This is a sequel and as should only be read after reading He Feared He Would Never Know. I do not own this show at all, this story is not betaed or Brit picked. Now that that is out of the way please enjoy the story.
Sebastian Moran crouched low on the rooftop looking at a man with three kids and another on the way. His shot was lined up and his aim was as sure as it always was but he hesitated. If there was one thing that Colonel Sebastian Moran never did it was hesitate. Anything like a conscience had been weeded out of him under Moriarty's careful guidance. He was cold and ruthless and he liked it that way, so why did the thought of a grieving widow and crying brats make his dead heart restart in his chest and proceed to have an attack. He fired straight through the man's heart and left the rooftop with a scowl on his face. That was his first clue something was wrong. He spent the next day eating greasy takeout and cleaning his guns in the condemned flat he called his own.
His next mission went off without a hitch, no hesitation or chest pains, just a loud bang and a man lying dead for the police to deal with. He put the incident behind him willing to ignore it if it never happened again. The next three missions he had were the same just a bullet flying and a man dropping dead. He'd just about put the entire incident behind him written up as heartburn and indigestion from eating too much takeout. Until the mission after that where he got the second sign that something in his world was irrevocably wrong.
It started simply enough he was laying down gun in hand looking through the scope waiting for his prey to make an appearance when his brain got hit by the mental equivalent of a semtex vest going off. His shoulder was on fire it was burning and there was blood a lot of blood. His arm was painted red and it throbbed with every racing beat of his heart. The sight of blood never bothered him until that moment when his shoulder was torn open and his life was pouring out of him. There were men standing over him the echoes of 'Captain' and 'hang in there' ringing in his ears. They were dressed like soldiers and he was lying on sand that was wet with his own blood.
"Please god let me live!" he screamed barely coherent. All his thoughts of failing the mission were drowned out in the pain of having his shoulder torn open and all his nerves exposed. He screamed and cried in agony for what felt like hours when suddenly it was like the world had tipped over on its axis and all the pain that had flooded his body was gone. Just gone without even a trace of anything to remember, no soreness, no sharp biting pain, no blood or hole in his arm, it was all just gone. He stood up and left the rooftop mission forgotten.
That mission was only the beginning, now just about every day he had a moment where he feared he was losing it. He'd do double takes of women he would have never looked at before. He smiled at random people passing by him on the street. He startled when he looked in the mirror as though he was surprised at seeing his own reflection. He nearly cried when watching a dumb movie about an alcoholic woman who put her life back together. He found himself watching for long coats, blue scarves, dark brown curls, pale skin, and eyes like liquid opal always disappointed when he saw any of those features in people he passed on the streets. He signed his checks with his left hand when even when his right arm was injured his penmanship was so bad with his left he would suffer through using his right. Now he was practically ambidextrous. He was making excuses for it left and right chalking it up to hanging out with James Moriarty. Perhaps it was only a matter of time until he cracked. In his line of work it was nothing to be ashamed of, all the good assassins were cracked a little.
He'd started buying apples. Every time he passed a market he walked in and bought an apple or two, or a bag full of them. He didn't know why but he clung to the idea that it was helping, that somehow the apples would fix whatever was going screwy in his brain. He'd bite into them uncaring of what kind he had as long as they gave him a semblance of control. They weren't helping and he knew it deep down in the bullet wound that wasn't on his shoulder and the pen that shouldn't write so smoothly in his left hand. But what else was there for him to do it wasn't like there was a guidebook to how not to lose your mind after it started slipping.
He tried to ignore the more obvious indicators of his slipping sanity. He tried to put the fact that he knew deep down in his bones what it felt like to kneel on sand wet with someone else's blood and pull them back from oblivion with nothing but a med kit and sheer force of will out of his mind. He'd never ever had to stitch up another man before. He was a killer not a healer, but the dividing line between those two ideals was blurring in his head. Now he turned whenever he heard the name John as though someone was addressing him and he was certain that he was in a nosedive into the deep end. But he held himself together by sheer force of will and stuffed those errant thoughts that maybe his sanity was being affected by Moriarty a bit too much onto the back burner of his brain.
