A/N Hey guys! We're fudging the recovery a little bit - as I understand it liver transplants and cancer recovery are a fucking hell of a shitstorm to heal from, and requires a lot of caution and care - well, a Little hard to do here, huh? So, yes, we're fudging it. I want Seb back, You want Seb back, We All want Seb back.

You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave

- The Eagles - Hotel California -

It took him another two weeks before they would let him leave the medical bay, and the fact that he didn't argue too much about it sat heavy on him. He put up perfunctory protests, but his heart wasn't in it. The medical staff might not have known better, but the boss certainly did, and so did Lorna.

In truth, he wasn't eager for his stay to be over. The hospital bed had become a sort of between space- a pause in his life where he didn't need to think about his ruined body, his shakey reputation, his retirement... The bed was a bubble between him and reality, and reality was shit.

Still, not arguing much was one thing, but when he was finally free he wasn't the sort of person to linger or wallow. Mostly-subconscious reservation aside, the idea of his actual bed and a room without fucking monitors beeping was as close to heaven as he was ever going to get. They tried to insist on a wheelchair until he offered to improvise chiropractic work on the nurses, and they let him go unmolested.

Lorna was waiting in the lobby for him. When she saw him, moving slowly but under his own power, she stifled a sigh, but said nothing. She knew his need to be an immovable object in a sea of wavering fools was ever-present, and, sometimes, not worth fighting him about. He needed to get his confidence back, after all. Still, she met him halfway, just in case his body tried to topple over on him. "Hey, I had a break in work, so I thought I'd come see you. I've got sushi in the flat - got some of your favorites when I heard they were letting you out today," she grinned, a bounce in her step. It was good to see him recovering. Better than good - it was a fucking relief. She didn't want to have to learn to live without him.

He gave her a grin, trying not to let the walk wind him. He'd been walking around the ward the last few weeks, working his strength back up, but his endurance was slow to follow, his lungs still healing. "Fuck that sounds good," he said, heading with as solid a stride as he could manage for the elevator. His voice, at least, was almost back to normal.

His voice being pretty much back to its regular self was also heart-warming for her - she'd always very much liked his voice, as evidenced by the fact that used in certain tones it could turn her on nigh-instantaneously, and it was a comfort to have it back. "Good! It's my little 'welcome back' gift to you, that, and, well," she smirked, holding open the door to the elevator lobby for him, shrugging one-shouldered. "That can wait five minutes."

"Should I be concerned?" he asked dryly as he pressed the button for the elevator. He leaned casually against the wall, frustrated that he was already tired.

"I would hazard that concerned is not going to be your reaction," she chuckled, stepping into the lift as the doors opened.

"If it's another cat, I'm divorcing you," he said mildly, following and hitting the button for their floor.

She barked out a startled laugh, and shook her head. "No, it's not another cat. Magpie was a special circumstance. This is..." she hummed thoughtfully in thought for a second, leaning her hip against the elevator wall. "Well, I don't want to spoil it, now, do I?"

"No, probably not," he agreed mildly, though he was more curious than he was willing to let on. "Fuck, it feels good to be out of there."

"I bet. I mean, I get it, having spent my fair share of time in infirmaries and hating it," she replied, pushing off the wall as the doors opened onto their floor. "I'm glad you're out, too." The bed was too empty without him. She didn't want to get used to having so much room.

He headed out the door at a tired plod, trying to keep his posture straight until he was sure there was no one on the floor, then sagging slightly into a more relaxed posture. "Did Jim renovate... at all? He kept... threatening to now... that the place was open... for so long."

"No, but he did send me an email asking me to pick a time window to do it in. I think the point was to wait until you could direct most of it," she said, keying into the flat and letting him in first before following. "Help yourself to the sushi, let me get your gift."

He grunted his thanks, plodding into the kitchen and grabbing the to-go containers out of the refrigerator, before sitting heavily at the table. He popped them open, starting to examine the spoils, and let out a hungry groan. "Fuck, it's been too long since I've had real food."

