The first time they'd met, Ira had been enamored. He stood in a lake, his hands cupped together to hold a small pool of water. Rivets of it sloped down the curve of his shoulder blades where knots of muscle grew into shimmering pearlescent wings, glimmering softly golden in the setting sun. 

He turned his head--his eyes catching in the same blazing light. They burned brighter than stars. The same guiding yellow, except where they slit in the middle, making space for pitch black pupils darker than any night that Ira had ever survived. 

Startling feline eyes, set in fox-shape. His hair was the same oil dark, and it curled where it dripped. If he'd been human at all, Ira would think he'd come from the islands of Indonesia. But Ira had known that he was not. Not human. Not from anywhere Ira could ever freely go.

It was immediately obvious as he approached from behind the unassuming figure, walking towards those dazzling wings. Stretching from his back, flickering in time with his heartbeat.

Those will be the first, Ira thought as his metallic sword slid slowly from its sheath, the first thing I shall slice from him will be those wings.

Because he was not human.

It became a sort of prayer that Ira hummed to himself. Something to break apart all the horror in his mind. Why should he feel guilt? They had committed the crime--because they were not human.

His beauty stood testament to his otherworldly blood. Glittering golden eyes and pearlescent glowing wings. For the first time, Ira thought that it was a shame to end such a creature. He was prettier than the angels Ira had seen with his own two eyes.

So first he would cut free his wings. When they fluttered on a final flight to the floor, he'd move on to pluck out his eyes. When he could no longer look with that feline gaze, he'd pull out his mouthful of pearl-white fangs. If he could make him appear human, would that be enough? Would that fix all that was wrong with him?

Ira's fingers tightened over the hilt of his sword. He was not human. He was prey.

"Well, this is incredibly awkward." The demonic lord sighed. "You've caught me just before my bath."

"What are you?" The man, who was not Ira, snarled.

"I'm dangerous."

Ira froze. The scene rapidly unfolding before him became suddenly hazy. His fingers twitched on the iron sword locked tightly in his grasp. As if he had the choice to return it to the scabbard. As if he had any choice at all but to walk endlessly down the path unfolding before him.

Ira's tongue flexed behind his teeth. He ached to reply to the wisp whistling softly past his ears. He knew what he would say, if only he could be given the chance. His voice rose up before he could stop it. His teeth rattled against the clash of his jaws. He managed his actions as flawlessly as a puppet on twisted and broken strings. But he still managed.

"You're not," he'd promised, "you're just Melchior."

"I'm just. . . really more of a dog person." 

His body crystalized, sticking in place as the voice floated past on the spring breeze. He turned, chasing after the echo of it. He could see it all so clearly; how he'd said it from behind a tight-lipped smile, as if playing a prank. And then--there he was. And Ira was gazing into green eyes that flashed each time the light shone on them just right. 

Beneath the lips that Ira had kissed--that was where he kept his sharpened teeth. And there he stood, in a lake. Ira had watched as the smoke curled off his skin, heard as he'd screamed in agony. 

Mel. 

And Ira was rushing forward, pushing past oil-thick restrains, to burst into a body rife with pain. He snapped upright in bed, crying out at his chest burned. He pressed his palm flat to the heavy bandaged there, gasping in air around the tightness of his wounds. 

"Melc-" His voice cracked in his throat, forcing up a sputtering of heaving dry coughs. He choked until he was dizzy and his eyes full of tears--but still, he couldn't suck in the air he needed. 

Thump, thump, thump. . . 

Ira thought it might have been the wild racing of his own heart, until the bedroom door flung open bringing in a cascade of gentle yellow light, and then he realized the sound pounding against his skull was that of footsteps. Ira squeezed his eyes shut tight to warn away the sudden bright of the hall lights. Hands met his shoulders and shoved him slowly back down into the bed, all while a voice hushed him with soft whispers. 

"Just breath, just breath." 

Breath, Kitten.

"Mel-"

"Shh, kid." He said, "don't try to talk. Just take it easy." 

