It was always going to end like this. Wet twine bound him to a chair in some godforsaken run down warehouse. It cut into his wrists and rubbed his skin raw. The smell of blood and barn waste, the nicest way to describe the revolting smell of his binds, didn't come close to the pungent stench bubbling up between the cracked concrete. A curious reality for a building which hadn't seen a single ray of light in well over five years. Judging by the way his side ached and seemed to slosh at the smallest movement, though, the smell could easily be coming from some kind of internal rupture of his stomach. He shifted and groaned. Sebastian Moran wasn't the type to father a child, but it wasn't a pleasant thought to know the option was most likely off the table now. The family jewels could withstand only so much abuse. Flakes of blood cracked and fell away from the back of his neck as he raised his head. A lesser man would have broken by now. No, not a lesser man. A smarter man. Any other thug would have told them exactly what they wanted to know. The plans, the safe houses, the pressure points, all of it would be free for the taking with a little poke here and a slap there. A moron would clam up. A retard would reply with snide comments on his captors state of dress, the weather, the very faint waft of rotting sewage from below. Even if he had a valuable secret, and he did, enough silence would lead to a misstep and death.
Days had merged into weeks as they tried to loosen his tongue or break his mind. He flexed his fingers and winced at the slight breeze the movement caused, ghosting over the exposed nail beds. For everything they had done, broken bones and carefully controlled internal bleeding, they surprisingly hadn't tried removing his teeth or slicing away at his tongue. All the better to hear him when he broke. It didn't matter to them which came first anyway, a child-like attitude as they chipped away at his mind or a single word of betrayal, as long as they got to him. The most dangerous man in London. Someone, somewhere, screwed up and lost the trail. Not everyone had been fooled by Moriarty's trick with the gun. His torturers gloated when they thought it mattered, boasting about their tails on the short man and video they alone held to prove his survival. Interesting, then, that they needed him to spill vital information. They had just managed to lock onto his own movements before he'd been able to seemingly fall off the Earth. Fucking luck, if you asked him. It didn't matter how long they kept him, though, or how painfully they tore into him. It was better to keep silent and die slow than to betray James Moriarty and live.
"This is getting tiresome, Mr Moran. Tell us where he is before your body mercifully ceases to function." The balding man looked down at him with tired, bored eyes. Mycroft Holmes, much like Moriarty, never dirtied his own hands. Thugs and brutes were hired to muss their fingers and shoes instead. Mycroft, instead, preferred to visit between sessions, when the blood was spongy on the floor and Sebastian couldn't spit more than a centimetre. He squinted up at Mycroft and absently wondered if his left eye could swell enough to split the skin. He'd been told already it resembled an overripe tomato. His breath came out in ragged gasps as his broken ribs protested the slight movement required to straighten and speak.
"Colonel Sebastian Moran, formally of M16-" A sharp blow to his temple cut him off and sent his mind reeling. He had been tortured before, of course, but he had to give Mycroft and his cronies some respect. The official certainly knew how to pick his men.
Nausea spiked up from his belly to the back of his throat as his body slumped and his head dropped to his shoulder and down to his chest, further aggravating what he was sure were several deep and infected lacerations across his back. Deep wounds like those were rare. They were trying to crack information from him, not murder him via infection. The needles driven into the soft fleshy remains of his finger tips, though, were fair game as long as he hadn't gotten too used to them. Either someone had been doing snoozing during class, or the Secret Intelligence Service had become severely lax in their policies regarding the treatment and extraction of 'vital information' from prisoners. They just weren't trying hard enough.
"Do try to keep your wits as this will be the last time I ask. Where is James Moriarty?"
His neck cracked as Mycroft gripped his hair and jerked, forcing their eyes to lock. They had no clue. A small mistake and they'd lost grip of their most wanted criminal's coat tails. The loss must have been eating away at Mycroft. To come so close to being free of Jim, to having his brother safe and more than capable to tear down the web of networks, to feel as though he could control a spider as cold and intelligent as James Moriarty, and then have it all ripped out from under him because of one wrong train had to make his blood boil. It was a beautiful rage to see, even without proper depth perception. He licked his lips with a thick tongue.
"Colonel Sebastian Moran-"
It was always going to end like this.
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Hello there! I'm slowly rewriting this so I can get back into the groove of things and actually finish the story. I've removed the original chapters, but I'll repost them once they've been reworked!
Review if you feel so inclined! If you'd like to contact me directly instead, you can find me on Tumblr at fluminiscarmen :)