There had always been a detective and a doctor. Before they were on paper they were already there, waiting. When the writer was ready, they went to him.

"Let me tell you how it happened," whispered the doctor.

At first the three of them were happy together. They gave the writer a life, just as he wrote their lives. But after a time, they were too much. They had given the writer the life he wanted at first, but he wanted more. He did not want to transcribe someone else's story. He wanted to write them away. He wrote a professor, and he wrote a gunman, and he wrote water. And he wrote death.

"No," said the doctor. And then the body was the same, but there were only two souls inside, not three. The writer had not been strong enough. But he his soul had been delicious. The detective licked their lips, and they picked up the pen.

Eventually the body decayed. The detective and the doctor returned to the air, but they were in the minds of the people now, so they were always greater than they were before the writer. Every eye that ate their words on a page, every tongue that tasted their names, every whorl of every finger that savored their books, fed them as they waited, always waiting, and watched themselves grow larger and stronger.

Soon there were other men who wanted to give them stories, time, power. Other men who wrote, who chose, who were. The detective and the doctor looked at them and smiled, and sometimes they helped. A whisper, a blink. The ones who wanted to write wrote, whether the detective and the doctor helped or not, but sometimes the ones who wrote heard the doctor's voice one morning and suddenly their stories became better, truer, and they were happy. The ones who were looked in the mirror in the morning and saw the detective's eyes looking back, and they were smarter, sharper, realer. The detective and the doctor were always in control; sometimes they stayed for an hour, a month, a lifetime, but the ones who listened and followed and submitted lived with them in peace until they left. The ones who rebelled were consumed.

After millennia together, the detective and the doctor had much love and much strength and much joy in each other. They gave each other gifts: the detective delighted in choosing a man, appearing in him suddenly, and saying, "I was strong and wild, brilliant and blood-made," and watching what the man created. The doctor smiled in another man and said, "Three continents and a limp." And the detective and the doctor looked and touched and ran and laughed, always laughed.

There were always more stories. And the people were always listening, reading, feeding. There was always more strength and more life.

And there were always new souls.

Sherlock Holmes was not always a detective. He was a cell, a parasite, a scream, and then he was a child. He was smart and skittery and supernova, burning burning moving being. He flew, in circles and knots and crashes and loops. There was so much to find that he could not stop to start.

He had a brother. His brother sat. There was no magic in his brother. His brother was coiled and waiting and watching, but he was only a brother.

Sherlock the child did not know how to wait. He did not know how to watch. He knew how to run and how to talk and how to live. He knew how to hide and how to hurt. He did not know how to laugh.

"I can make you great," a voice whispered in his head, one rare morning when the sun burned like the child, distant and hot and lonely, fighting with the grey-blue-wet of clouds. "I can teach you to see. I can give you strength. I can give you a forward."

Sherlock the child knew that he should not hear a voice in his head. His brother would not approve. Good.

"Yes," he whispered back.

John Watson was not always a doctor, but no one who was a doctor was born a doctor, of course. He was born a baby who grew into a boy who grew into a John, and he loved his mother and his sister and sometimes his father, and he loved his friends and his neighbors, and he loved his country. And when John and loving were not enough, he grew into wanting. His sister fell, and his sister screamed, and he stared and wanted and wished that John and loving were enough to fix his sister's skin and blood and bone and scream.

And a soul behind his eyes said, "I can give you what you want. I can help you. You can help."

He did not say yes or no. He did not ask the price. He nodded once, blinked, and then stepped forward and became and helped. And he became John and man and doctor and soldier and fixing.

Sherlock's finger hesitated. The needle was already in him, an obstacle snarling the traffic of his blood cells, waiting. Sherlock had become better at waiting since he had been taught. But not much.

"You need this," his mind whispered. "Trust me. You will see. It will hurt but you will survive. Like I do."

His mind was never wrong. Not about the important things. The muscles in his fingers pulled. He hissed and the blood screamed.

