He loves her. At least he thinks he does. Love could be such an odd thing; he had thought he loved Irene Adler, until she said she was Moriarty, and now he cannot help but love Moriarty.
But he also loves her. The one he is fascinated by, smitten with.
Sherlock says as much to Moriarty when she offers him the chance to run away. "I can't leave with you."
He can see a muscle twitch in her jaw. Ah, perhaps not as flawless as she thinks she is. "Why? Is it because you know my reality now?"
"You are still the Woman. If not the same one, she is still a product of your brilliant mind. I'm afraid I can't because I'm in love."
Moriarty laughs. "Yes, that's why I asked. Sherlock, you love me and you should be with me." She says it confidently, with a slight smug smile on her face, the one he knows rather well by now; it means she knows she's won. She's wrong.
"Not you," Sherlock scoffs. "Her. Watson. I can't come with you unless she agrees to come."
Her eyes narrow. "The mascot. She would never."
"Precisely why I could never."
"I'm giving you the world," she hisses, leaning close. "Don't turn it down for someone as mediocre as her."
But she is his world. "Oh, Ire- Moriarty. You've never been in love, have you? It's not about how mediocre a person is- and I assure you Watson is not- or what the offer on the other end is."
He enjoys this, watching the cracks appear on Moriarty's face. But then she says, "I suppose I'll just have to ensure you never see her again, won't I?"
Sherlock knows, even in his post-heroin haze, even exhausted and drained, that Moriarty has no empty bluffs, no idle threats. He closes his eyes and sees her, still and pale. Slit neck, gunshot to the back, or something more subtle- a car wreck maybe, or an accidental allergy exposure. "You wouldn't dare," he replies. "You can't want me that bad."
"Don't I?" she asks, shifting on the bed to put a hand on his cheek. "The beautiful trophy you are, with that amazing mind. Why would anyone pass that up?"
She is leaning close to him, and her touch on his skin reminds him of their nights together. Nights he was being manipulated and wrapped around her long graceful fingers. He remembers what those fingers can do. Now he is here again, at their edge. Being asked to jump.
"I will be incomplete without her," Sherlock tries. "You will have only half of a trophy. Useless."
"Oh, Sherlock. Trophies are designed to be utterly useless."
"What if I convince her?"
Moriarty pulls away. The loss of her warm skin on his is a tragedy. He struggles not to reach for her. She is considering, back straight, one eyebrow raised. "I have to admit, I would like her to come along, if only to see what it is you like so much about her."
Sherlock's tense shoulders relax. He says, "I shall do my best, then."
Joan Watson is not unused to death. She has lost patients under the knife, seen up close the effects it has on people, spent years slitting open cadavers and studying their insides.
But since she became a sober companion, she became used to life. None of her companions ever relapsed, a matter she had held in pride- until now.
Sherlock. Sherlock was... something else. He has become an implicit part of her life, and she doesn't even know when it happened. She just woke up one morning and knew.
Joan had certainly noticed the difference in his behavior since his discovery of Irene, erratic and impulsive and emotional. She blames herself for not being there, for letting him run out of the station without her, for losing his trail only a few blocks after. She should've been there, with him.
It's been several hours and the doctors still won't let her in to see him. Somewhere between her fourth cup of shit hospital coffee (she'd nearly forgotten how bitter and watered down it was), she falls asleep on the hard plastic chairs.
Joan awakens with a jerk and a stale metallic taste in her mouth. Her throat is completely dry, neck stiff. She has to force herself to stand, uncharacteristically drowsy. Almost immediately, her legs buckle and she nearly collapses again. She manages to stay up, clutching the wall.
It takes a minute for her vision to focus, and when it does, Joan sees the guard outside Sherlock's room passed out on the floor. Beside him, a cup of coffee.
