A/N: All the weird descriptions Watson gave of Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (you know, the ones that contradict just about everything we know about him) are worth explaining, and that's what I've tried to do, calling upon the early, Early days in Baker Street, even before Holmes has deigned to explain what the heck it is he does for a living, and they really aren't sure yet whether they quite like each other.

Well that, and a romantic bit about that really winning woman (SIGN) that Holmes seems to have known at some point. For all the silly Holmes romances on ff.n, nobody ever talks about that most interesting of references. I mean, come on people! So much possibility for speculation there, really. Of course, if you know the reference, you know why happy fluffy romances tend not to be written about her.

So, I've done it. I've written about her. And it isn't very romantic at all, really. It's more along the lines of really really weird.

Speaking of really really weird, I am not sure what possessed me to write this in exactly this way. I promise, it made sense at the time. I'm curious about whether this sort of strangeness works, though.

So anyway.

Enjoy!

[Other note—this draws upon events of The Skeleton (' nother story of mine) as background, just a little bit, so knowing that would help.]

The Most Winning Woman

It is the Spring of 1881, and life is insufferably dull. Business is slow, and I have thrown in my lot with one who gives every possible appearance of being one of the dullest men in London. By dull I more mean boring than mentally obtuse; were he less intellectually capable he might have had at least the amusing qualities of the utter fool, but he forsakes even that departure from utter typicality, and thus is, I may repeat, one of the dullest men in London.

He is a wounded army doctor by the name of Watson, shot in Afghanistan, and shipped back to a homeland that holds neither family nor friends for him, which is why he is recuperating in my (yes, our, but that is not the point) sitting room day in and day out, living upon his soldier's pension and prying into my business. I would perhaps, not be quite so testy with him were I willing that he should know my business, but I have resolved to show nothing of myself to him, and so fall back vindictively upon my absolute best behavior. Even in my blackest moods, I never snap at him; even when he pries clumsily into my affairs, attempting to do so without my knowledge and only the most innocent and general of questions, I never call his bluff. I hide the cocaine needle fanatically, and never give him a hint of what it is I do for the clients for whose presence I am perpetually bundling him out of the sitting room. The insufferable Dr. John Watson knows nothing of me, my life, or my work, and thus, I have resolved, it will stay.

Watson enters with a limp and his hand gripping his shoulder. The pain seems slightly more pronounced than is usual. I glance out the window at the sky—no clouds that I can see, but it will rain soon: my companion is an excellent barometer, if nothing else. He follows my gaze out the window, sees nothing, and goes to it to look down at Baker Street outside, which is invisible from my angle. He is, at least, wise enough not to speak to me at present.

Someone catches his attention. A pretty woman? No, he is more curious than admiring. His very expressive, if not very perceptive, eyes are alight with it. His gaze follows the person up and down the street, but always within a certain distance of our window—judging by the angle of his gaze... thirty feet. A person strange enough to capture Watson's notice, pacing outside our rooms? A client, surely. Pacing seems rapid, repetitive... a woman would not range so far nor with such a violent pace, with so little regard to the spectacle she was making. Watson pauses—the man must be hesitating. Doorbell in 5... 4... 3... 2...

"Mr. Holmes!"

"Show him up, Mrs. Hudson."

"A client, Holmes? I'll retire to my room then." Watson casts an inquisitive look at the door, but, the perfect gentleman, he does not tarry to satisfy his curiosity. The folds of his coat, I see as he goes out, are a little more pronounced than is usual. He's been scrimping of late, seems to have lost two pounds, which at his present recuperating and emaciated state, he can ill afford. Judging by the smudge of blue beside his thumb, he has lost money at billiards. It is five now. I will treat him to dinner at a restaurant when this client leaves.

The client enters, a tailor, an absolutely horrendous one, who seems to have recently come upon prosperity, regardless. Probably inherited. His hat proclaims that his wife is not fond of him, but, judging by his collar, another woman is. The workmanship of his whole outfit is the same... his own, surely... no one else would wear it. I can just make out the name on the inside of his coat collar.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Klein," I say.

