It was another three weeks before the second missive from Holmes arrived, by which time I had cleaned my revolver half a dozen times, re-written a letter of apology and instruction concerning my practice to Anstruther four times, and found myself on the rooftop investigating odd noises in the middle of the night thrice. I'd also been dogged on my rounds to patients, and had narrowly avoided being accosted in an alleyway by a pair of burly ruffians one foggy night.

Nevertheless, I sat and studied the envelope in my hands for a very long time before I opened it.

In the end we decided that Alfie should go, and his grandmother too, on the grounds that the old lady would do better for a time away from the reek and smoke of London air – an excuse all the better for being true.

Alfie objected, of course, preferring to be in the thick of things, but I reconciled him to our plans by extracting a solemn promise to guard Mary as best he could, and to warn her of any dangers. That, and teaching him the secret of the dancing men for our correspondence.

Now we had only to wait.

"We'd need a very good reason for me to go," Mary objected, although it was clear that she was becoming reconciled to the notion. "Visiting the Forresters won't take me farther than Camberwell."

"What about your great-aunt?" Myfanwy Morstan had appeared in our lives some months after our wedding, like a clap of distant thunder, and had declared herself a relation. "Wales is a long way from London."

Mary nodded agreement reluctantly, for her sudden relation was elderly, dictatorial, and inclined to raise a fuss. But then a smile lit up her face. "I know! I'll take Alfie with me!"

"Holmes hasn't asked for my help, but I think he's going to need it, all the same." She smelled of vanilla and flour and soap, my Mary, and I held her all the closer, breathing in that scent of our home and our life together. "I never bargained for my own safety, and I'm afraid that if I leave London with you, Moriarty will feel obliged to send someone after me, to make certain of my silence. But if you go alone, you might be safe. If Moriarty's a man of his word. And I might be safer with Holmes."

Mary folded her arms. "And what if I'd rather stay in London?" she asked.

"If Holmes thinks you'd be better to..."

"If Mr. Sherlock Holmes thinks that I can't mind myself..." Our words collided, and thankfully, she gave way first.

I reached for her. "Holmes does think you can mind yourself. He wouldn't suggest that we part, otherwise. But he won't come to me if you're here. He won't bring the lightnings down on your head."

"Just yours." She tucked herself against my shoulder, and sighed. "And you want that, don't you? You want to share the danger with him."

Alfie allowed himself to be dismissed to the kitchen, still gnawing on the question of Holmes's actual whereabouts. I saw him off, and then carefully applied the note from France to the chimney of the table lamp.

Brown figures began to emerge on the paper, stick-figures done in lemon-juice, and I did not need to reach for my notebooks to remember the cipher of the dancing men. Carefully, I parsed out the message.

"My next letter from France will be a signal. Get Mary out of London. Your choice to stay or go. I will come if you stay. Holmes."

My Dear Watson,

I write to congratulate you upon your vindication, and to thank you for the medical efforts you made on my behalf. I am convalescing in France. You may read in the papers that I have taken on a case for the French government, but as that task requires a pilgrimage to every spa and watering place the country has to offer, my full recuperation is assured. It will amuse you to learn that I have a young French policeman dangling at my heels, whose sole commission appears to be the mention of mealtimes at appropriate intervals.

Holmes

"But how can Mr. Holmes be in two places at the same time?" Alfie asked, leaning his elbows on my desk and his chin on his hands as he waited for me to open the missive from France.

"I don't know, Alfie. Perhaps he has someone pretending to be him in France, so that he can be in London without it being known."

"So I can't tell nobody. Not even Gran."

"I'd rather you didn't discuss the matter with anyone, including Mrs. Watson," I told him as I pulled out Holmes's note. "Now, let's see what he has to say."

I invested in foreign newspapers. Denmark, Belgium, France. And then my practice grew so busy that I had to give over most of the reading of them to Mary, while Alfie struggled through the agony columns in the English papers.

