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Sherlock had been chasing after this lead for weeks, unable to let it go. Mycroft had told him he was like a dog with a bone. That it was unhealthy. That he was worried for him.
But he just hadn't been able to drop it. This case--it had been gnawing at him. He was missing something. The details--there was just something so familiar about them. Not for the first time, he wished that James was here to help him work it out. To join him in his mind, walk around and see what he couldn't.
For a brief, shining moment they had worked together. And Sherlock had seen a hopeful future laid out before him. Purpose. Companionship. A shared goal. And then it had all fallen apart.
He still didn't quite know why, though he had his suspicions, but James had drifted away from him, grown more and more distant until he barely recognized the man. And after a while the inevitable happened. One day he was there and the next he was gone. Out of his life as if he'd never been there at all. The gaping hole he'd left behind was an obstacle Sherlock found difficult to surmount. And now he was more lonely than ever.
He had known something was wrong for a long time, he wasn't a fool. And he'd suspected James wasn't being honest with him--about many things. He also knew James was less morally scrupulous than some.
Sherlock wasn't naive. He'd often suspected that James was working both sides of the law. But he'd avoided it, looked past it. Excused it. After James' sudden disappearance...well, it was harder to ignore. And the circumstances of the case they were working on when James had vanished...well. Sherlock had come to some uncomfortable conclusions about who the real perpetrator might be. Emphasis on traitor.
And James had known he'd known, or at least suspected. Sherlock never could hide anything from him.
The next day he was gone.
Now this case... It all felt a little too familiar. The fingerprints of his former best friend were all over it. Sherlock didn't want to admit it but he feared that perhaps the criminal mastermind he was hunting was an all too familiar face.
Now he found himself in a dark alley in the late hours of the evening, standing a streets width apart from the man he'd been hunting all these weeks. He'd chased him here, this man in the hooded cloak, and had him backed up to a wall. Then the man spun around and Sherlock suddenly found a pistol aimed squarely at his chest, moonlight glinting off the barrel.
He raised his hands in the air quickly. "Don't shoot."
The hooded man took a step forward, the gun unwavering in his hand.
"I know you," Sherlock called across the alley. "I know your heart, James Moriarty. You could never hurt me."
"Want to bet, Sherley?" James asked, lowering his hood with one hand to expose his face and cocking the hammer with the other. But Sherlock noted the slight quaver in his voice. The young Irishman was usually so self-assured but the mask was slipping in the face of this. "When did you know it was me?"
"I suspected almost immediately," Sherlock admitted. "But I didn't know until right now."
James smirked. "Always so brilliant, Sherlock. What's it like, finally being the smartest one in the room, now I'm gone?"
"You can still make this right," Sherlock said, ignoring the dig and taking a step off the curb and towards his friend. "It doesn't have to be this way."
"What, me on one side and you on the other?" James retorted.
"You could always walk over here and join me on this side," Sherlock said lightly.
James rolled his eyes at Sherlock's deliberate ignorance of his meaning.
"This has been a lovely reunion Sherlock, but I'm afraid I really do have to be going. And you're in my way." He leveled the pistol at Sherlock's heart.
Sherlock tensed but held his ground. "You won't shoot me. A lot may have changed but deep down, I know you're still the same man I knew. Can't we make this right?"
"You're a world away from me now Sherlock. And I have no wish to come back to yours. One where I'm not respected, not appreciated." James' voice was rising as he grew more agitated. "Where I'm seen as little more than an Oxford reject, an orphan, a bastard."
"I respected you!" Sherlock shouted in the quiet night. "I appreciated you! You were my best friend." His voice broke and he cleared his throat, trying to regain his composure. He tugged his jacket down and took a breath.
"Surrender now, and I can help you. Mycroft can help you. You can make up for this. Choose a different path."
Sherlock flinched back as a shot rang out, deafening in the enclosed alleyway. Brick dust sprayed across his shoulder as a bullet lodged itself in the wall just behind him.
"I won't ask you again," James said softly. "Get out of my way and let me leave."
"James," Sherlock said, soft and pleading. "Don't you remember what it was like? Working side by side, our minds moving almost as one? Piecing together impossible puzzles, filling in the gaps for each other, nullifying each other's deficiencies?
"I have no deficiencies," James hissed.
"Whiskey, women and song, I would argue," Sherlock said teasingly. "And we both know I'm better at quadratic equations."
"Enough of this," James snapped, storming towards the high street. "Don't follow me."
Sherlock's shoulders slumped as he watched him walk away. His hopes lifted momentarily as the young man paused at the alley entry and turned to look over his shoulder.
"I remember everything, Sherlock," he said sadly. Then he turned the corner and was gone.