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He follows her, not a rare occurrence.

He grabs her arm as he catches up, pulls her aside to hide her from prying eyes, then comes face to face with prying eyes that are hers, and he's not as annoyed as he was five minutes ago. Is it really too much to ask? To have a moment to themselves? A moment like those of the old days?

She starts walking again. He follows her because it doesn't seem as though she would follow him, and somebody has to follow. Following in itself isn't a new development, it's something he has always done, it's just that recently he has realized the importance of doing it.

So now, he follows her when he is able and for as long as he is able, which is miles more than he used to dare to. And in return she stays as close as she is able, for as long as she is able, which is a considerably longer time than she used to care to.

Maybe they are coming to an agreement.

She still asks him to come away with her, though, from time to time (because she has to, because she can't not do it and then spend entire nights up wondering if he might have accepted this time). He still asks her to stay, too, every time she does, because he knows at some point one of them has to give in, and although he has the sneaking suspicion that it won't be her, he can't go down without a fight.

So this time, after he followed her and she didn't put up half the struggle she usually puts into not being caught, after she kissed him and they made dinner plans like it was something they had been doing for years, he is certain that something has shifted, and whatever that was it cannot go back to the way it used to be. Tonight the dust will settle. Tonight one of them will make the choice.

He's got half a mind to pack up his most indispensable possessions, the ones that are always in the spot he methodically picked for them, and place them by the front door, just in case it's him. He's got the other half of his mind set on packing up his least indispensable possessions, the ones that are just taking up much needed space in the flat, and putting them away in the storage attic, just in case it's her.

He then considers doing both, just to not put all of his eggs in one basket.

He briefly wishes he could make a bet, take the risk, choose the outcome he wants and hope he has luck on his side. Except he believes in no such thing as luck and making a bet on such an ambiguous outcome would be utterly foolish and Watson certainly would never let him live it down.

Eventually, he decides to do neither and settles for plucking the strings of his violin as he contemplates his conspiracy web, all red ribbons and well-composed though hard to prove theories. He throws his mind into it, because if he asks himself what he thinks the outcome of tonight's events will be one more time, he will drive himself insane and then convince himself not to show up at all.

Eight o'clock rolls around and finds him at The Savoy, sitting alone in a white loveseat strategically placed in one of the further corners of the establishment, shooing away waiters because he's not ready to order yet. He returns home a little past midnight, filled up on bread and a little inebriated from the expensive wine bottle he had to finish all on his own.

He wonders why he's always left to dine alone.

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He kisses me, and it's poison. I feel it flowing through my veins, slowly, destroying me.

And I can't stop.

It's been so long, and I thought by now I'd be immune, but- But he looks at me, eyes wide open and strangely warm, and I think...

I can't think.

We tumble (together, though sometimes it feels I'm the only fool in this pact) down this path once every year, then every month, then every week, and each time makes the days apart harder to bear. I'm not sure I remember what I did with my days before- before he held me, before he buried his hands in my hair, before he occupied every last thought...

He says (has said once, but I see it in his eyes ever since) that I'll be the death of him. He doesn't seem to believe me when I assure him it's quite the opposite.

He never comes to my shows, says he dislikes to see me pretending anymore than I already do when I'm with him (and if only he knew, if only he believed me when I tell him...)

And I sing with a heart half dead.

Until then he finds me, and makes me sing for him, and I hope I hope I hope-

And I think (once he has succumbed to sleep and his eyes aren't burning my brain to ashes) that he must believe me, in the end, if he can still fall so deeply into the void with me...

And it's only when he stays, and sleeps and wakes and breathes with me, that I can believe him too.

But then he stops staying, and he stops asking me to sing, and then he stops coming unless I ask, and then...

And then.

So I leave, because I've always known, I never should've let things come this far.

And the years pass me, and I think he has forgotten me, and sometimes (never, but some lies are necessary) I feel myself forgetting him too.

So I get myself a husband. And then another, and then a few more.

And then I get a letter.

It's not signed, the words cold and empty, the message clear. Meet me at The Grand for lunch. And I would have swam my way to England if necessary.

I sit and fidget. I wait. It's three minutes past noon, and that should have been my first clue, he has never been late in his life. And still I sit there and hope.

The man that sits in front of me, five minutes past noon as I get ready to leave, is not the one I came to see, and and and

And I feel the air has been banished from my lungs, because I was hoping and he didn't-

I stand up to leave (to run far far away until I find where my dignity has escaped to) and then he speaks.

