Archive of Our Own ^beta

When the knock came at the door, Maria was in the middle of cleaning up after the day's autopsy. She turned off the faucet and looked at the clock. It was only half past five, so it wouldn't derail her entire evening if someone had a few questions or wanted a quick meeting. But if it was another autopsy coming in, it would be a late night.

"Come in."

The door opened, and van Zieks stepped inside. Maria tilted her head in consideration. It had been a while since his last evening visit, what with the long hours he'd worked previous to the attack and then his recovery. Usually, Maria was the one who made the trip out to Baker Street or the manor these days, whenever someone invited her.

"I know I'm a bit early," van Zieks said. "But I thought I'd drop by for old time's sake and offer to see you home. Are you just cleaning up?"

"Yes. I need to clean my tools and write up the notes for the report. But I suppose if you wanted to wait twenty minutes, we could leave then."

"Perfect. I'd help you with the washing up, but…"

He shrugged and looked down at his hands. He still didn't have full use of them, and the bandages and splints needed to stay dry.

Maria clicked her tongue impatiently. "Just sit and wait. Here."

She pulled the chair away from her desk and positioned it out of the way. With a wry smile, he crossed the room and sat in it.

"It's been weeks, you know," he said. "I don't need so much coddling anymore. Everything is healing nicely."

Maria sniffed. "I never coddle. Who has the time for that? You should still be resting when you can. You've undoubtedly delayed your recovery already, straining yourself during the trials."

"Not to worry. Iris has been making sure I do little but rest, and I'm supposed to have weeks off of work." Van Zieks lapsed into silence, and Maria nearly forgot about him as she went about meticulously washing her instruments. Then he broke her concentration again by saying, "Was this an interesting autopsy?"

"All autopsies are interesting."

"Would you like to tell me about it?"

Maria looked at him. He watched her with polite interest. In general, Maria did not enjoy having an audience to everything she did, but sometimes it was nice to have someone who was genuinely interested in what she had to say about the things she wanted to talk about.

"Yes," she said. "I would."

She recounted the autopsy in clinical detail as she cleaned her tools, and van Zieks listened quietly aside from an occasional question. When she had put her instruments safely away again, she frowned at her desk. She needed to write up the notes from the procedure, but there was only one chair in the lab, and it was currently occupied.

Van Zieks picked up on the dilemma right away and stood.

"Oh, sit down," Maria said. "You've been standing too much."

"It's not as if my legs are broken," he said dryly. "You're only going to hurt your back if you hunch over like that."

"No, I won't. I'm not old yet."

He coughed out a low, somewhat pained laugh. "That's brutal, Doctor Gorey. Enjoy your youth while you can. It's all downhill from here."

Maria brought her papers over to the counter across the room instead, judging it higher than the desk and therefore requiring a bit less awkward hunching.

"You aren't old. Twenties to mid-thirties are when your body is in peak physical condition." She paused, considered. "So you're almost old."

Van Zieks laughed again, just a quick huff quickly smothered. "You've been spending too much time with Mr. Asogi and Miss Lestrade. I'm not sure I like that their irreverence is rubbing off on you. Just write your notes already."

Maria bent over the counter and started scribbling, but paused briefly to lift a hand to her face. A strange tightening of the muscles left her off balance, and her fingertips pressed lightly against the corner of her mouth, which had somehow tugged itself into a smile. Learning how to evoke amusement in her companions was a new development that she had not yet fully come to understand, but it seemed to inspire a similar positive reaction in her. Maybe she liked it.

She jotted down her notes and turned back. Van Zieks was leaning back in the chair, eyes closed, and Maria wondered if she had taken longer than she thought. Sometimes she got carried away when writing up her reports.

"Are you asleep?" she asked.

It was quite possible to sleep in the lab, of course. She had done it quite frequently herself, although not nearly as often since van Zieks had started gently but firmly encouraging her not to. But the table was occupied, and the chair seemed particularly uncomfortable.

"No," van Zieks said, opening his eyes.

Maria regarded him doubtfully. "I suppose we should go before you do fall asleep."

He smiled thinly. "I'm not falling asleep. I am…learning how to sit with my thoughts."

"…I have no idea what that means. Aren't you sitting with your thoughts every time you sit down?"

"In the most literal sense, I suppose." He hesitated and then said, "I find it difficult to sit idle and be alone with myself when I don't have something to focus on or work to do. I am practicing."

Maria sighed. Sometimes she didn't understand people at all.

"You're not alone. I'm right here."

Van Zieks coughed out another quick laugh. "Right again, my impeccably literal friend."

"Are we friends?"

The idea had come up once or twice before. Iris had said they were, and she seemed knowledgeable in such things. But there was always lots to do and more immediately relevant things to think about, so Maria had set it aside and largely ignored it. But if he was going to bring it up, then maybe now was the time to finally sort out the question.

Van Zieks cocked his head in a politely curious manner. "Do you want to be?"

Maria mulled this over. She was still not very well versed in the concept of friendship and what it entailed. Iris had tried to explain it to her once or twice and declared them friends as well, but it was still a foreign concept. But Iris made it sound nice, and if nothing else, Maria thought that friends were people to spend time with. Who you liked and who liked you. This had not seemed very important when she had only the dead for company, but now that van Zieks had drawn her into his circle and introduced her to his companions, she thought she might like it more.

"Yes," she said. "I think so."

"Splendid. I do as well, and although I am no expert on the subject, I believe that is the only real requirement. So yes, I suppose we are."

Maria thought such a profound pronouncement might make her feel different, might make something change or shift into place, but everything felt exactly the same. This was slightly disappointing. But then she thought that perhaps the reason it felt the same was that they had already been friends all along without acknowledging it, and that was nice.

But Maria didn't really know what to say about it, so she settled for "We can go now."

Van Zieks nodded and headed for the door, and Maria followed behind. They clambered into the waiting carriage and sat in silence for a few minutes, as they often did during such rides.

Then van Zieks sighed and pulled his gaze away from the window to study her instead. "Have you visited your mother recently?"

"I visit her every week."

"Have you…talked to her about whatever was bothering you?"

Maria pursed her lips and looked back out the window again. "No. You were supposed to come with me."

"Ah. My apologies for the delay. That is what I wished to discuss with you. I did promise to go with you, and I have not been available to do so. Now that I am on leave and sufficiently rested, I have a good deal more time on my hands. I will make myself available whenever you wish to go. Perhaps this weekend?"

"…That's too soon. I need more time to…"

"I won't ask you to go before you're ready," van Zieks said in a lower tone. "But… Do you feel any more ready now than you did when we first raised the possibility weeks ago? Perhaps this is one of those things you just have to do even when you don't feel ready. Are you preparing yourself or merely delaying the inevitable?"

Maria frowned at her reflection in the glass. She didn't want to think about it too hard.

"…Fine. This weekend."

"I think that's good. But if you do change your mind and need to wait a little longer, that's alright too."

Maria very rarely changed her mind once she had decided to do something. She knew this needed to be done.

So although she had explicit permission to back out, Saturday found her standing on van Zieks's doorstep. When she knocked, van Zieks answered the door himself.

"Ah, Doctor Gorey. Good morning. Let me fetch my cloak, and we can be on our way."

Maria waited while he grabbed his cloak and followed him silently back to the carriage she had left in the street. It was another quiet ride. Van Zieks made one or two cautious overtures and then lapsed into silence when she didn't respond much past a nod or shake of the head or shrug of her shoulders. There was an uncomfortable tightness in her chest, and she couldn't think of a single thing to say.

When the carriage stopped outside the prison, Maria stayed rooted to her seat. Van Zieks started to stand, took a good look at her, and sat again. Neither of them said anything for a long time. When the carriage driver finally opened the door to see what was going on, van Zieks waved him away.

Maria sighed and stood. It was irrational to sit here paralyzed.

Van Zieks followed behind her quietly as they left the carriage. Without any further hesitation, Maria marched inside the building and announced her intention to visit her mother. The wardens knew her by now and waved her through, although they fixed van Zieks with a harder stare as he slipped past.

Mama was reading quietly in the far corner of her cell when they arrived.

"Good morning," Maria said.

Mama looked up, carelessly dog-earing the page of her book and setting it aside. She stood and approached the bars, eyes flicking from Maria to van Zieks and narrowing.

"Good morning. And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, Lord van Zieks?"

Van Zieks sketched a shallow bow. "Hello, Doctor Sithe. Please feel free to ignore my presence. I am not looking to interrupt your visit."

"What are you doing with my daughter?" she asked more sharply.

"I asked him to be here," Maria said.

"…Why?"

"Because I wanted him to come with me today."

Mama stared at her for a long moment. "This mysterious friend of yours who you were asking for advice about…"

Maria nodded. "I need to talk to you about something, but I…didn't want to do it alone. So he agreed to come with me today."

"Talk about what?"

Maria drew a deep breath and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She didn't know where to start. She wasn't even sure she actually wanted to do this.

"I…"

She trailed off and shot an uncertain look at van Zieks. He had said he couldn't do this for her, but she wished he could at least tell her what she was supposed to say.

"What is it you needed to say?" he prompted. "Your mother did something you didn't like, and it's been bothering you, yes? How did that make you feel?"

He had asked the same thing when she told him the story behind the scar on her hand, asking her how she felt about it. Maybe that was somehow the key, but she had never been very good with feelings.

She thought about it, digging deep and searching for something she could string together in a coherent thought.

"You stitched up your corpses with all your secrets inside," she told her mother finally. "That goes against everything you taught me and everything our job stands for. I always admired how dedicated you were to laying out everyone's secrets and unearthing the truth, but you were hiding things too. And that made me feel…disappointed. Disappointed that you would do that, because it's wrong and I thought… I thought you were better than that."

A grimace pulled at the corners of Mama's mouth, her gaze sliding away. It locked on van Zieks again.

"What exactly is this, Lord van Zieks?" she demanded. "You think you can just come in here and use my daughter as some tool to–"

"I'm not using your daughter for anything," van Zieks said. "You need to listen to what she's saying."

"She wouldn't have–"

"It's nothing to do with him," Maria said. "There are things I need to say to you because sometimes they– Sometimes I feel them building and building up inside until it hurts to breathe, and I need to let them out. I don't know how to say them, so I asked him to help me do it."

Mama stared at her unblinkingly. "…Yes," she said finally, her tone clipped. "I didn't live up to your expectations. I wasn't the hero you thought I was, the person you looked up to. I know that."

"You were the person I looked up to. I just can't tell if I was looking in the wrong place." Maria paused and took another breath. "You killed Mr. Asman to keep your secrets buried too. That was also wrong."

"Yes," Mama said tonelessly.

