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

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"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.

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Jamie returned her eyes to her book, scanning the sentences quickly as she listened to him. There was no struggle in dividing her attention wholly in two, just as there was nothing lost to her in the multitask. Two worlds were forming in her mind at once, each spinning out bright and vivid, built in part by the words of her new acquaintance and the child narrator of her book, and the rest filled in by her imagination.

She could picture this fellow in London, she thought, or somewhere else suitably old. She had no idea whether or not that assumption was correct, but when she built his world in his mind there was none of the hard lines one found in modern architecture shaping up around him. She glanced up from her book again and studied his back a moment more before saying, "well, I could see that. Depending upon what part of California you were in, I mean. I tend to find northern California more agreeable."

"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.

“South America, you say?” She said, dropping the book a bit so that she could focus the whole of her attention on him. Jamie had always held a certain sort of fascination for South America, finding it a vivid place that had served her well in the realms of creativity in addition to being a fine place in which to handle her business matters. She could not help but dryly make a note of how bored she must be in the hotel to give a man her full attention at the mention of South America, but there was nothing to be done about that. Outside of his curious compulsions, his apparently extensive traveling was the most interesting thing he’d shared with her thus far.

“Lovely there, isn’t it? For the most part, I mean.” She tapped her finger on the spine of the book, feeling the worn edge of the leather before asking. “Was that very long ago, or--?”

His mention of her book brought her mind back around again, and she flipped the cover over to reveal the title to him. “It’s about racism in the first half of the twentieth century,” she said. “Told from the perspective of a child of a lawyer who is attempting to defend a black fellow accused of rape in Alabama. I never got around to reading it when I was younger but, well, it’s proving very earnest thus far. Haven’t you ever heard of it? It’s a staple in most high school English classes these days, but I missed that boat somehow.”

Edited 2015-03-19 17:11 (UTC)

"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."

“Mmm,” she hummed, making a wordless acknowledgement of what he’d said regarding his time in South America, her gaze narrowing speculatively at him. Something niggled at her, though she could not place what it was about him that made him so different as to come under her notice, and that was a thing she liked in a man. She sensed he was very, very tightly contained, but to what end? She thought for a moment more, then moved to rest the book open and face down, momentarily holding her page while she stood and moved back toward him.

“It’s good,” she said as she returned to her spot beside him, her gaze held steadily on the books on the shelf before her. “Well, thus far, anyway. It’s relatively short, so I suppose I should find something else to read after I’m done since I’d planned on spending a few hours in here.” She turned to look at him. “Do you have any suggestions? Or do you handle all these lovely old books without ever reading any, Mister…?”

"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."

The classics were of little interest to her just then, but she found his fixation on them interesting. There were pieces to the puzzle that were slowly fitting together, though the whole picture of which was still out of sight. It would have been so easy to believe that he was simply an ordinary compulsive with perhaps some sort of disdain for modern culture, but she could not bring herself to believe it. She was also aware that her boredom was reaching a peak in which she was prone to doing something drastic just so that she might occupy her mind with the fallout and repercussions, but she didn’t think she was seeing puzzles where there weren’t any, then. This Hal had something carefully held in restraint, of that she was certain.

“Irene,” she countered, introducing herself in turn, and arching her brows slightly at the way he folded his hands behind his back instead of offering one to her. She had been in the library enough to memorize where everything was – it took little effort for her, really - but she still took another step closer to him, tipping her head back so that she could meet his gaze and smile sweetly. “Would you mind showing me to your absolute favorite?” She asked.

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).

There was a touch of amusement at his proffered book and the distance from which he held it out to her, though she expressed none of that as she took it carefully from his hands. She looked at the cover with more than a touch of wryness, noting that it was yet another tome that even if she’d not read it for herself years ago, she would’ve been familiar with well enough to produce the general plot and a quote or two. She wondered if this too was a tell, and if this Hal was a religious man. Wouldn’t that be the most disappointing thing to have his great restraint be that of a man simply battling with religion and all its chaste values? She knew epics had been written on the subject, but goodness it was so terribly trite by this point.

That being said, she certainly wouldn’t turn her nose up at the chance of being a maestro of corruption for young (old) Hal, but it was certainly best to figure out where he was coming from before she tapped into her reservoir of religious knowledge in an attempt to gain leverage.

“Oh, I’ve heard of this one,” she said. “Mostly the Inferno bits, though. I’ve always thought I’d get around to reading it and decide which circle of hell I’d be most likely to wind up in.” She said it brightly and with a smile, making an obvious joke of it, though Jamie thought it a fortunate thing that it was in all likelihood that God didn’t exist. If there were such a thing as a higher power racking up all her malicious deeds, she’d no doubt spend an eternity or three on each of Dante’s nine blasted rings. “Now that I’ve said that out loud, I admit that sounds a little weird, huh?” She grinned crookedly up at him. “Have you ever done such a thing?”

