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holmestice2014-12-21 03:00 pm
holmesticemods) wrote in holmestice2014-12-21 03:00 pm
Entry tags:
Fic for blueonblue/pocketbookangel: Grit on the Lens
Title: Grit on the Lens
Recipient:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blueonblue
Author:marta_bee
Betas: All honor and praise tolindahoyland and sjames_centre
Characters/Pairings: Mycroft Holmes, Irene Adler, cameo by the Equerry and Anthea
Rating: Teen
Warnings:
Word Count: 4,901 + Notes
Summary: To Mycroft Holmes she would always be the Woman. An attempt to nudge the BBC's version of Irene Adler in a direction more compatible with her Doyle self, and fix some of that episode's more troubling bits at the same time.
I first met Irene Adler (although the name came later) in the autumn of 1994, at an embassy gala held to commemorate ten years' passage since the fall – of the tearing down, for such things should never be described as if they just happened– of the Berlin Wall. Strange, how governments insist on celebrating the progression of time, as if anything worth noting had been accomplished in the intervening period. The years have a habit of rolling by whether we humans had accomplished anything worth celebrating or not.
And stranger still, in this case, that I would be called upon to attend. I was, after all, just three years out of Oxford, a fairly junior member of the MOD and hardly the best-connected servant of the crown. Yet I was in Vienna when we intercepted the data concerning a possible mole with East German sympathies in the MAD, and I was both junior enough and looked sufficiently respectable in a decent suit that I might pass for an ambassador's aide. I would go unnoticed.
So I was sent to Dresden, and so I went. My MAD counterpart, Erich Hoffmann, greeted me outside the cloakroom, clasping me on the arm as if we were old friends, and led me into the banqueting hall. The data he needed waited for him on a microchip secured in my glove's inner-lining, which I would keep on my person throughout the evening (an Englishman's deference to those cold German nights) and somehow misplace in Erich's coat-pocket when we claimed our outdoor-clothes at the evening's end. We need not risk openly discussing it in front of so many people, a fair number of them old party stalwarts from the East German politburo.
Which left us to enjoy ourselves. Such as we could; state dinners were really only carefree affairs for men who had nothing to lose or were so impervious to retribution they had no reason to fear the fall-out of an ill-chosen word, and neither applied to Erich or me. But there would be good wine, and better food than a civil servant could hope to regularly procure in either London or Berlin, and music afterwards. We had only to enjoy each other's' company (or seem to, at any rate) so our meeting would seem more like a social pleasantry and less an exchange of information.
"How is..." Erich began, searching for a topic of conversation we could afford to have overheard. "How is Billy?"
"He goes by Sherlock now. Informed us quite solemnly last Christmas that all his other names were 'dull'. And as for how he fares?" I broke into a wide smile, a little surprised at the genuine pride the question invoked. "Straight A*'s across the board last spring, and a year early! Our parents forbade him to start university so young so he's back at Eton doing supplemental work in anatomy, which he loves, and languages, which he hates but quite honestly his progress on that account were a bit embar – "
My voice trailed off at the site of the stodgy banker in the too-tight tweed suit who had entered the hall, or more precisely at the woman standing beside him. "Who is she?"
"Irene O'Connor," Erich informed me, leaning in conspiratorially. "Daughter of Sean O'Connor, the youngest vice president ever to serve at the Continental Illinois National Bank." He indicated the man she stood beside. "The whole family is well-placed, and he has two cousins on the Board, but he is something of a financial genius in his own right. He's been working with a series of German banks since the Reunification and is a useful enough fellow, though not really the sort you would have round for dinner." He grinned mischievously. "I hardly think he'd balk at being called Billy."
I fixed him with my most exacting expression. "I meant his daughter."
"Of course you did," Erich said, his eyes glinting mischievously. "Irene O'Connor. Her father's pride and joy and, if I may be so bold, at least half his headaches." I arched my eyebrow at that but let Erich continue. "She completed the Beau Soleil last June and has been traveling with her father since then. Due to start a degree at Yale after Christmas."
"That hardly seems just cause for a headache," I noted., though I could imagine. A girl that age, travelling around Europe with a father who seemed incapable of keeping up with the circles she would prefer to socialize in.
"She has gone a bit... wild," Erich said. He pursed his lips, seemingly choosing his words carefully, and then shrugged in resignation. "She has been seen at various events, and after-parties, on the arms of members of the old Politburo and their sons. Sometimes with a married man – or woman – without the other spouse for company."
I looked over to where she stood in a cluster of well-dressed men, clearly honoured guests rather than aides and closer to my age than hers, and I caught a snatch of a pun in French. Of perfect French, and a pun about Baudelaire's poetry at that. "She's clever," I said after a moment. "Fashionable. Of course she would like more stimulating company than her father can provide."
"Last week her photograph appeared in the Bild after she was caught playing in the Neptune Fountain with a very well-respected housing developer. Shirtless. Him stripped to his boxers."
"She is young," I said. I hadn't been so much older than her when I'd thoroughly lost a game of strip poker and had to misplace a friend's camera before the night was over. I found myself smiling at the memory. "We young people do foolish things, sometimes."
"Seventeen is no longer a child, but hardly an adult either," Erich answered, his voice taking on a bitter tone. I knew his history; he had fled with his parents to West Germany while still a child, on quite short notice, leaving an older brother behind. Jakob had been interrogated (to be oblique), and had, in fact, died in the police custody. And he was right, of course; seventeen was not so young a person would be seen as a child, certainly old enough to know how to handle oneself – a skill this Irene seemed to lack.
