A/N: Enjoy! Please R&R!
Birth of the Magdalene
Father Brian Young watched the sun rise from beneath the dark clouds. He had made himself a cup of coffee, but it grew cold between his fingers, and he couldn't make himself drink it. Should he have spoken to the Kyle girl? He wasn't sure.
"Dear God," he said seriously, lifting his eyes to the slanting rays of golden sunlight which fought their way past the dark clouds. "Please guide me in this treacherous time. I do not know which is the correct path. I do not know if—"
"Father?" called a quavery voice.
He sighed, clasped his hands together for a moment longer, and then rose from the table. "I'm coming, Maggie!"
Entering the little study, he thought that if it were possible, the girl in the makeshift cot had grown even thinner. She seemed dwarfed by the striped blue pajamas she wore. Deep shadows beneath her eyes gave her face a hollow, skull-like appearance. "Father," she whispered, reaching toward him with a boney hand. "I had the nightmare again."
He sat on the bed beside her. "Don't worry, Maggie," he said, gently caressing her hair. "None of it is real."
Am I telling the truth, or am I lying to the child?
He didn't know. When he had first seen her, Magdalene Kyle had been a little girl in a convent school where he taught the chorus. She was a quiet, studious child, always a little out of step with the others. She often read a book while the others were chattering amongst themselves. One day he approached her.
"What are you reading?" he asked, and she flinched.
"The Bible," she said seriously.
"That's very pious of you," he said with a smile.
"I—I don't always read the Bible," she said softly.
"I'm not judging your reading habits," he answered. "I was just interested. Making conversation."
"Oh," she said, and this time she gave him a rather weak, surprised smile. "I do like the Bible," she said. "The words are very pretty. I don't always understand it, though."
"You're not the only one," he said with a laugh. "I wouldn't worry about it. The word of God is not something that one very young human can expect to comprehend."
"I like to try though," she said seriously, looking at him with her big, dark eyes.
"Well, then I'm very proud of you."
She began to hang around after chorus while he was packing up his things, occasionally asking him a question in her small, serious voice. One day, she seemed especially nervous, pacing up and down the room and unable to say anything.
"What's the matter, Maggie?" he asked her.
She looked up at him as if she hadn't seen him properly until that moment, then swallowed. "It's my sister's birthday," she said.
"Isn't that a good thing?"
Maggie looked at the floor. "I—I haven't seen her in a very long time," she said. "You see, I'm adopted. And Sally wasn't."
"Oh," was all he said.
The story came out over more sessions of impromptu therapy. Maggie didn't remember much about her sister, or her parents. She knew that either her parents had died, or that the siblings had been taken away from them, but not when or why.
"I was very young," she said, in a turn of phrase that seemed far too old for a child of her age. "I just remember that Sally had a stuffed kitten and I had a doll that we used to play with together. Sally loved kitties."
Sally—or Selina. Selina and Magdalene Kyle, both of whom had presumably retained the names that their birth parents had given them. A funny combination of Greek paganism and Christian grace.
"Did you know that Selina is a form of Selene?" Father Young asked her. "She was the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology." He gave her a book of Greek myths to read, and she devoured them and chattered for hours about Selina. She was interested in her own namesake as well, but in a less devouring way.
"I'm glad that she was really a good woman," she said. "I know people say she wasn't, but I know that she was, and that's all I need to know inside."
"You're very wise not to care what other people say," he told her.
But she cared about Selina. It was almost an obsession. She kept her sister's birthday, and she sometimes showed him letters she had written to the other girl. She talked about the things she did during the day, talked about God's love, talked about how wonderful her parents were and how much she hoped Sally liked her parents as well. "But if you don't," she wrote at one point. "You just have to write and tell me, and I'll be right there and I'll take you away. I know Mom and Dad would love to have you, too. It's my turn to protect you now."
