A few weeks later, Adele sat on the kitchen counter, watching as her father worked through his experiments, detailing is findings. "Daddy?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you going to leave Mummy and me?" she asked him quietly.

He glanced up at his daughter over the Erlenmeyer flask he was cataloguing. His breath hitched as he thought about his return to London, saddened by the fact that his three-year-old daughter was even slightly aware of what the future had in store. "Kitty, what makes you ask that question?"

"You and Mummy were talking about you going on a trip and you said you wouldn't see us."

This was the downside of having a brilliant child; they saw everything, heard everything, and even though they might not understand everything they absorbed, they were inquisitive enough to regurgitate what they had absorbed to create situations like this.

He decided that if he lied to Adele, he'd probably destroy her for life. She deserved to know the truth, regardless of whether she'd properly understand it or not. "Kitty, I do have to leave, and I will be gone for a long time, but I'm going to come back sometime in the future. I'll be back for your birthday."

"But Daddy, why do you have to leave?"

Explaining the finer details of taking down a multi-national criminal web to a three-year-old was harder than it sounded. Adele was smart, but she wasn't that smart. Sherlock had to figure out how to put it into her terms. "Um… well, there are a lot of bad people in the world, Kitty. They do bad things and hurt people. It's my job to make sure that those bad people can't hurt any more people."

"Are the bad guys like Henry when he pushed me down at school?" she asked him.

"Sort of."

"And are you like Miss Ginny, who made Henry sit in the Naughty Chair?"

"Yes."

"And you have to leave because there are a lot of bad guys?" she inquired sweetly.

Sherlock. "Yes, Kitty."

"I'll miss you," she answered.

"I will miss you too," Sherlock replied, feeling absolutely dreadful.

Behind Adele on the fridge were half a dozen pictures that she had drawn of her family—Mummy, Daddy, and Gladstone—showing quite clearly what this little girl lived and breathed. She adored her parents and her dog, perfectly content with what her life was. He wondered if he'd still be featured in the pictures that Adele drew once he had been away from them for a few months.

After Adele had gone to sleep and Irene and Sherlock had gone to bed as well, Sherlock stared at the wall, mulling over the conversation he had had with his daughter earlier. "God, you're loud," Irene murmured as she crawled into the bed next to him.

He jerked his head to face her. "Sorry?"

"You've been quiet the entire evening, but it's not your normal quiet. Something's bothering you."

Sherlock let out a long, shuddery sigh and leaned against the pillows. "Kitty heard us talking about my return to London," he explained.

Irene let out a soft groan. "No…"

Sherlock shook his head and blinked a few times. "I'm not going to be able to do this. I don't see any reason to do this."

"Sherlock, you know why you're doing this. You have to do this. You have to return to tie up all of the loose ends of this, seeing your work through. Addie and I will be fine."

"I shouldn't just see her for her birthdays. I shouldn't just come back once a year for a week."

"But you have to."

"Maybe I don't. Maybe I don't have to go back at all."

"Sherlock, you have to. John, Lestrade, Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, Molly… everyone else: they deserve to know that you're alive and well."

"I have nothing there. I mean… if you look at it, there is nothing there for me to go back to. John's probably moved on; Mycroft has probably thrown himself completely into work; Lestrade has probably forgotten about me all together; Mrs. Hudson probably has new tenants; and Molly has probably convinced herself that even though she knows that I survived that fall, I just moved on like everyone else."

Irene grabbed his hand and curled up next to him, resting her head next to his. She brought his hand up to her lips to kiss it. "Darling, it's not going to be easy, but you know that it is the right thing to do."

"Is it? Is it the right thing to do when it means that I will destroy yet another person in order to go fix everyone else that I broke?"

"She will understand one day."

"Yeah, one day. She already seems to have a pretty comprehensive understanding of the manner. She's three; she shouldn't have a comprehensive understanding of these things. Irene, you're her mother; you should know what is best for your daughter!"

"Shh… she's asleep. Don't wake her up."

He relaxed for a moment, exhaling sharply. "I have more important things to concern myself with now. I've spent the last three years completely immersed in this whole fatherhood, domestic thing. Sure, I've been working during that time as well, but for the last three years, my primary focus has been you and Kitty."

