“There comes a time in everyone’s life when they just can’t go anymore.”

“When their joints are creaking, their heart beats grow weak, and the fire burning deep in their soul begins to wither away to cinders. A pile of ash deep within your chest that makes you simply ask yourself.”

“Should I finally give up?”

“Give in?”

“Allow myself to get knocked down one last time and finally never get back to your feet?”

“In my life I’ve had a thousand times that the thought went through my mind, you know. With every last bit of pain and strife I felt the inferno in my chest get slowly snuffed out. Deprived of air, left to suffocate beneath my failures! Every last time my body threatening to finally give out on me.”

“Yet I just couldn’t.”

“No matter how many times the thought of giving up entered my head, no matter how tantalizing… Nothing could make me finally stay down.”

“I can’t give up.”

“My body, my soul, just simply won’t let me stay down on the ground, to finally admit defeat.”

“No matter the pain.”

“No matter the sorrow.”

“You know that too well, don’t you Harry? You and I were side by side these last few years. For better or for worse we’ve been through it all and you know as well as I do that the word ‘quit’ was never in my vocabulary.”

“Hell, I don’t think it was in yours, either.”

“But none of that matters now, does it? Because I know you Harold, I know how big of a toll this has all taken on you. You’re an old man on his way out, a ghost clinging onto the façade of life all because you have one last bit of business to attend to in your life!”

“I know it’s hard to let go.”

“But come Olympus one of us is going to have to say the two words that have haunted us for so long.”

“And to tell you the truth, Harry?”

“It sure as hell isn’t going to be me.”

“No matter how much you try to smother me, how much you stomp away at the cinders in my soul, I just won’t give up, Harold.”

“I can’t.”

“Not this close to the end.”

“That pile of ashes glowing in my chest will never go out because every last bit of pain only serves to fuel my fire.”

“Try and stop me, try and be the man to finally make me break. My fire will roar into an inferno before your very eyes and it will absolutely consume you.”

“From now until the end of time will I burn brightly, Harry. Bright enough to snuff you out, to finally lay you to the rest you deserve.”

“It’s okay, you can finally rest, old friend.”

“As your friend, I’m telling you to quit.”

“Quit before you get burned.”

“No one is above the Law, Harry.”

“And I am the Law.”