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Chapter Text

“I’m sorry Joan,” Marcus says, rubbing at his eyes with his index finger and thumb.  He’s sitting on the edge of his desk looking absolutely dejected and irritated beyond belief.  Joan doesn’t blame him, the anxiety that’s welled up and taken residence at the pit of her stomach won’t dissipate and this situation is not going to get any better.  “Our hands are tied.  Sherlock is an adult with a history--”

“Marcus,” Joan cuts him off testily. She honestly cannot believe that he’s giving her a line like that.  They both know that while Sherlock is an addict, he’s got a very pragmatic approach to addiction and has turned down drugs several times when they were freely offered to him in recent memory. This isn’t a relapse, Joan knows it and Marcus knows it too.  They’re stuck because Sherlock’s done this before, following up on a lead, and apparently Joan’s gut isn’t a good enough reason to actual start an investigation. “That is a myth. You don’t need to wait twenty-four hours to file a missing persons report.  You told me that.”

He looks up at her then, and his face says everything he doesn’t dare say.  “I know,” he says in a low voice.  “It isn’t me, or even the Captain that’s blocking it.  They want to wait until later tonight before they do anything because they’re pretty sure he’ll turn up, having solved the case and no worse for the wear.”

Joan doesn’t think so.  The case is twisted enough as it is without Sherlock going off on some ill-advised solo mission (which she’s pretty sure he still would have told her about) on top of everything else.  Lauren Evansport, 37, single mother of two very young children - a boy and a girl, had been found dead in the middle of an abandoned lot just inside the 11^th Precinct’s jurisdiction.  She and Sherlock had been called in to consult, and the more that the dug into Lauren’s past, the more that they found more questions than answers.  Her children’s father, in particular, was a great mystery, as was why she was so far away from her central Indiana hometown.  They’d spoken to her mother the previous morning, and she’d had no idea why her daughter was in New York at all.  They’d been under the impression she’d been living in Chicago, with a boyfriend whose name they’d never gotten.

She shakes her head, scowl firmly etched across her face.  “Sherlock was convinced that Lauren was involved in something – he wasn’t sure if it was drugs or smuggling or even running girls, but he was convinced that we were missing something important.” She takes a step away from Marcus and glances towards Captain Gregson’s office.  She can see that his expression mirrors Marcus’ and she hates that they’re not able to act just yet.  She wraps her arms more tightly around herself and tries to swallow the anxiety that she cannot shake.  Something is very, very wrong.  “He wouldn’t just leave without telling me.  And he would have taken his phone.”

Marcus hangs his head.  “Go home,” he says, resting a comforting hand on her shoulder.  “We both know Holmes.  He’ll turn up.”  There’s worry in his eyes and Joan knows that it’s because of how absolutely horrible the situation is.  He’s trying to put on a brave face.

When she gets home some twenty minutes later, the house is still empty, and Sherlock’s phone has no new messages.  Joan leans against the wall of the living room and draws a slow, steadying breath.  There has to be something that they’ve missed.  She doesn’t think about how it’s the middle of the winter, or how Sherlock is not the sort to disappear like this, even if he was relapsing. 

It is that worry, beyond all others, that has her standing before the murder board some twenty minutes later.  She’s tracing the threads of their investigation as they found them, trying to see a pattern that they might have missed.  They know next to nothing about Lauren Evansport besides the obvious and there’s obviously a very large piece to the puzzle that simply isn’t there. 

Joan lets out a quiet sigh of frustration and wanders over to the computer to check her email.  Sherlock’s phone has no new notifications and Joan doesn’t bother to actually enter in his password to make sure that they aren’t simply not showing up on the lock screen.  She’d made him change his settings after they’d accidentally switched phones one morning a few weeks back and she'd been waylaid gussing his passcode.  They should be showing up. 

“Nothing,” she mutters angrily.  She doesn’t see any pattern in this – and usually Sherlock’s the one who can pick them out without problem.  She’s got nothing.  “What the hell am I missing?”

She picks up her notes and scans through them, distracted to the point that she almost doesn’t hear the quick, three rap knock at the door.  She sets her notes down and is halfway to berating Sherlock for leaving without any of his things – not to mention his coat and keys – when she catches sight of who’s darkening her doorway. Her breath catches in her throat then, and she just about slams the door shut in protest for how much this is not happening.

“Hello, Joan Watson,” and honestly, it’s probably the shit-eating smirk that’s gracing Moriarty’s face rather than the fact that she’s standing in the doorway and that she’s most definitely not Sherlock that sets Joan’s teeth into a slow grind of annoyance.  “I’ve just had the most bizarre phone call and I was wondering if you would be willing to assist me in parsing out its meaning.”

The problem is that Joan knows fully well that Moriarty would not show up here unless it truly was a weird phone call.  She steps aside and closes the door behind Moriarty with a snap.  “Sherlock is missing,” she says.

“I’d figured,” Moriarty replies.  She’s dressed in uncharacteristically casual clothes, Joan realizes in that moment – leather jacket over a white tee and jeans.  It’s an odd look on her, Joan doesn’t like it.  They stare at each other for a moment, as if neither can think of anything to say, before Moriarty continues speaking as if she’d never stopped.  Joan thinks she loves to listen to herself talk.    “The call was from an old associate of mine, offering a trade.”

“Of what?” Joan asks, folding her arms over her chest and glancing towards the wall where they’ve pinned up their entire investigation. 

“Information,” Moriarty says simply, stepping into the living room.  “He wanted me to hand him over a dossier on one of his enemies, in exchange for information on one of mine.” She lets out a mirthless chuckle.  “Imagine my surprise when I asked which one and he mentioned Sherlock by name.”

Joan raises a single eyebrow at Moriarty.  “Why is that surprising?”

Moriarty shrugs.  “I don’t consider him an enemy.”  She glances towards the wall, and Joan can see her interest is caught on Lauren Evansport’s picture at the center of the web of their investigation thus far.  “Is this your case?” 

“No,” Joan says testily, “We just enjoy decorating our walls with pictures of dead women.”  Moriarty lets other another mirthless chuckle and steps forward.  “I know her,” she says after a moment, tapping Lauren Evansport’s face with a pensive look on her face.  “That might explain all of this.”

Maybe it is the break that they’ve been looking for, that one final piece to the puzzle that both she and Sherlock haven’t been able to see.  “Who is she?” Joan asks before she can help herself. It’s been bugging her for the better part of a week now, trying to figure out the connection between Lauren Evansport and the people who murdered her.    There had been seemingly no connection, and Sherlock had gone on at least two rants about how there was absolutely no way that anyone could be that squeaky clean. 

“Her name is Marina Pietrova,” Moriarty says, her accent on the name impeccable.  Joan wonders, briefly, how many languages the woman speaks.  She imagines that she’s like Sherlock and is conversational in more than a few.  “She’s an enforcer for Demetri…”  She turns to look at Joan then, hand dropping to her side.  “And you don’t want to get involved with Demetri.”

“And why is that?” Joan asks, even though she thinks she already knows the answer. 

If there’s one thing that she and Sherlock are both very aware of, it is the criminal underbelly of this city that they both love.  New York is far from perfect, and there are darker elements to the city.  The Russian mob, in particular, has a steady presence, as do the Triads in Chinatown.  There are other elements, elements that Joan’s been keeping track of for what feels like over half her life now – but they’re dying voices.  It’s the Mexican and Colombian cartels that are moving into the city, driving the old mobsters, the mobsters that Joan knows well from the soap opera-like sagas in the newspapers of her childhood, out of the city and to the outskirts of the criminal underworld. 

Moriarty takes half a step forward, she’s ventured into Joan’s personal space and Joan doesn’t like it. She doesn’t back, doesn’t let Moriarty know that she’s uncomfortable.  She is uncomfortable though, because she’s willingly let a sociopath into her home and she knows that this woman – this sociopath – probably possesses the only lead that they’ve gotten in this case so far.  She knows where Sherlock is, and that is enough to make Joan want to let her stay.  “Joan,” she says, and her lips twist around Joan’s name in a way that makes Joan feel even more uncomfortable, if that is even possible. “When Sherlock disappeared, was anything out of place?”

Joan looks down at her feet.  “No, his phone, his keys – even his coat, they’re all still here.  At first I thought he’d just jogged to the bodega to pick up some more milk, but then he just… didn’t come back.”  She raises her eyes then and meets Moriarty’s gaze head on.  She doesn’t flinch and she keeps her voice steady.  “I went to the precinct already – they can’t do anything until at least twelve hours have passed,” she runs a frustrated hand though her hair.  “They say it’s because he’s got a history of doing this, which is total crap and I know that it’s not Marcus or Captain Gregson that’s driving this and I don’t understand why someone higher up is blocking them.”  Her eyes flutter shut and she bites back a frustrated groan.  She hates this so much, because it’s complete and utter bullshit.

She’s startled a few long and calming breaths later, to feel a comforting hand on her shoulder.  It’s impossibly warm and certainly human and Joan isn’t quite sure what to make of it, other than she wants to push it away and lean into it all at once.  “He’s got people everywhere, I’m not surprised,” Moriarty says in a distracted sounding voice.  “I didn’t exchange the information, Watson, but I can.  It’s easy enough to reacquire.”

“You would do that?” Joan asks, because she already knows that the only reason Moriarty is here at all is because she does genuinely care about Sherlock, even if she doesn’t understand why she does.  She’s shockingly predictable in her continued attachment to Sherlock.

The hand on her shoulder pulls away, comes to rest on Joan’s cheek.  “Oh Joan,” Moriarty says, her voice low and her eyes shining with something that Joan can’t put into words.  “I would move heaven and earth to keep you both safe.”

Joan swallows and takes half a step backwards.  She needs to put distance between them, because she doesn’t know what Moriarty’s bizarre tenderness means.  She sucks in a shaky breath and then another.  “Do you want some tea?” she asks in what is surely a remarkably transparent attempt to escape the room, even if only for a moment.

Moriarty has produced a phone from the back pocket of her jeans.  She cradles it between her two hands, close to her chest.  She looks up after a moment of staring at the screen.  “I would,” she says with that winning smile that Joan finds so irritating and intriguing all at the same time.

She flees then, retreating downstairs to the kitchen and the distraction of the simple routine of making tea.  Joan’s hands shake as she hears Moriarty’s voice filter down from the top of the stairs as she clicks the stove on and waits for the gas to light.  She fills the kettle and takes a deep breath.  She can do this, she can work with Moriarty and she can get Sherlock back.

Soon though, she’s without a reason to stay away, and she carries the two mugs upstairs and hands one to Moriarty without a word.  She’s still on the phone, her eyes narrowed and scribbling on a piece of paper pilfered from the printer with a chewed up pen that she’d probably found, discarded, somewhere on the desk. 

“--are you sure that this is truly necessary?” she’s saying, her lips pitched downwards into an irritated scowl.  “I know that I haven’t been in town recently, but a party is absolutely out of the…”  She falls silent, obviously having been interrupted.  There’s a pause, as Joan sips her tea and Moriarty straightens, her whole body tight and poised as if ready to strike.  “We’ll be there,” she says testily and hangs up. 

The house is silent then, save the distant sound of the furnace switching on and the quiet hum of air escaping the heating vents.  Joan watches Moriarty as sets down the pen and clutches the mug to her chest like a shield.  She looks so odd in this moment, obviously irritated and deeply troubled at the same time. 

“Tell me, Joan,” Moriarty begins, taking an infuriatingly dainty sip of her tea before turning and fishing a coaster out from under a pile of Sherlock’s papers and setting her mug down on it. “Do you like parties?”

Joan closes her eyes, this whole thing seems like a nightmare as it is, and the idea of going anywhere willingly with Moriarty is absolutely the last thing that Joan wants to do right now.  She doesn’t quite draw breath in that moment, but rather levels her best glare at Moriarty.  Best deflect with humor. “If this is your way of asking me out you have another thing coming.”

She chuckles then, picks up her tea and takes half a step away from Joan.  Her fingers are splayed out over the page that’s covered with her loopy, almost girlish handwriting.  “My contact wants to do this exchange in person – I think he wants to make sure that I’m still alive since he’s gone to all this trouble to do me a favor.”  Moriarty takes another sip of tea and smiles a smile that could almost be charming, if it had reached her eyes.  “I told him I’d been out of town for personal reasons, couldn’t very well tell him I’d spent the time feeding your government secrets until they decided to set me free.”

It was a decision that Joan still doesn’t agree with.  She and Sherlock had both come to what was essentially an unspoken gentleman’s agreement to not mention the subject of his ex after the incident with the kidnapped girl.  Joan understood then, as she does now, that it’s the sort of thing that’s never going to go away, despite the fact that she desperately wishes it would. 

“Wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation, I’m sure,” Joan says with the slightest amount of bitterness.

Moriarty makes an affirmative noise.  “He’s having a party in midtown, some hotel ballroom for his more legitimate clients.  Not the sort of thing I’d usually go for, too public, but these circumstances are not exactly ideal.”

“Do you think that Sherlock will be there?” Joan asks, because she honestly doesn’t care about Moriarty’s grandstanding.  She wants to make sure that they get Sherlock back in one piece.  “I mean, the guy never told you that he had him, just that he had information, right?  How do you know he’s not bullshitting you?  How do I know you’re not bullshitting me?”

“You don’t,” Moriarty says, sipping her tea and tapping her phone back to life.  She navigates to an app that Joan doesn’t recognize, but its purpose soon becomes obvious.  The phone conversation that Joan had just overheard one half of starts to play and Moriarty drags her finger to a certain point in the three minute long conversation.  “Listen,” she says, and presses the play button, one finger clicking the volume on the phone’s speaker up louder.

“Da, so we have an agreement,” the voice says at the other end of the line.  Joan supposes that this is the Demetri that Moriarty mentioned earlier.  “You will be wanting proof of life, so listen.” There’s a sound like tape being ripped from skin, and then Sherlock’s voice fills the room, demanding to know where he is and who’s kidnapped him.  Joan’s fingers rise up to cover her mouth and Moriarty grimly shuts the program off. 

“So tell me, do you like parties, Joan?”  Moriarty asks again. 

Joan lets out a resigned sigh.  “How formal?”

-

She calls Marcus from the car on the way over the bridge.  Moriarty had vanished for two hours, telling Joan to get dressed and that she’d be along to collect her. She’s wearing a dress that Joan doesn’t even dare put a price tag on, looking every bit the picture of Moriarty that Joan’s always held in her head, poised and dressed to play her part as expertly as possible. 

“We’ve been trying to get a hold of you,” he says when Joan apologizes for not answering his texts.  “Captain’s been given the green light to start an investigation, if you still want us to go ahead.”

Joan hates lying to him most of all, fidgeting under Moriarty’s gaze in this little black dress that she’d found buried at the back of her closet. It’s not her usual style and she feels almost naked in it – showing off far more skin to eyes she’d rather have anywhere else in the world than on her person.  “Give him a few more hours, he seriously could just be running down a lead and lost track of time.”

He makes an affirmative noise.  “Did you find something at home that makes you think he did?” he asks.

Joan’s eyes slide up to meet Moriarty’s gaze and she feels her face heat before she looks away.  This whole situation feels too much like a date and Joan really doesn’t like it at all.  “You could say that,” she says.  “Look, Marcus, I’ll catch up with you in a few hours if he doesn’t turn up.”

“Well, let me know if he does,” Marcus says.  If he’s caught wind of Joan’s discomfort, he doesn’t let on to it, for which she’s grateful. 

She promises to call him regardless and hangs up the phone, feeling those cold eyes still on her.  Joan doesn’t flinch when Moriarty leans forward and fixes a strand of hair that she’s pulled out while on the phone.  “You’re good to not tell him everything,” she says in a low undertone that makes Joan think that she probably heard both sides of the conversation.  She starts to press the volume down button on her phone as discretely as she can.  “Better to not mention me.”

The worst part is that Joan knows that Moriarty is absolutely correct.  One breath of Moriarty’s presence in the city and she would find herself under an armed, twenty-four hour watch.  They would assume, and perhaps incorrectly, that Moriarty had something to do with Sherlock’s disappearance.  She and Marcus have actually talked about it a few times, a casual observation of two people who understand and know Sherlock pretty well.  Moriarty is a presence in his life that the NYPD collectively cannot truly understand. 

“I don’t get it,” Marcus had said, after she’d told him everything that had happened with the Kayden Fuller incident.  He’d still been in the hospital then, angry at the world.  “The dude’s in love with her despite everything that she’s done to him, and he busts his ass to exonerate her from an extra lifetime sentence for what she did to that guy?”

Joan wonders if it’s a cop’s mentality that makes it so hard for both Marcus and Captain Gregson to understand the relationship there.  She thinks she sort of gets it, because Moriarty can be irritatingly charming and an excellent verbal sparring opponent if given the opportunity.  She and Sherlock trade letters because they’re both unhealthily attached to each other and Sherlock will not listen to her when she points this out to him.  Joan bets that Moriarty would say the same things he does, almost verbatim, if she were to mention it right now.

“I didn’t want him jumping to any conclusions,” Joan admits, not quite missing the privately pleased smile that drifts across Moriarty’s face before it is schooled neutral once more.

The rest of the ride is silent, and it is only as they’re working their way through the thick of Midtown traffic that Moriarty’s hand shoots out to touch her thigh.  “Whatever happens in there,” she says, glancing towards the looming building that is playing host towards the party.  “Follow my lead.”  She reaches out and takes Joan’s hand, looking at the ring that Joan’s got on the ring finger of her right hand.  “And take that off.”

“Why?” Joan asks.  She loves this ring.  It had belonged to her grandmother – her mother had given it to her on her eighteenth birthday and Joan can’t remember a time that she’s taken it off in recent memory. 

Moriarty’s smile is almost predatory and she leans forward, their noses nearly touching. Joan wants to draw back, but she’s intrigued now, wanting to know the whys and the ins and outs of this plan that Moriarty has obviously cooked up in the two hours she’d left Joan to get ready.  “Because, for this ruse to work, you’re going to need to put it on your other hand.”

It takes a hard count to ten to keep Joan from spluttering her disbelief at Moriarty’s audacity.  It takes a further count of fifteen to get her breathing under control; and even then, leveling an icy glare back at Moriarty, Joan feels like it isn’t enough.  “So your reason for your absence is that you got married.” She deadpans.  “To me.”  It’s completely and utterly unbelievable that Joan wants to throw her head back and laugh, but Sherlock is missing and this is definitely a hair-brained scheme on his level if she’s ever heard one in her life.

Her ire earns a mere shrug. “That is a family heirloom, your grandmother’s I’m guessing.”  She gestures to Joan’s ring and Joan scowls and lifts a hand to cover it.  She doesn’t to go along with this.  It won’t work. Anyone will be able to see through it.  She nods though, when Moriarty’s head tilts just off to one side and she seems to soften. 

The car’s pulled up to the curb, the driver stopping and Moriarty letting out a quiet breath of air.  “It was a summer marriage,” she says quickly, tucking her phone into her clutch and producing a ring that she holds up for just a second to catch the light.  There’s a stone on it, blue like her eyes, and Joan thinks it suits her, even if she hates the whole principle of this thing.  “And we’ve been honeymooning in Europe – France mostly.”  She reaches out, as if she wants to touch Joan’s cheek and her fingers hover in the air before Joan’s face.  Her expression is almost tender.  “Trust me,” she whispers, her voice almost pleading with Joan. 

