(Untitled)

[shellfish_dimes]

i have longed to move away
sherlock (bbc): jim moriarty/sebastian moran. // (3,992) // R
trigger warnings: mild PTSD
title comes from dylan thomas' poem, i have longed to move away.
posted to dapperkillers.
NOW ALSO ON AO3

Comments

[messageredacted]

Oh this was so good. I love how cruel Jim is, and how Seb is so utterly loyal, despite (or maybe because of?) everything. So good. And now I have to read it over again.

[shellfish_dimes]

Thank you so much! I always fret that stuff is too patchy and doesn't work properly, but I'm glad this worked for you! I'm still trying to figure out why exactly it is that Seb's so doggedly loyal to Jim, that's part of the reason why I wrote this.

YOU CAN READ IT AGAIN BECAUSE NOW I FIXED ALL THE TYPOS.

Pardon my embarrassing verbosity

[messageredacted]

This is entirely my own interpretation, so it could be nothing like you pictured, but it seems to me that Seb is able to do things under Jim's employ that remind him of his glorious time in the army. He was great in the army, and he didn't leave by his own choice, and with Jim he's able to be great again (and when I say great I mean that he's is a perfectionist when it comes to his job, and he loves the feeling of a job done perfectly

I revel in verbosity.

[shellfish_dimes]

I think you are mostly spot on! In my view, or in my headcanon if you like, Seb is very serious when it comes to his work, and I'd also say that he is somewhat Machiavellian in the sense that he doesn't care if the things he does aren't done by the book, as long as they are done. He has his internal set of rules that he sometimes prefers to that of his supervisors, or to his higher-ranking officers, which was what happened in the army. But at the same time, he likes to be ordered around because it gives him a sense of purpose and order

Re: I revel in verbosity.

[messageredacted]

Yeah I don't think he has the same level of PTSD that Watson has, but I think he still has hair trigger reflexes that may occasionally misfire and cause him to overreact to benign situations (which is good for him, because in a sense the war isn't over for him yet--he still does violent things every day). I get the sense that his problem isn’t that he was traumatized by the war, but when he came back from Afghanistan he suffered a bit of culture shock.

And I admit my comment that it caused him to devalue his own life was a bit weak. I would have to think more about that.