[IC Contact -- Snowblind]

[bookofnope]

[There is a click noise. It sounds as though it might be judging you.]

Comments

Day 181 audio; @dreamsnhonor

[heroproceeding]

[ It would be so much easier to leave a text and just leave it at that. It would be so, so much easier. But Zack isn't a coward. And he isn't about to try and make this less than what it was. So, one deep, shaky breath later. ]

About what I said before.. The whole.. control thing.

[ There's a long pause. A really... really long pause. Then a bare whisper. ]

I'm sorry.

[ There's a faint click after that. ]

[bookofnope]

We have differing notions of obvious. [There he is finding his dry wit again. Good recovery. Though a part of him does not want to recover yet. Sometimes there is a strange relief in these vulnerable moments, when he feels as though she sees him clearly, all he is, and judges him worthy.

It occurs to him that there is something he should do next.]

Do you want to ask me anything? I'm not compelled, of course, but call it a fair trade. You know I believe in paying my debts.

text;

[bookofnope]

[He's not prepared for this.

It's been a horrific night, but for once, Beckett has escaped Norfinbury's madness relatively unscathed. He's been focusing very hard on this fact, almost deliberately keeping himself out of the loop.

And here is the loop coming right for him. Of course it does.]

Why the sudden interest? Not enough local horrors for your tastes?

[rubikscomplex]

everything's too local, fangs
just tell me

[phaseshifter]

There's no debt, Beckett. You know that.

[ But he's weird about debts, isn't he. Vampire stuff. She's known that since way back when he got sick the first time. It feels like an eternity ago.

Well. To a wee babby mortal, anyway. Maybe that's kinda what she should ask about? ]

But if you insist. Um, the thing we talked about - making me a vampire - do you think that'll make you happy?

[ Because in case he hasn't noticed yet, his happiness is important. The most important, along with Rhys'. ]

[bookofnope]

[There's no debt, maybe, but he thinks, there is balance; there is fairness, and it matters. And now he's got to give her an honest answer.

It'd be easier if he knew what the honest answer was.

Well, to begin with, it's fair to let her see that he isn't sure. Beckett has to consciously think about making that show; he's lost all natural tics of nervousness long ago, and now the way his eyes flicker left and right looks artificial. But it is honest. His happiness is a difficult subject. He finds it hard to imagine it, really.]

I - can't tell you it would not make me happy to no longer be the last of my Kindred. [And that's already more honesty than he allows himself much of the time.] But I'm not sure I would be happy knowing that I've given this - legacy, such as it is, to anyone. You least of all.

-> voice

[bookofnope]

[He's been wanting to tell it, of course, or wanting House to listen more like. And yet now that House does...

It's frightening.

He'd like to keep writing, but he knows his hands wouldn't stay steady for any appreciable amount of time. Voice it is. Not too steady either.]

The lore of Gehenna had warned us for the length of our history that someday, the oldest of our kind would rise and devour their get - vampires, but presumably, anything living or undead they happened to encounter. I never credited that, but - that is exactly what was happening to the world as I last knew it. I witnessed one of those ancient powers awaken and destroy - everything. Naturally, that made it impossible to keep the existence of all things supernatural secret. It was coming apart, all of it, vampire society, human society... but that's just the prologue. If the prophecies are true - and now I know they are true - then Heaven's judgement was coming for us.

>voice

[rubikscomplex]

[House is alone, holed up in some half-shell of an apartment where the bathroom fixtures are all rusted through. He switches to voice. It's... flat. He's taken a lot of Vicodin at this point.]

Heaven. Angels and ministers of grace defend us and all that crap? Standard judgement against the creatures of the night with all of you going to hell?

[bookofnope]

[No sarcasm. Beckett wishes he could be grateful; he's just more unnerved, if anything.]

In a nutshell. Yes. It seems a lot less... standard when you know it's actually happening. And that you have more than earned it.

[rubikscomplex]

You murdered people. There are murders that happen every day. Horrible things people do every day. Are we talking collective 'you' or you, in particular, earned it?

[bookofnope]

Both. [He doesn't even try to go into the moral debate. He's had it in his own head times enough.] I don't know... how God might judge mankind, a man who has done what I have. But we have always been damned, and if there was a way to salvation... it's all the same to a non-believer, I suppose.

