Set post Hiatus.

Notes for the reader – I write hurt/comfort, it's what I do. The challenge is always to keep the voices as true as possible while telling a story I want to read. For this tale, I was hearing Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke, for the most part. Two small items - ginger beer is a very strong but non-alcoholic drink with natural carbonation. French was taught to most Victorian gentlemen.

Chapter 1

I settled my black bag in the corner and turned to assist my friend through the compartment door. He, in turn, was reluctant; he had been chatting with the porter about the other passengers on our lightly-traveled train since we had stepped down from the trap. We'd gone slowly, Holmes summarily dismissing my suggestion of a wheeled chair, and now I could tell he was wearying rapidly.

I glanced behind Holmes' back at the younger man, whose dusky face was animated. When I caught his eye and tipped my head toward my friend, though, he understood with impressive speed and broke off his conversation.

"We should be getting you settled, Mr. Holmes," he said amiably. "I'll stop by with the latest gen once we're on our way, shall I?"

It was the work of moments to have my friend seated, feet up on the other seat (he firmly refused to have his bed made up early, I had fought and lost that argument already) and well wrapped. I tried to tip the porter but he raised a hand in denial, aimed a smile of dazzling brightness in his dark face at my friend, and left us.

"You've made another friend," I teased him gently. "I shall be concerned for my standing."

"Since you have made me somewhat known with your scribbles you should be blaming yourself," he retorted. "Still, he's quite a sensible young man with a good eye for detail."

"Another fan," I mock sighed.

"I do have a certain cachet, now." His ego was bolstered by the young man's obvious admiration and I had to own I was pleased. This trip was already beginning to bring him out of the depression that so often accompanies recovery from a severe injury.

"Cachet?"

"Je ne sais quoi?" he replied innocently.

"Allez-tu parler francais tout le voyage?"

He smiled, one of the first easy smiles I had seen from that hollowed face. "Not if you don't want to, old chap."

I returned the grin, and busied myself hanging our coats and hats, and arranging our various items of ease for our trip. There was a table near the window that could be folded – I lifted it and placed our reading materials within easy reach. There was a small washstand secured in one corner, it held a basin, soap, jug with fresh water, and several clean towels.

I had requested Mrs. Hudson prepare several packets of sandwiches, which I put near the papers, and finally, our immediate area prepared to my satisfaction, I sat and watched the activity in the station as the train made ready to leave.

Holmes was already dozing in the corner, and I noted his respirations professionally.
They were moderately deep and regular, no longer tentative and shallow as they had been for so long. He was indeed recovering nicely.

oOoOo

I crouched behind the pews, trying desperately to locate Holmes. Each time I chanced peering over, an all too familiar sound - a bullet's whine - kept me behind the reassuring thickness of English oak. Carefully, I made my way down the aisle, half crouching, until I saw an outflung foot, a scrap of coat just visible. The attacker was moving from cover to cover in the sacristy, and I had no interest in exchanging shot for shot randomly - I needed to get to Holmes, bring him to some modicum of safety and determine his injuries, as surely as I needed to draw the next breath.

I worked my way across between the pews toward that sight like a child amusing itself during a tedious sermon. I had kept count, and knew that the shooter had one, perhaps two more bullets - just shy of breaking into the open of the main aisle I beckoned him to use it by 'accidentally' presenting myself as a target. He fired, chipping the back of the pew, sending splinters showering. Then I peered around the edge, gun ready, and presented another small target.

The shape of the sacristy brought a tiny 'click' echoing to my ears, and I moved out from cover, dropping to one knee beside my friend. He was curled towards me, and though his eyes were half-open he did not seem to see me. I kept my ears forward and took a moment to examine the wound while still trying to plan our escape - the space between pews would not serve for retreat. And then my fingers found the warmth of blood - more than I had expected - and in his upper abdomen…I swore soundlessly. The villain had shot Holmes in the stomach.

I looked up from my examination and glanced behind me - would that St. Jude's had been a small country church! The main aisle stretched away in both directions, and looked as long as the Thames was broad. I should have held Holmes back when we arrived, I should have made him wait for Lestrade, only a moment or two behind us, but when he was hot on the trail it was like attempting holding back a train.

