for womanwhobeatyou: Waking up in Vegas---again.

[the_new_sexy]

Follows this.

It's surprising when morning comes. Sherlock rarely sleeps when he's on a case, and this entire excursion is really just a case in and of itself. Even more than that, he rarely sleeps an entire night. However, when he looks at the blinds in the motel room, he can see the faint hints of pink streaming through. Dawn, then. In the part of the world he used to live in, it would be nearly noon, if not very early afternoon.

He turns his head to look at the Woman, still sleeping next to him. She stayed.

She's different when she sleeps. He remarked on it to John when he found her sleeping in his bed so long ago. Not like an angel, of course, no one would ever think of the Woman as an angel. Instead, she looks like all of the things she's holding tightly together are relaxed, and she's comfortable. It's a strange thing, but beautiful in its own way.

He lets his hand rest on her shoulder. Are there people that find this sort of thing normal? Waking up next to a lover, watching the light stream in? Sherlock imagines there must be people who are accustomed to it.

Comments

[womanwhobeatyou]

She tilts her head, watching him, and as she does a wave of dizziness hits her and Irene holds very still until it passes.

She knows how much blood she'd need to lose before she start feeling the effects, and it hadn't been nearly enough. Except that measurement had been before Karachi, before her death and the subsequent life on the run and hidden. Less than.

She takes a slow, deep breath, and wills it to pass before speaking. "You're missing a step in the equation, Mr. Holmes. You'll cause a scene in the airport in the state you're in now."

[the_new_sexy]

"Yes," he says. "Which is why we need to go and get clothing."

She wobbles, but it's so subtle that Sherlock is almost uncertain he saw it. The Woman is too poised to give into dizziness, and it's everything in him to remain in the car rather than reaching out to catch her.

"And if you get into the car, then I might not have to carry you."

A pause.

"Please."

[womanwhobeatyou]

It's the 'please' that convinces her. That is the key to unlocking what she hears in his voice, the edge of actual worry, of sentiment, and when it falls into place she sighs and walks back to the car.

Because she realizes what has been driving him and she caves. It's losing and she cannot help it.

"I will if you let me drive."

The fact that the worry is mutual doesn't make her feel any better.

[the_new_sexy]

"You're not in any condition to and you know it," he says, and his voice sounds a shade defeated. He knows he's lost. He's betrayed himself by showing his emotions and even more so by actually having them.

But he can't just let her take them to buy clothing, to get on an airplane to a strange island and not make certain she's all right. Even if it's only a pint of blood, even if it's---he just can't. He can't.

He's stopping, he realizes. He's stopping everything for her. It's worse than bingeing for three days because of John because this won't stop. It won't stop until they've killed her.

[womanwhobeatyou]

"Nothing a glass of orange juice and an iron supplement won't fix," she answers. There's a touch of forced levity in her voice, nearly. Because she can tell he is caving and the power balance is shifting. And she likes it exactly where it had been before.

She waits for him to move out of the driver's seat. "Maybe two, and a few hours of sleep."

[the_new_sexy]

"Thirty seconds," he says. "And then I'm driving off and sending an ambulance back for you."

It's not a false threat, he tells himself. It doesn't matter that he's concerned about her. No, it doesn't. Because once the ambulance gets here, he can follow it to a hospital to keep her safe.

[womanwhobeatyou]

She glares at him, and for twenty seconds does absolutely nothing.

It doesn't matter that the ambulance could put lie to the fact that Irene Adler was dead. It doesn't matter that it would most certainly alert the people seeking them exactly where they were. It doesn't matter because he's still pushing.

Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

With a growl of pure frustration, she stalks over to the back seat and practically throws herself into it, glaring at him in the rearview mirror as she does so.

[the_new_sexy]

He holds out, counting the seconds in his head until she finally gives in and drops into the back seat. He swallows back the sigh of relief he feels bubbling up. Hospital. Now.

He doesn't talk to her, doesn't even say something smug or smart. He simply starts up the car and drives it down the road, leaving behind an abandoned petrol station and a lot of DNA evidence.

[womanwhobeatyou]

And she in turn says nothing. She's resisting the urge to kick the back of his seat in pique but that is more his reaction than hers, and she knows she knows that he is still in considerable discomfort and pain from his injuries. So she simply stares out the window as he drives, a small frown starting to grow as she glimpses a sign for the hospital and he turns.

