Disclaimer: I don't own any of this… Well, maybe some of it, but certainly not the rights to the characters or the plot of the episode A Scandal in Belgravia. I have been to the real 221B Baker Street, though. Which has nothing to do with anything, other than it being awesome. Anyway, all rights to Stephen Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC! I doubt they'll ever get around to reading this, but if they ever did it might be kind of an honor to be sued by them. Having said that, please don't sue me.

Timeframe: Set sometime between the conversation in Mycroft's study at the end of A Scandal in Belgravia, and the rescue in Karachi.

Rating: Eventually M, though the first chapter is not.

Author's Note: In the author's note to my last Sherlock fic, I wrote:

"This story kept me properly obsessed for about 2 weeks, because I found that out of every bit of fan fiction I've ever written, and all the character's heads I've gotten in to, Sherlock was the absolute hardest for me to write. It was a challenge, and it was awesome. I'm already working on my next Sherlock story, and I really hope this piece sets the stage, even though I very much hope to evolve my characterizations."

I definitely find while writing this new story, that I've finally found a voice, which is to say I've finally found a way to write a version of Sherlock that resonates as authentic to me, something that had alluded me in my first foray. As I say, it's a version, seeing as how I don't fancy myself quite clever enough to ever truly get inside that head, but I do think I've succeeded in what I set out to do to begin with. As ever, I am having an inappropriate amount of fun writing this, and the obsession continues to burn on.

As for the rating, I've never been a huge fan of overt sexuality in stories where there really was no place for it. I dabbled in it in my earlier fic writing, because that was what appeared to be popular. Since then, I've definitely adopted an attitude of, if it doesn't add anything to the story, it shouldn't be there. As far as a relationship between Sherlock and Irene goes, I think the matter of sexuality is an incredibly fascinating one, and there's every reason to explore it. I do not, however, write porn… So if that's what you've come here for, I really hope that you'll give this story a chance anyway.

If you were patient enough to read that whole thing, please understand that I love you and think you're a saint. I hope you enjoy this story!

Come Attrition, Come Hell

Part 1

Chapter 1: For The Moment

...

It had just started to rain as Sherlock unceremoniously exited his brother's posh home, leaving behind the older Holmes and Irene Adler to what was probably a very tedious conversation, though one his brother likely relished at that. He'd been just a hair's breadth away from crushing defeat. They both had been.

It was an eleventh hour victory, certainly, but a victory nonetheless.

Something of a victory anyway.

Sherlock pulled his collar up against the cold and the damp, and walked, what may have appeared to an observer as, absently down the street. It briefly occurred to him to hail a cab, but the rain didn't bother him, and anyway... He wasn't in a hurry to get home.

The light drops of water fell and clung to the detective's curly hair, and he vaguely wondered what it would be like living in a climate where this was not the norm, where the skies were more often blue than gray. Somewhere in America, perhaps? Somewhere in California where, like so many of its other residents, the sun was famous. He thought he should detest it, actually. This weather, this climate, his coat, and his scarf, this solitude... It was London, and it was as much a part of him as was the color of his eyes.

Dismissing these thoughts, as they were becoming dangerously close to seeming like sentiment, something he had chided The Woman for not 15 minutes before, he took his leather gloves from his pocket, and wished to God they were a pack of cigarettes instead. God, clearly bothered by Sherlock's unequivocal disbelief in him, however, did not comply... And the gloves remained gloves as the dark haired man slipped them over his hands.

He'd won. He had clearly won... But it was an unsatisfying win. Something, he felt, that couldn't be much unlike winning a game by cheating at it. He hadn't cheated, of course, but he hadn't quite played fair, either.

He'd understood that Irene's show of interest in him, for some time, had been a smokescreen to mask her actual interest in him. It had been clear upon their first meeting that she'd known of him for quite a while longer than he had known of her, and that she'd already become something of a fan of his intellect. From the outset she'd masked her true investment with layered flirtation, hiding in plain sight, as it were... And though he couldn't precisely pinpoint when exactly he'd understood her for what she was, he had been convinced that she had, for lack of a better vocabulary on the subject, fancied him.

It wasn't until just tonight in his sitting room, however, that he had realized she was in love with him.