"I'm aware you would much rather be in the company of your... friend, Miss Adler, but please don't look so dissapointed, for it is precisely of him that I hope we can converse about."

His words are friendly but the amusement in his voice conceals a threat, so I sit back down, heart pounding so loud I can barely make out what he says next.

"My time, as well as yours, I believe, is precious, so I will go straight to the point. You see, Mr. Holmes has become a great inconvenience to me, but I would truly hate to see the loss of such a great mind, therefore, in the name of the sentiments," and the way he sneers as if the word causes him physical pain makes me feel like a scolded child, "which you harbor for each other, I must ask for your help in... keeping him out of trouble, so to speak."

And I wish I could keep this, the humiliation and the loneliness, to myself, but I've never been one to waste what tools I have at hand. "I'm really sorry to disappoint you, sir, but I have no evidence of the survival of such sentiments you speak of," and then, quieter: "I've not heard from him in years."

His eyes gleam, and I see my mistake instantly.

"It does not matter, my dear, even if he does not succumb to his feelings for you, how could you not succumb to yours for him?"

Everyone has a weak spot, and he found mine.

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"Marriage is the end, I tell you!"

He splutters on and on, forgetting half the things he says the moment right after he's said them. No one ever said bitterness was a rational emotion...

They banter, like Holmes poisoned his (their) dog again, and his chest throbs as it caves in on itself while a million shrads of glass cut into the sensitive debris.

He tells himself, for the millionth time, this is not the last time they will do this, this childish routine of saying I love you and I can't breathe without you but you're a selfish bastard with insults and teasing and mocking and (and his brain has come to define this as existing, and can't even consider tearing that concept down and building a new one from scratch.)

"Not dying alone."

Holmes feels his heart being squeezed into a tiny little rock, and we all know just how large quantities of mass compressed into minuscule volumes ends.

He waits for the explosion in silence, and when it doesn't come he just says another something he forgets the moment it is out.

They drive in silence the rest of the way, and he can feel the apology radiating off Watson, but it offers no comfort, in the end, because the words are true: Holmes is going to die alone.

And it confirms the truth he (and Watson himself) has been trying to put down, a fire to be quelched before it spreads out and burns out the entire forest. The moment Watson gives his life over to Mary, Holmes will be given his back, and he doesn't (could never possibly, god, the mere thought is madness) want to live it out on his own.

And then, softly, an airy whisper travels across the ruins of his chest and gets caught in the gravity of his little frozen star of a heart.

Is marriage truly the way of not dying alone?

And he would like to say his mind comes up blank at the thought of marriage (other than the choking taste of bitterness in his mouth) but it doesn't.

He turns the word over, like a little china doll he isn't sure he wants to shatter anymore, and lets thoughts of bright eyes and pale skin (and kissed red lips and brown hair spilled like a halo and a body under his in a hotel room) float around, drifting down to the wreckage in his chest and orbiting around his neutron star heart, containing it from going supernova just yet.

He breathes in deep through his nose, and pulls the little car to a stop outside the club (he does not want to go in there, but heaven help him, this is a stag party). He sees Watson pat the hood that covers the engine of the thing, amazed like a child with a new toy, and Holmes turns away because his compressed heart is pulsing, and allowing it to explode right here and now is not a good idea.

Later, as he adjusts Watsons clothes (which are hopeless, they both know, but Holmes at least trying seems to give his friend reassurance, and Holmes would give him the world in these last precious moments), as he shakes Watson awake so he can pledge eternal devotion to a vision in white (and Holmes is not imagining another woman and himself in their place), as he watches them walk off under a rain of rice (taking his only friend forever away from his side so he can die alone)...

He wonders why this goddamn useless piece of shit he used to call a heart won't just fucking explode already.

He closes his eyes, breathes in through his nose. Inside his pocket, his fingertips rub against each other as he wonders when he gave that lovely handkerchief back to it's (even lovelier) owner.

He wonders if she would have given it back, had he asked that night, on their last dinner together- but, oh, that's right. She didn't come.

So he is going to die alone, isn't he? Even his last resort, the life with her that he (detests admitting) he wants just as badly as he wants his old one back, has deserted him.

And the star pulses steadily, feeding off his self-serving pity like a leech, the supernova threatening to destroy him in a blinding flash of light and he knows, he never should have let things come this far.

A man waits for him back at his clever little car, "The professor wants to see you," and like that the star freezes. He has work to do, and for all its omnipotence, the bomb seems to understand this, and decides to stop ticking. A truce, Holmes would say, if he were thinking of it as sentient being (which he absolutely is not.)

