warriorscribe | Snowblind Inbox

[It is a light and a comfort, strange ones, like sand or feathers between his fingertips. He'd felt many things towards Enoch, many of them not too positive, and it is odd to find he'd found his way through shock and jealousy and resentment and into admiration - into faith in the man, if not in all he stands for.]

I've heard it theorized before, that humans have the first share of God's love. The Qur'an tells that God commanded all the angels to bow down to the first man, and only the devil refused. It is... strange to imagine, but plausible, that He would want the eye of man on the angels, as well. Man's word on His.

Though all the while we are the ones who revere and respect them.

[He sounds almost as if he's about to laugh, but it dies in his throat.]

Like a firstborn child who must accept he is not the only one for his parents to attend to anymore when a younger sibling is born, and is expected to get along with this younger, more fragile newcomer. I think I understand this "devil"'s reluctance in this story.

You see why I used to consider it all metaphor. Our myths map so elegantly upon such mundane things. Jealousy between brothers, the complexities of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Humans' fear of death and change... [And there had been a part of him that had dismissed it because of this very mundanity, he knows now. Placing himself above it all, until...]

The story of Cain and Abel - do you know the one? I assume you must.

[He would say, had Beckett not changed the subject, that in his experience the truth is that the divine are far more like humans than anyone ever knew. Michael and Lucifel bickered lovingly like any human pair of brothers. Personalities clashed and clicked together in all the myriad ways of humans who worked together. The experiences were never quite so far apart as to not share any themes.

But it doesn't apply, and when Beckett does segue into Cain and Abel, he turns the topic onto something better suited.]

Of course I do. They're much less distant ancestors for me than anyone else here. When I first heard it, the tale wasn't quite old enough yet to be called only a tale. Five generations isn't so far away.

[...Well, it is, really. But much less so when the next generation tends to happen around the teens of the previous.]

[The answer he was expecting, of course, though perhaps not entirely. After his conversations with Castiel, He almost expected Enoch to say he knew of no such story, or to tell a different tale. Different worlds and faces of God - he's still contemplating the idea and its implications. Ask deeper, then - as always.]

How has it been told to you? I mean - were you told that Cain killed his brother, and was cursed by God? Did the tale mention the nature of the curse, or his motive?

Cain killed his brother, was cast out, and cursed, yes. It's...something more of a story of heritage and a warning against violent retaliation, I can't remember if his curse was specified beyond-...

[He pauses for a while, trying to remember centuries-old details. Was there some explanation he can no longer remember? No, all the stories about the early days of the world, he remembers. They are part of who he is.]

-...no, I can remember nothing else. He could no longer sustain himself by farming - God would no longer permit his crops to grow. Or...ah, knowing now how little God truly interferes with our lives, I suppose that might not necessarily be true. Close as we may have been in blood, it isn't as if we could ask his descendants what they were told. Cain's life was cut away from ours, and the only attention paid to his legacy was when my father decided he was going to begin some sort of...name-usurping contest.

[He does laugh now, awkwardly. It's strange to reflect on, and comically so to relate it to someone else. His mortal life has been of so little consequence to anything anymore, it almost feels like what scattered fragments of memory he has belong to someone else. It has been so, so long since having children was so vitally important for him. Immortals have such limited need of future generations, it has been relegated to a personal desire by now, wanting to be a father for the sake of being one rather than needing to further the bloodline.]

I can't claim to remember why, it's been far too long, and it has mattered less and less over the years.

Edited (remembered a canon detail that changed this slightly) 2017-05-15 17:17 (UTC)

[Bizarrely, though perhaps not unexpectedly, Beckett answers with a soft awkward laugh of his own. It's the strangeness of such a mundane detail coming into play in the heavy histories, and a little of it is an odd pleasure in hearing Enoch talk about himself, his mortal past. As if - he imagines - something in it brings them closer. And there is also what Enoch still doesn't know.]

