Arms of the Fatherless
IndescribableWho: Rebekah and Ben
When: evening
Where: fourth floor common area
If she was being completely honest with herself, the last thing Rebekah wanted to do was leave her room. She just wanted to hide and wait until the unsettled and upset feeling in her stomach left her, however long that might end up being. Forever, if she had to. But there was something she had to do before she could lock herself away indefinitely. She had to be rid of it.
The time after Adam had turned his back to walk away from her had been spent in alternating periods of tears she didn't understand and silent stillness. She didn't know what to do, but felt that she must do something, and she didn't know why either way. In the end, it was her creations that she'd taken action on. With a surgeon's precision, Rebekah had cut the hand off of the right wooden arm. That she wrapped up many times in a pillow case and put in the back of her closet. She just couldn't bring herself to destroy all of it. All of him that she had re-made. She gathered up the remaining intact arm and the scarred portion of the handless one into another pillowcase and carried out of her room, away from the jeering laughter that followed her.
"There is no atonement for you," a guttural and disembodied voice whispered somewhere above her left ear. "Not even God hears you now, girl, you think a mere man will be forgiving?"
Ignoring it, Rebekah went to the fireplace and started the ritual of lighting and stoking a fire. It was a thing that should have been done outside, in a bonfire, most likely. To give her art back to God or Satan or wherever it came from. But she couldn't risk even leaving her floor. Patiently, paying no attention to the twisting shadows that had crept around her to watch, Rebekah waited until the flames were high enough.
She held the bundle to her chest for a moment, seeing faces fade in and out as the fire burned, then pushed it off of her lap and into the fire. "'Thou has sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken'," she murmured as she watched the material catch. Rebekah sat back and hugged her knees, settling in to watch it all burn.
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For Ben it was a rare enough day, one where the pleasant weather hanging outside his window had been a sign of relief of some sort. More often than not since coming here, he would look out on the rain and wind and grey skies and read them as portents, signs he couldn't ignore that hinted at the turmoil within the walls. Ben never doubted them either, they were an always-reliable excuse to hide in his room, headphones on and the world tuned out as he listened to music of both his own crafting and others. Normally it was enough to fill up a day and block out the pangs of hunger until he knew the others slept.
But today? Today was nice to look at with a pane of glass separating Ben from it all, nice enough that if he was following his own irregular rules, it would mean it was safe beyond his door. And that was what had prompted a long shower, a careful cleaning of his beard, and a dose of his medicine only slightly ahead of schedule before Ben put on clean clothes and headed out into the halls. He padded past doorways, uncaring of the names he still didn't know on each one as he stuffed both hands in his pockets and followed the carrying sound of the fireplace as it hissed and crackled.
He almost turned back as he caught sight of Rebekah there by the fire, her lips moving inaudibly to him as she watched some bundle catch and flame. "Excising the past?" he mumbled to himself in wonder, lingering back a ways and watching, "Burn baby, burn? Until even the ashes can't say what they were?" It was Ben's usual nonsense, and he was aware enough of it to keep his voice restrained until he was done, then coughed louder.
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Rebekah's back flinched at the sound of a cough coming from behind her. Her head whipped around and she half-expected to see Adam there, to stare at her scornfully and ask her more prying questions than she ever wanted to answer. But it wasn't. After some of the afterimages cleared from her eyes, she saw it was some man with a beard like a street-prophet. Looking at her and her fire. She couldn't leave it, couldn't risk abandoning the destruction of what she'd spent so much time on until it was all gone. Someone might come along, take it, and then ... it would just be sullied. She couldn't allow that to happen, even though she was letting it burn.
She stared at Ben for a moment, not saying anything, then turned her eyes back to the flames. She was sitting close enough to it that the heat had drawn her skin taut, even through her clothes. So it should. They were her arms as well, in the fire. She should feel them.
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She had a gaze that could easily be called penetrating, and as Ben ended up in it's line of fire for even that brief moment, his hands shoved deeper into his pockets and his shoulders drew up nervously. "Gets cold in here," he observed from where he stood, "Even with heat on, blankets and sweaters and soup. Chill of strangers, judgment, prying eyes like mine. Fire help?" He wasn't sure quite what he was hoping for; either a stern reply that'd give him plenty of reason to go hide again, or maybe a chance that she'd be like Kaylin and Torlin. At least she wasn't so nerve-wrackingly stunning, though there was a definite intensity in the eyes he'd been frozen by seconds earlier.
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"Nothing ever helps," Rebekah said after a pause. She didn't seem to notice that his manner of speaking was strange. She was painfully used to being addressed in metaphors and cryptic speeches. Perhaps he wasn't really there at all. It wouldn't be the first time. She kept her back to him, still hugging her skinny knees with her skinny arms, skirt pulled down and tucked underneath her toes. Once this was done ... then she would be safe and everything would right itself, and she would stop feeling so off-centered. "The fire only cleanses that which cannot be forgiven."