He hops onto the driver's seat and turns the engine on, it spurs to life quite faithfully and Holmes would pat the hood proudly if he wasn't in complete work mode.

It's not the end, he thinks, and in the end it wasn't too bad either. At least this whole wedding circus is over, and he knows where he stands now, aside and alone. If he can only keep the supernova frozen for, say, the rest of his life, he should be able to get by just fine.

(The supernova does explode, later that day, the moment the soft fabric of her blood-stained handkerchief brushes his fingertips again.)

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"It's a 'You're in over your head, Irene' visit"

You have no idea.

"I've never been in over my head"

It's all your fault.

"Leave now, disappear," and my heart plummets down with such force I fear it might leave a dent in the hardwood floors. The soft "you're good at that" that follows feels like he took a hammer and nailed it further into the ground.

"Or stay, and volunteer for protective custody."

Is that really what you want? If I told you everything would you understand? Would you help me out of this mess? Would you judge me for being so stupid? Would you sneer at me for still wanting you? Would you-

"If I'm in danger, so are you." And he doesn't deny it. Have you compromised me the way I have compromised you? Are you stupid like I am too? Put me in danger, want me like I want you, I will beg if I  must.

"Come with me."

And then he looks at me, really looks, for the first time in so long, and his eyes are so warm, so deep, so honest, and I feel so close to him, in this moment, like he never forgot about me, like he never stopped wanting me, like I never left him. This room, his face his eyes his hands so close to me and if I reached for him would he take me? Would he have me like he used to?

Have you deduced my secret yet? Can you tell by my shaking hands how I have craved you? Can you see in my eyes that I would still leave everything for you? Give me a sign...

"What if we trusted each other?"

Trust me the way I want to trust you.

"You're not listening. I'm taking you to either the railway station... or the police station." And he turns away from me, but I'm not fooled. He downs his drink without hesitation, staring into my eyes and there's the sign I was looking for. You're not stupid, Sherlock, and that was a very stupid thing to do, oh darling!

"Which is it to be? You decide, which will it be?"

He starts crumbling, pretending he isn't. I catch him dutifully, the way I would always catch him if I could always be on his side of the game...

"Why couldn't you just come away with me?"

Give up, it's not too late, let me keep you, let me save you, let me...

"Never."

You're not stupid, then.

And I want to cry when he hangs himself in front of me, his eyes screaming at me to be calm, and how does he want me to be calm when he would let himself be sawed in half to protect me?!

After all I'm doing to keep you alive, you would throw your life away like this? Are you stupid?!

It happens so fast. The beam gives way under the weight of us three, and they both catch me before I tumble into the grip of the bandsaw. Then Sherlock is working off my handcuffs, looking at me like he forgives me for everything.

That was so stupid, so much could have gone wrong, you could have died, you would have died for me, you idiot, you absolute idiot-

I throw my arms around him the moment he has freed me. I press myself to him, I breathe in the scent of him, I kiss his neck and think You love me you love me you must love me...

"Thank you," I love you.

"We should help the doctor," he mutters, stiff, and frees himself of my embrace. I smile, and I run after him, because in this moment I would follow him anywhere, I would do anything, I want him to know, he has to know-

I will tell him, I decide then. Once we find Watson and finish our business here, I will go back to Baker Street with them, and I will tell him everything, what I know about Blackwood, the truth about Reordon, about Moriarty, about our deal...

And he will understand. He will, I know that now, because it's a deal he would make too.

It's with blissful thoughts like this that I watch as the bombs go off.

I pull myself up, I will never know how I gathered the strength to, but I did. His arms fall away from me, limp and lifeless. I should run, I have to, there's no time- but the panic in my heart overpowers all my senses, I have to know, I can't leave without knowing-

I grab his hand, squeezing tight before my fingers settle on the inside of his wrist.

The veins there are silent, and distant as the voices and the dogs, I hear a cry, as of an agonizing creature, wretched and pathetic, uttering his name and the sound of it tears at my throat, leaving it raw and hollowed, as if the cry were coming from me.

Shaking, I pull his head onto my lap, I trace my hands over his face, I shake him but he doesn't wake. Raindrops are falling on his dirtied face, leaving trails of olive skin as they slide off his cheeks but no rain falls over me, it's not raining, the wretched creature that cried out before is now weeping, but why does it weep?

My forehead drops to his and I stare at his closed eyelids, willing him to open them. The voices are becoming clearer, are now matched by feet and the rocky ruins that tumble around them. My fingers, shaking like the rest of me, search his neck, and from the creature's lips fall chants and pleas and prayers to a deaf God.