Maria's fingers curled towards fists at her sides and loosened again, over and over and over. That pressure was building up again, something she didn't know how to interpret or release. She shifted in agitation, grasping for anything to hold on to.

"Now you're in jail," she said. "You're a murderer. They're going to execute you. And for what? To cover up something you did wrong by doing something worse? Why didn't you just say no? Having your secrets exposed couldn't be worse than this."

"…You wouldn't understand. I only–"

"No, I don't understand!" Maria cried, something hot and sharp snapping her composure and bleeding through the cracks. "You compounded your mistake by doing something even worse, and you've ruined everything! I needed you! I need you! And now you– Didn't you even think about what would happen? Didn't you even–? Didn't you even think about me? You're hurting me too. Didn't you even care about that?"

Mama closed her eyes. "I never wanted to be caught up in Lord Stronghart's nonsense, but once I was… There was no going back. No way out. If it had come out that I forged that autopsy report… My career would have been destroyed. I would have faced charges of my own, and my reputation would have been in tatters. Do you think I didn't know what it would do to you if I was stripped of my position and put on trial? If you found out that I didn't measure up to your exacting standards or deserve your respect? I couldn't let that happen without at least trying to stop it. Killing Asman and going along with Drebber's blackmail was wrong, but at least it gave me a chance to prevent the train wreck I saw coming. I knew it would make everything a hundred times worse if I were caught, but all my options were bad and I took a gamble. It was foolish and immoral, and if I'd had time to think it through instead of panicking, maybe… It was wrong, and I'm sorry for murdering a man just to have a chance at saving my own skin, and you can hold that against me. But I was thinking about you all along. I always have been."

Somehow, this did not appease Maria. She could follow the thread of her mother's logic, but it felt like she was being used as an excuse for murder.

"This isn't my fault," she said sharply. "I didn't ask you to do it. You didn't do it for me—you did it to protect yourself."

Mama flinched back. "Of course it's not your fault. I didn't say that. But I was trying to protect you, even if I went about it in all the wrong ways."

Maria's anger flared hotter and brighter until she was shaking all over and could hardly see straight. It was just more excuses. She didn't want excuses. She wanted… She didn't know what she wanted.

She wanted to make Mama understand, maybe, but how was she supposed to do that when she didn't even understand herself what she wanted or felt? But everything hurt, and she didn't know how to make Mama understand except maybe by showing her what it felt like.

"You– You–" she stuttered, searching for the words big enough to convey her meaning. "I–"

"Careful, Doctor Gorey," van Zieks said, his voice low and serious. "Some words cannot be unsaid. Sometimes even things that are true do not need to be said if all they will do is cause harm without any benefit."

"But–"

"You are disappointed and angry and hurt. You have expressed this well. What else do you feel that is important enough to share?"

"What else…?"

How should she know that? Everything was too big inside her, swirling around in some maelstrom she hadn't meant to unleash. She so rarely loosed her emotions or took the time to think about them that she couldn't reach out and identify any one of them, couldn't tease it apart from the rest. All she knew was that there was too much of it.

When she opened her mouth, she wasn't sure what was going to come out, but then one thought coalesced with blinding clarity, something bigger and sharper and more important than the rest.

"I miss you," she said in a voice too small to be hers. "I want you to come home."

Her throat suddenly felt very thick, her eyes hot and damp, and Mama disappeared behind a haze of unshed tears. Maria lifted her hand, startled by her body's reaction, and scrubbed at her eyes. Everything still felt too big and loud inside her, but now it wasn't just anger.

Hands came to rest on her shoulders, pushing her gently forwards. She stumbled a step or two, and then Mama's hands came snaking out from between the bars, wrapping around her. Maria gave a small, choking sob and slid her hands into the cell as well, clutching at her mother and pressing as close as she could with the bars separating them, feeling the smooth metal grinding against the ridges of her ribs and pressing painfully against her forehead and cheek.

The anger didn't seem to mean so much in the face of this. All that mattered was that her mother was not going to be coming home again. Soon she would be gone, and that hurt more than anything else.

Maria cried until she couldn't cry anymore, until all the tears she'd never found a use for before finally ran out and left her aching and hollow. Mama murmured sweet-nothings and held on tight while Maria cried and snuffled and subsided. Maria's eyes felt swollen and sore, her nose raw and runny, her chest painfully tight. No wonder she never cried. It was an unpleasant sensation.

"You're right," Mama said when she seemed sure the worst of it was over and Maria could listen again. "I took the gamble for me, because I didn't want you to know the truth. I didn't want to disappoint you or see you look at me like I betrayed you. I was trying to protect you, and we do foolish things for love. But it was selfish too. I know it was wrong, that it hurt you and killed a man and obstructed justice. I'm not proud of it, and if I could change things… But since I can't, I've tried to make peace with it, and maybe that means I've been making excuses for my mistakes. But I promise you that I regret it every day, not only because I got caught, but because I hurt people and betrayed my own morals and lost you. Whatever else, don't doubt that I have thought about you every second, and I have always loved you more than anything."

"I love you too," Maria croaked. "I don't want… I don't want you to…"

"Don't you worry about me. I still have some time. I'm more worried about what will happen to you. You shouldn't have to be alone."

Mama sighed and drew back, retreating into her cell again. Maria let her go, feeling temporarily unmoored by the loss of her. A hand dropped onto her shoulder again, and she looked up at van Zieks. His face was drawn in tight lines, and he looked…tired, maybe. So did Mama. Tired and sad, maybe, in a way sleep couldn't fix.

"I'm not alone," Maria said. "Lord van Zieks visits me in the lab, and now Iris and Lestrade and Asogi and Sholmes are around all the time too."

Mama's brows drew together. "Who? Inspector Gregson's girl and Lord van Zieks's apprentice and that meddling detective?"

Maria nodded. "Lord van Zieks introduced me to everyone. They invite me to eat with them sometimes and talk and do things. We're…friends, I think."

Mama stared at her as if she'd never seen her before. Maria had not exactly been hiding the fact that she had been spending more and more time with van Zieks's companions, but she hadn't really talked about it either. She mostly talked to Mama about her work and autopsies—safe things they both understood.

"You're making friends," Mama said in a strange voice.

"I think so."

"Yes," van Zieks said. "They are your friends."

Mama looked at him then. "…You've been spending time with my daughter and pushing her to make friends with your circle."

"Yes."

"…Why are you looking after her?"

Van Zieks considered this in silence for a long moment, and Maria looked up at him curiously. She wanted to know this too.

"Because I like her," he said finally. "Because I think that with a little guidance, other people will too and she will also learn how to connect with others. And because I don't think that anyone should have to be alone. No matter what happens, she is going to have a support system so that she does not have to go through it alone."

Mama let out a shuddering breath. "…Thank you."

"…The pleasure is all mine."

Maria was too tired to parse through everything right now. All that inconvenient emotion had been packed back away, leaving her feeling drained and exhausted. She had said what she needed to say, at least for now. It was a start. The thought of talking about it any more right now was intensely unappealing.

"I should go," she said abruptly. "I'll visit again soon."

Mama hesitated and then nodded. "Alright," she said softly. "Soon."

Van Zieks followed Maria down the hall. He waited until they had stepped outside the building and into the gray afternoon light before addressing her.

"Where would you like me to take you?" he asked. "To your apartment? The lab? Baker Street? I believe everyone is gathering for tea, if you'd like some company."

Maria had had about enough of dealing with people for the day. But the thought of going back to sit alone in her apartment felt even worse. She could find something to occupy herself with in the lab, but… She loved it there, but she had been working overtime lately, and maybe she needed the day off. Anyway…

As far as people were concerned, maybe she didn't mind so much if it was van Zieks and Iris and the others. She didn't feel so alone with them, and she didn't want to be alone right now.

"Baker Street," she decided.

"Wise choice," van Zieks said, offering his hand to help her into the carriage. "For what it's worth… I know that was very difficult, but you did very well. I hope you feel as if you accomplished what you set out to do."

"…Maybe. Thank you for coming with me."

"Any time. Please believe me that I am at your disposal should you ever need my assistance. All you need to do is ask."

"Thank you," Maria said again, quietly. She did believe it.

"Truly, Doctor Gorey, the pleasure is all mine."

---

"Shake," Barok said, holding out his hand.

Toby lifted his paw and tapped it against Barok's palm. Barok gave it a firm shake and then passed the dog a small treat.

"Blimey!" Lestrade said in delight as Toby scarfed the biscuit. "That's real nice!"

"If you think that's good, I've been teaching him another. Toby, speak."

Toby gave a sharp bark and began spinning in frantic circles, unable to contain his excitement in anticipation of his reward. Barok shook his head indulgently and tossed him another biscuit.

Lestrade dissolved into laughter. "As if 'e ain't loud enough already!"

"But at least now he's loud on command. I don't think it would be difficult to teach him to spin on command either… He does it so much already on his own."

Lestrade beamed at her dog with pride. "'E's the smartest dog on the force, 'e is. Ain't you the smartest boy, Toby? Cleverest police dog out there, ain't ya?"

Toby yipped politely and rolled over, and Lestrade chuckled and crouched down to scratch his belly.

"He's the only dog on the force," Barok said dryly. "The competition isn't very stiff."

"Don't you listen to that grumpy old cove, Toby. Yer the best boy, yes, you are."

In Barok's new surplus of free time, he had been given more leeway to work on Toby's training. Some days when Toby wasn't needed at the Yard, Lestrade dropped him off at the manor instead. Barok and Iris sometimes brought the dog to Baker Street, and they were in the process of introducing him to Wagahai. Toby's constant state of excitement and loud barking often sent Wagahai hiding under chairs or on top of cabinets, but Iris had devised a carefully controlled routine to get the animals used to each other. The venture had been meeting with some success recently—no thanks to Sholmes, who sometimes came through like a whirlwind and upset everything.

Toby had learned all the basic commands with flying colors, so Barok had taken to teaching him more frivolous tricks for Lestrade's entertainment. He was, in fact, a clever dog. Just an often unruly one who would rather have a bit of fun than listen to someone bark orders at him and sometimes prioritized his own amusement.

"Gina!" Asogi shouted from across the room. "Come look at this!"

Barok didn't know what had his apprentice sounding so delighted, but he was nearly certain he wouldn't like it. While the group did often gather at Baker Street, they had been spending more and more time at the manor as well, citing the more spacious accommodations as an excuse. There was a good chance that whatever Asogi wanted Lestrade to look at was something he had found while rooting through Barok's things.

Barok's trepidation only grew when he saw that everyone was clustered around Iris on the sofa. Asogi and Gorey sat on either side of her, while Sholmes stood behind the sofa and leaned over the back. They were looking at a large book Iris had open on her lap, and Barok felt a shiver of apprehension.

Lestrade hared off across the room. "Blimey! Is that the boss? 'E's so small."

