Author's Note: Warning:This chapter has an M rating!

I really hope you guys enjoy this installment. It was a bit taxing at times, especially the beginning scene as I had to balance what I wanted to say with what I thought the characters would say… So, we'll see. I think it's actually my favorite vignette in the whole story so far, and it's not even between Sherlock and Irene!

Thank you for reading!

Come Attrition, Come Hell

Chapter 12: How Would You Know?

...

Sherlock sat silently in the small nondescript room, his back straight against a cold metal chair, staring across the table at his own reflection in the wall that was half mirror, half concrete. He knew that it was more than just his own eyes staring back at him from behind the glass, but he refused to look down or away as though he were a child being punished. Let them stare at him, he figured, and let them speak about him in their legal tones.

Just the day before, after all, was the day that Sherlock Holmes had become a murderer.

The door to the interrogation room opened behind him, and though he didn't move, he could see the reflection of Mycroft step in and close the door.

The older man rounded the metal table slowly, and took a seat opposite his little brother, though Sherlock continued to stare forward, just shy of meeting his eyes.

Neither man spoke for a long while. Neither moved. Neither seemed to breathe. This was not a usual moment. It was not just another one in a thousand interactions between Sherlock and his brother, where there was always a crackling energy of rivalry and hostility - of competing wit and information. This was new. This was different. The uncanny circumstance was harsh against the backdrop of the Christmas of just yesterday, and it burned too bright to focus on. If there were no words spoken in the first ten minutes that Mycroft sat before his little brother in the small, grey, hateful little space the two of them now occupied, it wasn't for lack of words to speak.

Because if silence was not silent, if silence could be a sound... The Holmes boys were screaming at each other.

Sherlock turned his gaze slowly to meet Mycroft's without turning his head.

"Why?" Mycroft's simple inquiry finally broke the quiet.

Sherlock blinked once, purposely.

"Don't." He said, and the word was pointed, the last letter annunciated deliberately.

Mycroft sat back with something of a small sigh.

"Of course not." He responded almost blandly.

Sherlock grit his teeth, though he remained still.

"And are there people chanting in the streets yet?" He asked with a decidedly bitter catch in his otherwise very calm, almost bored, lilt. Not that it mattered, really, or that he truly cared... Or rather, not that he had ever cared about that type of thing before. "Thousands of Sally Donovans yelling out their 'I told you so's..."

But as he spoke, it abruptly occurred to Sherlock that Mycroft appeared to him somehow different than he ever had before. He had never seen him look sad or lost... but he did now. Which was more frightening and more surreal than anything he had felt yet today, or in any previous point in his life. Mycroft had always been made of ice and steal, and underneath that had always been calculation and control.

But, Sherlock supposed, that is what most people would have said about him as well, and honestly, he couldn't even try to pretend that it was true anymore. He was always going to love people differently than they expected or wanted, differently, maybe, than they even understood... But the fact remained that he did love. He did... feel. He had never wanted to, no, but he had never wanted a lot of things that he ended up getting in the end.

And now here he was - a man who had loved and lost. A man who had seen a friendship through its worst and best times, all the way to its end. A man who had literally committed murder to protect the people he cared about most.

So, here the two of them sat. Sherlock, for the first time, seeing himself and his brother for what they really were.

"No." Mycroft answered, and the way his countenance was suddenly wiped clean of the expression Sherlock had just been ruminating over was clearly deliberate. Perhaps he had seen it reflected in his little brother's face. "We're keeping this quiet."

Sherlock turned his head completely toward Mycroft at that in confusion, his eyebrows coming together for a moment.

"Quiet?"

Mycroft raised his head.

"There will be no trial," he started. " And this will not be in any of the newspapers. We can't afford for Sherlock Holmes to be a murderer."

Sherlock swallowed, feeling himself beginning to shake from the pit of his stomach outward.

Psychopath.

Freak.

Murderer.

It was true. Today it was all true.

"We?" He asked, even though it was suddenly difficult to speak.

"Britain."

Sherlock laughed shortly through his nose, though no smile appeared on his face.

"A government cover up, Mycroft? If I'm to be imprisoned for the rest of my life, I think someone will notice eventually."

There was a heavy pause, and Mycroft's face began to register several more emotions that Sherlock had never seen it take on... but he couldn't read them.

"You are not to be imprisoned."

Sherlock's mouth began to form around the word "what", which would likely have led to the question "what are you going to do with me, then?"... But the word never came out, and instead his forehead rose in realization, as he remembered their previous conversation not 24 hours before this moment.

