Months had passed since - Moriarty, and he had built himself from scratch, before Harry Watson remembered she had a brother.

Oh why hadn't he run away when he had the time.

'Leave London,' she said.

'Why?'

'Why not?'

'Harry,' he said patiently. 'I live here. I work here.'

'Nah,' she said with a shrug. 'You mourn here.'

She was tempting him to treat her like a man. And she was a bit too collected.

'That,' he said, 'is not your business. You have nothing else to say - leave yourself.'

'I won't.'

He could call the police.

'Okay.' Besides, he was used to listening to people. 'I'm out of milk.'

'I noticed. You weren't born to solve crimes,' she said.

'Thanks.' He would wait until she threw something at the wall. Then he would sigh, she would hiss something very unpleasant, and they would stop seeing each other for another five years.

Happily ever after.

'You loved him - yeah, Johnny, we both know what I mean. You loved him so much that you didn't care what he did.'

'Sherlock,' he said through clenched teeth, 'wasn't a criminal.'

This was his sister. This was his sister.

'No, he wasn't.'

'I - what?'

'I said he wasn't. He solved crimes, and that was that, right? Just a guy who liked his work.' She narrowed her eyes at him again. 'And I am even willing to assume that he was human, after all.'

'Will wonders never cease?'

'It just doesn't matter, see? He could have been a baker, or a miner, or a bloody vampire, and you would have thrown in your lot with him. Come on, prove me wrong.'

'Sherlock Holmes...' he said, feeling tired all at once. 'Sherlock Holmes was a man, not a sum of his job or what food he liked or why people believed he was a fraud or a luntaic. He was... much more than that, Harry, and if you can't wrap your mind around the notion, then please go.'

She nodded, unconcerned.

'So are you, Johnny. Why didn't you try - '

'If you say 'being normal' - '

'Playing chess?'

'I'm rubbish at chess.'

'Diving?'

'Where do you get these ideas?'

Sober. That was it. She was sober.

'…not defining yourself in categories applied to others? There's more to life than just 'different from Sherlock' or 'Sherlock's BFF'.'

'How do you know?' he asked.

Harry Watson's smile was angry.

'I move around, Johnny. I actually talk to people.'

'So you don't know,' he said.

'So you never checked. That's bad science, dear.'

He shook his head. He really didn't want to fight her.

On the other way, how on Earth was he going to see her out?

...

'By the way, about John Watson...' Mycroft said idly. Idly, and sarcastically, and maybe something else there, too.

Sherlock sat back and wiped all expression from his face.

'I'd like it monstrously if you stopped interfering.'

'I didn't have to.'

'Mm?' Sherlock asked, mouth dry.

'He's in Cardiff - no, Sherlock, I'm not tracking him.'

'But what is he doing?'

'Without you?.. Last I heard, got himself a place in a bookshop. Curious how it works, eh?'