Author's Note: Hi guys! Again, very sorry it's been so long, but here is chapter 27! :) We're getting close to the end now, and am on holiday til September now which means plenty of time for writing! This might be a bit of a downer, but I won't leave you guys hanging on too long this time...that's a promise! Enjoy! :D

Holmes slept soundly that night; the sensation of Irene's bare skin touching his was strangely comforting, and not just because of the heat their two bodies pressed together produced. He woke up in great discomfort -muscles stiff from a night spent on the floorboards- just as the sun was beginning to rise, and became immediately aware that he was cold; Irene had moved away from him in the night and he now lay beneath the blanket alone on the floor of his room.

In one surging movement, Holmes sat up ramrod straight and tore his sleepy eyes open. Irene was bent over the cluttered desk, already dressed and in the act of folding a piece of ink-scribed paper into an envelope. She had her back to him, and apparently had not noticed him wake.

An amateur in this field would not have found it difficult to deduce what Irene was up to; for Sherlock Holmes, it was child's play. A strange feeling deep inside caused his chest to tighten, and he cleared his throat loudly.

"Were you going somewhere?"

Irene jumped, startled at the sound of his voice, but did not look 'round. Holmes did not have to be able to see her face to know she was trying desperately to think of something to say which would sufficiently explain why she was attempting to leave before he woke up, and failing miserably. She turned slowly, and Holmes met her eye for the first time – the one thing he had feared the most. She opened her mouth to speak, thought better of it, and then finally twisted her mouth into a wry half-smile which -in case there had been any doubt at all- told Holmes all he needed to know.

"It was a long shot," she said.

Holmes nodded stiffly. A hypothesis was beginning to form within Holmes' mind – the tiniest amoeba of a possibility that somebody besides himself was right; namely Doctor Watson who had been telling him right from the start that Irene Adler was nothing more than a lying, scheming, demoralizing specimen of humanity masquerading as an incomparably beautiful and charming woman. Once again, he had been too slow to see it. Once again, he was first in line to get hurt.

"I have a small query, if you'd be so kind as to answer." Holmes got to his feet, lifting his moth-eaten smoking jacket from the back of the armchair and swathing his body in its fabric folds. "Your coming here last night; our..." He considered. "...time together... I'm curious: did you always plan to leave the next morning without explanation, or had you not thought that far ahead?"

The sardonic tone had been deliberate, but Holmes was still surprised by the venom laced to his voice as he spoke. It appeared that he had been so busy impressing upon Watson that his becoming taken with a woman was the single biggest mistake of his life that he had forgotten to practice what he preached. Irene's face had hardened slightly at his words.

"Just...don't do this, Sherlock." She shook her head, sighing deeply. "It's too hard..."

"For you?" Holmes asked with incredulity. "It's too hard...for you?" He nodded once more. His heart was hammering and he could feel himself growing hot and flustered. So she was leaving again, this was nothing new. But why this sudden feeling – like his stomach, heart, lungs, eyeballs, brain and kidneys were screwing themselves tighter and tighter into a crunched ball of entrails about to implode into total nothingness and leave him empty inside..?

"This wasn't ever my plan," Irene said in belated answer to his question of her intentions. "You have to believe me...I never came here last night wanting to hurt you, it just..."

"Happened?"

"Yes." She nodded, as if grateful he had finished the sentence for her; as if it was somehow more acceptable for her to be feeling and thinking such things so long as she was not the one to say them out loud. "I promise you, I never wanted it to end this way."

"Then this is just another round of your game," Holmes said. "Typical..."

"It's not a game," Irene snapped, "I already told you, it's not a game. I just don't know how to...You don't know how to..."

"How to what?"

"Live an ordinary life!" Irene shook her head, staggered. "You don't, Sherlock. And I don't either, and that's why this," she waved a hand inbetween them both, "this will never end the way we want it to."

For the first time, Holmes noticed that Irene held a framed photograph in her hand. She offered it to him, and he took it. The framework was warm as if it had been held in the same hand all night, and Holmes could tell from the smudges and fingerprints across its surface that that was most likely the case. The picture showed Holmes, messy and scarred, standing between an equally filthy Watson (a long-suffering but exhaustively happy expression on his face) and Mary clad in a stunning white wedding dress. Holmes looked up at Irene questioningly, wondering what the significance of this photograph could possibly be to her.

"Have you seen the way they look at each other?" Irene's voice was strained and burdened with more agony than Holmes had ever heard it. She indicated the frame. "I couldn't sleep last night so I got up for some fresh air and I saw this photograph and just..." Irene shook her head.

