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Dec. 6th, 2003 06:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3pipeproblem*sigh* I love writing for The Practice. Shorefic, written purely for my own benefit.
For this week's![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15minuteficlets. My first. I guess I'll put the word at the end of the story.
Every day, Alan Shore asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing. Which was why he smirked and laughed so knowingly when, inevitably, someone else voiced the question.
There are reasons for doing things. This is a basic principle of law. Motive.
There are reasons to become a lawyer. This is not a basic principle of law. This he knew because he'd once asked Ellenor. He'd been drunk at the time. A lot of Alan's more introspective conversations with Ellenor had taken place in the company of a great deal of alcohol.
Alan had no reasons for being a lawyer. Without the law he would be nothing, but with it he wasn't really anything either. Although if he didn't know the law so well he'd have been in jail long ago: embezzlement, blackmail, fraud, concealing evidence...
You might say he did what he had to.
Then there came this little girl, so open and vulnerable and intelligent and he knew--knew that this was who the law was designed to protect. Experienced the unfamiliar sensation of walking the tightrope, of trying to work through the system rather than around it.
But the girl, Anna, she was still caught up in that system and she probably always would be and it was so unbearably unjust to have looked her in the eye and said, "No, you can't appeal" when what he was really saying was, "Yes, the judge is going to allow a fifteen-year-old you barely know to rape you."
He’d watched Anna's father place his hands protectively on the girl's shoulders and direct her from the courtroom, not even looking at her face.
Shore remembered the pride he thought he'd hear in his father's voice when he called to tell him he'd passed the bar.
How could he have forgotten that?
And the word was "forgetful." Please forgive my tenses.
For this week's
15minuteficlets. My first. I guess I'll put the word at the end of the story.Every day, Alan Shore asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing. Which was why he smirked and laughed so knowingly when, inevitably, someone else voiced the question.
There are reasons for doing things. This is a basic principle of law. Motive.
There are reasons to become a lawyer. This is not a basic principle of law. This he knew because he'd once asked Ellenor. He'd been drunk at the time. A lot of Alan's more introspective conversations with Ellenor had taken place in the company of a great deal of alcohol.
Alan had no reasons for being a lawyer. Without the law he would be nothing, but with it he wasn't really anything either. Although if he didn't know the law so well he'd have been in jail long ago: embezzlement, blackmail, fraud, concealing evidence...
You might say he did what he had to.
Then there came this little girl, so open and vulnerable and intelligent and he knew--knew that this was who the law was designed to protect. Experienced the unfamiliar sensation of walking the tightrope, of trying to work through the system rather than around it.
But the girl, Anna, she was still caught up in that system and she probably always would be and it was so unbearably unjust to have looked her in the eye and said, "No, you can't appeal" when what he was really saying was, "Yes, the judge is going to allow a fifteen-year-old you barely know to rape you."
He’d watched Anna's father place his hands protectively on the girl's shoulders and direct her from the courtroom, not even looking at her face.
Shore remembered the pride he thought he'd hear in his father's voice when he called to tell him he'd passed the bar.
How could he have forgotten that?
And the word was "forgetful." Please forgive my tenses.
