Lots of dense background and angst in this chapter, fair warning ;)

Toska

The instant he heard the front door latch shut, Sherlock leapt from his chair and strode to the window. Pushing aside the curtain, he watched Mycroft slide into his car and then waited for it to turn out of sight onto Melcombe Street, before he spun on the spot and made a beeline for his laptop.

"What was that all about?" John called from the kitchen, over the sound of the kettle starting to boil.

"Just Mycroft being Mycroft," Sherlock responded in an offhand tone, although his heart was racing and he could even detect a very slight tremor in his voice. "You know how is when he tries to coerce me into doing something for him."

"Mmmm, and I know how you are when you can't be arsed," John retorted drily, but without any actual rancor. "Put the two together and raised voices—inevitable. Got it."

But now that Sherlock had temporarily appeased John with a reply, he was barely listening, and as he jabbed at the power button and waited for the computer to boot up, his mind churned with dozens of ideas on how to proceed, and the nascent formulations of a plan. Yet just below his rational and coherent thought process—and vying for dominance—surged pure, primal adrenaline.

He hadn't heard the name 'Irene Adler' spoken aloud since prior to his fall and exile, when John had parroted to him the lie about her going to America, and hearing it again now, particularly so very unexpectedly, had incited a potent and all too familiar reaction in him.

Mycroft had been correct about Sherlock broadcasting the truth of his sentiments though physiological indicators: to his horror he had felt his face heat and his heart accelerate into a pounding arrhythmia in response to hearing the name by which he had originally known The Woman, and he hadn't been able to modify his expression into even the semblance of a poker face, let alone regain his composure.

He had been quite staggered by the force of his reaction, and what it revealed about the ongoing nature of his feelings towards The Woman—feelings that somehow persisted despite his resolve to... not delete what had happened between them, but at least to view that time with academic detachment ...To distill what he had learned and use that knowledge when applicable, while suppressing the associated emotions that served no function other than to distract and disconcert him. And though he had already known that he hadn't really achieved that objective, neither had he been prepared for quite the strength of feeling that had pulsed through him the instant Mycroft had spoken that name.

As if that experience hadn't been dismaying enough in and of itself, it had occurred in the immediate presence of his elder brother, thereby forcing Sherlock to reveal a rather personal and humiliating weakness to Mycroft. This inadvertent disclosure was more than just mortifying—it also put him at a dangerous disadvantage. It wouldn't be a question of if, but only of when and how, Mycroft would leverage Sherlock's weakness against him in some way, and Sherlock had only himself to blame for his predicament.

His mouth pulled into a reflexive scowl and he jerked his head sharply, as if he could physically jostle his thoughts back into approved order.

It took an uncomfortable moment of effort, and then a slew of thoughts burst forth in a disjointed tumble, as if they had been welling up behind a dam while he'd considered the more distasteful aspects of his situation. Nonetheless, he was able to quickly identify the most critical issue. Though he would eventually like to know precisely how Mycroft had learned of his little trip to Pakistan, practically speaking it was a low priority at present. Far more significant was the fact that Mycroft still wasn't privy to Irene Adler's location. For the timebeing, Sherlock's efforts (and therefore The Woman) were uncompromised.

Sherlock could tell that when his brother had asked him if he knew her current whereabouts, Mycroft had interpreted his expression as an admission that he didn't have such information. And though it had partly been a deliberate obfuscation on his part, it was true that he wasn't entirely certain...

All he had was the postcard.

Besides Sherlock's continuing sentiment for The Woman, another correct conclusion that Mycroft had drawn was that when Sherlock had rescued the former Ms. Adler in, and then exfiltrated her from Karachi, he had furnished her with a new identity. But Sherlock hadn't stopped there. Even with an alternate identity, if there were no supplemental framework to legitimise and protect it she would remain almost as vulnerable as she had prior to her capture. Because he was unwilling to see his hard work in Karachi be for naught (and, admittedly, for other more nebulous and personal reasons), he had also provided her with a small apartment and a bank account consisting of funds that he had managed to transfer from her Zurich account through complex and somewhat criminal means. However he had subsequently learned that she'd never taken residence in the flat, and shortly thereafter he'd discovered that the Chase account he'd opened had been drained as well.

