Human Error ~ A BBC Sherlock Fanfiction {Book IV}

Chapter LII - Fall of the Monarch

-Millie-

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"And he just let you two walk out?" asks John, disbelieving. "He didn't say anything?"

I look at them both; John waiting for a response, tired, creased, defined by lack of sleep, Sherlock sitting on our sofa, silent, cold, the wallpaper comforting in its brashness. After the harrowing cut-glass curves of James Moriarty's penthouse, I have never appreciated clutter more.

Emily's departure left a ringing silence: the stinging kind, harsh in its wordless severity and unforgiving to the listener. Jamie and I watched Jim Moriarty reach for his pressed handkerchief, folded triangularly in his pocket, and dab the blood from his finger. We flinched when he looked up again, and asked his brother to 'be a darling and step outside'.

Jamie was faced with a brutal decision between abandonment and punishment – although no threat was verbalised, the implication was there, extending to us both. After an excruciating minute of internal turmoil, I turned to Jamie and told him to wait for me in the building corridor, if only to stop the guilt from getting to him.

Once alone in my company, Moriarty crossed the room and took a seat on a bar stool. I stood where I was, regarding him in hyperawareness; prepared to take flight should the content of our conversation darken beyond my control. He gestured to the cupboard beneath the counter.

"I would offer you wine, but seeing as my brother just smashed a bottle of priceless Cabernet sauvignon over our poor, jilted hacker, perhaps whiskey would be more appropriate." His searching hand paused over a glass bottle, frosted and engraved with delicate, hatched carvings. "Scotch?"

I shook my head, wordlessly.

He poured himself two full shots of whiskey, mixed it with something clear and sharp-smelling, and downed it a little too quickly to be considered leisurely. I watched from afar as seconds lapsed into long minutes, counting them in my head – fifteen sets of sixty later and he spoke again, his voice rougher, the Irish thicker.

"You're being followed, Miss Millie."

I tighten the grip on my coat.

"Oh, you should be scared. He's not a nice man, our flower boy. Not a nice man at all." He raised the glass to his lips. "Closer than you'd think."

"Who is he?"

"You've made an awful mistake," he said, glossing over the panic in my question. "And when your unrequited lover catches up with you, you're going to regret it bitterly. You've trusted all the wrong people." He tilted the glass in my direction. "I want you to realise that, before you end up his pièce de résistance."

It took all my experience with the criminal world to keep the nausea from my expression.

"You look faint. Do sit down." He nodded purposefully at the whiskey.

"I don't drink."

"Of course. How virtuous of you." He took another mouthful of amber liquid, swallowed it with a grimace, then turned to me, smiling with strange, detached humour. "She's drinking right now. Did you know that?"

I looked at him very carefully, then. The intoxication veiled an instability more potent than the one I previously associated with the name James Moriarty: it was unpredictably theatrical then, all performance. In that room I saw something cracked, fractured, fissures like veins running across the thin surface of his sanity. He still maintained the external appearance of a man in control, but there were things, little things, that made me question that appearance; the bitterness in his tone, the agitated drumming of his fingers on the counter, the smile on his face. If I didn't know better, I'd have said it was paranoia – the worst kind, the kind that tears cognition in two and blackens the senses. I recognised it.