Fic: The Blurring of the Lines

[spacemutineer]

Title: The Blurring of the Lines
Author: spacemutineer
Rating:
Characters: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Warnings: a brief apocalypse and the emotional fallout from it
Word Count: 14581
Summary: Mycroft comes to see his brother with news of a scientific discovery and impending doom.
Author's Note: An adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novella The Poison Belt into the world of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Only plot was adapted, all characters are Sherlockian only.

Chapter 1 - The Exact Nature of the Anomaly

Should the day the world ends begin differently than any other? One would think it would somehow, but then again, why should it? A single moment must be the one when everything changes, when all safety and certainty fall away. For us, it was just after breakfast.

This morning was a Friday, so I was then leafing through half of one of the day's newspapers to see what good and distracting concerts might be playing that evening. The other half sat in Sherlock Holmes' restless hands after he wordlessly snatched the inner page from out of my grasp as I held it open.

But as soon as he had settled himself in his chair to read, he cocked his head curiously. He strode toward the window and pushed aside the curtain to view the bustling road just beneath us.

"My brother is here," he said. "I thought I heard his wheels. Serious business to lure the snail from his shell."

"Perhaps he has a case for you. It seems as though you could use the diversion," I said, looking at the inside pages of my newspaper, now flung unceremoniously onto the floor.

"Perhaps," he said, absentmindedly. I could see in the rigid cut of his shoulders and the tensing of his brow that something of this arrival was troubling him. My friend was anxious. I knew from experience to trust that anxiety.

As Mrs. Hudson was away visiting her aunt in Bristol at the time, we were left to our own devices. One of us would have gone in her stead to greet our guest, but the door downstairs opened and closed abruptly without even a knock. Mycroft Holmes let himself into his brother's home without bothering with any decorum whatsoever. I supposed it ran in the family.

We heard the man approaching before he appeared, trundling up the stairs as he did with all the characteristic grace of a man of some twenty stone. I took a peek down through the window and saw his attendant who remained outside, moving to guard the door against any other potential entrants. The man's stony expression was mildly disconcerting, but I let the feeling pass. When the English government itself came calling, it made sense that security and privacy were likely to be prioritised.

Holmes took a stand by the door to greet his brother as soon as he entered, but Mycroft simply pushed past him.

"Brother, Doctor," he said quickly in a semblance of greeting before walking straight to our sideboard to open a bottle of port. With one large hand, he extracted three glasses and poured them full.

Mycroft Holmes appeared haggard and pale, much unlike his common ruddy complexion. In his sunken eyes, I could see nights of insomnia, a considerable strain on a man of his general health. I knew now what Holmes had seen at the window.

My friend flashed me a look of concern and surprise, then stepped forward. "Mycroft, what is this? What–"

His brother turned around abruptly and shoved a generous glass of port into his hands, followed by another into mine.

"Drink it. All of it," he said, upon which he did exactly that with the glass he'd poured for himself.

"Why?"

Holmes asked my question for me, but then he continued well past it.

"This is bizarre behaviour, even from you. Especially from you. What, are you drugging us? You venture out of your cavern, make a journey all the way to our home, enter unannounced and immediately demand that we intoxicate ourselves with you when we have barely yet swept the sleep from our eyes. Mycroft, what are you doing?"

"I am offering you both the alcoholic consolation I wish I had received before I was first told of the matter I am here to discuss. If you are wise, you will drink it, but whatever you choose, do so quickly. This cannot wait.

I glanced over to Holmes for his reaction, but his attention was locked entirely on his brother. Heeding the stern advice of a man I never knew to be anything other than serious, I drank quickly and took my seat. Beside me, Holmes took his time to sit, eyeing Mycroft, taking in every detail. It was a moment before he took a long sip and set his glass down half full.

"Tell us, then," he said. "Who has died? Or is dying? Only death would bring you thus."

As ever, Sherlock Holmes cut to the quick. Mycroft hesitated for a moment, an unusual occurrence. My friend answered for him.

"It is a high level government matter, that much is clear," Holmes began. "Your most trusted guard is downstairs waiting, and you have not slept in at least a day. It is an extraordinary event, then. Unexpected and no single person. Not even the Queen herself would cause such consternation. There are plans in place for that eventuality, but none at all for whatever is happening now. I would think it is war, then, more than likely. And not just any. This is a cataclysm you contemplate."

"There is no contemplation. The cataclysm is taking place as we speak."

"Where?"

"We lost contact with Sumatra some six hours ago. Since then, a steadily moving line across all of Asia has been lost. It will be approaching the Continent shortly. The great houses are preparing, as are we, but they have even less time than we do."

"Lost contact? A moving line? It is not a war you are describing. Something of that size… This is a natural disaster?"

"Of a sort."

"What does that mean, 'of a sort?'"

I raised my voice for the first time. "Is it contagion? Some form of emergent disease?"

Mycroft was grim. "A disease would be less disturbing."

Sherlock Holmes leaned forward in his chair, analysing his brother and following the inexorable logic.

"Because diseases are slower, often containable. Nations may survive a disease, even a plague. But not this. For that is who is dying, you believe. That is what would bring you to this. The loss of entire nations. No, larger. Entire continents. …Civilisation. I see."

Holmes reached over and quietly finished his glass of port.

"Stop. This cannot be right," I stammered, grasping for some kind of lifeline of sanity. "Even the most devastating disasters, natural or man-made, do not destroy civilisation itself."

"You anticipated this," Holmes said. "What is it? How long do we have?"

"The exact nature of the anomaly is still debated among my astronomers. Surely you noticed the inkling of the matter that found its way into the papers yesterday."

"The only thing I have seen in the papers of astronomy of late was something about a German sounding scientist and his lines that were not behaving or some such. I tend to gloss over non-terrestrial information, so the precise details do not immediately come to me. You read that article, Watson, did you not?"

"I did. The lines were blurred, I think it was. Something about using the colour spectrum to analyse materials in space, but the equipment was not working properly. A curiosity for further study, the author wrote."

"Indeed," Mycroft said. "What you are describing are Frauenhofer lines, usually clear and distinct and able to instruct astronomers about the elemental contents of distant stars and planets. Forty-three hours ago, something began distorting those observations of space. Something exists there that did not before, and we are looking out into the heavens through it. The scientists believe it to be a sort of a cloud, a great fog bank drifting through space. Earth is passing through this region now and, as feared, its effects are seeping across the globe."

"What effects?" I asked.

"If I knew, I would tell you, Doctor. All we can say with certainty is that in the span of hours, half of the world has gone silent and non-responsive, and more vanish from our contact with each minute that passes. Telegrams sent are never answered. Messengers dispatched for information do not report in and they do not return. There is every reason to believe these regions have succumbed to mass suffocation as they were smothered in this vast belt of poison. The people, and indeed, all oxygen breathing life in those places could be incapacitated, they could be unconscious, they could be dead. My researchers strongly believe the last of those possibilities, but it is impossible to know with certainty. What we do know is that within three hours, there will be no place on our planet left unscathed."

Mycroft Holmes faced us with a funereal solemnity, the true weight of his news falling on the room like a coffin lid. I felt sick to my stomach, wordless. Sherlock was not, still actively contending with the idea, although even he seemed daunted by the prospect.

"You mentioned preparations. What is being done? For that is why you are here, is it not?"

His brother nodded. "It is believed some small groups of select individuals may be able to survive in sealed, oxygen-rich environments until the cloud passes. We have such a space being prepared as we speak, as do a number of the royal families and governments of Europe in their respective countries. You will be there with us in ours, Sherlock. I am allowed one to accompany me to the shelter. It will be you."

Holmes greeted the suggestion with a scoff. "So we're to go two by two into the ark? We're not much of a breeding pair. And where do you intend to keep the cattle and the chickens we'll need when this is over? What about the bees? You are aware that a handful of wealthy layabouts are not going to be of much use working the land when there are no pollinators left."

"Sherlock, Brother, enough. This is a matter of–"

“Of mass extinction. Yes, I’m well aware. I know what this is, Mycroft, if your prediction is indeed correct. What I am asking you is what exactly we are meant to be doing about an occurrence that is so far outside of all current human understanding, much less control?”

“Our job is to survive. That will be difficult enough. This is not a request, Sherlock. You are among the greatest minds alive and you are required by your Empire and by humanity at large. We need you,” Mycroft said before pausing. “I need you.”

“My, if you are right, you are going to need far more than me.”

Holmes sighed and leaned forward towards his subject.

“Go to this room if you feel you must, Brother. But you must know I have no desire to see, much less live upon a dead planet. What purpose would there be for a consulting detective in a world with no crime or mystery? What would I do on a planet with none of the appealing strangeness of life? If anyone, the person you should be trying to preserve is Doctor Watson here. You will need someone trained to keep the living few that way as long as possible, as well as an author to document the experience for future generations, in the unlikely event there should be such.”

“It will be you.”

Mycroft brought out a small case from his breast pocket and laid it on the table. When he opened it, a filled syringe lay inside, ready for injection.

I sat up straight at the unexpected open threat. For his part, Sherlock Holmes only barked a laugh, startled and amused by the brazenness.

“You plan to drug me to force me into this futile scheme? Well, I do look forward to watching you make the attempt.”

“I’ve already drugged you,” Mycroft said quietly, looking up from the case. “The syringe was a last resort that I planned to leave to the good doctor to administer had it come to that. We all here know that he would save your life for you even if you obstinately refused to do so yourself. To our good fortune, you took the faster route and drank your sedative willingly so he did not have to.”

Holmes’ face fell at once in disbelief. “You lied to me.”

“I did nothing of the sort. You were merely imprecise in your questioning, as you all too often are, Sherlock. You asked if I was drugging the collective ‘us’, and I most certainly did not. The doctor and I are merely mildly intoxicated from a glass of fine port. You, on the other hand, are that as well as dosed with a potent sedative that will keep you at peace until this contentious transition is made. I did what was necessary for the survival of the human species, Brother. That is what we are doing here.”

“No, it isn’t.” Sherlock said. “You are lying to yourself if you believe that. Should this disaster come to pass, the only thing that will survive is human misery, and even that, not for long.”

“We must try. There is an innate biological instinct for self-preservation. We continue, or we perish in the attempt. There is no other choice.”

“There is always a choice.” Sherlock Holmes stood and wavered, dizziness hitting him as soon as he came to his feet. He took a step toward his brother, but had to put a hand out to steady himself with the back of a chair. “If you honestly cannot discern your own wishes from the clear, cold facts of reality any longer, you truly have gone mad.”

Holmes stumbled to his knees and I rushed to help him. He blinked at me, his sharp eyes struggling to keep their focus.

“It is all right, Doctor,” Mycroft said with a casual air as he rose from his chair. “Even his chemically abused and accustomed body cannot process the drug quickly enough to keep him awake. It is a heavy dose, but it is a safe one. He will sleep for quite some time.”

Sherlock went loose in my grasp but I held him firm. I would not let him fall. Pale and beginning to tremble, my friend looked up at me. He spoke to his brother, but his eyes did not leave mine.

“You are making a grave mistake, Mycroft,” he said. “And committing a crime. You have no right to steal from me all choice and freedom. You are robbing me utterly, even of farewells.”

“I am sparing the three of us the futile spectacle and delay of those maudlin farewells. My entire purpose is to try to prevent this separation from becoming permanent. Sherlock, I know you are fading. Suffice it to know that I shall be doing the best I am able for you and your companion, and that you shall sleep comfortably and dreamlessly for some hours. If we are fortunate, by then, the worst will be over.”

“’If we are fortunate.’” Holmes tossed his head weakly against my arm. “No, Brother. The worst… comes after.”

He tried to speak again, this time to me, but no sound emerged from his lips when he mouthed my name. Sherlock reached up to grasp me at the shoulder, the one I’d been shot in, the one that had brought us together. Rare fear flashed in his grey eyes and his head fell heavy into the crook of my elbow. His hand dropped away from my shoulder to dangle loose at his side.

My friend Sherlock Holmes was lost to me.

Chapter 2 - Wagers Against Odds

"Place him there on the sofa if you would, Doctor, and we can continue our conversation. My man will be by in a few moments to convey him to the shelter."

Mycroft Holmes gestured as he lumbered toward the window without giving even a second glance to his unconscious brother whose limp, heavy body I held in my arms.

I wanted to say something, anything, but I was too horrified by all that was happening to put my thoughts into words just yet. Instead, I laid my friend on the settee and quickly checked him over. Beyond being deeply asleep, Holmes seemed well, at least for the time being. Only once I felt he was safely settled did I turn back to face his brother.

"Do not look at me like that, Doctor Watson. If you listen to my instructions, it may still be possible for you to survive what is coming. I would not rate your chance of success as high, but it is better than the chance you will have if you are caught out in the open when the cloud arrives. I am aware you are a man willing to accept wagers against odds, Doctor. Sherlock would want more thought given to alternatives, but we would be wasting time. This is the best I have to offer you, and you have precious little time to utilise it."

Mycroft rapped his thick knuckles on the windowpane and in moments his guard was at the sitting room doorway, standing at attention with a large metal cylinder in his hands. The man stepped forward to me and laid the thing at my feet, nodding his head respectfully.

"Thank you, Crittenden," Mycroft said. "Take my brother down to the hansom with you. We will be departing shortly."

"Careful!" I admonished the bulky man hauling Holmes into his arms, but he carried him with more caution than I expected. I watched him depart down the stairs, and through the window I witnessed him deposit my sleeping friend safely into the carriage.

I could not see Holmes' face then, only his arm, dangling motionless off the edge of the seat. His hand laid open, holding nothing but air. Desolately, I wondered if that glimpse was the last I would ever see of him.

At last I turned back to face his brother, bursting with a quicksilver amalgam of anger and sadness and fear.

"Does he know?" I asked, my voice raised. "That man, what was his name, Crittenden? Does he know that the world is dying with him in it? Or are you planning on drugging and kidnapping him too for his own good?"

Mycroft shook his head. "There is no purpose in burdening him with the knowledge. It is a poison in itself to comprehend what is to come this day."

"But you made certain to come here and poison us in the last few hours of peace any of us will ever know. Sherlock was correct. You are mad."

"Quite possibly," Mycroft allowed to my surprise. "The situation is all-encompassing and distressing on a level that human minds, even those as robust and cunning as my own, cannot properly absorb. However mad it may be, I find hope impossible to fully relinquish. And so I offer you this, Doctor Watson."

He gestured down at the cylinder. "This is one of the few last available tubes of oxygen left anywhere in the city. I was fortunate to be able to lay my hands upon it as the rest have gone to sustain our secured population for the duration of the event. This one I smuggled away for you."

Startled, I blinked. "For me? I understand the lengths you have gone to save your brother's life, but I must ask why you would do such a thing for me? You will forgive me, Mister Holmes, but we are little more than acquaintances at best."

"Our particular relationship to one another is quite irrelevant, Doctor. You are the brother my brother chose for himself, and thus we are bound together. You have protected and cared for Sherlock for years. The least I can do now is attempt to protect you this once in return so that perhaps you may be able to continue in that appreciated work."

He looked at me strangely, and for the first time, I saw raw emotion colour Mycroft Holmes' eyes. Love for his brother. Gratitude for me. I swallowed the lump forming in my throat.

"Take it," he urged me. "Take this supply and go to a small, tight location. A closet or pantry may suffice. You will need to seal yourself inside with the oxygen set to the lowest flow, as it must last as long as possible. Sedate yourself as deeply as you are able to suppress your breathing. You are a surgeon, I trust you can manage it. It is just possible that all of this will be enough to keep you alive. As I said, it is highly unlikely given what we know, but, as we have established, perhaps I am mad. Despite all rational reasoning, I continue to hope."

