A/N - Sorry for disappearing for so long. I still can't promise these updates will be often as I have also started university now so have a ton of work to do on top (ngl most of it is watching and critiquing movies though so we love that #filmmaking). Other than that, hope you all enjoy ^-^

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When the pair returned to the hotel, before the detective could even broach the topic of the issues with his plan, Elizabeth shut herself away in her seperate room. The click of the lock upset the metaphorical butterflies in his stomach and he stood there, mouth slightly agape. Stepping closer, staring at her door, although he was tempted to knock, he fought the urge and turned away. He knew she would need some time.

Plus, he had a new case to start investigating, as painful as it was without his not-partner-partner's help.

* * * * * * *

Sat with her back to the door, Elizabeth leant her head against the wood while her arms tightly clutched her knees close to her chest. How could Sherlock betray her trust like that? Well, it hadn't been the first time he had betrayed her trust since they had been reunited.

She held her breath as she heard the soft creak of the floorboards from behind the door. Elizabeth knew Sherlock was stood behind the door, probably questioning whether to speak to her or to leave her be for some time alone. Hearing a gentle exhale through the wood and footsteps quietly shuffling away, she resumed her own breathing. Thank God, she thought, she was spared from his concern for a short while.

And yet, at the same time, she wished he had chosen to speak with her.

Running her hands over her face and through her brunette locks, she tugged at her hair, eyes closed, teeth clamped together, letting out a quiet growl. She took a breath but flinched when she heard the sound of his hotel door bang shut. Where had the detective decided to go this time? Was this the point in their reunion where he ditched her and had decided to move countries already? No, that was a ridiculous thought. He had a case to solve and over his dead body would he leave it unsolved, that she knew for a fact.

She was in a half a mind to get up and race after him, to join him on whatever lead she assumed he had disappeared to investigate. But then, her fist would clench when the thought of Sherlock forcing her to talk to that doctor would crawl to the front of her mind again. Then, the clenching of her ready-to-fight fist would ease again when she considered the doctor's words: visit a therapist or counsellor...what good would that do her? What good would it be to her to keep reliving events past?

What good was it doing her to be with him, who also counted as an event long past to her?

She was afraid to be abandoned by him but what if it was the other way around? What if she left first? What if she abandoned him for all of his mistakes like he had done to her? Starting over again didn't seem like such a bad idea, until she processed the thought of doing so alone and, as of recently, it had been nice not to be alone, even after the gut-wrenching tragedies that had struck.

Round and around Elizabeth's mind went, carefully playing with the thoughts while the detective was out.

* * * * * * *

The local police station was quieter than he expected. Officers breezily flit in and out of the station with a quietly powerful presence. No officer or detective, it seemed, appeared to be panicked about the thought of a young woman found dead with vampiric bite marks on her neck. All was calm - eerily so.

Sherlock peered around, hoping the relaxed police staff wouldn't notice him slink into the elevator up to the offices. The key about blending in was to be confident, to act as though you were meant to be there the entire time.

The elevator car shook slightly when he slipped in and thankfully no one else was in there. For a moment, as the doors slid shut, he thought back to the moment when he realised he had been flirting with Elizabeth a year or so ago. It was in a lift, similar to this dull one, whose artificial lights seemed hellbent on blinding all who dared to come in. How different their not-relationship-relationship was now. Silently, he wondered if they would ever truly go back to what they were before.

"Aștepta!" Came a gruff voice and a hand between the metal doors a mere second before they shut.

Sherlock's sigh was between a silent hiss and the high-pitched whistle of an old kettle.

A giant, paunchy man stooped into the elevator with the detective. Sherlock had met tall people, of course, but this person was by far the tallest. The detective's face met with the man's breastbone so he estimated that the stranger could have easily been seven feet or taller, given that his knees were bent slightly so that he could fit in the elevator car. He was such a spectacle that it was rather hard to not look at him.

"Te cunosc, nu?" Questioned the stranger from above.

Sherlock peered up at this Goliath, "Nu prea vorbesc romaneste."

"English?"

"Yes."

"I said 'I know you, don't I'?"

Sherlock looked away, straight ahead at the doors, "I don't think you do."

"I'm sure I do..."

