A/N This fic was written for the Sherlock Remix challenge. It is a remix of Another Unfamiliar Ceiling by Moonblossom, which can be found on AO3. If you haven't read it, which you should, Irene and Sherlock are working to bring down Moriarty's network and Irene has persuaded Sherlock to send John a text telling him that he is alive and will be home soon.
Thanks to Calamitybreak for beta.
"If I never see snow again, it will be too soon," Irene comments.
Sherlock gives her a dark look, which Irene has come to recognise as meaning 'stop occupying my precious brainwaves with your inane attempts at conversation.' Irene sighs and stuffs her hands deeper into the pockets of her coat.
It won't be long, now, she reminds herself. One loose end left to be tied and they can go back. Sherlock, to the bright lights of London with the little army doctor keeping the home fire burning, and Irene to her sunny apartment in Spain, with the row of orange trees growing outside and the balcony that overlooks the sea. It's only for a few more hours that she'll have to endure this eerily silent snow covered forest and feet that, despite her fur-lined snow boots and several pairs of socks, feel like they're turning to ice.
"Are you certain this is the right place?" Irene asks Sherlock, stamping her feet.
Sherlock throws her a contemptuous look, as if the question is beneath his notice, but Irene can read tension in the stiffness of his back.
Over the past few months she has become intimately familiar with Sherlock's silences. There is the deduction silence, an electric stillness buzzing with suppressed energy. There's the danger silence, the black and burning tension that means Sherlock is struggling with frustration or despair – and which is usually Irene's only warning sign before he goes does something that nearly gets both of them killed. And then there is that other kind of silence - the far away wanting look that appears on his face when Sherlock is particularly unguarded. The last expression has appeared more and more often since their conversation two weeks ago, since his message to John. There is something new in it, something a little bit hopeful.
She isn't sure why, but it makes her heart ache.
Irene wonders if Sherlock has this effect on everyone – perhaps it is a side effect of his deductive abilities that he leaves people feeling raw, their usual emotional safeguards stripped away. Or perhaps it is simply that she and Sherlock are so similar. It isn't exactly surprising that Irene's usual methods of distancing herself from pain and need become less effective when she finds herself looking in an obviously hurting human mirror. This won't do, she thinks.
Irene has always maintained a high degree of control over her emotional life: it's a necessity of the lifestyle she had chosen. One cannot throw one's heart around with abandon and expect to remain a free agent (and Irene needs, more than anything else, to be free).
Affection, for instance, is a luxury in Irene's view. Like Belgian chocolate or really good champagne, she indulges herself with regular but controlled doses. Kate was an excellent choice in that respect. Devoted in her own way, but detached enough to understand that however much Irene enjoyed their quieter moments together – curled up together in bed, for instance, with Kate combing through her hair – they were only moments. They had been selected and designed to fulfil a passing appetite, not a promise of anything deeper. Irene has only been in love once in her life and she has no plans to repeat the experience.
Being dead has put rather a crimp in Irene's routine, in that respect. Sex is easy to find if she wants it, but affection is more difficult to come by, especially when living on the lam with an emotionally stunted genius.
Unlike her, Irene suspects that Sherlock had spent most of his life ignoring the urge to give and receive affection. While she had spent her time portioning out embraces like an athlete on a controlled diet, he had attempted to starve the need out of himself. It is a little painful to see someone so wilfully ignorant about one of the basic necessities in life. Irene imagines that if want were water it wouldn't occur to Sherlock that he was wet until he had almost drowned.
"Where is he?" Sherlock snarls, jolting Irene out of her reverie. He has his phone in hand now, gloved fingers tapping at the screen.
"He's probably just been delayed." Irene says.
Sherlock swears under his breath. Their contact was supposed to have been here an hour ago with the information that would secure Sebastian Moran's place in a Russian prison cell.
"I'm going to look," Sherlock says abruptly.
