Watcher (v1.1)
by Maureen S. O'Brien

8/31/01-10/2/01

Beth Lestrade was bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored. Give her clues 
to follow and she could perform the most banal legwork without a 
single complaint. Give her a stakeout and she'd find something 
interesting in sitting in one place for days on end.  But here she was, 
feeling perfectly well, but still forced to lie around in hospital for 
'observation' for a week. 

At least she had her handheld, so she wasn't completely cut off from 
the world. But she'd already surfed to all her favorite sites, caught 
up on mail that had been sitting around for months, done spring 
cleaning on her hard drive, and unsuccessfully tried to work her other 
pending cases by staring at their files and hoping new insights would 
magically arrive. 

Which they didn't, of course. Some cases just needed legwork to break 
them and plenty of it. She briefly considered using Holmes' 
Irregulars, but then put the idea away again. This wasn't Victorian 
times. Today's adults had no business using today's kids on 
investigations. Kids ought to get a chance to be kids, the way she 
mostly hadn't.

Well, if she couldn't figure out anything on the open cases, maybe 
she ought to take a look at Holmes' and Watson's report on this one. 
She smiled wryly. Watson, aspiring compudroid writer, and Holmes, 
aspiring to never do paperwork. I bet Holmes let Watson do the whole 
thing, and he just put his verification code at the end of the file.

As their supervising officer, she had access to their New Scotland 
Yard account. She retrieved the report, noting that it was datestamped 
only an hour or so after Holmes and Watson had gone home with the case 
finished successfully. Yeah, had to be Watson. 

But it wasn't. She immediately recognized the plodding prose style of 
Holmes' technical books and monographs. Holmes as a persuasive writer 
was an impish know-it-all, but as an informational one? She shook her 
head, torn between amazement that Holmes had actually written it up 
and horror that she'd have to read the thing. Well, at least it 
wasn't "The Blanched Soldier". 

But she had to know what she'd done while she was under Smith's 
control. Watson had reassured her that her flat had sustained little 
damage, and that all her books, including Dr. John Watson's precious 
journals, were unharmed. But what else had she done? The nanobots 
had de-prioritized things like memory and consciousness, and so she 
could recall no more than shards of her derangement. It wasn't 
enough.

The report was boring and complete. When she'd finished reading it, 
she shook her head. It told about what Culverton Smith had done and 
how Holmes and Watson had tracked him down, but said very little 
about her own part in this. Must be in the attachments. 

Lessee, Appendix One. List of property damage. She read it, paling. 
Mostly stuff at New Scotland Yard, and she wouldn't have to pay 
damages, of course. But she'd also smashed some personal stuff on  
people's desks, and that she'd have to do something about, whether 
she was officially responsible or not. But one entry made her smile. 
Smashing that horrible greeny-orange desk lamp of Dozinski's had 
been doing him a favor.

Appendix Two: the surviving bit of surveillance video from the 
original break-in at Midgard. Been there, done that.

Appendix Three: video and a diagram of how the puzzleboxes had been 
turned into weapons. Interesting. Looked like Holmes had discovered 
the wonders of 3D drafting software.

Appendix Four: surveillance video of events at New Scotland Yard. 
Now _that_ was what she'd been looking for. She called it up and 
watched herself leap, snarl, growl, and throw things across the 
screen. She tried to think of something funny she could say about it 
all, but her mind was blank.  There was just something disturbing 
about seeing your own eyes bereft of reason.

She switched it off. Being bored had its points.



After the third nightmare, Beth Lestrade gave up trying to sleep. 
She poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher by her bed. Her 
throat still felt raw from last night. Well, she hoped it was from 
last night. She didn't like to think that she'd been screaming in 
her sleep as well as in her dreams.

She knew she shouldn't have minded. Dr. Chang had given her a 
lecture on how nightmares were a very good way for the brain to deal 
with frightening experiences, and much quicker and easier than 
working things out while awake. But zed, if this was easier, then 
give her hard! She shuddered and got up, at least as far as the edge 
of her bed. 

Maybe she could find something to read or view in the pile of disks 
Watson had brought her. She rummaged for a moment before deciding 
that for once, she wasn't in the mood to read mysteries. But 
Watson's London Times printout was still sitting on the chair. The 
tiles sucked the heat out of her bare feet; she woke up a little 
more. That was the only reason she noticed the flicker of movement 
through the observation window in her door. 

Adrenaline was still jangling around her system from the nightmare, 
and she went on the alert. Who was out there? She crept over to the 
window as quietly as she could. No movement. But she'd seen 
something! Where was it, or was she just crazy?

Don't answer that, she told herself dryly. Then she pressed her face 
to the window, carefully looking up and down the hall. Nothing. Her 
peripheral vision caught another flicker of motion. She looked down 
and saw brown wool.

