For a moment, I thought perhaps my lungs would burst from my chest, my eyes detach from my head, and my balance would fell me unconscious. Was what I had just heard true? Could it possibly be true? But it had to be true, I reasoned. Holmes would never invent such a tale. But Sherlock Holmes, the great detective- a cold, calculating machine, without regard for the emotions of life, with nothing but contempt for love and affection, the greatest misogynist mankind would ever create- a husband and father? I could not comprehend this. Everything I had believed him to be, everything I had known of him for many years- all seemed to disappear and be uprooted from this one startling and shocking revelation.

"Watson." I finally looked at him. I realized that I had been silent for a good many moments. Sherlock Holmes stood before me, his hands clasped behind his back, his face undaunted and stoic, and his gray eyes direct and fearless. He was not expectant, nor emotionless. He was calm and patient.

"Holmes." I trailed off. This part of his life held so many questions. He had never told anyone- why? I was his closest friend, his only confidant. My anger, which was hardly ever present, suddenly burned with a bitter blaze against my friend.

"Why did you not tell me?" My voice betrayed the hurt and anger I felt.

"Because it is not a very.virtuous part of my life." Holmes murmured, not ashamed, but perhaps regrettable.

"Not virtuous? Why, Holmes, to be a father.that is the greatest virtue one can have! And a wife, a wife such as Doctor Montand. We have known each other for so long Holmes! Why did you not tell me?" I had stood now, and my voice positively shook with my feelings.

"Watson." he said sharply, wistfully.

"You cannot pass judgment upon me until you have heard the entire tale." I sighed. I could not allow my anger to vent itself upon Holmes. He was an honorable and trustworthy fellow. He would never betray me, nor anyone else he deemed worthy. There must have been very compelling reasons for his secrecy. I reseated myself back on the bench.

"Then please, Holmes, finish your tale that I might better understand you and your motives." Holmes leaned back against a tree, his arms folded and his gray eyes staring upwards at its branches, as if his tale was to be recited from among them.

"As I have said, Doctor Montand has a superior intellect. Deduction and perceptiveness are nothing new to her, even though she does not choose to employ them. It was this intellect, and only this intellect," He intoned, casting a sharp glance my way. "Which intrigued me."

"Naturally. I assume you knew no one with your particular talents, exempting your brother." Holmes nodded.

"Exactly. And therefore, such another talented person was a masterful challenge."

"A challenge?"

"A battle of wits, Watson, such as is hardly matched and rarely seen." His face seemed to get brighter at the memory of this "battle of wits".

"Every word between us was a fight, a battle to the bitter end. Every word had to be calculated, every slight breath deduced, every movement analyzed. It was delicious, Watson. I have always held that, in part, my abilities were honed and sharpened during our exchanges." I struggled to think of it as no more than an exciting game of chess to Holmes, as opposed to the romantic attraction it seemed to symbolize to me.

"We were not frequent companions, nor did we avoid each other. When we were together, we sought to better ourselves through being sparring partners, as it were. I was evenly matched on every score; courage, determination, tenacity, and blatant disregard for the common societal concerns of most other university students."

"Well, she intrigued you then. However did a few intelligent conversations translate to a marriage and a son?" I interjected. Holmes' eyes downcast to the ground.

"We began an experiment." He muttered darkly.

"An experiment?"

"Aside from similar abilities, Doctor Montand and I had similar goals. She sought to learn everything about the world she could to better aid her patients. I sought to learn everything I could to better understand the criminal mind and motivation."

"What a fool I was." He added in disgust. For a moment I took in the idea of Sherlock Holmes being disgusted with his actions. It was a new idea, one that I never thought I would see. Holmes was not a man for regrets.

"Where is the foolishness in that?" I finally said.

"I sought to learn by any means necessary." He finished.

"Are you saying your marriage is an experiment?" I said incredulously. Holmes shook his head.

"No, no Watson. I was a fool, but not an imbecile in my youth. We began an experiment in how attraction would influence a person's mind." I struggled to think of what this might entail. My mind came up with several possibilities, each more unlikely than the last. I still could not shake my belief that somehow, affection between the two had to play some kind of role. I could not bring myself to believe that Holmes saw the lady as nothing more than a test tube and could not even fathom the lady seeing Holmes as a mere whim.

"You must have developed some sort of regard for each other then."

"Disguise, in physical form or otherwise, is nothing new to me Watson. Doctor Montand despises prevarication, but was willing to lie for the sake of education."

"So you both acted as if you had a regard for each other? How does that show how it would affect your actions?"

"Deduction, Watson. If we put ourselves into the situation, our minds could filter through every possible action, testing it for likelihood and probability."

"That is almost grotesque, Holmes! Haven't you any care for what Doctor Montand felt?" Holmes sighed, exasperated.

"I tell you again, Watson, stop thinking of Doctor Montand as some wilting feminine flower that requires your every attention! She is as stalwart as the most resilient of men and as practical and logical as the best of them. She feels nothing for me as I feel nothing for her." Even though this story was farfetched to anyone but Holmes, my mind was still concentrated on one subject: How had Holmes and Doctor Montand eventually married and produced a son? I could not possibly comprehend THAT as an experiment, and I could not conceivably see Doctor Montand, who, despite Holmes' insistence that she was not a normal woman, was a devoted mother and would not, under any circumstances, bring a child into the world who would not have a loving family.

