[[CW: Alcoholism. Piss.]]

It was the middle of the day, in the middle of the week. The sun was high, the services were over.

The woman struggled, first, with getting the door open. Perhaps it was not as obvious from the other side, with just a rattle, rattle, rattle of the hinges being coaxed the wrong way. It was more obvious when one door flung open, Anita’s small, harried form clinging to the door’s handle like a drowning woman to driftwood.

She dropped from it, head down, hands grasping steps with a sway more suited for a ship than the perfectly still ground. To her feet, it was another precarious sway. But she caught the edge of the door, and at that point looked up. Bloodshot eyes peered blearily into the church, sighted yet unseeing. Her amble forward was determined … yet she veered consistently right, and right, despite half her body angled to the front.

The smell of beer, sweat … and piss, filled the sanctum.

Malachi was tired.

The day dragged on in the way it only did when he was longing for a rest, stretching every moment to a minute, every minute to an hour. It was hot inside the church, warmed with the collective body heat of a recently-dismissed congregation and the mid-day sun outside. He sat in a pew nearest to the sacristy door, several buttons of his cassock undone near the top.

Then he heard a rattle.

Slow, unhurried, his fingers fastened the buttons back into place while he heard the door swing open, and he prepared himself to speak with the next poor soul that wanted help.

Malachi turned, but the sight of his visitor brought him to stand. Was that woman... drunk? At this time? His brows furrowed, and he watched her for a moment before he moved to the center of the aisle.

"Hello," he greeted, sensing that the woman would require some form of assistance. What kind, he wasn't sure.

Anita had the vague, distant fear that she’d get caught doing something wrong. It crept over her in the corner of her eye, beckoned by colorful glass to live a vibrant, virtuous life. The air was lighter than the bar she had just gotten kicked out of. Clean.

She tripped over her own feet and fell to her knees. There was a brief look of confusion directed at the pavers.

“Oh, God,” she cursed, shaking her head.

Then, she squinted. Turned her head toward where she belatedly realized someone had tried to greet her.

“Oh. God.”

That time, it was the Name in vain but in a perplexed way.

“Father,” she guessed from the swimming black shape, rubbing her eyes and trying to get a look at his face.

Oh. He was a young thing.

“Son?” she automatically corrected, and then blinked.

Son? Which son? Was that …

“Claude, is that you? You’ve gotten so tall!” she said, warmly.

Anita tried to crawl up the nearest pew like a squirrel, without accounting for a squirrel’s claws or general lack of inebriation. All but her hand collapsed, grasping in vain on the arm of it before pulling her eyes above it again.

“You’ve joined the … priesthood!” she said.

Half the sentence sounded proud … but then it trailed off into a frown from mouth to forehead.

Oh, God, thought Malachi.

Not just a woman. A mother.

The lady (was she also a lady? Was there a difference?) had the unfortunate balance of an uncoordinated deer on ice. Drunk out of her wits or sick enough to die, she had to be one of the two. Malachi hesitated where he stood, torn between the desire to help her and the deeper, primal urge to get away.

She was determined, he'd give her that.

As slowly as he'd fixed the buttons of his robe, Malachi moved closer to the floundering woman, shoes clicking distinctly on the floor. Father, son, Claude; the trinity she'd made of him brought a frown to his pale face. Whatever she was, she was out of her mind enough to take him for her son, which only made the priest more reluctant.

"Please don't call me that, miss."

'Son,' not 'Claude.'

Malachi walked closer, but stopped before the pew that she had attempted to use as support.

"I'm Father Brennan," he offered in the hopes that she'd at least take one of those words before the ones she'd granted him.

"Are you alright? Do you want some help up?"

Anita lost her one-sided wrestling match with the arm of the pew and fell back instead. The world spun. It was queasy. She’d never felt so good.

And then Claude spoke again. She wanted to pay attention. She did! He’d always been so much better at it, though. But she tried, for him. Puzzled out that labyrinth of words, prickling away the pleasantness of oblivion, and frowned again.

“Don’t worry. Father’s out, and I’d never call you ‘miss’, Claude,” she said.

She looked hurt, though it could have just as easily been the state she was in.

“Not even in your aunt’s nice dresses. You know I never would, don’t you?”

Oh, God. Maybe he didn’t.

