This little thing wouldn't leave my brain and it was holding up The Beginning of an End so I wrote it to get it out.
Mostly just Moriarty background stuff.
Jim was 12 years old when he first wanted to kill someone.
He was 13 when he actually managed it, though.
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Tim Powers was a nice man, really, everyone knew it, with his son Carl, centre of Tim's world since Mrs. Powers had died. And oh, the poor thing, no mum to look after him, sweet poor thing.
Carl got everything he ever wanted - from teachers and father alike. Champion of swim club.
Poor thing, Jim's arse.
Jim, on the other hand, wasn't the teacher's pet. Not ignored, no, but not lauded, either. No one noticed his I.Q. was far above normal, his manner of speaking too grown up for his age.
He loathed it.
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Melissa Moriarty was a single mum (very single, according to Jim's teachers, who liked to 'joke' behind his back, as if he couldn't hear them), partly because Jim's dad had skipped out on them, partially because she'd then chosen to become a prostitute (because "Jim, if people are gonna treat you like shite no matter what, you might as well get paid for it"). She had dark curling hair and blue-green eyes and an Irish lilt that Jim adopted. Jim adored her.
So as annoying as Carl Powers tended to be, Jim was happy for her when she and Tim Powers started dating. (After all, Tim Powers was a nice man, really, everyone knew it, and if anyone deserved niceness, Jim's mum did.)
At first it was lovely - Jim went to school and suddenly was Carl's best friend and people noticed him, and Melissa Moriarty came home laughing and smiling.
But the smiles started to fade, and Carl's eyes glinted strangely, and when Jim's mum came home with angry, Tim-finger-shaped bruises on her arms, Jim began to get angry.
Melissa Moriarty went on her last date with Tim Powers and came home with a black eye.
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The next day Carl laughed, and others laughed with him. (Because it was funny, a whore turning down Tim Powers, who was so nice. It was funny, her son getting angry about it. Whores liked it a little rough, didn't they?)
Jim got sent to detention for inappropriate behaviour. Carl went to swim practice.
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Jim was 12 years old when he first wanted to kill someone.
He was 13 when he actually did it, though.
He never did forgive himself for that year in-between.
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Melissa Moriarty lost her easy smile. Bruises on her arms faded only to come back. (Jim asked her about it one day. She gathered him up in her arms and told him some people thought she liked it, and please, darling boy, would he never hurt anyone he was meant to be loving?
He promised he wouldn't, and she kissed his forehead and let him go.
He was very glad he wasn't meant to love Tim Powers and his son, because he didn't like lying to her.)
A week later she was found dead in an upper-class penthouse. Auto-erotic asphyxiation, they said. Just an unfortunate accident, they said.
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Luckily Jim had finally managed to finish his science fair project, so no one questioned it when he insisted on bringing the Petri dishes with him when the lady asked him to pack his things.
And when he insisted on going to the swim meet for his old school, the welfare lady was so supportive of his choice to reach out to people in his grief.
(Tears of rage are easily mistaken for sorrow.)
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Jim started his network on the streets, easily - he had a nice arse, and wide eyes, and he knew how to make himself look stumbling and virginal and naïve, and soon he had enough money in his pockets and blackmail material to begin to pay certain people to do certain things; and so London very quickly learned that there were places you did not go, and that someone was watching, watching, always watching.
Business was good, and that was nice, but boring, so Jim went to Paris and started over.
Then, New York. Mexico City. Amsterdam. Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing, in quick succession.
And then he decided he missed fish and chips - decent ones - and went back to London.
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Running his empire was easy, easy, too EASY with his giant mind, his superior intelligence, too easy, and he began to look for distraction, to seek out stimulation elsewhere (he tried drugs but even their effects were predictable. Sex was mundane. Gambling, moronic. GOD THE ENTIRE WORLD WAS SO EASILY BEATEN).
He was trying adrenaline, now (danger was nothing new to him, but he could play it rough, too rough, maybe trick his body into releasing the chemical, he hated the tracks of syringe marks) and the seedy pub was dirty and the ale foul, and he was wondering if the cover story was worth drinking it when the door opened and a woman came in, took a seat at a booth, sat down gingerly.
She wore a small dress, a simple coat, her hair sweetly curled around her face, her make-up impeccable.
Jim catalogued the injuries so easily hidden. Bruising along the ribs and spine. Welts on the buttocks. Small lacerations on the back. He ignored her, then - she'd ceased to be interesting - and turned back to his drink, which he was tempted to take home, as he was moderately certain it contained noxious chemicals previously unknown to science.
"Did you love him, once?" a gruff voice asked, and Jim let his head tilt slightly so he could study the man (ex-army officer, dishonourable discharge, no family) who had approached the elegant woman. She looked up at him in surprise.
"Who?" she asked, with a remarkable amount of poise, blinking innocently, but the man just scoffed.
"Your bruiser," he said. "Did you love him once?"
"Hardly any of your business," she said primly, and the man grinned.
"True," he said, but instead of leaving, he pulled out a pen and grabbed the nearest coaster, scribbling something down and then pushing it toward her. "Let me know if it becomes my business."
The lady ignored the coaster. The man stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away.
Jim waited, frowned, and left with his potentially toxic drink and a coaster.
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Moran, 020 794 60388
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"It's - it's become more of a problem, sir," stuttered an utterly useless moron of an underling over the phone. "They've hired a sniper. It's making deliveries difficult."
A sniper in London. Hardly new, but rare enough to be mildly diverting. Jim hung up without saying anything (knowing the moron would panic for a good fortnight about it) and send a few texts to Daisy and Pete and Kieran and Louis.
A week and one purposefully botched delivery later, he was handed an envelope by an appropriately terrified hotel employee. He opened it quickly and scanned the papers within.
A moment later the entire room was in chaos as he tossed about various items, letting an old teacup smash against a mirror as he tossed it over his head to lay his hands on what it rested upon: an old coaster.
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Moran, 020 794 60388
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OH. Interesting.
This is dedicated to noottersontheflightdeck, because he got me into MorMor in the first place so I blame him.