Chapter Twenty-Four

Catullus and Molecules

How, how, how was I so foolish as to expect to come back here and return to life as it had always been, with the game afoot and the revolver at the ready, and to the devil with the consequences?

I must be mad. I followed him in the streets all day, as though I were Leather Apron1 or some other murderer stalking my newest prey, and I never once revealed myself to him. I could have sent a letter, or even a dramatically terse telegram (Watson STOP Am alive STOP Will be returning to you shortly STOP SH STOP) but God, God, has my theatrical past caught up with me in the most dreadfully ironic way possible. For the second smartest man in London, my dear brother being the first, I am really remarkably stupid. (Exactly what your mother said, a tiny part of my brain whispers. I do my best to ignore it, though I do not succeed. I do not mind being wrong so much as I mind other people being right

This theatrical flair will be the death of me, to say nothing of my dearest friend. He is lying here as I write this, slumped on the chair, fainted from shock. At first I made as if to wake him, chafe his wrists or splash water on his face, but when I saw him lying there I did not know what to do but allow him to quietly sleep on, like a wax figure, or a child's toy soldier, paint uniform cracking to reveal the silvery tin beneath, because it had been cast away, or left behind, or lost. It was my fault.

He ought to have known. Who else would, disguised as a little old bookseller, hand him a copy of Catullus? Catullus? For pity's sake. Catullus is, in the name of all that is holy, greener than the greenest carnation. But still, my dear friend had thought me dead. One must make allowances.

Have I lost him forever now? Will he never again allow me near him? The thought a few months ago would have filled me with relief. I would not have had to return to my true home, would not have had to face myself. It was – it is ­– my father that they have called the real Dorian Gray, but I fell as though I am that particular entity, just forced to gaze upon my portrait. I am looking my dark reflection in the face now, at his world with a gap in it that was once my presence. I am ashamed at having created it.

Watson really is a sight for sore eyes. He does not look at all well, but he does look infinitely human, and infinitely familiar, and I am infinitely grateful to see him. One only realizes how much one needs someone until one is away from them, and one never realizes how much one has missed them until after one sees them once more.

I do not even want to touch him, I am beginning to realize. I cannot think of anything I want at all. For three years, I have been apart from him. I am content now just to look at him in all his unintentional, disheveled glory. It has been many years since I have had faith in any benevolent God, but now I find myself ready to fall on my knees and pray before a Lord that has let me live, live and return to my friend. My Boswell, my chronicler, and my friend.

The above was written, in the editor's opinion, somewhat later on.

In the absence of other stimulation, chemical molecules will dissolve into one another.

It was one of the first things I learned from my tutors as a small child fascinated with chemistry, and it abruptly left my mind as soon as it entered it, in the way of things one learns when one is very young. It always, though, had a habit of hanging lurkingly about the back of my mind, and once or twice a year I tended to pull it out so that I might consider it for some experiment or other. Never, however, did I see it so well expressed as when I stood in the doorway of my erstwhile residence, the poor doctor indecisively fretting himself into a Hamlet like heap.

As it had been on that night so many years before, all I can really remember feeling was exhaustion and relief. Only that. No wild, maddening lust. Shocking, I know, that I was only deeply, crushingly tired. Tired of going to bed alone at night, and of waking in the morning to see that still I remained alone, perhaps even more alone than I had been before. I was tired enough not to care what happened in those moments, and as a consequence it was all very unromantic and not a little embarrassing.

Perhaps it was my hand that brushed over his as I reached for the doorknob, or perhaps it was the the friction between our arms as he slipped his out of mine. I do not remember reaching out. I only remember falling, the easy effortless feeling of falling into someone that I knew I could and would always trust.

I cannot possibly explain with words the effect seeing him once more had upon me. He was the same, just the same, familiar and simple and yet full of endless complexity. And yet now it was so much the better, to see him once more after missing him for what now seemed like such a lifetime of years. But I had not allowed myself to miss him properly then, perhaps because I knew that if I did I would only return to England in the time of two heartbeats, and I missed him now. All that grief and loss and misery had locked itself up within me, and now that I saw him again, he became the catalyst that converted them from grief to joy. Joy in its purest form is not an active thing. It is a decidedly passive one, that one allows to flow over one and that one simply experiences.

I stood contentedly beneath the arch of my old Baker Street residence. I have often heard it said that the best part of a journey is one's homecoming, and my own return to my rooms in Baker Street has only confirmed this saying. I was mildly miffed to discover that some things had indeed been moved in my long absence – Mycroft had apparently seen fit to move my pipes into an actual pipe rack as opposed to the dear old coal scuttle, which has served me so wisely and well over the years, and a book of photographs from my dubiously innocent years had been spirited quietly away o'er the airy mountain and down the rushy glen by certain little men with the initials M.H.2 – but nevertheless 221B remained 221B, Mrs. Hudson remained Mrs. Hudson, if a slightly alarmed Mrs. Hudson, and Dr. Watson, thank heaven, remained Dr. Watson.

"You know," he remarked, "it's rather good to see you back."

It was the first time he had mentioned it, and we both laughed at that, that it was even possible that those words had gone so long simply implied.

"I rather think it's good to be back, you know," I retorted cheerfully, and we both began to laugh twice as hard as we ever had before, perhaps simply because there was nothing else to do, no other way to have any sort of communion. Communion. Perhaps the thing that I had missed the most. There was one other thing to do, of course, but neither of us wanted to shatter the calm.

Somehow, though, after the laughter was gone and the vacuum in the air remained like an endless hall of mirrors, reflecting the silence back at us, two molecules, in the absence of outside stimulation, dissolved into each other.

