i really don't blame you for being dead, but you can't have you sweater back. Part Five.
Continue with part five...
Mycroft’s manila envelope carried a full detail on Ingrid Klages. She had been attached to Jim, despite Sherlock having never found evidence that Moriarty had used her on any cases. And as no one knew anything about Moriarty, Sherlock couldn’t figure out in what capacity they had known each other or even who she was.
Klages had only been mentioned twice: as the beneficiary of a safety deposit box and then on Moriarty’s pay-role the year he and the detective officially met. The thing was she hadn’t been listed in Jim’s contacts and the detective had nothing to go on besides the name he’d gotten barely a year ago. There were any number of Ingrid Klages and Sherlock had only ruled out a third of them over the year.
The copy of Mycroft’s personal file on Klages said she was one of the best programmers on the continent. His notes seemed to think that she may have been Moriarty’s sometimes lover. Extrapolating on that, Mycroft probably thought Sherlock would be able to get her to tell him where Jim laid his head. As if they would have gone back to Jim’s flat instead of hers. As if she had to be a romantic attachment.
Mycroft, perceptive as he was at times, had the potential to be equally out of touch. Actually, Sherlock was mostly annoyed that Mycroft had found the location of Moriarty’s Klages first. Sherlock would comfort himself that the elder Holmes had no doubt scavenged over the detective’s personal case files in his absence and made the subsequent jumps to find her. Now it was up to Sherlock to follow with the actual leg work.
Which was the other annoying bit. Once Sherlock found Jim’s flat, Mycroft wouldn’t be but a step behind. He knew the elder Holmes had been following him the past couple of years. A fact made transparent when he showed up in Maupertuis’ dungeons.
It wasn’t like he thought he'd be able to keep Mycroft at bay for long with a find like that but he wouldn’t have minded the illusion.
Sherlock really didn’t know what he expected a conversation with Klages to reveal. He knew what he hoped to find, but in actuality the odds she would know seemed unlikely. The threads that tied her to Jim were just too scant for her to have the information he’d been seeking for the past year.
Sherlock weighed the options of the optimal place to meet her. He has her home address and the seclusion that could offer would likely be important to anything related to Moriarty, who was only spoken of in hushed whispers. Then again, popping around her place unknown and unannounced was a good way to spook her, and after searching for so long he couldn’t have that.
However, when he arrived at her office, he found Klages to be on her lunch break. Sherlock told her assistant it was just his luck that she should have left already. He was a friend, actually, and they were meant to have lunch together.
The assistant’s lips twisted, confused as she glanced at her computer screen, “I don’t see you in her datebook...”
“Hurm,” Sherlock frowned, then fidgeted as if in a hurry. “Could you tell me how to get to the cafe she went to? I haven’t been on campus for so long...”
The assistant then riffled through some papers, pulling out a foldable map of the TUM campus. “Here is where we are, and if you take this route to here” the young woman’s pen illustrated the path Sherlock should take to find the cafeteria Klages favored for their sandwiches. Sherlock thanked her, taking the map, and headed out the door.
Ingrid Klages was standing in line at the sandwich station just like her assistant had assumed. The detective recognized her from the picture included in Mycroft’s file. He bought a bottle of soda and followed her to the condiment and napkin stand.
“How old were you when Carl drowned?” Klages asked, discreetly, before Sherlock could even open his mouth.
“Thirteen,” Sherlock said automatically, evaluating her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”
“And when you first met, what was the number he gave you?”
“01 0958235,” the detective said with a certain unease. “How-”
“I had to know it was you,” she said in clipped English. “You can never be too sure, these days...”
Klages busied herself with the condiments for her six inch sub, but still flicked her gaze around the large open room roughly every ten seconds.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. How had she been expecting him? “You were expecting me.”
“Of course.”
“How did you meet him?”
“We don’t have time for this,” she stated furtively. “Someone will see.”
Sherlock glanced around them. The apparition was nowhere in sight and not a single other person was looking at them. He turned back to Klages. She was clearly more paranoid than him. He wondered exactly why that was.