In the lore of the Kindred, Enoch was the first childe Embraced by Caine, and has given his name to the First City. My friend Anatole was of his bloodline - that is, assuming Enoch ever existed as the lore says it - but now I'm inclined to think, yes...

[If Caine, then why not all his childer, just as the Book of Nod tells? He makes a faint sound, like a sigh smothered through closed lips.]

It's... interesting to think that to you, the whole affair was less theological mystery, and more family drama. And yet still no concrete answer. No knowledge of what God meant by the curse... in your world, of course, Cain could not have been damned.

Ah, no...he wouldn't have. There are many things we have wrong, that I learned the truth of in Heaven. We will learn them in time, of course. But how strange it was to learn the moon and stars are not truly part of the sky at all...

[There's a rustling as Enoch curls up with his tablet, as if he can pretend his own body heat is a substitute for actual companionship. It's comfortable, sharing a laugh like this. It's just missing a source for that laughter.]

I take it Kindred is what you call yourselves? I don't think I've ever heard you use it.

[All of this, he will better understand soon, of course, when he has the context itself laid out on his tablet for him to read...]

The moon and the - ah, yes - I understand. [A little shocked, but in a strangely pleasant way, imagining that moment of learning. They're exactly what he's always searching for, the moments in which the world tilts into a new sense.]

"Kindred" is one term, yes, though there are others. It has - it had certain historical and political implications. Kindred, as in, we are all of one kind, one kin... of course, put two vampires in a room and you'd get three factions. [This with a note of disgust.] But the name made for a nice sentiment.

[There's a short, breathy sound from him like an aborted laugh - exactly what it is, in fact, at Beckett's reaction. Of all the kinds of people he's met, few have been like they are, those who seek to learn even when it breaks their original perceptions, perhaps especially when. He knew the other would appreciate that sentiment.]

You do all come from men. We aren't terribly good at unifying without some immediate cause, either. But that gives us something to strive for, doesn't it?

Striving was part of the problem. [Now he's reminiscing about vampire politics, and it's not the happiest topic, especially in context. Would it have made a difference, in the end? He wants to say no, but he genuinely doesn't know.] What cause? Whose cause? Under whose name? Someone was always holding the banner, someone benefited... everything always traceable to some great game that we couldn't see...

[He sighs with a note of disgust again, but it's a sad one this time, more than frustration.] I think... that is one of the things Caine tried to tell me, in the end. That we should have found a path of our own. Free will, if you would - but how do you break old patterns when you're dead?

[Enoch's voice softens in response to the negativity he's inadvertently brought on, but he doesn't shy away from it. He continues, instead, gentler but no less sincere.]

That might be where to begin. Your body may be corpse-like, but you seem more alive than dead to me. You are animate and do not rot. There are things which can end your life, and you require sustenance - and you cannot end or sustain something which has already ended. You feel, reason, and learn, and you are capable of ambition. All of those things tell me you are as capable of change as we are.

It's an illusion, Enoch. [He didn't use to feel that. Even in Norfinbury, most of the time he remembers his immortal unlife with pride, with relish. More alive as an animated corpse than he ever was before his Embrace, certainly. But when he speaks of Caine, of the Kindred and their history, of damnation and grace, that pride almost shames him.]

I am not typical of my kind, and even I have to fight to maintain reason, feeling, even ambition. That is why... [he trails off, but then speaks a little more strongly.] That is why I cling to my search, I think. Because that is what keeps me living. Human.

[A pause. He doesn't believe he's entirely wrong here. That it is truly illusion. If he fights to maintain it, retaining a sense of humanity must be desirable. That requires emotion, that requires reasoning. As someone fascinated with learning new things inside and out, this seems a contradiction. It must be self-propelling, this desire to remain human.

