Dear Holmes,

This is utter foolishness; were you to see me now you would most definitely scorn and roll your eyes, actions most likely accompanied by the alighting your seventh pipe of the day… no doubt you'd finish it off with a glass of embalming fluid. I never understood how you could possibly drink the things you have in the past without recoil, but then when I truly think about it I suppose that I never truly understood your reasons behind many things you do... rather, did. It was, if I may be so frank, one of the reasons I found you of such frustrating intrigue.

You will never read this… and I do understand, to a painful extent, the truth of this. It took me about a month to accept it, if I must be honest – and why should I not be honest? You are not here to care whether I am honest or not, you have made it quite abundantly clear that it was more important to you to bring down Moriarty in your usual ridiculously extreme fashion rather than to wait and simply hand him over to the appropriate authority. As ever, you took the route that would lead you into the most danger and, for the first time, you have paid the price for your rash behaviour – your recklessness was the end of you and as I sit here, writing the letter that shall never be read, I find that I am almost beside myself with anger at you. You are endlessly selfish, immature and absolutely, inconceivably foolish. How you have come to render such respect from so many is beyond me, Holmes, and I am loath to admit that I am one of those.

Ah, but I realise as I read that back to myself that I am wrong, in tense and in content… you must forgive me, old boy, for leaping to attack your throat when you are not here to defend yourself. This is irrational behaviour garnered by irrational thought and it should hold no place within me, yet I find that the only way I can process anything of you is by allowing myself to be irrational… it is a side that I cannot show any other person, a secret, an illness kept hidden. It makes me wonder if this was how you felt when you suffered one of your black fits; did your head turn in circles, delving knee-deep into your past errors and insecurities? Did you find yourself wandering, in thought and in step, until you might just shout at the top of your lungs with the injustice of things you cannot change, things that perhaps you would not change? As I sit here, jotting ridiculous ideals to a man who is cracked and broken on rocks and submerged in the coldest of waters, I find that I am questioning more than ever what may have been going through your mind not just at the moment you glanced at me from the last place you would sit breathing, but always.

I retract what I accused you of before; I consider now that perhaps you were not being selfish in your actions as you tumbled into the falls, rather that you were doing the only thing that made sense to you in order to protect those you cared for – if, in fact, you had the capacity within you to partake in emotion that you often queried as being nonsensical and whimsical. Did you throw yourself with your archenemy into the depths of Reichenbach to protect me, Holmes? I ask only because I know you cannot answer, as if you were here beside me I would never consider the reality of asking such a question if only because I would fear the answer, regardless of it being an acquiescence or denial. Both would hurt me, for different reasons, reasons that I am not quite ready to neither address nor think about. I am barely thinking now.

A moment to wonder… how do you still manage to turn my world on its axis when you are no longer present to do so? Such an errant thought, brought on by useless ponderings of the losses I may experience should I let this reckless irrationality overwhelm me; I know for sure that if I were to truly think of you, to let myself look deep into the recesses of my subconscious and take note of the way I, beyond doubt, feel at the loss of my dearest friend I would probably lose my mind and lose my wife, my Mary. Even as I write this – barely legible as it is – I can imagine how you would respond to such an idea… with derision, with ridicule and, as much as it pains me to admit it, the tiniest hint of pleasure. I know that you do not wish Mary harm, that you never did – though I still maintain that pushing her from a moving train was one of the stupidest ways I can barely fathom, to ensure her safety – but I am quite sure that you never quite liked her, were never fond of her in the way that I would have been somewhat overjoyed at… and that, perhaps, you would have been pleased that you were the only person I had any care for in this world.

You always were possessive, Holmes, despite your insistence at times that I was merely an accomplice. I will forgive you of those times now, dear boy, as I know that it was usually the substances flooding through your veins that spurred such thoughtless words from your lips. I will forgive you, because I do not think I could spend another day with anger against your name.

- Dr. J. Watson