Chapter Text
Prologue by Sherlock Holmes, Esq.
We are all fortunate that news of Enola Holmes has yet to reach the papers - when at last she breaks into the public eye, I am quite sure that her debut will be accompanied by several explosions and perhaps a reckoning on the foundations of London society.
My work, however, has garnered the attentions of the press with some regularity, and so I found myself surprised that the gentleman at my doorstep had little idea of who I was. At least he was unlikely to demand possession of another of my pipes, I supposed, and so I allowed him in..
“Well, this flat is certainly of a good size,” Doctor Watson remarked. “Do you live here alone, at present?”
I followed his nonplussed gaze to the densest part of my current organizational system. “Yes,” I replied, “excepting the occasional visit from a client or the young lady who directed you here - if I may ask, how do you know her?”
“I’ve met her only once,” he explained, wandering to the window. “I returned to London quite recently, you see, and my current lodging is just across from the martial arts studio that Miss Holmes frequents. The owner fetched me to help with the sprained ankle of one of her students, and I mentioned offhand that I was looking for more permanent accommodations - Miss Holmes was quite insistent that I consider your flat, actually.”
He was friendly, then, if Edith had learned so quickly of his profession and seen him fit to attend to her students. Chatty, to share the details of his lodgings with her and Enola. A military man, from his bearing, but with a well grown beard indicating that he had not obeyed their regulations regarding the presence of facial hair for several months. So a recent move to London, but discharged well before. Significantly tanned, too, had likely served in the desert, and an odd way of carrying his left side-
“Ah - pardon me, Mr. Holmes, if I may be so forward, is your shoulder troubling you?”
I had raised my left hand unknowingly to my head, and dropped it with a near immediate grimace - a common occurrence in recent days. “Oh. Yes, I’ve been shot.”
To my surprise, he displayed not shock but grim understanding. “Fucking hurts, doesn’t it? You’d think the shoulder was a safe place to be hit, if any such thing existed.”
I stared. He stared back, massaging his own shoulder, and went abruptly pale. “Pardon my language, Mr. Holmes, I didn’t-”
“No, no, it’s fine,” I interjected - he looked quite haggard in the moment, and I feared for his wits. “Even if I had not already gathered that you are a veteran of the Afghan wars, I have little need for social graces myself.”
Doctor Watson appeared quite relieved at this, leaning back against my desk, then bolted upright at the remainder of my deduction - thankfully, he knew better than to disturb my papers. “How on bloody earth could you know that - were you also wounded in Her Majesty’s service?”
I waved his concern away - with the right hand, this time. “It would have to be an extraordinarily quick discharge, as my injury is from three - no, four - days prior.”
He straightened then, a canny expression in his eyes that took me aback after his previous mild demeanor. “And yet you don’t have a sling - who examined you? Was it a clean shot?”
Framed in the afternoon light, he looked rather like an avenging angel. I blinked. “It is of little consequence, Doctor - there is an exit wound, I have sterilized both sites, and as you can see, I am quite all right.”
Admittedly, after seeing to Enola on that exhausting night I had spared little care for myself. Plumbing the wound’s depths sent my vision black at the edges, and I had refrained from further investigation in fear that she might wake needing something and find me unconscious. When I awoke the next morning to find myself lacking both a sister and a functional left arm, I had discovered an injection of morphine to soothe the pain somewhat and left it at that.
I spared Doctor Watson these details, but his countenance was quite displeased nonetheless. “Holmes,” he cried, “do you mean to say you have not seen a doctor? Do you know how many soldiers are laid low by infection?”
His fervor seemed borne of genuine concern, but I cared not in the heat of a sudden reprimand. “I would thank you to leave my own affairs to my care, Doctor, I have had other concerns to attend to.”
“None more pressing than your own good health, surely?”
The way he looked at me - I suddenly longed for my pipe and a quiet room and a full flight of stairs between me and the world, if only to give myself time to find a defense for it. “Doctor John Watson,” I said instead, striding abruptly for the door. “I fear that Miss Holmes has misled both of us, and that this flat is not currently available for additional lodging.”