"Could burn up the whole
"Could burn up the whole world," Ben rumbled, "Let the five or six left sift through the ashes and remember how they thought they were happy." He wouldn't be one of them, Ben was certain of that; there was blood on his hands, rage in his veins. He took a few steps closer though, no less tense but no more panicked, and let his eyes wander to the overlapping tongues of orange and red flame. "Start with this place, and it's keepers. Sign me up, think I could sleep the night before knowing it was due." Not that he was actively looking to die, Ben could've handled that if he was, but more that it would be some measure of certainty in his entirely unstable world. "Ben," he muttered at her back as an afterthought.
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Rebekah was silent for what felt like a long time, just watching the flames. His words sank in, oddly poetic, and she considered them. "I would rather they wept over what could've been done," she said finally, a bitter edge to her voice. She would never survive it, and she was glad for it; she wouldn't even survive the year. And then she'd be in hell in her own flames, and all of this would cease to matter even the tiniest little bit. Maybe it should've been a comfort, but it wasn't. "Rebekah," she replied in much the same manner, eyes still forward and captivated as the pillowcase curled and ashed and the wood itself started to bubble.
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"Ben," he said again, a reflex at her introduction that twitched before he could really register the fact that he'd already said as much. A strange sound, a mix of a frustrated grunt and a laugh escaped his lips when he did realize, and Ben shook his head slightly. "Said so, sorry. Retracing steps I just took, walking circles." He looked past her back, which had been a nice neutral point to speak at, and to the fire where he could see more clearly the shape that was burning. "Most don't look back to what they missed, only what they're missing." It was an important difference to him, even if he knew he was usually in the latter category; Ben had taken enough time that on his clearer days, he could see both. Missed steps in his life, chances to do better, and countless little details that so many people took for granted every day. "Your room up here too?" he asked eventually, deciding to take a break from his rambles and focus on more mundane details.
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... only what they're missing. That echoed in her mind, setting all kinds of other thoughts rolling. Did she feel that? That'd she'd missed things, opportunities ... other ways? Other methods of living that weren't ... this? She knew that she had, but why was it that she never mourned them? Because their loss was her fault? She'd been the one to seal her own fate, the one to damn herself. She was told as much on almost a daily basis, after all. And though there'd been talk of redemption along the way ...
"Do you believe forgiveness is possible?" she asked in a very far-away voice, ignoring his question completely. It was almost as though she hadn't heard it at all.
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It wasn't common for Ben to be thrown by a jump in conversation, firstly because he didn't exactly have a lot of them, and secondly because when he did he usually was the one making people work to keep up. But it had just happened, clear as day, and his brow lined in thought at the unexpected question Rebekah had voiced. Forgiveness? For his selfish past, and his arrogance? For his fear, no, cowardice at what the world seemed to become in the wake of his accident?
"Case by case," Ben finally muttered, omitting his thought of 'not for me'. "Gotta want it. Gotta believe it'd pay off for all concerned." His hands had left the pockets of his jeans at some point as they spoke, a fact Ben had missed entirely until he noticed the fidgeting fingers and stuffed them back in as he struggled to remember something. " 'For he that wasted not a leaf in those golden days, why would he waste a soul?' Think it's Kipling, think I got it wrong. But it's right, too. Divine." It dawned on him that he was speaking more on his own terms than her vague ones, and Ben struggled for more to say, lips pursing as he felt the agitation start in his neck. "Some people do it easy, some don't. Heap on guilt, drag a grudge like a stack of cinderblocks, build their own walls. Waste their time. Never even try."
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That wasn't precisely an answer, but it was at the same time. Rebekah just didn't have a response for him. Not for that. She'd meant more along the lines of divine forgiveness, but most people didn't think that way. Adam would have, a part of her brain murmured, but she shoved the thought away. She knew where he stood, and it didn't really matter anyway, did it? "I care not for people," she stated, though that made his entire response moot, didn't it? She was aware that she wasn't making lots of logical sense, but she didn't care. Couldn't care. She was watching things burn. That too precedence. She didn't say anything more, and tucked her mouth in against one upraised knee.
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Initially, Ben had in fact been arguing along the lines of divine forgiveness, but he'd realized that her question probably wasn't so far-reaching, and changed the scope of his answer quick enough. Which he didn't recognize as a mistake, instead reading the shift in her posture as a withdrawal from him. "Suits me fine," Ben mumbled, losing his internal monologue for the moment. "Match set here, both don't fit." Which would've sounded like nonsense to most people, and that was really how he liked it. THe less who could get inside his head, the better. Bekah hadn't quite done that, but she'd definitely managed to unsettle him. And that was why he didn't offer a single word extra, grunting softly and hunching his shoulders as he turned and started from the common area.