Sherlock BBC Fic: The Most Permanent Destination - Flying: Three (4/5)
MASTERPOST | ZERO | ONE | TWO | THREE (3/5)
THREE (4/5)
Sherlock Holmes did not make a habit of giving himself over to crying.
Habits were made to be broken, he supposed. Or was that rules? He couldn't remember. Hearts, too. (No, stop: too bloody maudlin, listen to yourself.)
He did not weep, after all, though he wanted to, and he was not the one who'd broken the rules. And everyone's heart was perfectly intact, in the end, though they might not stay that way, if madmen's promises are of any slight value.
Of value: this fate that had been picked out for him, ever since he'd been struck by lightning and believed, at last, in the myth of the guardian angel. Belief almost broke him, myths had almost made him come undone, tearful; but faith and friendship (not an empty word now, he realised) might be worth saving, and lives too.
Always, always lives. (His? He'd never managed to say "thank you", and now never would.)
(Sherlock Holmes was still in flight, was not ready to die, but he trusted his angel with his soul.)
John nodded.
Rewind.
______________________________________________________________________________
At ten to midnight, Sherlock was outside. It would be unsportsmanlike of him to be late, he reasoned.
The pool: the set for this final act. It had only taken him a moment to decide upon it: parallelism, or sentiment, he surmised. He'd briefly wondered whether or not it would do to have the sky above (stars; he had not died in space after all, thank you John), in accordance with the popular ideas about angels being uneasy under rooftops; he discarded the idea, it was myth, ludicrous. There was no reason to play at angelhood, or to fake unease.
(He would only ever fake it, of course.)
He checked the time: seven minutes to the hour. The outside door opened easily. He remembered the path, from twenty-one years ago. He was trembling, sheer excitement in his bones.
Four minutes, and he could see the door. One, and he was inside.
Midnight.
His wings were wide.
"Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present. Oh, that's what it's all been for, isn't it? All your little puzzles, making me dance, all to distract me from this!" He waited for an answering entrance, his mysterious Moriarty. His feathers trembled.
Then, they became very still.
For a moment, there was no air.
And then, the entire feathered apparatus collapsed around him, his wings gone limp in shock, and all his tension devoted to holding his (human) body still, immobile as impossibility.
Impossible.
Not possible, an error. The universe had abandoned all logic. This was not possible.
He couldn't feel his wings anymore.
"Evening."
Horror, horror: John. He would not lie to himself; he knew that profile, the back of that head. John's back was to him, and the line of his body tense, but it was him. No denial.
"This is a turn-up, isn't it, Sherlock?"
"John? What the hell -- "
This was not improbable. This was impossible.
John's wing was extended wide, and its tar-stains were as black as death.
Blood-stains, as fresh as murder and twelve innocents dead and perjury in everything John Watson had ever told him, which was everything that pertained to his death-black soul.
No denial.
"Bet you never saw this coming."
Sherlock's limbs were made flesh and blood again, from stone: he stumbled forwards vaguely, his wings dragging on the ground behind him, metal screeching agony against the tiled floor. He did not feel them.
There was no denial, anymore. How masterful.
The John Watson he thought he knew would have balked, asked Sherlock to believe in him, just this once.
"What... would you like me to make him say -- next?"
John turned around.
Here, Sherlock could have cried.
John Watson had only one wing left, and it meant for him the world: how horrific, then, to see that it was now trussed up in coiling, blinking Semtex, dangling like foul fairy lights all across the golden (never grotesque or black) expanse. The angel could not move his wing-muscles at all, could not flex the appendage which was obviously trembling from strain. Wires wandered in and through the feathers, parasitic, pernicious: had they been lapping up his blood Sherlock would not have been surprised. The city of Death, it was, framed against a single wing. No-one in the building would likely survive.
John recited, and his voice broke. Sherlock reeled: sniper-lights made play across his best friend's feathered limb and torso. Sherlock did not notice it, but his wings snapped up in the air again, alive.
The machine/man was ravenous for blood, though he would settle for carrion if his angel survived.
"Nice touch, this: the pool -- where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson too; stop his heart."
The sound Sherlock's wing-beat made was like a death knell.
"Who are you?"
Then, he was close enough to hear it at last: a soft fluttering sound from above. He looked up. John did not move at all.