I reached to fling the door open with my left arm and cursed abruptly, half prepared to storm out myself when Doctor Watson spoke from behind me. “Hang the lodging,” he said, tense and even, “If you will not go to a doctor, Holmes, then I hope you at least have the sense to appreciate a doctor coming to you.”
I turned - he was perched at the desk, still, but fixing me with such an intent look that I feared to move. “Sit down,” he commanded. “You cannot expect me to leave without seeing you to rights, it would be a violation of my professional oath.”
The urge to flee increased, and I looked at him in some disbelief. “You will not go?”
It did seem, at that moment, as if the gentleman darkening my doorstep had left and been replaced with a man of quite different temperament. The good doctor must have been quite a force in Her Majesty’s medical tents. “You will have to throw me out,” he declared, “and as you have been shot more recently than I, I dare say we will be on even footing.”
I doubted it, given the assortment of weapons I had hidden around the flat, but the way he reached out entreatingly to me seemed far more dangerous. “Come, Holmes,” he soothed. “For my own peace of mind, if nothing else - if I read in the papers that you have died of lead poisoning a week hence, I shall never forgive myself.”
Perhaps it was his repeated insistence, or the moment of genuine haunting I observed in him. There was no choice but to pace back towards him and sit, entirely bewildered as he drew closer and patted my unhurt shoulder encouragingly with his brown eyes twinkling. “There we go,” he said. “Now, shirt off, and I shall wash my hands - with any luck, this will be a short examination.”
Impediments thusly removed, he rubbed his hands together briskly to warm them and instructed me to lean forward so he could examine the entry wound. “It’s clotting, but slowly. Did you bleed much?”
“Define ‘much’.”
“To the point of fainting,” he replied. “Those rags over there - you used them to staunch the bleeding? And that ointment for the inflammation? I don’t see any sign of it on your bandages, have you replaced them often?”
I nudged one of the aforementioned rags with my foot. “I used these to clean Enola’s - Miss Holmes’ - wounds on the same night. For myself I used, ah-” I answered almost regretfully. “A shirt that I suppose I shall have to discard, and distilled alcohol that I use in my experiments.”
Doctor Watson said nothing in reply, but I felt a stiff exhale stir my hair. Let him be annoyed. I could not bring myself to regret my priorities on that night.
“Right. Missed the subclavian artery, then, excellent. Let me know if there’s any of this you can’t feel.” He palpated my arm from fingertips to collarbone - I flinched, ticklish, halfway through and was forced to press my free hand against my mouth to stifle a series of involuntary reactions as he continued ruthlessly on. “No nerve damage then, I suppose.”
“I suppose not,” I replied wryly, flushing - I almost wished the damned things had stopped working. Thankfully, he retained his professional air and walked around to stand behind me.
“Alright, nearly done - I carry a small medical case with me, I’m just going to use my tools to prod a bit and make sure there aren’t any bone or bullet fragments lodged in the wound. Are you aware of the weapon’s type?”
“A Webley revolver,” I observed. “A .455 cartridge, I should think - the man who held it had neither reason nor skill to modify it from standard police fare.”
Watson hummed. “Thought as much, it’s quite similar to what we used at the front.” He paused. “You are considerably observant, for a man who was being shot at.”
“Observation is the key to my work, Doctor - you see, I am a consulting detective.”
“I did wonder what kind of study could boast such varied material,” he said, quite calmly for the amount of pain currently radiating from my shoulder. “You seem absolutely brilliant.”
I wondered briefly if he was attempting to direct my blood away from my shoulder and into my face. “I - ow -”
“Sorry.” Doctor Watson tsked. “Blazes, that’s definitely a piece of bullet - nicked a bone and got stuck, it did. Mind if I take it out?”
“By all means,” I hissed, gripping the arms of my chair - but something in my shoulder suddenly shifted, and in a panic I scrabbled at the exit wound upon my front with the thought that some splintering object had taken up root there. All I accomplished, however, was breaking the thin scab and causing a fresh seepage of blood. “Fucking hell!”
“Easy, Holmes,” Doctor Watson warned, hands rock steady at my back, “I know it hurts, but any interruptions will only make this harder-”
It was at that moment, as if summoned by the Devil himself solely on the virtue of being unwelcomed, that my door swung open once more.