As he had memorized his way through the darkness of his cathedral, so had he learned his way through the bleak, cramped spaces of the orphanage.
Old, rickety stairs, weary, thin floorboards, creaky, aged doors – not a peep came out of any of them as Bishop Shimura swept through. The nuns, with their inane hearing, didn't stir a bit at his intrusion; or, if they did, they didn't bother to investigate.
By now, though, Bishop Shimura should be as silent and well-learned as a ghost chained to these rooms and florally designed walls.
He slipped into Lee's room and locked the door behind himself. With a moment's thought, he decidedly flipped on the light switch. Here, in this room with Lee, there was no need for darkness. It wouldn't bother any of the other residents and he would be able to see the teenager's expressions much more easily.
The first thing he noticed as his eyes adjusted was that Lee's room was cleaner than it had been in awhile. Things were where they were supposed to be, objects weren't thrown haphazardly across the floor, and the floor, for that matter, had been swept and mopped free of all fluids, either drug-related or bodily rejected.
The air smelled fresher, something that he had missed.
However, instead of the Lee he had come to enjoy, the one with hazy eyes, flushed cheeks, and a loose, hot body, was someone else entirely, and Bishop Shimura cursed under his breath as his heart stuttered at the unsuspecting sight.
"Where aren't you tonight?" And how had he gotten there so quickly? Bishop Shimura knew, just knew that, in his Toyota Celica GT-4, there was no way he could have been outraced, even with the few minutes head start.
Then again, he hadn't seen another car on the road as he had speeded to the orphanage, and that didn't assuage him in the least to know.
Father Sabaku held a worn Bible in his lap, sitting in a chair opposite Lee's (empty) bed. He didn't look up from its pages at him, and he rolled and palmed his prayer beads lazily near his ear, the elbow of the same hand balanced on the chair's arm.
From where Bishop Shimura stood, he could see writing in the Bible; handwriting.
That was Lee's Bible, the one that Bishop Shimura had threatened to burn some years back. How dare Lee deface the Good Book with the scrawling and blotches of a mere mortal's penmanship? That had been his reasoning, and he had been disgusted at the Sisters for letting Lee go about with such a thing and Lee had sobbed pitifully as Bishop Shimura had held the Bible over the fireplace.
But Lee had earned his Good Book back, and its safety, as he had earned everything else from Bishop Shimura.
Now, watching Father Sabaku study the words that weren't typed, the misspellings and hopes and dreams and hellos and goodbyes that had tainted the parchment in shades of colored pencil and crayon and ink and lead, made him wish that he had denied Lee the chance to earn that back in particular.
"Father Sabaku," he called in a low, tight voice, "I would like very much to know what you're doing here. Weren't you supplied a room elsewhere?"
"Yes," the redhead murmured. Then said nothing. The rubbing and crackling of his prayer beads filled the silence between them.
"… Then why aren't you there?" he prompted. He felt humiliated beyond belief that he could be so ignored by someone of a lower status than himself. And this man was subservient to a woman. It was nearly more than he could bear.
Father Sabaku retorted, in a drone voice, "I wanted to talk to you."
"I thought we were done talking at Church. Or was that a pre-discussion to this one?"
"You could call it that." He flipped through the pages, going backwards, and then once situated, finally flickered his gaze towards Bishop Shimura. His unwavering eyes held him still and not a single emotion showed as the clinking and clanking of his rubbing beads slowed to a stop. "You don't look well."
Of course he wouldn't look well. This heathen, this spawn of Satan, wouldn't leave him alone! He was there, constantly, had been ever since he had arrived in Bishop Shimura's town, and he always seemed to know just how to alarm him, how to make him lose his edge and fall that much deeper into irritation and aggression and hostility.
His one hand fisted at his side as he kept his face slack. "I'm not feeling that well. This post-discussion can wait, can't it? I'll send for you first thing in the morning once I'm feeling better…" He turned to unlock the door.
He needed to think up another strategy. He needed to think of how to get Father Sabaku out of his territory, away from him and the orphanage and Lee. He needed him away from the truth, and Bishop Shimura needed to regroup.
"It won't wait," Father Sabaku said sternly, and froze Bishop Shimura in his tracks like a naughty child that had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "I want to talk to you about the past accusations against you."
"What accusations?" he hissed, out of good humor. "I can assure you, my file is clean."
"Thirty-two years ago, a twelve-year old boy complained to his mother that the priest at his local church was touching his private parts," Father Sabaku said in a clipped, unfeeling tone, as if reading the very words he was saying from the back of his eyes. "No charges were pressed, however, after a large sum of money appeared in the mother's admittedly lacking bank account.
