Her Final Problem


Irene blinked, and felt a faint and bittersweet smile on her lips at recalling that day. It had been somewhat surreal at the time, and her memories had taken on an even more abstruse, ethereal quality since. She had often wondered if their time on the ship could have been as extraordinary as she perceived it, or if she had embellished upon the experience until it stood out like a bold exclamation point in the timeline of her life, since it was the closest thing to intimacy she had ever known.

But on Baker Street, back in Sherlock's flat, she'd felt that same inexorable pull between them, although it was now manifesting as stilted awkwardness rather than mutual understanding and openness. It was the same coin, but this time fortune had flipped it the other way. And as much as she had 'managed' Mycroft Holmes thus far, the metaphor of a coin toss was yet another reminder at how detestably out of control she really was in this situation. She had a plan, yes, and the strategies to carry it out, but she had learned the hard way that even the best-laid plans could be put asunder—especially if the younger Holmes were involved.

The train was slowing to a stop, and when she glanced up at the name of the station she saw that it was Green Park, her transfer point. She wove through the other passengers to access the door, and her bittersweet smile lightened to a genuine one as she thought about seeing Nero. She loathed being apart from him, and it would be a palpable relief to hold him in her arms again.

She had never before cared so much about any one thing—not herself, nor Sherlock, nor her ambitions, nor even her beloved late grandmother. And though she had marvelled at it, she hadn't second-guessed the pure, fierce, and absolute devotion she had felt for the infant the moment he had been placed in her arms. Even the depth of feeling she'd felt for Sherlock that had initially so shocked her paled in comparison for her love for their child. It did make a neat sort of sense, she thought. After all, Nero was a perfect composite and extension of the two things about which she had previously cared most: herself, and Sherlock. It followed that her sentiments would be the sum of what she felt for herself and Nero's father.

Moreover the baby was a mystery unto himself, and though her adjustment to being a mother had been very difficult at first in spite of that love, she now delighted in discovering a bit more of his personality every day. With Nero she was never bored, and even the mundane daily rituals that had previously represented the epitome of why she'd never wanted children—breastfeeding, changing nappies, constant laundry—had come to ground her in a life that was otherwise precarious. She would have never expected to find satisfaction in ever-repeating duties that in no way served her own interests, and nowhere had the shift within her been more evident than in the way she didn't resent rising in the middle of the night to feed or comfort the baby.

She had always fiercely prized her sleep and Kate had understood that she was never to wake or disturb Irene unless the circumstances were dire. Nero penetrated through all of that—though all of her natural self-absorption and self-priority, and aloof detachment. For the most part he was a happy, outgoing, and alert baby, with the rare exception of when he was somehow confounded in his efforts of getting something he wanted. Then he could throw strops that rivaled his father's, and when pouting, their lower lips jutted out in precisely the same, endearing, way...

But Nero's usual ebullient and inquisitive personality was more than enough compensation for his fussier moments, although she also hadn't been nearly as put off by a crying infant as she might have expected. The unprecedented tenderness Sherlock had first managed to elicit from her was amplified exponentially with their son, and the power of her love for him was staggering at times. She would do anything for him, anything at all; she would die for him, and she wouldn't hesitate to kill for him.

Irene caught the equally crowded Piccadilly Line train and leaned up against a side partition, surrounded once more by a press of bodies but retreating within her mind so that it was as if she were alone. Closing her eyes, she remembered the time that had followed her discovery that those improbable days together had resulted in something equally unlikely and exceptional: Nero's conception.

In the hours after she had discovered that she was pregnant, Irene had realised with some shock that she actively missed Sherlock. It had been far sharper and more intense than the vague longing she had previously experienced, and unlike that feeling she had been unable to suppress or ignore it.

She had been so occupied with the logistics of recreating the basics of a life, and then elaborating upon those basics, that she had not permitted herself any distractions. Besides, missing someone was passive and unproductive and held traces of the pathetic; if she wanted to see him she could arrange it. And she hadn't, she had focused instead on the higher priority of her safety. She knew that he would agree that establishing her security was far more important than scheduling a rendezvous somewhere.

But by the evening of that first day she had less allowed herself feel the pang of separation and distance as much as she had just submitted to the overwhelming tide of emotions, and it had been every bit as unpleasant and pathetic as she'd always suspected it would be. In retrospect, that moment was the very initial loss of control that would set the precedent for the remainder of her pregnancy and early motherhood.

