A quick google search before work had revealed Sebastian Moran's Facebook profile. It was private, which was probably to be expected when the user was a contract killer, but the photo was all he needed. It was the face of the Moran, one of the photos that had been in all the news reports but newer than the ones Sherlock had got hold of a few years ago, and Moriarty. He didn't look like he had two nights ago, world-weary, deadened but somehow furious, more like the first time they'd met him, as "Jim from IT". They were both wearing sunglasses and looking… happy.
It seemed wrong somehow, how they got that and all John had for every good thing he'd ever done was a limp and a betrayal. He was stuck in with crap job, a tiny flat, even his car had been stolen as the grand prize for not shooting Moriarty on the spot like he maybe should have done. It hadn't been a great car, to be fair, a 1999 Vauxhall Corsa with sun-bleached red paint he couldn't afford to have re-sprayed, uncomfortable seats and a heater that had never worked but that wasn't the point. It had been his, and like everything he'd had in the last year and a half, it had been taken away from him.
So now John was sat in the back of a cab after a long morning shift he'd spent in anticipation and a train ride which had felt even longer, trying not to let his anger (or excitement) show and waiting for it to arrive in some suburb just outside Sheffield. A more in-depth search through one of Sherlock's old contacts had revealed that Jim Moran was a lecturer at the University of Sheffield but John didn't believe for a second that was more than a cover story, like Sebastian Moran's of being a lawyer. They might do those jobs officially but no-one would be able to give up the levels of power and control Moriarty had over crime in the UK, not voluntarily.
The cab stopped in front of a relatively pleasant looking detached house on a street of a similarly nice assortment of semi-detached houses and ones that looked similar to the one he was outside. Not the sort of villainous mountain lair he'd almost been expecting, although it was built on a large hill.
He paid the driver and waited for the cab to leave before looking around the street. There were only a few scattered cars, most people still being at work at this time of the day. John walked up to the door and checked the house number with the one he'd written on his hand earlier.
Definitely the right place. John had half expected there to be journalists camped on the lawn but Moriarty had probably found a way around that. He didn't have any excuses now, he realised, looking around again then removing his gun from his jacket.
He shot the lock off the door, wincing at how loud it was as the birds in the wood on the other side of the road flew up from the trees, but no-one came running to see what the noise was so he guessed he was safe for now. He opened the door slowly and slipped through, closing it behind him.
John didn't know what he'd expected of a Consulting Criminal's house but it wasn't this. No human heads mounted on the walls, for one thing. In fact, there didn't seem to be anything that wouldn't be found in an ordinary house. A couple of coats were on hooks in the hallway, shoes thrown haphazardly underneath. Letters, mostly bills, and a bowl of keys on a cheap sideboard and a bookcase filled with a mismatched assortment of academic journals and battered paperback thriller novels. Nothing particularly unusual about that, not with the occupants' apparent jobs and lives.
He walked cautiously into the dark kitchen, not knowing what to expect after the hallway.
The cupboards were full of… well, exactly what he'd expect a normal household's cupboards to contain. Cans of beans, biscuits, enough food for two people who weren't that passionate about cooking. A lot of coffee but not much tea, a sort of vague suggestion that they only kept it around for guests who did drink it. Half a bottle of semi-skimmed milk which had gone out of date yesterday, a couple of bottles of beer, all the other usual things found in fridges. No body parts, which had been a usual thing in the fridge back at Baker Street. Nothing even hinting that at least one of the people who lived there was a criminal mastermind, but what was he expecting? A .45 in the fruit bowl?
He was almost disappointed no-one was in the house yet but maybe Moriarty was still at work. John couldn't imagine what the guy was supposed to teach, and frankly he wasn't sure he cared, but at least it gave him more time to snoop around the house. John wasn't sure what he was looking for exactly, he realised as he walked up the stairs as quietly as he could. He just hoped he found it.
He heard the front door creak open when he was still halfway up the stairs and froze.
