He inwardly smirks, as he remembers the moment. Then chuckles aloud. "The Woman! The Woman,"
He thinks of her. Imagines her, and where she is right now. Her name flits through his head. Clara Stephens. That's who she is now. Of Trenton, New Jersey.
He thinks of his brother downstairs, smiling. Only he could fool his brother.
How long he can manage to, is another story.
Why?
Because he understands now, what it is, that fleeting feeling in pit of his stomach, that passionate sound in his head, the new sense of elation he finds at the thought of simply breathing the same air as her.
Love.
It's a fierce sound, feeling, experience.
Like his violin, at its most passionate. It's the adoration of another soul, another form of being.
Being through someone else.
Perhaps.
But it's also the knowledge that there is someone out there with his same thoughts, feelings, intelligence.
He remembers her eyes that night, the tear that trickled lightly down her cheek, the relieved smile that graced her lips when she heard his ringtone, saw his eyes, heard his voice.
To know that there was another person that understood…That felt in a way he had never hoped or even wanted to feel before.
Now he understands.
He smirks once more at the thought of her, as he puts the cell phone away in his drawer to be locked away forever, unless of course on occasion he wishes to look at it, to recall.
He's lucky, he knows that there isn't anyone else as intelligent as himself, or rather with a combination of intelligence and emotion.
He knows now that Mycroft was wrong.
Caring isn't an advantage, it is the means to which a man of intelligence can outsmart the rest, if he is careful.
Neither his brother, nor Watson would ever expect him to have seriously fallen in love with her. And so neither would ever know just what he had done for her.
For himself.
And she is safe because of it.
Perhaps he shall have to watch out for Mrs. Hudson, if he isn't careful, he shall begin to compose a much happier tune on his violin, and she would be the most liable to understand and then blather away his deepest secret.
His desperately unavoidable love for one woman, the woman, Irene Adler.
