Chapter Text
I felt that I must have brought the curse upon myself, when I first became aware of its existence. It seemed I had personally wrought the bars of my prison from my own desperate desires—and yet what mortal man, in my place, would have wished otherwise?
The day—oh, the accursed day, I loathe even now to speak of it—had dawned a particularly beautiful one. The pink sun wakened early and stretched out her graceful fingers to brush the tops of the green hills, glinting off the patches of snow that still lay nestled here and there about their crowns.
Holmes and I spent the pleasant morning taking breakfast at our hotel in Switzerland and enjoying a conversation with the landlord, who merrily advised us as to how we could best proceed on our journey. “Little Rosenlaui, just over the hills, is the place for you gentlemen,” he said, with an amiable smile. “It’s an easy enough journey, and you’ll find it an exceptionally rewarding one at this time of year, what with the wildflowers springing up and the weather as it’s been. And the falls! You won’t want to miss them for the world. Just a short walk out of your way, and worth every step of it.”
We took his advice, and that afternoon found ourselves on the winding, narrow path that led to the Reichenbach Falls, the praises of which we had heard so loudly sung. We could hear the rushing of the raging water, and indeed had nearly reached the falls, when the rushing of hurried footsteps turned our heads in the opposite direction. A Swiss lad came pounding up the path, clutching his cap in one hand and a crumpled note in the other.
“It’s from the landlord of the hotel,” I told Holmes, as I hastily unfolded the letter. “An English woman has just arrived there, and she is dreadfully ill. An English doctor would be a great comfort to her.”
“They could not have called for a better one,” Holmes said, and gave me a hearty slap on the shoulder. “You’d best go to her, Watson.”
“You aren’t coming?” I asked, with some surprise.
Holmes’ cheerful smile showed no trace of the anxieties that would have overwhelmed another man in his place. He had been dogged from country to country, forced to leave behind his home and all that was his, save his dearest friend, whom he had found even harder to escape than the vengeful Moriarty. And yet here, in this foreign land, with the shadow of death ever at his back, he smiled as if he hadn’t a care in the world. “I think I shall stay a while by the falls, for they are a wondrous sight to behold,” he said. “I am afraid you will not have the time to appreciate them, if you are required to stay long in Meiringen, and still reach Rosenlaui by nightfall. No, Watson, you go on. You are needed more urgently by another, and I am not so selfish as to refuse to spare you for so short a time.“
I hesitated. He insisted. At last, with the messenger boy’s assurance that he would remain with my friend as a guide and ensure he reached Rosenlaui in safety, I departed, and made all possible haste in returning along the path I had just come by.
How sorely I afterwards wished that I had done differently. The landlord was surprised to see me when I arrived, panting and out of breath, at Meiringen—he had written no note. I knew then that I was a fool, and likely to pay dearly for it. If I had made all possible haste in returning to Meiringen, I doubled my speed as I raced back to the falls.
Too late.
I found Holmes’ Alpine-stick, his cigarette case, and his footprints, but the man to which these things had once belonged was nowhere in sight. In desperation I scanned the ground for any sign of his escape, but instead found every evidence that he had at last met his end. Two sets of footprints led to the end of the path, to the edge of the precipice below which the falls plunged into an abyss of foam and spray; none returned. Where they ended, I knew Holmes had found his final resting place.
A handwritten note I found slipped beneath the cigarette case confirmed my suspicions: moments after I had been summoned away, by a message which Holmes had suspected from the first to have been a ruse, a cloaked figure had appeared along the path, and Holmes knew that his doom had caught up to him at last.
It might have been some small comfort to him, to know that with him had gone Moriarty, tyrant among criminals, but it brought no comfort to me.
London could sigh in relief now that Moriarty would trouble it no longer, but I? The sound of grief that sprang from my lips was nearer an agonized cry than any sort of sigh as I stared into the horrible pit that had swallowed up the man dearest to me in the world. I almost wished that it would swallow me as well.
As a mourner casts the first handful of dirt over a coffin, my tears served to swell his watery grave, where he and his greatest enemy must now forever rest.
I could not bring myself to carry on to Rosenlaui, to our arranged meeting place—what was the purpose now, when all our efforts had proved in vain? Indeed, I could hardly bring myself to return to Meiringen, so downcast were my spirits that they weighed heavily in my boots, but at last I managed it, and, after relaying my mournful tale to the landlord, who stammered out a shocked apology and assured me with a most enviable optimism that he would contact experts who would make every effort possible to recover my lost friend, I retired to my room and wept until my tears ran dry.
I know not at what hour sleep claimed me, dragging my wearied consciousness down into the abyss of black dreams, but it must have been a late one.
I rose late the next morning, and enquired of the landlord whether there had been any word from his experts.
“I beg pardon?” he asked, with a look of surprise.
“The men who were to search for Mr. Holmes,” I said, feeling, perhaps unfairly, rather put out that the affair had not eclipsed the whole of his mind, as it had mine. He had not known Holmes as I had. He did not understand what the world had lost—what I had lost.
The landlord gave a violent start. “Has something happened to Mr. Holmes?” he exclaimed.
I gaped at him. “Has… Of course something’s happened! He’s dead!”
The blood drained from the landlord’s face. His trembling hand flew to his mouth. “Dead…” he whispered. “Then you don’t… you can’t see him?”
“Not unless they’ve found the body!”
“Then what manner of spirit have I just served his breakfast to?” the landlord asked, with eyes fairly bulging out of his head as he pointed. I followed the line of his finger to the place where a tall man sat at a table, and was engaged in pouring himself a cup of coffee. I blinked. Could it be?