“Then I’ll meet you-”
“No,” she said with finality and confidence that made Sherlock wonder exactly what she would do if he attempted to follow her, knowing that whatever it was would not be good for him. She rooted around in her planner a bit before pulling something out.
“I don’t have anything for you but this,” Klages stated curtly, shoving the clean but slightly worn envelope into Sherlock’s hands, then stalking off with her lunch and a final sweeping glance of the cafeteria.
There was nothing inside but an address for a building in London and a six digit number followed by a ten digit number. Sherlock knew those would be the door code and the alarm code, respectively. This would be the thing he was searching for: Moriarty’s flat. Jim must have anticipated his contingency plan and accounted for it before Sherlock had even broke in to Kitty Riley’s.
Moriarty’s foresight both astounded and depressed him. Jim understood him so well and Sherlock...he hadn’t seen Jim until it was too late.
The sheet of paper inside contained nothing more. but then he supposes after all that happened why should it?
Jim hadn’t left a personal note and Sherlock didn’t wonder why not.
He needed to get back to London as fast as he could.
Sherlock blew out the smoke from his first cigarette of the day. The ship he’d come in on had docked in the predawn hours and the detective had come straight here once the gangways were down.
It had snowed during the night. The roads were slick with ice and slush under the fire colored dawn sky. He stood on the curb across from the side door to a completely innocuous looking building, which Sherlock now knew to be Jim Moriarty’s flat. An artist’s loft in a warehouse district, Sherlock had done some research during the journey and found that Moriarty’s deed was for the whole building. Which the detective thought was interesting, almost like Jim was cordoning off his space.
Sherlock was distinctly aware of the presence of only one other person: Mycroft’s tail, lurking a block and a half away. There was a regulation edge to every man the elder Holmes deployed after him, that didn’t so much ease his paranoia as spurn his pride. The detective was actually surprised they were the only ones on the street. This time of morning typically saw packers readying shipments to be moved, but today there was only stillness. It would almost be eerie, if it wasn’t also Sunday.
The presence he really missed was Jim’s. Sherlock hadn’t seen the apparition since Mycroft had dropped off the file. That was barely two days ago, but it was still the longest the apparition had stayed away. Jim hadn’t been there when he had woken up and he still hadn’t shown in the time it took Sherlock to make it to the flat. The detective imagined that maybe Jim didn’t want to spook him and that the sooner he saw what was inside the building, the sooner he’d get to talk to the apparition again.
Mycroft’s man was waiting for Sherlock to go inside a building, so he could report the location back to the elder Holmes, which gave the detective five or six hours to explore the place before Mycroft’s teams moved in.
It was not enough time. But then he wasn’t going to ask Mycroft for more.
With the clock ticking, he stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the sidewalk, the rock salt crunching and providing friction as he crossed the street.
Sherlock punched in the door code and entered the building. It was no warmer than the street, but certainly louder with its panicked beeping. The detective glanced around the darkened landing for the alarm box. It took his flashlight to find it and he promptly turned it off with the longer string of numbers. He climbed to the second floor and pushes open the door to Jim’s living space.
Sherlock’s gaze barely rested on anything for a second before continuing his sweep of the flat. His eyes took in every detail of the place avariciously.
It was simple and relatively clean, if a tad cluttered. The worn leather couch, obviously expensive, sat in the center of the living space. A broad desk with a computer and laptop near the window with its shades drawn. The detective admitted he could see Moriarty living here.
Everything was oddly tidy. Almost as if Moriarty knew it’d be the last time he would be coming back and wanted everything neat before he left. The refrigerator was empty. Even Jim’s bed was made. Though Sherlock had not thought the criminal actually slept the night before the Fall anyway.
Then, of course, there was the large portion of living room wall, which apparently also functioned as an office, that was plastered with clippings from the papers about Sherlock. The detective let his fingers brush the yellowing paper. Jeff Hope certainly hadn’t been kidding when he said that Moriarty was his fan. Jim had been meticulous. The collage covered nearly everything that he had consulted on which had gotten press coverage, all the way back to Carl Powers, even cases Sherlock had allowed the Yard to take credit for were included.
