I should have seen it coming when you didn't come down for breakfast this morning. Your case kept you out late last night, so at first I thought you were merely stealing a few more hours of sleep.
I should have known better.
When you're on a case, necessary human needs such as food and sleep become trivial and cumbersome to you. Now is one of those frequent times, so I'm not sure why I'm surprised.
I wanted to go with you, Sherlock. I wanted to be there when you solve the crime with only a handkerchief, a thumbnail, a fake bank cheque, and some rain-obscured footprints for incriminating evidence. I wanted to watch the faces of the police inspectors flicker from doubt to disbelief to shock to utter conviction that you have caught their perpetrator for them. I love watching you work.
But you left without me this morning, and now I sit here in our flat by myself, talking aloud as if you're still here and as if you would be the least bit sorry even if you could hear me. I know you are almost a species unto yourself with your attentive eyes and your massive intellect, but I'm not as stupid as normal people, am I? Am I really just your flatmate? Or have you come to consider me a friend, as I have come to view you? Every time I think you are beginning to see me as intelligent and valuable in my own right, you do something like this: leave me at home, forget my presence.
Well, you may think me useless in your antics today, but I'll show you. I'll prove to you that you need an assistant – a partner – and that I am the perfect applicant. For now, however, I will try to wait patiently here for you as I always have. I will try to remember how angry I am with you when you finally waltz back in with a wide smile and an air about you that tell me you have succeeded in your endeavor. I will try to tell you everything I have told the walls.
But you will make me forget all of it as soon as you start to explain your adventure and the capture of the criminal in a voice akin to an excited child's.
I will try to scold you another day.