Barok's heart sank. He took off after her.

"Isn't he cute?" Iris asked cheerfully. "Ooh, there's a really nice one over here…"

Barok's greatest fears were realized when he recognized the family photo album spread across his niece's lap, opened to pages of childhood photographs.

"Iris, why?" he asked, pained. "I showed you the album for your personal use. Why are you showing it to all my professional colleagues?"

"Oh, no," Asogi said, grinning widely. "This is too good to pass up."

"Don't be upset, Uncle Barry," Iris said, placating. "They're very sweet pictures."

Barok covered his face with his hand. The thought of his companions getting this private glimpse of another life felt intimate and embarrassing.

"You can't deny us this perfect opportunity for gathering blackmail material!" Sholmes declared.

"Sholmes, I swear–"

"No blackmail," Iris said severely. "Any of you. What is there even to blackmail about? They're just nice pictures. Once you get past all the stiff, formal ones, at least. Here, these are more fun."

"That's a lot of people," Lestrade said. "I didn't even know you knew so many people."

Barok shrugged, casting a glance over the photos of small figures ranged across the great lawn and around the grand sitting rooms. "Aunts, uncles, cousins… A few of them are still alive, although we haven't spoken in a decade. Those are my parents and…" He hesitated as his finger moved from his own parents to hover over Klint and his wife. "And Iris's parents."

"She's real pretty, your mum," Lestrade said to Iris, squinting at the picture.

"You stopped talking to your family a decade ago?" Asogi asked, brows rising. He was sharp enough to make the connection.

"Well," Barok said shortly. "They stopped talking to me. For obvious reasons. Although I may have facilitated the process."

"Did none of them ever reach back out after you were acquitted, at least?" Iris asked with a frown. She had never shown much of an interest in the rest of the family beyond her own parents and grandparents, and Barok had not offered the information.

"One of the cousins wrote a letter a few months ago, but I didn't respond."

"Why not?"

"I don't need them," he said tersely. "It's bold of them to crawl out of the woodwork now that I don't need them anymore."

Asogi blinked at him owlishly and Iris's frown deepened, and Barok wished he hadn't said anything.

"You look…happy," Gorey said slowly, as if testing the words, tasting the feeling on her tongue. She was still staring down at the photos with a look of intense concentration.

"Yes, very good," Barok said, flattening his tone to keep the waspish note out. He had come to think that offering Gorey immediate feedback on her interpretations of other people's emotional states might help her become more adept at the venture, and he didn't want to dissuade her from trying. "Everyone was happier then."

He was saved by a crash from the other end of the room as Toby's exploration of a side table grew too intense and he managed to knock over a vase. A hideous vase, thankfully. A gift from some great-aunt that his mother had accepted with a gracious smile and then sighed about behind closed doors even though she put it on display anyway.

"Oops," Lestrade said.

"No, it's perfect," Barok said. "Maybe he can destroy some more dreadful heirlooms I never had the heart to get rid of while he's at it. It's probably time to do a little spring cleaning any– Ah! Not that! That's my mother's, you little gremlin!"

He went chasing after the dog, heedless of the pain jolting through him at every injudicious step, and wrestled the decorative pillow out of Toby's mouth. He wrinkled his nose at the saliva-soaked fabric, but he was sure Mrs. Cooke would know how to clean it without ruining the delicate needlework. His mother had embroidered the pillow herself, and while he didn't care about most of the old fossils and relics gathering dust here, he didn't want to lose anything his family had made with their own hands.

"I should have known better than to leave you unattended for thirty seconds," he said with a sigh, crouching down to scratch the dog behind the ears. "You're such a little scamp sometimes. Sit. Stay here so you don't hurt yourself."

Barok tucked the pillow up out of reach and drifted back to the upended side table, setting it upright and collecting shards of porcelain. Mrs. Cooke would give the floor a thorough cleaning later, but he could at least pick up the obvious hazards. Anyway, it gave him something to do while the others gawked over his childhood.

"I didn't mean to upset you," Iris said quietly, materializing beside him. "I'm sorry."

"No, you didn't," he sighed. "I did say you could look at the album whenever you wanted."

"You just didn't want me to show anyone else."

Barok cast a glance over his shoulder. The others had closed in the space Iris had left behind, fighting over the album and laughing as they looked at the pictures.

"It's your family too," he said, looking away. "You can share it if you want. It's only that… I don't really want to look at it. That's all."

"You start getting tense when you look at the photos with me too. I shouldn't have…"

"They're just pictures. It doesn't matter."

"It…hurts to see them, even though they were happy times?"

Barok's lips twisted wryly, broken fingers spasming around broken porcelain until everything hurt like the rest of him. "Especially because they were happy. It's alright, dear heart. I just don't want to look at them right now. I know I should finish going through them with you, but… We'll do it later, alright?"

"Oh, of course. There's no rush."

"What are you doing on the floor?" Mrs. Cooke squawked. "You're going to hurt yourself again! Oh, leave that. I'll take care of it."

She came through the room like a whirlwind, setting down a tray of additional refreshments on the table by the others and bustling over to survey the crime scene.

"No, you're going to get cut," Barok said when she tried to take the broken shards from him, and she clicked her tongue impatiently and disappeared from the room to fetch a broom and dustpan.

Iris giggled. "I would have thought you would be more used to accepting us fussing over you, given how much she does sometimes."

"She's been with the family longer than I have," Barok said dryly. "I'm less worried about whatever Mr. Sholmes might find in some old photographs. If anyone has blackmail material, it's her. For safety's sake, I let her have her way."

Iris laughed again as he picked himself up off the floor. Mrs. Cooke reappeared a moment later and shook the dustpan at him until he dropped his fistful of porcelain into it.

"Perhaps we should move things to safer places while the dog is here," she suggested as she swept up the remnants of the vase.

"Actually, I was thinking that we might replace the vase with that charming box I love so much. The one from Spain with the garish colors. I am sure this unstable side table is the safest place for it—Toby will surely not strike the same place twice when there is so much other trouble to get into."

Mrs. Cooke shot him a look. "You could just get rid of the things you dislike without baiting a dog into breaking them, you know."

"I'm not sure how you'd ever get that idea. I said it was charming." Barok fetched the pillow and offered it to her. "He was chewing on this as well. Could you…get it cleaned up? So that it's not full of canine saliva."

Mrs. Cooke's expression turned grave, and she set the broom aside and took the pillow. "Yes, that shouldn't be a problem." She ran a thumb over a loose thread pulling away from the rest in a lazy loop. "Snagged a few threads on a little tooth, I see. I can tuck these back in, and it will be good as new."

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "Thank you. These I do need to rescue."

He traipsed back over to the gathering on the couch, reaching past Gorey to snag the pillow tucked against the arm and fetching the last one of the set from the other chair.

"Is there anything else you'd like me to move to safety?" Mrs. Cooke asked, shooting Toby a look even though he was still sitting obediently in place.

"Just that charming Spanish box."

She heaved a sigh. "You're the lord of the manor, you know. You're allowed to make changes. If you dislike something, you can always throw it out or put it into storage. You needn't use the dog as an excuse. Maybe it wouldn't feel like such a mausoleum if you started actually living here instead of keeping it as some shrine."

Barok turned on his heel and stared at her very hard, until she began looking as if she regretted her boldness.

"You're right," he decided in a sudden fit of reckless spontaneity. "Iris, how do you feel about redecorating? I frankly have no interest in the endeavor, but it sounds like something you might enjoy."

Iris's face lit up. "I do love decorating, and there's so much to work with here."

"Splendid. Let's start here since this lot seem to have moved themselves in." He shot a wry look at the bemused group watching from the sofa. They were here often enough to justify updating the room. "The piano stays. I don't care about anything else in here, so you may have free rein to do as you please."

"Perfect!" she said gaily. "I'm going to make everything pink!"

Barok briefly considered whether he had made a mistake but then shrugged it off. He already found the place grim and depressing. It could hardly get worse.

"Whatever makes you happy," he said. He held out the pillows to her. "I would like to keep these as well. My mother embroidered them. Other than that, anything goes."

"I was joking about the pink." Iris took the pillows and examined the blooming flowers and winding vines stitched across their surface. "They're very pretty. I can use these as a starting point… Take the colors and theme and expand them to the rest of the room. Then they'll fit in perfectly, and it will be like we have a whole room built around them."

Barok swallowed hard. He thought that was the kind of living shrine he could get behind. Maybe with Iris's touch, this place would start feeling more like her home too. Like the family home it had used to be, with a family to fill it again.

"That sounds lovely."

"Just don't go around changing everything on a whim without thinking about it first," Mrs. Cooke warned, frowning. "You might regret it."

"You are the one who just recommended that I make a change."

"Well, yes, I think you should change things to suit you, but not everything all at once. You've been so resistant to changing anything at all for years that you might find you regret doing something hasty. Just…start small. Don't turn this into one of your big projects just because you don't have casework to occupy you."

She was probably right, as she so often was. Barok had always left things as they were, frozen in the past, as if he were merely a guest passing through and trying not to leave an impression. No wonder he always felt so haunted when he lived in a house full of ghosts. Changing some things would be good for him, he was sure of it. Still, recklessly throwing out everything and starting anew would be dangerous once the adrenaline of the idea wore off. Those ghosts, after all, were his family, and even if he didn't want to be haunted every hour of the day, he couldn't bear to lose them entirely either.

"It's not my project," he said. "It's Iris's. And we will start with this room only and see how it goes."

Mrs. Cooke hesitated and then nodded.

"I'd love to pick a nice fabric and sew some new curtains," Iris said dreamily, eyeing the large windows on the far wall. "I can make this room feel so bright and open."

"You ain't really gonna throw out all these bits an' bobs, are ya?" Lestrade asked. "If you are, I'm fixin' to pinch some of 'em first. Looks worth a pretty penny!"

Barok smiled. "In that case, I have just the thing for you. There's a charming little box my least favorite uncle picked up from Spain, and it would absolutely gut him to know it made its way to the East End. You'd be doing me a favor, really."

Lestrade wrinkled her nose. "'Ow many times do I 'ave to tell ya? It ain't 'alf as fun if you give me permission."

"Well, we are moving it over to that table for safekeeping. If it goes missing, I'll assume the Chief Inspector broke it."

She snorted. "Don't look at me. I'm a right angel, I am. On the straight and narrow. My divin' days are over."

Barok was cheered to know the hideous artifact would undoubtedly be missing within the week.

After everyone had finally left and Toby's trail of destruction had been tidied up, Barok put the box in question on the table before wandering off. The incident with the photo album had brought his family uncomfortably close to the surface of his mind again, and since he had no casework to occupy himself with, it seemed this was to be the project of the night.

