thefinalsolution | (no subject)

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He's had some time to settle into this new domain of endless possibility and do you know what Moriarty finds? He finds wondrous things. He finds messages passed along hotel stationary and he sees doors that lead to countless other universes and he watches people and knows there are certain ones he ought to make acquaintances with.

One of them isn't a potential client.

One of them is far more interesting than that. Joan Watson. How can it be? And how can he have not had something so brilliant in his life before? Joan Watson! Which surely means there's a Sherlock out there to serve as consulting detective, which means there might be some kind of solution to the final problem apart from putting all his hopes and dreams on his Sherlock. Possibility and potential. It warms a villain's heart.

He needs to make the meet. He's taken to orchestrating potential meetcutes where she might pass by, accumulating little props to help his little charade as John Holmes. His new wardrobe consists of cardigans and reading glasses over well-fitted jeans. He's found himself spots in the bar, the lobby, and the restaurant, and he'll wait until Ms. Watson graces him with her presence.

It will happen. Moriarty knows it will happen and when it does, he'll have something new to play with, finally.

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Joan was enjoying the hotel, perhaps a little too much. She was dearly fond of Sherlock, but his presence could be tense and weighing, especially lately. You would think it would have been most difficult for her when she had started out as his new and unfamiliar sober companion, but in the end Sherlock, while he was different, had the similar responses and patterns she had experienced with other clients before. But now that they had been through so much and their relationship had changed to one of friend, apprentice, and companion, she found him more difficult than ever.

But the hotel? Was not a safe haven but one of new experiences removed from the ones she was getting in New York. It helped to keep her mind fresh and always buzzing, and it was a place to find more rest and relaxation - and as a result, her work was all the more better for it. Whenever she guiltily thought she might be cheating, she had to remind herself that it wasn't an exam.

She stopped in the lobby to check for notes at reception, in case there was any news, any mysteries she might look into, but all seemed calm on that front for the moment. She had decided to take a weekend at the hotel - hoping, of course, that the strange, tricky moveent of time was going to stay the same and not leap ahead without her as soon as she returned back home - and now she was wondering what she may do next to occupy herself.

Cautiously, Moriarty watches her from the chaise in the lobby he's been working in. There's a timing to this, like any graceful dance and once the pieces are in movement, there's very little room for error. He's predicted the grand variety of ways this could possibly go and he knows he needs to get her attention without getting her attention. In the end, he relies on something so simple: the clumsiness of human nature. When the probability is high that she's going to look his way, he fakes a spasm of his hand, sending his notebook and his pen clattering to the ground, far enough away from him that it's a struggle to reach it, given the laptop on his lap.

"Oh, bother," he says, hand to his forehead as he feigns exasperation and a hint of being on the edge of not being okay. He glances around, trying to balance his power cord, the laptop, his glasses, and reaching, giving a slightly strained sound. "Miss? I'm so sorry, Miss?" he calls out, a hint of mild worry in his London accent. "Can you help me?"

Joan turned on her heel when she heard the soft clatter that was pen and notebook hitting the floor, and saw that the man she had idly noticed on first entering the lobby was hailing her. Ever helpful, she was heading for him in an instant, her tall shoes clicking loudly in her ears. The lobby wasn't especially full at that time of day, undoubtedly why he'd called to her.

"I've got it," she said, bending her knees so she could scoop both items off the floor. She'd detected a hint of accent on him, very familiar, and as she neared him and held his things out for him her eyes quickly worked him over. There was nothing especially out of place, but she'd gotten into the habit of memorizing people, never knowing when a detail might tell her something, now or later on.

"You're a peach," he says, his smile still lacking a bit of the extra energy he might put into it otherwise. Moriarty sets the laptop aside, angled just enough so that she can see the screen it's open to (a blog devoted to some of the news stories from London in the past week) and reaches out to take both items, clasping her hands long enough to give them a small squeeze.

And to feel the heartbeat, that heart racing and that blood flowing, and it's exhilarating. It's a shame people are so ordinary because they're occasionally interesting enough to keep him giddy. "I thought to possibly make a resolution to stop being so absent-minded when it comes to where I drop my things, but I don't know that I can control that," he jokes mildly. "Maybe next time, I'll just vow to try and do it where I don't bother anyone."

"I wouldn't call dropping your things as bothering people," Joan said, with a smile. Her eyes flicked over the laptop screen but, not wanting to intrude, she quickly focused them back on his face.

She noticed the way he held her hands for just a second longer, but found nothing suspicious in it. She had been a doctor and then, after that, a companion, and she had always liked being around people, noticing the way they lived and acted, and appreciating human contact. She perhaps took it too much to heart; in the end it had contributed to her inability to continue in medicine any longer. "I don't think I've seen you around before," she said, "I'm Joan."

