Sebastian L. Moran, 38, Chief of Staff for J. Moriarty
When Sebastian continued to hesitate, Jim suddenly started to rethink the decisions for the past eight years. The decision to choose Sebastian, to take him in, to make his sniper. The sex, the dinners, the fights, the blood… all of it. Was it really all boiling down to a pathetic man who couldn’t follow an order?
“Bastard.” Jim said, pressing his forehead into the gun. “Pull the fucking trigger, Sebastian. Do it!” He shouted and then glared at him, his nostrils flaring slightly. “Kill me.” There was a seriousness in his voice, challenging the other to even think about defying him. “It’s an order, you worthless coward. Pull the trigger. Now!”
His voice suddenly got loud as he looked at Sebastian, still hesitating. “Didn’t you hear me?” He let out a trail of slurs in numerous languages, all attacking Sebastian and his cowardess. Jim shook slightly, his eyes tearing, but not from sadness, from frustration. “J-just do it.”
The hitch in his voice was small, but apparent. “Sebastian… pull the trigger… the last thing I ask of you… pull the fucking trigger.”
Even though he knew this was what Jim wanted, it didn’t make it any easier. He had dedicated his every waking moment for the better part of a decade to this man, and here Jim was, pressing his head into the business end of the gun and telling Sebastian to pull the trigger.
“Bastard.”
What would he do without Jim? What would he be able to do? He could join the French foreign legion, he could go back to India, or he could start up as a body guard in Italy or someplace in a spanish-speaking country. He could still do something dangerous and risky, but without Jim… .
“Kill me.”
Without Jim Moriarty it would be torture. Sebastian was staring at the man who was getting slightly red in the face, who was yelling at him, raging. It would be the worst sort of feeling in the world, living without Jim. He’d grow old, and, even worse, comfortable. And then he’d probably start forgetting things.
Jim began to curse in Gaelic and Sebastian only caught about half of the other languages the man used. He’d forget those first; and be stuck with just English and Spanish. He’d quickly forget his military training and wouldn’t be able to tell a pistol from a rifle, much less be able to shoot either. He’d forget the war, and wouldn’t miss it. Next would be the jungle, and the feel of mud on his legs and blood on his hands. And then, like his father had done to him, so many years ago, asking for Jasper and not this scarred stranger, Sebastian would forget his name.
The man was starting to tear up and Sebastian knew it wasn’t because he was sad. Jim was just angry. Angry at him.
He would forget Jim too, and that realization hit him harder than anything else. He couldn’t do that to Jim, whose biggest fear was being forgotten. Couldn’t live knowing that slowly, surely, his Alzheimer’s would eat at his brain, steal away his memories and leave him a shell, empty and complacent in a world that would provide him anything he wanted, and in the end all Sebastian would remember was that there was something terrible about living so comfortably. A man is only truly dead when his name is said for the last time.
“Sebastian.”
Sebastian looked, really looked at this man in front of him, and he understood something awful about himself; he was a coward, he was weak, and most of all, he couldn’t live without James Moriarty.
He took a deep breath and in a second he had stepped forwards, pulled Jim to him, held the other man close, Jims head tucked neatly under his. He shut his eyes, swallowed, pushed the barrel cruelly underneath Jims jaw, his other hand holding Jim tightly to his body as he pulled the trigger, releasing the bullet that tore through Jims and then his brain.
The last thing he thought of in that infinity of a second as the gun seared through his shattered skull was flashes of the jungle. The tight knit trees were large and imposing, dark and inviting and warm, dangerous and enticing and echoing with a need that said to Sebastian, you are mine, and you belong to me.
And then, Sebastians mind went dark, and he became only a memory that would surely be forgotten, as the only one who would have bothered to remember Sebastian Moran was dead by his own hand.