He stepped forward and shook my hand. I found myself trembling, but he was as solid as he ever was. There was no denying the man's strength of purpose.

"Good luck to you, John," he said. "May we meet again."

Mycroft Holmes departed and left me in silence. The door behind him shut and all at once I found myself alone, the only living person left in the house, for however long that would be.

As I stared at the strange gift he'd left me, I thought of all the people in the city around me. All the happy, laughing faces and the bright, youthful ones. All those whose lives would be snuffed out before they had a chance to truly begin. All the people I would never get to know.

I stood there numb in the quiet as I tried to comprehend. I could hear the road outside, the world going on without me and my mind swam with thoughts and questions. What was I doing? What right had I to survive when everyone else would be lost?

Below me sat the heavy metal canister, and I hefted it into my hands. It was so much steel, but it contained inside such a priceless invisible commodity.

Perhaps I would survive. Perhaps I would live and breathe, while everyone outside, all those I was sworn to heal and care for, would suffocate and die instead.

The thought twisted in my gut like a knife. A sudden urge hit me to run outside and give the canister and vital instructions to the first person I passed, someone, anyone, but why would they ever believe such a story? Any sane person would rightly take me for a lunatic and refuse to listen to my urgent, desperate pleas. If I did not use this gift of hope, no one would.

I took a few steps toward Holmes' bedroom, then a few more. His wardrobe was the smallest enclosed space I could think of where I might fit inside with the tank.

Holmes was everywhere in this room. His microscope sat beside scattered papers covered in chemical equations. His wallpaper consisted of the sinister faces of criminals he studied, and they scowled down at me. The room smelled of ash and greasepaint. I dearly wished my friend was with me to lend his advice.

I wondered where he was now. A sealed location somewhere, I supposed. Wherever Mycroft had taken him, he was surely unconscious, oblivious to the stress and fear no doubt surrounding him. Was his brother with him now or did Mycroft simply have Sherlock laid somewhere to sleep on alone? The best I could do for him was hope it was a soft somewhere.

Would Holmes want me to do this, to try to save myself? He was against the idea of the shelter from the start. But I thought of holding him up as he was losing his fight with unconsciousness. He looked up at me in a way I had never seen in him before. His eyes could barely focus, but they were fixed on mine, pleading. Sherlock was afraid. He did not want our connection severed then.

I did not want our connection severed now. I gathered all of his hanging clothes and various accoutrements in one fell swoop and tossed them off to the side in a messy heap. What at all did propriety and fastidiousness matter now? Into the empty void left behind, I placed the canister of oxygen.

It was ready. I was not. Any moment now, I was to enter that tiny space and put myself to sleep. There atop Holmes' books spread open on his desk, I prepared the injection. Shaky hands made slow work, and it gave me enough time to catch a glimpse of myself in his full length mirror.

I knew all too well what men's eyes looked like when they were facing near certain death for themselves and the others around them. That look is endemic in war, in the still of the camps in those dire hours before an attack. Eyes like that stared back at me.

I thought of Holmes again. I could not leave him alone in the world he would wake up in. I would not. Not if I could help it.

And so I crept into his empty wardrobe and shut myself inside. It was dark and close. The thin crack in the doors allowed but a single sliver of light inside. I could just make out the canister, its dingy silver shining in the gloom. Taking one last breath for courage, I let it out slowly and made myself as comfortable as I could. It felt like sealing myself inside a coffin. Perhaps I was.

Curled in place there, my knees against my chest, I turned the canister's knob to start the flow of oxygen. The valve hissed softly as I tied off my arm and readied my needle. This was a near enough dose of sedative to stop my breathing entirely, but as a physician I knew that there are times when one must risk death to avoid simply conceding to it.

I felt the drugs push into my vein and time seemed to slow as the air around me grew colder. I could sense the darkness at the edges of my vision creeping inward. Closing my eyes, I wished for the world I was already in, and I pulled the rubber band on my arm away to let the chemicals flow free through my blood and drag me under toward one oblivion or the other.

Chapter 3 - Signs of Life

Every joint in my body ached as I woke. Only dimly aware, I squirmed and groaned before a hand touched my arm to still me. When I opened my eyes, my vision was blurry and my head felt thick, but I would recognise the face of the weary man looking down at me anywhere.

"Holmes."

My voice was a croak that sounded terrible even to me. I could just hear the oxygen still escaping quietly from the canister, which lay awkwardly abandoned by my pounding head. Holmes had not bothered even to turn off the flow. He had been understandably distracted at the time.

"Hello, Watson," he said so softly.

It was dark there in Holmes' bedroom. He must have drawn the curtains at some point after his return, and now I had no way to tell if it was night or day. No way to tell how long I had been unconscious, or what had happened in the meantime. I listened, but the room seemed impossibly silent. No noise of traffic or people came through the window, not even the sounds of birds.

Still groggy, I lifted my head to look around the room. The first thing I noticed was that I was lying on the floor. I was not sure how I had arrived at that position, but there was a pillow bunched up beneath my head and a blanket covered me.

"Sorry, I didn't dare move you," Holmes said.

We were alone in his room. He sat beside me on the floor with his legs curled under him and when he looked down at me, it was with regret.

In all my years with him, I had never seen him look so worn. His hair was wild, thrashed by wind or stressed fingers raking through it. Dark shadows hung under reddened eyes. I tried to sit up, but Holmes pressed me back down.

"No, stay there for now, Doctor. Rest a moment, please. There is no hurry for you to strain yourself to rise just yet. There is no hurry for much of anything now."

"Holmes, are you all right? What happened? Did it…?"

"Yes." Holmes' voice was faint. "It is done."

A chill ran through my body. My head fell back to the pillow as all the breath fell out of my lungs. I was simply unable to fathom such a thing. I was alive. Holmes was alive. And nearly every other soul on the planet was lost. How could that be possible? I could not find it in myself to believe, so I pushed the thought away for now.

"We'll… We'll find a way through this," I stammered, reaching for anything to say.

"There is no way through this. You have survived to see the end of the world, Watson. I cannot regret more that my brother, my own flesh, inflicted this hideous fate upon you. And me. And himself."

His eyes were darkened with pain and while they remained fixed on mine, they were looking far beyond me. In that moment, he seemed a world away. He dropped his head.

"Forgive me, my friend. Knowing me has doomed you."

"Sherlock, no," I said, reaching for his arm. "We're still here. Mycroft saved our lives. He protected us. Neither of us would be here right now if not for what he did. I cannot be more grateful to him."

"Grateful? He should have killed us and been done with it," Holmes said, his words soaked in bitterness. "I would rather have died than live in a world without meaning."

He tore himself away from me to stand and pace, lost in a moment of grief and anger.

"'If not for what he did,' you say. If not for what Mycroft did. We would not now both be half-sick with sedative withdrawal and beyond sick with absolute loss if not for what he did, John. I would not now have to watch you suffer the unconscionable reality that waits for us just outside these walls if not for what Mycroft did. You would have simply died as nature intended you to, quickly and quietly right along with every other person on the entirety of the planet if not for what he–"

Suddenly Holmes stopped in place. He stared down at the abandoned tube of oxygen on the floor near me.

"…what he did."

My friend turned abruptly to look at me, and behind his gaze I saw that familiar flash that could only mean revelation. He scrambled to the canister to shut off the valve as quickly as he could manage.

"Watson, are you hale enough for me to leave you for a few minutes? I have a hypothesis I must test. I could make good use of your medical expertise and your help, but I would warn you that you will find the circumstances upsetting. I am reluctant to include you at all for fear of further challenging your already taxed system, but with your help or without it, I must know. If it is at all possible, as a scientist, I am bound at the very least to try."

I struggled and sat up. I was confused, but my heart began to race with excitement. The old energy of the hunt spread through me, giving me a fresh clarity.

"Whatever it is you have in mind, count me in. Just tell me what you need of me."

Holmes scanned me over for a second to be certain he trusted it was safe for him to leave me, then he nodded.

