Open to irene_adler (BBC's Sherlock)

[mmkaternater]

Whenever feasible, Sherlock Holmes preferred to travel Europe by train, rather than by aeroplane.

This predilection, to which Dr. John Watson was only enlightened as he attempted to squeeze two valise cases into the overhead compartment of a sleeper car (Holmes did none of the lifting), had several sources. Holmes was particularly sensitive to the idea of airline security in a post-9/11 society, where a man who could identify who you were sleeping with (just by looking at the cuffs on your sleeves) attracted a worrying amount of attention from border agents. (Holmes had once been stuck in a holding room in Lisbon's Portela Airport for thirty-six hours merely because the pilot's shoelaces had been of a particular interest.) Holmes also approved of the thrift of the railway system and, in spite the success of Watson's blog and the celebrity it attracted, preferred a private train car to a noisy, elbow-to-elbow aerorplane cabin.

They had taken a lightspeed rail from Charing Cross and reached the southern tip of France in just under three hours. After breakfasting in Céret, they had boarded another, hardier train for the one thousand mile journey north to the provincial town of Lille where they were to begin their latest investigation. Watson had settled down almost immediately, sinking into the plush seat like a winter bird fluffing its feathers. Holmes had gravitated toward the smoking car (itself in danger of becoming an anachronism in an increasingly anti-smoking society) which he found blissfully unoccupied. He spent most of the northward journey with his back to the window, watching the passengers as they traversed up and down the corridor. He did not smoke. He seemed merely content to be in a position to do so if he chose.

Their present commission had been set to them by a doctor named Roubaix, a noted physician and medical celebrity, whose latest research seemed to indicate that he had found a cure for all forms of malignant neoplasms -- cancer. He was mere weeks away from making a formal announcement when he discovered that his research notes had been stolen from a locked safety deposit box, itself protected by a two-foot-thick steel vault door in the city bank. The security cameras had recorded nothing of the incident; no alarms had been triggered and none of the employees had access to the safety deposit boxes, save the manager, who had been away on holiday in Nice.

"These papers are priceless, Mr. Holmes," Roubaix had pleaded, wringing his hands as he sat in the sitting room at Baker Street two days earlier, "the police launched a formal investigation but turned up rien, nothing. You must come to France. I do not want to be melodramatic, but the future of the human race may depend on it."

"Never let it be said that I did not do my part for humanity, Watson," Holmes said as they stepped onto the platform at Lille, the steam of the engine swirling around their ankles.

"Oh yes," Watson replied dryly, "Sherlock Holmes: our last great hope."

Holmes narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "You're irritated with me."

Watson dragged the last of the two cases down from the train and heaved them onto the platform, puffing for his effort. "No, no, not at all. I'll just get these heavy suitcases myself. What have you got in here, cement bricks?"

"Safecracking equipment." And he set off across the square at a brisk walk.

Comments

[elementarysaidhe]

Said the spider to the fly, Holmes could not help supplying to himself. The foyer was dark save for the splash of color coming from the LED security panel on the closest wall. No doubt she had the perimeter of the property marked with spotlights and invisible tripwire. Modern security had made safeguarding one's home easy and affordable. Irene Adler would be doubly caution, and spare no expense for the protection of herself and her secrets. Out of courtesy, Sherlock turned his back when she entered the code to disarm the system.

He stood in the middle of the tile, hands clasped lightly behind his back. He was completely and utterly calm; as if he had stopped by a neighbor's to borrow a cup of sugar, rather than in pursuit of sensitive documents.

"The bank heist," he reminded her, having fulfilled her condition of a more secure location in which to converse, "how did you pull it off?"

[irene_adler]

"You know perfectly well that bank was robbed when I was on stage." Her voice came from a few rooms away now, already reacquainting herself with the place she called home - at least, for the present time. It had been strangely simple to secure accommodations fit for a dozen, yet only intended for one. Not identical to her previous, beloved residence, but still not a terrible thing.

"Do you believe me capable of being in two places at once?"

An interesting thought, and not unappealing in this case.

Her heels sounded on the tile, crossing towards the elevator where she pressed the button to go upwards.

[elementarysaidhe]

"Physically or emotionally?" he queried; then, "or metaphysically?"

[irene_adler]

"Physically," she said, "of course. I'm sure you aren't referring to my robbing a bank on the astral plane. Do come with me."

[elementarysaidhe]

He joined her on the elevator. "I think you're capable of many things, Miss Adler, but physics are physics."

[irene_adler]

"That's rather elementary, isn't it,Sherlock? " Irene stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the penthouse level.

[elementarysaidhe]

"And so often missed. To the unschooled eye, what initially seems complex is actually quite simple. It is the commonplace -- the mundane -- which almost always more difficult to figure out." The elevator floated upward; Sherlock experienced the familiar pull of gravity and ran a computation through his head.

