Dr. James Watson, a young surgeon of her Majesty's army, returned from the war in Afghanistan wounded, with neither kith nor kin in England. In fact, his kin resided outside of England, and he wrote brief letters to them, being barely able to afford envelopes and stamps at present, let alone his hotel lodgings.

After a time, when Watson received no answer from either relative, he worried that he might have irrevocably offended both with his tardiness. He had last written his family while recovering from the jezail bullet that had pierced his shoulder, but then he had been silent for months upon being struck down with enteric fever. What if, offended by his apparent neglect, his family would not even deign to read his explanations now? Watson unhappily reflected that the twists of fate and fortune seemed to have conspired to leave him utterly alone in the world.

Finally, in despair of his dwindling finances to the point of looking for cheaper lodgings, Watson fortuitously ran across an old acquaintance named Stamford, from his days at St. Bartholomew's hospital. Learning of his predicament, Stamford quickly introduced Watson to a certain Sherlock Holmes, a studious young man also in need of affordable lodgings. Contrary to his Christian name, the fellow in fact had the darkest raven hair imaginable, a feature which sharply contrasted with his pale grey eyes, and he spooked Watson somewhat with his uncanny knowledge that the doctor had been in Afghanistan.

Choosing to overlook such puzzling enigmas for the time being, Watson agreed to move in with the eccentric Holmes into a lovely set of rooms in Baker Street. Perhaps it was out of loneliness or perhaps out of boredom, but as they settled in together, Watson soon grew keenly curious about his fellow lodger's queer habits and unknown profession, which brought a diverse stream of clients to their sitting-room. Something in Holmes's strange reticence about himself and his odd career seemed to almost taunt and entice Watson, increasing Watson's inordinate interest in him all the more.

Then one day, something quite unexpected happened. Their landlady came upstairs to their door and, instead of announcing a visitor for Mr. Holmes, as usual, she cleared her throat and proclaimed instead, "A visitor to see you, Dr. Watson."

Both Holmes and Watson sat up at this curious announcement.

"For me, Mrs. Hudson?" he blinked.

"Yes, doctor, for you." There was a strange sort of smile on her face, as if she knew some delicious secret.

"But who can it be?" Watson looked bewildered. "I know of no one but Stamford, who should surely see both of us--"

"Did the visitor not give a name?" Holmes interjected, looking impatient.

"No, sir," Mrs. Hudson replied, "nor a card. The doctor's visitor wishes to surprise him."

"He has certainly done that. Please show him in."

Mrs. Hudson smiled mysteriously again and withdrew, beckoning to someone downstairs. Both Holmes and Watson sat in a rather tense anticipation as they heard a feminine tread climb the stairs. "A woman," Holmes murmured under his breath.

At last the visitor reached their door and stepped into their sitting-room. She was a pleasant-faced young lady dressed in plain and well-worn travelling clothes, and her eyes went immediately to Watson with the most radiant of smiles.

"Helena!" Watson jumped up immediately from his seat and beamed in return, rushing forward and catching her up by the waist.

"James!" she laughed as he kissed her cheek exuberantly and put her down on the ground again. They embraced fondly, and Mrs. Hudson, who had been observing the happy reunion with approval, simply smiled and exited, closing the door behind her.

"Where've you been? Did you get my letter? Why didn't you write back?" Watson peppered her with excited questions before he remembered his manners. Turning to Holmes and blushing somewhat, he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Holmes. This is my sister, Helena."

"I thought as much," Holmes nodded from his chair. "It could hardly be anyone else whom you would greet so affectionately and without any worries about impropriety."

"Um, yes." He was not certain whether Holmes's unsmiling tone of analytical detachment indicated annoyance or not. It was always rather hard to tell with a cold fish like Holmes. Watson turned to his sister and gestured by way of introduction, "Helena, this is Sherlock Holmes, my flatmate."

She smiled agreeably. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Holmes."

He rose from his armchair and extended his hand. "Pleased to meet you, as well, Miss Watson," he shook her gloved hand.

Watson next invited her to sit down with him on the settee and started to repeat his previous questions.

But Holmes interrupted him, resuming his seat and scanning her appearance with that piercing once-over gaze that he gave to all strangers. "You'll pardon that I call you Miss Watson, of course, to distinguish you from your brother. Two Dr. Watsons at once would be rather much, don't you agree?"

