Redemption
He ached, somewhere deep inside himself that was neither physical or emotional. It resonated inside of him, as if somewhere far away, somebody had thrumbed upon strings that had been unused for a very long time. Marsden hurt. He remembered little, but one thing he was sure of was that he had been knocked out during the battle, trying to help Kaena. He was not one of her warriors, he now knew, but he loved her, and wanted to protect her.
Marsden opened his eyes, and became aware of himself in a way he hadn't been in a very long time, or maybe never. He could see himself in all his nakedness, physically nude, but spiritually exposed. Kaena stood there, or, no, not quite Kaena. Kaena's form, but somebody else inside of her. She stood facing him, wreathed in a glowing corona and dressed in pale blue. He stared at her in wonder, and her blue eyes, a darker and more fathomless blue than Kaena's pale eyes, stared past his naked flesh straight to his naked spirit.
"I have something that I took from you," she held out her hand to him. There was nothing in it, and yet there was substance. Light or depth. Memory, his mind supplied.
"My memories," he reached for them, and she drew back. He let his hand drop. "Can I have them back?"
"Do you want them back? Think carefully before you decide," she said, her voice a deep alto, feminine, but with a masculine undertone.
He stared at her for a long time. Memory. Identity. Self. He thirsted for self, but knew that contained within that self was pain, were evil things that had driven him to the brink of insanity. He knew he could live out his days like this, understanding that his debt had been cleared in mercy, but missing a piece of himself. No matter what memories came after, the lack of memory from before would change how he knew himself, who he knew himself to be. And yet he jerked from what he knew, instinctively, was there.
"Will I go back to how I was?" he asked softly.
"Humans never return to how they once were, try as they might. Only I Am unchanging. What is important is what you choose to do with these memories. You can learn from them, learn from your mistakes. Or you can embrace what you felt, and return to evil with greater power."
"What did I feel?"
"You will have to take the memories to find out," she said gently, and she approached him. In his heart he knew the answer. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what she would want. They did not have the same desire. She had given him a gift, the gift of preventing him from looking back. Somewhere, he had read about the unhappy habit human beings have of looking back, assessing their lives and measuring it against a yard stick of virtue. It was, he remembered, an unhappy habit because despite all attempts at virtue, at morality, one would always find himself wanting in comparison to true Virtue. He had no choice but to look forward, to look at that remittal of all he had done before and know that it had been taken away, that the debt had been canceled.
And yet she wanted him to remember. There was something important in those memories. Maybe facing whatever had turned him into the monster he'd been would help him grow in some way. He didn't remember shooting up six inches in six months in adolescence, but he imagined it hurt. He imagined this would hurt, too. His face or spirit or something clearly showed his conflict, because she brushed her hand across his cheek.
"You don't have to decide now. I will offer again in the future. Maybe you will be more ready at that time," she gently touched his face, running her fingers over his forehead, nose, and lips, where they lingered briefly. Then she moved away.
"Wait," he said finally. "I'll take them."
"There will be no forgetting again," she sighed to him.
He closed his eyes, and she stepped closer still. He could feel Kaena's soft body press against his chest. She wrapped her arms around him, embracing him tightly. Marsden clung to her. Her long fingers swept through his hair, touching his head, and suddenly there was agony, splitting his head, tearing him apart, and he collapsed into her. Somehow, she held him up, soothing him, breathing gentle words into his ears.
Marsden remembered his father, his mother, his sister. He remembered joy, he remembered love. And then he remembered the memories from the past life emerging, being cut down by Kaena's father on a battle field in his past life, his father's death in this life, and struggling bitterly against himself, against God and the church as belief and faith and theology conflicted with confusion and grief. He remembered the growing hatred for the man who had caused those memories in him, the hatred of all the people who lived happy, carefree lives while he suffered.
He remembered burning with violence for that man, and meeting his daughter and burning with hatred for her unusual, guarded personality, for the ease with which she flew through classes, how she impressed her professors. He wanted to hurt her, and he wanted to hurt her father, and he did. He terrified her by trashing her apartment and leaving a grisly goat corpse in her bedroom, and he terrorized her friends, burning down Taka's apartment—and the homes of all those innocent people who lived there, too. He had loathed Taka more once he himself started to love Kaena, and tried to poison Taka, and accidentally poisoned her father instead. How he had prayed the man would die, so that he could be happy with Kaena, and then he had pulled through, so he had done the unspeakable. He had used Vinny to attack her, had tried to rape her, had beaten her bloody. And then he remembered this same moment inside.
He had stood there in front of the goddess like he stood now, and she had given him a choice. She had given him the choice to die for what he had done, or to forget, to have it wiped clean. And weeping, convincted before her magnanimous virtue, he had told her to take it all away.
Marsden fell to his knees this time, and the goddess fell with him, still stroking his head. He buried his face against her pale blue robes and again he wept for all that he had done. The shame was overwhelming. She was mighty and holy, and he was dirty and broken, and he had failed her. Failing her was worse than all the knowledge of what had been done to him, worse than the memory of the night his mother and sister had died, worse than anything he could imagine ever happening to him. He had been measured against perfection, and could not stand.
"Forgive me," he pleaded. "Forgive me, please."
