Note: Still not willing to call this a chapter, but I'm on the verge of calling it a series. Continuation of sorts from my last two stories, "Questions We Ask Ourselves" and "Dark Corners." This one veers dangerously close to having a plot. Just close, though.

"You're a detective now, you tell me."

When the phone rang just after she got settled with a book and cup of tea and the house to herself, Joan figured it would be Sherlock or her mother, so she was surprised to see the caller ID.

"Captain Gregson — Sherlock left for the station an hour ago, he should be there—"

"Oh, he is, I just left him with the records manager arguing over classification systems for cold case files. She's either going to fall in love with him or never speak to me again."

"The records manager, your wife?"

"That'd be the one."

Joan had met Anna Nelson at the station few times, although she'd never seen her with Gregson. She could imagine the way they'd interact, comfortable and slightly sarcastic. Every time she saw Anna she thought she'd like to observe them together sometime, test her deduction. She had a sudden image of the world's most awkward dinner party in the brownstone lock room and shook her head.

"All right, then, what can I do for you?"

Gregson cleared his throat, then cleared it again. "Yeah. The thing is. I got a message this morning about a flag that came up linked to one of my recent cases." He stopped there.

She thought the connection had dropped until she heard the sound of an office door closing through the phone. Why he was stalling? "Okay? Is it something I can assist with?"

"Possibly. It's a sensitive matter, and it's going to put you in an awkward position."

"It's something to do with Sherlock."

"Yes. Maybe. It doesn't make sense, but if it did, then yes. It's a problem. Or it could be a problem, and I'd prefer to consult with you about it in person before going further." She'd never heard him have such difficulty getting to the point. Did not bode well. "Are you willing to meet me without telling Holmes before hand? I won't ask you not to fill him in after we talk, but I'd rather this start between us."

"This doesn't sound good, unless you're trying to plan a surprise party for him?" He coughed at that, about what it deserved, she supposed. "All right. It's not like I could reach him now anyway; phone reception in the records office is terrible."

"I know."

Of course he did. This was serious. That had to mean drugs, Rhys, or Moran. Rhys would be the simplest, she guessed; Moran worrisome but at least the man was locked up; and drugs: just the thought made her heart lurch in her chest. If he'd somehow relapsed without her knowing or noticing the signs. She broke out in a cold sweat. No. She would have seen something. It wasn't that. It couldn't be that. If she were still just his sober companion she could handle it, but now? She thought of Liam and what that had been like. It wasn't the same with Sherlock, but still. She didn't think she could go through that again.

He gave her the address of a brewpub in her neighborhood and said he'd be there in an hour.

She got there fifteen minutes early, and he was already there, sitting at the bar with a case file lying closed in front of him, next to a half-drunk pint of beer. It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and the place was almost empty.

"I'm not going back to the station today," he said, a little defiant when he saw her eye the glass.

She put up her hands in a gesture of mollification. "I was just trying to decide if I want something on tap or not."

"You drink?"

She didn't reply but gestured to the bartender and pointed to his glass. "So. What is this about? You've got me a little worried."

"Let's get a booth." He picked up the file and his glass and walked to the back of the pub, to the last booth, and waited for her to sit before sliding in across from her. Her hands felt clammy. He took a deep breath before speaking.

"I don't know what you know, but I told Holmes I wasn't going to forget what he planned to do to that guy last year. I don't trust him anymore, and honestly I don't know how you can. This thing," he tapped the file, "Well, it really makes me not trust him, if it is what it looks like." He drank down a good half of what remained in his glass. "I'm not going to let him get past me again." He set the glass down hard, emphasis or shaky motor control, she wasn't sure.

Moran, then. She was almost relieved. "What is it?" She had her own pint now and took a long, slow swallow.

He turned the file around and slid it over to her. "Every now and then fingerprints come up that are linked to someone known to be deceased. Usually it's a case of misidentification; rarely it's an old print somehow preserved. That's not the case here. This is a new print from a person who supposedly died in 2011. It was flagged a few months ago and eventually made its way to me because the name of the deceased appears in one of my case files, and that's the most recent mention of the person. My lucky day. Go ahead, take a look."

She had taken the file when he passed it to her but as he spoke she started pressing her hands down on it, as if the top cover was going to spring open of its own accord. 2011. Dead. Two years.

No.

She opened the file.

Yes.

Irene Adler.

"What does this mean?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Her raised voice caught the attention of the bartender, who looked over at them, concerned. She continued through gritted teeth. "Is she alive?"

"It's possible. I can't rule out some sort of manipulation. You know what kinds of crazy things are possible these days, you've seen those cases. Faked DNA and blood. Why not fingerprints? There's also video, which, of course is a lot easier to fake."

"Surveillance camera where the fingerprint was found." Cameras everywhere these days. She remembered the screenshot of Moran in the brownstone. Sherlock had reviewed and captured that image himself, but normally the video was processed daily by facial recognition software and deleted if it only captured known faces. His and hers. He'd shown her how the system worked, but she'd never examined it closely, not wanting to see herself on his computer like that.

He nodded. "An ATM machine. Thing is, the ATM video is from the same time Moran got here. I have a hard time believing that sort of coincidence, you know? I've put in an order to find out what account was accessed at the video's timestamp. May take a few days, but in the mean time, at least you can make the ID." He gestured to the file.

She flipped the top page over to find a grainy black and white image, a poor-quality screencap from a poor-quality video. A woman wearing sunglasses. White, with pale hair, maybe blonde. It took a moment for her to shift gears and process what he'd said. "What? No, I can't ID her. I don't know what she looks like. I don't know if this is her."

His eyebrows went up in surprise, but he didn't say anything.