“You’re lucky I’ve actually been to France,” Joan grouses.  She tugs her grandmother’s ring from her finger and stares down at it for a moment.  The driver has come around to let them out of the car and Joan anticipates the cold blast of air almost before he opens the door.  She shivers, and pulls her wrap more firmly over her shoulders.  She slides the ring home onto her finger and hopes to god she doesn’t have to kiss Moriarty to make this seem convincing.  She thinks she might actually gag.

Moriarty offers holds out her hand to Joan, and helps her from the car.  She smiles at her, all pretty and full of something that Joan can’t put into words. It is in that moment that she knows, beyond all measure of her own doubts about Sherlock’s susceptibility to Moriarty’s charms, that Moriarty is a fantastic actress.  “You’ll be fine,” Moriarty says then, leaning into the car once more to collect a leather folio – the dossier that Joan assumes is the other half of this trade. 

They are relatively alone when they enter the party, packed as it is with people.  The large, obviously rented ballroom is full of the sort of opulence that Joan’s come to expect from the upper echelons of New York society.  She doesn’t often have occasion to rub elbows with people like this and she’s never particularly cared for the experience.  It’s so far and away from everything she grew up with.  She takes a deep breath and lets Moriarty take her wrap and leave it with her coat at bag check.  She doesn’t relinquish the folio, carrying it like an oversized purse.

“Do you actually know anyone here?” Joan asks in a low voice as Moriarty surveys the room with the sort of quick precision she’s come to recognize in Sherlock.  She’s looking for the man they’re supposed to meet, as well as assessing the room for possible exits.  Sherlock likes to look for them in case people run, Moriarty, she guesses, is looking or other things.  She hopes she never has to find out what.

“I do,” Moriarty says, and offers Joan her arm.  Joan fights back the urge to recoil, and steps into the offered gesture, getting far closer to Moriarty than she’s ever truly wanted to be.  “I’ll introduce you.”  This feels so wrong, to let Moriarty – Jamie, Joan realizes that if this has even a hope of fooling anyone she’s got to think of the woman by her actual name, not her title.  She wonders if Moriarty’s given any thought to Joan’s knowledge of her line of work – within the confines of this false marriage.  She decides that she has to know, because that is the only what that this could ever have a hope of a chance.  Moriarty isn’t the sort to get married on a whim.

They slide into step beside a waiter with a tray of champagne flutes and somehow Jamie manages to snag two with one hand.  She leans in then, breath hot against Joan’s cheek.  She smells of summer and of breath mints that are so strong they burn when you first put them in your mouth.  Joan doesn’t inhale a second time, no matter how much she wants to.  “Sip it slowly, Joan,” Jamie says in a muttered undertone, her fingers playing against Joan’s neck.  “I don’t want you forgetting yourself.”

“Only if you promise to do the same,” Joan retorts, and goes completely stiff when lips brush against her cheek and she feels the heat rise to her face a way that is totally obvious to Jamie, if her shit-eating grin as she back away is anything to go off of.  This is absolutely not going to work.

Jamie steers her towards an older couple entertaining a few other people, Joan guesses that it’s the couple that knows Jamie, based on how their faces light up when they see her and how the husband’s eyes narrow suspiciously when he sees Joan.  He’s probably got a crush on Jamie, Joan realizes, and she doesn’t like the thought of that at all.  They are Mr. and Dr. Karnsten, Jamie explains, introducing Joan as the group of people they’d been chatting with disappears back into the crowd. 

“Joan Watson,” she introduces herself, shaking Dr. Karnsten’s hand.  “Jamie just insisted that we meet you,” she adds, swallowing all of her pride and batting her eyelashes at Jamie.  Jamie starts, her eyes narrowing for an almost imperceptible fraction of a second before a warm smile crosses her face.  It goes all the way to her eyes, and Joan swallows nervously.  How much truth is there, on Jamie’s side, in this lie?

“She’d mentioned the last time we saw her,” Mr. Karnsten says with a polite smile at Jamie, “That she’d met the most wonderful person.  I had no idea she’d be so beautiful as well.” 

She tries to laugh it off, but the flattery makes her cheeks flush and she hides behind a sip of champagne while Jamie tells this nice, older couple, of their marriage.  Joan finds herself contemplating if they know Jamie as gay – because she certainly doesn’t – of if that’s just something they’re taking in stride as only the New Yorkers in them can. 

What’s stupid is how easy it comes, to fall into a conversation with Dr. Karnsten about what sort of a doctor she is.  Joan lies a little, and says that she’s let her medical license lapse as she’s found a that married life suits her far better than holding people’s lives in her hands.  Dr. Karnsten, unfortunately, had known of her failure and of the man who’d died by her hand.  “It’s just such a tragedy,” she says, as Jamie’s fingers curl protectively around her waist.  “For someone with your skill and talent to have lost your way in the field, people spoke very highly of you, Joan.” 

“I know,” Joan says, and voices something that she’s been kicking around at the back of her mind for the better part of a month now.  She doesn’t think that she wants to go back into surgery, but she wants to help people.  There’s a free clinic not too far from where they live now and the director of it is an old friend of Joan’s.  “I’ve been thinking about renewing it actually, now that we’re back in New York.  I miss helping people.”

When they walk away from the Karnstens a few moments later, Jamie’s hand that’s wrapped protectively around her waist doesn’t relax.  Joan feels the emotional exhaustion that always comes from speaking about medicine and her reasons – albeit relatively untruthful ones – for leaving the field, well up within her.  The hands supporting her and the warm, constant presence of Jamie is actually comforting, and Joan hates that she wants to take comfort in it. “How do you know them?” She asks Jamie as they pause in an alcove by a wide window.  The city is truly beautiful at night, and Joan only stops to take the time to notice it when she finds herself forgetting that she’s from here, and that the city is constantly changing to stay exactly the same.  “They’re both lovely.”

“He,” Jamie says, one hand pressed against the window pane and her head tilted towards Joan’s, “Is Demetri’s most trusted lieutenant.”  Her eyes sparkle then, as the cold reality of this situation truly hits home for Joan.  She’s so far out of her element that she doesn’t think she will ever feel comfortable doing something like this again.  She takes a deep breath as Jamie chuckles.  “Consequently, he is probably the one who cooked up this whole exchange.  Demetri’s dangerous, but this he isn’t this smart… No, this has Erik’s fingers all over it.”

Joan reaches out then, and touches Jamie’s shoulder.  They’re acting, she tells herself, this is just a game like any other of Jamie’s games.  It will end badly, she knows this.  The reality is that she wants to touch Jamie, she wants be reassuring.

“I have a great deal of information that Erik would be interested in as well,” Jamie says in a low voice.  “I didn’t think to bring it with me, I had--” she shakes her head angrily and looks to Joan with an icy expression on her face.  “I made an error, assessing this situation.”

“You’re human,” Joan says automatically.  It’s what she says to Sherlock when he gets like this, all mopey and depressed because he’d missed something obvious.  “Humans are allowed to make mistakes.”

And it is in that moment that Joan sees just how beautiful a genuine smile can look on Jamie Moriarty’s face.  It steals her breath away.

-

The five-string band on the far side of the room selects a slower song, and Joan bites at her lip, knowing that as ‘newlyweds’ they should be dancing.  The problem is that Jamie’s still got that folio in her hands and it’s pretty obvious that she’s not going to leave it just anywhere so she can have both hands free.  She shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable with the notion that she actually wants to ask Jamie if she’d like to dance.  It’s just for the ruse, she tells herself, because she can see Erik Karnsten speaking in a low voice to a man holding court amidst a circle of women. 

They’re looking over at the pair of them, standing by the window and definitely not dancing.  “Jamie,” Joan says in a low voice, reaching out and touching her shoulder.  “They’re watching us.”  She doesn’t move or react when Jamie leans into her touch, or when she tosses her hair over her shoulder and glances back behind them, fingers white-knuckled around the folio. 

“So they are.”  Couples have gathered, pulled towards the dance floor and the music.  Joan’s set her discarded champagne flute down on an abandoned table, and Jamie’s left her clutch there as well.  The folio hasn’t left her hands until this moment when she takes half a step back from Joan and sets the folio down next to her clutch.  She eyes it for a long time before turning back to Joan and holding out her hand. 

Joan takes it without a word.  She’s not going to let Jamie Moriarty and her stupid smug smile or her bizarrely humanizing display of self-doubt get the better of her.  No, she knows better than to do that.  They have to dance, because that is what couples do when presented with an opportunity. 

This is by far the closest that they have ever been to each other, and Joan isn’t sure that she likes it.  Jamie smells good and she knows how to dance and Joan’s content to let her lead, one eye still obviously watching the folio, as if daring one of the mafia goons to try and steal it out from under her nose.  Joan watches two, catching glimpses of other people staring at them, some in wonderment, some with curiosity clearly written on their faces.

“How did you manage,” Joan asks.  She doesn’t bother to lower her voice much, as the conversation and music are so loud around them that she doesn’t think they’ll go overheard.  She does lean closer, their bodies pressing together, so she can speak into Jamie’s ear.  “To keep your incarceration a secret from all these people?”  Joan knows that while the FBI and the US Marshalls claim to have scruples, there are always bad eggs – and if Jamie knows of them, so can any other fairly large organization.  She doesn’t know the scope of this Demetri’s organization, but he’d had a woman living essentially a double life, and he’d been able to kidnap Sherlock without much fuss. 

Just thinking of Sherlock makes the anxiety that Joan’s been managing to keep at bay throughout this whole ordeal come roaring back.  She hates this, hates that she doesn’t know how to quell the surge of emotions that have welled up in her just thinking about how horribly wrong this could potentially go. 

Jamie’s hand slides from Joan’s hip to the small of her back.  She can feel the heat of her even through the fabric of her dress and Joan feels herself swallowing nervously.  This is too much, it’s too intense.  She’d never signed up for this. 

“Stop thinking about things you cannot change,” Jamie says, and she’s so close that Joan wants to lean forward and step back all at the same time.  She doesn’t know what she wants, and her gaze flicks down to Jamie’s lips.  She’s speaking again, and Joan can scarcely hear the words, talking about how she’d kept her public image elsewhere, and how this ruse would help to solidify that lie.  Her lips are distracting and Joan’s cheeks are burning with the shame of her realization that she actually could want this horrible, evil woman.

They stop, and Joan’s pulled back into the real world.  Jamie is looking at her curiously, and they’re still so impossibly close.  “You want to kiss me,” she says sagely, and Joan looks away, down at where her hand is resting on Jamie’s hip.  Her grandmother’s ring is on her finger and this is all a lie.  She’s caught up in the act and of course she’d want this. 

“No…” Joan says, and she doesn’t look up.  If she looks up she’s going to do it, consequences be damned.  She grits her teeth and grinds out the truth, because lying seems like the other, worse option somehow. “Yes.”

She isn’t gay.  It isn’t like that.  Joan isn’t sure what, exactly, it is like. She’s kissed a girl or two in her life, but she’s never wanted, wanted to the point of distraction and forgetting how much she loathes this woman.  She hates how easy it is to forget, in a moment of intimacy like this.  She says yes, because she thinks she’s going to do it anyway, and she does want this to work.  She can feel herself tumbling downwards into the tangled web of lies and secrets that Jamie’s woven, and doing so willingly feels like failure.

There’s a finger on her chin, making her look up, and Jamie is kissing her with soft lips and gentle fingers on her cheek.  It’s all a lie, but in this room full of cut-throats and villains, Jamie is the one that Joan knows she’d throw her lot in with every time. 

She stops before the kiss becomes anything but chaste, backs away before Joan can lean in to kiss her again.  “They’re ready for us,” Jamie says in a low voice.  She inclines her head almost imperceptivity towards Erik Karnsten and the man he’s been speaking to.  They’re standing by a door across the room.  Joan follows half a step behind Jamie as she collects her things from the abandoned table and checks the folio before she lets out a satisfied little sigh and makes for the door.  “Whatever happens,” she says as Joan catches up to her, “do not speak unless they speak to you directly.  I don’t know if they’ve bought into the game and I shan’t risk your life on top of Sherlock’s, Joan.”

Joan nods and nothing more is said before they step off into the side room and Joan has to swallow the scream that threatens to escape her lips as she takes in the contents.  Jamie’s standing half a step before her, and her fingers twitch before they clench into a fist.  Joan understands Jamie’s anger, she’s been on the receiving end of it before and she wants absolutely nothing to do with it.  She knows that

Sherlock is tied to a chair in the middle of the room.  This is a normal enough occurrence in Joan’s life that she’s not actually freaked out by that.  No, it’s the cut to the side of his head that’s still oozing a blood and the black eye that concern her. 

“We’d thought you’d left the business,” Mr. Karnsten says, arms folded over his chest as the other man, Joan assumes he is the mysterious Demetri, stands with his hands in his pockets. 

“And what gave you that idea, Erik?”  Jamie glances towards Demetri, an annoyed sneer playing across her face that does absolutely nothing to betray the rage that Joan has seen the quiet signs of in the way that Jamie is carrying herself.  “My operations continued in the same capacity as before.”

“This is true, yes,” Demetri speaks for the first time.  He steps forward and holds out his hand in what looks like a gesture of peace.  “Erik was concerned, given that you hadn’t pulled a major job in so long.  I think I understand why you didn’t, though.”  Jamie glances over her shoulder at Joan, who tries her best to not look too horrified by the idea of being sized up by two Russian gangsters.  She takes Demetri’s hand politely and shakes it and lets out a surprised sounding squawk as he pulls her into a one-armed hug.  “Congratulations are in order, my dear M.” Demetri laughs, swatting her on the back.  “It is not often that one in this line of work finds a supportive partner.”

Joan takes a deep breath and digs her nails into her palm to keep from looking at Sherlock, who was staring at her with an absolutely betrayed look on his face.  Joan purses her lips and shakes her head just once, off to the left side.  She’s caught up in trying not to look at the hilariously alarmed look on Jamie’s face at the boisterous Russian congratulations she’s on the receiving end of and trying not to look at Sherlock and his confused eyebrow wiggle at the same time.  She isn’t sure if she wants to laugh or cry at this whole situation, but the Russians have completely bought into the lie, and Joan’s glad of it.  It means that they will probably manage to get Sherlock out of here in one piece.

“Thank you, Demetri,” Jamie says, pushing on his chest with two hands and stepping back.  She’s smiling, even if it’s completely and utterly fake in Joan’s eyes.  She wonders when she’d gotten so good at pulling the real emotions from the fake ones on Jamie’s face.  “We’ve been in France mostly,” she says after a moment’s contemplation.

“Erik says she’s a doctor,” Demetri continues.  He claps his hands together and rubs them like he’s cold, before turning a broad, smiling face, complete with dimples, on Joan.  She doesn’t flinch or look away, and she’s really impressed that she’s managed to pull off a somewhat decent smile as well.  “Forgive me,” he says.  “I do not know your name.”

She stiffens, not wanting to reveal anything about herself that this man might be able to use against her later.  “Joan,” she says, biting at the inside of her cheek to keep her face as neutral as possible.  This is just a game, it’s just a role.  She can pretend to be someone else for a while.  “We’re still debating what we’re doing about the last name.  She,” Joan steps forward and rests a hand on Jamie’s shoulder. She can feel how tense Jamie is as soon as her fingers come into contact with Jamie’s skin.  “Doesn’t want to hyphenate.”

“It would sound ridiculous,” Jamie points out, not missing a beat.  “But we are not here to discuss my marriage, Demetri.  You have something of mine, and I have something that you want.  Let’s make the exchange and be on our way.  You know how much I hate parties.”  She holds out the folio, expression grim and determined.  “That is everything that I have on the Swede you’re looking for.”

Demetri takes the papers folio and opens it, letting out a low whistle.  “I am always forgetting that information is really your business, M.” He chuckles and passes the folio over to Mr. Karnsten, who flips through the pages and nods once.  He stares at them for a long moment before tapping his chin.  Joan’s stomach clenches with nervousness.  She isn’t sure why she’s so afraid, this seems to be going well.  “By the way, if you ever find yourself wanting children, come see me.  We can get you a little girl or two no problem.  Maybe one that looks like each of you?”  He glares over his shoulder at Sherlock.  “That one was sticking his nose into that side of my business; you know how these things can be.”  He chuckles.  “I know that he is your adversary, though.  Please deal with him accordingly.”

Jamie nods once.  “I will.”  There’s nothing relaxed about her person, the entire line of her body is tight tension and Joan’s nervous just looking at her. 

“You’re a doctor, right Joan?” Demetri pulls a key from his pocket, as well as a business card. "Mr. Holmes here might need some patching up..."  He presses them both into Joan’s hand with an almost irritatingly charming smile. “Call this number, it is my adoption agency.  We can fix you up.”

Mr. Karnsten snaps the folio shut.  “I’ve taken the liberty of collecting your coats from coat check, Demetri and I would rather you not take Mr. Holmes out of the building through the party.  The service elevator is just through this door.”

They leave the room after shaking hands with both of them, and Jamie lets out a slow, shuddering breath.  Sherlock is looking at them both like they’ve got three heads and Joan shakes her head once before bending to unlock him from the various bonds that holding him to the chair. She checks him for injuries as she does it.  His wrists are bruised from squirming, but he hasn’t dislocated anything that she can feel.  Jamie’s collected her coat and has tugged Joan’s wrap from where it’d been stuffed down the sleeve. 

“This looks bad,” Joan says, fingers gently poking at the cut on Sherlock’s hairline.  She tugs the tape from his lips slowly and lets him suck in a few breaths of eyes before she eyes him critically.  “Has it been bleeding this whole time?”

He nods.  “I think I have a concussion, Watson,” he confesses, rubbing at his wrists.  “Because I could have sworn that you were pretending to be married to her and that cannot possibly be true.  Short term memory loss and confusion are symptoms of concussions.”

Just barely  managing to not roll her eyes at his indgination over this whole bizarre situation, Joan helps him to his feet. He's situated and standing of his own accord Joan glances over at Jamie, who’s grimly staring out the door.  She’s shoved her clutch into her coat pocket, and Joan catches sight of what is very clearly a gun handle tucked into the other pocket.  It almost figures that she’d suspect a double cross, but then again, Joan had been worried about it as well. 

“It was a favor for a favor,” Jamie says with a pleasant smile.  “You’re looking far worse than the last time I saw you,” she adds with an assessing glance to Sherlock.

He opens his mouth and then closes it, obviously thinking better of whatever retort he’s thought of.  “I want an explanation,” he says as Jamie leads them past the service elevator and out onto the hotel floor.  She’s heading for the main elevator, which will spit them out into a busy hotel lobby.  It’s smart, to introduce other parties into the possible ambush.  Joan appreciates it. 

Joan pulls her wrap around her shoulders and promises him that he’ll get one, just as soon as they’re out of here.

-

“He’s got one hell of a shiner,” Joan says over the phone to Marcus as Jamie’s driver takes them back over the bridge towards home.  “But he’s in one piece.”

“Thank goodness,” Marcus says.  He lets out a relieved sigh.  “Are you at home now?  We just got a call from the vic’s parents, they’ve arrived in town.  I don’t know if either of you are really up to coming in to speak with them.”