Holmes' deerstalker.

She sighed in mingled relief and exasperation. Zed, Holmes, you 
almost scared me out of my skin! What in dev.null are you doing out 
there? 

She nearly went for her keycard, opened the door and bawled him out. 
But her bare feet complained about the cold again, just as her hands 
were unhappy about the air-conditioned metal door she'd pressed them 
against. She woke up a little more. Zed, what was Holmes doing out 
there instead of being asleep in bed? Maybe he couldn't sleep, either. 
And who could blame him? Under the influence of the nanobots, she'd 
tried to kill him three times yesterday. 

She shuddered again. Her dreams kept showing her what could have 
happened if Holmes had been a little less agile or lucky. A flung 
chair, a flying tackle, hands around his neck eager to choke the 
life out of him.... She turned away from the door in horror. The 
last one had been the worst. He'd just kept lying there with his 
eyes closed, refusing to fight back. The nanobots had released her 
before she'd even touched him, but when Holmes sat up, she'd seen 
fear in his face. It had only been for a moment, but her brain kept 
rewinding it.

She gathered herself together. This was stupid. All's well that ends 
well, and Holmes had told her to forget it -- but that didn't seem 
to be working. So if it was still bothering her that much, she 
really ought to talk to him. Now seemed convenient, since he had 
come to her door. She pulled the sheet off her bed and wrapped it 
around her, feeling its fibers begin to vibrate and emit heat in 
response to her chill. Then she retrieved her precious keycard off 
the bedtable. Finally, she knocked on her door before swiping her 
keycard through the lockpad to open it. Didn't want to give the man 
a heart attack.

Holmes had evidently been sitting on the floor, but he stood to 
greet her. "Inspector," he said, nodding as if he sat outside her 
door every night. 

She nodded back, amused. "Morning, Holmes. Even if dawn's a long way 
off. Taking over from Watson and that constable?"

Holmes shrugged. "Watson was being fussy. This seemed like a quieter  
place. Besides, Culverton Smith might have friends."

She snorted. "Pigs might fly, too. But hey," she added awkwardly, "I 
appreciate the thought. And you don't have to sit outside; there's 
a perfectly good armchair in my room that Watson used...."

Holmes eyed her with amusement. "Ah, but I'm not Watson."

"So? It's no big deal. Don't go all Victorian on me."

"My dear Lestrade, do you honestly think that even in this day and 
age it would cause no comment to have me spend the night in your 
hospital room?"

She felt herself redden. Right. Supervising officer. Harassment and 
all those craters. She really was sleepy. "Then I'll bring the chair 
to you," she said, covering her embarrassment with bustle. It was a 
little bulky, but not half as heavy as the weights she used in the 
Yard gym. She'd dropped her sheet onto its seat and was carrying it 
out without thinking about it when she saw Holmes' face whiten.

She bit her lip, turned around and set it down in the doorway. "Zed, 
my arms hurt," she complained. Which was true, actually. She didn't 
heave stuff around or bend bars/lift gates every day of the week. 
"Holmes, you wanna help me drag this sucker?"

By the time she turned around, the color was back in Holmes' cheeks. 
"All those little aches and pains...it's a sign you're getting old, 
Lestrade." He bent down to pull the armchair over the threshold.

"Yeah, yeah, just 'cause _your_ body's cellular age is 25...."

Holmes smiled faintly at the old joke, but she knew he was just 
putting a good face on things. This breathed vacuum. If they were 
both gonna set off each others' flashbacks all the time, how in the 
Net were they gonna solve cases? And she couldn't just push this off 
on somebody else. She was the supervising officer. She had to figure 
out what to do. She picked her sheet back up and wrapped it around 
her while she tried to think.

Holmes sat down in the chair and steepled his fingers. "Softer than 
the floor, I must admit. Thank you, Lestrade." 

"No, thank _you_." Without asking permission, she plunked herself down 
on the floor. All the way down there, maybe she'd be less threatening. 
"I was getting tired of fighting with myself all night. Which I guess 
beats fighting _you_, but -- zed, I hate nightmares," she finished in a 
small voice. And not as much for effect as she would have liked.

"There I am lucky," Holmes said, steepling his fingers. "I believe 
that I do have nightmares, and normal dreams as well; we are told 
that everyone has them. But I never remember them after I awaken."

She shouldn't have let him change the subject like that, but it was 
just so weird a piece of information that she couldn't leave it alone. 
"You never remember your dreams?"

"No, never."

Her lips quirked. "What, never?"

"Well, hardly ever," Holmes allowed, finishing the G&S reference. "I 
suppose from your disbelief that you remember them vividly."

"Of course," she said. "I log the really good ones in my personal 
journal. It's like having your own entertainment channel every night. 
Well, most of the time." She refused to shiver, but she did permit 
herself a nice exaggerated grimace. "Tonight I'm apparently showing a 
horror marathon. How about you?"