Both the Watsons were momentarily stunned by his casually tossed out statement. Finally, the flustered Helena replied in a stammer, "I--I am a doctor." She turned to her obviously confused brother, explaining, "They just granted me the degree six weeks ago, and there came your letter suddenly, and--" She did not finish and glanced back at Holmes as though at some frightening practitioner of the black arts, "But how did you know?"

James Watson was distinctly interested in the answer as well, and so Holmes touched his fingertips together and embarked on a lengthy explanation.

"You have come from America, clearly, as the style of your travelling clothes indicates. The cut of the fabric reveals much to a trained eye. You also speak with a slight American accent, suggesting both that your stay in that nation lasted a number of years and that you did not have anyone English to speak to regularly, to prevent the corruption of your speech. Now of course, it is most unusual for an unmarried young lady to travel so extensively without some companion from home with her, but you apparently have had no such chaperone on your own travels, and you freely arrive unannounced and unaccompanied to surprise your brother here. Yet why should you travel to, and reside in, America at all? What can that young nation offer that England or Europe cannot, especially as you have family here in England for whom you obviously possess a great affection?"

To answer that question, Holmes sat up and reached for Miss Watson's gloved hand again. "I could feel a strength in your hands that was unusual for a young woman, and the musculature and calluses that you have developed suggest that you have had an occupation more physically demanding than mere embroidery, music, and painting. Indeed, your hands bore a slight odour that I know well from my time spent in medical labs." Holmes released her hand and peered at her face, "That, and the studious, strong character I could see in your face, convinced me that you were engaged in the study of medicine at an unusual school which admitted female students. I thought immediately of the Blackwell sisters, who created the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and its associated Women's Medical College. That institution's rigorous program for women doctors, surely, must have been the cause of your venture so far from home and family."

As Holmes concluded this astonishing discourse, Watson looked with blinking disbelief from his sister to Holmes and back again. "A doctor?"

She nodded and elaborated, "Yes. I-I had intended at first to train only as a nurse and midwife, as we had originally discussed, James, but my plans altered once you had finished at Netley and joined the army." She bit her lip with an anguished expression. "Describing to me every detail of India, then Afghanistan, your letters expressed a more than passing interest in the idea of remaining in the army indefinitely. Your unexpected enthusiasm for the adventure of warfare and the romance of foreign nations made me doubt your ever returning to domestic life and our planned practice together. Perhaps you might return for my sake, of course, but you would feel that it was a sacrifice and you would be unhappy. Not wanting that burden upon me, I chose to extend my program so that I might establish my own practice without you, James."

She glanced down at her hands with a distressed sigh. "Then at last you wrote me that you had been discharged because of your ruined health, and you were returned to England. I realised that now it was you who needed me to return for our practice. I did not know how to answer you then, how to explain what I'd done."

"And so you came here, in person." James touched her hand.

She nodded solemnly, still frowning.

James smiled and burst into laughter. "My dear Helena, don't scowl so! This is a wonderful surprise! We should hang up a sign that reads, 'Watson and Watson, M.D.s'!"

She blinked at him. "Really?"

"Yes!" he assured her. "A second doctor is just what our practice needs, with the way that I'm banged up and worn out just now. How could you imagine I would not be pleased for you? To think, my very own sister, a doctor!"

"Oh, James!" She embraced him happily and kissed his cheek. "You were always my favourite brother."

They laughed together and, quite forgetting about Holmes's presence, began to talk with familial intimacy and ease.

Helena protested, "I missed you at your hotel! When I saw the forwarding address that you left, I wondered if you hadn't gone and set up a practice without me."

"Certainly not," he shook his head. "I haven't got the money saved up yet, and now I'm on wound pension to boot!" He gestured at Holmes vaguely. "I just managed to snag this place with Holmes, to put less strain on my income."

"Well, it does seem a wiser residence than a hotel," she smiled.

"But where are your bags, Helena?" he noticed her distinct lack of luggage. "Did you send them on to Harry?"

"Harry?" She frowned darkly. "You didn't hear, did you?"

"Hear what?"

Helena rose and, excusing themselves from Holmes's presence, withdrew with her brother to his bedroom to speak privately. The dissolute end of their brother Harry was certainly not a subject to be discussed before a relative stranger like Holmes. Left alone in the sitting-room, Holmes briefly speculated about whom this "Harry" might be, but he quickly concluded that any obviously private matter be best left alone.