“Watson!” called my friend, with his old, familiar smile. “You’re up rather later than usual this morning. You will forgive me for beginning my breakfast without you, I hope?”
I would have forgiven him far greater crimes in that moment. With a cry of disbelief, I dashed forward and clasped him by the shoulders, nearly toppling his breakfast table in my excitement. “Holmes! You’re alive!” I exclaimed.
“Well, I should hope so!” he laughed. “That is rather the point of our little holiday here, my dear fellow,” he added in a softer voice, close to my ear. He set his fork on his plate and tipped his head slightly to one side as he studied my shocked expression.
“I thought… I can’t believe it. However did you get out of that chasm?” I demanded, heedless of the other patrons of the hotel, who were making their best efforts to appear uninvested in our conversation as they slowly and methodically conveyed their breakfasts to their mouths.
“Chasm?” Holmes asked. “What chasm?”
“The Reichenbach Falls!” I said. “Moriarty! I saw your tracks leading up to the edge—I was certain you must both have met your ends! How on earth did you manage to escape that awful abyss?”
“By the very simple method of having never been in it,” he said. “You must have dreamed it, Watson. Neither you nor I have ever been to the Reichenbach Falls, although our good landlord here assures me it is a sight worth seeing.” He gave my hand a gentle pat. “I think you can release me now, my dear fellow, if you have satisfied yourself as to my being a creature of flesh and blood?”
I let go of his shoulders, still shaking my head in bewilderment. “If it was a dream, it was the strangest one I ever had,” I said. “But I cannot argue with the fact that you seem as alive and as human as I am.”
“Quite so,” Holmes said, taking a bite of his toast. “Won’t you join me for breakfast?”
Of the two of us, he had been the more wary and easily startled for most of our journey, while I, whose senses were perhaps less well-attuned to the subtle signs of danger that pursued us, was content to bask in the comforts of the pleasant countryside and the company of my friend.
The roles were now reversed. Holmes prattled on cheerfully about waterfalls and scenery as we strolled along, while I stared about at every hill and rock, like a creature that senses it is being hunted. I knew this land, this path. I had never been here, save in the twisted world of dreams, and yet it was exactly as I had seen it. Had it been a prophecy? A gift of warning, bestowed by the heavens? I was not the sort of man who believes in such things, and yet I could conjure up no other explanation.
Was it true, then? Was Moriarty even now on our trail?
“Watson, you are not well,” Holmes observed, after I received a wild start from a grouse that we had disturbed from its hiding place in the brush. “Perhaps we should retreat to our hotel at Meiringen, and spend another night there, before attempting any more strenuous exercise.”
“No, no, we had better continue,” I said. “But I think I would rather not make that detour to the falls, if you don’t mind.”
“If that is your wish,” Holmes said, with a disappointed but sympathetic look. “Last night’s dream still troubles you?”
“It was not an ordinary dream,” I insisted. “It was most vivid and…terrible.” I told him the details of it—the note, my departure, the terrible realization of what I had done. I told him how familiar, and how threatening, every inch of this landscape had become to me.
“That is indeed most unusual,” Holmes said. “But the sensation that one has encountered a place in a dream before is hardly an uncommon one. The human brain is capable of many strange tricks indeed.”
I could not be convinced that the sense of dread which had overtaken me was a mere trick of my mind, but neither could I furnish any explanation as to what else it might be. In the end, I agreed that we should go to the falls, as Holmes wished, on the sole condition that whatever happened, I was not to be separated from him, even for an instant.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, my boy,” said he, and we were off.
The Reichenbach Falls were as powerful and as awe-inspiring as when I had last seen them, but I had no appreciation to spare for their beauty. Every time Holmes strayed near the ledge, I fought the urge to catch him by the arm and pull him backwards.
“Are the falls exactly as they appeared in your dream?” he asked abruptly, spinning on his heel and turning his back on the roaring water.
“Every stone and droplet,” I said.
“And yet no Moriarty.” He looked thoughtful. “He has plagued our minds for days,” he said at last. “It is little wonder he has wormed his way into your subconscious.”
“You don’t believe what I saw?”
“Certainly, I believe you saw something,” he said. “But as to what that something was? Dreams are unreliable creatures, affected by the slightest of things. To quote Mr. Scrooge, there is more of gravy than of grave about some such visions.”
“You attribute it all to my supper, then?” I asked. “Holmes, in that moment, when I saw what had become of you—never have I felt more real, more dreadfully alive, in all my life. I would have given anything to live that moment over again, to right my mistake and save you from that terrible fate. My heart cried out to the heavens that it should be undone. Do you not think—is it not possible my plea was answered? That some higher power took pity, and deigned to grant my wish?”
“It was a dream, Watson,” Holmes said. “Nothing more. Hullo, who’s coming this way?”
I whipped around with such speed that my boots slid in the mud. A boy was running up the path, cap in one hand, letter in the other.
“It’s him!” I exclaimed. “It’s the Swiss lad I told you of.”
The boy reached us, and had hardly finished gasping out his greeting when I snatched the letter from his grip and thrust it into Holmes’ hands. “Read that,” I said. “You will find that it contains a message to me, which may appear to you suspicious, regarding an Englishwoman who has taken ill at the Englishcher Hof. A sudden hemorrhage, she will see only an English doctor, I am requested to come at once, and so forth.”
Holmes’ brows drew low over his eyes as he read the words I had described to him. “You are right, Watson,” he said. “Every word of it.”
“Then there’s no time to lose.” I caught his wrist, intending to drag him with me up the path whether he wished to go or not, but found our way to escape blocked by a wooden club, clutched in the hands of the boy.
“The doctor is free to go,” he said. “The professor’s quarrel is not with him. Only Mr. Holmes.”
