Work Text:
Vesta. Noah. Apollo. Hera. Exodus. Poseidon. Demeter. Juno. Balthazar. Zeus. Mars. Lazarus. Icarus.
With every bounce of the squash ball, Sherlock mentally named one of the thirteen plans, waiting for the prescribed time to put the wheels in motion.
For the past several months, as he watched Moriarty destroy his reputation, he felt the confrontation grow ever closer and more inescapable. And, he spent that time working with Mycroft, constructing each of the plans that would allow him to take out Moriarty and neutralize his threat forever.
To the outside observer, it would have seemed odd to see the two brothers work so closely together with so little conflict. But they both knew intimately how much was at stake and how much depended on each person in each scenario getting their part just right; there simply wasn’t time for their usual fighting and sniping. Mycroft, the master of coordinating people and resources, took the lead in constructing the plans, many of them more complex than the aborted Bond Air scheme which he had worked on for years. And Sherlock, the master of improvisation and solo work, would take the point role when go time came. It would be his life on the line once Moriarty appeared for the final confrontation.
The pair had constructed thirteen plans; thirteen families of plans, actually. Depending on what Moriarty did when Sherlock confronted him, he would text the code to Mycroft, who would start the ground response. The plans encompassed a wide range of possible scenarios and consequences. In the easiest scenario, Moriarty was neutralized along with his network bosses, and Sherlock was home in time for tea. In the most extreme, Sherlock died taking Moriarty out. The plans accounted for every foreseeable possibility in between. But what they all had in common was the need to get Moriarty and Sherlock alone in a confined, easily-controlled space with good visibility for Mycroft’s spotters. So, the brothers settled on forcing a confrontation on Bart’s rooftop.
Sherlock pulled out his mobile and texted the familiar number:
COME AND PLAY
BART’S HOSPITAL ROOFTOP
SH
The plan was in motion.
***
Several hours later, as Sherlock and John waited in the lab, John’s phone rang.
“Oh my God. Right, yes, I’m coming,” John said, panic edging his voice. Sherlock steeled himself as John vomited forth a torrent of words explaining that Mrs. Hudson had been shot. Sherlock forced himself not to react, to affect a dispassionate demeanor, all while squelching the corner of his brain that impulsively worried that the call was real, and that Moriarty had somehow decided to lash out at him by harming his dear Mrs. Hudson. But the rest of him schooled himself into a façade of indifference.
“Alone is what I have. Alone protects me,” he said to an enraged John.
“No, friends protect people,” John spat as he rushed out the door, his last words to Sherlock said in anger.
Sherlock picked up his phone reflexively at the text alert, still watching the door after John’s departure.
I’M WAITING…
JM
The game was on.
***
Sometime later, Sherlock felt his control of the confrontation with Moriarty start to slip. It had all been working so well. The detective had climbed to the top of Bart’s Hospital with a bit of a thrill uncoiling in his stomach. Moriarty was dark and dangerous and needed to be stopped, true. But he was also smart and cunning and a match for Sherlock’s own talent. It wasn’t that Sherlock saw Moriarty as a kindred spirit, exactly, but that he would relish having beaten someone with such cunning and ability. The pair were like chess masters facing one another across a board, prepared for intellectual combat. If, that is, the board were most of Europe and Asia, and the pieces were individuals and groups of people whose lives hung in the balance.
Sherlock was prepared to find out that the computer code Moriarty had “planted” in his mind was a ruse; that would have been too easy. Partita Number One was a nice touch, one that Sherlock wished he had decoded earlier so he could enjoy the subtle humor from his enemy.
Sherlock saw plan Zeus progressing as he and Mycroft thought it might. Moriarty had Sherlock’s friends under his thumb. One wrong move would result in their deaths, but Sherlock managed to calm his mind. He felt like a surgeon, undertaking a tricky operation, or a bomb disposal specialist, untangling a jumble of wires until he found the right one. If he just stayed calm and worked with what he knew, his friends – John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade – would be just fine, along with countless others who would have been harmed by Moriarty’s network.
He couldn’t resist explaining his triumph to Moriarty; it was the least he owed his adversary. “I don’t have to die…if I’ve got you,” he sang.
