sixthiterationlogs | 002 ✝ in the end only kindness matters

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002 ✝ in the end only kindness matters

WHO: Sonny Carisi
WHERE: The Fountain, the Inn, House Number 7, House Number 24 (the Church-in-progress), and in-between
WHEN: January 17th
OPEN TO: Everyone!
WARNINGS: Religion? Will update as needed.
STATUS: Open!

The Fountain

It's night time. Or, at least, it's supposed to be, the previous day creeping into the new one. Normally, it would be so dark that he could see the stars. (He's never been able to see the stars before, not in New York. There's too many city lights, and he's never really thought about it before. But now he thinks about it a lot. Now, he spends a lot of time looking at them when they're out.) Normally it would be dark and starry, but lately it's been the opposite. Lately, the sky has been so bright with the aurora lights that it seems like daytime all the time.

It's strange. It probably means something, and it's not necessarily something good. But he doesn't care. He's sort of enjoying it.

Of course, it's not the same thing as the neon lights of New York City. It's not even close. But he's been enjoying it. Most people, he's noticed, have only seen it as a hindrance. Getting a good night's sleep isn't easy when there's light pouring through every window. Sonny, though, always trying to find the silver lining in everything, finds them to be pretty and calming.

Maybe a sign from God. But even he doubts that.

Still, he's enjoying the night, despite how day-like it is. Tonight, he's sitting on the edge of the fountain, wrapped in a thick extreme weather blanket, a cup of hot, bitter tea between his hands. For once, he's quiet, looking at the lights in the sky.

The Inn

Eventually, Sonny turns in for the night, grateful for the blackout curtains he received as a Christmas gift. But when he wakes up, it's to a plain brown box with his name on the tag. And inside? The ingredients for a good batch of cookies, with some milk to go along with it.

So for the first time in quite awhile, Sonny chooses not to leave the house that morning. Instead, he stays in and bakes cookies. He gets a good two batches out of the ingredients, two dozen cookies in all. They're not as good as his cookies normally are, lacking some of the special ingredients he likes to toss into his own recipe. And truthfully, the ingredients probably could've been used for something else, something a little more useful than cookies. But everyone needs that kind of comfort food every once and a while.

Maybe a little more often, in a place like this.

He makes the cookies and wraps them up, taking them and the milk with him when he finally leaves for the Inn around mid-morning. He steps inside, into the warmth, and kicks some of the snow off his feet to keep from tracking it inside.

"Morning!" His greeting is cheerful and directed towards anybody that happens to be inside. "Anybody want some cookies?"

Houses Number 7 & 24, and the Path In-between

Later on in the afternoon, once it's warmed up a tiny bit (though not enough to make a real difference), Sonny's out and about again. And this time, he's working.

He's not doing his old job. He's not really doing a job at all, at least not one he's getting paid for. But this is different. It's for a bigger cause. A cause that's much bigger than him. He used to want to be a priest, when he was younger, but was never called upon by God to do it. Somehow, though, he's found another way to serve God. Maybe this has always been his calling, and it took this situation for him to realize it.

It's not easy. Not that he ever expected it to be.

The morning is spent rearranging the furniture in house number 24. A house he was told was lived in by a man who had planned on creating a church himself, but has since disappeared. (Something he finds very concerning, but hasn't really had time to look into.) The man hadn't gotten very far — just a makeshift cross, half-ready to be displayed. That's set aside for the time being — he'll finish it later. First, he wants to clear out the living room and get some places to sit in there. So he rearranges the couch and some armchairs, and brings in the dining chairs from the kitchen, lining them all up.

It's not enough sitting room. He doesn't want to take any of the furniture from the empty houses, just in case they get more people and the houses are needed. So instead, he retrieves chairs from the only other place he knows of — his own house.

It's not like he has much need for them. He hardly spends any time in his own home, and when he is there, it's usually just to sleep. So one by one, he begins to haul the dining room chairs from his own home, to the one that's going to be the town's church. It's a little harder than he would've anticipated. He's pretty sure he won't even be able to do the arm chairs by himself. And he definitely can't get the couch by himself.

But he'll deal with that when he gets to it.

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At least he's used to the skepticism. New York is one giant cultural mixing pot, and as such, he's met plenty of people of different religions, and some who don't claim a religion at all. So the way she scrunches her nose isn't anything he's unused to.

(Besides, it's kind of cute.)

