Hello everyone! I know it's been a long time since an update :) I took a break from writing after completing Sui Generis, but I'm happy to be back.

Just a reminder that this takes place after the main action of 'The Lying Detective' but before the big twist/reveal at the end. Things may make more sense if you're familiar with that episode.

Also, a reference to 'Sweden' in this chapter was inspired by this fun extra between Sherlock and Mycroft: [it won't let me include a link but if you search "Intercepted Audio - Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes" on YouTube you'll find it]

Chemical Burn

Sherlock Holmes was seated with one leg crossed over the other in the worn leather chair of his own front room, and was surveying his elder brother Mycroft from over the tips of fingers that were bracketed against his cheekbone.

Mycroft had called Sherlock about an offer of work, something to take Sherlock's mind off of his 'personal life' and 'put it to constructive use', but now Mycroft was droning about the dullest subject imaginable – politics – and Sherlock's patience was wearing thin. At least Mycroft hadn't summoned him in this instance; his brother must've realised he'd be on thin-enough ice as it was and had made a house-call. At the very least, Sherlock could be comfortable whilst being bored to death.

"The creation of the Eurozone was a godsend for mitigating a problem that even I couldn't envision a way to resolve," his brother was going on. "Open borders lessened longstanding tensions, but now that we're headed for an exit from the treaty those barriers go back up..."

Sherlock began to drum his fingertips against the side his face.

"I believe they're calling it 'Brexit.'" He overenunciated the word in a tone that said 'Even I know that,' although of course a lack of awareness wouldn't be the reason Mycroft avoided it. He simply considered himself superior to some media-coined term.

"The Prime Minister is behaving naïve in a way that beggars belief for a man who has reached his position," Mycroft went on, ignoring Sherlock except for the slight thinning of lips. "He won't listen to sense, won't even build a two-thirds majority into his referendum. He shall lose, and it's going to be an absolute bloody nightmare."

"I'd have thought you'd enjoy a new challenge," Sherlock said, and Mycroft looked at his brother with a sour expression. "Plus this way you'll have more autonomy - no more having to check in with your EU counterparts."

"I don't have 'counterparts' – EU or otherwise,'" he sniffed. 'And it's going to be messy. Every stakeholder who matters will want a different outcome. There may even have to be exceptions."

"No," Sherlock said in a low gasp, but Mycroft grimaced as if Sherlock's response had been genuine.

"And we know how we both feel about those."

"I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion," Sherlock said with a little twiddle of his fingers, not allowing himself to consider that word and its weight to him. "What does this have to do with me? Cut to the chase, Mycroft."

Mycroft frowned, then his eyes narrowed as they focused on him.

"This is delicate work, Sherlock. Lives may hang in the balance. Before I continue I need your assurances that you're up to it. That you are no longer… compromised."

"I'm fine. Surely it's clear to you now that everything you saw was in deliberate effort to achieve precisely what it did. That I never was compromised."

"You haven't," he seemed to be choosing his words carefully, "hallucinated anyone else bringing you a case…?"

Sherlock scowled at the reference to the one unexplained point in his otherwise flawlessly calculated and executed plan to save John.

"No need," he snapped, "since you're here offering one up on a silver platter, no?"

Mycroft continued to regard him, then gave a brief nod of assent, though Sherlock could still read some concern in the tightness of the skin around his eyes.

"The IRA hasn't been a threat since their disarmament a decade ago, but that all may change now. As you know I cut my teeth on The Troubles; I'd rather not see them return." He let out a long sigh. "I prefer to curtail problems before they have the chance to develop. This, brother dear, is where you come in."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow.

"I need you to travel to Northern Ireland. MI-5 has created a dossier of the most likely sites of fresh unrest there, and MI-6 has contributed intelligence on what's happening in the Republic, but you're the only one I trust to synthesise the data and observe it in situ. See what burgeoning sentiments there may be in the new generation. Roleplay a sympathetic party, I should think – but I'll leave the methodology and legwork details up to you. It's essential we gain data; only then can I best know how to prepare for this."

