John just stood there dumbfounded in his fancy hat and expensive suit. It was a familiar feeling, one he often experienced around Sherlock, and he hated it. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair.

"You're going to have to start from the beginning, because as usual, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Sherlock opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. He stood in silence and studied it for a moment, then marched back to his bedroom, ignoring John all together.

"Sherlock, what's this about?" John said as he watched his friend retreat into the bedroom. One bright light snapped on then another, and John could see through the open door some papers tacked to the wall.

"Sherlock?" he said hesitantly, apprehension building inside him as he turned to face the open bedroom door. When there was no answer, he took a small step forward and stopped again to listen. He could hear Sherlock rustling papers, and he couldn't help but take another step, slowly walking down the hall towards the bedroom. Every step felt heavier as he approached the open door. It had been years since he'd been in that room. It was the one room he never wanted to enter in the flat, the one room he avoided, the one room that he felt held too many memories and secrets and experiences that he didn't want to think about. Two years ago he had pledged never to go in there again. It wasn't his place. It was no longer his business.

And yet here he was, pulled forward as if by a string attached to his chest. He reached the threshold and stopped abruptly as the string broke. He looked inside the room for the first time in years, and somehow… he wasn't entirely surprised to see that, like its occupant, it was completely different.

The mattress was lying on the floor, turned sideways and pushed against the wall to make room. Gone was the solid dark bed frame. Other than the dresser, all else had been removed from the room except four bright utility lights and an explosion of paper on the walls.

Blooming across three walls was what at first seemed like a piece of art. A straight, narrow, bright red line made of tape bisected the room at shoulder height, and spreading above and below it were thinner black lines leading up to photos and notes, drawings and photocopies, like fronds on a pinnate fern leaf. He didn't know what to look at first, but he found himself staring at a photo on the other side of the room. What was that? His feet moved before he even realized it, passing Sherlock who was tacking a piece of paper to the the wall, and he stopped right up close to the photo.

It was a picture of Mary and John at the hospital, with Mary in bed and a baby swaddled in her arms. John was kissing the baby's tiny head as Mary looked at him with overwhelmed exhaustion and love. He had never seen the photo before.

"Where did you get this?" he said as he plucked the photo off the wall and held it closer, blinking rapidly.

"I took it," came a voice near his ear. John turned, and Sherlock was standing right behind him, holding a bottle of scotch. "The day Sherri was born."

"Yeah, I can see that, but why haven't I seen it before?"

He looked into Sherlock's face, searching for an answer, but Sherlock didn't meet his eyes. He just reached over, gently took the photo out of John's hands and deftly tacked it back on the wall with one hand. He then grabbed a glass from the top of his dresser, poured a finger full of scotch and handed it to John. He took their top hats and set them on the mattress, then helped John and himself out of their jackets and hung them behind the door. He left the room briefly, returning with a kitchen chair in one hand, and set it in the middle of the room.

"You should probably sit down," he said as he walked to the corner of the room and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

"What is this, Sherlock?" John said and nodded his head towards the collage on the wall.

"My timeline."

John looked back to the wall and took a step back to get a better perspective. At the beginning of the red line in the left corner was a label that said "2011" next to a photo of John and Sherlock emerging from the flat, Sherlock with his silly hat and John with his head down, smiling at something. Next to it, just further down the red line, were newspaper clippings about cases, then Moriarty, then The Fall, then photos of different cities in Europe, then his return to London. A photo of John with a mustache. The wedding. Magnussen. All of this intermingled with notes on investigations. The names of specific cases that John had written about in his blog were typed out and boxed with black pen with dates: "The Man with the Twisted Lip" "The Silver Blazer," "The Greek Interpreter," "The Adventure of Black Peter," on and on.