He wasn't ready to dissect the complicated inner workings of his extended family, wasn't feeling charitable enough to think about them much at all, but he could at least focus on something closer to home. Iris hadn't been asking about her parents as much lately while busy playing nurse, and Barok thought he should probably prepare something for her. He knew she still wanted to know everything, and he had made her wait long enough.

With no little trepidation, he pushed open the door to his brother's old rooms and lingered on the threshold before stepping inside. Maybe he could find some trinket that his niece would like. Something tangible she could hold on to.

He spent a few hours sifting through the drawers of desks and armoires and trinket boxes. He found his sister-in-law's old jewelry box and poked through it. Maybe Iris would like a memento she could wear. He knew next to nothing about such things, but he could let her pick through it and take what she liked.

In the desk, he found reams of correspondence filed away. The sight of his brother's familiar handwriting in his favored red ink made Barok's throat tighten. It felt wrong to read through private letters, but he skimmed through pieces here and there. There were a few mentions of him that he read several times over before carefully setting aside, and he found a few letters going back and forth between Klint and his then-fiancée that had been stored together. Barok read through those more thoroughly to make sure there wasn't anything he might prefer Iris didn't see and then made a neat sheaf of the most telling ones. He thought Iris might like to read her parents' words. It was the closest she would ever get to hearing them speak in their own voices.

He ran across a mention of Genshin too in the documents, and that gave him pause. He had destroyed or thrown out everything that reminded him of Genshin long ago, but it was possible something in his brother's things had survived the purge. But although he kept an eye out, he didn't find anything of substance. That was too bad. If there was anything left, he might have offered it to Asogi.

Finally, he stretched out his aching back and scrubbed a hand across his tired eyes. He'd been at it for hours, and it must be getting late now.

He wasn't sure if he'd found what he had hoped to, but he felt too raw and worn down to worry about it too much right now. Going through Klint's possessions, touching the things his brother and sister-in-law had touched and reading their words, had wrung out his heart and left it aching again. There was a reason he didn't spend much time here.

Sighing, he conceded defeat for the night and slipped out of the room. On a whim, he wandered down to the hall of portraits, glancing briefly over his ancestors before pausing in front of the last few. He had still been young when his father had taken ill and died, young enough that he had turned to Klint and his mother to fill his place, but he still felt a hollow sense of loss. The ache for his mother was even sharper: her kindness and gentle strength and sly wit, the way she had always loved him and made sure he knew it even when she sometimes disappeared into her darkened room for days at a time and wouldn't come out, the terrible way it had all caught up with her in the end and he had failed to notice before it was too late.

He swallowed hard and averted his gaze, but it wasn't as if the other portrait was any more comfort. Everything about Klint was bittersweet these days, somehow even more painful than it used to be. It was hard to set aside all the newest revelations and view him with the same innocent reverence as before, but neither could Barok stop loving and admiring and respecting him. Lady Baskerville was also an empty ache, even though she had come into Barok's life later. She had been kind to him when he was afraid he would be pushed out of Klint's life with her arrival. She had included him and made him feel welcome in the new family unit, and he had loved her for it.

And even though all these people were gone now, they still felt like home. He wished more than anything to hold that in his hands one more time.

"Your daughter has inherited all the best parts of you," he murmured. "You should be very proud. She is undoubtedly the best of us."

He glanced at the empty wall on the other side of the portrait, considered for a moment, and then walked away.

He ran across Mrs. Cooke near his own bedchamber and had a sudden flash of inspiration. "I realize this is a long shot, but…"

"What is it?" she asked, shifting an armful of linens to a more comfortable position.

"Mr. Asogi's father…" He hesitated but then forged on. "I, ah…threw out everything that had anything to do with him. I was wondering if you happened to have rescued anything? A photograph, perhaps?"

Due to the secretive nature of the closed trial, few people had known what Genshin was accused of doing to Klint. Some of the manor staff must have suspected since they had witnessed him fleeing the scene before the body was found, but no further details had been provided. At the time, Mrs. Cooke had hesitantly raised concerns when Barok went on a rampage to get rid of anything that reminded him of Genshin, the same way she had cautioned him against throwing everything out and starting fresh with the redecorating. He had summarily dismissed her concern, but the truth was that she had always had more foresight than him when it came to those rare occasions he gave in to reckless impulses.

Her face fell. "I'm sorry, My Lord. You were very thorough."

Barok sighed. "No, it's alright. It's my fault."

"There are no photographs, but…" She hesitated, brows drawing together in thought. "There might be one thing… Let me just check."

Barok held his breath until she returned sans linens. She offered him a small pouch of red silken material on a string, decorated with gold thread and Japanese kanji.

"I did set this aside before you…" Mrs. Cooke cleared her throat awkwardly. "I apologize for keeping it against your wishes."

Barok took this small miracle from her with reverence as it unlocked a memory he'd kept long buried. "I forgot about this," he murmured. "Thank you."

He had to swallow hard as something clamped viselike around his chest, something that hurt more than broken ribs ever had. It was still too hard to think about Genshin and the harm they'd done each other. There was still so much hurt and anger wrapped up in his grief and guilt. It was something hard to let go of. But in holding this last piece of his old friend, Barok felt like this was a last chance to make some kind of peace and say goodbye.

"You're alright, dear," Mrs. Cooke said, daring to reach out and cover his hand with hers, curling his fingers around this small treasure.

It had been a long time since she'd called him that. Since she'd fussed over him as a small child and looked after him when his mother was ill with one of her fits and his brother was away.

Impulsively, he reached out and hugged her like he might have done as a child, and she went very still.

"I know I've been awful," he croaked. "For a long time now. I don't know why you're still here, honestly, but I'm glad you are. I'm not sure I would have made it without you."

She had, for some unfathomable reason, stayed with him for all these years, long past the point the rest of the staff had wised up and left. She had tried to reach out to him, and he had pushed her away to wallow alone in his misery. It never had been fair to her when she had tried so hard.

"Oh dear," she murmured, patting his back. "I've enough self-respect to leave if I'm not treated right. Loyalty is earned, My Lord. If you've got it from me or those children, it's because you did something to deserve it. You've been grieving a long time and sacrificing yourself for London, and you weren't ready to let anyone help you. I understood. But you've been doing so well lately! Miss Iris is the best thing to have happened to you, I think, and you've been growing so friendly with her and all the others. Really, you've been changing so fast these last months that it's hard to keep up. It's been nice to see you happy again."

Barok leaned away, embarrassed, and scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yes, well… Thank you."

"Anything for you, dear," she said, smiling fondly, and he offered her a tentative, slightly shaky smile in return.

The next day, he presented the letters to Iris. She looked over them quietly, her fingers tracing the words.

"My daddy's handwriting looks just like yours," she said finally.

Barok smiled wanly. "The other way around, I think. I was so desperate to be just like him. I used to have the most terrible handwriting, and when I was trying to improve it, I began copying his."

Iris smiled. "So handwriting can run in families, then."

"Er… After a fashion, I suppose?"

"Thank you. I always wanted to talk to them, and the next best thing is seeing them talk to each other."

"There was one other thing. You remember the hall of portraits upstairs? You said I needed to add one of myself."

She looked up from her scrutiny of the letters, curiosity piqued. "Oh, yes. Are you finally going to have your portrait done? How exciting!"

Barok hesitated but then nodded. "Actually, I wondered if you might like to sit with me for the portrait? And we could include Mr. Sholmes, I suppose, since he's your family as well. I would…eventually like to include such a family portrait in the hall, but we could leave it at Baker Street for now since our connection is still secret. It would look odd if we were to appear in a portrait together, but less so if Mr. Sholmes was also present."

Barok had little interest in commissioning a portrait of himself, but he would make an exception if it was to include his niece.

Iris's face lit up. "That sounds lovely! We would need to include Waggy too."

"Of course. She is also a valued member of the family."

"Maybe we should invite Kazu and Ginny and Mary too! They're practically family, right?"

Barok had a sudden premonition that things were about to spin out of his control. "I…am having a hard time envisioning Mr. Asogi and Miss Lestrade sitting still long enough to have their portrait done. And it would be complicated to coordinate everyone. How about this… Instead of including them in the portrait, why don't we do a photograph instead? That will be easier to get everyone together for, and we can make multiple copies so that everyone gets their own print. And it will be something Mr. Asogi can take back with him when he finally goes home."

Iris's face folded itself into thoughtful lines. "That's a good idea, actually… It would be nice for everyone to have a copy. Oh! We can take a big family photo, and then I can take more pictures of everyone and make a collage! Hurley can help take pictures too… Most of them will be unusable, but he's great at getting candid shots because he simply photographs whatever he likes without waiting for permission."

Setting Sholmes free with a camera seemed like a massive headache, but Barok did think that documenting this little…family, as it were, was a nice idea.

"I suppose we can include him if we must," Barok said, sighing. "Although he is going to make it as exasperating as humanly possible. Oh, and about the portrait… I found your mother's jewelry box. I thought…maybe you might like to go through it? You could pick something to wear for the portrait."

Iris smiled, but her eyes were damp. "So I can have a piece of her in our family portrait too. That sounds lovely."

Barok might not be ready to look through the photo album with her right now, but he could do this much.

They spent the afternoon together, going through the jewelry and letters and discussing plans for redecorating the drawing room, but Barok sent her home for dinner.

"I have an errand to run this evening," he said. "But I will surely present myself at Baker Street tomorrow if you'll have me."

Iris laughed. "Of course. You know you're always welcome."

When Barok arrived at Scotland Yard, Lestrade was already packing up her things.

"Are you done for the day?" he asked.

She started and spun towards the doorway. "Blimey! Wot are you sneakin' up on me for? You ain't even s'posed to be 'ere!"

"Ah. My apologies. Pray forgive my inopportune interruption." Barok inclined his head towards Shaw as well before focusing back on Lestrade. "Are you heading home?"

"Yeah, I'm done for the day. Wot d'you want?"

"Walk with me."

Lestrade eyed him suspiciously but gathered her things and waved farewell to Shaw. "'Night, sir."

"Goodnight, Lestrade," Shaw said. "Lord van Zieks."

"Goodnight, Inspector," Barok said before slipping from the room and starting back down the hall.

Lestrade followed behind at a quick clip. "So, wot are you doin' 'ere?"

"I'm on my way to visit Inspector Gregson. I thought I would see if you'd like to come with me."

"You're visitin' the boss?" Lestrade's footsteps faltered and slowed. "Why?"

Barok frowned at the ground and kept walking. "You needn't accompany me if you don't wish to. I just thought I'd offer."

"…I'm comin'."

Once they were out in the street, Barok produced his neat fistful of flowers from beneath his cloak and offered it to Lestrade. "Here, you can be in charge of these. I'm afraid I caught you by surprise, so I don't expect you have a token if you wanted to bring one."

