Work Text:
It's late in the evening when he walks up the stairs, shadows long and spooky. He opens the door and sees a figure sitting languidly in the other chair.
He sees: pale skin, long features, dark curly hair, and he can't help the noise he makes, the name that escapes his lips or the tremble in his voice: "Sherlock?"
The figure leans forward, and John can see as plain as day that he was very, very wrong, and he feels something in his chest hurt like an open wound. In his defence, it is someone presumed dead.
"Irene?"
"I'm sorry, Dr Watson. I didn't-- I didn't realize--" Her eyes are wide, her voice full of panic, more genuine emotion than he's ever seen from her. This is enough to almost settle the bitter taste in the back of his throat. Almost.
And she shakes her head, mouth a tight line. "I'm so sorry."
"You're not dead." He finds his voice then, finds the embarrassed shame of hurt and hope turning into anger, burning through him like life. He remembers the rage he felt when this happened the last time, at the power station, and he realizes, suddenly, that he's shaking with it, with rage. “Again."
"Yes," her hands are splayed open, like placating a wild animal.
"You were dead. Mycroft said--"
"We let him think that. Sherlock …" she trails off, smiles, her eyes bright. It makes her look young and softer around the edges. “He saved me. I was about to be executed and then: Sherlock appeared. Out of thin air. Like it was a trick. Just a magic trick."
"He didn't tell me."
"I know. I'm sorry for that, too." She shakes her head again, lips curling now in a small, sardonic smile. He feels a pang of sympathy, unbidden, because that's what he was always reduced to: apologising for Sherlock's messes, successes and failures both.
He pushes that thought and the prickling in his eyes aside, forces a calmness to his voice that doesn't go all the way to his fingers. "Why are you here?"
"It's what people do, don't they?" She looks at him, calm and unblinking. Unnerving to a point that makes him flinch. "Offer condolences."
He nods and attempts a smile, probably ending somewhere clownish and terrible. "Tea?"
"Yes, please."
She takes hers black. He adds extra sugar to his, just so he can stir it and cover the shake in his hands. He holds the spoon a little too hard.
They drink their teas quietly for a moment.
Then: "I work for Mr Holmes now."
"For Mycroft?" John can't disguise the incredulity in his voice. She looks down. His mind flashes to the last time he saw Mycroft: nose bleeding, at the cemetery. He flexes his fingers in a ghost ache.
"I owe ... I owe Sherlock my life. The least I can do is help clear his name."
"What does it matter? He's dead."
"It matters to you. It matters to everyone he ever helped. It matters."
He smiles. The warmth he feels in his chest has little to do with hot water and Tetley's but he plays it off.
"Feels guilty, does he?"
She nods, some fleeting emotion crossing her face. "It's not my place to speak on his behalf - and I don't wish to - but you need to forgive him."
“This is what Mycroft has you do, plea for my forgiveness? What does it matter?"
“Not Mycroft; Sherlock."
“No." He shakes his head. “I can't. Not ... not yet."
“Ok. That's fine. Just know that you can," she says, and suddenly he's so tired he can barely breathe.
He doesn't realize his face is wet until Irene reaches towards to touch him. He pulls away with a start, wipes at his own face. And it's only then that he remembers. "What you do - what you did - you were good at it because you know how to read people. Give them what they want."
"What they need."
"What do I need?"
"A reason to get up in the morning?"
"Good. What else?"
"That'll do, for now." She smiles a not-smile. He's become an expert at those and smiles one back at her.
“I've seen people die before, you know. In Afghanistan. I was an army doctor." A beat. “I bet you knew that, too."
“I did."
“I saw my friends die. Some of them died in my arms as I was trying to save them." Most in battle, a few from self-inflected gunshot wounds, two from friendly fire. It isn't those boys that keep him up at night. Just Sherlock, who made John watch everything as it happened, made John a witness to his death.
The silence between them stretches and she just watches him with careful eyes, noting his every move, nothing like his therapist. He hates her, just a little bit.
“It isn't the same," she says, finally, getting up. “He wasn't just a friend."
“No. He wasn't."
She pulls her coat on and offers him her hand. He stares at it for a moment but grips it. Her handshake is firm, nothing soft about it.
"I am sorry," she says. "For everything. I hope you'll believe that some day."
He smiles when he replies, “I know. Goodbye, Ms Adler."
“Mr Watson." She hesitates for a moment at the door, adds, “If you need anything, anything at all, let me know. Goodbye, John."
She stops when she's halfway down the stairs, looks back at the door of the flat. Shakes her head. Takes her phone out of her pocket, taps out a coded message.
It says: I told him where to start digging. He just doesn't know that yet.
The reply is, as always, instantaneous, a message that deciphered from the code they use means, Thank you.
~fin