A/N Hello, just to let you know that this is set post 3x9 as I live in England and that is the most recent episode to air here. :)
Title: Beautifully Unfinished
Pairings (Mentioned or otherwise): Sherlock/Moritarty
Rating/Warning: T
Summary: They find the body on a frost bitten Tuesday in December. The man is the last of his family to die, the rest having been killed in a remarkably cold January four years previous. It leads Sherlock to try and find the answer to a question he has been asking since then. Why did Jamie Moriarty chose that day to leave his life and destroy him the way she did? - The answer surprises him the most.
Beautifully Unfinished.
They find the body on a frost bitten Tuesday in December. Gregson calls and, like the always do, they come. Sherlock and Kitty arrive as the first flakes of winter snow start to fall and by the time Joan draws up, the path in covered in a layer of it.
The body is on the fourth floor of a luxury hotel, all gold gilding and mirrors at every turn. It's a man lying on the carpeted floor of the room, blood in pools around him. Joan, despite being the last to arrive is the first of the trio to enter. She surveys the sight; the suited man drenched in a lake of his own blood. Gregson and Bell stand, gloves snapped over their hands in preparation for examining the crime scene. For that is what this room is, a crime scene – a tableaux of murder. The man had been shot in all four limbs, just once – but these shots aren't what killed him; no, it is the long slash of a blade across his neck that lead to his death, and the pools of blood he now lies in.
Kitty emerges from the lift mere seconds later, and stands by Joan, studying the room, taking it all in. They wait, moments pass, and then Sherlock arrives – having decided, in contrast to both Kitty and Joan, to take the stairs. By the time he opens the door and has started to review the mystery in front of him, both Kitty and Joan have had the situation explained to them. They know who the man on the floor is, are in possession of the information of who found the body and of when this murder was reported to the NYPD. But Sherlock knows too - he knows the answers to all the questions his colleagues have already asked, by just the way in which the man on the floor had died.
It is Terrence Matthews lying dead on the carpet of this hotel room; the body was found by the concerned guest in the adjacent room and the call to the police was at 9.30am that morning. He also knows that by the time Gregson and his team arrived the 'guest' was gone, having not really been a guest at all. He knows, of course, because Terrance Matthews' death has been a long time coming. Sherlock knows, too, that same people who had killed the dead man's father and brothers in London three years previous have finally found him. And as Terrence had died the same way as the rest of his family, the other details of those cases are sure to be present here too.
Sherlock listens for a moment to Bell going through the detail of the death, but interrupts and finishes by telling them what he knows. That the Matthews' family, four brothers and a father, were all killed in the same way as the man on the carpet, each one in turn over four weeks, three years ago, in London. He tells them the reason isn't important – a turf war between bankers taken to the next level– but what is important is that they need to find out why, three years after slaughtering his family one by one but sparing him, the killer has finally decided to remove the last of the Matthews family from life.
The others stare in almost shock as he speaks, and none of them react when he turns to leave the room, ready to go back to the Brownstone. He flees the room, trying desperately to keep the last piece of information he has about the Matthews murders from spilling out, for his need to hit something is overwhelming. Sherlock stops on the first floor landing, taking a breath and returning to his calm self. Joan appears on the stairs above him and for the first time since seeing Terrence Matthews' body he is ready to tell someone the reason this case is important to him. So important it is almost killing him.
It was the case he was investigating when Irene died.
Or he thought she had.
It was the case, the work of M, that he had been so close to solving – so close that Moriarty had decided she had to excise herself from his life, destroying him as she did, to stop him finding out something. But Sherlock is unsure of what it is he was so close to discovering and now, standing in a hotel in the middle of December, he has been given a second opportunity to work it out.
Kitty appears and he explains why he has to solve this case; that he has to know what he couldn't the first time – he has to link it to Moriarty. Kitty and Joan share a look and the younger of them speaks.
"Why do you want to solve this so much? I mean, this case, why this one particular?"
He doesn't reply, but the answer is already making itself clear in his mind. They travel back to the Brownstone in silence, the answer echoing in his head the whole way there.
He wants to know what made her leave; then, what it was that made her decide to destroy him in the way she did. He needs to know why.
Otherwise it will be the question he will spend his whole life trying to answer.