"You clearly haven't been around me when I go grocery shopping," he jests, offering her a bright smile as he begins to arrange his things in a neat and compulsive manner, making sure the angles are exactly straight before he looks back up to his new companion. "Really," he assures. "Apples, oranges, and god forbid I have to buy eggs."

"John," he introduces himself, rolling up his sleeves as he extends a hand. "John Holmes."

Joan Watson. Honestly, the goosebumps are practically erupting beneath the skin.

Joan had to laugh at that. She had to admit, he was pretty adorable; and if there was one thing Joan couldn't resist, it was adorable people. Even Sherlock filled that description, in some way or another, when he wasn't being completely childish.

"I think that's why you can buy those sorts of thing in bags and cartons," she teased. "That or you'll have to cut those out of your diet, I suppose. But who wants to live life without eggs?"

She shook his hand, for a moment startled, but only slightly. Holmes; that was a normal last name, right? Like her own. It was the first names that had to be noticed, but even so she tucked that away in the back of her mind. "A pleasure," she said. "I hope you don't find this rude, but are you from London? I recognize the accent."

"Bags break. Cartons fall apart," he says, as if this is a simple matter of life, but it goes so much deeper than this. Everything breaks, especially fragile human beings and their silly little delicate hearts. They're so easy to break when you know their pressure point.

And everyone has one. "I'm from London, yes," he says warmly, happy to be noticed and happy that his native Irish has faded away nicely enough. "Obviously not now. Can I be blamed if the prices here are a bit more affordable?" He crosses his legs, sliding his laptop half-shut as he begins to delve in on the questions. "You're not from London, though," he assesses. "Can I ask, who do you recognize it from? Is it Doctor Who?"

"Dr. Who?" she asked, then laughed. "Oh, no. I have some friends from London. I'll be honest, I'm not very good with accents yet, but I've heard that one enough that I don't feel completely idiotic when I ask." Yes, Joan had certainly been one of those people, once upon a time, who couldn't tell Australian from English. Living with Sherlock had changed that, in more ways than one. She noticed inflection, now.

"The prices are a bit better," she allowed. "I'm from New York, and everything costs an arm and a leg, there. But you meet a lot of people." She considered him, for a moment. Was he from a world like her own, or was he from someplace entirely different - somewhere crazy and strange, like some of the other people she had met here? "When did you make it into the hotel?"

"Only a few days past the party. I walked in and found myself wading through streamers and golden confetti. I missed a rather big to-do, it seems," he says, but he'd been busy with his own issues. Irene Adler and her terribly interesting information, Sherlock and the question of what to solve the final problem and when it does happen, the confetti will be oh so lovely and bloody. "Friends from London? Who knows, maybe I know them," he jests.

"Oh, that was the New Year's party, I guess. It was pretty good, actually." She rarely had a chance to let loose recently - actually, it always felt like an uphill battle in order to find time to do whatever she wanted, but that had severely become more and more difficult over the past ten years. And worse, more recently, though she found some freedom in her work these days. Still, drinking around Sherlock was something she never did out of respect.

If he was a Holmes he was either related, or not even close to friends. From what she understood Sherlock's family was very rich, and the sons kept track of. John didn't strike her as being part of that pedigree, so she doubted there was a relation there. Besides, there was no telling they were even from the same version of their worlds. She was more interested in finding out about him than trying to puzzle out some distant relationship. "I only went the one time and it was huge, so probably not," she said.

"Are you researching something?" she asked. There were very few reasons someone might sit in a lobby with a notebook and a laptop simultaneously.

"I spent New Years with a bottle of wine, struggling to stay awake until midnight." Lies. He'd spent New Years watching Irene Adler's fake corpse being wheeled into the morgue while promises of a government's plan collapsing sung in his ears. Honestly, he doesn't know why more people don't spend their New Years doing the same. "I'm a blogger," he confesses, twirling his glasses around sheepishly. "I mean, I'm a writer, proper, but only to pay the bills. I blog about current odd events; the sort of story that might make you stop for a moment because it's a bit strange. My latest article is about a case in our papers," he says. "It's riveting, really. The Speckled Woman."

"I've never been able to sleep before midnight on New Year's, even if I wanted to. I always feel like I'm going to miss something important."

A blogger? That made sense with what she was seeing (not that she was expecting him to lie; simply, everything was matching up cleanly for her observations). "A murder?" she guessed. It was that or a political scandal involving a woman in particularly dalmatian-like finery. She didn't find murders riveting, particularly - not in the way people who read the papers might. Joan fostered an appreciation for puzzles and the unknown, now - in figuring out oddities.

