Whatever Begins, Also Ends

Panting and slick with perspiration, he dropped himself onto her flushed body in exhaustion, their previous ardour now settling into tenderness so that their kisses, so passionate and aggressive only a minutes before, became sweet, lingering, and softly pliant. And even though he knew that he was surely too heavy for her to bear his full weight for long, he couldn't bring himself to move. Moving would break their connection and end this, and he wasn't yet ready to accept that it was over between them.

But it is, he knew, feeling desolate in the face of that acknowledgment. His reckless and half-baked mid-coitus plot to accompany her to Greece was so very tempting of course, but entirely impossible, he grasped now. The fact was, he simply could not give John the slightest reason to suspect anything, if (or rather, when, if Sherlock knew his brother) Mycroft covertly gauged John's knowledge on the matter by assessing John's reactions, under the guise of 'informing him of the situation.'

Just the faintest flicker of question or uncertainty from John (in case he recalled Sherlock's unexpected absence during the window of time Mycroft might mention) could be the reasonable doubt for which his brother was on guard. Sherlock could simply not risk Irene's future for the sake a few more days of deferred reality, as desperately as he may want it. No, he had to arrive home before John, so that his flatmate would never be aware of his absence at all. It was imperative.

Still, no matter what happened in the future, he would always jealously hold onto the knowledge that somewhere there was a woman who truly knew him, and whom he truly knew in turn. The brevity of their time together did nothing to detract from his certainly of that, and he suspected that as she made her way in the world as Erin Sigerson, she might recall him in the same way.

She certainly seemed to be feeling similarly now, but for her part, she didn't ask him to stay either. Instead, her arms continued to hold him tightly against her and prolong the present moment itself, and her fingernails dug uncomfortably into his shoulder blades, though he welcomed the sharp sensation, and tightened his own hold on her. He could feel their heartbeats galloping out of time with each other's, and for neither of them were the rates slowing.

It was only when her breathing became shallow and difficult that he reluctantly rolled onto the mattress, but he shifted her with him, so that she was half pulled onto his chest, her hair splayed across his arms and shoulders, tousled and untamed.

They remained there in silence, wrapped up in one another yet each lost in the privacy of his or her own thoughts. They didn't speak of what they had shared in the previous few days, or of the future, or about what they meant to each other. It would have been extraneous anyway, Sherlock knew; there was nothing else they could add to what had already been expressed in word, action, or physical intimacy.

Instead, with a steady and penetrating look into her bright eyes, he laced his fingers through hers, covering the back of her hand with his palm, and the single act eloquently summarised it all.

As he continued to peer down at her Sherlock felt something immense, something terrible, looming over him, colouring the moment with dread, but he abruptly shoved it away and sublimated his every cognitive thought into the effort of absorbing the tactile feel of her.

He wasn't certain how long they had remained like that but she was the one who finally broke the connection, wordlessly sliding her hand from under his and peeling herself from his body, her expression regretful but also filled with a new resolve.

Sherlock stared at the bathroom door long after she had gently closed it between them and the sound of the shower had started, and even though he knew she was just in the next room, he felt abruptly and utterly lonely in a way that he never had before.

That feeling seemed to trigger the much larger and overwhelming sensation that he had felt before, and now it yawned like an abyss before him, threatening devastation.

Scowling, he violently kicked his feet free of the tangled sheets and threw himself off the bed, then deliberately occupied himself with all the trivia of preparations needed for his departure so as to ignore that looming darkness. He packed up all his belongings and then zipped his suitcase decisively, leaving out only his toiletries and a fresh white-on-white striped shirt and black suit, which he lay out carefully across the writing table. Then, without permitting himself a pause, he began to carefully review all his travel documents, ensuring that his counterfeit passport, Sigerson's Visa card, and the print-out of his flight and boarding information were accounted for and in order.

Though he continued to keep himself engaged, he couldn't help but note that she was taking an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom, even after the water had ceased. And when he heard the steady noise of a hairdryer he found himself wondering if she were styling her hair into its rigid and complex knots once more, symbolic of the reestablishment of her personal barriers. The thought filled him with a sense of foreign and unwanted melancholy, one he had only felt once before in his life, in the days following Christmas Eve. He shook his head in irritation, culling it from his mind, and focused on counting and organising his remaining rupee bills, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed.

Nevertheless, when she finally did emerge his head lifted at once, and he saw that instead of having been fashioned into an elaborate updo, her hair had been blow-dried sleekly straight. It was still polished and much less uninhibited than her mane of waves, but wasn't as sophisticated or severe as her former hairstyle, and the sight filled him with mixed and ambiguous feelings. She caught his appraising look and instantly understood.

"As you said, no more Irene Adler. . ." she murmured, breaking the protracted silence and smiling serenely, albeit rather sadly.

