trans_9 | Mmm, good Bible.

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Mmm, good Bible.

Daimon had chosen the location ahead of time. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was sacred, perhaps more so than the Vatican. It was the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. It had also not been descrated.

Many months had passed since Daimon spoke before a group of people. His palms sweat and he wiped his brow. Silently, he asked God for the strength to not simply speak but to speak on behalf of the Lord.

When the time came, he walked up before the assembled, Bible in hand. While he was nervous, perhaps on the verge of a panic attack, his words were strong and passionate and grew surer the more he spoke.

“I recognize that the people on board this ship come from various walks of life. Some of you, perhaps, are not familiar with Christianity. If this is the case, you may ask whatever questions you have and offer me any comments or insights after I have spoken.” Daimon then gave what he called a “brief summary” of Christianity. It was, in fact, very lengthy and detailed and contained heavy praise of Jesus and the love of God. He then moved on to give a similarly “brief summary” of the context behind the Old Testament.

“Some of you are perhaps aware of the book of Job. Job was a prosperous man. He had seven sons and three daughters. He had herds of animals and acres of land. He was a devout worshipper of God. In the story, the Adversary speaks with God and tells him that Job only praises God because he has no reason to blame him. He says that if God takes away from Job all of his blessings, his animals, his land, even his children, then Job will curse God’s name. God answers that Job will retain his faith and permits the Adversary to strip away everything from Job save his health.”

“A series of disasters befall Job. He loses everything, his land, his herd, and even his children.” Daimon paused. “Job is distraught. Throwing himself upon the ground, he cries:

“‘Naked I came from the womb,
naked I shall return from whence I came.
The Lord gives and the Lord takes away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.’

“The Adversary spoke with the Lord God again. He tells him that Job continues to praise God only because Job himself has not been afflicted. God allows the Adversary to take from Job his health.

“Robbed of his health, bereft of hope, Job laments. He cries out to God, begging for relief, begging for death, and questioning his justice. Each of Job’s friends berate him and encourage him to have faith but Job refuses. Job’s lament continues until God himself answers him. The Lord says:

“‘Brace yourself and stand up like a man;
I shall put questions to you, and you must answer.
Would you dare deny that I am just,
or put me in the wrong to prove yourself right?
Have you an arm like God’s arm;
can you thunder with a voice like his?
Deck yourself out, if you can, in pride and dignity,
array yourself in pomp and splendour.
Unleash the fury of your wrath,
look on all who are proud, and bring them low,
crush the wicked where they stand;
bury them in the earth together,
and shroud them in an unknown grave.
Then I in turn would acknowledge
that your own right hand could save you.’

“At these words, Job kneels and asks for forgiveness. The Lord grants it and Job prospers greater than ever before. He lives to see his grand children and his great grand children and his great great grandchildren. To the end of his days he sang the Lord’s praise.”

Daimon gazed into the eyes of the people before him. “You may ask, as I have, why the Lord would cause a blameless man such grief. You may, as I once did, come away with the sense that God is not just, that he is fickle and cares not for man but this could not be further from the truth. To ask why God could and does allow such horrible events to transpire to such good people would be folly, for it is as the Lord says: we cannot judge him. We cannot know why the Lord acts as he does, nor can we hope to know. We can only have, nay, we must have faith in his actions. For the Lord is greater than all of us. He sculpted us with his hands and breathed into us our souls. The Lord knows more than we can possibly imagine and has our best intentions in his heart, even if it seems to us that he has caused us nothing but misery.

“Why, you may ask, have I told you this story? ‘What meaning could it have on my life?’ And this, I shall tell you. Every one of us on this ship is lost. We have been stripped of our most precious comforts- our home, our friends, our family. We do not know what lies ahead of us. We may despair, we may weep, we may beg for the mercy and guidance of our Lord. On board this ship, even surrounded as we are by each other, we may still feel, as Job felt, alone and abandoned.

“But I tell you that this is not so. You are not alone. The Lord sees you. In your darkest hour, at the hardest time of your life, you must remember that you are loved. You must remember that there is hope, no matter how dire your future seems. Furthermore, I tell you that though you have listened to every word I said and still do not believe, I tell you this: you are still not alone. For though we come from different worlds, cultures, and beliefs, we stand before each other as equals. We stand here together and so I tell you: we are not alone.”

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Roxie, or whatever the figure that's representing her is, stays silent, even though her seat repeatedly shifts as Katara's control of the dream fluxes. She's like an eye in the storm, perfectly composed in the softly-shifting changes.

But, still, a little influence creeps in: the sky changes, subtly, spidering patterns of brighter-than-life stars spanning from horizon to horizon, and a silver-lit moon hangs bright at the center of it all, beautiful and impossibly huge (http://i38.tinypic.com/bi788z.jpg), taking up what seems like half the sky.

