(no subject)

[iagreewithyou]

Sherlock had thought he had forgotten. He pressed on like he had dealt with it all, as if he no longer cared for what had happened back in London. That much was a lie about as see-through as glass. Joan had, undoubtedly, been able to tell the way he stopped and went cold when she so much as mentioned Irene the first time. Perhaps his shut down on the topic wasn't entirely purposed. Perhaps it was just the cold shot of pain. More agonizing than any physical horror he had ever endured, the pain of loving and trusting and losing and betrayal. The pain of believing in someone and somehow knowing they would fail but still, in the pit of your heart, the heart you had potentially unwillingly gave to them, it burned.

Then came a letter stamped with a distinguishable A that could only be one person; they'd argued over it. Joan was afraid. What it would do to him, what he might do, but after the storm had calmed she was convinced and sleep took her away. Something else took Sherlock away. He thought he had forgotten this, too. It was like any other skill you'd become far too attached to, unfortunately, and it was relearned with ease. He was an addict. One clean stretch didn't clean his hands, didn't wash away all those dabbles from such youth, didn't clear away the mess he left and promises he broke and people he left down as he just drowned himself. Far too much the coward to take the gun and pull it. Some bare thread of hope still there.

He would be found in exactly the state he mentioned during one of their cases. A motel, low end, rough part of town. Cheap locks. The gear put away but the man himself so incredibly spun half naked on the floor.

Comments

[hischauffeur]

He wouldn't answer his phone.

Joan was use to that though by now. The breaking of the two hour rule and the subsequential drug tests that followed that breaking. She even expected it really when she woke the next morning and found him no where to be seen. Joan blamed herself in part for that after the mess of things she had helped make last night. She should have stayed up. Should have even if he would have hated her for it.

Usually? He didn't break it for more than an hour at a time and the only time that wasn't the case was the day he'd been kidnapped.

Joan knew by 10am she'd made a mistake. She'd let him out of her sight during a crisis point and now? Now she was following the trail of Holmes to an ATM he had taken cash out of too close to their brownstone to be a good clue and was off.

She'd be grateful later though that he failed to shut off his phone, the app doing wonders on her own of pinpointing his location to a motel one, far too down in the bad side to mean anything other than one thing.

The manager was happy to give her his room after providing a description, but only after she claimed to be his wife.

"You get him out of here in the next twenty minutes or I'm callin' the cops. I got complaints. I run a business here, not a crack den."

She barely registered the mans words, taking the spare key and going out of the main office and outside once again. The lock was flimsy enough she could have entered without dealing with the scumbag desk man who didn't look like he knew a respectable business from a port-o-john he charged by the hour for.

But all of that slid so far from her mind as she flicked the light on to the dark room and found him.

It was... hard to explain how she felt. She'd dealt with people falling off the wagon before, she'd seen it. Heard about it before then. She never had blamed them, only expected them to answer for their mistakes-- but in that moment the look on her own face could only be described as painful, nearing excruciating, disappointment.

And not all of it was for him.

"Sherlock." she tossed her keys and bag onto the floor and kneeled down. Fingers searching for a pulse, though she stopped when noted the evident rise and fall of his breathing. So not overdosed. At least she hadn't failed utterly-- yet.

"Sherlock." she said harsher still, sighing and settling back on her knees.

She needed a minute. A minute to-- rally some energy back. To not feel some part of her falling into a chasm of her very own. Joan couldn't go back to that surgical room right now. Couldn't go back to that crushing weight of defeat. Not now.

"What did you take? Hey- what did you take? Where is it?" a faint smack to his cheek. It wasn't necessary but she damned well felt it was.

[iagreewithyou]

He wanted to believe he was better. He worked so hard to prove to himself that he was better, stronger, more capable on his own than before. Then he remembered the utter mess of his life when he lived alone. Drinking, fighting, and not to mention drugs. When he wasn't working or doing something pertaining to work he was practically criminal. He wasn't better at all he just had far too much ego. He wasn't self-sufficient at all. He was utterly dysfunctional. And now everything was painless, was quiet, was peaceful.

Sherlock heard the door. He was conscious, aware, but too high to move at any rapid speed. He was beyond the initial state of Heroin-high. The euphoria having come - and proof of that on the walls. This was Sherlock years ago. Seedy apartments doing equations on the walls that may or may not relate to anything, cryptic notes, ciphers - high out of his mind. At first, it actually produced worthwhile results and then he became addicted. Now he was at the point of 'nodding'; sliding in and out of what seems like a sleep state although he was not sleeping. Aware enough to hear the door; aware enough to hear her voice - for a second he thought it was... Irene. How many times had she found him like this? Took care of him.

