All I can say is massive amounts of PMS went into this, consider yourself warned. Also, I watched a lot of What Kate Did while writing it, so its kinda reminiscent of that - I think.…
Also if you or anyone you know speaks Czech, I sincerely apologize for the absolute butchering of the language. At any rate, this chapter is very Prague-y. Or at least what I imagine Prague to be like, never having actually been there, or anywhere really.
Ch 9
They stumbled out into the night, it was nearly 3am in a foreign city, and neither of them could immediately get their bearings. Jack swung his head around in every direction trying to figure out where their hotel ought to be. Still clutching at her hand, he arbitrarily chose to go left and pulled Kate behind him. They moved in the direction of loud thumping music and flickering bluish lights. Jack could only presume that it was a club and there would be a crowd of young drunk people that they could disappear into. The only thing he was basing this on was a couple of spy movies he had seen as a kid, and since Kate wasn't offering up any ideas, he went with it.
He looked back at her briefly. Her arm was stretched out in front of her and she followed behind him, matching him step for step. But he could swear she didn't see him at all. She tripped over some broken pavement, barely even noticing she clutched at her stomach and a sob wracked her entire body.
They were closer to the source of the music now, and Jack could hear voices above it. The music was harsh, so was the language the people were speaking and Jack couldn't understand a word of it. But the crowd was thick and they pushed their way through it. Suddenly everything was so incongruous, how had they even gotten here, from an island in the middle of the pacific to a club in Eastern Europe. A strange sensation, like vertigo or nausea passed through him, but he pressed on.
He kept turning to check one her, afraid of loosing her in the swelling crowd. Finally they made it to a corner. He turned Kate toward him easily, her body simply obeying. Her eyes didn't meet his, she scanned the crowd almost absently.
"Kate!" He spoke to her, shouted really, over the crowd. He put her hands on her face and steered her head to meet his.
"Kate. She's okay, Liz is going to be okay."
She said something inaudible and tears spilled down her cheeks. The lights flashed, blue, then green, then red. Her eyes flickered in them, vacant and still refusing to meet his. Sometimes she would just get lost in herself. He could almost see the dark thoughts, always swirling just below the surface, threatening to swallow her whole. Up until this point, she had always managed to fight off the black and find her way back to him. He was so afraid that one of these days she wouldn't. And he knew, he just fucking knew, this could be that time. He had never seen her quite this bad. She was so absent.
"Kate, look at me." He pleaded and she dragged her eyes to meet his. "Liz is a smart girl, she knows not to lie. She's going to be fine. I promise you."
She looked straight at him, her hands reaching for him, clutching at his lapels. She nodded slightly, and she believed him. He could tell by the way she looked at him, the way her eyes just about glimmered with an endearing combination of vulnerability and trust. He was drawn to it, but so afraid at the same time. Because what the hell did he know? Why did he insist on making promises he couldn't keep? He thought he could be right, but what if he wasn't? What if they took Liz into custody and never released her. Unlikely, but there were no assurances.
Kate shook her head as though trying to startle herself into coherence. When she spoke again, she seemed much more lucid. "We have to find somewhere safe to spend the night."
A girl wearing what looked like a thin foil top crashed into them, pulling her date with her. She then proceeded to look at them as though they were the ones who had rudely gotten in her way. Kate glared at the girl, but Jack moved out of their way, murmuring in Kate's ear, "Lets just go."
Their spot against the wall was being taken over by a growing line for the Ladies room anyway. They were pushed further into the crowd and Jack tried his best to keep Kate in his sights. He lost her, but only for a second. She grabbed his hand in the mess and pushed through people so she was next to him. They made their way to a back exit and emerged onto a completely different street.
A cold wind traveled through them as they got further and further away from the crowd. Fall was fast approaching and leaves rustled above them, they loosed themselves from thin branches and swirled toward them in the dark, Kate pulled her jacket tighter around her and moved closer to Jack. Instinctively he wrapped his arm around her and they moved to the darker interior of the sidewalk, snug against the buildings and just outside the bright circles cast by street lights. Together they hurried down the street.
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They hadn't been walking long when Kate ducked out from beneath his arm and squinted, trying to make out a building across the street.
"This way." She said as she quickly glanced up and down the street and jogged across it. He had no idea where she was going, but he followed her anyway.
About a block up, he could finally see what she had been looking at. In the middle of the industrial area they had been trying to maneuver their way through, there was inexplicably a very large, very old Catholic church.
Kate stopped in front of the steps and looked up at the ancient stone structure. "Think its open?" she asked him.
He took the steps two at a time and looked back to see her still standing there with her head tilted towards the sky. "One way to find out." She hurried up after him.
They pushed the heavy doors opened and a soft light spilled out onto the cold street. They ducked in when they saw that the place, though nearly empty, was definitely open. Save for an old woman in the front left pew and a man who shuffled past them out the open door, they had the place to themselves.
They chose a pew towards the back, deep in the shadows of the already dim great room of the church. There was what looked like an antechamber only a few yards behind their pew that would be perfect for a quick getaway, should the need arise. Their escape route was almost completely hidden by a large statue of the Virgin Mary that had been adorned with flowers and votive candles.
She stared straight ahead, looking at the interior of the church but seeing none of it. She hadn't been inside many churches before, and she couldn't ever remember being in a Catholic one. She hadn't been raised with much in the way of religion. As a matter of fact, the only time she heard her mother talk about God, it was in the context of yelling at her. As in "God damnit, Katherine." Or "Jesus Christ, Katie!" And her personal favorite "God help you if I find you Katherine Elizabeth!" Her mother had screamed it after her at the top of her lungs every time she had run from the house, slamming the rickety screen door, not stopping or slowing till she reached Tom's house a full two and a half miles away.
