A Haven In A Heartless World

Yeah, yeah. Another fic another rarefandom. This is slash, blah blah blah, you all know the drill, right? Priest/Hicks ficcage. Takes place a few years after the movie. Title comes from a quote by Christopher Lasch - "The family is a haven in a heartless world." Characters are not mine (except one) and please do enjoy! Thanks to kittycrackers for help! Comments are awesome!

Sorry for the slow update. Just got a puppy - not many computer breaks are happening. Or sleep breaks...


Chapter 7:

Hicks is barely aware of things after that. His mind is kind of fuzzy and delayed, like the rest of him has been since Doc Tomlin gave him that medicine. His injuries certainly haven't helped, but the kiss... That had thrown him into even more confusion.

After they break apart, the promised conversation lingering between them, the Priest gets serious. He bends down, hefting a grumpy and still coughing Shane into his arms. He hugs the boy close, just for a moment, before passing him to Hicks, making sure he's held tightly in the younger man's good arm. "Whatever happens, keep him close and try to keep him quiet, okay?" He asks, waiting for Hicks' nod before he motions them toward the cell door. Robotically, Hicks follows after him, biting his lip to keep his own coughs hushed.

They find themselves weaving through a long and complex array of hallways, all of which blend unhelpfully together in Hicks' confused mind when he tries to think of them later.

Five minutes into their escape and the first guard appears, a lone patrolman who barely even realizes that he's facing escaped recruits before the Priest lets a blade fly, killing the man with a swift hit to the chest. He flops to the ground, dead, almost instantly. The Priest retrieves his knife as he passes and they continue on without a word.

They duck into a dimly lit hallway when Shane coughs and lets out a shrill cry as they near the entrance. The noise brings a gaggle of guards, more than a dozen armed men who had been milling about as the shifts changed and they were assigned to patrols. Hicks vaguely recalls a feeling of hopeless despair, thinks sadly of never getting back home, but the Priest stands strong in front of him, guarding Hicks and Shane with his body and his life and then he strikes without mercy.

It doesn't compare at all to watching the Priest fight vampires. The first time he'd seen that, he'd mistakenly thought the man enjoyed killing, because it came so easily to him. His anger at the creatures had shown through in his actions, and it's showing through now, too. But the vampires could put up a fight. The Priest moves fluidly around the room, taking on all of the guards at once. His knives fly, he makes impossible movements and jumps about at impressive speeds, but he never turns his back on Hicks and Shane, always keeps himself between them and their enemies. One by one, they all fall, bloody or broken. Every last one.

Hicks stumbles over one of the bodies, almost goes down. The jarring movements send fresh agony through his arm but the Priest is right there, a hand settling on his back and steering him through a few more winding rooms until finally, the polluted Cathedral City sky looms above them, starting to grow darker with the coming sunset.

"Almost out," the Priest says. "Just stay with me a little while longer."

Hicks follows obediently as they weave through crowds of people, heads ducked down to limit detection and Shane pulled in close against him. More and more of the people they pass are civilians as they reach the main section of the city and soon the gates are within sight. The men on duty have changed and one of them recognizes the fugitives with ease.

"Hey!" the man shouts, "Stop!" He reaches out, grabs hold of Hicks' bad arm and the pain nearly brings him to the ground. He clutches Shane tightly, the boy wailing again with all the shouting and abrupt movements, as the Priest spins around to stop the assault. "They're escaping!" The man shouts out, drawing unwanted attention toward the gates.

Someone starts to draw the gates shut. If they close, then they'll be trapped in here and now is not the time for that kind of setback. Hicks is reeling in pain to the point of sickness as the Priest acts fast, jumps the man holding him and cracks his neck quickly. The other guard is on the move though, gun out and trained on the Priest. He fires and the bullet grazes off of his shoulder. He's about to send off a second shot, but then he's dead, too.

The gates about to slide shut, but Hicks finds himself hauled forward and out through it at the last possible moment, the Priest clutching desperately at him, pulling them to the side so they'll be out of range of any gunfire. There is a plus to the gates closing, though, as now they'll have a chance to get a head start on any pursuers.

"Almost home," the Priest promises, supporting Hicks as they hike around to where they find the stashed solar bike. Luckily, it's exactly where the Priest left it before he went in. The Priest climbs on first, balancing the bike in place as Hicks slides on behind him, with Shane between them. "Hold on as tight as you can, yeah?" He presses, though they both know it won't be an easy ride for him with the combination of holding on and holding Shane. The uneven ground of the Wastelands will not be kind to his injuries, either, but at least they're out.

The Priest aims the bike toward the snowy desolation of the Wastelands and takes off. He drives and drives and drives until Cathedral City is no longer in sight. He drives on until they reach the Outpost that marks home. Hicks knows there's nowhere else they would go, nowhere else they could go if they wanted to. Home is all they have and neither he or the Priest will allow the City guards to drive them from it. They will defend it and their family with everything they has and eventually, they'll get the message.

The bike comes to a stop by the porch, by then bathed in complete darkness, and the Priest reaches back to steady him, unstable as he is, as he climbs off.

"Let's get inside," he says, grabbing up his bag of supplies from Augustine and slinging it over his shoulder before bracing Hicks to keep him moving. "Get you fixed up."

