The day dawned. It dawned bright and sharp and clear, and all the sort of things you want when you're about to have the biggest fight of your life, but Sherlock wasn't really interested in any of that. The important thing was that it dawned.
He began the day by bringing toast and jam to the imprisoned doctor. That was how he liked to start his mornings nowadays. He wasn't quite sure why John's smile when he walked in had quickly become the highlight of his day, but he didn't mind.
"Good morning, sweetheart," he said, sweeping into the room. He didn't knock; usually the doctor rose far before he did. This morning, however, Watson was sitting up in bed, the laptop Sherlock had doctored for him perched on his knees, his bare chest uncovered by the yellow blankets. The doctor's eyes flickered up to him and he shut the laptop quickly, but otherwise didn't react. Sherlock, strangely, found himself increasingly flustered. "Um, sorry," he said quickly. John grinned.
"Morning, Holmes," he replied airily, putting aside the computer. Sherlock found his eyes drawn to the doctor's tanned chest with its soft dusting of hair and the knotted scar tissue like a war medal soldered onto his shoulder; found his fingers itching to reach out and touch it. But John had that sort of flirty gleam in his eyes they'd been sharing far too much in the past week, and so Sherlock couldn't show his fascination or, subsequently, his embarrassment. He had to play the game.
"I brought you breakfast in bed, my darling," he said silkily, placing the tray on his legs.
"N'awh," John cooed. "Thanks, dear." Sherlock sat down on the edge of the bed as the doctor started spreading strawberry jam on his toast. "Did you have breakfast this morning?" he asked conversationally, not looking up from the task.
Sherlock looked at him sceptically. "I never eat breakfast," he said archly. "Waste of time and energy."
"Speaking as a doctor, Holmes, I can officially tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It's not a waste of energy because food gives you energy. And as for a waste of time, how long were you going to sit there and watch me eat it?"
He considered that point; he liked watching John eat, for some reason. He thought it was because being able to watch the doctor do anything reminded him that he'd won, even though he still wasn't sure that had been the right thing to do.
Doctor Watson picked up the second piece of toast and offered it to him. He shook his head. "Come on," John cajoled. "Just one bite, Holmes, come on. It's bloody toast, for God's sake, just eat it – do I have to feed it to you like a baby?"
Indeed, the doctor leaned forwards, the yellow blanket slipping further down his stomach, and shoved the toast up against Sherlock's lips, chuckling. He reacted automatically to the intrusion by opening his mouth to speak – it's not funny, and I'm not eating that – at which juncture the doctor unceremoniously stuffed the bread and jam between his teeth.
All in all, it was less than dignified and Sherlock was forced to concede that Doctor Watson had won this round. He took a bite of the toast with a scowl, wiping jam away from his lips and holding the offending piece of food in one hand like it was a pair of dirty underwear he'd picked up off the floor. John was still laughing. "Better?" he asked.
He swallowed and made a face of intense displeasure. The doctor laughed again and Sherlock fought off his own smile; the noise just sounded nice. He put the toast back on the tray, although he was sure Watson wouldn't want to eat it now. "Less than pleasant," he lied. Actually the move by Doctor Watson had produced a warm sort of feeling in his lower abdomen that wasn't at all bad, and he didn't mind strawberry jam as much as some other foods. "If you think –"
There was a crash, a bang, and a shriek from Mrs Hudson the landlady downstairs. Both Sherlock and John looked around in surprise. Sherlock's grey eyes flickered to the clock on the bedsit. Oops. How did time manage to get away with him like that up here?
"What was that?"
"That," Sherlock frowned, dusting the last of the toast crumbs off his hands and getting to his feet, "was Jim Moriarty. Judging by the entrance, he wasn't as ready as I thought."
John blinked and listened to the cry of Holmes! from downstairs. Good thing Molly was out. "Who?"
"Oh, honestly, Watson, anyone would think you hadn't left your bedroom in weeks, don't you keep up with current affairs?" he teased, running a distracted hand through his hair. John grimaced at the joke. "Jim Moriarty has apparently been gifted with your powers, and now he thinks to challenge me. It sounds like he came in through the window, though, you always used the door."
John smiled. "Yes, it's so hard to find polite superheroes nowadays, isn't it," he said wryly. "I bet he won't pay for the damage, either." Sherlock shook his head in mock-rue. "Well, you'd better get down there before he tears up the house. Don't hurt yourself, now, Sherlock."
The other man paused on his way to the door as he realised that this was the first time Watson had ever called him by his given name. "I won't," he said confidently, suddenly wanting to actually defeat Jim if it would make John happy. Then he could spend all day up here. "Oh, and by the way, you do know I'm watching your Internet history, don't you, Doctor?" he threw back as he left the room.
John grimaced sheepishly as the door swung closed, then picked up the laptop again and hurriedly closed the fanfiction page he'd been browsing. He was very glad Holmes couldn't watch his word processor's history too, as the Office page popped up again. He took another gulp of his tea – made just the way he liked it, he noticed – and settled back on his pillows, reading back over what he had written.
