MidnightCrane- Thanks for the review! I did take away some of Silas's harshness on purpose. I wanted to show a softer side, before he became a homicidal maniac. He can't have always been that way.
Seraphine- Thanks for your review! I was blushing when I read it. The compliments keep me going.
Sternenlicht- Thank you for the compliment!
FuchsiaII- Wow, the beginning of your review freaked me out! I read the first sentence and thought I was going to get my first bad review for this, but it turned out to be a very good review. The kind that nourish a writer's soul.. Many thanks!
Kelly Tolkien- Yea, the premiere was pretty awesome! Thanks for taking the time to review!
shikongewl- I actually didn't get to see the movie, but I did see the stars on the carpet. Thanks for the review!
fabala4077- Wow, I'm flattered that this is your favorite! And I was at the beach the other day, but I was too busy getting eaten by waves to think of Silas. What you said is very true, and I wish I had a chance to add it! Maybe I'll do a one-shot with that... or something...
Just a warning- this chapter finally has corporal mortification in it. Its nothing worse than in the books, but I thought I'd warn you anyway.
For those who don't know, Mea culpa means Through my fault in Latin.
Sublimation- Part Four
Weeks. Weeks and he had not touched them. His marble skin remained flawless, his muscled thigh not tasted by the metal teeth. He stood in his room and stared at the path he had chosen. He was sick with himself.
He was Silas, a man saved from prison by God. He was Silas, who used to be a ghost. But there were times in this echoing marble edifice that he lost his ties to the world again. There were times when he was alone in his room in the middle of the night and he forgot that he was human. He needed something to remind him he was flesh and blood and bone, tied to this earth, doomed to perish. The knowledge that he would die would remind him that he was alive. That he was not a ghost.
But he was afraid to become human again. He was afraid of that childish drawing- Monster in Crayon -and everything it had shown him. As a ghost he could pass unnoticed, a slight anomaly in God's design. As a human, he became an abomination. A pale slave to love, in need of confirmation and acceptance. Vulnerable to denial.
But why does it have to be this way?The tiny voice inside sounded remarkably like Victor's.
Because I am cowardly and low.I am a nonbeliever deep inside.Yo soy una fantasma.
Because I am afraid.
He took the heavy braided leather of the Discipline in his hand and was shocked, as he always was, by its weight. Not its physical weight, but the weight of everything it implied. He opened and closed his hand around it and couldn't bring himself to raise it. With reverence, he placed it back on the chair and turned to his small sleeping cot.
From beneath it he dragged out his mirror. It was a small one, only big enough to allow him to see his own face. He stared at his reflection. When he had tried to take the first steps down his new path and faltered, he thought his stutters were only because he lacked motivation. So he found the mirror and tried to force himself into hatred or anger, any emotion strong enough to make him pick up the Discipline.
Yet every time before when he did so it brought only a wave of regret- why wasn't I born perfect?
The mirror nearly fell from his hands at the sound of a knock on the door.
"Silas? Can I come in?"
Silas wracked his brain, and then realized that it was Tuesday. The day he and Victor normally went out for breakfast.
"I am staying here today, Victor. You should go to breakfast alone."
"At least come down to the chapel with me. You haven't been to Mass in a while."
"No, thank you, Victor."
Silence sat outside his door for a long while afterwards.
"I'm going away for a while. Another retreat. I'll see you when I come back."
After an eternity of more silence, Silas registered the heavy sound of Victor walking away. Neither of them had the heart to say good-bye.
Silas closed his eyes, feeling the dull thud of disappointed tears behind them. Victor had helped him onto this path, and then Silas pushed him away. He had been nothing but kind, nothing but giving. And he was letting him down.
When Silas looked at his reflection now, the hate boiled free and dark, a poisonous sludge in his veins. He seized the nearby Discipline with a shout and struck blindly. The sharp leather tongues curled around his ribs and his back with a loud crack, then fell lifeless at his side.
Silas froze. His eyes bulged but all that was before them was darkness. He couldn't breathe at the sudden, exquisite agony. One shaking hand went to his bare skin and came away with drops of blood on it. He raised the Discipline before him again. He clenched it in his fist. He felt something inside him die and something else become stronger all at once. He struck over his shoulder this time. Harder. He threw all of his body into it, coiling like a writhing snake. His skin prickled with fresh blood.
