I didn't intend to write this scene. I believed it would be too difficult and too risky. Five minutes conversation between two genius characters who weren't my own... pretty daunting! But the thought kept nagging at me that it would be fun. So here's my stab at it. I hope it doesn't disappoint too much.

Please note that I've also added material to Chapter 2 with this update, so if you've already read it and have come back for more, please take a glance back for more treats.

Eurus opened her eyes before the door slid open. Some hint of a sound, maybe. Some fluctuation in the heat. A change in the molecules that filled up the space of her cell. She hadn't pinpointed exactly what it was yet that alerted her. But she had been in that one room for 27 years, 128 days, and 4 hours. It had become like an extension of her own body. A man in the lift was like an ant brushing past the smallest hair on her arm.

The door of the lift slid open, and Jim Moriarty stepped into the room with predatory slowness. She stood in a single, fluid motion, and matched his pace, meeting him at the glass. She immediately liked its eyes. They were different than other people's. It looked at her… and it wasn't afraid of her. But it wasn't that it was stupid like the some of the nurses and guards had been, it wasn't the glass separating them that made it feel safe. No… she could see he wasn't stupid. It was respect, not fear. That was the difference. Such subtle differences these things were… He paused in his approach. She mirrored him.

"I'm your Christmas present," he said with a gesture that encompassed his whole self. Eurus's lips turned up at the corners. Her pulse and breathing sped up as they both took a step closer to the glass, crossing the three foot safety boundary. "…So what's mine?"

Eurus flicked hungry eyes up to the camera in the right hand corner of the cell. She stared at it until the little red light blinked off. A brief glance around the cell showed that every camera had gone dark. Her eyes slid back to join again with Moriarty's.

"…Redbeard," she answered, drawing the word out slowly, so that it came to Moriarty through the speaker like a tinny caress.

Curiosity flickered over his face. Then a thin smile. And then they were both an inch from the glass wall, so close that if it hadn't been there, they might have embraced. She could feel the heat being shed from the meat that caged his mind, felt it warming the glass between them. He moved, and she moved her own meat to follow it, swaying before the glass to feel that fraction of a degree change, to roll that warmth against her skin. The glass, the hateful glass. If the glass wasn't there, she would sink her fingers into that meat, split it wide open and wrap herself up in it.

Moriarty turned and began to walk a slow line along the glass. She moved as his reflection, but in the opposite direction, like two planets that had danced too closely and slung each other out into space.

"…Redbeard," he said. "Is that a euphemism?"

"In a way," Eurus answered. "Aren't you going to ask why they put me in here?"

"Don't have to."

"Oh? Did my brother tell you? He's never told me."

Moriarty made a sound of amusement through his nose and spoke in a sing song voice that pleased her.

"You hurt Sherlock."

He reached the hatch that connected his side of the glass to hers, his eyes scraping over it a moment before he turned to start the slow trip back down the glass.

"Is that what it was?" Eurus asked as she too changed direction.

"Just a guess."

"Why? You hurt him, didn't you, and you're not down here."

"I only said I'll hurt him. That only gets you interrogated. All foreplay and no climax."

"But you are going to."

"Yu-p." He popped his lips on the 'p' playfully, and turned his head towards her as they both approached the middle. Her eyes bore hungrily into his, the same color as Sherlock's, and it drew another smile to his lips. With slow steps they came together again, but passed each other without pausing.

"…Why don't they lock you up before you do?" Eurus asked.

"Because big brother Mikey's a boring idiot."

Eurus accepted this without argument, and changed the subject. "They read the papers to me sometimes, you're in them."

"Aww, did they get my good side?"

"Your name appeared with Sherlock's some months ago."

"I always liked a good bed time story myself."

"You got Sherlock to play with you."

He glanced back at her over his shoulder, something in her voice making him look. But as they turned again to pace like tigers along the glass, he could see that her face remained unchanged. "…It took a little coaxing, at first. Now the trick is getting him to quit. He's insatiable. But then, I do like that in a… playmate."

"I have a little game that I think he'd find stimulating."

Eurus stopped in the center. Moriarty turned to regard her, slipping his hands comfortably into his pockets.

"You're adorable, in a B minus horror movie sort of way, but you have two minutes left and you still haven't told me what Redbeard is."

"Two minutes, twenty-six seconds. Not What but Who."

"Even better."

"Redbeard was his first pet."

"Ahh…He's got a few of those, these days."

"I took him away from Sherlock. But apparently it was too traumatic. He's forgotten all about it now. Do you have any brothers and sisters?"

"Nah, I hatched first and ate the rest," he said, shifting his weight more to one side than the other which Eurus perceived as a sign of impatience. His head swayed slightly, tilting back and forth, and she couldn't be sure if he was aware that he was doing it. "Where exactly am I in this little game of yours?"

"Dead."

The motion stopped and he stared at her. "…You've really got to work on your pitch."

"I can make you immortal."

"You said dead a moment ago."

"If Sherlock doesn't know without a doubt that you're dead, then how can he lose his mind when he think's you've come back?"

She stood a moment, waiting for his answer. When it didn't come, she turned to face him, and they gazed at each other once again through the glass. The time ticked steadily away, second by second. Tick. Tick. Tick.

She was the first to move again, towards the hatch. He moved with her, in the same direction.

"Forty-five seconds doesn't seem like enough time to explain the rules of this game," he observed.

"In approximately seventeen days, we'll be able to discuss it at length," Eurus answered.

"Come again?"

"That's how long it will take for me to compromise security."

"How?"

"I'll say the right things."

"Well, if it was that easy, what's kept you?"

"No one's invited me out before."

They stopped together at the hatch. Moriarty's head swayed gently a moment before he bent to speak into the open compartment of the hatch.

"Wanna come out and play, baby?" he purred. He blew a kiss from his hand into the hatch, then pushed the button that closed his side and opened hers. Nitrogen and oxygen molecules that had just been in his lungs swirled out to mingle with the ones in her cell. She took a deep breath to pull a few of them into her own lungs.

With a lazy smile, Moriarty stepped backwards towards the lift, never turning his back on her.

"I'll keep my eye out for you," he said, in a slow deliberate way.

Five seconds later, the red lights on the cameras winked on again. But all they saw was Eurus sitting crosslegged in the center of her cell, alone.

Seventeen days later, Eurus sat at an outdoor cafe sipping tea and watching the London Eye make slow, pointless revolutions.