Title: Dutiful

Author name: DocJorgensen
Category: Angst,
Characters: Sherlock Holmes, Dr. John Watson

Ships: None

Rating: K
Spoilers: I don't think any?
Summary: Holmes reflects on Watson's sense of duty.

DISCLAIMER: I own naught, alas. Sir Arthur, forgive my sacrilege in playing with your beloved characters.
Author Notes: I was reading Stephen Ambrose's book, Eisenhower and his Boys, and one of things he writes about was the duty that the men of the U.S. felt for fighting WW2. This is my response.

Dedication:To Ike, may he rest in peace.


"Alas for virtue, alas for the fidelity of ancient times, and a hand invincible in war!" Aeneid, by Vergil, Book VI, Lines 888-9 [Heu pietas, heu prisca fides invictaque bello dextera!]

Every argument I could discern was against his going. His advanced age, his lameness… each and all.

Yet the damned, twice-blasted fool insisted.

His duty, he says.

Duty! My tongue spits, sneers the accursed word.

Even on the eve of his going, I cannot understand his logic, if there is any logic in it.

I am all but in a rage over the stupidity of my obviously mentally disturbed roommate.

Surely the slight warmth in my eyes is the weakness of my vision, and the faint tightness in my chest is just the cold seeping from the windows.

I can admit naught else.

He sleeps but fitfully, if the twitching of the floorboards is any indication. I would suspect old demons, never truly exorcised.

My fingers catch on the telegram Mycroft has sent only a few days before.

Sherlock STOP Be sensible STOP Give regards to Doctor Watson STOP Mycroft STOP

Be sensible he says.

I am aching with sensibility. And my mind cannot help but see out into the approaching darkness with grim, cold dread.

Duty will kill a man. A friend. A brother. I must be sensible of this.

Thus it is with great care and trepidation that I see him to the station, and perhaps for the last time he departs.

Then it is that I curse my tongue for the words it could not, would not utter, but Watson knew all along, and the desperate and muttered prayers to a God in whom I had not believed.

Duty will see him dead.

Duty will judge him the better man.

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

–Nathan Hale, 1755-1776