"Sherlock?" John's voice questioned over the mobile that the detective held to his ear.
"Okay, look up. I'm on the rooftop." he instructed. His movements felt surreal, his voice sounded distant even to himself. He watched as John looked up.
"Oh god."
"I...I...I can't come down, so we'll...we'll just have to do it like this." Sherlock stammered nervously, unsure of how he was to say it, to explain such an intention.
"What's going on?" John asked anxiously.
"An apology," Sherlock took a deep breath, "It's all true."
"Wh-What?"
"Everything they said about me. I invented Moriarty." as he said this, he looked around to where the body of Jim Moriarty lay, a grin still plastered onto his sickly pale face, and a pool of crimson blood creating a devilish halo around his head.
"Why are you saying this?" John persisted, the level of panic rising in his voice.
Sherlock turned back to look down at him.
"I'm a fake." his voice broke.
"Sherlock…"
"The newspapers were right all along. I want you to tell Lestrade; I want you to tell Mrs. Hudson, and Molly...in fact, tell anyone who will listen to you that I created Moriarty for my own purposes." Sherlock couldn't hold back a few of his tears.
"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." Sherlock said, hoping to dampen John's hope.
"You could." John said without missing a beat.
The tears came freely after that comment, striking Sherlock to the core with wonder of John's loyalty.
But he couldn't have John dying anytime soon; and so he was still determined to jump.
Sherlock laughed bitterly, tears dripping down his chin.
"I researched you. Before we met, I discovered everything I could to impress you." he sniffed quietly. "It's a trick. Just a magic trick."
Sherlock watched as John began shaking his head.
"No. Alright, stop it now." John began walking across the street. Sherlock began to panic, remembering the snipers that waited patiently to put a bullet in John's head.
"No, stay exactly where you are. Don't move." he commanded urgently, worst case scenarios floating through his vast mind. John stopped suddenly and then backed up, holding up a hand in compliance.
"Alright."
Sherlock began to breathe rapidly and he almost subconsciously reached a hand out towards John.
"Keep your eyes fixed on me." his voice grew frantic and there was a tremble in its tone. "Please, will you do this for me?"
"Do what?" John sounded as if he were in shock.
"This phone call-it's er...it's my note. It's what people do, don't they-leave a note?"
John began shaking his head again and momentarily moved the mobile away from his ear. He rose it again, his voice very shaky. "Leave a note when?"
Sherlock knew he could waste no more time.
"Goodbye John."
"No. Don't." John shook his head.
Sherlock mustered all the courage he could and hung up, dropping the mobile with a clatter on the roof, and he gazed into the horizon, no longer knowing how he should feel. He had no other plans; there was no way out of it.
"SHERLOCK!" he heard John scream. Sherlock spread his arms to either side and fell forward until his feet left the ledge. Wind blasted in his face, panic and fear and the thrill of falling rose within him and he flailed his arms just before making a shattering impact with the ground.
Then his eyes flashed open. He fell backwards out of the chair he'd been sitting on. Sherlock gasped as he made contact with the floor and a terrible pinching plagued his right arm. He tore out a needle from his arm and scrambled to his feet, looking wildly around.
The first thing his eyes saw was the face of Jim Moriarty, a grin twisting across his very alive face; he wore a new Westwood suit.
"Wh-What? What's happening?" Sherlock questioned in a panic, stumbling backwards; he felt very dizzy.
"So good of you to wake up," Moriarty's surreal tenor of a voice started. "You made me wait a whole ten seconds."
"Impossible…aren't you…? What do you mean by 'wake up'?" Sherlock, still bewildered, spotted a silver briefcase which was laying open on a bed and revealing its very strange contents; tubes running from a box-like structure, in the center residing a ominously big red button, and at the ends of those tubes were attached a needle.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes slowly.
Observation: Expensive Hotel room, only been used today for about two...no, three hours. I have been asleep for most, if not all, that time.
"What is the briefcase for?" Sherlock asked quietly, only trying to draw a conclusion about what had just happened; he had a hypothesis that he needed to prove.
"You already know, Sherlock, don't be coy," Moriarty said. "Everything that's happened in the last two years was just a dream."
Analysis: The needles are used for some sort of sedation. By the look around Moriarty's eyes, he has been asleep as well for as long as I have.
Silence. The villain was just as clever as ever.
Conclusion: the briefcase is the means to sharing a dream. Obviously the subconscious can easily make three hours rest seem like years.
"Isn't it exciting, Sherlock, living inside your own mind? Jim's voice lowered. Then without warning, he twisted a grin onto his face and let out a laugh, a sound so crazed and unnaturally maniacal that even the detective felt a chill run down his spine.
