Fic: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part II (Sherlock/Irene, Sherlock [BBC])
Title: Our Hearts Are Wrong Part II : I've Been Dragging Around From The End Of Your Coat For Two Weeks
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Obviously follows Part I
Beta(s): The lovely sabrinaphynn and martinius who are essentially saints for putting up with me through this thing. By the time it's over I'll probably owe them each internal organs or something. Seriously, I love them to death.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler, and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part II:
I've Been Dragging Around From The End Of Your Coat For Two Weeks
They’d found a small café to tuck into, just them and the stack of files Irene had “borrowed” from Lestrade regarding the case. Irene generally felt awkward being the only one eating; there was wanting attention, and then there was someone thinking you were a cow, after all. But they’d been hours at the crime scene and she hadn’t eaten anything, and while all that Sherlock got was a cup of tea that he barely even touched, the whole time that she was eating he pointed out various people in the café, detailing their professions, and more often, their short comings. Every so often he would absently reach across the table to take the files she was peering at while she multi tasked listening to him judge everyone and attempting to eat her salad, and she would give his hand a good natured slap.
“Is this what you usually do on a date?” She’d said finally, with a sigh of mock exasperation, and it had actually made him stop talking for a moment. Before then she had never supposed that anything could render him speechless, she had gotten used to hearing his lengthy, one sided conversations with the other members of Homicide, and how entirely unfazed he was by their usually dim responses. But he had sat staring at her in silence.
“Date.” He’d said finally, arching an eyebrow at her. Irene smiled, awkwardly, making a pretense of shoving her salad around her plate with her fork.
“Isn’t that what this is…?”
“You tell me.” But he hadn’t sounded mocking at all, he had sounded like he had honestly wanted her to explain it to him.
“It’s what anyone looking at us would assume.” Irene said, absently twisting a strand of hair between her left index finger and thumb.
“Oh.” He said shortly, and actually looked good and genuinely confused. The silence that descended after that statement made her uncomfortable; so she decided, instead, to pointedly stare at the case folder in front of her. She arranged and re-arranged the crime scene photos; when she noticed a detail in the photographs that she had completely missed before. A small rectangle of white by each of the victim’s hands, too small to identify without any sort of magnification - Irene frowned, sorting through them each and finding the same thing in each picture.
It had only been the smallest furrow of her brow, but he’d noticed, because he was Sherlock Holmes and he noticed everything.
“You’ve found something.” Sherlock said. It wasn’t a question and for a moment she was tempted to point it out to him, have him tell her that she was clever for having seen what every other person to open that file had missed. But something stopped her, this was hers, she had found it. So instead Irene smiled and shook her head with a small laugh, tucking the pictures back into their folder and slipping it into her purse.
“No, nothing.”
**
The entire answer had played out for her by six in the morning. Sitting on the floor of her dingy flat in the poor lighting, a magnifier in her hand; she had recognized the treble clefs and quavers on the small white rectangles in the photographs. Each a small piece of a larger whole, a torn bit of sheet music. It took her two hours to piece together the notes on each scrap, but together they were a piece that she recognized completely. In fact, Irene knew it by heart. It was one of the few cassette tapes she’d owned as a child that she’d played over and over every night in bed, trying to keep the silence at bay.
The answer was inside the music itself, the rise and fall. She could see each graceful movement of the melody through the arrangement of their limbs and the victims’ open, glassy eyes. The killer had loved the music deeply, enough for it to have stirred something sleeping inside of him into action - that action being the murder of brunette girls between the ages of twenty one and thirty three. Irene had synched up Brahms on her headphones, opened her laptop and sifted through hours of implausible connections.
In the midst of the Requiem’s third movement she had found him in the news backlogs and it had gone off in her head in perfect pitch with the rise of the chorus singers and the string section.
“Found you.” She mouthed at her computer screen with a triumphant grin.
So when she’d arrived at Scotland Yard it had been with her head held high and the knowledge that she knew who the killer was, she’d solved it. Irene rapped her knuckles lightly on the open door to Lestrade’s office and he glanced up, almost warily.
“Adler? What are you doing here this early? Don’t you have class soon?” He asked rubbing at the stubble that had formed on his face. She noted that he had slept in his office, but didn’t say as much.
