Lighthouses (Irene/Anthea, John/Sherlock, R)
Title: Lighthouses
Pairing: Irene/Anthea, implied John/Sherlock and Sherlock/Irene
Rating: R
Word count: 3,477
Notes: spoilers for A Scandal in Belgravia. Once more, many thanks to cyntosis.
Summary: She knows she shouldn't still be here.
She knows she shouldn't still be here.
The plan had been quite simple: as soon as she so much as heard a whisper, a rumour of anyone being after her, she would pull at the string connecting her to Jim Moriarty, yank on it hard, with none of her usual coyness; she would remind him of what she had given him before and offer him what she still had to offer him - herself, with all her possibilities, as well as all her pitfalls, her foot still firmly stuck between the door that separates Sherlock Holmes' mind from the outside world, from Jim Moriarty - and he would produce a corpse, someone hand-picked with care, and see her off, probably have her followed everywhere in a somewhat half-hearted manner for a while, allowing her to slip away from his lackeys, already anticipating their next meeting. She would quite effectively try not to think about where the corpse came from, and play with the minions for a bit, before vanishing, which is still what she does best, despite everything. Simply rounding a corner, fingers trailing over stone, and finding herself alone again under different street lamps. Spending her evenings naked between bare walls, trying to remember what it is about her that makes her one person, and not many. Allowing others to help her with it before she becomes too aware of their being a person. Then moving on again. Rounding corners. She wonders sometimes if the maze she's in is heading somewhere. If there is an exit on the other side. Or just the point of nothing where all roads come together unnoticed and stop going anywhere.
But then it hadn't happened. Jim Moriarty had produced a corpse, true to his word, as true to his word as he would ever get; her forged files had been put in place with very little persuasion; her phone had been sent off to Sherlock Holmes. She had held it to her cheek for a moment before packing it in that small red box, knowing that he would be touching it soon, too. As though he would be able to trace it. As though there would still be cells of her, transferred to him. As though it would make any difference at all.
And then she should have left, but she hadn't. Usually the shadow that she fades into sneaks up to consume her, welcoming her back to her most permanent home - nowhere - and takes her away with such effortlessness that she sometimes doesn't remember how she made her escape. It's all her, yes, it's all her, she needs no one's help; but sometimes it doesn't feel like even she is there during her vanishing tricks. As if she literally disappears for a bit, into a no man's land that even she can't clearly see. But this time there had still been too many glaring lights behind her to meet the shadow of her disappearance; the bright bulb of Sherlock Holmes, the light he casts, and then the intrigue she feels between him and John Watson, the good doctor, not as clueless as he seems, not as good as everyone thinks, not when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. She can almost taste it, the potential of them, the intensity, and despite herself she wants to know, she wants to know what it is like to love someone like that, to be happy with being an extension of someone's being. To kill for them - she knows doctor Watson has done that for Sherlock Holmes, she sees it in both their faces when they look at each other, and then she remembers that Sherlock Holmes has also killed for doctor Watson, in her home, with her boobytrap to be sure, but if Sherlock Holmes had had a gun himself he would have shot that man in the face and watched him die, prying his hand off doctor Watson if it didn't fall of its own accord. She knows he would have, could read it in that rare moment of genuine fear in him, and it fascinates her to no end.
She plays games. She plays more than games, yes, but no matter how serious it gets, it's still performance. Under Sherlock Holmes' thick veneer of performance lies something different, and doctor Watson is a lot more transparent than that still. She almost envies them for it.
So yes, she does stay because she's intrigued, although she doesn't understand it. There is nothing in there that can be of any use to her, except the knowledge that she's not like them and - truthfully - wouldn't want to be like them, and couldn't be even if she wanted to. She's good at going away, even if it sometimes takes some time to remember why she's one person instead of many. She thinks Sherlock Holmes might be good at going away too, but he would never forget why he's one person, and she doesn't think he wouldn't always take something of doctor Watson with him. She thinks Sherlock Holmes might also be good at returning, and there he trumps her.
And then, because she doesn't go, she's in danger, real danger. The people who are after her are dangerous, and she is dangerous to herself when she finds she can't conquer her desires for knowledge. When she can't just let things be and pass around the corner, leaving the street behind her to sort itself out.
She wants her phone back because there will be cells of him on it as much because it has a deeply important practical value. It's stronger than she can admit to herself.
