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sga_flashficChallenge: Personal Item
Title: Dominus Tecum
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Author: Brighid
Summary: The ultimate Hail Mary Pass.
Dominus Tecum
by Brighid
)0(
One of his first clear memories of his mother is with her rosary wrapped lightly around her clasped hands. She is kneeling in the church, and he is three, maybe four, shifting restlessly beside her. He reaches out to touch the dark glass beads, interspersed with amber, and they are warm to the touch. She opens her eyes, dark and smiling and she whispers, "Do you want to hold them too, Radek?" When he nods she takes his small hand in his own and loosely wraps a loop of beads around them both. She touches a dark bead and says, "We are here: Hail Mary, full of grace..." and he likes this one, because sometimes she sings it to him when he's half-asleep. They say it four times, her fingers touching his, moving them from dark bead to dark bead and then she says, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." She touches his nose at that and smiles.
Later, when they have left the church and are walking to his aunt and uncle's apartment, he asks, "Do we have to have the necklace to pray?"
His mother laughs. "No, no. We can pray anytime, and God, He always listens, as does the blessed Virgin. But the rosary ... it helps us to think about what we believe, what we know. It reminds us to have faith."
"Why?" Radek asks, because he does not understand any of this. It makes no sense at all. "Why do we need to be reminded?"
"Because sometimes, we get too busy or too sad or too angry and we forget, and when we forget, it makes us ... sad inside, and small, even if we don't notice at first." She swings his hand high as they walk, and the streets are full of people and the sky is bright above them and she says, "It is a good thing, to believe. Good for the heart."
)0(
The room is full of scientists, all of them excited, most of the frightened. Radek moves quietly through them, checking lists, checking inventory. He is both excited and terrified, but at the centre of him there is a stillness. He touches his shirt and feels the long, warm chain of glass beads against his skin, tracing his fingers down to the crucifix. He thinks, perhaps, that some of that warmth is from years and years of it slipping between his mother's fingers; that somehow, something of her belief has imbued it.
Radek himself is not a particularly religious man. He stopped going to church except on the Holy Days of Obligation and Easter with his mother. He sees God as equations and clean lines that stretch to infinity and mathematics that are cool and precise and perfect. The creator of the world he lives in is remote and abstract, an idea rather than an act.
He thinks, however, that he finally has some small idea of what his mother meant by faith, by the need to believe. He looks at the gate and it is ... a thing of such possibility that inside of himself something that has always been small and narrow is suddenly blooming, like roses; it is as joyous as the memory of his mother's dark eyes. He thinks, if he were another man, that he might kneel and pray. As it is, he touches the rosary beneath his shirt and quietly recites the litany of equations that let space and time fold away and link together worlds.
)0(
End
Title: Dominus Tecum
Spoilers: None
Rating: G
Author: Brighid
Summary: The ultimate Hail Mary Pass.
Dominus Tecum
by Brighid
)0(
One of his first clear memories of his mother is with her rosary wrapped lightly around her clasped hands. She is kneeling in the church, and he is three, maybe four, shifting restlessly beside her. He reaches out to touch the dark glass beads, interspersed with amber, and they are warm to the touch. She opens her eyes, dark and smiling and she whispers, "Do you want to hold them too, Radek?" When he nods she takes his small hand in his own and loosely wraps a loop of beads around them both. She touches a dark bead and says, "We are here: Hail Mary, full of grace..." and he likes this one, because sometimes she sings it to him when he's half-asleep. They say it four times, her fingers touching his, moving them from dark bead to dark bead and then she says, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." She touches his nose at that and smiles.
Later, when they have left the church and are walking to his aunt and uncle's apartment, he asks, "Do we have to have the necklace to pray?"
His mother laughs. "No, no. We can pray anytime, and God, He always listens, as does the blessed Virgin. But the rosary ... it helps us to think about what we believe, what we know. It reminds us to have faith."
"Why?" Radek asks, because he does not understand any of this. It makes no sense at all. "Why do we need to be reminded?"
"Because sometimes, we get too busy or too sad or too angry and we forget, and when we forget, it makes us ... sad inside, and small, even if we don't notice at first." She swings his hand high as they walk, and the streets are full of people and the sky is bright above them and she says, "It is a good thing, to believe. Good for the heart."
)0(
The room is full of scientists, all of them excited, most of the frightened. Radek moves quietly through them, checking lists, checking inventory. He is both excited and terrified, but at the centre of him there is a stillness. He touches his shirt and feels the long, warm chain of glass beads against his skin, tracing his fingers down to the crucifix. He thinks, perhaps, that some of that warmth is from years and years of it slipping between his mother's fingers; that somehow, something of her belief has imbued it.
Radek himself is not a particularly religious man. He stopped going to church except on the Holy Days of Obligation and Easter with his mother. He sees God as equations and clean lines that stretch to infinity and mathematics that are cool and precise and perfect. The creator of the world he lives in is remote and abstract, an idea rather than an act.
He thinks, however, that he finally has some small idea of what his mother meant by faith, by the need to believe. He looks at the gate and it is ... a thing of such possibility that inside of himself something that has always been small and narrow is suddenly blooming, like roses; it is as joyous as the memory of his mother's dark eyes. He thinks, if he were another man, that he might kneel and pray. As it is, he touches the rosary beneath his shirt and quietly recites the litany of equations that let space and time fold away and link together worlds.
)0(
End
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 05:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 05:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:03 pm (UTC)I'm pagan, myself, but the magic of Catholicism is still so pretty and haunting... Even now aspects of it follow me, as they have Radek.
And it's Radek fic, so really, how can you go wrong?
.a.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:30 pm (UTC)My.
Yes.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:33 pm (UTC)Beautifully written as always too
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:38 pm (UTC)Beautiful. Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 06:59 pm (UTC):)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 07:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 07:19 pm (UTC)Zelenka is just so special, isn't he?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 07:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 08:02 pm (UTC)Dominus Tecum
I'm not much on Latin and I'm curious -- can you translate this for the Latin-challenged? *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 08:18 pm (UTC)B
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 08:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 08:47 pm (UTC)^_^
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 09:50 pm (UTC)Thanks for this.
I ran out of all the good adjectives
Date: 2005-08-18 11:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-18 11:54 pm (UTC)this is *perfect*: "and quietly recites the litany of equations that let space and time fold away and link together worlds."
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 12:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 03:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 03:17 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 03:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-19 05:17 am (UTC)all of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-20 04:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-20 09:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-20 11:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-21 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-21 07:45 pm (UTC)He is both excited and terrified, but at the centre of him there is a stillness.
This is great -- helps to explain how Radek can just keep doing his job amidst crisis (and how he can deal so well with McKay).
I'm with others in loving the way Radek sees God in the precision of mathematics. And the last line is truly beautiful and perfect.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-22 09:50 am (UTC)Thank You
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-22 10:34 am (UTC)Ok, now I want more Radek! : throws away McShep flag, pulls out Zlinky one:
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-22 03:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-23 06:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-25 04:11 am (UTC)Oh, yes.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-25 04:30 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-27 11:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-07 12:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-20 02:28 pm (UTC)did you ever read Sara Douglass' Threshold? it's a fantasy novel, but God-as-maths figures in heavily, and the way your writing is very fluid and reminds me of those pictures of ribbons floating in space brings Threshold to mind...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-27 11:14 am (UTC)