AN: THE BOLDED PARTS COME DIRECTLY FROM THE SIGN OF THREE DRAFT SCRIPT.
—oOo—
GOLDNEY HALL ORANGERY
BRISTOL UNIVERSITY
at the present moment
Sherlock blinks again, shaking away the memory of the first time he thought he'd be seeing the last of her after his supposed death.
As he comes back to reality, everyone is still laughing. It seems that no time had past since his last words.
His eyes quickly seek hers out and he knows that they're nothing at all like how her eyes had seemed on the day they first met.
Besides the fact that her usually electric and piercing blue eyes are currently brown due to contact lenses, the expression on her eyes seems... older, more tired, with pain being the only thing he can deduce from the heavy amount of emotions passing through her unreadable eyes. Not for the first time, with her, his mind can't keep up with how fast the puzzling information is oozing from her.
She swallows and her eye twitches, as if nervous from the way he is looking at her. He doesn't let go of her gaze and continues with his speech, changing it lightly from how he originally wrote it—making sure to emphasise his words by staring at her intently.
"Mary is a wonderful woman," he starts, emphasising wonderful woman.
Her brow twitches in confusion as she tries to think about his words—not the kind of expression you would usually see on the face of one Irene Adler.
And at that point, he knew that she knows he is talking about her.
At that, he finally looks away, looking down at his hands with a sigh. He doesn't care if people would think that he looks oddly grim or wistful as he says his words. He chuckles to himself at the possible rumour about him and Mary.
"Intelligent, beautiful, talented, deeply caring," he describes with an odd tone even he could not recognise.
Did he just sound as if he was... longing for something?
Knowing that he had royally fucked-up by now and doesn't really know why he's still trying to redeem himself since all sense of his dignity against his vulnerability is gone—damn his awkward-best-man mask, he looks at her intensely.
She's looking at him in a way as if she can see his mind drifting back to the many times he had sought her out in his time away to heal, to find some sense of sanity—despite either of them being the least sanest people he knows—and dare he says it: to find solace from her.
Irene wonders what Sherlock is playing at. She understood that he would be vulnerable on this day—exposing himself to the public in front of his friends and the wave of strangers he had probably offended at some point in the day.
But she didn't expect that he would open himself up completely in public—more importantly, to her in public.
Granted, no one really knows who she is and why she is here. No one knows that he is not talking about John and Mary Watson. No one knows that he is actually talking about Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler. But the point is: he is telling her something; he is declaring something to her in front of all these people, and he doesn't care how much it exposes him...
And in turn, he doesn't know how much it affects her.
—oOo—
MONTENEGRO
BIJELO POLJE
a few months ago
It had been five months since she last saw Sherlock at all—the longest time they hadn't seen each other since her second supposed death.
I'm nearly finished, he told her before he left. She never really knew what that meant and she still isn't sure whether she wanted to know.
She stayed in Switzerland for a year, living for herself and gaining as much as she could, before finally leaving the place to live in Montenegro.
To her surprise, he still found and sought her out when he is in dire need of help—occasionally asking her for help in some parts of the web she had written about on that brown envelope she had given him on his first visit. She never really knew how he still managed to break Moriarty's criminal web apart and track her down at the same time. Why he does it is a much larger mystery to her.
Whilst she lies down on the bed at midnight, staring up at the ceiling with questions about one Sherlock Holmes in her mind, she feels both panic and exhilaration at the sound of movement once more in the floor below her bedroom. Although, she isn't foolish enough to quickly assume that it would be Sherlock once more. She grabs the gun—the second one he gave her—from her bedside table.
As she turns the corner to her living room, she immediately goes into a stance and aims the gun on the intruder's head.
"Miss Adler," he greets with a raspy voice, cringing at the gun pointed at him.
"Mister Holmes," she greets, lowering her arms just as he lowers his own.
Their usual routine is for him to go to the kitchen where she will help heal him with his new wounds and injuries. She even attended some short classes on first aid after his first visit. She still doesn't know what compelled her to do so but it is rather helpful in this case.
However, unlike the many times previous, Sherlock suddenly falls to his knees in front of her and leans back on his heels, swaying with his head falling as if he's bowing down—a defeated position—the exact way she was forcefully positioned to before her own execution.