Jim still hadn’t made an appearance when Sherlock finished his self-guided tour. The detective went over to the large bookshelf that covered one of the living room walls and peered at the volumes there.
He let his long fingers run along a row of thin black notebooks. Sherlock had found Moriarty’s flat, the base of his operations and personal quarters. Of course, it was more than fascinating.
Sherlock had made a career out of looking at objects and extrapolating meaning. He’d thought that once he found Jim Moriarty’s flat with his life in possessions all laid out for Sherlock, somehow he’d would gain some deeper understanding, something more. He saw all the little quirks of a place that showed a person lived there. Like the toothbrush glass being to the left of the sink, not the right. Stray water rings on the bedside table. A half assembled computer on a desk in the corner, parts strewn. But the place hadn’t really given him what he had been searching for and he was faced with the question of what he should do now.
Sherlock took one of the many leather bound notebooks from the shelf and flipped it open to find it, as he’d rightly thought, full of Jim’s loopy scrawl. He meandered over to Moriarty’s couch and began to read, hoping Jim would appear soon.
“Sherlock.”
Jim’s voice roused him from his examination of Moriarty’s journals. The detective turned and saw the criminal was sitting on the couch too. So he’d finally decided to show up.
Even in the dim light of the afternoon, Sherlock could see the couch dipped where the apparition was sitting. As if his ghostly form had the weight it never had before.
Sherlock blinked.
Jim edged closer to him.
The detective was filing away Jim’s every movement meticulously now. After three years of conversing with what he had thought was a realistic apparition of the criminal, only now did he see his folly. All the details of Jim’s visage, which had been so clear in those final moments on the rooftop together, were suddenly sitting there with him again. Sherlock couldn’t resist. He reached out his hand. He wanted so badly to touch Moriarty. Three years of banter with this ghost and he had thought about it. Of course, he had thought about it.
The detective watched Jim’s surprise as Sherlock’s fingers brushed along his cheek. The way his eyes flickered shut. How he leaned ever so slightly into Sherlock’s touch.
When Moriarty opened his eyes again, he had a small smile on his face. Sherlock smiled back.
“You’re here,” he whispered, in awe, as his fingers dropped and sought out Jim’s hand. He gripped it tightly.
Moriarty squeezed the detective’s hand back and cozied up to him till there was no space between them. The warmth of the criminal’s body was a comforting reassurance that Jim was there with him again.
Sherlock closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of Jim’s hair and for the first time in his last three years of travel, undercover work, and hunting; he felt truly at peace.
“You can sleep now,” Jim said into the detective’s chest, voice quiet as his arms worm around Sherlock. “You can sleep now.”
The journal Sherlock had loosely clasped in his hands fell to the ground with a thud as he jolted awake. Harried, the detective looked beside him, but Jim wasn’t seated there. The worn leather was cold and there was no evidence that the criminal had been there moments ago.
Sherlock sat back, a slightly hollow feeling taking root in his chest as he understood the moments he had spent in Moriarty’s arms were all a dream. He was still in the criminal’s former residence, and it was still morning.
Strangely, the light coming through the window was still that odd orangey-dawn. Sherlock had scoured the apartment earlier and found Moriarty did not have a clock and the detective had pawned his watch years ago and his phone was dead again. But given how little the light outside had changed, he must have been dozing for only a few minutes, despite the vague sensation of not being able to feel his butt. Though that could be from sitting too long or that Jim’s flat was preternaturally cold.
The detective stood and looked around for Jim. He wasn’t in the main room. That was odd.
Sherlock was so exhausted, but he had some questions about what the criminal had written down in his journals. They were fascinating, as was expected.
“Jim?”
Sherlock peeked into the bedroom, then the bathroom, and absurdly the closet having no luck in locating Jim.
The apparition simply was not anywhere. As he stepped back into the main living space, the realization hit Sherlock like a lead pipe. The detective had dismantled the criminal’s web and discovered all the remaining world had to tell him about Moriarty and that was the end of Jim’s spectoring apparition. He knew it. Jim was gone for good.
