And there's no remedy for memory
Your face is like a melody
It won't leave my head
Your soul is haunting me
And telling me that everything is fine
But I wish I was dead

- Lana Del Rey - Dark Paradise -

Jim had sat there a long time after she'd left, clutching the gun, staring at the space where she'd been.

He was full of energy he couldn't control, emotions he didn't understand. Pain like nothing he had ever felt, not just in magnitude but in type. This was not the pain of a wound, the pain of a lost game, the pain of scar tissue strangling his brain... this was completely different. Completely consuming.

Still, he stared at where she had stood. I'm all you have left of him. Where was what was left of Jim? Where was the man who didn't give a flying fuck if his people died, who would have killed Harrison for saying something a tenth as insolent... but he had let her go. For Moran. Who was dead.

More emotions.

Eventually, without really knowing what he was doing, he stood and headed for the door, then for the lift. It wasn't until he was outside Moran's- no, Harrison's- door that he knew where he was going, and still he didn't know why. But he scanned in with his override and opened the door.

She didn't look up until she realized that it made no sense for the door to have opened without her permission, and when her eyes landed on him, the earlier fury was gone from them, a light extinguished. The drink had quieted her a little. She wasn't sobbing anymore, but a near constant stream of tears kept rolling down her cheeks. "What are you looking for, Jim?" She asked flatly, dejected eyes losing the energy to stay on him and fluttering back to the gun on the coffee table. Her attention was drawn to it like a magnet. "Most of this is probably yours. I haven't tried to dig up his will. Dunno if I'll get to it."

"You have most of this," he said quietly. "His flats, too, most of his money. He modified his will before that brush with death he pulled, and again after we got back from the labyrinth." His eyes shifted to the gun as well, then to her, reading quietly. "He's left a sizable sum to his daughter as well, but that's about it. I just have a few effects." A letter, the gun Moran had shot him with when they first met, Moran's personal ledgers and notes, his laptop.

"Did I interrupt something?" His gaze returned to the gun.

"I haven't decided yet," she said softly, a new ache in her chest. He'd left her nearly everything. She hadn't known. A fresh wave of tears stung her eyes. She couldn't believe she was still able to produce them. She took another swallow from the bottle. "I don't know what else to stick around for if not him. I used to think grifting could be enough, but..." she shook her head. "Things changed."

He put his hands into his pockets, rocking on his feet for a moment, before nodding and turning to leave. He took a few steps, then he was turning back, and for the second time that day he was acting before thinking.

God I hope this doesn't become a habit.

"Don't kill yourself. It'd be a fecking waste."

She couldn't even manage a surprised snort, only looking up at him again, unsure how to react. "What do you care, Jim? I've never been anything more to you than an employee who somehow got Sebastian Moran to feel something. Why the hell shouldn't I just fucking put an end to it?"

He was quiet for a moment, evaluating, trying to decide. Why was it she was useful? She would be difficult to replace as a grifter, certainly, but he had never shied from difficult.

But he had also never lied to himself, and he knew that he didn't ever want to feel more of whatever it was clawing its way around inside of his body. So he said the one thing that made any sort of sense.

"Because you're all I have left of him," he said finally, an admission, if James Moriarty ever made admissions. In the midst of this ... perhaps he did.

She shook slightly, a soundless sob, covering her mouth and pressing her forehead into her knees. This would have been about the time Sebastian would have pulled her into his lap, tucked her under his chin, let her cry until she had gotten it all out. But now she was alone, with nobody but Jim for company, and he would never comfort another living soul.

But besides Moran's things, and her memories, he was the only thing she had left too.

He watched her curl up, grasp for a hand on her shoulder that wasn't there, and left her to her grief. He walked out the door, closing it behind him, and texted orders that she not be disturbed for any reason, other than by the kitchen to bring her food.

He headed back to the elevator, entered his flat, and put the place in full lockdown. Then he headed for his bed, undressed, laid down, and went to sleep.

She sat up all night, drinking and sobbing. When the sun showed up again, she only managed to move into the bed, where she curled up around his pillow and just tried not to think anymore.

When he woke, it was with the worst craving for a hit he'd had in months. He had a massive headache, and his eyes felt swollen.

He forced himself out of bed, heading into the kitchen to get ice water. Then he sat on his couch and stared out on the city through three layers of bulletproof glass.

Moran had insisted on that.

"I'd expect one, most high-security places. Bring enough equipment and plan enough time to get through two. Three layers is ridiculous. Which is why we're putting it in."

He drank his water and considered finding heroin, but only in passing. Instead, he walked over to his laptop, pulled it up, and connected his phone. He was going to track down who did this. Starting with the text.