"Oh," she said, subdued, accepting them automatically.

For once, she seemed at a loss for words and walked quietly at his side. There was a new tension to the air that neither of them seemed to want to acknowledge. They didn't speak until they'd reached the graveyard and stopped in front of Gregson's tombstone.

"Er… Wot were you wantin' to do, exactly?" Lestrade asked, her low voice somehow still too loud in the hush.

"Nothing," Barok said, staring fixedly at the stone. "I just want to be here for a minute. You don't need to say anything. I think it works just as well if we only think what we need to say."

He, for one, had no intention of speaking his thoughts aloud for an audience, and he doubted Lestrade did either. After a moment, Lestrade bent to place the flowers on the grave and then straightened up again. They stood in silence for a long time.

I'm still all muddled up about the whole thing, but… If nothing else, I do miss you. I don't know whether you were really my friend, but I'd like to think so. Maybe that's good enough.

Beside him, Lestrade began to shiver in the cold. When Barok glanced at her sidelong, she was wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat.

Barok hesitated and then pulled his cloak around her too, an extra barrier against the wind. His arm kept the cloak in place around her, curling about her shoulders. She gave a little start and looked up at him with teary eyes, then looked back at the grave and leaned in closer to him, tucking her head against his side.

Your protegée has come a long way, he thought. She is every bit as clever and hardworking and kind as you could have wanted. You would be very proud of her. Don't you worry… I know she'll go far, and I'll look after her for as long as she wants me to.

Finally, Lestrade cleared her throat. "Did you finally forgive 'im? Is that why you wanted to come back?"

"…I don't know. Forgiveness is a process, I think. Something that takes time. I'm not sure if I'm there yet. I've never been the forgiving type, I suppose. Maybe it takes a kinder or stronger person than I am. But I'm tired of being angry, so…" Barok shrugged. "Even if I can't let go of all the bad yet, I'm working on it. And in the meantime, I can still remember the good parts too."

"…Wot did you need me for?"

"I didn't need you for anything. I just thought you might want to visit too. He was something of a mentor to both of us, wasn't he? And if I'm trying to remember the good things about him…you're the best part there is."

Lestrade cleared her throat and stayed quiet for a minute before saying, "The flowers are nice an' all, but 'e would've appreciated some o' those fish an' chips more."

Barok huffed out a small laugh. "Maybe, but the groundskeeper wouldn't have when they started to rot."

"Fair enough. That fish of 'is used to stink up the whole ruddy office. There was this one time 'e…"

Barok listened with rapt attention as Lestrade cycled through her memories and pulled out her best stories. He had been so consumed by his misery and isolation and paranoia towards the end that he had few such positive memories of anyone at all over the past years. And after he had begun suspecting Gregson of being behind the Reaper's activities, there had been no more room for positive interaction. Maybe he had never known this version of Gregson that Lestrade had. Maybe he had let the opportunity pass him by while he wallowed in his self-pitying, mistrustful solitude. It was…nice, actually, to hear about those moments of his old friend's life that he had missed.

In return, he dredged up a few memories from his own youth, when he had admired Gregson much as Lestrade did, and sifted out the more lighthearted moments from those later dark times.

They swapped stories back and forth for a while, veering between melancholy and amusement, heartbreak and laughter. The sun began to set, the chill growing sharper, and Barok shook himself out of his nostalgia.

"We should go before it gets dark," he said. "I'll take you home."

Lestrade stayed pressed close to his side as they turned back down the aisle and headed for the gate, and he let her because, after all, it was getting ever colder and his cloak was a good barrier against the wind.

"Thanks for comin' wiv me," she said. "It was nice to talk about 'im a bit. You've got some good stories."

"So do you. Thank you for sharing."

"Yeah, sure. Maybe we can do it again sometime."

"If you'd like. All you have to do is ask."

Barok felt a little lighter leaving the cemetery behind him. It was a little easier to breathe, as if he'd left some of that suffocating resentment and hurt at the grave and walked away with less weight pressing down on his shoulders. Learning how to let go of his darkness and hard feelings would undoubtedly be a process, but each small step in the right direction helped.

Approaching Asogi felt a good deal more difficult, not least of all because of the uneasy tension still surrounding Genshin. Barok almost pulled him aside once or twice to offer him his father's newly rediscovered memento, but lost his nerve.

He almost managed it one sunny Sunday afternoon while everyone gathered at the manor, but decided it was a foolish idea to pull Asogi aside right before Iris marshaled everyone for a group photo. She would not be pleased if her picture was ruined because of some ill-timed revelation that killed the mood.

"Come on, come on!" Iris said, herding everyone together. "Squeeze in a little… That's good."

Sholmes fussed with the camera across the room. He had claimed that he could set the device to go off automatically and set a short timer so that it would take multiple prints, enough for everyone to have one. Having seen the infamous red-handed recorders, Barok knew that Sholmes's claim was, in fact, true. He was not, however, convinced that the detective would pull off the maneuver smoothly even if it was technically feasible.

"I'm not sure I understand the point of this exercise," Gorey said.

Asogi shrugged. "If Iris wants to take a picture, we'll take a picture. You wouldn't say no to Iris, would you?"

"…No."

"We'll take another the next time we're at Baker Street too," Iris said. "We should have one there as well since we're there so often."

Mrs. Cooke bustled into the room just as Sholmes was wrapping up his fiddling with the camera. She surveyed the scene as she set down a tray of tea and snacks.

"What's going on here?"

"We're taking a family picture!" Iris said.

Asogi and Lestrade leaned in close to exchange a few whispered words. Barok picked out the word 'family' thrown around once or twice and worried they found this whole thing presumptuous or uncomfortable, but then Lestrade smiled and looked at the floor while Asogi chuckled, and he thought that perhaps the idea of naming themselves family was not so unappealing to them after all.

"You should join us as well," Barok said, gesturing to Mrs. Cooke.

She looked startled. "Pardon? But I–"

"You've been with my family long enough, and you've done enough entertaining for this lot that they had better appreciate you by now."

"Oh, you should definitely join!" Iris said. "Uncle Barry says you've been with the family longer than he has!"

"I think you've fed us enough to earn the honor," Asogi said.

Lestrade snorted. "It ain't 'ard to win you over. Easiest way to make friends would've been to just buy you a few meals."

Barok left them to their scuffle and crossed the room to take Mrs. Cooke gently by the arm and draw her back to the others. She looked flummoxed and uncomfortable, for which he couldn't blame her. Staff always knew they were staff, a bit apart from the family they served no matter how long the history between them. But she had been here a long time, at the edges of his childhood memories and as the one person who had stuck by him all these years and kept reaching out no matter how many times he pushed her away. And she truly had been putting a lot of work into feeding and entertaining his guests at the manor, had been building a friendly rapport with Iris especially, and he was grateful to her.

"Don't be shy," he murmured. "You're the closest thing I had to family for a long time."

She swallowed and looked down and nodded, and he pulled her into the back row beside him and dropped his other hand on Iris's shoulder as she bounced on her heels in front of him.

"I've got it!" Sholmes said, scrambling back towards the group. "Everyone smile!"

The camera began flashing long before he reached the others and turned back. Barok sighed.

After another ten minutes of fiddling with the camera and a good deal more wasted film, Sholmes finally managed to capture a few usable pictures. And then began romping about the room and shoving the camera in everyone's faces to take unflattering photos. Barok had known that giving him a camera would be a nightmare.

So when Asogi approached him and asked if they could discuss a case he was working on, Barok gratefully suggested they step outside. Leaving Sholmes to his fun, Barok led Asogi down the halls and out the back door, where they could sit on the patio in the sunshine. He breathed a sigh of relief at the sudden quiet and listened attentively to Asogi's description of the case before offering his advice.

"When are you coming back to the office?" Asogi asked afterwards.

"Lord Ashbourne suggested I take a month, so… Another week, I suppose."

Asogi frowned. "I didn't think you'd be able to stand not working for so long."

"Neither did I," Barok said dryly. "But I've…been enjoying the break, actually. I thought I'd go mad without casework to occupy me, but Iris has kept me busy and I've had time to work on other projects. It's…nice to find meaning in more personal pursuits."

"…Oh."

"Is something the matter? Is there a problem with Lord Norrington?"

"No, he's fine, just not…"

Barok tilted his head. "Just not what?"

A flush stole across Asogi's cheeks. "It's just different, is all."

"Just not what?" Barok asked again, more gently.

"Just… He's just not you." Asogi ducked his head and scrubbed a hand across his face.

Barok laughed softly. "I thought that would be the main appeal. You deserve a little break from me."

Asogi looked back up at him, his expression some strange mix of apologetic shame and annoyed frustration. "That's not–"

"That was a joke," Barok said, realizing that this sort of self-deprecating humor might be in poor taste after the talk they'd had in the hospital. "I apologize."

Asogi blew out a breath. "I wish you wouldn't joke about those things."

"I know. I'm sorry." Barok hesitated and then said, "Do you want me to come back?"

"No, no," Asogi said quickly. "Things are fine. You should take all the leave you can if you're enjoying it."

"I'll come back tomorrow if you want me to."

"No. I mean… I do miss working with you, but I can handle another week. You never take breaks, and it's good that you are now. Don't let me ruin a good thing. I'm glad that you're actually relaxing for once. I just wasn't sure when you were planning to come back. I didn't think you'd last this long before giving in."

"I didn't either, but… I have more important things than work these days, I suppose. Things I care about more. I'm learning how to make time for them too."

"…That's good. You work too much and worry us."

They sat quietly for a minute or two, appreciating the warmth and looking out over the lawn and gardens.

"I used to spar with your father out on this lawn," Barok said finally.

Asogi's gaze snapped back to him. "What?"

"Well, mostly… Mostly, he sparred with my brother. They were the same age, you know, and worked together. I was just the tagalong. A decade younger, so a child to them. But there were a few times he sparred with me too."

"…I assume he won."

Barok laughed softly, staring out over the lawn through the dim haze of memory. "Of course. He was very good, and I wasn't used to fighting for my life back then. I expect I could have given him a run for his money these days… I've had a good deal more real combat experience now."

"Hm. Perhaps you're a touch overconfident. Maybe we'll have to spar once your injuries are healed properly and see how you measure up."

"Maybe we will." Barok was relieved that Asogi had taken the topic well. They never truly talked about Genshin, tiptoeing around the powder keg for fear of igniting an explosion, and this could easily have lit the fuse. Emboldened by the unaggressive reaction, he fished the little pouch out of his pocket, where he had been carrying it around for days in search of the right moment, and held it out. "This was your father's. I thought you might like it back."

