Or when Jim left a note too, in his own roundabout way.

James Moriarty has ever despised normal. It is an anathema to his existence; blight in his world of perfect chaos; to be eradicated without hesitation or pity. It's both hilarious and somehow fitting that the penultimate act of a life lived as a force opposing all normalcies would be something so very normal as writing a note, but then, he does ever so love being unpredictable, and this: this is something no one will expect.

The pen scratches over paper, his familiar harsh handwriting marking it, soiling the pure white and he finds a moment to grin while the pen glides, tracing the pattern he can almost see, the pattern he's been following for a very long time now, if anyone could be bothered to look hard enough to find it- if anyone was smart enough to find it.

Sebby, Sebby, Sebby. Seems like I've miscalculated maybe. Now that I'm dead, I have no use for the world. Be a good boy and burn it for me? Burn it to the ground and raze the ashes. I'll be watching, from hell.

He giggles, high pitched and slightly manic, then rips the note into fifteen pieces, swanning about the flat, tucking one here, the other there, climbing on the table to stick one in the chandelier, burying another in the powdered cyanide.

The first one he leaves taped to the mirror: 'burn' slanting across the slim paper. The last, he tucks very carefully into the pen he used to write with, before dropping it under the couch with a final giggle. Games were so fun, and this one was looking like it may be the best yet.

Sebastian Moran has been involved in the criminal underworld for so long that he can't remember what it's like to be a law abiding citizen. He doesn't remember a time before he had to test his coffee for cyanide before he drank it; doesn't remember a time when killing wasn't intrinsically mixed with the taste of blood and his employer and lust that would burn through his bloodstream; doesn't remember a time before the games.

He lives with the most dangerous man in the world, fights with him, fucks with him, will one day die at his command. These are facts: unchangeable, inalienable facts. He's never contemplated anything else, not with a gun to his temple, not with a hundred dripping slices criss-crossing his torso; not even when he had been captured and held for months by an enemy crime circle, tortured for so long that he forgot what life was like without pain. Jim Moriarty was his raison d'être, and damned if he was going to give it up.

He's not under any illusion that Jim- always Jim never James, never Moriarty: he'd learned that one the hard way, with a pistol butt to the temple and a poison in his food- he's not under any illusion that Jim feels anything similar for him. He's a playing piece, interesting for now, but his time will come, and his body will disappear. He'd long since reconciled himself to that fact: probably that was one of the reasons that he was so shocked on the day his world ripped itself from its axis and went hurtling off into space to the sound of a single gunshot.

He doesn't remember much of what happened after the shot, after Jim Moriarty fell on top of the highest building in the area. He remembers carrying him out, so cold and dead and not-Jim that had he been the sort to have emotions, he would have cried. Instead, he slung him into the car that pulled up when he stepped to the curb, took him out to the countryside, and burned him.

He burned James Moriarty and he laughed, because what else was he supposed to do? He laughed because wasn't this just exactly like Jim: turning his expectations completely inside out and leaving him to deal with the mess. He laughed because there was a rage, coiled in his stomach that would destroy everything, not in a slow burn, but in a forest fire so far out of control he may as well be drenched in gasoline.

He lights a cigarette and smokes it over the flames, then flicks the butt onto the ground, pivots, and returns to the car. The drive back is silent, and he climbs up the stairs to their- his flat two at a time, wanting nothing more than to be inside and thinking about his next step. He's feeling warm, like the flames that had engulfed Jim's body had transferred to him, like he was part of Jim and should be burning too. He walks to the bathroom, forcing an even pace, but when he sees a scrap of paper taped to the mirror it's too much, and he's on his knees, vomiting.

Once he's done he rests his head on the cool floor for a five count, then forces himself to stand up, reaches out and takes the piece of paper with one hand, reads it. It's obviously part of a note, and isn't this just like Jim, to let him think he's dead and then leave him a note explaining the rules to this new game? He tears apart the rest of the bathroom, comes up with another scrap, and then the game is truly on.

It takes him five hours, forty three minutes and fifteen odd seconds to find the rest of the note, the seconds ticking steadily away in the back of his mind while he hunts. He sits on the couch- not in Jim's spot, never in Jim's spot, that's worth a sprained collarbone- and smoothens out the scraps of paper, putting them in order with almost no difficulty. When he's done, he leans back and reads the words again, then again. They don't change, just sit there, almost as though they're laughing, and he allows himself another five count of despair then stands up, knocking the table over carelessly, scattering the paper holding the words scored deep into his brain. He has work to do.