And she wants to go fishing in the clear, deep water of doctor Watson's pond. Foregoing the games for once; she wants to understand it, this thing she's glimpsed, and she knows Sherlock Holmes will never let her get at it the way doctor Watson will.
She has her in-ways, of course. The higher up in the government, the more clients she has - they appreciate the way she plays at being dirty while not actually being it (or, though they don't know it, the way she plays at not really being dirty while playing at being dirty). They love their games, but not messy aftermath. They like that she pulls her hair back after a session and leaves without a hair out of place. They like that she fixes her lipstick. They like that she leaves looking as though they have authority over her, even though they just spent lush hours under her whips and nails and teeth. Mycroft Holmes isn't one of her clients, of course - he reads to her as more gay than his brother, but she wouldn't bet on it, just like she wouldn't with Sherlock. Mycroft, too, has this diffuse, troubling quality about him that almost suggests that it would be an affront to him to think about sex, let alone engage in it; she knows those are the most dangerous ones, the ones that will go the furthest, but if he does go far with someone it's not with her. No, but Mycroft does take care of his direct employees in more ways than one, and she's the 'more'. His assistant seems a little too wide-eyed and lost to be up so high in the secret service, but if Mycroft is a Holmes she's not there by accident. Either way, she's pliant, and eager, and talented and most of all not immune. When Irene asks her for this one tiny favour, not even couching it as a favour but as a small lament so Anthea will feel like it's her own idea, either it doesn't even register that this could be immensely dangerous, or it does and Anthea plays games of her own. She wonders at the alias and supposes that if Anthea chose it herself, it's likely to be the latter. She doesn't look it, but maybe she has the snideness of the Hera-with-the-flowers she names herself after, the two-facedness, the blossoms on stems of knife.
Either way, it does the trick.
The good John Watson is everything she could hope for - blowing up with an anger at her that she relishes, because she can pick his passion out of his pores like gems. He's a light himself, not just Sherlock Holmes' conduit; it's easy to forget when he's standing next to Sherlock Holmes, but doctor Watson is no vague glimmer, he's a lighthouse in his own right, over-intense, missing many clues by his focus on the big ones, but oh, so bright. It's a metaphor that satisfies her as it slips into her brain; John Watson the lighthouse and Sherlock Holmes the ship at sea, because it means that half of the time, they don't see each other, and when they do, falling in the same orbit, it's blinding.
She does love it when he says he's not gay, because she knows he's not. There's nothing gay in him. It would have been disappointing if he was. There's nothing usual about this case, he says, and she has to agree with him. The set of his mouth is unusual. The way his fingers twitch as if he would want to get them around her throat is unusual. She hadn't wanted to tell Sherlock Holmes that she was still around, not yet anyway, she would have at one point, but he presses her and for reasons she doesn't understand she actually finds herself doing it. And then, of course, they're not alone, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't speak to her, so she won't let doctor Watson speak to him either, not yet, it has to remain pure, what he said without his knowledge of being heard, it has to remain unbroken. She's a bit sorry it goes the way it goes, but when he leaves John Watson is a pleasing line of hardened steel, his mouth cutting, and she wonders for a moment if he will hit her. He doesn't, of course, because he, too, has a veneer, even if it's see-through.
When she's alone she calls Anthea. She needs someone to touch her now, someone whose personhood is hidden, a blank canvas. She can't think of anyone with more right than someone without a name. Privately, Irene enjoys submitting for complicated reasons, most having to do with implicit control, and identitylessness, and a strange, upside-down kind of power. Anthea is awkward at first, having gotten used to being tied up, to listen, to get bitten in the lips.
