Disclaimer: This little vignette is sort of an antecedent to the story "Scars and Silence", the summary of which I hope to embellish a bit. It's an alternative plot behind the Great Hiatus and provides some explanation for Holmes' actions. I apologize if it appears a bit random and strange--this was just a thought I had one day.

The characters of Arthur Conan Doyle's amazing canon are not mine as much as I may hold them in the greatest esteem.

(Note: the title/quote is from Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene I)

"THE MISERABLE HAVE NO OTHER MEDICINE BUT HOPE"

The good doctor has at last resolved to end his grief. Stop.

Most alarming. Stop.

This must end. Stop.

M.H.

Holmes read these words beside a sunny window in a small public house. He laid the innocuous slip of paper face down on the table and produced two coins from his coat pocket. Folding the telegram carefully so not a single letter of the accusatory message would be visible, he slipped it between the folds of a play bill and pushed its contents from his mind.

For all of his brother's summerial allegations to the contrary Holmes was well aware of the progression of Watson's self-consuming grief. Every year he witnessed his friend's downward spiral first hand at the edge of those damnable falls. Originally he had asked Mycroft to send someone to watch over the doctor in case he decided to join Holmes' ghost at the base of the falls. Reflecting on this point however he knew, as well as Watson must, that he was decidedly incapable of such an act much as Holmes would be were their positions reversed.

Reversed--if only it were that simple. All he could do was kneel beneath the same lip of rock that had shielded him from view that last day he claimed friendship with the one person who could fill his heart with unsettling emotions Holmes rather cared not to admit. And he watched, impassively, as Watson slowly approached the cluster of rocks lining the lip of the canyon, clutching his cane as he struggled for balance. As the years passed this momentous effort of hiking nearly twelve miles through steep alpine terrain took an increasingly taxing toll on the doctor. He looked as Holmes did after a particularly scintillating and difficult case which so demanded his attention he forgot the need for food or sleep. At least until the next morning after the criminal had been apprehended. Then he would sweep out a substantial amount of tobacco with his finger from the slipper and after inhumanly consuming it in the time it took Watson to take two sips of tea retire to his bedroom to collapse on his bed fully clothed.

But it appeared that Watson had yet to submit to his body's requirements for food and sleep, unforgivable crimes that Holmes had been convicted of more times than he could count but could never recall his friend committing. Like an elderly gentleman clutching his staff lest he fall into the street Watson would at last reach that fateful precipice and thus spend the greater part of the morning staring into the white foam. Noting his vacant stare Holmes knew he was senseless of his surroundings and perhaps had been the moment he had set out from the chalet. His mind's eye was filled not with the slender trunks of cypress and pine but the painful memories of a past that was dug up from its grave every year since 1891. And each year he promised it would be the last. Regrettably it was not to be, Moran refusing to commit an egregious error and continuing to lay low like a tiger in the grass. As fragile a state as Watson's mind must have been reduced to he could not convince myself that the alternative was worth the risk of his material safety. He had received word and interrupted several communications between Moran and his widespread net of henchman which intimated the potential end of the ace they held up their sleeve. If he proved to be alive they would immediately capture Watson and, if they didn't kill him immediately, would subject him to tortures Holmes refused to imagine until he accented to exchange his life for his friend's.

There were other caveats as well and a few trivial accusations that Moran claimed was sufficient to blackmail them both. But none frightened Holmes as much as the doctor's life. He would not jeopardize it or even presume to cast the palest of shadows over his well being. At least, no more than he was now. After being coerced to share a particularly strong mixture of papavar sp. with an emirate, one thought which refused to be ignored and buried itself like a nettlesome thorn in his brain, was that perhaps this was the true intention of the late Professor's plan. The pain and suffering he had caused Watson was not only unforgivable and inhuman but far worse than any dangers they had faced together over the years. Moriarty was probably laughing in his grave and delighting at their masochistic self-destruction. As Holmes watched Watson's balance falter as he dug his cane into a cleft in the rock to keep from falling, reason and sanity left him and he lay his face to the cold granite and cried.

Holmes walked through the silent village as evening slipped into night, the green clad trees taking on a spectral appearance in the gathering darkness. Knowing, intuitively, the act to which Mycroft referred left a chill that seeped through his body until his bones ached. It would take a lesser man not to be affected by the news and apparently a far lesser one to walk away from it. The indecision seemed to tear him apart and weighed his mind with guilt. Should he return to London and save his friend from his despair only to risk the very life he had vowed always to protect?

Stopping suddenly in the road that had progressed from worn cobblestones to gravel and finally to well packed earth he realized the real reason behind his irresolution. Once presenting himself to someone who firmly believed him to be dead, would their relationship pick up where it had left off? Or would an awkward chasm descend between them irreparably severing their former regard? Holmes' conviction lay with the latter probability. Unaccustomed to addressing matters of the heart it remained his prerogative to somehow amend for his inexcusable farce. He would have thought Watson, a stout veteran who had weathered more storms than he count, would have surfaced from this last battle relatively sound in both body and mind. But he had been proven wrong on both accounts.

Thus was his path gradually wending through ever thicker woods. Holmes felt the cold shadow of the skeleton trees as they leaned over him, their thick roots protruding like firmly planted knees. There were many things he should do, and conversely many things he should refrain from at all cost, the foremost of which was insensitivity and continued anonymity. Watson may never forgive him but if Holmes did not return to alleviate the heaviest of his friend's burdens he would never be able to forgive himself. He could just hear the doctor's petulant voice expounding on Holmes' irresponsibility and impulsivity. Smiling ruefully Holmes kicked a large stone out of his path and continued along the road, conviction finally clearing his clouded mind.