Sherlock Holmes was dead.
Sherlock was dead, and John couldn't believe it.
Or wouldn't believe it; he wasn't sure which one to pick.
So he limped the streets of London, and watched his hand tremble, and tried not to think about what he would be doing if Sherlock walked beside him. If he did that, he'd have to sit down, and there weren't any benches around.
There was, however, a bridge.
As John looked over the edge, a brief though entered his mind about jumping, but he dismissed it. As Sherlock would say, death is boring.
His mobile buzzed.
St. Barts. Come at once. If convenient.
This was impossible. There was no way a dead man could be texting him.
It buzzed again.
If inconvenient, come anyway.
He was so going.
…
He was three blocks away when a skinny, pale hand shot out and yanked him onto an alley.
Turning, he faced a dead man.
And promptly smacked him on the side of his head with his cane.
Sherlock fell back, rubbing his ear. "What was that for?
"For being a bloody idiot, for making everyone think you were dead, and for-" he took a deep breath "-for leaving me"
Sherlock looked slightly confused, so John hit him with his cane again.
"Bloody idiot. I went to your funeral. Do you know what you've been doing to everyone?"
Emotions flickered across Sherlock's face (Anger? Guilt? Pain?) before they fell beneath a mask of steely indifference.
"No matter."
"No bloody matter? Sherlock-"
"I had to do something!" The ferocitypain in Sherlock's voice almost frightened him, until two words shattered the bit of whole existence he had left.
"Moriarty's alive."
…
That bloody bastard. Moriarty has been blown up, arrested, and shot, and he's still around?
"Alive, and being cared for at a high-security hospital in Switzerland that doesn't ask questions. I can't get at him there."
John starts. Before, Sherlock had fire in his eyes.
Now it's a bloody inferno.
"I can't get him there- but I can everywhere else." There's a ferocity in Sherlock's voice that John hasn't heard before, ever.
His hand has stopped shaking.
Sherlock whirls around to face John. "I am going to destroy him, John. He said that I would burn, and so I will burn him. I am going to destroy his world until there is nothing left for him, until he realizes just who he has crossed."
"Will you help me?"
John doesn't take time to think. The battlefield beckons, and he walks towards it with his head held high and his safety off.
"When do we start?"
…
The next day, John clears out his bank account, packs a few essentials into an overnight bag, and catches a train to the channel.
Sherlock is waiting for him there, and they check into a small hotel, heading for the bathroom.
When they're done, Sherlock has short, blonde hair and blue eyes. He slips into an accent like he was born in Stockholm, and tosses a traveler's backpack over his shoulder.
John has dark brown hair, brown eyes, and they both have new passports.
First stop, France.
…
Maurice LeFontaine.
He carried out several smuggling operations for Moriarty, and had a nasty habit of dropping subordinates into the Seine when they bungled a mission.
His body makes a small splash as it hits the water.
John pockets the small ceramic knife that slashed his jugular, and pulls off his gloves as he goes to find Sherlock, who had been dropping something off at the man's apartment.
When the police break down the door, they'll find a neat typed list (free from fingerprints, of course) of crimes the man can be convicted for, and cases that can be closed.
It will be resting on top of a box containing enough evidence to put half of LaFontaine's operatives behind bars, and rival gangs should pick off the other half within the next few years.
They meet up in their room, and toss their clothes into a garbage bag before changing, dying their hair, and pulling out new passports.
The evidence will be ditched in a small bonfire, and the remains from that dropped in the bottom of a garbage pail twelve kilometers south.
One down.
…
Petrov Korovin.
A middle-ranking Mafiya man who had helped Moriarty pull an art heist in Moscow several years ago.
A single shot takes him out, and the rifle is dumped in the Moskva River, along with the mobiles and passports they had been using- all at different locations, of course.
The police will find the box and the list again, and they won't be sure what to make of it.
Nevertheless, they will arrest a sizable chunk of a gang, and convict over half of them.
Two.
…
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
…
The names blur together- the ones they've killed, and the ones they've used. John doesn't ask where Sherlock gets the passports, and Sherlock doesn't ask where John gets the weapons.
They're everywhere, taking out a mob boss here and a Mafia Don there, the occasional hit man, and, on one memorable occasion, two assassins at the same time when they're hired to kill each other.
They slip beneath and behind and between Interpol, the United Nations, the CIA (Sherlock is gleeful about that one) and the MI6. In their case files, they're listed only as "unnamed killers" and, occasionally, "unnamed vigilantes".
John chuckles when he reads that. They're not vigilantes, they have a vendetta.
Sherlock wonders aloud if Moriarty has noticed.
….
Twelve.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Fifteen.
…
They have a list.
It contains the name of everyone who's ever had worked with or for Moriarty.
One by one, day by day, they're crossing the names off.
Sherlock said he would burn Moriarty, and he is.
He is burning his world, his life, and his livelihood.
And John is happy to light the matches.
…
Nineteen.Twenty.
Twenty-one.
Twenty-two.
…
Occasionally, they see reports of the graffiti all over England- "I believe in Sherlock Holmes".
Neither is quite sure what to make of it, but they both know that they're going to have to go back sometime.
There are two names on the list that they'll find there.
…
Forty-four.
Forty-five.
Forty-six.
Forty-seven.
…
Monte Carlo this time, and Irene shows up to help. Or unbalance Sherlock, whichever seems more fun at the time.
She is more than happy to lure the casino owner out to where a poison dart (John's started to get creative) finishes the job.
She is also happy to help Sherlock and John win enough to fund their next name. Blackjack's more interesting than hacking bank accounts anyway, Sherlock notes.
