Reconciliation

As he had in the car just before their captive had stirred from unconsciousness, Sherlock hit a point of emotional saturation, and he could no longer uphold his ever-weakening fortifications against the surging emotions. And through the miasma of alien confusion, he had one final epiphany—but it was staggering.

He understood that since he'd no longer had the mission's distractions to divert him from his feelings for Irene, he had erected barriers of his own creation to prevent himself (protect himself) from having to fully face the terrifying reality of his situation. And the actual reason he had been so angry that Irene had told Jarwar she cared for Sherlock was because her words smashed those carefully maintained walls and confronted him with that truth. . .

He had never genuinely believed that she'd had yet another personal agenda—that was just the final construct he had created to prevent himself from facing the evidence that he might be in love with another person, and that she appeared to reciprocate. (It had been one thing to think such a thing in the midst of a post-coital haze, when various hormones and satiated pleasure painted a rosy picture that might not be entirely accurate. But when standing in the distinctly unromantic setting of a cargo container platform, in the stream of a chilling ocean wind, the realisation held far more legitimacy—and weight.)

And yet, he'd been justified in attempting to keep his cognitive distance from this truth, because just as he'd subconsciously feared, it was far harder to endure than the created constructs. Because what the hell was he supposed to do with the knowledge? he thought in a mix of desperation and disgust. A lovelorn consultant detective was of no use to anyone, very least of all himself. And furthermore, her very life depended on her remaining abroad.

He was damned either way, he understood, and he couldn't see a way out of it. (And if he couldn't see a way out of it. . .)

If they were to somehow arrange it so that she could safely remain in London (which seemed impossible in and of itself, but for the sake of argument. . .), he couldn't pretend that experimenting with this sort of relationship wouldn't seriously impose on his existing life at Baker Street—even in ways beyond compromising his brainwork. And he liked his existing life.

Alternatively, if they went forward with his preparations and she relocated to New York City, this was all futile. The emotions he felt for her could not be given an opportunity to manifest or develop in any way, and were therefore utterly pointless—except in their (prodigious) ability to confound and wreck him.

"What do you want from me, Irene?" he muttered at last, staring at his hands. He'd meant for the words to sound caustic but to his ears they sounded beseeching, and he knew that in a sense, a part of him was just like all those clients she'd had: he was begging her for instruction—and her mercy.

The thing was, he didn't know if 'mercy' meant her dictating how they were going to proceed, or dropping the matter completely.

But for the first time, she was silent, and when he finally risked a peripheral glance towards her profile, he was somewhat unnerved to find her looking uncharacteristically subdued. Had his tone really hurt her? It seemed unthinkable, she was always so unfazed by his bouts of emotion.

"That's not the right question," she finally answered, still staring out over the water towards the port lights that were now becoming pinpoints in the distance.

That assertion got his attention, and he turned to her, completely nonplussed. So it hadn't been his tone, but some supposed inaccuracy. . .? She hadn't been downcast, but disappointed. . .?

"It's not what I want from you," she elaborated softly. "As much as I enjoy the dynamic we share. . . I'm not actually your adversary, Sherlock." She finally looked up to meet his stare, and her blue-eyed gaze seemed to penetrate directly through his eyes, and radiate into his chest, causing his respiration and heart-rate to skip, then double. "Given all your powers of observation, can't you see—you're not really arguing against me, you're arguing against yourself."

He swallowed hard. What she said hadn't been a revelation (although just barely, and she had almost certainly realised it before he had). But hearing it spoken out loud compelled him to justify himself to her. "I'm trying—" he mentally flinched at the passive words. "I am acting as I think is best. . .for both of our interests."

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and that one minute gesture seemed to somehow completely undermine and discredit his words.

He scrutinised her. "What is it that you want?" he repeated, this time dropping the last three words, and he heard how editing them out completely changed the tone of the question. Correspondingly, she actually smiled, although it was faint and looked somewhat sad and introspective.

Still, his motivation for asking the question was the same, and as ever, she perceived his subtext just as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud.

