It wasn't that she hadn't expected to get around to apologizing one of these days, of course. It was just that she…hadn't expected to get around to it.

And if she didn't make the greatest start in the world, Sally blamed the early hour and the unanticipated nature of his usual wraithlike appearance. Good grief, would it have killed the man to say something?

Then again, when had Sherlock Holmes ever been one for idle chitchat?

The first clue to his presence was the window thrown wide in the breakroom. Sally had actually stopped short in the doorway, eyeing the apparently empty room, indignation flooding through her. Sure, the room faced east, and sunrises were pretty, but it was half six in the morning, for crying out loud. Bit bloody early for some idiot to be leaving the window open. Having deposited her jacket at her desk on the way in, Sally could already feel the chill creeping across her skin as she strode across the room to pull it closed.

Only then had she noticed the curl of smoke from the corner.

Disregarding the wide variety of chairs and sofas scattered throughout the empty breakroom, Holmes was sitting—well, curled was more like it, propped against the wall in a corner, smoking what looked like his third cigarette of the morning. Hadn't bothered to flip on a light or so much as cough to announce his presence, neither of which should have surprised her at this point. He was staring into space, to all appearances utterly lost in thought—but Sally waved that away with more than a touch of impatience. There was no way Sherlock Holmes of all people hadn't noticed her entrance.

The twin thuds of two paper coffee cups hitting the communal table were enough to rouse him, or perhaps he could simply feel the irritation prickling from her skin across the room. At any rate, his grey eyes finally flickered away from the window, where the first touches of gold were just coming into view over the tops of the nearby buildings.

"He isn't here."

Sally had dropped into a chair at the unoccupied table, wrapping her hands around one of the cups. She was inwardly debating the pros and cons of freezing versus suffocating to death when the voice broke into her thoughts, startling her into a reply.

"What?"

"Sievers," said the Freak—no, Holmes, doing her best to break that habit, at least—with his usual degree of unconcern that he had no business reading anyone's thoughts.

Which he had been, Sally realized after a moment. Downright creepy, as usual.

"Who said anything about Sievers?"

Something about the challenge in her tone made him take notice at last, head coming up and eyes regaining their usual focus. Sally braced herself for the usual scathing flood of deductions, but instead he merely nodded in the direction of the tabletop.

She glanced down. Two coffees. Right.

"Your newest boyfriend won't be in for another hour at least. Lestrade only calls in competent officers on cases like this."

Sally opened her mouth to retort, and then shut it, wondering if she'd heard right. The Freak seemed to realize the insult had been mingled with something that could be taken as a compliment, because he set about immediately to rectify the mistake.

"Relatively speaking, of course."

"Thanks," Sally said dryly, taking a pull of hot coffee and immediately regretting it. She opened her mouth again, partly to let cold air steal across her scorched tongue and partly out of a knee-jerk reaction to ask the obvious question, and shut it again just as quickly. If there was one thing she had not missed during the past two years, it was the frequent (and highly public) streams of deductions regarding her love life.

Though in some ways Holmes had been right all along. She could hardly have done worse than Philip Anderson.

Then again, at least Phil had the human decency to lose his mind over his involvement in…that time. Sally popped the lid on her coffee and blew on it, half-sighing. Maybe the fact that she didn't like to put a name to the Freak's apparent demise was her own feeble subconscious effort at redemption. Or, more likely, sheer cowardice. Either way she wasn't sure what consideration he deserved; it wasn't as though he'd shown any to Greg or Dr. Watson for the past two years.

Still. She could be civil, at least.

"You're here early."

Holmes lifted his head from his knees and raised an eyebrow at her, as though to reiterate the points 'competent' and 'relative', but the intended effect was ruined when the glow from the window fell across his face. Sally felt her breath catch slightly in her throat.

The Freak looked…tired.

It was hard to say why, exactly. His angled face was as smooth and unlined as ever; the usual paleness marred only by hints of smudged darkness beneath the eyes. That in itself wasn't unusual—Freak never slept, and anyway he'd probably been here all night, interrogating the two suspects they had in custody—but something in his expression gave her pause and made Sally suddenly, acutely conscious that she'd never really caught the arrogant consultant on his own before. Without Dr. Watson at his side, or anyone else to show off for, he seemed somehow…different. Less carefree.

For a moment she wondered what it said that he didn't consider her worth the effort of raising his façade. Or…whatever.

