"Ma'am? There's someone here to see you."
Maria looked up from the news screen she'd been perusing and raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Who?"
The assistant nurse, a tiny, mousy girl that couldn't have been more than sixteen ducked in the doorway. Her white shoes with their square toes squeaked on the floor. "He didn't give me a name."
Paranoia was a habit, and she'd not yet seen a reason to work on breaking it. "Shouldn't you have asked for one, then?"
A flush crept up the girl's face, and she ducked her head, trying to lose herself in the already too-large pink lab coat that she wore. "I know I should have. But..." her hazel eyes jerked quickly left, then right, and she lowered her voice to a bare whisper as if afraid of being overheard, "he was very handsome. I sort of lost my head when he talked to me, ma'am."
Maria nodded. She wasn't the only one that still felt the old paranoia. "Can you at least describe him to me?" The girl did as asked with shocking accuracy, her blush deepening and her voice becoming louder under a wash of emotion. Maria had to work to pay attention to the girl's words and not her actions; even after a month her old instinct still stirred, whispering 'sense offender'. Her left trigger finger twitched at the thought, under the cover of her blanket. "It sounds like someone I know," she said, a faint smile slipping onto her lips. "Send him in, please."
As the girl scurried away, she turned her gaze back to the news screen. At least this one hadn't been afraid of her; the hospital had once served Clerics exclusively, and some of the older attendants remembered her face all too well. For some, the mere knowledge that she had once carried out summary judgement on sense offenders was enough to make them avoid her room. Even among the more open minded members of the staff, though, there were those that remembered the day she'd been brought in, coated from head to toe with blood, knocked out cold during a berserk rage. Hers was not exactly a popular room to visit.
The news was as jumbled as normal. Everyone was still trying to adjust, and accuracy suffered. She'd read of the pockets of resistance to the revolution, the people afraid to let go of Prozium. There had been pictures of war torn streets, somehow beautiful and terrible now that she could look at them through unclouded eyes. The new government was slowly falling into place, and society fumbled blindly to find its roots, realizing that there were vital crafts now lost to them. Today the largest news story was the discovery of another cache of paintings, however, carefully hidden away in an underground vault.
Footsteps approached her room and she reached under her pillow, curling her fingers around the comforting solidity of her pistol. The soft shirts and pants that the hospital provided for its patients were completely useless when it came to concealing a weapon. She let her emotions go and found the timeless place of waiting, her senses tuned for any indication of threat.
The door opened and she smiled, ignoring the unnatural way the expression stretched her face, and the uncertainty of the emotion that went with it. "Cleric Preston!"
He smiled in return, and for the first time in her memory the expression filled his eyes as well. He looked so strange, dressed in civilian clothing of green and black, his hair disheveled by the wind. There was a long, rectangular box in his hands. He leaned it against the wall before walking to her bed and sitting on the edge, his movements careful so as to not jar her leg. "There aren't Clerics any more, Maria. Call me Mr. Preston or call me John, but please don't call me a cleric again."
"Of course." Her cheeks began to feel warm, and she rubbed at them with annoyance. "To what do I owe this visit?"
"I know I haven't seen you since the Sunset," he said. There was no question what sunset her spoke of; she only had to close her eyes and she could see it again, catch the scent of gunpowder and her own blood. The Sunset was the end of the world, and the beginning. "I asked the doctors to keep me appraised of your condition; they're intending to release you today."
She raised her eyebrows. "Really? They haven't said anything to me."
"It was meant to be a surprise. One for me to deliver."
She snorted. shaking her head. "I don't understand why they would release me so soon. I still can't walk properly."
"I think the focus of this hospital has shifted some. They don't have to worry if we're ready to go back into combat when they let us go. You don't need constant attention any more..."
"...And there's a real possibility that I never will be able to walk normally again anyway," she finished. The bitterness in her own voice surprised her. "Oh, I know, even if they haven't told me. They might not call us Clerics any more, John, it might be some sort of curse or taboo for them, but we still are what we are. And I still know how to listen to what isn't said just as well as what is."
He leaned back against the foot of her bed. "Doctors still think they know everything."
"Another thing that never changes. Now they have the added bonus of being able to get angry when you turn around and tell them where to stick their second, third, and fourth opinions."
He laughed. It was a warm sound that brought a smile to her face, but at the same time made her squirm internally for reasons she really couldn't explain. "I guess you've already had reason to find that out?" he asked.
"I'm a model patient, I assure you."
"Of course." The smile was still there, and his eyes danced with merriment.
She let her smile fade before speaking again. "I need to know, John, and it's not something they'd put on the news screens. Not now. But...what happened to the others?"
There was no need for him to ask who she was speaking of. The last day, instead of cutting her way through the other Clerics, she'd taken the more difficult option, one that would leave them alive but incapacitated. Safe, if the revolutionaries hadn't fired on unconscious men. "There was talk of trials. Some of the citizens wanted to put us all up next to the council and stretch our necks."
She shook her head. "No." Her imagination, overly fertile as of late, supplied her with images of her coworkers hanging limply, swaying gently in the gale force winds at the top of the old Equilibrium. Branston with his blonde hair shining in the twilight, Moore, who she had taken down herself, still barely more than a boy... "No."
John shook his head. "No," he agreed. "It's strange, Maria, the more I learn, the less I know. Every answer makes ten additional questions. Did you know that the roots of the word Cleric were religious, rather than secular? That in the past, clerics were the protectors of their people, but they stood between light and darkness for them, instead of life and death. They were spiritual guides, mentors, saviors." He smoothed a hand through his hair, an odd note in his voice. "There were those among them, even further in the past, that did fight for their beliefs with fist and sword. Some were warrior monks, some were called paladins. And yet it all went horribly wrong, every time. They made wars, they killed too many innocents to fathom, they burned," he choked, and had to take a deep breath before continuing, "women and men for their non-conformity."
