Chapter Text
I’d realized somewhere along the way that I slept better with a violin playing. I don’t know when, nor why, but the nightmares of Afghanistan left me behind when I could hear Sherlock plucking away upstairs. And he often did, late unto the night, far beyond when any normal man would have embraced sleep.
I confess that I’d jabbed at him for it more than once, in the early years, when I still wanted to be left to sleep and suffer alone. I’d bring it up in anger often as well, when I had run out of arrows to fling in my incensedness.
I know now that he knew.
In no uncertain terms he knew it made me sleep better. How could he not? The man was a savant, a genius, a madman. He could likely quantify just with the dark circles under my eyes the hour to the minute I’d slept.
I wonder, quietly, writing now in the light of the fireplace, how it made him feel.
For Sherlock Holmes was not the masked face of indifference and emotionlessness that many saw when we were out and about. The man had a heart.
I knew it, he knew it, and I was perceptive enough to know that he saw it as some sort of weakness. For when Irene was killed, I saw in his eyes that he mourned. That he was angry at himself for it.
I wonder often now what that meant for him. For all those times he’d turned the other cheek when we fought, while simultaneously trying to get the last word in with no real bite, like a wolf with no teeth. For all those times he must’ve seen me freshly awakened, strolling about the house, with more spring in my step due to his plucking on violin strings.
I wonder now what he felt for me, now that I’m not naïve enough to think that the mask was who he really was.
I wonder now what I felt for him, now that I’m not naïve enough to push it far from me in his absence.
For I know what a bastard it makes me to yearn for a man only after he is gone, or to yearn for a man at all.
It is the second sentiment that bothers me less. I care not for the modern religious fervor and persecution.
What truly plucks at the strings of my heart is that I will never know whether or not Sherlock knew I loved him while he was alive.
Not like a brother, no, but I dream often now of my wedding day, with both Mary and Sherlock waiting for me at the altar. I don’t know what kind of a man that makes me, in truth.
All I know, through all of these ruminations in pen and ink, is that I always slept better with a violin playing.
The phonograph doesn’t quite match it at all.
—
It’s been a few months since his death, now. Since I walked out onto that foreboding terrace and watched him sacrifice himself to kill Moriarty.
I know not why, but I can surmise from that fateful night on the train.
“They’re here for you.”
It had made sense then, but it makes ever more sense now. They were after me to get to him, knowing he’d be there.
It makes me wonder, too, how much Moriarty genuinely knew about our partnership. If he knew… what I feel, what I felt. What I realized somewhere along the way, maybe a little too little too late.
I still love my wife, of course, with all those lovely days and nights I spend with her.
But I still feel an ache, like in my leg, like something’s not right with the world.
I know what it is, and I don’t think I’ll ever be over it.
I don’t think I’ll ever be over him.