Mycroft Holmes is sitting in the back seat of his very luxurious, completely inconspicuous, quite tasteful black sedan. The seats are leather. The two cut crystal carafes that sit in a custom rosewood holder are filled with purified water and a very singular, very elderly scotch. He is wearing a new suit made by a set of tailors who require a recommendation from an existing client to interview for. His shoes are polished to a mirror finish. And he is unhappy.

He has instructed the driver to sit idle while he looks at the terrace house. It's not much of a house; the neighborhood is fairly generic. It's not occupied by anyone special, either; the occupant is not beautiful, or rich, or famous. She is rather ordinary in every way save one: she is the woman Moriarity used to ruin his brother.

He watches the front door open. She turns and uses her key to lock it, and steps lightly down onto the sidewalk. Begins her walk to the tube station as she does every morning.

Mycroft depresses a discrete black switch. "Follow," he says without taking his eyes from her, and the car moves.

They drift along through the light neighborhood traffic. He'll follow her to the coffee shop where she'll get a tall mocha, then he'll leave her, and he won't come back and he'll never see her in person again. This is a one-off, a meditation. One can't, after all, persecute the press; and one can't, after all, truly *blame* someone for being used by Moriarity. No. One can't blame them for that at all.

When they arrive at the coffee shop she turns, touches the door handle, and then makes an abrupt about-face and walks over to his car. Damn, he thinks vaguely. She's not a complete imbecile after all. His mind stalls.

She is smiling with cheerful annoyance when she raps on the driver's window with a knuckle. The driver shoots a panicked look at Mycroft, then rolls it down and gives her a professionally blank look. His off-hand is tucked down beside the seat, holding a gun. Mycroft thinks this is a bit much, but the training is meant to be used in every circumstance or it's worthless.

"Listen," she says. "I'm not an idiot. I know you've been following me all morning. What I'd like to know is why. If you want to offer me a job that's excellent, but I'm good, thanks. Just got a promotion." She's trying to peer past the driver; the smoked glass makes any view of the back seat impossible, and this makes her wrinkle her nose. "If you're some creepy stalker, well, you'll be all over the front pages tomorrow."

His driver begins a valiant attempt to insert a word in edgewise when Mycroft's voice comes from the little grill on the dash. "Ms. Reilly. Would you like a lift to work?"

She gapes at the question. His driver gapes too, but has the self-possession to close his mouth and re-assume his blank look before she catches him at it. He opens his car door, necessitating her removing her head from the window and stepping back sharply. He steps to the back of the car and opens that door too. She stares for a moment, looks around the busy street, then shrugs and scoots inside.

Welcome to my parlor, Mycroft thinks sadly. This is an impulse and a bad one. He knows it and is going through with it anyways. The driver closes the door behind her and returns to the front; when he's settled, Mcroft presses the button. "Drive," he says. The whites of the driver's eyes flicker as he tries to judge where, exactly, he's supposed to drive to, but the last stated destination was Ms. Rilley's work - so. Until given other instructions, he drives.

Once she's beside him, Mycroft doesn't bother look at her. He can smell her, hear her breathing. He rests his hands on his umbrella and contemplates wat is in front of him: the glass partition, the stitching on the back of the front seats, and the whiskey decanter. Eventually he runs out of internal monologue and slowly turns to face her.

She's curbing her tongue, trying on silence. Very well. He twitches an eyebrow and her mouth pops open like a gunport. "If you're trying to intimidate me, you're way off base," she starts. "I don't know who you are but I'm press and there's nothing you can do that won't make the front page of-"

"I have a story for you," Mycroft says gently. She shuts up immediately. Her ears practically swivel in his direction like radar dishes. He wants to smile but doesn't. "Of course, my portion of the statement is off the record entirely," he says, rather gently.

She blinks. "Now, that's not fair at all," she begins.

Mycroft waves his hand at the car and she falls silent. "I am a minor government official," he says. "If you brought any mention of my discussing this with you to light it could be difficult for me. Surely you understand my position." His voice is as oily and unctuous as it has ever been, his hand wave elegant. "You are a tremendous reporter, Ms. Rilley. I'm certain if I present you with the story, you'll have no trouble following it up on your own. I will be quite specific and detailed. Names, dates, locations. All I ask is that this discussion never, ever come to light."

She shuts her mouth. He can see the gears in her head churning away. Abruptly, she nods. Too easy, he thinks. And smiles the shark-smile, the one that doesn't reach his eyes, the one that made John Watson's jaw stick out pugnaciously when they first met. Kitty Rilley pales a bit. Mycroft tones it down and leans back in his seat.