Lorna was largely useless for the next week. On the eighth day, she plugged in her dead phone and brought up some messages. She spent some time reading through ones between her and Sebastian, but when she was able to tear herself away again she texted Jim.

What can I do?

He glanced at his phone when it buzzed, and was prepared to ignore it, but saw the number and changed his mind. He picked up and shot back

Come up here.

Then he set it down and went back to work.

His office was a warzone, if a very neat one. Pages and pages of pictures and information were taped up on the walls in meticulous rows. A map of the world and a globe sat side by side, with matching spreads of pins in them, marking seemingly random locations. He had three laptops and a desktop open on his desk, one deep in interpol's database, the others on various sections of his own. He had dragged two spare televisions in in addition to his normal one, and all three were playing different world news broadcasts on low volume.

Lorna got dressed, took one last swallow of liquor from her rapidly diminishing supply, and went upstairs. She knocked on the door, waited for him to beckon her in, and then stepped inside. The room looked about how she had expected it to. Sebastian would have been serious about it, but if she'd made a joke about a spider's web, he might have laughed. She shut the door behind her and stood just over the threshold, not sure what he could want from her here. What help would she be with this compiling of data?

"How's it going, Jim?"

"Abysmally," he said with a soft sigh, closing one laptop and looking up at her. "You look horrendous. How much have you been drinking?" The answer was too much, but he had a few empty liquor bottles around himself, so there wasn't much he could say. "Sit," he said, pulling out the bottle of bourbon he was currently working on and pouring a couple of glasses.

Moran liked this brand.

He closed the bottle and put it back in the cabinet beneath his desk, before picking up his glass and taking a slow sip, closing his eyes and letting it burn.

She sat and took a sip as well, trying and failing not to remember the taste of bourbon on Sebastian's lips. Oh, Christ. Could she even make it a month without him? "I haven't stopped drinking since it happened, but I figure it's better than heroin or killing myself, so at this point there's really no point in worrying about it," she said slowly, her voice just a bit lifeless. She looked down into the amber liquid. "I haven't gotten much sleep. I'm not used to sleeping alone, and the feed was good nightmare fuel." She looked up again, appraising the room. "Have you eaten anything in the past week?"

He considered that, and took another sip of bourbon. He'd had the room on lockdown, so... "No, but I'll get there eventually. I've been busy." Busy getting nowhere. He looked back at her. "He would care, you know. About you being depressed like this. It isn't what he would want. He'd be furious about it, actually. About me, too, really, but I'd just tell him to feck off."

"I know he would care. That doesn't even remotely help, believe me," she sighed, shrugging a little. "I know he would tell me that he's not the only thing I have to live for, but that stopped being true a long time ago. I've had a fairly short life filled with abuse and drugs and he was the only good thing in a shitshow of life." She paused to sip at her bourbon again, surprised Jim was letting her get away with this much. He must have been hurting. "I'll stick around to put the son of a bitch who did this in the ground, but other than that I can't promise anything. I never told him that, but I've known it since we pulled him out of his sister's root cellar."

He nodded a bit. "Oh, I've known long before that. But that was when I first knew for certain I wasn't going to be able to get rid of you." His tone was vaguely exasperated, but mostly for appearance's sake. "I am disappointed, though. I had hoped for better. You have potential." He downed the rest of his whiskey. "His daughter is doing well. Boring, but with occasional instances of interest. With the right training she could replace him fairly successfully in a few years' time."

"Christ; Keira. I keep forgetting about her," she murmured, frowning. She didn't know if she could bear to see her. She had her father's eyes. "Regardless, I don't know if I could ever be the same after this. Work-wise. I just don't care anymore. My quality would drop enough it wouldn't be worth keeping me around anyways." She took another drink. "Keira is in Hits, I know, but you should put her in a rotation in my department. She's young enough to overcome her genetics; she can still learn how to spy without being on a rooftop. In a few years, you could have a very versatile right hand."

"I have one now, but she's given up all hope of survival," he said dryly, staring her down. "I'm not a patient man, Harrison. I'm not waiting a few years for someone competent. You're the best grifter I have. As for versatile, I own Armetti now. You think I don't know your history there? You're clean, you were sober..." He observed the dregs of his drink idly. "If you want to live your life like a teen romance novel, and hurl yourself off some obscure cliff because your beau isn't there to make your heart go pitter-patter anymore, by all means. But then you're not the woman I thought you were. Nor Moran, for that matter. He saw potential in you from the start." He stood suddenly, picking up a green pen and walking over to the wall, scrawling a note in the margin of a photo, and then underlining a bit of text on a page a few feet over. He walked back to his desk, returned the pen and sat down.

