Goodbye

Goodbyes are hard even when two people allow themselves to show their sentiment. It's even harder for two people who pretend it doesn't matter. Their goodbyes got harder as time went on.

A/N I'm writing my extended essay at the moment (5000 words of hell) and upon procrastination found this in an open word document from months ago and so I decided to finish it in a bid to procrastinate further. In a way it has good timing, it joins the waves of Sadlock that are currently circulating on tumblr.

Disclaimer: Not mine

After he'd unlocked her phone he watched her go, but there was no joy and satisfaction in knowing he'd beaten her. It was peculiar, that a man who relished in being right and defeating his opponent should feel no satisfaction in beating a woman he could even go as. As such, their goodbye in London was tinged with a strange emotion, but it was not hard per se.

Goodbyes got harder as time went on.

In Karachi it was hard They hadn't slept that night, she couldn't close her eyes and he wouldn't if it meant that she was still awake. Instead they passed the time making love to one another in the insufferable heat of the Pakistani night, multiple times until the sun had risen. Sherlock Holmes had bowed down to sentiment and let it consume him in the form of milky white skin under his finger tips. He kissed her bruises and scars that marred her perfect skin, inflicted by her captors. It's an act of apology as he goes from her collar bone to navel, an act of sentiment that would seem to foolish in the light of day. But in the darkness and the heat, in the middle of such a sensual situation, Sherlock apologies and Irene relishes in it.

Morning rises and their legs are tangled in one another, the sheets strung low against Sherlock's waist and Irene's laying with her back pressing into his chest. They don't speak, there's not much to say when their sentiment is so obvious now.

They said goodbye at the airport. It went unspoken that they would never see each other again.

"Goodbye Mr Holmes."

She whispered the words into his ear before pressing a kiss to his cheek and walking away, assuming the new identity that Sherlock had produced for her. Their time together had been short and had come far too late to be of any use for them. They were each other's exceptions and that was what was hard about this goodbye, the knowledge that after finally admitting that one emotion they would never see each other again.

In Montenegro it was the hardest. Throughout his 'death' in his bid to defeat Moriaty's web, he had quite regularly returned to her and they had spent many nights in many cities wrapped up in each other's arms in their mutual desire.

This goodbye was the hardest. He was returning to Baker Street and to his old life. This truly was the last time they'd ever see one another again. The consulting detective had no room for a dead dominatrix to infiltrate his mind. She would return to live the rest of her days in exile without him, in purgatory, she thought, a half-life between living and death.

The confidence that death had allowed him would be gone, there would be no physical touching no emotional relapses. This, whatever it was that they had, was going to end when he left her. She refused to let the moisture in her eyes form into fully fledged tears and he would never cry himself. It was only the unique pain in his chest that he always associated with her when he had to leave, that signalled that this was the hardest goodbye Sherlock had ever experienced. The pain of losing Redbeard had never been matched, until that is he'd had to say his final goodbye to The Woman.

Goodbyes did get easier as time went on.

Their goodbyes got easier when they knew they'd see each other again. She had returned eighteen months after their goodbye in Montenegro; when the potent threat of Moriaty's return had first occurred. Sherlock had recalled her to London, for her expertise but more importantly, due to an unspoken desire to protect her. Since then, she had returned out of habit, some days lounging around in his clothes reading his books. Sometimes she returned for a brief stop over between flights and sometimes she stayed for much longer, for weeks or even months. Neither minded those goodbyes when they came, just as long as she returned.