ashenmuses | FOR JIM MORIARTY

FOR JIM MORIARTY

Irene Adler loves to make an entrance, but only an entrance of her choosing.

This - her spilling out onto the floor of Milliways; gasping, mouth tasting of blood and bile, vision blurring - is not exactly of her choosing, but she'll take it.

Milliways has doctors, Milliwys has magic, Milliways is where Moran can't, can't, can't follow her, but she'll concentrate on crawling further into the the bar before she tries and gets the door shut.

Crawling while wearing a fashionably tight corset and bustle - while her lungs falter and her stomach cramps and rebels - isn't something she's tried before, and not something she'll care to repeat.

(she will, she will, she will be able to be in circumstances where crawling may have to happen again, because she's not going to die, she's in Milliways, she refuses)

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At a table nearby, there's a bland-looking gentleman with -

No. There isn't. There's Jim Moriarty, who is taking a long, startled look at the woman crawling in through the Door.

Then he isn't at the table anymore. He's at the Door, getting a firm grip on the woman to drag her forward far enough that he can kick the Door shut. He's not especially gentle about it. Speed is very clearly of the essence here.

The Door gets kicked much harder than is strictly necessary.

She doesn't say thanks, although the way she takes a moment to lean against him says it plain enough.

"Infirmary?" she says, or at least, Adler tries to say. It's a little hard to talk, given how numb her mouth is going.

The fact that she pitches forward to throw up doesn't help with communication, either.

He keeps firm hold of her, resulting in her vomiting down the front of his shirt. The only notice he takes of this is that she's vomiting blood. Infirmary now.

"Yes," he tells her. "Infirmary."

She clearly can't walk under her own power, and asking for sake of politeness would be a waste of time, so he doesn't. He just shifts his hold on her, carefully, to lift her up into his arms. He's stronger than he looks, more than strong enough to carry her to the infirmary.

She's heavier than one might suppose - corset, bustle, the sheer amount of fabric she's wearing - but at least she's not a dead weight.

She refuses to be a dead weight, and manages to hold enough of her train so he doesn't trip. She didn't sip much of the tea, doesn't know how much she ingested - not cyanide, not cyanide - but she has a passing familiarity with poisons, and reactions this soon are not good news.

Fortunately, the infirmary is close to the front door.

A brief, very brief, look of fondness crosses his face as she pulls her trail up. The differences don't matter; Irene will always be Irene, practical and stubborn as they get. And with very good reason.

The first doctor to spot them hastens over, wanting information immediately as she directs them to the nearest station.

"She's been poisoned," Jim says. "She's vomiting blood and it sounds as though her mouth has gone numb. Irene, darling, is there anything else you can tell us?"

Even with the feeling of her lungs stilling, Adler both notes the familiarity of the endearment, and gives him a long look.

Talk while her mouth is numb, indeed.

"All right," says the doctor, her doe-shaped ears pricked as she contemplates Adler for half a moment.

"Grab a bucket," she informs Jim, and then reaches out to hold one of Adler's hands.

"Sweetheart," she says, "I'm going to make you vomit what's left in your stomach, and I'll draw the rest out." Patients, she has learned, do appreciate some knowledge of what's going on. Once the bucket is securely on Adler's lap, the doctor concentrates.

This time, there is only a trace of blood when Irene vomits; the second time, no blood at all. The poison that the doctor magically drew out of Adler's system also ends up in the bucket, although it was such a small amount that it wasn't noticeable.

Adler gasps, and then shuts her eyes, gets her breathing back under control. She's broken out into a swear, but that's nothing more than a natural result of her body's exertions.

"Thank you," she says, letting herself go limp just for a moment.

Once he's brought the bucket over, he steps back to give the doctor (and Irene) the space they need to work in.

He places himself by the station entrance point. Anyone who isn't medical staff is going to have an interesting and exciting few moments trying to get past him.

Not that they're likely to try hard. He's still and steady, but he's quietly radiating the kind of rage most people give a wide berth.

He and Irene are in constant danger, of course, with the games they play, and sometimes that danger catches up with them. It's inevitable. Usually they can handle themselves, but sometimes one of them needs to call on the other for help. Irene is the one who stays calm and collected when she's on one of those rescue missions; Jim is the one who lives in a haze of rage until Irene is safe and anyone who tried to hurt her (who did hurt her) has been punished.

That this woman isn't his Irene is irrelevant. She is Irene, and he is Jim, and she is hurt and someone out there is going to pay and that is all that matters.

The doctor - long used to work in combat zones - takes note of the rage, but otherwise ignores Jim. It's a protective anger, at least.

Calmly, she finishes checking Adler over (which involves getting out of those clothes, various pieces of wood and bone and metal going 'thunk' as they hit the ground).

"Now, mostly what I've done is hastened your body's natural healing," she informs Adler. "You haven't consumed enough to kill you ordinarily, but that corset wasn't helping your breathing. You're going to be weak for a few days, and your throat will be sore. But I'm not sure I want to hasten things any further, unless you insist."

"I..." Adler swallows, takes a sip of water from an offered glass. "I'll live," she says.

