Epilogue: Homeward Bound

The interior of a train - a regular passenger train this time - rumbling south through the autumnal Midlands, a day or two later. John and Sherlock are sitting at a window, facing each other, John with his arms folded, looking out thoughtfully at the landscape, Sherlock huddled into his coat, his eyes on a phone in his hand. He seems to be scrolling through a long list of messages.

SHERLOCK: So, John. What do we do when we get back to town? Serial break-ins in Kensington? Fraudulent antique dealers in Notting Hill? Suspicious death by fire of a building company boss in Norwood?

JOHN (with a sigh): Good God. None of those, please. I think I need a holiday.

SHERLOCK (looking up): What? We've just had one.

JOHN: Yeah, right. Though I'm not sure there was a need to invite your brother and his friends along as well. Kind of detracted a bit from the R&R aspect of the whole enterprise.

SHERLOCK (shifting into a more comfortable position): But look, there are even actual seats on the train back.

JOHN (sarcastically): Not to mention the proper breakfast we had every single morning.

SHERLOCK (sternly): John Watson, you're not going to complain about my mother's cooking.

JOHN (in a mock-appeasing tone): Oh, never. I'll just complain that not all kinds of genius are hereditary then.

SHERLOCK (with a shrug): There's a reason why we live upstairs of Mrs Hudson, you know.

JOHN: Yeah, I forgot. (He nods at the phone in Sherlock's hand.) Where did that phone come from, by the way?

SHERLOCK: My dad's. Never uses it anyway. Too fiddly for his arthritic fingers, he says. (John nods understandingly.) But - (With a little flourish, he switches the phone off and slips it back into the inner pocket of his coat.) - maybe you're right.

JOHN: About what?

SHERLOCK: About the holiday. Sounds good, actually. (He stifles a yawn.) Leave our own phones with Molly and Mike for a couple more days, light a fire, put up our feet, ignore the bell -

JOHN (tentatively): Play a bit of music?

SHERLOCK: Certainly. And write an early Christmas card to Violet Westbury.

JOHN: What? Why?

SHERLOCK: I need to tell her that we're even now.

JOHN: That you're what?

SHERLOCK: Even. It's rankled with me for fifteen years that a girl with too much make-up and a Geordie accent could do something that I couldn't, you know.

JOHN (drily): So that's all we've been doing this past week, right? Getting even with Violet Westbury?

SHERLOCK (straight-faced): Of course. What else?

John rolls his eyes in exasperation and turns his face back towards the window, but then can't help glancing at Sherlock again, who has obviously been waiting for it with an expression of badly suppressed amusement on his face. They both begin to laugh, and we fade to black.

THE END

December 2014

Endnotes:

I, too, am more grateful than words can express - to my fantastic beta reader Cooklet, who has stuck with me and this story for weeks throughout November and December 2014, with everything from language help, medical advice to tweaking and clarifying major plot points. Without her support and encouragement, I'm sure I couldn't have pulled off saving Victor in publishable form, just like Sherlock couldn't have done it without John. :-)

A big thankyou also to Silverblaze, because if she hadn't made me include Mycroft in the prequel, this whole story would never have happened. I figured that Mycroft's presence in "The Three Students (Variations on a Classic Theme)" would come back to bite Sherlock sooner or later, but at the time when I was working on that one, I had no idea just how badly, and how much fun it would be to write!