Coda
part nineFor a long time, John's nightmares had been about Sherlock. He didn't always fall from the roof of Barts but he always took his own life--no way out, no one left. Sometimes he put a bullet in his head with John's revolver. Sometimes he hung himself from the door-frame between their kitchen and den. Sometimes there was endless amounts of blood on the bathroom floor or none at all on a bed or the sofa with an empty bottle of pills beside. Or a syringe. Sometimes the last words John ever said were 'You machine!' and sometimes there was still time to beg him not to die.
Those dreams had stopped long ago. He'd only ever woken Mary once with a whimper, both of them pretending it hadn't been his name when he left to wash the sweat from his face before cuddling back into her soft, forgiving embrace. She stroked his back, kissed his face, saved him his pride with no questions, just comfort. He always felt good with her there to soak in his warmth beside him. He had far more dreams than nightmares on the nights they shared.
And then those nights ended.
He'd had few nightmares of Mary, hardly enough to be considered reoccurring, but they were the most cruel of any nightmare he'd ever had. They always started out as a dream, peaceful and pleasant, and then turned into horror with hardly a warning. Most of the time John killed her. Sometimes Sherlock did. Moran hardly ever played into it and nearly always she was innocent. He had cried a few nights, expecting blood on his hands when he'd opened his eyes and finding only sweat with his sheets soaked as from fever. They were rare dreams and he'd always counted himself lucky that they were. The pain was less than the real loss but the guilt wore him down like a millstone.
He'd never woken Sherlock with a shout or a cry from those dreams. Even when he knew the man was awake in the kitchen rather than in his bed upstairs, still working, always busy, Sherlock never commented and never interfered. John breathed in the night air with his face pressed against his pillow on those nights and wrestled his guilt back to sleep to the tick of a clock.
The new nightmare was different but still so familiar. There was chlorine and a voice in his ear, sing-song and whimsical as it told him in no shortage of detail how he was going to dismantle Sherlock Holmes. He sounded so happy and his joy chilled the blood in John's veins, congealing it to jelly. The Storyteller told the tale of a man whose heart was three sizes too small and of the kind sorcerer who could remedy that. "He cut out his eyes first--trophies," he said, "Then his tongue and sharp rods through his ears. He burned his fingertips till the nerves sizzled and died and then you know what happened? That little heart turned out to be just the right size when it was the only thing he had left." Then footsteps, a greeting, a cold so deep in John's bones that they should have shattered like frozen trees. "Show time~" the man sang and John could not stay asleep one instant longer as he felt his feet lurch forward and fall to nothing below.
He sat upright, fighting against the weight on his chest that should have been that damnable vest but wasn't. He breathed hard as he searched the unfamiliar room for answers, as lost for a moment as he was afraid. It came back slowly: their room at the inn, the case against McCarthy, the smell of the breeze and the river through the cracked window. The unfamiliar weight on his chest, now retracted and laying against the bed instead, had been Sherlock's arm. John turned to look at him, finding him wide awake and staring with interest.
He swallowed thickly. "Ah... sorry."
"No problem," Sherlock said, perfectly still as he seemed to remain mesmerized. "You know, I imagine you'd perform quite admirably under torture."
Welcome back to reality. John stopped breathing for a moment to let his mind think without the shuddering sound getting in the way. He drew his knees up as he let his exhale become a loud sigh, raking his fingers through his hair with his elbows bridged across to his legs. "That is the worst compliment I have ever received from you. Ever. That's even without the bonus points for timing."
Sherlock chuckled, rolling back onto his belly with his arms crossing under his head. "I wasn't tired so I've been observing your sleeping habits. Outside a grimace and slight change to your breathing pattern, a nightmare was quite similar to your normal sleep behavior. You can't physically control how your body reacts to dream stimulus so possessing a natural inclination which is calm until bursting, I would suspect in a controlled environment you could easily endure a great deal before breaking."
"You needed to observe me sleeping to figure that out?"
