Epilogue- Homecoming
We sat in my flat, curled up and with the fire roaring in the fireplace. It was another chilly February day, and we were just taking a few hours to spend time together (translation: John and I were relieving Sherlock's boredom before he destroyed the entire street). We were playing poker in my sitting room using a deck of cards I bought from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, much to Sherlock's annoyance and John's amusement. John sat in my usual armchair and Sherlock and I were on my sofa. He sat up properly while I lounged lazily across all the cushions, my knees thrown over his lap. John was so proud that Sherlock had finally given in and allowed me to cuddle with him. It was about, oh, two weeks since my boys had gotten themselves kidnapped, and we were all on the fast track to recovery. By re-traumatizing myself, I kicked the ASD and John made it official, so I was back where I belonged: in Scotland Yard. John, after hearty congratulations for the fantastic aiming that blew the grenade and saved our lives, wrote the whole case down on his blog and dubbed it, "Keeping Up With the Matterns." Sherlock had rebounded from nearly getting beaten to death incredibly quickly: in fact, he was demanding to be released from the hospital the next day, but we kept him in there for another week. Now we were all gambling with cheese curls and relaxing the day away, thankful for once there wasn't a case to occupy our time.
Just as I laid down a four-of-a-kind, the sound of the front door being unlocked and opening floated into my flat. I began moving to answer the door, but before I could leave the sofa I felt Sherlock casting his arm before my waist, and I glanced up at him quickly enough to see him catch John's eye and jerk his head in the direction of the door—clearly, he remembered what happened the last time I'd gone to answer the door alone. I would've rolled my eyes if I wasn't so curious about our unidentified guest. John got up and went to answer the door with his shoulders set and hand curling into a fist if the occasion rose, but as soon as he disappeared into the front hall it became apparent that our worries were baseless.
"Mrs. Hudson!" he greeted warmly. "You're back!"
"John!" At long last, the sound of my mother's voice floated through the flat and seemed to make the entirety of Baker Street brighter. I glanced at Sherlock with a smile on my face and got up quickly, eager to see my mother.
"Mum!"
"Mals!" We hugged in the middle of the front hall, overjoyed. We hadn't seen each other in six weeks; while the three of us were off overcoming mental disorders and being tortured by angry daughters, she's been floating around the Arctic Ocean with mates from university.
We separated, and then Sherlock stepped up for his turn. "Sherlock!" she said in that motherly way of hers, hugging him as warmly as a mother would. Yes, the Baker Street occupants were all properly together again—we weren't oceans away or fighting inner demons anymore, we were just us.
After we unloaded all her bags and brewed all of us a pot of tea, we sat down again in my sitting room (though this time, Sherlock and I remained confined to our own cushions—Mum wasn't ready to see Sherlock's capacity to cuddle). Our cards lay abandoned on the table as the four of us settled in to start catching up.
"Well then," Mum said, pulling her cardigan closer around her, "I've been gone for six weeks and haven't heard a peep from any of you. You must've gotten up to something while I was gone."
John let out a quiet sigh and closed his eyes, a smile tugging at his lips. Sherlock looked at me with one eyebrow raised and a corner of his mouth listed in a slight smirk. I pressed my lips together into a taut line. We were all thinking the same thing: her reaction when we told her what we've been doing was going to be priceless.
"Better get comfy, Mum," I said, propping my fluffy sock-clad feet up on my coffee table as Sherlock's arm fell across the back of the sofa. "We have loads to tell you."