Sherlock inclines his head and steps back, expression suspicious. People don't. Even John doesn't; Sherlock knows his purpose in their association and that's all fine and good. Nobody does anything without a reason.

"Why?" Frankly, showing up in the living room might've made more sense to him.

Still, he's moved aside to let her pass, which says enough in and of itself.

"Don't touch anything." There's still no real force behind it, as though he's really only saying it because he thinks he ought to.

"Didn't get them from a tree with writing on it, did you?" Sherlock asks drily, eyeing the fruit with something like suspicion, as though it's an object utterly foreign to him, before plucking it from her hand and lifting it to his nose to sniff.

"He's on a bit of a vendetta against those at the moment, wouldn't want to risk it." Sherlock isn't terribly fond of them either, under the circumstances, but admitting that much would be admitting to personal investment, and admitting to that is apt to be a mess.

"On a bit of a vendetta at the moment," Sherlock reiterates delicately in response to the question, which has nearly made him wince. That's... a mess, not worth discussing, especially not if she's only going to side with John anyway. He doesn't know where most people would lie in regards to this particular question, and he doesn't care to know -- his own sense of having done rightly is tenuous enough as it is at the moment.

"Wasn't too pleased with me either. Fine now." As fine as it ever will be. He looks down at the orange section in Ellie's hand in silence for a few seconds before reaching out to pluck it from her fingers. Vaguely he wonders about the propagation methods of the fungal infection on her arm. Would he risk ingesting spores? Probably not. Probably dormant. Would it really matter if he did?

If nothing else he supposes he's not keen on being punched again, but it doesn't stop him eating the fruit all the same.

It isn't. Of course it isn't. Sherlock sets his jaw, gaze fixed on the distant wall, but simply ignoring her isn't apt to make her go away. She's come this far, after all.

"As fine as can be expected under the circumstances, yes. Digesting is bad for brainwork," he accuses, a throwaway distraction which he knows isn't going to work even as he says it. However true the statement might be, it's still too obvious.

"Don't know how you lot get anything done when you're constantly diverting blood flow from the brain like that."

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. "What does sneezing have to do with oranges?"

He takes the slice all the same, biting at it and waving his hand to usher her further into the house. Toll paid, she is now free to avail herself of any of the available seating surfaces.

"Had worse than a case of the sniffles without any citrus to tide me over, besides. Expect I'd survive."

"Mm. A fair point. He'd be insufferable," Sherlock responds drily, full awareness of who she means utterly irrelevant in the face of an opportunity to take a (perfectly fond) jab at John behind his back. What he isn't around to hear won't hurt him. Or get Sherlock punched again.

"'You really ought to take better care of yourself, Sherlock,'" he intones, voice raised in pitch and accent adjusted in imitation of the man in question. "'I told you you'd make yourself sick.' I told him not to eat the bloody fruit; hardly see why I have to listen if he's not going to."

"His future, not mine. Bit complicated." Bit of a bloody mess.

"Didn't tell him about it for a reason, anyhow, not that it's my fault." Not immediately, anyhow. He didn't ask for a madman to become obsessed with outsmarting him, or killing him, or taking everything he valued and turning it useless. It'd happened though. Sherlock Holmes had one from gold to pyrite overnight, purpose evaporating along with value; he's certain they all believed it entirely too easily, that he was a fraud, that he'd killed himself.

So much the better, really. So much the better.

A pause. "Expect so."

Am I? Yes. Obviously. Obviously he is; they both are. Sherlock's expression turns carefully neutral, before the corners of his mouth tug downwards.

"Wasn't my fault, though." He says it with quiet vehemence, because it's true. He couldn't have anticipated. Difficult enough to work out what he had, to fool them all instead of making it real.

"I didn't make me choose."

"John writes a blog." He says it almost primly, clearly unwilling to discuss the matter – and yet. And yet, would outside perspective help settle the matter? Not if she disagrees with him, he opines, but if she does...

"Wrote. At home. About my cases. Our cases, I suppose. Attracted a rather large readership. Press..." He wrinkles his nose, rubbing at the back of his neck. "Last thing a detective needs is for people to know his face, but they did. One of John's most avid readers was a fellow by the name of James Moriarty."