There's a noise, a grunt, a hum. His eyes tried to focus on her but they were heavy, glossy - Watson. And for a moment a look of remorse fell over his expression. He very much knew what he did. In after thought, he would hate himself for it. He couldn't help it. His desire to be better than it was outweighed by his desire to revisit old memories. To dream that maybe if his eyes opened again like this he might see her. It was so laughably foolish.

"Watson?" It's quiet. Come on, Watson. It's so obvious what he took. He didn't feel her hand. He didn't feel anything.

[hischauffeur]

He wasn't in any danger, he was just-- high. The realization of this setting a bur in the center of her heart that clogged up her initial response which was to... to help. Technically by the order of the man who paid her pay checks if this kind of scenario happened she was meant to call the police if he was not in need of a hospital. Even then, she was suppose to pack his bag and have him back at the rehab facility the moment he checked out.

Joan saw it as tough love when she first began as his sober companion, and she had half a mind to do it. And half a mind-- to cover for him. To not have them take away the one thing she had thought kept him from this place. Perhaps not, because in one instant he had thrown it away and she still didn't understand why, not really. She knew a name and an emotion tagged to it, but nothing else.

So she takes his wrist, turns his arm and finds the track marks and then quite unceremoniously dropped his arm back.

"Where is it." it's not even a question at this point, it's a demand. "Is there any left?"

[iagreewithyou]

He couldn't look at her. Eyes fell away in a mark that was undoubtedly shameful. She didn't understand and how could she? He avoided telling her anything. It was a woman, she said. She deduced that much quite quickly and then she got a name from Alistair. Irene. Then, from his reaction and admittance, she has likely deduced that Irene was very important to him. Quite close, he said. Quite close.

He fumbles to get himself up, at least a little, upon her grabbing his arm. His other hand finds his face and washes over it as if he could shut out the world and make her go away, make everything go away. Just bury himself deeper. A heavy and defeated sigh falls from his lips as he gets himself to sit back against the bed.

"I threw it out," his voice was quiet.

[hischauffeur]

"I don't believe you." it is out before she has time to bring it in. Joan stands up quickly, eyes casting around the room in a quick scan.

"I want all of it. Standard procedure." she says, keeping her voice stone. It wasn't meant to be cruel, quite the opposite. It was meant to spare him whatever array of emotions she was having trouble sorting out right now. He didn't need that, as much as Joan wanted to slap him upside the head and demand just what the fuck he had been thinking...she knew. Some part of her still understood this job and understood this, even if she didn't fully understand the why.

"Is it still in the bin?"
Okay. Maybe she believed him slightly, but Joan was on a mission and that mission was to get it out of this room if it still existed in it. Every last bit of it. The drugs. The syringes. The tourniquet. All of it.

[iagreewithyou]

He only lied because he wanted to do it himself and he did want to and he had every intention to destroy every last piece. Sherlock looks up at her for a long hard moment.

"Slow down, Watson." He makes a motion with his hand, lazy. "Heroin, remember?"

There's an ebb in his brow. "I have to do it." he tips his head. "Understand?"

[hischauffeur]

Cross purpose again.

"No. You are not so much as touching it again, I'm going to do it and then--"

Police. Right? That was next in the procedure, but Watson stands still for a moment. Spine rigid and her eyes fixed on him. She had to let him bottom out. If this was it she had to do it. That was how it went.

"-- then we are going home." No reason she couldn't inform his father there instead. Besides the last thing she wanted was that clerk calling them for her.

"You aren't in a position to be asking me any favors. Not this time."

And she moves away from him to check the bin first and if it wasn't there she would proceed to search for it. He wasn't exactly in a position to stop her and frankly he really did not want to try right now. She did understand, she understood plenty. The same thing that was compelling him to do want to do it himself was partly what compelled her. It was her job. This was her job like detective work was his and she had to see it through. Had to fix this blunder she felt she made.

[iagreewithyou]

Sherlock is silent. He speaks no more. He wont tell her where they are but an examination of the bottom left drawer will expose a stash compartment. Clearly this business is used to events like these. He frowns deeper still when she says that they are going home. Sparing his only clean route, his work.

"You hadn't failed, Watson." He speaks as she finds it. The small pouch of tar. A few more needles and elastics. All the necessities to cook it and be clean. "I failed."

[hischauffeur]

That stops her to the point it is visible how she gives a start, jerking open the drawer and finding the culprit sitting innocent as can be on the bottom.

This was not the time to be thinking about Liam, but she was and she gathers up everything as carefully as she could. Pulling out the layer of newspaper in another drawer that was meant to provide some sort of cleanliness and wrapping them up.

She picks his shirt up from where it was discarded on the bed and tosses it in his lap. The physical evidence of his relapse still for the moment in her hands.

