#but i think i've prodded a fair amount for one meta

[tellingscarystories]

The Nikolai and Religion Meta (aka winded ramblings of a squid eager to get their boy to SPILL THE BEANS)

Okay, so Nikolai's mother was a member of a local Russian Orthodox church, and there were a few influences of that at home, though not as many as she would have liked, as Nikolai’s father basically spat in the face of the idea of faith around the same time he became a deadbeat drunk. She’d start their mornings off with prayer--at first huddled in the kitchen long before Nikolai’s father awoke, and then, after Aleksandr got sick, in the little boy’s room, where much of their mother’s praying started to go toward her youngest son’s health--and end their nights with it as well. Right up until Aleksandr got sick, Nikolai’s mom also regularly brought her children to service, and encouraged them to go without her when she couldn’t leave Aleksandr’s bedside.

I don’t think a lot of it really stuck with any kind of depth, at least with Nikolai and Luka. At best, Luka’s probably agnostic. He was still rather young when they stopped going to church, and as Aleksandr got worse, their mother’s teaching dropped off, and her prayers were said alone in the privacy of her room, so he doesn’t remember much of the specifics.

Nikolai’s always had an odd relationship with religion. A big part of him going to church when he was younger was because that was what his mother wanted him to do, even if he didn’t necessarily get the whole faith thing, and he’s always been a mama’s boy. But by fourteen or fifteen, he was falling in with the wrong people. By eighteen he’d built up a reputation of violence, and by nineteen or twenty he’d killed a man, and it steadily went downhill from there. So without his mother bringing him, Nikolai was usually too ashamed of the things he’d done to show his face in church. (Which I’ve kind of nodded at in a drabble or two, but especially the one with Father Sokolov, where I referenced Nikolai having a hard time feeling like he belonged even at funeral services.)

But for all of his cynical tendencies, and for all that he wouldn’t call himself religious, I think part of Nikolai latched onto the idea of righteousness, and holiness. For all that he’s done these horrible things and he looks at ease with it all in the moment, I think a big part of why his actions still weigh at him so heavily is because of his exposure to religion, especially through his mother, as a boy. And I think that part of him still kind of, vainly seeking out that goodness and light is why there’s something of a motif of angels and holiness when he’s thinking about Danny. 

Danny’s always looked for the good in people, and tries to do right by others, even if they probably won’t do the same in return. And he hasn’t let the world make him jaded, even if he would have every right to be. So much of that strikes really close to home with what Nikolai remembers of his mother’s teachings, and what he internalized from years of attending church. Even though Nikolai sees himself as a bad presence for Danny to have around, he just can’t help being drawn in like a moth to flame by all that he sees in Danny that he doesn’t see in himself.