"No," Sherlock smiled just a little, his eyes glistening under the frizzy fringe of his curls. "But I like that about you. I enjoy it in observation, especially when the situation is not in fact dire."
John shook his head, chuckling softly as he felt his pulse grow steady. "I'm glad you find my tolerance for pain such a virtue. I'm sure I'll take great consolation in the fact at some point."
"With our lifestyle? Surely."
"Sherlock?" John shook his head, trying not to encourage him further with a smile. "You are really shit at this post-nightmare stuff, you know that?"
"I don't know. I'd say you're recovering from the experience quite well." Sherlock stretched his arm back out and placed his hand to John's shoulder, not to comfort but to push as he instructed his partner to lay back down. "It's four twenty-seven, soldier. At ease."
John went down, his own body just as demanding now that the adrenalin was subsiding to the order of natural exhaustion. He sighed long suffering though he let the smile touch his eyes. "That's Captain to you," he corrected and smiled even more with the hum of Sherlock's approval.
John could endure a great deal of pain, yes, but so long as he had breath in his lungs and blood in his veins, he was not going to allow himself to be in that situation ever again. Three years of guilt ridden nightmares was enough. He'd rather the terror of his own fate.
Sherlock left his hand resting on John's shoulder, his cold fingers following the lines of his clavicle through his shirt. John left it alone for a few breaths then pulled it back across his chest, sliding in closer till he could feel Sherlock's hip against his thigh. His hands which were almost always cold lead up to much more comfortable arms and a warm belly if he insisted enough to make Sherlock roll over off of it. Sherlock obliged more for his own comfort, shifting to his side to let John in before drilling a space for his own head into the crook of John's neck and shoulder. He was all bare skin, a million points of possible contact pressed against John from his head to his toes as their legs intertwined under the sheets.
"You're a furnace," Sherlock complained, though made little effort to remove himself.
John squeezed his arm, thumb tracing a string of freckles. "Yeah. Maybe a little," he said, as he let his eyes close to the far more peaceful darkness.
There were no more dreams--good nor bad.
John waited until Sherlock and Billie were out with Constable Wiggins before getting a cab to the nearest jail in Herefordshire. It was further than he expected but gave him plenty of time to call Church and make sure everything was set and ready for him to arrive, all the details ironed out and credentials waved. He'd have preferred James McCarthy to have been in prison but jail, though far more lax, had seemed to contain him thus far. It felt better to think that way than that somehow they were all playing right into the madman's game.
He smiled at the pretty brunette at the front desk as he walked to greet her, pulling a little at his tie as the summer heat made him regret his choice in dress. He certainly looked the part of a criminal psychologist, though he wasn't sure he was getting too many sanity points himself with a jacket on as well. "Dr. Watson to see Mr. McCarthy," he told her, offering his ID.
She nodded curtly, fingers clicking away at a stone aged computer. Only the best for her majesty's law enforcement. "They've moved him into room 1. End of the hall," she said as she offered him his card back along with a visitors badge and manila file. "Here is his detention information. A guard will be posted outside the door at all times; let him know when you're done or if you need anything."
"Outside the..." John clamped is mouth shut, busying himself with the file instead. "Right. Thank you." He squared his shoulders and made his way down the hall, reminding himself with every step that outside the door was fine, outside the door was normal. He gave the guard a tight lipped smile as he waved his visitors badge and waited for the door to be opened into the nice, private, special hell.
Even though he believed he'd prepared himself for it, John felt his body cringe and crackle with rage at the sight of a sitting, smiling, breathing James Moriarty relaxing in his chair at the opposite end of a table which was bolted to the floor. His short black, receding hair looked oily under the florescent lighting, the tired lines under his eyes deeper than he remembered. Three years--no one said they were kind years to anyone. But the smile was still the same, thin lips tugging like a whip prepared to crack, with drooping eyes marveling always at the funny way life worked.
"Hello," the man said with a voice like a memory. "Doctor Watson. Well, well, well. This is a surprise. I'd ask you what brings you out to a boring place like Ross but I think we both know the answer to that."
