So. This is the end. He didn't look at Vicious when it was done. You don't stop to look at things you've discarded. You don't stop to look at the past when you're moving on. And after the decade he'd spent living with the man and the memory, he was fucking sick of Vicious. It was a relief to finally be done.
It was a relief to be done with Julia, too, in a weird way. The woman he'd lost twice now, both times to the same man. Both times for the same reasons. Two people dead. Soon to be three, he suspected, but he found that somehow it didn't bother him. He'd spent too much of his life on dead things. He was done now.
He walked away for the second time. This walk was easier. He didn't have very far to go. He just knew that in the way of wanderers, he was headed out again. Only this time there was no running, and he had a very definite destination. One-way ticket, but how to go? He didn't feel victorious, so it wasn't a party. And he didn't exactly feel happy, just sort of concluded. Loose ends that had frayed his soul were finally singed off. For the first time in a while -- the first time in his life, maybe -- he wasn't coming apart at the seams and trailing thread.
Felt pretty good, he had to admit.
The smoke was clearing. It always does in the end. There are certain conventions to these things. Ah, there they were. Syndicate guys, come to clean up the mess. Good thing he was dying or they'd probably kill him, but he guessed they must know he was on the way out because everything was still. They were his final audience, and he figured they were waiting for the curtain to drop.
But how to end it right? What note to go out on? He didn't really have the energy left to curse, or to make a speech, and besides he hated speeches. He didn't have anything left to leave behind. Most of his life was dead.
Man, he really wanted a cigarette.
And then, like the best ideas do, it came to him. Complete. Simple. Perfect.
He smiled. How do you make the best exit? He raised his hand in a mime of a gun.
You go out with a...
"Bang." And he did.