For a while he had tried his hand at locating her remotely—as a purely cerebral exercise, he had assured himself, although he knew full well that it was more—but all signs indicated that she had indeed changed her identity yet again. And unlike the Karachi episode, it had appeared that on this occasion she had not wanted to be found by him, because he'd had as little success then as Mycroft was apparently having, now.

Not that he had had much of an opportunity to do the search justice, not really. Not so very long after he had returned from Asia, everything even slightly peripheral in his life fell by the wayside as his singular focus on Jim Moriarty and Moriarty's "Final Problem" consumed all. And then he himself had been consumed.

By the time he had realised how The Final Problem was to manifest, and therefore what a great resource The Woman would have proven in the demanding months that lay in store for him, time was far too short to do anything but plan for his bare survival.

Then, once he was ostensibly dead (and absolutely disgraced), he hadn't the time, resources, nor luxury of looking for her, as invaluable an asset as she might have been in the long-term. He couldn't afford to think in units of time any longer in duration than several days, and any energy he spent seeking individuals had to be exclusively devoted to locating the underbosses and caporegimes of Moriarty's still-viable network.

Conversely, neither could he risk disseminating any clues about his own whereabouts so that she might find him when she heard of his "suicide," in case those clues were seen and correctly interpreted by the very men and women he was trying to stalk under the cover of his death. Not that he had had any expectations that she would choose to contact him, after she had severed any and all ties that had connected them after they had parted ways in Oman. Still, that awareness hadn't prevented him from hoping for precisely that—and not solely because her knowledge of Moriarty and her skill at manipulation and deceit would aid in the work.

Because although he had initially been confident that he would not just cope but thrive under the challenging conditions of absolute solitude and relentless mental and physical exertion, after only several weeks he'd begun to feel its weight, and the cost of his lot. At the beginning, he had been completely consumed with the operation, fueled by the challenge posed by the enormity of his task, as well as not a small bit of fury and desire for recompense. However, Sherlock had soon learned that no matter how extreme a situation may seem at the outset, one might eventually acclimatise, and as he did so his fury had begun to shift into something much worse—deep loneliness and an increased apathy towards his mission.

He had missed the flat and being able to play his violin, as well as inexplicable, small things such as his tartan dressing gown, or the terrible PG Tips tea John would make, or the feel of his Kimex beaker in his hand. And he had fiercely yearned for London, less as a physical place on a map than as the embodiment of an idyll—one with limitations and infinite possibility, horror and wonder, challenge and reward... His personal Arcadia, and a representation of all that was deprived to him.

But mostly, to his shock and unease, he'd found that once he was forced by circumstance into isolation, he missed people. Besides The Woman, he had particularly craved being able to speak with John whenever he needed to 'talk out' a theory or problem, and as with Irene it was more than just the practical he had missed... On a number of occasions a random word or fragment of strangers' conversation had triggered the memory of something John Watson had once said, and comments that Sherlock had previously taken for granted came to become tokens of comfort to which he clung. And though they reminded him of all that he had sacrificed and left behind, they were also powerful incentives to continue.

Steadily Sherlock's original objective of destroying Moriarty's network evolved into the means by which he would get what he really wanted. He had stopped plotting out intricate strategies (bordering on revenge fantasies, he had to admit) on how he was going to destroy the criminal legacy Moriarty had left behind, and had begun to view the task as a mere—though potentially deadly—obligation. He'd understood his duty, and he would perform it proficiently, without reservation, and to its conclusion, but only because it would finally end his banishment.

