John knows that the little boomtown of San Pedro in Arizona is Sherlock's base – though he hasn't been back in all of the time John's known him – but he's still a little surprised at how many people recognise Sherlock on the day that they both ride into town. It's a little reminiscent of the prodigal son's return, especially when they dismount in front of a big house surrounded on three sides by vacant lots. An old woman – who's really not that old, John supposes, just wearied and worn by the land she finds herself in –throws the door open, hands on her hips, and glares at them.

"Sherlock Holmes," and her voice is measured, but firm. "I thought you were going to send a telegram once you were a day's ride away."

John is amused to see that Sherlock looks a little chastised as he lays Redbeard's reins across the saddle. "And I would have, Mrs Hudson, only for we had to take a difficult route to get here and needed to lay low for a couple of days."

The woman, Mrs Hudson, walks out and John takes off his hat as a mark of respect. She ignores him, focusing instead on Sherlock and slaps him across the side of the face. "I hope you haven't brought any of those villains onto my doorstep," she says, before hugging him. For only a flash, Sherlock looks taken aback, then he smiles.

"Don't worry about it, Mrs Hudson. We managed to lose them around Devil's Bluff, just had to push the horses a little harder than normal. I hope you have the spare room readied."

"I do." She lets go of him, reaching out a hand to John, which he presses to his lips, so that she blushes. "You must be Doctor Watson. Sherlock's told me all about you in his letters."

John frowns at Sherlock, who busies himself taking off the saddlebags. "You've sent letters?"

The detective clears his throat. "Only occasionally."

Mrs Hudson continues on, as if that minor exchange has never taken place. "I hope the room is to your liking, Doctor Watson. It's upstairs, and if you want I'm sure we can arrange a consulting room for you. Sherlock was saying that you might take up practice again. We already have a doctor, of course, though I imagine it would be better if we had two, and between you and me, he's not very good with the sort of injuries always coming out of those saloons. Drink, you know, it drives men mad. We had a dentist here not long ago, a gambler and he might have been a consumptive too, he just shot down a man who was cheating him at cards without so much as a blink." And on and on she goes, as they walk into the house and she makes coffee, remarking on the amount of violence, the unsolved cases since Sherlock left and tidbits of gossip that she's picked up at the general store or at church. Before John realises it, she's set down a meal in front of the two of them, and admonishes Sherlock for not eating enough ("You really need to get more meat on your bones, dear. You'll fade away otherwise. If I'd known you'd be back so soon I would have had a roast cooked.")

Sherlock revels in the bath that he has after lunch, enjoying letting the dust and grit soak off. (Plus, the shave that he followed the bath with is more than welcome. Without the stubble he feels almost normal again.) The coat he'd worn into town was falling apart, so when he's dressed and has pulled on a new pair of boots, he takes one of his spare coats out of the wardrobe and shrugs it on, fixing his collar carefully and running a hand through his hair to organise the curls.

While he's waiting for John, Sherlock sinks into his old chair in the sitting room and tunes his violin. It's survived the long trip remarkably well, for which he is terribly grateful, and really only needs a little bit of tuning. Mostly, he just wants the feel of it in his hands, so soothingly familiar, after so long without playing. No opportunity for that when you're trying to keep watch in case of sudden attack out on the plains.

When John eventually walks in after tidying himself up, it's to the sight of Sherlock standing at the open window, playing the violin as if it hasn't been a whole month. The melody flows through the room, and in the kitchen he can see Mrs Hudson smiling as she wipes tears from her eyes. It's the first time he's stopped to think about what it must have done to her, having Sherlock stay away so long and not knowing when or if he was coming back. Every exchange he's seen between the two of them in the few hours since they've been here has suggested that she treats more like a son than a tenant who can disappear with a case and not come back for three years.

So lost is John in his own thoughts and musings on the subject that at first he doesn't notice when Sherlock stops playing, setting the bow and violin down carefully into his armchair. "Coming, John?" he asks, swinging back into his coat which he'd discarded while playing.

"Saloon?" John asks, straightening his cravat.

"The Comique, yes."

The Comique is as Sherlock remembers it – loud and raucous with cowhands and miners and gamblers and far too many people in general. Though there are other saloons in town, through all of its short, grimy history the Comique has retained the position of power, always attracting the majority of available clientele with its useful combination of women, whiskey and excellent card games. (Though Sherlock is noted for little interest in these things, even he has to accept that the Comique has an impressive selection of women to choose from.)

Skilfully, Sherlock weaves his way through the crowd, pushing over to the bar and hailing the attention of Joe, who's acquired an assistant bartender in the last three years. Joe himself grins to see Sherlock, though he doesn't pass any remark on the subject until he has heard the order.

"Long time since you've been through these parts, Mister Holmes," he drawls over the noise. "Gonna be in town for long?"

"It's a bit soon to tell."

"Boss is on the war path."

John quirks an eyebrow at that, but Sherlock doesn't even let on that he even heard. Simply continues drinking, turning around and surveying the room. Joe simply shakes his head, heading further down the bar to deal with another customer.

"The boss?"

Sherlock ignores the question, eyes still scanning the room, taking in gamblers and whores and cowhands alike. At last he sees her, standing over by the stair case, her eyes, too, surveying the room. Opulently embroidered red dress, of the kind that gets ordered out of catalogues, black hair twisted and piled high, the same way she wore it three years ago. And even at this distance he can see the flash of lightning in her eyes when she finds him in the room.

He turns back to the bar, swallowing down the last of his whisky and re-filling the glass. Her turn to make a move now. He's not going to stop her.

