The Woman kneels on the dust track, her face wrapped in fabric, her eyes fixed on her BlackBerry. A man stands behind her, his hand cocked in a gesture of impatience as he waits for her to finish. They all find it strange that this was her final request; a goodbye message to the man who ensured she would be unprotected when they found her. He strains for a moment to see what she is writing – a final demand for revenge? A bitter, I-hope-you're-happy insult? But when he finally catches a glimpse of the screen, he is disappointed.
Goodbye, Mr Holmes.
She hands back the phone and the executioner steps up to the mark. She closes her eyes and her breath comes faster; this is it, this is the end. Her whole life flashes in front of her eyes like riffling the pages of the Kama Sutra until only thoughts of him remain, because he is all she wants to remember. And then she lets her mind go blank.
Then there is a noise, a noise she never thought she would hear again, and she opens her eyes, turning to find the source and looking into grey-green eyes more familiar now than her own face in the mirror. "When I say 'run'," the apparition demands, his eyes widening with amusement, "Run."
She turns back quickly, then has to blink and turn back, just to check it's really him. Where did he come from? And why? He made it perfectly clear all those months ago that he never wanted to see her again.
But he is, it's him, he's there, and he's lifting the scimitar and twisting in the traditional hold; as he unwinds to deliver the blow, he lets the sword fly out of his hands and into the assembled crowd of spectators. If it wasn't her execution, she would have been flattered by the number of people who turned out to watch her die.
"Run!" he shouts, ripping off his headscarf and dropping it on the ground.
And she runs.
After, they collapse on a double bed in a cheap hotel in outer Karachi, side by side on their backs, letting the adrenaline and the giggles wash over them, breathing out the strain of running. She can't help herself but laugh, the relief of not being dead compounding the amazement that he saved her, that he cared in some way.
"Thank you," she says finally, when her breathing has calmed down. She turns her head to look at him and sees that his eyes are already fixed on her. He smiles.
"You're welcome." His head drops back onto the pillow and he gazes at the ceiling for a moment. Then he looks at her again. "Hungry?"
She thinks she knows where this is going, so she gives him a flash of her old smile. "Not at all."
He nods factually. "Let's have dinner."
They order room service – after a wordless agreement that going out would be detrimental to their recent escape – and sit at the grungy two-seater table, facing each other, not talking. She has questions, of course she does, but for a while she is content to sit and watch him delicately lift forkful after forkful of braised fish to his pale lips. In the while since she saw him she managed, slightly, to convince herself that falling for him had been a moment of weakness; now, seeing him again, she knows it was much more than that. After a while she decides that she has to ask. "Why did you do it?"
He shrugs, lowering his fork slightly and looking at her. "I owed you one." He slips a hand into the Karachi tunic he is still wearing and draws out an envelope. "I had a flick through the camera-phone and guessed that Mexico would be safest for you. Your plane leaves at eleven. There are clothes in the wardrobe for you." He looks down and away for a moment, and she knows what he's about to say. "My plane leaves at nine. This never happened, and it will never happen again."
She knew that was coming. For them there can be no future; there is safety in that. But that doesn't mean she has to like it; to spend time with this impossible man feels like flying, and she'd give anything short of her life to be able to do this forever. Unfortunately, her life is exactly what's at stake.
He takes a deep breath, breaking the mood. "They trawled the river and found the boomerang, by the way," he says brightly, changing the subject. "Good thinking."
She frowns, not understanding, so he elaborates. "Months ago. The hiker and the backfire."
"Oh. I was right, then?"
He smiles. "Always, I think."
They share the double bed to avoid raising suspicion, and even though they fall asleep firmly on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other and trying to contain the longing to reach out, their sleeping selves are not so polite and he wakes up with her arms wrapped around his arms wrapped around her waist. He knows it shouldn't feel natural and right, but it does. He wishes for a moment that he could stay, that they could do this again sometime, anything except what he's facing now: to leave and never come back, never see this woman again.
