ofelia zhou deals in secrets. (consultancy) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-03-02 22:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, kiernan manley, ofelia zhou |
sweep 'em under the rug to see all that you left.
Who: Kiernan and Ofelia
What: Drinks and catching up
Where: Snuggly Duckling
When: Backdated to sometime after St. Namorados Day
Rating: Some discussion of murder and suicide re: Lav’s case.
Status: Complete!
Lavitz was still, for all intents and purposes, catatonic, and even Kiernan’s own revelries during the holiday last Friday was hardly enough to keep his own spirits up for too long. When he asked after his friend again, it was the same as it’d been over the past couple of weeks -- minimal response from the man in question, and frustrations all around. That Lavitz hadn’t been arrested yet was a good sign, though. Maybe the EKP got their heads out of their asses and realized that Lavitz was obviously innocent (or maybe they were too preoccupied over Banes’ disappearance -- something that Kiernan much preferred not to think about; he’d avoided Shieldwyrm lately because the rumors made his stomach twist into a gnarly knot), but that Lavitz himself remained unchanged was enough to send Kiernan into the same foul mood he’d been in the past fortnight. So here he was at the bar again. It was emptier now than it was during St. Namorados, as it usually was, and the drinks were back to their regular prices. Kiernan waved the bartender over and ordered a lemon drop. That’s when he finally noticed her. “Fee,” he said, trying to pull up a smile as he settled next to her. “Long time no see! How are you?” The nickname might as well have been a foghorn, the way it drew her attention. Ofelia straightened up at the counter, his voice spurring her out of anonymity and into the buzz of conversation. “Kiernan,” she said, pleasantly surprised. “It really has been forever—I couldn’t even say the last time I saw you. Was it your birthday?” Life had a tendency of whisking busy adults apart for months, but these two were guaranteed to be warm and friendly whenever their paths crossed again; it was what was so reassuringly low-maintenance about this particular friendship. There was a small assortment of paperwork sitting beside her half-eaten plate. Fee shuffled some of them back into order, covering them with a blank sheet. Nothing confidential, considering her public working space tonight: expenses, invoices, cryptic sets of numbers and billable hours, but no any actual case details. Kiernan chuckled at the memory. “Ah, but was it me, or was it…” He trailed off, considering. “Huh. I never did give my alter ego a name, did I? Oh well.” Another beat. “Wow, has it been that long? Well, now I feel like a crappy friend.” He flashed a grin; he knew there was no hard feelings on the matter, especially if the work in front of Ofelia was any indication. “Busy as always, I see?” He waved a hand at the paperwork in front of her. He didn’t know the details of what she did and he never asked, he was content to take what information she was willing to give him, as little as it may be, in stride. “For shame, Kiernan. Alter egos must always be named. That should’ve been the least I could teach you.” She swiveled on her stool, shifting so she could see him better, her bad leg stretched out to not put strain on the knee. Fee gave a dismissive tap on the papers. “As always, yes. Every Capricorn, I keep thinking this will be the year I learn how to balance work and life better—but then I’m always getting buried all over again. My assistant was out of town when a lot of work came in, so things have been hectic the last month or two.” Ofelia spoke at an easy and cheerful chatter, bubbly and talkative as usual when she wasn’t being stern and business-like. (It was only after the fact that one realised she hadn’t given away much by way of specifics.) “Ah, yes, Capricorn. The manipulative bitch of months, tricking us into believing that we get to start all over, do things differently, better! But it never does work out that way.” Kiernan took a sip of his lemon drop. “I, for one, resolved to drink less. Obviously, I’m doing a fine job of that.” A joke, of course; for his part, Kiernan never promised himself anything around the Valendian New Year’s, at least nothing that was supposed to last longer than the night. “As for my alter ego, I’m sure I’ll figure out something glorious. Something to really traumatize.” He snickered, though the word ‘traumatize’ was, unfortunately, enough for him to think of Lavitz, who seemed the most horrified by his get-up a couple months back. Kiernan’s grin fell, and he pursed his lips. Ugh, not now. Shaking his head, he tried to grin again. “How’s… Zaza? Or Gaga?” “I like Zaza. It has a certain Ordalian je ne sais quoi.” Ofelia’s head tilted slightly, watching the minute twitches of the man’s expression. Even if Kiernan’s heart weren’t already on his sleeve, the years and the nature of their intimacy had given her a good insight into reading his face. She had a certain working theory that once you saw someone naked, the rest of their secrets weren’t quite so well-protected. “How are you doing, Kiernan?” she asked. A nagging little thought kept vying for attention: she’d heard about it, of course her sources had brought it to her attention. Perhaps she should bring it up—but perhaps not… “Zaza it is then,” Kiernan agreed. At her next question, though, he knew it would be near impossible to pretend like nothing was wrong. They knew each other too well -- or at least, her sense of perception was unmatched -- to be able to beat around the bush and lie forever. So he sighed. “Been better, truth be told,” he said. “Seems like neither me or anyone I care about can catch a break anymore. Hard not to worry about him. Lavitz.” The woman nodded, taking a slow sip from the dregs of her drink before absentmindedly ordering another. “I heard about what happened,” she said. “I keep an eye