Nah, thank you for encouraging me to clarify my comments. I don't wish to come over as knocking what I felt was one of the strongest parts of the story. I once lived through a spookily similar scene with my own father, and it rings true for me far more than Watson going from shock to rarefied intellectual understanding in a single leap. I also think it's very in-character for Watson to project his own sense of honour even onto situations he does not entirely grasp (and which, indeed, Holmes has cautiously not permitted him to grasp.) One question I always find fascinating is how a Watson who is not intimate with same-sex partnership might make sense of his own experience and knowledge of same-sex affairs or encounters (at school, in the army, in medical practice, papers, courts, among Holmes's clients), and where he might or might not associate it with his own experiences. This fic provokes many thoughts on that topic.