"Put your clothes on, then come with me." she doesn't say how it isn't his fault. It is, but-- it is hers too in her mind. She feels it even though everything she has ever experienced with Liam and other addicts tells her she isn't, but that letter is in her minds eye. The things she said and how she pushed.

He isn't Liam. He isn't the other addicts. She has gotten too close and Joan knows it.
The way she looks at him now though tells it all. She doesn't believe him. Not one bit. And it is a wonder whether this is the same look she gave the gurney when they rolled her patient away. Dead.

He won't get to see it long though as she heads to the door and opens it, leaving her bag and keys for the moment. She waits for him.

[iagreewithyou]

He can feel the last stretch of nodding fall away. Typical for it to last so long, he took the first hit late into the night and it was almost 2PM now. Now comes the slow roll of consciousness; the guilt. The horrible crushing of all that you couldn't feel before. Physical ache. Sickness. Gut wrenching depression. It all comes back. Reality. The memories, too.

"She used to find me like this. 'Where would you be without me?' She'd ask. 'If you could ever catch me." He looks up at Joan as the shirt falls onto his lap. If you could ever catch me, he said. Irene. The only person in the world to slide through his fingers every single time. He leaned his head back and let out a morose laugh as both hands covered his face.

"You can't fix a person, Watson." It's more stern in tone as his hands drop and he tugs on his T. Slowly, Sherlock manages to his feet. His eyes slowly roll from the evidence in her hand to the look on her face. Finally moving away from the wall, he follows. The sun catches him enough for am arm to cover his eyes. Much later: "You can't fix a persons mind."

[hischauffeur]

"I think we both know... that it isn't your mind that needs fixing."

And for a moment her hand comes up and just sits on his other arm. She holds there then guides him to her destination which happens to be a very big dumpster on the other side of the motel building. After a pause she relinquishes over a few contents of the newspaper. She keeps the needles (she was a doctor and knew better than to leave used needles about...also she would be keeping this half for her own level of disposal later), but hands him the packets and the elastic.

"Toss it in, please." She adds at the end for a reason she can't fathom. Her hand stays on his arm.
"I'm.. I'm not going to be like that for you, Sherlock. I just want you to know. I don't want to find you like this again. I won't--"

And that was partly her job speaking and partly Joan. Which is probably why she says this even though she knows she shouldn't. She needed to stay detached, but it was far too late for that right now.
"I won't push so hard next time. Leave it here. Leave all of it here and we'll go back and you'll try again."

She wasn't going to let him give up, no matter how disappointed or hopeless either one of them felt. Joan fixed people everyday of her life and those people had been just as wounded, just as broken in their bodies...and she knew it wasn't comparable and that to heal in the way he needed he had to want it. But Joan believed somewhere he did and that was enough. That was the first step.

[iagreewithyou]

He is silent again as he tries to push aside the sting her words radiate in his chest. Holmes wanted to think he was cold, distant, impossible to get close to, unloving. Completely rational. Perfect, but he knew he wasn't perfect in any way. In mind, in method, in heart. It was hard for him to swallow that someone might care. It was hard for him to allow it. Much easier to convince himself this was her job lest he gets... too close. He always did. Silently. Care too much.

A hard swallow comes from him as he's handed the items. Something between panic and appreciation that she heard. She understood. Why he had to be the one; he needed to be the one. To prove that he could. That this was a slip and not a fall. That he could get back up on his own feet again. His hands curled around them and turned, reaching up. It was a very clear struggle but still he let them go. Satisfied. Of course he wanted to heal but he was just -- he was afraid, and she knew it. She had deduced that from him in minutes.

"If I must," he turns to her again. "I'd like to tell Gregson myself. He should know why I -- I wont be returning. From me."

[hischauffeur]

Joan doesn't answer him, not yet. Not while she is still-- deciding.

"We'll deal with that all later." she says firmly, taking his arm again in hers as if she wasn't trying to keep him steady.

"My car is parked over there. I'm going to put you in the back seat and you lay down. It's unlocked. I'll...go get my keys."

It felt awkward talking so normally when she knew in a few hours her word alone would be what kept him out on the street or put him back in rehab.

She led him again to the car and left him to his own devices for only a few short seconds as she hurried back into the room and collected her bag and keys.

"...you know as well as I this isn't over yet. I'll take you home first, but if it gets worse I don't know if I can keep that promise so I won't make it."

A pause.

"But we'll try."

[iagreewithyou]

She's giving him another chance. He doesn't deserve it but she is giving him another chance. He almost wanted to cry, but managed to hold it back and simply do as demanded. He sat, quiet, the whole drive back to the brownstone. More and more his high wore off. more and more his body felt heavy and mind washed up with far too many words rumbling about. It brought him back to Moriarty, Lestrade, Adler. It brought him back to boxing and drinking and experimental detective nonsense that ended too often in a ditch with some prostitute feeling bad for him.