[the_new_sexy]

He doesn't bother trying to hide where he's going. The lie was useful to get her into the vehicle, even if that was ridiculously difficult. Now they were nearly there. A hospital just on the outside of the city. Assassins were, no doubt, somewhere nearby. It didn't matter.

He pulls up outside of the A&E and stops the car.

"Let's go."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She looks from his reflection in the rearview mirror to the hospital and back again.

"Have you gone completely mad?"

[the_new_sexy]

"Only about the time I asked you to come to America with me," he says. "You need to get those stitched up, and then you need to get onto a plane."

He swallows, and his voice is like ice when he speaks because he wills it so. He wills away the sentiment, he wills away the sudden pang of loss he feels as he thinks what he's about to say.

"Australia. Keep yourself under the radar. I'll make certain the woman who saw you doesn't let it out who she knew from this incident."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She stares at him in the rearview mirror, and for a brief moment looks shocked by his words. But the vulnerability drains visibly from her face, and when she speaks, her face is expressionless, though there is a brittle quality to her words.

"Still as arrogant and delusional as ever, I see."

She says nothing more and gets out of the car, slamming the door for good measure. The noise attracts the attention of an orderly near the door, and Irene feigns a limp to keep the orderly's attention (she was a maternal type, prone to fussing about her patients).

The orderly approaches, looking concerned, and Irene bends to the other woman's ear, whispering a few words. The woman looks scandalized for a moment, then turns her attention unerringly to the driver's seat of the car.

[the_new_sexy]

Sherlock moves to sit back in the drivers' seat, trying to work out what it is that he wants from this, from giving her up. He can't---he shouldn't care about her safety, he tells himself. He shouldn't care, but he does. He tries to delete that emotion, but finds it impossible. He tells himself he simply wants to be more efficient at his plans. This works for a moment, but he knows that it isn't true.

He's wrapped up in his thoughts for so long that he fails to notice the male nurses who come out to the car until they have their hands on his arms.

"We've got you," they say. "It's all right, man, we'll get you help."

Whatever the Woman told the nurse, it keeps him from convincing them he's fine. He finds himself in his own room with a sedative drip on top of the fluid IVs he has. A bone in his hand is set, and the cuts he failed to take the glass out of are cleaned and stitched.

He hates the Woman for putting him through this.

[womanwhobeatyou]

She stays at the hospital long enough to forge signatures on the proper papers that would keep the nurses from allowing Sherlock to leave too easily and allow the nurses to bandage her up. Her own injuries are worse than her initial estimate, but nothing that painkillers and a few stitches cannot handle.

Her plan had been to return to the gas station and rid the area of the evidence of their passage (who would have been surprised that a gas station, its ground saturated with old gasoline, could explode quite so spectacularly?), to get rid of the car, to find new clothes, and...

Well, she had no plan after that. Australia was off the table, although Nassau held a contrary appeal.

It ended up not mattering, in the scheme of things. After the fact, Irene had a very difficult time remembering just what had happened in the hours after she left the hospital.

But within hours, a nondescript youth visited the hospital and left a gift on the nightstand in Sherlock Holmes' hospital room. A familiar piece of jewelry, sized for a woman's hand, resting in the middle of a similarly familiar scrap of black paper, folded into the shape of a lotus blossom.

[the_new_sexy]

He doesn't hear anyone enter, the sedatives are far too high. When he finds himself coming out of it, he looks over to see the ring, the Woman's stolen ring, sitting in the middle of a black lotus blossom. An identical copy of the folded paper is in the pocket of the trousers the hospital has. His eyes widen. She's gone. They've taken her. Not killed her, no. The lotus blossom would've been left with her.

He struggles with the IV, and grabs the two items, examining them initially, and then slipping them into a bag to bring to a lab with him. He grabs some painkillers and gauze from the room, and vanishes into one of the empty labs. He doesn't bother dressing, just wanders from table to table, working on the scrap of paper and the ring. Collecting evidence. The make of the paper, the places it's been. He goes onto the computer and pulls up information about mysterious black market sellers in Hong Kong and London.

There is no emotion right now. He remains in the lab, nude but for the hospital gown, stripping the evidence he can from the two items, and then he books a plane ticket.

To Hong Kong.