Chapter Text
Sherlock Holmes pitched his mobile phone behind him onto the roof of St Bart's hospital. He had just disconnected from his best friend, John Watson, who had begged him not to jump. But with Moriarty lying dead on the roof, there was only one way for Sherlock to solve this problem and keep his friends safe from Moriarty's gunmen.
Sherlock pulled his gaze away from John, who was standing on the far side of the street. Sherlock hoped this plan of his worked. He was almost certain to survive. It was the only way out of Moriarty's trap, for him and John and all of them. He looked down at the ground, and tried to move his foot off the ledge. Some absurd mammalian instinct prevented him from stepping off. He could do this. He would do this. Sherlock gathered himself and leapt off the edge of the roof.
The concrete was coming up faster and faster. It only took a few seconds. There was a horrendous impact. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't move. Everything was dark. As the pain began to register, he thought he heard John calling for him.
Sherlock was sitting upright in a chair. Everything around him was dark, but he could see himself. He could move. He could see. He looked around. Next to him, in another chair, was Moriarty. Moriarty turned his head towards Sherlock and grinned at him. Moriarty didn't look like a man who had just blown his brains out.
Moriarty was still alive, had seen him fall, seen him die, seen him lose. That was intolerable.
But then a man in a medium-gray suit stepped towards them out of the enclosing darkness and became illuminated. Moriarty looked just as he had on the roof of St Bart's, but this man was different from everyone else Sherlock had seen in his life. He appeared to be an adult male of European ancestry, blondish, rather pleasant-looking, but something was very off about him. This other man's hands were exactly the same size as one another and had no calluses and no scars on them. His shoes looked unworn. His tie was centered exactly at his throat. He appeared to have nothing in his pockets. He was clean-shaven, but he was shaved completely symmetrically. Not even Sherlock himself could shave that perfectly. Everyone made mistakes when shaving, depending on whether he was right- or left-handed. Everyone did. It made no sense!
This other man came to a stop a few feet from Sherlock's and Moriarty's chairs. "Please, allow me to introduce myself," he said. Moriarty started to cackle and threw his head back. The man looked at Moriarty with a very slight look of annoyance. The noise stopped entirely. Sherlock looked at Moriarty. Moriarty had no mouth anymore. There was just smooth skin where his lips ought to have been, and yet it was obvious even without the noise that he was still laughing.
The other man stepped closer to Sherlock, ignoring Moriarty. "Sherlock Holmes, how do you do? Have you deduced where you are yet?"
He looked Sherlock up and down and then began to circle his chair.
"I've made a friendly little workplace bet with my boss. Perhaps you've heard of him? Bossy bastard, thinks the world of himself. Anyway, we made a bet, and I get to pick one of you to send back to Earth for five years to gather up a few stray demons for me. And if you collect them all, you get another chance at life. Which one of you should I pick? It's not much of a risk letting your soul out of my grasp. It was mine when you got here; it will be mine again soon enough. But I think if I send you, I'll get more souls that way. Mr Moriarty is always backing people into corners with nowhere else to turn. The wailing and gnashing of teeth, I like, but the amount of praying he causes is absolutely disgusting. I can hear it from here."
He waved his hands back and forth as though attempting to disperse an odor.
"But why don't you go on up there, try to round up my demons for me, and when you fail, you'll come back here, and Mr Moriarty will go up there and try his hand at collecting the demons for the rest of the time remaining in the five-year period.
"I have 113 demons I need returned. And just to make things easier on your fallible little mortal memory, I'll write their names down for you."
Sherlock had an instant to feel offended before he felt as though all his skin was burning. Smoke twisted out from under his clothes, and there was a nauseating burned meat smell. Sherlock found he was on his hands and knees, gagging.
"Stand up," the man said.
Sherlock hadn't felt he could stand, hadn't intended to stand, but he immediately got to his feet. Sherlock’s mind whirled. What was this? Could he be having some odd little flickers of consciousness as his brain used up the last of its oxygen and slowed to a stop? This whole situation was very unlike the reality he knew.
Sherlock wasn't sure what was happening here, what any of this was, but if he had to choose between letting Moriarty walk the same Earth as John, or Sherlock walking the same Earth as John, Sherlock knew he would do anything in his power to make sure it was himself. He was decided.
The man in the suit spoke again. "You'll have everything that you had on your person when you died, and just to be a sport, I'll let you have your phone, too. You can receive any information you want, but you can't email, text, call, or otherwise interact with anyone you knew when you were alive, or you'll come right back here and your time on Earth will be over. And now, this young lady will show you the way back to Earth. I have one request before you go. Just before you jumped off the roof at St Bart's, you promised to shake hands with Mr Moriarty. I heard you. Go on."
Moriarty stood and stuck his hand out to Sherlock. Moriarty's hand was warm and dry and felt like any other living human’s hand. Moriarty grinned at him in that mouthless way, and looked him right in the eyes. Moriarty winked. Sherlock flinched away, somehow expecting Moriarty to shoot himself in the head again.
A creature came out of the darkness and took Sherlock's hand. The creature had a human shape, but was entirely covered in gray, ratty feathers, which appeared to grow out of its body. Its hand was dry and porous feeling, like clay soil, and the creature had a very firm grip. Sherlock thought he might've actually preferred Moriarty's hand. Reddish clay clotted the feathers of the creature's face. Sherlock couldn't see the creature's eyes. Perhaps that was for the best. Sherlock looked back over his shoulder as the creature dragged him into the darkness. Moriarty had his mouth back, and his grin back, and the other man in a suit was whispering into his ear.