Prologue
The young woman walked through the cemetery, going up to one of the newest stones there. The earth was still freshly dug from the funeral, just a short time ago. She placed a bouquet of red roses and white stargazer lilies in front of the stone. As a chilly wind blew through the trees, she swept her long brown hair back over her ear, away from her face.
"... You were great at this, you know," the young woman said to the stone. "... So great... He still believes in you... He completely believes."
She fixed her brown eyes upon the shining black marble, and its gleaming silver letters, stating the name of the departed.
Sherlock Holmes.
As she stood there, a voice broke the quiet sound of the leaves rustling in the wind.
"I assume you were waiting to restore his true self when I had taken myself out of the equation?"
That smooth voice came from behind her. She whipped around to look in to the face of the 'dead man'. Sherlock Holmes, supposed fraud and criminal, stood there in his signature dark coat, collar up, hands clasped behind his back, looking entirely normal. As if just months ago he hadn't taken a leap off of the roof of Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. As the wind rustled the thick black curls on his head, he tilted it slightly, making the fringe just manage to stay swept over his forehead.
She went completely stiff as she locked her eyes with his pale, blue-grey ones. She was not surprised at all to be looking at, or talking to a dead man. In fact, she went on guard, as if she were about to fight him, though she carried no visible weapon. But she said nothing.
"Well?" he inquired voice deeper yet. His head inclined slightly to the left, though as he moved it seemed a bit stiff. Not quite an easy, fluid motion. His eyes moved over her, taking her in.
"You can drop the act, if you like," the girl finally said. "I know you're not human."
He chuckled. "You may know what I am not, but I highly doubt that you know precisely what I am."
"Yeah, and that's not the only thing you're not," the woman added. "You're not Sherlock Holmes. He's fiction." She reached in the red bag slung over her shoulder, the main pouch resting on her hip, and she withdrew from it an old leather-bound book. "Very good fiction, but fiction, all the same. It got you noticed right away."
He continued to stare at the young woman, his head not moving from its angle, though it should likely be getting a touch achy by now.
"I do not believe the conversation was about me," he replied.
"No," the young woman said. "It isn't." She tucked the book back in to her bag. "But you're the reason why he's here. And the reason he's going to need to remember." His eyes narrowed in on the chain around her neck. He knew what hung beneath her zipped-up jacket.
"You weren't ever real," she added, "And he always knew that, even before he changed… Before he went to sleep."
She took one step forward in her ankle-high boots. Her lips turned up at the corners in a sly smile, but the furrowing of her eyebrows and the rigidness of her shoulders still said she was on the defensive.
"You know what he is," she said. "But do you know 'who'?"