His eyes fluttered for a moment before he closed them and let out another deep sigh. Irene watched him, examining his face, looking for something new on that man's face even though she had his face long memorized. Forty was around the corner, and it showed in the fine lines around his eyes and on his forehead. He hadn't started to go grey yet, but even if he had, it wouldn't have been all that noticeable, given their ritual of dyeing his hair every few weeks.

"Are you always going to call her Kitty?" Irene asked him softly.

His left eye opened slightly. "Of course."

She smiled. "I don't think I ever learned why you call her Kitty."

A faint smile crossed his lips as he turned to face Irene. "The night she was born, they brought her in to be fed. You were asleep, so the nurses had me feed her. That's why I was better at it than you were. But that's beside the point. So, when I first held her, she was making these noises that sounded like a cat. Since she didn't have a name yet, I called her Kitty. And obviously, the moniker has befitted her, seeing as though she has really taken the name to heart, committing to the title."

Irene snorted with laughter. Just that day, Adele had insisted on having her lunch on the ground, like a cat, because she was going through a phase where she believed that she was a cat. They had found her trying to get up on top of one of the shelves the week previous, because apparently cats liked being on top of shelves. Beyond Adele's strange phases, the story was bittersweet; Sherlock was such a dad, shaping his daughter's life in more ways than they had anticipated.

It was easy to smile and reminisce on all of the good things that had happened in the last three and a half years. It was easy to pretend that Sherlock wasn't leaving behind the life that he and Irene had inadvertently created for themselves. But as soon as Irene saw Sherlock express weakness, allowing himself to be vulnerable about this situation, all bets were off.

So, when Sherlock began the final preparations for his journey back to London a few weeks later, Irene took it upon herself to be the strong one. Sherlock had done his part in being strong and keeping it together, so now it was her turn. She remained stoic, distancing herself emotionally from the situation, and was as helpful as possible to Sherlock. Neither knew the role that they would have in the other's life, but both suspected that it would be one that didn't differ too much from the one that they had, except it would be less defined than it was now.

Keeping to his word, Sherlock booked a flight for two months after Adele's third birthday. That date had been burned into Irene's mind as the day that she had to get to before she could break down and make it known that she didn't care for the situation.

Sherlock's flight was early in the morning. He had to be at the airport by four in the morning, which meant that his day had to start at least an hour and a half earlier than that.

He was up finishing up his packing, trying to be quiet as he did so. He had done most of the packing the night previous, but he had also wanted to make sure that he made the most of his time with Irene and Adele. So, he was up at two, tucking away his things and ensuring he had all of his things for his journey back to London.

Sherlock wasn't sure if he was going home. Home was somewhat of an ambiguous concept to him, even though he had always felt fairly rooted in all of the places he had lived in his life. He supposed the concept of home was simply defined as the people whom he surrounded himself with, and in the previous three years, home had been Irene and Adele. He didn't know what was awaiting him (or what had stopped waiting) back in London.

"You almost packed?" Irene asked quietly as she slid out of bed and walked up behind him, wrapping her arms around him.

"Just about," he answered hoarsely as he tucked a bundle of socks into his suitcase.

She inhaled deeply, drawing the scent she had come to memorize. "Do you really have to leave?" she murmured.

"Yes."

"Yes, you do," she agreed, her voice shaky with the onset of tears that she was trying to resist.

"Don't cry," he muttered. "Crying doesn't better the situation."

"I'll see you in a year. And after three years of seeing you constantly, that doesn't seem adequate."

"Of course it's not adequate, but we discussed this."

"I want to rescind my points. I want to change my opinion."

"Irene…"

"I can't do this. I can't let you just walk out of our lives."

He gulped and turned around. "We'll go back to emailing."

"Emailing?"

"Irene, I'm so close to doing in Moriarty, and I need to go back to London for that. If, and only if, it's safe for you and Adele, we can discuss having you guys come closer. Ireland or something."

"Ireland?"

"Not Britain. Nothing too close. Dublin's close enough to justify a weekend trip, but not too close that it's a quick little drive."

This was the first time anything of this nature had been mentioned. From what Irene understood, she and Adele would be in Australia indefinitely. This was what really set her off, to the point that she was sobbing uncontrollably. She clung onto Sherlock's shirt and buried her face into his chest.

Maybe it was possible for them to make this work. If not immediately, sometime in the near future.