Work Text:
1881: Limehouse… or somewhere.
The room had been locked from the outside. James Moriarty knew this because he had tried the door. Only once. There was no point trying it again, that much was immediately clear. It was thick oak, reinforced with iron on the other side, and the lock had the unpleasant finality of something installed by a man who intended it to survive both fire and argument. James had put his shoulder against it, then his full weight, then examined the hinges, the frame, the floor beneath it. Nothing.
He had smiled at that. Not because there was anything particularly amusing about it but rather because there was something almost reassuring about finding that a problem was, in fact, exactly as difficult as it appeared.
The room contained one small window, set too high in the wall to be useful. It was barred. The glass was dirty and beyond it there was only a grey suggestion of the last dregs of daylight. Occasionally, the sound of a carriage passing somewhere below.
Additionally, there was a chair. There was a table. There was a dead man.
James had been sitting beside the dead man for nearly three hours. His name was Doyle. Or it had been until two hours ago. James had known him reasonably well. Not intimately. One did not become intimate with men like Doyle. Men who carried messages, stood outside doors, delivered parcels, collected debts, watched railway stations. Men whose names rarely appeared in newspapers because newspapers were only interested in the men above them.
Doyle had been one of James’s. That was what James kept thinking. One of mine.
James sat with his back against the wall and his knees drawn up slightly, one hand resting loosely over his wrist. Doyle lay on his side. There was blood beneath him, though not very much. The bullet had entered beneath his left shoulder blade and stopped his heart in a second. What blood there was had soaked into his shirt and pooled beneath his ribs. The man’s face was turned slightly towards James, his eyes closed. James had closed them himself: there had been something indecent about leaving them open.
“Well,” James said quietly. Doyle did not answer.
James looked at him. “I suppose this is rather awkward.”
Silence.
“You’re usually more conversational.”
Nothing.
James’s mouth twitched. “That isn’t fair, is it? You were never particularly conversationally inclined.”
He looked down at Doyle’s hands. One was curled beneath his chest while the other lay open on the floor. James noticed a small scar across one knuckle. He remembered it.
“Doyle,” he said.
The dead man remained magnificently unhelpful.
“I remember when you got that.”
Nothing.
“You were fighting three men in Limehouse.”
James tilted his head back against the wall.“You told me there were two.”
There was a pause.
“You were lying.”
His eyes drifted shut. “You always lied when you thought the truth would make you look foolish.”
James opened his eyes again. “I suppose you don’t have to worry about that now.”
That was cruel. He knew it as soon as he said it. His expression changed. “Sorry.” He stared at Doyle. “That was uncalled for on my part.”
The silence seemed somehow reproachful.
James sighed. “Yes. I know.”
He shifted slightly, drawing one knee closer. The floor was cold, the chill seeping through his trousers and into his flesh. He had spent much of his life in rooms like this. No, not precisely this room. There had been cells, basements, attics, cheap rooms above public houses. There had been rooms in respectable houses where nobody respectable had ever been invited, rooms where men waited for instructions. Rooms where men waited for death. He had spent years constructing a world in which he was never the man waiting and he had been very good at it: he had become Professor Moriarty, a name had acquired a life of its own.
At first it had been a joke. Before his chair at a good, new northern university, something the men who shifted the seemingly innocent bales at the docks called him when he checked in his interests there. Then it had become an identity - respectable, solid, a well-thought of academic presence at the cutting edge of mathematics. Then, slowly but surely, it had become a reputation: something with darkness about its edges, known to criminal coteries who either learned to join him - or flee. Now, in some circles in London, Paris, Shanghai, Delhi, and beyond, the title had become a creature with its own life. People said the name with fear now. Sometimes tinged with admiration, sometimes with disgust.
He had discovered that fear was easier to maintain than affection. Affection required close maintenance. Fear merely required consequences.
