I know everything.

And believe me, this is not one of my usual proud affirmations. My eyes are stinging and my head is swirling with white fog and my mouth tastes bitter and my stomach is churning. I have reached the conceivable end of my path of- what? Knowledge, power, revenge…

It doesn't matter. Because I've stopped. I'm standing right at the end of the path, and there is nothing beyond. There's not even an anti-path. There is only what I choose. If there's not even an edge to fall off now I'm at the end, I can either turn around and go back, start over, or… stop. Just stop. Sit down and don't move.

If I envision any of this navel-gazing, in my mind it appears as a path, a literal path that just exists, like a world in a video game. Perhaps there's trees to the side of the path, but no real places, only empty space and an unending drop below.

Enough of the metaphysics. Let's play a game to delay the inevitable. I'll pretend to be myself, that Jim Moriarty who I've mostly been living as since I was twenty-one. How would he think? He'd try and logically work out what was going on and what to do next.

I can use his voice, and I look like him too, but I can't think like him right now. It's like the moment when you've just woken up but the weight of your identity hasn't sunk in yet. The split second when you know no morality or worries or emotions, you just are. How long have I been trying to achieve that? And now I'm here and it's… it's nothing, but I still have memories of the man I was, and that hurts. It smarts, and maybe that's why my eyes are watering and my hands are shaking.

But in real time, these thoughts, or to be more accurate, realizations, only take a few seconds. A few seconds of empty space between words. In the real world, the surface world, I'm standing on the roof of St Barts and the sun is glaring down on me and Sherlock, Sherlock and I, and my face must have cleared because he's looking at me with that intensity of focus that I haven't seen since we first officially met. And for once, I can't double-bluff his thoughts and play him at his own game. I am genuinely stymied as to whether he can tell how lost I am, or if he thinks I'm trying to tug at the little sentiment he has. Because he does have it, but if he's that clever he should know I wouldn't even try to make him feel sorry for me. His teensy emotional breakthroughs will never be for me. And that's okay.

I'm back, I'm back, I'm successfully delaying. I can talk like myself. I'm playing the game again. There's still a few more moves left, hope is not lost.

Oh. We appear to have reached an impasse. We both know that there's no way to move on unless I make a critical decision. I think. I think. The game goes on once I'm gone. It's chess. I give myself up. I have the gun. I take his hand and thank him for a game well played. Thank you for letting me know there was another. And thank you for not being stiff like the others, not being boring. Thank you for accepting the challenge. Better do it now. I can see the pity creeping into his expression. Perhaps I haven't entirely purged myself of identity. It still annoys me.

One swift movement and my hand is on the gun. I splatter a laugh in his face and know what this is for. This is for the empty spaces between words and thoughts and actions, and for the disappointment whenever I pushed something too far and people backed away, and as a mark of respect to Sherlock. We're both due a fall. I just hadn't anticipated mine coming so soon.

So I pull the trigger and plunge into nothing. And there is nothing.