She threw back the rest of the bourbon and set it down on the desk, bringing up her hand to rub at her forehand. "We'll see, Jim. But how long will it be until I'm caught again, tortured again, a human wreck again? Are you going to help put me back together?" She looked at him steadily from the other side of the desk. "I'm not capable of doing it by myself. Learned that one real young. I always have to have a vice, or someone to keep me from it. I'm not saying I'm going to off myself for certain, or immediately. But you should be prepared for it."

"Give me three days," he said calmly, reaching up to rub absently at the week-old scruff. "If you ever decide to kill yourself, tell me, and I will start a clock and get things in order. Seventy-two hours later, if you're still certain, then you can go however you choose."

"Fine," she sighed, exasperated, giving a tiny wave of her hand. She probably owed him that much. She couldn't promise that she wouldn't make a rash, grieven decision late one night, but she would do her best. She was silent for a moment, wishing she had more to drink. She wondered if she still had any cigarettes. "I miss him," she said then, her voice quiet. "It's been a week and I already miss him."

He didn't have a response to that, so he reached into the cabinet, withdrew the bourbon, and poured them both a double. He left the bottle on the table this time.

"We'll find whoever did this," he said quietly, after a few sips of whiskey. It was starting to affect him pretty heavily on his empty stomach, but he ignored it. "I'm not going to let it go unanswered."

"I know," she replied, then took a good swallow of the freshly replenished drink. She had to keep stopping herself from thinking of things to say to Sebastian later. How her day was, what Jim had said, something funny she saw, whatever Kelly had set on fire. Being constantly drunk was starting to become more difficult. And it was starting to affect her judgment. Her first instinct was to seek physical comfort of any kind, and with Jim the only person in sight, it was a dangerous line of thought. "Listen, boss... If you need me to do something to help, I'm here. Otherwise I should go. I'm pretty drunk, and I can see myself doing something stupid."

He took a breath, wandering through the drunken, exhausted shanty house that his mind palace had become over the last week. "I need you to look over... everything. All of this. A bit at a time." He looked around. "Whoever this is knows me. Very... very well. This is all custom designed just for me! How lovely." His smile was acrid. "I need different eyes to see what I might be blind to. I know it will take you a while. Come and go as you please."

She nodded. "Alright," she agreed, and stood, picking up the glass. Then she walked over to the far side of the wall and began the daunting task of reading all of it. Yikes.

He sat back to watch her. He had read it all over and over, until his eyes were red and he had it all memorized. He eventually turned his attention to the televisions, watching the news quietly.

Sometime around midnight she had to take a break, and she went back to the flat to sleep. The next morning she came back, a bag of bagels in her hand, which she set on the desk as she passed. Sebastian would have wanted Jim to eat. She returned to the papers.

He ate about half a bagel, grudgingly, but it tasted so good that he ended up eating the other half a few minutes later.

It wasn't for another couple hours that something pinged in her brain. She took a paper off the wall, squinting at it to make sure she was reading it right, and then her stomach twisted. "This is for me."

He was engrossed in his own reading a while later- the latest news from Belgium- when she spoke. His head snapped up, and then he stood. "What do you mean?" he demanded.

"These code names," she frowned, troubled. "'Little Bird,' 'Black Widow,' 'Whore.' These are what my bosses called me. Only I would have seen this combination and been affected. What the fuck?"

He walked over, studying the paper carefully. "Bases of operation named after your various exploits..." He raised an eyebrow. "Flamingo? Is that one as well? If so, I want the story." He stepped back, looking at the other papers. "A message to you. Why? To show that they know you. Another boast...?"

"I don't know..." she whispered, staring at the paper. What was this? Who was doing this, and why? God, were they doing all of this just to get to her? "Jim, tell me this can't be about me," she said in a hushed voice, looking at him with wide eyes. "Tell me they didn't kill him because of me."

"It's possible," he said with a shrug. "But not likely. Their main attack has been against the network. If this were personal, it would be much more obvious. They would have texted you the feed link, for example." He glanced at her, taking in the fear in her gaze and rolling his eyes slightly. "And if it was to get at you? So what? It changes nothing. It doesn't make you culpable."

She relaxed a little and swallowed, nodding. It didn't make her culpable but it was something she would have to live with knowing; that she'd fucked over someone bad enough that they had ended the life of the person most important to her. "Yeah, no, you're right. Sorry," she shook her head a little, and sighed to relieve the tension in her stomach. "So what do we do with this information? They know about us, but what does that mean?"

