Chapter Text
Commandant Moriarty was livid.
No, strike that, he was more than livid. He was stark raving mad.
Here he was, in the middle of a sacrificial ceremony guaranteed to keep him young and alive forever with a literal army at his every beck and call, and it was all ruined by a bunch of blood thirsty sea bitches! And considering he couldn’t very well kill any of them, even in defense, he’d been forced to seek high grounds and shelter while allowing Moran to utilize his better features and blood thirsty nature. So he’d climbed up the side of the out cropping, teeth-riddled beasts chomping at his heels until Seb had dealt them swift punishment for their crimes.
“If any of you disgusting beasts follow me, I will cheerfully have Sebastian here beat you to death with my hat and then turn you into shoes!” It was a threat he couldn’t keep, but it made him feel better making it. His magic bargain still held fast to keep him from harming any of them. “And don’t doubt that I would have him do so!”
Sebastian had just smirked a bit before his mouth set in a determined line and he’d turned back to face the oncoming battle head on. Typical. Now he was trapped up high upon the rocky cliff faces, forced to watch as loyal Sebastian tried to fend them off and attempt to carry out his orders as well. The fair haired Commander fought wildly, bravely even, like a trapped wolf fending for its young, but in the end it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough in regards to the fabled and the supernatural.
After the third significant blow he’d taken by one of the writhing masses in the sea and on the ground, Moriarty could see the recognition dawn upon his face. He could plainly see the cold, calculating acceptance that Moran showed upon realizing that he wasn’t going to be able to win. That he was going to die at some point in the near future, and that there was little he could do to stop it. So Seb had stopped fending them off offensively and retreated to the easier defensive role before he proceeded to make his way away from the edge of the water and Tethys’s bound corpse. At first Captain Moriarty had been angered by this, thinking the man a deserter, until he saw a shimmering glimpse of metal work as Moran picked up the large Triton’s Conch from their bag of supplies near the opening of the chamber.
Moran was making his way back to Moriarty’s perch slowly with their salvation tucked tightly in under his arm, his other glancing blows off of scaled tales or angry claws, never enough time to actually blow the Conch less he wished for a fatal wound. And he was doing his very best to move at an agonizingly slow pace back to his Captain, succeeding in the barest inches of movement. He was almost halfway back to the incline when the blow from one of the largest fighting Mermaids caught him from the side, ripping him open from just beneath his breast bone down into his gut. The massive silver beast was then wrenched from his person by another of the beasts, the purple one this time, and Moriarty watched with something like fondness and regret as Moran’s eyes widened slightly before rolling up into his head. Sebastian hit the rocky ground with an exceedingly wet splat and went still.
And though is eyes were facing away from where Moriarty was sitting, the distinct stillness of Moran’s entire body was more than enough of an indicator that there was nothing left of the man. Nothing left but a meat shell that was currently looking to be a prize for a few of the smaller beasts waiting in the wings for the fighting to cease. Ones that seemed to be left out from the feasting that the others visible was taking part of. But when he went down, his body had canted inwards to protect the one thing that would be his Captain’s salvation, and if Moriarty could just get passed the hungry devils guarding his sanctuary to get the prize, he would easily be able to get out of this mess.
But that was before the monsters started throwing things up onto the shoreline.
Tiny somethings, tiny somethings that wailed and screamed into the open air.
Moriarty felt -for once in his life- sort of sick.
Because they were eating their young and dead.
Gagging, Moriarty decided it was high time to move upwards again, just in case they decided that they were determined to have him for a meal as well. It might be easier for them to climb than he once thought, and if they were all in the blood trance that cannibalism surely needed, then he wasn’t about to try it. But if he shouted obscenities at them the entire way up, well that was his business.
Out the corner of his eye, as he climbed up a few more feet, he saw something. A very familiar something, standing just at the entrance to the cave chamber. And not just any something, oh no, a person, standing just out of sight from the gory feast going on below. Sherlock Holmes, the one and only, was standing just there looking very lost and in pain. And since Commandant Moriarty had decided to climb up those few extra feet, he had no way to be able to get at him from this distance.
Oh, but there were other ways, other means to get that that infuriatingly persistent man. Because between him and Sherlock lay at least a dozen or more Mermaids, all eager to feast and render prey limb from limb. And with every second that passed by them, more and more of them seemed to show from the depths of the deep water crowding and splashing up against the weathered stone that made up the floor. They showed for the blood, the grisly meat that they were eating, the meat that came from their own, but who were they to turn down the offer of a nice human male? Especially one so happy to walk directly into their home? All he’d have to do was alert them to the lithe man’s intrusive presence and then watch the fall out occur.