"I don't—"

"Yes, yes," Mycroft said, rolling his eyes with a wave of his hand. "You make your excuses, I in turn threaten and/or cajole, you make an additional stand out of your sense of pride, we do our little dance, and then ultimately you capitulate. But we both know that you need this – now more than ever. You'd resorted to running inventory on your chemical supplies when I arrived. " He made a disparaging tsk sound. "Besides, you always did enjoy an opportunity for fancy dress. How's your West Belfast accent? Short Strand or Markets should suffice too, in a pinch. Regardless, you have a few days to prepare."

Sherlock opened then closed his mouth, but was spared from having to rouse a retort. His phone, on silent, vibrated in his trouser pocket.

He fished it out, glanced at it, and immediately felt the air go out of the room. All thoughts of the job offer faded and his brother's voice became a distant hum, his entire body went hot and then icy-cold as he stared at the three words on his phone screen, and he shifted into a hyper-focus he hadn't experienced since the Culverton Smith case several weeks before. He considered one scenario after the next to explain what he was seeing, and he wasn't sure how long it was before his Mycroft's voice cut back in, peevish and suddenly overloud.

"I'm sorry, does this bore you?"

"No, it's— Well yes, actually, but that's not it." He surged to his feet, sending the chair screeching back and no doubt putting fresh marks into the floor. "I have to go."

"'Go,' what are you talking about? We're not nearly finished."

"It's – an emergency."

"Where are you going?" Mycroft said, his voice climbing in irritation, and perhaps some apprehension.

"…Sweden," he answered as he crossed the room, with no attempt at sounding sincere. It was the first place that had popped into his mind, and seemed just anodyne enough.

"Sweden?" Mycroft repeated, his brows furrowing. "There've been no 'emergencies' in Sweden today. None that would concern you, at least."

Sherlock's lip twisted upwards, impressed with his brother despite himself.

"Well. That just shows what you know. You can see yourself out."

"Sherlock, stop."

Sherlock gave a sarcastic wave of his hand before disappearing from his brother's sight.

"You cannot be serious," Mycroft rising voice carried down the hall from the front room. "Your country needs you!"

"All booked up, I'm afraid!" he shouted back, and Mycroft's high, frustrated sigh was cut off by the sound of Sherlock's slamming bedroom door.

The moment he was in alone the ironic expression dropped from his face like a curtain falling on a stage, and he collapsed to a seat at the edge of his bed. His cavalier attitude had been a performance for his brother, and his heart was still pounding over the message he had received moments before.

It wasn't an uncharacteristic reaction to receiving a text from The Woman, but this particular one sparked an altogether different emotional response, and caused his thoughts to race alongside his pulse.

I need you.

The lack of tone in texting meant that her message could be interpreted in various different ways, from the prurient to the serious, and it would be just like her to ascertain somehow that he was in a meeting with his brother and try to introduce certain images at an inopportune moment. But his instinct told him she wasn't trying to wind him up, she was being sincere.

For him to receive a message exposing such vulnerability meant either she was in unprecedented trouble, or this was a set-up. It didn't evade his consideration that it was possibly both. He didn't think she would be the one responsible for the set-up aspect, not really, although a trace of lingering doubt and distrust always would remain between them. But certain parties did know about her significance to him and it had been a tried-and-true method to use Sherlock's various emotional connections against him in the past.

Apologies to the United Kingdom at large, he thought in wry response to Mycroft's parting words a moment ago. In the hierarchy of needs The Woman's came first.

He would reply with something he'd never said before either, because in the past when he'd gone to see her part of the thrill had been in the hunt, but he sensed that they didn't have time for their usual antics now.

Where are you? he texted back.

