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

[irene_adler]

Irene wasn't taking no for an answer. She crossed the room to his side and regarded the notes, then the sharp lines of his profile. There was rust and blood around the edges of the wound, and whether it was severe or not didn't matter if it became infected. Her hand touched the curve of his arm, the part still covered by his shirt.

"You can read them to me while I take care of this." Her head inclined in the direction of the chair again.

[elementarysaidhe]

He ignored her. "You see this --" he flashed the top sheet "-- the particular downward stroke of the rukopisniy shrift; indicative of a left-handed individual with a callous on the inside of the ring finger -- the pressure indicators are obvious -- perhaps from habitually holding a gun, my guess is our friend whom you ran down with the Land Rover. Grammatical structure indicates average intelligence, though I would not stake my reputation on a man who doesn't know to get out of the way of an oncoming SUV."

He went to the table and laid the pages out, side by side. "The writing bumps here on the second line, so, done while moving; written in the car. Instructions received while driving or dictation written when someone else was driving. Most likely our friends received their marching orders from Moriarty en route, which means that they are no more than hired thugs, my guess is the Orekhovskaya gang, resurrected with the help of the world's foremost consulting criminal."

[irene_adler]

Orekhovskaya was vaguely familiar, but Irene couldn't place what it was, other than what sounded Russian. She followed to his side, looking at the pages over his shoulder with a slightly furrowed brow. Concentration etched across her pretty features.

"My Russian is a little rusty," she said. "What does it say?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"You mean you never asked the Russian ambassador what he liked?"

He traced his fingers over the strange characters, flashing back on a workable knowledge of Russian linguistics. His brother Mycroft was better with the Eastern European languages. Sherlock did not necessarily want to know why. He read aloud:

"Twenty-five million for item on delivery.
Additional fifteen for successful recovery of the woman --"

and here Sherlock flashed her a knowing look

"-- alive preferable. Dead, if you must."

[irene_adler]

"He liked the ball gag."

Irene dropped the whispers of the past in favor of her eyes following Sherlock's finger across the paper. The words rang in her ears, but took longer to allow their full meaning to sink in.

If I can't have you -

"He'll send someone else." Her voice was surprisingly steady, even as she lifted her eyes to his face. "Won't he." It wasn't a question at this point.

[elementarysaidhe]

"Doubtless," he replied, though he attached no emotion to it. It was simply Newton's third law of motion in play: her actions brought about an equal and opposite reaction. To flee meant to be pursued; to run meant to be chased. Unless Moriarty came up against an external, counterbalancing force -- a detective, for instance -- a criminal in motion would always stay in motion.

Sherlock shuffled the notes, his brow knit in concentration. "Quite a love letter, Miss Adler. Fifteen million dollars: Alive preferable. Dead, if you must. Perhaps next time you should be a bit more discriminating when selecting potential employers."

[irene_adler]

"Moriarty selected me." Irene reached for the notes, taking the sheaf of papers from his hands. The writing meant nothing to her, but she ran her fingertips across the pages as if it might bring them to make more sense.

"After you told me to run, I ran. I didn't stop for days. Moriarty found me when I was about to cross the border. He just picked me up in one of his ridiculous cars." A pause. "Like he knew where I was. Which he clearly did."

[elementarysaidhe]

Sherlock folded his fingers into the palm of his hand and watched her as she pored over the past. "Simple deduction," he explained. "All human behavior is easily broken down into a series of habits and inclinations. Discover those of your target and you can pinpoint their location to within a mile."

It also didn't hurt that James Moriarty had the whole of the criminal underworld at his disposal.

"And given the fact that you have a...theatrical personality..."

[irene_adler]

Irene turned the full of her gaze to his face. There were still flecks of dirt and rust in his hair, and the blood on his shoulder looked dried, but angry. She laid the papers back on the table and turned her attention to his shoulder, pushing back split material to get a better look. It was a graze, but the aftermath of their adventure had found its way into the open wound, and whether it was nothing or not, it would hurt in the morning.

"That makes me easy to trace, or a person of interest to a mad man?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"I was going to say 'stupid,' but John is insistent that I learn the art of social niceties." And yet he somehow managed to come across as insulting anyway. A good trick, that.

He brushed at her hands again, irritably. It was clear that he had no intention of being ministered to while in the middle of a case. He rarely even slept when in the middle of something interesting. Cigarettes had been therapeutic, when he had been allowed to smoke. Now John insisted on nicotine patches and Sherlock paced the floor like a caged tiger when he could not sleep.

[irene_adler]

Her hands slipped from his shoulder but it wasn't out of being beaten. There was something else, something that was standing out to her mind, but she couldn't quite grasp hold of it. Irene retrieved the notes again, taking up the pages and returning her gaze to them.

"Roubaix was worried about the Russians," she said. "Worried what might happen if his project was ever discovered." Her eyes lifted again. "And you'll never learn social niceties, Sherlock. If you do, it will make you incredibly boring."

[elementarysaidhe]

Others may have been wounded, but Sherlock took his distinct lack of sociability as a mark of merit. There were so many other things to be concerned about; such a finite amount of room in one's brain to sacrifice any of it for the sake of remembering names, birthdays, or conversational motifs. The corner of his mouth tightened and then relaxed.