Fifteen years ago, a nine-year old boy went missing after telling his dad that the priest at his local church, twenty miles South of the first local church, forced him to do sexual acts. The dad admitted to not believing his son and confiding in the accused priest; it was the next morning that the son turned up missing. The son did not reappear for three weeks, at such a time that he arrived on his own doorstep, refusing to speak about what had happened. To this day, he has remained mute due to the traumatic experience.
Four years ago –"
"What are you getting at?" Bishop Shimura hissed, heart hammering in his chest. He felt cornered, powerless, and, strangest of all, in pain. As if tiny claws and small teeth were slowly chewing away at his insides…
He grabbed onto the rosary around his throat, reminded himself that he was a true man of God, and what he had done, it had not been wrong.
He was incapable of doing wrong. He was, after all, a Bishop, Holier than those that followed him. God himself had carved his being into existence to mirror His own, and he had been made near perfectly.
The pain abated as his doubt dissipated.
He had done nothing wrong. Even if he was found guilty, no mere human could be his Judge, no one but God could be that, and God would welcome him warmly home.
"Four years ago," Father Sabaku repeated patiently, without mercy, "a boy was discovered in Saint Luke's Hospital, held against his will in the Psych Ward. Interestingly enough, he wasn't mentally ill or self-abusive or a danger to society; there was nothing wrong with him at all. When asked why he had been put there, he talked about a Bishop that had 'put him away' so that 'he would shut his mouth'."
Bishop Shimura stared blankly back at him as he quietly closed the Bible. "What do you want from me, Father Sabaku?"
"We're going to decide what to do with you," Father Sabaku answered. "No matter what decision we come to, three things will be certain:
One, you will resign from the Church.
Two, you will atone for your sins.
Three, you will never commit such crimes as you have again."
Bishop Shimura raised a shaking hand to his face and stole a deep breath. Ah, the pain had returned… But he was a man of God and he would prevail.
And then he began laughing, just, just amused by the naivety of the mere boy before him. "And how do you plan to enforce those? I have done nothing wrong and you won't find a soul to testify otherwise. Naruto? He's been in a Psych Ward for the past six years! And Lee –"
"I never told you that his name was Naruto," Father Sabaku cut him off, and then corrected, "And it's only been four years. He was released from Saint Luke's two years ago. The public would be interested in his story, how the Church quieted his complaints by labeling him clinically insane. His Holiness would hear about it and he would know your name for the last time."
He put his rosary to his lips and just stared. He stared as Bishop Shimura's breathing became more ragged.
But he was a man of God. Yes, God would be his only judge, and God would welcome him into His arms where he had earned a place to be….
"Lee will dispute everything Naruto says," he snarled. "If he wants his precious children to sleep safely at night, he will keep his mouth shut! Or else he knows what will happen to them."
Father Sabaku didn't say anything, nor did his expression change, but Bishop Shimura somehow felt encouraged. It could have been because his head was buzzing again or because he felt the faintest shimmering of something like adrenaline. For whatever reason, he kept talking.
He grinned voraciously. His blood was boiling, eating away at his insides and flesh, and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead as his fists shook at his sides. "He knows. He goes through it every week. Where were you then, Father, to save him? When he prayed every night that a savior would come, not realizing I was just at the door behind him?"
Yes, yes, and then what, Bishop Shimura? Tell him about how you shattered that little no one's dreams, about how you threw him on the bed he prayed on and fucked him raw for thinking that God would listen to such a lowly being as him. Tell him everything.
Yes, he thought to himself. He should tell Father Sabaku everything. Wouldn't it be wonderful, to watch that stoic expression crumble into revulsion and then into hardly refrained want? No man could deny that the fantasy of a youthful, tight body around their member had never crossed their minds, that tears and confusion and dark, pained eyes had never enticed them!
He, as a man of God, would know all about the trappings of the devil, and how he lured the lustful to Hell with scantily clad bait and wanton cries. But he was a true man of God and such trappings had always eluded him. Never would he fall, never.
And he never had, he had never doubted himself, and yet, here was a scrap of a pretender trying to tell him what to do! No one had ever dared before, except for that whore, Arch-Bishop Senju, but she had never gotten anywhere with her accusations and testy remarks…
He's threatening everything you are. And it makes you doubt yourself, don't it? Your faith's crumbling the more he yaps and he'll never shut up, not as long as he knows you're listening. God may be your judge, but this mere slip of a boy is going to condemn you to humiliation here on earth. You can't commit suicide to go into His arms sooner than you're wanted, can you? And you're too old to live peacefully in jail. You can hope that you'll be killed there, but you'll be tortured first.
