“Step away from him, Sherlock,” said the voice. “And turn around.”

Sherlock did as he was told and found himself face to face with Jim Moriarty.

The consulting criminal had John’s handgun pointed at Sherlock, and a huge self-satisfied smirk on his face. He seemed to study John’s handgun for a moment. Then he slid the magazine out, and tossed it and the now-empty gun to opposite sides of the room. He pulled out an ornately-engraved pistol.

“A ‘Welcome Home’ gift, from my lovely sniper,” Moriarty explained, holding it up to the light. “I gave him the day off today. Said I could handle you two on my own.”

“Listen you--” John began, letting his sentence trail off as Moriarty pointed the pistol at him.

“Now, now. It’s quiet time, Doctor Watson,” said Moriarty.

“Why did you do this?” Sherlock demanded.

Moriarty turned his attention to Sherlock, and simultaneously lowered the gun. His eyes seemed to get a far-away look in them for a moment.

“I wanted you to know I was still around, of course! I missed you, Sherlock. While I was gone, I had a lot of downtime to think about how to do it. I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want to just point it out. No, you had to figure it out.”

“So you killed six people?” John snapped.

“What did I tell you?!” Moriarty shouted, pointing the gun at John again.

John pursed his lips, but fell silent. He really wasn’t interested in Moriarty’s reveal speech. He’d heard enough from him during the car ride over. He focused instead on trying to get some blood flow back into his arms, which were tied behind his back. As John flexed his wrists, he felt one of the knots shift. An idea began to formulate itself in his mind. He tugged slightly at the ropes around his wrists again, and definitely felt the knots loosen a bit. He carefully set to work trying to free himself.

Hopefully before one of us escalates the situation, he thought to himself. It seemed to be the inevitable outcome, and he didn’t like odds, with both he and Sherlock unarmed, while Moriarty was waving the pistol around.

“I thought about just showing up at your flat again. But I couldn’t take the chance that you hadn’t gone back, so I had to watch you for awhile. I could tell you were bored. So one night, I cooked up a solution to both of our problems,” Moriarty explained.

“Proud of yourself?” asked Sherlock.

“Of course. And you’ve got to admit, this was more fun than if I’d shown up at Baker Street with a pie, and asked if you had anything on.”

“Fun,” Sherlock began, feigning a pensive look. “Not quite the word I would use.”

John continued to work at the ropes around his wrists. From what he could tell, he was nearly free. He glanced down at his feet, where his ankles were bound to the legs of the chair. The knots looked simple enough to untie, once he got his hands free. It wouldn’t take him long to untie his legs if he could just get his hands--

“How did you survive?” Sherlock asked. Moriarty let out a short laugh.

“I can’t tell you all of my secrets, Sherlock,” he said.

“Fine. How did you choose your victims? Why pose as a deliveryman and bring parcels to some of them?”

Moriarty said nothing for a long moment.

“The parcels were merely a way for me to toy with them, and, by extension, you.”

Sherlock felt like he should have expected such a nonchalant answer. He also knew that that was the only answer he would be getting. It was highly unlikely that he would ever find out how Moriarty had chosen the six victims, or how he’d survived their encounter on the rooftop. The former was more pertinent to the ongoing criminal investigation, but he was also very interested in the latter. He decided that asking questions would get him nowhere fast. He needed to find a subject that Moriarty would actually want to talk about. He sighed.

“I saw your autopsy report,” said Sherlock, changing the topic, and putting emphasis on the verb.

“That was good, wasn’t it? I wrote it myself. The signature had to be illegible, unfortunately. It would seem a bit odd if I signed my name on my own autopsy report.”

“They wouldn’t let me into the morgue to see you after that.”

“Oh, naturally. I was a bit busy at the time.”

John slipped his hands out of the ropes around his wrists. He tried to catch Sherlock’s eye without saying anything. He hoped Sherlock would be able to deduce that he’d freed his hands, and understand what he needed him to do.

As Moriarty continued to pontificate, Sherlock finally glanced at John. He could tell that John had managed to untie his wrists. He took a few seconds to catalog his surroundings. No doubt John had cooked up some sort of escape plan. His suspicions were confirmed when John gave him a very subtle nod, which he returned.

Before Moriarty could react, Sherlock knocked his legs out from under him with a sweep of his own leg. Moriarty hit the floor like a bag of bricks. The pistol slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor a few feet away. Amidst the confusion, Sherlock kicked the gun aside.

At the same time, John reached down to untie his ankles. His heart pounded in his ears as he rushed to collect the parts of his handgun. With both parts in his hands, he slid the magazine back where it belonged, chambered a round, and pointed the gun at Moriarty.