"This flat, for instance. The building itself contains at least a dozen separate apartments, but only one of them is in use. Yours. And this is potential a very viable property: a short commute away from the city, modern appliances. You couldn't have gotten the place on your own. Not when INTERPOL has three different versions of your face on their Web site. No. You would have had to have had financial backing. Someone to ensure your privacy and to grease the wheels for your installation at the opera."

Someone for whom you've worked before. Someone who requires reassurances about your loyalty. Someone who will turn you into shoes if you fail to provide him with what he wants.

"Moriarty."

[irene_adler]

A subtle lift of her chin was the only indication of her response, along with a slow curve of her mouth. It was oddly poetic that she was now working with the arch nemesis of the man presently alongside her. Add in the happening of recent events, and it really couldn't be more shocking.

"Lille has turned a blind eye to my presence because the opera is one of its greatest attractions. Jim saw to that. My strategic placement just out of sight. And more importantly, out of reach. Interpol can't find what it can't see, contrary to popular belief."

Irene led the way through the penthouse doors, though she did give pause to lock the doors and activate the security system behind her.

"Aren't you curious as to why?"

[elementarysaidhe]

The last time Sherlock had seen Jim Moriarty, they'd been trading superior looks over the top of an incendiary device. Adler had openly admitted that she'd been working with him during the royal photo scandal. Now Sherlock wondered just how far the man's reach extended -- and into whose lives and pockets his beneficence stretched.

"More curious as to how you possibly managed to scrape your way back into his good graces after the 'Bond Air' affair," the detective admitted. "Jim Moriarty is not acquainted with the concept of forgiveness."

[irene_adler]

"Jim Moriarty is a man." Emphasis on the last word, as if it were a decisive piece to the puzzle. "Give a man a chase, he'll follow you anywhere to get what he wants."

Now inside the comfort of her own penthouse, Irene was more at ease. She tugged her gloved from her hands and returned them to her handbag, which found a resting place on a small table. Now free, her nails were scarlet in the light.

"I don't scrape, Sherlock. " A pause, and then a slow smile. "But I'm more than happy to scratch."

Moriarty was a complicated creature, and just how complicated was another matter entirely.

[elementarysaidhe]

"Moriarty is a spider," Sherlock retorted, developing a metaphor which he would use later, "sitting at the center of a very large web. He knows every twitch of every strand. Don't think for a moment that he sees you as anything other than a fly to be entrapped."

[irene_adler]

"That would require my flying in close enough to be ensnared." Now her shoes were quiet taps as she crossed the room to the detective again. Her chin lifted slightly to regard him in the dim light. "I have something Moriarty wants. He won't harm me as long as I possess that."

[elementarysaidhe]

And the detective stood his ground. "I don't doubt that you believe that, Miss Adler. The reality is that men like Moriarty don't think as you do. To even presume to know his motives isn't charming. It's delusional. Whatever you have, Moriarty can take away when he pleases. The fact that you still have it -- and your head -- is the part of the mystery that I find most interesting."

He tilted his chin to better read her face: the cool, self-satisfied smile at the corners of her mouth; the overturned vee eyebrows, set in casual curiosity.

"Why hasn't he discarded you yet?" he mused, half to himself.

[irene_adler]

"Yes, why hasn't he?" Her attention was on his face, the high, sharp cheekbones and the eyes which saw everything all at once.

"Tell me, Sherlock Holmes, why hasn't your arch nemesis come after me to take what he wants? Material things are so easily obtained, after all." Her fingers walked, feather light, up the lapel of his coat, curling to grasp at the heavy material.

"And while you're figuring it out, take off your coat and stay awhile."

[elementarysaidhe]

An eyebrow slid higher at the mention of arch nemesis, and continued its upward journey even as her fingers slid beneath the red stitch around a button hole. "Why would I stay?" he asked.

[irene_adler]

"Why would you go?" Her palm slipped beneath the heavy fabric and there was the thrum of warm skin beneath his shirt. Another upward bump of her knuckles upset the coat from his shoulders.

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock, formidable mental champion and logicist, could tell you the two hundred and forty-three different types of tobacco ash and how to identify each, but his mental faculties were stunted when it came to the good, old-fashioned come on. A divot appeared between his brows. He sleighted his face away from her, one eyebrow poised in question.

"What are you doing?"

It quite literally did not compute. Her move from from bank heist to shed your clothes had no logical origin nor flowthrough. Sherlock found himself backtracking the last twenty seconds for potential gap in his perception.

[irene_adler]

If it were the end of the world, if it were the very last night -

There had been firelight around them then, and he'd been far more preoccupied with his violin and thoughts of Coventry than he had been with her. For all of his knowledge and observations, Sherlock was oblivious to her advances.

