Rosemary's baby

"Are you praying?" Benedict quietly asked, breaking the tense silence that had engulfed the room ever since Finley and Aidan had been dragged off to another cell.

Jeri's eyes popped open as she was momentarily distracted from her recitation. "Fuck else am I gonna do?" She bit out, and went on with her mumbled prayer, hearing Mara's voice in her mind and repeating after her aunt the Latin words she half-remembered from her childhood.

After a few moments Ben asked, "May I join you?"

She sighed and opened her eyes again. RJ could sense his unease from his tone. "Sure, why not," she said noncommittally, and momentarily allowed herself to enjoy the warmth of his presence next to her as he sat so close their knees were touching.

"Who are we praying to and what are we praying for?" Benedict asked before she could speak again.

RJ considered this. Who should I be commending this prayer to? Definitely not the big God, they're an asshole, she thought. "To the universe," she eventually decided, "to the universe not being a dick? Is that too much to ask, universe?" She wondered, directing this more to the air and to Ben.

One of Ben's brown eyes opened to regard her with curiosity before closing again. "Alright then," he agreed easily enough, and clasped his hands in front of him together. "To the universe, may we not enter saṃsāra prematurely, please and thank you. I'd very much like to get out of this alive and see my family again," he added quietly in a more broken tone.

RJ could personally live without most of her family, but she didn't feel like that was productive to add, so instead she added to the prayer, "And please, universe, for the love of cake, do not let my brother mouth off like the mouthy shit he normally is and get himself tortured and-or killed, that is a hassle. Thanks, and byesies. I mean, Amen." She added the motion of the cross to her prayer and laid back on her rear end and felt better without the pressure on her knees, as she suddenly contemplated her age. He seemed so young to her in that moment - Benedict did not have a sign he made or nonverbal signal, he just nodded and closed his eyes for a bit longer before opening them and sitting back just as she. It was strange to think about, because his soul was probably older than the world.

"That was definitely the oddest prayer, but I actually feel better," Ben noted as he stared at the shadowed wall and door across from them.

"I had a moment there, but I feel better too. Thanks," she said with an instinctive chuckle at the unexpected wave of calm that washed over her. If her brother were near, she would blame him, but she felt his absence acutely. There was a now-silent cavern in her being Finley had carved out perfectly for himself from the moment their mother had taught her how to hold him in her arms as an infant.

Thinking about her mother only made her want to cry, however, and she didn't want to in front of Benedict. Not that she thought he would judge her, but it didn't feel right. I have to be strong for him, she realized as she remembered he was only twenty. Just barely younger than her little brother. And great, now we're probably trauma-bonded for life, she thought a little sarcastically.

"So," Ben clapped his hands together suddenly, arresting her attention. "These people are crazy," he observed mildly. "H-how do we get out of here?"

"You think if I knew that, I'd be praying?" RJ scoffed. "I see the past more than I see the future, and I—sometimes, it's just a stew of possibilities. We might die. We might, maybe, just get out alive. But what I really want . . . You know what I really want?" Ben shook his head, even though her question was rhetorical. "I want to burn this motherfucker down," she declared and gave the door her middle finger.

"You said . . ." Ben trailed off, as if he were afraid to continue. She nudged him with her boot and he went on, encouraged, "Your mother. What happened to her?"

"Got chopped up by these bastards for some weird ritual, I don't fucking know, and I don't want to know," she summarized in short, bitter words that had to be nearly chewed on their way out of her mouth. Talking about her mother's death was, as she was discovering, a necessary pain. RJ had, at one point, been caught by her older brother dragging razors across her skin to feel anything besides the screams of the dead in her ears during the quiet moments. Eventually she'd found things worth living for - music, siblings, and friends among them. Things that were louder than the shrieks and siren calls, beckoning her with their pain. Back then, she'd been too young to understand fully what she was doing, this dance with death she'd always taken. She'd been too young to understand even what happened to her mother let alone what she was doing to herself; that had taken years to parse out, with therapy, alcohol, and privacy.

Still, even her little brother and Timothee had only recently learned the details. Tim had not known the source of her pain back then, only that it was present and affecting her. T is my guiding star, she thought, as she reflected on all the moments that seemed appropriate to reflect on with one's best friend, when one is facing death. Tim had been her shoulder, her rock, her foundation, her very home when she needed it. He had never asked for anything in return, only given and accepted what was offered in exchange. All she had to return was her music, which was as close to her soul as she felt she could ever get. Tim deserved more, but that's what he would get.

As for Finley. . . She had lied to him long enough. It was time he learned the truth and learned to live with it. To be better, for them both.

"I think I have a way out of this mess," she announced to Benedict, surprising them both.

"What is it?," Ben agreed.