"I gave you my number! I thought you might call..."
There, in the ceiling beams: the form of a man, sitting cross-legged. Dark suit, in the shadows, indistinct, but then: he shifted. From the shadows lurking about the roof, Moriarty's wings unfurled.
They were completely coal-black. There was no natural colour in them at all, and no light reflected upon them. They were deep and unclean, like ragged wounds. Pits. Places where the universe was torn through, and had not bled so much as collapsed. They were holes that absorbed all light.
This, Sherlock realised with a fetid feeling in his mouth, was the colour of death.
Death's wingspan was feet (plural, oh god) longer than John Watson's, and that thought was terrifying.
Sherlock stared. He'd never dreamt he'd see anything quite like this. He had never expected to look upon his nemesis, and be afraid.
He swallowed.
John stood stock-still only seven feet away from him.
"Is that a British Army Browning L9-A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?" A shined shoe tapped absently at the air.
He had a sense that he was being given a cue he had not even prepared for, and he felt fooled. "Both." John’s gun drawn: his chances of accurately hitting Moriarty at this distance and in such poor lighting were slim, but he had no other options. He was unnerved, and severely out of sorts, and for the life of him he could not remember where he'd heard that voice before --
Moriarty straightened, and stood upon the concrete beam. Then, he gave a mighty flap, and began drifting to the ground. "Jim Moriarty. Hi!"
Oh, Sherlock was an idiot. He wished John could speak, just to tell him so. It would have shone light against that horrible blackness.
"Jim? Jim from the hospital?" Another great flap, and then: Moriarty's polished shoe touched the surface of the water. It went no further.
Bloody theatrics, commented the voice in Sherlock's head that sounded like an army doctor.
Moriarty stepped forward, with another flap, and did not sink. "Oh? Did I really make such a fleeting impression?" Moriarty gave then the water a little kick, and its splash punctuated his sentence. Another kick, and he was practically skipping. "But then, I suppose, that was rather the point." Moriarty kicked the surface with more force this time, and the resulting spray managed to hit poor John, who stood like a sentinel and did not flinch. Sherlock almost moved forward, but Moriarty raised a hand.
"Aah -- I wouldn't. Snipers may not be so fearsome as great big tarry demons, but they're good at holding rifles. And using them, of course." The sniper-sight moved about John's body, almost merry. "I meant what I said before, too; it’ll only take a nod and he’s dead. I don't like getting my hands dirty, but I do play foul."
Sherlock took this cue with purpose. "'Demons', you said. Interesting. It would imply tar with no provenance."
Moriarty’s mouth twisted. "You aren't going to tell me that there's no such thing as demons?"
"You already know that, so I don't need to."
Moriarty considered him, and smiled. He was still flapping lightly to keep himself standing on the surface of the chlorinated water. "No, I guess not. I mean, I've already given you a bit of an idea of what I've got going on out there in my big bad black world, right? Doesn't matter why I do it."
"Doesn't it?"
"Oh, but it doesn't, Sherlock. Not really. Why are we here, both of us? I'm a specialist, too, you see. Just like you."
Sherlock gave it a moment's thought. "'Dear Jim... please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover's nasty sister? Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?'"
"Just so."
"Consulting criminal! Brilliant."
"Isn't it? No-one ever gets to me. And no-one ever will."
Sherlock cocked the gun, because the games were over. "I did."
He looked at John. This was it.
And Moriarty laughed.
"You? Well, I guess you've come the closest, but that doesn't really count."
Moriarty was about halfway across the water, and yet he seemed far too close to them. "How so?"
"Do you play chess, Sherlock? Yes? So, tell me, Mister Brilliant Human Detective: do you actually never notice when everyone just lets you win?"
Sherlock blinked.
"Or, at least, do you never notice -- until the very last moment, when your victory is stolen back again?"
"I wouldn't know. I'm not in the habit of losing; my own merits usually prevent it."
"Oh, but that's just the thing, isn't it?" Moriarty took a step, and another, and began to circle them. "You're 'not in the habit of losing'; why would you ever lose?" Sherlock turned to follow Moriarty's movements; one side was now facing John, and the other turned to the blackened being on the water. "Dear silly little Sherlock, look at the poor man: he built his own wings from scratch, oh bless him." Moriarty's voice adopted a mimicking, high-pitched tone. "He's trying so hard, isn't he? We have to give him credit for effort. He'll never be one of us, of course, the little sod, but it's not good to be mean to humans, nowadays. Let him win, just this once." Moriarty stopped. "Just this once. Or maybe forever. Or not. So that's why I'm here."
