Chapter Text

CHAPTER 1. The man of God and the plague.

She had always heard that human beings possessed an astonishing ability to adapt to the worst situations; that mankind was, by nature, made to survive. In a way, Clea had always believed in that potential, but she had never, ever thought she would experience it in her own flesh. Not like this, certainly. Only a few months had passed since she had lived through the same pattern as everyone else: the tree, the crows, the endless road, and the nightmare nights. And yet, she had the feeling that an entire lifetime had gone by.

Perhaps, had Clea been honest with herself, she would have admitted that the nightmare they were trapped in had become, in some grotesquely perverse way, a home. Absurd as it sounded, she had found a place there where she belonged. She had a purpose. She was needed. She was visible. She had stopped feeling that enormous emptiness that had followed her all her life like a shadow clinging to her back, breathing down her neck. She no longer felt quite so alone. Or perhaps she did, but she had learned to turn that loneliness into something useful.

That morning, her footsteps rang out firmly as she headed toward the bar Tom had improvised in what had once been a gas station. At that hour, with the sun still high enough in the sky, the town took on a welcoming appearance that almost made her forget what it truly was: a trap.

She climbed the steps leading up to the porch and, by some cosmic miracle, managed to dodge Kenny as he shot out through the door. He was carrying a bottle of the alcohol Tom took such pains to distill; alcohol that, though anyone asked would say they could taste no difference between it and a sweaty sock, they would also admit was a better comfort than nothing at all.

“If you keep frowning like that, by forty you’ll look like a Russian war veteran.”

“Always so charming, Clea.” Kenny’s smile betrayed the friendly sarcasm behind his words, and it drew nothing from Clea but an even wider smile.

“I always am. The problem is that none of you are capable of appreciating it.”

The way he rolled his eyes made her laugh properly just as she stepped into the tavern, as though that laugh itself announced imminent danger.

“What’s brought on this outrageous display of good humor?” Tom, always wearing that smile of his, so easy and kind, set down a bottle and a glass already scratched by use and time. “Because I can think of a few possibilities, and each one is more scandalous than the last.”

“Don’t tempt me, Tommy.” With a coquettish wink, she took both the bottle and the glass just as Tom placed another one on the counter. Clea arched an eyebrow before fixing her olive eyes on him. “Are you drinking with me?”

“Maybe another time. I’m afraid you’re going to have good company.”

She turned on her heels only to see a man of medium height. The backlit effect created by the open door to the outside allowed her to make out little more than his slender, steady silhouette, and the curls she recognized surprisingly well.

“Father Khatri.” Clea’s lips curved into the smile of someone who knew she was about to enjoy herself. She leaned her elbow on the bar, shifting her weight as she tilted to one side. “How scandalous: a man of God entering the house of vice. We’ll have to brace ourselves for the worst plagues.”

“I’m quite sure one of them has already started speaking.”

Though anyone else might have missed it, Tom did not fail to notice the way Khatri’s dark eyes took on a most peculiar brightness in the presence of that woman. It was systematic, almost as ritualistic as the sun rising and setting each day.

“And yet, you keep seeking me out.” She dragged the bottle and the two glasses with her, setting them down on one of the tables in an implicit invitation for him to sit beside her. With a theatrical gesture, she pulled out one of the chairs and sat with feigned elegance.

“I’m not sure that’s what I’m doing.” As was tradition between them, Khatri sat on the other side of the table, much straighter, his hands resting on the tabletop in a gesture of remarkable correctness and formality.

“No, of course not. You simply appear wherever I am by pure divine coincidence.” She leaned toward him with a sly little smile. “Perhaps our meetings are some twisted plan to turn me into your disciple, but I’m sorry to say, Father…” She took the bottle and poured him a drink first. “Your attempts to lead me down the righteous path will only prove terribly fruitless and frustrating. For you, of course.”

Then she poured one for herself, took the glass, and lifted it in a discreet, silent toast before taking a generous swallow that made her grunt the moment the burn in her throat nearly stole her breath.

“I would never dream of it. I value my mental integrity far too much.”

A low laugh remained halfway caught between them, suspended in a strange complicity for two people who, perhaps in another context, would never have tolerated each other. But there they were: they had gone from perfect strangers to confidants. Two people who had far more in common than anyone might notice if they stayed at the surface.

As Khatri took a far more moderate sip, Clea amused herself by admiring those dark curls he tried so hard to tame, though one of them always ended up declaring rebellion and falling across one side of his forehead. His brown skin contrasted with the gray beginning to show at his temples and in parts of his beard. He possessed the sort of attractiveness Clea would have found irresistible were it not for one tiny detail: the clerical collar. That strap that made it clear the man was married to an incorporeal competitor. The universe had very varied ways of laughing at her.

