Title: One Flew
Author: porpoise-song
Characters: Sherlock, John, Moriarty, mention of Lestrade
Rating: PG, I think
Disclaimer: Unless I want Weeping Angels and the Crack to follow me (Steven Moffat), umbrella shaped bruises on me (Mark Gatiss), red coats storming my place (BBC), and a Victorian Age dressed zombie chasing me (Sir Author Conan Doyle), I need to say that I own absolutely nothing.
Summary: After getting convicted, Moriarty is sent to a hospital for the criminally insane. Sherlock and the Yard come to question him one day and find that he's drugged to the point he can barely function. Sherlock is horrified.
Warnings: Disturbing imagery of a mental ward.
A/N: Prompt from pogozebra at sherlockbbc_fic's Prompting XIV
The whole ward smelled, vaguely, like piss. It smelled like piss and a cheap, overbearing disinfectant that was meant to cover up the smell of urine, but, instead, only fused with it and made the whole place smell even worse. Some patients wandered, aimlessly, about the place, either not bothering to look up or too doped up with medication in their systems to do so, however, it didn't matter which one was which because they all looked the same in puke green coloured gowns and their greasy hair covering their faces. The nurses and staff would quickly walk past, a smile plastered on their faces, and give a swift, cheery "Morning", "Afternoon", or "Evening", as if they weren't working in a hellhole; them really sulky and hating everything, the time of day, the place they're at, the people they got to work around.
This was where Jim Moriarty was. This was his new empire.
He wasn't a figure like Randle Patrick McMurphy, who would enter as the boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who'd encourage gambling, drinking, and sex in the ward, and would rally the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorial rule of the "Big Nurse". No, no. He was a Vegetable, instead. Pushed off in one corner of the dayroom, strapped to a gurney and his hands neatly folded over, with the other Vegetables, reeking of stale urine.
He hadn't been lobotomized, but, with the amount of drugs that the staff had pumped through his body, it seemed like it. What Moriarty was before, he never would be again. Nothing in life is as ugly as death, but to everyone who had known who he was and what he was capable of, this was surely a close second. His eyes was normally filled with dark laughter and sharp, quick knowledge, but, now, his eyes were not his normal type of empty that he gave to his enemies to fool them, but a "the bucket's dry", "our water supply is gone and we're in the desert" type of empty. Nothing coherent was happening behind those eyes; nothing of value was occurring in that brain of his.
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson stood at the foot of his gurney, reading the chart, and then looked up to the other end at the head dented into the pillow, a swirl of brown hair over a face milk-white.
After a minute of silence, John finally spoke, "This isn't him, is it, Sherlock? Yes, the resemblance is uncanny, but, surely this can't be him."
Sherlock hesitated for a moment before saying quietly and narrowed his eyes more closely at Moriarty, "I'm afraid that it is, John."
"But, it looks nothing like him. See, they got the crooked nose and that crazy scar—even the scuff. But, they can't do that look. There's nothing in the face. He looks like one of those store dummies."
Sherlock didn't reply. He didn't have to; both he and John knew that it was him. He exhaled a miserable sigh and asked in melancholy tone, "How can someone so brilliant and great end up like this?"
The way that Sherlock asked his question added to the uneasiness John was feeling at the moment. It definitely wasn't because of the strong smell of urine that had climbed up his nose and soaked into his clothes. It was seeing, as Sherlock had just said, someone brilliant and great as Moriarty being resided to this state of decay. It was like watching a great statue or monument fall after it had endured hundreds of years of beating and weathering the elements.
Although this man had killed many innocent people and had taunted Sherlock and John for some years, John knew that this unique man was capable of great things. He had read over some of Moriarty's previous works of academia and was confident of his abilities and potential to do great good. John also knew that, one day, Sherlock himself could end up like this, if people didn't keep a close eye on him.
Sherlock muttered quietly, "And so it ends like this...not with a bang, but with a whimper." Sherlock shook his head in disgust and said, thoughtfully, "This is not the way I would want toend up; not the way I would want things to end...and this isn't the way he would have to wanted to as well."
John looked warily at Sherlock out of the corner of his eye. "Sherlock...what are you thinking of doing? Whatever it is, don't", he said sternly.
"Shut up", Sherlock instantly snapped at John, and then glanced towards the exit, a longing look in his eyes. "Let's get out of here...this place bugs the hell out of me."
The next day, John received a phone call from Detective Inspector Lestrade, telling him that Moriarty had died during the night. He had simply "stopped breathing", Lestrade told John. When John later told Sherlock this, he just nodded and gave a wonderful performance of shock and grief. John always had his suspicions, but was never entirely sure. He had taken up the habit of sometimes staring at Sherlock for hours, trying to see a hint or confession in his face, but Sherlock never gave the slightest sign that he did it. Nevertheless, John was only sure of one thing: Sherlock wouldn't have left something like that sit there with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so everyone could use it as an example of what happened if you buck the system or was unique in anyway. He was sure of that.