He glances over her shoulder at the clock blinking obnoxiously into the room and sighs. If he doesn't get up and leave now he'll miss his flight. Gently, he extracts his arms from around her waist and arms and gets up.
He dresses silently and re-packs his small bag. Within five minutes, he is standing over her again, his bag by the door. She looks like a pixie now more than ever: though her green eyes are hidden, the blank expression brings out the angles of her chin and ears. He finds he likes the comparison, likes thinking of her as a wood-sprite, always misbehaving. He is hesitant to leave without saying goodbye, but he doesn't want to wake her. Goodbyes were never his strong suit anyway.
After a moment's deliberation, he leans over her and plants a delicate, gentle kiss on her cheek. "Goodbye, Miss Adler," he whispers. She wriggles around in the bed in a subconscious reaction to his voice, but does not wake. He doesn't look back or stop for breath until he is on the plane, back to reality, and banishing all thoughts of the Woman from his immense mind.
"Clearly you've got news. If it's about the Leeds triple murder, it was the gardener; nobody noticed the earring."
John walked into the kitchen with a slow, heavy walk. Something weighing on his conscience, then. "Hi," he said lamely. Lately John had been taking to irrelevant greetings to prompt him when he opened a conversation too abruptly; today, however, it seemed as though he were only saying it because he couldn't think what else to say. "No, no – it's about Irene Adler."
Sherlock couldn't stop his eyes from flicking up to meet the doctor's. Irene Adler. His mind tried to stop the veer off back to that last night in the hotel in Karachi. "Oh?" he said, unable to stop himself from sounding interested. "Something happened? Has she come back?"
"No, no, she's… um…" John sounded relived at the thought that she hadn't returned. "I just bumped into Mycroft downstairs, I had to take a call." Sherlock wasn't fooled. Mycroft made a point of avoiding the public in general; there was no way someone could casually bump into him at Speedy's.
"Oh," Sherlock prompted further. John was carrying, he noticed now, a thick file and the camera-phone. "Is she back in London?"
"Um, no." John looked as though some huge internal struggle was preventing rational thought. "She's… um…" He stopped again, staring into space. Sherlock tried to invade that space and prompt an answer. He wondered what Mycroft had told him. Of course his brother knew he'd been in Karachi that night, but that couldn't have been what he'd said, because that wasn't 'news' to him. Suddenly John sucked in a breath and looked up at him, his mind made up. "She's in America."
Sherlock blinked. "America?"
"Yup. Got herself into a witness protection scheme, apparently. I dunno how she swung it, but…" John looked at him again. The poor doctor looked highly uncomfortable with the situation. "Well, you know."
Sherlock honestly had no idea. America? That couldn't be the truth, she wouldn't be stupid enough to go back there. "I know what?"
"Well, you won't be able to see her again." John looked up at him and suddenly he knew; that wasn't what Mycroft had told him. He was lying because he thought Sherlock would rather think that than the truth. He was lying because he cared. And he desperately wished that Sherlock didn't want to see Irene Adler again.
"Why would I want to see her again?" Sherlock humoured.
John backtracked hastily like a mother trying to reason with a bad-tempered child. "I didn't say you did." Sherlock shrugged and went back to his microscope. He had the distinct feeling John didn't believe that he didn't want to see her again.
"Is that her file?" he changed the subject, sitting down. John glanced at it.
"Yeah. Did you want to –"
"No."
There was a long pause as Sherlock dared John to tell him the truth and John continued the internal struggle. A glance at the doctor's face, that extreme look of conflict, of concern, and the penny dropped.
He thinks she's dead, Sherlock realised sadly. Oh, Mycroft.
"Why did you tell John she was dead?"
Mycroft blinks, dropping his pen, still recovering from the shock of Sherlock barging unannounced into his office. "Hello, Sherlock, lovely to see you."