"Wait a minute…"
Sherlock simply shakes his head, and takes off, launching himself under the dark, snow canopied cover of the trees. Irene hesitates just a moment, but then goes to follow him. She doesn't fancy standing around on her own in the middle of a darkening forest. God, this place is creepy - like something out of a German fairy tale.
Sherlock strides off ahead of her, ignoring the way his coat snags on passing bushes and kicking up the snow in flurries. Irene stumbles after him, feet slipping on the uneven ground.
"Sherlock," she hisses, irritated.
To her surprise, Sherlock stops. He reaches an arm out as if to stop her from walking past him.
"What is it?"
Sherlock points. Irene looks where he is pointing and then swallows. There is a smudge of something on the ground, bright red against the soft white snow. Sherlock, face set, walks the couple of steps back to where Irene is standing and closes his fist hard around her wrist, and pulling her along after him. They follow smears and spatters of blood through the thick underbrush and into a clearing.
"No," says Sherlock coming to a halt. "No, no, no."
A man lies spread eagled on his back in a pool of blackening blood. Their contact.
Irene pulls out her phone, automatically keying in the local emergency number but Sherlock shakes his head at her.
"Too late," he snaps. "Obviously."
Irene looks again at the man's face, livid and already blackening, ice crystals in his hair. His throat gapes open, dark blood crusting his shirt collar and the snow around him.
"Obviously," she echoes.
They both stare at the body for a moment. Sherlock walks over jerkily, moving to kneel beside the body.
"His throat was cut," Sherlock says. "But he would have suffered beforehand." He lifts the man's hands, inspecting mangled bloodied fingers. "He's been tortured. Crude job, but no doubt it was effective. "
Abruptly Irene remembers her last meeting with the man, over vodka shots in smoke filled bar. He'd winked at her, delivered a rather direct (though complimentary) assessment of her personal charms, before cutting to business. He had a wife, who he wasn't faithful to, and two small children. He'd seen collaborating with Irene as his chance to get out of the criminal way of life, to focus on being a better father.
She leans back against a tree, blinking hard in an attempt to prevent the two images from coalescing in her mind, the living man and the frozen bloodied corpse. She has other things to concentrate on.
"You think this is Moran's work?" she asks.
"Yes." Sherlock says tightly.
Irene bites her lip. "Then he knows we're after him."
Sherlock doesn't reply but continues to stare down at the body, as if it might provide him with some kind of answer. The body looks blankly back, a gruesome parody of a staring competition.
"How long has he been dead?" Irene asks.
Sherlock tilts his head ever so slightly in Irene's direction to reply. "Difficult to say, in these temperatures. John would be able to–" He stops himself, glancing away from the body, a flash of pain crossing his features.
"So, he knows about us." Irene says reasonably. "That complicates matters, but it isn't the end of the world. Even if he goes to ground, we'll catch him out eventually."
"That's unlikely," says Sherlock. "Moran doesn't have a reputation for caution. We've pulled apart his network, destroyed his career, murdered his boss. He'll want revenge."
Irene swallows. "You think he'll come after us?"
"Perhaps," Sherlock says. "Or…."
What little colour there has been in Sherlock's face flees as he stares straight ahead.
"Sherlock," Irene says. Over the last year she's seen Sherlock on the edge of a meltdown enough times to recognise the signs. "Sherlock."
"I don't…" Sherlock says, and Irene kneels down in the snow beside him. She places her hands on either side of his head firmly, turning his face to look at her.
"What are you thinking?"
"The snipers." Sherlock says numbly. "There were three of them. Moran – Moran was sent after John."
There is a silence as Irene think about this. "You can't know that he'll…"
"I can. We profiled him, remember? Angry, sadistic, fanatically devoted to following his ex-master's orders. This is exactly what he will do."
"Okay," Irene says. "So, he'll probably go after John. But we have time on our side. Moran doesn't have any friends he can call on anymore, you and I have seen to that. It will take him a while to track John down and by the time he does, we'll be ready for him."
