Greg's lost in his thoughts somewhere as we walk back toward NSY. For a change, I'd rather be lost in my own than his.
"I don't imagine," he says finally, "that I'll have to testify against him. Seeing as how I wasn't aware of anything until after he was arrested. Could be a character witness, I suppose. And Christ, won't I look a fool saying he worked hard and kept his hands clean."
"There's nothing I can say to that, Greg, but I doubt you'll look like a fool. Or that they'll call on you."
"A criminal web with a thousand fucking radiations. In my department. JESUS. And I suppose he was filling Sally up with lies all that time, too. If I call and tell her she'll never forgive me."
Why he'd care about Sally Donovan's opinion of him is beyond me. We reach the NSY doors.
"Do you want to come up, John? I'm expecting a nice little briefing from my superiors, assuming they've been let in on the details by now, and then I'm taking the remains of my team and getting falling-down drunk."
"Glamorous as it sounds, I think you need private police-officer time. I'll call you tomorrow and ask you about your hangover."
"That'd be great." He's on the verge of going inside when he remembers. "Ah, John? You doing all right?"
"Well enough, I think. I'm honestly not sure if it makes any difference."
"Hmpf. Definitely call me tomorrow." He looks hesitant again, mutters, and finally hugs me in a completely not-New Scotland Yard way. "Right. Take care."
"I will." Of course it does make a difference. You great idiot. You could have said. I wouldn't have liked it, but you could have told me, before you said goodbye. You probably thought you were sparing me. Or maybe you weren't certain whose wires you were wearing.
It's a pleasant enough day, so I make my way toward the river. The great buildings aren't calling today, but the water is. I've walked to Blackfriars before I realise I have a destination, and I leave the river and turn north. Past the Old Bailey, with Justice standing on top of the dome. Greg's lady friend, not that she looks at him. On the way there's a convenience store advertising the kind of food people eat in warmer climates, who have more solid ways of expressing emotions than I grew up with; they have what I need.
The usual group of people is waiting in front of the hospital for the bus on Giltspur Street. There are still a dozen-odd candles burning in tall glasses by the wall, and one's about to gutter out. I'm not treading on anyone if I put a fresh candle into the glass. I take a light from another one. It's not hard to pretend I'm unobserved. A simple thing to do. Apparently more than that, it's almost too much.
I haven't anything I can say to him. I try. "Thanks. I love them too."
I pay the cab and step into my home, carrying the box from St. Bart's. It clinks a bit. Mrs. Hudson's own door is open. "Hallo?" I call. Tomorrow I'll ask at the hardware shop if they know anyone to fix the wall. I should have asked Mycroft.
"John, come in! I just made tea. You look a bit tired, dear. How was your lunch?"
"Traumatic," I say. "Well, not so much for me, really." I accept a large mug from her with gratitude. Plum cake, too. Preferable to any three-star patisserie. We sit on either side of her kitchen table, with not quite a view of her rubbish bins.
"You never find Mycroft Holmes to be restful company, do you? I shouldn't think anyone does. So the roof of the hospital being clean wasn't… good news?"
I've told her what Greg and I get up to, because I can. There's never been any doubt she was Sherlock's chosen family; sensory issues or not, he leaned into her touch. And of the two of them, I'd trust Mrs. Hudson more to know what not to talk about.
"It depends. I suppose it was. Jim Moriarty died there. Mycroft's people cleaned it up and kept it quiet."
"I can't say I'm sorry to hear that he's passed. I know I should be, but if Sherlock's gone…a bit like those things on the physics programme the other night, really." My landlady's just compared my flatmate and his…nemesis to a particle and an antiparticle. Of course she has. And now she's thinking about cause and effect, which is at least Newtonian, thank God. "How did that happen? Why would Sherlock— was there someone else there?"
I can't think of any way to tell this gently, or even very coherently, so I just put the words out for her to examine. Maybe her antiparticle theory has some merit: "Moriarty wanted Sherlock dead, and apparently he wanted himself dead as well. Mycroft had the conversation recorded. Moriarty told Sherlock there were three gunmen on three of his friends, and if Sherlock didn't jump, they—we'd be killed. And then Moriarty shot himself, leaving Sherlock to draw his own conclusions. Which he did, about the time I got back there."
She knows I saw him fall. I don't think I've spoken to her about the phone call. There's only so much pain I feel like opening and spreading about.
"Three friends," she says. "You, and—?"
Quicker than I was. "Greg Lestrade, and the only woman I know he really trusted."
She looks a question at me still, so I pick up her hand and bring it to my lips. "Our landlady. Not our housekeeper," I say, returning her hand to the table. Her fingers grip mine with surprising strength. More than twice Sherlock's age, almost too old to have been his mother. "The holes in your wall weren't from the Gas Board. Mycroft says your tattooed man was found dead last month."
"He was here to kill me if Sherlock..?" she asks, slowly but evenly.
"So Mycroft believes. I think he's telling the truth, as far as he knows it."
"What a horrible man."
"Mycroft? The man from the—not from the Gas Board?"
"No, he seemed nice, I gave him tea and biscuits." Assassination as a routine social difficulty; dead man not a subscriber to Mycroft's idea about bread/biscuits broken together making peace. She continues. "Moriarty. I wonder if he was jealous, wanted Sherlock all to himself so they could be brilliant together."