[rubikscomplex]

So, what is this place to you? Hell? Just punishment? How's that square with kids like Quark and Frisk, and people like Hale? The talking dog?

[There's still no sarcasm. House is asking honestly for the logic here.]

[bookofnope]

[Beckett can't help it. He is the wry-est you ever did hear.] I've heard this funny theory that all of this is just my hallucination.

[rubikscomplex]

Kinda egotistical of you, don't you think? [It's deadpan. But the options right now are laugh, cry, or die. He still has a puzzle to finish so the last one isn't an option just right now. Crying for anything apart from pain isn't something House has done in a very long time. And laughing? Well, it's not exactly laughing, but it's the remaining choice.]

Lets say it is Heaven's divine wrath or Cthulu down below. What do we do? How do we fight this? I'd check my Bible, but I'm pretty sure Lucifer lost that war.

[bookofnope]

Is that what you're going to do, House?

[His voice is, suddenly, soft. House wouldn't want that, he's under no illusion that there is a any desire for comfort here, nor for understanding. But he's said time and time again that he and the doctor are not very different, not in a way that is good news to either of them. And now House comes to him with this question, and he hears himself being asked just the same - what are you going to do about it? Lucita had asked - and knows how he reacted, and how he failed, and fell.]

If this is from God - the God with a capital G we've been arguing about - are you going to fight it? Is that how you're going to go?

[rubikscomplex]

[He doesn't like the sudden softness in Beckett's voice. He shouldn't have come to the vampire. This is the guy who wanted to lobotomize him to keep him in line. But in spite of himself, there is that connection. It's like with the Joker... it's a fascination with someone who can think like him, or think in ways he can't let himself.]

What's the alternative here? [Even through the haze of drugs, there's that drive. Go down fighting, don't let them control you, you make your own choices, at least in this life, in this moment.] Screw fate and screw god. I'd rather die doing something.

[bookofnope]

[Go down fighting. It's so simple.

Beckett stares at the tablet, its quiet white light, so often the only illumination in their whole world. The question presses him - the abyss that, famously, stares back. What is the alternative? He had wasted his first - last chance chasing answers that had never existed. Shouldn't he have learned? What hasn't he learned yet?]

If this is hell, and we are damned - if this is what we rightly deserve - then the least we can do is accept it.

cw: discussion of religion (just sliding in this warning)

[rubikscomplex]

[While his words are combative, House's tone is flat, tired.]

Why? Why would you accept this? When were you given the rules here? Not the hundreds of different rules laid out by a hundred different religions for all their different gods. I'm talking about the clearly delineated rulebook that says if you do X, you'll go to hell. You weren't. No one has been.

If god exists, then he's an asshole or he's indifferent. He doesn't hand out the right rules or sometimes any rules to everyone when they're born, and he gives us free will and then tells us not to exercise it or we're all gonna go to hell. Or are certain people going to hell part of the grand design? Because if he's meant to be omnipotent, then he knows what path you're heading down before you do. That's a crap way to manage creation.

I don't really care about the judgement from someone like that. Do you?

[bookofnope]

[He's had these discussions many times. Being a vampire and going in the company he had will do that to you. The answers are still well-rehearsed, even if they are beginning to fray when called upon to be more than words.]

If God exists, then we can't know his mind, and we cannot judge his design. Believe me - I've seen the gap in perception, in understanding, between the elders of my kind and even the wisest mortal. It's enough to teach anyone the folly of claiming we have any insight into the mind of the infinite. You are a doctor, you should know better than most that the greatest acts of kindness and care can seem strange and cruel to an ignorant eye. Faith means trust. And I -

[He wants to say, I still have faith. But it's hard to announce your devotion to a god who has already discarded you.]

I don't have a rulebook. I would agree with you, about free will. But I know that I am not a good man. I believe that essentially, we know what we are.

[rubikscomplex]

How can you 'know' anyone's mind? You're not inside their heads. I can judge the results of their actions, especially if those actions involve damning little kids and idiots to hell for arbitrary reasons like 'the grand design.'

I'm a crap person, too. Hale? Quark? Hamada? Frisk? Nah. Not so much.