"I know how that is," she replied as she came into the kitchen a moment later, a thin but rather large envelope in her hand. "I don't think my stomach really ever got over a year of MREs," she added, and handed him the envelope. It was about calendar sized.

This was because it was a calendar. Featuring her, in lingerie, posing with a dozen of Sebastian's sniper rifles. (She thought it was very funny, mostly, but also she did know him.)

He opened it up, and smirked, tearing the cellophane to open it properly and starting to flick through, chuckling. "Now here's the question. Where to hang it?" He paused to admire a particularly scant picture. "Who shot these?"

She dragged the table's other chair over to sit by him and look with him, leaning her elbow on the tabletop. She chuckled at his second question. "Kelly, of course, who else? Like I'm going to go to Hits for this?" She scoffed, still highly amused. "Maybe hang it up in your home office? The favorite off-site flat one, perhaps? I'd say in your office here so that your peons can only glimpse it on their way out, but I think Keira might object to you trying to take their office for a gag."

"Probably true," he agreed with a nod, leaning back. "You got updated on that, then? I kept meaning to ask, kept forgetting. I'm still not entirely sure what they're on about with the whole gender-shift thing, but it's not like it's a hard change to make, so what the fuck do I care."

She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, chuckling dryly. "God, with all the grifting missions you've been forced on with me, sometimes I forget you're not actually from my department. We're all used to it, there. I think a quarter of the department doesn't buy into the binary system everyone else is used to," she snorted, and got up to grab herself a plate from the cupboards before sitting back down next to him and starting to snag sushi pieces. She could sit on the other side, sure, but then she would be giving up closeness to him. She wasn't ready for that. If ever, honestly.

"Yeah, yeah. Pile of bent weirdos, you lot," he muttered fondly, before falling silent to concentrate on more effectively delivering food to his mouth.

She smirked but fell into the companionable silence for a while, just enjoying her food. Eventually she finished, and leaned back, feeling quite full. "So," she said, casually. "How are you doing?" She'd give him a chance to deflect, but she was going to ask anyway. She wanted to know how he was doing, with his new status.

He looked at her, debating the wisdom of ignoring the question, but he knew better by this point. "Tired," he said finally. He was full. He hadn't been able to eat nearly as much sushi as he used to, which wasn't surprising given that he'd lost almost five stone.

She nodded a little. That was a good enough answer for her. Tired was a good enough expression for what was left of them after all these bad turns. "Movie?" She asked simply. "Something else?"

"If we can shift the tele to the bedroom, you've convinced me," he said with a chuckle. "I want to lay in my proper bed."

She grinned, standing. "I think we could put the tv on the dresser, don't you?" She asked cheerfully, and headed for the living room, with a "Can you put the sushi away?" thrown back over her shoulder to him.

He didn't bother responding, just stood and started packing the food away with careful movements. This felt strange. This morning he had been hooked up to wires and tubes, in a hospital bed for the fuck-knew-how-many-ith day in a row, and now he was... Home. More or less. Eating sushi and heading to bed to crash and watch a movie.

She hauled the television into the other room and was hooking it up when he walked in, humming a song that was stuck in her head quietly to herself. She knew not everything was fixed, not everything was better. Euros was still out there - still knew that they were trying to field her. Mycroft still had some way of getting into their own damn network, by the evidence of Sebastian's liver failure he'd presented her in that helicopter. Armetti was losing his marbles and doing gods knew what over in America. But Sebastian wasn't actively dying. He was here. Some part of her brain told her that with him alive and decommissioned - that maybe there was an after to all of this. It wasn't a cognizant thought. She didn't actively think this. It was just a sacrilegious, traitorous thought, like marriage had once been, that flitted in and out unattended and uninvited. She looked up as he entered her field of view, and smiled. "What are you in the mood for?"

"I'm going to fall asleep in the first five minutes," he muttered with a half smile. He'd learned not to laugh- it always hurt his lungs, or his incisions, or both. "Put on one of your stupid bird documentaries or something."

