AUTHOR'S SEVENTH NOTE
Again, I'm very sorry that this chapter has taken a while. First I was in London and then I have started my summer work so there's not that much time over. Also, I'm currently writing my application to the PhD program in history in my town so yes, still not much time left for fic. I'm therefore happy that I can at least conclude this story. The response on the last chapter wasn't that great so I hope that this one will be a bit more pleasing. It's time to learn what happened with Victor's father. Some slight references to drug use, just so you know.

Chapter four

THE GLORIA SCOTT

"Victor's father was a magistrate and a respected business man." Sherlock began his account as we walked down the crowded streets. "He had earned a lesser fortune some years earlier by a well-placed selling of his shares. I met the man only once when invited during a spring weekend to their summer house in Donisthorpe. Victor was an only child and his mother died when he was still in his young teens. Naturally, he was very close to his father. As it happened, I got slightly on the wrong foot with Mr Trevor when I by coincidence revealed some crucial details about his past. He had wanted me to prove that I was as good at deducing as his son had said that I was so I did what I was expected to do. I didn't know exactly what my deductions meant at that point but Mr Trevor fainted when I was done."

And that's what happens when you keep showing off more than you should, I thought quickly as we passed another crossing even though I said nothing of it out loud. Now when he finally was talking, I didn't want to interrupt him for the world.

"A few days later, on the day when we were going back to uni again, another man came to visit. From the first moment I found him suspiciously misplaced. Mr Trevor had done some previous charity work but this was different. This was a man he had known even before his investments and well, this Lewis Hudson was truly what you might have described as 'a complete dickhead'. Against Victor's wishes, his father still chose to make Hudson part of the company after we had returned to university instead of forcing him away. Mr Trevor's physical and mental health steadily declined after this. Victor called him on daily basis but finally felt forced to take a break from his studies to go home and help his father. He emailed me a few times in the beginning but as time passed, I heard nothing from him. Then, three months later, Victor suddenly called. He sounded exhausted and said that he didn't know who else to turn to. His father had sustained a major stroke after a suspected panic attack and he was now hospitalised in Norwich. Mr Trevor had been sitting by his computer when it happened and on the screen was only a peculiar email, most likely having been read by the man right before his collapse. Victor had read it as well but it made no sense what so ever to him. He was tired and worried and therefore he begged me to come and help him understand it."

Sherlock stopped talking. From his expression I could tell that he was deep in thought.

"What did you do?" I asked.

My friend straightened his back.

"I took the train to Norwich and arrived on the afternoon the day after he had called. He surely looked different from when I last saw him. He had lost 15 pounds, was severely sleep deprived and exhausted in general. The man I mentioned, Hudson, had apparently driven the company into the ground but even so, Victor's father had insisted on not firing him. Clearly it had taken its toll on both him and his son. Then Hudson had assigned on his own accord. Victor was sure that their problems finally were over when his father suddenly collapsed a few days later.

"After my arrival, we went straight to the hospital and in the waiting room Victor showed me the email. It was only a short text, just 35 words and sent from a 'Mr Beddoes'. At first, there was nothing that caught my attention except for the fact that the structure of the text in itself truly was peculiar, even for being what obviously was a message about the business. But when I studied it further, I found a regular pattern in the way the author had chosen the words. It was a skip code in which every third letter needed to be read to understand the message. Turned out Hudson wasn't only taking advantage of Mr Trevor. He was blackmailing him. Now the cat was out of the bag and Hudson had revealed his side of the truth to the authorities. Suddenly my deductions four months earlier made perfect sense. Mr Trevor hadn't made most of his money by selling shares. Instead, he had a deeply troublesome and criminal past which involved a massacre on the BA 3486 flight to London in 1979, the one the press nicknamed 'Gloria Scott'."

"Oh, I remember that." I said. "The plane was thought to have crashed somewhere in the Atlantic but was never found."

"Precisely."

"But they never found it, did they?"

"No, because it never crashed. The pilots and Trevor's associates had been working closely together to do one of the most advanced thefts in modern history. What hadn't been discussed was what would happen to the rest of the crew and passengers. Archibald, which was Mr Trevor's real last name, together with another associate called Evans didn't want to kill them. The others, led by Hudson, weren't as merciful and the theft ended in cold blooded slaughter. Victor's father, Evans and a few others left the scene when an unplanned explosion destroyed the plane along with the dead bodies. Hudson was injured in the blast and would've been a goner if the fleeing lot hadn't been fainthearted and returned for him. He was saved, something that would end up as their fatal mistake. Both Archibald and Evans used the money they had acquired from the event to create new identities and new lives far from their dark past. 'Evans' became 'Beddoes', 'Archibald' became 'Trevor'. The later married happily and after a few years he and his wife had Victor."

I stared at my friend in amazement, absolutely astounded by the story he had told me.

"You seriously deduced all that from the man's appearance and a short email?" I asked, for once slightly doubtful. Sherlock must have noticed the sceptical tone in my voice. His eyes narrowed, his features setting in a stern expression.

