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]

"Who said they were mutually exclusive?" She does, however, smile at his admission as she checks around the corner. Their path to the car is clear, and she gestures for the keys.

The asphalt is already warm on her bare feet, but she ignores that too for the moment. "Unlock the doors, we can run for it."

[the_new_sexy]

He presses the lock on the keys just as he throws the sheet out of the door. Several shots ring out, but they only hit the sheet. Sherlock makes a run for it.

His own feet are also bare, and he thinks of his shoes and his coat and everything behind them. Rebuilding is what they do best, the two of them. He spots the sniper from where he'd been hiding, but he pulls back his gun as Sherlock looks.

What? Why would he pull back his gun now?

[womanwhobeatyou]

The sound of gunfire is quieter than she'd expected. Either silenced or distance, but Irene turns towards the motel's front office anyway, watching for movement inside just in case the proprietor had heard the shots and felt the need to investigate.

She doesn't see anything, but then the window's shades are half drawn, and turns back to Sherlock, who is staring out at so--

The glint of sunlight off a scope shows her where the sniper is, and Irene's initial response is to raise the weapon in her hand, even as she does, she hesitates. There is no silencer on the handgun, and a shot from this distance would definitely be heard.

Never mind that there was no way she can hit from this range. Still, she keeps it trained on where the wink of light had come from. "You're a target," she snapped. "And I'm in no shape to be dragging you anywhere if you get shot."

[the_new_sexy]

"He's lowering his gun," Sherlock says. "He has a clear shot. Why stop now?"

He turns back. Is he missing something? Him, really?

"Woman, come back---"

It's at that moment that something explodes. Hot, lashing out against Sherlock's back. He falls forward onto the pavement as the car explodes.

[womanwhobeatyou]

The blast is hot, far warmer than the sun-baked asphalt, and the force of the explosion drives her to the ground. The scream of metal and shattering glass, and Irene covers her head out of sheer instinct.

After the blast, the world sounds strangely quiet, empty, and for a moment Irene wonders if the explosion has temporarily deafened her as she picks herself up. She hurts, her skin is raw and abraded from the texture of the asphalt, and bits of glass and fiberglass and whatever else the car had been made of fall from her like fine snow.

"I think that was the answer you were looking for."

[the_new_sexy]

He sees a burned one hundred dollar bill fall to the ground. So much for that sudden windfall. At least they didn't join it. He gets to his feet quickly, feeling glass cut into his soles. He looks up. The sniper is gone.

He looks back towards their hotel and notices something small and dark lying amongst the glass. He picks it up. Pieces fall into place, and he takes a quick glance back to make certain the Woman hadn't noticed before slipping the object into his pocket.

"The police would've been called," he says. "We need to keep moving."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She is too busy surveying the damage to notice what he's picked up, too busy cataloging what she'll need again, what they'll need again, and how to get it. How to disappear again, how to evade the people who had tracked them to the motel.

"Easier said than done," she mutters with a wince as she tries (futilely) to avoid walking on broken glass. She shakes her head, and a few more shards of glass fall from her hair. The gun she keeps at her side. "The woman's pockets. I thought I saw car keys."

[the_new_sexy]

He tosses the sheet her way. His feet are already lacerated, he can walk.

"Cover yourself in case he's still nearby," he says. He steps on the glass, focusing on the door. He can ignore the pain, he tells himself. His body is just transport for his brain, the pain is just neurons firing, explaining that he is injured. It is like hunger and sleep. He can ignore it.

He makes it to the room and grabs their shoes. He kneels next to the woman and grabs the keys.

Her hand grabs his wrist. Her eyes are open wide. He grips her jaw, pressing the keys into her injury.

"Tell your masters that the Woman is dead," he says. "If they want to find me, I'll be waiting."

And with that, he releases her and shakes his hand free. He shuts the door behind himself and walks across the glass.

[womanwhobeatyou]

She catches the sheet, trying to ignore the speckles of red that land on it as she does. It occurs to Irene, almost idly, that standing in the aftermath of an exploded car bomb, barefoot and scraped bloody, with a sniper somewhere in the vicinity, invisible, that she still feels distinctly less vulnerable than she had when he'd tried to deduce how she'd broken a finger twenty seven years ago.

She shakes her head, as if shaking away the thought itself, and looks around the parking lot. It's mostly empty, but there are three cars still left. All of them rentals. She dismisses the luxury car immediately, and heads towards the beige midsized. It is easily the most nondescript of the three cars, with enough space for the sniper's gear.

The sheet trails behind her as she does, as she picks her way along. She keeps an eye out for the sniper, but a part of her suspects he (or she) is gone. She says nothing as Sherlock returns; something is niggling at the back of her mind, and she isn't certain what it is just yet, but she knows it may be important.

[the_new_sexy]

"Shoes," he says, offering them to her along with the key. "You'll have to drive. Preferably to somewhere we can get medical supplies for you."

He didn't need to tell her that a hospital was out of the question. She was far from stupid, but he also knew she would be more concerned about a getaway than she would about her heavily-bleeding arm. And he---well, he couldn't let that happen, could he?

[womanwhobeatyou]

She looks blank for a moment at the key and shoes he offers, then exchanges them for the sheet and the purse she'd somehow managed to keep a hold of. "Better to get lost in the crowd first, or gain some distance. They should be keeping an eye on the area," she answers as she slips the shoes on. Another moment and she unlocks the car door, fumbling only slightly with the key.