And then there is his own emotion, which balks at the idea of false love as a whole with what he's seen. Somewhere in there is a spark of selfish panic, too: This friendship that has been struck up, can it be false? Will it be thrown aside once whatever benefit is in it for him is no longer needed? He doesn't know that he can take that. Permanence is important, so important. If he could subsist on transience, bonds with mortals wouldn't hurt so badly. His own returned mortality here would have resolved his pain.

He speaks against it with heart and head in agreement: it isn't true on its face. It mustn't be.]

Fighting to retain it doesn't make it false. How hard is it to fight, and how easy is it to hold? Does the desire to remain feeling and thinking not perpetuate itself by nature of being a desire? Doesn't this "grand game" of yours show by its very longevity that ambition is something your kind is good at keeping?

[Question, always question. Always challenge. He hopes Beckett will at least not be offended by this, see this probing for the truth as at least that much. And if he hears the uncertainty in the first sentence, maybe he'll understand it, or maybe he won't. Either way, he hopes dearly he hasn't offended his friend - because whether or not the feelings returned are true, he is his friend. He cannot call into question his feelings.]

[That - is actually, and suddenly, a new perspective. Beckett blinks, silent for a long moment - a tense and brittle silence that speaks of his surprise, the sometimes still confusing feeling of convictions of decades and centuries becoming however slightly unhinged. Much about his perceptions of reality has been altered in the last weeks, months, the last year since the onset of Gehenna, but this is a different stone being turned. He's always thought himself a creature of more than reasonable-knowledge. To be challenged on it so deeply is... possibly a little like being challenged on the nature of the sun and moon.]

I've never... [It is not easy for Beckett of the Mnemosyne to admit that he has never thought of something.] We speak of Man and Beast at war within our nature, but I don't think we have ever questioned the meaning of Man. I don't know if this is an echo, or some shell, or - I don't know. [He does know. Something is still fighting inside him, has never stopped fighting. Something has kept him from letting the beast take his mind even when the beast had been the only part of him that still wanted to live.]

But the game - the Jyhad wasn't about ambition, not truly. For some, maybe, but for most it was simply the only way we knew how to exist. Others have set schemes in place before us, and we danced to the tune they had left behind, or still on strings we couldn't see. We were... paralyzed. Stuck in the pattern.

[Enoch can't help but make some small noise in relief when Beckett finally breaks the silence, a tiny sigh that the tablet's mic may or may not pick up. He'd been worried he had inadvertently said something offensive. He knows being a vampire is important to Beckett, and doesn't want to disrespect or even somehow go so far as to damage that.

He wants to ask more about the "beast" - he has an idea of what it means, given what happened to Charlie and Charles. Raw instinct, the need for food. Like a lion or a wolf. It's a part of him too, necessary to survive if he is deprived, he thinks, and Enoch can't see that much as wrong. It must be vital in some measure.

But Beckett's words about his humanity trouble him. Echo. Shell. "Empty" words. It is no longer quite the same troubling thought as it was. There's the fear he's wrong after all, yes, but his first reaction now is pity, wringing out his heart. He thinks so lowly about this integral part of himself, this part of himself he has carried well before this beast was introduced. He must address this, even if he hasn't asked enough questions about it yet to be more certain. It hurts too much to think of Beckett thinking of himself in such terms. Again, he finds the lack of physical presence like an ache, this lack of ability to reach out a comforting hand.]

I might have...a suggestion of an answer. I can't claim to know your experience, but I can tell you something of men. Man's strength among his neighbors on Earth has never been his raw power, speed, defenses, or keen senses. It is perseverance. He will walk for hours at a time, miles under conditions which would make stronger, faster creatures collapse in exhaustion. Present him with an obstacle, and if he cannot surmount it with what he has he will find or invent a tool to help him do so, however many tries it takes. We have never needed an imposing presence, only to simply be present. And perhaps that is all we need, even if it is only a spark.

Again, I can't claim to know how it feels, but- but I hope that this is worth something to you.