Holmes was reading The Times when the Drs. Watson later returned to the sitting-room, looking far more solemn and subdued than they had previously. Watson turned to Holmes and pronounced quietly, "Holmes, due to some... unexpected difficulties, my sister and I need some time to remake our plans for the future. I hope you will not mind it, if my sister lives here with us for the time being?"

Holmes put down his paper and raised an eyebrow. "Surely that is up to our landlady?"

"Of course," Watson nodded, "we shall inquire as to whether she has any other rooms to let within her household. But I wish to be sure that you will not mind her presence in what we initially anticipated would be a bachelors' residence."

"I have no objection, of course," Holmes tried to be more reassuring. He eyed Watson's facial expression closely, realising that what he detected on his face was a barely contained grief and anguish.

"Thank you," Watson said stiffly. "Excuse us for a moment." He and his sister then headed downstairs to consult with Mrs. Hudson about the room arrangements.

They later returned briefly, and Holmes gathered that Dr. Helena Watson would be let a room on the floor above their own, and that the siblings would now go back to Watson's former hotel where she had left her baggage with the clerk. The rest of the day was spent helping her move into Baker Street and then giving her time to rest after her long journey.

---

To his chagrin, Holmes found in the next few days that the Drs. Watson spent a great deal of time conversing privately together and being absorbed by their familial affairs, leaving Holmes in the position of a distant outsider within his own home. He found himself, moreover, to sometimes be the subject of their whispered conversations, in which the sister would enquire, "But how can you not know his profession? How does he know the odd things that he knows?"

Holmes rapidly tired of this awkward position and decided to broach the topic one day. "Watson," he asked of James one morning at breakfast while his sister slept in, "do you never tire of spending so much time with your sister?"

"Holmes!" he looked up with offence at Holmes's tone of voice. "That is a rude thing to ask!"

"Rude," Holmes harrumphed and then let the silence speak volumes.

Watson realised his own rudeness of late and frowned. "Ah, I see. My apologies, Holmes, for being too caught up in suddenly having a family again."

Somewhat mollified, Holmes shrugged mildly. "It is natural enough for you to rejoice in the fact that your sister did not in truth abandon you when she did not reply to your letter."

"Yes, I had thought for a time that she felt betrayed by my liking the Army so--" Abruptly, Watson paused with his knife and fork in mid-air and peered closely at Holmes. "Wait, how did you know--?"

Holmes smiled mischievously. "The same way I knew that you had been to Afghanistan, and your sister to America."

Watson saw the look of challenge in those keen grey eyes, and he smiled with fascination. "You are a puzzle, aren't you, Sherlock Holmes?"

"And when are you going to do something about it, James Watson?" Holmes dared him devilishly.

Watson laughed heartily and with a thrill in his veins, finding his curiosity about Holmes renewed and redoubled by the sparkle in Holmes's eye. Consequently, Watson revised his recent habit of shutting out Holmes entirely for familial bonds; instead, he spent increasing time with his sister and Holmes together, most often in their mutual sitting-room that served as a neutral territory for the three of them. Soon both the Drs. Watson engaged Holmes in his intellectual game of hints and subterfuge about himself. Helena in particular loved to needle Holmes about whether he had ever visited New York and so gained an acquaintance with either the Blackwells or their Infirmary for Women and Children.

However, James Watson at last managed to break Holmes's secret when he discovered a magazine article, titled "The Book of Life" and authored by an "S. Holmes," which contained uncanny deductions remarkably like the ones Holmes had displayed to them already. They read the article through and then challenged Holmes by pointing it out to him and calling the thing "ineffable twaddle." Holmes of course had to admit his authorship, and in defending his article, he at last revealed to them his profession as a 'private consulting detective'.

James Watson would have gladly explored the meaning and further repercussions of this revelation had he not been obliged to depart England the next day. Not all of the Watson family's affairs had been resolved yet, and he needed to take care of some financial matters up in Scotland, as well as stop in America to retrieve the rest of Helena's possessions, which she had left with a few close friends. Reluctantly, James kissed his sister goodbye and gave Holmes a hearty handshake as he teased, "Well, we'll resume our detective work on you when I get back."

Holmes too seemed disappointed at the interruption to their pleasantly sparring relationship, and after Watson's train had left the station, he and Helena silently shared a hansom back to Baker Street.