"Pain is in the mind too, Sherlock! It's so much fun! I could have killed you at any point and you'd have just woken up!" his laughter calmed. "We haven't even met formally yet; so rude I know…"
"What do you mean?"
"It would be boring to ruin the surprise, Sherlock. But you really are brilliant," he slowly frowned at the detective. "It's not always fun to play with someone so much like me…" he stared off past Sherlock as if something that only he could see or hear had caught his attention.
"What's happening? Where's John?" the second question was asked much to Sherlock and Moriarty's surprise.
"John? He was never real, just some projection of your subconscious." Jim paced a bit, looking prepared for something. Sherlock just stared.
"He was a very powerful projection too...strange…" Moriarty said thoughtfully, "He wasn't supposed to be a main character…" Moriarty looked hard at Sherlock before suddenly shouting, "HE'S NOT REAL!"
Sherlock's silence irked him violently.
"You don't have any friends, not really, Sherlock; never have and never will." he grinned, "Except meeeee~" he almost sang, pointing to himself.
Sherlock began to gather that he was unable to use the full capacity of his mind, seeing as how more things confused him than made sense with reason.
Somewhere off in the distance he could have sworn there was music playing but it faded fast.
Then there it was again, in the background, getting louder.
/"Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah! Stayin' alive! Stayin' alive!"/
Sherlock looked to Moriarty but the killer didn't pull out his mobile. It was coming from somewhere else…
"Where is the music coming from?" he asked.
"My time is up, Sherlly," Moriarty evaded the question, pulling a gun from his pocket and throwing it onto the hotel bed.
"The game is paused, I guess, for now…" he smiled slowly. "You can follow me if you want, but I bet you won't even be able to sit up." and with that he vanished, along with the music.
Sherlock's eyes widened. Silence plagued the room.
'John was only a projection? But that would make him unimportant and shove him into the background.' Sherlock thought. The word 'shove' stood out to him for some reason.
'What actually happened to Moriarty?'
Too many impossible things were happening. And then something occurred to Sherlock: he'd woken up when he died. He looked at the gun before picking it up.
'You can follow me if you want...' Moriarty's words echoed in his mind.
"I'm still dreaming." he breathed. His analysis was now complete. Without hesitation, he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Sherlock's eyes flicked open, feeling heavy with sleep. His blue eyes rolled around, trying to see everything they could see.
"It's been fun, Sherlock. Every fairytale needs a villain and a hero, but the hero doesn't always have to win." Moriarty's voice echoed in Sherlock's ears eerily; he was still under the sedative's effects. He could just make out the figure of Jim Moriarty turning and looking down at another blurred body.
"I'd love to take one of you along...that just might be you, Molly-wog...that is, if you ever stop being so ordinary, which you won't." and with that he walked off down the steps and out the door, holding the briefcase, a second set of footsteps following him.
Sherlock looked around to see that he was sitting in his armchair and he could see other blurred bodies sitting or lying in various positions on the furniture in Sherlock's flat.
After blinking a few times, his vision cleared and he made himself lean forward to stand but found he couldn't.
Looking around again, Sherlock could see that the bodies were slumped in slumber and not in fact dead. Around him sat/laid Molly, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and Mycroft.
Sherlock knew his mind was a bit boggled but all he could think was "Where is John?"
"Mycroft," Sherlock's voice was deeper than usual with exhaustion.
His brother didn't respond, still asleep and clutching his umbrella as if it were his significant other. Sherlock rolled his eyes and smirked, thinking on what John's probable comment would be. Something like, "Maybe they want to be alone," or "Has he bought the ring yet?"
But no such comment was made and Sherlock remembered why.
"Mycroft!" he rose his voice and did his best to toss a pillow at his older brother. Luckily for Sherlock, the pillow hit Mycroft square in the face and startled him to wakefulness.
Mycroft let out a stifled snort and instantly brandished his umbrella like a fencing sword, pointing it at Sherlock.
"Bloody hell, why am I here?" Mycroft began straightening his suit, standing effortlessly; once he was standing, however, he swayed enough to make him use his umbrella as a cane to steady himself.
"We've been drugged-"
"Well, obviously, Sherlock. But who drugged us?" Mycroft interrupted in a brotherly manner.
"Where's John?" Sherlock blurted out unconsciously.
"Oh do stay focused, Sherlock," Mycroft sighed.
"James Moriarty and...someone else, I didn't actually see the other one." Sherlock complied.
Mycroft sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes.
