A meeting of minds (closed to Jeremy)

[3arthangel]

((Happens after the agree to meet again here))

The village was small, but no smaller than Apharah's or Sobran's. It had both water and forest and Xas wandered between both. That there were angels here another other beings fascinated him; he feared nothing. But still, as he would have away from this place, he wandered, still, perhaps looking. For what, though, he was no longer sure.

He sensed, however, the change of energy, the snap of the one for whom Xas had no category. He saw him, sitting on a bench and went, sitting too, leaning back, eyes on the sky; he could feel the bench slats against the cuts in his back; the muscles flexed as if still trying to settle wings that were long ago gone. "Hello," he said easily.

Jeremy peered from under the rim of his hat and smiled, speaking softly.

Xas had, for Jeremy, no thoughts, no feelings, no memories that he could sense, that he could feel. He had to admit it made sitting like this feel almost peaceful. Almost because Jeremy still had this overwhelming urge to go home. He wanted to go home.

There was no home for Xas. He'd traveled where there was to travel and there was no one place to call home. He would tell Jeremy that were the boy to ask. Instead, he asked, as he would have Sobran when he was younger, "what news?"

After Jeremy rocked a bit in his seat he shrugged, looking out, away. Further. "Nothing. I can't go home. I tried." But the village, something, an energy he couldn't place always brought him back here. Right here. This bench. His pale fingers gripped the seat on either side of him with Powder still trying to figure it out.

"We cannot leave." It was true. And curious. Xas had always left. But here they were on this bench. "Tell me of your home," he asked the boy, finally turning to look at him, the skin he wanted to touch.

Jeremy didn't like the idea of not being able to leave. He also didn't like that he couldn't understand why there were things he couldn't understand … or even feel. He looked at Xas with a mix of awe and curiosity.

"I live in a farm," he replied, finally. "You've been on a farm?" Odd that Powder had to ask when usually he'd already know.

"I have been on many farms," Xas told him with a smile, amused. "Many a vineyard. I had my own garden as well."

That made Jeremy smile. "What did you have in your garden?" And he would have to ask about the vineyards, too. He'd read about them.

"It took a very long time," Xas confessed, leaning in to utter the words quietly with a smile. "I had to create the dirt and that took a very long time. And worms."

"So you had dirt and worms in your garden?" Jeremy said with a teasing smile that he ducked to hide. "Did you have flowers? Pretty things in your garden?" He wanted to picture it because Xas had no images in his mind that Jeremy was privy to.

"Pretty things?" Xas asked, mouth in an amused smirk. "What use are pretty things? Can you eat them?" But his words lacked edge. He touched Jeremy's knuckles, his fingers cool. "You have never seen a grapevine, have you. It is not pretty, but it provides the grapes for the wine."

Jeremy's hand skittered back, brows drawn, forehead creased as he tipped his face toward Xas. It wasn't as if he was afraid of the touch, or, maybe he was, because Xas was one he couldn't reach, one he couldn't see from the inside. What was worse was that by touching him, Xas might be the one to be able to see him. Jeremy wasn't sure he was ready for that.

"Everything is beautiful," Jeremy told him. "The truth is beautiful. Like … things in a garden. I-I wanted to see it but with you … I c-can't."

Head cocked even further, Xas frowned thoughtfully. "What do you mean?"

"With you--" Jeremy stressed his words, looking intently at Xas while pointing a very pale finger in the middle of his forehead. "I can't see. Everyone else I've met, I've seen what they've seen..." But not Xas and it was something puzzling.

"Is that so." With a small smile, Xas leaned in, his forehead touching Jeremy's finger. His skin too was cool; he might have smelled like leaves. "You have a special gift, then."

Jeremy, unlike earlier when Xas tried to touch him, didn't pull his hand back. "I don't know if it's a gift. Grandma says it's cos I'm a fast learner." He tried not to think if it's from God because God took his mother.

"You learn so quickly that you can see the thoughts of others?" All things were possible. Xas leaned back, looking around again. "My garden has what can grow with little water and little light with great heat. It can be called not very beautiful."

He got a shrug. "I'm not like other people." Jeremy looked away, the connection, Xas finger on his forehead, was severed. "You don't find your own garden beautiful? Then why do you have one?"

