I myself have never had much patience for the idea that Holmes and Moriarty are flip sides of the same coin, and I like your treatment of it here, wherein Holmes has no patience for the idea, either. The chemistry may exist, but one still makes one's own choices.
...and yet, despite his assertion that he gets to make choices about how he'll deal with his counter/ring, he still gets sucked into that whole disaster, still allows himself to become an accelerant to the carnage. Perhaps most damning of his actions is that it required Mary's death before he could own his part in it: when it was 'only' Irregulars dying, when he thought that it would 'simply' be he and Watson marching to their deaths together...
(And how much did he enjoy the fact that their counters bore the same date? One could almost pretend -- almost -- that each ring referred to the other.)
The question for me, always, is what motivates Holmes to fake his death and disappear for three years, without a word to Watson as he goes. This here? This is a compelling reason.
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...and yet, despite his assertion that he gets to make choices about how he'll deal with his counter/ring, he still gets sucked into that whole disaster, still allows himself to become an accelerant to the carnage. Perhaps most damning of his actions is that it required Mary's death before he could own his part in it: when it was 'only' Irregulars dying, when he thought that it would 'simply' be he and Watson marching to their deaths together...
(And how much did he enjoy the fact that their counters bore the same date? One could almost pretend -- almost -- that each ring referred to the other.)
The question for me, always, is what motivates Holmes to fake his death and disappear for three years, without a word to Watson as he goes. This here? This is a compelling reason.