“He means to spare your life,” Holmes whispered in my ear, squeezing my hand and attempting to slip his fingers free of my grasp. “That is the most generosity you will get from Moriarty. You had better go. Do not worry about me. He will not catch me at unawares, thanks to your warning.”
“No. I will not make that mistake a second time.” I planted myself firmly between my friend and the boy. “Where Mr. Holmes goes, I go too.”
“Even to the grave?” the boy asked, with a sly grin.
“Even there,” I said. “But that will not be for many years yet—and you may tell that to the man who sent you.”
“Tell him yourself.” The boy pointed behind him, to where a gentleman, clad all in black, was picking his way along the path towards us.
It was not long before he reached the spot where we stood. “Mr. Holmes!” Moriarty exclaimed. “And his loyal biographer, Dr. Watson! What a pleasant surprise. How strange, that we should chance to cross paths in a foreign land, so far from our home country.”
“Ah, England,” said Holmes. “Yes, I hope the air there shall be the sweeter, when all is said and done here.”
“Certainly, it shall be rid of the most accursed blight to ever have infested it,” Moriarty growled, all pretense of warmness gone from his voice.
“I should hope so,” Holmes said. He leaned forward casually against his stick. “Have you any final requests?”
“No,” Moriarty replied. “Have you?”
“Only this: that Dr. Watson, with whom, as you say, you have no quarrel, be permitted to go free. I will remain here willingly once he is departed.”
“He had his chance,” Moriarty said, “as did you. He has chosen to share your fate. I would not deprive him of his dying wish.”
With that, he drew a pistol from a hidden coat pocket, and I believe he would have sent a bullet through my heart had not Holmes sprung upon him with a leonine leap, and dashed the weapon from his hand. It tumbled down into the spray of water and vanished.
The Swiss boy turned and fled the moment violence broke out, and I rushed to Holmes’ aid, dragging Moriarty’s hands from where they were wound round my friend’s throat. With a savage sweep of his arm, Moriarty flung me against the face of rock that bordered the path, and lunged again for his prey, who was still gasping to regain his breath.
Holmes’ feet scrambled wildly in the mud as he attempted to keep them planted on the slippery path. He ducked sideways, and evaded Moriarty’s grasp for a moment, but, even as he stumbled, the vicious professor shot out two strong, sinewy arms and grasped handfuls of my friend’s coat.
They teetered on the edge of doom.
Once more, I flung myself between them. My walking stick cracked sharply over Moriarty’s knuckles, and with a cry of pain he released Holmes and staggered backward. I thought for certain he would fall, but he regained his footing just on the edge of the precipice.
What a thrill of horror filled me, when his cold fingers closed around my own throat.
I felt the fleeting touch of Holmes hands skim my back and arms as he attempted to catch hold of me, to wrest me free of Moriarty’s fatal grasp. There was a visceral desperation in that brief brush of his fingertips that I would not have previously believed his rational mind capable of producing. I do not like to think what emotions entered into that great mind afterwards, for the next moment Moriarty’s arms closed around me, and we tumbled together over the edge and into the abyss.
I awoke in my bed, drenched in sweat.
It was pitch black outside. I could not guess the time, but no hour, no matter how unholy, could have induced me to remain in my room, or return to sleep. I crept softly into the hall and tapped Holmes’ door. I must know whether he was alive.
There was no reply.
I tapped louder. “Holmes!” I hissed. “It’s Watson.” I thought for a moment that I perceived the sound of footsteps within, and the creaking of floorboards beneath them, but then all fell silent once more. “Holmes!” I called again, and this time rapped loudly on the door.
“You had better lower your voice, Watson,” said a voice from behind me. “You might disturb our fellow guests, or worse, garner unwelcome attention from more sinister players.”
“Holmes!” I caught him by the elbows. “I thought you were inside!”
“I was,” he whispered back. “But I had to be certain you were acting of your own volition when you summoned me, and that it was really you. I let myself out by the window in my room, and entered your room by the same method. Once I was assured of the situation, I stepped through your doorway and presented myself as you see me now—my dear fellow, what is the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Perhaps I have,” I said. “Holmes, you must listen to me. I can’t explain it, but twice I have lived this day, and twice it has ended in tragedy at the Reichenbach Falls. Moriarty is here, or else he is close by. We must go, now, while there is still time.”
“Go? Go where?”
“Anywhere but here. There is a little hamlet not far off: Rosenlaui, I believe. We can make for there.”
“You said you have lived this day twice. Explain.”
“I cannot explain it,” I replied, “unless it is that time has impossibly folded in on itself, but twice now I have witnessed the horrible events of May the 4th, and now they are repeating once more.”
“You are certain of this? It could not have been a dream?”
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” I told him, “and my life may very well depend on it, and yours as well. Quick, get your things.”
I am not sure that he believed me, but he acknowledged that the possibility of Moriarty being hot on our trail was a very real one, and conceded that we might take the precaution of leaving in the dead of night and making for Rosenlaui before any new guests arrived.
We did not make it far. The dark hampered our progress, and several times we were forced to retrace our steps. It is difficult to navigate the Swiss Alps by moon and lantern light alone.
It must be equally difficult, if not more so, to hunt by such a faint light as that, but Colonel Moran managed it.
Oh, I did not know it was he the first time I tried this avenue of escape, nor the second, but I learned after many trials and as many failures who was behind the bullet that inevitably whizzed past my ear and struck a rock behind us.
Without a word, Holmes had pulled me to the ground and snuffed out the lantern. Clinging to one another so as not to become separated, we made our way behind a small stone outcropping and huddled there, listening carefully for any sound of movement. It was bitter cold, and the whistling wind whisked away the warmth of our bodies, as well as all hope of hearing any report of the movements of our enemy.