"Because I wanted one," he was told. Xas smiled some. "There is a farm here. Have you seen it? Things growing there; it is very peaceful." Perhaps he would be employed there if he needed to. "I've noticed that you are different. I can feel it too, you know."

That made Jeremy look back at Xas. "You can feel me?" He asked, brows drawn. He'd seen the farm, felt it. He'd like to go there but it still wasn't the same as going home.

"You have an - " How to describe it? " - an energy," Xas finally said. "It is crackling around you."

Jeremy smiled softly. "My Grandma said I have an electric personality." The smile bloomed brighter for a brief moment before Jeremy looked down, brim of his hat covering those violet eyes. "Why can't I feel you?"

"Because I am not human," Xas told him, watching his face, his profile, the curve of his shoulders. "Does that bother you?"

"That you're not human or that you're different?" Jeremy asked although he knew his answer already. He shook his head. "It doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you that you look more human than I do."

"Why would that bother me?" Xas asked, that amused smile on his face again. But then it occurred to him. "You are used to being judged."

"They're afraid of me." Jeremy reached up and pulled his hat off his bald head, placing it on his lap. "A lot of people are. You're not human but they'll accept you more than they would me." It was the truth. It was simply the human condition.

He was not wrong. Humans were an interesting species, flawed, just as God had foreseen. Xas reached out, fingers glancing along the smoothness of Jeremy's head and away. "I do not fear you." He feared very little.

There was a brief moment once Jeremy first felt Xas and his touch that he looked like he cringed, body shaky as he tried to pull away like he was pained. And he was, but in a different way. A longing that hurt on the inside.

"Why?" Jeremy asked, looking down, away, but inexplicably feeling bereft that the touch had come and gone. It wasn't like when Mr. Ripley touched him. That one lingered. "Why aren't you afraid?"

"You cannot hurt me and you do not threaten me," he was told, Xas watching his face. "I find you very interesting."

A lot of people found Jeremy interesting. At least that one was nothing new and now, not at all surprising anymore. "Do you mean that I can't do things to you? Because you're not human? LIke when I can't feel what you're thinking."

"Can't do what sorts of things?" Xas asked, ducking his head to look at the boy's face. "You cannot harm me and you cannot kill me. You might not be able to see my thoughts. Are you referring to something else?"

Jeremy remained quiet for a moment until his arm stretched out slowly in front of him. He looked right at Xas and said, "take my hand." He kept telling himself that he wasn't going to open up and let him see. This was going to be something else.

Curious, Xas did as he was told, pressing Jeremy's hand between his.

What Xas would see was the smile brighten on Jeremy's face while his eyes moved from Xas to the top of his head. "Feel that?"

It took a moment and Xas smiled as well, amusement giving way to delight. "Why yes I do," the angel said. "The crackle that I sensed."

Jeremy nodded, chuckling softly. It sounded deceptively like a giggle. "You're hair's standing," he pointed out.

"Is it?" Xas reached up with a hand and smiled more broadly. "You are special, then, Jeremy."

Jeremy was slow to let go. He wasn't anyone special. "If you're not human, what are you?" He finally dared ask.

"I'm an angel," Xas told him evenly, hands again resting on his knees. "A fallen angel, I suppose, if you wish me to be specific."

He'd read about angels and Jeremy's face took on a inquisitive expression. "Fallen? Why?" He was curious.

Xas's face grew darker, bitterness twisting his mouth before it cleared. Sobran had gone mad when he'd found this out. "If I tell you," he said, "you may find you no longer wish my company."

"I like your company," Jeremy told him. Because being around Xas was ... quiet. No thoughts, no memories, no mind noises. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to."

After studying Jeremy's face, Xas spoke quietly. "I followed Lucifer to Hell after the war of the angels."

Jeremy took that information in, he's read about this one, and remained quiet as he pondered Xas's revelation. "You ... had a reason ... to do that, right? To follow ...?"

Amused again, darkly so, Xas asked, "did I need a reason?" He had one, after all, but still.

Looking at his hands now wringing on his lap, Jeremy shook his head before peering back at Xas. "I'm sure you have them," he shook his head again slowly. "I don't need to know."

"It is a long and complicated story." Xas caught Jeremy's hands again, smoothing and soothing them between his palms. "And as I like your company as well, I do not wish to soil your opinion of me."

