Title: The Confessional

Author: Skye Firebane

Rating: PG-13

Summary: "The customers came and went, changed and rotated, like a never-ending tide of drinkers and story-tellers, lovers and loveless…"

Chapter: Prologue  

Comments: This fic is a little bittersweet collection of vignettes set in a bar on the East Bank of Haven. I rather like it; it's depressing and a little hopeful… and best read whilst listening to jazz. The prologue's short, but the chapters amount to more.

Disclaimer: Eoin Colfer + Stroke of Brilliance = Artemis Fowl. Skye Firebane + Stroke of Brilliance ≠ Artemis Fowl. He owns it. I don't. Enough said.

Thanks to: The PIC as per usual – The Book of Jude, Kitty Rainbow, Ophelia who is Insane, and the little wonder who read this for me (and provided me with slightly lewd Bebop manga scans), Flame Fairy.

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Prologue

Jack Salvia's father had been a priest. His father's father had been a priest. His father's father's father had been a priest. In fact, the Salvias came from a long line of priests. From the day he was born, young Jack had been expected to follow in his ancestors' footsteps; study hard, graduate at the top, and join the Temple on the East Bank for a nice quiet life of chanting and incense waving. But apparently, Jack was not so intent on living a life of quiet near-solitude, and in the grandest fashion (on his seventy-seventh birthday), announced that he was opening up a bar.

Of course, there had been repercussions. Jack's father disowned him, for one. But it was alright with Jack. He was that sort of guy; easy going all the way to the marrow. He cruised through life like it was nobody's business, even when he was slumming it in a dumpster behind Spud's Spud Emporium. He was the kind of guy that made everything look easy.

He'd stumbled across the perfect place for a bar on the way to the East Bank Temple; it was on the rougher side of the East Bank, the perfect haven for those career-driven types to down a few whilst moaning about their various failures in life. It was the sort of thing Jack dreamed about: to polish up glasses and listen lazily about the outside world while melancholic jazz played in the background. The price on the shop was a pretty penny, though, and it took some careful manoeuvring to get the cash to buy it. And it was a good thing no one at East Bank Temple lifted an eyebrow at the several kilos of gold spent on "The Confessional".

And so the name – and the irony – stuck.

The Confessional was quite popular with the East Bank crowd. Not the, "Oh-Dear-I've-Got-To-Buy-A-Bigger-Place-For-All-These-People" sort of popular, but the sort of popular where you could conduct your own conversation without being heard. This seemed to suit the patrons, plus there was live jazz on every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. And Jack was always there, day or night, to lend you an ear and a drink on the house if you were looking depressed. Hell, he'd been there behind that bar for near thirty years. And he never tired of it, not once. The customers came and went, changed and rotated, like a never-ending tide of drinkers and story-tellers, lovers and loveless.

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