Three days after the Hargreaves case was closed, Lestrade found her way to a tiny ground floor flat in Camberwell.

The green paint on the door was peeling. The brass numbers forming the address were tarnished and corroded. Feeling instinctively that she wouldn't like to be lingering on this street after the waning sun had set, she raised a fist and knocked. A moment passed, and the slim hopes she'd entertained that the door would be answered diminished a bit more. The bent blinds in the window showed that the interior of the flat was dark. She was on the verge of turning on her heel when finally she heard the deadbolt click, and the door opened.

It was immensely gratifying to see the man who answered. She had played a hunch in tracking him down, and was pleased to find that her instincts had lead her truly.

And to see that he was still alive.

He stood in the doorway, thin and hollow-eyed but manifestly breathing, and peered around uncertainly. He glanced up and down the street, as though expecting to see that she had not come alone. Finally, his steel-grey gaze fixed on her.

"What are you doing here?"

For all that this was hardly a greeting, she'd read enough to understand such brusqueness to be characteristic of him, and to see it in the flesh was something of a thrill. She hefted the white take away bags she held with a grin.

"I've brought you tacos and beer." So saying, she strode past him and into the flat.

Sherlock Holmes vacillated where he stood for a moment, perplexity warring with annoyance for dominance on his angular, refined features before he slammed the door uncaringly and followed her. "You've brought me beer and what?"

"Tacos. Cold beef and beer isn't done anymore. This is better." She looked around in vain for a place to set the bags, and was disconcerted to find that every surface in the flat – minimal though the furnishings were – was covered in sheets of scratch paper. In fact the whole aspect of the place, lit only by the glow from the screen of the lap top in the center of the floor, and a desk lamp plugged into the wall in a corner, was worrisome. Frowning, Lestrade reached for one of the pages scattered over the inundated kitchen table, only to have Holmes snatch it from her before she could comprehend what was written on it.

"That looks like maths," she remarked.

"Combinatorics," shrugged Holmes evasively, "the kitchen is that way."

She could see where the kitchen was. The kitchen was nothing but some cupboards and a sink tucked against one wall of the spartan room. But, she humored him, and without another glance at the papers, crossed to unpack the food onto the counter. There was nothing on this but a battered french press, filled with cloudy, stagnant coffee gone cold.

Holmes, meanwhile, seemed to have become somewhat self-conscious of the state of himself, if not of his flat. He smoothed a hand over mussed dark hair and then the front of his rust-coloured t-shirt before slipping slender hands into the pockets of his black jeans, the corners of his mouth tighening in a discomfited expression. Lestrade took the opportunity to observe him from the corner of her eye. Where she once would have called him lean or thin, "kenness bordering on starvation," now appeared a more apt descriptor of his condition. He'd grown bonier, and more pale – white as a sheet of paper himself. She considered the pace he must have been working at to produce the kind of snow-storm of papers that carpeted the flat.

"What'd Townshend want a slice of your brain for, again?" she wondered innocently.

Holmes sighed, self-consciousness sublimating into irritation, and scowled at her.

"Alright," she responded with a shrug of her own, "I'll be direct. It's Moriarty's prime factorization algorithm you're working on, isn't it? If you can give it to Townshend on paper, they won't be so interested in cutting it out of your head. Do you have a bottle opener?"

"No," snapped Holmes. Lestrade shrugged a bit, and, casting about herself for a moment, came up with the coffee-stained spoon lying beside the french press. She popped the tops from two bottles, offering one to Holmes.

"Why is your flat covered in combinatorics? Not that you seem to be filling the space with much else. But I thought you knew Moriarty's algorithm."

Holmes regarded the bottle without replying for a moment. Finally, movements slow and heavy, he reached to accept it. "His work wasn't finished."

"Ah," said lestrade. They drank in silence for a moment, Holmes at a rate which almost alarmed her, until at last he crossed to place his nearly empty bottle on the counter, passing the back one hand over his mouth. It seemed, she noted with concern, that rather than soothing or subduing, the effect of the alcohol and the confession on him had been to open a floodgate. He looked shaken. In fact, his hands were shaking.

"You can't work at the pitch you've been without rest," Lestrade scolded gently, nodding towards one trembling limb. Holmes curled the hand into a fist and pressed it against the counter top to still it, scoffing.

"I'm afraid I have few alternatives, Inspector. Remaining a fugitive holds little appeal. I must either destroy an institution of the British government, or demonstrate that I am worth more to them alive. Actually - I consider myself fortunate that I can in good conscience strive for the latter. The last time I was faced with toppling an organization of similar reach and power -" he shook his head, taking a final pull from the bottle beside him, emptying it in a swallow. "Well. I have no wish to be doing this for another three years."

Lestrade considered this. "You're trying to finish his work, and show that it can be beaten."

"I must," Holmes shrugged helplessly. "There'll be no outrunning these people. The world has gotten too small."

Lestrade took a thoughtful sip of her own, half-finished beer. Of course, she thought, Holmes was worn out, and his hands were shaking. He had taken on what sounded to her like an impossible task, and was working under enourmous pressure. She fought the sudden urge to crush him into a hug, half-surprised by her own impulse to protect him. Instead, she asked:

"Do you really not know what tacos are?"

He simply looked at her, grey eyes inscrutable.

She shook her head and began unpacking the takeaway bags.

Do you not know what's going on? Of course you don't. You didn't know that the author once spent some time writing an ambitiously long and complex Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century AU. Look down - that's your keyboard. Back to the screen - the AU is now a brief excerpt! The author is not on a horse.