Ira's stomach rolled until he thought he might be sick. His tears burst like a dam, flooding out onto the skin of his cheeks before he could manage to quiet them. "Father." 

"It's okay, kid." Father Pine soothed. "I'm right here. You're home." 

Ira found him in the washed out light leaking in from the hall. His salt-and-pepper hair was askew on his head, spiking off into all manner of direction. He was squinting his blue eyes, blinking out in Morse Code to communicate how much he missed his glasses. He'd always looked that way. Each time that he'd come to pull Ira from his nightmares. Between the two, Ira didn't know which of them got less sleep. 

He'd missed him. More than he could ever truly express, so he hoped that what he could give was enough. He wrapped his arms around Father Pine's shoulders and hugged him as tightly as he could before the knot in his chest began to ache in protest. Father Pine laughed softly and pulled him close in return, pressing a familiar kiss to Ira's hay-yellow hair. 

"Oh, kid." He breathed. "You had me so scared." 

"It's okay." Ira rasped in a voice nearly unrecognizable. His throat twinged, forcing a wince through his battered body.

"Here, take some water." Father Pine said. He grabbed a filled glass from the nightstand and passed it to Ira, who gladly accepted. He drank until the burn in his lungs demanded air. He handed back the empty glass and coughed into the sleeve of his loose white sleepshirt. 

"I can't believe you're awake." Father Pine whispered into the silence. "I thought I was going to lose you." 

He wished he could erase those doubts, but he didn't know how. Not as the reality of his situation came slowly pouring in. Everything ached. His head pounded, his stomach tensed, his muscles stiffened, and his eyes blurred beneath the dim lights. 

Ira pressed a palm to his wrapped chest. Beneath the fresh white gauze, he could feel stiff new stitches and raw skin. In the crook of his arm, there was a needle. He noticed it only as the line ran across the sheets of his bed, making gentle rustling that drew his attention. The tube was connected to a plastic IV bag, slow-feeding Ira a fresh supply of plain clear liquid. 

He ran his heavy tongue over the inside of his mouth. "How long?" 

"You've been asleep for weeks, Ira." 

His heart flipped painfully behind his sore ribs. 

"No." He shook his head. 

"Ira, you almost died. Do you get that?" Father Pine asked, his voice as fragile as thinly stretched glass. "You had four punctures in your chest, just centimeters from meeting with your ribcage. And then there was the infection. A lake wasn't a totally ideal location for that degree of injury." 

"No," Ira whispered. "I have to. . . where is he?" 

"Ira." 

"Where is he?" 

Father Pine blew a sigh from his nose and sunk his fingers into his wildly tangled hair. His gaze fluttered to the opened bedroom door, where a small figure filled the bottom of the frame. She mewed unhappily and trotted slowly into the room. Ira was glad to see her. His Peter. He was home, waking from a nightmare, not a single aspect out of place. Except that everything was terribly wrong. 

"Where is he?" Ira repeated, his tone growing sharper than rose thorns. "Where's Melchior?" 

"The Progeny have him." 

"They can't just take him!" Ira hissed in disbelief. 

"They can. They did." Father Pine shook his head. "Kid, did you know? What he was?" 

"What do you mean 'what he was', he's just Mel!" Ira snapped. "He saved us! He-" 

"Ira, he tried to kill you!" Father Pine said, his face turning sickly pale as the words come over his tongue. Maybe he was remembering again how close he came to seeing Ira die.

"He was just--he didn't mean to-" 

"Ira!" Father Pine snapped. "Will you just listen for one second! It's over!" 

Everything he said settled like rocks in Ira's stomach, turning sour and filling him with sick.

It's over.

"No." He shook his head. "No, it's not over. Not like that."

Ira sunk into his mattress, wishing he had the words to sooth away this ache. What could he do to fix it? He tensed and looked up at Father Pine with wide blue eyes. "The gate! Father, we did it! We found the gate! Our pilgrimage-"

Father Pine sighed and ran his flattened palms down over his tired eyes. "You're just too late."

