The door closed behind me with a particular finality.
I stood in the precinct hallway, aware of officers moving past, conversations happening around me, the normal flow of institutional life continuing while my own came apart at the seams. Marcus was on the other side of that door, probably already processing evidence, probably already filing me away in the category of people he'd misjudged.
I should leave. The logical part of my brain — the part that had kept me alive through transmigration and Moran and Jamie — knew that standing here accomplished nothing. The conversation was over. The relationship was over. Everything I'd built with Marcus was over.
But my feet wouldn't move.
"Mr. Dalton?"
The voice came from behind me. Joan Watson stood at the end of the hallway, coffee cup in hand, her expression carrying the particular awareness of someone who'd observed more than she was supposed to.
"Dr. Watson."
"Are you alright?"
The question was gentle, genuine — the concern of a sober companion trained to recognize distress, to offer support, to help people navigate moments of crisis. She didn't know the specifics, but she knew something was wrong.
"I'll be fine," I said.
"That's not what I asked."
I looked at her — this woman who'd been drawn into Sherlock's orbit, who'd discovered reserves of capability she hadn't known she possessed, who'd become something more than the assistant everyone assumed she was. She was watching me with eyes that saw too much.
"Marcus and I had a conversation," I said. "It didn't go well."
"I gathered." She glanced at the interview room door. "He's been tense for days. I assumed it was case-related."
"It was me-related."
Joan nodded slowly, processing. She was building a picture — the security consultant Marcus had been spending time with, the relationship she'd probably suspected, the fracture she was witnessing now.
"For what it's worth," she said, "Marcus is a good person. Sometimes good people have trouble accepting that the world is more complicated than they want it to be."
"He's not wrong about the things he's upset about."
"Being right and being the only truth aren't the same thing." She took a sip of her coffee. "Take care of yourself, Mr. Dalton."
She walked past me into the precinct's interior, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the weight of what I'd lost.
---
I walked home through Brooklyn streets that looked the same as they had yesterday but felt completely different. The brownstones, the coffee shops, the particular rhythm of neighborhood life — all familiar, all suddenly foreign.
Marcus was gone. The relationship I'd built over careful weeks, the intimacy I'd allowed myself despite knowing the risks, the one person in my new life who'd looked at me and seen someone worth wanting — all of it had collapsed in the space of a single conversation.
And I'd been honest about the worst part: I'd make the same choice again.
The Torres job hadn't been a mistake. It had been a calculation — money for service, clean execution, the kind of work I'd positioned myself to do. Rebecca Torres had been guilty, and I'd helped her escape consequences. That was the job. That was what fixers did.
But Marcus couldn't see it that way. Marcus operated in a world of clear lines and defined duties, where justice meant following procedures and law meant the system worked as intended. His morality didn't have room for the kind of compromises I made every day.
And I couldn't blame him for that. His certainty was one of the things I'd loved about him.
Loved.
The word caught in my throat as I walked. I'd been careful not to use it, not to acknowledge what I was feeling, not to give name to the particular vulnerability that came with caring about someone who didn't know what I really was.
But standing in an interview room while Marcus told me to get out, I'd known the truth: I'd loved him. I'd let myself love him. And now that was over.
Vex was waiting when I got home, positioned on my desk beside Jamie's portrait. The painted eyes watched me as I closed the door, set down my keys, sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands.
"It went badly," Vex observed.
"It went exactly as you predicted."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you?" I looked up at her. "You warned me this would happen. You said happiness built on lies has an expiration date."
"I also watched you be happy." She jumped from the desk to the bed, settling beside me. "That was worth something. Even if it ended."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say that brief happiness wasn't worth the cost of this particular grief, that I should have been more careful, that I should have kept my distance from anyone I couldn't fully trust.
But I couldn't make myself believe it.
"His voice broke," I said. "When he was saying goodbye. For one second, he wasn't Detective Bell demanding answers. He was just... hurt."
"You hurt him."
"I know."
"And you'd do it again?"
The question echoed Marcus's in the interview room. My answer was the same.
"The job, yes. The relationship?" I paused. "I don't know anymore. If I'd known this was how it would end, would I have let it start?"
Vex was silent for a long moment. Then: "You're asking the wrong question."
"What's the right one?"
"Whether you'd rather have been someone who never risked it in the first place."
I thought about Marcus's apartment. The smell of clean laundry and honesty. The way he'd looked at me when he thought I wasn't watching. The particular warmth of being wanted by someone who didn't know all my secrets but wanted what he saw.
"No," I said finally. "I'd rather have had it. Even knowing how it ends."
"Then that's your answer."
I lay back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the grief settle over me like something physical. Tomorrow there would be work to do — Sherlock's investigation to manage, Jamie's information exchange to maintain, the constant complexity of surviving in a world that wanted to catch me.
But tonight, I let myself feel what I'd lost.
The first real thing I'd built in my new life was the first thing I'd broken.
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