Sherlock tilts his head to one side and licks his lips, clearly trying to find an angle of approach for this particular thorny problem. There really isn't one from which he isn't going to get stung, he finally decides, and so continues. "Consulting criminal. Brilliant enterprise. Need to get rid of someone? Evidence destroyed – or fabricated? Business burned down? Need to disappear? Moriarty is your man, for a price. He also liked to play games. I was a favourite playmate."

He waves a hand. Long story. "Quite clever, really. Used the press against me. I'd committed the murders. Fabricated the cases. Paid witnesses. Paid him. Just an actor. James Moriarty was just an invention of mine – that was the story. Enough fact thrown in to make it convincing. So I met him. Only way to make it stop."

To make it stop before he was arrested, before any chance of redeeming himself became available, anyway.

"I was a problem, of course. Had to be rid of me. Couldn't just kill me, too suspicious. Had to make it look like a suicide. So. He gave me a choice." The enunciation here is delicate, walking on verbal eggshells.

"I'd expected it. I had... contingencies. There was a deal, his terms, not mine: I kill myself – quite visibly, a jump from a rooftop – or his men do their work. John. Two others. Not here." He pauses, takes a breath. "A fair exchange, really. Moriarty shot himself. Nobody left to see if I decided to toy with the terms. Not from that angle. John... saw. For the best, really. Couldn't tell him. He had to believe, too risky otherwise. I did jump. Would've been a fair exchange even if I hadn't known I'd survive. That isn't my fault either."

It's what you're supposed to do, for friends. Everybody knows that.

"Why would I say that I'm sorry if it wasn't my fault?" Sherlock asks, irritated, drawing himself up to hide behind bluster and thorns. There is not an inch of it which isn't transparent, hardly ever is, but he tries. He has to try; there's too much at stake.

"I'm not sorry, besides; I'd do it again if I had to, properly even. No point in useless appeasements, particularly if they're not true." Never any point in it. Sherlock has never seen the appeal of polite insincerity. He'd like to think John hasn't either -- like to, but frankly he's not at all convinced.

"You didn't hear him; wouldn't have mattered what I said."

"Not sorry I didn't risk getting him killed, either," Sherlock grinds out sullenly. It's all pointless -- there's no angle from which an apology is anything more than a smokescreen.

He doesn't know how to explain that, though. Can't find the words for how utterly ineffectual it would be. Insultingly so. "Wouldn't fix anything to say it. I wouldn't want to hear it, either; what good, exactly, would being catered to do? How is it any better? I didn't want to do any of it; I told him that which is plenty. I didn't enjoy it."

And then, when nothing matters? When there's nothing left to be done, when the best of possible choices was made? One moves on. One has to. It isn't simple, it isn't easy, it might not be entirely possible but everything else is failure. Everything else is giving in to precisely that malice which put them in this situation in the first place.

That's what it comes down to: Sherlock refuses to let James Moriarty win. He's come too far to bow to the man now.

"It wasn't," he agrees shortly. Of course it wasn't. Not a bit good, but Sherlock isn't, so if anyone ought to've had to do it he supposes it was best it was him. It was being not good that had permitted him to anticipate the fall, wasn't it? To work out Moriarty's plan?

It's exactly what he would've done, if he'd meant to accomplish the same end.

"I did what I ought to've done. If I asked him with hypotheticals he would've said the same; people always do." Real people. And not real ones; the ones on telly or in films or books. All this aggrandizement, and then when it happens, when it has to, he's the one who gets shouted at. As though it wasn't already difficult enough, having to jump. And the rest. All the rest that's still waiting, back home.

He eyes her in silence for a few moments, expression serious. "It's all a bit of a mess, isn't it?"

"Alone," Sherlock announces, "protects me. Alone keeps me safe; I am fine with alone. It's not being alone that got me into this mess in the first place, knew it was a bad idea. Probably still is."