And somehow, the fight Katara was determined to enact, the attacks she were about to perform suddenly take pause. This moon brought Katara's power to a real advantage, and if this fight enacted was realer than the Sensoriums, she would have crushed Azula easily. No, what was happening now was she felt erself go quiet, for a moment, and it was as if something changed in the dream, something somehow shifted, and she felt a presence so familiar she couldn't move.

And then she turned and created a wave from a nearby Fire nation water fountain leading to the sewers to bring her into the city.

Was it possible?

The breeze had given him away. There's always a breeze.

And she likely sees a shadowy figure, being carried along by the breezes, hopping from building to building away from her, a brief flash of a bald head and an arrow.

Roxie is gone... or is she?

The moon, still, watches silently from overhead.

And Katara didn't just go after him peacefully: the buildings were literally flooding over now with the amount of power Katara was wielding now, yet the only thing she wanted, the only thing was to get to him. The moment she arrived on this ship she felt like there had been an air of him somehow, but she couldn't place it. Even if it was all in her head, even if it was part of the Roxie dreamscape, she wanted at least a glimpse of him, a reminder.

She needed this.

He's looking back too often. TRying to catch glimpses of her face, even as he runs away.

This is why he trips on a loose roof shingle, and goes sliding down the roof, staff clattering away, his forward momentum carrying him right off the roof and into freefall, even despite his attempts to backpedal.

He blows a massive gust before his hits the ground, sending him flying into the air again into a flip but ultimately lands unevenly, trips again, and goes flying head first into a fountain.

Smooth Aang. Real smooth.

"Ow."

Better grab him before he runs again, Katara, because he certainly will try. Something about the way he looks is ephemeral, as if he's just an afterimage, barely able to stay in one place more than a second.

And Katara was nothing if not focused. She speed up now, and now she lept high in the air. After all her sessions with Master Paku and her training in places other than the watertribe nations have made her quite limber. Once she lands neatly one of her own waves, she speeds up even faster. He may have been an airbender and had that as an advantage, but adding Katara's determination and the moon?

Her speed was finally on par until she was finally at his heels practically, and finally, she rise high enough, and her hands grazed his shoulders.

He looks back, and it trips him up yet again. He misses the roof he was aiming for when she grabs him, he grabs her sleeve mostly by accident, and they both go crashing to the ground with the water, until the wave washes out around them. Soaking wet, and his limbs half-tangled with hers, he tries to shove her away and scrabbles away to try to run, but this time, even he isn't fast enough, most likely.

Grab his foot grab his foot!

In retrospect, going after Aang like that had probably not been the best thing in the world, but it was the quickest thing she could come up with. Once they crashed, she could see that Aang would be quick enough to try and get away, so using the water as an extra long tentacle, she grabbed at him and tripped him up.

And now that she was up, she was not a happy camper.

"Aang! Why are you running away from me?!" She demanded.

"Oof!"

Oh boy.

"Uh... because I'm a subconscious representation of the elusiveness of the real Aang?"

Please please buy that. Especially since he had to dig up a word like 'subconscious' after hearing the others say it so often, and remember what it means.

He finally turns to look at her, and what she sees might shock her. Even with the strange blurring and shifting of his form, he looks older now. Much older. Fifteen or sixteen, at least. But he's stopped trying to run now. Instead, he sits there, finally facing her, completely soaked with water, and gets that look he gets when he's trying to put one over on somebody, and trick them into doing the right thing so he can avoid a fight.

"I'm not the real Aang. I'm just in your imaaaaginaaaaation."

He wiggles his fingers for emphasis.

"Wooooo~"

Edited 2009-09-24 19:54 (UTC)

At first, Katara was definitely confused. When did Aang know words like those anyway, and when did he even look this old? All of this was impossible! For him to be this old, that would have to mean that he had been here before had, which would have been impossible. Even so, there was something about his face, about the manner, that reminded her of Aang a lot.

But at his next words, there was no mistaking it: that was Aang all right. The last time he did the whole "woo" was when he and Sokka were kidding about the Painted lady in that one Fire Nation village. She was tempted to laugh, or at least be angry, but she was still feeling really confused.

"Oh stop that," She said, looking sharp, but softening immediately afterward. "How...how are like this?"

No no no. She has to believe he's not here! Maybe if he uses more big words he only half understands she'll think he's someone or something else! But the doctors were never very good at explaining what they were talking about, so he's not really sure what to say.

"I'm not Aang. I'm...what you want to see. And I'm older because--uh... to represent the time! We've been apart. But it's magnified, because it hurts to be apart, so it's like even more time has passed than the time that's passed. And--"

And... this is not working, but she can't think he's real. She can't.

