Fic: Untitled Reparations World

[cybra]

Becoming a lawyer in this day and age had been the best idea she’d ever had.

She sipped her coffee and looked over her latest case, smiling to herself. With the number of descendants this guy had, it was likely her client would be able to get a cool two or three million which, of course, meant she’d get a rather generous cut. The evidence wasn’t exactly overwhelming but there was just enough to ensure that the guilty verdict would come down. She almost felt sorry for the suckers who had the misfortune of sharing the man’s bloodline, but it was just something they’d have to deal with. The pain and suffering that their ancestor had caused had to be paid for.

And reparations was a very lucrative business.

She looked up from her notes at the knock on her office door. Checking her watch—a lovely diamond-studded piece a grateful client had given her after winning a particularly large payout—she noticed that she wasn’t due for any meetings. Standing, she rose to answer the door.

The woman standing there looked vaguely familiar, but the lawyer couldn’t quite place them. The dark rings under the courier’s eyes mutely told stories of long hours with very little rest which the lawyer dismissed as soon as she saw them. They both had work to get back to, and the sooner the courier finished her route, the sooner she could go to bed.

“Can I help you?” the lawyer asked.

The courier verified her identity and presented an electronic signature pad which she signed. She then took the thick packet of papers she’d been sent.

“What is this?”

“You’re being served.”

“What?!”

Tearing open the packet, she stared at the very same pages she’d been filling out on her latest client’s behalf. The plaintiff’s name was a very familiar one as the watch they’d given her suddenly became very heavy on her wrist.

“This can’t be…”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

The courier turned to go, and the lawyer blurted out, “It’s not fair! He was a good man! Yes, he had a slave, but they were a gift! And he was killed while trying to get them to the Underground Railroad! Besides, I’d never own a slave even if I could!”

The courier looked back over her shoulder with an icy smile.

The lawyer felt herself grow pale as every ounce of blood seemed to drain out through her feet. She remembered where she’d seen the courier before: across the courtroom begging for the jury to consider that she couldn’t afford to pay reparations and how it wasn’t fair that she be punished for her ancestor’s wrongdoings.

But it didn’t matter. The lawyer herself knew it didn’t matter. In the eyes of the law, even if the crimes of your ancestor were legal at the time, a crime was a crime. Regardless of if you had no leanings to commit the same heinous acts of your predecessors, the potential still lurked in your bloodline and you were therefore an accessory to the original crime.

“It’s just the way the world works,” the courier echoed the lawyer’s own words from that past trial, not a drop of sympathy in her voice.

Overwhelmed at the idea that she was falling prey to the very same law she’d exploited for the very same person who was suing her, the lawyer fell to her knees. She could only stare as the courier walked off, the latter darkly chuckling at her misfortune.