But she's true to her name, this Hera, this Juno of the field, of women and of ice everywhere, and she picks herself up and takes over and there's a small glimpse of a resolution to Irene's wondering about her. She makes Irene talk, talk more than Irene thought was possible while shying away from Sherlock Holmes, it's the only thing Anthea doesn't press for, because she seems to know that that will end it; she may know everything she does is mirrored by a shadowy Holmes, a shadowy voice that is like a touch, Irene wishes it was real, but it is real enough and that is enough for now. Anthea makes Irene talk about mazes, and stones, and how darkness can be light and light isn't always transparent, it's all nonsense after a while, as she bruises her own lips on the bruises she makes on Irene's sides. She twists strands of her long hair around a nipple and tightens it so that with every move of her head a spear of pain and desire shoots down Irene's spine. She spends an amount of time licking Irene's thighs that is indecent, indecent because she avoids spots that could feel anything for so long Irene starts to go numb with the brittle unpleasantness of it, and then when Anthea finally licks at her folds the sensation is so much more than what she's doing, it's like there are so many people on her, all pulling at her hair and claiming her mouth and shoulders and breasts and hips and knees and toes and cunt with so many tongues. They're all Sherlock Holmes, and only one of them isn't, and she's almost enough, almost. Anthea twists a nipple cruelly, laps leisurely and then quickly, reading Irene's sounds in exactly the opposite way that a normal lover would, and just when Irene is about to say something that will be like, but not quite please she finally settles on a rhythm, and slips a finger in to aid her, two, three, and Irene is coming with an intensity that she later supposes to be like the one she has only ever read on her clients' faces and on Sherlock Holmes' face when he knows things, or when he doesn't know things, because both produce the same expression.
When Anthea emerges, the goddess has been erased, willfully, Irene supposes, and the wide-eyed girl is back. But Irene is nothing if not a gracious lover when needed, and she knows by now what Anthea needs. So she bites at the junction of Anthea's collarbone and her shoulder, feeling the tendons where the muscle is attached pushing up against her in protest as she slips her teeth over the ridges of the bone, catching on the skin, and as her tongue slips into the hollow under the bone, where Anthea is soft and weak like an animal living in a shell, and curls her fingers into a question mark inside Anthea, asking the question again and again - who are you? who am I? - until there is some blood (there always is with Anthea) and the other woman is straining up against her, the inside of her mouth a dark wine red, her lips not quite curved enough, her eyes not quite pale enough, but still, absolutely deformed and beautiful at the same time as she clenches around Irene and draws her hand in even further.
She puts herself together after that bit by bit, tracing her body with hands still wet with Anthea, and tries to remember why she's one person, not many. She finds it hard. She thinks about her cells on her phone and how they are now likely on Sherlock Holmes' hand, mingling with that part of him that is most dead, his skin. She thinks about skin and how so many things penetrate it and traces the sting of the small cut Anthea's wound-up hair has etched into her nipple. She thinks about how every chemical element inside her has been in someone else, and in something else, in distant stars, and in distant nothings, and how it will be in someone, something else after her. She thinks about how she is made of air, mostly, how the molecules that make her an entity are ninety percent nothing, with particles sailing around a dense centre at incredible distances. And inbetween, nothing. She thinks about how if she were to crash into someone else at the speed of light, they would pass right through her, through that thing inside every human that is nothingness, their molecules avoiding each other at that speed, using the paths of space to get through.
It feels wrong to think that that has already happened, that the bright glare of Sherlock Holmes has passed through her already, and that the blinking lighthouse of John Watson has passed through as well, picking up everything that was left.
She opens her eyes and for a moment can't think of a reason to run from the people who are after her, because who are they, really, are they not also points of heat dancing in an empty space?
But then she thinks of Sherlock's Holmes' bed, and how there would be traces of him, of flaked skin, of deposited scent, and how lovely it would be to sleep while knowing them to melt together in that small way.
So she gathers herself, pulls her limbs together, puts a hand on herself to find her familiar boundary of skin still somewhat intact, and slips into her clothes. With them she regains a sense of identity that's skin-deep at best. Dead. Flaking.
She knows where to go to satisfy this final want; she also knows that he will be somewhat doubtingly expecting her, and that it won't be hard at all to get in. It doesn't need to be now, she can wander these familiar streets for a while, brave the very real dangers of them, indulge in her private, secret game of memorising the sharpness of corridors, store it in her fingertips before saying goodbye. Getting rid of everything implies keeping just that one kernel of what was something resembling home for a while, the feel of alley grit under her thumb nail, the way her high heels got stuck in the London pavements at times when she was running late, the way tourists looked at her like she was an attraction, a monument, and snapped pictures of her. Getting rid of everything means that she has to keep the smallest of memories to contrast everything else to. The phantom feel of her phone under her pillow at night and the small unease that gave her. Kate's hair in the shower drain, too brilliant in the harsh bathroom lights on Monday mornings. The things she'd never told Kate she sometimes felt looking at those strands of red. Sherlock Holmes' defeated form under her riding crop, smooth, straining lines in his body as he struggled hard against her, eyes showing the whites, like clouds billowing in his skull.
