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]

"You're mistaking me for a man of sentiment, Miss Adler," Sherlock said lowly, soberly. "I think if you were to ask any of my acquaintances you would discover that I do not make a habit out of being concerned for other people." If you were to ask any of his acquaintances they would have several other things to say about Sherlock's attitudes toward other humans. In blue, blue detail.

[irene_adler]

"I'm very well aware." Irene's voice was quiet, wrapped in a thought or a memory or both at the same time. "There's only a handful of people in the world you offer the time of day to, and most of them you infuriate on a semi regular basis." Her fingers changed their pressure then, touch slipping across skin so her palm was pressed in line with his own. Her fingers bent to fill the negative spaces.

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock's shoulders slumped. "Oh let me guess," he said tersely, working through to the end of her thought, "you think you're different." He clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Boring." In his mouth, that word sounded like it should have been scooped out with a trowel.

[irene_adler]

A little smile perked at the corner of her lips. "No," she said, "you infuriate me on a semi regular basis." The fingers of her free hand played at the lapel of his coat before returning to her side.

[elementarysaidhe]

"Bully for me."

His thumb moved across the flesh of her palm. 'Bumped her life line up with the backs of his knuckles and raised her hand to the light, under which he put it to his casual inspection. "Your nails are freshly painted, but there's an indentation on the right edge of your thumbnail. Habitual use. I'm guessing there's a matching imprint on your other hand. Clearly from pressing small keys close together. You've sent a text message in the last half an hour."

He squeezed her hand between his thumb and fingers. "Letting him know I'm here?"

[irene_adler]

An incredulous look flickered across her face, but it stayed in her eyes and didn't move to the rest of her face. She wouldn't tell Moriarty that Sherlock was with her, but an intricate kind of tango had happened before, involving a mystery flight and a scheme of manipulation.

"Telling my assistant to pick up the glass with my fingerprints before John could."

Irene's fingers curled back to his, resulting in a tangle around his thumb.

"Moriarty doesn't know you're here."

[elementarysaidhe]

"Why not?" He looked almost disappointed. "It would be the perfect opportunity for an ambush. Plan more thoroughly next time."

[irene_adler]

"You think that's what I had planned for tonight? An ambush? Hand you over to Jim Moriarty on a silver platter?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"It's what you were alluding to. The memory stick in itself is inconsequential; a red herring. It has its purpose and its theft would certainly be enough to get international attention from the right kinds of people." He did not put particular emphasis on those five words but they somehow carried a particular weight. "But if Moriarty wanted the memory stick he would have had it by now. Clearly he wants to have you here for another purpose entirely."

He broke from her, giving her his shoulder and turning up his collar, hands fitted neatly at the small of his back. "He had to have known that Tyche would not have reported the theft to the authorities. Policemen are inept, not to mention indiscreet and quite often in the pocket of the press. A large-scale, multi-million dollar company; that sort of announcement would tremble the knees of the European stock exchange as soon as it broke. They would have wanted to keep it quiet, so as not to cause alarm."

And now he turned to face her, containing her within her own motives the way that the restorationist had framed the Vermeer on the wall behind her. "Hire a private entity. A consulting detective. The consulting detective. The only one in the world. Send him a frail old man with a dead daughter and a missing treasure and watch him run."

[irene_adler]

It was like watching the pieces of a puzzle fall together right before her, or lines of impossible code become deciphered with the flick of a lone finger. Sherlock Holmes had an incredible mind, completely capable of analyzing the most difficult of situations into something simplistic, all in the span of seconds. He saw ulterior motives in every place that he looked, because so many times that was exactly the case.

Except now. Because whether he admitted it to her as a positive or negative, this time Irene Adler was different. Her motives had nothing to do with the madman who was undeniably cackling to the open air over London right now.

"Oh, Mister Holmes." Her voice was silken and amused. "Always looking for the ulterior motive. Peeling away the layers to see what's beneath, what's really happening in the world. So sure that there's never any other possible reason other than what your mind figures out."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock shrugged one shoulder. "I find it impossible to operate under any other assumption," he said, with the complete bravado so intrinsic to his character. If self-satisfaction were an olympic sport, Sherlock Holmes would sag under the weight of his medals.

