Work Text:
He doesn’t feel like seeing anyone today. Mrs Hudson will chalk it up to one of his moods, he’s sure; he’s given her strict instructions that no one is to be ushered up— no clients, no inspectors, not even the Chief of Police himself.
It’s midwinter, a chill, sunless day with small fits of snow that flurry against the windows but do not accumulate on the street. Few carriages, none stopping. The fire is warm; nothing tempts him to go out.
Tea time comes and goes. When he hears the front bell ring just after six o’clock, he stops playing his violin and listens. Mrs Hudson has opened the door and is speaking to someone, her voice firm, then questioning. Then a male voice answering, followed by her feet on the stairs.
“I’m sorry, Mr Holmes,” she says. “This gentleman insists. He says it’s a matter of life and death.”
His peace already ruined, he gives in. Life and death mean something, though less to him than to most people. He sinks into his chair, dressing gown wrapped around, girding himself for whatever tale of woe will follow. “Send him up.”
She calls down the stairs, “He will see you.”
Then another set of feet. He has made a study not only of footprints, but footsteps. A person’s tread tells part of their life story— age, weight, infirmity, even mood can be deduced from the sound of feet on a pavement or wooden floor.
The choice of footwear is another clue. The most fashionably dressed person may have worn shoes that tell a story. Carefully buffed shoes on a man in work clothes tell a different tale. The wear patterns tell him what work a person does. There are other clues, as well: ill-fitting shoes, cheap shoes, expensive shoes, orthopaedic shoes—
These feet are boot-shod, from the sound, but the tread is light. And somehow familiar.
The visitor at the door does not speak. No introduction is necessary.
John Watson.
There is no reason why the man would have changed, but in the small differences Holmes reads the years since they’ve seen one another.
He remains in his chair. “You’re back,” he says, schooling his expression to something bland.
It doesn’t matter. Watson knows him, can see what he is feeling. Anger, regret, and something else that Holmes himself hasn’t yet defined, doesn’t want to define.
Watson takes a step forward, over the threshold. He’s the same in most respects— short, compact, his calm exterior barely concealing a restless energy. A lit fuse ready to blow. The corners of his mouth twitch. “You bastard.”
Holmes gestures towards the empty chair. If they’re going to have it out again, they might as well be comfortable.
He studies the man. The moustache is gone, the blond hair shorter again. The eyes haven’t changed. Not in a thousand years will he ever forget those eyes.
The limp is new. It interests him.
Watson takes the chair. “I thought you might have done it this time,” he says.
“You were wounded in action,” he replies. “In France, I think.”
“All healed. No idea why the limp persists.”
“Indeed. It is curious.”
“I haven’t forgiven you,” Watson says. “Hurling yourself into that cataract— and what for? You’re mad, you know.”
“I’m merely curious. And if I hadn’t— well, it would have amounted to the same thing.”
“Well, your obsession wears me out. I’d made up my mind never to see you again.”
“And yet, here you are.”
Watson smiles grimly. “Yes. Here I am.”
“It’s been, what, twenty years?”
“More, I should think. Nearly thirty.”
”If I may ask, why are you here?” He tries to sound cold.
Watson returns his level gaze. “You’ve been reading me for so long, you ought to know why.”
Holmes does not answer. He knows why Watson always returns. It’s the same reason that his heart leaped when he saw him standing in the doorway, holding the familiar bowler. It’s comfortable, Holmes thinks, the two of them together. After so many years living with the knowledge there is just one other person in the world like him, Watson’s absence had felt like a wound.
Why one of them always leaves is harder to explain.
They sit; they wait. The room grows grey as the evening comes on.
Watson closes his eyes and leans back. For a while, Holmes thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then he speaks. “Haven’t you ever… simply been tired, Holmes? The wars, the politics, the unending conflict—“
“Humans don’t live long enough to learn anything. It’s bound to be an endless loop.”
“And what have you learned?”
He considers this question. The answer is one they’ve often debated, even coming to blows over it a few times. Years ago he’d told Watson his conclusion that emotions were useless. Joy was pointless because its counterpart, grief, could not be avoided. Love was pointless because people die. The only way he could cope with all the mortality surrounding him was to be aloof, to stay detached and not let himself be biased. Passion may have its place, but as a scientist, he keeps it confined in that narrow place.
Watson has never been able to separate his mind from his passions. During the times they have been together, it has been their mutual passion that kept them steady. But the last time, Watson had had enough of finding and losing. And Holmes still hadn’t solved the mystery.
Every life ends in Death.
Every life but two.
“Lie with me,” he says.
It’s a puzzle, why they should even feel lust. Love must not be enough to ensure procreation of the species, so nature has provided Lust. But neither of them have ever fathered a child. He suspects they are sterile, which actually makes sense. If a creature does not die, why would it need to reproduce?
But when they lie together like this, sated and still, he could almost renounce his decision not to love.
“Do you remember being a child?” Watson asks.
“Of course.” He remembers everything, though some of it is packed away. It’s not useful to remember his childhood.
“I didn’t know you then. When did you realise?”
It didn’t happen all at once, he remembers. There were things that might have told him, things he ignored. Improbable things. It was when the improbable became impossible to explain that his understanding began. “Everyone was ill, dying. I tried to heal them. I had begun to understand how contagion works, and thought it strange that I didn’t become ill. I tried to infect myself, but even when my entire… family was dead, I did not succumb. I went away after that.”