“Even more interesting,” he said from his position on the floor. “How cute. Sherlock you've trained your pet so very well.” He started to reach for the pistol.

“Don’t,” said John, his voice low and dangerous. Moriarty continued to reach for his gun. The sound of a gunshot pierced the air as John pulled the trigger.

The bullet entered the floorboards between Moriarty’s outstretched hand and the pistol. Splintered bits of wood scattered across the floor in a small radius around the hole. Sherlock’s hands reflexively shot up to cover his ears.

“Leave it,” said John. "Stand up. Slowly.”

Moriarty obliged, and cautiously got to his feet. Sherlock bent down to pick up the pistol, and moved to stand next to John. The tension in the air was thick as Moriarty and John stared at each other.

One corner of Moriarty’s lips twitched upwards in a slight smirk. Then he lunged at Sherlock. Once again the sound of a gunshot rang out. The second time, the bullet buried itself in Moriarty’s skull.

John placed the handgun on the seat of the chair he’d been bound to, and bent down to check Moriarty for a pulse.

Just in case.

Finding nothing, he stood up and looked at Sherlock, who was still holding the pistol, and staring, at his own hand. John gently unfolded Sherlock’s fingers from the grip of the pistol and placed it on the chair next to his handgun.

“John, I--” Sherlock began.

“It's okay. Sit down. I'll go phone Lestrade." he said, moving the guns to the floor.

Sherlock nodded, and lowered himself into the chair. After a few minutes, his hands stopped shaking, and he looked down at Moriarty’s body. Several conflicting emotions clouded his brain, and he quickly looked away.

As John waited for Lestrade to pick up, he bent down again to check for a pulse. Again, he found nothing. He reached forward to close the eyes, and straightened up as his call finally went through.

“Lestrade?” John said. “There’s… There’s been a major development. We need you down here, at uh-- Irene Adler’s old address.”

“‘Major development?’” Sherlock repeated from behind John as he ended the call. “That’s quite the understatement.”

“He said he’d be here soon.”

Sherlock made a noncommittal sound in his throat, and turned to walk out into the corridor. He headed downstairs to the foyer, with John close behind him.

Neither of them spoke again until Lestrade climbed the front steps and joined them.

“The hell’s gone on?” Lestrade asked.

“I won.” Sherlock replied.

Two hours later Sherlock and John were seated in Lestrade’s office at Scotland Yard. Lestrade hadn’t asked them for details right off the bat once they’d shown him to where Moriarty’s body was. He had sent them back downstairs while he phoned the forensics unit.

“How did he survive the run-in you had with him on that rooftop, Sherlock?” Lestrade asked.

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me,” Sherlock replied. “He wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the details.”

“Well, what did he tell you?”

“That he concocted his murder spree in order to convey to me that his was still alive, and that he forged the autopsy report you have on file.”

“That’s all?”

“Most of the discussion consisted of him stroking his own ego,” said John.

Sherlock also spent several minutes recounting how he’d figured out the cipher, although he did mention that John was the one who’d suggested the possibility of the numbers being a cipher. He also described how John had been abducted, and the message that had been left on the mirror.

Once Sherlock finished speaking, Lestrade looked at him, and then at John, and back again.

“Which one of you shot him?” he asked.

John glanced over at Sherlock.

“It was me,” said Sherlock, quietly.

Sherlock fell silent, and John took over, explaining to Lestrade what had gone on in the bedroom, from when Sherlock had discovered him tied to the chair, until Lestrade showed up.

The entire time John was speaking, Lestrade was writing down what he was saying. He found it unbelievable that Moriarty had been the one behind the murders, but it was true, regardless.

A double suicide in which neither participant actually died. Unbelievable, he thought to himself. He pushed the thought from his mind. “Why didn’t you tell me what was going on when I phoned you earlier?” he asked, turning his attention to Sherlock.

“Would you have believed me?” Sherlock replied. “There wasn’t time.”

Lestrade said nothing. He still found it hard to believe, but he would have found it even more so, had he not seen the body and the evidence for himself.

“If the forensics check out and support your version of the story, which, I’m sure they will, we can close the book on this for good,” said Lestrade. “The two of you can go home for now. We may need to speak with you again in the next few days.”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said, earnestly. He rose from his chair, and John followed.

“I’ll phone you if anything comes up,” said Lestrade.

Sherlock nodded, and he and John left the office together.

Lestrade placed all of his notes into the file labelled ‘Moriarty, James.’ He stood up, and returned the folder to its place in the filing cabinet, and slammed the drawer shut with what he hoped was an air of finality.

Right as he settled himself back into his chair, the phone on his desk began to ring.