Sherlock nodded, but when the moment grew heavy between them, the bitterness edged out the bemusement in the balance of his emotions, and he suddenly felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out from the room.

Only three quarters of an hour previously he had been left alone and despondent when she had broken away from his embrace to shower, but he now completely understood what she might have been feeling. He was seized by an immediate impulse to escape from the blue eyes that mirrored back all that he was feeling himself (too much, can't...), and without a word he collected his clothes and shower items, and moved around her into the refuge of the now-vacant bathroom.

Once there he turned on the tap, checked the water temperature, and stepped into the small stall, then took his time to methodically wash and condition his hair, lather and carefully shave his face, brush his teeth, and scrub his body, all with single-minded concentration. He had always found the repetitive and meditative qualities of his personal hygiene rituals somewhat soothing, and now focusing on going through the motions also helped him to ignore the sharp ache growing in his chest.

But after the surprisingly hot and strong spray sloughed away the last of the soap, and it came time for him to shut off the tap and step out, he found that he was unable to move. He remained fixed under the steaming water, and without the distraction of his ablutions he felt as if something within him—some resolve or strength—had finally broken, and that he was immensely fragile. To make matters worse, the most recent words she had spoken to him reverberated in his mind, and he slumped forward, his hands bracing against the tiles just in time to catch his weight. He locked his elbows as he dropped his chin to his chest with a moan, and his ragged breathing echoed loudly around him.

"No more Irene Adler."

As the water continued to thunder down he felt his lips suddenly pull away from his teeth in an involuntary grimace and his throat tighten up painfully, but with immense effort he fought against the onslaught of bitterness.

He resisted not just out of his habit of repressing unpleasant emotions, but also out of real fear. The sensations of dread and loss were formidable and his determination to leave her was weak, and if he lost himself in the negative feelings, he would never be strong enough to take that first step down the gangway in Oman and away from her.

And yet the potential consequences he had already outlined to himself made that an impossibility. . . Taking such a foolish risk for the sake of indulging his sentiment could very possibly shift the balance between he and his brother (potentially literally putting him—them—on the 'losing side'), and jeopardising her life was too sleep a price to pay.

But somehow, that awareness did absolutely nothing to mitigate the wretchedness he was feeling.

Ten minutes, a somehow still-intact portion of his mind suggested, interrupting his angst-ridden thoughts in a tone of resigned tolerance. Just ten minutes. It sounded like Mycroft.

Yes, yes, that could work, Sherlock thought desperately. Wholesale suppression wouldn't hold up, he understood. The emotions were just too intense, and if he tried that tactic he might break at a critical moment, back in London with John (God knew it would be hard enough to keep all of this from him, as it was). And if he were unwilling to risk potential exposure for an entire additional week with TheWoman, he certainly wasn't willing to blow it over a lack of emotional control. So yes, he could allow himself to feel that ache, to feel heartbroken—if only for just a little while. If only for ten minutes. . .

He leaned more heavily against his arms as they bracketed against the tiles, his mouth pressed into a hard line as his breath gusted through flared nostrils, and his chest heaved. His compromise soothed some of his previous agitation, but that emotion was immediately replaced by another feeling, which was much darker and more profound.

The shower continued its unremitting gush, surrounding him in nothing but steaming vapour, water, and the sound of the stream striking loudly against every surface, and he felt as though he could have been anywhere, could have been locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. The feeling of isolation and sensory limitation gave him the impression of total privacy, and that seemed to break the last vestiges of control he had on his emotions, so that they burst forth as powerfully and inexorably as the pounding shower spray, and his forehead fell even further forward to press into his straining bicep.

In his mind's eye he saw the flash of her clever blue eyes darting playfully over to his as she made some witty remark, and a bubble of frustrated longing seemed to form and grow in his chest and choke its way upward, forcing itself through his lips as a low and unsteady exhale.

He blindly swayed backwards on his feet and dug the heels of his palms hard into his eye sockets, and the image morphed into one of her face, her eyes almost black with desire and focused only on him, her chin tilted back, and her hair strewn across the pillow.

His eyes screwed up tighter and his grimace twisted further, and the ache within him intensified until it burned. But he savagely embraced it, and let the painful throbbing well up inside him—let himself wallow entirely in it so that he could experience every nuance of his misery until he felt as if he were suffocating with it. It very briefly occurred to him that perhaps if he could understand it, he could catalog it, and eventually contain it, but at once he knew that that was a lie. His need to feel the full weight of his distress wasn't in the least bit rational. It was something deep and primal.

Besides, it was like probing into an open wound. Any insights he might have gained were seared away by the all-encompassing, brutal pain within him, and his head dropped back so that it hit the tiles behind him with a hard thud, while his mouth fell open and gasped noisily for oxygen.