“Your family. Did they understand?”
“No. And I never stayed in one place for long after I left. If I stayed, people decided I was an evil spirit. For a long time, I believed it too.”
Watson pulls him close. “I had a twin. A sister. She was weak, sickly, and never grew, while I grew stronger. They said that I had stolen her life away in the womb. That made me special. And dangerous. I got in fights with other boys, but even the worst wounds always healed over quickly. It frightened them, so I left. That’s when I became a soldier.”
“Maybe they were right, those who feared us.”
“We’re not spirits, Holmes.”
“No.” He wishes he knew what they were. Until he found Watson, there was no one to wonder with.
Watson sleeps. He’s been in France, fighting another pointless war, using up his resources. Holmes will take care of him.
He studies the well-known face. Different names back then, but they are essentially the same people they were when they first met. He was a priest, and Watson a soldier. Watching a battle, he saw a man take a pike through the chest, red blood pouring out of him into the white snow. It was obvious that the man was going to die, but he wanted to see him, watch the light fade from his eyes, and ask him, what is it? Where are you going? What do you see?
The man didn’t die. The bleeding stopped and he went into a deep sleep. If Holmes hadn’t been able to see the heart inside the broken rib cage, he would have believed the man was dead. But every few minutes the heart pumped. And the man’s face, though pale, never took on the cast of death.
Over the next days, his chest closed, the tissues and bone coming together, visibly healing. Holmes had by that time learned what the human body was capable of, and what it was not. He had studied Death with a knife, dissecting and probing and looking for the cause. He knew what it took to kill a human body.
For some reason, Nature had given him a gift he hadn’t asked for.
And now, he wasn’t alone.
Watson stays. It won’t last, but it’s enough for now.
They have a case, an odd one. A man named Garrideb, looking for two more Garridebs, a fortune to be shared by the men with that name. It’s about the money, he knows. People will kill for money, which only gets you more money— and less time. Time is the true currency, but no one gets more of that, and you can’t trade lives with anyone. By this measure, he and Watson are as rich as Croesus.
Watson would say that time is only meaningful when it has an endpoint. Otherwise, it’s like counterfeit money, an endless supply of currency that can’t be spent. They’ve had that conversation.
It’s curious. He hears the gun fire and sees Watson fall. It’s a gut wound, he can tell, which means he will bleed out quickly and go into stasis. He won’t die, he reminds himself.
And yet his own heart seems to stop for a moment, contemplating what it would mean if Watson died and he lived. This is why people love, he thinks, because whatever we can lose becomes precious to us. To experience that moment of Death, he might finally be able to see the borders of that country. Only when he can see beyond will he let himself love.
Watson is bleeding out. Holmes lies to Lestrade, tells him the bullet grazed Watson’s belly, and that he’d better take him home and see to it. Watson is fading, his eyes dimming as he allows Holmes to lift him into the cab. The quantity of blood left behind on the floor of the old man’s house ought to tell Lestrade that it’s more than a scratch, but he’s too distracted to notice.
By the time they reach Baker Street, Watson is unconscious, unable to speak. Holmes carries him up the stairs and lays him in the bed; after cleaning and bandaging the wound, he covers him with plenty of blankets. The wound is already closing, but so much blood has been lost. It’s too late to force him to eat or drink, so the process will take longer.
Already Watson is sinking into a deep state of unconsciousness. His skin is growing pale and cold, and soon he will appear not to breathe as all his resources focus on fixing the damage. Holmes lays his head on the still chest, listening. Every minute or so he hears the heart beat, pumping a bit of blood through his body. Not dead, just as close to Death as any human can come.
In that state, there is no awareness. Life dims, but like a pilot light, it keeps burning. That is the threshold, he thinks. If only he could stand there long enough to understand.
Mrs Hudson brings up soup and tea and toast when he tells her Watson is ill. She offers her own advice about poultices and herbal teas to drive away infection. It’s not the infection, though. It’s the blood loss, the shock to the body. Watson must rebuild himself. Holmes does not call a doctor; it would only raise questions he cannot answer.
He thanks his landlady and eats the soup himself.
Stasis is to be avoided, when possible. Holmes has been in that state many times, accidentally or on purpose, trying to see what might lie beyond. The vulnerability of the state is not dying, but discovery. A human body neither dead nor alive seems to defy science. Well, it does in fact defy it, and that is a conundrum Holmes has never solved.
Once, many years ago, he was buried after a serious wound nearly exsanguinated him, alive but cold and still, dead to all appearances. The grave robbers who dug up what was meant to be his final resting place were scared witless when they opened his coffin and found him glaring back at them. To bring himself back, he had to kill small animals and drink their blood for sustenance. Tales were told in that village about the living dead, a man who woke at night and fed on the blood of others.
After Reichenbach he was able to hide himself before his injuries sent him into stasis, and when he finally woke three years later, he had provisions on him that helped bring him back to life, strengthen him enough to walk away. He stayed in a hotel for a few days, then began his travels.
On that journey, he found no one like himself, but he did meet a few who attempted to answer his question. In Tibet, he had a conversation with a Buddhist who believed in reincarnation.
“Death is the other side of Life,” said the monk. “Energy does not die; it only passes into another form.”