No one takes pity on a pedophile.
"The first time it happened," he was saying, and his mind couldn't even connect to his mouth to stop himself as the words spilled out. A dam had broken and the truth was overflowing, drowning him, sweeping him away, and Father Sabaku wouldn't. Stop. Staring. "I remember the first time it happened with Lee, he was younger then, twelve, and I – he caught me with Naruto, and Naruto was so tainted. God would not have cared for his sacrifice, He was the one who had punished Naruto first, leaving him alone in the world…
Lee didn't cry, not the first time, no, he was, he tried to, he bit me, and that hurt and I, he bled and I told the Sisters to stay away from his room and I, yes, I had him for days and Naruto too and they were… They were…"
He frowned. Slowly, he raised his hands and touched his temples. He swayed and barely caught himself from falling.
He felt odd, as if he wasn't entirely within his body anymore. His skin wasn't his, his body wasn't there, and he was desensitized against his own touch. Cold. Yet, somehow, itchy.
It took him a moment to realize that he was smirking, his lips stretched wide and thin over his teeth, a trickle of saliva coming from the corner of his mouth. He was wheezing, when had he started that?
Why was there blood underneath his fingernails? And why was his face wet? Ah, his temples were bleeding – but hadn't his hands just been on his temples?
The disorientation he was experiencing only grew worse as he realized he was still talking.
"… And you would have wanted to be there with them, Gaara."
That wasn't his voice, nor was it the way he addressed the other man, and yet, he couldn't bring himself to care. The strange sensation of not having his own body anymore grew more and more intense till he thought he would disappear into nothing.
And then something grabbed him, sharp, piercing him, and he saw them – little things. Little creatures with huge, milky white eyes and small horns atop their disproportional heads. Their claws and talons were catching on him, dragging him back, and they gnashed their little, pointy teeth as their cloven hooves trampled on him and their forked tails cut into him like blades and –
They began eating him!
Vaguely, around the agony of being devoured alive, he realized that he was still talking.
But it wasn't him at all, and the eyes that saw Father Sabaku were strange, not human, and the world was in shades of black and red.
His body moved forward, staggered more like, before his one leg gave out, fell off, and the voice that wasn't his laughed cruelly. "This body is so weak. It can not support my full being!" Then his head snapped up, beastly like, and focused on Father Sabaku, who had yet to move. Who had yet to speak.
Who had yet to blink.
The voice that wasn't his sighed disdainfully. "Why are you so stubborn, brother? Come on, let's be one again." He could feel the monstrous smirk that spread across his face, even as he knew he was no longer controlling his facial muscles. "Like when we were born."
Father Sabaku stared down at him for an impossibly long moment.
Bishop Shimura's arm fell off and, through the pain of little teeth and nails ripping him to shreds, he saw Father Sabaku reach into his cassock and pull out a pistol.
He wrapped his rosary around the barrel of it and ignored the hateful frown that passed Bishop Shimura's lips as he spoke a simple goodbye.
"Go back to Hell and take Danzou with you."
The pain ended suddenly, thankfully, almost as soon as he saw distantly Father Sabaku's finger pull back on the trigger.
For awhile, he drifted in darkness. It was warm, not uncomfortably humid, and it was as if he was swaddled in blankets as a sense of peace and safety overcame him. God's love was more than he could have ever imagined it to be.
That euphoria ended with an enraged roar that was entirely inhuman and claws grabbed him, thick, long, curving claws that pierced his shoulders through and through and dragged him downwards as if through layers of ice and lava.
When it all stopped, he could see again, and what he saw was a gigantic monstrosity with yellow-golden eyes and a horde of small demons dancing on its sloping, heavy shoulders.
They stared at each other; for how long, Bishop Shimura didn't know. Couldn't know. His terror grew as the beast nurtured its own apparent rage.
But he was a man of God! How had he ended up down here? This was obviously no angel, and this was obviously not Heaven. How had he ended up here? Had there been a mistake? He hadn't done anything wrong!
Then it spoke and its voice caused Bishop Shimura to scream as his ears bled at the terrifying sound. "Well?" it growled at the demons prancing along its rolls of fat.
"Aren't you all going to finish eating him?"
~""~
Author's Note: What a morbid chapter… I had to rewrite it a few times; I couldn't make it feel right any other way. I hope you managed to survive reading this! Now I have to figure out what to do next…