“You look like you haven’t slept well.”

“I could say the same about you.” The man’s face softened into a kindness very particular to him.

“But I’m in a better mood.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Not at all. The Holy Trinity is debatable. My bad temper is a proven fact.”

The way Khatri laughed left a warm residue in her chest, as though the mere fact of seeing that man lower his defenses before her stirred a kind of happiness she had thought foreign to herself.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s been going around in that head of yours, little priest?”

He needed only a few seconds, pressing his lips together before answering.

“I went to see Mrs. Miller.”

A silence fell, one even the outside of the house seemed to respect.

“There are things we have to accept we can’t control, Khatri.”

“I know, but I don’t want to give up on her… Ever since she lost her wife, she’s been so dimmed that I fear one day…”

Clea quickly reached out until her hand caught the man’s forearm in a gentle squeeze, an attempt to pull him away from his thoughts.

“Khatri.” Her voice sounded softer than usual, more conciliatory. Her thumb traced light caresses over his skin as she offered him a somewhat pained smile. “We’re doing everything we can to help her stay afloat, but taking on a responsibility that doesn’t belong to you will only hurt you more.”

Although she received no direct answer, he did lift a hand toward the smaller one caressing his forearm with an affection he did not believe himself worthy of.

“You’ve done a lot for these people, Khatri. Even for me.”

If one judged the matter impartially, it was an entirely harmless moment. Two adults sitting at a table, talking in daylight, with the soft, distant murmur of other conversations around them. And yet, anyone who observed a little more closely would have noticed the latent complicity between two people who seemed to hold a mutual admiration for one another. And Tom, who was a born observer, perceived that small intimacy, innocent though it appeared.

Perhaps it was precisely that complicity, that intimacy, that made Clea feel as though she were standing on far more uncertain and unsettling ground, because it was not something she could manage with the same ease with which she managed many other aspects of her life. She was good at feigning a strength she did not always feel; good at selling advice she did not apply to herself; good at hiding the most embarrassing cracks in her soul.

But the emotional world was far more complicated for her. Not because she did not understand it — perhaps she understood it too well. Maybe that was why she fled from the possibility of forming a real connection. Or perhaps she was socially clumsy in that respect. Who knew. In any case, she withdrew her hand from his forearm despite how pleasant the feel of his skin had been beneath her touch.

And, driven by the urgent need to puncture the bubble they had fully sunk into, Clea lowered her voice as if she were about to address a matter of extreme secrecy.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Khatri, who knew that tone and distrusted it for that very reason, replied:

“It does not reassure me in the slightest when you ask whether you can ask me something.”

“Good. Do priests masturbate?”

The silence that followed was, in essence, of extraordinary purity. Although neither of them was looking directly at Tom, both were fairly certain the glass he had been carefully drying had almost slipped from his hands.

And Khatri, who had survived crises of faith, losses, horrific confessions, and the moral decay of a town trapped in that nightmare, discovered that none of it had fully prepared him for Clea Foresti asking him such a thing with the serenity of someone inquiring about the weather.

“Clea…” he said at last, in a tone both reproachful and exhausted.

“It’s a legitimate question.”

“No, it is not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No.”

“See? That ‘no’ was far too quick. Suspicious.”

Khatri closed his eyes for a moment and brought his fingers to the bridge of his nose, massaging it as if praising the virtue of patience.

“I’m not going to answer you.”

“That’s not the same as a remotely convincing denial.”

“There is no decent answer.”

“That’s not true. The answer is very simple: ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘go to hell.’ Any of those three would seem fairly clear and acceptable to me.”

Much against his will, he let out a laugh — brief, defeated, still carrying a trace of disbelief — that made him look younger. She watched him lift a hand to his hair, combing the dark strands back as his laughter gradually faded.

“You’re going to give me more gray hairs.”

“I don’t see the problem. Gray hair is sexy.”

“You are impossible,” he murmured.

“No, actually,” she said, pointing at him with a single finger as if emphasizing the obvious, “I’m charming. I’ve told you many times.”

“God help me.”

“He doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry.”

That, Khatri thought, was precisely the root of all his problems. God did not seem to be in any hurry to deliver him from anything: not from the town where they were imprisoned, not from guilt, and much less from the woman sitting across from him. With her shamelessness and that irreverent way of keeping him company even on the darkest day.

He did not realize he had been looking at her for a delicately long while, with an attention that was not particularly clerical. Clea, who was many things but certainly not blind, noticed. She settled back against the chair, crossing her arms over her chest and clicking her tongue.