"Who is he?" Sherlock questioned, questions about John still bombarding his mind. He already knew that Mycroft had the answer, he was just hoping that his brother was up to sharing the information though it was against Queen and Country.
"A rogue extractor, formerly employed at Global Corporations. He's a nihilistic thief and serial killer." Mycroft answered.
"An extractor?" Sherlock asked, though he hated it when Mycroft knew something and he didn't.
"It means that he's been inside our heads and those two years of him weren't real. We must have been living in the second or third level: a-"
"Dreams within dreams. That would of course explain the time differentials on separate levels of the subconscious." Sherlock interrupted, smiling inwardly when he spied Mycroft rolling his eyes with a look of utter annoyance. It would be years still before Sherlock would ever let Mycroft have the last word.
"Moriarty was the first to reach a fourth level of a dream without falling into Limbo; he did of course go there in the end...he was there for more than just a few years I'd imagine." Mycroft added but Sherlock wasn't listening.
"But what I don't understand is how John could become such a prominent figure in the dream…" Sherlock mumbled. "I can understand Irene-"
"Ah yes, quite the scandalous imagination when it came to your childhood sweetheart." Mycroft commented. Sherlock waved his hands for silence; more and more of his usual mind capacity was becoming accessible.
"You should be worried, Sherlock," Mycroft added.
"Why?" Sherlock asked uninterestedly.
"If it was Moriarty who walked in your dreams, there's certainly a chance that he's stolen something from you, secrets from your mind." Mycroft explained.
"What is it to you? It's not as if anything I know is of national security."
"I was just warning you, Sherlock. You're such a child sometimes…"
"Where is John?" Sherlock inquired again.
"In the hospital, in a coma, like he has been for the past month." Mycroft said bluntly. Sherlock looked up at Mycroft, looking concerned and confused.
"So he's real. Why would he be there?" he quarried then suddenly a flash of memories entered his mind, images accompanying Mycroft's next words.
"Because you put him there." Among the images there was a culprit, a chase, and absentminded shove, and then sudden realization. He remembered who he was chasing and where he'd been running; he remembered shoving someone out of the way in a crowd that was huddled at a traffic light, waiting to cross, and how the next sound he heard was the screech of tires and a sickening thud of a body hitting a car. He remembered the face of the man he'd pushed. It was John.
"Nevermind, I remember now." Sherlock said quietly, hurriedly walking to his coat and scarf and then the door.
"Where are you going now Sherlock? And what am I supposed to do with all your friends, here?" Mycroft gestured to the still sleeping people around him.
"Wait until they wake, I suppose," Sherlock answered as he walked out the door. "I'm off to find John."
Sherlock walked right into St. Bartholomew's Hospital, not without one quick glance towards the rooftop, and walked up to a nurse.
"Can I help you?" she said mechanically before her face animated with a sudden smile.
"I'm here to see-"
"John Watson, I know." she said. "You come everyday."
He only nodded and let her lead him to John's room.
Walking in, Sherlock saw that John was no longer in a coma but sitting up and staring out the window to his left.
The nurse turned and left and John looked up at Sherlock's footsteps.
"Who are you?" John asked.
"I'm um...I'm the man who cause you to go into a coma." Sherlock began anxiously-it was a very strange emotion for him to feel; meeting people was never his strong suit, especially since he already felt like he knew everything about the person he was meeting, which was literally everyone at first glance.
Finally he knew why John was so important in the dream: it was because of guilt.
"Oh." John said in reply. "Your voice...sounds familiar…are you the man who comes in every day to tell me you're sorry?" he asked to Sherlock's surprise; he'd heard him in his comatose state?
"...Yes." there was nothing else that he could say because the knowledge that this was not the John from his dream kept his other comments at bay.
"Well, alright," John said, raising his brows with an expectant look. "Tell me what happened, because I can't remember a bloody thing." he smiled goodnaturedly, laughing quietly.
"I was on a chase for the man responsible for the Soho killings and he had the good sense to run through a crowd of people by the traffic light. To get through, I had to shove people out of the way and I...shoved you into the path of a cab." Sherlock explained.
"Hm." John hummed, looking down and nodding his head a few times slowly. Then he stared at Sherlock with squinted eyes. His scrutinizing stare made Sherlock feel uncomfortable.
"Well, the nurse told me that you're also paying my medical fees. I think that's a bloody good
enough apology." John said and smiled again.
"We haven't been formally introduced," Sherlock changed the subject, walking up to the patient with an extended hand. "Sherlock Holmes."
John shook his hand firmly.
"John Watson. Pleasure to meet you, under the circumstances, Mr. Holmes."
"Ah, please, call me Sherlock."
Fin.