-----------------

Watson is blithe and bonny at dinner: without anything like gluttony in him, he nevertheless enjoys good food, and is irked when he cannot get it. He looks at me with a rather charming sheepishness, well aware of his unseemly curiosity. He is about to ask about business again.

"How is business, Holmes?"

"Not bad."

"Any new breakthroughs?"

"Yes."

"Oh. That's good. Er, congratulations."

"Thank you."

"Something to rival the discoveries of Copernicus, no doubt." He grins, mocking my secrecy. Two can play at mockery.

"Who?" I ask, raising my eyebrows and gazing languidly at the wine in my glass.

"Copernicus? Holmes!"

"Yes, Watson?"

"You have heard of Copernicus, surely."

"Who is that?"

"Why, the fellow who discovered that the earth revolves around the sun, rather than vice versa!"

"The earth revolves around the sun?"

"Holmes! You must have known that."

"You appear to be astonished," I say, grinning, for he believes me entirely. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.

"To forget it!"

...And I give him an impromptu monologue on the necessity of knowing only the information that is vital to my work. It is not a bad monologue, except that I have never had any way of knowing what is or is not vital to my work, and so generally need to know as much about everything as I possibly can. My work, my work: I allude to it, directly allude to it, and I can almost see the obvious question poised on the tip of his tongue... will he ask me this time?

No, ever the gentleman, he looks down at the table with a little exasperated twitch of his mouth. He is dying of curiosity, and he will not breathe a word of it. I wonder if I am more impressed or irritated by his forbearance: if he would be rude on occasion, I wouldn't have to behave so correctly all the time... early to bed, early to rise, morocco case as hidden as I can possibly keep it... damn the good doctor.

Watson has gone silent... eyes on no particular object, rather a rhythmic tic to their gaze, up, down, up, down... mental checklist. He is trying to determine what it is I do for a living, again.

I laugh, and call for the check.

-----------------

It is nearly nine o'clock: an hour before I retire, according to my Watson-induced disciplines. I was freer when I lived with my brother! But I am playing the violin, Lieder, for Watson, and at the moment I do not mind him so much.

The bell. I break off playing—a client, at this time of night? The rain Watson had forecast is already falling. Such desperation is encouraging. Watson smiles and rises.

"I think I will retire early Holmes. Good night." I nod. He encounters her in the hallway—it is shadowy, but I know she is female by her step and his deference. She enters. Dark hair, near forty, decent clothing but much worn, more than one small child at home, recently widowed, actress.

And I know her.

["...To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate: come come come come, give me your hand: what's done cannot be undone: to bed, to bed, to bed."]

You are in your pasteboard armor, but your scene is not for some time. There is time to listen. She comes through the folds of curtains, begins to blow out the candle, sees you, and smiles. She knows you listen to the scene with the same fascination every night, while she wrings away the invisible spots on her white hands. She does not understand why; she misattributes. She does not know it is about the blood, on your hands also, but, womanlike, she knows she is wearing a nightdress. It is only a costume, but it is also a nightdress, and you are seventeen. You look around, and there are no other actors there in that space of curtains, and you lick your lips and think of excuses to disappear.

["Will she go now to bed?"]

She is smirking at you; she can read your mind, and your excuses will not work on her. She is nearly thirty, and married to the man that plays Macbeth, but that means that she knows the world better than you do, for all that you have done.

["Directly."]

She approaches you, and her smirk is infuriating, but you are too terrified to be infuriated. Her hair is dark and loose and curls down to her waist, and the candlelight makes of it a russet halo that should not be there. The candlelight shows that the material of her pale nightgown is thin and frilly. It shows that the edges of her eyes are crinkled with amusement, and it shows that she is beautiful.

