Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock Holmes or Watson.
Disclaimer2: A few days ago a similar story to this was published. To avoid offense I would like to point out that this story has been written for two months and I have in no way taken another's idea. It's merely bad timing on my part.
Dedication: To my best friend Kris, who is a senior this year and will graduate in a little over a month. I am a junior. How will I survive one more year of school without you?
Witness to an Autumn Wedding
Long ago, like a child, John Watson could not hold his own, depending on his only friend for adventure, for interest, for companionship, for a few rooms to make a home. It does not seem so far in the past, but it's been years, and years are often quite significant. Now he and Mary hope to have the wedding before the weather gets to dreadfully cold. By Christmas, these rooms will be his alone. What shall he do with the extra bedroom? A chemistry lab? A library? Of course not. It will always be Watson's.
He watches Watson clamor into the hansom. It used to be that this battle-weary, rail-thin, gammy-legged man would trail him like a dog, siphoning off excitement to fill the holes in his post-war life. And slowly he learned to work with a partner as swiftly as he had worked alone, or moreso- bouncing ideas off Watson's intelligent yet unfocused mind, calling on his powers of temperance and steadfastness when a case became trying. And their two names became as singular a pair as Arthur and Lancelot, Quixote and Sancho: Holmes and Watson.
Now Watson goes into town alone very often for wedding preparations, staying less and less for the little cases, and sometimes missing bits and pieces of the larger ones as well. And the ring isn't even on his finger yet.
This particular day he does not know where Watson is off to, only that his friend will come back late, rosy-cheeked with the wind and grinning broadly. If he truly desired to analyze the dirt on his trousers, the scuffs on his boots, he could deduce precisely what stores he had visited in his travels and roughly what he had done there; somehow, though, that would seem a bit pointless.
The sun breaks through a cloud, spraying golden light everyone on the familiar London street. Before the hansom pulls away, he can see the light wash over Watson's hair, turning the fading brown into a brilliant bronze, as though life were flowing into him.
His violin strings squeal and his chin aches in protest as he presses the instrument too tightly into his shoulder. Had he been playing this entire time? Had the notes continued to flow reflexively, even as his mind was occupied elsewhere? What could he have played- anything, really, and he wouldn't have noticed the difference. Watson's hansom pulls away and in some repressed, fanciful part of his mind the street looks a little dimmer.
In mere weeks he will become the lone inhabitant of 221B Baker. The wedding will be at the tail end of autumn, and when the New Year dawns the time they'd had together might turn to nothing but myth.
A more passionate man might weep. But Sherlock Holmes merely presses down the bow of his violin and lets the hollow wood wail for him.