"But," she qualified, "you have to trust me."

"I asked what it is, not—Okay, I trust you," he agreed after a moment where he seemed to get lost in the grammar of what she had asked, but she stared at him until he agreed and his agreement came easily enough. "What do you need me to do?" He finally asked after they both fell silent.

She closed her eyes, and focused. She could feel the words she needed to say building up with necessity, their energy pouring out of her like a fountain. "You need to remember," she told him. "The things that you'll remember - it isn't anything you've forgotten. Try to remember, Benedict. Finley will help you," she realized, now understanding her brother's role in the unfolding events, even if Finley didn't understand himself. "He's walked me down memory lane before," she put together, and smiled. "He'll help you remember, before it's too late."

"I don't understand, what am I trying to remember? And how will that help us?" Benedict's whine was one of frustration.

"It'll make sense. Don't let them take us without a fight though, these dick-bags deserve to be kicked in the balls as hard as possible for everything they've done," she told him confidently and patted him on the back. She let her ringed and tattooed hand linger over his shoulder for a moment longer than it should have, and felt awkward about it, but he didn't seem to notice or wasn't paying attention.

When their door unlocked, they took RJ kicking and screaming every second of the way. Benedict naturally followed suit but went limp at first to try and distract them while she aimed for everyone's balls. Olivia wasn't amongst them, it was just her goons, so RJ cursed at all of them in every language she could think of and kept on calling them 'dick-bags' until they finally managed to get a hold of her arms and legs.

She tried to bite them, but they managed to avoid her and got her in a hold where she couldn't.

They passed through a few dark halls and identical secure metal doors, until finally one screaming zoo of a room passed them by in a blur and they emerged in what was unmistakably the cult's chapel. Small but vaulted, stained-wood paneled with a central horned figure carved before a stone bier that could fit a person, and chains that descended from the ceiling that came out of a horror video game she'd used to love playing as a child.

Finley and Aidan were tied to the nines in every kind of rope they seemed to have available, and Olivia was standing behind the kneeling Aidan pointing a gun at his wounded head. He seemed dizzy for his part, and a bit wide-eyed. Fin met her gaze in a moment of grim solidarity from next to the altar. She didn't let him into her thoughts, because he seemed to be trying to project confidence and she wasn't totally buying it. Our lives are a legacy of blood and pain, she couldn't help but think, and hoped Fin didn't pick up on it.

They shoved her down to her knees and divested her of her clothing, cutting it off in places when she refused to comply with the way they wanted to move her. One of them knelt to untie her shoes and she kicked him in the forehead, and finally got held down and had them roughly torn off, pulling skin and hairs with it. Their rough hands on her tattooed and naked skin felt like violation as they forced her down on the altar by grabbing her legs and arms and tied her in place so she couldn't do anything but raise her head.

She tested her rough ropes and sighed against the strain that put grooves into her skin in rough patches of red. Above her, even as he was struggling in vain, Benedict was divested of his coat, his shirt, and eventually just left as he was in his pants while they roped the chains around his body and lifted him with a series of pulleys above RJ's tied and naked form. It was a scene out of a ritual human sacrifice, and from their positioning, RJ was immediately able to determine their intention. She would be bathed in his life's blood while it was still warm as he was cut open above her, as if her life weren't already a legacy of death and suffering.

The Pastor himself was before them - had stood to the side in his purple robes and watched as his hand-men did all the work. Once they were done, the goons went to go sit amongst the chapel as other churchgoers in the inner circle of their cult, all in purple robes, filed in slowly and filled up the small number of pews. Still, RJ estimated at least thirty people in the room.

"You fuckers like watching women get raped and draped in gore, huh? Is that your fucking kink? You sick fucks?!" She shot out into the silence of the room and struggled against her ropes. Finley choked back laughter.

"You will survive this, if you are strong," the man in the purple robes with the gold embroidery announced. He seemed like he was about to take off his robes, so she stalled him however she could - by insulting him as much as she possibly could.

"NOOOOOOO!" She screamed and then laughed, "Come up with something original, banality hurts my brain!"

He scowled at her with those black, hostile eyes, and it reminded her so much of her step-mother that she laughed all the harder. So much of their circumstances of late brought back unpleasant memories of childhood, and her instinctive reaction to recollecting her childhood was to make fun of it. It's the only way to live, she thought.

"You will be the holy mother of Ba'el Moloch," the man in the purple robes droned on, and RJ interrupted him again.

"Well aren't you a spicy linguini, you bad little pasta sauce! Shit, I'm hungry. This is what happens when you deny your sacrifices food - you get insults about pasta and shit. Give me a minute, I'll do better."