Sherlock blinks, and then nods, her words evidently seeping in. He gets to his feet clumsily. "I need to call him," he says. "Tell him to get somewhere safe."
Irene is way ahead of him. She hands him her phone, John's number already keyed in. Sherlock presses the call button and they listen as the phone rings and rings.
"He could be out," Irene points out. "At work, asleep…"
Sherlock ignores her, cutting the call and firing off a text instead. "I'm phoning Mycroft," he says.
He starts to stride away from her as he dials another number. Irene has to scramble to catch up almost tripping over a fallen log, and getting scratched by passing bushes. While he's in this mood, losing sight of Sherlock could be dangerous.
Ahead of her Sherlock stops so suddenly that Irene almost runs into him.
"What do you mean, you've lost track?" The voice at the other end of the phone seems to be gabbling abject apologies.
"Since when?" Sherlock snarls. "Why was I not informed?" There's another brief pause. "I am incommunicado because I am on the run from the criminal organisation you set on my heels," he says. "I asked you to do one thing…."
Sherlock lets out a bellow of frustration and throws the phone to the ground, where he promptly crushes it under his heel, flattening it into a cracked lump.
"What is it with you and my phones?" Irene mutters to herself.
Sherlock's expression when he turns to look at her is dark and more than a little frightening. "John is missing," he says. "He has been for over a week."
Irene sucks in a breath. "Moran couldn't possibly have got to him that quickly."
"No, unless, unless…." Sherlock tugs at his hair a little, "We've missed something, Irene. What did we miss?"
"We didn't miss anything," Irene replies as calmly and patiently as she can. "There has to an explanation…"
"And if we did? He could already be… This isyourfault," Sherlock rounds on her abruptly.
"My fault?" she repeats incredulously.
"You told me to text him. I've been distracted… sentiment. Thinking about …Christmas. Going home – its – so stupid, I've been cutting corners. And now .. if he….,"
Right, Irene thinks, time to cut this panic attack short before it grows claws and starts maiming people. She catches hold of him by the front of his coat and shoves him hard until his back hits the trunk of a tree.
"Stop it," she hisses. "Fucking stop it. You're babbling total nonsense, do you know that? It's pathetic. Do you really think you're any use to anyone like this?" It's brutal, but Irene has learned that on Sherlock, brutality is what works –or at least, what works from her. Sherlock closes his mouth and stares down at her.
"Here's what we're going to do," Irene says. "We are going to go back to the hotel room and then we are going to book you onto the next flight to London. You are going to find John, and deal with Moran. In the meanwhile I am going to go back into town wring a few of these pathetic lowlifes dry for any scrap of intel we might have missed. OK?"
Sherlock swallows. "OK."
"Come on, then." Irene says curtly, heading off again.
They drive back in silence. Irene taps her fingers on the steering wheel, replaying the last few weeks over in her head. Had they make a mistake? They'd seemed to close to unravelling it all, so close to the end.
Irene looks sideways at Sherlock. He's staring straight ahead, face impossibly pale under a mop of black hair. There is a smear of dried blood on his shirt collar, and she's oddly reminded of a line from a fairy tale,oh how I wish I had a child with hair as black as the raven, skin like the snow, lips as red as blood….
They'd put on a production of Snow White at school, she remembers. She'd been cast as the huntsman, though she'd rather hankered after the part of the Evil Queen. And, of course, Georgina had been Snow White.
Irene shakes her head a little as she always does when she thinks of Georgina. Which is more and more often recently, damn Sherlock and his peculiar ability to psych her out.
She'd been so young back then, a different person really. Soft and impressionable in a way that seems impossible now.
They'd met at school. Georgina had been something of an anomaly at Lady Margaret's. It was one of the cheapest and most indifferent girl's boarding schools around, the kind of place families sent their daughters when they didn't know what else to do with them. Irene had probably been the only girl there who had chosen to be there, though of course she didn't mention that fact to anyone else.