"The Cardinal gave us until the full moon!" Ira snapped.

"Ira, the full moon is tomorrow night."

His heart thudded against his ribs as faithfully as the churning wharf of the Kaaterskill. 

You've been asleep for weeks, Ira.

"Then we still have time." He pointed, as if his world was not rapidly falling apart. "We did it. The Cardinal told us to find the gate--and we did it! There was an Archbishop, she saw it. Her name was Abigail--I think. Ask her! There was a whole platoon there! Ask any one of them!"

For one sickening moment, he thought that it would be alright. That they'd done as asked and that would carry reward. Until Father Pine looked at him with those sad blue eyes, a pair that seemed so familiar. Then it all began to make too much sense.

Every doubt he'd shoved down came rushing forward. Every question he'd choked on--he had answers. Terrible answers that he didn't want. The pieces began to fall into place. The Beast corpses littered across the national park, each helpfully marked on a map. The absence of laity in all the hundreds of tourist destinations of New York. The glaring knowing looks from the cab driver, the same one each time. Those knights he'd seen just hours before, and the archers invisible in the trees. The platoon--and how they'd managed to find them just in time.

"He. . . he already knew." Ira whispered. 

"Kid, listen-" 

"This whole time, everyone already knew." Ira began to suffocate on his horror. His skin flushed with silver and then began to molt into a bright angry pink.

"Ira, just let me explain-"

"You never needed us." 

"Now, just wait-" 

"Why?" Ira sobbed. "Why did he tell us to-" 

"Will you just listen to me!" Father Pine exhaled in frustration.

"Where did they take him?" Ira's mind raced behind his pounding skull. "I have to get him, I have to go."

Was he making any sense? He didn't know. He didn't know where he was going to go either. Ira flattened his palms against his mattress and began to push himself up.

"Wait!" Father Pine ordered. He placed his hands on Ira's shoulders and pushed him down.

"I have to-"

"Angels, Ira! Will you just stop! Listen to me for one second! You weren't meant to find the gate! He thought you'd complete the task sent to you by the angels if he just gave you time." Father Pine said angrily. The moment the words departed his mouth--he became statue still. Ira froze, too. They held in glass-like mirrors of each other, listening as the echo of Father Pine's voice rang out in Ira's bedroom.

He opened his mouth and then shut it again. His words had wilted on his tongue, freezing mere centimeters behind his grit teeth. He sunk his fingers into his black and gray hair before whispering a curse into the tense air.

"I'm sorry, kid. I didn't mean to raise my voice. I didn't mean to tell you like that either." He placed his face in his palms and exhaled shakily. "I don't want to argue."

For once in his life, Ira lacked the energy to rise into battle. He didn't know what to say. Instead, all he wanted was to sink beneath the covers and cry until the fluid bag leading in to his veins was empty from his tears. He blew out a breath and relaxed his tongue to freely spill out whatever lame conjuring he could summon. 

"I don't either." Ira said finally. He might have been surprised with himself to know that he really meant it.

Father Pine pressed a half-hearted smile to his lips and brushed a lock of tangled yellow hair from Ira's blue eyes. "Has it really been so long? You look older somehow." 

Ira felt older. As if the weight on his shoulders had finally caught up with the length of his soul's endless life. He was sure that if he looked hard enough in the mirror, he would find white hairs in his sun-yellow head and forming creases in his pale skin. 

"I really missed you, kid." Father Pine said.

Ira reached, with trembling fingers, to his night light of anger and ill-tempered replies but he found the bulb burnt out. Leaving him shaking all alone in the dark, beneath the eery gaze of night-time hunters.

"I really missed you, too." He whispered. The words came from him as shards of glass. It hurt, more than the punctures drilled into his chest.

Beneath sore skin and raw stitches was a feeling even more unpleasant. A giant gooey knot that he couldn't untangle. The longer he tried, the more it consumed him. Leaking first over his fingertips until it began to ooze up his arms. Eating him up to his elbows. 