"Yeah," he says, a little bit breathless, and offers a smile. "I mean, sure we're all trying to get home. But a place to worship will bring a lot of people comfort and peace. And that's important, too."

"It could also bring a minotaur down on you to force you to show your hand and then kill you before you blink," is her cynical response, though she knows that it's not a typical thing for people to get randomly beamed up to a prison and then shown your worst fear so you'll reach out to your faith. As far as she can tell, he's not constructing a separate room to fill with clowns and photographers and gorillas and whatever else frightens you. "Sorry. Bad personal experience," is all she says, curtly.

She gestures forward to where he's still hauling things around. "Want a hand? I might not be your number one customer, but I've definitely got two arms and no shortage of ability to move things."

Sonny blinks, and then his brows arch high up his forehead, almost disappearing beneath the fringe of his messy hair. Normally, he'd have it fixed and pushed back, but the village happens to be severely lacking in hair product, and it's not one of his top priorities anyway.

Right now, actually, one of his top priorities is that the girl in front of him might be a little bit crazy.

"If you want to." He's still smiling, despite her unexpected response. "Basically, I'm wanting to line all this furniture up, like in place of church pews."

She's still entirely not sure about it, but it's this or sit at home mucking about with their house and trying to build a fire, which she's apparently not allowed to do because she almost burnt down their house one time (and the less said about the time she tried to start one in the TARDIS, the better; it's not her fault the spaceship had suddenly given her one of those).

"I'm Amy," she introduces herself, extending out her hand to shake before she gets down to business. "Amy Pond."

Sonny shakes her hand, his grip firm and palm faintly calloused. "Sonny Carisi. Nice to meet you, Amy."

He steps back to survey the room, trying to decide exactly how he wants to lay things out. It's going to look ridiculous, he thinks, all this mismatched furniture shoved into the living room of a bungalow, lined up and facing a blank wall. Plus, he has no idea what he's going to do with the other rooms in the house. Possibly turn them into other places to pray in. Privacy could be nice for some people.

There's a pause, his hand resting on the back of one of the dark oak chairs, and he looks up at her again solemnly, speaking genuinely. "I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with religion."

"Sonny," she mimics in his accent as she gives a smirk and steps up to start helping with the chairs, leaning them against her body for a moment as she thinks about whether her issue is with religion or if it's with faith, which had to be broken down for them to survive. "It's not religion's fault, I guess," she admits, even if she doesn't like admitting she's wrong like this.

"That place, though, it targeted me," she shares, setting the chair down and scraping it loudly until it sets into place, a touch inelegant, but getting the job done. "My faith in someone was so strong, it pulled us in. And we still couldn't save everyone." Maybe if she hadn't been there, Rory could've pulled them all out, with all his practical, realistic ways of dealing with the world. "People in the future can be very messed up when it comes to punishment," is all she leaves it on. "And I don't think I want to believe in anything much anymore." She knows she can't put all her faith in the Doctor, not anymore, even though a part of her still thinks that he's going to make it through, somehow.

He listens to her, taking her words into consideration even if all of them don't quite make sense. He's used to that in this place. Once upon a time, he wanted to be a priest. He wanted to help people the way his priest helped him, by listening and talking and guiding him through to the path to the Lord. In the end, it wasn't his calling. He wound up saving people in another way. But that doesn't mean he can't still help people find that peace that his priest helped him find.

"Putting your faith in something can be scary," he says, leaning against one of the wooden chairs. "It's hard to do. Especially when you're putting your faith in God. The Big Man works in some wacky ways sometimes. But he's helped me more times than I can count."

He moves to one side of a heavy armchair, gesturing for her to grab the other side so he can move it back a few feet. "I'm a cop," he informs. "Not being able to save everyone is the roughest thing in the world."

Amy doesn't mention the part where she'd spent a few years making money by playing at being a cop when she'd been a kissogram, seeing as it's not really the same. Sometimes, she wonders if the Doctor hadn't been a sort of intergalactic law officer, but usually he caused as much trouble as he solved, so that probably wasn't a good comparison. She heads over to the other side of the chair.

"Travelling was supposed to fun adventures," she shares, wiggling as she uses all her effort to move the chair, "they just had a habit of getting dangerous. Usually all the time."

