Author's Note: Sorry for the delayed update, but I have a nice, long chapter to make up for my tardiness. And, of course, we finally get to meet Priest's son. But the real question is, will Priest get to meet him? Hmm, I won't give any secrets away just yet! ^_^

Before we begin, I would like to thank all my awesome readers and reviewers, saichick, Aureleis, FireChildSlytherin5, MssHeart of Swords01, Lystan, ShipsThatFly, Faith-Catherine and Mygara-chan. Also, I'd like to thank all the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. I do hope you enjoy this installment!

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part XXVIII Penance

"This is the place," Seth said. "This is the place as I remember it." He was straddling the seat of his motorcycle, one hand pointing to the rectangular cement buildings that stood open to the desert wind, shielded only by a low tin wall that encircled the compound like a cow pasture. "It looks the same," he concluded, "although they might've added another dormitory."

Priestess squinted in the sharp morning light and counted five buildings. Only one, a round structure no bigger than a hovel, had a cross above its door. "Your memory is admirable," she told Seth.

Priest said nothing.

They had parked their bikes by an iron gate outside the compound, somewhere near the swinging tin sign that read The Sisters of Charity—Orphanage. Priestess was amused by the bluntness of the sign. It left very little to the imagination. With a curious frown, she settled herself back onto her motorcycle, soreness radiating from her tired thigh muscles.

"It looks like a farm," she said doubtfully. Sand blew across the yard of the orphanage, insinuating itself into the crevices of the rustic buildings. The place had a plain functionality to it. It served a purpose and nothing more. There was no art to its construction, no pleasing facades or ornamentations. It had sharp corners and flat roofs and unfinished, wooden doors that probably creaked on their un-oiled hinges. Priestess glanced at Priest and wondered what he was thinking. Did it bother him to know that his son was being raised here?

Her companion's expression was passive, his skin flushed from the early heat, which even in the morning hours was suffocating. Priest raised his hand and wiped the dust from his nose. And then he coughed. Once.

"Well," Seth grumbled, dropping back onto his bike, his gloved hands slapping over his knees.

Priestess smiled grimly. She sympathized with his frustration. This journey, which had taken them a day and a night, was a favor to Priest. Neither she nor Seth had any business with the child. And if she was being honest with herself, Priestess knew that she wasn't pleased at the prospect of seeing the boy. It had been easier to face Lucy, Shannon's daughter. The girl was a part of Priest's life that she had already acknowledged and settled in her heart. She wasn't a child born from sin, like this boy, a living reminder of his mother's memory, the woman he had doomed for the moment of his conception.

Poor boy.

Priestess chewed on her lower lip, tasting a few grains of gritty sand. It wasn't fair, she decided, that the Church had corrupted that ancient love, had violated the bond between mother and child. Had Rebecca known, the moment she felt those first searing labor pains, that her life was over? Had she realized that in giving life to the world she would also herald her own death? The paradox was ugly. It upset Priestess in a strange way, made her feel uncomfortable in her skin, the very body that the Church had used as a weapon. Sometimes, when she was feeling particularly blasphemous, she doubted the existence of her soul, which had long ago been sacrificed to serve the needs of others. It was not what God would have wanted, Priestess was convinced, He who had given her both her body and soul. He who had given Rebecca and Priest their son, only to have the child stolen away.

She looked at the low buildings, the cramped dormitories and round chapel and the one-room schoolhouse. This boy could have had a mother.

Priestess blinked and remembered her own lost home out on the Wastelands, the hovel with the wooden porch and her rag doll and Sage.

"Me too," she whispered, thinking of her own mother, the woman who still dreamed of rain in the desert and named her children for things that were lost.

Priestess glanced at Priest. She saw his hesitance for what it was, a final deferral, a cowardice born from his unrelenting shame. She reached across and touched her fingers to his sleeve. "Are you going?" she asked.

Priest dropped his head. He was staring at the dusty tracks his motorcycle's front tire had made in the dirt road. The tin sign slapped against its pole in a poor imitation of a bell. In the distance, Priestess thought she could hear children shouting.

"I don't think the sisters would refuse to admit you," Seth said. He had pulled his hood up over his head to avoid the spray of dust stirred by the wind. The sand hissed, stinging Priestess's cheeks. She wondered, vaguely, what hail felt like.

"You are a member of the clergy," Seth added.

