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Description
Chapter 4: Too Fragile
A Sherlock Holmes Fanfiction based on Guy Ritchie's version.
Rated Teen

The sun gleamed in through the dusty curtains that had seen better days. Mrs. Hudson did well to avoid Sherlock's room and all of his possessions when necessary. It was a chaotic clutter in all and would take a week to clean out for an invalid to move around in.

Though Watson's old room was no longer in use, the doctor decided to place Holmes in his old living place instead, and set up a bed for him to sleep in. There would be much more space without having to worry about clutter and crusty dishes sticking to the carpets.

John rolled out an old wheelchair from the lounge downstairs, opened it up and inspected it for rust and damage. It was clean and passed his studious inspection. The leather padding on the arms and seat of the chair were intact and not chewed by Gladstone. Happy with it, Watson rolled it forwards and parked it beside the bed opposite the chair he constantly used as a bed himself. The chair was his daily roost where he discerned Holmes who rested frequently through the day in his sorry state. However, things were to be looking up. The sun was bright and warm for London. The wind was nonexistent and even when he opened the far window, not a single breeze lifted a strand of hair on his head.

He went back to Holmes and awoke him gently. It was time to get him more active and treat those wounds. While Sherlock did indeed rouse (and of course startled when he grabbed hold of consciousness), Watson smiled gently and helped him up by easing one hand down his back while the other hand cradled the back of his head. Watson tried to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat. "Good to meet you once again, Holmes. It's all right. It's just you and me in my room."

Holmes' lips moved ever so faintly, yet no breath of voice ignited. His eyes squinted in the measurable daylight and Watson could feel him sharply trembling in his firm hold. For some inconsolable reason, the detective seemed to be displeased at being touched. Now this had never happened before. True, John and Sherlock were good friends who didn't mind giving each other a slap on the back now and then or hugged each other when a great case was solved, but even if John had touched him kindly in open friendship, Holmes had always honored the touch. He never trembled or shied away from it.

Ever.

It was a struggle to not show how worried he felt inside. As he lifted him, Sherlock looked increasingly frantic and upset as if Watson's very hands were covered in blood.
"Holmes, speak for me. How do you feel this morning?"

He raised Holmes upward slowly, carefully watching his partner's countenance for signs of pain, primal discomfort or faintness. His bleak eyes, watery and anguished, darted often to his own eyes, as if constantly reassuring himself that Watson was still before him, as real as life itself.

"Holmes?"

He at last delivered a weedy look in John's direction. This was not like him at all. He was always one-minded in things, even menial tasks like breakfast. He was always on a mission, and did everything with dutiful precision; a woman's touch if you will. Yes he was messy. Not finely tuned in all aspects in the house. But his actions were never opaque or foggy or without motivation of some kind. The Holmes he had in his arms didn't look anything at all like that. He looked frail, lost and without a purpose. Like an orphan in a strange house. His eyes, sunken and unclear, were weepy. Always weeping, like a bleeding wound without pain. And even now, in the sturdy daylight and the warmth of the room, his small body shook as though it were winter.

Watson took a breath, then swallowed and wondered how else to engage him. It was a game he was more than ready to play. He was still over the moon that his partner was alive. Healthy as a sick dog, but still alive.

"Holmes," he tried again, "Mrs. Hudson is making breakfast soon. What would you like to eat? Some toast? Eggs? Some juice? Maybe an omelet with a bit of porridge?" He waited. Painfully waited. It was like being poised for the bus. Sherlock's watery eyes sought his for a fleeting moment, his thin chest rising and falling as awkwardly as it had always done since leaving the hospital. Sometimes his lungs hitched and he would wheeze for a few moments as if the air had got caught in his bruised throat. "Sherlock." John tried sadly, using his birth name in a soft, despairing whisper, "I'm going to get you out of this bed and into the wheelchair. Then I'm going to get you a bit of breakfast to wake you up a little. How about some hot tea? That'll warm you up."

The detective took a short, sudden breath, his face flinching at the pain it must have caused. He assertively glanced at the open window at Watson's back, blinking owlishly in the light. "No... no bars..." He managed at long last.

Watson smiled despite the fact that he couldn't quite make out what his partner meant. "No bars?"