That first day, she had attributed her sentimentality to the fluctuation of new hormones, but she hadn't been able to deny that regardless of the cause, the feelings were real. She had even found herself briefly wondering if he actively missed her, before dismissing that thought with a derisive sound. Regardless, she had wanted to have him read the truth about what had happened in her eyes, in the curve of her lips, in the way she couldn't help briefly brushing her fingertips against her belly, despite the fact that the embryo had been no more than a microscopic collection of cells then, and her belly had still been so flat from the weeks of near-starvation during her captivity that her hipbones had jutted out like the twin sides of a wishbone.

She had also experienced another feeling that she normally derided and dismissed, when she contemplated it at all: loneliness. Although she knew that it had always lurked below the surface of her daily life like a phantom, she also took pride out of being unique, to the degree that it was a primary component of her self-identity and self-confidence. She had never been tempted to compromise in order to have the companionship and understanding others seemed to find so easily. In fact, she had striven in the opposite direction; she had sought to make herself so singular and imposing that no one could ever hope to be worthy enough.

Of course, there had been those who had tried for some type of intimacy with Irene. There were the clients who worshiped The Woman, of course, but they had never stood a chance (though it was certainly enjoyable, and lucrative for her, to permit them to try). There were others, however, whom she had met under nonprofessional circumstances, who'd managed to earn a consistent place in her life. She knew that these women—and the occasional man—understood they would never be her equal or receive any concessions from her, and so they had tried to carve a place for themselves in a way they knew she valued: they had tried to be useful.

Beautiful, clever, and intuitive Kate had proven herself the most useful, and so she had become closer to Irene than anyone else had before. In the months before she'd met Sherlock, Irene had even come to wonder whether she felt anything more towards the woman, other than the satisfaction she derived from their successful working relationship. In the several years that Kate had worked as Irene's valet of sorts, they had certainly developed close familiarity, and perhaps even a type of intimacy, and she had taken Kate farther into her confidences than any other.

But then she had encountered Sherlock, and the blaze of recognition and understanding she had felt with him had burned away the lukewarm feelings she had experienced with Kate. For the first time she had experienced the possibility of true affinity and had glimpsed an alternative to that ever-repressed loneliness. It made whatever she had felt for Kate seem pallid and somewhat forced, though she still held the other woman in fond esteem.

The due diligence she had done in preparation for her initial meeting with Sherlock had piqued her curiosity and intrigue over the man, but it wasn't until he'd solved the AirBond code in less than eight seconds that it had fully struck her: she was not as singular, nor as alone, as she'd always believed. She had pulled away to stare at him in amazement over his mental prowess, but there was much more in her expression than simple admiration. There was wonder at seeing herself reflected in someone else for the first time, and shock as she identified what it was that she felt for him in that moment: deep attraction, respect, and, somehow, even desire.

Standing on her balcony in San Francisco, she had longed to share such a pivotal moment with the only other person she had ever met who was like her—the one who had made this with her, and the only person who really mattered. Instead she was alone again, a sole figure silhouetted against a bright Californian sky that was thousands of miles away from the night sky that blanketed London at that moment.

Ironically, the very reason she wanted to reunite with him so immediately was the precise reason she must not. Her safety was secondary now—the safety of their child must be everything. The powerful men and women she had manipulated and exploited for her own ends would remain neutralised only as long as they believed she was actually dead, and to make a move was to risk undue exposure.

That first evening, that she would keep the child despite the insecurity and danger of her life had not been in doubt. At that initial point she hadn't recognised it as a selfish act on her part, although she certainly had come to view it that way in the following weeks. Then, filled with a desperate angst and uncertainty unlike anything she had ever experienced before, she had waged a fierce and ongoing debate about whether or not she should terminate the pregnancy without ever telling Sherlock what had happened.

On one given day she would vow to have the child despite the danger—despite never having believed she would have children, and certainly not wanting to change that. Then as soon as the following day she would wake up knowing that she had been delusional and dangerously self-indulgent to even entertain the notion that she could properly care for an infant. She was a fugitive who hadn't used her own birth name since adolescence.

On that initial night, however, the idea of ending the pregnancy hadn't even occurred to her. She was too filled with wonder and an unfamiliar sense of nostalgic longing to consider it, as well as the single burning question that continued to cycle through her mind like an incantation: but how?

