Just a plot bunny from the crazy mind of… me… I am not British so excuse the blatant… non Britishness?

I do not own any Sherlock characters. Though I am obsessed with them. That ought to count for something…

Chapter 1

"Damn it! This is not how The Game is supposed to be played!"

Jim Moriarty glared at the monitor displaying a CCTV tape. The crime, the beautiful double murder he had crafted, had just been solved again by the world's only consulting detective. And that was the point. Jim loved making Sherlock dance, and Sherlock loved the rush of a good puzzle. It was a mutually benefitting relationship in Jim's point of view. But damn it, if there was one thing that drove him up the wall, it was Sherlock's cool disinterested mask he had on. All the time. During all the cases he so generously created for him. It was… ungrateful. And so, so boring. To be perfectly honest, Jim really missed that manic gleam Sherlock used to get in his eye whenever he solved a case. That clever charm that made Sherlock… not ordinary. It had vanished two weeks ago: the gleam, the game, the distraction. Now he was growing bored. And he vowed to find out why.

That was what the greatest criminal mastermind in the world was doing right now. Looking through CCTV tapes from the past two weeks like a mother searching through old home videos. Trying to solve this puzzle, trying to find a common denominator between all of the recent cases, trying to find out how Sherlock could solve the most intricate of murders without even looking at the mutilated corpse, and most of all trying to figure out where the Game had gone so horribly wrong. Hours upon hours he scanned through the black and white tapes, finding patterns and tossing them aside, his eager mind tearing voraciously into the given distraction. Anything to keep him from being so damn bored. Even as he watched each tape for a third time, something niggled his subconscious, something he had overlooked. Something so horribly ordinary, he just couldn't put a finger on it. And… there it was. Jim froze the tape just at the right spot so that he could see the problem. His eye twitched imperceptibly, and nose wrinkled. It was so blatantly obvious, he doubted it was supposed to be hidden. He had, once again, overestimated his opponent. In the frame, Sherlock stood looking bored with his cell phone out, no doubt texting that idiotic detective inspector the solution to the murder. Then, there was the good doctor, hovering uselessly by Sherlock's side, and, of course, the cut up corpses of twins that weren't actually twins (my, that had cost a pretty penny to work out). All mentioned persons were happily unaware of the surveillance Moriarty set up. But then, there was one more figure, standing off to the side. It was a wraith like boy, most likely a street urchin, and he was smirking up at the camera. Smirking! Jim's brain went into overdrive. The boy was standing close to the two corpses, seemingly unaffected, which was unusual to say in the least. He couldn't have been over twelve years old. He was wearing worn out clothes (poor then, obviously, anyone could see that) and had one fingerless glove covering his left hand (most likely to cover some sort of gang symbol). The preteen had a large jagged scar running down his jaw bone (a brush with death then, probably an experienced fighter) and had scrawny arms and legs (not a boxer then, probably armed). All in all, he was really nothing out of the ordinary. But he had to be special, why else would Sherlock have let him onto the crime scene, why else would Sherlock let him see him? It was clear he was part of the Game now, an informant perhaps. Jim was now certain he had seen that boy in every surveillance tape over the past two or even three weeks. He was irrevocably linked to Sherlock's disinterest, therefore, a threat. Jim's fingers twitched with an insatiable urge for violence, and without his consent, his hand groped his desk and connected with a rare and valuable Ming vase a stupid "forever indebted to you" client he always seemed to attract gave him. So clingy and unappealing, so human and boring. His grasp inexplicably tightened around the vase and he hurled it against the wall, watching the shards fall to the ground with indifference. There was a knock at his door. Jim turned towards the noise with his lips curled over his teeth. On a whim, he imagined sticking one of those nice pointy shards into the sod's neck…

"Sir?" a voice rang out from the doorway. Moriarty had to visibly shake his head to rid himself of the reverie. It would not do to just murder one of his employees at this time of day. Maybe later, but not now. He had work to be done.

"I want all background information you have on this boy on my desk in two hours or someone's going to find themselves without hands!" he snarled towards the burly man at the door. Despite the man being nearly a foot taller than the Irishman, he still shuddered.

"Yes sir," he squeaked, abruptly turning away from the half insane, very angry genius standing only feet away from him. The low light in the room served to make his employer even more demonic looking than usual, which was saying something. He walked quickly away from the office, phone in hand.

Jim had taken up pacing back and forth, only stopping his relentless march to glare up at the unobtrusive figure of the boy. Sherlock had introduced a new component to the game, a very bold move on his part. Jim was determined to show the detective it was a very stupid move to make.

...

An hour and a half later, a thin folder lay on Moriarty's desk, containing a couple of pages of information on the boy of the screen. Jim grunted dissatisfied as he thumbed through the meager documents. There wasn't many options open to him with this little amount of information. What he could gather is that he was indeed homeless, and an orphan at that. He had no official name, his mother presumably died of childbirth (no one knows for sure) and the father is unknown. The boy was left in the care of Sherlock's very own homeless network, where he was raised on the streets. He has no medical records or even identity, only that he calls himself "Erik". There have been reports of him being ambidextrous, but there is no known gang that he is a part of. So basically, Jim learned next to nothing about the kid. And that made him very frustrated indeed. Sherlock obviously did a very good job picking a pawn with very little traceable background information, with help from the Iceman, no doubt. But there was still something about the boy that grated Jim's nerves. What kind of urchin picks the name Erik for himself? There must be some significance…

Jim sighed. Yet another puzzle to unravel and he was growing impatient. Research was always so boring.

...

Erik whistled tunelessly as he walked the sidewalks of London in broad daylight. Sherlock really hooked him up with this deal of theirs. He chuckled carelessly as he pat his waistband, where his newly acquired gun was resting. Just one of the many gifts that Sherlock had bestowed on him. All for the sake of a ruddy game. Erik ran a hand through his jet black hair and sighed. People could be so stupid some times. He had his own "game" he had to play with Mr. James Moriarty, and neither Sherlock nor Jim knew of it, yet. But they soon will. And all he had to do is wait, wait for the inevitable which was James Moriarty. His appearance in those crime scenes were not accidental, after all, he had supplied Sherlock with vital information for each of the murders. And he got to strategically piss one powerful criminal off while he was at it. Now, he was waiting, patiently, for Jim to become impatient enough to snatch him off the streets. Ah! Just in time… a black car rolled around the bend and pulled up next to the young boy. Two men got out, slipped a hypodermic into his neck and dragged the instantly unconscious preteen into the car. Nobody noticed the absence of one black haired, blue eyed orphan on that sunny London afternoon. And that was why, even unconscious, Erik had a smile on his lips.