"Gone rogue, you mean," Priest muttered without a hint of amusement. He was shifting the weight of his bike, moving the machine back and forth as though it were an impatient horse. "Do you think the boy is safe?" he grated.

"It's been ten years since I handed him over," Seth replied.

"A long time," Priestess said.

"You've never seen him." Seth rubbed his fingers over his bike's handlebars.

Priest cleared his throat. "It isn't my place to interfere," he said gruffly. "I only wanted to make sure he was protected after Marcus took Lucy. The boy doesn't need to see me. It would be better…it would be unfair to him if I…"

Priestess was troubled by his half-hearted excuses, which seemed to come from a deeper place of darkness within him. "You cannot forgive yourself," she noted.

The clouds of dust and sand settled around them. Priest's head snapped up. He looked betrayed, the quiet ache in his eyes overwhelmed by fire.

Priestess, however, was not daunted. "How horrible," she said, "to carry your guilt within you for so long."

His jaw tightened. He shook his head once in denial, the light from the rising sun glancing off his face. "You don't have any right," he warned.

Priestess didn't listen. "I'm going to check on the boy," she insisted, swinging her leg off her bike and pushing out the kickstand with the scuffed heel of her boot. "Someone has to."

Seth let out a low whistle.

Priest shifted on his motorcycle, his discomfort evident.

Good, Priestess thought, let him squirm a little.

"What are you going to tell him?" he asked, rising panic constricting his voice.

Priestess thought about it for a minute. She plucked the gloves off of her hands and flexed her aching fingers. A blister on her thumb had begun to bleed. The finger missing a nail throbbed with a vengeance, like a viper bite.

"I might not tell him anything," she said, conceding her own lack of bravery, "but I think I owe it-"

"I never said you owed me anything," Priest interrupted.

"To Rebecca," Priestess finished. She unfastened the gate that led into the compound and slipped inside. It closed behind her with a definitive rattle and for an instant, she was frozen.

Why was she doing this?

Because you love him, reason told her. And you want her to forgive you for it.

Priestess tried to shrug off her jealousy. This was an act of unconditional love. This was her gift to Priest. She didn't look over her shoulder as she moved down the wide path to the main building. The road was rutted with tire marks, the terrain rough. An uneasy wind whipped over the plains and she was forced to pull up her hood. The sand could be blinding out here, if one wasn't careful. But in truth, Priestess wasn't sure how much she wanted to see.

A boy. A child. The evidence of a guilty sin. The despised truth.

But she couldn't hate the child for it, could she?

Priestess wasn't sure.

A set of double doors guarded the entrance to the main building. Priestess found a chord hanging nearby and pulled on it once, a bell pealing from somewhere inside the orphanage. She had to wait too long on the patio for an answer, fighting the urge to return back to the gate in an admission of her own cowardice. The minutes dragged by and she pulled the chord once more, the rough rope twisting against her palm. It was another moment before someone came to the door.

"Hello?" A tentative crack appeared in the seam of the doors. Priestess thought she saw a tuft of mousey brown hair, followed by the grey veil of a habit.

She stayed where she was on the patio and tried to put a smile on her face. "Is this the Orphanage of the Sisters of Charity?"

It seemed like a foolish question, given the clearly marked sign on the gate out front.

A head appeared from behind the door, a young sister who had dove-grey eyes and a thin nose. She wore her habit with a high collar buttoned up to her chin. "Yes," she said in a breathy voice. A pause, then, "Can I help you?"

Priestess stepped out of the sunlight and into the shadow.

The sister's eyes widened when she saw the cross on her forehead. The door was nearly jerked closed. "What are you-?"

"Your Mother Superior," Priestess said patiently, "may I see her?"

The sister hesitated for what seemed to be a painfully long period of time. Priestess was irked by her indecision, but she tried to remain passive. She knew that the Church had most likely put out several bulletins warning of rogue Priests. Stiff penalties, including excommunication, were visited upon anyone who harbored God's so-called enemies.

As the minutes passed, Priestess felt her hope begin to drip away. She was disappointed in herself and in Priest, who should be standing there beside her. Lingering on the threshold, she was ready to admit defeat when the sister finally opened the door.

"Please," she said, fingering the cross by her throat. "Come in and wait in the vestibule."