Then Sherri was born, and more than a dozen photos of the girl and the small family erupted like a bouquet around the timeline on the wall. It seemed that Sherlock could not pick only one picture to represent that time, for there was a blurry photo of John carrying the baby in a front pack on a cold day, and one of Mary looking down into her daughter's face as she nursed, and Mary drinking tea while John read the paper and rocked the baby swing with his foot. John and Mary were never looking at the camera, never seemed to be aware that they were being photographed, but the pictures captured perfectly the everyday wonder of that time. The small, precious, intimate moments.

Only one of the photos was of Sherlock, and it was a selfie with baby Sherri. Sherri was a few months old, her blue eyes wide, a huge, toothless, drooly smile on her face as she looked at Sherlock. And then there was Sherlock, looking into the camera with a small smile and his eyes shining, like he was trying not to laugh. John stepped closer to the photo and couldn't take his eyes off it. He swallowed hard and brought his hand to his mouth as he looked at the two of them together. The joy and the trust and the unmistakable look of love on Sherlock's face was devastating.

He had forgotten. He had pushed it all away how much he had taken from Sherlock when he left.

"John," Sherlock said gently from the other side of the room. "Sit down."

John cleared his throat and took a sip of whiskey, letting the heat warm his throat. He rubbed his face and took a deep breath, then turned around and sat in the chair.

"Ok, I'm sitting," he said and sat up straight as he looked at Sherlock. "What did you need to tell me?"

Sherlock was unreadable as he reached into the large envelope he had set against the wall. He pulled out a white sheet and handed it to John. It had the name FirstRand Ltd. at the top and a list of numbers on it.

"What is this?" he said and looked up at Sherlock.

"A bank statement."

"Is this supposed to mean something to me?"

"Do you remember when you found me at the hospital, wanting to see my client who had been stabbed?"

"You mean your suspect? Yes, I remember. You had the bushy eyebrows."

"His name was Dost Akbar, and he was one of the only surviving known associates of Mary's father. Or rather of Amanda's father. He had escaped South Africa around the same time as Mary, and to my luck, he had been living in London for several years. I had begun to hunt down various members of Mary's family but when it turned up that almost all of them were either dead or missing, I started looking into their friends and associates."

"Hold on, why were you looking into Mary's family?" John said, starting to get annoyed. "What business was this of yours?"

"I was following a hunch."

"I thought you didn't believe in hunches."

"Of course I do," Sherlock said with impatience. "The subconscious mind is able to make leaps that the conscious mind obstructs for various reasons. It's part of my genius, John. My mind is not constrained to look only at what is in front of me, but to also make connections between the subtle and obscure. It's not just that other people are not smart enough and don't observe - which they aren't and they don't, although that's not really their fault. It's also that they are unable to use their imagination and think beyond their idiotic first impressions and hasty, erroneous conclusions."

While out of the mouth of a lesser person, someone who John didn't know so well, a lecture like this would appear arrogant, haughty and prideful. But from Sherlock, who said it as if it were nothing more than fact, his face resigned, it made John feel an odd pang in his chest. The annoyance slipped away and he saw the man standing in front of him, open and brilliant and often completely misunderstood. Sherlock knew how his brain worked and how it was very different from others, and John was hit again with the sense that it must be very isolating to be flying so far ahead, looking back as others trudged through the mud of their lives. Genius can be a lonely existence.

John took a deeper drink of his scotch, his chest filling involuntarily with warmth and affection for this strange man, and he smiled at Sherlock. Sherlock turned his head slightly and squinted his eyes is suspicion.

"So what was this hunch then?" John asked and smiled a little wider.

Sherlock stood up and looked away from John for a moment as if gathering courage, and then looked back to him.

"Akbar was very helpful in filling in some of the missing history on the Greggerson family and in pointing me in the direction of one of the largest banks in South Africa: FirstRand. Those numbers on that sheet. What is the total sum at the bottom?"

John looked at the bottom of the sheet. "Two -" he counted the zeroes "- 20 million, with an R next to it."

"That's 20 million rands, the South African currency."

"Ok," John said, waving his hand to get Sherlock to move a little faster.

