Chapter 1: There Was No Why or How

To this day, Moran couldn't figure out why he did it. He'd done loads of crazy stuff before, but taking over the entirety of James Moriarty's underground empire? That had got to be a whole new level.

He didn't know why he did it, and he wasn't entirely sure how it came to be, either. Sebastian had always suspected that Jim trusted him with his life, but the consulting criminal never explicitly named Moran his second-in-command. For some reason, he even made an effort to exclude the sniper from his blood feud with Sherlock Holmes. On the day – that day – the day Jim solved his Final Problem, he didn't station Moran the St Bart's. In fact, he gave him a job on the other side of London. It wasn't even a hit, but more of a negotiation – an actual negotiation - with one Mr. Benjamin Gibbs. Moran protested: it made no sense at all. Why wouldn't Jim want him to be a part of this final victory over that arrogant private detective? Granted, Moran himself never quite saw the point of this "game" between Moriarty and Holmes, but if it was important to his boss then it was important to him. Plus, he could use his help.

"But I'll have Otto and Frank, and Jason right across the street," Jim said, with his hands spread out. "I've got all the help I need." He then went on to reaffirm that none of them was as good as Sebastian, but then again, how hard could it be to take out an unsophisticated Yarder and an unsuspecting old lady? "It will be over in no time," Jim promised. No more Holmes business. The Benjamin Gibbs deal, on the other hand… "It is paramount that I send someone I can trust. Would you do this for me, tiger?"

Of course Moran didn't say no.

The meeting with Gibbs went without a hitch, but throughout the morning, Sebastian's gut told him that something wasn't right. As the old man drone on and on about some new master plan to control Eastern Europe's natural gas supply, the sense of foreboding doom became so unbearable that Moran had to excuse himself and cut the meeting short, consequences be damned. He didn't come in his own car, and was hard pressed to hail a taxi in this part of town. By the time he got to St Bart's, there was already a crowd. An ambulance was pulling away. It was the fake detective from the papers, a spectator offered, shaking his head as if in shame, as if this wasn't the single most interesting thing that he had witnessed in his humdrum life. Dead. Jumped off the building and killed himself. Turned out he was a fraud after all… Sebastian was already sprinting into the hospital. Holmes was out, but something was still wrong, terribly wrong…

As he flung open the door to the rooftop, it was all there, plain as day. "Colonel Moran, sir!" Jason stood a polite distance away, looking extremely uncomfortable in his own skin. It would have been funny on any other day, to see this giant of a man squirm, but all Moran could make out in this instance was the blood. How could he – "Sir?"

Thank God Jason was here. Moran let out a shallow breath, his vision clearing somewhat, and drew his attention to the nerve-racked former bank robber as best as he could.

"Vlad, Vlad just called." Jason supplied, slightly raising the sleek black device in his hand. Jim's phone. "I just thought I shouldn't let anyone else take it, you know…"

Seb, I don't need you at St Bart's tomorrow… There was a police siren getting louder than was comfortable to the ears. "Oh, yeah."

"So Vlad said he had something for, for the boss, and I said, well… I told him to talk to you, sir."

Tomorrow is a big day for us, tiger… When did Jason start calling him "sir"?

Sebastian found Jason looking at him expectantly. "Huh?"

"I told Vlad to talk to you, sir."

Vlad was their contact in one of the prominent Russian mafias. The gears in his head finally clicked, and everything started moving again. "Right. That's fine, Jason. You did good."

The siren suddenly stopped as two police cars pulled up near the hospital. Officers would be swarming the roof in no time. Moran exhaled slowly.

"Sir, we need to, uh, go." Jason ventured.

"Yes." Moran bit down on the word, suddenly resolute. He turned to the exit without another glance at… it. It was no more than a body now, a pile of bones. "Ring Vlad for me, will you, Jason?"

And so it went. That very afternoon, Moran had to put down an insubordination. He wasn't sure why he felt the need to put those SOBs in their rightful place – Hell, probably – since his boss was gone anyhow, but he pulled that trigger in Moriarty's name. Very soon, Sebastian realized that Jim spent a copious amount of time on all kinds of communication devices for a good reason. All day long, contacts, outlaws, and desperate people from all around the world would want to reach the criminal mastermind, and after a moment of awkwardness, some sensible subject of the headless empire would carefully suggest: perhaps you should speak to the Colonel? And Moran would deal with every one of them. He couldn't pinpoint when it started, but Jim's most senior employees had taken to calling him "sir". Somewhere along the line, the name "the Colonel" began to remind people of more than just the sniper extraordinaire, and carried almost as much weight as the occasionally whispered "Moriarty". Without ceremony, and certainly without glory, Sebastian Moran became the new King of the Underworld.

It came as somewhat of a surprise, but in all honesty, he was doing all right. They had to pull out of some parts of the United States, and the Middle East was an unpredictable mess as always, but what operations they kept were running smoothly. Moran was no Moriarty – he was nowhere near in either intellect or insanity – but he had his own ways. Sebastian wasn't learnt in multivariable calculus or quantum mechanics, but he did understand fear. Vlad the crazy Russian was afraid of losing his twin daughters most of all. How predictable. Jason might be a head taller than even Moran, but he still cried out to his abusive daddy in his sleep. Moran's mole in the MI5 hid in his country estate a mistress he actually cared about. Phu, the intrepid trafficker from the Golden Triangle, could laugh in the face of a bullet or a knife, but would break at the mere idea of death by water. So on and so forth. Sometimes Moran had to laugh at the mundaneness of it all – these ordinary people with their mortal fears! Sebastian was acutely aware of how much he sounded like Jim, but didn't bother to wonder what this said about his mental state. He also stopped pondering his reasons for running Moriarty's empire, because the honest truth was that he didn't want to know. Money was nice, but Moran had plenty already. He didn't particularly care for the power or the prestige – he never did enjoy his years at Eton. Mostly, Sebastian welcomed the work because it gave him a reason to charge straight forward, with no time to think about what had been and what he had lost.

The little glitch in Moran's life came at a Starbuck's, out of all places, and in the form of a blonde-haired, recently grieving ex-army doctor. Sebastian began his retreat as swiftly as possible, but he'd already been made. "Colonel Moran?" The voice was unsure but hopeful.

Nope, there was no running now. Sebastian wasn't sure if he even wanted to run anymore. He put on a small grin and turned around. "Hey, Doc. What are the chances?"