Preamble: The usual I don't own blah blah blah. This is a one off. Sorta spoilers for S3 - well, slight refs anyway. Otherwise, enjoy.
With a shaking hand she lights up a cigarette, sharply inhaling the acrid tobacco smoke and slowly blowing it out letting it circle around her head. The sounds of the city drift up from below, honking horns, sirens, the odd shout as a tide of humanity ebbs away from the working day, and eddies as those headed home collide with those seeking out the Friday night lights.
Today was a bad day.
She looks down at the newspapers beside her. Well, loosely speaking newspapers. More tabloids. A mix of titillating sex scandal and suicide that had occurred over the last week. She normally didn't read them, and even after picking them up at the newsstand she only paid them a cursory glance.
"Long time no see." She breaths the words out with another slow exhale of smoke. The act is soothing, but the nicotine is starting to settle in making her head feel light and a tingling creeping up her neck. Not unpleasant, but not really relaxing. "I'd offer you one, but it's my last for awhile." She gestures to the empty pack beside her, Cyrillic branding worn and crumpled from too much time in her handbag.
"I see you've been catching up on the news, such as it is." He comes out of the shadows and sits beside her. He's familiar with her rooftop sanctuary. The red couch sits under a corrugated metal lean-to, the end table home to a bottle of vodka and tumbler – both untouched tonight, he notes. Tonight it's just nicotine, her cigarette held delicately between two fingers sporting bleeding knuckles. He knows if she turns her head he'll see a fresh shadow of a bruise forming on her cheekbone.
She lets out a soft chuckle. "You've clearly been into it." She gazes out to the horizon, the night's darkness chasing down the day in an eruption of pinks and oranges. "How are you?"
He is surprised at the question. Not surprised that she knows. Just surprised that she has asked.
"Just, you aren't usually the one that pulls the trigger." She offers, before he has a chance to respond. "And, you've narrowly avoided an assignment that we both know you weren't going to walk away from."
He shrugs. Both statements are true. And truth be told, that moment on the tarmac saying goodbye to John and realizing that he was facing his own mortality was… difficult. Unexpectedly emotional. For the first time yearning that his life had taken a different path. It almost made him regret what he had done. Almost. Four months. His brother was never wrong.
"You've 'clearly been into it' yourself." He says, glancing briefly at her. She's haggard. He's only seen her like that once before. She snorts softly. Her hand tremors as she brings the cigarette up to her lips.
"It's not everyday that your brother comes back from the dead." She speaks as she inhales and then breaths out the smoke in a sigh. "It's given some former associates a new set of balls, it seems." He smirks at this last statement. You can take the girl out of Kentucky… She reaches over to the bottle, unscrews the top, and pours three fingers of the white liquid into her glass. She moves stiffly, muscles taught under her skin. Half the glass goes down in a single gulp, a slight grimace tightening her features as it goes down with a slow burn that turns into a glowing warmth in her chest.
They stare out at the horizon in a heavy silence. She hands the glass over to him. "Za zdorovje." He drinks. Normally he avoids hard liquor, but tonight he recognizes this is a toast of sorts. He remembers watching her, as she stood before the slab and the pathologist pulled the sheet down revealing the features of the madman who had blown his own brains out in a final scorched-earth gambit against him. He remembers her slight, stiff nod at Molly, haggard with a conflicted grief that sat deep in the pit of her stomach. She left the morgue, breezing past his brother with barely a glance before stopping just past his peripheral vision. "He knows where to find me." She said simply. "Perhaps he should."
That had been a night of stories. He had cautiously approached her on the roof as she sat, staring out to the horizon as they were now. She was in the open and unarmed. In his presence she poured herself a glass, took a drink, and handed it to him in a sort of warrior's toast. Drinking from the same glass ensuring a sort of truce to hostilities, that no poison would pass his lips unless it had hers. It was an intimate act between them that would be repeated many nights over the next couple years. She told him about her brother. Irish father. Russian mother. A union of two criminal families. Fraternal twins. Being separated during their formative years. Grandmother in Kentucky. Educated at Oxford. Raised in Siberia on a heady mix of orthodox religion and living off the avails of sin. She called these "origin stories." She also had one to share of his, she said. When it was time.
She stubs out the cigarette, almost smoked down to the filter, and looks over at him. The collar of his coat is turned up against the cold night air, his hands in his pockets. Black curls hang almost to his eyes. He's not watching her as they exchange words and silence, he's observing her. She feels his eyes glance over her knuckles, scraped and sore, drifting up and resting on the pulse in her neck, then over her cheek where if it weren't for a well-timed dodge would be broken open instead of just bruised. Finally, his eyes rest on hers and they stay there.
"I got the job." She says.
His eyes widen. Four months. Damn. He exhales slowly a breath that he did not realize he was holding. She opens the bottle again and pours another. She drinks. He drinks.
"Sherrinford." She says.
"The other one." He replies, using the words Mycroft always did to describe his twin brother.
Sherlock leans back, fingers held in a steeple under his chin, and closes his eyes. He motions for her to continue.