"You think I hold all the answers, and while that's flattering. . . it isn't true," she said wryly, then pointed out: "There is no 'right answer'."

"I know," he insisted too quickly, and he frowned and started again. "I know that. If that were the case. . ." he trailed off, his jaw working, unsure of how to finish the sentence.

"But it doesn't matter," she cut in, fervent. "Not to people like us, Sherlock."

He looked up, his eyes widening at her words.

"We're not an orthodox couple who needs to concern ourselves about 'where things are going'," she continued. "In your words, 'how dull'. It's not as if I intend to marry and I meant what I said to you about children. I know you're the same. So what does it matter what comes tomorrow or next week?"

He had no answer for her, but her words were making a strange sort of sense, and a peculiar feeling of hope suddenly curled in his chest. It resonated with what he had actually thought that morning, in the seclusion of the hotel room when they had been wrapped up in each other—before the fallout of the day's events.

"What I do know is what I'm feeling, and. . . you can't deny you feel the same way."

She lifted her gaze to his face, made and held eye contact, and then stepped deliberately into his personal space. He stilled at once, though internally his systems all reacted riotously to the shot of adrenaline that had been released by her proximity, and the look of intent on her face.

He recognised his collection of symptoms as being similar to those that would present during a panic attack: besides heavy breathing, there was slight vertigo, trembling, and heart palpitations, among others. He had always known that emotions were powerful motivators—he had seen more than his share of crimes of passion—but he was shocked that it could incite such a powerful physical reaction, as well. Even for all his wariness, he had still underestimated sentiment.

And yet, he couldn't deny that more than anything, he craved to close the small distance that did remain between them, and embrace her. He'd wanted to do it all afternoon in varying degrees, but it had never been as intense a compulsion as it was in that moment.

"I know you're inexperienced with all of this, so here's a lesson," she murmured, leaning forward, and he couldn't tear his eyes away from her lips; they had somehow become singularly compelling. Her voice dropped and became even more breathless. "It doesn't have to be all or nothing. . . There are countless shades of grey in between. And the grey area is my speciality."

Her statement was rational, and he felt his hesitation waver, and then further dissipate in the wake of the physical arousal that was beginning to take over his body's physical and mental processes. Doubt was being replaced by desire, and the pain of confusion was being overtaken by the ache of being physically apart from her.

"We're here together now, and this is an opportunity I doubt we'll have again. And I'm a girl who does like to indulge while I can, and damn the consequences."

"Yes, I've noticed that. . ." he managed to say, though his voice was hoarse.

She looked down to her right, and he followed her gaze to see their hands resting inches apart on the railing. Slowly, as if she were afraid he would bolt again, she brushed the tops of his knuckles with her fingertips experimentally. He winced slightly, but in this case it wasn't because of her touch; they were still bruised from the punches he had landed the day before. He saw a trace of confusion in her eyes, and in response he turned his palm upward. Such a small gesture, and yet it took great effort on his part and implied volumes, and The Woman's lips stretched into a small but radiant smile.

Slowly their hands intertwined, and the physiological reactions intensified even further as he watched his fingers lace together with hers. This time the initial contact wasn't instigated while he was high on adrenaline and accomplishment, feeling reckless and provoked. It was slow and deliberate and utterly nerve-wracking, yet magnetic. His heart was pounding erratically, and he felt hyper-aware of each one of his senses: the sight of her dilated pupils and slightly parted lips, the scent of the salty air, a hint of petrol, and the hotel shampoo wafting from her hair, the sound of their mutually heavy breathing and the rustle of her completely impractical dress, and of course the firm but gentle pressure of her fingers. For such a (deceptively) straightforward touch, it was incredibly erotic.

Then, just as her palm slid up against his and she leaned towards him with her face upraised, a wave of intense panic surged in him again, and it was an even more powerful and overriding force than the mortal fear he'd experience earlier in the day.