"On the window, there. No bars at all." His words drawled out of his lips in dry, raspy fragments that reminded Watson of autumn leaves rolling in chilly October winds. He sounded as poorly as he looked.

No bars. Patrick Omen's house, the one he had been trapped in for three days had bars on all of its windows and doors. The whole house had been one massive cage with no discernable exit. Some of the bars had been slick with old blood. Blood when it dried went a rusty, burgundy color. Like brick dust.

"No, no bars." Watson went to cup his hand around his partner's scratched face in a wishful effort to help Holmes relax. It only did the opposite, producing an undesirable effect. Upon seeing Watson's hand rise in the corner of his sight, Holmes went reeling backwards as if the doctor wielded a dagger. His shoulders met the headboard and there he remained, as though paralyzed. Watson apologized limply, not accustomed to this behavior.
"Holmes, it's only me." He sighed at the pure frustration that he couldn't do anything to help directly. It was clear that his dear friend was deep in the footholds of shock, which was deadly. But there was a way to help him out of it, and that was good care. "I'm going to help you into the wheelchair now, and then I'll bundle you up in blankets. You ready?" He was met by a brief, frightened nod.

Rolling the wheelchair forwards, Watson parked it directly beside the bed; sideways, ready to receive its new patient. Sherlock set his shadowy eyes on the contraption in suspicious doubt as if John was about to pull him down into watery, piranha-infested depths.

The detective, frail, small and thin, was easy to move from bed to chair. Having been starved for three solid days, and even then having been terribly anorexic even before the Patrick incident, he was all bone and not much else.

Sherlock, still shivery, didn't so much as bleat a protest as Watson carefully lowered him into the chair with the detective's thin arms around his neck. Once this feat was accomplished, Sherlock dropped his arms back down and discerned the arms of the wheelchair in mortal anxiety. Watson grabbed a full length blanket and tucked it around Holmes' lean shoulders. "Better buy you some thicker sleeping garments too, I propose." Watson muttered more to himself. "The ones you have on now aren't warm enough."
"Yes, they are rather stolid."

Watson's secret smile grew larger still at hearing Holmes reply, even if the subject of sleeping garments was hardly worth getting excited over. The fact that he was responding of his own accord was real good news.

Watson grabbed another blanket, slapped the dust out of it, and neatly arranged it over Holmes' legs. Again the touch made the smaller man flinch and tense, his eyes fixing on the doctor's hands as if they had turned into grenades. His panic grew every time he was in contact with another. The doctor noticed how much his eyes grew large and staring, gaped like holes. Watson wanted more than anything to throw his arms around him and embrace him right there. Take his shivering body into his and whisper into his ear that it would be all right. That everything in time would go away. The memories. The pain. Everything. But he didn't, though his body was on the edge of going to him. Sherlock might even scream or break down, evidently not ready for such contact.

Now that he was safely secured in the wheelchair, Watson wheeled him out of the room and through the dank hallway where the cooking smells of early breakfast wafted down the corridor. The odors made John's stomach growl attentively.

He wheeled him over to the back of the house and opened the door that led out onto a sunny porch where dead weeds in their pots dangled their leaves onto the deck. He steered the wheelchair two meters from the open doorway and applied the wheelchair brakes. He wouldn't actually take him outside. Warm or not, Holmes was far too fragile to be taken outside by any means. But here, he was close enough to feel the invigorating fresh air and feel the sun on his pale, milky white skin while being in the warmth of the house.
Watson turned to the front of the wheelchair to confront his sickly companion. "You're going to have some breakfast, and then I'll give you a checkup. Make sure you are still breathing, after all. Then a bath I think is in order."

He took a moment to consider asking Holmes about the house. The name of the killer he could perhaps ask as an easy starter. But Holmes was in a right state, and didn't look mentally able. Was it too early to ask about the case? Or would he reiterate what had happened in but one silken breath with ease?

But each time he hesitated, the seconds weighed up against it, and he turned the idea down. He would. Oh yes. He'd ask Sherlock gently to confess what had gone on. Doing it as sensitively as he could like one might interrogate a traumatized child. It was the safest bet.
A cup of tea was brought from the kitchen, filled with soothing herbs to help one sleep and relax. Watson placed it on a little coffee table after pulling it along the wonky floorboards so that it was close to Sherlock's left-hand side for easy convenience.