She'd joined late, in fifth form and had quickly assumed the role of Queen Bee. The girls who weren't imitating her hairstyle and begging to sit at her table at lunch dropped their gaze when Irene met their eyes, aware that they would be made social pariahs if they happened to get on her nerves.
Georgina was the only one who seemed oblivious to Irene's influence – not that Irene had noticed it, at first. Not until that one day that they'd been in French class together. Irene spoke French fluently already and, bored, had decided to occupy her time by seeing how long it would take to get Alice Phillips to cry. Irene had informed the rest of the girls that no one was to speak to Alice for the duration of the lesson, addressing her existence only by reference to the (imaginary) horrible smell that pervaded her corner of the room. Most of the girls had leapt into the part with gusto and Irene watched in amusement as person after person shrank from Alice's desk, wincing as if overwhelmed by an unbearable odour.
Her enjoyment was rather spoiled when Georgina abruptly got up, rolled her eyes, and plonked herself in the seat next to Alice. "You smell fine," she told the quivering lipped girl, and went on to spend the rest of the class at her side.
Of course, Irene had been furious. She's watched Georgina like a hawk after that, determined to locate all her weaknesses, the better to destroy her later. However, the more she watched Georgina, the more she found her anger fading away and a strange fascination taking its place.
Georgina seemed ordinary at first glance, but was, in fact, rather different from the girls around her. She said very little, but listened to the infighting, the gossiping and jockeying for position that formed small school politics with a kind of amused detachment as if they were all creatures of a new and peculiar species that she was studying. She didn't have close friends, but seemed to be well liked by everyone who knew her, and never had trouble finding partners in class.
She was prettier than you would have thought at first glance, too; her pale skin peppered by amber coloured freckles, hair thick, dark and soft looking. Once, in class, Irene was called to the front to the teacher and was startled to realise she'd been staring at Georgina without stopping for almost forty minutes.
When they were both cast in the school play, Irene decided to make a move. She addressed Georgina in the dressing rooms after their first rehearsal, hands on hips.
"I think we should be friends." She said.
Georgina raised her eyebrows. "What makes you think I'd want to be friends with you?"
Irene took a step closer, and smiled at her. "I'll make you want to."
Irene had felt the breath catch a little in her chest, as a light in Georgina's eyes kindled.
They'd quickly become more or less inseparable. Irene dropped most of her followers, who were dull anyway, and spent most of her free time in Georgina's dormitory instead. It was an easy progression for them , from friends to lovers. Georgina wasn't even close to being the first person Irene had slept with, but she was, as Irene discovered, more than usually good at it. Irene can still remember, with a stab of nostalgia, the unexpected smoothness of Georgina's skin against her mouth, the small soft noises she'd made when she was touched, the way she'd looked at Irene as if she was some kind of holy thing, eyes wide and awed.
Georgina was also the only person at school Irene had told about her parent's accident, and about having to go and live with her Aunt and Uncle. She was the only person Irene had ever told about the looks her Uncle had started to give her, the disgusting things he whispered sometimes in her ear, the nasty crawling feeling she felt under her skin when he was near.
"You can't go back there," Georgina said decidedly.
"I'm not afraid of him," Irene had snapped, cheeks stinging a little with humiliation. "He's pathetic."
Georgina had given her a long and careful look. "You areafraid." She said. "It's perfectly sensible of you. He's older and bigger, and you didn't have anywhere else to live, until now. Come home with me, my parents won't care."
Georgina's family might have been a little put out by her insistence that Irene come home with her every holiday, but they soon got used to it. Georgina could be intractable once she had made her mind up about a thing, and it was more trouble to fight her than it was to simply give in. Over the next two years, the two of them had become such a fixture in each other's lives that Irene had honestly believed it would last forever.
In fact it took surprisingly little time for everything to fall apart. They'd rented a flat together in London. Georgina was due to start studying Law at Goldsmith's in October while Irene had an offer of a place from RADA and was filling in time waitressing. Away from the cramped close world of their school, Irene had found herself suddenly at liberty and a more than a little giddy at the sensation.
