This fic was inspired by spacefall's Chronodoom, which was also of enormous help to me while I was writing.

Comparing real-life publication dates to the dates on which Watson's stories take place (ill-defined as the latter may often be) throws up some odd points:

i. H and W lived and worked together in relative obscurity for many years: they met in 1881, but STUD wasn't published until 1887, and the stories didn't take off in popularity until the publication of SCAN in 1891, almost a decade after they first met - and in fact, a few months after Holmes' "death".

ii. Holmes was missing, presumed dead, from 1891 to 1894, but this was precisely the period in which the classic early stories (collected in the Adventures) were published. In fact only the novels STUD and SIGN were published before Holmes' death. And the Adventures really don't read like they were written by someone who believes Holmes is dead.

To avoid possible confusion, I should point out now that this fic plays the 'Watson was a highly unreliable narrator' game.

It's not always a very cheerful fic. Watson and Mycroft Holmes both believe Sherlock Holmes did indeed die in 1891. But rest assured: I haven't labelled this 'Major character death' and there's a good reason for that!

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Chapter 1 of 4.

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12th January 1883

Another heavy snowfall last night. Holmes had to break the ice on the water bowl this morning before he could wash his face. I preferred to stay in bed and watch. Earned a jibe from Holmes about the sorry sight of a Scotsman gone to seed. Replied with a rather witty riposte of my own. Punished by cold hands and cold kisses.

I flicked through the notebook to another entry.

7th June 1885

Holmes has been in a foul mood since Mrs L-D left. It was admittedly a very disappointing case. I regret the ink wasted writing up the notes I shall never use. Holmes v. curt regarding my attempts to cheer him up. He spent yesterday evening playing something ghastly by Saint-Saens and didn't come to bed until the early hours of the morning.

7th June 1885 cont.

Profuse non-verbal apology from Holmes this afternoon while Mrs Hudson was out. Atmosphere of decided contentment in the sitting room now.

I shut the red leather notebook and laid it on the table next to its blue-bound twin. Its contents had irrevocably changed how I viewed my late brother Sherlock and his friend Dr Watson, and I felt the need for a stiff glass of brandy.

I poured a shot from the decanter on the sideboard, drained it, and set the empty glass down next to the sheet of paper on which I had puzzled out Dr Watson's private code - though the code itself, in fact, had surely been invented by my late brother rather than the Doctor, for how else to explain the twenty whole minutes I had needed to crack it?

The two notebooks lay there on the desk, outwardly quite innocuous. I sat glaring at them for a long time, and then lifted a hand to rub it across my eyes. My head ached, for the day had been an unusually eventful one, in which I had been forced to deviate from my preferred and well-trodden paths.

The events of the afternoon had tried me severely, and then Fate crowned it all by bringing these two notebooks into my possession.

My problems had begun when Dr Watson failed to turn up for his appointment with me at eleven that morning. These meetings between us were a regular occurence. They had begun almost two years earlier, shortly after my brother's death, and the only pause had come some four months ago, during the mourning period for Mrs Watson. These meetings between Dr Watson and myself were of a literary nature: he always insisted on showing me the proofs of his stories before publication and securing my approval, since I was in some sense the heir of Sherlock's reputation. He preferred to bring them in person, and so it was his habit to come and see me at my club at regular intervals throughout the year.

Dr Watson and I always met in the Visitor's Room, in order to allow us to converse if necessary. The majority of his visit generally passed in silence, however, with me reading and occasionally making a note in the margin, and Dr Watson perusing one of the day's newspapers. We did exchange a few remarks at the beginning and end of his visits, as courtesy demanded, and over the past two years I had grown reasonably well acquainted with him. Before that, I had hardly known him at all. Indeed, my brother's funeral had been only the second time I met Dr Watson.

He had presented me with many stories over the past two years, starting with the tale of the opera singer and the King of Bohemia. Part of me enjoyed them: Dr Watson was a talented storyteller. Part of me was amused by his display of imagination: the majority of the cases, I surmised, were almost entirely fictional. In my position, I should have heard about such events had they in fact taken place. The character of Sherlock Holmes was a reasonably true likeness of my brother, but the rest must be fiction.

Beyond all that, however, the stories chilled me, with their blithely cheerful description of a man now dead. One could never have guessed, reading them, that they were in fact an extended obituary.

It made me worry that Dr Watson's peaceful exterior was a paper-thin facade for a troubled soul.

Be that as it may, Watson was a reliable fellow, for all his flights of imagination, and I had never known him to be so much as five minutes late for an appointment. I waited half an hour, until this deviation from my planned agenda became too much for me to bear. I sent Simmons, the doorkeeper's boy, to Watson's home to investigate. He returned with the information that no one was answering the door, but that he thought he could see a light burning in Watson's upstairs window.

For a moment I toyed with the idea of simply calling the police and letting them do the legwork. However, a missed apointment and a light burning in the middle of the afternoon are not usually sufficient reason to involve the police, even for a man of my standing. Moreover, this was my dear departed brother's intimate friend, after all. Surely that called for a little exertion on my part. I ordered a cab and bade the Simmons boy accompany me.

Watson had been living in Kensington since he left Baker Street, in a house which also served as his surgery. I saw at a glance as I descended from the cab that his neighbour - also a doctor - had had a far more succesful practice than he over the past few years.

A few minutes' hammering on the door brought not the slightest response from inside the house.

"Like I said," muttered the boy, sounding vindicated.

