papadopoulos | (Reply)

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Claudius realizes what that itching in his eyes is -- they're trying to cry again. He laughs, and shuts his eyes tight. He wants to be here, even with the threat of tears, if he can listen a little longer to the words of a kind god who only wants humanity's happiness and freedom. A god who's fought that for that freedom, and nearly been arrested, for the same loving vices human beings commit.

Is this the strength from faith true believers experience? The words of the church, even in times of mourning, only reminded him of his weakness. Impious stubbornness, he thinks. A fault against the dead. To be this crushed and empty speaks only to his failure to accept the inevitability of death, to say with Job, Man's days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass. But Dionysus isn't that god who chooses when sparrows fall.

And anyway, Claudius thinks more wryly, Crowley and Aziraphale stepped in with Job, and Job and his family were all happier for it. He takes another long drink of the kykeon. Like a child, he asks, "Thou wilt not leave me?"