Chapter Eight: The Adventure in Sherlock's Bedroom.

Disclaimer: You know the drill; I'm not making monetary profit off of this, so on and soforth.

Reviews and PMs are always welcomed and given a good home.

Acknowledgments: I have to thank all of the betas for helping me with grammar andpunctuation, brit-picking, suggestions and remindersof what they liked.Sloggingthrough this on my own would have been impossible. TheDubliner, MeiHitokiri, xXMildredXx, thisisforyou,SapphireElric, Sianco, Kanna-chan94, and LosGatos.

Epilogue

The final chapter of this part of the tale. Thank you to all the wonderful reviewers, alerters, favoriters and readers who have been reading and who will read. Please but your hand together for an appearance by our beloved Doctor John Watson.

"I will miss London," Irene said as she packed her suitcase so that everything fit just perfectly.

"Where did you decide to go?" Sherlock asked mildly as he buttoned up his shirt. The sun had risen behind the winter clouds, making them look faintly pink behind the grey.

Maybe I don't mind knowing where she is going.

"Ulyanovsk- Russia, I have an old friend who now teaches at the State University there, she'll be able to show me around and tell me where to find a good place to live."

They both let the silence stretch out, Sherlock watching her pack while she was avoiding his gaze, though she did not avoid looking at him.

"I don't know the answer, you know." He told her as she did up her suitcase.

"I know," she replied as he stood and led the way into living room.

He stood in the doorway of living room as he told her. "You saved mine and John's life when you called Moriarty that day."

They descended the stairs.

"And you returned the favor in Karachi."She said, looking at him against the black of the door to 221B.

"Does that mean we're... even or something?" He asked.

"We don't play in odds and evens, we play to win."

"So who won?"

She flashed him one of her wickedest of looks, "I think that is yet to be seen." She said, before she got into the car and was carried off; to the airport or the train station he didn't know.

He was writing a song on his violin when he heard the clang of the door as John came in. It had to be John, Mrs Hudson never clanged the door. He paused, mid-composition. His best and only friend walked up the stairs and set his suitcase down.

"Well that was a positively horrid trip! Remind me to decline the next Doctors' Convention I get an invite to!"
John announced as he flopped down on the sofa. Sherlock smiled; of course John had found it dreadful.

"How was your week?" John asked, still recovering on the sofa.

Sherlock raised the bow once more, uttered, "It was just fine," and resumed playing, looking out at the street as a new kind of smile flirting with his mouth.

The next morning Sherlock emerged from his room, where he had been going over a case file, to find John sitting on the sofa, book in one hand, newspaper in the other.

"Sherlock," John said as Sherlock sat down at the table and opened John's computer.

"Don't worry, I won't be that long, I just have to look up how to disembowel someone."

"I really hope you're not planning on practicing anytime soon; Anyways, that's not what I was going to ask," John held up a note that had been sitting on the coffee table, "I was going to ask; What happened in Karachi?"

Sherlock feigned confusion, "What on earth are you talking about?"

"There's a note here. Not your handwriting." John said, waving the note to and fro.

Sherlock walked over and took it out of John's hand.

I think we beat Karachi.

Sherlock folded the paper up and tucked it into his pocket.

"I have no idea," he said, going back over the kitchen table.

John watched his flatmate for a moment, picked up his book, took a sip of tea, and muttered, "Liar," with a smirk on his face.

The End.