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“Dammit Liam, listen to me!”
“Oh, and why should I do that?’ William’s voice was remote even to his own ears. He wasn't paying attention anymore, after all none of it mattered anymore, not Sherlock or what he or anyone else had to say, nothing mattered but the roar of the water and the drops of spray peppering his face. He took another step forward and was rewarded by the sound of shoes scrabbling down the bank behind him.
“Because you're wrong!” Sherlock sounded frantic, something William had never heard in all the time they'd known each other. On any other day he would have felt triumphant at causing such a reaction, on any other day such things would still have mattered. “You're going about it all wrong! This isn't going to help the country dammit! This isn't helping anyone! All this “Lord of crime” crap, you say you want to get rid of the demons but that's what you're becoming Liam! It has to stop!”
William's lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. “What do you think I'm doing Holms? I'm ending it, just like you said.”
He took another step forward and again heard the sound of Sherlock following him. “Not like this! This whole mad plan of yours, that's what needs to stop! You need to stop killing not stop living!”
I don't…?William shook his head, trying to dispel Sherlock's words.
“It's curious that you would say that Mr. Holmes, after all I am your enemy.”
“Hardly. You’re many things Liam, but never that.” William’s breath caught in his throat, both because of those words and because of their proximity. A quick glance over his shoulder showed William that his estimation of Sherlock's location was correct. The detective hadn't stopped moving after William’s most recent step forward, instead he’d used the cover of the waterfall’s noise to inch closer until he was half a step away from being within arm's reach of the blond. To close, that was too close. William felt an odd sort of panic rise within him at the idea that he might be grabbed, might be stopped. It was strange really, Sherlock had no reason to want to stop him, if anything William would have expected the detective to give him a push, he’d certainly given him more than enough reason. Yet Sherlock wasgoing to try to stop him, that was obvious, but he couldn't have that, no he couldn't have that, not now, not when he was already on the edge.
He looked back at Sherlock one more time. If he was going to do this, and he was going to do this, then perhaps it couldn't hurt to at least look at the man, just look, just that, one last time.
“Liam listen I_”
“Goodbye Mr. Holmes.”
William took one quick step backward before he had time to think better of it. He felt the pebbles bounce and roll away from the soles of his shoes, the crumbling edge of the cliff, and, finally, only emptiness beneath his heels.
“No!” The cry was still reverberating against the rocks as William felt pain in his arm and a jolt went through his entire body, wrenching his shoulder blade as… As a hand closed around his wrist?
Sherlock must have lunged for him the instant that William moved, it was the only possible explanation. He could feel Sherlock's fingers digging into his wrist through the fabric of his jacket sleeve, could feel the tearing and the muscles of his left shoulder blade as he hung suspended by it above the water. Yes it was easy for him to tell what was happening but, “Why?”
“Because you're wrong Liam.” Sherlock's voice came out strained and gasping, the exertion it was taking for him to keep a hold of William evident in every syllable. William looked up and saw that Sherlock had grabbed onto a nearby boulder to keep himself from being pulled over the edge of the gorge as well. The detective was already panting for breath, and already sweat was joining the droplets of spray coating his face. “This isn't the way. I refuse to let you die like this!”
“You refuse?”
“Yes I damn well refuse! Now drop that thing and hold on to me with both hands so I don't risk losing you when I haul you backup!”
Haul me back? You refuse to let me die? I’m wrong? The words twisted themselves around the inside of William's mind.
“I am…”
Could he be right? Is there some better way? No, dammit Sherlock, after everything, after everything I've done you can't make me falter now.
William felt himself drop lower but Sherlock's hand was still clamped immovably around his wrist. He realized with horror that it was not he who had slid but Sherlock, Sherlock who was losing his hold on the rock, Sherlock who was sliding toward the edge. Haul me up? Who are you kidding? This is my place to die, not yours! This has to stop, now!
“I am not wrong!”
For the first time in several minutes William really registered the weight of his cane still in his right hand. Funny thing that, I don't know why I still have it. Well if I can use it to save Sherlock then… I'm sorry Sherlock, but you have to let me go. In every way, you have to let me go. Making me doubt myself like this…
“You're the one who's a demon Sherlock!” William swung upward with the cane, putting as much force behind the blow as he could in his position. He meant to catch the detective’s shoulder or at least to cause him to jump back, anything that would force the detective to let go.
What he had not anticipated was Sherlock's refusal to do just that. Sherlock did jerk instinctively backward to avoid a blow to the face but as he moved one of his feet slipped on the spray dampened rocks at the cliffs edge and then Sherlock Holmes, the world's greatest detective, the man who William had hand-picked to oppose and end him, did the unthinkable. Slipping meant that he had to release his hold on something but what he let go of wasn't William but the boulder.