Sherlock could feel the stranger's intense stare from above him. It was quite literally like being watched by hawk when you took into account the man's aquiline brow.

"Aha!" The man exclaimed cheerily, "You must be him - the British detective with the hat!"

"Who sorry?"

"Ach, you are, you are!" He insisted heartily, "I must say, your faux death was quite a spectacle."

"To my knowledge, this Mr Holmes you speak of is buried in London - gravestone and all." Sherlock stated, "I'm often mistaken for him."

"All for effect, I say, and what an amazing effect it is." The man then clasped his hands together as though he were praying, "Please do not take me for a fool, Mr Holmes. I am a huge fan of your work."

"How...delightful." Sherlock sighed, accepting his fate.

The stranger offered his mighty hand to the small detective, "Inspector Pavel Bogdan."

Sherlock politely shook Inspector Bogdan's hand, "You already know me."

"I do, I do," He nodded, "So what brings a 'dead' detective to Romania?"

"Nothing in particular," Sherlock replied, "The young woman with the bite marks interests me currently."

"That is my case!" Pavel looked at him with puppy-like excitement.

"That's your what?"

"My case. That is the one I am assigned to - I looked into the others as well. Poor woman - women. Although, this string of murders is the most intriguing for the murderer staged them as though - "

"They were victims of the infamous Count Dracula."

"Yes, exactly! Truly fascinating to me."

"It is fascinating, isn't it?"

"Greatly so. One of the biggest crimes there has been in a long, long time in Brasov." Pavel nodded, "You would like to work the case with me, no?"

"Absolutely."

"Unfortunately," Inspector Bogdan sighed, composing himself, straightening his back as much as he could in the restricting space, "Only members of our force can work these cases."

Sherlock peered up at him suspiciously, "What do you want?"

"Ah, nothing much," He waved his hand, "Perhaps a dinner where you tell me of some of your greatest cases or...a photograph?"

Sherlock's brow straightened and hooded over his eyes grumpily as he contemplated this. A photo would be quicker but then Inspector Bogdan might be inclined to share it and if he did then his secret death would be secret no more. On the other hand, while the dinner was longer, it would be easier to keep his covert status...but it was longer and Sherlock had little appreciation for socialising for longer than five minutes with strangers. No, he concluded, it simply would not be worth it...but he really wanted to work this case and no doubt this slowly expiring hulk-of-a-man would miss crucial evidence.

He hummed, displeased, "My...partner and I will have dinner with you if you let me work on the case."

"Ah, sclipitor!" Pavel clapped his hands together gleefully, "With me, Mr H - "

"Ashby. The name's Tony Ashby."

Pavel gave a slow, understanding nod, a smile creeping across his lips as he tapped his nose, "Apologies, Mr Ashby." The lift doors slid open and he gestured with his hand out of the elevator, "This way."

* * * * * * *

Harsh lights shone down on the female corpse in the morgue, giving her an even more ghostly appearance as her skin gleamed a drab white. The twang of plastic against skin echoed as Sherlock pulled on some blue gloves and moved to look at the lifeless young woman.

The detective peered down at her curiously, watched closely by the hawk-of-a-man on the other side of him as he crouched down further to scan her neck. He stared intensely at the two crimson holes that formed the apparent 'bite mark' before grabbing a small metal tool from the pathologist's table beside him. Instead of using the sharp point, the detective moved to use the thin rounded end of the tool, delicately inserting it into one of the holes with a gruesome squelch.

Pavel grimaced.

After stopping naturally, the detective pulled the instrument out and inspected how deep the wound was judging by the blotchy, bright red stain on the tool. With a 'hm', he laid the instrument back down on the table and moved around to investigate the other side of her head. Squinting, he picked up the tweezers and pulled a lone strand away from the girl's neck, also placing it back on the table behind him.

Inspector Bogdan watched, enthralled.

He moved to her hands, noting the lack of jewellery and how soft they were. Sniffing at them, he smelt the faint odor of lemon. Important, perhaps. Checking her nails, he hummed again before moving to look at her feet. Sherlock lifted one of her feet up at a time by her slim ankles and noted the soft white scrapes and small, gravelly black dots on the back of her heel and ankle before laying them down again.

