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The embroidery on the handkerchief is unmistakeable, violent red, the letters intertwined.
The street is busy, and Holmes cannot see who dropped it, but it’s white enough that it hasn’t been there long. It’s possible that he’s being tormented, or warned, or trapped, but the person who would do that would be Moriarty, and Moriarty is dead. Holmes knows that he is dead.
When he keeps walking, he surreptitiously raises the handkerchief to his nose; the sliver of perfume on it smells the same, and he counts to three until the sharpness of the emotion fades.
Later, cheap liquor burning on his tongue, he turns the handkerchief over and over in his fingers, listening to a man cheating at cards on the other side of the room, another man agreeing to assassinate a woman’s brother so that she can inherit; he might foil that if he finds time, might not. His life is different these days, and his conscience lives back in England, contentedly married, and no longer there to drag him out of ditches of his own making.
Irene Adler might have been a ditch of his own making; Holmes still hasn’t made his mind up. Now, when he thinks of her, he just remembers blood on a handkerchief that looked just like this one, a taunt, a triumph.
“Well,” the voice says behind him, lightly tugging the handkerchief from his fingers, “that took you longer than I expected.”
He is not surprised. He is surprised. Irene makes herself comfortable in the empty chair opposite him anyway.
Her face is a little thinner than it used to be, her eyes bright and darker than before, and her hat and dress are pretty but less elegant than they used to be. She regards him and he regards her, risen from the grave, an apparition tucking her handkerchief into her bosom in a way that makes his eyes drop and linger even though a part of him resents it every time.
“I hope that when you finally inform Doctor Watson that your demise has been greatly exaggerated, he will be more effusive than you’re being right now,” Irene informs him at last, the corner of her mouth tugging.
Holmes isn’t sure he knows what to say to her, which is part of why she draws him in every time: she can wrongfoot him in a way that he finds invigorating, and he always gets the last laugh.
“I hadn’t seen an announcement of your latest wedding in a newspaper,” he says at last, and his voice feels like it’s coming from somewhere far away, “how was I to know you were alive?”
“Wedding announcements come with photographs these days,” Irene reminds him, “and while it’ll take a lot more than poison in a teacup to kill me, I’m not as foolhardy as I used to be.”
“What’s this, then?” Holmes asks.
Irene reaches across the table, takes a sip from his glass and slams it back down, her expression tangled with distaste.
“This was going to be a heartwarming reunion,” she replies; “I’m not sure what it is now.”
This, at least, is stable ground: the two of them were never good at defining anything. Holmes preferred it that way; still, it made mourning a stranger experience than it usually is.
“No one was supposed to find me,” Holmes tells her, aware that his mouth tastes of pique, something that shouldn’t be a competition but, of course, is.
“I probably wouldn’t have, if your brother hadn’t made a few suggestions,” Irene says, and she seems more comfortable with this, her lips flicking into a catlike smile.
Mycroft has never known when to leave well enough alone.
“You should know that very little of what my brother says should be regarded as truth,” Holmes responds, even though it’s rather late in the game to be saying that, and Irene has always been comfortable sifting between people’s truths and lies until she’s found something that she can work with.
“I was in London to see how Doctor Watson was faring in your absence,” Irene says, in response to the question Holmes won’t ask, ignoring his statement altogether.
“You were in London to see how that diamond Mrs Watson wears as her engagement ring was faring,” Holmes corrects her.
Irene smiles, caught, and says: “it was flawless, Sherlock.”
“And I’m sure it was not the last flawless diamond to pass through your hands, Irene,” he replies, because he’s entertained illusions about her a few times, but he doesn’t anymore. Not within his stripped-back existence where he repairs the fissures in Europe and tells himself that he will go home one day, resume living within society’s dull confines and picking apart its pedestrian mysteries.
She tips her head. “Perhaps.”
“So Mycroft sent you to me?” Holmes retains a certain affection for his brother, but he does grow frustrated when Mycroft thinks that he knows what Sherlock needs. It’s often made worse when Mycroft is right.
“He dropped a hint or five that I might find you around here,” Irene allows. “I think he’s decided Doctor Watson is lonely and Mrs Watson is growing frustrated with his restlessness, and that if anyone could-”
“-persuade me to come home?” Holmes cuts in. “Because that won’t be you, Miss Adler.”
She rolls her eyes, and the expression on her face is familiar; he didn’t even realise that he’d missed it. “He knows I can find you,” she says. “I haven’t ruptured your web of false lies and faked suicide, and I won’t; it’s up to you to do that.”
“So, you came to tell me to-”
“I came to tell you that I’m glad you’re not dead,” Irene says, with the brutal candour she only reveals for special occasions and the final unmasking of a con. “I thought you might tell me that you’re glad I’m not either.”
“Of course I’m glad,” Holmes snaps, affronted, and is about to tell her that he doesn’t see what that has to do with anything, but of course he does, some parts of the weaker emotions can slide through his nets, but this never has.
“Well, then.” Irene sits back in her chair, but her eyes are gleaming, triumphant, and Holmes has the irresistible urge to tamp down on a smile.
“Indeed,” he says at last, and Irene laughs, showing all of her white, white teeth.