Fic for lynndyre: On the Way Home, PG

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Title: On the Way Home
Recipient: lynndyre
Author (we will redact until reveal):
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3560
Characters, including any pairing(s): Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mycroft Holmes
Warnings: Violence. Language.
Summary: Watson makes a detour.

During my association with Sherlock Holmes, my medical practise, vanishingly small as it was in those hot summer days of 1895, still occasionally called for me to pay a house call or two. On one such afternoon, the improved health of my patient freed me earlier than I had expected. Rather than head immediately back, however, I considered my locale; my proximity to a nearby shabby lane, and my possession of my doctor’s bag, turned my steps instead away, toward the houses in which lived several of the ragged youths which comprised Holmes’ unofficial assistance. From my experience in dealing with the Baker Street Irregulars, I knew that such children were in want of regular doctor’s care, and entertained some thought of paying a visit to ensure that they kept as well as could be managed.

I received a warmer welcome than I had expected, however. In such a den of grubby poverty, all it took was Tommy McConnell’s cheery cry of “Dr. Watson!” for every nearby sufferer to converge upon me like beggars who hear the jingle of gold in a purse, and I was soon beset by paupers and factory-workers of all ages and conditions. A harder-hearted man would have had an easier time of it, but I held my ground and determined to do what I could for those around me.

Hours passed before I was able to remove myself, having exhausted nearly all that I had brought (including my person), and nearly floating in cups of tea – the only way many of the residents could pay me for my applications of carbolic, willowbark and catgut. Sadly, there was little I could do for their malnourished frames, their coughing spells, or their birth-blind children.

Tommy insisted on escorting me through the lane as the setting summer sun provided poor assistance to the street-lamps. “Shouldn’t a stayed so long, Dr. Watson, it ain’t good to be out here this late!” The scolding tone brought a smile to my lips, as my chastiser was not yet shaving. “Well, I know you, and everyone around knows me, so ain’t gonna be no trouble.” He thumped one fist into his open hand, already marked across the back with a knife-scar. “Mac goes where coppers dasn’t.”

“Mr. Holmes wouldn’t be best pleased to hear this, Master Tommy,” I said. I knew he was already getting into trouble with the police.

The lad snarled, revealing gaps in his foul-breathed mouth. “I’m Mac out ‘ere, Dr. Watson – ‘Master Tommy’s for the toff chaveys three streets away, or when I’m doin’ work for Mr. Holmes. And Mr. Holmes wouldn’t be best pleased about you getting taken for a mark by the bludgers on account of your swell’s togs.”

I could not refute the statement that my clothes marked me as a gentleman and therefore a possible target; I could not bring it in myself to be sorry for his company. “One thing I’ve learned from my travels with Mr. Holmes, Mast– Mac,” I said as we headed toward better-lit and better-peopled streets, where I would be able to find a cab who’d stop for me. “Those sumptuous houses in wealthy neighborhoods can hide terrible and brutal crimes too.”

“Yeh, but in those places it’s Christmas dinner, only happens now an’ again. Down here we get three bloody servings a day every day, ‘stead of vittles.”

I sighed. “I fear you’re right.” I thought of the dire poverty of those whose illnesses I’d made a feeble attempt to stanch that afternoon – ones whose cures were beyond the means of such poorly-paid and ill-fed people. Against such monumental wrong, even Sherlock Holmes could do but little.

“Maybe if the bloody reformers brought more bread an’ fewer Bibles, it wouldn’t be so –” McConnell froze, uttered an oath and shuttled me hard into an alleyway. “Jesus Christ, that was close. Dickie’s gang’s up ahead. We’ll go another way.”

“Are they coming here?” I whispered, every nerve instantly at attention.

“Nah, sounds like they’ve nobbled a pidgeon. Good thing it ain’t you.”

Which meant the brutes up ahead already had a victim whom they were engaged in beating and robbing. My teeth bared.

“Dr. Watson, this way!” Mac pulled at my forearm.

But I would not move. Every part of me – the soldier who hears the bugler sound the charge, the doctor who sought to end another’s pain, the staunch friend of the foremost champion of justice in this city, the Londoner appalled at this crime in progress, the Christian who would not walk past the dying man with the priest and the Levite – was now focused on what lay outside our bivouac. “Tom – Mac, go for the police.”

“You bloody starkers?” Mac hissed. “Coppers don’t come ‘ere after dark!”

