31-May-2001
I know, I know. I no sooner announce that I'm through with GW than the ideas start pouring back in. >P The result? Too many ideas, too little time. :) But please let me know what you think of this? It's the first of two stories following 'Angel on Vacation' so obviously it requires an ANGST warning. :)
{flashback}
//Life is bigger
It's bigger than you
And you are not me
The lengths that I will go to//
Well. It's been a while since I did this... funny that it feels so familiar. I kneel on the floor, composing myself, and my left hand raises to sketch a cross over my chest before folding itself together with its twin - hands that are blood-stained, hands that have killed. I try to pray, to formulate the words... nothing comes, but that's familiar, too. How can I talk to a God I don't believe in?
I wonder, not for the first time, why I'm doing this, trying to believe, trying to appeal to a God that doesn't exist... Why I think God would care about me or my friends, if He were real.
Why I think that I matter.
This is stupid. If I weren't so desperate... If the odds weren't so overwhelming, working against us, against him... I would do anything I had to, humble myself any way I had to, if it would bring him back... but it won't. I get back up, brush dust from the knees of my black trousers. I wear a cross, and sometimes I still wear the clothes of a priest... but I couldn't be more distant from that imaginary God than if I were the Devil himself. The Devil, at least, I can believe in. It's easy to believe in a malevolent being who exists purely to ruin the lives of us insignificant humans - because I have seen Evil at work. I can believe in Shi no Kami, because I have seen Death at work.
But God? A loving, caring being who has power enough to make everything right, but for some reason doesn't bother? A being who loves me and works everything in my life - even the horrors I've seen, the atrocities I've *been* - to my betterment?
No. That I can't believe.
//The distance in your eyes
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up//
Father Maxwell comes to mind as I tuck the cross back under my shirt; he always does, whenever I touch it, a warm, welcome haunting. He gave it to me, when I was first dragged to the Maxwell Church orphanage - we all got new clothes and what food they had, but only I was given a cross. It was the first thing of value I'd ever actually been given, without having to steal or beg for it - a real gold cross. It hurt him, I could tell, when I announced I didn't believe in God, but he gave it to me anyway, and then he gave me something even better. He told me he saw something special in me.
He saw all kinds of things I couldn't see.
//That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion//
I can hear footsteps approaching; it's probably Quatre checking up on me. Again. I turn to look at the door. The footsteps pause, then go back the way they came.
I'm relieved. He's a nice enough guy, but damn. I'd rather rip my own eyes out than see someone like him pitying me, or gazing at me with that mournful, puppy-dog look. I don't need pity, and I've seen more than my share of mourning.
//Trying to keep up with you
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I haven't said enough//
I get back on my knees, cross myself again. I can't think, I can't speak... I don't know what to say. I could pray to Father Maxwell, ask him to talk to God on my behalf, and maybe he'd do it. But... I don't want Father to see what I am now. He saw promise in me...
//I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try//
{"Duo! You did it again, didn't you?" I wince, but I don't lie, not to Sister Helen. I nod my head, tugging the end of my braid - the hair she'd tried to cut - around to toy with the end. I'm looking at the ground in front of her feet, and I start in surprise when I feel her hand cupping my chin, raising my face until I'm looking right into her eyes, eyes that are sorrowful. Eyes that *I* made sorrowful.
"You put those children in the hospital, Duo!" My eyes sting, and I blink quickly to keep the tears away - I don't want to cry in front of Sister Helen. I don't want to explain to her how sweet it had been, smashing in those arrogant faces, how much I'd relished it, revelled in it.
"Tell me what they said to you."
"They said... I stink," I admit, tearing free from her grasp on my chin, turning away because I can't bear for her to see the humiliated blush on my face under the layer of dirt. "They said my hair smells."
Sister and Father give us kids clothes, food... but water is rationed on the colony, and only rich people have enough to waste on washing more than once a month. I don't remember the last time I did more than wash my hands and face in the sink, using water that had been used before, and would be used again, for the purpose. I don't think my hair's ever been washed. I'm waiting for my punishment, whatever Sister deems an appropriate penance for the harm I inflicted on those hateful Federation kids.
