milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Jim has been rather enjoying spending weeks being moody and depressed in his suite, mainly because Sherlock's up there to make sure he's not actually all that moody and depressed. Bloody boyfriends, and their way of making life better. Jim would grump about that if he weren't pleased by it.

He's only in the bar now because his favourite distraction is asleep and anyway, they need food. Jim puts in a large order and, on a whim, asks for a current newspaper from their world. Bar provides an iPad with various headlines, and he scrolls through until he hits upon the news that NASA has discovered a solar system where life might have evolved.

He forgets about the food, and pretty much everything else for a while. Eventually he wanders over to the Window, still reading, and then just sits looking out at the explosions.

(The ice cream he bought will be melting all over the Bar at some point, so if anyone wants free food he's probably not going to object, or even notice.)

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"We are," Harman says. "If I didn't believe that, my work would be pointless."

Jim looks at him, like really?

'How so?'

"In just the way you said -- we wouldn't be better," Harman says. "But we are. We have souls, a conscience, choices, altruism. Mind you, humanity did some pretty awful things in the course of history. But that doesn't take away our God-given freedom of choice. Which the Code Fives don't have."

'So you're telling me,' he says slowly, because he knows this is bullshit, 'that your vampires have no choice but to be all the things you describe. They cannot possibly display anything that you would be able to recognise as a human-level emotion?'

"Precisely," Harman says. "They only mimic it, in order to manipulate humans to their ends."

'So how do you know it isn't real?'

And now he just sounds amused.

'You make that judgement? You, personally?'

"We make it, from centuries of experience combined with current science," Harman says. "Much as we make any judgement, as an order."

Jim swirls his drink around his glass, for a long time.

'You know,' he says eventually, 'the Catholic Church has a long history of deciding how people are, and tarring everyone with the same brush.'

Forgive him if he's sceptical.

"Hence, the bit about science," Harman acknowledges.

But science doesn't prove anything about emotion, other than the chemical reactions that cause it. Not really. Jim is honestly marvelling a little at the blinkered approach of this man.

'Right,' he says, amused, and has a drink.

"I do get where you are coming from, of course," Harman says. "I get this conversation a lot, even without the Code Fives."

'But you don't think you're wrong.'

Jim is willing to bet he's wrong.

"Of course not," Harman says. "However, I do acknowledge that there are some people who have very good reason to be very angry at the Catholic church in general, and even my clandestine unit in particular."

'That's meaningless unless you do something about it.'

Beat.

'And I'm not suggesting you should. You can do what you want, it makes no difference to me. But it's interesting to see whether you admit to your own failings.'

"I would never keep silent about abuse, physical or mental," Harman says, "and I will always speak up against messing up people's lives for the sake of principles."

'But you're entirely unwilling to accept the notion that you might - might - be wrong about vampires.'

Still amusing.

'Do you claim your opinion is based on your faith, or in science? Or are you trying to use science as a way to hide the fact blaming faith takes validity from your opinion?'

"Always science," Harman says. "I'm a Jesuit, after all, not some Trappist mystic."

'So why are you a priest? Why is the Vatican behind this?'

It's so blatantly based in a faith prejudice.

"I was a priest first, and began hunting vampires later," Harman says.

'Yes. That much is obvious, my dear.'

He sips his drink, and doesn't bother trying to hide his smile.

'It rather begs the question of whether you'd be quite so offended about vampires if you weren't.'

"I hope I would be," Harman says. "No matter my spiritual or sacramental state -- I would have felt the same horror at what I saw, when I first encountered them."

He hopes he would be. Actively hopes he'd be this judgemental and closed-off. That's hilarious.

'What did you see, Father? That first time.'

"Monsters who attacked one of my students, and me," Harman says.

'Did the student survive?'

He'll take a wild stab at 'no', but either way it's only a detail.

"She did," Harman says. "But her family didn't, nor did the hut in the favela where she came from."