Aidan this time started laughing especially hard, and stopped once Olivia pressed the gun into the back of his head. "Sorry," he immediately apologized. "I was just thinking of Rosemary's Baby and what a fucking sham the whole Criterion collection is, and God, what a fucking terrible movie. I hate it so much, and I'm sorry this is your life now, Jeri—"

He was immediately decked in the face by Olivia by the butt of her pistol, and still kept laughing. RJ was suddenly fiercely fond of him and was determined to get him out of this alive somehow.

"You know, 'mother of evil' is a metal name for a band or solo act," Finley suddenly riffed, ignoring the fact that his boyfriend had just gotten decked with a gun for talking out of turn. Jeri was proud of him too then, and worried for him when he went on, "In the rock-n-roll industry it's a pretty marketable title."

Olivia motioned to one of her nearby goons, who came over and kicked Finley in the stomach. This was slightly cushioned by the sheer amount of rope he was tied in, but it didn't stop the breath from being knocked out of him.

RJ smiled and felt herself tearing up even as she said, "You guys are dicks, I hate you and I'll die hating you."

Finley grinned after catching his breath and knelt upright again a little straighter, and said, "And those were her last words, before she was horrifically raped and made to be the mother of evil—" his words were cut off by the sudden movements of Pastor Malcolm, the demon that paraded in human flesh that Ramiel had named Asmodeus. Pastor Mal's arm snaked out and clenched around Finley's neck, and even as he was being choked and the air could only escape his throat in gasps, Finley used what little air he had access to, to utter, "Ch-choke me harder, Daddy! Ha-a-a-arder! Yesss . . ."

RJ nearly died laughing on the spot even as Aidan looked worriedly over his boyfriend and said, "Jesus, Finley! Let him go, you massive gaping asshole!"

"HA HA HA! You're so fucked up, Fin!" RJ cried, as tears emerged from the corners of her eyes that were both happy and frightened. The emotion became overwhelming as she howled with laughter, and Asmodeus let out a snort of disgust and let Finley go, choosing to slap him so hard he fell into the ground instead.

Finley caught his breath as the Pastor criticized, "This sacrifice is no joking matter! Her womb is sacred, and she will usher in Ba'el Moloch!" Finley started to laugh breathlessly on the ground, gaping, even as RJ stopped laughing as she processed this remark.

"What? Ha!" She started to feel the laughter welling up inside of her like a geyser threatening to spill out. "Nothing about me is sacred! My body is a carnival of horrors! What holes do I even have left to defile? There is not an orifice un-pierced or un-plugged!"

"Self . . . Burn . . ." Finley summarized from the ground in-between deep, hoarse breaths as he shook in his own version of laughter.

Aidan shook his head and sighed. The room erupted into nervous chatter behind them as he said, "Way to be honest to the end, RJ."

"Whatever, that rum wore off ages ago, I'm running on fumes," she admitted with salt and venom and pulled against the ropes once more.

Ben from above suddenly chimed in, sounding a little off his rocker from all the blood rushing to his head, "Wait like a movie usher, or the singer? How will that help if you make her an usher? Or did you mean the singer was going to impregnate her? Did you talk to his agent, or—wait, how would that even work, I—" He was silenced by a threatening look from the Pastor, and the rest of the room was silenced when he turned his glare onto them.

Aidan sighed in sadness. "Christ on skates, even the Canadian kid is getting in good licks. All I've got left are recycled gay pirate jokes and eye-puns from earlier," he joked, and was silenced again by a slap from Olivia with her ringed hand. He spat out blood even as Finley looked over him, worriedly. "Sure, hit the wounded guy, productive use of energy," he complimented with the utmost amount of sarcasm his body was capable of. "Maybe then you can tear out my stitches and rub lemon juice in the wound. That'll help." Jeri was so fiercely proud of him for a moment that she wanted to cry.

RJ looked over to the Pastor and whistled to get his attention. "You sure your swimmers are up to the task?" She asked insultingly. "My womb's an inhospitable environment for demon sperm. Also, I hope you're prepared, but there's teeth. So, so many teeth. I meant it when I said a carnival of horrors!"

He frowned. "What is wrong with you people?!" Asmodeus complained.

RJ rolled her eyes toward Ben and locked eyes with the red-faced student even as he tried breathing through his suspension. "Well, ASS-MODEUS," she emphasized, as Finley choked back even more laughter, "Like you're one to judge, Mister Rapey Abductor Murderer Guy, but one of them is a glutton for punishment and the other two are morons," she explained to the cult leader casually as she stared at the deep indigo of his robe and suddenly hated that color with every fiber in her being.

Finley bit out, "Hey, fuck off, Aidan's not a moron. It's not his fault he chose psych as a major, his mom pressured him into it." For this, he was kicked over again.

"Yeah, you and I agreed, Finley's the dumb one!" Aidan reminded her.