His hands swung out behind him to hold him upright against the wall, and he felt that well of distress and the ancillary noise build in his chest again. But rather than pressing a fist against his lips to stifle it, he let out the low, choked noise, which shuddered into another a moment later, interspersed only by heaving, borderline hyperventilating breaths.

But still he didn't shy away from the intensity of the meltdown, and he even mercilessly conjured up additional memories to further sharpen his suffering, now thinking of the times when their hands had entwined together, and the simple but incredible intimacy of that: at Baker Street, at the cargo deck railing, in public at dinner, and while their entire bodies, not just their hands, were joined. I'll never feel that with anyone again, he thought with utterly ruthless masochism, as shuddering spasms continued to wrack through him. I'll never have that again.

He couldn't tell if there were tears in his eyes—everything in the cramped stall was soaked—but his throat continued to constrict tightly, and though he swallowed convulsively several times, the painful pressure didn't ease. A part of his mind that felt separate from himself thought that even the body understood that sentiment could be very dangerous thing; this discomfort was its warning sign and distress signal. Yet still he welcomed the sensation, perversely luxuriating in his misery and the raw, flayed feeling that was the manifestation of the other side of (what he thought might be) love: loss.

Has it been worth it? Sherlock questioned himself. He had knowingly exposed himself to this pain, had understood that if he opened himself up to his sentiments and experienced the gratification and contentedness they evoked, that (just as with Newton's Third Law of Motion) there would be an equal and opposite reaction when things inevitably ended. But he had conscientiously chosen to experience life as she did, and postpone potential consequences in favour of momentary pleasure. Had he been a complete idiot to do so?

The answer will become clearer with greater distance, and time to determine how this will actually manifest in my daily life, he thought. Or to put it more prosaically: 'Only time would tell.' But even in the moment, although he felt bitterly resentful of their unalterable circumstances, he was inclined to believe, Yes. Yes it was worth it. Completely.

And with that, the bout subsided. The trembling in his limbs slowed then practically abated, and he imagined the last of his angst and uncertainty swirling down the drain of the shower along with the increasingly cooler water. It was similar to the visualisation trick he employed to delete items from his permanent memory, and although he knew that (unfortunately) emotions didn't function in quite the same way as neutral facts, and it wasn't a permanent solution, it seemed to work as a stop-gap at least. The hard, pounding misery that had coursed through him had left him wrung-out and exhausted, but it was now replaced by a calm (numb) acceptance. Overall, he felt heavy and empty, and as he shut off the water, stepped out into the bathroom, and toweled himself off, he was also aware that he felt strangely separate from reality, as if someone else were going through the physical motions for him.

After he pulled on his shirt several minutes later, he not only literally buttoned himself up, but also took the moment to do so emotionally, conscientiously reining in the feelings that went along with the separation. He had allowed himself time to grieve for what was finished and what could never be, but that period of indulgence was over, and it was of the utmost importance that he maintain dominance over his emotions. From now, onward—permanently.

Now dressed and (at least superficially) composed, he reached for the door handle, his eyes steely.

When he reentered the bedroom, his face was impassive and his expression didn't betray the slightest hint of the crisis that had transpired in the shower, except for perhaps a faint flush along his cheekbones that could be explained the heat of the water, and a slight redness rimming his eyes.

But even if they had been entirely bloodshot, Irene might not have noticed, because now she was busying herself about the room, moving swiftly and purposefully from one point to another, studiously looking everywhere but at him. She certainly didn't comment at how much time he had taken, and he wondered if she didn't need to question it because she had done the same thing herself. His eyes tracked her as she made her way around the cabin, searching her face for any sign that she had also fallen apart in the privacy of the shower, but apparently she had also used his time in the bathroom to reconstruct her careful facade, because once more he couldn't tell a thing.

It was a relief in a way, he thought, even as he felt the painful pangs of loss. Her restraint helped him maintain his own, very tenuous, self-control.

When the horn bellowed and the rumble of engines changed pitch a moment later, signaling the approach to their Muscat, Oman berth, Sherlock fastened the two buttons on his suit jacket, then pulled on his coat and tied his scarf, before grabbing the handle of his luggage. When Irene wordlessly passed him his carry-on satchel they made brief eye contact, but then they both looked away, lips pursed.

As they made their way to the disembarkation point, a stilted and awkward quality settled between them that was new and foreign, and the feeling was exacerbated when they reached the gangway, and turned to face each other.

To Sherlock, at least, the moment was loaded with the pressure that things ought to be expressed, and though he was still all too aware of the magnitude of his sentiment and the desire to accompany her at least to Greece, he felt completely unable to verbalise any of it on command and on the spot in such a way. Nor was he willing to risk undoing all the measures he had taken to control his feelings.

