Father, Forgive my Sins

Summary: There's a myth that the old abandoned church is haunted….But really it hides a worse truth- a red-eyed boy lives inside. Will Elizaveta ever heal his broken heart, mind, and soul? Or will she drown in the lies and fear that surround his life? PruHun

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The church that was on the edge of town was haunted- It was an accepted fact of life in their town. Everyone knew it as truth, and though they debated about petty things, the one thing they could all agree on was that the place was housing a spirit.

Children didn't go near it; Parents wanted it torn down, and yet no one seemed to do anything about the old, broken down building. Maybe they were afraid of inciting the wrath of whatever malevolent spirit that lived there?

No one could quite say what it was that made it seem like that.

It used to be taken care of by Father Beilschmidt- a local catholic priest- before he had just up and left the place for Europe almost 10 years ago.

Some people say that his disappearance was because of the haunting of the ghost. Father Vargas, before his death, had also briefly taken care of the church grounds. But then he died, and the place just became a haunted hotspot for tourists.

But no one ever went in. That was the defining feature.

Some say that a little boy wandered in, and died in those walls. People said they see his ghost in the shadows of the stained glass windows, looking out at the world he left behind.

Others claimed that it was actually a vengeful mother, who killed herself after her child was killed in the frosty night and now took her rage out on those that dared to go inside the place her baby died.

But nine-year old Elizabeta Héderváry thought the whole thing was complete bull. There was no way things like ghosts could exist in real life- they were reserved for stories, and stories alone.

She had taken this task on as a dare from her arch-nemesis, Dracul- or in her mind, Count Dracula. The Transylvanian boy and Hungarian girl had been arguing as long as they had known each other. She had actually nicknamed the old guard dog down at the station Dradrool as an insult to her fellow nine year old.

But as she looked up into the dusty front entrance into the old church, large and actually kinda scary, she was thinking that maybe she was having second thoughts about the whole thing.

She had to go inside the church, and stay there for ten minutes before she could come out on top. Roderich was watching her with hopeful purple eyes, and she sighed. He wasn't handling being alone well, and had latched on to her when his father had ruined the relationship he had with Vash, and now was probably hoping she'd win the bet, and make the Romanian stop bullying him.

She gulped, before opening the door. She shut it close, and looked around.

The church looked….surprisingly clean. Walking in, it looked like someone had been dusting it regularly, carefully taking care of the obviously well-worn wood, and even putting flowers in the pots, beautiful arrangements of roses and other blossoms. But the colors were either white or red. They were beautiful, but why only those two colors?

The red carpet looked a little dirty, like it had been walked on, but it too looked as though someone took care of it.

Walking further and further inside the building, she saw other signs of life. She passed lit candles that had been burning so long a line of wax was trailing down the side of them.

She saw at the end of the hallway was an Altar, one where a figure of Christ on the cross was seen hanging above. It was an ethereal sight, one that would always take her breath away.

She heard a very ineloquent snore coming from somewhere in the pews. Elizabeta wondered who else had wandered in here. She stopped being afraid entirely, because really, if someone was sleeping in here, what was there to be afraid of?

Nothing, that's what. Elizabeta internally berated herself for ever buying into the silly myth. Everyone knew the only thing to fear was that Francis would decide to use you as his next sin. There was a reason the French boy was a nuisance to the sisters of the other Catholic Church in the middle of town.

But instead of seeing a hobo like she expected, or a father, or even a sister, for that matter….

All she saw was a tiny wool blanket wrapped around a small form that was breathing every few moments. It was a child, she thought with interest.

She liked sweet children, like Feliciano the young altar boy at the other church, so Elizabeta decided to carefully pull the wool blanket off the young child. What greeted her was a sight most uncommon. She wasn't expecting a hair of white hair, or such pale, sickly skin. Or the slight furrow in his brow despite the fact that he was a little boy. She had only seen furrows like that on adults whenever they talked about money, or foreclosure, things she didn't really get all that well.

But he looked thin. Even skinny little pansy Roderich wasn't that thin, she admitted to herself with a blush that Roderich wasn't a pansy, nor was he bony like this boy was- The

Austrian was lean, almost muscular, and was a very good musician. This boy did look her age though, so that was a good thing.

She poked him in his cheek. "Hey, wake up." She said with annoyance and a touch of impatience, and his eyelids fluttered open to reveal blood red eyes. They shocked her, but then she remembered she had just learned about genomes, and albinism.

