TRIGGER WARNINGS: This chapter pokes around in Moriarty's brain quite a bit. As a result, there's some pretty nasty stuff within, including violence and a non-graphic description of the rape of an unnamed character. Please, please, *please* use personal discretion before you read. The last thing I want is to accidentally trigger someone.

The title of this chapter comes from some lyrics of song by The Mountain Goats, "Oceanographer's Choice". Unfortunately, won't let me include the full title because it's too long. So, on Archive of Our Own, the title of this chapter is "What Will I Do When I Don't Have You (To Hold Onto in the Dark)".

I also had to edit this because I originally listed the characters in this fic as Moriarty and Sebastian Wilkes. I thought it said Moran. Too many Sebastians in Sherlockverse, I tell you. Pah!

All that aside, let me leave you with a quote before the story begins.

"There are some trees, Watson, which grow to a certain height, and then suddenly develop some unsightly eccentricity. You will see it often in humans. I have a theory that the individual represents in his development the whole procession of his ancestors, and that such a sudden turn to good or evil stands for some strong influence which came into the line of his pedigree. The person becomes, as it were, the epitome of the history of his own family."

"It is surely rather fanciful."

- Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson ("The Adventure of the Empty House")

What little light the room possessed filtered in through the thin cracks of a barely-open venetian blind; it was only enough to weaken some of the shadows, introducing a few shades of dark grey into what would have otherwise been a murky blackness. A lone figure sat in this small and secret corner of the world, silhouetted faintly against the window and peering out the blind.

Without moving its eyes from the window, the figure reached to a nearby table, grabbing a cigarette and an old and battered Zippo lighter. For one brief moment, the flame of the lighter added an orange glow to the man's face, streaked though it was by the thick, dark lines of the shadows' continued presence. The light went out, leaving only the dim glow of the cigarette in the darkness. The man took a long drag and exhaled the smoke into the room.

On the third drag of the cigarette, a small, flashing blue light appeared on the table. The man turned, seeing it in his keen peripheral vision. He picked up the item that was making the light, and with a quick swipe of his thumb, his face was awash in light again.

He read the text and grinned in the soft, digital glow from the phone.

Let's play a game.
Jim

The man snuffed out the remains of his cigarette on the table. He flipped the phone sideways and began typing a response.

What kind?

Hide and seek. And I do wish you'd sign your texts.
Jim

Not my style.

Cheeky. I'll have to punish you for that.
Jim

When's the game?

Two weeks next Saturday.
Jim

I'll be entering heat around then.

Why, so you will. What a coincidence!
Jim

The man gazed at that line, contemplating. His left hand reached up to rub at the stubble on his chin.

Thought you were homodynamic.

I'm a lot of things. But comparing me to people like that Adler woman really does me a disservice. You wound me, soldier boy.
Jim

The man sighed, stretching. As he thought about his response, the phone lit up again.

Should've expected it from your skill set. Shot through the heart, and you're to blame.
Jim

Husky, quiet laughter broke the silence in the room.

Rules?

You hide. I seek. High stakes.
Jim

Got an idea what 'high stakes' means, but elaborate.

No contraceptives.
Jim

I always go without. I'd only need them if I got caught. Draw your own conclusions there.

Tut tut. So cocky. So risky. What would your secondary school health teachers say?
Jim

That I'm a good Catholic boy. Nuns, every last one of them.

Saw the harsh end of countless rulers, I'm sure.
Jim

You know I was a model student. Where?

Hellingly Hospital.
Jim

Such a romantic.

Guilty as charged. x
Jim

The man grinned. He looked at the phone's internal clock and nodded to himself.

Got to go. Work.

Wonderful. Do make them see reason.
Jim

Got it, boss.

He put the phone aside and returned his gaze to the window. Far, far down the street, two ambassadors were about to join together with several mediators to engage in an early morning peace meeting, all in the hopes that this would keep their turbulent country from plunging head-first into a civil war. The first ambassador stepped out of his car, flanked by security detail.

A bullet is the most dynamic inanimate object in existence in that, sometimes, you only need one to completely change the world. For example, in the right kind of circumstance, a single well-placed bullet can ensure the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people who would otherwise be alive and well.

Sebastian Moran raised his AS50 rifle to balance on the windowsill, peered through the scope, and changed the world.

