Written for a lovely friend's birthday.
Warning: Character Death.
Jim doesn't come home that night.
Or the next night.
By the third night, Sebastian had worked his way through three packs of cigarettes, two bottles of whiskey and one fist through the living room wall.
He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting. He knew, in all likelihood, that when Jim went up on the roof of St. Bart's that day, that he'd only be coming down in a body bag. He supposed he'd thought Jim was more clever than that, that somehow he'd be cunning enough to simply make it look like he'd shot himself. Sebastian had seen him pull off far more in his day.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't think a way around Jim being dead.
"Damn you, Boss." He'd mutter under his breath when it would start to hit him.
He'd taken his frustrations out in other ways, of course. The occasional hit or two eased him up a bit, especially when he found someone willing to pay him for it. Not that he needed the money.
But there was one target that pulled at him; John Watson.
He'd caught glimpses of Watson among the crowded streets every once in a while, and each time he could feel his anger boiling up inside him. It was his goddamn fault Jim never came home.
That was why, the day he found John, alone in an alleyway a week after the fall, he knew he had his chance. He knew it was him straight away; he was wearing the same jacket, though they it was now dirty and worn though it had lived through years of hell since he'd seen it last.
He approached the man quietly; John sat against the wall, his head against his knees. With a sneer, Sebastian cocked his gun loudly and pointed it at him. He wanted John to hear him. It wouldn't be half as satisfying killing him without seeing the light leave his eyes.
John's head snapped up at the sound, no doubt his soldier instincts still intact.
But what Sebastian hadn't been expecting was to find John alone and upset, his face worn almost beyond recognition. What he'd expected even less was to find himself lowering the gun at the sight of John's tears. He was a cold-blooded killer, not someone who sympathized with his enemies.
But for some reason or another he put down the gun, backing down from both his anger and his job for the first time in his life. He couldn't ignore that John lost someone that day too. That they had both loved and lost their sociopaths up there on that building, left behind to clean up their messes.
"What do you want?" John said coldly, obviously trying to keep his calm.
It had only hit Sebastian then, in that darkened alleyway, that he'd been going about it all wrong. John was not his pathetic enemy to be killed at first chance. He was his equal in the same way Jim and Sherlock had been.
"Nothing," he replied, tucking his gun back into his belt.
And as he watched John stand up and limp out of the alleyway, he knew that he had lost whatever "game" their kind seemed to play. John had reduced him back to being almost humanly sympathetic.
And he couldn't stand for it.
He pulled his gun back out, marveling one last time at the instrument which had been one of his dearest friends all these years. Then put to his lips, tasting the cold metal. If he was going to go, he wanted to know how Jim felt had then.
He had to admit, that after all these years, he'd wondered how they all must've felt as he put a bullet through their brains. He supposed he was about to find out.
"Damn you, Boss," he muttered. "This is all your bloody fault, you know. Damn you straight to hell."
He closed his eyes, letting the faint sounds of the street wash over him.
"You better be waiting for me when I get there."
And with one last movement, he pulled the trigger.
