The first thing Sherlock senses, as soon as he regains consciousness, is her perfume. One of her perfumes, actually. The one that a lifetime ago ─ when he still had the presumption to think that he knew the woman he regularly slept with ─ he might have referred to as her favorite, if only because it was the one the sheets of her apartment in London were more often impregnated of.
Other memories are trying to attack him, but Sherlock simply rejects them by opening his eyes. Bad move. The sunlight blinds him for a long minute, making him weep. From that first glance he doesn't catch a lot: open windows, curtains flapping in the wind, a wood floor, walls painted with pale colors, a painter's easel.
Déjà vu.
But she wouldn't have brought him in the same house where they found her, he thinks, while he waits for his visual capacity to work again. That would be too stupid and reckless. It would be crazy, it would be... a slap in the face for the police. Yes, Sherlock can definitely see the poetic side of the challenge. Good for him, too bad for her. Pride always come with a very high price.
He opens his eyes again, this time more carefully. It turns out he's sitting on the floor, with his back against the wall. He's still wearing the same clothes he was wearing when he left home this morning to go to the police station, peacefully unaware that he was going to be kidnapped by his nemesis slash crazy ex-girlfriend instead.
He turns his head slightly and there she is, just as he expected.
She is painting again. But this time she's not giving her back at him, she's just in front to the point where he is... chained.
Yes, it took him a regrettable amount of time to notice them, but those around his wrists are definitely chains. They're loose enough so he'd able to keep his arms in his lap, but then they stretch over his head, turn around a pivot in the wall, and rise up to the ceiling, out of his reach. Even from that distance Sherlock recognizes the lock that closes the chains together, and he curses mentally. It's one of the hardest to crack. Not impossible ─ not for him, anyway ─ but still damn hard.
The slight rattling attracts Irene's attention, and she finally looks away from the painting to glare at him. She smiles.
"Good morning, Sherlock. Déjà vu?", she asks cheerfully.
"The chains are a new element", he replies.
"I'd call them a spicy addition", Irene says, still smiling in her cold but apparently friendly way. "I wanted to organize something special for this meeting, after all it's been almost a year since the last time we met. I missed you, Sherlock."
He snorts.
"You've been missed a lot by the police, instead. I'm sure they will be very glad to have you back."
Irene laughs, then she stands up, leaves the brush and the palette on the stool and slowly approaches him.
She's wearing a work apron, her blonde hair is loose on her shoulders, and there is not even a trace of makeup on her face, Sherlock notices when she stops in front of him. She's in the list of the ten most wanted criminals in the world, yet here she is, beautiful, calm and relaxed as if nothing happened. Enviable.
As it's enviable the pretending pained expression on her face, when she reaches out and strokes his stubbly cheek with her fingers stained of blue, black and white.
"Oh, my love", she murmurs, with a smile that now seems almost sad. "They'll be very glad if they just manage to find some pieces of you."
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.
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The second time he wakes up, it's night, the room is lit only by a dozen candles disorderly scattered on the floor, and the windows are open to let see a clear piece of night sky. He's cold and dazed, and he no longer feels neither his arms nor his legs, but the smell of fresh grass tickles his nose while the last crickets of the season loudly sing their song, and there's something sweet in the breeze that strokes his sweaty forehead.
If it wasn't for the chains, it would be almost a great awakening, honestly.
In the opposite corner of the room, Irene is lying on a half destroyed couch, with a book in her hands, wearing a robe too light for a night so cold. When she realizes he's awake, she lowers her book and just stares at him. She doesn't smile anymore. She has nothing more of the malice and the complacency of the morning (or was it the day before? Sherlock has not yet figured it out).
"They found you", he deduces, and his voice sounds hoarse and rusty. He's thirsty. The kind of thirst that could push to kill for a glass of water. She seems to sense it, because she gets up, puts the book down and retrieves a pitcher from the table under the window.
There is more rigidity in the way she moves, but no urgency. She is not scared, not even anxious. She's just... angry. Furious, in fact.
