It's not the same. He feels something akin to what he's felt before with Irene's attention, but it is decidedly different. With Naoi he was a moth, she was the flame. And, as he types the first four letters of his name into her phone, he finds Irene was a moth too.

He almost feels bad about it.

Almost.

I did not sleep with Irene Adler.

He sends the text the morning after. His number is blocked.

He sends Naoi the piece he has been working on via snail mail. He writes the title in blue marker. Siren.

He knew it might take a week or two. It's the Sunday morning after he mailed the recording. His phone is ringing.

It is not Irene Adler.

He lets it ring once, twice, he breathes out and picks up. "Naoi."

He hears the recording in the background. "Sherlock."

He doesn't say anything while the music plays. Neither does she. He listens for her every breath and counts them in time with his heartbeat. He hears her breath hitch at the crescendo and the tears as she starts to cry.

When it's done and it begins to loop, he whispers, "I can't." He means the divorce papers.

"I know." She replies through tears. She hangs up first. His number is probably blocked again.

He texts her anyway. The same thing she said to him the night they ran away from her coming out party. We had a fight. We didn't break up.

His text went through. He tried one more.

I am still your husband.

Still his number isn't blocked. One more text. Just one.

Come home.

It goes through.

Naoi doesn't answer. She also doesn't block his number again.

Lemon verbena, her perfume hung heavy and sharp in the air almost five minutes after Aunt Ida had gone. Casper, my ever faithful companion, having managed to keep his back straight and his hands from trembling during Aunt Ida's visit finally gave in to the wreck she caused with his nerves. He rubbed his eyes, scrubbed his hands through his messy locks of prematurely graying hair and gave a shuddering breath. The tea in front of him remained untouched, and little did he know how it had made the difference.

Now she knew she could get to him.

In all honesty I should send him home to Toronto. Casper wasn't cut from the kind of cloth that allowed one to sit through the power play Aunt Ida sprung on us. When I accepted the invitation to guest lecture, I'd known Aunt Ida would corner me sooner or later. As I predicted, it was sooner rather than later.

She arrived with her ever faithful manservant Penny – a bastard to the core and twice as ruthless – with no warnings save the stink of her perfume as it announced her arrival. Unlike most people, Aunt Ida was shrewd, calculating and cruel to her blackened heart. During her visit she made the usual thinly veiled threats accompanied by aggressive monetary manipulations, all liberally sprinkled with caustic amounts of emotional blackmail.

After several quiet moments Casper reached out for his tea, knocked back the whole cup swallowing in three mighty gulps then returned the cup to its saucer. "How many years did you live with her?" He asked me, even though he knew the answer to the question already. I warned him before he insisted on staying and well before we arrived in Heathrow.

"Four," I replied if only to allow him time to calculate my indentured servitude again.

"Jesus Christ," his mild French accent only came out when he had had too much to drink or he was not concentrating on making himself sound less Quebecois. He smoothed his hair back once more, a nervous habit than necessity. "You look no worse for wear."

I wasn't. Unlike him I was used to my Aunt Ida and all the tricks in her proverbial bag. I had over a decade to get used to it. Having lived in Toronto for the last few years didn't mean I'd lost my immunity. "She did it to shake me before the lecture." One of her favorite strategies employed both in the boardroom and outside it.

I wondered who she had dirt on or whether she had simply called in a favor to get me alone at the school. A young woman, mid twenties, sleep deprived with a nearly imperceptible stutter had come running into my borrowed office, heaving deep breaths, eyes wide and eyelashes damp with tears. Aunt Ida's stock and trade: fear. Instilling it, brewing it, cultivating it and brandishing it like a finely tuned weapon. The girl was unable to say much more than 'you have a guest' before bursting into hysterical tears.

Casper cleared his throat, "You're married."

"Yes."

"And you've been living in Canada because…?"

Because I love my husband, but I can't stand when he ignores me. "I've been trying to get him to divorce me." Unsuccessfully for over three years.

He lifted the tea cup once more, looking at the bottom of the cup as if it could miraculously produce more tea for him. "I thought you were joking on the plane."

"When it comes to my aunt, never. She's too dangerous for that." I wouldn't scare him by telling him all the things Aunt Ida already knew about him, his family, and his life. She knew those things the moment he came to work for me, there would be no point in letting him know now.

"Thank god we're going back at the end of the week. I'm not staying here a minute longer than we have to."

Speaking of time, I checked my watch. "Ready to murder me?"

He groaned, one hand going up to cover his face. "I wish you wouldn't say it like that."

"That wasn't a no."

The scene of my death is grizzly, and a bit ostentatious for my tastes. My bones are arranged on a cold metal table twenty feet away, the stage is divided by a curtain. The university students have begun filtering into the room. I am settled on the murder scene floor, atop a thin rug, my clothes splattered with red paint. Arms splayed, one leg turned out while the other is almost entirely trapped under the sofa.

"I'm sorry to inform you all, the lecture for today will have to be postponed. Someone has killed the lecturer."

Nervous laughter followed.

"Each group will take some time to examine the body, make observations about the scene and then return to your seats. You will all have approximately five minutes to evaluate your findings, compare notes and then our lecture will begin. If," he nudged my shoulder with the toe of his trainers, "our lecturer doesn't fall asleep."

More laughter, and the sound of movement as they began grouping up.

"Alright, this group down here, you're group A. The ones to the left of them, B. You three behind them, group C. The ones on their right, group D. You four in the back, group E."

"We're-" a male voice said.

"Group E," another, somewhat familiar male with a deeper voice said.

"Group A, you have five minutes."

I kept my eyes closed the whole time, while the students studied the wounds, my awkwardly splayed body. Most of them were careful, overly so, making sure to not nudge me or the carpet, nor move the fold out couch we toted in just for this occasion. In all twenty minutes must have passed, with me silently keeping count by going over my lecture in my head. I timed it the last three times I ran through it. Twenty minutes and thirteen seconds.

Or, rather it would have been had I not heard a familiar voice when group E finally reached the scene if my grizzly murder. Seven seconds. That's all the time it took him. Seven bleeding seconds.

"No defensive wounds, the victim was asleep, afternoon nap perhaps Naoi?"

Hell. With a slow, resigned sigh, I opened my eyes seeing my husband of nearly seven years peering down at me. "Sherlock, what are you doing here?"

"I was invited." He held up an envelope.

I blinked up at his all too familiar face and then the confused looking Greg Lestrade next to him, Molly trailing a bit shyly behind that and an unimpressed Doctor John Watson with arms crossed over his chest. "Gang's all here." No point in taking the envelope. I know whose perfectly crisp writing that is on the front. Penny and Aunt Ida, conspiring once more to terminate my marriage.

She has one of her spies in the audience. I know she does. Sherlock knows she does. He doesn't look at me so much as he does at the scene, cool blue eyes calculating. He opened his mouth, thought about it for a moment, closed his mouth and held out a hand to me.

I absolutely should not take his hand. Not for anything or any reason.