She holds his midnight text against her cheek for a brief moment. It's not quite the same knowing that he will never touch this phone. The imagination of him pressing his side of the text against himself, any part of him, she hopes his mouth, is lost by the fact that she knows that he isn't. It's a new year. She's never put any value on the moments most people pick to lie to themselves more intensely than usual and tell themselves that this time, they will make changes. But the moments coincide - Sherlock Holmes' words against her face prompt her to tell herself that yes, she will make changes, and she knows that she, unlike all of the others, isn't lying to herself.
And after her private form of saying goodbye to the city that she despite everything loved and her final indulgence in Sherlock Holmes' traces in his bed she knows where she will have to go after that to allow Sherlock Holmes' skin to flake off along with the most dead part of herself, to experience, again, that she gets more honest under new skies, that she gets more pure with untasted air, and that she sometimes knows with a startling clarity who she is when there is no one else to remind her. She can sleep in him for one more time and then it will be her again, as it always has been, Irene Adler, holding her fort, defending her borders. She will cast him out again, him and doctor Watson and the unity they represent, she will reclaim the nothingness they took from her. She will cultivate the darkness at the centre of her, shut the glare of the lighthouses out.
She doesn't need anything except her own eyelids to shut everything else out. She doesn't need anyone. Only molecules of air that haven't been inside her yet. A new way of walking. The perfected trill of a new accent. Leaving her hair, dead, behind, hacked off with the lack of ritual that is a ritual in itself, and growing it again, feeling how she can be cultivated from the inside out, how she is growing thing.
She will be alone. She will be new. And underneath, a star collapsing in on itself, with a dense centre that defies gravity, and she will know, once more, that she is one person there, at that point where all roads convene and stop going anywhere. At that point where she stops going anywhere.
At that point, she will be herself. Naked. No disguises. All mirrors will be broken. She'll be alone. She'll be one. The lighthouse of new places will pass its otherworldly beam over her, and will leave her intact, missing her as an insignificant detail; because there will be no doctor Watsons where she's going, and no one will be as adamant to take her apart as he is, because no one will love anyone like he does, no one will want to protect someone like he does. She will spend time in her own skin and hold her fort, polishing the pearl of memories that is London at times.
Time to go.
Pairing: Irene/Anthea, implied John/Sherlock and Sherlock/Irene
Rating: R
Word count: 3,477
Notes: spoilers for A Scandal in Belgravia. Once more, many thanks to cyntosis.
Summary: She knows she shouldn't still be here.
She knows she shouldn't still be here.
The plan had been quite simple: as soon as she so much as heard a whisper, a rumour of anyone being after her, she would pull at the string connecting her to Jim Moriarty, yank on it hard, with none of her usual coyness; she would remind him of what she had given him before and offer him what she still had to offer him - herself, with all her possibilities, as well as all her pitfalls, her foot still firmly stuck between the door that separates Sherlock Holmes' mind from the outside world, from Jim Moriarty - and he would produce a corpse, someone hand-picked with care, and see her off, probably have her followed everywhere in a somewhat half-hearted manner for a while, allowing her to slip away from his lackeys, already anticipating their next meeting. She would quite effectively try not to think about where the corpse came from, and play with the minions for a bit, before vanishing, which is still what she does best, despite everything. Simply rounding a corner, fingers trailing over stone, and finding herself alone again under different street lamps. Spending her evenings naked between bare walls, trying to remember what it is about her that makes her one person, and not many. Allowing others to help her with it before she becomes too aware of their being a person. Then moving on again. Rounding corners. She wonders sometimes if the maze she's in is heading somewhere. If there is an exit on the other side. Or just the point of nothing where all roads come together unnoticed and stop going anywhere.
But then it hadn't happened. Jim Moriarty had produced a corpse, true to his word, as true to his word as he would ever get; her forged files had been put in place with very little persuasion; her phone had been sent off to Sherlock Holmes. She had held it to her cheek for a moment before packing it in that small red box, knowing that he would be touching it soon, too. As though he would be able to trace it. As though there would still be cells of her, transferred to him. As though it would make any difference at all.