Priestess raised a brow in surprise, but she complied at once, exchanging the dry air of the desert for the relative coolness of a long, wide hall. The vestibule was little more than a square box of space by the door, flanked by two niches where statues of patron saints had been placed. Priestess was pleased to see that these statues were still painted and made of plaster, unlike the iron sculptures that haunted the churches in the cities. Bowls of fake flowers had even been set at the base of each wooden pedestal and she enjoyed the unlikely splash of color amidst the drab grey and tan.

The sister nodded obligingly, her smile nervous as she moved down the hall. "Just one minute," she promised and then was gone through a door on the left-hand side of the corridor.

Priestess sighed and prepared herself for more waiting. She took a little time to say a prayer in front of both the statues, her meditation only disturbed when a door opened down the corridor.

The woman who came into the hall was short, a diminutive figure who had long, ropey limbs and wore a plain grey habit that was neat as a pin despite a copious amount of darning around the cuffs and the hem. She had a wide mouth and pretty blue eyes and her skin was burnt red from the sun. She smiled when she saw Priestess and nodded as though she had just run into an old friend.

"I'd be lying if I said I never expected one of your Order to show up here someday," she said, her clipped voice betraying a repressed Wasteland's accent.

Priestess's head snapped back. She couldn't hide her surprise. "I'm sorry,' she muttered, feeling thoroughly out of her element amongst the sand-strewn corridors and sunlit rooms that smelled of soap and children.

The woman held her hand out to Priestess and gave her fingers a firm shake, her palms lined with calluses. "I'm Sister Elizabeth. It's a pleasure to have you join us, Priestess."

Priestess blinked at her hostess. "Thank you," she said, remembering her manners, the only lesson of her mother's she still retained. "I was looking for your Mother Superior. Is she-?"

"Passed on last March," Sister Elizabeth said. "The clergy hasn't had much to do with our order since they cut-off the Wasteland parishes a few years ago. They never bothered to appoint a replacement. That still doesn't stop them from shipping train cars full of needy children out here every other month, though. I suppose they remember us enough unload their troubles on our doorstep."

"That sounds about right," Priestess replied. She felt like an unwelcome figure of authority, a reminder of the polluted cities that seemed like a bad dream out on the desolate stretches of the Wastelands. The Church's disdain for the outposts was no secret and she sympathized with Sister Elizabeth's predicament. The clergy never solved problems when they could help it, just shifted the blame to someone else.

Sister Elizabeth took one step forward, her heavy boots scraping against the sandy floor. She clapped her hand lightly on Priestess's shoulder. "I hope you don't think I'm too forward," she said, "but I know why you're here."

Priestess couldn't bite back her grimace in time. She pretended to look into one of the rooms off to her right. It was a washroom, complete with shallow basins and little squares of cloth hanging near the sinks. She counted twenty washstands in all, although taking in the number of towels, she realized that the children probably stood two to a sink.

Memories of dormitories and long corridors and narrow beds lined up against windowless walls came back to her as she studied the washroom. Priestess was no stranger to institutional life, where regularity and routine were the order of the day and the monotony could be maddening. The resourceful adapted, although Priestess never felt she had. She still missed her home on the Wastelands, that little hovel that was no more than a dream now, a childhood comfort softened and distorted by nostalgia. She stood very still for a moment and considered running for the door.

But Sister Elizabeth was already escorting her down the hall, her hand a definite pressure on her back.

"You're here about the boy, aren't you?" she asked.

To her relief, Priestess was ripped from her reverie. She gladly focused her attention on Sister Elizabeth, who had not dropped her smile once since the start of their conversation.

"Yes," she said, somewhat reluctant to admit the truth so easily. There was something about Sister Elizabeth's keen gaze that could either be heartening…or threatening. Priestess hadn't decided how she felt about the woman yet. For now, her opinion would have to be reserved.

There seemed little sense in skirting her true purpose, though, and Priestess set her jaw, ready to plunge into battle. "You seem to have some knowledge of the child's background," she said, throwing some weight behind her words.

Sister Elizabeth did not seem daunted, but she did lower her voice. "We know about his mother, you mean," she said. They were at the end of the corridor now and she took a sharp left, bringing Priestess through a dining hall that boasted no less than five long tables surrounded by rough-hewn benches. A door was propped open at the end of the room and dusty light fell into the darkened interior. In the yard beyond, Priestess thought she could see two girls jumping rope.

"I had been given to believe that his parentage was a secret," she muttered.

Sister Elizabeth stopped halfway down the aisle in the middle of the dining room and leaned against one of the tables. "Apparently not," she said, "for here you are."

