Sympathy 3000-21 [BBC Sherlock]

Split

Jim knew that Sherlock Holmes didn't mean to be cruel. Sherlock Holmes didn't know that Jim wasn't simply a psychopath playing a game. When Jim woke fitfully from nightmares, Sherlock Holmes would scoff, roll his eyes. And it hurt. It hurt Jim to face the lack of empathy coming from the one person in the world that he had hoped so desperately would understand him.

Even Watson (who disagreed with keeping Jim secretly in 221B) empathised to a degree. It was more like involuntary sympathy. And then Dr Watson would catch himself feeling sorry for Jim, and remind himself that he shouldn't, and school himself back into a fiery dislike of the criminal. And that hurt, too.

Neither of them meant to be cruel, not really. And cruelty is about intent, is it not? So then they weren't being cruel. Whatever they were being, Jim was sure without a shadow of a doubt that he deserved it.

He was, after all, a terrible person. A terrible person who did terrible things. Why did he do terrible things? Because they made him feel needed, accepted, valued in some way? Because he hoped that one day he might feel understood?

A terrible person doing terrible things doesn't deserve any of the things he wants, does he?

He was such a pitiful stereotype. When he hid in the spare room cradling a tub of icecream and a spoon, crying and trying to make the feelings go away with food, Sherlock didn't see him. But there was no point in hiding anything from Sherlock Holmes, because Sherlock Holmes figured it out. He figured it out, and he supposed that Jim had intended that he figure it out. Sherlock thought that Jim was pretending to be upset.

Of course, he felt disgusting afterwards. He always felt disgusting afterwards. And he was almost grateful that 221B kept a very ill-stocked kitchen, because if the pantry had been plentiful, he would have almost certainly kept the unfortunate habit of eating himself to sleep almost every day, and he didn't think he could handle feeling disgusting on top of everything else.

The downfall of this, however, was that he started craving coping mechanisms less pleasant. The scars down his arm were invisible, now. A decade-old at least, so much that they had faded and gone. They had never been deep, even when they had been fresh, and now they existed in memory rather than flesh.

He didn't want fresh ones. So he didn't do it.

Jim Moriarty never had a problem with alcohol. He drank, recreationally and without any issues that might suggest a dirty addiction. But Jim Moriarty always dealt with the kinds of alcohol that have a pleasant taste, that seem sophisticated, expensive and terribly in-character.

Now he was dealing with the cheap stuff that tasted like gasoline, served no purpose other than to help teenagers get absolutely pissed, and made him feel sick... He was on the kitchen floor at Baker Street, and Sherlock Holmes was observing him passively from his chair.

When John Watson came home, he looked between the two and blinked. "What's going on?" He asked.

" The Napoleon of Crime has evidently decided to drink himself to death," Sherlock answered boredly.

John made a start towards Jim, but Sherlock interrupted. "Stop."

"Sherlock, you don't even know-"

"You were going to take it away from him. Don't. I want to see how far he'll go for this game of his."

"For God's sake, if we have to take Jim Moriarty to the emergency room to get his stomach pumped, Sherlock," John said.

"Take it away then, if you think it necessary," the detective said, though he sounded annoyed.

Jim himself couldn't quite think. Couldn't quite comprehend the words of the people around him. He could do one thing, which was, more or less, the action of drinking. But apart from this, his function was impaired beyond sense.