He'd fallen into this hauntingly uncomfortable moment and had became too scared to ask--too scared to discover the answers he so desperately needed. His chest buckled beneath the tension and he whimpered as he pressed his shaking palms to it.

Father Pine reached down towards the floor, scratching a curiously mewing Peter between her perked ears. "I never wanted to hurt you. I know those words seem too cheap. I know that what I've done can't be so easily fixed, but I only did it to protect you." 

"I-" 

"Wait, please." Father Pine asked. "Just listen, carefully, to everything that I have to say." 

So Ira fell into stilled silence, holding his breath to keep from falling apart. 

"I. . ." Father Pine sucked in a breath and then slowly released it. He sat upright and pressed his fingers into the bridge of his nose. "I asked Absalom to give me you." 

Absalom, Ira knew, was the Cardinal but he'd never heard the man referred to so casually and it filled him with chills. He didn't know much about their history. Only that it had begun with Father Pine leaving his priesthood and ended with him becoming a new sort of father. 

"I was frightened and so unsure--I'd never planned to raise a kid before. I thought I'd just mess it up, how my father did. But I couldn't just let go." He said softly. Ira had never heard that before. He tried not to press, he sunk his teeth into his tongue to keep from interrupting the heavy admissions rolling free. "I knew that when he looked at you he only saw a weapon. But Ira, when I looked at you, I just saw her. Your mother." 

Ira swallowed the words rising from his throat. He forced them back down and squeezed his eyes shut. He knew that if he spoke, he'd shatter the truths flowing freely out into his childhood bedroom. 

He recalled, slowly, words spoken to him in a dusty stairwell miles beneath the roaring New York City streets. The day that they'd begun his trek for pilgrimage. Father Pine had told him then that his mother hadn't left him with the church--he'd said that before backing Ira into another corner, repeating an old story of an original sin that he couldn't remember, of a time in an orphanage that he couldn't remember.

The lies had been so thoroughly weaved into his every breath, he didn't know if he'd have anything left to choke down if it was taken away. And yet--he had to know. 

"She was kind, and brave, and strong. And I knew the moment that I first held you that I couldn't let you be any different. I wanted you to be a child, to be happy, to be safe. If I could have been braver myself, I would have abandoned this world to raise you as a boy truly cut free from this burden." His voice grew heavier the longer he spoke. When he'd finished, he stared down at his hands folded in his lap, and said no more.

"She didn't leave me with the Progeny," Ira muttered when he could no longer stand the silence billowing up into the tense air between them. "But she didn't leave me at the orphanage either, did she?" 

He shook his head. "She left you with me." 

"Why?" Ira hissed. "Why you?" 

Father Pine was silent again. For so long Ira began to think that he'd lost his chance, that he'd never learn the truth. Maybe that was better. Just as he began to grow content with that idea, he began.

"She trusted me to always protect you." He said. "We were friends." 

"Friends?" Ira echoed in disbelief. 

Father Pine lifted his palms in surrender, "just friends--but I wanted to be a father to you." 

"A father?" Ira muttered bitterly. "You took her son away! You raised me among people who only ever despised me! If she knew--she would never have given me to you." 

"She knew, Ira!" He said. "She knew everything! She knew who you'd become, who your soul had been. She didn't have a choice in the matter, it was what the angels demanded." 

Ira shook his head and lifted his palms to press over his ears. He didn't want to hear anymore. He didn't want to know that he'd had a mother--one who'd known his mistakes before he'd ever even gotten a chance. One who gave him away. One who didn't want him. 

"Stop," he whispered. 

Father Pine leaned across the bed, taking Ira's wrist beneath his grip. He gently pulled his hands away from his ears and wrapped his arms around Ira's trembling shoulders. Ira crumpled against the warmth of his chest, panting for each glass-sharp breath. 

"She loved you so much, kid." 