…
He throws himself into the work; of course Gregson and Bell – Joan and Kitty too- are working on the case too, but he wants to be the one who works it out. Sherlock contacts old friends from London and manages to get copies of the original Matthews murder cases before the NYPD can get them sent across. He spends ever increasing time on it, devoting almost every hour of every day to finding out a link between the Matthews' family and Moriarty.
Joan and Kitty start to get worried, Sherlock hides himself away in an attempt to find it out, barely eating or sleeping – it consumes him. So when he gets another shipment from London, full of all the things 'Irene' left behind, they both try and help.
In different ways of course. Kitty assists him, becoming his run around, doing everything he asks just so she can make sure he's not going crazy. Joan on the other hand, realises the one thing Sherlock will never admit. That there may not be a link between the two events, that maybe Moriarty always intended to leave his life that way, at that time. But she's not sure that he'll take too kindly to that idea. Gregson and Bell come over, giving over the details that the police have been able to find, but it's not enough for Sherlock and the visit is over almost as soon as it had begun.
Sherlock, decides, in the middle of the third week, that he is going to try and decode 'Irene's' appointment diary, see who she was meeting before she 'died' and try and work back from there. Both Kitty and Joan see the futility in this, but Sherlock tries regardless. He tries and tries and tries.
He marks of the date of the first Matthews death in her diary, blocking off the 4th of January 2011 in red highlighter. Sherlock then marks her 'death', nearly a month later, in blue – and proceeds to cross check all the appointments, all the comments mentioned in this window of time.
Kitty manages to smuggle photos of the diary, saved on her phone, to a coffee shop where she meets Joan. They sit in silence as they read, Kitty cupping an Americano and Joan, a latte in hand. Both of the women scrutinise different dates, different times and try to add meaning them that is not, at first, obvious. Sherlock has written on the pages, added notes – his ideas as to what certain things mean. There is one date, though, that Kitty knows he is obsessing over, reading again and again in an attempt to understand it's meaning– so fifteen minutes after arriving, she brings this to the attention of Joan.
Together they read the collection of words that even Sherlock cannot attach a meaning to.
KC– floor 4, Dr TO.
It is one of a handful of appointments in the book that is written is some sort of code – most of the others are self explanatory and Sherlock has taken it upon himself to prove she wasn't were she should have been – to prove she was somewhere, plotting the deaths of the Matthews family. This though, has stumped them all.
Sherlock has theorised that KC is a person – and has discovered at least 6 hired killers that have names, or go by names, that have the initials KC. He has struggled though, in finding a Dr TO – and working out why Moriarty would need a doctor in this situation at all.
Kitty and Joan discuss this – the need for a doctor – at great lengths. Talking about how it could be a doctor of any sort – or even a person who goes by the title doctor but who's skills that Moriarty required where nothing to do with them being a doctor of medicine. Every scenario they imagine leads them no closer to the answer.
It is Kitty who wonders, out loud, while there in the taxi on the way to the Brownstone, whether KC is a place or something like that as opposed to a person as they cannot find a person with the correct initials. So when they arrive to find Sherlock locked in his room, they start trying to find if KC is mentioned anywhere else in the diary or anything like it is. Both also search buildings in London with the shortened named or KC – both come up with nothing apart from the Kennel Club and an art studio – both of which they look in to with great interest. Neither yield results that help them at all.
So in the end they collate all the other coded appointments and write them in a list, placing them on Sherlock's already cramped wall.
TYE – 9.45 HW
D 11.20
KC – floor 4, Dr TO
JH – 4.50
LK Second
KC –
The first of the appointments is written on a day three months before the first Matthews murder occurred, the second three weeks before and the first KC mention comes five days before Harold Matthews was murdered – while all the others fall in the gap between the first murder and 'Irene's death'.
They stare at the list for a long time with no results. Puzzling over why the last appointment has no time, no floor – like the other mention of those initials. They spend no time working who JH and LK are, Sherlock having already worked that out – painting collectors 'Irene' was meeting with.
Then, as Joan stands to leave, Kitty flicks through the diary, coming to a close on the very last page. A hand, quite different to 'Irene's' has scrawled something.
Dr Osborne
If you want to talk
01254 758392
Kitty doesn't worry about the number, Sherlock has already called it countless times just to be told the number has been deactivated. But it's the name, Dr Osborne; it matches the doctor mentioned in the diary. She shares this with Joan and for a moment they stand, silence slowly seeping through the Brownstone.
And then KC makes sense, Joan can't believe they haven't thought about it before. Where do you find a doctor? A hospital of course.
