The slightly pink glow of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, driving him quite simply mad. He hadn't been altogether stable before, he was aware; but if the damned things kept buzzing, he'd go crazy. There was no question of that, not for him. They had given him a cigarette, at least, so that was helping a little. Not necessarily because of the nicotine -- he didn't actually smoke, and the first lungful had choked him awfully when he'd taken a deep breath of the stuff. No, it was really only because it gave him something to do with his hands, because it was free, and he had something against turning down *free* things.

Well.

He *had*.

"So you're saying that he just walked right up and shot him."

"Yes." He was proud of himself. The firm tenor of his voice didn't tremble, didn't shake, didn't betray the wail that was clamped behind his teeth.

"That's it?"

"That's what I told you, isn't it?" he snapped out a little hysterically. "That's what I told you the first time and the third and the bloody forty ninth! It's not going to change just because you keep asking!!"

"We just don't understand WH..."

He laughed, a brittle sound, revealing the underlying wreckage of his thoughts. "Oh, why, why, *why*!? You want to know *why*!? All these years of pursuit and you want to know *why*!? Iraq, Pakistan, Brazil, Georgia, Alaska, more slovakia's then there are *names* for, run and chase and touch and tease, and you want to know WHY!?"

"Well, it's just as you say. After all of these years..."

"Does it not occur to you that, eventually, there might have been enough of chasing and too little of catching?" James asked evenly, proud that he was able to go back to that tone of voice. Why shouldn't he be able to? He was a shambles, a wreck, and he knew it. How on earth could he...

"And you don't know of any other reason?"

They were the idiots that machine maniac had always declared them to be. "If I say the little green men inside of the earth made him do it, would that make you feel better? Get him a little psychiatric counseling, put him right back out to do your dirty deeds, huh?" The cigarette was still lit, but it was getting closer to the filter, and he lifted it, taking another shaky, horrid breath of smoke. What the hell was the point in these things, anyway!?

"What we do is..."

"None of my business?" came the cool reply, the tremble back in that voice again. "Isn't it, though? Really. Isn't it?"

And they didn't answer him, because in the end, perhaps it was more his business than anyone else's. Mr. James gave a faint smile accompanied by a little shudder. God, what was wrong with him and his penchant for blonds who wanted the unattainable? There was Eroica of course, before. Dorian Red Gloria. He'd been gone almost six years, lost in a spray of gunfire in Uzbekistan, bleeding to death under the hands of one Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach, the man doing his damnedest to slow the leak of blood from the arteries that had been hit, but there had been too many of them. Far too many of them.

Damn him.

If only he had stopped *running*, if only he had *given in*, maybe Dorian would still be alive. Maybe he would be happy, maybe he would have tired of the man, maybe...

Maybe, if, perhaps, wish, want, need.

If Dorian hadn't died...

And then there was Erich.

Z.

Beautiful, beautiful Z. So placid, so sweet, so wild in his bed. It had surprised him, James had to admit. He really hadn't seemed the sort, he *hadn't*, and definitely not the type to want some pretty little man like James, no. He was meant for tall, beautiful men, the fairy tale of dark and handsome, and he had yearned for it, too, not that James had realized it.

Back to square one.

It hadn't even seemed obvious that he was chasing the Major at first; how could it have been? He'd been a member of the Alphabet just as long as Dorian had been pursuing Klaus. Maybe that was why he hadn't noticed. It was just a different sort of pursuit, after all.

And now...

Well.

Now.

"Thank you for your answers. Mr. James. We will, of course, repay you for your time and trouble."

Time and trouble. Ha! Of course they'd pay him, and they'd pay him for more than that, he'd make certain of it. They'd pay him for every moment he'd spent hiding in that fucking stupid Eberbach castle, they'd pay him for the fear that had danced along his spine and down his limbs when the door had opened and the room had been searched, they'd pay him for the suit that had been ruined with blood, oh, they *would* pay.

They'd pay, and he'd make sure that they did. He'd find a way to be certain that... that *crazy* man was locked away for good, locked up so tightly he'd never, ever get out again. Erich...

Z.

So beautiful.

So deadly.

And as he walked out, passing A and G and several others who'd known him and cringed from him for years, he didn't pause. He just kept walking, the blood of Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach still clotted red and reeking in his hair and on his clothes, even covering the side of his face. It was almost enough to make him sick, as sick as the realization that there had been one more bullet in that gun, and it had not been meant for Z.

Grimly, he walked onward. /I will not think about this,/ he decided, ignoring the little cries of the secretaries at the front desk as he walked towards the parking garage. /I will not think.../

"Jamesie..."

Blue eyes widened, first with an insane hope belied by the difference in those voices and then with horror as he felt the cold steel muzzle pressed against the back of his head, just as it had pressed to Major Eberbach's.

"My poor Jamesie..."