Moriarty never had innocence in his life, not in the pure sense anyway, but looking down at the tiny bundle in Sebastian's arms, he knew this is what it was. A tiny little thing, brought into the world just hours ago and so untainted from the darkness that stains both of her parents.
Kelsey Mather was half-asleep in the hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and unable to stop grinning. Her little sister, Alicia, was seated beside her and going through a pile of documents on some dig or another that she was meant to be supervising in Egypt. The two didn't share much, but Jim had learned that they did, in fact, make the same face when he quoted poetry to drown them all out.
Sebastian held his new baby tenderly in his arms, the sniper tearing up, though he refused to let them fall in front of his boss and the Mather sisters. The little life in his arms stares up at him, her hand reaching up to run across his stubbly cheek, her mouth opening just enough for her tongue to peek out. She's so impossibly small, the reason being she was a month early, a pale pink and wrinkly. Jim wasn't sure what to make of her, this little thing that would be so easy to kill.
He knew how to kill everyone, he was a puppet master that pulled strings and made his dolls dance, but this little girl seemed unaware of how close to killers she is. Her mother was a conwoman turned hired gun, her father was the second most dangerous man in London, and Jim himself is the most dangerous man in London, so it wasn't hard to picture how to kill the child, it was habit by this point. Strangely, though, he didn't want to cause harm to this newborn. Every dark thought that passes through his head is followed by the bite of guilt. No, he would bring no harm to this little girl, he would make sure she was protected at all costs.
She's too pure to suffer death's touch so soon after being born.
Such innocence shouldn't be snuffed out when this world was in dire need of it. Jim shakes his head, coming back to the present and watching as Sebastian handed his daughter back to her mother to be fed, the baby now beginning to fuss.
"What's her name," he asks, leading Sebastian out of the room to give the girls some privacy. He's been awake since late last night and Jim knew Sebastian could use some coffee.
"We had an argument about that," the sniper says, sipping some of the hospital coffee with a grimace. One look at Sebastian's disgusted expression has Jim throwing his own cup in the trash without even tasting it. "She demanded that our daughter shared her mother's name, but I can't stand the thought of my baby having the name Agnes and she can't stand the name Deirdre."
"What'd you guys settle on?"
"Thalia Grace Moran." Jim approved of it, thinking the name suited such a little thing. "I've something to ask you." He looks up at the taller man as they start walking back towards the room. "I know you don't believe in higher powers or anything, but Kelsey's is insistent on having Thalia baptized and she's decided that I can pick out the Godfather." Jim gives a half-interested hum, letting Sebastian know that he was kind of paying attention even as his thoughts began to run wild. "I've decided that I want you to be her Godfather."
"Why on Earth would you pick me?!" Jim forces Sebastian to stop, facing him with an incredulous expression.
"You won't let anyone touch her." He said it so matter-of-factly that Jim was having trouble coming up with a suitable argument on why Sebastian should choose someone else. "It's either you or my father." That settles it then, Jim would do anything to piss off Augustus even if it meant taking on partial responsibility for a kid.
"I'll do it."
It's when Sebastian walks away with a smile that Moriarty realized he'd just been tricked.