“Sir, can I sit down?” Lestrade looked resigned, miserable, and Irene wanted to ask what was wrong, even though she had already guessed at the state of his marriage, so she didn’t. He nodded and she slid into the chair in front of his desk, clutching her folder of notes and print outs to her chest. “I know whose been doing these murders. It came to me last night, there was something right in front of us, but we all missed it. But then I figured it out-”
“Adler…” Lestrade started, leaning forward with that look of sympathy she had come to recognize on the faces of teachers when she was growing up. It gave her a sinking feeling, because she knew what he was going to say next, so she spoke quickly to cut him off before he did.
“It’s Brahms’ Requiem … he’s been leaving pieces of it by each of the victims, that’s the clue. I knew he was involved in the arts, but it wasn’t until I realized it was Brahms that I knew who I was looking for and-”
“Irene” He said her name not unkindly, fondly putting his hand on top of hers, and here it was; the speech she’d known was coming. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, I do, but you’re interning, for Christ sake, you’re a student. Job shadowing is one thing but I can’t have you running around playing detective. Do you know how much of a liability that is? The university would have my head. You’ve got to leave the police work to the actual police, love. Go try to get a nap or something before you have to get to class, you look like you haven’t slept at all.”
Irene bit down on her bottom lip and nodded. She couldn’t even argue, because he was right. But she was right too and as she got up to leave she was filled with overbearing need to prove that she was right.
She all but ghosted through the office on her way to the elevator; research cradled protectively to her chest when she rather bodily slammed into Sherlock for the second time since she’d met him. He caught her arm lightly and steadied her as she barely managed to not drop her arm full of folders, and he looked somewhat in the neighborhood of being glad to see her.
“I have a few theories about the murderer-” He started to say, and was abruptly cut off by her leaning forward and resting her head against his chest. Sherlock froze up slightly, after a moment he finally put the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her forearm lightly against her back. If she hadn’t been as tired and frustrated as she was Irene probably would have found it odd that he didn’t make any move to push her away.
“Sorry.” Irene said after awhile and finally looked up at him. Sherlock shook his head looking almost bewildered.
“It’s… fine.” He told her.
“Right, what were you saying?” She asked rubbing the heel of her free hand against the corners of her eyes quickly.
“I’ve had a few ideas about the case… if you’re interested.” Irene tilted her head at that with a small smile.
“Sure, sure, or you could, I don’t know, come catch him with me.”
Both of Sherlock’s hands locked onto her shoulders then as he peered at her.
“You did see something last night, you know who it is.” She nodded and couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face.
“Mmm. I know who he is, and I know how to draw him out.”
“Really? And how are you planning to do that?” Irene reached into the folder, pulling out two of the victims’ pictures and fanning them by her face.
“Hadn’t you noticed? I’m his type.”
**
When Irene had finally located the out of the way bistro that Mr. George Powell ate his lunch at, her first reaction had been to doubt herself. She was extremely sleep deprived, she could have made a mistake, and for all appearances, he looked like a rather nice older gentlemen. Sherlock had all but sulked at her refusal to clue him in to how she knew George Powell was their killer, but he had grudgingly agreed to get a hold of Lestrade once Irene had made contact with Powell after she promised to explain later. She took a deep breath before approaching him, appearances or not, nice older gentlemen didn’t generally turn serial killer.
“I’m sorry, is anyone sitting here?” She asked, smiling more than she would normally. The man looked up, confused. “You are George Powell, aren’t you? Of the New London Symphony? I’m a huge a fan.” He smiled at that and motioned to the empty chair across from him.
“I’m flattered, my dear, but if you’re a fan, you must know that I no longer am the conductor for the symphony.” He shifted to pour himself another cup of tea and Irene noted how every movement was done completely with his left hand, his right lying in his lap.
“I was sorry to hear about that. I’ve only been to the symphony once since then; the girl they have in your place is absolute rubbish. Not like you, your handling of Chopin’s Nocturnes was absolutely sublime.” Irene said, falling into her typical habits when she would try to be flirtatious. Smiling too much, twisting her hair, giggling - it was how girls normally acted when they were trying to flirt, and Irene acted when she was trying to be normal.
