"This is what Moriarty wants, and if it's what he wants, it's a mistake."
This is not how she had expected their separation would go.
She had predicted it weeks ago, Moriarty finding some way to sow the discord that would lead to a break. She had naively hoped being forewarned would be enough. Turned out that old-fashioned sexism and Sherlock's overreaching claims of responsibility were apparently going to be the lever, and whether Moriarty had any part she'd probably never know.
When she had imagined it, before Irene — just before Irene — it was bitter and biting and things said better left unsaid. She'd know she was doing the right thing and would still feel like she ripped her own heart out to save herself.
Now, staring at the open doorway as if she could will him to come back, she didn't know what to feel. The bitterness was a deep undercurrent, threatening to swell and overwhelm, but at the moment it was held at bay by waves of disbelief and disorientation. She stood in the middle of the observation room, swaying slightly, barely breathing, then took a step, halted again, and turned to sit in the chair where he'd been. Try to put yourself in his place, try to determine what his logic had been, how the hell he could decide just to abandon—
She cut herself off, took a deep breath. That's not helping. He hadn't been himself for days, hadn't slept, this was not about her. It was about her. His tripwire.
The first time he'd stumbled over Irene, when Moran showed up, he plunged into violence. This time he wreaked the vengeance on himself in a different way, retribution for failing to know she was alive and self-sacrifice to try to make it up to her, somehow. Both times the self-abnegation was instantaneous. It didn't seem possible that his complex, mercurial, empathetic mind could be reduced to a single focus so completely. That he could give up everything else — this — so abruptly.
She could only hope that as Irene recovered, she would see what he was doing, and if she truly loved him, try to help him climb out of that abyss. He did it once before. She shook her head, incredulous. He'd done it twice: it was a testament to his recovery that she'd actually forgotten to count the first fall. First, Irene's death and heroin, then Moran, now resurrection and guilt so heavy the Sherlock she knew was almost completely repressed by the burden.
He'd said he was leaving New York, as if he couldn't bring himself to say what he was really doing. Or, perhaps, he meant exactly what he said: leaving the city, not leaving their partnership. What did she think? Did she still have a partner? "Do I still have a partner?" She whispered aloud, under her breath, as if afraid to hear what the room would tell her in reply.
The answer was swift and much stronger than she expected. She closed her eyes in exhausted relief.
Bell found her there ten minutes later.
"You okay?" He hesitated by the door, uncomfortable. "Get lost looking for the coffee?"
She stood up, pulling her hair back away from her face. "Sorry, I saw the empty room on my way and just needed to take a minute. Collect my thoughts." She looked down at the phone still in her hand, and decided what to say. "I got a text from Sherlock. He's gone with Irene, and he didn't say where they're going or for how long. He feels it's too dangerous here."
Bell blinked and rubbed his forehead. "Let's go take this to the captain. He's not gonna like it." He waited for her walk out in front of him before asking, "You okay with this?"
"Honestly, I don't know what to think. It's a bit of a shock. And at the same time, it's not much of a surprise at all."
"He does take his responsibilities hard. And that can be hard on the rest of us." He tilted his head toward her. "Hardest on you."
She looked at him sharply, taken aback by his insight, and nodded. She realized it wasn't Bell's acuity that seemed unlikely; it was that she wasn't alone in caring why Sherlock did what he did. "Yeah. Thanks."
Sitting back on the couch in his office instead of close to his desk in one of the chairs, she repeated her edited version of events to Gregson, who swore for ten seconds before apologizing. "And you have no idea where they might have gone?" he asked, exasperated.
"He didn't say; I don't think he trusts his phone or email. That's probably why he didn't call on your cell before and then hung up on the landline. He's trying to protect everyone." She suddenly wondered about her own phone and quickly opened the settings, turned off the location tracking, and shut it down. He wouldn't be contacting her again tonight.
"He's never mentioned any place, ever, before all this, that he might go to?" Gregson watched her closely; she didn't think he thought she was lying, but he wasn't going to take anything for granted.
"Never; I don't even know where he grew up, other than 'England'. He's never mentioned travel or favorite places or safe houses or anything." She cleared her throat, wishing she had the coffee she'd pretended to go get. "Honestly, I think we're better off letting them go and concentrating on Proctor and Moriarty."
Gregson scowled. "After what happened last time, there's no way I'm leaving him out there AWOL to exact whatever kind of revenge he thinks he's owed."
"I get that. But he's not in offense mode this time; this is all about defense: protecting Irene. You saw what he was like; he's shown no interest in investigating anything since we found her. Keeping her safe is his only priority." She swallowed a rush of sudden emotion then, willing her eyes to remain steady on Gregson's face. "He's not going after anyone; they're running away."
"I'm really not happy about this."
"Well, if he were going to go after someone, it would be Proctor, right? 'Mr. Stapleton.' So if we focus on him, we'd either find Sherlock or be able to intercept him." Gregson's jaw shifted back and forth but he continued to listen. "Proctor's who we want to focus on now, yes? And anyway, I am as certain as I can be that Sherlock is out of this. You told me back then that he was broken, and maybe, maybe that was true. Now—" she stood up, wiping her hands on the sides of her skirt. "Now he is shattered, and being responsible for Irene is the only thing keeping him in one piece." She turn to Bell for corroboration, and he looked over at Gregson and shrugged.
