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"And I can hear him break
And he doesn't understand
And I wish that I could take his hand
But where I'm going is for me and me alone..."
Inkpot Gods, The Amazing Devil
It has come to this.
Mr Sherlock Holmes stands with his back to Professor James Moriarty - perhaps a rather reckless thing to do, but in spite of all his malice and manipulation and murder, the professor apparently has an honorable streak. He is willing to wait for Holmes to write his letter to Watson, before the end must come.
Then again, perhaps this is another aspect of the manipulation. To get him to confirm his own death sentence, by saying a final goodbye to his friend.
It is very, very difficult, Holmes has determined, to write a letter to your closest companion that sufficiently encapsulates goodbye and I am sorry and we have won and Moriarty is finished and I am not dead, not dead, my dear doctor, I am not dead. The professor was agreeable enough to his request that he will not read the letter once it is done, but Holmes must still be careful. He cannot predict what Watson will do with this, whether anyone else may find it and read it, and therefore he cannot explain what is truly happening here.
He is not going to die today. He refuses.
What he is going to do is break his dearest companion's heart, and consequently live with that decision for the rest of his life.
His pen has stopped moving. He blinks himself back to the present and re-reads the last sentence he put down.
Indeed, if I may make a full confession to you, I was quite convinced that the letter from Meiringen was a hoax, and I allowed you to depart on that errand under the persuasion that some development of this sort would follow.
The phrasing is vague; deliberately so. He cannot bring himself to write what he truly wants to say. I let you go. I sent you away. I wanted you to be safe and far away from me and I know you will blame yourself, my dear Watson, as much as I may beg you not to, and for that I am so very sorry.
Watson had told him to go on ahead, that once his doctorly duties were done he would catch up with him. Wasn't that always the way?
He can feel the eyes of Moriarty boring a hole into his back, but he will not turn around and acknowledge him until he has finished writing. He puts the tip of the pen between his lips as he tries to think of how to continue.
How indeed. How on earth.
Perhaps some simple instructions.
Tell Inspector Patterson that the papers which he needs to convict the gang are in pigeonhole M., done up in a blue envelope and inscribed "Moriarty".
What else, what else.
I made every disposition of my property before leaving England and handed it to my brother Mycroft.
Another confession. Poor Watson has no idea how much additional planning lay hidden under the surface of their hurried trip to the Continent. He only knows what Holmes has told him.
Holmes has never told him enough, has he?
Pray give my greetings to Mrs. Hudson, and believe me to be, my dear fellow,
Very sincerely yours, Sherlock Holmes.
He completes the letter with a crude drawing. It is small, and smudged, easily overlooked at the bottom right corner of the paper. It is a drawing of a hand, a left hand; thumb, forefinger, and little finger extended, and the middle and ring fingers curled in. A simple representation of three letters from the American Sign Language alphabet, which Holmes occasionally uses when he either has one hand occupied or is attempting to be more subtle with his finger-spelling.
I-L-Y.
That will have to do. Any more drawings and someone may begin to suspect a code. It is a code, in a way. He hopes Watson will understand it.
There are many more things he wants to write, and a certain part of him that wants to stop writing entirely and simply run away; run from Moriarty, from the waterfall's dark abyss, run all the way back down to the hotel where he can grab the doctor's hand and keep running and never stop as long as they are together. But that cannot happen. He cannot let Moriarty go, and so he cannot return to his Watson yet.
He folds up the letter, caps the pen, and turns back to the professor. His enemy's eyes are filled with impatience, even as he tries to keep his expression relatively neutral. Noticing this, Holmes takes his time removing a single cigarette from his silver case, placing the case on top of his letter, and tucking both down beside the rock he was leaning on. He lights the cigarette and begins to smoke it quickly. He does not offer one to the professor.
Is it foolish, to deliberately antagonise a powerful and dangerous man when the two of them are standing on such a precipice and to fall would mean certain death? Yes, of course it is. But Holmes does it. It is by far not the worst thing he will do today.
