There were precious few people Sherlock Holmes allowed to order him around. He didn't respond to commands—not like his brother had learned to when climbing the ladder of the British Government, nor like most people in their wide-eyed eagerness to fall into line and preserve the status quo. Sherlock railed against the idea of being told what to do, baring his teeth at anyone who tried to control him, and yet here he was, blinking rapidly at the sight of Irene Adler, of all people, suddenly materializing in front of him and firing off demands and deductions both, a whirlwind of cleverness that always managed to slow him down and stop him in his tracks.
Inconvenient. He was still, God help him, emotional after his literal brush with death, and Sherlock stiffened slightly, watching through half-lidded eyes as Irene watched him. They were each guarded and yet stripped of their usual defenses; Irene in her understated sundress, Sherlock in his blood-stained suit. She could see everything, and that was ... uncomfortable, but underneath that, he felt a sweeping sense of relief that Irene wasn't dead, too. That was something. "Ms. Adler," Sherlock returned, equally formal, equally desperate to cling to what little normalcy they could. "It seems you already deduced what happened." That was easier than addressing her comment about his untimely demise.
He folded his hands behind his back with a calm he didn't feel, knuckles white from the effort it took to keep his hands from shaking. Irene was fidgeting, too. Anxious, his mind supplied, rapidly cataloging all the observations that were popping up about the way she lifted her chin and tapped her foot. But Sherlock pushed those aside, stumbling on her last—and quite unexpected—point. I'm glad to see you. He eyed her, skeptical, and maybe a bit hopeful, but he couldn't focus on that, either.
"How long?" Sherlock asked instead, averting yet another difficult discussion that skirted too close to emotional. He didn't elaborate on what he meant because he didn't have to—Irene would know he was asking about how long she'd been trapped here, something he could only vaguely surmise given her appearance.