Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

- Stevie Smith

This must be what dry drowning feels like. The erratic beating of the heart, the decompression of the lungs, – lungs that were screaming out for a full breath to fill them – blood running cold with adrenaline and then the sickening feeling of horror that accompanies the realisation that you are about to die. Of course in this case death was only a metaphoric concept. He wouldn't actually die. His limbs wouldn't break, his flesh wouldn't tear and his scalp wouldn't split from the impact of hitting the pavement. He may be about to fall but he'd never reach the ground, Irene would make sure of that.

And yet he couldn't stop trembling. It was ridiculous, illogical, he knew this. His hands couldn't grip the banister as he climbed the stairs, they were shaking too violently and sweating_ when had his palms learned how to secrete sweat? It was nothing, a mere biological betrayal of stress and he was stressed, he was allowed to be, he was about to jump off a building, anyone would find that prospect stressful. The trembling could also be explained by simple biology: increased heart rate led to a depletion of oxygen saturation in cells, which resulted in the build-up of lactic acid in the muscles which, consequentially, caused the body to shake, to tremble.

But then earth trembled too just before it was about to be ripped apart, to be torn from the ground that it had grown to become a part of. The world had once been a single landmass before the shifting of tectonic plates had caused the earth to break apart and form separate continents that would never again migrate together.

The air around him seemed to grow incredibly thin and suddenly Sherlock found that he couldn't breathe. He pressed his back against the wall and sunk down onto the floor. He was in the stairwell of Bart's hospital, three flights away from reaching the roof, and he was having a panic attack. He cupped his hands around his mouth and tried to breathe in the carbon dioxide that was accumulating between his palms.

He didn't have time for this, not now, not when their plan relied on timing and precision and the ability to lie convincingly. He didn't have the time to shatter or to break apart. He wasn't going to hit the ground.

But that would be better wouldn't it? If when he fell he felt the impact of the concrete. He could handle death – it was such a passive process after-all. So easy in comparison to the alternative that involved John: John pleading, begging for him not to do it, John grieving for him, then moving on, packing up his things and tucking them away out of sight and out of mind. John meeting women, loving women, marrying a woman and settling down in a house with a dog and a homogeneous statistical number of children – probably one boy and one girl just to add insult to injury. Then John's rage when Sherlock returned, John's rejection and hatred, John screaming that he never wanted to see him again, that he wanted him to stay the fuck out of his life. John slamming the door in his face, John taking comfort in his new wife, John forgetting all about him…

Sherlock pressed his burning cheek against the cold stone wall and breathed in the smell of decaying paint. He felt feverish, similar to the way he had this summer when he had contracted a nasty strain of the flu. He had spent days passed out in bed, only being brought back to the brink of consciousness by the feeling of John's cool palm pressing against his overheated forehead.

He pressed his own hand against his forehead now and felt the sweat of his palm mingle with the sweat coming from his brow. He could use this, this feeling of utter panic and unadulterated fear. He was a good liar but he couldn't act. Acting required the ability to convincingly approximate the emotions that you were trying to convey and the only thing that Sherlock had ever been able to do with his emotions was smother them beneath the guise of impassivity. But he felt raw at the moment and he knew that if he spoke now Moriarty would be able to hear the tremor in his voice and the stuttering quality of his breath that bordered on hyperventilation. He could be convincing like this.

Sherlock slipped his sweating palm into the left pocket of his trousers and pulled out the disposable phone that Irene had given him. She'd programmed two numbers into the contacts list. His fingers traced the number he knew by memory before he selected the second one.

The phone rang twice before the call connected and the tinny sound of Moriarty's voice echoed down the line,

"Sherlock," He cooed, "I've been rendered practically breathless with anticipation waiting for you to call, although to be honest, I would really rather be having this conversation face to face – I'm personal like that."

Sherlock drew in a shaky breath before he said, "I think I've given you more credit than you've rightfully earned. This recent plan to torture me is, at best, the work of a lazy amateur."

"Now Sherlock, play fair, you know that I can't resist provocation. It just sends my blood positively boiling."

"I've decided to take pity on you," Sherlock said as he staggered to his feet, keeping a firm grip on the wall in case his legs proved to be inconveniently untrustworthy, "I'll show you how to destroy me and the people I love."

Moriarty paused and for a second Sherlock could only hear the sound of his quiet breathing down the line, "Is this some kind of trick? Are you trying to out play me?"

"No, this is a parley."

"Parley? I never took you to be a nautical man."

"As a child I wanted to be a pirate." Sherlock said to his own chagrin – ever since that ill-fated day when Mycroft had walked in on him wearing an eye patch in the bath, brandishing a wooden sword at a rubber duck, he had gleefully told every person that his baby brother had once wanted to sail the seven seas. His throat ached with the memory of it as he thought about Mycroft, the person who had tormented and tortured him his entire life, the person who had thrown his Winnie the Pooh bear into the rain, the person who used to yank viciously at his hair and who had managed to call him 'intellectually inferior' in over thirteen languages just to labour the point. He thought of his brother who had read 'The Ulysses' to him every night in order to bore him to sleep and who had dragged him out of the gutters when he was so strung out on cocaine that he could barely walk. He thought of his brother shackled to some radiator in the building across the street, his life resting on the whim of a mad man, and he felt his chest ache with the prospect of loss.

