Open 'verse RP [Open -- Separate threads fine]

[changehistory]

He'd come home out of some weird need to find his roots, again. Or something. At the current moment he couldn't remember. Souvenir shops lined the streets he roamed too long ago. The house had burned over three centuries before and even the alleys were swept now. There had been nothing to bury, and no money for more than a mass grave had there been, so there were no markers, nothing to see, nothing to kneel at.

Wandering into the new St. Paul's, built after he left, after the fire that took them, he nonetheless felt something settle. He sat in a pew for hours, trying to remember what it had felt like when he came home, saw this, sat here the first time, a different man. Not Matthew. Not Takezo Kensei. Something else, someone else. A man without country, time, family.

For a time, he'd thought to find it again, but now the dream seemed farther away than it had even when trapped in that cell, and he was cold.

It was well after dusk when he left. He found a pub, a table in a corner, and with a wry smile that cursed all the years in between, he ordered a whiskey and asked the bartender to leave the bottle, working to bury himself in the one thing left that had any familiarity or link to the old.

Comments

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

Hiro rubs his cheek against Adam's. "I am uncertain. I am Buddhist, but I cannot believe that it is the only way to reach the divine, just the way that is right for me. I think, perhaps, that we all see a glimpse of it and are drawn to the part that, perhaps, we understand best."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam nodded a little, fingers reaching to slide his fingers lightly through Hiro's hair. "I wasn't sure, really. Then, I just assumed it, but now...Even Japan seems to slide the scale of religious pluralism."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"A Japanese is born a Shintoist. Whether or not we follow it, being Japanese automatically means we are Shintoists. However, many families choose to practice another faith such a Buddhism or Christianity. You remember trees with white papers around them? Toris? These are all Shinto symbols. It is a part of all Japanese, whether or not we choose to see it as a faith. So, we are usually tolerant of multiple faiths, but we have had our moments."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam nodded a little. That much he knew. "Why Buddhism, then?"

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"My family believes it. I believe in the 8-fold path. I have felt a connection with the divine when I have been at the temple. I don't think I could feel that in another rite."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

He knew that, of course, about Kaito, but still. It was one of those things that fascinated him, made him think, long lived as he was--made him question. He nodded a little, looking out over the water, thoughtful.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"You are still looking." It's a statement. "You know some of the things you believe, but there is still something about it that you can't surrender to."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"My faith has no room in it for people such as you and I, carp," Adam said quietly. "I..always believed, I suppose, but I do not know where I fit."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"Perhaps it is time to let go of the comfortable and look at something else."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam's eyebrows went up. "I can't just walk away from 400 years of beliefs, carp."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"You can do anything you want. How closely have you lived to the tenents of your faith?"

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Well that hit a bit low. "Perhaps I am predestined to be damned."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

Hiro looks a bit impatient. "If we are all predestined, then there is no reason to believe anything because you will do whatever you have been told you'll do. I don't believe in that. Though I believe in fate, you still have the choice to turn away from it. Predestination means nothing I do matters because I will only do what has been laid out for me which means that, ultimately, the faith I have is not faith, but what I've been programmed to believe. If you do not believe science has all the answers, then how can you believe in predestination?"

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam shrugged a bit. "It is some of what I was taught, and then you came, did you not? With your stories of what I was meant to do, meant to be, as if I had no choice."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"But ultimately, you did have a choice. You could have ignored me, walked away and just kept drinking. It was your choice to believe me. I would have made it happen myself had you left me alone."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"But maybe it was fate--predestination itself that made me listen," Adam argued.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"No, it was you who listened to me. How can you believe that science would limit our place in the universe, yet believe that you are a puppet with no will of your own?"

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I don't know," Adam snapped. "But perhaps mankind was meant to be God's puppets, only we .. we are something else altogether."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"The only puppeteers are human and the only puppets are those who let themselves be puppets. I believe I have a choice. I could turn my back on my faith or I can believe. I can see science as the pinnacle of human understanding of the universe or I can see it as a tool that helps us understand how the physical part of the universe works. I choose to believe I am not any god's puppet, but a student of the Buddha and, as such, free to follow the path that I feel is my own."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I used to have that certainty," Adam murmured, sighing and rubbing his temples.

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

Hiro hugs him close. "It must be so hard to hang onto anything after so long. You must feel like everything is made of sand."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"It all shifts, it all changes, and then, really, it all stays the same, but you change...or you have more time to think. To question. You have to. Only there are no answers."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"Questioning is good. That way you may find something that you can believe or at least take comfort that the journey is worthwhile."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I can't ever shake fully what I believed as a child, though," Adam admitted. "I've lost faith so many times, tried others, searched the world learning about other beliefs, and always it returns to this."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"What we learn as children stay with us the longest. It does not surprise me that these would be the lessons you would return to. If it is what truly comforts you, you should embrace it."