"It's a bit...well..." He flushes here, willing his blood into his cheeks to create a passable and realistic blush of shame. "It's a bit morbid," he says, fidgeting with his glasses, yet. "The police weren't able to figure it out and neither was any of the outside consultants they asked to look in on it. I thought I might do a piece on it, perhaps a series, about the procedure when a case starts to go cold," he explains, bringing up a saved page, bearing the text and none of the dressings that show John Watson's blog on the event.

"Don't mind the writing. I'm not exactly Proust."

The last thing Joan would do was, of course, throw her lot in with a journalist. But case files were always interesting to her and, she supposed, if she could simply sidestep any of the possible reasons he might have for doing what he did, she could at least take a look and sate her natural curiosity.

"There are always people willing to read up on a case," she agreed, leaning forward slightly to begin skimming. She didn't point out the ethical questions that might arise - of compiling and putting out information on a case with low regard to anyone involved, especially family members. Sherlock would have, but Joan stayed silent for the moment. That would be rude. She never tolerated blatant disrespect, but she was always polite.

"You, included?" He wants information to build his web even further into the recesses of whatever strange logic governs a place like this. "Or is this a bit too gruesome? I have a story somewhere on the new arrivals at the London Zoo, if you'd rather take a look at that?"

"Well," she said, after a moment. Did she enjoy case files? In a way. They presented a puzzle for her to solve, much like diagnosing a health issue used to be when she was practicing. But it was true, she still found a lot of things chilling. "I work in that field. I consult. So I read a lot of them, but not before I got into the business. They aren't exactly light reading."

"No, they're not," Moriarty agrees. The heaviness weighs on some people like a thick shroud and buries them into the ground, but on others, it sits like a comfortable blanket. "What did you do before you consulted, then? It's not something you've always done? And why get into it, then. It's not light reading, as you said."

Joan laughed. "You know, you might not realize it, but you talk like a journalist," she said. "I don't think I've answered this many questions about myself in months. I don't think I'm that interesting."

Still, he'd asked a question, and it would be rude not to answer, even though she felt she as a topic had been exhausted enough. "I was in medicine," she said. "A friend of mine introduced me to casework. It just sort of found me, I guess." To proclaim that Sherlock was an addict who she helped through recovery would have been treading far beyond the line of patient privacy than she was comfortable with, so she skated around it.

"What about you? How did you start writing? A friend of mine is a journalist."

"I'm a curious man," Moriarty replies with great honesty. After all, the mark of a great liar is being able to spin what exists as a truth into something just off the mark. John Holmes may be a creation of the imagination, but he is purely based in truth. This is what people believe. You build the lie with the blocks of the truth. "If ever I get into any kind of medical trouble, you'll be my first call, now," he says, catching her gaze to sustain eye contact as he says the words.

"It sort of happened by chance. For a while, I wanted to write children's books. Don't laugh," he pleads. "I really thought I had it in me. Sadly, that career failed, but I picked up a few freelancing jobs on the side, so now I write about anything that pays the bills, but my personal blog is for me. It's things I find fascinating."

Curiosity wasn't a crime; she was guilty of it herself. "If you like," she said, smiling. "But I'd have to insist that if you want a proper diagnosis and treatment to go to someone with a current license.

"There's nothing to laugh about over children's books," she said, smiling. "Do you like kids, then? Because the hotel just got a baby." It was a bit interesting that someone who wanted to have a career related to children also found it equally interesting to dig into complicated murders.

"I don't think I've ever heard of a group baby before," Moriarty remarks, eyes wide with genuine puzzlement as he wonders whether people actually hear themselves sometimes. To him, this is often the sounds of goldfish swimming around in their little bowls with their mouths open -- blub, blub, blub, how's Mike and Karen, how's the job, blub. He stares at her for a moment long before he blinks and reels himself in. "I don't know that I'd be a good father, myself, only that I liked the idea of writing books for them."

"No, no, I meant..." Joan trailed off, then laughed, slightly, mostly at herself, and waved the statement off with her hand, nose wrinkling slightly. "Never mind. Thinking aloud." To tell the whole of the story would, after all, be too much like gossip to her, now that she thought about it.

"Are you just a writer, or did you want to illustrate them, too?" she asked. "I know some people do both."

"I'm terrible at drawing," Moriarty confesses, had to his heart to swear that he's telling the whole truth. "I would have to hire someone to do that for me. That is, if I ever turn out a finished product," he adds, because that's meant to be all writer's challenges, isn't it? Writing is hard, just as life is hard, just like living is hard, and impossible, and it stays, it just stays with you.

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