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After the business with the bride (Emilia Ricoletti, Sherlock reminds himself), Moriarty quiets. Or, at least, the Moriarty that once barreled unencumbered through his mind palace quiets, while the one that haunts London’s television and laptop screens rages on, promising puzzles and peril and everything Sherlock yearns for when he rises in the morning, thoughts a blurry firing mass seeking focus.
He’s immensely grateful, at first, for the quiet in his head, all of Moriarty’s noise and bustle externalized, the danger outside, real to everyone, where he can think and work his way through it without internal distraction. Moriarty’s schemes are magnificent, of course, even in death, each cleverer and more impossible than the last, the stakes always rising. People die, sometimes, when Sherlock is too slow, outwitted by a shade, but the ache is somehow always lessened when he sees John grieve each of them, the purple under his eyes deepening as he takes Mary’s hand, their mouths twin frowns. They feel, and suddenly Sherlock doesn’t have to, back straightening and eyes clearing as he thinks but does not say: dying, that’s what people do.
He’s grateful, yes, that death was not the end of Moriarty’s grip on the world, that his manic smile and ever-widened eyes still flash menacingly at him at every corner, that his reach remains enacted by a web of workers who plant bombs, hack systems, and point guns as soon as Moriarty’s onscreen ghost commands them to. Boredom is a far-off nightmare, and Sherlock hasn’t so much as thought about needles or pills or powder in months.
There’s a pain threaded through all this joyous frenzy, though, a pain that gets more difficult to swallow with the close of each new Moriarty-authored case. It isn’t just that Sherlock fears reaching the end (for surely an end will come, the footage will run out, and then what will be left?), it’s that he misses...something. Moriarty talks at him, celluloid and pixels, with all the life and bite he always did, playful, innuendo-laden, infuriating, but there’s something different around his eyes, something not quite sad but close to it. He’s a man aware he’s dying, talking into a camera, talking to Sherlock, knowing a response won’t come where he can see or hear it.
It’s strange, that Sherlock can miss responding to him, can miss impressing. Excelling is well and good, and God knows he has no shortage of admirers, gifts and letters flooding 221B after each hard-won victory, but there was always something uniquely exhilarating about Moriarty’s impressed attention, his smiling concessions. Something singularly thrilling about beating someone (if only for a second, and it was always just a second with Moriarty) who delighted at the fact of being beat.
Moriarty is everywhere, throwing daily wrenches in Sherlock’s life, bringing death and trauma with him, and yet, a painful truth emerges: Sherlock misses him terribly, in some strange tender way that makes his skin go cold, hands trembling.
It’s easy not to dwell, when there’s work to be done (and there always is now), but the spike of nervous pleasure that comes with a new address from Moriarty’s pixelated form still makes him momentarily falter, fingers scrabbling at the case of his phone, itching to text, to call, to respond and be responded to.
He shares none of this with anyone, meets Mycroft’s sideways knowing glances with icy glares that betray nothing. It matters not, Sherlock is clean, cleaner and sharper than he’s ever been. He spends most of his time at 221B alone now, it’s true, but there’s always a test to run, newspaper clippings to sift through, letters to decode.
“Have you given any thought to what you’ll do when this is all over?” Mycroft asks him one day, mouth twisting in that way he has, smug and shattered all at once.
“There will always be cases, Moriarty or no,” Sherlock snaps, waving a hand dismissively, his eyes never leaving the dog-eared map stretched out in front of him.
It sticks with him, though, in the weeks to come, as Mycroft surely knew it would, and Sherlock knows it wasn’t so much a question as it was a warning: be prepared for the end of this, lest the shock of losing it send you down a familiar path.
He decides, one day, to face the matter head-on, retreating into that palace that sits inside him in ways he’s only before attempted when deliriously high or dying (or both). He locates himself in 221B, not very different to the one of reality, only the light hitting it differently, sunbeams flickering unnaturally. He takes a seat, unsure if he should wait, hope that Moriarty will come to him, or seek him out. He sits for several moments (impossible to know how long, time works differently, here), before impatience gets the better of him.
He closes his eyes and re-opens them to find the rooftop at St. Bart’s, the last place he’d ever seen Moriarty, in living breathing flesh. He wanders around, footsteps loud and echoing, mind alert.
All is still. Not here, then.
Sherlock’s eyes squeeze closed again, thoughts racing. He attempts several other locations, including the padded room he’d once had Moriarty locked in (he finds only mild guilt there), and the Carl Powers swimming pool, to no avail.
