There was no hint of it in her letters, no warning of her coming. She simply arrived one afternoon in late September, the autumn wind tugging at her coat and a small suitcase at her feet as she waited patiently on the front porch for one of them to open the door.

When he finally did, she greeted him with her soft, winning smile, perfectly outlined with her favored brand of cosmetics which he knew for a fact she hadn't had access to in her prison warehouse.

"I did tell you I'd be out within the year," she reminded him, gently filling in his uncharacteristically shocked silence. "I don't suppose you have space on the roof for me to work? My easel should be arriving shortly. I can paint downwind of your hives to avoid disturbing the bees, if you like."

For all her certainty that she would one day circumvent the system and become a free woman, Sherlock could safely admit that he hadn't seen this one coming.

To say that Joan had some initial reservations about the new arrangement would be something of an understatement.

"No," she said flatly, upon looking up from the toaster to see Moriarty, who had followed a suitcase-toting Sherlock through the kitchen door—criminal mastermind and murderess or not, she was still a lady, and English manners would out. "No, no, no, are you insane, no, no. Not happening."

Sherlock grimaced.

Moriarty smiled. "I had every intention of leaving the pair of you alone upon my release," she lied easily, transparently. "But I'm afraid that my newfound freedom does come with some restrictions—I've been told that it will take your government several days to remove the holds on many of my financial accounts, leaving me somewhat pressed for income in the short term. And even if money weren't an issue, I'm not entirely at liberty as of yet—given the number of organizations, legal and otherwise, with their eyes on me at the moment, international travel looks to be more trouble than it's currently worth.

"I have other resources, of course," she added, picking up an apple from the bowl of fruit on the counter and studying it causally before putting it back. "But the time it would take to access them is similar, and I'm in no particular hurry to leave the city."

Clearly noting Joan's look of extreme displeasure, Sherlock rocked back and forth slightly on his feet, swinging his arms awkwardly—a gesture historically followed by exasperating information, in Joan's experience.

He did not disappoint. "I am assured that this arrangement, though no doubt somewhat odious to you, is indeed a temporary one," he promised, with the faux cheer of a man who knew that he was fooling absolutely no one. "A week, perhaps; ten days at the most. Obviously, you are welcome to stay here if you so choose—this is your home, and you are within your right to come and go as you please. However, out of respect for your privacy—"

Joan scoffed, conveying skepticism and irritation in equal measure.

"—and given your pointed, understandable dislike of our current houseguest," Sherlock continued, ignoring the interruption, "I am prepared to arrange for you to stay elsewhere in the interim. A hotel, if you prefer, or one of my father's other properties. Perhaps with Ms. Hudson; I have it on good information that her current paramour is out of the country until the first of the month, and she's currently in the market for an assistant in translating her latest work—it'd be an excellent learning opportunity for you."

Joan crossed her arms, leaning against the counter. "And you can't put her up in a hotel because, why?" she asked, glaring openly at both of them.

Sherlock opened his mouth to answer, but Moriarty beat him to it. "Security," she answered brightly, easily matching Sherlock's false cheer. "My recent…inactivity has given many of my enemies the chance to consolidate power and amass their resources. I'm afraid nothing New York has to offer in the way of hotels can match the kind of home security that you and Sherlock have here in the brownstone. I'll be much safer here than anywhere else."

"Because putting the serial murderer inside the apartment just screams 'safety'," Joan retorted, ignoring the smell of burning toast behind her and instead turning to Sherlock. "You can't possibly think that staying here alone, with a criminal mastermind that you have extensive personal history with, is in any way a good idea," she reasoned, her stare hard.

Sherlock's posture straightened as he beamed back at her. "So you're staying, then," he deduced, clapping his hands in front of him. "Excellent."

"And get murdered in my bed right along with you?" Joan shot back, disbelieving. "I'm curious, did you put any sort of thought into this plan at all before agreeing to it, or did you just feel bored today and decide that letting an extremely dangerous criminal stay with us would liven things up?"