"She is American," I said, surprised at how ready I seemed to make excuses on her behalf. "A people so liberated it makes one's teeth hurt. Or what they believe passes for liberation, at least. I doubt she knows the danger."
"Precisely," Erich said. "She is clever, and self-possessed, and has more social graces than her father could ever hope to claim. But she is old enough not to be written off as an unapproachable child, and she certainly hasn't guarded herself against the powerful men she insists on associating with. So far it has all been in good fun. No harm has come of it. Yet." He sighed and looked over at her, his gaze lingering a little longer than was (strictly speaking) necessary before shaking his head. "Someone should take her in hand, or at least warn her about the game she's playing. Otherwise, one of her 'friends' will take too many liberties, and her father will take offence, and there may well be hell to pay."
"But you've taken no such steps."
"The last man who tried ended up in police custody on some charge or other. Her father has powerful friends and doesn't take to people poking their noses into his affairs." Erich smiled wryly. "I worry about the worth of your gloves. It would hardly do to have them wind up in an evidence box at the local police precinct."
He was right, of course. My only real duty for the evening was not to make a scene, and this Irene O'Connor was not my problem. Still, I could not quite take my eyes off her. I told myself the concern was natural enough: she was my brother's age, she had my brother's brashness and more charm than he would ever be able to manage, even resembled him physically, and she seemed truly out of her depths. Why shouldn't I be moved to protect her, beyond the obvious? I buried the impulse to approach her, to ask her for the next dance and whisper a discreet word of warning as we made our way around the hall, but I could not bring myself to look away. I told myself she was either an innocent in need of protection or, if not that, she might even be an asset someday. She had a striking beauty, to be sure, but there was more to her than that; she had a confidence and an ability to master herself and others that often proved useful.
At worst, I told myself firmly, I was caring. Caring may not be an advantage, as Mummy was so fond of reminding me, but most of society thought well enough of that particular sentiment, and it was hardly likely to prove harmful.
After that night I kept track of her affairs as best I could. She did indeed enter Yale the next year, enrolling in both the English literature and the women's studies programs: a refined course for a refined mind on the one hand, and the surest way to drive her father mad on the other. She secured internships at the best communications firms in New York (which between her educational accomplishments and her family name she almost certainly would have managed on her own, without the well-timed call from a friend of mine in Washington). She seemed well on her way to her chosen career, but in her third year she went to Jordan of all places on a study visit abroad, and she simply never returned.
After that things became – more interesting. From time to time I would find printed photographs of her, or articles about her escapades, tucked under my morning cup of tea: scaling Mount Kilimanjaro, establishing schools in Jalalabad and Kandahar, even touring with an opera group through China, Laos, and Vietnam. Yet I never saw her again in person until perhaps a year before my brother decided to split (or share) rooms with his soldier-fellow.
I was making my way down a café-lined boulevard in Tel Aviv, toward the old Jaffa flea market where I'd arranged to meet my contact, when I stopped midstride. A young woman (though not so young as she had been) was sipping an iced coffee and purposely ignoring everyone around her. Her hair was cut short, her face pointedly free of makeup. Her khaki cargo shorts and faded tee shirt were a far cry from the evening gown she'd worn that night in Dresden, but there was no mistaking the striking green of her eyes – or, come to that, the unfeigned recognition and accompanying scowl that swept across her face when she saw me.
It was only a moment's lapse, and she quickly closed her laptop, tucked her computer into her bag and rushed over toward me, kissing me on the cheek as a cousin might. "Mr. Holmes," she said softly. She shouldered her bag, grabbed me by the elbow and guided me down the boulevard. "You are not supposed to be here."
I laughed at that, it was such an absurd thing for her to say. "Where should I be? It is a public street, after all."
"Not here," she all but whispered, turning us onto a side street. We walked (nearly ran) for two blocks in silence until finally she pulled me into a trash alley-way and looked over her shoulder, checking to see whether we'd been followed.
"What are you – "
I was cut off by an explosion some distance away – the boulevard, I realized – and by the ambulance sirens that followed swiftly thereafter. My first impulse was to run back to the café, to help, but I quickly checked myself. I could prevent attacks like that, to some degree, and ensure the men and women responsible for them were made to pay for their crimes, but in the immediate aftermath I would only be in the way of ambulance crews and security officers sure to be swarming around the boulevard by now. And while my face was not commonly tied to my work, my accent would place me immediately as an Englishman. Hardly the spark that tinder keg needed just then.
"You knew this was going to happen," I informed her, and she did not try to deny it. No point, really. Then, more cautiously, I asked, "You were involved?"
She scoffed at him. "You assume too much, Mr. Holmes."
"Hardly," I said. "You just pulled me away from a bombing. You must have had some foreknowledge of what just happened, and you most certainly did not attempt to stop it. Moreover, your heritage ..." I let my voice trail off, leaving the pointed question in the air and hoping she would rise to the bait.
