Wrath
by Alia
Notes

As my reading public will attest, I have over the years of my association with Sherlock Holmes shared a great deal of our lives and adventures together. There of course remains an equal amount about the great detective and myself untold, but for reasons of propriety and the sake of both our reputations' will continue among my most guarded of secrets, ultimately to be carried to my grave.

And it is herein my problem lies.

Throughout my published manuscripts I have alluded numerous times to the fact that Holmes is a far from easy man to live with. However, the words alone do not give any real indication of the true difficulties I have endured since I first agreed to share rooms with him. No one knows Holmes as I do and I dare say that most of what I have written about his sometimes dark moods has been perceived as no more than artist licence and has been given, if any, little credence.

I tell myself it is the price I must pay for my sins, for the path I have chosen willingly and without regret.

With perhaps the exception of Mrs Hudson and the occasional unsuspecting client, I am often the only living soul to bear witness to the true depths of Holmes's darkest moods, and always the one left alone in the aftermath of one of his rages.

It was in the wake of one such rage, when thankfully there were no clients to see and Mrs Hudson had gone to visit an elderly neighbour that I first decided to record the details here, within the pages of my private journal.

As I had no other to share my burden with I had initially intended it as a way of preserving my sanity -- perhaps help me to understand why after all Holmes and I had shared I still managed to incur his wrath in a manner that left me more alone with my secrets than ever. I would never compare my powers of deduction to his but if I could only deduce what had happened then there was the possibility I could avoid another such occurrence in the future. Or so I had hoped.

Sadly, many years have past since I first took up my pen. And as I sit here now, the all too damning evidence of yet another of one Holmes's outbursts strewn about my room, the heavy scent of male musk and his favoured brand of pipe tobacco permeating my linens, I know that I had my answer long ago and only ignorance has delayed my final acceptance of it.

At the onset of our intimate relationship I thought to blame Holmes's frequent use of narcotics for the worst of his moods, but his subsequent forgoing of the needle during the case I shared with the world as the Devil's foot revealed a man no less inclined to irritation than before and made little difference to our overall lives.

Over the years I have also considered that it was simply my presence in his life that prompted my friend's most destructive of rages. I was after all, a constant reminder of his failings, the one who exposed his softer emotions and roused his flesh in ways no woman had ever succeeded in doing, but I had always discarded the notion as merely a symptom of my own insecurities.

At least until now.

For the time being Holmes lies upon my bed, exhausted from the storm of his cresting emotions, sated from the rigorous sex that always follows one of his outbursts. When he wakes there will be no mention of what has occurred and what we both know will continue to reoccur as long as we both shall live. Life in our rooms will return to what we both accept as the norm and nothing between us will change. Not my feelings for him, or his for me.

Perhaps it is Holmes's feelings that confuse me the most and delayed my understanding for so long. It is difficult to say. To Holmes he is a brain and not a man. I know different however. I have seen the man, naked and vulnerable, as susceptible to hurt and vice as any man. I also know, albeit somewhat belatedly, that we only ever hurt the ones we love, for no other stirs our blood or compels us to the same level of hostility as one with whom we have shared our deepest of desires.