" You're stupid," she muttered under her breath, hiding her smirk by turning to look at the tv as she started to fiddle with it, standing, grabbing the remote, and walking backwards to flop onto the bed. "Bird documentary it is. You need your rest anyways."

He didn't bother arguing. He barely had the energy to strip down and climb into bed. He slid into sheets that seemed softer than ever, even though he knew his hospital bed had had the best, thanks to Jim. The mattress, either way, was heavenly. There was only so comfortable a hospital bed mattress could get when it needed to flex with moving machinery. His familiar, expensive mattress felt better than sex.

She climbed up next to him and set the volume on the television low - she knew once he conked out he'd probably take her with him - and curled up into him, head resting on his shoulder.

Sebastian was asleep before the show's theme had finished.

Two weeks later, Jim was standing in front of his large office windows, looking out over the London fog. He was angry, but it was a cool, calm sort of anger. He was past rage, past fury, and had settled into the molten slag of wrath.

Keira was behind him, waiting, but he ignored them for now. They were young. Still learning. But they had potential. He didn't want to kill them for saying something stupid.

"Send for Moran and Harrison. This requires more than your current expertise."

Lorna got the message from Keira over the intercom as she made coffee, and set down the beans to head into the bedroom and wake a late-sleeping Sebastian, her words quiet in the dark room.

"Jim wants a meeting. Now, I think."

He woke slowly at her nudge, but the words woke him better than the coffee he could smell would. "Shit... I wonder what's happening?" he muttered, getting up with relative speed. He'd been pushing himself the last few weeks, but finally his body was responding by strengthening slightly rather than just fading into utter exhaustion. He couldn't jog really, with the incisions still healing, but he could go for long walks, and move through martial arts forms if he was slow and careful. It'd given him something to focus on besides the abject boredom of recovery.

"No idea. You know how little information we get when he's angry. And he's definitely angry, judging by Keira's voice. It doesn't seem to be our fault, though," she said, dressing herself on the other side of the bed and then meeting him by the door to the bedroom as he finished. "Also, I know it's a weird time to bring this up, but should we put Keira through a couple rounds in Grifting when we get a chance? You ended up needing the experience eventually."

He nodded. "I think it's a good idea... We'll need to see what Jim thinks." He finished buttoning up his shirt over the tight medical binder that kept all of his stitches in place, and headed for the kitchen. "Coffee?"

"It might be ready by now, if not, we'll grab some from the employee lounge if Jim is sending us out," Lorna said, following behind him. "Well, me, I guess?"

He glanced back at her, and his steps faltered for just a moment, before he returned his attention to coffee. "I guess," he agreed, not letting himself think much further on that subject. It might not be necessary. There was a little coffee in the carafe, and he poured half a mug for something to do.

She let him have what was there, considering she'd been up longer, and checked her watch. They were running on schedule, but she knew better than to let them slip behind. "Bets on what it is?"

He shook his head. "None. I'm not as up on current affairs as I'd like... Security is still figuring out what the fuck to do with me as far as information access."

She nodded. That made sense - still, she bet that they would land on giving him more access than they planned on. He knew a lot. When he'd nearly lost his finger, she'd meant it when she said they wouldn't be better off without him. "Alright, well, chug the coffee or let me finish it, we should get going. I bet Keira would appreciate us being early."

He smirked a little. "I don't know... Let her sweat it out a little. Being in a r- Shit , them, let them- Being in a room with a pissed-off Jim for that long is a skill to learn." He took another sip of his coffee, but handed it over to her and headed for the door anyway.

She shook her head in an amused sort of disapproval and threw back the rest of the coffee with a smack of her lips before she set it down and followed after him, catching up in a few quick strides. "I have warring instincts about it, honestly. I want to shield them from it, but you make a decent point in that they'd probably live a longer life if they learned now how to deal with it," she sighed, following him out of the flat and to the elevator. "You agree on a time frame with Jim to remodel, by the way?"