In less than a second he received a link that showed a download prompt when he clicked on it. With not a small dose of reservation he gave it permission to proceed, and then the app asked access to his phone's camera. Throwing caution to the wind for the sake of Irene – neither for the first time nor, inevitably, the last – he agreed to that as well. The front-facing camera turned on and the screen displayed it scanning his face, then when he passed recognition, it loaded a satellite map. He squinted at the image of a compact red-roofed city surrounded by geometric parcels of farmland with the exception of a range of hills to the east. A miniscule digital arrow pointed at a spot in the town that looked indistinguishable in the sea of terracotta, but which he would have no difficulty finding once he narrowed down the location. And based on the geography and the architecture The Woman was in Albania.

His mind's eye swept over the terrain of the country until he reached a city that shared the same features.

It was the city of Korçë, unless he were very much mistaken (he wasn't).

He rifled through what he could recall of that region and compared the data of the languages spoken there with the languages he knew, and felt satisfied that he would be able to remain below the radar upon arrival. He would travel on his Norwegian passport but use his passable Greek once he arrived. His mind quickly assessed the most expedient travel options for the nonstandard connection. The international airport in Albania was Tirana, and he could take the train from Tirana to Korçë, but there were no London – Tirana flights. The next closest airport was in Thessaloniki, Greece, and he could take a direct flight there, but then he'd have to backtrack, and there were no trains between those cities so he'd have to find a bus. However since the travel times between Thessaloniki and Korçë and Tirana and Korçë were roughly equal, it was worth it versus contending with a layover. Next matter: there were no direct flights out of Heathrow and very few from Gatwick – and Stanstead and Luton were much farther; travelling to either would add extraneous travel time. The Gatwick Express wasn't running this early, but considering the light traffic at this hour, if he were efficient in gathering up his Norwegian passport and adding a few items to his pre-packed travel bag he'd just manage to make the 5:55 departing flight. He'd purchase tickets on the way there.

He let out a slow breath and blinked, the logistics settled in his mind. But with that out of the way, his apprehension for Irene mounted again. It hadn't been long since they'd last communicated – his birthday several weeks before – and nothing had seemed amiss. Once he'd had the chance to reply it had been the usual entendre-laden banter featuring something about battle dresses vs. birthday suits, and had concluded with the vague insinuation that they would see one another soon. Vague insinuations were the closest they danced to saying I miss you. And in the years that they'd carried on this intermittent but sustained affair they certainly had never, ever admitted I need you.

As much as the words themselves fed into the eager, always-ravenous part of Sherlock that basked in The Woman's attention, as well as any perceived tilt in advantage towards his direction, whatever had changed to cause her to say something so direct and nakedly vulnerable was cause for concern.

When he emerged from his room a short time later, he was gratified to see that the flat was silent and dark. Mycroft was a complication Sherlock didn't want to take into account at the moment. There was the fact that he had his own intentions for Sherlock that would be thrown awry if Sherlock left the country, but moreover, so far as Sherlock knew, Mycroft still wasn't aware that Irene had survived Karachi.

Sherlock pulled on his coat, quietly made his way down the stairs with his small suitcase in his arms so as not to disturb (alert) Mrs Hudson, and then went out into the night.

The journey to Korçë took long enough on its own, but Sherlock's anxiety and the speed of his thought extended it into years. Every mild inconvenience along the way – his bag being randomly pulled in security for a search at Gatwick, a delayed bus – seemed designed to destroy the composure that was already hanging on by a thread.

During one of the stretches of time he did have alone with his thoughts, his mind turned towards what he and John had discussed several weeks before, when Irene had texted him in John's presence.

It hadn't escaped Sherlock's notice that almost immediately after John had found out about Irene, someone purporting to be Irene Adler was drawing Sherlock out of London. In almost every way John was an asset, but in this he had always been a liability. It wasn't that he was untrustworthy; precisely the opposite: he was guileless to the point that he essentially broadcasted whatever information he knew to whomever knew how to read him. It was why – close as they were – Sherlock hadn't shared his mission to Karachi with him, and why Sherlock hadn't told him he was alive after his rooftop confrontation with Moriarty.

