Logs:Unconfirmed

Unconfirmed
Dramatis Personae Lucien, Sera
In Absentia Elie	2023-04-08 "{Why did you leave the Church?}"
Location <PRV> Tessier Residence - Backyard - Greenwich Village
Living in the heart of Manhattan means space is precious, and as such, the yard behind this house is small. It is as exquisitely well-kept as the rest of the place, though; all available space has been meticulously cultivated and transformed into a lush retreat from the concrete and asphalt of the city. The borders of the garden are lined in a wealth of flowers, the selection chosen to provide a panoply of color in all seasons save winter. A grassy rock-bordered pathway separates these from the raised-bed vegetable garden that dominates its center. The far left corner of the garden plays host to a tiny rock-lined pond, goldfish and a pair of turtles living in its burbling water. To one side of the pond is a garden table and set of chairs and presiding over the pond, a large oak tree with a hammock underneath, its branches spreading out over the tall brick wall that screens the entire area off from the city outside. It is the witching hour, or honestly a little past, depending on who you ask, but the Tessier who's creeping out into the garden isn't actually a witch. Spring it may be, but at this time of morning it's still quit chilly, and Sera has brought along a blanket, soft and black and adorned with constellations. She's also brought along a mug full of what looks like orange juice and smells more like vodka than a screwdriver probably should. Installing herself at the patio table, she wraps the blanket around herself, curls her legs up onto the chair, and starts imbibing in steady, businesslike fashion. She has a set of olive wood rosary beads -- brought from her own world, the beads worn much smoother since from use -- looped around one skinny hand, though there isn't really any sort of prayerful rhythm to her restless fidgeting. Sera is left to her own devices -- for a time, anyway. Eventually, though, the door opens, and Lucien slips out into the garden as well. His still shedding the vestiges of sleep but beneath that, carefully groomed into quiet. He's barefoot, in pajamas still -- soft black flannel pants, a black t-shirt with a filigreed Ace of Spades playing card motif printed on it, a soft green fleece robe thrown on over top. He hasn't brought tea, hasn't brought anything except a very small stuffed hedgehog squished into one hand which he is fidgeting with, thumb running slowly down to smooth over the very soft fur it improperly has in place of spines. He settles himself into a seat catacorner from Sera, eyes ticking only briefly to the mug -- then the rosary beads -- then just out towards the dark garden. At the sound of the door Sera reaches hastily for her mug to -- down the rest of its contents? Fortunately not, given it's still half full, comical though the attempt might have been. She just takes a sip and sets it back down with only an uncertain sidelong glance at Lucien and his plushie. She's quiet for a moment, and though nothing of her mental state slips the control of her power there's a definitely sense somehow she's waiting. Not for very long, though, before she ventures, quietly, "{Why did you leave the Church?}" Were Lucien a proper and responsible parent, perhaps he might have something to say about this middle of the night teenage drinking -- but he is, in fact, not even a parent at all, and it passes with no comment, though with a slow tightening grip on his conveniently stress-ball-sized hedgehog plush. His brows lift, his eyes shifting back to her with no discernible change in the quiet reserve of his expression but a briefly curious ripple somewhere under the surface calm of his mind. "{To say I was ever in the Church would be taking some liberties. I attended Church occasionally, to be sure. I did even rather enjoy the drama of it all.}" Sera had her mug halfway to her mouth again, but holds off to snort at Luci's answer. "{I'm glad you've been getting something out of it. But -- I guess mom...your mother, she was not so very strict about it? I don't think she would have insisted, if we didn't want to go, but.}" But what? She does not pick that thread back up. "{I never thought the Church was perfect, but the problems seemed...smaller? Like they were fixable. Maybe it's because I was younger, then. Seeing what I wanted to see.}" She takes a big gulp of her powered screwdriver and grimaces. "{Maybe I'm just broken, now. Angry, entitled, rebellious.}" A delicate spiderwebbing of cracks spreads itself across Lucien's mind, and he takes a ponderous care in smoothing it back into its previous glassy blankness. "{She was very ardent about Church attendance and very lackadaisical, by turns.}" His eyes have turned up, now, towards the dark sky above. "{I rather thought rebellion was as much a rite of passage as the confirmation itself.}" "{Sorry.}" Sera murmurs into her mug. "{She wasn't a very good mother, was she? I thought at first you didn't really talk about her because you were sad she'd died.}" As her control starts to slip, a chaotic jumble of anger, fear, loneliness, grief, exhaustion, and rapidly escalating inebriation spills out to catch at Lucien. She methodically gathers herself back and weaves together a flimsy soothing warmth to spread in their place. It, too, pulls toward Lucien -- toward the others sleeping in the house, for that matter, if more weakly -- but it's gentle, not insistent. "{I think for it to be a rite of passage, I have to rebel and return with my faith strengthened. Though.