She quickly places the gun on a nearby table to kneel in front of him, checking him immediately. She sits back on her own heels, making her smaller, so she could look up at him better, pushing him up to keep him from falling.
He is shirtless, which probably explains the shivering, but he also seems to be sweating and breathing heavily as if he had just run without a stop for breath. She notices that his hair had grown longer, touching his shoulders, making her think about how long Sherlock always-clean-shaved Holmes was kept away from his own comfort.
"What happened?" she asks quietly, placing her hands on the sides of his face to pull it up so he could look at her in the eye.
Sherlock feels her thumbs caress his cheeks absentmindedly and that she doesn't seem to have noticed her own actions. He closes his eyes at the touch—he's been aching for any act of humane physical touch after what he's been through.
I certainly never felt anything LIKE that from Mycroft, he thinks bitterly, remembering how his brother had pulled on his hair and even nudged it away from him when he had made his presence known.
Sherlock tries not to feel deep hatred for Mycroft for not doing anything whilst they tortured him in front of him.
He shivers at the thought.
"I... just came from Serbia," he whispers with a raspy voice.
She freezes at that.
To his horror, he almost let his head fall and bury itself on her shoulders.
All he wants is to feel her touch him more—the gentle touch from the hand of the dominatrix... Excluding her doctoring him and his occasional need for physical support from her, they never touched each other for touch's sake ever since that night before he had declared her own execution by exposing her with the passcode of her own phone.
He starts to wonder if her pulse would still elevate at his touch because the increasing beat of his own certainly does not come from his exhaustion nor recent physical activity. The room is dark, too, so he is not certain whether her dilated pupils was caused by the darkness or him.
"Come on, let's get you cleaned up," she replies, pulling him up gently and he tries not to wince.
"Not my back," he tells her.
"Alright," she says.
And so she only guides him by holding his clenched fist tightly with both of hers as he places most of his weight on his arm. His other hand grabs support from any surface nearest to him since he can tell that she's trying all she can to support him.
Irene sighs. The criminal network on Serbia was the last of the information she had given him and for good reason—it is, perhaps, one of the most dangerous parts of the web. From the description in the information she had encountered with Moriarty, it would remind her of that terrorist cell in Karachi.
She shivers at the thought.
The exact location of the Serbian side of Moriarty's web is just across the border of this city—where her house is located. Perhaps it's why her subconscious had chosen this exact area—just in case Sherlock's plan in dismantling the Serbian side does not go well—a place from a running-distance.
"Are you followed?" she whispers as they slowly head towards her bathroom.
He shakes his head.
She immediately makes him sit on the toilet which has its lid closed. He sits sideways on it, and as she stands behind him, she realises that both of them can easily look at each other in the eye through the mirror on the wall.
"Sure?" she asks, looking at him straight in the eye.
He looks away, shame lining on his face. "All dead," he whispers grimly, a rough edge in his voice.
She doesn't need to ask how those people came to their end. It was all over his face.
Sighing, she starts to inspect his injuries.
Her jaws clench at the sight of his back, practically mangled from torture scars—not unlike her own, although hers are just white scars now whilst his are fresh and deep and bleeding, and are in dire need of her healing.
She knows how one can feel after such an emotionally-draining session. Although her whippings are definitely different from the kind of whipping both of them had received upon capture.
So, she lays a gentle touch on him—most likely a stark contrast of how he had been treated—as she starts healing him, noticing the fact that he had leaned towards the touch as if he had been deprived from it for so long.
They're both marked now, she thinks.
She sighs when she nears finishing, leaving the bathroom for a moment to give him a glass of water which he drank as if he hadn't drunk anything so pure in months. He probably didn't.
"You've been gone for five months," she whispers quietly as she cleans an affected area with an antiseptic. He was usually only gone for one or two months.
She'd thought he wouldn't reply before he says, "You counted?"
She blinks once, twice. "It was routine," she finally replies.
"Yes, it was," he whispers back.
"I hope the information I gave you was useful... at least?" she asks, keeping her eyes locked on the wound, trying to sound nonchalant.
"It was."
"...Serbia was last on the list."
"Yes..."
Silence.