“Sherlock, how nice of you to join us! And after making me wait so very long. I thought you’d never show.” His shout rang out through the large stone chamber, echoing over the water sharply just as it did the rocks. “And might I add, what lovely dinner attire.”
Every Mer in the giant alcove froze before turning their heads collectively in his direction, large, inhuman eyes swiveling until they found his thin figure against the background. They moved as a cohesive mass, and even Moriarty was a bit off-put by the sight.
Sherlock just looked calm and collected, only fidgeting with the handle of his blade for a moment before drawing himself up to his full height.
“Come now, don’t be shy! I’m sure they won’t bite you too much, Sherly dear!” The Naval Commandant’s voice crooned sickly sweet taunts, but Sherlock still did no budge. “Because I’m sure they’re just as surprised to see you here as I am. How ever did you escape your sinking ship in tact and alive?”
“I didn’t.” Sherlock took one step, then two, jerkily into the cloying space they all occupied. His steps were not halting from fear, but from some unseen resistance, though his face remained passive. “I cam back for you, Jim. I came back for you.”
Moriarty laughed mockingly down at Sherlock. He was acting as if he were some sort of ghost or lost soul, when in reality Jim could clearly see the blood from the wound to Sherlock’s side bleeding beneath his shirt and coat, even at this distance. Ghosts did not bleed. His rival was clearly alive -though he still wasn’t sure just how he had survived the cannon blasts that destroyed his ship- despite the efforts to look like an ocean-drug corpse. Sherlock Holmes was human and not a vengeful water spirit.
But the strange thing was, he seemed to be scaring the Mermaids around him as he still slowly made his advance on Moriarty’s perch. They would watch him carefully until he got too close to them, turning and fleeing hastily as if the Hounds of Hell were at their very tails. Each one of their faces clouded in terror as they fled to the safety of the water’s hold, and Sherlock never even looked at any of them, his icy gaze held fast on Moriarty himself. For creatures as inhuman as they were, seeing them run away in such genuine fear of a human-playing-sea-bourn-spirit was very...beautiful.
And with realizing their full beauty, Moriarty also realized just how upset that made him.
“You’ve come for me, have you? As what? You are certainly not a revenge-fueled ghost of the water’s claimed. Nor are you dead.” Jim hissed, carefully taking a few steps down the rocks himself, towards Sherlock without much thought. “You are nothing but a man, an ideal, and a wounded one at that. So easily crippled and destroyed.”
“If that is what you believe, then that is what I am.”
“So you do not claim to have kissed Davy Jones then?” His demented laughter was only followed by his steady climbing back down the rock. Sherlock thought him a spider with his fluid grace, one to be squashed and then dumped into the sea for some hungry fish to devour. “Have not met the Man in person, or heard the word of a god?”
“I have claimed nothing, Moriarty. I am letting you do all the talking, the claiming, the naming. All the deductions.” Sherlock stood in the middle of the antechamber a few paces from Moriarty’s rock, with his arms drawn wide. “Name me and then meet me in battle.”
All the remaining Mers swarmed into the water one after another.
The tension crackled in the air.
Nearby, the Clutches lay unused and un-needed.
“Well, if you are a ghost then, let us see how much you can bleed?” Moriarty lunged off the rocks, still a few feet from the ground, hitting the stone floor moving rapidly, sword drawn and raised. His aim was sure to Sherlock’s injured side. “To the death, Sherlock Holmes. We meet once more.”
Their swords clashed together.
Each step of their fight resembled a sort of horrible dance, leading up to the ultimate ending where only one challenger would remain standing as the victor. Sherlock blocked and dodged like a pro, quickly and skillfully evading Moriarty’s more power-laced blows. But where he was quick on his feet and graceful in his attacks, he was less powered behind the physical aspects of it, and Moriarty was more than making up for his lack of prowess by being bluntly brutal in retaliation. The shrill clanking of metal on metal soon prevailed in the air, and following in its wake were grunts and groans of the two men taking part in the battle. It went on like this for quite some time, each man matched evenly with the other, neither gaining ground or losing it to their opponent. A challenge, truly, to the death, but more-so as the battle drifted onwards.