It was the start of April – the heart and soul of spring – but Hellingly hadn't yet received that message. The sun had been down less than an hour and already the temperature was a brisk 10 degrees. The high humidity and lingering cloud cover of the day had created the perfect formula for the dense, choking fog that had rolled in. The trees, still skeletal and bare from the winter's great freeze, shivered like half-seen, emaciated ghouls in the mist.

The dense silence was pierced by a whistled rendition of ABBA's "Take a Chance on Me" as a figure sauntered through the gloom, bobbing his head in time with the music as it flowed from his pursed lips.

The weather couldn't have been more perfect if Jim Moriarty had engineered it himself. As good as he was at setting every single domino up precisely as he planned (mostly so he could get the satisfaction of knocking them all down later at his own discretion), not even he could control the natural elements yet. It was awfully considerate of the universe to set things up as well as it had.

The dulcet tones of Swedish disco faded out with one last, long whistle. A lazy grin spread across his lips as the first signs of Hellingly Hospital began to come into view. The massive complex seemed to materialise before him as if brought into existence by condensing darkness and fog.

He stopped. About five meters in front of him, just beyond the vine-twisted chain-link fence, stood the shape of another man. His right hand clasped one of the links in the fence.

"Hit you yet, then?" Moriarty asked. "Your biology?"

Moran didn't answer. Nor did he move, aside from tightening his grip on the link.

"Ah. Downwind. I see. Well, best get things chugging along then, if that's how you are already. How's a hundred second head start sound? But you know me, Sebastian. Even if it sounded absolutely dreadful…" Moriarty's smile showed so, so much of his teeth. "I'd do it anyway. One… two… three…"

Moran's hand slid from the fence, and he backed away toward the facility. In moments, he had disappeared within the murky darkness.

Moriarty continued to count up in a bored monotone. Finally, when he hit 100, he began walking forward again. "Ready or not," he called, knocking aside a rusted sign from its perch on the fence. He trod on it as he entered, his shoe covering the word 'CONDEMNED'. "Here I come."

He had always known he wasn't ordinary. As long as he could remember, it was a fact of life: the sky was blue, the grass was green, the sun rose in the east, and Jim Moriarty was not like other people.

It wasn't a problem for him. He wasn't the sort to wallow in existential misery over being a square peg in a world that was covered in round holes as far as the eye could see, or to shiver in the chill of being ostracised over his differences. No. But he was in a position to get a good laugh out of all of it – seeing all the silly people with their silly concerns and silly drives working themselves into tizzies over such stupid, trivial fare. And he had had a few good laughs – a few great thundering moments of hilarity - but you can only get so many chuckles from the same joke for so long before it starts to grate at you like a pebble that refuses to dislodge from your shoe.

But he really did hate it when those ordinary people thought they could get their own laughs at the same joke. They had no idea about its vastness and subtleties and could not truly appreciate it.

So, when the joke itself began to grow stale, it took no effort at all to start down a different path. He started by dislodging the huge, dull, and particularly grating pebble from Carl Powers' trainers, which he kept next to his own expensive dress loafers for years and years before he found the perfect place to drop them off.

Puberty added another twist. For his whole life, he had been certain that he was an Alpha. Although it would be a decade and change before science advanced enough to screen children early for their reproductive dynamic, Moriarty knew his place deep down in his bones with absolute certainty while all the other boys and non-Alpha girls waited with bated breath for adolescence to reveal their results in the genetic lottery.

His certainty wasn't dampened even when his head remained clear while all the other Alphas turned into slavering, mindless animals when an Omega got a little too close to her or his heat in school. Normally such a resistance to an Omega's pheromones was a sure sign of being a Beta, but he knew better.

He had felt the mad drumming of his pulse as it shot hormone-laden blood through his veins. He did not need to see himself in a mirror to know his pupils had blown wide. He had wanted to scratch through every inch of his skin, wanted to rip and tear at himself with his blunt nails, to get to the itch deep down. He knew the intense pressure, the unmistakable tightening of flesh, as a knot formed.

But he didn't need scent for that. The scent of a fertile Omega alone was utterly meaningless, and the fact that that alone was enough to stoke the fires of so many Alphas was a disgrace. He needed atmosphere. He needed artistry. What he needed was the look in her eyes as a moment of clarity clawed its way through the heat-fevered fog that had settled over her brain. Then there were her hands - trembling with ruined grip thanks to the combination of fear and uncontrollable, unwanted arousal – as they fumbled at the handle of the gymnasium door. Locked. And best of all, how her look of absolute horror melted into the frenzy of her heat as she was set upon, and though she acquiesced to her traitorous biology, a small quirk in the set of her brow screamed and screamed and screamed the whole way through.

