Staying Alive - Sherlock (BBC)

Chapter 2

Sherlock continued to stare at her. Stunned. The gears of his mind had ground to a terrifying halt. After a moment of silence, she spoke again, her gaze boring into him. "May I come in?"

He snapped back into reality, swinging to the side and muttering 'Of course.' Under his breath. Once she was through the doorway he closed it behind her slowly, it let out an audible screech as it moved before clicking into place.

Eventually he cleared his throat and looked at her, finally allowing himself to look into her eyes. "How did you...um. Get in?" He asked in an out-of-character scattering of words. She frowned at him.

"Sherlock, I learnt how to pick locks with you."

Finally he spoke loudly and clearly, gathering his thoughts together. "You're supposed to be dead."

She smiled at him warmly. He relaxed instantly, it was the same smile she used when she had outsmarted either him or Mycroft. "Well theoretically, so are you."

"It's good to see you Lizzie." Sherlock said looking a lot more relaxed. His mind, however, was still all over the place.

He sauntered across the living room once more and slumped onto his armchair, she slid into John's seat opposite. "So what's your story? Don't hesitate with the details I have all night."

She stared to her right as she composed her answer. The lighting of the room exaggerated her features as Sherlock watched her. Her face was clean of blemishes allowing her pale skin to shine clearly. She was still recognisable but everything about her had matured, everything but her eyes. Her hair was no longer a frizzy mess of brown curls, but rested in tame waves on her shoulders. She wasn't, and had never been, conventionally beautiful. She wouldn't sit comfortably on the cover of a magazine. However, she had the beauty of a subject from a Renaissance painting. She seemed to carry this ethereal atmosphere about her that was worthy of an artist's attention. It would make sense for a painter to slave away for hours in an attempt to capture it. 

"I take it you are fully aware of my actions and whereabouts before my 'death'. Despite his influence Mycroft isn't very subtle about his surveillance." She sighed, he could see her piecing together words in her mind. "There's a difference between being Moriarty's enemy and being his ally. He treated them both with the same brutality. But it was much harder for him to let an ally go. I knew too much about him and he knew too much about me. I couldn't go anywhere because of the information he had and he wouldn't let me go for the information I had, and still have. There was only one option, to die.

"But to do what you did wasn't enough. His network was vast, as you know, you deconstructed it." She smirked at this before finally looking at him in the eye. "I had to die enough for it to reach my records, enough for it to fool Mycroft. It took far more planning than yours to pull off."

"I know. I'm impressed." Sherlock added, now leaning back into his chair comfortably.

"Thought you would be. I was always better at the bigger ones."

"Shut up."

She laughed through her nose before continuing. "I've been keeping an eye on you two, although not as effectively as Mycroft, I don't have the help of the British Government. I was even at your funeral, well, watching it from a distance. I could tell it was fake from the beginning.

"So, with Moriarty dead, I came back to life under the new name of Bethany Williams. The more you dissolved his network, the more public I could become and here I am." She stopped talking and a silence gradually swallowed up the room.

Sherlock had barely moved during this. His face was emotionless, but she knew of the volumes in his mind. "You have a reason for doing everything, you didn't just decide to visit me. Knowing you it was because you were concerned about me. Why? What has happened that caused you to return?" He questioned her, maintaining the same expression throughout.