“But I don’t,” he said. “I am stuck here, never passing on. It’s like waiting for something that never comes, something that every human understands but me. The next time I come to this place, there will be new monks, ones who haven’t yet been born. Everyone I know will die. You will die. But I will be the same.”
“When you achieve enlightenment, you will die,” the monk said. “You will see things as they are. Then you will not be reborn. You will be at peace then, in perfect balance with Nature.”
“Kill me,” he said. “Let me see the other side.” If this holy man knew so much about Death and Life, perhaps he could show Holmes the way between them.
The monk was opposed to the idea of killing; he told Holmes that he must continue on, never stop seeking enlightenment. The universe does not make mistakes; he must uncover the reason he did not pass to the other side of Life.
A few days later he met a man willing to kill him, for money. He stabbed Holmes, and as he bled, tied rocks to him and sank him in the river. When he finally woke, naked on the bank, it was as if no time at all had passed. He was not enlightened.
He returned to London.
Perhaps he and Watson are the lucky ones, the ones who will never need enlightenment. There may have been others like them who went into stasis and never returned. Stasis is nothingness, not enlightenment. It’s a process, not a destination, a cycle that repeats, pulling him from the edge of Death.
But he does not want to believe that Life is meaningless.
During the night he lies next to Watson, wrapping himself around the cold body, listening for the heartbeat that comes every few minutes. Every now and then the still form takes a visible breath, but otherwise he does not move.
“What do you think it’s like?” he whispers in Watson’s ear. All the senses are shut down, so he won’t hear. Maybe Holmes will ask him again when he wakes. “Is it like this, but without waking?” He thinks it must be, but can’t be sure. Every culture has stories of an afterlife, but that might simply be a way to make Death softer, less final. Humans have an endless capacity for self-deception.
All humans sleep, but not like this. The times he’s been in stasis, it’s been like a blank space. When he wakes, there is a moment when he doesn’t feel the length of it. That’s part of the restoration process, learning whether it’s been a day or a thousand days. Koma, they call it. A deep, dreamless sleep. The body heals, and the sleeper wakes.
All humans have the capacity to heal, some greater than others. What is it that makes one man succumb quickly to an infection, and another to fight it off? It must be sleep, he thinks, some quality of sleep that exists with greater or lesser force in all creatures. The infinite variety of humans is written somewhere in all bodies, even his and Watson’s, which never wear out. They are still human; one day they might reach the limits of that power to heal.
So much about life is happenstance, either the genetics that create a life unable to sustain itself (or able to last forever), or the circumstances that put one in the path of a bullet or an oncoming train, the luck that puts one out of Death’s way.
Someday he will find it, the thing that keeps them from dying.
It’s nearly three weeks before Watson opens his eyes. When he sees Holmes, he smiles. “How long?” he rasps.
He smiles. “Mrs Hudson was getting suspicious. I’ve had to consume oceans of soup so she would think you were eating.”
“Soup sounds good,” he says.
Holmes holds the bowl, feeds him one spoonful at a time. Once the soup is gone, Watson closes his eyes. “I love you,” he says.
Holmes stills. It’s a never-ending cycle, this leaving, returning. There is no answer.
Watson’s breathing slows. When Holmes is sure he’s asleep, he takes the bowl and spoon back to the kitchen and rinses them.
“I know,” he says.
Watson improves daily. Mrs Hudson is pleased when he tells her he’s sure it was the soup. In a way, he’s right, though almost any form of sustenance would do to shake off his stasis. Soon he’s going on cases with Holmes again.
They don’t actually argue about it, but the divide never closes. They’d been enemies, lovers, and friends over the many years since they’d found one another. He knows what Watson thinks. He can play the argument in his head.
There are no answers in Death, Watson will say. The only answer is to live.
And Holmes will reply, I have to know. Don’t you ever wonder?
Watson will look sad then. No, Holmes. I don’t wonder any more. I’ve loved people and lost them— all but you. And still, I will choose love.
So it ends, again.
Holmes has obtained a bacterium and infected himself, supposedly to gain a confession from a man who used the same agent to kill his nephew. As always, it is a matter of money, an inheritance that should have gone to the nephew, had he not died.
“You tempt fate,” Watson says when the deceit is uncovered. “You know nothing of this contagion.”
“How many years have you known me, Watson?”
He will not answer; anger makes him shake. “There are limits to all things, Holmes,” he says at last. “Nature demands it of all, even you and me. One day we will have to pay this debt we have accumulated. Until then, it’s better to humbly accept the gift than to treat it as worthless.”
“You call it a gift,” Holmes says. “It may be that it is a curse. I only wish to examine it.”
Watson’s eyes fill. “If you love me, you will stop trying to kill yourself.”
There is no answer to this.
Once more, Watson is standing on the threshold. He’s packed his small bag and is wearing his new coat and a bowler from 1891, the one he wore to Switzerland. He looks around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the skull. Then he looks down.
“Well, I’ll be gone, then.”
Holmes nods. If he had a heart that could die, it would stop beating now, as Watson turns his back to him and starts down the stairway.
He’s always wondered at the elasticity of time. It’s years before he sees Watson again, and every day feels like a month. After the second war, he had to leave London. People might have thought him ageless, but there is a limit to what can be believed.
He dies several more times and learns nothing from those experiences. Stasis is boring. Waking up, stressful. There must be another way to uncover the secret of Death, but several thousand years haven’t taught him that yet, and it seems possible that he will ever know.
