November 18th and Freedom (Patrick, Erin, Saul)

[hauntedsongs.livejournal.com]

It had taken a long time for Patrick’s arms to heal and they still weren't completely better, but while he had convalesced, he had been fed with hearty and filling food and there had been no more torture and deprivation. He had to have a bedside service every day, but pretending to pray would never be as bad as the things he had suffered in the work room or during his forced fast. He had regained the weight he had lost while he had been purified and, though he couldn’t believe it, he actually looked better now than when he had come to this terrible place, lost to his alcoholism and slobbering drunk. He didn’t feel better, and he was scared shitless, but he looked healthier.

And now he was about to be let go. He couldn’t quite feel relief. The idea of freedom now seemed so unattainable. Would he ever truly be free again? Now that he was sober and he wasn’t enduring constant physical anguish, he was able to focus on the fact that his entire family was dead, which also didn’t help matters. He was being released, but to what? And how could he ever manage to continue living?

He was given a change of clothes, which he thought were hideous, but they were meant to be modest and conventional. He was given enough money for a train ticket, something he didn’t understand, as he still believed he was in Dublin, and then after a final mass he was taken out of the complex he had just lost the last weeks of his life to, and he was set free on the streets of Vatican City a changed man.

Patrick didn’t know he was being followed. By more than one person.

The moment he emerged into the city, he knew he wasn’t in Dublin. He knew his hometown backwards and forwards and there was nothing here he recognised. The signs were in a language he didn’t know, and suddenly he realised he was way worse off than he had thought and the train money now made sense. Where ever he happened to be, he was supposed to hop a train and head back to his home in Dublin. And while going home had seemed like an inviting prospect just a few moments ago, now the long train ride back to an empty and cold house seemed like too much.

All of this, the surrealism of his ordeal now that he was back in the real world, and realising that he had no one to return to...it was all too much. And, as if he hadn’t just spent the last three weeks being tortured for his alcoholism, he turned to search for an establishment he knew would exist no matter where he was. More than anything, Patrick just wanted a drink and he could find it in a bar. Where didn’t matter. He couldn’t handle feeling like this. He wanted to numb himself to everything.

On a street thronged with people, Patrick headed for what looked like a bar, and as he passed a dark passageway, he was grabbed and pulled into it, a black bag shoved over his head before he could even scream. He did struggle however, even though it hurt so much his muffled screams were from the pain as much as from fear. Had the Templar changed their minds? He was not going back there, no matter what!

“So god damn predictable,” Erin snapped, holding onto Patrick easily even as he flailed against her. He wasn’t exactly an equal match for a demon in amazing shape. “They’re following you,” she told him, resisting the urge to give him a shake. Instead she drained his soul, passing him limply off to Saul beside her.

She slipped around the corner of the alley and found the people she knew were following. It was easy to pick them out and then easy to take them down, ripping the life force from them so they hit the ground.

Slipping back into the darkness she felt the three souls coursing through her veins like the finest drug in the world. She shivered in delight and then took Patrick again. “Alright,” she told him, freeing her wings and letting the darkness circle around her. “I’ll take him and meet you back there.”

Saul grinned and as Erin took off into the sky, he stepped out of the alley way, sure he wouldn’t be bothered for the technical kidnapping they had just committed because no one would have noticed at all. Having a demon around was so goddamned handy.

By the time Saul returned to the branch of Dead Meat’s headquarters which was loyal to Saul (conveniently located in an old mining shaft outside of Vatican City) Patrick was just starting to wake up and Saul found him being watched over by Erin. “Awesome work,” he informed Erin, though she would know she had done well. Then Saul stepped forward and he ripped the black bag off of Patrick’s face and the poor, pale man sat there, blinking at him in confusion and terror.
Patrick had just suffered more fear and horror than he had ever experienced in his life, and now he had been kidnapped again and instead of reacting in terror, he was angry even despite the fact that he felt dizzy and horrible. He had felt worse recently.

