AUTHORS NOTE:
I had this prompt idea in the back of my mind for a while, and originally I was planning on writing a Kakegurui fanfic with this prompt, but then I read the Yuukoku no Moriarty manga and I was absolutely obsessed so here's this random little one-shot. This is completely just a jumble of words and its supposed to make pretty much no sense. I set it up to be like those final moments before death where everything just rushes by in a blur, so it's all just constant thoughts. It follows chapter 54 & 55 but also has some stuff from earlier chapters. Also the "the moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?" is a Japanese phrase that is basically just a love confession. There are a few ways to respond to this love confession, but one of the most prominent ones is "I can die happy" so that's the one I used!
(Also, I am in no way a good writer and grammar is not my thing so please ignore any of that stuff)
"The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?"
It was. It was full and bright and larger than normal, the light it gave off was watery and pale blue in color. Yet it was one of those things that you noticed and looked at for a while before becoming bored and disregarding it all together. It was one of those things that was not particularly important, especially to two men standing at the edge of death. But Liam noticed it. Of course he did.
Devils walked the Earth in the form of men. Sherlock had always seen them, because they were everywhere. Every face he looked at, every smile and nod and blink and breath, they all contained traces of Hell. Hell was on Earth. Hell was everywhere. Hell was everywhere except at that moment. That short moment that existed on the line between death and life and life and death with the moon hanging over it to bare witness. And every other person in London at that moment was also witness, witness to this brief escape from Hell. Brief escape from the devils that plagued Earth.
Why was Sherlock up there at that moment? Why had he truly decided to come up to the top of a half built bridge to save the life of a murderer? Was it only because Liam was his friend? Or was it more?
Who had fallen for who. Or had neither fallen at that moment, was it later on in which the fall occurred? Or was it always a fall? Always a continuous game to save someone he couldn't save, to save someone who didn't want to be saved or at least didn't believe he could be saved, to save someone only he wanted to save.
"Oh what about that man? What's his profession?" Sherlock had known from the beginning. The man standing there with the narrowed red eyes scanning the staircase with deep concentration, mathematician had merely been a prolonged theory. Because when Sherlock looked at him he just couldn't figure him out. But perhaps he could and was merely too scared to do so. But the one thing he knew was that the man fascinated him.
Did Sherlock want to die? He couldn't say that he didn't although he also couldn't say that he did. What he did want, however, was to see a singular smile. Not just anyone's smile. He didn't want to see another smile from a devil, another smile ringed with malice and pure hatred for the people around it, a smile that contained nothing but empty implications. He wanted to see a smile from someone who wasn't a walking devil. But he didn't know who, and that was an odd thing for Sherlock Holmes.
Intangible beings. Sherlock was never one to believe in God, he claimed it was because he couldn't believe in something he couldn't see for himself, but perhaps it was because he was ashamed he couldn't figure God out. That man that he saw that day was the very same. He was so above everyone else and the expression that he wore underneath his eyes told everyone else that he knew it as well. He was intangible, anchored to this cruel, hellish world by nothing but a pure drive for revenge. He was a untouchable being that was so close, yet so far away to Sherlock. Yet Sherlock wanted to be able to materialize him.
Perhaps that was the reason he was up here now, trying to reason with the Lord of Crime who was already on his deathbed. And Sherlock knew, but refused to admit, that even he couldn't bring someone who had died back to life. Because in that moment, in that moonlight, that man's eyes had lost everything. Because in that moment that man's drive for revenge and hatred for every single thing in that disgusting world had disappeared from his eyes. Sherlock couldn't save a shell of a person.
Where had Sherlock heard that phrase that was uttered by the man standing in front of him? It was familiar, but not comfortable. Maybe he had read it in a book, a poem, a play. But the way this man said it was so utterly poetic. Everything about this scene was utterly poetic. The murderer and the detective both clinging to the faint temptation of life. It was enough to make Sherlock want to laugh. Here they were, about to die as a burning London watched, and they were in a tragedy story. That man had written it up for the both of them, he had planned it out detail by detail, he had made the plot and the setting and the characters, and here they were as the actors. Here they were, playing out their only death, playing it as if it were something to be played with.
That man had been a mathematician. Sherlock had figured it out of course, after all he was the world class detective Sherlock Holmes. And it helped that the man had been exceedingly obvious. It was because of the expression he wore on his face as he intently stared at the staircase above him that told Sherlock exactly what he needed to know, along with a couple of other points he made up on the spot to impress the ladies clamoring over him. But that expression wasn't only something he wore to dissect the mathematical theories behind architecture, he wore it all the time. He was constantly studying the world, constantly picking up on the same things Sherlock picked up on and most of the time he was two steps ahead. He was a mathematician, and he solved more than math problems. He tried to solve the world, and his death was always in the solution no matter how he set up the equation. Sherlock couldn't argue with math, he could never argue with facts.
