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After Sherlock walked out of Mycroft's office, he took a cab back to Baker Street. When he got there, however, he wasn't in the mood to talk to John, and answer the doctor's inane questions about what had happened with Irene after he had taken off. He knew that the shorter man was convinced that he was in love with Irene, and he was not at all in the mood to see John's face after he recounted what happened at the plane and in Mycroft's office.
So he just wandered around London for a while, eventually ending up in front of Lestrade's flat. During his walk he had worked himself up again and so he slammed the other man's front door open, causing Lestrade to jump.
Sherlock ignored him and started pacing in front of the telly. Lestrade tried asking him again, but Sherlock kept ignoring him.
"Oi! If you're not going to say what you're so worked up about, at least stop pacing in front of the telly so I can watch the Gunners."
Sherlock shot a look at the telly. "They're loosing."
"I'm aware." Grumbling, Lestrade stood up and went to the kitchen, presumably to fetch another beer. Sherlock sat down on the couch, not even bothering to loose his coat and he drew his legs up, embracing them.
"If you want to talk about it, talk. Otherwise I'm going to watch the match and going to bed after."
Sherlock didn't say anything but hunched further into himself. He wasn't ready to talk yet, so better to let the other man enjoy the game before trying to bring into words everything that was going through his head.
What seemed like only moments later, he felt Lestrade shifting next to him. Throwing a quick look at the telly he saw that the match had ended, with Arsenal loosing.
"You staying then?"
Sherlock nodded.
"You want to talk?"
Sherlock shrugged, not knowing what to say, and refusing to look up from his knees. He could feel Lestrade watching him and tried to ignore the warm feeling that elicited.
The silence stretched on for a few minutes before Lestrade broke it again.
"What did the woman do?"
Sherlock looked up in surprise. "You really aren't as stupid as I sometimes make you out to be, are you?"
Lestrade rolled his eyes at the backhanded compliment.
"Nope."
Sherlock sighed, obviously not knowing where to begin, but Lestrade helped him out.
"You knew she wasn't dead, didn't you?"
Sherlock was surprised again and Lestrade smirked at him. Sherlock once again had to ignore the warm feelings he got, Lestrade really was the only person that was capable of surprising him multiple times. Everyone else was boring.
"Yeah, I knew. But how did you know I knew?"
Lestrade smirked again. "Because I know you, Sherlock. If you really thought she was dead you'd be tearing London to pieces to find the person responsible. You didn't, so ergo, she wasn't dead."
"Huh, not even Mycroft realised I knew."
"Yes, well, your brother has a major blind spot where you're concerned." Sherlock was aware of this, and he exploited it often enough, though not nearly as much since he got clean. He didn't know however, that Lestrade was also aware of this.
"So she wasn't dead. What happened then?"
"She 'revealed' herself to me. Asking for her phone back, that she had left in my possession on Christmas Eve."
"The present on the mantelpiece that you picked up before went into your bedroom?"
"Yes. The phone was what made me think that she was dead in the first place. Which is why we cut the Christmas celebration short. I genuinely thought she was dead until I saw the body."
"But it wasn't her."
"No, it would have fooled me, if Adler hadn't let me see her naked."
Lestrade choked on the beer he was just taking a sip off. "Naked?" He coughed out, confusing Sherlock. He thought John had told him about what had happened during the first time they met Adler. Apparently not.
"Yeah, didn't John tell you? She was naked when we first met. It was how I figured out the code to her safe, her measurements."
"Oh. Weird." Lestrade looked strangely relieved, confusing Sherlock even more, though it wasn't important at the moment to know why he was relieved.
"Yeah, it was, didn't expect it at all, though very much in character for her, in hindsight."
"So she revealed herself not to be dead. When was this?"
"New Year's Eve. Before the burglar broke in at Baker Street. Or well, during him breaking in. When I got back from her reveal, I found the burglar holding Mrs. Hudson at gunpoint. I saw the guy this evening again, apparently he was working with Mycroft all this time."
Lestrade bristled at that and Sherlock had to once again ignore warm feelings. He liked that the DI got protective over him sometimes. Though luckily not overprotective like Mycroft could be sometimes.
"Oh, calm down, Detective Inspector. Mycroft wasn't aware that the man had broken in and since then he has the man on a very short leash."
"Alright. Why did he break in?"
"To get the phone. When I first met her, she told me that the phone was her life, her protection. Apparently she had pictures, state secrets, scandals and other information on it, which could prove to be either very valuable or very destructive in the wrong hands."
"Did they get it?"
"No, so I spent the next few months trying to unlock it. I had four tries to get the password, but after the first fail I X-rayed it, discovering she had explosives in the casing, so breaking it open wouldn't be an option. Plus I suspected that if I failed four times, the explosives would go off."
Sherlock could see the admiration on Greg's face plain as day, but he ignored it. There were other, more important things to worry about tonight.