It was hours before the genius returned, and my bladder was starting to be a pressing inconvenience. I'd planned so many witty retorts for when he came back into the room, tied up by the silver ropes as I was, but when he finally burst through it like so many whirlwinds at once the only one I could think to bite out was to do with bodily functions. "You know, Holmes, superpowers and all, I'm still essentially human."
He pouted. That shouldn't have been attractive. Why did that make me want to hug him and smother him and never let him go? "Untrue," he replied, as usual seeing the truth straightaway. "Your point being?"
Um… I really have to pee? "There are certain bodily functions that even I'm not exempt from, that make staying tied up in one room all day rather uncomfortable." The answering awkward look that told me he understood was equally smotherable. God, I had to stop this. I was John Watson, for God's sake. I had to stop falling for Sherlock Holmes.
Much as he hated to keep the young hero waiting, Sherlock was very aware that one cannot attempt to battle their new nemesis in pyjamas and a dressing gown, so he stopped off on the landing to shrug on his black cape and make an attempt to flatten his hair. While this was happening, the calls of "Holmes!" from the sitting room were getting louder and angrier.
Well, good. The angrier he was, the better fight he'd put up. Finally, dressed and groomed, he threw the bedroom door open with a crash and stepped his most dramatic steps towards Jim Moriarty.
"Good of you to drop by," he stated silkily. The young professor scowled.
"What were you doing up there, Holmes?" he shot cruelly at him, nodding up the stairs.
"Private man things," Sherlock replied mysteriously. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."
Jim shot him a glare, but other than that had no reaction; Sherlock had expected him to have thrown a punch or something by now. He raised an expectant eyebrow – was the man expecting him to strike the first blow? Sherlock coughed awkwardly. "I believe, young hero, that this is the part where you attempt to take me to the police."
Jim smiled suddenly, but it wasn't a nice smile. It was cold and calculating and Sherlock was suddenly struck by the feeling that something had gone wrong. Something in this picture was very, very wrong. "I have another suggestion," the IT professional admitted, flopping down onto the sofa.
"You have a what?" he asked dumbly, coming around until he faced the youth again. Not only had he sat down without being invited, but he'd turned his back on him. In Sherlock's book, that was so rude as to be unacceptable. He still had that unnerving little smile on his face.
"Another suggestion," Jim repeated blandly. "Other than me taking you in."
Sherlock blinked. No. No, this wasn't right. "Well, I'm afraid it'll have to wait." He pulled out a long, slender gun from the pocket of his too-tight black pants and fired it in Moriarty's direction. The youth just batted the bullets away, but Sherlock had expected that. He fired it a few more times in quick succession, forcing the youth to stand up again and throw a half-hearted punch in his direction. "Come on, little one, put up a fight, could you?"
Moriarty's face twisted at little one, as Sherlock had suspected it might; he leapt towards him with a cry and showered him with blows. Yeah, okay, that hurt. He fired the gun again, and even though it had no effect on the professor he stopped hitting him, instead holding him into the floor with a hand on each shoulder, breathing heavily. His face calmed quickly, reassuming its collected smile. The smile Sherlock didn't like. "I think you should hear me out, Sherlock," he said lightly, letting his shoulders go but sitting up so that he was sitting on Sherlock's stomach. It was less than comfortable. "I could take you in to New Scotland Yard at the end of this conversation, but I don't want to. I admire you, Sherlock, I won't pretend I don't. But I'm a lot cleverer than you are."
Sherlock struggled under him, highly offended. "I'd appreciate it if you got off me now."
Moriarty's cruel smile widened. "Not until you've heard what I have to say," he whispered silkily. "I think you had the right idea at the beginning, when you took over. But Sherlock, you lack vision. You fail to see the potential of someone with your… skills. Now, you and I together… forget London, Sherlock, we could have the world."
What? Sherlock stopped his struggling, shocked. "Are you suggesting we… team up?" he asked, so incredulous his head was almost exploding with it. Seriously? This wasn't right, this wasn't how things were supposed to go. He had that sort of swooping sensation that you get when you fall over in a dream; this couldn't be happening. What was wrong with him? What had happened to the heroic young man he'd seen yesterday?
"What else would I be suggesting?" Jim's dark Irish eyes bored into Sherlock's, full of mirth. It was nauseating, it was too much, it was frightening.
Sherlock raised his fingers to his lips and whistled; a cohort of robots burst through the window Moriarty had destroyed and lifted the professor off him. "No!" he shouted as the bots threw the professor across the room. "This is so wrong – you're supposed to be a hero!"
Moriarty skipped into the air and sat back lazily. "Being a hero is boring," he said airily. "I was a criminal before I got the powers, why should I stop now?"
"Because you have the power to fix things!" Sherlock shouted. "You have the ability to do some real good, and you'd rather burn and blister everything – wait, what?" The last part of the statement sunk into his mind. "You're a criminal?"
"One and only Jim Moriarty," he replied brightly. "Criminal mastermind extraordinaire."