But until then his exile would go on, and he hadn't been certain of how long the sentence would last. He had often thought that a span of years not only seemed possible, but likely. And sometimes, at his darkest moments (after a devastating setback, or when he hadn't spoken to a single person for days, or when something had particularly reminded him of home), he had convinced himself that he would never finish the work, and that he would have to remain forever an outcast. That it was impossible for one man, no matter how driven, resourceful, and clever, to take on such a layered, entrenched, and international network.

Those had been times he had mostly keenly, almost desperately yearned for Irene Adler. Unlike his friends and other allies, she wouldn't have been endangered by their contact, at least not in and of itself, and he could easily imagine her adapting to the trials of such a dangerous and transitory existence. 'Death' had condemned them both to be refugees from their old lives and former selves, but it also could have protected them, and connected them...

Granted, he'd had no doubt that she would've proven an immense asset to the work itself, but in those moments it was clear that he was longing for something else, something he had never really experienced before: personal consolation through another person. Comfort, closeness, intimacy. Not only sex, although he hadn't been able to deny that that was certainly part of it. He could recall the few times they'd had intercourse in the finest detail possible for being so preoccupied, and the idea of sharing such intense physical closeness after so many long months of solitude was incredibly alluring. But it was more than that. If it had been about only physical closeness and release, he could have engaged the services of a prostitute or 'pulled' someone in a club, and those ideas were so alien and unappealing to him that he would accept the crushing loneliness rather than indulge in either of those options.

No, it had been her he'd wanted: her body, admittedly yes, but more so her mind and the simultaneously affirming, challenging, and exhilarating dynamic between them. To his annoyance, he had had some difficulty readjusting to a strictly nonsensual life when he had returned to Karachi, but the extremity of his exile only magnified and intensified what he had already been feeling, and at points it felt almost unbearable. To cope, he had begun to invent entire conversations with her, about everything from the repulsive condition of a hostel's sheets to the vulnerabilities of the underboss he was stalking at that time (smoking habit; Sherlock could confront the man alone as he stepped out for a smoke, into the secluded alley behind the unlicensed casino he operated). But his running commentaries were a poor replacement, and they only served to accentuate his solitude. He had never been able to quite capture her voice—his impersonation lacked the vitality and flirtatious defiance of the real Irene Adler.

They never did reunite in death. He had remained the lone predator, facing interminable months of ever-increasing danger and difficulty in eradicating Moriarty's syndicate, one shot-caller at a time. Sometimes he would tip off the local or state police as to the person's location if he or she were a fugitive; in the absence of any sort of outstanding warrant, he would find evidence that would lead to a direct arrest. Occasionally, when opportunity allowed for it and he felt particularly repulsed by a mark, he would just turn the person over to a rival criminal faction and let the chips fall where they may.

That violence-by-proxy had been the extent of his own brutality, since he had never been compelled to use deadly force. His advanced planning was careful, informed, and detailed, and so in the critical moments of confrontation, he had never encountered any variables that he had not at first anticipated—variables which might have necessitated the use of his weapon. Nonetheless, his first step in each country he'd entered had been to obtain a firearm, and he had mentally prepared himself for the eventuality of having to take a life to such a degree that—to his later distaste—he had almost longed for a reason pull the trigger, just to end the unbearable psychological suspense of what it would be like.

But as the long months, extreme loneliness, and often squalid lifestyle continued to wear on Sherlock, he came to believe with irrational fervour that if he were to ever take a life, the bullet would be reserved for the most important target on his list: Jim Moriarty's second-in-command and chief confidante, Colonel Sebastian Moran.

The name hadn't been familiar to him prior to the undertaking of his mission, but the more Sherlock had learned about him, the more Colonel Moran had grown to represent everything that Sherlock sought to destroy. The man wasn't Moriarty himself, but as Jim's first lieutenant he was the next best thing.

Besides, he had done plenty on his own to rekindle Sherlock's desire for revenge. According to Sherlock's intel, he was the man who had physically strapped Semtex around John at the pool, and he had been at least one of the riflemen who had threatened the two of them on that same night. Sherlock had also suspected that Moran had been one of the snipers commanded to kill John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade if Sherlock failed to jump from St. Bart's, and was very likely the one whose sights had been trained on John. Moriarty had seemed to appreciate that type of symmetry and elegance.