He didn't even need to be there. He was fine watching the whole thing through the camera he'd set up in the gymnasium.

Too bad it was a one-time use sort of trick. Once others had finally pried the doors open and saw what had happened, saw her treatment at the hands of five Alpha teachers, the Omega rights groups were up in arms and the media sensation was outrageous. Laws were passed prohibiting Alphas from working in co-ed schools with underage students. What a downer.

She dropped out of school almost immediately after that. And she'd wanted to be a nurse, too. What a shame, what a life in shambles.

What was her name again?

No matter.

It was dust now anyway.

Jim Moriarty's eyes darted wildly beneath his lids as he scented the air. Damp earth reclaiming parts of the floor, mould creeping beneath peeling paint and crumbling plaster, rust and corrosion tainting unmaintained metal.

And deep, deep in that heady aroma, a trace of Sebastian, whose scent defied Omega convention by complimenting the delicious sour tang of decay and ruin so very well.

Moriarty's eyes fluttered open as he released his long breath.

He set his hand against what remained of a window, clouded with the filth of ages and cracked from disuse. When he moved it, he left behind his print in the grime. He looked down at the dark smudge on his hand and clapped it away, sending more dust motes into the heavy air. His peripheral vision caught a faint hint of movement through the handprint, and he turned to glare at it. The window revealed a large courtyard, which was enormously overrun with wild grass and weeds. The crumbled pile of brick that had once been Hellingly's enormous water tower lay at the far end of the yard. Two figures waded through the cumbersome overgrowth, brandishing their torches wildly.

Moriarty switched off his own torch. He thrust his hands into his pockets, and watched them approach. As they drew nearer, he glanced around until his gaze settled on a crumbled hole in the wall which seemed to lead to the courtyard. He smiled.

"Bleeding hell, let's just get out of here. It's like every nightmare I ever had got into an orgy and this is the result."

"You're being paranoid. We go in, tag some shit, snap a few pics, and leave."

"Naw, man, mark my words. We get in there, and there'll be some rusty old phonograph, and soon as we start investigating the room, it'll turn itself on and start playing an ancient, crackly version of Ave Maria. Fuck, that's if we're lucky. You know there's some old porcelain doll sitting on a creaky rocking chair in there, and it'll turn its head to us as we walk past. Christ, just thinking about it is giving me goose flesh."

The young men were likely no older than twenty, based on their mannerisms. It was nigh impossible to make out much of their features between the combination of the murky darkness, their oversized hoodies, and the bandanas wrapped over most of their faces. The calmer one carried a torch in one hand and a shopping bag which made the tell-tale clinks and rustles of cans of spray paint knocking against each other. The jumpier of the two had his own torch in his left hand and a board with a nail in it in his right. He brandished his weapon nervously.

"I thought Alphas were supposed to have big balls of steel, mate. You're acting like – Shit!" The calmer one dodged a rogue swing from his friend. "You fucking idiot, stop twirling that around. Why'd you bring it, anyway? It's not like it'd do much for you if this place really were haunted."

The jittery delinquent dropped his weapon. His anxious twitches were gone in an instant, leaving him stone still. "Do you smell that?"

"Smell what? Feral cat piss? Because if so, the answer is an emphatic yes."

"No," the Alpha snapped. He breathed in again deeply. "It's faint. And it's… weird." His brows furrowed in confusion. "But it's still… it's unquestionably… oh God, there's an Omega in heat somewhere in the area."

The other youth scoffed. "Beta, mate. You get to pick up on that, while I'm left smelling damp and animal wee."

The Alpha pulled down his bandana to smell the air deeper. He was still spotty from adolescence and possessed a patchy blond goatee that he was probably very proud of. "I have to find… where…" he murmured.

In the shadows, Jim Moriarty cleared his throat. The delinquents' torchlights were on him in an instant. His pupils constricted in the light, and his teeth glinted.

"Is it this…?" the Beta asked the Alpha, gesturing vaguely.

Moriarty rolled his eyes, stepping a few feet closer to the youths. "Oh puh-lease," he groaned. "How blind can one be?" He pulled his left hand from his pocket, mimicking the shape of a gun with his fingers. He pointed it at the Beta's head and flexed his thumb 'trigger', imitating blast recoil with his hand as he did so.