He travels up the the flat just as quiet. Enters, and closes the door behind her. When Sherlock turns he is almost anticipating a good hook. To the let, she'd remember. A good backhand to the left, he anticipated.

[hischauffeur]

By the time they reached the brownstone any desire she had to do so was gone. He just looked... like he didn't need it. Wanted it perhaps, but didn't need it.

"Do you want some coffee?" is all she says instead. Quiet, but there is no pity there. She is angry and disappointed and all those things still, but the car ride home had given her time to wrap up those things and file them away for her own time.

"If you want to go to your room I'll bring it up, just this once. Or... if you want to go over some cases? Your interrogation tapes are still out. You just got to the 79' Chicago PD ones right?"

There is something terribly forced about her attempts to make him comfortable, but she is trying all the same to find him something in which to distract him. To take his mind from-- well, itself.

"I'll watch them with you."
In other words he wasn't to be out of her sight until his system was clear, but she packaged it nicely enough.

[iagreewithyou]

Did you want to know what coffee does? Well, Sherlock will tell you. He'll tell you all the effects that Caffiene has on the psyche of a person and it's incredible similarities to Meth. How, while many seem ignorant to it, high amount of caffiene can mimic effects of a meth high. How the percentage of persons who become painfully addicted to cafinated products crossreferenced with who are now clean from meth use is also incredibly high.

Then he'll rub at his eyes that began to burn and trudge his way forward. Yes, he waited for it. He wanted it. Wanted to be yelled at and slapped about. Some odd form of caring, the only one he really quite understood -- poor attention was still attention. For the longest time no one ever paid attention to how brilliant Sherlock was. Only how weird he was.

How wrong he was.

"I don't want to," he said, falling in to the front room and bunching himself up into the couch. "I can't think of that now, Watson." He pokes at the side of his head in further explaination.

[hischauffeur]

"Alright. So that is a no on coffee."

Was her reply after a prolonged pause, watching him settle upon the couch and suddenly finding the meter of her patience beginning to rise again. She was not going to give into her anger and this weird pit in her stomach that she was beginning to notice wasn't not so much disappointment as nearing to... betrayal? Which was irrational at best, yet there it was.

When Sherlock didn't want a case, Joan knew her list was suddenly impossibly-- non-existent of things to relate to him with. She'd sat up enough times with Liam, with others and held their hands through it all and talked and worked through it and maybe with Liam it had hit close to home but the others she had only the expected level of trouble with.

Sherlock though... she didn't know how to do this with Sherlock and no amount of telling herself "this is like any other addict" convinced her that was so.

Joan followed him into the room though and after a moment of deciding between the chair and the sofa, sat on the far side from him. She didn't want to make him feel cornered, but there was no way she could just leave him up by himself and pretend this didn't happen. He wanted attention? He had it now.

"What can you think about then?" the question didn't completely lack exasperation, but it didn't lack sincerity either. "Because what ever it was you were trying to run away from in there? It is going to come back or already is and we need to prepare for that."

We. As in in no scenario of this was he going to shut her out.

[iagreewithyou]

Why do people start taking drugs? Anyone who takes illegals are, in fact stupid. There was the reasonable stupi and the stupid stupid, he would say. He might have justified it once and maybe he still does. A little. That is beside the point. Each drug had it's appeal; it's market. Heroin was one for escape. To stop thinking. Something that Sherlock never did otherwise.

His eyes look over to her as she enters the room and finds the couch. While his body and head are turned to the side, curled up in the chair, he is glad she is here. More than she might know, maybe. Yet somehow also fearful. He knew who Liam was. A lover, someone she still cared greatly for. He'd deduced that she knew someone who was an addict, a person close to her, and he was right.

"You." He said. "Me. Irene. London. Heroin." A pause. "Moriarty."

His hands come to his chest in expression. "I can't just let you in. I know you would rather hear this from a sober mouth Fantasize of me telling you all there is to know about Sherlock Holmes, blah, blah."

A wrist is rolled, "but you don't want to know, Watson. You don't want to. Trust me. You'll learn, and that will be it. All it will be for you is a memory I shared that sits there and sits there and sits there. It will always just sit there, Watson."

[hischauffeur]

"Is that really such a terrible thing? Everyone has a past, Sherlock. Everyone has parts of it that they'd rather forget."

And for a moment that little bit of useless fluff seemed all she had to say, but she knows it is insufficient. All of this sober companion sticking to the rules fluff had always been insufficient when it came to him. Sherlock opened up when Sherlock wanted to open up and no amount of this step program brochure stuff worked.

"...Whether I want to know or not, I have to. This--" she motioned to the boxes of tapes and files that were scattered around the room. "-- this is your work. This is your puzzle. What you do to pay your penance."