“You need me to be something, Moriarty!” Sherlock shouted, nearly doubled in pain, a hand clasped firmly to the once more bleeding wound in his abdomen after a rather fierce blow on his weak side. “You need me to keep yourself afloat, to keep yourself with purpose! You’ve felt it, haven’t you? The boredom slowly seeping in, the sheer agony of being without a challenge, without a rival. What do you think will happen once you really kill me?”
Moriarty gave only a second’s worth of pause, but it was enough.
Sherlock lunged forwards, hoping to strike Moriarty in the gut at the very most, the upper thigh or leg at the very least, anything in order to deal him damage as he had done to him. Something that would be enough to cripple him or subdue him for a any amount of time. Time that Sherlock desperately needed to redouble his efforts and compose himself once more. He needed it, because as the battle drew on, he was tiring quickly, and the pain shooting from his stab wound was increasing ten-fold. He wouldn’t be able to keep up the physical exertion for too much longer. It had to end. It had too. This could not go on for much longer, not how it was. Sherlock wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But Sherlock miss-stepped in his pain and distress, misjudged the distance from him to Moriarty, and in doing do left his belly and side wide open. So that when Jim dodged the blow and drew away to the side, it left him with a full opening in order to run Sherlock through. Sherlock would be too slow and too weak to stop it. This was the end, he had failed. He had fallen so quickly.
Moriarty’s blade descended and Sherlock closed his eyes in anticipation of his failure.
Though instead of blossoming agony in an already painful side, the sound of splashing water and breaching flesh tore through the air, just as metal did. Instead of a triumphant shout that the British Naval Captain was sure to give, there was an inhuman screeching cry before the sound of metal, bones, and flesh met. Sherlock opened his eyes to witness John being impaled upon Moriarty’s sword instead of himself, and everything within him froze over. John had come from the water, must have pushed his way through the sea and the other fearful bodies beneath it, must have somehow escaped Mycroft and his crew in order to back track and come to Sherlock’s aid. He had come from the water at the very last moment in order to impale himself upon the blade instead of allowing it to fell the wounded Captain Holmes and carry him to his death. John had taken their friendship and used it as motivation, as a shield with which to protect and defend. John had saved his life at the cost of his very own.
And the red binding magic on Moriarty’s pinky flared to life with a passion, the beautiful crimson band elongating and expanding until it was a brand up along his hand, traveling across his wrist and up his arm, towards his neck and torso. Jim shouted in agony and confusion, clearly bewildered as to why the intent behind the promise was reacting to his stabbing of John in the way it was. Tethys had rejected John as one of hers, but clearly something in the magic still identified with him as a true Mer, as a denizen of the deep. It reacted with fiery spite, stripping the man bound in its web of everything he had and laid bare his soul. Sherlock could only look on just as confused while the red-light, the magic Sherlock guessed, began to rip Moriarty apart. Whatever John had done, it had saved him from his end.
“No, she denounced you as kin! She denounced you!” Jim screeched, dragging his sword around in John’s abdomen in his anger before ripping it from his side in order to grasp his sword hand over his burning chest and the rippling patterns beneath his shirt. It sent blackish blood in an arc against the rocks and water below, staining the surface with dark. “You’re not kin! And you’re not one of her’s! This won’t work! There was no intent!”
But the magic was already racing in.
The sound of tearing flesh soon filled the air, along with Moriarty’s pained screams.
John did little more then than collapse backwards to the ground, his upper torso laying mostly on top of his lower half, a once melodious voice pitched low with pain and sorrow. His visibly damaged side was colored as dark as the ground was now, stained with blood where the sword had opened up a substantial wound from his gills nearly to his navel. The water sluicing off his body only made the blood run faster, panting and movement resulting from the irritation. Gaping to the open air and starring Sherlock in the face with biting accusation, here was every bit of his failure printed into John’s flesh with anger and the blade it was carried upon. John would not last long, not like this, Sherlock realized, and he was beginning to think that they both knew it. John was going to die, and it was all his fault.
“John, oh no, no.” He flung himself more to John’s side, trying anything, everything to stem the flow of blood. “No, you can’t leave me. Not now, we’ve come so far.”