Alright. This woman was not in any state to listen too closely to the things he said.

Malachi rushed forward in spite of himself when she fell back down, but the tumble from the pew's arm didn't seem to faze her much more than anything else.

Still wasn't her son. Still wasn't Claude.

He cast a cautionary glance about the rest of the church, but it was gracefully empty apart from them. Malachi mulled over the thought of just playing along, frowning down at her all the while.

"I know," he answered finally, sounding less like a dignified priest than an irritated son. He crouched down beside her, offering his hands.

"Would you at least let me help you up? The floor is dirty."

While the words did not seem to parse, there was a delayed but nonetheless deeper frown at her apparent son’s annoyed tone.

She looked at his hands and smiled, though looked like she was on the brink of tears.

“Oh, Claude,” she said fondly. “It’s no trouble. My soul’s already dirty.”

She sagged against the pew, pulling her knees clumsily to her chest with her arms.

“Don’t kill a man,” she mumbled. “Not even a Ward. Not worth it. Leave that to your mom.”

Then she looked up suddenly, like a deer that just heard a threat.

“And get married! Soon as you start having lustful thoughts! God will smite you down otherwise, and you’ll go to Hell like Noah.”

She oozed back against the pew with a glassy, miserable look up to the steepled ceiling.

“I don’t want him to go to Hell,” she moaned miserably, to her presumed other son.

If only this woman had stumbled her way into the confessional before she'd fallen down, then he wouldn't have any presumed obligations to take notice of the suspicious things that came out of her mouth.

Leave killing people (killing a Ward, because she just had to be specific, didn't she) to mom. Mom, with her dirty soul and fears of familial damnation.

God, he hoped that was all. He didn't want to have to find a constable.

(He wouldn't have anyway.)

"But I'm a priest," countered Malachi. After another glance up to ensure that no one else had entered the church, he fell back from his crouched position to sit on the floor with her. "I can't get married, mother."

Was it wrong to play along with her drunken delusions, or was it a kindness not to disrupt her?

Malachi hadn't the first idea about who Noah was, or Claude for that matter, or why this woman was so sure of the former's dark fate.

"What if I have lustful thoughts then?"

Anita squinted, tried to steady herself. Failing that, she tried to steady the vision before her by rolling her head in circles with the distortion. Since when had Claude asked her for advice? Something told her not to trust this man.

But, if she started listening to that instinct now, she might start questioning her marriage.

“Oh, God,” Anita pleaded. “I don’t know, you’ve always been better at this kind of thing. And you’re a priest now.”

A priest! Last she’d heard, Claude was … fixing chairs? A lot of chairs? Something like that. But she rather liked the idea of her most beloved son as a sexless, naive saint. Was that selfish of her? No. God wanted it that way.

“You don’t suffer from that,” Anita reassured with a dismissive toss of her hand. “Besides, God wouldn’t’ve let you become a priest if that were true, so either you sold your soul to Satan or you don’t have a problem.”

Speaking of problems, she was starting to catch too many words and almost be able to think about hers. She stuck two fingers down the hem of her skirt, over her hip … drew out a little bottle, then popped the cork. When she tipped it back, she found but a drop left and barely that.

“Claude,” she said, warmly, though her eyes were still fixed on the nip like it was a telescope seeking far off dry land. “Where do you keep the communion wine?”

Malachi could not even attempt to follow the woman's logic. Nevermind how strongly he disagreed with her notions of hell and damnation (that yes, he was sure the majority of the Catholic church shared), her ideas regarding God's selection of priests was faulty at best.

Why would he have sold his soul to Satan in order to become a priest? To lead the faithful astray from a better vantage point?

On second thought, that was probably the most logical thing she'd said since she stumbled into the church.

A fool's errand it would have been to correct her on any of the rest of it, and so he hummed along in vague agreement.

"Alright," he gave. "I suppose I don't suffer from that."

The woman's hand slipped beneath the hem of her skirt and Malachi's eyes shot wide.

Oh, God, not this again. Just yesterday, a girl having issues with her husband had asked him to 'give her what her man won't' in the confessional and he'd had to rather awkwardly explain why that would only make the problem worse, and- oh thank the fucking Lord when the woman pulled out a bottle.

"The-..." the communion wine? Malachi cleared his throat and said, "we're out. You don't have anything at home?"