The difference was, now the panic wasn't tied to the fact that he thought she was manipulating him, or because he didn't know what would happen with the two of them in the future, or any other constructed pretenses. In fact, there wasn't any rational cause for it that he could discern; it was purely the manifestation of a deep-seated and instinctive fear-response to fight or flee, and it obliterated everything else, even the primal feeling of lust that had been taking root and blossoming within him.

"I can't. . ." he uttered with a low agonised moan, and he leaned back and jerked his hand away, feeling wretched in a way that was entirely new to him and almost unbearably horrible to experience, but still not as overwhelmingly potent as his nameless panic.

"Why," she asked, lifting her chin. Her tone was dispassionate but even in Sherlock's state he could detect the almost imperceptible quaver in her voice, and her eyes had become faintly glossy.

"What are you so afraid of?" Now frustration inflected her voice more obviously, and Sherlock knew that it was in reaction to both his withdrawal, and the fact she thought she'd finally talked him out of all his reservations.

"I'm—I'm not—" he struggled to say.

"You are," she retorted as colour blushed the tops of her cheekbones, and through his breakdown he identified anger on top of exasperation.

So he had finally pushed her far enough to incite her anger, and it did indeed show the woman beneath the mask, but he didn't want to see it now; it only made things worse.

She stared into his eyes for the length of two heartbeats until he had to look away from the intensity of the gaze, and she turned on her heel to walk away from him. But he had seen her lips tremble, and her gaze reflected all pain and angst he was feeling as well. It reminded him of the expression she had worn while he'd cracked her passcode, though intensified many times over.

But this time he was far more susceptible to it. The combination of seeing her back turned firmly against him while she began to walk away from him, and recognising the deep disappointment mirrored in her own eyes broke through the overwhelming (yes) fear. There was something worse than his own personal demons and the panic they unleashed: the suddenly unbearable idea of a missed chance—of losing a fleeting and somehow precious moment that would likely never come again.

He lunged forward on one leg and caught her around the elbow before she had moved out of range, and in one movement, he spun her back towards him and pulled her into his arms.

He had expected her to pull away and glare at him glacially, but instead she stood stiffly in his arms for only a fraction of a second (shock, he understood) before she pressed herself against him, clutching his arms.

The first thing he registered was tactile: the skin on her arms felt icy to the touch in the short-sleeved dress she wore, and he pulled away from her just long enough to tuck her under his greatcoat and shield them both against the increasingly chilling sea wind.

They remained wrapped up in each other for a moment, not speaking, and though Sherlock knew what he wanted—what he needed, the lingering fear was hideously tenacious.

"Irene. . .I can't be who you want me to be," he said against her hair in a low and tight voice. "I'm not. . ." he couldn't finish, and swallowed, burrowing his face deeper into the crook of her neck. The skin he found there was soft and delicate, and smelled familiarly alluring. It was a scent that had come to evoke extremely vivid memories, and responses.

She had stiffened slightly again at his words. "I know exactly who you—" she was retorting, but then without thinking, Sherlock pressed his lips against the spot.

And though the unconscious act had been somewhat chaste, the sensation, combined with her scent, unleashed an avalanche of suppressed tenderness and desire—more formidable than any argument she could make, and searing through his panic and annihilating the fear.

She fell silent as one soft brush of his lips led to another, which led to another, traveling in a chain up her throat with progressively less gentleness, and greater force and speed, before their faces came together. After a brief but intense moment where they breathed heavily, noses brushing and eyes downcast, he cradled his fingers against her cheekbones, looked into her eyes, and then found her mouth, where he pressed a soft but sensual kiss against her lips.

Making a small noise in the back of her throat, she dug her fingertips into his lower back, just above his trousers, and the passion of her touch burned into him. He answered with his own low moan, and tightened his arms around her waist before tilting his head and thrusting his tongue against her lips, which parted immediately to him.

