A/N: I was listening to Power and Control by Marina and the Diamonds, when I couldn't get the idea out my head of that being Sherlock and Irene's song. I've been meaning to turn it into a fic for a while, so here it is. Well, it's a drabble at best. Bold indicates lyrics, while italics indicate sections from A Scandal in Bohemia.

Disclaimer: Sherlock, A Scandal in Bohemia, and the song "Power and Control" belong to their respective owners.

To Sherlock Holmes, she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotion, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise, but admirable balanced mind.

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Scandal in Bohemia

Irene thought that her death was inevitable. She thought that that familiar ringtone was just a figment of her imagination. But when she turned around and saw those cold and calculating eyes, she knew that it wasn't in her head. After he distracted then killed those who were supposed to chop off her head, he helped her get out of there. Not many words were exchanged during that time, but everything had already been said.

She hated that he was right in that love is a dangerous disadvantage. She fell in love with his mind, turning the game into something more dangerous, leading to her downfall. Despite him unlocking her phone (she thought he would never be able to figure that one out), everything went according to plan. She told him how she made her way in the world and proved her point: She had him on her side exactly at the moment that she needed him to be. She wasn't sure if he knew that or not, but if he did, she took comfort in the fact that even he was the one who saved her, he played right into her hands.

Sherlock didn't really know why he had to save her. He could have just let her die out there after he cracked the code on her phone. But there was something about her that drew him to her like a moth to a flame.

Women and men we are the same
But love will always be a game
We give and take a little more
Eternal game of tug and war

He was more fascinated with her than anything else. She was always one step ahead of him, able to work out things that he thought were almost impossible, outsmarting him in their game until the very end. In fact, if he really thought about it, she was very much like him.

You do not know her yet, but she has a soul of steel. She has the face the most beautiful of women, and the mind of the most resolute of men.

He knew she was clever in her own right from the moment they met. Looking past the fact that she was stark naked, he was confused as to why he couldn't figure her out like he could with others normally. The solution was simple: she stripped herself of all possible evidence that would give anything away about her. She knew that that was his MO and used it to her advantage.

He thought to back to their conversation at the flat: "I make my way in the world. I misbehave. I like to know people will be on my side exactly when I need them to be."

"So how do you acquire this information?"

"I told you. I misbehave."

Power and control,
I'm gonna make you fall

Though he didn't fall for her, he fell for her intelligence and for the game in the end. Her misbehaving got him right where she wanted him: in a desert saving her from a beheading. He supposed it was worth it. Sometimes he felt like there only so many people who challenged him intellectually and earned his respect. Irene Adler was certainly one of those people. It would have been a shame knowing that there weren't more people like him in the world; cold, clever, manipulative, and vastly intelligent.

…how the best plans of Mr Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honourable title of the woman.