After his brief lucid spell the little memory he had of the drive to the lodge had a dreamlike quality.
Anthea had appeared in a nondescript saloon car and acted as chauffeur. Mycroft, pleading work pressures, had left again in the plane. Taxiing for take off before they even left the deserted airfield. He vaguely recalled empty acres of muted green and the two women awkwardly making conversation, something that would have riled him in it's pointlessness under other circumstances.
The sedative dragged him under again as Anthea left him alone in his room. In his mind the present had mixed with memories of the last time Irene drugged him and it was as if both John and Irene( wearing his coat and nothing else) had taken turns in a vigil at his bedside while the chemicals made their way out of his system.
In reality, when he woke, he was alone in the attic room. Pleasant enough, all dove grey and tasteful tartan. He'd been here before. After the infamous 'March 2008'. His brother, unwilling to put their parents through another detox, had checked him into a ruinously expensive clinic north of Glasgow. After he gone through the all too familiar routines of getting clean Mycroft had brought him here, as far from civilization as he could manage. Keeping him under virtual house arrest for a further month. Sherlock remembered him euphemistically calling it a sabbatical.
When he got up and went downstairs through the chilly house Irene' s door was still shut. He drank strong, sweet tea at an open window in an attempt to clear the fog from his brain before showering.
The soap and shampoo were his (expensive) brands of habit from Baker Street. His brother or , more likely, Anthea had done their homework. He supposed it was meant as a kindly welcome home gesture but the familiar scents made him feel homesick in a way he hadn't allowed himself since the night he silently wept on the frigid deck of a Rotterdam ferry. His newly shaved scalp itching under a woollen hat as he watched the lights of Hull disappear into the distance.
He towelled off and dressed from a selection of new clothes that had been left in carrier bags in his room. Outdoor stuff, fleece and pockets, ugly but functional.
He made more tea and carried it to the living room along with the file Mycroft had given him and a packet of biscuits. He knew he'd need sensible food eventually but for now he was more curious about the file, about Mary Morstan.
He flipped straight to the back. The most recent pictures of John and Mary. Romantic relationships, not his area. They looked happy, it was true, but John was also watchful. Very probably he knew that he was being observed and resented the intrusion of his old life into his new one.
He went back to the start, copies from another file. Eastern Europe in the mid eighties. The military of several countries run schools for orphans with promise. When the wall came down some of the mentors kept their charges on during the period of adjustment, whether for financial gain or out of sentiment isn't clear. At some point they are put to work. A pattern emerges by the late nineties of an excellent sniper able to pass through high level security with ease. Skills that are needed by both sides, skills that are for sale to the highest bidder.
When he looks up his tea is cold and Irene is sitting opposite,cup in hand, just watching. Her hair shower damp.
'So what now?'
'You seem to know as well as me.' He replied sharply, his brain still too sluggish to come up with anything else.
'Breakfast then. Ive been told you've to eat - properly.' She looked pointedly at the packet of digestives.
'Fine.' He got up and stretched, ignoring the way she ran her eyes over him. Exaggerated, unlike the covert once over he'd noticed ( through his sedated haze) she gave Anthea as they left the plane.
In the kitchen he helped. Putting on toast and laying the table while Irene stirred scrambled eggs. John, who would have been left to do the whole thing himself, would have laughed and made some remark about the display of domesticity.
They ate in a neutral silence for which he was very grateful. Predictably he felt much better for proper food.
'Did you find anything?' Irenve nodded at the file which he had carried with him to the kitchen like a security blanket.
' Not really, She worked for British intelligence at one point, Moriarty may have known, Mycroft certainly would have.' He thought out loud.
'It would have tickled Jim.' Irene said, smiling.
'We never did clarify the nature of your relationship with him did we?'
'If you're asking what I think the answer is no. Never directly a client, certainly never a lover. He occasionally used me as a lever, one of many.'
'How very professional.' He replied dryly.
'It was very easy money.' She said, a little wistfully. 'Humiliating a peer of the realm till they, well- disgrace themselves is nothing.' She said, primly sipping her tea.
Sherlock dissolved into unexpected laughter. 'That I can believe.'
'Anyway, time for a walk.' She said getting up and clearing the plates.
'Walk where? I'm dead, we both are.'
'Yet our legs still function - as long as we're careful to keep our distance from people we should be fine. Besides, you don't look like you, though I noticed a deerstalker in the boot room if you wanted to do something a little risky.'
'Pass. I assume this enforced exercise is my brother's idea.'
'No, mine. I'm not letting you sit inside for days, I'm not sitting inside for days.'
He rolled his eyes. 'If you'll give me peace afterwards.' He went to his room to see if the bags held any outdoor clothes. Returning to the kitchen in hiking boots and an olive green jacket.