A friend. He was a friend. He was merely a friend. He was. Friend. But he wasn't. He couldn't be. But he couldn't be more than that. He was just… there. They barely knew each other. They had met on a boat by pure, simple coincidence. Then met again on a train by coincidence again. They had met at Milverton's the night Sherlock became a murderer by coincidence. And here they were, facing off against each other by something more than just a coincidence. Because this had all been planned out methodically by that man. And that thought, that revelation, made Sherlock rethink everything.
That man played God. More than God actually. That man played God and all those thoughts, those non existent, non conjurable substances that were above him. That man played himself and he played well. Everything that happened and had ever happened and would ever happen were controlled by that man, because he simply controlled the world. The amount of people under his control was so large. He could've used anyone he wanted to at any point. Yet he chose Sherlock. At first it was from Sherlock's pure intellect. That man found Sherlock useful to spread around the misdeeds of the nobles he chose. But after that, after Sherlock was no longer useful, why did that man keep him around? Sherlock could find no answer for that question.
Sherlock hadn't been there that night where those brothers burned down their family - if you could even call those people family- mansion. He hadn't been there when three brothers made a promise to each other, a dedication through blood and fire. He hadn't been there when that young boy told a group of orphans to kill bad nobles. He hadn't been there when that young boy forced a heart attack onto a man. He hadn't been there when that young boy was kidnapped, or when he threw a dead body overboard, or even when at the peak of all of this, he declared his own suicide wish. But he was there now, and he was there because that boy chose him instead of everyone else and Sherlock had no idea why.
They were the same. Their ideals reflected so obviously on their faces. Sherlock and him, him and Sherlock, them, both. They wanted to rid their world of its many evils. They wanted. But they were so different, at least on the surface level. That boy was a murderer. It didn't matter how it was justified even if Sherlock could justify it forever. The people that man killed were murderers themselves. He was merely a murderer of murderers, and until a few weeks before he had been a Robin Hood of sorts for the commoners and working class of the world. He had killed the corrupt nobles to help the working class. But now he was nothing, he wasn't good to either side and they both hated him. Sherlock, however, was loved by both sides. He was directly opposing this man, the hated figure of London. And the crowd below them screamed their praise for Sherlock.
They didn't know anything though. Because below that thin veil of black and white, good and evil, Sherlock was also a murderer. And he now knew how it felt to be that man. That odd sort of high he got off of killing Milverton was something. It was something he tried so hard to reach all the time. It was an odd sense of righteousness, an odd sense of pride for ridding the world of someone that was only there to harm it. But it was still murder. It was still exactly what that man had been doing, only it was much less thought out and had no connections to an overarching plan. It was unneeded, unprofessional murder, and the fact that he didn't care was something that felt so right yet so wrong.
Perhaps that was the reason Sherlock now wanted to save this man. Because he knew how it felt to be in the position. It felt sinful and sick and wrong but it also felt good. Or maybe this wasn't that simple of an equation and it couldn't be solved that easily. Of course it couldn't. After all nothing this man did or was involved with was simple. Which was why Sherlock knew there had to be an answer. There had to be a reason why he was standing here gazing at the man across from him. There had to be. He couldn't accept the possibility that there wasn't. He couldn't and wouldn't and.
Sherlock Holmes was not a patient man. He had never been a patient man. He would jump into cases at a whim, solve them, and then sulk as he waited for the next thing to appear. He didn't like waiting, had never liked waiting. Each moment that he wasn't doing something felt to him like all progress in the world had just stopped. But something about this man made him want to wait. It made him want to stop and just stay next to this man for the rest of his life. It made him want to do whatever he needed to just to make this God of a man happy. It made him want to be patient.
"Catch me if you can, Mr. Holmes." It had been a declaration that meant nothing. It had been a short sentence, uttered briefly, by that man. But it hadn't meant anything at the time, not to either of them. But here they were, and Holmes was here to catch him. Catch him because he finally could, finally wanted to. Here they were and they were catching each other. But that man didn't know, and neither did Sherlock. They were both just falling.
"The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?"
The moon was beautiful that night. As that thick cloud moved out of the way, thin slivers of moonlight came out and everyone watching could see the fall.
"The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?"
The nobles and commoners working together at the banks of the Thames to put out the fire that was lapping in the distance were watching. The anticipation from the very start was high, everyone had one person that they wanted to win. And that person was Sherlock Holmes. They all expected that. But now they were watching two men fall into the slightly shimmering water below, and the moon lit them up just enough.
"The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?"