"I tried to send them to her when I was littler," she told him, one day, a few years later, studying for her exams. She was already talking about taking her novitiate when she turned eighteen. "But I didn't know where to address them, so they always came back. Mom and Dad eventually talked me out of it."
"She used to protect you," he prompted.
She smiled, a faraway smile. "I don't really remember much. I just remember someone yelling and threatening, and then Selina steps between us and yells back. I felt so safe when I was around her. I would still know her anywhere, but I've never seen her since."
It was three days after she started the novitiate that he had come in early one morning and found her kneeling in the church at dawn. Her face was white, and her hands were shaking.
"Maggie!" he exclaimed, running to her. "Maggie, what is it?"
She looked up at him and shook her head. Her lips were swollen and bleeding.
"What happened to your lips?" he asked in concern.
"I bit them," she mumbled.
"You bit them! Maggie—what happened?"
She shook her head, getting up slowly. Her legs trembled, and he caught her before she fell. "I—nothing. I just—I've had a shock."
"Is your family all right?"
She looked at him for a moment with blank incomprehension, and then she began to laugh. It grew from a little giggle into an uproarious guffaw and then slipped into sobs as he held her and rocked her back and forth.
She stayed in the novitiate for two years before she met a man at the library, whom she fell madly in love with. Father Young had almost expected it to happen; she had been such a lonely child, grasping for shreds of affection from everyone, so when she came to him to ask him if she was abandoning her god, he reassured her.
"Of course not, Maggie," he said, stroking her hair gently. "Not everyone is called for a life in the church. He's a good, God-fearing man, I take it?"
She smiled and laughed a little. "Oh, yes, Father. He wouldn't even hold my hand until we started talking about getting engaged. I do love him."
"Love is always a good thing, Maggie, no matter what. God wants you to feel love."
"I'm glad," she said quietly.
She and her husband moved away, and Father Young went on a two-year sojourn to Africa. They corresponded via letters for a long time. When the letters stopped coming, he was unable to find anything else out—his letters were sent back and the phone number was listed as disconnected. He had never heard from her again until three weeks ago.
It had been a stormy night—Gotham was certainly having an unseasonable number of storms this year. At first he had thought the insistent pounding on the door was the thunder, but soon he had recognized it for what it was and hurried to open it.
"Sanctuary—please," gasped the figure outside the door, collapsing into the church. She had a blanket swathed about her shoulders and her wet, dark hair hid her features from view.
"It's all right, my child," he said, kneeling beside her. For a moment she just lay there, shuddering. Then, quite suddenly, her head snapped up, and her eyes locked with his. She was smiling slightly, and her tongue ran swiftly over her cracked, dried lips.
"Lo—there will be blood," she whispered. "Eve shall rot and the cat be vanquished. This I have seen."
He recognized her. "Maggie?" he said. "Maggie Kyle?"
Her eyes widened. "F-f-father Young?" She grasped his collar, buried her face in his front, and began to sob. "Oh, Father. Father! Help me—please—"
He held her, rubbing soothing circles on her back. "Shhh, shhh, there now, my child. It's all right. You're safe."
"The angels," she gasped. "The angels and the cat."
There was something off about her, off in a way that chilled and frightened him, though he didn't show it. He found her a pair of pajamas and dried her off with a towel and gave her some hot soup and hot milk, but she wouldn't take the milk. When he offered it to her, she shrank back and whispered, "Cats drink milk."
"I'm sorry," he said, and got her some hot apple cider instead.
He put her to bed and she slept for fourteen hours; when she woke, she was listless and confused. Her face glistened with sweat, and her eyes were glassy as if she were feverish, but her temperature stayed constant at ninety-eight point three. In between her babblings, he could comprehend only fragments. Her husband was dead, and she had been in a mental home for some time.
"Then the angels came," she said fearfully. "They talk to me at night, Father. They want me to help them. They say that I'm not Eve, I'm the Magdalene."