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.

He didn’t smile or laugh at her joke, but Jamie kept her smile firm in place, easy and true and perhaps more smirk than anything else. His answers were not so much answers as clues, and she liked that. Captivity had broadened her horizons, or perhaps it had just lowered her standards, and she found herself warming to the idea of him quite rapidly. She was enjoying herself for the first time in what felt like decades, though she knew even by thinking that she was being dramatic.

“Oh, now don’t go selling yourself short, Mr. Yorke,” she said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts while still holding the book so that it lay heavy and cool along her side. “I’m sure you’re doing the library a grand service here by arranging these books as you are. Surely there’s some sort of spark of karmic goodness in that, or are you perhaps mussing them further by arranging them however you are? The Dewey Decimal System was invented for a reason, you know.”

At his question concerning which ring of hell she might belong in, she had to figure that by Dante’s standards even the ninth ring would be too gentle for her. “Malicious” was an apt word, though once again Moriarty found that to be some sort of flowery term for what she believed to be very natural instincts. She was born with the overwhelming desire to create and an equally powerful desire to break, and to do both in equal measure just seemed like balance to her. All the gentler instincts in the world such as love or kindness that were sometimes attributed to the presence of an omnipotent deity were simply a glitch in the system of all human beings, best she could tell. Even she herself was not entirely immune. “Oh, who’s to say?” She replied instead. “I believe Dante was partial to damning people to hell for things most people do nowadays. Is there a certain level of hell reserved for those of us that eat meat on Sundays or some such nonsense? I did enjoy a rather tasty burger just yesterday.”

"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.

“Hmm,” Jamie hummed, contemplative as she watched what she could see of his face, the neutrality of his profile and the softness of his voice holding her attention as she watched and waited for any sort of give in whatever he was thinking. That he found himself worthy of punishment was as obvious as the nose on his face, but why was the real kicker, wasn’t it? Knowing the source of someone’s self-hatred was a tool that was always easy to reach for in times of desperation, and he wore his pain with such regal self-containment. It was too much to resist, bored as she was.

“I don’t know,” she said, uncrossing her arms and looking once more at the book in her hand as though the cover might reveal the answer she sought. “It is interesting, something I appreciate mostly for the vivid quality of his imagination, but I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of anything that wants to damn me to eternal suffering for the smallest and most insignificant acts. And anyway, to ascend the rings of hell couldn’t be that much of a relief, right? They’re all torture of a different sort, best I can figure.”

"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.

There was a beat of silence before a burst of low, soft chuckles as she shifted the book to be held against her chest, her arms crossed over the back of it to hold it securely there. It felt cool against the skin bared by the V of exposed skin above her shirt collar, but the leather warmed quickly enough that she was able to forget about it within seconds.

“It is a heavy subject, isn’t it?” She said as she propped one hip against the nearby bookshelf and let herself lean in against it. “We should speak of less intense things, I’ll agree with that. Perhaps you can show me to a hilarious volume of Mad Libs and we can discuss the pros and cons of certain adjectives, or you could perhaps tell me more about yourself. For instance, how long have you been at the Nexus?”

"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?"

The prospect of him being a homebody was just as boring as the prospect that he was some sort of devout religious person, though she sensed still that was not the case. Her experience in the Nexus was admittedly limited, though she found it not the least threatening or unpleasant thus far. Her experience with the doors had been mild at best, she’d never lost her own door home, and while she understood that her experience with the doors was considerably better than the time that some had of it, she still found the place mostly decent.

That could’ve been her recent incarceration talking, but that hardly mattered.

“You haven’t found your door home, then?” She asked. “Did you leave a woman or a man or a family behind?”

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."

The lack of family or anyone of significance to him was a detail she would remember, though she cast it aside then in favor of focusing on the bit of his speech which was the most interesting. He didn't like the person he became upon going through certain doors? She had no full idea of the many places the Nexus could take someone, though she would be very interested in learning, especially if it brought about certain results in her new acquaintance. What those results were, precisely, it would behoove her to learn as well, she was sure.

"How do you mean?" She asked. "I just ask because I haven't explored many doors here yet. Are there many dangers?"

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."

There was no hiding her intrigue, for all that he spoke of pirate ships and "mad" abilities with the cautionary tone of some sort of biblical prophet. Her eyes widened considerably, not entirely without joy, as she thought of the ramifications of all of that. Of course she'd known that the hotel was capable of transporting a person from one place to somewhere in an entirely different universe, but she'd heard nothing about powers.

How utterly interesting.

"I hadn't heard of that," she said. "No one has really spoken to me much, so I'm afraid your my initial font of information." She smiled at him even as she noted the way he moved further away from her, as though she were a hot iron instead of a woman. "Your being very skittish, Hal," she said, opting to tease him. "I promise I'm not about to do anything untoward."

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?"

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

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