Fields of Play [2/?] -- revised
title: Fields of Play [2/?]
fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes/Watson (PTSD and pre-slash in this chapter)
rating: PG
words: 3,707
summary: There was Holmes, kneeling beside him on the carpeted floor of the landing, and there was the wind blowing in from the window he had left open halfway up the stairs. That was all.
note: Thanks so much to taconaco and avalonauggie for being my springboards, for letting me bounce scattered ideas off you at will. I really am thankful for that, especially considering how this fic has grown legs and a mind of its own.
And thanks to paperclipbitch for helping me find my way again with this.
(Chapter 1)
By the time Mrs. Hudson knocked on his door and politely reminded him that dinner was ready, Watson had thoroughly convinced himself that he wasn’t hungry.
“No thank you,” he called. Even though two hours had gone by, Watson still couldn’t bring himself to leave his bedroom, still not feeling brave enough. Besides, one dinner didn’t seem like such a terrible sacrifice if it kept Watson from having to see his flat-mate. After losing his composure over something trivial to the point where it was hardly even worth remembering (if only), he wasn’t ready to risk Holmes calling him out for it.
So, without any further plans that evening, and to distract himself from how hungry he really was, he went to sleep. The sun was still up and the streets were still busy, but Watson’s exhaustion was so that he drifted off just as his head touched the pillow.
Sleep, however, was dangerous, despite the delusion Watson must have been under that had allowed him to so willingly to succumb to it that night. Most evenings were a battle, with the struggle to keep himself from falling asleep so great that he felt like he was back in Maiwand, which he then would dream about (when he wasn’t dreaming about his body and mind wasting away with sickness as he lost control of everything that he knew).
Upon being terrified into wakefulness, Watson would find himself covered in a film of sweat, his muscles all contracted with tension, his leg aching like the devil and his mind unable to quiet itself. Then, with the memories sitting on top of him like a weight, he would spent the rest of the night awake, all the while tormented by the reality: that he would sleep again, and that he would also dream. Every night.
But that evening, so early in the evening, Watson felt so truly exhausted - from his nerves, since he had long since recovered his physical strength from his walk from hell that afternoon - that he hadn’t been thinking straight, and so he willingly let himself sleep without even the slightest inkling of dread.
He woke a few minutes before three that morning, wracked with shivers and chattering teeth despite how warm his room was. He pulled his blanket up over his head and shut his eyes tight, trying to squeeze away the afterimages of the nightmare. Though his helpless trembling eventually calmed, he found that mental calm would be impossible as long as he remained in his bedroom. People had died in there, he thought, with one foot still planted firmly - stuck - in the dream, he couldn’t sleep in a bed with corpses. They’d decompose all over Mrs. Hudson’s sheets, and then where would he be?
Though he originally planned on venturing into the sitting room, his hopes were dashed to bits when, halfway down the stairs, he saw light filtering out under the closed door. He had come so far. If he continued into the sitting room, his missing dinner would have been in vain. Watson wasn’t particularly fond of doing anything in vain, so he opened the window on the landing, very slowly so it wouldn’t squeak, and leaned on the ledge to take in the night air.
The gust of wind that blew in felt amazing. Watson liked the cold. His rational mind still had trouble remembering that he was no longer in the desert, so the cold was a great help. The hairs of his arms stood up, and he could feel himself beginning to shiver in the draft. Relief washed over him and he finally felt like he could breathe normally again.
“Is that you, Watson?” came Holmes’ voice from down the stairs.
Watson’s fingers gripped the window sill. He would not lose his patience, he resolved, not after he had just managed to calm down. Maybe he had just imagined it, Holmes catching him awake. Maybe the demons in his mind were not ready to lose him to sanity just yet, and had just supplied it to torment him. That seemed plausible.
But then, “Were you planning on joining me, or are you going to stay out on the landing all night?” Holmes sounded far too cheerful than one would expect at three in the morning. But Watson downright refused to let himself be bothered by it. He had been caught, after all, so he had no other choice than to join his flat-mate in the sitting room. He had lived through far worse; he could endure this.
He didn’t see Holmes right away. Instead, his eyes were first drawn to the dozens of books, all open, scattered across the floor. Then he saw Holmes, wrapped in a blanket that seemed to camouflage him where he was presently crouched over one of the books. He flipped a page, flipped it back, and then, in reaching for another book, leaned over so far to his right that he fell onto his side.