He steps up to the pool’s edge, watching the water gently lap against the wall, greener than he remembers it. He thinks of Carl Powers, drowned, shoes missing, and feels a swell of rage and awe rise in his throat.
“Where are you?” He yells, angry.
He doesn’t get a response, but he does feel something like a tingling. Static scratching at the nape of his neck.
“Not here, then, but close,” he mumbles aloud, hand rubbing hard against the side of his neck. “Think.”
He looks down into the water’s chemically colored depths, thinking of Carl Powers again. 1989, drowned, shoes missing, the shoes, something about--
“Ah. Of course.”
Sherlock’s barely finished the thought before the world around him shifts, the swimming pool giving way to a room eerily familiar, though he’s been in it only once before. It’s 221B without any of its warmth or clutter: a barren, moldy room empty but for the figure sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, back turned to Sherlock.
“You and me in 221C,” Moriarty’s tell-tale singsong voice fills the room.
Sherlock’s irritation is tempered by relief.
“You’re not an easy man to find,” Sherlock responds, stepping forward.
Moriarty turns at that, a smile on his face.
“That’s not what I hear,” his voice is low, syllables drawn out, mocking as ever. “My image is inescapable out there, is what I hear.”
“It’s not the inescapability of your image that’s the problem.”
“Delighted to hear it,” Moriarty’s voice goes high, face twisting in parodic flattery. It settles into blank seriousness just as quickly. “Is that why you’re here? Having trouble with one of the problems I so lovingly left for you?”
“No,” Sherlock insists, defensive.
“What, then, do you want?” Moriarty’s voice is soft, vowels tilting up, eyes genuinely curious. He turns further, looking Sherlock up and down with, surprisingly, none of the salaciousness Sherlock has come to expect from him. “You’re not dying, or in any immediate danger. You only ever summon me when you need someone to provoke you toward the light of the living.”
Moriarty raises both hands to the sides of his face, cross-eyed, mouth rabid. He drops his hands into his lap after a few dramatic seconds, a self-deprecating smile sitting on his lips.
“You do know how to make a girl feel used,” he continues, “I’ve had chats with some of the ladies you deign to keep stowed away in here--”
“Enough of this,” Sherlock interrupts him with a raised hand.
In a move that surprises both of them, he moves to the center of the room to join Moriarty on the floor, sitting close enough to brush their knees together.
They sit in silence as Sherlock thinks about the last time they interacted in this room: Carl Powers’s shoes their re-introduction. He thinks of himself, just a teenager, finding his first case, the truest beginning he knows, between the inky lines of his death announcement.
“Tell me about Carl Powers,” Sherlock speaks, finally, a demand.
Moriarty is quiet for several seconds. Sherlock can feel his confused stare. He smirks, just slightly, pleased to have been the one to catch him off-guard for once.
“Carl Powers…” Moriarty manages, voice wistful. “You know everything there is to know about Carl Powers. I already told you. Dummy.”
“Did you know it was the first case to ever interest me?”
“I’m touched to hear it,” Moriarty’s voice is sincere. “You were the only one who saw. Just a kid. Clever boy.”
Sherlock turns to look at him then, unsurprised to find him smiling. It’s a smile he’s seen on him before, wet-eyed and open-mouthed, just before he blew his brains out on a rooftop all those years ago.
“But you didn’t really come here to talk about Carl Powers,” Moriarty says, still faintly smiling.
“I’m not sure what I came here to talk about,” Sherlock admits. The confession brings an absurd amount of relief.
“Oh,” Moriarty’s smile goes sinister. “You’re lonely, is that it? What with your pet running off and moving out to spawn more offspring?”
Sherlock doesn’t answer. It isn’t quite true, but it doesn’t ring false, either.
“Serves you right, for letting him ruin our moment at the waterfall,” Moriarty frowns, petulant.
“There was urgent business to attend to.”
“By ‘urgent business’ you mean me, of course.”
“Of course,” Sherlock agrees, mouth quirking up. “It’s always you, somehow.”
“Not for much longer,” Moriarty’s voice adopts the musical quality he’s so fond of. It makes the expressed sentiment no less ominous.
Sherlock’s mouth drops open, then closes again. His chest tightens.
None of this escapes Moriarty.
“Ah. That’s it. You’re scared you’re close to losing your next fix,” Moriarty hisses the last word.
