As extraordinary as my association of nearly twenty years was with my friend and colleague Sherlock Homes was, both as his trusted assistant and his sometimes bemoaned biographer, the abrupt ending to our acquaintance was even more surreal. As much discomfort as it caused me to suddenly find Holmes gone from London, almost as if he had fallen off the face of the Earth, it wasn't nearly as painful as the brief, shocking period in which he came to me, only to then disappear forever.

I have chronicled countless cases of Holmes' and have notes on dozens that have yet to be published. I have sought in each account to give a portrayal of how brilliant and talented my dear friend was and hope that that is how the public will always remember him; as the savior of so many souls who thought their problems were hopeless until brought to Holmes' fantastic abilities. But this account, the most difficult I have ever wrote and one for my own personal remembrance and nothing else, shows the humanity and heart of the man I alone knew.

It was a bitterly cold day in January, at the turn of a new century when Holmes made his appearance yet again into my life. It was not an uncommon occurrence that I went for extended periods without seeing my friend, having taken up my own home with my wife and busying myself with my private practice. But this particular absence of Holmes' was not common. It was at the height of one of his best periods, when problems were dropping onto his doorstep faster than even he could solve them and it was everything that he could possibly hope for when he simply disappeared. After not receiving any message to several telegrams I had sent him, I went around to the home we had shared for so long to find it as it always had looked but obviously, even in its usual disarray, neglected. When I spoke to the landlady, Mrs. Hudson, she said that Holmes had not been home in several weeks. While I knew he could take care of himself well enough, this was still long enough of an absence that I felt I should look into the matter. When I inquired of his brother Mycroft at his usual haunt of the Diogenes club, he told me that Holmes was away on holiday that he had received several letters from Holmes and that he was doing very well. When I asked for more details and even hinted that I would like to see the letters, Mycroft Holmes grew cold and made it known in so many words that he did not want to be pressed on the matter.

I tried to calm my mind on the matter but found it in the front of mind as weeks turned into months with no sign of Holmes. When I walked into my home that snowy afternoon to find Holmes standing in my sitting room as if he had never disappeared I felt myself grow weak.

Standing by the window, staring out at the street below he looked as always I remembered him, impeccably groomed and dressed as he always had. It was only when he turned to face me that I saw that all was not as it should be. Holmes' face, usual very pale, was almost corpse like in its lack of color, except for his eyes which had dark circles around them, giving him the appearance of someone very ill and declining fast.

When he turned toward me to speak, seeing that I was stunned into silence, he took a ragged breath that rattled in his chest painfully before trying a weak smile. "John, I hope that I did not frighten you. Mycroft tells me that my absence has been plaguing you" he said in his usual, lighthearted tone. It did little to make me feel relieved. Everything about this was wrong from his long absence to his sickened appearance to his use of my Christian name, never having used it before.

"You've never called me John before" I said, lamely. I was trying to ignore the truth that was so painfully speaking to me in Holmes' features.

Holmes smiled again but it seemed forced and unnatural on his tired features. "After two decades of intimate acquaintance I think it's high time we used each other's Christian names" he said, taking several deep breaths as if the sentence had caused him much pain.

"You've been gone months. Your brother said you were on holiday" I said, knowing shock still heavily weighed on my features.

"And you don't believe him?" Holmes said, raising an eyebrow.

"No. You don't take holidays, at least not without my insisting you take one" I told him.

Holmes grinned; I was glad to see that despite a large lack of light in his eyes, there was still the sparkle that I very rarely saw when he was pleased with me. "Excellent deduction" he told me.

It was then, after taking a breath that rattled through Holmes' chest like wind through chimes that he pressed a handkerchief to his mouth and gave the worst ragged coughs, each one clearly pulling energy out of him that he didn't have. When he pulled his handkerchief back and tried to stuff it into his pocket without my seeing it, he wasn't quite quick enough. I saw it was clearly covered in blood. It seemed as if the very ground beneath my feet was moving, my heart beating in my chest with extreme effort as if my veins had suddenly filled with iron; I had to grab onto a nearby chair to keep my balance. I wanted to be wrong but the eyes that met mine at the realization showed clearly the sorrow I felt in my own soul reflected back. My friend, my confidant had contracted the much dreaded scourge that was tuberculosis. And by the appearance of him he didn't have much time left for this world.

"Yes…..very astute" Holmes said, nodding satisfied as if I had merely solved a trifle in a case of no importance. "You can see now why I had to leave. Though I always mocked your medical capabilities as that of a mere general doctor, in truth, when it came to my health you were the most capable and sharp doctor that I have ever known. You would have known instantly.'

