A/N: I could do this forever. Especially since you've been so very kind to me, and graced me with so many heart-warming reviews. And yet—Sherlock and Irene are so complex, and so unique, and they have to be kept in character, and therefore: this is the final instalment of this story. (It looks like I've got a thing for five-chaptered fics.)

Thank you very much for all your support, and for bearing with my highly irregular updating. I hope to venture into the world of "Sherlock" again, if my Muse decides to help. Until then!...

Between the two of them—their wits, his observation skills and Irene's predisposition to extract all kinds of information from unsuspecting males—they crack the case open within seventy-two hours from their arrival.

"I don't think his reaction was justified, though," Sherlock states as they share a celebratory bottle of Mosel red, spread out in the armchairs at half past three in the morning. "So his business partner had an affair with their secretary. Why not fire the girl and be done with it? Why drown him in a barrel of a perfectly good Riesling?"

Irene rolls her eyes. "They were lovers, Sherlock, before they were business partners. It's quite obvious if you decide to look for it. That's why he felt so betrayed by the affair. It was the crime of real passion, not just business-related necessity.

"Anyway," she adds smugly, stretching her back like a very content cat, "another case closed. Is that what you wished for when we escaped from London?"

Sherlock snorts and puts his glass aside. "It's definitely not closed."

"How so? You looked for the answer, and you found it. Isn't that what detectives do?"

"I'm a consulting detective. I have to share my findings with someone. Make sure the crime gets punished, and justice prevails."

"Sherlock Holmes, ever the knight in the shining armour, even in death," she remarks sarcastically, with something quite like disdain flashing in her eyes. "You cannot do this, Sherlock. You're dead. Act it out."

"How come you are allowed to continue your 'work', then, despite finding yourself in quite a similar state?" He's getting angry, his adrenaline level still sky-high with no proper closure to the case provided.

"Because I'm not doing the same things I had before. Because I've moved on to a different circle of people, changed my profile, made sure nobody would recognize me. And because dear Jim's dead, thanks to you, of course." She sighs and slides off her armchair, kneeling at his side, her hand gently stroking his bare arm. "You cannot go to the police. You shouldn't as much as give them an anonymous hint. Nobody would catch on, not initially—but it'd make you feel bold enough to try it again, and again, and one day… One day, someone would read an article about a tip-off enabling the police of Andorra, or Sweden, or Hungary, close a particularly puzzling case, and think: 'Hey, that's just like the stuff that crazy fake-detective guy in London used to pull off—what was his name again?...' And they would share it with a friend, or blog about it, and keep an eye out for other news like this.

"And there would be other cases, Sherlock, because we both know you couldn't stop once you were back on the track. And then—then the Yard would find out, and come looking for you."

"There's no one there clever enough to ever catch up with me," he protests, not looking at her. Irene's fingers tighten.

"They would ask John to help them. Or your brother."

His head whips around, eyes locking with hers. "These are all probabilities, theories, pointless musings, Irene. I need facts. I need actual proof on which I would build my deduction regarding my future. This isn't helping."

He stands up and starts to pace, from the armchair to the bedroom door, to the bathroom one, and back, a vicious triangle, his head hurting just a little, the cogs in his mind turning restlessly. "What am I if I cannot do my work? I was always doing my work. Why should I stop now? I'm smarter than most people I've ever met, probably smarter than ninety-nine-point-nine percent of this planet's population. Why should I worry about being discovered?"

"Because although it is highly improbable, it is not impossible," she throws his own saying back at him, still sitting on the floor, very calm yet with an expression marking some serious decision upon her face. "And once they find you, Sherlock… Well, let me just tell you that you'd rather 'come out', and it is, on your own terms."

"And what if they do?" He rarely raises his voice when talking to her, but this is one of the occasions. "What could they possibly do to me? I can prove I'm not a criminal; I'm not like—"

Like you.

It hangs unspoken in the air between them as they look at each other across the dimly lit room; Sherlock can only see half of Irene's face, illuminated gently by the light coming from an artificial fireplace behind her right shoulder; her eyes are obscured, holes of darkness over perfectly shaped cheekbones, but he knows there's no more doubt about the disdain in them.

"So that's it," he hears himself say in a dull, toneless voice. "That's what they call a 'deal breaker', isn't it?"

"I believe you're right," her voice is soft, almost tender, and when she stands up and comes closer to him, embraces him, tugs her head under his chin, he feels a pang of regret of it having to be so.

"I cannot be what I'm not."

"I wouldn't want you to."

He takes her hand, thumb brushing the underside of the wrist. Her pulse is slow, steady and strong—there's no doubt in her, as there is none in him.

He slides one hand to the back of her head, angles her face towards him, kisses her deeply, trying to make her understand, make her see everything that's in him—the restlessness, the hopelessness, the need to be himself, the regret. She responds leisurely, setting a slow, sensual pace as they move into the bedroom. Sherlock lifts her up, feels her legs wrap around his waist and slips his hands under Irene's dressing gown, smirking as she gasps at their coldness against her skin.

