She practically ignored him during the rest of the week. They didn't speak and she never bothered to look at him when they bumped into each other in the usually very crowded corridors. He didn't mind, but felt… rather empty. He didn't understand why, they didn't know each other well. She was just a random woman in his class, and yet she was so different. One of a kind, the only one he had ever met that mattered. Everybody else was so bleak and non-saying. He didn't even know if he liked the woman or approved of her, but he knew that she mattered to him. And that frightened him a lot.

Apart from biochemistry, she studied psychology and English literature. Sherlock found himself straying around the corridors where she had lectures, just to get a glimpse of her. As he didn't know why he felt empty without their peculiar conversations and her swift glances, he didn't know why he, more or less, stalked her. However, she didn't notice him and Sherlock remained unseen.

"Do you mind?" A voice suddenly interrupted him when he ate lunch one day. He didn't need to look up to confirm who the voice belonged to.

"No." He honestly answered and she took the chair opposite his. They were silent for a couple of minutes.

"How are you?" She inquisitively asked.

"Fine." He sharply replied. "You?"

"Ok." She shrugged and returned to her plate with lasagna. Sherlock, however, got interested against his will. He tried to deduce small things about her that could have made her sad, or gloomy, but found it surprisingly difficult. More difficult than the first time they had met, and that was extremely odd. She had two drops of ink behind her left ear; maybe she had written a letter? But why would she do that instead of sending a mail? He frowned. Her hands were clean, so were her clothes. The label in her shirt in the back of her neck was visible, she was a size small and the shirt came from Armani. Rich, he observed but wasn't surprised. Almost all Harvard students were awfully rich or very intelligent. Usually the first of those two routes. Her engagement ring was missing, he noted when he looked at her hands again. Well, it had to be the fiancée then. She had a little bit of inking print on the tip of her nose, probably from a newspaper. He developed a mental image of the poster he had seen when he had bought cigarettes earlier this morning. Godfrey Norton's company in ruins. Her fiancée had to be Godfrey Norton, CEO and famous billionaire.

"I'm sorry about Godfrey, I hope you'll be fine." He quietly told her, to his great surprise. He was actually worried about her emotional state. He mentally snorted. She flinched, but didn't look flabbergasted or surprised, as if she had waited for him to make the conclusion (or the connection). She just gave him a cold stare and left in a hurry. When Sherlock stood up, he found a folded note on her chair. He suspiciously opened it.

I'm waiting for you outside at the oak. – IA

That was rather unexpected, he had to admit. He wasn't sure why he decided to go and meet her, but did so nevertheless.

"Do you have a cigarette?" She asked when he approached her. He nodded and reached her the box of matches and a cigarette. "Walk with me?" She suggested as she lit it. Sherlock followed her doubtfully.

"I've always been a beautiful girl." She told him as they strolled down the main road. "When I was fifteen, I met him. Godfrey Norton. I was, back then, very poor and I had no choice." She unemotionally said. "Love is for the weak and for a woman who wants to survive, love is not an option. Men use women." She clarified and continued mockingly. "When they are done with us, they leave us to rotten and love is the force that destroys us in the end." They still wandered around the school yards and the cold voice of the woman made Sherlock feel, and he loathed it. But he couldn't tell her to stop, her words bewitched his mind and soul and he didn't know how to act. Therefore, he remained silent and waited for her to continue her story.

"He proposed two years later, and I accepted. He is… acceptable and rich, most importantly, but he is not someone I ever could fall in love with. I have now decided to leave him, simply because he can't afford me any much longer. And he's a terrible snorer." She sighed and Sherlock nodded and tried to not smile, because he finally understood her choices, he could make her out. He almost felt as if he knew her.

"I see." He told her in a deep voice. "But why are you telling me this?"

"I've always been different, though I've pretended to be normal during my entire life. I always feel like I'm standing in the middle of a crowd and screaming the loudest I'm capable of. But they never hear me, nobody has ever heard me until I met you. I understood the first time I met you, that we're the same." Sherlock nodded.

"Does this mean that we're friends?" He suspiciously asked.

"I don't know, perhaps if you want to. I don't think that's really necessary."

"I don't want friends." He automatically said and quickly swirled around, facing her. He studied her cold expression, and admired her secretly. He had never met such an energetic woman, such an energetic person. Though, that didn't change his opinion. He didn't want friends, but he was attached to her. "But I want to be with you." He reluctantly confessed and she gave him one of her rare stretched smiles.

"We don't have to be anything you don't want us to be." She shrugged. "We are still aliens from the same planet, and nobody will ever understand our curse."

"I know." He whispered and, after a short moment of hesitation, he apprehensively embraced the woman.

AN: Many have asked me why they go to Harvard and that's a secret right now. But I can tell you that it has something to do with the end of this fan fiction, and that I have a very good reason.

This is probably a bit OOC, but this is how I pictured Irene Adler before I saw A Scandal in Belgravia. My fan fiction, my rules. REMEMBER TO REVIEW OR I'LL BURN THE HEART OUT OF YOU.