Recrimination

For several moments he ignored Irene, stretching out the time he could pretend to still be alone for as long as possible. But at last, when it became evident that he would've noticed her, he asked without turning around, "How did you find me?" His voice sounded flat and resigned, and yet that same small part of him felt almost gratified that she had set out to look for him.

"I had the feeling you might need a cigarette," she said from behind him, "so I tried to follow the scent of a Dunhill. They're quite distinctive, you know."

Yes, he knew. He frowned down at the smoldering end then flicked it out into the water, knowing that it was against at least six different types of regulation, but not caring.

He was no longer surprised by her uncanny insights, nor by how she was able to so clearly comprehend him, but her ability did both please and displease him. On one hand it was deeply refreshing that someone could understand and relate to him after his lifetime of dissonance with others, but it also reminded him of how exceptionally vulnerable he was to her, and whatever agenda she might have.

She brushed past him to lean her forearms against the railing and gaze out at the view as well, seeming particularly captivated by the lights' reflections dancing in the dark water. In the narrow space between the cargo containers, she was close: almost flush against his side. Too close for Sherlock's comfort, despite the calming properties of the cigarette.

But she just stood beside him, not speaking, and the combination of the psychological comfort of the dark, the ability to focus on a shared view rather than having to make eye contact, and yes, the lingering effects of the Dunhill, eventually relaxed him somewhat.

He didn't realise just how relaxed (or perhaps, just lax) he had become until, unbidden and without any forethought, words suddenly burst from of his mouth—the exact words he'd been working to contain for the past two hours.

"Everything you said to me – about hacking into my mobile, and Mazari, and my brother. None of that was necessary," he vented accusingly. "You'd already convinced the man to let you go. So what was it, just showing off?"

She looked at him evenly as the words hung between them, and Sherlock was suddenly frustrated that he couldn't get a rise out of her, ever. He wanted her to shout back at him, to get angry, and perhaps reveal more than she intended, as he was inclined to do with her. After all, they were the same, isn't that what she had said? Maybe they were alike in that way too—or would be, if she ever lost her composure.

"You wouldn't stop talking, I had to say something," she finally answered, somewhat blithely but still calm. It was a deflection and they both knew it.

"No. You didn't. You could've ignored me," he retorted in a terse voice. "What you said might have made Jarwar suspicious, it was too risky."

She straightened up from the railing and crossed her arms, for some reason watching him warily. He raised his eyebrows and jerked his head once in an impatient, slightly aggressive nonverbal Well?

"He had already decided to let me go, he wasn't going to change his mind. Besides, he had no idea what any of it meant, and he didn't want to bother himself with trying to understand."

Even though he agreed with her, it was still more deflection; surely she knew how transparent she was being? And she still hadn't answered his question.

He scowled, and Irene sighed next to him. It now did appear that the mask was slipping off slightly, but Sherlock couldn't trust his perception of her—if he ever could.

"I said all of that. . ." she pursed her lips then looked into his eyes with what looked like atypical effort, "so that you would know that I could have done it on my own. If I proved that I didn't need you in order to escape and complete the rest of your operation, you'd understand that whatever I might express to you, after. . . it wouldn't be because I had any ongoing ulterior motive and was attempting to manipulate you. It would be because it was true."

Sherlock's eyes moved back and forth as he processed what she was saying, weighing her words. Granted, she could have hypothetically pulled it off without him—he wouldn't have been so appalled by her apparent betrayal if he hadn't completely believed in the viability of her plan. But he had already realised that, and it didn't exclude the possibility of a different, unknown agenda.

In the wake of his silence, a faintly mischievous smile tugged at the corner of her lips and she looked away from the harbour towards him. "And all right, perhaps there was also a bit of showing off. Did it work? Did I impress you?"

Sherlock continued to gaze outward, giving every indication that he hadn't heard her words except for the slight pouting of his lips. Of course she had impressed him—she rarely failed to do so (whereas everyone else rarely did at all), but he wasn't about to admit it.

"But you believed it, didn't you," Irene asked in the form of a statement, directly addressing the metaphorical elephant in the room. "That I was willing to sacrifice you in order to bargain for my own safety. That's why you were angry in the car. Angry at me for what I'd said, angry at yourself for believing me, and even for ever trusting me in the first place."