Well, one reason Sherlock hadn't told him about Karachi. Sherlock's continued denials about the nature of the relationship certainly indicated there were others as well. Even sharing that he did respond to Irene and that they were in mutual contact felt like an enormous admission, and he had only done so in sacrifice of making a point that he hoped would help his friend.

So the broad strokes, John knew. He knew Irene was alive, that Sherlock had saved her, and that they were still in touch. For the rest – his very, very private 'private life' – Sherlock thought he had fended off his friend rather well. He had reiterated a truth that had been the truth for the majority of his adult life: that romantic entanglements, while for other people were understandable, were not something he would ever pursue himself.

In a way, what he had said still was the truth. He had certainly never pursued this, it had been something that had happened to him. He thought of it as a cataclysm akin to a landslide or a fire, and in many ways it had been just as devastating to the life he'd had and the person he'd been Before. He had since made an unspoken commitment to The Woman, but in many ways his passion for her still felt beyond his control in that same way. And she was so much more than a 'romantic entanglement'. She wasn't some attractive woman on a bus that he had flirted with, for example; she was… and now he was veering dangerously close into what John had said about how finding a romantic partner would complete him as a person, and he felt himself physically grimace. How could something that felt so elemental comply so easily with John's clichéd platitudes? It wasn't possible.

And if anything should happen to Irene now, he would feel the loss as if the part of himself he'd built out of the foundations she'd laid bare had been destroyed. The part of him that she made feel alive, and a better version of himself.

Just as John had described, damn it.

He had seen what grief had done to John, how he had been so lost after Mary's death. He remembered that sense of loss himself, had in fact experienced it twice with The Woman – once when she had deliberately faked her death and he had felt cheated out of something he couldn't articulate in words, only in music. And once when he thought she was dead because of what he'd done. He couldn't go through that again.

The fact that John did know meant that he and Irene had a potential leak, and gave even more credence to the possibility that this was a trap. John knew, and now someone purporting to be Irene was drawing him out of London.

Reckless, he was always so reckless when it came to the woman. She had provided no proof that it was really her, and yet he had come running with one simple text.

By the time he arrived at the location indicated in the image he had been sent he was almost frantic, although his face wore a mask of complacency. He inspected the area around the nondescript building's entrance but saw nothing noteworthy, and with a surge of adrenaline he pressed the doorbell.

When the door opened to reveal the beautiful face of The Woman Sherlock's initial reaction was one of overwhelming relief that it really was her, that he hadn't been manipulated out of his sphere of security by someone who somehow knew about this very sensitive pressure-point.

Then there was that sense of existential relief he always experienced when he was with her; the sense of being unburdened in some intangible but profound way, of having some part of him soothed and vitalised by her very presence. Once again he pushed away John's words about being completed, and just savoured the moment of seeing her again.

Then he noticed how pale that face looked, and rather than the dancing warmth with which she usually met him there was a distance – almost a wariness – in her eyes that he hadn't seen for years. At once his relief was replaced by a strong sense of concern and protectiveness that very few drew out of him, and which wasn't entirely rational when it came to The Woman. Unlike Mrs Hudson, Molly Hooper, and even to some extent John, she was capable of handling threats of all kinds on her own. And yet he couldn't help but feel a tingle of foreboding over whatever could put fear like that into The Woman's eyes.

In unthinking reaction he stepped towards her and stretched his fingertips up to cradle her face. Her eyelashes fluttered to her cheek and she let him bend his head down to kiss her, and although he poured all his tenderness and relief into it her response was passive and almost detached, and it intensified the sense of concern in Sherlock.

He wanted the kiss to deepen and express everything he felt at seeing her again, but before it could become anything more than a greeting she pulled away with a sigh. By the time he opened his eyes she had already averted hers, although her fingers lingered in the curls at the base of his head for a moment longer.

When she moved away he followed her into the small and utilitarian flat, and took the opportunity to study her enough for a picture to develop.