Sherlock shakes off the reminder. "Irene Adler," he bites out. "You knew I saved her. Why did you tell John she was dead?"
The Ice Man leans back in his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin and smiling sadly at his younger brother. "Does that really beg explanation, Sherlock?"
The Virgin strides forward and braces his hands on the wide expanse of desk, leaning in until his face is a suitably intimidating distance away from his brother's. "Tell me."
Mycroft sighs. "What difference does it make? The end result is the same. Whatever occurred between you and Irene Adler is over. You will never contact her again."
"So why not tell him the truth?" Sherlock spits out, withdrawing slightly from the smell of expensive cologne. "Why give him all the trouble? He fed me some story about a witness program in America. I know John, he'll feel guilty for months not telling me what he thinks is the truth." Mycroft, to his surprise, smiles at this, the soft and lingering smile of someone who is content in the unselfish knowledge that they were right about something. Only Mycroft is never unselfish about being right. "What?"
"I thought that would be the version he would choose to leave you with," the government official says quietly. "Doctor Watson values the truth, but for you he chose a lie that would make you feel better."
"Yes," Sherlock replies shortly. "Because he cares about me. That doesn't explain anything."
Mycroft gives a thin-lipped smile. "I think you underestimate the strength of John's feelings for you," he says slowly. "I know he would rather think that she is dead than know that you flew all the way to Karachi to save her life."
Sherlock Holmes is temporarily baffled. He knows John doesn't like the way he treated Irene Adler like she was something special. He also knows it's mostly because he doesn't treat him the same way. But John is special, perhaps more so than the Woman. And he cares.
Sherlock turns on his heel and stalks out of his brother's office.
John stumped into the room, his tread dejected. Sherlock took a moment to look him up and down; he'd been to the pub with Lestrade. He could smell the DI's cheap aftershave like John rubbed his face in it; he hoped that wasn't the case. He gave the doctor a minute to put the kettle on, and when a mug of steaming black tea was dumped in front of him, he didn't protest.
"John?" he said, carefully keeping his voice casual. "About Irene Adler." Instantly the doctor's attention was on him, disapproving and yet concerned. How does he care this much? "I didn't say thank you."
John sighed, slumping into a chair and taking a gulp of tea. "For what?"
Sherlock looked up and held his gaze seriously. "For telling me that awful story about America when Mycroft told you she was dead."
"Oh." John's eyes fell to the floor. "Did he tell you, or did you figure it out?"
Sherlock shrugged. "Please. She wouldn't go back to America, half the country wants her dead, they'll have pictures of her in all the police stations. It wasn't Mycroft's best lie." He paused for a moment, unsure how to express what he wanted to say. "I'm… touched that you fed it to me anyway to try and spare me, even though it went against your conscience."
The doctor stared at him for a moment, then nodded shortly. It was as if a weight had lifted from his shoulders, and Sherlock recognised it as his guilt for lying to him. "Well, that's well and truly over now, anyway," he said slowly. Sherlock could hear the relief in his voice – the Woman was completely out of the picture. Things between the two of them could get back to normal without thoughts of her intruding. He felt a twinge of guilt himself. "Isn't it, Sherlock?"
Sherlock was pro-honesty here, so for a moment the truth was on the tip of his tongue – she's not dead, I saved her, she's in Mexico going by the name of Violet Hunter – but then Mycroft's words drifted back into his mind.
What difference does it make? The end result is the same. He would rather think she is dead than know that you flew all the way to Karachi to save her.
There was no difference, really, he realised, between John telling him she was in America and Sherlock agreeing that she was dead. "Yes, John," he said finally, smiling and taking a sip of his tea, perfectly made as always. "It's well and truly over now."
He doesn't feel guilty, not really. After all, it's the truth.
A/N: And that's goodbye to Irene Adler, all that energy out of the way. Cheers. Drop me a line if you're feeling generous.
-for you!