"I spent two months researching," he whispers. [1]
She looks up from his wounds to look at his face through the mirror. Sherlock twitches as he fidgets with his hands, his eyes going a hundred miles per hour—thinking. She decides to give him time.
Three months of torture, then, she thinks to herself. She's been tortured for a few days before she was rescued. She can't imagine how to endure torture for three months. [2]
"How did you escape?" she asks him.
"Mycroft was a distraction," he replies.
"He was there?" she asks in shock.
Sherlock snickers—the first non-negative emotion he had shown. "Pretended to be a Serbian soldier," he replies before whispering with his face darkening, "He watched me get beaten—only stopped it when I was about to get hit with the pipe."
Her eye twitches at the last part. She masks her anger with an impassive expression.
"I never really liked your brother."
He chuckles. "The Ice Man, you said."
"No, Moriarty said."
A pause. Sherlock sighs. "I'm going back tomorrow night."
She expected as much. "How?" she asks.
"Mycroft."
"Here?"
"Yes." Sherlock sighs, his head falling down. "He doesn't know you're alive," Sherlock finally says.
"I know," she replies because she knows he would never give away her secret for no good reason. This is not one of them.
"I know you do," he replies.
"What's your excuse for having a house in Montenegro?" she asks him.
He chuckles. "I'll tell him someone owes me a favour."
Her lips purse at that. "And he'd believe it?"
"Probably not."
She hums. "Tell him you won it from a gamble. You know your card games, I heard," she says nonchalantly. [3]
His eyes look straight at hers. "How did you know about the Clarence House Cannibal?" he asks.
Her lips twitch upward for a moment. "I'm not the only one who kept track, Mister Holmes."
"I was careful."
"You were," she admits. "Which organ did you nearly give her?" she asks instead.
"Kidney," he says, chuckling.
They stare at each other through the mirror before she shakes herself to look down at his back. "There," she says firmly, standing up straight and sighing. "Done."
She watches as Sherlock painfully stands up, wincing and grabbing on to the wall to steady himself. She doesn't offer her help because she knows he will be insulted if she dared ask.
Still, she stands by the doorway, opening it for him as a gesture of politeness rather than as an offer of help.
As he walks out of the room, he slowly and gently brushes his hand on her arm, letting it glide downward to grab her by the wrist. By doing so, he can steady himself more as well as seek out the question he wants answered.
There it is.
Elevated upon his touch.
He's not surprised. Her breath hitched at his touch.
To steady both of them better as they walk towards her bedroom where he will be staying once more to heal before Mycroft arrives, she grabs on to the wrist of the hand clutching her wrist. She's not an idiot. She knows he's checking her pulse—which she tried and failed to keep subdued—and in turn, she is now checking his.
There it is.
Elevated upon her touch.
She's not surprised. Yet neither of them speak about it.
She guides him to sleep on her bed as she always did, making sure he doesn't disturb the gauzes and other bandages. He lowers himself and sighs when he finally lets himself be buried under her scent, staring deep into her eyes as she stares back at him after placing a blanket over him.
As her face hovers on top of his, he can't help but wish for her to move closer but she stays where she is. He wants to pull his hand up and grab her closer, but his arms are too weak to do so. He wants to tell her to stay but his lips stay frozen.
He may outwit his torturers with his words as they glare him down but he never fails to fall speechless at the unreadable gaze of the Woman.
"Rest," she whispers.
"I—"
"Hush now," she whispers, reminding him of all those years ago. He can't help but submit to her wishes.
—oOo—
GOLDNEY HALL ORANGERY
BRISTOL UNIVERSITY
at the present moment
He blinks, realising that he had not wasted more than two seconds of pausing.
Thinking of the Woman is always fast-paced.
She's a dominatrix. Her hands are strong and she definitely knows how to put people in their place in the most mind-boggling way possible. But an excellent dominatrix also offers aftercare to equalise the harshness of the punishment—a form of balance against the severity of the previous act of domination.
Her gentleness had already been confirmed on the day they met. She was gentle with her words after she had hit him with her riding crop thrice—caressing him even with that long weapon of hers whilst he lay on the ground, drugged up.