"Okay. I'd prefer it if you stayed here for the next few hours, just to see how you are reacting. Then I think you can go to your own room. I'll just be finishing my shift, so call me if you need me."

The doctor grabs one of the infirmary rats, and Adler's clothes are bundled up for cleaning or destroying. Adler herself - just dressed in her undershift - leans back against the pillows on the bed, and regards Jim.

"You know me," she says at last.

Another rat turns up with a clean hospital gown and a disinfectant-soaked cloth for Jim. He automatically strips off his ruined shirt and cleans up, his attention on Irene.

(The anger is still there, simmering under the surface, but that surface is decidedly calmer now she's out of immediate danger.)

Under the circumstances, he supposes he can forgive her for not being at her sharpest.

"Jim Moriarty," he says. "Who do we kill for this?"

(It doesn't occur to him that she might have reason not to recognize him, or to pretend she doesn't, or to be unsure of him. It isn't often he doesn't consider all the possibilities, but the idea of a universe where he and Irene Adler aren't a team is, for him, quite unthinkable.)

Her reaction - well, her initial reaction, she cannot hide. She's too worn, still too shaky, and so fear passes over her face before she forces herself to blink, go blank.

"Ah," she says. "You would be an alternate version of Professor James Moriarty."

No affection, no years worth of companionship behind her tone. Nothing but a careful, polite blandness, and a tension making her body nearly vibrate.

The rat has left with the shirt and the used cloth. Jim is still holding the hospital gown. He's completely forgotten it's in his hands.

He stares at her.

He looks, for a moment, very young. Very young and very lost.

The moment passes, his face clears, he pulls the gown down over his head.

"He would be an alternate version of me," he says. "An inferior one. The Victorian ones are." His enunciation is crisp; the sharpness of the italics may give away a little more than he'd intended.

He doesn't know how to hide himself entirely from Irene. He's never had to learn.

All of which, of course, Adler notes, and files away in the neat recesses of her mind.

"Ah," she says, the inflection sharper and more 'ah-huh'. "I see. And I suppose that your Irene Alder would be a superior version to myself?"

He pushes his hands into his pockets, studying her.

"You're better written than the Professor," he says, his tone careless.

"So you read the stories," she says, all smooth Victorian manners. She could be sipping tea at the Savoy, every inch of her clothes immaculate and calculated, not sitting in an infirmary bed wearing nought but (an admittedly stylish and high-quality) chemise. "The Bar would not give me all of them, although if they mention the man attempting to kill me, I shall be quite cross."

"I struck a bargain with another patron to get mine," he answers; the you might want to do the same is implied.

(He checks the impulse to offer. He'd given one of the tablets he copied them onto to his Irene, of course - they share their resources freely with each other - but as he has just been emphatically reminded, this is not his Irene.)

"Sensible of you. It...was careless of me not to do the same." An acknowledge of weakness - it could count the same as a 'thank you for helping me'.

"Easily rectified," he says. "You'll find it harder to meet someone here who doesn't know of the stories than someone who does."

His carefully blank expression has relaxed just slightly.

(You're welcome.)

"And they're bound to respond better to your name than they do mine."

"Goodness, really? Even when I made Holmes look so foolish?" This amuses her, even as there is a flash of...something.

(We have a dinner date)

He's recovering his equilibrium, which has taken him a stupidly long time to do. Being blindsided is no excuse. Being blindsided shouldn't happen, not to him.

(Most of him is still resisting the obvious implications of the man attempting to kill me, but that won't last for much longer, either. Refusing to see the truth is equally inexcusable.)

"You never tried to pull him off the side of a cliff," he says. After a brief and calculated pause, he adds,

"For the sake of clarity, I haven't either."

What he has in mind is much more fun.

Moriarty - the one in her world - found her weakness, her only real one; Sherlock Holmes. He is a bright, entertaining mind amongst the dull, ordinary people, and she loves him for it.

(Not adores, of course, because that particular foolishness she leaves to Watson; she is well aware of Sherlock's faults, which is one of the reasons she tends to keep their liaisons short).

So, yes, there is a reaction to 'pull him off a cliff', although she's back into the swing of things enough at it's very well hidden.

"It does seem a rather...prosaic ending," is what she says.

That will always be the key difference between them, in any universe, in any time: Irene likes to tinker with her toys until they work the way she wants them to; Jim likes to tinker with his until they break when he decides they should.

"Not Sir Arthur's finest work.

"Why is he trying to kill you?"

"He decided to end my employment."

Why he insisted not letting her go beforehand, when she would have simply disappeared, is quite beyond her.

His brow furrows slightly.

"Had you become some kind of threat?"

It would be the only way to deal with Irene if their interests ever came into unresolvable conflict. It's also one of very, very few acceptable reasons to terminate an unsatisfactory employee. Killing them left and right is something only idiots in movies do.

"Not as far as I am aware," Adler says, with perfect honesty. "I did not particularly wish to be in his employ, but I have my integrity."

All professional criminals, if they wish to get anywhere, have integrity.

"And he didn't even stick around to make sure you were dead," Jim says scornfully. "Inferior."

He has worked hard to make his name one that inspires fear and respect. He hates hearing about doubles who go around mucking it all up.

"He did at least have the sense to do it himself?"

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