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

[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."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"Most days I find it easier to not believe in anything anymore."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"I don't believe that you can't believe in somethng. If you didn't, you would not feel any kind of conflict. You would only believe in what you sense. Whether or not you believe in one of the structured faiths, you still believe in something."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I believe..." It was almost so simple to slip into the profession of faith, the first he learned, before he slid into the Latin when he converted in Italy a century later. He was drunk enough to recite it, even, perhaps inspired by his time in the Cathedral that afternoon, staring at altars to long-dead gods.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

"And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

"I believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the life everlasting. AMEN."

He fell silent for a moment, then shrugged, straightening. "The resurrection of the body, carp. I don't think they meant it the way mine works, not for humans, not just for..." It was part of it, he knew. When he realized he could not die, that he would have life everlasting, but not in heaven. Trapped on Earth, like the angels that fell, forced to live on and to see and to watch.

"How does it apply to me anymore? What do I hope for...I have life everlasting, without His promises, without His creeds. The Tree of Life, carp. 'And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever...'" He looked at him, shook his head. "Man, living forever. The thing God wished to prevent, lest man truly become like Him. Gods on the Earth, walking and talking and...I cannot die, carp. I am what God feared man to become. So what does that make me?"

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"You are not. You can be killed. Much as you will live a very long time, when the universe ends, you will end with it. It doesn't make you bad or evil or a fallen angel. One day you will go to your Heaven." He smiles gently. "Then you'll get your halo."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam sighs, shakes his head, slight frustration in his eyes. "If I do ever die, carp, it is highly likely it will not be Heaven where I am sent."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"Do you get little horns if you go there? Of course, Satan should worry that you will take over."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam rubbed his temples. "There aren't horns mentioned anywhere, no. Though if I could manage it, then, yes. He should."

[powered-otaku.livejournal.com]

"You'd look cute with little horns."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam stared at him. "I don't want to go to hell."