There was no malice in her tone, no goading challenge or rebuke. Sister Elizabeth folded her hands across her middle, the hem of her skirt swaying slightly in the breeze that came in through the back door. "He was brought to us by a Priest," she said. "Most of the children we get here are sent from the refugee centers in the cities. Our Mother Superior, God rest her soul, was a shrewd woman. But you don't have to be particularly shrewd to put two and two together. She made inquiries about the baby. The Monsignors were reticent, but some members of the lower clergy knew enough of the gossip. It's a shame what they did to Peter's mother. We never told him that, of course. Only that she was brave. And that she loved him."

Sister Elizabeth's voice echoed in the cavernous dining hall, up to the rafters. Listening to her, Priestess tightened her hands into fists, reminded of all those terrible things she had hoped would soon be forgotten.

Who am I doing this for? she asked herself. Is this for Priest? Or is it for her?

"Peter," she replied, testing the name on her uncertain tongue.

"That's what we named him," Sister Elizabeth said.

Priestess stared at the floorboards, the wide wooden planks etched with sand. "His mother was Rebecca," she said.

Sister Elizabeth took a step forward, her expression sympathetic, the softness in her face heightened by the muted light and the motes of dust that obscured the air between them. "You knew her?" she asked.

"Yes."

"And did she love him?"

"I don't know," Priestess replied. She paused, remembering not what she knew of Rebecca, but what she hoped was true. "Yes," she amended. "She had to have loved him."

Sister Elizabeth seemed satisfied. "Did you come here because of her?"

"No." Priestess looked over her shoulder back out into the corridor. She felt awfully lonely then, facing a challenge that wasn't really hers. "I came for his father."

"Oh." For the first time, Sister Elizabeth seemed caught off guard. "And the father," she questioned, "he is-"

"He wants to make sure that his son is safe," Priestess said. She was anxious and she leaned forward on the balls of her feet.

Sister Elizabeth picked up on the subtle signal. "Of course," she said. "Why don't you see for yourself?"

Priestess was about to protest, but she stopped herself. There had been a hint of the surreal about this interview, as if she were observing her conversation with Sister Elizabeth from afar, detached from the blunt edges of reality. Seeing the boy, she knew, would give life to Priest's sin. She might not be able to forgive him if she looked at Peter and saw an echo of Priest within him. Priestess was not so deluded as to believe that her old jealousies had been conquered at last. And she was envious of Rebecca in a strange way, envious of the woman who had claimed a part of Priest's past as her own, who had loved him…and been loved in return.

The boy was evidence of that.

Sister Elizabeth turned and moved towards the open door in the rear of the dining room. Priestess shuffled her feet, her boots impossibly heavy. She wanted to delay this moment. She wanted to give in to her own peculiar cowardice, which had frozen her in her tracks.

"How is he?" she asked lamely, recalling Sister Elizabeth back into the dining room.

The nun raised a brow, the skin on her forehead creasing with slight skepticism. "Pardon?"

"The boy," Priestess muttered in a coarse undertone. "I only need to know if he is well."

"Oh, he is." Sister Elizabeth nodded readily. "We think he may have been a few weeks premature when he was born…he was so tiny when they brought him to us! A very fussy baby. Kept me up many a night with colic, crying, Lord he would cry. I used to walk with him up and down the halls, trying not to disturb the other children. He'd settle, eventually. I couldn't help but feel that he was missing his mother."

Priestess thought of Rebecca lying cold and unlamented in her grave, her arms outstretched, begging for her child. Oh God.

"He's grown up nice and strong, though," Sister Elizabeth continued. "Very affable and obedient, although I suppose that's not a surprise, considering who his parents were."

"No," Priestess said vaguely. She realized then that there were very few pleasant things she could remember about Rebecca. She remembered her breaking Seth's jaw. She remembered her howling at the novices when they fell asleep during chapel. She remembered her dragging a few familiars out into the sunlight, mere children, and killing them all…

What if Peter wanted to know about his mother?

I'll lie, she thought.

"They're having their recess in the yard now," Sister Elizabeth said. She had half-turned and was heading towards the door. "Lessons start again in half an hour, so you'll have a little time to talk to Peter if you want."

"I…" Priestess started to refuse, but the woman was already out the door. Numbly, she followed her into the unforgiving sunlight.

