a/n: Hi. We should stop meeting like this. But we won't.


She had crawled onto the roof, he realized. He grabbed her, in her soot covered pyjamas. The night was still dark.

The building collapsed as he scooped her into his arms.

A very human, very girlish scream as she held tight to him. They fell.

The world slowly went by. Flames and debris rose around them both. Heat tickled his back. Smoke started to erase the stars in the sky.

His mind didn't race.

He thought about the divine.

His feet dangled in midair as he thought about the cosmos. About God.

He wondered about things and why they were. Why they came to pass. Why things like this happened. Why this human girl had to fear and experience pain. Why she had to live life with worries in the back of her head.

Why she had to endure possibility.

She could be a scientist. The next leader of the free world. A banker. An author. A stripper. A prostitute. A junkie. Dead in a back alley. Crying over a dingy toilet. Married with kids. Divorced. Locked up in jail. A lawyer. A judge. A priest.

Endless roulettes.

Uncertain futures.

Possibilities.

Falling was slow, he thought for less than a fraction of a second.

Why did we fall in spirit? Why did we have to suffer?

A God that loved us would never want to have this happen. No such thing as benevolence.

No answers.

So they said.

He turned his body, facing the approaching, burning earth. Debris piled up, hot and glowing.

Who could understand the cosmos? Or a being that existed long before it?

Who could decipher divine will?

We couldn't even decipher the darkness in ourselves.

Couldn't even adopt the dark without losing our minds. The shadows always betrayed us, because they were never ours. And never would be.

Who are you to question existence?

Who are you to question?

Who are you?

Or rather...who are you if you are your own God?

Who...is God?

And who the hell are you?

In that moment, he let go of the question.

In the next, he abandoned his arrogance.

His feet took him to a sturdy piece of concrete as it fell. He pushed off violently to another large piece, and then another, and another. His feet hit the scorching earth and it spread out in a wave. His powerful legs pushed him forward. He accelerated through the smoke and flames. Escaped the vortex of destruction, a stream of smoke coming from his body as he moved and slid to a stop. With ease, he set the girl down.

Looked down at one hand, and clenched it into a fist. He nodded, understanding.

The power to transcend mortal thought. Wasn't this it? To abandon the arrogance of the limited mind and embrace the limitless in the world around him.

In every movement, he had achieved the work of thousands of years.

He could see the true path.

Not to decipher what mortals saw in God, but to decipher the actuality of God himself.

A new type of arrogance.

Carving his own providence.

The remains of the building burned as fire trucks surrounded the scene. He left the girl's side and she waved after him, the understanding of divinity in her mind already, shared from him. She looked to the stars and believed in heart and mind.

He stood on a rooftop, overlooking the city. Stared into the malformed moon.

Came to another realization.

To carve into reality and create providence was just another form of divinity.

Another tool of salvation. Justice and freedom for all.

A touch closer to the face of the divine.

But he knew from every waking moment that he was closer than anyone could ever dream. The phantom in the rushing wind said as much.

He smiled as he understood the phantom's form.

The deep night started to shift into dawn. He jumped down from his perch and shot out of the city. Accelerated. Felt the phantom at his back.

A knowing smirk. He took up his arrogance again, transformed and pure, and went faster. The asphalt of the interstate rumbled.

A sonic boom cracked through the morning air.

The world rippled with that familiar streak of blue.

The Father watched with an all-approving gaze.

And on His right hand, the Son simply smiled a smile.