Beside the china cup of hot, steamy tea was a bowl of warm, easily digestible oatmeal. Watson knelt before his sick comrade and clasped his cold, pallid hands in his. The moment contact was made, Holmes jerked as if to get away. But he was fastened on both sides by armrests. He made no move to go anywhere, anyway, but a spurt of hot blood jettisoned from his nose which made Watson start. "God Almighty!" Watson felt his own blood draining from his face. Sherlock, evidently aware of the blood gushing down his nostrils, went to touch it with his fingers in numb curiosity. Watson plunged his hand down his left breast pocket to grab his handkerchief that was patterned in a mix of red and white hexagons. He went forwards, and not caring for Holmes' reactions, held the handkerchief against the stem of the blood flow. "Open your mouth and breathe." He tried not to appear so worried, not an easy thing. Sherlock looked none the worst, but his skin was etched white, like snow.

The blood flow did stop, after it had soaked Watson's handkerchief. Mrs. Hudson, after hearing Watson cry the Lord's name, came quickly to see if everything was all right. She was very patient with Sherlock, even though they had their differences, and under normal circumstances would have sneered at each other. But today was a saddened shade of rue and unspoken comradeship. Sherlock, dazed and clammy, remained seated and didn't begrudge Mrs. Hudson's help. Between her and Watson, they cleaned his visage of gore. After this, the oatmeal had to be re-warmed on the stove, but the tea was still pleasantly hot. Watson helped his partner drink it down. It was a small victory.

Though the doctor was no detective, he had had quite a few lessons from Sherlock Holmes himself. As the small detective drank down the tea in comfortable, weary silence, eyes almost drawn shut; Watson looked at his healing head wound. Then his gaze trailed down to his chest where the worst of his injuries had been made. The head fracture had been enough to give Holmes a concussion, which meant there had been a violent struggle between him and the foe in this house. Holmes had clearly lost. Possibly the assailant had bashed the detective on the head with a sharp, heavy object. Possibly a large tome book or a candle holder or even a small wooden chair. Anything was lethal when used with force. Holmes' wrists, thin and bony like the rest of him, was bruised and reddened with what looked like rope marks. So, if he had been unconscious, the killer would have tied him up to an immovable object, like a radiator or iron bar fixed to the wall. His chest; broken and bruised, may have been the further result of a struggle. Again possibly done with something like a brick (the doctor at the hospital had said the front of his chest had been smashed from blunt trauma). And then, left in darkness, possibly for a day or two, Holmes was left with these bleeding wounds and shattered ribs. Would he have screamed for help? Or had stubbornly kept silent, aware with intelligible clarity that his life was at an end? And then the killer might have...

"Watson..." Holmes, finished with the tea (he had only managed a quarter of the drink) had leaned back in his chair, evidently looking sicker. A fresh skin of oily perspiration fringed his forehead. "You've acquired no sleep, h-have you? And you've been w-weeping."
Watson was aware of the ending stutter. Holmes had never stuttered in his life, or gone about as such. "How do you mean?" He asked quietly. He went out to touch his hand in support, then thought better of it.

"I took note of the shadows beneath your eyes and your atrocious, unkempt clothing. You've been sleeping in that same uniform, I do believe. Also," he nodded over at the dresser table four feet to his left, "I see the steady encumbrance of your tea cup collection on the dresser surface. You've been coming and going into this room, regarding the view from this very window. There are enough boot prints here on the floor to suggest that much at least." To confirm this, he looked over at the doctor's shoes. But the moment he did so, he blanched as if he had just seen something truly horrific. He didn't moan or flinch, however he did cover his face with both bruised hands. Watson, puzzled, frowned at his partner's reaction, but held his tongue. He glanced down at his own shoes to confirm that there was nothing to see. He was wrong on this occasion. There was the subtle skin of blood on the edges of his boots from when he had gone into the house of horrors with the investigation team.

"Forgive me, Holmes. I'm taking them off."
"Quite."
Watson stripped them off at once and proceeded to take them out of the room as though they were snakes. When he next came back, he tried Holmes with a little bit of warmed oatmeal once the fragile detective had calmed down. Holmes miserably opposed, saying that his stomach was most disagreeable with him at present.