He hesitated, waging an internal war with himself, but finally confessed tensely, "You already know I did. You were very convincing—you. . .you said 'Sorry about dinner'." He despised the wounded tone that coloured his words, but even the memory of that still stung.

She nodded, looking towards the water again. "I suppose I couldn't resist giving you a taste of your own medicine in the end, but perhaps that part was unnecessary," she admitted, actually looking somewhat contrite.

"Still," she murmured a moment later, "you let me get on with it. Even though you thought I was leaving you there to die, you didn't contradict my story. You didn't try to undermine me."

"No. . ." he said in a low, tight voice. "At first because I still trusted you and didn't want to sabotage your plan, but then when you had me convinced otherwise, I. . ." he trailed off, uncertain how to verbalise his thoughts, nor wanting to reveal too much of his hand. He cleared his throat. "I came to Karachi with the intent of rescuing you. Then you rescued yourself when I failed. I wasn't going to stop you; it would have been counterproductive to the whole reason I'd come."

She tilted her head and considered his profile. "When you 'failed'? Did you feel like you somewhat deserved the 'consequences', then? Sherlock, you hardly fa—"

"I did," Sherlock interrupted obstinately. "I tried to convince him to let us go, you heard me. I didn't get anywhere." It was extremely difficult for him to admit that to himself, let alone aloud, but he felt almost masochistically compelled to speak the words to her.

She looked away with raised eyebrows, then turned back to him. "It was a mutual effort. You made him talk about his motivations," she said, her tone matter-of-fact. "I could've never used them against him, had you not done that first. You got him to say everything I needed to hear, about family, about obligation. . . This morning, when you said we made 'quite an adequate team': you were right." She continued to watch him, and although his mind was churning (particularly at that reference) he didn't respond and he kept his expression set. Finally she swung her penetrating gaze away and shifted forward again.

A minute, then two, then five passed in silence as they stood next to each other, both leaning their forearms on the ship's railing and looking out across the docks that would be their last image of Karachi.

And then without warning a deafening horn blew directly above them, and the rumbling vibrations and noise of the engines increased. With a jolt, the ship began to move away from its berth, and slowly, the view began to recede.

They both watched, unspeaking, as the shore pulled away, and the sight stirred up a far greater degree of internal conflict than Sherlock had anticipated.

Now that he was actually underway on the journey that would bring him home, he was profoundly relieved that he would soon slide back into the comforting brand of chaos and excitement (a known quantity) that was his life, and escape the volatile and emotional variation of chaos that was hers.

And yet. . .he still found himself tormented by the prospect of leaving things unanswered, despite his earlier affirmations that it was the right choice. Their conversation had stirred up too many questions (as well as the deeper sentiments he was still trying to repress, inevitably) and his resolve was weakening. ...Not that it had been particularly staunch in the first place, he recognised wryly.

That was yet another treacherous thing about love; its whims were inexplicably fluid and capricious. In applied chemistry and other fields of science, states did not change arbitrarily, but only when conditions were altered or new stimuli were introduced. There was no such stability or consistency now, he knew.

Case in point, his ongoing internal debate on how to proceed: (1) select the safer option and remain silent, but understand that he would never have answers to so many of his questions, or (2) risk the potentially dangerous consequences of the answers, but gain satisfaction that he was at least apprised of the situation (insofar as it was possible to be apprised of such things).

Then abruptly—against his better judgment and in fact almost rebelliously—he decided, To hell with it. He knew that he was behaving rashly, but he was simply too accustomed to requiring answers, and sometimes he would have to go to unpleasant lengths to obtain data.

He took a low breath, gathered his courage and ignored the parts of him snarling Shut Up, and resumed the conversation as if there had not been a twelve minute lull by asking, "So you're saying. . . you meant what you said. To Jarwar. Before I went back to the car."

In his peripheral vision he saw her start ever so slightly, and then give him a piercing, appraising look. "I've been trying to impress it upon you that I did—do," she said softly after another length of time. "I thought I made it clear."

"No," he disagreed coldly, suddenly wary again after asking such a question, and trying to regain some emotional distance. "I think it's the least clear of any of the many plays you've made yet, actually."

