A/N: I haven't the foggiest idea where this plot bunny came from, but I decided to try it, originally posting it on my LiveJournal. Thanks to KaizokuShojo and Pebbles66 for their encouragement to post it here as well.

I stepped off the wooden gangplank with a thrill of gladness to plant my weary feet upon familiar English soil once more, in the great country I loved so dearly but had been absent from for so long...the years seemed more like decades, and my sixty-six more like ninety.

I gripped my small bag tightly as I stumbled, accidentally jostled by a hurrying young fellow in khaki, who shouted an apology as he jumped down to greet a crying, smiling young woman who had to be his wife. I looked round at the unfamiliar scene with some sense of bewilderment, like a child lost in an unfamiliar department store – how very much things had changed in four years!

My fellow men in uniform were sweeping wives, sweethearts, and children into their arms with an abandon that never would have been seen back when I was that age; war makes mighty changes in us all, I had come to see all too well over the years. Such emotional openness would not have been common or indeed proper in the complacent Victorian era I had seen at that age. Such a pity, that half the world was forced to annihilate the other half to provoke us to realise those things that truly were important.

I watched a father swing his infant son up into his arms and put a loving hand on an older lad's shoulder, saw men clapping each other on the back and laughing, talking animatedly. The younger, much younger, doctor with whom I had been traveling had bid me a hasty goodbye and dashed off to greet his awaiting friends, newly arrived from the front as well. Despite the sobriety of the wounded and recovering men that dotted the otherwise whole crowd, only joy and closeness filtered through this place at this time; all were safe and content in the knowledge that the war to end all wars was indeed over.

I watched for a long moment as the crowd thinned and gathered into small excited knots and laughing couples. Then I sighed and turned away, feeling very, very old and weary, and started toward the nearby street with my eyes downcast and my heart not far behind them.

"You have been in Flanders, I perceive."

I promptly dropped my bag in astonishment, and it thumped and rolled a foot or two. My heart quickened and jumped into my throat, and I whirled round upon the so very familiar voice, one that I would recognise anywhere, in any guise. And finally I felt my face break into a very wide, very overjoyed smile, something I had not done for years now.

"What the devil!" He had come to meet me? How?

"Good to see you too, my dear Watson," Sherlock Holmes replied in amusement, his grey eyes dancing, as he firmly wrung my hand with his right and gripped me affectionately by the shoulder with his left, running that piercing gaze over me with all the old sharp scrutiny I so remembered.

"But – how –" I stammered in amazement, my brain refuting the evidence of my stunned eyes.

"Oh, come now, Watson. Age has not disintegrated my faculties all that much, I should hope. It was no great feat to trace your movements once you left your post," said he airily, picking up my bag and smiling at me with the warmth that can only be originated in a long separation.

"But – well – by heaven, it's good to see you!" I finally exclaimed.

"It has been far too long," he mused somewhat sadly, linking his arm through mine and starting for the street with me in tow.

"Over a year," I agreed quietly, for we had been able to see each other for a few brief hours that one time when he was asked by his brother to deliver some message on the Continent…it seemed like a lifetime ago. "What have you been doing these last few months? That business for the war department was concluded just after we parted ways in France, so you said."

"Indeed. I accomplished what I had been asked to do and returned to my little cottage, having nothing to occupy my time then but study my bees and continue to track your location across Europe as I had been doing," he replied, his grip on my arm tightening protectively.

"Did you really?"

"My hair has not greyed this much in four years for nothing, old fellow," he said softly, and I saw his features grow suddenly weary with the look of a man who has seen and done far more than he should in sixty-four years, " and when I heard how bad Flanders had been, I…" his voice trailed off for a moment with a slight tremor, and a few seconds passed quietly before he went on. "…Well, at any rate I was certainly glad you sent me that wire the next day telling me you had escaped the fate of so many unfortunate others."

I shuddered at the nightmarish remembrance – the Afghan War had been bad enough, but this one had brought a whole new meaning to the word horrific. The cost for victory, a necessary and well-deserved but expensive victory, had been so dreadfully high. Holmes's hand tightened again on my arm as I shivered even in the warm sun, chilled by invisible and intangible sights and sounds.

"You will come down and stay with me, for a few days at least?" he asked hesitantly, waving down a rather ancient cab; the streets were a bit rough in places for a motor-taxi, and besides I remembered that he still despised the machines.

"I would rather like that, Holmes, very much," I replied, slumping back in the seat with utter exhaustion and reveling in the smell and feel soft leather; another nostalgic reminder of the comforts of a pre-war age.

"Capital," Holmes exclaimed contentedly. I then noticed that he was quite openly staring at me, glancing up and down my figure in a very odd fashion.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, nothing," he said hastily, his face flushing warmly. "It's – it's just that I have never seen you in a uniform before; it was so dark when we met that one time…."

"The last time I wore one was nearly forty years ago, shortly before I met you," I sighed, feeling dreadfully old as I said it, "thirty-seven years, to be exact."

Holmes whistled, his brow furrowing in reflection. "Has it really been? What an incredibly long time," he mused, settling back beside me.

"Good heavens, yes. Half a lifetime," I murmured, thinking back over how many things we had done together, the feats we had accomplished, the people we had helped, in those thirty-seven years.

"The better half," he muttered wryly.

"Well, you are optimistic in your old age."

Holmes snickered, shaking himself out of his rather depressed reverie and sending me a warm grin. For a few minutes we chatted, a little slowly at first and then faster as we warmed up to each other once more, falling back into place in each other's minds and hearts as if we had never left Baker Street fifteen years ago.

