Who: Willa Thompson What: Following the announcement of the major changes in leadership inside the Resistance When: Backdated to Tuesday night, around 3am, November 2 2010 Where: New York Warnings: A softer side to the reincarnate of Moriarty, which is disturbing at best. And then she has someone killed. Natch?
The news of Josia Hughe's death had shaken her in a way she hadn't expected. Willa Thompson was a woman of many qualities, but vulnerable was not something she often claimed to be. Quick to anger? Yes. Though she was usually able to stifle it with a carefully placed facade of cool. Rarely did she ever actually loose her temper in front of people, it took something knocking her completely out from under her feet to achieve such an emotional outburst as she'd expressed just a few hours before. The truth of the matter was, Willa was strong-willed and a creature of habit. She was far too used to getting what she wanted and when things didn't go her way, when people like Hunter Williams got under her skin, she reacted. She couldn't help it, she was still a woman no matter the murderous villain currently residing in her head. No matter. Hunter represented only a temporary road block to her, and she had bigger fish to fry at the moment. She'd never lost a wink of sleep over the things she'd done to achieve any one of her lofty ambitions. And she'd had so very many. But sometimes, only sometimes, she gave into the scared little girl that she truly was inside. This was one of those times.
Following Leo Paulson's rousing speech to the gaggle of reincarnate outcasts, Willa had set herself to work. She'd needed something to keep her mind occupied and Leo's offer to form her own reconnaissance branch for the resistance had provided it. Caleb Dowell had taught her well. She'd been such an amateur when he'd found her, a budding young thing in her early twenties, hungry for power with no real outlet for it. CORE's renowned head of security had taken her under his wing and with Moriarty's help he more or less shaped her into the world class criminal she was today. She'd been naive back then, highly impressionable and eager to please, even verging on charmingly idealistic. She'd just wanted to be heard, to be known, just like all the promising young CORE recruits of that time.
Her relationship with Caleb had been complicated at best, not even factoring in that she had already been married at the time. Her best friend in the world had been Anna Harkness, who most only knew her as Calamity but she had just been Anna to Willa. They were both gone now, gunned down in the privacy of his own home and crushed under a collapsed building that had once been CORE's head quarters by the hands of Camelot. Their deaths had turned her world upside again, in a way that it hadn't since she'd first become Moriarty. While she hadn't known Josia very well, she mourned his death all the same, if only because he'd been the last real link to the old Willa, even if he hadn't known it. There were so few of the old hats left, and now another of them was dead. The old Willa was still there, locked away deep inside her, but she was a lot quieter now then she had been just a few years prior.
"Willa?"
She turned at the sound of the voice, allowing a small, tight lipped smile to cross her mouth as her ex-husband made his way to her from the darkness. She crossed her arms over her chest and shivered in the cold air of the night, steeling herself against what she knew he had to do.
"What on earth is the matter that you demanded I meet you this late? Is everything alright?" He seemed genuinely concerned.
Edward Thompson, quite possibly the only man who'd ever actually cared for Willa in her long life of deceit and treachery. And in her own way, she'd cared for him too. In her own way, he was as close as she'd ever gotten to real love, love that wasn't tainted by ill intention and the mutual ambition that she'd had with Caleb. Sadly, what Edward had to offer her just hadn't been enough, but she'd cared. She knew she had, or she wouldn't be feeling that foreign pang in the pit of her stomach at the sight of him, so trusting. So willing to meet her in a darkened alley way in the middle of Brooklyn at three in the morning, it was almost enough to make her chicken out. But not quite. He really had no idea who she really was.
"Thank you for meeting me, Eddie. I'm terribly sorry I dragged you out of bed at this hour, I just needed to see you." For once Willa wasn't enveloped in a clean mask of calm, unshakable resolve. It showed on her face that something was troubling her, which is probably why he reached out to her. His last and final mistake, the first of which had obviously been his misfortune of deciding to marry her in the first place. "I'm sorry, Eddie. But he left me little choice. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me one day."
His confusion was apparent on his face and she couldn't blame him, he had no idea that the 'he' she was referring to was a voice in her head. It was Willa's hand who carried this out but Moriarty was the one who'd pushed her. Edward only had a moment to look at her before hands were coming out of the darkness behind him and three men were dragging him off down the long, empty alley way. No one else on this side of Brooklyn was awake at this hour to witness the scene, only Willa, who watched with some measure of regret, hidden behind a mask of indifference as Edward Thompson was immediately gagged and dragged off to meet his end.
If there had been another way, she would have found it, but there wasn't one. She had things to accomplish and Willa had long ago become accustomed to not letting anything stand in her way of the things that were, from her point of view, hers. Willa Thompson never wanted for anything, she simply took. Edward Thompson was the CEO of a widely successful law firm his father had helped build up from the ground, he'd been named CEO after his father had died last spring. Unknown to most, during their brief but strangely pleasant marriage Willa had been more then just a volunteer for her husband when it came to paralegal matters. Being an heiress herself, she'd put quite a bit of her own money into the company, taking advantage of many a criminally inclined client as her own form of payment right under Edward's nose.
It was the basis for her now very extensive inner ring of criminals, but enjoying the fruits of her labor wasn't enough anymore, it was time to take what was rightfully hers. His father was dead and Edward Thompson had no offspring, no wife since Willa, and no siblings to speak of. Willa Thompson's name was still listed as the next of kin, and therefore the next viable option for taking the company into her very capable hands should god forbid, something ever happen to Edward. It seems changing that along with splitting up all of their worldly assets had been overlooked following the divorce. Whether that had been his intention or his mistake, Willa said a silent thank you for Edward Thompson all the same. He'd served his purpose, at least that's how Moriarty told her to see it.
Willa didn't stay to watch the rest. When she finally got home that night, breezing into her swank apartment in the middle of Manhattan, she breathed a shuddering sigh of relief as she shut the door from the rest of the world for the moment. Edward's body would be found later in the morning, no one would know what had happened to him. That thought made the knot in her stomach grow tighter, until she was rushing to the bathroom to puke into the toilet. After a couple heaves she was collecting herself, washing her hands and rinsing her mouth from the sink, content to stare at her somewhat sallow reflection afterward.
She hadn't wanted to hurt him, she managed to convince herself of that as she stared at the dark circles under her eyes that no one got to see but her. Without warning her fist came up from where it had hung loosely at her side, colliding with the mirror and she let out a ferocious cry as her reflection cracked at the same time as her knuckles did. Whether she got a hold of herself after or spent the rest of the night crying her guts out, no one would ever know but her. Holmes could suspect her all he wanted, he'd never find the proof for what she'd just done, she was careful and the people who worked for her valued their lives. After tonight she'd play the appropriately mournful ex-wife and pay her respects to Edward's grave, before taking up the leather chair in his office like one might take up a throne.