"I know you're here." Moriarty called out. From him, it should have been in a lighter, more threatening but more sing-song tone but it wasn't, his voice just flat as it was two days ago. When John held his breath instead of saying anything, the criminal padded through the hallway into the kitchen. He came out again several seconds later with one of the beers that had been in the fridge. He wasn't dressed like John remembered, not in the costume of Moriarty or any of the other people he'd pretended to be. He was wearing a black polo shirt, jeans, and an old hoodie that was several times too big for his slim frame and seemed to be swaying slightly as he stood still, but that didn't stop him from being intimidating.
John walked down the stairs as confidently as he could when he was already running for the door internally.
"You shot the lock off my door. It's not exactly something I wouldn't notice. I left it open for you, John, did you even check?" Moriarty sighed, looking mournfully at the damage but not seeming particularly intimidated, despite the gun aimed at his head. "I'll have to replace that on a teacher's wage, you know."
John didn't speak, slightly shocked at how calm he was at being discovered.
"So?" he said, arching an eyebrow as he opened the bottle.
"So what?"
"Why are you here?
John hesitated. Why was he here? He hadn't been entirely convinced he was in the right house, even the right town.
"You took my car."
Moriarty nodded, reaching towards a drawer in the sideboard.
"Don't move!"
"Do you want your car back or not?"
"How do I know you're not going for a gun?"
"This is my house. My neighbours have kids. I'm not going to leave deadly weapons everywhere. Do you always ask so many stupid questions?"
John's eyes narrowed slightly but Moriarty just rolled his dark eyes and threw John's keys at him.
"Now get out."
"No. I need to know what the hell is going on."
The criminal's fists clenched involuntarily.
"If I find out, I'll let you know." He said through gritted teeth.
"Like you don't already know."
"I don't. If I did," his face contorted into a snarl. "Sherlock Holmes would be dead."
"He is dead!"
"So a ghost shot Sebastian?"
"I'm not saying that, I'm saying there has to be a mistake! Sherlock wouldn't do that, he…" John hesitated. "He… he would have told me!"
And that was the root of it, wasn't it? John knew, knew in the bottom of his heart that Sherlock had killed that man, whether he'd deserved it or not. But that wasn't where the John had a problem. He'd been betrayed. He'd thought, even after what he'd said at St Bart's, that Sherlock trusted him as much as he'd trusted Sherlock. But he hadn't. He'd left John's life to slowly get worse, through the scandal and the court case and all the other bullshit he'd had to deal with alone.
He was brought back out of his regret by Moriarty's elbow colliding with his chin and the gun being twisted out of his hand as he fell to the floor.
He looked up at the Irishman, the gun held casually but in a way that John knew meant that he carried firearms more often than most.
"Just get it over with."
Moriarty shook his head, checking the safety on the weapon then dropping it at John's feet. "I can't shoot you here."
"Why not?"
"I have neighbours."
John laughed bitterly. "And they're not used to the screams yet?"
"I don't mix business with pleasure."
"Killing me would be pleasure?"
He looked at John, unimpressed by both his deduction and his continued presence. "Get. Out."
"You've already said you can't kill me here."
"I can't kill you," Moriarty said, regaining his calm fairly quickly. "But you know what I can do? Call the police."
"What?"
"You broke into my house, now you're threatening me with a gun." Moriarty said quietly.
"You wouldn't."
"I could." He shrugged.
John blinked. "Why?"
"I'm already too drunk to win in a fair fight." The younger man said, flashing a smirk. "If I was sober, you'd already be dead."
"Drunk?" The criminal seemed as stone-cold sober than he'd ever been, probably more so.
"My husband just died Johnny. I have an excuse to drink." He picked up the bottle of beer from the sideboard again, raising it in the air in John's direction in some kind of sarcastic toast to his enemy, then drank the whole thing without coming up for breath.
"Now, if it's all the same to you, I'm just going to… sleep…" Moriarty yawned as he leant back against the wall. He slid down it silently, apparently unconscious before he hit the ground.