John didn't take sugar in his tea. Or in his coffee, for that matter- he never acquired that much of a sweet tooth. But as he set the tea-tray down on the mug-stained coffee table, the tiny white clumps shifted and formed a small hill in the silver sugar-bowl. Sitting next to it, there was a minuscule pitcher of cream, a round, grey-stained teapot, a nearly uselessly-sized spoon, and two matching teacups, off to the side and in isolation of each other.

He cleared his throat as he sat down in the armchair, shifting his weight forward so that he could take to pouring the tea. The earl grey tumbled from the spout to the fist first porcelain cup, and the room echoed the liquid tune, but in a weak, lethargic manner. A few beats of silence, then the passage repeated for the second.

The pot made a lighter sound when it touched the tray again. It was then that the silver cutlery, ignored until then, was suddenly brought to attention. One spoon, a dull glimmer in the hazy afternoon, sent to disturb the little powdered pile: scoop, over, deposit, return, scoop, and deposit again. Finally- some musical tinkling gave the room some depth.

Tin-tin-ting, tin-tin-ting, tin-tin-ting. Ting, tink.

It was almost like he had rung a dinner bell., as no sooner did he set the spoon back down on the tray, then did the sound of footsteps falling ring in response to the call from the stairway up to the flat. John turned his head, eyes regarding the doorway with thought. When the florally-garbed, lamb-like woman stuck her head through curiously, his head dipped in a cheerful nod.

"Ah, Mrs. Hudson!" He gave a welcoming gesture. "You're back early- I thought you were visiting your family until next Friday?"

The woman pattered into the cluttered room with tiny footsteps, John able to see her examining the state of the flat out of the corner of her eyes. "Oh yes. Well, there was a bit of a dispute, actually, first day I arrived… figured I better not overstay my welcome."

John gave an empathetic shake of his head. When he saw her eyes threaten to dart into the kitchen, nearly a warzone with disorganized books, jars, and things John has long since lost track of, he could not help but smile. "The flat has seen better days, that's for sure."

Mrs. Hudson sighed. "Are… well, are you thinking of doing some tidying up anytime soon?"

"Of course," John finally rose to his feet, heading back into the kitchen, "Just hang on- I'll get you a cup and saucer."

"Oh," John heard the surprise in her voice, a slight distortion in its tone. "This other one here, then… it's not for me?"

There were a few moments of silence as he returned to the room with a third, mismatching-patterned teacup. He left her a few moments to think, before he poured her tea, adding a few lumps of sugar and offering it to her with a genuine smile. "This one's mine."

She was not someone who bit her lip when thinking, as much as she curled her lip. Just as she was doing now- an amiable facial expression, the curl of her lip resembling a sheepish smile. "Thank you, dear."

Now came the interesting part. She accepted the saucer, threatening to have the brimming cup spill its contents over the porcelain ridge, but she only shifted her wight slightly from where she stood. John saw her facial expression. Guessing her thoughts was as easy as reading a book, given the circumstances. Her choice of seating was a crucial choice, in her mind. John saw her attention flick over to the soft arm-chair recliner across from him. Would she dare take it?

John was fairly confident in his answer to that question. "Would you not like a seat? Your hip is still bothering you nowadays, no?"

He had given her a bone, and she snatched it up without a moment's hesitation. "Oh no, dear now. Don't make a fuss- just need something I don't sink into. Something a little more stable."

They wheeled over the little desk chair, and she perched on the edge of it like an attentive parrot, taking gingerly sips from the still scalding tea.

"Well then, is there anything else that Dr. Watson can help you with today, other than your daily sugar intake?" He rolled of the sleeves of his sweater, the room warming up nicely with the hot beverages. "Sorry I don't have any biscuits or something to offer you, though I am sure that they'd be put to shame by your baking."

Mrs. Hudson made a bashful wave, but her face had soon grown serious as John took an innocent gulp from his cup. "I've got a really… a truly serious question for you. And I don't want you to give me the same answer you do everyday. Okay?"

Good. Didn't feel like small talk anyways.

"How are you doing?"

John gave a quick smirk. He knew this was coming. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but today I am just as I was yesterday."

She looked at him.

He smiled.

"And how is that exactly?"

"Perfectly alright, thanks for asking. And how are you?"

He somewhat regretted the jeer that when he saw the face she made, a mixture of irritation and confusion. "John, I'm really worried about you. You… do you know that I can hear you?"

He blinked. "Hear me? Hear me when?"

There it was- that lip curl again. "I can hear you talking. Talking when there is nobody up there, but… you're not just talking to yourself."

He wouldn't allow his face to twitch even in the slightest movement.

"You still talk to him, don't you?" Her voice had turned very thin and saturated with emotion. "You sometimes yell a lot. I can hear you laugh then, too, and…"

John took another drink, staring down into the dark liquid as she spoke. When she hesitated, he lifted his head a little higher before he responded. "And?"

She opened her mouth a little wider for a moment, but seemingly lost her response.

"If it is bothering you, Mrs. Hudson, I can keep my voice down. It carries fairly well, doesn't it?"