He returns to London only when the name Sherlock Holmes has been forgotten.
He owns the Baker Street building and moves back in without changing much. The plumbing and electric have been modernised, but those are the only nods to the twenty-first century. He calls his new landlady Mrs Hudson, even though she insists she’s Mrs Turner.
Murder is still practiced in this new century, and there is always need for a consulting detective. After a few rebuffs from Scotland Yard, he finds an inspector who listens to his deductions and begins letting him into crime scenes. As it happens, his name is Lestrade, whose great-grandfather once worked with Sherlock Holmes.
In between the murders, he studies Death: looks at it under a microscope, cuts it open with a scalpel, beats it with a riding crop so that it will reveal its secrets. What he learns improves his success rate and brings Lestrade to his door more often, but the Question remains unanswered.
He goes to funerals. This is something he’s always done, for centuries. He can’t explain why, but he wants to comprehend the grief he sees. What purpose does it serve? He used to grieve, back when Death was new, but over the years it’s lost the power to move him. He observes sorrow, trying to experience it vicariously.
He’s in the pathology lab at Barts Hospital when Watson walks in. He’s with Mike Stamford, an anatomy lecturer that Holmes has gotten to know.
People use first names now, so he says, “Mike, can I borrow your phone?”
Mike’s phone is in his pocket, but for some reason he suggests that Holmes use the landline.
“I prefer to text,” he replies. He’s looking at Watson, who is standing at parade rest, looking back at him. His old friend/enemy/lover has thinned out some, which tells Holmes he’s been injured and then ill with an infection. Maybe he’s really done with the army now and will be content to follow Holmes to crime scenes and write up their adventures. That would be enough, he thinks. Just let him stay.
For Mike’s benefit, they act out a little drama, plan to meet the following day, but when he returns to Baker Street, Watson is already sitting in his chair, waiting for him.
They don’t discuss why Watson is back or what will happen now. It’s the same as always— the two of them falling in step— the cases, the chases, the evenings together, the nights of passion, the silences, the violin.
Eventually, there is also Moriarty.
“Just so I know,” Watson says to him one day— a particularly gruelling day— “Do you care about human lives at all?”
“Caring about human lives will not help me save them,” he replies irritably.
Watson’s face falls. Sniffing, he looks away. “I suppose you’ll never change,” he says. “I’ve been a fool to think you might.”
Holmes is impatient. “Don’t you see? Moriarty must be like us. He died at Reichenbach, as I did, and he has returned.”
“He’s not like me, Holmes. I actually care about lives.”
“You’ve killed people. Or have you forgotten that, Captain Watson? You carried a gun, and you used it.”
“War is futile. I’m sorry it took me so long to learn that lesson. But I only ever killed to save another life.”
“I have never taken another life.”
“Maybe you would have more respect for human lives if you had.”
“I’ve saved lives, Watson. And where I haven’t, I have given justice to the survivors.”
He smiles sadly at Holmes. “True. You’ve always loved solving puzzles. I just wish— you hold yourself aloof, Holmes. Yes, you’ve done good things, brought justice. But what about you? We’ve been given a great gift, this endless life. Why must you spend it pursuing Death?”
“I’m afraid we must agree to disagree. To me, it is the one question that all people eventually answer. I only want to understand. Until then, I can never— ah, it’s pointless. You will never convince me to stop.”
Watson nods but will not meet Holmes’s eye. “I’m going to get some air.”
He doesn’t ask if Watson will return. If he doesn’t leave now, it will happen soon.
At the door, Watson stops. Without turning, he says, “I love you.”
The door closes behind him. Holmes hears his feet on the stairs.
I know, he whispers.
While Watson is gone, he sends a message to Moriarty. The Pool. Midnight. This is what it’s all been leading to, the elusive man ready to engage in conversation.
He’s surprised when it’s Watson who faces him. Even more surprising, he’s wearing a vest filled with explosives.
“You’ve come close,” Moriarty says, strolling out of the darkness. “But you still don’t understand, do you?”
“Explain,” he demands. “You’ve discovered something.”
“What I’ve learned,” Moriarty says, “would take a lifetime to explain. But we’ve got all the time in the world, haven’t we? The two of us.” He gestures at Watson. “And this one, again. Really, Holmes. Immortality does not equate to intelligence.”
“How long have you known?”
Moriarty scoffs. “Time is irrelevant. Let’s talk about your heart.”
“My heart?” He glances at Watson. “I’ve been reliably informed that I don’t have one.”
“We both know that’s not true. You do in fact have a heart, which I intend to burn out of you. Obviously you’ll still be alive, but imagine what it will be like.”
Watson is angry, he can see. “Since I seem to be superfluous to whatever is going on here, you won’t mind if I leave.” He shrugs off his coat and reaches for the straps that fasten the explosives to his body.
“Do you want to see something interesting?” Moriarty giggles.
Holmes watches Watson struggling with the straps. “Interesting… how?”
Instead of replying, Moriarty aims his gun at Watson and fires.
When he wakes, he’s in hospital, wrapped in bandages. He feels like he’s been set on fire and thrown against a wall. Burns from the explosion, naturally, and a few broken bones from landing after a short flight through the air. His head is intact; he remembers perfectly the moment of the explosion, but nothing after.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” a voice says. For a moment he thinks it’s Moriarty. He hopes. But it’s just Lestrade. “Shouldn’t have gone in by yourself. You’re lucky.”