However Moran had proven exceptionally difficult to trace, and none of the underbosses Sherlock had apprehended had seemed privileged with any information on his location. Even when Sherlock had promised (lied) that he would release the person in exchange for information on Moran's whereabouts, Sherlock had gleaned nothing of use to track him down—he had only been given additional reasons why the man needed to be eliminated.

Unfortunately, while each removal of an underboss had brought Sherlock a step closer to his ultimate goal, and had provided him with an opportunity ask additional questions about Moran, it had also made it ever more blatant to the outstanding leadership that someone was methodically dismantling Moriarty's web, which had made his task increasingly more difficult.

Still, scant or ambiguous as the evidence in his possession had been, it was sufficient enough for him, and after nine months and four weeks, his determination had resulted in the neutralisation of all of Moriarty's remaining commanders, barring two: Moran, and a chav named Neil "Bozzy" Bosworth whose prodigious counterfeiting skills had elevated him through the ranks of Moriarty's organisation. And while Sherlock had found reliable evidence regarding the location of Bosworth, he had still not discovered even the hint of a lead regarding Moran, and had been all too cognisant of the fact that unless Bosworth knew anything, Sherlock potentially faced a vacuum of data, which would mean an indefinite exile.

In facing such adversity he again found solace in thinking about The Woman, and he had come to the conclusion that if he did reach an impasse in his work, he would invest his energy and brainpower into locating her instead. Perhaps she would know something about Moran and his potential location... or perhaps not. But either way, it would be something tangible on which he could focus—something which offered the potential of a more promising future than an interminable life of solitude in search of a single fugitive whom he had never met.

However, three days shy of the ten-month anniversary of his 'suicide', Sherlock's mission had come to an abrupt and unanticipated end, ruling out any need for contingency plans.

His pursuit of Bosworth had returned him to England, where he had been able to ambush the young man at his aunt's council flat in Hartcliffe, Bristol. Bosworth, perhaps because he was English and therefore was more familiar with how Sherlock looked due to his media coverage the previous year, had appearred gobsmacked when he had realised that Sherlock had been behind the annihilation of the crime syndicate, since the entire network had believed him dead as a result of Jim's manipulations. It had been intensely gratifying to Sherlock to know that the deception of his suicide had remained intact—but not as gratifying as Bosworth's keen nod when Sherlock asked him if he were willing to trade any information about the whereabouts of Colonel Sebastian Moran for his freedom.

However, he hadn't been prepared for Bosworth's next words: "I hate to break it to you, bruv, only Moran's dead..."

According to Bosworth, Moriarty's most trusted associate had been killed in a bare-knuckles brawl over dogfight winnings in the Black Country only several days prior. And though it had been quite anticlimactic, and Sherlock had been disappointed that he had not been directly responsible for the final ruin of Moriarty's legacy, he had taken dark pleasure in the barbarous nature of the man's death. Besides, it had meant that he could finally return home, which—after turning Bosworth over to the Avon and Somerset Constabulatory, and then taking several days to investigate Moran's death until he was satisfied that it was legitimate—he did.

And though home was almost all that he had wanted for almost the entire duration of his 'death' (home—and The Woman), he had found the transition exceptionally hard. Difficult as his unstable and perilous life abroad had been, he had become somewhat accustomed to its rhythm and demands, and it was challenging to reenter into his old life. He knew consciously that there had once been such a thing as normalcy for him (well, his own unique brand of normalcy), but he hadn't been able to recall what that had entailed, let alone put it into practice.

He had almost welcomed the tension wrought by his emotional and contentious reunion with John; it had given him a valid reason to feel wrong-footed and vaguely bereaved when he should have felt relieved that his great hiatus was finally over. But frankly, he had felt very little relief, even despite the fact that not much had changed for him on the macro level. His flat was still available to him and despite being mostly moved in with Mary in Clapham John still spent time there, his room had been left relatively untouched, and his friends were all safe.

