AN: And there is a new character on the scene! Another one I don't own!

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Mycroft decided that the first step was simply asking Mae Ollivier about her strange habits around her sister. Not that there was any guarantee that she'd answer honestly, but her answer should tell him something, at any rate.

So he did so, the next time they saw each other.

As was her usual response, she smiled.

"I'm not really cleverer than my sister," she said, "at least not by much." That was a lie, but Mycroft listened on. "What I have that she lacks, however, is a certain...ability to see reality, I'd say, as melodramatic as that sounds. I'm not easily blinded by prejudice, influenced by wishful thinking, or any of the other things people are so wont to do. She was never like that, and one of the things she regularly gets blinded by is her own self-image, as your brother so rightly spotted. She is almost five years older than me, so it took some time before we got to the point where I could see that I'm her match. I believe that I was nine. In other words, I was also old enough to see that she didn't want to see it, and that in fact every proof of it caused her intense anxiety as she fought to ignore it. And, well, I didn't want to cause my sister anxiety, did I?" She shrugged, sitting down on the bed. "So I learned to hide it, better and better as time went. It makes it easier for her, and for me, frankly. She got rather unpleasant when she was upset. The fist time I won at chess was dreadful."

Mycroft sat down next to her and observed: "You're being rather open with me, Miss Ollivier. Why is that?"

She raised her eyebrows at him, turning her head to look at him. "Well, you are the first person I can talk to without feeling like I'm communicating with a lesser life form that I've ever met. Unless completely necessary - and there really wasn't anything new that you could use against me in what I've just said- , I don't want to spoil the pleasure by telling you absurd stories. I get enough of that at work."

How it was possible that some people could apparently admit to being lonely without it indicating some kind of weakness, Mycroft wondered.

He also wondered about his relationship with his brother, as compared to what he saw here. Most people would certainly call this one healthier, seeing how both sisters obviously cared for each other and knew it, and apparently could even express it to each other.

Yet it was built on a big lie.

Wasn't his relationship with Sherlock, tense as it was, preferable, because it was more honest?

But then again, was it really? Like Mae Ollivier, he was lying constantly too. Only not about his intelligence, he was lying about his...feelings for his brother. And unlike Miss Ollivier, he wasn't lying to save his brother pain, he was lying to save himself pain.

In his defence, though, he had tried to get rid of that lie. He was still trying. When he saw the progress their relationship had made thanks to Dr. Watson's gradual humanization of his brother, he did his best to make the lie at least smaller. He even told Sherlock, completely truthfully, that his loss would break his heart. Of course, it was easier to do when he knew his brother wouldn't believe it. But still. He was trying, step by small step, to make the lie go away. But there was a long way still ahead, he knew.

He also wondered how Countess of Arundel, that self-centred, naive creature, deserved such devoted love of her younger sister, while he had only his brother's contempt. But then again, he had known life wasn't fair for a very long time.

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A week later, when Mae Ollivier rang the door bell, Mycroft was on the phone with Vernon again, as distraught as he ever got. He let her in and tried to end the talk, but Vernon was difficult to stop, as usual, even though Mycroft was answering in monosyllables. He'd have liked to do a couple more calls, but it seemed he'd have to contend with texts later.

"Good evening," he greeted his companion. "Please accept my apology about this impoliteness."

"That's quite all right. I almost had to call it off today, and I might well have to go back to Paris for a while. And it's not even our interest as much as yours, so I'm almost surprised to see you here."

"There's only so much you can do during the night."

"True. And really, there is only so much you can do, period." She paused. "Don't you hate that feeling?"

"Passionately. Especially at the moment."

"Oh, yes. And to think there are two more weeks of this headache ahead of us...I know I'll have a stiff drink when it's over. You should probably have a bottle," she noted, her lip quirking up.

It certainly sounded tempting. "I'm afraid that I will be busy with emergency plans."

"Such defeatist attitude..."

Mycroft paused, hesitated, decided the question told her nothing, and asked: "Haven't you had the news today?"

She didn't bat an eyelash. "Yes. But the majority is still ahead."

"The bad kind of majority. Karnataka is over," he stated bluntly, because of course she knew, so why not tell her, and – though his mind shied from the concept – he really wanted to vent.

"I know, Mr. Holmes. But you're not quite as powerless as all that, are you?"

