Bringing Light to the Darkness
Source of Refuge
There were not many windows in Levi’s apartment. It was a small, rather cramped studio, in a not particularly good neighborhood. Normally, that wasn’t much of a concern, but it was Hanukkah. Part of the point was setting up the menorah in a window. He had specifically been thinking of it, when he noticed this one had a living room window. Tonight he had turned off all the lights, thrown the curtains open, and set up a table in front of the windowsill. The menorah rested on it - a less expensive one, but the best he could afford on a student budget, which was also true of the candles he was using - and he set the first candle and the shamash in place.
It was his personal tradition to light the first candle of the menorah with the room in complete darkness. It had been his parents’, once, too, and now that he was living on his own, it felt like the right thing to do, even if he was out of contract with them for a thousand reasons. Not liking his parents didn’t mean he had to not like everything they had given him. Bring light into the darkness, even if it was just the darkness of his own little apartment with all the lights off.
It was thirty minutes past sunset - nightfall, officially.
He lifted out the shamash candle reverently, and flicked on his lighter, touching it to the candle wick.
And quietly, he recited the traditional blessings - all three, for the first night.
And then he added a fourth - an idea he’d heard from one of the other young men at his synagogue, who’d found it online and directed him to the site. There was an extra blessing for each day, designed to bring light to the darkness in a conflict in the world. It appealed to Levi’s sense of social justice, to his pursuit of activisim and of bettering the world. Incorporating that into his Hanukkah felt natural. Besides, each of them felt personal to him.
“Blessed are You, Source of Refuge, who shelters us under your wings and who teaches us the value of welcoming the stranger.”
Being tied into a magical war gave a lot of opportunities for needing to welcome the stranger. He was still sort of angry over the Mirror meeting, where Remarque had encouraged shutting out the Negaverse. That was never going to be his personal path. His early interactions with the Court had been scattered, few and far between. It had been a Negaverse officer who had given him most of what he knew, Negaverse officers who kept him alive during the battle on the train. Maybe it was because the Mirror was smaller, more scattered; maybe it was just his luck.
But he was absolutely going to welcome the Negaverse. And -- well, maybe he ought to welcome Order, too, if he was given the chance. Not on the whole; on the whole they were still enemies and, apparently, the place Dark Mirrors who were too pathetic and scared of a little black on their uniform to slink off to. But if there was an Order Senshi who was interested in the Court - then fine, he could talk, he could try to bring them in. It wasn’t like persuasion wasn’t a thing he did regularly, anyway.
Welcome the stranger. Be a little more trusting. Be a little more open. He could learn to do that.
He touched the shamash to the first candle, and watched the lights flicker for a very, very long time.
Provider
When Levi went to light his candles for the second night of Hanukkah, he wasn’t standing in the dark. That was just for the first night.
He took the shamash, and lit it, and spoke the blessings, and again, had an extra one to add.
“Blessed are you, Provider, who calls us to provide a living wage so that every person has the opportunity to support themselves and their family.”
For the world, it was a plea to help those fighting to raise their wages. For Levi, it sort of was too. He had barely started college, but he could already feel the looming pressure of student loan debt. He had a job at a bakery, but it was barely minimum wage work in a small, family-owned place. He couldn’t bring himself to ask for more - even if working there sort of sucked, a lot. His manager wanted to fire him, and didn’t have the power to, because the a*****e had made one too many hasty and unfounded firing decisions in the past. So instead, the man made his workday as hellish as possible, in the hopes that he would quit. It might have worked, if he didn’t need the money so desperately. And if he didn’t sort of love working in a bakery period, around all kinds of amazing pastries and chocolates and things.
At least his boss’s boss liked him, which kept him employed. Had even offered to let him start selling some of his chocolates in her store. He’d deferred, a little, but he was pretty sure he was going to take her up on the offer, because wow could he ever use the little bit of extra income.
Really, he wasn’t made for the world of customer service. Loud, opinionated people who had trouble putting on a polite face in front of assholes, generally, weren’t. But he didn’t have much of a choice, if he wanted to continue surviving; there might be other jobs, but he couldn’t risk quitting and being jobless for any sustained amount of time. Food, shelter - all those things cost money. And of course so would his education. Which wasn’t exactly in an automatically marketable field. Political science was great for his passion, but not so much for his pocketbook.
He really, really needed to have that job, to hold it down. To get a raise, or something, maybe, instead of scraping by at barely minimum wage. Or he could keep looking for more job opportunities, find somewhere that could afford to pay him better consistently. Or something.
