Chapter Text
I’ve done it, and it was far worse than I expected.
Not the process, as such. I frittered away weeks before I broke down and decided the best way to go about it was to get as high as a kite.
I became frivolous, and more than a little mad. I tried music and formulae and everything, staring at my own fingers like they belonged to someone else as I typed in the dark.
I am dead.
So I tried it.
Dead.
And that was it, of course.
That was what caused the Wellington Arch to explode at four o’clock in the afternoon. I couldn’t have known, but I should have deduced it.
Twenty-five people died, John. Twenty-five.
I didn’t know what I had done until after I had texted Mycroft to tell him I had broken the code. I was so proud of myself. I started reading everything I could. I was making plans until the car came.
He couldn’t look at me.
Every good thing I have ever done has also been bad.
This is a very bad thing, and I know this: if I stop, I fall.
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I keep going. I use the information. I use everything I have.
Ronald Adair is a tall man with fair hair and brown eyes. He has an inconsequential cocaine problem and he likes to gamble. He isn’t terribly good at it.
Sebastian Moran likes to gamble.
I find him. It’s simple when you know where to go, and it’s all been laid out for me like an air traffic pattern.
I gamble. I lose. I lose three thousand pounds in an evening. I go back and do it again.
I find him quickly. I am the sort of creature he likes to hunt. Diffident, foolish, and eager to burn money I haven’t earned in a game I don’t understand. I am a white rabbit to his tiger.
He’s got the most unmusical voice a public school education can confer upon a man. It’s flat and dry. He doesn’t say much.
I attempt small talk. I always hated it before, and it’s dreadful now.
He sits at the table, right foot hooked around his chair leg, and he stares us all down. He doesn’t drink much, but all the others do. I do, to an extent. Just enough to be convincing. I am a man with a compulsion. I have a horrific bank balance. I am shy.
My hands shake. Neuropathy, but it looks like the other kind of nerves.
Three days in, I get bored. I slip. I count cards constantly, and the tedium of knowing the answer and not doing anything with it gets to me. I win. Maybe it’s the cocaine.
Afterwards, I lean against the wall of the club and light a cigarette wondering whether what I have done can be dismissed as luck.
It can’t. I took it too far. I did it several times.
The door swings open and it’s him. I smile. It hurts.
“So,” he says.
I am a rabbit. My eyes are wide.
“You’re smarter than you look,” he says. “Was that a joke?”
I talk fast. I fabricate debts and a woman. I apologise. I cry, a little. I’m good at that.
He invites me to join him in another game, if I can do it again. I agree.
We do this several times, and we split the proceeds. He invites me to a private game and gives me the address of his flat.
It’s on Baker Street. It’s across from 221B. Our flat, in fact.
He has been living there all along, and I had no idea. Mycroft had no idea.
It occurs to me that he is still planning to kill you after all.
***
It’s almost dark when I get out of the cab. I can see a light in one of the windows of 221B. I see a man’s head silhouetted against it. It’s you.
I send a text to my brother. If I’d told him what I was doing, he would have tried to stop me, I think. I don’t bother with that. Instead, I send him the address and “Sebastian Moran.”
I turn off the ringer and stuff the phone into my pocket. I climb the stairs. I knock on the door.
He meets me with a microfibre cloth in his hand. He has been polishing a gun. Of course he has.
It’s relatively unfurnished, but I can see signs that he has been here for weeks. It smells of gun oil and burnt toast.
“Please, “ he says, nodding towards a chair.
New, cheap pine, seldom used. He likes the one with its back to the wall. The seat is more polished, one leg has been scuffed.
Two Russians arrive. One: bald, early fifties. New tattoos, locally done. Recently divorced. Works in a butcher’s shop. Blood on his shoes, wore an apron, didn’t change his clothes. Two: in his thirties. Wearing a suit that isn’t his. Works in a chippy. Ink on his hands. Oil on his skin.
Moran pours us drinks, and we play. I barely touch mine. I can have one, if I make it last. Cocaethylene contributes to heart failure.
We win. Things get heated. Moran pulls a gun out of the drinks cupboard (it was behind a bottle of metaxa -- duty free, Athens?).
They go.
“Cheers,” he says. He smiles at me and shakes the ice in his tumbler. I drink the rest of mine. I never did care for whiskey.
He takes away the empty glass, and leans across the table. “We’ve done rather well tonight,” he says.
I agree.
‘The gun was a surprise,” I say.
The right side of his mouth quirks up. “It shouldn’t be,” he says. “The thing about me, is, I like to hunt. I get what I am owed.”
He doesn’t blink. His eyes are green and gold. His pupils are dilated, but the lights are dim.
The lights are wrong. My head jerks. I am suddenly incredibly tired. It’s midnight. I am never tired. I had one drink.
I bite my tongue. Pain is good. Pain brings endorphins.
“I like tigers,” he says. “Killed one once.”
I blink. Don’t blink.
“People are easier. Easy to find. Easy to kill.”
I press my hands against the table and it seems a million miles away, like my feet.
“John Watson, say.”
I am still. I am breath in my lungs. I am a chemical cocktail, going wrong.
“He’s across the street. He is mine.” He unhooks his leg from the chair. The gun is on the scarred formica countertop. The distance favours him.
“Who is he?” I say.
Sebastian Moran touches his teeth with his tongue. “Who are you?” he says. It isn’t really a question.
I say nothing.
“You are a dead man. And the best thing about a dead man is that no one cares when he dies again.”
I feel like I am sinking through the floor. I feel like a dull knife is scraping across my optic nerves. I push myself out of my chair and towards the window. The glass is cold and damp against my face. I see your light across the street. I see nothing else.
“You’re supposed to be good with detail,” he says.
I bite my tongue until it bleeds. “I am,” I say.
“Not good enough. I knew who you were the moment I saw you.”
Good. Let’s talk about me. If we talk about me, someone might come before you move on to the next thing. To John.
“Did you,” I drawl. “What was it?”
“Your face.”
My face is against the glass. The glass is cold. Cold is good. Invigorating.
“I’m a hunter,” he reminds me. “I study my prey."
"Jim is dead, but that’s no reason to stop now.” He is on his feet. That was fast.
I turn my face away from the window. My depth perception has gone to pieces.
“No?” I ask. “What was he to you?”
“A means to an end. He let me do what I like.”
What does Sebastian Moran like?
My mouth is dry. I’m going to die.
It’s a Sig Sauer P226R, and it’s aimed at my head. His breath is shallow. His stance is relaxed.
“I have several guns,” he says. “This is the one I want to use.”
My head is sliding down the window, almost imperceptibly. We are silhouetted here where anyone could see, but it doesn’t matter. No one is looking.
I am going to die right in front of you and you will never even know this.
Think of Moriarty in his box. Pale bones in a brown residue. White mycelium creeping into the sodden wood. A network of something, pushing though. I can push through this.
I could -- no. I can’t. I can’t reach. I can’t move. I’ve crashed. My body is a mistake. This has all been a mistake.
I am too stupid to live.
“The doctor is next,” he says. He smiles.
I think of William Blake. I think of the phone buzzing uselessly against my leg. I think of you.
I want you to live.
The bullet, when it comes, is a surprise.
It punches through the glass.
It catches him in the head.
We fall.