Holmes just started at her, unable to come up with anything to say.

"What we have, what we're doing right now," Irene said, "We're on the edge, Sherlock – the edge between being with each other and having a relationship when both of us know that is the one thing we could never have." All at once, her tone changed and she frowned furiously in his direction. "What is it you want? I asked you two years ago to come away with me and you wouldn't do it. Now suddenly you want the opposite?"

"I have never asked anything of you."

"You don't have to ask," she said. "Sherlock, do you think I feel good about all the times I've walked away from you?"

"Oh so just a habit you find it hard to escape from."

Holmes stayed silent; a sure indication to Irene that the Great Detective was at a loss. She sighed once more, knowing she would have to put it bluntly.

"Leaving aside our bogus marriage these last weeks," she said slowly, "If I was really Mrs Irene Holmes would you still love me? Would you still love me if I was anyone other than Irene Adler?"

Holmes flinched visibly at her use of that word. It was not that he didn't feel it – he knew well enough by now that he most definitely did. It was the fact that she was using it now; now when she was preparing to leave him once more that was tearing him apart from the inside.

"Do you know what happens to people who start a relationship?" Irene demanded. "They have a wedding and a cake and loads of pretty little bridesmaids, and then they go off together and have a life," Irene said, as if Holmes was unaware of the restrictions of marriage. "I mean, come on, Sherlock – haven't you been telling Doctor Watson for years what a huge mistake he made in marrying Mary?"

"I have been known to be wrong...on occasion."

Irene laughed. "Oh that's one for the album - Sherlock Holmes admitting he's wrong...I never thought I'd see the day!"

"We are straying from the subject."

"Yes, you're right," Irene said icily. "Let's get back on track, shall we? Would you like to hear more reasons why we could never make this work?"

"No, but I would very much like to hear the real reason rather than your fabricated excuses to that fact."

"No excuses," Irene said, and she suddenly appeared incredibly focussed. "You say you were wrong about Watson... So what does that mean? Do you want to marry me?"

If Holmes had been drinking, he would have choked. "Miss Adler, marriage would not be a solution for you any more than it would be for me."

"But you would do it?" Irene asked, and her voice was softer now.

Holmes stared resolutely at the floor, determined that he would not meet her eye. He wondered how it always came back down to this – he and Irene facing each other over the tattered ruins of what could potentially have been a fulfilling and wondrous future together, before they had allowed their feelings to get in the way. Every time they were handed another opportunity to make something of their lives together, Holmes realised, one or other of them smashed it to pieces before it had even begun.

Against his will, Holmes found himself looking at her. And suddenly, he wondered what it would be like to wake up every morning with her by his side in bed; to swear before God and with Watson at his side as his best man that he would be loving and faithful to Irene til the end of their days; to hold in his arms the tiny wriggling form of their first-born child, and many years down the line die in the same bed they had lain in for years a happily married man with no regrets to the way he had spent his life. He had experienced the thought; now all that remained was to say the words...

"If I was willing," Holmes said with unbelievable slowness, "...Would you be?"

The sound Irene made was midway between a gasp and a sob. Somehow, Holmes knew what her answer would be before she had even said it.

"I'm sorry..."

"Don't be." He meant it, though he had no idea how. "It would be a sham of a marriage anyway – a leaky bucket...full of holes, nothing of substance inside."

"It's not because I wouldn't want to," Irene said softly. "A marriage is based on trust. And there's none of it between us."

Holmes nodded once more, secretly glad she had answered the way she had. It had occurred to him as soon as he'd said it that marriage was a mistake of gargantuan proportions where he and Irene were concerned. Experience had told him that Irene Adler and a legally binding arrangement of any kind would make for an unstable and potentially explosive experiment. What he could not understand, however, was why Irene had not yet suggested that she stay anyway. He had never said that he wanted to marry her; merely that he would consider it if needs must. He didn't want to marry her, but he did want her. It was a knife-edge, and they were both dangerously close to toppling off.

"You asked me once to run away with you," Holmes said, to himself more than to her.

"And last night, when I came here to you, I was prepared to ask again," Irene said. "But seeing that photo made me realise – we weren't made for anything more than liaisons, and that's the way it's always going to be." She sighed. "Besides, a marriage ruined my opinion of a man I loved more than words. Don't ask me to let the same thing happen with you, Sherlock..."

