Shizuru was in no shape to pack, and besides which it wasn't like she needed any of her things, as everything she'd left behind her six months ago was all still in our Baker Street rooms.

"Our" rooms, I thought. They'd been "mine" now for nearly as long as they'd ever been "ours," and yet they'd never felt like anything but "ours." Not my home, but Shizuru's and mine, from which she'd been missing.

I'd as good as said as much to her face when I'd said, "Let's go home." I wondered if she'd even noticed, though, given her state. It wasn't like her at all to be like that, numbly moving at my direction. We waited only so long as it took me to dump the drugged gin down the kitchen drain, then run up and grab the letters and Shizuru's notes on the handwriting from the garret; we hailed a cab and made our way back to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson's eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline when she opened the door to us.

"I should have guessed that if you finally came back it would be at tea-time." I checked my watch and found that it was quarter past four.

"We could use some, thank you."

"English or Japanese?"

I put my hand on Shizuru's shoulder.

"Japanese, I think."

Mrs. Hudson nodded.

"Anything else?"

"I'd draw the blinds and close the shutters," I said. "It turns out Adair's murderer was after us the whole time, as an elaborate trap."

The Scotswoman just sighed.

"So what else is new? Try not to make it too long this time." She was about to go back into 221A, then turned back. "Shizuru, you owe me six months' back rent."

I couldn't help myself; I laughed. Shizuru blinked in surprise, then smiled for the first time in an hour.

"Of course. It may take a week or so, as things are a bit at sixes and sevens just now."

"As I said, so what's new?" She winked at us, and we went upstairs. I went into the sitting room but Shizuru paused at the threshold, looking around.

"It's...everything's the same."

"Well, the desk is more cluttered since you weren't here to clean it up, but..."

"Natsuki will always be Natsuki." She walked slowly to the door of what had been her bedroom and pushed it open. "Everything...it's like I've never left."

"I didn't want to touch anything of yours. Mrs. Hudson dusts once in a while."

"But...if you thought that I was dead, why leave things as they are?"

I pulled the blinds so that Tomoe couldn't snipe into the room. Mrs. Hudson was right; I'd been doing the same thing six months ago as part of a more generalized fear of the Obsidian Court's assassins. Now that I knew Tomoe had the means and skill to fire the Von Herder into the room from some vantage point, it just made it all the more important to take precautions. Who knew what she'd do next?

"I...I don't really know. Maybe I couldn't just admit to myself that you were gone. Hell, look at how long the Queen's been in mourning."

"I suppose that Mrs. Hudson appreciated it, too, since she did not push to clear out my things and get a new lodger, and clearly she did not increase your rent to the whole amount for the lodgings."

"I don't know what I'd have done without her. Mai, too, of course, but Mai didn't really know you, plus she's got her own problems what with Kanzaki's reunion with Mikoto and her own brother getting married this past June. Of course," I tried to lighten the mood, "I figure in another couple of months she'd have cashed in the stuff you left behind to pay the rent. That Kyoto tea set of yours would go a long way on the collector's market."

She didn't answer, not even that little half-giggle, half-chuckle laugh of hers. I turned around and realized that my attempt at a joke had fallen very flat. She wasn't smiling; she didn't even have that blank look like she had had after the encounter with Tomoe. She looked...stricken.

"I didn't mean it, Shizuru. No one was really going to sell your tea set." I hadn't realized it had sentimental meaning to her; maybe it had been her mother's or something? But she shook her head at once at my apology.

"No...no, Natsuki, don't say that you're sorry. That just makes it worse."

"What does it make worse?" I asked. I was probably being oblivious again, but I truly did not understand what she was talking about.

"Everything! Your feelings, this case, Tomoe Marguerite. This...this is all my fault."

"How do you figure?" I said foolishly. It wasn't really a question, more of a rhetorical denial of her claim, but she was ready to answer it. She'd said almost nothing while we confronted Tomoe in Mrs. Turner's kitchen, and I was now informed that it was because she was listening and thinking about what she'd heard.

"It's my fault that she's coming after you. If I'd had the courage to face up to my feelings, or to have any sensitivity about yours, I'd have never left and she would not be playing games with you now."

I supposed that there was some justice to that, but...

"Shizuru, that woman was trying to kill me six months ago while you were still just a name to her. She'd probably have tried to come after me anyway because I got away from her once and her ego couldn't take it. Not to mention Kanzaki, and what that could have meant for Mai and Mikoto if she hadn't been so focused on us first."