George laughed good naturedly at that.
“You’re too kind.” He told her, taking a sip of his tea. She shook her head.
“It’s true, I’m only sad that I never got to hear what you would have done with Brahms, that was the next symphony you had planned wasn’t it?” He was affected by it; she noticed the way his jaw clenched slightly. It was subtle, but it was there.
“The Requiem” George said shortly, his hand tightening on the handle of his tea cup.
“Such a shame, it’s my favorite.” Irene leaned back in her chair, hands arranged neatly in her lap.
“It’s mine too… but there’s nothing I can do about that. What’s done is done.”
“That doesn’t mean that you aren’t angry about it” George jolted slightly at that and stared at her with his eyes widening.
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything Mr. Powell. I know. It makes you angry, doesn’t it? Watching that girl do your job; she’s just a kid really, and she’s supposed to be taking on Brahms? You’ve been doing this for twenty years and you always wanted ‘The Requiem’, but you never got it. And then came that pesky stroke and the symphony started treating you like you were useless, how can you conduct an orchestra with just one hand? This was your dream, you loved it, and it’s just been taken from you. And it made you mad.”
“Who are you?” George Powell breathed.
“I wasn’t finished.” Irene fixed him with an unwavering, dangerous look. “At first the stroke threw me off. The work, well, the murders, they were so polished, so professional. And I thought it would be hard to achieve that level of artistry with one hand - much like conducting a symphony. But you’re an artist, aren’t you Mr. Powell? Like the symphony, you’ve been doing this for years, and if there’s one thing all successful artists understand it’s how to adapt.”
“How did you…?”
“Like I said, the Requiem is my favorite. You left it there like you wanted to be found, maybe most people would have ignored something like that, but I know that piece backwards and forwards. Were all your victims brunette girls in their mid twenties, or did you M.O. just switch after Rebecca Adams got your job? If there’s one thing I know as well as I know Brahms, it’s serial killers, and there was experience in your work. There’s no way these girls were your first” His good hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“I see. And you’re going to do what now, with this information, little girl like you? You could get hurt you know.” He all but growled; Irene waved a dismissive hand, not seeming at all scared or put off by this.
“You had to slip them something, didn’t you? You didn’t have to before, but after the stroke it wasn’t so easy any more; killing them, I mean.” She continued, un-phased. “Drugging them was the only way that your work stayed so neat. Did you just charm your way in? I mean, you’re rather dashing still, it must have been so easy.”
“It was.” He said with a shrug, relaxing and leaning back. “Really, it was ridiculous. They were all so young and impressionable, not unlike you. Are you thinking I’m going to let you walk away? What makes you so much more special than them? They were lovely girls. I can’t have you telling anyone else, even though I doubt they would believe you, it’s best to be safe” He smiled easily
“I know that look, you’re curious; you want me to tell you how I did it; why I did it before Rebecca came along. I can see all the little cogs turning in that brain of yours darling. I barely had to do a thing to get all those girls home, so many girls who would do anything for the chance at a better life. Girls like you - they just wanted to shine, even if just for a minute. I gave them that, they were plain little nobodies and when I was done with them… they were so much more than that.”
“Why? Because you gave them purpose when you killed them? You made them into something; as if they were compositions on sheet music?” Irene said incredulously.
“More than that, I made them into masterpieces, love, each of them a small piece of a larger symphony. No one knew who they were the day before, and then there they were, front page, everyone looking. People would die for that kind of fame, and just think of the sonata I could make with you.”
“I wouldn’t be too heavy handed with those threats, especially when you don’t have any chance of implementing them.” A cool voice behind Irene said as Sherlock sat down in the empty chair to her right. “Scotland Yard is already outside, waiting. And you don’t much look the type to get away quickly on foot right now.” Sherlock said.
“Am I supposed to be intimidated by the two of you? You could be bluffing.” There was something like the look between co-conspirators when Sherlock glanced at Irene and she couldn’t help but grin despite the gravity of the situation.
“I wouldn’t expect you to be intimidated by me, Mr. Powell.” Irene told him with complete, wide-eyed honesty. She maintained her look of perfect innocence - even as the front door of the bistro banged open, and the police began to file in, with the click of their guns having the safety removed as they raised them and surrounded their target. “Them, however, I would be intimidated by.”