The two did not always match. O was in Normandy, while Holmes was reported in Paris, in Dieppe when Holmes was in Dijon. I was beginning to think I had it wrong entirely when O mentioned Dover. But then a tall, thin, red-headed farmer tipped his hat to me on the same morning that I received a note from Narbonne.

"Riga – O."

Of all the cryptic messages in the past weeks' agony columns I could find, that one alone might have been from Holmes, but it was enough. I took to watching the papers like a hawk, and was rewarded first with "Stockholm – O," and a few days later, "Copenhagen – O." But I was concentrating so hard on the agony columns that it was Mary who first noticed the article on page three of the Chronicle.

"Look, John!" she cried, thrusting the newspaper into my hand and pointing to the headline. "Sherlock Holmes meets with the Crown Prince of Scandinavia!"

As the clock swung past the half hour, Mycroft Holmes pulled himself to his feet. "Time to part, Doctor," said he, and I knew that it was not rudeness, but his sacred routine which drove him.

I took the hand he offered and nodded my acquiescence. Routine has its comforts in an uncertain world. "Should you require my services," I said, "please do not hesitate."

He did hesitate then, and I saw the calculations flickering behind his eyes. "Not I," he said slowly. "But you may wish to keep an eye on the agony columns. Odysseus is still at sea."

We spoke a while longer – I told Mycroft Holmes about the nature of the truce I had negotiated with Professor Moriarty and he informed me in no uncertain terms how differently that conversation would have gone had I consulted with his brother beforehand.

"I would have," I said, with some asperity, "if I'd had reason to suppose that Moriarty had anything to do with the matter. But I didn't want to worry him."

Mycroft tugged a red silk handkerchief out of his pocket and used it to hide his amusement. "And he, my dear doctor, didn't want to worry you."

"Surely you know something more," I protested.

"Not definitely. Sherlock had a choice of ports once he was at sea. He could be anywhere from Cape Town to Christiana by now."

"The doctor who was with him?" I asked.

"Put ashore in Edinborough when his services were no longer required, to undertake a course of research at the University concerning the use of oxygen gas in lung injuries." Mycroft settled his hands across his waistcoat with interlaced fingers. "I have, of course, compensated Dr. Palmer for the loss of his device."

"He is healing, then."

"So I infer."

"Thank God."

"Doctor," Mycroft Holmes said, engulfing my hand in his own. "You have not heard from Sherlock." It was a statement, not a question.

"No, from Wiggins," I said. "He thanks you for the book, but he's had no more word of your brother than I."

"Sherlock is keeping his head low. The only news I've had is a laggardly bill for the tuition of a dozen boys at a small school in Yorkshire." Mycroft waved me to a chair and offered me snuff, which I refused. "Do not worry overmuch, doctor. Bad tidings I would have received entirely too quickly."

"They've scattered," I said, and read the card aloud to Alfie, who wistfully agreed and then asked if he could keep the picture. I glad to hear from Wiggins, but frustrated by the realization that Holmes was not with him. Still, the postcard provided me with sufficient excuse to do what I very deliberately had not yet done.

That evening, therefore, I put on my best suit and coat and took a cab to the Diogenes Club, where I was ushered through the silent halls and into the warmth of the Strangers' Room to await the arrival of Mycroft Holmes.

"Wish I was there, but here ain't bad." Having parsed that much out, I managed the rest of Wiggins's scrawl with more facility. "The work is hard, but the pay is good. Lots of stars at night without fog or smoke. I am learning to find my way by them. Tell M.H. and thank him for the maths book. I will be a navigator instead of cabin boy, the Captain says, by the time we get round the world. Thank S.H. for getting me the job and I hope he is safe now. Hope you are safe too.

"Jim Wiggins"

Having determined to wait upon events, I set my jaw and waited. At Mary's insistence, the bulk of Holmes's money was sewn into my coat, though I made certain a healthy plenty was bestowed in the lining of hers as well. But days turned into weeks without any news, until the day that my new boy-in-buttons burst into my consulting room. "Doctor! Doctor!" he cried excitedly.

"What is it, Alfie?" I asked, setting aside my notes and closing the inkwell as a precaution.

