It's still with Kitty. That sting, that humiliation, days later, it's still with her. It's like grazed skin; impossible to avoid and it will not heal. It is triggered by everything and it is eternally painful. She threw out that twice hemmed skirt. Cut it to bloody ribbons first, because why should she ever wear it again, and why even give it to charity and fob it off on some other poor soul to have a twice-hemmed second-hand supposedly-good skirt? If anybody needs for her semi-formal she's done for until payday, but that just didn't seem important, after the courtroom.

The source called her back. Now that she's preparing the eventual article, finally, she's thinking in detail. The woman's name is Grace Kerr, she's a legal secretary with the firm of Darcy, Arthur and Phelps. A small firm that's been kept in the three families for over a hundred years, they keep a low profile and handle, it seems, only the most illustrious clients, and some really very nasty cases.

Including that of Richard Brooke, and the very unusual job offer brought to him two years ago.

It's all proven. While the man was still in custody she had everything she needed. Contracts and matched signatures and binding legal paperwork. Could have gone ahead. Actually, there were times she could hardly contain herself, when she wanted to, didn't know why she wasn't doing it. After the court (so many things, now, begin with the words 'after the court') she was glad. After the court it wasn't enough. She started that very afternoon, wheedling and arguing and bribing, when she met Kerr.

"But I don't understand," said the secretary over coffees. "I've given you everything. If I'd brought it to the police it would be done by n-"

"No, no, you don't need to do that. Let's not talk about them. You and I both know the way these things get buried, don't we?" A threat, did that sound like a threat? Kitty backed it up with an attempt at a smile, tried to turn it into solidarity. Needn't have worried. The woman was unfazed. Never, really, seems to get all that fazed.

"All I'm saying, Rich-" The name choked her, and she corrected herself, "Mr Brooke is in a very vulnerable position right now and-"

"And he knows I'm trying to help him. You can get him to talk to me." Eye contact. Years of training abandoned her and all she knew how to do was make eye contact and lean in and try and look earnest.

"You didn't need him last week, what's changed?"

'Miss Kerr' for the record, got pulled up on that. When next she met poor vulnerable Mr Brooke he went through her for a shortcut, over putting pressure on his journalist, tormenting his journalist. Kitty's torments were to be his, all his. Miss Kerr rolled her eyes and let him rant. Six weeks in custody hadn't much agreed with him. Never bothered trying to explain to him, that knowing Kitty had met with Sherlock and knowing both parties reasonably well, there was only one word she wanted to hear his bloody journalist use.

One that hung on Kitty's lips and she was only just able to deny it. Personal. It needs to be personal. Holmes made it personal and her pain is personal and now she wants it all to be very, very personal. Kitty wants to expose nerves and play them with razors. But she couldn't exactly admit all that out loud, could she? She's not the kind of person. Feelings like that are very strange to her, and the words, the images that lend themselves to her shame and her hate, they make her afraid.

Brooke and Kerr and Moran, who has no spare name and was only driving the car, each of them was thinking the same word, when Kerr explained the reactions. In derision or distaste, simply, Amateur.

Of course, his journalist doesn't know that. Doesn't even know she's his. In fact, now that the time has come, now that today's the day, now that the wait is finally over, Kitty is rather looking forward to thinking of him as hers. Rich is alright with that. She can think what she pleases. You wouldn't know it to look at him, though.

He looks beaten. He looks exhausted. Most importantly, he looks around him. Everywhere, into every corner. It's a tiny caf on a tiny side-street full of tiny lives and every single one of them, he looks as though they might suddenly turn and shoot him. And as much as she might feel for him, Kitty is only fighting to keep the smile off her face, and she knows her eyes are smiling above it all. Think of anything, she tells herself. Think of war orphans and drowned kittens and oil-spills. Think of anything except how fabulous he is.

For the first time since the initial phone call, Miss Kerr is unwelcome. In the way. Kitty wants her to leave now. She's delivered all the evidence and now Brooke himself; her conscience is clear. It's all over, we're done here, Miss Kerr can just drop him off and leave now.

She doesn't, she sits down. Kitty can't think how to phrase all these things that she's thinking, so she doesn't say them. Besides, it doesn't matter. She's getting what she asked for, and stands out of the booth to greet it.

Brooke looks at her outstretched hand like she might scratch him. In the end, he takes it, but briefly, and with no grip at all. And then, before uttering a single word to her, turns to Kerr and says, "Gracie, I don't know if I like this."