Not enough.
Again. Blood flowed. And again, and again, and again. He fell to his knees. The Discipline slid from his hands. He reached for the cilice and strapped it to his thigh. The pain of metal teeth biting into his muscle tore him from consciousness.
Weeks. Weeks went by but not a day passed when Silas's hand didn't itch to feel the Discipline in it. It was closer than a lover to him. He lost consciousness with it in his hand and woke still clutching it. He removed the cilice only on Sunday. The pain was addictive. He never went far from his room; he was too eager for the pure, raw feeling of letting go, and at the same time being in control. Of being human.
Then Victor came back from his retreat.
It was a Sunday, nearly two months after the other numerary first appeared silently in Silas's room, handed him the new cilice and the Discipline, and disappeared. Silas had gone to one of the chapels in the higher levels of the building, far away from where the other numeraries went. It was small, as far as the chapels in Opus Dei went, but in keeping with the Catholic tradition it had an enormous stained glass window. It was an image of Christ on the Cross, and that was why it was Silas's favorite chapel. He didn't dare put himself on par with the Son of God, but the pain that wracked his body did make him feeling closer to his Lord.
The image faced the street and reminded Silas of the picture he'd seen on his retreat, the picture that Isabelle found him near. He didn't hate her for her honesty; he loved her. If it hadn't been for her, he never would've found his path.
It was there that Victor found him.
The day was very still, but not quite calm. The occasional breaths of air had a feel of the resigned to them. Silas stood before the window, blood still trickling down his back and the coarse fibers of his robe irritating his cuts, and felt completely at peace. He no longer needed to stand in darkness to feel light and empty, ready for God to fill him. It hadn't occurred to him yet that he wished desperately to be human, but always sought to lose contact with his body when he yearned for God's peace. He didn't hear Victor come in.
"It's been a while, Brother." Victor smiled as he said it. "Have you missed me?"
"Of course. How was the retreat?"
"Great, but I missed our breakfasts. Did you go without me?"
"No."
"Then we'll have to go tomorrow. You've probably been cooping yourself up again." He grinned, slapping Silas on the back.
Agony, a white hot iron across his eyes, blackness, sudden waking. Victor was above him, his gray-green eyes fraught with worry.
"What happened, Silas?"
"Nothing." He wheezed, pulling himself swaying to his feet.
Victor's gasp made his stomach drop. Silas turned and saw that the blood had soaked through his robe, so that when he fell he made a bloody mirror image of the one on the window.
"Is this from...?"
"It is my path. I have found more peace through this than anything else in my life."
"You were only supposed to use this once or twice a week! It wasn't supposed to happen like this!" Victor's eyes were wide with horror. Fading sunlight from the window at his back framed him. He was a hallowed image, handsome and young. He was no monster.
Look at him, the sneering voice in Silas's head whispered. He's just as disgusted as everyone else.
"This is my path. Youhelped me!"
"No, I didn't. My God, I shouldn't have given you those. This is wrong, Silas. Please let me really help you this time. This isn't the right path!"
"You can't tell me what's wrong and what's right! I just want to feel alive!"
Silas didn't know what language he screamed it in. All he knew was that he screamed so loud it made his head dizzy with the lack of breath. His vision flooded with sparks, and he nearly lost consciousness once more. He was hardly aware of himself for uncounted moments afterwards.
It was only when he saw the red glass falling to the ground like so many drops of blood and felt the cold winter air sighing around him, leaving pinpricks of moisture like tears on his skin, that he realized what he had done.
Bishop Manuel Aringarosa sat in his rooms in Opus Dei's New York Headquarters and prayed with all his soul for the phone not to ring. At the same time, all of his senses were attuned to the simple cell phone, waiting for the sound of the call.
Even though the cell phone on the table wasn't his and he'd only received a call on it once before, Aringarosa was already familiar with the ringtone. Hearing the mundane sound of his regular phone was a jarring sensation.
He rose, crossed himself, and answered it. He had to cross himself again when he heard the news.