The yard wasn't particularly large, shielded from the light by an overhanging tin roof. The children had broken off into small groups to play. Jump rope was popular amongst the girls. Priestess watched their long braids swinging as they hopped over loops of coiled twine. Their clothes were clean, she noted and none of them looked overly thin.

The boys, who were fewer in number than the girls, were playing tag, even though the yard was almost too small to accommodate the game. They kicked up clouds of dust as they ran, their skinny legs pounding against the cracked soil as they tried dodging the unfortunate child who had been dubbed "it". Priestess observed the boys, saw them wheel and duck, heard them quarrel over what constituted as home base and what didn't. They frightened her, these wild, gangly children. She saw in them the ashes of a ruined civilization, a world that had already been led to its deathbed and was succumbing to its own disease. Childhood was painful for its innocence. It highlighted the miseries of the human race, the last, hollow gasps of decaying life that could only herald the end. For the first time, Priestess considered the concept of extinction. They were not very different from vampires, after all, packed away on their own rotting reservations, hungry for survival and the right to exist. Priestess was heartbroken when she looked at the children. She had such doubts.

Sister Elizabeth put a gentle hand on her wrist, tugging her hand until Priestess was stirred from her apathy. "He's over there," she said, pointing to a tall boy who had broken off from the group and was playing catch with a younger child. "Peter never wants anyone to feel left out," she explained. "He makes sure everyone is included."

"Oh," Priestess said. She forced herself to look at the boy. He was unremarkable in most ways. He was a little bit leaner than the others, although both his mother and father had been tall and trim. And the hair. He would have been immediately recognizable if she had seen his hair first. The sisters kept it short in a sensible crew-cut, but even at a distance she could spot the mop of red. Peter looked like his mother, she realized. Priestess's stomach soured. She did not want to come face to face with Rebecca again. She didn't want to…

"Peter!" Sister Elizabeth put her hand to her mouth and called out, her voice ringing with practiced authority over the yard. "Peter!"

The boy quickly handed the ball back to his playmate and turned, jogging over to the women. "Sorry, Sister," he panted.

Priestess had no idea what he was apologizing for.

Sister Elizabeth brushed a little dust off Peter's sleeve. Automatically, the boy tucked his shirttail into his pants. "You have a visitor, Peter," she said.

Both of the boy's tawny eyebrows shot up. He had freckles on his forehead, Priestess noticed. Just like his father. "Yes, Sister," he said, although the concept of a visitor was clearly foreign to him.

"This woman has come to speak with you for a little while. I don't have to remind you be polite," Sister Elizabeth said. She nodded once at Priestess. "Good luck."

Priestess was more than annoyed when the Sister left them and went back in through the dining room door. The boy was looking up at her, his curiosity tainted with well-placed fear. Priestess was at a complete loss. She stood a few paces apart from Peter and stared at him, saw too much of Priest in his face, in his eyes especially…

"I…" she stammered, looking about wildly. There were a couple of wooden benches pushed underneath the roof. The shade looked inviting, a reprieve from the constant heat of the morning sun. She ran her hand over her neck and felt the sweat on her skin. "Why don't we sit down for a couple of minutes?" she offered.

The boy was obedient, as Sister Elizabeth had said. He followed Priestess over to a bench wordlessly and sat on the farthest edge away from her, picking at the loose splinters with his dirty fingers. After a while, he noticed Priestess's eyes on him and quickly wiped his hands on his pants.

"Sorry," he muttered again.

Priestess looked away from the boy. In the back of her mind, she wondered what Rebecca would have done with him. Could she have possibly been a good mother?

"Do you know who I am?" she asked, realizing she had no idea just what her conversation with the child should entail. He looked healthy enough, seemed like a good boy, wasn't that enough to tell Priest? Or would he want to know more?

Her heart had begun to thunder in her ears. She hoped that Peter wouldn't pick up on her own sinister fear, which infected her senses and made feel more than a little off-balance. There was no heady rush of adrenalin to accompany this terror, no drive of battle. She was sitting alone in a dusty yard with an orphaned boy, uncertain as to her purpose and lost to that same strange jealousy that had tainted her ever since she had learned that Rebecca had loved Priest. It all seemed so dreadfully unfair in a way, a mother taken from her child, a child deprived of his family. Priestess remembered her own departure from home at the tender age of ten and could not help but feel sympathetic towards Peter. And that sympathy, she knew, would be her salvation.

We have that in common, she thought. We share the same tragedy.