John Watson possibly (probably) saved his life that first case, maybe, maybe yes, but that was more serendipitous than expected, wasn't it? He knew. Sherlock knew, knew from his own paltry experience that getting involved was dangerous. That tangling himself up in anything but his own problems would end disastrously.

Maybe that's why he did it. Could be dangerous. Maybe they were both doomed from the start.

"Been trying to get rid of them for ages. People. Family; family is an awful mess, can't be bothered. Forgot people make their own. Suppose it was a miscalculation."

Sherlock huffs the beginning of a laugh, just one indignant, darkly amused -- defensive -- contraction of the diaphragm. "Obvious you've never had one if you think that's what they're for."

Which is cruel, perhaps; he can't tell. It's certainly honest. In his mind she's some kind of fortunate if it's true. Given a blank slate, not born into the sort of tangled, awful mess that he was.

Still. Still, that probably bears some elaboration. "No idea where my father is. Don't care to know. He left with the maid when I was seven. Couldn't stand having a freak for a son. Mycroft was bad enough. My brother, Mycroft. Do you know where Moriarty got that extra information about me? The bits he threw in to make his story look legitimate?"

He pauses a moment, mouth set in an unhappy line. "He knew. Mycroft knows plenty about anybody he'd like to. I couldn't escape him if I wanted, but he doesn't give enough of a toss about me not to willingly hand the people who want me dead the ammunition to accomplish it. There's my mother; I suppose she'd have cared once. Doesn't tend to seek me out though. Not in years. I am a disappointment. Brother in politics and all I do is chase madmen around."

There's something in his eyes, a bright conviction, almost fervor. "Family isn't there to care about you. It's there to hurt you, either because they're used to or because they want to. Most murder isn't random, you know. Not strangers at all. Daughters murder their mothers for the insurance money. Husbands murder their wives because they can't stand the nagging a moment longer. I met a woman who poisoned her child slowly, over years, because she enjoyed the sympathy people gave her when the girl suffered. Your poor girl -- family is an excuse to use, and the more you care about someone the more they'll use you. That's how it works."

Sherlock is equipped to see the worst in people. To weasel out every last inch of their hypocrisy. He had wanted to understand, and so he'd taught himself to see, but in doing so had only distanced himself further from that particular goal. Other people are, by and large, obscure to him. All he does know is that every last thing they do and every last idea they have is meant to serve themselves, even -- especially -- when they're not supposed to.

That most of them aren't worth investment is obvious, and the idea that those that are become that way out of simple genetic proximity is laughable.

"How? I was only born to them; it hardly means anything at all." Perfectly arbitrary, once instinct ends and the reality of human complexity sinks in.

"It doesn't matter. Supposed to, people say that, but I hardly see the point. Doesn't stop me choosing." Which, clearly, he already has done; that's the point. What is this current living arrangement if not something better than family?

"John is my flatmate." And Sherlock had jumped. Given his very mixed feelings on the subject the human race in general, that says enough. He isn't inclined to add to it, especially given the risk. Whether or not he trusts her is irrelevant -- information has a way of spreading, and he certainly doesn't trust anyone else.

It's probably futile. It's probably obvious, but he doesn't want to invite any further attempts to use John against him either.

"Would, therefore be nice if he'd stop wandering about shooting me tragic looks, as I'm going to have to live with him."

"Can't imagine what you'd say that wouldn't just have him interrogating me as to what I'd told you and why," Sherlock responds drily, though there's a hint of surprise in the reflexively suspicious narrowing of his eyes. For a man who so enjoys surprises, he is remarkably suspicious of them, regardless of who they come from. Stasis is easier, even he has to admit that.

"Find him a girlfriend or something to shoot, those tend to cheer him up. Can't imagine why as both tend to end poorly." Maybe that is why. That would be irritating: if John is attracted, however subconsciously, to things that are bound to end poorly (and the balance of evidence is in favour of it, given the circumstances) then he's always going to have to be lobbing himself off buildings, or at least fielding the anger and the moping.

Fine. Not fine, really, but he'll do it; as long as he knows he'll get through it's only a minor nuisance. "No accounting for taste, I suppose."