Usual disclaimer-none of this is mine etc. Angsty Visit fic. And this is just a story.
He isn't quite sure why it happened. He'd like to blame someone, but that wouldn't help. It wasn't Vimes. It wasn't even Dorfl. It was him. It was in every moment he breathed, every thought that crossed his mind, in every movement he made, he was taking himself further away from it. From religion, from Om, from faith. And what's worse is that is doesn't even hurt, except in the dull aching way of a small and irretrievable loss. He'd feel so much better if it hurt, if the pain burned sharp and bright in the depths of his soul. If it raged and stormed at him. Instead it just whimpered like a child occasionally, without anger, with nothing but a slight apathetic twinge.
You left me...
He'd feel better if he'd lost it in a dramatic revelation, after trials and tests of his morality. But instead of dying in agonizing moments his faith had just faded and dwindled into nothing. No fuss. Just a gradual waning until he had realised one day that it was no more. That somewhere along the way he had left it behind. That he hadn't noticed himself gently giving up on Om, doing less and less for his faith, no more pamphlets, no more church, no more guiding light in a cosmos of darkness.
Alone in the dark...
When he thinks about it that's what really prompts the melancholy. The fact that there was no one there that he could believe cared for him. No great force that was watching him benevolently, that would guide him, help him, love him. That, when his life was spent, would go to him and tell him that he had done well.
Please don't leave me like this...
He wants his faith back. He wants to be whole again. Because, now, he can sense a gap in his life, and he knows what used to occupy it. And he longs for the return of his faith, with a passion that should have saved it, but it was already gone, and if he tried to reclaim it he'd just be pretending. The knowledge has a cold lustre. It's gone, he desires it, but he just can't revive it. The embers in his soul won't relight and he watches in growing numbness and the glow fades, his attempts at fanning it into even a fraction of what it was before futile.
Did it matter, when I used to believe?
He sees people going to the various churches. And he envies them, the jealousy twining like ivy around the stone frontage of his soul.
Jealousy is one of your sins. I don't have to care now...
I want to care though. Why can't I care? Why won't you give me the faith to care?
I believed in you.
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