He'd had no particular reason for taking her pulse other than that she had presented him with the perfect opportunity. He felt the rapid beat of her heart through her wrist as soon as she placed her hand over his, and moving his fingers over her pulse point under the guise of a returning caress seemed almost the logical thing to do in that particular situation - the collecting of all available data to paint a more complete portrait. The beat quickened as he turned her wrist in his hand, and he could read everything else he needed to know in her face. He'd seen the signs so many times in others, particularly in Molly Hooper where the sentiment had been directed toward himself.

Having taken in her physiological symptoms and comparing it against what he had already known about her and experienced of her, he was satisfied in his conclusion that she had indeed fallen in love with him at some point. How he would ever find a useful application for this information, he was uncertain. In fact, it had made little difference to him whether she loved him or not, since she seemed quite keen on concealing it from him and it would likely never come in to play at all. As for his own feelings, he was left a bit amused, but on the whole at a loss as to why she'd mislaid her sentiment so absolutely. He hadn't, however, planned on using her feelings toward him against her.

She had continued her act of disinterest as she spoke to Mycroft about demands and protection, and Sherlock was inclined to let her. After all, what would have been the point in pulling the rug out from under that particular charade? She loved him, but so what? It didn't matter. It wasn't going halt her in her course, and since that would be the only outcome Sherlock was interested in from any action he chose to take, her love was, again, useless to him.

And then, of course, it wasn't.

Sherlock unconsciously clenched his hands in to fists in his pockets and shivered only slightly over the increasingly present cold. He felt... something. Anger? It was an emotion not immediately identifiable, whatever it was, and that alone was quite frustrating. Even putting aside, for a moment, the utter, utter, humiliation he had just been dealt.

He hadn't meant to use her feelings against her, no, but when the last piece of her ridiculous puzzle clicked in to place with almost painful clarity, he was unmerciful.

There was no denying now that she had succeeded in fooling him, at least insofar as he hadn't completely sensed an ulterior motive. The pretense of infatuation, while he had already identified it as a smokescreen, was also meant as a distraction. One that had worked. He could almost applaud the effort, really. It was no small task fooling him at all, and she had done it so thoroughly. It was impressive, and unforgivable.

So when the opportunity arose to tear her mask apart, his anger and cruelty were hot and swift. He was callous and precise, and even as something not unlike hatred though completely different from it as well burned in his chest, he pressed on. He wanted to be sure she understood why even the people he helped referred to him as a freak; why even the people of the city that he so often protected thought of him as a psychopath. Why love was nothing but a trap in the end even on the best of terms, but on his terms was nothing short of an atrocity.

Love.

Sherlock's mind recoiled at the word even as he audibly scoffed. What had she been thinking of, falling in love with him? He wanted to hate her for it, and in truth he felt a deep abhorrence toward her and her sentiment toward him... but he was left wondering at why he had wanted to use it to hurt her. Why was this blight among all the many he had suffered in a lifetime of being other than what people wanted him to be so completely and horribly loathsome to him?

Why did he care?

On the surface, the answer was simple, really. She had embarrassed him, and it was rather a bit unacceptable... But that wasn't the whole answer. There was something else, something that defied calculation and classification.

Suddenly, and unbidden, his thoughts turned to the night he had found The Woman's phone on his mantel. He had been certain that she was dead, and it...

He shook his head twice, violently, before he could finish his train of thought, and then held his hand out for a taxi.

After paying his cabbie, Sherlock alighted from the black cab and took a deep breath as he came to stand in front of 221B. It was, as always, a welcomed sight, and even he couldn't deny that a sense of being home was comforting.

He surveyed the door with a short glance as he always did before entering. Judging by the angle at which the doorknocker sat, the door had been opened and closed only once since his own departure, accounting for the Woman leaving a short while after him, which meant that John was still out. Sherlock was relieved, but at the same time disappointed. It wouldn't have been terrible to see a, what would someone else say?

A friendly face, his mind begrudgingly offered.

Pushing the front door open, he stepped in and wiped his feet on the mat in the foyer unconsciously. He looked through the foggy glass of the interior door for a moment, his gaze empty and distracted, before pushing through to head up the 17 steps to his flat.

