Title: Material Culture
Author: Nemo the Everbeing
Rating: PG for this chapter
Summary: Every object has significance. The goal of study is to determine what it is. (Finch/Dominic)
Disclaimer: 'V for Vendetta' belongs to Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The theatrical version of the story belongs to Warner Brothers, the Wachowski brothers, and possibly a few other brothers. I don't own any of it, am not a brother, and write this solely for my own pleasure.
oOo oOo Footnote the First oOo oOo
"Would it be so bad, do you think? Really?"
Finch looks up from his pint to see Delia watching him. They've been friends for years, the two of them, both content to keep their noses clean but not above the odd poke at the Party. They even tried dating once, but after a few tries Delia had laughed and called the whole thing off.
"When I leave the morgue," she says in the present, and Finch is shocked to realize she's echoing the exact reasons she gave when she broke it off between them, "I have to leave the work there. I have to. There's too much pain and loss in a place like that to carry it about. But you do. Everywhere you go, Eric, you've got the work following you like a black cloud. Would it be so bad to have a person to go with all that baggage?"
Just as he did when she said it before, right after kissing him on the cheek outside a pub much like this one, Finch doesn't know what to say. Would it be so bad? Possibly. "He's a political officer, Delia," he says.
"No, he's a political appointment. There is a difference. From what you've said, the politics belong to his father. Stone may be entirely free of them."
"You can't know that," Finch says.
"Nor can you. Has he done anything? Anything to indicate he's going to put politics ahead your work together?" It's times like these, when she watches him with a measuring look and a certain detachment, when he realizes he doesn't know her at all. Even when they were seeing one another they didn't talk about their pasts. He thinks his is unbelievably boring, and always assumed she had the same reason. But there are times when he thinks perhaps she keeps her background secret because of something else entirely.
"Here now," he says, "we're not here to talk about my would-be partner. We're here to celebrate your promotion. Chief coroner in only five years. Not bad for a botanist."
She laughs it off into her brandy. "Plants and people, Eric. We're not so terribly different. Both require certain conditions to thrive, and if denied we die. And there you are. Botany to cause of death in five easy steps."
"How often did you see a geranium shot to death?"