This moment was profound in a series of incredibly dull, mind-numbing moments that led him here, to this Light Rail standing a few feet away from the very-much-alive James Moriarty. He didn’t know whether he should push him onto the tracks or linger for a while as a part of him implored himself to indulge in. After all, it wasn’t all the time that one ran into an opportunity to confront a dead man after coming back from the dead, himself. One look at that smile and Sherlock couldn’t help the twitch at his lips. Not a smile at all but an acknowledgement of the joy radiating from the other man. The insane glee that had pulled at him in the moments between wakefulness and rest, the images that haunted him when he thought he would die in that operating room Mary had put him in with her handiwork, he could still feel how cold it was in that room with Jim and how the man beckoned him to submit to a force stronger than reason, reputation, cleverness or rationality. Pure, unpolluted insanity. It tore through his tangle of thoughts with as much damage and depth as a bullet fired point blank.
He knew he was a rational man and was able to hold himself to that standard, champion the notion, perform the work that must be done for the sake of upholding rationality, truth and above all, logic above flights of fancy or the allure of an unsolvable puzzle. Yes, he would die before all puzzles were cracked like codes, before the language of truth, objective and supreme would reign, but it didn’t stop him for a moment. His death would be as insignificant as anyone else’s but his contributions to shedding light on the shadows would remain far after he was gone.
When Jim suggested making snow angels, Sherlock tilted his head and raised an eyebrow. “You’re welcome to try before you bleed out. Still up for it?” There was no desperation to his tone, no fear, just unyielding focus on the man before him as if he were in a tiger’s cage without the bars between them. Somehow, though, he didn’t seem scared. Just interested and… sharper than he usually was. Even sharper than a knife. His presence threatened to cut or pierce deeply those who defied him or got in his way at this point.
It almost felt like the purifying rush of cocaine, the hyper-focus, the way his heart beat just a little faster, the feeling like he could take on anyone and anything in this altered state. Sharing a space with Jim, filled with the knowledge about what exactly he was going to do got him high. It wasn’t as if he’d swear off cocaine if he could grasp this feeling more often but he was as greedy as any addict at the end of the day and would take the adrenaline wherever he could get it. John wasn’t here to protect him and he didn’t have to protect John. It was finally just the two of them with no place to go in particular, no dramatic posturing for the city, it was intimate.
As Jim stood up from the bench, his eyes bore holes into him and there was a sense that he was savoring this time, as loud as his head was right now. Thoughts ricocheted off the constraints of his skull, associations were made in an instant (some that didn’t even quite make sense, rhymes, imagery he associated with Jim, the pips on the phone, that old woman’s last words, the pool reflecting off his face) and the lighting flickered above them for an instant, probably due to the wind and the chill in the power source.
“How could I forget? But you lied. Just. Like. Me.” He said those last words, a sickly little smile overtaking him. This lighting made him look gaunt, sallow. The both of them looked ill, in fact but it was fitting, somehow. They both shared this particular ailment. “You know I don’t ask for help and you know very well what your heart is made of.” With that, Sherlock pulled the gun from his pocket and held it out at an arm’s length, aiming at Jim’s throat. He was no shot like Mary but it was a good target in terms of lethality. The smile didn’t leave his face.
“And now what, Jim? Will you tell me you don’t want to die, just like your victims expressed? Or will you dare me? Taunt me? Or will you… truly surprise me? I’ve been thinking about this. All of the possible manifestations of this reality and here it is. So, make your move.”