**
“Adler, didn’t I tell you to go home, or school, or something? Didn’t I at least tell you to not keep doing whatever this all is?” Lestrade said with a heavy sigh as they stood in front of the bistro, watching two sergeants fold George Powell into a squad car.
“We were just having lunch here, Sir, I can’t be expected to control who comes into this place, can I?” Her eyes never left were Sherlock was standing, a bit away, explaining the situation to a lieutenant who was taking down his every word. Lestrade followed her gaze and seemed to slump even further into his coat.
“I should have known introducing the two of you would be a terrible idea.” Irene looked at him quizzically.
“Wait, what?”
“I mean, you’re young and I don’t want you getting mixed up in all …” He made a vague gesture. “I know it’s what you want to do with the rest of your life but. I don’t even know what I’m saying. You completely ditched your classes today didn’t you?”
“I may have.” Irene shrugged “But I did catch you a serial killer, so I think that’s worth missing one sociology class.” Lestrade leaned forward, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Just because all of this is completely out of regulation doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you, you know that, right, Adler? Just … I don’t know. Be careful.” He ruffled her hair affectionately before leaving, passing Sherlock on route. The latter reached where Irene was standing with a cat like grin on his face.
“At some point you’ll have to tell me how you figured it all out.”
“If I didn’t know better I would say that you were impressed, Sherlock.” The grin on his face changed into a frown and for a moment Irene almost panicked that teasing him might have put a hole in whatever fragile thing had started build between them.
“Tell me over lunch?” He asked in a voice that sounded almost … hopeful? And Irene couldn’t help but laugh.
“So you can watch me eat and make snide remarks about everyone else the whole time?”. Sherlock considered it for a moment before nodding. “I’d love to.” She said.
Author: mad_teagirl
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Character/Pairing: Sherlock/Irene
Rating: PG-13
Summary:This is set roughly four years before the start of the series. I had been writing a Sherlock/Irene that took place during the current series time-line, but then I got completely sidetracked with their back story and so this happened. The title comes from the Jessica Lea Mayfield song of the same name
Obviously follows Part I
Beta(s): The lovely sabrinaphynn and martinius who are essentially saints for putting up with me through this thing. By the time it's over I'll probably owe them each internal organs or something. Seriously, I love them to death.
Disclaimer: Pretty much everything belongs to either ACD, Gatiss, Moffat, or the BBC with the exception of my casting choice for Miss Adler, and my choice to take her character in the direction of psychology and criminal profiling as opposed to opera singing.
Our Hearts Are Wrong
Part II:
I've Been Dragging Around From The End Of Your Coat For Two Weeks
They’d found a small café to tuck into, just them and the stack of files Irene had “borrowed” from Lestrade regarding the case. Irene generally felt awkward being the only one eating; there was wanting attention, and then there was someone thinking you were a cow, after all. But they’d been hours at the crime scene and she hadn’t eaten anything, and while all that Sherlock got was a cup of tea that he barely even touched, the whole time that she was eating he pointed out various people in the café, detailing their professions, and more often, their short comings. Every so often he would absently reach across the table to take the files she was peering at while she multi tasked listening to him judge everyone and attempting to eat her salad, and she would give his hand a good natured slap.
“Is this what you usually do on a date?” She’d said finally, with a sigh of mock exasperation, and it had actually made him stop talking for a moment. Before then she had never supposed that anything could render him speechless, she had gotten used to hearing his lengthy, one sided conversations with the other members of Homicide, and how entirely unfazed he was by their usually dim responses. But he had sat staring at her in silence.
“Date.” He’d said finally, arching an eyebrow at her. Irene smiled, awkwardly, making a pretense of shoving her salad around her plate with her fork.
“Isn’t that what this is…?”
“You tell me.” But he hadn’t sounded mocking at all, he had sounded like he had honestly wanted her to explain it to him.
“It’s what anyone looking at us would assume.” Irene said, absently twisting a strand of hair between her left index finger and thumb.
