Mrs. Hudson was lost. Mycroft's house was huge, and she had simply been told to look around, and that someone would come for her when John was fit to be seen. Thinking of John, she sighed. Poor thing. He had been gone for months after Sherlock, showing up a few weeks before the present, confused, hungover, and depressed, and addicted. His state had not changed as he grew into the couch, leaving only to stumble to the liquor store. She had asked him if he wanted for her to remove Sherlock's things from the flat but he refused, seemingly preferring to wallow in self-pity and alcohol.
Wandering for what seemed like forever, she eventually settled in a wooden chair stationed rather oddly in a hallway, all by itself. Her hip was acting up again, and in the dim, sputtering light of lamplit hallways (Mycroft has always been rather old-fashioned), she didn't trust herself to find her way back to the room where she had been told to wait. So there she sat.
Every thirty seconds or so, she leaned over and tried to glance in the doorway directly to her left. The door was slightly ajar, just enough that she could see it was an actual room instead of a linen closet or something. After several of said furtive peeks, she gave up on inconspicuousness and stood up, nudging open the door and taking a cautious step inside. The walls were lines with newspaper, the dim table lamp in the corner casting only just enough light for her to read the titles. Two Dead in Fire. Children Survived ,Young Boy solves Murder, Baffles Police and, most recently, Fraudulent Detective Ends Own Life.
"Mrs. Hudson!" A voice echoed down the previously empty hallway, and Mrs. Hudson immediately recognized that with the level of arrogance each syllable possessed, it was Mycroft. "If you've gone in any of the rooms, I'll—"
"You'll what?" Mrs. Hudson ducked out of the newspaper-lined room. "Beat me to death with an umbrella?" She closed the door gently behind her. "And not that I'm your housekeeper, dearie, but I took the liberty of doing a bit of dusting. Just this once, you understand?"
Mycroft sighed. "Fine, Mrs. Hudson." He paused outside of a closed door, muffled complaints emerging from within. "John is…" he paused, considering the proper adjective, "presentable, if a bit disgruntled."
John had been properly dressed, beer-splattered sweatpants and a hole-ridden army tee swapped for khakis and a grey jumper. "Mycroft," he growled in a greeting. "If this bullshit you claim is about Sherlock is about the will again, I'll…" his head lolled back, and Mrs. Hudson noticed the empty glass on the side table. John stood up suddenly, stature wavering even with his arms thrust out for balance. "I'll burn you, Holmes!" he yelled. "I'll burn your fucking house down!"
"If you would follow me" came Mycroft's calm, steely response. Without waiting for consent, he turned and left the room, the quiet shuffle of dress shoes on expensive oriental carpeting fading as he walked. Groaning, Mrs. Hudson grabbed a confused (and very, very drunk looking) John and headed after him, not wanting to get lost in the labyrinthine hallways of Mycroft's exorbitantly oversized house.
Fifteen minutes and three collapses on John's part later, they had reached a door, one of many identical wooden antiquities lining the hallway (which, funnily enough, looked exactly the same as the last four they had walked down.). "Lestrade?" he called, not bothering to knock at the door. They waited, Mycroft tapping his foot impatiently while Mrs. Hudson fidgeted and John leaned weakly against the wall. Being at Mycroft's was really too much for him, wandering the halls as he and Sherlock once had. The memory made him wince, and he longed for the welcoming burn of liquor in his throat, raw from wheezing after months spent out in the cold.
When the door opened a few moments later, a grim Lestrade gripping the doorknob in such a way that one would have thought it was the arm of his dead offspring, Mrs. Hudson took a deep breath, and the three surged through the door; Mycroft hurriedly, John reluctantly, and Mrs. Hudson worriedly, what would have been the clacking of her stylish but sensible shoes muted by the rug.
The room was poorly lit; for all of his wealth, Mycroft didn't have enough windows in his house. Squinting, Mrs. Hudson could make out a table in the gloom, a softly rising and falling mass splayed over its top. Taking a few hesitant steps forwards and dragging John behind her, she leaned in for a closer look.
Every inch forwards she moved, the darker the ominous cloud that seemed to be hovering over the figure got. As she grew closer, Mycroft backed away as if cautious of her reaction to the figure. It took her several minutes to recognize the cheekbones, the mop of black curls, the ever –present sneer etched on the lips. And she was maybe helped along my John's childish whine of "Mycroft, what does this have to do with Sherlock?"
She screamed, eyes closing, and rough hands that were probably Lestrade's led her through the door into the plush hallway. Behind her, the door slammed shut as "Fucking hell, Sherlock!" faded through the wood