#lukas.

Attending church had become a rarity for Inge, who struggled to connect with the religion that had once ruled her life. It was too confrontational, did not fit the easygoing way she preferred to go to life — dealing in terror, sure, but supposedly not affected by it. Church was a place of guilt and shame, a place of reflection and remembrance, and those weren’t things she looked for most of the time. And yet, every now and then, she felt herself pulled to such places. 

That was not to say she was going into the church today. Just the churchyard, moving past the graves of people long gone and filing away some of the imagery for later. It was a rare moment of feeling somewhat grounded, in touch with the person she was before she’d died and become what she had been meant to be. A god-fearing creature. She still believed that he existed, but no longer did Ingeborg think he had any say on where she would end up post-death. If anything, she was more demon than a person made in his image.

Oh, what did it matter, what she was? Those were the kinds of questions she’d asked in the first years, when she had still been grappling with her nature, and ones she’d asked after her daughter had died and the world seemed wholly unfair. But now, it mattered not: the sun shone! A bird whistled cheerfully. She saw a stranger on a bench and decided, why not approach — better to chat up a random stranger than to keep mulling over her own existence and that of some higher power. The bench was sat nicely in the shade, which Inge did prefer. “Afternoon,” she said, sitting herself down and staring up at the church. It was a nice building. Catholic, which meant it actually had some charm unlike the reformed churches she’d gone to as a mortal. “Hope it’s alright I’m sitting down.” If it wasn’t, she’d stay. Her gaze remained on the building, one of its high towers. For a moment, she was quiet: “What brings you here?” 

Lukas wasn’t sure why he kept doing this, sitting outside in the courtyard of the Church he once ran. Perhaps part of him did it instinctually, he had on many occasions sat out here after all. It was a perfect place to contemplate everything, the good and the bad. Maybe it also reminded him of those twilights with his Sire, where she wasn’t so scary. The gardens of a church had been a place of peace - the last time he had peace. So he sat there quietly thinking, his hands clutching each other in a pretend version of a prayer, his head bowed for prayers he no longer thought God could hear. 

Maybe this just proved  he actually wanted to pray and turn to the light, but he was already a monster. He was chosen for this after all. Salvation for Lukas could only be through the darkness, so he should stop trying to hear the choirs from inside the church. He should stop trying to hold a rosary closely. He should move from his spot, even if just being near the old church gave him comfort. He didn’t need it anymore, and more importantly he didn’t deserve it. Surely though he could stay in the garden outside. After all, Eden was the place where good and evil were hand and hand until it tipped. Surely the snake had the same amount of rights to wander the place as did the rest of creations. 

Even if he was damned, and could only be saved through the darkness, Lukas could still have a place in the garden of good and evil. 

Still, as his spiral started yet again Lukas heard a woman’s voice and for a moment his eyes grew wide thinking it was his Angel - just to realize it wasn’t. Relaxing, he moved to sit up properly and said, “No problem at all. Go ahead." Afterall, he didn’t own the seat, and he was ready to not think about the gnawing questions just at the surface of his damned existence. He didn’t like thinking of the roles he - well wasn’t sure he wanted to play. At the question though he sat for a moment thinking and said, “It’s a good place to contemplate I suppose. What brings you?” 

If Inge believed in God – and that was an if, these days – then she wanted Him to exist in the simplest and most mundane of things. He was the flowers waving in the sun, the light through the trees, the sweet food on the table and also all the rest the world had to offer. The cold of night, the thunderstorm crashing down on the earth’s surface, the feeling of terror like a cold fist around a heart. If she believed in Him, He was something cyclical that she was part of.

Of course, that didn’t negate all she was taught and had once believed. It was ever-present, like a nagging thought in the back of her head. A song that had been stuck there since the moment she gained consciousness. But she sinned so much these days that she couldn’t let it rule her days any more. There was no afterlife waiting for her, anyway. Or so she told herself, convincingly and endlessly. Life was the earth’s pleasures and sorrows for her, and God was in them — and that was the end of that.

But here she was, in front of a church that would disagree with her. Inge lacked self-awareness to see it as anything else than a whimsical decision. “I appreciate it all the same.” The silence was comfortable, but she wouldn’t mind filling it. Conversation was a favorite of hers, after all: there was so much silence in her life, as it stood. “It is, isn’t it? I find churches and their grounds often are. And I don’t know, exactly, I suppose it is contemplation I’m after. I guess I used to find it inside, but it’s been a while. What about you?”

