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The first thing you see is his eyes.
You are a nothing, a nonsense, something you cannot comprehend, but you see his eyes, oil-slick black with those too-bright white rings in the center, and it hurts to look at them, hurts to look at him , whoever he is. His arms are around you, and his lips are moving, saying something you cannot comprehend. Everything hurts, and then it doesn’t – all of a sudden, you can’t feel anything. Just his arms, just his breath on your face. He is speaking still, and as your self begins to crystallize, slowly, knitting back together into some semblance of a consciousness, you begin to understand.
I love you I love you I love you I lo
You have never heard these words before, but some part of you feels them, feels them as you feel his arms around you. Something wet falls onto your face and you realize he is crying, and then you are crying, and then your eyes are closing and you’re slipping down, down, down into nothingness again.
When you open your eyes again, you are no longer in his arms. Some part of you resents this, some part of you misses their warmth, so different from the cool of the sheets you’re tucked into, so much softer than the lumpy pillow beneath your head. You turn and find him there, in a chair next to you, staring at you with those nightmare eyes, at once both terrifying and comforting. You blink. You want him to look away. You want him to never stop looking.
He brightens, seeing you awake. He clasps your hand in his, and he is warm, and he is smiling, and he is saying I missed you, which confuses you, because you don’t know who he is. And yet, in your chest, you feel a tug towards him, an inkling of a feeling that tells you you missed him too, whoever he is. He calls you by a name you do not understand – Mercymorn – and keeps holding your hand in both of his, and tells you there’s another, someone else he wants you to meet, someone else he brought back. He does not tell you what he brought you back from. He does not tell you why. He only tells you he loves you, and he missed you, and that one day, when you’re ready, he’ll tell you more. You want to tell him you’re ready now, but you can’t find the words, and at your expression he just smiles again, sadder this time, and pats your hand. You’re tired again, so, so tired, and when you close your eyes you still see that smile, and something about it makes your insides turn.
The next time you awaken, there is someone else there. You can’t see them, whoever they are, but you can feel them, somehow. Another presence. He – your Creator, the man who made you, your God – is holding your hands again, kissing your forehead, your cheeks, smiling down at you, saying softly, Good morning, Mercy. Remember how I told you there was someone I wanted you to meet?
It’s the other he told you about before. Someone else. An unfamiliar feeling, twisting and ugly, rears in your gut. You barely know this man – you barely know anything – but a part of you hates the idea of sharing him. You want to be the only one – the only one he smiles at, the only one he holds, the only one he talks to in that soft, lilting voice. His light has saved you, you’re beginning to realize distantly, and you do not want it shining on anyone else. You shake your head. You try to speak to him the way he speaks to you, but your mouth won’t form the right shapes. You make an unlovely sound in the back of your throat, and he smiles, sympathetic but not altogether kind, and beckons the other person over.
This is Augustine, he says. The new person does not speak. His eyes are cool grey, and they’re white where your Creator’s are black. You do not like these eyes. You do not like this person – man? – and yet part of you yearns to reach for him, to pull him close to you, to take refuge in his arms. More than anything, this frightens you. Your Creator smiles again, his expression still a curious mix of care and something darker, something that puts you on edge. I hope the two of you will get along.
Augustine says nothing. You struggle to raise yourself up, to sit, dimly aware of the concept of dignity. You are tired of lying nearly insensate, unable to help yourself, unable to do more than look around and gurgle. It insults you, insults a part of yourself you do not yet fully comprehend, but that seems to govern you nonetheless. Your Creator rushes to your side, cooing and whispering and shhh- ing in a way that is meant to comfort but only burns. He tells you you aren’t ready to sit up yet. You make another ugly noise in indignation, and keep trying to push yourself up. The new person – Augustine – makes a sound that you do not like. The distant part of you, the part that is clawing its way back to the surface with every second you spend awake, registers it as a laugh. You knit your eyebrows together and stare at him. The sound stops.
Your Creator tells you to go back to sleep, and ushers the new person out of the room. You’re still struggling to sit – you do not want to sleep. You want to learn, you want to understand. He slides his fingers over your eyelids, gently but firmly. Sleep now, he says. There will be time for all that later.
You don’t want to obey, but you cannot help it. He has done something to you. Exhaustion washes over you suddenly and thickly, and you try try try to fight it, that scrambling, clawing part of you insisting on consciousness, but it loses against whatever he has done, and you know no more.
Your Creator keeps the stranger away from you for a while. For this you are grateful. He helps you to eat, to drink, to speak. He tells you his name, John, and helps you round out the single syllable on your tongue, speaks his own name exaggeratedly while holding your gaze with his too-dark eyes so you can mirror the shape of the lips, the tap of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. It isn’t hard to learn. The first time you say it, which is also the first time any real word has passed your lips, it feels natural. It feels as if you’ve said it a thousand times before. Speaking comes easier after that. It’s not so much learning as it is remembering . You begin to talk to him – to John, to God, to the man that made you. He tries many times to explain to you that he didn’t make you, not really, that he merely brought you back, but he still won’t tell you from what. When you ask, he smiles that hungry, sad smile, and tells you he’ll tell you when you’re ready. The clawing, aching part of you thinks that he is lying, that he will never tell you, or that you will never be ready. You aren’t sure whether to blame him or yourself for that.
You tell him, My resurrection is also my creation. You tell him, You made me as I am now. You tell him, I do not remember. When will I remember?
He does not answer. He smiles that awful smile, clasps your hands in his, and leaves the room.
One morning – evening? Time still eludes you – you wake suddenly to grey eyes above you, a cool hand on your arm. Most of you panics, even as the locked away center of you shudders in relief, telling you to lean in to the touch, to pull him closer. You do not listen to this part of yourself much anymore. You’ve gotten used to him, but his presence still unnerves you. More accurately, the way you react to his presence still unnerves you – that subconscious yearning that you still can’t explain.
You say, Where is John?, and Augustine barks out that laugh that you hated so much when you were new. You still hate it now, you think, but it scares you less. At least that’s something. You repeat your question. His hand is still on your arm. You do not know why you haven’t flinched away. You do not know why he has put it there.
I wanted to talk to you alone, he says, which is really not an answer to what you asked, and you tell him as much. He quirks his eyebrows in what you think must be amusement. You ask him why. His face does something curious, then – it tightens, somehow, loses its languid sense of ease, becomes something darker. Something almost fearful. He looks at you like that for a long moment, searching, you think, but for what you do not know.
What do you remember?, he asks finally, still staring at you with that uneasy expression, still holding your arm. You do not know what to say. You do not know how to tell him that when you’ve tried, you’ve found only darkness, but that sometimes John will say something, or look at you a certain way, or make a joke only he finds funny, and you’ll feel a twinge, a tugging at the back of your mind, a feeling of unmistakable familiarity that makes you feel as though if you only dug deeper, thought harder, you could find something, anything, some scrap of memory from your dead self. You do not know how to tell him that when you see him , Augustine, when he touches you as he’s doing now, some part of you bends toward him, craves that touch, even as the rest of you insists he is as new to you as everything else. You do not know how to tell him that that locked-away, scrabbling part of you turns cold at the sight of John sometimes, that other times it feels like that part of you needs him more than you’ve ever needed anything in your whole short life.
Nothing, you say finally, sliding out of his grasp, watching his face go slack. I remember nothing.
You don’t think he believes you. He doesn’t ask again.