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Sherlock stood under the hot spray of the shower, feeling the water beat against his skin as steam clouded the glass shower doors. He swallowed, the coppery taste of blood still lingering on his tongue. It was everywhere. He peeled open his eyes, the harsh light of the hotel bathroom blinding in its brightness.
The otherwise pristine white floor of the shower had a sickly coat of pale-red water, tinted with blood. He lifted his hands and held them under the running water, watching as dark drops of blood dropped from his fingers and landed on the floor with a silent ‘plop’. There was red, dried blood trapped behind his nails and caught in the creases of his skin. It was unsightly and disgusting and he wanted it gone.
He grabbed a sponge and a bar of soap and roughed them together, before rubbing them all over his skin, desperate to get rid of the nasty red substance because he couldn’t stand the sight of it any longer.
His skin started to burn, and he stopped, squeezing the sponge between his hands. He dipped his head under the shower head. God, there was blood in his hair, and so much of it. Red rivulets ran down his neck, over his chest and arms, trickling down his legs and onto the floor of the shower, gradually making its way down the drain.
Gone forever, just like Jim Moriarty.
A raw, sickening pain took hold of his chest, threatening to claw his soul wide open. He choked back a sob, bracing his hand against the cool tiles as a wave of something that he couldn’t quite describe hit him like a ton of bricks.
What was it? Terror, disbelief? Fear, guilt? Anguish, depression? Grief?
He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tightly, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a series of deep, controlled breaths. He couldn’t afford to do this, not now. He didn’t have the time nor the resources for a mental break down, or whatever the hell was happening to him. He swallowed the lump in his throat, forcibly relaxing his jaw as he straightened his back. Get a grip, he told himself, sort yourself out.
Despite his best efforts, resting in the darkness behind his eyelids, he found himself haunted by the face of Jim Moriarty. Before, before all this, the face that plagued him was the face of a truly unbalanced man - a madman, a dangerous criminal who was completely and utterly out of control. He saw in those eyes lunacy, a madness that couldn’t possibly be contained. The Irishman’s unfaltering insanity was something to be afraid of, and his stunning intellect to be reveared.
But now, when Sherlock closed his eyes, he was tormented by an entirely different image. Jim’s eyes. Jim’s eyes. In the moments before his death - no, his suicide, Jim’s eyes had given away everything. Sherlock could barely find the words to describe it. The desperation he saw in those eyes, the raw aching sadness, the pain and the relief and the sorrow.
Sherlock wasn’t used to seeing anything other than sheer emptiness in Jim’s eyes. It had always disconcerted him, actually, the way that Jim’s facial expressions would change so much. He could smile, laugh, frown, whatever, but his eyes would remain forever cold and dead and unchanged, as if nothing ever quite managed to penetrate the carefully constructed and closely guarded walls of his mind.
No one ever gets to me… And no one ever will.
But Sherlock did, right at the very end. Sherlock was the man who got to Jim Moriarty, the man who revealed his heart and his soul. Sherlock Holmes got to Jim Moriarty, and Jim Moriarty burned the heart out of Sherlock Holmes.
The mental image of Jim shoving the barrel of the gun in his own mouth, a manic grin on his face as his hand tightened around Sherlock’s. The echo of the trigger being pulled, the deafening bang reverberating through both of their skulls. Jim, falling lifelessly to the ground as his grip on Sherlock’s hand faltered.
Jim, slipping through Sherlock’s fingers.
Sherlock should be over the moon. He should feel happy and victorious, he was the winner. Sherlock lived and his arch nemesis didn’t. He had taken on his greatest rival and had come out on top. He ought to be incredibly proud of himself… And yet, all he felt was sorrow, accompanied by an aching, almost overpowering sense of loneliness - because Sherlock was alone, now that Jim was gone. Sherlock was, and always would be, completely and hopelessly alone.
A shiver ran through his body at this realisation. He leaned against the cold glass of the shower door, slowly sliding his back down it until he was seated on the floor. He sat there, numb, under the scalding spray of the shower, for what could have been hours.
This was so wrong.
It didn’t matter that the world was rid of a depraved criminal. The idiot masses wouldn’t even notice that he was gone. Jim Moriarty - Richard Brook - would be just another headline. He’d be office chat, something to talk about for 5 minutes over tea and biscuits before work started or lunchbreaks ended. In a week or two, there would be a new story to occupy their silly little heads.
Jim Moriarty would fade away, and Sherlock Holmes would fade with him.