“Did you need anything, Mr. Holmes?” Watson prompted after Holmes, having landed near enough to the book he had been reaching for to begin reading it where he lay, made no sign of even noticing that he had come in. He snapped his head up and smiled favorably in Watson’s direction before turning back to his book.
“I missed you at dinner,” he said pleasantly, “Doctor.”
Watson figured that Holmes, being so busy, was probably not going to keep him for long, and therefore remained where he stood, near the door, anticipating his return the landing and the open window. “I wasn’t hungry. I ate on my walk.”
Apparently, this was funny, because Holmes started to laugh. Or maybe he had just read something funny in his book, Watson considered, trying not to jump to conclusions. That seemed to be where he went wrong last time.
“I’ve caught you,” Holmes stated.
“I beg your pardon?” Watson asked, still too shaken from his nightmare to really be sure what was going on.
“You weren’t at dinner.”
Watson didn’t get the joke. “Yes...”
Holmes’ smile disappeared. “Neither was I.”
There it was. For some reason that Watson could not fathom, Holmes seemed to be set on making him feel guilty, as if his missing dinner somehow had a direct affect on Holmes, even though he hadn’t gone to dinner either.
Watson shifted his weight in an effort to take the strain off his leg. “Why’s that, then?” he said, because in his attempt to avoid getting agitated and shouting ay anyone, maintaining semblances of a normal conversation seemed to be the surest way to do so.
“Come in. Sit down,” said Holmes, using his arm first to gesture towards the nearest armchair and then to drag over another book. Only when Watson was seated did he continue. “Are you aware of your tendency to cry out in your sleep?”
“Yes,” Watson said. He had been complained to more times than he could remember about this particular affliction, and it had often been his own screams that woke him from his nightmares. He was too tired, and too biased against his new flat-mate, to bother with saying anything kinder. “Is that why you missed dinner?”
Holmes snorted, and did not look up from his book.
“Alright,” Watson conceded. He hoped that the time would come where he would no longer scream in his sleep and be a nuisance to anyone, where his mind would finally get used to the impossible horrors he had seen in battle. But that day had yet to dawn, and Watson decided that this had to be the reason why Holmes was awake at three in the morning. After all, he of all people knew how hard it was to sleep when your neighbor is screaming at the top of their lungs about nothing at all relevant or beneficial to life: the only way he managed to get any sleep at all in the veterans hospital was from all the drugs he had been on. Noisiest damn place, veteran hospitals. Every other bed, someone was screaming about one thing or another, and perhaps Watson might have sympathized with them if he had been their doctor and not their equal.
He hated the way Holmes called him ‘Doctor,’ as if to mock him for the sorry state he was in. ‘Look how far you’ve fallen,’ he seemed to say, smirking at him at three in the morning. Of course he was angry, though. He wasn’t getting any sleep, and Watson, felt guilty, knew that he had to at least try to apologize, even if he was about to be out in the streets and needing to find another to live with (or an asylum to check himself into).
“If it is an apology you want,” he said, “all you need is to ask for one. I am very sorry for keeping you up. If I could do something about the screaming, I would.”
“You could stay up,” Holmes suggested, managing to pull his attention away from his book.
“I am up,” said Watson.
“As a solution,” Holmes explained, looking baffled and slightly offending that his point wasn’t getting through to him. “If you stay awake, you won’t scream in your sleep.”
The fact that Holmes had to look up from his book turned Watson’s guilt into a fist that squeezed and twisted his heart, for now, not only did he keep Holmes from screaming, he was now keeping him from his work. “If it’s going to be a problem--”
“I was merely making a suggestion,” Holmes remarked, crawling over to another book. But he did not read it. He just sat by it, his eyes still on Watson. “You didn’t wake me up. There is no reason for you to apologize.”
Watson slumped back into the chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Then why bring it up?”
“Simply to state a fact,” he said.
“If not because of my inadequacy as a neighbor,” said Watson, choosing to take his anger out on himself rather than on Holmes, if only to make up for his screaming, “what on earth are you doing awake at such an ungodly hour?”
Holmes blinked. “Is it fair that only one of us is allowed to wander through our home at night?”
“Hardly,” said Watson, and then continued, despite himself. “However, we are not both of us traumatized war veterans.”
“No, I supposed not,” he decided. Then he turned back down to the book. “However, since we are on the subject of supposition, I don’t suppose that war is the worst thing a man can go through.”