Despite my desire to appear strong, I found I had to sink into a chair. Looking ragged and unbelievably weary, Holmes took my sitting as a cue and sat down himself. He looked so tired, as if every breath and word spent so much energy out of him. He looked like a shadow that might blow away with the smallest wind.

"Please say I'm wrong" I beseeched him. "For once, give me joy in knowing I'm wrong about something, Sherlock." I found that the emotion behind my words made it easy to slip into his Christian name. If he had as little time as I believed him to, then it hardly mattered how anything sounded.

Sherlock looked down at the ground, coughing into his handkerchief again, paining me by looking like he was trying to be discreet about it. As if discretion would help anything….I felt dizzy and weak with the realization. When I imagined where he might have been all of these months, somehow I always imagined he would come back. I didn't think it'd be for so short a time.

"I wish I could. If ever there was a time that I wanted to tell you were wrong, this is it. But sadly, you are not. I have been infected for some time now. I have been away, at the coast, trying to soothe my failing health." Sherlock said.

The sorrow inside of me felt like an open wound. All of these months, Sherlock had been extremely ill with tuberculosis and he'd been alone. As his friend and one who had long seen to make it his mission to be his personal doctor, it caused me agony to think of him suffering alone when I could have been nursing him. It seemed the universe was impossibly cruel that I could not cure him, but I could have at least eased some of his pain. But, as so often was the case, he pushed my away when he could have let me in. While I had always accepted this about him, it hurt now more than ever it had; soon he wouldn't be here and there was so much time that I had lost with him.

"Why?" I asked, the word sounding far too unsteady as it came from my lips, "Why did you leave? Why did you feel you had to hide it?"

Sherlock took several fortifying breaths before he spoke. "I simply did not want anyone to know" he said, "I am more known now than ever before and I didn't want the whole of London inquiring about my health, or worse, pitying me. Besides, I hardly wanted to take any chances infecting any other poor souls with my affliction. I made to simply disappear and the world could know of my fate when they read of my passing in the papers.'

It was so callous, so inhuman. I struggled not to wince at the notion of never hearing from him and seeing his name in an obituary. "But why hide in from me?" I couldn't help but ask. "I thought that our friendship meant you could trust me"

It sounded bitter and childish coming out of my mouth and I was relieved when Sherlock didn't laugh as he undoubtedly would have under different circumstances. "Please don't be wounded, John" he said, seeming to actually feel sympathy for me. "Our friendship is precisely the reason I left you in the dark. It was so dear to me that I could not bear to see the pain in your eyes as you watched me suffer. I could not contemplate my mortality if I saw it in your eyes. I did not want to cause you undue pain…not after everything we have been through. Not after everything you have done for me."

I had never heard him speak so frankly and so emotionally about me. He'd always seemed detached, unemotional save for a few instances where we had faced mortality together. Facing his death, he was concerned about my feelings. It showed a depth of care that I did not think him capable of. "So why are you here now?" I asked, "Believe me, I am glad you are. I am glad you did not let me find out from the papers. But what has changed?"

Sherlock actually smiled at this, that glint back in his eyes. "I could not stay away," he said. "I fully intended to not disturb you more than was possible but I found I could not face the end without seeing you again. Since you are a physician and seem to be endowed with the blessing that the Creator has given to physicians to be more able to resist illness, I chanced to see you again; otherwise I wouldn't have taken my chance. I do not wish to cause you any pain but my selfish nature has gotten the better of me."

"I think it safe to say that you have more that earned the right to be a little selfish" I told him, feeling glad for the chair beneath me that was holding up my continuing to weaken frame, "Not that you are being selfish. You should not have to be alone."

"There is no where I would rather be. There is no one else I would rather see" Sherlock said, surprising me with his earnestness. I was embarrassed by the emotion in his eyes; it was so unnatural to what I was used to seeing but I was glad for it. Sherlock seemed embarrassed by it and covered his reddening face with a hand as he gave a little cough and quickly changed the subject.

"I am afraid that I must ask you for one last favor. A favor I don't deserve to ask but one I one I am asking all of the same." Sherlock said, glancing away from me in a way he himself would deduce as self-conscious. Sherlock had always been such a confident and assured man I was unaccustomed to the self-deprecation in his words. It caused me pain to see how the end of his life seemed to be making him aware of only his faults, real and false.