No wonder Dickie’s gang worked with such impunity. My fear at realising my own peril only sharpened my anger. I reached into my front pocket and slapped my calling card and a half-crown into Mac’s hand. “Then go and get a cab to Baker Street. Holmes will know what to do. Show the cabman this if he tries to pass you by.” A street urchin, younger-looking than his life had made him, would elicit scorn from a cabbie three streets over; but said urchin who bore proof that he was a friend of Sherlock Holmes carried a Letter of Marque.

“Bloody hell I ain’t leaving you here to get nobbled too!”

“There’s no time to argue. Go, lad!”

Mac shook his head in despair; for all that he was barely a child, he clearly considered himself my protector in his domain. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his clasp-knife. “All right, Doc. But take this.”

I pressed my lips hard to hide a smile. “That’s not a knife,” I whispered. Ignoring Mac’s incomprehending glare at what sounded like an insult to his arms, I reached into my Gladstone bag and produced the long, wicked-looking blade meant for amputations, a full two inches longer than his own weapon. “That’s a knife,” I said coolly to Mac’s wide-eyed stare, and I fear that my own grin matched the younger man’s ugly rictus.

Without another word Mac was off like a rabbit.

I did not wait for him to vanish before I was out of the alley and pelting down the street we had been walking, toward the coarse laughter and groans of pain that had alerted Mac.

The only light came from the long dusk of summer in this street, but what light there was proved enough to see what transpired. There were five of them, ranging in age from late teens to late twenties, in shabby clothes. Their “pidgeon” lay curled in the middle of them on the filthy cobbles; I could only see that it was a large man, wearing clothing that marked him as a man of means, his arms over his head. One of the hunters pulled back his leg to deliver what was clearly another in a series of kicks to his prey.

“Stop in the Queen’s name!” I roared in my best drill-sergeant voice mid-charge.

All of them whirled to face me, grinning like hyaenas; they greeted me with ugly laughter and oaths I will not repeat. The scrawny chap in the forefront - slouch hat perched at a jaunty angle, gold chain gleaming from his ill-gotten pocket-watch - was clearly the “Dickie” who ran this small, vicious gang. All carried the deadly makeshift weapons of the street-hunters; Dickie bore what was either a stick or a length of lead pipe.

“Stand away from that man!” I bellowed in the same drill-sergeant roar.

They obliged, by surrounding me. I held stock-still for a breath, assessing. Five; lead pipe, knife, chain, knife, razor. Speed and accuracy – now, while they saw only my doctor’s bag and respectable clothing and took me for another well-to-do mark who’d frozen in terror.

I took a breath as if gasping in fear at my situation, looking wildly around at them. The sadistic beasts laughed – and that’s when I swung my Gladstone bag hard behind me to slam into one head and send its owner sprawling, lunging forward in the same split-second to strike across the inner elbow of another’s knife-arm with my amputation blade, laying open clothing and skin and flesh in one sweep. Down clattered his knife and his arm flopped to his side, blood gouting. Pivoting from the shrieking boy I slammed my body hard into Dickie sideways, under his aborted knife-lunge, close enough to smell his tobacco and reeking breath, barreling in and refusing to back away, and swung the end of my bag hard into his groin, a blow that sent him to the ground, doubled over and helpless. Two down, third getting back up.

Pain smashed along the side of my head and cheek like lightning, and I yelled with rage even as I let go my bag and flung my arm up to seize the retreating end of the chain, the tail of which had licked along my left ear and scalp like a branding-iron. As with Dickie, closeness hindered an enemy’s assault; I bore back on the chain to its owner’s hands, seized a wrist in my freed hand and torqued it as God never intended radius nor ulna to do, till I heard a crack and a scream; a solid fist to the nose crumpled number three. A backhanded swing with the amputation blade struck something solid, and another scream gouted out. The background shrieking of the arm injury faded; he was fleeing.

I whirled and faced the last two of my feral assailants – one of whom sported his own bleeding ear and cheek from my backswing, the other the first one I’d hit with my bag – gripping a gory doctor’s tool as if I bore Excalibur and with my teeth bared in a grin at their white-eyed terror. Perhaps twenty seconds had elapsed. “Go,” I snarled, and they fled like the cowardly rats they were.

Dickie still lay curled on the ground beside his similarly-curled prey, cursing between breathless moans of pain; the one with the broken nose and wrist was still hunched on the ground, and the one with the mangled arm had fled, leaving a trail of blood behind. Eyes only on the ringleader I pulled one last item from my bag to administer the coup de grace. I shoved the little hyaena onto his back, and felt rather than saw his lead pipe slam into my side with a lightning-burst of pain. Crack if not break, if it punctured a lung I was dead – Even as I cried in pain I clamped my left arm to pin Dickie’s pipe-hand against my injured side, and at the same time used all my weight behind my right arm to force the chloroform cone over his nose and mouth.

