warriorscribe | Snowblind Inbox

No, just the opposite. Being there alive, I think...helped? I don't remember it ever being so insubstantial as when I was there last. Then again, I wasn't dead when I was there last, either. Simply...no longer in my own body.

[At least, for a time. These are unpleasant memories they're treading on, and having to reiterate it isn't helping. At least he's in a more relatively comfortable environment and state of mind than last time he discussed anything surrounding his corruption; there will be no breakdown. Just very audible discomfort creeping into his last sentence.]

[It's hard to follow the details, but he hears the discomfort in Enoch's voice, and it frightens him, cold slipping into his spiralling mind. What is there to be afraid of when talking about Heaven?]

It's meant to be the reward, [he mutters, not so much a question as thoughts running scattershot.] To be in the kingdom of God, with all those who have gone before you...

[It's not Heaven he's afraid of... The discomfort eases as their conversation moves back to Heaven itself and not his experiences specifically, but his voice retains a slow, careful quality.]

It is...the end. A safe haven for souls whose bodies can no longer sustain them. A human soul without a body can be vulnerable.

["Reward" implies it can be denied. He supposes it can be, but for God to do so would be unfathomable.]

[Haven is not a reward. Nor does it escape Beckett's notice that Enoch says nothing about reunion. He tries not to let any sound of distress escape, but it's hard to control his breathing.]

What happens to the souls that - are not in this safe haven?

[He can't bring himself to talk about hell, but it's on his mind. Indeed it may be too much of his mind to openly mention.]

If they haven't gone, either something or someone has bound them to Earth, or...

[He trails off uncomfortably. There's the sound of shifting as he moves on the other end of the feed, though there's little telling how until there are slow, pacing footsteps in the background.]

...or a demon has somehow claimed them before they died, and now has their soul for themselves.

[That is, again, not the expected answer, but it makes its own sense. At least he knows where he stands, in this plan. He knows demons.

Or does he know? Does he really know anything? He's terrified of asking, but is it better not to know, if the knowledge exists - to close his eyes to it? Or hasn't this always been his downfall?]

And the souls that demons claim... have you seen hell? No... not you. I can't imagine it.

Why? Because you think it is something one earns?

[He doesn't mean to sound so hurt and bitter. But he does. How can he not, when faced with the very idea that someone could think anyone deserves that kind of pain, forever?]

People who think that have no idea...

[He cuts himself off in a strangled almost-sob.]

They'll capture their enemies, too, if they think they can use them.

Edited 2016-05-18 01:16 (UTC)

No?

[He sounds genuinely surprised, genuinely astonished, even. It's a strange ring in his voice, the sense that he is seizing on something - something very particular, with a sudden yearning that makes everything else unimportant. For all of Enoch's bitterness, maybe it even sounds like Beckett hears hope.]

Do sinners not earn hell? Isn't that the punishment for denying God - being sundered apart from His love forever?

No. [The pacing footsteps stop abruptly, and his clothing rustles. If Beckett listens closely enough, he will hear the soft thump of his pack hitting something hard and scraping over a surface - he's leaned against a wall. He sounds as if he is holding back tears.] If you are in The Darkness - you call it "Hell" - you have been stolen. God would never give a human soul over to His enemies willingly...

[OOC: so I'm a total moron and only now realized I put this tag in the wrong place, idk if you want to continue the thread but just for completion's sake I have moved it!]

[An echoing sound comes from the other side, heavy, tremulous breathing. A rustle of moving fabric as Beckett pulls himself to sit, curling under the blankets around the light and sound of the tablet. It catches the rasping of air in his struggling lungs. He can't understand Enoch's pain, and he thinks, perhaps that too is an echo - the answering agony of abandonment.

When he speaks his voice is louder, barely containing itself to its whisper.] Then why? Why does He permit it? Thy will be done. How can it not be?

((It's fine!))

He does not permit it, He can do nothing about it! The Darkness...even Heaven doesn't understand it, doesn't know how it came to be. The angels can't give me answers about it because it is beyond His sight.

[His voice is more ragged. He needs to have an answer to it too, why. Why did it happen to him and why did Nanna have to get caught up in this? He knows the answer is there is no answer, but this "answer" isn't comforting enough.]

It happens because we have free will, Beckett. Even if we do not consciously choose it, our actions are unpredictable to them, and demons can take advantage of it. Of us.

[There is no answer. He hears it, even if Enoch doesn’t outright say it. And it’s like a physical blow, a pressure forcing out the air he fights for. An evil that even God – Enoch’s God – cannot account for. Was that the true meaning of what Caine had said to him, or not said? No hell but what they have made for themselves on Earth?

But it wasn’t free will that made the curse of his kind, and it was not free will that made Gehenna. There is a darkness. The darkness is real.]

You… [he hesitates. It isn’t for Enoch’s sake, though he hears the other man’s distress. Maybe it’s for both of them, what they both seem to circle around, now. Once the thought is voiced, there’ll be no taking back the roots it strikes.] You make it sound as though the Darkness is stronger than Him.

[Not quite where Enoch is going. He had long since been broken of the idea that God could see, know, and react to everything. Many things, perhaps, countless more than any mortal or even any angel can respond to. But not everything.]

I think if it were stronger, He would have been overthrown by now. It is...a formidable foe. That is all I know. And its denizens hunger for human souls.

[And there is the thought, voiced, and Beckett takes a long time before he finds the next one. The concept of God as, essentially, just one more supernatural player on the stage is one he's familiar with. Others in Norfinbury seem to have similar mythologies and metaphysics. But this is not what he'd been speaking of, with Enoch. And it is not what the other man seemed to be speaking of. To have the idea placed in front of him again suddenly - that God is limited, fallible, may Himself lack answers - is wrenching.

They've all said it. House has taunted him with it. Shiro has said it. Haurchefant seemed ready to believe it. Caine himself had left the idea there to eat away at him. Even Anatole had wondered, in their darkest hours. And he had kept searching, because he had always been the doubter, even when what it really meant was belief...]

This is not what I want, [he rasps, and hears his own words with perfect clarity for the child's helpless tantrum that they are. Raging at cosmic unfairness. What you want has never existed.] I wanted answers, damnit, I wanted truth, I wanted grace -

Some questions don't have them...

[This is both freeing and frightening. He knows. He went from thinking God had a hand in everything to learning He sees much but acts little. The angels say He knows all, but they all phrased it in hypotheticals. "It is said that...", "God is supposed to..."

Like humans. Like them. The two obviously learned it from one another, but which among them had the idea first, who can say.]

I would like to help you, if I can. We are made as companions to one another and the caretakers of our Earth. It is our only directive from Him. So I will help, if you'll have it.

[It's almost unfair - a part of him wishes he had the breath to shout at Enoch. You say you want to help, and this is what you give me! If that is the only directive, then it's a pointless one. His companions are gone, and there will not be others. Not of his Kindred. Enoch can speak of God and Heaven of all the personal experience he has, but he is not Anatole. No one will be.

He shifts in the blankets, restless and helpless. Human things are suddenly overwhelming. He's too hot, his throat is tight, his head feels stuffy and aching. If he speaks up too loudly or coughs or sobs someone will wake up and come see to him, and there is nothing he wants less. He wants to be alone with his - it's not existential emptiness - it isn't some kind of cosmic anger. It's just grief.]

There's nothing you can do, [he rasps finally. The pain is in his voice, though it's a very human one now.] Thank you, but there is nothing.

[That is the last reply Enoch gets that night. Grief too needs its time.]

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SOB MY IDIOCY CONTINUES

It's okay! It'd be easier if I could change to site layout without losing the sidebar...

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