Asogi took the small object with reverence. "…I forgot about this. It's an omamori. A…good luck charm. In Japan, you can purchase them at temples or shrines. There's a prayer written on a scrap of paper inside the pouch, and the priests bless them. My mother and I bought this for my father just before he came to England to bring him good luck and protection during his travels. For all the good it did, I suppose. How come you have it?"

Barok sighed and leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. "I mentioned that he defended me once in the streets? It was assumed I was the target of the attack, although in hindsight it seems likely that the objective was to get a hold of his ring to use as planted evidence. He gave this to me afterwards and told me to hold on to it for protection. At that point, Klint was already dead, so… I don't know if he figured it was too late for him by then, or if the guilt was eating at him and he was doing what he could in the aftermath."

Asogi stayed quiet for a moment before saying, "I'm surprised you kept it."

Barok grimaced. "I didn't," he admitted. "I didn't keep anything that reminded me of him. But apparently Mrs. Cooke got her hands on it, and she gave it back to me recently. I wish I had something more to offer you, but… This is the only thing I have left, I think. Maybe it will bring you better luck."

Asogi didn't say anything for a long time, and Barok waited to see how his apprentice was going to take the gesture. This could still go sideways very easily.

"Why are you doing this?" Asogi asked finally.

Barok couldn't read his tone, which put him on edge. "I just thought–"

Asogi shook his head. "You've been talking to everyone about the past recently." He looked up at Barok, mouth drawn into a frown and brow creased. "You took Doctor Gorey to visit her mother, brought Gina to Inspector Gregson's grave, gave Iris letters from her parents, and now this. We do talk, you know. Especially when you're acting unusually. Why are you doing this now?"

Barok sighed, his gaze drifting away. "The people who link us together… They made big impacts on our lives, for better or worse. It's a tangled web of love and betrayal and hurt. I'm trying to learn how to forgive. Let go. I'm saying goodbye, maybe. Their influence will always be there, but… If I can move past the bad parts, learn how to let the wounds heal without always picking open the scabs, then maybe… Well. You can't kill ghosts, Mr. Asogi. You must learn to live with them. If I'm going to be haunted, then I'd rather be haunted by friends than enemies.

"You still know all the good parts of Genshin. Miss Lestrade saw the best parts of Inspector Gregson. I was never as personally close to Doctor Sithe, but Doctor Gorey sees the best in her too. Iris never knew Klint, but she has such a wide-eyed innocence about it… And as it's my duty to introduce her to her parents, I've had to dredge up all the good of them to show her. My memories are all so muddled and tainted by the betrayals and ugliness that it's nice to see everyone through your eyes sometimes. The way I used to see them once. And truthfully, I would like you to keep those good memories as well. It is easier that way. If I can open myself to that too, then it will be common ground between us. The people we loved and lost.

"All that is to say… I know we don't talk about your father. I know it's a sore subject. But… If there came a time when you wished to, I hope you would know that we could. I am trying to make peace with the past, as I hope you will also, and I want you—all of you—to know that if it's easier to make your peace alongside someone else, I am here and willing to try."

And if I can't learn how to forgive them, then how will I ever find the strength to forgive myself?

If Barok was going to try healing from the hurt and heartache Stronghart had brought down on him, then he might as well take the opportunity to address the other ghosts in the room too. Lord Ashbourne's advice had made him think, and in this brief lull where he had left the city to fend for itself, he had resolved to work on improving himself. Even if it was a slow process, it seemed very important that he start.

And if he was able to help the others heal along with him in even a small way, or if it would open communication between them so that they had an outlet to talk about the people they had lost with someone who had known them too, then it was worth a shot. Maybe it was presumptuous to think he could drag the children along on some self-healing journey with him, but at the very least, he wanted them to know that if they wanted to take that step, if there was some way he might help, he was here.

Asogi stared at him for a very long time, mouth pressed into a tight line and fingers curling around the good luck charm in his hand. Then he cleared his throat.

"It always freaks me out when you suddenly turn into some enlightened font spewing inspirational advice."

Barok snorted. "Hardly enlightened. You know exactly how small-minded I can be. I've just had nothing to do but think recently. I have too much time on my hands without casework."

"No… You've always been insightful when you wanted to be. It just always catches me by surprise. Are you sure you don't want to keep this? He gave it to you."

Barok waved off the offered charm. "No, I'm sure he'd want you to have it. I want you to have it."

"…Thank you. I don't…really want to talk about it right now. You caught me off guard. But someday I'd like to know more about what he was up to here. Soon."

"Well," Barok said, one corner of his mouth quirking towards a melancholy smile, "you know where to find me."

---

When Iris turned up on the manor's doorstep bright and early Saturday morning, she had a large book tucked under her arm. Barok would have asked about it if she hadn't immediately commandeered the conversation and begun peppering him with cheerful chatter and questions.

"How was your first week back at work?"

"Good. Mr. Asogi and I are working on the same case for now. I hope to avoid too much concurrent casework for the time being. He chases me out of the office at five o'clock on the dot and gets very cranky if I show up early. I figure I'll let him think he can boss me around for another week or two until he's properly settled into the office again and less jumpy, and then I'll go back to making my own schedule."

Iris looked torn between amusement and exasperation. "It's good to be on a more normal schedule. You shouldn't just go back to working around the clock."

"This isn't the kind of job with set hours. My schedule will vary based on my workload. He knows that too, but I'll let him have his fun until he's less paranoid that I'll keel over at the drop of a hat. Once Miss Lestrade loses interest and stops making up excuses to swing by the office on imaginary errands, they won't be able to gang up on me anymore."

This time Iris did laugh. "I'd say you were being very patient with them, except that Kazu says you're being especially strict about picking apart his work. It's driving him a little crazy."

Barok smiled beatifically. "I know," he said with satisfaction. "He hassles me about overexerting myself, and I hassle him about every detail of his work in exchange. I think he's especially annoyed because I still can't write very much, so he has to listen to critiques in lecture form." His smile quirked into a smirk. "Sometimes I dictate my corrections instead, and that drives him especially mad because he has to listen and write them down. Although he did finally rebel and go on a little tirade yesterday, so perhaps I'll take a break on that for a bit. Let him think I'm finished so that I can resurrect it when he least expects it."

"Maybe you're having a bit too much fun teasing him."

"He went some two months without suffering my mentoring. He's overdue. In any case, it's still my job to teach and guide him, and I haven't been able to do much of that recently."

"Well, he did say he missed having you in the office, so I suppose he brought it on himself. Speaking of the writing… How is your hand holding up? Have you been doing your exercises?"

"It's exactly as fine as it was when you saw it two days ago," Barok said dryly. The inquisition made it sound as if it had actually been a week since they'd last seen each other. As if Iris hadn't come over for dinner on three separate occasions, towing Sholmes along behind her. "Fine motor movement is still difficult and my fingers start seizing up if I overtax them, but I think it's getting better. At least I can write a little. Mr. Asogi is still taking on the lion's share of the paperwork, though."

"And the exercises?"

"Yes, I've been doing them. I think they're helping."

He flexed his fingers experimentally, grimacing at the stiff ache holding them rigid. The breaks had been bad and were taking time to heal. They were still painful at times, especially on chilly days in drafty rooms, but it was much better than it had been a few weeks ago. He was more concerned about the stiffness of his joints, but the exercises Iris had shown him seemed to be improving their flexibility. He was hopeful that he would regain normal functioning if he kept up with the work.

"Good!" Iris said brightly. "Then we can do a piano lesson today?"

"Certainly."

Iris beamed and grabbed Barok's other hand, dragging him to the drawing room. She set her book on the table and ushered him to the piano.

Barok still couldn't play properly, but he could sit at the other end of the bench and offer guidance. Iris was picking up her lessons quickly and already played well, and sometimes Barok joined in with his good hand, taking over a part he could play.

His other hand rested on the bench beside him, the damaged fingers tapping out the other part of the melody, practicing for when they were deft enough to join in. He was committed to making it work. Teaching Iris and Lestrade had stirred that old love of the music, slowly at first and then more fiercely. Playing with them had brought some of the old joy back into it, until he couldn't believe he'd gone so many years without touching the instrument. He had even begun composing new melodies again, the notes rattling around inside his head in preparation for when he could draw them out. He was sure he would play again sooner or later, and he was looking forward to it.

"Very good," he said. "Although that should have been a sharp."

Iris sighed. "I'll get that note one day. It was easier before you started adding in sharps and flats."

"You're a better player now, so you get harder melodies. Why don't you practice just these few measures a bit? They're tricky."

Barok's gaze wandered across the room as Iris repeated the same dozen notes a few more times. Sunlight streamed cheerily through the windows, framed by the new curtains Iris had put up last week. She had changed out the wallpaper for a lighter pattern as well, which gave the room a more open feel. The decorating campaign was not finished yet and Iris was still working on her plans for the room, but it already felt like a homier space.

Barok had removed any bric-a-brac he didn't like, no matter how steeped in family history. It had been wildly satisfying to remove the hideous candlesticks from the mantel and replace them with Gorey's stuffed dolls. It seemed as good a place as any to display the dog and cat she'd made for him, here in the room where everyone who mattered gathered. It had earned him a bit of teasing, but Gorey had stared at them solemnly and then nodded once, which was good enough.

Iris had also brought over an assortment of photos taken during her campaign to get pictures for her collage, and the two of them had spent an afternoon choosing the best ones to slide into frames and line up across the mantel. Barok had expected teasing about this too, but Asogi and Lestrade had exchanged a look and gone uncharacteristically quiet until Sholmes began rambling about how he was due credit for taking many of the candid shots.

The man had been an absolute menace for a week or two, popping out of the woodwork at inopportune moments to ambush everyone with the camera. He had even materialized in the middle of a crime scene a few days ago, at which point Barok had delivered colorful threats about what would happen if he caught Sholmes taking one more picture. It had been an awkward situation to explain to Shaw, who could only watch in bafflement as London's most infamous self-proclaimed detective pranced about an active crime scene with abandon, jabbing a camera in people's faces.

Still, Barok appreciated the results inasmuch as they brightened up a once dreary room. Even when the rest of the manor still felt steeped in too much history, a shrine to the ghosts still haunting it, this space where Iris and Asogi and Lestrade and Gorey and Sholmes gathered with him felt like them.

"Was that better?" Iris asked.

"It's perfect."

They banged on the piano, as Lestrade would call it, for a few minutes more before Iris was satisfied with the day's work.

"I'll come over and practice during the week," she said. "You're going to be amazed at how good I am by next weekend."

"I am always amazed by you," Barok said, and Iris giggled and wrinkled her nose at him as if he might be joking. "Before we get distracted… I have something to show you."