"John…" she had a firm frown pressed against her face now, but she still did not say anything else.

He knew what she was thinking, and she knew that he knew, but he was going to have her say it.

But to his surprise, she remained quiet and supped away at the tea, until the cup was well empty and she just twiddled with the handle in her lap.

He let himself fall back into the silence, and wondered how long she would last. He had finished his cup as well, and occupied himself by apparently finding a particularly interesting pattern in the wallpaper, but the furrow in his brow suggested more serious cerebral activity.

It wasn't long before she gave in.

"You are thinking hard about something."

"Normally, yes." He didn't even move his eyes.

"Good lord, John, are you doing this on purpose?"

"What now?" There was not a ripple of anxiety in his voice as he looked up.

"It's… you remind me so much of him."

Still won't say his name... "People who spend a lot of time together do normally tend to pick up each other's habits, mannerisms…"

"You know perfectly well that "normally" isn't really an applicable word here."

"He'll be flattered."

Silence.

Ah, finally noticed the verb tense, have we? "Anything else I can get for you, Mrs. Hudson?"

Now she was getting a little more than irritated. "I'm not getting out of here jut yet."

He smiled, a fair measure of sarcasm woven into his voice, "Of course not."

"We need to talk."

"It would seem."

"Then explain it to me."

"Explain what?"

"Ah…" she stumbled, "…you know perfectly well what."

"Do I?" his face was now echoing the sarcastic tone, "Because I don't believe we've mentioned the subject that needs to be talked about once during this whole little tea-time."

She gave an irritated huff. "John, it is more than obvious."

"Hmm, and yet it is you who continues to avoid putting it into words. Maybe I'm just reading this wrong, but that makes it seem a little more likely that it is your problem, and that you need to do the talking."

She sat up a little straighter. "Well, you haven't said anything either."

"Oh, I can if you'd like." He gave an grim little smile.

"Please do." Her voice had gone thin again, but this time the hurt was visible.

"Your problem is that you think I'm crazy- that I am in denial with the fact that Sherlock decided to throw himself off a building while I stood and watched. Well, let me put your mind at rest: I'm not in denial."

Her face relaxed slightly, before contorting into a look of bewilderment. "Then what-"

"You all have the problem wrong, sorry. I can't keep silent anymore, so let me let you in on a little secret… Sherlock is not dead."

Surprised is what came to mind when he saw her face, but it wasn't just that. There was pity, maybe a bit of disappointment too. "John… I know it's a strange concept, but… you… how can he be alive?"

"By not being dead. And Sherlock Holmes is not dead. Therefore, he's alive." He gave his reasoning as if he were a practiced college professor.

"John, you said that you saw it yourself. You were the only person there who saw the whole thing… that Lestrade fellow-"

He pulled himself forward in the chair, whispering as if there was someone in proximity of eavesdropping. "Would you like me to tell you what I saw that day? What it was I saw lying on the street?"

Her face said no, but her mouth said nothing.

"The ground was cement-paved. His head must've hit the ground first, with the amount of blood there was. From the height that he fell, that sort of contusion should have killed a man instantly. His hair was slick with blood… when they turned him over, his eyes were like a corpse- lifeless, pale, dilated. I even took his pulse…" he mirrored the action on his own wrist. "Nothing."

He was nearly tempted to laugh when he saw the look on her face.

"Just wait, I haven't finished yet. What I'm trying to say is, I know a corpse when I see one, and on the sidewalk that day, in broad daylight, that was a corpse."

Mrs. Hudson looked beyond terrified now.

"It would take Sherlock Holmes himself to fool me, Mrs. Hudson." He sat back in the chair, a smug look across his face.

"Oh dear…" she rubbed her hands against her face, trying to wipe away the ugly melangé of emotions, eventually revealing a comforting but sad smile. "It is true. If there was anyone in the world who could pull it off, it'd be Sherlock, that's for sure…"

"…but you and everyone else seem content to just deem his as dead."

"No." She shook her head in a never-ending back-and-forth motion. "No, it's not like that."

"Don't bother." John sighed and waved away her words. "I've given up trying to convince you- all of you- since day one. I know no one will believe me. He does too."

"John, if it was true, why would he do such a thing? Why wouldn't he tell us or… or come back after it was done? Where is he now, then?"

"Seemingly no reason for this, right?" John leaned forward again with the climb of excitement, "See, it's perfect. If he gave us obvious answers, then of course we'd suspect him to be alive, and if he needed to be dead and everyone suspected him to be alive, that wouldn't really work in his favour, now would it?"

"I… I suppose. But, you said that in the end… he told you… he claimed that he…"

Now John's face drew in tight. "Don't you even begin to try and tell me you believe a word of it. That Sherlock's some sort of big impostor. That he was a coward who would off himself like that, like some sort of over-romamtacized character. Sherlock's dramatic, I'll give him that, but he'd never do something like that if he didn't get to see the results. No point in doing it if he didn't get to enjoy the looks on our faces."

"You still believe in him then, John?"

"Until the day I die."