MI6, they want to place you back in Eastern Europe. An undercover assignment that would prove fatal to you in, I think, about 6 months...

"I see." he said quietly, his perfect posture finally failing him as he, too, slumped back in his chair, his eyes becoming far away. "So, I shall not be declining your job offer, after all?"

Mycroft looked down.

"Sherlock, if I could protect you from this-"

Sherlock snapped his attention back to his brother suddenly.

"I need to make some phone calls." He interrupted, unwilling to hear whatever Mycroft was about to say. He didn't want an apology, or a sentimental oration. He already knew that if there were any other way, that his brother would have found it. There was no point in delving any further.

Mycroft paused for a moment, but Sherlock's stoicism was absolute, and it left no room for argument here.

"Naturally." Mycroft said finally. "I'll need to know who first."

"Molly Hooper. Lestrade. Mrs. Hudson." Sherlock rattled off without thought or hesitation.

Mycroft furrowed his forehead.

"John?"

"He'll see me off."

Of course he would.

"Indeed."

But that wasn't all he needed, and since he likely had very little time to negotiate the terms of his exile, he continued on, his eyes narrow and his face hard.

"And if I were to ask you to see to the safety of my friends, to make absolutely certain that-"

"I'll check in on them, from time to time." He said, which meant, of course, that he would have someone else check in, but that was assurance enough Sherlock supposed. "Anything else?"

A beat.

"Yes." He answered. "There is one more thing."

To Sherlock's surprise, Mycroft smiled a small, almost knowing smile.

"Irene Adler, I presume?" He asked.

Sherlock's eyes narrowed slightly further to the unexpected reply, but he managed to keep the rest of his face neutral.

"Oh, come now." Mycroft went on. "You didn't think you were the only person who knew she was still alive, surely. We've been aware for quite some time."

"And how long is that, exactly?" The younger Holmes asked, rotating his jaw momentarily.

Mycroft ticked his head about a degree to the left in an almost nod, his eyebrow shooting up for just a moment.

"So. Shall we put her on your list?" He responded, ignoring Sherlock's question... And the younger brother knew better than to push for the answer.

"... No." He swallowed, his eyes averting somewhat downward. "Then you have a file on her, I suspect?"

He looked back up.

"Of course we do."

He nodded slowly.

"... Is she well?" He asked, attempting to appear somewhat disinterested even as he knew asking the question at all belied the act.

"Quite well, in fact." A pause. "And safe."

Sherlock's mouth became a thin line on his face, feeling the strain of emotion in his neck and jaw. She was well. Safe. That was all she had ever wanted, wasn't it?

No, it wasn't.

"My last request is that you allow her back in to London."

Mycroft seemed somewhat confused by this at least.

"Seems like a poor last request."

"Yes, but..." He faltered a bit, but only for a split second. "But it is, nonetheless, my last request."

Mycroft poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue as he took in a deep breath. Sherlock knew this was probably a bit much to ask of his brother, but what did it matter?

"I'll see what can be done."

Sherlock blinked.

"Thank you."

Mycroft laughed shortly.

"Sentiment." He said almost as though the word were distasteful to him.

Sherlock's face twitched briefly in to something like a smirk as he averted his eyes to the far wall for a moment, straightening his posture again as he did so.

"Well, we can't all be Mycroft Holmes, can we?" He asked, and then looked back at his brother.

"Yes... And I suppose you shall elect to keep me in the dark over just why exactly you chose to... do what you did?"

Sherlock said nothing, his face a blank mask.

Mycroft took a deep breath, and then reached in to his inside jacket pocket to reveal Sherlock's black iPhone. He placed it on the table and pushed it toward his brother.

"3 phone calls, then." He stood. "I'll leave you to your privacy."

"And John?"

"I'll arrange everything with John. I should imagine he would be quite willing to... see you off."

"I suspect so."

Mycroft nodded. His hands stretched slightly outward at his sides as he turned to go... but he stopped just short of the door, and turned around to face his brother.

"Oh, and by the way, little brother..." He started, his eyes on the floor. "About what you said earlier. People chanting out hatred for you in the streets and all that." He paused, looking up. "If that's what you believe would happen, you're wrong. The people quite rightly 'believe in Sherlock Holmes'... or haven't you heard?"

Sherlock swallowed, his face rigid. Even though it didn't come near it, really, that was the closest Mycroft had ever come to expressing any kind of pride in him... and at now of all times.