“Why do you suppose that?” said watson.
“Why do you,” said Holmes, “ask me, voicing your surprise and disapproval with such conviction, what I am doing awake at, as you so sensibly put it, such an ungodly hour?”
He had such a way of speaking that he had almost managed to convince Watson that they were having a different conversation entirely. At least, he would have, were Watson’s heart not still being twisted in a grip he had come to grow all too accustom too.
“I thought we were talking about war?” he prompted, not comfortable with going into detail about his own psyche and reasoning for wanting to re-rail the de-railed conversation. However, either it was his current state of self-deprecation or the fact that Holmes talking about war carried about as much credibility as Watson talking about performing in a circus, Watson somehow felt the need to focus his flat-mate and submit himself, willingly, to whatever mines were buried in that field.
“Perhaps you were about to go into details on the subject of war and its horrors. Please,” he leaned forward in his seat, “continue.”
Holmes looked confused for a second. He stared at the pages of his book but did not appear to be reading them. Then he closed his mouth, which had been hanging slack, and then finally, he set his gaze back on Watson. “I only meant to say that wars do not seem entirely miserable. Not entirely.”
“Do not seem, you say,” said Watson, his voice taking on the characteristic he associated with aiming his rifle at a defenseless man. “However, this is a subject you know nothing about.”
“While I have not been to war,” Holmes began, “I am well aware of what occurs during one.”
“Are you?” said Watson, as if he were raising the scope to his eye.
“There are worse unpleasantries to endure,” said Holmes.
“Is there anyone for whom a war would be considered pleasant?” Watson hoped that, from both his tone and how their last conversation had gone, Holmes would infer that he should pick a new subject of conversation immediately. This way, he could avoid delving any further into such an unsettling subject and finally give his mind the rest it needed.
“Those who wage it?” Holmes suggested, then shook his head and quirked his mouth into an amused little smile, as if to comment on this statement, on this whole conversation, being too ridiculous even for him to agree with it. “Well no one would call it boring, anyway.”
Sweat was beginning to form at Watson’s neck and forehead, and his finger wrapped around the trigger. He felt that he would suffocate if he did not make it back to the open window soon. “You know nothing of which you speak.”
“Would you care to elucidate, then?”
That was all that Watson needed. He rose swiftly to his feet. It was an attack if ever there was one, and he would rather Holmes throw him out than try to further infect their conversation with subtle hints at his disapproval. “I strongly advise you not to say another word,” he said. He then became aware, as his hands dropped to his sides, that he had been pressing his thumbs up against his index fingers, an act he had effectuated as a less conspicuous alternative to clenching his fists. Judging by the pain spreading across his palms, he could safely assume that he had been doing so for quite some time. He didn’t dare release the grip, for he felt that if he wanted to make it out of the sitting room alive, he needed to hold on to something.
Instead, he pulled the trigger.
To hell with propriety. He had been through a war, for god’s sake, and could no longer stand to be idle while Holmes continued to ramble on about something that he had no business even thinking of. “I need not hide away in my room in response to your blatant ignorance and attack on my character. But if there is anything in your life that you hold dear, you will not say another word.”
“There isn’t,” said Holmes, not surprisingly, but there was no barb to it. He was merely making a statement. “However, allow me to tell you one thing right now. As much as I am wont to admit it, abandoning a train of thought is not a simple task for me. I find it very much like jumping off a real train. Racing down the tracks. You must plan their exit well, take notice of everything in a split second, lest you wind up breaking your neck from the fall.”
Tension was beginning to creep up Watson’s forearms. He maintained his control though, rather than distract Holmes, who spoke with such an air of regret that he could have very easily moved Watson to pity his own particular troubles, had he not then concluded his speech with such a blatant comment on how stupid he believed Watson to be: “You can’t just jump.”
Watson briefly wondered what sort of experience Holmes had with jumping off trains. But it was fleeting, and left him feeling confused. “I had half a mind to believe that you were trying to apologize to me, just then,” he said, “until you went and called me an imbecile.”
“I did not call you an imbecile,” Holmes stated.
“You did not use those words,” Watson said quietly. “But I know what you think.”
“Is that so? I dare say I was never before under the impression of being such an easy read.”
“Well then, if it will help you make sense of what you’ve done, I shall attempt to continue along in the metaphor you’ve just described: This is my stop. This is where I get off.” Thumbs still clenched tightly against his index fingers, Watson turned and started, haltingly, for his leg was not helping any, for the door.
