A/N: I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Forty days and nights, the Son of God fasted in the wilderness, away from all luxuries of what was then modern life. He resisted Satan and his temptations, and returned pure and strengthened to deliver the Word of God to the world. In commemoration of this, Christians observe forty days of fasting where they give up certain luxuries, amongst which one is the consumption of meat. Lent is a time for prayer, atonement, repentance of sin, and penance – and especially important for those who delve deeper into their conscience in preparation for receiving Christ.
Four days to go, still no lightning bolt. One hell of a patience you've got, if that show I put on for the third Scrutiny's exorcism didn't piss you off. You gotta admit that part of the ritual's funny, though. At least when you know what possession looks like.
Penance… I think I need more than forty four days for that. What's with forty four anyway? In the book it's only forty. Did mankind degenerate that much, that we need longer to repent?
I don't feel like I'll ever be forgiven, no matter how much I regret things. Might be 'cause I don't actually believe in you.
And yet, prayer had become a habit.
I need to tell someone, don't I? Humans need that. 's why we invented you. So someone could listen to our problems and tell us it'll be alright, even when it feels like everything's gonna go to hell. Which it usually does, or maybe that's just me.
I've been thinking 'bout what Samael said. About Knowledge and that… If I'd just known more about the circumstances down there in Deep Keep I would've made a different choice, and they'd still be alive.
And Samael wouldn't.
It's not just me it's about. It's… tch, isn't about me in the first place. I just like to think that 'cause I'm a self-centered idiot. Knowledge will mean life or death for people around me, too. I can regret for forty four days or forty four years, and it won't make any difference whatsoever: Knowledge will.
Not for the past. Not for the wrongs paved in stone on the path behind him. The future… The future he would shape, as far as that was possible; for his own sake and for others'.
I'm fucking tired of not being able to do anything. That's gotta be what sucks the most – just not being able to do anything or change anything. If I wanna change things I gotta hoard up Knowledge, like he does. So I can make the right choice next time.
Choice and consequence - how simple they pretended to be when you stood before them. It was never simple. He could never just take his chances and act on gut feeling. Could never let emotion obstruct his judgement; and to be able to make a judgement, he needed to know the parameters of the situation. He needed Knowledge.
…It's not easy to admit he's right, you know: I think I deserve some credit for doing it anyway. If someone was actually listening, that is. It pisses me off to admit it. Practical example right there; emotion getting in the way of judgement. Can't have that. So I'll admit it: he's right. He's a fucking cunt, but he's a smart fucking cunt who knows what he's talking about.
Samael knew: that was the essence of it. He knew a whole lot of things, and because he knew how they worked he could make them work in his favour.
And because he isn't blinded by emotion. I'm too rash – always been too rash. So I've been thinking: I'm not gonna be able to change anything unless I change, right? I can't turn this game around if I don't learn to play it cool and know what I'm doing before I do it.
If there was such a thing as turning the game around: and if he wanted to do it.
Shiro's eyes idly traced the creases and lines on his hands, clasped before him on the open book on his desk. He had always relied on those hands. He was the kind of person who acted, not contemplated, but it was high time he got used to doing both. He wanted to turn the tables and pay Samael back for what he'd done: but was that a wise choice? There was only misery ahead on that path. It would mean no friends or special someones that Samael could use to pressure him. It would mean endless feints and stabs until one of them surrendered – or fell.
"Limit the damage we do. That would be better. Inhibit him and limit the damage, but don't challenge him; that would be the smart choice."
No, said the burning, clenching coils in his gut. No, he wanted revenge, wanted Samael to feel what he felt, wanted to oppose the smug little cocksucker.
Shiro closed his eyes and drew a slow breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth. Feelings don't think, but they're damn persistent about what they want.
"Rash idiots follow their feelings", he reminded himself, drawing another slow breath to clear his head of flitting bird wings. "It was fun being a rash idiot, but times change."
He opened his eyes, and lifted his gaze from the clasped hands to the bright April day outside the dorm room window. There were leaves on every tree now. The air was dotted with flies and birds that caught them, and flowers bulging over the edges of the Academy's ceramic pots as Spring dressed up in her finest clothes to wake the world with warmth. And Fujimoto Shiro saw none of it. His mind was black and white, checkerboard squares in straight rows where every move required knowledge and patience.