But he needed to be able to provide for himself, one way or another.
He touched the shamash to the second candle, and then to the first.
Life of All the Worlds
The third night was cold, and windy, and Levi barely got home in time to light the candles when he was supposed to. He’d had to slip out of one class early, and skip another, but he’d also informed both professors ahead of time.
“Blessed are You, Life of All the Worlds, who turns us away from destructive habits and who teaches us to preserve our earth for future generations.”
Levi wasn’t entirely thinking of Earth, when he spoke that blessing. Remarque had spoken of all the other planets out there. Of lost civilizations, fallen to the ravages of war and a conflict that as far as Levi could tell, the Dark Mirror barely had a part in except by their associations with the other two sides.
But if the stories of other worlds were true - well, that was something he wanted desperately. He knew Elsa was an asteroid, floating somewhere out in space, and he hadn’t thought about it until the idea had been presented to him. The thought of being able to go into space was fascinating, pressing, a burning need. And that was the world he wanted to be able to preserve. Sure, he’d fought for environmental causes on Earth - though his focus was social justice, not environmental, really - but there were plenty of people who could fight for that. And plenty of people who were going to ******** it up.
Elsa only had one person, one Senshi. Everyone else was a thousand years or more dead. If he wanted to fix it, he would have to do so himself.
Of course, he would have to get there first, but that felt like a minor impediment. Surely he could force his way through. Surely he could make it happen. The entire Court was going to be searching for a way.
He was just a first-stage, couldn’t get there without assistance, but he would make it happen anyway. Besides, surely he had to get stronger soon, and then he would be able to help them without needing a babysitter to take a trip into Mirrorspace.
He wanted to be able to reach out. To go beyond Earth. To find his asteroid - to see Mintaka, or Remarque, or Leto, or any of the other planets belonging to Dark Mirrors. As much as he resented authority, he wanted to follow the Prince and Princess in this. He didn’t have to respect or admire the Royals themselves to believe that their goals were worthy of chasing. There was a whole universe out there, and he could take it in his hands if only he was brave enough. Levi was absolutely brave enough - he had never backed down from a challenge before, and he damned well wasn’t going to start now.
He lit the three candles, and stared out the window at the city, and smiled.
Supernal Advocate
On the fourth night, Levi had gone out of his way to make a fairly big dinner for himself. He didn’t usually cook a lot, especially not when he didn’t have anyone around, but it was fun, and it would save him the effort for the rest of the week.
And this time, when he gave an extra blessing over the menorah, the blessing was painfully personal.
“Blessed are You, Supernal Advocate, who testifies to the tragic state of race relations in our country and who calls us to create a nation where all are judged according to the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
Levi had been to Ferguson. Levi had been to New York. Levi had been to Chicago, to Saint Louis, to a hundred other cities with his protest group, fling on donated dollars and fighting as loudly as he could in the streets against injustice. He had been to loud protests, to quiet tragic memorials. He could list off dozens of names of people murdered by the police for nothing more than being in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and being the wrong color.
He had been called a hundred thousand slurs, all dependant on how, exactly people perceived brown skin. And it made him angry. Angry that he couldn’t trust the people who were supposed to, in theory, protect him, angry that he had to fear authority because authority was all too easy to abuse. Angry that despite all his work, despite everything he had done and tried to do, he was just one man.
Angry that he couldn’t do it as much anymore, that he couldn’t fly off on a dime, because he had responsibilities. Work, school, being Sailor Elsa - Chalrie, for a while, but that had fallen apart because he had been an idiot. Stupid enough to think he could fix a person. People, he knew, didn’t like being fixed; it had been stupid to dream that he could. There was so much he needed to do here that he couldn’t do what he wanted everywhere else.
But he would get through it, he was sure of that. He would be able to get back to protesting one day - either he would graduate college or he would drop out, one or the other. And then he would be able to get back to doing things that really mattered, because no one deserved to live in fear. He could even take the Senshi thing on the road, quietly, maybe - and there was an idea. Maybe being Elsa didn’t have to just be about the magic. He could use it to make a real difference, the way he wanted to.
Make the bad cops afraid of something even worse.
That felt like a very, very good reason to keep on powering up.
He lit four candles.
Rock of Israel
On the fifth night, Levi came home exhausted. He had his earliest class, and he was not feeling particularly happy about it. Still, he had a duty to himself and to his faith. So he brought himself over to the menorah at nightfall, and lit the shamash, and recited the blessings.