The touch made Jeremy both want to recoil and hold on. It made his breath come out shaky but it was as Xas intended it to be: soothing, that he didn't pull his hand back.

"Someone thought I was an angel once," Jeremy shared, voice soft.

"Did they?" Amusement once again made Xas look over. "What did you say?"

"She was sick and couldn't talk anymore ... I didn't say anything. It was more important I get her message to her husband." He smiled gently at Xas then looked down at how the angel's hands clasped his very pale one. It felt ... good... to be touched.

"Ah." Xas nodded, rapt on the expression in Jeremy's face. "The chance to bring joy." It was addictive.

"To help." Jeremy's forehead creased. "She was dying and she couldn't go because she worried about her son, her husband. She said she believed in miracles because her son found her wedding ring lost years ago, and it brought her family back together." So did her death. "I don't think she found joy but peace."

"Are those not the same sort of thing?" Xas asked, smiling. "Is peace not like joy?" He finally gently released Jeremy's hands, setting them on the boy's knee. "What happened then?"

"She died," Jeremy said with a shrug. "Not away, just ... out." And everywhere, her energy was everywhere. "I think peace is more than joy," he told Xas then, purple eyes intent on the angel's face. "Peace is quiet and content. Something I wanted." But instead of going out, home, he was taken here.

"Are you disappointed that you have not been giving peace?" Since the boy spoke in past tense. "Do you resent it?"

"I just want to go home." Peace. He wanted peace. Away from the people who mocked him, hurt him. But he shook his head. He didn't resent it. There were still people beautiful on the inside that he had met.

"Tell me of home," Xas urged. Since he had no such place to speak of.

"It's on a farm," Jeremy told him again, very aware of the weight of Xas's hand on his knee that still made him feel like skittering away. "I help out until the sun gets too high." And it hurts his eyes. "Then I stay down in the cellar and read." It was as close to peace as he got.

"Can you not do those things here?" Xas asked. "There is a farm. There are books." He looked around the village. "But it isn't the place, is it. It is who was there." Just as it had been with Sobran.

Jeremy dragged his eyes from Xas and his face, his hand on his knee to look out over the park. "They were afraid of me, but I knew they loved me."

"Love," Xas sighed. "It is a complicated thing. Something so simple is far from that." He'd thought himself above it for so long. Now, he knew better.

"It could be simple but people complicate it." Jeremy said, nodding. "I still want to go home ... this place ... it's not home." He wondered if Xas felt that way. He doubted it.

There was no home. Xas gently squeezed Jeremy's knee and let go, lacing his fingers together. "If we cannot go … home … will you be unhappy here?"

He didn't know how to answer that. Jeremy didn't know any other place but the farm. The Center wasn't pleasant and he knew he didn't like it there. "I don't know," he answered truthfully, "this place isn't the same as the town they moved me to."

"It isn't," though Xas didn't know it, simply taking the boy's word for it. "I have found," he noted, lightly. "That people have a great deal of control over whether they are happy or not. If you want to be unhappy, I suppose you can."

"I suppose." Jeremy looked over. "What about you? Are you ... happy here?"

"I am not sure those labels apply to me," Xas noted, amused again and thoughtful. "It was not something that I would have ever given a thought to in times before."

"if you think about it now ... what would your answer be?" Jeremy asked, brows drawn with curiosity.

"I am," Xas said after a moment's thought. "... content. This place is no different from anywhere else."

That was an interesting reply that Jeremy didn't expect. It was harder to when he couldn't listen from the inside. He watched Xas and his face, the expressions, the scar and his hand reached out and hovered before them. "People still look. Everywhere I go. They still look." Not as much but still ... " So, no, it wasn't that different than anywhere else. Except the farm.

"They will look - that will not change," Xas answered, urging Jeremy's hand to his cheek with his own. "It is your choice how you choose to react. You are better than they are. They cannot affect you if you wish them not to."

A pale finger moved down to follow that scar, Jeremy wishing he could see into the memory of what put it there. It still saddened him because Xas was beautiful. Probably the most beautiful man Jeremy had seen.

"I ignore them," he spoke, still touching, eyes fixed on his finger moving. "...but sometimes they come to me. They push and tease and..." spewing hurtful words. John especially even though the other boy did it to mask his own hurt. It still made Jeremy angry. He began to pull his hand back.