"Even if I say I did, you wouldn't believe it."

"Of course I would!" I answered instantly.

Sherlock glanced at me again from the corner of his eye. The look was now more thoughtful rather than annoyed.

"So did I? Did I deduce it?"

I stopped walking and fixed my eyes on him firmly to emphasise my answer further.

"Yes."

He smiled contently.

"What convinced you?"

"Nothing I have seen you do can convince me of something else."

My friend laughed and I smiled back at him, happy to having regained his trust.

"Well, actually there is." he suddenly said. My smile turned into another confused frown.

"What?"

"The story had way too many intricate details and contained a sequence of events which involved people that I couldn't possibly have had any information about. You did notice this, which was clearly why you doubted but you didn't trust your intuition when I started to question you. Of course I did that intentionally. The gameplay behind crime solving always consists of a series of gambits which deliberately uses statements on one hand and facts on the other. What you really have done is never important, John. What's important is what you can make people believe that you have done. That's crucial, regardless of which side of the law you favour."

My face set and I clenched my jaw.

"So you lied?"

"There's a huge difference between a lie and deception. It was you who implied that I deduced Mr Trevor's story from the email, not me. How quickly you all make conclusions. Fascinating, isn't it?"

I sighed loudly as we pushed out way through a group of tourists on a particularly crowded part of the sidewalk. I wasn't really feeling in the mood at the moment for being the average human specimen my genius flatmate could perform experiments on.

"Well, how did you get to know then?"

"It was simple. He told us. Well, actually that was his final word to his son; 'Hotspur'. Again, the peculiarly of the word made me guess the word in itself had no meaning but rather a function. Within a few moments, Victor had found a locked file on Mr Trevor's laptop. We used 'Hotspur' as password and as expected, the file opened and revealed the story of Mr Trevor's life. Just an hour later, a nurse came and told Victor that his father had suffered a second stroke. After another half hour, Mr Trevor was dead."

Sherlock fell silent and pushed another signal button for the red light that would take us from Dorset Street to Baker Street.

"Victor was devastated." he concluded, his voice as flat as it had been during the whole account.

I sighed sadly as we crossed the road, honestly moved by the dark turn the story had taken.

"I bet he was. What a fate."

"Mycroft used to tell me when I was a child that even how much we try we can never outrun the past."

Sherlock breathed in and closed his eyes, his voice dropping to a deep whisper.

"Used to scare me with it. 'Eventually, our past will always catch up with us, little brother. Consequences never disappear. They only wait.'"

"As if Mycroft wasn't intimidating already." I muttered.

"After what had happened to Mr Trevor, I was inclined for a time to believe him. Let's just say that the feeling was... unpleasant."

"And after that you lost contact with Victor?"

Sherlock nodded once.

"The whole revelation of his father's past, as well as his painful death, was just too much for him to handle and he became desperate to get away from here. Years later I heard that he had moved to China a few months after the funeral to start a new company of computing where he was the main designer. Evidently it turned out well for him."

"Yeah, he did seem to be in a good place now at least."

"He is. Quite well-deserved."

Sherlock paused and closed his eyes against the sun. For a moment I'm sure that I saw the corner of his mouth twitch.

"It was good to see him again."

"I was glad to hear this, you know." I said after another moment of silence. "About Victor."

"It's a fascinating story."

"Not just the tragic death of his father, I mean."

My friend looked at me and frowned, not seeming to understand what I was getting at. I pursed my lips and tried to figure out how I was supposed to formulate my next sentence.

"I'm just glad to hear that you had someone to talk to." I finally settled on. "To spend time with back then. You weren't… well, you weren't alone."

Sherlock stared at me intently for a moment. Finally his face relaxed and he began to snicker soundly, as if I had said something that was particularly amusing. I grunted in annoyance.

"Okay, what's so funny about that?"

"People always reverse so desperately from loneliness. No one ever understands the beauty of solitude. It highlights your senses, makes you extremely effective. They should embrace it instead, and the world would be slightly less tedious for us who do."

"But come on, who really wants to be lonely? Like they say, it's better at least to have loved and lost it than to never have loved at all."

"Oh, that's beautiful." Sherlock mused wryly. "You should write that to the next girlfriend you break up with. Of course it's an absolute lie. Once people have experienced what the presence of another being feels like, they'll always pathetically grieve that it's not there anymore. The life you once knew and were fine with will henceforth feel empty in comparison. It becomes a fix, an addiction, just as the most addictive of drugs and they'll crave it just as badly, until no other drugs will substitute. No distraction, nothing redeeming, no matter how much you take!"

Even though the sound of the busy city around us, it felt like everything else also fell silent when Sherlock's loud voice did. I realised in the same moment that we had stopped walking and stood immovable side by side on the pavement.

I raised my gaze and looked at his face. His expression was as set as ever but there was a moment, even if just a short one, when I saw that his unusually intense grey eyes were distant and blank. He closed them quickly.

"Sherlock..."