He screamed and the blood hissed. The fingers in his muscles pulled. The hand in his shoulder left, taking the bullet with it, pressing down on the wound, muffling the rush of the blood. The scream he muffled himself.

"You will survive," said his eyes. Doctor's eyes. Soldier's eyes. He looked at his shoulder and it was bad but not fatal. He would live. He would be broken, never as strong as before, but he would live.

"No," his mind whispered. "You will be broken, but you will be stronger. We will be stronger. We will be together. You will have pain and joy and life."

John began to laugh and he did not understand why. The hand that had taken the bullet wrote, "Recommend psychiatric evaluation."

The detective and the doctor waited and whispered. They were almost perfect.

The voice had been wrong. There was no joy. There was no life. Only pain. Only nothing.

John turned over and over, wall, ceiling, room, pillow, ceiling. The voice was trying to say something to him, but all he saw and all he heard was bullets and sand and screaming and blood.

"Wrong!" said his fingers. "Wrong!"

The day was colorless and lifeless just like any other. He walked with a cane now. Always forward, but it was not enough. Nothing happened. The voice had stopped trying to talk to him. Maybe it was gone. He was lonely without it. He was no longer soldier or doctor. John was not enough.

"John Watson?"

"NOW. THIS. TODAY." Pounding, screaming, burning in his brain.

He turned back.

Sherlock had not been alone since he became a detective. He talked to his mind and it listened, and sometimes it talked back, and it was constant. It was beautiful and magical and all his own. There was no one else in the world who saw and heard what he did.

"That is true," said the voice. "But it is not enough."

"What? Yes, of course it is," he said out loud, looking into the microscope. "It was always enough before. Except when it wasn't, but now there's the work."

"You need another," said the voice.

"Mrs. Hudson will be understanding about the rent."

"No. There is another. There are anothers. They he are mine ours yours. Wait. Trust me."

The door to the lab opened, and Sherlock's mind exploded.

The detective and the doctor smiled. They stopped talking. They were together now. They were more.

Sherlock and John never noticed that they no longer heard voices. They talked to each other. They did not understand, but together they were more.

They looked and touched and ran and laughed.

"And you invaded Afghanistan."

The professor was back. He was not like the detective and the doctor. He only lived in men, not in the people. The detective and the doctor did not understand why men continued to be the professor. He was only the creation of a weak writer who could not obey. The detective and the doctor did not speak of him to Sherlock and John. He was not worthy. He was only a creation. They were always. He did not have a soul. They had many. They would eat him. He would taste like death and forgetting and impermanence. He was not supposed to keep living. Why did he always return? He was only a tool meant to kill them, and he was never stronger than them.

The detective and the doctor did not see the professor. They were together. Sherlock and John were together. The professor was never meant to be there. He was never meant to live as long as the detective and the doctor. His laugh was not true. His life was not joy and together and finding. He was alone and craving and he was not supposed to be forever.

The second that John stepped out lasted lifetimes. This was wrong. The detective and the doctor had always been right even when they had to be wrong to get to right. They did not know the end of this story. They had always known their stories. The only time they had not known their story was when the writer made his own, but they had been in him and they had overcome him and become stronger. Now they were in Sherlock and John, and there was no writer, but there was a professor and there was a bomb and there was John and they did not understand.

"We both know that's not true," said the professor.

"But we are always true," said the doctor.

"We are always right," said the detective.

"I made you," said the doctor to Sherlock. "I made you my detective when my detective was making your doctor, and we should be together, and there should not be a professor. We have your souls and we are our writers. There should be no writer and there should be no gunman."

"But there is a gunman," John whispered to the detective. "This is life. This is not a story."

"This is life and a story," the doctor said. "But we are supposed to be the writers and we are supposed to be forever."

"We will be," Sherlock said.

The detective looked out of John's eyes at the doctor. John blinked, and Sherlock's mind said, "Yes."

The detective and the doctor could still be stronger. They controlled their stories. There would be burning and bright wet pain and souls and life and forever. They would be together.

They were good at waiting. And the people were always listening, reading, feeding.