"My heritage?" she scoffed. "You mean the fine upstanding Chicago family I hail from, or the fact that I have spent these past eighteen months teaching English and preparing visa applications to help children emigrate from the occupied territories? This is neither 1969, nor Belfast." She pressed her lips together, making her disappointment in me quite obvious, but I let it pass. "As to foreknowledge," she continued, "yes. My neighbours are a nice enough professional couple, an Israeli civil engineer and an Arab lawyer out of Hebron, whose son is a lovely boy but an increasingly angry one. I saw him carrying a knapsack into a café at the time of day when you can count on a half-dozen IDF boys stopping in for a coffee after their shift, and in that precise moment I saw you walking down the street, plain as day. The last thing we need is a British spy killed by a Hamas pipe-bomb. It seemed... prudent, to withdraw."
"You thought of all that in the seconds after you saw me, but you didn't think to disarm the boy."
"Yes, because I could have easily made my way across the boulevard, reached and disarmed the bomb in that short a time. And even if I could, the real problem would still remain. A half-dozen injured university students and off-duty soldiers pales in comparison to the cost of your involvement." She looked at me, assessing the way her words had struck me, and that more than anything she had said convinced me how great an asset she might prove.
"You think me cool," she said.
"Perhaps," I answered, "You are intelligent, but that is no revelation. Decisive. Masterful –and that is hardly a fault, in my experience. I was just wondering what it might take to convince you to join the side of the angels."
She looked at me quizzically. Some conversations were better conducted out of the public ear, even any public ears that might be lurking in seemingly-deserted alleys, and if her neighbour truly had been involved in the bombing, the city police would soon be descending onto her apartment. But my own rooms at the Market House had been swept and taken off the hotel's security systems prior to my arrival. They would have to do. I introduced her to my aide as an old family friend and sent her off to make my apologies to the Israeli agent, and to arrange our dinner. It promised to be a long night.
Three weeks later, Irene O'Connor was found dead from a gas explosion in her flat; or rather, a thoroughly unidentifiable corpse was found whose genetic profile matched hair follicles found on the hairbrush in her desk at a visa application agency. An orange tabby's tail was badly singed, but at her insistence precisely no one else was harmed. I made sure of that. Obituaries were carried in the Israeli and Chicago papers, and if the television coverage could be trusted her family was every bit as devastated as one would expect. Three months later Irene Adler was introduced by a colleague of mine, a woman from a reasonably good family, tragically orphaned, but a graduate of McGill and a rising star at a respectable public relations firm. She was poised, indomitable – and, I hoped, unrecognizable as the woman who once caught the attention of every eligible man (and many who were neither) in Dresden.
Sherlock was three months out of Lexham House (and three months sober so far as I could tell) when Ms. Adler left her old life, and he'd worked on two cases with New Scotland Yard by the time she had debuted in London. He was also beginning to attract some unusual attention. Suspicious IP activity on that website he used to find his clients, CCTV cameras that were meant to scan randomly but had an unsettling tendency to track his motions. Sherlock might insist on distancing himself from my influence, but I was not so naïve to think I had no rivals who might use him against me, given half the chance. And that was the more benign of the various possibilities. If a past acquaintance, perhaps a loyal employee frustrated at his boss's rough treatment at my hands, intended to exact revenge, I needed to know about it.
Which was where Ms. Adler entered into things. I could survey Sherlock's world well enough, but Whitehall? Regent's Park, even Windsor? For all that Irene had seemed unaware of the dangers in the game she played, she had proved herself socially adept for seventeen, skilled at enticing men to offer up secrets they would never have revealed to a colleague. She could go to places I could not and, if I'd once had doubts about her ability to handle herself, her cool performance in Tel Aviv had laid them to rest. She would not be compromised by her own sentiment, or so I thought. There is after all a reason that spies have used honey traps since Samson was ensnared by Delilah. The public relations firm had of course been a front, but it gave her that veneer of respectability to work her way into London's most cloistered bedrooms.
I had not counted on her being quite so ambitious, though. At first she played her part perfectly, delivering intimate secrets in her first months concerning two MPs, a CFO, and the wife of a popular (if politically inconvenient) barrister. As time went on, however, and she saw that the information was hardly used for the dragon-slaying purposes she imagined it would be, she became much more reticent. That on its own was suspect, but hardly damming. Her clients might just have grown more tight-lipped, or she may have hit a temporary unproductive spell. Then one day Anthea showed me a photo she had found pushed under our office door of Irene leading me down a Tel Aviv side-street, her face turned away and obscured but my own profile plainly visible, and time-stamp clearly connecting us (me) to a terrorist's attack.
Obviously a copy. Most likely obtained through hacked access into Israel's equivalent of our CCTV – not planned, but damning nonetheless. That was as good as a declaration of war. It was an entirely baseless accusation, but that hardly mattered: Irene knew how it must look. I cared too much about her (that weakness again) to want to see her truly hurt, but neither was I so befuddled by sentiment to leave her be. I had half decided to manufacture evidence against her and have her housed somewhere that would keep her comfortable but harmless. Perhaps a private room at Holloway. She would hate it, of course, but it was really the best possible outcome she could expect. I only had to have Anthea retrieve the original photo and then we could begin.
Before we could move against her, though, Ms. Adler had what I could only describe as an immense stroke of luck – or what a more superstitious man might call luck. Planning, then, though how she had predicted...
First, no more than three hours after Anthea first discovered the photograph slid under our office door, the Royal Equerry paid a rare visit to my office in Whitehall, to ask my opinion on Ms. Adler's character and security. It seemed the newly-minted Duchess had requested her companionship. That raised an eyebrow, and Harry smiled knowingly – marriages in such circles might be played as love to soften the family's image, but that was rarely the whole story. For the first time in our long acquaintance, I lied to Harry. I knew of no black marks against her, I said, but I would certainly look into it.