A bullet tore through the Beta's head from the back, splattering Moriarty and the Alpha with blood and tissue. His corpse slumped to the ground.

The Alpha screamed and began to hyperventilate as terrified tears fell from his eyes. "And as for you," Moriarty said, pointing his 'gun' at the young man. "This is a private party. I really hate sharing." He pulled the trigger again, and a bullet ripped through the youth's back, embedding in his heart. He fell, his body seizing once and his eyes drifting out of focus as he died.

Moriarty held his 'gun' up to his lips and blew imaginary smoke away from his index finger. He strolled a few feet past the bleeding bodies. "No, really, I nearly had to repeat my first year in school because of the sharing thing. Promise you two won't tell anybody that little secret?" Silence. "Good boys."

He grinned at the remains of the water tower. Moran had set his torch down facing up at his feet, illuminating him from the bottom up. A pistol glinted in his right hand.

"Are you going to pay my dry cleaning bill?" Moriarty called across the yard, gesturing to the blood and fragments of brain matter clinging to his suit. "It must come out of your card money, not from what I pay you. Otherwise, what's the point?"

Moran gave a thumbs-up with his free hand.

Moriarty kissed the palm of his left hand and blew it in the Omega's direction. Moran slipped his pistol into the waistband of his fatigue trousers and reached up to catch the kiss.

Moriarty knew that even if he broke into a sprint, even if he pushed every last one of his muscles to the breaking point to reach his target, Moran would slip away before he could get there. The perfect time was nearly upon them – it was so very, very close – but not quite yet. Their elaborate dance had a few steps left.

So, he did not run. He strolled, watching as Moran stretched down to turn off his torch, arching his back a bit more sensually than the process required. When Moriarty flicked on his own light and shone it at the former water tower, Moran was gone.

The Beta's blood was cooling against Moriarty's cheek. He shut his eyes, shivering at the divine sensation of another's warmth dissipating permanently into the air. When he opened them again, he set off once more.

Hellingly played tricks on the eyes, and Jim Moriarty appreciated a finely-crafted trick.

By torchlight, the shadows of Hellingly danced and whirled in the corners of ruined hallways, seemed to cling to the shattered glass and rusted hinges of ward doors, warped the dimensions of abandoned chairs and beds. They fled from the light, pooling and waiting in secret corners until they could spill back out and reclaim their rightful territory. Hellingly was theirs now, and they were possessive masters.

As Moriarty moved his torch and watched the writhing of the shadows, he caught sight of a human shape in one of the small bathing rooms. Steadying his light, it was revealed to be a drawing. Someone had painted a black and white portrait of a ghostly woman against the wall; from the doorway, she appeared to be bathing in the grime-blackened tub that took up most of the room's area.

Moriarty examined the tub closer. It was surprisingly clean in comparison to much of the rest of the hospital, with fewer layers of grit and dust in the basin than he had expected. On a whim, he stepped into the tub and sat, eventually working himself into a lounging position. He already had person all over his suit; what was a little muck from a disused tub?

When he gazed at the low ceiling, the ambient light from his torch allowed him to notice a small hole directly above his head. He moved the torchlight to cover it.

A pathetic man would have yelped at what he saw. A lesser man would have jumped. But he was neither of these things. "Hello again, Seb," he said.

A single clear blue eye gazed down at him through the hole. He stared back. Moran was an infrequent blinker; it was a quality that unnerved normal people, who could never appreciate how very entertaining such a quality made staring contests.

Brown and blue eyes locked together, Moriarty lounging in his tub and Moran, certainly, pressed bodily against the yellowed, cracking tiles of the room above. Moriarty imagined what the sound of Moran's nails slowly scraping against the floor must be like.

Finally, Moran moved away from the hole.

"Ha," Moriarty breathed. "I win."

"Never intended to win the game," Moran murmured through the hole. "Seems that's the theme of the day."

"Even if you did intend to win, the conclusion was foregone," Moriarty replied. "By hook or by crook, Sebastian, I get what I want."

"Then come collect your prize in the main hall."

Moriarty smirked, pulling himself up and out of the tub. He brushed as much of the dust off of his suit as he could, then mimicked drying himself off and wrapping a towel around his head like a turban. "Do I get a crown?" he asked. There was no response. Moran had left without making a sound. The world's only consulting criminal sighed and continued. "Eventually I'll get a crown for a job well done."