From what Jack had told her, he had been raised Lutheran, but apart from that, she had no clue about his belief system. They had just never gotten around to talking about it. Weird how you could know someone so intimately, love him even, yet not know something so fundamental as whether or not he believed in God.
"Do you believe in God, Jack?" There was no preface, she just blurted out the question. He turned to look at her, and didn't speak for a moment. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. She wondered if he was censoring his answer, or trying to tell her what she wanted to hear. She didn't even know what she wanted his answer to be.
She looked at him expectantly. He sighed and shook his head. "No." he said simply, offering no explanation.
"Do you?" he asked after a brief silence.
She shrugged, "Maybe on my good days." She was so noncommittal. The more she thought about it, the less she wanted to dwell on the ramifications of what that might mean.
She rubbed her palm over the wood on the pew directly in front of them, it was worn and smooth with age. Her eyelids suddenly felt very heavy. She reached for his hand and tilted his wrist toward her to read his watch. It was nearly 4 am.
When she released his hand, he ran it through her hair straight through to the ends of it. She saw him blink heavily and scooted closer to him on the bench, gingerly resting her head on his shoulder. He kept his hand in her hair, continuing to absently pull at the straightened strands.
"Huh." he said almost to himself.
"Yeah?" she said as she glanced at a small table full of red candles, some lit and some dark.
"Nothing," He sad, "I just kinda miss the curls."
The feel of his fingers in her hair lulled her into a delicious sleepiness. There was something about the place that was surprisingly comforting. Or maybe it was having him right next to her. Or perhaps it was the two together, but for whatever reason she felt safer than she had in ages. The sensation was not at all what she'd expected to feel given the days events. She gave into the dreamlike quality of her surroundings and sank deeper into him. She didn't even try to keep her eyes open.
"I just don't know about the whole heaven and hell tie in with God." He said it low, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Hmmm," she murmured into his shoulder, not even opening her eyes.
"I never liked the idea of it. Heaven I mean." He continued.
"Yeah," She shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable on the unyielding pew. She wrapped both arms around his middle, below his jacket, and her head slid onto his chest. "Paradise sucks."
She heard him breathe a laugh, but he kept talking. "It just sort of negates all the good parts. It seems….wrong. It implies that there's something better." He stopped and she waited, her eyes now open. She was, for once in her life, completely still. "Something better than this."
He stopped speaking and she was suddenly more awake. She lifted her head and looked at him. His eyes shifted away from her, he looked slightly embarrassed that he had said it all out loud.
She just kept looking at him, waiting for his eyes to make their way back to hers. Just the fact that he had said it, and meant it, because he so obviously believed what he was saying, it meant more to her than he could ever know. That somehow, despite the chaos, and mess and absolute uncertainty of their situation, being with her made him happy.
After a few moments, he glanced down at her and shrugged.
Without saying a word she craned her neck and brushed his lips with hers, so slight at first, so slow. He brought both hands to her face and she sat up straighter, leaning into him at the same time, her mouth never leaving his. The kiss intensified, but stayed slow, almost meandering. He pushed his hands back along her jaw line and into her hair and she wrapped her arms even tighter around him. They stayed like that, finding each other again, bridging the subtle distance that had somehow grown, and mending everything that had gone wrong since they had left their room that morning.
They only broke apart when a large banging noise echoed in their ears. She felt Jack's heart leap simultaneously with hers and they turned quickly towards the source of the noise. The tiny old woman from the front of the church had made her way down the long center aisle and was now standing at the end of their pew. She was a slight, wisp of a woman, but imposing all the same since she was alternating between banging her cane loudly on the end of the pew and shaking it at them threateningly.
"Desny! Ne respekt nebot privest do kostela!" She shouted at them as she shuffled towards the door to leave. They both just stared after her, bewildered. Kate was nearly on the verge of tears trying to hold back her laughter. She brought a hand to her mouth and pressed hard.
The woman stared back at them, then gestured at the heavy door yelling at them in Czech again. Neither of them moved. Kate finally elbowed Jack in the ribs and said through the corner of her mouth, "Help her with the door, Jack." Why she whispered, she had no idea, the woman could no more understand them than they could understand her.
Jack stumbled to his feet and hurried to help her. As he held the door open and she hobbled out, she glared at him and shook her head. He looked just like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He walked sheepishly back to her, a wry smile on his lips.
She grinned at him and held her hand out. He caught it in his as he sat back down. He shook his head lightly, "What was she doing out at 4 in the morning anyway?"
Jack woke up slow, he didn't immediately know where he was, all he knew was that his neck was killing him. He blinked in the early morning light and tried to get his bearings. It seemed he was doing that a lot lately.
In the harsh light of day, the church seemed less beautiful and quite a bit shabbier. It was a building more suited to low lamp light than streaming sunshine. He looked up at the stained glass windows that ran the length of the church and almost changed his mind.
Kate groaned next to him and her hand shot up to her neck as she gingerly moved her head back and forth.
"Sleep good?" He asked her. She just stared back at him blankly. "Me either." He nodded.
It was still early enough that the church was nearly empty, but soon that wouldn't be the case. He glanced at his watch, hoping to God, or something else, that it wasn't Sunday. Kate stretched her arms above her head and tried to crack her back.
They looked at each other until Jack finally said what they were both thinking.
"Now what?"