"It's my fault that innocent people were victimized as part of her scheme to get at me," she went on without missing a beat.

"Mrs. Turner will be fine. She just got a harmless nick on her neck and slept through the whole thing. Yvette Hélène isn't maudlin enough to blame herself because a lunatic bought a gun from her and shot someone. And if you expect me to weep over the oh-so-Honorable Ronald Adair, you're going to have to wait a really long time."

"It's my fault that I let myself become something that that sadistic monster saw as her ideal woman!" she all but shouted at me. "Look at what I made of myself! How are the things I did for your sake any different than what she is doing for mine right now? That...that thing is what I became, while claiming it was for love's sake."

"Stop it!" I snapped. "Don't talk like that!"

"Why should I not? It is the truth." She buried her face in her hands, weeping openly.

"I said, stop it!" I repeated, crossing to her in quick strides. Before I even knew what I was doing, I grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands apart. "Look at me." She didn't respond at once, so I snapped, "Look at me, Shizuru!"

She raised her eyes to mine; they were wet with tears.

"You are nothing like her," I said slowly and firmly. "Yes, you did awful things. That's a fact you can't run away from. But you are not the same, and it's only because she's as mad as a hatter that she can't recognize that. Tomoe Marguerite likes to hurt people. You know it yourself from the Wilton murder, from my fight with her six months ago, and from the encounter we just had, both from how she carried it out and what she said. She's a murderer for pay who'll hurt or kill anyone from a vicious criminal to a complete innocent, from an enemy to a causal bystander. You know that, Shizuru, just like you know that the people you killed were all criminals, most or all of whom the law would send to the gallows if it had all the facts. Just like you know that you wouldn't have done any of it if not for the fact that I was in danger. Yes, it was a twisted and distorted kind of love, but you did it all to protect me—probably, without it, I'd be dead today. She's doing this all to possess you, not to help you. You rejected her and she started planning more murders, while when I pushed you away, you just did as I asked.

"So don't just stand there and compare yourself to her. You may have been twisted up inside and driven half-mad by your love, but it was love. Tomoe is just trying to take you out of her own selfish lust and avarice. You don't think I can tell the difference? Do you think I'd have missed you for six months like my heart was cut out of my chest if I didn't know that your love was real?"

Shizuru trembled like a captive bird in my grip and I got the eerie sensation that it was she who was trying to look away from my gaze but found herself trapped. The problem with starting out in the light was when one falls, the darkness looks like one solid black pit, but those of us who have been there all along know that there are shades and gradations in the shadows.

Maybe that was what had struck Tomoe so deeply about her. It was the purity with which Shizuru had committed even unforgivable acts. Even her evil had had that selflessness about it, done not for gain but entirely for my benefit, with no hope of taking me for herself.

"Natsuki," she said in a small voice, "it's never that simple."

"Yes," I said, "sometimes it really is."

And then I kissed her.

Her lips were cold from the quick, frightened breaths she'd been taking while I'd been delivering my speech, but they warmed quickly. For a moment, it was the reverse of the kiss she had given me in the Obsidian Prince's library, as she did not react, seemingly frozen. For a moment.

Then she was kissing me back with an urgency, a passion that was almost explosive. Warmth seemed to flood her mouth, not only from my own but from inside herself. Her hands slipped from mine, closed around my back, and pressed me up against her. My head tipped back as she deepened the kiss, pressing on with what I had begun, and I embraced her, too, one hand at the small of her back and the other sliding into her hair, pulling it free of its pins so that it tumbled down around her shoulders and I could feel the silken cascade over my skin. A fire seemed to have been lit within me; a heat seemed to spread out from my lower abdomen, filling me. My lips opened beneath hers and I sighed into her mouth, a long, ragged groan that came from deep within.

Shizuru broke off the kiss for a moment. Her eyes were alight with something more than just desire, something that threatened to pull me in, to consume me.

"Natsuki..." she murmured. "So kind that it hurts..."

"It isn't kindness," I told her, "to take what I want." I pulled her mouth back to mine and with that act shattered the last bonds of her self-control. A dull, growling noise came from the back of her throat and she deepened the kiss, her mouth moving wetly on mine, and I tasted her breath through her open lips. Her hands slid down my back, cupping my bottom through my trousers, and pulled me hard against her; I could feel the heat of her even through our clothes. It took me by surprise at first when her tongue slid into my mouth, a gentle invasion probing, tasting, but then I moaned against her, returning the caress, our mouths exploring one another.

