ataraxion | 011✖; (voice)

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011✖; (voice)

"People tend to believe in something, whether it's gods, a god, some sort of afterlife or nothing at all. Nothing can be something, can't it?

"In any case, the belief in the soul and that it goes somewhere after the body dies has surprisingly been a subject of interest these last few years. Is the soul a thing that is natural, and can it be created out of something that is unnatural?

"What happens to the vessel once it's no longer occupied by whatever makes you you?"

['You are a vessel. You are born to die.' Those were among the first words she's ever heard, and yet the connotation behind them are unsettling for her now.]

"Is there any place like a Heaven or a Hell for a thing that's not born but made by a person, or is it more likely that we just disappear entirely once the vessel dies?"

[Death had never been a scary prospect for her before. Not when she had something that she wanted to live and die for. She almost misses being empty, when she didn't have to worry about the things she would leave in the likely events of her eventual demise. Everything has an expiration date, after all.

[DEEP THOUGHTS coming from the lounge with booze.]

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One is saved by being good, and following the teachings of the Lord, and one is damned by committing evil deeds and following the wicked ways of the Devil.

[it sounds rote when she says it, though it is perfectly true. sophie just happens to be the soulless twin.]

Or, I suppose, one suicides and is consigned to the eternal purgatory of the Onyx realm, from whence the Elder Creatures came.

The twin without the soul, though, they cannot commit sin or know grace. Their words and deeds leave no mark on the soul, for better or worse.

[All that sounds terribly familiar, despite the pitch.]

Have a twin, back home. [What Sophie says about the Lord and Devil and sins, sounds a lot like some of the things he truly believed.] He's good.

["The golden son", she's called him.]

You do? I don't suppose the soul business applies, though.

[christine hates sophie, for not feeling the devil's temptations. for not being the one responsible for their fate. for good and evil not being so starkly simple as she'd like. for sophie stubbornly refusing to be her sins or her whipping boy or anything other than sophie.]

What is your twin like?

He's good.

[The words are an echo of the first time she's said them, but then decidedly adds:] Killed his vessel when we were born. After that, we were forced to live separate lives, at the risk of history repeating itself.

[As history has a way of doing so very often, in Rey's experience.]

Until a few years ago, he was raised believing he was human -- and an only child. [There's almost a kind of amusement in her tone when she says that.]

He is... the better half of us.

He killed nearly as soon as he was born, but he is the better of you?

[it's a question, but she's not skeptical. it's a complex thing, being good.]

Mine...tries. She certainly fears the Devil as much as one should. No one wants to be damned.

[she pauses. when it comes down to it, sophie doesn't really understand good and evil. without a soul, there's no intrinsic comprehension of such things. love and hate, kindness and unkindess, sure, but not good and evil.]

But I don't know what will become of us in the end.

Well, he may beg to differ. But it's true. He didn't go as mad for as long after realizing what he was capable of. He didn't lose control. [Unlike Rey, who spent four years recovering after obtaining all the memories of her past selves.

[Even now, she wouldn't even know where to begin to tell the difference of good and evil, so she's just as lost. Right and wrong make sense, but evil is not a construct that she's really seen or experienced. Just people killing people, as they are oft to do. Crazy, insane people.]

Is the devil such an imminent threat where you're from?

[She thinks about what this woman had said about her own world -- about twins and souls. And it doesn't take much for her to piece the information together enough to wonder which one the twins she was talking to now.]

Is self-control a measure of goodness? I'm not sure where acceptance ranks on that scale.

[it's not a facetious statement. if self-control was a measure of goodness...well. how could anyone get to heaven?]

For most it is the fear of damnation, an eternity spent in hate and torment. For my family, it's...more personal.

Would very much like to not become a maniac again, so yes. That's a little important.

[She almost nearly didn't come back from that state the last time. It's not an experience she cares to repeat if she can help it.]

More personal how? Sounds like a rather reasonable thing to fear.

I'm fairly sure that part of being evil is doing bad things with knowing and purpose. It's important, yes. But a sorcerer attempting to do evil requires as much control as one intending to do good.

