Archive of Our Own

Without his companion at his side, there had existed a strange interval of peace as Holmes approached the Reichenbach Falls - the water thundering with an indifference Holmes found almost restful, the Alpine air clean of any scent that might remind him of London.

Holmes had permitted himself, in that final unoccupied hour, a single indulgence: he thought of his dear Watson, not as colleague or chronicler, but simply as a man he had been fortunate enough to know.

It would be, Holmes had decided, a reasonably good thought to keep until the end, whenever that end would prove to be.

Holmes remembered it clearly, far clearer than he remembered most things unrelated to his cases - the two of them walking along the Serpentine, unhurried, the low sun gilding Watson's moustache to something near gold.

Watson had spoken of trifles.

Holmes had scarcely listened, being occupied with the curious effect of the sunlight upon his companion's hair, and with the still more curious satisfaction he derived from merely keeping pace beside him.

He had said nothing of it, then, as was his habit. Now, far away from both London and Watson, that unremarkable hour returned with a cruel vividness.

He remembered a time when the door to Watson's room had stood ajar, soft lamplight spilling out, and Holmes had stood before it longer than any task could justify. He had rehearsed several variations of what he might say - none satisfactory, yet all of them true.

Watson glanced up from his book, curious.

Holmes considered the words, and found himself wanting for the courage he had never once lacked before.

"It's nothing," he said, and withdrew, carefully closing the door as one might close a case left deliberately unsolved, for want of the strength to pursue it further.

A stranger passed him in the dockyard smelling faintly of the same common tobacco Watson favored over Holmes's own more particular blends, and Holmes was obliged to stop walking entirely, arrested by a grief so completely overpowering that it rather embarrassed him.

He had not particularly given much thought to that scent, not since the days he had shared with Watson in 221B. It was not especially distinct nor a scent that would be considered special, but in that moment Holmes would have given a great deal, standing there in the salt air, to smell it again in earnest.

There had been a night in Yorkshire, some case now folded into the great catalogue of solved things, when the inn had only a single bed to spare and Watson had offered, with his typical decency, to take the floor.

Holmes had refused, on the grounds of practicality.

He remembered the warmth of it, even with years past - Watson's back against his own, the unremarkable intimacy of feeling their synchronous breathing in the dark.

In exile, Holmes found he could recall that warmth with an accuracy that near unsettled him, though nothing, that night, had been said or attempted.

The bruise spread beneath his ribs in various shades of mottled black and blue, and there was no one now to chide him for it, no steady hand to gently press linen against the ache.

Holmes had grown skilled, through these months of solitude, at binding his own wounds - a skill that Watson had near never permitted him to practice, always intervening before the necessity arose.

He worked now in silence as he thought, with his long-cultivated detachment, that the pain was a rather poor substitute for company, though it was, at present, the only company available to him.

Mycroft's report, forwarded through the usual channels, mentioned in a single clinical and detached sentence that Dr. Watson had fallen from his horse and continued his medical rounds regardless, refusing all suggestions of rest despite his old war wound clearly bothering him.

Holmes recognized the stubbornness as his own, reflected back at him with cruel fidelity, and he understood, with the particular helplessness of a man several hundred miles removed from everyone he cared for, that he had no right whatsoever to be angry at a habit he himself had taught by example, however unintentionally, over years of practice.

He composed the letter three times before settling on the version that said almost nothing of truth.

My dear Watson, he began, and then discarded four attempts at what followed, each one dangerously close to sentiment Holmes had spent a lifetime believing to not exist.

In the end he wrote of investigative methods, of professional matters entirely, and signed it with customary restraint. The words he wished to write - that he loved him, that he was sorry, that for once he was unsure of what he expected - remained unwritten, folded away with the same care he gave to criminal evidence.

There was an evening some months into their acquaintance, when Watson had first laughed at an observation of Holmes's, and Holmes had felt the joyous sound rearrange something inside his chest, a completely new and almost uncomfortable feeling.

He had noted the sensation and dismissed it, at the time, as indigestion or fatigue or some other undesirable occurence.

It was only in his time away, with nothing left to deduce but the troubles of his own heart, that Holmes was obliged to admit what he had so stubbornly avoided: that he had loved his Boswell from nearly the beginning.

Watson fainted for the first time in Holmes's memory, and Holmes, lunging forward to catch him before he struck the floor, discovered that years of rehearsed explanations had abandoned him entirely.

"I want to tell you everything," Holmes said quietly, into hair that had gone slightly grey at the temples, "and I find I do not know where such a confession would properly begin."

Watson stirred, gripping one of Holmes' slender wrists as though needing to verify his existence through touch alone.

"Please," He whispered, and Holmes discovered that he wanted, more than anything, to bare his heart entirely.