He sat staring up into the night sky, watching as the dancing lights expressed a certain celestial joy. The technicolor beauty bordered on painful to behold but Connor refused to close his eyes and met the impossible artistry of the heavens straight on. He was enraptured by the idea of their creation, feeling a strange kinship with the intangible cause.
Once his twin and he had been forces like those substorms. Chaotic. Uncontrollable. But they'd been burnt out, hollowed; their brilliance spent on a holy mission. Methodically broken and then remade, sanctified but no longer whole.
Trained well to heed the divine call.
Knees were pulled closer to his chest, hugged to his body as though for warmth rather than the comfort he so truly sought. Amidst the company of those flowing lights he felt forsaken. Alone for the first time in his life and that just wasn't right because he'd never been alone; he'd always had Murphy, even when they'd be apart.
No, he still had Murphy.
So why was he alone?
Isolated and caged, and suddenly he envied the natural phenomenon its freedom: something he realized he'd taken far too much for granted in the past.
He was confined and each passing day made the manacles enslaving him bite in deeper until their imprints were embedded into his soul. He couldn't breathe without feeling them constrict, coiling around his spirit like a python crushing its prey.
He shouldn't feel that way. Shouldn't think of his duty as slavery but what else could it be when he no longer had a choice? When the thrumming in his head grew into a full-fledged shouted order of obedience. When all he wanted to do was flip God the finger and tell Him no.
Rising to shout the word at the heavens, the angry syllable died into a whispered plea upon still air. When he felt the familiar thrum echo in his brain and play down his spine, he turned and answered it as he had so many times.
God's housebroken Saint.