"Joan figured you out again?", he asks when she kneels in front of him to shove the glass against his lips.
"Don't be ridiculous, Sherlock", Irene says in a cold voice, holding up his face with one hand. "Your little pet might've a stroke of luck once, but please don't put her on my level. A gentleman should never offend his lady this way."
Sherlock just grins, well aware that he's right, but he doesn't argue. He drinks slowly, despite the burning thirst. Meanwhile he looks at her from behind the crystal edge of the glass: he notices the hard wrinkle in the middle of her forehead, the bitter twist of her lips, her slightly contracted jaw. If the problem was just a right move of the police, she would be angry, yes, but also amused, curious and ready to play. It's something different.
"I should be already dead, shouldn't I?", he asks again when she withdraws her hand. The chains feels a bit looser, and his muscles are starting to regain sensibility. If only he could keep her busy for a few minutes...
"What is it? Are you unable to kill me, Irene?", he asks again, in an almost mocking tone. "Or would you prefer me to call you Moriarty, now?"
She doesn't react immediately. She's furious, of course, but she's also tired. And maybe confused. A lifetime ago, Sherlock would have said she was on the verge of tears. But Irene is an excellent actress, and nothing is more true than a lie with her.
A blonde strand slips on her face, and Irene absently smooths it with a pale hand. Even her face is unusually white, and by contrast there are dark shadows around her eyes. Lit only by the combined light of the moon and candles, she looks like a ghost.
"You should already be dead," she confirms, still kneeling in front of him. And there's something in her voice. Something he doesn't like at all.
"How long?" Sherlock asks, with a hint of what might be panic. "How long should I've been dead? How long am I here? "
No response. Not right away.
The candle's flames flickers in the night's breeze, and monsters made of shapeless shadows appears on the walls. It's getting colder, and the crickets have stopped singing long time ago.
"A week", Irene finally says. "You've been here for a week."
The news is a cold shower. Seven days? Seven days he has no memory at all? Seven days tied here, without eating or drinking? Impossible.
Unless...
"I'm almost out of heroin ", Irene says. "The supply was not intended to last this long. The idea was an overdose. A true overdose, this time. It would have been appropriate, right? To repay your little joke". There is no trace of sarcasm in her voice. There is no trace of anything, in fact . It's so empty and flat that it's scaring.
Sherlock would be worried if all his attention wasn't focused on a single word. Heroin. Drugged for a whole week. He doesn't feel the pangs of abstinence yet, but after all he's awake for less than five minutes. How much time has passed between the last dose and the moment he was finally able to come to his senses? And how much his level of tolerance has lowered? What level of addiction his body is now?
Irene is crying.
Sherlock needs a few seconds to process the information. He sees the tears filling her eyes and then run over her cheeks, drawing two straight, wet lines on her face, but he doesn't understand. Not right away.
Irene cries, and he hates her, he hates her in a way he never hated anyone before, and at the same time, if he could, he would probably stretch his arms to hold her. He doesn't understand that either. Perhaps he will never understand, because the concept of odi et amo surely wasn't invented by him, and it's unlikely that he'll find a rational explanation for one of the most perilous problem that has ever afflicted humanity.
Irene hates him too. He can read it in her eyes. She hates him and she's furious with him, and she wants to kill him ─ really wants to kill him, not so to say ─ but she can't. She really can't.
Sherlock laughs.
He feels his head light, empty, almost disconnected from the rest of his body. There isn't any muscle that doesn't hurt. He is a heroin addict without hope again, in spite of all the good progress of the last year. In spite of Joan. Yet he laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs, and when Irene screams and slaps him, he laughs even more.
She cries and shouts and scratches his face with her fingernails still stained with paint, and she seems crazy, completely insane, the scariest woman he has ever known, the most brilliant, the most evil and vicious, the woman who crushed under her heels men and women and children, almost entire countries. And now she weeps on his knees, almost in his arms, and hits him with punches that have no strength.
And Sherlock can't help but keep laughing, while he casually wonders if he is becoming crazy too.
.