And then she should have left, but she hadn't. Usually the shadow that she fades into sneaks up to consume her, welcoming her back to her most permanent home - nowhere - and takes her away with such effortlessness that she sometimes doesn't remember how she made her escape. It's all her, yes, it's all her, she needs no one's help; but sometimes it doesn't feel like even she is there during her vanishing tricks. As if she literally disappears for a bit, into a no man's land that even she can't clearly see. But this time there had still been too many glaring lights behind her to meet the shadow of her disappearance; the bright bulb of Sherlock Holmes, the light he casts, and then the intrigue she feels between him and John Watson, the good doctor, not as clueless as he seems, not as good as everyone thinks, not when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. She can almost taste it, the potential of them, the intensity, and despite herself she wants to know, she wants to know what it is like to love someone like that, to be happy with being an extension of someone's being. To kill for them - she knows doctor Watson has done that for Sherlock Holmes, she sees it in both their faces when they look at each other, and then she remembers that Sherlock Holmes has also killed for doctor Watson, in her home, with her boobytrap to be sure, but if Sherlock Holmes had had a gun himself he would have shot that man in the face and watched him die, prying his hand off doctor Watson if it didn't fall of its own accord. She knows he would have, could read it in that rare moment of genuine fear in him, and it fascinates her to no end.
She plays games. She plays more than games, yes, but no matter how serious it gets, it's still performance. Under Sherlock Holmes' thick veneer of performance lies something different, and doctor Watson is a lot more transparent than that still. She almost envies them for it.
So yes, she does stay because she's intrigued, although she doesn't understand it. There is nothing in there that can be of any use to her, except the knowledge that she's not like them and - truthfully - wouldn't want to be like them, and couldn't be even if she wanted to. She's good at going away, even if it sometimes takes some time to remember why she's one person instead of many. She thinks Sherlock Holmes might be good at going away too, but he would never forget why he's one person, and she doesn't think he wouldn't always take something of doctor Watson with him. She thinks Sherlock Holmes might also be good at returning, and there he trumps her.
And then, because she doesn't go, she's in danger, real danger. The people who are after her are dangerous, and she is dangerous to herself when she finds she can't conquer her desires for knowledge. When she can't just let things be and pass around the corner, leaving the street behind her to sort itself out.
She wants her phone back because there will be cells of him on it as much because it has a deeply important practical value. It's stronger than she can admit to herself.
And she wants to go fishing in the clear, deep water of doctor Watson's pond. Foregoing the games for once; she wants to understand it, this thing she's glimpsed, and she knows Sherlock Holmes will never let her get at it the way doctor Watson will.
She has her in-ways, of course. The higher up in the government, the more clients she has - they appreciate the way she plays at being dirty while not actually being it (or, though they don't know it, the way she plays at not really being dirty while playing at being dirty). They love their games, but not messy aftermath. They like that she pulls her hair back after a session and leaves without a hair out of place. They like that she fixes her lipstick. They like that she leaves looking as though they have authority over her, even though they just spent lush hours under her whips and nails and teeth. Mycroft Holmes isn't one of her clients, of course - he reads to her as more gay than his brother, but she wouldn't bet on it, just like she wouldn't with Sherlock. Mycroft, too, has this diffuse, troubling quality about him that almost suggests that it would be an affront to him to think about sex, let alone engage in it; she knows those are the most dangerous ones, the ones that will go the furthest, but if he does go far with someone it's not with her. No, but Mycroft does take care of his direct employees in more ways than one, and she's the 'more'. His assistant seems a little too wide-eyed and lost to be up so high in the secret service, but if Mycroft is a Holmes she's not there by accident. Either way, she's pliant, and eager, and talented and most of all not immune. When Irene asks her for this one tiny favour, not even couching it as a favour but as a small lament so Anthea will feel like it's her own idea, either it doesn't even register that this could be immensely dangerous, or it does and Anthea plays games of her own. She wonders at the alias and supposes that if Anthea chose it herself, it's likely to be the latter. She doesn't look it, but maybe she has the snideness of the Hera-with-the-flowers she names herself after, the two-facedness, the blossoms on stems of knife.
Either way, it does the trick.
The good John Watson is everything she could hope for - blowing up with an anger at her that she relishes, because she can pick his passion out of his pores like gems. He's a light himself, not just Sherlock Holmes' conduit; it's easy to forget when he's standing next to Sherlock Holmes, but doctor Watson is no vague glimmer, he's a lighthouse in his own right, over-intense, missing many clues by his focus on the big ones, but oh, so bright. It's a metaphor that satisfies her as it slips into her brain; John Watson the lighthouse and Sherlock Holmes the ship at sea, because it means that half of the time, they don't see each other, and when they do, falling in the same orbit, it's blinding.
