Veranda was bored and nervous. She fidgeted in passenger's seat of the silver Fiesta and wished desperately for something to do with her hands. She and Sherlock had been driving for what seemed like days, even though it had been less than 3 hours since they left London the first time. This was the fifth car they'd been in today and the first time she was absolutely certain they were heading west. She had no idea where they were or where they'd been and Sherlock was not volunteering information.

In fact, he hadn't spoken one word to her since they got in the black Jag in the underground parking garage where they said 'goodbye' to John and his girlfriend Cathy. Everyone had been struck by the resemblance after Cathy put her wig on. Veranda didn't know she had so many doppelgangers out in the world.

They'd driven north for a bit, then east and then exchanged cars with John and Cathy in some charming little town she had no clue about. Then they went south and right through the bleedin' middle of London where they stopped at Heathrow to get a dark blue Peugeot. She thought they only made bicycles. After that Sherlock had driven northwest for quite a while before hanging a left on some barely paved horse trail where they had spent quite a lot of time waiting for a herd of sheep to get off the road. After one more stop in a nameless hamlet where they got the Ford, they were finally going due west. She knew Wales was to the west so maybe they were finally going to get where they were going instead of wandering aimlessly in circles.

The landscape was endless and dreary with jagged grey rocks breaking out of the sodden grey hills covered with lifeless grey vegetation. Wispy tendrils of grey fog embraced the grey vista that blended into the grey sky. It was a lot of grey and it felt like the perfect setting for the grey mood of the grey-haired grey-eyed woman looking at it from a grey car.

"Where are we?" she finally questioned with a touch of whine to her voice. She resisted the urge to ask if they were there yet.

"The M4." Sherlock stated flatly without taking his eyes off the road. He sounded stuffed up and Veranda wondered if it was the weather or all the smoke he persisted in creating inside the small apartment. She hissed through her teeth. "The M4 is a freeway, not a place. That's like saying I-5 is California because it runs from one end to the other."

"I suggest you read the signs that have been located at the roadside for your convenience."

"Kiss my grits, Sherlock! Why have you suddenly decided to ramp up the asshole routine?" She sighed heavily and thumped her head against the window. "I don't know where we are. I don't have a map. You're the only one who can see the flippin' GPS. The road signs might as well be telling me that we're on Mars. Why are you in such a bad mood?"

"I'm not." He still refused to even look over at her.

"Don't give me that. The irritation is rolling off you in waves. Are you mad at your brother for making you do this?"

"Reading."

Veranda swiveled her head in confusion. "What?"

Sherlock finally gave her a side-eyed glance. "You asked where we are and I told you. Reading. Actually just passed it a short while ago."

"Oh." Then a bit more brightly than she intended, "Spelled read-ing, but pronounced red-ing…like Redding, California. But spelled like Reading, Pennsylvania."

Sherlock sucked his cheeks in just a fraction before replying, "You realize England was founded some years before America?"

Veranda stuck her tongue out at him. "I got schooled when I went to Pennsylvania and mispronounced Reading. You really don't want to talk about Mycroft?"

He was again staring straight ahead at the road as he overtook a Transit. "Not in the slightest."

She nodded. "OK, fair enough."

He heaved a mental sigh of relief when she didn't say anything further. Nearly an hour passed and he thought she might be asleep. Suddenly she piped up, "Yellow car!"

He groaned out loud. "No. No. For God's sake, don't start!"

She giggled. "Oh, come on…"

He shook his head vigorously. "No. I know very well what you're up to and I get enough of it from John. He adores 'Cabin Pressure' and has subjected me to it against my will on numerous occasions. He claims I sound like the captain and he finds it extremely amusing."

"Well. You do." Sherlock looked very grim when she glanced over. "Fine. You know the guy who does the captain also narrates books? When he does an American accent he sounds like Tom Selleck."

"I don't care."

Veranda slumped in her seat. "I guess you wouldn't. Spoilsport. I can recite a lot of Monty Python?"

She cleared her throat, but he cut her off. "Shut up. Now."

She sagged back against the window and Sherlock was grateful for the next stretch of silence even though it was too short by half.

"Where are the moors?" she asked out of nowhere.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. "Why?" he drawled carefully.

"Oh, you know…'Wuthering Heights'. Heathcliff and Catherine…all that folderol."

