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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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."

She breathes in and tries to absorb his words, trying to make herself feel better. True, she doubts that he'd been there in the late 30's, but it still doesn't sound so bad. Besides, she'll get to see the war and she can drag Rory to Times Square, see if she can't muscle in and steal the infamous newspaper photo on VE Day. Still, even that isn't much solace, not when she's stuck here now.

"Here, it seems like you walk ten blocks and pass a few rabbits and birds," she notes with the air of someone displeased with all of it, already. "If I'm lucky, there's a deer."

He misses the city. He misses the cracked sidewalks and irritated drivers and neon lights. He misses having a coffee shop every two blocks and he especially misses the little Italian bakery that's around the corner from his apartment building. He wonders, vaguely, if his sisters have bothered to water his plants for him while he's missing, or if he'll come home to a bunch of dead foliage.

"I don't think I've ever seen a real deer in my life," he says thoughtfully. "Only in movies. Well-- only in Bambi, I guess."

"I've seen enough of them to know that they're not really worth seeing, anymore," Amy admits, because it's something that she gets bored of. Nature, followed by more nature? When you've seen some of the wonders of the world and the universe, even Bambi starts to pale in comparison. "I never thought my life would ever be this boring," she complains, aware she's being petulant, but feeling like she's owed at least this much.

"Boring?" Sonny echoes, sounding startled. He glances around at the house, at the mess of unmatching furniture, the heavy oak and old patterns that are terribly unfamiliar to him. While he'd be reluctant to call this entire experience exciting, he certainly wouldn't call it boring. He looks over at her, brows arched a little. "You arrived in some centuries old village by waking up in a weirdly deep fountain with no way to get back home. That's boring to you?"

While he could sound skeptical or rude, he really just sounds curious, truly interested in how she must've lived her life for this to be considered boring.

"Yes, actually," Amy admits, with a shrug of her shoulders. She's shown up on an antique, futuristic pirate ship once and had her husband nearly killed by a nurse-siren computer program and that had just been a few days. Showing up in a village in the past is only strange in that the fountain is a new touch given how cold it is outside.

She gives her churchy friend a wry smirk. "My life was fairly complicated before, thanks to my best friend. My raggedy Doctor," she says fondly. "We travelled, him and me and my husband."

"You traveled with your doctor?" The thought strikes him as odd. He's had the same doctor his entire life, a family doctor on Staten Island that his still drives two hours to see for check-ups, even though he lives in Manhattan now. It means they know each other relatively well, Sonny always asking about his family during their visits, and vice versa. But the idea of being close enough to him to go traveling with him is absurd.

Maybe things are different in Europe. Maybe people form unusually close blonds with their doctors. She did say best friend, after all. Maybe they were friends before he became her doctor. Either way, it's certainly not his place to judge.

"Man," he says, shaking his head. "I don't envy you, if this whole thing is boring by your standards."

"Not a, the Doctor," she clarifies, even though it's hard to explain without the man (or alien) himself standing right in front of you, because it's definitely not the sort of thing that comes with easy explanation. "He's a sort of specialist of sorts? I don't even know how to properly explain it," Amy confesses with a shake of her head. "He's just...special," she says. "When you're in trouble and you've got no one else there to help, he's there. He's a protector, a friend." He's not here, but Rory is, and Amy's made most of the decisions of her adult life based on Rory, even when she'd been scared and running away from him.

It's all Rory and that's what matters. "I used to think that I'd settle down, enjoy boring," she admits, "but at least it would've been a choice, then. This is being forced into the past and made to stay." It's not even the similar choice she made.

Sonny tips his head back against the chair, looking at the ceiling. An actual church would have tall walls, arching ceilings and rafters. There'd be stained glass windows, and the altar, and the candles. Motifs and crosses and, in his catholic church, statues of the Mother Mary. This house isn't shaped like a church, doesn't have all the aspects of a church. But it has places to sit and a cross outside and, most importantly, people who believe in something. And that's all that matters, really. It gives people a place to pray.

"Sounds like a good friend to have," he says, still looking up, gaze thoughtful. "Sounds like my best friend. She's not a doctor — just a cop, like me. But she's always there when I need her."

He turns his head, looking over at her. "That's the worst part, isn't it? It might be a nice vacation if we chose it. But we didn't. So it's awful."

"Yeah, he was my best friend," she agrees, the troubled look on her face purely because she'd chosen to leave him, but there are some very specific vows she'd taken and she stands by them. Rory comes before anyone else, even her best friend, even at the end of all things. "I wasn't going to choose New York either," she admits, "but that's where Rory was. So, that's where I went."

She thinks back to when she'd been an idiot teenager and wonders how she could have been so stupid as to not see what had been in front of her face the whole time. If only she'd persuaded the Doctor to take her back so she could smack herself silly for ignoring the best thing she'd ever had.

002 ✝ in the end only kindness matters

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