Chapter Text
For Sherlock Holmes the uncovering of mysteries is merely cerebral, the equivalent to some sort of intellectual push-up. Revelation is boring rather than shocking, its aftershocks nil, its consequences settled once another feather has been added to his cap.
However, our last case, that of the Gerrideb Brothers, had uncovered the mystery that was Sherlock himself. I cannot say that it was unlike any other case in that my friend revealed those truths that are always there for those who can but see them. However, I believe I must defend my obliviousness by pointing out that this is something I could never have seen, for as a modern man, a man of science and reason myself, I would never think to look for the impossible.
And that’s what it was. Impossible. I found myself in the three weeks following the conclusion of the Gerrideb case running circles in my mind. I simply could not reconcile the two knowns of my problem: that of Sherlock, the man with whom I had lived and worked these last few months, the great mind, the detective, and the man I had thought of as my best friend and that other variable – Sherlock, the vampire. Such an equation was simply ridiculous.
I wished there was room for doubt, that this was all some thin theory of madness, but there was no doubt. Being the empiricist he was, Sherlock had demonstrated his nature by baring fangs, biting me and drinking my blood. Perhaps as always he had been two steps ahead, knowing that in the weeks to come I would do as I had done, sought holes in the logic, in the scene, in any glance or move on my friend’s part to bring us both back to where we had been before this whole insanity had commenced.
For, instead of cases, I now preoccupied myself by thinking back over the months of our acquaintance, trying to recall any incident that spoke of the supernatural and could find nothing. I began to observe Sherlock in earnest and our time together turned into a petri dish of moments that I would later catalog and examine. Soon enough, I even broke this pattern off, finding excuses to remain at Bakers Street when Lestrade had summoned us, or patients to keep me late at the clinic. In other words, I found myself avoiding Sherlock, but at the same time, the thought of him overwhelmed and obsessed me.
If I had just asked him the many questions on my mind, perhaps we both could have been spared the awkwardness and distance that grew between us. How many times I had begun to ask how it was that he could walk about in the day if he was a vampire, or when or where or with whom he got his blood, or what strange abilities he possessed… Perhaps the reason I did not question was not so much that he would amaze me by turning into a bat or summoning rats or calling to wolves, but that it would further reveal how little of the man I truly knew.
Of course, the fact that Sherlock had taken the Gerrideb case, had revealed himself to me for my own benefit weighed on my mind as well. Concern for me, for my mortality had been the motivation for all this. I knew that my friend had a methodical nature that did not act on whims. He had told me what he was so that I could solve the problem of dying on him by allowing him to change me into one such as himself. If he had done all this, it meant he believed there was hope I could accept his offer.
Then perhaps the reason I did not question him was for myself most of all. If that mind that so easily perceived the hearts and motives of his fellow man saw that in me, was the question therefore not so much if I could find the desire within me to accept his offer, as when?