Author's Note:

Set just after the end of 'His Last Vow'. If you still haven't seen it or any of Series 3, thar be spoilers. There will be 2 short chapters in all.

This is my attempt at a short fix-it fic for HLV, especially that damned 'goodbye' scene which left me flailing at the video. I won't say it completely fixes things, and I'm sure there are holes in my 'solution' theory that you could fly a small British government plane through, but that's not why I wrote this. This is just me attempting to coax some hope out of ground that's feeling a bit barren, at the moment. It's made me feel a bit better to write it; perhaps some of you will feel better after reading it.

Apologies to ShiningMoon, who usually betas my work: I took too long (as always) to write this and got too eager to post to send it to her first for editing. So if this seems rough and not up to scratch, it's not her fault. It's only meant to be a little thing, anyway, and its roughness perhaps reflects the way it was born, which was as I was still half-asleep and lying in bed on the second morning after watching the Series 3 finale. Apparently my brain had needed some time to process things and had finally said, "No, we're going this way with that, thanks."

As always, this has not been Brit-picked, but I will always accept polite corrections on that or any aspect of my writing.

Butterfly

The wheels of the aeroplane bump once, twice, and then grip the tarmac as if to say: got you, earth; you won't be getting away from me this time. We're touching down. I've been in exile for a total of nine and a half minutes and the plane is suddenly scraping its wheels on terra Britannia and taxiing to a halt. The door opens and the flight attendant who insists on continuing the pretense that he isn't an MI6 agent assigned to ensure I don't pull a daring escape opens the door and nods me through. I wave him out of my field of vision; my mind is occupied with whowhatwhenwherehow. Moriarty. Impossible. Someone purporting to be Moriarty: much more likely. Whowhatwhenwherehowwhy. I don't usually bother with why; that's more John's area, trying to understand people. Sometimes it's necessary, though, if only as a clue to discovering who. Certainly rescuing me at the eleventh hour from a short-lived stint as bloodhound for the British Government will not have been their primary intent, whoever they are –though this Moriarty-clone may have cleverer, more interesting plans for me than Mycroft could devise. In any case, my new quarry is not the MI6 man whose irrelevant face I've already forgotten.

My brother is waiting on the tarmac, phone in hand, arm resting on the door of his government saloon car. I scan his face out of habit, but naturally it's impossible to tell if he's pleased to see me. Mycroft's world, his life, his chance at what he calls success depends on his appearing to have no weakness, no exploitable emotion –no 'pressure point', as the late Charles Magnussen would put it. Mycroft would die before conceding to such a common ailment as familial affection. He hasn't mentioned Sherrinford by name since the Incident; he hardly refers to him at all except as 'the other one'. He uses my boyhood grief at the death of a family pet to mock and shame me into doing what he wants. And now I'm being shuttled away into his custody. For England. If she truly knew this man who has made himself custodian of us all.

He'd said my loss would break his heart. He was slightly under the influence, though he didn't know it. I won't know if it's true. I gave up looking for evidence of my eldest brother's love long ago. His arm is outstretched and the door is open, but there is no welcome here.

"Sherlock! Sherlock, wait!"

That voice, high and compelling: John. I can see him from the corner of my eye, a dogged black dot advancing up the tarmac. Behind him Mary, a petal-stroke of deep coral, follows as fast as she dares.

I look at Mycroft, who shudders and makes a face that says he could not personally stomach both a departure and a greeting between friends on the same day; but he oils into the back seat of the Jaguar without a word and turns his gaze to the line of trees that brushes the horizon.

John trots up and stands there with his breath coming in little glad bursts. He's grinning; that placid plastic expression he wore earlier has cracked. In its place is his 'we won again; isn't it brilliant' look. He puffs at me expectantly, eyes bright. He wants me to say something. I know he hates the pet analogies but he really is like a beagle at moments like this. All he needs is a word from me and a scent to follow, and he's off. I don't move my eyes from his face, but a splash of pink has appeared an estimated ten foot off his right shoulder.

"Change of plan," I say to John. He nods, his grin slipping up a notch on one side.

"Yeah," he answers, while his eyes and the tilt of his head say Obviously.

I go on anyway. "It appears I'll be sticking around after all," I say. "A rather urgent problem has arisen, requiring my particular combination of skills and insight." Wait. Pause, rewind, replay, wince. "When I say 'arisen'," I add, "that's actually a pun. Clearly unintentional—"

John chuckles. "—but appropriate, I know. Mycroft gave us the ten-second version." His smile is warm, relaxed; he's not worried. It's disturbing. I can't tell if his faith in my ability to defeat a man who really, actually, no magic tricks involved should be dead is staggering, or if the succession of lies he's had to contend with recently has left him too jaded to care. I blink rapidly to clear my vision, but there's still just John, and Mary somewhere behind, waiting for him.

I take a breath. "Well," I say. "I suppose I'll be rather busy, then, these next few –however long it takes." I clear my throat. "I mean to say, you'll understand if I can't quite…" I make a vague gesture of association between us. "I realize there are conventions with friends when one of them is about to have a baby," I say. "Visits and showers and the like –well, you probably didn't expect me to do any of that anyway; but I would at least have given a passable approximation of interest, before; enough to convey—"

"It's the expectant mother's girlfriends who usually throw the shower, Sherlock. But yeah, I get the picture."

