Disclaimer…If you think I own anything, then I applaud you for having the capacity to even read this disclaimer.
Author's Note…I promise, my disclaimer is as sassy as it gets for this fic. I've written a lot of 'fics that have religion as an underlying theme, but none like this. If I screwed it up…please let me down gently.
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Ruthie had always been fascinated by the meaning of names. She was sure they were a secret code which hid a beautiful message from G/d, one that dictated what a child would grow up to be. Maybe a young RN would write the identity of a newborn on the birth certificate, and maybe a beaming set of new parents would memorize an entire name book, but was it not G/d Himself that made all the decisions? Ruthie was sure He could foresee the future, or, at the very least what it would need. Every screaming baby, coated with blood and amniotic fluid and effort and love, had a G/d-given purpose to fulfill…and one only had to research his or her name to realize it.
Ruthie, for instance, meant 'friend.' Ruthie had felt a primal sense of completion upon gaining that particular pocket of knowledge; she hadn't met a single person who could do without a companion. So she embraced it…at eight, she strived to become everyone's ally.
For a while, she had lost herself. Even as Ruthie undertook it, the abstract corner of her mind warned her it was an impossible task. But Ruthie never listened to that dark spot, she was safer that way. Like a black hole, it sucked in everything if it got too close.
But Ruthie could not blame her inner pillar of night for her failure in the L/rd's mission. She lost a little bit of her faith then, and wondered why it was her that was confined by holy chains to be 'friend'. She was nobody's friend. Not even her own.
But, like a boomerang, her belief in the power of identity came back to her. Ironically, it returned at around the same time she was told Martin was soon to be a father, and the birth of a new life, a new purpose, loomed ominously in the distance.
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Ruthie runs up the stairs, her shoes thumping heavily on the creaking staircase, supporting a thousand emotions. Her climb is especially clumsy; if she bumps into enough walls, perhaps the impact will jerk her back to simple reality, and she won't be trapped, immovable, in amber, where she is only a miniscule reminder of what once.
But trying to escape complexity only hurts her. And tomorrow, she'll have the bruises to prove it.
Ruthie presses herthumb on the on button of the computer, putting more pressure on it than usual. The machine is slow to wake up; the screen takes longer than usual to fade from deadened black to a gray as fuzzy as the eye of a newborn. The outdated Internet they had installed for…Martin…is out of practice, and takes a life and a half to load.
With the aloof efficiency of a robot, Ruthie goes to the first search-engine she can think of. Today, the two o's in Google are the yellow eyes of a turkey, plump for Thanksgiving. A sick feeling settles in the depths of her stomach at the thought of eating again, of encouraging existence.
Finally, she finds the definition; Martin: male.
Well. That much had been obvious.
The small, satanic creature that would wander around her mind when it was blank and ripe for new ideas suddenly makes his presence known, and, internally, leans against Ruthie's temple, putting an almost unbearable pressure on it. What he did with Sandy makes it abundantly clear that he's male, he observes gleefully.
Determined that there must be a more intricate classification of the man that was causing her so much grief, Ruthie presses--or rather, clicks--onward. It takes an hour, but this explanation is far better suited to him than a simple gender assignment.
Martin: Warlike.
Martin had always told her that he was more of a lover than a fighter, but Ruthie believed differently. When he couldn't battle against the man that was sending his father to war, he battled with him; became the pro-war poster boy of the neighborhood. When he couldn't come up with a decent argument for playing pro-baseball, he came up with an argument against it; graduate first, live later was his new motto. When he couldn't procrastinate the inevitable, he sped time up to the best of his ability; he would forever be known as a perpetual early bird.
Warlike. Ruthie shudders slightly. People who are warlike go to far-away places and get hurt and get killed, leaving nothing but a corpse behind.
And a survivor. When all is said and done, the survivors, the ones left at home, bidding farewell at airports and harbors, are the ones that have to live with scars.
But unlike the scars that heroes get, this kind can't come off with an application of Mederma. These scars dwell on the inside, lining thick arteries and settling on white bones, weakening them.
Something pricks at Ruthie's heart, and she thinks that she can feel a scar forming there. And wonders how, with this bleeding cut, she'll ever manage to love again.
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What Ruthie Camden does not know is the story of her namesake, Ruth. She left her family and the people she knew to be with her foreign husband. When he died, she stayed devoted to her futureless mother-in-law, even though her love had left this Earth, and her reach. So dark was the potential of the life of Naomi, the mother-in-law, that even her other daughter-in-law had left. Eventually, Ruth and Naomi came upon Boaz, who took good care of the two, keeping them fed and clothed, in admiration of Ruth's selflessness. Boaz and Ruth married, and had a son, Obed--the grandfather of David.
What Ruthie Camden also does not know is Ruth's speech to Naomi, in which she declares her loyalty to what she once loved:
"Stop urging me to abandon you! For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will become my people, and your G/d will become my G/d. Wherever you die, I will die – and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me severely if I do not keep my promise! Only death will be able to separate me from you!"
Ruth kept her promise.
And the scar never did heal.