Sherlock swallowed as Moriarty advanced.
"I love to watch you dance, Sherlock; you're so good, given the right bait. I played you, Sherlock, and you participate so well; so willing! You'll do anything. It's adorable; you'll do anything, to play with the big boys. So it's time you learned something about us big boys, my dear, at last, because the flirting's over. Though, I really have loved this, our little game, it was so much fun. Playing ‘Jim from IT’, playing human - did you like the lack of wings? I won’t tell you how I did it - and playing with you."
This was not a game. "People have died."
"That's what people DO!"
And, for a moment, Moriarty's face was reptilian, and his whole being -- wings and eyes and soul, too, if that was tangible -- as dark and bottomless as the pit of hell.
Sherlock swallowed.
"I will stop you. I can."
Moriarty spat at him. Sherlock did not flinch.
Sherlock was roughly the same distance now from John as he was from Moriarty. He looked over at John. "Are you all right?"
John said nothing. Moriarty chuckled, and stepped, at last, off of the water.
"You're an interesting character, John Watson, really. An angel running around in the muck with the likes of Sherlock? Yours is a brain I ought to pick sometime; don't worry, I'll make sure the environment's sterile."
Sherlock might have vomited. "John?"
At last, John looked him in the eye, and nodded.
Sherlock breathed out, and brandished the memory stick. "Take it."
"Hmm? Ohhh, that!" Moriarty stepped towards Sherlock, the whole of his dread-cold dark wings blocking off Sherlock's view of John. "The missile plans!" He smiled at Sherlock for a moment. "Boring! Oh, Sherlock; I could have got them anywhere!" he said, and flung it to the water.
And then, Moriarty made a choking sound, and his wings pounded, and someone very stupid and very brave and very impossible had locked his arms around the almost-demon's throat.
Sherlock’s heart stopped, and his brain went into overdrive.
THREE (5/5)
THREE (4/5)
Sherlock Holmes did not make a habit of giving himself over to crying.
Habits were made to be broken, he supposed. Or was that rules? He couldn't remember. Hearts, too. (No, stop: too bloody maudlin, listen to yourself.)
He did not weep, after all, though he wanted to, and he was not the one who'd broken the rules. And everyone's heart was perfectly intact, in the end, though they might not stay that way, if madmen's promises are of any slight value.
Of value: this fate that had been picked out for him, ever since he'd been struck by lightning and believed, at last, in the myth of the guardian angel. Belief almost broke him, myths had almost made him come undone, tearful; but faith and friendship (not an empty word now, he realised) might be worth saving, and lives too.
Always, always lives. (His? He'd never managed to say "thank you", and now never would.)
(Sherlock Holmes was still in flight, was not ready to die, but he trusted his angel with his soul.)
John nodded.
Rewind.
______________________________________________________________________________
At ten to midnight, Sherlock was outside. It would be unsportsmanlike of him to be late, he reasoned.
The pool: the set for this final act. It had only taken him a moment to decide upon it: parallelism, or sentiment, he surmised. He'd briefly wondered whether or not it would do to have the sky above (stars; he had not died in space after all, thank you John), in accordance with the popular ideas about angels being uneasy under rooftops; he discarded the idea, it was myth, ludicrous. There was no reason to play at angelhood, or to fake unease.
(He would only ever fake it, of course.)
He checked the time: seven minutes to the hour. The outside door opened easily. He remembered the path, from twenty-one years ago. He was trembling, sheer excitement in his bones.
Four minutes, and he could see the door. One, and he was inside.
Midnight.
His wings were wide.
"Brought you a little getting-to-know-you present. Oh, that's what it's all been for, isn't it? All your little puzzles, making me dance, all to distract me from this!" He waited for an answering entrance, his mysterious Moriarty. His feathers trembled.
Then, they became very still.
For a moment, there was no air.
And then, the entire feathered apparatus collapsed around him, his wings gone limp in shock, and all his tension devoted to holding his (human) body still, immobile as impossibility.
Impossible.