Sherlock was alone.
He had to remind himself to breathe. When the detective’s lungs finally started working again, his breath came in large sucking rasps. Sherlock could not hold back the sob that shook his body.
For the third time in less than five years, Moriarty’s departure had sent the detective reeling. Though Sherlock wasn’t sure this time, Jim’s leaving was entirely within his control. (He also wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t.)
Without the consulting criminal’s crimes, the world needed no consulting detective to solve them. Mycroft gave him the key with Klages’ whereabouts, thinking that it would bring the detective home. Except that Sherlock didn’t have one of those anymore. His place in the world left with Moriarty.
He could sleep. He could sleep now.
The words Jim had spoken in Sherlock’s dream rattled around his mind.
It seemed only too fitting that his end destination be here. After all, the search for this place was Moriarty’s final puzzle for him; what had kept him going after all the strings of the web were laid out in orderly prison cells and graves.
Sherlock walked back to Jim’s bed room.
The detective threw back the dusty constellation covered duvet and sat on the edge of Jim’s bed, fingers smoothing over the navy silk sheets. He took out the kit he’d bought in the train station while he waited for his final connection back to London from Munich.
Sherlock was methodical more out of habit than some daze. He was familiar with how to induce a cocaine overdose and the detective had prepared this particular injection with those steps in mind. At least with Mycroft’s people coming in a few hours, he knew his body wouldn’t sit decrepit in an abandoned flat for long.
Even after years clean, cooking up came back to him as if it were reflex; dissolving the cocaine, preparing the shot, finding the vein, taking a deep breath, and pushing the needle in.
He laid down on Jim’s bed, getting comfortable. Moriarty had slept here. It was something of a revelation. Sherlock turned his face into the pillow, which had probably smelled like the criminal at one point but now all he could smell is dust.
He could feel the drug taking hold in his veins. It was a familiar feeling yet more heady than any before.
From the angle he was stretched out, Sherlock could see through a gap in the curtains how the sky had turned a light blue.
Sherlock shut his eyes. He could sleep now. He could sleep.
Mycroft’s manila envelope carried a full detail on Ingrid Klages. She had been attached to Jim, despite Sherlock having never found evidence that Moriarty had used her on any cases. And as no one knew anything about Moriarty, Sherlock couldn’t figure out in what capacity they had known each other or even who she was.
Klages had only been mentioned twice: as the beneficiary of a safety deposit box and then on Moriarty’s pay-role the year he and the detective officially met. The thing was she hadn’t been listed in Jim’s contacts and the detective had nothing to go on besides the name he’d gotten barely a year ago. There were any number of Ingrid Klages and Sherlock had only ruled out a third of them over the year.
The copy of Mycroft’s personal file on Klages said she was one of the best programmers on the continent. His notes seemed to think that she may have been Moriarty’s sometimes lover. Extrapolating on that, Mycroft probably thought Sherlock would be able to get her to tell him where Jim laid his head. As if they would have gone back to Jim’s flat instead of hers. As if she had to be a romantic attachment.
Mycroft, perceptive as he was at times, had the potential to be equally out of touch. Actually, Sherlock was mostly annoyed that Mycroft had found the location of Moriarty’s Klages first. Sherlock would comfort himself that the elder Holmes had no doubt scavenged over the detective’s personal case files in his absence and made the subsequent jumps to find her. Now it was up to Sherlock to follow with the actual leg work.
Which was the other annoying bit. Once Sherlock found Jim’s flat, Mycroft wouldn’t be but a step behind. He knew the elder Holmes had been following him the past couple of years. A fact made transparent when he showed up in Maupertuis’ dungeons.
It wasn’t like he thought he'd be able to keep Mycroft at bay for long with a find like that but he wouldn’t have minded the illusion.
Sherlock really didn’t know what he expected a conversation with Klages to reveal. He knew what he hoped to find, but in actuality the odds she would know seemed unlikely. The threads that tied her to Jim were just too scant for her to have the information he’d been seeking for the past year.
