There was never a right answer. There was never a right way, and if there was, Malachi had certainly never crossed it.

Was it truly just him? Would someone else have known exactly what to do instead of stepping out that door? Would they have known what to say to a detective that did not want a lie, and did not want the truth? A doctor that commanded him to walk out, and dragged him back inside?

Maybe they would have.

Malachi sure didn’t.

He just wanted to curl in on himself and let his body just – deteriorate. Perhaps he would have fared better if he’d just remembered that all things were dust, and to dust they would return.

He thought he’d wanted this. Hadn’t he asked for control? For honesty? Was that a lie too, that he’d ever wanted any of it at all, and this was just another part of his sick game?

Not particularly eager to lie, Malachi ignored the question instead and moved to push himself up. He doubted the answer would have mattered, and it hurt his throat too much to waste the words on it. So he stood, somewhat steadier on his feet, and went to pick his clothes off of the floor.

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. He was nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“The-n ex-t –” a breath, “-time, I’ll s- ay no.”

Malachi stood, and instead of pulling him back down like he wanted to, Arthur leaned away and out of the man's way.  He stayed knelt on the floor, even when Malachi went to the couch and collected his clothes.

Was this it, then?  This was it?

"No," Arthur said, half turning his head towards Malachi.  "I don't want you to say no to me.  I won't ask you to do something like that again."

Another lie, maybe, but maybe it wasn't.  Was Malachi really going to leave?  No fight, no yelling?  No more blood?  No nothing?

"Where are you going?"  Are you leaving me?  Are you going to come back?  "Please, I - I am sorry, Malachi."

If he meant that, Arthur wouldn’t have asked him to do something like that in the first place.

Malachi dressed himself quickly, pulling on his trousers and the arms of his cassock. His midsection ached with every little bend of his spine, but there was no way around it.

“No,” he said, firmer this time. “Yo-u’re no-t.”

Indulgence was nothing but a fantasy. Arthur, painted kindly through the priest’s hopelessly romantic pathetic glasses, was a fantasy. The truth was that he was just – cruel. And pretending not to care wouldn’t change that it still hurt.

He'd been willing to sacrifice everything for him. His career, his reputation, his freedom. He'd just proved that, and it still meant nothing, because he would always be nothing.

Malachi fiddled with the buttons of his vestments, grateful for the way the black fabric hid the blood that rubbed off from his fingers. Wiped more blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist.

“I’m going-…” …where? There was nowhere that felt safe anymore, if there ever had been. He didn’t want to find Nettie, or Mable, or Elijah, or even Francis, and pretend that he wanted anything but to just stop.

“…Home.”

He didn’t care if the trains were still running or not. He’d wait there until they were.

With that, Malachi went to pass by the kneeling doctor and continue to the door.

"Home?" Arthur couldn't argue that he was sorry, even though he wanted to.  Where did a priest consider home to be?  The church?  Heaven?

London?

"Malachi -" with less grace than already expected, Arthur stood and grabbed the other's arm.  "Malachi, do not leave me."

How ridiculous he must have sounded, begging the priest to stay.  Arthur had been alone all his life and he'd never had a problem with it before, so why did it scare him so much in this moment?  It shouldn't have.  But it still did.

Arthur had just made up his mind to push and push and push Malachi past the breaking point, no matter what it looked like, but perhaps they were already there.  Perhaps Arthur was too good at breaking things, and now he didn't even realize he had done so until it was too late.

"I gave you - I gave you your indulgence, and this is what I get?  What about my part, what I wanted?  What more can I do for you?  Just tell me, talk to me."

His hand paused before it could reach for the doorknob. Arthur’s fingers burned a hole in his arm, and Malachi didn’t turn.

He could still just walk out. It would be so easy. The doctor might pull at him, might hit him, even, but he could make it. Even if it meant leaving Arthur another bloodied mess on the floor, he could make it.

He wanted to, so badly.

Malachi squeezed his eyes shut and stood still, instead. Tense. Ready to move if he had to.

It was all just an act. Everything that wasn’t hitting and bleeding and hurting him was just a prelude; something Arthur must have tolerated solely for what he could do to him after. Malachi knew that. To Arthur’s credit, he had never tried to hide it.

“My- indulgence?”

Every syllable scraped against his throat and left it raw, but he pushed through the growing degradation of his voice.

“I- tried to give you what you wanted, and- you–”

An awful noise ground out from his throat that should have been a groan. Malachi finally turned to face him, grabbing both of Arthur’s arms in his strong grip.

“I don’t know how to please you. I- am trying, and everything I do is just – wrong! I just want to mean something to you!”

There were the tears, glossing over red-rimmed eyes. And why? Why had he turned around? Why was he standing here, holding Arthur’s arms in a death-like grip, shaking him like all of the answers would fall out? Why did he want a man as terrible and cruel as Arthur to care for him at all?

“Is this what you wanted to do to me?” he bit out. “Is this the ruination you wanted? To reduce me to nothing for the crime of just- just wanting to be wanted by you? Am I making you happy now that I’m fucking ruined, Arthur?”

God, Malachi was - he was crying.

He was crying, and continued to lie even as his voice went raw.  Arthur wished it would leave him all together so he wouldn't have to listen to him.  Wished he could move his arms enough to cover his ears, but Malachi's grip on them was too strong.  He couldn't move if his life depended on it.

Arthur couldn't be certain, but he suspected his life depended on it now.