Sherlock was not crying, not yet, but he felt like his entire world was being ripped apart from the inside out as he gathered the flailing Merman to him as gently as he was able. John just cried out but did not resist, trying to help move away from the magic that was ripping their foe to pieces before them. All the time, Moriarty continued to scream and flail, slamming himself backwards into the rocky outcropping that he’d climbed down to face off with Sherlock, his limbs and head beating against it with every pulsing of magic and cry of pain. Captain Holmes used his tattered shirt sleeve, arm. and upper torso to try and shield both himself and John from the backlashing of power that suddenly bloomed outwards from its Moriarty center, but even then the scarlet light blinded him for several seconds after the explosion happened. The rocks and water resounded with the force of the impact, casting sound in all directions.
When all was quiet except the panting of both himself and John, Sherlock slowly relaxed and drew his arm away from both their faces and uncurled himself from about John slowly. If Moriarty had survived whatever it was that had just happened, he had to be ready, he had to be ready to defend himself and John. To kill with all swiftness.
But there was little left of the once-famed Commandant.
His remains were simply that of a skeleton dressed in old rags weathered away by exposure and salt, the sword he’d been clutching embedded with the bones into the rocky face behind them. Forever trapped and immortalized for those foolish enough to venture here to see. Commandant Moriarty was nothing but remains trapped forever in a rocky prison upon the sea side, a statue, a trophy for the Mers and the magic that beat him. A warning to all who dared mess with magics they could never hope to control.
The now deceased Commandant didn’t take up his attention for very long, however, when John’s once iron tight grip upon his shirt began to go slack, clawed hands spasming as if in pain and weakness. Dying, Sherlock’s mind supplied, his body was dying, and he couldn’t do anything to prevent it. There was too much blood, too much damage to fix or even treat, and nothing he could do would stop what mortal men feared.
So together, he and John cried and clutched at one another until the time came.
Until The End.
With one final sharp inhale, John’s body went still.
And Sherlock wept.
“Do not cry, mortal. The sea has long been awaiting the return of its lost child.” A great voice filled the air above Sherlock’s head, breaking the silence with determination tinged with sadness. It could have been hours of minutes for Sherlock, so deep was his grief. “It has gained back what once was lost. The ocean though he would never return.”
Sherlock turned around and brandished his own cutlass before himself and John’s body, prepared in his grief to fend off anyone who dared interfere and take John from him. No one could have him, no one. Sherlock would not let him. But the great purple Mermaid before him -the one from earlier, his mind supplied, the one with the dark skin and piercing teal eyes- did not flinch back from his anger or loss, but instead approached further to help him embrace it. She circled her great arms around him and John before slithering back upright, her torso propped up on her great tail as she surveyed them both with understanding in her own right.
“You must return him to the sea, so that his body may be once more returned to its home.” She said again, her face passive if a bit pinched, body covered in trace remains of blood. “He is meant to be here. His destiny has been met.”
“No, I will not return him to you. You will devour him. You will take him from me and mangle his corpse.” Sherlock said hurriedly, eyes shifting from her to their surroundings, looking for those he knew to be hiding just out of sight. “I will not allow you to do such a horrible thing John. Not on my watch.”
“We would never, not for one as brave as him. His name will become legend.” She sighed before moving herself so that she was placed just as the edges of the water and of John’s torn tail, her own massive appendage fluttering as she moved. “Help me return him to the water. Give me, Sasheena, the new found Matron, the power to help return him to us. He has been lost for a long while and I would be glad of his company once more.”
“I do not know what you want of me, Sasheena, but you cannot have John. He is all that is left of me. You can have anything else you ask. But do not take him from me.” Sherlock bit at his lip, tears making their way down his face. “Take whatever Moriarty has stolen, but leave me him.”
“You would give up the power of Triton’s Conch? The great Clutch?” She seemed surprised, but her face was pleasant in its surprise, not startling. Fangs gleamed for only a moment before she composed herself once more. “You would give us our freedom from humans?”
“I thought I would have need of it to call you and your people off of me, so that I could avenge the wrongs that man dealt me. But I was wrong, you fled when I walked among you.” Sherlock snapped, holding John closer to him still. “I don’t want it. Take it and the memories it contains and be free. We will not trouble you again.”
Sasheena paused for only a moment before she moved down further into the water on an incline that had been sculpted from the rocks, her beautiful hair and tail moving with practiced ease over the jagged rocks. Once she’d submersed her gills back into the water, she turned to Sherlock questioningly. She would not ask again, but the care in her features was enough to tell Sherlock all he needed to know. That she truly wished John’s body to be returned for proper funeral rights as done by the Merfolk. He could not give brave John that. He could not follow his wishes when they were as alien to him as Mers were.