Mycroft left the room without another word.

The exhausted man let out a shaking breath that he felt he had been holding throughout the entirety of his interaction with his brother... and it was quite a few moments before he felt composed enough to take the phone from the table.

Staring at the screen for a long moment, he stole himself for what was not going to be an enjoyable few conversations. He dialed the first number.

One ring. All it took was one ring.

The woman on the other end picked up after one ring, because his friends picked up when he called. His friends came running when he texted. His friends loved him. He wasn't prepared to say goodbye, and now that he knew he had to... he didn't know what to say.

"Molly..." Sherlock started, and clenched his eyes closed. "Do you have a moment?"

She did. Sherlock breathed in deep.

"I have something I need to speak to you about."

3 and A Half Years Earlier

Sherlock stepped over the threshold in to his flat and looked around for a moment, feeling utterly exhausted and emotionally spent. There weren't many times in his life where he felt as though he needed a break, but this was one of them. The days and weeks ahead of him were going to be painful and difficult in ways he was sure he couldn't even imagine at the moment, and all he wanted to do right now was breathe.

John Watson looked up at him from his arm chair.

"Oh, you're back." He said, closing the book that he held open in his lap.

"Astute observation." Sherlock responded monotonously.

John smiled the sort of smile that usually appeared on a person's face before he laughed, except he didn't laugh.

"It's a good color on you." He said, gesturing with his index finger at his own face, but clearly referencing the bruise that had formed on Sherlock's cheek, temple, and under-eye.

Sherlock brought his fingers up and tentatively felt along the tender portion of his face before half rolling his eyes and dropping his hand back down to his side.

"Yes, well... with clients like mine, who needs enemies?" He asked, sauntering slowly over to his own chair and sitting down heavily.

"You know you had it coming."

Sherlock's face shifted in to a genuine glare.

"Why do you think that family came to me, John?"

"For help."

"No, they didn't come to me for help. They came to me for answers. And when I gave them answers, they started crying and hurling off-the-mark insults at me in ignorant indignation."

"Well, to be fair, it was only the little girl who cried."

"And I was supposed to..." He shook his head and shrugged pointedly, because he was sincerely at a loss in this case. "What? What exactly was I supposed to do?"

"Sorry, before or after you were being punched in the face?"

Sherlock sat up, his face darkening.

"I don't tell people what they want to hear, because what people want to hear rarely relates in any way to reality. If they wanted to be coddled and told everything was okay, then they should have gone to a support group for the terminally delusional."

John cocked his head back a little, beginning to look concerned.

"Are-"

"I'm fine."

"You don't even know what I was going to ask."

"You have the 'are you okay' look on your face."

"Well, you have the 'I'm not okay' look on yours." He paused. "Did your conversation with Mycroft not go well?"

Sherlock pursed his lips just a bit, looking to his side for a moment, and then back at his friend.

"What did you find out from Lestrade?"

John sighed.

"The woman at Charing Cross." He started, and then cleared his throat. "It was Louise Clarke... but then, you already knew that."

A moment passed, and then Sherlock smirked almost to himself, though it didn't soften his face.

Ah. There it was. He did know. He knew, because he observed. He was paying attention.

Up until this moment, Sherlock has assumed that Moriarty was going to target him, and that he was going to send him his own message. Which had been all the more reason to get the man in to custody as soon as could be managed... But that wasn't right. He'd been missing the bigger picture. The cracks in the jigsaw puzzle had obscured the image. But he could see it now.

The murders. The tying off of loose ends. The very public show of power. This wasn't to send the criminals of London a message. This message was to Sherlock... Just like the pink phone, and the trainers, and the puzzles had all been calculated to catch Sherlock's attention, to start a trail of breadcrumbs that would ultimately draw him out to the pool that night so many months ago; these murders, this pattern, were meant to tell Sherlock that something was coming.

That Moriarty was coming.

But then, of course, that meant-

Find me...

- Moriarty wasn't just going to go after Irene Adler because she had lost the phone, or because she was useless to him, or because she had disappointed or angered him. No. Moriarty was going to go after Irene, because he knew that Sherlock had let her go. After everything. After the humiliation and the lies. After using him as a pawn in her game... he hadn't insisted that she be dealt with in a manner that not only would have been justified, but possible, given his brother's position in the government. To someone from the outside, someone who was paying attention, that may have looked like an act of kindness from someone not yet prepared to see The Woman fall.

