Down with Critics United!

They are the cancer to our society.

The root of heresy needs to be burnt to crisp

with over thousand innocent souls without remorse or guilt thereafter.

No sacrifice is too great and no treachery too small.

Remember, we all are walking under the immortal shadow of Him.

His light shines so brightly, it will guide us to our foreseen destiny that is in our grasp.

A great moment we all should not pass.

Praise Be The Emperor of Mankind!

If you are on the same page, cp this message.

And Bella119 is dumb.

Hybrid of Fate is nothing. She needs mental help.

cathrl, do u want to be my daddy? I won't promise to be a good girl :D

CrystalRei should quit.

Now onto the actual review:
John, only half-awake, reached out blindly to where it lay on the bedside table, wrapping his fingers around it awkwardly. With one eye open, he checked the caller ID and was not in the least surprised to see that it was Sherlock.

Yeah, I felt bad when we broke up, but I don't lose any sleep over it. :P

*tear*
Oh Mrs. Hudson.

Why are you bothering to reply to them? You know what they're like, the forum has new members who don't know shit about you. They all troll each other, the original forum troll is long gone but everyone now blames he/she/it for everything and as a cover for their own shitty behavior. Edhla you're no fool, you're better than this and a better person than they are. Take care my Aussie friend.

Aww. So sad that Mrs. Hudson has passed away. :,( Although, I thought this story is beautifully written. I've been meaning to say that you capture each of the characters so precisely. They are so well written. Now my curiosity is perked about how Sherlock's sister will react to him. I have to wonder about Sherlock & Mycroft's dad. Why would he not want anything to do with his sons? They are both successful & give the Holmeses a good name. Reading on...

Oh. Oh. My heart... You can't do this... :'( Seriously though, this is just absolutely perfect, and truly beautiful.

This is a hauntingly beautiful little story. You captured all the emotions that accompany a sudden death almost too accurately, including that mind-numbing shock and feelings of disassociation. I particularly appreciate how well you portrayed Mycroft, with his careful distancing of any and all sentiment. Well done!

You really caught the voice of the BBC Mrs. Hudson with the will. She wants to please everyone and gets very detailed about her reasons. Even though Sherlock knows about computers, she entrusts the deactivation of her accounts (you might add something she definitely couldn't entrust to Sherlock-passing the news on to online friends? I remember years ago when a father posted to a listserv that his daughter, active in the group, had died in a car accident).

Smudge is the last loose end. He and Sherlock should get along.

Well... Some comments on the story overall. The characterizations are spot on (as usual) with good observations of mourning (I particularly like Sherlock's evident guilty feelings in chapter 2). I think the dip in popularity of this story is heavily due to killing a favorite character, but perhaps also due to this not really being a story. Mrs. Hudson dies in the first chapter and the fact is dealt with over the next four chapters. There's no mystery, there's no problem to be solved, there's no conflict, there's no major emotional crisis, and absolutely nothing is ever at risk (Sherlock only takes a prescription drug, Harry is philosophical). Personally, I'd have preferred the death to be part of an intricate evil plot but that's me. If Sherlock had perhaps insisted an evil plot had to be in play-but ultimately discovers the death was natural as in this story-he'd at least have gone through a journey of discovery. As is, this is a progression of events that basically revolves around what needs to be done with a body-discover it and eventually bury it.

Interesting that despite his annoyance with Mycroft, Sherlock is entrusting his care to him rather than John. Partially, it might be because he doesn't want to burden John and Molly who are mourning for their own sake with caring for him, but also because Mycroft is still the one person in the world most like him and perhaps most able to know what might help get him through this crisis. Mycroft does try the usual Holmes Brothers interaction-armchair sleuthing-but I'm not sure whether it helps.

I learned a new word: sonsy.

John and Molly, of course, are taking care of the more complex part-dealing with the funeral home. (Mrs. Hudson may have been elderly as Mycroft said but not so elderly that she made the plans herself.) John tasking Sherlock with keeping an eye on Harry is nice.

When Sherlock and Harry finally talk, I had the strong suspicion John probably told Harry to keep an eye on Sherlock. She makes a big deal of telling Sherlock the details of what the coroner said about the heart failure and that it happened in Mrs. Hudson's sleep-so that clearly Sherlock not realizing she was dead until two hours later made no difference and he carries no blame.

Sweet detail that Sherlock had once given Mrs. Hudson flowers on Mother's Day (according to Wikipedia, called "Mothering Sunday" in Britain) and she'd gushed over them. It's not a canonical scene, but I can imagine the actors playing it.

Interesting that when Sherlock thinks he needs privacy to come to terms with Mrs. Hudson's death, he comes to Mycroft (leaving John behind). And Mycroft immediately lights on Sherlock having taken some drug. The main reason, though, may be that he wants to collapse but can't bring himself to do it at Baker Street while Mrs. Hudson's body is being carted away.

