A three-day rainstorm has made London's streets all but impassible, imprisoning even the most hardened criminals in their lairs; the postcard Watson and Mary sent to 221 Baker Street, WISH YOU WERE HERE against a wishfully watercolored background of the beach on a sunny day, makes for a stark contrast with the dismal weather outside your window.
They play speed chess.
Irene wins the first game easily, rising from the board to purr "Checkmate" into his ear before slinking off to put the kettle on; only after losing the second and third does she suspect that he let her win on purpose to study her technique. By the fifth game, however, she's hit upon just the right combination of odd noises from the other room, purposefully tuneless humming, and rattling the table with her foot to make his moves less-than-optimal, thereby giving her a fighting chance. Around the sixteenth game (she's ahead by two pawns and a rook, although, judging from the elaborate gambit he's setting up, she suspects that her lead won't last long,) she fakes a visit from what they sardonically refer to as "Moriarty's little joke." Clutching the table's edge so far that her fingers whiten, she erupts in a bout of faux coughing that, annoyingly enough, turns into a genuine struggle for breath. Concerned, Holmes departs the room to fetch a glass of water. His footsteps fade.
Irene forces herself to breathe deeply until the color has returned to her cheeks, even though it makes her ribs hurt. Tucking her plump lower lip underneath her small front teeth, she studies the board. Right. If she switches his bishop with her pawn…
When he returns, she's sprawled weakly against the couch. "Thank you," she says, her voice hoarse, and reaches for the glass.
Without even looking down, he switches the pieces back before lowering the tumbler into her hand.
Around the two hundredth and twenty-second game, (Irene: twelve, Holmes: ten, and two hundred draws) the pattern jumps into focus.
Irene makes an effort to remain composed as she regards the pieces. How, how, how could she have ignored such an obvious trap? All he has to do is sacrifice his queen, and his bishop and rook will have her ivory-colored king pinned in checkmate.
Instead, however, he moves his knight. She lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding, and the smile returns to her face as she contemplates her next offensive. Secretly, however, the situation rattles her. Is he letting her king slip away, only to save it for an even more diabolical capture?
The game ends with two pawns and both kings hopping in an ineffectual circle around the board. Interesting.
Game two hundred and thirty-eight: Holmes has the potential to make a spectacular queen sacrifice, turning a check around on its deployer- but he doesn't.
Game two hundred and fifty, two hundred and seventy-four, two hundred and eighty-three, and "Do you know what you're doing?" she says, flicking his king over with a fingernail, then dropping it on top of her heap of collected chess-piece casualties.
He regards her with a slight smirk. "Enlighten me."
"You're protecting your black queen as if it was a wounded arm or a favorite racehorse. In fact, you're favoring it to the extension of repeatedly choosing it over your king."
Does his expression darken for a split second, or is it only her imagination? Sometimes she sees a certain-colored carriage or a distinctive top hat and she's certain that Moriarty has returned for her. Her favorite restaurant is now her least favorite; upon swanning through the door, the room's familiarity brought a distinct sensation of dizziness, setting the well-dressed patrons aswirl. The forks clinked too loudly, and she couldn't shake the feeling that, at some undetectable signal, everyone in the room, from elderly matrons in secondhand corsets to the scrawniest busboy, would rise and depart. Managing an excuse about leaving her handbag on the seat, Irene darted out. She spent the rest of the evening draped over a nonplussed carthorse's chestnut neck, trying not to cry.
If she hasn't imagined it, for the merest heartbeat, Holmes looks exactly like how she felt for the majority of that night.
Irene purses her lips and persists. "Honestly. What is it about the black queen?"
Reflexively, Holmes catalogues the woman's appearance. The smudge of flour on one side of her nose from that morning's pastry-making rampage, which filled the kitchen with pies ("Don't eat the gooseberry, they're just full of laudanum;") the bruise on her forehead from a recent ambush (they'd been pulled in as consultants for the incompetent finest of Scotland Yard; she'd stepped between him and the descending length of lead pipe so swiftly, he hadn't realized her presence until several seconds afterwards;) her perfume (bergamot, jasmine, and cinnamon, amongst a host of other scents.) She never hesitates before exaggerating her condition to wrangle something out of him, but when her lungs really do ache, he always has the devil of a time convincing her to admit it. That angled self-satisfied smirk whenever she captures one of his pieces, and the resigned little what-can-you-do smile of underlying hopelessness whenever he takes one of hers-
- and how surprisingly normal it feels to have her sitting in his parlor across a chessboard, drinking all the apartment's tea, setting Gladstone on his socks, falling asleep on the couch occasionally, as if they've fallen into some parallel universe where he isn't the world's greatest consulting detective and she isn't the world's greatest thief, or at least where they won't have a criminal mastermind attempting to eliminate them as soon as news of their survival reaches the public-
"It's… debatable," he responds, glancing away. "Someday, however, I hope to find out."