Dickie arched and heaved and cursed and wrenched at his arm, which stabbed like knives but also made this work faster as he heaved for breath as well – and there was no breath for him to take save through chloroform. His eyes glared up at me over the cone – the vicious, stupid animal gaze of violent little men who know no other way of life. I glared back at him, but could find no corresponding hatred within me, any more than one can hate a hungry wolf for following its brute nature. I waited; and in less than a minute his body went limp with the unmistakeable signs of true unconsciousness. The battle was over.

I pulled myself carefully and painfully to my feet, groaning and spitting out a little blood from the chain-wound; I’d tasted the steel in that blow. My ear bled freely and hurt abominably; it was very likely torn and I’d need one of my long-suffering medical colleagues to stitch up yet another souvenir of old Watson’s mad detective lark. My side bore a deep ringing ache, as did my head; but on the whole I’d come out very well.

The crumpled figure groaned, and began to unfurl. I hobbled over to attend to Dickie’s unfortunate victim.

“Sir?” I said to the groaning man on the cobbles. I saw blood and prayed the knife wounds had pierced no organs. “You are safe – well, safer than you were. Can you stand? We need to leave this place quickly.”

The man groaned again. Just as I reached out to turn him, he rolled onto his back, slowly uncurling.

I had thought I had seen my fill of horrors today. But now I gaped in shock as I recognised just who this vicious gangleader had assaulted, recognisable though one side of his face was bloodied and bruised. The man blinked, and I saw recognition in his eyes.

“Good evening … Dr. Watson,” whispered Mycroft Holmes.

Shocked though I was, my medical instincts roused, and I hastened to reassure my patient even as I (carefully) lowered myself to loosen his clothing over his bloodied injuries to examine him. “Mr. Holmes, you’re safe. Your assailants are gone, and their leader insensate. Your brother is sending help – poor devil, he thinks he is only rescuing me from a bad situation!” Heedless of the stabbing pain in my side, I dragged my Gladstone over – once again a doctor’s bag and not an armoury – to tend to my friend’s elder brother. “We may have to leave this battlefield as walking wounded. Can you stand if I bandage–”

A whisper on the cobbles. Too late.

I turned my head, and looked up at yet another cluster of hard-faced lads staring at me and armed as had been Dickie’s gang – knives, pipes, boards. Their leader was a grubby blond youth.

My heart failed in my breast at the sight of those pitiless young wolf-faces. This is why the police don’t come here at night, my thoughts ranted inanely. Thieves and killers were like cockroaches here, strike down one and a dozen more appeared. I was on my knees with an injured patient, spent, unarmed (I’d put back my bloodied blade), and now bearing injury myself. I only stared back at the gang, determined to do what damage I could with my fists; I had nothing left in my bag that would save me.

“Your mother is a seamstress … in a shirt factory.” Mycroft’s voice was low, gasping, full of pain; but the deductive abilities that marked a Holmes were as keen as ever – judging from the wide-eyed start the blond boy gave at his words. “You work as apprentice … in the brickyards, but find robbing … more lucrative. An older brother is … away at sea.”

The blond boy stared at Mycroft, stock-still. The others stood and stared too. The shock of this unexpected revelation had stopped them, just for a moment.

“This is Dr. Watson,” Mycroft continued. “He has spent the day … tending people in this neighborhood … as I perceive.”

The leader and the others looked at me again. The feral wolf-stare was now muted, and tempered with curiosity. One dark-faced lad stared a little closer. “I seen you,” he finally said to me. “You are the doctor. You give that powder to me mam that took her headache away. Din’t charge her nuffin, neither.”

The blond boy stared at me with no expression. Then he turned toward a nearby alley. “Come on, you lot,” was the only thing he said. Seconds later the little mob had vanished like snow in a spring rain, leaving the two of us alone again.

I blinked. It seems I had, indeed, had something in my doctor’s bag to save me.

“Thank Providence this gang … was more inclined … to listen to me.” Mycroft groaned in pain again. “Doctor, if you would be so kind.”

***

By the time a Mariah appeared with Mac sitting beside the driver, the police wagon’s carriage-lantern was required for the summer dusk had been replaced with true night – and though I could do little for Mycroft in our current site, I had to my relief determined that his injuries, though severe, were not immediately life-threatening.

