Chapter Text
I had long since resigned myself to the ghost of Sherlock Holmes.
His presence lingered in the creaking floorboards of Baker Street, in the scent of old tobacco woven into the upholstery, in the maddening quiet where once had been the ceaseless whirring of his restless mind. I had accepted his absence the way one accepts the inevitability of the tides, with no small amount of sorrow, but with the understanding that to resist would be a fruitless endeavor.
And yet, the ghost had never been so bold as to sit in my study chair, draped in my old dressing gown, leafing through my medical texts with the casual indifference of a man who had never once tumbled to his supposed death from the edge of Reichenbach Falls.
I could not speak. My throat tightened as my mind scrambled for rationality, but rationality had long abandoned me. The very foundation of my grief, my healing, my quiet resignation had been stripped away with one glance at the impossibly living figure before me.
Holmes did not look up from his reading, though he must have heard me enter. "Your taste in literature has not improved, Watson," he remarked, turning a page with the absent flick of a pale hand. "Dull and predictable, though I suppose it serves its purpose."
It was more than the sight of him, more than the shock rendering me motionless that broke me from my stupor.
"You are… dead," I managed, the words feeling brittle on my tongue.
"Evidently not. Though, if I may say, you do look as though you’ve seen a ghost." Finally, he lifted his eyes to mine, and there it was. That glint, that unbearable sharpness, as though he had known all along how this moment would unfold and had simply been waiting to observe my reaction like one of his curious experiments.
My fist clenched at my side. "You let me believe you were dead."
He closed the book with a quiet snap. "Yes."
The silence that followed was thick and unforgiving. My heart pounded furiously against my ribs, torn between relief and fury, longing and betrayal. It would have been easier if I could simply hate him. Instead, all I could do was stand there, drinking in the sight of the impossible, while the carefully reconstructed pieces of my life, once again, began to fall apart.
Holmes tilted his head, observing me as though I were a particularly perplexing case. "You are angry. Understandable. I would be, too."
I took a step forward, fists still clenched. "Understandable? Holmes, I mourned you. I buried you! I—" My voice caught, and I turned away, breath shaking. "I do not know whether to embrace you or strike you."
Holmes stood, the familiar rustle of fabric accompanying his movement. "Both, I suspect. And I would not fault you for either."
I turned back sharply. "Then why did you let me believe you were dead? Why not send word? A single note, anything!"
He sighed, folding his hands behind his back. "Because, dear Watson, the game was not yet over."
I let out a breath, a sort of half laugh, half sob. "The game? Is that all this is to you?" My voice cracked, my composure unraveling faster than I should like to admit. "Did it never occur to you that I might grieve? That I might spend months—years—feeling as though I had lost the only person who-" I stopped myself before saying too much, before my heart overruled my reason.
Holmes frowned slightly, as though the notion had never settled in his mind. "Watson, surely you knew I would return."
I gaped at him. "How could I have possibly known that? You fell. I saw the cliff, the water, I had seen you die."
Holmes' brow furrowed further. "But you are a man of reason. Surely you would have considered the possibility—"
"Possibility?" My voice rose, my anger spilling out in a way I could no longer control. "Holmes, I buried you. I lived with the weight of your absence. Every day, every night, I grieved, damn you! You think I should have simply deduced your return like some puzzle in a newspaper?"
Holmes regarded me with something I could not immediately place. Curiosity, perhaps, mixed with a hint of genuine bewilderment. "I did not anticipate this reaction," he admitted quietly.
I let out another shaky breath, running a hand through my hair. "No, you didn't, did you?" I shook my head, the fight draining from my limbs. "You never do."
His expression softened, just a fraction. "Then perhaps you might explain it to me, Watson. If I have miscalculated, I would rather correct my error than persist in it."
I exhaled, exhaustion creeping in alongside the whirlwind of emotion. "I do not know if this is an error you can simply correct, Holmes. But if you are truly here to stay, then by God, you owe me an explanation."
Holmes gave a small, nearly imperceptible nod. "Very well. Then let us begin at the beginning.”
