Disclaimer- I do not own Sherlock, if I did, you would see this on your TV, not on a fanfiction website.
Irene Adler knew the difference between being beaten and losing. Getting beaten didn't always have to be a bad experience; she'd made it her business to make sure it wasn't for a lot of people. Losing, however, was a whole different problem. Losing meant being captured by a terrorist cell in the Middle East and being televised while armed militants stood around her, sharpening their swords. Irene Adler had lost. She'd been beaten by Sherlock Holmes. She had lost.
Without her phone and the secrets it held, she had always known she wouldn't last long, and now here she was, being held captive in some godforsaken cave, miles from civilization where no one could help here, even if anyone wanted to. All because of Sherlock Holmes, the most infuriating man she'd ever dealt with. The man she loved.
So here she was, Irene Adler, known throughout Europe as The Woman, kneeling on a cold stone floor sending one last text. She'd had to beg with the only guard who understood enough English to help her, but she'd been allowed to send a final text. Various thoughts raced through her head, ranging from one extreme (I love you) to the other (You'll never see me again). Finally, she decided to simply send 'Good bye Mr. Holmes'. As the phone was wrested from her grasp, Irene closed her eyes and allowed one tear to fall.
Then she moaned.
Her eyes shot open in a heartbeat. That moan could only be heard from two places in the world, her mouth and a phone belonging to Sherlock Holmes. It came from the man standing to her left, her executioner. She looked at the man standing at her side, holding his sword behind her head and he looked at her with his piercing blue eyes.
"When I say run, you run." He said calmly. Irene could only nod. That impossible man, He'd found her.
XXXXX
Finding Irene, challenging, but doable; infiltrating the terrorist cell and positioning himself in the right place, child's play; the fight about to occur between him and a half dozen terrorists, nothing new. The real challenge, Sherlock decided, was what to say to a woman who sauntered into your life, made you feel like you'd never felt before, turned out to be working for your arch-rival, got sentenced to death, and who you then had to enact a rescue mission to save.
As he drew the sword back, Sherlock cleared his mind and prepared for the battle ahead. When they were growing up, Sherlock and Mycroft had been educated in various different techniques and styles of fighting. Mycroft had always preferred distance styles, such as archery or marksmanship, but Sherlock had always enjoyed the closer arts, specifically the sword. Something about the weight and feel of it just felt right in a way he couldn't specify. Sherlock waited for the guard with the AK-47 to walk behind him before moving into action. In close quarters such as this, he didn't need some trigger happy gunslinger sending bullets in every direction, especially not with Irene in the room.
He nodded to Irene as he swung around, swinging the blade through the man's neck, severing the windpipe and opening the arteries in his neck. In the same fluid movement, he brought up the pistol he had stolen from John's drawer, shooting two of the terrorists in the chest before they'd had time to react. Under normal circumstances, Sherlock would never resort to killing an opponent, but their capture of Irene and the danger they'd placed her in had awoken something in him he hadn't felt since Ms. Hudson had been taken hostage. It was an animalistic rage, tempered by his own cool logic. The protective rage wanted to kill and the logic showed him how to do it cleanly and efficiently. Besides, he thought, they were terrorists; no one was going to miss them terribly.
Sherlock spun around on his heel to face the final three men in the room; they were rushing towards him together, swords drawn. Not very smart, Sherlock thought smugly, not smart at all. He shot the man in the center first, but before he could train his gun on the man on the left, the one to his right threw his own sword at Sherlock.
The unorthodox move caught Sherlock by surprise and his attention was drawn to blocking the flying weapon with his own sword. As soon as he knocked it out of the air, the other man swung at Sherlock's chest in a wide swing. Sherlock jumped backwards, bringing the gun up to bear on the man's obscured face.
However, before he could pull the trigger, a sword came swinging up from below, catching the gun by the barrel, pushing it upwards. Sherlock looked in surprise at the man who had thrown his sword, rearmed by the dead man on the floor. Before Sherlock could respond, the man punched him in the face, causing him to lose his grip on the gun. As it fell to the floor, Sherlock kicked it as far away as he could. He knew he wouldn't be able to pick it up, so he made sure his attackers couldn't either. He brought his sword up in a defensive position, watching the two men move on either side of him.
"I surrender" Sherlock said, making sure they could read the defeat in his posture as he dropped his sword to the ground.
"After all this fighting, he just gives up?" the man on the left asked in the men's native tongue.
"He is a coward." the other man replied, "Just like all of his countrymen. He is afraid to die and hopes we will show him mercy." Sherlock had kept a blank look on his face during the entire exchange, but he now gave both of the men a small smile.
"Or," He began in their native tongue, "He has more than one gun." As he said this; Sherlock pulled from his robe the two smaller pistols he had bought in a black market earlier that day. Before either man had time to register anything more than shock, Sherlock shot them both.
"Irene," He called smiling in spite of himself, "get your coat." Irene Adler stood up from behind the rocks she'd been using for cover and smiled at him. As always, Sherlock found himself completely in awe at her beauty, he tried to keep his face blank, but he knew it would still be obvious to her.
"All this for me?" She asked, looking around at the six dead men in the room. "You shouldn't have. Where'd you get the robes? This material is very specific to this particular cell of terrorists, you'd have to have gotten it off of one of the other members of the cell. How'd you do it?"
"I knew what he liked." Sherlock responded, walking closer to her. Irene raised her eyebrow, recognizing her previous word to him and John. Sherlock smiled smugly, "He liked shooting people, so I shot him, twice."
Irene looked at him coyly, "Seven dead terrorists and a rescue mission. You sure know the way into a girl's heart." Sherlock began panicking slightly inside, here was a perfectly intimate moment, dead terrorists notwithstanding, and he had no idea how to react. Luckily she seemed to understand this, she moved forward to place his arms around her, and she pressed herself into his embrace.
"At this point, you could start by telling me I'm not dead, this isn't an illusion, and you're really here, rescuing me."
Sherlock held Irene closer to him, inhaling the scent of her hair and enjoying the feeling of her body against his.
"It will be ok," He reassured her, "I'm here and I'll take care of you."