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Description

Jim's swinging his feet on the examination table, like a drool-lipped toddler waiting for his mother to get through her hair appointment.  Toddler in an eight-hundred-pound suit, thereabouts.  He made me pay as much for the one I never wear.

It falls to me to listen, take mental notes.  Jim taught me that.  Paper trails and electronic footsteps—they're like breadcrumbs.  Not that mentally checking off items on a list is any less of a fucking bother, but I've learned to get used to it.

Malignant.  Terminal.  Metastasis, infratentorial growth, rapid glial production, cerebral hemispheres—

"English, Ponce," I growl.  Taking mental notes does no good if you don't know what the bloody words mean, let alone how they're spelled.  That's not fair. I know "malignant," "terminal," and "metastasis."

The "neurosurgeon," a twitchy eejit named Rodney Ponce, is a half-mad dope fiend, but Jim refuses to see a real doctor.  "For identity purposes," he'd cooed at me.  A load of rot.

Once upon a time, Ponce had a bright future as a surgeon, before his discovery that various opiates gave him the ability to see things in an even brighter light, and he began writing himself prescriptions and stealing medication from his own practice.

Ponce is one of Jim's most treasured lackeys.  After me, I suppose.  Ponce is looking at me like I've just pulled an AWM on him.  Which would be ridiculous, considering it's a long-range weapon.  At this distance, about five feet, an AWM would blow him to kingdom come.  Messy.  Not to mention the recoil trying to use a sniping rifle like a handgun.

Ponce's eyes, a pair of watery greys, shift between the boss and me.  Jim's not even looking at him, so the good doctor grunts a mild "ahem," and gibbers to me, "It's a brain tumor, rooted at the—"

Ponce attempts to indicate and area around the base of Jim's skull with a cupped hand, but recoils at an eyebrow-scrunch from the boss.  "Rooted at the back of his brain.  It's called infratentorial."  A hand over my hip has Ponce talking my language again.  "Infra—meaning, the back.  The back of the brain.  His brain is producing too many glial cells, too fast.  He's dying."  He seems worried.  Maybe he's wondering who will pay him a king's ransom for backalley medical advice once Jim Moriarty is gone from the world.

I glance at Jim.  He isn't kicking his feet anymore, but he isn't looking at me, either.  Just staring.

At what, I'm not sure.  Not much to stare at, other than a poster of an Irish landscape, the words "FIND YOUR SILVER LINING" tramping across the rolling hills in ugly, white, ironic typeface.  There aren't any windows in Ponce's exam room, which, as far as I can tell, is a gutted master bath.  We're in a tower block on the southeast side of town, in the dodgy end.  The exam table is bolted to the floor where it looks as though a tub should be.  The sink and a small cabinet beneath which holds the medical tools hearken back to the room's former purpose.

It's been silent for too long.  Silence is never good.  Sets my teeth on edge.  In Afghanistan, silence means the target has been alerted to your presence and will seek shelter, send his ululating bastard horde after you to pump you full of lead.  In the jungle, silence means the cat has spotted you.  In that moment, you are powerless.  Less than that, you're the prey.

Jim breaks the silence.  His voice is even—as even as that ridiculous up-and-down tra-la-la he calls a speech pattern gets.  "Don't suppose you could give me a time frame?"  Jim's head rolls on his neck, like a charmed cobra, until he's facing Ponce and he takes in a delicate breath.  I realize his eyes have been closed in thought.  But before anyone can speak again, they fly back open and bore into Ponce.

The doctor tenses like a tiger the moment a bullet hits its chest.  Not a tiger—he's too thin for that.  A fox, maybe.  But what's the point shooting everyday, fuzzball creatures?  "I can't be sure."

"If you would make an estimate."  Jim is completely still.  If I hadn't slept next to him on and off for as long as I have, I could have been tricked into thinking he was calm.

But the boss's stillness is his brain at work, plotting.  The Moriarty cogs are grinding together at somewhere around villain speed, which, to ordinary baddies like Ponce and me, is an unattainable rate.

"A month."

I can't hear it from him.  Not from Ponce.  It's too polluted.  Not stylish, not classy—it doesn't suit him at all.  The heel of my palm is in pain, and I uncoil the fist I've gathered at my side.