"Are you quite finished, Mr Holmes?" asks the professor. He has stabbed his cane into the soft ground and is leaning on it, his shoulders hunched, resembling a strange corvid in his long black coat.
"Almost," Holmes replies. He is incredibly thankful that on both occasions when he and Moriarty have spoken face-to-face, he has somehow still been able to use his voice. He will not consider what the professor might have done if he'd found out that particular tidbit of information. "Why? Is there somewhere else you would prefer to be?" He drops the last of his cigarette into the damp grass.
Good Lord, he can hear Watson’s voice in his mind, admonishing him for being so cavalier in this situation. In truth, he is all over the place and attempting to hide it, and maintaining such an attitude feels like the only thing that keeps him from leaping forward and tackling Moriarty off the cliff. He has never felt so shaken, and therefore his mask is thicker than ever.
He should have ended this in his own living room, when Moriarty visited him. The world would not have begrudged him that. Watson would have understood.
Moriarty sneers at him. “I assure you, Mr Holmes, I am precisely where I wish to be.”
Holmes folds his hands neatly behind him. “Very well. Then how are we to go about this duel of yours?”
It is very, very difficult, Holmes has determined, to climb a rocky cliff and escape the siren call of a waterfall that wants to claim your soul. Particularly when you have already nearly died once, and you are dressed for a hike through grassy hills rather than a mountain-climbing expedition. These are his conclusions; he has no desire to repeat the experiment.
He lies on his back at the top of the falls. The stone is cool against his back, dampness soaking through the fabric of his clothes. A fine mist fills the air and settles on his skin, mingling with the sweat on his brow. Above him the sky is clear, a beautiful blue, and by all other accounts it will surely be a lovely afternoon.
He feels like his heart will never slow down.
Above the roar of the water, he hears a voice - one he would recognise anywhere.
Holmes is instantly alert, rolling onto his front so he can see his friend down below. Watson is darting through the grass with great speed, calling his name. Three times he calls for him, cupping his hands around his mouth to magnify the sound as it echoes down the cliff face. Each cry sounds more desperate than the last.
Holmes almost replies to the first one; it is instinctual. He’s always done it before, when he’s been able. He gets halfway through the doctor’s name and has to stop himself.
For what might be the first time in his life, he wishes he were unable to speak right then. It would make the temptation far easier to resist. He mustn’t call out, for Watson’s sake. He mustn’t.
Watson stops in his tracks. He has seen the tall Alpine walking stick Holmes left behind, jutting from the grass like a grave marker. Holmes cannot see his face from where he is, but he can imagine the expression, the shadows passing over Watson’s features as he begins to understand what has apparently occurred.
Oh, my dear Watson. I’m sorry.
He’s found the letter. He stoops and picks it up, along with the cigarette case, and then adopts an eerily similar position to that which Holmes had held while writing it; his back to the cliffs, leaning against the same rock, his head bowed as he studies the paper. Holmes feels his fingers twitch as if they want to reach out for him, to grasp the doctor’s shoulder as he has done so many times before, stroke a hand down his spine to soothe his nerves while he kisses his brow.
Watson is not a man who cries often. It is not through some misplaced insistence on masculine stoicism, but because his expression of sadness generally leans more towards brooding than anything else, before he happens upon a way to make things better or Holmes brings him out of his mood with a well-placed distraction. Over the years they have been together, Holmes has seen him weep only twice. One of those times was when he feared for his own life, and the relief afterward became too much for him to bear in silence.
And one of them is now.
Watson is crying for him. He hunches over, curling in on himself, his shoulders visibly shaking even from this distance. Holmes can imagine how his hands tremble holding the letter, how his face crumples.
It is wrong for Watson to be crying because of him. It should not be something that is allowed to happen.
Holmes turns away from the sight. There is a lump in his throat and he fights to swallow it down. He cannot stay. He can run, now; now he can run, as far and as fast as he likes.
But it must be away from here and away from his dear friend, because everything went exactly as he planned.
Sherlock Holmes is dead, and whether he is able to or not, he will not speak to John Watson for a very long time.