Since the external factor of 'home' hadn't changed significantly, Sherlock had come to realise that the shift was primarily internal... Being back again, amongst his tailored suits and insects enclosed in glass and books and collection of chemicals, forced him to acknowledge that he wasn't the same man he had been when he had last stood between the walls of his flat. A shift that began when he left for Karachi had continued its progression, and he had found that he could barely recognise himself. And so, even though he was technically Sherlock Holmes of 221B Baker Street, NW1 once again, that was of little consolation in the face of his burgeoning identity crisis. Throughout that time, particularly during his sleepless nights, his mind had still turned to The Woman, the ghost of his yearning lingering despite his return to a life that could never realistically accommodate her.

He had often wondered if she would get in touch with him since he was back in his own flat and she therefore knew how to contact him. However, as weeks passed and there was still no communication from the late Irene Adler, he had become increasingly more disillusioned, and it had felt as if he were slowly surfacing to consciousness from a dream. He had started to realise that the reunion he had imagined between himself and The Woman had been an infantile fantasy, and that while it was perhaps permissible during the hardship of his time away (somewhat; grudgingly), it was an entirely inappropriate diversion while he was attempting to rebuild his life and reputation. And rebuild he must.

In fact, as he did finally begin to reacclimatise to his former life, the breadth and depth of the need he had felt during his 'death' had eventually come to seriously unnerve and appall him, and as much as he had yearned for her during that time, he was correspondingly even more grateful that they had never reunited. He would have approached her as a diminished and desperate man—a shadow of his former self—and the results would have been pathetic and degrading to the extreme. Moreover, in his state he would have been incredibly vulnerable to her, and as much as he admired her, and as proficient a team as they had made in Karachi, he still didn't entirely trust her. Or perhaps it was that he didn't trust himself with her...

Either way, he had resolved that he would not look for her again, and should he perchance ever see her, he would have to ensure that he was in a position of not only not needing her, but preferably not even wanting her. Any position weaker than that would cede too much power to her (and to sentiment), and threaten to push him into the abyss of emotion once again. At best the fallout would be like the aftermath of their interlude in Karachi; at worst, like the majority of 2012. Or perhaps worse even than that, he thought, as horrifying as the idea was.

And then just over one month after his resurrection—as if she could sense her hold over him diminishing slightly—he had received a postcard from America.

It was John who had brought it to his attention, which was fortunate (or perhaps just the reverse) because otherwise it might have sat languishing for ages, only to eventually be swept into the recycle bin during one of Mrs. Hudson's occasional purges.

But instead John had seen and been charmed by it, remarking that it looked to be a kid from the handwriting and spelling, and then reading it aloud.

Dear Mr. Sharlock Holmes, I was always a believor in you and I was very sad when it seemed you were dead for 11 months, But now that you're back I admire you evenmore.
Yours,
Terri Womera.

At first Sherlock had taken little interest except to correct an error, interjecting in a bored voice, "It wasn't eleven months, it was ten. Not such a fan then, clearly." But then when John had read the name, his mind had jolted to attention, stimulated by something he couldn't immediately place. Almost simultaneous to this reaction, his body had been flooded with adrenaline, as if his limbic system had known why he was reacting in such a way before his brain could interpret it. That primal response should have been the tell...

Still, he'd feigned indifference—until John had left the room, at which point he almost tripped over his own feet to snatch the postcard off the table and stare at the signature.

Terri Womera. Of course. It was almost a homophone to her former professional name, plus the last letters were her former initials, and 'Womera' was promoted as the female alternative to Viagra, so there was a reference to sex. . .

Once he had established with some confidence that it was The Woman who had sent it to him, he had voraciously skimmed the rest of the coded message, and had deciphered its meaning in less than three seconds.