Moving the chair is less lifting it and more shimmying it around, between the two of them. Sonny is in pretty good shape, thanks to his job, but the chairs are made of heavy wood, not to mention they're relatively large. It's probably mangling the wooden floors, but it's not like Sonny's that concerned about them anyway. He's a little out of breath by the time they get it where he wants it, and he leans against one side of it as he breathes.

"I've never been traveling before," he says, still managing to sound a little awed. "I've gone to Canada before, but that's just a hop, skip, and a jump away from New York. Where all have you been?"

"I was in New York City before this," she says, pointedly not mentioning that it had also been the late 30's, since that's the kind of detail you tend to lay on someone when you've been talking to them a little longer than just a few minutes. "Then, you know, France, Wales," she shares, "Washington DC," she lists, "England, all over." Outside the very nature of the human universe probably isn't an easy one to explain and the less said about places like Appalapachia, the better.

"Never been to Canada," she admits, "though I've definitely been in places with snow like it," she acknowledges. "Ugh, god, I hate snow like that," she complains. "It's just as bad here. We're not actually in Canada, are we?"

For the time being, he seems content to rest against the side of the armchair and listen to Amy list off all the incredible sounding places she's traveled to. France, Wales, all of England — it sounds amazing. He wonders briefly if she's ever been to Italy, because he's pretty sure if he could choose one place to go to, it would be there, so he could get a good, authentic taste of his ancestry.

"Gotta admit, I'm a little jealous," he says, but he's still smiling. "Sounds like you've been living your life to the fullest."

He pauses, stepping back to examine where the arm chair is. Satisfied, he looks back at her, laughing softly. "Could be, I guess. I think people have seen moose around here. That's a Canadian thing, right?"

Amy's smile is a bit fractured, because it's true that she's had a hell of a life, but there's two problems with that. The first being that for twelve years, she had been interrupted with normalcy, followed by another two year stint. For all that Rory sat up waiting for her, she's not much better. Besides that, the second part being that all the travels and adventures are over. "I was a travel writer, back home," she explains. "Sort of a perk of the job, being able to get out there and see everything."

It really had been everything too, so at least she's got her memories. "Moose? Like, the giant things with antlers? Don't they have a bad habit of killing you on impact?" Amy asks dubiously.

Truthfully, it sounds like the American Dream to him. Forget all the wife and kids and picket fence stuff — being able to travel and see the world and go on adventures (dangerous or otherwise) sounds way more incredible. Like the best experience of your life, he'd think.

This doesn't count. Waking up in a fountain in the middle of a sleet storm to a village with little technology or supplies is not his idea of a good time. Though, he supposes it's still probably an adventure. Even if it's an involuntary one.

"They might?" It sounds like a question rather than an answer. "I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't know much about moose. Manhattan doesn't really have a whole lot of them."

"You're from Manhattan?" She says it like she's been struck with it. It's a sore subject, even now, because they had been there just for a vacation and a visit, but it had instead taken them out of their lives, forcing them to adjust and then to figure out how to cope with a kidnapping fountain that didn't care that you had a life to get back to.

What are their friends doing, she wonders? What about Brian? What does he think happened to them? She really should have sent something to him, from the past. Maybe asked the Doctor to pass along a note or give the grieving visitor speech. "What year?" she asks. "Did an Angel send you here?"

He blinks, a little bit stunned by her surprised reaction. He knows he's not the only person here from the big city. Credence is, at least. A couple of other people too, if he remembers correctly. And even if she hasn't ran into them before, it's not like New York is exactly small. You could go just about anywhere and find someone from New York.

"No?" It comes out sounding more like a bewildered question than anything else. He shakes his head. "I mean, I don't think so. I guess anything is possible at this point, but I don't remember seeing any angels."

She pulls herself back before Amy goes full on investigation, trying to figure out what strange alien plan or dastardly revenge scheme this could be. If all these people were from New York and Angels sent them, then maybe she could try and figure it out, like a puzzle, but she has the feeling that it won't be so simple.

"Big stone statues, completely still," she says, trying to figure out how to describe any of this without sounding mental. "Sort of move if you blink?" Yeah, not doing a great job, is she?

She might be reining herself in a bit, but Sonny still likes stunned and uncertain. He's dealt with crazy people in his line of work, but they're usually a little easier to work around than this is. Maybe it's because he doesn't really know her, or because he's not at work right now, but he's finding this a little more difficult to handle.

"You know, I really don't mean to be rude, but you're sounding a little bit... insane." He frowns. "I mean, stone statues don't usually move in my experience."