A confession? It certainly felt like one.

Mrs. Hudson inhaled slowly, and a shadow of acceptance fell on her visage. "You sweet thing… you still make his tea."

"Oh, sweetness doesn't come into it, I'm afraid. Old habits die hard, and my habit is to always forget the sugar." He paused, but it was apparently still his turn. "I'm going to fix that, one way or another."

For a peculiar moment, John was overly aware of the tone of his voice, and he found himself agitated by his words that clung to the silence of the room.

"But dear… you do realize… well, that he's not here?" Mrs. Hudson had to drag the words from her throat.

"You know what? Sometimes I think I forget. There are times when he doesn't talk for hours so… I'm not sure. The silence can fool me, I suppose."

"He had entire conversations with you while you were gone, somedays. I'd come in to check up on him- how he was doing, see if he'd set any fires, shot the walls again, you know-and he'd just have his face pressed to his microscope, making remarks to the air."

"Mmm." John nodding knowingly. "Sometimes I wonder if I was just a façade for him somedays. Mustn't have been very useful if I could do my job without being there."

"Oh." Mrs. Hudson smiled, "Don't be too sure about that. If I ever interrupted him while he was thinking, aloud or not, usually the first thing he'd do was look at me as if I were an alien of some sort. Then he'd ask 'Where's John?' Obviously I was not was he expected… less suited for whatever he was asking you about."

John gave a scoff. "Well, I you ever find out what makes me special, be sure to let me know."

His eyes wandered away once more as his thoughts drew away their focus. Mrs. Hudson shook her head again, as if in disbelief. "So you really aren't doing this intentionally then? Acting like him?"

"Well, if I was trying, I could do much better than this. Just give me a second-" he sat himself up, straight-backed, giving his since grown military haircut a good ruffle, scrunching his face into a serious expression, and pressing his two hands together, index fingers under his chin, in an almost prayer-like pose. "Middle-aged woman, twice divorced, probably more than three kids, all in university. Minimum-salary job, obviously stressing about money issues based on her premature facial wrinkles, greyed hairs and the scuff of dirt on her left shoe."

Mrs. Hudson gave a forced laugh, but John could appreciate the effort.

"Mmm." He returned to his normal voice, but his face retained the stern expression. "No, I haven't got it quite right yet. I have to be a bit more of a condescending bastard."

The smile flew off Mrs. Hudson's face once again- John couldn't help but think of how often it had changed expressions in the last half-hour. "You're still angry at him, then?"

"Of course I am. Had he been dead, we wouldn't have a problem- I'd know he was buried under six feet of soil next to that headstone with his name on it. But now he could be on the fourteenth moon of Jupiter, for all we can tell."

Although that's hardly likely. He couldn't help but chuckle a little at the distress he could imagine his flatmate would have were he condemned to live on such an isolated and uninteresting, irrelevant place.

"But where could he be? Where would he have to go that would call for him to fake his own death?"

"Be damned if I know." John massaged his temple as he spoke. "For all we are aware, he could be right under our noses."

"John… you aren't going to go… looking for him, are you?" This time, Mrs. Hudson actually did bite her lip.

"No." Her assured her. "No... that wouldn't do me any good, wandering around blindly in search of a man who does not want to be found. No, I'll need to figure out how he did it before why."

"It's a case then?" He piped up excitedly, her hair giving a little bounce.

"Mmm. He must've had some sort of planning, some way to make it all work. Even he couldn't pull this off alone… the question is, who would he let in on this? Who did find trustworthy enough?"

"And why wasn't it you?"

John was unfazed. "That should be a clue right there. He wanted to keep me in the dark- you too. Why is keeping us out of this so important? Then who would he be able to trust to not reveal his secret?"

From the expression on Mrs. Hudson's face, John suspected that she had not even considered the idea. Of course, she was going the list now- Lestrade, Mycroft… who would he have conceded assistance from? Friends were not something Sherlock had in great quantities.

"There's one thing for sure," she set her teacup down, next to the long-since cold brew in Sherlock's untouched one, "I do hope he will come home soon. It's far too uninteresting as it is now."

"Oh, so you believe my theory, then? I'm not buying it. Nor will anyone else- save your effort."

"Ah-"

"Please. For the better. You think he's dead, so continue to act as such. It'll work better for him anyways."

Mrs. Hudson resembled a fish for a moment as she opened and closed her mouth with no sounds to produce words. "You want me to think of you as mad then?"

"To be perfectly honest," John pushed the sleeves of his sweater down his arms again, "With all that I've said today, I'd think you insane if you thought anything otherwise."

The wind took the weather-torn shutters and dropped them lazily back on the building with a series of rhythmic claps, and out of the corner of his eye John saw the small marks of raindrops begin to splatter on the windowpane.

"…I think he said that to me once before." Mrs. Hudson professed pensively. He raised his eyebrow with an air of remembering something he had forgotten to remember. He set down his own saucer and cup, sinking back into the back of his chair as if in preparation for a long sit.

"Mrs. Hudson, did you ever see Sherlock when he got his migraines?"