"Holmes, you haven't eaten for five days. You can't live like this, and you certainly can't live on tea. Please have a few mouthfuls." Three days he had been trapped in the house, and he couldn't have eaten then. He spent a day in the hospital, then spent a day at home, sleeping. But again, Holmes politely declined Watson's protests. "Food is most improper right now. I feel tired, dear Watson. Please take this old man back to his bed."
His request pulled at Watson most bitterly. To give in would mean another afternoon without nourishment. And force-feeding Holmes wouldn't be a pleasant experience for any of them. "I will, after your bath." He ached to know what had caused Holmes' wounds. The entrapment that went on for so long. And why Holmes was the only one that got out alive. "Sherlock, why does it upset you so when I touch you?"

Holmes' eyes lowered away from his, and there was the obvious evidence of upset as his hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. "I'm still sore." Was all he said.
Watson nodded, taking that answer as everything he needed to know for now. But he would keep pressing him here and there. And the ironic thing about Sherlock now, was that the detective loved to digress what he had found out, or the smallest traces of evidence, or the behavior of other people. If he had been in a normal state of mind, Sherlock wouldn't have been able to stop talking for all the things he had seen in that house. But now, in the speckled light of the afternoon, he was as quiet and as delicate as a wounded mouse. And Watson felt terrible. Terrible for not protecting him. For ignoring him before it all happened, and choosing to stay with Mary instead. He would take it all back if God permitted it. But it was nothing but foolish thinking now.

"Holmes?" Watson began again wistfully. Nervously.
"Hmmm?" He didn't raise his head. Instead his pained eyes were fixed on the little garden beyond.
"Do you blame me? For what happened to you?"
"Vulgarity has no fault or blame." It came out as a raspy, thin whisper. "No. You I do not, could not blame. I just wish I had died in that house, dear Watson. All I request now is that you help me die. I require nothing more."

What he had said came out of sudden, and Holmes said it so normally that Watson was too stunned to speak. At first he was scared of what Holmes had confessed. Then it slowly gave way to fermenting anger. How could his partner be so thoughtless and selfish? Anger washed away too, when he saw the gaping sadness in the small detective's eyes and the slow, ragged movements of his chest as he drew breath in and out.
"Holmes..."

Description
Chapter 4: Too Fragile
A Sherlock Holmes Fanfiction based on Guy Ritchie's version.
Rated Teen

The sun gleamed in through the dusty curtains that had seen better days. Mrs. Hudson did well to avoid Sherlock's room and all of his possessions when necessary. It was a chaotic clutter in all and would take a week to clean out for an invalid to move around in.

Though Watson's old room was no longer in use, the doctor decided to place Holmes in his old living place instead, and set up a bed for him to sleep in. There would be much more space without having to worry about clutter and crusty dishes sticking to the carpets.

John rolled out an old wheelchair from the lounge downstairs, opened it up and inspected it for rust and damage. It was clean and passed his studious inspection. The leather padding on the arms and seat of the chair were intact and not chewed by Gladstone. Happy with it, Watson rolled it forwards and parked it beside the bed opposite the chair he constantly used as a bed himself. The chair was his daily roost where he discerned Holmes who rested frequently through the day in his sorry state. However, things were to be looking up. The sun was bright and warm for London. The wind was nonexistent and even when he opened the far window, not a single breeze lifted a strand of hair on his head.

He went back to Holmes and awoke him gently. It was time to get him more active and treat those wounds. While Sherlock did indeed rouse (and of course startled when he grabbed hold of consciousness), Watson smiled gently and helped him up by easing one hand down his back while the other hand cradled the back of his head. Watson tried to swallow past the sudden lump in his throat. "Good to meet you once again, Holmes. It's all right. It's just you and me in my room."

Holmes' lips moved ever so faintly, yet no breath of voice ignited. His eyes squinted in the measurable daylight and Watson could feel him sharply trembling in his firm hold. For some inconsolable reason, the detective seemed to be displeased at being touched. Now this had never happened before. True, John and Sherlock were good friends who didn't mind giving each other a slap on the back now and then or hugged each other when a great case was solved, but even if John had touched him kindly in open friendship, Holmes had always honored the touch. He never trembled or shied away from it.

Ever.

It was a struggle to not show how worried he felt inside. As he lifted him, Sherlock looked increasingly frantic and upset as if Watson's very hands were covered in blood.
"Holmes, speak for me. How do you feel this morning?"