"Plays? Sherlock, you're so—!" she broke off with a short laugh that was a combination of frustration and what sounded like affection, and turned to look at him incredulously. "I've already proved that I don't need to lie for any ulterior motives; I could've pulled off the rest of your plan myself. Besides, how can you ignore the fact that you're the one who first deduced my sentiment? It's how you cracked my passcode, and if you hadn't guessed that, I never would've needed protection to begin with. You're not being rational."

His face flushed with colour; for him this was an incredibly insulting allegation, and what made it even worse was that he knew at a certain level that she was correct. And what made it yet another shade worse still was the realisation that there was nothing he could do about it. Unlike superfluous trivia, he couldn't just 'delete' unwanted feelings—no matter how hard he tried, apparently.

"The real reason you're so angry is because you're hurt," Irene stated, interrupting his thoughts in a knowing tone that cut to the quick. "You're insecure and distrustful of me after seeing how I manipulated Jarwar, and you're afraid I've been manipulating you in the same way, this entire time. . . You'd finally allowed yourself to feel, which has made you angry and vulnerable enough, only to then come to believe—convince yourself—that it was all just a calculated manoeuvre on my part. But Sherlock, it wasn't."

He scoffed derisively to cover his true reaction to her words, but didn't meet her eyes, and she leaned over to grasp his hand and repeated with new emotion, "It wasn't."

"Also if you'll recall, you let me think I was going to die, too, for the sake of the overall efficacy of your strategy," she pointed out, though without any spite. "I had to do the same."

"It is not the same," Sherlock said through a stiff jaw, feeling the leftover and irrational flare of anger that seemed to have been unleashed by her correct identification of his thoughts and emotions—even while cognitively he understood that she had saved both their lives in a spectacular fashion. His hand clenched under hers and again his heart-rate increased painfully at the mere thought of how he'd felt in that moment: the triply devastating forces of a broken heart, a gross error in judgment, and mortal treachery. "I didn't lead you to believe that I had betrayed you."

"Oh no?" she asked, now sounding a touch cool and pulling her hand back again. "Well I felt betrayed—like you'd callously abandoned me to my execution. And moreover, I thought that I'd failed myself for miscalculating how you really felt, and foolishly placing all of my trust and hope in you. Does that sound familiar?"

He pursed his lips and stared determinedly down into the choppy blue-black water, but she correctly interpreted his silence as acknowledgment.

"The parallels weren't intentional; you obviously know that I didn't plan for that to happen," she murmured, her voice softer again, and he felt a foreign prickle in his eyes and swallowed, still watching the waves. "But Jarwar was so very easy to read, and I did what he needed me to do. With his devotion to the family, there was no way he could reconcile himself to my murder if he saw me as a vulnerable mother. But at the same time he needed someone to 'pay', to fulfill his family's need for recompense. So I had to offer him you, and to make him feel good enough about it, and justified enough in it, so that he would fully align himself with me, making him susceptible to what happened next."

"I know that," Sherlock snapped. Of course it was all so obvious now, in retrospect; he didn't need her to explain it to him like he was an idiot. But it had been a different matter then—she had been so horridly convincing.

"But it seems that you were quite ready to believe I was prepared to betray you," she said, almost echoing his own thoughts, though from her perspective.

"Yes, well," Sherlock started, feeling defensive and taking the offensive in response. "Despite my feelings, despite the acknowledged fact that I ca—" he abruptly shut his mouth with a frown, then restarted in a more confident, ringing tone: "There are certain realities that I cannot ignore. Realities of who I am—and who you are."

"And who is that?" she challenged immediately, her head swiveling up. Her expression didn't hold a trace of amusement now, and her eyes looked large and flinty.

But he refused to back down to that intimidating stare, and he ploughed on in an even more strident tone. "Someone who uses the euphemistic term 'misbehave' to refer to her acts of sedition, blackmail, and confidential information trading—Someone who chose to work with Jim Moriarty."

"Ah," she nodded shortly, turning towards him with one elbow resting on the rail. "Do you want to talk about Jim, Sherlock?"

His jaw clenched as he continued to face forward. "You were either his pawn, or it was your idea to undermine BondAir and place countless lives in danger. Neither are particularly flattering options."