The fire crackled in the hearth, filling the silence between us. I had hardly moved since his confession, too stunned, too drained to do much but stare at the man I had once lost. Holmes, for his part, had resumed his seat, fingers steepled beneath his chin as he studied me in the same way he always had, cataloguing details, unraveling emotions he only half understood.
"I have no excuse," he said at last. "Only an explanation."
I scoffed, the sound bitter. "An explanation? By all means, Holmes, do enlighten me."
He tilted his head. "You know, Watson, I do believe this is the angriest I have ever seen you."
I clenched my jaw. "And yet you seem entirely unsurprised."
"Oh, on the contrary, I am quite surprised. I had assumed, after all this time, you would be relieved."
I shot to my feet. "Relieved? Holmes, you let me mourn you. You let me stand at your grave, deliver a eulogy, carry on with the unbearable weight of your absence." My voice cracked again, and I turned away before he could see just how deeply he had broken me.
A pause. Then, softer, "Watson, I did not think—"
"No, you did not think," I snapped. "Not about me."
Holmes fell silent. I dared not look at him, dared not meet those sharp eyes that could unravel me with a glance. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than I had ever heard it.
"I was not certain I would return."
That stilled me. My anger and grief did not fade, but it shifted, making room for something else. Something raw. Slowly, I turned to face him. "What do you mean?"
Holmes met my gaze, his expression unreadable. He hesitated, weighing his words carefully. “When I went over that ledge, Watson, I did not know if I would survive. I had a plan, yes, but even the most carefully laid plans do not always account for the unpredictable.”
I remained silent, waiting.
He leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. “I had to disappear. Moriarty’s reach was vast, and eliminating him did not ensure that his network would simply dissolve. I could not risk them knowing I had survived.”
I swallowed, my throat dry. “But you could risk letting me suffer?”
His lips parted slightly, then pressed into a thin line. “I thought it best.”
The words landed like a slap. I let out a sharp breath, shaking my head. “Best for whom, Holmes?” My voice was quieter now, laced with something more fragile than anger. “Because it certainly wasn’t best for me.”
He exhaled, his fingers pressing together as though searching for the correct formula to mend what he had broken. “Watson, I-” He stopped himself, uncharacteristically uncertain. “I did not expect you to grieve so deeply.”
A bitter laugh escaped me. “No, of course you didn’t. I was meant to move on like one of your discarded experiments, wasn’t I? Pick up my life, tend to my patients, and simply accept that the most infuriating, brilliant, impossible man I had ever known had ceased to exist.”
His brows furrowed, as if hearing the weight of my words for the first time. “It was never my intent to hurt you.”
“And yet, you did,” I murmured.
The room felt unbearably small. The firelight flickered over Holmes’ face, casting shadows that made him seem both familiar and strange. For all his brilliance, he remained blind to the depth of what had been lost.
I ran a hand over my face, exhaustion creeping in once more. “Why are you telling me all of this now- why have you decided to return now of all times?”
Holmes studied me, his expression softer than before. “Because you deserve to know.” A pause. Then, more quietly, “And because I have missed you, Watson.”
The breath caught in my throat. For the first time since stepping into this room, since seeing him alive, my anger faltered.
I had missed him too.
God help me, I had missed him more than I had words for.
I let out a slow breath, my anger waning, leaving only exhaustion in its place. I rubbed a hand over my face, willing myself to stay composed.
“You missed me,” I echoed, my voice barely above a whisper. “Well, Holmes, you certainly had an unusual way of showing it.”
Holmes did not react immediately. He merely watched me, as he always did. Calculating, dissecting, waiting for something unseen to reveal itself. But there was something different in his gaze now. Less certainty, more… vulnerability.
“Would it have been better,” he asked finally, “if I had written to you? If I had risked exposure, my own life, for the sake of alleviating your temporary grief?”
I opened my mouth, ready to affirm it without hesitation, but the words did not come. Because, damn him, he had a point.
Had I received a letter, some cryptic reassurance that he lived, what then? I would have scoured the earth for him. I would have followed the trail, consequences be damned. And that, I realized with a bitter twist in my stomach, was precisely why he had done nothing.
Holmes studied my face and gave the barest nod, as if he had deduced the moment I reached my conclusion.
“You see,” he said, voice quiet but firm, “it was never about causing you pain, Watson. It was about keeping you safe.”
