Claude was agreeable in his own way … but had he always been so vocal about it? Good for him, Claude! Coming out of his shell, finally!

Oh, God. She was going to have more grandchildren soon-wait, no. Priest. Thank God!

“You’ve always done the right thing,” she sighed fondly.

Hard life, Claude had in no small part from her. She loved him all the more for it.

The world spun less. She shook her shoulders, trying to recapture the free fall that she hardly felt herself without. Shook the bottle desperately over her open mouth.

“God, no,” Anita sighed, some of her pleasantness blunting with frustration. “Your daddy’s faster. You know that.”

For the first time since her arrival, the congregant looked at him. Her chin pulled into her neck, like a hawk studying a hole that it swore it saw a mouse dive into. Well, if said hole moved a lot.

“You’re not holding out on me, are you?” she asked with a note of concern.

His daddy was faster, was he? That was the second mildly-concerning thing she'd said about his 'father.'

Somehow he doubted that it would be the last.

What kind of man had this poor woman married?

(Perhaps he was assigning too much of the blame on the man in this equation, but it was not often that he met women that drank themselves into a stupor because they were treated well.)

Malachi mirrored her look, but had the gall to look surprised with a lift of dark brows.

"Holding out on you?" he repeated. "No. The other priest made off with it all."

As much as a part of him wanted to see just how far she would go, he could not empty the church of their wine. He had already displeased Father Richards enough with his actual charity. He did not want to find out how venomous he could become if pushed farther, if only to save himself from the bishop's ire.

So what else was he to do?

"But if we find some other clothes for me to put on, I can go out and find more with you."

“The other- shit,” she whispered the word, like that would hide it from her [apparent] child’s precious, innocent, and yet nonetheless full grown ears. “Is he still around?”

Shit, shit, shit. She turned her glassy gaze upward, letting out a sound like a centuries-rusted door creaking open. Was she going to get kicked out of the church in front of her own son? … Father-son. That was going to take some getting used to.

Claude was so, tall. Shot up like a weed some time over the past … twenty … what, years?

Then, his words parsed. That priest was a thief? She opened her mouth, then frowned, then raised her brows in bleary relief. He was a thief. That absolved her.

After all, she was a parishioner – not a priest. Surely the standards were lower!

“Yes, of course,” she said, though there was a touch of flustered in her haze.

Their clothes had rarely fit well as children, and now Claude had outgrown Harry. Which meant …

“Help me up,” Anita grunted, holding her hands out to him.

"No, no," Malachi shook his head. "He's not here. Not right now."

Which other priest was she referring to?

Perhaps it was Kemble. That one seemed to have been rather unpopular among the congregation, although Richards had a streak of judgement in him as well. If this woman had meandered her merry way through the church doors before, he supposed he would not have been surprised to hear that either of them had mistreated her for daring to have a real problem.

Malachi watched as his 'mother' sorted through her own feelings on the matter, and offered his own solution when the time came.

It was not a good one. Not even slightly. But God, it was so hot in here in his black robes, and sometimes he just wanted to get out.

Pushing himself up, Malachi leaned down just enough to grab both of the woman's hands in his own, and pulled to try to help her up.

"Careful," he warned. "Slippery floor. Where are we going?"

“Oh, thank fuck,” Anita sighed in relief. “GOD,” she then over-corrected. “Thank GOD.”

Her hands were grimy. The bodily smell only grew stronger, and lingered on his hands.

Not unexpectedly, she slipped on the floor. Grasped sleeve and elbow to keep from meeting face to paver in something that couldn’t quite be called prayer, at least any more than ‘God damn it’ could be.

“We’re going to get you some clothes,” Anita declared with utmost solemnity.

And so, dangerously teetering from one side to the other, Anita turned to the double doors once more. Careened into them, but hardly let that stop her.

Staring straight into shadeless sunlight, however, had her ducking behind her arm. Was it always so bright this time of day?

“Shit, that’s rude,” she muttered, then looked left and right with watering eyes.

It was half a block before she realized he’d asked her something.

“We’re going to get you some clothes, James.”

Whew! James had shot up like a weed these last-… how old was James again?

“Do you have a crowbar?”

She could thank fuck too if she wanted. Malachi didn't give one.

What he did give a fuck about, however, was the awful stench she transferred to his hands. Making a face, he looked down at them, turned them over in brief inspection. The woman had walked in smelling of alcohol and piss, and neither one felt particularly great slathered on his hands. Or his poor cassock, because she just had to fall and grab onto his elbow too. He did what he could to steady her, and held an arm out in case she needed it, but oh, he hoped she didn't take it.

"Thank you," he returned, a reflection of sincerity himself.