"It was both—or neither," she parried. "It was business. I had amassed some extraordinary information, so as I do in the rare cases when I'm not personally the best, I engaged a consultant to advise me on how to proceed with it in the most advantageous way."

"Jim Moriarty," Sherlock interjected in a flat voice.

"He became very excited when he found out about a certain other classified code I had in my possession, and told me that he knew just the person to break it," she continued, his interruption not breaking her stride.

"Sherlock Holmes," Sherlock said, in the same bored-sounding tone.

"But he said that since he couldn't approach you because you knew who he was, he wouldn't charge me for his services as long as I could get close to you somehow, so that you would crack it for me. He said that he would compensate me financially for it, as well. . . I wasn't really aware of who you were at that point, let alone his fixation on you. It was completely impersonal for me then."

"Ah, and that's why he left the pool so abruptly," Sherlock muttered quietly, thinking aloud. "As soon as he discovered that he could access the code from you, he knew he'd need me alive. I've speculated as much, but I've never had proof."

"The threat to her royal highness—that was just a construct to pull you in, thanks again to Jim's knowledge of your ties to the upper echelons of British government. Your family ties," Irene elaborated. "By that point I'd already researched you and figured you out, what made you tick, and so setting up the bait was incredibly easy. As soon as I saw you in my sitting room in that ridiculous disguise, I knew the game was on."

Sherlock flushed at the concept of being so transparent—and consequently, easy to manipulate—but then again, he was only that way to her. . . she was the exception. . .

He squeezed his eyes shut at that phrase, as if he could physically block out its implications and the memories it stirred.

"You know the rest. It stopped being a game, it stopped being impersonal. . ." she concluded, sounding contemplative.

Her words hit him squarely in the gut, resonating with the thoughts that had already evoked memories of their exchange in the dark of that hotel room, when he had laid himself more bare to another person than he ever had before—physically, of course, but moreover psychologically.

"You recite a litany of my. . . 'misbehaviours'," she continued (drawing out the word with relish, in apparent defiance of his criticism of the term), "as if to imply that you find me problematically amoral." She hesitated, and then her voice became more thoughtful. "I don't know if I'd call myself 'amoral', but if I am, then so are you. When have you hurt someone to get what you wanted? Thought nothing of manipulating a situation to get at something or someone? You're not inherently or profoundly concerned with justice, it's the pursuit itself that drives you. We may have different motivating incentives, but we behave the same way to get what we want."

"And yet people don't die when I'm involved, Irene," he asserted somewhat imperiously, though the attitude did feel slightly false—and like he was the one deflecting, now.

"Oh? What about that apartment block and a certain 'gas leak,' then?" she retorted immediately.

He immediately flashed indignant. "I didn't cause that," he replied heatedly. "You can't possibly suggest that I could've known that the woman had personally interacted with Moriarty—none of the others had—and that she would begin to describe him. When I did realise it, I attempted to stop her."

"Nor did I know what that code would contain, or that it had the potential to cost lives," she rejoined, less piqued but just as intensely. "Except that in my case they're still only hypothetical lives. I admit that I can be plenty naughty, but in this case let's lay the blame firmly where it belongs, shall we? For each of us, it's with Jim Moriarty."

"Whom you sought out," Sherlock pointed out, changing tact but still fervent, clamping his hands harder around the railing and breathing faster.

"Are you going to tell me you didn't?" she asked bluntly. "When you first heard about him? Oh, don't look so surprised; it's obvious that you would have. Except that you were just intrigued, and that interest cost lives. My contact with him was necessitated by business."

"Don't try to diminish—" he turned it around with a sneer, a trace of sardonic laughter in his voice as if to imply she was absurd to attempt such a thing.

"I'm not," she interrupted, hers becoming correspondingly softer. "Because I don't believe that I need to. I'm merely pointing out that your judgments are fallacies—excuses, really. Or that they at least should be applied to you as well."

We are the same, you and I, her words came back to him yet again.

He opened his mouth to retort, but found that he had no response or rejoinder left to make—she had effectively countered him on every point or reason he raised. As only ever happened with her (on the plane, during her ruse with Jarwar, and now), he had nothing more to argue. His posture deflated and he leaned back against the railings, feeling utterly bewildered, fatigued, and resigned.

I drew a quick and messy sketch to go along with this chapter, which may be found here:

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