Sherlock Holmes raised one eyebrow and waited in patience.
John Watson sighed deeply. "We are going to Uganda because Aadan has recently received word that an unknown disease is killing people in his village," he finally admitted. "It's not a new disease by any means, but had not affected his people for some years. I've tried to find a known disease that matches its symptoms, but as of yet I can find nothing. And so, seeing as how no one else was going to travel to help his people, Aadan decided that he would go alone and hope the training he'd already gotten would be enough to help his village."
"And you, of course, were not eager for that outcome."
"No. I was not. He was determined to go by himself, I tried to convince him to let me go in his stead, and we ended up deciding to go together and bring you along if you would come."
"Why include me?" Holmes asked. "This problem seems to be more in your line of work."
"My dear fellow," Watson said with a sad smile, "I would have never dreamed of leaving you behind, and certainly not if this may be the last great adventure we take."
"I see," Holmes murmured, leaning back heavily against the train seat. "I take it I am correct when I assume the reason you are not planning on coming home is that you are planning on treating the mystery illness for as long as you can until you yourself catch the disease and die?"
"Yes," Watson said softly. "I will treat the illness until I die, and pray to God that my efforts mean Aadan will not fall ill instead, and if he does then he will be strong enough going into it that he will not die."
"And my role in this drama is to do whatever I can to isolate the causes of the disease, study it chemically, and come up with a treatment."
"If you can. And try to not fall ill yourself, of course."
"Of course. You do believe that we will die, however. Both of us."
"I do," Watson said softly. "We are old men now, Holmes, and are not equipped to deal with strange diseases in a land and climate foreign to our own. If you have any common sense at all, you will abandon this fool's errand and go back to the peaceful, quiet life you have earned."
Holmes smacked the train seat so violently Watson jumped. "I do and I will not!" he growled. "I am not some self-important arse who believes that just because I've worked all my life that now the world owes me tranquility even if I have somehow earned it. It is the sacred duty of the old to protect the young, to plant trees and build bridges and smooth out the road of life. If I can help you do that for your young ward, then I will."
They gazed at each other for a moment in the ensuing silence, the small outburst seemingly stunning both of them. then, Watson smiled in a way Holmes knew was genuine.
"Thank you," Watson said softly "I never doubted it, though you can imagine how sorely I've been wrestling with whether to include you at all, for what kind of dear friend asks another to make this kind of sacrifice? But you have never before forbidden me from following anywhere you went, even into danger, and the thought of not returning your loyalty was heavier on my soul than any thought that I was leading you to destruction."
"You did well to come to me," Holmes assured him. "I can think of no scenario more preferable than being with a friend and continuing to work towards the goal we have striven for all our lives. If we do that work until the end, so be it. Who knows but that this won't be our last adventure, hmm? We both ought to know by now that life is full of surprises. Your friendship, John, came as one of the great surprises of my life, I assure you."
"Life is full of surprises," Watson agreed slowly. "And if this time it is not?
"Then we will face the unknown together like we always have. Either way, there is another great journey ahead of us."
"I suppose that's one way to think of it," Watson murmured, and the tone of his voice was hard to decipher.
"And now, my friend," Holmes broke into Watson's train of thought, "I see that the weight of our conversation has been lifted from your shoulders and you are even now repressing a yawn. Come sit here beside me and my jacket and my shoulder will offer you what little comfort they can. I will wake both you and your young ward when we arrive."
"Very well," Watson said, letting his yawn break free as he moved to sit beside his friend. "Aren't you tired? Or have you somehow maintained the energy levels of your youth? If so, may I have some?"
Holmes chuckled. "If I could give you any amount of strength, my dear Watson, then you would never have fallen asleep during the countless stakeouts of our past."
Holmes expected Watson to give some pawky reply, but instead his breathing softened and his tense body relaxed fractionally. Holmes chuckled and reached out to adjust his friend minutely, wondering how long he'd been awake and how long he'd been anxious about their conversation. When he was sure Watson was asleep he looked up at the door to their compartment.
"Come in, Aadan," he called softly. "There is no need to linger in the corridor."
A moment passed. Then, the door opened and Aadan came in sheepishly. "I was not listening to your conversation, Mr. Holmes."
"I did not believe you were," Holmes replied casually. "Please, be at ease and be seated."
The younger man did so, and Holmes took the measure of him, surveying him thoughtfully for a couple minutes that seemed to stretch into hours.
Finally, Aadan cleared his throat to break the silence. "Thank you for agreeing to come, Mr. Holmes," he said, and his voice was as cautious as if Sherlock Holmes was a stray dog whose temper was yet unknown. "Doctor Watson speaks very highly of you."
"As he does of you, I assure you, sir. There is some poetry in this, I am certain, though I cannot pinpoint it. I will ask Watson when he wakes."
Holmes' tone was relaxed and casually familiar and Aadan's eyes blinked in surprise. "I... poetry, sir?"
"Yes. Do you read any?"
"Yes, sir. Doctor Watson says that poetry can take many forms, when you can read poetry you can read anything, and if you never read poetry nothing else you read will ever truly make sense."
"He is quite correct," Holmes mused. "It is a lesson most learn very late in life, myself among them. The older you become, the more you will see that life rhymes just like poetry."
"Sir?"
"In poetry," Holmes explained, "there is a theme, a song, a rhyme, and it flows in and out of itself and comes back together and everything, in the end, is all the same and yet somehow new entirely. It is that which makes for the deep feeling of satisfaction we feel when we find a particularly resonant poem."