Not possible, an error. The universe had abandoned all logic. This was not possible.
He couldn't feel his wings anymore.
"Evening."
Horror, horror: John. He would not lie to himself; he knew that profile, the back of that head. John's back was to him, and the line of his body tense, but it was him. No denial.
"This is a turn-up, isn't it, Sherlock?"
"John? What the hell -- "
This was not improbable. This was impossible.
John's wing was extended wide, and its tar-stains were as black as death.
Blood-stains, as fresh as murder and twelve innocents dead and perjury in everything John Watson had ever told him, which was everything that pertained to his death-black soul.
No denial.
"Bet you never saw this coming."
Sherlock's limbs were made flesh and blood again, from stone: he stumbled forwards vaguely, his wings dragging on the ground behind him, metal screeching agony against the tiled floor. He did not feel them.
There was no denial, anymore. How masterful.
The John Watson he thought he knew would have balked, asked Sherlock to believe in him, just this once.
"What... would you like me to make him say -- next?"
John turned around.
Here, Sherlock could have cried.
John Watson had only one wing left, and it meant for him the world: how horrific, then, to see that it was now trussed up in coiling, blinking Semtex, dangling like foul fairy lights all across the golden (never grotesque or black) expanse. The angel could not move his wing-muscles at all, could not flex the appendage which was obviously trembling from strain. Wires wandered in and through the feathers, parasitic, pernicious: had they been lapping up his blood Sherlock would not have been surprised. The city of Death, it was, framed against a single wing. No-one in the building would likely survive.
John recited, and his voice broke. Sherlock reeled: sniper-lights made play across his best friend's feathered limb and torso. Sherlock did not notice it, but his wings snapped up in the air again, alive.
The machine/man was ravenous for blood, though he would settle for carrion if his angel survived.
"Nice touch, this: the pool -- where little Carl died. I stopped him. I can stop John Watson too; stop his heart."
The sound Sherlock's wing-beat made was like a death knell.
"Who are you?"
Then, he was close enough to hear it at last: a soft fluttering sound from above. He looked up. John did not move at all.
"I gave you my number! I thought you might call..."
There, in the ceiling beams: the form of a man, sitting cross-legged. Dark suit, in the shadows, indistinct, but then: he shifted. From the shadows lurking about the roof, Moriarty's wings unfurled.
They were completely coal-black. There was no natural colour in them at all, and no light reflected upon them. They were deep and unclean, like ragged wounds. Pits. Places where the universe was torn through, and had not bled so much as collapsed. They were holes that absorbed all light.
This, Sherlock realised with a fetid feeling in his mouth, was the colour of death.
Death's wingspan was feet (plural, oh god) longer than John Watson's, and that thought was terrifying.
Sherlock stared. He'd never dreamt he'd see anything quite like this. He had never expected to look upon his nemesis, and be afraid.
He swallowed.
John stood stock-still only seven feet away from him.
"Is that a British Army Browning L9-A1 in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?" A shined shoe tapped absently at the air.
He had a sense that he was being given a cue he had not even prepared for, and he felt fooled. "Both." John’s gun drawn: his chances of accurately hitting Moriarty at this distance and in such poor lighting were slim, but he had no other options. He was unnerved, and severely out of sorts, and for the life of him he could not remember where he'd heard that voice before --
Moriarty straightened, and stood upon the concrete beam. Then, he gave a mighty flap, and began drifting to the ground. "Jim Moriarty. Hi!"
Oh, Sherlock was an idiot. He wished John could speak, just to tell him so. It would have shone light against that horrible blackness.
"Jim? Jim from the hospital?" Another great flap, and then: Moriarty's polished shoe touched the surface of the water. It went no further.
Bloody theatrics, commented the voice in Sherlock's head that sounded like an army doctor.
Moriarty stepped forward, with another flap, and did not sink. "Oh? Did I really make such a fleeting impression?" Moriarty gave then the water a little kick, and its splash punctuated his sentence. Another kick, and he was practically skipping. "But then, I suppose, that was rather the point." Moriarty kicked the surface with more force this time, and the resulting spray managed to hit poor John, who stood like a sentinel and did not flinch. Sherlock almost moved forward, but Moriarty raised a hand.