“Moriarty,” he says. “Is he alive?”
“Moriarty? Who’s he?”
“The man I was meeting.”
“There were just two people in there,” Lestrade says heavily. “You. And Watson.”
“Where is Watson?”
Lestrade shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Sherlock.”
Staying in hospital is not an option; he leaves through the window, returns to Baker Street. The burns are already mostly healed. The broken bones are mending as well. He was in stasis for four days, assumed to be in a coma.
Opening the refrigerator, he eats the days-old remains of Thai food, drinks a quart of milk, and consumes all the biscuits left in the flat. He’ll need to eat more soon, but for now he can rest a bit, and think about what to do.
Molly Hooper will have seen the remains. He calls.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “There was… almost nothing… He’s been cremated.”
“And the ashes? Can I have them?”
“If he has family—“
“He doesn’t.”
Lestrade doesn’t remark on his swift recovery. Like most people, he is slow to notice things that are improbable, and never gives a moment’s thought to the impossible.
Watson’s remains are in an urn that sits on his mantel, next to the skull. They seem to be inert, no obvious regeneration. He can’t make up his mind what to do about them.
“What about Moriarty?” Lestrade asks. “You said this was his doing. A master criminal—“
“Consulting criminal. I think you’ll find he’s responsible for a number of unsolved crimes.”
“Right. Any help you can give us… well, I’d appreciate it.” He stands up from Watson’s chair, sets down his tea, and looks at the urn. “He was a good man. I know you miss him, Sherlock.”
He does miss Watson, and he doesn’t. He misses his warm body, next to him in bed. He misses the questions, the arguments. John Watson remains, but in a state Holmes can’t reach. If there is any way those fragments can come together and recreate the man, he would bring it about— in a heartbeat. He doesn’t know how.
But he knows someone who might possess that knowledge.
The trail Moriarty leaves him is strewn with bodies.
As Holmes solves the cases, his fame grows, and the media attention he has never craved becomes a nuisance. He can barely leave the flat without some reporter cornering him and asking stupid questions. It’s draining. Ironically, the case that wins him the most recognition is the recovery of a valuable painting of the Reichenbach Falls, where he once died in 1891.
Oh, Holmes. He imagines what Watson would say about it. He has entire conversations in his head with Watson, but it’s not the same.
It’s not like all the times before. He’s always waited for Watson, he realises, because Watson always comes back. The longest he ever waited was hundred and twenty-three years.
But even then, while Holmes was doing his experiments, trying to avoid being burned at the stake for witchcraft, he knew that Watson was somewhere in the world, doing things. He’d never been one to sit around and speculate; he liked to be in the thick of Life. He’d been a healer, so perhaps he was patching people up somewhere. Maybe he was fighting a war. Or he might be traveling. He imagined him crossing the steppes of Asia, sailing across the Atlantic, talking to indigenous people in Africa, or trekking towards the South Pole.
“What are you doing now?” he asks the urn.
The ashes are silent.
Moriarty steals the Crown Jewels. Well, he doesn’t exactly steal them, but he breaks the impenetrable display case and poses, wearing the jewels and sitting on the throne. And he leaves a message: Get Sherlock. He is arrested, then acquitted.
This doesn’t surprise Holmes. The man knows how to find a person’s pressure point and use it to get what he wants.
Just as Holmes has billed himself as a consulting detective, willing to solve mysteries, Moriarty advertises a different skill set: he creates mysteries, for a price. A consulting criminal.
At Baker Street, he sits in Watson’s chair and smirks at Holmes.
Holmes gives him a scornful look. “You said you would show me something interesting.”
“Death is interesting.” Moriarty takes an apple from the bowl, begins to carve it with a pen knife. “I’ve always thought so, anyway.”
“He’s not dead.”
“You sure? You haven’t figured it out then.”
“Tell me.”
“You’ve become sentimental. That’s interesting as well.”
“I’m not— I’ve spent years trying to solve this mystery. You’ve evidently figured it out. I just want to know, one scientist to another, how does it work? Is it something genetic? He and I were born around the same time, though in different places. So maybe a mutation of some sort. I imagine you’re as old as we are.”
“You want to know why you don’t die?” He puts a piece of apple in his mouth and chews it, thoughtful. “Why should I tell you?”
“You owe it to me,” he says.
“I owe you one thing,” he tells Sherlock. “I owe you a fall.”
He leaves the apple behind, its flesh carved to spell I.O.U.
Holmes falls in slow motion. By the time his reputation is in tatters, he has nothing more to lose. No puzzles, no friends, no Watson.
They meet on the roof of Barts.
“Such a gift,” Moriarty says. “But you only want to be ordinary. You disappoint me.”
“You’re dying to tell me.”
“Tell you? Ah, that.” Grinning, he lowers his voice to a dramatic whisper. “The Secret of Death.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re willing to sacrifice everything to know?”
“As you can see, I have nothing left.”
“Yes, I suppose you’ll leave London now. New name, new life. Still no Watson, though.”
Anger surges through him, blinding him momentarily. It serves no purpose, though, and he pushes it down, steadying himself until he can finally speak. “Watson can’t be dead. He has never died before, not permanently. Neither of us have. Like you, we always come back before we cross over. But this— this has never happened before.”