"The other side of the country…hundreds of miles north." He wanted to roll his eyes, but he knew it wasn't the American's fault for not knowing British geography. He wasn't 100 percent sure he could find Washington DC on a map of the US. It wasn't important to him and his work so he never bothered to retain the information if he had ever been exposed to it. "There are moors southwest of here, in Devon…"

Veranda almost squealed. "Oh yeah! 'Hound of the Baskervilles'! That's…there's more than one moor?" She gasped and her face fell. She looked like she had just found a slug in her salad. "That's just sad." She was still making an 'ew' face when she asked with new vigor, "Where was 'Jane Eyre'?"

"Yorkshire. Same as 'Wuthering Heights'. Far away from here." Sherlock shook his head at the idea that she got all her impressions of England from 150 year old Gothic romances. "This area has plenty of its own myths and legends. It didn't need the Brontë's assistance."

She looked unimpressed. "I grew up in a state bigger than Great Britain."

"Britain or England?" he asked sharply.

"Britain. I know the difference. I spent a lot of time watching Doctor Who, Monty Python, James Bond and The Young Ones. I'm addicted to Top Gear UK." With unbridled enthusiasm she exclaimed, "I'm an Anglophile!"

Sherlock groaned in mock torment. "If you are so enamoured of our country, why are you so easily disorientated?"

"Disoriented."

"Disorientated."

"Disoriented."

"Provincial."

"Toffee-nosed twit."

"Toffee-nosed? What have I ever done to deserve that? And I most certainly object to being labeled a 'twit'." At least Sherlock was laughing now.

Veranda snorted in annoyance. "We are not even going to go there. Scotland is north, Wales is west and England is everything else."

"What about Ireland?"

"Ireland is a whole different country. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, but it isn't on the island of Great Britain…which is why I said what I said."

"Not bad…for an American," he said grudgingly.

"I can recognize place-names, but I would need a map to find them…so I can get oriented." She was refusing to let him goad her into getting irritated.

Sherlock sniffed self-righteously. "Bah. It isn't my fault you caahn't speak proper English."

At long last, a companionable silence fell in the car.

Traffic had thinned out as the afternoon faded into twilight. There was nothing but the thrumming of the tyres on the pavement and the occasional squeak of plastic from somewhere under the dashboard.

Sherlock's mind had ranged far and wide as so little of it was actually occupied with the task of driving on an uncrowded motorway. Despite his best efforts to keep it working on other projects, it kept coming back to the woman who was almost catatonic in the left hand seat of the car. He could no longer avoid the awful truth: She was beginning to get under his skin. Sometimes she seemed to know him better than he knew himself and it was disconcerting. He mentally recoiled at the thought and wondered why she didn't use her insight against him like Mycroft so often did. She kept advocating for him to be less unpleasant and holding herself up as a rather bedraggled example of someone who was farther along in the transformation. On the surface, her endeavour was daft, but he feared her assessment of him was accurate and it made him feel vulnerable.

He stretched slowly and deliberately, like a cat, and rolled his head this way and that to loosen his neck muscles. From the corner of his eye, he saw her take in every motion as she studiously tried to not pay him any attention.

"Your non-engagement ring," he started apropos of nothing. "The story last night was interrupted by several assaults and at least two attempted murders. Would you care to bring it to a conclusion? I assume there are more bodies lying littered in the narrative?"

The Bronx cheer escaped before she could stop it. "No. No grand adventure. Only the prosaic tale of a young woman who was sold a bill of goods by people who, maybe…maybe not, had her best interests in mind. And she was naïve enough to believe them and not do the thinking for herself."

Sherlock found himself frustrated by her unusual reluctance to talk. "Do go on. I really want to know 'the rest of the story'."

"Why?"

"Because I think it genuinely means something to you. Something important. A guidepost in your life…like your snippets of songs."

Now she was looking askance at him. "But why? Why would you care? It'd be like a sign written in Martian. It might tell me where I'm going, but it would mean nothing to you."

He found himself gritting his teeth and was only partially successful in relaxing his jaw. "Perhaps I'm trying to learn Martian? I…am on a journey…and I'm trying to get orientated…oriented…orientated!" Gah! This was impossible! "Just, please. Finish your story. And know that I actually want to hear it?"

She pursed her lips and looked highly unconvinced, but began anyway. "I got married to a guy I thought I could beat up, if it came to that. I didn't go into it believing I would have to, but it was a fallback plan. A contingency, if you will. In reality, my subconscious was screaming and throwing flags down on the field, but I wasn't paying her any attention. Society had me thoroughly brainwashed. I was at the age where most of my peers were already either coupled-up, married, married-with-children or divorced and working on their second divorce." She chuckled at her own joke.

"So I got married. I wanted to fit in. I found a guy who was soft-spoken and outdoorsy and seemed to genuinely like me for who I was. He didn't care that I had one more degree than he did…he didn't care that I made more money than he did. In fact, he liked it because he had two kids already and his ex-wife took him to the cleaners. He said he liked that I was smart and that I could make my own way in the world. It was great for a couple of years."

