Textless nights and mornings without coffee
Silent. The rooftop is silent in the night air.
Sebastian can hear only his own footsteps as they echo loudly against the concrete. The sound seems almost out of place in the quiet stillness; loud enough to wake the dead.
Finally, he spots Jim lying a few feet in front of him and a brief smile flashes across his face.
'Oi, there,' he says. 'You mad fucker.'
Jim doesn't move.
Sebastian crouches over and stares at him. Realization hits as suddenly as the acknowledgement that, even in death, Jim's face still has that psychotic look about it, but damn if he doesn't make for a handsome corpse.
'Oh.'
Well, now. This would explain why he hasn't returned home since earlier this afternoon. Sebastian wonders wether he should actually be surprised or not.
'Sad day for good old England, then?' he says as he sits down and lights up a cigarette. 'Best criminal she's ever seen and he goes off shooting himself. Idiot.'
Jim always did like to end things dramatically.
'I like what you did to your hair,' he goes on, watching as the cigarette smoke leaves his lips and rises in the air like ribbons. 'All clogged up in strawberry syrup like that.' He intends to laugh, but the sound gets stuck in his throat, a bitter reminder of all things left unsaid. Regret leaves an awful taste, like food that has gone mouldy because no one's ever bothered to tell you that it was there. But it's always been there, and Sebastian knows it. He tries to imagine what his life will be like from now on.
No more waking up at two in the morning because of stupid texts.
No more organized crime on a regular basis.
No more 'Seb, darling, get your gun, daddy's got another problem for you to solve'.
No more ostentatious flirting and fooling around.
No more Jim.
Sebastian wonders when exactly it was that he began to care. He had promised himself that he wouldn't. Jim didn't care, of course. James Moriarty, consulting criminal, could never be bothered by something as trivial as caring. He was a perfect actor, through and through. A perfect composer. And now just look at him, lying sprawled here on the cold concrete with a gun in his hand and his hair soaked in blood, staring upwards at the night sky with that demented grin on his face. Almost as if he were mocking the entire universe. Maybe he is, Sebastian muses. After all, he has orchestrated the fall of the great Sherlock Holmes with such mathematical precision that the universe can't even dare to compete.
So, then, had this been a slip? A mistake?
... Nah.
Couldn't have. Moriarty never makes- well, never made mistakes. No, it was probably just something done on the spur of the moment; just another one of his whims. A sudden change of plans or something along those lines.
A desperate decision to ensure that his plan would succeed.
That was Jim.
'I carried out my part, you know. Kept my word, just as we've discussed.'
He puts out the stub of his cigarette and lights up another.
'You said to shoot only if he doesn't jump. Well, he jumped. Caused quite a show as well, though I don't think you caught that.'
Somewhere, on the streets below, a police car rushes past, sirens wailing in the night like children with broken toys.
'D'you hear that? An ode to you, I reckon.'
But the sound dies off in the distance soon enough and Sebastian's smile fades. He inhales heavily and then sighs.
'Good grief, I'm talking to the corpse of a psycho... What d'you say, Jim? Am I going mental, as well?'
Jim doesn't answer. Jim will never answer again.
Sebastian Moran is not the kind of man who cries. He's the kind of man who laughs. So, in the end, he manages to laugh; it sounds hoarse and bitter and it hurts like hell.
'What am I supposed to do now, Jim? What am I supposed to do?...'
The following morning, Sebastian unconsciously makes two cups of coffee, out of habit more than anything else. It takes him a few good minutes of staring at the second one before the realization that no one will ever drink it anymore starts to sink in. In a sudden fit of rage, he grabs the cup and throws it against the floor, where it shatters in dozens of tiny, glistening pieces of china; then he collapses next to the table, resting his forehead on his knees and not knowing that on the other side of London, another man does the exact same thing because of a lonely cup of tea.
There's spilt coffee on the carpet and there's a handsome dead body in his car, so he sobers up. After all, he was Jim's henchman. He was Jim's sniper. He was Jim's. It's only natural that he should be Jim's gravedigger as well. Got a nice place in the countryside in his mind, he'll go there this afternoon and do it. Jim might have preferred cremation; he doesn't really know, they never talked about such things. But Sebastian has always been a bit of a traditionalist. Wouldn't want to ruin that pretty face so quickly, now, would he?
Still, there are always rumours - in this case, concerning a certain Mr Holmes. Sebastian would hate to think that all of Jim's efforts went to waste, so he sets up a few plans of his own; with so much free time on his hands now, what else can he possibly do? He doesn't want to acknowledge the ache in his chest, but as he picks up the broken china from the floor, he knows he'll forever have a single purpose from now on:
'Oi, Jim. I'll make your death worthwhile.'