She is gone the next morning, and Sherlock mutters something about "the woman" before changing into a new person.
John's almost forgotten what colour his hair used to be.
…
Fifty-eight.
Fifty-nine.
Sixty.
Sixty-one.
…
They run, through continents countries and cities and houses, and they laugh at the people behind them who can't keep up. They run from governments and mobs and lights; they are chasing shadows, and the shadows are running too.
…
Eighty-four.
Eighty-five.
Eighty-six.
Eighty-seven.
…
They sleep in shifts.
Neither of them knows when they started doing it, but while one sleeps, the other makes diagrams and looks at maps, schematics, and names (Sherlock), or cleans weapons, catalogues funds, and plots escape routes (John). They don't want to be caught off guard, so they watch each other sleep, and they watch the world around them turn.
Neither has had more that six hours of sleep at a time in three years.
And they don't care.
…
One Hundred twelve.
One Hundred thirteen
One Hundred fourteen
One Hundred fifteen…
Only once does John wonder why he isn't remorseful.
Why the blood that stains his hands doesn't haunt him.
Why he doesn't want to turn himself in.
Then Sherlock startles him out of his reverie by asking what he thinks the best way is to leave the Sydney Opera House in a hurry.
As he walks over to look at the map Sherlock has pulled up, he catches a look at himself in the mirror (the room is a bit cramped).
He has an inferno in his eyes, too.
He wants Moriarty to burn.
…
One Hundred thirty.
One Hundred thirty-one.
One Hundred thirty-two.
One Hundred thirty-three.
…
Berlin.
Chicago.
Rome.
Cape Town.
Guadalajara.
Lima.
Hand in hand, they chase the shadows.
…
It's Christmas day, and John is pulling Sherlock out of the Rhine, cursing.
"Bloody idiot! You're lucky you're not dead!"
Sherlock smiles weakly.
"We did get him, didn't we? Pity about the opera house."
John groans.
…
One hundred fifty.
…
They're back in London now, and using every tool in their arsenal to keep from being recognized.
They're a cold case; one that Sherlock would even have trouble solving, were he not the perpetrator.
There are two names left.
One is of a drug dealer that Moriarty used to use to move weapons and narcotics into the hands of his operatives.
The other is Moriarty himself.
…
They take the dealer out quickly enough- a British Army Browning L9A1 with silencer does the job quite nicely. Base of the skull, little mess. Sherlock breaks into the flat to add the list and the box, and decides to deviate from the norm with another note.
You know who's next.
Reading the note, Detective inspector Lestrade sighs and shakes his head.
"Yes. I guess we do."
…
One hundred fifty-one…
They find Moriarty on NSY rooftop.
It seems fitting, after all.
John is on the next building over, laser scope rigged and safety off.
And Sherlock- his hair back to normal, a replacement coat, and the same scarf, is stepping out of the staircase into the biting air.
It's windy- gusts that threaten to drag one or both of them over the edge. He stands to face the man that he has been hunting for three years, and looks him in the eyes.
"Fancy seeing you here, Jim- it's not often that two dead men meet."
Moriarty's reply is a wordless snarl and a smattering of red dots on his chest.
Sherlock grins.
"This again? Honestly, I expected it." He texts John.
Now, please.
Moriarty starts as one by one, the red dots wink out from Sherlock's chest.
One, two, three.
Then, a dot appears on Moriarty's own chest, mocking him with its unmoving glow.
Moriarty spits out a defiant "You burned, Sherlock, and you will burn again."
Sherlock looks at the man who tried to light him on fire, really looks, and all he sees is an empty shell.
"No, I won't."
A pause.
"But you will."
One last shot.
Sherlock doesn't have a box, but there is a sheet, and he drops it beside the something that was Moriarty.
And walks away.
…
Anderson is taking pictures, Donavan is running security footage (though there seems to be a missing chunk), and Lestrade is surveying the scene with Mycroft Holmes at his side.
"Do you think," he begins, "that there is a coincidence between John Watson dropping off the face of the earth and this little…unpleasantness?"
"No more," replies Mycroft, "than the fact that there is absolutely nothing that can give us any idea to the identity of the shooter may indicate that someone we believed to have given up a life of crime-solving may have been involved."
There seemed to be nothing more to say, and they both stared off the edge of the building, at the boiling storm clouds that frothed at the edge of the Thames, obscuring what could have been a magnificent sunset.
…
At the press conference the next day, the reporters get down to business.
A woman, her hair in a neat bun and her pen at the ready, enquires as to whether or not this murder had anything to do with the Reichenbach affair three years previous.
Lestrade takes a breath, and replies that no, he doesn't believe that it does.
A second, and then there is a multitude of ringtones as people pull out mobiles to receive a single text message.
Wrong!
Lestrade's eyes open in shock.
Impossible.
Another reporter questions whether or not the deceased is the real James Moriarty, as the rumours suggest.
Donavan slides in to answer that one, responding with the information that the police are investigating all possible leads, but it is a rumour after all, so there's probably no truth to it.
The mobiles buzz again.
Wrong!
After a few more questions (and texts), the press conference concludes, and Lestrade heads for his office and the mound of paperwork that awaits him.
His mobile buzzes.
You know where to find me.
SH
…
And there it is, folks! I wanted to see a post-Reichenbach that wasn't too angsty, and I was intrigued at the idea of Sherlock and John going all BAMF-y, so my brain churned out this idea. This is my first foray into the genre, so please leave a review to let me know if I should write more. I appreciate all that you have to critique, condemn, and congratulate (maybe) more than words can say. Also, I'm thinking of writing an epilogue, so if you'd like to see that, send a review or a PM my way.
See you soon!