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"I think I'm going to kill Sherlock Holmes," Jim says to you, wrapping your tie around his fist. "Not the man. The legend. I'm going to watch him soar and when he hits his peak, I'm going to break his wings and watch him fall."
His fingernails are cracked and bleeding. His body is covered with yellowing bruises; when you press your fingers against them, he doesn't react.
"Sure, boss," you say, checking him over, checking for permanent damage. His grip on your tie is starting to choke you, but you don't mind. Not now, not when you'd been half-convinced he was dead, because he'd gone off the grid for weeks without so much of a hint about what he was doing. "Am I on call?"
Jim licks his lips and sometimes the act is teasing, is flirtatious, but right now it's alien. His head has gone somewhere you can't follow -- somewhere you don't want to follow. "Not yet, Seb," he says and lets go of your tie to pat you on the cheek. "First, I need to break into the Tower of London."
--
You're not like him. He trusts you, but (because) you're not like him. You're just a sniper, a killer-for-hire he'd hired on permanently. You're still a person, still ordinary, and he sometimes he says it with a sneer and sometimes a groan, but you never mind that because once you'd heard him say it like he wished he was too and the agony in his voice had made your blood freeze cold.
You can't follow all the threads he keeps in his head at once, not while he's creating them. Not while they're half-formed, a dozen possibilities that haven't yet coalesced into the one he'll pick. You can't track how paying a kid in uni a couple thousand to make some shiny icons that automatically send text messages ties in to the dozens of emails in his inbox about a skeleton key ties in to weeks alone with shadowy figures you'd only heard rumors about when you were a Major.
You sure as hell don't know how it ties in to him putting on the crown jewels and picking up six weeks in custody. (He takes a picture and emails it to one of his accounts; you find it there there three days later and laugh yourself sick.)
You don't visit him when he's there, locked up and obedient in a cell you know he could escape from in an instant.
You can't, so instead you click through his emails and send the reply to everyone else who doesn't already know (the only reply he ever gives you, the only one that's always ended up worthwhile):
Watch and wait.
--
"Six," Jim declares triumphantly. "Six so far, scuttling around Sherlock Holmes, trying to get closer but not too close."
He's still dressed as Richard Brook, in loose ill-fitting clothes and wild hair. You'd stared the first time he'd walked into your temporary flat like that and he'd widened his eyes, used a different accent, stammered, "I - I'm sorry, I think I have the wrong flat. I have a meeting with someone."
His eyes had dropped to the gun you'd left out on the table and his mouth had gone near-comically wide in surprise. He'd turned to run and you'd leapt to catch him, and when your hand closed on his arm threateningly tight, he turned and grinned at you, sharklike.
"Gotcha," he'd said. You'd let go of him as quickly as if he were on fire and thought about it long into the night, remembering the feel of his arm (warm, warm and soft and alive) beneath your bare palm.
"What if he finds the code?" you ask now and he gives you a look full of withering scorn.
"Don't talk. You're too stupid."
You don't care when he says that. Compared to him, it's true, so you close your mouth and let him crow about his achievements, about the triumph so close he can almost taste it.
His voice washes over your ears and you don't know when this happened, but it's familiar, soothing.
--
Six mercenaries arrive in London and three of them die but you don't get to take out your gun until after that, until Jim gets a text and grins wide enough to show his teeth, snaps when you answer the phone, "Showtime. Grab your gear, I'll need you."
He feeds you instructions as you get ready, gun and silencer and tripod already packed, shoving yourself into some civvies that won't attract attention on the street. He tells you where to go and where to aim and you ask how high, because that's what you do when he tells you to jump.
His voice is more excited than it's been in weeks. His excitement bleeds into you because you've been watching the tabloids and you know, in your bones, that this is what he's been waiting for, this is Sherlock Holmes' great fall, and you have front-row seats.
--
You track Jim with your scope while you wait, finger nowhere near the trigger. You're not sure he knows you're watching. You're pretty sure he thinks you aren't, because there are three other perches that'd give you a closer range, a wider coverage on the street. But you chose this one because even at this distance the pedestrians are fish in a barrel and now you can see him, just barely, just when he's close enough to the edge to make your chest tighten nervously.
You aren't afraid of heights, but in another life, you would have been.
You've never seen that look on his face before.
You've seen him angry before. You've seen him annoyed and furious and you can even tell when he's just faking it to scare people. You've seen him pleased and gleeful and more than a little bit mad. You've seen him drunk and high and you've seen the mornings after, when he growls with his lip curled up and communicates to you only in grunts. You've seen him wide awake and half-asleep and once even dared to run your fingers curiously through his hair, feeling its texture when he'd been too unconscious to notice.
But you've never seen him like this, serious and thoughtful and frowning at the sky.
That's when you realize what it is.
He looks sad.
--
Sherlock Holmes stands on the ledge. You point the scope at him idly. You could kill him now. You could end this now but you won't because it's not a part of the plan and Jim hates when you deviate from his plans.
You feel almost like a voyeur as you watch Sherlock Holmes on one phone and John Watson on the other. John's face is expressive enough, the situation obvious enough, that you can guess at the words. You follow along, stealing glances at the rooftop until you see Sherlock plummet downwards and John's face change in rapid succession from confusion to shock to horror.
You watch until you're sure, until there is a crowd and a body and John Watson still reeling from it all. Then you lift your kit -- gun and silencer and tripod, snap the pieces apart and drop them back in your bag. Zip it shut and go down the steps and suddenly you're someone else, anyone else, hidden in plain sight.
--
You go looking for Jim when he doesn't answer your call, when he doesn't send a text or a photo or anything else to revel in his victory. Sherlock Holmes, disgraced. Defiled, his name dragged through the mud and into infamy. Maybe, if they're lucky (unlucky, Jim would correct), even dead.
You figure out why when you get to the roof and find his body there, sprawled on its back in a congealing pool of blood. You are not as surprised as you think you should be, thinking back on dozens of frustrated growls, on uncountable angry groans and a million moments of dissatisfaction, of disappointment.
You crouch and touch your fingers to him, pressing them against his throat. You don't find a pulse but you aren't expecting to. His body's still warm. The blood, when you dip your fingers in it, has turned cold and sticky.
You begin to put your palm over his eyes then stop, choosing to leave them open instead.
At least he doesn't look sad anymore.
"Well, good for you, you bastard," you mutter under your breath and drag the knuckles of your half-curled hand down the side of his face.
Even when everyone else loses, he still wins.