“Blessed are You, Rock of Israel, who gives us strength to hold fast to our beliefs and the courage to openly celebrate our heritage and traditions.”
That felt particularly relevant, for him. Levi lived alone, in a neighborhood that wasn’t exactly populated by a large number of Jews. But he still practiced his faith - still kept kosher (even if it was hard, and would have been much cheaper to give it up), still hung the mezuzah even though he was sometimes terrified of it being stolen off his door, still celebrated his traditions and sang in Hebrew at the top of his voice whenever he felt like it even though his neighbors weren’t always happy about it.
He was not in a world that wanted him to be proud of being Jewish.
Levi had never done what anyone else wanted him to do just because they wanted him to do it. He would not lay down and be quiet just because someone wanted him to be. That was not, and never had been, in his nature.
So he would keep on celebrating. He would celebrate louder, and stronger, and more fiercely, in the face of people who wanted him to do anything but that. He still wore his Magen David to work, even though his manager narrowed his eyes and had asked, once, that he take it off, because this was a “nonreligious establishment.” Levi had been ten seconds from punching him, before another employee intervened. It would have been worth it, right then, to get fired - even to get arrested for assault. His brightly-dyed hair, his tattoo, he would weather narrowed eyes and snide comments and whatever else there might be about those, but not about his faith. Never, ever, ever about his faith. He had also complained to the owner, and he was allowed to wear the necklace - but if he didn’t need his job, he would have quit right there. Probably should have, but without another one lined up...he would be on the street.
Nothing was ever going to change if he didn’t keep fighting for it. In the small ways, in the big ways, in every way possible. And the easiest way to fight was to keep to his traditions, to keep being who he was, to love being who he was, in the face of a world that wanted everything but that.
Five candles and the shamash flickered, reflected in his window.
Shelter of Peace
The sixth night was special. The sixth night of Hannukuh was a Friday - which meant that eighteen minutes before sunset, Levi would have to light a second set of candles for Shabbat. Traditionally, that was a woman’s mitzvah, but living on his own meant there was no one else to do it, and he wasn’t going to give up a ceremony just because he was technically the wrong gender. Besides, he was Reform Jewish anyway - a little wiggle room on specifics in ceremony was made up for by genuine and sincere devotion, as far as he was concerned.
But on top of that, it meant that the Hannukuh candles had to be lit before then, instead of thirty minutes after sunset. He had bought a special, larger, longer-lasting set, so they would make it for the hour and a half necessary instead of the half-hour or so they usually burned for. Expensive, and hard on his budget - but deeply, deeply important.
He recited the blessings, with his addition.
“Blessed are You, Shelter of Peace, who shepherds us to the path of safety, dignity, and self-determination for all.”
Peace wasn’t exactly something Lvi had a lot of room for - not as himself, and definitely not as Elsa. He was a fighter on a hundred fronts, in a hundred ways. There wasn’t a lot of room to worry too much about peace.
But safety, dignity, self-determination? Yeah, he could worry about all of those things, could look at them and want them for every single person.
Could want them, even in the midst of a magical war.
He carried a lot of guilt, for his participation in the corruption of poor Sandrine. He hadn’t seen the Senshi since, hadn’t even seen them then, really, and he had no idea how they were adjusting. Maybe they were fine. But he had still had a part in taking away their right to choose which side they were going to fight for, and he really, really hoped he never had to make that choice for anyone else ever again. He had a right to fight for himself, to use his magic in defense of himself and others. But he didn’t have a right to choose a side for another person.
He wanted safety, too, for the members of his own Court, who were scattered and lost and in danger from everyone on every side of the war. He had no illusions about his personal bargain with the Negaverse helping any of them. If anything, he suspected he would lose allies in his own Court when they discovered who he helped.
But that was alright. This was his path, and no one else’s. It didn’t have to help anyone else, or be right for anyone else - all that mattered was that it was right for him.
He lit six candles, and then the Shabbat ones, and then he settled in a comfortable chair to watch them burn and to sing hymns to himself.
Pillar of Strength
On the seventh night, Levi’s preparations were a little frenzied. Shabbat rules meant that he couldn’t begin to prepare until after sunset, so he had to wait, and then it was a tight thing to get everything he needed in thirty minutes.
He made it, and he lit the shamash, and stared into the flickering flame as he recited the blessings.
