AN: Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes (as portrayed) and all related characters belong to Laurie R. King. Everyone else belongs to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Thanks to History Place for the source information and Jop4722 for the quote.

Incendium

By The Lady Razorsharp

Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too. Heinrich Heine

May 12, 1933

Holmes threw down the newspaper, muttering and (no doubt) cursing under his breath as the pages sank into an untidy heap around his slippered feet. He stared into the fire, tapping his long index finger against his lips as if he were puzzling out a particularly tough point of deduction. This did not last long, and he thrust himself up out of his chair and moved to the window.

Catching the movement out of the corner of her eye, Russell looked up from the manuscript she was translating. "Holmes?" she queried, regarding him blurrily before pushing her glasses back up on her nose.

"The whole world is going insane, Russell," Holmes muttered, his voice bouncing back to her from the salt-stained glass. "And here I sit, with not a damned thing I can do about it."

Russell laid down her pen with a half-stifled sigh. "Maybe not you, Holmes, but others like you can do something. Let those you've trained bear the burden now." Even as she uttered the words, Russell knew she was shouting into a hurricane, and automatically braced herself for the backlash.

"Oh, for God's sake, Russell!" Holmes thundered, whirling on her. "Spare me your platitudes about my 'long years of faithful service' and all such rubbish." He marched to the mantle and plucked his pipe from its stand. "Mycroft…" he began, but his face tightened and he turned away to busy himself with filling the pipe.

Despite her stern warnings to herself, Russell's eyes filled with tears at the mention of Mycroft Holmes. With a brain superior even to that of his rapier-sharp younger brother, Mycroft had lent his counsel to kings, queens, and ministers as a high-level government official. Massive in spirit and intellect as well as frame, the man had gone quietly to his reward two years earlier, leaving behind a capable force to carry on the business of International Exports. Russell knew what Holmes could not say: Mycroft would have been able to help, or at least connect Holmes with those in need of guidance, but was now and forevermore beyond concerning himself with the woes of humankind.

Clouds of smoke rolled towards her, letting Russell know Holmes had managed to get his pipe to draw cleanly during her moments of musing. "Did you see the paper, Russ," Holmes murmured, his back still turned to her.

"Which one? Today's?" Russell scraped back her chair and stood with her arms above her head, stretching out the kinks.

"No, of course you haven't," Holmes corrected himself. "You've been huddled over your Hebrew verbs all day." He swept up the papers with a flourish and handed them to his bride of nearly ten years. "Though I must admit I'm not surprised at your failure to clamor after the news of the day; ancient history foreshadows the troubles of the present."

"Only the names change," Russell agreed, her blue eyes scanning the lines on the front page. There was a large photograph in the middle of the page, featuring a crowd of people gathered around a huge, jumbled pile. Everyone in the crowd was pointing toward the sky in an odd fashion, and here and there in the pile there were blurry objects nestled within a mass of right angles, almost like snowflakes alighted on a grassy hillside…

Alighted…lit…

Horror stole the breath from Russell's chest as her eyes slid down to the caption. Book burning ceremony held by the National Socialist Party on 10 May in Berlin.

"They burned books," she choked out. "Oh, God, Holmes…they burned…Why?"

"You needn't read the article, Russell. I apologize; I should not have asked it of you." Holmes was before his wife in the space of a heartbeat, dragging the paper from her hands. "I can tell you what it said: Germany glowed with unholy fire that night. The rest is morbid details."

"But…the books," Russell whispered, as Holmes took her ink-stained fingers and brought them to his lips.

"Come to bed, wife. Your books are still safe, and they will keep for another night."

The world that knew Sherlock Holmes as a cold, calculating 'thinking machine' would not have known this man lying beside her, Russell thought, settling deeper into the circle of his arms. The world could not guess that those long, white fingers would be gentle enough to set his wife's body to trembling with a touch, nor could it fathom the smolder of desire lit deep within the gray depths of his steely gaze. Such had been their reality tonight, as Holmes had reminded his wife that the glow of their rapport burned brighter and purer than any ill-set pyre of books. With those remembrances filling her mind, Russell surrendered to the drowsy warmth of her husband's protective embrace and slept.

What was that smell?

She was standing in the courtyard at Oxford, silver moonlight spilling over the well-traveled grounds. What hour was it? She strained to listen for the bells, but all was silent.