"My name," he says gently, "Is Mycroft Holmes. I am Sherlock Holme's brother." He sees her flinch, hears the sudden breath sucked in through her nose. Ignores it. "Fourteen months ago, we learned of a thing which we wanted very much. Four months later we captured the person who had it: James Moriarity. It was a very well-executed operation which, on reflection, I do believe he set the stage for. We were completely deceived and thought it was his bad luck, an informant, and our hard work which had done the job." Mycroft's jaw clenches and his lip twitches. "We locked him in a cell, drugged him, beat him, shocked him, and drowned him. He would not talk. We kept at it for three weeks. He never so much as whispered a word until we said one name." Mycroft falls silent, his shoulders hunching. "Until we said Sherlock's name."

"So, like a good little official, I snatched at the line I was given. Made a choice." Mycroft looks away from her broodingly. "The wrong choice. I sat with him and talked to him. Talked for hours and hours, Kitty, and listened to Jim go off on rant after rant. Completely substanceless but speech nonetheless, and modern psychology believes that initiating speech is the key to opening the person, to getting more and more and more. And in ninty-nine cases out of a hundred I am absolutely infallible. Just start with a single sentence of dialogue and I can have your life's story, your every secret, in a matter of hours." He is smiling a thin-lipped grim little smile now, turning back to face her. "Except, I do believe modern psychology does not have a word for James Moriarity. Not in all their textbooks or their definitions. Because although I gave him my brother's life bound in leather and embossed in gold, he did not give us one… single… thing."

Now he turns and looks at her. She's pressed back against the door, sensibly frightened. "Off the record still, m'dear," he says gently, and she flinches. His satisfaction is a warmth which slides out from under his breastbone. "Of course we could have killed him, but then we'd never get what we wanted from him. So we let him go." Mycroft is watching her. She swallows. "You know the rest," Mycroft murmurs. "The perfect story you were given. The opportunity of a lifetime, falling right into your hands. You probably thought it was you, getting the information from your reluctant source. He let you think it was all your idea. Let you research it." Mycroft's voice has some unwanted sympathy in it now. He turns his head and watches the road through two layers of glass. "Don't worry," he says after a moment of silence. "You're not the only one he fooled."

The silence is nearly perfect. The insulation on the car leaves the sound of the motorway distant, the vibrations as they smoothly glide over cracks and bumps in the pavement nearly nonexistent. It stretches on and on until she chokes out a reply. "You can't prove any of it," she says, and Mycroft lets his shoulders shrug.

"I don't particularly feel the need to," he replies. "This is off the record, after all. It'll never ever be published. By anyone, in any format. Because you are a reporter of your word and you wish to go far in this business; you wish to get more scoops, more stories, and it would look very poorly indeed if you outed a source who brought you such a tale." He feels satisfaction mingled with sadness. His timing is impeccable, as always. The car stops. She's staring at him and does not seem to realize they're at her building. Mycroft watches how fixed she is on his person with sly delight as his driver gets out and the door behind her chunks open a bit - she jumps, starts to fall, flails about. Would land on her ass in front of her own office, with all her co-workers watching, if his driver didn't catch her arm and help her to her feet. She's shaking as she looks at the car, but she still leans in to grab her purse.

Mycroft too leans over when she reaches back in. Grasps her wrist; she nearly shrieks, but doesn't tug free. He can feel her pulse in her wrist as fast as a rabbit's. Mycroft turns her hand over, gently pries her fingers open. Presses a small slip of paper into her palm with an enigmatic smile. "An address," he says. "Empty now, of course, but you may find the view from the windows on the second story interesting."

She yanks her hand free, whirls and stalks away. Ten steps and Mycroft watches her uneven wobble vanish as she gets her poise back.

She clenches her hand around the scrap of paper. Does not drop it.

Mycroft leans back into the car. His driver closes the back door, get in, tugs his own door shut. Glances in the mirror. Waits.

No orders come; eventually he pulls out and begins to drive, letting his employer watch the city slide by past the window, his pinched face slowly drooping with years and secrets and schemes.

"Why?" asks Anthea later, as she takes his coat.

"Can you imagine," he replies, " a revenge more fitting for such an ambitious woman than a story of this magnitude which she can never confirm and never publish?"

Anthea's face blanks, then a smile slips over her secretive lips. "No," she replies, and moves away to get him a drink.