“Blessed are You, Pillar of Strength, who mourns with us the loss of culture and history, strengthens us to defend the sanctity of human life, and who compels us to shield our world from further senseless violence.”
That was something he could stand to pray for. Everything about the war felt terribly, horrendously senseless. How many people had died on the train, because of the unanticipated accident of the thing turning into a monster? How many had been crushed in the massive rush to exit the station, how many swallowed by the beast?
He hated to think about it. It hadn’t been his operation, but he had still assisted - though most of what he’d done had been to try and stop the damned thing. He would have to decide what he considered senseless, pointless violence, and what he was willing to accept as necessary, because there was going to have to be a certain amount of violence to fight a war. He was no pacifist, certainly, and prone to solving his problems with angry words or thrown fists, but that didn’t mean every problem ever needed to be solved that way. That didn’t mean he couldn’t try to be better, try to make other uses for himself as a soldier of the Dark Mirror Court.
Levi sort of wished he had less inherently violent magic. He could serve in another role, if he wasn’t made into, effectively, a perfect shock trooper. His magic was all horror and cold and nightmares. He was the monster that stalked in the darkness, vicious and cold and hungry. And his magic made people see that.
So maybe he could take that and make use of it. Maybe he could make the violence less senseless by scaring the s**t out of people before they got into it. Maybe he could stop blood from being shed, even with magic inherently built for war.
That sounded, to him, like an inherently worthy goal. To make the violence he participated in just that little bit less senseless, to try and stop lives from being wasted. To try and fight in ways that didn’t require him to become a murderer, on top of everything else.
That was something he could promise himself, tonight. To not take a life without it being the utmost necessity. Even enemies were people with dignity - to murder without cause or care would be to disrespect that in the worst way possible. He would not do that, ever.
He lit seven candles, and murmured the oath to himself under his breath.
Creator of Light
The last night of Hanukkah always felt a little sad, to Levi. It was the end of something he loved, a warm cultural tradition that even when doing it alone still meant family. Sure, Hanukkah wasn’t exactly the most important of holidays, but it was still special. It was still about holding onto yourself in the face of assimilation, about the sheer strength of Jewish identity.
At least, it was for him.
For the last time, he lit the shamash and stood before the menorah to recite the blessings. For the last time, he added an extra.
“Blessed are You, Creator of Light, who has placed within us your divine spark and who inspire us to pursue justice and seek peace.”
Ultimately, those were things he deeply, deeply wanted. Justice was always going to be something Levi held in high regard; justice mattered, justice was what he fought for with every ounce of his being and every breath in his body. The world might be painfully, agonizingly unjust, but Levi would never let that prevent him from working and fighting to make it better.
Justice was what had him out on the streets, protesting and fighting and shouting and raging against the unjust authorities of the world. Justice was what made him wary of those with power, because it was all too easy for them to ignore it. The pursuit of justice - real justice, applied to everyone everywhere - was the highest calling he could think of. He couldn’t ask more of himself, or of anyone else, than to pursue justice as best as they could.
And peace - well, without justice, there could never be true peace. There could be tightly-enforced authoritarian hell, but there could not be real, lasting peace. And as someone knee-deep in a war that had no beginning and no end, as far as he could tell, Levi wanted to find a peaceful solution to a problem more than he ever had in his entire life.
He wasn’t entirely sure there was one, but he wanted there to be. This war had destroyed hundreds, thousands of civilizations. Billions of lives snuffed out. And from what he understood, if it continued as it was, it would do the same thing all over again. He wasn’t sure he believed in these dreams of a future where Metallia ruled and the world fell into darkness; it seemed far-fetched, and he certainly hadn’t had any himself; but he did know that a conflict without end, carried out by people far stronger than the average human and with abilities unavailable to them, was absolutely not going to end well for the rest of the world. There had to be another way - there had to be a better way.
Maybe he wasn’t the one to find it. Levi Burningham certainly wasn’t going to be anyone’s pick for a Nobel Peace Prize any time soon, not with his hair trigger temper and propensity towards violence. But just because he wasn’t the one to find it didn’t mean he couldn’t hope for other people to. There was a whole world depending on their ability to end this, somehow.
Part of him feared the only way for it to ever end was with the deaths of every single combatant. He shoved the thought away. That was absurd. Surely there was a middle ground between “endless conflict” and “total slaughter.”
He sighed, and lit all eight candles, and set the shamash in the center.
And as loudly as he could, he sang “Light One Candle,” because someone had to.
[[A note: The extra blessings Levi recites are sourced from here!]]