In retrospect, I believe I came to him. It was only three steps across the doorframe to touch his shoulder, and then it did not seem to matter what would happen. Silently, in the soft whisper of an evening fog, I leaned my head into the comfortable curve of his neck and shoulder. Oh, how I had missed it! It was somehow shocking to know that he was still there, still the same, still as finely made and clear and true as he had always been, and I could only fall into him, falling further and further, afraid to drown, but even more afraid to stay, shivering, on the shore. My mouth found his, and –

"Holmes!"

"Mmm?"

"Holmes, we're in plain public view…"

"To hell with plain public view."

"I would just as soon not have us both arrested."

"Have us arrested?" I pressed my nose into his hair. It smelled the same. Tobacco and, for some insane, unfathomable medical reason, iodine.

His hands pressed into the small of my back. "Not have us arrested, I said."

"Ah. I must say, that makes much more sense." I paused and fumbled desultorially for the doorknob. "All right, fine, I cannot deny the accuracy of your point."

"I certainly hope not…hello, didn't I just say stop it?"

"Fine," I replied, mockingly miffed, and removed my hand from under his shirt collar. "Watson, stop talking. For pity's sake, my dear old fellow, let's please get out of plain public view."

"It is an executive decision, after all. Remember, despite your having gone on indefinite leave for three years with everyone thinking you were dead – regardless of that – Holmes, don't do that, I said, it makes me lose my train of thought – I am only the junior partner in this agency." I did not see his ironic smile, but I felt it against my cheek.

"You are two years older than I," I made a point of reminding him, shoving him bodily through the door.

"Regardless," he retorted, attempting without success to hang his hat on the peg.

"Hmm. Regardless, you say? Well, yes, it's true, you are indeed the junior partner, if by junior you mean –" My sense of humor will never cease to humiliate me.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, stop talking. Come on. There are only seventeen steps, as you have so often intelligently pointed out. Now who's being obstinate?"

"I don't know."

"Well, yes, that's hardly unusual." He smirked at me, and I suddenly had a keen awareness of what it would be like to be John Hamish Watson.

"Oh, harken to the good doctor."

"But what is it exactly this time around that you don't know about?"

"It's that…why, it has been a long time since I said I didn't know." It had, too. I had thought it for most of the three years abroad, but I had never said so.

"You might benefit from admitting it more often," he

"Saying it more often," I protested.

"Admitting it more often."

"Saying."

"Admitting," the doctor insisted, and stepped sharply on my toes.

"Ah! Ah. All right, admitting, admitting, admitting!"

"Much better." He leaned back against the wall and coolly crossed his arms. Disquietingly enough, he reminded me of…me. "Now, what would you like to admit you don't know about?"

"Ah. Ecclesiastes, really." I replied evasively. "Leviticus, I have made up my mind about, I think."

"Really?"

"Indeed. I have come to a satisfactory conclusion."

"So have I."

"What might yours be?"

"I'll tell you tomorrow morning."

"Why?"

"Because my opinion on Leviticus will be significantly affected by the events I expect to transpire between now and tomorrow morning."

For a moment, I was rather nervous at the prospect of my performance (or perhaps lack thereof) being critiqued, but then I saw his smirk again, and the undeniably mischievous glint in his brown eyes. "Pawky humor again, Watson," I berated him. "Pawky humor."

"Look, please stop talking."

"No," I said, and the word was sad and strange in my mouth.

Watson looked at me, hurt, and I ruefully tried to take it back. "It is only…"

"Only what?" He was truly frowning now, joy turned to hurt and then metamorphosing once more into anger. "Only what? Did you find some lovely lady somewhere in Vienna or – or some equally lovely man?"

"No!" I heard my voice becoming louder, and frantically, I quieted myself. "No. No, truly, no. It is only…Mary."

His face was like a tombstone, as devoid of expression as it was of cheer. "Dead," he said, and his voice sounded like the meaning of the word.

"I know. I heard. I heard when it happened. I very nearly –" I almost admitted it, then. "I almost –" And then I did. "I very nearly almost came back." I was stuttering like a schoolboy. This, then, was love.

He stared at me, seeming half shocked. It almost offended me, that he should be so surprised that I would feel anything at all. "Is that so surprising? Is that really such a terrifyingly unreal thing? Hath not a Jew eyes?3Are you so amazed?" I demanded bitterly.

For a long time, neither of us said a word. I reexamined the annex of number 221 for what felt as though it might be the five hundredth time. The walls were scratched and stained, some from Mrs. Hudson's occasional rare bouts of clumsiness, some from our own debatably wise episodes. There, there, where black vulcanized rubber had scuffed the wall sconce, Jefferson Hope had pressed one foot in his frantic struggle to avoid the police forces. There, at my eye level, the good Inspector Lestrade had once tapped out his pipe on the coat rack just before getting a decidedly furious glare from Mrs. Hudson, upon which occasion he promptly ceased to even glance at his pipe while at the estimable address of 221B. There, just at the level of my bony right ankle, Watson had accidentally nearly cracked off the sole of one of his shoes, and there by the gaslight high on the wall I had once, through an extremely odd set of circumstances which I shall not recount here, stained the wallpaper with acid.

"No," he answered me finally, "no." At which point he finally saw fit to kiss me properly.

1 The press's original nickname for Jack the Ripper, before the Dear Boss letter appeared in newspapers, signed Jack the Ripper.

2 A rather odd, totally out of context, and completely incongruous William Allingham quote. The original stanza runs, "Up the airy mountain/Down the rushy glen/We daren't go a-hunting/For fear of little men."

3 A reference to one of Shylock's most famous speeches in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice."