Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You can’t be allowed to continue. You just can’t. I would try to convince you, but everything I have to say has already crossed your mind.”

“Then probably my answer has crossed yours.”

One bullet to the Semtex.

All it would take was one bullet to the Semtex-rigged jacket lying on the tiles, and everything would be over for Jim Moriarty.

It would be subsequently over for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson as well, but that was a minor detail Sherlock had reconfirmed with a tense glance at his soldier of a roommate who knelt on the floor sweating in anticipation of a quick death. He’d nodded back affirmative.

Several red-dot laser points squirmed at both their chests; they were going to die anyway.

Might as well take the Devil with them.

Having everything he’d worked for reduced to this one moment was in a way both humbling and humiliating for Sherlock Holmes.

The swimming pool they were trapped in was where Carl Powers died, only to become the mystery that boggled a young Sherlock which eventually led him to become the only Consulting Detective in the world. And there he stood, paying his dues while facing his untimely nemesis; the well-dressed short man with the unhinged, lifeless dark eyes that also belonged to the boy who put Carl Powers in the pool in the first place.

Full circle.

What a way to die, indeed.

Sherlock held his gun steadily aimed at the Semtex-covered jacket. He glanced at Moriarty, who had the audacity to smirk at him. Not a muscle on his face spoke of any fear; the man was dead inside in every sense except the physical.

Which, if Sherlock pulled the trigger, could easily be arranged.

A few painful beats of silence followed until something startled them all.

Much to the surprise of the detective and the doctor, musical notes tore through the tense atmosphere; a ringtone playing Stayin’ Alive moronically rang in the air, its upbeat tune bouncing off the walls of the sombre swimming pool.

Frowning, Sherlock and John looked around awkwardly.

Jim Moriarty rolled his eyes to sigh heavily in exasperation. “Do you mind if I get that?” he droned tiredly as if mildly inconvenienced from the interruption.

“Oh, no, please,” Sherlock played along politely, gun still poised at the ready. “You’ve got the rest of your life.”

Moriarty fished his phone out of his suit pockets and cut off the catchy tune by answering the call.

“Hello?” he spoke, and a pause later he snapped, “Yes, of course, it is. What do you want?”

Sweating and very close having some sort of heart failure, John Watson was not sure if he wanted to laugh hysterically or yell bloody murder when Moriarty dramatically mouthed ‘Sorry’ at Sherlock who mouthed back ‘Oh it's fine’ with an elegant shrug of his shoulder.

Watching the criminal mastermind pace in circles while listening to the other end impatiently, John tried to remember how to breathe, willing his pulse to stop racing in his ears; all of this could be quite a wonderful laugh if he could just jolt awake in bed from a nightmare right about now.

“SAY THAT AGAIN!”

The two men started under Moriarty’s harsh voice bouncing around the closed pool.

The man hissed into the phone, drawing out the syllables venomously, “Say that again, and know that if you’re lying to me, I will find you and I will skin you.”

Sherlock and John shared a concerned look between them.

Moriarty pursed his lips as he listened to the other side, before putting the call on hold. He then turned his beady black eyes on both men, slowly stepping up to the Semtex-laced jacket. His face pulled into a childish expression of indecision as he contemplated quietly.

Sherlock swallowed a lump in his throat, regripping the gun in his sweating hand.

John stifled a groan. It was like sitting on top of a time bomb rigged to explode at whatever time it chose was fun; John and Sherlock were sitting ducks. Or Schrodinger’s cats, as Sherlock would add graciously if he wasn’t so concentrated on eyeing the madman.

“Sorry,” Moriarty announced with a thoughtful scowl, “Wrong day to die.”

Sherlock narrowed his blue eyes at him suspiciously. “Oh. Did you get a better offer?” he quipped.

Moriarty glanced at the phone with the caller waiting patiently at the other end.

“You’ll be hearing from me, Sherlock,” the man promised as he stepped back and turned away.

Sherlock carefully shifted to a two-handed fold on his gun as he watched the psychopath in the suit saunter away to the Exit in leisurely strides, hoisting the phone to his ear and resuming his call. “So, if you have what you say you have, I will make you rich. If you don’t, I will make you into shoes.”

The man raised his hand and snapped his fingers once, the shrill of it echoing through the pool before he disappeared behind the Exit door.

The red dots of the lasers on Sherlock and John disappeared as well.

Sherlock spun around, trained eyes checking for any hooded figures to spot in the dark recesses of the pool surroundings. Lowering his then sore arm, he caught his breath, the adrenaline spiking his heartbeats to a shrill squeal in his ears.

John looked winded and pale. Schrodinger’s beloved, adventurous little cats were truly alive, for now.

“What-what happened there?” John stammered while remembering how to breathe, or talk, for that matter.

“Someone changed his mind,” Sherlock panted in reply, “The question is, who?”

~

The Woman lowered her phone as she cut the call; the wild, arrogant ponce on the other end was supposed to be a powerful man of great influential control, so she decided that enduring him and his temperamental theatrics was her best bet.

She had just the thing for him, and he had just the thing she wanted.

Smiling to herself, she put her phone away, sauntering into the bedroom in her sheer, laced gown leaving nothing to imagination and everything to be desired.

“Well, now,” she purred playfully, cracking her black riding crop against the threshold of the door, the sound cutting sharp into the air, “Have you been wicked, Your Highness?”

“Yes, Miss Adler,” gasped the excited, naked woman who lay sprawled on the extravagant bed, her wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with black, braided ropes.

The Woman shut the door behind her.

Chapter Text

The flat 221B at Baker Street was buzzing with activity.

Days went on with cases arriving and departing at varying speeds depending on what mood occupied the resident Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes, while his roommate Doctor John Watson had to put up with the ebb and flow of said detective’s boredom or lack of interest.

John spent the little time he had when he wasn't chasing criminals down alleyways or sitting in restaurants peering at suspects by typing away solemnly at his laptop, documenting in his blog his bizarre adventures with his roommate.

The detective himself had noticed all the typing with a side-eye.

John Watson sat in front of his laptop at the living room table, putting down a short blog entry as a heads up for his readers under the lovely title of ‘Life goes on’.

The title was absolute; life went on and never stalled when one's roommate was Sherlock Holmes.

“What are you typing?” Sherlock asked distractedly, sipping from a cup of hot tea held in one hand, while the other flipped through the newspaper at the table without any inclination of reading anything.

“A blog,” came the doctor’s distracted reply from across the table, fingers tacking away at the keyboard in a mortifyingly slow pace.

“About?” asked Sherlock.                                                                                               

“Us.”

“You mean me.”

“Why?”

Sherlock let out what sounded like a hybrid between a sigh and a cough as he droned, “Well, you’re typing a lot.”

John paused to look up at him with narrowed eyes. He’d just about formulated a good comeback when the doorbell rang to indicate the arrival of yet another baffled client.

“Right then,” Sherlock mumbled, setting aside his teacup and walking briskly to the door, mauve dressing robe fluttering in his wake. “So, what’ve we got?”

~

A stream of grievous clients came that day to 221B Baker Street with absurd cases. But unfortunately, none of them seemed to interest the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes’s expansive brain.

A fidgety, middle-aged man had come with a problem.

“My wife seems to be spending a very long time at the office-”

Each client was made to sit on The Chair; a simple, wooden piece of furniture that was placed at the dead centre of their living room, to face the fireplace, and thereby, John and Sherlock. Usually, each client would state their dilemma after which they were told if the case would be taken or not. Sherlock usually wasn’t very diplomatic with his verdicts of interest.

“Boring.”

John found his patience thinning to a dangerous degree as he sat in his armchair with his trusted notepad and pen, watching Sherlock dismiss client after client before the doctor could even attempt to question them for details for the ones that interested him or make a noise of wonderment for the ones that didn't.

~

Sherlock paced around in irritated agitation from the sheer incompetence of what he was receiving.

“I think my husband might be having an affair,” started a middle-aged woman.

“Yes,” ended Sherlock.

John turned to glare at him in response as the woman in front of them looked gobsmacked.

~

“She’s not my real aunt,” spoke a balding man as he clutched at a decorated porcelain vase of ash in his lap, “She’s been replaced. I know she has. I know human ash-”

“Leave!” Sherlock announced, gesturing to their door impatiently with one long arm.

John blinked at the retreating man who seemed to be silently muttering to the vase in coaxing tones.

~

John stared at the dark-eyed, well-dressed gentleman at The Chair, flanked on either side by large, stiff bodyguards.

“We are prepared to offer any sum of money you care to mention, for the recovery of these files-”

“Boring,” Sherlock announced.

John sat back defeatedly in his armchair, hoping to the Gods in Heaven that the offended man would not be sending assassins to pay them a visit; he'd just run out of tea.

~

Three teenagers dressed in geeky T-shirts with logos John knew nothing about sat huddled in front of them; the tall, thin one sitting in The Chair spoke with a nervous air, hands fluttering rapidly as if he knew what he was about to tell them would get shot down even as he said it.

“We have this website; it explains the true meaning of comic books, ‘cause people miss a lot of the themes-”

Almost instantly, they lost Sherlock’s meagre attention, and as he made to turn away, the teenager sputtered urgently, “B-but then all the comic books start coming true!!”

Sherlock paused; hands clasped behind his back, he turned to them carefully considering the young, nervous trio with his narrowed blue eyes. Under his scrutinising gaze, they looked absolutely terrified, like Sherlock had set a laser on them; a feeling which, when John gave it a thought, he could sympathise with entirely.

“Interesting.”

Thankfully, that one case made it to the light.

Days later, John christened the blog entry and typed away at his laptop from the comfort of his designated armchair, unaware of a looming shape that came up from behind and peered into his screen.

“'The Geek Interpreter?’ What’s that?” a deep, inquiring voice materialised near his ear.

“That’s the title,” John tipped a chin in acknowledgement of Sherlock’s head floating above his right shoulder.

“What does it need a title for?”

John smirked in response, deciding to consider it a rhetorical question that he didn’t need to expend his precious energy to respond, and continued to type away. Rightly so, the curly-haired head of Sherlock Holmes disappeared from beside him as quickly as it had popped in.

~

The concept of the blog’s existence seemed to baffle the genius.

“Do people actually read your blog?” Sherlock threw at John once, as one cerulean eye whizzed in bursts over his retractable magnifying glass that he hovered over the face of a corpse at the Mortuary. John stood across from him, inspecting the abdomen.

Detective Inspector Lestrade stood off at the side of the cold room, casting a tired look at the two whispering men he knew were well on their way to squabbling over the corpse, like an old married couple.

“Where do you think our clients come from?” John returned as he continued examining.

Sherlock’s gloved fingers continued to flutter the magnifying glass around the corpse’s face in a perfect little show of nonchalance. “I have a website,” Sherlock offered haughtily.

“In which you enumerate two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash,” John declared casually as he narrowed his eyes at the corpse’s forehead and hairline. “Nobody’s reading your website.”

Sherlock dropped his little act and assessed John with a laser-eyed glare of composed indignance, complete with pursed lips and level eyebrows, all of which John electively ignored.

“Right then,” John announced out loud to Lestrade just as the two of them straightened up from their examination. “Dyed blonde hair, no obvious cause of death, except for these ‘speckles’, whatever they are.”

At the sound of footsteps, John looked up from the corpse so to see the quickly retreating figure of Sherlock ‘I am offended, and I will not entertain you with my deductions anymore’ Holmes walking away even as John finished speaking.

Lestrade threw John a knowing look before he set off after the detective who left the Mortuary altogether.

The curious case took a bit of fiddling about between sisters, stepfathers and a bottle of bubble bath, but they managed to get to the bottom of it. Afterwards, at Baker Street, when John sat at the table, quietly jotting away their tale of victory, Sherlock came up at his side, peaking at his progress on the laptop screen.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sherlock spat indignantly with a mouth full of Mrs Hudson’s cookies, “The Speckled Blonde?!” he whined after which he whisked himself away, leaving behind a blinking John.

The titles, unlike the masses who read the blogs, seemed to have left Sherlock unimpressed.

~

Age didn’t restrict their hoard of troubled clients.

Once, two little blonde girls had come up to their door, brought in by their mother who apologized for taking their time. John, ever the host, shooed away her apologies and stationed her in the kitchen where she sat with a cup of tea, watching them nervously.

John couldn’t blame her for doubtfully assessing her surroundings where she'd brought her precious children; their flat looked like a museum dedicated to a mad scientist and a temperamental writer having had a massive fight which ended in both parties stashing their paraphernalia in every visible nook and cranny of space.

The little girls didn’t seem to mind, which probably had something to do with the fact that one was five and the other seven years of age; the pair of them were small enough to fit side-by-side on The Chair.

Sherlock sat on his Le Corbusier armchair and stared at them like he did every client; with cold, unbiased indifference.

John smiled at them encouragingly.

The smaller one squeaked in clear, innocent tones, “They wouldn’t let us see Granddad when he was dead. Is that because he’d gone to Heaven?”

John could tell this wasn’t going to be a pretty conversation.

“People don’t really go to Heaven; they’re taken to a special room and burnt.”

“Sherlock,” John mumbled in warning, as the two girls looked at each other in shock, their mother could be heard coughing out her tea in the kitchen.

~

Lestrade led John and Sherlock down a construction site one fine, windy morning. The inspector marched in long strides, Sherlock just behind. John was left to fend for himself and every man of his perfectly amicable height.

Lestrade was quick to the point.

“There was a plane crash in Dusseldorf yesterday; everyone’s dead.”

“Suspected terrorist bomb,” Sherlock interrupted flatly, his hair whipping around his head as he walked, his hands shoved deep into his Belstaff coat pockets. There was a pause from Lestrade, at which the detective added, “We do watch the news.”

“He said ‘boring’ and turned over,” John supplemented, betraying Sherlock altogether. John was rewarded with a new sort of Sherlockian glare he was yet to document.

“Well,” Lestrade continued before yet another squabble unfolded at the crime scene they were walking up to, “According to the flight details, this man was checked-in onboard.”

They came up to a car, with its boot popped open revealing a dead man stashed inside, his one arm hanging off the edge pathetically.

Sherlock flew into action, inspecting the boot lid and the number plate.

Lestrade dished out the details to them in the practised ease of someone who’d been doing it for a while. “Inside his coat, he’s got a stub from his boarding pass, napkins from the flight, even one of those special biscuits.”

He held out said objects enclosed in the clear, Ziplocked evidence bags.

The excitable Sherlock was busy inspecting the underside of the car while his hands worked quickly at his compact toolkit from which he fished out his trusted magnifying glass.

Lestrade pulled out one Ziplock bag for John to look at. “Here’s his passport, stamped in Berlin Airport. This man should have died in a plane crash in Germany yesterday, but instead, he’s in a car boot in Southwark.”

“Lucky escape,” commented John, feeling something akin to sympathy for the man in the boot, whose fingernails were being meticulously peered at by the buzzing detective.

“Any ideas?” asked Lestrade, clearly at his wit's end.

“Eight, so far,” came Sherlock’s reply without missing a beat, until he moved onto the corpse’s head, at which, whatever he saw made his face glitch. “Okay, four ideas.”

John watched a twitchy Sherlock grab the evidence bags from Lestrade’s hand and study them. He then suddenly threw his head back to gaze up at the sky as if someone from up there had beckoned him.

“Maybe two ideas.”

They didn’t solve that one.

And John, in the spirit of documentation, decided to enter it into his blog anyway.

Back at Baker Street, he typed in the first sentence, brushing away any concern on how it would be received by his roommate. No sooner the thought left his head, a tall presence materialized at his side. In John’s periphery, he saw mustard yellow asbestos gloves, one wielding a blowtorch and the other some unfortunate, green chemical in a conical flask.

John looked up to see Sherlock frowning down at him through with a pair of oversized protective glasses perched on his long nose.

John flinched; he couldn’t erase the title ‘Sherlock Holmes Baffled’ before it was spotted.

“Don’t mention the unsolved ones!” Sherlock spat, gesturing one fat, gloved finger at the screen as if it were some kind of perpetrator.

“People want to know you’re human.”

“Why??”

“Because they’re interested.”

“No, they’re not!” Sherlock scoffed. He turned away and then flipped back around as if something just occurred to him. “Why are they?”

John glanced at the view count displayed at the side of his blog and beamed victoriously at it. “Look at that; one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-five.”

“Sorry, what?” the protective glasses came off with a tug as Sherlock frowned into the screen again, curiosity peaked begrudgingly.

“I reset that counter last night; this blog is at nearly two thousand hits in the last eight hours. This is your living, Sherlock,” John cast a knowing look at the taller man, “Not two hundred and forty different types of tobacco ash.”

The fuming presence at his side let out a hiss, “Two hundred and forty-three,” before switching on his blowtorch and brusquely heading back to the kitchen-lab.

John smiled as he resumed typing solemnly.

~

Solving a new promising case was a thrill of its own, and it had come not a moment too soon, given their last few unsatisfactory blips in the crime-radar. This time it was in a prominent theatre, the crime scene upon the very stage itself; quite appropriate for the dramatic detective who liked a bit of superlative theatre.

The paramedics shuffled about to clear away the body and the policemen marked the stage closed with the blaring yellow caution tape.

“So, what’s this one? ‘Bellybutton Murders’?” Sherlock asked as they exited the stage, their part in the investigation done and dusted.

“The Navel Treatment,” answered John, dodging a few buckets and things lying around as they made their way backstage.

Sherlock let out a displeased harrumph.

Lestrade joined them at the door as they stepped into the narrow corridor leading to the exit. “There’s a lot of press out there, guys.”

“Well, they won’t be interested in us.”

“That’s before you were an internet phenomenon; a couple of them specifically wanted photographs of you two.”

“For God’s sakes,” Sherlock groaned in annoyance, taking the pains to turn while walking, simply to bestow his short partner with a glare for effect. Said partner was more amused than ashamed.

Sherlock paused at a dressing room they happened to pass by. Eyeing the rack of assorted costumes, he reached out and grabbed the first two hats he could catch with his outstretched hand.

The detective flung one hat at his partner who peered curiously at the item he'd caught.

“John, cover your face and walk fast.”

Lestrade, unlike the inconvenienced detective, took the situation in a positive stride. “Still, it’s good for the public image, a big case like this!”

“I’m a private detective; the last thing I need is a public image!” Sherlock countered; the irritation clear in his voice as he pulled the grey hat onto his unruly ebony curls. John followed suit tugging the hat onto his head of short blond hair, beside himself with the fun of it all at the expense of Sherlock’s annoyance.

Cameras flashed at the exit door as the press milled like well-dressed moths to the crime-fighting flame that was Sherlock Holmes and John Watson; overlapping voices yelling in a cacophony of questions even as they stepped foot to the threshold. Sherlock pulled his Belstaff tightly around himself, flicking up the wide collar to cover his face, one furious blue eye glaring from under the grey hat as the camera that happened to be right up in his face snapped loudly with a flash.

The resulting picture became the very centre of the many spreads to come of the internet phenomenon; the detective bloggers lovingly yet unfortunately nicknamed ‘Hat Man and Robin.’

~

The newspaper lay on the dressing table, the article on the detective bloggers facing up.

Blood red nails shone in the dressing light as The Woman’s fingers softly smoothed out the paper, caressing the grainy monochrome photograph of Sherlock wearing his signature irritated glare and a funny hat. The large diamond ring on her ring finger caught the light and sent facets of shiny blotches on the photograph.

News had travelled.

She smiled as she placed her riding crop on the table to pick up her camera phone. She valiantly dialled the number she’d learnt held more power than whole governments in the world.

“Hello. I think it’s time, don’t you?”

Chapter Text

Mrs Hudson huffed as she walked into the 221B flat, reminding herself for the umpteenth time that she was not the housekeeper, but lo and behold, the very sight of the disarray in the flat sent her in a frenzy of picking things up and putting them back where it should be.

A hurricane might as well have wreaked havoc in the flat; the kitchen seemed to have thrown up into the living room, given that Bart’s hospital laboratory had thrown up in the kitchen.

The old woman carefully picked up the half-empty milk carton and the dried-up mug from the mantel, pulling a face of disgust at the smell emanating from both. Pacing to the kitchen, she placed the dirty mug on the otherwise completely occupied table of glass beakers and unfinished experiments and whatnot. Seeing that the milk seemed fine enough to live another day, she made the mistake of opening the refrigerator.

It was possible to deduce why the milk smelt funny; the odour inside the fridge was almost tangibly pushing out at her, like an invisible force trying to keep her out. She schooled her face to stop herself from pulling a muscle in her old age and rummaged to find space for the milk among the questionable items her tenants stuffed in the fridge.

Considering that it wouldn’t hurt to throw away some visibly rotting vegetables, she did just that; motherly instincts kicking in as she disposed of a tomato that’s could pass for a kiwi. She tugged out the freezer to get rid of more vegetable decay and promptly pulled out a clear plastic bag filled with a suspiciously red liquid swimming with-

“Oh, dear! Thumbs?!” she squeaked, dropping it back into the freezer.

She should have known. Her gifted yet eccentric tenant did not have any moral qualms about what went where.

Last time, it was toes in the microwave.

Hurried footsteps from behind made Mrs Hudson turn around in alarm, and there in the living room stood a short, chubby man dressed in business overalls, his breath falling in laboured puffs. His rotund sweating face was stricken with pallor, the sheen of wet glistened at his forehead. His small wide eyes were blank with shock.

“The door was- the door was….” he gestured feebly at the entrance in an effort to justify him walking in without preamble, and before he could make further attempts at communication, his stout legs gave in, as did his consciousness; the man fell face forward onto the carpet with a heavy thud.

Mrs Hudson looked down sympathetically at the heap on the floor, making a noise of pity and concern.

Well, she had seen worse.

The landlady tossed back her head to yell, “Boys! You’ve got another one!”

~

Sherlock and John were ushered down to the living room as the man was returned to the conscious world and made to sit on The Chair. He introduced himself as Phil while he remained looking shell shocked, or nothing short of traumatized, as he stared off into space, or maybe the fireplace. It was all quite unsure and awkward.

The doctor in John was concerned.

“Tell us from the start,” Sherlock ordered. “Don’t be boring.”

The tale Phil managed to sputter through was indeed rather curious.

Fourteen hours ago, Phil had been in the countryside, driving his way home when his car had shuddered to a stop and refused to budge. He had tried everything he knew within his limited understanding of how cars worked. The hood had been popped open, valves probed at, wires plucked at, and there was nothing he could have done to make it start again. There had been no one around as well, just a vast stretch of plains and beautiful rolling hills to one side of the road. A quiet place, the worst to get stranded in. At the foot of the hills, he had seen a river flowing by and after some stressful peering, he had noticed a man in a red jacket at the riverbanks, looking up at the sky. A solitary figure in red standing out amidst the vast green that stretched around him. A hiker, Phil had guessed. He had almost called out to said hiker, but deciding against it, he had hopped back into his car to restart it in another attempt. The engine had suddenly belched an explosive sputter as it backfired before dying again. Giving up, Phil had glanced at the hiker at the riverbank only to see that the man seemed to have collapsed on the grass. Upon jogging to the man with great difficulty, Phil had found to his utter horror that the hiker was dead, his head bleeding away into the grass.

John was thrilled; this looked promising indeed.

However, Sherlock wasn’t so amused.

~

Detective Inspector Carter was at the crime scene, and he could admit the whole affair was beyond his grasp. In his many years serving as DI, this was one of ‘those’ weird ones that took ages to sort.

He had his team inspecting the car that backfired and the body that lay sprawled in the banks. One of his men, a young lad with a bright tuft of red hair came up to him holding out a phone.

“Sir, phone call for you!”

Taking the phone, the DI answered, “Carter.”

Lestrade’s voice floated out to him, “Have you heard of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Who?”

“Well, you’re about to meet him now. This is your case, it’s entirely up to you, this is just friendly advice, but give Sherlock five minutes on your crime scene and listen to everything that he has to say. And as far as possible, try not to punch him.”

The call ended, and Carter stared at the phone in bafflement.

What kind of hooligan was he expected to give an ear to? If not for the fact he trusted Lestrade who had been in the Yard for as long as him, he would have given the other end of the phone a piece of his mind.

Almost at the same time, a car pulled up at the road next to him. The red-haired youth spoke to the man in the car and then addressed Carter.

“Sir, this gentleman says he needs to speak to you.”

“Yes, I know.”

Carter knew Lestrade worked with some fast blokes.

Walking up to the car, Carter pushed back his sparse greying hair and put on his authoritative face. “Sherlock Holmes,” he greeted, reaching out a hand when the car door opened. The figure who stepped out of the vehicle was a short, blond, modestly-dressed man who nodded at him in return, “John Watson.”

Carter blinked in confusion as he shook hands with John Watson.

“Listen, are you set up for Wi-Fi?”

The next few minutes were spent procuring a laptop with a Wi-Fi connection to run Skype, during which Carter was told by Doctor John Watson that the mysterious Sherlock Holmes would be corresponding through the webcam rather than in person, which made this man sound like a sort of clergyman of unprecedented importance.

However, when they had established a decent connection given they were in the countryside, the figure greeting them on the screen was that of a yawning man with a peculiarly long face cut with high cheekbones, and a mop of curling black hair curlier still, but the most notable thing was him dressed in nothing but a white bedsheet wrapped around his understandably nude self in a sort of indiscreet couture statement, the visible stretches of skin almost as pale as the sheet itself.

Sherlock Holmes introduced himself without an ounce of formality.

Carter looked equal parts confused and offended.

John pursed his lips at the screen.

Sherlock placed the laptop unceremoniously on the kitchen table and lounged about fixing himself a mug of coffee as if he had all the time in the world and was not, in fact, speaking to a Detective Inspector at a crime scene he was supposed to be helping out in person.

“You realize this is a tiny bit humiliating,” John spoke into the laptop, his voice soft with an underlying hint of ‘why do you always do this Sherlock.’

“It’s okay I’m fine,” came the yawn, as Sherlock picked up his mug with one hand and the laptop with the other, his footage now dipping to the right and left as he sauntered. “Now, show me to the stream.”

“I didn’t really mean for you,” John’s sigh carried well through the speaker.

Sherlock shuffled to the living room table and planted himself on the chair, setting the laptop on an empty spot on the cluttered table.

“Look, this is a Six,” Sherlock snapped impatiently as he adjusted the screen to face him comfortably, “There’s no point leaving the flat for anything less than a Seven; we agreed. Now, go back and show me the grass.”

In the distance, the doorbell at 221B rang once.

John, at the crime scene, held his tongue for a moment. Holding the laptop against his abdomen, with the screen facing outwards into the scenery, he felt like a prop. Or a robot. Or a modestly dressed tripod stand with two legs.

He knelt as he directed the webcam eye at the grass as asked.

“When did we agree that?” John muttered.

“We agreed it yesterday,” came Sherlock’s distracted response as he studied the grass through footage John was showing him. “Stop!”

John froze.

“Closer.”

Instead of obeying the Voice, John swung the laptop around to face the webcam, knowing Sherlock could then see a very enlarged image of his annoyed face. “I wasn’t even at home yesterday; I was in Dublin!”

“It was hardly my fault you weren’t listening.”

From behind John, Carter viewed the debacle with a look of unimpressed awkwardness.

The doorbell at 221B rang once more, its shrill ring carrying through the speaker as did Sherlock’s reply to it, “Shut up!”

John was beyond exasperated. “Do you just carry on talking when I’m away?”

“I don’t know, how often are you away?” Sherlock asked petulantly.

John pulled his lips tight, deciding to drop the perilous conversation while Carter tried not to look invested in the squabble going on through the Wi-Fi he had to set up for the weird blokes.

“Now, show me the car that backfired.”

John silently clambered back onto his feet and directed the laptop screen at the scenery where the car was stationed at the roadside. “It’s there.”

“That’s the one that made the noise, yes?”

“Yeah,” John turned the screen back around to face him as he made his way to the said car, “If you’re thinking gunshot, there wasn’t one.”

Sherlock sat back in his chair, running his fingers across his lips in silent contemplation.

John looked a bit pleased. “He wasn’t shot; he was killed by a single blow to the head from a blunt instrument, which then magically disappeared, along with the killer,” John chuckled as he breathed hard from the walking, “It’s got to be an Eight at least.”

Carter was about done with all the fooling around and numerical secret codes. He walked quickly, catching up just behind John, “You’ve got two more minutes; they want to know more about the driver.”

From inside the screen, Sherlock flicked a wrist to dismiss the Inspector’s statement as if it were a fly. “Oh, forget him, he’s an idiot. Why else would he think himself a suspect?”

Carter caught up to John and thrust his face near the webcam to catch the detective’s attention, “I think he’s a suspect!”

Sherlock glared from the screen. “Pass me over,” he hissed his command at John.

“All right, but there’s a mute button, and I will use it,” John warned.

“Up a bit!!” snapped the visual feed of Sherlock gesturing impatiently, “I’m not talking from down here!”

It took everything in John to not trip and fall on his face while walking across a grassy plain, holding a laptop with an irritated albeit irritating detective barking orders at him. Exasperated as one would be with a brat, John thrust the laptop at Carter who fumbled to hold it upright. “Okay, just take it.”

Carter was now in full receiving end of an earful of Annoyed Sherlock.

“Having driven to an isolated location and successfully committed a crime without a single witness, why would he then call the police and consult a detective? Fair play?” A wild eyebrow twitched to further supply his point.

“He’s trying to be clever,” Carter countered, “It's overconfidence.”

Sherlock sighed dramatically as if the very thought exhausted him.

“Did you see him?! Morbidly obese, the undisguised halitosis of a single man living on his own, the right sleeve of an internet porn addict and the breathing pattern of an untreated heart condition, low self-esteem, tiny IQ and a limited life expectancy, and you think he’s an audacious, criminal mastermind?!”

An amused chuckle left Sherlock as he turned from his seat to address the man he’d just deduced to the heavens. “Don’t worry, this is just stupid.”

Phil who sat in John's armchair looked at Sherlock, bewildered and alarmed. “What did you say? Heart, what?”

Sherlock turned back to the screen, giving his attention back to Carter. “Go to the stream,” he ordered.

“What’s in the stream?”

“Go and see.”

“Sherlock!” came Mrs Hudson’s voice through the speakers as she seemed to have walked into the room just then, “You weren’t answering your doorbell!” Trailing behind her were two large men in suits.

John politely took the laptop back from an irritated but curious Carter who went on to get a team to inspect the stream as suggested.

John watched the footage as one of the suited men addressed the other, “His room's in the back; get him some clothes.”

“Who the hell are you?” Sherlock demanded of them, not in the least alarmed but every bit annoyed as always.

“Sherlock,” John asked urgently as the suited man’s open hand moved towards the laptop webcam, “What’s going on? What’s happening-”

The last thing John heard was ‘you’re coming with us’, which wasn’t a good sign, and the last thing he saw was a flash of the detective’s confused pale face before the screen went black.

“I’ve lost him, I don’t know what happened-” John spoke to a team member who had procured the laptop, while he pressed several keys on the keyboard hoping it was a lag.

The next moment, the red-haired young man came up to John with a phone held to his ear.

“Doctor Watson?”

“Yes?” John gave up at the laptop with a shake of his head.

“It’s for you.”

“Okay, thanks,” answered John, making to take the phone from him.

“No, sir,” the man corrected him with a grin, “The helicopter.”

No sooner did the words register in John’s brain did he hear the telltale drone of the flying vehicle in the distance parking itself carefully near the riverbank. John looked on in complete astonishment.

Meanwhile, at 221B, the suited men stood in attention at the door as they set before Sherlock some folded clothes and his shoes. Sherlock glanced at the pile like a petulant child, complete with a snarky raise of an eyebrow to dismiss his interest at it. He remained unmoving in his bedsheet.

“Please, Mr Holmes,” said one of them bluntly, “Where you’re going, you’ll want to be dressed.”

Sherlock turned and bestowed the man with his light blue gaze.

Man unarmed under the tailored suit of seven hundred pounds, manicured nails and a clean hairline suggesting office work, right-handed going by the hands crossed at the front, clean patterned shoes indicating indoor work, small fur remnants on the trousers speak of a small dog, no, two, three, three small dogs-

Sherlock smirked mysteriously.

“I know exactly where I’m going.”

Chapter Text

Strapped securely to his seat in the flying helicopter, John Watson assessed the situation.

He had to admit he was baffled, but with Sherlock Holmes involved, he was either being kidnapped or escorted, and he couldn’t tell one apart from the other.

Large headphones pinched his head from either side to protect him from the brain-drilling noise of the helicopter engine as John peered over the window to the sprawling expanse of the City of Westminster zooming under him, buildings the size of matchboxes.

Soon, a very prominent architectural behemoth came into view under him, with its extravagant West facade facing the St James Park and Green Park, just as John realized where he was being kidnapped, or escorted to.

The Buckingham Palace.

Static radio noises from the cockpit tugged John out of his surprised bewilderment; they were about to land, rather noisily, nonetheless.

Soon enough, the helicopter landed, and the doctor was escorted through a few security procedures before being led into the Buckingham Palace by a stiff bodyguard who ushered him into one of the sitting rooms and promptly disappeared before John could ask anything of him.

John looked around in awe; the interiors were warm-toned with marble whites, golden yellows and rich, royal reds. White crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling every few steps and it was all so very expensive and magnificent. It had the faint and delicate aroma of cultivated royalty and John felt completely out of place as if he were nothing but an ill-bought decoration piece dropped off unceremoniously by FedEx in a mix-up of deliveries.

That was when John noticed the figure sitting in one of the sofas.

John blinked at Sherlock Holmes who sat silently by himself; curly hair flaming in all directions, his chin out defiantly with all the air of the Prince of Britain who’d just awoken from slumber, wrapped in nothing but the white bedsheet with long pale toes peeking from underneath. A pile of his black clothes and a pair of shoes were set before him on a decorated teapoy. In the elegant and sophisticated setting, he looked more in place despite his attire than John felt in his modest jeans.

John raised an eyebrow at Sherlock questioningly.

Noting his presence, Sherlock merely graced him with a nonchalant shrug that John knew was the Sherlockian signal for ‘I couldn’t care less about what is going on right now and it would do you good to not expect it of me.’

John knew better than to be confused about where he ended up, in whatever godforsaken state when it came to Sherlock Holmes. But he was beyond amused, though.

John carefully walked into the room and planted himself quietly to Sherlock’s right side on the designer sofa of mute yellow with a singular red cushion between them.

He bit back a smile as the predicament of their situation sunk in; they were in the sodding Buckingham Palace and his infamous business partner sat next to him, wearing a bedsheet.

John turned to glance at Sherlock, who stared ahead like a blue-eyed robot set to Idle, his long arms folded inside the cocoon of cloth. John peered at the man’s abdomen, unable to judge if-

“Are you wearing any pants?”

“No.”

“Okay,” John nodded, looking away casually as if he’d just asked a fellow comrade about the weather.

Almost simultaneously they turned to look at each other, and promptly burst into a fit of giggles and laughter; John’s helpless chortle and Sherlock’s deep gurgling giggles the only noises in the otherwise pristinely silent room.

Catching his breath, shoulders still shaking, John cleared his throat. “We’re at the Buckingham Palace, right.” He let out a disbelieving sigh, “I am seriously fighting the impulse to steal an ashtray.”

The comment set off another short round of chuckling from the young men.

“What are we doing here, Sherlock? Seriously, what?” John shook his head, sporting a warm smile.

“I don’t know,” answered his companion, with the crescent of a boyish grin spread across his peculiar face.

“Here to see the Queen?” John remarked.

That was when Mycroft Holmes walked into the room; a picture of perfect, gentlemanly class and sophisticated grace.

“Oh, apparently yes,” Sherlock answered, which set the both of them off again, John’s head thrown back as he was wracked with more giggles, Sherlock’s head and shoulders bobbing as he tittered.

Mycroft, however, was far from amused as he summoned all the patience he’d accumulated over the many tumultuous years of being unfortunately designated as Sherlock Holmes’ Babysitter and Big Brother.

The man begrudgingly walked up to them and set his disapproving look to maximum.

“Just once can you two behave like grownups?” sighed Mycroft.

“We solve crimes, I blog about it, and he forgets his pants; I would hold out too much hope,” answered John cheekily, while Sherlock rearranged his face into his default petulant nonchalance.

“I was in the middle of a case, Mycroft.”

“What, the hiker and the backfire?” Mycroft inquired casually, slipping his hands into his trouser pockets, “I glanced at the police report; a bit obvious, surely?”

John looked at the tall man in surprise; the case had been an Eight.

“Transparent,” added the younger Holmes.

John turned to Sherlock, his deep blue eyes wide as he remained even more baffled.

“Time to move on then,” Mycroft decided, picking up the clothes and shoes from the teapoy and holding it out to seated Sherlock. Sherlock looked away as if it was the most uninteresting thing in the world he couldn’t be bothered with.

Mycroft let out a long-suffering sigh.

“We are in Buckingham Place, the very heart of the British nation,” he started with a faux smile. before snapping, “Sherlock Holmes, put your trousers on!”

“What for?”

“Your client.”

Sherlock stood up swiftly, nose in the air, the sheet falling around him like a cloak. “And my client is??”

“Illustrious in the extreme, and remaining, I have to inform you, entirely anonymous,” came a voice.

The three of them turned as a tall man walked in, dressed like a counterpart of Mycroft, down to the suit, the tie, the receding hairline and light eyes that seemed to know more than they let on. He looked important enough to be an Equerry warranting respect, so John quickly got to his feet to greet him. Sherlock remained standing with the tight-lipped scowl on his face, and Mycroft set aside his brother’s clothes hoping the whole ordeal would be done with at the soonest.

“Mycroft,” the man addressed the older Holmes pleasantly with the air of an old comrade.

“Harry,” Mycroft returned as they shook hands sublimely, “May I just apologize for the state of my little brother.” Together they surveyed said little brother with twin looks of politely-veiled judgement.

“A full-time occupation, I imagine,” added Harry. He then set his eyes on Sherlock’s shorter counterpart, “And this must be Doctor John Watson, formerly of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.”

 “Hello, yes,” John beamed at the precise identification, reaching out and shaking hands with the tall man.

“My employer is a tremendous fan of your blog.”

“Your employer??”

“Particularly enjoyed the one about the aluminium crutch.”

“Thank you,” John nodded proudly, before looking over his shoulder to glance at Sherlock in an ‘I told you so’ fashion. Sherlock actively ignored him as he does whenever he was proven wrong.

Harry then addressed the figure in white bedsheet sportively, “And Mr Holmes, the younger; you look taller in your photographs.”

Sherlock levelled his gaze with the Equerry.

“I take the precaution of a good coat and a short friend.”

John frowned at him slightly, even as Sherlock turned and made to walk away from the room, pausing at his brother’s side.

“Mycroft, I don’t do anonymous clients,” Sherlock hissed rapidly, “I’m used to mystery at one end of my cases; both ends is too much work. Good morning.”

With a nod in the general direction the Equerry, Sherlock Holmes waddled away as they watched.

Familial instinct overcoming him, Mycroft put out a foot and stomped onto one end of the trailing bedsheet, which caught taut and unceremoniously unraveled itself, falling apart around Sherlock like an bow untied. Sherlock froze as he caught it around his waist just in time as the three men were granted a bit of an unwarranted peek of the detective’s pale derriere.

John remained unaffected by the debacle; living with the eccentric man whose concept of clothing was either ‘the best’ or ‘nothing at all’, there was very little room for the doctor to be offended with unexpected nudism. Harry, the Equerry, looked blank except for an uncomfortable twitch of his eyebrows, having never seen Sherlock before but now seeing a little too much of him all at once.

Mycroft Holmes was beside himself with exasperation that threatened to burst at the seams of his control.

“This is a matter of national importance,” Mycroft hissed. “Grow up!”

“Get off my sheet!” Sherlock hissed in return as he tugged at the cloth, back still facing them all.

“Or what?”

“Or I’ll just walk away,” Sherlock threatened, the ten-year-old in him prideful, arrogant and shameless.

“I’ll let you,” Mycroft challenged, also a ten-year-old, but in a suit and tie.

John, the only one sane enough to not tolerate the secondhand embarrassment threatening to follow, decided to call a truce.

“Boys, please, not here.”

“Who is my client?!” Sherlock spat, enunciating every syllable with spite.

“Take a look at where you’re standing and make a deduction,” Mycroft answered calmly, reverting to his grown-up self again. “You are to be engaged by the highest In the land, now for God’s sake-“ he barked the end of his statement, and then looked apologetically at a startled Harry, before turning back to his half-naked brother to add in a softer chastising hiss, “Put your clothes on!”

~

After a bit of cajoling and huffing and puffing, a clothed Sherlock Holmes sat at the sofa at John’s side, immaculately adorned in his dark ensemble of black suit with his customary omission of a tie. John called it Sherlock’s ‘Bachelor Vampire’ attire, given the way his pale skin and light eyes shone against his dark clothes and black hair, while his cheekbones were raised to the haughty air of a displeased aristocrat; an observation John hadn’t shared with Sherlock, knowing he’d be rewarded with an unflattering observation of him in return.

Mycroft was pouring them all tea from across Sherlock at the teapoy, from a beautiful set of tea things Harry had ushered into the room.

“I’ll be mother-”

“And there’s a whole childhood in a nutshell,” Sherlock punctuated unkindly.

Mycroft froze mid-pour, glaring daggers into his younger brother’s face. A deadly silence settled between the four men.

Equerry Harry took this as a cue to brief the detective and his blogger.

He smiled at them calmly. “My employer has a problem.”

Mycroft spoke up when Harry paused for effect. “A matter has come to light of an extremely delicate and potentially criminal nature, and in this hour of need, dear brother, your name has arisen.”

“Why? We have a police force of sorts, even a marginally secret service. Why come to me?”

Harry looked amused. “People do come to you for help, don’t they, Mr Holmes?”

“Not to date anyone with a navy.”

John’s lips twitched with a smile.

Mycroft continued, “This is a matter of the highest security and, therefore, of trust.”

John blinked at Mycroft. “You don’t trust your own secret service?”

“Naturally not. They all spy on people for money.”

Remembering that once upon a time Mycroft had tied to hassle John into spying for him for money the day he’d moved in with Sherlock Holmes, the blond doctor sent the sly man a smirk of understanding.

Harry turned to Mycroft, a smidge of urgency in his voice, “I do think we have a timetable.”

“Yes, of course,” Mycroft acknowledged, before reaching for his briefcase which he proceeded to prop up on his knees. He clicked it open to pull out a printout which he smoothly handed out to his brother.

“What do you know about this woman?”

Sherlock received the print, holding it up to look at the closeup of a sharp-jawed albeit strikingly beautiful woman with clandestine features; dark hair stylishly pinned back, the sharpest pale-blue eyes flanked by curling, blackened eyelashes, softly painted eyelids, and a set of thin, blood-red lips with sharp ends punctuated by the slightest crescents of smile-lines.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

“Then you should be paying more attention,” remarked Mycroft, “She’s been at the centre of two political scandals in the last year, and recently ended the marriage of a prominent novelist by having an affair with both participants, separately.”

John’s blond-ochre eyebrows rose in piqued curiosity from above his teacup.

Sherlock looked unbothered. “You know I don’t concern myself with trivia. Who is she?”

“Irene Adler, professionally known as The Woman.”

“Professionally?” asked John.

“There are many names for what she does. She prefers ‘dominatrix’.”

“Dominatrix…” Sherlock mused as he stared the photograph in his hands.

“Don’t be alarmed,” Mycroft smirked, “It’s to do with sex.”

Sherlock looked up at his brother, aquamarine eyes lit wildly. “Sex doesn’t alarm me.”

“How would you know?”

Sherlock’s eyebrows rose in reply. Harry, from beside Mycroft, let out a silent sigh.

The older Holmes decided to steer the conversation back to the matter at hand like the professional he was.

“She provides, shall we say, ‘recreational scolding’ for those who enjoy that sort of thing and are prepared to pay for it.” Mycroft then pulled out a manila envelope from his briefcase and handed it out to Sherlock, “These are from her website.”

Sherlock hastily received the envelope and from it he pulled out a set of printouts. The one of top was the main page of her website, adorned in a backdrop of gothic wallpaper with the words The Woman splashed in big, red letters. On the side was a picture of her biting down suggestively on a riding crop while pale-blue serpentine eyes, clear and powerful, stared up at him from the print.

More printouts followed, each a screen-capture of her website detailing out the specifics, details, terms and conditions of her ‘professional service’ accompanied by suggestive and provocative stills of her in various sheer and see-through apparel of diminutive size, all designed to visually entice if the information hadn’t already roped the reader into hiring her.

Sherlock surveyed each image with an unbiased blank eye. John peeked at them curiously from his side, teacup lowered to its saucer, mouth a little agape.

“And I assume this Adler woman has some compromising photographs?” Sherlock asked as he surveyed the pictures.

“You’re very quick, Mr Holmes,” Harry observed, impressed.

“Hardly a difficult deduction,” Sherlock remarked before stressing on his main point, “Photographs of whom?”

Harry glanced at Mycroft doubtfully before he carefully addressed the detective. “A person of significance to my employer. We prefer not to say any more at this time.”

Sherlock didn’t appreciate the diplomatic reply, the annoyance of which he conveyed by dropping the prints onto the teapoy abruptly, face sporting a look of displeasure.

“You can’t tell us anything?” John pressed on, ever the polite counterpart of Sherlock’s scathing interrogations.

Mycroft mulled at a proper answer. “I can tell you it’s a young person; a young, female person.”

John, who had raised his teacup to his lips, lowered it again at the interesting piece of information, eyes owlishly wide.

Sherlock glanced at Harry to send him a knowing smirk. Harry, under the man’s feline gaze, swallowed nervously. John raised his teacup to his lips again.

“How many photographs?” Sherlock asked.

“A considerable number, apparently,” answered Mycroft.

“Do Miss Adler and this ‘young, female person’ appear in these photographs together?”

“Yes, they do.”

“And I assume in a number of compromising scenarios.”

“An imaginative range, we are assured.”

“John, you might want to put that cup back in its saucer now,” Sherlock added. John, who’d taken in the exchange with his mouth agape and teacup midair, blinked mechanically before quickly set his cup down, ears turning a little pinkish.

Harry smiled at them. “Can you help us, Mr Holmes?”

“How?”

“Will you take the case?”

“What case?” Sherlock scoffed, “Pay her; now and in full.” Sherlock shuffled as he made to pluck his Belstaff coat from the arm of the sofa, “As Miss Adler remarks in her masthead, ‘know when you are beaten’.”

“She doesn’t want anything,” Mycroft stated.

Sherlock paused from attempting to get up.

Seeing as he got his younger brother’s attention again, Mycroft continued solemnly, “She got in touch and informed us that the photographs existed. She indicated that she had no intention to use them to extort either money or favour.”

Sherlock’s face bloomed with an expression that usually surfaced when he was suddenly invested in a case sensational enough to be worthy of his precious time, energy and attention. A new smirk grew across his lips as he looked off into the distance.

“Oh, a power-play; a power-play with the most powerful family in Britain, now that is a Dominatrix.” His face took on a childish sparkle of glee. “Oh, this is getting rather fun, isn’t it?”

“Sherlock,” John warned quietly when the Equerry looked slightly alarmed at the pleased detective.

Sherlock rubbed at his jaw in excitement and scooped his Belstaff from the arm of the sofa. “Where is she?”

“In London currently,” his brother answered, “She is staying at -”

“Text me the details,” Sherlock dismissed suddenly. He got up and stepped nimbly over John’s feet, nearly leaving the room before anyone even blinked an eye. The surprised men scrambled to their own feet.

“I’ll be in touch by the end of the day,” Sherlock added, buttoning his suit jacket leisurely.

“Do you really think you’d have news by then??” Harry enquired after him, a tinge of incredulous doubt laced in his otherwise composed voice.

Sherlock stopped his strut and turned around to face the man with a prideful tip-up of his chin. “No, I think I’ll have the photographs.

Harry looked at him, a little bit hopeful, a little bit sceptical.

“One could only hope you’re as good as you seem to think.”

Sherlock’s eyes whizzed across the man’s form in a short burst of assessment.

Dog lover, horse rider, public school, early riser, left side of the bed, father, nonsmoker, half Welsh, keen reader, tea drinker-

Sherlock addressed Mycroft smoothly, “I’ll need some equipment, of course.”

“Anything you require, I’ll have it sent over.”

“Can I have a box of matches?” Sherlock addressed Harry, who turned to him with a surprised start.

“I’m sorry?”

“Or your cigarette lighter, either would do,” Sherlock added, reaching out a hand for said item.

“I don’t smoke.”

“No, I know you don’t, but your employer does.”

John frowned as the realization of Sherlock’s sudden request dawned on him.

Harry assessed Sherlock quietly, point taken, his face remaining composed yet a break in his eyes betrayed him succumbing to Sherlock’s wit. Harry maintained eye contact with Sherlock as he fished the cigarette lighter from inside his suit jacket.

“We have kept a lot of people successfully in the dark about this little fact, Mr Holmes.”

Sherlock accepted the small item, eyes holding an unforgivingly intense lock with Harry’s.

“I’m not the commonwealth.”

The detective pocketed the lighter and turned away. John stepped in to fill the awkward silence before it got too abnormally difficult.

“And that’s about as modest as he gets,” John excused, before sending a polite nod to Harry, “Pleasure to meet you.”

Harry and Mycroft watched the detective and his blogger exit the room.

“Laters,” came Sherlock Holmes’s musical dismissal of a farewell echoing through the expansive corridors.

It took a bit of time, but soon they were off riding a cab home when John voiced a question bothering him since they’d departed.

“Okay, the smoking, how did you know?”

“The evidence is right under your nose, John, as ever you see but you do not observe,” Sherlock shrugged a shoulder, pleased with himself as he looked out the window of the cab.

“Observe what?”

Sherlock stuck his hand inside his Belstaff and produced a multi-faceted crystal piece which he then tossed up to catch smartly in an impish air, “The ashtray.”

John laughed out loud and Sherlock joined him quietly, the two men tittering as their black cab headed home.

Chapter Text

Irene Adler sat in her private car en route home with Kate, her PA among many things, riding shotgun. The car swerved at a turn, making its way smoothly. She had just about sorted through her thoughts when she received a text alert on her phone.

[I’m sending you a treat]

A few attachments followed; images to be downloaded that made her red lips curl into a secret smile.

Her car pulled up to her private residence No.44, in the exclusive district of Belgravia. Rows of beautiful houses loomed ahead, all with identical, white gothic facades.

Kate stepped out of the passenger seat to open the door for her boss; the femme fatale, Irene Adler.

She was a slight frame with a thundering presence; short, slim and angular, her movements were serpentine and sophisticated as she stepped elegantly out of the car, dressed in a short white Alexander McQueen dress, her black faux fur coat draped over her arm. Her hypnotic charm carried around her exuberantly like delicate expensive scents that befuddled both the unaware and hyperaware equally. She held her shoulders like she was always in control of everything, and everyone. 

Irene looked down at her phone, red nail on the 'Download' button.

Upon receiving a confirming nod from the woman, PA Kate withdrew into the house to prepare for her boss. Irene loitered at the porch, glancing around discreetly; she was always on alert, surveying her immediate space since being the woman that she was, she was wanted for many reasons.

She pressed the button and watched the downloading process begin, her red-bottomed, black Louboutins clicking on the marble flooring as she quickly made her way into her house. She sauntered up the stairs to her vast bedroom as her excitement heightened, knowing the images promised a wonderful little adventure; a new pawn for her to play with. Almost immediately the images were downloaded, and the first one popped up for her to see on her camera phone.

She paused mid-walk, her lips parting slightly.

There it was; a photograph of the curious Sherlock Holmes draped in what looked like a white bedsheet, and by the look of it, nothing else underneath. Her red mouth curled into a smirk as she went through the subsequent photographs.

She’d looked him up a bit before by reading the blogs and the papers; he was an eccentric and egotistic man whose power of deduction made him a God among simple men. And what a God he did look like indeed, she mused to herself as she peered at the bedsheet-draped man, all haughty and frowning as he was ushered into a taxicab by two bodyguards.

Irene knew the pictures probably did no justice to the skin that seemed as pale as the white cloth covering him, or the high cheekbones built for prideful, arrogant men like him. With piercing neon-blue eyes and his unruly black hair curling softly at his chiselled scowling forehead, he looked positively flammable.

Her nerves lit with excitement and impatience.

She quickly sprinted to her bedroom, and in quick sweeps disposed of her heels and sheet stockings, planting herself on her bed to survey more pictures like an excited schoolgirl.

In the next few pictures, Sherlock Holmes was clothed, unfortunately, but the dark tones of his suit and coat made him all the paler, pristine and untouched. Irene’s red nails itched to mark the unblemished skin. The pictures were from when he was returning from the Buckingham Palace and sitting next to him in the taxicab was the doctor, John Watson. He was a small man, rather good looking in his own way; rugged, blond, economical, polite, there was a sort of quiet strength to him that probably only came out when required. The two men seemed to be polar opposites; two ends of the same adrenaline-junkie spectrum, and yet the rapport between them was familiar, warm, playful, and a tad bit curiously intense.

Irene was beyond intrigued; she wondered how interesting it would be to covet both, simultaneously.

“Kate?” she called out to her PA after deciding what had to be done, “We are going to have a visitor. I’ll need a bit of time to get ready!”

Dressed in a smart, full-sleeved white blouse and black pencil skirt, the redhaired Kate obediently entered the room to see Irene prancing her to her elaborate dressing table to sit at its small chair while she took off her earrings in preparation. The woman smiled to herself as she picked up the stockings and shoes Irene had shed at the floor like snakeskin.

“A long time?” asked Kate as she pulled the stockings right side in.

“Ages,” Irene smiled.

~

They were going to have to confront this ‘Adler’ woman, John realised.

He was equal parts curious and interested to witness the meeting between Irene Adler who embodied sex and Sherlock Holmes who abhorred it.

John had been catching up on some news in the paper when he frowned at the sound of clothes being flung out into the hallway from the detective's bedroom.

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m going into battle, John; I’m going to need the right armour!”

At the word 'armour’ John was compelled to turn around and observe the debacle himself. He was greeted with the absurd sight of Sherlock trying on a fluorescent-green safety vest, its metallic reflective stripe shining at the sleeves through the open door of his bedroom.

“No,” Sherlock declared his dissatisfaction as he jumped back into his closet to fish for more armour.

~

“No,” Irene announced at her reflection showing her lithe form, arms akimbo in a glittery black dress that she tried on.

Having earlier changed into her favourite lace-trimmed peignoir of sheer green, Irene had mulled through the rows of coveted, expensive potential attire in her walk-in closet, keeping in mind she was to entertain a very special, well, human being, for the lack of a more accurate term.

She had tried on a few and it didn’t seem to speak the way she wanted to. As she twirled and surveyed herself from one of the many full-length mirrors adorning her well-equipped bedroom, she tsk-ed in dissatisfaction.

Kate, on the other hand, approved of the choice. Leaning against the threshold, her eyes assessed the dangerous woman and the plunging back of the dress suggestively.

“Works for me.”

“Everything works on you,” Irene replied distractedly, and a few twirls later she froze at her reflection. A smile lit up on her face, the one that very much resembled the cat that caught the canary; she realized exactly what she needed to wear.

Kate stood up straight when Irene turned to her, smirking deviously.

~

The ride in the taxicab was absurdly silent.

“So,” John hazarded a conversation while seated next to a silent Sherlock, “What’s the plan?”

“We know her address.”

“We just ring her doorbell??”

“Exactly,” Sherlock stated, before raising his voice for the cabbie. “Just here please!”

“You didn’t even change your clothes,” John pointed out.

“Then it’s time to add a splash of colour.”

~

Kate delicately applied a glittery grey tone of eyeshadow to Irene’s eyelids, sweeping it out like a wing, and ran an electric blue shade of liquid eyeliner to frame the woman’s hypnotizing gaze of aqua.

Irene always relied on her for the makeup; Kate did quite know how to bring out her best features without laying on a lot. Under the brush strokes of Kate’s talented and deft left hand, Irene’s face was a canvas for foundation, blush and colour.

Kate’s thumb brushed softly against Irene’s untouched bottom lip, her lip-brush propped between her fingers on the ready.

“Shade?”

“Blood,” Irene purred.

~

The cabbie let them out a few streets ahead of the Victorian Belgravia residences. John looked around in confusion as Sherlock led them determinedly down an empty street. John cast a questioning glance at Sherlock who abruptly tugged his blue scarf off his neck in one quick swipe.

The taller man stood there with his pale neck and bony collarbones exposed, to face John who looked back a little alarmed and on alert for unexpected shenanigans.

“Are we here?” John tested carefully, eyes darting around.

“Two streets away, but this will do.”

“For what?” John, completely at odds, observed the detective shuffle weirdly as he seemed to brace himself for some kind of impact. 

“Punch me in the face.”

“Punch you?” John repeated despite his fame for stating the obvious, just so he could clarify what he’d just heard his friend command him to do.

“Yes, punch me, in the face, didn’t you hear me??” Sherlock snapped.

“I always hear ‘punch me in the face’ when you’re speaking, but it’s usually subtext.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes.”

An inconvenienced groan was all John heard before he saw Sherlock’s pale fist come flying at him, knocking him off his feet into a heap on the ground.

Sherlock, knowing he had but two seconds for a retaliation, braced himself with a few deep breaths as an infuriated John Watson clambered swiftly to his feet, eyes blazing red, pained face twisted in rage.

A hefty punch to the cheek sent Sherlock heaving backwards to the ground in one fell swoop.

John hissed at his knuckles that also sustained damage, as Sherlock got up on his own feet, a blotch of red blood smeared on his left cheek where he’d taken the hit.

“Thank you, that was-”

Before Sherlock could complete his statement of gratitude, the enraged doctor flung himself at him, tackling him to the ground like the fierce fighter he was. At one point, he was trying to strangle him.

Sherlock should have known better; John Watson, a very calm and serene soul, wasn’t as easily calmed once aggravated.

“Okay, I think we’re done now, John!” Sherlock choked urgently, his otherwise fair face turning red under the steel-like vice grip of John’s headlock, with the smaller man pressed to his back, grimacing with effort.

“You want to remember, Sherlock, I was a soldier!!” John hissed through grinding teeth, a vein popping at his forehead with exertion, “I killed people!”

“You were a doctor!”

“I had bad days!”

~

Kate painted Irene’s lips delicately with her brush and sat back to eye her work.

“So, what are you going to wear?”

Irene smacked her lips to even out the red. “My battle-dress.”

Kate crooned. “Lucky boy.”

Irene smiled eagerly, eyes aflame with playful dexterity like a patient panther coiled and ready to spring herself at her opponent.

The doorbell rang, catching both their attentions; the anticipated visitor had arrived. Kate excused herself to go answer it as Irene winked at her.

Kate was always found it fun to watch Miss Adler in her playful mode; the way she toyed with the people who were enamoured by her and were more than glad to turn into putty in her presence. It was a different kind of grace that equipped her slender body; one that was poisonously beautiful and deadly. Kate smiled to herself; Mr Sherlock Holmes was going to have quite an exciting time.

The PA walked downstairs to the main door and pressed the button on the intercom speakerphone. “Hello?” she addressed the Visitor, trying not to chuckle knowing full well who was on the other side and what they were attempting.

“Oh, um, sorry to d-disturb you, um-” came the shuddering, deep voice at the intercom, “I-I’ve just been attacked, um- I think t-they took my wallet, and um, and my phone. P-please could you help me??”

Kate fought her hardest to keep her smile off of her voice, “I can phone the police if you want?”

“Thank you!” the voice squeaked despite the baritone, “Thank you, could you, please?” he seemed to shuffle as he hesitated, “Uh, would you- would you mind if I just waited here, just until they come? Thank you, thank you so much!” There was faint sniffling coming through the speakerphone.

Kate opened the door for the ‘poor, attacked man’ who walked in looking so very distressed in a black Dolce Gabbana suit that fit him like a dream and an expensive Belstaff Milford coat. With a head full of wild hair, he was a very oddly-handsome man indeed; she could see why Miss Adler was so excited. The man was pressing a white handkerchief to his wounded cheek, as he tripped over himself to show his gratitude to Kate in quick stutters, while he glanced around the extravagant lobby.

“Thank you, thank you!”

Kate stood aside with her hands folded, silently assessing the shorter man who followed inside as well; he was more economically dressed, in his plaid shirt and blue jeans, and a crisp suede jacket with leather shoulder patches. He also had a smallish blemish on his chin. He held himself straight, like a man from the Army.

“I saw it all happen,” the blonde man announced, “It’s okay, I’m a doctor.”

Kate gave them nods of understanding.

“Now, have you got a first aid kit?” John asked, closing the main door behind him politely.

“In the kitchen,” she gestured to the door near her, “Please.”

After a few courteous exchanges of ‘thank you’s and ‘please’s, Kate had accompanied John to find the first aid kit and Sherlock found himself alone, seated on one of the plush, white sofas in the parlour.

Irene Adler had decorated the room to be an exuberant and sophisticated affair; all beige tones, soft whites and creams. The very touch of an expensive woman was evident in its embellishments. Large French windows decked with heavy ash grey curtains flanked to Sherlocks’ right. A large fireplace sat across from him with a heavily ornamented mirror atop it, and further glances showed several decorative crystal showpieces and other unnecessary trinkets scattered across the space; multifaceted, fragile-looking things meant to lend an air of superficial grandeur.

In a way, the room looked like a reflection of the living room at 221B Baker Street, only less in disarray and more classy at the expense of all the people The Woman had brought to their knees, kissing her feet and eating off her hands.

“Hello,” came a woman’s voice echoing from the corridor, startling Sherlock. He quickly rearranged his usual aristocratic posture into that of his ‘helpless vicar’ persona. Clicks of high heels on the wooden floor sounded louder as the woman approached the room.

“Sorry to hear you’ve been hurt. I don’t think Kate caught your name?”

Sherlock pressed the handkerchief to his wound as he turned to the door, “I’m so sorry I’m-”

Whatever Sherlock wanted to say next died at the tip of his tongue; the woman who stood at the threshold, greeting him with a smile was The Woman, Irene Adler, and she was stark naked, her pale creamy skin positively glowing. Sherlock’s mouth went slightly agape as he took in her nude form; the only things she wore were her diamond-studded earrings, the diamond ring on her finger and her black Louboutins.

“Oh, it’s always hard to remember an alias when you’ve had a fright,” Irene casually sympathized, as she sauntered elegantly into the room towards Sherlock, until she stood right in front of his seated form, very pleased with herself and her Battledress. Sherlock’s pale blue eyes focused solely on her own glittering ones.

She reached out and pulled away a slip of paper from Sherlock’s dress shirt collar to disassemble his makeshift clerical collar.

“There; now, we’re both defrocked,” she smiled down at him, “Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

“Miss Adler, I presume?”  the detective acknowledged calmly with a tip of his head.

Irene studied him indelicately. “Look at those cheekbones,” she purred, very much pleased to see the man in person than through the photos that really did do no justice to him, “I could cut myself slapping that face. Would you like me to try?” she offered in a tease, popping the slip of paper between her teeth with a crisp click of her frontal teeth.

Footsteps sounded again, as John walked into the room at that precise moment, holding a white, ceramic bowl of warm water.

“Right. This should do it -” he started and promptly froze on the spot at the sight before him; the beautiful naked woman in heels standing over the seated Sherlock, with a slip of paper clipped between said woman’s teeth.

Both stared at John as if he’d roused them from a riveting game of chess.

John’s eyes ran everywhere all at once and then down into the bowl as he stuttered, “I’ve missed something, haven’t I?”

Sherlock pursed his lips, hoping John understood that the vicar act had fallen short.

Irene’s jaw hung open as she suggestively removed the slip of paper from her mouth, salaciously scanning John as if he were a tempting magazine.

“Please, sit down,” she offered, turning away slowly for effect, before seating herself on one of the armchairs, “Or if you’d like some tea, I can call the maid.”

“I had some at the Palace,” Sherlock dismissed.

“I know.”

“Clearly.”

The Woman smiled, folding one leg over the other elegantly, coming off as a Greek sculpture in marble. She folded her hands at ease as she observed Sherlock with the same intensity he observed her.

“I had a tea too, at the Palace, if anyone’s interested,” interjected John, in a way wanting to be a part of whatever telepathic match was taking place in the room.

Sherlock focused his gaze on Irene, his brain kicking off the usual preliminary scan he ran on people to understand about them things they wouldn’t otherwise say outright in verbal form. He ran his eyes objectively on her smooth, unblemished skin over her petite and supple frame, her black hair carefully tailored to fall in two stylish swoops flanking either side of her head to meet in a braided bun at the back, and her artfully touched-up face that was taking great pleasure in his deduction.

Nothing; he came up with nothing.

Sherlock blinked pensively, feeling like a radar with its antennae broken, which was a dizzying concern because that most certainly never happened. Putting aside the cartoonish notion that John’s punch to his face could have rearranged his brain, Sherlock turned his head to sweep his eyes on his blond blogger instead. A stream of data about John lit up in his lobes like light signals.

Two-day shirt, electric razor shave, not a blade, date tonight, has not phoned his sister, new toothbrush, night out with Stamford-

Sherlock swivelled his gaze back at Irene.

And once more, nothing.

Irene took the silence in the room as a cue to voicing her mirth and pleasure at the bafflement that sat like a frown on Sherlock’s face.

“Do you know the big problem with a disguise, Mr Holmes?” she questioned smoothly, running the pad of her thumb idly across the blunt ends of her manicured fingernails, “However hard you try, it’s always a self-portrait.”

Sherlock tipped his chin in consideration, unbuttoning the collar of his dark dress shirt to ease his secret bafflement. He scoffed, “You think I’m a Vicar with a bleeding face?”

“No, I think you’re damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power; in your case, it's yourself.”

Sherlock threw her a narrowed glare of aquamarine.

Irene leaned forward with great interest, her pale blue eyes studying Sherlock’s face openly like an artist interpreting another’s masterpiece. She smiled, making a noise of approval.

“Somebody loves you; if I had to punch that face, I’d avoid your nose and teeth too.”

She cast a knowing look at John, who felt his neck warm absurdly either at the accusation or the fact the beautiful, naked woman was looking at him, and she was so very much still quite stark naked.

John let out a short dry laugh before addressing her. “Could you put something on, please? Anything at all,” he looked at the bowl he held which had a soft white cloth soaking in it. “A napkin?”

“Why?” the playful undertone in her hypnotizing voice carried through the air as she smiled at him softly, her pearly white teeth gleaming in between symmetrically painted red lips, “Are you feeling exposed?”

“I don’t think John knows where to look,” Sherlock supplied in a bored tone. The Consulting Detective got up to offer his Belstaff to the notoriously clever albeit naked woman, holding it out to her while he stared pointedly at the large French windows more out of polite protocol than concerned courtesy. Irene stood up as well, stepping a little towards John who, intimidated and very much flushed, stayed frozen at his spot with his face betraying the great effort he summoned to keep his eyes level and unmoving from Irene’s gaze to any other parts of her he shouldn't be gawking at.

“No, I think he knows exactly where to look,” Irene smiled at John as she plucked the coat from Sherlock’s extended hand, before turning to the detective and rolling her eyes at him. “I’m not so sure about you.”

“If I wanted to look at naked women, I’d borrow John’s laptop.”

“You do borrow my laptop,” John frowned.

“I confiscate it,” Sherlock corrected, walking around the room with half a glance as he pocketed his handkerchief.

“Well, never mind; we’ve got better things to talk about.” Irene slipped on the coat with the graceful practice of a professional who dressed and undressed frequently. She then casually plopped down on the couch Sherlock had occupied a minute ago. “Now tell me, I need to know; how was it done?”

“What?” Sherlock questioned, standing as still as a statue.

Irene casually pulled off her Louboutins and dropped them to the floor, flexing her bare toes and smiling up at the two men like a cosy cat wrapped stylishly in the cocoon of Sherlock’s oversized coat. “The hiker with the bashed-in head; how was he killed?”

John remained rooted at his spot by the door as he looked between the two pale figures in black.

Sherlock's eyebrows flinched despite himself.“That’s… not why I’m here,” he replied carefully.

“No, you’re here for the photographs, but that’s never going to happen. And since we’re here just chatting, anyway…” she trailed off her statement playfully.

“That story’s not been on the news yet. How do you know about it?” John asked incredulously.

“I know one of the policemen. Well, I know what he likes,” she answered him.

“Oh,” John observed, sitting down confidently next to the enigmatic woman while looking her in the eye, “And you like policemen?”

Being a soldier counted, didn’t it?

“I like detective stories. And detectives,” she sent John a feline smirk, “Brainy is the new sexy.”

John returned her smirk with a lopsided one of his own.

Thepositionofthecar-” the words that left Sherlock were so rapid fast that it sounded like one stilted hiss than anything, and he glitched for a moment as he composed himself, only to repeat in his usual spitfire coherently, “The position of the car relative to the hiker at the time of the backfire and the fact that the death blow was to the back of the head; that’s all you need to know.” He then sauntered crisply around the room, nonchalant, hands clasped behind his back in his ‘Deduction Mode’.

Like a pair of hypnotized cats observing a pendulum, Irene and John watched Sherlock, slightly whiplashed at the information thrown out at them like knives. John frowned as he took in the information, while Irene looked impressed, her thin eyebrows knit in concentration and awe.

“Okay, tell me, how was he murdered?”

“He wasn’t,” Sherlock replied coolly.

“You don’t think it was murder??”

“I know it wasn’t.”

“How?” she challenged.

“The same way that I know that the victim was an excellent sportsman recently returned from foreign travel and that the photographs I’m looking for are in this room.”

 “Okay, but how?”

“So, they are in this room, thank you,” Sherlock sent her a mockery of a smile. “John, man the door, let no one in.”

A brief exchange of knowing looks passed between the detective and the doctor before the later put aside the bowl he’d been holding on to and briskly stepped out of the room, locking it from outside. At the corridor, John walked to one of the fancy, wooden side-tables to pick up a magazine and roll it into a tube for the next part of their plan.

Inside the locked parlour, Irene looked at the door pensively.

Sherlock wasted no time setting his scheme into motion.

“Two men alone in the countryside, several yards apart, and one car,” he started in sotto voce.

“Oh I – I thought you were looking for the photos now,” Irene replied, fidgeting uneasily.

“No, no,” Sherlock dismissed, observing the heavily ornamented mirror above the fireplace, “Looking takes ages; I’m just going to find them. But, you’re moderately clever and we’ve got a moment, so let’s pass the time.”

Sherlock Holmes turned around to bestow his gaze on The Woman as he theatrically sauntered around the room like a man delivering his piece de resistance.

“Two men, a car and nobody else. Driver’s trying to fix his engine, getting nowhere. And the hiker is taking a moment, looking at the sky. Watching the birds?” He paced smoothly, “Any moment now, something’s going to happen; what?”

“The hiker’s going to die.”

“No, that’s the result. What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh well try to,” Sherlock chastised her like a disappointed teacher.

“Why?!” Irene demanded, taking offence.

“Because you cater to the whims of the pathetic and take your clothes off to make an impression,” he remarked unkindly, “Stop boring me and think; it’s the new sexy.”

Irene clenched her jaw as her eyes blazed. Unused to be the ordered rather than doing the ordering about, she summoned her composed façade once again. “The car’s going to backfire.”

“There’s going to be a loud noise.”

“So what?”

“Oh, noises are important; noises can tell you everything. For instance-” Sherlock paused. Irene blinked at him confusedly.

The very next moment, a smoke alarm sounded from the corridor, its shrill beeps slicing through the tension in the air. Unaware that it was John who had set fire to the magazine and activated the alarm, Irene sat up straight, her worried eyes urgently swivelling to the ornamented mirror hung right above the fireplace.

Sherlock followed her gaze.

“Thank you,” the detective approached the fireplace, running his hands busily over it, “On hearing a smoke alarm, a mother would look towards her child.”

Irene looked on in shock as Sherlock pressed his fingers to the underside of the mantel, feeling around the metal.

“Amazing how fire exposes our priorities.” He pressed against the buttons he expected to find, and with a click, the ornamental mirror slid up from its position on the wall, revealing what it had been concealing in the gold wallpaper; a small, metal safe built into the wall. “I really hope you don’t have a baby in here.”

Alarmed, Irene Adler got to her feet immediately.

Sherlock peered at the safe, studying its numbered keypad as the smoke alarm continued to beep warningly in the background. “Alright, John you can turn it off now!” he yelled over his shoulder.

Outside the room, John fanned the smoking magazine to dispel the grey swirls in the air. It was taking its bloody sweet time, and just as he expected, his Partner wasn’t pleased.

“I said you can turn it off now!!” came another yell from inside.

“Give me a minute!” John yelled back, coughing as the thin smoke irritated his eyes and nose.

Sudden footsteps made John turn around in surprise. Marching down from upstairs were three armed men in grey suits and earpieces; the one leading them quickly pointed a gun at the smoke alarm and shot it silent. John had but a moment to drop the smoking magazine and raise his hands in surrender as the three men cornered him, guns pointing at his head.

“Thank you,” John mumbled, glancing at the busted alarm.

In the parlour, with the shrill beeping silenced, Sherlock studied the safe in peace. He bit his lip, his tall form bent slightly to eye the keypad like a mathematician solving an equation on a board. Irene hovered near the sofa, curiously watching the man in his dramatic element, a little appreciative smile blooming on her face at the theatrics of it all.

“You should always use gloves with these things, you know,” Sherlock mumbled out loud, “Heaviest oil deposit is always on the first key used, that’s quite clearly a 3, but after that, the sequence is almost impossible to read. I see from the make that it’s a six-digit code. It can’t be your birthday, no disrespect, but clearly you were born in the '80s and the 8’s barely used, so -”

“I’d tell you the code right now,” Irene teased, “But you know what? I already have.”

Sherlock turned to bestow her with a look of scepticism.

Irene raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Think.”

Suddenly, the door burst open as the three, armed men barged into the room, John pushed forward at gunpoint.

“Hands behind your head, on the floor, keep it still!” came the barked order, which both Irene and Sherlock instantly obeyed. Irene, Sherlock and John had a man each holding them at gunpoint. The man in charge of john pushed the doctor down to his knees, with his head dipped and hands folded behind his head.

“Sorry, Sherlock,” John groaned, feeling the gun pressed to the crown of his head warningly.

“Miss Adler, on the floor!” the man yelled again, teeth clenched in spite. The man assigned to her tackled a pliant Irene to drop to her knees next to John, mirroring his predicament.

The lead man then turned to his target, Sherlock.

“Don’t you want me on the floor too?” Sherlock asked cheekily, much too casual for a man with a gun pointed at his face.

“No, sir, I want you to open the safe.”

“American,” mused Sherlock as he observed the CIA Agent with piqued curiosity, “Interesting. Why would you care?” He glanced at Irene who stared back, blue eyes laden with an alert warning.

“Now, please,” the man threatened.

“I don’t know the code.”

“We’ve been listening, she said she told you.”

“Well, if you’ve been listening, you’ll know she didn’t.”

“I assume I’ve missed something,” the man stated, “From your reputation, I’m assuming you didn’t, Mr Holmes.”

“For God’s sake,” John spoke up from his spot on the floor, “She’s the one who knows the code; ask her!”

The man clenched his jaw. “Yes, sir, she also knows the code that automatically calls the police ad sets off the burglar alarm. I’ve learnt not to trust this woman.”

Irene, from her compromised position, decided to speak up. “Mr Holmes doesn’t-”

“Shut up!” the Agent hissed harshly in her direction, “One more word out of you, just one, and I will decorate that wall with the insides of your head; that, for me, will not be a hardship.”

He looked at Sherlock who looked back defiantly.

“Mr Archer,” the man called over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off Sherlock’s, “At the count of three, shoot Doctor Watson.”

That seemed to have set an anxious and urgent buzzing shooting through the room.

“What?!” John spat in shock.

“I don’t know the code,” Sherlock stated, his voice as level as he could maintain despite the imminent threat.

“One.”

“I don’t know the code.”

“Two.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Sherlock bit urgently, voice raising, “I don’t know it!!”

“I’m prepared to believe you any second now.”

The cold metal muzzle of the gun that pressed into John’s neck made him shudder despite himself even as his heartbeat picked up erratically. He counted milliseconds, head bent, hands folded, knees hurting as he knelt waiting for the miracle that was Sherlock Holmes’ brain to click and light as it always unfailingly does.

Out of odds, Sherlock glanced erratically at Irene for a moment, and all the woman did was drop her eyes to her own abdomen.

Click and light.

“Three-”

“No, STOP!” Sherlock yelled, his face lax with realization.

The man gestured at his henchman to pause, making John let out the heavy breath he’d been holding.

The CIA agent waited for Sherlock who seemed to be computing something behind his glassy eyes whizzing across the air as if reading invisible words. The man narrowed his eyes at the detective suspiciously.

Sherlock carefully turned around to face the safe, breaths measured, hands lowering from behind his head. He looked at the keypad with finality and pressed his finger to the buttons, pausing at every press as if checking himself. Irene watched, with a glimmer in her eyes, the sequence of numbers he dialled punctuated by short beeps.

3-2-2-4-3-4

Two short beeps followed, announcing that the safe was successfully unlocked.

Irene smiled, impressed once again. John sighed, the knot in his throat loosened enough for him to draw a breath. Sherlock pursed his lips, brain still running as he eyed the door of the safe waiting to be swung open.

“Thank you, Mr Holmes,” the agent supplied, “Open it, please.”

Sherlock pinched the lever on the door between his fingers and carefully turned it clockwise by 45 degrees, earning him a crisp click. Something nagging him prevented him from swinging it open; knowing the dangerous Woman and her equally dangerous mind, he secretly glanced at Irene over his shoulder. She looked away promptly, eyes nervous.

Click and light.

“Vatican Cameos!!” Sherlock yelled.

Instantaneously, several things took flight at once.

At the sound of their secret war cry, John bent double against the coffee table in front of him with hands protecting his head, while Sherlock flung open the door of the safe and ducked under the fireplace just in time as the gun booby-trapped into the safe shot a bullet straight ahead into the man near John. Losing no time, Sherlock jumped back up and tackled the head agent by grabbing his gun in the face of the confusion and smacking him hard across the head with the butt of it, immobilizing him as he fell unconscious to the floor. Sherlock had just about flipped the gun around and equipped it into his fist when he noticed Irene, who had meanwhile jabbed her elbow into the crotch of the man next to her and disabled his shoulder with a punch to render him weak on his knees, standing poised over her assailant with the gun she nicked off him pointed back at him, her petite hands clenched tight, her red nails glistening in the light.

Sherlock looked at her; a flicker of dazzled surprise escaping between his furrowed brows and open mouth. “Would you mind?” he asked offhandedly, shrugging his suit jacket into place.

“Not at all,” the femme fatale replied, smacking the man unconscious with the gun, while Sherlock swiped his hand into the safe and grabbed the item in it, a small black camera phone, without her notice.

John got up from the floor, equipped himself with his assailant’s gun before checking his pulse. “He’s dead,” the doctor announced, a little breathless.

Irene, John and Sherlock remained standing for a moment, all armed and breathing hard, with three felled men strewn around them.

“Thank you,” Irene smiled appreciatively at Sherlock, her gun still aimed at her unconscious assailant precautionarily. “You were very observant.”

“Observant?” John huffed confusedly.

“I’m flattered,” Irene added.

“Don’t be,” Sherlock muttered dismissively.

John blinked. “Flattered?”

Sherlock jumped into action, heading for the door. “There’ll be more of them; they’ll be keeping an eye on the building.” John followed after him, tucking the gun into the waistband of his jeans behind his back.

Irene was left alone in the parlour with two unconscious CIA agents and one dead, when she noticed the open safe and her spine buzzed in terror. Holding her breath anxiously, she hurriedly stepped across the room on her nimble bare feet and peered into her safe. It was empty.

She’d been robbed.

Outside the residence, Sherlock Holmes crisply stepped out into porch with John at his tail. “We should call the police,” John suggested urgently.

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, promptly raising his gun into the air and shooting five, quick rounds into the sky to John’s disbelief and surprise. Distant sounds of cars screeching in shock accompanied the aftermath ringing of ears.

The detective turned around mechanically and stepped back into the house. “On their way,” he announced in his wake.

“For God’s sake!” John groaned at his roommate’s unorthodox methods as he followed the tall blur of a retreating figure begrudgingly.

“Oh, shut up; its quick.”

Both men walked briskly back into the parlour. Sherlock stepped inside the room as he commanded of his friend, “Check the rest of the house; see how they got in.”

John nodded in reply, leaving to go upstairs from where he had seen the men come down.

“Well,” Sherlock announced, discarding the gun at his leisure and boyishly flipping up the camera phone to catch it in his hand in a show of victory, “That’s the knighthood in the bag.”

Irene eyed her phone in Sherlock’s nimble fingers. “And that’s mine,” she reached out a hand, jaws clenching apprehensively.

Ignoring her request but duly noticing the anxiety in her voice, Sherlock studied the phone in his hand that had been precious enough to be put away safely in a boobytrapped metal safe. He easily recognised it as the luxuriously expensive Constellation Quest model by the company Vertu, decked in yellow gold and black leather; a camera phone built to evoke respect such as the likes of Gucci or Rolex, which sat quite aptly with Irene's image. Sherlock ran his fingers across the body of the Qwerty-equipped phone decked in sleek, glossy black steel, with a golden V-shaped detail just above the screen like a smooth, polished frown of conceited elegance. The phone was at the top of its game for its specifics, so Sherlock assumed it contained some very interesting bits of information and vast trough-fulls of it as well.

He pressed the power button on the phone, and it drew up a password-encrypted screen.

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

“All the photographs are on here, I presume?” Sherlock guessed, eyeing the screen carefully.

“I have copies, of course.”

“No, you don’t,” Sherlock quipped, “You’ll have permanently disabled any kind of uplink or connection. Unless the contents of this phone are proveably unique, you wouldn’t be able to sell them.”

“Who said I’m selling?” she challenged.

“Well, why would they be interested?” Sherlock glanced at the three well-dressed American men sprawled comically around them.

Irene bit her tongue and refused to ease.

Sherlock mused, “Whatever’s on this phone, it's clearly not just photographs.”

“That camera phone is my life, Mr Holmes,” she snapped, anxious exasperation clear in her voice, “I’d die before I let you take it; it’s my protection.” She stepped towards him, hand still stubbornly outstretched for her possession.

“It was,” he corrected snarkily, pulling the camera phone out of her short reach.

John’s voice floated into the room from outside, “Sherlock??” the voice sounded urgent. Irene watched as Sherlock pocketed the phone and walked out of the parlour to seek John. Making up her mind, the petite woman adjusted his coat around herself and determinedly stepped over the bodies to follow the quick detective who was already making his way upstairs to Irene’s bedroom from where John seemed to have called out.

Inside the bedroom, John was bent over the head of an unconscious Kate who lay sprawled on the floor haphazardly. He listened for her breathing and inspected her pulse. Confirming her status as simply unconscious, John got up and walked around the contemporary room of Victorian aesthetic, eyeing for suspicious telltales. He stepped into the decorated en suite bathroom to check the windows, only to have his doubts confirmed. John also peeked curiously at a thread of thick, braided rope hung just outside the window.

Sherlock materialised at his side almost immediately.

“Must have come in this way,” John gestured explanatorily at the open window in the bathroom. 

“Clearly.”

John then noticed Irene Adler slip into the room, looking down at her PA as she approached her prone form.

"It’s all right,” John assured her, “She’s just out cold.”

“Well, God knows she’s used to that,” Irene mumbled offhandedly. John looked at her with wide eyes, unable to conceal his surprise at the implications. Irene let out a tired huff as she continued, “There’s a back door; better check it, Doctor Watson.” Irene delicately stepped around Kate and advanced to her dressing table, rummaging through it calmly.

“Sure,” John replied carefully. He cast a suspicious glance at Sherlock, who gave him an affirming nod. Taking it as a cue that everything was under control, John walked out of the bedroom in search of said back door, feeling the gun pressing into his back just in case there were more men waiting hidden.

Irene's bedroom remained silent with the two figures in it.

Sherlock pulled out the camera phone to inspect it. He busied himself, hitting buttons and pondering on the password encryption, unaware that Irene had her fingers locked around a spindly needle she carefully produced from her dressing table drawer.

“You’re very calm,” Sherlock pointed out conversationally into the silence of the room, his deep voice bouncing around the dark walls papered in intricate black and grey designs. In response, Irene turned around from the dressing table to look at him; jaws tight and pensive, pale aqua eyes calculating.

Sherlock glanced at her to shrug matter-of-factly. “Well, your boobytrap did just kill a man.”

“He would have killed me,” Irene explained casually, walking up to Sherlock who was occupied with the camera phone again. “It was self-defence in advance,” she continued in a soft purr. She reached out to run a warm palm up his bicep suggestively, startling him with the sudden physical contact. Sherlock frowned down at her short form and before he could question her at all, her other hand lashed out and jabbed the needle deep into his right bicep.

A strangled groan escaped Sherlock’s mouth as he spun around in shock. He reached out blindly for his pricked arm that seared with the injection just as Irene withdrew the needle and threw it away.

“What- what is that?! What-”

Sherlock’s vision swam as he came around and tried to look at Irene who was blurring around the edges to his alarm. The next thing he saw flying at him was her pale hand as she unwarrantedly slapped Sherlock hard across the face, sending him into another spin on his suddenly wobbly legs, discombobulating his senses as his brain seemed to tumble like a gyroscope inside his skull. He dropped on his knees gracelessly, fumbling for balance as his eyes refused to focus on anything. His cheek where he’d been slapped stung like a burn from a lick of fire, his eyes rolled in his head. Lights were too bright and too blurred, everything was melting into itself, and there was a distinct ringing drowning his ears, his muscles felt like liquid around his suddenly rubbery bones.

“Give it to me, now,” came Irene’s voice, muffled and accompanied by the swimming image of her glaring at him authoritatively, her hand outstretched in demand once more. “Give it to me!” she repeated.

Sherlock forced himself to remember the priority; protect the camera phone, do not let her have the camera phone. It became the sole point of his concentration as he maintained as good a grip on it as he could with his body shutting down around him.

Sherlock felt his jaws soften and his tongue grow heavy in his mouth. “N-Nuh-” he managed, breathing hard.

“Give it to me!”

"Nuh!”

One by one, his limbs seem to give up, his thighs failing to hold him up, making him drop forward on his hands and knees on the polished dark wood floor.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Irene cursed, dropping the nice act and turning away to her dressing table.

Sherlock fumbled to stand up unsuccessfully, as The Woman returned with her riding crop. She held it poised above Sherlock threateningly with the ease of practice.

Sherlock blinked up at her, his brain, still active to a degree, supplied information about it unprofitably - Mark Todd, Braided Leather Riding Crop, the same from her website, the same that he owned, the same one he used on corpses to determine the rate at which bruising can occur on-

“Drop it!” The Woman commanded sharply, in a voice that seemed to boom and hiss at the same time to Sherlock's unsure senses. She waited only a moment’s time before she lashed out and struck Sherlock in three, merciless long sweeps across his shoulder, the sharp sound of the leather against his body cutting through the air like knives. Blinding waves of searing pain floored the Consulting Detective as he crumbled backwards in a heap, fingers going lax around the camera phone which fell and bounced away. He moaned softly to himself as the back of his head hit the floor with a sickening thump, his curls bouncing against it. His uncooperative body sprawled pronely, face fallen aside in an overload of inconceivable stimuli and hazy context, and a resounding, dull ache on his skull. Vision off-kilter, nerves on fire, veins popping with effort, he felt his air pipes struggle to work as he scraped in a breath of air.

“Ah” came her pleased purr from the distance, “Thank you, dear.”

He could hear her pick up the phone, and the following beeps meant she was dialling something into it.

“Now, tell that sweet, little, posh thing that the pictures are safe with me," she was speaking, "They’re not for blackmail; just for insurance.”

Sherlock felt his throat close as he struggling to rake in a breath, his hands not even cooperative enough to move.

“Besides,” The Woman’s voice floated in the air again, “I might want to see her again.”

Somewhere in his muddled brain, he felt the alarms of warning ringing in the distance.

The camera phone.

Hadn't he had something to do about it?

Secure it, of course!

Choking out a groan, he heaved massive effort to awaken his body, his hands and legs pathetically drawing up to turn his body over, and possibly at some point in the near incalculable future, get up. But alas, he felt a small, bare foot press to his chest and nudge him back onto his back, all his efforts dispelling like smoke from his joints. The authoritative and warm foot seared right through his thin, black dress shirt and pressed against his shuddering, erratic heart.

“Oh, no, no,” The Woman swam back into his vision, all distorted yet so very alarmingly clear, as she preened, “It’s been a pleasure; don’t spoil it.”

Sherlock felt the flat end of her riding crop press against his face, running itself on the skin of his cheek, it's leather an absurd feeling he couldn’t place in his currently spinning world of blotches and blurs and dancing starbursts. That was when he felt his consciousness slipping in and out too, making him close his eyes weakly; passing out was starting to be deliciously tempting.

The camera phone-

He had to secure the cam-

He had to try. He had to try get up and take it from her - 

“This is how I want you to remember me; The Woman who beat you,” he heard her say, her voice like a sheer sliver of gossamer silk floating in a soft wind through his subconscious, consuming him and his world falling apart around it.

The riding crop brushed across his lower lip, his open mouth thrown open for breath.

“Goodnight Mr Sherlock Holmes.”

John Watson stepped into the room just then, and gawked at the sight; Irene Adler, brandishing a riding crop as she stood over a pliant and lucid Sherlock Holmes prone and spreadeagled on the floor at her bare feet.

“Jesus!" John gasped, "What are you doing?!” Alarmed, he paced to Sherlock’s side just as Irene fluttered away from him.

“He’ll sleep for a few hours,” Irene dismissed, happily her salacious self once more, “Make sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit; it makes for a very unattractive corpse.”

John knelt to pick up the discarded syringe with which Irene had attacked Sherlock. “What’s this? What have you given him?”

“He’ll be fine,” she mused, perched on the sill of the open window in the en suite bathroom, holding onto the thick knotted stretch of rope at her shoulder like an impish pixie in an oversized coat. “I’ve used it on loads of my friends.”

John peered into Sherlock’s delirious face. “Sherlock? Sherlock, can you hear me?”

Judging by the glassy, unfocused eyes looking nowhere and a body weakly writhing as if under a spell, John put his suspicions on Ketamine, or, as he worriedly considered, the GHB drug. Either way, at least Sherlock didn’t seem poisoned despite being so very out of it.

Irene watched the concerned doctor inspect his best friend.

“You know, I was wrong about him; he did know where to look.”

John turned around to look at the woman at the windowsill. “For what? What are you talking about?”

“The key code to my safe,” she smiled, as one long, naked leg rose from inside the coat to rest the heel of her foot on the edge of her bathtub near her.

“What was it?” he asked, distracted by all the glowing, pale skin.

Irene smiled elegantly. “Shall I tell him?” she sang to the drugged detective whose head was turned to her, but his eyes did not seem to see her at all.

Police sirens sounded in the distance, signalling the arrival of the response team at the door.

John frowned at Irene.

Irene’s red lips curled at the edges. “My measurements,” she whispered, pushing off the tub with her foot to fall back right out the window, coat and all. John’s mouth dropped open before he scrambled and ran to the window, but she had disappeared, nowhere to be seen.

Sherlock, a part of him still hearing the conversation, wanted to chase after the enigmatic criminal, but all he managed was to lift the extreme points of his body and flop back down on the wooden floor in failure. The sound of the sirens seeped through his foggy haze, making it unbearable to endure at a point, his eyes watering as the room spun, and spun and spun, breath leaving his lungs and his heartbeat ringing in his fingers, his clothes feeling all too warm and uncomfortable around himself.

There was a wash of black, his world went so very dark, then a muffled shuffle, a glimmer of light, sunlight, it was warm sunlight, and he heard voices, no, a voice, no, not John, but a female voice, a soft, serpentine voice coiling around his brain, cinching all the fallen bits back together so he could process where he was, he was in a car, he’d seen this car before, it was Phil’s car from the webcam; the case of the backfired car -

He was sitting in Phil’s backfired car.

Why was he in Phil’s car? The siren was still loud, if cars make loud siren noises, but police cars made siren noises, and he was in Phil's car-

“Got it!”

He blinked sluggishly and turned his head slowly, and an excited Irene was staring at him through the passenger side window from outside. Behind her, the plains spread out, and the river, and the hills; the countryside. He was in the crime scene, in Phil’s car, with Irene, who was naked, wearing in his coat, just outside the car door.

He lunged forward to get out, he had to get John, he had to let John know he was here at the countryside, but Irene shushed him, brandishing an elegant forefinger in his face, he couldn’t do anything but sit back down, it’s like she had power over him, a lot of power in that one slim finger, which was impossible, scientifically speaking, yet there he was, sitting obediently in the car as she made him to -

“No, don’t get up. I’ll do the talking,” she whispered.

He watched as she quickly walked behind the car and spoke from there, an infectious excitement in her voice, like she was figuring out a puzzle, he knew that feeling very well, he felt it all the time, the world a puzzle in his hand, a jigsaw puzzle, a Rubix cube, a sudoku sheet-

“So, the car’s about to backfire. And the hiker?”

He blinked.

He was now standing in the fields, at the riverbank, with Irene, who was naked, wearing his coat, and the hiker, in his blue beanie and red jacket, standing a little away, a foot or two.

Irene pointed at the sky, her voice seemed to come from all around the plains, confusing him greatly, like she was on speaker, which was absurd because he couldn’t see any wiring in the grass and-

“He’s staring at the sky. No, you said he could be watching the birds, but he wasn’t, was he?”

Of course, he wasn’t, Irene –

“He was watching another kind of flying thing.”

They turned around as she looked at the car, Phil’s car, the car he’d just been in, he could have sworn he was sitting in it a second ago, but there it was, far away, so very small-

“The car backfires, and the hiker turns to look. Which was his big mistake.”

A blur of wood came flying from the air and hit the hiker at the back of the head, the sickening crunch of his dented skull made Sherlock nauseated because he could feel the hit, it was so real, the hiker dropped to the grassy floor, and he could feel the pain of it, as if he’d fallen too, at some point, he could feel the bump as his head bounced on the floor, but there he was, standing, next to Irene, who was naked, wearing –

"By the time the driver looks up, the hiker is already dead. What he doesn’t see is what killed him because Its already being washed downstream.”

Irene and he looked down at the wooden object in the muddy bank of the river where it had landed after it struck the hiker.

“An accomplished sportsman recently returned from foreign travel with a boomerang.” Her voice floated, “You got that from one look? Definitely the new sexy.”

Irene turned to him, her eyes like neon dots flickering in the wind, red lips and red nails blinking like traffic signals, stopstopstop warningwarningwarning -

He mumbled, he mumbled again, but he was falling, falling, falling, the world around him spun on its side, the grass pulled from under his feet, the sky slipped away, and he felt softness, the softness of a pillow under his head, the softness lulled him, the feel of the soft pillow and the soft blanket and the soft bed, enveloped him, pulling him under, he was drowning, drowning in nothing, but her distant voice came up again, floating, like delicious cigarette smoke, a whisper like a feather from one of the pillows slipped free-

Hush, now, it’s okay, I’m only returning your coat.

Chapter Text

Sherlock awoke to the world with a strangled gasp, eyes flying open like a robot switched on.

“Jowhn?” he tried to call out, but his tongue was still asleep, as was half his face with his jaw hung to one side uncooperatively.

Shaking his head, he hazily registered the soft pillow under him and the blanket draped over him. He faintly recognized his surroundings as his bedroom at 221B Baker Street. But an avalanche of memories from hours ago made him sit up in a start.

“John-hn!” He yelled in alarm, trying to sit up with sore and watery limbs, which didn’t stop him from hoisting himself up on his feet and heroically tumbling face-first off the foot of the bed and onto the floor.

John, having heard his cry, stepped urgently into the room, barely concealing the laugh bubbling up his throat at the sight of the infamous Genius Sherlock Holmes falling off his bed, his otherwise impeccably curled hair matted to one side in sleep.

“You okay?” John asked, suppressing a grin.

Sherlock looked around, eyes still heavy and his voice quite husky from his slumber. “How did I get here?!” he demanded in a slur with his leaden tongue.

“Well, I don’t suppose you remember much; you weren’t making a lot of sense.” John rubbed at his ear sheepishly, “Oh and I should warn you, Lestrade filmed you on his phone.”

Sherlock missed John’s apologetic smile.

But Sherlock’s world was just falling into place; the jigsaw pieces cinching into clusters that sealed together and made pictures that arranged in order of chronology, clarity returning at an exponential rate even though his body refused to proceed even an inch. At the back of his brain, he realized his suit jacket was gone, and he remained in his dark dress-shirt and trousers.

And shoes, thank goodness.

His coat?

“Where is she?” Sherlock mumbled urgently as he got to his feet, walking around dazedly in his room, hands reaching out for either balance or to grab something in case he lost it.

“Where’s who?” John blinked.

“The woman,” Sherlock gestured vaguely into the air as he fumbled, “That woman-”

“What woman?”

“The Woman!” the incapacitated detective snapped as he gestured some more, beyond annoyed even in his inebriated state, “The woman Woman!”

“Oh, Irene Adler,” John observed at his leisure, “She got away; no one saw her.”

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut to make his visuals stop spinning for a moment and then opened them to stare at the window he suddenly noticed. He stumbled to it like a newly born foal and peered through the glass.

She had to have come in somehow, maybe she was hiding, maybe she’s still hiding in the room, she is so very agile-

“She wasn’t here, Sherlock.”

Sherlock spun away from the window and spotted his bed next, and immediately dropped to his hands and knees in an attempt to inspect the darkness under said bed.

John started at the sight of his friend on all fours. “What are you-” John bent over and grabbed his friend by the shoulder before the delirious man disappeared under the bed and found himself wedged onto something.

“No, no, back to bed!” Years of Army training gifted John the ease with which he hoisted his tall, gangly-limbed friend upright by the armpits, and steered him to plop him unceremoniously onto the bed, face down on the sheets. The bed was some sort of signal for Sherlock’s body to shut down again because his blue eyes, suddenly heavy, refused to stay open.

John reassured him in soft tones as he pulled the covers on top of him, “You’ll be fine in the morning, just sleep.”

“Of course, I’ll be fine, I am fine, I’m absolutely fine,” the ever-valiant Sherlock Holmes mumbled rapidly.

“Yes, you’re great,” John humoured him as he walked up to the threshold, “Now, I’ll be next door if you need me.”

“Why would I need you…” Sherlock sighed sleepily.

“No reason at all,” supplied john as he left the room, closing the door after him.

There a moment or two of silence.

Sherlock’s mind settled and his consciousness teasingly toed the line between being semi-awake and deeply asleep. Just as he almost gave in to the ocean of sweet nothing beyond the line, a sudden noise startled him alert.

A moan; a female moan, sounding a little grainy as if from an electronic device. Like a text alert sound.

A familiar voice.

Hearing the foreign sound he never expected to place in his bedroom, Sherlock sat up hastily, his swaying head turning around to look into the direction from which it had sounded. His unfocused eyes narrowed on his Belstaff coat that hung from the hook on his bedroom door. Something floated around his subconscious again.

"Hush now, it’s okay, I’m only returning -"

His Belstaff coat, he frowned, which he had given to The Woman, and which she had taken with her when she fell out of the window and disappeared-

Carefully, still swaying without an equilibrium, he wriggled out of his blanket to stand up and wobbled his way to the coat, almost falling backwards but catching himself in time. He reached out and grabbed the fabric of his familiar coat, its texture grounding him for a moment. He slipped his hand into one of the pockets and promptly pulled out his phone. Leaning back against the wall for support, he hazily eyed a text that he’d received from an unknown number.

[Till the next time, Mr Holmes]

Sherlock frowned as he considered the text, tracing the line of information this provided him, while pleasantly unaware of the faint imprint of red lipstick on his left cheek in the shape of puckered thin lips, suggestively placed just off the corner of his mouth and under the reddened bruise of John’s punch that sat high on his sore cheekbone.

~

“The photographs are perfectly safe,” Sherlock stated bluntly.

“In the hands of a fugitive sex worker??” his brother quipped.

Mycroft Holmes had promptly dropped by the next morning at Baker Street. Upon being told that Sherlock had neither the photographs nor Irene’s confidence, he was all displeased scowl and exasperated resignation, colouring a very sombre note to Sherlock and John’s morning. Mycroft's experienced eyes took in the reddened bruise on Sherlock’s cheek and the slightly healed one on John’s knuckles, and quietly sighed to himself; he was dealing with his equivalent of children.

Said children were ignoring him as if he were an untimely spectre haunting their living room as they had their breakfast; Sherlock surveyed the newspaper, John munched away in peace.

“She’s not interested in blackmail,” Sherlock snapped to reassure his point, eyeing Mycroft from above his paper, “She wants ‘protection’ for some reason.” He paused, gazing into the distance as more remnants of the previous day swam across his well-rested yet sore head. “I take it that you’ve stood down the police investigation into the shooting in her house?”

“How can we do anything while she has the photographs?! Our hands are tied!”

“She’d applaud your choice of words,” the younger Holmes jested before casting a glare at his brother, “You see how this works? That camera phone is her ‘get out of jail free’ card; you have to leave her alone. Treat her like royalty, Mycroft.”

“Though,” John added with a playful grin, “Not the way she treats Royalty.”

Mycroft returned the smile with a patronizing one of his own, but before he could say a word, a sudden female moan slipped through the air, rendering both John and Mycroft silent.

“What was that?” John inquired, blinking.

Sherlock paused from above his paper. “Text.”

“But what was that noise?”

Mycroft and John silently watched Sherlock as he folded his paper, put it aside, and briskly got up to step away; a whirlwind of mauve dressing gown and business casuals flying across the room to pick up his phone.

He pressed a few buttons into his phone and eyed the message he received.

[Good morning, Mr Holmes]

He decided not to grace it with a reply.

“Did you know there were other people after her too, Mycroft, before you sent John and me in there?” Sherlock supplied to distract everyone, “CIA trained killers, I think, are an excellent guess.”

“Yeah, thanks for that, Mycroft,” John added begrudgingly.

Mycroft pursed his lips haughtily as Sherlock returned to his seat at the table.

Leaning against his umbrella cane, the older man found the whole argument bothersome and pointless; Irene Adler was a dangerous woman who was wanted for many things, and his wild little brother loved to fly right into the very heart of a problem without preamble. Coming across the CIA agents was one of those things that could have been avoided, had his genius sibling consulted him for help, which he knew was a far cry of a thought.

Mrs Hudson huffed into the room to place a dish of food at the table, fussing like the mother she was. “It’s a disgrace; sending your little brother into danger like that!” she patted Sherlock and John softly on the shoulder before sending a disappointed glare at the standing man. “Family is all we have in the end, Mycroft Holmes!”

Mycroft had just about had it. “Oh shut up, Mrs Hudson.”

“Mycroft!!” came the unanimous shout, startling him; both Sherlock and John glared at him like he’d insulted their home, their profession and their very existence.

Composing himself, knowing that banal insults were supposed to be beneath him and were not in his usual repertoire of dealing with frustration, Mycroft pulled an uncomfortable smile that was meant to be polite but looked every bit inconvenienced as he was. “Apologies.”

“Thank you,” Mrs Hudson accepted, tipping up her chin and moving away to the kitchen.

“Though, do in fact, shut up,” Sherlock called after her in a sentiment of observation.

Another prerecorded moan fluttered into the air, startling everyone.

Mrs Hudson looked scandalized. “Oh, it’s a bit rude, that noise, isn’t it?”

Sherlock fiddled with his phone to open the text.

[Feeling better?]

Sherlock ignored it and returned to his newspaper while addressing Mycroft. “There’s nothing you can do, and there’s nothing she will do, as far as I can see.”

“I can put maximum surveillance on her.”

“Why bother? You can follow her on Twitter; I believe her username is ‘TheWhipHand’.”

“Yes, most amusing,” Mycroft droned, just as his phone rang from inside his pockets, cutting off any further remarks. “Excuse me.”

From the corner of his eye, Sherlock watched Mycroft step out of the room to take the call. Sherlock knew private calls as such came in rare times. A frown danced on his forehead.

John, however, had pressing matters to discuss.

“Why does your phone make that noise?”

“What noise?” Sherlock asked, face unyielding.

John stared at him, also unyielding.

“That noise,” John tipped his head to address Sherlock’s phone on the table, “The one it just made.”

“It’s a text alert; it means I’ve got a text.” Sherlock flipped a page of the paper in a show of nonchalance.

“Your texts don’t usually make that noise.”

“Well, somebody got hold of the phone and apparently, as a joke, personalized their text alert noise.”

John made a noise of wonder. “So, every time they text you -”

The sultry female moan sparkled aloud again, making Mrs Hudson straighten up from the kitchen.

“It would seem so,” Sherlock mused as he once again checked his phone.

[I’m fine since you didn’t ask.]

Mrs Hudson really took offence. “Could you turn that phone down a bit; at my time of life, its-” she complained before deciding to walk away than complain to the wall of bricks that was Sherlock Holmes.

John cleared his throat and focused on the book he was reading beside his breakfast. It took all of three seconds before he couldn’t help himself. “So, I’m wondering who could have got hold of your phone, because it would have been in your coat, wouldn’t it?”

Sherlock raised the paper splayed open in his hands to block any view John may have had of his face. “I’ll leave you to your deductions.”

John returned to his book, with a knowing smile on his face. “I’m not stupid you know.”

“Where do you get that idea?”

Before John could give another reply, Sherlock’s attention diverted to Mycroft who was at the threshold of the door completing his call, his voice carrying enough for Sherlock to eavesdrop.

“Bond Air is go, that’s decided; check with the Coventry lot. Talk later,” Mycroft finished, cutting the call and pocketing his phone. Sherlock studied him, filing away the little sliver of information as he always did with his well- connected brother.

“What else does she have?” Sherlock demanded.

Mycroft glanced at him, looking contemplative but not answering.

“Irene Adler,” Sherlock pressed loudly, “The Americans wouldn’t be interested in her for a couple of compromising photographs.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his brother. Newspaper discarded, he got up quickly to step into Mycroft’s personal space, levelling his gaze with his sibling who stared back at him with a sour expression of defiance.

“There’s more,” Sherlock’s voice mumbled low, “Much more. Something big’s coming, isn’t it?”

“Irene Adler is no longer any concern of yours. From now on, you will stay out of this.”

“Oh, will I?” Sherlock challenged.

“Yes, Sherlock; you will.”

John watched the two brothers held in a heated lock of the eyes, the threat hanging in the air and permeating around them like heat waves.

Sherlock was the first one to break away with a shrug and a roll of the eyes before he walked to the windowsill and pick up his Stradivarius, the end of the conversation a finality.

Mycroft cleared his throat, clicking his umbrella cane to the floor out of habit as he addressed the room even though only John was looking back at him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a long and arduous apology to make to a very old friend.”

“Do give her my love.” Sherlock hoisted the violin to his chin and promptly worked the bow, the smooth notes of God Save the Queen filling the room instantly.

John snickered. Mycroft rolled his eyes insufferably at the joke and walked promptly out of the room with his head held high, while Sherlock traipsed around at his leisure, playing the tune of mockery.

~

Six months passed with a handful of cases and a good amount of work until Christmas came around; the one time of the year when the festivities could not elude Sherlock and he was forced to succumb to the ‘merry’ of it, albeit begrudgingly.

That was how he found himself, dressed immaculately in his black Spencer Hart suit, his loving Stradivarius under his chin, right arm flouncing as he ran his bow across the strings to wash the room with the joyous notes of We Wish You a Merry Christmas while the guests of the little Christmas Dinner party listened enraptured at his panache.

Flat 221B was decorated to full Christmas garb with colourful tinsels, fairy lights, stockings and holly; a bloom of red-and-green everything’s scattered about. The fireplace was alight with a warm fire to keep everyone toasty from the chill of the snow that carpeted the streets outside.

The handful of friends and acquaintances lounging across the room erupted into applause and wolf whistles when Sherlock’s performance came to an end.

“Lovely, Sherlock, that was lovely!” laughed Mrs Hudson, as Sherlock bowed theatrically.

“Marvelous!” commented John as he came in from the kitchen, one hand holding a teacup with its saucer and the other a cold beer.

Mrs Hudson gestured as she giggled from above her champagne glass, “I wish you could have worn the antlers!”

“Some things are best left to the imagination, Mrs Hudson.”

John and Sherlock then shared a knowing look.

A tall woman, one of the guests, came up to Sherlock to offer him a tray of assorted confectionary fresh out of the oven. Sherlock looked at her with unfamiliarity, noting her long black hair spooled into a sizeable bun atop her head, pulling the high points of her face taut and refined. With a soft, warm complexion, minimal jewellery and dressed in dark blues, Sherlock mused that he could chalk her up as ‘beautiful’ to the Commoner’s eye.

“Oh, no thank you, Sarah,” Sherlock declined her tray politely with a smile.

The woman gave him a tight lip just as John, a short blond blur dressed in his ridiculously cheery, red-and-black knitted sweater, jumped in to save her the embarrassment.

“No, he’s not good with names-” John waved explanatorily as the woman set the tray aside on the table, an unimpressed shade colouring her face.

“No, I can get this,” Sherlock interjected, deciding he was in a more amicable mood to entertain the guests than usual.

John braced himself for disaster.

Sherlock speculated into the air, waving the tip of the Stradivarius bow for emphasis, “Sarah was the doctor, then there was the one with the spots, and then the one with the nose, and then,…” he paused a moment, “Who was the one after the boring teacher?”

“Nobody,” the woman added, hands folded defensively while John counted seconds to push back down the secondhand embarrassment bubbling furiously in his stomach.

“Ah, Jeanette!” Sherlock announced with a faux perky smile. “The process of elimination!” he explained.

John sent her an apologetic glance, whisking her away from his roommate with a gentle hand to her lower back.

Sherlock was rather pleased with himself for scoring a little bit of social frivolity; it was only fair that he eased in to do his part every now and then in return for the many things John did for him.

It was that very moment he set his eyes on the open door of the living room and saw a glittering figure stepping in.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he groaned to himself.

“Hello, everyone!” came the voice of Molly Hooper, “Sorry, hello, uh, it said on the door to just come in??”

Molly was beaming, decked in her new plaid blue coat and a bright yellow scarf, with large rhinestone- studded hoops dangling at her ears; a very unconventional exhibitionist decoration on her usual economical self. Occupying both her arms were a plethora of gifts in Christmas-themed paper bags. She came in like a bedazzled, female Santa Claus with bright, red lips.

John had come up to Molly at the door, helping her put her gift bags on the table. Everyone greeted her cheerily, calling out her name and making noises of welcome.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Everybody saying hello to each other, how wonderful,” he mumbled to himself sarcastically.

Molly eyed Sherlock shyly, before making to take off her coat peppered with snow at the shoulders. John reached out, ever the gentleman.

“Let me-” He started and at the sight of what was under her coat, his statement punctuated with a whispery “Holy Mary-”

The guests eyed her, curiously bewildered; she was dressed in a figure-hugging black dress, accentuating every curve she owned in her otherwise quite slim and compact frame that usually hid under her sweaters and lab coat. Thin straps to her shoulders were holding the up dress, the hem at her bosoms glittering in shiny sequins and stones. With her auburn hair coiffed at the crown pinned with a decorative barrette and the brown locks curled at the ends, she looked rather ready to confidently traipse to a bar and entertain a crowd of excited patrons with a challenging song. Her red lips smiled widely at the attention she was receiving, although oblivious to the stunned Greg Lestrade who stood with mouth agape over his can of beer like he’d seen a fairy come to life.

“So, we’re having Christmas drinkies, then?” Molly spoke shyly, rubbing at her wrists for the want to dispel a small bout of coy. She looked at Sherlock, nervously gauging his reaction to her reveal.

“No stopping them, apparently,” was all the detective answered dismissively, as he planted himself at the table in front of John’s laptop.

Mrs Hudson joined in warmly as she smiled at Molly, “It’s the one day of the year where the boys have to be nice to me, so it’s almost worth it.”

The party tittered at that. Molly nodded with a giggle, but her eyes kept shifting in bursts to Sherlock as she adjusted the very tight dress around her shoulders and waist awkwardly, only distracted when Lestrade asked her if she wanted a drink which she agreed to gratefully.

Sherlock was engrossed at the screen of the laptop, instead. “John?” he called out, face glowing in the pale light of the screen.

“Yes?” The Good Doctor was at his side, peering in as well.

“The counter on your blog; it still says ‘1,895’!”

“Oh no, Christmas is cancelled,” John quipped in good nature.

Sherlock didn’t grace the sarcasm with a reply. But instead, he spotted something in the blog gallery and promptly huffed in displeasure. “You’ve got a photograph of me wearing that hat?!” he gestured to his infamous 'furious blue eye glaring from under the Hunting Hat with the coat collar turned up’ image.

“People like the hat.”

“No, they don’t! What people??” Sherlock snapped as a nonchalant John walked away back to the guests. He was left alone to listen to Molly Hooper attempt to make social interactions within his earshot.

“How’s the hip?” she asked conversationally of Mrs Hudson.

“Oh, it's atrocious, but thanks for asking,” the woman laughed in good nature.

“I’ve seen much worse, but then I do postmortems,” Molly sympathized and then suddenly seemed to have realized what she said. “Oh God, sorry-”

“Don’t make jokes, Molly,” Sherlock advised bluntly.

“No, sorry,” Molly flushed apologetically at Mrs Hudson, who waved it away with a smile.

Lestrade swooped in just on time, holding out the wine he’d promised Molly. She accepted the wine glass from him cordially. “I wasn’t expecting to see you; I thought you were going to be in Dorset for Christmas?”

“That’s first thing in the morning, me and the wife,” Lestrade flashed a handsome grin, “We’re back together; it’s all sorted.”

“No; she’s sleeping with a PE teacher,” Sherlock supplied casually, eyes still on the screen as if he couldn’t be bothered to be in the conversation but had to grace the people with his insight either way.

The grin on Lestrade’s face froze like a plastic smile even as he looked murderous behind the eyes.

A beat of awkward silence followed, which Molly broke by addressing the other host of the party. “And John, I hear you’re off to your sister’s, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“Sherlock was complaining-,” Molly started and when she felt the burn of Sherlock’s indignant warning glare on her face, she stumbled to correct herself, “Saying.”

“First time ever, she’s cleaned up her act,” John spoke of his sister and raised his beer triumphantly, “She’s off the booze!”

“No, she’s not,” stated Sherlock.

“Shut up, Sherlock!”

Sherlock Holmes was done with the blog, the ‘people’ who were interested in his hat and the people in the flat who were scuttling around, and his brain itched for a friendly game of Deductions; it was the only way he knew to make conversation.

“So,” he announced into the room, catching everyone’s attention with his rumbling baritone, which he was unaware John had christened the Drone of Doom, “I see you’ve got a new boyfriend, Molly, and you’re serious about him.”

His unfortunate target for the evening, Molly Hooper, turned around in surprise at the observation, gaping from above her wine glass.

“What?” the forensics pathologist laughed nervously, “Sorry, what?”

“In fact, you’re seeing him this very night and giving him a gift.”

John groaned to himself. “Take a day off,” he hissed at the detective, who promptly ignored him.

Lestrade, unwilling to see more embarrassment for the festive night having been dealt his share already, set a glass of wine Infront of Sherlock. “Shut up and have a drink,” he warned.

Sherlock, ever the oblivious genius, did not see the point of shutting up at all.

“Oh, come on,” Sherlock scoffed from the table, “Surely you’ve all seen the present at the top of the bag; perfectly wrapped with a bow. All the others are slapdash at best. It’s for someone special, then?”

Molly glanced morbidly at her collection of gifts as Sherlock smoothly got up and walked to it, plucking out the ‘Special Gift’ from the top of the bag as if it were a clue at a crime scene, once again completely unaware that the air in the room had risen to an alarming ring of ‘uh oh’.

“The shade of red echoes her lipstick, either an unconscious association or one that she’s deliberately trying to encourage.” Sherlock turned the red box around in his hand, its carefully wrapped bow golden and gleaming under the lights. He smirked at the unsettled woman as he sang, “Either way Miss Hooper has love on her mind!”

John watched the fidgeting Molly with a careful eye; waiting for an opportune moment in case he’d have to break apart the theatrics before things got quite irreparably ugly.

Like a magician doing a card trick, Sherlock flourished, “The fact that she’s serious about him is clear from the fact that she’s giving him a gift at all; that always suggests long-term hopes, however forlorn. And that she’s seeing him tonight is evident from her makeup and what she’s wearing, obviously trying to compensate for the size of her mouth and breasts-” the remainder of his sentence hissed to a stop when he had turned over the small tag tied to the gift and read the careful cursive in red.

Dearest Sherlock,

Love Molly xxx

Sherlock stared at the writing, swallowing as the realization hit him like a brick to the head. A faint wave of uneasiness coloured the highest points of his cheeks.

The room fell into a hush.

John glared at his colossal idiot of a roommate.

Molly, once again, decided to break the looming silence in a calm and resigned tone. “You always say such horrible things; every time, always, always...,” she trailed, shaking her head dejectedly.

The occupants of the room threw Sherlock patronizing looks.

Sherlock stepped away, with some hidden part of him that he’d tucked deep into his mind glowing with shame as he backtracked his entire relationship with the forensics pathologist for a moment. Molly Hooper; nervous, innocent, ‘n’er do wrong’ Molly, who had always helped him at the ‘mortuary’ end of the cases, no questions asked. Molly, whom he’d very well taken for granted, a little too much, in fact.

Molly Hooper sighed, a bit defeated.

Sherlock paused. Whatever Christmas spirit it was whose fable was sung about across the world, it had come from over yonder to puppeteer him; he turned back around to face the small, embarrassed woman who stared sadly into her wine glass.

“I am sorry,” Sherlock apologized softly, “Forgive me.”

Everyone in the room turned their eyes on the detective. John’s eyebrows drew together in bafflement; Sherlock Holmes was apologizing to Molly Hooper.

Molly’s confused eyes grew wide and wider still as Sherlock stepped up to her, his tall form shadowing her. She held her breath when Sherlock bent and whispered into her ear, “Merry Christmas, Molly Hooper,” before pressing his lips to her cheek in an uncharacteristically gentle fashion. He then drew away and stepped back from her personal space.

Her mouth dropped open in a gape, just as a sudden sultry female moan announced itself, startling everyone who were all already stunned.

“No!” Molly stuttered, horrified, gesturing wildly at her throat, “No - that’s wasn’t- I didn’t-”

“No, it was me,” Sherlock sighed guiltily.

“What??”

Lestrade looked scandalized. “My God, really?!”

“My phone,” Sherlock hissed, as he threw the DI a look of incredulous disappointment; it was truly a wonder to Sherlock how the man came upon his designation coming up with conclusions so lurid.

“Fifty-seven?” John mused out loud.

“Sorry what?” Sherlock pulled out his phone from his jacket to view the text he had just received.

[Mantelpiece]

“Fifty-seven of those texts, the ones I’ve heard,” John stated, voice laced with a tad bit of curiosity mixed with a bit of an accusation.

Sherlock walked to the fireplace while shooting a challenging look at John. “Thrilling that you’ve been counting.”

The detective turned to the mantel above the fireplace, surveying the volley of things across it and his eyes promptly landed on a small box gift-wrapped in an unforgettable blood-tinted shade imprinted to the back of his mind. The box was tied together with a bold, black, braided rope, a deliberately suggestive choice mocking him.

Sherlock held up the gift silently, a small inhale straining at his purple Dolce Gabbana shirt.

“Excuse me,” he mumbled to the room as he stepped away mechanically.

“What’s up, Sherlock??” John got up, beyond interested as he too eyed the unconventional little gift.

“I said excuse me,” Sherlock pressed, shouldering past a dubious Lestrade. Molly eyed the detective in his wake while taking a herculean sip of her wine; she’d seen the little gift too.

“Do you ever reply??” John called out as the detective’s form disappeared into his bedroom.

Sherlock closed his door behind him and quickly sat down at the foot of his bed. Putting his phone aside, brain whirring with excitement on edge, he pulled at the black rope impatiently and popped open the lidded box, only to freeze. The object nestled inside it gleamed at him in a small bed of tissues, as the breath he had been holding rushed out softly in a warm exhale.

It was Irene Adler’s Vertu camera phone.

He pulled it out slowly, staring at it long and hard, crosschecking it from memory when he’d held it a while back. He turned it around, inspected its build, and checked its charger port.

It was definitely her camera phone; Irene had sent him her most important asset.

Sherlock silently grabbed his own phone and dialled Mycroft. His brother picked up almost immediately after the first ring, as always.

“Oh, dear lord”, Mycroft’s voice came across, “We’re not going to have Christmas phone calls now, are we? Have they passed a new law?”

John appeared at the bedroom door just then, softly easing the door open and peeking through the gap, as Sherlock answered his brother.

“I think you’re going to find Irene Adler tonight.”

“We already know where she is. As you were kind enough to point out, it hardly matters.”

“No,” Sherlock countered, his deep voice tuned low, “I mean, you’re going to find her dead.”

John blinked in surprise as Sherlock cut the call briskly.

“You okay?” John asked at the door.

“Yes,” Sherlock answered curtly, before getting up and closing the door in John’s face with a crisp click.

~

Sherlock and Mycroft walked across the corridors of St Bart’s Hospital, marching their way to the Mortuary. Sherlock led the way, his steps brisk and purposeful, with Mycroft a step behind watching him out of the corner of his eye.

Inside the cold chilly room, on one of the examination tables was laid a corpse shrouded in white with the pale greyish feet visible at one end. Molly Hooper was already at the foot of the table, waiting for them. Sherlock made a beeline for the table.

“The only one who fitted the description.” Mycroft gestured to the corpse, “Had her brought here, your home from home.”

Sherlock looked at the forensics pathologist instead. “You didn’t need to come in, Molly.” His eyes were unreadable and neon in the over lights, and his voice quiet as he spoke.

“It’s okay,” she nodded between the two brothers, “Everyone else was busy with Christmas.”

Being the professional that she was, she quickly got to the matter at hand as she reached out for the end of the cloth at the corpse’s head. “The face is a bit, sort of, bashed up, so it might be a bit difficult,” she warned.

Molly eased back the cloth down to the waist of the corpse. Mycroft raised his eyebrows with mild disgust at the mutilated face and the vast expanse of greyish-white skin; the dead certainly had a sickly plastic pallor to them, only emphasized by the choice of harsh white lights.

Above the dead woman, Sherlock looked like gaunt porcelain. 

"That's her, isn't it?" Mycroft asked.

The detective merely glanced at the face once. “Show me the rest of her.” 

Molly looked a bit taken aback, hesitating just a moment before tugging the cloth to the foot of the table.

Sherlock raked his scrutinizing blue eyes over the bare female body only twice, before looking at Molly and mumbling, “That’s her.” The detective turned around and left the room the way he came, leaving Mycroft at the table with a confused Molly.

“Thank you, Miss Hooper,” Mycroft tipped his head politely, before making to leave as well.

“Who is she?” she asked after him, unable to help herself of her awkward curiosity, “How did Sherlock recognize her from… not her face?”

Mycroft had no answer; who was Irene Adler to Sherlock Holmes, indeed?

All Mycroft could give her was a tight-lipped smile of apology, before turning away to leave. Molly watched the elder Holmes exit the Mortuary as she pulled the cloth back up over the corpse.

Mycroft stepped outside of the cold room, to find his brother standing in the corridor with his back to him, looking out a window where the blue-tinted world was fast covering itself in steadily falling snow of December, its chill radiating through the glass. The detective’s figure cut a forlorn silhouette in black.

Mycroft suppressed a sigh; he knew this would happen sooner or later. Resorting to a protocol he never believed he would actually have to conduct given his brother’s fixations and fascinations with objects rather than people, he slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out a lone cigarette.

Sherlock turned around when Mycroft came up behind him holding out the cigarette near his face with his gloved hand, like one held a lolly as a peace offering to a sulking child.

“Just the one.”

“Why?” Sherlock asked suspiciously.

“Merry Christmas.”

Eyebrows twitching at half discarded sentiments he didn’t bother voicing, Sherlock plucked the cigarette from Mycroft’s fingers into his own gloved ones, watching silently as his brother produced a fancy, engraved lighter from his pockets.

“Smoking indoors,” Sherlock scrunched his nose, “Isn’t there one of those Law Things?”

Clicking the lighter on, Mycroft held out the flame over which Sherlock lit one end of the cigarette, pulling in a deep breath.

“We’re in a morgue; there’s only so much damage you can do.”

Sherlock held the smoke to himself before exhaling a steady stream of it, a soft groan escaping him meanwhile.

Mycroft pursed his lips; tact was unnecessary when it came to talks with his little brother.

“How did you know she was dead?”

“She had an item in her possession; one she said her life depended on,” the smoke rippled around him as Sherlock spoke huskily, “She chose to give it up.” He pulled another comforting drag from the cigarette propped between his fingers, its end lighting up at his inhale.

“Where is this item now?” Mycroft asked.

There was a muffled noise coming from the far end of the corridor, distracting Sherlock. Both men turned to see that at the far end of the corridor a small family wept as a doctor in scrubs looked over them empathetically; someone dear had passed.

“Look at them,” Sherlock remarked quietly, “They all care so much.”

A comfortable pause extended between the brothers as they continued to watch the family wrapped in an embrace held together by the adhesive of their grief and pain, their tears washing in between.

“Do you ever wonder if there’s something wrong with us?” Sherlock mused quietly.

“All lives end. All hearts are broken.” Mycroft turned to his brother, hoping the wild-haired younger one was privy to reading between the lines. “Caring is not an advantage, Sherlock.”

Sherlock Holmes exhaled a plume of smoke and pulled the stick away from his lips sourly. He frowned down at it, displeased.

“This is low tar,” Sherlock observed.

“Well,” Mycroft stated, “You barely knew her.”

Realizing there wasn’t much to say without saying too much, Sherlock let out a noise of wonder. He turned around and walked away, advancing casually down the corridor to the exit. Mycroft watched him go; his dramatic, enigmatic and emotional sibling with intellect of dizzying heights, tapping the ash off his cigarette as he sauntered away in his dark, expensive coat.

“Merry Christmas, Mycroft,” the sibling called out into the corridor.

“And a Happy New Year,” Mycroft replied.

As soon as the detective had walked out the exit and out of sight, Mycroft pulled out his phone, quickly dialling John. The call was answered after a ring, and he reported, “He’s on his way. Have you found anything?”

“No,” John answered from his end, “Did he take the cigarette?”

“Yes.”

“Shit,” John exhaled defeatedly. There was a muffled noise as the doctor seemed to ask Mrs Hudson for any finds in the bedroom and she drew a negative as well. John’s voice came back into the phone again, “Well, it looks like he’s clean. We’ve tried all the usual places. Are you sure tonight’s a Danger Night?”

“No, but then, I never am,” Mycroft admitted, as he walked to the exit, “You have to stay with him, John.”

“I’ve got plans.”

“No.”

“Mycroft-”

At Baker Street, John groaned to himself as the dial tone beeped to signal the end of his conversation with Mycroft; he never could catch a break, shuttled from brother to brother, like a little handyman in the affairs of the Holmes kin.

John was thankful that all the guests had departed by then. Bracing himself for the disappointment to come, he carefully approached Jeanette who sat on the sofa with her lips drawn together. He speculated she had heard his end of the conversation.

John sat down next to her, giving her his best apologetic face. “I am really sorry.”

Jeanette smiled at him instead.

“You know, my friends are so wrong about you; you’re a great boyfriend.”

Having expected an outburst, John looked taken aback. He sank into his seat, looking at ease as he added, “Okay, that’s good, I mean, I always thought I was great-”

“And Sherlock Holmes is a very lucky man.”

There it was; the outburst he was expecting. Jeanette glanced at her watch and hurriedly pulled on her shoes.

John sighed.

“Jeanette, please-”

“No, I mean it. It’s heartwarming; you’ll do anything for him,” She sent him a scathing glare as she got up, grabbing her coat, “And he can’t even tell your girlfriends apart!”

“I’ll do anything for you,” John stepped up after her as she pulled on her dark blue coat, “Just tell me what it is I’m not doing, tell me!”

“Don’t make me compete with Sherlock Holmes!” she argued, looking down at the shorter man who looked owlishly back at her.

“I’ll walk your dog for you,” John bargained desperately, “There, I’ve said it now; I’ll even walk your dog -”

“I don’t have a dog!!”

John wanted to shoot himself between the eyes.

“No, because that was the last one,” John mumbled as he hung his head, chastising himself as Jeanette looked at him like he was the gum under her shoes.

“Jesus,” she muttered incredulously, picking up her bag and making her way to the stairs. John watched her tall form retreat angrily down the steps.

“I’ll call you,” John tried.

“NO!”

“Okay.”

Taking a deep breath and letting it out in farewell at the lost cause, he turned back around to the room, only to find a rather unimpressed Mrs Hudson observing him with her hands folded judgmentally. Her face, however, was sympathetic.

“That wasn’t very good, was it?” she asked.

John had half a mind to shoot Sherlock between the eyes.

~

It was much later into the night, when John was preoccupied with a book while seated in his designated armchair by the warm fireplace crackling pleasantly at his side, that a click and shove later, a few lightly measured footsteps sounded from downstairs, announcing the arrival of one resident detective.

John looked up from his book to see Sherlock materialize at the door. He closed his book to greet Sherlock as casually as he could muster.

“Hi.”

The man did not reply, looking oddly into the living room as if he were surveying a crime scene. Like a mechanical scanner, Sherlock’s eyes blazed across the room, John included, irises moving in quick analytical sweeps with his eyelids twitching every few times.

“You okay?” John asked softly.

Sherlock pursed his lips and turned away to his bedroom. “I hope you didn’t mess up my sock index this time.”

John blinked as Sherlock’s bedroom door closed itself shut with a click.

So much for the secrecy, John pondered to himself. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes, wondering about the state of his sanity for the coming few months, harbouring a volatile detective who’d discovered the new hobby of 'Pining in Denial' in his own Sherlockian way.

Chapter Text

Peals of beautiful, sad music rang from 221B in the crisp, cold morning of New Year’s Eve.

Sherlock Holmes stood at the window. His sheet music was open in front of him and his Stradivarius equipped at his chin, his body swaying slightly as his bow-wielding arm drew long, mournful notes out of the instrument; the sounds a combination of quick, seductive skips, some sad, elongated dips and long stretches of high-pitched sighs, melding together to form a sort of shimmering eulogy made of gossamer wings and silk feathers.

It was absolutely dreadful.

John walked into the living room stiffly and it took everything in him to not say anything. He tried to ignore the blatant Serenade of Sadness as he pulled on his brown waxed jacket.

Mrs Hudson had been clearing out the table after their breakfast when she cast John a knowing look as she held up Sherlock’s untouched plate of food. John returned the look, warning her not to comment, but darn if the woman ever listened to anyone at all.

“Lovely tune, Sherlock,” she tried chirpily. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

Sherlock had paused to jot down notes into his sheets but said nothing to reply. Counting on the window of opportunity the elderly woman provided him, John cleared his throat and hazarded an enquiry.

“You composing?”

“Helps me to think.”

John patted down his jacket and stood there awkwardly as Sherlock resumed filling the room with the sound of his composition.

“What are you thinking about?”

Sherlock froze mid-note as if the winding had run out of his music box. He suddenly burst into movement, spinning around and dropping both Stradivarius and bow on his armchair, to point wildly at the open screen of John’s laptop at the table. “The counter on your blog is still stuck at 1,895!”

“Yes,” John agreed, peering into the screen, “Faulty. Can’t seem to fix it.”

“Faulty?” Sherlock breathed, pulling out Irene’s Vertu camera phone, “Or you’ve been hacked, and it’s a message.”

John wondered if that phone was on the detective as much as the man’s own phone was; Sherlock carried it on his person like a loyal trustee. He watched the excited detective fiddle with the phone.

Quick presses of his thumbs drew up the password-encrypted log-in page.

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

John frowned at him, confusedly. “What??” he glanced at the counter on the blog, and suddenly put two and two together.

Sherlock fervently typed in the numbers, holding his breath, as stilted beeps announced every number he pushed in.

I AM

[1] [8] [9] [5]

LOCKED

He smirked as he hit the enter button.

WRONG PASSCODE

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

3 ATTEMPTS REMAINING

Sherlock’s smirk fell clean off his face as if wiped away by a cloth.

He clicked the phone off and slipped it back into his pocket. “Just faulty,” he announced with a bite, before mechanically picking up his violin, and much to John’s chagrin, resumed playing his Serenade of Sadness.

“Right,” John sighed, “Well, I’m going out for a bit.”

John pulled his lips taut, waiting for an acknowledgement which he didn’t get; Sherlock remained lost to the world, wrapped in the spell of his own making. Nodding to himself, John headed for the kitchen with purpose, where he crowded a surprised Mrs Hudson. The two of them watched Sherlock swaying in his formals and blue dressing gown, a sad silhouette against the sunlight streaming in through the window.

“Listen,” John whispered to the landlady, “Has he ever had any kind of girlfriend? Boyfriend? A relationship, ever??”

“I don’t know,” the woman admitted softly.

“How can we not know?” he sighed frustratedly.

“He’s Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson stated as a matter of fact, “How will we ever know what goes on in that funny old head??”

That was a very valid point, one which had John holding his tongue. He and Mrs Hudson shared a warm smile, casting a final look at their violin virtuoso.

“Right,” John gestured realizing he had better leave for his errand, “See you.”

Mrs Hudson waved him away.

A quick trip down the staircase sent John Watson stepping out into the street, closing the main door after him. The air was still a bit nippy, so he zipped up his jacket as he stepped in the direction of Speedy’s.

“John?” a woman’s voice called out from behind.

John turned around, surprised to see a woman lounging against the metal fencing near their front door. It was Mycroft’s PA, Anthea, as she had called herself. And she wasn’t, for once, typing away on her BlackBerry.

Anthea sent him a knowing smile as she stood there; a beautiful woman in a black dress and a black shawl, her greenish-blue eyes inviting.

“H-hello,” John greeted all perked up as he stepped towards her.

“So, any plans for New Year tonight?”

“Uh, nothing fixed,” John chuckled lightly, not believing his luck, mentally deciding to drop his errand for another freer time, “Nothing I couldn’t heartlessly abandon.” He looked her up and down, steeling himself. “You have any ideas?”

“One,” she smiled, looking over her shoulder as a sleek non-descript black car rolled up the street to pause right next to her.

One look at the car and John rolled his head on his neck tiredly.

“You know, Mycroft could just phone me,” John huffed as he pulled open the car door with spite and shuffled himself into the back seat, “If he didn’t have his bloody, stupid, power complex!”

Anthea said nothing as she stepped into the passenger seat.

The car ride was mostly silent, John caught somewhere between feeling humiliated for flirting and fuming that he’d been played. He wondered what had been next on his agenda for ‘Mission: Babysit Sad Sherlock’ for him to be whisked away to a remote location for a briefing. He decided that this was basically a kidnapping; Mycroft kidnapped him every other week.

The car carried them to the abandoned Battersea Power Station and parked itself in one of the emptied garages.

John silently followed Anthea as she left the car and walked briskly up the staircase, way deep into the belly of the dead beast.

“Couldn’t we just go to a café?” John asked exasperated, following her down a walkway at the upper levels of the structure, “Sherlock doesn’t follow me everywhere.”

Even as he said it, he knew that was untrue.

Anthea ignored him in favour of pulling out her BlackBerry and thumbing a few buttons on it. A few paces later, she drew up short to a stop. “Through there,” she announced, gesturing with her phone arm at a doorway that was barely holding itself up.

John looked at her dubiously, before walking off into the direction he was pointed to, unaware that when he was sufficiently out of earshot, Anthea completed dialling a number and waited for the ring.

“He’s on his way”, Anthea spoke, retracing her steps back to the car, “You were right; he thinks its Mycroft.”

John Watson found himself at another empty section of the station; the tall structures rising up all around him covered in dust and debris, the floors waterlogged in the rains and snows like a battlefield of a war long lost. He looked around at the dead power units as he decided to get right to the point, guessing the host of his ‘kidnapping’ was lurking dramatically in the shadows for him, balanced against a black, umbrella cane.

“He’s writing sad music!” John called out into the air, “Doesn’t eat, barely talks and only to correct the television. I’d say he was heart-broken, but well, he’s Sherlock; he does all that anyway -”

His stream of Roommate Updates came to stop when a figure appeared from the other end of the space; small, petite, dressed in a short, full-sleeved black dress with a high neck, a pair of thick black gloves, styled black hair and the ever-reminiscent shade of blood-red upon thin lips.

Irene Adler stood across from him several yards away, very much alive, glowing like a siren of the night in her dark attire.

“Hello, Doctor Watson,” she greeted calmly, her voice easily carrying through the great distance between in them in the comfort of the hollowed-out space.

John gaped at her. They shared a sliver of silence, charged and electric.

“Tell him you’re alive,” John demanded.

“He’d come after me.”

“I’ll come after you if you don’t,” he warned darkly.

“Oh, I believe you,” she smiled appreciatively while eyeing the small angry blond man with tight fists of fury clenched at his sides.

“You were dead on a slab!” John pressed, loudly, “It was definitely you.”

“DNA tests are only as good as the records you keep,” she informed.

John scoffed. “Oh and I bet you know the record keeper.”

“I know what he likes,” Irene commented airily. “And I needed to disappear.”

“Then how come I can see you and I don’t even want to?”

Irene smiled at him; John Watson, the ever-loyal and trusting man, fearless and mouthy in the face of danger.

“Look, I made a mistake,” the woman admitted with a modest shrug, “I sent something to Sherlock for safekeeping, and now I need it back, so I need your help.”

“No.”

“It’s for his own safety,” she offered.

“So is this,” John replied firmly. “Tell him you’re alive.”

“I can’t.”

“Fine,” John snapped, rage starting to seep through his calm façade, “I’ll tell him, and I still won’t help you.” He turned away to leave.

Irene watched him a little helplessly, as she called out, “What do I say??”

"What do you normally say?!” he yelled loudly, turning back to fix a glare at her, “You’ve texted him a LOT!” His voice reverberated in the empty space.

“Just the usual stuff,” Irene added with a petulant pout, pulling up her phone to scroll through it casually.

“There’s no usual in this case.”

Irene sighed as she started to read her attempts of communication out loud for the defiant doctor.

“'Good morning, I like your funny hat’,” she smiled to herself, “’I’m sad tonight. lets have dinner.’ ‘You look sexy on Crimewatch, lets have dinner’.” She then paused to stare emphatically at John as she read out Sherlock’s curt reply, “’I’m not hungry’.”

John gaped at her once more in disbelief. “You flirted with Sherlock Holmes??”

“At him,” she corrected, still scrolling through her phone, “He never replies.”

“No, Sherlock always replies to everything. He’s Mr Punchline; he will outlive God trying to have the Last Word.”

Irene smirked at John playfully, red lips curling at the ends, “Does that make me special?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“Are you jealous?”

John frowned at her, dubiously offended. “We’re not a couple.”

“Yes, you are,” she stated, as a matter of fact, silencing him. The woman thumbed a few more buttons on her phone, and announced, “There, ‘I’m not dead. Let’s have dinner’.” She held up the phone with screen displaying her new sent message.

John huffed, shaking his head, still offended. “Who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes, but for the record, if anyone out there still cares,” he stated loud and clear, “I’m not actually gay.”

“Well, I am,” she supplied calmly. John stared back at her owlishly, once again, silenced. She had a knowing glint in her pale blue eyes as she observed him. “Look at us both.”

John let out an exhale of more disbelief.

A sudden muffled yet familiar female moan punctured the air, making both John and Irene freeze at their spots as they recognized the text alert noise. It came from inside the structure recesses. The implication of Sherlock’s presence made John start and he jumped into action immediately, heading for the direction of the sound but Irene held up a steady gloved hand to stop him.

“I don’t think so,” she looked at him nervously, “Do you?”

John could only blink in reply.

~

To the outside eye, Sherlock Holmes was simply walking up Baker Street in his usual familiarity with his hands deep in his coat pockets, but a closer look would deem him, in fact, dazed and winded, his usually sharp eyes unable to look at any one thing at a time.

Sherlock tried to still his mind that had gone off into a frenzied spin ever since he’d left the power station where he’d followed John.

Irene Adler was alive; she had been hiding.

Why had she been hiding?

He closed his eyes as he skimmed through everything he knew and deduced about the slippery woman, even as his own musical composition weaved in and out and in between the information like a mockery of his own folly; he’d composed it about her. She’d died, traipsing about his head like a wanton wraith and he had to rid himself of her through his violin.

And she’d been alive the entire time.

The Woman who beat him; alive and seeking John’s help to retrieve the camera phone.

She wanted the camera phone.

Well, blast if he was going to give it to her.

Sherlock walked past Speedy’s and made his way up to the door of 221B, just as he noticed something very odd; a marring scratch sat on the black door, right next to the lock. The wood was splintered, and the paint chipped. The door itself was slightly ajar.

All thoughts evaporated to a secluded corner of his mind as gears clicked into place, lending him fierce clarity and focus.

Signs of forced entry.

Blue eyes narrowing as alarms rang in his head, Sherlock cautiously pushed against the door to step noiselessly into the hallway. Across the space, he noticed Mrs Hudson’s cleaning buckets with her cleaning tools and aerosol spray cans, all lying uncharacteristically abandoned on the floor. He also noticed the door of her flat left ajar.

Lips pursed tightly, answers dawning in lightspeed, he saw black scuff marks on the wall at the foot of the staircase; marks that would be made from shoes brushing against the wall roughly while dragging something, or someone, up the steps. Signs of a struggle simulated in his mind’s eye even as he pressed his fingers softly to the wallpaper where parts of it were torn as if clawed at for purchase by short nails.

He gazed up the staircase with blazing eyes, his breath falling in controlled measures; he could almost hear Mrs Hudson’s yell while she would have been dragged away by two or three figures. His blood simmered under his skin.

Sherlock quietly walked up the stairs to the door of his shared flat where he anticipated activity. The door left ajar confirmed his theory. He nudged it open with his foot and stepped in casually, hands clasped behind himself like he did while surveying a mildly interesting crime scene. His entry caught the attention of the occupants in the room.

A terrified Mrs Hudson sat shuddering on The Chair, and behind her, pressing a gun to her head stood the CIA agent who’d attacked Sherlock at Irene Adler’s home. Sherlock had learnt his name was Neilson.

Neilson’s free hand was placed threateningly on the landlady’s shoulder, pressing her into place from slumping or moving. She remained obediently in her seat with small, trembling fists pressed up against her chest protectively. Two more agents were in the flat; one spying out through the window, the other near the kitchen.

At the sight of her tenant walking in, Mrs Hudson sputtered in a mix of relief and fear, sobbing his name softly as if anything she said could set off the dreadful man behind her.

“Don’t snivel, Mrs Hudson; it’ll do nothing to impede the flight of a bullet,” Sherlock stated, his cold statement laced with a tinge of warm concern traceable only to those who knew him well enough. “What a tender world that would be.”

Neilson and Sherlock shared a long look of cautious challenge as the detective planted himself confidently in the room.

Mrs Hudson’s hands trembled fearfully while she sobbed. “I’m sorry, Sherlock-”

“I believe you have something that we want, Mr Holmes,” Neilson cut her off, before turning the gun at waist-height to aim for Sherlock warningly.

“Then why don’t you ask for it?” 

“I’ve been asking this one, but she doesn’t seem to know anything,” Neilson quipped, gesturing his poised gun at the landlady.

Sherlock ignored the gun, as he surveyed Mrs hudson. In a show of silent reassurance, he casually stepped to her, reaching out to hold gently one of her trembling, aged hands in his steady one.

Bending slightly over the woman, Sherlock’s finger discreetly pushed away a smidge of the sleeve of her green jumper, revealing the bruised handprints at the delicate spotted skin of her wrists. At close quarters, he took in the tear in her jumper at the right shoulder and the cut across her right cheek that drew blood. He glanced at Neilson’s right hand holding the gun to the aged woman’s head, and promptly spotted a silver ring on his finger, smeared with the telltale tinge of blood.

The small, terrified form of Mrs Hudson sniffled from under him. Sherlock’s lips parted slightly as he inhaled to stabilize seething emotion; his vision sharpened like lasers.

The CIA Agent was impatient. “But you know what I’m asking for, don’t you, Mr Holmes?”

“I believe I do.” Voice radiating a deadly calm, Sherlock's piercing blue eyes looked up at the smirking American, sizing-up the agent’s body and the anatomical points that were suddenly very interesting to catalogue.

Carotid Artery, Skull, Eyes, Lungs, Ribs-

Eyes still locked with the agent, Sherlock’s straightened up to his full height. Stepping back a good distance, Sherlock tipped up his chin confidently, his hands clasped behind him. “First, get rid of your boys.”

“Why?”

“I dislike being outnumbered; it makes for too much stupid in the room.”

After a moment of contemplation, Neilson let out a short, inconvenienced huff as he glanced at his men.

“You two, go to the car.”

“Then get into the car and drive away,” Sherlock added, smirking at Neilson condescendingly, “Don’t try to trick me, you know who I am, it doesn’t work.”

The two accomplices silently walked out of the room at the nod of confirmation from Neilson. Steps sounded from the corridor and the stairs as they departed, Sherlock listening for the telltale shutting of doors.

“Next, you can stop pointing that gun at me.”

“So you can point a gun at me?”

“I’m unarmed,” Sherlock answered, stepping back and spread-eagling his hands at his sides, his coat yawning open in the middle.

“Mind if I check?”Neilson quipped dryly.

“Oh, I insist.” 

Mrs Hudson panted in fear as the assailant moved from behind her and approached Sherlock. She worried her hands for the safety of her young tenant. 

Neilson kept the gun poised, using his free hand to frisk the flaps of the detective’s Belstaff, his scrutinizing eyes still locked onto Sherlock’s. He moved around Sherlock’s back and patted quickly across his spine.

Mrs Hudson watched as Sherlock rolled his eyes in annoyance, and to her great surprise, he suddenly materialized an aerosol spray can from his coat in one quick motion, turning around to spray it right into Neilson’s eyes. As the blinded man yelled aloud in shock, Sherlock pulled back to headbutt him hard enough to send the man crumbling backwards unconscious.

“Moron,” Sherlock scoffed, twirling the can impishly in his hand and surveying his handiwork; the assailant lay collapsed across the small tea table, limbs awkwardly spread out around his prone form.

Sherlock set aside the can on the table and marched to Mrs Hudson who looked whiplashed with the debacle that she just witnessed before her eyes. She chuckled softly as Sherlock knelt on his knees, fussing as he gently pressed his fingers to her cheek and inspected the wound to her cheekbone. She looked at him with large, glassy eyes as she slumped in her seat in relief.

“Thank you,” the landlady whispered gratefully in her tired voice still high-pitched and brittle from the shock of it all, her hands fumbling at nothing.

“You’re alright now,” Sherlock reassured in low, gentle tones as she nodded, heaving soft breaths to calm herself.

Sherlock looked over his shoulder at the unconscious man, scathingly.

~

John Watson stepped out of the black car that dropped him at Baker Street just outside Speedys.

Worried about the reception he was expecting from a certain tall, eccentric man, he nearly missed the slip of paper wedged to the small golden doorknocker of the main door. He peered at the handwriting that he recognized as Sherlock’s impatient scrawl.

'Crime in progress. Please disturb’, it read. With two big emphatic underlines.

John looked around at the street not actually sure what he was looking for, but with Sherlock and his well-thought shenanigans, he could never know and it was best to be on his toes, given the man was possibly angry with a certain Dominatrix.

Without bothering to pluck the note, John cautiously stepped inside, also noticing the cleaning supplies in the hallway but not making a big thought of it.

He made his way upstairs to his shared flat where the door already wide open.

“What’s going on -” John started, only to find Neilson, whom he recognized from Irene Adler’s home, bound and gagged to The Chair with thick, black insulation tape. He sported a broken nose, blood dripping down his nostrils, over the tape across his mouth and down his chin. His earpiece with its telephone-spiral cord hung off his shoulder. He looked resigned and a bit bored, though the defiant steely look in his eyes remained as he acknowledged John’s presence.

“Jesus! What the hell is happening?!” John exclaimed, turning to Sherlock who was sitting at an upholstered chair near the door, with a phone pressed to his ear while his eyes and a gun were steadily aimed at Neilson.

“Mrs Hudson’s been attacked by an American; I’m restoring balance to the Universe.”

That was when John noticed Mrs Hudson sitting at the sofa hugging herself, looking shaken. John immediately stepped over to her, sitting down at her side just as she wracked into soft sobs of aftershock. “Mrs Hudson, my God, are you alright?!” he asked her gently, wrapping a comforting arm around her shaking shoulders. “Jesus, what have they done to you!”

Mrs Hudson sobbed dismissively into her hands, “Oh, I’m just being so silly-”

John looked up at Neilson, eyes hard like flint, jaw set with silent anger. Neilson looked back, unafraid and nonchalant. John was just about ready to unleash Captain Watson his way but knowing that the cowering landlady needed the Good Doctor more, he returned to comforting the whimpering woman who leaned into his one-armed embrace for support.

“Downstairs,” Sherlock commanded of John, voice still low and gentle for the sake of his sobbing landlady, as he got up with the gun still aimed at Neilson. “Take her downstairs and look after her.”

John helped up the woman while she wiped at her eyes careful to avoid the wound on her cheek. She tried to retain some composure, sniffling as she was.

“It’s alright, I’ll have a look at that,” John whispered to her, eyeing the cut that was starting to redden a little with bruising.

She waved at John in good nature as he hovered at her elbow with concern. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she sighed, and her dignity carried her carefully out the door.

John came up to Sherlock’s side. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on??” he demanded, looking up at his roommate.

“I expect so, now go,” Sherlock breathed, his voice gravelly as he turned to John, locking eyes with him in reassurance.

Both the Detective and the Doctor looked at Neilson murderously for one long moment, before John set off after Mrs Hudson.

Finally, Sherlock spoke into the phone he had been pressing into his ear. “Lestrade? We’ve had a break-in at Baker street; send your least irritating officers and an ambulance.” Casually, he walked to the window, placing the gun aside on the table.

“Oh no, no, we’re fine,” he reassured at the phone, “No, it’s the burglar. He’s got himself rather badly injured.”

Neilson frowned at him from his chair.

“Oh, a few broken ribs, fractured skull, suspected punctured lung,” Sherlock listed, his eyes glinting villainously at the American, “He fell out of a window.”

Sherlock cut the call after a moment of confirmation from the other end.

Downstairs, John had managed to scuffle the landlady into her kitchen, locating her first aid kit. By then, he’d coaxed her to sip some water to calm her nerves and to stand still near the kitchen sink as he prepped. Carefully, he pressed a cotton swab of antiseptic to her cheek. 

“Oh," Mrs Hudson flinched at the contact. "It stings.”

John smiled at her apologetically as he gently cleaned the clotting blood around the cut, just as a sudden crash made them both start; a black shape had fallen just outside the kitchen window, possibly from the kitchen upstairs.

“Oh!” Mrs Hudson gasped in realization, “That was right on my bins!”

~

It was nightfall by the time the police has come in, questioned everyone and cleared up the place, the ambulance siren wailing as it whisked away the unfortunate American to Bart’s, while Lestrade and Sherlock watched from the pavements.

“And exactly how many times did he fall out of the window?” Lestrade asked with thinly veiled suspicion.

“It’s all a bit of a blur, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock glanced at him coolly, “I lost count.”

Lestrade looked at him incredulously, before departing for his car with a shake of his head.

Sherlock smirked to himself. He stepped back into the indoors, but instead of heading upstairs, he made for Mrs Hudson’s flat where John and the landlady sat at the small table in her kitchen in the soft and warm glow of the flowery lamps and pretty pink wallpaper.

Sherlock wiped his shoes at the small, furry indoor mat as John addressed him in soft tones.

“She’ll have to sleep upstairs in our flat tonight; we need to look after her.”

At that, Mrs Hudson made noises of denial, feebly shaking her head even as she supported it against her hand, very much exhausted and tired from the day’s events.

Sherlock casually rummaged her fridge like a child without preamble. “She’s fine,” he declared.

“No, she’s not; look at her!” John frowned, “She’s got to take some time away from Baker Street. She can go and stay with her sister.” He looked at the woman warmly. “Doctors’ orders,” he punctuated when Mrs Hudson looked doubtful.

Sherlock nudged the fridge door shut with the heel of his shoe after coming up with a powdered scone which he bit into distractedly. “Don’t be absurd.”

“She’s in shock, for God’s sake,” John sighed exasperated, “And all over some bloody, stupid camera phone.” John sat back against the wall as he regained some perspective. “Where is it, anyway?”

“Safest place I know,” Sherlock answered, daintily brushing away powdered sugar at his lips with a finger. He looked down conspiratorially at Mrs Hudson, who looked back with a knowing glimmer in her red-rimmed eyes.

Before John could say anything, Mrs Hudson reached into the neckline of her jumper. “You left it in the pocket of your second-best dressing gown, you clot!” she chastised the detective. From inside her clothing, she produced the camera phone, holding it out for Sherlock. “I managed to sneak it out when they thought I was having a cry,” she chuckled, shaking her head.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said softly as he took it from her.

John gaped at them before his mouth split into a smile of awe; the landlady being a small, fragile little woman of surprising and unexpected cunning prowess shouldn’t come as a surprise to John given the tenant she harboured, but hell if it wasn’t always a pleasant occurrence to witness firsthand.

Smug to the heavens, Sherlock boyishly flipped the expensive camera phone up into the air to catch it nimbly in his hand before pocketing it in a quick swipe; a little thing he liked to do that sometimes made John snicker to himself.

Sherlock stared at John, munching on his scone. “Shame on you, John Watson.”

“Shame on me??” John asked incredulously as Sherlock walked up to the landlady.

“Mrs Hudson leave Baker street?? England would fall!” the man stated as a matter of fact, crowding the small form of the woman to his side, a hand on her shoulder in a sort of one-armed hug. Mrs Hudson chucked as she leaned into him, patting his hand affectionately like a mother.

A sincere smile bloomed on John Watson’s face as he watched the older woman sighing in relief and the wild, spirited young man smiling down at her protectively with a scone balanced on his other hand; somewhere under all the layers of a fancy coat and designer suit and the high walls of his immaculately built Mind Place was a beating heart that could love, nurture and care. For a moment, the mechanical brilliance of Sherlock Holmes softened its edges into that of a warm human being.

~

With the balance restored as promised, the two men returned back to their flat upstairs after putting their landlady to sleep with reassured pats and fussing.

John poured himself a drink from the kitchen and eyed Sherlock who was busily divesting himself of his Belstaff.

“Where is it now?” John asked offhandedly, swirling his dark auburn drink in his glass.

“Where no one will look.”

The reply was followed with Sherlock picking up his beloved Stradivarius and bow, his back facing the doctor.

John watched him pensively. “Whatever’s on that phone is more than just pictures?”

“Yes, it is,” stated the detective tuning the strings of the violin, plucking at it to draw chords like little bursts of auditory glitter in the air.

John chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully, trying to figure out an angle from which to address the delicate topic at hand. Coming up short, he just decided to go for the direct approach.

“So, she’s alive, then,” John exhaled, “How are we feeling about that?”

Sherlock remained as still as a statue, hands frozen in place on his violin strings. The manner he held himself was so stiff and sullen, he could have been easily mistaken for a mannequin.

A bell tolled outside their window as it struck twelve o’clock midnight, ushering in the beginning of a new Gregorian calendar.

“Happy New Year, John,” Sherlock wished quietly, lowering his Stradivarius to look out the window thoughtfully.

“Do you think you’ll ever see her again?” John asked quietly, using Sherlock’s patent method of bypassing statements.

Instead of giving a reply, Sherlock turned around to look at his friend solemnly. He merely ran the bow in a practised swipe across the strings of the violin he propped under his chin; the notes of Auld Lang Syne fluttered into the air between them.

Accepting it as the reply, John smiled at the detective who swayed softly to his ministrations, already lost to the world with the glazed look in aquamarine eyes both intense and yielding at the same time. John sighed as he plopped down on his designated armchair, stiff drink in hand. He sank into the soft, worn upholstery and the high, fluttery notes of the Stradivarius, while outside the window England celebrated the New Year.

The bells struck in twelve long chimes across the city.

Somewhere among the streets, The Woman walked, decked in her fur-lined mink coat of black, her heeled boots clicking against the pavement. A small chime of a text alert made her jump, and she urgently pulled out her phone with her gloved hand.

She stared at the text, coming to a sudden stop.

[Happy New Year.  SH.]

Her red lips curled at the ends.

Chapter Text

Molly Hooper had seen many things in her life that were odd. Working as a forensics pathologist, death and mutilation were next to ordinary tea and coffee. She’d seen ways in which the human body could perish that would turn stomachs; from the slightest cut, to the most disintegrating burns, and to body parts that were more chunks of mutilated flesh than discernible structural elements.

But never even once did it fail to make her curious and flabbergasted whenever the World’s resident Consulting Detective dropped by Bart’s laboratory, his pale face set in steel-like determination as he brought one or the other absurd thing to test. Surely, it saved lives and caught criminals, but it never failed to surprise her.

She stood there, eyeing the man as he peered at his laptop with the intensity of a laser as if the very truths of the Universe lay scrawled on it in a language he, unfortunately, couldn’t comprehend.

Molly stepped up behind him, and knowing the man, she maintained a bit of a distance. She saw on the screen the X-Ray of an electronic device, its innards traced out in greys and blacks against the blue of its light.

“Is that a phone?”

“It’s a camera phone,” Sherlock corrected mechanically.

“And you’re X-Raying it?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Whose phone is it?”

“A woman’s.”

Her face faltered a second. “You’re girlfriend??” she hazarded, attempting to be casual with her body language, even though she knew the man could see through it blindfolded.

Sherlock paused from his work to process her question with a slight frown. “You think she’s my girlfriend because I’m X-Raying her possessions??”

“Well, we all do silly things,” she chuckled nervously.

“Yes,” he answered dismissively until a sudden light went on behind his eyes and he looked into the middle distance. “They do, don’t they?” he breathed, before turning to look at Molly but not actually seeing her. “Very silly.”

He launched himself off his seat in a burst of excitement just as Molly jumped back startled before knobbly joints could smack her across the face. She watched him pull out the Vertu camera phone from inside the X-Ray machine.

Sherlock switched it on quickly. The very sight of the password-encrypted page made him buzz.

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

 Sherlock smiled to himself, entering the code he was sure could grant him the access he’d been trying for so long. “She sent this to my address, and she loves to play games.”

I AM

[2] [2] [1] [B]

LOCKED

“She does?” Molly asked in a small voice, as Sherlock pressed the ‘enter’ key.

WRONG PASSCODE

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

2 ATTEMPTS REMAINING

A displeased scowl replaced all excitement on Sherlock's face as he grumbled to himself, angrily pocketing the phone.

Molly watched him return to studying the X-Ray, not actually sure what to make of the whole spectacle. She wondered if this was the same woman John mentioned about; the Woman who had ‘died’ six months ago, that particularly bizarre day on Christmas, and whose body he’d identified from not just the face.

The Dead always did elude the curious man.

~

Later that day, Sherlock returned home very much annoyed yet all the more intrigued; he hadn’t succeeded in unlocking the camera phone, but he had mapped and catalogued the many physical protections Irene had placed inside the body of the phone to prevent anyone from tampering with it or removing its memory card. She had been very prepared.

Sherlock had all but stepped up into his living room when he immediately sensed a disturbance in the air.

A foreign smell laced the air delicately, almost subtle enough to go undetected, but as the man who’d written a blog about the varying nuances of perfumes, colognes and other scents, Sherlock immediately chalked it up to the most uncharacteristic scent to be found in their bachelor flat; a woman’s delicate yet strong Eu de toilette.

He detected notes of almond and jasmine with a hint of vanilla. He sniffed the air in quick measures.

Hypnotic Poison, Christian Dior.

Sherlock peered around just as he spotted the top section of their kitchen window slightly popped open. He walked up to it, his face steeling. After the events of the other day involving a delicate landlady and feisty Americans, caution was more than just a precaution; it had become a reflex.

Carefully, Sherlock sniffed again, his suspicions getting firmer as the scent got stronger near his bedroom whose door was ajar. Making sure his shoes didn’t make a sound, he pushed the door to his bedroom open and stepped inside briskly.

He stared silently at the bed.

John Watson entered the flat just then; removing his coat and folding it aside economically, a skip in his step. He had a new bottle of wine, unopened, that he wanted to taste with some company. As much as his detective of a roommate wasn’t a standard, John was ready to sign off Sherlock Holmes as said ‘company’.

“Hey, Sherlock??” he called from the living room, seeing the detective's figure at the door.

“We have a client,” Sherlock stated calmly.

“What, in your bedroom??” John laughed, walking up the narrow corridor space to approach him with his bottle of wine. He stepped next to the taller man and spotted the object of his attention. “Oh.”

Lying comfortably tucked into Sherlock’s bed, deep asleep and dressed in a somberly toned jumper was a freshly showered Irene Adler; a picture of innocence, breathing in soft heaves of slumber.

~

Irene Adler sat still in the living room.

She did look very different from her usual, primed self; out of the comfort of her home, she was wearing no makeup, her skin smooth and dewy, her eyebrows softer than usual, her unpainted eyelids were nude with the delicate wisps of imperfect natural eyelashes, her lips no longer a statement in the seductive red but glowing a gentle pink of well-cared-for skin. Her hair was let down her shoulders, a rather damp and tangled cascade of wavy black locks that reached her ribs, the roots parted in the middle made her strong jaw look deliberate and cutting. She was dressed, for the second time, in one of Sherlock’s clothes; his silken, blue dressing gown, the very same, John noted, that the detective wore a lot while composing his Serenade of Sorrow during her ‘death’.

Stripped once more to her bare essentials, the only things about Irene Adler that hinted materialistically at her wealth were the glinting pair of diamond studs at her ears punctuating the sides of her sharp jaw, her diamond ring and her blood-red nails manicured to perfection.

But she wore The Woman in her piercing pale eyes in ways her cosmetics and couture could not; even with her removed of paint and preening, the essence of the Dominatrix flared against Irene’s unblemished skin like a sheen of morning light. Despite being dressed in only a dressing gown, she had the aura of someone who commanded the best grooming of anyone in her presence. John had, quite involuntarily, rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves; he had been complimented for the strong clefts of his wrists anyway. Sherlock remained in his black Spencer Hart, his white dress shirt tight across his chest, while his face wore a look of neutral vehemence.

John blinked at her from above his coffee mug as she sat in Sherlock’s Le Corbusier armchair as casually as if she owned it.

The displaced detective sat solemnly at the table, as did John.

A bit of a tight silence stretched between them all.

“So,” Sherlock asked bluntly, “Who’s after you?”

“People who want to kill me,” she replied calmly.

“Who’s that?”

“Killers.”

John let out a silent exhale of exasperation. “Would help if you were a tiny bit more specific.”

Sherlock agreed. “So, you faked your own death in order to get ahead of them?”

“It worked for a while,” she mused in amusement.

“Except, you let John know that you’re alive and, therefore, me.”

“I knew you’d keep my secret.”

“You couldn’t?” Sherlock retaliated, crossing one leg over the other at the knees.

“But you did, didn’t you?”

Another pause of silence bloomed in the air when the detective refused to add to her comment.

“Where is my camera phone?” Irene asked, sitting up and getting to the point of her visit.

“It’s not here,” John remarked, placing his cup of coffee on the table, “We’re not stupid.”

“Then what have you done with it?” she asked carefully, “If they’ve guessed you’ve got it, they’ll be watching you.”

“If they’ve been watching me, they’ll know that I took a safety deposit box at a bank on the Strand a few months ago.”

Irene stared him down in contemplation. “I need it,” she stated calmly.

“Well, we can’t just go and get it, can we?” John added. He watched between them from his chair, almost a spectator in the back and forth banter, until he offered, “Molly Hooper.”

Sherlock turned to him robotically, the crease between his eyebrow a mark of confusion.

“She could collect it and take it to Bart’s,” John strategized, “Then one of your homeless network could bring it here, leave it in the café, and one of the boys downstairs could bring it back up the back.”

Irene looked on expectantly at the detective to agree. Sherlock gave John an impressed upturn of his mouth.

“Very good, John,” the detective nodded approvingly, “Excellent plan, full of intelligent precautions.”

“Thank you,” John sat up, pulling out his own phone, “So why don’t I-”

Before he could continue, Sherlock slipped a hand into his suit pockets and pulled out the black Vertu camera phone, silencing John who groaned softly with a sigh of frustration.

John pushed back his annoyance; at least Sherlock had sent his way a compliment before rendering his plan moot.

Irene sat up at the sight of the camera phone, her spine straight, eyes focusing with a twinkle. She got up urgently from her seat, her hands folded across her chest as she eyed the man with a tight, expectant smile. Sherlock held the camera phone with the ease of all the power it had over his opponent.

“So,” he asked comfortably, switching the phone on, “What do you keep on here? In general, I mean?”

“Pictures, information, anything I might find useful.”

“For blackmail?” asked John.

“For protection,” she corrected him, her eyes glinting. She then sent her taller opponent a focused gaze of steel grey. “I make my way in the world; I misbehave. I like to know people will be on my side when I need them to be.”

“So, how do you acquire this information?”

“I told you,” she shrugged, her next words a playful hush, “I misbehave.”

Sherlock and John shared a knowing look.

“But you’ve acquired something that’s more danger than protection,” Sherlock pointed out, “Do you know what it is?”

“Yes”, she answered confidently, before her façade cracked a little despite herself. “But I don’t understand it.”

“I assumed. Show me.”

Irene reached out a strong yet delicate hand for her phone.

In response, Sherlock pulled the phone further away. “The passcode,” he demanded.

Irene didn’t move, her eyes fixed upon his with radiating challenge openly daring him.

John watched between them again. Neither Irene with her seeking hand nor Sherlock with his hand on the phone moved for a few solid moments; it was a picture frozen in time and John felt absurdly comical wedged in the painting. He drew his thick eyebrows together, feeling a little out of the loop.

Sherlock gave in first; he sat up straight to hand the phone to her cautiously. Irene accepted it with a smirk, clicking it awake and drawing up the password-encrypted page. She threw Sherlock a playful smile as she typed in the passcode while making sure to lean away lest Sherlock peep.

Sherlock, however, was far more interested in paying attention to the lilts of the mechanical beeps that accompanied every number that she typed. His neck strained as he listened into the air like a bloodhound.

When she pressed the ’enter’ key, the phone buzzed erroneously.

“It’s not working,” she observed.

“No,” Sherlock rose to his feet, and in a smooth swipe, he plucked the phone off her hand triumphantly. “It’s a duplicate that I had made, into which, you’ve just entered the numbers ‘1058’.”

John smirked in amusement. Irene turned around to watch Sherlock, who stalked over to his Le Corbusier armchair and pulled out her original Vertu camera phone from a zippered pocket hidden in the upholstery.

“I assumed you’d choose something a bit more specific than that, but thanks anyway,” Sherlock quipped as he switched on the phone and drew up the password-encrypted page.

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

He glanced at her victoriously, entering the numbers she had typed in the duplicate.

I AM

[1] [0] [5] [8]

LOCKED

John watched Sherlock pose himself, the dramatic man that he was, as he gazed at Irene while theatrically pressing the Enter key.

WRONG PASSCODE

I AM

[_] [_] [_] [_]

LOCKED

1 ATTEMPT REMAINING

Sherlock looked nothing short of gob-smacked in the most aristocratic and composed sense. He frowned at the message, and then looked down at a smug Irene.

“I told you that camera phone was my life,” she spoke coolly. “I know when it’s in my hands.”

 “Oh, you’re rather good,” Sherlock observed quietly in acknowledgement as he offered her the original phone.

“You’re not so bad,” she cracked a knowing smile, taking her possession from him in a slow, smooth movement mimicking his own nuances.

John frowned confusedly between them for the umpteenth time, a little bit out of depth.

A long albeit charged silence extended from between both pairs of captivating aqua-tinted eyes; the tall, slender man in black and the short, petite woman in navy blue speaking through silence between their blinks.

“Hamish.”

Irene and Sherlock broke their battle and turned to John in a start.

“John Hamish Watson,” the doctor stated with a cough, “Just if you’re looking for baby names.”

The short doctor drew his lips together, shoulder taut as he held himself with pride. Sherlock looked absolutely clueless. Irene smiled to herself. She then unlocked her phone and scrolled through the contents as she paced around the room casually.

“There was a man,” Irene announced, launching off into the root of her situation, “An MOD official; I knew what he liked. One of the things he liked was showing off.” She pulled up a screenshot and showed it to Sherlock.  “He told me this email was going to save the world. He didn’t know it, but I photographed it; he was a bit, ‘tied up,’ at the time.”

John blinked at the suggested implication.

Sherlock took the phone from her and peered at the picture as he sat down opposite John at the table.

007 Confirmed allocation

4C12C45F13E13G60A60B61F34G34J60D12B

“It’s a bit small on that screen; can you read it?” she asked from Sherlock’s side, looming over his seated form.

“Yes.”

“Code, obviously. I had one of the best cryptographers in the country take a look at it, though he was mostly upside-down, as I recall,” she mused playfully, “Couldn’t figure it out.”

John frowned this time; she wasn’t subtle in the least. Meanwhile, he noticed Sherlock concentrate as his bright greyish blue eyes zipped innumerable fast over the screen.

“What can you do, Mr Holmes?” Irene challenged, leaning down to purr into his ear, “Go on, impress a girl.”

All it took were the few seconds it required for Irene to lean in and press a wet kiss to Sherlock’s cheek while John put down the mug of coffee from which he’d sipped. Irene had only just pulled back with a feline smile when Sherlock went off in a rattle-

“There’s a margin for error but I’m pretty sure there’s a ‘747’ leaving Heathrow tomorrow at 6:30 in the evening for Baltimore apparently it’s going to save the world I’m not sure how that could be true but give me a moment I’ve only been on the case for eight seconds.”

Sherlock looked at John who gaped back at him in disbelief.

Irene was still processing the rapid stream of words that had droned out of Sherlock’s mouth as she stared at him, her face caught off guard.

Sherlock noticed the man and woman rendered speechless. “Oh, come on, it’s not code; its seat allocations on a passenger jet. Look!”

He held out the screen to John as he went on with his deduction. “No letters past ‘K’, so the width of the plane is the limit. The number always appears randomly and not in sequence, but the letters have little runs of sequences all over the place; families and couples sitting together.”

He pulled the phone back to inspect the photograph. “Only a Jumbo is wide enough to need a letter ‘K’ or rows past ‘55’, which is why there’s always an upstairs. There’s a row ‘13’ which eliminates the more superstitious airlines. Then, there’s the style of the flight number, ‘007’; that eliminates a few more.” He glanced up at Irene with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “And assuming the British point of origin, which would be logical, considering the original source of the information, and assuming from the increased pressure on you lately, that crisis is imminent. The only flight that matches all the criteria and departs within the week is the 6:30 Baltimore tomorrow evening from Heathrow airport.” He stood up, drawing himself up to his full height to tower over a sparkling Irene.

John could have sworn Sherlock had probably taken only two breaths throughout the entire thing.

Sherlock stared down at Irene who did nothing but look up at him with a serenely infatuated daze in her eye. A slight flush coloured the higher points of Irene’s pale cheeks as she gazed at him, steel grey like laser points in intensity, pupils blown wide.

Sherlock looked at her clinically. “Please don’t feel obliged to tell me that was remarkable or amazing; John’s expressed that thought in every possible variant available to the English language.”

“I would have you right here on this desk until you begged for mercy twice,” she breathed huskily.

Sherlock greeted the remark with two pulsing moments of silence.

“John,” he spoke, eyes still on Irene, “Please can you check those flight schedules to see if I’m right?”

John looked between the two of them locked by the eyes. Irene looked one moment away from frothing at the mouth or tearing Sherlock into pieces with her teeth, or perhaps just his clothes. Sherlock looked unreadable as he usually does around female counterparts.

The room was suddenly several degrees warmer; simmering and rippling with the heat of unsaid words.

Feeling himself sweat a little, John cleared his throat, “Yeah, I – uh, I’m on it.” Willing his red ears away, he typed at the search engine in his internet browser.

“I’ve never begged for mercy in my life,” Sherlock addressed The Woman, his voice low and a rumble. She took a languid step closer to him.

“Twice,” The Woman emphasized, voice thick like honey, her head titled back at the difference in their height.

John came up with a positive search. “Yeah, you’re right; flight ‘007’.”

Sherlock blinked up at the air, suddenly distracted as he processed John’s statement. “What did you just say?”

“You’re right,” John repeated.

“No, no, after that, what did you say after that??”

“‘007’; flight ‘007’.”

Sherlock felt stars burst behind his eyes as his ears rang with the numbers.

007- 007- 007- what- 007- 007- 007- something-

John watched Sherlock shoulder past Irene to pace around the room like a man possessed, mumbling ‘007’ to himself over and over like a chant, rubbing at his face as he searched his mind for the right thread of information.

Neither detective nor doctor was aware of Irene, who stood with her hand behind her back discreetly typing a text message to a number on her camera phone, while her eyes tracked the movements of the muttering Sherlock and confused John. Her practised fingers dialled the text in quick presses, and she thumbed the send key.

Sherlock was still muttering, until suddenly, he spotted the door of their flat where he’d seen Mycroft, the morning after they had been to Irene Adler’s residence, answering his call with some very specific words.

“Bond air is Go.”

~

The text arrived promptly with a short chime.

Jim Moriarty was in the Parliament Square; among the masses walking about him, he was a figure cut in black, with his dark coat and slicked hair the colour of oily tar, dark sunglasses propped up on his pale nose against the sunlight.

He plucked his phone out of his pocket and read the text sent by The Woman.

[ 747 TOMORROW 6:30 PM HEATHROW ]

Mouth pulled into a pout of satisfaction, he thumbed a new text to another number he had been waiting to contact.

~

Very few things irked Mycroft Holmes; over the years of pseudo-running the Government, he had developed a sense of calm bordering on the supernatural and no amount of any news threw him off balance, purely because he was always a step ahead of everyone and everything. He always had a backup or a remedial plan in the works. For every card someone threw his way, he had ten others to incapacitate them in return.

The text he’d received from an unknown number was one of those very few things.

[ Jumbo Jet. Dear me Mr Holmes, dear me. ]

Mycroft sat at the head of his table in his empty conference room, staring at the text while his well-manicured world running like an oiled machine in full efficiency slowly fell to a standstill around him.

Stiff drink ignored, he despairingly pressed his hands into his face in a moment of vulnerability as the ramifications and consequences sunk in.

Jim Moriarty.

~

“Bond Air is go, that’s decided; check with the Coventry lot.”

His brother's words rang in his ear as Sherlock sat very still, quietly plucking at the taut strings of the Stradivarius with his bare fingers, his bow discarded. He was seated in his Le Corbusier throne, the glow of the fireplace shone along the side of his face wrought in deep thought, his blue eyes tinted in liquid gold looking into the distance as Mycroft’s voice floated in and out of his brain like wisps. Nimble fingers plucked away in very slow twitches.

“Coventry,” he mumbled.

“I’ve never been. It is nice?” replied Irene, who sat across from him on John’s armchair, watching him the entire time, beyond intrigued.

Sherlock blinked at her, his distant eyes zeroing in on her figure; she was curled up in the warm armchair, her arms around the Union jack cushion, an imploring smile dancing at her pink lips, her pale eyes soft and inviting.

“Where’s John?” 

“He went out a couple of hours ago,” she answered amusedly.

“I was just talking to him…,” he mumbled again, eyes searching the room.

“He said you’d do that.”

Earlier, when John had pulled her aside and discreetly offered her the interesting tidbit of information, she’d looked on at him with something along the lines of disbelief, although a part of her knew she couldn’t put it past the detective to do something so odd. Yet there he was as if roused from slumber, genuinely confused and unaware of John’s absence while he’d been talking out loud to her the entire time.

“What’s Coventry go to do with anything?” she asked curiously.

“It’s a story, probably not true,” Sherlock mused quietly, “In the Second World War, the Allies knew that Coventry was going to get bombed because they’d broken the German code, but they didn’t want the Germans to know that they’d broken the code, so they let it happen anyway.”

Irene gazed at him, her mouth slightly parted at the spades of information he kept gracing her with.

“Have you ever had anyone?” she breathed huskily.

“I’m sorry?”

“And when I say ‘had’, I’m being indelicate.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll be delicate then,” she whispered, slipping gracefully off the armchair, a mass of long pale legs and silken dressing gown, as she crossed the foot’s distance between them to sit back on her hunches before his knees. She placed her hand softly atop his on the armrest of his Le Corbusier, her diamond ring glimmered in the warm light of the fireplace. Sherlock eyed the hand questioningly, before looking down at Irene who gazed up at him with a searing glaze in her eyes. Their proximity forced words between them into mere whispers.

“Let’s have dinner,” she offered softly.

“Why?”

“You might be hungry.”

“I’m not.”

“Good,” her lips bloomed with an inviting smile.

“Why would I want to have dinner, if I wasn’t hungry?” he implored, slowly pulling syllables into long whispers of his rumbling baritone. He turned his hand over from under hers to grasp her wrist ever so softly, his fingers curling on her soft, supple skin, and in response, her own fingers curled around his knuckles intimately. At close quarters, he studied her eyes the way she studied his.

“Mr Holmes,” she sighed, her focus now tipped in favour of observing the deep, arching dip of his cupid's bow atop his lips, “If it was the end of the world, if this was the very last night, would you have dinner with me?”

Her soft whisper hung between them as they gazed at each other, a moment of silence stretched between them, until a sudden voice interrupted the rapture of their little bubble.

“Sherlock??” came the imploring sound of a certain landlady from downstairs.

Sherlock looked to the door just as Irene sighed defeatedly. “Too late,” she sighed softly.

“That’s not the end of the world; that’s Mrs Hudson,” Sherlock observed quietly, as Irene withdrew from his knees and slipped away, a look of disappointment gracing her exquisite facial features.

“Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson stepped urgently into the living room with a tall figure at tow, “This man was at the door. Is the bell not working?” She turned to the dark-skinned man dressed in a grey suit, his face set in stone. She looked apologetic as she spoke to him, “He shot it,” as she gestured to her violin-plucking tenant.

Sherlock didn’t look amused or in the least sense bothered. “Have you come to take me away again?” he jested.

“Yes, Mr Holmes.”

“Well, I decline.”

“I don’t think you do,” the man added, pulling out a white envelope from inside his suit jacket, handing it over to the detective.

Sherlock drew his brows together as he pulled out from the crisp envelope a boarding pass to flight ‘747’ to Baltimore.

Chapter Text

Sherlock Holmes was packed away in his Belstaff against the chill of the night air, escorted by the silent man into a black car waiting outside 221B. The car promptly drove away into the night as Irene watched from their window, left alone in his home.

Sherlock sat quietly in the backseat of the car, observing his boarding pass, thoughts bubbling up around his brain.

With no John at his side to listen to his musings, Sherlock decided to use what company he had; the suited man, someone he now recalled was named Palmer, who sat in the passenger seat next to the driver seemed a likely candidate.

“There’s going to be a bomb on a passenger jet,” Sherlock stated conversationally, as Palmer glanced at him through the rearview mirror. “The British and American governments know about it, but rather than expose the source of their information, they’re going to let it happen; the plane will blow up.” Sherlock looked out the window, musing to himself, “Coventry all over again. The wheel turns; nothing is ever new.”

Of course, he did not get so much as a derisive snort out of the two trained men in the car. At times like these, he really did miss John and the absurd faces he’d pull as he processed Sherlock’s findings.

The car rode silently through the streets until it reached the airport. It made its way to the sprawling hangar, coming to a stop right beside the only jumbo jet parked in the tarmac. The doors of the passenger cabin of the Jet were open and the boarding steps were propped up against its side. Two men were positioned to stand in attendance on either side of the boarding steps on the tarmac ground.

Sherlock climbed out of the car and casually approached the steps, recognizing one of the two men as Neilson.

“Well,” Sherlock let slip in a demeaning American drawl as he walked up to him, “You’re lookin' all better. How 'you feelin'?”

Neilson looked at him icily. Holding his ground, true to his professional training, he replied calmly, “Like putting a bullet in your brain, sir.”

Sherlock graced him with a scoff of a smirk, before climbing up the steps.

“They’d pin a medal on me if I did, sir,” Neilson called out after him. Sherlock paused a moment contemplatively at that, before hiking up the steps again.

Once inside, he observed that the passenger cabin was unusually dark and dingy. He narrowed his eyes as the light from outside the windows illuminated weakly all the passengers who seemed to be in a state of sleep. Sherlock’s mouth parted as he took in the several men, women and children occupying every single seat. The air conditioning hummed quietly, the chill of it dancing on the shell of his ears and at the tip of his nose along with a curious sterile stench tinted with a chemical aftertaste.

Sherlock looked around, a foreboding sense settling onto him. The passengers didn’t look asleep; they looked unconscious. Wondering why he’d been sent to a jet filled with passengers knocked out cold possibly with an inhalant drug, he switched-on one of the overhead lights that lit a wash of white light upon a few of the passengers.

The detective's face cleared as he took in the pale greyish skin and the gaunt cheeks.

All the passengers were dead; they were propped corpses.

“The Coventry Conundrum,” announced a voice.

Sherlock straightened up to see Mycroft Holmes materialize from behind a curtain at the galley, his crisp suit and round face outlined in the dim light.

“What do you think of my solution?” Mycroft asked as he observed his brother. “The Flight of the Dead.”

Sherlock pursed his lips. “Plane blows up mid-air; mission accomplished for the terrorists, hundreds of casualties, but nobody dies.”

“Neat, don’t you think?” Mycroft smiled placidly, “You’ve been stumbling around the fringes of this one for ages. Or were you too bored to notice the pattern?”

Sherlock looked away, immediately remembering the many cases he refused to pick up before he’d fixated on The Woman; lurid cases about missing ashes and dead grandfathers.

Mycroft added, “We ran a similar project with the Germans a while back, though I believe one of our passengers didn’t make the flight.”

Sherlock silently recalled bending over the boot of a car, examining the dead man who was supposed to be in a plane crash in Dusseldorf.

“But that’s the deceased for you,” Mycroft mused poetically, “Late, in every sense of the word.”

“How’s the plane going to fly?” Sherlock asked before answering it himself. “Of course, unmanned aircraft; hardly new.”

“It doesn’t fly. It will never fly; this entire project is cancelled,” a bitter tone laced its way into Mycroft’s voice, “The terrorist cells have been informed that we know about the bomb. We can’t fool them now.”