'If he wanted to torture me he should have handed me over to the Spanish gang. This is just cruel.'
She laughed. ' I'm sure you'll be flouncing round London in that bloody coat before you know it.'
The wind was fresh, cold and vaguely saline. Ugly as the goretex was he zipped it against the weather. They followed a path behind the house that led into scrubby sand dunes. It threaded in and out, skirting the edge of the beach in places. They tried to stay out of view of the dog walkers throwing sticks and balls on the sand.
Despite what he recognised as a vaguely Country Life background, he was a confirmed city boy. Only a place like London had enough going on to hold his interest but today he could see the appeal of the air at least, it felt clean and new. He started to feel the heavy weight of the last months and years loosen if not yet lift from his head. The realisation that he was almost home, properly home.
The path brought them out at a ruined church and graveyard. They wandered among the crumbling grey stone, pausing to lean against a half ruined wall.
'How long have you known I was alive?' He asked suddenly.
'Months I suppose. I never really bought the suicide. Besides you were the only one who really understood how Jim worked. You said it at his trial, the spiders web. You knew how to take it down elegantly. Some parts collapsing in on themselves while others didn't see it coming. The things that happened to his people, his businesses, could only have been you. So I looked for you, I thought perhaps I could help.'
' You were watching me and you called Mycroft when you realised I had the cocaine.'
'Of course I did. Sherlock Holmes, high as a kite on foreign soil with an MI6 issue weapon no one wants that. I suspect Mycroft owing you a favour is a mixed blessing though.'
'Very much so.' He said grimly. 'Almost as bad as when you owe him.'
'And we all do.' She sighed.
'Quite.'
They were silent a few moments before they started to walk back. Irene told him, unprompted, about after Istanbul. Moving slowly into, then across Europe, crossing borders where her fake passport was least likely to raise flags. Selling all her good jewellery and working in bars to survive.
Back at the house Sherlock took the file apart, literally. Ignoring the grave warnings stamped in red on the cover he tore out photographs and fragments of reports. Annotating them with leaky biro and sticking them to the living room wall with a roll of masking tape he'd found in the kitchen.
Irene left him alone, save for insisting he ate again just after it got dark and went to his bed at midnight. The next day passed with the same routine. Gently enforced meals and a walk that this time took them on to the then deserted sweep of sand. Irene, inexplicably, collecting shells. By the time he could smell dinner cooking in the late afternoon he'd hit a wall with both the file and the newly linked information in his mind palace. He needed fresh data.
He told Irene as much when she handed him a drink and curled onto the sofa. They both sipped at their glasses as they silently regarded his work. Dark rum she had found in a cupboard apparently. Rough stuff for his palate but he appreciated the heat and the slight fuzzing of the edges.
They ate dinner, or at least Irene did. Sherlock went through the motions mostly, pushing vegetables round his plate like an eight year old. He returned to the living room to stare at his wall and she followed.
'I'll show you what I've been doing for a change.' Irene said, slightly hesitant as she disappeared to her room.
He felt a very slight twinge of reflexive gentlemanly guilt because it had not till then occurred to him that Irene was also stuck there with little to occupy her decidedly above average mind. She returned with a laptop.
'Internet?' He said hopefully.
' Sorry no. I've been writing my memoirs - of my working life.' She said starting up the computer.
'Hasn't that been done?' He had a vague memory of Mrs Hudson and John watching something on television about a high end escort. (John pretended to hate it but was always in their landlady' s flat somehow when it was on.)
'Not like this.' She said turning the screen towards him.
He read as Irene fetched glasses and poured more cheap rum. The style was a little florid for his taste and he had to resist the temptation to correct her grammar but he could see how it could be entertaining. He assumed she was trying to be provocative but there was simply far too much equipment involved for him to find it arousing. He knew that the government minister being described was a particular thorn in Mycroft's side.
'It' s diverting.' He said finally, snapping it shut and swallowing a mouthful of rum.
'High praise.' She said sarcastically.
'You're hoping to sell it at some point?'
'Perhaps, anonymously. I'm rather hoping my role so far in this little drama of yours, along with any other help I can offer, might earn me a clean identity. That should be nothing to Mycroft.'
'I don't know how much help I'll need.' He said. He had been considering his next move, after he got back to London, and he was sure someone else (other than John Watson)would only slow him down.
'I think you're forgetting, how much you used to rely on people who think you're dead. Who've grieved for you.'
He was silent. The human element, not his area, the thing he used to rely on John for.
'You've been alone a long time.' She said simply.
'I suppose, I haven't thought about it.' That was a lie but she let it pass. He'd missed his small but perfectly formed support network more than he'd thought possible, every single night as he stared at the ceiling of yet another anonymous hotel room.