"I'm taking your coat, Mister Holmes. What sort of a hostess would I be if I didn't - " her other hand traveled upwards to make the same push at the other side, the other shoulder " - take your coat?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"I don't intend to stay," he reassured her, rolling his shoulders to stop the progress of her hands. Hostess or not, Sherlock was single-minded when it came to the practicalities of a case. This particular engagement was a reconnaissance-recovery operation; on the grand scale of criminal activities, this ranked somewhere between a six and a seven. Interesting, yes, but more a matter of clean hands than dirty objectives.

"I already know the location of the memory stick that contains the doctor's notes. I also know that, regardless of what you believe to be true about the man you are working for, your possession of the memory stick does not mandate your safety." He glanced at he bodice of her dress; for the impression of the three-inch rectangle that held all the world's hope in its tiny computer chip.

But why does she still have it? Why hasn't Moriarty collected it from her? What secondary purpose could she possibly serve?

He met her eyes. "He'll kill you." His voice was devoid of emotion. It was simply a fact.

[irene_adler]

Three small words, and each held a ring of truth. Irene held his gaze with her own, even with her hands pressed against his shoulders, undaunted. It was a strange embrace, almost some kind of beginning to a dance.

For a brief instant, her mind is back on a darkened stretch of road, and the feeling of grit and ground beneath her knees is as fresh as it had been. There's foreign language roaring in her ears and masked faces by the half dozen, armored vehicles and a glinting blade sparkling in her peripheral vision like a stray star. Black gauze brushes against her cheek, the last memory she thought herself to have. And in what she believed her final moment to be, it had been Sherlock who she had said a goodbye to.

A goodbye, in three words.

Goodbye Mister Holmes.

When I say run -

For some reason - a reason she didn't quite understand, didn't understand at all - he'd come to save her. Posed as her executioner, then turned the blade on the terrorists themselves.

"It isn't the memory stick that Moriarty wants."

[elementarysaidhe]

"Clearly," Holmes replied. Moriarty had veins of intrigue running throughout the entire corpus of Europe; if he had wanted the memory stick he could have taken it in a variety of criminally creative ways. Blackmail. Extortion. Bribery. Any number of bland, everyday crimes that would have little overhead and very few personnel on the ground.

But this...this was elaborate. Far too many bodies for a simple snatch-and-grab, too many potential loose ends. Sherlock was looking at one now: a loose end in a stunning black dress and heels that would break the resolve of all but the most confident of women.

[irene_adler]

"Something that he has tried to buy, but can't. Something coveted, but not a material possession."

Her hands were flat against his shoulders now, and Irene took that moment to push a little harder, managing the upset of the coat by another fraction of an inch. There was a height difference between them, but not enough to prevent the brush of her breath across the sculpt of his chin.

"Something he's been denied, yet continues to ask for."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock was certain there was a very short list of things that Jim Moriarty could not obtain -- whether through money or good old-fashioned coercion -- and that if he ever came abreast of a locked door, he'd be just as moved to blow it off its hinges as ask for the key. Human casualty was a moot point. In fact, Moriarty probably felt that he hadn't done his job unless he left a lot of hats on the ground.

"I don't like riddles, Miss Adler," the detective said, arching a reproving eyebrow. "And you have something that Moriarty wants. That thought alone is enough to put ice around the hardiest of hearts."

[irene_adler]

Moments came where Irene almost forgot how impervious to seduction Sherlock Holmes could be. It wasn't enough to deter her, but it was enough to make her try harder. Or in a completely different way.

Moriarty hadn't been enough to stop Sherlock from saving her life, though.

"You would advise I give it to him? Give him what he wants?"

Irene took a step back, her hands slipping from beneath his coat. She turned on a high heel and moved further into the penthouse.

"Come sit down, Sherlock. Make yourself comfortable."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock considered her question -- and her proposal -- and found himself spelling out his opinion on the former while he indulged her in the latter: "I would advise you to collect your things and leave France immediately for somewhere far warmer; perhaps even equatorial. The longer you are in the company of hangmen, the closer you are to the tightening noose."

He followed her through the corridors and the dark frames of doorways. Distant rooms, filled with indistinguishable furniture, passed on either side of the hallway. It was a splendid apartment. Enviable, even. But Sherlock could see that the owner spent very little time here. She would tell herself that this apartment was only temporary; that she would almost invariably end up going elsewhere, like a hermit crab searching for a new shell. Nomads did not have sentimental attachment to their homes. Sherlock, on the other hand, was London's great champion. His fondness for the metropolis nearly rivaled the pleasure he took from bringing a case to a satisfying conclusion.