“What the- You kidnapped me! I’ve been Patrick-napped!” Patrick glared at the woman and the man in front of him, hiding the fact that deep down he felt like he might vomit from fear. I couldn’t take any more torture. He simply could not.

Saul raised his eyebrows at the demon and then he shook his head. “We didn’t kidnap you.”
“You grabbed me off the street and shoved a bag over my head!” Patrick protested and he tried to stand from the cot he had been sitting on, but he fell back down, too dizzy to be completely upright.

“Well...yes...but in a good way,” Saul said with a shrug.

“WHAT?!” Patrick squealed, shocked. How could you get kidnapped in a good way? He had been through Hell and now he was being put through more horror and he didn’t think he could take it.
“You were being followed by the people who have been torturing you for the past three weeks. They’re called the Templar by the way in case you didn’t know. You were about to go right back into a bar and word has it that was what you were being punished for.”

Patrick’s head was spinning and he needed that drink now more than ever. “How-?”

“It’s not important how we know this,” Saul said before he had even had a chance to ask the entire question. He wasn’t going to give away Dead Meat’s secrets until he knew whether or not Patrick had been convinced that the Templar were in the right or not. Some people came out of that place irrevocably ruined. So much so that they honestly believed in the messages the Templar preached so hard. “The point is that you were being followed and the second they saw you set foot in a bar again, you would have been dead.”

Patrick’s eyes widened and he looked terrified. “D...dead?” He had been promised he would be able to go home, hadn’t he? How did dying factor into that. Oh God, unless ‘home’ meant Heaven!

“A repeat offender is considered a heretic not worth saving,” Saul explained, a dark look on his face. Perhaps he was remembering when the Templar had attempted to save him back when he was sixteen. “Because that’s what they think they were doing. Saving you.”

“W...what would they have done?”

“They would have burned you at the stake and watched with pleasure as you screamed,” Erin told him, becoming frustrated at this. She didn’t do well with the talking thing. She was much more useful as the brute strength behind things. Her arms were crossed as she watched the man they’d saved, her shoulder against the cold stone wall. “Do you understand?” she asked him. “There are religious freaks who think they’re making the world a better place. And they’ll do that by lighting you on fire if they think you’re a sinner. Got it? They’ll burn you up to try and ‘save your soul’.” The air quotes were firm and obvious.

Patrick stared at Erin in obvious horror, his mouth opened slightly as she very bluntly stated what the Templar would do to him if he drank again. The other stuff he had pretty much worked out on his own. “I...I get it.” Then he turned to the man who was slightly less terrifying and he asked, “so, you’re not going to turn me over to them?” His heart was once again pounding against his chest and he felt rather like he had been here too many times to count.

“No,” Saul replied, and he was much more soothing in his tone than Erin had been. “We fight against them.”

Patrick didn’t know if it was a trick, but he found that he was unable to care. It didn’t seem like he was in immediate danger right now and that was all he could focus on. So he sighed in relief and he leaned back against the stone wall that was behind him, letting a lot of the tension out of his body. It ached all over and he didn't have any fight left in him. “Uhm...thanks for kidnapping me?” Not that the fear had been good for him, but at least he wasn’t being burned alive.

Saul chuckled and he gently rested a hand on Patrick’s shoulder, as he had heard what the poor man had been through and he didn’t want to cause the man more injury. He remembered what the strappado felt like. “You can stay with us as long as you like, and I can promise you will be treated hospitably. We don’t have much, but you won’t go hungry.” He knew that would be important for someone who had just suffered at the hands of the Templar to hear. “If you just want to go home, we can arrange that as well. I have to say though...the Templar obviously know where you live-”

“I’m not going back there,” Patrick replied. The decision had been made for him the second he knew the Templar would probably watch his every move. If he slipped and drank even once, he would be burned alive for it? He could see, now that he was sober, that he needed to face the pain of losing his family and drinking wasn’t the way. But he couldn’t live his life in constant fear and not slip and drink. And, despite everything, he had also learned during his ordeal with the Templar, that he did in fact not want to die. It didn’t matter where he went, as long as the Templar couldn’t find him. And then another thought occurred to him. “Where am I?”