"You're only as strong as your allies, especially in cases like these. You can't do everything personally."

"Don't I know it!" She sighed, then smirked: "So did you get to do a lot of shouting in the last couple of days then?"

"I never shout," Mycroft stated indignantly. Well, except at Sherlock, but his brother was the exception to everything.

"Your equivalent of it, then."

"...yes."

"I thought so. I think you're entitled to some relaxation today. Let me take the initiative."

She really was good at taking his mind off work, paradoxical as that was.

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A month later, Irene Adler came back.

It made Mycroft think of honesty and dishonesty in his relationship with his brother again.

He had known she was alive, of course. Oh, Sherlock covered his tracks on the spot pretty well, but he did fly to India in his own name and apparently spent a month there. For someone who hardly ever left London...Mycroft didn't think he had been really trying to fool him.

He came up with the story of her being in the witness protection program anyway, mainly to save his brother the trouble of deciding whether he should pretend to be mourning, and how to do it. Because he knew very well that the pretence had to be perfect. Sherlock normally wouldn't have bothered, but it would have been idiotic even for his brother to save someone's life and then blow their cover by not playing their part. So Mycroft just made it easier for him. He wasn't sure if he knew, but he supposed he did. He knew Mycroft was the smart one, after all.

He knew Irene Adler came back, because she waited for him one evening when he got home. Or rather, a woman with bright red hair, brown eyes, a slightly oriental tilt to her eyes and very full lips was waiting for him, standing just before him in front of his Mayfair house, but then she spoke and there was no doubt of it. Mycroft had a very good memory, and it included voices.

But then, she wasn't exactly trying to hide her identity, as evidenced by her words: "Good evening, Mr. Holmes...or should I say Iceman?"

He looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "I will invite you in and hear you out if you tell me where the breach in my security is."

"Oh, it isn't really a breach...all of your security guards have their guns pointed at me now. I just convinced them that they can let me wait here, where I will be in their plain sight, and I let them search me beforehand too. I explained we were old friends and I just wanted to talk to you and you were so hard to meet, what with security around your office, your phone number not being public, and everything...wouldn't it just be sad if I never spoke to you again because you got yourself this high in the hierarchy? They understood my plight and allowed me to stay here, on the understanding that if you didn't confirm my story of being an old friend, they would shoot me." She looked at him with one eyebrow raised in a way that was, again, typically hers.

She knew very well that dealing with the dead body would be too inconvenient for him, and besides, she might actually have something interesting to say. "It's all right," he said loudly. "She is indeed an...old friend. Though we're still having words later."

Taking Miss Adler inside, he asked: "I still don't see how you convinced them not to simply detain you and then present you to me."

She smiled. "I said how sad it would be that after so many years, the way you'd see me would be as a captive...I wanted the first impression to be a little better than that, I said. Oh, I spun quite a background story."

"I'm sure you did. You always could do that. Now, what brings you back to London? I wanted to say it was dangerous, but frankly with the changes to your face, I'm not sure it is...not many people could identify you the way Sherlock did, or thought he did."

She raised her eyebrow again. "Don't be naive. That method wouldn't work any more. I haven't just changed my face." Her smile broadened. "In fact, I had a very unfortunate accident some years ago, burning all of my fingers on a stove. Quite a misfortune, that." And she showed him her hands – on all of her fingertips, there were scars in place of skin. Effectively, she had no fingerprints.

"That must have affected sensitivity," he said, shuddering a little inside at such a sacrifice for saving one's life.

"Oh, yes. But one gets used to everything, you know. Especially when one knows what the alternative is."

They entered his drawing room and he offered her wine, which she gladly accepted.

"So, back to my question," he said then, "why are you back?"

"Moriarty is," she answered simply.

Oh. That.

He raised his eyebrow: "I had no idea you were so close."

She just laughed in response.

When the silence stretched, he said: "Would you consider being more specific?"

It grated him a little that he really didn't know why she was here of all places. He was never as enchanted as his brother by Irene Adler, but perhaps because of that, he understood her better than Sherlock did. It was also, quite plainly, because Mycroft knew more about sex.

His brother had assumed that Irene Adler lost that game all those years ago because she was in love with him.

That was, of course, absurd.