I had no idea how we got across the room, let alone how we found ourselves sprawled on my bed with her atop me. All I was aware of was the desperate, aching need for her that drove my mouth, my hands like it would consume me if I didn't fill my senses with Shizuru in every way I could. She'd gotten my cravat and collar off somewhere along the line, and pressed nibbling, biting kisses along the length of my neck, drawing shuddering moans from me.

"Ah! Shizuru..."

Her fingers began to work at the buttons of my shirt, but they were trembling so much she could barely work them through the holes and more than one was torn off accidentally. She began to pull the lacy silk camisole up, then stopped and lifted her head, apprehension merging with smoldering desire in her eyes.

"Natsuki..." she made herself say. "Is this...is this really what you want? You're not...for my sake?"

I thought it was so endearing how she stumbled over her words. No surprise, that: she had known how she felt for months on end. She had longed for this for who knew how many days, how many nights? If what I was feeling, the terrible, clawing ache for her, the need to touch and be touched, was what she had felt time and again, I was amazed that she could bring herself to stop at all.

But she had, and my heart almost melted from that alone.

I cupped the side of her face in my palm, and despite my own nerves, my own passions, I found the words to tell her.

"I love you, Shizuru. I'm sorry it took so long for me to know it. I'm not good with things like this. I cut myself off from it for so long that I didn't even understand what love was until you showed me, day by day, and even then I was so ignorant that I couldn't tell what it was that I was feeling. But I do know it, now, at last, and this is exactly what I want."

Then, because I thought I would go mad if I had to wait one moment more without touching her, I wrapped my thigh around hers and pulled her down on top of me while I crushed our lips together once again.

~X X X~

It was a long time after that. The room had grown dark with the sunset and my bare skin was growing cold except where it was pressed up against Shizuru's. She lay with her body half-covering mine, head tucked up under my chin, her arm embracing me just beneath my breasts.

"I could die right now without a single regret," she murmured, her breath gently tickling my skin.

"I'd have regrets," I said, the hand I had wrapped around her lazily tracing circles on her bare back. "I'd regret every day in the future we haven't spent together yet."

"Oh, Natsuki..." she sighed, then smiled and playfully teased my collarbone between her teeth. "For someone who said she knew nothing about love, you do very well at it."

I blushed, recalling our fumbling caresses, how more than once she'd had to gently guide my fingers to the right spot or wordlessly show me what did or didn't feel good for her. "It'll...I'll get better, I promise," I stammered. It made Shizuru laugh.

"Don't be silly, Natsuki; that isn't what I was talking about. And it is not as if I have any comparisons to make."

"I recall one of us having a much better idea of what she was doing."

She raised her head so she could look me in the eyes.

"Natsuki, I have never made love with anyone before tonight. I have been aware of my lesbian inclinations since I was a teenager, yes, and I've shared kisses with other girls in the past. And I was curious about the kind of things two women would do together, so I did research the matter. I even," she admitted with a blush, "went so far as to...try things...on myself where I could. But I've never been with another woman before. I'd never been in love."

There wasn't much that I could say to that.

"Oh," was my brilliant comment, in a very small voice.

"Natsuki?"

"I...Really, I'm your first love?"

Shizuru smiled impishly.

"Ara, was Natsuki jealous of the previous lovers I did not have?"

I could only hope that the dim lighting was hiding the full extent of my blushing.

"I...just didn't want to disappoint you," I muttered.

"Natsuki, making love with you was a dream come true. It was about being with you, about you welcoming me into an intimacy that we've never before shared, about you loving me enough to offer me something that you have never offered anyone before. After the things that have happened between us, can you imagine how that makes me feel? None of this was in any way about technical proficiency, Natsuki."

The warmth that flooded me was not entirely from the heat of my flushed skin this time.

"Thank you, Shizuru. I wasn't really thinking about that stuff while we were actually together, but afterwards..." I couldn't, it seemed, get over running squarely into embarrassing topics. "I wanted this to be everything you hoped it would be," I said in a very small voice, "and you made me feel such amazing things, and, well, I didn't want you to be left out."

"Ahh," she said, understanding. "Well, you needn't be embarrassed on that score." She arched forward and kissed me softly. "Although, if Natsuki ever wishes to practice diligently to improve herself I will be more than willing to assist in your training."