Often now, as he sat in the shade of the trees outside of the Church he wondered exactly how it felt like to be removed from the narrative of Goodness. How he would word it. Lukas always thought of Cain, the first murder, who asked if he was his brother’s keeper. Who had been rejected.  He didn’t realize how cruel it had been, that he had been Marked and told to live forever after walking the world east of Eden. Perhaps Cain still sat outside of holy places as well, waiting for an invitation to go back to God. Idly he wondered if he ever would. 

He wondered idly how many people were like him, sitting right outside of the light, rejected from being welcomed in through no fault of their own. After all, he was tossed aside like he hadn’t mattered. Normally Lukas pushed those thoughts away, convinced he still had a purpose, but surely that meant his purpose was to embrace the dark. If that was the case, sitting in the church courtyard was merely a way of reminding himself that he was not welcomed. He was marked, and he would remain here in this weird in between light and darkness. Neither protected, nor fully rejected the courtyard could provide a sort of Limbo the rest of the world couldn’t. 

“I don’t feel particularly welcomed inside if I am completely honest,” Lukas said with a small nod towards the other, an uncharacteristically solemn look to his face. “So I would rather contemplate outside of the hallowed halls where I do feel welcome to sit and simply be. Although I do believe the inside is beautiful.” It was, at least to Lukas. “Do you come here often then? I don’t think I have seen you before.” 

That was honest. Inge looked at the other, at the solemn look on his face and the truth he offered. People of faith so often claimed to be honest, didn’t they? To lie was to sin and yet, lie they all did. She herself included — but if immortality anything, it was to be above sin. So what did it matter if she lied? Maybe that was why it was somewhat unsettling and strange, that this person she didn’t know spoke with a rawness. Refreshing, even.

And maybe she agreed. Not feeling welcome wasn’t something that usually held Ingeborg back, considering all the breaking and entering she did on a regular base. There was something different about it though, wasn’t there? Maybe there was still that young woman inside her, who turned to her priest in a time of need and expected to be answers. Who thought that maybe a demon was ruining her nights, making it impossible for her to rest without terror. She knew better now, of course: mares were not demons, even if some religious zealots might think so. And for as far as she knew, there was no space for God in the astral, either.

“Neither do I. It’s been too long.” She let out a breath of air, “And I was never catholic, anyway.” That had mattered so much, back at home. The Dutch world split in catholic and protestant, society built on those differences. Inge now thought they mattered little. “There’s something holy about the gardens too though, hm? And no, not often. I have been inside, though, once, maybe twice.” Mostly to see the art. “It’s beautiful. Do you come here much?” She stared at the towers again. “What is it you’re contemplating?”

Lukas almost hummed in agreement on the idea of it being too long. After all, it always seemed that he had just entered the church days ago. If he just calmed his mind he could hear the choir and see the lights streaming through the stained glass windows creating beautiful and awe inspiring lights across the altar, illuminating the scene as he held up the eucharist. 

Still, he knew that it had changed, and it was indeed too long. He knew that even the words had changed, he no longer knew them. He knew that if he tried to touch that sanctified chalice up to God that it would burn him. His hands already bore that fact time and time again. Things that he had loved were already long gone, and while he hadn’t wanted to accept that, the years blurred in a way so he did. 

At the woman’s words,  Lukas chuckled and said, “The gardens are open to everyone I would think.” He did think that, or else he wouldn’t be here on the borderlands between what was holy and what was damned. If he could be here, there was no reason that she couldn’t, no matter what God or path she followed. Perhaps at the end of times maybe one of the loudest people would have been proven right, but Lukas thought there was such a big time before that. 

“The gardens are lovely this time of year, they’ve always been my favorite,” Lukas said with a light nod. They seemed to hold life better than most places and while the Church inside was beautiful and peaceful, there was something about the peace in nature out here. “I try to come out here a couple of times a month.” It wasn’t truly a lie, but more so stated in the opposite. He only allowed himself the calmness of this place twice a month. He couldn’t get used to a  comfort blanket that wasn’t his after all.  “Do you come by often?” 

At the last question Lukas thought for a moment and said lightly, “I suppose what I think about good and evil and an individual’s position to even begin to answer those question. In front of a church it can be hard not to think about that, although I think that’s probably too big of a problem for me.” He had a sheepish smile on his face as he continued, “Did you have any thoughts on the subject?” 

A hum of thought exited her throat at those words, “These gardens are, at the very least.” Those behind the pearly gates of heaven were a little harder to access, weren’t they? Ah, what did it matter — it was hardly a subject to get upset about, in Inge’s case, though she found herself wondering sometimes. Whether it was all real, of course, and if so who had been admitted there.

Where had Vera gone, upon death? Was she up there, looking down? Were her own parents there, too? She wondered if her two still surviving siblings prayed for her. Inge hadn’t prayed for them in quite some time and wondered if perhaps she should, despite the fact that she hadn’t seen them in so long. Hard to do, with her appearance not having changed a bit in forty years. Hard to do, when they all reminded her so much of that horridly bleak and restrictive existence. 