}" Another gulp. "{I guess it's still a rite of passage if I fail, no?}" Lucien's grip on the stuffed hedgehog is easing. He's settled his hands into his lap, fingers still running slow over the fur of the plushie, smoothing it down flat as he grooms his disrupted neurochemistry back into place. "{She and I did not have the best of relationships, no.}" His tight control carefully eases, letting the exhausted-but-steady calm layered just beneath mingle with the warmth spilling out from Sera. "{Failing would imply that returning with your faith strengthened is the one correct outcome. It is an outcome, certainly. A good one only if it fulfills you.}" "{I never considered whether I belonged in the Church, back in my world. It just seemed so self-evident.}" Sera subsides into a deeper slump. Lucien can sense, through the feedback from her power, that this is as much relief as resignation. Though she doesn't have much finesse herself at the moment, she's letting his steadier calm guide her slap-dash artificial comfort. "{I want to believe that it's this world, that it's different enough everything's just wrong, even grace. But probably it's me.}" This has the sound of something she's been brooding on for some time. "{I can't reconcile the Church Fathers' writings with what Christ actually taught, and I don't know what fulfills me.}" "{Even within the Church -- there have been so very many Catholic thinkers since Augustine decided that a little bit of torture every now and again is just, and they have come to very differing conclusions, no?}" Lucien shakes his head, his eyes returning now to his not-really-sister. "{Regardless, is the Catholic Church the only path to grace? To Christ?}" His musing is quiet, but certainly does not seem idle. "{I think in many ways life is a permanent search for what fulfills us. We may cobble it together from all manner of sources, each of them imperfect. If you find some joy in, say, the words of Christ or in the hymns or in your relationship with your pastor --}" His hand turns up and out in a small shrug. "{Is The Church something you can only take all of or leave all of? No other options?}" "{That may be, but the liturgy isn't based on their conclusions.}" Sera is trying hard not to sound petulant. "{Through the Sacraments, the Church is the primary means of grace. 'Primary' should mean it isn't the only one, but the Catechism also says there is no salvation outside of the Church.}" Her emotional scaffolding is starting to buckle, only partly because she's rapidly becoming too drunk to maintain it. "{I think most Catholics disagree with the Church on some things. Even Father Flores.}" Her teeth click against the edge of the mug and she winces. "{But how much can I disagree and still say} 'I believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church'? It feels like a lie, now." She sits up suddenly, and would probably have spilled her drink if there were more of it remaining. "Wow, I was literally baptized in a different holy, catholic, and apostolic Church! I can't get confirmed if I wasn't baptized properly, right?" Lucien is very possibly wishing he had, in fact, come out here with a drink of his own. It certainly (and, after two Tonys, one would hope) does not show on his face, but the balance of exhaustion-to-steadiness Sera can feel in his mind is markedly tipping itself towards the former, only pulling back with a determined effort that then carefully corrals itself into something altogether less noticeable. "{If your god is so very small as all that you are in a bit of difficulty, I suppose. I don't think I am quite the person to ask. I've only ever managed the one world, myself.}" He very carefully tucks away the traces of annoyance that were threatening to slip his quite-sober but quite-underslept control, laying out, instead, a quietly more neatly woven mental patterning to support Sera's unraveling one. He plucks what remains of her drink from her grasp when she sits up. "{This feels like perhaps something you ought to be sleeping on. Nobody is going to force you up there, tomorrow.}" "{I don't think God is the problem.}" Though Sera does not actually sound particularly certain about that either, now. "{I'm sorry.}" She surrenders the mug and slumps back down, clenching her fist around her prayer beads and clenching her jaw hard to hold back tears. "{This is so stupid, I don't know why I'm making problems.}" Whatever her doubts, her guilt at least is very Catholic. Giving up on finesse, she just copies what Lucien's power is doing, and at once her tight shoulders ease, her shuddering breaths even out. "{Thank you, I'll do that.}" She climbs out of the chair and totters gracelessly back inside. As Sera wobbles her way back into the house, the calm in Lucien's mindscape shores itself up, offering steadier light, a soothing comfort, for her unmoored mental chaos to follow. The scrunch of his eyes, the hard press of forefinger and thumb to the hollows of his eyes, do not come until considerably later when she is firmly back inside. He downs the last of the drink in a quick swallow, and for a few minutes just lingers in the cool air outside, fingers squeezing gently at the plush in his hand. When he pushes himself up out of the chair he resists the urge -- strongly -- to glance at the time on the Fitbit on his wrist before heading back in to sleep.