She does love it when he says he's not gay, because she knows he's not. There's nothing gay in him. It would have been disappointing if he was. There's nothing usual about this case, he says, and she has to agree with him. The set of his mouth is unusual. The way his fingers twitch as if he would want to get them around her throat is unusual. She hadn't wanted to tell Sherlock Holmes that she was still around, not yet anyway, she would have at one point, but he presses her and for reasons she doesn't understand she actually finds herself doing it. And then, of course, they're not alone, and Sherlock Holmes doesn't speak to her, so she won't let doctor Watson speak to him either, not yet, it has to remain pure, what he said without his knowledge of being heard, it has to remain unbroken. She's a bit sorry it goes the way it goes, but when he leaves John Watson is a pleasing line of hardened steel, his mouth cutting, and she wonders for a moment if he will hit her. He doesn't, of course, because he, too, has a veneer, even if it's see-through.
When she's alone she calls Anthea. She needs someone to touch her now, someone whose personhood is hidden, a blank canvas. She can't think of anyone with more right than someone without a name. Privately, Irene enjoys submitting for complicated reasons, most having to do with implicit control, and identitylessness, and a strange, upside-down kind of power. Anthea is awkward at first, having gotten used to being tied up, to listen, to get bitten in the lips.
But she's true to her name, this Hera, this Juno of the field, of women and of ice everywhere, and she picks herself up and takes over and there's a small glimpse of a resolution to Irene's wondering about her. She makes Irene talk, talk more than Irene thought was possible while shying away from Sherlock Holmes, it's the only thing Anthea doesn't press for, because she seems to know that that will end it; she may know everything she does is mirrored by a shadowy Holmes, a shadowy voice that is like a touch, Irene wishes it was real, but it is real enough and that is enough for now. Anthea makes Irene talk about mazes, and stones, and how darkness can be light and light isn't always transparent, it's all nonsense after a while, as she bruises her own lips on the bruises she makes on Irene's sides. She twists strands of her long hair around a nipple and tightens it so that with every move of her head a spear of pain and desire shoots down Irene's spine. She spends an amount of time licking Irene's thighs that is indecent, indecent because she avoids spots that could feel anything for so long Irene starts to go numb with the brittle unpleasantness of it, and then when Anthea finally licks at her folds the sensation is so much more than what she's doing, it's like there are so many people on her, all pulling at her hair and claiming her mouth and shoulders and breasts and hips and knees and toes and cunt with so many tongues. They're all Sherlock Holmes, and only one of them isn't, and she's almost enough, almost. Anthea twists a nipple cruelly, laps leisurely and then quickly, reading Irene's sounds in exactly the opposite way that a normal lover would, and just when Irene is about to say something that will be like, but not quite please she finally settles on a rhythm, and slips a finger in to aid her, two, three, and Irene is coming with an intensity that she later supposes to be like the one she has only ever read on her clients' faces and on Sherlock Holmes' face when he knows things, or when he doesn't know things, because both produce the same expression.
When Anthea emerges, the goddess has been erased, willfully, Irene supposes, and the wide-eyed girl is back. But Irene is nothing if not a gracious lover when needed, and she knows by now what Anthea needs. So she bites at the junction of Anthea's collarbone and her shoulder, feeling the tendons where the muscle is attached pushing up against her in protest as she slips her teeth over the ridges of the bone, catching on the skin, and as her tongue slips into the hollow under the bone, where Anthea is soft and weak like an animal living in a shell, and curls her fingers into a question mark inside Anthea, asking the question again and again - who are you? who am I? - until there is some blood (there always is with Anthea) and the other woman is straining up against her, the inside of her mouth a dark wine red, her lips not quite curved enough, her eyes not quite pale enough, but still, absolutely deformed and beautiful at the same time as she clenches around Irene and draws her hand in even further.
She puts herself together after that bit by bit, tracing her body with hands still wet with Anthea, and tries to remember why she's one person, not many. She finds it hard. She thinks about her cells on her phone and how they are now likely on Sherlock Holmes' hand, mingling with that part of him that is most dead, his skin. She thinks about skin and how so many things penetrate it and traces the sting of the small cut Anthea's wound-up hair has etched into her nipple. She thinks about how every chemical element inside her has been in someone else, and in something else, in distant stars, and in distant nothings, and how it will be in someone, something else after her. She thinks about how she is made of air, mostly, how the molecules that make her an entity are ninety percent nothing, with particles sailing around a dense centre at incredible distances. And inbetween, nothing. She thinks about how if she were to crash into someone else at the speed of light, they would pass right through her, through that thing inside every human that is nothingness, their molecules avoiding each other at that speed, using the paths of space to get through.