She moved closer and picked up his hand. Afterwards he'd wonder if he'd picked up hers first. Either way she started to stroke the thin skin on the inside of his wrist. Before they'd met again he'd last been touched by an Italian nurse, dressing his wounds. That was necessary, clinical. This was indulgent, warm.
'We won't be interrupted this time you know.' She said softly, almost a warning, as she kissed the backs of his fingers. The conflict between relaxing into her touch and pulling away from it began to resolve into a prickling, not entirely comfortable, arousal.
He thought back to his last sexual encounter, he was alarmed at just how hard he had to think to get the details, a dusty neglected room in a dusty neglected corridor of his mind palace. A girl, (name deleted) she'd always flirted with him. They both ran with a set as devoted to substance abuse as any other junkie but with the money to do it in some style, at least most of the time. He felt no attraction to her but allowed himself to be used because he knew she had more coke and he was out of cash for the month, a simple transaction. He felt queasy at the thought.
He kissed Irene then, in part to push the memory away. No delicacy,hands cupping her face, tongue pressing into her mouth . This was what it was, two people wanting to feel something. He wondered if it really mattered in the end what.
As they broke apart he realised he'd surprised her. She smiled, girlish he supposed. Genuine. It only lasted a second.
'Mr Holmes, I was beginning to wonder if you had it in you.' The Woman back to the surface.
' If we're doing this no games.' He said quietly.
'I doubt you can afford the full package at the moment.' She replied smoothly.
'I mean I want-I want it to be you, not the performance, the persona.'
The blunt honesty of this silenced her for a moment. 'Let's go then.' She said finally getting up and walking in the direction of her bedroom. Peeling her clothes off as she went. It took him whole seconds to realise that he was meant to follow. Her directness appealed.
Irene had somehow quickly removed every stitch of her own clothes and was as naked as, well, the day they'd first met. The master suite was similar to his room but with a sumptuous modern four poster bed.
'I know.' She said noticing him looking at the bed as she moved in to unbutton his shirt. 'Terrible cliche. I promise not to tie you to it.'
She pushed the shirt from his shoulders. Running her fingers without comment round the scar at his shoulder. Her other hand dipped lower until she was running her fingers down the line of the coarse hair below his navel. She wrapped an arm around his neck and kissed him roughly as she efficiently flicked open the button and zip on his trousers. Her hand sliding into his underwear and giving his length one slow stroke before pulling away to allow him to clumsily strip himself the rest of the way.
She crowded him onto the bed, straddling him. It was,for a second, a little too reminiscent of barely forty eight hours ago when she'd drugged him but he quickly pushed the thought aside as he stretched to renew the kiss. His hands moved over her body in generous circles, noting where elicited an extra catch of her breath.
She hadn't touched him again since they lay down, possibly because she had realised how quickly he'd get close, how long it had been. (It would, he supposed, be the sort of thing she'd have experience of.)The unintentional brush of warm skin against his arousal was more than enough. She pulled his hand between them, pressing his fingers against and inside her for a second.
'Wait there.' She said with a,sloppy kiss to the corner of his mouth.
He was confused for a second till he heard the tear of foil.
'I'm clean and I know you are but - we don't want any accidents.' She looked a little embarrassed as she deftly rolled the condom on.
There had never really been any doubt that she would take control, that he would let her. She sank on to his length, looking at him questioningly as she slightly circled her hips, allowing them both to adjust. He slid his hand up towards her waist in reply.
Between the weight pressing him down and her flesh close around his the feeling was exquisite. He'd taken care of himself on occasion, of course he had, preferring the contents of his mind palace at such times to the crass offerings of the internet. This though was so much more and he wondered now why he'd denied himself the comfort of another body for so long.
'You won't last long.' She breathed close to his ear as she stretched forward to almost lie on top of him, skin to skin. Her hips began to move in earnest, grinding against him, taking her pleasure as he helplessly thrust up into her.
' It's ok, neither will I. I've thought about this for a long time.'
They both gave in to instinct, her fingers buried in sweat damp hair while his flexed and pressed into whatever soft skin he could reach. He tried to hold back and wait for her out of the shred of chivalry that his short circulating brain muster. He managed by seconds. She panted and spasmed (no theatrical screams or moans he was pleased to note) just before he was pulled over the edge.
She collapsed on to him, breath damp and cooling against his neck for a few seconds before rolling off. She lay on her back, making no move closer or further away.
He knew other people were affectionate at this point but in his limited experience if the conclusion of the act had been a prompt to do anything it would have been another line of coke. So he waited. After a few seconds she clasped his wrist.
He hadn't meant to sleep but somehow did, for hours. Waking up at two in the morning he gathered his clothes and crept back to his own room. He hadn't time to think as he lay on his own bed before he drifted off again.
'