He walked to the center of the room, looking around slowly. "Not just that they know about us... Who called you Whore? Someone before DeWitt? It certainly wasn't me."

She snorted. "Besides my own name I feel like that's what you called me the most. Maybe putting my own name was too obvious. Flamingo was something that Ford Holmes called me once in a while. The flat I'd moved into had a lot of flamingoes. Just. On the walls, or the furniture..."

"Christ, did I really? That's painfully unoriginal," he muttered with a sigh. "Still. To have all of this... They've been watching you for years at the very least. None of these are written down anywhere. They would have had to have seen personal interactions, or talked to people who had seen them... this isn't someone who just stepped up to the plate."

"No, and that worries me," she frowned, taping the paper back to the wall. "Do they not have anything personal about you up here?" Honestly, she was glad that neither of them brought up the fact that maybe, just maybe, Sebastian had said something before he died. She didn't want to consider that.

"This whole bloody thing is personal," he snorted, annoyed. "A nest of dead ends and rabbit warrens that shows a disturbing intuition as to how I think, how I plan, how I react..." He rubbed at his eyes and then pushed a hand through his hair. It was disheveled, like the rest of him. His office was put together, but he very much wasn't. "I haven't made the announcement that Moran is dead," he said suddenly. "I need to be ready to name his replacement in hits and restructure the necessary sections immediately, or all hell will break loose."

She muttered a swear, rubbing her eyes. "Who are you planning on putting in charge? I know plenty of people who want it, but I don't know if they're even close to qualified. I can stopgap as best as I can, if you need me to, until you find someone better."

"I have a few options, but all of them involve bringing someone in from a different branch, or from outside. Armetti had occurred to me. Or giving you Hits and bringing someone in to take grifting." For that, he was considering Adler, but she didn't need to know that.

She shook her head. "Don't bring Armetti here. He'll be useful in America. You already lost one hardened hitman to me, you don't need another. And I would probably end up killing him. I'm sure Moran's death will make him think he has a wonderful opportunity," she said acidly, half concerned with the professional, half dreading someone trying to make her move on. She couldn't handle that pressure, that insult to his memory. "If you can't find someone better, I'll take Hits. Godspeed to anyone who has to take over the bag of cats thats Grifting."

He nodded slightly. "I'll look into the situation a bit longer, but that may be my best course of action at the moment, even if it's temporary. I'll inform you when I've made a decision. Unless you have any suggestions on candidates for either department?"

She rubbed her eyes, shaking her head a little. "I don't know. I don't have faith in anyone right now. There's plenty of good people in both departments but none of them are leaders. As for anyone outside this branch I don't know enough to decide," she sighed, casting a depressed glance over the wall of papers.

He nodded a little, and then waved a hand to dismiss her. "For the time being, then, you'll take Hits. I can't afford to delay this any longer. The network is growing stagnate. I'll evaluate the situation today and make the announcement tonight."

"Alright," she agreed, running a hand through her hair. "You want me to keep reading over this stuff or get out of your way?"

He sighed, considering the room, then stood. "Keep reading. I'll work from my flat." In truth, he needed a break from the walls of unreadable futility. It was massively draining and frustrating.

She nodded with a quiet sigh, and moved to return to the wall she'd left. "Oh, and Jim? For both our sakes, please, shower."

He glared at her, rage rising in him almost instantaneously. He considered her for a long moment, then took a slow breath. He didn't have any way of threatening her right now. Death had no meaning to her, and pain would drive her away. He needed her, for the moment. So he just said softly, evenly, "I'll keep that in mind, whore," and headed for his flat.

She snorted, shaking her head and returning to the work, utterly unaffected by him. Nothing would get to her for the foreseeable future. Not when she'd lost so much.

He put out the email that night, after he had received Adler's acceptance. He saw no reason to treat the address any differently than his other occasional network-wide bulletins. To do otherwise would show weakness. The message was cold, clear, and brief:

To all departments:

Sebastian Moran is dead. The new head of the Hits department will be Lorna Harrison. The new head of Grifting will be Irene Adler. All other personnel adjustments will be handled by security.

M

Lorna checked her phone as it gave a one-two buzz; the vibration she had for any of Jim's messages or emails. She read it neutrally at first, and then felt sick, fingers tightening on the phone. Of course it would be fucking Irene Adler. That bitch had shown up so soon before they'd been called back to London - it made her suspicious, and it wasn't a feeling she enjoyed. She left Jim's office, deciding that she couldn't focus on anything else right now, and left for the common room to scrounge up some food, and to make a public appearance. She needed to prove she was still kicking.