"Aah -- I wouldn't. Snipers may not be so fearsome as great big tarry demons, but they're good at holding rifles. And using them, of course." The sniper-sight moved about John's body, almost merry. "I meant what I said before, too; it’ll only take a nod and he’s dead. I don't like getting my hands dirty, but I do play foul."
Sherlock took this cue with purpose. "'Demons', you said. Interesting. It would imply tar with no provenance."
Moriarty’s mouth twisted. "You aren't going to tell me that there's no such thing as demons?"
"You already know that, so I don't need to."
Moriarty considered him, and smiled. He was still flapping lightly to keep himself standing on the surface of the chlorinated water. "No, I guess not. I mean, I've already given you a bit of an idea of what I've got going on out there in my big bad black world, right? Doesn't matter why I do it."
"Doesn't it?"
"Oh, but it doesn't, Sherlock. Not really. Why are we here, both of us? I'm a specialist, too, you see. Just like you."
Sherlock gave it a moment's thought. "'Dear Jim... please will you fix it for me to get rid of my lover's nasty sister? Dear Jim, please will you fix it for me to disappear to South America?'"
"Just so."
"Consulting criminal! Brilliant."
"Isn't it? No-one ever gets to me. And no-one ever will."
Sherlock cocked the gun, because the games were over. "I did."
He looked at John. This was it.
And Moriarty laughed.
"You? Well, I guess you've come the closest, but that doesn't really count."
Moriarty was about halfway across the water, and yet he seemed far too close to them. "How so?"
"Do you play chess, Sherlock? Yes? So, tell me, Mister Brilliant Human Detective: do you actually never notice when everyone just lets you win?"
Sherlock blinked.
"Or, at least, do you never notice -- until the very last moment, when your victory is stolen back again?"
"I wouldn't know. I'm not in the habit of losing; my own merits usually prevent it."
"Oh, but that's just the thing, isn't it?" Moriarty took a step, and another, and began to circle them. "You're 'not in the habit of losing'; why would you ever lose?" Sherlock turned to follow Moriarty's movements; one side was now facing John, and the other turned to the blackened being on the water. "Dear silly little Sherlock, look at the poor man: he built his own wings from scratch, oh bless him." Moriarty's voice adopted a mimicking, high-pitched tone. "He's trying so hard, isn't he? We have to give him credit for effort. He'll never be one of us, of course, the little sod, but it's not good to be mean to humans, nowadays. Let him win, just this once." Moriarty stopped. "Just this once. Or maybe forever. Or not. So that's why I'm here."
Sherlock swallowed as Moriarty advanced.
"I love to watch you dance, Sherlock; you're so good, given the right bait. I played you, Sherlock, and you participate so well; so willing! You'll do anything. It's adorable; you'll do anything, to play with the big boys. So it's time you learned something about us big boys, my dear, at last, because the flirting's over. Though, I really have loved this, our little game, it was so much fun. Playing ‘Jim from IT’, playing human - did you like the lack of wings? I won’t tell you how I did it - and playing with you."
This was not a game. "People have died."
"That's what people DO!"
And, for a moment, Moriarty's face was reptilian, and his whole being -- wings and eyes and soul, too, if that was tangible -- as dark and bottomless as the pit of hell.
Sherlock swallowed.
"I will stop you. I can."
Moriarty spat at him. Sherlock did not flinch.
Sherlock was roughly the same distance now from John as he was from Moriarty. He looked over at John. "Are you all right?"
John said nothing. Moriarty chuckled, and stepped, at last, off of the water.
"You're an interesting character, John Watson, really. An angel running around in the muck with the likes of Sherlock? Yours is a brain I ought to pick sometime; don't worry, I'll make sure the environment's sterile."
Sherlock might have vomited. "John?"
At last, John looked him in the eye, and nodded.
Sherlock breathed out, and brandished the memory stick. "Take it."
"Hmm? Ohhh, that!" Moriarty stepped towards Sherlock, the whole of his dread-cold dark wings blocking off Sherlock's view of John. "The missile plans!" He smiled at Sherlock for a moment. "Boring! Oh, Sherlock; I could have got them anywhere!" he said, and flung it to the water.
And then, Moriarty made a choking sound, and his wings pounded, and someone very stupid and very brave and very impossible had locked his arms around the almost-demon's throat.
Sherlock’s heart stopped, and his brain went into overdrive.
THREE (5/5)