“No, I suppose it hasn’t. Perhaps it’s a clue?” His smile is guileless. “Come, Sherlock! You’re a genius— think about it. You have all the pieces, so solve it.”
“Just tell me how to bring him back.”
Moriarty pauses, smiling. “We’re alike, yes, but not in the way you think. We both ruthlessly pursue what we want. Unfortunately, what you want is ordinary. You want John Watson. At this point, you don’t really care about the secret. You just want him back. And you’re willing to do anything for that, aren’t you?”
Reluctantly he nods. “Yes.”
“Well, then. I’ll tell you. I do have a secret, but it’s not the one you want. Here it is: people die. It’s what they do, Sherlock.”
“I don’t.”
From the pocket of his coat, Moriarty withdraws a gun.
Holmes laughs. “You think you can kill me? I’ve been shot dozens of times, run through with swords, poisoned, drowned. No, I do not die. You do not die. If you don’t tell me, I will never let you rest. I will pursue you for eternity, using every means of Death on you. Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few. You will not die, but you will wish you could.”
“You sure about that?”
Before he can answer, Moriarty puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The force of the shot drops him to the roof. Blood begins to pool underneath his head.
Holmes sits down next to the body as the blood begins to coagulate. He listens for sirens, running footsteps; no one is coming to see what’s happened.
He waits, watching for the signs of regeneration. The process is familiar; he knows its timetable. Soon the wound will begin to close and he will breathe, sporadically. It won’t be long now.
In an hour he knows. Moriarty is dead. Not an immortal, just a clever man who guessed what Holmes is and taunted him with what he can never have. Whatever the man knew about regeneration has died with him. Holmes must learn for himself.
Existence will continue, but the life he built for himself has been destroyed. All is lost. Soon he will be arrested, charged with the death of James Moriarty. He will be sentenced to life in prison, outlive the prison that confines him, and become a mystery to be solved. He will be studied, like a specimen.
The decision is easy. He stands on the ledge for a moment, surveying the city where he has lived so long, the familiar skyline he loves. It will be years before he comes back. Closing his eyes, he tips over the edge. This fall is swift. He does not remember the landing.
He wakes in the morgue. A day, at least, has gone by, judging by the state of his healing body. It’s too soon to be moving; he needs to go into stasis, but it can’t be here. That would raise too many questions. At times like this, it’s handy to have an accomplice.
Sitting up, he looks around. He can hear Molly in the office, talking on the phone with someone, maybe Lestrade. It will be interesting to see what Scotland Yard makes of their deaths, his and Moriarty’s. A crime has been committed, but is it murder? Suicide? A revenge killing?
Let them wonder.
Moriarty is in a drawer, his compartment pulled out, his bag zipped down to reveal what is left of him. Holmes stands, carefully, shuffles over to him and has a look.
Dead, definitely. Rigor mortis is just beginning to wear off. His face is still frozen into a ghastly rictus, as if he’s sneering at Holmes, taunting him.
“Bastard,” he mutters.
The door opens and Molly enters. To her credit, she doesn’t scream. She does faint, though, quietly dropping to the floor, her eyes rolling back. While he might flee now, be out of London before she calls Lestrade to report a missing corpse, Molly might also buy him some time. She always looks at him with affection, though he can hardly understand why. Her eyes are red now; she’s been crying, grieving for him. She won’t betray him. Really, he has no other choice.
Too weak to raise her up, he sits down on the floor beside her. “Molly.”
Her eyes flutter open and she startles again. But she’s seen a lot of deaths, many of them odd in some way. Maybe she’s even seen a dead man come back to life.
“What…?” She gasps and sits up. “How…?”
“I could explain,” he says, “but you will find it hard to believe. Short story: not dead.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t understand.”
He owes her more than this, but that will have to wait. “Will you help me?”
He stays in her flat. The stasis lasts seventeen days, and when he wakes, she is there, watching him.
“I still don’t understand,” she says.
He manages a weak smile. “Neither do I.”
Food is his first priority, easily digested calories. Molly watches as he consumes nine chocolate bars, her stash against PMS or whatever drives women to crave chocolate. He sometimes wonders why he has never met an immortal woman; female bodies seem more resilient than males in many ways, being designed for childbirth as they are.
She cooks for him, and while he eats, he explains. She’s a scientist, so his explanation focuses on what he understands of the science. Ageing has always been the problem, the slow decline towards Death. Telomeres, the ends of chromosomes, gradually shortening as the body ages— if that process could be reversed, if cells could continue to divide as they do in a young body, maybe immortality would be more than a cliche in science fiction stories.
“I don’t know why I am whatever I am,” he says. “But you must believe me.”
She has seen his broken body, observed his regeneration. As a scientist, she must admit this evidence. “There are people who would like to study you.”
He remembers the experiments in the camps. Things done in the name of science are sometimes barbarous. “No, thank you. I study myself, and will one day share with the world what I know. Now, I have to go away.”
“I will keep your secret on one condition,” she says. “Stay in touch with me. I’d like to see you from time to time.”
In Sussex he has owned a cottage for years. He brings just two things with him, his violin and Watson’s urn. He buys an old dog, names him Toby, and walks the South Downs.