"Sherlock," she says, testing out the name. You discover too late that the curtain behind you covers blank wall. She is nearly as tall as you are, and she is quite close now. The crinkles beside her eyes deepen. She blows out the candle, and there are lips on your lips. Then she leaves you alone with your own hammering heartbeat.

"Sherlock Holmes," says the actress in my sitting room. I have not seen her in ten years. She was talented when I knew her, but her ability has not brought her fortune. Her husband drank the money they earned; that I knew before. He has died and left her money in peace, but he has also left her children who will eat it. I try to be sorry for her, but she is too self-possessed to be pitied.

She looks very much the same.

I, however, am not the same. I am twenty-seven, not seventeen. I have run criminals to the ground, and dealt with every possible permutation of person in the city of London. They come to me for help. I am not afraid of actresses.

"Mrs. Roland. Please, sit down." She sits on the edge of the sofa, and the heretofore imperturbable poise of her demeanor is softened by her pleading eyes. She has also come to me for help.

"I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Roland."

"Thank you. You have become very much the gentleman, Mr. Holmes." She pulls at the fingers of her gloves. "It is about my husband's death that I have come to see you." She wrings her hands. I draw my chair nearer and put my hands over hers: she will not give me a rational account if she is distressed. She smiles up at me with deep gratitude.

-------------------

The death of Mr. Roland has been ruled a heart attack, and, stopping by the coroner's, I admit to myself that this looks very much like the truth. Mrs. Roland fears that there was foul play, but I can find no evidence for it.

I wonder for a while in the hansom home why I have taken this case, and how soon I can officially manage to drop it. But when I reach my rooms, Mrs. Hudson tells me that Mrs. Roland is already waiting for me.

Mrs. Roland looks up as I enter. I sit down in front of her as I did last time, preparing myself to explain, but she anticipates my news.

"It was nothing, wasn't it? Heart trouble, as they told me. I am sorry that I wasted your time, Mr. Holmes, and I thank you for your trouble. You have put my mind at rest, at least, though I am afraid the great benefit of your actions falls more on my side than on yours."

It is very much what I have been thinking up until this point, but something in her declaration of it makes it less true.

"Mrs. Roland," I find myself saying as I stand up, "I am happy to have been of service, regardless of the result."

She rises also, and steps close to me. I can smell her perfume, cloying in a thick haze, and I can almost smell the dust of the curtains and the burning tallow that once accompanied that scent.

I am taller this time, though not much. I am not a child that can be intimidated, that is the point.

Her face is upturned, and her eyes are more wary than last time, offering me a choice.

I incline my head towards her, curious. Odd: another human mouth tastes much like one's own. Possibly saliva has a taste to which we become too accustomed to register? Though is a taste that we cannot taste a coherent concept? Does taste exist in concept beyond the man's own conception of his ability to feel it? Lips are firmer than I would have expected, but they seem to vary in pliability according to the contortion of the mouth. The tongue is a surprisingly contradictory combination of firm and soft, but really, given its linguistic adaptability, I should have realized as much. In logical terms, it is very strange thing that we are doing. Wherefore have we this inclination to press mouths together in this fashion? And what weakness brings me to do so now?

Then she breaks off and leaves me standing breathless in my own sitting room, wondering what I am to make of her. This time, though, she smiles over her shoulder at me as she disappears.

It is a week later. Mrs. Roland—Emily?—has come in, crying. I sit her down, soothe her as best I can, but it is several minutes before she can explain.

"My children... Oh God... Sherlock..."

"Tell me—" I avoid using her name, unsure of how to address her— "tell me what happened."

"Oh God... this morning... I found them there, I don't know, I don't know what happened..."

"Mrs. Roland, I cannot help you if you will not tell me anything. Are your children all right?"

She looks up at me with wide, wet eyes, like the hunted deer. "Sherlock... they are dead."

I try to think what to say to that. ["He has no children. –All my pretty ones? Did you say all?"] But there is nothing to say to it, and I embrace her, while she sobs against my shoulder.