The common room wasn't full, but it was more populated than usual, a dull roar of conversation. Almost everyone had phones out, and those that didn't were reading over other's shoulders.

The roar died off at a stagger when she walked in, eyes turning towards her warily, uncertain. A few people murmured congratulations, and one flustered woman offered condolences, but for the most part people kept their mouths shut.

She ignored them for the most part, only giving the room a cold scan with her eyes before turning for the community pantry and looking for something microwaveable. She settled on making a cup of macaroni and cheese, the beep of the microwave buttons loud in the silent room. As she waited for it to cook, she turned and leaned against the counter, eyes going to movement at the door. Short, dark hair; blue eyes. She sighed. Keira.

"Everyone else out. Not you."

Keira didn't seem surprised, just adjusted her pack over her shoulder as the collected people filed quickly out.

The teen walked into the room and over to a couch, dropping her bag and unzipping it, before pulling out a bottle of good vodka and walking over, unscrewing the cap with a small crack as the seal broke. She took a long pull.

"Took it from his desk. Want some?" She offered the bottle in Harrison's direction, expression inscrutable.

She didn't answer for a moment as the microwave went off, turning and pulling out her bowl before she turned and took the bottle, taking two swift chugs before handing it back. "Has anyone taken anything from his desk, or just you?" She asked then, grabbing a fork and beginning to eat her food, eyes flicking definitively to Keira.

"Just me," she said, taking another swig. "I locked the door when I left. Unless security comes around to get in, which I doubt they will. Not now that you're in charge." Her eyes looked over Lorna for a minute before she said "Who fucked up?"

"Jim sent him to check out a situation in Belgium. Alone. They had him on false charges almost immediately. They executed him a week ago. Lethal injection," Lorna said, almost robotically. She ate more of her mac and cheese. "Everybody we sent in went dark. There was nothing we could do at the end."

"Who's they?" Another swig, before she set the bottle on the counter and walked over to sit on the arm of a couch.

She followed, sitting on the couch proper. "We don't know. They had control over a court, though. They sent us the prison feed of his death."

She nodded a little. "I want to see that," she said quietly, though her voice trembled just slightly.

She looked at Kiera directly instead of out of the corner of her eye. It was painful; she looked so much like Moran. "Why?"

She cleared her throat, and didn't look at Harrison before she finally said "He wouldn't want me to be afraid of it. Of how he died. Besides. Maybe he gave us a clue about who did this to him."

She nodded, rubbing her eyes. "I don't have it on me. I'll send it to you once I get it. Don't share it unnecessarily, I don't know how public we want it to be. I don't want it to exist at all, but there's nothing I can do about it."

She nodded a little, looking at Lorna for a minute before standing suddenly and sticking out a hand to help Lorna up. "Come on. I'm going to get my hair bleached and then find a dive and get fucking wasted, and I'm not stupid enough to do the second part alone. It's not alcoholism if it's social, and something tells me you need the drinks as badly as I do."

She gave a startled laugh. "Why the fuck are you bleaching your hair? And you're, what, seventeen? I guess you haven't learned that dive bars aren't worth it. If you want to get wasted we'll do it here. Better liquor, anyway," she shook her head taking her hand and allowing herself to be helped up.

Her expression pinched a little at the age crack. She would eighteen in a month, but that wasn't the point. "I'm bleaching my hair to honor my father, I'm going to a dive bar because they don't look twice at fake IDs, and I'm going out because my dad just died and I can't show emotion here or I'll get eaten alive." Her words were barbed for a second, before she closed off again. "Are you coming or not?"

"I don't mean the common room, Keira, have some sense. We'll drink in our flat. Look over his rifles, drink his bourbon, listen to his music. God knows I've shown plenty of emotion in there," she sighed, gathering up her empty plate and walking over to the counter to put it in the sink for someone else to deal with. "But the last thing I want to do is go to a dive bar in his memory. I'm a recovering heroin addict, again. He wouldn't have been pleased if I went somewhere it was readily available."

She hesitated, glancing around. "I didn't mean the common room either. This whole place... Nowhere's fucking private. I guess your place is." She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Fine. Fine, your place, then. I just need to get the fuck away from everyone."

"He had the place swept for bugs every month or something," she snorted, then waved a hand. "Now where are we bleaching your hair? I can do it, if you want."

She was surprised at the offer, considering Lorna warily for just a moment before she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

"I probably have some in the flat, come on," she said, beckoning her with a wave of her hand, and leading her back towards the elevator. Moran would laugh if he saw this. Lorna accepting a sentimental aside from his daughter, inviting her into their flat. Drinking to his memory. She still had a few bottles of liquor in the flat. There were a couple that she couldn't bring herself to touch.