Usually when he located her he used his power of deduction as a game to determine what she'd been up to and where she'd been, and it was decidedly a game to be won – although losing had its own benefits as well. But now everything he saw told a story of stress, and she look haggard and haunted in a way that reminded him of how he'd found her during her captivity and near-execution several years before.

Her long hair was clean but tangled and tousled, which indicated that she'd let it dry naturally after washing it and then had repeatedly dragged her hands through it. She rarely wore makeup around him, but this time her lack of it showcased the dark hollows beneath her eyes and a pale, almost grey complexion. Through a door into the bedroom he saw items in disarray: shoes left where she'd stepped out of them, a valise partially spilling out its contents, an unmade bed – all of which were contrary to her immaculate nature. He didn't want to get ahead of the data, but he was unsettled by his initial impression.

"I don't have much in the way of refreshments," she said, "but would you like any water?"

"No. Thank you," he said after he set down his bag in the dim sitting room with simple dark wood furniture and a threadbare Kilim carpet.

He straightened and turned so that they faced each other, and after a moment of unusually tense silence, he said, "You're scared." It was a statement of the obvious but said it with more gentleness than his typical blunt delivery.

He elaborated: "Something got to you enough that you left every comfort you've re-established behind to hide out in a place where you've no connections. You didn't even risk conventional travel, you bypassed the border by traveling across the lake. You hitchhiked the rest of the way, then wandered around until you found this place from a To Let sign in the window. No digital traces, except for when you reached out to me, and then you'd have made sure to cover your tracks as much as possible."

"Full marks," she replied, but in a way that was bit too monotone to sound glib.

At that moment the fog slightly receded from her eyes, and her gaze sharpened as she seemed to see him for the first time.

"What happened?" Her hand moved as if to touch his face, but dropped again without making contact.

His brow furrowed, then he remembered the traces of injuries from his unfortunate but perhaps necessary encounter with John. They would've been undetectable to most people several weeks after the fact, but of course she was intimately familiar with the look of healing wounds, and even more intimately familiar with his face.

"It was for a case," he dismissed, but then he gave a slight shake of his head. With her, he could be truthful. "It was for John," he amended quietly.

She regarded him with an unreadable expression. Then she straightened but didn't lose the flatness in her voice as she said, "There's a target on your back, and I've put it there by bringing you here. They think I've done exactly what they wanted me to."

It seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but it clarified what she'd been thinking the moment before: what would he look like after he helped her? How badly would he be hurt this time in his effort to protect someone he loved? Was this the source of her strange reticence?

"'They?'" he prompted, and she shrugged and looked away.

He processed that for a moment, then gave a short nod. "So someone asked you to bring me here."

"Yes."

"You've done the right thing. If someone has this kind of access and this kind of power, and knows to use you to flush me out, I need to know about it. I need to be involved."

"If the intent was to remove you from London, to get you out of the way for some reason, then I've done exactly what they wanted."

"And if it's not – if it's more personal?" Sherlock prompted.

"You mean if it's a test of some sort, to gauge your importance to me? Then I appear to have betrayed you for my own self-interest. There's an obscene amount of money sitting in my bank account that suggests I have."

It would've been intellectually careless not to at least consider the possibility that she had, but he rejected it in an instant.

"Advantage, us, then," he said instead. "Underestimating you is always a mistake."

A ghost of a smile at his wording – not in that it was faint, but in that it was the deathly inverse of the real version – touched her lips, and something about it chilled him.

"And then there's the third possibility," she said. "That through me they've lured you out into the open where you're compromised. You're in a new setting without your usual security – both in the form of Big Brother, and your own knowledge and familiarity of safe baselines."

"This is the one that concerns you the most," he observed, but she didn't react. The emotional part of him wanted her to admit that, but her face and body language remained a fortress. So he continued, "My coming should bring their intentions into the open, since you've appeared to fulfil their initial request."

"So the question is, who could know about us?"

He considered that, pursing his lips. A roster of hundreds of names flew through his mind like a scroll, each being discounted for one reason or another, until he was left with just a few remaining contenders. One in particular.