"It's the only explanation that fits the facts of the case," he continued, crossing the floor to stand before her again. Barefoot, she had to tilt her chin to see his face. His expression was that of cool patrician confidence. "When you reduce detail to the simplest element, Miss Adler, it's really quite obvious."

[irene_adler]

"And yet you're wrong."

Irene gave him a brief handful of seconds in which to enjoy his triumph, to take in the feeling and sensation of being right, then shattered it with four simple words. Her expression didn't change from the subtle smile tucked at the corner of her mouth, everything was the same save for a small glint in her eye. He had deduced and reasoned his way around everything that had happened, come to a perfectly reasonable conclusion -

- and been completely wrong.

[elementarysaidhe]

For a moment Sherlock Holmes looked dispossessed. Confusion crossed his face, followed quickly by an unmistakable flash of irritation. "Wrong?" he repeated. In reference to himself, his performance, the word was clumsy and unfamiliar. That Word applied to other people; to ordinary people. People for whom the world was a sloppy, disorganized place without order.

Sherlock saw through the chaos. And he was never, ever wrong.

[irene_adler]

His disquiet made her lips twitch a bit more, watching the confusion unfold on his face. For all of his deductive reasoning and certainties, Sherlock had been completely off base in this particular case. Irene held his gaze, then took another two steps to bring herself into his immediate space.

"Yes, Sherlock. Wrong." A pause. "Catch."

From the pocket of her robe, she drew out her camera phone. Pressing a couple of keys (the volume set to silence) she drew up her text message history on the screen.

"And if you don't believe me, look for yourself."

Of course, without the phone leaving her hand.

[elementarysaidhe]

He glanced briefly at the screen, then back to her face. "Tell me how."

[irene_adler]

Irene slipped the phone back into her pocket without taking her eyes from his face.

"Which part do you want to know first? Why you're wrong about Moriarty, or why you're wrong about why you're here tonight?"

[elementarysaidhe]

Wrong, wrong, wrong like klaxon bells. She had to know the effect that word had on him; it was why she kept repeating it. Seemed almost delighted to roll the first, round sound off of her lips. Wrong. The sting was sharper than any of the toys she had in her arsenal.

Worse still: the compulsion to stay and learn just how this happened overrode the part of Sherlock's brain normally responsible for regulating his impulse control. She was a hit of cocaine. A fistfight. A single unidentified fingerprint at a crime scene.

Not boring.

"What does Moriarty need you for?"

[irene_adler]

She did know, knew full well that each time she told him he was wrong, she was driving another nail into the ground to root him into place. Keeping him here, away from the outside world, because he couldn't stand the idea of not knowing where he'd gone off the correct path.

"Jim Moriarty doesn't need me."

A pause as she turned on one bare heel, crossing the plush carpet to take up a seat on the plush sofa.

"It isn't need that's driving him, Sherlock. It's something else. Do you know what it is?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"Psychopathy?" he ventured, not entirely unserious.

He turned. She had curled up on the sofa like a cat, satisfied with her secret. He could see the pulse beat in her long, imperial neck and was inexplicably struck with the image of a cobra poised to strike.

[irene_adler]

"Close."

Her fingers settled against the sash of her robe, something rich with lace and black silk, twining it idly around one finger. The movement lasted a brief second before her hand came to lay flat against the arm of the sofa again.

"Something close to, akin to psychopathy. Something that can drive a man to do things he wouldn't otherwise do."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock was not entirely convinced that Jim Moriarty possessed a full set of human emotions. At the very least they were broken; read on the faces of other people and stitched together like a patchwork. He could emulate, but he could not experience.

"And that is?" he pressed, almost irritably.

[irene_adler]

Irene's legs shifted, her feet taking up residence on the carpet again. In a few slow steps she crossed to him again, her arms folded loosely beneath her chest.

"Want."

[elementarysaidhe]

"Want," he repeated. "Of what?"

[irene_adler]

"Of me."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock arched an eyebrow. The two words set him on the backs of his heels, as if he had absorbed a dull blow. He narrowed his attention to the confidence he saw written in her expression.

"Don't make the mistake of thinking that Jim Moriarty is capable of feeling, Miss Adler. He is not. To him, people are either obstacles or stepping stones. Means to an end." He scrutinized her face. "You have earned the distinction of being both, I think. But nothing more."