We've been drugged, she thinks. Her mind moves sluggishly, struggling to fill in the blanks. Both her up and the guard's cup was from the coffee machine on the second floor. All the coffee in the machine must've been spiked. Gregson, Bell, most of the staff on this floor... everyone must have had at least one cup of the stuff.
It wasn't enough drugging Sherlock. Moriarty had drugged them all.
By the time Joan staggers to the door and throws it open, nothing remains but a wrinkled bedspread and an open window. She's too late.
She is alone.
The next morning, her phone vibrates to an unknown number when she's in a meeting with Gregson and a voice on the phone- Mycroft Holmes. They're trying to figure out what to do and Joan dismisses the number.
It vibrates again almost immediately.
She makes sure Gregson doesn't suspect and says, "I need air. I'll be back. Does anyone need anything?"
Gregson shakes his head and continues to assure Sherlock's father that the NYPD were trying their hardest to track down the consulting detective.
She waits until she's outside before answering. "Sherlock?"
"Watson," his voice is calm, possibly under duress.
"Where the hell are you?"
"Does it matter? Watson, I need to ask you something."
Joan rolls her eyes and focuses on the maroon brick pattern outside the building. Typical. "Everyone's going insane here. Your father's been calling us nonstop for hours, freaking out about your disappearance."
"Yeah, he does that."
She says, "Okay, ask me."
There's a pause. It's not a good pause, the kind you can wait out knowing there is something good on the other side, and it's not a relaxes pause, fraught with tension. Joan can hear him breathing, a brief crackle- licking his lips - then.
"Joan, I-"
"Stop," she interrupts. He never calls her Joan. "Sherlock, stop. Whatever you're about to do, or say, just think about it first. Okay?"
"Okay." He falls silent again. Then, in a rush so his words run together and she can barely understand, "I'm with Moriarty, we're going to Greece and I'm going to help her with- with whatever she does and I want you to come, Watson, come with us please."
Joan's vision blurs out of focus and she realizes there are tears in her eyes. She rests her forehead on the cool bleak brick and sniffs.
"Are you crying?"
"Don't do this," Joan's voice cracks.
"You are," he says, and this time he doesn't sound too calm. "You are crying."
On the other side, she hears a crash, glass shattering. Unintelligible screaming, Sherlock's voice, Moriarty's voice, sounds she can't place.
"Sherlock," she whispers, knowing he isn't listening.
Sherlock returns to the phone, angry, "Watson, think about it!"
The line goes dead.
She is alone.
He is there, when she returns to the brownstone that night. Waiting. She knows instinctively he's there when she opens the door. A silhouette, barely a shadow. She stays still and he stays still.
Moriarty breaks the silence. "Are you coming?"
Joan does not know how to react to Sherlock, but she knows how to react to Moriarty.
Joan clenches her fist and leans back on the door and manages to say, "Why are you doing this?"
"I want to," Moriarty replies, possessive and haughty.
There is so much rage. It blinds her. Joan takes a step forward, all her muscles tense, more adrenaline in her body than she can contain. Sherlock must recognize it because he snaps, "I need to be alone with her."
Moriarty laughs and walks past Joan. The wind is cool when she opens the door and closes it gently behind her. The lock clicks shut and Joan realizes with a sick feeling in her stomach that Moriarty has the keys to their apartment.
The two are left alone. Sherlock moves toward her until they stand inches apart. He looks tired. "Have you thought about it?" She doesn't answer, refusing to look at him. "Watson, I know I have put you in a very compromising position, but-"
Joan slaps Sherlock across the face, as hard as she can. Sherlock's head snaps back. Without giving him a chance to recover, Joan closes her fingers into a fist and punches him square in the jaw, splitting open his skin. She lets her bloody knuckles drop. "Compromising," she sneers mockingly. "Leave, Sherlock. And don't ever come back."
"You don't understand," he says. "She would kill you if I didn't."
"It'd still work out for you, wouldn't it? Perhaps I would be better dead."