A few clients brought their cases to Holmes in the ensuing days, and though he no longer created a shroud of secrecy around these visits, he still asked Helena to depart the sitting-room for the sake of his clients' privacy. Whenever they left, she would return to the room and curiously inquire as to how Holmes could possibly be a detective if he never left home and investigated. He replied that he did sometimes investigate, but that most of the cases he received were simple enough for him to solve by just listening to the facts in his armchair. She greeted that idea with scepticism, and he responded by demonstrating the things he could deduce from various personal items she possessed.

She rightfully protested that Holmes knew her, thus making deductions about herself no great feat, whereas deducing such things about complete strangers like his clients would indeed be a challenge. Thus rendered defenceless, Holmes pensively weighed the idea of letting Helena remain present during a client interview to prove her wrong, but he decided against it and had to suffer her continued smugness. Instead, Holmes considered intimating to her the existence of his brother Mycroft, who ran much of the British government from his own armchair, but he was torn between his discretion and his vanity.

The days grew longer while James Watson remained away, and he sent a few parcels to Baker Street along with his renewed correspondence to his sister. Holmes observed that when Helena read his first letter, she grew very sombre and brooding. He was certain more than ever that the Drs. Watson were grieving the loss of some family member or close friend, by the name of Harry, but he said nothing on the matter, having neither the discourtesy to intrude where he had not been invited, nor the altruistic desire to inflict an emotionally awkward moment upon himself for someone else's sake.

So they spent the day in silence, and Helena withdrew upstairs to her room for hours. Unexpectedly, though, she at last descended again with a watch in her hand and, going up to Holmes with steadfast coldness and composure, said, "It is time to prove yourself."

He raised an eyebrow.

She handed him the watch. "This object is the property of someone you have never met, a complete stranger. Tell me what you can deduce from it, if anything."

Holmes realised then that the watch must belong to the deceased Harry, and have been sent in one of the parcels from James. Why Helena requested this demonstration, he did not know, other than perhaps that she wished some distraction from her grief, even if it took the form of what she had disdainfully called Holmes's "parlour-tricks".

So Holmes examined the watch minutely, made his deductions, and recited them all to his waiting audience. To his surprise, she sprang up from her chair once he concluded and was visibly upset, more so perhaps than she had been when reading her brother's letter. She accused Holmes of prying into their family tragedies for mere sport.

He realised his clumsiness, then, for not only had she been expecting his complete failure, but, far from being the dispassionate Dr. Helena Watson, she was at present only a vulnerable, grieving sister with no family to lean upon for comfort.

He awkwardly apologised and explained his deductions to her point by point, so she would believe his insistence that before now he had never known for certain who this Harry was, nor what shame he represented for his family. Hearing this, Helena in turn apologised for her offended outburst and tried to calm herself, but suddenly she broke down into tears and confessed that Harry had not only squandered every last cent of the family inheritance, but had also left behind him considerable debts, which James was trying to pay off now with what little he had. They had not known the desperate state of affairs, for Harry had not communicated regularly with either of them for some time before his death, making it difficult for the lawyers to find and contact his family once he had died. Now the prospects for the remaining Watsons looked bleaker than ever.

This unexpected emotional outpouring quickly made Holmes uncomfortable, but as he thought that James Watson would wish him to do, he sat with Helena and tried to soothe her distress with a handkerchief and a half-hearted touch on the shoulder until at last her tears subsided. "Thank you," she whispered sombrely to him, before she rose and withdrew to her bedroom again.

They did not speak of that night again, and Holmes found Helena absorbing herself now with the practical business of trying to find work at a hospital or clinic in town. Though she was a doctor, she met often with resistance and condescending men who would employ her as a mere drudge or nurse. She found a position at Bart's, though, and hoped to put away some savings that could revive the great plans that she had made with her brother.

James Watson's next letter to his sister was much more cheerful, and she read it out loud to Holmes with delight. On arriving in New York, James had found that some of Helena's friends at the Infirmary had united to find her a suitable practice. They had a nice prospect, but purchasing and furnishing it with all the necessary equipment would require a loan, and if James would meet with a certain benefactor on behalf of his sister, that loan would certainly be secured. Thus it looked as if a Watson & Watson practice was not so unlikely after all. Helena beamed with hope and chuckled as she read the last line, "Say hello to Holmes for me, and tell him I'm sorry that he'll have to find a new flatmate soon."

Holmes raised an eyebrow. "You'll both be leaving me, then? I suppose I should count myself lucky for getting any warning at all. Hmph, let us hope that Stamford knows some other nice, dependable bachelor for me."