It was a small group that gathered in the office of Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, huddled around a small table. Rain lashed against the windows outside, the door to the room was shut. Everyone was staring at a small, rectangular object in the center of the desk.

"Molly found it..." Lestrade said hoarsely before clearing his throat. His voice was marginally stronger when he spoke again. "Molly found it in Sherlock's pocket, in the morgue. It was recording the... the whole time."

Mycroft leaned heavily on his umbrella. "Have you listened to it yet?"

"No."

"And... you want everyone to hear it? Now?" John's voice was impossibly quiet, blank, numb. Instead of an umbrella he was leaning on his cane.

"Yes. And... if you want, we'll release it to the press. But I thought you should hear it first, before anything else."

John slowly eased himself into a chair. Molly shakily sat, but Mycroft ignored the chair set out for him. Lestrade reached across the desk and hit the PLAY button on the recorder.

The Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive was the first thing they heard, and Mycroft blinked.

"Moriarty's ringtone," John muttered dully.

The sound of a door shutting, the music growing louder as Sherlock presumably moved closer to where Moriarty stood.

"Ah. Here we are at last – you and me, Sherlock, and our problem. The final problem.Staying alive! It's so boring, isn't it?" The music abruptly stopped. "It's just... staying. All my life I've been searching for distractions. You were the best distraction and now I don't even have you. Because I've beaten you."

Crunching footsteps on gravel as Sherlock paced, broken slightly as Moriarty spoke before continuing evenly.

"And you know what? In the end it was easy." The footsteps stopped. "It was easy. Now I've got to go back to playing with the ordinary people. And it turns out you're ordinary just like all of them. Ah, well."

Footsteps, but not Sherlock's.

"Did you almost start to wonder if I was real? Did I nearly get you?"

"Richard Brook."

John flinched at the familiar voice of his late friend.

"Nobody seems to get the joke, but you do."

"Of course."

"Atta boy."

"Rich Brook in German is Reichen Bach – the case that made my name."

Lestrade's hands clenched into fists, and he looked away.

"Just tryin' to have some fun." Moriarty\ adopted a fake American accent for a moment. "Good," he commented an instant later in his normal, sing-song voice, referring to something they couldn't see nor hear. "You got that too."

"Beats like digits," Sherlock replied. "Every beat is a one, every rest is a zero. Binary code. That's why all those assassins tried to save my life. It was hidden on me; hidden inside my head. A few simple lines of computer code that can break into any system."

"I told all my clients: 'last one to Sherlock is a sissy'."

"Yes, but now that's it's up here, I can use it to alter all the records. I can kill Rich Brook and bring back Jim Moriarty." A long pause in which nobody spoke.

"No, no, no, no, no." Moriarty sounded almost... disappointed? "This is too easy. This is too easy. There is no key, DOOFUS!"

The last word was screamed, so close to Sherlock that the recorder speakers crackled slightly at the noise, and John flinched again.

"Those digits are meaningless. They're utterly meaningless. You don't really think a couple lines of computer are gonna crash the world around our ears? I'm disappointed." Faint footsteps, and Moriarty spoke again, his voice now in a slow drawl. "I'm disappointed in you, ordinary Sherlock."

"But the rhythm-"

Sherlock's voice was genuinely confused.

"Partita No. One," Moriarty scoffed. "Thank you, Johann Sebastian Bach!"

"But then how did-" Moriarty steamrolled over Sherlock's feeble questions.

"Then how did I break into the Bank, to the Tower, to the Prison? Daylight robbery! All it takes is some willing participants. I knew you'd fall for it. That's your weakness – you always want everything to be clever. Now, shall we finish the game? One final act. Glad you chose a tall building – nice way to do it."

Still bewildered, Sherlock stammered out a question. "Do it? Do- do what?" There was a long pause, and then Sherlock's voice was blank and resigned. "Yes, of course. My suicide."

"Genius detective proved to be a fraud," Moriarty announced before his tone switched back to mocking again. "I read it in the paper, so it must be true. Fairytales." The sound of footsteps, two sets of them, as both Moriarty and Sherlock began to walk. "And pretty grim ones too."

Lestrade had been staring at the recorder blankly the entire time. Rich Brook. Reichen Bach. Half the crimes Sherlock had solved were cold cases brought by Lestrade to keep him from getting too bored and burning down London. Half of those had occurred when Sherlock was a mere child, or decades before. He couldn't have possibly arranged those. How had they been so blind?

John's mind had switched off. He heard the words, they registered, but-

Sherlock.

Mycroft exhaled shakily before sitting down, gripping the handle of his umbrella so tightly his knuckles were white and his nails had dug half-crescents into the polished wood.

Molly said nothing.

"I can still prove that you created a false identity," Sherlock stated.

"Oh, just kill yourself," Moriarty groaned in exasperation. "It's a lot less effort." The pacing of footsteps, most likely Sherlock's. "Go on. For me. Pleeeeeeeeeease?" His voice shifted into a high-pitched squeal. The footsteps ceased abruptly, there was the rustle of fabric and a faint scuffle. While they couldn't see what was happening, the reports said that there had been signs of a struggle, however brief. Moriarty's suit was wrinkled, as though someone had grabbed him by the collar, and the gravel on the rooftop was scattered.

"You're insane," Sherlock snarled, his breathing short. A pause.

"...You're just getting that now?"

Another scuffle, and Moriarty laughed.

"Okay, let me give you a little extra incentive." His voice turned savage. "Your friends will die if you don't."

"John," Sherlock breathed.

John's head snapped up to stare at the recorder.

"Not just John. Everyone."

"...Mrs. Hudson."

Mycroft managed a few more shaky breaths. Caring is a disadvantage. Caring is a-

"Everyone."