John felt his hackles rise and his hands grow steady as he pulled out his own chair and sat. If he got out of this without throwing a punch, he'd consider himself a candidate for sainthood. "Should I be calling you McCarthy or Moriarty, Jim?" he asked.
"Well, why not just stick to a first name basis, John. Much less impersonal. More me." Jim smiled, leaning his elbows on the table where John could see the handcuffs like large bangles dangling against his wrists. "So," he started, "you want to know why I killed my father?"
"So you did kill him."
"No," He corrected, "but you think I did. And even after I tell you everything, you're still going to." His eerily penetrating eyes fluttered away, looking off at the wall as though it were a window. "It's true, you know: what they say about home. You can always return but you can never really go back."
"Insightful, truly. Not really what I'm here for though." John peeked at the man's file all the same, browsing over notes on how docile he had been, remorseless for a killer or grief-less for a mourner. He couldn't help but smile slightly at the idea of putting the man away for life. His Moriarty or not, he was still a very unlikable man.
Jim, however, simply rolled his shoulders, not at all concerned with John's disinterest. "I didn't think he'd be out by our pool. Boscombe. It was our meeting spot--the only real landmark for miles out there in the wood. We all knew it. We all went there. And for the first time he was there."
John licked his lips, keeping his back straight against the hard wood of his chair. "You argued," he said, following along, somewhat willing to listen though generally unwilling to believe anything the man said.
Jim smirked. "What does it tell you when both sons abandon their father's name for their mother's? I'll save you the boring details. Suffice to say we hated the man. Apparently it wasn't entirely mutual. He took one look at me and sssssss." He shook his head as he hissed, mocking a look of disapproval. "It's my fault James is dead after all. My face. My legacy. My little scapegoat. I gave him something worth dying for, a death with a purpose. Good ole' Da didn't agree."
"I guess there's no reason to ask why you didn't put that down in your statement."
He liked that. Jim's face split with a gleeful smile, his face angling up at the ceiling as he sighed. "Ah, John, no one here really gives a damn about James Moriarty. I bet all of maybe five people in all of Ross even know who he is and they would still need you to remind them of why he's famous. James Morairty, the man who defeated Sherlock Holmes."
"Check your facts. James is dead; Sherlock's alive." John took no small amount of pride in correcting him, watching the way the man's cheeks puffed as he clenched his jaw, a small moment of reproach before the smile returned.
"My brother still won," he said. "He was going to die anyway but I doubt Sherlock was planning to play dead for three years. Inevitability verses possibility. James won. And there's nothing Sherlock or you can do to make him pay."
"We could start by putting you behind bars for the murder of your father."
"You can't punish him by punishing me. Dead is dead. He won. The game is over. Besides, I didn't kill him. And I can prove it."
"Oh yeah?" John sat back, hands on the table. "Go on then. Prove it."
Jim smiled, leaning forward to eat up every inch of space between them that John relinquished. "If I had killed him, I wouldn't be here," he said. "I'd be a million miles away on a beach, drinking out of a hollowed out pineapple with a tiny paper umbrella stuck in. I'm a professional."
"Right. And how long have you been retired exactly?" John felt his pulse quicken for a moment, unsteady on the cusp of anxiety and calm.
The killer's smile grew. "You never really retire," he said and the nightmare winked as it stared back at him.
John bit at the inside of his cheeks as he looked away, back down at the file where no one had still bothered to make note of the man's handedness. He couldn't tell. He knew James Moriarty as a man of disguise on par with Sherlock if not greater: Jim from I.T., Richard Brook. As much as he wanted to believe the man across from him was a man he already knew, there was no proof. It would take a keener eye and ear than his to peel away the facade and find the truth. If there even was a facade. Jim played the knowledgeable but distanced older brother perfectly.
And so there was no harm in forgoing all attempt at subtly. John wanted to know and perhaps the imprisoned man with nothing much to lose would indulge him. It was impossible to know without trying. "So, what, baby brother got to be your stunt double while you enjoyed the show?" he asked, glancing up once again to the man's steady smirk.