Ira's tears began to fall before he could stop them. "Then why isn't she here?" 

"She didn't have a choice in that either." Father Pine murmured against Ira's hair. 

Wrapped up in the familiar scent of oud soap, Ira silently cried for the death of a mother he'd never much considered before. Why had he never stopped to think about her? Because he was too scared to know? Because it was easier not to? Because if she hadn't tossed him aside, then he'd tossed her aside. 

Guilt stung up his insides, tearing him apart with a venom-tipped barb. She knew all that he was and would be, and she still loved him. It seemed impossible, or maybe just the proof of miracles everyone seemed so desperate to find. But he didn't know and his mind was already whirling too fast to ponder it. 

"I thought so many times of running away, I knew that she would have been brave enough, but I couldn't. Absalom never told me much, but he made it clear you had a destiny. You were their chosen one, even when they only felt hatred for you, and it wasn't fair. It's not fair--but I stayed." He continued, even as Ira wished he could shut it back out. 

"I believed him when he told me he'd spoken to the angels, that you had committed a sin against them, and this was your path to redemption. I thought pushing you towards this ending was saving your soul. And for that, your pain seemed a small price to pay." He said.

Ira scoffed between his sobs. "You believed him? Has that changed?" 

The words seemed too heavy to lift off his tongue. Was my sin ever even real?

"I don't know, Ira." Father Pine breathed. "Something is keeping your soul trapped here, constantly reincarnating on this plane. You're different. The Prince wants you for something, Ira. The Cardinal--no, the angels, they relayed the memory of your first life when they delivered their message to Absalom. It just. . . made sense." 

Ira, the ever faithful betrayer, was a story that just made sense?

"I don't remember it." Ira said. 

He squeezed his eyes shut, ignoring the chilling memories of a man submerged in a lake. That hadn't been--no, that couldn't have been real. It had been a tangled mess of fiction born from near-death and an infection addled brain. How else had he forced the dream to carry him back to Melchior? How else had he been able to pull himself free from the tangled webs?

His first life was a ghost that alluded even him.

"I know." 

He was dizzy on it. He couldn't make sense of this alternate reality, where everything was just a few inches shifted to the left. He'd never been in an orphanage. He'd never told stories of attacking the Third Prince with a Vestige. They seemed so incredibly insignificant--he couldn't understand why everyone had built the story up around him. 

"Why?" 

"Absalom thought their might be secrets to unlocking a Vestige in the memories of your first life. How to do it, how we could do it without needing to wait on the completion of the angel's promise. He thought that if you believed you'd had those memories then eventually they would return." Father Pine said. "Angels, maybe that's why they never did. The angels don't want us to circumvent this." 

Somehow, it seemed a perfect fit that Ira had unknowingly already spent years of his life trying to save Melchior. But it only made this failure sting worse.

"Is any of my life real?" Ira asked.

"You're Ira Rule." Father Pine said. "You were sent to us by the angels, to complete a task worthy of reinstating the Progeny with a Vestige. Your soul is unnaturally glued to Earth and completing this journey might allow it to rest." 

Ira sunk his fingers into his hair. "Might? That's all I am? A lost soul who's only retribution can be found with death?"

"I'm not done yet, Ira." Father Pine said quietly into the hallowed space between them. "You're nineteen now, which pains me to admit because you're the kid I raised. You're stupidly stubborn, like a mule. Your favorite color is orange. Your birthday is in May, on the fourteenth. You'd rather bake than cook-" 

"Those aren't-" Ira began to interrupt.

"They are." He cut back. "They are important." 

"None of this makes sense." Ira said.

"I know." 

"I. . . I don't know what to do anymore." Ira said. "My pilgrimage was never meant to succeed--I was never meant to save him."

There was no way to avoid the tragic end they were barreling towards.

Father Pine nodded his agreement. "No, but you did. You two found the gate." 

"Does it matter?" Ira scowled. 

"I think so." Father Pine shrugged. "Maybe you're capable of more than you think." 