"20 million rands is just over 1 million pounds. It's what's left of the Greggerson fortune. It's been unclaimed since the last surviving family member died or went into hiding."

John looked at the sheet and for a moment he felt the room tilt.

"I don't…" he began and then blinked several times. The bank statement was addressed to the name of a company he didn't recognize.

"But…" It wasn't that he couldn't understand what Sherlock was saying; it was as if his body was physically rejecting it. John's eyes glazed over and he looked up blankly at the wall in front of him. He could hear Sherlock talking but it sounded like it was coming from far away. Slowly he realized he was staring at a medical report pinned to the wall, just below the red timeline. It described in detail the wound caused by a bullet to the chest. The words "Mary Morstan/AG missed the heart" were written in red letters at the bottom.

Sherlock's voice came in a little clearer.

"... when she changed her name, first to Mary Morstan then to Watson, it didn't change the fact that she was still the last surviving Greggerson," Sherlock continued. "In this envelope is a statement from an international law attorney who believes that the money would then, legally, be passed on to her heirs. That's you and Sherri."

"A million …" John shook his head as if trying to wake up.

"Yes, John. You and Sherri have inherited one million pounds."

As John's world completely turned upside down and his head swam from shock, Sherlock slid down the wall and grabbed the bottle of scotch, popping the cork and taking a long draw on the bottle.

"Of course, it'll take some time to complete all the necessary paperwork and procedures to transfer the money, etcetera," - another long pull on the bottle - "but I don't expect a challenge. As far as I can tell, anyone who could have challenged you or taken the money for themselves is out of the picture."

He took a deep breath and let it out heavily, almost like a sigh. John turned his head and blinked several times, finally coming to focus on his best friend sitting in a slump in the corner.

"I can't believe it," John said, his voice raspy. "I don't know what to say."

"I think the right thing to say would be 'Thank you,' although I've been told more times than I can count that I'm a rude bastard, so what do I know?" Sherlock took another drink.

"I don't think I could ever thank you enough, Sherlock. You've changed my life."

Sherlock just nodded, his face drawn. Sherlock looked as if someone had killed his dog. It didn't make sense.

"What's wrong?" John said in confusion. "Wasn't this what you wanted? Is it because I didn't thank you? I'm just in shock, Sherlock, and I could never have imagined -"

Sherlock looked up at him, and although he tried to smile, it didn't last long.

"I would do anything to make sure you and Sherri are ok," he said. "It's the least I could do for you, John."

"The least you could….?" John just shook his head. He got off the chair and sat down cross legged in front of Sherlock, forcing the two to look each other in the eye. "This is absolutely, incredibly, one of the most amazing, best days of my life! Thank you. I can hardly believe it. But why aren't you happy? We should be celebrating!"

Sherlock just nodded. "Congratulations, John. Really."

"Are you … envious or something?" John asked, but Sherlock just gave him one of those looks.

"Please. I have no desire nor need for money, you know that."

"Then what is it? Are you worried that things will change?"

At that, Sherlock just huffed and looked at John as if he was being absurd.

"Change from what? Change from you not talking to me to you being rich and not talking to me? Well, yes, I am pleased about the rich part, you're right." He nodded and looked away. "And now, if you do decide you want to be friends again, it will be because you feel an obligation to me. I don't want to be your charity case, John. I can take care of myself."

"What?" John said incredulously, trying to follow Sherlock's convoluted chain of thought. "So wait a minute. You're afraid that because you've done this for me, now the only reason I would hang out with you is because I feel I owe you?"

"Why else would you be with me, John? You've made it perfectly clear that everything has changed and I am no longer part of it, no longer part of -" he took another swig, wincing slightly this time "- your family."

"Jesus," John said and laughed. "You are the most insecure, obtuse, amazing person I've ever met."

He moved and sat next to Sherlock, their shoulders touching as they sat with their backs to the wall. John took the bottle from Sherlock and took his own swig, then reached over and wrapped their hands together, their fingers intertwined.