He raised Holmes upward slowly, carefully watching his partner's countenance for signs of pain, primal discomfort or faintness. His bleak eyes, watery and anguished, darted often to his own eyes, as if constantly reassuring himself that Watson was still before him, as real as life itself.

"Holmes?"

He at last delivered a weedy look in John's direction. This was not like him at all. He was always one-minded in things, even menial tasks like breakfast. He was always on a mission, and did everything with dutiful precision; a woman's touch if you will. Yes he was messy. Not finely tuned in all aspects in the house. But his actions were never opaque or foggy or without motivation of some kind. The Holmes he had in his arms didn't look anything at all like that. He looked frail, lost and without a purpose. Like an orphan in a strange house. His eyes, sunken and unclear, were weepy. Always weeping, like a bleeding wound without pain. And even now, in the sturdy daylight and the warmth of the room, his small body shook as though it were winter.

Watson took a breath, then swallowed and wondered how else to engage him. It was a game he was more than ready to play. He was still over the moon that his partner was alive. Healthy as a sick dog, but still alive.

"Holmes," he tried again, "Mrs. Hudson is making breakfast soon. What would you like to eat? Some toast? Eggs? Some juice? Maybe an omelet with a bit of porridge?" He waited. Painfully waited. It was like being poised for the bus. Sherlock's watery eyes sought his for a fleeting moment, his thin chest rising and falling as awkwardly as it had always done since leaving the hospital. Sometimes his lungs hitched and he would wheeze for a few moments as if the air had got caught in his bruised throat. "Sherlock." John tried sadly, using his birth name in a soft, despairing whisper, "I'm going to get you out of this bed and into the wheelchair. Then I'm going to get you a bit of breakfast to wake you up a little. How about some hot tea? That'll warm you up."

The detective took a short, sudden breath, his face flinching at the pain it must have caused. He assertively glanced at the open window at Watson's back, blinking owlishly in the light. "No... no bars..." He managed at long last.

Watson smiled despite the fact that he couldn't quite make out what his partner meant. "No bars?"

"On the window, there. No bars at all." His words drawled out of his lips in dry, raspy fragments that reminded Watson of autumn leaves rolling in chilly October winds. He sounded as poorly as he looked.

No bars. Patrick Omen's house, the one he had been trapped in for three days had bars on all of its windows and doors. The whole house had been one massive cage with no discernable exit. Some of the bars had been slick with old blood. Blood when it dried went a rusty, burgundy color. Like brick dust.

"No, no bars." Watson went to cup his hand around his partner's scratched face in a wishful effort to help Holmes relax. It only did the opposite, producing an undesirable effect. Upon seeing Watson's hand rise in the corner of his sight, Holmes went reeling backwards as if the doctor wielded a dagger. His shoulders met the headboard and there he remained, as though paralyzed. Watson apologized limply, not accustomed to this behavior.
"Holmes, it's only me." He sighed at the pure frustration that he couldn't do anything to help directly. It was clear that his dear friend was deep in the footholds of shock, which was deadly. But there was a way to help him out of it, and that was good care. "I'm going to help you into the wheelchair now, and then I'll bundle you up in blankets. You ready?" He was met by a brief, frightened nod.

Rolling the wheelchair forwards, Watson parked it directly beside the bed; sideways, ready to receive its new patient. Sherlock set his shadowy eyes on the contraption in suspicious doubt as if John was about to pull him down into watery, piranha-infested depths.

The detective, frail, small and thin, was easy to move from bed to chair. Having been starved for three solid days, and even then having been terribly anorexic even before the Patrick incident, he was all bone and not much else.

Sherlock, still shivery, didn't so much as bleat a protest as Watson carefully lowered him into the chair with the detective's thin arms around his neck. Once this feat was accomplished, Sherlock dropped his arms back down and discerned the arms of the wheelchair in mortal anxiety. Watson grabbed a full length blanket and tucked it around Holmes' lean shoulders. "Better buy you some thicker sleeping garments too, I propose." Watson muttered more to himself. "The ones you have on now aren't warm enough."
"Yes, they are rather stolid."

Watson's secret smile grew larger still at hearing Holmes reply, even if the subject of sleeping garments was hardly worth getting excited over. The fact that he was responding of his own accord was real good news.