.
.
He imagines her going back and forth, nervous, irritated, unsure. He imagines all the times she must have approached the fatal syringe to his arm, only to withdraw it before inevitably push down the plunger. He imagines that she must have tried less symbolic ways. He wonders how many times the barrel of a gun or a knife were approached to his face, only to be turned away by shaking hands. He imagines her doing this one day after another, one night after another, with Watson, Gregson and Bell at her heels, and with the vengeance getting colder and colder on the plate.
He wonders if, in her place, he would have pulled the trigger, or sunk the blade, or pushed the needle. He doesn't know the answer. He can't judge. He became crazy the same way when he believed her to be dead. And even if the situation was different then, he can't really say that he doesn't understand, at least in part, what she must have felt.
He wants to laugh again, but his throat burns too much.
Now Irene lies slumped against him, exhausted. Her head resting against his shoulder, her hands against his chest. The fury of a moment before is gone, like the flames of the candles already too worn out, and now all is dark and quiet around them. He breathes in the smell of her hair and wonders who, among them, is the most crazy. Who is the victim, who is the victimizer? They are tangled together and neither of them knows how to untie the knots.
Irene sighs and sniffles, then she get away from him and sit properly. It's strange to see her like this. So... destroyed. She must hate herself a lot right now. For a person like her, full of so much pride and hardness, it can't be easy to go into pieces in front of someone else.
Sherlock knows something about it.
"It has to end", Irene whispers, and who knows how many times she must have said this words to herself. "This obsession has to stop."
Sherlock closes his eyes and tilts his head back, against the wall behind him.
"Stop it, then", he mumbles. He knows that she is holding a syringe. He saw it through the glass when he was drinking. He doesn't care. Even if they manage to find him and save him, it wouldn't end better than this anyway. He can't deal with Joan in these conditions. Not again.
He feels her moving closer to him, and again he closes his eyes. He waits for the cold needle to pierce his skin, he waits for the wave of adrenaline, and then the analgesic and euphoric effect of the drug. If you are lucky enough not to choke on your own vomit, overdose isn't the worst way to die.
Instead of the needle, however, he feels Irene's hot breath on his face, and then her lips crushing hard on his.
.
.
.
Sherlock returns the kiss without really thinking, just barely noticing the taste of salt and alcohol in her mouth. He kisses her and feels her hands cling into his shirt as to tear it apart, while Irene crushes against him. Her skin is hot, almost as if she had a fever, but the tips of her fingers are cold as ice: her caresses are a nice contrast, and chills of pleasure run down his spine.
It's all wrong. It shouldn't be like this. A part of his head try to tell him so ─ shout him so, actually ─ but he can't hear well. Not while Irene's hands slip down his hips, and then stop on the buckle of his belt.
"No."
Sherlock pushes her away, despite his tied hands.
Irene blinks a few times, surprised by his refusal. For a moment she seems lost again, and then her eyes narrow slightly and Sherlock understands that a decision was finally taken.
"Yes", she replies, and now she's smiling again. She stands up on her tiptoes to reach the pivot and the chains that ties together Sherlock's hands. He sends a muffled cry when she pulls hard, lifting up his arms above his head in a position that they both know will become more and more painful by the minute.
Satisfied, Irene returns to kneel between his legs, then she leans forward to kiss him again. Again Sherlock returns the kiss, this time only to be able to bite her hard. She immediately pulls away, hissing, but then she laughs with her lips stained with blood .
"Ah, rough sex", she whispers in a voice full of malice. "You know I love it. And unless I remember it wrong, you don't mind it at all either."
Her lips are pressed together in a mischievous grin and she looks at him through her eyelashes, like she was seducing him during a casual evening. Meanwhile her fingers begin to play with the belt's buckle again.
"You disgust me", Sherlock replies. Irene almost smiles sweetly while she finally looses the belt and pulls it out slowly, freeing it from the loops of the jeans.
