Francesca used the knife on her bindings immediately, not caring about the fact that she may have just skinned off a considerable amount of skin from her arm.
The messy hair that fell around her shoulders was caked with blood and her whole being seemed drenched in an unbelievably horrible odour of grape medicine and chemicals.
When she stood up quickly, a sudden lightness swelled up in her skull and overcame her. Her legs wobbled as she stumbled and she blinked at the grey and yellow spots waltzing before her.
Leaning against the wall for support, she pushed herself back to a standing position and dizzily made her way over to Sherlock, knife in hand. The chemicals hadn't worn off completely, and fatigue certainly did not improve her balance.
Stumbling and swaying from left to right towards an unconscious man, with a bloodied knife, dirtied hair and muddy clothes, and a shock of red blood on her mouth against a sickly pale complexion, she looked like a true nightmare.
Kneeling next to Sherlock, she began to cut at the ropes binding him mercilessly.
When Sherlock was finally unbound, he rolled onto his back and grunted in a displeasurable way and woke up with a start.
In a flash, she was pinned to the adjacent wall.
"Wh- what are you doing, Sherlock?!"
"I am going to ask you some questions, and you will answer them. Truthfully," he snarled.
Francesca scoffed and stared at Sherlock, bewildered. "What has gotten into you?"
"You're not as plain as you come off to be, are you, Francesca?" he said slowly and quietly. His voice was laced with danger. An angry Sherlock Holmes was one to fear.
"Spit it, Holmes." She was starting to feel extremely annoyed at the detective in front of her with his eyes blazing and expression twisted into one of fury, and also terribly afraid.
"That little trick of yours back at the pub, explain. You're working with him, aren't you? Were you simply an assistant, or did join in on his little excursions also? Answer me!"
"You're....you're delusional, Holmes."
"Am I? Or are you?"
"Sherlock," she whispered. Francesca stared up at him mournfully, a few tears falling from her eyes. "Sherlock, he's gotten into your head."
"Shut up."
"You let him get into your head, Holmes. You can't just let him do that, clear your head."
"I said, shut up, Arlington. Shut. Up. And answer my damn questions."
"Listen to me, listen. You let him confuse you and he took advantage of that. Get a sense of your priorities. He's playing with us, Sherlock!"
"He's been playing with us from the beginning. And you're just one of his more elaborate toys."
"Look around you! This place, the ropes and the blood. Do you see that? That's your blood. Xavier Venticelli is toying with your mind especially because out of all of us, you are the most corruptible. You say you have a sense of your values, that your mind is iron-strong. But who is the one who least knows his enemy? Sherlock, look around you. Just look, and think."
Sherlock looked down at his feet and back up at Francesca's pleading eyes. He blinked sluggishly, attempting to clear the haze Venticelli had put there.
"He's playing us like Jim Moriarty did to you, and Doctor Watson, and the whole country before."
He seemed to truly get what was happening as soon as he heard the allusion to Moriarty.
"Isn't that what you've built your life around? Thinking?"
Sherlock stumbled back and breathed heavily. His actions in the past five minutes now made no sense to him, and a deep regret was beginning to burn inside a pit of his stomach.
The emotion was confusing. He had never felt regret before, just how he had never felt any true love for another individual in any romantic way. Perhaps Venticelli's drugging really did confuse his motives.
Venticelli's drugging, Sherlock realised in a blast of horror, had offered him solace. It had offered him a peacefulness and a dull haze of unthinking. Completely unlike the cigarettes and nicotine patches he used for clearing his mind. In the few hours his magic was affecting him, it had been strangely peaceful to not have to think.
And that frightened him.
"Sherlock...?" her voice started tentatively. "Are you alright?" He stared at her strangely for a moment before replying.
"It's inevitable," Sherlock said suddenly.
"What?"
"It's inevitable, this partenership. Jim Moriarty is playing a dangerous game."
"What does Moriarty have to do with the concocting of this whole affair?"
"Did you not hear him? He is only the perpetrator of this game. We are pawns on his board, and he made sure that he had gathered the three most interesting pieces to partake in his show and that each had some sort of sentimental, or painful connection. Every other piece is just...background music."
Sherlock's brain was whirring, and the gears were turning as clarity returned to the empty cavities.
"You are implying that Venticelli was placed here strategically, and that he is not in the game on his own accord?"
"Obviously. We will have beat him at his own line of work."
Francesca was startled at Sherlock's declaration of "we".
"You...trust me enough to work with me?" she asked, confused.
"I trust you about as much as I trust that magician. But this unspoken contract is unavoidable. We have to get out of this place, they've made their move."
Francesca sighed at the complexity of the whole game.
"And now we have to make ours."
.
.
.
So devious, you are, Divertimento.