“Oh.” He said shortly, and actually looked good and genuinely confused. The silence that descended after that statement made her uncomfortable; so she decided, instead, to pointedly stare at the case folder in front of her. She arranged and re-arranged the crime scene photos; when she noticed a detail in the photographs that she had completely missed before. A small rectangle of white by each of the victim’s hands, too small to identify without any sort of magnification - Irene frowned, sorting through them each and finding the same thing in each picture.
It had only been the smallest furrow of her brow, but he’d noticed, because he was Sherlock Holmes and he noticed everything.
“You’ve found something.” Sherlock said. It wasn’t a question and for a moment she was tempted to point it out to him, have him tell her that she was clever for having seen what every other person to open that file had missed. But something stopped her, this was hers, she had found it. So instead Irene smiled and shook her head with a small laugh, tucking the pictures back into their folder and slipping it into her purse.
“No, nothing.”
**
The entire answer had played out for her by six in the morning. Sitting on the floor of her dingy flat in the poor lighting, a magnifier in her hand; she had recognized the treble clefs and quavers on the small white rectangles in the photographs. Each a small piece of a larger whole, a torn bit of sheet music. It took her two hours to piece together the notes on each scrap, but together they were a piece that she recognized completely. In fact, Irene knew it by heart. It was one of the few cassette tapes she’d owned as a child that she’d played over and over every night in bed, trying to keep the silence at bay.
The answer was inside the music itself, the rise and fall. She could see each graceful movement of the melody through the arrangement of their limbs and the victims’ open, glassy eyes. The killer had loved the music deeply, enough for it to have stirred something sleeping inside of him into action - that action being the murder of brunette girls between the ages of twenty one and thirty three. Irene had synched up Brahms on her headphones, opened her laptop and sifted through hours of implausible connections.
In the midst of the Requiem’s third movement she had found him in the news backlogs and it had gone off in her head in perfect pitch with the rise of the chorus singers and the string section.
“Found you.” She mouthed at her computer screen with a triumphant grin.
So when she’d arrived at Scotland Yard it had been with her head held high and the knowledge that she knew who the killer was, she’d solved it. Irene rapped her knuckles lightly on the open door to Lestrade’s office and he glanced up, almost warily.
“Adler? What are you doing here this early? Don’t you have class soon?” He asked rubbing at the stubble that had formed on his face. She noted that he had slept in his office, but didn’t say as much.
“Sir, can I sit down?” Lestrade looked resigned, miserable, and Irene wanted to ask what was wrong, even though she had already guessed at the state of his marriage, so she didn’t. He nodded and she slid into the chair in front of his desk, clutching her folder of notes and print outs to her chest. “I know whose been doing these murders. It came to me last night, there was something right in front of us, but we all missed it. But then I figured it out-”
“Adler…” Lestrade started, leaning forward with that look of sympathy she had come to recognize on the faces of teachers when she was growing up. It gave her a sinking feeling, because she knew what he was going to say next, so she spoke quickly to cut him off before he did.
“It’s Brahms’ Requiem … he’s been leaving pieces of it by each of the victims, that’s the clue. I knew he was involved in the arts, but it wasn’t until I realized it was Brahms that I knew who I was looking for and-”
“Irene” He said her name not unkindly, fondly putting his hand on top of hers, and here it was; the speech she’d known was coming. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, I do, but you’re interning, for Christ sake, you’re a student. Job shadowing is one thing but I can’t have you running around playing detective. Do you know how much of a liability that is? The university would have my head. You’ve got to leave the police work to the actual police, love. Go try to get a nap or something before you have to get to class, you look like you haven’t slept at all.”
Irene bit down on her bottom lip and nodded. She couldn’t even argue, because he was right. But she was right too and as she got up to leave she was filled with overbearing need to prove that she was right.
She all but ghosted through the office on her way to the elevator; research cradled protectively to her chest when she rather bodily slammed into Sherlock for the second time since she’d met him. He caught her arm lightly and steadied her as she barely managed to not drop her arm full of folders, and he looked somewhat in the neighborhood of being glad to see her.
“I have a few theories about the murderer-” He started to say, and was abruptly cut off by her leaning forward and resting her head against his chest. Sherlock froze up slightly, after a moment he finally put the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her forearm lightly against her back. If she hadn’t been as tired and frustrated as she was Irene probably would have found it odd that he didn’t make any move to push her away.
