AND WE COULD PRETEND WE'RE STRANGERS

I am done pretending
You have failed to find what's left
I will suck you dry again
Some are not worth saving
You are such a pretty mess
I will choke the life within

Now you want to take me down
As if I even care
I am the monster in your head
And I thought you'd learn by now
It seems you haven't yet
I am the venom in your skin
And now your life
Is broken

'Lights Out' by Breaking Benjamin

"You're not very human, are you?" she says, conversationally. "Haven't been in quite a long while."

His lips curl into a near-smile, and why should it matter, hey? Why should it make the slightest difference for him that it's hurting her, because it's the same one from twenty years ago and a lifetime's worth of otherness.

"Rules of the game, darling, rules of the game." High-pitched voice, and a frightening bit manic, but she doesn't seem to want to comment. Not the time for scruffy little Caragh O'Shea to be disillusioned, not yet time.

And so what if he hurt, too? What if he knows exactly what it's like? It's not important, not any longer.

Once upon a brighter time, there were people teasing him, laughing at him. Laughing because he wouldn't join in with their stupid, ordinary ways. Because he wasn't them, and never could be, and how silly it was that he didn't realise then how much that burned.

"You don't give a damn about me, do you?"

"Hm." He breathes out, slowly, calmly contemplating this. "No. No, I don't. Good guess."

She stiffens, but nods, and he can almost believe she's fine with it.

"Aw, sweet. You actually believe I care."

She pauses, then, in the simplest of ways, shrugs. "I used to be in love with you, you know."

He can see her wishing. Wishing with every fibre of her existence that there might be a way to keep the memories without the pain – you know, that drowning, asphyxiating, please-let-this-be-over-before-anyone-sees pain that he promised (fucking promised, all right?) she would never, ever have to deal with again.

"Oh, aren't you funny, Caragh."

And no, it's not like that, he swears. It's not like he's thinking back to those crazy wide grins of hers or the times she sat with him behind her father's car and pretended not to notice the tears streaking down his face. Jim doesn't have time for that, he really doesn't.

He just can't afford to care.

"Caragh."

Caragh.

The wind rushes into his open coat and Jim Moriarty throws his head back and laughs, uncontrollably, because there's that tiny detail he never got around to mentioning.

Caragh O'Shea died fifteen years ago in a car crash.

He doesn't know whether that little, damaged, broken thing inside him hurts for her or because of her, but it does, and he rationalises it by telling himself that she was stupid and human and wrong – that promises aren't made to last forever anyway.

Because humans, they don't get it, do they? Every single time, every. Single. Bloody. Time.

There's nothing left now, you see.

Nothing to stay alive for.

A/N: I seriously, honestly haven't got the foggiest what I'm doing penning a Moriarty fic! No, wait, I do – Andrew Scott. Kick-ass brilliance or what?

Anyway, hope I'm not subjecting you to some kind of medieval torture (*cough* I'll make you into shoes *cough*) by asking you to drop me a line with your thoughts on this?

All the best,

Marmelatta