He grabs her shoulders then and looks at her, forces her to look at him, bloody face and bruises under eyes brimming with tears. "Don't ever say that," his breath touches her face, warm. Joan reaches out her hand and grazes his wound. He flinches.
"Do you care at all? Did you ever?"
"Joan, please."
He's calling her Joan again. She shakes her head. "Stop it."
"Then come with us. With me. We can figure the rest out later."
But no, they can't figure the rest out later, they won't. That would be too easy and convenient. Moriarty would never let them go. The first yes would lead to bigger more yeses. And she liked this life she had created, with him. She wouldn't even have to think to get comfortable in that life.
Joan may not be unused to death, but she has tasted blood and she still struggled to hold that craving in check for the rest of her life.
"I can't do it. I'm sorry," she whispers.
"No, you're not," he tells her and kisses her, nearly as hard as she had slapped him. There is something so utterly desperate and frantic about it, like he never wants to let her go. Sherlock pulls her closer, grabbing at her back and pressing in like a lifeline, closing the spaces. She lets him, kissing back, tongues heavy and wet.
He can taste the bright sting of a needle sliding home into his veins. She can taste him leaving.
They pull apart, though Joan doesn't want to, knowing what's coming next. He doesn't let go of her, and she can hear his heart like a drum in her ears through layers and layers, so many layers that Joan suspects it's her own pulse she hears.
"Don't stop because I'm gone," he murmurs into her hair. "You mustn't."
"Don't start because I'm gone," she reminds him and all his layers. He's already slipped. Once more would ruin him.
He holds her at arm's length and begins to say, "I lo-"
"No. If you say it, I won't let you go," she warns him.
He doesn't say it. When he leaves, the light follows him out.
She is alone.
Years pass. She marries Ty and keeps her own name. Sometimes, she resents him for not being skinnier, or being tattooed, or being brunet, or being him. She makes pots and pots of coffee, though Joan prefers tea and he doesn't drink caffeine. She bites her tongue when they make love because the wrong syllables might escape her lips.
She wonders where he is, she wonders what he's doing. She reads in the paper about political assassinations tearing entire countries apart and she thinks, is that her? Did she do this? Did he help?
Once, walking through the city, Joan sees the back of a head with a scarf so achingly familiar, she reaches out and touches his shoulder. When the face that turns has the right hair but the wrong eyes, the disappointment nearly crushes her.
She is alone.
Joan is not aware of the fact that it has been precisely three years to the date she met Sherlock Holmes. On this very day, she had first walked into the brownstone, shook hands. On this day, he had looked into her eyes and recited lines from a television show and she had known her life would never be the same.
But she is healing.
When Ty wakes her to head to work, she kisses him goodbye and goes to pick up the morning paper. Tucked in beside the paper is another magazine, a skinny little journal with expensive glossy paper and vivid ink titled, "Diogenes Scientists (Weekly English Edition)." Joan frowns and brings it inside with the rest of the paper. She puts coffee on to brew, coffee nobody will drink, but her day will be incomplete without its lingering scent.
After her shower, she sits at the dining table and opens the journal. The first two pages contain articles on advancements in ocular biotechnology, some new sort of drug for cancer therapy, and research on native flora of the Sahara. It is when she flips to the centerfold that her breath catches in her throat. It's a picture of a bee.
"Euglassia Watsonia Honey Found to Contain Compounds Aiding in Stabilizing Melatonin Cycles," by Mr. S'ohe Skolleck.
She puts the anagram together instantly.
Joan races through the article, heart racing. It was clearly not written for a layman but she manages to understand the gist of it. When she reaches the end of the article, she notices a tiny sliver of paper sticking out the bottom. It's a note, tucked into the next page. She pulls it out and opens it, the irony not lost on her as she reads the words:
And miles to go before I sleep.
She does not know that today marks three years. She does not know that there is a cup of coffee missing from the pot, or the cup is impeccably washed and placed back in the cabinet.
What she does know is that she is not alone.