"What, seriously?" Finley looked over to Aidan incredulously, even as they were both struck by the side of Olivia's gun and were spitting out blood and bleeding from several cuts on their cheeks and noses.

"You are all to be sacrificed," the creep in chief announced, "but one more word out of any of your mouths, and I'll kill you where you stand right now."

Silence engulfed the room, even as she locked eyes with her brother from the altar and saw he was shaking on the floor, trying not to laugh, just the same as she was. She bit her tongue, physically in pain but unable to deny the sheer, terrifying, sublime hilarity of the moment.

That was when Benedict rustled in his chains and said, sounding genuinely confused, "Don't you need us alive to sacrifice us? That would sort of defeat the purpose right? I'm just trying to understand—" Once more, a glare silenced him. "Okay," he finished quietly. RJ snorted back more laughter, still shaking.

"This is a really shitty final fight," Finley announced for no one's benefit. "I expected better from us," he admitted with utterly no shame.

Aidan consoled him by adding, "It's okay, I expected better out of you too."

"Gag them," the being Ramiel had named Asmodeus announced tiredly to Olivia, who instructed her goons to do so with some fabric from RJ's shirt that they simply cut into appropriately sized pieces.

"You are seriously insecure about your microscopic penis," Finley criticized the guy who gagged him, probably accurately since he could pick up on thoughts, and the man was subsequently rough with Finley and tied the gag tightly. Fin coughed.

"Hey, Tiny Dick, he needs to at least breathe if you want him to hear the evil speech and watch this fucked up ceremony," Aidan threw in, trying and definitely not succeeding to get them to ease up on his boyfriend. They tied his gag just as tightly, perhaps in spite of his protests.

"Your comfort is not our concern," Olivia reminded him.

"Aww," RJ made a falsely sad noise as she watched her brother try to chew his way through the gag and fail. "You should've taken the time to sharpen your teeth, man," she laughed at him, and he glared at her half-heartedly with tears in his eyes from his effort.

"Don't start," the pastor warned her in a low, threatening voice.

It had the opposite effect on her that the demon probably wanted; she walked hand in hand with fear her whole life. Death did not scare her, and neither did pain. Nothing scared her anymore. "If silence is what you wanted, you picked the wrong baby-mama!" She informed him enthusiastically. "You'll need another gag. Probably several because I will chew through them." She saw Aidan and Finley nodding through her periphery and shaking in laughter in spite of their inability to speak.

Surprisingly, the pastor endured this for a few more moments longer than she expected him to. Jeri settled on 'you look like' insults, and let out the largest, pettiest stream of them she'd ever produced on the fly, and even felt proud of herself for some of them. Aidan and Finley were choking on their laughter through their gags with tears rolling from their eyes as she ranted to Pastor Malcolm, still bound and naked on the altar below him, "You look like a hat full of assholes on top of a purple dress. You look like a bad excuse for a good idea. You look like a dry piece of corn bread that was left out in the sun. You look like a 'before' picture. You look like you just proved intelligent design is false by breathing. You look like the wheel is running but the hamster can't catch up. You look like a middle-aged beaver who started taking pills. You look like a half-buried turd that a cat left in the litter box. You look like God lost a fight with giving a damn halfway through making you. You look like one of Freddy Krueger's own nightmares that escaped dreamland. You look and smell like the wrong end of a moose. You look like you're wasting the oxygen that we all need to survive. You look like James Cameron staring into the abyss as it stares back into him. You look like cabbage and human meat slow-cooking in a dutch oven. You look like something I would shit out and chuck off a wagon. You look like my alcoholism manifested into physical form—" and at this point, she was finally gagged by the pastor himself, even as she tried to chew and insult him through it.

This is it, Fin thought grimly. This is the end of it all. He'd done everything he could to think of to stall the pastor. Stress and danger had a way of disguising hunger; he knew he, like his sister and Aidan, were probably sleep-deprived and starving and had been for some time. At the point they were at, Finley considered himself a complete failure, and anticipated after his death his brother somehow resurrecting him so that Salvador could kill him again. His hunger rose up in him as nausea, compounded by shame.

There were thousands of things he could've done differently or should have done; mainly perhaps not gone along with RJ's plan to infiltrate the church, but Finley digressed from that line of thinking and focused on trying to get the gag out of his mouth. It was highly distracting, and painful, but it was no use without his hands. He wanted to vomit. He couldn't afford to, with the gag. It choked him, and he fought the urge with every part of him.

