This is a short story based on a plot bunny that crept into my head one night and just wouldn't leave.
Warning: deals with child loss.
It's been years, but it feels like decades. So much has changed, and yet some things seemed to have stayed the same.
He has managed to slip into her apartment.
She's naked.
She has just come out of the shower, her hair still wet. She walks through her apartment, being under the impression that she's alone.
"Goodness," she says as she stops dead in her tracks when she notices his presence in the one comfortable arm chair in her living room. She raises her eyebrows, her voice a suggestive tone, "Mister Holmes, do you make a habit out of walking into naked women?"
"No, strangely enough they tend to walk in on me," he retorts, quick witted as always. It's been six years since they first met, and it's been four since their last meeting. It was New York back then, and they had both been declared dead. It's Chicago now, and Sherlock Holmes is alive. The persona of Irene Adler, however, is still dead.
She doesn't ask him what he's doing in her apartment – she figures he'll tell her later on if he wants to, and if he doesn't want to tell her she'll figure it out sooner or later. She's clever enough and even if he wants to keep the reason for his visit a secret, he'll leave hints for her. It worked like that last time.
Even when she turns her back to him, she can almost feel his eyes roam over her figure. She knows he isn't looking at her with any other intentions than checking if anything has changed. If he was ever attracted to her, it wasn't her body he had been drawn to.
Six years ago she had been flattered.
He had been right, she shouldn't have been.
While she dresses in front of him, she can see the gears in his head turning, squinting his eyes, taking in the details of her apartment. When his gaze rests at her figure, she knows he's calculating. Perhaps he'll be surprised with his calculations. He'll do it again, knowing he was right the first time. He's Sherlock Holmes. He doesn't make mistakes – at least, not when it comes to measurements.
Her skin doesn't show any scars, apart from the ones she already had when they met for the first time. Most of her scars are in places that nobody will ever see. They're in her mind, and, even though she wouldn't be happy to admit it – in her heart. If she were a different person, she would've been wearing these scars with pride – but she's not that person, and to her they're a burden and a sign of weakness.
She can almost hear his rapid thought process, his stream of consciousness, his brilliant mind interpreting the strings of evidence she's provided him with by simply appearing naked in front of him:
measurements – changed slightly;
hips - widened - carried a child less than a year ago;
scars in abdominal area – none - no c-section;
her history and sexual preference taken into account: probably doesn't know the father - likely to be a sore point;
no signs of child in her life; it's not here;
photographs or any memorabilia – lacking; it never was.
"It was never alive, was it?" he asks, and she looks at him, blinking.
Her heart sinks into her stomach, and even though she had braced herself for this moment, she can't help but being hurt. She grinds her teeth, feeling the urge to turn away from him to hide her emotions, but she won't. She was never under the impression that she could've hidden this from him.
"No," she says quietly, trying to fight back the sudden tears, "stillborn."
She remains silent for a short moment, trying to regain her composure. She manages to prevent any of her tears from dropping, but she closes her eyes and rubs her temples instead.
When she opens her eyes his gaze is still fixed on her.
No one from her old life nor her new life knows any of her deeper secrets, except for him.
But then, he had always been her exception for everything.
He can possibly sense how the loss has changed her, and yet she doesn't want to show that she cares so much. She doesn't want to appear to be weak, but at the same time she wonders how being emotional about a lost child is a weakness.
She wonders if it counts if she says that she didn't think it would affect her so much.
"Did I hurt you?" he asks neutrally with his deep voice, probably gauging her reaction to stow it away in his library of emotions. He might take advantage of this later on, or perhaps he will forget about it. Knowing he has only limited space in his so called mind palace, she hopes it will be the latter.
"Don't pretend you care," she says, and she walks into the living room barefoot after having put on a pair of black trousers and a dark turtleneck sweater, "you're rubbish at it."
"Listen, Irene," he says, and the use of her birth name (what was the last time she had heard that?) makes clear to her that he is very serious indeed, "I might not appear to be remotely interested, but I do know that no parent should have to bury their child," he says.
"You go and tell your mother that," she says, and the sounds she makes sounds like a strangled laugh. She had not expected that sort of sentence coming from Sherlock Holmes. This is mainly why it hurts her even more.
She hope she doesn't have to explain what happened to her, or how, or why. He probably already knows how and when and why and who, even though there aren't really satisfying answers to any of those questions. She can't and won't answer them.
The scars in her mind run deep. The scars in her heart run even deeper, and they're being reopened by his reappearance in her life. This, however, he won't find out about. He can't look into all the separate layers of her heart, in which one of them he himself is locked away and kept safe from the outside world.
"Do you want tea?" she asks, and he shakes his head, not saying a word. She shrugs and settles on the couch next to his chair, her left arm resting on the arm-rest, her feet pulled up on the couch.
They remain silent for a while even though there is so much they need to discuss, but she just can't find the words right now.
She seems uncharacteristically uncomfortable in this situation, and she shifts in her seat. Just when she puts both her hands in her lap, she can see Sherlock jerking back his hand from the corner of her eye, as though he had meant to comfort her by placing a hand on hers. She thinks it might have been her imagination, but somehow she keeps the thought in mind.
She initiates some small talk, but Sherlock isn't quite talkative. His replies are short and it's almost as though he regrets coming over to her place. She leaves her seat to make a cup of tea for herself. Perhaps Sherlock will change his mind. It's not like she was planning on poisoning him. For now.
Observing him from the open kitchen while the kettle is boiling, she knows she won't ask him to have dinner this time.