William only just had time for his eyes to widen in shock and then they were falling, falling, falling.
I'm sorry Sherlockwas William's last conscious thought and then the breath was driven from him by the shock of his body hitting the water and he felt the pain of stones colliding with his shoulder and head and everything blurred around him. Dimly he heard the roar of the waterfall all around him and felt the force of it drive him against more rocks as water filled his lungs and something tightened around his chest and then everything was blackness.
***
Consciousness returned by inches. Vaguely William registered voices and hurried footsteps and the feeling of warm fabric against his skin, all muffled by the pain pounding through his head. The darkness claimed him again. The next time he woke it was to a pricking sensation like knives in his shoulder and he tried to open his eyes to see what was happening but as soon as he managed to force them open enough to catch the light the pain returned and he cried out before falling back into nothingness.
The third time William woke the pain was mostly gone. He could still feel it, off somewhere in the dim recesses of his mind but it was no longer strong enough to blot out thought, any more than it was strong enough to blot out the lesser pains and aches from the giant bruise that his body seemed to have become. Slowly William opened his eyes, wary after last time, but to his relief like no longer burned. He blinked and the room came into focus; wooden walls, tile on floor and ceiling, white sheets and curving metal bed posts, a white curtain half pulled back and a hefty wooden medicine chest directly opposite him. A hospital, he was in a hospital. Only then did the thought hit William and he sat up with a jolt. I'm alive.
Instantly he regretted his too rapid movement as he was rewarded with pain from at least a dozen injuries. How? I jumped, I know I jumped, and then… “Sherlock!”
“Welcome back to the land of the living, Liam.”
William James Moriarty was a genius by anyone's metric but occasionally even he did incredibly stupid things, as his body informed him when he moved without thought for the second time in as many minutes. As he whipped his head around in the direction of that familiar voice he felt his body again make its objections known, only this time the pain in his torso and shoulders was joined by a bolt of agony in his head strong enough to cause a gasped to escape his lips.
“Hey, take it easy there!” Instantly Sherlock was at his side, his hand resting comfortingly on William's shoulder.
It was the warm skin on skin feeling of that hand which finally had William glancing down to assess his own state. There were bandages wrapped around his lower chest, left shoulder and right arm but other than that he was naked from the waist up. His eyes moved upward to Sherlock. The detective’s face looked haggard, the long strands of his hair pulling free from his bun and dark circles like bruises around his eyes. His expression was a strange one, all seriousness and intensity as it flickered from hope to worry and back again. He was in a similar state of undress with bandaging around his lower abdomen and more around his left shoulder, making it the twin of William’s. They had probably been injured at the same time as well, when that shoulder took William’s full weight as Sherlock held him suspended above the falls. And then…
“I thought I'd killed you.” Williams voice was soft as he remembered that moment, the moment when he realized that he was going to die with regrets after all.
Sherlock raised the hand that wasn't resting on William's shoulder and ran it through his long hair, irritably pushing wayward strands away from his face. “If that’s what you were going for you're going to have to try harder than that.” There was amusement in his tone.
William looked away. “I wasn't trying to kill you at all.”
“I know.” When he spoke again all the mirth had gone from his voice to be replaced by sorrow.
“How are we alive?” William asked, still not looking at Sherlock.
“Oh that,” Sherlock sounded like he was trying to sound nonchalant, it wasn't really working. “I fished you out and John took care of the rest when he got there. Having a doctor on hand is quite handy sometimes, although there's only so much even he can do without resources. That's how we ended up in this place, and let me tell you Ms. Hudson isn’t going to be pleased because a few days in a private hospital is going to cost my entire month's rent.”
Now William did turn, frowning, to look at him. “I blacked out when I hit the water, how come you were still able to swim?”
“You blacked out all right but that wasn't the fault of the water.” Sherlock raised the hand that had been resting on William's shoulder and William couldn't help feeling momentarily bereft by the loss of contact, then Sherlock was tapping lightly against the left side of William’s temple, just below his hairline. The feeling was strangely muted and now that he thought about it he could feel something tight against his skin there. Gauze. He should have noticed it sooner, it was strange that he hadn't. Actually there were a lot of things he hadn't noticed sooner and his whole mind felt vague and muzzy, although at least that was better than the pain. The pain, of course. He was in a hospital. Morphine. No wonder everything's a blur.
“You hit a rock right after you landed. I didn't. There’s also our positions. You landed on your back but I more or less dove in after you so the shock of the water didn't hit me anywhere near as badly.”
Now it was William's turn to frown. “Then how did you get that?” He asked gesturing at the bandage around Sherlock's abdomen and trying not to stare at the rest of the detective’s unclothed chest.