"Maybe five weeks."  Ponce is paler than a sheet that's seen a ghost, wearing a different sheet.  I don't blame him.  To my knowledge, no one who's estimated a time of death for James Moriarty in the past has lived to see the day.

Jim isn't smiling.  But he's not showing signs of distress.  He's slipped off the table and is pushing his hand through one of the sleeves of his jacket.  On his way past, the boss gives me a look that's almost warm, and pats my chest.  "Don't linger."  Then he's gone.  He didn't want to hear it from Ponce, either.

When I close the door to the exam room with my boot, the slam resounds for longer than I expected.

Ponce is looking at me.  It's that look of nosiness that some of the ill-fated give to Jim instead of to me:  The presumption that I am Moriarty's Number Two Man because I can give Jim something they can't.

They're right.  But whether they're correct doesn't stop them from catching a bullet in the brain.

"Moran—I'm sorry," Ponce tries.  He's fidgeting, nervous.  And for good reason, because I'm advancing on him and rolling my sleeves to my elbows.  "I-I've got spare pills, needles.  Morphine, things like that.  He won't suffer, much."

I jab him in the nose.  Close-quarters combat training ensures that it breaks, and blood spills down his face.  His eyes are wide as he backs up, hits the wall, rips the "silver lining" poster.

The hand he raises in defense is bright red.  Blood from vital areas is dark.  I backhand him.  I don't know why I'm hitting him, but I can't stop myself.  Not as though Ponce really matters anymore.  Dying man has no use for a doctor.

My fist connects with his gut.  His jaw.  His lip.  The swing to his cheekbone checks me, and I curse, cradling my fist in my other hand.  The knuckles are trickling blood, but only a little of it is mine.

Ponce is cowering, has inched his way to the corner and is quivering pathetically.  Maybe he's afraid he's going to die.  Jim isn't cowering this way.

With a glance in his direction—he's still trembling with shock—I riffle through his sink cabinet.  The search turns up nothing but a first-aid kit, the tools Ponce had used on Jim following our jaunt to the stolen MRI, and two needles of adrenaline.  "Where's your stash?" I demand.

He doesn't have anything to say, other than a whimper, so I lob the assortment of useless medical items in my hands at him, and he yelps.  The first-aid kit pops open against the tile behind him; he raises a forearm in protection from the syringes of adrenaline.  Wise—they scrape against his sleeve and tumble to the floor.

When I raise my hand to him again, Ponce shrinks back, clutching at his chest and nose with one hand, his forearm still hovering over his face.  As though I can't break an arm.

Grabbing Ponce's forearm, his last line of defense, I tug upwards, and he hovers above the floor like a sack of flour with limbs.  "I don't need you to tell me the whereabouts of your stash to break this, but it couldn't hurt your chances."

I don't have time for one-sided banter with Ponce.  For all I know, Jim has already wandered out onto the street and hailed a cab.  He doesn't know what's best for him.

Ponce's voice is small.  "Under the tiles.  The tiles."  He's holding out a lot longer than I expected.

"What tiles?"  A quick shake of his arm has him in tears.

"Next to the sink—please."

I drop him to the floor and use the heel of my boot like a battering ram against the floor by the sink cabinet, until the rubber sole plunges through a hollow area.  The brown paper sack is just small enough to conceal in my jacket pocket when I roll out all the air.

One last look Ponce's way.  He is sobbing.  Probably just realized he won't be able to dull his own pain with the stash I've nicked from him.

I laugh, but it feels empty.  Bittersweet.  I swing the door back open, grimace at the skin stretching over my knuckles.  "You'll live," I tell Ponce, and step out.

Jim hasn't gone into the street to hail a cab.  He's leaning against the bare wall, hands hooked over the nape of his neck, eyes half-closed.  Thinking again, most likely, though I don't know that that ever stops.

He gives a small smile.  Our eyes don't meet.  On purpose, I think.

---

The cab ride back to the flat is silent.  Again, silence.  Damn quiet.  I can't stand it, but I know Jim doesn't want to hear anything more than the noise of the city, so I keep my mouth shut and nurse my knuckles with a thumb.

Jim is graceful getting out of the cab.  Men aren't graceful.  But Jim isn't a man.  He's not human.  He's more than that.  Jim.  Boss.  He practically dances up the steps to the flat, and I have to take full strides to catch up to him after tossing a few notes at the cabbie.

