Finishing stories left and right. This one freaking broke my heart to end but it reached its conclusion. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU REVIEWS AND FAVORITES...YOU ARE FREAKING AMAZING PEOPLE! Thank you!

He quit the next day.

Mycroft had been right. He needed to move on. He needed to find another way to be productive to society but filing papers wasn't it.

"You're what?"

Sherlock buttoned his jacket and stood firm. "I quit."

"You can't quit," he said. "What about your rent?"

The cut on his face burned with an intensity that kept him going. The small sting reminded him of the man from John's blog. That person wouldn't have put up with his brother's demands. That Sherlock paved his own way.

"I'll figure something out," he said.

Mycroft sighed. "You're not well. Just stay on for a few more weeks."

"I'm fine," Sherlock said. "You don't need to worry."

He shook his head. "Worry? I'm not worried. Is that what you think that this is?"

"Of course," Sherlock said.

Mycroft bounded forward. "I stopped worrying about you years ago. Now you're just…"

Sherlock saw straight through the bluster. "Just a what?" he said with a smile.

"Forget it," Mycroft said.

"I know what you did. I know what you've done. I know that you care. But you have to understand that this is my life to live."

"Yes I realize that."

"It will be all right," Sherlock said.

Mycroft blinked back the concern in his eyes. "Mother would always talk about you...she saw things I never did."

The mention of his mother pierced Sherlock's heart. "Saw what?"

"Never mind," Mycroft said as he placed his phone in his pocket and headed for the door. Sherlock put a hand to his brother's chest to stop him. He looked him straight in the eye.

"Sherlock please," Mycroft said as he grabbed at Sherlock's hand to pull him away.

He shook his head. "Tell me, please," he said quietly.

Mycroft backed away. "When she was diagnosed, she called me. She was in tears."

He held tight to his breath. It took his mother days to break the news to him and she had sounded so collected. It had alarmed him with the amount of calm she possessed as she spoke to him.

"She wanted you there, not me. I wasn't offended. It made sense."

He looked up at his brother. "Did she say why?"

"Why do you think?" he said.

He genuinely didn't know. His memories of his mother were in bits in pieces. The pain was that so much of his childhood was a blur but the time at her bedside was crisp and clear. He could smell the musty bedsheets and herbal tea as potent as if they were there. His strongest memories of her was at her weakest.

Mycroft ran his fingers of the figurine that sat on his desk. "She knew you wouldn't give up on her."

They'd given her no more than a month to live. He'd rushed home in the middle of the semester and didn't leave the house for thirty-four days except to go to the pharmacy and get her medications.

Never once did they mention that she was going to die. Never once did they talk about her disease. He sat beside her bed and they read together from morning until night. All his mother wanted was to finish the books that she'd never had a chance to read that sat in a stack beside her bed, mocking her inability to find the time.

They read them all in those thirty-four days. At first they'd switch off but quickly she lost the ability to speak with any fluency and her hands shook as she held the books. It was then he took over. He read until his throat ran dry and his voice croaked at overuse. But they finished each one. All twenty-one books were completed.

He'd finished the last page of Jane Eyre the morning that she passed. As he read the last few pages, he felt a great urgency. Her grip on his hand had loosened in the last chapters and he read quickly. He felt a squeeze as he entered the last page.

"Slow down, darling," she said.

He looked up at her and saw her smiling for the first time in days.

"I want to enjoy this one," she said softly.

He finished the last sentence and shut the book. It was going to be the last page he'd read to her. He knew, deep in his heart, that this was it. "Did you like it?" he said.

She looked over at him with glee in her eyes. "It was glorious."

He then felt her hand grow limp in his and her eyelids closed.

Sherlock looked over at his brother. "I just wanted to make her happy."

Mycroft shook his head. "No, you did so much more. She knew that you had that strength. I never had it."

"You must."

"I don't," Mycroft said. "You don't give up. Not on anything."

Sherlock sighed. "Don't be so sure."

"No," he said, "not even this has stopped you. I just...I don't understand. How?"

"How?"

Mycroft anxiously tapped his desk. "I spoke with your doctors."

Sherlock was about to chastise him but Mycroft put out a hand. "Before you say anything, just listen."

He held his tongue.

"They said...it...they told you that it isn't fixable. Is that right?"

Sherlock nodded.

"And you're okay with that?"

"I have to be."

Mycroft clenched his hands. "How can you be? After everything you've worked for?"

"I know."

"I don't understand."

Sherlock looked at his brother and tried to remember their life together and how many times they'd stood across from each other and fought just the same way. Two men with so much history and so little understanding of each other. "That's just the way it is. I'm angry, too."

"Then do something about it."

"I am," Sherlock said. "I'm moving on."

Mycroft shook his head. "No. You've done too much."

"It's gone, Mycroft. Please...just understand that."

"No," he said. "I don't want to believe that."

Sherlock put a hand on his brother's shoulder. "There's life beyond this."

He pulled up with John in the cab. Sherlock hadn't been nervous up until the car stopped. His leg shook against the floor of the car.

"You all right?" John asked.

Sherlock shrugged.

"You're going to be just fine."

Rent was due in just a week's time and John was still at home. This wasn't an option. It was a necessity.

"What if I'm not?" Sherlock said.

John smiled. "Sherlock Holmes does not doubt himself. You understand?"

Sherlock nodded. "Just this once?"

John grabbed his arm. "Nope. Now let's go."

They walked up the step and to the front door.

"You ready?" John asked as his hand perched in front of the door, ready to knock.

Sherlock nodded.

Harry was already there the moment John knocked. "You're here!" she said with a big smile.

Sherlock slammed his hands into the pocket of his coat and forced a nervous smile. "Hello."

She looked behind herself at the commotion in the back of the house. "You're just in time. He's a little wound up."

John looked over at Sherlock and gestured him inside. "After you."

Harry grabbed Sherlock the moment he walked inside and hugged him so hard he could barely breath. "Thank you so much," she said with tears in her voice.

"Thank you," he said quietly.

She took them both to Peter's room where he sat on the floor with a bucket of Lego's spilled out on the floor. He had created a barrier of coordinated colors to encapsulate himself from intruders.

"Peter?" Harry said.

His head spun around but he didn't say a word.

"Sherlock's here to play with you, okay?"

Sherlock looked over at John as he took a tentative step forward.

It wasn't much but it was enough for rent. It was a job that he knew he could succeed at it made Harry so happy. He couldn't help but smile as he stepped over an outlying blue Lego on the way to Peter's bed.

This was where he belonged. Sure it wasn't solving serial murders or stopping assassination plots but it wasn't giving up. He adapted. The man from the blog would be proud. He'd evolved. He was new.

He hadn't stopped.

He lived on.

Sherlock pointed to the poster on the wall.

Helicopters.

He couldn't remember what he had for breakfast but his knowledge of helicopters appeared untouched. "Want to build that one?"

Peter shook his head.

"Airplane. Boeing 777. 247 seats."

Sherlock looked over at John who had a look of unbridled glee.

"247 seats," Sherlock said as he parked himself on the floor next to Peter. "Well then we must get started."