The moment I spoke he turned briskly on his heels, walking straight into a small nearby shop located just where we had stopped. I stayed on the sidewalk outside, watching him the whole time as he gasped something from the shelves and paid the cashier. In that moment I made a decision. I would ask nothing more about what had happened during those years after uni if he didn't chose to speak about it himself. Even how curious I was, even how much I wanted to know. If he wanted me to believe that he had only been using the drugs as a metaphor just now, I would let him have that.

My friend returned a moment later with his buy; a new cigarette lighter as well as two chocolate bars. He put the small metal item into the inside pocket of his jacket.

"I hope you're only gonna burn some radioactive chemicals with that." I warned. He didn't answer and instead threw me one of the bars.

"Come on. I'm an honest man. You know I don't take bribes."

"Who says it's a bribe?" Sherlock argued, opening his own as we continued our walk. "Maybe I just felt like being generous?"

Well, that would be a first, I thought but quickly regretted that I had. Thinking about what I just had heard that he had done for Victor those years ago, it simply wasn't true. Actually, when thinking about what he had done for me the day he suggested that I'd be his flatmate, and all the other days to follow, it was a complete lie.

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Well, you're human after all."

Sherlock murmured in disagreement and took a bite of his chocolate.

"I am my brain, John. The rest of me is just were I keep it."

"Victor was right in any case. You deserve the attention."

"Oh, please." Sherlock scoffed. "If I wanted attention I would've become a detective inspector, or frankly a detective inspector gone rouge on a murder spree. Nothing is as fascinating to the public as proclaimed heroes with dark secrets."

"Yeah, maybe." I laughed. "Still doesn't mean that you don't deserve it. You always have."

Sherlock looked at me again as we passed the final crossing on Baker Street before it was only pavement left to 221. He said nothing more. Instead he smiled.

I smiled back. That day I realised a lot of new things about my flatmate. There was a side of him which didn't help people because he was bored and in need of a fix. Some people he helped because of different reasons. Maybe even because he genuinely cared about them? Victor Trevor had been one of these people, all those years ago. Who knows if there were more? Maybe Mrs Hudson had been another one? What I was, I didn't know. In fact, I didn't really care. Whatever the case, I was still grateful.

The sun had started to go down when we came back to our flat. Our calm mood was however interrupted when the door to the property opened and Mrs Hudson stepped out.

"Sherlock, I tried to call you! There was a man here asking for you but I didn't know when you would be back. I said it wouldn't be too long and that he could wait in the flat if he wanted to but he was very restless and went off before I could say anything."

Sherlock glared at me with some irritation.

"So much for afternoon walks." he complained and brushed past our landlady into the house with resolute steps.

"Did he leave a number? An address? Describe him! His clothes, his manner, his hairline. Quickly!"

I walked into the house a moment after Sherlock, already hearing him search through the property for clues about who the mystery client could have been, all while Mrs Hudson tried to answer his questions. I shook my head. Yes, so much for afternoon walks but even during these times, there never came a moment when I didn't learn something new about my flatmate. Maybe that is what I miss the most, now when he is gone. That there still must have been so much I didn't know about him...

I was thinking about getting in touch with Victor after Sherlock died but Mycroft advised me not to and reassured that he would take care of it. I don't know if he ever did. Victor wasn't in any case attending the funeral. Neither was Molly. Not even Sherlock's parents. Mycroft was there but he never shed a single tear or showed any emotion in general. Most of the time he was on his phone. Lestrade stood in the corner of the chapel, trying not to be too visible. At least I had Hudson sitting beside me, the only one acting like a proper human being that whole afternoon. After the ceremony in the chapel some journalists stood outside and waited to get that final picture, like bloody vultures.

And that was it.

So many people who had written comments on my blog, as well as his website. People who had praised him, raised him to the skies. When it all came down to the end, it was only I and his landlady who were still there.

One year has passed. The grass on the grave has grown thick. Mrs Hudson still visits. I do as well. I don't know if anyone else does. It's hard, so hard and it would be a lie to say that it doesn't hurt me every time. It doesn't get easier; only worse but I keep doing it all the same. I never bring flowers. No, he would have hated that. Instead I just stand there, if only for a short moment. Most times I say nothing but sometimes I do. I stay a few more minutes and I talk to him, tell him about the recent murders in London and how I think he would have solved them. Honestly, I think he knows. Maybe it's just stupid but at least I want to believe that he knows that I'm there because that is what I want to reassure him. I still am, because that is what I learned during that afternoon walk in April.

Not even Sherlock Holmes wanted to be all alone.

AUTHOR'S FINAL NOTE

And that's it. Done, finished. Sorry to end the story on such an angsty post-Reichenbach note with a sad lonely John trying to keep a "dead" lonely Sherlock company.

You who are familiar with the original books will recognise the story Sherlock is telling and many other aspects in the chapter as well. I have tried to do a straight up modernisation of the story of the Gloria Scott and Mr Trevor but have explored how the characters were feeling during that time and afterwards.

So what did you think about the concluding chapter? Comment your thoughts, Follow & Favourite.