Xas caught the retreating hand. "Humans can be cruel. If anyone pushes you here, though, I will protect you." It was the least he could do.

Jeremy tried to pull his hand away again. "Why?"

Amusement returned to the angel's features. "Why not?"

There must be a reason. Something behind those eyes. Jeremy felt lost, unable to sense anything. "Because you don't have to. Because you have a choice."

"And I choose this. I have made a great many choices; I've regretted only a handful." Xas cupped Jeremy's cheek as he smiled.

A small choked sound crawled out of his throat and Jeremy closed his eyes tightly, his eyes downcast. He was confused. Confused. He shook his head because he didn't know. Unlike Mr. Ripley because with him, Jeremy knew it was true.

Why would Xas want to do this? Why did he touch? And Jeremy craved it now that he leaned his cheek against the cool palm; he couldn't help himself.

"Do you think you'd regret this choice?" Jeremy asked, still not looking at Xas.

Moving his hand to touch more, Xas watched, eyes wide and unblinking. "Why would I?" He would take care, not get too close. This is what he told himself.

"...because I'm not like other people." Jeremy peered slowly up at Xas. In his chest it felt like a thunderstorm was brewing, lightning next to come, already making his skin prickle with a tingling current.

"I know you aren't." Xas said it again, expression gentle. "You keep saying that as if it would change my mind." He could be very stubborn, even if Jeremy didn't know that.

Jeremy looked over and smiled small and crooked - flickering on then off. He kind of hoped that Xas wouldn't change his mind. He still didn't think he needed friends but it was nice to have someone there. Like Jess, like Lindsey and Mr. Ripley, like the Sheriff even if they still didn't quite understand.

Maybe Xas understood, being an angel and all. Maybe he didn't. It was very hard for Jeremy to tell.

"Don't change your mind." Said softly, sounding almost like a plea.

Xas smiled, just a little bit, brushing his fingers and palm along Jeremy's cheek and head. Even when Sobran went mad, Xas did not give up on him, not over nearly five years. He would not change his mind.

Jeremy watched Xas and the expression on his face, trying to understand what it meant but no insight was forthcoming. He wouldn't ask anymore. No more whys. At least no more today.

Not when his touch was soothing and calming; it felt like the beginning of a promise.

"So how much are you like me?" Which made Jeremy smile because none were really like him but he meant how human? How similar were they, really? He wanted to know, and he didn't want Xas's touch to stop.

"I don't know," Xas responded quietly. "I can speak to the dead, I cannot … spark … like you can. I cannot die and I cannot age." His smile returned gently. "How like you am I?"

"Not much," Jeremy replied, but slowly a smile broadened on his lips. "I was thinking more about food. Do you eat?" Although the rest of what Xas said made Jeremy curious, he didn't pry.

"I eat for the taste," the angel told him. "You can tell where a food came from by its taste. Wine as well. Do you like wine, Jeremy?"

Jeremy shook his head, ducking it before peering up at Xas again. "I've read about it." He's never had it. It wasn't as if his grandparents drank such things. "... and I don't think I want to think about where something comes from when I have bologne in my sandwich." He grinned crookedly.

Smiling if only because Jeremy was, Xas said, "we shall have wine one day." He soothed his hand over Jeremy's head once more before lacing his fingers again.

He shivered, feeling little sparks dispersing off his skin when the hand, the touch had gone. "Okay." Jeremy gave Xas a smile pulling back a bit more, away, shoulders hunched over. At least it meant he'd see Xas again.

"Will you stay sitting here?" Xas asked as he stood "Will you not walk with me?"

Jeremy looked up, squinting at Xas then slowly standing. "I walked and walked already. I went around in circles trying to find a way out." All it did was make him walk around in circles. "If you don't mind us sauntering aimlessly, then, okay." He put on his hat then his glasses.

"That is what I have done most of my time on earth," Xas said quietly. "There is something, though, always, to see. Don't you think?"

Jeremy agreed. At least this time around he could feel the earth, touch things, feel nature alive under his palms and not be finding a way out. "Did you walk ... alone?" He asked, looking at Xas through dark glasses.

"Much of the time, yes." It was much slower than flying. "I've known a great many people. From all over the world."

"...and still none like me." Jeremy smiled at him, there and gone. It still sounded lonely, what Xas did, and lonely was something Jeremy knew.

