Disclaimer: This fan fiction is not written for profit and no infringement of copyright is intended. Not beta read, so all mistakes are mine. Takes place after "The Reichenbach Fall," but references the entire series to date. And can I give a thanks to wickedwanton for her encouragement in dipping my toe into Holmesian waters? Cheers, love!

THE WOMAN

Bored in a hotel. Join me. Let's have dinner. IA

I'm not hungry. Let's have dinner. IA

I'm in Egypt, talking to an idiot. Get on a plane. Let's have dinner. IA

I'm not dead. Let's have dinner. IA

Sherlock? Are you there? M.

Lounge Bar, Sheraton Imperial, Kuala Lumpur,

201 Days After The Fall

He's changed, that's the first thing Irene thinks as she watches him enter the bar.

Not so much physically, though the red hair and beard now disguise that striking face. The cheekbones she would gladly have cut her hand slapping now hidden behind a grizzled beard and an even more grizzled demeanour. He's built up muscle, no longer razor-thin and elegant as a shadow. There's a strength and width across his shoulders now, a dip of weight that tells you this is not a man with whom one would wish to toy. And yet, he's still Sherlock. He's still the only man who ever intrigued her. He's still the man who saved her life. Irene sinks onto the loveseat she chose when she arrived, watching him. There's such a pleasure in that, in watching someone who once wanted to belong to her, and she's never been the kind to deny herself a treat.

Denial, she used to say, is for other people, darling.

That she has been forced to make her peace with it still sets something hissing and angry coiling in her chest.

But though she sees the similarities with the person who saved her in Karachi, she can see the differences too. He's quieter now. More focussed. More of a scalpel, less of an electric current. More of a grownup, less of that stubborn, dreaming little boy. He has a… patina of experience, a sureness about him now that all his old arrogance never could make up for. Or fake. It's so noticeable that Irene feels herself wondering darkly where her Sherlock went to, whether John Watson and he have a happy announcement in the works. Whether that relationship, always so strangely charged and oddly loving, has finally tipped over into something else-

But no, she muses. If he and John were together then he wouldn't be here.

If Watson ever gave his heart to his best friend then that best friend would never leave it. The fights would be ear-splitting and the sex would be epic, but there would be nothing she or anyone else could do to induce distance. Sherlock certainly wouldn't be asking to see her or flying around the world to do it. And yet, this meeting had been set up at his request. Curioser, she thinks, and curioser. The idea that there might be another woman appears, only to be rejected as too ridiculous to countenance: She is The Woman to him, the only one that matters, and that's who she'll always be. No little slip of a girl is going to interfere with that. They're two of a kind, she and Sherlock; If they were able to have other people, neither one of them would be here.

But still…For the first time in all the time that she's known him, he looks… comfortable in his own skin.

He looks like he knows who he is now.

An image appears in her mind, Sherlock airborne, Sherlock tumbling, black coat like liquid smoke around him. Breath snatched from his lungs by a giant's hand, the tearing, siren call of gravity opening its arms to fold him in close. In her mind blood spatters and bone hits concrete, but he's in front of her, living proof that that never happened-

It's fanciful and romantic and ridiculous, and he's about the only man she can imagine being able to carry it off, even a little.

Jim Moriarty would have murdered the world to be half as interesting a creature as that man there, she muses.

"Mr. Sigerson," she says then, rising and holding out her hand to him.

He makes a show of turning at the sound of his alias, but Irene suspects he knew where she was well before that.

"Mrs. Mounier," he retorts, nodding and holding out his hand to her, every inch the stiff, professional British gentleman. He doesn't want the hotel staff guessing the nature of their assignation, Irene thinks. "So good of you to see me on such short notice," he says. "And how is your husband?"

She smiles wryly. She should have known he'd check. Youssef will be happy with someone looking into their relationship, she thinks. "Trying to flee Cairo," she says. "It's rather frightful, I'm afraid. Revolution." She shakes her head, gives a delicately exaggerated shudder. "Why can't people simply behave themselves?"

Sherlock's smile is wry. Warm- For him. "Yes," he says. "Why indeed?"

And he takes a seat opposite her, nodding to the bar-tender to top up Irene's whiskey. The man does so as silently as a shadow, shooting Irene an are you alright, madam? look, bless him. But Irene feels no fear sitting opposite Sherlock Holmes. She feels no tug of sorrow, no hurricane-twist of a broken heart. No, she feels what she's always felt, the anticipation of a battle well-fought, the torque of an attraction she'll never willingly turn her back on tightening then tightening again. It is exquisite. He reaches into his pocket, places a room-card on the table. She looks at it, one elegant eyebrow raised, her mouth pursed in contemplation.

"The penthouse suite," she says. "I must admit, I'm flattered."

Now it's Sherlock's turn to shrug. "The Woman would expect nothing less."

He purses his lips, taps those long, elegant fingers on the arm of his chair. For a moment his mind is to be very far away, but then he snaps back to the present. "Besides, it seemed appropriate," he continues, as if he hadn't paused at all. "The last time we were here, that's where we stayed. Can you blame me for developing a fondness for the closest thing to a crime scene I've ever slept in?"

Irene snorts in amusement. "You forget, I know what you did to Agent Neilson," she points out. "I was hardly your first crime scene, Mr. Sigerson."

"And I was hardly yours, Mrs. Mounier," he retorts.

Again that almost-smile. A woman could get used to seeing that.

The woman who gets used to that smile won't be me, Irene thinks.

But nevertheless, Sherlock leans over and places a hand on hers, long elegant fingers stretching beyond her own, weighing her hand down. His smile a moment from a lifetime ago. A moment from the life she had to abandon, the life she'll never have again. Nobody would blame her for wanting to live in that moment again, and even if they did… Well, she'd tell them to go to Hell. So Irene picks up the room key. Stands.

Her hand is in his now.

"Then by all means," she says, "let's go break the law."

.