They're back where it all started, the water lapping against the walls of the pool like a caged sea. The place where little Carl died.
The Browning is comfortingly solid in John's left hand. Sherlock stands at the shadows' edge, feet ground into the tile, his body sprouting upwards into divisions of pale and coat and massive intellect, pretending at patience, at apathy. The waves are a thin bass line on the fringe of John's hearing, and there's nothing else, not yet, even though his ears are almost opening up with the waiting.
Though he should be in the viewing gallery, John stays, had insisted on staying with Sherlock as company in lieu of his beretta. If Sherlock has noticed, he's said nothing; it's foolish to make sounds when there are new sounds to wait on. The lights drop into the shivering dimples on the water's surface and reflect a deeper sallow green against Sherlock's cheeks.
The voice sounds then, short and soft with a moist inner lining, "Oh, aren't you pretty."
John steps full into the shadows, gun steady justincasejustincase, and can't see anyone else but Sherlock, still planted yards away from the deep end, his face sliding from stasis and towards this promised new diversion. "Love the hair," the voice continues, "new product?"
"I don't use product," Sherlock says.
John sees a suit and a man just as tailored, who says, "Oh honey, those ringlets are hardly wash-'n'-wear."
There's someone else, moving up in the viewing gallery. Moran. John almost regrets not staking out the area as planned, though he'd be hard pressed to say exactly why. The suit man is watching John watch and he smiles, nectarine sweet. "Don't take it personally, Johnny. It's just that I've heard you're dangerous."
No use for shadows, then. John Watson walks into the light, and maybe it's true and of course it is. Here it holds no weight, collapsing into itself with the history of the place and what it has seen. Repetition compulsion.
Sebastian is looking down through plate glass, bolt-action rifle steady on Sherlock Holmes. Looking at Jim, and isn't that familiar. Looking at Jim and looking after Jim, Sebastian can't even see the difference anymore. Thinks of what Jim hadn't done, only because Sherlock had done it first.
And James Moriarty holds up something small and black and slender, military secrets in two square inches of plastic. It's encased in his fist and he raises his arm until a ridge of thin muscle pushes against the edge of a seam in his jacket. "Power to the people," he says, and the hand springs forward.
Sherlock doesn't move to catch it.
The flash drive lands on the tile, clattering to a halt several yards away from John Watson. Never more than a pretense.
James Moriarty appraises Sherlock with a fine-toothed eye, sees the sweetness of tendons and the thrumming mind. And as Sherlock's gaze unfolds the other consultant, John knows.
They've always been here.