Doyle had known him before the title, before the great, sprawling organisation, before the university men began whispering about the mathematics professor who had somehow acquired an extraordinary number of friends in extraordinarily uninteresting professions. Doyle had known him when James was still young enough to believe that cleverness could save him from everything.
James looked at the corpse. “You remember that?”
No answer.
“You probably don’t.”
He smiled faintly. “I do.”
He looked towards the window. There was a patch of yellow gaslight behind the grime.
“Do you know what the strange thing is?”
Doyle said nothing.
“I used to think my life would be different. For a long time, I thought that was because I was poor.” He rubbed his thumb slowly over his knuckle. “I thought if I had money, everything would become simpler.”
A pause.
“Then I had money.”
His smile, when it came, was thin. “It did not become simpler.”
A carriage passed outside, hooves striking the street in a brief rhythm. James listened until the sound disappeared.
“I thought it was because I was Irish.” His voice had softened. “Not quite so far away from the truth, that one ”
He shrugged.
“You can build a very respectable collection of grievances if you live long enough.”
He glanced sideways at Doyle. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Doyle’s face did not move.
James frowned despite himself. “You are still doing it.”
He lowered his gaze. “All right. Perhaps it was just me being me.”
The admission sat between them. James had not intended to say it, which was perhaps why it felt so sharply true. He had spent years explaining himself, mostly to himself.
The thought that arrived next, uninvited, was that Sherlock had once been the person to whom he did not have to explain.
James’s face became still.
“Sherlock.”
He said the name as though testing whether it still belonged in his mouth.
Doyle remained silent.
James looked at him. “You remember him, don’t you.”
Of course he did. Everyone did. Sherlock Holmes had become one of those names that existed in several worlds simultaneously: Consulting detective., whatever the fuck that was. Rumour. Problem. Enemy. Friend. Lover.
James swallowed. “Yes.”
He looked away.
“We were very good together.”
There was no reason to tell the dead man that. Perhaps that was precisely why he did.
“When it was good.” His fingers tightened slightly. “It was very good.”
He could see Sherlock as clearly as if he were sitting opposite him and Doyle. The irritating tilt of his head, the restless hands, the dark hair that never remained properly arranged. The eyes. God, the eyes. Sherlock had always looked at him as though he were attempting to solve a problem that James himself had not realised he had posed.
James smiled faintly. “He used to know when I was lying.”
Doyle offered no comment.
“Not always. But usually.”
He leaned his head back. “I hated that.”
A beat.
“I loved that.”
His smile disappeared.
“And eventually I couldn’t stand either.”
The words came more slowly now.
“Do you know why we separated?”
Doyle, being dead, did not answer.
“Of course you don’t.” James looked down. “Neither do I, entirely.”
Well, that was not quite true. He knew. He simply did not know how to arrange the reasons into something that would hurt less.
Sherlock had wanted him to stop. Not everything, not at first. Just certain things. Meetings with certain men, certain arrangements. Certain nights when James disappeared and came back with blood on his cuffs and some explanation that was technically true and therefore useless.
Sherlock had understood what James was. That had been the trouble. He had understood too much.
“He said I could leave it.” James gave a small, humourless laugh. “Bless. He thought there was an outside.”
He looked towards the window.
“That’s the sort of thing Sherlock believed in.” Another pause. “He believed doors were made to be opened.”
James looked at the locked door. “But the truth is, sometimes they aren’t.”
He fell quiet.
Doyle’s body was beginning to stiffen. James noticed and did not look away.
“I should probably move you.” He didn’t but remained where he was.
“You’d make a terrible travelling companion.”
Silence.
“You don’t complain.”
A pause.
“You don’t eat.”
Another.
“You don’t argue.”
James’s expression softened. “Actually, perhaps you’re ideal.”
He reached out. For a moment his hand hovered above Doyle’s shoulder. Then he gently adjusted the dead man’s coat. It was an absurdly ordinary gesture.