"I don't like to get my hands dirty." The madman's head listed to the side as though listening to voices in the distance, his smile fading only so far as it took to claim a look of whimsy. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? James Moriarty alive and well for you to blame everything on and maybe get a little revenge as well?"
The deduction stung but John sat still, doing his best to neither confirm nor deny.
Jim fixed on him. "I didn't use my brother, John. He was family. No need for both Mama's boys to go down in history as terrorists. James is a war hero and me, well, I got what I deserved as far as the rest of the world knows, right? The tumor made him crazy--made him confused. Sebastian would joke about how it made him more like me and well... it wasn't such a bad idea. He wasn't really my brother anymore, that man died when the tumor changed him, so why not give him a death with a bit more meaning than slowly losing his mind to dementia? I made him me and he seemed all too happy to accept it. As long as Sebastian was there. Good man, Sebastian. I should stop off in London sometime to give him my regards."
"I'm sure that can wait till you're reunited in hell."
"They don't hang innocent men for crimes they didn't commit. Well, so I hear anyway." Jim tapped his fingertips against the top of the table, boredom rolling off him.
John was far from impressed and not in the least dissuaded. "So what crimes should we hang you for? Carl Powers? Twelve deaths in the explosion of a block of flats? Kidnapping and attempted murder of two children?"
The smile on Jim's face took on a new light as he became nearly giddy with pride. "You'd give anything for monsters be real again," he said, leering with an unsteady expression. "Exciting, isn't it? And a bit... terrifying? Not that you'd like it any other way."
"I'm quite content with a steady, normal life, thanks." John said to dissuade him, hands clenching around the file in front of him.
"And yet here you are."
There was nothing to say to that. John cleared his throat, eying the file again, wanting distance almost as much as he wanted to simply nail the man with the murder and let justice run its course. Whoever he was, the world would still be a better place without him. And he would still sleep better at night knowing he was far away and unable to interfere with his life.
"Where's the bag, Jim?" he asked. The conversation needed to be about the case in order to solve it, no matter how little it reflected on the true question at hand.
"Bag?"
"Your bag."
"No bag. I didn't plan to stay long. Just came to pay my respects." Jim finally sat back, the intensity of his presence fading as his attention waned. "We threw his ashes in Boscombe pool, you see. I like to visit every now and then. It's not exactly on the way to anywhere but then graves never are, are they? Just passing through, doctor. And as soon as I'm done here, I'll be back on my way."
John chortled. "Oh, so you're just sitting in a jail cell because it's fun, are you?"
"One gets bored. This is new." He smiled again, eyes alight. "You're here."
It was an involuntary shiver but it did not fail to register on Jim's radar nor incite a wrathful indignation in John. "Look, forget about the murder," he spat through gritted teeth, leaning as far over the table as he felt comfortable doing, demanding the offensive as he took control. "Are you the real James Moriarty or was your brother? You know what I mean. Yeah, maybe you started it all but who was the one who wanted Sherlock? Who started the game?"
"Dear me, Johnny Boy, dear me. What would be the fun of telling you that? Can't you tell? Don't you know?"
John punched the table. He couldn't and they both knew it. "You're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars, Moriarty," he swore.
"No, I won't," Jim corrected with a calm that could kill. "I think we're done now. Unless you have anything relevant to discuss? I'm sure Sherlock expected more from this than simple abuse and suspicion."
"Fine. Are you left handed?"
Jim shrugged. "I'm whatever I need to be; whatever my part requires."
"I'll take ambidextrous. That suits our case just fine." John stood up from the table, snatching the file as he turned to the door, wary to turn his back but wanting so much to show a fearlessness he needed to own.
"Tell Sherlock hello for me. You're a lost cause but I expect him to bring my father's killer to justice. I never like the man--my father--but there's just something so... enticing... about having Sherlock Holmes set me free."
John caught the shiver before it passed through him this time, steeling himself from the madman's tone and words. "If it wasn't you, then who was it?"
"Can't you tell? Don't you know?"
John knocked heavy against the door for the guard to let him out.