Title: Dust to Dust
Characters: Jimmy, Ducky, team, mostly Jimmy.
Genre: Character Study, Angst, Drama.
Rating: FR15.
Plot: Something is wrong but no one seems to notice. Does anybody even care?

Written for the sickness and addictions NFA Challenge

Disclaimer: Set sometime on Season 7. No copyright infringement intended. Not making any money out of it. Etc Etc.

"Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose."- Turkish Proverb

Chapter 1: As water rusts iron, so is man consumed by time

Life flows in moments, not in years, as the highs and lows of our existence accumulate one after the other, forcing us to blindly seek something just beyond our grasp. Our incessant struggles to achieve something - what? I have no idea... - are rarely noticed by others, as all those around us are also in the same rat race, running, running, but never arriving anywhere.

I observe the struggles, joys and battles of the agents around me, as they tirelessly fight to bring justice to those who have been wronged. Their battles are not easy, as each one of them carry their own burdens and scars from previous battles, juggling their lives precariously over a very thin line which separates hope from despair.

Yet, as I put yet another body of a another dead petty officer onto the morgue drawer, after Dr. Mallard had finished his work on it and I have the chance of study the sightless eyes staring accusingly towards the heavens, I valiantly try not to think about what that young healthy man must have thought as he had to face his own mortality.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

My mortality.

The fragility of life before death.

Everybody dies. It just happens that some people die sooner than others. Others die by somebody else's hands, their lives cropped at the height of their vigor.

Others linger for days, months, sometimes even years before the Ripper comes to finally make a visit.

I think I've been hanging around Dr. Mallard for too long. I'm sounding like him already.

I've really started to notice that something was wrong when one night, approximately two months ago, I woke up really thirsty and went to get a bottle of water in my fridge. For some unknown reason, I had to support myself against the wall to wait for the dizziness to pass as soon as I stood up from my bed. Once the black dots stopped dancing in front of my eyes, I walked slowly towards my fridge, opened it and took a bottle from inside of it. However, I froze when I stared at my hand, holding the bottle of water. It was shaking as if I had just ran a marathon, or as if I was a patient in a very advanced stage of Parkinson's disease and, regardless of how much effort I put into it, I couldn't stop its shaking.

As I stared the bottle, the water inside shaking as if going through an earthquake, my mind was inundated with fear as thousand possible diagnostics run through my head, the vivid images of my medicine books jumping before my eyes, increasing even more my panic.

I have carefully watched my food intake, my sugar levels and my frequent insulin shots, as I have lived with diabetes during most of my teenage years and I have been very careful during my short adult life, but I can't help the feeling of panic of this being something different.

Something more serious than a simple imbalance in my sugar levels, something which could radically change my life.

And thus started my long road to discovery.

Of what? I really have no idea.

- TBC -