Malachi followed cautiously after her, ready to reach out and grab her should her legs decide to give out again. Eugh, the smell would be all over him then. It was a blessing that she made it to the door without incident.

He stepped out to walk beside her, eyes squinted in the harsher light. Dare he go back for his saturno? That ran the risk of her inevitably getting her dirty hands on it, so... no. No, that was not happening. By the time he made it back into the church and returned, she probably wouldn't even be here. And- what was that? He was James now?

"That depends," answered 'James.' He did not want to know what she needed a crowbar for.

"You need it before or after we change my clothes?"

What was Anita to do but to take it? Her piss (it was hers … right?), booze, and sweat clung as readily to … James’ sleeve as Anita to his hand, though it did not let go nearly as quickly. No, it seemed intent on dragging everyone in nose’s reach under into its prickling, stale hopelessness.

“Oh, don’t thank me yet,” Anita said, clutching her stomach as a wave of nausea passed over her. “This is easier at night, James, but no one really cares if you’re fast enough.”

Important lessons to impart upon a developing young man.

She tripped, staggered, and repeatedly fell against her tallest son’s arm, but ambled on like the waking dead on a mission. She hoped if she haunted the world, she’d be a nice ghost. The mother that would have kept Noah confident enough to not go chasing love on a damned dock instead of the one that had yelled at him after the fact.

Anita cast a guilty, sidelong look to her ‘son’, but bolstered herself with the thought that some things were necessary.

“Before,” she admitted, then straightened her back for a full three seconds. “Sometimes the windows get stuck, honey, and they need a little help.”

He would figure out eventually that those windows were supposed to stay locked against people like them, but for now? Little (huge!) James had the whole world ahead of him, and need not trouble himself with the details of their survival.

It was not a pleasant experience, having an intoxicated woman fall against him every few feet. Even less so when said woman reeked of every awful thing that went in and out of her body.

She needed a crowbar before they got the clothes. Which meant she needed it for the commission of what he was quickly realizing would be a crime. Malachi met her guilty look with an unmoved, unamused glance of his own.

Alright, so he wasn't as uptight about following the law as a priest probably should have been. But doing something illegal while still in his priestly attire? That was a bit far. He could get caught, and getting caught was not on his agenda.

The fact that this woman (piss-drunk and pissed on as she was) treated him so... tenderly, though, in calling him by her presumed sons' names and easy little terms of endearment... his heart was a whole lot softer than it really should have been, and he hated it.

"Okay," he relented, "but we can't let anybody see me doing this, or I'll get kicked out of the church. Then I'd fall into those sinful thoughts you warned me about, since I wouldn't be a priest."

Had Anita seen him as the thirty-something priest of far better education than she or the rest of her family could ever hope, perhaps she would have been cowed by unamused look this figurehead cast down on her.

But, no. No matter how far he came? In this state of inebriation, the young man beseeching her for clothes was an apple – and she the tree. So, she would bear fruit the ways her roots pulled her to. (And also soak thoroughly in other fruit, which … said something? Something deep, surely.)

Then Son James explained the depths of sin even he might sink to if Anita failed to shield him this time.

Anita looked to him, teetered. Teetered some more. Huh. She’d raised (failed to raise?) a right bastard. Must have been Harry’s side-… no, that was unfair. Her sister was a right cunt, too.

“James,” she said very seriously, then started ambling forward again with a mission. “You have two fists, too much brain, and not a single weepy, unwed missus getting the boys all riled up. If you were going to fuck it up,” she slapped … his elbow? bicep? something swinging in the vicinity of that, “we’d have heard by now, dear.”

James grew up so fast. She’d been more worried about future James than Noah at one point! Good Lord.

“… What about a stick?” she sighed, vision swimming too much to bother looking herself.

Her gait, however, was starting to grow steadier …

Oh, she had far too much confidence in him.

Two fists, too much brain, and not a single weepy, unwed missus getting... what? The line of Malachi's mouth cracked into a smile, and his amusement only grew upon having his arm slapped. Whoever Claude was, whoever Noah and James were -- he felt for them, truly, and their alcoholic mother...

...but God if he wouldn't have traded his own mother for her, in that moment. She might bumble around, break into things, stain herself with booze and piss, but at least she was kind. She didn't seem like the type to push her armoire down on top of her child, or to toss them from the second-story window. No, this woman at least seemed like she cared.

"Fine," he agreed. "You're right."

Malachi set to looking, then, casting a glance from one side of their path to the next. Not too many sticks around, but he grabbed what he saw. Snapped the first two right in half when he tested them, but the third was sturdy, less of a twig than a real stick.

"Here," he returned to her side and pushed it into her hand.

"Will that do?"