Prompt: A Scotland Yard party, from mrspencil
It was a very different Scotland Yard Lestrade was leaving than the one Detective Inspector Lestrade had started at. When he was first on the force, anyone could join up, and many had, straight from failed job after failed job. Now things were much more official; there was an academy, and tests to pass, and classes to take in things that sounded too much like Mr. Holmes's theories for Lestrade's taste. Still, he'd miss it, however much he was looking forward to his long-belated retirement. The war had pushed it off five years longer than he'd intended, as the younger men who should have replaced him went off to France and North Africa only to end with little to show for it.
None of that was Lestrade's concern anymore, though he suspected he would find it hard to let go. Scotland Yard had been his life for the past forty years, and for it just to be over with this little retirement party, full of people he hardly knew, was anticlimactic to say the least. Most of his contemporaries had managed to retire long before he had, and so he was the only one left. Bradstreet was living down in Salisbury now, and Gregson had moved near his daughter in York.
Not that Lestrade really wanted Gregson at his retirement party. But Hopkins, now in charge of the division, and Wiggins, having just made Inspector, were the only two Lestrade knew anymore, and as he looked out among the room, he knew it truly was time for him to go. He felt like a relic.
"Speech!" Someone cried out, and the woman next to him gave him a dirty look. That was different too; more women on the force. Many of the men hadn't been sure about that at first, but Lestrade had quickly grown to see the benefit. Namely, that the women seemed to be more willing to listen and keep an open mind about things even he might have ignored had he not spent years alongside Sherlock Holmes.
"I'm not one for speechmaking," Lestrade said, trying to wave them off. Retirement parties, he thought, were more akin to funerals as they were more a goodbye than a good luck wish. None of these people were ever going to see him again. Probably most of them, unlike at a funeral, wouldn't have even come if they weren't already here because they had to be during regular work hours.
He was wondering if he would enjoy this party more if there was even one more person he knew when the door opened, and someone walked in who he had never expected to see again. Lestrade's jaw fell open. "Mr. Holmes!" he cried, hurrying forward. "And Dr. Watson!" he added, as Holmes's ever-present biographer followed. "I never expected to see you here. Last I heard you had retired to Sussex Downs."
"Wiggins invited me," Holmes said, shaking Lestrade's hand, and nodding to his former Irregular, who grinned back. Lestrade would have to remember to thank the young detective, for there truly was nothing more he could have asked. Holmes had long since become a friend, and he'd found he even missed the old amateur after he left London. Not even only because his division's record of case closures had drastically decreased after Holmes's own retirement.
"Congratulations, Lestrade," Dr. Watson added, smiling as he shook Lestrade's hand. Goodness, he had aged. Lestrade supposed they all had; certainly he no longer looked thirty-five, but Holmes, aside from his greying hair, still stood straight and was as lean as ever. Dr. Watson looked nearly ten years his senior, leaning heavily on his walking stick. They were old men now, truly, only Watson looked the part.
He had gone to the war, Lestrade remembered. Some of the young men who had returned hardly looked any better. Still, he smiled, feeling more celebratory. "It is wonderful to see you both - not least because you've got me out of a speech!"
Dr. Watson laughed, though Holmes turned around and found himself facing a crowd of awestruck police officers. "Most of them are here because of you," Lestrade said. "How do you like that? You were always so disparaging of the Yard and now you've been the making of us."
"As legacies go, mine are not to be envied," Holmes said derisively. "Between that and those infernal stories…"
"Mr. Holmes? Would you say something to us, sir?" One of the newer recruits, a lad who looked barely out of his teens, asked tentatively, looking up at Holmes with barely concealed nerves.
"I don't make speeches," Holmes said grandly, which called to mind every time he had, in the course of revealing the conclusion of a case, made a speech to rival every Prime Minister Lestrade could remember. "Especially not at someone else's retirement party."
"He's learned some tact, then, finally?" Lestrade whispered to Dr. Watson.
"Some," the good doctor answered with a chuckle. "With reminders, usually. I did warn him not to upstage you - he rarely remembers his own fame anymore."
"All I will say is that you are losing the best of the Yarders today," Holmes continued, loudly enough that everyone could hear him. He turned to face Lestrade. "Congratulations on your retirement - though may I suggest finding a hobby? It can be dreadfully dull if one does not keep busy."
Lestrade grinned. "Well, I thought I might set myself up as a private consulting detective. Maybe you and I might even be partners."
It may have taken him some forty years, but as Holmes stared at him, speechless, Lestrade allowed himself a triumphant feeling. For the first and only time, he saw Mr. Holmes surprised by something he said, and it had been well worth the wait.