“After you hit your head the waterfall pushed you under, Liam.” Sherlock's voice was serious and William saw real fear reflected in the detective's dark eyes. “I had to get right under the waterfall to reach you and even then I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do it.” His voice lowered, softening until it was barely above a whisper. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
Memory came seeping back to William, the fall, the pain, the pressure of the water all around him, the feeling of it filling his lungs, and another feeling, the feeling of something wrapping around his chest.
“That with you.” William said softly as the realization came to him.
“What was?”
“In the water, one of the last things I remember was something wrapping around my chest. I was already too far gone to think about what it was at the time, but that was your arm wasn't it.”
“Well, yeah.” Sherlock ran a hand awkwardly through his hair.
William just stared at him. It made sense, the facts lined up, but, “Why?”
“Hu?” Sherlock paused frowning in the act of tucking some wayward strands of hair back behind his ears.
Anger flared suddenly in William. “Why Mr. Holmes!? Why did you save me?”
Sherlock's frown deepened. “Shouldn't that be obvious?”
“No it isn't!” William snapped back. He wished he was standing so that Sherlock wouldn't be towering over him like that anymore but considering the state of his body he doubted very much that his legs would support him. “I'm the Lord of Crime! I'm the killer you've been hunting! Your enemy!”
“You are not!” Sherlock snapped back, the temper rising in his voice as well. “It's like I said, you're not my enemy Liam, you never have been!”
“But why_”
“Because you don't need to die dammit! Because there are other ways to finish your ridiculous plan! Because I couldn't bear to be without you!” Sherlock flushed, his mouth snapping shut as though he hadn't meant to say that last part out loud.
William stared up at Sherlock, eyes wide and lips slightly parted. His mind was reeling, twisting and turning and trying to figure out how to make sense of Sherlock's words, trying to find some other meaning in them.
At last William asked, "You don't hate me?" The words came out quiet and more uncertain than his voice had sounded in years, if ever.
Sherlock laughed tiredly, sinking down onto the side of the bed beside William’s blanket covered legs. “Hate you? Geez Liam, you really have no idea, do you?”
“Idea?” He should have been angry, annoyed, dismissive, but all he could really muster was tired. He should have been dead. He was supposed to be dead. He wasn't supposed to be sitting here with an unfairly shirtless Sherlock tryingnotto think about how it might feel to run his fingers through those distracting strands of hair and facing the prospect of having to talk himself off of the cliff's edge all over again.
“Yeah.” Sherlock's voice was quiet. He reached out, with a hand that shook slightly, a gesture that seemed oddly tentative for the ever confident Sherlock Holmes. He rested his fingers lightly against the gauze on William's face. “You almost died Liam, and it made me realize that I had to tell you. The idea of something happening to you before I could, of you dying thinking we were enemies…” Sherlock’s voice trailed away and he shook his head, the sorrow obvious on his features.
“Tell me?” There he went echoing Sherlock again, as though he couldn't think of anything more intelligent to do. What was wrong with him? Well, for now at least he'd blame it on the morphine, even if a small part of his mind knew that for a lie.
“Yeah,” Sherlock said again, his hand sliding from the gauze down to cup William’s chin and he felt his heart skip a beat at the warmth of that touch. The detective smiled a little, an expression that was half rye amusement and have sorrow, and said “I love you Liam. I have for a while now. Since the day we met maybe. I don't know.”
A gasp hissed from between William's lips, brought on this time not by pain but by shock. He stared wide-eyed at Sherlock, trying to figure out if there was some way he’d misheard, some way he’d misunderstood. He was the Lord of Crime, a monster to be hunted, a killer to be stopped, so “Why?” The word left his mouth in a cracked whisper.
Sherlock laughed again. “Now I know you’re messing with me, Liam. Your beautiful, the most beautiful person in this whole damned country, and your looks have nothing on your mind. The way you think…” Sherlock shook his head. “Who wouldn't be in love with you?”
William’s mouth opened but this time no sound came out. He just stared at Sherlock as the detectives words echoed in his ears “…most beautiful person in the whole country…” “… Looks have nothing on your mind…” “..since the day we met maybe…”and, over and over again, “in love with you, in love with you, in love with you.”
William nearly gasped at the sudden feeling of cold against his cheek as Sherlock withdrew his hand, and it wasn't until he had to force his eyes to focus on the detective’s face, that he realized that at some point they'd filled with tears. William only just managed to blink them clear in time to see the blush now covering Sherlock's features before the detective turned his face quickly away.
“Well, now I've told you.” The detective's tone was abrupt as he struggled to cover up his embarrassment. “So now you know I don't have to worry about not getting to tell you anymore.”
