'His name is John Watson. He was my best friend. To be fair I met him but two years prior to… well I suppose I should just start from the beginning. 221B Baker Street. The home of the consulting detective and his blogger. That's who I am, you see, a consulting detective. I do the Police's job when things get a bit overwhelming for them, which is most of the time. John shared the flat with me, assisted in my cases and blogged about it. Utter nonsense most of it, I can't imagine why people would read such obscenities and yet. Anyway, the villain of this tale goes by the name Jim Moriarty. The cruellest, sharpest and smartest man I have come to know. The most human human and the most bored. A consulting criminal he liked to call himself. Fitting. He was the one that pushed me to my limits. Before long I was stranded on a rooftop, the three people I cared about held at gunpoint, a dead man at my feet and the choice to fall. 'Falling's just like flying,' he told me once, 'just with a more permanent destination.' He was wrong. Falling is not like flying. The fall takes everything; plucks it from your grasp like a blade of grass from weak, brittle earth. Squeezes your secrets out of you to dribble through the sky. The fall takes all and leaves you stranded, alone. But most of all the fall removes you from the world; permanently. To fly is to take flight knowing that that which you leave behind will be safe. To fall is to shatter everything you love and leave a self-shaped hole, a crack in everyone you have touched, no matter how brief as you breeze past. But I did not choose to fall. I fell but I will never fall. I could not even give those I care about the finality of that decision. Because I am selfish. And selfishness leaves a trail of destruction. But Sherlock Holmes is a selfish man and I cannot change that. All I can do is try to pick up the pieces. He was my friend you see, and I deceived him. And that is why I have to find him; why I will find him. Because he needs to know I'm sorry. Because I need to pick up the pieces. Because if he doesn't know, if he never knows, then Sherlock Holmes will fall. I will fall. It happened once before. And never again.'
Those were the words that lay dead on the page, that sidled in beneath the morning haze and stamped themselves before my eyes. John Watson, Jim Moriarty, all strangers to me. But not him. Not Sherlock Holmes. I knew this man seemingly better than I ever would have imagined. He took the risk to trust me with his words. And that is not a privilege I take lightly.