"And it has been set." He relinquishes his hold on Watson's hand only to instead set his arm against his back, and he draws him closer -- but not too close -- to the window. "Look in the window to our sitting room, and tell me what you see."

He doesn't even entirely notice that he's called it that aloud, and maybe it isn't really a big deal. It's habit; it just slips out to call the sitting room theirs because it never stopped being theirs to him, not for a single day in these three years, but he'd neglected to consider that for Watson... It's ceased to be theirs. For Holmes, his life with Watson has been frozen in time, suspended, and he realizes now that he'd been thinking about this all the wrong way. Things cannot simply jump into motion now that he's come back.