It’s almost as if he can hear Jim inside his head, laughing and sayind well, I told you not to let that happen, didn’t I, Tiger? And Sebastian wants to reply that no, no you didn’t, you little prick, but he should have known. Should have seen it, and he would have, hadn’t he let himself go and fall in love with Jim.
He’s dead now, though. Dead, Sebastian repeats out loud, letting the word roll off his tongue and echo in the emptiness of the living-room. It makes him want to laugh a bit, this whole thing. The ridiculousness of the situation. Sebastian flips the channel on the telly and sees the news: suicide of fake genius detective and now that makes him laugh.
Holmes is dead, he thinks, you got what you wanted, Jim.
You always do, he adds a little bitterly and laughs again at the weird taste it leaves on his mouth, wants to punch a wall, shoot someone and have a drink, or maybe five. He doesn’t do either of these things, though, nor does he sit in a corner of the flat to rot. No, just the mere thought of it brings Jim back to his mind, and he says honestly, Tiger, I expected so much more from you.Sebastian knows he can’t disappoint him, never did and never will.
What he does is stand up from the couch and go straight to Jim’s office, while the television is still flashing images of Holmes’ lifeless body on the street. He goes straight to where what he wants is, fishes the file out and holds onto it a bit too tightly. It says S. Moran in Jim’s neat handwriting, Sebastian puts it down on the desk and examines it for a moment, traces his long, precise fingers across his name. It’s Jim’s reminder of what Sebastian is, what he expects from him. Sebastian swallows and opens the file, reads through it carefully and plans out everything he needs to do from now on to keep things going, because of course that’s what Jim would want. He wouldn’t bear the idea of the empire going into someone else’s hands.
So, Sebastian carries on, and it wears him down to the bone.
At first it’s as if Jim’s still present somehow, Sebastian hears him in his head all the time, but as he keeps going it becomes less and less like a presence, and suddenly he doesn’t think about him anymore, he sort of becomes a memory on the back of his mind. His things in the office, the clothes on his closet and everything else feels very far away. Moriarty becomes just a name written on a business card, a name he uses to threaten those who have less access to information with, and the coldness of the other side of the bed slowly but surely creeps its way up and into Sebastian’s heart.