We crept a little way along by the light of the moon, hoping to find better shelter from the wind before we froze to death. Moran spared us the trouble of such a slow demise, however—his next shot did not miss.
It took me a moment to comprehend what had happened. One moment, Holmes had been pressed against my side as we crawled along the hillside; the next, he gave a horrible cry, and fell away from me.
I shouted his name and reached blindly out for him. “What is it?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”
“I am…afraid so.” The sound of his voice filled me with a dread colder than the night’s chill. My service as a military doctor had made me an expert on words spoken in such a manner: Holmes spoke with the voice of a man assured of his own death. “Watson…” he gasped.
I gathered him in my arms and clutched him close to my chest. “Stay with me,” I begged him. “Only let me light the lantern, and see what I can do. Perhaps it’s not so bad as—”
“Watson.” The rasping tone of his voice was one of finality. I felt his arm move, and his trembling hand softly caressed my cheek, in a sort of lingering apology. Then his head dropped against my chest, and he spoke no more.
I spent the remainder of that accursed day in plotting how best to escape the nefarious net which Moriarty had woven around us. I tried once, twice, thrice more to escape with Holmes in the cover of night, but to no avail—Moran was a deadlier foe even than Moriarty had been, impossible to evade; the very hills seemed to serve as eyes for him. He hid himself away in the sheltered outcroppings of their tops, where he could keep watch on all paths of escape that lay ahead of us. The way behind was blocked as well: Moriarty had left some of his men there to guard the path of retreat.
Unlikely though it seemed, I at last determined that the confrontation at the falls offered Holmes his best chance of survival, and so I once again accompanied him there, explaining to him along the way all that I knew, and how I had come to know it. He was, as always, incredulous, but inclined to humor me, and we arranged a plan.
When the boy arrived with the note, I agreed to return with him, and bade Holmes farewell. Once the shoulder of the hill hid him from view, however, I turned on the boy, and quickly dispatched him with a blow to the head, before racing back the way which I had come.
Moriarty stood over my friend, who was deeply engrossed in writing on a slip of paper. I moved forward as silently as I could, and then darted forwards, bringing the club I had taken from the Swiss boy down on Moriarty’s head in an act of unbridled rage. He collapsed at my feet, and without hesitation I hooked the toe of my boot beneath his crooked arm and rolled him over the edge, watching with satisfaction as he struck a rock and tumbled into the roiling pool below.
Holmes had watched these proceedings with some degree of amazement—or perhaps it was horror—but he said nothing until I turned around. Then he spoke, in a voice so low it could hardly be heard over the roaring of the falls: “Thus ends the great professor Moriarty.”
“And the world a better place for it,” I said. “Now that’s over with, we have only to carry out the rest of our plan. Let me see. How best to make these tracks look convincing?”
Holmes being the expert in such matters, I left it to him to complete the task of leaving his own footprints in such a manner that left no doubt that he could only have tumbled over the edge after Moriarty. Then I aided him in scrambling up to the lowest ledge of the cliff face, and watched him climb until he reached a hollow place large enough to accommodate his slender frame.
“Stay there until I come to fetch you,” I told him. “I’ll spread the word of your death, and, with any luck, that should reach Moran before nightfall, and draw him out of our way.” It was only when I returned to collect Holmes that evening that I realized my mistake.
I found my friend’s broken body sprawled in the path, beneath the remains of an enormous boulder that had fallen—no, that had been pushed —from above.
Moran, as I was to discover on subsequent investigations, had not spent the entire morning in the hills, but, having been informed by one of the professor’s spies that Holmes and I had departed Meiringen for the Falls, had followed us, and positioned himself at the top of the cliff to keep watch over his villainous companion.
I stood for a moment, frozen in shock, the joy of my success ripped from my hands and blasted into a thousand tiny fragments. I knew then that it was hopeless, and that what I had at first mistaken for a providential blessing was nothing short of a cruel curse. Try as I might, I could not save him—the net was closed tight around us. I imagined I heard Moriarty’s laughter echoing up from the depths of the falls.
The thought gradually occurred to me that, at the end of the day—so to speak—it did not much matter what I did. Moriarty might have arranged a trap for Holmes, but I was caught up in a very different one: one which ensured that, even if I somehow managed to succeed, my victories would be fruitless in the end. Why save a man’s life one day, only for him to die again the next—the very same day!
The cycle of misery was endless. The kindest thing to do, I imagined, would be to slip into Holmes’ room in the dead of night, at the beginning of each new day, and put an end to it all there, quickly and painlessly. It would spare him the trouble of running and fighting and grieving, as well as the possibility of a much slower, more agonizing death at the hands of an enemy.
I came close, once—but as I stood over my friend’s sleeping figure, weapon in hand, I could not bring myself to do it. I was fully aware that it could have no real consequence: whatever I did now, he would be asleep in the same bed when morning came. And yet, I could not lay a finger on him, even to spare him suffering. I turned away, shaking, full to the brim with disgust, grief, and horror, and left the room.
In the end, I took to running. I would rise before the break of dawn, slip out of the hotel, and make my way into the hills. The first few times, upon discovering my absence, Holmes followed me, using those miraculous methods of his, and caught up to me. On these occasions, Moran was soon to follow. Soon, however, I had coaxed the details of Holmes’ reasonings out of him, and learned how best to cover my tracks. After a few weeks, I knew how to escape all those I wished to avoid, and was free to wander the hills, lonelier than any of the now familiar clouds that skimmed the skies.