At the door, Jim's breaths are slow, steady, as though clearing the steps has been a terribly exhausting ordeal for him.  It probably has.  My gut twists with something I'd rather not think about.  Some feeling.  Compartmentalize.  Tuck it away with the war.  Never think about it again, because it's so much now that if you think about it, you'll be sick. I turn the key in the lock, hold the door open for Jim, who walks in with a calculated poise; maybe it's not second nature anymore.

Jim stands still and casts eyes over the sitting room.  I close the door behind me quietly to avoid disturbing him, but he notices everything, and I swear his ears prick up a little at the click of the deadbolt.

He takes out his mobile and starts texting.  And now he's pacing.  To and fro, tap-tap-tap.  To and fro, tap-tap-tap.

"Jim."  No response, but he continues to pace.  "Boss."

The boss's hand is so tight around his mobile that his knuckles have gone white, but at least he's come to a stop.  He's inspecting my shoes with his eyes.  "Get a hold of yourself, Moran.  Grieving isn't going to make you anything, other than a less impressive male specimen."

His voice is sharp.  The flamboyant trill has left him, like it's been sucked out of his vocal cords into a cancerous vacuum.  I haven't heard him like this before.  Is this what it sounds like when James Moriarty is worried?  I'd die happy not knowing.

"I'm not grieving.  You're still alive."

"That's going to change soon."

Dark eyes are suddenly on mine.  They're fighting for the strength to look angry.  Half-winning.

"You don't want to talk about it?"

The anger drains from Jim's face as he twists his mouth in a nonchalant sort of way.  I half-expect the next word that comes out of his mouth to be "nah."  He flops onto the sofa and lets his head loll back.  "Talking is wasted breath," Jim says, quietly this time.  He raises a hand to his face and presses against his eyes with the tips of his fingers.  "I have," puffing out air, "piles.  Piles of work to do.  Time is my most valuable currency, Moran.  And I don't have much left."

I feel stupid that he's holding back on what sounds like a new plan.  Jim always makes me feel stupid.  "Is this a new scheme?"

Jim's fingers dance away from his eyelids to make a gesture in the air.  "You'll see," he says, and it's almost as infuriating as usual.  His fingers curl gently into his palm now, and he taps a knuckle against his forehead.  Sometimes it's like he plucks thoughts from the air.  Like he can see them, and decides which bit of genius is most appropriate for the situation.

I guess that'll change soon, too.  I try not to think about that either, tuck it away with the knowledge that Jim is going to die, probably by May.  But nothing better comes to mind, and Jim has fallen eerily silent.

It feels familiar.  The helplessness against destruction.  The sensation at the base of my ribs, that twisting that tells me I'm watching something I shouldn't be.  I don't know what to expect.  I'm not a fucking quack doctor like Ponce.  But I know Jim's brain has already started to go downhill.

Night before last, he was blathering to me in the kitchen, but it wasn't real words.  It started out that way—bossing me around to make a chicken dish of some kind—but sort of slid into a jumble of vowel sounds.  Made-up words.  He stopped himself in frustration and pointed to the recipe, written in his gentle, swift handwriting.  Then he left the room.

It hurts more than it should.  Maybe.  Maybe it just hurts knowing that I have to see it get worse.  Jim is more than this.  He's a genius:  The man who transformed criminality from a lifestyle to an art.  I'd rather shovel dirt on his coffin today (not today, any day but today) than watch that great brain of his succumb to a damn lump at the back of his head, or wherever it was.

Why'd he have to go and get cancer?  Jim never plans for anything that he can't control.  Part of me wishes this is another in his endless stream of crank jokes.  That he'll pop up from the sofa, take me by the collar, and flash me one of those mad smiles.  "I got you again, Moran," he'd say.

I'd kill him myself if he did that.

I've been standing in front of the door for the past few minutes, and Jim is peering at me sideways.  The look tells me to come closer.  I was wrong about Jim being worried.  Maybe he's scared.

My boots clunk across the hardwood paneling.  I stop behind him, and he inclines his head a bit.  Still quiet.  I settle my hands on his shoulders.  Let them sit weightier than usual.  His shoulders sag under the pressure, but he gives a little sigh of relief.

When he finally says something, it sounds like the old Jim, but it's not comforting.  "I have no intention of putting myself through a great degree more degeneration."

