9:00pm

The six protesters and Mrs Doyle were being kept in the information centre where they could be kept an eye on, whilst Sherlock, John and the others relaxed in the café area.

"Well, we have three hours leisure time," said Lestrade happily. "What the hell do we do?"

"Get royally pissed?" Sally suggested helpfully.

"Let's not forget what happened last time we did that," said John wisely. To Sherlock's astonishment, Sally blushed. Lestrade simply looked bewildered for a few seconds, then laughed.

Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that this had somehow been too easy.

10:00pm

"John, can you get him out of that corner?" said Lestrade exasperatedly. Sherlock was huddled over at a table, examining the files that they had accumulated whilst investigating. "We're supposed to be celebrating whilst looking like we're working, not the other way around."

John walked over to Sherlock. "What's up with you? You're all down."

"Oh nothing. I'm just bored is all."

John let out a sigh of frustration "Sherlock, you solved the case. For once, let yourself relax."

Sherlock ignored him and turned back to the files. Gordon Feversham's business ventures were varied and numerous. He hadn't checked these lists himself, he'd gotten Lestrade to do it for him. He scanned them again, then stumbled backwards from his seat.

The others looked at him. "What's wrong Sherlock?" said John.

A creeping sensation of horror seemed to fill him as he stared at the paper in terror. "This is wrong. It's not Mrs Doyle. It's someone else."

"What? Sherlock, it can't be-"

"We need to get to Feversham's, now."

11:55pm

Sherlock willed the car to reach their destination quickly. At this rate, they would never make it.

"Sherlock, what the hell is going on?" Lestrade asked in irritation. "I thought we'd-"

"We were wrong!" He yelled, anger overwhelming him. "You don't understand! Gordon Feversham owns a large number of Hans Christian Andersen manuscripts."

"Yes, but they weren't specified-"

"He owns 'The Wild Swans'! It's a story by Andersen, he owns it and Frasier loves those stories. He's going to kill him."

11:59pm

The car pulled up at the house and Sherlock leaped out, racing to the entrance and hammering on the door. A bewildered Gordon Feversham opened the door.

"I thought you said we were done with all this."

Sherlock paid no attention to him and began to run up the stairs, John and Lestrade following close behind. He could feel his heartbeat in his head, could feel himself beginning to sweat due to exhaustion and fear. He slammed into the door of Frasier's bedroom, knocking it open and falling to the floor.

He found himself at Frasier's feet. He was lying on the carpet. His eyes were closed, and he would have looked like he was sleeping if he wasn't covered in blood. The horribly red gash across his throat was nothing to the wound to his arm, which was barely recognisable as a limb anymore.

Sherlock heard Lestrade retch behind him, and John murmur "Oh God no." Sherlock checked for a pulse, but found none. He looked at his watch. 12:01am. They were just too late.

December 11th

12:30am

Sherlock examined the room, trying to find some clue of the identity of the attacker. He could find nothing.

"Sherlock," said John. "I think you ought to see this."

Sherlock turned to find him holding three boxes. They were wrapped in dark purple paper, with a black ribbon, just like the original gift from Moriarty had been. "One's addressed to you," said John. "There's one for me, and one for Lestrade."

Tentatively, Lestrade took the box from him, and undid the ribbon. "Christ!" He let the box drop to the floor. Inside was a dead bird. "The sick bastard."

"Look underneath it." Sherlock lifted the bird and saw a small book there. On the cover, it said 'The Nightingale, by Hans Christian Andersen'.

"Why the Nightingale?" Lestrade asked.

John began to open his present. Inside his was another book, and a small tin soldier. The soldier had one leg. John picked up the book. "'The Steadfast Tin Soldier, by Hans Christian Andersen'"

"I don't like where this is going." Sherlock picked up his box, and unwrapped it. In his was a small silver mirror, delicately carved and with his initials engraved on the back. There was also a book- 'The Snow Queen, by Hans Christian Andersen'.

"Why is he doing this?" said Lestrade, rage clearly audible in his voice.

"I think we'll find out soon enough.

1:00am

Sherlock sat with his head in his hands, fingers clenched around curls of his dark hair. He didn't want to look at the family, to look at John or Lestrade or Sally and know that he had failed them. He had lost.

"He killed a child…" Lestrade voice cracked with the effort of speaking. "A child." Sherlock looked up and saw that he was shaking, and he had never seen such undeniable rage in his eyes before. He wasn't sure what to say.

His phone rang. The four of them stared at the phone, which was lying on the table. They had been waiting for the call.

Sherlock put it on speaker phone. "Yes?"
What they heard first was a laugh. "Hello Sherlock. How are you?"

"You know perfectly well how I am."

"Humiliated? Angry? I would be. This was an easy one, if you can't handle it then maybe you shouldn't be playing."

"Why?" His words were short and said with a brutality that Moriarty seemed to register.

"It fits deliciously, doesn't it? Those six eco warriors trying to protect the swans? It was brilliant- but I needed one more. The seventh. And then I remembered the child…" another tinny laugh rung harshly from the mobile. "With his love of those stories… I have spies everywhere, Sherlock, I can find out whatever I need to. Do you really think that babysitter had the flu? I paid her, to give you more of a chance, and you still failed."

"Why not Mrs Doyle? That would have fit as well. Why a child?"

"To let you know what I'm capable of. I gave you a tiny glimpse of my power with our previous game, Sherlock. This is what I can do. I can destroy something pure. Something innocent. That boy was the final swan."

"In the story," Sherlock muttered. "In 'The Wild Swans'. The brothers of the princess are turned into swans, and she has to weave coats made of nettles to free them."