"Look. I haven't told you yet, but John knows."

She looked at him in alarm, and colour rushed into her pale cheeks.

"Knows…" she repeated, slow and dangerous.

"About you. Being alive, I mean. He's assumed the rest, but I only–"

"When?" she interrupted, her voice suddenly more alert and avid than he'd heard since he arrived.

"He was at the flat, on my birthday–"

"When I texted. You still have the original alert."

"I–yes." That hadn't been information he'd shared with her, but the inference was an obvious one.

"I see," she said.

"You're not happy," he observed. "And I don't blame you, but–"

"I couldn't understand what had changed," she interrupted again, her tone sounding almost triumphant, "Why suddenly my identity was compromised after all these years, when I've been so careful."

Sherlock couldn't help but feel defensive – both for himself having kept the text noise that alerted John of Irene's survival, and on behalf of his friend despite the same concerns plaguing his mind on the way to Korçë.

"It's premature to make any assumptions. The two very well might not be connected."

"No? You made it clear in Karachi that John must never learn that I was alive; your reason for cutting it so fine with my execution was that you had to work with his schedule so he wouldn't find out you'd left the country. Why would you go to such lengths if you weren't concerned about him knowing?"

"I didn't want him to know. I had never intended for him to know. Your safety and anonymity are always of utmost concern."

"Oh, and do I seem safe to you?" she said with an airiness that barely disguised an animosity Sherlock couldn't understand. "You can't have it both ways, Sherlock. Either you didn't want him to know because you thought he couldn't be trusted with the information, just as you didn't tell him when you were still alive, or you're not concerned with him knowing because you trust him not to compromise my safety."

Before he could answer, she got a look in her eye that filled him with a different foreboding: a strange combination of seductive and cruel, and she slid up to him and looked him in the eye.

"Or is the truth of the matter that you just wanted to keep me as your shameful little secret? Someone to screw when you were bored between cases whilst still maintaining your reputation as an untouchable god-man?"

Sherlock stared down at her, appalled, and his thoughts churned yet were unable to come up with a response. He felt as if he were on some runaway train, and his brain could not fathom how they had abruptly reached this point. The string of ? characters replayed in his head, but now instead of being a point of intrigue, they made him feel lost.

"You can't possibly think that," he managed. "You're far too smart to say something so idiotic."

"I'm also too smart not to notice that you won't answer the question," she shot back without missing a beat, although she flushed a bit more.

"Because the question is absurd," he said, disbelief sharpening his tone. "It isn't worth dignifying. And if there's a point, I'm failing to see it."

Her eyes went flat again, like he had failed some test he didn't know he was taking, and she pulled away.

"The point is, apparently if not for you I wouldn't be running. Again. I clearly didn't learn my lesson after the first time."

His head swam with confusion and not a small measure of hurt. He thought that her concern had been for him, but really it was for her…? He couldn't begrudge her that per sé, but the unfamiliar sensation of uncertainty was mounting.

"I could say the same thing. Didn't you just say that you'd put a target on my back?"

"That was before I knew that the threat came the other way around."

"We have not established that," he said, his voice rising, feeling like he'd just suffered a nasty case of whiplash.

"I suppose not, but in the end does it really matter?"

He paused, then asked, "What are you saying?"

"If we'd made a clean break after Karachi, I'd be safe now."

"If you've kept your head down, perhaps."

"I have, I may have toed the line but I never stepped over it. I've gone over everything I've done and I can't see how the leak could've been a result of anything I'd done."

He didn't know what to say to that.

"Except—"

"Except?" he prompted, almost masochistically.

"Except for one thing. I couldn't cut the final link to my former life – you."

Another moment passed before he managed, "Is that what I've been – a link to your old life?"

She seemed to steel herself, then said, "In retrospect, yes."

She spoke with a bluntness he hadn't heard from her before, and he mentally recoiled as if she'd slapped him, though he just managed not to visibly react.

"I suppose it comes down to priorities," he answered. "I know what mine are." The subtext was I would risk anything for you. His actions in Karachi had proven that, and his sentiments certainly hadn't changed.