"Very well. Leave the curtains closed and do try to rest for now, Doctor. I will return shortly, and I need you to recover as best as you are able in the meantime. We will need all of the fortitude we can muster for what lies ahead of us, both the experiment and... whatever follows."

And he was gone. I took the time alone in the quiet to gather myself. With clearer eyes, I could see now long lines of early morning light seeping through the space between the curtains. It seemed earlier in the day than when I had gone into the wardrobe. Had I really slept an entire day and night? I was surprised the sedative I used could have remained in effect that long. I had expected eight hours of unconsciousness at most.

I got to my feet and thankfully moving my limbs seemed to help with the lingering stiffness, a relic of my tight confinement. By the time Holmes returned, I felt much recovered, with only a dull headache as a reminder of my recent experience.

But when he appeared again in the doorway, I felt suddenly sick to my stomach. In his arms, he carried a small, limp body. This was the first of the dead I had seen, and I clapped my hand over my mouth in a reflex of horror as I took in the truth of what I was witnessing, what had happened, and what it meant. All the children…

"I know." Holmes was grim-faced. "As I said, the circumstances are… upsetting."

He brought the curly-haired girl of perhaps ten or eleven into the room and her head lolled in the bend of his elbow. In silence, he moved past me to lay her gently on top of his bed.

"This is Kate," he said quietly. "One of my message runners. Fridays."

With a weighted breath, Holmes straightened again and stepped back to allow me space to examine her. As I worked, he went to retrieve the air canister from its place on the floor.

I tried, but I could find no pulse in the lanky child, no respiration.

"She was outside?" I asked.

"Half a block down, under the streetlamp. She kept it. Her post." Behind me, Holmes swallowed hard.

What he must have seen on his way here. What was now my future waiting for me on the other side of our door. Just this lost dove was tragic enough.

I stood and watched Holmes set the girl up with the last of the oxygen Mycroft had left for me, nestling it beside her on the bed with the valve by her cheek, although by now the tank was nearly empty. He pulled up a chair to sit, observing her intently.

I ached for him, for her, for all of us. I came behind him and laid my hand on his shoulder to offer him what strength I could.

"The oxygen, this is your hypothesis to test? Do you really believe there is some way this could help her now?" I softened my voice. "Holmes."

His eyes never left the girl. "It is the slimmest of chances, I will admit it. But I do believe it is at least theoretically plausible, and thus I must try. I was certain you were dead when I found you too. You weren't."

"You thought that I was… dead?"

Holmes took a long breath that he let out gradually, an act of control.

"I knew that you were. You had no pulse, or at least none I could perceive when I first discovered you. It was so faint and so slow that in my haste I missed it entirely. It took rather some time for me to realise that my initial conclusions were flawed."

He continued, but still he never looked at me.

"I was not entirely… calm when I pulled you from the wardrobe cool to the touch and seemingly not breathing. I spent an unknown while useless, pressed there up against the wall, as far away as I could get from you without you ever leaving my sight."

Holmes shook his head a little and I squeezed my poor friend's shoulder. After the horrors he witnessed outside, when he reached home, this is what he found of me. I could not imagine a greater nightmare for him. Finding him beyond my help had always been my greatest nightmare too. I'd never known to fear finding the whole world beyond my help as well.

He reached up to cover my hand with his own, but never once did he lose focus on the pale body lying before us.

"But had I not been so useless, I would have missed the subtle change in the angles of the shadows cast on your waistcoat. It was motion. The barest suggestion, but even so, it was motion, and motion could only mean breath. So I returned to you knowing there were signs of life left in you to find. I only had to be persistent. Give me your stethoscope, Doctor."

After his story, whatever could I do but oblige him?

Holmes was persistent. He sat there with the girl for long minutes in silence, listening with all attention to her lifeless chest while I stood beside him and tried to think of what I could do to help him.

Allowing him to continue this charade was not one of my options. He was grasping at life where none existed on the last tiny scraps of irrational hope. All he was accomplishing with this desperate attempt was torturing himself even more than he had already suffered. Doctors are trained to know how to let a patient go, even one so young and guiltless. Holmes was not.

I was bracing myself to intervene and attempting to conjure the words to do so when all at once he perked up like an alerted bird.

"There!" he cried. He was quiet again for a few moments. "Astonishing…"

Still listening through the stethoscope, he looked up at me for the first time since he had brought Kate into the room.

"I heard it, Watson. A heartbeat. Just the one, but I heard it. She is alive. Although I'm not sure what that makes her heart rate. What, half of a beat per minute at best?" He laughed, half madly. "But she must be breathing as well, however shallowly…" He pressed his slender hand to her side and held it there.

Holmes was wild in his eyes, full of thrill and fire. This was impossible, and he knew it, and he believed it anyway. I could see it in his face, the frantic hope shining there, an unquenchable flame burst into full conflagration.

"Holmes…" I said with caution, but he interrupted me.

"You are thinking I imagined it, and I do not blame you for that assessment. I would think the same were our roles reversed, and I would be, as you are now, considering how best to pull you back from this morbid obsession. The only proof I have for you is to listen for yourself. Here, Doctor, take it. Listen. It will be a few minutes yet at least before you find I am right. But you will. I shall use the time to consider next steps. If this is proven true… when it is, so many will need our help and we may have precious little time to act."

However confused and apprehensive I felt, I took the instrument from him anyway.

This was mad. It had to be. But even then, I trusted him. I followed him. What was the alternative? To simply give in to misery and let the world end? If Holmes was still able to hold belief inside him that there could be light after the unfathomable darkness of this tragedy, then I would too. I settled myself into the chair he vacated by the bed, pressed my stethoscope to the body of a girl I knew was dead, and listened as closely as I have ever been able.

We waited. After covering her in the blanket that had earlier covered me, Holmes retreated to his armchair in the corner. He kept himself completely frozen as a statue save for one finger keeping quick time tapping the armrest.

The time he had told me to expect ticked by and I heard nothing but silence. I wondered what it would mean if somehow he was correct about this. A human body's systems slowed to the point of being fully indistinguishable from death, and not for a few brief and frightening minutes at most but for hours and hours on end…

What if, just what if this girl still lived? What would we do then? And dear God, what were we to do if she didn't?

"We have passed two minutes," Holmes said. "That is how long I listened. It could be any time from here on out. Listen well, Doctor."

I found myself holding my breath, but the wait lasted longer than the anxious breath could. Holmes was growing impatient too, tensing in his chair with his legs beneath him, a spring compressed.

Another minute passed. I kept my head down and my eyes closed. Anything to keep from witnessing the expression of desperation and pain that was our entire endeavour.

But then there it was, unmistakable. The double boom of the girl's heartbeat was deafening through the earpieces after so much silence, and it startled me into nearly jumping out of my seat.

There was no nearly for Holmes. He burst from his chair and was already beside me in an instant. The man was nearly vibrating with energy, bouncing on his heels and grasping my shoulder.

"Well? Watson?"

I had no idea how to process something like this. As I looked up at my wide-eyed friend beside me, I felt suddenly drunk. I shook my head and looked down at the instrument in my hand as if it would somehow help me understand.

"I– I don't… Sherlock, she's alive."

"Ha!" Holmes' eyes flashed with his grin and he bit his lip as he put his hand to my cheek. "My dear John, they all are."

He came around me in one swift, graceful motion and bent by the bed, his long arms tucked behind him. Into the girl's ear, he whispered something I could not hear, then he kissed her temple with a delicate tenderness.

I had never before seen Holmes so unguarded. Joy and relief from the burden he had been bearing had him floating, high above the walls he normally kept secure around his emotion. He talked rapidly as he gathered his things and headed for the door.

"I have to find Mycroft. We'll need the others and all the oxygen we can lay our hands upon. It's possible ambient air will provide them enough in time, but there is no way yet to know. We should try to revive as many as we are able ourselves, and do what we can to spread the word to the rest of the world, or what's currently awake of it, at least. You'll be all right with her? Watson?"

