towerofanimus | What's the point of praying [Open]

Characters: Romeo and Open
Setting: Cathedral
Format: Starting in prose but feel free to switch
Summary: Romeo wakes up to a tower that is very different than the one he went to sleep in.
Warnings: Small child having a very grown up crisis. Mentions of Dax's death, plot reveals, etc. Quite a lot of religion/questioning religion/heaven and hell and souls and good and evil stuff.

The cathedral was quiet, but not empty. At the front of the pews there was a small barefoot boy kneeling, head bowed. He wasn't praying though... he was just thinking.

Everyone seemed different today, the adults had that pale, something really bad has happened look about them. Romeo hadn't found any of those he really trusted to ask what had happened, but he had walked past a terminal and it had came on, for the first time in a while. So he had looked at the network...

And learned everything. Seen Zo being attacked... Seen Dax... He was dead. Dead for real... and seen Feferi's post, she was so upset and what she had said...

He knew what souls were, and he guessed that he had sort of known that they could take your soul out of your body. Because that's how he must have been swapped with mister Itachi, and how he had been a rocking horse. Still Romeo, even though he had been made out of wood and all he could do was rock...

But souls were meant to go to heaven. They belonged to God right? If you died your soul went to heaven if you were good. So the bad people were stealing their souls, and making them come here instead. And it wasn't really saving them at all...

The bad people. Romeo couldn't get what he had seen out of his head. He squeezed his eyes tight shut but tears came anyways. He had thought all this time that mister Dax was a bad person, that he was working for Ruana and even though he was nice to them he was still bad because he let bad things happen and didn't try and stop it.

But he had, he had been trying to help them all along, trying to stop mister Jason, that he was trying to stop the monsters, that he was trying to save them from miss Ruana...

And he had died for them. Because he argued with Ruana. That made him a hero. But could a bad person be a hero? And if he was was he a bad person at all? Or a good person who had been doing bad things because it meant he could help them more?

Romeo felt really bad for being so mad at him. For being angry all this time at someone who had actually not been bad at all. And it made him even more worried for Zo... He was just little and Romeo had never believed that he was really bad. The bad people were just his bosses so he had to do what they said. He didn't try and stop his tears, he couldn't work out how to keep his spirits up.

He really hoped that Zo would be alright... He brought his hands up to clasp together in prayer before dropping them again. He hadn't really believed God could hear him for a long time and he guessed he knew why now. The priest in his village had always said that his soul belonged to God even before he died, and God would look after him and when he died as long as he was good he could go and live with God and all his friends who had died. But if the bad people had stolen his soul than it didn't belong to God any more, it belonged to the bad people.

And Romeo really didn't know what to think about that...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Living things in the air? Romeo looked around, squinting to try and see these germs. He couldn't see any, it sounded a little like an adult lie to him but he didn't think Ienzo would lie to him.

"But if germs go on surfaces doesn't this have them too?" He waved the handkerchief he had been handed.

"Germs are on everything, but they're much too small to see. Your body has germs living in it. But those are either good germs or ones too weak to pose a threat to your health." He takes the handkerchief back and folds it up. It was a little bit amusing to see Romeo looking around frantically for them, he had to admit. "But that's why you wash handkerchiefs to get the germs off."

Romeo looked at his hands quietly horrified, even if they were harmless and he couldn't see them... he hadn't know he had living things on him! What if he accidentally hurt them?

"Oh, so it doesn't have any germs?"

"Right. If you clean it, you can basically use it like a tissue again and again." With Romeo's germs safely tucked on the inside of the handkerchief, he drops it back into the infinite pockets of holding. "Of course, tissues are better when you're already sick because you don't have to go through all the trouble of washing it each time, you just throw it out and get a new one."

Romeo nodded slowly and hugged his knees, it made him feel sad, and a bit scared. Because he hadn't even known there were invisible living things everywhere, just like he hadn't known that there were physics and rules that everything had to follow.

How was he meant to help anyone when he didn't know anything! "You're really really clever sir..."

...Aw.

Okay, Ienzo did feel really bad for the kid. He was obviously badly affected by the things happening in the Tower, things children were not supposed to see... but then, he had always regarded "things that children were not supposed to see" with a kind of odd detachment. Romeo had known him when he was in this Tower as a little boy. That kid had probably been dreadfully callous to him, and yet he still saw him as a friend... that took some truly special faith in others. Quietly, Ienzo put a hand on the child's back, the closest he allows himself to get to comfort in most cases.

"Would you like to learn?"

Romeo nodded, "I've been trying sir, but it's hard. Everyone keeps saying that we got to be smart to beat the bad people, but I never even went to school and I tried to read all the books in the library but they have lots of big words in them and Ken showed me how to use a dictionary but it takes ages to read every page until you find the word and then there are words in the explanation I don't understand either!"

Romeo didn't much like dictionaries.

Never went to school? Well that's just not okay. Not okay at all. "Then we'll start with the small things. In various subjects, not just reading, because you do need to know other things about the world... like germs." He frankly can't believe that Romeo didn't know about germs from whichever world he came from. "But before that... tell me. Where did you live before the Tower?"

Romeo grinned, Ienzo had always been really clever even when he was little and Romeo was happy to learn from him, especially about things he had never heard of before. "I was in Milano sir, I was a chimney sweep there but before that I was in Sonogno, that's my village.

"And these are two settlements in the same world?" He doubted it would be otherwise, since Romeo didn't seem like the kind of person who went world-hopping, but (looking at some of the administrators of their very own Tower), Ienzo figured that it truly took all kinds.

Romeo nodded, "Yes sir, I never knew there were other worlds before I got here. Sonogno is about... three days travel from Milano."

"And why did you go to Milano?" Sue him, he's curious. Ienzo never really was one to keep a tight rein on his curiosity.

Romeo hugged his knees tightly and rested his chin on them giving a small smile. "Well my dad got really sick and he was going to die if we couldn't get a doctor, but we needed thirty franks... that's a lot of money!" He explained because he didn't know how money worked in Ienzo's world.

"It was really scary but there was a man called Luini who everyone called the god of death and he bought kids from villages like mine to sell them in Milano as chimney sweeps. So he bought me and we got a doctor for my dad. And then I went with him to Milano and worked as a chimney sweep!"

That... made Ienzo frown. He could easily guess at the conditions Romeo lived in during his time as a chimney sweep, and they weren't very good. Well, to him the Tower must seem like something of an improvement on a day-to-day basis, even though there were still moments like... well, like when an administrator is killed in cold blood by another one.

"Did you see your family again?"

Romeo nodded, "When it was spring I got to go home but only for a day... then the world ended." He remembered being really happy to see them again, and that day had been so happy. His mum hadn't stopped smiling and his brothers had talked non stop about everything he had missed. His dad had hugged him and told him he had grown.

Romeo punched the air, he missed them a lot.

Ienzo wanted to tell Romeo that it would be fine, that he would see them again at some point in the future. He really did. It was unusual; normally he would tell someone in that position to just get on with their lives and build a new family, but somehow the words wouldn't come to his mouth. Mostly because...

"...you've still carried on for this long without them."

He had to admit. That was impressive.

"Well I had to, no one has their family here." He shrugged, truth was days went by without him even thinking of them. And that made him feel bad sometimes, but they belonged to a long time ago and though he would always love them and miss them, he had friends that he had to help right now to think about first. "Alfredo always said that no matter what happens you got to keep living, and keep your spirits up."

Keep living and keep your spirits up.

"...Alfredo is very wise."

"He was, he was the wisest person I ever knew even though he was just twelve... same as I am now. But he was cleverer than all the adults I knew."

What's the point of praying [Open]

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