Joan leaves the thought unfinished, hanging in the air as she clenched her jaw a few times then relented.

"You are mine. You knew that already though I guess." a sigh as she pressed her fingertips to forehead, "And I forced it and look where we are now? So yeah. I've got it. You can't let me in. You find it easier to go back to the needle than come to me."

Harsher than she intended. Far harsher. This wasn't how she was suppose to do this, yet Joan couldn't deny it felt relieving to do so. A selfish act, her professional mind chided, so she tried to fix it.

"I'm not saying I'm quitting." she added quickly, "Just.. usually I've made more progress with someone by now. It's like relearning and I made a mistake. And that? That will sit there. Not the rest. Not knowing just makes it worse. "Was there something I could have done?" "Had I known could I have done better?"."

Joan shakes her head and scoffs at herself before standing up and venturing to the kitchen.
"You may not, but I need some coffee."

[iagreewithyou]

"It's what I do to stay alive, Watson." He speaks quietly afterward. No, Sherlock was impossible to be around. He only did what he did when he felt and/or thought he would do it. There was no force in this entire world that could make him do something he didn't want to do; no amount of guilting or bribing and it's why his relapse was so profound. It had to have meant that at one second he was more than triggered with the memory of it's good side but he wanted it. He wanted it more than the ego he's built in denying it.

"I am not your duty," it comes far more harsh than what might have been expected. "I am my duty and you're the unfortunate soul that got hired to attempt salvaging my pathetic arse, but let's forget my self-pity for one moment and look at what you could be outside of this nonsense. Watson, my relapse has nothing to do with your failure."

He's pleading, Joan. He wants you to see how much he cares about your well being over this 'failure'. Please understand what he is saying, please. He stands, albeit with a small wobble, while she goes off to make coffee, Hands come to his forehead with a hard slap. Whether through frustration or by headache is not quite known yet. Instead, he'll follow her in.

"There is no escape talking to you," which is not entirely a bad thing. "There's truth, there's" he has to look away, "nakedness in being open to another person, especially for such a short time -- A needle doesn't make it better. It drowns. No Heroin user wants their life to be better; they want to disappear." He tips his head to the side. "And no addict wants to go back. It's never about want."

[hischauffeur]

Joan listens even as she roughly set about making coffee, trying to distract herself in the mundane task and finding it steadily becoming harder and harder to remember how many scoops to put into the top or whether she even put the filter in first or enough water until she eventually gives up. Leaning her palms against the side of the counter.

She turns when he begins to speak of her, defensive and ready to snap again until he finishes and she is left once again with her brows furrowed at him.

"I know that." she says after a moment just to-- say something. "I know that."

Repeated to herself. Confounded with how all her objectivity just seemed to have been thrown right out the window in the past day after all this and there seemed no end in sight. She turned and punched a button on the coffee maker and it slowly began to gurgle to life.

"It's such a waste. When I look at you it isn't just another addict. Another "pathetic ass" I was sent to salvage. The things you can do- that you do? You have this great analytical mind, yet you can't work out your personal relationships or your past to save your life almost literally."

Joan understood. She did. She knew that it wasn't her fault and that it couldn't be her fault and to even try to make it so was undermining everything she was taught. Sherlock had to take responsibility for himself and she was only there to cushion it, not take the blame. Blame wasn't suppose to be something she took upon herself.

"And yeah. Okay at first the money was entirely good and the job was something I knew and was good at. I took it, but after-- " how could she say this? It's getting to close, to personal and she wants to just let it go. Call the cops. Turn him over. Wash your hands of this, Watson it isn't worth it.

"-- if there is a way to help you. To make these things not hurt so badly you do this to yourself. If there is even the smallest chance, I have to help. Okay? It isn't for you to decide what I want and don't want to know."

Unspoken still behind it all was the thought, this one selfish thought-- if he can overcome these demons then maybe I...?

She turns back to face him, arms crossed over her chest.

"Who is Moriarty?" she asks, out of sheer defiance. And now they are edging dangerously close to the conversation that started this all. Her breath comes quicker and it is visible she is losing that calmness she was trained so well to have under pressure. This isn't the time and she knows it.

[iagreewithyou]

And Sherlock sees it all. Like it had been sitting there all this time, why she became a companion. Penance. Help save lives because she'd lost one but this wasn't where she belonged. He knew it but somehow ithad just lit up with such vibrance and possibly he now understood just what this situation was doing to her.

There was nothing but the coffee slowly coming to a stop that sounded through this house. He reaches out for a cup and takes one, pouring. Not for her, for him. Putting aside his talk about caffeine addiction, he was going to start burning out in - now, more or less. Sugar. He needed lots of sugar.