I felt a bit dazzled by the experience and his excitement, but I knew we were not out of danger by any means.

"We don't know if she is ever going to regain consciousness, Holmes. We know nothing about her condition or her chances of recovery yet."

"We know she is alive. That is far more knowledge than we had and it is a place to start. You are awake and well, which gives us some good reason to believe so shall she be in time. And I know until and when she is, she will be in good hands."

"Wait, where are you–"

He cut me off with a curt bow. "I must go, Doctor. I promise to return to you as soon as I am able."

Holmes disappeared into the hall. I heard the front door slam shut, and for the first time there was noise emanating from the street outside. Under the waning whistle of the oxygen tank, I could just make out the sound of his footfalls racing away from me at a clip.

Chapter 4 - The World Outside

Nothing seemed quite real in the strange quiet my friend left behind. I dared not open the curtains he had closed, even just to watch him go. Holmes had closed them for a reason and he had told me to keep them that way when he'd left me before. Observing the scene on Baker Street and beyond had clearly taken a toll upon him. He wished to spare me the sight, and for now at least I was inclined to follow his advice.

Instead, I turned up the lamps and concentrated on my patient. With her metabolism unfathomably low, Kate's body temperature was as well. If nothing else, I knew she had a serious case of hypothermia, and that was something I could treat. I tucked her into Holmes' bed before I started a fire and stoked it high.

It took some time to see much of any response, but as she warmed and the last of the oxygen flowed, gradually she began to recover. I could finally hear the movement of breath in her lungs, even if it was still impossibly slight. The oxygen supply gave out and so I set the canister aside, but the girl's condition only continued to improve. The strength and pace of her pulse steadily increased. It took several hours, but by the time I counted fifty beats in the space of a minute, my own heart was racing.

The colour had come back to her face at last. I felt a tremendous weight lift from me as I realised that she was now recovered enough to be considered simply asleep, as any person is for a third of their lives. I felt like the one dreaming as I took her hand in mine and patted it.

"Kate? Can you hear me? It's Doctor Watson. Can you squeeze my hand?"

I felt her small fingers close around mine and I almost laughed for joy.

Slowly, she stirred. She fluttered her little eyelashes at me, and opened eyes as green and bright as a summer field.

"Doctor Watson?" she said sleepily.

I remembered her voice as soon as she spoke. That's right, Kate was the soft spoken one with the taste for liquorice the other children rejected outright when I gave them sweets. I felt an overwhelming urge to pull the girl into my arms. Instead, I settled for simply tucking a stray lock of her hair behind her ear.

"Yes, I'm here," I said, blinking back a few tears. "We've been worried about you, Kate. You have been very ill, but you're getting better now."

She looked about the room, captivated by her surroundings. I realised Sherlock Holmes' bedroom was a particularly terrible place for a convalescing child to wake up in, surrounded as she was by chemicals and the hateful countenances of murderers, but it was far too late to concern myself with any of that now. At least Kate seemed more impressed than frightened.

"Did Mister Holmes bring me here?" she asked in a voice tinged with awe.

"Yes, he did. He's out helping other people who need him right now, but I am going to stay here with you and make sure you are well."

She squeezed my hand again and I could feel the strength returning to her grip. Kate looked around the room once more, her eyes heavy with fatigue, and she tried to tug the blanket back up to her chin.

"Are you cold?" I asked. "I could make you some tea."

"You could?"

I was flattered to hear the anticipation laced in her voice, but she was still recovering. I had awoken her as early as I thought was possible to be sure she would wake at all, but she clearly needed more rest than that. By the time the tea was ready, she had already closed her eyes and drifted off again.

I tucked her back into bed with care. The tea I ended up drinking myself, and I passed the time with a view of this polite little girl who I had just watched return to life from a death I would have sworn to on all my honour.

It felt like a fantasy. Only the Earl Grey steaming in my cup seemed real.

There in the calm quiet as the afternoon was waning, I was beginning to nod off a little myself when Holmes returned at last.

"Watson! You must come!" he shouted, bursting through the door in full energy and enthusiasm. He panted between his proclamations, clearly having run from somewhere. "Come! Come look!"

I stood and drew him back out into the hallway where we could converse without waking my resting patient. He was red-faced and sweating, but absolutely ebullient.

"Holmes, take a breath," I told him. "What has happened?"

He grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward the door. "This, my dear boy. See for yourself!"

The world outside of our rooms at Baker Street I had not seen since Mycroft first broke the news of Earth's imminent demise to us and stole Holmes away from me a day and a half ago. It was the strangest sight now.

An entire street of store keepers, workers, travellers, shoppers, families, simply everyone who had been going about their day when the calamity struck had collapsed in place wherever they stood or sat or walked. They surely must have been as near to death as Kate was when Holmes brought her inside to me, but now they were slowly waking, just as she did.

The world had not ended. It was exactly as Holmes had predicted. Everyone, all of the fallen were stirring, stretching stiff joints, rising from the deepest of slumbers. Scattered about on the street, people were gradually picking themselves up off the ground, looking disorientated and rather tired. Some were helping the nearby up to their feet, while others sat together, recovering and talking about the mystery of what had happened to them. It occurred to me then that Holmes and I were the only people anywhere around us who actually knew what had taken place.

I could see the smoke of a few fires burning at some distance, but the worst damage I could see immediately about us were a number of small injuries. The streets were being filled with people, people who had survived.

"Holmes!" I cried. "Did you do this? You brought everyone back?"

He gazed around us in awe, unwilling or unable to contain it within himself.

"Hardly. There was very little I could do with the scant supplies of compressed oxygen left to be salvaged in the city. No, nature itself did all of this. Nature put an entire planet to sleep, and now nature simply wakes it back up again."

Behind us, the door to our rooms opened and Kate appeared there, rubbing her eyes, confused at the commotion.

"What's going on? What's all the noise?" she asked.

At the sound of her voice, Holmes looked over at her then back at me. I knew he was struggling to find the words. All the logical, precise apparatuses that made up his mind were failing him now. He strode over and knelt before her, seizing her hands and looking into her eyes.

"Kate, you're awake. You're awake and you're well."

She smiled shyly at him. "Doctor Watson said you helped me."

Holmes' face broke into a smile of its own. "Why, yes! Yes, I did, as a matter of fact. If not the whole world, I will gladly take credit for you at least."

Kate looked between the two of us, a puzzled look on her face as she tried to understand what was going on around her, between Holmes and I and with everyone else.

"Stay with her," I instructed him. "I need to fetch my bag and help the wounded. There are several crashed carriages down the street, and I can see quite a few falling injuries among the pedestrians."

Holmes stood and took Kate's hand. "Yes, of course. I'll try to shepherd the mobile among the waking and explain to them what has happened. Depending on their condition, I'll send them home or off to help others in need."

He followed the line of my eyes downwards. "Don't worry, Doctor. I have her." As I left them, I heard him turn to Kate. "Come along now, Miss Stillwell. We have important work to do, you and I."

The next hours I spent going from person to person, from street to street, helping in any way that I could think of. Sometimes that entailed simple brute force, lifting toppled carts and the like, but most of my time was spent caring for the wounded. Some of the injuries were worse than others. Tragically, there were two already beyond my aid when I came to them, a frail old woman who seemed to have suffered a stroke from the stress of the event, and an unfortunate fellow who took a bad tumble down a set of stone stairs.

But the miracle held. Despite the physical ordeal they had all been through, nearly everyone was only minorly worse for wear for their experience. They were often tired, and perhaps bruised or scraped from their falls when they collapsed, but they were alive. They were safe.

Occasionally as I worked I would catch sight of Holmes calmly moving about and explaining to everyone he met what had happened to them and what they needed to do now. The fires in the distance stopped smoking. Closer to us, carriages were righted. Horses were caught and cared for.

There was much to do, and it would take time, but recovery could and would be done. The world had not ended. The Earth was still here, and life thrived upon it. We lived.