Sherlock nods, just slightly, and looks down. He feels unbearably vulnerable.
“If you’d only died with me on that rooftop like you were supposed to, none of this would be an issue.”
“If only,” Sherlock mutters, venomous.
“Surely you’ve already consoled yourself with the thought that there will always be others. No end of murderers to be had.”
Sherlock doesn’t reply. He lets him continue.
“And surely you’ve also realized, just as quickly, how hollow that consolation is.”
Sherlock lowers his eyelids in assent. Moriarty laughs, harsh and vindictive.
“I’m incomparable,” he agrees, bringing a hand dramatically to his chest.
Sherlock sighs, annoyance only feigned.
“It’s not simply that I’m cleverer than your usual criminal lays,” Moriarty goes on, bottomless eyes bright. “Though I am. No, there’s something else, too.”
Sherlock inches his face closer toward him, curious.
“It’s that I alone see you. Hear you. Respond, really respond.”
“Yes,” Sherlock confesses, because, really, what does it matter? The man is dead.
Moriarty grins, elated, but falls quiet. It’s Sherlock’s turn to speak.
“Even before you revealed yourself to me by name, I felt you. Saw you, even,” Sherlock’s voice is steady, soft. “I’d open a newspaper, and there you were.”
“Boredom, loneliness remedied,” Moriarty nods.
“It hasn’t been the same, with you dead,” Sherlock states.
“With all that work I put into it,” Moriarty looks at him in exaggerated outrage. “So ungrateful…”
“You talk at me now. No hope of response.”
“And you miss our chats, even the quiet ones. Touching,” Moriarty says, hand over his heart.
“All your prattle about being made for each other and the same, somehow...I thought you were just insane.”
“And then I went away. And you got it.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I want to say that was intentional, but…” Moriarty closes his eyes for a moment, head shaking slightly. When his eyes open again, they’re sharp. “Do you regret, now, flouting our destined end?”
“You knew I’d flout it.”
Moriarty makes a loud buzzing sound. “That’s not what I asked. Don’t evade, it’s boring.”
“Life is more than just staying for me, so, no, I don’t regret it. I think I just wish life had been more than that for you, too.”
“I see,” Moriarty breaks eye contact, head turning to look at the wall before him. He looks empty, gloomy, the way he had sitting on the rooftops ledge, confessions spilling out of him.
Sherlock remembers, then, the feeling: Moriarty’s hand in his, Sherlock’s full name on his lips, eyes alight, thankful. Then the gun, brains and blood spilling out behind him. The moment of pained hesitation just before.
“With my hand in yours, the realization that you hadn’t wasted your time on me - did you consider not dying?”
“Only briefly. I let you see too much. The game wouldn’t be the same.”
“It’s not the same now.”
“Yes, but that’s your problem, not mine,” Moriarty turns to look at him again, vulnerability hardened by that toothy shark’s smile.
“I’ve let you see a lot, and I have no plans of blowing my brains out in response.”
“Stupid,” Moriarty spits, sincerely annoyed. “Of course not. This is in your head. I’m not real. This isn’t actually happening.”
“That doesn’t feel true,” Sherlock frowns, because it doesn’t.
“Doesn’t it? Or have I made a believer of you? Sherlock Holmes, talking to ghosts,” Moriarty laughs at the absurdity of it.
“You have agency in here. You elude me, derail me. Surprise me. Exist even where I can’t hear or feel you.”
“I suppose,” Moriarty concedes. “Evidence is inconclusive.”
“Always is, where you’re concerned.”
“Impossible to pin me down,” Moriarty’s eyebrows raise, mouth curling, tongue tipping out against his lips. Suggestive. “Unless you literally want to, of course.”
Sherlock’s skin warms despite himself. The crack in the lens stretches. Time to go.
Moriarty feels it even before Sherlock moves to leave.
“Leaving, are you?”
“Lives to save,” Sherlock says with a wink.
“I’ll be here,” Moriarty promises, then cackles. “Or will I?”
Moriarty’s singsong voice is still ringing in his ears when Sherlock wakes, flat on the floor of 221B. He smirks, happy for it, and pulls out his phone, unsurprised to find panicked texts from Mycroft, Lestrade, John. Moriarty’s struck again.
Heart in his throat, head already spinning, Sherlock steps out, the very air around him throbbing with possibility.
“The game is on,” he declares out loud to no one in particular, and it’s the first time it’s felt true in ages.