He led her upstairs to the hall of portraits. The newest painting hung beside that of Klint and his wife. Barok and Sholmes stood behind Iris, a hand on each of her shoulders. She beamed out at the viewer, wide blue eyes sparkling, and clutched Wagahai in her arms. Barok had been initially uncomfortable that the painter had chosen to depict him with his gaze sliding sideways to look at Iris out of the corner of his eye, one corner of his mouth just barely quirked upwards, but he supposed it was an honest take.

The portrait seemed brighter and more animated than the others lining the hall, not least because of the carefree joy on Iris's face and the ridiculous goofiness on Sholmes's. It felt very different from the others somehow, but maybe in a good way.

Barok was frankly surprised it had turned out so well, given the difficulties encountered during its creation. Sholmes could not stand still for more than about two minutes at a time. He had also come to the first sitting wearing an outlandish purple hat and sporting a ridiculous yet impressively curled fake mustache. Coaxing the hat off him had been a feat in itself, made worse by the discovery that he was wearing it to hide the fact that he had 'accidentally' dyed his hair an appalling shade of red. Wagahai was better behaved, but she could only stand to be held in place for so long too. In the end, the frustrated painter had taken a few photographs to use as references, and Barok and the others had done a few short sittings instead of the longer ones usually required.

Still, however exasperating the process, Barok couldn't help but be charmed by the result. After all these secretive months of being unable to claim his niece, it was satisfying to see her likeness here with the rest of his family, surrounded by their ancestors.

"You can keep it at Baker Street if you'd like," he told her. "Seeing as you aren't officially connected to the family yet and it would look odd to have your portrait here. I'll arrange to have it delivered. I just wanted to show it to you first."

Iris reached out a hand, her fingers hovering just above the thick oil paint shadowing her face. "No," she said quietly. "Let's leave it here. It's not as if you have a bunch of strangers tramping through who would see it. It's just us. I… I like having it here, next to my parents. With you. I like still having a place here too. I think this is where it belongs."

"Well… If you think so."

"I do." She beamed suddenly. "I can't wait to show everyone! It turned out so well! Oh, we must show Hurley. He'll be so thrilled. He was very excited to be included in the portrait."

"Yes," Barok said dryly. "I could tell by the way he did his very best to ruin it."

"That's just Hurley being Hurley. He's a little silly sometimes."

"All the time."

"Sometimes," Iris said sternly. "He was happy that you wanted him to be part of the painting. I think it makes him feel like we're all part of one family instead of the both of you fighting over me. I know he annoys you and there was a rough patch when you found out he was hiding me from you, but… You get along better than you used to, right? He worked really hard finding all those awful men who attacked you. I know you pulled him aside to talk about it at the hospital. He didn't say what you told him, but I'm guessing you gave him information to help. He was pleased you trusted him enough to tell him. He was trying to help you with that treason case too, wasn't he? And you tried to keep him away from it because you were worried he would get hurt. I think he appreciated that too. I know he rubs you the wrong way sometimes, but he does like you and likes to feel included in what we're doing."

Barok sighed. As always, Iris's clever mind picked apart people's feelings and relationships better than he ever could with his social ineptitude. He supposed she was probably right. Sholmes was—and likely always would be—a colossal pain in the neck, but he had proven a reliable companion when it mattered most. Maybe even something like a friend.

The man's likeness looked entirely out of place in this hall of van Zieks ancestors, but within the context of the portrait, tucked in beside Iris and Wagahai and Barok, he managed to fit in.

"Wise as ever," Barok said. "Why don't you bring him by for tea tomorrow? We can show him then."

"That sounds perfect," Iris said, smiling. "On that note, I actually had something to show you too."

"Oh?"

"I left it downstairs."

They went back to the drawing room, and Iris waved Barok over to the couch while she retrieved the book from earlier.

"What's that?" Barok asked as she sat down beside him.

"Well, you remember I wanted to make a collage with all the pictures Hurley and I were taking? I decided to make an album instead."

Iris opened the book to reveal the group photos taken here and at Baker Street. Iris, Asogi, Lestrade, Gorey, Sholmes, and Barok himself appeared in both. Mrs. Cooke smiled awkwardly in the photograph taken at the manor. In the picture taken at Baker Street, she had been replaced by Wagahai and Toby. Taken together, it was the sum of everyone Barok properly cared about in London.

When Iris turned the page, the candid shots began. There was Lestrade lunging after Toby, eyes wide and mouth open mid-command as she tried to stop him from chasing Wagahai across the Baker Street flat. There was Gorey crouching down before a chair to pet the drowsy cat napping on it, her mouth ever so slightly curled upwards. There was Asogi holding some ridiculous new invention and blinking at it in consternation while Sholmes grinned widely and rambled some explanation. There was Barok jabbing his finger at the camera, face twisted in annoyance as he harangued Sholmes for breaking his way into a crime scene, Asogi and Lestrade smirking in the background. There were Iris and Lestrade sitting side by side on the bench before the piano, playing a simple duet while Barok lurked off to the side, fingers caught tapping out the rhythm soundlessly in the air. There were Iris and Gorey in the coroner's lab, peering at the dubious contents of specimen jars. There was Sholmes sporting his ridiculous red hair, arms thrown wide in the midst of a particularly memorable deduction involving the Lord Chief Justice running off to join the circus. There were Barok and Iris curled up on the sofa, tucked close side by side as Iris read from her manuscript and Barok watched her fondly.

"Oh," Barok said softly. "This is…"

"Well…" Iris sounded a little uncertain. "You don't like looking at the other album, so I thought… I thought if we made another album with us, for times that are still happy, maybe you would like that more until you're ready to go through the other one."

Barok's eyes felt very hot and his throat very tight. He pressed his lips together and stared down at the pictures until they melted together in a colorful blur.

"Is it alright?" Iris asked.

"It's…" Barok's voice came out too gravelly, and he cleared his throat. "It's perfect. I would… I would like to look through the rest of it with you."

Iris flipped the page and laughed, pointing at a picture of Lestrade wearing a flabbergasted expression as she tried to pull on her coat and force her hands through the sleeves. Asogi laughed in the background, and Gorey looked on with studied blankness.

"Do you remember when Ginny tore a hole in her coat and asked Mary to sew it up for her? And Kazu told Mary to stitch the pockets shut too, and she did. Along with the sleeves! Watching poor Ginny flop around with her arms stuck in the sleeves was too funny."

"Oh, yes," Barok said. "I remember it as if it were only last week."

And Iris laughed, because it had been. These were all recent pictures, taken within the past few weeks, and the memories attached to them were still fresh and warm.

They looked through all of the photographs, and it made Barok's heart feel very full to see everyone laid out on the pages, captured in time. These children and young adults—including Sholmes, he supposed, who was practically a child himself—truly had come barging into Barok's life and taken it by storm. They had come so far and grown so much and come together like a real little motley family.

For a moment, it made Barok nostalgic for his own family, even though it was gone now. He still wasn't ready to pry open those wounds. Still… He had received another letter from his cousin stating that she'd heard about the attack and asking after his health, even though he hadn't responded to the last one. It was sitting on his desk upstairs, ready to be tossed out. But maybe he would write back. Nothing very personal, but maybe something small. He wasn't ready to invite any of them back into his life, but since one of them had reached out, perhaps he would at least wedge the door open so that if he was ready one day, he would have the option. If he was trying to forgive everyone else, maybe they deserved a chance too.

But later. For now, what he had here was enough.

By the time they had finished, Iris could barely contain her eagerness to run off straight away to show everyone else. "I wanted to show you first," she said. "Except for Hurley. He helped pick out the pictures, so I had to show him the end result. I can't wait to show everyone! Are you nearly ready to come back to Baker Street for tea? Everyone should be arriving soon."

They made it back with just enough time for Iris to make the tea and set out an array of finger sandwiches and scones with Barok's nominal assistance before the others began arriving. She called Sholmes back out of exile, where he was moping about being banished from the kitchen after eating nearly an entire tray of sandwiches when Iris's back was turned, and he sat in his chair a little away from the others and stealthily swiped food when he thought no one was watching. Barok sat in the chair beside him, watching his antics with faint exasperation as he sipped at his tea. Iris had gathered the others at the sofa, Lestrade and Gorey sitting on either side of her while Asogi stood behind them to look over their shoulders, and they laughed uproariously as they looked through the album.

It was nice to see them all having a good time, Barok reflected as he watched them from across the room. It had been smart of Iris and Sholmes to put together this little collage of the sweet and funny moments that bound the group together.

Barok cast a sidelong look at Sholmes, who was still pouting either because of his earlier exile or because he was not the center of attention.

"The portrait was delivered yesterday," he told the detective. "I would be most pleased to invite you to tea at the manor tomorrow, if you'd like to see it."

Sholmes looked at him, eyebrows rising. "Oh? I never pass up an invitation for tea. Free food is the best food, you know. I can't wait to see how fetching I look with red hair. I tell you, it did not seem like my color when I first sacrificed my follicles for the sake of infiltrating the Red-Headed League, but I thought this particular shade was a bit less offensive to the eye. Unless you just had the artist leave me out so that I didn't ruin the ambiance of your portrait?"

"I did not have you removed, but neither is your hair that abominable shade of crimson. I provided the artist with a photograph of your natural hair color, so you appear perfectly normal. Well, as normal as you could ever appear."

Sholmes perked up a bit at this. "Good thinking. I truly don't think that red is my color."

"It most certainly is not." Barok sighed and looked back across the room at Iris, watching the way she beamed with pride and joy while showing off her work. "It would have been a terrible waste to exclude you after all the hassle you put us through to include you. In any case… If the painting was to have one Sholmes, it might as well have both of them."

Wagahai hopped up onto the arm of the chair, and Barok passed the teacup to his bad hand cautiously so that he could pet the cat with the other. She gave a little chirruping meow and butted her head against his hand, and he smiled a little as he found the sensitive spot behind her ear and she began to purr.

When he looked up again, he noticed Sholmes watching him with an unusually serious air of consideration.

"What?" he asked.

Sholmes shook his head. "I'm merely a bit curious."

Barok narrowed his eyes. "About what?" he asked against his better judgment.

"I'm curious about the children," Sholmes said, cutting a glance across the room at where Iris and the others were still poring over the album, following Barok's gaze from a moment before. "I always found it a bit curious how you went about collecting this bevy of orphaned and mentorless children. Young adults. Whatever we're calling them these days."

"I beg your pardon? I've done nothing of the kind. I believe Iris is the one who pulled them all together."