"I told him to do it whenever the fuck he wants, as long as he can stand us living at my offsite flat for the time being," he said, calling the lift and reaching up to straighten his tie. He needed a haircut, but he hadn't had a chance.

She chuckled, stepping into the lift with him, hands in her slacks pockets. "I like that. It's fun telling him to work around us for a change. And yes, I'm aware of the blasphemy."

"Careful," he warned wryly as he joined her and the lift doors closed. He scanned his thumb and eye- Jim had specifically instructed he be left access to his office- and the lift started upward. "You're still gainfully employed. I've been put out to pasture, I have a few benefits."

"I know, you lucky thing," she snorted playfully. In truth, she did wonder if that wasn't actually the case, if she got killed before she earned the same retirement he had. She knew he would go on without her, as he should, but they'd both seen what each other's deaths would do to the other.

He was wondering much the same thing, but their mutual musings were cut short by the lift coming to a stop and the door sliding open. Crossing the familiar six paces from lift to office door was almost soothing in its familiarity, and he knocked on a spot on the wood worn shiny by repeated abuse.

Keira opened the door a moment later, their face blank but not unduly frightened, so Lorna guessed Jim hadn't outwardly exploded. Yet, anyway. They stepped back to let them in, and she saw Jim past his desk - standing, looking out the window, a tense set to his shoulders. "What happened?" she asked simply, as soon as she was close enough not to shout.

"Armetti," Jim said crisply. "He's gone. Vanished. We have nothing on him."

She grimaced, fingers squeezing into tights fists for a moment before releasing again. He's a handsome Italian mob boss with a major limp, how hard can he be to find? went through her head, but she wisely didn't say this. She didn't know what to say. She glanced over at Sebastian, then focused back on Jim. "Can we do something to lure him out? Fuck, have we asked his enemies if they went and killed him?"

"Asked? No," Jim said, turning around with a dangerous glint. "Why didn't I think of that stunningly obvious method? I have a network of criminals that spans continents- why not use it for a change? Mary and Christ, Harrison, how have we gotten on without you these past months?"

"I deserve that," she agreed easily, face neutral, nodding a little. "I can't make a good suggestion without knowing what's been done," she continued, looking to Keira and then back to Jim. "But I guess the quick answer is everything you've had access to - so. Again. Luring him out." She lifted a hand and pointed a finger at her own face. "I'm probably the best bet, right? Can we start with my calling his personal phone before we leap to faking my dismemberment or something similar?"

"I think your dismemberment has been faked quite enough recently, don't you?" Jim retorted dryly. Sebastian hid his confusion for the most part, but his gaze flickered to Lorna for a moment. Moriarty sighed dismissively. "You were rather not in a condition to deal with the situation, Tiger. Focus."

He did, but flagged it for discussion. "I agree, sir. He might pick up a call from Lorna's number-"

"I very much doubt it," Moriarty grit out, his expression shifting mercurially from dismissive back to livid. "You weren't listening, Tiger. I didn't say he had left. I said he was gone . We have nothing on him . Not his current location, not his past locations. There is no birth certificate, no records of residence, no bank accounts- but fuck all of that, because someone erased him from our records. We have nothing on him ." By now Jim's voice was almost a hiss. "Were it not for my flawless memory and Harrison's cunt, he may as well not exist."

Lorna found breathing was not as easy as it was supposed to be for a second as she absorbed this information. She forced in a breath and her eyes zeroed in on Jim. "It has to be her. The Holmes sister. She knows we're looking for her, why not make a move now? Kill Armetti, or convert him; we already know she converted an entire island that was specifically made to keep her in - why not this? Perfect timing, isn't it? Vincent is already losing his fucking mind, isn't he?" She shook her head, teeth grit together. "Oooh, I should have killed him years ago."