"And no, none like you." Xas walked next to him, his hands in his pockets, head up, looking around. "What do you think of this place's insistence that we get a job?"

"I've never had a job before except helping my grandfather at the farm. Working would be good instead of being idle," and lonely. It was also just as Jeremy suspected, there was no one like him, which meant he really didn't belong anywhere. He checked a sigh.

"I've done a great many things. Perhaps I will work at the farm," Xas noted, looking over at Jeremy. The angel was used to human emotion, the rage, self-pity, intense swings of joy and sorrow. Jeremy seemed to live much in his head; Xas wouldn't press.

"You want to work at a farm?" Jeremy asked, partly in disbelief. "Has this anything to do with you mentioning vineyards?" He never forgot that Xas had talked about it earlier. They walked together with no particular destination, slow and leisurely, each step made Jeremy feel the life that flowed over the grass and earth he stepped on.

"And my garden," Xas said with a nod. "I have some luck -" To say the least - "with making things grow. Perhaps I can help at the farm here. What do you think, Jeremy?"

"I think it's a good idea ...maybe we should go together and ask?" He gave a small smile. Working would be beneficial for him, he knew, and farms meant away from the general population. Quiet save for nature.

A smile. Xas returned it and nodded. "We shall. And you can work away from the sun at times, as well. Do you like the moon, Jeremy?"

Jeremy shrugged a shoulder slowly. "It's better than the sun," he told Xas, head tilted, watching his face and puzzling through the expressions he saw, cataloging them in his mind. "It doesn't hurt my eyes. Do you like the moon?" He asked in return.

"I do. Though I don't mind the sun." After all, nothing could hurt Xas, not really. "Ah, but the stars," the angel added. "Those are my favorite."

The expression on his face and the tone on his voice made Jeremy smile. "I like the stars," he said in return. "Do you stay out at night and just look at them?" He did, back home.

"I do." Xas did not need to sleep so he had a lot of time to look. "You are welcome to join me. There is a bluff overlooking the lake that makes for a good place to sit."

"I think I'd like that." Jeremy replied earnestly, reaching out and touching the trunk of a nearby tree they passed, his pale hand sliding on the rough bark, feeling its life under his hand. "So, what other things do you like to do with your time?"

"I walk," Xas said quietly, smiling. "And I talk to people." Both living and dead. "I observe. I learn. And you, Jeremy?"

"When the sun is too high I stay in the cellar. It's cold there and dark and I build things or read. I stay there when there are storms, too." Which made him look up in the sky. It was coming; he could feel it.

"Because you channel it, is that it?" Xas asked, taking a guess from what they'd experienced earlier. "Or do you draw it?"

"I feel it wanting to come to me." Jeremy looked back down. And it made him afraid until right before he came here when he gave himself over to the energy. But now … it was back to how things had always been.

"Ah." Xas watched Jeremy as they walked. "There are those," he said mildly, "who would think you something like a god."

That made his forehead crease as Jeremy looked at Xas intently. "I'm not a god. Where I come from they think I'm a freak." An oddity. An it. He'd been called so many things. God wasn't one of them.

"So you've told me," Xas replied mildly, face untroubled. "Perhaps here, you will learn to move beyond labels others give you and find some for yourself."

"Maybe." It was, for Jeremy, a lot to ask since he'd seen very little of that where he came from. He looked back toward the path they were taking, hearing the rustle of the leaves on the trees and the breeze whistling as they walked by.

"You don't apply labels to yourself … should I apply any to me?" Jeremy asked then, as they reached a fork in the road. Which way to go?

They would to the left for philosophical reasons. "There are many labels that can be applied to me," Xas told Jeremy. "But they are not entirely who I am, are they?"

"No they're not. It doesn't to anyone, I don't think." Even him. Jeremy followed Xas's lead and took the path on the left. "I'm just … me. Powder. That's what they call me. I don't think of that as a label anymore." Just a name.

"Exactly. Therefore, being called things like 'freak' do not matter."

For Xas the matter was settled.

The path was well-worn and as they walked, grass and dirt gave way to sand. The beach.

Jeremy looked up and stopped short, breath catching. He'd only read about the ocean and the beach. He squinted even through his dark glasses, the sand and water reflecting the sun.