Mycroft's observation that Watson's answering his phone after four rather than two rings "betokened that he, too, considered the passing of Martha Hudson a tragedy" is amusing in a sick sort of way. Mycroft is really twice as removed from normal human interaction as Sherlock is, isn't he? He has to consciously analyze in order to understand. Is nice later, though, that he offers to assist with Harry if the death affects her sobriety.

But later... wow is he out of his emotional depth comforting his brother. "She was an elderly lady, and she wasn't going to live forever. This is what happens, Sherlock, when you let yourself get too attached to people. They leave. They die. They're horribly unreliable. I've had those opinions confirmed time and again." Oh, my! This has the sound of a Holmes-brothers-mantra. (Seriously, I believer your backstory for the brothers a hundred times more than I believe BBC canon's attempt to be "unexpected" by making them intelligent but middle class and ordinary.) But Sherlock gets a little closer to the truth of his brother when bringing up their own mother. Poor Mycroft: "And scars are ugly, but they seldom hurt. You learn to forget about it for long enough to carry on with business as usual, Sherlock. That's all." Talk about keeping a stiff upper lip.

Nice characterization of Sherlock: he played his violin early, knowing full well Mrs. Hudson usually objects when he does that. His typical human interaction is the give-and-take between him being obnoxious and being called out on it. The lack of Mrs. Hudson's objection is what told him he was wrong. He feels the guilt common to the situation of finding out someone dear had died and he spent two hours doing the usual when, if he'd known, he would already have been mourning. He's so upset that sensory perceptions-the smell and taste of bad tea-aren't getting through to his brain. His observations of John and Molly's mourning are back to his usual attempts to deduce, albeit random and disconnected.

Nice description of John: "An adapted kind of parade rest." Later, Sherlock's sudden awareness of the irony of "living room" is interesting.

I read this a month ago (downloaded to read on the plane). I'm finally reviewing.

When breaking the news, Sherlock doesn't embellish: "Mrs. Hudson is dead." It says a lot about John's honest, straightforward manner that his immediate reaction is shock and belief; and it says a lot about his history with Sherlock and everything his friend has put him through that his next reaction is to raise the possibility that this is a trick to manipulate him into doing something Sherlock wants; but John's dutiful nature wins out at the end. He goes to Sherlock, without even putting on his shoes.

I like John's respect for Mrs. Hudson that what makes him reluctant is not the thought of seeing a body (he's seen a lot of those), but the thought of breaching the inner sanctum of her bedroom. Dead or not, he cares about her privacy.

Amazing! ! Love Mrs Hudson !

Hiya Edhla!

Its been awhile since my last review to this story, but even so, I enjoyed it. I wouldn't call it perfect, but it was definitely enjoyable.

Must really do something about those grey hairs, he reflected unhappily - This seems to be a bit of a telling statement. It's not bad, of course, but of course there are more effective ways to say this without him thinking it and/or saying he thought this unhappily. Maybe you could say: "He glared at the grey hairs before, his lips a thin grim line. No matter how he looked at it, it was such a shame for a man of his stature to deal with such a bothersome thing like male-patterned baldness." - something like that, I'm sure you could think of something that could improve of that moment. You're a wonderful writer.

Poor Mycroft having to be the one suffering from the curse of male-pattern baldness... I really liked this line here: Mycroft thought it an appalling oversight to spend a fortune on haute couture tailored suits and leave one's hair a disaster. - Its really fitting of his character to think in such a way. I also enjoy the voice of the character as he looks himself over in the mirror.

"Sherlock, what did you do? What have you taken?" - I like this line. It does well to show what kind of person Mycroft sees Sherlock as and his natural inclination to think that he must be up to something. One can't blame him to think that way first when it comes to his brother. It's also a nice hint that he doesn't know about the death of someone very important to his brother.

Mycroft heard a dull thud that indicated Sherlock had just thrown himself on the bed face-first. - I'm not sure that a "dull thud" would be assurance that Sherlock had thrown himself "face-first" to the bed. The sound could logically be a number of things: a back against the door as he slides down, maybe even drunkenly slipped on the edge of the bed, he could've plopped himself on the bed and just sat there... The assumption here, while possibly correct and possibly logical, can be omitted - just a suggestion, not something you have to do or anything.

Mycroft let the line drop without saying it aloud: I will. - Very nice line... I like the conversation between him and John, but what took the token moment for me was this highlighted part... because it's a big part of who Mycroft is. He is all about Sherlock at the end of the day, and he's always protecting him even if its not always as public as he could be about it. Nice characterisation moment.

