Advent Wreath: X/1999 Fic
Author: Bitterfig
Title: The Advent Wreath
Fandom: X/1999
Character: Karen Kasumi
Summary: Karen lights the candles of the advent wreath.
Word Count: 382
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: Written for 24xmasPrompt #06: Wreath
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any illegal acts taking place within that fiction are NOT condoned by the author. Depictions of any questionable, illegal, or potentially illegal activity in said fiction does not mean that I condone, promote, support, participate in, or approve of said activity. I grasp the distinction between fiction and reality and trust that readers will do the same. I do not profit from the fan fiction I write, and all rights to the characters remain firmly in the hands of their creator.
The Advent Wreath
On Christmas Eve Karen lit the candles of the advent wreath.
Four candles - three of purple, one as pink as her hair.
She did not use a lighter or matches but her powers, concentrating on each candle in turn until it caught fire.
The first purple candle was the candle of hope.
Hope.
That might have seemed a cruel irony given that this would most likely be her last Christmas and quite possibly the last Christmas as Earth and all those on it perished. Still, the worst had not yet come and as long as she lived Karen would fight against it for the sake of all those souls who deserved a future. Many of these souls she did not know, some she did - Aoki and his family and the children that were the other Dragons of Heaven.
The second candle was for love.
There had been great loneliness in Karen’s life, abuse and hard luck. She had experienced the worst in others and in herself but still she knew the reality of love. Love between people, and overreaching all a divine love that went by many names. Karen Kasumi knew this love as the presence of God.
The third candle, the pink candle, candle of joy and of the Virgin Mary. It was the candle that someone who didn’t know Karen would expect her to feel most distant from but in truth it was the one she thought of as her special candle.
The Virgin Mary had always belonged not to the church proper with its wars and bureaucracy but to her followers, women mostly, who lived in the cruel world but carried God in their hearts. The Blessed Virgin did not appear to Bishops and Cardinals but to housewives, prostitutes and lost children.
As for joy, was joy possible when there was so much horror close at hand, so much sorrow, so much to lose? It had to be, or horror and sorrow had already won. She knew joy, joy in the song of living flame, joy in Aoki’s smile, in the sun setting over the skyline of Tokyo, in flying, and in lighting candles on her last Christmas Eve.
The final candle was purple and represented peace.
If Karen Kasumi fought, she fought that peace might come.
Title: The Advent Wreath
Fandom: X/1999
Character: Karen Kasumi
Summary: Karen lights the candles of the advent wreath.
Word Count: 382
Rating: PG
Author’s Note: Written for 24xmasPrompt #06: Wreath
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any illegal acts taking place within that fiction are NOT condoned by the author. Depictions of any questionable, illegal, or potentially illegal activity in said fiction does not mean that I condone, promote, support, participate in, or approve of said activity. I grasp the distinction between fiction and reality and trust that readers will do the same. I do not profit from the fan fiction I write, and all rights to the characters remain firmly in the hands of their creator.
The Advent Wreath
On Christmas Eve Karen lit the candles of the advent wreath.
Four candles - three of purple, one as pink as her hair.
She did not use a lighter or matches but her powers, concentrating on each candle in turn until it caught fire.
The first purple candle was the candle of hope.
Hope.
That might have seemed a cruel irony given that this would most likely be her last Christmas and quite possibly the last Christmas as Earth and all those on it perished. Still, the worst had not yet come and as long as she lived Karen would fight against it for the sake of all those souls who deserved a future. Many of these souls she did not know, some she did - Aoki and his family and the children that were the other Dragons of Heaven.
The second candle was for love.
There had been great loneliness in Karen’s life, abuse and hard luck. She had experienced the worst in others and in herself but still she knew the reality of love. Love between people, and overreaching all a divine love that went by many names. Karen Kasumi knew this love as the presence of God.
The third candle, the pink candle, candle of joy and of the Virgin Mary. It was the candle that someone who didn’t know Karen would expect her to feel most distant from but in truth it was the one she thought of as her special candle.
The Virgin Mary had always belonged not to the church proper with its wars and bureaucracy but to her followers, women mostly, who lived in the cruel world but carried God in their hearts. The Blessed Virgin did not appear to Bishops and Cardinals but to housewives, prostitutes and lost children.
As for joy, was joy possible when there was so much horror close at hand, so much sorrow, so much to lose? It had to be, or horror and sorrow had already won. She knew joy, joy in the song of living flame, joy in Aoki’s smile, in the sun setting over the skyline of Tokyo, in flying, and in lighting candles on her last Christmas Eve.
The final candle was purple and represented peace.
If Karen Kasumi fought, she fought that peace might come.