Hallelujah: I'll Be Home for Christmas (Deacon)
The church is a welcome sight after so many weeks on the road gathering intel. With the soft snow falling around, if he squints a little he can almost see what the town might have looked like before the big one. With a blanket of white everywhere, sound is dampened and the world is quiet. His footsteps are softer than usual, tempered by the chilly quilt that muffles even the creaky sound of the rusted hinges on the church door opening.
Inside is dark but for an indistinct yellow glow coming from above. Around him the balconies are collapsed, creating a ramp on one side. Pews lie disorganized, and not for the first time, Deacon wonders what the place must have looked like before.
Something catches his eye before the altar; Desdemona. The auburn of her hair glints bronze in the light, falling as it does over her shoulders. She's kneeling, bent prostrate at the altar, in front of the crucifix that someone has propped back up so that it towers over anyone who stands before it. She tilts her face up, gleaming white in the diffuse lantern light that filters through the shattered roof, and he thinks he hears a soft amen.
He feels uncomfortable; he's spied so many people in such compromising positions, but something about this is so intensely intimate that he takes an involuntary step back, stumbling into the rubble that almost blocks the entrance to the crypt. A beam falls from above, continuing its decades-long slide towards the ground to clatter to the pile of debris and release a cloud of dust, much to Deacon's dismay.
Desdemona turns suddenly, her pistol drawn, and for a moment he thinks she's going to fire on him just for being there. She relaxes just as suddenly, her posture going lax, and greets him, casually.
"Deacon."
"Des, I'm sorry...I didn't mean to interrupt."
She shivers as if uncomfortable and Deacon feels a fresh, unfamiliar pang of guilt at knowing he caused it. A wave of irritation follows it as he realizes she was doing whatever it was in the middle of the church and of course someone interrupted her and he's annoyed at feeling bad about it.
"I was just...celebrating." Desdemona says the last word as if it means lament, as if it means mourn. Her posture shifts imperceptibly, and he realizes that what he walked in on wasn't worship; it was grief.
"Sam?" He asks, but some part of him knows the answer before she responds. Not for the first time tonight, he thinks of Barbara, of the way her dark hair hung around her shoulders, of the curls that he would wrap around his fist when they -
"Our baby," Des says, as he knew she would. "The one that didn't -"
"We don't have to -"
"It's alright," she says with half a smile. "We've both suffered...losses."
He tries to picture Desdemona at twenty-two, pregnant with a full belly, barefoot and farming tatos. In his mind she wears a green housedress with no belt, small flowers dotting the fabric. A small child, a girl with curly hair runs around her feet, playing with a battered rocketship.
Deacon thinks again of Barbara, of the way she'd put her small, calloused feet in his lap at the end of the day, of the way her dark eyes would become huge in her face, begging him to rub them, all without speaking. Of the way he'd do it without asking, because he loved her and the way she'd arch her back when he hit the right spot. The sound she'd make, the high-pitched one between a moan and keening, that let him know she was finally, at long last, relaxed.
Yes - they've both known loss.
He steps back from Des and pulls out his cigarettes. Lights one, takes a puff, and offers it to his boss. She shakes her head, a mute refusal.
"Not in God's house." He can't tell if her smile is ironic or not.
"Do you really believe in that?"
A beatific look darts into her eyes. "Does it matter?"
No, Deacon thinks as he watches the smoke drift through the gaping hole in the roof and disappear. No, it doesn't.