Then I felt a sinister regard and looked back towards the altar. Julius Dabney stood in the soft, religious light of the stained glass windows, re-loaded gun at the ready. I had no knowledge of how he had come so close without sound. Then I looked at his feet briefly, and saw the reason. He had been a sailor, after all, in one his many criminal enterprises. Rope soled shoes were nothing exotic to him.

Under my hand, I felt Holmes shake off the daze, he gasped and jerked, and bit back a cry. I leaned forward and grasped his shoulder to turn him carefully flat, hoping Dabney had not seen I was armed, hoping I could conceal the weapon between Holmes and I and find some moment to use it; but Dabney interrupted, or perhaps divined, my plan.

"Lay down your gun, Doctor, and stand up."

I looked down at Holmes, who nodded slightly, and I felt a curious tickle at my left knee. Without looking down, I realized he had slid his own gun up, shielded by his wounded body, to be accessible.

I leaned over Holmes' torso and placed my revolver down carefully with my right hand, and then made a show of getting to my feet with a grunt of effort that concealed the susurrus noise of my retrieving Holmes' gun. Standing, I kept my left side slightly turned by stepping over my friend with my right leg, nudging my own gun across the marble with my foot in hopes that the sound would distract him. It did not, so fixated was he on the man currently gasping his life out on the cold stone floor.

"We'll just wait a tic, shall we?" Dabney said, sounding for an instant like a carriage driver delayed by a bit of traffic. "It won't be long. I've no interest in you, just him. Come on, step over. You're obstructing the view."

He did gesture with his gun but it didn't waver far enough for me to take advantage. We needed a better distraction than that. I shook my head and stayed where I was, knowing that it was a false sense of protection - for my dearest friend was already dying. Dabney did not repeat the command.

"You appear to have an irrational hatred for him," I said flatly, trying to contain my anger and fear.

Dabney shrugged. "He's made a fool of me on no less than four occasions. When one is the leader of a group such as mine, once respect is gone, your life might as well be over. Killing the scourge of the criminal world, being the person who rid us of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, I will have my power again."

From the corner of my eye I saw Lestrade moving slowly down the side of the pews, lost in shadow, dressed in black. Mourning clothes, my mind supplied humorlessly, but I took a deep breath and kept my gaze on the madman before me.

"You won't make it out, Dabney. Let me tend to Holmes and I'll arrange safe passage – I can do that." I wasn't certain that I could, but I was desperate, what little I'd seen of the wound was not encouraging.

"You remind me of my brother, Doctor – loyal. Loyal to a fault, like a faithful dog, and pitifully unaware of what it takes to grab power and hold it." He looked down at Holmes again, a satisfied smile spreading over his face.

It took all my strength not to drop back to my knees as I heard my friend whimpering in pain; felt his arm move against my ankle, hand scrabbling at the floor, and come upon my trouser leg and grip there, helpless against the throb and burning of the bullet within him; but I began to be as focused as I had been in Afghanistan. Deliberately, I strove to ignore everything but the threat and my one possibility of action.

It all depended on Lestrade and his powers of observation and deduction, which – though not of Holmes' standards – were still above those of the average Yarder, possibly because of his long association with my friend. I saw the slight movement stop and calculated it was just about the point that Lestrade might have reasonably been expected to see that I was, in fact, armed.

It would happen soon, I knew, and I felt my body tense, there was no sound in my ears, I no longer heard my friend's cries, there was only me and my enemy, and the time stretched out between us.

Then there was a sharp crack, a bang, as a pew was tipped forward to fall with a clatter on the heavy stones.

I saw Dabney dart his eyes to the sound for just a second, a fraction of a second, and it was all I needed to bring my weapon up from behind me, turn slightly, fire.

I aimed for his heart.

I knew nothing less would stop him; alive, he would be a constant threat, and I shot him in the heart with my left hand, blessing my old instructors for their thoroughness, "who knows if you'll be shot in your good hand, maggot, what if you only have the one hand left, what then?" they said, and I knew my shot was true for Dabney dropped down like a sack, like Holmes had…

I held my stance for a second, then realized I hadn't breathed properly in several moments. There was shouting and then Lestrade was there, taking my – Holmes's gun, and I said nothing to his urgent questions but turned to my friend again, dropping down and calling for help and a doctor's bag.