Peter stirred, the bench shifting beneath him. "You're a Priestess," he said, unconsciously touching his face, outlining the shape of her cross on his own forehead.

Priestess nodded. "That's right. I am."

"My mama was a Priestess."

Priestess swallowed. She was suddenly nauseous, sickened by a child's knowledge, which somehow superseded her own adult reasoning. Peter was frank and he obviously clung to what he knew of his mother, the one thing he had not been denied, a made-up memory of the woman who had paid for his life with her own.

And Rebecca deserved some justice, Priestess knew. She deserved her own reckoning, some revenge for the violation that the clergy had visited upon her. Priestess felt some of her anger and she quivered. Was there a chance, she considered, to partially right this wrong? No. No, there wasn't. She was powerless to heal a wound she had not inflicted, to make amends for a tragedy that was not her own. She was a bystander. She was an outsider who wanted to be a part of something that could never include her. This was Priest's task, his wound to heal, his tragedy to mend. And she was only the hapless messenger, the insignificant other who could not understand the full weight of this grief, even though she was sitting next to a boy who needed his mother.

Priestess sighed. She regretted her weakness, but didn't deny it. There was only so much she could do here. And for Priest and his sorrow, she could do nothing at all.

"Yes," she said, admitting the little she knew. "Your mother was a Priestess and your father is a Priest. I know them both. They are my…friends."

Peter scratched his nose, his movements vaguely reminiscent of Priest's own particular quirks. "But my mama is dead," he said, his voice dropping as he pronounced the last word.

Priestess almost wanted to embrace the child, to hold him against her breast because Rebecca couldn't. She satisfied herself with giving him a sad smile. "That was a long time ago," she said.

"Before I even came here," Peter said. He stopped picking at the splinters and let his hands hang between his knees. "Sister Elizabeth says that vamps probably got her, that's the way it usually happens. Most of the kids here don't have parents because of vamps."

Priestess said nothing. She couldn't bring herself to lie to him. Turning her guilty gaze away, she studied one of the posts supporting the roof, followed the uneven grain of the wood, the cracks and knots. The air was dry. Priestess saw a few of the children gathered around a pump off to the side of the yard, filling a metal cup with water. She touched her dry lips and tried to overlook her thirst. Peter started swinging his leg, scraping his heel against the dust. His foot made a narrow imprint in the dirt.

"I only know a little about my mama," he said, "but Sister Elizabeth never said anything about my dad. I reckon she doesn't know much, otherwise she would have told me. She said she'd never keep secrets from me if I wanted to hear them. Like…like I know my mama wasn't supposed to have me, but she did anyway. That means she loved me...but my dad, I guess the vamps got him too."

"No," Priestess said before she could stop herself.

Peter's head shot up. "How'd he die then?" he asked.

Priestess hesitated. She tugged at the sleeves of her coat, the cloth sticking to her sweaty skin. There was a definite danger here, she knew, a line that she was probably not meant to cross. But Rebecca's ghost had taken form in her mind, insisting, pleading for a final act of mercy, the mercy she had been denied when she stood before the Monsignors with blood still running down her legs and asked whether she had had a son or a daughter.

Unwilling tears stung Priestess's eyes. She looked at Peter, who had his father's eyes and his mother's hair. What did he deserve, this lost, lonely child? What did he need to hear from her?

Tell him. Please, please tell him.

There was no penance for this sin, Priestess knew, only absolution.

"Your father is still alive," she told Peter. "He sent me to see you because he wanted to make sure that you were safe and happy here. And he wants you to know that he loves you very much…even though he hasn't been with you. Do you understand that, Peter?"

The boy nodded numbly, his mouth falling open. "My dad…"

"It's all right," Priestess muttered, sensing his emotion.

Peter suddenly seemed embarrassed. His shoulders stiffened. He rubbed his nose repeatedly with his hands and tugged on the frayed cuffs of his pants. After a while, he looked up at Priestess, his eyes watery with unshed tears, bearing all the stoicism of a soldier, the child of warriors who was obedient by nature, but still a little boy nonetheless.

"Sister Elizabeth never told me that," Peter said. His voice had lost its lazy, Wasteland drawl, his vowels and consonants hardened with what might have been misplaced fear…and pain.