Then, by that week's end, a madman blew up my brother's flat.
Much of the rest, as they say, is history; or at least it is recorded on John Watson's blog, in parts and over my objections. Irene quickly became indispensable to me, but also dangerous. Doubly dangerous, and doubly needed, because I could hardly move against Moriarty (I never doubted he was behind the Baker Street explosion and everything that came after, even before the debacle with the Bruce Partington plans) unless I knew who else he might strike against. Irene could be my eyes and ears inside Windsor, warn me against any attempts made against the royal family. She was, however, no longer an ally in my mind. When she attempted to blackmail the Crown, I was discomfited, annoyed, even frustrated – but I was no longer surprised.
When I told Sherlock that we could do nothing so long as she had the photographs, I was not speaking of whatever evidence she was attempting to use to blackmail the Crown, or not solely. Her photo might damn me, even if its implications were entirely untrue, in the wrong hands – and even more than that, it might unbalance the tenuous situation in Israel. She had claimed to care about those people, but what did I know of her character, really? No, she might well use it to ruin me, us. Them. Twice men under my command ransacked her home, even before Harry thought to employ Sherlock on the Queen's behalf. We even searched her luggage, when she accompanied a client to Milan, but with no luck.
Once we had the phone, when Sherlock had guessed (deduced, he would say, but no; guessed) her mobile's passcode, I thought at last we had her beaten. Things involving Irene Adler, however, rarely worked out so neatly. When I inventoried the phone's contents, it was all I could do to keep from throwing my head back and laughing like a madman. There were the photos of the Duchess – in an imaginative range of poses, as promised, and thank God those had never seen the light of day – and of other allies and rivals and flat-out enemies, and other documents besides. But there was no grainy security still from a Tel Aviv camera. All that, and still she had me under her thumb!
Or, as it turned out, perhaps not. After Karachi, Sherlock returned with an ugly row of stitches where a bullet had grazed his skull, a full complement of bruises – and two photographs. One, of Irene and an Afghani warlord, inscribed on the back with I knew what he likes, and the other, a snapshot of Erich and myself that night in Dresden, with me looking longingly to the side. She could have ruined me, could have had Sherlock killed for his attempt to rescue her (had she ever been in danger?), but no. She sent him back to me and as good as told me I was free.
To my brother she will always be the Woman. In later years he came to respect a score of women – his pathologist, Martha Hudson, our mother, even (grudgingly) the woman we came to know as Mary Morstan – but to hear him speak there was one who stood apart as an exemplar of her sex. He did not – could not – love her in the conventional sense, nor could I. He would publicly scoff at the mere suggestion he felt anything akin to affection for her, never would have admitted any such intrusions into his temperament. That would have been as destructive as grit in a sensitive instrument, as a crack along his microscope's lens.
And yet to him – to us – there was but one woman, The Woman, and she was the twice-dead (yet very much alive) Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
***************************
Notes
This story is written for Pocketbookangel, who said in her request, "I have a soft spot for Irene Adler, I always want her to win and be happy, but the dominatrix thing in BBC Sherlock is a DNW." Which, to be honest, was entirely too tempting a possibility to resist. Would it be possible to write BBC!Irene in a way that was (basically) consistent with the portrayal we get on the show while salvaging that unfortunate choice on the part of the show-creators? I've borrowed heavily from Doyle, and much of the language in the last two paragraphs is adapted (read: "borrowed") from "A Scandal in Bohemia." Certain plot points in the final section are also based on that story.
Some rather extensive (possibly excessive) explanations of various references:
My sincerest thanks tolindahoyland and sjames_centrefor their quick and useful beta, and to Pocketbookangel for her inspiring prompt.
Recipient:
blueonblueAuthor:
marta_beeBetas: All honor and praise to
lindahoyland and sjames_centreCharacters/Pairings: Mycroft Holmes, Irene Adler, cameo by the Equerry and Anthea
Rating: Teen
Warnings:
1) There is implied sex, violence, moral greyness and general abuse of the criminal justice system in the story ahead. It's the BBC's Irene and Mycroft, after all and includes pretty much what you'd expect (though not in explicit detail).
2) While I hope this story is enjoyable for BBC-only fans, certain aspects will make more sense if you have a basic familiarity with "A Scandal in Bohemia." (Doyle /// Granada)
Word Count: 4,901 + Notes
Summary: To Mycroft Holmes she would always be the Woman. An attempt to nudge the BBC's version of Irene Adler in a direction more compatible with her Doyle self, and fix some of that episode's more troubling bits at the same time.
I first met Irene Adler (although the name came later) in the autumn of 1994, at an embassy gala held to commemorate ten years' passage since the fall – of the tearing down, for such things should never be described as if they just happened– of the Berlin Wall. Strange, how governments insist on celebrating the progression of time, as if anything worth noting had been accomplished in the intervening period. The years have a habit of rolling by whether we humans had accomplished anything worth celebrating or not.
And stranger still, in this case, that I would be called upon to attend. I was, after all, just three years out of Oxford, a fairly junior member of the MOD and hardly the best-connected servant of the crown. Yet I was in Vienna when we intercepted the data concerning a possible mole with East German sympathies in the MAD, and I was both junior enough and looked sufficiently respectable in a decent suit that I might pass for an ambassador's aide. I would go unnoticed.