She speaks slowly, in a low voice. Husky with fatigue and drink, she has helped herself to another, the sharing of which has been waved off. He does not want his faculties further blurred. She seems to need hers dulled to allow the story to flow.
Sherrinford Holmes. Freshly recruited to Her Majesty's secret service, and tasked with dismantling foreign criminal syndicates, the senior Moriarty had been a long sought target. He had gone deep undercover, insinuating himself into the organization feeding intelligence to Mycroft on the outside. As Sherrinford rose through the ranks, he encountered the young Jim Moriarty, impressionable, bold, eighteen, and ready to follow in the footsteps of his father. The elder Holmes had seen this, and took Jim under his wing in a moment of surrogate sentimentality – perhaps driven by the knowledge of his youngest brother's troubles back home. Slowly he tried to steer the younger Moriarty away from his father's world of drugs, human trafficking, and murder.
She pauses, pouring herself another. The bottle is getting low. She watches as Sherlock absently massages the inside of his forearm. He watches her as she sips this time, rolling the liquid around her mouth before swallowing, a combination of cold and drink colouring her fair skin pink at her cheeks and nose. Her resemblance to Jim often creeps up on him in a surprising way. Her dark eyes smolder with years of witnessing some of the most heinous acts that the human race could inflict on its own. Strong piano-player fingers tap a silent tattoo on the glass and he flashes to his meeting with her brother at Baker Street, his fingers playing invisible keys as they exchanged barbs. She kept his ring, he notes, on a fine chain around her neck.
She breathes in. Then out. And continues.
As Sherrinford gained the trust of the young Moriarty, the criminal empire began to fall. First an intercepted shipment here, and a drugs raid there. Then, key enforcers were apprehended. Soon, Sherrinford's superiors were getting antsy. They were cutting away the serpents, but they wanted the head. They demanded the head. And Sherrinford now had access through his attachment to Jim.
Sherlock leans forward, elbows on knees, fingers running through hair, down face, and finally steepled in front of his lips. He's remembering the day it was announced that Sherrinford would not be coming home. His mother cried as Mycroft held her hands in his. His father stood silent with a stance of granite. Sherlock had been high, and he was now coming down with a crash. As his brother delivered the news, his eyes locked with Sherlock's, reptilian and filled with disgust toward his younger brother. Sherlock looked back with equal disgust, confident in the knowledge that while he didn't know the full story, his brother's version was equal parts truth and lies.
She sees a sadness flicker across his face. It is brief and mars his chiseled features for only a moment. He sighs, produces a silver case from an inside pocket, and takes out a cigarette. He lights up, takes a drag, and hands it to her. She raises her eyebrows. "Your brand." He says. "I was out that way not long ago." She nods, takes the cigarette brushing her fingers against his, and inhales with a sigh before handing it back.
She was there when it all happened. Visiting. She had been in Kentucky now for 7 years, but enticed to come for a family that she felt was slipping away. She remembered being reunited with Jim, her twin, same eyes staring back at her. They had hugged awkwardly. Brother and sister separated by distance for so long, they still shared a strong emotional attachment but had no knowledge of how to express it. No knowledge of how to be around each other. Sherrinford had accompanied Jim, now acting as his enforcer. They sat outside the isolated family compound in Siberia, not far from the Tunguska crater. The spring air was crisp, and a slight breeze tugged at her mother's skirt and the tablecloth laden with platters of pumpernickel and meats.
"Em?" Sherlock lays a gentle hand on hers. She doesn't realize she has lapsed into silence, mute from the remembering of it. Her breath hitches at his touch, and her body stiffens. He removes his hand and sits back, aware that the distance between them has closed even more than he was aware.
Her remaining memories are sporadic. A phone call, Jim called away by Sherrinford. He's gotten too close, and he can't bear the thought of seeing his protégé blown to bits. She's knocked to the ground, her ears ringing. Her hand comes away from her left ear sticky and red. Her father lays dead on the ground her mother is gasping for air, her mouth like a goldfish knocked from its bowl. She looks up, the picture of Sherrinford Holmes stalking toward her, the barrel of his gun pointed at her doubling and merging over and over again, his mouth moving but her ears not registering the sound. Suddenly he stops dead in his tracks, a hole opening in his chest, crimson spreading across his white shirt. As he falls forward, she sees Jim behind him, his own weapon still smoking.
Sherlock runs his hands through his hair. Em stares at her fingernails. The climax of the story still hangs in the air, rushing in their ears.
"So, four months." She finally breaks the silence.
"He's never wrong." He replies. "Not even then, I doubt." She looks at him, surprised. Though she knows Mycroft Holmes, and shouldn't be.
"I don't know who is using my brother's likeness."
"I know."
She looks at her watch. Her time is nearing its end. That same plane will be taking her away now. She stands up on the shaky legs of those who are condemned to die and moves to take her leave. Sherlock grabs her wrist, feeling her pulse hammering against the soft flesh. They lock eyes for one last time.
"Prove him wrong."