But he stopped at the foot of the stairs. Immediately a wave of adrenaline crashed against him so suddenly and intensely that he had to close his eyes against it.

She was here.

Mycroft; an even more unforgiving and unrelenting foe than himself. He had let her go, with all the knowledge of what exactly that meant for her. She had committed treason, to be sure, and should have been on her way to prison, or to her own public beheading (though, unfortunately, Britain was no longer in the practice of publicly beheading its traitors), but instead Mycroft had released her back in to the wild to be cannibalized by what he may have classed as "her own sort." It was cruel, in a way, but more calculated than that. It was a move to show that she could not hope to find protection here, certainly not in England, but most likely not in the whole of the UK. Not even in the form of a prison cell. Perhaps had a different government official been in a position to make that decision, or perhaps if Mycroft had not been Mycroft Holmes, it would have been different. But it wasn't different.

Sherlock's eyes opened and his jaw set as his gaze traveled slowly up the steps. For someone who prided himself on knowing a person's next move before they even knew it themself, he found that it was rather startling to be presented with the fact that he hadn't expected The Woman to come here. He hadn't expected to be confronted with seeing her again so soon after toppling her whole world. In hindsight, it was obvious, really, that she should turn up here if his brother (as he had anticipated) let her go. Everything that he knew of her behavior thus far through their association, the patterns she adhered to, the fact that she loved him, made her appearance here tonight a glaring inevitability, but one that he had still missed.

He was clearly off his game, which was not a little disconcerting, because his game was more than just a set of exceptional observational skills; it was who he was. Being startled, being confused, being emotional, being so deeply moved to feeling so many times in one night and in instances so close in proximity to one another made him feel foreign in his own body. And through it all the sense of betrayal was coming through louder and clearer than anything he had yet felt... but it wasn't betrayal by Irene Adler. Betrayal implied an already established trust, and a belief that something was intrinsically one way and not another... And though he had believed Irene's story in part, he had always assumed that he was not seeing quite to the core of who she was or what she wanted. There had been no trust lost there.

Sherlock Holmes felt he had betrayed himself.

With a deep breath, he began the climb up the steps, his hand running along the wall to his left. He didn't know what real reason she could have for coming here, couldn't even conceive of a reason for it, seeing as how their business with each other was permanently settled, but there was no mistaking the scent of her perfume wafting down to meet him as he ascended. It was ingrained in his memory as his coat had carried the fragrance for some days after she had returned it to him following their first meeting. It was something very near to horrible to him now, and he both hated it and was entranced by it in equal measure, though he was grateful, at least, that it had given him a "heads-up" as to her presence. He was preparing himself with each step he took, consciously focusing his his breathing until it was even and steady, collecting his thoughts and his wits.

By the time Sherlock made it to the landing, he had regained a substantial amount of his normal calm collectedness. He pulled the gloves from his hands and returned them to his coat pocket as he tread slowly to his room. The door had been left slightly ajar, and the soft glow of his bedside lamp was visible. If The Woman knew he was here, she made no announcement of it.

He didn't know why he should feel any apprehension at all in this moment. This was, after all, his home, his domain. If London was his kingdom, then 221B was inextricably his castle, and his mind his palace... but he nonetheless felt a measure of uncertainty as he made it to his door. Pushing it open the rest of the way, he stepped in.

Something inside of him gave pause for a microsecond; not long enough to be of detriment, but just long enough to throw a warning.

There she was, just as he knew she would be, sitting at the end of his bed, staring at the wall in front of her. Her hair was down again, though she still wore the black dress she had been in earlier. She didn't turn to look at him. She didn't move at all.

"Back to your not evil hair again, I see." Sherlock said carelessly as he closed his door slightly to gain access to the hook behind it. He unraveled his scarf first, and then shrugged off his coat, hanging both items across the door as he spoke. "Is there a switch at the back of your neck for that?"

"He's going to kill me now." The Woman spoke softly, though it didn't seem as though she was addressing Sherlock at all. For his part, he nearly froze at the words, but was able to turn to look at her instead.

"What are you doing here?" He asked.