The thought the boss is too young for this strikes, and I realize that I'm not sure exactly how old Jim is.  "What do you need from me?"

"That's a good boy."  I can hear the smile in his voice.  It would grate my nerves if he wasn't, y'know.  "Your final assignment."

"No."  I was never a strong believer in the Christian faith.  Was raised Roman Catholic by my mick grandfather after my father died and Mum drank too much to be of any real use.  But God in Heaven, I know what Jim wants, and I feel the sudden urge to pray I'm wrong.

Jim tenses beneath my fingers and tries to shrug them away, but he isn't strong enough.  He never was, especially not now.  "Not a question."  His voice is high and away, like it's hopped into a rogue hot air balloon.

I bend at the waist and get level with him, but he refuses to look at me until I force him with a hand to his jaw.

His face is composed.  In fact, it gives off the appearance of latent amusement.  But his eyes are too guarded for the façade to be convincing.  Jim knows it's the best he can do.

"It's my job to protect you."

"Hurts, doesn't it?"  Always that ridicule.

"I won't put a bullet in you, Jim," I say through gritted teeth.  It's all I can do to keep from slapping some sense into him, never mind the cancer.

There's a real smile on Jim's lips now.  Somehow that's less reassuring than it sounds.  "I didn't say anything about a bullet."  His fingers slide over the hand that's at his jaw.  It's the one I roughed-up punching Ponce, and it burns when Jim rubs against the cuts on my knuckles.

I let him guide my hand to his throat.  He caresses it like it's a fucking housecat, and it dawns.

I pull my hand away quicker than if I'd laid it down on a boiling-hot range.  "Jim—"

Jim's touching his own neck pensively now.  "'Jim,'" he echoes.   Then he's on his feet again.  "I'll get my affairs in order.  Finish what needs to be completed."  He moves carefully, as though he's concentrating to not lose his balance, stations himself at my side.  "Breathe a word of this to no one.  And, as always..."

Jim is looking at something.  I follow his gaze and lay eyes on my rifle case.  There's nothing I can do but grunt affirmatively.

"Loose ends must be tied."

No one who's estimated a time of death for James Moriarty in the past has lived to see the day.  And, apparently, no one ever will.

Description

Jim's swinging his feet on the examination table, like a drool-lipped toddler waiting for his mother to get through her hair appointment.  Toddler in an eight-hundred-pound suit, thereabouts.  He made me pay as much for the one I never wear.

It falls to me to listen, take mental notes.  Jim taught me that.  Paper trails and electronic footsteps—they're like breadcrumbs.  Not that mentally checking off items on a list is any less of a fucking bother, but I've learned to get used to it.

Malignant.  Terminal.  Metastasis, infratentorial growth, rapid glial production, cerebral hemispheres—

"English, Ponce," I growl.  Taking mental notes does no good if you don't know what the bloody words mean, let alone how they're spelled.  That's not fair. I know "malignant," "terminal," and "metastasis."

The "neurosurgeon," a twitchy eejit named Rodney Ponce, is a half-mad dope fiend, but Jim refuses to see a real doctor.  "For identity purposes," he'd cooed at me.  A load of rot.

Once upon a time, Ponce had a bright future as a surgeon, before his discovery that various opiates gave him the ability to see things in an even brighter light, and he began writing himself prescriptions and stealing medication from his own practice.

Ponce is one of Jim's most treasured lackeys.  After me, I suppose.  Ponce is looking at me like I've just pulled an AWM on him.  Which would be ridiculous, considering it's a long-range weapon.  At this distance, about five feet, an AWM would blow him to kingdom come.  Messy.  Not to mention the recoil trying to use a sniping rifle like a handgun.

Ponce's eyes, a pair of watery greys, shift between the boss and me.  Jim's not even looking at him, so the good doctor grunts a mild "ahem," and gibbers to me, "It's a brain tumor, rooted at the—"

Ponce attempts to indicate and area around the base of Jim's skull with a cupped hand, but recoils at an eyebrow-scrunch from the boss.  "Rooted at the back of his brain.  It's called infratentorial."  A hand over my hip has Ponce talking my language again.  "Infra—meaning, the back.  The back of the brain.  His brain is producing too many glial cells, too fast.  He's dying."  He seems worried.  Maybe he's wondering who will pay him a king's ransom for backalley medical advice once Jim Moriarty is gone from the world.