"Knowledge and patience", he repeated to himself, weighing the words like daggers in his mind. "That's what I need."
"Good day, Fujimoto-san", said a voice as smooth and impersonal as the curt click when the door closed behind it.
Saburota had become that lately. Smooth. A strange contrast to his earlier square mind and sharp edges.
Perhaps there were the same checkerboard squares in his mind, shaping him for stealth rather than direct confrontation?
"'day, Todo-senpai", Shiro replied without even turning in his chair to face him.
By silent agreement, the conversation ended there. Amputated – if you could say that of something that hadn't begun growing in the first place. A haze of verbal skirmishes and stuttered disagreements had made him and Saburota develop a shallow, bland kind of interaction: the kind of interaction people use when they have nothing to say to each other. When tolerance grows out of the ruins of understanding.
"I'm going out for a smoke", Shiro announced without expecting an answer.
"Congratulations."
Shiro stopped at the door. Saburota was seating himself and unpacking his suitcase, showing no sign that he was having a conversation.
"To the conversion", he enlightened, taking the silence as his cue to elaborate.
"It's not until Saturday." Why was Saburota bringing this up?
"I know. It's decided that you are ready for it, which is in itself an achievement. I was notified that Sir Pheles was pleased by your swift progress."
"Yeah. Thanks."
Shiro opened the door and left before the conversation went any further. Words had taken on a new dimension of meaning since Samael showed his true colours. Words that people chose spoke of what went on in their minds, in millions of finely tuned nuances. Words like "progress": advancement. Movement on a scale of given directions, towards the one desired; towards a goal. A goal Sir Pheles was pleased to see him approach. Saburota hadn't given up the chase, no. Just continued it in less overt forms.
"Like me", he observed coolly, and lit his cigarette the moment fresh spring air touched his face.
Ironic. If Shiro hadn't been bound hand and foot to Samael, he would have supported Saburota's questioning. And if he hadn't been tied down by the contract, he would never have known what Samael was really like, and would have protected his secrets out of friendship. And god was one sadistic son of a bitch.
"If there's a god at all." Can you doubt something you've never believed? Yes, no - whatever. Shiro doubted. Samael had been a god to the Ancient Greek, and to many others. "What's to say the Christian god is any different?" he thought, tapping ashes to the ground.
It was a thought that had drawn nurture from his Bible studies instead of being expelled by them. A thought that could neither be proven nor disproven, at that. The worst kind of thought.
"Testing humans with no explanation, blessing one and cursing another, calling down fire and plague when something isn't to his liking." An orange cat glared at him from the low brick wall marking the dorm premises. Glared the way only cats can. "Sounds like just another demon king."
Stop. Just… stop.
Shiro sat down on his haunches, held the cigarette between his fingers and made low, clicking sounds with his tongue against his palate. The cat dismissed him as just another dumb human and jumped down on the other side of the wall.
"Fine, don't bother", he muttered and drew another breath on his cigarette.
If only you could gas certain thoughts…
Every time his thoughts wandered down that trail, he could feel the ground dissolving under his feet; could feel the abyss wake within, yawn and stretch and swallow the world. There could be no god at all, and that was fine. He could go on without a god. He could rely on his own two hands. But if there was going to be a god, it was going to be someone – something – that didn't play with meat dolls and threw them away when they weren't fun anymore.
If it was just another demon hiding behind lies…
Stop.
Shiro forced himself to think of the first other thing that came to mind: Saburota, unsurprisingly. Saburota was diligent as ever, the way you are when work is the drug that keeps your mind in one piece. They'd both sit quiet at their desks through the small hours, reading and scribbling. Or pretending to do so. Sometimes, scribbling was only heard from one of the two desks. Sometimes, when Saburota was lost in his own flitting maze of bird wing thoughts, Shiro could catch glimpses of familiar shadows in the stoic, freckled face; glimpses of the need to know that ate at the youngest Todo son.
The need to know. Poison and potion. Knowledge.
"Knowledge and patience." Shiro blew smoke up at the sky, squinting through the bright sunlight that made his eyes gleam red. "I hope you get the right dose of each, Todo-senpai. I hope we both do."