Twenty One
Remnant

Surprisingly, my hangover wasn't that bad the next morning. Sure, the headache would sting with any sudden loud noise and the vague nausea prevented me from my customary wake-up cigarette, but it wouldn't stop me from getting on with my normal life. Well, as normal a life as I was having at the moment, anyway, which really meant hanging around at Becky's apartment until the afternoon when my shift in the shop started.

Hanging around at Becky's, however, was going to be anything but ordinary on this Friday.

Inigo was being oddly excitable as he mewed at my ankles and brushed his silky fur across my skin while I walked across the hall and into the kitchen with the intention of pouring myself a large cup of tea. The reason for his mood became startlingly obvious as I stepped through the doorway.

My feet halted, immobilised by the sight in front of me.

I didn't understand. What was he… Why?

He had clearly noticed that I had entered the room, he must have done, but he did nothing to show this recognition. He just continued to sit there, engrossed in the glowing screen atop the table before him.

After a good minute of simply staring at him, I finally managed to make out a weak and confused greeting. "Hi."

Still Sherlock didn't look up.

"I need to borrow your laptop." He said as if it was an explanation. "They might have found my IP address."

I didn't get it. I just couldn't comprehend his words. It was too… I don't even know what it was.

"Sherlock," I let out, my voice nothing more than a whisper, "What… Just, what?"

The detective only raised his eyebrows for a moment in a symbol of my current idiocy, his fingers tapping away busily on the keyboard. "I said I'm borrowing your computer."

I frowned, a slight anger twisting in my gut, but my bewilderment was so much that none of this was conveyed in my voice when I spoke. Instead, it was a quiet musing – a mere statement without any darker emotions behind it. "Don't avoid the question."

"Was I?" Sherlock asked back, his eyes still not being pried away from that screen.

"Yes."

There was a pause. It was almost as if Sherlock was pondering whether to tell me something or not, but that couldn't have been it; Sherlock never told me anything.

"Irene Adler's gone."

He had said it so calmly, so damn casually, without altering his persona one millimetre, that at first I didn't realise that he was saying anything more important than his previous laptop request. Even when it did hit me what he was saying, I couldn't register the meaning. It was as if he had been speaking in a foreign language. I therefore didn't respond, neither with words nor movements.

"I don't mean she's dead," he continued, keeping his voice in that unconcerned state, "but she won't be troubling me anymore."

Why couldn't I move? Why couldn't I do something? Why weren't my thoughts coming up with any meaningful ideas?

"Last night…" I said softly, not having any clue as to how I was going to finish the sentence. All I could figure out was that something must have happened when John and I were at the pub – something big and important and completely situation-changing.

Sherlock gave a small sideways nod, but to my despair, still didn't meet my gaze. "Long story involving my dear brother, a decoy plane full of corpses and a cracked terrorist cypher."

"And Adler, she-" I started asking, my brain at long last beginning to work this out. I got side-tracked, however, when something else clicked. "Hang on, if those things are connected in the way I'm thinking they are, then it's an awfully familiar tactic."

"History, Melanie. It's all history."

My frown deepened, confusion turning to suspicion as I asked nervously, "What did you do?"

That, for the first time in over two months, was enough. Sherlock, the dark, frustrating man, looked up. I had forgotten how chilling those grey eyes could be and my heart caught in my throat.

Slowly, deliberately, he spoke. "Removed her mask."

Mask.

The significance of that word pinned itself to my brain, a slow realisation taking over me. But I couldn't believe it. Not just like that.

"You mean," the words left my throat in a hushed murmur, not trusting my logic to grasp what he was trying to tell me, "you didn't…"

My voice stumbled. What I wanted to ask, what I need to know – it was too unreal. After all this time, it couldn't simply be put out there. I couldn't hear it.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, a motion – I found to my horror – that I had missed.

"Of course not." He told me plainly. Had my self-confidence really been buffeted so much over the past year that I was longing to be criticised by this man? I couldn't have become that messed up in such a short period of time. "I already have a perfectly satisfactory girlfriend."

"Satis-" I immediately began repeating, noticing with a twinge of gratefulness that I was indeed angry at the use of such a mediocre term. Then I saw the bigger picture and the subject of my inquiry switched. "Girlfriend?"

His forehead furrowed in a rare sign of uncertainty. "Yes."

My expression softened. Did he honestly not get it? No, he didn't. He was Sherlock Holmes.

"Sherlock," I stated, trying to be as gentle as possible, while at the same time marvelling at how ignorant he could be in these matters, "I'm not your girlfriend."

His frown deepened even further, his puzzlement spreading to his voice as he contradicted stubbornly, "Yes, you are."

I shook my head, but kept my tone calm as I said, "No, I'm not. I never have been. I'm just a person you like having around in case you need something."

The confusion didn't leave his face.

"Yes," he agreed, "I like having you around. Isn't that a girlfriend?"

"Not if it's for entirely selfish reasons, no."

Sherlock groaned in annoyance. "All reasons are selfish. You used to think that too."

My arms twisted as I wrapped them around my waist anxiously. I looked down at the floor, unable to keep the eye-contact I had so craved for months under the strain. This conversation was wandering into dangerous territory. I had been firmly avoiding thinking about this. I didn't want to start now.

"I used to think lots of things." It slipped unbidden from my lips before I could stop it, the sad mutter hovering menacingly somewhere above our heads like a warning.

Sherlock clearly didn't spot the cautionary signs. It took him a moment, but he pressed on, a sense of understanding entering his heavy words. "But you don't anymore."

I inhaled heavily and let it out in a long sigh, turning my gaze to the wall to my left. I would not be brought into discussing these things.

"And now the riddles start." I said in mild frustration, hoping it might distract him.

It didn't.

"You look," he started before considering his words, finally settling on a simple, "different."

It was my turn to give a patronising stare, despite my knowledge that he wasn't talking about what I answered. "I had a haircut."

Sherlock didn't look impressed at my observation. "Well, yes – the new length does succeed in making your eyes appear less squinty, by the way – but I was actually speaking in a more abstract sense."

Squinty? My eyes weren't squinty, were they? Well, maybe they were when I was trying to read something without my glasses, but not usually. And besides, why would shoulder length hair make them look wider than long tresses? Sherlock saw weird things.

"You mean," I again meandered around the real topic, "I'm not fawning over you, shouting at you or crying in terror?"

His eyes narrowed as he inspected my features, searching for the answer to some bizarre and illogical question.

"No," he let out slowly, "it's not that."

I sighed and tilted my head to the side, getting more and more irritated by secret judging. "Then what-"

I stopped mid-sentence, my face going slack in surprise. It wasn't just surprise, of course, but I wouldn't admit that his sudden leap from the chair he had been perched on not only startled me; it also scared me a little bit. I subconsciously took a small step backwards as he approached before gathering my composure and reassuring myself that it wasn't anything to be alarmed about. For God's sake, we had been much closer than the inches apart that we now were before. Then why did I feel a tiny jolt of fear shiver down my spine?

Sherlock stood in front of me, peering into my eyes with nothing except a cold, analytical determination. I opened my lips a fraction to say something, but found that nothing would dare creep forwards. I didn't know what to do. We hadn't been this near each other for so long.

I hadn't been able to see the individual hairs of his eyelashes for months.

I hadn't been able to taste the scent of his skin for weeks.

I hadn't watched him as he gradually bent his neck, his lips, little by little, drawing towards mine.

Originally this and the next one were going to be one long chapter, but it was too much. Hence the cliff hanger.

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