I glance at Jim.  He isn't kicking his feet anymore, but he isn't looking at me, either.  Just staring.

At what, I'm not sure.  Not much to stare at, other than a poster of an Irish landscape, the words "FIND YOUR SILVER LINING" tramping across the rolling hills in ugly, white, ironic typeface.  There aren't any windows in Ponce's exam room, which, as far as I can tell, is a gutted master bath.  We're in a tower block on the southeast side of town, in the dodgy end.  The exam table is bolted to the floor where it looks as though a tub should be.  The sink and a small cabinet beneath which holds the medical tools hearken back to the room's former purpose.

It's been silent for too long.  Silence is never good.  Sets my teeth on edge.  In Afghanistan, silence means the target has been alerted to your presence and will seek shelter, send his ululating bastard horde after you to pump you full of lead.  In the jungle, silence means the cat has spotted you.  In that moment, you are powerless.  Less than that, you're the prey.

Jim breaks the silence.  His voice is even—as even as that ridiculous up-and-down tra-la-la he calls a speech pattern gets.  "Don't suppose you could give me a time frame?"  Jim's head rolls on his neck, like a charmed cobra, until he's facing Ponce and he takes in a delicate breath.  I realize his eyes have been closed in thought.  But before anyone can speak again, they fly back open and bore into Ponce.

The doctor tenses like a tiger the moment a bullet hits its chest.  Not a tiger—he's too thin for that.  A fox, maybe.  But what's the point shooting everyday, fuzzball creatures?  "I can't be sure."

"If you would make an estimate."  Jim is completely still.  If I hadn't slept next to him on and off for as long as I have, I could have been tricked into thinking he was calm.

But the boss's stillness is his brain at work, plotting.  The Moriarty cogs are grinding together at somewhere around villain speed, which, to ordinary baddies like Ponce and me, is an unattainable rate.

"A month."

I can't hear it from him.  Not from Ponce.  It's too polluted.  Not stylish, not classy—it doesn't suit him at all.  The heel of my palm is in pain, and I uncoil the fist I've gathered at my side.

"Maybe five weeks."  Ponce is paler than a sheet that's seen a ghost, wearing a different sheet.  I don't blame him.  To my knowledge, no one who's estimated a time of death for James Moriarty in the past has lived to see the day.

Jim isn't smiling.  But he's not showing signs of distress.  He's slipped off the table and is pushing his hand through one of the sleeves of his jacket.  On his way past, the boss gives me a look that's almost warm, and pats my chest.  "Don't linger."  Then he's gone.  He didn't want to hear it from Ponce, either.

When I close the door to the exam room with my boot, the slam resounds for longer than I expected.

Ponce is looking at me.  It's that look of nosiness that some of the ill-fated give to Jim instead of to me:  The presumption that I am Moriarty's Number Two Man because I can give Jim something they can't.

They're right.  But whether they're correct doesn't stop them from catching a bullet in the brain.

"Moran—I'm sorry," Ponce tries.  He's fidgeting, nervous.  And for good reason, because I'm advancing on him and rolling my sleeves to my elbows.  "I-I've got spare pills, needles.  Morphine, things like that.  He won't suffer, much."

I jab him in the nose.  Close-quarters combat training ensures that it breaks, and blood spills down his face.  His eyes are wide as he backs up, hits the wall, rips the "silver lining" poster.

The hand he raises in defense is bright red.  Blood from vital areas is dark.  I backhand him.  I don't know why I'm hitting him, but I can't stop myself.  Not as though Ponce really matters anymore.  Dying man has no use for a doctor.

My fist connects with his gut.  His jaw.  His lip.  The swing to his cheekbone checks me, and I curse, cradling my fist in my other hand.  The knuckles are trickling blood, but only a little of it is mine.

Ponce is cowering, has inched his way to the corner and is quivering pathetically.  Maybe he's afraid he's going to die.  Jim isn't cowering this way.

With a glance in his direction—he's still trembling with shock—I riffle through his sink cabinet.  The search turns up nothing but a first-aid kit, the tools Ponce had used on Jim following our jaunt to the stolen MRI, and two needles of adrenaline.  "Where's your stash?" I demand.

