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Jamie Moriarty ([personal profile] notthewoman) wrote in [community profile] all_inclusive2015-03-09 12:18 pm

"I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year."

She was not accustomed to genuine fear as she was not sure she was truly capable of it. Instead she felt varying emotions that usually accompanied fear in a gradient of severity. She was mildly confused by her newfound surroundings, but she was learning quickly and not drawing attention to herself in the meantime. Freedom for Jamie Moriarty had been inevitable, and this twist of fortune was not something to be rushed into. There was almost too much freedom here, but then she was also positive that it was entirely impossible for such a thing to exist. She was exactly where she was supposed to be, and now the only thing left to do was make the most of it.

The library of the Nexus was appealing to her in much the same way she enjoyed the gardens. She favored solitude for the contemplation of things, and the Nexus itself had been catalyst for much deep thought as of late. The door back to her world was present in her very own room, and she’d made the trip back and forth between her world and this one without any notice of the guards who were designated to watch her. They thought the blood loss had weakened her, and that fact was quite obvious. She still felt weak and breathless and a bit chilly, though she could force herself above those particular setbacks if she found herself in danger. Thankfully, the Nexus had yet to present anything of the sort.

She found herself in a section of what she recognized as ‘Classic’ American fiction, her fingers brushing along legible and clean book spines as she sought out something simple to read. Moriarty rarely indulged in fiction, she seldom had the patience for it, but she was feeling a bit of a fat cat these days, and wanted something with which to curl up in a spot of sunshine and allow her to present the image of someone entirely wrapped up in their book, while allowing her mind to turn over the possibilities of this place. Her fingers came to a stop on a thin volume, small and compact, bearing the title To Kill a Mockingbird. She knew the subject matter, of course, though she’d also never read it for herself, and that alone meant it matched all requirements she had at the moment.

She closed her fingers around the slim book and slid it free of its neighbors, turning away from the shelf in search of somewhere to sit.
lordharry: (bloodlust)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-12 12:40 am (UTC)(link)
Finding himself in the Nexus against his will was a most inconvenient wrench in his routine that he despised, wholly. It did not fit his routines, hardly allowed him the precise manner of time-keeping in which he appreciated, and besides that, he had to fear the worry of stepping through a door that might take him to another world. He'd found, unfortunately, that no matter the world, it's a place where his darker half comes out.

The bad, bleeding out through the good. The library, however, is sanctity because it affords him a task. No matter when he arrives, there are books to organize by shape and author and colour and subject. Today, he chooses topic, but comes to a halt when there is a beautiful young woman standing there.

Hal doesn't do well around beautiful young women.

They make him very, very hungry.

"Pardon me," he says calmly, with every inch of restraint he possesses. "Were you planning on lingering long?"
lordharry: (piece by piece)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-12 11:44 pm (UTC)(link)
She brings up smell and Hal does his best not to draw in a horrifyingly desperate, shaking inhalation. He doesn't smell her, doesn't smell how wonderful she would be to him, but it's a near thing. In his pocket, his grip on the single domino grows tighter and he flexes his fingers while he thinks of placing them all down in order to pick them back up.

This is all so much easier when you've only a ghost and a werewolf to worry about, it truly is. "My routine involves organizing the books in this room," he explains, aware he can't explain why it's so critical that he does. "I'm not accustomed to company while I do it."
lordharry: (bloodlust)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-14 02:55 pm (UTC)(link)
Hal isn't precisely sure that will work for him, but the alternative is to explain in further depth precisely why it won't, which is a conversation he's not ready for. He won't forget her presence in the room because he cannot. "I suppose we are at an impasse," he says, rather than mere acquiescence and wishes, again, for Annie's presence to at least draw his attention.

He walks as far as possible from her and begins his organization of the books, paying no mind to the religious tomes and shelving them in one area with ease. These icons stopped working on him a very long time ago and now he looks at them as one would something curious. "Most people don't want the distraction of noise as they read," he notes evenly, his back to her.
lordharry: (put together: by ailesfragiles)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-16 01:00 am (UTC)(link)
Aware of his perfect manner of speaking, Hal lifts his chin a sharp degree higher, holding himself up properly. Five hundred years and change, obviously, is plenty of time to perfect one's enunciations and syllables. As well, he is, of course, a dignified gentleman and would never stoop to slumming his words. "American?" he clarifies, though he doesn't feel in control enough to stop organizing the books.

"I was in the United States for a time. California," he says. "I'm afraid I couldn't manage to stay very long." Nor did he wish to. He had been eager to get back to proper business, at the time, and the dog-fights were best run across the pond.
lordharry: (Default)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-16 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)

"Business matters," he explains, "back in London." He's succinct and precise in his explanation, knowing that further explanation will only open a very dark door to a hall full of things that demand answers and that he is not ready to give, especially not to a stranger. He could hardly bring himself to tell Annie of all his faults, both because of the guilt, but also because there is not the time to list all the sins he has committed.