"Sherlock told me he only had two photos, and neither of them were good likenesses. He didn't show them to me, and he certainly never described her to me. He doesn't talk about her."

She thought back to her book, her comfortable bed, her now-cold cup of tea sitting on the chair she used as a bedside table, still. After six months, she couldn't get a proper table? Why had she answered the phone? Why did she even have one? Why did they have to be invented?

There was no way this was not going to be terrible. Every scenario she imagined meant betrayal and heartbreak, a whole spectrum of miserable possibilities. She wanted to let her head drop to the table. Better yet, crawl under it. She settled for pushing her fingers into her forehead, letting her hands screen her face for a moment.

"Miss Watson?"

'Miss Watson'. What the hell. Was it a professional thing, or something he picked up from Sherlock? Never mind. It didn't matter. Classic displacement. The name he called her was not actually what she was upset about. Nor the bedside chair. Get on with it. She dropped her hands, looked back at him, and let out a heavy sigh.

"If we want confirmation, we're going to have to go to him."

"Sherlock."

"Hmm. Anything but Thai, you're in a rut with the Thai, Watson."

"I'm not ordering dinner now. Something's come up. I think, I think it's what we talked about. How Moriarty's coming after us."

He turned around then, away from books he was reading (apparently three at once, she could see) in his room, and came into the kitchen. She was sitting at the table facing the fridge, and she'd moved the other chair to be next to it, facing the garden windows.

"He's found a way, somehow, I don't know how, to pull you away. Separate you from me, redirect your attention. Consume it, I think. I'm afraid. I'm afraid it will work."

"What is it?" He was clearly skeptical, not of her, she didn't think, but of the premise.

Suddenly she remembered the dead look in his eyes when he first saw that pool of blood in the accountant's apartment. Convincing her he needed to relearn how to work without her. Her own naiveté and the loss of that innocence when she saw the security camera photo and he told her his plans. Waving the icepick and heading off to kill or be killed. She started shaking and felt almost faint for a moment, then cold. There was a buzzing in her ears. A glass of water was pressed into her hand. "Watson, what is the matter?" He looked anxiously at her, his earlier arrogance discarded. That helped.

"Please sit down." She tried to take slow, steady breaths. A sip of water. When he complied, she thought for a minute, rejected the idea, and then decided to go ahead.

"What is going on?"

"Give me your hands."

He looked at her warily and didn't move. She laid her hands out, palms up. "Take my hands."

"Watson..."

"Sherlock, please. It's a simple request."

He slowly brought his arms up and gingerly rested his hands on hers. She grasped his firmly, and after a moment he returned the pressure, holding her hands with the same tension. He stared down at the backs of his hands and the tips of her fingers curled around the edges. His palms felt warm in hers, and heavy. She squeezed them lightly and took a deep breath.

"Someone wants to make us believe Irene is alive."

As she expected, he jerked back and she held on tightly, her arms pulled up off the table and stretched forward, almost as far as she could reach, the table edge hard against her ribs. She squeezed tighter and pulled their arms back down again. He was going to pull out of her grip any second. His eyes looked wild, not cold and hard as they had before. She hoped that was a good sign.

"Please. Stay with me. This is what they want. Sherlock."

She could feel him shaking now, from shock and fury. He didn't pull any farther away but his grip got stronger until she felt the bones in her hands shift. She shook their arms side to side to try to get his attention. "Remember: This is our problem now. Not just yours. We're partners. Right?" Her calm voice was having little effect, so she dropped the façade.

"Hey! This is what I was afraid of — you pulling away, ditching me again. Sherlock! Sit down!" The barked command startled him and brought his focus back to see her, arms taut and pulling his down, half-bent over the table. He stopped pulling and loosened his hands, letting her sit back in her chair. He wasn't holding her hands anymore but hadn't pulled out of her grip. He was breathing hard, like he'd just crossed a finish line. He hadn't said a word.

"Please. Sit down." He eased back into his chair and she let his hands go, slipping hers out from underneath. He left his lying on the table. She took a drink from the glass and rubbed her ribs with her free hand.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Did I hurt your hands, too?"

"No, I'm fine." She sighed. "I'm sorry. I wish we didn't have to do this."

"Tell me. What is the evidence? Where is it?" He was grimacing now, and angry, but still here. She felt like crying.

"I think it's identity theft. Gregson has it." He gave her an angry look which irritated her enough to push the tears back. "Yes, Gregson came to me first. I'm sorry. He wanted my advice on how to proceed. You know why. If that pisses you off, fine, but you can't blame him, and what did you want me to do, refuse to meet him?"

"Is he going to try to keep it from me?"

"No, of course not. He's, well, he's actually out back, waiting for me to call or open the door."

He didn't say anything right away, just clenched his teeth for a moment and sighed. "He doesn't trust me. Another officer parked out front?"

She nodded.

He sighed again, then looked at her. "Thank you for helping me not do something stupid. Again." He got up and paced around the kitchen, more contemplative than frenetic.

She took a sip from the glass and watched him over the rim. "Do you want my summary first, or do you just want to see the file?"

He paused in the middle of the room. He looked toward the back door, and she could almost feel his need to get his hands on the file and absorb everything he could from it. She picked up her phone.

"No, don't call him yet. I feel like letting him stew a while longer, I admit." He swung his hands to clasp them behind his back, and his expression shifted to what she thought of as his teaching face, lips pursed and a strange mix of encouragement and exasperation around his eyes, like she might say anything and he didn't know if he'd want to beam or wince.

"You could use the practice presenting a case, Watson. Tell me what you know." He gave her a little nod and did not smile. "Partner."