Sympathy 3000-21 [BBC Sherlock]

Whir

(There are several obvious AU elements here: in the timeline, in which events actually occur and which do not, and in characterisation and motivations. I know about these AU elements, and most of them are choices that I made for my narrative. Big ooft though.

And obviously, the title is from the song One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21 by The Flaming Lips because I just happened to be listening to the album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots while writing this. It's a good song, I'd recommend it. Actually, the whole album is pretty sick honestly.)

---

Certain feelings are complicated things, a pinpointed weakness. Inconvenient and often painful, such things are not to be favoured or indulged. Occasionally there is a need to be filled, that for a person whose perception can match one's own, who can be stimulating and fulfilling intellectually and emotionally.

But that feeling is dulled slightly in many. There are a special few, people's whose perception is so strikingly different, that long so wholly for this fulfilment that it's rather impressive.

Jim has always known he was different. The world a flood of information from all directions, a constant buzz of input, enough to drive him insane. Well, obviously, seeing as he was insane. How do they think that happened?

All he needed, all he needs, is someone to share it with.

---

Nobody ever showed up to Jimmy's parties. It was odd because he didn't like them anyway, but when they neglected to show up, the nagging sense of isolation that he felt anyway would flare up.

Of course, having an ordinary brother, there were frequently people from his school coming over to his house to play with his sibling. But with him, nobody was particularly interested in playing games.

There was perhaps one time when he felt like he was included, like he was where he was supposed to be and he meant something to somebody. He was seven. His brother was nine. It was his brother's birthday party. Five of his brother's friends were gathered in the living room where they would be sleeping, but it was currently full of balloons.

The balloons needed disposing of. Parents not paying attention, a room full of children got ahold of a great number of sharp objects, and it became a balloon-popping frenzy. With the knife in his hands, Jimmy hunted the balloons avidly, war-cry on his tongue each time he swung the blade.

Miraculously, nobody came away with anything more than little cuts and bruises.

But the next time Jimmy swung a knife that wildly, he came away as 'Jim', covered in his brother's blood.

---

Psychopathy has always been a shining ideal. He tried his best to convince himself that he was that type of crazy. Moral insanity. But sometimes, when he'd been alone too long, or unalone too long, or had done something particularly cold, he realised... no, he remembered. Yes. He remembered that he wasn't like that. He was full of ordinary feelings, all locked up inside a chest in his head.

He would never be the shining ideal. And there was nothing he could do to force himself not to feel like this. Nothing he could do to try and make himself what he wanted to be. Jim was alone in the world with a mind so alive that it hurt, and all he needed was someone to share it with.

---

'Moriarty' was an important name, now. He had earned that importance, by being clever. It was nice to know that there were ways his cleverness would be appreciated, not teased and shamed. Then again, he had earned that importance by pretending to be a psychopath.

His world would never appreciate the power of the name Moriarty if they knew that what it actually meant was a man who had cried himself to sleep in guilt every night for the first three years in the business, before he had begun to desensitise. A man who is exhausted constantly from all the effort it takes to suppress his empathy. A man who ritualistically eats himself into a shameful stupor every month to try and deal with all those disgusting, ordinary feelings. A man who ruminates self-pityingly on suicide in the early morning when he wakes up and can't find sleep again, delicately cradling his gun.

His world, his empire, would topple if they knew what they were really representing. His own people might even deem him unfit to rule them if they knew how weak, how pathetic he was. He may be clever. He may even have started to like his job, to an extent, his heart having become quite numb to the damage he inflicts. But never would he really be that type of strong: untouchable, effectively unfeeling. A mess of annoyance and amusement, no fury, no sadness, no self-hatred: that's what he'd never have.

It was driving him insane. He supposed, though, that it was good for business. Going from blank to screaming, to apparent thoughtfulness, to blank, to screaming. That unsettled people. It made them frightened of him. Good for business. But really, what they were witnessing wasn't a clever psychopath trying to manipulate them; it was a desperate man who was shattering on the inside.

He had wanted to be loved and appreciated. What he had ended up with was to be feared and respected. Not quite what he'd been after. But then again, it was nobody's fault but his own that he'd set out to put his mind to use and become the world's greatest criminal mastermind.

It had been John Watson's blog, in the end, that alerted him to the existence of Sherlock Holmes. And he discovered that he fell in love with every apt word of the respectable doctor, more and more with the detective that was to be so awed and revered. Because for the first time in Jim's life, there was somebody who could understand him. Who had the capacity to understand him?

And thrillingly, Jim Moriarty was faced with the prospect of not being alone. Not being alone in the way he saw the world. From what he could deduce from Doctor Watson's writings, not being alone in being all the more damaged for it.

But here's the rub; he wanted to capture Holmes' attention. He wanted to capture Holmes' awe, his respect, his fascination, his interest. And so, as always, Jim Moriarty proceeded the only way he knew how. Crime. 

---

The detective is a good someone. Jim is a bad someone. But the detective is perfect. He might not see the world exactly like Jim, but he has the capacity. 'Freak' burns in his ears the same way. Input stabs his brain and his mind is ever alive, ever tired, like Jim.

The problem being that the detective always refused to play the game. Jim just wanted to share, and the detective didn't.

Alone. Was he going to be alone forever?

He could live with it when he was younger if nobody picked him. He didn't want them to pick him, because the ordinary can't understand the extraordinary, so it hardly mattered.

He could live on, believing that along might come somebody, someday, who would pick him and who he would like to pick himself. And along comes the perfect candidate.

But instead of Jim, they pick the ordinary man. They pick ordinary things and ordinary feelings. Watson? A friend, more important to him than a foe?

And how is he supposed to go on?