Chapter 1:

A Conversation Starter Piece

The boys were having yet another one of their little "domestics". Normally, this wouldn't phase Mrs. Hudson, since it usually meant she got some much needed peace and quiet around the flat while Sherlock sulked in his study and John stormed out and did whatever it was that he did… But this time, Sherlock's "coping" antics had surpassed obscene amounts of nicotine patches, hallucinogenic sugar ("Experiment in progress!" Sherlock would correct), and the occasional extra bullet holes in the walls (which she always swore she was going to tack onto their rent… one of these months…). Those, Mrs. Hudson could live with – but this?!

Her lips were a thin, chalky pink line of disdain as she bustled around the living room, picking up Sherlock's debris of emotional mismanagement. Crumpled scribbled out notes, an exorbitant amount of empty tea cups and half-eaten take out containers, piles of shriveled nicotine patches that had been kicked under the couch like an abandoned snake skin… Again, these things she could live with, as odd and unhygienic as they were. But this…

It stood in the corner of the room the whole time she cleaned, and if not for the fact that it had been chiseled into a form that covered its eyes, Mrs. Hudson probably would have been even more irate since then it would have felt as if it were watching her. Insult to injury avoided, so that was a small victory there. It was grey and plain, and …well… it was ugly, there was no other word to so succinctly describe it. She figured either Sherlock had gotten it to set John off (she could never tell if he started things intentionally or not, but regardless, he was the one to always start these sort of things between them), or this was his attempt at remedying the situation. Although why Sherlock would ever think that a hunk of stone junk would ever put him back into the good graces of the doctor was beyond Mrs. Hudson. Hence, she attributed its arrival in the flat to the former of the two options.

She thought about shucking it into the basement, but it looked too heavy to get down there by herself, and she didn't feel like paying someone to come move it for her. No, she'd much rather save that money for her scratch cards and cheap makeup. Instead, she pulled down some old holiday lights from the attic, shook out most of the dust, and strung it around the hulking thing and plugged it in. She stood back to admire her handiwork with a smug smile. Self-satisfaction was not something that came into Mrs. Hudson's life readily at 221B since the arrival of the consulting detective and his P.A., so she wasn't about to pass up the moment.

She plucked out a card from the dresser and scribbled a reminder note for the boys that she was not their housekeeper, and taped it to the back of the hands of the great winged statue. By the time she finished assessing the damage in the kitchen, her disapproval in Sherlock's furniture taste had all but evaporated to a small nagging sensation in the back of her mind, something that would easily be forgotten about completely once she headed upstairs for her routine nightcap and favorite telly program.

And forget is exactly what she did as she trudged up those stairs after doing more scrubbing and rubbish chucking in the kitchen than she deemed respectable for a woman of her age. So tired and irritable was she with Sherlock, that she never even remembered to unplug the holiday lights. Perhaps if she had – or perhaps if Sherlock could remember to run the dish wash every once in a while, or if he and John had never argued over who's turn it was to go have a row with the machine down at the market, or perhaps if Mrs. Hudson could just make good on her word that she was in fact not the boys' housekeeper – she would have possibly noticed that her passive aggressive note had fallen from the statue's hands, and landed neatly and innocently on top of the desk from which she had gotten the card paper from…which just happened to be on the clear other side of the room.

Perhaps then Mrs. Hudson would have realized that she was not as alone as she thought she was that night in 221 B, and perhaps everything that happened next would have turned out much much much differently.