The usual rules of life did not apply to me. My actions carried no consequences. I did not die, I did not age. I spent all my money in a day and woke in the morning with it back in my pocket. I lived recklessly, desperately, seeking anything within a day’s journey that might serve as a distraction from the inescapable knowledge that, somewhere, somehow, my friend was dead, or soon to be. It was his doom, and it was mine. There was nothing to be done. These things I told myself, over and over, as the weight of his loss settled again and again on my weary, ageless shoulders.
I do not know how long I lived like that. It might have been months, perhaps even years. There was no way to mark the days, save in my mind, and there they had the tendency to run together into one long, repetitious blur.
Some days, however, I could remember distinctly: the first days of Holmes’ deaths, each one uniquely horrible, stood out in my mind, and so too I remembered my own deaths, fewer in number, but equally painful to recall: the plummet over the falls, and, later, a bullet in my chest, which I had received from one of Moriarty’s confederates just outside the hotel. It had been done in retaliation for my bringing a chair down on the great professor’s head in a fit of rage the first time I witnessed his arrival at the hotel.
The splintering of wood across Moriarty’s miserable skull had been a great satisfaction to me, but it was not worth the pain of finding a lump of lead embedded in my chest a moment later, and so I decided against a repeat performance the next morning, and left the Englischer Hof before Moriarty arrived.
It was a lonely existence. I had no friends in this country save the one that I could no longer bear to face; no dear soul in which to confide my troubles. Certainly I made the acquaintance of several of the locals, and improved in my knowledge of their language and their habits, but at the start of every day, I was once more a stranger to them. Many days, I found isolation preferable to the empty company of people who would forget me entirely in a matter of hours.
It was on one such day that I had taken one of the most secluded paths through the hills, when I was surprised to come across a man whom I did not recognize, and who I was quite certain had not been on that path when I had walked it on previous mornings. He was tall, nearly the same height as Holmes, but of stouter build, with short-cropped brown hair and an impressive moustache. He looked strangely familiar.
“Who are you?” I demanded of him—manners were not a necessity in this world where offenses were quickly forgotten, and I had ceased to habitually employ them.
“A traveler, like yourself,” he said, with a warm smile in answer to my crude greeting.
“An Englishman?”
“Yes indeed.”
“How strange,” I said. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.”
“Well!” he laughed. “That is not particularly surprising. An Englishman can hardly expect to be personally acquainted with every fellow countryman he meets on the road, and I am just recently arrived myself.”
“I see. It’s only—well—oh, never mind. Good day to you, then!”
He laughed again. “Now, now,” he said, “you’ve captured my attention. What was it you were going to say?”
“Just that my experiences of late have been rather unusual,” I said carefully. “I seem to know everyone round these parts.”
“What is your name, sir?”
“Watson,” I replied. “John Watson.”
“Watson.” A strange sort of smile came over his face, but he shook his head. “I’ve a colleague, a James Watson, but I’m afraid I don’t know any Johns by that name. We are strangers then, you and I. How is that you have come to know everyone else, Dr. Watson?”
“I don’t rightly know,” I admitted. “And what I do know, you won’t believe.”
“Try me.”
“All right then. I seem to be caught in a sort of…” I waved my hands vaguely, at a loss for words, “a sort of loop, I suppose. I have lived this day so many times I have lost count, though it must be many hundreds. The exact same day, morning to evening, and then it begins over again.”
“Such a thing happened to me once, I think,” the stranger said, much to my surprise.
The first rush of hope I’d felt in an eternity sprang to life in my breast. “However did you manage to escape?” I asked.
“I am not entirely certain,” said he, “but I can speculate, and often do. The way I see it, there are times in which Fortune goes one way, and Fate goes another, and some poor soul like you or I ends up caught in the middle, unless he can find how to set things to rights. Some things are simply not meant to be, you know.”
“Set things to rights?” I repeated. “Then you mean it’s possible to return to the natural order of time, merely by, by altering events?”
“It’s possible,” the stranger hummed. “Just possible. Are you aware of anything of great significance which occurs on this day, that you may be somehow involved in?”
“Yes!” I could no longer contain my excitement. “And you believe that if I find a way to alter it, this dreadful loop will cease, once and for all?”
The man held up a finger. “I make no promises,” he said. “But that is my advice to you. Good day, doctor.”
He strode quickly past me, swinging his stick as he walked, and disappeared round a bend in the road. I stood rooted to the spot for a moment, trying to comprehend the information that I had just been given. Then I ran after him. “Sir!” I called. “Excuse me! If I may ask—” I rounded the bend, and found myself alone on the path. It was only then that it occurred to me that he had not given me his name, and that he had addressed me by the title of doctor, despite my never having given him any indication as to my being one.
It did not, in that moment, matter very much to me whether I had seen a man, a demon, an angel, or a ghost. All that mattered was that whoever it was had spoken the first words of hope I had heard in a very long time.
I knew from experience that, on days when I vanished early in the morning, Holmes would be handed a note from Moriarty, claiming that I was a captive of the professor, and demanding Holmes meet him at the Reichenbach Falls. From there, events progressed as I had witnessed them, culminating in the two men plunging to their simultaneous deaths at the bottom of the torrential stream of water. My pocket watch told me that two hours remained before that final struggle took place.
It was fortunate that I had not strayed far from the village. Casting aside my stick and all that I had carried with me for the day, I made a path straight for the falls.
A man possessed by a demon could not have run faster than I did that day, and I do not believe I shall ever accomplish such a miraculous feat again. I reached the falls just behind Professor Moriarty: his boot prints were fresh in the mud as I came to the bend in the path.
