AN: This is it folks, the last chapter is up. This has been an incredible journey with one of my favorite stories, and I hope all of you had at least as much fun reading this as I had while writing it. Thank you! to all of you who reviewed, favorited and followed the story, your support brought me to this point. I'm sending you all a BIG hug!

Warning: angst;

The last song

Sherlock sleeps almost all the time now, lucid dreams brought by morphine intersected with stark reality. He sometimes thinks that this is the way his body is trying to recuperate all the hours he spent chasing after thrills and mystery - a fanciful notion, he knows - and he can almost see Joan's affectionate smile were he to say such a thing aloud.

His 'transport' might be failing him, but his mind is agile as ever. He can tell with a glance who has been the last person to come to visit him by the type of flowers they sit at his bedside – Caroline; the way the visitor's chair is tilted towards his bed – Mycroft, or how doctor's notes have been rifled with – Aidan. There are other visitors, others whose lives he has touched during his long live as the World's only Consultant Detective, but they don't matter, faces deleted the moment they departed.

No, the important ones are those coming back day after day.

During the day, Aidan is always the first to visit, before the sky gets the first rays of sunshine, his sleeping habits as bad as his uncle's. Sherlock looks at him and sees the Eton and Bart's educated brain surgeon, brilliant and accomplished over imposed on the image of the seven-year-old, a white faced and visibly discomfited Mycroft had brought to 221 B Baker St. one day, and introduced as his son, no mother mentioned. A shell-shocked Sherlock had had a difficult time controlling his reactions which unfortunately degenerated in the worst spat he had with his brother until Joan had snapped and put them both in her own version of a timeout. In her best version of Captain Watson at her most annoyed, she had given them one hour to sort out their differences and then took the silent boy to a trip to the park. By the time she had arrived back, a truce has been established – Aidan would come to visit every week, since they were, in Mycroft own words, nauseatingly domestic and the boy would benefit from the environment, while the child had come back from the trip with a case of adoration for one Doctor Watson that never faded in time. Par per course with Holmes men, as Sherlock can testify.

He also knows that the initial awkward introduction between the two of them means that they have never been, nor will be perfect at ease with each other with Joan not playing mediator. They are truly too much alike, down to their fascination with dangerous women – Aidan first marriage has ended literally in flames - but from the subtle clues Sherlock can spot, the crease of the shirt, the newness of the shoes and the subtle way in which the young man carries himself whenever he comes to visit, a romantic relationship is slowly developing with most likely a colleague of his.

Good, the old detective thinks. The boy he has come to see as more than just a nephew, his eldest as his wife tends to call him, and whose lack of domestic happiness had always troubled Joan, seems like he's finally content.

The next to come, and usually in the evening is Caroline. Caroline Holmes, their miracle child, born when Joan had thought of herself as too old to carry a child without risk, and Sherlock had been too terrified of the thought of being a father. She always comes and sits with him by his bed, recalling her most challenging cases as a forensic anthropologist, now that she has to stay at home, her youngest son only four months old. She's pale and still tired after the second difficult pregnancy, but with Frederick Holmes Lestrade is a happy bundle resting in his beaming father's arms, she too, looks content. Sometimes when she talks to him she stops and looks at the window, then smiles and leans over to kiss him gently on his cheek. He's never been at ease with physical affection, but for her, he bears it with barely a sigh.

When she leaves, with promises to come back the next day, Sherlock closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep while the nurse bustles through the room, her moves quick and efficient. He knows that he won't be left alone for long; his brother always comes to keep him company in the long hours of the night. Mycroft is well in his eighties, round and bald but with his mind just as sharp and cutting behind his glasses, having ruled the United Kingdom from the shadows for almost three decades. People look and a see a charming, sometimes odd older gentlemen and mostly ignore him the way they do with things past their prime. More the fools, them, Sherlock thinks, for they see but don't understand. Sherlock has long made his peace, and he knows that whatever happens, Mycroft will take care of things.

But now, at the moment caught between light and dark, as the last rays on sunlight filter between the drapes gently moving in the current let by the open window, Sherlock turns his head and sees her, the glow of the setting sun lighting her figure. As always, she's right next to him, waiting patiently for him to start his next great adventure, and now there's only the two of them in the room.

Sherlock smiles, eyes soft and happy. "I'm tired, my heart. Take me home."

As he falls asleep for the last time, ghostly lips brush against his brow. "Come when you are ready, my love. I'm waiting for you."

End.

AN: And now that the Sherlock voice in my head has finally been brought to more manageable levels, Loki and Harry here I come. :D

Stay tuned!

Para