"And I found the people disagreeable," he adds. To his stomach, he does not mention, but there had been quite the processed taste to them.

lordharry: (no door no hope)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-18 11:19 pm (UTC)(link)
"I wouldn't know. My travels were more limited to South America and Europe," he says, though he has touched upon every continent at least once with the exception of Antarctica, having no mind or will to endure the cold. Even as a young vampire when the sun had bothered him, he had never avoided it. One must endure the hardship to inure yourself to it.

He eyes her cautiously, noting the pace at which she reads. "What is your book about?" he questions curiously.
lordharry: (look up: by ?)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-20 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
"One might say a lifetime ago, but memories are a tricky thing, aren't they?" Hal speaks, his voice subdued and soft -- the hallmark that he is in the midst of one of his good cycles, though the shadow lingers past a door, just out of sight. They are one, here, and Hal is too intelligent to ignore that the next cycle is going to come hard and fast, at some point.

He regards the book, thinking that Leo had spoken highly of it, though Pearl had been somewhat judgmental of the topic. "I'm afraid I've been somewhat sheltered recently from all manner of pop culture. I haven't been up to speed on my literature."
lordharry: (is this hell?)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-21 08:47 pm (UTC)(link)
"Hal," he introduces himself, though doesn't offer his hand to be shaken. He's sure he'll be able to feel the thrum of her pulse if he does such a thing and so he folds his hands behind his back to avoid such a temptation. "Hal Yorke," he adds, with all the dignity a man amasses when it comes to his dignity. "I'm afraid all my suggestions are likely a bit antiquated," he confesses. "Though I do have a soft spot for the poets. Yeats," he suggests. "Or Kipling, or perhaps Shelley."
lordharry: (joke's on you)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-22 11:45 pm (UTC)(link)
This is a dangerous situation for Hal to be in. He takes a step backwards when she steps forward, masking it by sliding his fingers over the books cautiously, looking for something that he might constitute as a favourite, but the trouble is that in five hundred and many more years, a man can amass several favourites. He finds the Divine Comedy, however, and thinks it might be a pertinent choice for him.

He offers it out to her, two feet separating them (it's not enough to dull the intoxicating perfume drifting towards him), but he counts to ten in his head and thinks of domino pieces slotting into place. "I've always been rather keen on that one," he remarks, both for its content, but that Dante hadn't been a contemporary and thus, hadn't been ruined (like Shakespeare and Marlowe).
lordharry: (Default)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-24 06:42 pm (UTC)(link)

Hal belongs in all of them. He regards her without blinking or flinching as he thinks of Mr. Snow and the place he holds at the right hand of the devil, who had been there for the writing of this book and for the ascension of the man himself who created and enflamed such a religion. "I'm sure that my own judgment is bound to fall short," he answers, which is true. No matter how wicked he thinks he's been, he is sure that if there is a deity to welcome him to the lower pits of sulfur and hellfire, he will be sent to a new, lower level. He cannot imagine anything else.

"And which do you belong to?" he asks in turn, craning his head gracefully and smoothly to one side.

lordharry: (in everything there is hope)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-26 02:12 am (UTC)(link)
"Everything is a sin if you try hard enough," Hal remarks softly, but there is no meekness in his words. His voice is the quiet, even tempo of someone who can use words as dangerously as any weapon, though he has chosen to sheath them. "I think that's what I find so particularly interesting about Dante's piece. He condemns so many to hell for such small transgressions. Perhaps we all belong there, working to ascend the ranks," he notes, fingers twitching for the books again.

In lieu of them, however, he merely rubs his thumb along the engraved dots upon the domino in his pocket. "The books are arranged by whatever I choose. It's a routine, one to calm the mind and bring about zen." He doesn't feel inclined to mention that the calm is necessary so that he doesn't eat anyone.

Keeping away from reflective surfaces, now, Hal moves to the bookcase's edge, to start over again, this time by height.
lordharry: (dead centre)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-03-29 05:16 pm (UTC)(link)
"Ascension," he echoes, finding that a curious word. "And here I would think ascending the ranks of hell means going the other way." There is a genuine part of Hal that isn't fearful of the tortures that a place like hell might hold for him, but rather what he could do in a place like that. What parts of him would have to die in order to allow that to happen.

"Quite the heavy conversation, considering we've only just met," he notes.
lordharry: (hanging on)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-04-01 11:10 am (UTC)(link)
"Longer than I'd like," is his response. For all that he would dearly love to return to the safe home that affords him the presence of a ghost he cannot touch and a wolf that would poison him as soon as Hal laid fang upon him, the doors have been awful in that other worlds bring out the worst in him and he cannot find home without venturing into them. It's left him needing to be restrained more than once upon return to avoid his bloodlust and the staff are beginning to think him mad and odd.