He let out a very unmanly yelp as he found her face in his, before jumping back, his previously open face hard and guarded. "What are you doing here?" He asked in a heavy German accent, and his red eyes flashed in the lazy sunlight coming through the dirty stained glass windows.

"Are you the Demon of the Church?" Elizabeta asked him curiously, bypassing the question he had asked her.

"I'm not a Demon!" The furrow in his brow was back as he half-heartedly yelled at her, something like hurt combined with anger and tears in his red eyes, before turning around and running away. She felt a little guilty for making him cry. She heard him run up the stairs, but when she tried to follow the boy up them, she was hit with rocks.

Elizabeta sighed in resignation. "Fine then, stay up there," she muttered, rubbing her head from where she had been hit with the rocks. She turned around, and decided to look around. It was true the boy intrigued the young girl, but she had just been thrown rocks at. He obviously wasn't interested in her.

She walked out the east entrance to the church, the very back door. It was still a park of the church, because there was a great, crumbling wall no one could see over, not even the tall adults. But what she saw in this secret garden astounded her. It was a beautiful garden, one where roses of white and red grew in huge bushes, though the white was clearly favored over the red, for the red was much less seen in the green garden.

There was a small pond that was kept clean and even had a few goldfish, frogs, and lily pads. She saw that tadpoles swam around in one corner of it. She knelt down to look at the beautiful pink flower on the pad, and saw in her peripherals, the little boy watching her with curiosity. She smiled to herself, before saying aloud, "They're very pretty." She complimented his obviously superb skills in gardening.

Elizabeta turned around, to see him now just barely peeping out behind a doorway, only one red eye gleaming in the sunlight. She smiled at him in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "Hello there, I shouldn't have been so blunt with you." She stood up and faced him. "My name is Elizabeta. Why are you here?"

"….Because I'm a sin," the little boy hesitated before giving her that little bit of information, and she frowned deeply. How could such a young child be a sin.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked, frowning. That was one thing about Catholics that she would never understand. They though that everyone on this earth was a sinner and the only way to repent the simple sin of being born was through the church, even though the bible told them that god loved them all. Elizabeta called it hypocrisy; her mother simply said it was contradiction.

"Even you said it…" He sighed, red eyes looking down at the ground. "I'm the demon of the church." Elizabeta furrowed her brows in confusion. She didn't like that answer whatsoever.

"Why's that?" She asked again, determined to get a better answer out of the boy.
"Father Beilschmidt told me I was the sin born of a sin. A demon born of sin thrice evil as the first act of sin committed. I was cursed with this body as proof of that sin." He continued to stare at her with his gleaming red eyes that looked tired, bone tired, and Elizabeta fumbled for a response.

"N-No, even if Father Beilschmidt told you that, I'm sure-" She was cut off by him again.

"Father Vargas told me I was a sin too, but he also had also sinned once, and told me that someone had to show me how to repent. But…he said the difference was that he was bound in holy matrimony, unlike Father Beilschmidt." He shrugged.

Elizabeta didn't get what he was saying at all. She was Catholic as well, but she didn't understand what he was talking about.

"Eliza!" Roderich's voice was heard from the front door, and the albino froze. "Are you still alive? It's been ten minutes!" She only shut her eyes for one moment, but when she opened them, the albino was gone.

It was a conundrum, in her eyes, how such a little thing had managed to move so fast.

She however, did not let it bother her, and called out as she walked calmly out of the garden and back into the church, "I'm fine, Roderich!"

She left the church without as much as a second thought, even though a part of her was completely entranced by the ruby red eyes of the boy that lived in the church.

Little did she know that they watched her just as curiously, just as intrigued, just as entranced by her simple hazel eyes.

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In later years, Elizabeta wondered often if she had stayed, what would have she have learned of the boy-That little boy who considered his own life a sin, the little boy who she was always confused by.

Would she have still gotten involved in his mangled up life? Dragged into his story?

Or, what would have become of him if she had chosen to not take the dare in the first place? Would he be alive and well? Or would he be dead or dying in that church with his web of lies that surrounded him?

She had yet to figure that out.

She dressed herself for her big day, and smiled into the mirror.

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A/N: Here we are, repost of Father, Forgive My Sin! I hope that you enjoy it as much this time around as you did when it was originally posted!