"Where does the marriage come in, Holmes? You say it is not an experiment. Then is it of your own free will? And how does John Montand, your son, factor into all this?"

"One experiment led to another, Watson. An even more fool idea than the first." Holmes walked over to sit beside me, rubbing his neck ruefully.

"Which was?"

"5 bottles of port." He muttered, almost so low I could not hear.

"What?"

"An experiment involving myself, Doctor Montand, and 5 bottles of port." He said slowly, but clear this time, sitting up as if he had decided that he was no longer hesitant to tell me.

"What was the premise?" Holmes thought for a moment.

"I believe it is sufficient enough to say that John is the result of this experiment." For a moment I again thought I would stagger back in disbelief. Holmes, who rarely drank and when he did was not affected in the slightest, and Doctor Montand, a decorous and intelligent woman, intoxicated beyond sensibilities, without any intention produced a son? A startling thought came to mind.

"Do you mean to say you were not married to her?" I said incredulously. Holmes nodded. I leapt up.

"Holmes, that's deplorable!" Holmes smirked.

"The experiment or the fact that it was not conducted consciously or within the confines of wedlock? My dear Watson, if you honestly believed I married out of affection or regard, you are utterly mistaken."

"So you are married merely because of your son?" He nodded again.

"Nothing else would possibly have induced me down that road, I assure you."

"I thought you did not care for what society thought of you." I snapped, unable to think of anything else to say.

"I do not in the slightest; however, the rest of England does. Both Doctor Montand and I were ambitious. It would not do us nor John any harm if our names were legally joined on a piece of registry paper." He sounded so light, so casual, as if it all meant nothing more to him, and I was repulsed by what I saw as callousness.

"But what kind of life was that for Doctor Montand and her son? You have not lived with her at all, and if you have visited, it must be before you made my acquaintance or in the ridiculously late hours of the night."

"After we conducted the courtroom ceremony, Doctor Montand and I parted ways. I did not even know I had a son until he was about the age of 8."

"Holmes! To have- For Doctor Montand to have borne a child- And you to have abandoned her!" I sputtered. My heart was torn. Half of me knew Holmes as a just, fair, righteous individual, my dear friend. The other half of me was ready to denounce him as an audacious cad.

"I most certainly did not abandon Doctor Montand." Holmes said, rising, slightly insulted. "It is impossible to 'abandon' the lady, for she needs nothing and no one to survive. I assure you she neither needed nor desired my help in any way. She informed me of a child, asked my advice, and we followed it to the letter. I did no more than she requested of me. Anything more would be an insult to her self-sufficiency and a waste of my time."

"What about your son then? What about abandoning him?" I yelled, aware of how heated my voice had become.

"Abandon my son?" Holmes snarled in surprise, perhaps even more insulted that I would accuse him of such a thing.

"After 8 years, I became curious as to what had become of Doctor Montand and her child. I sought them out and finally met young John. To my astonishment, the young lad deduced exactly who I was and furthermore, my relationship to him. Since then not a week has gone by that I have not visited the boy."

"And now he is missing." He finished in a sentence that stopped his tirade short, and he leaned one arm against a tree, steely gray eyes staring off into the distance. I too had run out of momentum. I no longer could accuse him of anything. It was foolish to expect Sherlock Holmes to have followed the traditional thinking of society, and foolish to think that his reasons for marrying or having a son would be anything like I would imagine. He had acted no differently than in his usual Holmes- like fashion would dictate, and as I thought back, as long as what he said about the lady's own opinions were true, I could see no true fault in his actions. Morally surprising and questionable certainly, but not any fault in the eyes of God.

"Now that I know the truth, Holmes," I said softly. "I am certain we shall find him." Holmes glanced up at me.

"I am sorry I did not tell you sooner, Watson." I waved a hand at him.

"You've told me now, which is far better than never." Holmes straightened up.

"I doubted you would find anything in the way of entanglements. One thing John has not inherited from me is a temper. He is far more patient and amiable than I could ever wish to be."

"Do you believe he was carried off rather than gone of his own free will?"

"It is more probable that he was forced to go somewhere rather than forcibly taken there. Who would do such a thing I do not know."

"Well quite obviously one of your enemies, Holmes. Wouldn't that be logical?"

"It would serve no purpose for my enemies, Watson." Holmes said, starting back towards the house.

"Why ever not?"

"Because he is John Montand, not John Holmes. Not yet, anyways."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I try to follow Holmes and Watson as best I can- I don't trust the fan fics where Holmes falls in love with some woman- love is contradictory to his nature and declaring it as thus even more so. If he did love he wouldn't recognize it until it had taken him over, and if he did act on it, it wouldn't be in conventional methods. I don't know if love will factor into my stories, but in the terms of marriage and a son, I could only see once conceivable way of Holmes willingly having both. Review if you can!