on most potential murder investigations in the city—one of the bodies fished out of the river might always be one of my missing persons, after all—but I have to say, I wasn’t expecting to see his name pop up.” A slight grimace, an indication of Ofelia’s distaste for the mess and complication that kept landing in that corner of her circle. “I haven’t been able to talk to him about it. We’re friends, but not quite close enough for that. How is he?” Were they closer, perhaps she could have helped Lav with this—but then again, too many of Ofelia’s cases already involved people she knew, mixing the professional and the private. “He’s…” Kiernan waved a hand in the air and then finally tossed it in frustration. “Lav. Poor idiot’s got abysmal self-esteem already and even though he’s innocent and everyone damn well knows it--” The EKP, at least, hadn’t arrested him yet, so hopefully it meant they came to their senses. “But he’s still blaming himself enough to consider taking the fall for this. I mean, shit.” He leaned on the bar counter and held his forehead, elbows resting on the counter. “He’s not doing great. In some ways, I have to admit, I can’t blame him. If it were me, I think I’d be in shock, too. Maybe even wonder if I should’ve stayed longer, you know, to prevent it. But on the other hand…” Kiernan shook his head. “How could he even want to accept the guilt for this? Not just officially and ‘confessing’ he did it, but actually believing that it’d be for the best that way? That I don’t get.” But, then, for as bad as a place Kiernan had been in his youth, using his own death as an escape had never crossed his mind -- so in many ways, Kiernan knew he’d never truly understand Lavitz and his emotional turmoil. It was at a level beyond anything Kiernan experienced himself, though he had served with others who suffered from varying severities of survivor’s guilt, among other traumas from being in the Fighters Guild. Occupational hazards, after all. That didn’t stop Kiernan from wanting to try to help his friend, for as little as he knew how to do it. Fee’s eyebrows rose at this new bit of information. It was completely antithetical to every rule of her existence and profession. “Why?” she asked, dumbfounded. On this, the gambler and dragoon were entirely on the same page. “If your hands are clean,” as hers so rarely were, “why in the world wouldn’t you try to protect that innocence? Why take on baggage that genuinely isn’t yours?” She shook her head, tipping back her new glass to take a generous gulp of the cocktail. “Frankly, Kiernan, I’m with you. My job hinges on finding the guilty and acquitting the innocent.” (As long as they could pay, at least.) “Pointlessly self-sacrificial heroics don’t play into it.” Kiernan nodded, mirroring her actions. Once the tart and sour taste of his drink trickled down his throat, he sighed. “Even when people are guilty, they try to prove their innocence. Crazy thing is, Lav actually thinks he’d be protecting people this way. Next thing we all know, they find the real killer and he gets his ass in prison anyway for hindering a criminal investigation because he said he was guilty, and the murderer kept murdering away.” A pause. “Do people really get their asses thrown in jail for that?” he wondered out loud. Protecting them from what, his incessant politeness? Fee wondered, but before she could deliver the question (it was a bit too sharp, especially for her), then Kiernan’s question brought a welcome respite. She nodded, settling back into her chair and seamlessly melding back into her orator’s voice, reciting knowledge from comfortable memory. “At the risk of sounding like a textbook, obstruction of justice is punishable by up to five years in prison. And if it occurs in connection with the trial of a criminal case, they could also receive maximum sentence in that trial itself—for example, if the obstruction occurs in connection with a drug trafficking case carrying a maximum penalty of twenty years in prison, then the person who obstructed justice might receive twenty years in prison for obstructing justice. So needless to say, the law-makers take it very seriously. And for a murder case…” She shook her head. “To put it mildly, mucking about incorrectly with a murder case isn’t a clever idea. You don’t need to be a judge to see that.” “So in other words, don’t tell Lavitz that.” Kiernan shook his head and took another large gulp of his drink. Already nearly out, damn. “Because that would be just the thing to enable him to go through with that idiotic idea of his.” Would it do any good to warn the EKP of it, he wondered. On the one hand, they might disbelieve everything Lavitz said should he ‘confess.’ On the other, they might just wind up arresting him anyway (and hold Kiernan in suspicion as an accomplice, but the dragoon didn’t honestly care about that point). Either way, Kiernan saw no good end to it and hoped that Lavitz would eventually see reason. Or, better yet, the EKP to see it first, which Kiernan saw as a much better probability. “Sorry,” he apologized, attempting to give her a carefree grin. He doubted he succeeded at the carefree part of it, though. “Didn’t mean to bring this conversation to a downer note like that.” “No worries. It happens.” It was unusual for serious subjects to crop up between them—life was easier and simpler when it was drinks, sex, and laughter, no need to delve beneath the surface or go scratching at anything deeper. But now that it had occurred, Ofelia could acknowledge that broaching something more personal wasn’t the worst thing. Perhaps she needn’t mind it so much. It didn’t mean they had to linger and languish in it, however. “Let’s move on. I can set aside the work for an evening, and we can table these concerns. Some distractions are called for, hm?” Fee clinked her drink to Kiernan’s, then gave a flutter of the hand to summon more, seeing how low in their cups they were getting. “To bigger and better things,” she said. |