“You would take him and properly give him your rights? You will not eat him?” He demanded of her, his own glacier eyes meeting the warm teal of hers. “You must promise to me, swear it, that you will not desecrate his body.”
“My word then, human, that Ladon’s body will go to the sea.” Her head dipped once in acknowledgement. “I have no ill will for him or his kind. It was not me who drove them out, and I do not wish to follow in my Matron’s footsteps or duties. I only pity.”
“And why should you pity him?”
“For the love he bore for humans. It is not a frequency my kind encounters, the amount of love and loyalty he had for you. His mourning cry was enough to have my sadness. His actions my pity.” She gently took John’s tail in her hands and began lifting it up off the group, so that Sherlock could pick the rest of him up and join her in the water. “Come, bear witness to his reward. It is the least I can do for you.”
Sherlock nodded and gently picked John’s upper torso up fully and held onto him tightly as he moved, shifting so that no part of him drug the ground. It was painful for him in more than just emotional ways, but he would see the proper thing done. If for John’s sake. Always for John’s sake.
With an agonizing pace, he edged towards the water, his trousers at the knees ripping from the jagged points in the floor, but he would not stop. His careful touch took him all the way into the the water until he was sitting up on his feet and knees in the water next to Sasheena, John’s body submerged between them. The Mer Matron slowly straightened out John’s tail and fins so that they were floating gently with the bob and weave of each wave, the thin membranes of John’s arms brushing against Sherlock’s hands gently in the water. Each flick of the Mermaid’s much larger tail send ripples through the water and John, and for the tiniest of moments, Sherlock could pretend that he was only sleeping.
Sherlock did not let go of John when the Mermaid did, but watched the peaceful face of the Merman in the water with him. He would not be able to relax fully until John’s body was fully taken care of or until it was taken from his hands, which ever came first. He held tight but gently as Sasheena began to chant in some guttural language that was never meant for human mouths above them both, her webbed hands moving over the surface of the water hypnotically. The water around them began to grow steadily warm, and filled with bubbles the longer she chanted, the salty boil rising up until it completely surrounded John’s body and parts of Sherlock’s own. It made beautiful rings and patterns in the waters around them, and as the chanting changed pace, it was joined by several mournful cries and melodies from just at the surface of the water where a good chunk of the Mer population had surfaced to pay their respects. Sherlock could not count how many there were because to do so would mean taking his eyes off John, and he would not have it. But the melody was kind and gentle, and as it increased in tempo and pitch Sherlock felt his heart sing along side it. For John.
Before long, the body he held began to dissolve into the bubbles and salt around them, the fins and beautiful tail going first, followed by hands and arms and hair until there was nothing left of John in Sherlock’s arms but the blood still staining his clothing and body. The water’s temperature began to cool almost as soon as Sasheena stopped her chanting, and the bubbles dispersed along with the other Mers above the water. There was nothing left of John now except memories and blood.
“I have returned him to the sea, as is our custom.” She said heavily before she spread her arms along the water between them. “And I will deal with those that remain in my home. You and yours are free to leave, but do not return here. It is not a safe haven for humans.”
Sherlock nodded numbly in agreement, but made no move to get himself up and out of the water he still sat submerged in. He was adrift, just as John now was.
“People approach.” Sasheena said before sinking lower into the sea, the distant shouts of men and the clanking of metal working down the corridors leading here. “Thank you, human, and go before the sun does. These waters are unforgiving at night. They will not give you the peace you desire.”
“I doubt anything will.” Sherlock finally grit out. “Lost in the sea as I now am.”
Sasheena only stared at him before quickly diving beneath the waters from whence she came, the waves lapping at the shore and Sherlock’s body gently. A caress maybe, Sherlock thought, from a parting lover or a long lost friend. It only made Sherlock’s stomach turn as he settled further down into the water upon the ledge, content to stay with John for just a little longer. The sea was as close as he could get now. So the sea it would have to be where he returned as well, every bit of himself releasing out into the darkened waters as John had gone only minutes prior. It felt like a weight were simultaneously pulled from him and placed atop him, the crushing force driving him down into the water further and further until there was hardly anything left.
When Mycroft, Harry, and Lestrade finally found him, Sherlock was hardly there to save.
Just another shell pulled from the Ocean’s floor.