Sherlock stood up straight, taking into account the whole body once more.

"So - "

"Quiet." The Detective said rapidly before moving back to her head.

Gently tilting her head to the side, he exposed some suspicious bruising on the nape of her neck. A confounded look crossed his face but he lifted her body and rolled her onto her left side to inspect her back where he found more bruising in a line across her shoulder blades. Interesting...

Sherlock turned to the Inspector, "You said they had her dress here?"

"Yes." He nodded, moving to the back of the room where some lockers were.

Pavel opened one and drew out the white, blood-stained nighty that was wrapped in a plastic cover and laid it on one of the spare tables.

The detective moved to the garment, unwrapping it carefully, taking in the elegant, old-fashioned design. He then moved to stare more at the blood stains, acknowledging the streams, but finding the droplets adjacent to the main stain far more fascinating. The back bottom side of her dress was also heavily stained in such a shape that one could almost have mistaken it to be a pattern - and an interesting one at that.

He pulled away, satisfied with his discoveries.

"What have you deduced, Detective?"

"A lot." He took a breath before asking, "Do we have a name for her?"

Pavel shrugged, "No ID was found with her and no one has yet claimed to know her."

Sherlock nodded, "Well, for our Jane Doe, either fortunately or unfortunately no person or animal actually bit her - had to rule it out, did so by checking the depth of the wound as you saw. Another tell of course is that there isn't much bruising around the wound. Equally, the blood stains on her dress indicate that the weapon was pulled back out of her neck because of the drops distant from the larger stain on the front. My guess so far is that the weapon was some kind of two-pronged fork, possibly a carving fork as the prongs are thinner."

"Fascinating."

The detective continued, "No blood underneath her finger tips, no sign of a struggle at all. So she trusted whoever she was with. She didn't see this coming at all. Or...maybe she was intending to die? To sacrifice herself to a faux vampire?" Sherlock tilted his head as he looked between the young woman and the dress, "The act appears ritualistic, doesn't it? The white dress; sign of a maiden, a virgin, an innocent, offered up for a gruesome exsanguination." He flashed his hands in a showy way then dropped them by his side. He shook his head after he looked at the wound closely again, "No. She didn't sacrifice herself willingly. There's a slight scratch mark dragged towards her nape, indicating some shocked movement."

"Perhaps the man who did this has a shake?"

Sherlock shook his head, "A - the incision was too precise to be an accident. It's directly on the jugular, one of the veins that would produce the most blood should you hit it and B - it was a woman who did this."

"A woman?"

Sherlock walked over to the trolley with the instruments and used the tweezers to pick up the strand of hair he had found, "This woman has short blonde hair, but this strand is long and of a dark ginger or brown. Therefore, it was a woman."

"But - "

"The scrape marks on the woman's heels further back this up. She was dragged to her final resting place - there's some gravel residue left on the scraped skin. Look at her, she doesn't look exactly heavy to you or I, so I'm gathering a woman of her stature or a little smaller did this and dragged her out of a car boot."

Pavel nodded, totally engrossed in the detective's explanation, "I must say, your abilities are beyond incredible."

Sherlock smirked to himself. Egotistically, he had missed having John with him to offer unasked-for compliments. Elizabeth opted often to say nothing but to stare at him hungrily when he deduced. He did like that look too but he missed the few ego-boosting comments from John.

"I just don't know why some devilish cretin would do something like this."

"Ah, but Pavel, that's where you're wrong - we know why our murderer did this."

"We do?"

"We do." The detective looked up at the towering man, "What's one thing you didn't find at the scene? One thing that 'Dracula' would want most?"

Inspector Bogdan's brow raised impressively as he looked down at the little detective, "Where has all her blood gone?"

Chuffed with his answer, Sherlock looked down at the bled-dry body once more, "Where indeed?"

* * * * * * *

Elizabeth didn't like thinking alone. Before, her thinking alone had led her to make questionable and often terrible choices so, naturally, understandably, she now preferred to distract herself during any alone time she found herself with.

Hours had passed and the detective still hadn't returned, the matter of which made her undeniably unhappy but she couldn't wait around for the detective any longer. She had to be active. She had to distract herself. She had to or else she would go mad.

