Michael Salvius - Tumblr Posts
You both kick ass. You’re weirdly informed about the theological state of the world. And apparently this one speaks Latin. So, really, no bullshit. Who are you two? WARRIOR NUN 2x02
Jillian runs out of options before Michael turns two. She knew when she first got pregnant that the unique circumstances may lead to other, unforeseeable risks. He was already her miracle, one she’d created with her own two hands and her mind, one she’d wrestled from the world with pride and greed. She’d shrugged off that knowledge of risk with the hubris of the woman who created man. What could the world do, she’d thought like the fool she was, that she could not overcome? No answer had come to her mind then.
No answer came now because what Michael was afflicted by was so unique it had no name. No, it had his name. He was only two and already his legacy was a slow horrible way to die that would linger in footnotes. She had done that. With her own hands and her own pride. It’s the guilt that drives her there. The place people go when they have no other options. She’d sneered at the very idea of something so unscientific and nonsensical. Disdainful of imagined desperation lingering in a cloud beside dust and lies. It was a little harder to sneer when she was the petitioner. It wasn’t that she believed she would find anything, the idea of faith was anathema to her sensibilities. It was the idea that if she didn’t try and could have found something she’d never be able to forgive herself.
The Vatican was slow to answer her requests. Again, her hubris weighted down her task. If she’d kept her tongue when the first self-righteous supposed holy man decried her attempt to supplement God as creator of man as unholy, well. Jillian had never been good at holding her tongue when it came to men raised to mediocrity through sheer dint of historical fear mongering. She was self aware enough to realize if not the first man, she would have responded poorly to the second, or the third, or the fiftieth. At least cutting down the first one curtailed the deluge of futile posturing and fruitless silencing to an online (and thus more easily ignored) medium. The Vatican does answer her requests, eventually.
The man who does, an archivist by the name of Kristen, seems different than those who’d stonewalled her attempts at logic with rigid dogma. He was… curious. Seeking. She’d spent her life curious, driven to pull apart the mysteries of existence and improve them. Kristen had the same look in his eye, the same need in the tilt of his head as he poured over manuscript after manuscript at her request. He’s looking for something specific. This is not a child’s restless musings, not a teenager ego driven exploration. He has parts of the puzzle, enough to have once thought it finished. Then he discovered an extra piece or an empty area where nothing fit. Enough to know the puzzle he spent his life fitting together is but a small section of the actual picture in front of him.
Jillian came to the Vatican, to the Church, because that is where all those who are truly hopeless and in search of divine intervention go. Instead she found the infinite complex mechanics of the universe causing dominos to fall perfectly into place. She confronts him after a month of working together, after confirming there are no official palimpsests to aid her mission. He’s reticent to explain what plagues his mind until she finds the correct leverage. Proof. Solid, concrete, measurable proof of his faith. It’s what he looks for. It’s what he’s unsure if he found. He lacks the scientific background to understand that the piece he already have is exactly that. The Church calls this precious metal Divinium, because of course the do. Jillian would roll her eyes at the arrogance but in all honestly, they should. They should call any element that is exactly the miracle she’s been searching for Divinium. That is, they should if the descriptor Kristen used is accurate.
Orangic metal.
Trying to find a timeline for Jillian starting to build the Arc. Because it was Adriel feeding Michael the blueprints, so was the entire idea Adriel’s? I feel like it must’ve been, the Arc was an essential part of his plan. And for Adriel to feed Michael the blueprints Michael had to have been injected with divinium for them to communicate, therefore Jillian had to have known about divinium and have had access to it. The only one who could have known about divinium would’ve been Kristian, but Kristian only joined ArqTech to “find evidence of a world beyond”? That one’s the murkiest so far, though, and Kristian’s motives might’ve changed over time. So the tentative sequence of events I have so far is:
Kristian joins ArqTech (Did it have that name before Jillian got started on the Arc? She definitely did a bunch of other things too. Maybe they rebranded)
Kristian tells Jillian about this substance called divinium which he came across during his time as a Vatican archivist. He probably also knows where to find (some of) it.
Jillian finds a divinium cache and experiments with it, discovers that it has healing properties. She tests it on Michael, and it keeps him alive.
Adriel makes contact with Michael, and he starts drawing his weird little drawings and telling Jillian about an angel, and a different world without suffering or death. Then Michael starts drawing the blueprints for the Arc, tells Jillian it’s the door to the other side. Though skeptical at first, the science to Michael’s drawings appears sound when she tests it, and realizing the potential, she diverts all of ArqTech’s resources to building this machine.
And the rest is canon. I find the sequence helpful because if Jillian didn’t, in fact, come up with the idea of the Arc, then her primary purpose was never to find a perfect realm without pain or suffering. The place she started at was “how do I cure my son”, and it’s then through her son that the idea of the Arc comes up. She sees the Other Side (and the Arc as the gateway to that place) as a solution to a problem she has, not as an ideal in its own right. Which makes her different than a typical hyper-rational scientist character, who would make a Faustian bargain in a heartbeat. Jillian is a mother, not just a scientist, and that makes her motivated by love, not just ambition. And though I think, after losing Michael a second time, there is a lot of potential for them to go to a really dark place with her, I think that love will ultimately save Jillian.