Sherlock weighed the options of the optimal place to meet her. He has her home address and the seclusion that could offer would likely be important to anything related to Moriarty, who was only spoken of in hushed whispers. Then again, popping around her place unknown and unannounced was a good way to spook her, and after searching for so long he couldn’t have that.
However, when he arrived at her office, he found Klages to be on her lunch break. Sherlock told her assistant it was just his luck that she should have left already. He was a friend, actually, and they were meant to have lunch together.
The assistant’s lips twisted, confused as she glanced at her computer screen, “I don’t see you in her datebook...”
“Hurm,” Sherlock frowned, then fidgeted as if in a hurry. “Could you tell me how to get to the cafe she went to? I haven’t been on campus for so long...”
The assistant then riffled through some papers, pulling out a foldable map of the TUM campus. “Here is where we are, and if you take this route to here” the young woman’s pen illustrated the path Sherlock should take to find the cafeteria Klages favored for their sandwiches. Sherlock thanked her, taking the map, and headed out the door.
Ingrid Klages was standing in line at the sandwich station just like her assistant had assumed. The detective recognized her from the picture included in Mycroft’s file. He bought a bottle of soda and followed her to the condiment and napkin stand.
“How old were you when Carl drowned?” Klages asked, discreetly, before Sherlock could even open his mouth.
“Thirteen,” Sherlock said automatically, evaluating her suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. “Why?”
“And when you first met, what was the number he gave you?”
“01 0958235,” the detective said with a certain unease. “How-”
“I had to know it was you,” she said in clipped English. “You can never be too sure, these days...”
Klages busied herself with the condiments for her six inch sub, but still flicked her gaze around the large open room roughly every ten seconds.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. How had she been expecting him? “You were expecting me.”
“Of course.”
“How did you meet him?”
“We don’t have time for this,” she stated furtively. “Someone will see.”
Sherlock glanced around them. The apparition was nowhere in sight and not a single other person was looking at them. He turned back to Klages. She was clearly more paranoid than him. He wondered exactly why that was.
“Then I’ll meet you-”
“No,” she said with finality and confidence that made Sherlock wonder exactly what she would do if he attempted to follow her, knowing that whatever it was would not be good for him. She rooted around in her planner a bit before pulling something out.
“I don’t have anything for you but this,” Klages stated curtly, shoving the clean but slightly worn envelope into Sherlock’s hands, then stalking off with her lunch and a final sweeping glance of the cafeteria.
There was nothing inside but an address for a building in London and a six digit number followed by a ten digit number. Sherlock knew those would be the door code and the alarm code, respectively. This would be the thing he was searching for: Moriarty’s flat. Jim must have anticipated his contingency plan and accounted for it before Sherlock had even broke in to Kitty Riley’s.
Moriarty’s foresight both astounded and depressed him. Jim understood him so well and Sherlock...he hadn’t seen Jim until it was too late.
The sheet of paper inside contained nothing more. but then he supposes after all that happened why should it?
Jim hadn’t left a personal note and Sherlock didn’t wonder why not.
He needed to get back to London as fast as he could.
Sherlock blew out the smoke from his first cigarette of the day. The ship he’d come in on had docked in the predawn hours and the detective had come straight here once the gangways were down.
It had snowed during the night. The roads were slick with ice and slush under the fire colored dawn sky. He stood on the curb across from the side door to a completely innocuous looking building, which Sherlock now knew to be Jim Moriarty’s flat. An artist’s loft in a warehouse district, Sherlock had done some research during the journey and found that Moriarty’s deed was for the whole building. Which the detective thought was interesting, almost like Jim was cordoning off his space.
Sherlock was distinctly aware of the presence of only one other person: Mycroft’s tail, lurking a block and a half away. There was a regulation edge to every man the elder Holmes deployed after him, that didn’t so much ease his paranoia as spurn his pride. The detective was actually surprised they were the only ones on the street. This time of morning typically saw packers readying shipments to be moved, but today there was only stillness. It would almost be eerie, if it wasn’t also Sunday.