Her mind may not have been as scientifically knowledgeable as Sherlock's, but it was almost as rational. And even if the conception might have seemed like a miracle, she knew there had to be a logical explanation, besides the simple possibility that she was in the 0.6% of women that experienced a technical malfunction of an IUD that resulted in pregnancy. That seemed as if it were a swing to far in the opposite direction of a miracle, and was too banal. Anyway, the 0.6% figure was based on an entire year of use. She and Sherlock had only spent three days together.

For a full week she contemplated how to get in touch with Sherlock, and she finally decided to go to an internet café in disguise and email him her burner mobile's number through a masked ISP address. She planned for the subject line to simply say "In Venture," which would mean nothing to anyone who might be keeping tabs on Sherlock's inbox, but which would tell him immediately that the email was from Irene. The Independent Venture had been the name of the cargo ship that had borne them from the Port of Karachi, and the likely site of their child's conception.

It still wasn't as safe or particularly clever as she'd have preferred, but she had limited options, and she felt that Sherlock deserved to know what had happened as soon as possible. She was a bit concerned with how he might react to the news, especially after their entire conversation about birth control, but in real and practical terms it didn't matter much whether he accepted it or not. She was the sole architect of her new life, and she alone would determine its design.

But despite her irritating apprehension over his reaction, Irene had been determined to share the news with him. It was too significant, too unexpected, and too much of a paradigm change to keep to herself. The only other soul who had known about Irene's pregnancy at that point had been the proficient, but overworked and impersonal San Francisco General Hospital obstetrician whom she visited once in her first trimester. But that woman hadn't counted, and she certainly hadn't been Sherlock. She could have never seen Irene as any different from the hundreds of other mothers whose care she oversaw, or found the fact that Irene had conceived a child with one Mr. Sherlock Holmes compelling in any way. The fact that the doctor had known the straight facts but could've never understood the context or implications had made Irene feel even more isolated than when she alone had known about the pregnancy, and the visit had steeled her resolve to reach out to Sherlock.

But just as she had settled on an internet café located in the tacky area of Fisherman's Wharf, which was solely frequented by tourists and therefore provided a degree of anonymity, everything had changed.

On a blustery mid-March morning she was listening to National Public Radio, the closest approximation to the BBC she'd found in America, when a news presenter announced, "British media is already proclaiming it the crime of the century, as three separate highly-secure facilities were breached earlier this morning: The Tower of London, The Bank of England, and Pentonville Prison. Katty Kay has more on the developing story."

At the words 'British' and 'crime of the century' Irene had frozen and looked up from the list of high-end condominium grand opening tours she had been compiling. She'd been filled with sudden ice-cold dread and foreboding, and her heart had started to pound against her ribs. She had warned Sherlock that Jim had further and much worse plans in store for him, and capturing Sherlock's attention by perpetrating something that earned the moniker 'crime of the century' would certainly be the style in which Jim might commence his final, deadly game.

The NPR presenter turned coverage over to a correspondent for the BBC World Service, and the longer Irene listened, the more leaden and chilled she felt.

"Some are already calling it the crime of the century. Today England has seen an unprecedented break in security, as three of the nation's most guarded sites have been breached, all within minutes of one another.

Scotland Yard was notified of a potential robbery of the Crown Jewels at the Waterloo Barracks in the Tower of London at shortly after 11:13 this morning, and at 11:15 and 11:18 respectively, the vault of the Bank of London in The City was unlocked remotely, and the security system at HMP Pentonville failed.

One man was arrested onsite at the Tower of London, and a representative of Scotland Yard has stated that he is compliant. It is believed that he was responsible for all three break-ins, although it remains unclear how he carried out three separate breaches, two of which appear to have been performed remotely.

A Tower of London guard is in hospital at St. Thomas in London and is listed as being in fair and stable condition, but there have been no other injuries associated with the break-ins. Nonetheless, there are fears that this is not the end of compromised security and therefore safety, but the beginning.

A special session has been called at parliament to attempt to answer questions about how someone might have broken past the defenses of all three facilities, and what measures are being taken to prevent this from happening again. The Home Secretary had this to say:"

The clipped and professional voice of the home secretary came on the air, but Irene could discern a harried tone beneath her confidence.

