He is awakened by the sharp sting of fluorescent lights. The room fills with the tell-tale hum as they flicker to life above him. He opens his eyes. The room is a beige blur, the furniture distorted and odd. He can't see properly and he doesn't understand why.

"Good morning, Mr. Holmes!" a cheery voice calls. "It's almost time for breakfast! Would you like to go to the cafeteria today?"

He turns his head slowly. Standing next to his bed is a navy blue splotch. "Oh! I almost forgot. Here are your glasses," the voice says, pressing the piece of metal and glass into his hand. He grips them loosely, but doesn't put them on.

"Here. I'll help you," the glasses are taken from him and placed on his face. His vision clears and he sees a pretty young woman smiling blandly at him. She's wearing scrubs and her blond hair is pulled back in a high pony tail. NANCY, RN is stamped across a name tag that rests over her left breast. "There now. Are you ready to get dressed?"

He stares at her and remains silent. Oh, he still deduces her. He knows her mother is sick, she has two dogs and a ferret, a cheating husband, and a baby on the way, but he doesn't say anything.

She pulls him up out of bed and manhandles him into the bathroom where he brushes his teeth and gets dressed. He doesn't look in the mirror. He wishes they'd remove it but he's never told them that.

He skips breakfast and pushes his walker to the garden instead. It's a cool, breezy spring day in the English countryside and he plants himself on a bench. He stays there God knows how long, butterflies floating around him, staring off into the distance. Nancy comes and tries to take him to lunch but he remains on his bench, breathing the fresh air, longing for the London smog and cursing Mycroft.

She ambles away muttering about noncompliant patients, PEG Tubes, and Dobhoff placements.

He realizes he's dozed off when a shadow casts itself over him and a fingertips brush against his shoulder. He jumps and looks around wildly. A man sits on the bench next to him.

"I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm Greg Lestrade," he says. "Junior."

He knows. The man has the same eyes and mouth as his father, but the cheekbones are all his mother. He would know him even if Lestrade Sr. hadn't show off pictures of his eldest child to anyone who would pay attention.

"My Dad," Greg begins. "My Dad passed away."

Sherlock closes his eyes.

"We were going through his things and we came across this," Greg Jr. produces a thick book from inside his suitcase. "We…we thought you might want to have it."

Sherlock reaches out and takes the book from him. It's large, made of leather, and held together with string and tape. It's old. The leather is cracking and its binding has seen better days.

Greg Jr. looks at him expectantly. What the boy expects, he does not know. Tension builds in the silence. "Well," he says. "I should go. It was nice seeing you, Mr. Holmes."

Sherlock doesn't open the book when he leaves. He doesn't want to know what's inside. He wants to be left alone. Alone is what he has. Alone protects him.

'Friends protect you.'

I don't have any friends, he thinks.

The sun is setting in the west when Nancy returns. She admonishes him thoroughly for sitting in the sun all day and escorts him back to his room. She brings the book, even though he shot her a dirty look when she picked it up. It sits on his bedside table now, looking as ancient as he himself is.

He feels like that book. Old and worn, binding cracking from over use, passed off to someone else to be taken care of. A relic from another time.

He glances at it every now and then. It whispers to him of things long passed, memories long forgotten. He resists it. He resists for days and then weeks. He begins to wonder what's inside. What had Lestrade kept that his children would drive all the way to the countryside to give him?

There has never been a mystery he could resist.

He picks it up one night, after climbing into bed, and turns it over in his hands. The weight of it speaks volumes. A journal, perhaps? No. A son would not give away his father's journal.

He cracks open the cover and stops.

This was not what he was expecting.

It's a scrapbook. There, on the first page, is a newspaper clipping from the very first case he'd helped Lestrade with. It's faded and yellow, but he recognizes it instantly.

He turns the pages and looks at more clippings, more headlines. His name is mentioned in passing in the first few articles, but the farther he goes the more frequent it becomes. Some of the articles pop out and grab his attention, others he glances over briefly.

'London Cabbie Shot While Attempting Murder'

'Orphanage Burns To The Ground'

'Bank Caught In Foreign Trafficking Scandal'

'Prime Minister Abducted, Saved By Freelance Detective'

'Wild Boar Skewered By Local Detective'

'Explosions Rock Central London'

'Local Politician Charged In Drugs Bust'

'Break In At Government Facility'

'Sherlock Holmes A Fake?'

'Suicide of Fake Genius'

'Fake Genius' Funeral Attended By Few'

'Moriarty Was Real'

'The Return of Sherlock Holmes'

'Detective Faked Death To Protect Friends, Family'

Eventually, pictures sneak their way into the scrapbook. Not article headshots, but actual photographs. Every few pages, there is one taped to the paper. It hurts to look at them. Too many smiling faces. Lestrade, Molly, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft, J-

He keeps reading.

