On Chess

Proof I've been staring at the games cupboard too long.

There is a chessboard in 221B- it has always been there, or perhaps Mycroft only dropped it off last week. But anyways, it's there, and it shouldn't be going anywhere soon.

(That is, unless Sherlock has the sudden urge to blow up something when John's left him on another…date, and Lestrade isn't answering his phone and thewallsareclosingin...)

It's a rather nice chessboard, with marble inlay squares and pieces carved out of shiny black and white stone that feels cool to the touch until the game is well underway and you haven't even noticed the time passing. But it's just a chessboard.

Or it was.

Until a madman- a proper madman, not just someone with a mind that works a bit differently than everyone else's, a madman that doesn't quite understand the concept of lives and deaths and the difference between the two- challenged Sherlock to play a game with him.

Now it isn't anymore.

Because Sherlock can look at the chessboard and the pieces dance and twist until they have faces- even if the one of the sides is a little blurry.

White moves first.

Pawns

Sherlock knows pawns- he is forced to interact with them on an almost daily basis. The officers who cluster around crime scenes like ants, unable to make a move without their superior's say-so. The myriad nameless (but not story-less, not to him) faces on the street, oblivious to the invisible hands that silently guide their lives.

He supposed that Anderson and Donavon are pawns, too. For all their snide looks and whispered comments, they are oblivious to the plots unfurling like monkshood flowers around them. They are only pawns, in a game that is so much larger than they can even conceive. And they don't even realize it. Or perhaps they can't- when you're only moving forward, you've no way to see the myriad plans unfolding around you like the tesseract that was mentioned in the book Sherlock never bothered to read.

Moriarty loves his pawns- the nameless hit men and burglars who are willing to throw away their lives or freedom for an appropriately sized paycheque. He has other pawns to- pawns that think that they're game-players, who have pawns of their own, and don't even realize how they're being used.

Until he needs to sacrifice one.

Rooks

Lestrade, Sherlock decides, is a rook. He can be remarkably effective if he's pointed in the right direction, but he can only move so far, so fast. He is restricted as well- all those silly, dull things like protocol and regulations and what he calls common sense (Sherlock calls it constricted thinking). Nevertheless, he is useful all the same, and things would be a bit more difficult if he weren't around.

There have been crooked cops ever since the first police force was established, and Moriarty has a few of his own. Even if they can't always help, it's just so easy to misplace a little bit of evidence or a single sheet of paperwork until sadly, the case just can't be solved. They never need to cover his crimes, of course, but sometimes a pawn slips up.

Bishops

There is no doubt in his mid concerning this-Mycroft is a bishop. Though he can slip behind and between and betwixt, and travel from corner to corner in less time than it takes to blink, he still sees everything in too-straight lines and in the name of Queen and Country, and he'll sometimes miss something. And when he does, it isn't just a "You-bloody-idiot-the-paperwork-is-going-to-take-weeks moment, it's a people-are-going-to-die -and-it's-your-fault moment. So Mycroft doesn't make very many corner-to-corner moves. A pity, really.

Jim's bishops aren't as noticeable- they hide in plain sight beneath Armani suits and MP badges and CEO business cards. But they're there, and even if they have to move carefully so that their colours stay hidden, they're still dangerous.

Queens

Ridiculous slang aside, Sherlock knows where he is on the chessboard. Queens can twist and turn in every direction- there is nowhere he can't go, nothing he can't do. (Or almost nothing, at least). Rules and laws and codes are meaningless when you can change direction at a moment's notice. And Queens don't let anything stop them. Ever. Because they don't care about protecting the king- they just want to take out every damn piece that's in their way.

Sherlock twists the piece between his fingers before replacing it on the board.

Moriarty is an equal here- his rules are for bending and his laws are for breaking. And he has marked his opponent. And don't you know what happens when two Queens decide to destroy each other?

Complete, utter carnage.

Are you prepared for that, Sherlock?

Knights

Knights, now- knights are interesting. You never really notice them at first- they're shuffled off to the side, are far too often the player hasn't the faintest idea about how to use them to their full potential.

But sometimes…sometimes, if a player knows what he is doing, he can slip his knights over and under and sideways until they've cornered the king without their opponent even realizing it.

Sherlock has two knights, two people who constantly surprise him, two people who force him to remember that he's human, and that there are people who would do anything for him. There is a broken (but fixing, chips and cracks smoothing out as the game wears on) army doctor who shoots a man not twenty-four hours after meeting him, and a shy little mouse who can look at the dead and see what prompted them to make the final journey.

A mouse who catches him when he falls, and a doctor who runs with him as he prepares to rise again.

That's the one little snag about tying people to you through blood and wealth and fear. Loyalty to one's employer only goes so far, and after a while, everything just gets so…boring. So he plays his games and neither winds or loses until that fateful day on the rooftop. He doesn't die, of course, but he's a bit indisposed, and rather shocked. After all of his work, all of him manipulations and conniving, after doing his best to solve the final problem, the person he thought of as a weakness and the one he didn't think of at all do something that he never expected.

He's a bit put out at first,until he gleefully realizes that this means the game doesn't have to end, that they can play another round and perhaps this time will be different. And even if it isn't , it's rather amusing anyway.

Kings

Kings, in all honesty, are rather useless. Only slightly more mobile that pawns, they simply watch the game around them as if it doesn't even apply, moving when it's only necessary to prevent the game from ending. It's the other pieces- and players- that really matter.

There are two kings on the board- one that burns with a cold white light, and another that's composed of smoke and shadow, feeding on the glow around it. The light-king and the shadow-king watch as the game twists and turns around them but never really ends, even as some pieces are taken out and replaced, and as the different players face off in matches that you might think were life-and-death until you remember that it's only a game…isn't it? But this game will continue until the board is worn away and the pieces fall, the kings left standing in a draw.

Let the game begin.