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May 4th, 1891
When James Moriarty tumbled—headlong and aimless, with Sherlock Holmes in his arms—the dogged fight finally left him for good.
In the years since their shared time at Oxford, Sherlock had grown into the habit of throwing punches, while James had learned the luxury of letting others dirty their hands. He would be remiss, however, to let someone like Moran take down the great detective once and for all. No, that was gift for James alone.
For a moment, wrestling along the precarious ledge above the falls, they were young again.
James raised his fists to his face, head cocked as he observed how Sherlock mirrored his stance.
"Might I have this dance, Sherlock?" James purred.
"Oh, let's, James. For old time's sake," and the smile on Sherlock's face was both pained and alight. He threw the first punch, aiming with his non-dominant left, hoping to throw James off guard.
It didn't.
James bobbed easily, ducking down to deal a blow to the diaphragm, which Sherlock sidestepped along the soft black dirt.
An equal match. A set pair. Two sides of one coin.
Neither of them were sure whose foot slipped first, or whose hands dealt the hardest strike, but it ended all the same: with the detective, the criminal, and the Reichenbach Falls.
In the brief moments before deliverance, James suspected that Sherlock felt the same way he did, for the detective's grip was no longer sharp and clawing. Instead, Sherlock found a way to tuck himself into the crook of James’ neck. His arms wrapped around the Irishman’s waist—a last, buried instinct to clutch onto something shaped like salvation—but the two of them were clever enough to know that they were long past saving.
The spray of water peeling off the falls made everything damp and cold. James could not tell if the wetness on his cheeks was a trick of nature or the wicked thing in his chest finally breaking free.
Uiscefhuaraithe, James thought. The word came to him like an old friend. Cooled by water.
He had seldom believed in the veracity of sanctity, but just this once, James prayed. He suspected his mother would find great comfort in the idea that he succumbed in the end. His eyes fluttered closed, overwhelmed by the feeling of calm that flooded him.
In his last moments, he knew he had witnessed some sort of miracle. How else could James explain how his three deaths ended with Sherlock Holmes and a fall?
Le neuvième, Paris, France, 1871.
If it weren’t for the second blast of gunfire, James would’ve been dead before he made it to twenty-one; before he wrote his treatise upon the binomial theorem, before he fashioned himself Professor.
If it weren’t for that second shot, a nascent James Moriarty would have found himself burnt up from the inside; a poor man’s Odysseus drawn to the siren song of his first brush with real power, with death.
He was not unlike the moth spiraling headlong towards lamplight when the glass dome containing Malik’s noxious agent shattered. If he could only step closer, see the fog of his last breaths, he would know if the feeling of the soul leaving was as warm as he suspected.
Then, that blessed second shot. The sound seemed to re-orient the world again. Why shoot a second time? Who was the target if not Silas Holmes who had already absconded—
Holmes.
James whipped his head around, arm drawing up on instinct, as men around him choked and fell. Where was Sherlock Holmes in the midst of his enchantment?
With the heady spell of enormous power broken, James searched the frantic crowd for any glimpse of his friend: for his neatly parted hair, for his well-bred, stick-up-the-arse stance, for the distinct blue check of his suit; a blue that had the gall to try and match the sky of Sherlock’s eyes and paled in comparison.
When he finally caught sight of him, James felt his heart stop. This was not the sight of death he bargained for, he thought.
Sherlock’s knees buckled beneath him and James watched helplessly as he fell, down, down, down.
In hindsight, it was only a few feet, but the sight of Sherlock head crashing against the dirt and the way his hands made no move to brace his fall made James’ blood run cold. Sherlock crumpled in a heap on the ground like a marionette with its strings snipped. Sherlock Holmes was dead.
For once, James paid no mind to the fine wool of his own suit, scrabbling along the ground like some blind creature. He dug through his pockets for his handkerchief, though it was a lousy substitute for any sort of bandage or gauze.
“Sherlock!” he roared, “Sherlock!”
He pressed himself close, cupping Sherlock’s face on instinct, the way he had done only once before, on the path back to the Holmes manor.
“Whatever the truth may be, I need to know,” Sherlock said, leading his horse along like timid child.
James rolled his eyes, though a growing satisfaction was brewing in his gut.