So I was sent to Dresden, and so I went. My MAD counterpart, Erich Hoffmann, greeted me outside the cloakroom, clasping me on the arm as if we were old friends, and led me into the banqueting hall. The data he needed waited for him on a microchip secured in my glove's inner-lining, which I would keep on my person throughout the evening (an Englishman's deference to those cold German nights) and somehow misplace in Erich's coat-pocket when we claimed our outdoor-clothes at the evening's end. We need not risk openly discussing it in front of so many people, a fair number of them old party stalwarts from the East German politburo.
Which left us to enjoy ourselves. Such as we could; state dinners were really only carefree affairs for men who had nothing to lose or were so impervious to retribution they had no reason to fear the fall-out of an ill-chosen word, and neither applied to Erich or me. But there would be good wine, and better food than a civil servant could hope to regularly procure in either London or Berlin, and music afterwards. We had only to enjoy each other's' company (or seem to, at any rate) so our meeting would seem more like a social pleasantry and less an exchange of information.
"How is..." Erich began, searching for a topic of conversation we could afford to have overheard. "How is Billy?"
"He goes by Sherlock now. Informed us quite solemnly last Christmas that all his other names were 'dull'. And as for how he fares?" I broke into a wide smile, a little surprised at the genuine pride the question invoked. "Straight A*'s across the board last spring, and a year early! Our parents forbade him to start university so young so he's back at Eton doing supplemental work in anatomy, which he loves, and languages, which he hates but quite honestly his progress on that account were a bit embar – "
My voice trailed off at the site of the stodgy banker in the too-tight tweed suit who had entered the hall, or more precisely at the woman standing beside him. "Who is she?"
"Irene O'Connor," Erich informed me, leaning in conspiratorially. "Daughter of Sean O'Connor, the youngest vice president ever to serve at the Continental Illinois National Bank." He indicated the man she stood beside. "The whole family is well-placed, and he has two cousins on the Board, but he is something of a financial genius in his own right. He's been working with a series of German banks since the Reunification and is a useful enough fellow, though not really the sort you would have round for dinner." He grinned mischievously. "I hardly think he'd balk at being called Billy."
I fixed him with my most exacting expression. "I meant his daughter."
"Of course you did," Erich said, his eyes glinting mischievously. "Irene O'Connor. Her father's pride and joy and, if I may be so bold, at least half his headaches." I arched my eyebrow at that but let Erich continue. "She completed the Beau Soleil last June and has been traveling with her father since then. Due to start a degree at Yale after Christmas."
"That hardly seems just cause for a headache," I noted., though I could imagine. A girl that age, travelling around Europe with a father who seemed incapable of keeping up with the circles she would prefer to socialize in.
"She has gone a bit... wild," Erich said. He pursed his lips, seemingly choosing his words carefully, and then shrugged in resignation. "She has been seen at various events, and after-parties, on the arms of members of the old Politburo and their sons. Sometimes with a married man – or woman – without the other spouse for company."
I looked over to where she stood in a cluster of well-dressed men, clearly honoured guests rather than aides and closer to my age than hers, and I caught a snatch of a pun in French. Of perfect French, and a pun about Baudelaire's poetry at that. "She's clever," I said after a moment. "Fashionable. Of course she would like more stimulating company than her father can provide."
"Last week her photograph appeared in the Bild after she was caught playing in the Neptune Fountain with a very well-respected housing developer. Shirtless. Him stripped to his boxers."
"She is young," I said. I hadn't been so much older than her when I'd thoroughly lost a game of strip poker and had to misplace a friend's camera before the night was over. I found myself smiling at the memory. "We young people do foolish things, sometimes."
"Seventeen is no longer a child, but hardly an adult either," Erich answered, his voice taking on a bitter tone. I knew his history; he had fled with his parents to West Germany while still a child, on quite short notice, leaving an older brother behind. Jakob had been interrogated (to be oblique), and had, in fact, died in the police custody. And he was right, of course; seventeen was not so young a person would be seen as a child, certainly old enough to know how to handle oneself – a skill this Irene seemed to lack.
"She is American," I said, surprised at how ready I seemed to make excuses on her behalf. "A people so liberated it makes one's teeth hurt. Or what they believe passes for liberation, at least. I doubt she knows the danger."
"Precisely," Erich said. "She is clever, and self-possessed, and has more social graces than her father could ever hope to claim. But she is old enough not to be written off as an unapproachable child, and she certainly hasn't guarded herself against the powerful men she insists on associating with. So far it has all been in good fun. No harm has come of it. Yet." He sighed and looked over at her, his gaze lingering a little longer than was (strictly speaking) necessary before shaking his head. "Someone should take her in hand, or at least warn her about the game she's playing. Otherwise, one of her 'friends' will take too many liberties, and her father will take offence, and there may well be hell to pay."
"But you've taken no such steps."
"The last man who tried ended up in police custody on some charge or other. Her father has powerful friends and doesn't take to people poking their noses into his affairs." Erich smiled wryly. "I worry about the worth of your gloves. It would hardly do to have them wind up in an evidence box at the local police precinct."