It all had to come to a head eventually and it happened as he stood at a window rifle aimed at a corrupt drug lord that thought that refusing to bow to Moriarty was a good idea. It was a shock to feel the bullet one of the so called kingpins bodyguards shot piercing his stomach and he instantly pressed onto the wound to hold in the blood as his target fled like a rabbit chased by hounds. He staggered as his legs locked up and he fell as he tried to fight through the pain. He sat there for what felt like hours just staring at the red substance that was slipping through the cracks of his fingers. When his horrified solitude was interrupted by a man in a three piece suit that strolled into the room like he owned it carrying an umbrella.
"Sebastian Moran it has been a while. I apologize for the confusion as I'm sure you don't recall our previous encounters." The man said as he swung his umbrella to and fro.
"I've heard of you." Sebastian said with a voice that never lost its strength even now.
Mycroft shook his head sadly. "We had such high hopes for you Sebastian, but it looks like we still have a few kinks to iron out. Someone slacked off when they were cleaning out the hard drive and I fear there might be some residual fragments of John Watson's programming locked up in your files. You might have suspected that given what they say about apples, but no matter we'll get you fixed up and functioning properly in no time."
"Stay out of my head." Sebastian growled even as he stumbled over woozily dizzy from the loss of blood or oil in his case.
Mycroft gave him a vicious smirk that would have made Moriarty proud. "It's not exactly your head now is it?"
"You are not making and sense and I'm going to kill you." Sebastian hissed through clenched teeth.
"Do go ahead and try I'm not going to stop you." Mycroft said a satisfied slick smile on his face as he looked down at the assassin like a scientist might look at a particularly curious specimen.
If he had the strength to move Sebastian would have gutted him with his own umbrella. "If I wasn't bleeding put you'd be dead already."
Mycroft laughed. "Oh I'm quite sure that I would be safe from you either way Sebastian Moran." He pulled out a black notebook from inside his jacket and flipped through the pages completely at ease as though he wasn't watching a man die at his feet.
"Perhaps I should show you why I'm here. Deactivate psychological operating codes 478b through 485m." Mycroft drawled lazily reading from his book. "Now go ahead and look at what you are, what you actually are."
He felt lightheaded for a moment and the colors and shapes of the room blurred together like he was looking through frosted glass while spinning out of control. The world jumped back into sharp color and the metallic scent of blood faded. Against his will his eyes looked down at the hole in his stomach he swore he was hallucinating because a bright golden yellow was pouring out of the wound instead of the red he expected to see. It looked like cooking oil and it felt like oil now too the warm stickiness of blood dissolved into the cold slickness of oil.
His eyes were wide with terror and disbelief but he quelled the horrified scream that was growing in his chest so it couldn't escape from his mouth. The scream raged inside him tearing at his chest and howling voiceless in his ears. It could be seen in his eyes dark with confusion and outraged fury. When he could speak again without screaming he leveled a glare at Mycroft and snarled. "What am I?"
Mycroft looked like he'd been waiting to hear that question for most of his life. "You Sebastian Moran are a unique prototype that I have high hopes for, an infiltration unit designed to fool even the most intelligent of people. This is only your second infiltration mission, you had a different face and source for the last one, but you performed splendidly I assure you. But as I said earlier you seem to have a few bugs this time around most likely due to an incomplete flushing of your previous hard drive. Rest assured that this won't happen again in the future. Your internal damage sensor went off so we've come to pick you up and do any necessary repairs. We might as well as clean out your files so you can run properly while we're at it. Activate repair protocols."
A team of men walked into the room and picked him up off the floor as he went numb. He felt his systems shutting down one by one. He could feel that he was a machine now as his circuits and gears hummed and purred slower and slower until they flickered off one by one. The last thought he had before he shut down was that this must be a nightmare he'd finally cracked. Everything went dim and hollow. He feared it would never stop.