He doesn't have anything to say, other than a whimper, so I lob the assortment of useless medical items in my hands at him, and he yelps.  The first-aid kit pops open against the tile behind him; he raises a forearm in protection from the syringes of adrenaline.  Wise—they scrape against his sleeve and tumble to the floor.

When I raise my hand to him again, Ponce shrinks back, clutching at his chest and nose with one hand, his forearm still hovering over his face.  As though I can't break an arm.

Grabbing Ponce's forearm, his last line of defense, I tug upwards, and he hovers above the floor like a sack of flour with limbs.  "I don't need you to tell me the whereabouts of your stash to break this, but it couldn't hurt your chances."

I don't have time for one-sided banter with Ponce.  For all I know, Jim has already wandered out onto the street and hailed a cab.  He doesn't know what's best for him.

Ponce's voice is small.  "Under the tiles.  The tiles."  He's holding out a lot longer than I expected.

"What tiles?"  A quick shake of his arm has him in tears.

"Next to the sink—please."

I drop him to the floor and use the heel of my boot like a battering ram against the floor by the sink cabinet, until the rubber sole plunges through a hollow area.  The brown paper sack is just small enough to conceal in my jacket pocket when I roll out all the air.

One last look Ponce's way.  He is sobbing.  Probably just realized he won't be able to dull his own pain with the stash I've nicked from him.

I laugh, but it feels empty.  Bittersweet.  I swing the door back open, grimace at the skin stretching over my knuckles.  "You'll live," I tell Ponce, and step out.

Jim hasn't gone into the street to hail a cab.  He's leaning against the bare wall, hands hooked over the nape of his neck, eyes half-closed.  Thinking again, most likely, though I don't know that that ever stops.

He gives a small smile.  Our eyes don't meet.  On purpose, I think.

---

The cab ride back to the flat is silent.  Again, silence.  Damn quiet.  I can't stand it, but I know Jim doesn't want to hear anything more than the noise of the city, so I keep my mouth shut and nurse my knuckles with a thumb.

Jim is graceful getting out of the cab.  Men aren't graceful.  But Jim isn't a man.  He's not human.  He's more than that.  Jim.  Boss.  He practically dances up the steps to the flat, and I have to take full strides to catch up to him after tossing a few notes at the cabbie.

At the door, Jim's breaths are slow, steady, as though clearing the steps has been a terribly exhausting ordeal for him.  It probably has.  My gut twists with something I'd rather not think about.  Some feeling.  Compartmentalize.  Tuck it away with the war.  Never think about it again, because it's so much now that if you think about it, you'll be sick. I turn the key in the lock, hold the door open for Jim, who walks in with a calculated poise; maybe it's not second nature anymore.

Jim stands still and casts eyes over the sitting room.  I close the door behind me quietly to avoid disturbing him, but he notices everything, and I swear his ears prick up a little at the click of the deadbolt.

He takes out his mobile and starts texting.  And now he's pacing.  To and fro, tap-tap-tap.  To and fro, tap-tap-tap.

"Jim."  No response, but he continues to pace.  "Boss."

The boss's hand is so tight around his mobile that his knuckles have gone white, but at least he's come to a stop.  He's inspecting my shoes with his eyes.  "Get a hold of yourself, Moran.  Grieving isn't going to make you anything, other than a less impressive male specimen."

His voice is sharp.  The flamboyant trill has left him, like it's been sucked out of his vocal cords into a cancerous vacuum.  I haven't heard him like this before.  Is this what it sounds like when James Moriarty is worried?  I'd die happy not knowing.

"I'm not grieving.  You're still alive."

"That's going to change soon."

Dark eyes are suddenly on mine.  They're fighting for the strength to look angry.  Half-winning.

"You don't want to talk about it?"

The anger drains from Jim's face as he twists his mouth in a nonchalant sort of way.  I half-expect the next word that comes out of his mouth to be "nah."  He flops onto the sofa and lets his head loll back.  "Talking is wasted breath," Jim says, quietly this time.  He raises a hand to his face and presses against his eyes with the tips of his fingers.  "I have," puffing out air, "piles.  Piles of work to do.  Time is my most valuable currency, Moran.  And I don't have much left."

I feel stupid that he's holding back on what sounds like a new plan.  Jim always makes me feel stupid.  "Is this a new scheme?"