"I don't care about any of that--I just wanted to save Melchior." Ira muttered bitterly. "But they never intended to spare him. They were never going to give him another chance. Especially not now that they know what he can do." 

"Absalom isn't a perfect man, Ira, but he's not a mad one either." Father Pine said.

"What do you mean?" 

"It won't be easy. I'm sure the borrowed time he was living on has run short. I'm sure there are many who'd rather kill him now--now that they know he's not human." Father Pine explained. "But I know Absalom, kid, and maybe he's looking for a way out, too. You just have to give him one." 

Ira's gut rolled over, doing silly dog tricks inside of his hollowed out chest cavity. Those words--he knew those words. They rose up, snarling and snapping with sharpened teeth. 

Because they are not human.

"Do you think he's still worth saving?" Ira whispered. "Even if he's. . . a Ze'ev." 

Father Pine was still and quiet. In the sudden silence, Peter's mews echoed up and down the apartment's halls. Finally, he offered a simple shrug. "I. . . don't really know."

Ira nodded slowly, turning his blue eyes down to the stiff second skeleton of his tight bandages. They seemed the only thing keeping him together.

Father Pine sighed and pushed his messy hair away from his forehead. "But it's not my burden, Ira. It's not my choice to make. You are the one the angels promised would hold his killing blade. Do you remember what I told you before I sent you to your pilgrimage?" 

Ira stared down at the stiff fingers of his tensed fists and nodded. "You told me to follow my heart. You said I'd understand in time." 

Father Pine smiled softly. "I was so scared on the night I first brought you home. You cried for days, and I thought I was messing up--but when I look back upon the life we've spent together my only regret will be that I never took you away from all of this. That I never followed what my heart told me was right, and that I put my duty to the Progeny before you." 

Ira stared down at the ruffled sheets of his bed, as if they woven in the threads were all the right answers. 

"My heart," Ira murmured. 

"So, are you?" Father Pine asked. "Going to follow it?" 

Ira breathed slowly out. Father Pine nodded in quiet acceptance. He pushed himself up from the mattress and crossed the room to the desk stationed in the corner. It was piled high with abandoned school work from his home studies and dog-eared textbooks. Amongst the clutter were a few odd items, sticking up as out of place. Some that Ira instantly recognized, and others that he had to blink to comprehend.  

"Get dressed properly before you go." Father Pine said. He rested his flattened palm against the neatly folded stack of fresh clothes and pressed a weary smile back into place. "I'll be just outside."

He slipped out into the hall, Peter close on his heels, and softly shut the bedroom door behind him. The room fell into dim and silence. Ira's eyes fell to the pricked inner skin of his elbow. He grit his teeth to combat his nausea and pulled the tube from his arm. A small raindrop of blood bubbled up to fill the empty space, he hardly paused to wipe it away. 

Moving as shakily as a rusted robot, Ira swung his legs over the side of his sick-bed, slipping free from his cozy blankets. Unsteadily, he rose. His knees trembled beneath him, threatening to spill him across the carpet. Ira quickly retreated, sitting back down on his safety net, before he could collapse instead. 

He sucked in an inhale of trembling breath and counted until his head stopped spinning. At eleven, the ground stilled beneath his feet. He pushed himself forward, crossing to his desk as treacherously as a ship across thrashing sea-monster filled waters. He tipped forward, splaying his hands across a loose scattering of homework to catch himself. His chest burned and his stitches pulled--but he did not stop. 

Laid atop the bed of white pages were things he didn't know he'd been missing, but which now seemed impossible to go without. A small silver chain necklace, adorned with a set of nearly identical metal keys. One to a home he'd shared and the other to open the grounds beneath the Cathedral. 

With trembling fingers he retrieved the mock jewelry and slipped it over his blond head. The keys were cold where they rested against the hollow of his throat, filling him with a bitter sense of aching. Deprived of his warmth, lost and unused. Like the rest of the items sprawled across the crowded table.

