Prompt from Michael JG Meathook: The woman is Sherlock's life
Another unusual take on the prompt, but seeing as I simply cannot imagine Sherlock Holmes ever having romantic feelings for Irene Adler, this was what happened! Possibly another prompt will give the opportunity to continue this adventure.
I once wrote that to Sherlock Holmes, Irene Adler would always be The Woman. No other of her sex could compare in his mind to Mrs Norton, nee Adler. At the time I wrote those words, I knew they were true, but it wasn't until decades later that I knew exactly how true they were.
Holmes never shared many details of how he had spent the years he was supposed dead. I knew he had been in fear of his life, had often travelled in disguise to avoid the remaining members of Moriarty's gang - particularly the notorious Colonel Moran - and that for a time he had gone under the name Sigerson, but only after Holmes' retirement did he tell me the story I now relate to you.
Holmes had been lying low in Montreal after narrowly escaping detection in New York from one of Moriarty's gang, a Mrs Crowe. He had, as he told it, grown bored of staring at walls and had instead escaped to the theatre. The headline act, to his surprise, was Mrs Norton, performing again under the name of Irene Adler. A coincidence and nothing more, you may think, but her presence turned out to be all that saved him from a horrible fate at Mrs Crowe's hands.