Four psychiatrists have told Amy that she's a little bit mad and she didn't let them break her down, so a random stranger in a weird village isn't going to get the better of her. Hands on her hips and rising up with childish stubbornness flaring, she can see how this probably isn't going to end well. Hopefully, no one's getting bitten, this time. "In your experience?" she echoes. "In your experience, do you end up fighting a fountain just to escape and show up like you're turning up for your first day of rounds at a hospital?" she counters.

"Trust me, they move," she says darkly. "Once you take your eyes off them, they move fast."

It still sounds crazy. She's so serious about it, but it sounds so insane. He got here through a solid fountain, he's met people supposedly from outer space, people from years and years in the past. He's watched Cougar cook fish from fire that he was manifesting out of his bare hands. And somehow, somehow, this is the one that he can't seem to wrap his head around.

Maybe it's the religious tones surrounding it. The fact that it's angels, stone statues that can move, that are apparently dangerous, from the way she talks about them.

"Well now, in my experience, I do end up fighting my way out of an improbably deep fountain, yeah." He sighs, rubbing at the deep crease between his eyes. "Why do they only move when you're not looking at them?"

He's not sure why that's the question he decides to ask, but it is.

The actual explanation is long and technical and has so much to do with time and space that for the most part, she has a habit of tuning the Doctor out when he starts to get too fussy about the details of how these things work. "It sort of works like when you're looking at them, they're quantum locked, but if you can trick them and make them look at each other, but that's apparently something the Doctor only does when I'm not travelling with him. When it's me, it's a graveyard full of them," she notes bitterly.

Or a New York City filled with them, but that one's a little more recent and bitter. "If they touch you...just hope they don't touch you," she says.

Sonny nods, like that makes sense, even though he wants to say science was never really his strong suit in school. As a matter of fact, he thinks he distinctly remembers studying it more than any other subject when he was a teenager.

"I suppose a graveyard would have a lot of angel statues," he murmurs, because at least that part does make sense. "Though I still don't remember ever seeing any of them move.

"But--" he holds up a hand before she can argue with him, because that's something he can already see coming. In a way, she reminds him a little bit of his sisters. Full of stubbornness and fierce attitude, always willing to snap back when pushed. "I'm going to believe you, because everything is weird now, and I saw someone cook fish with fire from their hands the other day."

Huh. No one had to get bitten to get her point across. This is a brand new time for Amy Pond, one that she's approaching with relief, but also a fair degree of suspicion. "Thanks?" she musters out, settling down in the chair they've just moved, kicking her legs over the side and letting them dangle a little while.

"So if you're from New York and you don't know anything about angels, what's a bloke do for fun back in your day?" she asks, even though she suspects that her and Rory getting stranded in the city would've been back in his day. No one's ready for the headache of time travel the explanation would bring, so she keeps it straightforward. Sort of.

"You're welcome," Sonny says, somehow sounding exhausted and amused and the tiniest bit exasperated all at once. Now seems like a good a time as any to take a break, so he sits down in the chair beside her, a little more properly than she does. But that's mostly just out of habit.

"Back in my day?" he echoes. "Are you calling me old? Besides, I know about angels — I'm Catholic, I grew up learning about angels. I just don't know about angels that move when you're not looking at them."

It sounds like a freaking horror movie, truthfully. If she is telling the truth and isn't just crazy, he really doesn't envy what she's been through.

"Old enough," Amy replies idly, wondering what it is about the rest of the world that's so ready to be okay with angels, but then, she also doubts anyone else has had to endure the harrowing experience with them that she has. "Trust me, you don't want to know," is all she says. "They're a frequent source of my nightmares and after all the things I've seen, they shouldn't be."

What she wouldn't give for a crack in the universe to steal those memories away, but alas, here she is. "I almost lived in New York," she notes. "My husband and I, not really by choice, but we were going to make the best of it, at least, I think we were."

"I'm not that old," he says, rolling his eyes. He's only thirty, but he suddenly has the feeling that that's too old, as far as she's concerned, so he doesn't say it. His hair is starting to silver at the temples, and he can only imagine how much worse it must be getting with all the stress this place causes.

"New York's not bad," Sonny assures. "In some ways, it's like having a little bit of every part of the world in one place, you know? You can walk ten blocks and pass all sorts of different kinds of restaurants and shops and people. It's sort of amazing."

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