Sherlock looked on in surprise, hands deep into his coat pockets, eyes glinting like a cat’s in the darkness.

Mycroft continued, “We’ve lost everything. One fragment of one email, and months and years of planning finished.”

Gears clicked into place. “Your MOD man.”

“That’s all it takes,” Mycroft spoke calmly, “One lonely, naïve man desperate to show off, and a woman clever enough to make him feel special.”

Sherlock shrugged airily, rolling his eyes. “You should screen your defence people more carefully.”

Mycroft’s voice then came out quite harsh and loud as he bit, “I’m not talking about the MOD man, Sherlock, I’m talking about you!” His sentence punctuated with a sharp stomp of his umbrella cane on the floor, the hollow sound echoing in the deathly silence of the passenger cabin.

Sherlock looked at him in surprise, eyes wide and glowing.

Mycroft took a moment to regain his composure within a moment before he went on with a condescending scoff of a smile. “A damsel in distress; in the end, are you really so obvious? Because this was textbook.”

Sherlock frowned.

“The promise of love, the pain of loss and the joy of redemption,” Mycroft listed, “Then give him a puzzle and watch him dance.”

Sherlock looked on, the information seeping in through the ears and reflecting onto the pale skin of his face. “Don’t be absurd,” he hissed.

“Absurd?” Mycroft challenged, “How quickly did you decipher that email for her? Was it the full minute? Or were you really eager to impress?”

A look of realization passed across Sherlock’s face just as he caught a whiff of delicate perfume while a dark shape moved from behind him.

“I think it was less than five seconds,” a familiar woman’s voice sounded from the other end of the cabin.

Sherlock spun around to see the figure standing at the galley; Irene Adler, restored to her preened and coiffed self in her short, glossy-black, Jacques Azagury dress. Her lips a dangerous red, and hair curled into place, she radiated a picture of confidence once again.

Mycroft looked at her with a pensive resignation before solemnly addressing his brother. “I drove you into her path. I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” he apologized quietly into the air.

“Mr Holmes,” Irene purred as she walked up to them, “I think we need to talk.”

Sherlock blinked at her, quite winded at everything. “So do I; there are a number of aspects I’m still not quite clear on-”

Irene shouldered past Sherlock, brushing him aside without so much as a glance at him, “Not you, Junior, you’re done now.”

Sherlock looked on after her as she stepped up to the taller Holmes who glared at her with icy, stone eyes.

“There’s more, loads more,” Irene addressed Mycroft, holding up her camera phone its screen glowing blue in the dark, “On this phone, I’ve got secrets and pictures and scandals that could topple your whole world. You have no idea how much havoc I can cause and exactly one way to stop me.” Irene’s lips curled confidently. “Unless you want to tell your masters that your biggest security leak is your own little brother.”

The pallor on Mycroft’s face rivalled that of the several undead in the seats around them.

~

An ominous silence hung in the air, the occupants of the room wrapped in varying degrees of emotion.

Irene sat at an ornate wooden desk in Mycroft’s study; her long, pale legs crossed in a picture of smug victory, eyes glinting as she sat like a cat that caught her canaries. Mycroft sat across from her, his fingers pressed defeatedly to his forehead as if the burden of the whole world resting on his shoulders was easing down beyond his strength. Away from the table was Sherlock, sulking in an armchair facing the fireplace; information and deductions were buzzing in his ears, a blank nothingness hanging over his face even as he combed through the betrayal and the folly of his distractions. He seethed under his skin; he'd been played.

Placed on the table before Mycroft Holmes was Irene’s Vertu Constellation Quest camera phone.

“We have people who can get into this,” the man challenged, pressing a finger onto the cold screen as if for emphasis.

Irene smirked. “I tested that theory for you; I let Sherlock Holmes try it for six months.”

Mycroft held his tongue.

“Sherlock, dear,” Irene called out playfully, “Tell him what you found when you X-Rayed my camera phone.”

Like a device switched on, Sherlock stated his observations in an even drawl into the fireplace. “There are four additional units wired inside the casing, I suspect, containing acid or a small amount of explosive. Any attempt to open the casing will burn the hard drive.”

Mycroft groaned to himself quietly.

“Explosive,” Irene repeated with a musical purr, “Its more ‘me’.”

“Some data is always recoverable,” Mycroft tried.

“Take that risk.” 

“You have a passcode to open this; I deeply regret to say we have people who can extract it from you.”

Irene looked away, seemingly bored. “Sherlock?”

“There will be two passcodes,” the detective announced coldly, “One to open the phone, one to burn the drive. Even under duress, you can’t know which one she’s given you and there would be no point in a second attempt.” He twiddled his fingers that he locked at his lap.

“He’s good, isn’t he?” Irene reflected suggestively, her salacious eyes on the detective’s profile outlined in the golden light of the crackling fire, “I should have him on a leash; in fact, I might.”

Mycroft was having none of that.

“We destroy this, then,” the man spoke up, “No one has the information.”

“Fine. Good idea. Unless there are lives of British citizens depending on the information you’re about to burn.”

“Are there?”

“Telling you would be playing fair,” she smiled. “I’m not playing anymore.”

With the shimmer of mischief in her eyes, she reached out to her leather purse and produced an envelope which she slid over to Mycroft Holmes, her fingers splayed across the pristine white paper making her blood-red nails stand out.

“A list of my requests,” she offered, as Mycroft took it from her. “And some ideas about my protection, once they’re granted.”

Mycroft pensively pulled open a folded sheet of paper from the envelope, running his eyes with trepidation across the demands.

Irene's smile was sickly sweet. “I’d say it wouldn’t blow much of a hole in the wealth of the nation, but then I’d be lying.” She watched Mycroft’s eyebrows jump up to his receding hairline as he processed the words and numerical figures inscribed in the paper. Ridges of destressed lines streaked across his forehead.

“I imagine you’d like on sleep on it?” Irene offered softly.

“Thank you, yes,” Mycroft breathed tiredly, eyes still bleakly surveying the paper.

“Too bad,” she smirked viciously, “Off you pop and talk to people.”

Mycroft looked up at her with a scathing flash in his eyes. Sherlock scoffed from his seat at the fireplace.

Letting out a sigh, the older Holmes sat back in his chair, giving in completely to the implications of a surrender. “You’ve been very thorough,” he complemented silently with his dignity, “I wish our lot were half as good as you.”

“I can’t take all the credit. I had a bit of help,” Irene hummed in faux modesty as she turned to Sherlock. “Oh, Jim Moriarty sends his love.”

Jim Moriarty.

At the sound of those syllables, Sherlock was sucked back down to Earth and into the room, his eyes refocusing on the golden flames dancing before him inside the fireplace.

“Yes, he’s been in touch,” Mycroft replied begrudgingly, pulling out an expensive pen from inside his suit pocket, “Seems desperate for my attention, which I’m sure can be arranged.” He scribbled something onto the envelope.

At ease and basking in the glory of her glimmering, sizeable victory over some of the most powerful men in the country, Irene got to her feet to saunter around the table, a feline figure in black. “I had all this stuff, never knew what to do with it. Thank god for the Consulting Criminal," she taunted as she leaned against the wooden table as casually as at a party, looking down at the seated Holmes. “He gave me a lot of advice about how to play the ‘Holmes Boys’. Do you know what he calls you?”

Mycroft looked up at her defiantly, not in the least interested to know.

“The Ice Man,” she whispered playfully, red lips a perfect shape, “And the Virgin,” she glanced at the figure silent at the fireplace.

Gears and cogs turned in Sherlock’s mind; a complex tapestry of information processing itself behind his eyes as her words trickled and seeped into his mental machinery clicking away.

Irene tipped up her chin. “He didn’t even ask for anything; I think he just likes to cause trouble. Now, that’s my kind of man.”

Click and light.

Mycroft let out a huff of defeat. He got up slowly and regarded her with his lips pursed in farewell. “And here you are, the Dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees. Nicely played.”

“No,” came a solemn admission from across the room.

Irene and Mycroft turned to the fireplace where Sherlock sat quietly.

“Sorry?” enquired Irene.

Sherlock let out a steady exhale, before turning his attention to the other two. “I said no; very, very close but no.”

Irene and Mycroft watched the detective rise to his feet confidently with the air of someone who had suddenly acquired supreme control. Mycroft knew that stance; he recognised the familiar aura that suddenly radiated from his little brother in waves.

The young, wild-haired detective set his neon cyan eyes on The Woman. “You got carried away; the game was too elaborate, you were enjoying yourself too much.”

“There’s no such thing as 'too much',” Irene provided with a smirk.

“Oh, enjoying the thrill of the chase is fine,” Sherlock mused as he casually approached her, “Craving the distraction of the game, I sympathise entirely. But, sentiment??” He looked down at her small form as she gazed back defiantly. “Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side,” Sherlock sneered.

A brittle smile curled the ends of red lips.

“Sentiment??” Irene jeered back, “What are you talking about?”

“You.”

Sherlock studied her carefully; the small woman enveloped in black and red, her pale blue eyes quivering ever so slightly.

“Oh, dear God. Look at the poor man; you don’t actually think I was interested in you??” Irene replied with a smirk even as her voice faltered slightly. When a silent Sherlock stared back at her intensely enough to burn holes into her head, she pressed on condescendingly, “Why? Because you’re the Great Sherlock Holmes, the clever detective in the funny hat??”

“No,” Sherlock replied, stepping into her personal space to crowd her small form.

Irene looked up at him, suddenly hypnotized by the proximity as he loomed his tall form against her; a hair's breadth away, dangerously intimate. He gently slipped his hand over hers, delicately pressing his adept fingers to the smooth, perfumed skin of her wrist cuffed by her leather-strapped watch. Time fell into a standstill around her; she didn't move as his warm breath curled around the shell of her ear when he leaned in to hover his face next to hers. Somewhere between the suddenly hazy rapture of intimacy, she heard him whisper in his deep voice reverberating to send shudders down her spine -

“Because I took your pulse.”

Irene’s eyes widened even as a feeble memory lit up behind her pupils; the gentle brush of his fingers on her wrist from earlier that day, their hands entwined in a magical moment from hours ago, seemingly an eternity away.

“Elevated,” he observed huskily, “Your pupils dilated.”

Her eyebrows drew together when Sherlock pressed his fingers more deliberately, the touch suddenly less intimate and more clinical in a borderline spiteful vice grip. Her vein beat rapidly against his unforgiving fingertips. And then, as quickly as he’d stepped in, he drew away leaving Irene bereft of feeling. She froze in her place, the skin of her wrist searing as if touched by a ring of flames.

Mycroft observed the entire thing with a silent, curious eye. His brother was nothing if not dramatic in the way he made his points, and yet, there was an underlying emotion he was sure he'd missed. He watched Sherlock pick up her camera phone from the table and thumb it on with calculated purpose.

“I imagine John Watson thinks ‘love’ is a mystery to me," Sherlock mused out loud, "But the chemistry is incredibly simple and very destructive.”

Irene, alert and jittery, stepped up after him like a trepid shadow when Sherlock paced around with her phone in his confident hands.

“When we first met," Sherlock announced in a flourish, "You told me that a disguise is always a self-portrait. How true of you. The combination to your safe; your measurements. But this?” he held up the phone in a taunt, with a devious glint in his eye, “This is far more intimate.”

Sherlock drew up the password-encrypted log-in page that chirped robotically. “This is your heart," he gazed pointedly at her, "And you should never let it rule your head."

He entered the first digit of the code. The following beep made Irene’s eyes widen as if she was struck by lightning.

“You could have chosen any random number and walked out of here today with everything you’ve worked for. But you couldn’t resist, could you?" His eyes never left hers as he pressed another key on the Qwerty keypad of the phone which sent out another lilted beep. "I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage; thank you for the final proof.”

Another beep sounded as he entered the third digit; the sound making Irene’s face falter and her eyelids tremble under the merciless blaze of his stare.

Before he moved his thumb for the fourth, she came alive and suddenly reached out, grabbing his hand to stop him. She pressed herself close to him, her face distraught with emotion; she was almost unrecognisable in her moment of vulnerability. Her eyes were thin blue rings quivering around big blown pupils, a watery glaze of desperation filming over them.

“Everything I said, it’s not real," her warm voice shook as she beseeched in a fluttery whisper, "I was just playing the game -”

“I know, he murmured back icily, “And this is just losing.”

Sherlock entered the final digit of the four-digit alphanumeric code, holding up the phone with its screen to face her way, the code to their short-lived acquaintanceship written in big capital letters like her death sentence.

I AM

[S] [H] [E] [R]

LOCKED

A warm, helpless tear escaped her saucer-wide eyes as he pressed the enter key, a musical click sounding as it unlocked the main page listing out her many folders and settings; her entire fortress was now bare, and everything she held as her power was laid to waste. She became very aware of her crumbling predicament.

“There you are, brother," Sherlock stepped aside, offering the Vertu phone to a stunned Mycroft who took it from him mutely. "I hope the contents will make up for any inconvenience I may have caused you tonight.”

“I’m certain they will,” Mycroft mused as he eyed the contents of the phone, scrolling through the folders.

With the game over for many and his part played duly, Consulting Detective Sherlock Holmes made to leave, briskly heading straight for the door, but not without remarking at his brother in his wake, “If you’re feeling kind, lock her up. Otherwise, let her go; I doubt she’ll survive long without her ‘protection’.”

“Are you expecting me to beg?!” a distressed Irene gasped after his retreating form.

“Yes.” Sherlock paused at the threshold, not granting her so much as a glance.

Irene swallowed a burning lump in her throat that tasted a lot like her wounded pride. “Please.”  

The detective turned to look at her quietly, his expression unkindly stoic and observant.

Never before had Irene Adler felt so naked in her life. She mustered enough courage to speak, her voice wet and distraught, “You’re right; I won’t even last six months.”

She blinked at him hopefully.

“Sorry about dinner,” was all Sherlock stated, before turning away and disappearing out the door, while a tearful Irene watched him with red-rimmed eyes and devastated resignation. The room fell silent, save for the crisp click of the door pulled shut.

Checkmate.

Chapter Text

A few months passed since the tumultuous roller coaster of an experience stretching the course of eleven months that John Watson lovingly dubbed as the 'scandal that happened in Belgravia'.

The rains doused a gloomy film of wet and damp upon the City of Innumerable Cases.

John particularly hated the wetter days and especially when he had forgotten his little umbrella at home.

Begrudgingly, he trudged up the street in quick steps, pulling up the collar of his green Folk overcoat to shield himself from the thin rain drumming on him. Squinting against the drizzle fighting to keep his eyes washed blind, he spotted a tall figure in black, back as straight as an arrow, stationed like a sentinel outside Speedys Café with an open umbrella keeping him dry from the falling rain. Small wisps of grey smoke plumed from under the umbrella hood as the figure breathed out from the cigarette perched elegantly between short, manicured fingers.

Drenched, John came up to the figure. “You don’t smoke,” the blond doctor threw out as a greeting.

Mycroft Holmes gave him a sullen pull of his lips. “I also don’t frequent cafes,” he enunciated the word as if it was an insult to his pride and dignity.

He unceremoniously dropped the stub of his cigarette onto the pavement and crushed it under the heel of his immaculately black shoe. Once he’d crisply folded his umbrella and picked up his briefcase, he walked into the café, John trailing in just behind him like a wet dog.

The café was warm, secluded and cosy, smelling of tea, coffee and pastries. A cup of coffee each, John and Mycroft sat across from each other at one of the small square tables. While John gladly sipped from his steaming mug, Mycroft mechanically produced a plastic ziplocked package from his briefcase and set it on the table. Through its transparent material, John noticed that it contained some documents and a telltale bulge. A thin label on the plastic read ‘Restricted Access: Confidential’ with the British Government seal next to it.

“The file on Irene Adler??” John asked casually.

“Closed forever,” Mycroft sent him a polite smile. “I am about to go inform my brother, or if you prefer, you are, that she somehow got herself into the Witness Protection scheme in America; new name, new identity. She will survive and thrive, but he will never see her again.”

“Why would he care?” John shrugged. “He despised her at the end. Won’t even mention her by name, just as ‘The Woman’.”

“Is that loathing or a salute?” Mycroft mused, “One of a kind, the one woman who matters?”

John narrowed his eyes, disagreeing. “He’s not like that; he doesn’t feel things that way, I don’t think.”

Mycroft breathed in carefully, adjusting his posture on the uncomfortable chair like a gentleman. “My brother has the brain of a scientist or a philosopher, yet he elects to be a detective. What might we deduce about his heart?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I,” Mycroft admitted with a sigh. “But initially he wanted to a pirate.”

John looked at the British Government Official confusedly, not exactly sure if the man was joking or not. Mycroft Holmes certainly never joked, so John simply brushed it off as another interesting tidbit about Sherlock that the man himself would never share.

Sherlock could be very defensive about himself.

John pursed his lips thoughtfully. “He’ll be okay with this Witness Protection thing, never seeing her again. He’ll be fine,” he nodded reassuringly.

“I agree,” Mycroft replied, before adding a bit darkly, “That’s why I decided to tell him that.”

John stared at him quietly as he processed the statement. “Instead of what?”

Mycroft looked solemn. “She’s dead.”

The rain outside continued to beat in a steady drum against the roof as the two men stared at each other in silence.

Mycroft broke said silence smoothly. “She was captured by a terrorist cell in Karachi two months ago and beheaded.”

John cleared his throat, looking down into his mug of coffee pensively. The empathetic part of him pulsed morosely, but his logical side trained by prolonged exposure to a certain high functioning sociopath lit up in alert.

“It was definitely her? She’s done this before.”

“I was thorough this time,” Mycroft squared his shoulder ever so slightly, “It would take Sherlock Holmes to fool me. And I don’t think he was on hand, do you?”

John merely looked on, not sure what to make of it all.

“So,” Mycroft pushed the file towards John, before lacing his fingers at the desk and looking expectantly at him. “What shall we tell Sherlock?”

In about 10 minutes, with their coffee paid for, they departed Speedys Cafe and stepped into the hall of 221B. Mycroft suggested John go up to Sherlock with the file, while he waited downstairs.

Bracing himself, John walked up the stairs to their living room, hoping Sherlock was still home and not off on an impromptu adventure somewhere at the other end of England.

Promptly, he found his friend in the kitchen peering down the eyepiece of the microscope, studying a glass slide of smears. He was exactly as John had left him the morning; dressed in his black dress shirt and dark trousers, teetering at the edge of five boring cases all of which he was solving simultaneously to make up for the lack of excitement.

“Clearly you’ve got news,” Sherlock called out without looking up from the eyepiece, “If it’s about the Leeds triple murder, it was the gardener. Did nobody notice the earring?”

John hovered near the kitchen door thoughtfully as Sherlock remained twiddling at the adjustments on the microscope.

“Hi, uh,” the doctor cleared his throat, clutching the file close to himself sheepishly, “No, it’s, um, it’s about Irene Adler.”

That made the cerulean eyes look up to fix John with a laser stare.

“Well?” Sherlock sat up straight, his face a pale blank mask of nothing, “Has something happened? Has she come back?”

“No, she’s…” John wracked his mind for excuses, “I just bumped into Mycroft downstairs, he had to take a call.”

“Is she back in London?” Sherlock got up to approach him. John looked up at the tall presence looming over him solemnly waiting for the answer.

Lying to Sherlock was a lost cause; the pale, expressionless irises saw through every little muscle twitch and nervous tick like the All-seeing Eyes of a God, but blast if he wasn’t chivalrous enough to go through with it anyway.

“She’s, uh,” John inhaled deeply, “She’s in America.”

“America?” Sherlock mused with a frown.

John nodded. “Got herself on a Witness Protection scheme, apparently. I don’t know how she swung it, but, uh, well, you know.”

“I know what?”

“Well, you won’t be able to see her again.”

“Why would I want to see her again?”

John sent him a sheepish smile. “Didn’t say you did.”

Sherlock stepped away, uninterested. Sitting at the table in front of the microscope again, he asked dismissively, “Is that her file?”

“Yes, I was just going to take it back to Mycroft.” John turned halfway to the door to leave but he paused to consider himself. He held up the file to address Sherlock. “Do you want to-”

“No,” came the stiff reply to the incomplete question as the man continued to peer into the eyepiece of the microscope, fingers delicately adjusting the dials.

John stared at him silently, considering his options. Sherlock had probably seen through the fact he’d been lying through his teeth and despite the possible ramifications of laying out the truth, John felt the tall man in black deserved the facts notwithstanding his denial of any attachment to the woman in question. He’d seen the brief electricity between them; Sherlock deserved to know.

“Listen, actually-”

“No, but I will have her camera phone though,” Sherlock stated, reaching out an open hand to John, eyes still on the eyepiece.

John blinked at him in surprise. “There’s nothing on it anymore; it’s been stripped.”

“I know but…,” Sherlock breathed, “I’ll still have it.”

John found himself untimely wedged between a rock and a hard place. “I’ve got to give this back to Mycroft, you can’t keep it.”

Sherlock’s pale hand remained extended out to John, something very softly beseeching about it despite the demanding nature of his long fingers.

“Sherlock, I have to give this to Mycroft; it’s the Government’s now. I couldn’t -”

“Please.”

Blue eyes unfocused on the eyepiece, Sherlock’s pale hand reached out an inch further. John’s mouth fell open a bit; Sherlock Holmes never begged.

John drew a silent breath, observing the closest he’d seen his friend depict a fleeting flash of a vulnerable, unnamed emotion humans succumbed to on a daily basis. Decidedly, John tugged the Ziplock open and pulled out the infamous Vertu Constellation Quest camera phone and carefully placed it on the extended hand. John watched, almost as if Time slowed, as Sherlock’s long fingers curled around it, pulling away to slip it into the back pocket of his tailored trousers.

“Thank you.”

John paused again, a little taken aback. He plucked at the blue strip of zip-lock for want to do something.

“Well,” John sighed, “I’d better take this back.”

“Yes.”

John stepped out into the living room and paused for the second time. If there was ever an indecisive point in his life that made him terribly relieved and absurdly anxious simultaneously, well that moment was it. Succumbing, he stepped back into the kitchen to address the occupied Detective.

“Did she ever text you again, after all that?”

“Once,” Sherlock responded, eyes whizzing between the particles he saw in the eyepiece, “A few months ago.”

“What did she say?” he asked softly.

“‘Goodbye, Mr Holmes’.”

John regarded Sherlock silently, trying to push down the blooming wave of sympathy that threatened to come out his throat with the truth.

She’s dead, Sherlock.

John cleared his throat, snapping shut his mouth. He sent the distracted Sherlock a nod, more for his own assurance than for the detective, before turning away clinically and quickly marching his way into the living room before he changed his mind for the umpteenth time.

Sherlock raised his eyes, watching the short blond man walk out of the flat. Quick measured steps sounded softer as he descended the stairs.

Finally alone again, Sherlock quietly unlocked his own iPhone, thumbing through his contacts to draw up some messages; the ones The Woman had sent him so many times, none of which he responded to, except one single one he’d sent as a holiday greeting. He got up and sauntered to the window casually as he read through them.

From: The Woman

[I’m not hungry, let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[Bored in a hotel. Join me, let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[John’s blog is HILARIOUS. I think he likes you more than I do. Let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[I can see tower bridge and the moon from my room. Work out where I am and join me.]

From: The Woman

[I saw you in the street today. You didn’t see me.]

From: The Woman

[You do know that hat actually suits you, don’t you?]

From: The Woman

[Oh for God’s sake. Let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[I like your funny hat.]

From: The Woman

[I’m in Egypt talking to an idiot. Get on a plane, let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[I’m not hungry, let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[You looked sexy on Crimewatch.]

From: The Woman

[Even you have got to eat. Let’s have dinner.]

From: The Woman

[BBC1 right now. You’ll laugh.]

From: The Woman

[I’m thinking of sending you a Christmas present.]

From: The Woman

[Mantelpiece.]

From: The Woman

[I’m not dead. Let’s have dinner.]

[Happy New year. - SH]

From: The Woman

[Goodbye Mr Holmes.]

He stared at the last words on his phone calmly, the sound of the relentless drizzling of rain drumming against the glass formed a soothing white noise.

Knelt on the dirty, dust-addled floor, dressed top to bottom in a black Burqa with a black hijab twirled around her head, all that was visible of The Woman’s form was her small hands and her pale face frightened and defeated. Her eyes were dull and filmed with tears, her thin pinkish lips quivering as she typed into her phone; the last wish she was granted. A terrorist stood at her side, masked in a black scarf. Armed with a rifle, he held out one hand impatiently, waiting for her to be done so that he could confiscate her phone.

She typed the last letter to her message before pressing the send key, its beep like a bell to announce her death sentence.

[Goodbye Mr Holmes.]

Just as she handed the phone over to the man, she felt footsteps behind her; the executioner had come in, armed with a large sword, its wide blade glinting in the headlights of the van parked near them. As he positioned himself, she could feel its sharp edge just inches away from her neck. Goosebumps of fear rose and fell across her skin despite the sickening heat.

She closed her eyes, awaiting unfathomable pain as warm tears escaped through her lashes.

A sudden female moan graced the air, its breathy tone rippling the silence like a feather landing on water.

Irene Adler tore open her eyes, her mouth parting. She turned to look up at the masked executioner behind her holding the sword to her head.

Through the opening in the black scarf that covered the man’s head, a pair of brilliant cerulean eyes stared back at her, pupils like black holes on bluish-green marble swirling with life and adrenaline.

“When I say run, run!” came the deep voice in a whisper.

She turned back to face ahead, as she heard him swing his sword up, and instead of bearing it down upon her head, she heard him turn and attack the other masked men stationed around them.

Knelt on the dirty floor, dressed in modest black, a smile of disbelief bloomed on Irene Adler's face as the ruckus around her raised in volume, yells and shouts of alarm and wet slashes of cut flesh peppering the air.

Sherlock smiled fondly at the memory, pulling out the camera phone from his back pocket. His smile burst into a breathy chuckle as he tossed up the phone to catch in again in his hand, observing with admiration its shiny black exterior and the golden V-shaped frown above the screen; the singular object that he had spent studying those six gruelling months, much like the phone, under the thumb of a woman.

“The Woman,” he mused to himself.

Sherlock Holmes carefully placed the camera phone in a drawer at the desk. He looked out the window, the rain streaming down in rivulets against the cold glass.

“The Woman.”

-The end-