Georgina said nothing when Irene began staying out night after night, coming home mid morning, still not entirely sober. She said nothing about when Irene met a group of girls in a bar, and took off to France for a week without telling her. When she came home one sunny afternoon to find Irene and another girl shagging on their sofa, however, she'd burst into tears.
"You don't own me." Irene had pointed out, tearfully. Georgina had said that she knew that, but she got very quiet after that, retreating to her room for long periods of time to bury herself in her books.
A fortnight later Irene had come home to find a floppy haired boy in a blazer sitting on their sofa, and sipping tea.
"This is my boyfriend." Georgina told her, and Irene had turned right around and left the flat.
She'd moved into her own place after that. Georgina had tried to call a few times but Irene had refused to answer. The words my boyfriendseemed to have lodged themselves somewhere under her breastbone, sharp as a knife blade. It was a denial of everything they'd been to each other. She didn't understand why Georgina couldn't see that the other girls weren't important, it was just sex – Irene had never promised to love to anyone but Georgina. Irene spent a while coping with matters by drinking rather too much and dropping out of drama school (at least she had told herself that that was coping, and somehow been convinced, however flawed the logic seemed now).
One day, she'd heard through the grapevine that Georgina was engaged. She'd poured away the wine after that and taken out a notebook, planned herself a life where she would be in control and wouldn't rely on any one person for what she needed ever again.
"We're here." Sherlock's voice sounds low and rough, snapping Irene out of her thoughts.
She parks their hired car in the dingy hotel car park, and they head inside. Sherlock stands back as she gets the keys from the receptionist, tapping his foot restlessly, then snatches them from her, bounding up the stairs. When Irene catches up to him she finds he has stopped short and is staring at the door in front of him.
"What is it?" Irene asks him, and Sherlock looks up, raising a finger to his lips for her to be quiet. He points to the lock. Irene approaches cautiously, and bends down to look at it. For a moment she only sees her reflection blurred by the unpolished brass. Then she notices it.
A single thin scratch in the varnish directly under the lock. That hadn't been there this morning.
Irene reaches into her pocket, and pulls out her gun. "He found us already?"
Sherlock frowns at the lock."Must have done." To her surprise his face creases into a grim smile. "Time for a little talk with Mr. Moran, I think."
Sherlock takes up position on one side of the door, his own weapon out, hand on the door handle. He gestures to Irene to take up position on the other side. Irene hesitates. If Moran is on the other side of that door then walking into whatever trap he has laid doesn't sound like the most fantastic idea in the world. On the other hand, what choice do they have? If he can track them down here, he can track them down anywhere. This confrontation is going to happen sooner or later.
She gives Sherlock a brief nod and takes up position beside the door.
In a quick movement, Sherlock unlocks the door and shoves it open. He moves forward to look inside – and then stops dead. Irene watches as his face pales, his mouth falling open a little.
"Sherlock?" she asks, but Sherlock doesn't appear to be able to answer. He merely makes an odd choked noise and the hand with the gun in it falls to his side.
Worried, Irene moves to be able to look over his shoulder. Standing in the middle of their hotel room, shoulders tense and eyes wide, is John Watson.
"It's true then," John says quietly.
"John," Sherlock says. "How….?"
There is a sudden rustle of movement as John crosses the room to reach Sherlock, grabbing him by the arms, pulling him forward into the room, into the light.
"You," he says staring at him. He raises a hesitant hand to brush the side of Sherlock's face. "You're - you're alive again."
"I didn't actually die," Sherlock says, but the words sound automatic, unplanned. He is staring at John as if he can't believe what he is seeing.
"God. You – God." John's eyes close at that briefly, and when he opens them again he is staring at Sherlock with an expression that makes Irene's heart skip a beat.
"How did you find me?" Sherlock asks hoarsely.