“Sorry.” Irene said after awhile and finally looked up at him. Sherlock shook his head looking almost bewildered.
“It’s… fine.” He told her.
“Right, what were you saying?” She asked rubbing the heel of her free hand against the corners of her eyes quickly.
“I’ve had a few ideas about the case… if you’re interested.” Irene tilted her head at that with a small smile.
“Sure, sure, or you could, I don’t know, come catch him with me.”
Both of Sherlock’s hands locked onto her shoulders then as he peered at her.
“You did see something last night, you know who it is.” She nodded and couldn’t help the grin spreading across her face.
“Mmm. I know who he is, and I know how to draw him out.”
“Really? And how are you planning to do that?” Irene reached into the folder, pulling out two of the victims’ pictures and fanning them by her face.
“Hadn’t you noticed? I’m his type.”
**
When Irene had finally located the out of the way bistro that Mr. George Powell ate his lunch at, her first reaction had been to doubt herself. She was extremely sleep deprived, she could have made a mistake, and for all appearances, he looked like a rather nice older gentlemen. Sherlock had all but sulked at her refusal to clue him in to how she knew George Powell was their killer, but he had grudgingly agreed to get a hold of Lestrade once Irene had made contact with Powell after she promised to explain later. She took a deep breath before approaching him, appearances or not, nice older gentlemen didn’t generally turn serial killer.
“I’m sorry, is anyone sitting here?” She asked, smiling more than she would normally. The man looked up, confused. “You are George Powell, aren’t you? Of the New London Symphony? I’m a huge a fan.” He smiled at that and motioned to the empty chair across from him.
“I’m flattered, my dear, but if you’re a fan, you must know that I no longer am the conductor for the symphony.” He shifted to pour himself another cup of tea and Irene noted how every movement was done completely with his left hand, his right lying in his lap.
“I was sorry to hear about that. I’ve only been to the symphony once since then; the girl they have in your place is absolute rubbish. Not like you, your handling of Chopin’s Nocturnes was absolutely sublime.” Irene said, falling into her typical habits when she would try to be flirtatious. Smiling too much, twisting her hair, giggling - it was how girls normally acted when they were trying to flirt, and Irene acted when she was trying to be normal.
George laughed good naturedly at that.
“You’re too kind.” He told her, taking a sip of his tea. She shook her head.
“It’s true, I’m only sad that I never got to hear what you would have done with Brahms, that was the next symphony you had planned wasn’t it?” He was affected by it; she noticed the way his jaw clenched slightly. It was subtle, but it was there.
“The Requiem” George said shortly, his hand tightening on the handle of his tea cup.
“Such a shame, it’s my favorite.” Irene leaned back in her chair, hands arranged neatly in her lap.
“It’s mine too… but there’s nothing I can do about that. What’s done is done.”
“That doesn’t mean that you aren’t angry about it” George jolted slightly at that and stared at her with his eyes widening.
“What are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything Mr. Powell. I know. It makes you angry, doesn’t it? Watching that girl do your job; she’s just a kid really, and she’s supposed to be taking on Brahms? You’ve been doing this for twenty years and you always wanted ‘The Requiem’, but you never got it. And then came that pesky stroke and the symphony started treating you like you were useless, how can you conduct an orchestra with just one hand? This was your dream, you loved it, and it’s just been taken from you. And it made you mad.”
“Who are you?” George Powell breathed.
“I wasn’t finished.” Irene fixed him with an unwavering, dangerous look. “At first the stroke threw me off. The work, well, the murders, they were so polished, so professional. And I thought it would be hard to achieve that level of artistry with one hand - much like conducting a symphony. But you’re an artist, aren’t you Mr. Powell? Like the symphony, you’ve been doing this for years, and if there’s one thing all successful artists understand it’s how to adapt.”
“How did you…?”
“Like I said, the Requiem is my favorite. You left it there like you wanted to be found, maybe most people would have ignored something like that, but I know that piece backwards and forwards. Were all your victims brunette girls in their mid twenties, or did you M.O. just switch after Rebecca Adams got your job? If there’s one thing I know as well as I know Brahms, it’s serial killers, and there was experience in your work. There’s no way these girls were your first” His good hand tightened around the edge of the table.