By the time the sun rose, I was tired to my bones. I had just finished the wrapping of a sprained wrist when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Holmes, looking as weary as I felt. His voice was even more tired, undoubtedly from countless recitations of facts and instructions.

"The girl is with her elder brother now," he told me. "They are both well. The lad came looking for her as soon as he'd awoken, worried sick."

I nodded, not trusting my own voice either. The energy of excitement was worn off by now and the sheer exhaustion of the trials we had been through in the last two days had taken its place.

Holmes looked me over. "You should get some rest, Watson," he said softly. "You have done a great thing here, no doubt. But you will need sleep and food before you can do more."

"Yes," I admitted, the word coming out as a sigh. "That goes for you too, of course."

His lip quirked upwards in the barest beginning of a smile and he bowed his head.

"I accept my doctor's wise prescription."

We made our way to our rooms. I moved like an old man, sore and slow. Holmes kept my pace to guide me on, linking his elbow in mine and carrying my bag for me in his free hand. I was half-asleep already by the time he sat me down in Mrs. Hudson's kitchen and pressed a cold sandwich into my hands. I was just awake enough to insist he make one for himself too and actually eat it.

By the time I trudged up the steps to my room to wash and collapse in my bed, the weight of the past forty-eight hours had fully hit me like a train. I considered it an achievement of success to have made it all the way under the bedclothes before I was completely immobile.

I closed my eyes and as I drifted, I thought about Kate and her brother, Holmes and his brother. I thought about Holmes and me.

And I felt grateful. Grateful to be alive, grateful that he was alive, grateful that we were still together. The end of the world had come and gone, and somehow that fact remained true. We were together. Holmes and I had seen each other through the worst tragedy imaginable and lived to find the other side. What could we not weather now, as long as he had me and I had him?

My only wish then was that he could be nearer to me now than he even was. I would have felt better having him in arm's reach, but it soothed me to know he was safe and resting in his own bed just one floor beneath mine. When I slept, it was in comfort, knowing the same roof sheltered us, and that he and I would continue on as we always have, sheltering one another.

Chapter 5 - To Have Witnessed

It was the smell that woke me in the end, that familiar and acrid sting of fresh tobacco smoke. I heard nothing, but of course I did not. He always was as stealthy as a leopard.

When I first opened my eyes, I saw nothing but darkness until the cigarette emanating the smoke lit up in brilliant orange on an inhale. In that brief flare, I saw the outline of Sherlock Holmes' face. That piercing gaze was fixed upon me.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to wake you," he said, his voice still rough, but sounding much different than it had before I'd gone to bed. "You need your rest, and I am aware this is... an imposition."

"Holmes? Are you all right? What are you doing?"

I rubbed the bleariness out of my eyes, trying to focus in the dim light. I could only just make out his frame sitting on the floor on the other side of the room. I lit the lamp at my bedside and I could see him slouched there with his back against the wall.

When he looked up at me, I was shocked at his expression. His eyes were lined in red, his jaw clenched, and his brows tightly knit. I rarely saw Holmes this way, but that was by his design. The few times I had seen him in this state, he had always been in pain, pain more intense than he was able to conceal.

He exhaled a long, thin line of smoke. "What am I doing? I don't know, to be quite honest. There is no valid answer to give you. For the past half hour or so I have been sitting here thinking and watching you sleep. Thinking and watching you breathe, if I am willing to be more precise."

I was startled by the statement, but only just long enough to consider whyever he would come to do such a thing. It was obvious when it occurred to me.

Holmes had thought I'd died that very day. He had believed completely that I was gone when he found me and laid my body out on the floor of his bedroom. And for the past hours, he had been trying to sleep in that very room filled with those fresh and searing memories.

I should have thought of this earlier, on our arrival home after the great awakening. Perhaps I would have if I had not been so drained myself when we returned.

"I know I should go," he said. "I should never have come here at all. It is bizarre and inappropriate. You are well within your rights to demand me to leave."

"You don't want me to do that."

He took another long drag. "No, I do not."

With effort, I rose from bed and walked in front of him to offer my hand. He took it and stood without hesitation, but he kept his head down. He nodded without meeting my eyes.

"Right. You have my sincere apologies, Doctor. I should not have disturbed you. Forgive me. I'll be going now."

"Holmes, stop. You don't have to go anywhere. I only want you to sit on the bed. I can't sit beside you here on the floor right now. My leg is aching already. Sherlock, please. Sit."

I could see in him the reluctance, the intense desire to leave this uncomfortable, vulnerable moment contending mightily with the obvious need he had to stay and not be alone. He looked at me briefly, looked at the bed longer, then stubbed his cigarette out on the tray. At last he took a seat at the foot, containing himself stiffly and silently. As I sat down beside him, he examined his fingers, doing anything to keep from raising his gaze to meet mine.

He needed to talk, that much was clear to me, but simply being here was a struggle enough. I settled my bones next to him and waited for him to gather his stressed thoughts. Holmes continued twisting at his fingers as he contemplated what he wanted versus what he needed to say. When at last he spoke, his words were strained.

"It is… a strange thing," he began, "to have witnessed the end of all life. Or what appeared exactly like it, in any case. Every last breathing creature on the planet made a corpse. Every person, every thing. Everywhere I looked."

Holmes shook his head at the thought, and I shivered. I knew this kind of pain well, if not this exact form or severity. Far too well, in fact. It was familiar, the overwhelming ache left behind by exposure to vast death on the battlefield or anywhere else. The experience carves deep moral injuries on even the most controlled man's nerves, on his heart. I carried the scars of my own and I always would.

"But they weren't dead, of course," he continued. "None of what I saw was real. It felt real, it certainly looked real, but it was not anything more than a mirage in the desert, a straightforward misinterpretation of observable evidence." He sighed. "If only I could convince my brain of that fact."

"What is there to convince it of?" I asked gently. "All the death you saw was real by every understanding humanity held of the subject until today. That it turned out to be a temporary state in this case in no way diminishes it. It must have been a truly hellish thing to see, Holmes. I am very sorry you were forced to endure it."

He turned to face me and I saw a desperation in his eyes.

"I do not want your pity."

"I am not offering pity. Only an ear. You should not try to bear these memories alone, Sherlock. They can be as painful and dangerous to a person as any physical wound. In many ways, they can be much worse. You may trust me on that."

"I do," he said quietly.

He was so weary. I could see it in the lines of his face, in his defeated posture. I wished I could help him find the rest he so needed, but the best I could offer him at that moment was my companionship.

"Tell me what happened to you, my friend."

"It is simple. You died. You all died. And then you did not. That is what happened to me."

"I know that much. But I also know it is the details of memory that leave the deepest scars. I have no idea where you went after Mycroft took you away or anything of what happened to you before you returned here. You do not need to shoulder such a burden all on your own, Holmes. Please. Share it with me and relieve yourself of at least some of this weight."

Holmes sighed again. If he had any energy at all left to him, I am certain he would have continued resisting my care. But here my friend was worn as thin as tissue paper. Rather than fight on, he raked trembling fingers through his hair and began recounting his harrowing experience at the end of the world.

Chapter 6 - A Crashing Wave

"I finally awoke a while before dawn with a kink in my neck. I was lying, if one could call it that, where I'd been placed some hours before, collapsed into an antique upholstered chair with my head dangling awkwardly off to one side. At least the room was familiar to me, one of the large reading rooms of the Diogenes.

"As it turned out, the entire highest floor of the building had been sealed off for the duration. Matting and varnished paper plastered around the edges of the windows and doors had made the space as airtight as practicable. Steel tubes of oxygen were arranged in the center of the room. Their whistling exhalation seemed loud to me.

The monarch and her attendants were secluded by themselves in a secure room separate from the rest of us common aristocratic rabble. Here among me instead were dignitaries and politicians, along with a handful of scientists and medical researchers, all attended by their respective spouses, if such existed.