Slowly he looked behind them, seeing where they came from and how different everything was when he turned back around. It was … beautiful. He looked back up at Xas, unable not to smile.

Xas returned the smile, his hand in the small of Jeremy's back. "Take off your shoes. Walk in the sand."

"You, too?" He looked unsure but Jeremy sat down on the ground and took his boots off, then his socks, wiggling his toes a bit, pale like the rest of him before he took his place beside Xas again.

He was already shoeless so Xas smiled again. He held out his hand to steady Jeremy if it was needed; the sand would be warm.

They'd walk in the sand. Something that Jeremy had only read about. He looked at Xas a moment, already feeling the small grains of sand under his feet. Then, he took a tenative step forward.

It was like a surge of energy that went through him and Jeremy had to hold on to Xas tightly. He could feel the water rushing to shore, the waves as it kissed the sand, the breeze that brought a saltiness in the air. Connected. Everything was connected.

Covering Jeremy's hand with his own on his arm, Xas walked with him toward the water, slow, steady steps, their toes sinking into the sand. The energy was there, he could feel it. God's creation, yes, however flawed, still remarkable.

Once his feet were in the water, the sand under them wet and darker, he could wiggle his toes then sink them in the wet sand. He was smiling down, the heat seeming not to bother him, as was the sun. It was all so new that it awed Jeremy, overwhelmed him.

"Did you, in your walks, go to the sea a lot?" Jeremy asked Xas, finally looking back up.

"I have walked near many seas," Xas told him. "Lakes, streams and rivers, as well." But he felt it too, the peace that came from water.

"I think … I like the beach," Jeremy told him with a small, wondrous smile. "It feels different here." It wasn't just peace but a serene energy that just flowed and flowed like the waves lapping the shore only to go back out again. Leaving, then coming home.

"Then I will expect to find you here often," Xas told him, squeezing Jeremy's hand. "That," he said, pointing. "Is the bluff I suggested."

"Can we go there?" Jeremy asked as he looked up at the bluff then back at Xas. "I want to see what you see."

"Of course. Are you all right under the sun?" Xas asked, ever conscientious.

He nodded. "I have my hat and these help." The glasses. He'd have to start wearing his contacts again if he planned on being out longer in the sun. Jeremy slowly moved toward the bluff Jeremy pointed to, the sand gritty and sticking to the bottoms of his feet.

The path to the bluff was smooth dirt as well and not difficult to navigate. There, Xas guided Jeremy right to the edge to sit, his feet dangling over. He patted the ground next to himself.

Jeremy still had no shoes on and the hem of his pants were slightly damp. He folded them up and exposed more pale, hairless legs before he sat down next to Xas, hands pinned between his knees with his shoulders hunched up. "It's pretty here. I see why it would be more beautiful when the stars are out."

"We shall come back and see. Or sit here until it gets dark," Xas answered, looking out beyond the shore to the water. "The stars always appear." Like he did, he supposed.

"We can stay … unless a storm comes." Then Jeremy would have to leave before the lightning sought him out. "Unless you have somewhere else where you have to be?"

"I have nowhere else to be," Xas said with that trace of amusement back in his voice. "I will sit here with you, Jeremy. Unless a storm comes. Perhaps even if it comes."

Oh that made him shake his head. "No. You can't. You might get hurt." That was worrisome and the anxiety, just the thought of it made Jeremy worried.

"Jeremy," came the rebuke, quiet and gentle. "You cannot hurt me."

Jeremy didn't seem to want to believe that and his brows were drawn together so close as he looked back at Xas. "I know you said you can't die but--"

"There was only two times I have been truly hurt," Xas told him softly "Both were done by angels." One being himself after all. "Please do not worry about me."

His expression hadn't changed though. "I wish I could see," he said just as softly. "I wish I could see you." So he'd know and he wouldn't have to guess. Still, Jeremy worried for Xas. Or anyone that dared to be close. Like David.

"No you don't, not really," Xas whispered.

But he took Jeremy's hand between his and he looked out at the water and the slowly setting sun.

But he did. Jeremy did. He wanted to know more about Xas. Then there was that touch again. The one that spread comfort and warmth. The one that calmed.

Jeremy looked out into the ocean, too. Letting the serenity of the moment take him away. He wouldn't push. There was always some other time.