"Resonant? I'm not sure I'm familiar with that word, sir."
"My apologies. Have you ever played an instrument?"
"Yes, sir. We have all kinds of music and instruments in my village, and before Mrs. Watson died she attempted to teach me piano."
"Then you are quite familiar with the need to keep your instrument strings tight or drum heads uncracked or any other of a plethora of considerations in order for your music to sound the way it should?"
"Yes, sir."
Holmes nodded. "One of the ways I keep my violin in top shape to play is with a tuning fork, which is a metal instrument with two prongs, like this." He held up two fingers. "When the tuning fork is struck against a solid object," he continued, miming hitting his fingers against Watson's forehead, which made Aadan grin, "the metal vibrates and emits a pure tone which can be used to ensure my violin is also in tune. Are you following me thus far?"
"Yes, sir."
"Very good. Now here is the most interesting part: we have found that tuning forks, when presented to the right object, for demonstration purposes usually another tuning fork with the same pitch, will cause the object to vibrate with it. So when I use a tuning fork for the note 'A', another 'A' tuning fork would also vibrate. A tuning fork for 'B' would not even though they are similar. Yes?"
Aadan nodded, and Holmes smiled in return.
"We call this phenomenon resonance," he continued. "There is still more experimentation needed to define exactly how and what is happening when this resonance occurs, but the scientific principle itself has, in various degrees, been observed for centuries. There is even a theory that all things, even you and I, vibrate with resonance. Were there somehow a Sherlock Holmes' shaped tuning fork, then when it was hit I might vibrate with it. And so you see, when I say poetry is resonant, I am speaking metaphorically."
"You mean that poetry makes us… vibrate?"
Holmes rubbed his chin with one hand. "Perhaps it is a bad example, but what I mean is that poetry can make us feel. Not just happy or sad, but… it's hard to explain, I suppose, and not very scientific at all."
"It is a good example, sir," Aadan said. "I have felt it. I know what you mean."
Holmes nodded. "Good. Well, then, perhaps you can see how life is like poetry. In one day of your life, you experience a flow, a rhythm, and at the end you are the same yet somehow entirely different. In a year, the same. And at the end of your life, you will see that rhythm. You will realize life rhymes, and you are somehow entirely different and yet exactly the same."
"You have found this, sir?"
"I have. It's a bit difficult to recognize resonance in a year, but in a decade it becomes stark. After several, you learn to appreciate it. I started my life in the country, I moved to the city and thought I'd never look back, and later I ended up back in the country. I still carry opinions and values and hopes that I had as a young man, and yet when I look back I don't always recognize that man. I met John Watson because he nearly died in a foreign country, now I am traveling to a foreign country with him at the end of our lives. There is some poetry here, I can feel it resonate within me even if I can't quite name it. In the end, even the worst times of one's life seem to rhyme."
"I believe I understand, sir."
"Please," Holmes said with a small wave of his hand, "call me Holmes. 'Mr.' Holmes if you really must, but as you are practically Watson's charge there is no need to stand on ceremony."
"Did he say that?" Aadan asked so quickly Watson stirred slightly in his sleep.
Holmes blinked once, then smiled. "No," he said gently. "He was much more complimentary than that. He described you with pride like a father bragging on his son."
Aadan smiled widely, then sobered. "Thank you, Mr. Holmes," he said softly. "Doctor Watson has been good to me, and when he dies I will mourn for him as though for a father."
Holmes also smiled, but sadly. "Perhaps that is also poetic. Somehow, both Watson and myself have taken the role of mentor and even parental figure to many young men despite neither of us being blessed with children from our own bloodline."
"Does that matter to him, Mr. Holmes?"
"It may have once, but even if it still does, I will have you know that I have never witnessed John Watson treat any of his stepdaughters with anything but care and love."
"I have a very hard time imagining doctor Watson treating anyone harshly, Mr. Holmes, not even our worst patients. I admire him for his kindness."
Holmes grinned slightly. "Well, well," he murmured, "I suppose I shall not regale you with stories of our early days living in Baker Street, then, but I assure you that your mild mannered mentor here was once brash and hot-tempered and wildly reckless concerning the things he was passionate about. I believe I once called him a man of action, and the description is an apt one. Have you read this?" Holmes asked needlessly, pulling A Study in Scarlet out of his jacket carefully so as not to wake Watson.
"I have," Aadan said.
"Then you are quite aware that back then John Watson was freshly home in England, not yet recovered from a nearly fatal wound, and cohabitating with a strange man who had even stranger ideas about the world. It was against this backdrop that he tackled a murderer in his own living room on no other evidence than I said it was so. That was, I assure you, characteristic of him, and it endeared him to myself at once. John Watson is a man with hidden depth."
"Was that the way it really happened?" Aadan asked.
"Hmm? Oh, you are referring to the events of the story. I can't remember exactly what Watson wrote at the denouement, but I assure you our friend the killer fought back fiercely. Or, as fiercely as a man can with a heart condition. He would have given me a black eye to nurse for weeks if it hadn't been for the aforementioned tackle."
"Will you tell me more stories?" Aadan asked, and his voice was soft but his eyes were alight with wonder and his lips were curled into a grin.
"Of course I will," Holmes replied, and from the beginning of their friendship onward he told Aadan every secret Watson had left out of his written accounts and about every case of significance between them until it was time to wake Watson and the next leg of their journey had begun.