Priestess's hand itched. She wanted desperately to embrace him. Despite her doctrine of detachment, she began to wonder what life had been like for Peter, one unfortunate child of many, constantly overlooked, his existence ordered by routine and necessity, not love. It damaged the soul, to be unwanted at such a young age. It corrupted youth and left lingering memories, invisible scars. Peter was already a veteran of many battles. Priestess knew that he must lay awake at night, trying to imagine his mother although he had never even seen her.

"I'm sorry," Priestess said. She suddenly felt guilty for hating Rebecca, for envying what was not the least bit enviable. Reaching over, she touched Peter's shoulder.

The boy coughed, but did not recoil under the weight of her hand. "My dad knows I'm here?" he asked thickly.

Priestess heard the insinuation in the question. It stung of abandonment, of a resentment that was already brewing.

"He didn't," she said, trying to undo the hurt before it dug underneath Peter's skin. "He wasn't sure where you were, but he wanted to find you."

"Oh." Peter did not seem appeased. "Well, why now?"

"It's very complicated."

"That means you don't want to tell me the truth."

Priestess sighed. She had no skill for this conversation. Peter was almost beyond her reach, but she wanted to soothe him as best she could. This journey, she realized, had not been for Priest's benefit. It hadn't even been for Rebecca.

Peter deserved better. He deserved a father who was not kept away by his guilt. He deserved a mother who was not buried at some unhallowed crossroads. And Priestess could sense his desperation, that clawing, groping determination to reclaim what had always been missing.

His father was near, that he must know, but the separation between them was never more defined. Priestess dropped her hand from the boy's wrist. She was wronging him, even now. This was a not a victory. This wasn't an end. Only a defeat.

"This seems like a nice place," she said to assuage her own conscience. "Do you like it here, Peter?"

The boy shrugged. "I like Sister Elizabeth. She's always been real good to me…not like a mama, but nice. And the other kids, we get along. I always have enough to eat and I get my own bed."

"You are fortunate," Priestess said, although she was doubtful.

Peter said nothing.

They sat in silence for a few wasted minutes. Peter continued to dig his foot into the dirt. He had made a little tunnel, burrowing down to the dark, deep earth that was still cool. The toe of his shoe was tan with dust. Like any boy, he had bruises on his knees and a small scrape by his left elbow. Priestess tried to think of something to say, but her purpose had been exhausted. Together, they watched the other children play until one of the sisters rang the school bell. The jump ropes stopped swinging and fell limp on the ground. The game of tag was finished, unresolved. The ball Peter had been playing with rolled against the yard and hit the fence with a quiet thud.

"Afternoon lessons," the boy muttered without much enthusiasm. He stood and brushed the splinters off the seat of his pants.

Priestess rose as well and stood before him. "It was very nice to meet you, Peter," she said and held out her hand.

The boy took it gingerly and shook it without much force. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, clearly remembering what Sister Elizabeth had told him about politeness. "I 'preciate your visit and all."

Priestess smiled and touched his hair, a final remembrance of his mother, the only memorial Rebecca would ever have. She turned to go.

A shadow was blocking the doorway to the dining room. Most of the children had already filed inside, but someone lingered on the threshold. Priestess took a step closer, expecting to see Sister Elizabeth or one of the other nuns. Instead, she saw Priest.

He was leaning against the doorjamb, waiting, picking at the dirt underneath his nails.

Priestess went weak in the knees. She realized, with a sudden jolt, that Peter was right behind her.

Priest glanced up at her, that quiet ache in his eyes never more evident. Over the years, Priestess had been naïve enough to think he was yearning for Shannon and Lucy alone. Now she knew better.

And inexplicably, she felt the most jubilant elation, a joy that was not hers, but came from the world. This was the amendment. This was the victory. This was setting right what she always knew was wrong.

Priestess stood still and listened to the ecstatic throb of her pounding heart. She could only think of one thing to say in that moment, only one thing.

"Thank God," she muttered.

Priest nodded in acknowledgement, his eyes, Peter's eyes, squinting in the sunlight. A silent exchange passed between them. Priestess knew what was needed of her. She moved through the doorway when Priest stepped aside, lingering just long enough to whisper, "His name is Peter."

Priest nodded again.

Peter was coming in from the yard, his long arms swinging by his sides and he almost ran into his father. The boy stopped short and looked up. Priest looked down at him.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked the child.

Peter didn't hesitate. He found his father's face and held it in his gaze, the wish of a lifetime repaid in an instant. "I sure hope so," he said.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! I'm hard at work on part twenty-nine and should have it posted as soon as possible. Until then, take care and be well!