“Please, Doctor, I beg of you, stay!” Holmes called after him. Watson then heard the some shuffling sounds, and turned back instinctively to see that he had disentangled himself from his blanket and risen to his feet. He spoke with a kind of urgency that Watson had never heard him use before. “It seems I have offended you a second time, and I must make amends. I must convince you that none of this was deliberate, that it is just my nature to be inquisitive.”
“I assure you,” Watson said, “you stopped being inquisitive far too long ago for any of this to be excusable.”
Despite the cruelty in Watson’s voice that surprised even Watson, Holmes continued. “After what happened when you returned from your walk, it dawned on me that perhaps I was being too careless with your sensitivities.”
“My sensitivities... you speak of me as if I am a woman,” Watson held up a hand in an effort to stop Holmes. “Please do not tell me you are still trying to apologize.”
“Not a woman, no,” Holmes said hurriedly, his words stumbling and tripping over each other. “As a man, one who has been through a serious trauma and is still recovering from it.” He took a breath and steadied himself. “It was my mistake to assume that you were already over your shock. I myself have never fallen victim to such anxieties, and therefore cannot possibly relate to yours.”
“You say you’re trying to help, and yet you continue to offend me,” Watson cried, exasperated. “Do you mean to say that you are just, only now, realizing how truly offensive you’re being? Honestly?”
“Yes!” Holmes exclaimed.
When Watson was first struck down in battle, he set his jaw and crawled to where his rifle had fallen. He continued to fight until his strength eventually failed him, and he fell back into the sand in defeat. His fight with Holmes went the very same way, with Watson steeling himself for the worst and not giving up until his strength had reached its limit.
That time had come. Watson only had so much strength to endure, and he had used himself up. After mumbling a quick excuse and making an even quicker retreat, was found himself shuddering on floor of the landing when Holmes came out to join him, to drag him away from the dead.
“Forgive me,” he said, his voice grave as he knelt down a little ways off from him. “I have not been ignorant. I have been so careful during this last conversation we’ve been having. You just haven’t realized. These books, I’ve been so carefully turning pages so as not to make a sound, lest I risk reminding you of some other horrors of your past.”
“Stop it,” Watson protested feebly.
Holmes paid him no heed. “It is my habit to throw things about, and I have refrained from doing so after what happened last time we spoke. I have restricted my vocal tones, refrained from shouting at you--”
“Please stop,” said Watson, refusing to look at him. “You are being unspeakably cruel.”
“I was merely trying to take your particular state of recovery into account.”
Watson stared at the floor. “I do not wish to be accounted for. I wish to god I were not plagued with such weaknesses.”
“One can only wish for so long before other methods need be considered,” said Holmes, after a moment’s pause.
Watson looked at him then, before he could stop himself, and saw that Holmes’ face was drawn with what appeared to be concern. He looked positively ill with it, all traces of his previous smiles and lighthearted jibes completely effaced.
“You really have no idea, do you?” he said, incredulous and yet finding himself starting to believe that perhaps Holmes had not meant to attack him at all, that perhaps he truly had meant well, even though his efforts ended in resounding failure.
“No,” Holmes agreed. “But I am trying.”
“So you are,” Watson said, straining to draw in a deep, shaky breath. It was like waking up in the hospital for the first time after he had been injured, snapping into immediate awareness and taking inventory of his injury, where it hurt, and how bad, trying to judge how much morphine he was on. The sun burned through the curtains and made his head ache. All around him, there was noise, screams, squeaking wheels, curtain rings gliding along metal rods, the clicking of metal instruments on metal trays, and so much talking.
This time it was quiet. There was Holmes, kneeling beside him on the carpeted floor of the landing, and there was the wind blowing in from the window he had left open halfway up the stairs. That was all. Watson lowered his head into his hands. “What am I going to do?”
“Allow me to suggest that you accompany me to the kitchen,” said Holmes, his voice taking on a tone that far more suited for a command than a suggestion. “You are in no condition to be missing meals, dear boy.” And though it was a rather patronizing thing for him to say, Watson did not feel particularly patronized.
So it came to pass that Watson and Holmes dined together after all that night, scraping together whatever they could find to make a rather lamentable meal. Watson didn’t mind. They ate in silence, which Watson didn’t mind either. And even though Watson still felt like he was about to fall apart, Holmes made no sign of noticing. Watson minded that least of all.
