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John’s ears ring, and he wills away his double vision once he regains consciousness. He doesn’t know what good he can do anyone with a definite concussion and a possible case of imminent death, but he’s determined to stay alert anyhow. His eyes fix on the only other occupants of the warehouse as they face off, fun house mirror reflections of each other.
Moriarty spreads his arms out in a supplicating gesture. “You and I, Sherlock, we’re fated.” He slithers forward, a hair’s breadth closer to the muzzle of John's war companion. Thus explaining where John’s gun had scurried off…again. The incapacitated doctor begins to feel a bout of déjà vu coming on.
“I could draw this out for years, you know. I’m patient. It took absolute ages to build this empire, and I’d happily give you the pleasure of razing it to the ground. You do so like taking things apart. We can watch everything burn together, my dear, when you’ve finally caught me.” The unctuous bastard pauses and lifts a finger toward the consulting detective like a conductor dramatically raising his baton.
“But. Not. Just. Yet.” He leans forward, closing the distance between his slick designer lapel and solid military steel. Even past the rush of his own labored breath, John imagines he can hear the snag of silk sliding against metal. With a confiding smile Moriarty whispers, “We both know how much you enjoy a good game, now don't we? I'd make it so you NEVER tire of the chase.”
Sherlock’s nimble hands don’t waver for a moment as they hold the gun between himself and his unhinged suitor. “Yes,” he hisses, eyes slightly unfocused. He swallows audibly, the restrained want discernible by the bobbing of his Adam's apple along the expanse of his throat. John supposes Sherlock does not share his own view of Jim Moriarty’s disturbing brand of courtship.
“That. That is true enough,” he concedes. "I get bored." The hazy gaze he fixes on his tempter is heart-wrenchingly familiar to John. The expression triggers recollections of too many nicotine patches, and the one time he’d come home from the surgery to the sight of a pin-prick of blood sullying a landscape of white scarred flesh with the offending weapon lying on the floor below Sherlock's arm. The syringe appeared much like a dog awaiting the return of his master's caresses. John feels as full of impotent rage now as he did on that very, very bad day. As ever, he can only stand by and watch. Watch and wait to see into which hell he’ll next follow this mental case – his brilliant madman.
“Yesss,” Moriarty echoes, “You can't claim it wouldn't be the perfect end. We're positively meant to be, Sherlock. Why fight destiny, darling?” Moriarty’s brow lowers minutely over upturned eyes and his mouth widens into a maniacal gash, preemptively triumphant as he slants his face in what John can only guess is meant to be a coquettish manner. Sherlock’s eyes harden in turn, and his mouth releases a characteristically rapid-fire dismissive reply.
“The thing is Fate and I never got on much,” he confesses with a click of the cocking gun. The pistol brings the point home with a report that reverberates around the warehouse like a taunt.
Moriarty’s only rejoinder is the susurration of his last breath, and that look of surprise he’d promised so very long ago. Many years down the line, Dr. John Watson will decide that Sherlock Holmes never looked as beautiful as he did in that moment – with a declaration written in someone else’s blood across his face.
*****
When John lays awake that night in a hospital bed drenched in the stench of anti-septic and death (a familiar and mundane odor in his line of work), he contemplates Sherlock’s answer to what must have been, by his standards, the most romantic gesture of his life. The events of the day require careful consideration, and so John lays out the facts for analysis.
This is what he determines:
1. Sherlock Holmes burns brighter than any sun. It’s the only explanation for John’s inability to see anything or anyone else with much clarity when in his presence. He is blinded by the intensity of Sherlock's brilliance.
Thus, John reasons, Sherlock Holmes has no need for Jim Moriarty’s manic pyrotechnics. Sherlock can set anything around him alight if he chooses, so why let someone else determine where he should focus his flames? But if that were truly his goal, he already has a standing offer from someone with a more authoritative claim on world conquest. And Sherlock has yet to take Mycroft up on it.
2. The steadying comfort of a companionable planet or satellite, on the other hand, might be welcome to an otherwise solitary self-consuming star. The “frailty of genius” comes to mind as support for this hypothesis.
Conveniently enough, after years in the scorching heat and sub-freezing cold of the desert, John Watson has become acclimatized to extreme conditions. He can weather any phase of an orbit – would be lost without the anchor of it, really.
As the morphine drip drags him under, John concludes that Moriarty never stood a chance. He’s glad that at least he remembers his primary school stuff, because when it comes to Sherlock and himself, it’s not fate. It’s gravitational pull. It’s the solar system. It’s science. And Sherlock Holmes is nothing if not a man of science.