"I'm not really Aang. I swear! I'm just, the part of me--him, that's right here."

He taps her forehead.

"And right here."

He taps the center of her chest, near her heart.

"And the thing you have to remember is--that's where I'll always be." He closes his eyes tight. "You'll have to remember that."

She could see through him easily. Aang was usually a terrible liar, now that she'd seen him do it before. But he had to lie to her for some reason, she could certainly see that now. There were so many missing pieces to this story, like why Aang looked the way he did, and why people were holding secrets from her. It was like people knew things that she didn't, that maybe she really was trying to protect her heart from something. Why see Aang like this in the first place? It was the last thing she would have imagined. But was this actually real?

"I never forgot," she said softly, her eyes brimming with tears. "How could I? You saved the world Aang, and you did it on your terms. After everything, I wanted nothing but to be with you, happy. But...but I got brought here."

And the pain came, quicker than she thought, and she closed her eyes. "And now all I want is for you to be here again, and we can discover this place together. I don't know if you're a dream, or a figment, or real. I just know its what I want, more than anything. I want to see you!"

His chest aches with the truth, with the reality of his situation, and for a moment, he just stares at her, his own eyes glassy. That's when he leans over very suddenly and pulls her in close, holds her, and to her, he likely feels solid and normal, and the image of him even stops blurring and shifting.

"I can't promise things like that anymore," he says in her ear, and his voice is lower-pitched now, and tired, but still his, still peaceful somehow, even despite his words. "That everything will be okay. It's different now."

He pulls back enough to rest his forehead against hers.

"I might not even be here. I might just be--"

In her head. Even though it's not true, he has to say it, he has to plant those seeds of doubt to keep her safe. Warrior that she is, he's never fought anything like this before, anything this horrible, even more terrifying than Koh. He can't let Him find her through her dreams. He knows He's reaching out, searching...

For cracks.

And that He'd want more than anything to hurt someone that Aang loves. She can't come looking for him.

"But I can promise you that I love you so much that it hurts every single second I'm away from you, and right now, the scariest thing in the world is that I might not get to see you again."

A pause.

"Well, and Sokka, and Toph, and Appa and Momo, too, because I really miss them--"

He stops himself, realizing he's going on a tangent.

"Anyway, uh--" Wait. "What was I saying?"

Apparently, the attention span is exactly the same.

"Oh yeah! ...I love you, Katara. That's the thing you have to hold onto. Guru Pathik, he told me that love doesn't leave the world. That the love my people had for me was reborn into a new love, that it was still in my heart, and--"

And when he died, when this was all over, it'd still be there. She had to remember that.

"And you have to remember that." That's when fat tears start to roll down his cheeks. "Do you promise me you'll remember that?"

Edited 2009-09-25 02:02 (UTC)

Katara couldn't bear it any longer. She leaned over and kissed him, kissed him because her heart felt like it was breaking, because no matter what, no one but she and Roxie would know this happened, and kissed him because without saying it, without talking about it, she knew the dream needed to end.

Somewhere in her, she understood that. It didn't mean she wasn't hurting, that she wasn't dying right now. In a moment, she knew that she couldn't know that Aang was here, not now. After what had happened in her mindscape, after bringing that fight with Azula back, she knew that she was becoming unstable. And THAT, more than anything, was a way of leaving them open. That could hurt them both.

And it was exactly what Roxie had been trying to tell her. She had to make a promise, that she would do what she could to not expose this, that she would keep him safe. She had to forget.

The ship wasn't safe.

"I promise," Katara said. "I'll forget this, if only to protect you. I'll make sure I just remember the city, and I'll keep this only a memory. But if I have to forget it now for you, just know: I love you too. And I'll keep loving you with every day that goes by, and with every month a podpop happens and you're not around. But if I can keep this safe, if I can help you like this, I will. Because that matters to me, and always will."

And she kissed him again, her tears mingling with his. "So forget me as long as you can. Because I won't let them hurt you because of me."

It was scary, sometimes, how she understood without REALLY understanding.

And even though she felt like she was betraying herself and her body was screaming murder, she turned and looked into the distance. "Thank you Roxie. This dream has to end."

He doesn't want the kisses to end, but they have to.

He doesn't want her dream to end, but it has to.

As soon as she turns away, he's up, the wind carrying his footsteps, and gone again, running. Crying.

And hoping against hope that he's wrong about everything.

And it all starts to fade away and fragment, until there is only the moon: the rest of the sky and the earth is gone, and the silver light shines like an overwhelming beacon in the darkness, flooding out everything into noiseless sensory overload...

It's just Roxie, some dim part of her is likely to process as she grudgingly wakes up, sitting over her and holding the near-blinding light of the flaring marble close to her face to interrupt her sleep.

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Mmm, good Bible.

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