Ensign Sariel Rager (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
visible_sariel) wrote2007-12-28 11:30 pm
visible_sariel) wrote2007-12-28 11:30 pm
upstairs, room 1701D post Gene's being bound
She'd have gone outside, if the weather had been anything short of freezing.
she'd have found the fragment of inlet in the lake if the rest of the shoreline and the grass before it hadn't been buried beneath three months of accumulated snow. But the icy wind and the drifts and the glimpse of frozen hell from just beyond a friend's door were enough of a three-pronged deterrent to keep her inside, to send her up the staircase, to make her draw her curtains and lock herself in. Time, she'd said. A minute.
and it hadn't helped. the opposite, in fact; she'd made it worse. Time, she'd said. A minute. An hour, a day and all the while the same thoughts were chasing themselves around her brain, spinning circles in half-remembered darkness. time, she'd said. After all, it had worked for her.
She hadn't dared say time to heal.
Even though that had worked for her, too. As much as anything could.
But she'd made it worse - she'd made him cry, made him avoid her eyes, and even after the fact she could only piece together half a reason why. she'd never been in combat before, save thirty seconds of blood and desperation in sherwood forest that counted as her second stint as a hostage more than as experience on the line. she defined the term noncombatant in a dozen ways, and knew it. Sariel was a hundred things, and had been, and continued to be; pilot, explorer, prisoner, experiment, mother hen. But she'd never been where Gene had.
And because of that, she'd made it worse.
And Gene had been half-frozen when he'd finally found the door, and now who knew what he thought of her. and Harding was God knew where, a victim of his time's horrifying ideology, maybe held down,
just like me
maybe strapped down,
just like I was
and why in God's name did everything seem that much worse when weeks separated Terra from Terran?
there are tears on Sariel's cheeks and more clinging to her lashes when her thoughts finally start reordering themselves. she's homesick. It's Christmas and she's homesick as hell, and she may have botched things spectacularly with one friend, but he's in immediate need of her and that's enough to suppress the worst of the guilt. The other friend, beyond the other door--well. There's only one thing she can do.
Terran religion in 2369 is closer to Universalism than anything else, and the planet and colonies are dotted with variations on a theme. Everything matters: culture, personal belief, heritage, history. Sometimes there's a god, small G. Sometimes there's a tree. Sometimes there's a spirit - we are far from home, far from the bones of our ancestors. Everything matters, and nothing does; nobody on Earth cares what language you pray in, if you pray at all.
And sometimes the God being prayed to has a capital letter.
There are four candles standing in a row on Sariel's nightstand. An old-fashioned stick match lights the first on the third, clumsy strike; the first lights the second, the second lights the third, the third touches off the last and a quartet of pale flames cast their shadows on the ceiling.
and the shadows
One for Harding.
keep on changing
One for roe.
and the shadows
One for amalie.
Keep. On. changing.
And one for Kellin.
"God who is in heaven, even in a place like this..."
And Sariel kneels.
she'd have found the fragment of inlet in the lake if the rest of the shoreline and the grass before it hadn't been buried beneath three months of accumulated snow. But the icy wind and the drifts and the glimpse of frozen hell from just beyond a friend's door were enough of a three-pronged deterrent to keep her inside, to send her up the staircase, to make her draw her curtains and lock herself in. Time, she'd said. A minute.
and it hadn't helped. the opposite, in fact; she'd made it worse. Time, she'd said. A minute. An hour, a day and all the while the same thoughts were chasing themselves around her brain, spinning circles in half-remembered darkness. time, she'd said. After all, it had worked for her.
She hadn't dared say time to heal.
Even though that had worked for her, too. As much as anything could.
But she'd made it worse - she'd made him cry, made him avoid her eyes, and even after the fact she could only piece together half a reason why. she'd never been in combat before, save thirty seconds of blood and desperation in sherwood forest that counted as her second stint as a hostage more than as experience on the line. she defined the term noncombatant in a dozen ways, and knew it. Sariel was a hundred things, and had been, and continued to be; pilot, explorer, prisoner, experiment, mother hen. But she'd never been where Gene had.
And because of that, she'd made it worse.
And Gene had been half-frozen when he'd finally found the door, and now who knew what he thought of her. and Harding was God knew where, a victim of his time's horrifying ideology, maybe held down,
just like me
maybe strapped down,
just like I was
and why in God's name did everything seem that much worse when weeks separated Terra from Terran?
there are tears on Sariel's cheeks and more clinging to her lashes when her thoughts finally start reordering themselves. she's homesick. It's Christmas and she's homesick as hell, and she may have botched things spectacularly with one friend, but he's in immediate need of her and that's enough to suppress the worst of the guilt. The other friend, beyond the other door--well. There's only one thing she can do.
Terran religion in 2369 is closer to Universalism than anything else, and the planet and colonies are dotted with variations on a theme. Everything matters: culture, personal belief, heritage, history. Sometimes there's a god, small G. Sometimes there's a tree. Sometimes there's a spirit - we are far from home, far from the bones of our ancestors. Everything matters, and nothing does; nobody on Earth cares what language you pray in, if you pray at all.
And sometimes the God being prayed to has a capital letter.
There are four candles standing in a row on Sariel's nightstand. An old-fashioned stick match lights the first on the third, clumsy strike; the first lights the second, the second lights the third, the third touches off the last and a quartet of pale flames cast their shadows on the ceiling.
and the shadows
One for Harding.
keep on changing
One for roe.
and the shadows
One for amalie.
Keep. On. changing.
And one for Kellin.
"God who is in heaven, even in a place like this..."
And Sariel kneels.