She turned to him at that, and Sherlock was able to clearly observe the streaks in her makeup, and the red tinge to her eyes and nose. She had been crying, sobbing, in fact, and rather convulsively. The soft and impermanent lines that had already begun to fade around her mouth and eyes, however, made it clear that she had been calm for at least an hour. Had she been here that long? He told himself that it was immaterial, that it was all immaterial, though he didn't much care for the tightening in his chest, and was thankful that he didn't feel necessarily inclined to analyze the reason for it.

"This is the safest place for me at the moment." Was her simple response.

At the moment. Well, there was an implication there, obviously.

"Lovely." Sherlock answered flatly as he undid his jacket button and crossed the room to his dresser over which he emptied the meager contents of his pocket - a business card and his mobile - quietly turning over a small framed photo of he and his brother as children, that always sat atop the wooden chest of drawers, as he did so. He wasn't sure why it bothered him that The Woman might see it, and furthermore he knew it was likely that she already had, but he turned it over anyway. "And where might that be in the next moment? Somewhere else, I can only hope." He annunciated the "p" in "hope" more than was absolutely necessary.

"Of course." The Woman said almost conversationally. "He'll know to look for me here."

Sherlock faced her, though she continued to stare at his wall.

"In my bedroom?" He asked with an even, almost bored tone.

"In London." She responded, finally looking at him.

Sherlock stared blankly for a moment.

"Yes. I can't imagine that you've made many friends in London while... misbehaving."

She visibly flinched.

"Only you."

Admittedly, like her appearance here, he wasn't expecting that.

Sherlock was silent as he examined her face and contemplated her words and their meaning. Honestly, there was a bit to wade through here. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, who was this "he" to which she was referring? The detective had 3 theories, 2 of which made substantially less sense than the last, and so he was left relatively assured the last was correct.

Her association with James Moriarty had come as something of a surprise to him, though now the different pieces, too scattered for him to have seen the way they fit together before, were now falling in to place. It had been her call about the undecipherable email that had saved his and John's lives at the pool, though she most likely hadn't been aware of it at the time. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was that Moriarty was aware of the secrets and information tucked away in her camera phone, some of them presumably pertaining to several of his... projects. Nothing definitive, of course; the man Sherlock had met at the pool that night had not been a negligent one, so nothing on the phone would lead directly to him. It would, however, be a very unwelcomed irritant.

It was only a matter of time before he knew that Mycroft had gained access to Irene's files, and a matter of probability that he would have her killed if only because she was a loose end and useless to him now.

"You can't hide here." He said finally, completely passing over her comment, unwilling to rise to it. "Given your profile and the nature of the information you've been holding, it's unlikely your whereabouts will remain unknown for long, if at all."

The Woman stood, though made no move to leave, and she seemed somehow completely changed from the confident dominatrix that had almost brought the Holmes brothers to their knees. Sherlock found himself vaguely trying to reconcile this version of her with the version he'd been presented with on all other occasions, and it became apparent to him that this was the real Irene Adler. The Woman when all the pretense had been stripped away. He wanted to think her ordinary and dull like everyone else at the revelation, but the truth was this didn't alter his opinion of her at all.

"Do you hate me so much?" She asked, her face setting itself into lines of obvious distress, though Sherlock assumed it wasn't exactly in connection to what she had just said.

"Hate you?" He asked, his mouth quirking in to a very small and dangerous grin as he took a step toward her. "I don't feel anything for you."

Still trying to hurt her? Something inside of him prodded through the new and strange ache behind his ribcage. Why?

"Moriarty will know-"

Sherlock dismissed her words with an impatient wave of his hand, wordlessly telling her she needn't explain the situation to him - though he did feel a vague sense of satisfaction at having accurately assessed who "he" was.

Irene tightened her jaw, her eyes glossing over anew.

"He will kill me... I gave myself 6 months." She continued. Sherlock raised his chin, observing her from beneath lowered eyelids. "I was being very generous."

The low boil of frustration building up inside of Sherlock was now a familiar one. It was the dissatisfaction at having a particularly difficult puzzle dangled in front of him, only to be confronted with the fact that he didn't possess the necessary tools to solve it. He knew next to nothing about Jim Moriarty, and this was quite the crude reminder of that. He didn't like being in the dark. He didn't like being made to feel as though he didn't understand.