'Look, the important thing to understand is that the perpetrator is in custody. He has confessed to the break-ins, and he has informed us that he was working alone. Based on the evidence collected by the police so far, we have no reason to believe otherwise. Scotland Yard have not determined motive, but they believe that he poses no further threat. In the meantime, we are doing everything we can to understand today's events.'

Questions remain as to whether one man could be capable of this, or whether he and his arrest are only serving as diversion for future attacks. Here's the shadow Home Secretary:

The opposition minister's voice was strident as she demanded, "We're just supposed to take the word of this man that he was acting alone? These are the best-guarded spots in our country, and they were compromised within minutes of one another. And why, just to show off? Or are we supposed to believe that he was acting as some well-intentioned citizen who was pointing out flaws in our security? I have a hard time believing that, and so do my constituents. I was in Tavistock Square on 7/7, and I won't just accept the word of a criminal that this isn't a prelude to a more serious attack. I want to know: what is the government doing to make sure we remain safe?"

The Scotland Yard is actively pursuing answers in their ongoing criminal inquiry, and there are unconfirmed reports that they have brought on additional, external consultation.

'External consultation.' That would be Sherlock, of course. Even without hearing either his or Jim Moriarty's names stated overtly, Irene's every fear had been confirmed in the short bulletin. 'Showing off'? Of course. 'A prelude to more'? Without a doubt. Just not in the way the ministers had thought.

With clammy hands she had opened her laptop to read all that she could on the emerging coverage, and every addition word filled her with greater alarm. Jim had finally thrown down the gauntlet.

Her initial knee-jerk reaction had been to grab her mobile and ring Sherlock at once, consequences and personal security be damned. During his and Jim's previous entanglement she had been at the centre, and she'd wanted Sherlock to assure her in his own words that he was more in control of the situation this time. Her thumb had gone to press the button to connect the call, but just before she could've gone through with it, she had quickly jabbed 'cancel' instead, and had thrown her phone back onto the tabletop, staring at it and beginning to breathe hard as if she had just done something strenuous. In a sense, she had.

Even though she had been desperate to speak to him, she had also known that she needed to put aside her personal sentiments before they did more harm. After all, there was a reason he had been so distracted and malleable last time, and that reason was her. Until the final minute of the eleventh hour, he had fallen in line precisely as she had intended him to, and Jim had been the direct beneficiary of that. In fact, Jim Moriarty had been the only person in the entire situation to gain everything he'd wanted, and lose nothing.

Even if the dynamics between she and Sherlock had evolved, the fact that she could act as a diversion might not have. She hadn't wanted to take even the slightest bit of Sherlock's focus from Jim and his deadly contest of wits; Sherlock had needed absolute focus and clarity to pull through alive. Irene knew him well enough to also recognise that he would be mindful of all of that, and would most likely not even appreciate her involvement. She hadn't taken this personally, rather the opposite—it was a testament to the power she held over him and the significance of who she was to him.

And if her mere contact alone might have provided distraction, informing him that she was pregnant was most certainly off the table. She'd imagined that nothing could be more potentially catastrophic to his concentration than that particular bomb.

It had been the first time she had ever acted in the best interests of someone else when those interests directly countermanded what she wanted herself, but she had understood that it was essential.

From a distance she had watched it all unfold—the 'not guilty' verdict six weeks later, the intensely violating Sun article that cited a source called 'Rich Brook,' the superintendent of the Met's bloviated disavowals of Sherlock—with a sort of helpless, escalating fury. Though she had tried to think of how she might be able to aid Sherlock even indirectly, her lack of position or leverage meant that she had no useful contacts. What had been even more frustrating was the fact that any information she had on Jim was not to be trusted. She'd had no real way of knowing how much of what he had shared with her was genuine, and how much was strategically fabricated. He was a malevolent genius who was masterful at foreseeing and anticipating countless variables and eventualities, and she could easily imagine him planting fictitious information with her, even back then. A bid to help Sherlock that actually did the reverse and undermined him was just the sort of twisted scenario Jim would delight in engineering.

But then, despite her distance, despite her underlying faith that Sherlock could defeat Moriarty despite the prodigious challenge he posed, he had not.

Her initial reaction to the news that Sherlock had committed suicide had been absolute certainty that it was a feint of some sort, and that he would emerge shortly thereafter, fierce, vindicated, and victorious. In the week that had followed his alleged death, Irene had developed the daily ritual of purchasing all the British papers carried by her local international newsagent. She would then return home and comb through both the papers and the online crime blogs of villages throughout the UK, seeking signs of Sherlock's signature brilliance. She'd never found even a close approximation, and eight days after the fall, she had come across images in The Sun, under the blaring headline Final Farewell to the Fraud!