She remembered, with striking clarity, going into the church back in those human days and asking the pastor for guidance. It had been when the nightmares had been at their worst, her mind fraying at the edges because of a constant state of terror. Is He punishing me?, she had asked, as he rubbed his hands and considered her question. There had been so little comfort in his answer, as he’d told her to keep faith.

Inge was glad she’d left the church, even if she hadn’t completely abandoned God. There was no priest or pastor that could speak to her existence any more. “They are very beautiful. A good place for contemplation. A good use of space, too.” She wondered how many vampires roamed this place at night. How the gravestones would look covered in the blood of their victims.

He expressed questions of good and evil. Inge shifted in her seat so she could look at him better. “No, it’s understandable. It’s a large question.” Not one that bothered her much in her personal life, as she didn’t let herself be held back by human debates of morality. But even she had her little moral codes. “I think, these days, I’ve started to see God as someone who’s capable of ambiguity, right? Good and evil.” These were words that would have plenty of her family pale. “And if we are made in His image, then so are we — good and evil. I suppose it is personal, at the end of the day, what you lean towards more. But it’s also natural, that both occur within and because of you.” 

“It’s easy to think, here at least,” Lukas replied about the gardens, thinking thoughtfully about how even in the summer they looked beautiful. Even in the evening, when most people found the Church ominous and there was a sense of forboden, there was something beautiful there. He had heard once, something about the sublime being even more compelling than the beautiful. Maybe that was one of the reasons the Church had always enraptured his soul. It was awe inspiring and compelling - to the point of ego destroying in itself. 

At her shift Lukas looked at the other, for a moment, thinking back to another woman who’d sat not unlike her talking about similar topics. It should have made him nervous, but instead he felt a kind of nostalgia he’d missed over the past decades. While his Angel always prodded and asked questions and gave answers, there was always a glint in her eyes that suggested she didn’t particularly care about her answers or his. She was always playing the devil’s advocate to his sincerity, and for some reason he didn’t think this stranger was. 

He listened carefully, and found himself agreeing with her. After all, had he not come up with a similar conclusion. Still, it was probably why he was sat out here instead of inside of the Church now, a heretic of the highest degree. “I find myself thinking similarly,” Lukas said softly, “After all, what is one without the other? If good or evil were to win over the other would it stop mattering? Theoretically of course, I don’t think in the here and now such ideas matter for day to day living.” 

Well, for most people he supposed they didn’t matter - but for the former Father they did deeply hurt. He fixated on the idea of good and evil - how a balance of them could be achieved. It was hubristic for him to think about this. It shouldn’t have been up to him to decide any of this, but without anyone seemingly looking down what else could he realistically choose? He was denied the ability to be good - that much was clear with what had happened to him. He wasn’t even Job, who could continue to weather the storm even if it seemed as if no God was hearing him. After all, he couldn’t even hold a rosary anymore, much less properly be resolved of sins. 

He had so many sins  on his soul now. It had been 7365 days since Lukas’s last confession after all, and he couldn’t be absolved of any of them. 

Looking back to his companion Lukas continued, “Do you think then that it is up to us then? To decide how much good or evil we contain? Or do you think it is out of our own control?” 

That much was true. The gardens were a good place to think. Inge wondered what it said about her, that she had come here — she wasn’t a person prone to contemplation or reflection, after all. She did it in her art, revisiting memories that had scathed her as a person, but she did not tend to sit down to think. And yet she’d come here, to this churchyard, and joined in on conversation the way she might have when she’d still been Ingeborg Beenhakker, that poor mortal woman. “It is indeed.” Nothing more was said on the matter.

She chalked it up to the gardens, that she was contemplative now. Speaking of morality, using God as a vessel through which to explain and grasp it. She was a woman of little moral qualms now, time and experience having hardened and desensitized her to a point where little held her back. But there were areas where she tried to be good, weren’t they? She cared for the earth and its climate, held social-economic ideas that were idealistic (even if her own greed sometimes went against them) and fought to remain progressive, even as she grew older.

And the things she did to others — that was, perhaps, objectively evil. But maybe all consumption was, especially these days. Mortals got their hands on unethically produced foods but would balk at the sight of a vampire drinking blood or a mare creating nightmares. To eat was to claim something for oneself, an inherent selfish act of care for your own body. To call it evil was redundant, useless. (Her methods, then, those were … questionable, morally speaking, but Inge was far beyond the idea of changing that. It improved her art. It improved some other mortals’ art. And she never took it too far where her sleepers died.) 