"And the youngest brother gets an unfinished coat, and keeps one of his arms as a wing. You see? That's why I had my guy… tamper, with the body a bit."

Sherlock's mind flashed back to the mutilated arm of the boy he had played with just one day previously. "This is sick."

"Perhaps. Have you heard of the black swan theory, Sherlock?"

"What?"
"The theory that a tiny, improbable and surprising event has a major impact on the world, but is later rationalized by hindsight. Named after the discovery of the first black swan in the eighteenth century. No one believed that they existed before then, and it terrified people. You see, before I knew about you, I believed that I had no equal, and no-one would dare try to stop me. Discovering your existence was a shock- but now I think about it, it was always bound to happen. We're destined to do this forever. You are my black swan."

"Will you please tell us why the fuck you've done this?" Lestrade spat.

Moriarty sounded pleased. "Oh, Gregory, you're here! You were so quiet, I didn't even notice. Gregory, Gregory, Gregory… You are special, you know that?"

"What the hell are you talking about? What was with the gifts, the bird, what are you planning?"

Moriarty giggled. "I'm getting to that. Be patient. I'll start with you then, if you're so desperate to know. Have you read 'The Nightingale', Lestrade?"

"No."

"Well, then I'll tell you. In the story, the emperor of China orders that a nightingale is brought to him, because its song was the most beautiful thing in the entire world."

"What are you getting at?" said Lestrade angrily.

"You are the nightingale, Gregory. You are talented, oh so talented- you are the best at what you do. But just like in the story, you are upstaged. The emperor is brought a mechanical bird. Covered in jewels and made of gold. It sings just as well as the real nightingale, but it never tires and looks so much better. Don't you understand? You are second best. They bring in someone else, as equally as talented but flashier, showier. Sherlock is a younger, more impressive version of you."

Lestrade said nothing at this point. He was staring flatly at the wall, fists clenched.

"You are second rate." Moriarty continued. "Second best. Never anyone's first choice. Who would have you when they could have someone like Sherlock Holmes?" His sing song voice was tauntingly cruel as Moriarty mocked him. "Whatever way you look at it, you are inferior to him."

"Stop it," said John. "Just stop it."

"Ah, Johnny boy!" Moriarty chuckled. "So glad you're finally joining in. Do you understand your little gift?"

"It's a soldier. With one leg. A reference to my limp?"

"Partially. This story applies almost too well to you. Poor, defective little John. You're so broken and battered. Just one big scar now. The Steadfast Tin Soldier was broken too- he only had one leg. He wasn't fit for his purpose, like you, he was rejected by the other soldiers. Did you think they cared about your PTSD? They thought you were weak. You came home from the war as nothing."

The silence in the room was deafening.

"But you've always been an outsider, haven't you? Always on the edge of things. Inadequate. Incomplete. You're not enough for the army, and you're not enough for Sherlock. The soldier falls in love with a ballerina, and he thinks she has one leg. Did you think Sherlock was the same as you? Did you think because you're both fragmented, both deficient and emotionally substandard, that you could be friends?"

Sherlock tried to express with his eyes that John was his friend, but John was avoiding looking at him.

"Sherlock is so much more than you. And yet you stay so loyal, do everything for him, do anything to get back to him, just like the little soldier. But when you do, what is your reward? You burn with him. At the end of the story, the soldier is thrown into the fire, and he melts into a little heart. The ballerina follows him. They burn together, just like you two will, and I will watch you burn."

"I thought you and Sherlock were destined to do this forever," said John, a little croakily.

"Oh, we are. When I say that he'll burn, he won't die. You will die- and if you burn, he burns inside."

The last words had such startling poignancy that Sherlock had to speak. "So what about me, Moriarty? What little plan have you cooked up for me, hmm?"

He could hear the smile in Moriarty's voice. "Sherlock, don't be mad. My beautiful black swan. You are beautiful, do you know that? Everyone can see it, even your idiot of a flatmate. You are so beautiful that you dim everything around you, everything in your periphery is somehow worse for your presence. You make them all look like scum- and that's what you are. You are the magic mirror from the Snow Queen. The mirror created by the devil that makes everything good and wonderful shrivel up to almost nothing. You help the darkness, it intensifies and multiplies around you. You shatter and splinter into thousands of pieces that catch in people's eyes and hearts, so all they can see and love is you. That's what you do to people, you infect them till their hearts turn to ice and all they want in the universe is to be with you, and everything else seems wrong to them. I told you that you had a heart, Sherlock. It's just frozen. With me, I don't have a heart- and that's fine. That's acceptable. I'm a psychopath, after all, it's practically a requirement. With you, your heart is there, it's just… twisted. Wrong. You are an addiction Sherlock, and the only way people can break free is by leaving you. You're always so alone, except for me. With the risk of sounding like a cliché," Moriarty laughed. "'I just don't know how to quit you'."

"You think this is funny?" Sherlock said, bile stinging his throat.

"Well, yes, actually. You're looking for someone to love Sherlock, but you don't know how. And even if you could, who is capable of loving you, apart from me? Johnny boy will leave you, just like the others did. I am your past, your present and your future, whatever way you look at it. So stop wasting your time on people you can never have," Sherlock's stomach dropped at these words, "and come to me. I am eternal." Moriarty began to laugh, until he was almost hysterical. "Do you know what happens, Sherlock, when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?"

"No."

"You will by the end."

That was the plot detail I warned you about, the reason for upgrading the story to an M. You have to be careful when you talk about children dying, it's a touchy issue and some people are offended. Like I said, it was a safety measure. Thank you for reading.