He was right, of course. My only real duty for the evening was not to make a scene, and this Irene O'Connor was not my problem. Still, I could not quite take my eyes off her. I told myself the concern was natural enough: she was my brother's age, she had my brother's brashness and more charm than he would ever be able to manage, even resembled him physically, and she seemed truly out of her depths. Why shouldn't I be moved to protect her, beyond the obvious? I buried the impulse to approach her, to ask her for the next dance and whisper a discreet word of warning as we made our way around the hall, but I could not bring myself to look away. I told myself she was either an innocent in need of protection or, if not that, she might even be an asset someday. She had a striking beauty, to be sure, but there was more to her than that; she had a confidence and an ability to master herself and others that often proved useful.
At worst, I told myself firmly, I was caring. Caring may not be an advantage, as Mummy was so fond of reminding me, but most of society thought well enough of that particular sentiment, and it was hardly likely to prove harmful.
After that night I kept track of her affairs as best I could. She did indeed enter Yale the next year, enrolling in both the English literature and the women's studies programs: a refined course for a refined mind on the one hand, and the surest way to drive her father mad on the other. She secured internships at the best communications firms in New York (which between her educational accomplishments and her family name she almost certainly would have managed on her own, without the well-timed call from a friend of mine in Washington). She seemed well on her way to her chosen career, but in her third year she went to Jordan of all places on a study visit abroad, and she simply never returned.
After that things became – more interesting. From time to time I would find printed photographs of her, or articles about her escapades, tucked under my morning cup of tea: scaling Mount Kilimanjaro, establishing schools in Jalalabad and Kandahar, even touring with an opera group through China, Laos, and Vietnam. Yet I never saw her again in person until perhaps a year before my brother decided to split (or share) rooms with his soldier-fellow.
I was making my way down a café-lined boulevard in Tel Aviv, toward the old Jaffa flea market where I'd arranged to meet my contact, when I stopped midstride. A young woman (though not so young as she had been) was sipping an iced coffee and purposely ignoring everyone around her. Her hair was cut short, her face pointedly free of makeup. Her khaki cargo shorts and faded tee shirt were a far cry from the evening gown she'd worn that night in Dresden, but there was no mistaking the striking green of her eyes – or, come to that, the unfeigned recognition and accompanying scowl that swept across her face when she saw me.
It was only a moment's lapse, and she quickly closed her laptop, tucked her computer into her bag and rushed over toward me, kissing me on the cheek as a cousin might. "Mr. Holmes," she said softly. She shouldered her bag, grabbed me by the elbow and guided me down the boulevard. "You are not supposed to be here."
I laughed at that, it was such an absurd thing for her to say. "Where should I be? It is a public street, after all."
"Not here," she all but whispered, turning us onto a side street. We walked (nearly ran) for two blocks in silence until finally she pulled me into a trash alley-way and looked over her shoulder, checking to see whether we'd been followed.
"What are you – "
I was cut off by an explosion some distance away – the boulevard, I realized – and by the ambulance sirens that followed swiftly thereafter. My first impulse was to run back to the café, to help, but I quickly checked myself. I could prevent attacks like that, to some degree, and ensure the men and women responsible for them were made to pay for their crimes, but in the immediate aftermath I would only be in the way of ambulance crews and security officers sure to be swarming around the boulevard by now. And while my face was not commonly tied to my work, my accent would place me immediately as an Englishman. Hardly the spark that tinder keg needed just then.
"You knew this was going to happen," I informed her, and she did not try to deny it. No point, really. Then, more cautiously, I asked, "You were involved?"
She scoffed at him. "You assume too much, Mr. Holmes."
"Hardly," I said. "You just pulled me away from a bombing. You must have had some foreknowledge of what just happened, and you most certainly did not attempt to stop it. Moreover, your heritage ..." I let my voice trail off, leaving the pointed question in the air and hoping she would rise to the bait.
"My heritage?" she scoffed. "You mean the fine upstanding Chicago family I hail from, or the fact that I have spent these past eighteen months teaching English and preparing visa applications to help children emigrate from the occupied territories? This is neither 1969, nor Belfast." She pressed her lips together, making her disappointment in me quite obvious, but I let it pass. "As to foreknowledge," she continued, "yes. My neighbours are a nice enough professional couple, an Israeli civil engineer and an Arab lawyer out of Hebron, whose son is a lovely boy but an increasingly angry one. I saw him carrying a knapsack into a café at the time of day when you can count on a half-dozen IDF boys stopping in for a coffee after their shift, and in that precise moment I saw you walking down the street, plain as day. The last thing we need is a British spy killed by a Hamas pipe-bomb. It seemed... prudent, to withdraw."
"You thought of all that in the seconds after you saw me, but you didn't think to disarm the boy."
"Yes, because I could have easily made my way across the boulevard, reached and disarmed the bomb in that short a time. And even if I could, the real problem would still remain. A half-dozen injured university students and off-duty soldiers pales in comparison to the cost of your involvement." She looked at me, assessing the way her words had struck me, and that more than anything she had said convinced me how great an asset she might prove.
"You think me cool," she said.
"Perhaps," I answered, "You are intelligent, but that is no revelation. Decisive. Masterful –and that is hardly a fault, in my experience. I was just wondering what it might take to convince you to join the side of the angels."
She looked at me quizzically. Some conversations were better conducted out of the public ear, even any public ears that might be lurking in seemingly-deserted alleys, and if her neighbour truly had been involved in the bombing, the city police would soon be descending onto her apartment. But my own rooms at the Market House had been swept and taken off the hotel's security systems prior to my arrival. They would have to do. I introduced her to my aide as an old family friend and sent her off to make my apologies to the Israeli agent, and to arrange our dinner. It promised to be a long night.