This is exactly what Kitty was worried about; this bloody bitch will have him warned about the way he talks to journalists and about going too public and all the other things that plague her nightmares now that she's stopped dreaming. The dream of the scoop turned into the dream of the fame has turned into the nightmare of all the things that could still go wrong and this is one of them, and here it's happening from the very first step and she can't even think what to say and damn but… "Give her a chance." Oh. Alright, Miss Kerr can stay. "She's on your side."

Kitty feels Brooke run his eyes over her. Searching. Not seeing everything like Holmes did, not trying to strip her back. He's looking for something to trust. All she has to do is fit the bill.

Something decides him, and he slides into the booth. Tight to the corner, turned so that he can watch the door, chin tucked in. Again, Kitty has to make her eyes stop smiling. "I understand," she begins, "how difficult this has to be for you. Especially after everything you've been through lately."

"Oh, don't worry-" His voice is bitter, and less hollow as hollowed-out, as though someone's done it all to him. "I was well reimbursed." Shaking his head, he looks at his folded hands, "Don't get me wrong, it's not about the money. It was, in the beginning, obviously it was, but it's just got to a point, where… It's not about the money, anymore."

"You don't have to justify yourself to me," Kitty tells him. She understands, or so she thinks, all too well. Once you've met Holmes and he's spat you back out again, it's not about the money anymore.

But won't the money be nice…

While she dreams, Kerr is explaining, "Miss Reilly already knows just about everything. The way we agreed. She just wanted to meet you for herself-"

"But I don't get that," he hisses, as if it's confidential, just the two of them on that side of the booth and Kitty can't hear. "Why me, what does anybody need me for? You said, Gracie, you said-"

Gracie raises the eyebrow farthest from Reilly; Really? Really, you're going to shout at me for that and then come in and rip the whole thing off, after me setting it up, really? He reads her perfectly and tries to stop his eyes smiling. Then he can't, too pleased to revel in the irony of a whole table full of people all trying not to give themselves away. Reilly's safe. He knows she's safe. She's so taken with the glamour of the whole thing she'd probably only try harder if she knew it was a scam. Poor Kitty, so boring and so bored; she's never even been this close to a fraud before, never mind a real story. She can work her way up to real stories, once he makes her name.

Kerr sees him struggling not to laugh and presses her heel down on his foot until it stops. A service she's having to perform more and more frequently lately. When Kitty goes into her spiel she kills the time wondering how many times it happened in prison, that laughter. The harsh, broken barking he passes off for laughter these days, anyway. She's happy to crush it, like a cigarette butt, any opportunity she has.

Meanwhile, of course, Kitty is explaining herself. "I need you because you've been hurt."

"Oh, human interest," Brooke mutters, nodding.

"Not at all. But it's because you just jump to that. Because this has made you so scared, and so cynical, and these crimes he's put together have done that to so many people. I know; I met him." And needs to stop mentioning it. Or is that the first time she's mentioned it? Is it just so consistently on her mind that she can't even tell what's in her head and what she says out loud? "I want the story as you know it. You're the victim here and people are going to see that."

A breath, the ghost of a dearly departed laugh. Kitty doesn't know who, if anybody, he's speaking to, "She talks a good line, anyway."

Earnestly, she leans in. Searches for eye contact. Gets a bit annoyed when it's not forthcoming. "It's more than just talk." No, he thinks, it's first-year body language too. His shoulders shake once before the stiletto presses harder into the groove between bones in his foot and he almost winces. "It's so much more than that. I'll admit, it was about the money for me too." He nods, bites his lip. "Yeah, you understand that alright. Of course you do. But this is different. This isn't a scoop, it's a service."

The secretary, excluded from their little bond, feels safe to roll her eyes, slumping momentarily to lean her face on her fist. To think she was waiting idly in the courtroom gallery when there was apparently a public flaying going on in that men's room… Maybe it'll toughen the little sap up a bit. She'll need it, dreaming of 'senior crime staff writer' and 'Leon Coxcroft's boss'. Ought to get over it. It takes a very special sort of person to stand up under Holmes' scrutiny and Kitty's just not it.

But then again, her charge, sweet, vulnerable Rich, who's been through so much and only wants to make it right, he looks as though this is all exactly what he wants to hear, so maybe she's missing something. After all, torturing Kitty was to be his sworn duty. Maybe he meant for this to happen. Purposefully picked one who would crumble the moment Sherlock turned it on.