So that was it, then. That was the real reason why Irene was walking away yet again; not just to escape from the net of impending commitment, but from the idea of a future which ultimately scared her far more than the fear of being forever alone. Though she had not said so, Holmes suspected then that Irene's previous divorce from Geoffrey Norton had little or nothing to do with the reasons that she had cited; that instead she had had her heart broken, but could not bring herself to tell Holmes the truth when she returned. Which made her...what to him, exactly? In that moment, Holmes swore he saw Irene Adler's flaws for the first time. She had wanted him only too readily when she needed or wanted something from him, but that was where it stopped. Had she wanted anything more last night than just a pair of arms willing and open to her, knowing he would be unable to resist her advances? Holmes did not doubt her word – she would have asked him once more to run away with her had she not discovered the photograph. The real question was how long they'd have lasted before old issues began to surface – if his time with Irene had taught Holmes anything at all, it was that you can only pretend for so long. She was The Woman; not His Woman and that was all she would ever be.

So it was with a heavy heart but clear conscience that Holmes set the photograph of himself, Watson and Mary back on the table, tugged resolutely on the ties of his smoking jacket and offered Irene a hand.

"Let us part with a handshake then, Miss Adler."

"Why?" She smiled slightly, asking more out of curiosity than objection.

Holmes swallowed uncomfortably, as if the words were there but did not quite wish to leave his mouth. The overbearing and logical voice marked Reason which sat astride his right shoulder was screaming in his ear to stay silent, to return to his armchair and let her go in the same fashion as the last time she had left – before the Blackwood case when she walked out of his rooms and he had not even met her eye. There was no harm to be drawn from letting the same thing happen again. Except for a tiny whisper in his opposite ear – the voice of Heart telling him to say something -anything- to Irene which would ease the pain of her leaving again, and somehow make things right between them before she did.

"Because," he said finally, "I feel I would regret parting ways once more without doing so properly..."

Irene smiled, properly this time. "We did, Sherlock – last night..." She obliged and shook his hand comically. Holmes could see tears welling in her azure eyes as she stepped closer to him. "In another time, if we were different people, Sherlock...I'd wish I didn't have to go."

Then stay. The voice of Reason won this time. He watched as Irene closed the distance between them and pressed her shaking lips to his cheek one last time, before drawing back and leaving the room. He did not turn to the window to watch her leave via the steps and begin her journey along Baker Street as he once might have. Instead his eyes fell upon the note she had left for him on the table – the white envelope bearing no title. He scooped it from the tabletop and ripped the envelope open.

My Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes, it read.

I thought that the hours since we parted at Victoria late last night would have given me time to come up with the words for a proper goodbye, but I still find myself at a loss. Please let me begin by saying thank you – though no measure of thanks can be enough to repay what you did for me and what you have saved me from. I realise you may feel as though I betrayed your trust. Oh Sherlock, I think you know as well as I do that I never had your trust to betray. You cannot always choose who you fall in love with, but you can choose who you trust. In time I hope you will realize as I have that although there has been little trust between us, there has been love and lust and some of the best times of my life – in every sense, for you are an amazing man, Sherlock Holmes, in so very many ways. On the table with this letter you will find a bag containing the five-hundred shillings promised as payment for the case. I feel sure we'll meet again sometimes soon; in the meantime, please be assured I'll miss you greatly.

Most faithfully, Sherlock,

Yours

IRENE ADLER

The words of the letter seemed almost void considering their earlier conversation. Holmes looked to the tabletop. There, as stated, was a small satin tie-up bag filled with coins. He set the letter down and took to his armchair, rubbing his chin in thought. The woman was an impossibility. Holmes could not claim to understand her now anymore than when they had first met. When he thought of all she had said to him, of her reasons for leaving, not one of them made any sense at all – she was playing with him once more as she had played with him so many times in the past.

An ordinary man would have screamed, thrust his fist through the nearest window and sworn to boycott womankind forever. But Sherlock Holmes was not an ordinary man. He had not screamed since infancy, there was no window nearby to punch, and there was only one woman for him. There was nothing more to do or say. In one movement, Holmes ripped Irene's note in two and threw the pieces into the fireplace. Later on when a fire was roaring in the grate, he watched the words burn to ash. On impulse and fuelled by a reckless adrenaline he'd never quite felt before, he reached for the dossier marked IRENE ADLER, ripped pages at a time from inside and fed them one by one into the flames too. Sure now that his eyes and body was ablaze too with hatred and bitterness, he found himself in frenzy, snatching his most treasured possession from the tabletop and holding it over the grate with the intention of watching it burn too, but at the last minute stopped himself. What good would it do?

Slowly, very slowly, Holmes set the photo frame holding Irene's picture back on the table and headed downstairs to search out his pipe.