40 Days (in the Desert): Cup of Poison
Apr. 5th, 2007 11:50 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsGetting home from the opera, Lorna does some more thinking.
Lorna spread the files over the bed, over the discarded gown she'd worn to the opera, stacking them against each other matching the glowing explanations from Zala with the coarser realities of Sofia's file.
Sofia had been scrupulously fair. She'd noted each transaction in the last five years, showed where each had lead. Showed the money trail. Quite by accident, Zala's file filled in the rest. A revitalized shelter, new books and computers for a local school, an arts program in a neighborhood better known for drug busts and gang violence, free clinics that asked no questions. Paid for in the blood of hundreds of innocents.
The deal that had put a disgruntled ex-general in possession of the power to massacre a village down to the last soul, an incident that hadn't even made international news, so common was the story, had also send two teens to college. The clinics owed their testing supplies to the greed that led a Colombian drug lord to remove his boss from power and flooded the streets with new product.
There was plenty of money in weapons smuggling and Zala poured it out like water on the people that society had written off.
Disgusted, Lorna pushed away from the bed. How much did you have to pay out to make up for supporting that kind of thing? How many good deeds balanced out one death? Two? A dozen? And how could you turn away from the opportunity to shape events? To stop these sales before they happened. Not every deal Zala made supported hate, fear, terror. Some gave the right people leverage. Some saved lives. Some put hope back in places that had long since forgotten the feeling.
There were two ways to see it really. Either Zaladane Delgado was a creature of rare callousness and greed wearing a mask of earnest ideals, manipulating family for her own ends. Or beneath the brisk business mask was a woman struggling to do the right thing in an impossible situation, reaching out to whatever supports she could find.
She knew as well as anyone that sometimes you had to step into the darkness to bring light. But how many times could you do that before you had no light of your own to carry with you?
Did she have any left to give?
Lorna spread the files over the bed, over the discarded gown she'd worn to the opera, stacking them against each other matching the glowing explanations from Zala with the coarser realities of Sofia's file.
Sofia had been scrupulously fair. She'd noted each transaction in the last five years, showed where each had lead. Showed the money trail. Quite by accident, Zala's file filled in the rest. A revitalized shelter, new books and computers for a local school, an arts program in a neighborhood better known for drug busts and gang violence, free clinics that asked no questions. Paid for in the blood of hundreds of innocents.
The deal that had put a disgruntled ex-general in possession of the power to massacre a village down to the last soul, an incident that hadn't even made international news, so common was the story, had also send two teens to college. The clinics owed their testing supplies to the greed that led a Colombian drug lord to remove his boss from power and flooded the streets with new product.
There was plenty of money in weapons smuggling and Zala poured it out like water on the people that society had written off.
Disgusted, Lorna pushed away from the bed. How much did you have to pay out to make up for supporting that kind of thing? How many good deeds balanced out one death? Two? A dozen? And how could you turn away from the opportunity to shape events? To stop these sales before they happened. Not every deal Zala made supported hate, fear, terror. Some gave the right people leverage. Some saved lives. Some put hope back in places that had long since forgotten the feeling.
There were two ways to see it really. Either Zaladane Delgado was a creature of rare callousness and greed wearing a mask of earnest ideals, manipulating family for her own ends. Or beneath the brisk business mask was a woman struggling to do the right thing in an impossible situation, reaching out to whatever supports she could find.
She knew as well as anyone that sometimes you had to step into the darkness to bring light. But how many times could you do that before you had no light of your own to carry with you?
Did she have any left to give?
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