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Sherlock’s dead.
Two months on, John finally brought himself to open up the blog and have a look at the comments on that last, gaunt entry. He had been numbly deleting email notifications as they came into his account, unable to bear the sympathetic remarks and tearful remembrances of others, although there had been hundreds, the BBC having picked up the story after Scotland Yard swept half the criminals in London up in one coordinated strike. John had ignored the comments, the press, everything. The wake after the service had already been too much to bear. He had avoided speaking to everyone he could and for three days afterwards had holed up in the flat, opening the door and answering the phone to no-one.
At Harry’s prompting he had finally started looking for work, having abandoned his locum job at the clinic to chase around Europe with Sherlock, both convinced that the other would be safer at their own side. Two weeks ago he had taken up a post at University College Hospital, working in critical care, which was busy and complex enough to take his mind away from his grief for nine hours a day. And with the return to routine came a halting sense of normalcy, enough that he began to think he might cope with the world again. And so one evening when three new comment notifications pinged into his inbox in quick succession, he made himself tea, microwaved a bowl of the latest stew that Mrs Hudson had slipped into the fridge, and opened up the blog.
Reading the final thread of comments sent him dashing across the flat to the bathroom, his stomach lurching.
He leant on the cold tiles for a few minutes, breathing hard, before the trembling subsided sufficiently for him to regain his footing. He swilled his mouth out, spat, and wiped at the cold sweat that had broken out on his forehead.
Moriarty.
Returning, trembling, to the laptop, he looked again to confirm he was not seeing things in the username field on the comments, and was halfway to dialing Lestrade’s direct line before his brain caught up with his eyes.
Colonel J. Moriarty
He scanned the messages this time, and the sick feeling subsided a little but did not dissipate. The author was claiming to be Moriarty’s brother.
Moriarty had a brother?
It was hard to think of him as having anything so human. John dropped into the chair with a thud, forcing himself to breathe as he focused on the words.
Following the statement released by D.I. Lestrade of Scotland Yard, and your own libellous remarks pertaining to the character of my dear brother, it is clearly up to me to set the record straight. Your actions, Dr. Watson, and those of your colleague have taken my brother’s life but I will not allow you to defile his memory. These actions speak loudly of the disdain in which you unjustly held him, but in the matter of public record the pen is mightier than the sword, and therefore I will make it clear how grievous a miscarriage of justice has been effected by two men taking the law into their own hands. It is my fervent hope that this will result in your own imprisonment and trial...
The paragraph descended into a vaguely insane ramble, disguised under purple prose and century-old grammar, about the wonderful, kind, caring and cruelly-derided-by-the-world Jim Moriarty. John wondered momentarily if Col. J. Moriarty had ever even met his little brother. The rant spanned all three comments and concluded with a promise to pursue John’s own conviction with all the resources the family Moriarty could throw at England’s best lawyer.
John’s phone chimed and he picked it up numbly, registering that there was a text message.
Your blog’s TRENDING ON TWITTER. Who is this creep? Are you alright? Harry x
Before John could think about a response, the phone buzzed again, an incoming call this time. LESTRADE showed on the display. John hit divert, knowing that he would be hauled over the coals for the plan that had formed in his head and he wanted it done before Lestrade could pull any strings to cut off his web access.
“I’ll show you trending on Twitter,” muttered John to the Col. Moriarty now appearing in his head, adjusting the screen of the laptop to the best angle for typing. For the first time able to think of it without tears, now that he had a purpose, he settled himself to write a full account of the final adventure of Sherlock Holmes.