"Then it started. The cutting remarks…the put-downs…the left-handed compliments. Now, keep in mind that at this point…I'm still telling complete strangers that I'm some sort of dhamphir and I'm dedicated to verbally destroying people 'cause I think it's fun. But I didn't do it to him. Even I knew that you were supposed to be nice to the person you married."

"It confused the hell out of me! I didn't know why I deserved it, but obviously I must have done because otherwise he would be nice to the person he married? Right? Wrong. It turned out he was a passive-aggressive nightmare straight out of the DSM-III. So we went on for a while like that. I knew it was messed up, but I didn't know what to do about it. I even left him at one point, but I went back because he promised he would change. Classic, really."

"Eventually he pulled out the big guns…said that I made him say those things to me because I wouldn't 'behave'. He said I had an overly well-developed sense of self-preservation. Well, I knew I was many things, but a martyr to someone else's mental illness? I had been there and gotten the t-shirt and I wasn't going there again. So I packed up my belongings, left and I've tried to never look back."

"That's what this ring symbolizes." She held it up in front her face, silhouetted against the oncoming headlights. "I wear my old engagement ring to remind myself that I am responsible only for my own actions. I don't owe anyone happiness and I'm not at fault if they choose to be miserable. Society can fuss and fume, but I don't need to conform…it was a tricky few years, ironing out where the line was…of what I actually had control over and where other people sincerely had to step up."

"Luckily, I ran into someone…the best friend I could ever ask for…who was like a rock. A lighthouse on a rock…in the stormy sea…Gawd, that's a cheesy metaphor…innit? Anyway. I've told you about him already. He'd stumbled and struggled and thrashed around in his life until he finally sort of figured out what he was really about and how you could be yourself and still relate to regular people. He was a great man when I met him and he helped me become a good woman. I'm still striving for greatness, but I know it's not something you can honestly see in yourself. You have to see it reflected in the eyes of those around you."

She looked over at Sherlock, his pale skin glowing in the reflected light. He looked meditative, his well-defined lips pressed into a line as he worried them between his teeth. He turned to her suddenly and said in a conspiratorial tone, "You were right. Martian." Then he laughed. It was unselfconscious and rang merrily around the interior of the little car.

She threw her hands up in surrender and began laughing with him. "I give up, kid. You might never get it." They tapered off into sporadic giggles and chuckles and finally settled into reflective, smiling silence.

They checked into the seaside inn around 6 pm. Veranda wasn't sure how it had taken the better part of a day to drive a couple hundred miles west. Mycroft must have sent them off on the most circuitous route his devious mind could have imagined. Good God, but those two must hate each other.

Her attention was caught when the proprietor thanked 'Mr. Somerset' and wished he and 'his missus' a nice stay. When they went out to the car to get their bags she snarled at Sherlock, "Lemme guess. David and Caroline Somerset?"

He looked down at her with utter surprise. "Yes. What?"

She growled, "Remind me to kick your brother in the kneecap next time I see him."

As they walked to the door of their room Sherlock remarked, "At this point, I'll hold him down for you. However, I suspect our reasons are different. Would you care to enlighten me?"

"David and Caroline Somerset are the fake names for James Bond and Tatiana Romanova in 'From Russia with Love' and I am going to hurt your brother when I get the chance, because he deserves it for trying to be funny." Her anger was palpable.

"Mycroft doesn't bother with humour. It was probably one of his assistants having a laugh." He opened the door and gestured her inside. "You can still kick him. Repeatedly, if you wish. I shan't stop you."

The room was actually a suite; the front part was furnished as a lounge with a fireplace, flat-screen television, microwave and mini-fridge in a built-in cabinet. The bedroom was farther on and the bathroom was at the end. Veranda steeled herself for the next joke that Mycroft's assistants may have decided to have at her expense. Her sigh of relief was audible when she saw the bedroom had two separate beds. Thank God. She wasn't going to have to spend another night on the couch.

AN: For those who don't know, 'Cabin Pressure' is a BBC Radio 4 series written by John Finnemore. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Captain Martin Crieff. BC is also the narrator for the audiobook 'Sherlock Holmes: The Rediscovered Railway Mysteries and Other Stories' by John Taylor...and he does a very plausible American accent except for the shibboleth of schedule as 'shedge-ool' instead of the typical Yankee 'skedge-ul'. You can tell BC pitches his voice way-the-hell down for Sherlock because he sounds positively squeaky otherwise.