Unlike my brother, I have never been in the habit of carrying around a set of lockpicks and jemmies. Today, however, I had foreseen the necessity before leaving my club, and Simmons Sr. had been able to provide me with appropriate tools. Within a minute I was ascending the stairs to the first floor, the Simmons boy pressing impatiently at my heels.

The front upstairs room clearly served as Watson's office. Watson himself was slumped in a dead faint across his desk. A gas lamp was burning on the wall behind him, presumably since some time the previous night.

To my relief he stirred slightly when I laid my hand on his shoulder.

I sent the boy next door for the doctor, while I searched Watson's medical supplies for a bottle of smelling salts. Once he was somewhat revived, I helped him to the sofa in the corner of his office and tried to make him comfortable.

I was now at leisure to examine more closely the details I had noted when I first entered the room. Two heavy, leather-bound notebooks lay on Watson's desk, one red and one blue. One of them was open and an uncapped fountain pen rested in the crease between the pages, as though the doctor had fainted in the very act of writing. One of the drawers in Watson's desk was ajar, and on the desk lay a small key, which I soon determined fit the open drawer. The implication was obvious: Watson was in the habit of keeping the two notebooks under lock and key.

Watson was not quite unconscious, and probably aware of my movements. Social etiquette thus forbade me from anything more than the limited visual inspection at that time.

I heard Watson's neighbour and colleague, Dr Cripps, on the stairs just then, and stepped out to greet him.

Some ten minutes later he came to find me in the downstairs drawing room, looking grave. Nervous exhaustion, apparently, was the diagnosis, and the prescription bed rest.

"His recent bereavement must certainly have contributed to this," the doctor went on. "I hadn't realised - that is, one doesn't like to intrude - "

I understood from this that Watson's neighbour had not called upon him since Mrs Watson's funeral, though Watson had sent out his cards several months since, a few weeks after the death; I had received one myself and paid the necessary call of condoleance. Dr Cripps was clearly feeling guilty now about that deficiency in behaviour. As a neighbour and a colleague, he ought to have paid Watson a similar call.

I had in fact been feeling concerned about Dr Watson for quite some time. Each time I saw him in the four months since his wife's death, he had looked more and more dreadful. I was surely in no position to mentally criticise Watson's neighbour, for I had not done anything about my concerns either.

The doctor cleared his throat.

"He should have someone to look after him," he went on. "Perhaps a female relative - ?"

He looked at me hesitantly, clearly not having puzzled out my relationship to Dr Watson. I had introduced myself only by name.

"There is no one suitable," I said, for I knew Dr Watson had no immediate family, neither of his own nor through his marriage.

"I can recommend a nurse - "

We were organising the details when we were interrupted by the arrival of the lady who came in to do for Dr Watson each afternoon - something in the nature of a housekeeper. She immediately proceeded to express her surprise and alarm upon learning her employer's state. Fortunately, the doctor was far more skilled than I at dealing with female histrionics and its lesser cousins, and I was spared the necessity of interacting with her myself.

The two of them moved Watson to his bedroom. The doctor returned to find me in the sitting room and gave me the news that Watson was now sleeping peacefully.

Cripps took his leave, and I desired the housekeeper to bring me something in the way of luncheon, for it was already two in the afternoon and I was beginning to feel quite put out. This was the first time in five years I had had to displace my luncheon hour.

The nurse arrived while I was sitting in Watson's drawing room with an after-lunch port, gathering my forces. This unaccustomed activity had been exhausting.

While the housekeeper saw to the nurse's installation, I returned to Watson's office. At the very least, I felt responsible for returning those notebooks to their locked drawer, safe from prying eyes. First, however, I intended to satisfy my curiosity.

My late brother had always been far more scrupulous than I. I believe he would not have approved of what I now intended to do. I was not Sherlock, and I did not scruple to sit down with a cup of tea and my reading matter.

Half an hour later, I was in quite a different mood than when I started. A quick glance through the blue notebook, first, had shown notes which I recognised as having eventually been transformed into the stories I had read before their publication. It was something in the nature of a cross between a record of events experienced, and the notes made by an author as he sketches out a work of fiction. It was written mostly in longhand, modified by a system of simple abbreviations easy to understand. It was a fascinating read. I had long wondered which elements of Dr Watson's stories were true or false. Not having been present for the events in question, the question was a difficult one to answer.

Now, however, I had access to what seemed to be a truer version of events: the red notebook. Watson's record, in the form of a diary, of ten years spent with my brother. Ten years in rather more intimate circumstances than I had previously supposed.

Of course I was already perfectly well aware of my brother's particular regard for his friend, and of its reciprication. I had deduced as much when I met Watson briefly at my club in '85, in my brother's company. However, the relationship had progressed somewhat further and the sentiments were much deeper than I had believed. Indeed, it had progressed to a level that anyone must call illegal, and that a more punctilious man than I would have called immoral.

I assumed this was one of the reasons Sherlock had not encouraged an acquaintance between myself and his fellow lodger. Commendably prudent of him, of course, but after his death I now saw things in a different light. I would even go so far as to say I regretted it.

After a topup to my glass of brandy, I sat down in my armchair by the fire and opened the red notebook again.

I was perfectly well aware that Dr Watson had not intended these words for my eyes, or indeed for anyone's. That would have been clear even had the diary not been written in code. I read on regardless. Perhaps I was simply prurient. Or perhaps I had the excuse of wanting to see my brother come alive again before my eyes.