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If there was one thing James Moriarty could say for himself, it’s that he’d not yet had cause to kill anyone.
He remembers one of the older boys on the street, a Timothy Brennan, who had shanked his pa after a night of too much drink. Then there were the other stories. Older stories, of the famine and the war, whispered in the pubs, of righteous indignation and grim necessity.
He thinks of this woman in front of him, with a trail of bodies lying behind her; including Sherlock's for all James knows.
He sees the man turn the corner and he shouts, “No, no don’t,” but he knows as well as anything that the man isn’t going to stop.
He doesn’t think. He raises the gun, he points and he shoots.
The sound of the shot is deafening, and the world goes silent around him as he watches the man fall to ground, a marionette with his strings cut, just like that. Just like nothing. When Sherlock was shot, James had watched him hover in the air for a few moments before he'd dropped. He’d pushed and shoved through the mass of people to get there before Sherlock could crack his stupid skull open on the rocks.
There’s nobody stopping him from rushing to the side of the soldier. And yet, he stands there staring as the body drops.
His breath is stuck fast in his chest as the gun droops in his hand and he stumbles with the force of the shot, the world around him as still as the air in his chest. It’s the Princess turning to him and the gun nearly slipping through his fingers that prompts James’s chest to fill with air and the world around him to reassert itself.
He can’t take his eyes off the man as his breath returns to his chest in deep lungfuls. He steps past Shou’an, intent on getting to the soldier.
The memory of pushing through the crowd to get a closer look at the cage comes to mind, of the man's face twisted in agony as he died, of Sherlock’s body on the ground, of cupping his face.
The stones of the street are warm beneath his knees as he kneels next to the soldier, his lips trying to form words his mind hasn’t come up with yet.
The man's eyes are wide as he stares up at James, perhaps with his life flashing before his eyes. Is he picturing his mother? His wife? His children? Is he thinking of an open field and a nice parcel of land to himself? Or is he just thinking about the pain of the wound? The knowledge of his oncoming death at the hands of the man above him?
James places his hand over the man's wound, and feels his blood slip through his fingers.
He feels a hand come down on his shoulder and the Princess speaks. “You had no choice,” she says, a pithy piece of nothing if he’s ever heard one. “There’ll be more of them. We have to go.”
But James isn’t really listening to her. He’s thinking about Timothy Brennan.
Timothy Brennan, who after the incident had walked around the lanes with a haunted look in his eyes. Who had taken the cajoling of the local kids well enough until one day he exploded much like that bomb did, all heat and fury and righteous abandon.
He’d told them all that as he’d stabbed his father with his own knife, his hands had grown slippery with blood, and he’d cut himself on the knife. He’d brandished the scar on his hand then, and told them all it's an ugly reminder of the worst day of his life. He’d told them they best hope they don’t ever find themselves in his position, forced to kill. He’d told them he hopes they never understand how it feels.
James lifts his hand as Shou’an walks away, looking down at the blood on his fingers, on his palm. It gathers between his fingers, under his nails, in the crevices of his hands. It’s so much brighter here in the street, a vibrant stunning red. In the cavern, Sherlock’s blood had been dark and thick. It’s beautiful like this, in the daylight.
He thinks of what the stories say about the first time a person takes a life. How horror floods their systems as they realise exactly what it is they’ve done. How regret is at the forefront of their mind and they wonder who might be affected. He thinks of tales of guilt and remorse and a desperation to never have to do that again.
He waits to feel any of it.
“James, we need to go,” the Princess calls.
James is looking at his left hand, stained with the blood of the first man he’s killed, and his right hand, lying against the ground, red with Sherlock's blood.
He feels wholly different right now to how he had felt watching Sherlock get shot. He had felt only a desperation to be there, to hold the blood in, to keep his life from draining from his eyes. He had wanted to hold Sherlock, to cradle him away from the cold ground.
He runs his fingers over the blood of the soldier on his left hand, and he knows he doesn't feel what the stories tell him he should feel. He felt horror only minutes ago, and this, this isn’t horror.
No.
He looks down at his right hand again. He thinks of how Sherlock would feel in his moment. He would feel the horror, the guilt, the immediate sense of wrong, as morally upstanding as he is.
But there’s too much satisfaction in James' heart at the blood on his fingers.
Perhaps it’s something wrong with him. Something wired wrong in his mind that looks down at the man below him and is glad he’s dead. That feels nothing about killing him.
He can’t help but laugh.
It’s not a happy laugh. It’s not even a relieved laugh. He can’t quite say what kind of a laugh it is, but it keeps going as he rubs the worst of the blood off his hand on the man's jacket, and casually pats his hand, thanking him for getting it over with.
He stumbles up, until he’s half bent over, looking down at his right hand. Sherlock’s eyes could look just like this soldier’s right now. That deep blue, blank and unseeing, staring into nothing. Another laugh falls from his lips and he straightens up.
He takes one final look down at the body as the Princess calls for him again.
So maybe he’s not a man of the stories. Not a man horrified by the very act of killing.
So maybe he’s instead a man who’ll do anything to protect himself and his friends, his family. He looks down at his right hand again. Sherlock will never be capable of doing what must be done. He’s a man of the stories. But maybe that’s where James comes in, to protect Sherlock's back. And if he gleans a certain amount of satisfaction from it, then who’s to know to pass judgement on him for it.
Perhaps James can be the man who kills for Sherlock.
He straightens up and follows after the Princess, a final grim laugh falling from his lips. It won’t be so bad next time.