I pulled up short as I did so. Moriarty stood with his back to me. He was engaged in a heated conversation with Holmes. The noise of the waterfall drowned out most of their words, but I thought I could discern my name amongst the shrill creaking of Moriarty’s voice, and certainly I read it on Holmes lips and in his eyes. I at first believed him not to have seen me, for there was no break in his dialogue with the professor as I inched nearer on the path. Soon I was able to discern more of what he was saying.
“You were a fool, professor,” Holmes sneered, “to attempt to snare me with such a transparent bluff as this. A blind man could see through it.” He waved the note in his hand. “It will not do.”
“On the contrary,” Moriarty replied, “it has done exactly as I intended. I did not bring you here to bargain, Mr. Holmes.”
Such primal fear looked unnatural, displayed on the pale, angular face that was usually a portrait of cool calmness. Remarkably unnatural. It was my first clue that my friend was aware of more than he let on. “I see,” Holmes said, with the air of one who has resigned himself to his fate. “And Watson?”
“Will be released when all is finished. That fool is of no consequence to me.”
“You mean to continue with this charade, then?” Holmes asked. He stood a little straighter. “You still claim he is your captive?”
“I assure you,” said Moriarty, “that this is no charade. Dr. Watson is as much in my power as you are.” I took an inching step closer.
“Then you can have no objection to telling me his whereabouts.”
“I am under no obligation to tell you anything, Mr. Holmes.”
“Might I be permitted a guess, at least?”
“You may guess all you please,” Moriarty replied. “You are only delaying the inevitable.”
“That may be,” Holmes said. “But if you have been a student of Watson’s works, then you must know I can never resist a touch of the dramatic, or an opportunity to exercise my powers. My senses have given me one or two little clues as to his whereabouts. Yes, I feel entirely certain that I can guess his exact location, even now!” This last word was given as a shout. Holmes and I lunged forward as one, the hammer and the anvil closing in on Moriarty in a single synchronized swoop.
The master criminal’s hand flew to the pocket which concealed his pistol, as I knew it must, but he found that my hand had got there first, and I twisted the weapon free of his grasp. At the same time, Holmes’ fist connected squarely with his jaw, flinging Moriarty backwards into my arms. I lifted him off his feet and threw him against the wall with enough force to stun an elephant.
“The game is up, professor,” Holmes said, wrapping an arm around the struggling man’s neck. “You will return with us to London, and face justice for your crimes.”
Moriarty answered by kicking against the wall with his legs, sending himself and Holmes, whose grip was still tight around his throat, staggering backwards.
I saw it all again. The ledge. The falls. The two men, the greatest criminal and the greatest detective to ever walk the earth, balanced on the edge of the precipice, locked in each other’s arms—a picture permanently seared in my mind. This. It always came to this.
It was the stranger’s voice that called me back. I must have imagined it, but it seemed to me that it came up out of the falls, the rumbling voice of which had an almost human quality at times. Some things are simply not meant to be, you know.
It is a commonly observed phenomenon, that in moments of crisis a man often feels that time has ceased to pass at its usual speed, and yet I am absolutely certain that, in this one instance, time really, truly slowed for me, creeping by at an impossibly drawn out pace as I dove forward, reached for Holmes’ hand, caught it, clasped it, and pulled him to safety on the path.
We tumbled to the ground together at the usual speed of things, breathing heavily.
“I say, Watson,” Holmes panted, sweeping the damp hair back from his brow as he propped himself on an elbow, “that nearly ended very badly. However can I thank you for your timely interference?”
“By helping me up to that ledge,” I told him, “and standing clear once I reach it.”
“What business do you have up there?” he asked, already offering me his hands to step in.
“No time now. I’ll explain in a moment.” I don’t know how the Holmes of a previous day had managed the climb so neatly. My boots scrabbled on the slick rock and loose tufts of grass, and more than once I nearly tumbled back down at his feet, but at last I reached the ledge, and craned my head upwards.
The boulder fell sooner than I had anticipated, and I was forced to flatten myself against the stone face in order to avoid being more permanently flattened against the stone floor. With the horrific crash still ringing in my ears, I lifted my head once more, and caught sight of a ghastly visage, glaring down at me with murder in its eyes. I raised Moriarty’s pistol, and thus put an end to Colonel Moran—at the same moment that he attempted to put an end to me.
It is very fortunate that his bullet went slightly astray, for I am certain he intended it to lodge in a somewhat more vital organ, but I did not find myself feeling particularly fortunate when fire exploded in my leg. I was quite unconscious of having let go of the wall, but I must have done so, for I presently perceived myself to be falling backwards.
I scrambled to catch myself—too late—and succeeded only in shredding my sleeves and trousers, as well as the skin beneath them, against the cliff face as I tumbled my way down at a much faster rate than I had ascended.
I collided with something too soft to have been the rocky ground. There were hands tightening around my shoulders and thin fingers searching my neck for a pulse. Then a soft cry of distress, close to my ear, and I felt myself being borne upwards. That is the last thing I remember—until I awoke in my customary bed in the hotel room.
For a very brief moment, I was filled with the darkest despair. Then a new sensation struck me. I do not imagine that a man was ever so happy to discover his leg wrapped in bloody bandages as I was when I sat up that blessed morning. Even the throbbing pain was an immense relief: never had I yet passed the threshold of midnight without the vanishing of any injuries I had sustained throughout the day.
My exclamation of joy roused Holmes, who had been dozing in a chair in the corner of my room. He crossed the space between us in two quick strides, and perched himself on the edge of my bed, from which position his sharp eyes inspected my face for signs of pain. “What is it? Shall I call for the doctor?” he asked.