“I see. And you’re going to do what now, with this information, little girl like you? You could get hurt you know.” He all but growled; Irene waved a dismissive hand, not seeming at all scared or put off by this.
“You had to slip them something, didn’t you? You didn’t have to before, but after the stroke it wasn’t so easy any more; killing them, I mean.” She continued, un-phased. “Drugging them was the only way that your work stayed so neat. Did you just charm your way in? I mean, you’re rather dashing still, it must have been so easy.”
“It was.” He said with a shrug, relaxing and leaning back. “Really, it was ridiculous. They were all so young and impressionable, not unlike you. Are you thinking I’m going to let you walk away? What makes you so much more special than them? They were lovely girls. I can’t have you telling anyone else, even though I doubt they would believe you, it’s best to be safe” He smiled easily
“I know that look, you’re curious; you want me to tell you how I did it; why I did it before Rebecca came along. I can see all the little cogs turning in that brain of yours darling. I barely had to do a thing to get all those girls home, so many girls who would do anything for the chance at a better life. Girls like you - they just wanted to shine, even if just for a minute. I gave them that, they were plain little nobodies and when I was done with them… they were so much more than that.”
“Why? Because you gave them purpose when you killed them? You made them into something; as if they were compositions on sheet music?” Irene said incredulously.
“More than that, I made them into masterpieces, love, each of them a small piece of a larger symphony. No one knew who they were the day before, and then there they were, front page, everyone looking. People would die for that kind of fame, and just think of the sonata I could make with you.”
“I wouldn’t be too heavy handed with those threats, especially when you don’t have any chance of implementing them.” A cool voice behind Irene said as Sherlock sat down in the empty chair to her right. “Scotland Yard is already outside, waiting. And you don’t much look the type to get away quickly on foot right now.” Sherlock said.
“Am I supposed to be intimidated by the two of you? You could be bluffing.” There was something like the look between co-conspirators when Sherlock glanced at Irene and she couldn’t help but grin despite the gravity of the situation.
“I wouldn’t expect you to be intimidated by me, Mr. Powell.” Irene told him with complete, wide-eyed honesty. She maintained her look of perfect innocence - even as the front door of the bistro banged open, and the police began to file in, with the click of their guns having the safety removed as they raised them and surrounded their target. “Them, however, I would be intimidated by.”
**
“Adler, didn’t I tell you to go home, or school, or something? Didn’t I at least tell you to not keep doing whatever this all is?” Lestrade said with a heavy sigh as they stood in front of the bistro, watching two sergeants fold George Powell into a squad car.
“We were just having lunch here, Sir, I can’t be expected to control who comes into this place, can I?” Her eyes never left were Sherlock was standing, a bit away, explaining the situation to a lieutenant who was taking down his every word. Lestrade followed her gaze and seemed to slump even further into his coat.
“I should have known introducing the two of you would be a terrible idea.” Irene looked at him quizzically.
“Wait, what?”
“I mean, you’re young and I don’t want you getting mixed up in all …” He made a vague gesture. “I know it’s what you want to do with the rest of your life but. I don’t even know what I’m saying. You completely ditched your classes today didn’t you?”
“I may have.” Irene shrugged “But I did catch you a serial killer, so I think that’s worth missing one sociology class.” Lestrade leaned forward, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“Just because all of this is completely out of regulation doesn’t mean I’m not proud of you, you know that, right, Adler? Just … I don’t know. Be careful.” He ruffled her hair affectionately before leaving, passing Sherlock on route. The latter reached where Irene was standing with a cat like grin on his face.
“At some point you’ll have to tell me how you figured it all out.”
“If I didn’t know better I would say that you were impressed, Sherlock.” The grin on his face changed into a frown and for a moment Irene almost panicked that teasing him might have put a hole in whatever fragile thing had started build between them.
“Tell me over lunch?” He asked in a voice that sounded almost … hopeful? And Irene couldn’t help but laugh.
“So you can watch me eat and make snide remarks about everyone else the whole time?”. Sherlock considered it for a moment before nodding. “I’d love to.” She said.