"Moriarty," he finds himself wandering over to the table to take a seat; both hands coming to wrap around the warm cup. He scrapes his hands over his mouth and rubs along it. He's not stalling. It's fair. It's time. How to tell it, this fantastical story he is not even sure of it's truth. How much of it was halucination from his drug use? In retrospect -- But Moriarty was a real person real close to being the reason Sherlock almost was not here today.

Irene found him, that night. The night Sherlock lost.

"I can't go back to London," he starts there. "I can't go back," his hands ache for movement. They seek whatever they can get as he speaks. "because I am wanted for murder. I am wanted for murder because of Moriarty, the only reason I was permitted to enter America was because Scotland Yard knows I did not do it. Even if all the evidence points to me that I did. Friends, lets say."

[hischauffeur]

That-- was not what she expected. Joan had expected him to blow up at her at best and ignore her at worst and go back to whatever hole it was he built for himself when he wanted to be rid of these thoughts.

She doesn't say anything. Joan grabs another mug and fills it before taking a seat opposite of him. Taking the time to put some sugar in her own cup before she stirred it over and over. Watching the liquid swirl for a long moment.

"Whose murder?" it was the logical next question wasn't it?

[iagreewithyou]

"Moriarty's." he finds himself looking into his cup after stirring in an appropriate amount of sugar for this oncoming crash. His body slowly rolls forward against the table and he grounds his forehead against it.

"I had a... Reputation in England. Moriarty was," what I could have become, he wants to say as it was true. Obsessive, intelligent, violent. "The king on a chess board."

[hischauffeur]

"...can you elaborate?"

He said that he hadn't been arrested and the evidence repressed, but did he do it? Joan couldn't help but wonder Irene's place in all of this, but she resisted asking for now. Trying to digest what she'd already been told and getting the full story.

He had chased serial killers before, why not consult on organized crime as well? That all made sense to her, but this "Moriarty"...it sounded so sinister. Something from a book or a movie, not reality.

"So he was like a crime boss? Mafia-godfather-like guy?"

[iagreewithyou]

Both hands scratch at the back of his head before he rises again and they come up to dig at his eyes with a heavy exhale. He really did not want to talk about this for so many reasons but he owed it, didn't he? He owed it to her after what she had just done and everything she had done in the passed for these weeks. Hands fall to the table.

"I can't," not only because of memories but because of the level of security on the matter; but he nods at her deductions fingers splayed and the tips tapping the table. "Yes, Watson. A very dangerous crime boss with very lethal information and plans."

[hischauffeur]

And now. Now came the question she had been somewhat reluctant to ask. Joan stared fixedly at his hands, following how he moved and tapped and otherwise nervously shifted. It made her anxious while seemingly soothing his.

"... did you do it?"

For Irene. For justice. For whatever reason he might have for killing someone. She wasn't-- Joan didn't see it in him, but then again wasn't that what all people whose friends or family committed a violent crime said?

[iagreewithyou]

"No," a moment. "He killed himself, and in that moment I knew that he won." But he was a lot more volatile than she seemed to have brought herself to think. The drugs helped in his twitchy behaviour back then but that point aside Holmes was still quite eager to fight tooth and bone for what he believed right.

Sherlock leans back and stays silent for a moment as the coffee comes to his lips. Fingers tap down one after the other on the fake china. Flashes of the past now seeming so scrambled. What would Lestrade say about it all? Would their stories match up. What happens now that he knows Irene is still alive. What is going to happen. Is Moriarty? Was it all a clever ploy? Was Irene trying to lure him back to London?

[hischauffeur]

"How does... Irene figure into this all?"

One last question. She planned to call England, of course she did. Meddling and prying further, but she planned not to tell him though Joan knew he would know regardless.

She hadn't even touched her coffee yet, but mimicked him when he went to do so and realized she had definitely not put enough in the pot. It was weak and sugary, but she drank it all the same if only to keep herself a bit more alert.

"Did he hurt her? I mean before-- when you thought she was gone. Did you think it was him?"

[iagreewithyou]

He knows she will. He considers leaving. Packing up a few small things and relocating elsewhere. A chat with Gregson before she can get to him after she gets to his contacts in England and hopefully work something out. If not, then. Well, he doesn't know. His options are limited. He looks up at her for a moment with something of an unreadable expression. Only in due that he doesn't know what he is thinking; he doesn't know what to do. All it took was once. Things were better when he was distant. Safer.

"Irene was something of a specialist of her own," he lets the cup slide to the table, eyes down on the brim that his fingers ring about now. Slowly they slide around the cup; around and around. "She worked with him, although I did not know at the time. She was a flawless actress."

[hischauffeur]

At the last bit Joan feels her heart sink. She knew already from his own words-- they were close. He didn't take her death well. All of that... and to find out someone who had helped him and had seen him like this and what else they may have shared.

He was guarded. It was in his nature. But he let Irene in and then she betrayed him.