He was right about Silas Holmes and the victory felt all the more sweet knowing he arrived at the conclusion before Sherlock. It didn’t quite salve Sherlock’s cutting words or the dull the ache of his first successful blow, but James at least planned on making the poor bugger grovel, and that might suffice for now.
“Is that your idea of an apology?” he bristled.
For all of his brilliance, Sherlock Holmes was terrible at reading people when it came to matters of the heart. “Well?”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like an apology,” James responded matter-of-factly.
Sherlock sighed, clearly annoyed. “Well, I apologize."
James could have throttled him for his insolence. “Ah. Is that all?”
“I sincerely apologize?”
“Still think you can do better.”
Sherlock sighed, dropping the reins of his horse and eyeing James in a manner that felt too intimate for friends to gaze upon one another. He stepped close, nearly a hair’s breadth between the two of them, brushing some invisible debris from James’ lapel as an excuse for proximity.
“I, Sherlock Holmes, sincerely apologize to you, James Moriarty,” at this low volume, Sherlock’s voice gained a rougher quality than his usual bright timbre.
“Still think I smell of perfume?” James half-joked.
“I hardly mind,” Sherlock muttered, gazing down at him.
James reached up and cupped his cheek firmly, making his intentions clear.
Sherlock, to his credit, did not miss this cue.
He leant down and caught James’ mouth in a searing kiss, perhaps the most sincere version of an apology the latter could hope to attain. James wasn’t sure how long the two of them stood there, reveling in the game of tongues and teeth, before he had to surface for air.
“Well done,” he muttered breathlessly, laughing when he caught Sherlock rolling his eyes.
“It’s a miracle we didn’t spook the horse,” Sherlock commented, clearing his throat.
“S’a Miracle we didn’t spook the groundskeeper,” James fired back.
That’s what James needed now—a miracle. He dug his hands beneath Sherlock’s arms and endeavoured to lift him, prop him up, anything to get air in his lungs. The groan that Sherlock emitted was like music to James’ ears.
“You’re alright, I’ve got ye,” he reassured, though the sight of blood seeping through Sherlock’s waistcoat made his stomach turn.
“You know, getting shot, eh? That was a terribly stupid thing to do,” for all his efforts, James couldn’t keep his voice steady.
His hand pressed against the warm wetness of the bullet hole in Sherlock’s side. The wound throbbed underhand, a cursed paradox: on the one, its pulse signalled Sherlock was still this side of sainthood. On the other, its very existence threatened that truth.
“Here, let’s get you up,” James near-begged. The only thought in his mind now was keeping Sherlock Holmes alive.
Rather stubbornly, Sherlock seemed to have other plans. “No, no, no. Shou’an, Shou’an. S-she tried to shoot my father and we have to stop her.”
Stupid, James thought, stupid to be selfless and sentimental at a time like this.
He had no idea if the concentration of Malik’s invention was strong enough to kill the both of them dead if they lingered here. He rather disliked the idea of finding out, but the thought of letting Sherlock bleed out was worse.
He grit his teeth, fighting against his own impulses.
“I am not leaving you down here,” he growled into his ear. Stupid. Sentimental.
He was no better than Sherlock, but then again, the world was no better without Sherlock.
It was the first time James felt himself die—holding his heart in his arms. Like lightning, he was struck with how weak he had become and how unacceptable it would be to go on living that way.
If Mycroft had not intervened, James knew he’d be there still, curled like Quasimodo around Esmeralda’s corpse. Killed by his own terrible fondness.
When Sherlock roared at him to chase after Shou’an, James left that part of himself behind to press at his wound.
That’s how he was able to kill that soldier, he thought, and how he came to enjoy it.
When he gazed upon the lifeless gendarme, Shou’an had mistaken his thrill for fear. She was wrong.
James was simply proving his supposition: tenderness was akin to weakness, and the tender part of James Moriarty died in the cellar of the Follies Bergère.
Afshin, Ottoman Empire, 1871.
In the moments before the factory met its raucous end, all James could cling to was the promise of the future.
He could hardly hear Shou’an shouting about explosives and charges as he rifled through Malik’s discarded paperwork. He was on a mission of his own design; now that the Holmes’ were happily reunited, or close enough, James was seeking his insurance policy. The hand of mercy meant nothing without the hand of judgement after all. He had tried to teach that lesson (it’s obverse, really) to Sherlock the first day they met, but it hadn’t stuck.