For one, Sherlock really didn't understand love, or even infatuation, or hadn't then, for all he tried to pretend otherwise. The physical signs he observed in Irene Adler were simply signs of sexual attraction. She had undoubtedly been attracted to him, fascinated by him even, just as he had been attracted to her and fascinated by her. But that was not the reason she made his name her phone password.

There were thousands of people around the world deeply, passionately in love with each other, attracted each other, and yet they didn't make each other's names their passwords. Not because their love or attraction wasn't strong enough.

No, it was because there was no reason. They weren't playing a game.

Irene Adler, much like his brother, saw all of her adventures in this world as one big game.

She made Sherlock's name her password because it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up.

It was so brilliant, so witty, such a perfect provocation, that she put her life on the line to do it.

If she had won, it would have been perfect – the password being Sherlock's name all the time and him not guessing, the password being such a complete expression what she felt and him not picking up on it because he was too oblivious to these kinds of things...

But she hadn't won.

She lost the game, though not her life, and his brother never fully realized why.

Mycroft had known all along, though. He personally wasn't really like that, he'd mostly turned away from that approach to life to pragmatism, but there were still traces of it in him, traces that showed every time he kidnapped John Watson or did something similar just to amuse himself.

And so he could understand.

Sherlock couldn't, because he had no idea what the effects of attraction or infatuation on someone were. Or at least, he hadn't known before his month-long holiday in India. Now, Mycroft knew, the situation was different. Now Sherlock understood more, and perhaps if he brought him here, he would be able to tell why Irene Adler was here. He was closer to her after all, knew her better, and was more like her in his approach to life.

But Mycroft hated to admit to any kind of lack of understanding, so he'd first try everything on his own before he'd call his brother in for help.

So he looked at Irene Adler and waited.

"I owe him," she said.

Mycroft waited some more.

She smiled, took a sip of her wine, and said: "After the Bond Air fiasco, I went to him. He'd promised he'd make me rich if I broke the code for him, which I did, after all. So I asked him for security, instead of the money he promised. He...wasn't very kind. It was as a direct result of his response to my plight that I ended up in that situation in Karachi. So, as I said...I owe him. I couldn't collect my debt the first time around, since I was too busy setting up my new identity, but now that he's back, I fully intend to settle that score."

Hmm.

This opened...possibilities.

He obviously could not tell her the truth.

However, she was far too dangerous as a loose canon to just let her go.

The obvious thing to do, if she intended to work against Moriarty, was to put her in touch with Sherlock.

Only...well. Only this was Sherlock and Irene Adler. That didn't end so well last time.

"Why didn't you go to my brother first?" He asked. "It almost seems he was right after all, in that plane. I thought he was just being overly melodramatic – it's one of his unfortunate tendencies."

She laughed in response. "Oh, he was certainly being melodramatic – measuring love from my pulse, I ask you. Even though, well" – she furrowed her brow, another gesture that was a clue to her former identity – "you of all people must know the feeling," she said without a trace of flattery. "When you are...unusual enough, it gets difficult to find anyone at all who'd catch your eye in the slightest. And once you do, they're difficult to forget."

To his own surprise, Mycroft realized that he indeed did know the feeling. The fact that he'd missed Sherlock terribly during his two years' absence aside – he was his brother, that didn't count – the idea of not seeing Mae Ollivier again caused him some discomfort. He could do it if it was necessary, of course – just as Irene Adler hadn't been in touch with his brother for three years – but the thought was unpleasant. Going back to the world of goldfish...well.

Sentiment, he wondered?

But then, was it?

He enjoyed a 2001 Saint-Emilion, and the idea of never drinking it again was unpleasant. Yet he didn't call it sentiment, did he?

He stored this material away for future thought and said: "If you intend to move against Moriarty, it would be logical to put you in touch with Sherlock. Can you handle that?"

She shot him an amused look. "Don't forget who you're speaking to. Irene Adler might be dead, but she isn't exactly dead. I could handle using him to bring the nation to its knees - and don't argue, I know you know it wasn't love what made me loose that game in the end. I choose to speak with you first to make sure you wouldn't have me shot the moment I tried to approach your brother. And you have very good wine."

"Thank you. It certainly should be." He sighed. He knew it was inevitable. "Do you wish to spend the night?"

"Why, I thought you'd never ask!"

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AN: Irene Adler misquoting Whole Nine Yards doesn't seem exactly in character, but I just couldn't resist.

Also, a cliffhanger! Well, sort of. A very small one.