James Moriarty - Tempestuous Tides

Chapter 2

We often forget the simplest of things, like where we put the television remote, the car keys, our phones. Yet, we also seem to forget the things that matter a heck of a lot more to other people, like where they live, what time we are meeting them to celebrate their success, even peoples names.

Time goes by, our brains forget certain pieces of information making the most important faces from our lives just disappear as though they were never anything to us. Perhaps it is because of the short time we have to live that we only want to keep the best memories and people in our lives.

Some things that we want to forget never leave us. Sometimes we want to leave the world behind due to the hardships we face when guilt overcomes us and overthrows our passions in life. It's not wrong. It's human. 

Aella stood, watching over the sea, her feet brushing the edges of the waters. Feeling the cold on her feet. It had turned dark, the midnight breezes catching her hair in their terror to turn her away. All the events replaying in her mind, whipping her, cursing her, wanting to hurt her over and over for the guilt eating her inside and out. Nothing felt more painful than the feeling of losing someone you love.

However, she had killed the one person she loved. The person she called her sister since they were born. Both of them twins, both of them Moriarty's daughters. When he uncovered them being twins, he would wish Aella was dead rather than being alive. What else did he have to live for? To see her die by his hand, maybe. In some ways, it made her feel strong that she managed to do something he was doing for years. Killing the people he loved to stop feeling the way that he did.

In some respects, she was not wishing Aimee had fired the gun at her, to go back to the blackness she enjoyed when her head hit the pillow. Now, she did not even know the last time she had slept peacefully in a warm house, a warm bed, feeling safe and secure.

Her life was far from being safe and secure. She missed feeling loved by her mother, feeling like her father cared, Moran distantly looking at her, smiling so slightly but so much it made her heart flutter like crazy. 

She missed innocence. She missed love. Love that kept her going.

Fading into the background of her existence, she felt so lost, and not free to do what she wanted. The number of people she remembered hurting to get what she wanted was far beyond her belief, her partner in crime was mangled and depleted in an office she watched everything happen in. 

From out of her pocket, she took out her phone, bringing up Moran's number. As she dialled his phone, she deleted the number from the screen, dropping her phone in the side, feeling her tear drip down her face. Still fading. Background noise. Everything was blurry, it was blocked out by her willfulness to not listen, to pay attention and be mindful of her surroundings. Now, she was unable to begin again, to begin a whole new life and turn the page.

As soon as she turned the page, she would be hunted for.

Those that had found her before when she was in the house by the sea, were of her kind. She had worked for them before in fear of losing out on hearing how her sister was doing. Never being allowed to see her was harder than anything, which is why hearing, if she was okay, was easier. 

Somehow, she could not find herself having the ability to get into the water, letting go. Letting go is the hardest thing anyone has to choose to do. 

Sitting down beside her phone, she watched it light up underneath the sound, buzzing away the sand on top of the screen as it fidgeted like her hands. Shaking. 

Moran. Moran was calling her. Sebastian Moran. 

Taking the phone into her hands, it shook violently with the tremors of her hand. 

Pressing the button to accept the call, her breathing was becoming erratic and out of control. 

"Where are you?" he asked, he was out of breath and panting, he was panicking. "I have been searching for you everywhere, where are you Aella? Please tell me where you are."

He was so desperate to find her, he needed to know where she was. How was he going to tell James she was alive, but he did not know where she was? No way, he would not accept that as an answer. 

"I need to find a way to start fresh, I need to leave here, I need to go,"

"No! If that is what I think it means, Aella, I will not allow you to go, to leave me here,"

"Oh, come on!" she said down the phone, her hands steadying talking to him. "You can live without me."

"No. I cannot live without you,"

"You can. But, it's not about you, it's about me not being able to live with myself, I killed my own sister. I shot her, and I killed her,"

"You had to save James, your father,"

"Does it count?" she seemed so exasperated. Talking about what she had done made it all the harder to face her responsibilities, to take action, to finally tell James that Aimee was his daughter. "I killed his other daughter, I killed her and he never knew that it was his daughter, How ashamed will he be when he finds out I knew and I never told him."

"Then, I will tell him, but you need to come back, please," he begged her, he wanted her to stay. 

"Starting fresh involves a new life, with new people, and I cannot start fresh with you," putting the phone on the loudspeaker, their conversation had made her realise that she had to go sooner rather than later. "I know you are up on that hill, watching me do this, so you watch from afar and just see me walking into my own life. I have to go, whether you like it or not. They need me, and now I need them. It turns out, I am the weirdo everyone believed me to be, the girl you did not fall in love with. You fell in love with the criminal me who just killed to get by and get into my father world. I need to begin again and find my own rhythm and find my own routes. I need to find my own life."

"Find it with me," he sighed, thinking of all the fun they would have together, but she was going to let it go. "We can do it together."

"We can't, I have to get rid of this guilt somehow, and being reminded of it is the last thing I want to do, so please do not let me see it every day. If you love me, let me go."

"I do love you."

Putting the phone down, he was now standing behind her, looking at her intently. "I do love you."

Moving into the water, she looked behind her to see him watching her leave, her father soon joining his side after Moran gave him the location. Sherlock and John just stood by their sides, seeing her leave. But, somehow, this didn't feel like the end of this story, it seemed like the beginning of another one. 

As her body got deeper into the water, she removed her clothes gracefully so she would not be completely naked to the sight, but she would be under the water. Feeling the cold water drown her skin, goosebumps caused her to shiver from the cold. Now, she did not want to look back. Looking forward was her only option. 

Now, was right then. Not later. Not the future. Right then. 

"αντιο σας." (goodbye) she said, her body soon turning into scaled, her body going under to form what she had dedicated herself in her mind to be. Turning into a stunning woman of the sea, a goddess in Moran's eyes, she was gorgeous, she was stunning and so perfect. 

Gone so soon.