Even when they're at their most tender and selfless, sex is usually about the power play between them, about having the upper hand, taking the lead. This time, though, he takes her as much as he gives himself to her, knowing with cold, blinding certainty this may well be the last time they do it, ever.

He falls asleep afterwards, giving proof to the fact of him being as normal and average a man as there ever could be, at least in some ways. When he wakes up, Irene's sitting in the edge of the bed, fully dressed and with her make-up on, tracing lines across his forehead with warm fingertips.

"I'll be off now," she whispers, and in his dazed, sleepy state he doesn't find in himself any will to protest. "Keep the passport, and stay in touch, hubby dearest."

He murmurs something inaudible, before blinking twice and looking at her with slightly more clarity in his eyes. "I've… enjoyed this," he admits reluctantly. "I never thought I would."

"Neither did I," she answers and kisses the corner of his mouth, reminding him of their very first kiss, at Baker Street, in what seems now to have been another lifetime.

He'd turned his head then, captured her lips with his.

He doesn't now.

He closes his eyes and lets her leave him. Lets her get away.

They exchange emails with surprising regularity. She sometimes sends him pictures of places she's in, and if he's close enough, they meet for coffee, or for lunch. Never for dinner.

She looks well when he sees her, and tells him he does, too.

They never sleep together again. Never kiss. Never as much as touch each other beyond the strictest formal conventions. It would be so easy to slip back into that, to start pretending once again they could really do this, this time for sure—but that would have been a lie, and they have to cope with enough lies as it is.

Two and a half years after Germany, Irene sends him a link to an article which states, once and for all, that the person claiming to be Richard Brooke was in fact James Moriarty, a man who'd later murdered the very journalist that published his story, and that the whole campaign of hate aimed at one Sherlock Holmes had been nothing more than a bunch of lies.

He sits in a Parisian café, drinking ridiculously expensive coffee, as he texts her back: Took them long enough. Perhaps they'd fired Donnovan.

He doesn't expect an answer, but it comes, almost straight away: You could go back now.

I know.

"You bastard. You bloody, unfeeling sod."

He's more than ready to get punched, but instead he's being enveloped by strong arms, and held in a crushing embrace for an alarming amount of time.

"John. Let go. I'm losing the feeling in my fingers."

"Right. Right." His best friend—his only real friend—steps back, and eyes him carefully. "You look good."

"For a corpse?"

"Yes, that too. Have you told anyone yet?"

"I came here first. I thought I owed you that much—a chance to make a bloody mess of my face before anyone does."

John laughs nervously, brushes a hand over his chin. "That might still be coming your way."

"I know."

"Shall we call Mycroft? Mrs. Hudson? I don't know… Molly?"

He bites his tongue to stop himself from saying something regarding Molly's involvement in this whole scheme. There'll be more than enough time for that later. "I think we'd better have."

Mycroft is rather shocked, but obviously relieved. Mrs. Hudson looks like she might have a heart attack, but she doesn't, fortunately. Molly simply smiles brilliantly, and Sherlock knows she's thinking about Irene's—Jane's—absence, trying to make some sense of it.

It takes them three days to have him installed back at 221B (no tenants seemed eager to live in the apartment that has bullet holes in the walls and the fridge that had been contaminated with suspicious specimens). It takes Mycroft four days to get a hold of Lestrade and his team, and haul them over.

Anderson and Donnovan wouldn't look him in the eye, which makes him feel quite smug. Lestrade looks stunned, angry, but first and foremost: relieved. "Does this mean you'll be working with us again?" he asks after the others have left, looking quite hopeful. Apparently the rates of successfully solved cases had dropped significantly since he 'departed'.

"Maybe," he says with a shrug, although he knows he'd jump at the very first case they gave him.

The DI nods and leaves, together with Mycroft, and Sherlock is left alone, in a place that looks, smells and feels familiar—the place where he belongs.

He unpacks the last of the books. Strokes the warm, shiny wood of his violin, checks the tension in the strings, the level of deterioration in the bow. He's not ready to play yet, but it's coming—everything is coming back to him.

Everything is the way it should be.

His phone vibrates in the left pocket of his coat, thrown carelessly across the sofa. He picks it up, half expecting a dinner invitation from the Watsons, or a similar message from Molly, who seems to have got her hopes up when he'd returned to London alone.

Naturally, it's neither of them.

Congratulations on your successful resurrection. What is the social protocol? Do you expect flowers? Chocolate? A Harrods gift card?

He smirks and walks into the kitchen, phone in hand, to check whether the take-out menus are still there. They are. I'm feeling rather peckish. Will probably coorder dinner soon.

As he waits for the answer, he realizes he's not actually sure what he'd want it to be: so when it does come, he's surprised to feel amusingly elated.

He reaches for the receiver and punches out the number of the nearest Indian restaurant, eyes fixed on the phone laid down on the table, the screen still glowing:

I'm not hungry. But I do believe I have some unfinished business with that desk of yours.

The End