A Golden Opportunity

Love Is Or Isn't

Following Mary to the kitchen, Victor found that he had grown incredibly used to walking slowly. As of late his only company had been people over the age of seventy, and by now he was almost appreciating the feeling of dragging his feet across the ground, attempting to use friction to his advantage in trying not to outpace his generous host. Mary walked slowly, though as she did not yet need a walker she could easily beat the two men in a race. The walk was not long, as the house was set up in a strange sort of symmetry, with the living room connected straight to the dining room, save of course for a short pause as the foyer's hallway stretched beyond the walls and lead to the back porch. The dining room was small, set up with a quaint set of farmhouse furniture, and the kitchen took over the entire right side of the narrower room. Victor could see the adjoining bedrooms past the last doorway, though he dare not poke where his nose was not appreciated. He stopped short at the kitchen, turning happily to face the multiple pots bubbling and steaming upon the stove.
"Do you cook, Victor?" Mary wondered as she switched on the oven light, crouching with some difficulty to observe the ham as it sizzled in the pan. Victor leaned down to observe it as well, seeing nothing more special than a hunk of meat in a glass dish. Certainly he could not tell the temperature, nor could he estimate how much longer the thing would have to sit in there.
"Not enough to offer my opinion on the ham, I'm afraid," he admitted.
"Oh no worry dear, I've set a timer of course. We've got about ten minutes until I should check it," Mary assured, gesturing to the plastic egg timer she had clicking on the counter.
"Ah, so you're not psychic then?" Victor chuckled.
"It's times like this I wish I was," the old woman admitted, her face darkening even while a smile remained upon her face.
"You wish you could read their minds, do you?"
"I always know when my husband is keeping a secret, though what it is about this strange man I cannot say. Perhaps he was really a German, having mastered an accent enough to live stateside? Or perhaps...well perhaps he was a spy?"
"You've known him for about twenty minutes, ma'am, certainly you don't think he is discreet enough to be a spy?"
"Oh, perhaps you're right," the old woman puttered for a moment, her rounded face pursed for a minute as she tried to ponder what drew this remarkably strange man into her living room. "Well...you know, don't you Victor?"
"I know my place, Mrs. Watson. Sherlock's life story is not mine to share."
"Certainly, certainly." Mary looked disappointed, certainly, though Victor knew not to be fooled. She wouldn't know what to do with the truth, even if she did pry it out of someone in this house.
"They were close, though?" Mary presumed, folding her hands innocently over her apron. She did play the part well; she could pass very easily as an innocent old grandmother, with not a bias or hatred in the world. And yet she would find them, certainly. She would find them if she were to know the truth.
"Yes, they were good friends. John healed Sherlock during the war," Victor admitted. "That's a bonding moment, if anything."
"I couldn't imagine what they all went through. John never wants to talk about it, and for good reason I'm sure. Guns, bombs, tanks, disease. The worst I went through was rationing and the factories, and in those days how I wept. Oh, it seemed the war would go on for the rest of eternity, it felt like Armageddon truly."
"You are all heroes, for having survived and having won," Victor assured. "It's been an honor to know Sherlock, even if he is rather forward at times."
"Was he a nice Professor to have?"
"He was excellent at calculus, and intuitive in the way he taught it."
"Did he ever speak of the war in class?"
"Oh no, never to the students."
"So how did you get to know he ever fought?" Mary wondered, so innocently pursuing around the true questions she wanted to ask. Victor was following her train of thought, though he would play dumb until the moment her questions truly seemed unanswerable.
"I spoke with him in his office hours, once our assignments were finished. He's a story teller at heart, once he gets to trust you."
"I'm sure he had wonderful stories," Mary presumed.
"Certainly so," Victor agreed with a grin. "Cut short by his injuries of course."
"Oh yes, yes. And what year was that, do you recall?"
"I couldn't swear to his timeline, ma'am. Though he was called back to the military hospital on American soil once his condition had stabilized."
"All thanks to my John, so I've heard." The woman smiled proudly, undoubtedly considering her husband to be the greatest hero this country had ever seen. She would have one man agree with her, at least.
"Yes of course," Victor agreed. "The role of combat medics cannot be understated, and certainly he's the reason Sherlock is with us today."
"And a great privilege it is," Mary muttered with a twitch of the lip, evidentially unimpressed with the manners of their esteemed houseguest. Victor could not help but laugh, for he could not argue with the woman's spite. Sherlock was proving most unruly, though Victor could only hope time alone with John would solve that. He was short tempered when he felt cheated, and certainly a crowd around his grant reunion was not what he imagined when he arrived. Sherlock wanted his fairytale, and a warm welcome with group conversation was never fit into such stories.
