Hunter (Sherlock Fanfiction)

Chapter 16: Change

One year later...

"They're bloody idiots!"

"Greg, calm down. I know your division is hopelessly incompetent but I'm not, so let me." I convinced Greg to let me take a case that his division had spent hours trying to solve. It was a terribly easy case, I had told Mrs Hudson about it the previous night and even she had it solved within five minutes, but Greg had been determined to solve the chain of murders on his own.

"Look, you're concerned that there's a serial killer around London again and I get that's stressful, Lestrade. You don't have... him... anymore so the average number of cases that you solve along with the time it takes to solve a case isn't doing well."

"I need a smoke..." He sighed, getting up from his chair. I stopped him and gave him a look. 

"I thought you quit?"

"That was before he died, I can't seem to stop now..." His voice trailed off into nothing. I wrapped my arms around his neck and gave him a hug.

"It's been hard on all of us, but we need to try and live without him now." I pulled away and held him by the shoulders "Let's have dinner, you need to wind down a bit." 

*****

We went to a chippy by the Thames River, and sat down on a bench together in the dark, eating our chips. Greg took a cigarette out from his pocket and lit it, exhaling and causing a small cloud of smoke to go in my face.

"You know, those things are terrible for your lungs." I said, choking on the pungent smell. 

"You sound like Sherlock right now, always telling me to stop smoking." He laughed. 

"Do you miss him?" I asked. He looked at me with a heavy sadness in his eyes.

"Yes, somehow I wish that he'll pull a Sherlock Holmes trick and come back, but..."

"But he jumped off a building." I finished. He nodded and looked out over the Thames River and over to Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the London Eye on the other side. 

"How's your thing going anyways, with your mission thing?"

"Decent, we've gotten a bit more information and things are going well." I lied. In reality, things were not going well at all. Ezra was still leaving for months at a time but he did supply us with a heck ton of information, Regina was trying to let go of her assassin days and live normally but she still helped with anything I needed help with. And John? He had moved out of Baker Street last week with his new girlfriend, Mary. Although, I did like Mary a lot more than the rest of John's exes as she had managed to pull him out of the dark place he had been in after Sherlock died. 

"And you've managed to do all this whilst taking on most of the cases Sherlock would have taken, it must be exhausting."

"A little, but once this is all over I can finally rest."

"What do you want to do once you retire?"

"I've always wanted to move to the countryside, live in a small cottage with a cat or dog and tend to my own orchard for the remainder of my life. What about you?"

"I want to find a place on the coast and go jet skiing every weekend." He admitted, a little embarrassed. 

"Hey, we all have our weird dreams. When I was younger, I always dreamed of being a princess who would get rescued from her dull life by a pirate."

"Certainly not the oddest fantasy around, thank you for spending tonight with me, Ava. I appreciate it. I've had a hard time with the divorce and Sherlock being gone, it's nice to clear my mind with a friend."