Aidan bumped him on the shoulder with his own, and Finley looked up at his boyfriend and wanted to cry. All of Aidan's love was in his eyes, and Fin had to struggle to meet them and accept this. He wanted to tell Aidan so many things in that moment, and couldn't; thus it was that Finley absolved himself of his guilt and was determined to do something about their circumstances, rather than just give up and admit it was the end. No. I can't let Aidan die like this, he resolved. It's not about me, or my sister, it's about them. My mother, aunt, Teegan, Aidan, Ben, Tim, Jack, and all the undeserving people caught in the Ravara orbit. For everyone who falls into our path unsuspecting and gets maimed or beaten or killed - it's time I fought back for them.

Finley closed his eyes, muscling past all the physical sensations that were really just weighing him down overall. The pain, the discomfort. It started there. Pain was all in the mind, and Fin had power over that. Pain could ground you, keep you focused, but it also hindered you. He let it go, and then encountered the emotional barriers that would hinder him just as acutely. Guilt, the crushing guilt, and the love, the twisted and tangled mass in his chest that arose whenever he delved too deeply into himself. He let it fall through his fingers as he passed through the final mental door in his walls and let himself go.

He floated out of himself quite abruptly - or rather his awareness did, in the form of a fish's eye that could see everything simultaneously and it was incredibly disorienting. He touched the ceiling of the vaulted church as the people in the room began to chant. Finley could feel them, united in their thought and intent before Asmodeus' influence. Malcolm took the center stage and faced Jeri, who thrashed in her bindings. Finley didn't understand the words or the language and didn't need to. It didn't matter, nothing did. He was free.

"Finley?" He heard a murmur from the mass of chains and pulleys that comprised the bound and suspended Benedict above the altar. He was looking at Finley - not Fin's body, but his mind, hovering there in the space between rafters. Ben seemed very confused by what he saw, which Finley could only guess at. Perhaps Finley was a light, or a shadow, or a fold in space that comprised of neither and both. The fact that Benedict could perceive him in that state, however, mattered.

He willed himself over to the hanging man and passed over the gaze of his sister who stilled in her bindings for a moment to whisper, "Help him, Fin. Help him remember." He understood that she meant in the way he had helped her remember her mother's death; there was something hidden in Benedict's past she wanted Fin to help recover. He had trusted her thus far, but wondered if he trusted her unto death. He didn't know - couldn't know, because he had no other choice. If his body died, would he float around, free to haunt the imagination of the world? Seeing everything? Living, essentially, forever? He wouldn't wish that fate on his worst enemy.

It was, Finley realized, another way to stall for time - for time had a way of passing by slower in the mind's realm than it did in the place called reality. Both, however, were real.

He tapped into what he visualized as a red, transcendent cord that tethered Ben's body to this world - slipping into Ben's consciousness - and Finley abruptly hit the chemical switch that kept Benedict awake. It would be easier to navigate Benedict's subconscious without his awareness asserting control. Finley knew this would not be the delicate dream-dive that he had patiently hand-held his sister through, but rather a desperate memory-marathon for something he didn't even know he was looking for while time raced against him with a potentially unwilling subject. Delicacy was a luxury he could not afford.

I'm sorry Ben, buddy, but I need the reins, he apologized to the student as Ben's mind drifted into unconsciousness. Ben was surprised and did not struggle. As Fin fell with Ben into the young man's unconscious, they drifted into darkness past memories that floated near the surface of Ben's thoughts. Thoughts about Lavi, his parents and family, recalling their time in the cult and their capture, RJ and the cell, praying, being dragged and chained - and they fell and fell past everything recent, everything new, everything that wasn't hidden. The greenhouse, the bar, the coffee shop - Ben's classes, his family, the prayers and recitations and the smell of incense - the smell of home, the taste of fresh daal and savory kulfi . . . Everything that Ben made Ben alive and human and a person - everything he could recall slipped through Finley's fingers like smoke as they kept falling. To his credit Ben did not object, and simply let it happen.

After a certain point however, Ben's awareness disappeared from Finley's grasp, and Fin started to panic. All around him became nothing but light - bright and fiery, it seared past his eyelids and nearly blinded him. He burned inside and out, and he kept falling, though now it felt as though he were thrown and there didn't seem to be an end to the falling or the light. He was endlessly burning and felt . . . Oddly free.

Then, he landed abruptly into the black waters of a shockingly cold Arctic ocean. The physical sensation of it surprised Finley almost to the point where he nearly withdrew from Ben's mind, but he pushed past his shock and physical pain and stilled. He knew the pain was an illusion. It was easy to manage, once he reminded himself of that.

He saw some distance away a flailing figure, thrashing in the choppy waters, something that looked human from a distance. He approached, swimming effortlessly through the cold, knowing the physical part was all in Ben's mind and that as soon as he found Ben's awareness he could change that. Ben still had the power here - just as RJ's memory of their mother had guided them through the memory, this figure had power in Ben's mind, even if Finley had technically brought them there. But, Ben had stopped them from falling for some reason with the ice water, and that meant there was something to overcome or recover here in his memory.