Sherlock was aware that things had slipped so far out of his control that he was practically dead. Jim Moriarty, a criminal? But he'd seemed so eager to please him, to conform to John Watson's stereotype – and underneath all of that had been a criminal mastermind? "No," he whispered desperately, begging for it not to be true. "No, that can't be right –"
"Sorry, Sherlock," the professor – the criminal – sneered. "I was the most dangerous man in London before somebody gifted me with unfathomable superpowers."
"No!" Sherlock screamed. "You're a hero. I'm the villain. I do something bad and you take me to the police, that's how this works, that's how it's always worked, that's why I gave you those powers!"
He realised the slip of the tongue too late. Moriarty smirked. "Oh, you gave them to me? Well, thanks, Sherlock. I'm flattered, really. I'd always assumed it was someone from the government. Father had their lack of imagination."
Another bolt of anger shot through him. "I'm your Father," he snapped, turning around to pull out the cloak from behind the sofa. If Jim was going to play like this, he'd just have to goad him into being angry enough to fight properly.
Jim just smirked again. "Oh, I know. And I knew you were the one who slipped the genes in my Chinese that night. I can't thank you enough, Sherlock, really. Your constant references to Doctor Watson were cute, too. But honestly – you killed him. You can't just bring him back."
Desperate now, and desperately angry, Sherlock grabbed a little black box off the kitchen table: the remote for his and Molly's latest weapon, left undeveloped since Watson's death. He shot a glance at one of the robots above his head – how he'd trained them to respond to his glances he wasn't sure – and it shot into the bedroom, emerging with a matrix of wires and pressure-pads. Moriarty sat in a leisurely manner in midair, watching lazily. "I don't know what you think you're going to do, Sherlock," he purred lazily. Sherlock let the bots arrange the wires around his arms and legs, then pressed the red button on the remote. "I'm much stronger than you are. There's nothing you can do."
He'd just about finished that last sentence when the reinforced steel arm reached through the hole where the window used to be and smashed down on his head. Sherlock chuckled. "Oops. Didn't see that one coming, did you, Professor? Shall we take this outside?" He rolled his shoulders experimentally, the arm retracting as the huge robot shell outside mimicked his actions.
Jim sprang up from the floor. "Sounds delightful," he replied cheerfully. Sherlock jumped into the robot and swung his arms around, watching the metal shell around him amplify the movement. This was rather fantastic, he should have done this before. "So what was it, Sherlock?" Moriarty taunted, skipping out of the window. "Did you get lonely?"
"Of course not," he replied lightly, delivering a backhand that sent the young criminal cartwheeling down Baker Street. "I got bored."
He didn't even see the youth get up before he had cannoned into the join between the robot's head and shoulders and tipped him over. "Ah, I know how that feels," came the Irish lilt. "I can keep you entertained, Sherlock, if you'd let me. We can have the whole world as our playground together."
Sherlock grabbed Moriarty by the neck and lifted him up against the wall. "I created you to entertain me," he said softly. "But not like that."
Jim chuckled and grabbed onto the hand around his neck; Sherlock started to panic as he felt himself being lifted into the air. "You're not bored now, though, are you?"
"Well, now, Jim, for all intents and purposes you're playing my game," he reminded him, shaking him off with ease and landing with a crunch on the pavement.
The young professor arched an elegant eyebrow. "Oh, really?"
Suddenly Sherlock was on his back, Jim's hand reaching through the metal shell and clasping, coolly, around his neck. It was tight this time, choking him, pressing against his larynx, he couldn't breathe – "I don't play other people's games, Sherlock," the man whispered, pushing his face closer. He smelled nice, Sherlock noticed dumbly. "Now either you can have me as a friend, or you can have me as an enemy. A proper enemy, not like that pathetic little game you had going with our late friend Doctor Watson."
Sherlock coughed weakly. The edges of his vision were starting to fray and close in, all grey and swirling. "Molly," he choked out. "I'll take Molly. I'll hurt her."
Moriarty smiled. "No, you won't," he called the bluff expertly. Sherlock knew he couldn't hurt Molly. He forged on with the bluff anyway, knowing he could make it look like he was hurting her. Or something – anything to make this stop.
"I will," he insisted.
"Off you go then, I don't care." The smile was still there; Sherlock could feel his fingers tingling numbly. "I only pretended to like her so that I could get to you, and boy, didn't you deliver. I'll hurt her myself if you like."
"No!" It was embarrassing, but Sherlock could feel his hands automatically creeping up to try vainly to wrestle the younger man's hands away from their death grip on his neck.
The face was right next to his ear when it chuckled, so that the sound went right through him, making his bone marrow ache uncomfortably. "Oh, you're such a disappointment, Sherlock Holmes," the Irish lilt sounded in his ear.
Then suddenly the hand was off his neck and the professor was gone with only a rumble through the street as he pushed off the pavement. Sherlock lay there, taking great gulps of breath and watching the BBC helicopters close in on him, collapsed and helpless in the street; then, looking up, he saw a concerned face from an upstairs window laced with silver threads and right then, right there, Sherlock wished he could sink into the pavement and die.
John Watson had seen everything.
