The Demise of Richard Brook

...

"I don't like Richard Brook," she'd said. "Mind you come back as Jim Moriarty."

He'd grinned. He'd blown her a kiss and he'd walked out of the door without a single word.

He hadn't come back. Not yet.

Emma looked at her phone. He wouldn't come back, she decided. Not this time. It wasn't that he'd never disappeared before, nor that he'd never left without any warning. It was just that this was his grand finale. He would have come back if he'd won. He would have come back to brag. She was almost the only one he could brag to.

She got up and turned on the TV. She found what she was looking for on one of the more sensational news reports. You could always depend on people lusting after a scandal.

"The famous self-proclaimed detective Sherlock Holmes, also known as 'the Reichenbach Hero' has committed suicide after he was discovered to be a fraud," an exited girl proclaimed from behind a shiny table.

Emma watched and waited. Nothing. Just Sherlock Holmes being dead. Nothing else. She stared at the flickering screen. Sherlock Holmes was dead, Jim had won. But he wasn't here with her and he wasn't on TV as the terrified but relieved Richard Brook.

"They've caught him," she said aloud to herself. "Or he's dead."

Dead. That had to be it. He'd destroyed himself in the course of destroying Holmes.

Emma wasn't sad, she was livid. She'd always known that the game was more important than her. Holmes was more important than her, because he was in the game. She'd never been in the game. That was why she was special to Jim, she was outside of the game, outside of his life. But she knew. She knew everything. Well, she knew enough. Emma turned off the TV.

It probably hadn't been his plan. Dying that is. She was confident enough to think that his plan had been to beat Holmes and then come home to her. Preferably soaked in blood. But apparently winning had meant he had to die. And of course he chose to win. Winning was everything to him. It always had been.

She got up and started pacing through the room. If he'd died there, and nobody was shouting about Sherlock Holmes bringing death upon poor actor Richard Brooke someone must have removed the body. Someone obviously thought his death worth covering up. British Intelligence couldn't have bought the Richard Brooke story for one minute. They knew James Moriarty was real, they had the casualties to prove it. Or perhaps Jim had put people in place to make sure he'd disappear, perhaps dying had always been an option…

"Brilliant Jim," Emma said crossly. "You've won and now you're dead. You're dead and no one knows but me and the suits."

She hesitated a moment and then marched into his study. She glanced around. Where would it be… She wasn't interested in his papers, his research or his books. His computer was on, he never turned it off. It sat there humming away like always.

If he wanted her to find something he wouldn't have hid it in a place where he'd hide it, but in a place where she would have hidden it. Emma turned around a couple of times and then grabbed a handful of paperbacks off a bookshelf. Behind them was a small box. She took it, put the books back and sat down at Jim's desk.

She opened the box. A piece of red paper lay on top of the things gathered inside it. It read:

"Clever girl"

Emma didn't smile, she scowled. She put the note aside and inspected the box' contents. There was an big envelope, a smartphone, a ledger and a smaller envelope. She took up the big envelope. Underneath it there were a couple of flash drives.

Slightly absent-mindedly she opened the big envelope. Inside there was a death certificate for a Jareth M. Morris. Emma vaguely remembered it as one of Jims aliases. She took out a bundle of papers that read:

"The last Will and Testament of Jareth Matthew Morris".

She read it with raised eyebrows.

"I Jareth Matthew Morris, being of sound mind, declare this to be my last will and testament. To be executed in the event of my death.

My apartment in London I leave to the fourth woman I wanted and the only woman I possibly loved, Emma Worthing. As do I my shares and assets in…"

Emma didn't read any further. She stared at the words "possibly loved". He'd never told her he loved her. Why would he? It wasn't like him at all. Love was something ordinary people had. Well, she wasn't ordinary, but Jim…he was brilliant, and insane. She reread the first line, "I Jareth Mathew Morris" and smiled wryly. That was alright then, it was Jareth, not Jim, that possibly loved her.

"I possibly loved you too," she muttered and read the rest of the will.

