Deliver Me

And I'm just a child who belongs on her knees.

—ADELE, I Found a Boy

The heavy door slammed behind her, the sound echoing in the cavernous space. Her footsteps thudded on the marble tile as she walked the well-worn path, the muted sunshine filtering through the stained glass windows lighting her way.

She stared up at the altar, the judgmental stares of men long-dead raining down on her. Her eye glanced off the statue of a haunted man nailed to a cross, and she faltered, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake. But guilt and grief wore a body down, drove one to seek absolution in places they'd never thought to look. How he would laugh if he knew. How he would sneer and tell her that they, of all, knew this was nothing but ceremonial nonsense. But he wasn't there to know.

She approached the glorified wardrobe, knelt and crossed herself with awkward hands as she stepped inside.

"Forgive me Father, for I have sinned," she whispered.

It was such a joke. He wouldn't even hear her. Did it matter?

"This is my first confession. I'm—I'm not Catholic. I just . . . ." she trailed off, then took a deep breath and tried again. This was the point of it all. Whoever was in the other side of that box couldn't judge if he couldn't hear. "I just need someone to listen. I have to get it out."

She wouldn't burden her friends. She couldn't bear their pity. Or their recriminations.

She couldn't bear her own.

She closed her eyes, and let it out. "There was this man. My best friend, my savior. For so long he was my everything. And then one day he just—he just left. I thought I didn't matter to him, I thought he didn't care, but I needed him, I had no one else, and so I followed him."

The deep, even breathing from the other side of the screen comforted her, somehow.

"Things were different after that. He wasn't happy with me, I could tell. I'd worked so hard to be able to follow him, and I couldn't understand why he was disappointed instead of proud. Part of me resented him for that. But I kept on, even though there was a distance between us, a coldness to him that I couldn't penetrate, I couldn't stop loving the boy I knew, I couldn't stop trying to regain what we had. And then he—" she choked up, words caught in her throat and her head, not wanting to say it out loud, not wanting to remember. She pressed against the door, one more failed experiment.

"Speak, child. The Lord is listening." The voice stopped her, deep and worn with age, but gentle.

She opened her mouth, shut it again, sank back into the seat and let the door fall shut again. "Y-you can hear me?"

The priest turned to look through the screen, and his eyes pierced right through her. "You're a child of the Lord, aren't you?"

She shook her head. "But I'm not—" I don't even believe. Or she hadn't.

"Those who do His work are His children. Do you not do His work, Shinigami?"

She pressed her eyes shut, and the sense of wrongness, of not belonging disappeared. "Yes, Father," she whispered, pressing her fingers against the screen separating them.

"Then speak, child."

She found her strength. "Then he—Gin—betrayed us. All of us. He hurt someone I had come to care for almost as much as him. And he left again, with an evil man. I didn't want to believe it, that this man, the same boy who had saved me, shown me the only love and kindness and belonging I had ever known could do something so horrible. But—" she broke off, gasping, twin tears sliding down her cheeks. And she gave her confession. "But I did. I believed. I still loved him, still cared, but deep in my heart of hearts I knew he had changed too much from the boy I had known, that he didn't deserve my loyalty, didn't want my forgiveness. I didn't have faith in him, Father. And it turns out—" she sobbed, tears falling freely now. "It turns out he didn't betray us after all. The whole time he was just pretending, from almost the time I met him, he had been scheming to take this evil man down. And he died trying. And he did it for me. And I didn't believe in him."

She paused, letting the truth settle in, making herself face it for the first time since Gin's death the year prior. She dashed away her tears because she didn't deserve to cry. She hadn't earned that right.

The man on the other side of the screen was silent, and her worst fears came to light. "Father," she whispered, driven more by desperation than hope, "can I be forgiven?"

He was quiet another moment. "Child, I'm not the one you need to ask."

She looked up, as if something were there besides paint and chipping wood. "What do I do?"

"Talk to him."

"D-do you think he can hear me?" There were so many things she wanted to tell him, so many things she needed to ask forgiveness for. So much she'd wished she had time to tell him. It was silly. He'd already been reincarnated. Somewhere on earth there was a tiny baby with Gin's soul. And my heart.

"Does it matter?"

And she knew then that it didn't. "No." She stepped through the door, then turned back to whisper into the emptiness. "Thank you."

So she sat down in a pew, felt the kiss of the sun on her face, and she spoke.

"Oh, Gin," she sighed, sweeping her hair out of her face and wondering what to say now that she finally had the chance. "I'm so sorry." The words were torn from her very soul. "You have to know that I love you—I've always loved you. And you deserved better from me than what you got. I never should have doubted you. I knew you better than that, and I knew it, but I faltered, and I let myself get confused, and God, how you must have felt, looking in my eyes and knowing you were doing this for me, and I didn't trust you!"

The tears started again, and this time she let them fall. Now it wasn't about her deserving to cry them, but him deserving to receive them. There was no shame in mourning his pain.

"You were a better man than even I knew, and you should have had someone you could count on to believe in you always, and it should have been me. I'm sorry I couldn't be that for you. I'm sorry I—And I miss you, Gin! I missed you when you left, and I miss you now, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life turning around and wishing you were there."

Then, buried beneath the guilt and pain, the rage bubbled up to overwhelm her. "And I hate you, Gin! I hate you for doing this! The price was too high. It was too high!"

It would be one thing if he'd just died for her, to save her. But . . .

"You gave up your whole life, for me! Every moment! And I let myself blame you, I let myself doubt you. How am I supposed to go on, knowing that? How am I supposed to live with this burden?"

She was sobbing now, crumbling in the pew, falling apart, and she thought that might just be okay. She could just crumble into tiny pieces and slip through the cracks in the bench, and turn into dust; become part of the church; become grief and mercy and penitence itself. She fell to her knees.

"How do I go on without you?" she whispered.

The hand on her shoulder gave her pause. She wiped her face on her sleeve, glanced up through stinging eyes and plastered bangs to see what pearls of wisdom the priest offered this time. Her salvation, maybe?

Her eyes crashed into the ocean. "Come on, Matsumoto," he murmured, pressing a handkerchief into her palm. Pure white, like him, embroidered with the initials HT.

He cupped her elbow, helped her rise. And she followed him up and out of the church. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she heard Gin's voice.

"Like this."

A/N: Please review.