Haunted wasn't anything new to a police officer. As a new sergeant Donovan had had nightmares of her own. Still did sometimes. And in the years since she'd seen it all too often in the eyes of officers new to the line of duty. The utter stillness that settled in after the first firefight or messy homicide, to replace shaking shoulders and fingers that curled and uncurled in the palm of the hand. Hollow eyes, because even after the jitters had gone it took a few days to wake from the nightmare. A vague, apathetic disbelief at the world in general—as though everything had gone either grey or too brightly colored to be real. Because that, whatever it was, had no business existing in the same universe as this 'normal life' nonsense. Sally knew the feeling, knew that look.

She'd just never expected to see it on Holmes.

And…she didn't like to imagine what that might indicate. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder what he'd been up to in the past two years.

He'd noticed her staring and was scowling openly now as he stubbed out his last cigarette against the tile. Without conscious thought, he lit another and brought it to his lips in one smooth motion.

Sally found herself speaking again, if only to break the silence and the thoughts it sent whirling round her head. She really must be tired, if finding London's least sufferable prat in the place she'd expected to meet her boyfriend drove her to this.

"Thought you'd quit. Ages ago."

Holmes blew out a lungful of smoke and cast a glance down at the cigarette in his hand, frowning slightly as though uncertain how it had gotten there. "I did."

Sally shrugged and went back to her coffee. Found herself grimacing again, but this time it had nothing to do with the temperature. Honestly, it was like drinking caffeinated dishwater.

Caffeinated being the relevant word.

Silence stretched on the way it usually did when the day's flurry of insults had been exhausted. That usually didn't happen before seven in the morning, which probably accounted for the growing discomfort crawling across her shoulder blades—or maybe it was only in her head. It took only a glance to confirm that; Sherlock's eyes had wandered back to the open window as though he had forgotten her presence entirely. Which, she thought wryly, he probably had. Not that she'd seriously expected any degree of awkwardness to bother him. Or cold, she reflected, in a fit of renewed shivering. He was wrapped in that enormous wool overcoat he wore rain or shine—probably for the sake of his bloody image, she'd always thought, but she couldn't fault him for it now. Sally was getting up to retrieve her own jacket from her cubicle—taking the coffees with her, thank you very much; Freak probably didn't have any experimental chemicals on him, but she had read enough cautionary entries from that blog—when her feet decided to carry her across the room instead of toward the door.

"Here," Sally found herself saying, pressing the extra cup into his free hand. "It's fresh and…you look like you could use it," she finished lamely.

Holmes stared at the cup in his hand, then gradually his gaze climbed to meet hers, expression showing traces of utter perplexity that even the most intricate string of burglaries rarely brought to light. When he finally met her eyes, Sally shriveled inside and retreated to her seat, forgetting her jacket entirely. Living embodiment of arrogance, and she had just fetched him coffee. Possibly the worst idea in the history of…

"Thank you."

The quiet tone brought her out of her mortified reverie. Sally wasn't quite sure what happened next—one moment she was blinking at him over the top of her own cup, the next she had set it down rather more forcefully than she had meant to, and the question was pouring out of her mouth.

"Why did you do it?"

"Do what?"

He had just raised the cup to his lips, and as he lowered it something in her expression must have made recognition dawn, because he closed his eyes. "Oh, please. Not you too."

"Not—"

"So you're 'interested' too now, are you? Tell me you haven't joined the fan club."

"No such luck," she said dryly, and could have sworn he almost smiled. Which made Sally suspect she was indeed going delusional. Greg was a great detective inspector, well-respected and all, but the next time he called her in at six in the morning she was going to tell him to go and—

"Moriarty upped the stakes," the baritone broke into her thoughts. "Or 'Richard Brooke', if you prefer. It wasn't unexpected." Something curt in the tone indicated that he wasn't about to elaborate. Fair enough. It wasn't as though she deserved an explanation.

Sally wasn't sure where her next words came from either, unless it was about a hundred sleepless nights.

"Listen up, Holmes." Oh perfect, that sounded like an ultimatum. Trying not to cringe again, Sally made an effort to go on in a softer tone.

"I'm…I'm not going to apologize for any wrong conclusions I came to in the past. Partly because it wouldn't do any good, but mostly…mostly because I think I was set up. And I think maybe you were counting on that."