As soon as Fin reached the figure, they latched onto him with desperate breaths and let Finley drag them as dead weight through the choppy water to a nearby ice floe that looked sturdy enough to sit up on. He helped the person up and drew himself up with no small amount of effort through the biting cold.

"Ben, please tell me that's you in there," Finley said through shivering, blue lips and turned the figure on the ice to face him and meet their gaze.

Whoever they were, they was clad in garments like Ramiel's, but clean white and completely soaked through. They were chilled to the bone and would freeze to death soon if Finley couldn't find a way to change their circumstances. Everything in the mind was symbolic of another thing, it was a changing world of metaphors that Fin was barely equipped to navigate.

Their eyes were clamped shut as they fiercely shivered, but they spoke - only words in a language Finley didn't understand. Out of them poured alien syllables that the tongue shouldn't form, a language that was both beast and human, and utterly intangible to Finley's mind. Fin tried to grasp onto some of the sounds and repeat them, but his mouth was incapable of uttering the words or forming the noises.

They had responded to Finley's address, which meant that this was likely Benedict - or some version of him that the Canadian student had forgotten, from long, long, long ago. Just how long was anyone's guess; RJ had described memories of past lives that seemed positively ancient. If Benedict suffered from a similar predicament - of carrying the memories of a past life, but having repressed them - it would certainly make a lot of sense that RJ had felt so drawn to him from the moment they'd met. It might be the very memory that his sister had told him to find.

"I don't know if you can understand me," Finley put his hands on the person's shoulders. They were neither man nor woman, nor a child or adult - of indeterminate nature and ageless, Finley could only internally compare them to Ramiel, and wondered if he had mis-gendered Ramiel or if 'angels' even had a gender. For not the first time, he wondered just what was special about Benedict - why Ramiel had called him the Prodigal Son and emphasized him with such importance. "Just nod if you can understand what I'm saying. Okay?" Finley instructed.

The figure did nothing to acknowledge this, and Finley sighed. It was useless. Finley pressed on, knowing all their lives depended on what he did next. "Benedict. Your name is Benedict Frank. You're the child of immigrants, a student in Toronto. You love animals, photography, my sister's band, and really fine scotch. Ben, come on, buddy. I need you with me. Don't lose yourself. You're Ben!"

"Ben?" Said the person through chattering teeth, and Fin considered it progress. "You . . . Ben?" They opened their eyes briefly, and Fin saw they were the inverse of Ramiel's - Ramiel's had been made of golden light seemingly while this person's were back and hollow, like voids. It gave Finley an involuntary shiver that he muscled past.

"No, you are Ben," Fin pointed. "I'm Fin—shit, I don't have time for this," he reminded himself and felt like slapping himself in the forehead. They were trapped in an incredibly vivid forgotten memory, his sister was about to be raped by a demon, and the only way through was down.

Fin stood and stared around at the utterly dark abyss that surrounded them, of ice-cold black water and an endless series of ice floes. The water was black, and bottomless. He put a few things together from their surroundings. Namely, that the person Ben had once been in this particular memory had been drowning from the moment Finley saw him. Which meant in reality, he most likely hadn't had someone like Finley come along and try to save him. He'd been alone, and frightened, and possibly died or came close to it, and the trauma of it might have caused the memory of it to become repressed by Ben's present self.

Finley looked down at himself - his hands, his clothes from before he'd changed to infiltrate the church, just as it had been when Ben had first met him at the coffee shop. Finley wasn't sure if it was his perception of himself or Ben's subconscious one that he saw reflected in his appearance, but it meant one thing - Finley still didn't have the reins. Ben was in control here, and Fin could only do so much. So, without preamble he made a snap decision . . . And pushed them back into the water.

They plopped in with nary a yelp and started to flail again, and Fin swam in after them, keeping them afloat but dragging them further and further away from the ice shelf, this time heading toward deeper, choppier waters with fewer floating discs of ice. There was something still yet to uncover, and perhaps it was in the water itself - or it would make itself known eventually - but the only way out was through. If that meant that this person would drown, Finley would have to drown with them. He felt it was the least he could do.

Then, floating effortlessly in the frosty night and sluicing through the frail ice was a massive Norse long-ship that rode right out of the mists of legend. It was unmistakable - the distinctive shape and decor down to the sword-wielding Valkyrie poised and carved on the prow. A haunting song in a language on the edge of understanding preceded the ship, hovering above the icy waters as a deep chorus echoing out a somehow familiar melody. It took Fin only a moment to recall it - a melody he'd often heard his sister mumble and hum under her breath, both as a child and as an adult. She'd hummed him to sleep with it. She'd picked it out across her guitar in quiet moments. The song had followed him throughout his life, and to know its origin now shook Finley to the core of his being.