Keira followed Harrison quietly, warily. They had never gotten along, but that felt petty now in the wake of Moran's death.

It hadn't sunk in yet. She could feel it sitting there, on the surface, waiting for something to break the last barriers and send it crashing into her full-force.

Dead.

It wasn't like she'd known her father well, but she'd been starting to. And she had seen the potential. Had had aspirations of rising to become his second at Hits, maybe taking the department over so he could focus on guarding Jim...

Now he was gone. Gone.

They stood in silence in the elevator, lacking any common ground besides Moran to talk about. When they reached the right floor Lorna led her out and scanned into the flat. She walked in, leaving the door open for Keira behind her. "Let's do it mostly in the bathroom. I don't want to get bleach on the furniture."

She nodded, following after Harrison and studying the flat carefully. It showed a side of her father she'd never seen- what he was like in the comfort of his own home. It was surprisingly similar to what she had usually seen. Careful and stark organization, quiet elegance, guns. The kitchen was much better supplied than she would have thought, carefully hung pans and a variety of knives and tools and spices. She wondered if it was Moran or Lorna who liked to cook. Both?

The bathroom was spacious, and she looked around in appreciation. The flat was much nicer than her one-room cell in the lower levels, though that was to be expected.

Lorna crouched in front of the sink and started rooting through the cabinet, pulling out several different boxes of varying shades of red hair dye and finally coming up with a box of bleaching solution before piling the rest of it back in. She didn't hesitate to show her back to Keira. She didn't think she had any reason to distrust her, and even if she did, she no longer cared enough. She was exhausted. Moran was gone.

She stood, setting the box on the counter. "Alright. I assume you showered within the last 48 hours? It'll work best if you're not filthy."

"Yeah, this morning," she said quietly, waving off the question. This morning. That seemed like a long time away. Ten hours ago, when she hadn't known her father was rotting in some prison graveyard.

She nodded, grabbing a random towel off the rack (it wasn't random, it was hers, not Moran's) and handed it to Keira. "Wrap that around your neck and shoulders then, and we'll get going," she said, opening up the box and cracking open the bottle, pouring the chemicals together and then pulling on the gloves included in the kit. It was going to be even harder to look at Kiera after this. Right now, at most angles she could pretend Sebastian's features weren't right there, staring her in the face. Once she was blonde, though, it would be impossible. "Have you gotten good use out of that motorcycle he got you?"

She smiled a little at that, just the hint of a smirk curling the corner of her mouth. She wrapped the towel around her shoulders and nodded a little. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Got my license, and I've been doing races... I'm good."

She chuckled, pouring the solution into the tiny tray and picking up the brush, picking up a good amount on the bristles and starting to paint the paste into her hair. "He'd get a kick out of that, I'm sure," she smirked, wrinkling her nose as bleach wafted up it. "Your scalp may start burning; that happens."

She nodded just a little, minimally, cautious of the brush on her head. "It's fine. Just be careful about my neck behind my left ear. Roadburn." The scrape had been ragged when it happened, full of gravel and dirt, but now it was near healed.

She frowned once her eyes found it, tilting her head forward with a finger to the back of the head. "Have you been wearing proper equipment? You're aware of just how many people a year die from motorcycle accidents, correct?"

"Yes, mum," she snorted. Though sarcastic, the word planted a boot in her gut she wasn't expecting. "Just wiped out during a race and hit the ground funny. I'm fine."

"Alright, as long as Sebastian Moran's only kid doesn't get taken out by a glorified bicycle," she rolled her eyes, letting her head return to normal and continuing to apply the bleach. It was weird, Keira making fun of her that way. It was something Sebastian had used to do, but it was a double-edged sword coming from her. As his, what, girlfriend, partner, live-in, she was the closest thing to a parent the girl had left.

She rolled her eyes, but didn't comment, watching in the mirror as Harrison spread the paste around. Finally she asked "Why did you wait a week to tell us?" To tell me?

"I left this flat for the first time in a week yesterday," she said quietly. "Jim stopped me from shooting myself. I've probably come very close to alcohol poisoning this week. When I got myself kind of together me and Jim spoke. We couldn't announce his death without having another head of hits in place, the power vacuum would have sowed discord, and we can't handle that at the moment." She was silent for a moment, then sighed. "I thought about telling you, but, honestly, I couldn't face the idea of seeing you. You look... so much like him."