I answered as I had so many times before, without hesitation or pause. "Certainly. Anything" I said.

Sherlock smiled. "You will come away with me? I can't say precisely when you will be back." He said.

It was painfully aware that he did not say "we"; we both knew wherever we were going, he would not be coming back. It made me feel ill to think of it.

"I will go wherever you need me, without hesitation" I said with feeling. In that moment nothing else mattered. I had such precious little time left with my dearest friend that I could think of nothing else.

"That is the Watson I know best; always at the ready" Sherlock said with fondness. "Wont your dear wife miss you?"

"I will make her understand" I said simply, not wishing to speak of my wife at the moment. Ours was a relationship quickly failing, not the least of which had had several occasions of strife when it came to my dangerous acquaintance with Holmes.

Sherlock did not speak for a long moment, seeming to gather his nerve to say something else. It seemed to take much out of him, for when he spoke again, he looked too much like a corpse. "There is one thing I must tell you before you come with me. You should know before you come with me" he said.

I braced myself for another shock but spoke cool and composed. "Why?" I asked.

"Because if I tell you, you may change your mind about accompanying me" Sherlock said severely.

"Surely not. We have seen each other at our worst" I said, trying to lighten the mood. I could not imagine what he could possibly tell me that would make me desert him in his last hours.

Sherlock's mood did not lighten but seemed to grow more desperate. After starting to say something several times and stopping, he jumped up abruptly. "How about a bit of brandy, John? You look nearly faint," he said.

I could tell the brandy was entirely for his benefit but I did feel faint and was quick to agree. I took the glass he gave me with shaky hands and downed it quickly. I felt a little warmed but it did not seem to matter much; I still felt empty.

Sherlock, having taken the decanter with him, drank several drinks in quick succession, alarming me. It was obvious he was trying to fabricate a sense of bravery he didn't feel. He had never, to my knowledge, been afraid to talk to me.

After several large drinks and still shaking, I felt my alarm increase. "Whatever it is, you can surely tell me later?" I suggested, worried at seeing how affected he was, frail as he was.

"No! I cannot" Sherlock said, frightening in his intensity. "Though I would never wish to burden you with this knowledge I can continue no longer as such a fraud."

"I must admit you are startling me" I confessed. I knew all of his unsavory secrets, at least I thought I did. Was it possible he had, as some of the public had wondered, given up his great talents for the law to the ways of the street?

"Are you in trouble?" I prompted him, feeling panicked, reflexively tipping back my glass but finding it empty.

Sherlock shook his head vigorously as he topped off another drink, even his sickly cheeks now brightened with red. "No, it nothing like that. It is you, John" he said.

"Me?" I asked, wondering what he could mean.

Sherlock met my eyes and startled me with the honesty in them. "You wondered why I came back here now. It wasn't only because I wanted your help; it was because I could not imagine facing the end of my life without you" he said. At this point, he looked away, as if unable to look at me as he spoke the next.

"It is not fair of me to tell you this now but I feel I must. It will surely make you think less of me but I must at least end as an honest man" Sherlock said.

"There is nothing that would make me think less of you" I said honestly. Truthfully, at this point, in such a desperate moment even the revelation that he was a terrible murderer would have fazed me relativity little.

"You are so loyal" Sherlock said, smiling but still not looking at me. "You are loyal to a fault and it is only one of your many admirable qualities. You are an honest gentleman, a talented physician…..it hardly is fair for me to tell you that for a long time now my feelings for you have gone from those of my deepest friend to an affection that dare not speak its name. It's only my mortality that makes me say it now. To say I have the deepest affection for you would not be an understatement. Pray don't hate me for it."

"Wait…..what?" I asked, frowning in complete confusion. Whatever I had been expecting, it had not been that. My mind, so still struggling with the knowledge that Sherlock was near death was having a hard time absorbing such a strong revelation.

Sherlock could not have looked more embarrassed. "I of course don't expect you to act any different. I will not. I don't want to make you uncomfortable and I won't bring it up again if you don't want me to. I just wanted you to know fully of my feelings before you came away with me in case it made you not want to. Pray don't hate me."

To say I was stunned was an underestimate. For years I had sought, I believed unsuccessfully, for Sherlock's affection and attention. He had scorned me at worst and was indifferent at best. Had the circumstances not been so dire and Sherlock not looked so sick, I would have accused him of telling a joke. My mind felt like it was spinning. Five years ago the news of Oscar Wilde's trial had caused me, with the majority of London, to disdain the 'love that must not speak its name' with all of its shocking details. Why, when I had always found sodomy such a disgusting thing, did this not disgust me? I was biased I knew because it was Sherlock but there was nothing disgusting about him. He had never treated me in a bad way; had he not told me now he felt, I would never have known. His affection for me, while I now knew must have crossed a line society would have found question with, was far more than some paltry passion. I cared far too much for him to desert him now.