The presence he really missed was Jim’s. Sherlock hadn’t seen the apparition since Mycroft had dropped off the file. That was barely two days ago, but it was still the longest the apparition had stayed away. Jim hadn’t been there when he had woken up and he still hadn’t shown in the time it took Sherlock to make it to the flat. The detective imagined that maybe Jim didn’t want to spook him and that the sooner he saw what was inside the building, the sooner he’d get to talk to the apparition again.
Mycroft’s man was waiting for Sherlock to go inside a building, so he could report the location back to the elder Holmes, which gave the detective five or six hours to explore the place before Mycroft’s teams moved in.
It was not enough time. But then he wasn’t going to ask Mycroft for more.
With the clock ticking, he stubbed out his cigarette and stepped off the sidewalk, the rock salt crunching and providing friction as he crossed the street.
Sherlock punched in the door code and entered the building. It was no warmer than the street, but certainly louder with its panicked beeping. The detective glanced around the darkened landing for the alarm box. It took his flashlight to find it and he promptly turned it off with the longer string of numbers. He climbed to the second floor and pushes open the door to Jim’s living space.
Sherlock’s gaze barely rested on anything for a second before continuing his sweep of the flat. His eyes took in every detail of the place avariciously.
It was simple and relatively clean, if a tad cluttered. The worn leather couch, obviously expensive, sat in the center of the living space. A broad desk with a computer and laptop near the window with its shades drawn. The detective admitted he could see Moriarty living here.
Everything was oddly tidy. Almost as if Moriarty knew it’d be the last time he would be coming back and wanted everything neat before he left. The refrigerator was empty. Even Jim’s bed was made. Though Sherlock had not thought the criminal actually slept the night before the Fall anyway.
Then, of course, there was the large portion of living room wall, which apparently also functioned as an office, that was plastered with clippings from the papers about Sherlock. The detective let his fingers brush the yellowing paper. Jeff Hope certainly hadn’t been kidding when he said that Moriarty was his fan. Jim had been meticulous. The collage covered nearly everything that he had consulted on which had gotten press coverage, all the way back to Carl Powers, even cases Sherlock had allowed the Yard to take credit for were included.
Jim still hadn’t made an appearance when Sherlock finished his self-guided tour. The detective went over to the large bookshelf that covered one of the living room walls and peered at the volumes there.
He let his long fingers run along a row of thin black notebooks. Sherlock had found Moriarty’s flat, the base of his operations and personal quarters. Of course, it was more than fascinating.
Sherlock had made a career out of looking at objects and extrapolating meaning. He’d thought that once he found Jim Moriarty’s flat with his life in possessions all laid out for Sherlock, somehow he’d would gain some deeper understanding, something more. He saw all the little quirks of a place that showed a person lived there. Like the toothbrush glass being to the left of the sink, not the right. Stray water rings on the bedside table. A half assembled computer on a desk in the corner, parts strewn. But the place hadn’t really given him what he had been searching for and he was faced with the question of what he should do now.
Sherlock took one of the many leather bound notebooks from the shelf and flipped it open to find it, as he’d rightly thought, full of Jim’s loopy scrawl. He meandered over to Moriarty’s couch and began to read, hoping Jim would appear soon.
“Sherlock.”
Jim’s voice roused him from his examination of Moriarty’s journals. The detective turned and saw the criminal was sitting on the couch too. So he’d finally decided to show up.
Even in the dim light of the afternoon, Sherlock could see the couch dipped where the apparition was sitting. As if his ghostly form had the weight it never had before.
Sherlock blinked.
Jim edged closer to him.
The detective was filing away Jim’s every movement meticulously now. After three years of conversing with what he had thought was a realistic apparition of the criminal, only now did he see his folly. All the details of Jim’s visage, which had been so clear in those final moments on the rooftop together, were suddenly sitting there with him again. Sherlock couldn’t resist. He reached out his hand. He wanted so badly to touch Moriarty. Three years of banter with this ghost and he had thought about it. Of course, he had thought about it.
The detective watched Jim’s surprise as Sherlock’s fingers brushed along his cheek. The way his eyes flickered shut. How he leaned ever so slightly into Sherlock’s touch.