If it's true what they say, that losing a lover is like losing your soul, then perhaps losing a brother is like losing a limb or some vitally important organ. Sherlock shook these thoughts from his head as he continued to ascend the stairs to the roof.

"I can't win at my own game," he said, "So I thought that I'd settle for winning at yours."

"And how exactly do you plan on doing that?"

"You want to destroy me. I'm the only person who knows how best to achieve that particular task."

"I have to say that you're confusing me. Why would you willingly tell me how to destroy you?"

"Because you have my brother and you've already tried to kill John twice. And I'm not going to tell you how to destroy me, I'm going to do it myself." Sherlock had reached the roof at this point, he keyed in the code that opened up the emergency exit and headed outside. Freezing winter winds assaulted him and he realised, with mild – illogical – delight that it was just beginning to snow.

"I have one condition though."

"I expected as much."

Sherlock walked across the roof and stood so that he could see over the edge. The drop was significant, if he was really going to hit the ground then the fall would kill him. The passing pedestrians looked small, like miniature, moving silhouettes. His eyes scanned the ground until he recognised the unmistakable outline of John's form. He was standing on the opposite side of the road, his back pressed against a brick wall, his hand dutifully clenched around Sherlock's phone. In that moment John reminded him of a toy solider, standing in the exact same position where his child owner had last placed him, waiting to be picked up and played with again. The analogy was apt and it made him feel nauseous.

"Sherlock," Moriarty sang down the line, "Are you still with me? What's your 'one condition' – as if I didn't already know - ?"

"Let Mycroft go and never interfere with my family again."

Moriarty hummed, "Do you consider John to be in that particular demographic?"

Sherlock swallowed against the dryness in his throat, "Yes."

"That's rather touching… sentimental even."

"Not really, 'sentimentality' and 'family' are not two terms that are necessarily synonymous with each other."

"I'm sure that believing that makes it easier for you to lie to yourself. I went through a stage of caring about people but then I hit puberty and the empathy just grew right out of me. It seems my dear Sherlock that you, on the other hand, are going through the painful process of growing in to your state of newly found sentiment. Is this the work of the good old, steadfast John Watson? I bet that little cold heart of yours just melted when you first clapped eyes on him. The poor injured man, the lonely man, the lost man, the army doctor fighting in a war, not because he believes in it, but because he wanted to stitch up the wounded and save some lives. I bet he had you positively trembling at the knees the first time he fired a gun. You're that transparent."

The contempt in his voice was so potent that Sherlock could almost imagine him spitting the words.

"It's pathetic Sherlock, it really is, the way that you fawn over him while simultaneously keeping up that ridiculous pretence of 'platonic friendship'. It disgusts me, you disgust me because you think that just because you work out crimes rather than commit them and fall in love with simple army doctors rather than sadistic sociopaths, that you're better than me."

Sherlock cleared his throat, "I may be on the side of the angels, but don't think for one second that I am one of them."

"Oh I don't Sherlock. After-all, it's impossible to believe that you're an angel when you've convinced yourself that you're actually a god."

"Well, you have a rather high opinion of me don't you?"

"Yes," Moriarty hissed so quietly that at first Sherlock mistook it for an exhalation rather than a word, "I do and that's why I need to bring you to your knees. I burn with the longing of it Sherlock, the desire to slowly rip you apart, to tear out the hearts of the people that you love and feed them to you so that you can feel the exact moment when each one stops beating. I want to bring you so low, to strip you of everything that you have until you have no choice but to take your own life. So, forgive my scepticism, but do you really think that you're capable of torturing yourself to the degree that I yearn for?"

"Yes I do."

"Well isn't that ambitious? Tell me, how do you plan on appeasing me?"

Sherlock breathed in a slow breath. He turned his face up towards the opaque white sky and breathed in the smell of snow. It was falling faster now and he wondered, with a childish spark of enthusiasm, if it would settle. In the winter months he had always prayed for the snow to settle – it was the only legitimate excuse for not having to go to school. When he was a child, before he had built up an impenetrable barrier between his brother and himself, he had used to run into Mycroft's bedroom at six in the morning and trample all over his sleeping body with his ice cold feet. He used to shake and tug and plead with him until Mycroft relented and begrudgingly took him outside to play in the snow.

He knew that it was only frozen water but it never failed to make him stand and stare in awe as it fell from the sky and transformed London into stark white blobs. It covered up the grime and the mess, it wiped the proverbial slate clean – even if the pretence only lasted until the temperature rose and the snow melted into water.

He'd never asked John if he liked the snow. He could add that to his list of regrets. He could still see John standing on the ground below and he wanted, more than anything, to whisper into the icy air: Trust me John. It's all a trick, an illusion, a lie made to look like the truth with the help of some smoke and mirrors. It's not real. I'm going to fall but I won't hit the ground, I'm not going to die, I'm not going to leave you for long, I'm coming back. Please believe me, please don't hate me, please wait for me…

"Come and stand on the roof of your building." Sherlock said instead as he finally turned his face away from John. He couldn't look at him anymore. They didn't have time.

"Why?"

"Because in about ten minutes I'm going to jump to my death in front of John Watson and I want you to watch the fall destroy us both."