Also watching the fall were two men, the two men who had come to Sherlock about this matter originally. And they were both in heavy denial. The older man had accepted it. He had accepted the matter of his brother's death. After all, it was what was always going to have happened. It had only been a silly dream, a stupid expectation that even Sherlock Holmes couldn't live up too. So he could only accept the death. But he desperately didn't want to. It was ironic however. His brother had always wanted to die alone, die at the mercy of the rest of the world, become a fallen God repenting for the many sins that he had made on this Earth. Here he was, dying next to the man that he wanted to protect more than his own brother. Dying next to the man that he unconsciously wanted to die next to this entire time. And that made the older man jealous. Or jealous of a sort, why didn't his brother want his life? But he could no longer question his brother's plans, they were always right, and Louis just stayed silent as he watched this final act play out in front of him.
The fall had happened so quick. For a moment, Sherlock didn't even know if it had happened at all. They had been up there and that man's face was stony with grief and final, utter despair. And as the bullet came raining down, that face broke into a small smile. A smile that told Sherlock everything he needed to know. And he dove forward to grab that man.
"The devil here is you."
Had it always been him? In those many moments where the faces around him morphed into nothing but a blur of self satisfied devils and narcissism, was his face one of them? And had this man seen that? He didn't think so. Because he wanted to think all those smiles that the man gave him, all the times his eyes ever so slightly brightened when he looked at Sherlock, he wanted to think that those were real. That that man didn't see him the way he saw everyone else. Perhaps even an equal.
In that specific moment, was no one a devil? The nobles and commoners working together below, a replica of the world that man wanted to create. Sherlock, willing to die to save the life of the man in front of him. And that man, willing to die to leave behind his sins. They were all devils but they were all also the absence of devils. That moment felt so separated from the world and none of the rules of this world applied.
That line between life and death got even thinner as death clung on to life on that bridge. Death, that man, was already falling. And so was life, Sherlock. They had both always been falling. Falling for each other. Sherlock wouldn't let go. He couldn't let go. He had made a promise, a promise to himself, to those two men who confronted him in a carriage, to that man he was now clinging on to. He wouldn't break his promise. But death won over life because it always did. And now the man was falling, and now Sherlock was falling after him. And now they were falling for each other all over again, or maybe this was the first time.
Life didn't stop. This moment didn't slow. But to those two men in that moment it was like the entire world was holding its breath, waiting for them to do whatever they needed to do in those final moments. Waiting.
"Catch me if you can, Mr. Holmes."
They were falling through the air. Could that truly count as catching him? Sherlock assumed not but that man was in his arms, so perhaps he had caught him. And he wasn't about to let him go, not again, not ever. He knew that death was coming, he could feel the impact and water and the absence of air already. But until then, no, even then, he wasn't letting go of this man that he finally had in his arms. He still needed to see a smile, still needed to give this man everything he had. God and the devil were both in that moment. And they too were holding on to each other.
Sherlock was a musician, not a writer. He barely frequented plays or operas or shows in general. He didn't care much for visual stories although novels were alright. He read occasionally but tended to get bored far too easily. Sound was what intrigued him, the feeling of making music and composing pieces. But that moment contained no sound, it was all feelings and sights. And if anything, it was a play. It was the final act. The two main characters of this Shakespearean tragedy. They were falling to their deaths as the crowd around them watched with large eyes and silent bodies. No heartbeats could even be heard, no breath, no noise at all. It was a silent picture. Except for the one question that wouldn't leave his mind. It was so loud.
Why was such a trivial conversation starter so pointed to him? Why did it matter so much. What could he even say to it. What could he even say at all.
And then the response to the very question that Sherlock thought had no response finally came. The two of them and the moon were the only ones to bear witness, the moon heard it all. They were so close to the water, so very close to the cold, dark mud filled water that gently moved below them. They were so close to death. But that man that Sherlock held in his arms was further away from it than he had ever been. He had always been near death, always strove for it, knowing that it would come and it would have to come. But he lay here now, falling, and finally that hatred behind his eyes was cleared. It was only for a split second. No one saw, no one noticed. But that man was the most at peace he had ever been in his life. That man was finally prepared to die, but now for a different reason.
"I can die happy."
That was the response that was uttered, murmured into the night. They both heard it but neither one said it. Or maybe they both did. But it meant the same no matter who said it. Because it was true for both of those men. Sin on sin on sin and they were both murderers prepared to die. Murderers who murdered murderers. Murderers together, alone. And the words they both spoke answered the words from earlier. Answered any and all questions they could ever have about each other. Sherlock Holmes, famous detective. William James Moriarty, Lord of Crime. They could die happy.
The crowd watching didn't hear them, didn't feel that intimate moment that the both of them did as they died. The crowd watching only saw the fall and the splash. They only saw the fall and the death. But the moon saw everything. Everything. The moon saw the letter that Sherlock received hours before, the moon saw the classes working together for once, the moon saw the ever so small teardrop that appeared in the eyes of Liam's youngest brother as he watched his brother and the one person that his brother cared about more than him, die. The moon saw the fire, and the blood, and the stabbing, and all of it. The moon saw and heard everything that had ever happened. And that night it heard the words that no one else did.
"The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it Sherly?"
"I can die happy."
And so they did.