♻ 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!]

Comments

[orderfromchaos]

Okay.

[He sits, fishes a rosary out of his pocket, a Christmas gift, the first one he's had in a while. He fiddles with the rough olive-pit beads, doesn't quite have the courage to say the prayers.]

It's a shock, isn't it?

[Quiet, simple.]

[tucky]

[She eyes the rosary, and instead of answering, makes a comment of her own.]

Lotta Catholics here.

[orderfromchaos]

There's a handful. None of us are strictly in good standing, I don't think.

[tucky]

I guess you don't got a lot of Christians?

[orderfromchaos]

The ones we have are mostly quiet about it, I think.

I've got a theory that catholic is easier to hold onto when everything is crazy. There's always the rituals.

[Even when the things they're supposed to believe are hard to hold onto, or the way they fit into the topsy-turvy world is hard to figure out. The rituals are self-aware, worldly, latin and wine and smoke.]

[tucky]

Yeah, but people use those as-- as false idols, you know. They worship the beads and the icons and things.

[What Pennsatuckys Actually Have Been Told To Believe.]

[orderfromchaos]

[He shakes his head, though he's not angry. It is a thing people say.]

It's not really like that.

I was a false idol, for a while. It's...different.

[Terrible, terrifying.]

[tucky]

You were a false idol?

[W h a t.]

[orderfromchaos]

Had a cult out in the desert and everything.

I didn't mean for it to happen.

[tucky]

They thought you were something you weren't?

[She gets that. She accidentally got herself a fanclub, after all.]

[orderfromchaos]

Yeah, exactly.

And I didn't want to say no, you know? Get out, I can't help you. Because I could help, a little. But not everything they needed.

[tucky]

Did they write you a lot of letters, or...?

[orderfromchaos]

It was before I got locked up.

[...he probably would have gotten a lot of letters in Hesperia, if anyone had known he was there. Lots of people never believed he was dead.]

They'd come to where I was staying, or - other people would bring them. And I'd heal them. And I wanted them to go back to their lives, you know? Go be whole. But after that they'd want to stay.

And they'd go hurt people and bring them in, so I'd do more miracles. It was really messed up at the end.

[tucky]

[Woah. She's sitting up straight now, facing him fully.]

You healed them for real? It weren't a trick?

[orderfromchaos]

Yeah, for real.

There was a guy who was tricking me, who did some awful stuff - I thought he was helping but he just wanted to use the people who came to me. But the healing was real.

[tucky]

How? How'd you do it?

[orderfromchaos]

I don't know. I just - have something in me that does it. That wants to make the word fit together. I can see how it should work and I nudge it and it happens.

It's not holy. Or if it is, it's like any other gift. It didn't come with - visions or instructions or anything. I didn't always use it to do the right thing, but I'm trying.

[tucky]

So it's just like a superpower, but they thought it was holy. That right?

[orderfromchaos]

Feels a little weird to call it that, too.

But yeah, that's right.

[tucky]

Well, we got-- we got faith-healers where I come from. But the ones that are the real deal are the ones that let God work through them.

[orderfromchaos]

I think maybe God can work through everybody if they let him. And it's not always so flashy. But if you do something with - with grace. Out of love for people just because they're people. That's where God is.

[That's what Deanna would tell them both, he thinks; her memory is more of an intermediator for him than Mary, these days.]

[tucky]

Yeah-- yeah, exactly. He don't always show himself to us directly, but He wants us to do right by him.

[It's just too bad she took "God wants me to show His grace by forgiving and being kind to good people" and expanded it to include "God also totally wanted me to kill this 'evil' person in his name".]

But that's if he exists, I mean.

[orderfromchaos]

And by each other. 'Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do to me.'

[He's nodding; as though it's an expansion, rather than correction.]

If he exists.

If he exists, I think he has to be - stranger and vaster and - more complicated than any church or person really has a way to say.

[So if the barge doesn't fit the things she's been told, if there's goodness to be found for her in faith, it's okay to keep that, to say it works despite the letters of the lessons. If.]

[tucky]

So you're saying He exists, but He don't exist in any way that I know.

That's just like saying He don't exist at all.

[orderfromchaos]

In more ways than you know. It doesn't mean the ways you do know are empty.