2019-07-27 - Trial From God

Genevieve kneels in front of Janet Blake's stone, a spade in hand as she stirs the dirt and prepares the ground for flowers. She sneaks a look up at Eli as she works, and then looks at the neighboring stone. Her voice is careful when she speaks, "So, tell me more about your father?" She has noticed that he doesn't really talk about his father. She's probably poking at a wound that might still hurt, but she's curious and didn't Eli just tell her that talking about difficult things is important?

Eli's attention was drawn across the cemetery, lost in his own thoughts while Eve worked at the dirt around his mother's grave. Her voice pulls him back to the present, his expression making it clear that her question doesn't really come as a surprise. He knew very well he'd have to talk about it at some point, just hadn't really come up yet. "I don't have many positive things to say about him. I try to let him have his rest without me dragging his name around. I've spent a lot of years trying to reconcile how he treated me and have never really been able to understand it. I know I'm not the only person in the world with an abusive parent, but that hasn't really made it any easier, you know?" He steps away from his mother's grave and eyes the one next to it. "I can make excuses for him, but most of them ring hollow."

"I don't think you should make excuses for him, bad things happen to plenty of people, but they don't have to hurt someone else because of it." Genevieve glances up at Eli as he takes a step away from Janet's grave. She stops playing in the dirt, settling back to sit and watch him. "Why don't you tell me one positive thing, and maybe.. if you want.. we can put some flowers there too." She won't push though, the offer is out there. She pulls one of the pots they brought closer, transferring the lady's slipper into the ground, gathering dirt around it.

"To my knowledge he was good to my mother." Eli says carefully, as though uncertain about the truth to those words. "I never saw evidence that he was cruel to her and while she was alive he mostly stayed away from me." He paces in a slow circle around the rock, blue eyes on the weathered surface, his mind in another time and place for a few seconds. "Is your family religious, Eve? Are you?" He asks, looking over toward her. Likely questions that should have been asked before living and sleeping together - but they were all about being out of order.

Genevieve is glad that she's gazing down at the plant she's putting in the ground, those careful words make her frown. "My family is religious, my mother and my father are Catholic. They only miss going to a service if they were sick. Even then, not often." She pats the dirt down with her hands, and then dusts the dirt off of her fingers before she gets to her feet, moving over to care for the weeds and ground around the second stone. "Me? I believe there is a bigger thing out there, just not sure what it is or if going somewhere every Sunday is the way to find it? I'm not very religious. It's always been something my mother and I have disagreed on."

"I can imagine that's a cause of a great deal of friction. It has been something I've always struggled with too. My father was a very religious man. I've always said he was aggressively so. I was raised with a raw fear of God as a tremendous being who looked for any possible way to punish us. That no matter how hard we tried we would fail in His eyes and be destined to an eternity of suffering. My father was quite convinced that it was his place on this earth to convince others of their faults and try to fix them. Most could ignore him - but I wasn't really in a position to avoid his attentions." Eli is looking at his father's grave again while he explains this, though his body language is tight and his emotions are subdued.

"That's... " Genevieve sighs and she sidles closer to Eli, rubbing a hand along his back. Now they're both going to have dirt on them. "That is a very scary way to think of God, and religion. Isn't it supposed to be a comfort for people?" She sighs and then wraps her arms around him, trying to ease the tension in his body. "I'm sorry that you had to go through that, Eli. I wish it could have been different for you." She looks down at the half tended stone and frowns. "Do you think his Father might have brought him up like that?"

"I was quite a bit older before I understood that. It's funny the beliefs that you hold on to when no one is around to explain any differently. That was what I thought religion was and after my parents were both gone I didn't seek it out for myself, just continued to believe what I'd been taught. At some point, yes, I came to understand that wasn't how many viewed it. Not that the church appeals to me even now, but at least I can understand the place it has in people's lives." Eli leans back a bit into that hand on his back, though the tension stays. He shakes his head at Eve's question. "I don't believe so. I didn't know my grandparents, so some of it could have come from there. My father was in the military for years and I believe many of his ideas came from people he knew while he was deployed."

"Do you think he'd like to have a flower here?" Eve continues to look down at the grave, her thoughts far away at the moment. She shifts on her feet, leaning against Eli briefly. "Think you can forgive him for how he was?" She stretches a leg out, shuffling a weed away from the stone while she stays close to Eli. "It is amazing to me that so much about any of us hinges on things that we wouldn't consider. That one thing, or a series of events, that changes our thoughts and feelings irrevocably." She kneels down again, even if she's not planting anything, she still wants to pull the weeds and grass. Clean the stone.

"I don't mind if you want to plant something." Eli says, looking toward her and giving the smallest of smiles. He gives a small shake of his head. "I might have been able to forgive him for what he was, but I'm not ready to forgive him for how he treated me after my mother was gone. I'm not ready to forgive him for the things he did when my powers manifested." He says the words quietly. A deeply religious God fearing man with a son who developed unnatural powers? It doesn't take a whole lot to connect the dots to see that it might have been ugly. "But, that doesn't mean he shouldn't have a flower."

Eve pulls the pot closer, grabbing the spade as if she's about to dig, but then Eli speaks. She drives the tool into the dirt and turns to gaze toward his face, eyebrows raised. "Understandable." She considers what was said for a few more beats, her eyes on Eli's face, and then turns to pull the spade from the ground. She digs, not with the same care she showed Janet's plot, maybe taking a little bit of anger out on the ground since she can't get to the source. "I'm more sorry than I can put into words, Eli." She finally says, shaking some of the dirt off the roots of the second lady's slipper, placing it into the ground with a little more care than when she was digging.

"You don't need to be sorry, Eve. Really. You're the last person in this world that should apologize. You've been so much to me since we've met, but you've proven that I can be close to someone without them trying to hurt me every day. It took a long time to get to a place where I was willing to let other people in. You've made me realize I waited too long." Eli lets out a quiet breath, eyes on the stone while he reads over the name carved into it and gives a slow shake of his head. "I don't talk about this much because it never felt like it would help. It was something I had to deal with on my own and come to terms with. I don't think I'm there yet, but I'm a lot closer than I was a decade ago."

"I can be sorry because I don't like seeing the hurt in your face. So I'm going to be sorry for that, no child. No. No person should ever have to feel that way about a parent. No parent should ever make their child question their love for them." Genevieve shakes her head, frowning as she gathers the dirt back around the plant. She shakes her hands, dusting them off on her thighs, leaving behind a few streaks of dirt. "I'm here when you're ready to talk. If you never want to talk, that's okay too." She shoves the spade in her back pocket and gazes down at the stone. "He doesn't know what he's missed." She turns toward Eli, holding out a slightly grubby hand. "Home? I'll make you a sandwich."

"I was a trial from God. A punishment. A test to see if he was worthy - if he could teach me to walk in the light." Eli says with quiet words, watching as Eve finishes up the work around the stone. When she climbs back to her feet and speaks he nods, pushing those thoughts and feelings back down and locking them very securely away. The tension drains out of him a bit and he takes the dirty hand without any hesitation, squeezing it a bit too tightly. "Home, yes. I'd love a sandwich. Let's put on some overly upbeat music when we get there too, yeah?"

"He should have seen you for the blessing that you were." Genevieve says, a slight wince at the hand squeeze, returning it gently. "You're full of light, and he just didn't bother to see it. I see it." She pulls Eli closer and bumps into him as they walk toward the entrance of the cemetery. "Upbeat music and a sandwich, sounds very doable. Hopefully my idea of upbeat music is the same as yours."