The fact that she had entered his bedroom to bring his coat back was an indication of her interest already—that she had spent the time beside him, seeping into his mind and telling him her own deductions, kissing him on the cheek in the process.
He deduced, right then, that she had definitely used that drug more times than necessary, since she knew when he was on the bridge between full consciousness and drug-addled confusion. It was not a surprise that her text came at the time it did.
She was near 221B when he came to wake. To check up on him, perhaps?
Intelligent. Beautiful. Talented. Deeply caring.
She definitely is.
"She was bound to want a man with the same qualities," he says after, looking down in thought. "John's just so relieved he managed to snag her before she got her hands one."
Her head tilts at that as she looks at him calculatingly, her brows furrowing at his words—deeply confused with his admission. She looks up at him in question as he gazes at her in a way she cannot truly describe.
Does he think himself too little?
No, that's not it, she thinks.
Is he, perhaps, telling her that he is someone who seeks a person of the same qualities as he is—insane and dangerous? Is he telling her that he is relieved that he managed to snag her before she got to find someone else? That she is his equal and he is lucky enough to find someone equally deranged as he is?
She doesn't know.
"What advice can I give them as newlyweds?" Sherlock continues, bringing her back to reality. "John—always remember to show Mary how you feel."
Sherlock made every effort not to look at her at the last part.
—oOo—
As Sherlock describes two cases as well as his journey in planning the wedding, she couldn't help but notice that he seems to be slightly distracted by her presence as well. His eyes would glide over hers once in a while, making him all the more determined to finish his speech—to get away from the torture of having to talk in a sea of people with her in it.
She knows he's nervous at the fact that he is in the wedding of his two best friends—nervous to be left alone.
It's why she's here in the first place, she reminds herself.
Still, as he describes their probable last case in a very long while, she couldn't help but detect him feeling which she can only describe as forlorn.
He continues, "I enjoyed that very rare privilege that not many Best Men can claim. I've slept with the bride and groom. At the same time. On the night before their wedding."
She smiles at the scene that played in her head, that last night, Sherlock and John had managed to crash where Mary was as they try to solve the case with the Mayfly Man.
In her head, John is asleep on his shoulder, and Mary is asleep on John's lap, while they are sort of scrunched together. She joins everyone in the laughter at that.
She also tries not to laugh at the thought of Sherlock having intercourse with both John and Mary. Knowing him and his hesitance to anything sexual, the ridiculousness of the statement almost brought her giggling if she wasn't usually composed and icy.
He's not opposed when it comes to you, a voice in her head says and she quickly dismisses it.
"Most people bond through day-to-day experience—the simple daily rituals of living. Shopping together. Eating together. Sharing a flat. Sharing a drink in the pub. Not John and me. Our lives have been peppered by mysteries, murders, kidnaps, every form of danger. But it hasn't just been a life. Thank you, John. It's been an adventure."
Despite herself, she smiles as Sherlock offers his hand to John and they shake, and then that shake becomes a hug. Sherlock even looks like he might be welling up.
When John sits and the applause dies, Sherlock finally raises his glass. "Ladies and gentlemen. If you'd like to raise your glasses please. I'd like to end... by proposing a toast. To..."
And he pauses. As everyone stands confused, as well as John and Mary, she knew immediately that something else had transpired.
As John, Mary, and Sherlock all start muttering amongst themselves in a panic and realisation, she knew then that something is definitely wrong... especially when John and Mary jump up to their feet, clasp hands with Sherlock, and hug, and then the newlyweds staring at Sherlock in horror before all three of them stare at their audience.
"Ladies and gentlemen, not quite finished. I'd like to keep you all here a little longer. Hands up who likes John."
No one puts their hands up.
"We all do. Lovely chap. Can't say it enough times. Let's talk about how much we love him..." Sherlock pushes John back into his chair. "I mean I've barely scratched the surface. I've always admired his taste in... baggy cardigans... And he can cook. Wow. Does a great lasagne. And he's got a really nice singing voice. Bet you never knew that."
As Sherlock rants about his best friend, Irene can hear the many amounts of buzzing from his phone. Her eyes glide over to the Head Table where she sees the newlyweds texting and looking at Sherlock in confusion.
"Hold on a moment," Sherlock replies, texting and smiling at everyone nonchalantly.
