Greg Lestrade rolled over under the covers, his senses just beginning to rouse him from his night's sleep.
The first thing he heard was the muted notes of his wife's cello from the music room he had set up for her down the hallway from their bedroom. He had found himself becoming restless after his retirement from Scotland Yard, so setting up a room for Eurus, even before they were married, that she could call her own to compose in and to play in, had been a welcome home-renovation project. He had made sure that it was brightly lit from the natural light coming in from outside and from a skylight he had installed for the purpose, but central enough that he could hear her while she played. It was one of the simple things that he had loved about her from the very night they had begun their fairy tale the year before.
As he rearranged his limbs, still coming to consciousness, he felt the rumpled sheets where Eurus had lain next to him, now cool to the touch. She had been up for a while now, he guessed. This happened sometimes when he had been out later than expected the night before, losing track of time sleuthing with his old friends and counterparts, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. He wasn't a young man anymore after all, but he knew that Eurus understood. Old habits were hard to break and she wanted him to continue to do the things that had given his life purpose for so many years.
Nearing to full wakefulness, Greg opened his eyes, squinting briefly against the sunlight that poured into the room through the window. Eurus had pulled the curtains back to allow the light in and give the new day a chance to awaken her sleepy husband.
He took a deep breath, and he thought he smelled what she had planned for breakfast. Usually he could tell by what she was playing in her music room, on those mornings when he didn't wake up with her still next to him. Eurus was nothing if not a creature of habit and ritual, and the pieces she chose to practice on any given morning – whether they were with her cello, or her violin - seemed to correspond with her choice of breakfast fare. If she played Bach, she was probably baking something – scones, quick bread, or something similarly delicious; if it was Brahms, she was probably waiting on him to get up before starting the meal, so that they wouldn't be eating cold food that was meant to be consumed hot and fresh. Mozart meant fresh fruit and maybe croissants; and if it was one of the many compositions that had been created by either her brother, Sherlock, or his son Will – that meant that Greg had best get his arse out of bed and make himself decent – because company was coming and would very soon be ringing the doorbell.
On the mornings he awoke and heard her humming sweetly next to him, smiling and gazing at him with bright blue eyes that he could lose himself in forever, he knew that she was planning to wait on him to arise and do the cooking. He would open his eyes, gently take the hand that had been caressing his bare chest in his, and kiss her fingertips softly one by one.
"Nice try darling, but it's still your turn to cook," she would giggle softly.
Rolling over towards her, he would murmur something deliciously seductive to her, take her mouth in his, and then they would spend the next little while enjoying every aspect that married life offered to them, at a most exquisitely leisurely pace. And then, when one hunger had been satisfied but another had become impossible to ignore, they would finally leave the comfort of their marriage bed to head into the kitchen.
Mornings in the Lestrade household were never hurried. After all, Greg was retired, and Eurus was savouring every wondrous little moment of domestic mediocrity that her freedom from Sherrinford had to offer. All of the boring little things that made up a normal, ordinary existence, that most people would find had put them into a rut after years of unchanged routine, she had missed out on.
Just over a year ago, she had boarded the helicopter to leave Sherrinford for the very last time, in Greg's "permanent protective custody" – a condition of release that her oldest brother Mycroft had slyly used to secure her permanent liberation from the island facility. It was the day after their nephew Will's wedding to Rosie Watson, and everything had happened so fast on the day that her nephew had married Dr. John Watson's only child Rosamund, that Eurus had barely had time to think, time to process that this wondrous new adventure that she and Greg had found themselves beginning together just the day before was not going to be cut short any time soon.
Greg barely had time to process the fact that he and Eurus would get to have their fairy tale ending after all, when he found himself formally assuming custody of her in front of Mycroft and the Governor at Sherrinford.
Escorting her down the hallways and into the lift that would take them to her now former cell, they needed little time to collect her very few belongings, before departing the room for good.
At the helicopter, her slight frame crouched over and her hair blowing under the wind created by the rotor, Eurus had turned around to look briefly at her old prison fortress one final time. With a smile to her brother Mycroft, and then boarding the helicopter with Greg's hands on her waist to help her up, she wouldn't look back at the facility again – only forward into the path they were taking over the churning waters of the sea below that would bring her home.
On that day, she had vowed to never take for granted the little pleasures that ordinary life would offer to her. No matter how boring, no matter how exhilarating, no matter how ordinary or extraordinary, she would savour all of it.
And on another bright, beautiful day some 7 months later, with Sherlock standing next to her groom, and his wife Dr. Molly Hooper standing next to her, she would vow to savour it with Greg Lestrade, for better or for worse, for the rest of their lives.
What a life of wondrous mediocrity.