obligatory 03

"Let's have a meeting," stated Moriarty flatly, "All those dragging their feet should be there."
"What would that prove?"
"That I'm not willing to have to manually cut past your smoke and mirrors."
"It's a completely different case, Xander..."
Cold pain shot up Alexander's throat. Reynolds would stop at nothing to keep him from continuing this line of interest. But there would be no case at all if this was not continued...
"Then you tell me why it is so inexplicably connected." Moriarty replied coldly, hiding the fear.
Reynolds was silent.
"So I am correct." Moriarty mumbled. He cleared his throat. "A meeting, Kane. Today."
"You don't have time." Kane Reynolds declared.
"That wasn't so last night."
Silence.
Kane Reynolds finally cursed. "You drive a hard point, Xander-"
Moriarty swore. "Don't call me-"
"I'll call you whatever I want, Alex. Are you afraid of something?"
"I'm not," Moriarty retorted, "You know that. Your insistence on digging up whatever you think ought not to be brought back only betrays the stupidity-"
"Can I quote you on that?"
Moriarty said nothing.
"A meeting at six." Kane snapped finally. "Be there."
"I'll-"
Click. Kane had hung up. Moriarty dropped the phone and turned. Woon and Walsh were staring at him.
Moriarty shook his head. "Meeting at six."
Walsh nodded.
Alexander Moriarty limped across the room and reached the door, pulling a cigarette from his coat pocket.
When he reached the back stairs, he unconsciously began to flick his lighter with his right hand. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the door at the top of the stairs slammed open.
"Where are you going?" Woon demanded to know.
"For a smoke," he snapped. "Do you mind?"
"Mind if I join?" Woon's voice was different. Less harsh, less demanding.
Moriarty shrugged and pushed through the door into thick, misty air. He lit his cigarette.
The door burst open and Woon stepped out. She looked exasperated.
"Why do you smoke?" Alex asked gruffly. "You're educated. You know it's bad."
"We all have things we can't shake." Dale Woon snapped; her face softened. "Do you have a light?"
Alexander nodded wordlessly, flicking the lighter. Dale brought her cigarette to the flame and then away, breathing in, out, permeating the dim area with the awful, rancid smell.
"Worse than gasoline fumes," she mumbled. She breathed out, and the thin white smoke hung in the air. She cursed after a long moment. "From an educated standpoint, however, it makes more sense to do things that are self-destructive. It's easier, you know. To do something wrong for the results that seem positive."
Moriarty said nothing.
"So what was that about?" Dale tapped the cigarette and turned towards Alex.
"Kane Reynolds is a fool." He muttered. "That's all there is to it."
Dale fought a grin.
"There are a good deal of things, anyway, which point to a desired collective confusion." Moriarty glared, unseeing, at the cigarette in his hand. "You'd think that somewhere in this rubbish someone might grow a conscience."
"Apart from self-imposed and pompous integrity, I highly doubt that prospect. Even then you don't see active or consistent conscience, except in religion."
"'The enigma wrapped in so many questions.'" Moriarty murmured. He turned to Dale. "Never was into that."
"There've been major breaches in logic from that camp."
"It seems there's more positive than negative, though." Moriarty tapped the excess ash from his cigarette. "It's how you take it, but..." He trailed off.
Dale nodded.
"In 1989, I was still a rookie." Moriarty began, clearing his throat. "Occupying a nice office, a fairly quiet beat... a deranged criminal I happened to be in the way of nearly killed me with an iron bar. Officially I killed him in self-defense while on duty."
"Unofficially?"
"He was a well-known violent criminal who'd gone to prison before for insanely violent crimes. He came across a female jogger in a Bristol park one morning, and killed her. She was my sister in law."
Dale inhaled sharply. Her face finally betrayed human emotion, it seemed. "I'm sorry."
"I was, too. I wasn't supposed to go off after the fellow. Emotional ties, family, et cetera. It was only luck that I got out of that alive. My left tibia was cracked in two pieces, and my patella was shattered. That was the end of a lot of things." He finished.
There was relative silence.
"Why are you telling me?" Woon asked finally.
"Because..." Moriarty trailed off, suddenly unsure. "We're not competing for our jobs."
Woon said nothing.
"Reynolds was the first - and only person to professionally know this."
"I'm sorry it happened." Woon said softly.
"I know the consequences of the shortcuts." Moriarty replied. "I've realized the warning signs of corruption and lies, even though we all tell them. And if those above you are involved with the very lie that you're trying to uproot, what are you to do?"
"They're like Daniels himself?"
"It's the same greed, same winding tale. Different ways of being shown, of course."
"Everything is the same in the end, anyway."
Moriarty considered this and nodded, stabbing out his cigarette blindly against the wall. He turned and headed back to the door.
"Alexander-" Woon said suddenly; the man turned back to her earnestly upturned face. "If everything is the same in the end, is there any hope in changing it?"
"I think the liar's confession is genuine if born from a ridiculous amount of anxiety and fear - a fear of a large amount of the truth, and the anxiety that the truth will make him out to be a fool. It plays on honesty and pride, my dear, and the clever man is not immune to that but reacts in conniving ways."
"What if a confession is born from repentance?"
"Then you have more of a liar's hope to go on." Moriarty replied blandly.

posted by paradoxically correct @ 7:43 PM