Joan bites her lip and glances at Sherlock, he’s got his arms crossed and is very pointedly not looking at Jamie.  His leg is bouncing up and down and he looks absolutely exhausted.  Joan figures that she’ll get him patched up and then send him to bed.  The case can wait until the morning.  “Better put it off until tomorrow,” Joan says, feeling the weight of the ordeal today has been pressing down on her shoulders.  “There are some new developments in the case that he and I want to discuss too.”  An idea strikes her then, and she adds.  “Hey, can you run a check on a Marina Pietrova? Her name came up today.  I think she’s Russian.”

“Will do,” Marcus says and he hangs up after a quick goodbye.  Joan hangs up her phone and holds it in her hands for a moment before setting it on the seat beside her. 

This, she realizes, is beyond awkward.

They get back to the house without anyone speaking a word, which Joan thinks, given how both Jamie and Sherlock love to talk, has to be some sort of record.  They’re into the house before Sherlock rounds on Jamie and demands, again, to know what the hell is going on.

Stifling all the annoyance that she feels at Sherlock for not thinking that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t Jamie’s idea; Joan disappears upstairs and collects the first aid kid from the bathroom.  She sits him down on the couch and begins to explain to him how natural it was for her to be worried that he’d gone missing in the middle of a case and how annoying it was that the police didn’t want to act on the report that she’d filed until he’d been away for longer.  “She showed up,” Joan adds, glancing at Jamie, who’s just returned, having disappeared into the bathroom and changed out of her dress and into the same jacket and jeans from before.  It makes her look so completely and utterly normal that Joan’s almost sick to her stomach, knowing that there’s a gun tucked down the waistband of her pants and having seen photographs of what Jamie had done to the man who’d kidnapped Kayden Fuller.  “The Russian called her, not me, or even the police; he kidnapped you to get something from her.”

“Yes, you’re lucky I was in town, Sherlock.  I’d hate to think what Demetri’s boys would have gotten up to, had I been overseas,” Jamie says.  She’s standing in front of their wall, looking at the pictures of Lauren – or Marina, whatever her real name was, her finger trailing down a clipping from the Ledger that Sherlock had printed out.  “Joan was willing to go along with my plan, and to provide a plausible explanation for my absence from Demetri’s loathsome parties this past year.”

Joan bats Sherlock’s hand away as he reaches up to prod at the butterfly bandaids that she’s used to pull his head wound closed.  It’s already showing signs of staring to heal, so she doesn’t think that it needs stiches.  “Don’t poke it,” she says and he scowls at her.  His leg has started to bounce again.  “Anyway, yes, it was sort of a weird plan, but I went along with it.  It worked out, let’s leave it at that.”

He scowls, all petulant like a child who hasn’t gotten his way.  “I will not have you making deals with her, Watson, that’s how it starts.”

Joan gets to her feet.  She’s taken off her shoes and she feels impossibly overdressed between the pair of them.  It’s the anger that gets her more than anything else, because he cannot be grateful that they’ve just bailed him out of the hands of the Russian mob.  No, it’s all about his own personal hang-ups with Moriarty and how he cannot wrap his head around that fact that she’d be willing to save him.  Or even that Joan would be willing to set aside her own dislike of the woman for long enough to ensure Sherlock back in his own home with a case half-solved to keep him busy.  “As I am my own person,” Joan says testily, “and certainly not married to you or to anyone else. I’ll make my own mistakes, thank you.”

She doesn’t know why she storms out, or why Sherlock doesn’t call out after her.  She hears Jamie tell him good night and she stands by the door, one hand on her coat and the other tugging on the flats from the other day that she’s yet to bring up to her room.  She’s tired, she’s confused, and this case has got her thinking in circles. 

“Walk me to the car,” Jamie says, gathering up the bag of her belongings that she’s left by the door.  Joan pulls her coat on and follows her outside, slamming the door for good measure.  She can see Sherlock watching them in the window, and she knows that she cannot say all that she wants to say, because thanking Jamie is too much. 

“What was in that dossier, on the Swede?” she asks as they walk up the block.  She doesn’t know why she wants to know, or even if she’ll be able to stomach what she’s about to hear.  They’ve got time, and Joan doesn’t want to talk about Sherlock or their ruse or even what they’d done after that dance.  It’s late now, and most of the parking on the street is taken.  Jamie’s driver must have had to circle around to find a place to park, well out of Sherlock’s line of sight behind a tree.

Jamie turns to look at Joan then, and her expression is not one of suspicion, but rather resignation.  Joan’s not used to seeing it on her face and it takes her a moment to place it.    “He’s a contract man,” she explains.  “He did Demetri’s cousin about two years ago, he was all of fifteen.”  She shakes her head.  “I don’t really blame Demetri for wanting him, though.  Larson likes young boys like that, and from what I heard, he didn’t make an exception for a professional hit.”

Revulsion almost chokes Joan then, and she stops, feet planted as firmly as she can get them.  She feels like she wants to vomit.  “So in giving that to the Russians, we’re doing the world a favor?”  Joan asks, swallowing against the bile that’s threatening to well up from her stomach.

“If that is what helps you to sleep at night,” Jamie says and Joan wants to shake her.  How could anyone be so cold?  She looks at Joan and she’s as hard as she was around Demetri.  “Give me your phone,” she says and Joan blinks once before holding it out.

“What are you doing?”  Joan asks, watching Jamie’s fingers fly over the keyboard.

“Your dead woman, she had two very young children,” Jamie says quickly.  “I would not be surprised, going off of their photographs, if they were to turn up missing within the next day or so.  They both show signs, even in the pictures, of having spent time in an orphanage, probably in the former Soviet Bloc.”  Sherlock had picked up on that as well, but there had been no official adoption paperwork filed as far as they could dig up.  Jamie looks up then, eyes flashing almost dangerously as she saves whatever she’s doing onto Joan’s phone.  “Demetri offered them to you, Joan.”

Her mind races as she thinks about just what Demetri had said to her.  He’d offered her children – for their laughably fake marriage, had she wanted them.  “So this is what then?  Another favor I’ll owe you?”

Jamie steps forward, tucking the phone back into Joan’s pocket.  “No,” she explains, leaning in and kissing Joan once more.  Again it is chaste, innocent, and full of promise. Joan wants her to do it again when she pulls away.  “Call it a need to see this thing through.  People who deal in children are deplorable.”  She tilts her head to one side.  “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.  I dunno if you’ll need it, but I’ve saved my number into your phone and wrote you an algorithm so that you can get around my security.”

She retreats then. Joan finds herself staring after her, watching as Jamie disappears into the car and vanishes, two red headlights in the cold midnight air.

Chapter Text

Joan stays out of the interview with Mr. and Mrs. Evansport the next morning on a hunch.  She pulls Sherlock back as well when he makes to leave the observation room and head into the actual interview room. The morning has been fraught with tension as it is, and he turns to her as Mr. and Mrs. Evansport settle themselves across from Marcus at the interview table. 

“What is it about this case that has you behaving so oddly?”  He’s standing with his hands clasped behind his back, and his jaw is a tight line of tension. The swelling on his eye isn’t quite so prominent today, but the bruising is still spectacular.  Joan hates to think of what might have happened, had they not been able to rescue him.

The question, however, is unwarranted.  Joan hasn’t been the one acting out of character. Or at least, she doesn’t think she has been. The brief partnership with Jamie had been a means to an end, nothing more.  Joan wants to let out a frustrated sigh, but she manages to hold herself together fairly well.  He’s been stubbornly ignoring the fact that he was the one who’d paid the price for their getting to close to the Russians who seemed to be at the core of this case. 

“Why did you end up looking into Demetri and his organization, anyway?” Joan asks.  She’d been out for a run when he’d first disappeared, and hadn’t thought much of his absence until the hour had stretched to two and then four.  She’d gone to see Marcus then.  “Was it the kids?”

She’s playing a hunch, the same hunch that Jamie had suggested yesterday.  He looks at her and then glances down, fiddling with his shirtsleeve.  “They looked as though they’d spent time in an orphanage, yes.”  He glances towards the window.  The Evansports are tearful, but there’s something about their display of emotion that seems fake to Joan. She can’t put it into words, but it sets her teeth on edge.  She steps forward and presses her hand to the observation window, eyes narrowing as she tries to put her finger on what it is.

At first glance, Mr. and Mrs. Evansport seem like a fairly normal and relatively affluent couple.  They have the right accent to be from Indiana, but there are times when it seems too heavy – like an actor who understands the accent, but not the nuances of it.  Joan’s never spent any significant amount of time in Indiana, however, so she can’t be sure.  There’s just something about them that doesn’t seem right.  Maybe it’s the way that they keep asking about the kids, rather than their daughter.  Or maybe it’s because they’re insisting on taking the kids back to their hotel with them. 

“Private adoptions are notoriously hard to track, Watson,” Sherlock announces.  He’s standing very close to her and she starts, turning to look at him and playfully nudge him away. 

“Sherlock,” she says, pulling her arm away from the glass and wrapping it around herself.  She’d been up half the night being angry at him for acting like an ass and at Jamie for kissing her again when there was no reason to do it at all.  She didn’t understand it, their agreement was done and over, and yet it had happened again and she’d given Joan her number.  Joan lets out a quiet breath of air and forces herself to focus on the matter at hand.  “There’s something off about them,” she begins, voicing her suspicions of them for the first time.  She doesn’t say that she’s stayed out of sight because there’s a plan already forming in the back of her mind, should those two kids turn up missing.  No, best save that for later.  “I don’t know what it is, but seriously, you’d think that they’d care more that their daughter was just murdered, you know?”

Sherlock scratches at the three days of stubble that’s grown on his chin thoughtfully.  He makes a humming noise and raises his hand, fingers crooked, to rap on the window glass.  Joan grabs his hand before he can do it.  “Don’t,” she hisses.  “Let them think that this is okay, I want to see what they do.”

Earlier that morning Marcus had gotten a report from Interpol on the name that Jamie had given for Lauren Evansport.  Marina Pietrova was a known enforcer for Demetri’s organization, as well as one of a few that Interpol suspected of being involved with Demetri’s side business of quick, under the table adoptions for parents desperate for children. 

“You want to see if they’re involved as well,” Sherlock says sagely and pulls his hand away. 

Joan turns her attention back to the window, focusing hard on Mrs. Evansport’s face. “Jamie mentioned it yesterday night.  She said that she wouldn’t be surprised if those kids go missing once they’re back in the hands of their so-called family.”  She doesn’t look at Sherlock as she says the words, because she’s afraid of the look of betrayal that she’s sure is etched across his face. 

“Did you let her peruse the whole case file, then?”  Sherlock demands, “Or did Jamie make this assumption all on her own?”

Wincing, Joan silently wishes that she’d stuck to ‘Moriarty.’  She glances over her shoulder at Sherlock and isn’t surprised to see that his face is a stormy mask.  She understands his anger and his annoyance, but she really thinks that he’s taking it to level that’s a little bit much.  She sets her jaw and scowls at him. “She saw the wall and the photos.  I was a little preoccupied, at the time, with your disappearance to think to restrict her from looking at it.”  She shrugs then, turning fully to face Sherlock.  “And besides, she came to the same conclusions you did about the kids.  It’s not like its new information.”

He looks down at his feet, and then back at Joan’s face, his expression a strange mixture of sorrow and anger that Joan feels is entirely undeserved.  “I do not like her involvement with you, Joan,” he says in a quiet voice that sounds almost lost in the room.  “She is an evil woman beneath all that charm and apparent nobility.  She cares little for anyone other than herself.”  He looks away, and Joan’s got her mouth halfway open to point out that Jamie does care about Sherlock a great deal, to risk a public appearance before a man she apparently doesn’t particularly care for, when he continues.  “She’ll only hurt you before this is through.”

“How did you--” Joan trails off.  She honestly has no idea what she wants to ask him.

“You were avoiding the interview room so that you were not known to Mr. and Mrs. Evansport, if that is indeed their real names.”  He tilts his head to one side, bouncing on the balls of his feet in an uneven pattern.  Joan knows that he does this because the frenetic movement calms him when he’s upset, and she hates that he’s so worked up about this.  “I take it she offered to help, should the children go missing?”

Joan doesn’t say anything for a moment.  Instead, she turns back to look through the window into the interview room.  She wonders if Marcus shares their suspicions, and if he’ll even let the plan that’s half-formed in the back of Joan’s mind unfold.  “Who knew a woman so evil could have a weakness for children?”

“I think you’ll find,” he replies with bitter resignation.  “Is that her weakness is for you.”

There is no response that Joan can possibly think of for that.

They wait until they’re sure that Mr. and Mrs. Evansport are gone, driven over to the CPS group home where their daughter’s children have been taken for observation, before they leave the observation room.  Marcus comes and knocks on the door with a strange look on his face.  “Coulda really used you two in there,” he says.  “They’re not exactly what I’d call the best picture of grieving parents.”

“Watson noticed that as well,” Sherlock says.  In the harsh light of the precinct’s office space, his black eye looks far more bruised and swollen than it had when they’d left home that morning.  Marcus lets out a low whistle at it and Sherlock blinks before his hand flies up to his eye.  “Walked into a door,” he says by way of explanation.

“Yup,” Marcus agrees.  “Looks like a nice, fist-shaped door too.”  He glances at Joan, who purses her lips and looks away.  “And…” he concludes, “You don’t want to talk about it.  Okay.”  They make their way over to his desk, and he flips his notes open. “I know that Mr. and Mrs. Evansport have had, what, three days now to digest the death of their daughter?”

“Four, actually,” Sherlock supplies.  They’d notified them at close to midnight, when they’d finally managed to get an ID on Lauren’s body.

“Basically three,” Marcus says with a shrug, they’re both to Sherlock and his need to be absolutely precise when it comes to time.  (“The difference of mere seconds could make or break a case, Watson.”)  He taps his pen on the back of his notes.  “Something was off about them, like they were trying too hard – I don’t know.  It was weird, though, how preoccupied they were with the kids.  Everything we’ve found up to this point suggests that Lauren and her parents didn’t have much of a relationship.  How’d they even know about the kids at all?  They knew ‘em by name.”  Marcus flips over his notes.  “And as far as I can tell they’re both legally adopted by Lauren.”

Joan nods.  “I agree, it doesn’t sit right.”

“The Interpol report you received this morning contained their suspicions that Lauren was involved with some sort of child smuggling ring,” Sherlock says, flipping open the case file on Marcus’ desk and turning to the report.  “They target parents who want white babies and aren’t going to ask a lot of questions.”  He glances over at Joan and then sets the report back on the table.  “You need to keep them from taking Ms. Evansport’s children, at least until we can find out some more about them.”

Marcus stares at the pair of them and then glances back down at his notes.  “I don’t know if I can really do much on that front.  CPS is stretched as it is, and no one over there is going to say no to a close family relative without a lot of evidence that we don’t have.”  He rubs his hand over his head.  “The best I can do is tell them that they’ve got to stall for a while – but if they’re after the kids, they could be in the wind as soon as they pick them up.”

It hits Joan then, how to protect those children.  She twists, pulling her purse around from where it’s resting against the small of her back.  Inside her wallet is Demetri’s card.  It’s a heavy decision, and one she knows that she should discuss with Sherlock – and probably Jamie – before she commits to it.  “I might… be able to stall them until you can find more evidence,” she says, her hands resting on her purse.  “I need to make a phone call first.”

Inclining his head in a universal gesture of be-my-guest, Marcus sits back in his chair and drums his fingers on the table.  Joan grins at him before turning and heading for the interview room, she’s not about to call a known criminal in the middle of the bullpen.  Sherlock follows her, trailing her like a silent shadow.  He pauses in the doorway of the interview room, his expression unreadable.  “There are other ways, Joan,” he says.

Joan looks down at the phone in her hands.  Somehow Jamie had programmed herself a contact picture when she’d entered in her information, but she really doesn’t remember the picture being taken.  She clicks the screen off and looks up at Sherlock.  “It’s perfect,” she says.  “Plus she’ll give it credibility and the NYPD might be able to take down not only the men who murdered Lauren Evansport, but also break up an illegal adoption ring.”

He touches her arm then, and steps away. “I won’t stop you,” he says, glancing towards Marcus.  “But please, Watson, think this through.  You’re putting yourself in unnecessary danger and I won’t have you hurt.”  He turns and walks away, hands shoved into his pants pockets.  Joan catches a glimpse of neon yellow stars on bright purple socks and shakes her head, closing the door of the interview room shut behind her. 

She understands his concerns, and truthfully, they’re her own as well.  She does, however, think that this situation is not exactly like her costing Jamie Moriarty close to a billion dollars, or Jamie Moriarty’s secret daughter (and Joan wasn’t even going to get started on what that could possibly mean) being kidnapped.  No, it’s different and Jamie stands to gain something from it as well.  It’s a mutual sort of a thing, even if Joan feels impossibly confused about the whole thing.

Truthfully, that is what she is the most worried about, because there are not words to truly express how confused Joan feels about the whole thing.  The kisses had been nice, and Joan hadn’t wanted them to stop.  She’d been caught up in the moment, she’d told herself as she lay awake last night.  It wasn’t anything more than that. 

She takes a deep breath and slides her finger over the green button.  It rings three times, which Joan thinks is a lot for someone who is as glued to her phone as Jamie is, before it’s picked up. 

“Hello Joan Watson.”

Joan’s caught then, not really knowing what to say.  She doesn’t think she can just walk up to probably one of most gifted criminal minds she’s ever encountered and ask her how she feels about assisting with entrapment.  “Hey,” she says.  She pauses then, sucks in another breath, and then continues.  “You were right, about the kids.  The grandparents showed up today and we’re pretty sure that we won’t see them or the kids again.”

Jamie makes a distracted humming noise at the back of her throat.  Joan tries to picture what she’s doing and is caught up with the mental image of her sizing up a canvas, brush distractedly held in one hand and her phone cradled against her shoulder. “You want me to help you catch them.” 

“If you’re willing,” Joan says, carefully hedging her tone neutral.  “Sherlock and Detective Bell want to dig into the grandparent’s identities. We’re pretty sure that they’re fake, but we need more time to prove it.”

“Well, I did offer, didn’t I?”  Jamie says.  “Go home and pack a bag Joan, and bring some photos with you, I’ll collect you at five.”

Joan glances at her watch.  Its three thirty now.  “Okay,” she says, and feels the weight of the world slam down on her shoulders.

-

She packs two of Sherlock’s burner phones, carefully burying them between layers of underwear, and throws in one of the photo albums she’d put together during the first year of her and Sherlock’s partnership.  Sherlock stands in the doorway with his arms crossed.  “I won’t be able to contact you,” he says, until Joan holds up a burner phone and he lets out a quiet sound of approval.  “You shan’t need to stall them more than three or four days.  We’re already circulating the grandparents’ pictures around to various agencies and departments.  Hopefully Moriarty won’t manage to completely warp your mind by then, either.”

Joan flips her duffle over and turns to scowl at him.  She reaches over to the bed side table and tosses her glasses case into the bag, and, after a moment’s thought, adds the novel she’s working her way though.  “You aren’t me,” she says simply, getting to her feet and brushing past her to collect her bathroom things.  She makes a point of taking the full bottles of shampoo and conditioner; she doesn’t know how long she’s going to be there. “And I don’t think that I’m going to fall into the whole gas-lighting cycle that she is constantly pulling you back into with those letters she writes you, Sherlock.  This is about those kids, pure and simple.”

He sticks his hands into his pockets and bounces on the balls of his feet.  “If you say so,” he says, and Joan resists the urge to groan loudly at his obvious skepticism. 

She’s downstairs sorting out which coat she wants to bring when the there’s a knock on the door.  Sherlock hands her the iPad and its charger without a word and answers the door.  “I want to talk to you,” he says to Jamie as she steps inside, that same shit-eating grin on her face.

“Then talk,” she says.

Joan puts the iPad into her purse and sets it and her coat aside.  “I’ll just, go get my bag then,” she says, because she knows a request for a word alone when she sees one.  She goes upstairs and sits on the edge of her bed.  Her fingers grip the edges of the mattress through the sheets and she takes a deep breath.  She’s breathing in the smell of this place, filling her mind with the feelings of comfort that this place holds for her.  This is probably the stupidest thing she’s ever done, and she’s done some stupid stuff in her life. 

“I hope it’s worth it,” she says to the empty room.  It looks barren with her things mostly packed in the duffle by her feet. 

Sherlock’s footsteps feel like a funeral march as she listens to them come up the stairs.

“Did you say what you needed to say?” she asks, echoing a conversation of long ago.

He nods, not bothering to feign innocence.  “If you feel threatened at all, Joan, I want you to get out of there.”

"I will," she promises.  She slings her duffle over her shoulder and heads downstairs, hoping to god it's a promise that she can keep.

Jamie is standing in the living room, her arms crossed over her jacket.  She's staring up at the wall where Sherlock has rearranged some of the evidence to position the driver’s license pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Evansport front and center.  "I suppose it would be too easy for you both to get lucky twice," she muses, turning to look at Joan over her shoulder.  "I've never met either of them."

"Yes, I suppose that that would be too easy," Joan says.  Her things are by the door now and she cannot shake the feeling of finality of this moment.  She's avoided this moment for so long it seems.  She'd flat-out refused to allow her partnership with Sherlock to expire once before, and now it feels as though she's walking out on it.

"Do you have copies of the case notes?" Jamie asks.

Joan nods and reaches for her coat.  She tugs it on and selects a scarf from the rack that's enough of a neutral color that she can wear it with most of the clothes she's brought with her.  "They're on the iPad - we figured digital would be better than physical copies."

Sherlock had insisted on it, actually.  "I've done one of these stings before, Joan," he'd explained, pressing a thumbtack into the wall.  “You need to be completely out of contact with law enforcement for them to work well.”  Joan hadn't bothered to point out that the plan, at this point, was simply to call up Demetri and ask to see the kids.  She'd promised to tell him, if the plan did change.

"I agree," Jamie says.  She glances to the top of the stairs, where Sherlock is lingering.  Joan watches as her expression hardens, and wonders what exactly Sherlock had said to her.  It isn't her place to ask.  What is between them is not something that she thinks she wants any part of.  Their relationship isn't healthy, but until they can successfully extricate themselves from each other, it is a grim reality of Joan's life.  She has to learn to deal with it.

It's bitterly cold outside and Joan feels the breath sucked from her lungs as she lingers in the doorway, duffle over one shoulder.  She's staring up at Sherlock, a promise she doesn't know that she can keep on her lips.  "This had better work," she mumbles to herself, and turns and heads down the brownstone steps.

They're into Jamie’s town car and halfway up the street before Jamie speaks, and when she does it's not exactly what Joan is expecting.  "This is a spectacularly bad idea," Jamie explains, fingers folded primly in her lap.

Joan bites back a laugh, because she sounds just like Sherlock and she's sure that both of them would hate that comparison.  "You offered to help," is Joan's disinterested replay.  She glances down at her fingernails.  "This gives you creditability in your lie, doesn't it?"

She turns and stares out the window, not looking at Joan.  There's an almost nervous quality about her in the silence of the back seat of this town car.  Joan watches as Jamie brings her arm up to rest her chin on her palm.  "I don't do entrapment, Joan," she explains.  "It's a dirty business.  Demetri isn't the sort of problem that goes away simply, lop off his head and two will spring up in its place."

"Then what are you saying?"

"That we do this my way or not at all.  I'm sure that Sherlock can figure out a way that doesn't involve this lie, given enough time.  Say the word and I'll tell the driver to turn around."  The intensity of Jamie's gaze is enough to make Joan look down at her hand, clenched to white knuckles around her purse's shoulder strap.

It's this that she was afraid of, more than anything else.  She's poked a hornet's nest of emotions when it comes to whatever the relationship is between Moriarty's organization and the Russians that run so many undesirable aspects of this city.  Still, she wants justice for Marina or Lauren or whatever her real name is, and she wants to make sure that those kids are going to be okay.

She's resigned when she sits back, fingers stiff as they relax their grip.  "What is your way?"  Joan asks, not quite able to keep the curiosity from her voice.

A wide smile blossoms across Jamie's face.  "Let me explain."

-

The plan is actually fairly simple, although the level of finesse that it's going to take to pull it off makes Joan a little worried.

"I maintain several properties around the city," Jamie explains as she leads Joan into a fairly upscale East Village apartment building that overlooks the River.  They take the stairs as the elevator reads that it's at the top floor and Jamie apparently doesn't feel like waiting.  "It helps to have several places to go, if one wants to remain anonymous."

Or, Joan thinks darkly, one is hiding from the dogged pursuit of a very tenacious Sherlock Holmes.  She trails half a step behind Jamie as they reach the third floor.  There's only one door, and Joan lets out a quiet breath of air when she sees the space inside.

The entire wall to her right is a wide bank of windows.  Joan sets her bag down and goes to stand by them.  "People would kill for this view," she says and Jamie lets out a quiet laugh.

"I'm sure they have, too."

She's standing by a low wall that divides the kitchen from the wide, open space by the window.  Joan thinks that this apartment must be the entire floor, rather than one of four, which was the set up on the floors they'd climbed past.  A hallway goes off past the kitchen and Joan's sure that there's more open space on the other side.

Joan thinks of the two little children, probably sitting in a hotel room somewhere with people who didn't even have to bother to pretend to care about them.  She turns away from the window to look at Jamie, hands in her pockets.  "So how do you want to do this?" she asks.

They're operating under the assumption that this won't be easy - that they'll have to jump through the usual sorts of hoops that under the table adoption takes.  Joan hates everything about this, as Jamie sets the piece of paper down on the counter next to her phone and keys and crosses over to stand beside Joan.

There's a danger about this.  A warning in every movement of Jamie's body and Joan wants to recoil and step back.  She's always been one to talk about her feelings - to express them freely even if they don't come easily.  Sherlock had texted just once, to say that Marcus has confirmed that the Evansports and the children are no longer reachable and that the address and number they gave for their hotel are fake.

She's so impossibly close to Joan, her eyes half-lidded and predatory.  Joan feels herself swallowing, barely able to resist the urge to step backwards towards the window.  "Are you ready for this?" she asks, and her voice is all wrong for the look on her face and Joan can't quite stomach it.  Her gaze flicks down to Jamie's lips, mind racing back to what had happened the night before - the totally unnecessary second kiss.

Joan had tried to explain it to Sherlock the night before, when she'd come back inside with swollen lips and he'd seen right through her attempts to brush it off as nervous habit.  "She kissed me," Joan had offered by way of explanation. "And I don't know why."

He'd known. He'd pulled her into a sulky, one-armed hug, their shoulders bumping into each other.  "I'd hoped that you would be able to keep yourself from her twisted web," he'd confessed then, and Joan hadn't wanted to tell him that it was so much more than that.

"I'm not gay," she says to Jamie, because she honestly isn't.  She wants to make that as clear as possible before this goes any further.  She needs it well-established for her own sanity.  "I just... I have to say it."

Jamie laughs.  "No one ever said you were."

It's that pronouncement that draws the set of Joan's jaw in even tighter and she can feel her teeth grinding.  She hates that she's curious and that this is happening to her at all.  She wants to get those kids away from Demetri and the rest of his goons, but she's not sure that she can do it at the expense of her sanity.  She's going to have enough on her mind without the constant doubt that's plagued her since their first ill-advised kiss.

Sighing, Joan runs a hand though her hair.  "Look," she says, and it's almost enough to pull her out of this illusion, to see Jamie Moriarty for the murderer and criminal that she is.  "I'm willing to do this, I am, but you had to know that, going in."

There is a pause then that feels almost pointed, and Jamie's fingers play with the hem of her shirt.  "Did you think that I would try to sleep with you in order to make this seem more real?"

A hot, embarrassed feeling blossoms red and blatantly obvious across Joan's cheeks.  She looks down at her feet.  "No," she says honestly.  "I just... I never thought..."

She never thought that she'd understand why it is so hard for Sherlock to extricate himself from Jamie.  She understands it far better than she ever felt possible now, and she hates that she gets it at all.  It isn't fair; she'd never gone into this with anything but good intentions.

She's saved by having to say anything else by the sound of Jamie's phone ringing.  Jamie gives Joan a long, lingering look as she moves back across the room to collect her phone.

Joan's shoulders slump and she turns back to the window.  She feels exhausted and they haven't actually done anything yet.  This is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

She's only half paying attention when she catches a string of Jamie's conversation, an off-handed line about how Joan won't leave her alone about Demetri's offer.  She turns, eyes narrowing.  "I know I called you about this last night," Jamie says, her voice full of inflection that doesn’t show on her face at all.  "I honestly never expected you to offer, Demetri.  Did a deal fall through?"  Her expression tightens from neutral to actual confusion.  "A double cross?  How unfortunate for Pietrova," she says and Joan blinks at the mention of their victim's name.  She hadn't ever thought that it would come up so obviously in conversation.

Jamie taps a pen that she's produced from somewhere against the back of the counter, fingers flying over a scrap of hotel stationary.  "I trust you can make an introduction - I know that this isn't our usual line of business, but she won't stop bothering me about it."  She chuckles, but her lips don’t turn upwards into a smile.  There's no joy in it, and Joan's almost horrified at how good Jamie is at this, at lying and acting.  "Women are like that, I suppose.  I consider myself more evolved, but I'm not about to say no to her."

She flashes a grin at Joan then, and it's warm and full of everything that hasn't been there before.  It's brilliant and genuine and Joan swallows and looks away.  She doesn't need this; Joan swallows hotly and wishes she had a better name for what she's feeling beyond a sexuality crisis.  She needs this like a hole in her head, especially during an incredibly high-stakes case.

"I trust you can make an introduction in person, Demetri?  You should know better than to just expect me to show up at an address."  There's another drawn out pause, and Joan watches as Jamie writes down an address and draws three lines underneath it.  "I'll fax you the paperwork tonight," she says, and hangs up the phone.  "Best prepare yourself," she says brightly, tossing her phone back into her purse.  "We're meeting him tomorrow at eight."

Joan steels herself to the inevitability of what is to come, and nods her agreement.

-

She's making coffee the next morning at the ungodly hour of six thirty, leaning up against the counter in the apartment's kitchen in bare feet and her favorite red cardigan, when Joan witnesses something that is both bizarre and oddly hilarious.  Or, at least, it is later once she's consumed the coffee she's making.  Now it’s just a little strange and she can’t quite put her finger on why.

The kettle whistles and Joan, who is far too tired to be attempting to navigate a French press, moves to take it off the stove top and pour it into the top of the press.  She doesn't hear Jamie pad silently into the kitchen until she's done pouring and sets the kettle back down.  It lets out another half-hearted whistle and Joan turns to set it onto a different burner.

She sees Jamie then, standing in a pair of leggings and a long white t-shirt, and she's acutely aware of the fact that she's being stared out.  She tugs at the base of her sweater and looks down at her feet.  Jamie lets out a quiet sound that sounds vaguely approving, and Joan blinks and looks up at her, staring at her though smudged glasses lenses.  She pulls them off and rubs at them with the edge of her sweater.

"Good," Jamie says, seeming to recover herself.  "You're awake."  She turns and vanishes down the hallway and out of sight.

Joan shoves her glasses back onto her nose and turns her attention back to the French press that she's not entirely sure she's using correctly.  She doesn't think she has the mental space to deal with Jamie being odd this early in the morning.  It's her usual tactic with Sherlock and it's saved her a great many headaches over their partnership.

The coffee smells good and by the time she's figured out the press, Jamie has reappeared.  She's still dressed in what Joan guesses are her night clothes, but she looks freshly showered, hair damp and hanging loosely around her shoulders.

"Want a cup?" Joan asks a little tentatively because she can't quite decide if Jamie is more of a tea or coffee person.  The coffee she'd found was fresh and obviously expensive, but there's enough loose-leaf tea in the cabinet above the sink to keep an army caffeinated.

"Yes," she says, and after a beat she adds, "I had you as a tea person."

Joan shrugs.  "I'm pretty equal opportunity."  She's not going to mention that she tends to favor tea in the morning and coffee in the afternoon, and usually reserves coffee for when something - be it worry or Sherlock deciding that four AM is a perfectly reasonable time to practice his single stick for hours and hours right outside her bedroom door.  Last night it was the uneasiness of sleeping in a new place, and knowing that somewhere lurking in the darkness that had pressed in all around her there truly was a monster.

She'd fallen asleep thinking of those two kids and wondering if they'd ever had anyone care for their welfare before now.  She isn't sure, exactly, why she cares so much.  She supposes that she's committed, that she knows she must care because no one else probably does.  She wants to make Demetri and his goons pay for what they did to Sherlock, and if this is the only way to do it, then she'll do it a thousand times over.

Joan sips her coffee and eyes Jamie over the edge of her mug.  "I almost had you pegged as a tea drinker."

"Not all stereotypes are true," Jamie replies with a quiet sort of laugh.  She looks down at the mug in her hands.  "I mean, Sherlock practically runs on this stuff."

"When he's not being absolutely insufferable about his tea," Joan agrees.

And it's strange then, they're standing on opposite sides of the counter and the laughter that bubbles up within Joan is infectious and she hears Jamie laugh for the first time.  She wants to hate that she's comfortable with this, with the contact between them as it is now.  She can close her eyes and see Sherlock, shattered before her.  She can close her eyes and see dead bodies and that completely remorseless expression.  She can see the look of absolute hatred that's been directed at her more than once.

Jamie sips her coffee.  "You seem unsettled," she says and Joan knows that she's been caught in her reflections.  She tries to think of something to cover herself, but she can't think of anything at all.  She sets her coffee cup down on the counter.

"I was just caught up, thinking about those kids," she says quietly.  She thinks of something then, something that hadn't occurred to her before.  "Erm... how are you with kids?"

"Why?"

Joan thinks that it is far too early in the morning for this sort of a conversation.  "You have a child," and at this pronouncement, anything that was open about Jamie's posture immediately closes off.  Her expression hardens and she cups the mug she's holding tightly.  "And I won't pretend to assume anything..."

"You already are, Joan, but by all means, continue," Jamie replies testily.

She doesn't roll her eyes, but she's tempted.  "Look, I cannot begin to imagine what it's like to go through what you went through," and at Jamie's hard look she holds up both her hands in surrender, "And I'm not going to.  All I wanted to ask is if you could fake it - you know, actual interaction with a young kid."

Jamie's shoulders slump and she leans forward on the counter.  "I suppose I should be flattered, that you're not attempting to martyr me to the cause of lost motherhood."

Joan shrugs. "I figured if you wanted to keep your child, you would have."

The comment earns her a raised eyebrow.  "That would have been highly impractical."

"I suppose it would have been," Joan agrees.  There have been a few quiet moments, when she and Sherlock are actually able to sit down and talk about things like his Moriarty-problem and Joan is always trying to wrap her head around why Jamie, who had always seemed a practical person to her, wouldn’t have terminated an unwanted pregnancy.  There’s more to it, but she doesn’t want to ask for more details.  That isn’t their relationship, no matter how much they’re faking that it is.

In the end, as they glance at each other one last time, all awkward tension and unasked questions, Joan decides not to push.  She doesn't press for Jamie to answer her question, hoping that she'll do it on her own.

It never comes.  Joan finishes her coffee and heads into the bathroom to get ready for the day.  She's coming back, freshly showered, when she catches a glimpse into the room at the far end of the hall.  There's a work bench and an easel at the middle of the room.  There are sketches on the wall, studies, her mind says.  She looks away, not wanting to intrude.

They leave at close to eight and Jamie hands Joan a copy of the paperwork that they'd completed the night before.  "I really don't understand why they need all of this information, considering how much they charge," she explains, locking the door and heading towards the stairs.

While it hadn't been a serious discussion, Joan had asked Jamie what might happen if they actually bothered to look into her current career at all.  "I'm not an out of work doctor and it would take maybe three seconds on Google to figure that out, Jamie," she'd pointed out and Jamie had looked at her for a long time before shaking her head.

"It will be his head if he tries anything," was all that she had said in response, and somehow, it doesn't make Joan feel any better.

The office where Demetri's told them to meet him is not that far away, nor is it in a building that Joan recognizes.  It's a five story affair in the West Village.  Joan hasn't spent a lot of time in this part of the city and she feels slightly disoriented as she lets Jamie help her from the car.

They're putting on game faces, two people with entirely different motivations working towards a similar goal.  Joan reaches out and takes Jamie's hand, indicating with her chin the black suited form of Demetri, sitting in the first floor lobby.  He raises a hand in recognition and Joan forces herself to smile at him.

"Did you find it alright?" he asks, stepping forward once they're inside.  He's alone today, save a massive, hulking body guard that waits off to one side.  "Our office is on the second floor."

It is a sunny office, with a wide play room that dominates the far side of the room and several offices decorated with children's art work.  Joan thinks that it looks a bit try-hard-y, but she's not about to say anything to Jamie with Demetri right there.

Mrs. Evansport greets them and introduces herself as Alice Zellner. Joan makes a mental note to text Sherlock the name as soon as they get out of here.  Hopefully it will prove useful to the investigation. "Demetri's told me a good deal about you both," she says, and ushers them into her office.  Joan glances over her shoulder to see Demetri smile encouragingly at her and she feels sick to her stomach.

Jamie's fingers brush against her own, and Joan turns her hand to catch them and hold fast. She doesn't dare let go, afraid of bolting.  They need to do this, for those two kids, and to stop this from ever happening again.

"So I understand that you two have been married for a little over a year," Alice Zellner says.  She bridges her fingers over the expertly forged marriage certificate.  Joan wonders how many strings Jamie had had to pull in order to get it completed so quickly.

There’s a panicked thought that crosses her mind then, that it might have actually been filed with the city.  Joan quickly squashes that thought into the dark recesses of her mind, smiling brightly and leaning a little closer to Jamie.  "Yes, a year ago last August."

It's amazingly easy how quickly the lies flow now that they've told them a few times.  She answers questions about her family, and her income.  Alice doesn’t ask Jamie many questions at all, and Joan gets caught up debating mentally if it's an intimidation thing.  Moriarty isn't exactly a small name in the criminal underworld, and Joan is pretty sure that Alice is actually terrified of Jamie based on her body language alone.

