rickitikitarr | 2. and the breaking point

[Video]

[He'd woken up this morning to a terrible new alteration to his body, and to Zane's (rather terrifying) network announcement. So, subdued, short;]

I don't know what the hell is wrong with you people, but this place is fucking dreadful. Someone let us know when the rampage killing lunatic has-

[Fuck. He stops himself, because he hadn't intended to let his temper get away with him. This isn't helping anyone. He, quite visibly, draws a breath in through his nose, lets it out through his mouth.]

I'm sorry. I hope there can be an announcement when the halls are safe again.

[Spam]

[The flood really hasn't been good to him. He gives up on staying holed into his cabin, and makes the trek to go get breakfast. He looks rather unusual, in a low slung pair of jeans and a sheet wrapped around his head and shoulders, held together over his chest with one hand, like a grandmother with a massive shawl.

It's better than going shirtless, which is his only other option. By the way his bedsheet tents up the centre of his back, something is clearly wrong with his spine. When he gets his tray, one handed, and the hood of sheet over his head spills back to reveal a dip at the top of his shoulders, a keen observer will catch sight of a ridge of uncomfortable protruding plates. They're interspersed enough that the movements of his spine are only a little restricted, though twisting side to side more than a bare inch is impossible.

So, he learns quickly, is sitting back comfortably against anything. He perches up gingerly on the edge of his chair, flings one end of the sheet over his shoulder like a scarf to free up his hands a little better, and starts to stab at his meal. He is in a mildly better mood than he was earlier.

Very mildly.]

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[She's feeling a little bit of that ecstasy and light right now, just from hearing it described. She closes her eyes when he starts quoting the imagined preacher, trying to picture it in her head. Eyes still closed, she asks:]

What'd your dad do?

When I was a kid I was in trouble, yeah? A little, at first, and then a lot of it, and he wasn't best pleased. He'd always been quick with a belt, but when I was... seventeen, I think, he turned some preacher friends on me to 'beat the sin out of me.'

[Aware that this is a bit of a drag, so he delivers the story lightly enough, bringing her to the bad part gently.]

They got me pretty bad. So bad I bolted, as soon as I could walk, never went home again. Haven't made it back to church properly, since, either.

Oh.

I knew a lot of kids who got beat, growing up.

I'll go back one day, I'm sure, when it won't turn me into the kind of man who feels justified doing that to his kid, on account of God giving him the right.

How'd you find your faith?

[Always a tricky question, for her.]

I got... led to it. By my lawyer. He brought me to God.

As a legal strategy, or through his own faith?

[He doesn't mind either way. His father was a lawyer, though he doesn't feel the need to share that particular tidbit right now. This is already personal enough.]

[Both. But instead of saying that, she says:]

He's a Christian.

Good fellow, then?

[If she'd followed along, he hopes so.]

Yeah, he did a lot for me.

[Before the wardens here, she'd never felt that anyone had ever done more for her than he did.]

I miss him. Haven't thought about him in a while.

I haven't seriously thought about this in a while, either.

[He admits, a little more quietly. It's funny, given how hard he pushed back against it, and for how long, how easily it comes back now, the passages he has at the tip of his tongue, though none quite as readily as Ephesians 6:10.]

I still think about religion.

[Though, admittedly, less now that it's not literally the only thing she has going for her. It's still a big, important part of her life, but it's moving away from being her obsession.]

Just... I don't know.

Did you stop being religious because of your dad?

For a little, yeah, because of him, and then because of other things. I was running guns, the war was still on- I didn't have much space in me for the thought of a loving God. The ugliest theological question there is is still 'why does God allow suffering?' and I saw a lot of it in the world, for a few years there.

I was told that God gives us what we can handle, and all suffering happens for a reason. We just don't always get those reasons, is all.

Mm-

[Nothing like a war zone to really challenge that philosohy, but he doesn't see the need to get into the nitty gritty of it right now.]

I still believe there's value in a lot of it.

Oh, me too. I believe it.

Well, I'm not the best friend for bible study you'll find, but if you have questions about any more of it- what church is like and all that, things that are new to you, I'll be around. You know I'm hardly an untarnished follower, but I know my chapter and verse as well as anyone, I'd wager.

I would love that. A lot. I got some other religious friends, but they ain't my kind of Christian, necessarily. -- They're still good, though.

[She feels the need to clarify that.]

I'm glad to have met you.

Yeah. You did me a solid favour, being friendly when I was brand new.

[So.]

[She chuckles.]

I was... having a real good month.

[She badly wishes it had lasted.]

I'm sure there's a passage for that, if my memory were what it was.

A passage about having a good month?

On keeping faith while fortunes change, taking the strength you got from the good and using it to face the things that may yet come.

... Yeah. I bet there's a lot of passages about that.

You know, we got a chapel.

I saw it. It's a nice place.

[He feels hopelessly out of place there. Needs to admit;]

This conversation is the closest I've come to God in most of a decade.

You don't ever wonder if he wants you back?

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