A/N: Hi everyone! At long last, the final installment. I hope you like it—I had meant to do more chapters but Season 3 really changed a lot of things so I just thought I would neatly tie up the ends of my little head-canon and move on. I do like this chapter, though, and I hope you do too. There's a pinch of hope in it.

It's set pre-John, but not by much.

He was a man with a purpose that was inimitable, inexorable, and quite inscrutable because it was so singularly his own.

He was an enigma to those who met him, a faint sort of legend to those who heard of him.

He was Sherlock Holmes, and he was all that kept Scotland Yard together.

Then, too, Scotland Yard was all that kept him together.

Scotland Yard was the solution to the habit that had started long ago by the side of a schoolyard fence and in part, to the unhappiness that had started long before that.

Those days still lingered in the far recesses of the Mind Palace, folded away and boxed up, yet never truly erased.

He was something now, someone. A consulting detective—cryptic and unconventional enough to dissatisfy Mycroft, active and agile enough to occupy his mind. Sometimes he thought that if his father cared to know, he would have hated it.

Sometimes he thought Mummy would have approved of it.

There was, perhaps, a slight chance that Mycroft's dissatisfaction might not be so entire as he would have liked; but that was best not dwelt upon. He didn't want to think of that decision as being in any part a credit to Mycroft. But then, the brother who had come to him on one memorable day when decisions had been made and turning points been reached had not been anything like the brother he generally knew.

Therefore, that person, being so unlike Mycroft, could almost be considered a separate entity from Mycroft.

It was a memory he would rather have tucked far, far away—pushing it over the very edge of remembrance—but even now, with his clever fingers employed by a careful sorting of blood samples in the Saint Bart's lab, he could not.

A few years ago. He knew the exact number—of days, even of hours, but didn't wish to recall. It had been a white room, sunlit through a large window. The light, he remembered, had hurt.

"I don't need rehabilitation, Mycroft." Every word was a sneer. Had to be, so that they might not be pleas.

"Sherlock." Mycroft's pompous voice, usually so condescending, had a note of gentle sympathy beneath its layers of detachment. "Look at yourself."

He didn't have to, not really. He knew what drug addicts looked like. He knew he was one. He didn't know if it was worth caring about. "Not important."

"Think of what Mummy would say, if she could see you now."

Pain—burning and sharp—broke through the numbness, and Sherlock knew he was incapable of pushing it away.

"She can't."

"Perhaps she can."

It was the only time his brother acknowledged even the faintest possibility of an afterlife. It was the only time Sherlock remembered him so plainly, so transparently…caring.

His fingers were perfectly poised as he finished his organization of the samples. He did not believe, on principle, in letting memories disturb his equilibrium.

He was miles past that; at least, he was miles past caring.

The door of the lab banged open and, had he been in a self-evaluative frame of mind, he might have questioned that concept of past caring.

If caring included emotions such as exasperation, that was.

Sally Donovan stalked towards him—because Sally always stalked, at least when she was in his vicinity—and he felt a familiar flicker of disgust. (It was disgust now—it had once been borne of schoolyard glares and mockery, and he called it disgust because that didn't hurt).

He saw the new little pathologist—couldn't recall her name, or didn't care to—trail in after her, a diminutive shadow in the wake of Sally's aura of general displeasure.

"Lestrade says you've determined something."

"Of course," he said, peering deliberately down into the microscope. He had read that eye contact was important to most people; that the lack of it made them uncomfortable. Thus, a lack.

"Little more specific?"

The pathologist was opening drawers and shutting them again, looking for something. It was vaguely irritating.

"Something was your choice of words, Sally."

She huffed out a sigh. "Said you knew the C.O.D."

"Ah, yes." He smiled. Infused the smile with a hint of condescension. Saw her notice it out of the corner of his eye. This was an old game of theirs—skewers and jabs. Quick razor cuts, precise, like a surgery of sarcasm.

He almost couldn't remember who had started it.

"Traces of hemlock toxins in the bloodstream," he announced.

"Oh," she said.

"It wasn't a murder," he added.

"Really? Sounds like a straight-up poisoning to me."

"Did you look at his hands?"

"No." She was disgruntled.

"He was a naturalist. Happened to eat the wrong plant. Accidental death. That's all." He implied by the quick ratchet of his speech that her ignorance was unforgivable. Which really, it was. She was on the police force. Hardly singular in her idiocy; but that just made the whole lot of them incorrigible.

She turned, scorn in every inch her posture. Walked towards the door, tossed a word over her shoulder.

"Freak."

And it struck him. Like it always had. Like it always would, and he hated how it crippled him, even for just a moment. How it crippled him, even now.

She was walking out, and he had no retort.

But the pathologist had gone very still.

"Don't say that."

Her voice sliced through air like a blade, cutting off Sally's departure.

"Sorry, what?" Sally didn't understand.

And for once, Sherlock didn't either.

The little pathologist—her name, Sherlock remembered, still not knowing if he cared to, was Molly—had her hands pressed flat against the lab table, had her eyes fixed unwaveringly on Sally.

"Don't call him that."

Sally relaxed into her typical position of belligerent contempt. "You arguing it? Please. You may have a schoolgirl crush or some such nonsense, but it's the bloody truth."

"It isn't just," said Molly, and her voice was quieter, but no less sharp.

Just. He thought it was an interesting word, and it was the only word he found himself holding onto. It isn't just.

Sally shrugged and went out, unapologetic and yet visibly deflated.

And Molly just—stood. And looked down. At anything but him. She opened another drawer and shut it again without even glancing inside.

He opened his mouth to speak. To tell her—what? That she was wrong, or right? That she was the first to defend him?

She looked up and met his eyes.

He analyzed her quickly, briefly and reaffirmed what he had originally deduced: she was profoundly, pitiably average.

She went out before he said anything, coat flapping about her.

She had thought he deserved justice. He had thought she was pathetic.

He didn't know what he thought now.