"Now these are the harder questions," Alice says, setting a fresh form down in front of her.  She turns to Joan, "I understand that you've done some consultant work for the police in the past."

Beside her, Jamie tenses.  Joan can feel it in the fingers that are trailing against her arm.  "When I left medicine," she explains, taking a deep breath and deciding that honesty is the best policy.  "I did some work in sober companionship.  One of my clients did work for the NYPD as a consultant, and as is usually the case with sober companionship, I accompanied him."  She glances at Jamie and smiles then, bright and hopefully adoring.  "It's actually how we met."

It's an in for Jamie to actually the be one to spin the narrative, because Joan isn't sure how much she should be saying.  There’s a gentle draw of a finger down her forearm, and Jamie's lips quirk upwards for the briefest of instants before she starts to speak.  "Joan was involved with Sherlock Holmes very briefly; they've maintained a friendship despite my best efforts to the contrary.  I understand your concern, Ms. Zellner, naturally, but let me assure you that any involvement that Joan has had with law enforcement is long over."

Alice inclines her head, "Forgive my skepticism.  One can never be too careful."  She folds her hands over her paperwork and glances at Joan once more.  Her eyes narrow and Joan glares back.  "Tell me, you both have been married for over a year, why do you want to adopt now?"

"Well," Jamie says, but Joan turns to her and rests her hand on Jamie's upper arm. 

"I wanted to," she says.  "Jamie's not so sure, but after Demetri mentioned it, I couldn't stop thinking about it.  It gets lonely, sometimes, with Jamie away."  She shrugs, because she doesn't think a couple - especially a gay one - should have to justify their reasons for wanting to adopt beyond wanting a family. "And we're not getting any younger."

There's a pause then, and Joan tries to play it cool, because it looks like Alice is weighing her options carefully.  "We do not," she says at length.  "Usually allow children to be adopted to gay or lesbian couples.  It isn't good for children to not have a mother and a father.  The only reason I've allowed this interview at all is because Demetri spoke very highly of you both."

Joan had honestly not even thought of that.  They didn't know much about this adoption agency at all.  Sherlock had been able to get a little information off of their website, but he'd wanted to keep his web presence as far away from the operation.  Jamie had said that she wasn't going to do much more than look at what was plainly visible.  "I could dig deeper," she'd explained, pinching the iPad screen between them to zoom out, "But Demetri has always run a tight ship with his technology and I usually contract out the more advanced digital snooping I have to do."  She'd glanced at Joan, a shy smile on her face.  "I don't want to have the door shut in our faces before we're even invited in."

"Why are you doing this, really?"  Joan had asked.  It had been bothering her all day, and she hadn't quite found a way to ask that didn't sound accusatory.  "It cannot be simply because I asked you."

Jamie had shrugged.  "Why not?"  She'd asked.  "I can do favors for friends."

And Joan hadn't had the heart to tell her that they weren't friends.  She wasn’t sure what they were, but friend seemed too close - too intimate.  Joan didn't want to be friend with a murderer, even if she was finding it more and more difficult to find reasons why a simple friendship couldn't be acceptable.  She didn't think, after all, that Jamie intended to hurt her or Sherlock ever again.

She'd been wrong before, however.  Jamie is Moriarty, she'd told herself, and Moriarty is never going to change.

"Then why bother at all," Jamie demanded, her voice full of a venom that Joan had only heard once before.  It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she tried very hard to keep her expression neutral.  The anger was so clearly written across Jamie's face.  "Why barter false hope?  I came to you because Demetri and I have worked together for years without any problems.  We could go anywhere, but we came to you."

"Forgive me," Alice says, hands raised in a placating gesture.  Joan throws a warning look over at Jamie, but the anger there is so real that Joan catches herself getting caught in the emotion as well.  "I was merely saying that this is a special case."  She shakes her head.  "We're going to have to observe you both with the children both at home and here."

Joan nods.  "That seems fair," because it is fair.  She swallows, and reaches out to touch Jamie's shoulder.  She turns to look at Joan and Joan is struck by how truly real the anger is.  It's all wild energy behind Jamie's eyes and her nostrils are flaring.  She looks like she could murder Alice where she sits and Joan doesn’t think either of them want that.

"I can let you meet the babies we have presently, if you'd like.  We have two.  Demetri mentioned that you might be interested in both?"

"That would be lovely," Joan says and Alice collects a set of keys from a desk drawer and gets to her feet.

"If you both would meet me in the playroom..."  Alice says, and heads out of the office.

Joan gets to her feet and turns to Jamie as soon as the door closes.  "Hey," she says.  She's barely speaking above a whisper, not sure if she should touch Jamie when she's this pissed.  "Hey, it's alright, they're going to let us do it."

Jamie shakes her head, collecting her things and standing in one fluid motion.  "I wasn't angry," she says hoarsely, voice full of unexpressed emotion.  "I got caught up in the act."  It's an easy lie, and one that Joan is willing to let slide.  "I don't know if I can hold a child, Joan."

Closing her eyes, Joan lets out a slow breath, and reaches out to touch Jamie's hand.  They're standing so close together that it's easy for Joan to tug Jamie forward and into a hug that's as awkward as it is unnatural.  Jamie is not a tactile person, Joan's figured out that in watching how deliberate her gestures of physical affection are.

They stay like that for far longer than Joan ever intended to.  It’s far too intimate and far too familiar and it twists Joan’s stomach into knots. She tries to push the anxiety away, because this moment seems far more important than her own fears about how familiar she’s being with someone she knows better than to allow herself to become close to.  Her fingers trace patterns on Jamie's back and she whispers that it's okay to be nervous about interacting with a child.

"I never held her," Jamie confesses into Joan's shoulder.  "I didn't want to."

"That's okay."  Joan says, and she steps back and does something that isn't exactly what she'd intended to do.  She presses a gentle kiss to Jamie's cheek and takes her hand.  "Try and fake it, just for a little while."

The uneasy look in Jamie’s eyes does not disappear as she trails half a step behind Joan out of the office.  Joan wants to turn and tell her to get her shit together.  This is the moment that they’ve been waiting for, their first test.  Demetri, Joan notices, has vanished from the office lobby.  She glances around for him. 

"He probably left," Jamie says, as if she's picked up on Joan's curiosity as to where Demetri had gone.  She glances around as well, seeing that there's another person - probably the caregiver for the children - in the playroom with Alice Zellner.  "I didn't expect him to linger," she adds.  "This is a side business, at best, for him."

Joan decides then and there that she doesn't want to know what Demetri really does for a living.  The story of his dead nephew had been enough to turn her stomach, and Joan doesn't think she can stomach knowing any more about the circles that Jamie runs in.

Marina - Lauren's - children are both very young.  Alice has set them in the middle of a pale yellow blanket, a few stuffed animals dotting the otherwise nondescript room.  Joan hates that this place feels so soulless and empty, especially when they're obviously bringing kids into the country at a decent enough rate - if the pictures of happy families on the wall aren't straight up fakes.

Despite her best efforts to not coo at the babies, it happens anyway.  She turns then, a grin pulling at her lips that is entirely genuine, and sees the nervous look that Jamie can't quite hide behind a disinterested glance towards Alice.  The more Joan observes Jamie, the more she thinks that this is probably the most genuine display of emotion she's ever seen from her (other than her anger over Kayden Fuller's kidnapping), and it strikes her as odd that Jamie isn't able to mask it very well at all.

Are children truly that challenging for her?  Joan bites the inside of her cheek and focuses on the children - they're the priority now, not her fascination with Jamie Moriarty.

"The one in green is Alexi, and the older girl is Nadia," Alice explains.  She holds out a container of hand sanitizer to Joan, who takes it and squeezes the smallest amount of the stuff onto her hands that she can possibly get away with before handing it to Jamie.  She knows better than to protest that the stuff hasn't been approved by the FDA, or that it probably helps to create superbugs.  "I figured that we'd observe you interacting with the children here for, oh, say, half an hour, and then maybe set up a home visit for later in the week?"

Joan isn't sure how long it's going to Sherlock and Marcus to establish what they need to regarding the case.  She nods her agreement and bends to sit on the carpeted floor next to the blanket.  She doesn't want to do the wrong thing here, but as Alice and her assistant leave the room, Joan reaches out and gently lays a hand on the little girl's back.

She has wide brown eyes and pale wispy hair and doesn’t look much older than maybe nine months.  She’s small, though, for a baby that age.  "When I was doing my residency," Joan says, leaning forward and picking up a small stuffed bear.  She makes it dance before Nadia and watches as the baby's eyes move to follow the bear.  "I did a rotation in the neonatal ICU."  She's offering the information as freely as she can, because she wants to put Jamie at ease if she can.  Talking helps Sherlock, after all, when she's trying to convince him to do something he doesn't want to do.

Jamie is still standing at the edge of the blanket, the toes of her shoes barely touching the yellow fabric.  Joan wants to tug her down and tell her that it's okay to be afraid, but that it is the people outside of this room, not the children, that are the threat.  "You never told me that," Jamie says cautiously.

"It was more stressful than anything else," Joan explains, wiggling the bear again.  "Because of all the sick kids and worried parents.  I knew a girl who went into it and loved it - but I couldn't handle it.  I guess I liked it when the patient was knocked out."  It's a lie, and one that Jamie knows is a lie because it's pretty well established how good with the pre and aftercare of her patients Joan was.

She glances at the little boy, regarding her with solemn eyes, and sets the bear down beside her.  She picks up Nadia in one fluid motion, watching how the child could already support her head and still resting her hand there.  She's too light. 

It's as if by some miracle that Jamie sits down beside her.  Nadia is a sweet little girl who coos at Joan and tugs on her finger when it's offered.  Jamie looks at her as though she's diseased and Joan rolls her eyes.  "You have to actually touch them or they'll think you inhuman," she hisses.

"What, like you do?" Jamie retorts in an equally low voice.  She gives Joan a hard, evaluating look, and prods Nadia in the stomach with her finger.  The baby lets out an excited shriek and a strange, almost confused look comes over her face.  Joan wonders if it's because the child isn't screaming bloody murder, or because Jamie's honestly never interacted with a small child before and doesn't really know what she's doing.

"Here," Joan says, shifting her weight so that she can hand Nadia to Jamie.  "I'll get Alexi," she adds when Jamie shoots an alarmed glanced towards the baby, her facial expression completely betraying her perceived cool exterior.

Nadia lets out another excited coo and Jamie stares down at the baby as Joan gets up and collects Alexi.  He's maybe a month or two younger than Nadia and even smaller than her.  They both look so utterly starved for attention.  Still, he seems even-tempered and looks up at Joan as though she's a new, interesting toy.

"I don't think I've held a baby since I was in secondary school," Jamie says, staring down at Nadia with a bewildered look on her face.  Joan is about to respond when she finds herself having to extract Alexi's fingers from her hair.

"No, that isn't for you," she tells him in a soft voice.  She lets him tug on her finger instead, and he seems to enjoy that.  "My brother keeps talking about how he wants to have kids and my youngest cousin's nineteen now.  It's been a while for me," she's lying, maybe just a little bit, because she doesn't want to mention her friend's kids.  Jamie already knows too much about Joan's life for comfort, and she wants to keep them safe as best she can.

The moment that they're sharing, whatever it is, is truly bizarre to Joan.  She's not entirely sure that she likes the idea of being this intimate with Jamie.  It's all for an act, for these kids.  Joan knows this, but when she sees the barely concealed confusion that floats across Jamie's face when Nadia cries at being handed back to the nursery attendant she cannot help but feel for Jamie.  This cannot be easy.

-

They leave the adoption agency some forty minutes later after spending ten minutes in the bathroom trying to get spit- up out of Joan's shirt and half an hour talking to Alice about the logistics of a home visit.

There's a text from Sherlock when they get back to the car, and Joan calls him back, thankful that she'd taken the burner phone and not her real phone along with her.  She doesn't have to worry about talking to him on a phone that cannot be traced.

"Those children were legally adopted by Marina Pietrova," He explains after she's filled him in on what they've found out.  "She didn't even go through the agency that you're dealing with."  Sherlock's voice is tense and Joan can tell that he's itching to haul everyone in for questioning.  “The one she went through is well known and respected – if religiously affiliated.”

"Hang on," Joan says, pulling the phone away from her ear and setting it on speaker.  "Sherlock says that Marina Pietrova adopted those kids legally," she explains to Jamie, scooting closer so that they can both hear and speak freely.

"I had wondered about that," Jamie says, leaning forward so that the microphone on the phone can pick up her voice.  "Demetri mentioned something about a double cross last night."

Sherlock makes a humming noise at the back of his throat.  "He was most likely referring to her being about to turn herself and the children into witness protection," he explains.  There’s a rustling of some papers and Joan can see him in her mind’s eye, standing before their wall flipping through thumbtacked pieces of evidence until he finds what he’s looking for.  "We had a visit from the US Attorney's office not long after you left yesterday.  They were rather annoyed that we did not inform them immediately that she was dead. She was, as far as we can gather, their star witness."

"So where does that leave us?"  Joan asks.  Her mind is racing, trying to figure out why on earth anyone who was about to turn state's evidence would adopt children.

"Detective Bell and I are looking into possible relatives of Marina here in the states.  We've found a couple who came here about six months ago and are going to interview them tomorrow."  Sherlock lets out a quiet sound that might have been a sigh.  "I think you should stay put and keep those children as close as you can.  Ms. Pietrova is proving to have more secrets than most."

"Okay," Joan says.  It seems the most logical option, and the one that seems the easiest for them to keep up –even if it means that she has to keep up this confusing act a little while longer.  She ends the call after a brief good-bye to Sherlock and a reminder to feed Clyde.  Tucking her phone back into her purse, Joan turns to look at Jamie.  She's sitting with her chin resting on her palm, staring out the window.  "What do you think?" she asks.

"I think that Alexi and Nadia are related to Marina Pietrova somehow," Jamie says after a long moment of contemplation.  "And that she adopted them to give them citizenship here under her alias and Demetri found out about it."

Joan bites her lip.  It does make things infinitely more complicated, but Sherlock is digging, as is Marcus.  They’ll find something soon, she’s sure of it.  "How do we fix it?"

Jamie sits up a little straighter, a frown pulling at her lips.  "I..." she looks away, her hand twisting and waving in the air distractedly.  "I need to think..."  She trails off and turns her attention back to the window.

Joan sits back and stares at her feet.  There's something that doesn't make sense here still, she just doesn't have a read on why nothing is fitting.  If their victim had adopted those children already, were they technically dealing with a kidnapping? She puffs out her cheeks and thinks about what they know of the case thus far.

Marina Pietrova, alias Lauren Evansport, had been found dead in the middle of an empty lot across the river in Brooklyn.  She had two young children in her care that were found in her apartment and taken to CPS - at which point her estranged parents from somewhere south of Indianapolis were contacted as next of kin.  Joan continues to chew on her lip, thinking of how they'd struggled to find a next of kin, until they'd found an old passport of 'Lauren's' on their second search of the apartment and a half-filled out renewal form.  Sherlock, Joan remembered, had been suspicious of the handwriting not matching other samples that they'd found around her apartment, but they'd wanted to get those kids away from CPS and into a family member's care as quickly as possible.

Had their desire to get the kids away from the foster system actually been what had caused this mix-up in the first place?  Joan looks guiltily over at Jamie, who's still absorbed in staring out the window, twisting the fake wedding ring on her finger around in idle circles with her thumb.  Joan is struck then, at how absolutely deadly she looks, awash with a killing calm that Joan's sure is not an act. She's known this woman to murder without prejudice, and she's known this woman to act in ways that defy everything that Joan's ever known about her.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks once more, almost afraid of the answer that she'll get.

Jamie turns and stares at Joan for a long time before she smiles that same calculating smile that Joan's noticed she tends to favor when she thinks she's in on some private joke. "For you, Joan," she says simply, as though it's all the explanation that was ever needed.

Chapter Text

Joan calls Sherlock back, leaning over the balcony of Jamie's apartment, fingers idly tapping out a rhythm, the beat of a song she can’t remember, on the railing that surrounds the balcony.  He answers in less than one ring, but is quiet when she wants to ask him more about the case.

"We haven't had a great deal of success," he confesses and Joan can just picture him standing in the middle of the living room, one hand in his pocket and toes wiggling distractedly in too colorful socks.  She can feel his frustration even though he's not physically present beside her and she wishes that she could touch his shoulder and tell him that it will all be okay.  They'll figure this out, they always do.  "Bell is convinced that there has to be more to this, that these children are the key to the whole case - but we cannot figure out their connection to it on a larger scale."

"Have you thought about other, maybe looser, connections?"  Joan asks, glancing inside.  Jamie is walking around the perimeter of the room, her lips pulled into a deep frown.  She has something in her hand, and Joan's stomach drops to somewhere around her knees when she gets a better look at what it is.

She's seen bugs before; they've found them in the brownstone a few times on some of their more exciting cases.  It isn’t a good sign.

"You know what," she says almost distractedly.  "Let me call you back in the morning.  Jamie had a theory about this case, and I'm thinking that we'll be seeing confirmation of it soon enough."

He's in the process of asking what on earth she means by that when Joan pulls the phone slowly away from her ear and hangs up.  Joan stands perfectly still, watching as Jamie's expression grows increasingly more and more murderous.  Joan guesses that there is some honor among people in Jamie's line of work, and that this sort of thing simply isn't done.

She slides the balcony door back open and pops her head inside.  There's no place to hide a bug out here, and Jamie probably knows it.  The heating from inside hits her full in the face and Joan realizes just how cold it is out here.  The wind is whipping in off of the river, and she'd been so distracted trying to figure out what the deal is with Marina - Lauren's kids was that she hadn't noticed. Joan silently inclines her head backwards, inviting Jamie out into the air.

There's a moment then, when Jamie's expression softens into something that could be friendly once again.  She sets the bug down on the counter top and pulls her coat on before stepping outside.

"Demetri?"  Joan asks in a low voice.

Jamie shakes her head.  "No," she confesses.  "Or at least I don't think so.  He wouldn't be stupid enough to try something like this."  She purses her lips and wraps her arms around herself, a pensive expression on her face.  "It does explain a few things, however, about why this situation has cropped up at all."

"How do you mean?"

Somewhere below them, a car horn honks and Joan glances over the balcony to see that someone has spaced out a green light.  She wraps her fingers around the balcony railing and stares out over the river and Brooklyn beyond.

"Think about it," Jamie says, coming to stand next to Joan.  "I understand why Demetri had Marina Pietrova killed.  Betrayal isn't handled kindly in this line of work," she explains. "She was about to turn him into the authorities and he handled the situation accordingly.  His reaction to Sherlock snooping around was to take him and rough him up a bit - and use his connection to me to get information he's been after for years now."  Jamie shakes her head and looks down at the street below them.

It's honestly a little disturbing how pragmatic Jamie is being about Marina Pietrova's death.  She isn’t a good person by any stretch of the imagination, Joan's coming to realize and accept that.  Not all their victims are, but they still deserve justice.

"Then what of the kids?"  Joan asks.  They're at the heart of this, and yet no one can figure out just how.  "Where do they figure in to your version of this case?"