“No, no, I’m all right.” I took his hand in mine, and gave it a reassuring squeeze, though I was not entirely certain which of us I was intending to reassure. “But please—what day is it?”
“It is the morning of the fifth,” he said. “You have been—”
“Hah!” I cheered, and threw a hand in the air.
“—and perhaps, you still are,” he continued, “subject to a feverish delirium, since our return here yesterday afternoon.” Had he kept vigil all that time? I shut my eyes, and thought I glimpsed, amongst the shades of feverish recollection, his pale face bending over me, and his slender hands raising a glass of water to my lips. Was it the wavering of my imagination, or did I recall a slight tremor in those usually steady hands?
“One of the local doctors has seen to your injury,” Holmes went on. “He says there is no great threat to your life. But I am afraid you will forever carry a bullet in your leg, to accompany the one you got in your arm in Afghanistan.”
“My dear fellow,” I said, wringing his hand and grinning like a fool, “a bullet in my leg this fine Tuesday morning is all that I could ask for!” Holmes frowned, and felt my forehead for a temperature.
It took a great deal of assurance to persuade him that I was, in fact, myself, and not under the delirious influence of a raging fever. The thermometer took my side of the argument, however, and Holmes was forced to concede the point, although he insisted upon hearing an explanation for my strange behavior.
I gave it to him. He did not at first believe me, but as the facts fell into place, he found he could not deny that my explanation, however improbable, served better than any he could furnish. How else could I have known about Moran, or the pistol in Moriarty’s pocket? My understanding of the German language had greatly improved since he had last spoken to me, and by the time I had rattled off not only the full name of my attendant doctor, whom I had hardly spoken a coherent word to, but the names of his sister, his wife, his children, and most of his neighbors, Holmes was prepared to accept the veracity of my statements.
“And I suspect,” said he, “that there remains a great deal of which you have not told me, that I shall hear in the fullness of time. At present, however, there is one matter of importance, which I must impart to you. As you are no doubt aware, several of the late professor’s lesser agents remain abroad. None of them have yet shown their faces at this establishment, but I do not doubt they will before long. I have instructed the landlord to wait until our departure, and then spread the story that that you returned alone from Reichenbach Falls, to report that both Moriarty and I had fallen into the abyss.” His grip tightened on my hand. “I am afraid, my dear Watson, that I must vanish for a time. Until the law catches up with the last remnants of Moriarty’s gang, it is best that the world believes me to be dead. I shall remain a wanderer in exile, until that time comes in which I deem it safe to return to London.”
“That is all right, provided you don’t wander too quickly,” I sat, patting my injured leg. “I won’t be able to keep up.”
“You won’t need to,” he told me. I thought I saw a glimmer of sorrow in those austere eyes, but it was quickly extinguished. “You will be better off remaining here until you are recovered, and then returning to London. I shall go on alone; I will be less likely to be recognized and arouse suspicion, if I am not accompanied by my trusty companion, who is almost as well known as myself. No, Watson, this is one adventure on which I cannot ask you to join me—I am sorry.” This last remark was an addendum, made in response to the expression he perceived upon my features, which must have been a bitter one.
“That won’t do,” I said. “The worst mistake I ever made was to let you go on without me, and I have quite learned my lesson. I’ll go on horseback if I can’t walk, or hobble after you on foot if I must. I’ll disguise myself, if it will bring you comfort; I believe I could make a rather convincing Swiss man, having lived among them now for days beyond count. But I will not let you go on alone.”
Holmes gaze was conflicted as it flicked between my face and my injured leg. “Good old Watson,” he murmured, and turned his face away, as if to glance out the window at the sunrise—but I thought I saw him draw his sleeve across his eyes before he turned back towards me. “Very well,” he sighed. “You were always a man of determination. I can see that even had it been necessary to amputate the injured limb, I should still find you crawling after me over the hills.”
“And if I should have lost both my legs,” I said, “then I should learn to walk on my hands, and follow you that way.”
Holmes chuckled. “That will hardly be necessary,” he said. “Your suggestion of a horse was excellent. I shall see about procuring one.” He stood. “Oh, and one more thing, Watson.”
“Yes?”
“When you feel up to it, in a few months’ time, I should be greatly obliged f you would write up a little account of my rather tragic death. As convincing as possible, if you please, to satisfy any scoundrels that may have stumbled across an inkling of the truth, and begun to suspect.”
“It shall be the most convincing account ever written,” I assured him, and then added, rather more darkly, “I confess, I am somewhat of an expert on the subject.”
“Oh, Watson.” He had been on the verge of departure, but this last remark of mine drew him back to my bedside as though he were compelled by a magnetic force. “Watson, dearest of friends.” He grasped my hand firmly between his. “I fear I shall never be able to repay you for what you have suffered for my sake.”
“My reward, old chap, on this glorious fifth day of May, is the joy of seeing you alive and well,” I told him. “And, if you endeavor to remain in such a condition as long as humanly possible, and you suffer me to remain by your side throughout that time, then I say you may consider me repaid in full. All I ask is that you do not send me away. Not again.” The last words had a hoarser, more whispered quality than I had intended.
Holmes leaned forward, and gently pressed his lips to my forehead, in what may have been the most open display of human emotion I have ever witnessed from him. “My dear Watson,” he said, his fingers tightening around my hand. “You are faithful to the last. The road which lies ahead of me is a hard one, but, if you are willing to share it with me, then I could not ask for a better companion.”
Chapter 2
Notes:
I originally intended the conclusion of the last chapter to be the end of the fic, but I needed a bit of fluff and softness to make up for all the angst, so have a self-indulgent epilogue I added on after I wrote it :)
Chapter Text
It was several years before we were able to safely return to London, but our exile was not as dreadful as it might have been—the presence of a trusted companion can ease even the worst of trials. Holmes was true to his word, and even in the face of the greatest peril, he never so much as hinted at the possibility of my leaving him.