He pulled his legs up into the chair with him. "I must admit that I 
am developing a certain dislike for the Yard's computer core. Who in 
the world decided to put access in the middle of the room, on a 
bridge?"

"Oh, that was Kirby. Did a lot of New London after the Great War -- 
_our_ Great War, that is -- and I guess he was just a little too 
influenced by early 20th century sequential illustration. But it 
does help keep the core cool." She shifted uneasily in her place. 
"So, are they gonna be able to fix the railing?"

"Do you remember that?"

She shook her head. "Not...really. I read your report."

He nodded, almost with relief. "Oh, yes. But I understand your 
superiors aren't pleased. That railing was made out of some very 
strong materials, on the understanding that it wouldn't break. 
You've exposed a safety hazard."

"Or so you spun it," she added ruefully. "You know, I have a feeling 
I'm gonna owe you about a thousand favors after this one."

"Then tell me, as a favor, how you broke that railing."

Even as tired as she was, the old drills came through. "Adrenaline," 
she said without skipping a beat. "What'd they use to call it? A 
madwoman's strength?" As she spoke, she rose, careful to appear 
unhurried. Time to go. 

"And going mad allowed you to jump down several stories and land on 
your feet? Or elude New Scotland Yard's security like a ghost?"

She shrugged. "I guess. Hey, you fell down into Reichenbach and 
managed to grab that tree." Her hand reached for the safety of the 
door.

"I've been known to bend pokers back into shape, but I've never 
ripped a hospital bed and all its equipment right off the floor it 
was bolted onto. An athlete may be very strong and adrenalin permits 
incredible feats, but I've never heard of anyone doing all that in a 
single day without even pulling a muscle." His tone softened. "Come 
now, Lestrade. I think it's time you told me the truth about 
yourself."

She knew exactly what he was doing. She was tired and stressed, and 
he was whipsawing her emotions to find out what he wanted to know. 
Standard interrogation technique. But she could ignore that. 

What she couldn't ignore was that he was her friend, and she'd 
almost gotten him killed. He deserved to know what he'd gotten into. 
But on the other hand stood her family's training and all the fear 
she'd learned from her youth. People didn't like their kind. If 
anyone ever found out, it could mean losing everything she'd worked 
for. Everything. 

But what the dev.null. She'd never listened to what anybody else 
said before. Why should she start now? She turned back around. Heck, 
if she couldn't trust Holmes, who could she trust?

Still, she wasn't stupid. She understood precautions. "Will you give 
me your word not to tell anyone about any of this?"

He looked hurt. "We are friends, or so I thought. And I can keep 
a confidence."

"I know," she said unhappily. "But this is more than just me. You've 
got to promise."

"Very well, you have my word. I will not communicate the information 
you give me to anyone in any way. Is that sufficient?"

"Yeah. And thanks." She paced while she picked her words carefully. 
"Look. Do you remember the Biotech case?"

"Ah." His tone strove for mere comprehension, but she heard his 
satisfaction at being right. "Not the first time someone had tried 
making a better soldier, then."

"Not hardly. There was a case in Meridiana back in the 1990's, and 
another in Wyoming at the beginning of the last century. Neither 
was entirely successful. They both possessed weaknesses similar to 
those of Biotech's little project, and they didn't breed entirely 
true. Luckily." 

"Go on."

She shrugged. "I'm a little bit stronger and a little bit faster. I 
heal a little faster. I have to take some vitamins most people don't. 
No big deal." She shrugged again. "If nobody finds out, that is. If 
they do...well, I'd rather get the crazy people trying to kill me 
for polluting the gene pool than the offers I can't refuse."

"Are you speaking from personal experience?"

"Some of my cousins had troubles."

"You didn't answer my question," he observed mildly. "But I shan't 
press you. I assume this explains your invisible family."

"Well, we try not to be too connected with each other. If somebody's 
cover gets blown, we don't want to lead the bad guys to the rest of 
us." She cocked her head and looked down at him suspiciously. 
"You're certainly taking this well."

"My dear Lestrade, I have been brought back from the dead to live in 
a world of space travel and prosthetic eyeballs. Next to Victor 
Trevor, Moriarty, and myself, you and your family barely count as an 
oddity." He granted her an actual smile. "Although I shall take it 
as a favor if you avoid leaping from roof to roof from now on."

"No problem," she agreed fervently. "I don't heal _that_ fast."

But she noticed the whole height thing really seemed to be bothering 
him. Reichenbach flashbacks, she thought unhappily. That was all 
this whole thing needed.

"Good," Holmes said. "I was a great deal more worried by what you 
did by yourself than what you tried to do to me."