Those photographs had done more to convince Irene that Jim had won than any frothing exposé or photographs of the St Bart's site in the immediate aftermath of Sherlock's jump could do.

She knew what people liked, but she knew the inverse, too. She possessed a native intuition that had been particularly honed by her craft to recognise what might break people, but she was certain she had never seen someone as broken as John Watson had been in the pictures of Sherlock Holmes's small, sparse funeral. They had been grainy, taken by a paparazzo from a distance, but the deep grief etched on John's face had been unmistakable. He had looked haggard and brittle, and she couldn't be sure, but it had appeared as though he was favouring his left side.

Irene knew that Sherlock hadn't told John about her being alive, let alone about what had passed between them, but she had gotten the impression that as with most other things, she was an exception to Sherlock's status quo. In all other regards, he seemed uncharacteristically open with the other man. John was just as much of an exception for Sherlock as Irene was—but Sherlock's helpmeet and complement rather than his reflection. And as a person of such importance in Sherlock's life, Irene hadn't believed that Sherlock could keep John in the dark about the most critical confrontation he had ever faced. It simply hadn't tracked with what she knew of Sherlock, and what she knew of his and John's friendship. And so, if John believed with such obvious and devastated certainty that Sherlock was dead, then that meant...

She had stared at the photographs and John's small pointillated face for some unknown amount of time, distantly sensing the blood drain from her face and a sharp, aching pressure welling up inside her chest. Then with a single, disjointed cry she had dropped the paper as if it had scalded her, and had stumbled backwards out of her chair to stand in the middle of her studio, staring but not seeing. Her breathing had hitched, and then sped up.

She'd pressed the heels of her palms against her mouth, hard, but the breaths had pushed past her fingers, getting faster and shallower, until she'd started to hyperventilate. And then her exhales had shifted into hoarse, dry cries. She couldn't remember the last time she'd cried like this, and she cried like someone who had forgotten how—short, erratic bursts that sounded alien and confusing to her. A rational part of her mind, a part that seemed distant and detached and had been almost as disturbed by her loss of control as it was by the real possibility of Sherlock's death, had berated her to pull herself together, that this hardly concrete proof, that this changed nothing.

But hadn't they both learned that sentiment was never rational? Something had heavily and irreversibly clicked with her, some sort of horrified acceptance and surrender, and she could no longer convince herself that he had survived.

In the grip of her grief, she had flashed back to the way her flesh had crawled whenever she'd had to look into Jim Moriarty's black vacuum eyes, or had had to endure hearing about his pathological fixation on Sherlock's destruction. During those times she had told herself that she could ignore that particularly distasteful aspect of coordinating with Jim since his obsession wasn't actually directly relevant to her business, but it had still filled her with an unfamiliar and unrelenting dread.

She had feigned admiration for Moriarty during her ill-fated meeting with the Holmes brothers, but that had been bravura, as well as some overcompensation for how she had actually felt for the younger of the two. In fact, she had felt scorn and contempt for Jim, but also very real fear. Contrary to what she had had said, he was not her type of man at all. She was intuitive but she created plans based on meticulous organisation and cost-benefit analyses, and he was far more spontaneous and talented than she, but also far more volatile and capricious. Also, whereas she experienced sentiment as an (initially) unwanted affect of her interaction with Sherlock, he was driven by it. Except that in his case the sentiment was mad obsession fuelled by adoration and hate in equal measures. She was audacious and clever, but he was a fanatical genius. But apparently he was fanatical enough and genius enough to take on and vanquish the great Sherlock Holmes.

She had never experienced such a crippling, paralysing sensation as she had felt in the aftermath of her acceptance of Sherlock's death, and even more than when Sherlock had destroyed her security and every carefully-laid plan, she had understood the heavy cost of sentiment. But she did not like to think about that day, nor the days that had followed.