"Marsden," she murmured to him, and her voice was like a caress on his soul. "I forgave you long ago. I took away your memory because I wanted to give you a chance to remember what it's like to live without all that hate in you."
"I still feel it, I feel it all again."
"Your hate got you nothing. Let it go."
"I don't know how," he sobbed, hiding his face in his hands. How could he let go of something that had been a part of him so long? It had wormed into him, eaten him alive, left him writhing, itching to do anything to quell the hate, by hurting others, by hurting himself. He didn't know how to purge it.
"When you hate my children, you hate me."
What are you angry about? he heard whispered in his head. He closed his eyes. His father's death, his untimely death in a past life, the injustice of it all. It was the injustices that made his blood boil, that hurt him. What was so great about some people, about people like Kaena, that they should have happy families and happy loved ones, and he should struggle? And then he thought of Rowan and her faith crisis, and of Sam's paralyzing visions, and Taka's numerous deaths. They had all suffered.
"I suffered with you," she said softly. "And I'm so sorry you have felt pain, my love, my child. But I do hope that you grow through pain. I never willed for the pain to destroy you."
"But you willed for my pain?"
"I willed that we should fight against evil together. Those who do not fight evil, they do not suffer like those who rebel. Evil has no reason to attack those which have already been won. I will be victorious," she said with convinction. "But for now we fight, and battles are painful. But out of them? Growth. Renewal."
Marsden pulled away from her reluctantly, and looked at her face. Now that he sat here with her, she looked less like Kaena and more Other. Her features were beyond human, almost Elven, but more strange and beautiful. Her form was willowy and ethereal. She was moving away from him.
"Wait!" he jumped up and followed her. "Don't leave me here! I have one more question."
"My time is short. I will answer your question."
"Now that I remember everything again, does that mean that I again bear the responsibility for this burden? Must I carry it alone?"
"You never carried it at all," she smiled, and began to fade. Marsden reached for her, through her, panicked. He longed for her comfort and cried out for her to return, but she was disappearing from view. He didn't understand what she meant. He had made these poor choices, had he not? He had done these wicked things, so how could he not carry the weight of them? He didn't understand. His soul cried out for her, but she was gone. He collapsed again, shaking pitifully; haunted and alone.
He became aware of himself again, his whole self, with his memories intact. He sat up and saw them all there. Kaena was not breathing, and Taka was crying over her desperately. Had the goddess used Kaena all up while he was asking questions and getting answers he did not understand? He prayed silently, prayed for Kaena to live. She shouldn't suffer. She had sacrificed so much already. And then he heard that laughing voice, and it said that life wasn't fair, but the point was made moot when Kaena started to breathe, and Taka heaved a huge sigh of relief and held her. Marsden pushed himself to his feet and wavered, mind still straddling another dimension of space and time. Rowan was standing there looking dazed too. An encounter with God, he imagined, would do that.
"Penny for your thoughts?" she asked, and her voice sounded tired and unused.
"They're back," he whispered, swallowing hard. He could barely speak it, so horrible was the burden, but he had to tell her, had to explain. "All the memories. I am . . . deeply ashamed."
"Can I tell you something true?" she asked him.
"What's that?" He thirsted for truth like a man parched and dying in the desert.
"You are forgiven."
He nodded slowly and gave her a weak smile. He didn't believe her. How could he be forgiven for all that he had committed? He had hurt Kaena, who was so pure and close to the divine that the divine spirit channeled through her and poured out of her. He had hurt others, he had hurt her father. Marsden's eyes fell on the man, on Nakago, and he felt hate flood him. That man hurt him, hurt his family. But that man was no more guilty than he was, and so he went over to him and helped him to his feet. Nakago quirked an ironic brow at him and accepted his help gratefully.
"Thank you," he said. "Are you whole?"
He opened and closed his mouth. He knew that Nakago meant it ironically (how else did the man intend anything?) but he hadn't asked if he was well or if he was hurt—he had asked if he was whole. It took him a second to nod numbly, and as he nodded, he realized that he was whole. It wasn't because of the choices he had or hadn't made, but because the goddess had made him so; because she had had mercy on him.
And then Rowan's statement, which had seemed so shallow a moment ago suddenly encompassed his universe. That was what the goddess had meant when she said that he had never carried these burdens. They were all her burdens. Every offense against another was a burden on her, a burden that she had to bear because of her choice to fight rather than to give the world over to the evil that wanted it. And so she bore those burdens for them all, to atone to them, in some small way, for making them fight the battles. And in turn, all humans were atoned. Rowan's statement rang in his head. He was found guilty. He had been measured and found wanting. And he had been judged whole and clean, because the burden of those sins rested elsewhere. Tears streamed down his face.
"Are you all right?" Nakago asked again.
He looked at the man, really looked at his face. It was lined with pain and laugh lines, and his eyes held hurt and fear and joy and love and all the breadth of human experience. And he saw the goddess in his pale eyes, and Marsden's hate evaporated, drying up and blowing away like sand sifting over the shores of time. He nodded and let the tears fall freely, washing him the way that he had been washed by grace. And nothing else that happened around him or outside of him mattered, because he was free. They were all free.