Chapter Text
i.
He’d been discharged for months when he followed a man-eating tiger down a drain in India. He’d been roaming around, stealing himself from the world and waiting for something to happen. Days and days he spent sitting at the window of his second storey bedroom in an inexpensive and unsanitary hostel, looking at the busy life below him.
Hundreds of people came by, as the hostel was right in the middle of the market. Hundreds of bodies transported themselves from stand to stand, exchanging, arguing, talking, gossiping, waiting, eating, drinking, working –and yet, nothing seemed to move.
He was restless, a caged animal, hungry and weary and barely slept. It was always too hot and there were always so many noises that filled his mind that he could hardly close his eyes before it was all too much again.
Quickly enough, he found his way into the black market, meeting men who spoke a little English in bars they owned, early in the morning and late at night, to talk business. They financed the expeditions, the hunt and he financed their trafficking by providing them with the furs of the precious animals he’d slay in the jungle. He slept better within the humidity and the deafening noises of the jungle nightlife.
That lasted for a time. When the men he worked with discovered he was selling to others, to the white Englishmen they didn’t want anything to do with, they made sure he knew the deal was over. Within three days, Sebastian moved out of the city and was cut off from his main financial resources.
After that, he travelled. He roamed. He kept quiet and didn’t try anything that would expose him. A couple of times, he found English-speaking Indian men who were hungry enough for money, for danger, for food, to execute burglaries he’d plan. It was good, though it paid according to the amount of risk implied.
Sebastian Moran was beginning to wonder if he’d better get back to England and slum it out over there, when he heard of the tiger.
The beast roamed around at night, hungry, restless, trapped in the city. No one knew where it came from; no zoos nearby, no jungle. Sebastian didn’t pretend to know more about the beast than anyone else in the village, but he felt a connection to it other than of fear, which set him apart from everyone else.
He wanted to see the tiger. He wanted to hunt it down and see if it was all he’d hoped it would be; restless, hungry, wild, and dangerous. He wanted to kill the beast.
Down a drain in a village with a name he doesn’t remember now, he looked the tiger in the eyes. A shiver ran down his spine and he knew he’d been right: no one could ever tame this sort of animal. A smile stretched on his face as the realization that he was just like that tiger crept up on him and the feline crawled forward, one heavy paw in front of the other, cornering him.
He’d gotten out with a wound on his side, running from his first ribs to his hip. He brings back to England one of the tiger's canines.
Months later, he meets a strange, powerful man who offers him a job and a room in a brothel on Conduit street. The man's name is Jim Moriarty.