There is a knock at the door, and I lead Mrs. Roland to the couch before I answer it.

Lestrade enters, darts past me, and bears down upon my client with an air of triumph. He looks at me curiously when I ask him about the case, but acquiesces to my questioning. Leaving Mrs. Roland in handcuffs but with my assurance that I will get to the bottom of it, Lestrade and I adjourn to the hallway.

"I'll admit you've been right a few times in the past, Mr. Holmes, but this hardly seems a case to draw your interest."

"Let me be the judge of that. What happened?"

"Emily Roland's three young children, ages six months, two years, and five years, have been found dead in their beds. She reports that they went to bed fine, then she woke up and found them that way. Rather a horrible experience for a mother if it were true, but there's no chance of that."

"Cause of death?"

"Arsenic poisoning, without question. Significant quantities have been found both in the bodies and in the food they ate last night."

"That is certain?"

"It is certain."

"Take her, then."

I sit in my armchair, staring at the floor.

No arsenic victim dies quietly in his sleep. She watched them die and cleaned up their corpses, and placed them there.

She was a murderer.

She wasn't even any good at it.

The courtroom is hot and the murmurs of the crowd buzz cacophonously through my head. They hardly need me; the case is quite complete without my evidence. But she asked for me. I suppose I must see the only woman I ever kissed before she is hanged.

I give my evidence. "She enlisted my services over the matter of her husband's death, when they were of no possible use. I believe that she had discovered how much pecuniary relief his life insurance afforded her, and was already plotting the same for her children. She must have thought that by obtaining my sympathy in the matter of her husband, she could blind me to the fate of her children, and thus have the avowal of Sherlock Holmes behind whatever story she invented."

"Mr. Holmes, tell us the precise nature of your relationship with the accused." I glance at the floor, then up to the pale face of Emily Roland, then down at the floor again, then straight into the eye of her prosecutor.

"She was merely a client," I say. My indifference persuades him and he nods and looks up his next question.

I, also, am an excellent actor.

"No, Holmes," says Watson to me, "I don't believe that a person's nature can fail to leave its traces upon his features. Habitual expressions must necessarily leave the traces of their stresses upon the skin over time."

It is the night after the trial, but he does not know that. It will be midnight soon, but I have kept him talking until now, unwilling to retire.

"It is almost impossible to test with any reliability, I think. But even if it is true for men, women can smile and smile and be villains, I assure you." I am forgetting to pretend literary ignorance, but he takes no notice.

"But even so, surely there will be something unnatural in the nature of the smile, Holmes. The real, genuine smile—"

I snatch up the evening's newspaper and brandish before him the article that describes the trial. "Here, for example. This woman has murdered her three children, in cold blood. I am one of the most perceptive men I have ever met, but I could not detect falseness."

Watson has an odd look: slow and methodical, but deliberate. "She could not have been unmarked by it, I think, Holmes."

"She was, Watson! The most winning woman I have ever known, and she made me believe it was all genuine! At my very worst, I could never have done a fraction of what that woman did, yet she did it with smiles and talk of love! What hope is there for her sex—for the entire human race—if such a thing can be done?"

Watson gazes at me more thoughtfully than I believed him capable of, and I realize he has drawn me out on purpose, to disclose my real meanings when I had not meant to. He has the advantage, and I wince. He smiles kindly, and looks wiser than I would have given him credit for being.

"I am afraid I cannot speak for women specifically, but as to the human race... I promise you, Holmes, we are not all bad. You might give us a chance, sometime." He rises, squeezes my shoulder, and makes his limping way up to his room, leaving me alone with my pipe and my thoughts.

Not all bad... A magazine on my desk catches my eye. I have an article in it, lately published, in which I expound the ways in which observation and deduction can tell one man vast volumes about another. Snatching up a pencil, I circle the article, and toss the open magazine on the table where Watson will be sure to see it in the morning.

When he asks about it, I will tell him everything he wants to know.