That provided...a lot of clarity.

But she planned to gain more later. Holmes would have no opportunity to slip out on her tonight or for a long while. He'd relapsed. Their check-ins were about to get more frequent. Every two hours? Try every half-hour. At least for awhile now.

"Did you know all this before she "died"? But- also. Why would she get in contact with you now? You wouldn't say what was in the letter before and you don't have to, but if Irene was apart of this crime organization will she come here?"

[iagreewithyou]

He still doesn't know the full story of Irene and Moriarty. He is unsure how much he really does want to know. She was a criminal, she came and she went, she got in trouble with many high-authority persons throughout the entire world and was paid for it with thrill, excitement, and riches. She did what she did out of desire and nothing else. Yet for someone so irrational, it seems, so incredibly impulsive, she was miraculously logical and smart enough to trick Holmes on more than one occasion.

In the end, though, it was betrayal. No matter what mind might say that she may as well be the only reason he was alive today. She found him so close to the end and she was the only reason Lestrade came to clean him up and send him off before anyone knew that Sherlock Holmes got away. She was also the only one who knew the progress he was making; the only way Moriarty could have known what he knew.

He couldn't help a short laugh before letting his hand slam down on the table perhaps a little more strong than he initially meant for it to. "Adler works for Adler. Moriarty drew her in with his promises, and he won."

[hischauffeur]

Joan reached out quickly to stop her mug from toppling over, giving a start herself at the sudden noise.

He hadn't answered her question, not really and that was a tell to her that it was time to let this conversation fall aside. For now.

"I'm not going to tell Gregson." she said, referring of course to his relapse.

"And neither are you. Finish your coffee and go shower or whatever else and then you are going to bed."

Not your mother she had said once, but that tone sounded terribly like one. She stood up and poured her own cup out in the sink before coming to stand by him.

"Come on. I'll get my pillows off my bed and some of the extra blankets. You know the drill."

As in Sherlock's claim to privacy just became nil. Joan planned to set up camp right at his bedroom door. It was not even dark out yet, but Joan was in no hurry for night and the inevitable bottom out crash that would come.

[iagreewithyou]

He could feel his heart slow, his hands start to shake, pain start to slide back. Drear, tiredness, depression. He'd make a comment on motherhood if he had one. Instead, with a deep frown, Sherlock pushes his way up to his feet and turns abrupt. It almost looks like he's grabbing something to his chest by the way his shoulders curl. Silently, he just walks up the stairs.

Well. Good. Sharing time was over. They can go back to never talking about this ever again. Fair is fair.

[hischauffeur]

Faint steps followed behind him the whole way up, diverting only to venture into her own room quickly and strip free her sheets and blankets and grab her pillows.

The whole bundle in her arms as she entered into his room and dropped them upon the floor. She set up a place for herself right by the door, finding him like a child sent with no dessert laying face down on his bed still completely clothed. She would have sighed, but found herself with little energy to even do so and instead used what remained to venture across the room and close the heavy drapes and leave them in darkness. Settling down in her makeshift "sleeping bag" Joan thought to read, but not even the discomfort of the floor beneath her back seemed to ward off sleep.

She was drained and took the opportunity to recoup. She dreamed of morgues.





Later when he had begun to stir as if waking, Joan found reason enough to situate herself on his bed. Waiting for him to slowly groggily come back, but he was taking a bit longer than Joan was clearly ready to wait and so-- well being a doctor she did what she did best.

"How are you feeling?" it was not a question seeking an emotional response, it was a question to his physical. Joan had no problem invading his space it seemed, placing the back of her hand against his temples to check for cold sweats or clamminess as she sat perched on the side of his bed. Congratulations, Holmes-- you've made her right worried. The combination of fitful sleep and nightmares.

If he wasn't wakened by that he would surely find offense when she pressed her thumb beneath his eyelid and pulled down. It had been maybe three hours tops and the outside had finally begun to darken. It came quicker in the colder months, but Joan had flicked on his side lamp which was honestly in need of a new bulb. She released his face soon enough though and instead took his arm in her hands, fingers finding his wrist pulse point as she checked her watch.

[iagreewithyou]

Yes, didn't shower. He went up stairs and passed out exactly that way. One big scorned manchild who got sent to bed for being particularly naughty. As he managed to pass out, at least for awhile, he jittered and jumped a bit in his sleep. It was actually the burn out that woke him. This feeling of panic on the back of his neck. Cold sweat across his skin. His brows frowned as she began to poke and prod at him. Slowly, Holmes' body rolled over and lossed eyes managed to look up at her.

"Must you be so invasive," it comes slow and quiet as he swats away her prodding hand. "I feel like I've been run over by a truck, how do you think I feel, Watson? I'm coming down from Heroin."