I have faith and trust in individuals if I have to. Faith in some all-powerful being that's damned me to suffer for eternity? Pass. God gave up on us if he exists and this is hell. So he gave up the right to any of my faith or trust. Or yours. You're really gonna sit there and tell me someone slamming a door repeatedly in your face is doing it for your own good?

[phaseshifter]

Really?

[ Her surprise at the last part is completely genuine. She'd thought -- ]

With all the talking you do about how miserable it is to be mortal, I didn't think you'd view sharing your kind's legacy to be such a bad thing. I'd figured any concerns would be more along the lines of how embarrassing it would be for you if I started trying to add sugar to blood before drinking it, or something.

[bookofnope]

Oh, it is miserable. [Things Beckett will never be done complaining about, Exhibit All of Them.]

But vampirism is not merely immortality. It is... there are things I considered a fair price once, but...

[For god's sake lighten the mood lighten it now.]

To begin with, you won't be able to ingest sugar. It's all blood, all the time.

[bookofnope]

It's the failure to understand that makes you think of the grand design as 'arbitrary'. What do we know, when we say an action or result is good or bad? Only our limited vision. Our limited definition of good and bad - of time - of actions and results as a concept.

[The theology of it is easy. The other part, not so much. He understands House's anger and defiance. It compels and repulses him in equal measure.]

I don't know who deserves what. But if God is the reason - the alpha and the omega - then whatever his reasons are, they are the only ones that matter. He owes us nothing. He can give up on me, or you, or anyone he deems deserving, and we will be deserving by default. That is the point. To believe that there is a true answer - a true purpose - even if we will never know it, even if for us it means nothing but suffering. Because it still is. A truth that makes everything just.

[rubikscomplex]

Then nothing we do matters, and life itself really is ultimately meaningless. Faith and religion are meaningless. It was preordained. The choices you make have no relevance.

Before I got here, I'd just finished up teaching a class on diagnostics, filling in for some idiot who let his kids play with lead paint. 'World's #1 Dad,' my ass. [He's quiet a moment. But what the hell? Why not tell? It's not like this is a secret.] Three patients, three stories for the students to figure out. One of the stories was mine, my leg. I wouldn't let them take it off and complications happened. I died... technically, for over a minute. And you know what I saw?

Visions. Things that had happened, might happen, whatever the hell they were. All of that was just neurons firing, chemicals going crazy as my brain and body started to shut down. People say near-death experiences make you more religious. I didn't get any of that. I woke up and nothing was different, except my chest hurt like hell.

You choose to believe in god or not. There's no conclusive science to say there's anything there. Even all of this... it's not conclusive. It's just... more comforting to think that there is no god. Always has been. Because if there is a god, life has no meaning if he's dictating everything... or if you believe in free will, then it means that all of life is just a test. Either way, you're screwed because you were predestined or your life is under a microscope.

I never understood how people found that comforting.

[There's another pause, but House continues in the same monotone as before.]

Wilson's dead. Doubt he's coming back. He wasn't even mine, anyway. Timelines don't match up. Shouldn't matter. [But it matters.]

[bookofnope]

... ah.

[That explains it, the call, the questions, everything. Wilson, House's friend - more his friend than Beckett has ever realised, to send House unravelling like that, falling open like that. Enough to come to Beckett. Or to God. And does either of them have an answer for him?]

Before I got here, I had a conversation with Cain. The Cain. Father of vampires. He had no answer to what was God's plan in cursing him - his reason for making him, and us - no more than anyone else. It's hard to be an atheist when you are yourself unquestionably supernatural, but to know from a firsthand account that God is, and that you will never know his mind in damning you and all your kin...

[Since House shared his dying story first. Well.]

Your visions may have meant nothing, but faith... my faith is not in revelation. Not anymore. The comfort isn't knowing the answer. It's - knowing that there is an answer. Life, the world, it has meaning to the one who made it. For us it might mean that all our choices were predestined but what is the other option? To be lost in a world where things happen simply because they do, because that happens to be the accident of chance? If I suffer, if I'm tested, at least God knows why. There is need for the test, for suffering. And perhaps there is grace...

[No. His belief only reaches so far.]

Otherwise, your friend died for no more reason than just the cold randomness of life.