She'd been numbed by the loss in a way she could not have anticipated, and then when she had been able to emerge from that haze of pain she'd been met by keen, palpable regret for the second time in her life. The first time had been when she'd been captured by the terrorist group Lashkar e Taiba and summarily sentenced to death by decapitation, but at that point she hadn't been certain whether she regretted setting her password to S-H-E-R, or if she regretted agreeing to Moriarty's initial terms of consultation, and manipulating Sherlock in the first place. Now she couldn't help but bitterly condemn herself for not sharing with Sherlock what she did know about Jim, so that he could parse through the data and decide for himself what was true or false.

In retrospect she had also desperately regretted not telling him about her pregnancy, despite her good intention. Would knowing that he had conceived a child with her have altered his mindset as he'd moved towards his and Jim's final confrontation? Might it have made him less reckless, less prone to taking serious risks in his effort to defeat Moriarty? She would never know.

Yet she had been confident of one thing: if Sherlock were dead then it had been murder, not suicide. He had been outmanoeuvred somehow, but he certainly hadn't killed himself; that was only Jim's final masterstroke in a long-term design of defamation and disgrace. Sherlock was (had been, she'd reminded herself) far too proud and stubborn, and more importantly had held far too high an estimation of himself, to ever take his own life. As long as his intellectual brilliance—the single, essential trait that truly defined him—remained intact, it wouldn't matter how discredited or derided he was. No, the 'suicide' element had had Moriarty's brand of wicked genius all over it.

The day she had seen the photographs of Sherlock's funeral had been the day she had finally resolved to see her pregnancy to term. Not even the moment she had decided to email Sherlock had made up her mind fully, she had realised in retrospect. But after she saw the images of a shell-shocked and bereft John Watson standing beyond Sherlock's polished black granite headstone, she never again questioned that.


Two fortnights after Sherlock's apparent death, just as she had emerged from the deepest fog of her pain, she'd begun to notice various strange occurrences, and she had been rattled to realise that they might have been ongoing and she hadn't been aware enough to notice them. She had found the door to her postbox left slightly ajar on several occasions, although when she had inspected her post she hadn't detected any signs of tampering, nor had it seemed that anything had gone missing. On another occasion she'd caught a busboy furtively pocketing an empty bottle of San Pellegrino after she had finished it at a nearby café, but when she'd confronted him about it he'd said that he was separating it for recycling. Whilst the story had seemed somewhat plausible, her suspicions and sense of self-preservation had been alerted in a way she hadn't felt since just prior to her capture in Karachi. And she never ignored or dismissed her instincts.

Two months after Sherlock's death, the small incidents escalated dramatically with two harrowing events, the second of which had confirmed to her that the occurrences were not at all random but in fact targeted attempts against her. They had been perpetrated for reasons unknown and by assailants unknown—although she'd had her suspicions.

If the incidents had happened in the first weeks after she had discovered she had been pregnant, she would have almost certainly terminated the pregnancy. But since she had resolved to have the baby, it only steeled her already formidable determination to not only survive, but thrive. For herself alone it was a valid objective, but for her child, for Sherlock's child, it was an imperative.

Three months before, she had wondered how she could've fallen pregnant, but after her ordeals she had been left with a much more alarming 'how' to consider. How could anyone know she was alive? She'd wagered that Sherlock's body hadn't shown any signs of torture—that would've made the cause of death as suicide rather unpersuasive. Even if they had managed to find a way to hurt him without leaving tell-tale marks (the thought had made her sick), she had felt sure that he would never confess their secret. She knew he cared for her, even loved her, and he had risked his life saving hers. No, he wouldn't have given her up.

But even if the mysterious assailants had somehow learned that she was alive, how would they have known where in the world, literally, to locate her? Not even Sherlock had been privy to that information prior to his death. Had she been overly careless in San Francisco, and risked too much exposure in her enthusiasm at finding a lifestyle that held almost as much potential as the one she had left behind? She'd racked her mind looking for signs of negligence or flickers of suspicion in anyone she had met, but she had drawn a blank.

Barring personal error on her part that had alerted some of her former enemies that she was alive, there was only one man capable of locating her, she had thought. Jim Moriarty.

Since Sherlock's death, even the name was enough to unnerve her, as though he were some evil spectre out of a children's story, who could be invoked by name alone. She had realised that in a very real way he had become that to her. Besides failure and falling into obscurity, Jim Moriarty - with his uncanny brilliance and absolute amorality - had been the only thing she truly feared.