Resting innocently against the bright blue face of a laity textbook were his knives. They'd never seemed more defiant of each other than they did now, laid side-by-side. 

The gift from Father Pine was moonlight white. Comprised of a pale cedar wood handle, which melded against a flat and boxy tanto-style blade of thin, but strong, bone. The other, a secret, as it had been called, was the knife he'd taken from Melchior. 

Crafted to be as dark as the moonless night sky. The rounded hilt was cut of pine but stained with oil to shimmer a rich glossy ebony, the blade was unstyled and unpolished. A simple jagged tooth. 

Ira set them aside for the moment, having no belt to hang them off, and turned to the pile of new clothes. They were black, stiff, and made up of a thousand buttons. They were made in the traditional style, cuffed at the wrist and neck to suffocate the poor victim beneath the thick fabric. Ira longed for the scandalous loose T-shirts he'd dressed in back in the Catskill. 

He lifted the button-up with a gingerly curious set of hands and tried not to lose control of his near-empty stomach as the clothing unfolded before him. Every lining of the suit was adorned in scarlet fabric. Blood red, the color of Beast eyes, of Melchior's charred flesh, of the water easing away from his split open chest. This was the modest armor of a Bishop.

The stark declaration of a pilgrimage completed. 

Ira knew that once upon a time, shadowed beneath the rage of wishing to make right his original sin, that this was something he'd so desperately wanted. But as he held it in his trembling hands, staring down at those red lines only filled him with more regret. 

And yet--this was what he was now. He couldn't deny it. He couldn't reject it. He had completed his journey, he had upheld his promise to find the gate--and he would remind the Cardinal of such. 

Ira shrugged stiffly free of his sleepshirt and carefully pulled together the even stiffer attire over his ivory white bandages. For longer than it took to find the gate, he labored into his traditional clothing. Each bent joint, no matter the proximity, seemed to radiate up a zap of pain into his slowly healing flesh.

When he finally managed to appear neatly dressed, he reclaimed his knives and holstered them to his belt, one to each hip, and tucked his metal keys beneath the suffocating collar of his shirt. He wished he had a mirror in his small room. He was curious to know if he looked as much of a fraud as he felt. 

Ira stepped out into the hall. Father Pine, who had taken to leaning against the wall, glanced up at him. 

"Wow," he said, "my kid's really all grown up." 

And it ached. Everything ached. He didn't know if he had it in him to look at Father Pine and see the father that had raised him--not now. Maybe not until Melchior was safe. Or until he'd had time to process every single mistruth that he'd been nurtured in. 

So, Ira turned to leave, but before he'd even taken a single step, he could feel his feet floating over the carpet carrying him thousands of miles away. He knew that there might not be any way back. Ira stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to breathe in the discomfort lodged between his ribs. 

"I. . ." he hesitated. 

"I'm listening." Father Pine promised. 

Ira eased his shoulders into a slump beneath the stiff line of his Bishop cloak. "I'm not ready yet to forgive you. I don't even know if I could ask the right questions to do it." 

Father Pine winced. He ran his fingers through his tangled hair and nodded slowly. "Alright, I understand." 

Ira choked on the knot tightening in his throat. "But. . .I want to. So, when it's all done, can we talk? I want to know more about her. About you, too. I want to start over, as just a kid and his father." 

Father Pine sucked in a sharp inhale and forced a trembling smile across his weary face. It was a fragile thing that seemed stretched dangerously thin over a flooding sense of sadness. "Yeah, it's long overdue." 

Ira nodded. The wall he'd been steadily building came tumbling down. Without any regret, he crossed the mile-wide corridor and threw his arms around Father Pine who hesitated for a moment, frozen by surprise, before tightly grabbing Ira back. He pressed his lips to Ira's hair and kissed him, how he'd done since he was little whenever the nightmares became too all-consuming. 

"I love you, kid." He whispered. "And I'm so proud of the person you're becoming." 

Those words hurt too. Ira grit his teeth together and turned to leave.