It feels wrong to think that that has already happened, that the bright glare of Sherlock Holmes has passed through her already, and that the blinking lighthouse of John Watson has passed through as well, picking up everything that was left.
She opens her eyes and for a moment can't think of a reason to run from the people who are after her, because who are they, really, are they not also points of heat dancing in an empty space?
But then she thinks of Sherlock's Holmes' bed, and how there would be traces of him, of flaked skin, of deposited scent, and how lovely it would be to sleep while knowing them to melt together in that small way.
So she gathers herself, pulls her limbs together, puts a hand on herself to find her familiar boundary of skin still somewhat intact, and slips into her clothes. With them she regains a sense of identity that's skin-deep at best. Dead. Flaking.
She knows where to go to satisfy this final want; she also knows that he will be somewhat doubtingly expecting her, and that it won't be hard at all to get in. It doesn't need to be now, she can wander these familiar streets for a while, brave the very real dangers of them, indulge in her private, secret game of memorising the sharpness of corridors, store it in her fingertips before saying goodbye. Getting rid of everything implies keeping just that one kernel of what was something resembling home for a while, the feel of alley grit under her thumb nail, the way her high heels got stuck in the London pavements at times when she was running late, the way tourists looked at her like she was an attraction, a monument, and snapped pictures of her. Getting rid of everything means that she has to keep the smallest of memories to contrast everything else to. The phantom feel of her phone under her pillow at night and the small unease that gave her. Kate's hair in the shower drain, too brilliant in the harsh bathroom lights on Monday mornings. The things she'd never told Kate she sometimes felt looking at those strands of red. Sherlock Holmes' defeated form under her riding crop, smooth, straining lines in his body as he struggled hard against her, eyes showing the whites, like clouds billowing in his skull.
She holds his midnight text against her cheek for a brief moment. It's not quite the same knowing that he will never touch this phone. The imagination of him pressing his side of the text against himself, any part of him, she hopes his mouth, is lost by the fact that she knows that he isn't. It's a new year. She's never put any value on the moments most people pick to lie to themselves more intensely than usual and tell themselves that this time, they will make changes. But the moments coincide - Sherlock Holmes' words against her face prompt her to tell herself that yes, she will make changes, and she knows that she, unlike all of the others, isn't lying to herself.
And after her private form of saying goodbye to the city that she despite everything loved and her final indulgence in Sherlock Holmes' traces in his bed she knows where she will have to go after that to allow Sherlock Holmes' skin to flake off along with the most dead part of herself, to experience, again, that she gets more honest under new skies, that she gets more pure with untasted air, and that she sometimes knows with a startling clarity who she is when there is no one else to remind her. She can sleep in him for one more time and then it will be her again, as it always has been, Irene Adler, holding her fort, defending her borders. She will cast him out again, him and doctor Watson and the unity they represent, she will reclaim the nothingness they took from her. She will cultivate the darkness at the centre of her, shut the glare of the lighthouses out.
She doesn't need anything except her own eyelids to shut everything else out. She doesn't need anyone. Only molecules of air that haven't been inside her yet. A new way of walking. The perfected trill of a new accent. Leaving her hair, dead, behind, hacked off with the lack of ritual that is a ritual in itself, and growing it again, feeling how she can be cultivated from the inside out, how she is growing thing.
She will be alone. She will be new. And underneath, a star collapsing in on itself, with a dense centre that defies gravity, and she will know, once more, that she is one person there, at that point where all roads convene and stop going anywhere. At that point where she stops going anywhere.
At that point, she will be herself. Naked. No disguises. All mirrors will be broken. She'll be alone. She'll be one. The lighthouse of new places will pass its otherworldly beam over her, and will leave her intact, missing her as an insignificant detail; because there will be no doctor Watsons where she's going, and no one will be as adamant to take her apart as he is, because no one will love anyone like he does, no one will want to protect someone like he does. She will spend time in her own skin and hold her fort, polishing the pearl of memories that is London at times.
Time to go.