“You’ve gone very quiet.”

“I was actually wondering why I keep talking to you.”

“Easy: because I entertain you.”

“Because you exhaust me.”

A laugh escaped Clea, so sweet that Khatri was convinced he had not heard anything like it in his forty years.

“That, Father, is also a form of love.”

Khatri merely shook his head, though his expression had softened and, at some point, his dark eyes drifted toward the window to his left. Clea, as though by reflex, looked in the same direction, only to see the orange tint in the sky announcing what was already obvious: every inhabitant of that town had to return to the safety of their homes before hell broke loose, as it did every night.

“I’ll walk you home.”

“You make it sound like an act of chivalry when, in reality, your church and my house are right across from each other.”

She pushed back from the table to stand, gathering the two glasses while Khatri took the bottle so they could leave everything on Tom’s counter.

“Well, considering you always walk as if you’re in a hurry, keeping up with you is an achievement.”

She turned to him with a teasing little smile and, as she passed by his side, gave him a light nudge with her elbow.

“You are charming, Father.”

There was something peculiarly melancholy in the way she watched the same people return to their homes at the same hour each day, the sun setting behind their backs and the feeling that no one truly knew whether there would be a tomorrow. As though it were a funeral march.

Clea walked with her hands tucked into the pockets of an aviator jacket that, given how huge it was on her, had obviously once belonged to someone else. She had slowed her pace considerably; she did not know whether it was to match Khatri’s stride or to prolong the walk a little more. And it was true: Clea had that involuntary habit of walking quickly everywhere, as if she were always late, even when she was not, or as if time itself were about to run out.

“Hey.” Khatri did not answer; he merely turned his face toward her to let her know he was listening. “I wanted to thank you.”

She saw the priest arch a single eyebrow in a gesture of genuine curiosity.

“For walking you home?”

“For everything.”

She had never found it difficult to hold Khatri’s gaze, perhaps because she had always seen in him a certain visceral honesty that made her feel comfortable. And yet, in that moment, she felt the need to look ahead again, as though she did not know the way home perfectly well.

“When I arrived here…” She released a long sigh that left her lungs almost empty. “Well, you know how we all arrive. It isn’t easy to accept all this shit.” She lifted her hands as if that somehow demonstrated the obvious, which, in truth, it did. “A lot of people arrive with family, with friends… I arrived alone and…” Khatri noticed immediately the anxious way she gestured. “I don’t know. You made things much easier for me. You made me feel like I wasn’t a burden.”

They both stopped beside the woman’s house, with the church and Khatri’s own home only a few yards away.

“You helped me understand how things worked here. You welcomed me as one of you. You made this place feel… I don’t know, a little less hostile.” She lowered her eyes for a few seconds, as though something slightly more vulnerable had caught somewhere in her throat. “Thank you.”

Khatri felt the immediate impulse to tell her he had done nothing extraordinary, because humility was comfortable ground for him. Perhaps, if he diminished the importance of it, he would not feel the overpowering temptation to wrap that woman in his arms, to assure her that he would keep taking care of her, that she was not alone.

But the need did not disappear.

In the midst of that strange silence, not entirely uncomfortable, she watched Khatri move closer to her with the slowness of someone determined to give her room in case she wished to step away — which Clea, of course, did not. Out of pure instinct, she slipped her arms around the man’s sides, feeling his own arms wrap around her with a delicacy that made every part of her body relax. That embrace was far from cold or clumsy. It was a full embrace, so warm that it made her feel too much. Too much relief. Too much affection. Too much contained heat.

She allowed herself the indulgence of closing her eyes for the sole purpose of sharpening the rest of her senses. His beard brushed her temple. His back was tense beneath her hands, as though even holding her that way implied some form of conflict for him. He embraced her with an intensity Clea had not felt in a very long time, perhaps longer than she would have liked to say aloud.

It filled her soul so completely that she allowed herself the luxury of smiling. And Khatri noticed.

“Thank you…”

Although there was no answer, she was certain Khatri had smiled too. They separated with the slowness of people who do not want to break the moment, partly because of the comfort of it, but above all because of the uncertainty of not knowing what to do next. Their gazes inevitably met in the midst of a tension neither of them quite knew how to dissolve.

Fortunately for them, divine grace — or perhaps the sheriff’s grace — showed them a certain mercy when Boyd’s bell rang out in the distance, part of that final round he made through the town to announce that everyone had to return to the safety of their homes.

“See you tomorrow, my dear priest.”

“Good night, Clea.”