"That's not true", she argues. "Perhaps you no longer love me, Sherlock. Surely you hate me. But you don't feel disgust for me, not at all. Not ever. "
Now she's again pressed against him, her arms wrapped around his neck, her breasts against his chest, her lips less than a breathe away from his ear. She speaks in a slow, almost sing-song voice, and now there's absolutely no trace of the broken woman she was a few minutes ago.
"And you know why? Because we are all too similar. Because be disgusted by me would mean to be disgusted by yourself too", Irene continues in a whisper.
"And who tells you that I'm not?", Sherlock questions.
Irene kisses his jaw, then laughs again.
"You aren't because I'm not. You are startled by yourself, maybe. Outraged by your weakness. Angry with that part of you that is enjoying all of this, in spite of everything", she adds, brushing her hands against his pants with a knowing smile. "But if you will ever got to the point of being really, really disgusted by what you are, Sherlock, then you will kill yourself. "
She caresses him more firmly and Sherlock holds a groan, biting his lips. The buttons of his jeans jump one after the other under Irene's fingers, then his boxers are pushed down. The muscles of his shoulders send a long twinge of pain when she leans on them with her hands to mount on him. Then Irene begins to slowly rub against him, and both of them sigh at the same time .
It's crazy, it's too much crazy, Sherlock thinks.
Her tongue caresses his neck, leaving a trail of wet kisses and bites, and his head becomes more heavy and confused. Meanwhile he continues to rub his wrists against each other, but without being able to win on the chains. Yet it's all movements that he knows very well. How many times had he trained in his living room, in what Joan has always called the Houdini's trick?
"You will kill yourself", Irene resumes after a few moments, between a gasp and the other, while pushing herself more and more against him. "Or you will kill someone a lot like you", she ends.
She moves before he has time to realize what's going to happen. Not that it would change anything: he can't do absolutely nothing to avoid it.
Irene rises to her knees, parting from him, then she puts her hands behind his head and a moment later Sherlock feels the caress of the leather belt around his neck. Irene tightens the grip before he has time to scream, and at that point, when the buckle is closed so tight around his throat, suffocating him, nothing more than a slight, strangled moan manages to escape from his lips.
"It ends tonight, Sherlock", she murmurs, her mouth pressed against his forehead, her voice thin, but with no trace of tears. "I'm sorry."
Black flowers bloom and explode into his sight. Sherlock reels uncontrollably, looking for the air he's no longer able to swallow. The belt tights more and more around his throat, and in the meantime Irene continues to rub against him, murmuring nonsense words, saying that she's sorry, that she loves him, that it has to stop.
It has to stop.
Strange ending, however, Sherlock thinks absently, while his senses begin to fade. He had always imagined is death accompanied by a bullet shot or something like that. And even if sometimes he thought of a noose around his neck, this surely wasn't the scenario that was painted in his mind.
Will it be listed as a crime of passion?, he wonders, and he wants to laugh again even though he's suffocating.
He understands that the ending is near when he realizes he can no longer hear Irene's voice, her monotonous litany of excuses. He doesn't even smell her perfume anymore, and his arms and his legs are now separate appendices with which he has nothing more in common. The view blurs in the most absolute black, leaving only shadows.
Therefore he doesn't see the walls of the room painted first with the red and blue of the flashing lights, and then lightened by the ruthless white of the reflectors. He doesn't hear the sirens, nor Gregson's voice that barks orders into the microphone. Sherlock's walking in balance on that wonderful and very thin line between life and death, so curiously similar to the one between wakefulness and sleep, and he doesn't see or hear anything.
Irene, instead, sees and hears everything, and remains motionless for a moment with her eyes wide open in the dark, and her head resting in the crook between the shoulder and the neck of a now unconscious Sherlock. Only when she hears Joan's voice screaming her man's name, she decides to loosen the belt's grip. Then she sits on Sherlock's lap and she doesn't move anymore, waiting for her with a smile on her face.
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- Written for the Badwrong Week # 2 maridichallenge and for 500themes_ita, prompt # 355. It ends tonight.
- English is not my mother tongue, so if you spot any mistake please let me know :)