Perhaps with the finished equation in hand, Sherlock would be able to see things from James’ perspective.The fantasy he had posed at the camp had been a genuine one: James gave fuck all for returning to respectable society; he’d much rather slink away with Sherlock and their freedom in tow. The two of them could do great things together—they already had.
There was the complication of Beatrice, of course, but who could blame him for seeking secondary means to his end when they presented himself? Sherlock need only ask and James would be a content, kept bachelor.
Malik’s formula was the key to this kingdom and James, by the grace of God alone he suspects, had only just managed to dig it from the chaos when Shou’an gave it order to light it all up.
“Now, James, move!” she called, though her footsteps were already fading into the distance by that point.
James gave one long, lingering kiss to Malik’s finished formula, letting himself imagine what it would be like to kiss Sherlock once they were rich enough to be free of the world of class warfare and indecency laws.
He trusted his legs to carry him to safety and leapt like he might’ve been Jack of the nursery rhyme: nimble and quick, James jumped over the incendiary device and took it as a sign of good fortune when it didn’t snuff out.
He felt differently when the slew of gunpowder ignited, and with it, the whole of the room. The force of the blast sent him flying forward, his fist still clutched tight around the formula for safekeeping. In the daze and confusion of its aftermath, he found the wherewithal to pull his scarf over his mouth to stave away the burn of hot air singing his throat and lungs.
He called out for Sherlock, though he couldn’t hear his own voice past the tinny ringing in his ears. Soot clung to his eyelashes and made his vision blur. He desperately hoped that the light he stumbled towards was the baking heat of the desert and not the inferno they were leaving behind.
James was only allowed a moment of respite, a few gulps of fresh air and a glimpse of Shou’an’s braid swinging behind her, before the second blast knocked him to the ground. The impact forced the air from his lungs and for a moment, he was certain he’d never breathe again. His temple ached terribly from where it bashed into the ground and when he reached up, his hand came away damp. He wasn’t sure if it was blood or sweat.
There was no more sound around him, not even ringing.
So this is what dying feels like, he thought to himself, nothing but the pulse of your own heartbeat to keep time.
James tried to lift himself to his feet, but all he could manage was a pathetic half-crawl in the sand—biblical punishment for feasting upon the forbidden fruit.
His only solace was the feeling of hands upon his back, running over the muscles of his shoulders and arms worriedly. He squinted up against the bright sky, eyes still blurry and unfocused, but James knew who it was immediately. James could recognize Sherlock Holmes anywhere—even in total darkness. Perhaps, his hazy mind supplied unhelpfully, that was where he knew him best.
He reached up to him, words of gratitude already bubbling up, but as soon as his hands found purchase on the moleskin of Sherlock’s coat, the man was gone again.
Sherlock stumbled forward, batting away James' hands as he stared transfixed at the fleeing form of Silas Holmes.
“Sherlock!” he wailed, desperate to pull the man back from Silas’ orbit.
James knew that magnetism well and saw in an instant how he and Sherlock differed: James could not imagine leaving Sherlock to die. Sherlock did not glance back at him once.
It was a bitter pill to swallow made harder by the swelling of his throat. He sniffed hard once, then twice, staving back the impulse to cry. He would not waste tears on Sherlock Holmes. He would not waste another breath on a man who could leave him in the dust while his body ached and his mind reeled, while he still clutched the key to their future in his singed hands.
There had once been a version of a life with Sherlock Holmes; one that would never come to pass.
James Moriarty killed that version of himself while Silas Holmes tumbled into the depths of a quarry.
May 4th, 1891
It cannot be said whether the good Doctor Watson ever knew about James Moriarty’s last words. It is unlikely he would have understood them if he did.
“Mo chuisle,” James mouthed into Sherlock’s hair, “Mo chroí.”
The sound of it was swallowed by the rush of the falls, the feeling of it crushed by their impact upon water and stone.
It was unlike the villain to be so tender and yet Sherlock Holmes knew it to be true. He had known it his whole life, though perhaps it was more true to say that he had known it many lives ago.
Watson surmised that a man so callous and calculating must have had the heart cut out of him.
In his final moments, Sherlock pressed his ear to James’ chest and listened; a hypothesis tested.
My pulse. My heart.
A brief and tender miracle.