She looked away, her eyes shining. "Imagine that you'd never been able to go back to London after Reichenbach," she said. "And now imagine that you had finally created a life you cared about, with only one person as your connection to your past history, but then precisely because of your connection to that person you had to do it all over again – because of what you thought had been your priorities." She looked into his eyes, "So yes, you're right. It is about priorities, and priorities can change."

"Irene," he said, and she seemed to almost flinch at the use of her old name, "I'm here at your behest. Why did you summon me? Why did you text… that."

"Because I do. I need you to solve this, because I can't start over from nothing – again." She looked directly into his eyes. "And then I need you to forget me."

"That… isn't possible," he said, his voice finally sounding as lost as he was feeling.

At that her entire being coalesced into something hard and impenetrable, and before his eyes she seemed to transform into someone unrecognisable. The part of herself he knew she'd only ever shown to him receded like a tide before a tsunami, and alarm bells began to go off in his mind, deafening him to all other thought.

"You don't have a say in the matter," she said, and her voice was equally unfamiliar. It was colder and more foreboding even than when she'd pushed past him on the airplane all those years ago now, telling him he was done and making him feel impossibly small. "It's what I want. After this, it's over. You won't ever see me again."

He instinctively lifted an arm to reach towards her. In the past when they'd come to an impasse they managed to express all the unsaid in a more physical language. But without a word she put her hand out, flat, rigid, and obdurate, so that her fingertips stopped him mid-motion, and where they pressed into his abdomen he felt as though he'd been stabbed with ice.

He looked down at them, and then up at her face, and wanted to tell her that she was lying, that this was a feint like she'd done in her brother's dining room , or in Karachi when she'd gained the sympathy of their captor to save their lives. He wanted to shout at her to stop it, it wasn't funny, and it wasn't fair – to either of them – but the look in her eyes stopped him. They were the eyes of someone with the thinnest veneer of control, but whether she were withholding cruel things she wanted to say to and about him, or she were suppressing something else entirely, he couldn't bring himself to ask.

Instead, he only said, "You don't mean this."

"I do."

"I know you – your sentiments haven't changed."

"Even if that were true – 'priorities,' remember? How I may or may not feel about you is irrelevant if my safety is ranks higher to me and you are a direct threat to it."

This wasn't unprecedented, he suddenly realised. It was that night in his brother's sitting room all over again and she was putting her interests above her own feelings; he only didn't want to believe it because it would devastate him. But that was antithetical to his core philosophy. As he was always quick to point out to John and anyone else who needed reminding, facts didn't care a whit about how one felt about them. And by that same token, one's emotions shouldn't necessarily play a role in making key life decisions.

How could he refuse her this if he truly were a threat to her? It was his choice to place himself in danger for her sake, but he could hardly dictate that she do the same thing for him, particularly when, as she'd pointed out, she was the one in the far more precarious position. He would've fought down to his last physical and mental reserves against ending things for any reason, except the one she had presented: her wellbeing. Because he had said a moment before, her safety and anonymity were of utmost concern. Even if it meant heartbreak he could survive it, if it ensured that The Woman would continue to exist and misbehave in the world.

He stared at her, finally at a loss for words. Denials, protests, and arguments withered in the face of acceptance. Intense emotion that felt like grief pierced his chest, and he couldn't believe that he could be losing The Woman so soon after regaining his closest friend. That he could be losing Irene so soon after losing Mary. That they were both his fault, if indirectly.

"I-understand," he finally stuttered out, and a distant part of his mind noted that he still sounded more or less like himself, despite feeling as though he were in free-fall. "Let's begin. The sooner we can solve this, the sooner we can close this chapter."

She nodded with grim approval, and he swallowed reflexively. Work had saved him with Mary and John, and it would have to serve as his lifeline now as well.

"Start at the beginning."

Thank you so much for reading the next chapter of this story after such a long hiatus! I really appreciate it :)