All he's ever done, everything they've come through, the stuff he was recently arrested for, sometimes his cruelty can still shock her

He allows too much of his satisfaction to come across, though. Catches himself and reins it in. It had made him lean in, matching her calculated body language like any old shill. Like he was falling for it. Can't have her thinking so little of him, now, can he? No, he falls away from her, slumping back into his corner. It's all consistent with the act, naturally. He wouldn't do it otherwise. And yet his caretaker, that bright woman from the front desk at the lawyer's office, the one who was able to tell when it was all getting too much for him, shoots him a sharp, piercing glare.

Less than half a second, it lasts. What the hell are you doing? she asks. Time to be bought, Richard.

He moves his foot from under hers and puts it down on top. Hard. It's a danger with Kitty at the table, because he means to cause pain. It's up to Miss Kerr to hide that effectively. But he grinds his foot down, keeps doing so even when he looks back to his journalist. His heel doesn't push in the same spirit as Kerr's did. She did it to help him. A service, if you will. He does it because she's questioning him, wrongly, and must be chided for it or she'll never learn. A punishment.

Same dif, really, he thinks to himself. Working very hard to control his own laughter this time, Service, punishment, po-tay-to-po-tah-to, eh Kitty?

Kitty is as oblivious as he ever could have wanted. He tells her, "You don't understand. The network this man has… It's global. And it's evil. If my name appears anywhere, if I appear anywhere-"

"Once it's published? I wouldn't worry. There's nothing they can do to you once the world knows what he is."

"That's not what I'm worried about. Miss Reilly-"

"Kitty."

"Kitty. I won't make it as far as publication. And then your source you said you had is gone. I won't even be dead, because he knows that, he knows that dead is just too good, but…"

Kerr looks round at him. She says, "I'm doing my best, Rich." She's taken him in, since the trial. She told Kitty that when they met before. Because the press were unbearable. They were everywhere, made his life unlivable. And that name… Kerr could hardly bring herself to talk about it, but from what Kitty could gather, Brooke had difficulty putting up with a hundred voices behind microphones and flashbulbs and all of them baying for 'Moriarty'. And yet, in the here and now, she gets the feeling they're talking about something more. Certainly something passes between them. Kerr speaks, doing her best, and there's a moment, a shared glance. Kerr stops grimacing, sits straighter, as though a physical weight had been lifted from her.

And flexes her bruised foot under the table.

Kitty, slowly, says, "I have an idea."

It's not quite true. She's still having it, letting it dawn on her, letting the details fall into place. Brooke sees it and his mind starts racing for excuses. Kerr sees it and tries to stop her eyes from smiling. She's the one who prompts Kitty, "Go on?" Under the table that crushing pressure comes back, but she doesn't care. Her foot's already damaged, and her shoe destroyed. The shoes, she'll charge to him. The foot, he might be paying for soon enough.

"Well," Kitty goes on, and oh God, what is she doing? What part of her mind decided this was a good idea? And yet she keeps talking, as though logic and judgement are overriding all her reservations, and the offer follows effortlessly, sounding more and more like the most sensible thing in the world. "Well, I'm not connected. No offence, Miss Kerr, but you're close. You're a part of it. And I'm not. Mr Brooke-"

"Rich."

"Rich. You wouldn't have come here unless you were sure you weren't followed. They know nothing about me."

For the first time since he walked in here, Rich's distress takes the acrid, ozone tang of genuine fear. He can taste it in his back teeth, and when he tries to think, shutting his eyes, running a hand through his hair, all he sees is the dark behind his eyelids. No exit. He shoots one begging glance at Grace Kerr, but it's hopeless. The bridges there are well and truly burnt. He'll kill her afterward, yeah, but she's not looking any farther ahead than her petty vengeance.

Prolonging his agonies, "What're you saying?"

"I'll hide you. Just until the weekend, just until the story. After that, it's like I said. You're safe once you're public."

"I couldn't put you in that sort of danger," he tries, a stab in the dark, a whiskey chaser in the Last Chance saloon, oh, God, this is actually happening to him, isn't it…

"I know what I'm doing," Kitty says, with a reassuring smile.

And every member of the party thinks, in perfect unison, and with the same regrets, You really don't.