[there's a pause, long enough to edge toward awkwardness, where it seems like sophie might not even be breathing, and then a sigh.]

People fear damnation because an eternity of torment will inevitably be unpleasant. I have met the Devil, and glimpsed the seat of his power. He has whispered into the ears of my brothers and sisters. Mostly, it seems people save or damn themselves without his help, but it is personal, between us.

...

Didn't think of it like that.

[She'll admit it, at least. But it helps being able to look at it with the context of her own history. Though she wouldn't by any stretch call the person a sorcerer -- or evil, for that matter. Misguided, perhaps, as they both were.

[For a moment, she starts to wonder if perhaps she had said something wrong -- and that the person she's talking to has hung up. Until she hears that breath.

[Huh.]

Understood. [She sees a little better now. Or so she thinks, anyway.] And your twin is...?

[She's not sure how to say it tactfully. After learning the deal about souls and the devil, though, Rey kind of falls quiet, putting it together.]

[this time, the breath sophie lets out sounds wryly amused.]

The one with the soul, of course. She fears the Devil well enough, but she also thinks killing me will absolve her of...something. She would take my sins as hers as though that would forgive her own.

That said, I am not really capable of judging her. In most things not related to me, I think, she is good, but she is blind to the truth of many things.

[Okay, so that just confirms more or less what she suspected. Cool, cool. No soul, that ain't no big thing.]

Funny how killing one person can either solve so little, or everything.

You said you're not capable of judging her, though. Is that what it means to have no soul where you're from? To not feel?

In this case, it would only drive her toward damnation.

Oh no, I have a heart. I feel. But I do not have the burden of saving or damning two. I know what it feels like, to be damned, but God has no interest in one like me. Which is fine, I've had enough interest.

[and when it comes down to it, as the one with the soul, christine has some control over sophie. she has just fought all of her life to resist that control, to remain herself instead of an extension of her twin.]

[Rey's thinking more along the lines of "Wow God is kind of a dick in your world" -- if only that was a Rey thing to say.

[Either way, she thinks she understands a little where Sophie is coming from, whether that's a good thing or not. Probably the latter.]

Was damned many times before, in a way. Know what it's like, and sometimes it feels like it'd be easier -- being damned rather than being saved.

[At least then she doesn't have to carry the weight that she does now of all the things her past lives have ever done.]

[rey's words make sophie remember what the devil had said to her that night: i think you would be happier. the insidious thing about the devil is that he is quite likely right. sophie's suffering would have ceased the moment she ceased to be sophie. the devil would have loved her, or at least the creature he shaped her to be, and there is a sort of joy in taking pride in one's damnation.

but then she would not be sophie.]

It might be easier. It is simple to live an existence where the choices are all made for you. But that is not the existence I have chosen.

[She pauses. Silent for a good moment.]

Didn't seem to have much of a say in the matter. Some didn't like my choice -- then made a different one.

Granted, it was a remarkably shitty choice. But it was mine to make and they took it away.

That is what I don't want to happen to me.

[she has the idea that rey may not have had the freedom, or perhaps the power, to resist. sophie has no soul, but she was still born from the body of a woman, an individual and not simply a vessel. or perhaps she was born an empty vessel, to fill as she chose.]

But you are free of them now, here?

Yes.

[There's a heaviness in her answer as well. She breathes out through her nose.]

Despite what they did, they meant well. But too often the worst acts are created out of good intentions.

["I am wicked. I deserve to die." Those words still ring true in her mind, regardless of all that's happened. But then, so does "I want to do good." That last part has been a mantra keeping her alive all these years.]

[she had meant well, in her wish to be worth tempting. she had meant well, telling manfred to hold on to whatever love he could find in this world. she had meant well, drawing on the red to face the devil. she had meant well, trying to keep francescu from her father's legacy. or, at least, she had partially meant well. christine meant to save them, trying to murder sophie.]

Meaning well does not seem to count for terribly much, in the end.

True. [At least she's willing to admit that she agrees.] Have seen many lives destroyed by good intentions.

[And what few instances she had the chance to do the same herself, it caused a Cataclysm and had just about the same result -- many lives destroyed. Funny thing, that.]

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