(Next Chapter)
fandom: Sherlock Holmes
Pairing: Holmes/Watson (PTSD and pre-slash in this chapter)
rating: PG
words: 3,707
summary: There was Holmes, kneeling beside him on the carpeted floor of the landing, and there was the wind blowing in from the window he had left open halfway up the stairs. That was all.
note: Thanks so much to taconaco and avalonauggie for being my springboards, for letting me bounce scattered ideas off you at will. I really am thankful for that, especially considering how this fic has grown legs and a mind of its own.
And thanks to paperclipbitch for helping me find my way again with this.
(Chapter 1)
By the time Mrs. Hudson knocked on his door and politely reminded him that dinner was ready, Watson had thoroughly convinced himself that he wasn’t hungry.
“No thank you,” he called. Even though two hours had gone by, Watson still couldn’t bring himself to leave his bedroom, still not feeling brave enough. Besides, one dinner didn’t seem like such a terrible sacrifice if it kept Watson from having to see his flat-mate. After losing his composure over something trivial to the point where it was hardly even worth remembering (if only), he wasn’t ready to risk Holmes calling him out for it.
So, without any further plans that evening, and to distract himself from how hungry he really was, he went to sleep. The sun was still up and the streets were still busy, but Watson’s exhaustion was so that he drifted off just as his head touched the pillow.
Sleep, however, was dangerous, despite the delusion Watson must have been under that had allowed him to so willingly to succumb to it that night. Most evenings were a battle, with the struggle to keep himself from falling asleep so great that he felt like he was back in Maiwand, which he then would dream about (when he wasn’t dreaming about his body and mind wasting away with sickness as he lost control of everything that he knew).
Upon being terrified into wakefulness, Watson would find himself covered in a film of sweat, his muscles all contracted with tension, his leg aching like the devil and his mind unable to quiet itself. Then, with the memories sitting on top of him like a weight, he would spent the rest of the night awake, all the while tormented by the reality: that he would sleep again, and that he would also dream. Every night.
But that evening, so early in the evening, Watson felt so truly exhausted - from his nerves, since he had long since recovered his physical strength from his walk from hell that afternoon - that he hadn’t been thinking straight, and so he willingly let himself sleep without even the slightest inkling of dread.
He woke a few minutes before three that morning, wracked with shivers and chattering teeth despite how warm his room was. He pulled his blanket up over his head and shut his eyes tight, trying to squeeze away the afterimages of the nightmare. Though his helpless trembling eventually calmed, he found that mental calm would be impossible as long as he remained in his bedroom. People had died in there, he thought, with one foot still planted firmly - stuck - in the dream, he couldn’t sleep in a bed with corpses. They’d decompose all over Mrs. Hudson’s sheets, and then where would he be?
Though he originally planned on venturing into the sitting room, his hopes were dashed to bits when, halfway down the stairs, he saw light filtering out under the closed door. He had come so far. If he continued into the sitting room, his missing dinner would have been in vain. Watson wasn’t particularly fond of doing anything in vain, so he opened the window on the landing, very slowly so it wouldn’t squeak, and leaned on the ledge to take in the night air.
The gust of wind that blew in felt amazing. Watson liked the cold. His rational mind still had trouble remembering that he was no longer in the desert, so the cold was a great help. The hairs of his arms stood up, and he could feel himself beginning to shiver in the draft. Relief washed over him and he finally felt like he could breathe normally again.
“Is that you, Watson?” came Holmes’ voice from down the stairs.
Watson’s fingers gripped the window sill. He would not lose his patience, he resolved, not after he had just managed to calm down. Maybe he had just imagined it, Holmes catching him awake. Maybe the demons in his mind were not ready to lose him to sanity just yet, and had just supplied it to torment him. That seemed plausible.
But then, “Were you planning on joining me, or are you going to stay out on the landing all night?” Holmes sounded far too cheerful than one would expect at three in the morning. But Watson downright refused to let himself be bothered by it. He had been caught, after all, so he had no other choice than to join his flat-mate in the sitting room. He had lived through far worse; he could endure this.
He didn’t see Holmes right away. Instead, his eyes were first drawn to the dozens of books, all open, scattered across the floor. Then he saw Holmes, wrapped in a blanket that seemed to camouflage him where he was presently crouched over one of the books. He flipped a page, flipped it back, and then, in reaching for another book, leaned over so far to his right that he fell onto his side.