Three weeks later, Irene O'Connor was found dead from a gas explosion in her flat; or rather, a thoroughly unidentifiable corpse was found whose genetic profile matched hair follicles found on the hairbrush in her desk at a visa application agency. An orange tabby's tail was badly singed, but at her insistence precisely no one else was harmed. I made sure of that. Obituaries were carried in the Israeli and Chicago papers, and if the television coverage could be trusted her family was every bit as devastated as one would expect. Three months later Irene Adler was introduced by a colleague of mine, a woman from a reasonably good family, tragically orphaned, but a graduate of McGill and a rising star at a respectable public relations firm. She was poised, indomitable – and, I hoped, unrecognizable as the woman who once caught the attention of every eligible man (and many who were neither) in Dresden.
Sherlock was three months out of Lexham House (and three months sober so far as I could tell) when Ms. Adler left her old life, and he'd worked on two cases with New Scotland Yard by the time she had debuted in London. He was also beginning to attract some unusual attention. Suspicious IP activity on that website he used to find his clients, CCTV cameras that were meant to scan randomly but had an unsettling tendency to track his motions. Sherlock might insist on distancing himself from my influence, but I was not so naïve to think I had no rivals who might use him against me, given half the chance. And that was the more benign of the various possibilities. If a past acquaintance, perhaps a loyal employee frustrated at his boss's rough treatment at my hands, intended to exact revenge, I needed to know about it.
Which was where Ms. Adler entered into things. I could survey Sherlock's world well enough, but Whitehall? Regent's Park, even Windsor? For all that Irene had seemed unaware of the dangers in the game she played, she had proved herself socially adept for seventeen, skilled at enticing men to offer up secrets they would never have revealed to a colleague. She could go to places I could not and, if I'd once had doubts about her ability to handle herself, her cool performance in Tel Aviv had laid them to rest. She would not be compromised by her own sentiment, or so I thought. There is after all a reason that spies have used honey traps since Samson was ensnared by Delilah. The public relations firm had of course been a front, but it gave her that veneer of respectability to work her way into London's most cloistered bedrooms.
I had not counted on her being quite so ambitious, though. At first she played her part perfectly, delivering intimate secrets in her first months concerning two MPs, a CFO, and the wife of a popular (if politically inconvenient) barrister. As time went on, however, and she saw that the information was hardly used for the dragon-slaying purposes she imagined it would be, she became much more reticent. That on its own was suspect, but hardly damming. Her clients might just have grown more tight-lipped, or she may have hit a temporary unproductive spell. Then one day Anthea showed me a photo she had found pushed under our office door of Irene leading me down a Tel Aviv side-street, her face turned away and obscured but my own profile plainly visible, and time-stamp clearly connecting us (me) to a terrorist's attack.
Obviously a copy. Most likely obtained through hacked access into Israel's equivalent of our CCTV – not planned, but damning nonetheless. That was as good as a declaration of war. It was an entirely baseless accusation, but that hardly mattered: Irene knew how it must look. I cared too much about her (that weakness again) to want to see her truly hurt, but neither was I so befuddled by sentiment to leave her be. I had half decided to manufacture evidence against her and have her housed somewhere that would keep her comfortable but harmless. Perhaps a private room at Holloway. She would hate it, of course, but it was really the best possible outcome she could expect. I only had to have Anthea retrieve the original photo and then we could begin.
Before we could move against her, though, Ms. Adler had what I could only describe as an immense stroke of luck – or what a more superstitious man might call luck. Planning, then, though how she had predicted...
First, no more than three hours after Anthea first discovered the photograph slid under our office door, the Royal Equerry paid a rare visit to my office in Whitehall, to ask my opinion on Ms. Adler's character and security. It seemed the newly-minted Duchess had requested her companionship. That raised an eyebrow, and Harry smiled knowingly – marriages in such circles might be played as love to soften the family's image, but that was rarely the whole story. For the first time in our long acquaintance, I lied to Harry. I knew of no black marks against her, I said, but I would certainly look into it.
Then, by that week's end, a madman blew up my brother's flat.
Much of the rest, as they say, is history; or at least it is recorded on John Watson's blog, in parts and over my objections. Irene quickly became indispensable to me, but also dangerous. Doubly dangerous, and doubly needed, because I could hardly move against Moriarty (I never doubted he was behind the Baker Street explosion and everything that came after, even before the debacle with the Bruce Partington plans) unless I knew who else he might strike against. Irene could be my eyes and ears inside Windsor, warn me against any attempts made against the royal family. She was, however, no longer an ally in my mind. When she attempted to blackmail the Crown, I was discomfited, annoyed, even frustrated – but I was no longer surprised.
When I told Sherlock that we could do nothing so long as she had the photographs, I was not speaking of whatever evidence she was attempting to use to blackmail the Crown, or not solely. Her photo might damn me, even if its implications were entirely untrue, in the wrong hands – and even more than that, it might unbalance the tenuous situation in Israel. She had claimed to care about those people, but what did I know of her character, really? No, she might well use it to ruin me, us. Them. Twice men under my command ransacked her home, even before Harry thought to employ Sherlock on the Queen's behalf. We even searched her luggage, when she accompanied a client to Milan, but with no luck.
