♻ 002 | spam

[tucky]

[After a few days, Tiffany checks herself out of the infirmary. They were willing to let her go-- except for her teeth, she's mostly healed up; even her bruises are gone-- and she was starting to feel stir crazy, so out she went.

Except now she doesn't know where to go. She knows there's her cabin, but she doesn't want to spend all her time there-- it looks like a Litchfield prison bunk, so it's not the most comfortable place around. She's new, so she doesn't know the best common areas to hang out in. There are a lot of doors, but most of them are unopenable to her. So she wanders.

Despite her bravado and argumentativeness, the things people have been telling her since she arrived-- that she's dead, that she was chosen to be here, that she's here to make amends-- are getting to her. She doesn't fully believe them, but she can't completely disbelieve them either. If they're right (and what if they are?), everything she thought she knew about God and faith and atonement has been turned on its head. There was that man-- that Catholic-- who'd tried to help her reconcile this with what she believed, but it hadn't worked all that well. She's relatively new to her faith, and without someone spoonfeeding it to her, she's shaky in it. She's used it as both a comfort and a crutch in the past, and now she isn't sure that she has it at all anymore. She doesn't know whether that makes her feel depressed or furious; she doesn't know whether she wants to punch someone or curl up and cry. She isn't ruling out doing both.

Predictably, she finds her way to the chapel. Finding a Bible in the cabinet, she sinks down onto a bench and flips through it aimlessly, barely taking in what she's seeing. She tries the trick of opening to a random passage a couple times, but it only ever seems to be just that-- random. Sadness is the overwhelming emotion here-- sadness, confusion, feeling alone and lost. When a teardrop or two lands on the pages, she doesn't bother to brush them away.

At some point, she also wanders into the dining hall, circling the room and poking around for something to do. It's not time for a meal, but the cafeteria was a popular place to hang out and relax in Litchfield, so she figures it might be the same here. Unfortunately, she's leaning towards anger right now, and she's spoiling for a fight. That's not a good thing, on a prison ship filled with inmates just like her.]

[OOC: Permissions post for this character!]

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[tucky]

[She turns to face forward again, dropping her chin into her hands.]

Nobody can know him entirely; I know that.

But if the Bible's wrong-- and this place ain't in the Bible-- then I don't know how much I know him at all, because that's how I learned about him. I didn't grow up going to chuch and feeling him in my heart.

[orderfromchaos]

I believe there is a heaven. It's not here. But I couldn't see heaven back home, either, and I believed in it then. I believe in the bible, still. Jesus talks in parables, right? So. People being saved, being forgiven. That's in there.

[Even if he doesn't believe there's a way into heaven for him; even if he hasn't been to confession in four years.]

I believe God loves us even when we don't believe, even when we're scared or confused or angry and can't find that feeling in our hearts.

I think maybe that's what the beads are for. Because you're not just your soul, you're a body and a spirit and all. And it's a way to - to seek him with your hands even when your heart's lost.

[tucky]

[She doesn't know very much about Jesus's parables. She doesn't know very much about Jesus period, which is pretty weird for such a devout Christian, but it's kind of what happens when most of what you know about your religion was spoonfed to you by your lawyer.]

You're one of the "God loves everyone" types?

If he loves everyone, then what's the difference between people like me and people like the rest?

[Translation: she was attracted to the idea of God because it was a way to feel special and loved.]

He loves the ones who love him; the ones who follow him.

[orderfromchaos]

There isn't anybody else like you.

[Slow and quiet and certain, absolutely certain, in the way that doesn't need to shout because nothing could ever shake his conviction. He sees souls, at the edges in silhouette, in the ripples they leave in the past and the future. Everyone is utterly themselves. She is special.

Terrible, in quite a lot of ways. But also lost, also hungry for human attention and care that everyone should have. And like every soul, absolutely irreplaceable.]

That's why he loves everyone.

[tucky]

But He sent me a message. You weren't there; you didn't see it. He wanted to end this girl who didn't respect or know him.

[orderfromchaos]

Respect is really important to you. She made you angry, when you found out she felt like that.

[He doesn't bother to make it a question, not even a rhetorical one. He knows.

It's not sharp, not an accusation. It's somber, serious.]

So. Was it what He wanted, or what you wanted?

[tucky]

I asked him. I went to my Bible for wisdom, and He gave it to me. It weren't about what I wanted.

[orderfromchaos]

[He stares, for a long moment, and there's a low thrum of energy, like the air before a thunderstorm, palpable but impossible to pin down. He looks at her, at everything that built her, everything she grabbed and scrabbled for to build herself with. He sees the trial, first, the lynchpin of it, the first crashing wave of cheers, the sudden hunger for adulation he watched bloom in the other shards so disastrously. The rest of it all ties into that moment, backward and forward, the faith healing, the murder, psych, her childhood, already sketched in glimpses and guesses, shadows and details rushing in to fill the outlines. The experiment with forgiveness.]