Without the resources to fight, or even any knowledge of whom she was fighting, she had been forced to flee, and abandon everything she had built and prepared in San Francisco. In an addition of insult to injury, she had been forced to turn to her very last resort– her legal, original identity. It had been disused for so long that it almost functioned as an additional alias, and though she was required to spend nothing other than a minor fee to reclaim it, it still carried a heavy cost in other ways.

Renée Wolfe's life in Edison had been all desaturated beiges and mute greys after the vivid, riotous colours and dazzle of possibility in San Francisco. She had found it depressing and almost oppressively reminiscent of her childhood, but she had resolutely carried on, letting a flat and finding work in retail, and reminding herself on a daily basis as she measured women's bra sizes and stacked folded trousers into neat hedges that her unborn child's safety was paramount and ranked above the matter of her utter boredom.

She had imagined that she was living the sort of exile that would have given Mycroft Holmes incredible satisfaction, had he known. "The Dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees..." now frequently on her knees herself—but only to restock boxes of shoes. In idle hours at the shop she had sometimes fantasised about notifying the elder Holmes about her pregnancy, and commuting her role of mother to Mr. Holmes's niece or nephew as a way to reenter the country and not languish in suburban hell. But in her more sedate moments she had vowed never to turn to Sherlock's brother for assistance unless it were an absolute necessity, nor to stoop to using her own child—and Sherlock's child—as leverage for her own gain.

Her belly had swelled, her thighs had thickened, her breasts had become fuller, and although she had been fanatical about her figure at one point (curating her curves as critically and ruthlessly as the topiary designers at Kensington Palace Gardens), she embraced the changes wrought by pregnancy. They had served as daily reminders that Sherlock's living legacy was growing and becoming stronger, and that he or she would represent a piece of the great detective, and great man, that Jim would never touch.

And then when Nero was only one month old, her small grey world had exploded back into full colour: Sherlock made the fierce and triumphant return she had expected—just ten months later than she had anticipated. Immediately she had sent him a postcard, cheekily selecting one that had an image of Baltimore on it, which had been the destination of FlyAway Airlines Flight 007. She had meant it as a message that despite her dull life in hiding and her alias, she was still (mostly) the same woman he had known. On the back of the card she had crafted a coded message that would fool anyone else who might read it, such as John, but which she had known he'd easily interpret. She had even spelled out the ongoing nature of her sentiments for him by signing off with 'yours'. She had posted it, and resigned herself to the fact that now that she had made her move, it was his play, and she would simply have to wait.

She had spent the weeks after she'd dropped the card into the post in a state of heightened suspense, caught between excitement and dread, and vacillating between the two emotions almost from one second to the next. Each time she'd fitted her key into her lock, she'd wondered whether she would find Sherlock Holmes on the other side, sitting on her sofa with, say, a bottle or soother in his hand. She had imagined countless expressions that he might wear, and had held silent conversations with herself in anticipation of his various possible reactions.

But the actual response had been far more difficult to bear than any anger or reproach she could've imagined: total silence.

At first she had rationalised that he mightn't have received it, but when she read his post-resurrection, feature interview in The Guardian, a photograph of him sitting in that same worn Le Corbusier chair had given her a glimpse of the bookcase just behind him—and of a familiar postcard that was propped up on it.

She had puzzled over that, uncertain about what it could mean. He had held onto it rather than discarding it, and moreover he had chosen to openly display it rather than hide it away? She knew that it was unwise to attribute sentiment to Sherlock unless the evidence were indisputable, but she had still taken it as a somewhat hopeful sign. Perhaps it wasn't that he wanted to have nothing to do with her; perhaps it was that he simply wasn't ready to take on something she acknowledged was intense and complicated. He had just recently suffered a harrowing ordeal during which he may have had to resort to lethal violence, and he was returning only to face an obliterated reputation and the broken trust of his friends and colleagues. No matter how stoic and unaffected he was acting with the press, she knew that any number of those things would've affected him; the combination of all three must have had quite a serious toll.

She decided that after one year had passed since his return, she would travel to London on the false documentation he had provided her, and introduce him to Nero then. She could wait in this purgatory; she could allow him that, at least. It was certainly a potential improvement on the future she had faced prior to his return. And if Mycroft Holmes's facial recognition software, or whatever Orwellian technology he might use to detect her return to Dear Old Blighty, did alert him to her presence, then so be it. Now that she knew Sherlock was alive, it was inevitable that Mr. Holmes would learn about Nero as well.

