Author's Note: This is my story for December 1st. It's based on MyelleWhite's prompt, "I never intended this to happen". It explores Holmes's relationship with Watson and his attitudes to emotion. It has a surprising amount of angst. I welcome reviews, suggestions or corrections!
Intent
We had solved the mystery of the Sign of the Four. Now Watson and I sat in silence, contentedly smoking. The mystery had exhilarated me for days: I was finding it increasingly difficult to sleep in the nights, because I found it impossible to suppress my thoughts about the case. I refused to tell Watson about my occasional insomnia. It could only worry him – particularly when I effected my own pharmaceutical solution. The good doctor could not understand that a man such as I might use these drugs (morphine, cocaine, opium) as tools; with none of the risk of dependence that one observed in others. Dependence was what I feared – feared above all else. I had observed so many times how weak, emotional dependence could frustrate the intellect. I had meticulously explained this to Watson, but he did not understand me. I refused to let emotion control my life and overwhelm my mind.
"Well, and there is the end of our little drama," said Watson. "I fear that it may be the last investigation in which I shall have the chance of studying your methods. Miss Morstan has done me the honor to accept me as a husband in prospective."
My stomach plunged towards my feet, and I accidentally scattered smouldering ash from my pipe onto the armchair. Inadvertently, I groaned. The shock! – I could not have prepared for the shock. After our years of friendship… years of my friend's faithful companionship… the only other whom I trusted as I trusted myself was to leave my life. Watson looked at me with distress, so I rushed to say something.
"I feared as much," I said, trying to restrain the emotion from entering my voice. "I really cannot congratulate you."
"Have you any reason to be dissatisfied with my choice?" he asked. He looked wounded.
I groaned again, but quietly.
"Not at all," I said. "I think she is one of the most charming young ladies I ever met, and might have been most useful in such work as we have been doing. She had a decided genius that way: witness the way in which she preserved that Agra plan from all the other papers of her father. But love is an emotional thing, and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I should never marry myself, lest I bias my judgment."
It was all true: these were my attitudes, and this was how I intellectually felt. I could not express the contemptible, emotional reason for my dismay. For I knew Watson did not think of it as abandonment. He was my only friend. And now he was leaving.
"I trust," he said, laughing, "that my judgment may survive the ordeal. But you look weary."
"Yes," I forced myself to say, "the reaction is already upon me. I shall be as limp as a rag for a week."
"Strange," he said, "how terms of what in another man I should call laziness alternate with your fits of splendid energy and vigor."
I spoke without attention for a time, quoting lines of old Goethe; I remembered my friend liked to hear me speak them. We spoke a little of the case's details, of details that I could recall without feeling. I did not want to feel anything.
"The division seems rather unfair," Watson remarked. "You have done all the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?"
I had introduced Watson to Miss Morstan, and I had led him through our investigation. I had brought him close to her. I had given them the prerequisites for that ineffable mystery – love. I never intended this to happen. I looked spitefully at my friend.
"For me," I said, "there still remains the cocaine bottle." And I reached my hand out for it.