She's silent for a long time then, breath fogging in the cold air.  Finally she turns to Joan, her hair blowing into her eyes.  Joan reaches out, forgetting herself, and tucks it behind Jamie's ear.  She catches herself then, and snatches her hand away, a flush blossoming across her cheeks.

"Demetri doesn't know that they're Pietrova's.  He's probably under the impression that they're from whatever orphanage he usually gets his kids from in Russia," Jamie reaches up and touches the spot on her cheek where Joan's fingers had lingered.  "Someone else did this, someone who knows of your connection to Sherlock - that's why this place is bugged."  A wry smile plays at Jamie's lips and she steps into Joan's personal space.  "They're hoping to catch us in a lie, and I don't intend to do that, do you, Joan?"

It takes all of a second for Joan to shake her head.  "No," Joan says.  "We can't get caught, not until we can get enough evidence to convict Alice Zellner and Mr. Evansport for kidnapping."

She's thinking of the case and the kids when Jamie leans forward and presses her lips to Joan's cheek.  "We can't discuss them inside," she says in Joan's ear.  She's so impossibly close and her shampoo smells like summer in the middle of winter.  "And it has to be convincing."

And it's Joan who forgets all of her reservations and turns and presses her lips to Jamie's in a kiss that is neither hurried nor is it chaste.  She knows she can fake this… whatever this is.  They both know that it’s just that, a fake relationship with no true affection.  Joan wants to say that they can handle it, but this kiss feels real and like everything she’s wanted.

The thought of it terrifies her.

They go back inside and put the bug back where Jamie found it.  Joan sends Sherlock a text from Jamie's phone, explaining the situation.  She tells him that maybe he should start to look into a usurper within Demetri's organization, and suggests the name of the man who'd functioned as Demetri's right hand as a decent place to start.  She watches as it encrypts the message with that same cypher that had been such a puzzle to them for so long.

He replies a few minutes later, but Joan can't stomach reading his response past the first line of text that informs her, for what feels like the hundredth time, why, exactly this is a horrible plan.  She knows it's a horrible plan, but it's the best one that they’ve got.  They have to keep those kids safe, there isn't another option.

Jamie's disappeared into the room that she's been using as a studio, and Joan doesn't particular feel like going in there and possibly having to confront another giant picture of her face.  The first one had been unnerving enough, a second; she doesn't think she can stay in character.

She instead chooses to stand in the doorway, watching Jamie in profile, the canvas slanted slightly away from the door.  "I was going to order dinner," she says, because like hell is she going to cook to make this even more domestic.  "Did you have any preference?"

"Something spicy," Jamie says distractedly, reaching for a different brush and not turning to look at Joan.  "Maybe Thai..."

They eat sitting side by side, an hour later, the iPad propped up on Joan's lap.  She's distractedly reading the Mets' practice report, and Jamie's reading over her shoulder with interest.

"Why do you care so much about baseball?"  Jamie asks at length.  She's deceptively good with chopsticks and has been stealing bites of Joan's curry whenever she thinks Joan isn't watching.  Joan is debating revenge, but is waiting until the moment is right. "It's an entirely predictable game - brilliant if you like statistics - but incredibly predictable."

"Why do you paint?" Joan asks, because it's the same thing to her. Just something to do when you're bored.  A means to an end of mental stimulation.  Joan cannot recall the last time she watched or listened to a game without thinking of something else as well.  It's friendly, familiar, background noise.  Before he retired, Joan thinks that she could have sat and listened to Bob Murphy call the game all day. It's been years since he retired now, and Joan can't remember the last time she'd sat and listened to a game the whole way through. "Everyone needs a hobby."

Jamie looks away, her expression unreadable.  "It isn't a hobby," she confesses.  Joan knows that they're being overheard, but it feels real.  "I was taught as a child to find an outlet for my creative energies when my parents had no time to keep me engaged."

Somehow, Joan isn't really surprised.  She leans over and blatantly steals some snap peas from Jamie's plate, daring her to object with a raised eyebrow.  Two could play that game.  "My mother put us into piano lessons, but they didn't last long.  I'm not very musical."  She doesn't mention that with a writer for a father, there was never enough money to keep them in lessons for any extended amount of time. She doesn't think that she wants Jamie to know about that - she gets the sense that their upbringings were very different in that regard.

Jamie's head tilts to one side and she's almost distracted-looking as she watches Joan.  "I find it hard to imagine you not being good at something, should you set your mind to it."  The pronouncement pulls a wan smile onto Joan's lips and they're just eyeing each other like this is some sort of date and the whole idea of it seems a lot less horrible the more that Joan thinks about it.

This is all an act, and she's intrigued, wants to ask Jamie questions that she should already know the answers to - had this been real.  Joan feels torn, unsure how to ask the questions without tipping her hand to anyone who might be listening.  She casts about, searching for a segue, to get the conversation back onto something that they could talk about.

"Did your brother play baseball - was that where your interest in the sport came from?" Jamie asks, her voice a picture of polite interest.

It is a complicated answer, and not one that Joan feels entirely comfortable giving.  She eats one of Jamie's impossibly spicy snap peas and breathes deeply through her nose, looking anywhere but Jamie.  "It used to be a thing that I would do with my dad," she explains.  "We'd go to see him, sometimes, and he'd tell me about the Mets.  It was the one thing..." she shakes her head, and she can see the narrowing of Jamie's eyes, obviously clued into the fact that there's something that she's missing.  Joan decides to let her wonder.  "It was the one thing that was the same about him, no matter what else changed.  I played little league until I got too old for it - I never wanted to play softball."

"And were you any good?" Jamie asks, because obviously that is the clarification that's needed.

Joan thinks of strike outs and complete games pitched, about learning how to throw a knuckleball in the middle of a back alley behind a homeless shelter with Oren reading books for school against a dumpster.  She thinks about jeering boys who didn't understand and taking them out, three up, three down.

"I was okay."

The conversation dies, and Joan trails after Jamie into her studio when they’ve finished eating.  There is another bug, this one taken apart with the screwdriver from Joan's eyeglasses repair kit and set neatly to the side of Jamie's palate.  Joan closes the door behind her when she comes in.

"I won't abide them listening in here," Jamie announces, not looking up from where she's rummaging through tubes of oils, a brush in one hand.  "The living space is fine, but this is my space where I work.  I'll not have them listening in on my plans."

"That seems reasonable," Joan answers.  She hadn't thought much about it, honestly, but Jamie does have a point.  They didn't even bother to hide the bugs all that well.  They were meant to be found, which begs the question as to why.  Joan has no answer for that question and she can’t quite figure out if Jamie has any idea about it.  Joan watches her as she moves fluidly through her supplies.  This is her natural environment, far more so than the criminal underbelly of New York.  "Are you going to call Demetri and tell him off for it?"

Jamie shrugs, having successfully found the paint she'd been looking for.  She glances down at it in her hand, already streaked crimson from what Joan guesses is a loose cap somewhere in the pile.  "Probably not, I may mention to Zellner and her people that I find their methods incredibly invasive."  She pauses, holding her brush in the air as though she's trying to catch a fleeting thought.  "Yes, I might tell them that."

A chill runs down Joan's spine.  She lets herself forget, when they're just talking, when they're just two people occupying the same space, just who Jamie is.  She is another mask, maybe the most true of all of them, but just another mask worn by Moriarty. Being told something by Moriarty sounds a lot like a bullet between the eyes and Joan concentrates on that worried feeling that grips her, attempting to burn it into her memory.

She can't let herself forget.

"Wait until after this investigation is done," Joan says.  She doesn't think that she can say anything that will make Jamie stop, but she can at least remove herself from being complicit in their subsequent murders. And maybe they'll get enough evidence that they'll be safely in jail and Jamie won't bother trying to kill them because murders in jail are, according to Sherlock, a 'hassle'.

There's a pleasant smile at Jamie’s lips and she's mixing powder into paint and the entire room smells like turpentine and oil.  Joan crosses the room and opens the window. "I didn't think you'd approve," Jamie says.

"I don't like my privacy invaded either," She replies smoothly.  "But try not to kill them?" Joan says it like a joke, but she’s deadly serious.

"Oh, I have no intention of that," Jamie says loftily.  "I intend to use their lack of respect to leverage some information out of Demetri that he's been holding back on for some time."  She glances over at Joan, and there's an almost amused twinkle in her eyes.  Joan looks away.  "Do you really think I kill everyone who wrongs me?"  She tilts her head to one side; brush up in the air again.  "If I did that, Joan, half of the criminal underbelly of every major city from here to Hong Kong would be dead... you'd be dead."

The anxious, worried feeling that's settled in the pit of Joan's stomach dissipates somewhat and she flashes an almost smile at Jamie. She can't say that she's happy for it, but she does think that it's a white flag if Jamie's ever waved one.

Joan leans against the window and feels the cold glass through the back of her sweater. It’s a calming feeling, one she appreciates as she prepares to ask this question.  "There is only one bedroom in this apartment," she begins and Jamie looks up sharply, her eyes narrowing as she waits for Joan to continue her thought.  "And I was thinking that we should probably discuss the sleeping arrangement here, where we won't be overheard."

"I sleep on the right," Jamie says and goes back to mixing her paints as though the matter is settled.  It isn't settled, not even close.  Joan has never been one to share her sleeping space easily.  Sleep is so vital to Joan's ability to function that she doesn't really know how to articulate that she doesn't think a simple brush off is going to explain it.

"I um..." Joan sighs as theatrically as she can.  "I kick."

"For someone who values rest as much as you do, you certainly overthink it, Joan," Jamie says distractedly.  "It's a bed, plenty big for two people.  You stay on your side, I'll stay on mine and they'll be none the wiser."

Joan puffs out her cheeks and hopes that she's right.

-

Joan wakes up the next morning warped in a warmth that she hasn't felt since the last time she'd had a regular bed partner.  She rolls into the warmth, content to doze until the alarm goes off.

She's nearly dozed off once more when her eyes snap open, hazy as they are with sleep and lack of glasses.  She's practically nose to nose with Jamie Moriarty, who is staring at her with sleepy eyes and tussled hair.

"You didn't say you cuddle," she says in a low voice as Joan hurriedly scoots back to her side of the bed.

Swallowing, Joan shakes her head in a vehement denial.  "I don't."  To add emphasis she rolls onto her other side and stares at the blank wall.  Her cheeks are flushed, and embarrassment has settled over her in a thick cloak that feels suffocating. How could she have been so stupid, to allow this to happen?  She should have slept on the couch. 

Fumbling on the bedside table for her glasses, Joan shoves them onto her face and blinks at a now in-focus Jamie, who hasn’t moved save to throw an arm very clearly onto Joan’s side of the bed.  Sleepy, Joan stares up at the ceiling before rolling over and glaring at the encroaching arm.  “When did you come to bed,” she flushes at the words as she says them, because it sounds so overtly sexual when it really isn’t.  She’d gone to bed by herself last night, after reading a lengthy email from Sherlock explaining how this situation as escalating in ways that he didn’t like or approve of and replying that if he’d just solve the case already Joan would be free from playing house with Jamie.  He’d sent back a single line of text reminding her that this whole thing was her idea to begin with and Joan had put away the iPad and dozed off not long after.

“A little after two,” Jamie says and her voice is heavy with sleep. There’s a streak of deep blue paint on Jamie’s cheek, and Joan reaches to touch it, to rub it away.  “I lost track of time,” she adds, fingers wrapping around Joan’s and holding them to her cheek.  It feels so intense, so intimate, a gentle touch that is everything that Joan doesn’t want this to be. 

She doesn’t pull away.  Jamie is sleep warm and her eyelids are already drooping once more.  This is all an act, Joan swears to herself, shifting so that her glasses are not digging into the side of her face. 

“Take them off,” Jamie suggests, and Joan starts – her hand jerks away and the warmth is gone.  Jamie’s eyes are open again, crinkled at the sides and she reaches up and plucks them from Joan’s face.  She turns and sets them on the far edge of the mattress – well away from both of them, before settling back into much the same position as before. 

Somewhere between getting resituated and Joan half-wanting to demand her glasses be given back, they end up nose to nose.  Jamie still has a streak of paint on her cheek and it’s oddly endearing to Joan, blurry though the world is right now.  Later, she’ll say that she isn’t sure who moves first, but she knows that she’s the one who caves, and leans across the space between them and presses her lips against that blue streak.  Jamie tilts her head and they’re kissing again, only this time it’s slow and easy – practiced even and the thought that this is becoming a habit terrifies Joan.

Jamie pulls back, her lips red and swollen and Joan is caught, breath stuck in her throat, struck by how intimate this is.  “I could have you,” Jamie whispers, all the sleep gone in her eyes and replaced by something different, something dark and intriguing.  Joan has seen that look on her face only once before, full of desire and a ceaseless want for everything that she cannot have.  The world isn’t enough for Jamie; Joan knows this, but this, this little piece of it is entirely hers to give and she’s contemplating giving it.   “I would have you, if you …” she sucks her lower lip into her mouth and looks away, hair falling into her eyes.

And Joan kisses her again because she would have Jamie too, if she understood how this had progressed from a shared attraction and a lot of fake kissing to real kissing and actual desire painted clear as the blue streak across Jamie’s cheek.  She’s falling, she knows it. She’s not even into women and she’s falling anyway. 

“How much of this is real?” She whispers, lips grazing at Jamie’s earlobe.  There’s a shift, and Joan is practically on top of her – weight on her elbows and knees and fingers tangled in Jamie’s hair. 

Jamie’s smile is slow and easy and entirely disconcerting as she takes a handful of Joan’s sleep shirt and they’re kissing again and god – it feels so good and Joan’s sleepy and content and she definitely could see herself doing this for hours and hours.

“All of it,” Jamie whispers, her nose brushing against Joan’s and their foreheads bumping.  “I am doing this for you,” she says again, and her fingers curl around the back of Joan’s head and pull her back in.  They’re about to kiss, sharing the same air, and Jamie adds, lips sliding against Joan’s as she speaks.  It feels good and it promises more and Joan can feel what little resistance she still has slowly starting to ebb away. “I won’t do anything you don’t want, I swear to you.” 

Something about that proclamation makes Joan pause, mind racing and fingers curling into Jamie’s hair. “I need to think,” she says in what she hopes is a low enough voice to not catch the listening device’s attention.   She sits up and extracts herself from Jamie as best she can. Her finger curl around the sides of the mattress and she can feel her shoulders shake with the effort to keep herself together. 

The bed dips and Jamie’s presence, the feeling of eyes boring into the back of her head, is gone.  Joan lets out a slow, uneasy breath of air feeling like she’s shouldered the weight of the world and unsure just how to escape it.  Jamie is there then, holding out her glasses with a strange, somewhat distant expression on her face. 

“You have paint on your face,” Joan says once she’s got them back on.  Jamie’s fingers fly to her cheek and Joan shakes her head.  “Other side,” she corrects. 

Jamie pulls her fingers away from her cheek.  "I must have missed it last night when I was cleaning my brushes."  She frowns, and Joan knows that while the gesture might have seemed deliberate - as so many were with Jaime - that one probably was not.

Joan lets out another slow breath and rises, rummaging in the drawer that she's been offered for leggings and thick wool socks.  "I'm going for a run," she says, not caring that it looks to be absolutely frigid and potentially about to snow outside.  She has to get out of this apartment for a few minutes, to allow herself time to think, to breathe without Jamie's constant, ever-observant presence lurking just out of view.  Sherlock had been right; this had been a horrible idea.

"It looks absolutely miserable outside, you'll get sick."

Taking a gambit, a careful play on words and an act for the people surely listening in.  "You say that every morning," she says flippantly, tugging off her sleep shirt and hunting for her sports bra in the drawer.  She's not exactly embarrassed, standing in a tank top and shorts and knowing that she's being stared at.  She's used to that, on some level. It's be stared at or become invisible, and Joan hates the idea of being invisible.

A slow, easy sort of a smile blooms across Jamie's face. She settles herself down on Joan's side of the bed, nails still picking distractedly at the paint on her cheek.  It's flanking off now, and Joan is very pointedly not looking at it as she successfully finds her bra and slings it over her shoulder on top of her leggings. "In the middle of the winter, it's true every morning," Jamie points out.

Joan rolls her eyes.  "That isn't going to stop me," she says, and she means every word of it.

-

"Take the key," Jamie says, tossing it to Joan a few moments later.  She's wrapped up in a robe and has socks on against the cold floor.  Joan catches it and can't help but feel slightly vindicated at the you-are-absolutely-insane look that Jamie is giving her.  It’s sort of hypocritical, Joan thinks, but she doesn’t say anything at all.  "I may be gone when you get back."

"Oh?"  Joan asks, bending to tie her shoe.

She doesn't ask where Jamie is going, but Joan is pretty sure that it has something to do with the cable company truck that's parked just outside the building and has been there for the better part of the last two days.

Joan runs, key pressing into her palm on its leather fob.  She runs as hard and as fast as she can, wanting to forget everything but the skill it takes to dodge around people.  Blood pounds in her ears and Joan pushes herself until her mind is perfectly blank.

It's glorious.

"You're outside," Sherlock says when she calls him from the midway point on her run, breathless and needing to take a breather, perched on the edge of a freezing cold park bench.  "She let you leave?"

Joan doesn't answer for a moment, her breath fogging the air before her.  "I'm always free to go."

"But you won't," Sherlock says without prompting.  "Because of Moriarty?"

"Because of the kids, Sherlock," Joan retorts, because honestly, confused as she feels, that has been the reason for this charade since the beginning.  "They're so young and I do not want them sold off to the highest bidder just because Marina or Lauren or whatever her name really was pissed off the Russians."

He seems to take her word for it, humming quietly.  "We might have some news on that front, actually.  Captain Gregson's Interpol contact was able to locate the orphanage that Pietrova adopted the children from and was able to establish a familial link between them.  Pietrova has a younger brother and sister.  The brother is 35 and facing a prison sentence for being involved with the mafia in Latvia, and the sister is twenty."

"The kids are the bother's?" Joan guesses, because going off of the evidence, the sister seems unlikely.  "And she took them because he was going to jail and she was about to go into witness protection?"

He makes an affirmative noise.  "One is his, yes, the little boy.  His mother was killed when the brother was arrested, and he and the little girl - we're not sure her origins yet - were in the care of the sister, who's still in school.  She put them into an orphanage because she couldn't afford to care for them," He sighs and Joan can picture his face, a study of contradicting emotions: anger at the men who did this and sadness for those two children.  "It's almost honorable, what Pietrova did to keep those children safe."

Joan stares out across the road.  She's at the far corner of Central Park, having run farther than she'd anticipated.  She's still out of breath but her mind is racing.  "We have to get those kids away from the adoption agency," she says at length.

"Yes," Sherlock agrees.  "I don't the way you're going about it, though.  A search warrant works just as well."

"I'm sure," Joan says.  An idea strikes her and she follows it along in her head.  "Do you have any word on who Mr. Evansport really is yet?"

He's quiet for a long time.  "Not yet, why?"

"I think he's responsible for the listen devices in the apartment - which means that he's trying to catch us in a lie - or listen in on Jamie's plans."  Joan sucks in a deep breath of air.  "We're meeting with Zellner this afternoon to discuss a possible home visit," she adds. "Maybe I could try to wheedle for the kid's stories?"

