The Truth about Irene

Mycroft made his way across the rain-slicked sidewalk from the door of Baker Street and back into his black car, which then folded itself into the traffic and drove off toward the heart of London. Watson saw him off and then continued on foot, no doubt into the waiting arms of some woman or another of his acquaintance… and Sherlock was, as always, left alone.

The phone was cool in his hand and he turned it over and over in his fingers. At its touch, he instantly recalled the pains it had cost him and how his own frailty, weakness really, had been laid bare in the pursuit of its secrets.

The truth of her fate, finally known, unsettled him. True, the former uncertainty of it had gnawed away at his self-possession ever since he had turned her precious phone over to Mycroft all those months ago. However, upon hearing the truth of her fate from Mycroft's own lips while hiding unseen in Speedy's starkly lit kitchen, Sherlock was jolted by an unaccustomed feeling of guilt and remorse.

He would never have fallen for the "she's gone to the US to have a new life" story even if it had been told to him by someone less painfully honest and completely guileless than John Watson - even if it had come from his cold and calculating older brother. But to know for certain that he had been the cause of her death….that was more burden than he could bear. She had humiliated him, but he wondered if the price she had paid was a fair one. He flipped the phone over, scrolling through their conversations, one-sided as they were, until he reached the last one. Knowing, as he now did, that he had cost her not only her protection, as she called it, but her very life, he was uneasy.

He imagined for the first time, but not the last, that he had been be there, shrouded in black, his sharp cheeks and wavy thatch of dark hair obscured by the blackness of the hood and cloak, a scimitar sharp and gleaming in his hand.

She would be on her knees, utterly helpless and at the mercy of a pack of villains. And he would rescue her. He would spare her life – such as it was – not for her sake, but for his own. For though he was not capable of love as it is best known, he did have some feeling for her – respect, or admiration even. Admiration from Sherlock Holmes was perhaps a far rarer, and therefore, more valuable commodity than love could ever hope to be.

But the image was just that – a creation of his own mind forged to spare him the years of self-recrimination he was bound to feel for what he had done to her. The rain fell outside the window and Sherlock looked out into it for some time. The Woman was gone beyond recall and there was nothing even he, the great detective, could do about it.

Two months after the publication of the highly edited events made famous in Dr. John Watson's blog, Sherlock Holmes received a lengthy, if anonymous, handwritten letter in his mailbox. It bore a post mark from the Falkland Islands, but even under Sherlock's most intense gaze, it offered little other information.

My Dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes,

The rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

You were truly an adversary worthy of my time and attention. Your diligence in revealing all my dirty little secrets saved me from a life-time of looking back over my shoulder. But as it is now, I can move on with my new life, unfettered by the past. For that I owe you, at the very least, an explanation.

Even in this modern age, it can be tough to make a living for a young single girl of no means and no family. Blackmail seemed my only recourse in my youth. I knew it to be distasteful, but it beat prostitution. Then of course, there was often little separating the two - one was necessary for the other to be perpetrated. It was only a few years later that I stumbled upon a far better ploy. The dominatrix trade was neater in many ways and so much less intimate. I never had to be physically involved if I chose not to be and I was, more often than not, merely an observer. It often seemed the higher the level of the client, the greater the power, the more debased the client desired to be. And the more debased they were, the looser their lips became. There is no shortage of people desperate to reveal their deepest secrets as you well know.

But years of the business - trading information and building up my protective layer of secrets - had begun to wear me down. I had accumulated a large amount of wealth and felt it was time to disappear. I had needed to wash my hands and walk away clean. I had a plan, but I needed help to pull it off – I needed the best help money couldn't buy.

It is important to me that you know that I never screwed over anyone who didn't deserve to be screwed over – or liked to be. The problem was everyone deserves to be screwed over at least some of the time. Except you. You were never anything but honest and admirable and brilliant. (I must confess that had things been different…well).

Nevertheless, coming to know you through your fine friend's blogs and you and your brother through our mutual acquaintance, I knew you were the one person who could be seen to defeat me and render me powerless, and therefore, make me no longer a target of revenge. If you had all my secrets, no one would be pursuing me for them. My 'death' was merely the icing on the proverbial cake. My plan worked splendidly and you lived up to all expectations. There is only one regard on which I look with dissatisfaction.

I believe I hurt you - I did not think I could from all I had heard about you. I imagined my woman's wiles and artifice would have fallen on a deaf heart – not a surprisingly tender one. I could see almost from the beginning that you were intrigued by me. I assumed it was a sort of professional respect – one between intellectual equals. But that night in your flat, I realized it was more. As you felt my pulse quicken in surprise, I felt yours racing. And as I am not totally heartless, I knew I had to alter my plan so that you could not be blamed by your elder brother for the outcome. I chose a new password the next morning that I felt sure you would eventually lit upon if I played my hand just right.

The contents of the phone I gave you were plenty damning and who would ever have thought that there was more? No one. So, you had your reputation intact, and when I met my untimely 'death' at the end of a sword, any remaining secrets died with me.

Now, I will not confirm or deny that I still have any secrets worth keeping, but perhaps you, of all people, know better than that. Rest assured, though, that they honestly will die with me.

I remain, dear Mr. Sherlock Holmes, very truly yours.

IA

Sherlock read the letter several times, committing it to his copious memory, and then burned it in the grate, watching the embers slowly fade to grey ash. For the next several days he found himself looking at the phone or flipping it over and over in his hand. He kept it always as a reminder. Not as a reminder of having been beaten, as he surely was, but as a reminder that he was not so alone in the world. And when he spoke of Irene Adler to anyone, he always did so under the honourable title of The Woman.