I closed my arms around her waist.

"You'd better be, because I'm sure as hell not going to let anyone else take the part!" We shared another long, warm kiss, then regretfully untangled ourselves from one another and sat up. I slid from the bed and turned up the gaslight so we could see to get dressed. When I turned around, I saw that Shizuru was staring at me.

"You look like you want to eat me alive or something."

"Natsuki is very worth looking at, and as I am finally permitted to look..."

"Idiot. Would you hand me my camisole?"

"Ikezu," she said with a mock pout. She found where the lace-edged silk undergarment had been left on the other side of the bed and handed it to me. "Natsuki, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

"I suppose not."

"I would expect you to wear sturdy, utilitarian undergarments. Yet very often you seem to wear ones like these, both very fancy and quite expensive, particularly compared to your outer wardrobe. Why is that?"

I wondered for a second whether or not I should answer, then glanced at Shizuru sitting, still naked, on the bed and decided that it was hardly the time to be keeping back minor secrets.

"Wearing fancy lingerie makes me feel like I'm a woman," I confessed. She didn't react at once, so I went on. "I've spent most of my life dressed in masculine clothing, carrying out dangerous business most often left to men. Most of the time, I figure that it's just the way things are, but sometimes it makes me feel...I suppose that you could say 'unfeminine.' So I wear pretty, lacy underthings because I can wear them regardless of whether I have on jeans, trousers, or a dress. I suppose that sounds like a silly reason."

Shizuru shook her head twice, slowly.

"No, it does not. I must say, though, that I have never thought of you as masculine, Natsuki, but always as an amazing and unique woman." She smiled at me. "Believe me that if I had found you manly, I would not be in this particular state just now."

"Thank you."

"I do envy you in one respect, though. It is much easier for you to dress than I."

"Well, a lot of ladies' outfits are created with the assumption that the wearer has a maid to help them dress."

"Indeed so."

We sort of ran out of things to say at that point. The warmth and intimacy of our lovemaking had worn off for the most part, and with that had come the realization that we were there, naked and exposed in a room with each other. Maybe some day things would reach a point where we could be casual about such matters at all times, when the connection between us and comfort with one another had been built so strongly. That time wasn't today, though, and we found our self-consciousness growing. Was this the way it was with most women when they first took a lover?

Lovers. That was what we were now, I thought. There was no turning back from that reality. The step was irrevocable: the relationship might or might not remain the same in the future, but the fact of it was something that could not change. How strange was it that I'd been the one to take the final step, to decide to cross that line, and now I was feeling...what? Maidenly shyness? The idea made me want to gag.

Because I did love Shizuru, and I was attracted to her, woman to woman, and I wasn't stupid enough to have regrets over doing something that both of us wanted to happen and were ready to have happen. More than that, I thought, it needed to happen, because I doubted that there was any other way for me to make the point to Shizuru and as long as we'd been stuck there we'd never make any headway between us at all.

I wondered if, for a while, I'd made her feel like a princess for a change.

These thoughts occupied the rest of the time it had taken me to get dressed. I fastened my belt and turned around to see that Shizuru had put her underclothes on but had the maid's dress and petticoats folded over her arm instead of having put them on.

"If you need help, I'll hook the back up for you," I told her," remembering what we'd said about clothing styles.

"No, thank you; I believe that I shall take your suggestion from before and change into one of the kimono I left here."

"All right."

I put my hand on the doorknob and then slowly, as if recognizing that something was about to change, that the idyll between us was ending and we had to return to the real world, I turned it and proceeded Shizuru back into the sitting room.

The tea tray which both of us had forgotten lay sitting on the low table in front of the sofa. Mrs. Hudson must have brought it in while we were in my bedroom. A bit of white caught my eye; a folded slip of paper from my memo pad was sitting on the tray. I picked it up.

"What does it say?"

I unfolded the note, then rolled my eyes.

"'It's about time.'"

Shizuru giggled.

"It seems that Natsuki's decision to alter our relationship meets with our landlady's approval, at least."

I groaned.

"Next time, remind me to lock the door," I said, trying and failing to not think about what Mrs. Hudson might have heard.

"Still, I am very pleased, and surprised, that she should condone a homosexual relationship so freely. Many people would not be so accepting."

"Which brings us to someone who is definitely not accepting of our relationship."

Shizuru nodded.

"Miss Marguerite. Whom in an odd way I need to thank, as it was because of her that I came back to London in the first place."