He strode out of the room, oriented himself toward the main hall, and let the shadows twisting at the edge of his torchlight guide him there.

It was an obvious trap. The distribution of dust and dirt over the cracked boards – themselves carefully arranged to simply look like wood warped by years of moisture and cycles of unchecked freezes and thaws – was too precise to have fallen there through years of random accumulation. Then there was the fact that there was bait; Moran had made very liberal use of his scent in constructing the trap.

Warmth crept under Moriarty's collar as the image of Moran's hand, slick with his own lubrication, purposefully moving against the grey, bent wood popped into his head. He loosened his tie.

Yes, it was a very obvious trap. Someone like the young Alpha whose glassy eyes stared unseeing at the cloud cover as his congealing blood nourished the courtyard weeds would have fallen for it instantly, but he wasn't the intended recipient. Moriarty was. Moriarty, who prided himself on seeing through every ruse and gambit under the sun. Therefore, it was a symbolic move more than anything else.

After such a lovely evening, it was a sentiment Moriarty was willing to indulge.

He adjusted his loosened tie enough to slip the top three buttons on his shirt out of their holes. He began to stroll around the perimeter of the covered hole, tugging on his shirt to fan himself. "Is it getting hot in here?" he asked the empty hall. His eyes darted around, looking for likely hiding places. "Or is it just you?"

For a moment, the moon broke through the clouds, and a tiny degree of light came in through great hall's many windows. It was only for an instant, but it was enough. There. Crouching beneath graffiti which read 'HOME SWEET HOME'.

Moriarty stopped walking around the perimeter. He smiled. "They don't know what they're missing, all those people who lose track of everything once they get a whiff of a nice scent. A feast for all senses is so much better. Because not only is scent still part of the deal-" He took in a deep, luxurious breath through his nose to drive the point home. "But my sense of sight has been treated to gorgeous scenery… and I got to win that staring contest. And touch-" He ran a finger over the dried blood on his cheek. "Has had a nice prelude. A good appetizer for the main course."

His grin turned particularly predatory. "If you're wondering about taste and hearing… I am going to lick the salt from your skin. I am going to bite down hard on your clavicle, and my teeth will vibrate against the strength of the bone even as my taste buds sting with the metal in your blood. And I am going to fuck you until you scream, until your larynx burns and all you can do is whisper choked pleas against my lips."

A small sound came from the darkness. It was not a gasp of desire, not a moan of barely contained lust, not a whimper of need. It was a sigh: long and ragged, delivered through clenched teeth. It blended in with the distant sounds of settling, creaking wood and wind whispering through cracks and holes in the walls.

"Now then," Moriarty said. "Shall we?"

And with that, he took one step back and fell through the floor.

He landed on a mattress. When the dust and debris cleared, Moriarty saw jugs of water and boxes and tins of food – simple staples like vegetables, fruit medleys, and beef stew. Fancy food and heats rarely went together; there wasn't much of a point, when the relevant parties would be physically incapable of focusing enough to appreciate it.

Moran had been telling the truth. Not only had he never planned on winning, but he had prepared for his loss meticulously.

"Ah, Sebastian, ever the pragmatist," Moriarty said. He shone his torchlight back up the hole, where Moran gazed down at him with a small quirk to his lips. His chest rose and fell with heavy, ragged breaths. Even in the light, his eyes were wide and his pupils dilated, giving them a feral quality.

"Looks like I caught a beastie," he said. His voice was thick and raw.

Moriarty sprawled out on the mattress. "So you have. The most dangerous one of all."

"Don't know about that. Maybe I've crawled after worse things."

"Oh," Moriarty said, drawing out the sound, closing his eyes as he leisurely shook his head. "I doubt that very, very much."

Moran grinned. "Well, if I ever get to say those words again, they'll be accurate. Forever and always."

And he leapt into the abyss.

Just under nine months later, James Augustus Moran was born - named for two men who, while alive at the time of his birth, would not be so for very long thereafter. Less than a month later, Augustus Moran would fall asleep in his favourite armchair and have his heart quietly stop ticking an hour into his nap, never knowing he had a grandson. Jim Moriarty would blow his own brains out five months later, with complete knowledge of his actions and who was left behind.

Thanks to a (very well paid) 'small clerical error', the boy would be sixteen months old before any of his records and information appeared in official databases accessible to minor government officials.

Even then, several portions of his birth certificate were left blank, which really said everything to certain scrutinizing eyes.