"And you've come to me, for what?" Sherlock ground out neatly. "Protection?"

"No, Mr. Holmes. My protection was ripped away from me tonight, and there is no help for me now." She sounded angry, and justifiably frightened. The return to the formal address was interesting as well, though he wasn't exactly sure why he thought so. "My life depended on the information on that phone, and it was worth everything, everything to me. It was worth your pride and my feelings... What good is my heart if I'm dead?"

Ah, Sherlock thought as something became clear to him, though not necessarily in response to her question. You hurt me.

It was a deeply mortifying realization, but one that he could not deny. She had brought up her impending death in the context of her feelings toward him, and he could not refrain from remembering his own feelings for her in the context of her earlier perceived death. It was what he was thinking just before he hailed the cab home.

He had been certain that she was dead, and it had hurt him.

Extrapolating from there, it was impossible to ignore the plain fact that she had hurt him again earlier tonight, and that's why he had wanted to hurt her... Which was, in itself, an unconscious admission of his own regard.

Something about this line of thought was, he felt, inherently dangerous to him, and since it was neither relevant nor useful, he managed to push it away and keep the strain from showing on his face. The only notable proof that he was fighting an internal conflict at all was that his breathing had become markedly more shallow, and his face had gone a tad paler.

"The only help I can offer, and the only help you can expect," he started, staring down at her, meaning his words incontrovertibly. "-Is advice to run. Run now, and far, and keep running, because you were right."

She watched him silently, seemingly appraising every movement of his face and every nuance of his words.

"6 months was incredibly generous." He finished, his mouth pressing together in something that was half grimace, half sneer.

He crossed behind her toward the door, though he wasn't exactly sure what he meant to do once he got there. Was he just going to pop out in to the study, pour himself a nice cuppa', and wait until she politely let herself out? All he knew was that he wanted her gone, even if gone meant that she was headed off to die, because then he would finally be rid of her-

Sherlock halted abruptly with his hand outstretched toward the door at that thought... because even in his state of acute agitation, he could recognize palpable discomfort at the idea that she should die, and what's more, that she should die because of him.

He screwed his eyes shut for a moment before blinking them rapidly, and then slowly, moving them from side to side as though examining the carpet beneath him.

"It wouldn't have mattered to you in a month's time." The Woman's voice, strained, came from behind him. He furrowed his forehead slightly, dropping his hand back to his side, and turning to look at her in bemusement. She swallowed, and one thick tear dropped from each of her eyes in unison. Sherlock felt, more than observed, that a change was taking place, and one that he didn't think would be altogether a good one. "I would have gotten what I wanted, my protection. Everything I worked for, as you aptly put it. I would have disappeared." She shook her head.

"And what would it have cost you?" Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued and looked him up and down with a judging and accusatory glare without moving her head. "Your older brother's temporary scorn. Some embarrassment. A loss. One loss against how many wins?" Tears, again. Sherlock swallowed, and his mouth felt uncomfortably dry. "You guessed what I felt, and then you threw me to the wolves, and for what?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but found, for once, that he had nothing to say.

"You were trying to save face in front of the cleverer Holmes in that room, and I was fighting for my life. You weighed one against the other and chose your pride over my life, because the only belief you have is in yourself, and you-"

These were vicious, unfiltered words, not necessarily in content, but certainly in subtext, even if they were being spoken in a relatively calm and unbroken cadence. There was venom there that hadn't been present minutes earlier... And the effect it had on him was significant, both because of the resentment she was inspiring within him, and because he was very suddenly feeling something precariously similar to guilt for perhaps only the second or third time in his life.

"Me?"

The Woman jumped slightly. He had meant only to make a placid interjection, but somehow it had come out as a coarse shout. He could have taken a moment to compose himself, but... didn't. He stalked toward Irene, closing the gap between the two of them.

"I didn't ask for you. I didn't ask for any of this." He intoned with his own venom, his voice darker and lower than it had been even in Mycroft's study. "You're a grown woman, Irene, or need I remind you that it was of your own volition that you chose to consult a psychopath about matters of potential national importance?" He grabbed her around the wrist, and she gasped up at him in surprise. "Did you think this was all going to end in a tea party at the National Gallery?" His eyes became two dark slits contrasted against the pallor of his face, his mouth turning in a twisted smile. "No, you knew what he was, and what he was capable of. You weighed your life against the whole of the country, and found the country wanting."