"No," Sherlock disagrees.  "Don't do that. As much as I hate it, you're supposed to be out of law enforcement and happily pretend-married to a murderer.  I think that a person in your role would know better than to ask prying questions.  Especially given that you've established yourself as being fully complicit and aware of all Moriarty's crimes."

"Then what do we do?  We have no way of getting those kids into a better situation, at least not right now.  Unless you can get that girl to the US."

"I don't think we can," Sherlock lets out a quiet sigh. "At this point, the best possible option for those children would be for them to be adopted through some other agency - to families that will actually have them."

"There's no chance at a relative being willing to take them in?"  Joan sighs, knowing that the lead on a potential relative hadn't panned out.  She frowned, an idea striking her, one that Sherlock wouldn't like.

"None that we can locate in the States," Sherlock replies with a defeated sort of voice that lets Joan know that he doesn't have much of anything to go on right now.  She wishes she could go back and talk through the case again.

Closing her eyes against the park's foot traffic, Joan posits the idea that she knows he'll hate.  "Jamie has made a child disappear before."

"Twice," Sherlock agrees, and his tone is sour.  "However, I do not think that she would be willing to do so for a stranger's child."

"So we shouldn't resort to that?"  Joan asks.

"Not unless you think that Alice Zellner and her cohorts will kill the children in order to avoid implication in their kidnapping," Sherlock answers.  "Give Detective Bell and me time, Watson, I think we may be on to something with this Interpol lead.  If we can find any evidence linking Zellner to Piertrov beyond pretending to be her mother - criminal impersonation will hardly stick to someone as well connected as her - we'll have a reason to bring her in and arrest her.  CPS can then take the children and you," he pauses and tries not to sound gleeful, "can come home."

Joan hangs up a few moments later, her mind spinning with the implications.  Tomorrow they would see Zellner again, and by then, maybe there would be more answers from Sherlock.

The trip back she takes it slow, she lingers, cuts her pace down to a more reasonable mile time, and by the time she gets back she's freezing and drenched by the spitting, icy rain that had started to fall.  She lets herself into the apartment, shivering and kicks her shoes off by the door to be dealt with later.

There is a mug of tea, still steaming on the kitchen counter.  Jamie is nowhere to be seen, and Joan takes the mug between ice-cold fingers gratefully.  She pads in semi-dry socks down the hallway to stick her head into Jamie's studio, damp hair clinging to her face.

She hasn't really had time to think, more time to shut her brain off and reacclimatize herself to this being part of a job, and that she has no interest in spending any more time with Jamie than is expressly necessary.

The lie, even when it's only in her mind, tastes sour.  Joan swallows the bitterness of it and drips, perhaps consciously, cold rainwater all over the warm, dry floor of the studio, Jamie's fuzzy wool socks be damned.

"You look dreadful," Jamie says, and her lips quirk upwards on one side, a little crooked and privately amused.  She's sitting with her laptop on her knees, phone pressed to her shoulder, obviously having been interrupted.

Joan sets the key down on the bookshelf just to her left.  "Just wanted to tell you I'm back - and to say thank you for the tea."

She nods, and Joan retreats, tea still clutched in one hand.  She drinks it quickly, before shedding her wet clothes and showering.  It's only close to an hour when she's dressed and her running clothes are hanging up in the bathroom that she goes to collect the iPad and her phone from where she'd left them on the kitchen counter.

Joan puts the kettle on and curls into a small ball on the couch, feet tucked up beneath her as she waits for the water to boil.  Sherlock has sent her a transcript of the conversation he'd had with the Interpol agent (and Joan is happy to see that, unlike last time, it isn't in French), as well as everything they've got so far.  She's midway through the interview when the kettle whistles and she's up and taking it off the stove quickly.

She spends a few minutes contemplating the tea in the cabinet before she selects a tin of a blend her mother as mentioned she liked in passing a few times, and sets it in the infuser. Behind her, she can feel Jamie looking at her, having gotten off the phone and emerged from behind her closed studio door.

"Want some?" she gestures to the tea and Jamie nods and sets her laptop down on the counter, phone clattering on top of it.

"How long was it raining while you were out there?"  Jamie asks, staring out the window. She lets out a quiet sound that might have been a laugh.  "You really are going to get sick."

Joan laughs, "Nah," she says dismissively as she crosses over to Jamie and hands her a mug.  "I'm used to it."  She catches herself before she says more, about how this is nothing, or that she's been doing this for years now - because Jamie's already supposed to know it.  "I got an email you might find interesting," she adds, and passes the iPad over, unlocked and without a passcode needed.

Jamie's eyebrows climb up her forehead as she reads and her expression darkens.  "I don't suppose he would want me to do what I did with her, would he?" she asks.

"He didn't seem to think you'd be amenable to the idea,” Joan replies.  They're talking around it, but there are questions that Joan desperately wants to ask.  She can't ask them, because asking them makes them real and they're secrets that can't be said out loud anyway.

Everything here is a secret that can't be said out loud.

The iPad ends up back on the coffee table and Jamie stands in the window, mug clutched in her hands and expression distant.  Joan watches her, knowing that she could ask anything, and yet not wanting to.  There's the same sick, nervous feeling twisting at the pit of her stomach, the one that's been lurking ominously for days, exacerbated by close proximity and how having to keep up this ruse full-time.

Joan knows what it is, she knows what it is and the very thought of it terrifies her.  She's never had a cause to question; she's always just gone the easier path, in that situation.  She's never felt the need to pull out those strange feelings she sometimes gets and examine them more closely.

It has to just be the ruse they're maintaining, the spending all this time cooped up in this apartment with someone as apparently appealing to Joan as Jamie Moriarty.  Joan wonders if she's got a thing for emotionally distant people, or if they're just the sorts of people she gets along best with.  If she really thinks about it, she’s had lovers like Jamie before, all endless creative energy and catastrophically bad break ups that had made Joan swear to never date an artist again.

She isn't gay, she can't be gay.  Sexuality crises are for teenagers and people in their twenties, and Christ, that was a long time ago for Joan.  She's confused and caught up in the act.  That's all it can be, because looking at Jamie standing in the window is enough to make Joan toss all her good sense and caution into the wind and actually make this real.

The kids need her, and Joan needs to keep them safe.

"With Alice Zellner visiting tomorrow, do you think that we should make sure that the nursery is prepared?" Joan asks.  She flicks the iPad's off switch as she leans forward to put down her empty tea mug.  She needs to focus on something other than her panicked thoughts right now, and preparation for this space to be invaded by people who are not them seems like as good an idea as any.

Jamie looks up, tea apparently forgotten. There's a strange expression on her face, distant and completely closed off.  Joan's breath feels like it's stuck in her throat as Jamie sets her mug down beside Joan and disappears down the hallway without a word.

This is what Joan's afraid of, the feeling of not knowing and finding that more confusing than anything else.  Jamie is an enigma, Sherlock had been absolutely correct about that.  Joan had once liked to delude herself into thinking that she had Jamie all figured out, that it was easy to parse out motivations from behind the guise of an emotionally stunted woman who couldn't understand that she was hopelessly in love with Sherlock Holmes.

The truth, as it usually does, proves to be far more complicated.  Jamie isn't without emotions; she simply doesn't process them in a way that makes sense to Joan or anyone else with anything resembling a normal range of emotions.

What scares Joan the most is that she's starting to think she might be actually able to make sense of the maelstrom that rages behind Jamie’s eyes when her face is perfectly blank. The charming smiles and moody silences - all of it.  She's a lot like Sherlock.

Joan follows Jamie down the hallway and finds her standing before the one door that neither of them have opened.  Jamie had mentioned that she'd had her people prepare the room, and when Joan comes to stand beside her, Jamie glances at her with that same closed-off expression, before she reaches out and pushes the door open.

It is a child's room, pale yellow walls and light green curtains on the window.  Joan stands in the doorway and takes in the sparse decoration, serviceable, and yet not over the top.  "Don't want to seem desperate," Jamie's voice echoes in her head, and Joan looks over at her for a long moment before stepping into the room.

Jamie doesn't follow her.  She stands in the doorway, fingers white knuckled on the doorframe.  Joan looks down at a small stuffed bear that's sitting inside the crib, and when she looks back up, Jamie's gone.

"Fuck..." Joan breathes out, holding the bear between nervous fingers.

She checks the room over, getting lost in a copy of Paddington Bear.  She remembers the story from her childhood, her brother complaining that it was boring and predictable and her mother scolding him in two languages before going back to reading.  The book is older, creased with age, and the publishing date sets it to be close to thirty years old.

There are no bugs in here, at least none that Joan can find.  She goes back to the kitchen and collects her iPad before venturing back down the hall to the half-closed door of Jamie's studio.  When no objection is voiced by her presence, Joan slips inside and closes the door behind her.

Jamie has been using her wrist as a palate, apparently, it's streaked with a combination of orange and yellow ochre, a brown that Joan can't identify dabbed to one side.

"Those are your books," Joan says, and it isn't prying or even a question; just a simple statement of fact.

The brush stops moving and Jamie looks up at Joan steadily.  "Some of them are," she says quietly.  "Others were acquired at a second hand shop I frequent when I need older paint." She looks down, her expression almost perfectly blank.  "I had a horrible idea, when the Marshalls let me go, and I almost acted on it."

"What stopped you?"

Jamie looks away, down at her feet in thick wool socks.  "It wasn't practical," she says and the lie is so obvious that Joan doesn't want press.  She merely crosses back over to the half open window and perches on the sill.  Sherlock's sent her chat invitation and Joan's a little afraid of his aversion to vowels but wants to know what he's up to all the same.  She settles in, her back pressed against the rain-slicked glass and doesn't look at Jamie for a long time.

"I do have a laptop," Jamie points out, some twenty minutes of Joan fighting with autocorrect later.  "You could..." Jamie sucks her bottom lip into her mouth.  "Use it to better facilitate your argument with him."

Joan shakes her head.  "They've found out who Mr. Evansport really is.  He's apparently a cousin of Erik Karnsten's."

"This is coming together rather nicely," Jamie says and Joan isn't sure if it's directed at her or simply a comment to herself.  She looks up at Joan, using the back of her paint brush to tuck her hair behind her ear almost expertly, until another streak of paint, this time orange-ish brown, ends up on her cheek.  "Erik... doesn't have any children that I know about."

"Well, with his wife's career, I can imagine that it isn't the easiest thing in the world," Joan points out.

Jamie tilts her head to one side, and Joan sets the iPad down and tugs a paper towel off the roll that's tucked carefully on a shelf beside a truly bizarre piece of salt beached white driftwood.

"You have paint on your face," Joan explains at the eyebrow that's risen in question.

"Oh," Jamie stays perfectly still. "How careless of me." It had been a deliberate action this time, Joan almost smiles. 

Joan dabs at the streak, and soon it's gone and Joan steps back. She can feel herself smiling and she glances at the painting that Jamie's been working on and can't tell what it's supposed to be.  Perhaps, she thinks, stepping back, it's for the best.  Jamie has always struck Joan as being exceptionally private about her art.

"Do you think that they're, I don't know..."

"Having a run at Demetri?"  Jamie shakes her head and she turns back to the blotchy orange-ish brown square she's dabbing paint onto with a critical eye.  "The thought had occurred to me as well, but this is too neat for that.  I believe that Pietrova was legitimately about to go to the authorities, she was a big enough fish that they'd make a concession to get those children here.  I wonder if Erik found out about it and decided to right a long-time wrong in his personal life at the same time as taking care of the problem.  They're both getting on in years, I suppose." She taps her chin pensively with a paint free finger, eyeing the square critically and reaching for her actual palate and a different brush.  "Perhaps they wanted to build a legacy and these children, what with their Judas of a mother, were too easy to pass up."

Joan frowns, "Then why front with the adoption agency?"  She sighs and moves to throw the paint-covered paper towel away.  "It seems so..."

"Unnecessary?"  Jamie makes an affirmative noise and makes a very deliberate mark on the canvas before her.  "Not if you want to make sure that it's legitimate."

"Then our involvement is what, just a happy accident?"  That sounds absolutely insane to Joan.

Jamie looks up from eyeing her brown square critically.  The ring, the stupid ring on her finger that makes this whole thing seem unnecessarily real, glitters dangerously as Jamie shifts the palate over to her left hand.  "Demetri doesn't know any of this, probably aside from Pietrova's betrayal, so his offer was innocent.  Erik was foolish to go through his own adoption agency, if that is indeed his motive."  She glances around.  "It does help to explain why they're so keen to listen in, though.  Any overheard that could prove we're unfit so they can give the children to the Karnstens guilt-free."

She wants to point out that Erik Karnsten doesn't sound like a much better alternative, and at least Jamie... Joan silences the thought with a mental shake.  Jamie is no better, a murderer and a professional liar just like Karnsten.

The rest of the afternoon is spent in silence; Joan wanders back into the nursery and finds that the books on the shelves are obviously well-loved.  She laughs when she finds a worn copy of Eloise, and sits on the edge of the bed, reading about the terrible child who lived in the Plaza Hotel for what feels like the first time in years.  Oren has got to have kids, and soon, she needs to have an excuse to read all of these wonderful stories to a child again.

That night, Jamie comes in earlier, and Joan is still awake.  They lay together in silence and Joan swallows all her nervousness and finally rolls over to face a slightly blurry, if very much there, Jamie.

"Did your Mets win today?" Jamie asks.

"No," Joan says, resigned to this over the course of decades of abuse by the stupid New York Mets.  "But it was just a scrimmage against a college team."

"That is embarrassing," Jamie says and her amusement is evident by the twitch of her lips.  "But I suppose that this early in the season-"

"It isn't even the regular season, it's spring training," Joan sighs.  "You get used to it, though."

"What, being a downtrodden fan of a bad team?"  Jamie asks.

Joan shrugs.  "Better than bandwagon-ing on the Yankees just because they win all the time."

"What," Jamie asks, leaning closer, "if winning is what I like?"

Joan gets a sense, all of a sudden, that they're no longer talking about the Mets.  They're so impossibly close together and Jamie's mouth is so close to Joan's ear that Joan can hear her say, her voice so low that there will be no way that the bugs could catch it, "Darling, a gay crisis doesn't suit you."

"I'm not a prize to be won," she answers, turning into Jamie so that their noses are almost touching.  The whole idea of two separate sides of this bed seems laughable now.

"No one is saying that you are," Jamie points out, and her hand tentatively touches at the sleeve of Joan's shirt.  "I would have you," she echoes, her face perfectly blank, "but I know that you are uncertain."

"How," Joan breathes.

Jamie lets out a quiet sound that could be a laugh and rolls onto her back.  "Best not rush such things," she says broadly, loud enough to be overheard.  "Good night."

It is a long time before Joan falls asleep.

-

There are, and Joan feels a hint of regret as she pushes the though from her mind, decidedly fewer kisses the next morning.  Jamie is still a horrible invasive force and Joan wakes up firmly on what has become her side of the bed with Jamie sleeping practically on top of her, one arm slung casually over her stomach.  It is, oddly, very peaceful to have someone sleeping more on your shoulder than the pillow, and if it wasn't for the mouthful of hair that Joan inhales at the shrill beeping of her alarm, Joan would have let her linger.

Coughing, she nudges Jamie off her shoulder, and the grin that greets Joan as she fumbles for her phone to turn off the alarm tells her that Jamie has been awake for some time.

"You could have woken me up," Joan says, after she switches the alarm off and finds her glasses.

"Where's the fun in that?" Jamie asks.

Alice Zellner is coming at nine thirty, and its eight thirty now.  Joan doesn't have time to go for a run, and stares regretfully at her running clothes, folded up and sitting on the bathroom counter.

They hurry about, breaking into a box of cheap picture frames and going through the photos that Joan's brought with her, selecting a few and popping them into frames. It had seemed an odd request at the time, but Joan gets the sense that this is the way that Jamie talked about when she'd first told Joan that this was a horrible idea.

"You're going to get rid of this safe house," Joan says after they're done and Jamie is gathering her things from the studio and preparing the lock the door.  "Once this is over."

"I may," Jamie says, tilting her head to one side.  "I suppose it will depend on the outcome, though.  I think I can trust you to keep a secret, and I'm sure Sherlock already knows where we are."

"I never told him." Joan points out.

"He wouldn't have asked."

The place looks... lived in.  Joan's sneakers are still drying on the heater when Zellner comes in, Jamie is pretending to absorbed in the Times and it all looks so disgustingly domestic that Joan has to take a deep breath, fingers playing with her grandmother's ring on the wrong finger, and remind herself to fall into the character.

"Ms. Zellner, come in," Joan says, watching as the woman steps into the room in sensible low heels.  Joan almost tells her that they leave their shoes at the door, but thinks better of it.  She doesn't want to be too contrary.  "Do you want some coffee or tea?"

Zellner contemplates Joan for a moment before shaking her head.  "No, thank you, Ms. Watson."  She glances towards Jamie, who's watching them from behind the newspaper with an almost disinterested look on her face.  "This is a truly lovely space.  Near good schools too, you're very lucky to have found such a place."

Joan shrugs. "It's wonderful for this neighborhood.  I find myself missing Brooklyn sometimes, though."

And it's an opening volley, something that Jamie can build off of.  Joan glances up to see that she's set down the paper and is getting to her feet.  "Ms. Zellner," she says and doesn’t offer her hand.

"Alice, please," Zellner says, and glances between the two of them. "I don't know if you've been told what this visit entails?"  When they both feign ignorance, Zellner continues.  "I need to have a look around, check for any blatant environmental hazards, and then there's another interview that I figured we could conduct on Monday morning, if that sounds alright for both?"

"That would be fine," Jamie says.

It's easy then, at least by Joan's estimation, to lean against each other, hold hands and make stupidly affectionate faces at each other as they watch Zellner go through the apartment - she checks the bedroom carefully, looking through the books for a long time. Joan reaches forward while she's distracted and pulls Zellner's blackberry from her pocket.  She wiggles her eyebrows at Jamie, who's face is an absolutely priceless picture of shock and pockets the phone.  She's willing to bet that Jamie has a phone cloning program on her computer.

When Jamie excuses herself to take a call a few minutes later, Joan feels the briefest brush of Jamie's fingers against her leg, and the weight of the phone is gone with Jamie into the studio.

"What's in there?" Zellner asks; eyes narrowed as Jamie closes the door behind her with a long and rather meaningful look at Joan.

"Her studio," Joan says with a shrug, "She paints."

"I had no idea," Zellner replies, making a note of it.  Joan reasons that that note pad is going to have to be liberated as well, but she's not going to be the one to do it.  "Oils?"

"All kinds," Joan explains.  "She usually keeps the door closed, though; I don't go in there much." Joan lowers her voice and whispers conspiratorially.  "That's where she does most of her work."

Mrs. Zellner nods severely.  "Why don't we give her some time to talk, I'm sure you have questions, Ms. Watson."

"Joan, please," Joan insists, and they end up back in the kitchen.  Joan boils water for tea and grins at Ms. Zellner.  "I bet you're wondering how someone like me could ever fall for someone like her."

"And what are you like, Joan," Zellner asks, setting her papers down on the table and sliding into a stool.  she pulls the times towards her and reads the headlines with a interested look on her face.  "You seem very respectable to me.  I know that Ms. Moriarty does some business with Demetri, but he never exactly said what."