There! There it is! A mere flutter but it exists, his blood still runs and I laugh, laugh like I haven't in a long time, and the laughter shuts the creature up, chases it away and drowns it in the river. I kiss his hair, his eyelids his cheeks his lips, laughing, laughing so much.

The voices are clearer now, they're not Blackwood's men, and in the dim moonlight I can see his pupils moving under his lids. He's waking up, and the men approaching are from Scotland Yard.

He's safe, you aren't.

With one last, wet kiss to his forehead, I part from him, laughing, laughing still.

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~Wanted~

Can I pry your finger
From everything I say and do?
And I just can't forget you
And your heart of stone

- Heart of Stone, Iko

.

The newspaper reads:

SHERLOCK HOLMES WANTED

Understatement of the century.

I find him in a room above The Punchbowl, drugged off his wits and close to choking on his own vomit.

In the poor light of one lonely candle, I manage to pull him into a sitting position, then I drag him to the nearest wall and lean him against it. His head bobs and falls, chin resting on his chest. There's not much I can do for him, two of us alone as we are, in the middle of the night, wanted by the law, and him half passed out, but at least I can keep him from hurting himself even more.

Taking off my overcoat, I sit by his side and lay it over him. His back slides down the wall and he startles awake, briefly, but it's something. He looks around, dazed and scared, searching the shadows for whatever it is that haunts him. I take his face in my hands and force him to look at me, but his eyes are glazed over and he tries to shake me off, tries to crawl away, muttering something unintelligible. I make shushing sounds and run my hands over his hair, his cheek, his neck, and though he doesn't recognize me, he does relax, and eventually he sleeps.

I lower his head to my lap, and sit with him like that for hours, carding shaking fingers through his hair and muttering sweet nothings, more to calm myself than him.

I entertain myself trying to decipher all the gibberish he has written in the wall in front of me. It's difficult to see, considering he has melted every goddamn candle except the one currently lighted, but my eyes adjust well enough after a while.

There's BLACKWOOD in the center, obviously, and Reordan sprinkled all throughout, then it's names and places and things that can't possibly be related but knowing him, they somehow are. Just when I'm about to give up on making sense of his madness, I recognize my name, scribbled on top of other words, the lines of it thick from retracing it, over and over. Once I've learned the particular scrawl of it, I begin to notice the smaller ones, woven neatly through the mess of his thoughts.

IRENE Irene Irene Irene IRENE

It's everywhere.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I have cried enough for a lifetime.

I continue to hold him throughout the night, throughout his terrors, and he wakes every now and then, and once or twice I think I see the fog lift from his eyes, but then his lids drop again, and it all starts again.

Around six in the morning, I hear limping footsteps on the stairs. I try to stand, try to think of where I could hide him if it's the police, but my legs are numb from sitting here all night, and the day has not quite dawned yet and our only candle died almost an hour ago.

So I hold him closer, hunching over him as if that were enough to hide us from the world, and I close my eyes and hope for the best.

The door opens softly, tentatively.

"Overdosed. Of course, what else could he have been doing?" someone mutters, and I want to sob with relief.

"Morning, Miss Adler. I trust he hasn't managed to drown himself in formaldehyde?"

"Just barely, Doctor. Just barely."

And for all that he's never trusted me, he still smiles at me.

Together we manage to make for Sherlock something resembling a bed, and regardless of my protests about his injury, together we lift him up and lay him down on it. Watson then collapses into a chair, panting for air and clutching at his shoulder, and doesn't try to relieve me of my nursing duty again.

Sherlock wakes around nine in the morning, starts as if from a nightmare. He looks around, obviously lost, then his gaze settles on me and the expression of utter disbelief in his face amuses me almost as much as it pierces my heart.

"Good morning," I offer, as sweetly as I can manage, and the perplexed look intensifies tenfold.

This moment, here, is the first time since I was sent out to destroy him that I feel the need to put some distance between us. I've spent so long (barely a week, really, but it feels like a lifetime already) following him like a leech, like the pathetic woman I've become, craving scraps of his attention, trying to protect him from the harm I'm meant to cause him, and I've become addicted to this feeling, to this stifling need to have him close, to touch him, to know his heart beats and his lungs breathe...

It's staggering, to say the least, this sudden urge to put an ocean between us, to run and forget him like I already had (never) managed to before Moriarty dragged me into this, because the truth is... he honestly cannot believe I'm here, taking care of him, can't believe I could love him, and it hurts more than I'm willing to admit.

"Now, time to get to work."