"Earlier today I found her in my bed after John and I came home from another case." Sherlock could feel his throat going dry, so he was rather relieved when the other man clearly noticed and went to fetch him a glass of water and another beer for himself.
After the detective emptied the glass, he continued. "She told me there were killers after her because she had acquired something that was more dangerous than she had first suspected. She needed me to help her figure it out. So I gave her a duplicate of her phone, to try and trick her into giving me the code, but she figured out that it wasn't hers. I gave her the actual phone and she showed me a picture of an email she had been show by an MOD-man. It contained information about a plane that was to depart from Heathrow tomorrow night."
"Was to depart? It's not going to depart any longer?" Sherlock hid his head in his knees again, in shame about how easily he had been fooled by the woman.
Sherlock shook his head. "No, decoding the email was a mistake. I had overheard Mycroft talking about the flight a few months earlier, not that I had known at the time, but I figured it out, well some of it anyway. The flight was a ruse, Mycroft had filled the plane up with the dead bodies of people who had died over the last couple of months, because there had been chatter about terrorists bombing that flight. But they couldn't let on about how they had overheard the chatter, so the plane would be flown by remote control and blow up mid-air. The mission would be accomplished for the terrorists. Hundreds of casualties, but nobody dies. Elegant solution, really."
"Yeah, it really is. So why isn't it flying any longer?"
"Because Adler is working with Moriarty."
"Shit." Lestrade cursed vehemently, amusing Sherlock. The DI didn't curse often, so it always seemed a bit... improper when he did.
"Hmm, quite." Sherlock sighed. "Mycroft had me picked up then, bringing me to the plane and proceeded to berate me for my mistake." Sherlock could feel Lestrade's wince next to him, but he ignored it.
"Then Adler turned up. She blackmailed Mycroft to give into her demands for protection and other requests I'm not aware off. Otherwise she'd be contacting his superiors that I'm his biggest security leak."
Sherlock took Lestrade's beer from the man, and emptied it, playing with the label afterwards, so he wouldn't have to face the other man while he told him about his mistake. "Mycroft tried to negotiate, but she wouldn't give. Next, she revealed she had been helped by Moriarty. And that he had given a lot of advice on how to play us."
"Jesus. That man is a menace."
Sherlock looked up at Lestrade then, faintly smiling before turning his attention back to the label on the bottle.
"She made a mistake then."
"Oh?" This time Sherlock managed to surprise Lestrade.
"Or rather, she made a mistake earlier and what she said made me realise it.
"'Moriarty didn't even ask for anything.' She said. 'I think he just likes to cause trouble. Now that's my kind of man.'" Sherlock quoted.
Lestrade frowned and Sherlock rolled his eyes at the other man's confusion. Even though the DI was smarter than most at the Yard, he could be ridiculously obtuse sometimes too.
"I don't get it." Case in point.
"Sentiment, Lestrade! She got carried away, made the game too elaborate. She tried to deny it of course, but I took her pulse earlier. And I figured it out. I figured her out."
Sherlock went into the kitchen, leaving Lestrade in bewilderment, when he came back he had a pen and paper. He sat down next to Lestrade again, bending over the coffee table and when he sat up again, he showed Lestrade what he had written down.
I AM
____
LOCKED
"This was what her lock-screen looked like. And because she made the mistake of bringing her heart into it, she lost everything she ever worked for."
"Still don't ..." Lestrade started to say, but he trailed off as Sherlock started filling in the blanks on the paper.
I AM
SHER
LOCKED
"Oh." Lestrade said and Sherlock knew that this time he had figured out that the woman was in love with Sherlock.
"Sentiment, Lestrade." The detective threw his head back onto the headrest. "Why did she bring sentiment into it? She was so close."
Sherlock jumped up and started pacing again, the calm he had regained by sitting quietly next to Lestrade on his couch was lost. His head was turning into a maelstrom again, there was something bothering him, he had to figure it out, so he ignored the older man's call of his name, as he went over what he had said to Adler again.
"Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side, Lestrade. She gave me the final proof tonight, that love is a dangerous disadvantage."
"Sherlock?" Sherlock ignored the DI again and suddenly he realised it. He was right in what he had told Adler. He had said it to rattle her, so he could deduce if he was right about the password. But the password wasn't the only thing he had been right about.
Love is a dangerous disadvantage.
A really dangerous disadvantage.
Especially if Moriarty was back.
He couldn't stay here any more. And he couldn't come back any longer.
Not as long as Moriarty was running free.
"I have to go." Sherlock couldn't resist to glance at Lestrade one last time, and he could see the bewilderment on the other's face. His heart ached to leave Lestrade like this, but he had to. Otherwise the other man would be in danger, and so would Sherlock.
"Goodbye." He said, and he left. Hopefully not for good, but if that was what it would take to keep Lestrade safe, he wouldn't ever come back again.
Still, he felt rather bereft when he closed the front door behind him, knowing that he had just lost something important.