He finds himself inside within seconds, blissfully aware that he's finally home and that he's safe here, with Shane and the Priest. He lets go of the last of his adrenaline, the only thing that's been keeping him going at all since he attacked the guards, and relaxes.

"Ah, not yet," the Priest tells him, keeping him from flopping backwards onto the bed. He keeps him sitting on the edge, while he gives Shane another dose of Dr. Tomlin's cough medicine. He gives the boy a quick look-over and changes him into clean clothes before setting him down to sleep on an unoccupied section of their bed. They're all too tense for any separation further than that right now. And then he turns his attention on Hicks.

But the Priest's first step is to dose him, too, because his cough is awful and each time he moves, his arm pulses in pain. He drifts to unawareness quickly, but he feels the Priest stay close to him as he goes, feels the ghost of gentles touches as he loses consciousness and gives into the darkness, trusting the Priest to bring him out of it.


The Priest sets to work. There's a lot to do, but he needs to move quickly so that he can stand watch and make sure that those he loves are soundly protected from any incoming enemies.

He bandages the deep wounds on Hicks' wrists, where the chains cut into his skin. He stitches the long, jagged knife wound on his forearm closed. Hicks, all malleable and pliant, is completely compliant as the Priest tugs and cuts his ruined, bloodstained shirt off of him, revealing his bare chest, all bruised and marred, to his protector. He braces the broken arm and straps it tightly in place, making sure it can't move and cause him any more pain than it already has. He takes care in cleaning up the blood from the head wound, patching that up as carefully as he can. He slips the man a dose of strong pain medication, which probably shouldn't be mixed with the cough medicine, and strips Hicks down before settling him under the blankets of their bed.

It's not lost on him that they've come full circle. When he first showed up here, Hicks had been forced to do the same for him, patch him up in the dark of the night with no idea what had happened. The Priest has some idea, but he hates that this happened at all.

He collects Shane, drags his fingers through the sleeping boy's blond hair and settles him back down on Hicks' good side, curled up in the crook of his arm. He wants more than anything to join them, to climb in beside Hicks and hold him close, make sure that nothing else will hurt him, be he can't. He has to guard them from the night, when the potential risk for retribution is highest.

Nothing happens. Not for so long that he starts to think nothing is coming after them after all, but he won't risk it and he was right to wait it out.

Around dawn, half a dozen Cathedral City soldiers appear on the horizon and by the time they skid to a stop yards from his home, he knows what he'll do. He's already dug a deep hole in the yard, not an easy task in the icy cold of winter, but one he'd had to complete if he wants to send his message.

The first man approaches him, armed and armored and pointing a gun at him. "Turn yourself in and give up the fugitives, vow breaker."

"Not a chance," he retorts, unimpressed. His voice, however, is hard and serious, daring them to challenge him for his family. "You'll never touch them. You tell the Monsignors that. That they'll never get my family, that they're not taking anything away from me ever again."

"You turn your back on God as well as your Brothers, your vows?"

"I turn my back on nothing but a corrupt order that makes what it wants out of God's will and ignores what it does not wish to be true. I turn my back on a City that took everything from me," the Priest growls out, having wiped his hands of the Monsignors corruption. "But, we're not in the City anymore. We're in the Wastelands and out here the Church is not welcome and it has no power."

When they seem to realize that there's no reasoning with him, they attack. The first man fires a gun at him, but he easily deflects the bullet back at the shooter, letting it bury itself in the man's stomach.

The Priest pulls out a knife, long and sharp, and strikes at the downed man, cleanly slicing his head off as he would have a vampire. He tosses it into the pit he dug and jumps at the next opponent. This one, too, he slays and decapitates. The others grow concerned.

"Anyone who dares to attack my family will suffer the same fate. Black Hat's head is in that pit, dead and decaying like the rest of him. He was a monster and so are all of you, doing the dirty work of the corrupt. You will all rot with him," two more go down, leaving just two left standing. "Except one. One of you will relay my warning to the Monsignors and they will leave us be or else I will come for their heads, too. You will remind them that having my family is the only thing keeping me in line, that I will not be stopped if I lose them and that I will avenge them using every ability I have been granted by God. You will tell them that today was only a taste of what I will do should any harm come to Hicks or to Shane." He takes down one more, as only one man is required to send a message. "You will tell them to give up on recruiting them, that they'll be allowed to go wherever they want without the risk of what happened in Augustine happening again because I will always find them."

The man he leaves alive cowers before him, staring wide-eyed up at his blood-spattered form. "You will tell them all of this and you will never return here, no matter your orders."

"Y-yes, sir," the man stammers, shaking on the ground.

"Take the bodies with you, as proof of my threat. All of them. I do not want them here. And go."

He watches the survivor struggle with the bodies, driving them away from the Outpost one by one before he takes his leave for good, racing back to the City.

The Priest is confident that they will not be bothered again. Even the Monsignors know a serious threat when they see one and his move definitely qualifies as such. Nonetheless, he will stay on guard for as long as it takes to prove true.

For tonight, though, he expects no further trouble, so he covers the pit of heads and returns to the house. He strips off his clothes to burn them, too blood-covered to be salvageable. He finally gets around to patching up his own wounds, grazes from punches and bullets that just add to his varied collection of scars, and then he lets himself pass out at Hicks' bedside.