She sat back down Indian-style, tucking her cold feet under the hem 
of the hospital gown. "Well, it must have bothered you, at least a 
little." She tried to make it a joke. "After all, you've been at war 
with women all your life."

"More escape and evasion than open warfare," he said, barking out a 
laugh. 

Sure. She'd read Watson's appalled journal entries of some of Holmes' 
nastier misogynistic moments, and that wasn't entirely the truth. 
Still, Holmes'd always kept those comments for male company, and 
he'd figured out earlier than most that, duh, women were intelligent. 
As for the rest, she didn't care if Holmes wanted to rail about 
romance and zed, she'd heard stuff just as bad from women about 
men. He'd said something to her face exactly once, and she'd said 
something back, and that had been the end of it.

But there was more to it than that, and every Sherlockian knew it. 
She hated it sometimes, knowing more about his family and his past 
than was fair. "I was actually more concerned about the other 
thing."

"The other thing?"

"The parental thing."

His tone turned ice cold. "I had my fill of psychologists when I 
first became a consultant for the Yard. If my mother went mad and 
killed my father, that is my business."

She stared at him, now truly appalled. "But...but she didn't! I 
thought you knew that!"

"What?" He stared back.

"Sure she went mad, but she didn't kill your father. The forensic 
records, the position of the defensive wounds, the obvious posing 
of the corpse... and heck, the letter found at the scene that was 
allegedly from her old boyfriend was clearly from a stalker...." 
Her voice trailed off. "You really didn't know." 

Everybody had always figured that he'd figured it out later on. 
Guess everybody was wrong.

"No, apparently I didn't." His lips twisted with anger, but his eyes 
were far away, accessing memories he must have locked away long ago. 
"I was a child. I wasn't allowed to look at any of it, or attend 
the trial, or even visit my mother in the asylum before we were 
whisked off to our relatives in Yorkshire. I did not choose to 
wallow in my childhood traumas after I was grown. But no doubt you 
wrote an article on it in that yellow journal that has nothing better 
to do than publish jokes and lies about Watson's life and mine."

"Well, actually, yeah," she said quietly. "I was the one who noticed 
that the judge's handwriting matched the letter's." She wrapped her 
sheet around her, carefully not looking at Holmes. "I'm going to get 
a drink of water," she announced to the world at large. She went 
back in her room, poured herself a glass, and drank it, silently 
cursing herself as being bone-stupid. She took her time. When she 
was done, she walked back outside. Holmes was sitting there quite 
calmly, to all outward appearance. She hoped it was to inward 
appearance, too.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm an idiot."

"Hardly." He smiled at her, which made her feel worse.

"What I mean is...I didn't mean to...I don't mean to keep...." 
Hurting you, she wanted to say. "I just keep screwing up big time. 
Like I'm Nemesis or a Fury or something."

"My dear Lestrade," he said, "may I suggest that we both will need 
quite a bit more sleep before being at our best. And it's difficult 
to worry about a Fury who somehow manages to start a fire in her 
apartment without scorching a single book, or even permanently 
destroying a piece of evidence. Do you know, one could write quite a 
nice little monograph on how, as with hypnotism, the mind somehow 
manages to stay in control enough not to do anything it truly does 
not want to do."

"Except try to kill you," she said morosely. "I hope you're not 
saying I...."

"Not at all," he assured her. "Oh, you tried...and yet, with all 
your martial arts training -- which we are told becomes instinctive -- 
you did not once attack or block me with a formal move. Nor, with all 
the ionisers in New Scotland Yard and your own easily available at 
your flat, did you once use a gun. Suggestive, is it not?"

She looked up at him. He was quite serious, and certainly he would 
not have said it if he didn't think it was true. Yet she was quite 
sure that he had said it solely for her comfort. "I guess you're 
right, Holmes. I never thought of that," she said. "Thanks. It 
helps. It helps a lot."

Of course he ate that up. He loved being right. But if she didn't 
think it was true, she wouldn't've said it, either. She got up. 
Time to go to bed before she did anything else stupid.

"But you really took that all into consideration when you were 
trying to stop me?" she asked, unable to stop herself. "I mean, 
sheesh, if you'd been wrong I would've made a heckuvan enemy."

He closed his eyes. "You are not the enemy," he said. "I have always 
known that." His voice grew very quiet. "It is what you are that 
puzzles me."

For a moment, she couldn't feel the cold tiles beneath her for the 
wave of heat that washed over her. She could hardly breathe, and 
something in the way Holmes sat suggested she wasn't alone. She 
opened her mouth with no idea what she would say.

"Call me Beth," she offered, knowing what that used to mean. "It 
might help you figure it out."

"So it might," he said. His voice sounded as strange as her own. 
"But it might take me some time to...to get used to it."

"No expiration date," she said.

"Good."