Hey, this is the last chapter, folks, so please enjoy it. I hope, it satisfies you, and I hope, I can hear some thoughts about it in the end. I want to thank all the readers and their comments because they made me going on. But thank you as well, people on story alert. I never hear from you, but the alert means you actually enjoed the ride. Maybe I can hear some last thoughts before I leave you with this? ;)

So, let's do it, let's bring it to an end.

We talk. We are human. We fall.

Enjoy. And maybe, we meet again.

11. Human being

The sound of his own name is strange to him. It sounds hollow and empty how it rolls over Jim Moriartys lips. Sherlock Holmes. Insignificant syllables, strung together, grey pearls on a line. When did he hear someone say this name, really saying it? Not muttered in a rush, not read out of a newspaper or taken from a flickering computer screen. He tries to picture the figure behind this name, the great detective with his brilliant mind, dark London back alleys are reflected in attentive icy eyes. But everything he sees is a broken man crouching on a dusty floor, the syringe that should end his life between long cold fingers.

"You're a human wreck", Moriarty whispers into his ear, stands up and takes a step backwards, watches the hunching shape in front of him on the ground with a scornful smile.

Moriarty is right, he became a fragile shell, and inside him the storm blusters, the same storm he recently was still able to control. Now the vortex digs painfully into his insides, corrodes him, and just as in a black hole everything disappears into that milling mind which is so brilliant and yet so dangerous. When did he sleep the last time, when did he eat? He just can't remember.

"It took me so long, Sherlock, so long until I knew how to do it", Jim Moriarty says, and he shakes his head a bit dreamy. "I wrote it all down on a little piece of paper, I made some drawings too. It would have amused you." He chuckles. "The key, the key. Did you light on the solution? Did you get my brilliant plan yet? Are you still here enough?"

Sherlock breathes in, counts the sniffs of dusty air from the flat that only smells of him now, of his chemicals and the stacks of old books, of paper and boredom and long wake nights on the sofa, fingers pressed together and placed on his chin, and of his gaze to the ceiling. But actually this flat is a museum, nothing is new in here, nothing changes. And Sherlock Holmes an exhibition piece.

Slowly Sherlock leans back, his back touches the wall and finds purchase on it and he slouches even more. He looks up to Jim Moriarty who still shakes his head as if he was shocked at the dimension of his triumph.

"You were invulnerable, Sherlock, you were above all things. No-one ever got to you, you subsisted on your brilliant mind and on what you were doing. The only decision in your life you had to make was on which side you wanted to be. And you had the choice, oh yes, if not you, then who? Most people talk about fate or predestination, they stumble through life and take what they can, what is offered to them." His expression becomes disgusted. "But not somebody like you, Sherlock, you always had the choice, and you did choose. You always got what you wanted, you weren't like other people. You weren't human."

The strange fascination Jim Moriarty feels towards him, he can understand it. If you always believed you're the only one of your kind, you are really surprised to finally find someone who is quite similar to you.

He looks into Moriartys eyes and sees so much darkness and hatred and insanity in them, and he tries to remember if all these things are inside his eyes as well, and he thinks of all the times he avoided his own gaze when looking into the mirror. His heart hammers hard against his chest as if the blood in his veins became thick and twice as much energy was needed to move the vicious black liquid through his body.

"How do bring someone down who's not human? How do you kill someone to whom death has no meaning at all?" Moriarty asks, his eyes big, two dilated pupils in the twilight of the room. And his next words are so silent that Sherlock barely understands them, and it takes him some seconds to put the thin fragments together. "You make him human."

For some moments it's completely quiet, even Sherlocks head grows silent.

"Look at you", Moriarty then says, and he points at Sherlocks shape on the ground. "Now you're one of them. A pathetic human being full of emotions and conflicts. I humanized you, all that is left now is killing you. But", and here he smiles almost sympathetically, "I'm sure that is something you're looking forward to, and I won't stop you from doing it yourself."

Sherlock twists the syringe between his fingers. He uses the silence in his head for a short reflexion, and for some seconds he disappears inside his mind palace, pictures pass him by, injuries, reports. A phone call. John, sitting on a bench. A warehouse. A threat, directed into the dark. A corpse inside an empty house. A lily between cold dead fingers.

Sherlock opens his eyes wide. He slowly stands up, his limbs are feeling so heavy. Moriarty observes him amused, starts to laugh.

"And how much human, Jim Moriarty, are you?" The words are coming so clear out of his mouth that he is surprised. Even in his head when he rolled them back and forth, they were not more than distant stuttering. Moriarty watches him irritated but not alarmed.

"Human, Moriarty, is also insanity. Something that rages inside yourself and controls you, that's human vulnerability. You think you're something supernatural and sacrosanct, but instead you're as pitiful as we are."

Jim Moriarty stares at him a long time, then he shakes his head, a smile in his face that doesn't reach his eyes.

"You're obsessed", and at these words Moriarty flinches as if he had heard them before, "with me, with this game, with all that. And you feel. You feel the emptiness inside you, and the raging and the pain as much as I do."

"You don't know who I am", Moriarty says between clenched teeth, his body tense, his fists doubled.

"The dead man in Abbey street, you killed him. There is only that one explanation. He was a cold-hearted killer, and yet someone could kill him with a stab into the heart. He wouldn't let anyone near himself except for an ... acquaintance." Sherlock sees how Moriartys expression freezes, becomes grey, and the mask crumbles. He takes a deep breath. The next sentence is just a guess.