She had his attention now, the full focus of that seaglass stare fixed on her. Sally took a breath and went on, trying not to feel too much like a bug under a microscope. She'd seen that look focused on battered corpses too many times.

"But I was wrong. Before, I mean. You may be an insufferable, conceited twat, but that was no excuse to treat you like a…" she trailed off. "Sorry. Sherlock."

It wasn't hard to explain why she'd hated him so badly, and maybe still did. It was never just the arrogance, the dismissive manner toward Yarders and clients alike, the total disregard for the privacy of others. It wasn't just Holmes' lack of respect for Greg Lestrade, a good man who'd done him more than a few favors and happened to be the best detective inspector Scotland Yard had to offer. It wasn't the drugs, or the questionable past-that-wasn't-quite-in-the-past. It wasn't even the fact that she'd struggled for this position, fighting tooth and nail against every degree of prejudice in her way, and then found herself, for all her competence as a policewoman, immediately upstaged by a twat in a long coat.

No, she had hated Holmes for years because when you were a detective sergeant, it wasn't too infrequent that you found yourself standing over a child's mangled body and wondering what kind of person could do that to a kid. And if you were Sally Donovan, your answer ducked under the yellow tape a few minutes later.

She'd been wrong, though. She'd misjudged him, and she had to keep telling herself that.

Sally forced herself to look him in the eye, wishing he'd drop that weighing stare—intrigue, she could almost call it, as though her face held the clue to some particularly gruesome murder. Sally shook off that thought.

"Not 'Freak' anymore?"

From anyone else, the question would have been confrontational, but Holmes simply sounded mildly curious, as though genuinely unaware of what had brought about this alteration in the set way of things. Something about it made her heart clench.

Sally dropped her gaze. "No."

He was silent again, eyes fixed on the smoke curling through the air, expression pensive, as though exploring a few overlooked details in a case marked 'closed'. His expression cleared a moment later; apparently he'd run hers through his database and correctly identified it as 'guilt'.

Well. She'd said it, anyway.

"It never bothered me," Sherlock volunteered after a moment, startling them both. "That particular insult lost its sting before I was twelve. Mere invective is useful, in its timing, at least. In figuring out how people think."

He looked up cautiously at this, as though uncertain at the conciliatory effect of these words, but the exposition simply made Sally feel worse than ever. Rather ill, in fact. If that was how he had shaped his understanding of normal human minds...

Little wonder he had never shown any interest in being one of them.

Maybe he has reason to call us all idiots.

It seemed impossible that anyone could just not know the sort of things it wasn't right to say, or to be happy about. Sally had always assumed that Holmes simply ignored social conventions out of a lack of regard for others. But what if…well, his brain was different, wasn't it? What if he genuinely didn't understand? What if he never had?

Had he simply relied on that…constant barrage of negative feedback all his life? Had anyone, aside from Dr. Watson, ever taken the time to explain to Sherlock Holmes when something was 'not good'?

Before he was twelve… Sally felt a blush of shame creeping up her cheeks. So she'd been behaving like a schoolchild, this entire time. She wasn't even a rude person in general. It was just that she'd…somehow convinced herself he wasn't a person at all.

"You don't have to do it, you know."

Had those words really come out of her mouth? Clearly no amount of caffeinated dishwater would be enough to make up for six hours lost sleep. Holmes must have been momentarily blindsided as well, because he actually lowered his cigarette.

"Sorry?"

"Pretend. You're not fooling any of us, John least of all. Well, not anymore."

The haughty look was back. "Pretend what, if I may ask?"

"That you're not human."

"What makes you think I'm pretending?" The answer came automatically, and sounded so childish that she was sure he regretted it the second it left his mouth.

If so, he was a better actor than she was. The calculating stare didn't waver.

Sally swallowed, hard. This was the bit she never liked to think about. The moment when her world had unraveled, when for the briefest second it had felt as though she were the one plummeting through thin air, heading toward very solid ground. Which turned out to be every bit as unforgiving as she thought. It wasn't like a bad dream. In a nightmare, at least you had the luxury of waking up.

Good grief, these past two years had messed them all up. For a fleeting, white-hot second Sally hated the man sitting in front of her.

Then again, it didn't look like he'd woken up yet either.

"We found the recording. On your phone. That's why you tossed it aside, wasn't it?"

Holmes' head came up, and his eyes narrowed.

