A/N: This is dedicated to afteriwake, who got me hooked on this particular ship.
"Watch her," Jim Moriarty had said just before he went onto Bart's roof.
The second part of the order had been left unsaid, but Sebastian Moran heard it clearly.
"If anything happens to me, shoot her."
Seb was prepared for "anything" to include Jim being captured by Mycroft Holmes' men, being shot by Sherlock Holmes, or even being betrayed by one of his own. The one thing Seb wasn't prepared for was Jim turning the gun on himself. If the world's only consulting criminal had considered that possibility beforehand, he hadn't bothered mentioning it.
That fact hurt almost as much as Jim's death.
Shooting Dr. Hooper never entered his mind when he realized Jim was dead. He knew instantly that suicide was Jim's choice, so killing the woman didn't fall under the unspoken order.
The spoken order, however…
It was the second night after Jim's death and Seb was sitting in a flat in the building across the street from Molly's. His eyes were on her sitting room window, his entire focus on the petite woman watching telly with her cat. Just doing his job.
If anyone had asked, that was his reason for not hearing the world's only consulting detective enter the borrowed flat until the other man spoke up.
"If you hurt her, I'll do something worse than killing you." His voice was like ice.
Seb stiffened but didn't turn around. "Jim told me to watch her, that's what I'm doing," he said simply. "I consider it his last request."
"And if someone tried something?"
"They wouldn't get very far."
There was a pause. "I'm going to hold you to that, Moran. I need someone to watch Molly while I'm taking down your compatriots."
"They're not 'my' anything now. Everything that tied me to Jim's world died with him."
"Fine." Another pause. "Don't get too close to her – she'll break your heart in the sweetest way possible."
"I won't."
He didn't know it at the time, but that was one promise he couldn't keep.