[hischauffeur]

"Yes, I know." ah and there is that disappointment again Holmes. Best not mention the obvious.

"What I want to know is whether you feel abnormal. Are you going to suddenly drop dead any second and leave me out of work? Because I hate job hunting."

She does not release him and instead gives him a swat back of her own to stop his meddling. She eventually let go of his arm though, satisfied and rested her forearm above his head, leaning over to check his eyes again now that he was awake.
No longer constricted. That was good. It had been a few hours so now he was experiencing the opposite; pupil dilation.

The steady expression of the surgeon in her faded after a moment though and her eyes flicked over his face quickly as if she was remembering something- sometime before. But she simply said, "You still need a shower."

And then away she went, settling back against the wall (he had no headboard to speak of) and folding her hands in her lap as she stretched out her legs. Distancing herself in her own way and settling back into the role of "sober companion".

"It will help break the sweats. But if you want to sleep more I will go get my book." as in she will continue sitting. Right here.

[iagreewithyou]

He tilts his head to the side, watching her; listening. He hears it. More than just the upset of having a client relapse. There was something else in her tone. With a huff, he sits back and lets her finish. He doesn't say anything when she is done and sits herself back again. Hands fold into his lap. Eyes look down at them.

"Have I." - "I've." - "I disappoint you, Watson." He finally manages and looks toward her. "Like I disappointed Lestrade. Like I would disappoint Gregson; and I disappoint my Father. Do you know how many times I have actually seen my Father since boarding school?" His brows frown deeper. Here it comes, the crash. Where he can't hold anything in any longer. Where that desperate scramble for some feeling of hope takes over and he's gasping beneath the water. He might as well drown.

He seems to be speaking a little faster now. It's nerves, and it's all personal, and it's so hard for Sherlock to speak of emotions. Of what he hides. Quiet and quick. "You should avoid thinking of me as anything but human, Watson. I'm nothing better than human and my all accounts I wish I could say that was not so but it is. Imagine a human who could not turn off their mind." He swallows and leans back, looking away.

"Once you see the puzzle in things you can't stop. It either makes you a brilliant person or a dead person, often one and then the other."

[hischauffeur]

"It isn't that. I know you are human, Holmes. I've tried to get that part out so often I doubted it a few times, but..."

She keeps her eyes focused on a point. Her hands clasped together. She knows about failure. She knows about disappointment. She'd seen it in her parents eyes the day she told them she was quitting. Better stop now then live the rest of her life as a shunned and disgraced surgeon, unable to get a job in what she spent her life training to do in any decent hospital. Forced to move from home and find some low rate position in a hospital use to malpractice issues.

"I'm disappointed in how things have turned out." she worded carefully. Slowly. "Not in you. Maybe not even in me. Just-- the situation."

Every part of it. Down to the day she put on her surgical mask and walked into that room to the day he had first put a needle in his arm. What a pair they made. But in the end what frightened her the most...what made this all so horrifying was the idea that she knew he didn't want her to leave and if they knew of his relapse that was exactly what would happen. He'd be off back in the system for god knows how long away from what kept him sane and she would end her yet another career on another failure.

And she-- cared. How could she not? He was a child at best sometimes and maybe that was what made it so hard. He needed someone. He needed a friend. And she wanted to make sure he had one in Alberto or someone before she was gone.

"You are not a dead person, Sherlock." she sighed faintly, "Just- a troubled one. A troubling one. And that is very.. human."

[iagreewithyou]

"Should have been." He says so quiet it might not have been audible at all. Regret. Regret was what he read in her expression as his eyes met hers and stayed for a long moment. No, he did not want her to go. He did not want her to come in, either. Father's orders made it so but leaving was not something that came easy to Holmes. As hard as it was to get in through his armor was just as hard to get back out again.

"I never understood how people made fleeting relationships. How they could just," he uses his hands to emphasize, "let someone in. Like a window, see through and free to open and close as desired. So simple, it seems, to them."

[hischauffeur]

Joan thought for a moment, trying to come up with an answer, but she didn't have one. Not one that would be sufficient. She'd had colleagues once and friends. Boyfriends. But lately-- she could understand.

She wanted those relationships, but this way it was safe. Meeting people and making acquaintances as a sober companion. It kept distance while feigning closeness. A superficial closeness. And Holmes refused to play by those rules leaving her to contemplate too heavily the lack of relationships she had now after cutting ties.

"They don't think about how it might go wrong, they just hope it will go right." she says at last, shrugging. "You've let people into your life before... not everyone is as discriminating. Maybe they should be a little, but to be overly so is just as bad."

Joan gave a half shrug, "You might miss out on something-- something worth hoping for."

There was her best answer. A mantra she hadn't even taken to heart lately, but being around him...it made her think. Made her wonder.