But when he checked Irene's expression, he was startled to see that she had lost the confident yet detached expression of her default mask. Instead she was broadcasting uneasiness and uncertainty, and somehow their shared anxiety enabled him to find his voice.

"This has been. . ." He paused, his jaw slightly working as he searched for the appropriate words. "I won't forget it," he finally said.

But then, when he felt the sentiment threatening to well up inside him again, much closer to the surface than he cared for, he briskly continued, "But now you need to establish a life with your new identification, and you certainly can't come to London. It's too dangerous."

A flicker of amusement momentarily replaced her previous expression, and she replied, "I'm quite a hand at disguise, you know; I daresay even better than you, from what I've seen."

"I mean it," Sherlock said firmly, his voice raising, flushing at the thought of her in renewed danger even while he knew she was just teasingly provoking him. "Your safety is paramount."

She looked away with an inscrutable look on her creased brow, but after a moment the familiar twinkle came back into her eye again, and she said blithely: "You could always visit me in America. . . put me back in line when I inevitably misbehave again. . ."

The edges of his lips lifted slightly, but it wasn't exactly a smile; there was no real humor in it. He murmured, "I suppose that a husband should see his wife occasionally," but they both knew that it was merely a humouring pretense—there was a very real possibility that they would never see each other again.

She smiled wanly, then rolled onto her toes to kiss him on the cheek, her hand lifting to cup the other side of his face.

His eyelashes fluttered closed and his heart sped up as her lips pressed against him, but all too soon she pulled away, and then her hand dropped as well. He immediately missed the contact, but swallowed hard, fortifying himself again.

"Until then, Mr. Holmes. . ." she murmured.

He nodded and began to wordlessly, stoically turn away, but then the same rush of clarity and realisation that he had felt on-deck the night before struck him again: the sense that he was witnessing a rare and fleeting moment of opportunity, but that it would expire imminently, un-seized, never to be repeated or re-offered.

And just as he had then allowed his emotions to fuel his desperate lunge forward, to catch her before the chance to accept what she offered him had passed forever, he now twisted back around in an impulse that felt as incontestable as a mandate.

Without even releasing his luggage he wrapped his arms around her and his face practically collided into hers, inelegantly kissing her with all the ferocity and emotion behind the words he couldn't actually say aloud. Yet when he allowed his sentiment to be channeled and expressed through his body rather than processed through his mind, he was just as articulate as he was in all other areas of his life—perhaps even more so. She had stumbled back slightly at first but without thinking he let his bags thud to the deck boards so that he could draw her in even closer, and after the barest pause she answered his passion with a torrent of her own with a low, shaky sound.

His mind went beautifully, blissfully blank as he felt the rightness of this final act resonate through him. It didn't matter how many kisses they had exchanged until that point; they were all in the past. But this, for now, was the present, and he could not conceive of anything that he needed (or could ever need) more than the press of her against him, the heat of her skin under his touch, the firm but pliant suppleness of her lips against his, the sound of her short, shallow breaths. . . He heard himself moan into her mouth and his hand went up to clutch at the back of her head as he tilted his face and deepened the kiss, as if he wanted them to melt into each other and posses part of one another one final time.

Some unknown time later he pulled away from her lips and blindly pressed his mouth along her cheek until his face was nestled into her hair again, and they stood there for another moment, embracing tightly as he inhaled one final breath of her scent. He knew that it was just the shampoo stocked by the ship, and yet the when the fragrance mingled with her own unique body chemistry it was intoxicating to him. Everything else faded away as he focused only on that, and he knew that whenever he detected a whiff of that particular brand of shampoo in the future, he would be fully transported back to this very moment.

Then, when they finally parted for the second time, panting hard, the bittersweet ache he felt welling in his chest was reflected in her slightly strained face and faintly glossy eyes, and his brain was silent except for a strange and very insistent humming.

"Until then," he said, his voice hoarse and raw-sounding despite his efforts to regulate it, and she nodded once, with an air of finality.

And then with enormous effort, clinging to the knowledge that he was making the 'rational' and 'smart' decision (and yet resenting those traits for the first time in his life), he collected his bags, turned around again, and made his down the gangway, and away from The Woman.

It was only much later, when he was seated on his direct Oman Air flight to Heathrow, that Sherlock came across the scrap of stationary with the cargo ship's letterhead on it. It had been taken from the pad on their cabin's writing desk and then folded into fours and placed in his carry-on.

He unfolded it, read it briefly, refolded it, then tucked it carefully in his jacket pocket and gazed out of the aeroplane window, his eyes unseeing and his lips pursed thoughtfully. But despite his composed demeanor, beneath his fresh, crisp shirt his heart began to pound wildly.

In script as neat and elegant as The Woman herself, the note had simply said, Thank you for dinner.