Joan calls in favours with various friends in London and a photocopy of 'Irene Adler's' medical records arrives in New York three days later. They come from Kings College Hospital – the elusive KC – the closest hospital to where 'Irene' and Sherlock were living three years previous. They don't tell Sherlock - he's to consumed by trying to find a link between the Matthews murders and Moriarty. And anyway, Joan thinks she knows what they will find and she's not ready to tell him.
They read the file, spread out on the table. It's not very long but the dates mentioned in it correspond with the ones in the diary.
By morning they have an appointment to see Jamie Moriarty in prison.
….
Jamie Moriarty likes reading the newspaper, likes to keep on top of current affairs, so it's no surprise that when Joan and Kitty are admitted to her cell, her room, she's holding a newspaper in her hand. The headline on the paper is about the Terrence Matthews' death, even though it had occurred nearly a month previously, and Joan thinks she might be holding it to prove a point. Moriarty's way of saying she knows why they've come.
She thinks they have come talk about the death of a man on a cold December morning. She couldn't be more wrong. She gestures for them to sit down and even knows Kitty's name – it unnerves her but Joan was expecting it. Of course Moriarty keeps tabs on Sherlock, so, of course she'd know who Kitty Winter, the runaway from London, is.
The blonde starts by talking about Sherlock, inquiring into how he is – what cases he has at the moment. Kitty, taking the lead, starts – telling Moriarty about the Matthews' Murder and how Sherlock has become obsessed with trying to link it to her.
Moriarty almost looks surprised, just good acting Joan supposes. Moriarty starts speaking, candidly, as if she's admitting some great secret - she tells them that she had nothing at all to do with the death of Terrence Matthews – and for once, Joan believes her. Kitty pipes up yet again, mentioning the diaries that Sherlock has had shipped across from London, about how he is set on decoding her appointments. Moriarty laughs, saying that there's nothing important there.
Then Joan speaks, telling her why Sherlock is so intent of linking this case to Jamie Moriarty. She talks of his need to know why she decided to leave, to 'die', when she did, of the fact he had always been convinced that it had something to do with the case he had been investigating at the time.
The three women sit in silence for a while after Joan stops speaking, Kitty just places Irene Adler's medical file down on the table for the blonde to see.
The information on the page is about something Jamie Moriarty hasn't thought about in a long time. Not in a very long time. Irene Adler, according to this medical record, has only ever been to hospital a handful of times – once for a fictional broken arm at three – but it's the dates, the appointments, that appear in her diary that had caught Joan and Kitty's, along with Jamie's, attention.
The first is for an appointment with Dr Tara Osborne – the same Osborne that Joan assumes scribbled the note in the back of 'Irene's' diary. It is for the first scan of a baby. Irene Adler was pregnant. The type-written record of this meeting tells a story of a woman, of Irene, who did not want a baby. That it was a mistake. There is a note, at the end, saying how the patient seemed sure to start with but seemed wary of termination by the end of the appointment.
When Jamie Moriarty thinks back to it she knows what happened during the appointment. The moment, sitting it that room on the fourth floor of Kings College Hospital, she thought about keeping that baby was the moment Irene Adler's fate, death, was sealed. It was the moment she decided to destroy Sherlock Homes for just making her think about keeping his child. That was it. The next appointment details the termination but Moriarty can't read it. Instead she stands, walking round the boxed cell she has called home for years.
Joan and Kitty worked it out, there was never any link to the Matthews case – Irene Adler died because Sherlock Homes made her fall in love with him.
It's that simple.
It's when they go to leave, five minutes later, that Moriarty finally speaks. She speaks words that refuse to leave Joan's head, even when they're telling Sherlock that there is no link, when they're telling him what the appointments mean, when they are placing Irene Adler's Medical file in front of him.
"It may surprise you, Joan, but I am human. I do make mistakes."
…
Sherlock visits her three weeks later; they sit in silence - a whole hour with no words, for neither know what to say. When he leaves, Jamie Moriarty cries, just for a moment, just for a heartbeat because it hurts. Sherlock, standing in the New York rain, does too – only for one second though. He thinks no can see through the rain.
The letter arrives the next day. It's longer than the usual one page – Moriarty just answers the questions he posed in his last letter. She signs her name, just like she always does, but there's still a page left. So as he puts it down he sees the message on the last page.
I'm sorry.