The two circled one another, playing out their final confrontation. “You’re not ordinary. No. You’re me,” Moriarty eventually said, with realization coming across his face. And Sherlock watched as his carefully laid plan spectacularly derailed.
“As long as I’m alive, you can save your friends; you’ve got a way out. Well, good luck with that,” Moriarty said, simultaneously pulling his gun. He opened his mouth into a rictus and proceeded to shoot himself, his body falling backward onto the rooftop. Sherlock jumped back as he watched the blood spread beneath Moriarty’s body, his face just as crazed in death as it was in life. Sherlock began to pace erratically.
This threw off the entire plan. None of the scenarios accounted for a dead Moriarty when only a live version could act as the “off” switch to a ticking bomb, in this case the snipers aimed at Sherlock’s friends. And even if Sherlock could somehow manage to warn all three of his friends in time to save their lives, Moriarty’s network lived on, now dangerously destabilized by the loss of its leader. Sherlock needed to select a response and do it quickly, and he needed to choose one that would allow him to go immediately undercover to begin the perhaps months-long process of taking out Moriarty’s followers, spread through terror cells and into many petty local criminal networks across continents.
He took out his phone, which he had carefully prepared the night before. He had taken off all the apps, erased all the email, and removed all the security codes. All that remained was his texting app, into which he entered the code LAZARUS and hit send.
He stepped to the ledge of the rooftop as he saw John arrive on the scene, his cab letting him out at the exact point dictated by the LAZARUS plan. Mycroft had worked quickly. Now, Sherlock had to convey enough of the plan to John to let him know that all was not as it looked, but giving enough information to let John know the scenario he must portray, all while staying in-character enough that anyone tapping the call would not suspect something was amiss.
“It’s all true. Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty.”
Here’s the story, John. Here’s what you need to tell people.
“I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly. In fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes.”
Here’s your team, John. Among the four of you, you will have enough information to put together the truth.
“This phone call. It’s, er, it’s my note. It’s what people do, don’t they? Leave a note?”
Look for the phone, John.
Sherlock threw the phone gently to the ground. When John found the phone, he would know. Maybe not the specifics, but John knew Sherlock’s methods. He would know that something had happened. He would contact Molly, and Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson. Together, they alone would know that Sherlock had been involved in a plan much bigger than himself.
Sherlock stepped forward off the roof ledge and began to fall.
***
Mycroft had been against telling John from the start. Sherlock protested that he needed a confidant to make the London side of several of the plans work, but Mycroft wouldn’t budge.
“I’m afraid I’m your confidant, brother mine. If we execute the plans that call for you to fake your death, John Watson has a more important role to play,” Mycroft said one night, locked with Sherlock in his office to go once again over the various scenarios to be sure nothing was missed.
“You’re a celebrity, Sherlock. The media follows you, and that means they follow Dr. Watson. Do you really think John could fake being in mourning all day, every day, for as long as the paparazzi chose to follow him? Do you think he could sell the lie that you were dead in such a convincing way that no one in the public ever suspected something was amiss? There are blogs that follow you; news shows that cover the pair of you; tabloids that speculate about your friendship.” Mycroft paused. “One smile out of place from Dr. Watson, one chink in the armor, one happy event undertaken way too early, and someone will notice. We are dealing with Moriarty’s men here; one error could mean Dr. Watson’s death.”
Mycroft leaned closer. “It could mean your death, brother mine. And that is something I simply won’t allow.”
Sherlock acceded to his brother’s wishes. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t hope that John Watson would put the clues together.
***
The thing that no one tells you about falling off a building, Sherlock thought, is that it always feels like falling off a building, no matter what catches you. Intellectually, he knew that the giant blue airbag would only slow his deceleration to a survivable speed, but there was part of his mind that had always pictured it as feeling a bit like falling a short distance onto a child’s bouncy castle. That part of his mind was wrong.