The night progresses slowly. Sherlock and John continue their drinking, joining in on a poker game or two before going back to the bar and deducing the new arrivals in the room. John gets the sense that Sherlock's waiting for something, though what that might be he can't say. Everything things normal, ordinary, and yet there's definitely something lurking beneath the veneer that he hasn't seen yet.

He gets his answer when a woman saunters across the barroom. He'd noticed her earlier – it being hard to miss her – and filed her away as a whore, albeit a well made-up one with a degree of class to her, more so than the average whore, and more too than the exceptional ones he's come across in his time. Now, however, he finds himself drawn to her again, to the fire in her eyes and her chiselled features, the long red dress serving to add a hint of mystique to her. To describe her, in a word, he has to say she's fierce.

She walks right up to them, and when Sherlock opens his mouth to speak she slaps him across the side of the face.

"Three years, you bastard," and her voice hisses acid. "Three years without a word."

Sherlock rubs his cheek, frowning. "I see the engagement is off, though I'm certainly grateful for the lack of a ring."

"It was never going to last anyway." The fire melts from her face and she smirks, pulling down his head and kissing him full on the lips. Sherlock pulls back, wiping it off on the back of his hand. "Aaw, you're not wiping it off. You're rubbing it in."

"Irene." He re-fills his whisky glass.

"Why did you never write me any letters, Sherlock?" She rubs her hand up and down his arm, fingers light but firm. "Three years and no letter. You said you'd be back."

"A woman with a beau in every stage station and cavalry unit west of the Missouri doesn't need any letters from me." His voice is stone, emotionless and firm. "Not to mention you were engaged. Norton was supposed to be something special."

"You knew as well as I did that it was only for fun."

"Still." He purses his lips. "Good night, Irene." He walks away, coat swirling behind him until he settles in at one of the gambling tables. The woman – Irene – doesn't pay any heed to John, and he shrugs, following Sherlock and joining in with his poker game.

They play long into the night, each winning a decent amount of money. The game is regularly interrupted by people coming up to welcome Sherlock back, and John suspects that most of these people don't actually care, but instead want to be seen to care so that it won't count against them at another time if there're cases in which they may be implicated. John has to smile into his drink when that thought occurs to him, knowing that Sherlock doesn't care about something so petty.

Eventually, Sherlock gets up to leave, and as he swings on his coat he motions for John to stay playing.

"I'll be back soon," he says, then leans in closer to John and whispers, "watch the man to the left. He has an ace up his sleeve which he thinks I haven't noticed." For the benefit of the other gamblers, he claps John on the shoulder. "Have some important business to take care of." He's gone in a moment, lost already to the crowd.

It seems like only last week when Sherlock last walked up those stairs at the back of the Comique to consult with Irene Adler. Back then she was just after getting engaged to Geoffrey Norton, and he was just after receiving Mycroft's summons to Prescott. He'd been apprehensive at first about the case, and it was the presence of opium dens which finally swayed him. He's relieved now that he went, otherwise he never would have met John, or had the adventures of the last few years apprehending cattle rustlers and solving bank robberies and the like. It was brilliant.

He doesn't knock on Irene's door, knowing that she'll be alone because he didn't see anyone successfully acquire her attentions, though some certainly tried. The door doesn't so much as creak when it opens, swinging clear and allowing him into the darkened room.

An oil lamp glows into light in the corner, by the bureau, and Irene sits back in her chair, legs crossed and arms folded, naked with her long hair flowing loose down her back in a tumble of waves.

"So you're back then, Mister Holmes." It isn't a question, and so he doesn't answer, instead filling a brandy from the decanter on the cabinet beside her. "And do you intend to stay or is this only a quick stopover?"

"You didn't used to drink brandy." Or take your clothes off to make an impression, he considers adding and then decides against. Better to leave the remark sounding like a side-note than to embellish it unnecessarily.

The smile drops from her face. "I still don't."

"And yet, the brandy is here." He sips it and nods to himself. "Excellent brandy at that."

"You didn't answer my question." For a moment, the mask slips, and Sherlock sees her nervousness bleed through the cracks. Then the mask is back in place as if it were never lost.

"I might stay. I haven't decided yet, though I am sure that there is room for deduction here, at least for a short time."

"I'll give you the letters if you'll stay."

He raises an eyebrow, leaning against the cabinet. "What makes you think that's why I'm here? Maybe I just wanted to see the town before going off on more adventures."

"Yes, but this is you. Of course you're here because of the letters. Mycroft will have gotten all worked up over my having them and want you to take them off me. He's never trusted me."

"Mycroft doesn't trust anyone that he can't control and you don't trust anything which tries to control you. You're perfect for each other."

"Sherlock – No. Never mind." She sighs. "Your new doctor friend will be wondering where you've gotten to. I'm sure he'd like to stay for a while. Won't find such good gambling tables anywhere else for two hundred miles. Prescott pretends to be impressive, but we both know that it isn't."

"Irene –"

"Just go. Please." She turns away from him, and he has no choice but to leave.

The next morning, Sherlock wakes to a package on the kitchen table, his name written across the top of it in bold feminine handwriting. Inside, he finds the incriminating letters which Mycroft wanted taken out of Irene's hands. Mycroft had refused to say who had sent the letters, but Sherlock flicks through them and smirks to see the name of a very prominent senator signed at the bottom.

That night, Sherlock burns the letters one by one, having sent word to Mycroft that it was already done. As he goes through the letters he finds a note, comprised of only a single word, but that word is more than enough.

Stay.

And this time, Sherlock decides that he will.