"Mycroft," he seethed, such a dangerous expression passing over his face that Sally found the word 'sociopath' going through her mind again. It wasn't often you saw Sherlock Holmes display more than bristling annoyance—and that usually directed at her or any other officer deemed 'incompetent'. Which made the cause of this outburst unclear. 'Mycroft?' Was that a name, or—

"Never mind," Holmes hissed, reading the question on her face. "That recording was never meant for you, any of you. Sentiment," he spat the word. "He's such a bloody hypocrite."

Sally raised an eyebrow, deciding not to ask about this last. "It was a good enough reason for you to jump off a building."

"Rubbish," he snapped, drawing his knees to his chest. "It was practical. Let Geoff believe what he likes."

"Geoff?"

Sherlock stared at Sally as though she had grown two heads. "Lestrade."

Annoyance prickled across her. "You mean Greg."

"Whatever. He should never have known." A thought seemed to strike. "You didn't tell John?"

Didn't tell…Her eyes widened. "What do you think?"

"You shouldn't have."

"Well, we did." Honestly, after everything else that had happened, this was what he got worked up over? Why'd he record the bloody conversation, then, if not to salvage his own reputation…and who for, if not his grieving friends?

Another cigarette stub mashed against the tile as the head of curls jerked up again, mirroring an angry twitch of the shoulders. Sally had a sudden, brief vision of a stallion rearing and wondered whether Holmes would rise to his feet, but then a thought seemed to strike, arresting his movement.

"And it made things…better?"

She snorted. "Not exactly better, per se."

"But knowing…why…helped?" He sounded genuinely unsure, and that brought Sally to a halt for the umpteenth time that morning.

Was…was he actually serious? London's great consulting detective? Couldn't see the difference between—

So much for figuring out how people think. Different, indeed. If this was how Holmes thought all the time, no wonder he was such a head case.

The question was a jarring one. Sally felt oddly as though she were standing on unsteady ground. As though her perspective had flipped or turned inside out, offering an utterly skewed point of view, normal dimensions swapped out for unfamiliar ones she couldn't quite grasp hold of.

Did it help?

And that did it. She couldn't keep her mind from jumping back to that day, the worst of her life—the worst of all of theirs, actually, because maybe Sherlock Holmes was completely insane and a mass-murderer and kidnapper who traumatized those kids out of their minds but she'd never intended this to happen. And that was just the tip of the iceburg…Watson in shock and the poor girl in the morgue nearly crying as she laid out the body, something odd in the orchestrated movements of doctors and nurses and Lestrade barely keeping it together, dropping orders so mindlessly robotic that guilt eclipsed relief entirely and Sally figured he'd go home and collapse for a week as soon as this thing was over. But he'd been back two days later when they'd finished running the immediate evidence, and the phone with the cracked screen on the rooftop turned out to hold a lot more information than the splintered body of its owner. It had been a nightmare, informing Watson. But the scene playing out in the recording had, if nothing else, transformed the look in his eyes from nothingness to tangible pain.

John had even regained his voice before the funeral she hadn't attended, though by Lestrade's account it had sounded about as cracked as his flatmate's skull. It hurt just thinking about it, and the remembered pain muddied her reply.

"Ye…yes," she stuttered. "And no. But mostly…yes."

To her surprise Sherlock forwent any acerbic comment, merely mused over this less-than-eloquent reply.

"Why?" It was almost plaintive.

Why?

"Because," Sally paused, ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth. Why? "Because people don't like to think something…like that…is pointless."

That got through to him. He sat up straight, uncurling his long legs.

"Of course it wasn't pointless. But logically, if I was truly dead that wouldn't have altered the outcome."

Sally ignored this, tracing a finger along the stained woodgrain. "It didn't change his opinion of you, either."

A glance across the room confirmed the glacial eyes were boring into hers again.

"It didn't, you know. That pack of lies you fed him?" Just another piece to the nightmare, it had been, dragging that statement out of Dr. Watson. It isn't true, he'd said over and over again. I know what he said, but it isn't true. Those were the last words to come out of his mouth for a long time.

"He never believed it. For him the recording was just…confirmation."

For the longest moment, Sherlock's expression didn't change. And then he was closing his eyes, tilting his head back until it bumped the cabinet behind him, resting it there, deep in thought. Suddenly uncomfortable watching, Sally pushed to her feet and turned, stepping across the room to close the window. Pressing fingertips against the cool glass pane she paused there for half a minute, looking out at the lightening grey city, shivering slowing as the chill crept across her skin in earnest.

