Prompt: At the beginning of his career as a consulting criminal Moriarty spent the first money he earned for a portrait. Soon he noticed the portrait had started to change: for every criminal action he took his painted self turned uglier and uglier...

The Picture of Jim Moriarty

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty looks fresh-faced and young and his dark eyes glint merrily like a schoolboy with a secret.

It almost breathes, it is that exquisite, that lifelike, everything from brush-strokes to composition a study in perfection.

Jim looks at it for a long moment, quietly proud of himself – for obtaining the money necessary to buy talent, for the method by which he obtained that money, for simply being the sort of person that wants a portrait of himself – because it is a work of art, and it is Jim's. He contemplates killing the artist so that his possession can never be bettered.

The changing light in the room alters the painted eyes in some subtle way, turns their careless merriment into something darker, more mocking.

Magnificent.

Jim begins to build his empire with victimless crimes, quiet invisible thefts of identity and money that is nothing more than numbers on a screen. It is mildly satisfying, the way Jim has always enjoyed mathematics, taking numbers apart and putting them together again in complex equations to leave his teachers baffled.

It doesn't satisfy the hunger in him, the restlessness that made him choose a criminal career for himself, but Jim is not going to be a fool, ending his days detained at her majesty's pleasure; he will have time to indulge one day. For now, he is the most harmless criminal you could meet.

Jim might be new to the business – as opposed to the pleasure – but he understands the virtue of invisibility, that there can be nothing more valuable to him.

Every day he glances in the mirror to establish the persona he will wear for the day. He spends hours at his portrait to see himself.

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty smiles slyly, eyes gleaming.

There is a careful balance Jim must find, between keeping clean and letting others know how dirty he is willing to get. He can't be trusted by all classes of criminals if he's seen as nothing more than white-collar criminal. It's just not respectable, and if you don't have respect in this business, you have nothing.

There are layers, and Jim is at the top (or bottom, depending on how you look at). So he goes down (or up) a step or two, not street-level, but hardly Tower 42, and carves himself a little niche as a man who is willing to do things.

Dear Jim, and if you've got a problem Jim can solve it, or order it solved, depending on the nature of the request. Never something so obvious that his backers and business allies will start to worry (you want your money cleaned? Jim will fix it, not a fingerprint on it, none of that careless, low class criminal mess) but enough that the street hears and listens and starts to think (did you hear? that mark? work of Moriarty).

In his portrait, the folded handkerchief in Jim Moriarty's suit pocket is spotted red, and his expression twisted and cold. His eyes are shadowed as if he has spent long nights without sleep, fighting nightmares.

Jim tries to remember if he was having a bad week when his portrait was painted.

He thinks it was a good week – fantastic even, so why his portrait should look so hollow-cheeked and cold, or the constantly practised smile that he knows he was wearing during his sitting so twisted and awkward is beyond him.

It is still magnificent, of course, but. But. There something about it that brings a creeping malevolence to mind; it is yellow wallpaper and lonely crossroads, restless shadows and a disembodied heart thumping beneath the floor, locked rooms and gaslight.

It is the idea of gaslight that makes Jim see – he looks at his portrait every day, the subtle changes would of course be invisible to him. But he knows he smiled for his portrait, and his smile was as polished and perfect as inexperience allowed – he would of course be better at it now – and his suit was certainly neat and new, not the slightly ragged cheap-looking thing with near invisible stains Jim sees before him.

"Ah," he says, and smiles. "Well, well."

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty's lips curl back in something too ruthless, too mirthless to call a smile, showing teeth. His hands gleam wetly and leave red marks upon the papers crumpled in one fist.

There is something freeing in having his sins expressed on canvas. What Jim sees when he looks is that he will never be punished for his crimes – how can he be, when his portrait takes them instead?

So Jim who'll fix it and Moriarty who will break it, between them they create a monster.

In his portrait, Jim Moriarty looks old, ravaged by time and excess, his gnarled hands stained red to the elbow, dried blood under his fingernails, chemical stains on his fingers. His young man's suit hangs off of his twisted frame, bowed beneath the weight of age and guilt. His face is creased and worn, ugly with habitual contempt, scarred and snarling.

Jim Moriarty perfects the knot of his tie with steady, nimble fingers, brushes his young unmarked hands down his neat suit. He winks at his portrait and goes to meet Sherlock Holmes.