This is so much like my worst fears of last year I can only gape. Except that Mrs. Hudson seems to have had more faith in Sherlock than I did. But she always has, in everyone, I think. "That makes as much sense as anything else."
"And Mycroft thinks we're safe enough to be told about this now, is that it? Have they hunted down these gunmen?"
"The man here was found dead a month ago, he said. Mine is in Slovakia, under surveillance. And they arrested Greg's this morning, with five other men."
"That's good. You'll not be headed for Slovakia yourself?"
"No. Definitely not. I wasn't trained for that kind of warfare. Let Mycroft's people do what they're for without me underfoot." I am saying too much and I do wonder whether she hasn't called me on an idea before I knew I had it. He died to keep me safe, anyway; not good to…no.
Mrs, Hudson watches it all pass across my face and relaxes at the end. Apparently, for the moment, I won't be going. "The traumatic bit was when Mycroft told Greg it was a man in his department, someone who worked with him."
"How would someone in New Scotland Yard have shot anyone, with all those security cameras and metal detectors?"
"Asked him to lunch, perhaps? Out to the pub?" Security is stiff through the whole neighbourhood; Greg would have been the hardest target among us.
She shakes her head. "I don't like whoever it is Mycroft works for, but this seems as though it was worth doing. A police officer! It takes years to make detective. I wonder, was he Moriarty's man all along or, or—don't they say 'recruited'?"
"Corrupted? Brought on board? And someone was fiddling the Met's e-mail and records as well."
"Oh, not the records! When they've just finished that enquiry about all of Sherlock's cases! What a good thing he wouldn't take credit for most of the ones in the early days!"
"He wouldn't?"
"Not the ones he helped the police with, dear, not until your blog. Well, and his, of course, but not very many people read that. He told me he wanted his name kept out of it."
"He never said anything about that. Nor did Lestrade."
"He used to be a great deal more—nervy, might be a good word. Anxious. I think you helped him a great deal just being there, being calm. And arguing with him, of course. Most people didn't like it when Sherlock bit back. Or bit in the first place, more often than not."
"Bit of a stable pony."
"Don't say anything unkind about either of you, John Watson. Sherlock wouldn't stand for it and neither shall I." She squeezes my arm.
And if it kept him from kicking himself to pieces I don't mind being a stable pony. If it had kept him from it.
"Don't think about that," Mrs. Hudson says. "You did everything you could, we all did. And I am so very glad you were able to come back here. Your home, not just Sherlock's."
"My home. My landlady, not just Sherlock's."
And even though she's not my housekeeper, she's making supper and we have it together, and some truly dire television.
The flat is quiet. As it would be, as it always is; I don't know why it's so welcome. I light the fire Mrs. Hudson has left in the grate. Something very strange in recognising the smell of fossil fuel as homelike. The one thing I want to do doesn't take long; I shut the computer and throw myself onto the couch, rolling up in a crocheted throw. It doesn't have the same air as a silk dressing gown, but I don't have the body-type to flounce and hurl myself about with any style. As a way to tell the world what I think of it, it's not bad. The fire moves the shadows in the room, whispering and crackling softly to itself, getting on with combustion. Trees older than the dinosaurs going back to air and earth.
Polly's ringtone. "Hey," I answer.
"You all right then?"
"Another of the endless number of shoes Sherlock left in the air hit the floor, that's all. So I lit him a candle and said 'thanks'."
"And you put it up."
Really stupid; it's not as though he's more likely to see it if it's in the virtual world. Ghosts in the wires. "I did. Maybe I'm turning into one of you."
"What, 'Pics or it didn't happen?'"
"I want you to show me how to make a GIF, I wanted to have the flame moving." Art? It does feel right, somewhere, to have some of the feelings outside me.
"Easy. And I can make the flame move tonight, if you want."
"Please. Only a bit; he was definitely not a candle in the wind, right?"
"No, I know what you mean. Just enough to make it look alive. Oh, John. You sure you're all right? You want company?"
"I don't know what 'all right' means but I'm okay, Polly, thanks. Just some time to myself."
Finally I get up and go to the box I brought home from Bart's. The dark green candle-glass, definitely, and after some indecision I take the one someone's painted wings all over and fill them both with fresh candles, put them on a plate on the table under the bison skull, light two more flames. "More romantic," Angelo said that night. I snort. It wasn't like that. There was soft music in the air (a violin) but it was just as often something by The Clash and I don't think I've ever heard music that would work for the numbers of times we laughed.
So for awhile I just hold onto the laughing, and though that fades into sorrow the couch turns out to be an excellent place to sleep.
Notes: This brings us up to the end of most of the theories in TheFinalProblem's Tumblr (http COLON theory-index), from which, wondering what that might look like from inside, I grew my plot (mutations and misapprehensions all mine, not FinalProblem's). I'm not addressing the kidnapping, though Lestrade and Mycroft may work on it a bit now that Lestrade's sniper is out of action. Someone needs to give Eva-Christine's Rumplestiltskin theory (http post/32560017981/reichenbach-explanation-richard-brook-was-real) a good workout, but I don't think that will be me.
As for this story, it goes on. There are far too many things up in the air for me to leave it here, but it's possible that the worst is over and we may look for a happy announcement sometime in the nearish future.