So I stand, I walk, I give him my back which is probably the only part of me he can stand to see, and I try to think of a way out of England that Moriarty won't frustrate.

You're the idiot, stupid stupid stupid woman, you were always the stupid one, Moriarty knew that, that's why you're here, you crafted this for yourself when you fell for him, when you failed to forget him, you knew you knew you knew

"Somehow I knew you wouldn't leave."

Abruptly, the world stops spinning, then sets to spin again, only in the opposite direction.

The perplexed look has become one of wonderment, of appreciation; it's so sincere it leaves me quite breathless. This is, I am sure, the warmest gaze I have ever been on the receiving end of, not just from him but from any person I've known on this earth. Such naked trust and unresentful affection as I never thought him capable of, at least not meant for me, and he looks so young in this moment, the youngest I've ever seen him even considering that I've known him for over ten years. He looks almost like a child.

This moment I try to sear onto my heart, the weight of our bond, stronger than I ever dreamt it could be, to become a permanent fixture in my chest, the warmth in his eyes to never forget.

I know then, with no small amount of dread, that this is the closest we will ever be, and that things can only go downhill from here on. But the sweetness of the moment (the sweetness in his eyes, and I used to think I knew what it felt like to have those eyes land on me a fill with tenderness but it seems I was mistaken before) stifles all worries, and I tell myself:

make the most of it while it's there.

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~Sleep~

And the only solution was to stand and fight
And my body was bruised and I was set alight
But you came over me like some holy rite
And although I was burning, you're the only light

-Only if for a night, Florence and The Machine

That bloody gypsy woman sings to him.

That is, he's sure, the worst thing she could be doing, the sharpest knife she could twist into his so very wounded chest.

It’s also the best comfort she can probably offer, so he lets her do it.

Because he doesn’t have the strength to stop her anymore. Because-

He tries to delete the thought before it registers on an emotional level, but his mind is sluggish, and the electric discharge is already coursing his veins by the time he realizes the mistake he's made-

Because she may be the last person on this earth willing to sing to him.

He tells himself such thoughts shouldn't cripple him with sadness, but then again, he used to tell himself he didn't love Ire-

His head rests uncomfortably on her lap, the ever-present rumble of the train causes sporadic jolts of pain throughout his body, and she is singing to him in a raspy, murmuring voice with words he can't make out, her hands calloused as they run through his stubble... 

But her voice is so deep, so soft, the only voice willing to sing and he wants to pretend it's the voice of...

It feels so wrong, incongruent, and he thinks he would go mad, if he had enough energy left for such passions.

But all he can feel is the sadness, flowing cold in his bloodstream and turning his veins to steel.

It's rather peaceful, he has to admit.

His brain too foggy, a useless pound of flesh, his body too sore, an iron suit dragging him down, and his soul too tired, too empty to bother with reality, with staying sane, with Hang on and You'll heal properly once I’ve gotten this splinter out of your foot, he allows himself to succumb to make-believe.

He lets her sing to him, imagining it is her, really her, the only ‘her’ that has ever deserved the emphasization of the pronoun. Imagining she is beckoning him, unusually angelical instead of devilish, gentle, to rest with her, alongside her, forever with her. 

The pain starts fading, and slowly, he goes numb with peace and relief and quiet contentment.

Because he can hear her, now, loud and clear, he can feel her all around him, pulling him to her, and he knows he could never let her go again. He can’t go back to the way things are without her.

Far away, across land and sea in some distant mountain, shouting at the top of his lungs is him, working over his wounds and fretting like the good friend he is, and he knows he should stay, he knows he can’t do this to the good doctor. He really tries to stay, he does.

But he’s so very tired, he feels he has lived a thousand lifetimes, and she is here, waiting for him, embracing him so lightly and through his weakness he wants to be strong and clutch her, bring her closer, feel her with everything he is. It’s all he asks for.

All this time he’s been wanting to disappear, to vanish, to turn to dust and be swept away by the wind. This is his chance.

He allows himself to drift off, just a moment, I just need this moment, feels the way each heartbeat is delayed, feels how each breath takes longer to be released, feels his mind dissolve into nothing and closes his eyes... 

The nothingness, treacherous and heartless, embraces him, and he barely has a moment to wonder where she has gone.

Later, when he is jolting upright, heart pounding like somebody danced on it, his body tingling with too many sensations, he understands that it was stupid of him to die in front of John Watson and think he could stay dead.

And stupidity has never suited him.

From then he soldiers on, he needs to keep moving, keep going, lest he fall back into the void that beckons him so.

The game is far from over, and no loose ends will be allowed.

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