Then Sister does something amazing.
She hugs me. She holds me tight, and tells me I don't smell at all, and even though she's lying I love her for it. I promise not to fight any more, and if I could live in one moment, this would probably be it - surrounded by love and warmth... and peace.}
//Every whisper
Of every waking hour I'm
Choosing my confessions//
My hands are clenched so hard it hurts; they unfold slowly, automatically reaching to pull my braid forward. It's all I have to remember her by... my hair, still wound in a braid as she taught me. That and the cheap gold-plated cross at my throat are the only things I've managed to keep all these years. I guess... I guess I should be thanking God that they weren't taken from me.
It's hard to be thankful when everything else I cared about *was* taken from me.
Even him, and I don't even have anything to remember him by.
//Trying to keep an eye on you
Like a hurt lost and blinded fool
Oh no I've said too much
I set it up//
{"You say there's no God?" the question is more of a gasp, Sister's eyebrows raised in shock. Father looks almost as appalled as she does. I feel guilty for shocking them, but I won't lie to them.
"Yeah," I say, grinning to hide the way their reactions make my heart hurt. "If there's really a God, He should stop the war. If there wasn't any war, there wouldn't be war orphans like me."
Father Maxwell speaks slowly, looking so hurt I want to hang my head. "Duo... God doesn't start wars, people do. People have to end what they start."
He has a point; it's true God didn't start the war. God never *does* anything, whether it's to start or finish it. But if God never does anything... "So it doesn't matter if there is a God or not, huh?"
"That's not true!" Poor Sister. She looks so horrified. It must be the first time anyone's told her this truth. But I know I'm on to something, here; I've got it all worked out.
"I think the only God in this world is the God of Death."
Sister looks like she's about to cry, but I feel like running and shouting, because I've finally figured it all out. There's so much freedom in *knowing*...
"Duo... You don't believe in God, but you believe in Shinigami?"
"Yeah!" I'm grinning now, knowing that this is one debate I can't lose. "'Cause I've never seen a miracle, but I've seen lots and lots of dead people!"
They don't have an answer for that, and I'm not surprised. It's not like God's gonna come down out of His "I-don't-care-about-anything" cloud to tell them what to say.}
//Consider this
The hint of the century
Consider this
The slip that brought me
To my knees failed//
It's funny, kind of. I almost feel like I *made* it happen. When I said that... it's like I brought a curse on everyone I loved, with those words.
I thought he was immune. I mean... you couldn't look at him without feeling his strength, that sense of purpose. Surely God couldn't take him, because he still had some great purpose to fulfill in the grand scheme of Life.
I couldn't have been more wrong; I should have known better than to believe in him, just because he believed in himself.
Everyone around me dies, because Death is all I can believe in. Death is all I can believe in, because everyone around me dies.
Even him. Especially him.
//What if all these fantasies
Come flailing around
Now I've said too much//
245 people died in what is known as "the Maxwell Church Massacre." 245 people... I don't even want to think about what the count is now, after all these years. First there were my parents... I don't even really remember them. And Solo. Then everyone at the Maxwell orphanage. At the time of the massacre, those 245 people were my whole world.
There's nothing like cold-blooded murder to broaden a guy's horizons. I moved on, drifting, avoiding entanglements of any kind until I was caught as a stowaway.
That was when I first laid eyes on my partner, and became the God of Death for real.
//I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try//
It wasn't too long after that that I first met him, the one guy I thought my curse couldn't touch. He was a cold, unfeeling bastard, but I clung to him like flypaper - the one person in the Universe who could survive my friendship.
The one person in the Universe who could survive my love... but we only had one night, one morning together. He let me touch him, let me love him, and he didn't seem to care that I was cursed.
I can almost see him...
I can almost see him.
I fold my hands, and bow my head, but no words come.
//But that was just a dream
That was just a dream//
God and I have nothing to say to each other; it would take a miracle.
OWARI
Losing My Religion
Copyright © R.E.M./Athens Ltd.
Can be found on the album "Out of Time"
(:./yoiko/religion)