"For a select group, they were singularly ill-equipped for the task they were selected for, given the average age and the sex proportions of the group. But, of course, this was a political asylum more than it was an ill-fated ark. Influence was far more likely to get one admitted than functional utility. I was there due to a mixture of both.

"Most of the lot were asleep by that point late in the night, having wrung themselves out completely from stress. A few had the flushed, swollen faces that usually accompanied having cried oneself to sleep.

"Mycroft was awake. I found him by the window doing what he had clearly been doing for hours. It was all that he could do, all that anyone could do then. While I had been sleeping, he had been sitting in a comfortable chair behind a protective pane of glass, drinking and watching the world die.

"The sky was just beginning to colour then from the coming sunrise, and smoke was rising up through it. In the street below, I could see a fire burning. I wrapped the blanket I had around my shoulders and came to sit by my brother after navigating my way through a room of dazed, exhausted people. He spoke softly so as not to disturb the others, but Mycroft never looked at me.

"'I have been watching this single fire for hours,' he said. 'It started small, the spark nothing more than a fallen pipe that tumbled from the slackened hand of a driver. In the low oxygen environment, it burned poorly for quite a while, but it has taken the man's entire hansom in the time I have been sitting here. There must be a dozen or more fires like this in London right now. Some smaller, some far larger. Thousands upon thousands in the world. I have been fixated on just this one.'

"I had never seen Mycroft so cowed by knowledge. Understanding the world around him has always been his stock in trade, his faithful sword and shield. But the most observant person alive had spent a full day watching and absorbing every detail of the fall of man. I had simply slept through it. My brother made sure of that.

"'We are on our last canisters of oxygen,' he told me. 'Our calculations required us to survive thirteen hours in isolation. Sunrise and the last of our protection will be sixteen.'

"I could hear the doubt darkening his voice. 'You don't believe it's enough.'

"His reply was simple. 'There is no way of knowing. I have no way to be certain of anything now.'

"In the shadows of the night outside, I could just make out the shapes of people strewn about like spilled sacks of grain on the street. To my ears, the ever-present bustle of the city had been reduced to silence.

"And it was then in the absolute quiet that I truly knew it was real. It was done, all of it, and we were alone. Even the animals of the Earth were lost to us. We were more alone than any human being has ever been.

"Mycroft was trapped in his own memory. 'They just fell,' he said, 'dead where they stood, every last one of them caught in a crashing wave of stolen breath. Just the briefest flash of difficulty as the miasma first hit their lungs, and then it was over. Men and women fell in the streets. Birds fell out of the sky.'

"A gust of wind blew the smoke away from us. My eyes scanned the nearby buildings, turned corpse-yellow and grey in the low light.

"It was daunting to process the truth. My mind narrowed to what was close to me, just as Mycroft's had.

"Save for my brother there beside me, every person I had ever cared about was dead. Those I appreciated, those I despised. Everyone who ever interested me at all was gone. I thought of you, Watson. In my mind, I could still see you looking down at me as I faded out from Mycroft's drugs. I could still feel the strength of your grasp on my arms, holding me upright. You looked so sad and scared then, for me as your friend, for yourself, for the entire human world about to be lost. And I knew in that moment that I would have to remember you that way forever, the rest of my short and ruined life.

"But of course, Mycroft read my thought process in the intake of my breath. 'It is possible that the doctor may still be alive. Like everything else, it is presently unknowable. I gave him a small amount of oxygen and an equally small amount of chance. It was the best I could do for him. At dawn, you may find him and know. Providing that we first survive opening the door and letting in the atmosphere.'

"Mycroft turned to see me for the first time since I'd awoken, and the haunted look in his eyes as he spoke is now permanently seared into my mind.

"'Sherlock, I need you to return. Whatever you discover, you must promise me that. You have always felt more of the world than I do. If I am feeling such… strain from this event, I cannot conceive of how it must be for you. You will want to run when you find John Watson. I know you will. It is your inborn instinct of last resort. With him or away from what's left of him, you will want to run. Don't. I do not know how to face a world with no one in it whose intellect I trust. Don't leave me alone here to try.'

"His voice wavered on the request. We are not given to touch in our family, brothers or otherwise, but he reached out to me and took my hand with his cold, clammy one. I saw his lower lip quiver. Mycroft is not an emotional man. I am not either, at least not voluntarily. I felt my eyes stinging, and I gave him my word.

"Dawn came, and daylight woke the sleepers. The last canister of oxygen wheezed to a stop, and those of us brave or desperate enough to want the situation at an end one way or another stepped forward to open the door. Everyone prepared for the worst as we took our first breaths in the hallway, but the air seemed no different than it had prior to the event. We walked downstairs without incident and thus the scientists among us declared emergence to be safe, as if that word had any meaning in a dead world.

"Among the survivors, there was much grief and emotion at the widespread carnage we found everywhere outside. But I was not like the others around me. I was the only living being left in existence with hope. I had no time to waste on tears. I had to get back to Baker Street. I had to find you, Watson. I had to know.

"Hope is sustaining, but it is corrosive too. It gnawed at my gut. What was I hoping for? To find the most decent heart still beating only to watch it shatter completely in horror and fear? I knew the depths of this misery would crush you if you lived to experience it.

"And if you didn't… well. If you didn't, then I would live to experience discovering your lifeless body instead. Just like all of those countless others that surrounded me.

"The tales of disaster were close and clear and far too many to ever be numbered. Here lay a man collapsed with his dog by his feet. There, a woman yet cradling her infant. Drivers dangled from cabs weighed down by dead horses. Conversing friends and strolling lovers alike were crumpled into heaps half atop one another. On and on and on, an endless sea of millions of unique tragedies to wade through and try not to drown in.

"There was no way to travel but on foot. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me so that I could hear the wind rushing by and my blood pounding in my ears and not the oppressive, deafening silence.

"I had to keep going. I could still know. If I kept going, at least I could know.

"I turned the corner onto Baker Street and what was already intolerable became exponentially worse. Here, I knew everyone by face, by name. My lungs were burning by then, my muscles cramping, but I kept running through all the extreme familiarity.

"I saw old Edgar Williams through the window of his bakery, slumped over his flour-dusted counter. Kent Landis had fallen gracelessly and face-down in the doorway of his bookshop. On the corner, Len the newsboy still held a paper in his hand somehow. They were scattered about, all of our local acquaintances, dead on the ground in piles like wet autumn leaves.

"And then I noticed the tawny-haired girl lying under a streetlamp ahead. The closer I came to her, the more details my brain pointed out to me. A knitted cap half sunken in a puddle. The strings of a frayed coat fluttering in the breeze. Like the others on our street, I knew that girl. I knew her name and her history. But unlike them, I also knew why she had been standing in precisely that location at precisely that moment. I had told her to be.

"Kate died at her post, dutifully waiting for my summons, wearing the shoes I'd bought her and all the other Irregulars so they could be warmer and more stealthy in their work. The shoes were scuffed up and soiled to appear well-used, just as I'd instructed. The pair looked too big for her, stuck at the ends of her bony legs that lay at odd angles in the dirt. But that was the original idea in the purchase. She was meant to grow into them.

"Part of me screamed inside to leave this place, to stop seeing everything, to stop hearing nothing, to stop feeling the suffocating pressure clamping down on my chest. But I kept going. I had to keep going. Because if I didn't, I would never know.

"I still had hope, God help me. It clung to me like iron chains. I kept my feet moving long enough to glimpse what I had sought for so long.

"The door. Our door.

"But first I had to pass the gaslamp, and Kate's body, and the curls of her hair spilled like milk across the cold, hard ground.

"I couldn't look. Not at the girl, nor anything else around me. I had to reach my destination. For it was almost over, one way or another.

"I had just one image in my mind. I chanted the words in my head, focused entirely on that single physical object. My destination. And my answer, waiting for me behind it.

"The door. Get to the door, whatever it takes.

"The door. The door. The door."

Chapter 7 - Come What May

Holmes finished his story by dropping his face into his hands.