Once we had the phone, when Sherlock had guessed (deduced, he would say, but no; guessed) her mobile's passcode, I thought at last we had her beaten. Things involving Irene Adler, however, rarely worked out so neatly. When I inventoried the phone's contents, it was all I could do to keep from throwing my head back and laughing like a madman. There were the photos of the Duchess – in an imaginative range of poses, as promised, and thank God those had never seen the light of day – and of other allies and rivals and flat-out enemies, and other documents besides. But there was no grainy security still from a Tel Aviv camera. All that, and still she had me under her thumb!
Or, as it turned out, perhaps not. After Karachi, Sherlock returned with an ugly row of stitches where a bullet had grazed his skull, a full complement of bruises – and two photographs. One, of Irene and an Afghani warlord, inscribed on the back with I knew what he likes, and the other, a snapshot of Erich and myself that night in Dresden, with me looking longingly to the side. She could have ruined me, could have had Sherlock killed for his attempt to rescue her (had she ever been in danger?), but no. She sent him back to me and as good as told me I was free.
To my brother she will always be the Woman. In later years he came to respect a score of women – his pathologist, Martha Hudson, our mother, even (grudgingly) the woman we came to know as Mary Morstan – but to hear him speak there was one who stood apart as an exemplar of her sex. He did not – could not – love her in the conventional sense, nor could I. He would publicly scoff at the mere suggestion he felt anything akin to affection for her, never would have admitted any such intrusions into his temperament. That would have been as destructive as grit in a sensitive instrument, as a crack along his microscope's lens.
And yet to him – to us – there was but one woman, The Woman, and she was the twice-dead (yet very much alive) Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
***************************
Notes
This story is written for Pocketbookangel, who said in her request, "I have a soft spot for Irene Adler, I always want her to win and be happy, but the dominatrix thing in BBC Sherlock is a DNW." Which, to be honest, was entirely too tempting a possibility to resist. Would it be possible to write BBC!Irene in a way that was (basically) consistent with the portrayal we get on the show while salvaging that unfortunate choice on the part of the show-creators? I've borrowed heavily from Doyle, and much of the language in the last two paragraphs is adapted (read: "borrowed") from "A Scandal in Bohemia." Certain plot points in the final section are also based on that story.
Some rather extensive (possibly excessive) explanations of various references:
[1] MAD: The Militärischer Abschirmdienst, a division of the German intelligence network aimed at counter-intelligence. (Source)
[2] Dresden: One of the larger cities in what was once East Germany. Setting the party here wasn't a purely random choice. It was famously carpet-bombed by the Allies during World War II and was rebuilt "in a 'socialist modern' style, partly for economic reasons, but also to break away from the city's past s the royal capital of Saxony and a stronghold of the German bourgeoisie." The city became a kind of economic powerhouse in East Germany, and I'd suspect its symbolic association with economic progress would appeal to people planning the kind of event an American banker would be invited to. (Source)
[3] A*: The highest grade level possible in A-levels. (Source) I'm not even sure it's possible to attempt them early, but let's be honest, if anyone would be able to manage it...
[4] the Beau Soleil: The Collège Alpin de Beau Soleil, a prestigious boarding school around ninety minutes outside Geneva. (Source)
[5] the Bild: A German tabloid. (Source)
[6] Tel Aviv: For those not up on your Middle Eastern geography, Tel Aviv is a major Israeli city located maybe 30-40 miles from the (Palestinian) West Bank. It also was "born" in some sense because of a migration from nearby Jaffa in the 1920s, after mass rioting tied to different ethnic groups' and political groups' within the ethnic groups – the whole thing actually started as a street rumble between two Jewish groups – dissatisfaction with British immigration policies. It seemed fitting that a British man's presence there could complicate the situation once again. (Source)
To my knowledge, there actually weren't any terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv at the point this scene is set. Certainly the bombing isn't modeled on a particular real-life event. That part is completely fictional.
[7] Neither 1969 nor Belfast: A period where there was massive rioting and more than a few events that, were they not carried out by Europeans, would probably be labelled terrorism. Irene is essentially accusing Mycroft of labeling her as a terrorist because of his anti-Irish bias. (Source)
[8] IDF: The Israeli Defense Forces.
[9] Lexham House: A drug abuse rehabilitation house in Kensington, London. (Source)
[10] Honey traps: A common spy technique where (essentially) an agent would use sex appeal and romance to try to entice his or her mate to give up information s/he wouldn't otherwise reveal. (Source) Interestingly, this is more or less the trick Irene pulls on Sherlock when she gets him to decipher the "Bond Air" document.
[11] Whitehall, Kensington, and Windsor: London neighborhoods known for (in order) housing many governmental buildings, including the Ministry of Defence (Source); an affluent, largely residential neighborhood in central London (Source); and a royal residence (Source).
[12] Holloway: A British women's prison. (Source)
My sincerest thanks to
lindahoyland and sjames_centrefor their quick and useful beta, and to Pocketbookangel for her inspiring prompt.
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I really enjoyed reading this somehow AU character study and especially all the carefully researched little details. :-)
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And you even addressed ACD's misogyny in that whole "the woman" business. :-)
It's just, yes. A lovely fix-it. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing it with us.
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Mycroft's voice is completely in character.
He would publicly scoff at the mere suggestion he felt anything akin to affection for her, never would have admitted any such intrusions into his temperament. That would have been as destructive as grit in a sensitive instrument, as a crack along his microscope's lens.
Perfect description of their relationship, but I do think Mycroft is projecting a bit. :)
Thank you - I really enjoyed reading this.
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