I scoffed. “Safe? I have been in more peril at your side than I ever was on my own! I have taken bullets for you, thrown myself into fires I had no business surviving, all because you asked it of me, and you never had to ask, really.”
Holmes' lips parted slightly, his brow creasing. “And yet,” he said slowly, “this was the one thing you could not abide. The one wound I inflicted that you cannot forgive.”
I turned away sharply, pacing toward the fireplace before I did something foolish, like let him see the way my hands trembled. “You were dead, Holmes,” I muttered, staring into the flames. “I was forced to learn how to live in a world where you no longer existed. And now-” I exhaled sharply, turning back to face him. “Now you sit before me as if none of it mattered.”
Holmes' expression flickered—there and gone in an instant. But I had known him too long, studied him too well. It was not indifference that kept him still. It was uncertainty.
For all his brilliance, for all the cases solved and lives saved, his emotion, regret, human connection, it was a puzzle that eluded him.
“I seem to have… miscalculated,” he admitted, voice quieter than I had ever heard it.
I swallowed hard. I should have felt triumphant for hearing him say it. Instead, it only deepened the ache inside me.
“Holmes,” I said, my voice rough, “why did you come back?”
His gaze flickered, something unreadable behind his eyes.
“Because I could not stay away,” he answered.
The words settled in the space between us, heavier than I had anticipated. And I found, much to my dismay, that my anger could not hold against them.
“Because I could not stay away.”
Damn him. Damn me! I did not know if I could forgive him. But I knew, without question, that I would never send him away.
Silence stretched between us, thick with the weight of all that had been said and all that still remained unspoken. Holmes, for once, did not seem to have an immediate answer. No clever remark, no sharp deduction to cut through the tension.
I let out a slow breath, pressing my fingers to the bridge of my nose. "You truly are impossible, Holmes."
"Yes, I have been told as much," he replied, and to my astonishment, there was something almost tentative in his voice.
I glanced at him then, really looked at him. Not just at the sharp lines and familiar features, but at the hollows beneath his eyes, the slight tension in his shoulders. For all his arrogance, for all his brilliance, he was not as unaffected as he wanted me to believe.
My anger had not vanished, but something else crept in to take its place.
Relief.
No matter how furious I had been, no matter how deep the wound he had left behind, he was here. In front of me. Alive.
And I could not bring myself to push him away.
I exhaled and took a step closer, hesitating for only a moment before sinking into the chair opposite him. My body ached with exhaustion, for the grief and rage had drained me, but now, with my heartbeat finally slowing, a different sort of weariness took hold.
Holmes studied me carefully, his sharp gaze softer now, as if reassessing the situation. He tilted his head slightly. "You are still angry," he noted.
"Of course I am," I muttered, rubbing a hand over my face. "You left me."
"I did."
"You're not even going to argue?"
Holmes sighed. "Would it serve any purpose?"
I huffed a quiet laugh, despite myself. "No, I suppose not."
He nodded, satisfied, then leaned back in his chair, watching me with something bordering on curiosity. "So, Watson, what now?"
That was the question, wasn’t it. What now?
The fire crackled between us, its warmth creeping through the study, easing the sharpest edges of my temper. I glanced at Holmes, at the way he sat, fingers tapping absently against his knee, an old familiar habit.
It was ridiculous how easily I could slip back into this. How, despite everything, the mere presence of him settled something in my chest.
What now?
I exhaled, then met his gaze with something steadier than before. "Now, Holmes, you explain everything. From the beginning. And this time, you do not leave anything out."
Holmes' lips twitched—almost a smile, but not quite. He reached for the poker, adjusting the fire absently before turning back to me.
“It was, of course, Moriarty’s web that necessitated my disappearance,” he said, as if we were discussing the weather.
I narrowed my eyes. “Holmes.”
He exhaled through his nose. “Yes, yes. The details. Very well.” He leaned forward, the firelight casting sharp shadows across his face. “After our encounter at Reichenbach, I had mere seconds to act. I had anticipated that Moriarty would not allow himself to be taken so easily—his contingency plans were extensive. But I had my own.”
I scoffed. “Of course you did.”