[Through his personal mulling, it is quite an abrupt realization when Beckett picks up Enoch's small sigh, and realizes - suddenly - the other man's worry about having misspoken. He isn't used to that. None of his many teachers have ever hesitated for fear of damaging the bond between them - and when has he started thinking of Enoch as a teacher, anyway? Bloody nostalgia, must be, missing someone to show the way he'd lost so entirely...

And yet here is this man, this chosen of God, extending this answer to him - some kind of answer, and he weighs it in his mind like a man carefully weighing a jewel in hand. Perseverance - the power of acting on hope? He thought it was the Beast in him that wouldn't lie down and die. But it isn't only, or so he'd like to hope. He has resigned to live because Anatole might yet come for him. Because of faith, in his friend and in his friend's God.]

It isn't so straightforward, [he murmurs, low words seeming to rise out of a depth.] Man does not persevere only because he can. There must be a reason for it. Isn't there? A reason to keep moving?

[It's his turn to pause now, forced to examine a thing he had always in some way known but never had to think about. Yes, people tend to keep moving more often than not, and when they don't, it's only after the mind struggles against despair to the bitter end. That there was always reason to fight seemed a given, and, like Beckett and defining man against the beast, he hadn't thought to look at it on its own.]

I- ...ah. Yes, we do. There's always a reason. Always a purpose. Er...I think. But, even when we have none...

[He stops, and searches his mind. What happened, when he felt he could not go on? Lucifel reminded him of the stakes. And when it became too abstract for him, he clung to Lucifel. When even he wasn't enough, he still didn't give up entirely. He only seemed to truly give up when death was already imminent. He didn't throw himself at the mercy of the elements, he still survived, even if it was only falling into a holding pattern, looking for...]

How quickly do we invent these reasons, find them in the smallest cracks, or seek someone else's? How often does one act with the purpose of finding a purpose, as children do, or those going through some sort of transition?

[Even as he says speaks, he gets the sense that the more he doesn't say it, doesn't give him a reason why he contests it, the more a lie it is to conceal it. He can't leave it at all philosophy and no emotion. He treasures his mind, yes, but everything stems from his heart. He has to admit it plainly:]

...I don't know how much sense it makes to you. I'm not even sure how much sense it makes to me yet. But I'm- I don't want you to sell this part of yourself short, Beckett. It is a part of you...

[Enoch's sudden hesitation is strange, though it doesn't undo the effect of his words, from which eddies are still spreading like from a rock thrown in a deep pool. The churn drags up memories, and he continues to turn them in his mind and examine them in the light of Enoch's words. To invent reasons or go searching for them is exactly right, or he'd still be a careless thug wandering day to day, thinking like an animal, not an immortal. And it doesn't matter where his path had brought him to - how many closed doors, how many dead ends - worst of all still seems the idea of never starting on it in the first place.

Maybe it would have been better, to never want grace rather than come to the knowledge that he could never have it. But that just seems a different kind of damnation.

He blinks when Enoch's tone changes, and stares, half coming back to the present and taking a while to understand what his friend means. At last his face softens into a sad and sincere version of one of his wry grins. Touching, that Enoch thinks this, but he doesn't understand.]

The human part of me? Don't bother with it, Enoch. The mortal man I was - he was no loss to me because he was barely anything. Everything I am - [his gaze flicks down to his hands as he raises them to look at.] It's all this. But - I'm starting to think that this means very different things than what I assumed.

[Beckett's answering shift in tone brings more warmth to his own. It's...undeniably wonderful, to have a friend he can talk about these things with. Someone else who gained immortality from a mortal life. Who has lived a comparable amount of time, in a largely mortal-populated plane.

He'd like to go on, about how their mortal lives are what shaped their immortal selves, so long ago. Putting these thoughts into words helps him hold on to his reason, too. But he can't linger on this thought and talk over Beckett. He'd be a terrible friend if he didn't follow through here. If he didn't give Beckett the chance to speak for himself and kept tossing assumptions out. Eventually toes would be stepped on, and Heaven forbid he knowingly hurt anyone he cares for. Heaven forbid he damage this bond he's come to treasure more than he thought he would.]