He comforted her and told her to sleep. She talked ceaselessly of the cat-demon that had taken over her sister. Apparently she had met Selina once more, but it hadn't been a happy reunion. During one of her more lucid periods, she passed him a soaked, water-warped picture, of a smiling woman with short dark hair. "That's Sally now," she said. "Isn't she pretty?"
She seemed to have a phobia and an extreme hatred of cats. He had to stop her at one point from viciously attacking a stray that had wandered into the church. She had taken up a brass candlestick from the altar and was raising it over her head when he entered.
"Maggie!" he cried in horror. "Don't!" He caught her arm, and the cat ran off with a surprised meowl. For a moment, when she turned, he thought she was going to attack him as well. Her face seemed devoid of all humanity, perfectly calm and perfectly immobile, her dark eyes hooded, her white features wiped clean. Then, a spark of recognition dawned, and her fingers relaxed on the candlestick, which dropped to the floor with an almighty crash.
"Father?" she said in an agonized whisper. "It was a cat."
"Yes, Maggie, but I'll see that it doesn't come back. Come back to bed, now, there's a good girl."
Then, last night—Selina Kyle. Arriving out of nowhere. He had recognized her instantly from the photograph. And he'd thought about taking her to Maggie, but he couldn't bring himself to do so. Maggie was so painfully unstable; there was no telling how she'd react. And with what Selina had said, if she received vitriol from her sister now, she would be badly hurt. At least he knew that she was in Gotham, and with any luck he'd be able to track her down if he needed to.
He had been a little afraid to reintroduce the sisters, as well. Maggie wasn't getting any better; if anything, she was getting worse. She muttered in a low voice about angels and about cleansing her sister. At first he had thought it was just residual madness from her departure from sanity. But lately—he wasn't so sure. More than once he had thought he'd heard voices coming from the room when he was absent—deep voices, voices Maggie couldn't possibly be making.
On at least one occasion, he had seen a light under her door—but when he'd entered, it had been pitch dark, and she had been sound asleep. And her neverending talk of 'angels' was beginning to unnerve him. Once he had asked to meet the angels, but Maggie had had such a hysterical fit at the thought that he had given it up. His warning to Selina had been brought on by his darkening thoughts, and perhaps it had been a little too melodramatic, but…
He looked down at the girl in the bed. "Maggie," he said slowly, and she nodded. She seemed relatively lucid now, if child-like and worn with pain.
"Yes, Father?"
"Can't you tell me something about the nightmare?"
Her face screwed up. "Do I have to?"
He patted her shoulder gently. "Of course not, my child. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to help you."
She bit her lip. "Promise you won't tell anybody?"
He frowned. "I—can't promise that, Maggie. I promise I won't tell anyone unless it is absolutely necessary. How's that?"
She sighed sharply. "They're so beautiful," she said. "They have golden wings and golden hair and golden eyes. They don't wear clothes but that's all right because they don't have…well…"
He nodded. "I understand."
"They're so bright, it's hard to look at them. They all talk at once, and their voice is so gorgeous that I want to cry. I—I forget who I am, Father. I'm their Magdalene, and I'm going to lead them. We're going to cleanse the world of Eve's sin, you see."
"I see," he said. He stroked her hair.
"I've got to save Sally," she said. "But I'm afraid I'll have to kill her to save her, because the demon has got her. Then I'll go to hell, but she'll go to heaven—won't she? Oh, Father, won't she?"
He felt a sickening, sinking feeling in his stomach. "Maggie, you mustn't kill anyone. Your sister loves you—"
"My sister is a thief," Maggie spat. "The Cat has taken over her mind! She's a sinful, blasphemous Eve! And Eve will be cleansed!" Her voice deepened as she spoke, her eyes lighting from within with a frightening fire.
"Maggie!" He took her by the shoulder. "Maggie—you are a human! Humans cannot judge others. 'Judge not lest ye be judged.'"
"We are not human," Maggie whispered. "We are Hayyoth."
Then she began to laugh.