"I do hope he's not too unbearable?" Victor presumed, understanding that their being here at all was already a lot to ask. He could hardly expect the woman to put up with rudeness as well.
"Oh no, no I've grown used to the bluntness of old veterans. Though it's always been helpful to understand where they came from, so as to rationalize what makes them so bitter."
"My lips are sealed, Mrs. Watson. You'll have to ask Sherlock directly," Victor insisted with a tease, reading in the old woman's eyes that she would not be asking that old grouch for his life story any time soon. She sighed, though she seemed rather accustomed to being kept in the dark.
Victor studied her for a moment, watched as she went about tending to the multiple boiling vegetables that were floating around in the pots. He saw how discouraged she was at being left in the dark; he remembered how confused she was at inviting them in, how she claimed all of John's war friends had died. What were their theories, as to the letters returning back to Sherlock's address? Either John was dead, he had changed addresses, or his wife was sending the letters back in spite. Well, here they stood at the address in question, not among the company of the dead by any means. And Mary...Mary didn't have a clue. John had never mentioned Sherlock's name, had he? He had never mentioned him, nor did he wish to keep up communications as the years dwindled by. A sickening feeling deepened in Victor's stomach, glancing again towards the living room so as to make sure there was not blood pooling across the carpet.
John didn't appear a secretive man, though of course a reasonable man would keep any love confessions while in wedlock close to the chest. All the same...something seemed off. The smiling grandchildren on the wall, the old woman with a shining silver wedding band, the domesticity of it all, mixed with the memories of the horrors of war. Victor didn't feel the same tensions in the walls as he did in Professor Holmes's house, he didn't feel a secretive longing creeping from the woodwork. He felt happiness, he sensed love. He saw a woman in her rightful home, with her rightful man, and he saw a husband who immensely loved her. A husband who loved the life he was living. A husband who realized what was good for him some years after the war, a husband who realized that he had all he needed. Love confessions, however passionate in the moment, seemed pale in comparison. The war made things slip from his lips, didn't it? The blood on his hands and the stitches in Sherlock's leg, the anxieties of gunfire and the moans of dying prisoners...a man would say anything, wouldn't he? A man would do anything, just to feel something other than fear.
"I think I might step outside for a moment, if I may?" Victor muttered, suddenly overwhelmed with the smell of the ham and the dull snippets of voices from the living room. He suddenly felt as if he had been trapped in the kitchen, trapped by invisible forces of grief and misunderstanding, as if the walls were closing in upon him and the woman was growing taller and taller.
"Yes of course, the back deck is serene if you would prefer," Mary pointed through the wall, gesturing towards the door. Victor nodded, ducking away in the preference to not make direct eye contact. He wasn't sure if he could handle reading her thoughts right now, even if they were only half informed.
Stepping into the cold air was enough of a shock that Victor felt he could finally think straight, though he could hardly claim to have any positive thoughts, even in the midst of the brisk yet sunny afternoon. The backyard was as pleasant as any, with bird baths frozen in the middle of patio furniture, cobblestone pathways, and dormant landscaping. It would be lovely when the grass was green and when the flowers were in bloom, and even now there was some pleasure to be had. That is, if one was in the state of mind to see any of this as beautiful, and not as some cruel joke.
Victor didn't know what he was expecting, especially when considering John's stern greeting on the front stoop the day before. He couldn't remember his expectations as he walked up the sidewalk today, if he had thought something could be remedied, if a solution could be found, if Sherlock Holmes would ever get the confirmation he was looking for. He didn't know if he expected John Watson to confess to the same pining, the same fifty years of regret, though Victor might have hoped. He might have hoped for a solution for the old Professor, at least when he was driving the day before, or when he was mourning by a hospital bed for a man not yet dead. He used to be on his side...because he used to believe this was love.
And yet he was wrong, wasn't he? He was wrong to assume that love amounted to suffering, that the one who waited the longest deserves the prize at the end. He was wrong to see Professor Holmes's love letters and see poetry, to see the old man's passion and mistake it for dedication. It was stupidity, it was stubbornness, and it was toxicity. It was the very poison which ran through his veins, the stuff that kept him alive but at a terrible, terrible cost. Love wasn't waiting, nor was it any form of self-sacrifice. This was love. This back porch, overlooking the landscaping. This house, with the pictures on the wall. This old man with a hand carved wooden cane, and his wife with a sewn apron. This was happiness absolute, a love story that started quick and started early, and never had to endure years of waiting, years of misunderstanding, and years of intentional miscommunication. Love would have prevailed had it truly been fated, and it seemed as though it had. It was not a perception, nor was it a thing to be doubted. Love is or isn't...and waiting on it did no good.