There are two things a person sees when they walk around London. They can see the flashing lights, the taxis speeding by, the people who never stop to look twice at a bar keep, a shop attendant, a retired army doctor, a consulting detective. For those people life will pass in the blink of an eye; the world will start and stop as suddenly as the cars they drive and the cabs they take. The lights are simply lights and the river is just a river. The world is nothing to them, just a thing to use and throw away.
There are some, however, who see differently. For Sherlock Holmes, the lights were a cover and a call simultaneously; the taxis were hideouts for criminal masterminds and the drivers were their disguise. The people walking next to him, the people brushing against him in the city rush were all potential killers and all potential victims. He would glance at them once and see which they would become.
Life stopped for Sherlock Holmes. He stole every bit of information in a moment that lasted an eon. Time meant nothing for the consulting detective. A second lasted an hour; an hour- a millennium. In this daze, the street lights and billboards became beacons and strobe lights, pointing the way for Sherlock. The river was a dumping ground and refuge for the dead. The world opened up for Sherlock, and he embraced it, the battlefield, in amity.
Since his youth, Sherlock saw many things. The world was never the kind place a child should live in; for him it was always a war zone. He fought malevolence from his peers as both a child and adult, and the militaristic way of growing up shaped his world view. He rarely looked kindly upon others, always viewing them as an adversary. Sherlock may never have seen the bloody battles of war, but he was a soldier in his own crusade.
When he began consulting, his battlefield became real- drenched in the blood of victims, no longer simply symbolic. He began to truly fight with fists and weapons and not just words in wars he fought. The battlefield grew around him. It rose and seeped into the buildings, dissolving the stone exteriors and replacing them with bones and dust.
The battle never ended for Sherlock. The shadows were always there and always urging him towards his war until eventually it took him. Together, he and the battlefield rose, and together they fall.