Decision
I do remember the day I met him first. He was looking for a flat. I had one and was willing to share for a financial participation. He had just returned from war, had been injured and was looking for a way to lead a normal life. His name was John H. Watson and he was a doctor. Military doctor. He had returned from the front line and suffered nightmares. He entered my life like an emaciated, hurt dog you throw a bone at for this wiggling his tail and loving you. That was my view of him in the beginning. He took the room upstairs and was willing to pay fifteen pounds per month.
When he came he had nothing but a bag, where his few belongings fitted in easily. Some clothes, an army pistol, a saber, a dagger, some memories from Afghanistan. Mrs. Hudson was happy to hear that he claimed the whole furnishing, bedding and linen. Well, he was a friendly, straightforward man. When Mike Stamford introduced him I thought him harmless and naive. But his eyes were beautiful and fascinating. This was the first disastrous deduction. Disastrous for addicting me from the first moment on. These eyes; full with life and emotion. Full with all the things that I lacked. I realized much later that it was me who provoked all of it. John had a way to smile, to think and to pay attention to me that biased me towards him. He changed my life completely. He taught me how to feel, my soul how to fly, my mind how to calm down. He taught my body to surrender and ignited my heart. Doctor John Hamish Watson was anything but harmless. He made me a loving, lost human. He presented me a kingdom of heaven, whose backside was hell.
My brother was the first to conclude. I remember a picture in the Times. We had been photographed together at a crime scene. We were leaving, Watson and I. We stood next to each other. We did not look the other in the eyes but we seemed clearly allocated and our shoulders slightly touched. We faced the camera with such a deep contentment and such happiness in our eyes, no one believed it to be fake. Watson and I looked like a newly wed couple. The picture shocked me when it appeared in the newspaper. Most of the people surely missed the details. Yet some others did understand the message. My brother said:
"Be careful about yourself and Watson, are you?"
I told him and I remember myself quite beaming with joy:
"He is my friend."
"Love is a chemical malfunction, Sherlock. And love among men is a crime."
"He is my friend.", I repeated.
He still was at that time. My friend. For a little time left. Some hours later we were lovers and criminals. We went home to Baker Street after solving the case. Both deep in thoughts. Both knowing that the tenderness and the contingencies that happened among us were crossing the borders of friendship easily. Both feeling the longing behind these gestures that urged relentlessly to the surface. We talked about it that evening. John Watson was brave enough to approach the subject and to kiss me, to break the spell. We loved for the first time that night. Sinful, passionate. I was overwhelmed with the experience and could not believe the luck I witnessed. I realized the meaning of surrendering completely to somebody by time, the meaning of being woven into another being. I realized the terminal addiction connected to it.
We feed from the strength of our love. I was unspeakably serendipitous. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. John had assumed a small surgery. We solved difficult cases. It had been the best time of my life.
But our bliss did not remain secret. First there were begrudges, then people disliking our work. Finally even the public sensed something, feeding the gossip eagerly. Someday, John left. I know he did it for me. For both of us. To save us. To save me.
Yet there is nothing that could save me.
He has left for the second time now. But it is different this time. He has left for good.
I do not know whether I have known, sensed or even waited for it. Three days after our last night I received the telegram that the body of Doctor John H. Watson had been found. He had turned the army pistol to himself out in the woods. I was in a state of shock when I realized that he had gone. All gone. That there was no possibility to ever look into his beautiful, familiar eyes, to ever embrace him.
Something within me fell apart and moved me into a condition of loss of space. I sat in my chair in front of the chimney, empty and timeless. I just sat there. No pain. Just plain and sober nothingness. Yet something had fallen apart, deeply, silently. It took some time to realize it. A distortion. No blind, maddening pain, crying, raging and sobbing, no fight as before, as he had left the first time. It was a single, heavy fault that moved all grounds. Out of this, tears welled up like from a fountain, and once they had been released, the desperate hopelessness and the cruel stinging bitterness that had accompanied me for so long as well. Everything welled up from me. A black, venomous, putrescent swill. I cried, vomited, coughed and gasped them out of my body, my soul. I let it all flow out. There was nothing left worth keeping. I did not fight. I just gave up. It took countless hours to exhaust my body completely. Mrs. Hudson and Mycroft looked after me. I hardly perceive them. A black hole of irrelevance. Just the fault within. I knew it was important. My life had fallen apart.
No note. He did not leave anything. Not a single word. It just is not necessary. I know all his words. His thoughts. His warm smile. His hands touching me. His heating body. I know everything about him. Know him completely.
I started to comprehend. He had freed me. Freed us. Our love. His death had elevated it from this hostile earth to place it in a memory that could not be harmed any more. He secured everything we were and everything we shared. He created an indestructible band in a sphere out of our love, where no society, no gossip, no world power was ever able to destroy it. Our love had become sacrosanct.
I went to his funeral. I wanted it, wanted to accompany him to the place we would finally meet again. I was able to do this for him as a token of my unabated love. Mycroft worried about me. Maybe he sensed that I had found John in a new way; John was closer than ever. I sensed him so close to me as if we were sleeping together, yet there was no flesh parting us anymore. I looked perpetually into his beautiful, loving eyes and felt him embracing me all the time.
I went to his funeral and cried uncontrollably at his tomb. Mycroft held me. I wept over our unaccomplished lives. Over his. And over mine. I wept for the people close to us. Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade. I wept over the farewell. I did not weep over our love, for it was indestructible.
I talked to Mary and grieved for her. She was the victim of our incapacity. She seemed calm.
She said:
"The love for you has killed him."
And I responded:
"We still love each other."
She stared at me in dismay and said:
"Do not commit a sin, Sherlock Holmes."
Commit a sin? His body lay wrecked in a coffin and entrusted to dissolution. A suicide. Without the right to receive the sacraments of church. It did not matter, though. The love he hallowed me with was still there. I would hallow him with this love as well. Wholly and unprejudiced.
We committed Johns body to earth. I had memorised him. Every inch. His overwhelming beauty and strength. I sensed him in every moment. I gave him flowers to take with him, witnesses of my appreciation. I was aware of death while doing that. The only man I had shared my life with, to whom I had revealed my soul, whom I had gifted my body to; he was no longer here. The only man that the longing of my heart sensed after day and night, whom I had yearned for was no longer here. He had relieved himself. And me as well. Now there was a path to reach him.
John Watson has stopped the world for both of us. He got off and has left the door open for me. He has always been the braver one. The world is braked. Time stands still. Reality has fallen apart to empty nothingness.
Oh, death, where is thy sting?
I always have enough morphine at home.
End.
