Work Text:
5 years old.
Jim’s face is unhealthily pale, like a sheet, his mother used to say. The rest of him is weedy and thin, a ragged mix of bones that stick out and ribs that sometimes show through his t-shirt. He has deep brown eyes that make people uncomfortable. This he knows because adults always fidget with their fingers and look away. Other children stare warily before turning their back.
But what he doesn’t understand, is why.
In fact, there’s not much he understands about the world that surrounds him. He doesn't know why his mother is gone, and now that she is he misses her - with her mousy brown hair and faded smile - desperately. The memories he has are already starting to dissolve faster than he can stop them, cracking and deteriorating in his mind. Why wouldn’t she wake up that morning, with the glass bottle and collection of small white pills curled in her hand? And why was that hand stone cold?
He’ll never forget what that felt like.
But what’s most confusing is why she would leave him alone with father.
Because father is horrible.
Six feet tall, with greasy coal black hair and hunched shoulders, he’s a brute of a man. His eyes are a constant bloodshot red. Clouds of cigar smoke forever seem to shroud his face, cling to his beard. He shouts, never shaves, and almost always smells of whisky.
Jim’s not old enough to fully understand hatred yet, but he will. He’ll feel it tingling within every fibre of his being. Every minute of every day. It will burn within him like an unstoppable force, an untamable fire. Stronger than anything .
As the weeks slip by he starts to spend long days and sleepless nights staring out of the window in his bedroom, his big brown eyes dark and murky, longing to hug the woman he never really knew; to sink into her arms and cry as she cradles his head, just like she used to.
But he can’t hug her ever again, and as he grows older, he realises it was his own father who made sure of that.
And he’ll pay for it.
*
28 years old.
Jim Moriarty lets the chewing gum travel slowly to each corner of his mouth, pushing and easing it around with his tongue. He tilts his head back. Tonight is a good one. He’s lounging on the top of his very own apartment building, staring out across the purple tainted skyline, watching as the cool evening air settles over the city. Sorry, his city.
London hums quietly beneath him. The faint sound of buses trundling across bridges and people travelling back to their homes, disappearing through their various front doors and turning the key.
But there isn’t one of them he couldn’t unlock. Not a single person he doesn’t, or couldn't, control.
He takes another slow drag of his cigarette and exhales slowly, thinking, watching as the smoke swirls high into the sky above.
He hates reminiscing about his childhood. It’s always a painful and predictable experience, but sometimes he forces himself to do it.
He can’t forget.
Because it’s good to remind himself exactly why he’s like this. Mad. Insane. Unstoppable. Smart. Intelligent like no one else is.
It’s better this way. He’s free from all the tiresome emotional baggage, from everything that could possibly make him vulnerable. He just has himself, the power of the world on his shoulders, and the occasional flashback.
I’m sorry she’s gone, Jim. I didn’t mean to hurt her. It was an accident, she killed herself. I won’t beat you again, I promise - please don’t -
They’re not traumatic though. Sometimes he just gets visions from the day that blood first stained his fingers. The sticky lukewarm liquid that wasn’t too dissimilar to his own, biologically of course.
He smiles.
Life ain’t too bad after all.