In the Times he reads of a body stolen from the morgue at Barts Hospital in London. Scotland Yard is puzzled as to why anyone would steal the body of Sherlock Holmes. Fitting, that his last case with Lestrade should remain unsolved. He can imagine that it might keep the DI up at night, wondering.
Molly visits him about once a year, usually as autumn is coming to the downs, colouring the landscape yellow and russet. He makes tea; they sit and talk. She tells him about her ordinary life, and he listens. Later they walk to the shore, where they can see the chalk cliffs.
Each year he sees the small changes in her. She marries and has two children, a boy and a girl. He urges her to name one of them Sherlock, but she just laughs. People would talk, she says. The name Sherlock Holmes is still remembered in London.
He’s just William now, last name Vernet, after the artist whose painting of a shipwreck he once admired. He lives in a cottage, keeps bees, and occasionally draws money from a very old bank account.
Eventually Molly is a friend, not just an accomplice. With her, he doesn’t have to pretend he’s anything but what he is. It’s nice, having someone to talk to.
She ages, and he does not. Often he envies her. She wears her advancing years comfortably. Her joints trouble her, and she puts on a few unwanted pounds around the middle, but the alternative, she notes with a smile, is something no one wishes for. Not unless they are in terrible pain.
There is something satisfying about old age, he thinks. Molly sees her children grow up and leave home. There must be some sense of accomplishment in bringing new humans into the world, letting them go into the wild. Grandchildren are much more fun than children, she admits; she spoils them rotten, takes them on holidays so their parents can have time alone.
The grey hairs gradually outnumber the dark ones. Her eyes, still lovely, have crinkles at the corners. She needs glasses to read. Walking is harder; she has surgery to replace both knees. He comes up to London and visits her that year.
Her husband is dying of cancer; she talks about that long goodbye. She knows Death intimately; its victims have come through her morgue. It’s better to know you’re dying, she tells him, better for the people left behind to have that time to say goodbye.
He tells her about Watson, how badly misses him. More accurately, he grieves him. The story of how they met, oh so long ago now, makes her smile. It’s good to talk about it, but it doesn’t ease the pain of his heart. She understands that kind of pain. It’s what Life is made of, love and loss.
When she goes back to London, he misses her company.
The days roll on, one after the other. He talks to Watson as he goes about tending his hives, boiling water for tea, and taking Toby the Fifth for a walk. His life isn’t exciting, but he tells Watson about the mundane details— the dance of his bees, the taste of their honey, the bread he’s learned to bake. He describes how the world is changing, the boring politics and wars, the new technology. It’s exciting and a bit scary to see what’s happening in the field of genetics. Cloning, stem cells, genetic engineering. Things that he once could not even imagine.
Even though he has only a few conclusions, he works on an article recounting his longevity research. Eventually it becomes a book. He will not publish it yet, not until he’s ready to move on again. Already, he’s begun posing as William Vernet’s son, and soon he’ll have to become someone else.
Molly’s daughter calls to tell him she’s died. She was ninety-three and passed away in her sleep. He comes up to London for the funeral.
He used to go to funerals, wishing that he could feel something, but gave it up when Watson came back the last time. And since Watson left, he’s begun to understand grief.
The casket is closed, as Molly wished. Even though she took care of dead bodies for years, she confessed to him that she has never liked funerals, seeing a person she once knew all fixed up like that, to look asleep. It just felt wrong, she said. A body is a record of Life, and though Death is true, what is true is not always lovely to look at. Death is not beautiful.
He says goodbye. “Thank you. You were more than a friend to me. You mattered.” He remembers her that day in the morgue, the days he spent in her flat, recovering. She didn’t have to do any of that for him. She must have loved him, though it’s hard to understand why.
I loved you, too, he thinks, and is surprised to feel tears stinging his eyes.
“How did you know her?” It’s one of Molly’s grandchildren asking. She’s not young, probably in her forties, and looks a bit like Molly.
“My grandfather was her friend,” he says. “William Vernet. I’m named for him.”
She nods. “She used to talk about him. I gather he was quite an interesting person.”
He’s still thinking about Molly when he arrives at his cottage. He makes tea and takes the urn down from the mantel. Sitting in his chair, he sets it on the table in front of him.
“Well, Watson. I’m a bit wiser now, perhaps. I still miss you, and I have never known what to do about that. Once I thought I could bring you back, but maybe you wouldn’t have wanted that. The last time I saw Molly, she seemed happy. She was ready to die. She said she wanted to fall asleep and not wake up. Maybe that’s what you want, too.”
He holds the urn in his hands. It’s not a fancy urn, just the basic one provided by the mortuary. He’s opened it many times and looked at the ashes. Watson’s atoms are there. Nothing is ever wasted in nature; everything turns into something new. How that happens is the miracle, and Death is just part of that cycle.
“I love you,” he says. “Let’s go.”
On the shore he stands looking across the water. France is there, though you can’t see that shoreline from here. He’s been to Dover, where you can see Calais on a clear day, and remembers standing on the other side once, with Watson. That was a long time ago, before the Romans invaded and started naming things. Watson had looked at England and said, Let’s see what’s over there. He was always ready to go somewhere, to meet new people, to try their food and hear their stories. Once he’d even sailed around the globe, he said. During one of the wars, he’d lived on a submarine. He’d thought about being an astronaut, seeing the world from miles in space. He loved the world.