I'd say you never quite lost him. I did little of consequence as a mortal, myself, but it's still where I came from. But...what does it mean to you, to be what you are?

It's more than not doing anything of consequences. I was... asleep. A log in the currents, Anatole called it. He woke me. He - [ The memory is so wildly vivid, it takes over him completely when it comes. He's silent for a little while as he fights his way back to the surface over it.]

He thought I was chosen, [he mutters at last. Now he knows Anatole was right, though he doesn't know if his friend, his first teacher had ever truly known the meaning of it, had ever foreseen what would come of the two of them. But perhaps, knowing Anatole. Perhaps that was his ultimate comfort.]

Once they told me that I was damned, so I set out to prove damnation wasn't real. Then I learned I was wrong, and I thought my continued existence was damnation itself. Now... I wonder if all of it was only in me, in all along. Damnation, grace, meaning - if all of those were only names I've given to my own lack of understanding.

Oh, Beckett...

[The thought that he had believed himself damned by essence, that in finding more purpose than he ever had as a mortal he was somehow wrong, takes such painful hold of his heart he can focus on nothing else.]

I have tasted the agony, fear, ugly hatred, and bleak despair of damnation for myself. You are certainly not. Your capacity to bring joy and comfort to others, and to find it in return, that is not something one corrupted can do without breaking free of its influence. I am...I'm so glad you've moved away from such thoughts.

And-

[He exhales a breath he'd caught in his throat without realizing at the mention of his time in The Darkness. Strangely, the spike of remembered pain and fear doesn't resonate as strongly...]

And even if you somehow were, if a demon had laid claim to you, I would fight for you.

[...It's seemingly useless in the face of the calm conviction of protection. His own feelings had always come after anything he might feel for those around him, especially the ones who had found a place close to his heart.]

[His capacity to bring comfort to others - he almost laughs, because he's a vampire, for heaven's sake, and what does Enoch know about all the blood that's flowed over his hands and down his throat for centuries? But the laughter stops in his tight throat, and he thinks instead about Enoch, and about Angel, and Rhys, and Brian, and back before them he thinks about the last words he'd said to Lucita. his last friend. They hadn't saved her life, but he knows, he knows they had pulled her back from the consuming darkness. He'd invoked Anatole's name, of course, it was Anatole who had freed them both, really. But Anatole was gone and he had remained, her friend.

And here is Enoch now, doing much the same for him. This reminder that there was a path of light to follow, not just outside one's self, but inside as well.]

Enoch, [he says quietly, into the darkness behind his closed eyelids, which is deep and soothing somehow, a dark that is peace.] My friend, I don't know if God has forgiven me, but... I think just now, your forgiveness is enough.

And you will have it, always.

["Show love, mercy, and forgiveness, in the name of the Lord," Michael had said once, so long ago he doesn't remember the context and the words themselves are a faint echo in his memory. He hadn't needed it - love, mercy, and forgiveness were default states of his. Michael had likely been instructed to tell him so, because the reason it was needed was because God and His angels could or would not. Not in a way humans would perceive as any of those three, if so.

So when Beckett says, in serenity that he feels too, that his forgiveness is enough, it fills him with joy and satisfaction. He exhales slowly, calm pervading the shadows that had burrowed into his mind, lifting away their fog and granting him a moment of precious true peace. He had brought to mind his darkest moment, and through this connection with his friend, had hardly felt the wounds it had left on his psyche.

Even if it was only just this once, love truly could conquer all.]

Snowblind Inbox

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ughhh Enoch I just want to hug him until he faints

Hugs are important, he'll take it! Looks like he's wanting to give one of his own rn though

they gotta hug when they meet they GOTTA

yes, even if it takes more than one attempt (thanks Brian)

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