Watson grabbed another blanket, slapped the dust out of it, and neatly arranged it over Holmes' legs. Again the touch made the smaller man flinch and tense, his eyes fixing on the doctor's hands as if they had turned into grenades. His panic grew every time he was in contact with another. The doctor noticed how much his eyes grew large and staring, gaped like holes. Watson wanted more than anything to throw his arms around him and embrace him right there. Take his shivering body into his and whisper into his ear that it would be all right. That everything in time would go away. The memories. The pain. Everything. But he didn't, though his body was on the edge of going to him. Sherlock might even scream or break down, evidently not ready for such contact.

Now that he was safely secured in the wheelchair, Watson wheeled him out of the room and through the dank hallway where the cooking smells of early breakfast wafted down the corridor. The odors made John's stomach growl attentively.

He wheeled him over to the back of the house and opened the door that led out onto a sunny porch where dead weeds in their pots dangled their leaves onto the deck. He steered the wheelchair two meters from the open doorway and applied the wheelchair brakes. He wouldn't actually take him outside. Warm or not, Holmes was far too fragile to be taken outside by any means. But here, he was close enough to feel the invigorating fresh air and feel the sun on his pale, milky white skin while being in the warmth of the house.
Watson turned to the front of the wheelchair to confront his sickly companion. "You're going to have some breakfast, and then I'll give you a checkup. Make sure you are still breathing, after all. Then a bath I think is in order."

He took a moment to consider asking Holmes about the house. The name of the killer he could perhaps ask as an easy starter. But Holmes was in a right state, and didn't look mentally able. Was it too early to ask about the case? Or would he reiterate what had happened in but one silken breath with ease?

But each time he hesitated, the seconds weighed up against it, and he turned the idea down. He would. Oh yes. He'd ask Sherlock gently to confess what had gone on. Doing it as sensitively as he could like one might interrogate a traumatized child. It was the safest bet.
A cup of tea was brought from the kitchen, filled with soothing herbs to help one sleep and relax. Watson placed it on a little coffee table after pulling it along the wonky floorboards so that it was close to Sherlock's left-hand side for easy convenience.

Beside the china cup of hot, steamy tea was a bowl of warm, easily digestible oatmeal. Watson knelt before his sick comrade and clasped his cold, pallid hands in his. The moment contact was made, Holmes jerked as if to get away. But he was fastened on both sides by armrests. He made no move to go anywhere, anyway, but a spurt of hot blood jettisoned from his nose which made Watson start. "God Almighty!" Watson felt his own blood draining from his face. Sherlock, evidently aware of the blood gushing down his nostrils, went to touch it with his fingers in numb curiosity. Watson plunged his hand down his left breast pocket to grab his handkerchief that was patterned in a mix of red and white hexagons. He went forwards, and not caring for Holmes' reactions, held the handkerchief against the stem of the blood flow. "Open your mouth and breathe." He tried not to appear so worried, not an easy thing. Sherlock looked none the worst, but his skin was etched white, like snow.

The blood flow did stop, after it had soaked Watson's handkerchief. Mrs. Hudson, after hearing Watson cry the Lord's name, came quickly to see if everything was all right. She was very patient with Sherlock, even though they had their differences, and under normal circumstances would have sneered at each other. But today was a saddened shade of rue and unspoken comradeship. Sherlock, dazed and clammy, remained seated and didn't begrudge Mrs. Hudson's help. Between her and Watson, they cleaned his visage of gore. After this, the oatmeal had to be re-warmed on the stove, but the tea was still pleasantly hot. Watson helped his partner drink it down. It was a small victory.

Though the doctor was no detective, he had had quite a few lessons from Sherlock Holmes himself. As the small detective drank down the tea in comfortable, weary silence, eyes almost drawn shut; Watson looked at his healing head wound. Then his gaze trailed down to his chest where the worst of his injuries had been made. The head fracture had been enough to give Holmes a concussion, which meant there had been a violent struggle between him and the foe in this house. Holmes had clearly lost. Possibly the assailant had bashed the detective on the head with a sharp, heavy object. Possibly a large tome book or a candle holder or even a small wooden chair. Anything was lethal when used with force. Holmes' wrists, thin and bony like the rest of him, was bruised and reddened with what looked like rope marks. So, if he had been unconscious, the killer would have tied him up to an immovable object, like a radiator or iron bar fixed to the wall. His chest; broken and bruised, may have been the further result of a struggle. Again possibly done with something like a brick (the doctor at the hospital had said the front of his chest had been smashed from blunt trauma). And then, left in darkness, possibly for a day or two, Holmes was left with these bleeding wounds and shattered ribs. Would he have screamed for help? Or had stubbornly kept silent, aware with intelligible clarity that his life was at an end? And then the killer might have...