But when Nero was ten months old, her course of action had been decided for her.

They—whoever 'they' were, although she had become convinced that it was Jim Moriarty—had discovered her in Edison too, and there it only took one narrow escape for her to rapidly re-evaluated everything that she had previously determined.

It had become time to talk to Mycroft Holmes.

Contrary to what he now believed, Irene hadn't been—and wasn't—interested in the protection he could offer, although it was a useful secondary benefit. No, she had required smooth, discreet, and uneventful entry into the country, specifically London. Though Jim was oh-so-changeable, there had been one consistency: London had always been at the centre of his web. Her instincts told her that it was there that she would discover the truth behind the escalating attacks against her and Nero, and it would be there that she would confront and destroy the threat. She had also needed to approach Mycroft so that she could reinitiate contact on her own terms. Then she could devote the entirety of her time, energy, and ingenuity to her mission, without having to simultaneously evade the elder Mr. Holmes.

She exited the train and made her way through the lovely glazed terracotta tiled station of Barons Court, then turned right and crossed the road. She passed a row of familiar though slightly less well-maintained white plaster terraced houses before she entered a private mews and walked down the cobblestones to a small but charming house with a buttery yellow door. After flashing a smile that was a blend of cheek and seduction to an elderly woman who was giving Irene a death glare as she watered her potted petunias next door, Irene withdrew a key from her pocket and unlocked the front door.

Inside, a willowy redhead immediately stood from where she was seated on a sofa inside, the sleeping bundle of Nero in her arms and an open, welcoming expression on her face. For a moment Irene ignored her, too struck by the profound relief she always felt when she was reunited with her child, and she saw with her own that he was safe. Still, she had to admit there was something strangely soothing and familiar about having Kate waiting for her as well. It was an echo of her former life—a life that was now barely more than a ghost of memory.

"Has he been fed?" Irene asked, her tone business-like and identical to the one she had once used to ask Kate about new bookings or if she had picked up Irene's clothes from the tailor. She had become a mother and within the context and confines of that role everything had changed, but otherwise her essential character remained unaltered.

"Yes, half an hour ago... How did it go?" the other woman asked, her voice filled with warmth and gentle concern.

"Not well," Irene admitted as she pushed back the hood and then unzipped the heavy jumper. She made a small sigh as she casually discarded her outer layer to the side rather than hanging it up, a habit she had resumed almost immediately after reuniting with Kate. "I didn't tell him."

The woman's brows creased in sympathy, and she passed Nero to Irene's outstretched arms. He shifted in his blanket and made a sleepy murmur, but didn't wake, and she savoured his slightly heavy weight.

"About the baby?"

Irene looked into Kate's eyes, her face grave. "About any of it."

Kate's lovely pre-Raphaelite lips made a small 'o' at that, but she quickly schooled her expression back into one of concerned support, and she bent down to retrieve and fold the clothing. "I'm sure you'll find a moment that you think is best," she said.

"I'm not certain that there will be such a moment. I frighten him. Or more to the point, his sentiments for me frighten him, and he's determined to keep me at arm's length. I'm not so confident that I can break through his reserves as I did last time."

"If anyone can, you can," her former house submissive and occasional lover said encouragingly, although now Irene thought she could sense a trace of something unfamiliar, which sounded slightly like reproach, in Kate's tone.

She ignored it.

"I agree," she said briskly. "But now I'm not so certain that anyone can. He seems quite determined to push me away, and I won't use our son as a tool of manipulation."

"That doesn't sound like the Irene I know," Kate said, as Irene leaned down to press a kiss on Nero's downy forehead. "Ms. Adler would use anything at her disposal to get her way."

Irene looked up and raised a brow. Kate had never displayed any type of insubordination towards her before, even accepting Irene's return—with a child in tow, no less—the previous day with little surprise and few questions.

"You will recall that Ms. Adler is dead," Irene said, her voice steely and her gaze piercing, and Kate had the grace to blush and avert her eyes.

"Although," she added, her voice more speculative, "if I have my way, and I often do, London might see another resurrection—of sorts."

She took a sip of tea, made perfectly to her taste as she had known it would be, and her lips curved into a tight, determined smile.


Note: If any plot points seem like they were glossed over in this chapter, or are missing, it's because they're going to be examined/explained in greater detail in later chapters. Some things you'll just have to learn right along with Sherlock ;)