The woman's cry had been familiar, had tugged at some memory, and it irritated Irene that she couldn't immediately bring it to mind. "If they were as prepared as they look, there may be a first aid kit in the car."

[the_new_sexy]

"Fine," he says. "Just go."

He thinks the amount of blood loss she's going to experience within the next few minutes may make him the final decider of what they end up doing regardless of the Woman's opinion. He gets into the passenger seat and immediately looks in the back, finding several weapons and some traveling equipment, along with explosives.

"This changes everything," he says. "We can't go back to the casino without opening ourselves back up."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She starts the car (sighing in relief that it's an automatic), and peels out of the parking lot, heading west. There's no thought in the choice; she's deliberately acting unthinkingly to keep from second guessing where the killers would expect them to go.

The car runs well enough, and the air conditioning that kicks on is pleasantly soothing, enough that the adrenaline begins to ebb and she starts feeling the throbbing pain in her arm, the raw sting of scratched palms and knees and the re-irritated wound from the day before high on her leg. "Then we go split up," she answers, her eyes on the road. "Give them two targets to chase, divide their resources."

That was the logical, smart answer. The correct answer. She knows this even as she says it, but the next words come anyway. "That or find somewhere to go to ground."

[the_new_sexy]

"I have a contact in Nassau," he says. "Well, I say I do, but it's Mycroft's contact. Hasn't seen Mycroft since before he started his love affair with baked goods. I think I should be able to play the part well enough."

He pulls a few pieces of glass from his foot. They bleed rather spectacularly, though he imagines with some staunching they'll be fine. It's nothing in comparison to other injuries he's experienced, and not nearly as deep as the knife wound in Montenegro.

"I did promise you a warm escape."

[womanwhobeatyou]

An upward tug at the corner of her mouth. "Use the sheet for bandages," she says. "I'd hate to have to dispose of this car too just because you bled all over it. One car fire's enough for a day, isn't it?"

Not that she's one to talk right now, but her mind is still pulling at the puzzle of the Chinese woman. Something was familiar and she wasn't certain what. Something about her cry of surprise and pain...

She's speeding along the road, but for the moment there is nobody else on the freeway with them, and she'd like to keep it that way.

The mention of Mycroft Holmes does bring to mind government, London. And the piece that had been tugging at her mind falls into place. "She spoke Cantonese."

[the_new_sexy]

"Probably," Sherlock says, distracted by the glass in his foot. He staunches the wound with some pressure against it, keeping the blood back with the sheet. He feels some sharp pain. Pieces still in there, then. Not good. He can handle it later.

"I didn't know you spoke it."

[womanwhobeatyou]

"British diplomat," she answers. She doesn't speak it, not with any skill. Just knew enough to hear the difference, but she doesn't correct him. A petrol station appears on the horizon, but Irene dismisses stopping. Still too close to the motel for her own peace of mind. And while at some point they would have to stop for medical supplies, she is going to push stopping as long as she can.

They, the carbombers, the assassins, would expect them to stop as soon as they could. The farther away they could get, the better then. "Spent years in the region and had a tendency to swear in it."

[the_new_sexy]

"Knew what she liked, did you?" Sherlock says. He'd picked up the fact that the would-be assassin didn't make it her day job from the clumsy action, and the political nature was obvious from her shoes. However, the specifics aren't something that Sherlock was able to deduce.

He shakes his head. "Someone who can recognize you. But why? Why send someone after us who can recognize you but not me."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She would have corrected him, would have said she and the diplomat had had common interests, but his unexpected statement about the would-be killer surprises her and Irene turns sharply to him.

"What?"

[the_new_sexy]

"They're here to kill me," he says. "Obvious. But they selected an assailant who would know you. Probably owed them a favor or money---more likely the former, considering her brand of skirt."

[womanwhobeatyou]

She chuckles darkly at that. But then he would not be Sherlock Holmes without that arrogance. It's almost comforting, in its own way. Familiar.

"Given their choice of tactics, I don't think they're quite that discriminatory about whether they kill you or both of us." Blood dripping down her arm is starting to irritate, to distract, and Irene lets go of the wheel long enough to wipe the worst of it on the skirt of her dress. One more thing to replace.

[the_new_sexy]

"Yes, but targeting me. Why would they focus on you? How could they know that you're alive?"

He shakes his head. "It's not good. Not as terrible as them knowing I'm alive, but still very problematic."

He is completely unaware of the fact that he's brushing her off, or really that he's being arrogant at all. In his mind, he's simply being observant.

[womanwhobeatyou]

"If they're targeting you, then by definition they already know you're alive," she cannot resist pointing out. Her eyes remain on the road, and a glint of sunlight in the rearview mirror catches Irene's attention.

It could have been a trick of the light, or the imagination of a currently overtaxed mind, or there was a car behind them, coming up over a rise in the desert road.

She isn't willing to risk it being the last, so she speeds up, casting an eye along the road. There is an abandoned gas station, recently closed judging by the state of the plywood still covering its windows and door, and she turns the car sharply into its lot, parking in the shadow of the abandoned building, careful to keep the car out of view of the road.

[the_new_sexy]

"Yes, obviously, and it can only be worse if they expose me," he says.

The car speeds up, and Sherlock doesn't need to glance in the rearview mirror to know the Woman sees something. He holds onto the side of the door as she turns sharply into the station. He glances over his shoulder.

"This is as good a place as any," he says.

[womanwhobeatyou]

Her attention is on the road for the moment, on cars that may or may not be coming down the road, not on bloody arms and lacerated feet, and when he speaks, Irene turns to him, momentarily confused.

"What?"