Should you need me, wait until pigs fly, hell freezes over, and zombie badgers roam the earth.

Then leave a message.

Maybe I'll get back to you.

-Bernard

-He can't drive. If deprived of public transportation, he will either hail a cab or use a bike. Mind you, he rarely goes far enough to warrant transportation at all.
-He can't swim.
-He's more or less fluent in: English (Hiberno, i.e. with an Irish accent), Irish (Goidelic, the local language), German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin (written only), Greek (written only), Mandarin (Chinese).
-He hates doctors and hospitals with a passion. ("They're Satanists. That's why they write 'ambulance' backwards.")
-He attended St. Patrick's Classical School, a Roman Catholic Church-run school for boys.



It's not that Bernard doesn't believe in God, it's just that he doesn't like God.

He was raised in a religious home, with a father who worked too much and a mother who talked too much. If your father is your model for God, then it's no wonder Bernard doesn't feel the love of God.

His school involved a lot of praying, and church every Sunday, and there wasn't really any way you could escape God. Bernard never lost the belief that God exists, he just lost the belief that God loves him, a long time ago.

Besides, he could never be the child that God would want. Wrath, greed, envy, gluttony, lust, pride and sloth, he's committed all of these a billion times. The church is all about guilt and sin, and repentance. Guilt is practically hard-wired into him.

How can he ever be happy when he knows he doesn't deserve to be?

For a long time, he held onto hope. Hope that maybe he could change, he could repent, he could get better. Maybe one day, he would have the strength to make up for it all.

It was when his fiancee Emma died, that's when Bernard lost hope. God was punishing him. Show him what love is, then rip it away, no reason, no explanation. Of course, when he found out a few years later that she never did die, she'd faked the whole thing to avoid him, well, it didn't exactly restore his faith.

Because it was still his fault, either way. Who's to say God didn't work through Emma? Only now it wasn't just God, it was the world. The world had realised that Bernard didn't deserve love. The only reason Manny and Fran stuck around was because they knew this from the start, and weren't exactly innocent themselves.

But a proper relationship? Love? He could never have that.

"If I could wake up in a different place, at a different time, could I wake up as a different person?"

I read this in a book somwhere. It seems more fitting now than it ever has. I find this writer has a lot of truths.

( quotes )

beyondtherift
Wiki entry.

Threads:
2009-07-31: Arrival Scorching the park, meeting Sarah, practicing sparking.
2009-08-07: Reading up on the world.
2009-08-19: Meeting James, discussing HP, having a drink.
2009-09-07: Drinking in a bar

Art:
Lineart electric good
Coloured good
Coloured electric good
Sparking with Sarah
Lineart electric evil
Coloured electric evil

deserted_city

Threads:
2009-07-26: Arrival. Panicking, meeting Florence, sharing news of USSR/KGB, possibly breaking into pub, drinking.
2009-08-26: Another conversation with Florence.

arcanum_logs

Threads:
2009-07-27: Arriving at the Parlour, speaking with the Oracle. Bugging the hell out of poor Artisan.
2009-08-03: Settling in the upright compound.
2009-08-06: Reading in the library, talking with Harry Dresden.
2009-08-27: Meeting the Doctor, sharing his knowledge of the city and the war.

Whiteboard:
2009-08-02: BUGGER THIS FOR A LARK XP

Journals:
2009-08-06: Saying hello to the Doctor, and mentioning his TV show.