"The guy can act, Captain, but I don't think he was faking it this time. He hasn't called me for info even once since this started."
Gregson ran one hand over his chin and mouth before leaning back in his chair, resigned. "All right. Frankly, we don't have the people to go after Proctor, follow up on Gotlieb's murder victims, and track down a rogue consultant. But Joan. If you hear from Holmes—"
"—I'll tell you."
"I'm serious. If I find out— I'm not going to let anything — anyone — get in the way of stopping him if he needs to be stopped."
"If he needs to be stopped, that's what I want too. I did call you when he went after Moran, remember? I'm not going to get in your way."
She stood outside the station at 11pm, suddenly uncertain where to go. Not the brownstone. She wouldn't be able to sleep there, not knowing how Proctor navigated it so well. And it wasn't home anymore, not without Sherlock there. She blinked, startled. That was an unexpected revelation, and one she did not have the energy to unpack. She'd go to her mother's. After a second of trying to remember what day it was, she confirmed in her calendar that her mother would be taking the train back from visiting friends in Cape May in the morning. She'd have the place to herself, no explanations required.
On the bus she mentally reviewed the details she'd assembled with Bell: Proctor's known history, scraps of information about the CIA work he'd done (not that their New York office had been any help when contacted), bank records. She'd laid everything out on the conference table, and at one point amused Bell by standing on a chair to try to see it all at once, as she could when it was posted on a wall. It didn't help.
She noticed just in time that the next stop was hers, the visceral memory ingrained from the year she'd lived with her mother after Liam, too overwhelmed with sadness and work to find a new place. It wasn't until she was standing in front of the building that she remembered the keys were in the top drawer of her dresser. Crap.
The building had two sets of locked doors in the foyer, and she'd have to climb up three stories to get to the back balcony; the speed required for the first and the agility necessary for the second were levels of breaking and entering she had not yet mastered. She rummaged through her bag in a futile effort to discover the keys she knew weren't there and felt the metal of the folded slim jim at the bottom. "Travel-size" she'd joked to Alfredo when she ordered it online. Her mother used to keep spare house keys under the front seat of her car; here's hoping she'd continued to ignore her children's pleas to stop doing that.
As she maneuvered the bar inside the car door, she had to laugh. If only her thirteen-year-old self could see her now. She'd either be terribly impressed or utterly mortified. Possibly both.
Once inside the apartment, she leaned back against the closed door, eyes shut, and let her bag and coat drop where she stood. She could hear the gentle glug-glug of the fish tank filter and the hum of the fridge. Her mother had cleaned before her trip, a faint citrus and vinegar scent lingering, or maybe the citrus was the orange and garlic sauce she'd made then. There was another smell, flowers, and she opened her eyes and flipped the light switch in the hallway on her way into the kitchen to find the vase of almost drooping red peonies.
She filled the electric kettle and turned it on before collecting her bag and coat from the floor and taking them to the guest room. She pulled the interoffice envelope out of her bag and emptied the contents onto the bed. Tape. She needed tape; covering her mother's walls with pushpin holes would cause way more trouble than it was worth. She heard the kettle click off after boiling and went back to the kitchen, pulling open drawers until she found one with a roll of masking tape. Better than nothing.
Fifteen minutes later she stood cupping her tea with both hands, staring at the meager collage assembled on the wall. What would she add? What details did she have not represented there? What, or who, was missing? She closed her eyes again, breathing in the steam from the tea and caught again the faint odor of the flowers. Peonies. The red had distracted her, but Stapleton, or Proctor, had tormented Irene with white peonies. Why?
She didn't have Irene on the wall. She picked up her notebook and started a list: the empty house, the paints, the paintings. All those city landscapes, no people. Empty buildings and empty skies. Wouldn't she have populated her paintings, kept in isolation as she was? Did Proctor control that somehow? She wondered whether, or when, Irene might start painting again, with Sherlock, and how her work might change as she recovered. As they both did. If they did.
She set the tea on the bedside table and sat down on the bed, head in her hands. That was the fear she hadn't let herself consider at the station, that instead of finding their way together, Sherlock and Irene would shut down further, both becoming more paranoid and depressed in isolation. His sacrifice would be for nothing. She pushed off the bed abruptly, grabbing her cup and going to the kitchen to pull one of the flowers out of the vase.
Something was not right about this. The way he effaced himself for Irene, over and over again. That was not love, or should not be. That sounded like... That sounded like what had been done to Irene. Psychological pressure tactics to destroy someone's identity. What did Moriarty know about him, to be able to so precisely detonate these triggers? Had he set them up in the first place, putting Irene and Sherlock together for this purpose? She put the flower on the counter and rinsed out her cup, thinking.
How long was this con?
Gregson would be following up on Proctor, looking deeper into his financials and any clues to who he'd been working for. She'd start with Irene's past: what had she been doing before Sherlock met her? That meant going back to the brownstone and the data they'd compiled there. The unease she'd felt initially was gone. She knew it wasn't secure, but there were ways of dealing with that, and that's where the trail led and where her work could continue.
That's where she belonged.