His eyes flicked to mine, gauging my reaction. “Watson, if I had let you in on my plans, you would have been in greater danger. Moriarty’s network did not fall with him. They would have come after you.”
I shook my head, but before I could reply, he continued. “For months, I dismantled what remained of Moriarty’s empire. I traveled across Europe, cutting ties, following leads, ensuring that when I returned, neither you nor Mrs. Hudson nor anyone else I hold in some regard would suffer retaliation.”
I swallowed, letting that sink in. My anger had not disappeared, but it had shifted. I had thought Holmes had chosen to stay away out of indifference or simply calculation. But now… now, I saw something else beneath his words. Care.
Perhaps not expressed in a way I would have preferred, but care nonetheless.
“You should have trusted me,” I murmured, rubbing my temple.
Holmes was quiet for a long moment. Then, so softly I nearly missed it, he said, “I did.”
I looked up sharply. He was staring into the fire, his expression unreadable.
A strange sensation settled in my chest. Not quite anger, not quite relief. Something else entirely.
Holmes sighed, shifting his gaze back to me. “Watson, you have always been a man of unwavering loyalty. I have no doubt that had I told you of my plans, you would have insisted on staying by my side.”
I straightened. “And you assume that would have been a mistake?”
He hesitated. “I assume that had I watched you be harmed because of me, I would not have been able to bear it.”
That stopped me cold. Holmes was not a man prone to sentiment. He avoided it as one might avoid a particularly noxious odor. But there was no jest in his voice, no playful deflection. Just quiet honesty.
I swallowed against the sudden dryness in my throat. “Holmes…”
But he was already moving on, as though he had not just spoken words that unraveled something deep within me. “Regardless,” he said briskly, “I have returned. And you, my dear Watson, will simply have to adjust to my presence once more.”
I stared at him for a long moment, torn between laughter and exasperation. Finally, I exhaled and allowed a small, weary smile.
“God help me,” I muttered, “I believe I missed you.”
Holmes gave me that insufferable smirk of his, the one that so often made me want to throttle him. And yet, after all this time, after mourning him, cursing him, missing him, it felt like a homecoming.
I sighed, shaking my head. “You are impossible.”
“So you have said,” he spoke, his smirk fading into something softer. “Though I must confess, I was starting to have some concern over whether you would welcome me back at all.”
I frowned at him. “Holmes, you are an infuriating man, but did you truly think I would turn you away?”
He looked at me then, really looked at me, as though weighing something in his mind. He was rarely hesitant—Holmes either leapt or did not move at all. But now, there was a flicker of something… uncertain.
“Time is a peculiar thing, Watson,” he said at last. “It alters much. I have found that absence does not always strengthen bonds, it can just as easily erode them.”
The words settled between us, quieter than the crackling fire, yet heavier than I had expected.
I exhaled, rubbing a hand over my jaw. “Yes. Time changes things.” I looked at him then, at the sharp lines of his face, at the familiar intensity in his gaze. “But not this. Not you and I.”
Something passed over his expression, something fleeting, unreadable, and yet I swore I saw his fingers twitch, as if resisting the urge to reach out.
I gave him a small, tired smile. “You should know by now, Holmes. There is very little you could do to drive me away for good.”
He regarded me for a moment longer, then, almost imperceptibly, he relaxed. The tension in his shoulders eased, and though he did not say it aloud, I understood.
Holmes huffed a quiet, amused breath and leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping against the armrest. “I shall endeavor to test that theory, then.”
I chuckled, rolling my eyes. “See that you don’t.”
Silence fell between us, it was not the heavy, unyielding silence of earlier. It was something else. Something familiar. Something almost, dare I say it, comfortable.
I poured myself a drink and, after a brief hesitation, poured one for him as well. I held it out, eyebrow raised.
Holmes accepted it, fingers brushing against mine as he took the glass. It was brief, nothing at all, and yet the warmth of his touch lingered longer than it should have.
I cleared my throat, raising my glass slightly. “To the return of lost things.”
Holmes tilted his head, considering, before mirroring my gesture. “To things never truly lost.”
Our glasses clinked softly together, and for the first time in a while, I felt like I could finally breathe again.