Inspired by this post: post/41803386749/thinking-about-reichenbach-what-happened-to
Work Text:
Jim didn't tell Sebastian his plan, but the sniper hadn't seen this as odd. He never got told the details, only the ones that involved him. It was clear that Jim had been acting odd the few days leading up to what the Criminal had been calling 'The Fall'. Sebastian had just rolled his eyes and put it down to the excitement of the game.
Arriving at the hospital roof Sebastian felt as though his world had stopped spinning. Since Jim had found him 2 and a half years before, Jim had been his life. And that was no understatement. After the Discharge, Sebastian had been a wreck, alcohol, drugs, sex, he didn't care if he lived or died and Jim gave him purpose. Seeing Jim's body with his head in a pool of blood broke Sebastian's heart. While normally he would've seen a gunshot wound as beautiful, here it was just sickening. Jim was so small, he looked so innocent, so vulnerable.
Guilt racked through Sebastian. Jim had seen what Sebastian had been going through Post-War and fixed him but Sebastian hadn't even noticed that Jim was hurting. He knew the Criminal was a little manic but he thought it was just his character. It never crossed his mind that Jim was suicidal. In an attempt to hold back this guilt, Sebastian pulled out his phone. He needed to arrange what happened next.
He called some of Jim's employees, ones he knew could be trusted to work swiftly and secretly. It would get around soon enough that James Moriarty was dead but it didn't need to get around yet. While on the phone, he knelt down almost subconsciously, running a hand through Jim's hair. Jim would've hit him for such a sentimental action, but now Sebastian was just horrified to find his hand covered in Jim's blood.
With a small whimper, he pulled away. The person on the other end of the phone asked if he was all right and he snapped that of course, he was fine. Of course he wasn't fine, he was anything but fine. His soul might as well had died with Jim because without him Sebastian knew he was just a shell of a person. Finishing the arrangements, Sebastian hung up.
He didn't cry, he very rarely cried, but staring at Jim's body Sebastian felt too empty to express any real emotion. A thought crossed his mind and he leant forward to check Jim's pulse. The second his warm fingers caught Jim's freezing neck, he regretted it. The feeling of sickness that had surrounded him in that moment overwhelmed him and Sebastian moved away quickly, chucking up just a few feet away. Shakily he sunk onto the ground, leaning against the raised part at the edge of the roof.
Jim's body was removed, the blood and sick was cleaned up and the roof of St Bartholomew's hospital soon looked as though nothing had happened there. Sebastian didn't move as the body was removed, didn't respond when the men tried to speak to him. Questions were being asked of him. What was to be done with the body? What would happened to them without Jim? Sebastian didn't have the answers, he didn't have the strength to take charge though he knew it would be expected of him.
He stayed on the roof for hours, and no one dared tried to tell him to move. Although nothing had ever been explicitly known, most people had their suspicions and beliefs about the nature of Sebastian and Jim's relatioship, they knew this would be hitting the sniper in a more personal way that it would be hitting the rest of them. By the time Sebastian made any effort to move, he was freezing, shivering from the cold. It crossed his mind though that he was not as cold as Jim had been. He was certain he could never forget how it felt to touch Jim and feel him ice cold, deathly cold.
Leaving the roof, Sebastian couldn't go home. Home was the flat Jim owned and had one day insisted Sebastian was to move into it and neither of them had ever regretted it. Well, Sebastian assumed and hoped Jim never regretted it, he never kicked him out anyway. He couldn't go back and fine that flat empty and Jim gone. Instead he went to the office. Numb, empty, and cold, the office would be a good place to try and think.
Sebastian had a small office next door to Jim's in the work building. He had very rarely used it, but there were times, when he was training the lower snipers or when Jim couldn't be bothered with the less important of the clients. In there now, Sebastian just sat on the floor, staring at the wall opposite for a long time. He was slightly warming due to the heating the building had, but he was barely aware of it. He felt like he was cold to the core, like that simple touch to Jim had left him frozen for life.
Without really being aware that it was happening, Sebastian dozed there on the floor. When he woke the sun was shining through the window. He hissed slightly, irritated by it and got up. For a moment he was confused and then it all came flooding back to him. Jim. The roof. The blood. The cold. Shuddering, he got to his feet - this was to be his first day without Jim and the thought was almost enough to make him reach for the nearest gun and join his boss in hell - and tried to pull himself together.
Within the next hour he had arranged for Jim to be cremated. There was to be no service. Jim wouldn't have wanted one, he didn't care about people, he wouldn't have wanted them pretending to care about him. No, Sebastian knew that Jim was under the firm belief that Sebastian was the only person who gave a damn about him.
The cremation was to happen straight away. Sebastian considered going to see the body again before it happened but he couldn't bring himself do it. He didn't want to have to see Jim so pale, so cold, so dead, again. No, he wouldn't do that. He would simply collect the ashes in the urn when they were ready.
Once he had it, Sebastian was at a loss as to what to do. He knew of people who had kept their spouses or parents ashes in an urn and just kept them in the house, by the bed or on the mantel piece, Sebastian wasn't sure he could do that. He couldn't bare to think that all that was left of Jim Moriarty was the contents of this stupid wooden pot. He needed to scatter them.
Where though?
Ireland was the obvious answer but Sebastian decided against it quickly. Jim didn't like the memories he had of his time in Ireland. His Mother;s death, his father's abuse. No, Sebastian wasn't going to condemn him to a death stuck there. London would have to do. He had lived and soared in London so it was rather fitting.
Late that night - less than 36 hours since he had found Jim - Sebastian found himself back on the roof of St Bart's. It seemed like poetic justice for him to be scattering the ashes from up there. With a cigarette balanced in his mouth, he sat on the edge of the roof with his leg dangling down and Jim next to him. He opened the lid of the urn, and just looked at the grey flaky pieces of ash for a moment, he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, shaking the ash from that away from the urn. How meaningless was life if is ended so like a cigarette.
"Fuck you boss," Sebastian muttered and placed the cigarette back in his mouth, freeing his hands. He tipped a small amount of the ashes in his hand before tipping his hand upside down and watched them float away, the odd reminder still on his hand. Shuddering, he blew on it to get all the little bits away.
After that, he just turned the urn upside down and watched all the ashes float and fall away from him. He couldn't keep them, it wasn't right. Jim was never really his anyway. As he watched the ashes flying, the tears finally started and they poured down Sebastian's face desperately. He dropped the urn, not caring where it landed as it aimed towards the ground.
Shaking slightly, he forced himself onto his feet. Crying was pointless but he couldn't stop now that he had started. Turning away from the floating ash, he drew in from the cigarette and let out a breath, the smoke lingering behind long after he had walked away.