"Where did you find this out?"
"A lot more has been unearthed than they've even reported. One of the main projects is to rebuild the history that Father destroyed in the name of convenience." John curled his lips back when he said 'Father', as if the word tasted bad in his mouth.
"You're in the thick of things, I suppose."
He shrugged helplessly. "What else can I do? Sometimes I think that if I had gone away, disappeared into private life like they had wanted me to, they'd have forgotten you and I all too easily. So I stayed, and I reminded them."
"Of what?"
"I reminded them of what we did, constantly and loudly. That without us, there would have been no revolution, and they would have continued to die by inches. That the only difference between us and every other Cleric was a happy mistake that almost got us killed more times than I want to think about. I finally gave them an ultimatum: If they wanted to execute the Clerics, they'd have to hang us next to them. And if they didn't, they would face wrath the likes of which would make the city fires a happy memory."
Maria reached out, ignoring the stab of pain from her hip, and took his hand. "Brothers in the cause, John. I'm always at your side. I'm glad you remembered that. What did they say?"
"Nothing. But they dropped any mention of trials, and did their best to smooth over the angry rumblings." He smiled. "They're still frightened of us. I think they always will be. They've assigned watchers to the other former Clerics, to make certain that they're...adjusting."
"Adjusting. A pretty word for it."
He nodded. "I know. I don't think any of them can understand how hard it is to realize that everything you knew was so wrong. So terribly wrong."
"There were some nights, John..." she said, her voice cracking and wavering. It made her angry. Unable to look him in the eye any longer, she leaned forward just enough that her loose hair covered her face. "Sometimes I wondered, when I couldn't sleep from the pain. I'd stare at the ceiling and examine everything I felt during the day, and try to understand it. I know what the Prozium did to all of us, John, but I can't help but wonder if they picked you and me and the others because we would have been the most emotional without it. Because it made us stronger, and faster, and more merciless." Her eyes stung and her throat felt tight. The strangeness of it all forced her to stop.
"Go on," he urged.
"I want to hate them. But I can't. And I don't know why."
He squeezed her hand warmly. "I can't say that I understand Maria. I did know hate. It was so strong that when I let it go, I couldn't feel anything at all. It overwhelmed completely. But I can say that whatever you feel or don't feel, it's not wrong. I'm starting to realize that there is no right or wrong in this."
"I don't understand, but maybe I will some day. I feel broken. I know that I'm not, but it's like someone shattered me to pieces and scattered me to the winds."
"And some days, it makes you angry, and other days you find yourself almost wishing that you had the drug back."
She looked up at him, her eyes wide.
"I feel that way sometimes too, Maria. When it's dark and all I can think about is what I've lost. You're not alone. You'll never be alone."
As quickly as it had gone, her smile returned. "I know." It didn't fix her, but it helped ease the ache. What else could she do? Thinking about it only made the emotions stronger.
"There's another reason I'm here, you know."
"Oh?"
"I have to ask a favor of you, and I'm not quite sure that I even can."
"Ask, John. Brothers, remember?"
He nodded, pulling his hand away from hers. "I'm tired, Maria. The fights have been wearing me down, though I think I've finally won the major battles. I want to be a father to my children, now that I can understand what that really means. I can't do that if I'm the new government's conscience."
"You want me to take your place."
His eyes begged her to understand. "I've given them everything I can. If I give any more, there won't be anything left for my family."
"You don't have to ask, John. You should have known your answer before you set foot in this room," she said, a dry smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "I need something to do. I don't have a family, and very few friends. It's an obvious choice."
The relief evident in his posture was almost painful to acknowledge. "Thank you. I can't begin to thank you enough."
"There's no need. Will I have any sort of official status?"
"The plan Jurgen put forth was for there to be a new sort of police force. I told him that it needed to be at the very least...watched by a former Cleric. We're best equipped to understand the mistakes of the past that should never be repeated."
"And to notice if someone is trying to grab a little too much power and make us all over again. Here I thought that I was going to continue being bored when they let me out."
"Thank you, Maria."
She suddenly didn't want to see that expression in his eyes any more. It disturbed her, felt wrong and out of place. "What's in the package you brought with you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"That's right." He fetched it, smiling again. "This came out of one of the more recent finds. There no real historical significance attached to it, so they let me have it with only minimal protest."
The box was surprisingly heavy; she would have dropped it if he hadn't steadied the thing. Consumed with curiosity, she tore through the outer wrapping and popped the lid off. Inside, in a nest of crumpled paper, there was a cane, black and austere with the golden head of a hawk as its handle. "Amazing..." she breathed, pulling it from the box.
"There's a secret to it. If you feel the hawk's head, you'll find a tiny catch near the left eye."
"Got it..." There was a tiny click and the cane suddenly slid apart, revealing a sword. The edge was blue with sharpness. Maria grinned. "Very nice."
"I doubt you'll be without your guns any time soon, but this way you'll always have a weapon in reserve."
" This is the first gift I've ever received, and it's a good one." She hoped that her smile conveyed the warmth she felt; she really didn't have the words to describe it.
"Ready to try it out, then?"
She clicked the cane shut and reached out to take his proffered hand. Despite the uncertainty, the fear, and the grinding protests of her hip, despite everything, the day was looking brighter with each moment. "Let's go."