Jim's fingers dance away from his eyelids to make a gesture in the air.  "You'll see," he says, and it's almost as infuriating as usual.  His fingers curl gently into his palm now, and he taps a knuckle against his forehead.  Sometimes it's like he plucks thoughts from the air.  Like he can see them, and decides which bit of genius is most appropriate for the situation.

I guess that'll change soon, too.  I try not to think about that either, tuck it away with the knowledge that Jim is going to die, probably by May.  But nothing better comes to mind, and Jim has fallen eerily silent.

It feels familiar.  The helplessness against destruction.  The sensation at the base of my ribs, that twisting that tells me I'm watching something I shouldn't be.  I don't know what to expect.  I'm not a fucking quack doctor like Ponce.  But I know Jim's brain has already started to go downhill.

Night before last, he was blathering to me in the kitchen, but it wasn't real words.  It started out that way—bossing me around to make a chicken dish of some kind—but sort of slid into a jumble of vowel sounds.  Made-up words.  He stopped himself in frustration and pointed to the recipe, written in his gentle, swift handwriting.  Then he left the room.

It hurts more than it should.  Maybe.  Maybe it just hurts knowing that I have to see it get worse.  Jim is more than this.  He's a genius:  The man who transformed criminality from a lifestyle to an art.  I'd rather shovel dirt on his coffin today (not today, any day but today) than watch that great brain of his succumb to a damn lump at the back of his head, or wherever it was.

Why'd he have to go and get cancer?  Jim never plans for anything that he can't control.  Part of me wishes this is another in his endless stream of crank jokes.  That he'll pop up from the sofa, take me by the collar, and flash me one of those mad smiles.  "I got you again, Moran," he'd say.

I'd kill him myself if he did that.

I've been standing in front of the door for the past few minutes, and Jim is peering at me sideways.  The look tells me to come closer.  I was wrong about Jim being worried.  Maybe he's scared.

My boots clunk across the hardwood paneling.  I stop behind him, and he inclines his head a bit.  Still quiet.  I settle my hands on his shoulders.  Let them sit weightier than usual.  His shoulders sag under the pressure, but he gives a little sigh of relief.

When he finally says something, it sounds like the old Jim, but it's not comforting.  "I have no intention of putting myself through a great degree more degeneration."

The thought the boss is too young for this strikes, and I realize that I'm not sure exactly how old Jim is.  "What do you need from me?"

"That's a good boy."  I can hear the smile in his voice.  It would grate my nerves if he wasn't, y'know.  "Your final assignment."

"No."  I was never a strong believer in the Christian faith.  Was raised Roman Catholic by my mick grandfather after my father died and Mum drank too much to be of any real use.  But God in Heaven, I know what Jim wants, and I feel the sudden urge to pray I'm wrong.

Jim tenses beneath my fingers and tries to shrug them away, but he isn't strong enough.  He never was, especially not now.  "Not a question."  His voice is high and away, like it's hopped into a rogue hot air balloon.

I bend at the waist and get level with him, but he refuses to look at me until I force him with a hand to his jaw.

His face is composed.  In fact, it gives off the appearance of latent amusement.  But his eyes are too guarded for the façade to be convincing.  Jim knows it's the best he can do.

"It's my job to protect you."

"Hurts, doesn't it?"  Always that ridicule.

"I won't put a bullet in you, Jim," I say through gritted teeth.  It's all I can do to keep from slapping some sense into him, never mind the cancer.

There's a real smile on Jim's lips now.  Somehow that's less reassuring than it sounds.  "I didn't say anything about a bullet."  His fingers slide over the hand that's at his jaw.  It's the one I roughed-up punching Ponce, and it burns when Jim rubs against the cuts on my knuckles.

I let him guide my hand to his throat.  He caresses it like it's a fucking housecat, and it dawns.

I pull my hand away quicker than if I'd laid it down on a boiling-hot range.  "Jim—"

Jim's touching his own neck pensively now.  "'Jim,'" he echoes.   Then he's on his feet again.  "I'll get my affairs in order.  Finish what needs to be completed."  He moves carefully, as though he's concentrating to not lose his balance, stations himself at my side.  "Breathe a word of this to no one.  And, as always..."

Jim is looking at something.  I follow his gaze and lay eyes on my rifle case.  There's nothing I can do but grunt affirmatively.

"Loose ends must be tied."

No one who's estimated a time of death for James Moriarty in the past has lived to see the day.  And, apparently, no one ever will.