Paid in Full
In the end, it's disappointing.
Night has long fallen by the time Sebastian returns to the outskirts of London, face darkened to swarthiness by soot from the fires that continue to rage through the decomposing city.
"I found him." The words, delivered with blunt finality, are utterly devoid of tone.
Silence, then:
"Show me."
The hours-long trek passes in uncharacteristic silence. Its terminus, a makeshift shelter constructed of rubble and a shabby tarp slung between two still mostly-erect buildings, smells of urine and the beginnings of decay.
Jim meets Sebastian's eyes and gestures wordlessly at the mouth of the alley; Sebastian complies, pausing only long enough to dig into his rucksack and remove a stack of small, regular squares of cloth. He hands them to Jim with a short nod and retreats.
Jim ducks into the shelter.
He's there, unmistakably; a huddled lump, curled in on itself, obscured by the distinctive coat (so worn now, so caked with filth so as to be nearly unrecognisable) that has been draped over his unmoving form like a shroud.
Sherlock Holmes is oddly diminished in death.
Pale. Shrunken.
Less.
There are (read: were) people who suggest that the dead merely appear as though they are in repose, as though they could wake at any moment, bright and alive, and carry on. These people have never seen a corpse. The muscles relax when one is sleeping; stress lines, minor signs of strain, tend to ease away. The muscles of Sherlock's face are not relaxed - they are slack.
Even as Jim approaches, even as he looms low over his one-time adversary, he cannot pretend the man (body, corpse, shell, husk, un-man) beneath him is anything less than dead.
He ignores the sickly-sweet odour of rot and stoops, bending down, down, bringing his lips to the air just above Sherlock's ear.
He breaks the silence for the first time since having asked Sebastian to bring him here hours before, his voice a low hiss.
"I win."
And so he does.
There is no pageantry in this, no drama. There is no struggle, no conflict whose grand resolution lies at his feet. There is no glamour in dying of pneumonia, and Jim feels an irrational surge of hatred towards Sherlock for daring to succumb to something so pedestrian. He feels cheated, somehow. Robbed.
He has his victory, but it rings hollow, hollow.
For a small eternity he remains like this, enclosed in the pseudo-shelter with a corpse, breathing in the stink of decay, hating.
"Oh, well." The moment breaks as Jim sing-songs his mock lament, giving an exaggerated shrug for the benefit of an audience who will never see it, and draws from seemingly nowhere a shining steel knife with a highly ornamented handle. He picks up a cheerful hum which doesn't quite obscure the satisfying ripping noise as he cuts a neat square of wool from the dead man's coat.
When his work is complete, Jim rises to his feet, turns on his heel, and walks away without sparing another glance for the man who had, in the end, utterly failed to challenge him.
"Sebastian, dear," he lays the new swatch of cloth on the stack of assorted pieces, directly atop a scrap of oatmeal-coloured wool that looks as if it must, once, have been very comfortable, "keep these safe, will you?"
Together they take their leave of the city, Jim with a new spring in his step.