“Calm yourself, little brother … your face tells the world your business,” Mycroft murmured to a white-faced Sherlock Holmes bent over us both, as several of Lestrade’s burliest men took Dickie in hand. The elder Holmes seemed to have regained some of his wind, now that he was no longer being kicked and beaten; I was moved to see the battered man offer words of comfort to his unharmed younger sibling.

“He will be quite all right, Holmes,” I said, calmly enduring my friend’s rapid silent assessment of my own hurts and the story they told. “Your brother’s corpulence proved an asset here – none of the brigands’ cuts reached major organs or blood vessels, and though he is badly bruised his ribs are intact; they were well-protected. The pipe-blow on the side of his face has bruised his cheekbone and loosened a molar which may necessitate removal, but his jaw is intact. I can stitch these lacerations, Mr. Holmes, or your physician can.”

“Mycroft has no damaged ribs, Watson.” Sherlock Holmes spoke in a level tone of voice, but his white-knuckled grip of my blood-stained bowler reminded me that I must look a fright with half my head covered in blood. “You, however, do.”

I nodded. “One only, and cracked only. You can wrap my ribs at Baker Street, and remind Anstruther what my ear should look like when he stitches it back together again.”

Thrashing and curses, with the clink of cuffs, announced that our assailant had come out of his chloroformed stupor.

“Dickie Jacklin,” Mac sneered, standing over the tableaux we made. “Very smart, fishing outside your waters. Thought you could kidnap a full-grown one? Couldn’t wait for toffs to wander in here lost could you?”

“How’s I to know he had a friend here, damn you?” snarled Dickie. “Great fat toff walks same way every night, every time, nobody else around, set yer watch by it. Wait, flash a bit of steel, make the nab, easy peasey. How’s I to know?” He continued to protest his inability to know as the police wrestled him none-too-gently into the wagon.

Mycroft sighed. “It is a pity that I must now take the necessity of changing my homeward route now and again, and avoid reading engrossing reports during same.”

Mac made a rude noise. “Bugger that – er, sorry, Mr. Holmes. Mr. Holmes,” he amended, looking from his stern-eyed employer to the amused “pidgeon.” “Word’ll go out from Dickie’s lot, from me, from anyone who saw or heard. You’re a hard gent to miss, begging pardon – and no one’ll touch you from now on, not after this.”

“Yes,” Mycroft rumbled. “It seems, Sherlock … that we now have a family retainer.”

“As do I,” I countered instantly, for I was in danger of blushing at the sobriquet. “Mac, a brave knight requires a sword. Use this only for self-defence, as it was created to save lives and not take them.” After a brief wipe with my handkerchief, I presented my faithful amputation blade, handle first, to the delighted lad.

“Off home with you now, Tommy,” Sherlock Holmes said, smiling for the first time since he had arrived, and the Irregular was off again like a hare. “Your turn to get into the wagon, brother mine.”

I reached into my pocket, grimacing for now I ached all over, and pulled out the gold watch and chain I had lifted from the insensible Dickie. “I believe this is yours,” I said to Mycroft, and was rewarded by my friend’s bark of laughter.

***

Mycroft Holmes’ misadventure on his way back to his Pall Mall lodgings (“You obsess over a simple matter, Sherlock; my assailant attempted a level of criminality above his means, and chose to punish me for both my resistance and his own foolishness”) did little to change his behaviour. After a week convalescing in his rooms, he returned to his government post and walked home via the same route as before, if a little more bandaged, taking Mac’s word that he was now marked as one to be avoided.

As for me, several weeks passed before I could walk with ease. Anstruther did indeed mend my ear and stitch the gash on my cheek, but Holmes insisted on tending to my ribs – and in sour moments in those long weeks I wondered if my singular friend was using me to practise mummification techniques.

My ability to walk was greatly improved by the handsome mahogany cane sent to me by the elder Holmes. Your words that night in identical circumstance was all the card said; when the gold lion head atop the cane proved to be the hilt of a sword-blade hidden in the stick, I recalled my words to Mac, and laughed.

“That should be more useful than a scalpel, the next time you find yourself in a slum after dark and surrounded by cutthroats,” said Sherlock Holmes in fond amusement. “I would prefer to ask you to return directly to Baker Street after your rounds, but since my brother is alive today owing to your detour I cannot be sorry. In any case I would have better luck asking the Thames to flow upstream.”

I grinned ruefully. “You know your Watson all too well, Holmes.”