POSTSCRIPT - Author's note

(SPOILERS - If you are the type of person who goes to the end to see if you'll like the story. SHAME ON YOU! Stop reading this postscript and go back to chapter one where you belong.)

Maddy St. Martin is a character who sprang up out of the ether one day when I was thinking about Sherlock and the Homeless Network. It seemed a bit cruel the way he used them, giving them pocket change to act as his agents, and I wanted to explore that. But as I wrote about Maddy, I realized that of all of the characters in the Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock was the only one who even saw these people as people. John never noticed them, and to Mycroft Holmes they were totally outside of his sphere.

Sherlock may have been self-interested in his use of them, but no more self-interested than in his use of Anderson, or John even when he asked him to take his phone out of his pocket for him. To Maddy, a man who sees her, who gives her a phone and a job no matter how small could be seen as a savior in a cold world where most people pretend that she doesn't exist.

And at the end of Reichenbach, when Sherlock is officially dead, it seemed to me that the only people that he could talk to were the forgotten ones, so I had him talk to Maddy and ask her to do impossible things like help others. This was impossible for her, because she knew that she had nothing to give.

Despite a certain passivity, a tendency to cry, and a fuse that blew up on occasion, Maddy turned out to be a pretty good girl. As a parent, she'll have lots of problems, not the least of which is that she is not a genius, but all in all I think that she'll do okay.

As for the romance between Maddy and Mycroft, Mycroft is at the prime of his career and he needs his concentration. Also Maddy was already starting to chafe at Mycroft's controlling nature. Besides, when I think of Mycroft as a parent...frankly it's a bit scary. I begin to understand why Sherlock is so angry with him.

I do believe, however, that in the future when he has a few more gray hairs, and he spends as much time at the Diogenes club as he does at work, then he might think of getting back together with Maddy.

Maddy will have her hands full all of the time that little Eliza Mohammed (yes, it's a girl) is a child, but after she goes to university. (Something that may happen much quicker for her than other youth being that she is Sherlock's niece.) I can see how she might find him again. One day, after she opens her own restaurant. (He does love a good meal after all.) They might rekindle those old flames and realize that they share a love of fine food, sex, and tradition. But that won't happen until they both get enough perspective to stop worrying about what other people think, and realize how well suited they are for each other.

The fact that Mycroft's mother accepted Maddy so easily even though she was so recently homeless and is so much less educated than her fiancee can be attributed to the fact that only a confirmed bachelor or a very young woman could NOT notice what it means to have no period for four months. Rule one for any mother who wants grandchildren is sit back and don't rock the boat.

And although Mycroft may have doubts, "Grandma" Holmes has probably already written the child into her will. I have no doubt that a silver heirloom rattle with show up mysteriously in the mail in a few months.

Maddy took over a good part of my mind for quite a while, but now she seems to be content. She's busy with her cooking classes and planning a nursery. I think that Suzanna will move in with her and help out with the baby. I do feel a little guilty about stealing the Holmes genetic legacy, but we can't leave it to people like Sherlock and Mycroft can we? The Holmes genes would die out!

If I were to write another Maddy story, it would be called Mother Maddy and it would be about the problems of raising a genius kid. Such a story would be so OC, however, with no regular series characters making an appearance, that I just can't see it succeeding here at FF.

It might be possible after series three starts and we find out what Sherlock has been doing and for how long. Mycroft may be cowed by Maddy and her naming scheme, but I think it will take less than five minutes for Sherlock to figure out who the father of her baby really is. And wouldn't that be fun to see? Sherlock chiding Mycroft for kidnapping his operatives and getting them pregnant. Oh the shame! I'm laughing already.

I think that Eliza will grow up to be quite a character. Right now I envision her as being very similar to "Souffle Girl" from Season 7 episode 1 of Doctor Who. A genius who thinks that she should also be good at cooking. Hopefully, she won't share the same fate.

All in all, I enjoyed writing these stories, and I hope to have a chance one day to revisit these characters in the future.

Aless NOX