In a little while we had boarded a train – Holmes had already procured two tickets in his usual presumptuous anticipation of my returning to Sussex with him – and we found ourselves in a small compartment at last, facing each other as of old.

For a few minutes a comfortable silence filled the compartment, broken only by the sounds of distant traffic as we pulled out of the station; Holmes scowled and muttered something about 'those confounded motorcars that people are so fond of cluttering up the streets with' making an infernal racket.

"England – and the world – have changed so much in four years," I remarked softly, glancing about us as we traveled through a countryside that looked the same to appearances, though within the small houses that dotted the green meadows lived families that had been struck and decimated by the war.

"Indeed," my companion sighed. "You and I, Watson – we are relics of a forgotten age. Nothing remains of our London but a few ancient hansoms and the youngest sergeants at the Yard, now venerable Inspectors. It made me feel quite elderly to read last month that Stanley Hopkins was preparing to retire from active duty. We are the only thing that remains of that bygone era, I am inclined to think sometimes."

"We, and over fifty stories in the Strand Magazine," I replied with a self-satisfied smile. "You at least will never truly die, Holmes, not so long as people love you through the pages of my 'ridiculous romanticism'."

"A dubious immortality," he muttered, but his eyes told me he was not really as indifferent as he appeared as he turned them once more upon me, their keen scrutiny not missing a single detail of my appearance. "You look absolutely exhausted."

"Thank you very much for that comforting assurance," I snorted dryly, leaning back in the seat with immense weariness.

He chuckled lightly, his eyes lighting up with that old mischievous twinkle I remembered and missed so much. For a moment we sat in silence, listening to the train wheels – so much quieter now than those rickety old railway cars we had traveled in so many, many years ago, dashing off to those exciting cases with all the exuberance of youth and vitality… My mind wandered for a little while along a path of memory until I became aware of Holmes's watching me with some concern at my distant expression. I shook off the nostalgic mood and brought myself firmly back to the present; I had learnt in the last few years that the present was the only part of one's life that was guaranteed, and one should make the most of it.

"How is your brother?" I asked finally, trying to think of conversation that would keep both our minds off the past.

"Whitehall's pension keeps him able to spend his days studying and whatever else he does with his time and his brain now," he replied cheerfully. "Living comfortably still in Pall Mall, so I've heard since last year when he began to gradually relinquish control of his Empire to underlings. A little less mobile than before, but that is not saying much for he never was much of a one for getting about."

"I am glad to hear it," I said quietly, for I had feared that the elder Holmes had passed on in my absence and was relieved to find my fear had not yet been justified.

Silence - a comfortable, comforting silence - fell once more over the compartment, for there really was no need for small talk between the two of us, not after so many years. But as I felt the pull of exhaustion threatening to creep over my dulled senses, I turned my gaze to his and spoke.

"Thank you, Holmes, for meeting me," I said sincerely. "It – it means a lot to me, I promise you."

"I would not have missed it for the world," he replied, his eyes shining warmly at me for a fond moment. Then he reverted to that old aloof exteriour and waved off the emotional tone with a careless hand. "Besides, my bees have been frightfully dull the last few days anyway."

"Only the last few days?" I asked drowsily, slumping back into the seat cushions and raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Holmes laughed heartily, and I realised suddenly how much I had missed the sound; laughter of any kind had been a rare occurrence in my company for so long.

"You shall have to come and see them with me when we get back, Watson. They really are the most fascinating study, you know?"

"Bees." I shook my head and closed my eyes, feeling my senses start to slow with the knowledge that I had nowhere to be, nothing that would demand my attention at the moment of my rude awakening…no dying patients to haunt my waking hours and deceased soldiers to haunt my sleeping ones, nothing. I would be perfectly safe in nodding off for a bit…

I jumped with a startled cry as a loud, sharp crack sounded in the next compartment, my war-frayed nerves automatically registering the sound as possible danger, and I felt Holmes's strong but gentle hands on my shoulders, pushing me gently back down into the seat and holding me there.

"Easy, old chap. I think it was merely a piece of luggage falling from the rack in the next compartment," he soothed, moving to sit beside me and keeping a firm grip on my shoulders as I forced my breathing back to normalcy with a supreme effort. I felt my face flush scarlet with high embarrassment, but he patted my arm reassuringly and without any hint of condemnation for my weakness.

"It's all right, old man. You've had a devil of a time of it, I know. We've a three-hour train ride to Sussex, Watson, so do try and get some sleep." He spoke atypically gently, calmly, so much so that I instinctively wished to obey and to trust his words.

I took a deep breath and nodded, forcing the smile back to my face and settling back once more, and feeling his firm grip remain supportingly round me as I began to slowly relax and grow drowsy again. With the welcome approach of a safe sleep, my mind became slightly pensive.

It was true, that we were part of a forgotten age, buried in a bygone year of Victorian formality and beautiful simplistic living. But I knew that despite the transformation that went on round us, the whole world could turn upside down and we would never truly change: not to the world who only knew us through the pages of a romantic adventure story, not to the few living souls who yet remembered the address 221B Baker Street and two gentlemen who had spent over twenty years there in a battle against crime and injustice. Few men were privileged enough to attain that kind of a well-remembered legacy, and we were two of them.

All good things must come to an end, so they say – but Sherlock Holmes had never been one to conform to popular opinion, and he had certainly proven society wrong in that particular adage.

We would never really die, in the hearts of our readers or, more importantly, in each other's.

And that was all that truly mattered.