The window slid shut with a satisfying thump. And then, back still turned—maybe she was a coward, maybe she only said it because she couldn't see his face—Sally added, "You should tell him."

Holmes didn't say anything. She turned back around, sill pressed against her back, and watched him, noting that the glow from the window had slid down his jaw toward his collar, illuminating that bloody pretentious sapphire scarf and throwing the piercing eyes into shadow.

"You should, you know. Where you've been for the past two years. It helps to know."

The sun was well and truly up now, and the man on the floor raked his eyes upward and over the sergeant's shoulder. Noting body language but not attempting the futile task of reading her face from her silhouette. A tiny, uncharitable part of Sally's brain reminded her to take better note of light sources at future crime scenes.

"He hasn't asked." John. John hadn't. She wondered if that hurt him, or if it was a relief.

Or if, as was more likely considering this was Sherlock bloody Holmes, it didn't matter at all. But there was a question buried there, so maybe it did. Two years' absence and John didn't ask, why?

Sally gave the only answer she could.

"Sometimes you can't."

There was a groan from the vents as the heater sputtered into life. Sherlock was silent so long that Donovan moved back to the table, dropping into her vacated chair. Warm air washed over her prickled skin, and after a minute Sally felt herself drifting, chin resting in her hands as the boiler's muffled hum mingled with muted traffic sounds from the street below. One half of her brain still clung to that chill, early morning alertness, the other falling back into cloying exhaustion…

"And what if the answer isn't…pleasant?"

The tone made Sally flinch out of her stupor, almost brought the question dancing off the tip of her own tongue, if only to get it over with, stop the incessant wondering. And, heaven help her, the growing apprehension. But it wasn't hers to ask, really, hadn't been since…since forever. Since a couple of disenchanted knights had gone to the king bearing seeds: suspicion planted by a dragon and watered with years of festering resentment. What it added up to was that Sally Donovan would never be more than a side character in the chaotic life of Sherlock Holmes, and she wasn't sure anymore whether to be relieved or distressed about that.

Both, probably. John Watson certainly had enough of both.

"Then he'll need to know all the more."

There was no verbal response. Sherlock merely sighed, as though she had confirmed his worst suspicions, and then propelled himself to his feet in one abrupt, fluid movement. Standing a good six inches taller than Donovan, of course. Still annoying after all this time, even across the room.

He crossed to the door, curled his long fingers around the handle, but didn't open it. Sally braced herself for a parting insult, but Holmes seemed to be struggling with something. His mouth gaped open once, twice, like a fish, before he managed,

"The coffee, that was…good."

The comment was inane on so many levels that Sally found herself fighting a mad and almost overpowering urge to laugh. Too bad she didn't have that on video—she'd treasure this moment for years to come if she managed not to block the entire conversation from memory.

That was definitely the wiser course, forgetting it. Probably have to delete the solar system or something otherwise. No, she would not start giggling like a schoolgirl at the absurdity of this conversation, she would not she would not she would not.

She kept it together, though her mouth pulled up at one corner. "No, it wasn't."

Sally wasn't imagining it this time: Holmes' lips actually twitched in the suggestion of a smile. "No," he agreed, dropping his gaze at the floor. He took a breath, then, eyes flickering up as though he were about to say something more, and then he visibly deflated. "Tell Lestrade to look into the neighbor's magazine subscriptions," was all he said. And he pushed through the door.

"Take care, Freak."

Sally stepped forward to retrieve her empty cup and stood there a moment longer, eyes tracing the shadows on the wall, thinking.

Resentment was a funny thing. Looking back, it seemed hardly worth the effort, though that would almost certainly change the next time Holmes swanned into one of her crime scenes with the old mask in place—and out again with a piece of stolen evidence.

She'd give it two days, tops.

Sally stretched, twisting raised arms behind her back to relieve the early-morning stiffness in her shoulder blades, and then marched toward the door, crumpling her paper cup into the bin on the way out. There was a hollow rustle as it collided against the other already there, a shuffle as both gave a little.

Donovan was still a little dazed as she stepped into the hallway. Well, that had been…odd. But not bad.

Apparently some things could change.

And maybe, Sally reflected, as Lestrade's raised voice echoed from the direction of the yes-Sherlock-those-are-classified-and-we-don't-appreciate-your-lockpicking-skills filing room, some things never should.