Leonard Dawe had no personal tragedies to contend with that morning (no need for comma) and picked up his mobile phone almost immediately. "Sir?" - I would personally omit the "had no personal tragedies to contend with that morning and." Saying he "picked up his mobile almost immediately" would probably give a bit better of his relationship with his workers... this moment seems to be a "nonchalant sarcasm" about why "Leonard" picked up his phone so quickly and while it could work had this been another scene or maybe another character's POV about something, it doesn't quite work for me here.

That's just my own nitpick. I could be totally off in thinking it doesn't work... but the line neither adds to the mood or lightens the mood... just sort of interrupts the mood for me.

"I'm not very familiar with social customs surrounding deaths. What sort of gestures toward the grieving would be appropriate?" - I absolutely love this line! Sherlock and Mycroft are so abnormal - possibly stemming from them both having their mother's genius IQ and most people with extremely high IQs having low EQs which makes them behave in what others would call "strange." Mycroft, more-so than Sherlock, reacts to things logically and because of that, this would naturally happen. He would want to know how he should "emotionally react" for his brother. Nicely done.

The moment between Mycroft and Sherlock, after the latter began to cry, was magnificent. Very in-character, and I love that Mycroft completely ignored Leonard's sensible direction about what to do with faily and tried to be logical when what Sherlock needed was alone time and comfort. His line about old people dying and being unreliable to live was a wonderful line.

I also enjoyed the development that you gave AU-Mycroft when it came to his dying mother... in relation to Sherlock's emotional response to not being there when the landlady died. It's a nice contrast and a wonderful moment. I loved the emotion in that part.

I like the final moment about Sherlock not doing anyone, especially not someone dead, any good by not eating. I also enjoyed Mycroft's understanding to a cat's understanding of the woman's death.

I think you did an excellent job on Mycroft's POV in this chapter and his thought process was rather enthralling. There were, however, many moments of monotonous emotions where it felt a bit forced or flat. The tone of this chapter didn't feel especially different from the first two - in John and Sherlock's POV - some of it was interchangeable with other chapters. Yet, despite those smaller faults, I did enjoy this chapter.

Thanks for writing,
Until Next Time,
Neo

Dear Mrs. Hudson, taking care of everyone to the last. I love the suggestion that Harry might move in. She and Sherlock could help each other deal with their addictions, or go off the deep end together.
It's ironic that a misogynist like Sherlock actually needs a woman in his life so now that Mrs. Hudson is gone, he'll get in touch with his sister.
The scene in the cemetery was short by really moving. It held an emotional connection for all of them even before Mrs. Hudson was buried there.
I'm a little surprised that you ended the story where you did. There was really no mystery. I assume that means that the next story is really juicy.
Can't wait to read it

Mmmm, seeing the way that Sherlock continues to try to reconcile himself with what happened... I really love the way that you tied that into his relationship with his brother, particularly at the beginning of the chapter when he's going back and forth with Mycroft. This is really some of your best work when it comes to characterization, because it just fits so richly, even when you consider that this is the kind of character development we've really never seen before. How you manage to make it seem like a perfectly natural reaction when we really don't have any kind of source material, I will really never know. The details like the dialogue and the wiping of his mouth just work together and meeehhh, it's just lovely.

Ah, well done Sherlock on the solving of that case. It is nice to see that his mental faculties and power of deduction are fine and dandy, even with everything that's been going through his poor head. And, as always, I love when you bring these little real life cases into your stories, whether they take a front seat or a backseat. Your flair for research is fantastical here!

"Rather." Mmm, quite so. Poor Mycroft, not really knowing how to deal with a situation like this. Attachment just causes pain...

"...slithered out of a cab..." Looove, love, love this turn of phrase. I can see it so perfectly. Ninja-like deductionsss.

Slightly nitpicky, but I had a little bit of trouble following the transition from the scene with the deductions to the scene where Sherlock shows up on John's doorstep. I just didn't feel like the melancholy carried over as nicely as it could have done, just a thought there. Not sure what you'd want to do to work it over but there you are. xx

"...your brother instead." Don't anyone ever say that John is not extremely sharp when it really comes down to it. I love that observation of his, and it really makes a hell of a lot of sense. And that's all he really has to say to Sherlock. He won't have a relapse at this point. Maybe later. But not yet.

"...don't want to" I don't think that I'd want him to either... that might be the straw that completely breaks him.

Oh damn... those chrysanthemums... it's like she knew. I really love the detail there, and it's just absolutely so painful... poor John.

I really loved the funeral scene. The fact that you really didn't cover any of the real dialogue or the eulogy or any real specifics... it just worked so perfectly here, and I felt like the tone that you took on really did Mrs. Hudson proud on so many levels. It worked very well, and it really just brought a lump to my throat. Really loved seeing Mike Stamford especially. Really beautiful. Another fantastic chapter. Looking forward to the next!

Cheers, dearie!