And so, what better way to distract herself than by going on a long walk.

As the day was coming to a close, she noted the change in the air, how its touch went from barely noticeable to slightly more crisp and cheek-reddening. Due to the grim, autumnal cloud cover, instead of the sky being one sea of rich blue, the cold shades varied, all accompanied by a soothing, stony tint. Every now and again there would be a small wink, the slightest of twinkles, of a star whose light just managed to peek through the blueberry blanket. And every time there was a sparkle, the subtle, small lines around Elizabeth's eyes would crinkle a little closer together at the thought of Hanna.

"Oh, you would have loved this." She whsipered, to who, only the wind knew.

However, during her unbreakable gaze up at the sky, she failed to notice that she was about to walk into the path of a stranger. Yet, as the stranger walked on towards her, his attention was hardly on what was in front of him too.

Inevitably, they collided.

"Oomph - !"

His walking stick clattered to the floor.

"Oh!"

Her loss of balance had almost landed her on the floor too, had it not been for the stranger's quick reaction and desire to hold onto something sturdy also.

The two stood there a moment, catching their breath, as he gazed into her eyes and she frowned as she stared back into the reflection of her own eyes also in the lens of his sunglasses.

"Are you alright?"

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes, fine - " He nodded, still clinging to the ex-thief.

"No, I mean, you're wearing sunglasses and it's...dark?"

"Oh, ha." For a moment the stranger bared his teeth sheepishly, "I...it's hard to explain."

"Right..." Elizabeth nodded, tilting her head, "Could you let go of me, please?"

"Oh! Yes, of course, my apologies - I - I'm a little unsteady on my feet - could you just pass me my walking stick first, please."

With widened eyes, she immediately darted down to the floor, still holding him with her one arm as she retrieved the fallen stick, "Yes, sorry, I didn't realise - "

"It's alright, no harm done apart from a bump for us each, I imagine." He said as he gratefully took his walking cane back from her, inspecting the bejeweled handle of it briefly.

The handle in question, was crafted from silver with carvings of what one might assume to be animals. Each animal was adorned with striking, blood-red gemstone eyes. Redwood complimented the gemstones as the main body of walking stick.

"Not broken is it?"

"Hm? No, no, not even scratched." The stranger shook his head, unbothered, "Quite a hardy heirloom this - bit like a Nokia brick I imagine one would describe it."

Elizabeth laughed lightly, "That indestructible, is it?"

"Of course. I would throw it on the ground if you really wanted to see but I'm afraid I would fall over and, well, that would quite frankly be embarrassing." He scoffed.

Together, they stood looking at each other for a moment before the stranger offered his hand to her, "Va - Victor. Victor Albescu."

Politely, she shook his hand, "Eh - Verity Ashby."

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, and your sunglasses, too." She smiled.

They shuffled before each other for a moment.

"Are you...heading anywhere?"

"Not particularly. Just going on a walk really."

"Would you...like any company?"

Elizabeth involuntarily blushed. She could feel that familiar glowing heat rising in her cheeks that she knew, or at least prayed, would be hidden by the sharpness of the air upon her already coldly-blotched skin.

Even with sunglasses on, she could tell this man wasn't bad looking. His ruggedly-fine hair tickled the top of his shoulders and his beard was neatly-shaven. He also wore a sleek black blazer, a dark agate turtle-neck underneath, and dark trousers. A slim, dark scarf further insulated his neck but certainly contrasted oddly when she acknowledged his sunglasses again. Taking in his appearance, she briefly wondered if she was in the right era...then thought about how sad a thought that was given she merely questioned her reality on the basis of one man being more gentlemanly than most.

Of course, who was to say that this stranger couldn't turn out to be the Darcula-like serial killer they were also looking for?

Victor, understanding the uneasy silence, merely smiled and offered his elbow for her to take, "Feel free to say no, but I'm also just going on a walk with no particular destination in mind and I, personally, wouldn't mind a bit of company myself."

Reciprocating his smile, Elizabeth gave in and gently interlinked her arm with his.

But, from afar, a woman sneered, scowling specifically at the ex-thief as she left with the intriguing, already taken man.