"Hm," said Sholmes. "She is very good at that. And yet you reached out to all of them as well. Forgiving my rudeness, I wouldn't have expected it of you. You had enough on your plate after your trial. But you still did. Why is that? At first, I thought it was some penance of yours. Some misplaced guilt for what became of Mr. Asogi's father and Miss Lestrade's mentor and Doctor Gorey's mother and your brother. But while you do have a heavy streak of self-blame, you never truly seemed to act as if you thought you owed them anything. Then I thought that perhaps it was just out of respect for their parents or mentors, your friends and family and colleagues. But now I think it's something else."

Barok's grip tightened around the teacup, his fingers screaming in protest. "Maybe you should stop thinking so much," he said tersely.

But Sholmes was never one to allow common decency to stop him in the middle of an unsavory deduction. "Now I think it's because they remind you of yourself and you're trying to save them from turning out like you. You're making sure they still have an authority figure to rely on because you had no one. You're looking after them the way no one looked after you and shielding them from the dangers you had to face head-on."

"You think you're very clever, don't you?" Barok snapped. "Always think you know everything."

His broken fingers protested abruptly at the increasing pressure being put on them and seized up. They spasmed and slackened, and although he made a grab for the cup with his good hand, it fell from his grasp, bouncing off the rug and hitting the floorboards with a sharp crack. Everything went very quiet.

"Well," Sholmes said, shrugging as he watched Barok carefully, "I do think I'm right. They remind you of yourself, so you're protective of them when they face dangers you've already faced, and you prod them into forming a family because you've lost your own family and know how difficult it is to be alone. Am I wrong?"

Barok glowered at him. His skin felt very tight and uncomfortable, his thoughts shying away from the spotlight Sholmes was trying to shine on them. He had no desire to pick apart his motivations, and even less so to hear Sholmes do it. He hated the thought that Sholmes was sitting there dissecting him, trying to tease apart his feelings and motivations. It made him feel too vulnerable and raw.

"As usual, you are very clever yet just missing the mark," he said bitterly. "And as usual, you talk too much."

"Oh? What needs to be corrected this time?"

"Firstly, your assumption that you are welcome to voice your speculation on the subject," Barok said coolly.

He stood and stepped over to where the cup lay on the floor, crouching down with a faint grimace at the twinge in his ribs.

"Laying that aside for the moment…" Sholmes said.

Barok blew out a short breath and began collecting pieces of broken porcelain. "It may have started out that way. You're right, really, about all of it. But you see, I didn't want them to rely on me. I wanted them to rely on each other—and themselves. Of course I want to help where I can, but they needed to befriend and support each other."

"Because sometimes authority figures can't be trusted," Sholmes mused. "Like Lord Stronghart. Maybe sometimes like yourself."

Barok closed his eyes and took a breath and went back to collecting shards unhurriedly. "They aren't my penance, Mr. Sholmes. It's patronizing to reduce them down to some…some personal redemption arc. If you must know the real reason… It's because Iris is brilliant and kind and chooses to use her prodigious talents and charisma to brighten the lives of everyone around her. It's because Mr. Asogi is fiercely honorable and has a just heart and is genuinely devoted to bettering the world in order to help people. It's because Miss Lestrade is scrappy and bold and exactly the kind of fresh blood that could shape the Yard back into a trusted institution. It's because Doctor Gorey is passionate and ambitious and determined to understand the intricacies of humanity through people's bodies and now their minds and feelings as well. In fact, it's even because you are, despite your constant ridiculous nonsense, always swooping in to save the day in your own incomprehensible ways and have proven a reliable companion when it counts. It's because we're all just people, Mr. Sholmes, and people tend to flock together."

"Because you like them," Sholmes said, a sly sort of smile in his voice.

Barok scowled at the ground and fished his handkerchief out of his pocket to swipe at the small puddle of tea. "Yes."

"Because you like us."

"Don't push your luck."

"Because you love them."

Barok closed his eyes again and drew in another deep breath. "…Yes. Now would you kindly shut up, you insufferable twit?"

Sholmes barked a quick laugh. "That's a new one. Well, I suppose it's fortunate that you took a shine to them. You've shaped them into a nice little family."

"I already told you, I didn't do anything of the sort," Barok said irritably.

"Ah, but you were pushing them together, if I'm not mistaken. I do believe you encouraged Mr. Asogi to accept Iris's invitations to Baker Street and encouraged Miss Lestrade to look for a family of her own here and bound them to each other by getting them assigned to the same cases so that they'd have to work together. And even you can't deny how much single-handed effort you put into introducing Doctor Gorey to the group."

Barok did not understand why Sholmes had taken such a sudden interest in the matter and wished he would end the inquisition. He didn't want to talk about it. For some reason, it felt very uncomfortable. Maybe because he hadn't put too much thought into it himself, and so he felt caught wrong-footed without any satisfactory explanations when Sholmes made up his own.

"They would have come together anyway," he said. "Iris was already working on making friends with everyone. At the most, all I did was encourage them to be open to that. You and Iris did all the rest."

"As usual, you are very clever yet just missing the mark!" Sholmes said with a little too much gusto, and Barok scowled at the mockery. "Iris put a great deal of effort into making this a place they could call home and encouraging everyone to gather here, but she had a fair bit of help from you. Didn't you notice? While you were pushing everyone here, what she was trying to do was draw you in too."

Barok glanced up at him, brows drawn together. He still had no idea where Sholmes was going with this. Luckily, he did not have to come up with a response, as Sholmes was more than capable of carrying an entire conversation by himself.

"You like to watch from the sidelines," Sholmes said. "You look after people and push them together, but then you back off. Convincing you to join in yourself was like pulling teeth in the beginning, and you still like to sit back and watch. Goodness knows you were ridiculously perplexed when you became the center of attention and had everyone fussing over you. So… What I'm really curious about is this: have you realized yet that you're part of this family you helped create too?"

Barok stared at him, something tightening in his chest. The worst thing about Sholmes was that for all his silly nonsense and obscenely bad judgment, he could often see straight through people, peeling back all their layers to poke at the soft core of them. Being flayed open for his perusal was one of the most uncomfortable experiences in existence.

The truth was… Sholmes wasn't wrong. Barok had painstakingly built relationships with the children and young adults he'd taken into his care. He had advocated for them, protected them as best he could, encouraged them to lean on each other and have confidence in themselves, and eventually learned to connect with them on more personal levels as well. But in group settings, he was still the outsider.

They had been slowly drawing him in, but it was hard to reach out sometimes, and often nearly as hard to reach back when they made overtures towards him first. He had watched them pull together as a sort of unconventional family, but as for him… Was he a part of this little family too?

He thought perhaps that was what Asogi had been trying to tell him in the hospital. Maybe that was what Iris was trying to tell him with her photo album. Maybe that was what everyone had been trying to tell him when they threw him a birthday party for no reason other than that they wanted to. What they had been hinting at all along.

Barok wasn't sure he'd started feeling it himself until recently. Had it started creeping over him at the hospital, when everyone had insisted on caring for him and needed to be comforted themselves because they were genuinely upset at the thought of losing him? Or had it been later, when he had finally taken a step back from his work to just appreciate life and the friends he'd somehow made along the way?

He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but… By the time he had let Iris redecorate his drawing room specifically as a gathering place for all of them, choosing to put up pictures and mementos that marked it as their own… He must have felt it by then. Why else let them pick a spot in his house and make it home? It had been a long time since anywhere had felt like home.

"Yes," he said quietly, looking down at the shattered porcelain in his hand as his fingers closed more tightly around the broken pieces, pressing them back together. "Yes, I do understand that now. I'm just a slow learner sometimes, that's all."

"It certainly took long enough," Sholmes said dryly. "It's a rather large blind spot of yours."

Barok clicked his tongue in exasperation and stood, grimacing faintly as he used the arm of the chair to pull himself back up. He drifted away to toss the broken cup into the trash and turned back to see everyone watching him intently. Lovely. Sholmes always had liked being the center of attention.

"I apologize for breaking your teacup," Barok said to Iris. "I'm afraid it was careless to use my bad hand. I will, of course, ensure its replacement."

Iris opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but then closed it and set the album aside on the couch. She crossed the room and threw her arms around him, pressing in close, and he frowned down at her in bafflement as he awkwardly settled his arms around her too.

"Er… What–?"

"Splendid idea!" Sholmes said with glee. "Group hug!"

"Wait, what–?"

The detective launched himself at Barok with a disturbing amount of enthusiasm. Already trapped by Iris, Barok had little chance to defend himself. Sholmes latched on like a boa constrictor, squeezing all the air out of Barok until his ribs began to creak.

"What are you doing?" Barok hissed around shallow breaths, trying to breathe past the sharpening twinges emanating from his ribcage.

"Surely, you must know what a hug is by now?" Sholmes asked. "I'd think Iris might have taught you that much, at least. This is the next step! A single hug is all well and good, but it's nothing compared to the power of a group hug! The whole family can join in!"

"That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever–"

"Oh, alright," Lestrade sighed. "You don't gotta twist me arm."

She stood and flounced across the room, wedging herself in beside Iris to add herself to the mix. Barok was too taken aback to protest properly.

Asogi and Gorey exchanged a look. Barok figured they were too sensible to be taken in by such a cheap trick, but then Asogi shrugged and Gorey sighed and they joined the others. With a bit more reservation, to be sure, but they joined.

It was a very uncomfortable pile-up, not least of all because Barok's arms were pinned in place awkwardly and he was certain the pressure was creating a new stress fracture in his ribs, but… He supposed it was very warm too. Unbelievably awkward, but warm in the way of being swarmed by an entire litter of soft, fluffy kittens.

"So…" Gorey said finally. "Is the point of this exercise to see how much force we can exert before we crack his ribs again? Or have I missed something again?"

Then everyone was laughing in amusement or out of surprise at the unexpectedness of the question, and the huddle broke apart. Barok sighed in relief when he could breathe properly again, but there was still a strange, not entirely unpleasant pressure squeezing around his heart.

"We love you too, Uncle Barry," Iris said, lacing her fingers with his and smiling up at him.

Asogi pulled a face. "Well, I tolerate you, at least. Which is about the best you can expect."

Lestrade elbowed him hard. "Be nice, 'Soggy!"

He looked wounded, too used to them being on the same side and getting into mischief together. "I'm just saying–"

"It's alright," Barok said with a breathy chuckle. "I tolerate you too."

Everyone devolved into their trademark bickering again, and Barok watched fondly. They were a ragtag bunch, a motley crew—a patchwork family pulled together by luck and circumstance and hard work. A stranger group he had never met, and yet he felt entirely at home in the middle of their chaos.

He had lost so much in his life, but when Iris caught her hand in his and Asogi cracked one of his sarcastic jokes and Lestrade laughed louder than a pack of hyenas and Gorey offered a tentative smile and Sholmes waggled his eyebrows in a most infuriating manner, Barok could almost forget that for a moment and smile back. It might be the strangest family in existence, but it was his, and he was happy to call them home.