"It's this." He thrust a postcard with a picture of pyramids into my hands. "It's from Wiggins."

"Holmes doesn't know about the deal I made with Moriarty," I explained, although knowing my Mary, I was setting my thoughts out for my own benefit and not hers. "He's done his best by most of the boys, by taking them out of London, but if I'm not here to keep an eye on things, Moriarty may feel free to take advantage of the ones who are still here."

"Like Alfie?" she asked.

"Like Alfie."

A dimple appeared in her cheek, "Then I think it's quite convenient that Mr. Holmes has provided us with enough money to hire a page."

"I'd like to see India again," Mary said, turning to me and resting her head against my chest. "I was only nine when I was sent away to England. And I still dream in Hindustani."

"Do you?" I took her in my arms and kissed her hair. "I've forgotten most of what I knew. You'd have to translate for me."

She looked up at me. "I would. But you really don't want to go, do you?"

"I don't want to go because I'm being chased," I corrected her. "But someday, perhaps."

"And in the meantime?"

"In the meantime, we wait."

With Lestrade's departure, and his promise to see that constables would patrol more frequently on our street, Mary and I retreated to my consulting room and began fitting it to receive visitors once more. We worked in silent amity for a time, but as we started restoring the books to the shelves Mary spoke her mind.

"If even Sherlock Holmes thinks that London is unsafe," she ventured, "Perhaps it is."

"I've known Moriarty's reach to go well beyond London," I told her, thinking of the late John Douglas. "But we might be safe in India. If we got that far."

"I'm not running."

Lestrade raised an eyebrow and Mary gathered her brows, but I crossed my arms and raised my chin, even while I thought to justify that first instinctive response. "It would be the height of foolishness to goad Moriarty into thinking I intended to renege on our bargain, no matter how unreasonable the terms."

"You just don't like being pushed," Lestrade observed. He passed me back the cheque. "Cash it anyway and carry as much as you can in a money belt. If Mr. Holmes turns up in need of ready funds you can always pay him back."

"What is it, John?" Mary asked, seeing my scowl, and I passed her Holmes's cheque. She in her turn passed it to Lestrade, whose curiosity was palpable. He whistled thoughtfully when he saw the amount.

"I'll wring his neck," I declared. "I never asked for compensation, and I never mean to. He's clever enough to know that."

"It would have come in useful if you'd gone to prison, dear," Mary said, calmly.

"And it may yet," Lestrade added, thoughtfully. "I don't think he actually meant it as a payment at all."

"What else could it be?" I protested.

"Running money."

Having no better way to express my gratitude to Lestrade for his actions of the day before, I changed the bandages on his neck and lent him a heavy coat.

He was preparing to return to the Yard, when a messenger came with an envelope from Mycroft Holmes. I tore it open, hoping for information, and found only a note of congratulations over my vindication. That, and a cheque for "services rendered" inscribed with an amount which would have sent me rampaging down to the Diogenes Club were it not signed in a remarkably unsteady hand by Sherlock Holmes himself.

There were times, very late at night, when Watson heard owls confabulating in the plane tree outside his window, times when counting doors from the end of the street fetched him up against the wrong lock, his key useless in his hand, until he'd gone back down to the pavement and started over. Times when men, and women, in elaborate robes vanished from the corner of his eye just before they could be properly seen. All of which prepared him far better than Holmes for the visitor before them that frosty morning.

"My name," said the wizard, "is Phineas Black."









for elendiari22 who also knows that the movie exterior is the same house for both 12 Grimmauld Place and 221b Baker Street

"I want to be a healer."

Bergil looked at his feet, waiting for the roof to fall, but he couldn't help but be glad he'd finally spoken out. The adults had gone silent, the room so quiet he could hear the splashing of the fountain outside the window, and the bark of the sergeant in the training square below, trying to make the thump of the recruits' feet all fall into the same pattern. All his childhood he had wanted to be in that pattern, but he was not a child any longer, and he knew the cost of war.






for dreamflower02