"It's a touch late for should, wouldn't you say?" The boss spat, finally making his way to sit behind his desk. "And yes. Of course it's Euros. Who else? The question is why? How does he fall into her plans? Is he still alive? Is he a tool or a hit?"

Lorna shifted to lean against one of the chairs across from Jim. It felt weird, assuming Sebastian's normal place in the conversation as the main backboard for Jim's brain games. But Sebastian had been out of the loop for a while, and who knew Vincent Armetti better than her? She didn't know Euros, but that was what Jim was for. "I don't see what we can do other than wait for him to reappear or her to make a move, then. Other than call up Mycroft and ask him to guess what information Euros can't get from her cell. What does she need on us that Armetti has? Panic plans we have in America? Some resource that we're only getting from him? Something on me?" She shook her head a little, crossing her arms. "I don't think he's irreplaceable enough to have been killed. She must know that him gone alone won't cripple anything."

"There are any number of reasons to keep him or kill him. Speculation without further information at this venture is nearly pointless, at least when it comes to Euros." The admission was clearly bitter. Jim didn't like being out-thought. Luckily enough, it almost never happened. "But whatever she did this for, I want to be prepared. Try calling him... let's see where that gets us. It's possible he doesn't know he's been removed from our system."

"Wouldn't that be a nice surprise," she muttered, pulling her phone out of her pocket and quickly finding Armetti's personal number in her contacts. She hit the green call button, hit speakerphone, and waited. The phone rang for a minute and a half, and then went dead. No message for the voicemail, and no beep indicating she could leave a voicemail. The call ended itself, and she sighed inaudibly. "I'll try again later, but that's... unusual. " She said the word like it tasted sour in her mouth.

"Don't bother. He won't pick up," Jim said with a dismissive wave. "Either he's incapable of picking up, or the number doesn't connect to him anymore." He picked up a pocket knife and began turning it in his hands. He glanced up absently at Keira, as if contemplating.

"I'm going to have to object to that line of thinking, Jim," Moran said with quiet firmness. "Open mine again if you like, but the kid hasn't earned it."

Moriarty didn't bother objecting, just made a disgusted noise and tossed the knife onto the desk again. "Fine. Keira, go make yourself useful and get me a plaything in the basement before I ignore your father's request and release a little tension ."

Lorna watched silently, willing to step in to back up Sebastian if need be, but remaining impartial for the moment. Keira looked a little drawn but nodded and left. Lorna looked back at Jim. "What do you want to do?"

"Kill someone," Jim muttered. "But beyond that..." He waited until the door closed behind Keira, then relaxed slightly. "I'm not sure yet. This is... Unusually infuriating."

She wondered what that was like: finding only things like this extremely infuriating. She found most of Jim's games with the other geniuses of the world to be very infuriating, but she didn't say that. Lorna glanced at her watch. "Alright, sounds cathartic. Do you need me here on crisis alert, or," she looked at him from the corner of her eye for a brief moment, "as tension relief aid, etc? I have a meeting in my department I need to pass off if so," she said, dropping her wrist and grabbing the back of the chair she stood behind, looking at Jim neutrally.

In truth, she wasn't sure exactly where she stood with him. She'd never been a second like this before - with Armetti he'd been obsessed, had almost put the power in her hands. Here, she hadn't caught up with Jim since Switzerland. There she'd gotten a glimpse of something... Else in him. And then everything had fallen apart again, and all her attention had fallen to Sebastian, rightfully. But now she was Jim's second, and she lacked the bond he and Moran had shared, which left her at a disadvantage. She didn't like disadvantages.

"Cancel the meeting," he agreed, standing and walking back over to the window. "I want you both here, though I've yet to decide what for, precisely."

She nodded and agreed, "Alright," pulling out her phone and texting Kelly to take over - she was sure that once he read it, there would be much sagging of posture - and then put her phone away again, glancing over at Sebastian, who was doing a good job of being unreadable. He was best at it in Jim's presence. Or maybe it was just that he put the most effort in, then. What Jim ended up needing them for could be anything - ranging from helping him murder someone to a fuck to all sitting around until something useful came in that they could work off of. After a moment, she raised her eyebrows a little. "This is going to sound a lot like the old me, but anybody wishing for some booze right about now?"