"And you?"
lordharry: (put together: by ailesfragiles)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-04-04 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
She says it in such a way that he thinks of Pearl and Leo and their doors. It would be kind if he were to find the right door that leads them to wherever they are now, but kindness is not something that Hal Yorke is owed. "No family," he assures. "Not anymore. Certainly no one of significance when it comes to romance," he adds. "I've found many doors, but they often lead to perilous places where I don't like the person I become. I try and avoid doors unless necessary, as a result."
lordharry: (look up: by ?)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-04-14 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Hal has yet to blink in long moments of their conversation and when she asks about the doors, he steps just out of her range to avoid smelling her. The intoxication of such a thing would put him back to a perilous place that he's only just escaped. Each world that brings the worse half of him out makes him struggle for so long to find balance again. "Pirate ships filled with wickedness, doors that give you mad abilities," he lists calmly, "should there be more to it than that?"

"I shouldn't sway you from your decision, if you do wish to explore, but know that while some may seem paradise from afar, not all are."
lordharry: (look up: by ?)

[personal profile] lordharry 2015-04-24 01:29 am (UTC)(link)
Hal raises his brow and wonders at what she has thought to imagine she is the trouble. It says something of her character, he imagines, but he keeps himself standing straight as anything, his posture impeccably straight and on guard. "Perhaps it's for your own good," he informs her. "You've only met me. How do you know you can trust me?"
assistingconsultant: (tired)

[personal profile] assistingconsultant 2015-04-01 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Joan liked the library. Even though she was taking a break from Sherlock, voracious reading of some of the oddest of subjects was not a habit she could nor wanted to break. She was used to intense work and heaping amounts of information from her time in med school, but tutoring as a detective had yielded interesting discoveries about herself - like the fact that she could teach herself how to pick pocket without even trying.

Every now and then she came and tried to find books on different subjects. There was something dizzying about this library in that it was an amalgamation of different worlds; Sherlock would have a field day in here. She found two large books, both on horticulture, and then on a whim found herself drifting towards fiction. It would be nice to spice up her reading with something different, especially from a place she may have never heard of before.

What wasn't nice, in every sense of the word, was rounding the corner and discovering Moriarty - free of her shackles, so to speak, a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird held in a loose, relaxed hand. Joan was immediately on her guard. She knew there were cases of lookalikes in this hotel, but she was confident she'd know Moriarty anywhere.

"Interesting choice," she remarked. Had Moriarty followed her here? The next few minutes of the confrontation would tell her.
assistingconsultant: (k what?)

[personal profile] assistingconsultant 2015-04-07 03:40 am (UTC)(link)
Moriarty was there, clearly at her leisure; and Joan didn't think the woman would engineer a grand escape to track down Joan and not have created a more entertaining, useful meeting between the two of them. Her eyes took in the bandaged wrists, as well, and she knew that if the two of them had come from the same time then she would have adequately healed by now. Had she? She might have left the bandages on for effect, for a chance at sympathy, but again she didn't think so. Wounds were harder to talk away than no wounds at all, and if Moriarty had not known Joan was there then she was less likely to play those games, more likely to drift by unnoticed.

"I look about the same, probably," she said, and motioned to Moriarty's wrists. If Jame Moriarty was a normal person, then the way she handled her book would be a dead giveaway whether the cuts were fresh - but she wasn't, and if she was faking she would have faked that too. "You look a few cups lighter."

Her manner was not hostile, simply lacking in the friendliness which Joan wore as habit. She was simply cool, distantly polite. She had little love for a woman who had tormented so many people. There were worse individuals, of course, but they were not in front of her just then.
assistingconsultant: (over the shoulder)

[personal profile] assistingconsultant 2015-06-07 08:08 am (UTC)(link)
Joan's lips thinned, very, very slightly, but that was the only indication of her displeasure. She did not consider herself an intimidating person - she would have been surprised at the fact that, indeed, she truly could be - and she was not about to act like this was some sort of standoff between her and Moriarty. In a way it was, but not in a pistols at dawn sense. This wasn't a fist fight; this was tactics. And tacticians knew when to take a step forward, and when to take a more circuitous route.

"I can't pretend to accurately discount anything he's written to you," she said, politely. "You claim to know him so well, anyway. Maybe your estimations are better than mine."

Of course, she was reminded of the fact that she and Sherlock were definitely in a bit of a cool down period, and that was vaguely annoying. Still, she wouldn't hint at any of that. Moriarty already knew more about her personal affairs than she was comfortable with, thanks to Sherlock's correspondences.