Tyson is Icarus

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
 In the forests of the night; 
   What immortal hand or eye, 
     Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies. 
 Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 
   On what wings dare he aspire? 
     What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

Tyson is Icarus; and the Moriarty Mirrors, Moran, and Kim all work as his Apollo.

Our little Icarus would rather rip his own wings off, if it prevented them from getting clipped again or if he thought the cage door was closing. […] Tyson would rather fly free, and have the trust from someone else that he will always come back. That so long as the door remains open, Tyson will tumble in through the window instead.

He may, in fact, be completely incapable of stopping himself from showing off for a pretty face. […] If it will get him a second of the sun’s attention, our little Icarus will hurl himself off of cliffs - or, more accurately, rooftops - over and over again.

Our little Icarus knows that he’s going to burn himself up, and does it gladly, because - to him - it is entirely worth whatever pain may come to bask in the sun; whether that is The Colonel or the Moriarty Mirrors, Tyson will gladly take that leap of faith every time.

Tyson always knew that Kim would never be his to keep. […] It was fun. It was all just a game, and Tyson knew it would hurt like hell when it ended, but he treasures every precious moment with Kim. And he would do it all again.

The risk of burning up to bask in the warmth of the Moriarty Mirrors or The Colonel is a risk that Tyson will take every time without failure. Even in Tyson’s mind, it’s not a risk of burning up. He knows he will burn to make them happy, and Tyson is fine with that. He welcomes it with open arms. Our dear Icarus will not flinch from his fate.

…has a confusingly big heart and a kind disposition that cannot be changed so easily. […] He’d been burned again and again. And yet, Tyson still offered out his heart and compassion - his body and soul, for friendship and love, and even that old lady down the road with a barbed tongue and far too many shopping bags - not without caution, but a boneheaded determination to give until his confusingly big heart had nothing left to offer.

His instinct to survive is (almost) as strong Sebastian Moran’s to kill, and yet Tyson is thelimping walking embodiment of Icarus; a role he openly embraces with ‘calculates risks’ that avoid ever taking unnecessary risks.

He is just too stubborn to die and though he struggles to motivate himself, Tyson simply doesn’t stop once he starts. He keeps going until he has nothing left to give. […] His talent for picking himself up, though admirable, would be entirely unnecessary if Tyson didn’t keep putting himself in situations that knock him to the floor.

…somewhere in his heart, he’d accepted that the odds were stacked against him; that this would be his undoing. […] but Tyson never stopped trying. He refused to stop pushing himself to make that next step, to live for another day. It doesn’t matter if Tyson thinks he can’t, he will. He will survive and fight to his last. […] Brave, stupid, Tyson. Too damn stubborn to die, marching forward and refusing to fail. After all, he has to live to see that new day. Tyson can’t throw his life away for someone else tomorrow if he lets himself die today.

“Icarus didn’t b-believe he’d fall. I knew I would, and did it a-anyway.” […] “That doesn’t sound wise to me, Sir,” Tyson countered, that devil-may-care smile unwavering. […] Despite his genuine pyrophobia, Tyson was but a moth to flame, and couldn’t that sum up his entire life? Tyson knew it was dangerous, knew it would hurt, and chased it anyway.

For all of Tyson’s humility and self-doubt in his own abilities, there is a level of hubris - of sheer, barefaced arrogance - in the way he plants his feet and say ‘I will burn to make this happen. Then I will do it again, and again, and again; until I have nothing left, and no one can stop me.’

Tyson took that leap of faith and survived it. He survived The Colonel. He licked his wounds. The story should have ended there. A lesson in hubris was learnt. Tyson’s heart, body, and mind were broken, but he lived to learn his own lesson rather than to be a cautionary tale.

Tyson took a different lesson from that. Not the usual, don’t fly too close to the sun, but rather: if you fly too close to the sun, you will be burn. You will hurt, and keep hurting forever, but you will survive and you caught the sun’s attention. For a brief moment, you shone together and made the sun happy, so go try again.

The arrogance to come limping back home, tail between his legs, and then to stare the sun in the face, haul his broken body up onto the roof, and jump again is intrinsically Tyson. He survived this once, he can survive it again. He survived The Colonel, he can survive the Moriarty Mirrors; probably.

And if he survives that attempt? Tyson will do it again.

But what if you die?

Then I die.

Tyson works himself to the bone. He is burning the candle at both ends, whilst trying to find a way to ignite the middle too; all whilst chastising himself for being too lazy, for not pushing himself harder.

All to prevent the Moriarty Mirrors from burning themselves out too soon by burning too brightly, Tyson throws himself wholeheartedly into trying to sustain them for a long as possible; no matter the emotional or physical toll on him. He taunts and stokes the fire of Moran’s anger to make sure Sebastian never loses that burning passion, because he would rather burn himself than watch Sebastian flicker away.

To Tyson, any sacrifice that he must make is worth it. He is confident in his ability to survive, to adapt and dust himself off afterwards, and he isn’t throwing his life away pointlessly. However, the knowledge that - eventually - it will kill him does not deter Tyson.

If it’s the next leap of faith or the leap two hundred attempts from now that will kill him, it does not matter. So long as Tyson knows that he gave it his all. That he never stopped trying to seize that fire, to cradle it to his chest and protect it, no matter how much it hurt to do so.

And the part that proves without a shadow of a doubt that Tyson is Icarus? He knows that he is. Tyson will gladly admit that. Not somberly resigned to an inescapable fate. No. He does not flinch from duty.

Tyson says ‘I am Icarus. I will gladly burn myself up to bask in the sun’ with a cavalier - devil-may-care - smile. Cocksure and arrogant. Proud in his inevitable demise. He welcomes this fate, openly embraces it. He is galvanised by it.

He leaps, and dares the world to do its worst. He is not afraid. He’s ready.