"Dead? Right in front of Opus Dei? Was he a member? ...so there is no way of knowing yet. Have the police been contacted? ...Good. Tell them to move the body quickly and not to involve the media. Have someone else identify it. I'd oversee myself, but I'm busy tonight. Thank you, Sister."
If Aringarosa hadn't known it to be a mortal sin, he would've begun to contemplate suicide. The night couldn't move much further downhill. On top of these orders from the Vatican and the call he was waiting for, there was a dead man outside of Opus Dei. Apparently pushed from one of the upper levels.
He was just kneeling down to pray when there was a strange sound on the door. It was just a faint but growing vibration at first, until it graduated into an urgent knock. Every instinct told him that it was not a saint, come to earth to help him, but the Bishop couldn't stop himself from opening the door.
"Silas! You're shaking!"
"Mea culpa, Father," Silas whispered as soon as the door closed, falling to his knees. "Mea culpa."
"How have you sinned, my son?"
Silas looked up at him with beseeching eyes. In a moment of clarity he could see into them. He saw white hands balled onto black robes, a sturdy body soaring through the air like a feather, heard the crash of glass and the sickening crunch of bones on concrete, and the sound of a phone ringing when it shouldn't.
When he thought of the message he was to receive that night, he realized that nothing that had happened was out of place. It was simply all the threads coming together.
"Victor is the one who died, isn't he?"
Silas gave the faintest of nods.
"I killed him. Maybe I'm beyond saving, Father"
"Never say that."
At that moment, the cell phone rang. In two swift strides Aringarosa reached it and answered. For upwards of a minute he listened to the French voice on the other side and nodded, agreeing when it was required of him. Then there was the sound of the phone line going dead, as chilling as a flat-line on a heart rate monitor. Aringarosa hung up and sat down heavily on his couch, feeling a bone deep weariness. Silas remained kneeling near the door, his eyes glazed with something like terror.
"Rise, my son."
He did so, limping heavily on his right foot.
"Did you hurt yourself?"
"I found a way to do God's work."
Aringarosa sucked in his breath; the acrid scent of blood filled his nose. He realized what his son had been doing without him there to guide him. There was no doubt that Victor was not at fault for this; but Aringarosa couldn't help blaming himself.
"If there was a way other than this, would you do it?"
"...yes." The pain in his voice hurt worse than the thoughts of the injuries on his white body.
"I need your help, Silas. I have found you a mission that will cleanse you in God's eyes. You will become one of his strongest soldiers. And then, God willing, you won't need to do this anymore."
"I can't leave now, Father. I have murdered a man. A good man. My only friend."
"Was anyone there when it happened?"
"No."
"Then you can vanish again. Very few people know you here." No one will notice you are gone. It hung in the air, unspoken.
"I am still a ghost." Silas whispered in a voice full of defeat.
"Cover yourself well," Aringarosa continued, moving to a trunk nearby. With a hesitating hand he removed the gun that Silas had put to his own head years ago in Spain. "And take this. I need you to meet someone at a small restaurant down the street."
"And once I am there?"
"Find a man in the back corner booth. He will give you instructions from someone called the Teacher. Find a pay phone and call me here when you are done, and we will go from there."
"Thank you." Silas said, taking the gun, his red eyes filled with nothing but pure, simple gratitude.
Aringarosa took him through the women's dormitories and out into the side street. He didn't need to point him on his way. Silas knew where he was going; it was the same restaurant that he and Victor had gone to every week to share the small indulgence of a little syrup. It was fitting; his old life was ending and his new one was beginning in the same place. He was still filled with nothing but gratitude and love. He didn't realize that Aringarosa had already seen the end of this new life. He had already killed him, as surely as Victor lay dead on the street not far away.
Silas left without a word of good-bye, disappearing into the shadows. Even Aringarosa had to look twice to assure himself that he had really been by. Later that night he went into the computers and deleted all the evidence that Silas had ever been a member of Opus Dei; he even put the page of a coloring book that had been sent to them with a child's words at the top- I'm sorry -in his fire. The only thing that remained to say that the ghost had actually lived was the thin trail of blood left in his wake.
A/N-- Well, I hope you enjoyed the ending! I'll have the epilogue up soon!