She listened to the confession, surprised deep down that Harrison was telling her all of this. But it made sense. The woman had apparently really loved Moran. Still did. She nodded a little at the comment about her looks, still watching their doubles in the mirror. "Yeah. My mum always said that, too. That I looked like him."

"I'm glad it's not just me," she muttered, carefully working around the mostly healed scrape on the girl's neck. "If you had any questions about him you want answered, now is the time. I don't know everything, but I know a lot of it, and I can guess pretty well."

She sighed, then laughed a little. The vodka was starting to hit her, and the laugh sounded off. "This is some bullshit," she muttered. She closed her eyes for a moment, and told herself the burning was bleach fumes. "I don't know. What the fuck should I ask?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. What have you ever wondered about? I'm still not even sure if he could dance or not..."

"Not wondering if he could dance," she muttered. "What got him into organized crime? To the Network?"

"Indirectly, his father," she said, voice carefully devoid of emotion. Touchy subject. "He joined the military to spite his father. Learned the tools of the trade. When he got kicked out, he started picking up bodyguard jobs or some shit."

She nodded just a little. Lorna set the empty bowl aside and Keira headed for the kitchen to find aluminium foil. "Did he care at all about... That I existed?" she asked, more quietly, finding what she was looking for and ripping off a piece, wrapping it around her head.

"I assume you mean after he found out you did exist," she said, following her out and pulling off the latex gloves to throw in the trash can. "Which he did, at least as much as he knew how. He was given a choice about whether or not to take you into the network, and he chose to take you in. I can't say he had a sense of fatherly affection, but I think I can say without a reasonable doubt that he cared about you more than his father ever cared about him, even if that is an astoundingly low bar."

She accepted that for what it was, walking over to rinse the bits of paste that had gotten onto her hands off in the sink. She let the water run for longer than she should have, just feeling it slide over her hands, cool and distracting.

Finally she shut it off. "I didn't really know him at all. I shouldn't be bothered. But I am."

"He was a man you've heard about most of your life, whether or not you knew who he really was. All children add emotional attachment to what are essentially fictional characters," she said quietly, opening up the liquor cabinet and picking out a bottle of middle-shelf vodka.

"But I'm not a child." She dried her hands. "I'm a member of the best criminal network in the world. I survived the culling. I should be better than this. He wouldn't have cared if I got killed."

"Everyone has lingering childhood sentiments, Keira, even Sebastian. And he would have cared. He might not have admitted it to anyone, but I think he was pleased with the idea of a progeny," she replied, moving over to sit on the sofa.

She didn't respond to that, choosing instead to focus on the couch Lorna had just sat on. It was, unlike the rest of the apartment, rather in shambles- stained and torn and surrounded by empty bottles of alcohol.

"Was he really all you had to care about?"

"At some point," she said quietly, rubbing her fingers over the tear in the couch that she had made. "Who else? What else?"

She shrugged. "Seems odd. That's all. To only have one person in your life that makes an intact skull seem worth it." She walked over to pick up the vodka, took a sip, frowned. "We should have brought the other bottle up." She took another swig.

"How many people have you met who you'd stay alive for, Keira?" She challenged, raising an eyebrow at her. "And why are you insulting my vodka?"

"A. I am not insulting your vodka, merely stating that the other bottle was better. Which it was. He had it around for some special occasion, I think. It was in a nice box. And B... A lot of people?" She felt vaguely sorry for the woman sitting across from her. "Plenty of the kids I went through culling with. We go out drinking, watch each other's backs. Both of my girlfriends- yes they know about each other- My cousin Matthew back in Ireland, some of the guys I race with, the rest are tools... You need to get a dog or something."

She laughed, rubbing her eyes. "What's that like? Living a normal life until your parents died? Keira, my entire family were criminals. I grew up with my step dad using me to ferry drugs. My real dad left my mom to go do hits. She was the one calculating all the money coming in and out of my step father's tiny drug operation. During the start of our relationship, your father got my mother killed. I shot my own brother in the head after he tried to shoot Sebastian. Who, incidentally, also killed my father, with my blessing." She paused to take a swig of vodka, her stomach burning.

"I've been at the head of the grifting department for years, which means I don't have and can't make friends. I killed the man I used to distract myself from Seb. I can't do drugs, and the drink won't work forever. I don't have the loyalty to Jim that He did. There's nothing for me here, and there was never a chance of there being anything. I grew up and learned to kill my friends and family in order to survive. But what's the point? What's the point if the only thing I've ever really loved is gone?"

