A/N: Yay, I updated finally! Boy, it's been awhile since this story was updated, right?

Enjoy!

"It's so wonderful here!"

Holmes watched with intrigue as Jane meandered through the house, navigating her way through the various rooms and Victorian furniture. Her shoes clicked quietly against the wooden floorboards, echoing throughout the country home as though on the other end of a megaphone. Holmes restrained himself to keep from following the girl into the various rooms, having learned the layout of his brother's house years and years before. His last visit, with Watson, had been admittedly pleasant, if only mildly strained with the impending disaster of Watson's soon-to-be marriage. With a wistful sigh, one that betrayed the sadness he felt for his companion, Holmes made his way to his room on the furthest side of the house, cleverly placed and untouched by all manners of maids and house-cleaning services. The dust there could only be three times as thick as the dust back at home, but he looked forward to it with relish, knowing that, unlike back at 221B, the dust would never be disturbed unless he wished it.

"Odd." Jane's voice drifted from the room nearest to Holmes's. "They haven't a piano here. How interesting…"

"My brother," Sherlock stated, tossing his bags into his room, "hasn't the nerve to play since the death of our mother."

Jane materialized in the doorway and leaned against the doorframe as she asked, "She played much, then?"

"Very," Holmes replied, turning to face the girl. "It was one of the few things that made her happy."

Jane nodded, one eyebrow quirking in inquisition. "And what makes you happy, Sherlock?"

Holmes met Jane's gaze with his characteristic wide-eyed stare, the stare of a man who sustained his mind with cocaine when his thoughts turned stagnant and he hadn't anything to occupy himself with. The brown eyes were unreadable in Jane's gaze, but she nevertheless sought the detective's face for an answer, for some trace of emotion that would lead her to better understand the man beneath the layers of eccentricity and awesome deductive powers.

"My work," he finally said – curt, clipped, and straight to the point. Brevity, his friend every once and a while when he chose, decided to befriend him once again in that instance, leaving nothing but speculation for Jane.

"In which case, then," Jane said slowly, glancing up at Holmes beneath her slender eyebrows, "you've not been happy for a long while."

Sherlock's eyebrows arched high on his head; his hands busied themselves by wrapping around and around the scarf he had pulled off from his neck. "And what makes you think that?"

Jane shrugged and sighed, her gaze dropping to the floor and the patterns of the wood's grain. "You've not had a case in a long while, so Watson has said. And if it's work that makes you happy, then you've been deprived of happiness for months, have you not?" Her eyes met his briefly – intense, direct. "You do realize that the Blackwood case was a once in a lifetime chance, and nothing else will most likely ever compare."

"You sound just like Watson."

"And is that such a crime?" Jane pushed herself off the doorframe. "He is the 'Good Doctor', is he not? That is much more to say that your title, Holmes."

Concealing the hurt in his chest well, Holmes turned away and picked up one of his bags, heaving the thing onto the thin mattress. "I came here to get away from such criticisms and accusations, not to be confronted with them full force."

"Oh, yes, but you don't mind me much, so you've said." Jane's voice came now from the hallway, startling Holmes, for the ease with which she had left on silent feet could only be equated to the sneakiness and stealth of a cat on his midnight prowl. Her voice faded and grew tinny, almost as dissonant as a failing phonograph. "But, enough of that. What shall we do here?"

"I haven't a clue," Sherlock muttered to himself, dumping the contents of his bag onto the bed. Sifting through the various papers and notebooks, along with a variety of knick-knacks that may have seemed useless to some but was vitally important for any situation Holmes might have come across, the detective was aware of the slow ticking of the clock, of each swing of the pendulum. He was not aware, however, of Jane's silent movements about the house as she went through this and that, observing and notating things in one of her many notebooks.

Their menial tasks occupied them for an amount of time that seemed relatively small in comparison to how long they would be staying at Mycroft's country home. Holmes, itching to do something and having nothing of interest to pursue, wandered through the house until he located Jane in one of the adjacent rooms lying on the bed therein, eyes focused on the ceiling, unblinking. He paused in the doorway and stared at the girl momentarily, wondering why he felt the constrictions in his chest – constrictions he had never honestly felt before. Women, he had once told Watson, were never to be trusted, not any single one, and yet he had the feeling that he would trust Jane with his life – with anything that was his or could be his – and he would never be betrayed by her. Although far from a saint in her stained shirt, sloppy pants, and tousled hair, Jane had a heart of gold – albeit 70% gold, but gold nevertheless.

"I've always wondered what people do in the country," she said, her voice loud enough to be heard, but so quiet that it hardly could have carried across the room had Holmes not been right there. With her hand, she beckoned him to her side, and he found himself perched beside her on the bed, gazing down at her face. Her countenance, to his surprise and horror, was strained and marred with the lines of deep, heavy thought and weariness. Perhaps the sleep that had eluded the duo for days would finally come crashing down upon their shoulders and bow them to their knees with such force that they would have no choice but to succumb.

"I have the feeling," Jane continued, her fingers unconsciously coming to rest on Sherlock's hand, "that people in the country have nothing to do and spend their days in absolute boredom. Perhaps that's why doctors recommend going to the country every once in a while – the boredom surely must cure anyone of whatever ailment afflicts them, in that they have no option but to sleep it all away as their mind grows more and more stagnant." She shifted her gaze from the ceiling to Holmes's face, meeting his brown-eyed gaze unflinchingly. "And for those of us whose minds rebel stagnation?" She laughed a harsh, bitter laugh, more like the bark of a pestered dog than that of a human. "There is no hope."

"Watson seems to think so," Sherlock commented, intensely aware of the feel of Jane's skin against his. "He claims that the way I live will surely kill me."

"But you don't listen." A small smile touched the corners of Jane's lips. "And he's your best friend."

"I don't listen because it's not true." Holmes shifted on the bed, finding that he was easing himself more and more onto it. "I've been living in such a state for more than a couple decades, and I am still live and well."

"And yet you take cocaine and put yourself into dangerous situations that, without Watson's help, would have surely been the end of you."

"I can do anything with Watson's help – "

"Sherlock, you are in denial of how much Watson means to you and how much you value his company." Jane gave his hand a comforting squeeze. "Without Watson, you would have been dead and gone decades ago."

"On what data do you base such accusations?"

"Accusations?" Now her laugh was the musical laughter Holmes had grown fond of, the laughter that made his heart still in his chest and sent waves of warmth rolling through his body. "I would hardly call them accusations, Holmes. They are but mere observations."

"Observations are based on facts and data. Show me the data, and I will believe such lies."

The smile faded from Jane's face, and she looked away, her eyes glazing over for a brief, brief moment. "But Sherlock," she said, her voice quiet, striking him to the core, "there are some things in this world of ours that can never be proven by data." She closed her eyes and sighed. "Data is not the basis of everything."

"On what grounds do you think that?"

Jane shook her head, her eyes still closed. "If data is the concrete of this world, as you claim, what of human emotions?" She cracked open one eye, fixing the detective with her stare, drawing him in. "There is no data for human emotions, is there, Holmes?"

The words that slipped from Holmes's throat and hung in the air as a response surprised him more than the sudden hard-knocking of his heart within his chest.

"I suppose not."