He burned his gaze in to hers for only a moment longer before releasing his grasp on her. She closed her eyes against the new onslaught of tears that fell, and sat heavily back down on the bed. Sherlock only stared forward.

"You came here wanting my aid or my mercy." He went on in a decidedly cooler, but no less hateful, tone. "I am neither willing to offer, nor am I capable of offering, either."

He looked down at her slumped figure, her hair falling in a mess around her face, obscuring her expression from view. He didn't need to see it to know that it was obvious to her now that she was defeated, and completely alone.

If he had been any other man, this was the moment he would have relented to her - given her anything and everything she asked for. Seeing her so thoroughly vulnerable and exposed was nothing short of gut wrenching - a term he had never had cause to apply to any situation, and one that he was intensely startled, if not horrified to have applied now... yet there it was. If he were any other man, she would have been in his arms, and he would be promising his life away to her just for the hope of taking her grief away... But he wasn't any other man, and so he merely swallowed the lump in his throat and said:

"Know... when you are beaten."

She looked up at him suddenly, her eyes as wide and wild as a frightened child's, her cheeks flushed in a deep crimson. Sherlock's breath caught in his chest.

"Do you?" She asked cryptically.

"What?" He asked trying to sound put out, though the look of confusion on his face probably betrayed him.

"Jim Moriarty is just as clever as you, and what do you think a man with your calculating intelligence would do if he were criminally mad?" Sherlock said nothing, but continued to look on as Irene straightened her shoulders. "He wants to burn the world down, Sherlock, and for no other reason than that he can. I'll be out of the way soon enough, but then I never really mattered. I shudder to think what it would be like to matter to him."

The insinuation was clear, that he - that Sherlock - mattered... And what was clearer was that her appraisal of the situation was nothing but correct, right along with each dubious meaning the word "mattered" implied. He had heard Moriarty tell the very woman who sat before him that he would find her and skin her if she had been lying to him over the phone, and he had an overall feeling that the man wasn't being figurative.

"I think I've well proven that I can handle myself." Sherlock responded quietly, though he was shaken, and probably visibly at that.

Irene smirked, though it held no warmth.

"You're going to fall." She said blithely. "And I only hope that I live at least long enough to see it."

That... stung, and since it was likely meant to, he was loath to accept that it did.

Sherlock bit down.

"And if you had chosen a different passcode, perhaps you might have... but now we'll never know."

He regretted the words almost immediately, which was another of his feelings rarely visited upon. For her part, oddly, The Woman looked abruptly more detached than she had even when he'd first entered the room.

"No, we won't, will we?" She murmured, though it did not even appear to be directed at Sherlock at all.

An excruciatingly long moment passed before Sherlock ran his hand impatiently through his hair and began to pace the room. This was just... unacceptable. The whole messy affair. He had never pictured himself the star of his own bloody soap opera, yet here was a beautiful and damaged woman sitting forlorn on his bed, and the compulsion to hold her until that look was well gone out of her eyes was becoming more and more urgent as each second went by.

How could he let her leave? How? But how could he let her stay?

Neither was possible. Neither was conceivable.

Sherlock hadn't noticed Irene's intent eyes fixed upon him as he paced until she reached out at his hand, halting him mid step. He looked down in to her face, her dark blue stare shining bright with tears and pain, and he was undone.

There were very few moments in Sherlock's life that he would categorize as "defining." The first time he had come to a conclusion before Mycroft had, and therefor the first time he realized he could perhaps be just as clever as his older brother, was one. The moment he realized he cared for John Watson was another...

And then there was this. A moment that, for reasons completely alluding him, he knew he would look back on with the certainty that this was when something had changed for him - completely and absolutely.

"Sherlock-"

His name hung in the air as he sunk to his knees in front of Irene, his hands desperately cradling her on either side of her head, and pressed his lips to hers in a frenzied kiss that, he understood now, was probably always going to happen.

The ground was dropping out from underneath him now, he knew, but as always when The Woman was involved, he was quite at a loss as to how to stop it.

...