And Jim Moriarty was "just as clever" as Sherlock. He would have been paying attention, too.

Irene Adler was on the run from a psychopath, possibly dead, because he had let her go... And because she had meant something to him. She was the outlier in a string of only a few people Sherlock cared about. She was the fuse that would ignite the bomb.

So the card hadn't meant "find me, I'm in trouble"...

It meant "find me before he does."

And he had to. He had to find her... and if she wasn't dead already, Jim Moriarty would need to believe that she was.

Sherlock looked at John. His friend. Part of the bomb that Sherlock had already known was in place... but he just hadn't known the timer had already begun to tick down.

But he did now.

"Yes," Sherlock responded finally. "I suppose I did."

3 and A Half Years Later

That I never replied to you, however, is not my main regret. I couldn't have replied. You paralyzed me. I couldn't read you, and I couldn't analyse you, as I'd had no previous experience to compare your actions against. I was unable, through the texts you sent, to gain any kind of insight in to you or your motives, and anything I would have replied with would have been too telling. I was unwilling to hand you information about me when all I really knew about you was your phone number. That's just me, and you always knew that.

My main regret, Ms Adler, is Islamabad.

3 Years, 5 Months Earlier

Sherlock pressed Irene up against the hotel room wall, the door barely just closing behind them, The Woman pushing Sherlock's shirt down his arms. The new feelings, and thoughts, and sensations were bombarding him from all sides and from every angle. His heart raced with different emotions than it had the only other night in his life when he had found The Woman's lips and body against his.

He felt burning anger now. A simmering and consuming fury that made him pull the white robe from The Woman's shoulders in an abrupt jerk, down her arms and away from her body, throwing it somewhere elsewhere in the room without agility or grace. He had wanted it off of her now, and now it was off.

She met his eyes as she pushed his trousers and pants down his legs, and there was a noticeable intensity of her own in them, but he spent no time allowing himself to analyze what it was. He didn't care. He didn't care what she felt. He didn't care what he felt for her.

Why should he care what she felt while he was on fire?

He'd repressed it all for too long. He'd let it go unanswered for too long. It had always been there, always. In the back of his mind. Coloring his thoughts. Coloring his views. Coloring his life. It had all changed, hadn't it? When he had pushed the door open to find her in his bedroom. Everything had changed. And he'd known it then. He had known the moment he dropped to his knees in front of her for a desperate and heartbroken kiss that he would never be the same.

And he wasn't.

Now as he pinned The Woman to the wall with his weight, his hand burying itself tightly in the underside of her hair, he wasn't the same. Now as he shuddered in to her lips against the sensation of his bare torso pressed to her breasts, he wasn't the same. Now as he roughly pulled The Woman's left thigh up against his waist, he wasn't the same.

She had broken him, and she had changed him, and this - everything - was her fault.

He wanted her now, badly. More, he realized, than he had ever wanted anything. This wasn't him, it had never been him, except it was. If this was happening now, it was because it had always been in him. It was because The Woman had found a way to breach his reserves and his walls, and his heart, and now she was in there. Inside. Scratching away at everything that had ever made him whole. Everything that had ever made him who he thought he was. But who was he now?

Who. Was. He?

Sherlock's breath caught, his mouth hovering open near hers, and time stilled just for a moment as he pushed himself up and inside of The Woman that had destroyed him.

He wanted her. He wanted her so badly even now as he had her. He loved her.

And God he despised her for it.

So, if he was on fire, if he was going to burn, then he'd let her catch fire right along with him.

The overwhelming emotion that Sherlock felt pound in his chest made his fingers dig a little too deep in to The Woman's flesh at her hip, and she gasped in to his kiss... Though he didn't get the feeling that it was in disapproval.

"Oh, god." He grunted, pulling his mouth away from hers and resting his forehead against the wall at her side of her face.

"Are you a believer, Mr. Holmes?"

Sherlock brought his head back from the wall and leveled his gaze at her. Her eyes were bright and her skin was sheened over with sweat... And he could see her for all the ways that she was wonderful. He could see her for her wit and her cunning. He could see her for her cleverness. He could see her for her singular grade of elegance. He could see her for her beauty, too, because she was beautiful. It was all in her eyes and in her hands as they held on to him for dear life. It was all in her sharp smile.

Sherlock Holmes. Torn apart by a woman. One woman. The Woman.

He pushed suddenly and roughly against her, and her eyes slid shut - a far too appealing noise escaping from her parted lips.

"No." Sherlock responded from behind gritted teeth.

