Prompt: Two years after Mary's death, Watson thinks he sees her whilst Christmas shopping, from W.Y. Traveller.

A sad one today

Winter had arrived in full force in London in 1896, the biting cold and heavy winds making it a thoroughly miserable affair to go about daily business. I had always found winter a dreary season to begin with, and viewed the prospect of Christmas shopping in such weather with dread. I should, I suppose, have begun earlier, but between my duties at the hospital and the number of cases my friend Sherlock Holmes was taking on, I had had hardly a moment to myself in months.

Holmes, however, viewed the weather with indifference, only noticing if it prevented him from investigations, and sometimes not even then. I remember many occasions on which we had relied on poor weather to hide us from some ruffian or criminal. This, of course, meant that when it was one of the rare beautiful days we had in England, he would be inclined to stay shut up indoors all day with his foul-smelling chemicals, while insistent that we needed to search all of London for a particular type of hairbrush for a case all in the pouring rain.

Today, however, my friend was without a case and laying languidly upon the settee, letting the various sections of the newspaper fall onto the floor as he discarded them. He seemed ready to fill the room in a cloud of smoke and not move for the rest of the day when I suddenly determined that if I put off my Christmas shopping any more, I would likely not have a chance to do it at all. "Holmes, would you mind very much accompanying me?" I asked, putting on my coat and tying and scarf around my neck.

"Christmas shopping at last, Watson?" Holmes asked, springing up immediately. He must indeed have been bored.

"Now, Holmes, really! However did you know that?" I asked.

My friend chuckled in his silent way. "My dear Watson, your forehead has recently developed the tiniest wrinkle whenever you are preoccupied with something. I observed it first two weeks ago and have watched it increase since. Undoubtedly something has been weighing on your mind, yet it is not related to your work, for you would surely have mentioned any medical problem serious enough to have lasted a fortnight, nor is it related to a case, for we do not have one at present, nor is it financial, as I have not seen you doing your ledger in some time. Given the season and the decreasing number of days until Christmas, it is clearly because you have not yet done your Christmas shopping."

I stared at him in some amazement and he smiled at my incredulity. "Come, Watson. As it happens I have also been late in shopping for the season. Perhaps we shall both accomplish our goal today."

We headed out into the bitter cold and hailed a hansom immediately, which Holmes instructed to take us to Oxford Street. I sat back, relieved to be out of the cold and the wind, and watched the passersby. It occurred to me that Christmas was the only bright spot in an otherwise long and cold winter, and that when it was over we would have months before the arrival of spring. It was a dreary thought, and I distracted myself by attempting to guess the professions of the people we passed on the street, as Holmes often did, though I did not do so aloud, not wanting Holmes to laugh and then deduce them all so brilliantly it would put me to shame.

I guessed one fellow a bricklayer based on the color of the dust on his trousers before I remembered that there was unlikely to be any bricklaying going on in the middle of winter, then felt I had better luck with deciding a passing young man was an accounting secretary, judging by the heaviness of the books he carried. I turned my attention to a young lady just passing when I gasped aloud, sure I could not have seen what I thought I had. I looked behind me quickly as the young lady passed out of sight. Her hair was exactly the same color, her gait the same. Even in height and build, she was exactly the same as my dear Mary, dead these two years. "Watson?" Holmes asked in some concern, seeing my reaction. "You have gone quite pale, old fellow. What is it?"

"It is nothing," I said, sitting back. It could not be. I had held Mary's hand as she died, chosen her casket, attended her funeral. Of course it could not be. I was a fool to be taken in by such tricks of the eye, though not enough a fool to admit so to Holmes. He would no doubt think me unduly sentimental, or worse, think there was something truly wrong with me.

"Come, Watson, you are white as a sheet," Holmes said.

I sighed, feeling his keen gaze upon me and knowing he never dropped a line of inquiry until he received an answer. "I thought I saw Mary, there on the street," I said. "Of course it was not. Only a lady who looked very much like her." I looked out the window so he would not notice any display of emotion. Surely he would not understand, all coldness and rationality as he was. Yet two years had passed and I still missed Mary as much as I had the day I lost her. I would have given anything for one more moment together. "A trick of the eye," I said gruffly. "Foolish of me."

"Is it?" Holmes asked. "The senses are not infallible, Watson. They see only what things appear to be. It is the job of the brain to interpret and the brain is, at times, known to interpret things as it wishes them to be rather than as they are."

Such admittances were most unlike Holmes, and he gave me a small smile.. "Do you think I never saw men who resembled you, while I was adrift, being chased across the world for three years by Moriarty's henchman?" He appeared almost ashamed to admit it, but he continued. "A certain gaze in one man's eye, another who wore a similar hat, and it was I turning around, sure that I had seen you."

"You, Holmes?" I said in some disbelief.

My friend shrugged. "I must confess I was surprised the first time. I am used to living by my senses, Watson, and to be unable to trust them...well, I was certain I had lost the only thing left to me, and that was a hard blow on top of losing my career, my home…" Unspoken was that he had lost a friend, though he did not need to give voice to the sentiment for me to know it was there. "After a time I realized it was simply my mind interpreting what I saw as what I wished it to be," he said.

It seemed he would never cease to amaze me; with this admittance he seemed that much more human than he ever had, rather than the perfect thinking machine he appeared. Furthermore, he was correct. Such experiences were not unknown to me. I had experienced similar things during his disappearance. One man's hawklike nose, another's ink-black hair, and I had been sure I had seen Holmes, before telling myself that it could not be. Such sightings became frequent enough that I only wished for them to stop, for they kept alive a seemingly impossible hope. Yet, hadn't I been wrong? Had he not returned, seemingly from the grave? Was it truly so impossible?

For Mary, though, it was, and if my mind was searching for her in the crowds of London, it would never find her. How cruel, that fate returned my dearest friend to me just as it took my beloved wife. If I was to see her everywhere I went, searching for something that could never return, I felt as if I would never be able to live without the constant companion of grief and longing. The thought of another Christmas without her was suddenly unbearably painful. "Holmes, would you mind terribly if we changed our plans?" I asked. "I find I am no longer in the mood for Christmas shopping, but I would like to stop at the cemetery."

"Of course, Watson," Holmes said, his normally cold features sympathetic. "The shopping shall wait for another day."