The wind whipped past her, bringing with it a renewed burst of the strange odor. She wrinkled her nose, almost sneezing. The smell was heavy, acidic, like someone burning trash. Leaves, or papers, maybe…

A bit of grey fluff floated down to her, and she sat on her haunches to look at it. She wished Holmes were here; he could identify ashes at a glance.

Holmes? A spasm of panic seized her; where was Holmes? Then she remembered. He was asleep. Safe.

Another bit of ash, then another, drifting down on the dust-scented wind. She got to her feet and realized that ash was raining from the sky like snow, blanketing the grounds and blotting out the moonlight. Orange streaks were spreading across the ground, replacing the spill of quicksilver. She could see her shadow thrown upon the path now, limned in topaz light.

In utter dread, she whirled to face the stately building she had once called her second home.

The Bodlein was burning.

A roll of papyrus came to rest at her feet, its edges on fire. She reached for it, but the wind whisked the roll away before she could grab it and stamp it out. A gray-haired woman chased after it and disappeared into the night.

The plaintive strains of a solo violin floated to her on the smoky air, and Holmes, dressed in the rough clothes of a dock laborer, plodded past her while coaxing mournful sounds from his Stradivarius.

"The books," he whispered. "Please, brother Mycroft. Save the books."

Before she could draw breath to call out to Holmes, she felt someone tugging at her elbow. It was Watson, his clothes smeared with soot and his blue eyes filled with tears.

"The manuscripts…all my notes…all our adventures. I tried so hard to save them." He hung his head and wept. "Now they're all gone. No one will ever remember the name of Sherlock Holmes."

Glass tinkled as the windows burst out of the Bodlein. Mycroft lumbered out of the flames, a pile of blackened books in his hands. He gave them to her, and she turned them over to reveal the titles stamped on the covers: Further Reminisces. A History of Dartmoor. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of the Baskervilles. They came apart in her hands, and she let them fall around her feet.

A young man walked toward her, his face an echo of Holmes' features. Cradling a large, crumbling tome in his hands, he approached with tears streaming down his face. He gave the book to her, and she turned it over to see the title.

Sophia.

"Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," called a woman's voice in the distance. A petite woman walked out of the fire, her head and shoulders draped in a shawl that had once been beautiful, but was now irreparably scorched on the edges. She held out her hands.

"Come, my daughter. Pray with me. Pray for all who love you and all whom you love."

She felt the words on her tongue, but could not force them out. Hear, Israel…

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," rang out a strong voice, as Sabine Baring-Gould stepped up next to the woman in the shawl.

"Salaam Allah," called Mamoud and Ali, just beyond Gould.

"Our Father, who art in Heaven," murmured Watson from her left.

Holmes' voice was in her ear. "Amen," he whispered.

"Amen!" Russell gasped, sitting bolt upright in bed.

Holmes was instantly awake. "Good Lord, Russell!" He snapped on the light to reveal the familiar room, staring at his wife's flushed face with alarm. "Are you all right?"

Taking two deep breaths did much to slow her heart's wild hammering, and she nodded. "I will be." She tried to smile sheepishly at her husband, but knew from the deepening of his frown that she did not succeed. "I was dreaming about the books. The Bodlein was on fire."

Holmes didn't speak, but nodded with understanding.

"I'm all right. I'm going to get some water; I'll be right back," Russell added, when she saw her husband reaching to put on his dressing gown.

Not wanting to spend much time away from Holmes' comforting presence, Russell scrambled down to the kitchen and filled a tumbler with two fingers of water from the faucet. The water tasted strongly of the earth from the well the pipes were tapped into, but it was good and cold, and seemed to quench the last vestiges of the fiery dream.

She ascended the steps just in time to see Holmes, clad in his dressing gown after all, standing by the window. With a series of small movements long made automatic, he struck a match to light his pipe.

"No!" The cry burst from her before she could stop it, and Holmes paused halfway with the bit of wood to his pipe. Immediately, he blew out the tiny flame.

They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Holmes placed his pipe on the table and threw the burnt match into a porcelain dish with its predecessors. He slipped out of his dressing gown, moonlight silvering his bare shoulders as he climbed back into bed.

She wasted no time in following suit, and was soon fast asleep beside him.

End-