He pulled her away from the wall suddenly at that, and turned them around - pushing The Woman back several paces until her legs hit the bed and she landed backward on to the soft white sheets underneath her.

Sherlock moved at a steady pace on top of her now, his breathing quick but controlled as he stared down at Irene, his hands on either side of her face on the bed. She stared up at him, meeting his eyes, meeting his movements; her hands wrapped around his arms.

A shadow seemed to cross her face for a moment.

"You do love me, don't you?" She asked, raising her hips upward as rhythmically as Sherlock moved against her. Now it was his turn to close his eyes against the physical sensation. He could hardly reconcile how good his body felt, when inside he was in agony.

He said nothing.

Her fingers moving gently across his cheek forced his eyes back open, and he found her staring up at him, her eyes knit together in what looked almost like concentration.

"You do..." She almost whispered. Sherlock raised his head.

Could she see it in his face? Was it reflected in his silence? In his body? Was he touching her in a way that was usual of someone who was in love? Could she readit in his damn heartbeat the way he had been able to read her feeling in her pulse?

Sherlock reached up and took hold of her hand that was still caressing his face, entwining their fingers for a moment, and then held her hand to the bed.

"I told you." He said, pressing a little harder against her as he spoke. "I'm not a believer."

She took in a sharp breath, pressing back against him.

"But you feel it." She said, her voice low and seductive.

Yes, he felt it.

Sherlock tilted his head. Even now as he felt such an intense urge to hold her, to allow himself the comfort of her, to love her... He also wanted to make her feel as devastated as he did, and he hadn't felt such an odd awareness of vindictive desire since the night he had stared her in the eyes, changing her life forever with 4 simple letters.

"I don't love you." He said, and his voice cracked just slightly.

A slow and lust filled smirk spread over Irene's face, though it didn't quite reach her eyes.

"Show me what it feels like to not be loved by you, then."

Sherlock smiled a dark half-grin. That was a reasonable request.

He shifted his weight, and began running his palms down The Woman's arms before reaching her hands and clasping them with his. He moved them slowly out to her side before abruptly pulling them up over her head, pressing them to the mattress.

"You..." He said, allowing himself the sense of awe as he took in her perfect nude form; the curves of her body that were so unlike the flat lines of his. She was soft where he was bone, painfully exquisite where he was angular and harsh.

He kept one hand over her wrists, and moved the other slowly down and over her collar bone, her breasts, her side, and then her hip. She was smooth and magnificent, and every other ridiculous and sentimental word in his vocabulary that he could think of to describe how utterly brilliant she was to him.

"Me." She responded, arching her body as he continued to move his hips with hers.

"You said I'd regret you."

"And did you?"

Sherlock swallowed.

The Woman let out a long, low moan, moving her head back against the bed as her eyes closed and Sherlock's widened.

He hadn't realized he had quickened his pace, or that his breathing was no longer even or controlled.

"Yes." He responded to her question, but the word came out nearly as a hiss. He could feel the Woman straining against his hold on her wrists above her head, but he didn't let her pull away, and if the sounds escaping her were any indication, she didn't mind.

And through all the intensity and fog of lust and want, Sherlock realized that this really was the last time he would have The Woman this way.

The throb of emptiness and heartache in his chest made him angrier than he had yet been, and it manifested itself in a deep thrust of his body against Irene. She groaned nearly to the point of screaming, and Sherlock's mouth descended on hers to stop the noise up. He swallowed her cry of pleasure and was aware that he had made one himself. Outside of his mind, and outside of his thoughts, his body had taken over and it felt so... good. And wrong.

But, he vaguely realized, he didn't mind that.

The words were forming in his mouth before he had time to think about them or what they meant, and then he spoke:

"Now, you're going to regret me."

3 Years, 5 Months Later

Sherlock stared at his computer screen, his stomach dropping as though he were falling from a rooftop in to oblivion.

He sat back in his chair and brought his hands up against his face almost as though to pray, and his eyelids fluttered shut. He hadn't been aware of the tears that had been filling up in his eyes until he felt them fall down his cheeks in unison. His eyelids snapped back open and he pressed his thumbs against his face quickly to dry the liquid from his skin.

Yes, it felt as though the world were dropping out from underneath his feet again even as an unmovable force rushed up to meet him, and that if he reached out that his hands would connect with nothing but air, nothing but emptiness, nothing but... nothing.

Nothing is what awaited him on the other side of this fall.

After all... he would know.

...

TBC