Contemplating Dinner
What thoughts go through Sherlock's mind as Irene Adler negotiates with Mycroft Holmes?
Disclaimer: Based on, and sometimes quoting, BBC's Sherlock.
He sits quite still, back to the flickering firelight, listening to his brother's increasingly desperate attempts to dissuade one Irene Adler from blackmailing the entire British government.
The Woman. That impossible woman.
"We'll destroy it, then. No one has the information."
"Good idea . Unless there are lives of British citizens depending on the information you're about to burn. "
Really, Mycroft stands no chance against her. Sherlock allows himself a brief moment to notice, with some interest, the rare helpless tone in his brother's voice before returning to contemplating the problem at hand.
How to save her.
Because the password is no mystery now, no mystery at all… it had become clear to him, the moment he felt her pulse on his fingertips and looked into her eyes, exactly what it would be. Now all that remained is what to do about it.
He would have to reveal it, of course, he owed Mycroft that much for his mistake. His one mistake, when Irene's delicate perfume had wafted towards him and the heat from her cheek had been close enough to feel, and for a very, very brief moment, and the first time in his life, he'd lost control. Before he knew it, he'd been loose-lipped in front of a known, formidable enemy (for he considered her that, an enemy, the enemy, the most clever and enticing of them all).
But he knows it now, and to redeem himself he's going to reveal her secrets and destroy her protection, and then she will run. Run and hide, though she had virtually no hope of surviving the year. ("That camera phone is my life, Mr. Holmes")
Where to? Sherlock closes his eyes and places his fingertips together.
She would have no safe hideouts - while she had her protection she would have been completely exposed, letting her enemies circle her like vultures, enjoying their frustration at having her trapped but unable to harm her because of the information she held. ("If you are lying to me, I will find you, and I will skin you.")
She would have reveled in the danger that would be the death of her now.
To escape, the only way to escape, is to go somewhere… chaotic, somewhere familiar to her but so crowded with enemies and enemies of enemies that her killers would be fighting each other to get to her, so that she might last just a little bit longer, pitting them against each other… and have the tiniest thread of hope of slipping away in the confusion.
Though the odds are certainly very long against even her managing that. Alone.
But Sherlock knows where she would be - does he know? Yes… yes, he does, Indian perfume oil, faintest tan line that hadn't quite faded (her face had been much easier to analyze without the over-applied cosmetics), the distinctive way she had folded that dressing gown about her - she had been there before, lived there for a very long time, long enough to pick up habits and accumulate enemies, and then leave them behind, simmering. That is the familiar, chaotic place she would return to.
Pakistan.
Sherlock opens his eyes.
So, can he make it to Pakistan? Hm… four or five days "locked in his room in the blackest of moods" - with a sullen text message on the third day to placate John - a couple of plane tickets booked with a false passport… And he'd have to shake the team of agents Mycroft's got tailing him, again.
Reasonably straight forward, he thinks.
The game is on.
"The dominatrix who brought a nation to its knees. Nicely played."
"No," he says, "very close, but no."
He knows that he himself is just as capable as the Woman of deceiving his brother, but Mycroft knows it too, and Mycroft knows him very, very well.
He will have to put on quite a show.