"You miss so much for someone who sees everything," he continued softly, looking at their conjoined hands. "One thing you will have to relearn about us is we're both drama queens and sometimes I'm just a whole lot of bluster. I end up yelling through my feelings and I get angry and we fight and I just say stupid things sometimes -"

"Well that's true."

"Shut up and listen, you git," John said with mock consternation and looked at Sherlock, who was watching John play with their hands. A small smile was beginning to toy with Sherlock's lips. "What I'm trying to say is that I want us to be friends again, and it has nothing to do with money."

John's smile faded a little as he looked at the bashful look on Sherlock's face as they held hands, and he felt that sadness again at the childlike insecurity of this incredible man. John rubbed his lips against Sherlock's shoulder, feeling the smoothness of the fine linen, and watched Sherlock's eyes follow the movement. There was no longer any doubt in John's mind or his heart.

"Sherlock, you are my family, and I'm sorry that I ever took that away from you."

Sherlock's eyes fluttered closed, letting out his breath slowly, as if letting go of an immensely heavy burden. He leaned in, resting his lips on John's forehead and taking in a deep breath through his nose. John's eyes gently closed, feeling a closeness that he hadn't felt in years. He suddenly felt the depth of his own loneliness, how he has been without companionship for so long, without another person to share his innermost thoughts and feelings. This intimacy was what he missed more than anything.

He kept his eyes closed as Sherlock moved his head away, leaving a small kiss on his forehead. His heart skipped as he tilted his head up expectantly, wondering if he would feel the softness of Sherlock's lips on his. When nothing happened, he cracked open an eye and saw Sherlock a few inches away, smiling at him knowingly.

"I promised I would get you back to Sherri," he said, his low voice sounding a little rougher than usual. He reached over with his free hand and took the bottle away from John. "And that you wouldn't be too drunk."

John slowly pushed himself back and nodded, reluctantly unclasping their hands. He was feeling lightheaded and it wasn't entirely because of the whiskey. Sherlock pushed himself up off the floor and reached down to pull John to standing, holding his shoulders steady as John swayed on his feet a little.

"This is all a lot of information to take in, John."

"Yeah, it sure is."

"It will likely take us weeks if not months to complete all the paperwork. It will probably include a few trips to Africa."

John could feel the smile growing on his face as he looked at Sherlock, who was trying to act serious - but John could see the giddy excitement underneath.

"Yeah, I think so."

Sherlock slipped his fingers into John's hand again and led him out of the room, grabbing the jacket and hat as they left. They walked down the stairs, hand in hand and in silence until they reached the door. Sherlock pulled out his phone and sent a quick text, then put John's hat back on his head and smiled.

"Keep the suit. You may need it again some day. Who knows?"

"You're amazing, you know that?" John said, feeling breathless as he looked into Sherlock's face.

Sherlock smiled. "I've also ordered a cab. You don't look like you're able to drive at the moment. It should be here shortly.

"Probably a good idea."

Sherlock's smile faded as he looked at John thoughtfully.

"You know, I think we were both right, in a way."

"About what?"

"The truth has set us free," Sherlock said quietly. And Sherlock bent down and kissed him, a sweet, long, slow kiss that began to fill the hole in John's heart that had been there since the day he left Sherlock, too long ago. When they finally broke apart, John was dizzy and the world seemed like a dream. Sherlock's eyes sparkled and his face was tranquil and steady, though, and John reached up to touch it to make sure it was real.

"Dinner tomorrow?" Sherlock said as he smiled into John's hand.

"Yeah, ok." It was as much as John could get out.

"Bring Sherri?"

"Yeah, ok," he said with a smile.

Sherlock paused, then his voice lowered slightly.

"Spend the night?"

John took a deep breath, his chest feeling as if it would burst.

"Yeah, ok," and he pulled Sherlock down into a deep kiss until Sherlock gently broke them apart, led John out to the cab and sent him into the night.