Humans used to regard the ocean as deadly, a thing to be crossed only to get to another piece of land. Sea travel was treacherous in those days; over the centuries, many lives have been lost in the ocean. Even today, when ships still cross the sea and planes fly over it, there are mysteries in its depths. It’s an unexplored country. It teems with Life, but like Death, it is a place from which one cannot easily come back.
Wading out into the water, he opens the urn. “Goodbye, Watson,” he says. “Good journey.”
Some of the ashes sink, some fly into the air, and the rest float there, surrounding Holmes as he watches. Once they’ve dispersed into the water, he walks back to the shore and sits.
The sun is going down and he’s suddenly tired. Sleep doesn’t come to him much these days. It’s been a long time since he’s used himself up enough to go into stasis. Since Watson died he hasn’t killed himself once. There are ways he could do that. He could walk into the ocean now and drown, his body weighted so he would never be found. He wonders what that would be like, to drift forever under the waves.
No, he will accept the gift. When the sun comes up, he’ll go back to his cottage and make plans. He’ll pack up a few clothes, call that fellow at the Beekeepers Association to check on the hives. He’ll have to turn off the water and call the electricity people about stopping his service. Toby the Eleventh has died, and he’s thought about getting another dog, but he’ll wait.
Then he’ll return to London, put the manuscript in his bank box, buy new clothes, and plan his trip. He’ll book passage on a ship and see all the places Watson once sailed to. He’ll stay in foreign cities, learn new languages, make new friends. He’ll write letters to Molly’s grandchildren. He’ll learn to scuba dive. There are mountains he could climb. Watson always talked about that.
And when he’s seen everything, he’ll come back here and sit on the beach. He’ll tell Watson all the interesting things he’s seen. He’ll tell him about the people, their lives and their deaths. That will be a long story to tell.
He’s still awake as the sun rises. The sky is purple and the sun is orange, reflecting across the water, turning the cliffs gold. He sits, gazing across the channel, thinking of everything that lies ahead of him.
Something is out there in the water. A small boat, perhaps. No sail. The water can get choppy out there, even when it seems calm. He watches, wondering.
It’s not a boat, he realizes. It’s a swimmer, closer than he looked. People do swim across the channel. It’s twenty-one miles at the narrowest point, but the straits are a busy shipping lane, so a swimmer usually has a boat alongside them as they swim.
This swimmer is alone, no boat. A mad loner, perhaps, trying to set some kind of record. As he approaches the shore, Holmes can see his arms moving, his face turning to take a breath every few strokes.
He stands, waiting to see.
When it’s shallow enough, the swimmer touches bottom and begins to walk towards shore. He’s naked, Holmes notes, his skin gleaming like gold in the early light. As he wades out of the channel, water sluicing off of his body, he grins at Holmes.
It’s Watson.
He doesn’t hesitate. Running to him, he grabs him in an embrace and doesn’t let go. His clothes absorb all the water from Watson’s body and he doesn’t care. He’s wet and cold and his heart is beating as it hasn’t for years. It’s wonderful.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
Watson looks up at him. “What for?”
“I love you. You always say it, but I never told you.”
Watson pulls him in again, lays his dripping head on Holmes’s chest. “I know.”
“How did you know?”
“I saw it when we first met, and every time we met again. I felt it every time I came back, and every time I left. I knew it when you took care of me, when you were angry with me, and when we made love. I listened to your heart and it told me.”
“Don’t leave,” he says. “I don’t want you to leave again.” Your loss would break my heart.
“All right.” Watson shivers a bit. “Chilly morning.”
Holmes looks at his naked body, glistening in the early morning sun. He’s beautiful, like the sun rising. He’s everything. “I’ll make you some tea. You must be hungry too.”
“I feel… amazing.” He laughs out loud. “Like I could live forever.”
“So do I,” he says. I love you.
Watson sits by the fire, sipping tea. He’s wearing Holmes’s dressing gown, getting toast crumbs all over it, licking honey from his fingers. “You seem different,” he says. “Did you figure it out?”
“I did.” He sets another plate of eggs in front of him.
“Good.” Watson nods at the case by the door. “Where are we going?”
“Everywhere.”
He smiles around a mouthful of eggs. “I might need a nap before that happens. Is that all right?”
“Of course.” Holmes looks at the empty spot where the urn was. “Moriarty wasn’t like us. He shot himself and died.”
Watson shrugs. “I didn’t think he was. Maybe there are others like us, but with seven billion people filling the planet, we might never meet one. Though the world was a lot smaller then, it’s a quite a coincidence that the two of us ever met.”
“You know what I say about coincidence,” he replies.
“I remember.” Watson sets the empty plate on the table.
Restless, Holmes sits in the chair opposite, folds his hands to keep them still. He’s not sure what he’ll do when Watson leaves again. That must not happen.
He draws a deep breath. “I was wrong.”
Watson raises his teacup to his lips. “Oh? About what?”
“Life.”
“Okay.” Quirking an eyebrow, he smiles. “Life.”
“It’s more interesting than Death.”
“That’s… good. We agree, then.”
“I think we should stay together from now on,” he tells Watson. “Just to be sure we don’t lose each other.” The two of us, living in defiance of Death. “I don’t wish to lose you again. I love you.”
Watson’s smile is fond. Rising from his seat, he comes to Holmes and pulls him into his arms. “Lie with me.”