It was November, and aliens hadn't attacked for months when she heard the news.
Sherlock Holmes was alive.
She didn't believe it, she couldn't, not until John Watson posted it on his blog.
She's pretty sure she didn't say anything sensible to Ron, just spat out some words and then headed to SHIELD, and fought her way to the Director's office, who seemed unamused to have her appear there.
"Sherlock Holmes is alive," she blurted out as a greeting, and he didn't even blink.
"I have to go back," she told Fury, not caring that he was glaring at her with that one eye of his. "Do you understand that? It's like... it's like they're my children, and they're coming home from university, except it wasn't just that, he was dead, like, for real, except apparently not. They need me," she said desperately.
Fury smiled, and it was the sort of smile that made Miranda's stomach fall about a foot.
"I know," he agreed. "We've already made arrangements for you to go back. Your apartment is being set up again, cleaning crews dusting and whatever, the power and water being turned back on. We were prepared for this contingency."
She paused in her internal celebration at that.
"Prepared..." she repeated. The realization was horrible. "Oh my god," she said slowly. "You knew. You knew the entire time, didn't you? You knew he wasn't dead and you didn't tell me?!" she bellowed, more angry now than grateful.
Fury winced, which was more than she thought she'd get from him. "Your clearance level was nowhere near high enough to know that." He shrugged. "And we didn't even know if, or when he was coming back, if he would come back at all. Because even if he didn't die when the world thought he did, he's been in the depths of human depravity for nearly two years. Not everyone can survive that, hell, we've had a lot of good agents who couldn't. And that was for a much shorter time." He leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on her. "But I suppose this Sherlock Holmes is one special man. But you already knew that didn't you?"
She beamed at him. "Oh god, did I ever." Her smile vanished. "Hey, don't do that. I'm still pissed at you."
He raised his eyebrow. "I'd be disappointed if you weren't. Now go pack your things. Agents Barton and Romanoff will be escorting you back to London. Don't let them die before you get there, because until you are off that jet, you are still working for SHIELD, and that means you cannot let SHIELD assets die. Understood?"
She saluted at him, which she probably did horribly wrong, since she'd never been in the army or the navy or anything of the sort her entire life, and it wasn't like she'd learned those things while at SHIELD, babysitting a bunch of superheroes.
He covered his face with one hand and dismissed her with the other.
She practically skipped out, but not before he picked up the phone, and she heard him say "We're going to need to get Williams in here. Top priority."
She didn't envy Williams, whoever they were, although she suspected they were her replacement.
Because she had more important places to be, yes, even more important than being in New York. She had to go home to London, to her London, to Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, those two idiots.
But they were her idiots.