James had dressed dead men before, he had ordered men killed…. He had watched men die. Yes. He had stood in rooms while people begged. He had signed instructions that became corpses. But Doyle was different. Doyle was his. That seemed to make the difference. It surprised him.
James drew his hand back. “You know,” he said quietly, “I used to imagine that if I ever died, I’d make it impressive.”
He smiled.
“Something theatrical. An explosion or, I don’t know, a plunge down a waterfall….”
His eyes travelled around the shabby room.
“This is rather disappointing.”
He looked at Doyle.
“You’ve ruined it for me.”
Nothing.
“Selfish.”
James breathed out. For the first time since waking in the room, he looked tired. Not physically but something older, something underneath. He had spent years cultivating endurance until endurance had become indistinguishable from habit. He could endure hunger, pain, fear, solitude, being hated, being misunderstood. He could even endure being loved, for a while. What he had never learned to endure was regret. Because regret required looking backwards and James Moriarty had built his entire life around looking forward. The next move, the next scheme, the next rival, the next weakness, the next victory. Sometimes he imagined himself like some great engine, made of iron, ploughing through the earth or the waves to reach its destination, regardless of the elements it moved through relentlessly. Never looking backwards, never looking down long enough to see the bodies.
Now he looked at Doyle. “Do you think I was a bad man?”
Silence. James waited.
“You can say it.”
Nothing.
“You’re dead. You’ve earned the right to be rude.”
Nothing.
James laughed quietly. “Perhaps you were always too frightened of me to say it.”
He looked at the floor. “Perhaps I was always too frightened of you really seeing me.”
That made him stop. He considered the thought then nodded once. “Yes.”
He looked at Doyle again.
“That may be true.”
Outside, somewhere far below, a church bell began to strike the hour. James counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
He lost count after that. The mathematician lost count after eight bells. He did not try again.
He had no idea how long he had been sitting there. Perhaps that was the point: time had become strangely irrelevant.
He wondered what Sherlock was doing. The thought hurt - and he allowed it to.
Perhaps Sherlock was working. Perhaps he was asleep. Perhaps he was in Baker Street, surrounded by books and papers and that peculiar chaos he pretended was an organisational system…. Perhaps he had found someone else.
James closed his eyes. He had no right to resent that. They had separated: that was what separating meant. He had wanted freedom and Sherlock had wanted safety. Neither had been entirely honest about what they had been asking the other to sacrifice all along, since Constantinople at least.
James opened his eyes.
“I still love him.”
The confession was almost inaudible. He looked immediately at Doyle. There. That was the thing he had been avoiding. Not death, not the locked door or the rival who had arranged his kidnapping or even the very real possibility that he might never leave this room alive. Sherlock.
“I still love him.”
Doyle remained still; James nodded. “I know.”
He stared at his own hands.
“I know.”
For once, he did not try to explain it away.
“I loved him when we were happy. I loved him when we were fighting.”
He swallowed.
“I loved him when he told me to go. And I loved him when I walked away.”
James looked at Doyle. “I suppose that is the trouble.”
The Irishman’s expression was almost peaceful now. “You cannot always stop loving someone merely because the sensible arrangement has ended.”
Doyle, naturally, had nothing to say.
James leaned his head against the wall. “You’re very quiet tonight.”
Nothing.
“I suppose that’s your contribution.”
James’ eyes closed. For several minutes, each man was as still as the other. Then James spoke again.
“You know what Sherlock once said to me?”
Silence.
“He said I was not the worst thing that had ever happened to him.”
A faint smile appeared on his face.
“At the time I thought that was romantic.”The smile vanished. “Now I think he meant it.”
James stared at the ceiling. There were cracks in the plaster. One ran almost directly above his head.
“I wonder whether he knows. That I never stopped.”
He breathed slowly.
“That everything since him has been an attempt to prove I could live without him.”
His mouth twisted.
“And look how well that went.”
He glanced down at Doyle.
“Professor Moriarty.” He said the title with quiet contempt. “Mastermind. ‘Criminal genius’.” His gaze moved towards the locked door. “Currently imprisoned in a filthy room with a dead Irishman.”