"Watson..." Holmes, finished with the tea (he had only managed a quarter of the drink) had leaned back in his chair, evidently looking sicker. A fresh skin of oily perspiration fringed his forehead. "You've acquired no sleep, h-have you? And you've been w-weeping."
Watson was aware of the ending stutter. Holmes had never stuttered in his life, or gone about as such. "How do you mean?" He asked quietly. He went out to touch his hand in support, then thought better of it.

"I took note of the shadows beneath your eyes and your atrocious, unkempt clothing. You've been sleeping in that same uniform, I do believe. Also," he nodded over at the dresser table four feet to his left, "I see the steady encumbrance of your tea cup collection on the dresser surface. You've been coming and going into this room, regarding the view from this very window. There are enough boot prints here on the floor to suggest that much at least." To confirm this, he looked over at the doctor's shoes. But the moment he did so, he blanched as if he had just seen something truly horrific. He didn't moan or flinch, however he did cover his face with both bruised hands. Watson, puzzled, frowned at his partner's reaction, but held his tongue. He glanced down at his own shoes to confirm that there was nothing to see. He was wrong on this occasion. There was the subtle skin of blood on the edges of his boots from when he had gone into the house of horrors with the investigation team.

"Forgive me, Holmes. I'm taking them off."
"Quite."
Watson stripped them off at once and proceeded to take them out of the room as though they were snakes. When he next came back, he tried Holmes with a little bit of warmed oatmeal once the fragile detective had calmed down. Holmes miserably opposed, saying that his stomach was most disagreeable with him at present.

"Holmes, you haven't eaten for five days. You can't live like this, and you certainly can't live on tea. Please have a few mouthfuls." Three days he had been trapped in the house, and he couldn't have eaten then. He spent a day in the hospital, then spent a day at home, sleeping. But again, Holmes politely declined Watson's protests. "Food is most improper right now. I feel tired, dear Watson. Please take this old man back to his bed."
His request pulled at Watson most bitterly. To give in would mean another afternoon without nourishment. And force-feeding Holmes wouldn't be a pleasant experience for any of them. "I will, after your bath." He ached to know what had caused Holmes' wounds. The entrapment that went on for so long. And why Holmes was the only one that got out alive. "Sherlock, why does it upset you so when I touch you?"

Holmes' eyes lowered away from his, and there was the obvious evidence of upset as his hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair. "I'm still sore." Was all he said.
Watson nodded, taking that answer as everything he needed to know for now. But he would keep pressing him here and there. And the ironic thing about Sherlock now, was that the detective loved to digress what he had found out, or the smallest traces of evidence, or the behavior of other people. If he had been in a normal state of mind, Sherlock wouldn't have been able to stop talking for all the things he had seen in that house. But now, in the speckled light of the afternoon, he was as quiet and as delicate as a wounded mouse. And Watson felt terrible. Terrible for not protecting him. For ignoring him before it all happened, and choosing to stay with Mary instead. He would take it all back if God permitted it. But it was nothing but foolish thinking now.

"Holmes?" Watson began again wistfully. Nervously.
"Hmmm?" He didn't raise his head. Instead his pained eyes were fixed on the little garden beyond.
"Do you blame me? For what happened to you?"
"Vulgarity has no fault or blame." It came out as a raspy, thin whisper. "No. You I do not, could not blame. I just wish I had died in that house, dear Watson. All I request now is that you help me die. I require nothing more."

What he had said came out of sudden, and Holmes said it so normally that Watson was too stunned to speak. At first he was scared of what Holmes had confessed. Then it slowly gave way to fermenting anger. How could his partner be so thoughtless and selfish? Anger washed away too, when he saw the gaping sadness in the small detective's eyes and the slow, ragged movements of his chest as he drew breath in and out.
"Holmes..."