Nothing to Forgive

[rabidsamfan]

It was Mary noticed as she helped me prepare my manuscripts. "How came it," asked she, "that in seven years you never mentioned your brother to Holmes? Not even to say that he had died?"

I still have no answer, except that you are Sherlock Holmes. For all that you see and know and instantly comprehend there are chambers of the heart forever locked against you. Knowing you to be numb to grief I hid my grief from you, and will again now that you are come back from death.

How could you have possibly known that I would mourn?

Comments

[lame-pegasus.livejournal.com]

*smiles*

One of your fascinating gifts is that you are able to make fictional people real - and that with merely 100 words (where I need 15 chapters and 60.000... *grins*)

Beautiful.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Drabbles are such a fun challenge. I'm glad this one came to me.

[lothithil.livejournal.com]

Awesome!! *enthusiastic applause*

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*bows* thank you

[fictualities.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is fabulous. Such a complicated Watson, keeping secrets from his friend in part because he realized Holmes would be out of sympathy with them, but then realizing that he'd left Holmes without the only thing he needs to make inferences about human relationships: evidence.

(Holmes's failure to let Watson know he was still alive is such a chilling moment in canon, isn't it? He says he did it because he knew Watson would give him away if he knew, so he cold-bloodedly uses Watson's honesty and kind heart against him. This drabble is such a good invocation of the feelings at stake, which Holmes either didn't know about or too easily discounted.)

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Watson is far more complicated than most people think, and as reticent as Holmes in his own way.

I sometimes find myself thinking of Holmes as a child with a mild touch of Aspberger's raised by high-functioning autistics. Mycroft is the best evidence of the theory -- even more brilliant, and yet so uncomfortable with human relationships that he founds a club where he never has to interact with another person except by his own choice. Like a normal child raised in an insane asylum, Holmes learned the rules of emotion from people who were disconnected from their own, and as a result has to "act" when he wants to be sociable most of the time and is confounded by his own emotions when they interfere with his logic. Watson got under his guard, somehow, and Holmes never quite knows what to do about it.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I liked the drabble, but I'm not altogether sure I got it properly before reading this comment. I like it even more now.

[surgicalsteel.livejournal.com]

Oh, lovely!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*bows*

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

Great googli moogli, you amaze me anew with your drabblemastery. WOW.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

*grin* Yes, I'll take compliments. *preen preen preen*

[dreamflower]

I think what I loved most about it was the first sentence--"It was Mary who noticed..." Even Watson himself doesn't realize *what* he'd done, until she pointed it out. But once she did, he instantly knew why he'd done it.

Such insight into a very complex relationship.

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Looking at the Holmes stories again, I see so much that I didn't see before. It's quite fascinating.

[mariole.livejournal.com]

Ah! Through the heart. You are an ace at this!

[rabidsamfan.livejournal.com]

Nice to know I haven't lost my touch!