A faint laugh escaped him. “Quite the career.”
He reached for Doyle’s hand. The fingers were cold. James held them anyway.
“I suppose this is where you tell me not to become sentimental.”
Doyle did not.
James looked at their joined hands. “You always did know when to keep quiet.”
His thumb moved once across Doyle’s knuckles and the old scar. James remembered hearing about the fight: three men, Doyle’s lie about there only being two.
James smiled. “Good man.”
The words were quiet. Then, after a moment, he added:
“I’m sorry.”
He did not specify what for. Perhaps for every dead man whose name he remembered and every dead man whose name he had forgotten. Perhaps for all of it.
The silence remained. But it no longer seemed empty. James sat beside the corpse until even the gas light beyond the barred window began to dim. And because there was no one else in the world to whom he could safely tell the truth, he kept talking.
Not dramatically, or loudly but just enough for a dead man to hear. He told him about Sherlock. He told him about being twenty-one and stupid and certain that love was something clever men could control. He told him about London and Oxford and blood and mathematics. He told him about the organisation and the first time someone had called him Professor Moriarty and meant it with fear. He told him things he had never told anyone alive.
And Doyle, as he had done in life when James needed someone to listen without interrupting, said absolutely nothing. It was almost comforting.
Near midnight, James finally became silent. He rested his head against the wall, his hand still wrapped around Doyle’s.
Outside, London and the world continued without them. Carriages passed, doors opened and shut; someone laughed in the street and a dog barked in reply. The great city breathed and shifted, utterly indifferent to the two men locked away inside a forgotten room.
James listened to it all then, very softly, said: “If I get out of here, I’m going to find him.”
He looked at Doyle. “I don’t know what I’ll say.”
A pause.
“I probably won’t say anything sensible.”
Another.
“He’ll hate that.” He smiled. “He always did.”
His eyes closed. “But I’m going to find him.”
And James Moriarty sat beside the corpse of one of his own men, held his cold hand, and waited for morning.
It was at two in the morning that James heard the first shout. His eyes flew open. For a moment he did not move, everything in him concentrated on the sound. It had come from somewhere beyond the door. A man’s voice, muffled by walls and distance.
Then there was another shout and something crashed. James sat upright now, Doyle still beside him.
“Apparently,” James murmured, “the evening is improving.”
There was a second crash and then running footsteps of several men. A curse and a sound like someone being thrown against a wall.
James stared at the door.
There was a peculiar quality to the noise. Not the disorganised violence of his captors. This was different. Efficient. Rapid. Until someone screamed.
James’s eyebrows rose. “Oh.”
Another scream. Now, James stood, letting go of Doyle’s hand for the first time in hours. And just in time as the door exploded inward. For half a second he saw only movement: a man stumbling backwards in through the doorway, blood across his cheek, then propelling himself out again, and vanishing from sight. And then, emerging through the doorway came Sherlock Holmes.
He had a pistol in one hand and something that looked suspiciously like a length of iron in the other. His coat was torn. There was blood on his face, a dark red fleck near his temple and another across his cheek. Behind him came Mycroft, carrying a revolver in both hands. James stared. Mycroft looked as though he had personally declared war upon the entire criminal fraternity and intended to see the matter through before breakfast. There was blood on his collar.
Sherlock stopped dead. His eyes found James, then Doyle.
Nobody spoke.
James looked from one brother to the other.
He took in Sherlock’s wild hair, the blood, the weapon, the expression on his face, then Mycroft, in equal disarray.
James smiled.
“Hello.”
Silence.
Then Sherlock’s face changed. The pistol and the bar dropped towards his sides. James barely had time to straighten before Sherlock crossed the room, practically flying at him.
James staggered backwards with the impact while Sherlock’s arms went around him, crushing him against his chest with such force that James made a startled noise.
“Good God,” James gasped. “Sherlock.”