"You couldn't stand it, couldn't you, him, wanting to leave you?"

With a load outcry Moriarty leaps at him, pushes him back against the wall, the hand tight around his throat. The force pressed all the air out of his chest, the syringe falls clattering to the ground. Moriarty is smaller than him but he suddenly feels so helpless how the other holds him against the wall with his whole body, the hand on his throat so strong and determinate, fingers press into his skin, tomorrow, he thinks, there will be bruises, and then he thinks that he won't live to see tomorrow and that the bruises will be perfect evidence. Sherlock Holmes a crime scene. The irony of that thought would have made him laugh if he had some air left to do so. Instead he stiffens his whole body and he feels the carbon monoxide in his lungs and his vicious blood how it circulates slower and slower, and his arms are hanging loosely besides his body, unwilling to fight back.

"You don't know him", Moriarty hisses into his ear, but maybe he says it normally but all the sounds are distorted, the room begins to spin. "And you never will. And it doesn't matter, Sherlock Holmes", the name, so hollow, without meaning, an empty phrase, "Because you're just another puppet between my fingers. And you will die tonight because I want you to."

The grasp around his throat loosens, Sherlock coughs, oxygen streams into his body but it tastes bitter and stale and he chokes on it and coughs even more. Moriarty bows down and picks the syringe up, observes the floating liquid inside of it.

Again one hand pushes Sherlocks head back against the wall, a piercing pain goes through his skull, but he is glad because he has not to breathe in the bitter air anymore, and then his arm tingles and before he can look down at it Moriarty rams the needle inside the crook of his arm, between all the pale punctures, and it doesn't even hurt, his body so numb. Then he presses the plunger half down, and he laughs and looks into Sherlocks eyes, and then they watch each other for a while, and the insanity inside Moriartys eyes is only a shadow, now there is grief and sorrow, and suddenly Sherlock knows that Moriarty regrets it.

Moriarty stopped laughing, pushes the plunger down, presses more of the drug into Sherlocks body. He whispers something, a goodbye or just his name or a last triumph, and his eyes, his eyes. And Sherlocks head so silent, so silent, between his black blood the drug where oxygen should be, and he tries to think about John, how it was like before this whole thing started, but everything he sees is his oppressed body and the panic in his eyes and the index finger of the right hand, God, his trigger finger, and nothing will be the same. And then his head becomes silent and everything stops.

Jim Moriartys eyes, they grieve about the death of two friends.

The shot cracks through the room and Moriartys pupils widen when his head gets ripped aside. The bullet splits the skull, shatters bones, and blood and skin and hair adhere as the dead body hits the ground. And Sherlock, unable to stand without Moriartys hand on his throat, falls too, air rushes into his body but he doesn't feel it. Blood runs over the floorboards, some drops hit Sherlocks face, and at first he stares into Moriartys empty eyes, and then, unable to breathe in, he looks up to the door, and there stands John Watson and in his left, well hand the weapon whose bullet smashed Moriartys head, and his trigger finger so steady and still and he doesn't tremble. Not the tiniest bit.

Everything blurs.

John who lowers the weapon. Rushing.

His name. Sherlock. The sound. Different when John says it. Totally different.

The distant feeling of the syringe being removed from his arm. The pain when he breathes in. Does he actually breathe? He was wrong, he doesn't breath, he just stares.

John's eyes. Panic in John's eyes. A different panic.

Sherlock. His name, again and again. He can't get enough of the sound.

A cold hand which touches his cheek and whisks off blood and curls. Voices.

John.

Rushing.

And then.

Nothing.

EPILOGUE:

Dust swirls in the incident sunbeams in 221b Bakerstreet. Books are scattered in the whole room, between them loose pages, documents with red marks and side notes. Two armchairs face each other, an old and a new one. The wooden floorboards are grey and old and creak when someone steps on the wrong one.

John knows them all, he knows on which he can put his foot when he wants to be quiet. But now he sits on the sofa, a book between his hands, in front of him a steaming cup of tea, it takes some minutes until it reaches the perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. It's silent inside the flat and John relishes the calmness of this Saturday afternoon.

Sometimes he still has panic attacks, and at night he often wakes up, screaming and flailing. Then he remembers everything that happened. But he lives with it, and everyday it gets a bit easier, and he knows as long as he remembers the terrible things he will remember the good things as well. And Sherlock Holmes, his flatmate, partner, friend.

Steps on wood, the entrance door clicks, then the stairs creak under short, light paces. Sherlock got into the habit of touching the wrong floorboards so John knows when he comes home, and John can identify his steps by now, even asleep.

When Sherlock enters the room he vibrates from excitement, and he tells him about a new case and Lestrade and Anderson and all the people who make him crazy, and he gestures with his long thin fingers.

And then he becomes silent and he sits besides John, so close that he can feel his friends breathing, and finally he leans his head lightly against Johns shoulder. He whispers into the silence "It's about time you come with me again", and John smiles, he lifts his right arm, puts it around Sherlock, his hand, his fingers inside his dark curls. Sherlock reaches his hand as well and places it on the soft fabric of John's jumper, underneath the warm skin that signifies life.

And so they sit and stay quiet and don't move, John's fingers on Sherlocks head, and Sherlocks hand on his heart.

That's the end. Be sure to tell me how it made you feel. See you next time. Thanks for staying with me, thank you for living through this with me. See you next time.

cat.