"Hm," I say, skeptical. "I might have assisted. From what I've observed of Mary's girlfriends, I'm sure they could have used my help. But now—"

He coughs. "Mm, yes, very busy," he says briskly. "Criminal mastermind risen from the dead, England in peril, all that." He's still smiling up at me. I've never seen the prospect of Jim Moriarty brighten John's face in that way. "Well," he says. "I expect you'll catch me later, then."

Catch you… later.

When revelation hits, it's often described as a flash –and that's true, in a way; from a normal point of view, it's like the headlamp on a high-speed locomotive, driving science and inspiration between the eyes at a million miles an hour. Slow it down, though, and it's much more elegant. No crude hammer, deduction, but a web of thought spinning across the mind; seeking, connecting. Streams of bio-luminescence linking this word to that person, this seemingly insignificant act to something massive. Something life-changing.

Or, as is so often the case when John Watson's involved, life-saving.

Some previously shelved or indeed overlooked data in my Mind Palace are rearranging themselves in a pattern that temporarily takes my breath away.

Item 1. That image on the screen, on all the screens: I know it. It's a snapshot of the mastermind from the day of his trial. I remember that suit, lighter than I knew he typically wore, the hair carefully styled to look respectable, not slick or sinister. I served tea with that tie glowing innocently at me from my own armchair. Anyone with an Internet connection has access to pictures of Moriarty in that suit, from that day. John had a high-resolution closeup sent to him by some contact of Lestrade's in the courthouse, at my request. We had a printed copy tacked to the wall of 221B until John ripped it down one night, snarling that he hated it 'staring' at him. I never saw that he'd deleted it from his laptop files, though. He's as terrible about clearing his physical hard drives of old rubbish as he is his mental ones.

Item 2. John had said, "The game is over." I had been too muddled by sentiment at the time to register how out of character that was. John only refers to 'the game' when a case is particularly trivial or ridiculous –or more frequently, as a sarcastic comment on my attitude toward situations 'normal' people would consider serious and/or troubling. He would never invoke 'the game' when saying farewell to his best friend –and I am that still, I think; he hasn't informed me otherwise (do ex-best friends do that? I wouldn't know. It feels like there should be an announcement. That woman had thought she was special to the Mayfly Man and then he'd just moved on, without even bothering to tell her he was done with her. That was wrong, wasn't it?) John had looked me in the eye and said, "The game is over." He had leaned forward to say it, as though it was a secret; but because of our height difference he had been speaking more or less into my lapel, or my collar – right where he might guess (correctly, of course) that Mycroft's minions had fastened a microphone while I was being prepared for launch into enemy territory.

Item 3. Mycroft had arranged for our parents to visit during the short period in which I was confined at an 'undisclosed location' while my fate was being decided –whether as a favor to them or as punishment for me, I can't be certain. I tuned out most of their prattlings and admonishments almost as soon as they breached the air of my cell, but I do recall my mother remarking on how John Watson appeared to have taken over the care and feeding of Bill Wiggins, now that I was gone. That did surprise me a bit, even knowing John's nature as healer and comforter of broken spirits as well as bodies. He and Wiggins got off on the wrong foot and they've never quite warmed to each other. It's possible Wiggins still hasn't forgiven John his little burst of violence at their first meeting; possible that John will never fully accept a man he found in a junkies' hideout and who has since conducted a regular acquaintance with me. Possibly –no, definitely—a bit of jealousy there as well, on both sides: Wiggins knows that no matter how clever he is at picking up the science of deduction, he'll never replace John at my side; while John, even playing at 'normal' family life in the suburbs, resents anyone else being entrusted with my methods, with the Work. And Wiggins has made sure to let John hear about every new skill he's learned from me –including the infamous trick of sending the same message simultaneously to a collection of unlinked mobile phones.

Item 4. John kept looking around the airfield while we were speaking, before. I had assumed it was his natural distaste for emotional scenes, or possibly he was checking for those ubiquitous 'people' who might see John Watson and Sherlock Holmes making expressions of friendship and, Heaven forbid, talk. Replaying the scene now in my head, I can see it more clearly: that wasn't John's 'I have feelings and they make me uncomfortable' look; he was scanning the area for people. The airfield has been empty all afternoon except for our little group in the middle; whom else could he have been expecting? Not someone who was already there, of course. A late arrival, then, coming in from outside. Someone to interrupt us.

Oh.

I shake myself out of my head and find John still looking up at me, smiling. It's his 'any time you feel like rejoining us, Sherlock' smile, but there's little exasperation or annoyance in it. He knows what I've been thinking. It's a smile from Before, unmarred by doubt or grief or anger. I like to think it's a smile just for me.

"Yes, John, later," I say, and it's a struggle to keep from laughing. I clench my fists. "Now, I have a brilliant and dangerous man to hunt. The game continues!" I turn in satisfyingly dramatic fashion (the coat, which never fails to keep up, adds its particular flourish) and stride over to where Mycroft et al are waiting. John's dark chuckle follows me, tickling my ear.

Oh, John. Clever, surprising, wonderful John.