"...Lestrade."

Lestrade blinked once. Him? Why... him?

"Three bullets," Moriarty said. "Three gunmen. Three victims. There's no stopping them now. … Unless my people see you jump."

John's breath hitched in his throat, Lestrade was actually shaking. Mycroft's eyes had slipped shut, and he let his head fall back to rest on the chair.

"You can have me arrested. You can torture me, you can do anything you like with me, but nothing's gonna prevent them from pulling the trigger. Your only three friends in the world will die... unless..."

"...unless I kill myself," Sherlock finished. "Complete your story."

"You've gotta admit that's sexier." The smirk was practically audible.

"...And I die in disgrace." Moriarty snorted.

"Of course. That's the point of this. Oh, you've got an audience now. Off you pop, go on."

Slow footsteps. Sherlock's breathing was shaky.

"I told you how this ends. Your death is the only think that's gonna call off the killers. I'm certainly not going to do it."

"Would you give me... one moment. Please. One moment of privacy?" His voice broke halfway through. "Please?"

"Of course."

For a long few moments the only noise was Sherlock's heavy breathing, and the weight of tension hung heavily in the air. No one was meeting anybody's eyes.

Then there was laughter. Sherlock's laughter, going from quiet chuckling to full-blown cackling triumph.

"What?" Moriarty sounded furious. "What is it? What did I miss?!"

The crunch of gravel as Sherlock walked to Moriarty.

"You're not going to do it," he repeated. "So the killers can be called off, then. There's a recall code or a word or a number. I don't have to die..." Now it was Sherlock's turn to mock, his voice sing-song as he spoke. "...if I've got you."

"Oh!" Moriarty laughed. "You think you can make me stop the order? You think you can make me do that?"

"Yes. And so do you." Moriarty scoffed.

"Sherlock, your big brother and all the King's horses couldn't make me do a thing I didn't want to."

Mycroft flinched.

"Yes, but I'm not my brother," Sherlock snarled. "I am you, prepared to do anything; prepared to burn; prepared to do what ordinary people won't do. You want me to shake hands with you in hell? I won't disappoint."

A long pause, but Moriarty's soft chuckle broke the silence. "Nah. You talk big. Nah. You're ordinary. You're ordinary – you're on the side of the angels."

"Oh, I may be on the side of the angels..." Lestrade shuddered slightly at Sherlock's voice, darker and more threatening than he had ever heard. "...but don't ever think for one second that I am one of them."

"No, you're not."

Everyone in the room waited with bated breath. Most of them had their eyes closed; only John kept his eyes on the recorder as though it would make it play out faster.

"I see. You're not ordinary. No. You're me." Moriarty gave a delighted laugh. "You're me! Thank you! Sherlock Holmes... Thank you. Bless you. As long as I'm alive... you can save your friends, you've got a way out."

"What went wrong?" Lestrade whispered, but then, rapidly, the situation turned. Moriarty spoke, and his voice sounded calm, almost normal.

"Well, good luck with that."

There was a click, Sherlock cried out and his shuffling footsteps were barely heard as a single gunshot rang out. A thud. Moriarty was dead. Sherlock's breathing grew agitated quickly, and John could almost picture his frantic, manic movements as he desperately tried to think of something-

"Hello?"

It was John's voice. The man in question let out a strangled moan and dropped his head into his hands.

"I can't-" he choked out, then grabbed his cane and hobbled out of the room, door slamming shut behind him.

The recording kept playing as recordings were meant to do, although the group remained motionless and shell-shocked.

"Turn around and walk back the way you came, now."

"No, I'm coming in."

"Just do as I ask!" Sherlock's voice was panicked, strained. "Please."

"Where?" John, bewildered, confused, oblivious.

"Stop there."

"Sherlock?"

"Okay, look up. I'm on the rooftop."

"Oh, God."

"I... I- I can't come down, so we'll... we'll just have to do it like this."

"What's going on?"

"An apology. It's all true."

"Wh- what?"

"Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty."

"Why are you saying this?"

Sherlock's voice broke.

"I'm a fake."

"Sherlock-"

"The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade. I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly. Tell anyone who will listen to you... that I created Moriarty for my own purposes."

"Okay- shut up. Sherlock, shut up. The first time we met- the first time we met, you knew all about my sister, right?"

"Nobody could be that clever."

"You could."

Sherlock gave a weak chuckle.

"I researched you," he sniffed. "Before we met, I discovered everything that I could to impress you. ...It's a trick. Just a magic trick."

"No. All right- stop it now."

"No! Stay exactly where you are! Don't move. Keep your eyes fixed on me. Please, will you do this for me?"

"Do what?"

"This phone call... it's- it's my note. That's what people do, isn't it? Leave a note?"

"Leave a note when?"

"Goodbye, John."

"No, don't-"

There was the sound of rushing wing, whipping fabric, then a sickening crunch.

The recording went to static, then stopped.

The room was silent for a long time then.

"Did you give it to them?" the man asked quietly, standing half in the shadows which hung over him like a curtain. The woman nodded, holding out the small recording device.

"Yes," she said quietly. The man took the recorder with a gloved hand.

"And?"

"John left when you started talking to him in the recording," she said softly. "I've never seen Lestrade cry before. Mycroft... he didn't cry, but... you could see it in his eyes. He looked so sad." The man didn't reply. "Sherlock, are you sure-"

"Yes, Molly!" Sherlock cut in sharply. "I need to do this. Moriarty's empire must fall before I can come back, or everyone will still be in danger."

He left without another word, and Molly pulled her coat tightly around her as it began to rain.

"You were a great man," she whispered to nobody in particular. "Anyone with half a brain could see that. But now... now you're a good one."