As he melted into her, the sense memory of everything they had shared the night before and that morning came flooding back to him, and he backed her up against the corrugated siding of one of the containers that surrounded them, bending his knees slightly and tilting his head to get that much closer, kiss her that much more deeply. With a sense of elated abandon, he gave himself permission to fully submit to the sensations, and to embrace those attendant emotions that he could not separate from the physical experience.

Several minutes later he leaned back, panting, to check her expression; her face was flushed and dazzling, and eyes were hard with the same emotion he knew was shining in his.

He felt a shiver pass through her, and he pulled her closer against him again, holding her even more tightly than before.

"Cold?" he asked, still looking down into her face.

"No," she answered with a slightly mischievous smile, as she tilted her head back to look up him from under her dark fringe of eyelashes, and for the first time since the Jarwar incident he gave a small smile of his own.

Because, astonishingly, he knew what just she meant. . .

In fact, he understood that if he hadn't had such a depth of feeling, he would be back in the cabin now, alone, or holed up in some other obscure part of the ship. Because as compelling as her words had been, and as much as she had perhaps intellectually swayed him, he finally understood that it was simply not possible for reason to trump sentiment. People (including, it must be admitted, Sherlock himself) could not be rationally convinced into or out of their emotional responses—as much as he had tried to disprove that maxim in the past two days. Despite what he would prefer to believe, the heart unequivocally ruled the head—and logic had no place in matters of the heart.

Rather, it could only take an even more powerful sentiment to overcome such a strong emotional response. In their case, it was his regard and desire for Irene that had overwhelmed his fear of intimacy—his fear of finally and completely surrendering himself to his feelings.

And yet, somehow, his head and his heart were in accord with one another, an unexpected synchronisation that frankly astounded Sherlock. Her arguments had convinced him intellectually, and the strength of his feelings for Irene had decided the rest.

But it was fitting; it was the perfect embodiment of the complementary dynamic that he and The Woman shared.

Smiling even wider, he shrugged out of his coat and put it around her shoulders, commenting, "I always did think this coat suited you," before leaning over and tugging up the collar around her ears.

"Sherlock Holmes, acting like a gentleman?" she asked in disbelief, a teasing glint in her eye.

"Tell anyone and I'll emphatically deny it," he replied flatly, but after a beat his face broke into another grin and then, taking her hand, he pulled her towards Staircase D.

To Be Continued. . .

Update: Another set of quotes from some Sherlock actors on Irene and Sherlock's relationship :)

Benedict Cumberbatch: "I think he meets a like mind. That's the fundamental attraction. He meets someone who is a challenge, who is rather good, and it takes him by surprise - not because he's a misogynist, not because he views women as any lesser species; he views them as equals. It's just that, from his point of view, pretty much all people other than himself are a bit stupid. The fact that he meets someone who is a worthy opponent, of either sex, is of great intrigue. There's a side of her that's utterly mysterious to him, and he has to break through why he can't read her. The fact that she is a difficult objective to overcome is what attracts him to her. She's a puzzle, as most of us are to each other in relationships. It's extreme here, because of the way they are and who they are and how they live their lives. If there is attraction, it's through these masks that are constantly shifting in an effort to engineer control. That dance is a very, very entertaining one, and very witty. It's interesting to see this man slightly touched and moved, and possibly humanized by this experience."

I think that this is brilliantly well-said; I just have a minor modification to make. . . In my version of events, he is indisputably humanized by the experience ;)

And Lara Pulver's take:

"It's a mind-game, I think, for those two characters. They're mirrors; they look at each other and they see themselves, and that's both intriguing for them and also scary as hell."

And: "They're both very flawed human beings, and I think she is riddled with insecurity, and is hugely vulnerable and quite. . . Quite desperately wants to feel loved. To feel loved, to feel adored, and to feel what being in love is like, as does he to a certain degree. . . There's this moment where he [Sherlock] just holds her hand, and it melts her heart. . . It's so sensual because there's these two people who could stand absolutely stark-naked in front of each other, and it doesn't resonate. You've got all this stuff going on with them, and mind games going on, but when he touches her hand, and it's like they're making love."