There was no need for him to continue. I already knew the ending to this tale. Behind that door, Holmes found me crammed inside his wardrobe, my body still and unresponsive. For good reason, he believed he had lost me too in the dead world he was trapped inside. Only later did he realise that he was wrong and I yet lived. And only later than that did he realise everyone else did as well. I shuddered at the thought. What he had suffered was unique and terrifying.

"I have been to the battlefield," I told him. "I have been immersed in death like a great burial shroud draped over the land. Death beside me, death right in my hands, death as far as my eyes could perceive. But that was when I was a soldier in a distant war, separated from any semblance of normal life. What I witnessed was not the city I dwell in and the very street I live upon. Even if it had been, war has boundaries beyond which the violence cannot touch. But this, what you saw today, what you believed you were seeing and at what scale… Oh, Holmes. I cannot imagine the horror you experienced."

It was all I could say. I wracked my brain for words of wisdom, of comfort, of encouragement. But I could find none to match his needs. Whatever could? When Holmes spoke again, it was to the floor.

"I was alone. Alone with the empty shell that had once been you in the empty shell that had once been the whole world. Mycroft was right, of course. I wanted to run more than anything, fast and far without ever looking back, my promise to him be as damned as I was. But where was I to go? Everywhere was nowhere now. Everything was nothing. All that remained of the world I knew was emptiness."

There were no words to soothe his wounds, so I gave up trying. I reached out for him instead. I wanted him to feel the warmth of my hand on his own as I held it. The world was not empty, and neither was I. I was filled with care and compassion for him. He looked down at our joined hands and winced.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry, John."

"Why would you ever be sorry? Today you were brought to mourn humanity itself. That is an unfathomable, devastating blow. You cannot expect yourself to release grief of that magnitude immediately. No one could, not even you. The only reason I am not equally distraught is that you closed the curtains before I woke to spare me the sight. I know you did that for me, Holmes."

He looked up at me, and in the candlelight, I saw the glisten of a tear dripping down his cheek.

"I prayed to God that you were dead. To God, the universe, whatever power might deign to hear my plea. The thought of watching you take in the desolation that surrounded me and being by your side as you absorbed the reality of it, the loss… No. It was too sickening to contemplate. So I hoped. For the first time since I was a child, I prayed. And when I dragged your body out of the wardrobe and held it in my arms, I saw my prayer was answered. It was the worst moment of my life, and I had begged for it."

I felt a chill run down my spine. What torments he had endured this day, torments he had wanted more than anything to shield me from. Holmes' head drooped, and I could see several tears running down his face now. Still, he did not sob, he only wept silently.

"My dear friend–" I began, but he cut me short with a snarl, snatching his hand back away from me.

"Your dear friend wished he could bring himself to smother you in your sleep when he discovered you were breathing. Knowing that, is he quite so dear? The only thing worse than finding you dead was realising you were still alive."

I laid my hand on his back and he flinched away as if I'd burned him.

"Don't."

"Don't what? Punish you as you are punishing yourself? And for what, exactly? The sin of wishing you were able to protect me from the extraordinary anguish that was tearing you apart? The crime of wanting to help me above all things, even your own wellbeing? You were in unendurable pain in the most extreme situation, but you would have freely chosen to suffer that pain alone so long as I never had to suffer it at all. Holmes, that is an act of true loyalty. It is devotion, not betrayal. I can see that clearly even if you cannot."

Sitting up, I moved in front of him, looking down into his face. I brushed the loose hair away from his eyes, his beautiful and penetrating eyes, looking so tortured in that moment.

"Sherlock, you can't keep doing this to yourself."

His voice trembled along with the rest of him. "Then stop me if you believe you can. There is nothing in me left to stop myself."

I thought for a moment about how I could express what I needed him to understand. I kissed his forehead gently, then his cheek, and then his lips. I was tentative at first, but as I felt his hands slip around my back and he melted into the kiss, I knew that what we were doing was good and right.

Holmes whimpered and clutched me to him. I pushed him to lie back and covered his body with mine so he would feel my weight against him. Taking his face in my hands, I kissed him again. His mouth parted under mine and I breathed into him, filling his lungs with air and his head with thoughts other than death.

I felt his body responding to mine and I pressed him into the bed, feeling his hands trail on my back and lower still, pulling me closer to him.

He passed the breath back to me, moving his lips against mine and brushing my face with fingers that were gently shaking. My touch moved down his body, slowly tracing over his chest and stomach to rest on his hip bone. The tip of my thumb moved in tiny circles, and he shivered.

"John, you shouldn't… You shouldn't have to…"

"I want to. Just feel now, Holmes. Forget what you saw and feel life all around you. Feel where your body and mine touch. Do you feel your life pounding inside you, sustaining you? I can."

His head fell to the side and he groaned as I kissed his cheek, his jaw, the sensitive skin under his ear. His hands roamed over my back and shoulders.

"But I can't… I don't… It's been so long."

"The only thing I need you to do is experience," I told him, and I kissed his mouth again. "Use your senses. There is only now, this single moment. Be here with me."

He turned his face to my neck and I felt him inhale deeply, taking in the scent of my skin. My pulse beat in my throat and he ran his fingers over it. He took in a shuddering breath.

"How?" he asked in half a whisper.

"We just move together. Let your body feel what it wants to do, and do what feels good. No pain can come of this, only pleasure, only joy. Only life." Once more I kissed him and he pressed his lips back against mine.

"Show me."

We moved together, slowly at first and then with more abandon. We found pleasure. We found life.

At the end, we were both spent and covered in a fine sheen of perspiration. I kept him held against me and I stroked his hair. He pressed his face to my chest while he caught his breath. I could feel his tears mingling with the sweat on my body and I held him closer.

He needed this release just as much as he had needed the other. He needed to remember what it was to allow himself to be in his body and to feel with his heart. To truly know that he was alive. That we both were. That we all were.

"Thank you," he whispered softly against my skin.

"No, I don't want you to thank me for loving you, Holmes. If you start, then I'll have to spend all my time thanking you for loving me. It's too much work."

He laughed then, a laugh broken by a sob, the first he'd not been able to stifle.

"Oh, my Watson." He lifted his head to gaze at me, a bit wistful and thoughtful before his lips turned up into a wry half-smile. "Well, I suppose you'll just have to find some way to make the time."

I laughed out loud and he laughed again too, his tears slipping down his cheeks. He ran his hand along my face and down my throat, studying me with the greatest delicacy and attention. He touched me in the way he would examine a priceless prehistoric sculpture, with captivation and a near disbelief that such a thing could yet exist.

"I know that I should," he said. "Every second. You more than deserve it."

I turned my head to kiss the inside of his palm. At the contact, he took in a sharp and tremulous gasp. He met my eyes but only for the briefest moment before his lip shook and he wrapped his arms around me to grip me tightly to him.

When I returned the embrace, he buried his face in my neck and I felt his body shake against mine as he quietly cried. I knew these were not tears of sadness or happiness alone but both merged and tangled together as one, as indeed all love is.

We lay together like that for a long time, just feeling the rise and fall of our entwined bodies. His gentle sobs tapered off until all that was left in him was pure exhaustion. I pulled the blankets up around us and Holmes sighed and shifted a little, settling himself next to me. The weight of his head on my mended shoulder and his arm across my chest was soothing, and not only to me. His tense muscles slackened and his breathing eased into a long, slow rhythm that I could just feel dance across my skin.

After his long ordeal, our long ordeal, my dear friend at last allowed himself to relax into sleep in my arms. He trusted me enough for that. He loved me enough for it.

And I loved him more in that moment than I had ever loved anything, more than I ever would. I closed my eyes and let the comfortable warmth of his body pressed to mine lull me back to rest.

Life is fleeting. We knew that now more than ever. Every day could be our last, and I wanted to spend all the days that I had left to me with him. Come what may, we would not be parted.

Because Sherlock Holmes was alive and I loved him.

I was alive, and he loved me.