"He was about to announce that he had found a cure for cancer," he said. "Of course he was going to run into resistance. The United States alone spends approximately $4.8 billion dollars per year on ongoing cancer research. Roubaix was about to take the wind out of many sails."

[irene_adler]

Irene shook her head. "He was worried about it being used as a weapon," she said. "He told me anything that can be used for good can be used for the opposite. Getting hold of his notes meant understanding his work. Understanding his work meant that in the wrong hands, it could become a weapon."

She looked up to his face again. "Mutate the cure for cancer, and what do you get?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"A plague," he murmured, eyeing the notes again, "a plague to end all plagues." He met her eyes. In his mind, windows were aligning, bringing everything into sharp focus. The light of the lamp framed her differently. He seemed to be able to see something else -- a new angle, a new shape in what he thought he had deconstructed completely. He spoke again: that strange, staccato rhythm of deduction that did not lend itself to pause, punctuation or uncertainty:

"Roubaix knew what he had created; he knew that the work he had done had the potential to kill as well as save." He took a step closer, into her personal space. "And so he made a choice. He did the only thing he knew would keep his discovery from ending up in the control of those who would use it against humanity." His gray eyes held her whole.

"You didn't steal the notes. He gave them to you."

[irene_adler]

Irene closed the distance by another slight degree, her chin tilting upwards to take look into his eyes. The sharp featured face she'd caressed with a strip of leather in what seemed like another lifetime.

"The notes in my possession meant Moriarty would never have them. Because he came to you to recover the notes. Roubaix went to you knowing exactly where the notes were the whole time." Now the tips of her fingers touched the back of his hand again, drawing a pattern across the bumps of his knuckles, the similar kind of dance they had done before. This time she didn't shy her touch away, instead she curled her fingers around his hand.

"In giving me the notes, he led you right to me. Moriarty wanted the notes - wanted me - two things he would never have. For one very simple reason."

[elementarysaidhe]

Roubaix, the degenerating scientist, had played his role so perfectly that Sherlock had missed the larger game; the bigger, more damning deception. Sherlock found himself gut-punched by his earlier advice: it is the simple case which is ultimately the most baffling.

He drew in a half breath, contempt tucked behind his teeth."People have died, Miss Adler. Roubaix is dead because of your --" an odd mixture of that contempt, and curiosity, roiled in the pit of his stomach. "-- Theatricality," he finished. In his mouth, the word sounded like a blunt instrument.

"Why?"

[irene_adler]

Roubaix wasn't supposed to die. It wasn't supposed to happen. But when dealing with a mad man, the most dangerous piece was the man himself. Moriarty had taken away everything from Irene in one sweep of his hand, all because she had come to dance with him. But the why was the far more difficult question to answer, as difficult as it was simple. Her tongue touched lightly against her teeth.

"Moriarty was coming for the notes. I took them into my possession, which in turn led him to me. And led you, Mister Holmes,back to me."

[elementarysaidhe]

"So that's what this was all for?" he asked. Then, quieter: "A play for my attention? I told you, Miss Adler: send a note. The body count will be considerably lower."

[irene_adler]

"I misjudged Moriarty." Never let it be said Irene Adler didn't know when things were out of control. Her head tilted a bit, lowering, the curve of her cheek touching his shoulder. "I didn't know how far he would go to have me."

[elementarysaidhe]

"Or to have you killed," Sherlock reminded her, somewhat languidly, though perhaps it would be to her benefit to point out the distinction. It was entirely possible that Moriarty did not even function on the recognized plane of human emotion; that he had sunk below the acceptable range of feeling, into the realm of monsters with motive.

He turned his shoulder, subtly changing his position so that she would be forced to lift her cheek. The spot where she had been left a pool of ambient warmth.

"I have always said that emotion is a dangerous distraction. Love --" he raised a critical eyebrow "-- has the particular distinction of being the worst kind of distraction."

[irene_adler]

His adjustment did cause her to lift her head, but not before brushing her cheek against his. It could have been an accident, but physical contact was never accidental to her. Irene blinked once and brought his face back into focus, the pronounced, defined features she had become acquainted with so intimately through Moriarty's photographs.

She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but she couldn't. Sentiment was dangerous, it had led him to find her passcode and her near death at the hands of a terrorist cell.

And yet -

Irene found his wrist with her fingers again. Felt the strong beat of his pulse.

"A distraction? Is that what you call it?"

[elementarysaidhe]

"A liability," he countered, "and one I avoid at all possible cost."

[irene_adler]

"Not all cost," she murmured. Her lips touched the corner of his mouth, featherlight.

[elementarysaidhe]

"All." Beat. "Surely the fact that you are the one who has initiated all physical contact gives you some indication of my perception of the matter. You have some history of using your physical wiles to your advantage; you seek to dominate, to control, and you believe that given the right application of pressure to certain areas of the brain and body, you can get anyone to do almost anything."

He turned his wrist, sliding his fingers over the backs of her knuckles. He drew her small, closed fist into the confines of his long palm. "But you're an actress after all, Miss Adler. And not a very good one."

[irene_adler]

Her fingers were warmed by his hand, the coiled pressure of long strength holding her still. Her breath was a ghost across his cheek, and his skin was warm.

"I think that you saved my life - twice. For reasons that have nothing to do with my acting abilities."

It was the question that had been nudging itself at her consciousness since she had last seen him. Why had he come, posed as her executioner, then helped her to run?