"Say something" Sherlock begged me, my pause having gone on for far too long. "Will you still come with me?"

"Of course I will" I said without hesitation.

Sherlock looked shocked. He honestly believed I would be so appalled by his affection for me that I would not go with him. "You will?" he asked. His assumption that I would hate him was harder to take than his meaningful secret. Nothing, not even the ugliest, grimmest truth could have possibly turned me away from him at this moment; certainly not the knowledge that I succeeded in gaining the love of the man who I had, somewhat subconsciously, been trying to gain for years.

I was suddenly aware of the absurdity of how far away we sat, me by the fireplace and he by the table. While the space did give me some comfort, a way to emotionally detach from the intensity of the situation, I found that I could not maintain it any longer. I got up from my place and took the chair opposite the table from Sherlock. He looked surprised, as if I were approaching a leper instead of my friend of twenty years.

His hands were lying atop the table, visibly shaking. Even I had the deductive abilities to see that it was a combination of nerves, his illness and whatever drugs he was using to soothe his illness. Tentatively, I lay my hand on top of his; they were thinner they ever had been, cold as stone to the touch. Though it was a foreign motion I gathered strength from it and I could see Sherlock visibly relax as well.

"Sherlock, you are and have always been my dearest friend" I told him. "There has never been anything that I would not do for you and that continues to remain true now. Nothing will turn me away; nothing will make me desert you. I care for you more than anyone else I have ever known."

There were, like Sherlock's words, words I would not have dared utter under other circumstances; I had hardly dared to feel them. Sherlock's presence in my life had been a rock, a strength I had drawn from even when I did not realize it. He was the final commanding officer to my obedient personality.

The look of trust and emotion deep in Sherlock's weary eyes meant everything to me. His hand gave mine the smallest squeeze of comfort back. True to his word, he didn't push me to talk about how I felt about his world shattering revelations; of that I was glad because I was not sure how I felt about it at all. "I am glad to be back with you, Watson" he said with a bright smile. He almost looked like his old self again.

I felt a small smile turning on my own lips. "Watson? I thought we were going by our Christian names now?" I said, feeling my normal humor surface for a moment.

Sherlock shrugged. "It is a hard habit to break" he said. Indeed it was; our using our surnames had nothing to with a lack of intimacy, rather it was just a comfortable habit.

Sherlock left me then; I was to pack my things to go away with him and he was to return in an hour. Walking to my room and closing the door tightly behind me despite my being entirely alone, my first task was not to begin gathering my positions. The first thing I did was fall heavily on my bed and weep bitterly.

Sherlock would be back in an hour and when he did I wanted all signs of my emotions to be long gone, even to his brilliant eyes. But I was completely and utterly heartbroken. I didn't want him to see it, lest I bring him down with my sorrow but I could hardly contain it in his presence.

Sherlock Holmes was dying….he had been a part of my life for so long that I did not know what I would be without him. While Sherlock was a mortal man of many destructive habits, all of which I had bemoaned on numerous occasions, I had always felt he would long outlive me. He was full of contradictions; while he was incredibly athletic, he was terribly lazy to the point of self-neglect at times. While he was usually in good health, he indulged heavily in drugs. He constantly consorted with the most dangerous of persons; he has sustained numerous injuries but was an amazingly quick healer. I always felt he'd be around forever.

Even as I struggled to believe that it was actually real, furious anger was already overtaking me like a dark cloud, making be burn with anger even as tears ran down my face. How could this happen? London needed Sherlock; what cruel force of the universe had stolen him? Everyone needed him…..I needed him. Had I not suffered enough in my life? Had I not lost enough people? What sin in my life was so great that the most important person to me was being stolen in this cruel manner?

I allowed myself to wallow in my self-pity and sorrow for twenty minutes before I began to pull myself together. Mopping my face heavily with a handkerchief I sought to pack and banish thoughts of Sherlock's mortality as much as I could. As for Sherlock's imitate feelings for me and my own uncertain ones…I could not even begin to examine them.

I was ready and standing on the street when Sherlock arrived for me. I took bitter pleasure in the fact that not even Sherlock could see any sign of my grief now.