“I…” William began then faltered, still so lost in Sherlock’s words that he wasn't yet capable of forming speech himself.
Sherlock shot him another quick glance, looking away just as quickly, but in the time that their eyes met William saw that a new sort of sorrow had mixed with the embarrassment marking Sherlock’s features.
They sat in silence like that for a few moments, William still trying to grasp Sherlock's declaration and Sherlock lost in whatever thoughts had put the sadness back in his eyes.
Sherlock was the one to break it, saying quickly “just so you know, that wasn't why I saved you or anything. I mean it's part of why I did it but I didn't save you because I was expecting you to be grateful or have feelings for me or anything. I saved you because I wanted you to live and, even if you want nothing to do with me now you know, that doesn't change.”
What? Didn't save me for gratitude? Don't want anything to do with him? Why…? Oh. Really it was embarrassing how much the morphine was slowing him down.
“Sherlock.”
At the sound of his first name on William’s lips, Sherlock turned quickly back to face him, his eyes wide with a surprise which only grew as William reached out and cupped Sherlock's cheek with his right hand. The detective’s breath caught in a quiet gasp and his eyes rotated downward as though he was trying to get a better look at that hand. Maybe that was why he seemed so surprised when William leaned forward carefully and kissed him.
There was a moment in which Sherlock made no move, his mouth slacken and unresponsive beneath William’s, and then he was kissing William back with a fervent desperation that made the blonde laugh even as the tears continued to flow down his cheeks. He deepened the kiss, sliding his right hand from Sherlock's cheek to tangle in the loose strands of hair at the base of the detective's neck. He awkwardly wrapped his injured left arm around Sherlock, pulling the other man as close as he could manage. The detective responded by twining his bare arms around William's waist and holding on as tightly as though he was afraid that the waterfall could still tear the other man away from him.
At that thought ice seemed to pool in the pit of William's stomach and he pulled reluctantly back, far enough to end the kiss but not far enough to force Sherlock to release him, although he knew that was coming soon, and it hurt, oh how it hurt, even more now than it had before he'd been given this glimpse of all he had to live for.
“Wha?” Sherlock looked blearily up at him through eyes still half lidded and Williams heart rolled at the sight but he did his best to force the feeling away. This wasn't the time, not now, and not ever.
“I still have to die you know,” he whispered, his regret rising to the surface and curling around those words until they became more of an apology than the simple statement he'd intended them to be.
Sherlock blinked up at him, taking in those words, and then, to William's utter astonishment, he grinned.
“That might be a little difficult for you Liam, seeing as you're already dead.”
William stared at him blankly, “I… What?”
Sherlock's grin grew. “Yep, dead, cremated, and with a nice shiny death certificate to prove it.”
William continued to stare at him for another moment and then his morphine and kiss addled brain finally made the connection. “Watson.”
He hadn’t thought it was possible for Sherlock’s grin to grow any bigger but it did. “I told you it was convenient having a doctor around. Why do you think I sprang for a private hospital? Dead men can't exactly show up at a public one.”
For what felt like the 10th time since he'd woken up William found himself just staring at Sherlock, trying to come to terms with something the detective had said. He was dead. Legally, at least, he was dead. James Moriarty was dead and that meant…
Carefully Sherlock untwined his injured left arm from around William's waist and raised his hand so that he could brush the tears from the other man's eyes with a gentle thumb.
“You don't have to go through with it now, Liam. Your plan’s finished now, it's over. The Lord of Crime is dead, I've killed him just like you wanted me to, but it's like I was trying to tell you, you don't need to be buried with him.”
The Lord of Crime is dead. It was as though some massive, all-consuming, weight was lifting off of his shoulders and he felt his chest contract briefly at the shock of it. So long, he'd been under that wait so long that he hadn't even realized it was there, not until now, the moment of its removal. He felt his chest contract a second time and then a third and then he was sobbing, his head buried in the crook of Sherlock's neck and the detective’s arms once again tight about him.
At last, when his sobs had turned into gasps and then silence the man who had once been William James Moriarty raised his head and Sherlock Holms again wiped the tears away from his eyes and stroked his face and murmured “it’s all right now, you don't have to leave anymore,” and the blonde nodded and pulled his hand from Sherlock's neck and used it to wipe away the detectives own tears and whispered, “I’ll stay.”
At last Sherlock leaned back and quirked his lips in the smile which the blonde so loved and said, “you'll need a new name though.”
“No, I won't.” The blonde’s lips curved into a teasing smile of their own.
“Of course you will, you can't be William James Moriarty anymore.”
“No I can't,” the blonde agreed, his smile growing at Sherlock's obvious confusion. “But I can still be “Liam,” and I will be, from now on.”
This time when their lips met there were no tears between them, only laughter.