When he's done patrolling for the night, Terry doesn't follow his usual routine by going back home. There's something else he needs to do.
He bows his head as he walks up the steps to the doors of St. Catherine's Cathedral, not exactly from a sense of respect or deference but because being here makes him feel more than a little uncomfortable. The McGinnis family is Catholic, religious enough to have the kids baptized, go to Sunday school and go through First Communion, but none of them are really observant. Once in a while they put on good clothes and go to services on major holidays. And, last year, they came here when Warren McGinnis died.
After Terry reaches the top of the steps, he looks up at the elaborately carved walls and the great round stained-glass window. His eyes linger on it for a moment, then continue upwards to the upper reaches of the twin spires that flank the arched doorways here at the lower end of the nave. Spotlights bring every joint, every carving and tile on the great fingers of stone, into stark relief. Although the old building is dwarfed by the great skyscrapers that surround it, and the crisscrossing causeways and walkways and tracks between them, the venerable structure is too glorious and too significant to look small. It helps that the airspace directly above the cathedral grounds is clear – a city ordinance, put into place in response to the lobbying efforts and influence of a number of concerned citizens (including Bruce Wayne), guarantees that 'historically significant' buildings will not be boxed in by tangles of twenty-first-century construction.
The cathedral is open at all hours, and though that may not seem like a good policy for a religious institution that does not have any aggressive security systems and will not let its security force use deadly weapons, even the most belligerent Jokerz and notorious professional thieves consider it to be off-limits. Although that may be attributable mostly to a combination of the security sensor grid around the periphery of the grounds and the police station just down the block, one cannot help but get the impression that its status is something of a deterrent as well. Terry's had to fight off criminals in a lot of places in this city, but never here. And, as far as he is aware, this place has not been the site of any criminal activity for the past decade at least.
For a moment, he thinks he should just abandon the notion that brought him here, turn around, and go home. After all, he's wearing his street clothes, there are no services going on, and it's an ungodly hour (no pun intended) to be out. On top of that, he can remember many occasions, most of them during the Sunday mornings of his childhood, when he denounced religion as 'stupid.' In all likelihood, there are many more such incidences that he just doesn't remember. Some of his later expressions of anti-religious sentiments, which took place in the more recent past, were a lot quieter and at least marginally more articulate but no less disrespectful. A more serious concern, perhaps, is that he has done a lot of things that are, in a word, sinful. And though he has repented the immorality of his past, he has not done so in a religious context. He can't remember if he ever went to confession, and he can't do that now, because even if he left out everything having to do with Batman it would take a very, very long time to list all the shameful acts he has committed. Not to mention how long it would take to do penance for them…
But his need for closure overcomes his embarrassment and guilt. He steps through the open doors and into the foyer. He realizes that he has been holding his breath, and lets it out in a sigh of relief. Then he continues on into the great vaulted hall of the nave, feeling overwhelmed, despite himself, by the sheer size and atmosphere of the place. There are a few other people here, a handful of late-night (or really early-morning) worshippers one or two members of the clergy and a few security guards, but the place is mostly empty. He starts walking toward the little Virgin Mary chapel up in the transept. Each time his foot comes down on the tile floor the sound seems to fill the whole building, and the echoes it produces take a couple of seconds to fade away. The sound makes him think of the ticking of some huge, invisible clock.
He stops to look at one of the stained-glass windows. It's a picture of the cathedral's patron saint, Catherine of Alexandria, sitting next to a spinning wheel. Not at the wheel, since she isn't working at it: If this were a portrait that someone had painted, she would have been sitting so she faced the artist. Her right hand rests on top of the wheel (which has little spikes on it, combining both her patronage of spinners and the device associated with her martyrdom) and her left on her heart. She is looking down over her left shoulder with a pious expression. Of course, the picture isn't that easy to make out at this time of night, since it's completely dim but for a few small spots backlit by lights outside, but he's seen it often enough to know what it's supposed to be. Terry recalls that Catherine is also a patron of children, particularly girls – his mother, and his Sunday school teacher, told him that.
Well, he's here because of the death of a girl. Considering that Catherine is a patroness of girls, does that make this a particularly fitting place to honor the death of one? Or a particularly unfitting place? He doesn't know. But that issue doesn't really concern him. He turns away from St. Catherine's window and continues on his way to the chapel.
