Wisdom and War

Chapter Six

We were never one for big gestures.

The topic of marriage never came up, but we both knew there was no reason to look elsewhere. As descendants, the gift of immortality can sometimes become lonely. During the years before I found Joaquin, I never made a real connection to the people I met because I knew that they'd die inevitably or I'd have to leave before they notice that I don't age. It was during one of my first few conversations with Athena that she told me about the others. I travelled throughout Luzon but found no one, so I assumed they were somewhere in Visayas or Mindanao. Each descendant was intended for another within their omada, to ensure that they wouldn't have to live through immortality alone.

Joaquin and I were difficult in our own ways, both wary of everything, so it made sense that love was one of those things. It took us fifty years to acknowledge what was going on, and another ten for us to properly sit down and have a conversation about it which only happened because of Maiko. Before that, it was all actions and no words– subtle looks thrown from across the room, silent mornings spent with me reading a book and him watching me with a cup of coffee, and nights spent either in bed or with me making use of his skin as if it was a blank canvas.

The day that we got married was anything but extraordinary. I was on my way out to get my morning coffee when Joaquin tagged along, saying how he found this new coffee shop that I should add on my list. At the time, there had only been a few items on it so I rarely went out to buy coffee. The shop was along Quiapo, wedged in between a shoe store and a Chinese restaurant. The Luzon Omada was operating in a five-storey building in Pandacan at the time so the walk going to Quiapo was about forty minutes long. We were both silently walking, eyes watching as the people of Manila began their morning routines. Suddenly, my feet stopped when my eyes zeroed in on a building found on the other end of the street, and I heard Joaquin's footsteps stop in front of me when he noticed that I was no longer beside him.

The church was over ten meters tall, thirty if you count the two towers on each side. I walked closer, Joaquin following behind me, and realized that it was no average church. Unlike the ones made out of bricks or stones, this one was made of steel. I remember Joaquin standing beside me, gazing up at the church in front of us. Our attention was taken away from the exterior when the doors opened and about forty people walked out, all dressed in formal clothes and chatting amongst themselves. Inside the church, I caught the priest talking to a few people still milling around after the morning mass.

My eyes met Joaquin's before I gestured to the entrance of the church.

"You want to pray?" I remember him asking and me rolling my eyes. I was never religious and neither was he. We did believe in higher beings, but ours was a different god– gods, technically. "Then what?"

"Do you want to get married?" I asked and I watched as his smirk disappeared from his face. His eyes roamed over my face once before he stepped forward, gaze holding mine. I could feel my heart beating erratically, as if it was fighting to get out of my chest. Every memory of Joaquin flashed across my mind, and I knew with every bone in my body that this felt right.

He cupped my cheek with his right hand, thumb lightly grazing my cheekbone. A small smile formed from his lips, and I felt mine stretch into one as well. He rarely smiled, but when he did, it was always a sight to remember. "It's been a hundred years. What do you think?"

The priest was surprised to see two twenty-one year olds saunter inside the church and ask to be wed. He resisted at first, saying how there's a process to be followed and we'd need a marriage certificate, but we managed to convince him that we'd come back during the day to take care of the formalities. So we stood there, side by side like equals, as the priest held a small notebook that had all the things he needed to say. The morning sun was seeping through the stained glass windows, the colors reflecting onto our skin as we stood in the middle of the church's transept. At that moment, we forgot about everything that made us who we are– we were simply two people standing underneath the steel rib vaults of the San Sebastian Church, participating in the most mundane form of love.