When Moriarty opened his eyes again, he had a small smile on his face. Sherlock smiled back.
“You’re here,” he whispered, in awe, as his fingers dropped and sought out Jim’s hand. He gripped it tightly.
Moriarty squeezed the detective’s hand back and cozied up to him till there was no space between them. The warmth of the criminal’s body was a comforting reassurance that Jim was there with him again.
Sherlock closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of Jim’s hair and for the first time in his last three years of travel, undercover work, and hunting; he felt truly at peace.
“You can sleep now,” Jim said into the detective’s chest, voice quiet as his arms worm around Sherlock. “You can sleep now.”
The journal Sherlock had loosely clasped in his hands fell to the ground with a thud as he jolted awake. Harried, the detective looked beside him, but Jim wasn’t seated there. The worn leather was cold and there was no evidence that the criminal had been there moments ago.
Sherlock sat back, a slightly hollow feeling taking root in his chest as he understood the moments he had spent in Moriarty’s arms were all a dream. He was still in the criminal’s former residence, and it was still morning.
Strangely, the light coming through the window was still that odd orangey-dawn. Sherlock had scoured the apartment earlier and found Moriarty did not have a clock and the detective had pawned his watch years ago and his phone was dead again. But given how little the light outside had changed, he must have been dozing for only a few minutes, despite the vague sensation of not being able to feel his butt. Though that could be from sitting too long or that Jim’s flat was preternaturally cold.
The detective stood and looked around for Jim. He wasn’t in the main room. That was odd.
Sherlock was so exhausted, but he had some questions about what the criminal had written down in his journals. They were fascinating, as was expected.
“Jim?”
Sherlock peeked into the bedroom, then the bathroom, and absurdly the closet having no luck in locating Jim.
The apparition simply was not anywhere. As he stepped back into the main living space, the realization hit Sherlock like a lead pipe. The detective had dismantled the criminal’s web and discovered all the remaining world had to tell him about Moriarty and that was the end of Jim’s spectoring apparition. He knew it. Jim was gone for good.
Sherlock was alone.
He had to remind himself to breathe. When the detective’s lungs finally started working again, his breath came in large sucking rasps. Sherlock could not hold back the sob that shook his body.
For the third time in less than five years, Moriarty’s departure had sent the detective reeling. Though Sherlock wasn’t sure this time, Jim’s leaving was entirely within his control. (He also wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t.)
Without the consulting criminal’s crimes, the world needed no consulting detective to solve them. Mycroft gave him the key with Klages’ whereabouts, thinking that it would bring the detective home. Except that Sherlock didn’t have one of those anymore. His place in the world left with Moriarty.
He could sleep. He could sleep now.
The words Jim had spoken in Sherlock’s dream rattled around his mind.
It seemed only too fitting that his end destination be here. After all, the search for this place was Moriarty’s final puzzle for him; what had kept him going after all the strings of the web were laid out in orderly prison cells and graves.
Sherlock walked back to Jim’s bed room.
The detective threw back the dusty constellation covered duvet and sat on the edge of Jim’s bed, fingers smoothing over the navy silk sheets. He took out the kit he’d bought in the train station while he waited for his final connection back to London from Munich.
Sherlock was methodical more out of habit than some daze. He was familiar with how to induce a cocaine overdose and the detective had prepared this particular injection with those steps in mind. At least with Mycroft’s people coming in a few hours, he knew his body wouldn’t sit decrepit in an abandoned flat for long.
Even after years clean, cooking up came back to him as if it were reflex; dissolving the cocaine, preparing the shot, finding the vein, taking a deep breath, and pushing the needle in.
He laid down on Jim’s bed, getting comfortable. Moriarty had slept here. It was something of a revelation. Sherlock turned his face into the pillow, which had probably smelled like the criminal at one point but now all he could smell is dust.
He could feel the drug taking hold in his veins. It was a familiar feeling yet more heady than any before.
From the angle he was stretched out, Sherlock could see through a gap in the curtains how the sky had turned a light blue.
Sherlock shut his eyes. He could sleep now. He could sleep.