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William James Moriarty is not the sort of man who is easily surprised. He prides himself on the opposite, in fact. He necessitates the opposite. It has become as fundamental to him as breathing, to always observe, analyse, and predict. So much so, and so thoroughly, that even when things do not go according to his first plan, he always has a second, third, even fourth plan at the ready to accommodate. Nothing comes as a surprise to him, and has not for a great number of years – even as a child, it was rare.
William James Moriarty is not easily surprised, and yet, there is one man who so easily surprises him.
From their first encounter under the staircase, Sherlock Holmes had surprised him. He had been so utterly out of place in dress and manner, yet so comfortable in his position regardless. He had read William with the ease William used to read others, made a petty game of what, to William, was a carefully honed survival skill. For some brief moments, William forgot to balance the dozens of moving parts of his Plan, and he understood a little of what it meant to be swept off of one’s feet.
Before he had even left the Noahtic entirely, Sherlock Holmes surprised William again. With only a few more sentences, William felt the ground beneath him swept away all over again. To be seen so accurately – even if only by theory – by someone he did not even realise he needed to hide from. The way Sherlock grinned about the possibility of a deeper scheme, as if nothing would bring him greater joy than to pin down the culprit. William had decided two things, then. First, that Sherlock Holmes was nothing short of the perfect candidate for his role of hero detective, and an audition must be arranged at once. Second, that he would need to be sure Sherlock did not surprise him, the next time.
The audition goes as smoothly as William had planned, entirely flawless. He was not surprised by this fact, nor Sherlock’s decision to spare Hope, but he had expected not to be. If a small part of him was disappointed by that fact, it was easily drowned under the weight of such a success. William could not have asked for a better white queen for his board, and jump though it might in any and all directions, William now understood the rules of how it moved. Even the regular, small surprises came to become a part of William’s calculated margin of error. A game on the train to London, a visit to his university, an exam failed with such startling completeness that William almost wondered how Sherlock managed to deduce anything without a shred of mathematical reasoning. Yet, all of these were within parameters – were thrilling, even, like little swirls of sweet jam baked into an apparently plain bread roll. Sherlock Holmes was a terribly fun piece to play with, and play through, and William had all but mastered him.
Until, of course, he hadn’t. Until William readies his finger on the trigger, only to be stunned out of firing by several shots rung from beside him. Until he stares, almost without comprehension, as Milverton tumbles over his balcony in a bloody mess, and Sherlock’s gun is smoking from the barrel, and William can’t begin to understand how he calculated so incorrectly. His profiling had been complete and thus far proved accurate; how could any aspect of it have been so far out of place that Sherlock could kill a man with such vitriol and lack of visible grief? It was both devastating and thrilling, and William knew he had to hurry everything else along, now, before anything else could fall out of his control. “Catch me if you can,” he had said, again, to similar effect as the last time, and at least he could rely on the fact that Sherlock still loved their game as much as he always had.
Knowing, then, that he had little time left, William set to work with a passion. All of the dozens upon dozens of moving parts and balancing elements finally began to come together, all of the pieces moving into their final positions. The black king was properly cornered, the whole board positioned perfectly, and the white queen a single move away from an inescapable checkmate. This, at least, William hoped he could trust. That he had arranged things too perfectly to go awry. That Sherlock would have no qualms in killing, now that he had once already. He had made it so very easy for Sherlock to win, to take the final step across the board and knock him down. And yet, Sherlock hesitated, and William realised with wry amusement that he should have known Sherlock would surprise him. He should have expected it by now. But it was too late to recalculate, too important for this moment not to go as planned, so even as William began to see the chips of dark wood under the white paint of his most precious playing piece, he continued to fight and goad it in hopes it would fight back. It never does.
William jumped, then, because he knew this much could not be taken from him. If Sherlock wouldn’t push him into the final checkmate, he’d resign the game, himself, and there’s nothing he or Sherlock could do to stop the game from ending once the king has fallen. It was foolproof, so far beyond point of salvation that there need not even have been a consideration of contingencies. Gravity would not allow even for the tricks of Sherlock Holmes.
William should have known better than to underestimate him. He chose Sherlock, himself, after all. He found himself suspended over the flames of London being reborn like a phoenix, and he looked up at Sherlock with nothing but helplessness in his eyes. Helplessness, and a sad, aching fondness. If only Sherlock could see that William wasn’t worth all of his brilliant, logic-defying wonder. William wasn’t worth fighting so hard to save. He had neither the time nor the willpower left to make Sherlock understand this. “You’ve bested me,” is what he said instead, because it was true, and as one final gift, one last small surprise in retaliation, he wrapped all of that broken, hopeless adoration into his voice, “Sherly.”
Too far to reach, and Sherlock’s arm too wounded to try. Even still, even still, Sherlock Holmes surprised him. Of all of the surprises along the way, this shook William most deeply. More than a pleasant, unexpected encounter. More than being seen through so easily at the base of a golden staircase. More even, William thought, than watching the man he planned to kill be shot by someone else. Because all of those things happen, though rarely, in a life where people have free will. For anyone – let alone the likes of Sherlock Holmes – to throw themselves entirely at the mercy of fall and river and flame just to save someone who neither wanted nor deserved to be saved was unheard of. For William to be held so closely, so tenderly, even in the face of violent death, was outside the realm even of the unlikely.
There, in the warmth of that careful embrace, William gave up trying to predict anything that Sherlock would do. He gave up on trying to fight, trying to consider how he might still push Sherlock away to safety, trying to calculate the odds of either or both of them surviving this. He closed his eyes and gave over his future entirely to Sherlock. Sherlock would have taken it, anyway. Perhaps he already had.
Even as they both fell to a highly probable death, William felt at peace. He trusted the world he had forged to his family. He trusted himself to Sherlock. He allowed himself to tuck his face into Sherlock’s shoulder and enjoy, for however long he might, the only unpredictable thing he had ever found safety in.