Finley heard the song of the sailors falter for a moment and lose its momentum as individual members of song called out in alarm and rushed to the sides of the ship. The melody cracked across the water into sharp cries. Most of them were in simple tunics and furs, warded against the elements and a few pointed at Finley and Ben in the waters with gloved hands. Some pointed up at the gray sky - and Finley followed their fingers and saw that it was not quite night or day, but some middle twilight between that he had found himself in. The skies would have been thick with gray clouds but for a massive hole in them that seemed to be the eye of some storm, where the air was clear and undisturbed and the stars shined through, more than he'd ever seen even if it was just a portion of the sky. For a moment, he couldn't look away.

The ship slowed as the oars propelling it stopped, and it came to halt some distance away from Finley after passing them by. The once and future Ben struggled for a moment but then went limp as Finley swam them both toward the ship, and a few ropes descended from the sides. Two long-haired men crawled out, largely naked, descending deftly into the ice-cold water without a seeming care for the temperature. Fin swam them both to them and passed Ben over toward their grasping hands. They ignored Finley, but he managed to follow the men who carried Ben back and hauled himself up the ropes before they pulled them up.

On the deck of the ship, the Nordic sailors laid the person Ben once was out and divested them of the wet clothing, quickly covering them in furs. They were about as anatomically correct a human as a doll, with no visible genitalia or navel, but this didn't seem to bother the sailors who were largely preoccupied with pointing at the sky, at Ben, and covering them with as many furs as possible.

They laid down on the ship, unable to keep their balance and Finley helped them fall gently back without cracking their head. The sailors gave them space. The person Ben used to be stretched their shaking hand up toward the sky, looking at their hand or the stars, it wasn't clear. They blinked, and Fin could tell they were completely in shock.

The sailors asked a question, but they could not answer, and Fin did not speak the language either. As the sailors gesticulated toward the sky and toward them both, Finley began to put a few things together. Before landing in the ocean, he had recalled falling, and burning. Ben was still staring at their hand, at the sky, at the stars, that hole in the clouds as if . . .

"You fell," Finley breathed, and loomed over the person Ben used to be and grasped them by the shoulders. Finley wasn't clear if Ben could understand anything, given that he was technically unconscious and Finley was merely addressing a representation of Benedict's past self . . . Fuck my life, Finley thought, and decided to try anyway. "You're from the stars," Finley told him. "The prodigal son. Like, literally fell to Earth-angel, straight from a song. Or wherever it is your kind come from and whatever it is you call yourselves, but you . . . You became human. You were born as Benedict Frank, college photography student, but you didn't start out that way. You were like Ramiel, or Asmodeus. You're one of them. You have to remember who you are, what you are, Ben. Remember this. Or we're all gonna die here," he added, with the qualification, "Uh, no pressure."

They blinked, and the ship was gone. The sailors had disappeared as well, and in their place was Benedict, his sweater clenched between Finley's fingers. Finley let go of him immediately and helped him stand up, because all that was apparently tangible was the ground and all around them was a ceaseless gray ennui that stretched into forever.

Ben stood and looked around, spinning in a few circles before he addressed Finley. "Where . . . Are we?" He thought to finally ask.

Fin shrugged, because he genuinely wasn't sure. "Somewhere in your mind. Definitely not mine. Mine's more . . . Chaotic library, and less gray void. Are you ready to wake up? I have no idea what will be happening once you do, but it might be terrible."

Ben blubbered, "What? Wake? What happened to the—the ship—the sky, I saw—I felt—I fell, and then—?"

There were too many questions and not enough time. "Sorry Ben, buddy, but we gotta go," Finley apologized gruffly, but touched Ben's shoulder gently. Finley was completely unguarded from Benedict's feelings of overwhelm and insecurity, but he pushed past them and found the switch that activated the correct combination of hormones that would quickly awaken Ben. Gray void or not, he finally had the control that he'd been looking for, even if he'd just been a passenger in the vivid memory of Ben's first time on Earth. "You'll feel a little jolt, that's the adrenaline," Finley told him, thinking this was all he could do for Ben. "Work with it. Remember. Don't forget."

He snapped his fingers in front of their faces, and Ben's eyes snapped open and he rattled his chains with the sudden energy suffusing his body. Finley snapped back to his own awareness, suddenly feeling all the aches and pains that he had been putting off and disguising with his own adrenaline. It had worn off, and he was now beaten, tired, and feeling broken down as well as losing feeling in several of his fingers and one of his legs. He winced and tried adjusting, but with as many ropes as he was bound it, it was impossible.