She refused to be baptized. Vehemently. That's when you decided to kill her. For the insult, and because it didn't make sense to you, that you could do the right thing and still not have it turn out the way you wanted, not if God really wanted you to forgive her in the first place.

You went to your Bible after.

[tucky]

[She looks quite startled by that, because dude. That is totally exactly how it happened. Not only did he sum up her actions, he summed up her thoughts and feelings-- in a more clear and concise way than she could have herself.]

You read my mind? You a mind-reader?

[orderfromchaos]

More like...a life-reader. We all carry our pasts with us.

[And futures, but that's a lot dicier on ship; the Admiral is one force he can't predict at all.]

[tucky]

That's the same thing. You're in my head.

[orderfromchaos]

Not right now. I can't hear what you think while you think it. I just - understand what made you, and what you made with it.

It feels different. To me. But maybe it's the same in practice.

[tucky]

Well, you...

[Were totally right on the money.]

... Do you get why she needed to die?

[orderfromchaos]

I get why you felt that way.

But she didn't need to. She didn't even deserve to.

[Sad and calm, more than judgey.]

[tucky]

No, no, you don't know this girl. She's a menace.

[orderfromchaos]

It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud; and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. Genesis nine....something.

If everything dangerous or unrepentant or enraging deserved death, we would need another flood. But that's not what God asks of us. He's promised the opposite.

[tucky]

No, I saw the message. I saw it. Maybe you're right, maybe I wanted to kill her first--

[She did.]

-- but He told me I should. He wanted me to do that for Him.

[orderfromchaos]

I think any god that would ask that of you. That would - make use of your poverty and loneliness and anger, that would tell you to do the thing you want, that would only make all of that worse, instead of something harder, something that you need, something that didn't compound the worst of you - I don't think such a god deserves your worship.

[tucky]

Oh, yeah? Then you tell me how it happened. Tell me how I opened up right to that page. I weren't looking for it or flipping the pages to find it-- it was shown to me.

[She stands up, pointing a finger at his chest.]

Don't tell me God don't deserve me, or I don't deserve him.

[Not that he even came close to saying God didn't deserve her; she's throwing in a little projection of her own for good measure.]

You may be some fancy-dancy mind-reader, but you don't know what he's done for me. You think I mind him making use of any of the bad shit that's happened to me? Why you think he gave it to me in the first place? It was because he knew I could handle it, and because he wanted to use it for good later.

You can't lose your faith in God just because he lets a bad thing happen or asks something of you that's hard.

[orderfromchaos]

There's a lot of bloody crap in the bible.

[Quietly, because he sort of knows that won't help his case at all, but - he has read it, and he loves it, and it's still true.]

No. You can't. And forgiving her even when she didn't do what you expected would have been the hard thing. Better for her, and better for you, but hard.

[tucky]

You only say that 'cause you're a Catholic and you'd rather follow the Pope than God.

[Honey, no.]

Look, I tried to forgive her once, okay? Didn't work. It would've worked if that's what I was supposed to do, and you know it.

[orderfromchaos]

[He makes a bit of a face, because, um, JPII may have excommunicated him personally when he started raising the dead. He's just going to ignore that entire line of thought.]

Life isn't that simple. God isn't that simple. You don't forgive someone as bait on a hook. You do it because it's the - merciful thing. Because we all need forgiveness.

How do you know what worked would even mean? Like it would be obvious, and quick, and exactly the same as it happened for you? Like there's only one way to be affected for the better by human kindness?

[tucky]

And I tried that, okay. She didn't want it. She threw it back in my face.

She thinks she's better than me, that's what this all comes down to. She thinks she's above me and she thinks she's above God.

[orderfromchaos]

So she's wrong.

[There's not a speck of doubt in him about this; she's a person, she deserves respect, so does her faith, no matter how patchwork it is now. It's all she has, as she's said herself, and more, it's what she needed. But it can't be static any more than she can, which is to say, not healthily, not well.]

So she's wrong. People are wrong every day, people are arrogant every day, and they don't deserve to die for it. They can't ever learn if they die. And maybe they never do, but that doesn't mean she only gets one chance, or that she learned nothing from your forgiveness just because she didn't learn everything you thought she should.

It's not, 'And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, but if they don't fall in line after that, smite the bastards.' It's - Matthew, 18:21 and 22.

Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven."

[tucky]

[For what it's worth, she does listen. And when he starts quoting the Bible, she nods slightly, going to sit back down on the bench.]

That still don't explain why He sent me the message that He did.

I ain't lying about that.