Disclaimer – I don't own the characters. They belong to ACD, MG and SM and the BBC. No one pays me to do this, I do it for love.

Reunion

by

thedragonaunt

Mrs Hudson

Mrs Hudson was in her kitchen, washing up, when she heard the front door open and close. She'd had the other landladies round for lunch and a gossip. They took turns to host these little get-togethers, ad hoc meetings of the unofficial Marylebone Landladies' Support Group. That was something of a misnomer, in Mrs Hudson's case, since she wondered if she could still be termed a 'landlady' when her only tenant was a dead man.

The flat upstairs had been unoccupied for nearly three years, now, ever since….that day. Nowadays, it was not so much a domicile as a memorial, a temple to a fallen hero which had but one worshipper, one acolyte, who came alone every week to pay his respects. And that was the thing. Mycroft had already been this week – just a couple of days ago. So why had he just let himself in through her front door? Was it some special anniversary?

It certainly wasn't a birthday. Sherlock's birthday was in January, months ago. And neither was it the anniversary of The Fall – that was not for a few more weeks. Still, she concluded, he must have his reasons and who was she to question the motives of a man like Mycroft Holmes?

And once again she was being inaccurate. The shrine upstairs did have more than one regular visitor. Was she not the High Priestess of that particular Cult of Personality? She went there more often than she cared to admit. She probably talked to that dead man more than she did to any living soul, these days.

But Mycroft – no, he was a once a week man so why was he back again, only two days since his last visit? Not only back but….tapping on her flat door? He never knocked on her door! If he needed to communicate, he would ring or, on the odd occasion, text - but never knock. This was a day for rare exceptions.

She wiped her gloved hands on a tea towel and then removed the Marigolds and placed them on the draining board, brushing her bare hands down the front of her apron, as she walked through the sitting room, toward her flat door. She was almost there when the knock came again – more insistent, this time.

'Yes, alright, I'm coming,' she called, as she reached the door, grasped and turned the handle, and pulled the door open.

She looked up at the grey three piece suit, the pursed lips, the long, thin nose and the sharp grey-blue eyes – except they weren't. Mrs Hudson blinked and stared and blinked again, her brain not making sense of what her eyes were reporting.

'Sherlock?' she gasped, as her knees began to buckle and her head to swim.

'Yes, Mrs Hudson. Please, don't be alarmed,' he exclaimed, catching her by the upper arms, in a bid to arrest her descent to the carpet.

She was in a state of confusion and disorientation. If this was a dream, it was the most multisensory one she had ever experienced, in all her seventy-plus years. This dream had strong hands and smelt of expensive after-shave.

'Sherlock, it is you,' she gasped again.

'Yes, it is. I'm sorry if I startled you,' he replied, with a self-deprecating smile.

'But how can that be?' she blethered.

'It's a very long story,' he intoned, in that deep, baritone burr that she had thought never to hear again.

'Oh, my darling boy,' she choked, as the tears began to bubble from her eyes and course down the rouged and wrinkled cheeks.

She threw her arms about his waist and pressed her face into his midriff, repeating, over and over,

'My darling boy, my darling boy.'

He enclosed her fragile frame in his long, strong arms, cupped her head in one huge hand and pressed his cheek into her fine, grey hair, as he fought to swallow down the emotion that threatened to over-whelm him, too.

ooOoo