Keira was quiet for a while, sitting in a chair. Then she shrugged. "Whatever you want it to be, I guess," she said finally, the tin foil on her head crinkling slightly. "I mean, there's a whole world of people and things. You're head of hits now. You can travel wherever you want, run the department however you like as long as you don't piss off the Boss. Hell, you could get a nice apartment and take painting classes and talk about feelings. There's a lot out there."

"I'm the head of hits," she repeated, bitterly, "And that means that I don't have the time to do anything like that. It means now instead of watching out for spies I have to watch out for knives. There's a whole world of people and things, but I have never had access to them. They have access to me. Or they used to. Christ, Keira, don't you get it? After all the shit I've seen, after all the sexual assaults in the past few years, the near deaths, the torture, the head games - I went through all of that with him. There is no After. There is no leisure time, no place of safety, no person on this Earth anymore who I can trust. If you have to suffer, you shouldn't do it alone. It's been a week and I'm already fucking sick of it," she spat, a few tears spilling over her cheeks. Her chest hurt, like it had been ripped in two. "He was everything that made me feel safe and at home and worthwhile. And now he's gone."

Another silence. She watched the broken woman across from her, trying to pinpoint what she wanted to say. Finally she took a breath. "So...?" She shrugged. "'Safe' and 'home' and 'worthwhile' are luxuries you can live without. I haven't felt any of those since my mother died. She was gone and there went 'home'. I followed my father and ended up in drug-trafficking, so there goes 'safe'. I find my father, and the first chance he gets he puts me into the culling and cuts all ties. There goes 'worthwhile.'" Her tone wasn't bitter, but it was perhaps a touch frustrated. "You didn't suffer through those alone. He was there. The reason you're suffering through this alone is because you didn't tell anyone. Now I'm here and you aren't alone again. He died. It's horrible. I want him back. But there is a point to living without him. There is."

"He suffered with me. That's part of it," she whispered, wiping the tears off her face. She couldn't believe she was falling apart in front of Moran's teenage daughter. "I've lost too much. There's no one else who can ever grasp that or what it means to me. I don't have the will to keep doing this without him. Why are you trying to convince me otherwise?"

She laughed, exasperated. "Because you're a human being who deserves a good life. And because my father loved you, and if he's watching right now from his VIP suite in hell, he's screaming at you to stop being stupid."

"I don't know if I believe any of that, but there's no reason for me to argue it. I don't care about it. I'm too tired," she sighed, grabbing the vodka again and taking another swig.

Keira watched her, briefly considered removing the alcohol from the decision but decided that that would make things worse. Instead she stood, starting to walk around and pick up empties, bringing them to the recycle bin.

"What are you doing?" Lorna asked, watching Keira wearily. This all felt pointless.

"Cleaning up," she said matter-of-factly. She needed to do something . Standing still just meant thinking, and thinking was a problem at the moment. She finished clearing up the bottles and looked around for a moment for something else, before finally walking over to sit again. She was definitely buzzed, but suddenly she didn't want to be drunk anymore. Her head was hot. "I should rinse this out before it burns my hair off," she said, standing suddenly and heading for the bathroom.

She waved her hand, indicating agreement and sipping more of the vodka, sprawled back against the couch. She was exhausted.

She showered quickly, drying off with a borrowed towel and getting out, looking at herself in the mirror.

Her father stared back.

She took a slow breath, closing her eyes tightly and swallowing back everything that wanted to break out. She couldn't do this, not right now. She'd go out, get away, find somewhere no one would question a girl crying in a corner.

She wiped away the few tears that escaped and straightened, taking a breath and roughing her hands through the short blond crop of hair. Then she headed out into the living room quietly.

Lorna practically flinched at the sight before her, her chest wringing itself in knots. "Christ," she breathed, "It's like looking at a ghost. I don't... I don't know if you can be here."

"I know," she said, straightening her shirt. "I'm going. I'll see you around, I guess. Don't kill yourself. And don't forget to send me that video." She headed for the door quickly.

She nodded, ducking her head, trying not to look but wanting to, wanting to see that familiar face come back around the corner and make a wisecrack, talk about cooking and Jim and sniper rifles. She pressed a hand to her mouth as the door opened, stifling a sob.

Keira headed to the elevator and hit the down button, but then eyed the stairs and took them instead, running down them rapidly, full of energy to burn. She hit the garage level and headed for her motorcycle, pulling her helmet on over her damp hair and revving the bike up, heading out onto the street.

You were a vision in the morning when the light came through
I know I've only felt religion when I've lied with you
He said, "You'll never be forgiven 'til your boys are too"
And I'm still waking every morning but it's not with you

- Halsey - Colors (Stripped) -