Sherlock only held tighter, James feeling Holmes’ face against his shoulder, his fast breathing. His shaking. James’s hands hovered awkwardly for perhaps half a second before settling around Sherlock’s back. Then he just held him.
“Oh,” James said softly.
Sherlock tightened his arms again. “You’re alive.”
“Apparently.”
“I thought…”
Sherlock stopped but James felt the words disappear against his shoulder.
“I know.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I thought they had killed you.”
“They killed Doyle. They were going to kill me later, I think.”
Sherlock pulled back sharply. His eyes were bright and he started to look at James as though he were checking him for missing pieces.
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
Sherlock touched James’s face then his throat, down to his shoulders and being, as though his hands needed physical evidence.
James let him. “I’m all right.”
Sherlock’s fingers trembled. James just looked at him. “You came. My God, you came.”
Sherlock stared. “Of course I came.”
Something inside James gave way. He drew Sherlock back against him and for a moment there was no Professor Moriarty, no detective and no separation, just two men clinging to one another in a locked room at two in the morning.
Behind them, Mycroft cleared his throat while looking at the ceiling and blinking rapidly. He had clearly decided that dignity required somewhere else to look.
Eventually he said, very carefully: “James.”
James looked over Sherlock’s shoulder and saw the older Holmes standing in the doorway surrounded by what looked like the aftermath of a small war. There was a man unconscious just outside the room while he could hear another groaning somewhere further off. Someone further down the corridor was shouting weakly for help.
Mycroft’s waistcoat was torn, his hair slightly disordered and he looked deeply offended by all of it.
“I should perhaps explain our presence,” he announced.
James blinked.
Mycroft adjusted his cuffs. “If it is quite all right with you…we are here to rescue you. I do hope you are not offended. We know you have your own people and do on but It seemed better to be safe than sorry.”
James stared at him. Then he began to laugh. He laughed until he had to lean against Sherlock, who simply smiled into his hair.
Mycroft sighed. “I am pleased to see that captivity has not impaired your sense of humour.”
James wiped at one eye. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No.”
Mycroft nodded. “Good.”
James glanced towards Doyle then and his smile faded. Sherlock followed his gaze and the air in the room shifted.
“Doyle,” James said.
Sherlock’s eyes moved to the body.
“He was with me.”
James looked down. “He kept me company.”
Sherlock understood immediately. His hand closed around James’s. Mycroft stepped into the room; for once, he did not say anything clever. He simply looked at Doyle then at James.
“Come away,” Mycroft said quietly.
James nodded but he did not immediately leave. Sherlock squeezed his hand.
“You can say goodbye.”
James looked down at Doyle. “Thank you.”His voice was very quiet.
Sherlock’s arm went immediately around his shoulders and Mycroft turned towards the corridor.
The elder Holmes said, “I suggest we leave before the rest of our evening’s entertainment discovers that I have become rather tired of shooting people.”
James raised an eyebrow. “You shot someone?”
Mycroft looked offended. “Only in the leg.”
Sherlock glanced at his brother. “Twice. You shot him in the leg twice.”
“The second was his own fault.”
James stared at them both. “You two came here armed to the teeth.”
Mycroft straightened. “Naturally.”
Sherlock gave James another squeeze. “We were worried.”
James looked between them. Something warm and painful moved through him. He had spent years believing that if he disappeared, the world would simply rearrange itself around the empty space. Instead, Sherlock had come tearing through London in the middle of the night and Mycroft had apparently brought enough weaponry to conquer a small principality.
James swallowed. “Thank you.”
Sherlock kissed his temple while Mycroft pretended not to notice.
“Yes,” Mycroft said briskly. “Well.” He gestured towards the ruined doorway. “Come along.”
James looked once more at Doyle then back at Sherlock, whose hand was still clasped firmly around his.
James smiled. “All right.”
And together they walked out of the room.
(While Mycroft started to comment that James was looking rather thin…)