Work Text:
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen; but, as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer—excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A Scandal in Bohemia
The photo is pinned to the mantelpiece with a knife above the countless letters. Blue smoke from the tobacco in the Persian slipper hits the breath and clouds the air around. The expression in the picture, however, is clear. With a shrewd, unveiled look, the eyes from the black-haired beauty's face peer into the room as if they could actually see. And what her timeless gaze sees is chaos.
Newspaper articles, mostly Scottland Yard press releases and other police reports from all over Europe pile up between the armchairs into tangled hills, surpassed in height only by the mountains of tomes on music theory and criminal history, eventually growing to Mount Everest of the table on which, on a jumble of chemical formula collections and sheet music, both handwritten, the pointed needle of a syringe and a crystal vial glisten in the light of the candlestick.
And in the midst of this paper mountain, tall and gaunt with an amazing skill at not knocking anything over, the cause and master of the hullabaloo moves and fills the air in two ways: With smoke and with sound. Up and down sinks the bow as he strokes gently over the strings of the violin. The eyes above the eagle's nose are closed, the pipe in the corner of the wound steams along. And against the window panes, behind which the twilight of night is already gathering, the gentle rain of a changeable April evening falls steadily.
One last, oblivious flick, one last absent-minded puff on the pipe, then Sherlock Holmes lowers the bow and sinks back into his armchair himself. His gaze wanders around the room until it finally lingers on the photograph. The photograph of Irene Adler.
The woman... The woman... it hammers in his head and a strangely warm, strangely light feeling spreads in his chest. A feeling that confuses him. A feeling he knows very well how to deduce, but shies away from because it offends his mind, just as the lady herself did.
It is quiet this evening on Baker Street. For over a week now, Mrs. Hudson has brought no news that a client was waiting in his salon when he returned home after a walk or a concert. The silence gnaws at his patience, his nerve. His mind needs activity. And even though his meeting with Mycroft at the Diogenes Club and their old ritual of communally deducing the passing pedestrians on the sidewalk was a welcome change, it only lifted the gray veil of boredom for a moment. Sherlock tried all the usual means, chemistry, music, finally drugs. But the days remained gray.
Again, his gaze drifts to Irene's photo. Again a pleasant shiver goes through his body, warm and tingling. He loves to look at this picture. The pretty black curls, the symmetrical face, the clear, brisk eyes. All her feminine grace... which wouldn't excite him in the least if the brilliant mind hadn't beaten his. Had completely overpowered him. What can the great mind do but kneel in fascination before its master?
The woman...The woman!
Once more to measure oneself in the spirit, once more to see, to feel her lips. Thundering thoughts, weak knees. Sherlock's heart beats wildly.
No!
His hands grope for the cocaine vial. He can't let Irene Adler corrupt his mind. These feelings are dangerous. Not again the same, desperate game of human abysses, which he always wanted to be fascinated by in all his cases, after all, only as an observer and researcher. Sherlock Holmes does not know that John Watson will once describe him as a reasoning and observing machine, for whom love is like a grit in a fine instrument. And John Watson does not know that that fine instrument already carried that grit all these years.
A heavy, hoarse gasp rattles the walls of Baker Street as Sherlock tears away from Irene's photograph and looks into the room.
The armchair vis-a-vis is cold and it is empty. A screaming, ghastly sight. Something is missing. Someone is missing. Heavy as lead. The violin leaning against his own armchair makes memories dance. Memories of a night spent awake, when another detective with a finer nose led them through London, only to come across a barrel of Creosol in a backyard. John exhausted on the couch. John he plays to sleep with a piece he composed himself. The sweet hours he was allowed to spend awake at the sleeping man's bedside, just watching him with his heart beating warmly; with his knees dizzyingly soft, the butterflies in his stomach and suppressing the urge to kiss his lips, to breathe words into his ear. John's lips, John's ears. John, whose heart he fights for because, despite all false sense, he knows love well enough to deduce, even without his brilliant mind, that Mary Morstan is about to reshuffle the deck.
John. John Watson. How could he have misunderstood him so when Sherlock expressed his displeasure at the marriage? To teach him all about the art of deduction, otherwise kept like a good secret; to endure his ghastly sentimental reports with angelic patience; to bring him in on every case, never wanting to miss him, not for a second, even if it is not expedient to the enlightenment; even to send him as a deputy with the deepest trust. The language of the rational man, who knows no words for love.
Dull and beaten, Sherlock lets his gaze wander over the crystal vial in his hand and the needle, considers for a moment, takes a puff from his pipe, and then puts the vial aside again and grabs the strativari instead.
John Watson is it married. So is Irene Adler. What remains are photographs and empty armchairs. Dream like shapes of memory that turn a reasoning and observing machine into a fool. The violin sounds in the gray and with each note, as it were, the two halves of Sherlock's broken heart fall a little deeper into the chaos of crime reports, formulas, sheet music and all the other inanities with which a genius mind stuffs its brain so as not to feel the pressure of tears.
Suddenly the doorbell rings.
Sherlock immediately puts down the violin, hastily hides the instruments of drug consumption under the sheet music and turns around. Perhaps the longed-for client at last? The delicacy of the pull on the doorbell points to a woman. Curiosity fills Sherlock's mind with new life. A new case would be just what he needs.
But when Mrs. Hudson finally ushers the guest in, he is nearly struck. The lady in the doorway is no stranger.
"Mrs. Watson!" he exclaims in surprise.
In a single glance he has deduced in what vehicle she has arrived, that she has had a sleepless, tearful and brooding night, that she has long weighed her decision to call on him and by no means set out in haste, that she even thought of contacting him, Sherlock Holmes, by letter, and that she did not tell John a word about it. But all that is secondary for the moment.
When a Mrs. Watson appears in his place, it is about Mr. Watson and that is enough to put Sherlock in the highest concern, even if her appearance does not express acute danger.
"Please sit down and have a glass, won't you? You look pale, Mary," he leads the young lady into his sitting room and makes her as comfortable as possible. The former Miss Morstan might have been his rival, but he harbors no ill will against her personally.
"What's it all about? What about John?" he asks, putting his fingertips together as Mary sits down with a purred thank you.
She fusses for a while. But then, finally, she finds her tongue.
"My husband...your old friend. I know he loves me. From the bottom of his heart. I don't doubt it," she explains nervously, "But I think...I think...his heart beats for someone else, too."
"A rival?" Sherlock frowns.
If he knows John just a little, he is fidelity personified. He wouldn't cheat on his spouse.
But by then Mary is already shaking her head gently as she looks around the room, avoiding his gaze.
"I suppose you think I want you to prove adultery against him. But that's not what I'm here for. The matter is ordered quite differently. To give the truth its due, I'm worried about him. This love seems to be very old and he himself is only half aware of it. But I fear that he is tormenting himself unnecessarily over it. You know, Mister Holmes, I love my husband very much, and if he needs two people by his side for all his happiness, I am willing to overlook the conventions of marriage."
Sherlock listens leaning forward, his pulse racing with vague anticipation.
"Who?" is all he asks.
At that moment, Mary looks up and looks him straight in the eye.
"Mister Holmes, I think my husband loves you".