“Did you need anything, Mr. Holmes?” Watson prompted after Holmes, having landed near enough to the book he had been reaching for to begin reading it where he lay, made no sign of even noticing that he had come in. He snapped his head up and smiled favorably in Watson’s direction before turning back to his book.
“I missed you at dinner,” he said pleasantly, “Doctor.”
Watson figured that Holmes, being so busy, was probably not going to keep him for long, and therefore remained where he stood, near the door, anticipating his return the landing and the open window. “I wasn’t hungry. I ate on my walk.”
Apparently, this was funny, because Holmes started to laugh. Or maybe he had just read something funny in his book, Watson considered, trying not to jump to conclusions. That seemed to be where he went wrong last time.
“I’ve caught you,” Holmes stated.
“I beg your pardon?” Watson asked, still too shaken from his nightmare to really be sure what was going on.
“You weren’t at dinner.”
Watson didn’t get the joke. “Yes...”
Holmes’ smile disappeared. “Neither was I.”
There it was. For some reason that Watson could not fathom, Holmes seemed to be set on making him feel guilty, as if his missing dinner somehow had a direct affect on Holmes, even though he hadn’t gone to dinner either.
Watson shifted his weight in an effort to take the strain off his leg. “Why’s that, then?” he said, because in his attempt to avoid getting agitated and shouting ay anyone, maintaining semblances of a normal conversation seemed to be the surest way to do so.
“Come in. Sit down,” said Holmes, using his arm first to gesture towards the nearest armchair and then to drag over another book. Only when Watson was seated did he continue. “Are you aware of your tendency to cry out in your sleep?”
“Yes,” Watson said. He had been complained to more times than he could remember about this particular affliction, and it had often been his own screams that woke him from his nightmares. He was too tired, and too biased against his new flat-mate, to bother with saying anything kinder. “Is that why you missed dinner?”
Holmes snorted, and did not look up from his book.
“Alright,” Watson conceded. He hoped that the time would come where he would no longer scream in his sleep and be a nuisance to anyone, where his mind would finally get used to the impossible horrors he had seen in battle. But that day had yet to dawn, and Watson decided that this had to be the reason why Holmes was awake at three in the morning. After all, he of all people knew how hard it was to sleep when your neighbor is screaming at the top of their lungs about nothing at all relevant or beneficial to life: the only way he managed to get any sleep at all in the veterans hospital was from all the drugs he had been on. Noisiest damn place, veteran hospitals. Every other bed, someone was screaming about one thing or another, and perhaps Watson might have sympathized with them if he had been their doctor and not their equal.
He hated the way Holmes called him ‘Doctor,’ as if to mock him for the sorry state he was in. ‘Look how far you’ve fallen,’ he seemed to say, smirking at him at three in the morning. Of course he was angry, though. He wasn’t getting any sleep, and Watson, felt guilty, knew that he had to at least try to apologize, even if he was about to be out in the streets and needing to find another to live with (or an asylum to check himself into).
“If it is an apology you want,” he said, “all you need is to ask for one. I am very sorry for keeping you up. If I could do something about the screaming, I would.”
“You could stay up,” Holmes suggested, managing to pull his attention away from his book.
“I am up,” said Watson.
“As a solution,” Holmes explained, looking baffled and slightly offending that his point wasn’t getting through to him. “If you stay awake, you won’t scream in your sleep.”
The fact that Holmes had to look up from his book turned Watson’s guilt into a fist that squeezed and twisted his heart, for now, not only did he keep Holmes from screaming, he was now keeping him from his work. “If it’s going to be a problem--”
“I was merely making a suggestion,” Holmes remarked, crawling over to another book. But he did not read it. He just sat by it, his eyes still on Watson. “You didn’t wake me up. There is no reason for you to apologize.”
Watson slumped back into the chair, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Then why bring it up?”
“Simply to state a fact,” he said.
“If not because of my inadequacy as a neighbor,” said Watson, choosing to take his anger out on himself rather than on Holmes, if only to make up for his screaming, “what on earth are you doing awake at such an ungodly hour?”
Holmes blinked. “Is it fair that only one of us is allowed to wander through our home at night?”
“Hardly,” said Watson, and then continued, despite himself. “However, we are not both of us traumatized war veterans.”
“No, I supposed not,” he decided. Then he turned back down to the book. “However, since we are on the subject of supposition, I don’t suppose that war is the worst thing a man can go through.”
“Why do you suppose that?” said watson.
“Why do you,” said Holmes, “ask me, voicing your surprise and disapproval with such conviction, what I am doing awake at, as you so sensibly put it, such an ungodly hour?”
He had such a way of speaking that he had almost managed to convince Watson that they were having a different conversation entirely. At least, he would have, were Watson’s heart not still being twisted in a grip he had come to grow all too accustom too.
“I thought we were talking about war?” he prompted, not comfortable with going into detail about his own psyche and reasoning for wanting to re-rail the de-railed conversation. However, either it was his current state of self-deprecation or the fact that Holmes talking about war carried about as much credibility as Watson talking about performing in a circus, Watson somehow felt the need to focus his flat-mate and submit himself, willingly, to whatever mines were buried in that field.
“Perhaps you were about to go into details on the subject of war and its horrors. Please,” he leaned forward in his seat, “continue.”
Holmes looked confused for a second. He stared at the pages of his book but did not appear to be reading them. Then he closed his mouth, which had been hanging slack, and then finally, he set his gaze back on Watson. “I only meant to say that wars do not seem entirely miserable. Not entirely.”
“Do not seem, you say,” said Watson, his voice taking on the characteristic he associated with aiming his rifle at a defenseless man. “However, this is a subject you know nothing about.”
“While I have not been to war,” Holmes began, “I am well aware of what occurs during one.”
“Are you?” said Watson, as if he were raising the scope to his eye.
“There are worse unpleasantries to endure,” said Holmes.
“Is there anyone for whom a war would be considered pleasant?” Watson hoped that, from both his tone and how their last conversation had gone, Holmes would infer that he should pick a new subject of conversation immediately. This way, he could avoid delving any further into such an unsettling subject and finally give his mind the rest it needed.
“Those who wage it?” Holmes suggested, then shook his head and quirked his mouth into an amused little smile, as if to comment on this statement, on this whole conversation, being too ridiculous even for him to agree with it. “Well no one would call it boring, anyway.”
Sweat was beginning to form at Watson’s neck and forehead, and his finger wrapped around the trigger. He felt that he would suffocate if he did not make it back to the open window soon. “You know nothing of which you speak.”
“Would you care to elucidate, then?”
That was all that Watson needed. He rose swiftly to his feet. It was an attack if ever there was one, and he would rather Holmes throw him out than try to further infect their conversation with subtle hints at his disapproval. “I strongly advise you not to say another word,” he said. He then became aware, as his hands dropped to his sides, that he had been pressing his thumbs up against his index fingers, an act he had effectuated as a less conspicuous alternative to clenching his fists. Judging by the pain spreading across his palms, he could safely assume that he had been doing so for quite some time. He didn’t dare release the grip, for he felt that if he wanted to make it out of the sitting room alive, he needed to hold on to something.
Instead, he pulled the trigger.
To hell with propriety. He had been through a war, for god’s sake, and could no longer stand to be idle while Holmes continued to ramble on about something that he had no business even thinking of. “I need not hide away in my room in response to your blatant ignorance and attack on my character. But if there is anything in your life that you hold dear, you will not say another word.”
“There isn’t,” said Holmes, not surprisingly, but there was no barb to it. He was merely making a statement. “However, allow me to tell you one thing right now. As much as I am wont to admit it, abandoning a train of thought is not a simple task for me. I find it very much like jumping off a real train. Racing down the tracks. You must plan their exit well, take notice of everything in a split second, lest you wind up breaking your neck from the fall.”
Tension was beginning to creep up Watson’s forearms. He maintained his control though, rather than distract Holmes, who spoke with such an air of regret that he could have very easily moved Watson to pity his own particular troubles, had he not then concluded his speech with such a blatant comment on how stupid he believed Watson to be: “You can’t just jump.”
Watson briefly wondered what sort of experience Holmes had with jumping off trains. But it was fleeting, and left him feeling confused. “I had half a mind to believe that you were trying to apologize to me, just then,” he said, “until you went and called me an imbecile.”
“I did not call you an imbecile,” Holmes stated.
“You did not use those words,” Watson said quietly. “But I know what you think.”
“Is that so? I dare say I was never before under the impression of being such an easy read.”
“Well then, if it will help you make sense of what you’ve done, I shall attempt to continue along in the metaphor you’ve just described: This is my stop. This is where I get off.” Thumbs still clenched tightly against his index fingers, Watson turned and started, haltingly, for his leg was not helping any, for the door.
“Please, Doctor, I beg of you, stay!” Holmes called after him. Watson then heard the some shuffling sounds, and turned back instinctively to see that he had disentangled himself from his blanket and risen to his feet. He spoke with a kind of urgency that Watson had never heard him use before. “It seems I have offended you a second time, and I must make amends. I must convince you that none of this was deliberate, that it is just my nature to be inquisitive.”
“I assure you,” Watson said, “you stopped being inquisitive far too long ago for any of this to be excusable.”
Despite the cruelty in Watson’s voice that surprised even Watson, Holmes continued. “After what happened when you returned from your walk, it dawned on me that perhaps I was being too careless with your sensitivities.”
“My sensitivities... you speak of me as if I am a woman,” Watson held up a hand in an effort to stop Holmes. “Please do not tell me you are still trying to apologize.”
“Not a woman, no,” Holmes said hurriedly, his words stumbling and tripping over each other. “As a man, one who has been through a serious trauma and is still recovering from it.” He took a breath and steadied himself. “It was my mistake to assume that you were already over your shock. I myself have never fallen victim to such anxieties, and therefore cannot possibly relate to yours.”
“You say you’re trying to help, and yet you continue to offend me,” Watson cried, exasperated. “Do you mean to say that you are just, only now, realizing how truly offensive you’re being? Honestly?”
“Yes!” Holmes exclaimed.
When Watson was first struck down in battle, he set his jaw and crawled to where his rifle had fallen. He continued to fight until his strength eventually failed him, and he fell back into the sand in defeat. His fight with Holmes went the very same way, with Watson steeling himself for the worst and not giving up until his strength had reached its limit.
That time had come. Watson only had so much strength to endure, and he had used himself up. After mumbling a quick excuse and making an even quicker retreat, was found himself shuddering on floor of the landing when Holmes came out to join him, to drag him away from the dead.
“Forgive me,” he said, his voice grave as he knelt down a little ways off from him. “I have not been ignorant. I have been so careful during this last conversation we’ve been having. You just haven’t realized. These books, I’ve been so carefully turning pages so as not to make a sound, lest I risk reminding you of some other horrors of your past.”
“Stop it,” Watson protested feebly.
Holmes paid him no heed. “It is my habit to throw things about, and I have refrained from doing so after what happened last time we spoke. I have restricted my vocal tones, refrained from shouting at you--”
“Please stop,” said Watson, refusing to look at him. “You are being unspeakably cruel.”
“I was merely trying to take your particular state of recovery into account.”
Watson stared at the floor. “I do not wish to be accounted for. I wish to god I were not plagued with such weaknesses.”
“One can only wish for so long before other methods need be considered,” said Holmes, after a moment’s pause.
Watson looked at him then, before he could stop himself, and saw that Holmes’ face was drawn with what appeared to be concern. He looked positively ill with it, all traces of his previous smiles and lighthearted jibes completely effaced.
“You really have no idea, do you?” he said, incredulous and yet finding himself starting to believe that perhaps Holmes had not meant to attack him at all, that perhaps he truly had meant well, even though his efforts ended in resounding failure.
“No,” Holmes agreed. “But I am trying.”
“So you are,” Watson said, straining to draw in a deep, shaky breath. It was like waking up in the hospital for the first time after he had been injured, snapping into immediate awareness and taking inventory of his injury, where it hurt, and how bad, trying to judge how much morphine he was on. The sun burned through the curtains and made his head ache. All around him, there was noise, screams, squeaking wheels, curtain rings gliding along metal rods, the clicking of metal instruments on metal trays, and so much talking.
This time it was quiet. There was Holmes, kneeling beside him on the carpeted floor of the landing, and there was the wind blowing in from the window he had left open halfway up the stairs. That was all. Watson lowered his head into his hands. “What am I going to do?”
“Allow me to suggest that you accompany me to the kitchen,” said Holmes, his voice taking on a tone that far more suited for a command than a suggestion. “You are in no condition to be missing meals, dear boy.” And though it was a rather patronizing thing for him to say, Watson did not feel particularly patronized.
So it came to pass that Watson and Holmes dined together after all that night, scraping together whatever they could find to make a rather lamentable meal. Watson didn’t mind. They ate in silence, which Watson didn’t mind either. And even though Watson still felt like he was about to fall apart, Holmes made no sign of noticing. Watson minded that least of all.
(Next Chapter)