Sherlock huffed as the air was knocked from his lungs, his shoulder twisting painfully as he landed with his arm trapped beneath him, his coat momentarily darkening his vision as it flew over his head on impact. Quickly, he forced himself up, made himself roll from the already-deflating airbag as the crew of his homeless network began compressing it to remove it from sight. He had chosen a few of his most trusted neighborhood vagrants to work on this part of the plan, knowing that prejudice would mean no one of importance would ever believe the fantastic stories coming from a homeless person about how they had helped to save Sherlock Holmes, had any of them decided to talk. He quickly ducked into a back entrance of Bart’s.
He watched closely as, shortly after, the body of the look-alike Molly had chosen dropped from the first floor window to the pavement with a sodden thud. John must be within sight.
Come on, John. Be a doctor. That body fell like a dead one; not one that was alive until it hit the ground. Deduce, John!
The body was quickly pulled from the scene. Sherlock had just the barest few minutes to fling himself to the impact site on the pavement and allow his helpers to soak his hair and face with the blood he had had drawn the day before. He quickly placed the squash ball under his arm and clamped down, then chose a point far up in the sky to focus his “dead” eyes on as he counseled himself to keep his eyes open but blank, no matter what. And then he prepared for John to find his body.
***
The thing no one tells you about faking your death, he thought, was how much it hurts; so much worse than falling off a building. Sherlock listened as footfalls, a pair of them John’s, ran forward.
“I’m a doctor; let me come through. Let me come through please.”
He felt fingertips graze his hand as someone – John – was pulled away from him then surged ahead.
Eyes blank, Sherlock. Eyes blank. Don’t concentrate on John.
“No, he’s my friend. He’s my friend, please,” John almost sobbed, reaching for Sherlock’s wrist. Sherlock concentrated on clutching the squash ball while keeping his wrist and hand limp.
Come on, John. Lots of things that can cut off a radial pulse. You saw this squash ball all night; put it together.
“Please, let me just,” John begged. “Jesus, no. God no.”
Sherlock felt John collapse to his knees by his side. He couldn’t – didn’t – look as he felt his body lifted onto the gurney and taken away. John’s anguished grief echoed in Sherlock’s ears, hurting him far more than any physical confrontation with Moriarty ever could have.
Don’t give up on me, John. Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains must be true. And you know it’s impossible that I would abandon you this way.
Once inside, Sherlock hopped from the gurney and took a proffered towel to his face, wiping most of the blood away. He headed for the morgue, where he would give Molly the last of the information and physical data she needed to fake his death, then be taken to an MI6 safehouse to start his mission to tear down Moriarty’s network.
Lazarus was go.
***
That afternoon, Greg Lestrade led the team that documented and cleaned up the crime scene. He gave the clean-up of Moriarty’s body a wide berth; true, as a seasoned detective, he had seen his share of dead bodies, but it never got easier seeing one missing the back of its skull. Not even when it was Moriarty. Not even when he was responsible for Sherlock Holmes’s death. Lestrade left that gruesome job for some of the officers junior to him once he had gathered the data he needed.
He wandered over to the point from which Sherlock had jumped, looking out at the view of London that was Sherlock’s last sight. Letting his gaze drift to the rooftop, he spied Sherlock’s phone. He picked it up with his gloved hands and flicked the power button.
Immediately, the screen came to life. That was odd, he thought. Sherlock Holmes was the king of razzing everyone about insecure passwords; it was unthinkable that his own phone didn’t use a passcode. Unless he wanted to make it easy for someone to open?
Lestrade started to page through the apps reflexively, until he realized that there was only one app installed: his texting app. Bringing the app to life, Lestrade saw two text conversations that Sherlock had had. One conversation was a two-message exchange with Moriarty, inviting him to Bart’s rooftop and, much later, Moriarty replying that he was waiting.
The second conversation was a single word, sent to Mycroft Holmes’s phone; Lestrade recognized the number. The message said, “LAZARUS.” A single response came from Mycroft’s phone: “LAZARUS IS GO.”
Lestrade shut the phone off and slipped it into an evidence bag. This didn’t feel like a murder, and it sure didn’t feel like a suicide.
He descended from the rooftop deep in thought. Perhaps it was the grief talking, but he felt like he hadn’t heard the last from Sherlock Holmes.