A/N: Merry Christmas everybody

From Domina Temporis: The Christmas truce

Those early days were not as bitter, not as costly to the minds and bodies of men as they would grow to become. The true horrors of global warfare had not been realized. There was an innocence to those days that has been lost. I will not say the new world is better for it, but not only evil came from those great and terrible years in Europe.

It had been some months since I had last seen my friend Sherlock Holmes. We were both getting on in age, he having this year celebrated his 60th birthday. While we were both eager of news and eager to aid, there was only so much to be done by a pair of old relics. My dear friend had taken it upon himself, instead, to go into intelligence gathering rather than try to fight. I fell back into my old ways picking up nearly where I had left off as a Doctor.

Only this time was different. It seemed always to change, and yet stay so terrifyingly the same. I had seen the horrors of war in my lifetime, but as I said these were early days yet. Some five months into the endeavor that we paid for with a generation, Sherlock Holmes was captured by the enemy. I did not know how much peril he had been in at the time. Indeed, it seemed he was the only one fully cognizant of the situation.

As it was, the first words he said to me upon being released went along the lines of "What a Merry Christmas this is Watson!" before, to my great surprise, throwing his arms around me. I was shocked, as this was the first conversation we'd had since October.

"I suppose it is, Holmes." I said, bewildered. "What on earth have you been up to, and how did you come to this part of the front?"

He drew back with a sadder smile this time. "Ah, well... I have been very busy, my old friend, and I am no favorite of the Kaiser for it. Would you believe I have narrowly escaped becoming a prisoner of war?"

Holmes had stunned me for the second time in as many minutes. "What? However did you escape?"

"I didn't escape, which was why the thing was so close." Said he. "My luck lay with a handful of words in passable German and my age. It is much easier to adopt the part of an old man hard of hearing when one has authentic wrinkles customary to the character."

I was still too amazed at his close shave to find the humor in all this. "And they let you on your way without another word?"

He gestured to the men around us, the state of calm that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. "It is truly a Christmas miracle. But, had this not been my last assignment behind enemy lines... Watson I have no love of war nor the avarice that leads men to it. No pride nor wrath nor lust for power should ever drive me to fully back a decision of such magnitude."

Holmes paused for a long moment and squeezed my shoulder gently. "How brave you are, my friend, to dive into man's folly in the hopes of saving them from it. Not once, but twice in your life you chose the path with so great a personal risk..."

"It is what you do, in your own way." I said, not really knowing what else to say to such a pronouncement. It showed a glimpse of his mind, of his concerns regarding the days to come. I who knew him well could read them clearly. "You do as much from the other side, a shield rather than a suture."

That brought more of a smile to his lips. "Always one to pay a compliment but never receive one in full. I have missed you more than my bees, more than good coffee or all the comforts of home. You might accuse me of becoming sentimental in my old age..."

"But?"

"But nothing." He laughed. "I am a sentimental old fool and perhaps happier because of it."

"I must concur, and plead guilty on my own account."

We rested, as did much of Europe, that Christmas night. It seemed for a moment that the old world was dying slower than it had been. Though the shortest of reprieves, it highlighted the depth of human kindness even amidst the darkest of human cruelty.