Moriarty held up a finger. "If I could just interject and remind you that I have stayed here before without murdering either of you," she pointed out, "and, in fact, did you a service by shooting as assassin that was rather well bent on killing Sherlock at the time."

"Ok, you are not helping," Joan hissed, holding both of her hands up in exasperation, before pausing and taking a deep breath.

And immediately began coughing—the toast she had been making to go with her tea was charred beyond recognition, and smoke was beginning to pour out of the toaster.

Bypassing the switches entirely and angrily yanking the cord right out of its socket, Joan turned back to Sherlock and Moriarty, who were watching her with slight concern and infuriating condescension, respectively. "All right," she sighed, resigned. "Here's the deal: I'm going to call Captain Gregson immediately and tell him about your idiotic plan to let her stay here, and hope that he has you committed and her put into protective custody. If that doesn't happen, I'm going to ask him what sort of safety measures he would recommend in a case like this, and we will be implementing any and all of his suggestions, without complaint."

Sherlock leaned forward slightly. "And what if—"

"Without complaint," Joan reiterated, and Sherlock shut his mouth with an audible snap. "While I am doing that, you are going to choose several locks from your extensive collection to safeguard all the entrances to my room, including the loose panel at the top of the closet that leads to the storage cabinet in the hall. Call someone to install them or do it yourself, but I want them ready by the end of the day."

Sherlock thought about it for a moment before nodding sharply. "I'm amenable to your conditions," he agreed, and leaned over to pick up Moriarty's suitcase where he'd set it down. "I appreciate your willingness to compromise on the matter, Watson," he added. "I realize that your—our—previous interactions with Moriarty have been somewhat fraught, and it would not have surprised me greatly if you had called the precinct immediately upon seeing her."

Joan's frown softened. "Let's be clear on this," she stated, leaning back against the counter. "I'm not doing this for her. I think this is the stupidest plan you've ever come up with, there is no way this is going to end well, and I will breathe a lot easier once she's out of the brownstone and over on the other side of the world. Which, for the record, I'm pretty sure she could make happen today if she really wanted to."

Joan paused. "But I know you," she continued, "and I know that if we throw her out now and anything happens to her, you'll blame yourself. Even if this is a terrible idea."

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply, paused, and closed it again.

Down the hall, the doorbell rang.

Sherlock quickly put the suitcase back down. "Your art supplies, I expect," he said to Moriarty, avoiding Joan's eye. "If you'll excuse me."

He hurried from the kitchen, leaving Moriarty and Joan staring first at the doorway, then at each other.

Moriarty broke the awkward silence first. "I'm curious," she wondered out loud, tilting her head slightly. "What sort of lock do you expect Sherlock would have that would keep me out, if I decided that I wanted to come in?"

The first night was a long one.

When Joan woke up from her fitful sleep for what felt like the tenth time, the early morning sunlight was streaming in through the window and shining directly into her eyes. Groaning slightly as she stretched under the sheets, she turned away to face the wall. And froze.

A silver tray, one which had definitely not been there the night before, was resting on the small table next to her bed.

Suddenly completely awake, Joan shifted until she was sitting upright, then carefully lifted the tray from the table and placed it next to her on the mattress. On it was a covered ceramic plate from their kitchen, the kind that Sherlock used to bring her breakfast whenever he dragged her out of bed for a case before she was ready to wake up, and a small, folded piece of paper.

Joan picked up the paper first—it was cardstock, some of the nicest she'd ever seen; at least as nice as the calligraphied graduation announcements her mother had sent around after she'd completed her final year of medical school. Her name was written across it in beautifully flowing script, and she unfolded it to see a message written in more of the same:

My Dear Watson, the note read,

By the time you are able to read this note, you'll have noticed that you are in fact still alive, and that I took the liberty of not murdering you in your sleep as you so feared. Please take this realization as a gesture of my goodwill.

Yours most sincerely,

Jamie Moriarty

Temporarily overlooking the alarming fact that Moriarty had been able to break into her room and leave the tray without waking her, Joan lifted the cover off of the plate.

Delicately arranged on the ceramic, and tied with a pink satin ribbon, was a single white peony.