Interesting, she's playing dumb, Joan changes course mid-idea, curious to see if she can get the reason why she's playing dumb out of Zellner.  "He wouldn't have," Joan replies.  "The nature of Jamie's work is a far more intellectual pursuit than what Demetri does. Take it from someone who does know, it's probably better that you don't."

The woman raises her eyebrows behind her glasses and regards Joan impassively. "And you know?"

There is a joke here, and had this been any other time, Joan would have made it.  She shrugs, "You can't exactly marry someone without knowing all their secrets."

Zellner opens her mouth to say more, but the kettle whistles and Joan collects mugs and makes the tea wordlessly and efficiently. Her hands are shaking, and she's worried that, in a moment of idleness, Zellner will want to mess with her phone.  "Interesting," Ms. Zellner says, taking the mug that Joan offers her and sitting up on her stool.  "You, I must say, are something of an enigma, Joan."

"How so?" Joan asks.

"It's customary to expend a few cursory web searches for our organization.  We check for ties to enemies of Demetri's, law enforcement, things like that.  The only records we were able to find were older - it's like you've disappeared from the searchable Internet for the past two years..."

Joan makes a show of biting at her lip and looking away, hands fiddling with her tea.  "When Jamie and I first met, it wasn't under the best of circumstances," she confesses, because it's actually true.  "I ... I guess you could say that I shocked her, and she was intrigued and wanted to know more."  She sips her tea, the lies flowing easily now.  "We did spend almost a year in France."

Mrs. Zellner nods.  There is a fond smile on her face.  "It must be nice, to be newly-wed," She looks around the apartment as though she’s taking it in for the first time.  "And to be considering starting a family."

Jamie takes that moment to come back, reaching across Mrs. Zellner with all the nonchalance in the world as she slips what Joan can only assume is her phone back into Mrs. Zellner's cardigan pocket.  She collects the laptop and bound leather notebook that were sitting next to the newspaper on the kitchen counter.  "That was Marcus," she says to Joan with an almost imperceptible furrowing of her eyebrows, "I have no idea how he got this number, but he won't be calling again.  My apologies."

Very much doubting that Marcus had indeed called her, mostly because that would be insane, Joan offers Jamie a cup of tea and accepts a gentle kiss on the cheek as a thank you.  "We were just talking about how we met," she says.

"Oh, that whole mess with you sticking your nose into things where it didn't belong?" Jamie laughs and Joan nudges her in the side with her elbow, all playful affection.  Jamie turns to Mrs. Zellner.  "She stumbled into the middle of one of my more intricate operations and I had to work around her.  She was..." and Jamie trails off, an expression on her face so full of love that it makes Joan's ears and cheeks burn.

They talk for a few more minutes, and Zellner is nearly out the door before Joan notices that there's a change in Jamie. She stands at the end of the long hallway to the door out, next to Joan's running shoes and fixes Mrs. Zellner with a look that Joan is fairly certain could kill if Jamie wanted it to.  "I have to say," she announces, almost conversationally.  "That I find your methods for surveillance a little archaic, Alice."

Mrs. Zellner freezes.  From where Joan is, leaning against the kitchen counter, it looks as though her expression has turned from perfectly blank to completely terrified.  “I’m sorry,” she says, her hand snaking into her pocket to pull out her phone. 

It feels as though the temperature in the room has dropped by degrees, as Jamie – no, this isn’t Jamie – Joan shakes her head and watches as the woman that she’s come to absolutely loathe everything about steps forward, hands in the pockets of her slacks, and her expression murderous.  “Don’t bother calling Erik or his fool of a cousin.”  The threat, though ever present, feels more imminent than ever. 

“What are you doing?” Joan hisses, feeling the investigation start to come apart at the seams. 

“Mrs. Zellner has been sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong, Joan,” Jamie says and her whole body seems to still.  Joan nods, still panicked and not quite following the thread of this.  It seems like Jamie is trying to play up the reaction that they’d both felt, initially, pulling the bugs out of hidden nooks and crannies on the first day.  She is playing up the sense of violation and the sheer irritation at the audacity of these people to come into a private space, a safe house and violate every ounce of trust that Jamie had given them.  “And I intend to make my feelings on such a matter very clear before she leaves.”

Joan nods just once, fingers gripping the edge of the kitchen counter to keep herself from doing anything too drastic.

"Its standard procedure," Alice Zellner is saying, hands flailing every which way, blackberry in one hand and an expression of pure panic on her face. "Demetri would--"

"Demetri," Jamie cuts her off with a vicious little bark of laughter, "Would do no such thing.  Especially not to me." She folds her arms over her chest and stares hard at Zellner.  "I've half a mind to call him and see what he has to say about your actions.  No doubt you'd end up just like Pietrova, shot in an abandoned lot somewhere."  She looks down, and Joan feels a sick sense of realization at the pit of her stomach.

She reaches forward, expression carefully blank, and picks up Jamie's phone.  There's no passcode to unlock it, which strikes Joan as incredibly odd given how paranoid Jamie can be about the authorities, but the last number to call the phone was, indeed, Marcus' work line.

How had he even gotten the number?  Joan swallows nervously, already not looking forward to explaining to Marcus why she'd spent the better part of a week now playing house with someone who, if she'd wanted to, could very easily be one of Interpol's most wanted.  He didn't understand Moriarty or Sherlock's continued relationship with her - nor apparently would he understand Joan's strange sense of infatuation.

"Jamie," Joan says, very quietly.  Her voice feels lost in her throat. She's making a deductive leap right now, but given Jamie's comment about Erik Karnsten's idiot cousin, Joan is willing to bed that sometime last night they were able to find him and bring him in for questioning.  And no doubt he rolled over on Alice, and maybe even Demetri's whole organization.  "Let what's about to happen, happen."

Jamie looks over her shoulder, hair almost obscuring her face and her expression murderous.  Joan meets her gaze evenly, because killing Zellner will not keep those babies safe and Jamie has to know that.

There's a knock on the door and Zellner just about jumps out of her skin.

"It's unlocked," Jamie calls, although, Joan can see the hand that hangs limply at her side clench into a fist that shakes slightly.  Joan wonders if this is truly as much of a violation as it feels like.

Sherlock opens the door, his expression grim. "Ah," he says, and Joan catches the dangerous glint in his eyes.  Something big must have happened.  Why hadn't he called?  Where was her phone? "Mrs. Evansport, it's good to see you again."

"I'm sorry?" Mrs. Zellner says, brow furrowing in confusion. "I have no idea who you are."

Bouncing on the toes of his battered shoes, Sherlock looks around the room.  "I'd wondered where you were lurking," he says, more to Jamie than to Mrs. Zellner. "There's a lot of light in here."

"Good for painting," Jamie replies with a small smile.  She wrinkles her nose.  "Bit too modern for my taste though."

Joan resists the urge to roll her eyes at the both of them.  She comes to stand beside Jamie, and through the open door she can hear the sounds of booted feet stomping up the stairs.  Marcus must not be far behind, then, which is good, because this is super awkward and she doesn't want Zellner to bolt.

"Mrs. Evansport," Sherlock says, giving Jamie a look that Joan knows all too well.  He enjoys showing off his intelligence just as much as Jamie does; only he has a modicum of modesty about him when he does share, unlike Jamie.  "My name is Sherlock Holmes.  I observed your interview with Detective Bell when you came to speak to him regarding the murder of your daughter Lauren."  He smiles then, and it's almost cruel looking.  It almost reminds Joan of Jamie when she’s feeling particularly vicious. "That, however, is not exactly the real story is it?"

"The cousin?" Joan whispers to Jamie.

"Quite," she replies in an undertone.  Jamie fingers brush against the edge of Joan's shirt, and then Joan's hand.  Joan turns her hand, and lets her grab hold, a small smile on her face.  "He apparently sang like a canary when he found out he was facing international kidnapping charges."

Sherlock bounces on his toes, and turns to see Marcus and two armed SWAT guys that Joan thinks are really unnecessary to arrest a middle aged woman - she supposes that they're probably for Jamie's benefit.  A show of unnecessary force, a reminder of how her freedom could easily slip away once more, even if this isn't about her at all.

"Alice Zellner," Marcus begins, looking up from his notes.  "We've been looking for you.  Could you please come with us to answer a few questions regarding the murder of Marina Pietrova, alias Lauren Evansport?"

Mrs. Zellner looks like she's just seen a ghost and nods just once fingers curling around her blackberry so tightly that Joan can see her hand shaking.  "Alright," she says, swallowing visibly.

Marcus flashes a cheeky smile at Joan and leads her away.  One of the SWAT guys lingers, looking around for a moment before disappearing off down the stairs as well.

"Why the hell didn't you call me?" Joan demands, stepping forward and poking her finger into Sherlock's chest.  They've been partners long enough that he should have contacted her as soon as he knew something like this - something huge that was going to be enough to merit an arrest.

"I did," he replies curtly.  "You didn't answer your phone."  He glances over to Jamie, who's got her hands in the pockets of her slacks and an impassive expression on her face.  "Eventually we had to call the Marshalls and Captain Gregson had to argue with Agent Matoo for a good twenty minutes before he gave up her phone number so you'd at least have some warning before we barged in."

"Only twenty minutes?"  Jamie sounds almost disappointed.  "I would have thought Ramses had more fight in him than that."

"Captain Gregson may have implied that you were involved with this... to expedite the process," Sherlock admits, glancing at his feet.  Jamie glares at him.

She’s almost annoyed that they’d gone to all the trouble of stealing the phone, only to have it not be needed.  “Was there anything on her phone?”  Joan asks, looking over at Jamie and marveling how her expression softens when she turns her attention away from Sherlock.  They really are at complete and utter odds with each other, and it would almost be funny, if it didn’t make Joan feel sick to her stomach with the betrayal of what she’s been up to the past few days.

“There was,” Jamie says, and produces a tiny thumb drive from her pocket.  She passes it over to Sherlock without a word, and he stares down at it for a moment before closing his fist around it.  “I found a series of emails between Erik Karnsten and Zellner regarding the status of the children and a rather long diatribe about how Demetri’s interference was running the perfect plan, which, I feel I should point out, was far from perfect.”  There’s a childish sense of indignation about Jamie as she says the worlds, as though the plan is an affront to her very nature.  Joan has to remind herself that yes, it probably is. 

"Are the kids okay?" Joan asks, turning back to Sherlock.

"They were surrendered to CPS early this morning, probably right after Alice Zellner," and Sherlock says the name with such derision that Joan wonders if they’ve discovered something truly unsavory about her beyond the obvious kidnapping and involvement with murder, "left to come and speak to you."

"And Erik Karnsten?" Joan asks.

Sherlock turns to look at Jamie for a long moment, his expression unreadable.  His eyes slide to Joan.  "Provided we can locate him, he will be arrested for his involvement in Marina Pietrova's murder."

"And you don't want to get involved with Demetri," Jamie's voice echoes in her head, a warning from when this all started.  Joan knows then that there is a very good chance that they will never find him - that he's gone from the world already, another casualty of disloyalty within Demetri's organization.

They stand in awkward silence, and Joan closes her eyes, wanting, oddly, for Sherlock to go away so that she can leave without an audience.  She feels unsteady, because it's over.  There's no need to linger, and yet she wants to, and the thought feels like it should be repulsive.

Sherlock's phone chirps and he pulls it from his pocket.  "Detective Bell wants me to ride with him," he says with what almost sounds like disappointment.  "Will you be back tonight?"

Swallowing, Joan nods once.

He nods, "I will see you then," he says.  He shoots a dirty look at Jamie.  "Moriarty."

"Holmes," Jamie replies with an eyebrow raised in challenge.

After he leaves, Joan collects her phone from where it's still plugged in to its charger on the bedside table and sees that she has no less than ten missed calls.  "That's what we get for rushing around," she says, mostly to herself.  She'll apologize to Sherlock tonight, when she's back at home and the world hopefully goes back to feeling normal.

Jamie is standing in the doorway, and it's the look on her face, more so than anything else that makes Joan set her phone back down on the bedside table.  There's a slip in the mask, a hole torn through the cloak of Moriarty to reveal the woman beneath.  She looks almost vulnerable.

Perhaps Joan is a fool, for wanting to get involved with this woman.  It will only hurt her in the end, and it will crush Sherlock.

"I suppose that I should apologize, for throwing you into a sexuality crisis," Jamie says, and though her face is a mess of unspoken emotions, her tone is oddly conversational.  "It was never my intention to have you so confused."

Joan laughs, and it's a strangled, choked sort of a sound.  "It would have come up eventually."  It's hard to admit it, but Joan feels as though she owes it to Jamie to try and explain things.  "I just never had the time to think about it, before.  Maybe my life has finally stabilized enough that I can try and wrap my head around it."

"And experimenting with someone nearly ten years your junior for the sake of saving children?" There's a wry little crooked smile on Jamie's lips and her eyes have softened to something that could be almost fond.

“Sometimes things happen.” Shrugging, Joan turns Jamie's logic back around on her.  "You told me once that you're drawn to things that you don't understand."

"I am," she says.

Joan glances down at her phone, there's a text from Sherlock that makes absolutely zero sense, she clicks off the screen.  Meeting Jamie's gaze evenly.  "Maybe I am too," she confesses.

In the quiet moment that follows, Joan is halfway to expecting Jamie to try and needle her, announcing something like how Joan had boasted having figured her out and had that changed?  The words never come though, and they stand, eyeing each other across a room and it feels like there is far too much distance between them.

"If I were to ask you something, would you answer me honestly?"  Jamie sounds almost hesitant and it's weird.  She's usually so confident in everything she does and says that it seems almost bizarre to hear her so hesitant.

"I suppose it would depend on what you asked," Joan replies smoothly, but she thinks she knows what's coming.  The conversation is really only going one place.

Jamie steps more fully into the room.  "I would like to try this..." she gestures to the expanse of empty room between them, "without the lies we've had to tell."

"You want honesty?" Joan asks quietly, because it honestly sounds a bit ridiculous, all Jamie does is lie.  "I don't know, Jamie, that's going to take a lot more from you than it will from me."  It had taken all of ten minutes on a computer to make Joan basically untraceable - a ghost - but Jamie is more complicated, more criminally inclined.  More dangerous.

"Am I truly that repugnant to you?"  Jamie asks.  "You know who I am - what I am."

"No," Joan confesses.  "I do know who you are, but sometimes I catch these glimpses of humanity in you and that... that is what..."  She can't get the words out.

Jamie is across the room in three steps, her fingers touching Joan's upper arms, and she's so impossibly close.  There is that vulnerability, what she wants, what she's intrigued by in Jamie.  "You are an enigma to me, Joan Watson," she says, and presses her lips to the corner of Joan's mouth.

The kiss feels like it was supposed to be a chaste peck, but it feels like hello and goodbye and I've missed you all at once.  Joan's fingers skirt across Jamie's jawline, holding her there when it becomes more intense, more desperate and Joan feels like running. Jamie's fingers trail down to rest on her hips, to slide the back of her shirt up and Joan doesn't protest.

'I would have you,' Jamie had said, and Joan isn't quite ready for that, but this feels like a decent enough place to start.

-

Sherlock is cooking when she gets back, lips red and kiss-swollen from what Jamie hadn't called a goodbye, but a parting.  "I will see you soon," she'd promised, before disappearing back into her car and vanishing up the street into the icy evening air.

"Do I need to stage an intervention?" He asks, pointing a spoon almost accusingly at her.

"No, Sherlock," Joan says with an exasperated smile.  She comes to stand beside him, leaning against him and looking into the pot where he's cooking... "Is that a shoe!?" she exclaims disbelievingly.

"Absolutely not," Sherlock replies, looking scandalized. "Although I can see where you'd make that assessment, it is rather shoe-like."  He lifts out what looks like half of a chicken carcass from the broth he's poking with his spoon.  "This is not for today, though. I made pasta."

"Thank god," Joan mutters to herself.  She moves to get down plates and forks and it's only when they're safely on the table that she asks how Sherlock and Marcus were able to catch Mr. Evansport so quickly and Sherlock lets out a low chuckle.

"We had some help," he confesses, and then goes on to explain how the man had walked into the police station with a black eye and had demanded to speak to no one other than Marcus.  "Moriarty, apparently, was interested in solving this case as well - and she understood that he was the weakest link in this chain of criminals and made him come to us."

They're sitting at the kitchen table, elbow to elbow sharing one knife because Ms. Hudson is out of town this week and there are no clean ones.  "The loss of Karnsten will be a blow for Demetri's organization," Joan says, because she knows that it will.  She almost feels bad for the boisterous Russian; even though she knows that he's a bad person.  He was almost completely uninvolved in this whole ordeal.  "Do Marcus and Captain Gregson think they have a case against him at all for Marina Pietrova's murder?"

Sherlock shakes his head.  "They don't, unfortunately, because it seems that Karnsten was the one who pulled the trigger."

A wave of disappointment washes over Joan and she sets down her fork. She had hoped that something more would have come out of this, and she can't quite hide the feeling on her face when Sherlock reaches over to take the knife back.  "Did you really think that you'd get something out on him with all this?"  He asks and Joan just shakes her head.

"We went into this wanting to keep those kids safe, and that's what we did.  We got the people involved and we solved Marina Pietrova's murder, but..." she sighs and looks down at the pasta that she's barely eaten.  "I guess I just thought that we'd manage to take out more of Demetri's organization than his adoption ring."

It was, perhaps, by design, that they were unable to get a crack at Demetri.  Jamie had wanted to do it her way, and they had, for the most part.  Joan had been a little annoyed at the pronouncement that Jamie was pulling strings in the investigation behind the scenes, leading them towards a sure conclusion, but there didn't seem to be any motive to it other than to keep the children safe.

'Because that is what you want,' the phrase echoes in her head over and over again and Joan feels sick.

"Is it possible," Joan says, pushing her plate away from her and meeting Sherlock's gaze.  "That Moriarty could actually care for another person... besides you, I mean?"

"I don't think she's capable of any human emotions," Sherlock says.  He fiddles with the knife, looking at his reflection in the shiny steel for a moment before he sets it down in the space between them once more.  "But I am not the best judge of her character."  He gives Joan a sympathetic look.  "Nor, does it seem, are you."

Joan bites her lip and wraps her arms around herself.  She feels cold and worried and she doesn't know why.  There had been something about the way that Jamie's touch had lingered on her grandmother's ring, still on the wrong hand and still oddly biding-feeling; it had felt final.  A declaration that could not be spoken in words.  "Maybe it’s better this way," she suggests.  "That we don't know."

Sherlock looks down at his fingernails and distractedly pulls on a hangnail.  "Maybe," he admits, and there is a look of something that is so pitying, so sorry for Joan that she feels the sick sting of betrayal all the same.

He knows, and he's not angry, just sad.

-

Joan gets a text at two-thirty that morning from Jamie.  It says a lot while containing very few words at all, and Joan's heart thuds in her chest as she reads the words.

I never thought I'd come to find silence so suffocating.

Joan stares at the words sleepily, curled with her back to a spare pillow.  She doesn't know what to say, but it's remarkable how her half-asleep mind comes up with the idea.

So come sleep here.

Twenty minutes later, the bed dips and an arm wraps around her and Joan drifts back to sleep.