I carried on in my role as his biographer, although I was forced to alter the facts rather more frequently than I had for the stories I sent to the Strand. Still, my numerous accounts of the Norwegian explorer Sigerson, published under the pen name of Ormond Sacker, were very entertaining to Holmes’ brother Mycroft, as well as to our good landlady Mrs. Hudson, whom Mycroft had informed—with our permission—of the truth about what had become of us.
As Holmes had predicted, our path was far from easy. Most of his enemies had been thrown off our track by the news of his death, but a few still remained abroad, and we lived in fear of being discovered. Moriarty had a long reach, even in death.
We were always on the move, bouncing from one place to another. We rarely spent more than a few nights in the same location. Sometimes, our lodgings were pleasant, as they had been at Meiringen, but more often than not we were forced to content ourselves with whatever was near at hand, and without whatever was not.
We spent one particularly frigid night atop a mountain, tucked away in a crumbling mud-brick house with a thatched roof in desperate need of repair. It was hardly fit to be inhabited—that was why we had been permitted to remain there, as no one else had any wish to claim it. I had sat for a time in a corner with my shoulders hunched against the cold, bent over my notebook as I attempted to record a version of Holmes’ latest exploits suitable for the public eye. My lamp made a valiant effort to sustain itself, but at last it succumbed to starvation, and the hungry shadows which had long been creeping nearer swallowed up the room.
I shut my notebook with a sigh. “We will have to do without light for a while, until we can procure some more oil,” I called in Holmes’ direction. “And I am afraid our friend Sigerson shall have to remain buried in the haystack, until the morning provides enough light for me to write him free of it.”
“It won’t do him any harm,” Holmes voice answered out of the gloom. “He may find himself more comfortable than we tonight.”
“Yes, I’m rather jealous of the old fellow.” I rose with a grunt and a stifled cry of pain.
“Is it your arm, or your leg?” Holmes asked, ever observant.
“Both,” I admitted. “But no matter. I have survived worse, and so have you.” I fumbled for my walking stick and gripped it in my right hand, feeling my way along the wall with my left.
My trailing fingers found cracks in the bricks, holes where they had fallen away, and, once, something unpleasant that skittered off into the darkness and left me feeling even more chilled than before. I was glad when I heard Holmes’ voice near at hand.
“This seems to be the best spot for escaping the wind,” he said, and there was a rustle of fabric. His fingertips grazed my knee.
I lowered myself to the ground with another groan, leaning heavily on my stick. His hand guided me toward the nest of tattered blankets he had made for himself on the ground. His fingers were cold, but the blankets had been somewhat warmed by his presence.
Finding a comfortable position to lie down in proved an arduous effort, and one in which I was never entirely successful. My leg throbbed where Moran had wounded me—I was healing well enough, but bullets are never pleasant things to carry around in one’s body—and my shoulder, for the same reason, furiously refuted my attempts to rest on that side. I settled for lying on my back, the aching protests of which were easier to ignore.
Holmes pulled the blankets over both of us and I shut my eyes.
Sleep did not come for me. This did not trouble me too greatly; I was accustomed to lying awake, twisting distant wolf howls into human screams and imagining heavy footsteps out of the wind, or, as I preferred, listening to the more comforting sound of Holmes breathing beside me.
Tonight, however, that familiar breathing was rendered slightly less comforting by the shuddering quality it had taken on of late. Less than a week before, I had found myself struggling to draw Holmes out of the depths of a stubborn fever. He had shaken it off at last, but it had left him gaunter and paler than ever. I fancied I could hear the bones in that thin frame rattling as he shivered.
I had just stretched out my uninjured arm in an attempt to tug the blankets tighter around him, when, to my surprise, I felt Holmes shift nearer to me, nestling himself against my side and bringing his head to rest upon my shoulder. I froze momentarily. Holmes was a tactile man in some respects, often prodding and nudging those near to him in his own peculiar manner of communication, or grasping my hand in a moment of great danger, but this level of proximity to another human being was something he seldom permitted.
“Is everything all right, old fellow?” I whispered in his ear.
Holmes made a drowsy hum of confusion. “Hm? Oh, yes.” A pause, lingering on the edge of awareness, and then he raised himself with a start. I felt his fingers brush anxiously over the place on my shoulder where his head had been resting a moment before. “I haven’t hurt you, Watson?”
“Not at all.” Satisfied that all was well, and that he had been perfectly content to rest by my side and share my warmth, I curled my hand around his shoulder and gently pulled him back towards myself. “I believe I should rather have you here than anywhere else.”
“Well… that is a lucky thing,” he murmured, the heaviness of sleep creeping back into his voice, and he settled down once more against my shoulder.
It was a lucky thing indeed, I mused, to have him here beside me, after everything that we had endured; after so many narrow escapes—but, then again, perhaps it was not luck at all.
Some things are simply meant to be, you know.
Uhm666 on Chapter 2 Thu 07 Aug 2025 07:29AM UTC
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all_and_sundries on Chapter 2 Fri 08 Aug 2025 02:43AM UTC
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kingstoken on Chapter 2 Sat 09 Aug 2025 12:35AM UTC
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all_and_sundries on Chapter 2 Sun 10 Aug 2025 10:16PM UTC
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althusserarien (ArmchairElvis) on Chapter 2 Mon 11 Aug 2025 04:02PM UTC
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all_and_sundries on Chapter 2 Tue 12 Aug 2025 08:09PM UTC
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