"Second drawer," Jim said, waving to his desk. "Pour us both a glass. None for you, Tiger."

"I'm aware, sir. I'm not suicidal." Moran muttered, shaking his head a little.

"Give it a few more months." Moriarty glanced at him. "How is your mother?" His tone wasn't quite barbed, but there was weight to it.

"Honestly, I haven't spent much time with her, sir."

Lorna walked around the desk to bend and grab the supplies needed out of the drawer, setting two glasses on the desk and pouring them both a glass of the first thing she'd grabbed. It turned out to be whiskey. "We could do a dinner thing. Make Keira come, so we look like functioning people with manners. Just a thought," Lorna chimed in, aimed at Sebastian. If Jim wanted in, he could invite himself, but she was being semi -serious, and that meant that she didn't want to alienate Ratree with Jim's often-abrasive nature.

Moran shot her an incredulous look. "A dinner thing?" He wasn't sure what she was angling for. Normalcy? "Would you like to pick out plateware? Or is the day-to-day china suitable?"

She rolled her eyes as she lifted her whiskey to take a big swig of. "I was thinking your mother is probably not going to be down for the get-to-know-you family field-gutting, but I don't know, maybe I'm picking up the wrong signals," she said, words drenched in sarcasm. "If we're keeping her I want to know the damn woman. Do you know how many peers I have? One - you," she said, pointing at Sebastian. She was comfortable airing this in front of Jim because she was sure he would find it, at the very least, slightly amusing. "I need to expand the list of people I talk to who I don't control and-or do light groveling for. Work with me."

"Fine. Plan your tea party," Moran grunted. "You're the social butterfly. The food had better be worth it though."

Jim rolled his eyes. "I'd hurl my glass at you for something to do, but I rather want to drink this whiskey. Leave the bickering somewhere else before I decide I don't want to wait for the basement."

She hid a smirk at her victory in her whiskey, and managed to get the expression off her face by the time she'd put the glass back down, and she moved a couple feet to sink down into one of the chairs facing the desk. Absently, she ran her thumb over the two rings on her left hand. She missed Switzerland. She wished she wasn't stuck here - she wished she could go, with Sebastian, and leave this problem behind. But that wasn't her lot, was it? She took another sip of whiskey.

The intercom beeped, and Jim leaned over to press the accept button. Keira's voice filtered through: "Do you want the soon-to-be-corpse up in your office or down here, sir?"

Jim glanced at Moran- who shrugged- before pressing the reply button. "Send it up. We may as well celebrate your father's return to the land of the living with a good old-fashioned mutilation."

She visibly perked up a little, though kept herself from looking too hopeful on the basis of being purposefully ignored when it was time to hand around the knife. She knew how Jim was. "You got it, sir," Keira said over the intercom, and the line went dead again. Lorna wondered how many people Jim had burned through with his white-hot frustration during the months that Sebastian had been dying in his hospital bed. She didn't ask.

Jim took a sip of his whiskey, and his gaze settled on Moran again. "We have a few minutes, then, I imagine. I'm cooled off enough to discuss the fake dismemberment." He said simply. Lorna snorted, and he looked over at her, narrowing his eyes. "What?" he asked, crisply.

"It's just not a big deal, is it? I got smacked once, no other harm came to me."

Moran's gaze shifted quickly to her, looking her over for a mark, though that was a fool's errand after so many weeks. "Define dismemberment."

Lorna sighed, rubbing at her eyes with the back of her wrist. "Luciano faked a video of myself being beheaded. We used a body double. The only thing that happened to me was a little slap."

He squinted, confused and debating on whether to be annoyed, before glancing at Jim. "Why? To fake us out?"

