Title: Stayin' Alive
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: What if it had all gone wrong? (TRF alternate ending)
Warnings: Character death
Written: 8/15/14
Notes: Thanks to some wonderful discussions with Fang's Fawn and Wynsom, I finally decided to stop trying to write about S3 – a season that will never work for me on any level – and go back to previous seasons and other possibilities instead. I was in the mood to write something short and (hopefully) packing a punch. Going back to "The Reichenbach Fall", I realized that Moriarty's ringtone – the Bee Gees song "Stayin' Alive" – is the same song used as a guide in performing chest compressions during CPR. This piece then came to mind, written and edited in one hour. As always, I hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading and for your continued support. I cherish every response.
Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin' alive…..
Sherlock's plan had been very clever. Intricate and brilliant; rational creativity driven by genius-level problem solving and the barest hint of ragged desperation. She had been ready to help any way he needed; to try anything to save his life.
Instead, four were lost.
Sherlock Holmes and Jim Moriarty had been playing a dangerous game, each facing an equal for perhaps the first time in his life. Their mutual mistake, however, was in thinking that the world would care that they were so clever; that its age-old melodies would change in the face of two warring conductors who each saw himself as the center of the music. That nothing would go wrong.
But the world didn't care. It had seen billions of lives, billions of years; had its own rhythm, its own center. And clever or boring, final problems or IOUs notwithstanding, the world went on. People lived, people died. For each person saved by a brilliantly clever medical advance, there were others who died despite its existence. For every newborn diagnosed and operated on for a congenital heart defect was a young adult diagnosed via post-mortem after sudden death. For each disease eradicated by a new vaccine, was a catastrophic natural disaster. Checks and balances. Old scores filled with key changes, codas, and smudged pages. Earthshaking fortissimos and triumphant pianissimos, soaring symphonies and mournful dirges, the world played on - regardless of clever men playing mental chess in their little corner of it.
In a way, it was poetic – just that week, St. Bart's had offered a class on hands-only CPR. Press hard, press fast. Use the beat of "Stayin' Alive" as a guide.
But there was no poetry in how they died. No bullet through compassionate eyes versus an intuitive gut; through a loyal heart versus a world-famous brain.
Just four impacts, four beats, four deaths.
Ah….
Mrs. Hudson, shot at Baker Street, offering a stranger another cup of tea.
Ah….
Lestrade, shot at Scotland Yard, taking the call.
Ah….
John, shot in the street, watching his best friend jump.
Ah….
Sherlock, hitting the pavement.
Stayin' alive…
And Molly, the smell of blood and gunpowder in her hair, Sally Donovan's words ringing in her ears, slumped against the wall of a building that taught a lifesaving technique to the same song now coming from a murderer's mobile, carried past her in a bloodied evidence bag by a DI who wasn't Lestrade; hands shaking for a cup of tea that would never again be made by Mrs. Hudson, savored by John Watson, or expected by Sherlock Holmes.
Molly Hooper, stayin' alive…
…and wondering how it all went so wrong.