“No, I agree. They’re hypotheticals, thinking in black and white — which is at the end of the day, where we as people will always lose. If we humans exist in shades of gray, then so does God.” Inge stretched out her legs, placed her hands on the bench next to her thighs. “Which makes me feel conflicted about heaven and hell. It’s so binary, isn’t it? Purgatory exists, but still, I don’t think that brings the nuance the church sometimes lacks.” 

His question was interesting. Inge thought on it for a second, before shrugging. “Both. There are things outside of our control – the way this world functions, for example, or the things our natures demand of us.” This part was more true for herself and other undead, of course: humans hardly had instincts to harm others (and yet committed that harm all the same). “And yet there is always some semblance of choice. Again, there’s … no black or white answer here, hm?” 

Lukas listened to his companion closely, not wanting to think too much about how his hands looked bloody. He didn’t want to think about how many sins now weighed his immortal soul down. So instead he focused on Inge - something that kept the panic from bubbling up in him. 

She had a similar viewpoint to him, although Lukas didn’t think he was gray at all. He was stained, dragged down to something not quite demon but not at all human. Surely, humans were made to be this gray - easily tilted into either good or evil - but something like him? He must be dark. After all, sun burned his skin and he couldn’t even try to hold holy items. “I agree,” He said softly looking at the steeple thinking about how unfair it all was. 

He continued contemplating deeply, hardly paying attention to his words . “I also can’t help but think there are things in the world - maybe people who are that white and black you know? Maybe most are gray and those examples are there to show the edges. Maybe heaven to some in that case is hell to another. We are all just searching for something then, and maybe everything is just purgatory. ” He paused, and if he could have he might have blushed as he realized that he was thinking particularly raw emotional ideas out loud. “Apologies, I doubt I’m making much sense.” 

Still as she continued Lukas couldn’t help but focus on the ideas - something that was at the heart of his obsessions at times. “I can agree to that. It is possibly too much to ask to go against our own natures, but at the same time too permissive to suggest that we have no responsibilities.” He thought of that verbiage, wondering if he should write that down later. “It is gray too I suppose,” Lukas said with a little chuckle. “Maybe that’s why most of the old philosophers went mad, hm? Always thinking about the nature of good and evil. Still, it’s hard not to think about it.” 

It was hard for Lukas not to after all. Even as a human he thought about it constantly, and now that his ‘role’ was reversed it became even more important to him. If he was casted as a villain now, he should act like it right? Could good really exist without evil? Was it so wrong for him to want to push people to the edge to pull them back into immortality if they weren’t going to heaven anyway? After all, he couldn’t lead people to the light anymore, but he could lead them to immortality anyway. Didn’t those people deserve a chance too? 

Didn’t Lukas deserve a chance? 

Glancing at Inge, Lukas gave a small real smile and said, “I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, though. Thank you for sharing them. Thinking about this outloud is much more fun than thinking about them alone.” 

Things, he spoke of things, people as those things — Inge furrowed her brow at him, wondering what hid beneath his skin, behind those eyes. Was he something else, then? Not just a mere human, but something that no longer counted as a creation of God? Or maybe he was simply edgy, someone who thought differently than most mortals for no good reason besides having some weird philosophy that set some apart from others. 

“You make sense.” She shook her head in disagreement, though, “But no,” she said, “I don’t think there are people – or things – out there who are the perfect extreme, one way or the other. There is no such thing as complete evilness or complete goodness. Shades of gray — some darker, some lighter, but none of them completely one way or the other. It’s like with painting … you never use the pure white or pure black.” 

She had tried to get into philosophy, once, and some of it had appealed to her — but at the end of the day, Inge didn’t tend to think that deeply about life. She was a hedonist, if anything, someone who followed whim and desire and hunger, who cared little about consequence and implication. Some ideals came into play, but most of the time? The world might as well be a planet which revolved around her. (It was, admittedly, something that came with the territory of the loneliness she found herself caught in — but that wasn’t something she wished to admit, either. Her lack of reflection helped in this regard.)

“They thought too much and did too little. Perhaps if they had gone on a few more strolls or had partied some more …” She smirked. “But it’s an endless discussion, I suppose, that of free will and good and evil. No right answer.” Except, of course, her own opinion — but even that was subject to change. “At the end of the day it’s all so very nuanced that there’s no definitive way to answer it, hm?”

She liked that thought, anyway. The in-between space. To mark everything off with harsh lines was not only limiting, but dull too. Why should she call herself a villain, when there were humans more cruel than her – even if their impact wasn’t so directly measured? Why should others call themselves good when they had done plenty of mean things? People – immortal or otherwise – were not so easily defined. She would not be bound by it, anyway.