December 11: "Old wounds cast long shadows." (from Madam'zelleGiry)
Watson
It is not easy to express the inexpressible.
I remembered Stamford's words regarding Sherlock Holmes for a good many years after he spoke them, and they have, on many occasions, rung true.
Holmes was a difficult man to understand. For the first several months of our sharing rooms in Baker Street, he never ceased to surprise me. Sometimes he seemed to be a reasoning and calculating machine, sometimes a musician, sometimes an actor, or a chemist, or a boxer, or a swordsman…there seemed to be no end to his hidden talents, except in the category of understanding.
For one of the most—and in my personal opinion, the most—brilliant mind to ever enter the field of detection, he was sometimes surprisingly dense when it came to his actions towards other people. At times, he could deduce with a glance everywhere I had been and everything that I had done, but later on, he would scrape away at his violin, oblivious to my growing irritation at the discordant noises he was producing.
I soon either grew accustomed to—or learned to put up with—most of the man's quirks most of the time, but he constantly seemed to be doing something that could get on my nerves.
It was much to my surprise, therefore, when one day, Sherlock Holmes did none of these things. It was July 27th of 1881, when my mind was filled with the horrors of the tragic battle of Maiwand,.
That day, there was no listless scraping on the violin, or malodorous chemical experiments. He did not complain loudly about the state of criminal London, Scotland Yard, or anything else. No criminal relics were found in the butter dish or anywhere else, and even his papers had been secreted in more out-of-the-way locations.
Holmes never breathed a word all day about the reasons for his actions, but I knew he must have known, somehow.
"Thank you," I ventured to say, during dinner. "For today."
He gave a stiff nod, not meeting my eyes.
Nothing more was said of the matter, but at least he knew his actions did not go unnoticed or unappreciated.
A/N: Although none of it made its way into this story, I read several webpages about the Battle of Maiwand… very, very horrible stuff. Poor Watson! :(