First she had written his name with an 'A' instead of an 'E,' which was followed by putting an 'O' where there should have been an 'E' in 'believer.' Then the number eleven. Why eleven? It seemed rather arbitrary, but he knew that neither that nor any of the other apparent errors were anything but deliberate. In the next clause there was a capitalised letter after a comma, and 'evenmore' formed one word. Two Es in a row, two Es missing from their proper places twice before, he had thought. So just replace the first E with an A and the second E with an O. Avonmore. Eleven B Avonmore. Simple, but clever.

He had then turned to his preferred search engine, and had discovered that the only 11B Avonmore anything—Avenue, Boulevard, Lane, Road, Street, etcetera—in the world was in Edison, New Jersey, despite the fact that the postcard both depicted and was sent from Baltimore (he had been surprised but wryly amused that she'd opted to reference that debacle). After all the energy he had invested in trying to locate her, the address was less than thirty miles from the apartment he'd originally let.

In an instant it was as if he had discarded all that he had resolved in the past several weeks pertaining to The Woman, and had become re-consumed by the yearning he'd felt for her in all those months of solitude. He had logged into his British Airways account and would have gone through with booking a reservation for that evening—had John not walked back into the room and startled him out of his trance-like state moments before he submitted it. Instead, he had snapped the lid of his laptop closed without taking the time to shut it down, jumped up from his chair, and gone straight for his coat. After shoving his arms into it and then wrapping his scarf around his throat, he had fled the flat without so much as a word to John, and had taken a long and mind-clearing—though difficult—walk to the river and back. By the time he had returned, he had managed to harden his will against her once more.

And though the pangs of sentiment had returned (almost like Swiss clockwork during times of boredom or adversity, though he likened them more to acid reflux), they were never quite as acute as they had been during his ten months abroad, the weeks immediately thereafter, or the moments directly after he examined her postcard. She was like an addiction from which he was slowly weaning himself—but would never escape entirely. Fortunately he knew how to manage just such a thing: work and more work, and due to the eventual restoration of his reputation, demand for his skill had almost returned to its previous capacity.

He had kept the postcard, though. He had propped it up on a bookcase next to the fireplace, where it was frequently within his view. Sherlock could tell that John projected his own emotional makeup onto it; his face had softened when he had first seen it there, and he obviously took it as evidence that Sherlock was capable of some depth of feeling after-all, perhaps as a result of his extended exile.

The irony was that John was actually spot-on about the emotions evoked by the postcard, but Sherlock's reasons for actually keeping it could not have been more contrary to what his flatmate believed. Sherlock had held onto the card precisely as a reminder of and a caution against those feelings, using it as a sort of ad hoc chip, similar in function to those he had received during his recovery from stimulants. And despite (or perhaps due to) the fact that the postcard was far more provocative than an imitation poker chip since it ostensibly contained her address, it had served as an effective coping mechanism. He had never returned to his online BA cart and completed the booking.

However, tonight he would.

Sherlock glanced up at the postcard with narrowed eyes, and sensed his face flush even more hotly, reflective of both the shame and defiance he felt.

Yes, he was crossing a line he had drawn for himself in the sand, and while it was undeniable that he was experiencing a significant relapse of sentiment that he could only moderate but never delete, it was not that impulse that compelled him to act, but his rational concern for her ongoing welfare. He was responsible for warning her that his brother had discovered Sherlock's actions and therefore her survival, and that obligation had nothing to do with sentimentality or the strange vulnerable need he had felt for her—at least not directly.

And although there was some question of whether the address in the postcard was still valid, it was still a lead of sorts (it was certainly more data than Mycroft possessed, he wagered), and Sherlock intended to pursue it to its conclusion.

"I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss—you can't do it alone."

― John Cheever (Thanks to my lovely readers, especially for your patience between updates! Xx)

Toska is essentially what Sherlock was feeling during much of his 'Great Hiatus' in this story. It's a word from Russian with no English equivalent:
"No single word in English renders all the shades of 'toska.' At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish... At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul...a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." -Vladimir Nobokov.