His eyes gaze at hers knowingly when she feels her phone vibrate. She blinks rapidly as he gives a small and subtle nod in her direction, and so she replies with a small nod of her own.
Nonchalantly, as to not show suspicion, she checks her own phone for the message.
HE'S HERE! THE MAYFLY MAN IS HERE. SOMEWHERE! TRY TO STAY CALM
"Oh my God!" John yells at something in his phone just as Mary screams when she reads it.
The trio starts typing to themselves which she finds amusing since it is the very nature of her and Sherlock's relationship—texting.
Do they even have a relationship?
Definitely. It's not a normal one but they definitely do.
Her phone vibrates once more.
Be wary of anyone.
My phone's on vibrate.
And she knew he was seeking communication from her at that exact moment.
When she looks up, to her surprise, he eyes her warily, thinking heavily. She hides the small feeling of nervousness in the pit of her stomach—not because she is being scrutinised by Sherlock Holmes—but because he is looking at her with both concern and fear.
Is she to be murdered?
Am I the target?
She sees his brows furrow the moment he saw her text, immediately looking at her calculatingly.
"Let's all play a game," Sherlock says. "Murder. Let's play murder... Imagine someone's going to get murdered at a wedding. Who exactly would you pick?"
She watches as he goes a hundred miles an hour with a case. It reminds her of the time all those years ago, when they were in the office of one Mycroft Holmes.
How her world fell apart as Sherlock had shared his own deductions about her. How he had exposed her feelings for him as the truth.
Sherlock Holmes doesn't stop when he sets his mind on something.
" You wouldn't kill me 'cause you could find me any time. Just knock on the door of Baker Street. Boom. Single shot to the head. The Bride and Groom could be killed in any number of ways. Quick dose of poison on the honeymoon. Hijack room service."
His eyes gaze over hers and she quickly understood the message.
Planning a murder at a wedding is risky and difficult, why do it to someone if they can be killed anytime?
Because the target is hard to target in the first place.
The target is difficult to find.
The target is unknown.
The target could be her.
Did someone find out that she was alive? Had someone caught her? Had someone found her locations and made out the conclusion that she would be here? In public for the first time in years?
Her mind comes back when Sherlock points at her directly.
"She flew from Alicante. Bomb on the plane," he says firmly, staring at her.
She understands immediately.
And she sighs at the confirmation that she is still safe, although she still glares at him at the reminder of her most vulnerable moment.
That 747 Jumbo Jet will never fail to haunt her.
Then again, her time with Moriarty had come to past and Sherlock had freed her dependency on an inanimate object and had even helped her gain a second chance at a life—a life away from being too big and too noisy with the sharks in the sea of criminal activity.
He was there for her when she most needed it.
She thought, by having betrayed him, that he wouldn't show up at her execution. Her feelings for him was the main reason he had involved himself with her, and it was the same thing that made him detach himself.
It all worked out in the end, however. Her betrayal was foiled by her emotions, and it was her emotions that made him go back to her.
She was still able to save herself through Sherlock Holmes—excruciatingly painful for both of them, sure, but she still managed it.
As John and Sherlock finally come to the conclusion that someone is here to kill Major James Sholto and they had started to interrogate the staff, she comes to her senses.
She leaves.
—oOo—
[1] In The Empty Hearse, Mycroft mentioned that Sherlock spent quite some time investigating Baron Maupertuis. In the books, it was mentioned that Holmes spent two months researching on him nonstop, neither eating nor sleeping, before finally going on his way to search for him.
[2] John posted about Irene on his blog around March. Assuming he posted it a hours after he told Sherlock that Irene was going to a "Witness Protection Scheme" in America, Irene would have been officially dead since January because "she was captured in a terrorist cell in Karachi TWO MONTHS AGO and beheaded."
We all know Irene revealed herself alive on New Year's Eve, and that she went to 221B days or perhaps, hours, after revealing herself... which means it would have been days or one/two weeks since she was released in the world phone-less, and perhaps she was caught in Karachi and jailed for a few weeks before her execution and secret rescue.
[3] His Last Vow, Sherlock said he owned the place in 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens and that he "won it in a card game with the Clarence House Cannibal."