Well, she was rich now, that was one thing. And the apartment was hers, which was convenient. She picked up the ledger and opened it. She sighed. So even Jim didn't fully trust his computer toys. This looked like his version of the infamous little black book. People, events, transactions, contacts. Everything that was still of worth was in there. It was enough to blackmail, put away or exploit a ton of people with more power than most people could dream of. The flash drives probably contained the less sensitive information, there must be a lot of it. Emma put them aside and looked at the smartphone.

It was exactly like the one Jim always had with him. Only this one was empty. It even had the same phone number. She looked in the memory and saw that the card had been activated a few hours ago. So this was a clone phone, to be activated if the other phone was somehow deactivated. A strange feeling crept up on her as she realized that the time that this phone was activated must have been the time that Jim decided to die. She threw it aside and picked up the small envelope. This was the last thing in the box and she doubted it would be any more comforting or significant than the other things in there.

She was wrong. Inside there were photos. One of him as a boy. It looked like a holiday picture and Jim seemed fairly happy. He had to be around ten and he looked quite like a normal boy, but Emma could see a faint gleam of derangement in his eyes. It made her smile in spite of herself.

The next photo shocked her. It was his mother. It had to be. She looked like him. She also looked quite sad. Jim never wanted to talk about his mother, even though she'd pestered him about it. His father had left them. She knew that because she guessed it right and he had gotten angry with her, but that was about all she knew. That and that he was born in Ireland where his mother came from. She turned the picture around, looking for a date, but instead she found Jim's handwriting. Quite obviously addressed to her:

"Surprise! Didn't think I cared, did you…"

Upon seeing that she looked at the back of the childhood photo, but it was blank.

There was another photo and to her surprise it was of her. On the back it just said: "Emma". But there was something strange about it. It was not "Emma" written to remind oneself who was on the picture. It was Jim saying "Emma. He had taken that picture and he was calling her "Emma". Emma looked in the envelope. There were no more photo's just a card. It was blank except for the words:

"Kisses, Jim".

This time Emma swallowed. There was a lump in her throat. But anger still triumphed sadness. Anger at Jim for dying, anger at the world for being like it was, anger at Sherlock Holmes for making Jim obsessed with him and a hint of anger at herself for expecting an insane man to not fuck everything up eventually. She clenched her teeth.

The computer made a noise. Emma looked up. She knew that sound. It always called Jim to the screen. It was The Server. He'd explained it to her with great pride. The Server was how people contacted him. People knew people who knew the server address. They posted a message on there and Jim replied if he thought it looked interesting or fun. You couldn't access it directly, your message would bounce off of a million IP-addresses before it reached The Server and that way you wouldn't get caught. All the messages were encrypted and only meant to set up a phone line or occasionally a meeting.

Jim was dead, but someone was accessing the server. His associates must have followed his trial and the Richard Brooke story with shock, fear or relief, but they either didn't know that he was dead or they didn't really believe it. Jim was too brilliant to die, too indispensable and too big a threat for them to believe it. Emma got up and stared at the screen. The post was by one of his first hand contacts. This was someone who knew the name Moriarty and maybe had a phone number somewhere.

Emma looked down at the box. She picked up the will and saw that the envelope underneath it, now laying with the opened side down, had writing on it. It said:

"Emma Moriarty."

She stared at it. Legally that would never be her name. But about a month ago Jim had taken her out in one of his manic states, bought her a dress, bought himself a suit, bought two ridiculously expensive rings, found a random person who knew the ceremony and had married her. It couldn't have been legal. There hadn't been any witnesses, there hadn't been a proper marriage certificate. But nevertheless the envelope read, in his handwriting: Emma Moriarty.

Emma looked at the screen and at the large M in the corner of the server window. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She hesitated for one strange, expressionless moment before a grim little smile showed on her face and she slowly typed:

"DID YOU MISS ME?"

I wrote this a long time ago, just after the series 2 finale came out. I came across it again, cleaned it up a bit and decided to upload it anyway because I still rather like it. Hope it get's a smile out of some other Sherlock fans! Reviews are of course very much appreciated :)