'Consulting Detective Back On The Job'

'Terrorist Cell Caught'

'Army Corporal Dishonorably Discharged'

'Consulting Detective Weds Blogger'

'London Underground Crashes'

'Queen Knights Detective'

'War With France Adverted'

'Detective, Blogger Have Child Via Surrogate'

'Assassination Attempt Foiled'

'Jim Moriarty Lives'

'Suspect In Robbery Claims Entrapment'

'Nazi's Caught Tracking Down Holocaust Survivors, Descendants'

'Child of Famous Detective Drowns In Pool, Foul Play Suspected'

He slams the book shut and throws it across the room.

He dreams of Hamish that night, his rosy cheeks and wild brown hair, the way he would toddle down the stairs to Mrs. Hudson's kitchen and return with a cookie in each hand.

He wakes up crying. He's in a foul mood the rest of the day.

And yet he picks up the book again. He takes a picture of Hamish and places it on the bedside table before he begins reading. There's a gap after his son's death. Several years go by between that article and the next. They'd been in seclusion, mourning him.

It's all there. His return to work, speculations on the state of his marriage, that time he moved out of 221 B because he couldn't stand to be there without his child. The death of Jim Moriarty makes an appearance in the book, but he passes it over. He knows what it says. He'd nearly gone to prison for the things he did to that man before he killed him. He still doesn't think he suffered enough for what happened to Hamish.

There are a few more pages.

He wrestles with himself over whether or not to read them, takes a breath, and turns the page.

He cries for the second time in twenty-four hours.

They'd always thought it would be Moriarty who put a stop to their happiness. They'd expected bullets and explosions, maybe a kidnapping or an ultimatum, but when he died, when Sherlock killed him, they'd thought they were safe.

They never thought the end would come as they walked home from Tesco's, groceries in hand, while mulling over the thought of having another baby.

'Detective, Husband Attacked By Gay Bashers'

'Famous Blogger Dies From Brutal Attack'

'Sherlock Holmes In Critical Condition'

There's a picture of them, from their wedding day of all things, tucked between the pages. Behind it there's an envelope with his name scrawled across the front in handwriting he hasn't seen in a very long time.

He opens it. Of course he does. He unfolds the paper, crinkling with age, and presses it flat against the book.

Dear Sherlock,

I read somewhere once that it's always good to have your affairs in order just in case something happens. Well, we live a bit of a mad life, love, and everything happens to us, so I figure I should do this sooner rather than later.

I don't blame you for what happened to Hamish. I don't blame you and you shouldn't blame yourself. We are the product of the choices we make and If I had it all to do over, I wouldn't change a thing.

You said danger – remember? – and here I am. Here I'll stay.

I love you, Sherlock. I know I say it all the time, but I get the feeling sometimes you doubt me. So there it is. I love you.

I wish I were creative enough to write you a sonnet or something romantic like that, but you married an Army Doctor, not a poet. I hope you have no regrets about that. I know I don't.

Your Loving Husband,

John

He's sobbing. It's the ugly, gross kind of sobbing and he can't stop. His whole body shakes and jerks wildly.

Nancy rushes into the room, eyes wide and lips parted. "What's wrong? Mr. Holmes, what's wrong?"

Two minutes later there are three other nurses in the room. They're pushing him back on the bed as Nancy rolls pulls one side of his pajama bottoms down over his hip. He feels the sting of the needle as it bites into his flesh.

The effect of Haldol on his body is strange. It moves slowly as he rolls over in the bed. He feels light and floaty, disoriented even. "There now," Nancy says as the other nurses file out of the room. "You should be able to rest now. Just close your eyes."

But he doesn't close his eyes. He stares at the empty chair on the other side of the room and smiles. "John," he says. "John."

Nancy's jaw drops.

"I miss you," he speaks to the empty chair. He huffs a moment later. "Sleep is boring."

Nancy darts out and returns, pulling a fellow nurse alongside her. She presses a finger to her lips.

"I don't want you to go," his voice cracks. "Don't leave me again, John. Don't…don't go where I can't follow."

The two nurse share a look and back out of the room. Talking to someone who wasn't there was never a good sign.

Nancy made the call to the Doctor.

"He hasn't spoken in nearly twenty years," he snapped. "It's the Haldol."

"But, sir -

"He's hallucinating. It's just a side effect. Do your job and don't call me unless it's an emergency!" the line went dead.

She stuck her head in his room periodically throughout the night, watching him sleep with his hands curled around a picture of a little boy, waiting for the inevitable.

The next morning, the newspapers ran a special headline.

'Genius Detective Passes Away'