As soon as Terry steps into the little room, much of the discomfort and self-consciousness he felt in the main part of the cathedral evaporates. Maybe it's because the smaller space is not so awesome and overwhelming as the high walls and vaulted ceilings outside. It may also be because Mary herself lends a benevolent atmosphere to this place. There are four muted yellow lights, made to look like gas lanterns, each placed in one of the four corners. Another one hangs over the altar against the rear wall, above the head of a three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin herself, simply but realistically depicted in fine hand-painted porcelain, with the light reflecting softly from her blue and white robes. She stands in a classic pose, her eyes downcast, her arms spread a little with palms facing upward. When Terry was little, he noticed that his mother stood much the same way when she wanted him to come over for a hug, and he decided that Mary must be doing the same thing – offering to give someone a hug. There are a couple bouquets of slightly wilted flowers on the surface of the altar. A quick look around the dimly lit room tells him that he is the only person in here.
In front of the altar are three racks for votive candles. Most of them have long since burned down and melted, covering the racks and the long metal pans beneath them with lumpy masses of congealed wax, like clumps of some strange grayish-white fungus. A few wicks are still burning, though. The candles of which they are a part have melted and merged with the greater mass of congealed wax to such an extent that the little flames look like fires on a snowy mountainside at night.
Terry looks around some more and finds, off to the side, a cabinet containing boxes of squat white votive candles and matches. There is a little donation box on top of the cabinet, politely requesting 0.75 credits per candle. Terry gets 1.50 in change from his pockets, puts it in the box, takes two candles and a match. One of the candles is for Tanya Wooten. The other is for his father, for whom he lights a candle in this chapel every time he comes here. He doesn't know if Tanya was Catholic or even Christian, but whether she was or not, a memorial candle will not go amiss. Terry pries a couple of extinguished candles out of the upper left corner of the central rack, letting them fall to the pan below, then uses his fingers to remove some of the wax they left behind so that there will be a spot for his candles. Once the little space is about as clean as he can get it, he puts the candles there.
Part of him wonders why he's doing this. It makes sense for him to light a candle for his father, but Tanya Wooten was a stranger to him. He cannot attend her funeral – even if he knew when and where the service would be – and even that wouldn't be much. This little gesture means nothing.
Another part of him, however, knows exactly why he's doing this, and that while it may be only one candle, it's a lot more than that. He is doing the same thing for her death that he does for his father's, because in some way he can't explain, both of those deaths mean the same thing. It galled him – an inadequate word, but the best he can think of – that his father was killed to protect the interests of the callous, avaricious Derek Powers. What he finds galling about Tanya Wooten's death is different. In that case, what he can't stand is the fact that it was so pointless. She wasn't assassinated for knowing too much, or getting in the way of someone else's agenda. Nor was she an executed hostage, or even the unfortunate victim of some maniac's homicidal rampage. Even then her death would have had a point of some kind, and a little more dignity. But Tanya's death was completely without purpose, and without dignity, because the man who killed her didn't notice, or care, that she was nearby. She was hit by a stray bullet from a fight that had nothing to do with her. Terry is here because he wants to show the universe, and himself, and maybe God, that she is more than just collateral damage.
He strikes the match head with his thumbnail and it bursts into flame. Then he carefully sets the burning end of the match to the wick of each candle he has placed the rack. He does not, in his mind, decide that this one is for his father and that one is for Tanya. For some reason he doesn't think that it would be right to do so. Once he has lit both wicks, he drops the match, still burning, into the metal pan below the rack, where it quickly goes out.
Then, following a habit that was instilled in him at some so long ago that he can't remember it, he kneels on the floor, genuflects and clasps his hands together before him, then lowers his head and closes his eyes. He doesn't say any anything, aloud or inside his own head. A few minutes of silence, which he spends crafting and maintaining a vivid mental image of the candles he has just lit but cannot see through his closed eyes, seems better to him than any prayers or whispered messages to the Infinite or whatever it may be. In a way, he is literally putting a lot of thought into the candles, which is what counts. It's an idea that seemed perfectly rational to him
After a time, he gets to his feet, traces a cross in the air again, and turns around to leave the chapel. Then, with one foot out the doorway and one still inside, he turns his head to look at the candles – his candles – burning with steady, bright yellow flames. The grief that has weighed him down for the past few days has not gone away, but now it's not so difficult a burden to bear.
Terry bows his head respectfully to the Virgin Mary standing in the chapel before stepping out completely and turning right, to make his way back to the entrance and from there, back home.