Jim shook his head, having gotten back into his chair, leaning back to sip his whiskey. "No. It wasn't for us. It was for Armetti - Luciano and him had a feud that Harrison was capitalizing on. We got the video from another source. I stepped in. And lo, she's alive," Jim drawled, gesturing to Lorna with a lazy unfurling of his fingers in her direction.

Lorna nodded a little in agreement.

Moran glanced to her, and nodded. She was at that. "That certainly explains Armetti going off the rails."

"It also explains Luciano's death, if Jim's right, which we know he probably is," she replied, shrugging matter-of-factly. Jim snorted a little at her phrasing. There was a knock at the door, then, and Jim cleared his throat.

"Come in, little cub," he called, standing from his desk, putting his glass down, and sliding a hand into his suit jacket to pull out a wicked-looking knife. Lorna stayed put for the moment, deciding not to get her hopes up about tearing into someone.

"Oh, they've got to love that," Sebastian said, amused.

"About as much as you'd expect," Jim agreed as Keira entered with a man twice their height. Still, they had him controlled with a firm grip on his handcuffed hands behind his back, and the muzzle of a shotgun resting comfortably between his shoulder blades. They kicked out the back of his legs, and he fell to his knees with a grunt around the leather gag in his mouth.

Lorna jacked a thumb toward Keira, glancing at the other two incredulously. "So are we just not going to talk about the shotgun predilection? Is this-" she turned to look at Keira, eyebrows raised. "Is this like your dad's thing with sniper rifles? Like this is your gun obsession?" She questioned, half on the verge of laughing, though not in a cruel way. Keira gave her a very dry look that said they were just trying to get through this day intact, and Lorna smirked into her glass. The man settled on his heels, looking around the room with angry eyes. She wondered what he'd done to make this his fate.

"I don't have a thing with sniper rifles," Sebastian countered. "I'm a sniper. So I have sniper rifles. I wouldn't say you had a thing for wigs."

Jim ignored the conversation, crossing the room to look at the man with interest. "Are you interested in playing, Tiger?"

"Yes, sir," Sebastian said with a cold grin. "It's been far too long."

She thought that while his argument was valid, he definitely did have a little something for his rifles, but kept her mouth shut. Jim looked away from the man to look over his shoulder at Sebastian, just the hint of a dangerous smirk on his face. "I assume I don't need to hand out knives to the class?"

Lorna produced her own knife from seemingly nowhere, waving it a little - she hadn't currently been invited, but fuck if she was going to let the opportunity slide by just because she didn't have the required tool.

"Yes, very well Harrison, I suppose there's room," Jim sighed with dramatic exasperation, though he didn't look particularly bothered. "Keira, you aren't invited, as fucking may result and I have no interest in you participating. Go have fun with something else in the basement. On your way, tell analytics that Armetti is their new priority. I want every scrap of information we have in my office by 5pm."

Keira hid their disgust at the first comment poorly, but their expression lightened at the suggestion of finding their own amusement. "Yessir," they said with a nod, "If that will be all?"

"Go, go," Jim muttered, not looking at them any longer as he turned his focus to the man on the ground, who was clearly considering the best way to escape once the shotgun left the base of his neck. Once, Sebastian would have been an intimidating enough presence to stall that particular train of thought with a look, but he hadn't recovered nearly as much body mass as he would have liked. Instead, he pulled his pistol out of his shoulder holster and walked over to take Keira's place as they stepped away.

Lorna stood as Keira stepped away, but Sebastian filled their place before she could - that was fine with her, honestly. She rather Sebastian get to fulfill his old role, and that left her free to walk up to the side of Jim, smiling sweetly down at the man. "Thanks, boss," she added, never one to let an opportunity slip away because she'd forgotten her manners. Jim flicked the hand that wasn't holding his blade in acknowledgment, though his attention remained firmly on their prey. The door shut behind Keira with a click.

We may or may not see this scene in full, we haven't written it yet so, undecided! We'll see! Let us know thoughts? Thanks so much for comments guys, we love them! hearts!