"You..."  The words materialized in his mind, and the sentences they strung together made sense theoretically, but when Arthur tried to apply their meaning to himself, to Malachi, to this, to them - it didn't work.

Who would want to be wanted by Arthur Adams?  Something like that was a fate worse than death.  Malachi, standing before him now, was proof of that.

And he still wanted to mean something to him?

"You're actually making me quite upset," he managed after a long, tense minute staring up into watery black eyes.  "My shoulder, the - you're irritating the stitches, Malachi."

Still, Arthur didn't try to escape.  Who was to say if he'd ever feel these violent hands against him again if he pushed them away now?

"Everything you have done this far has been perfect, Malachi, you've done nothing but please me.  You've done nothing wrong!  Except, well, the lies, and breaking my glasses, and leaving me before - but you've atoned for those, all of those things."

Really only most of them, but Arthur didn't think he was in a place to be picky right then.

"If you wanted or - or needed more from me, you should have said something at the church.  Add to the fucking - those fucking conditions you hate so much, instead of just blindly agreeing to something you're gonna fuss about later!"

Oh! He was irritating his poor stitches. Malachi stared hard at the doctor for another long moment, frustrated beyond belief that that was his first response. And eventually – before that anger could rise, and rise, and slip beyond his own control – he let go.

Didn’t want to irritate his poor fucking stitches after all! As if yanking him back into the house by rope had done nothing to irritate the cross stitched into his abdomen.

His hands fell back down to his sides. Jittering, shaking as hard as if they were still holding on and shaking Arthur too.

A scoffed breath pushed from his raw throat, and the priest forced his glare away from the doctor’s face. Again, here he was, going on about the lies that Malachi so rudely burdened him with! How was a false name the worst of it? How did that strike Arthur as something so much more offensive and unforgivable than - than lying about assaulting someone that Malachi cared for so much?

Malachi took a shallow breath and willed it to keep every word bitten back behind his teeth. If, for a moment, his composure had been lost – he was quick to find it. His eyes were still wet, but no tears ran rivers down his cheeks. His hands still shook, but did not grab.

What did he even have to hold onto?

“You can’t give me what I want,” he breathed, in a lower tone closer to his own, but not quite.

“And anytime I ask for it, you tell me that I’m lying.”

No one could give him what he wanted. All they could do was pretend, at most, until they tired of him and left him high and dry the way they always did. Arthur would, too, he was sure of it; in time he'd tire of Malachi and maybe then, he would leave him outside, and stop trying to drag him back in.

Malachi shook his head in a short, stilted motion, and set his hand on the doorknob behind him.

“I want the same things that you do, Arthur. But I want more than that, too. I don’t want to just use and be used. So – fuck off,” he said, finally returning his gaze to his face, “and stop trying to keep something you don’t even really want.”

Released from Malachi's grip, Arthur felt like he was falling apart.  He couldn't blame his own shaking hands on the other's influence anymore, could just clench them hard and try to convince himself they were trembling out of anger.  That was part of it, sure, but the rest of it was something Arthur wasn't familiar with.

Fear.

What did he have to be so afraid of?  The fact that he was right?  Arthur knew he was the only person on the Earth like this, terrible and cruel as he was.  He had thought for a moment Malachi was something like him, even just half of what he was, but he was wrong.

So why was he still fighting?

"You don't want me to love you," he spat.  Just the word, love, sounded like it tore his throat coming up.  "You don't love me, you don't even know me, you're nowhere close to knowing me and you're already leaving.  You don't want love, you've just deluded yourself into thinking love will fix you!  But it won't!"

Arthur was tense, ready to strike with more than his words but for the first time, he was holding back.  Physically, at least.  Vocally, he was throwing everything he had at Malachi, near screaming at him now as if volume alone could convince him.

"Nothing will fix us, Malachi, we are broken and that is that!  All we can do it cope, and stick together, but you are working to make an enemy of me and that is not something you want, I can promise you that."

Like this, Arthur reminded Malachi of a petulant child more than a man. Yelling in his face about - about being broken, both of them, and that was that? They were broken, so they had to stay and be broken together? Without even an attempt to fix anything, they were but shattered, stained glass, depicting fractions of images that would never again form a clear vision. And that was that.

He sounded like a child trying to convince him not to take his favorite toy away, or not to sit with the other kids, because the other kids were too good for people like them.

“And what are you going to do, Arthur?”

Malachi couldn’t even think to say a word about the rest of it. Had Arthur never been loved by anyone at all? To Malachi, love was – love was like God, all-consuming and powerful, and it needed nothing other than faith. He didn’t know the details of Arthur’s life, but he knew him. And for Malachi, that was enough.

The doctor might have raised his voice as a weapon, but Malachi's scratchy voice was level.

“Am I supposed to be afraid of you?”

Oh, did Malachi not believe him?  Not think him capable of things worse than carving a cross into a man's skin?  In seconds, the doctor's mind was flooded with things far more gruesome than that.  He stared at Malachi, imagining it all for a long and quiet moment.

Arthur couldn't help but smile.

"Leave and find out," he said simply.  "Or stay, and don't."

Had Malachi said before that the girl had a brother?  Arthur supposed Malachi cared for the both of them a great deal.  If he wanted love, why not get it from them?  Children were so easily swayed one way or the other.  It couldn't have been that difficult to gain affection from them.

Perhaps the priest was really that unlovable though.

If that was really the case, he and Arthur were perfect for each other.  Why couldn't he see that?

"Don't do this, Malachi.  Stay.  Stab me again, kill me, love me, if you think you want to.  Just stay."