"It wasn't easy. But," John says, and there is the faintest hint of a wry smile on his lips for a moment. "I know your methods. Since I got that text I've been tracking arrest records in Europe….. I went to the site of the most recent one, asked around, eventually I managed to get hold of one of your network here…"
"Do you have any idea how dangerous…." Sherlock begins.
"I don't care." John says. "Do you know how long I've been hoping…? I really don't care."
Irene lets out a soft cough, and both men turn to look at her, John frowning in puzzlement.
"I'm very sorry to interrupt," she says. "But we do still have a sniper to find. Sherlock, I'm going to go and see if I can pick up any more intel on Moran."
Sherlock nods curtly. "Inform me as soon as you hear anything."
Irene smiles at him. "I will. Have fun, boys." She winks at Sherlock who, naturally, frowns at her blankly (one of these days she is going to have to draw him a diagram).
She leaves quietly, closing the door softly behind her.
When she returns four hours later she finds Sherlock and John, both fully clothed, on the bed. Sherlock appears to be asleep. He is curled on one side, face half buried against John's thigh. John is sitting up against the headboard, watching Sherlock with an expression that seems to be half anger, half raw tenderness. As Irene watches John reaches over to smooth a curl back from Sherlock's forehead, and she feel something twist inside of her.
"Dr Watson," Irene says, and he looks up.
"He just crashed out," John says, voice still a little dazed. "Doesn't seem like he's slept properly for a long time."
"Moran is on a plane to London." Irene says. John looks up at her. "No doubt trying to get to you. You and Sherlock will need to go after him as quickly as possible."
"Aren't you…?"
Irene shakes her head, lips pursed thinly. "It isn't safe for me in London," she says. "In any case, I've done my part. My debts are paid."
"You helped him," John says slowly, looking from her down at the sleeping man the bed. "You kept him safe."
Irene shrugs, handing him Sherlock's laptop. "Book your flights."
She begins picking up her things from the flat, stuffing them into her suitcase. It doesn't take long. Carefully pushing Sherlock off him, John gets to his feet as she heads for the door.
"Sherlock told me that it was you that told him to send that message."
Irene looks at him questioningly.
"Thank you," says John.
"My pleasure," Irene replies, and finds herself actually meaning it.
"If there's anything…" John begins, and then stops.
Irene looks down at the sleeping body of Sherlock Holmes, arms flung out in sleep. She thinks back to the months they've spent together – the frustration she'd felt at this prickly half-blind logic, the painful sympathy he'd pulled out of her. The warmth of him by her side at night. The unexpected gentleness with which he'd brushed her hair.
"Take care of him," she says. "I know you will anyway, but. Do it for me."
John's eyelashes flicked slightly for a moment, but then he looks at up at her steadily. "I will."
"He'll know how to get hold of me," Irene says. "If there is anything more to be done. But tell him not to bother me with trivia, I have a life of my own to get back to."
"Of course."
Irene smiles. " Good luck, John."
John nods, back ramrod straight. One soldier saluting another over the battlefield that is Sherlock Holmes.
Irene lets herself out of the hotel room quietly, slipping out of the hotel into a whirl of drifting snowflakes. She pauses for a long moment, looking up at the building she's just left. It is surprisingly difficult to rid herself of the image of Sherlock's sleeping face, truly relaxed for the first time in a year. Sherlock Holmes - in so very far over his head and barely half aware of it.
Slowly Irene pulls out the pre-paid phone she'd purchased earlier. She'd found the number on the internet and learned it by memory a long time ago. It rings six times before switching onto an answer phone message.
"You've reached the answer phone of Georgina Norton. I'm sorry I am away from the phone at the moment but please feel free to leave me a message after the tone."
Irene doesn't allow herself to hesitate.
"Georgina, darling," Irene says, in a voice that is as smooth as she can make it, with her heart beating unexpectedly fast. "It's been a long time but I wanted to let you know - I'm not dead. I was wondering, any chance you'd fancy a trip to Spain?"