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Every time you tell me that you love me, a part of me dies.
You don’t, Jim. You never have, you never will. You aren’t capable, I’m absolutely positive of that fact. Or, at least, you weren’t capable of it. You poor, beautiful, broken little thing. You used to be so full of viciousness; a white hot fury that dominated your mind and consumed your soul. It drove you to do things, Jim, horrible things, brilliant and amazing and mouth-wateringly gorgeous things.
You are a master of destruction, the king of the chessboard. You are the man who had everything and lost it to his own madness. Why? Because you met another king.
Was it worth it, Jim? Was it worth losing everything for the sake of finding another stupid know-it-all bastard, just like yourself? Fuck all of it, every second of it, because it was all for nothing. Everybody died that day, Jim. Sherlock fell, John crumbled, you blew a hole in your head and left me as a soldier without a post, like a useless piece of scrap metal left behind after a war in which neither side was victorious.
In a way, Sherlock’s a lot like you, I’ve always thought so. Both so clever, so detached… Cool, calculating. Bored. Insane. And now he’s pushing up daisies from 6 feet under, and you’re trapped so deep inside your own head that I often wonder if you’re even still in there.
I hate you. Honest to god, I hate you with every fibre of my being. I hate you for leaving me to pick up the pieces. And I will pick them up for you, Jim, you know I will. Because I love you. Even now, when you’re this harmless little man. You’re a far cry from your former self, I must say, and I still love you. You’re gentle, surprisingly so. You never lash out, never yell at me, never berate me for how intellectually inferior I am to you. The only time you ever lose your temper is when you lose it with yourself.
You stir in my arms, you adorable little thing. I pull you closer and run my hands through your hair, the tips of my fingers smoothing over the scar at the back of your head. The doctors and nurses cleaned it up nicely, if we’re honest. It’s just a rough little bump with a jagged, protruding scar going through it. It’s completely covered by your hair, you wouldn’t even now it was there.
I press a kiss to your temple, tell you to shush, to go back to sleep because I’m here, and you’re safe. Of course you are safe, Jim, you’ll always be safe with me.
You turn around to face me, your eyes still closed, and drape your arm around me. I feel your fingers flexing against my back as you mumble something that sounds suspiciously like ‘Sebby’, but I can never quite be sure.
You do things like that, you know. Say things that only he would say. Like the other day, when we were watching crap telly together. You insisted on watching one of those ridiculous shopping channels, and they were selling a model replica of the crown jewels, a cast-off from some movie set. And you looked at me with your cheeky little eyes, and told me how pretty you’d look in that crown.
I laughed harder than I’ve laughed in a long time. And then I locked myself in the bathroom and took a long, hot shower, telling myself that I wasn’t crying, even though I probably was. Since when does Sebastian Moran cry?
You settle down, your breathing falling into a slow and steady rhythm as you drift off again. You look so peaceful, Jim. I have never seen you like this before.
You’re him. You are. I can hear it in the way you speak, all soft and flirty and Irish. I hear it when you play the piano, and the same slow, sad, lilting tunes float through the air. I can see it in your eyes, in the way that your fierce old intelligence burns behind them.
There’s something missing from your eyes though, Jim. Something that I notice every single time I look at you.
The darkness is gone.
I think that deep down, no one misses Moriarty less than you do. Whatever demons were tied up in your past, whatever haunted the back of your mind and kept you awake at night, kept you scared and desperate and unhappy… It’s all gone. Whoever hurt you, Jim, whatever evil bastard caused you so much pain, made you so afraid that you became a monster, has been erased from your memory. The slate has been wiped clean and you can start all over again. Every last dirty horrible little detail of your life has been forgotten, blown away and lost in the wind.
You’re free to happy now. You are happy now.
And that’s why part of me hopes that you never, ever remember.