Aidan leaned in his own bindings and touched his shoulder to Finley's. Love and concern flooded Fin's body from Aidan's, but he couldn't communicate anything back beyond the pain he was in. I just hope RJ sees morphine in my future too, he thought with a small amount of amusement.

Very little time had passed in Benedict's mind, but the room had erupted into a long anachronistic chant, and several people were now on the altar decorating the figure with the antlers or horns, wrapping crystals on strings and flowers to it. Jeri was struggling still violently, and cursing through her gag if the tenor of her thoughts was any indication - they could voice nothing to each other, but Jeri locked eyes with Finley for a moment and they silently communicated, while the Pastor raised his hands above his head and closed his eyes.

You did the thing, huh? She asked silently, as if shouting through a crack in a door that she had opened to her own mind.

He's one of them, like Ramiel, but he became like us, Fin struggled to communicate.

We have to believe in him now the way he believes in us, she told him with her eyes, and finally looked away, shutting the door.

The room went silent as Pastor Malcolm's arms went down to his sides and the people on the altar climbed off and rejoined the mass of cloaked cult followers. There was no murmuring or rustling, only a hushed silence that engulfed the room. The pastor pulled a long blade from his side, offered to him by one of the cult members who approached only to give him this blade, and Malcolm drew it in a slow arc toward Benedict's neck.

Ben was bound upside-down from the vaulted ceiling in a mass of chains, and his head was level with the tip of the blade as it suddenly was pressed against his neck. "With this blood, this offering of sacred flesh, we—" Malcolm began, but Benedict - the ever-polite Canadian student - interrupted him, even as the blade bit slightly into his flesh and drew a small bead of blood as he spoke.

"Sorry, can we hold on for a second—I'm still processing a lot of what I've learned and I need a moment," Ben blurted out, "I mean, a few seconds ago I was laying on a Viking ship after falling through the sky, and now I'm back here?"

At least he remembered, Finley thought. He wasn't sure what good the memory of it would be, but RJ seemed insistent upon it and he had to trust her. She hadn't failed him yet.

Benedict's body then disappeared from its imprisoned state and the chains rattled freely against Pastor Malcolm's knife. The purple-cloaked cult leader whirled around and came face-to-face with Benedict again, but on the same level, just as Ben stumbled backward and tried to get his bearings as nervous feeling and blood rushed to his deprived legs.

"Whoa," Ben made a noise of surprise and drew his hand toward his throat, touching the wound the blade had made just as he had suddenly teleported the same way Ramiel had without seemingly realizing it. He managed to stay upright on shaking legs but put some distance between himself and the Pastor. But with the crowd of cult members at his back, he turned to face them instead and didn't like what he saw, and a panicked expression crossed his face. He was still cornered. They were all still trapped.

The pastor reached out to Ben, and tried to grab him by the throat the way he had Finley earlier. Ben, rather than go limp as Finley had expected him to do, managed to pull the Pastor's arms away from himself even as Malcolm's fingers tried to close around Benedict's neck. A fiery-white glow erupted from Benedict's eyes as his strength increased, and he tore the Pastor's arms away from him and sent Malcolm reeling back to collide with the still-struggling RJ on the altar.

"Hey, ow!" RJ objected to being crushed under the pastor.

Benedict immediately picked Asmodeus up by the robes and tossed him to the side, away from Jeri, and apologized profusely, "Oh, sorry! I forgot! I didn't realize how strong I was."

Olivia still had a gun pointed at Aidan's head, but she pointed it away for a moment - toward now-glowing Ben - and Finley's focus narrowed in on this moment. He knew that with the Pastor so far away, whatever abilities he might have wouldn't stop him in time. He visualized the red string that kept Olivia's awareness tethered to reality, and tugged on it, letting himself into her mind with all the finesse of a battering ram. She had tried to kill him and his boyfriend - she would have to go. This was one death he would not feel guilty of.

Olivia, now unconscious and being puppeted by Finley, fired her gun into the crowd of cult members, over their heads, causing panic and scattering some. One of her henchman tried to stop her - she shot him in the head, her arm moving in a quick arc that pointed her gun to the other one situated behind Aidan and shooting him in the shoulder once, and then again in the head.

Fin added two more in his head to his total tally of deaths he'd been responsible for . . . And then counted one more as he pointed Olivia's gun with her own arm toward her own head, and she shot herself through the jaw and brain, killing herself instantly.

Aidan looked back at Olivia as her body collapsed to the ground, devoid of life, stunned or perhaps in horror. Finley didn't want to know what was going through Aidan's mind in that moment - he'd just witness Finley force someone to kill themselves - so Finley kept himself away, kept himself focused on the glowing Ben who now had the Pastor by the throat instead in a reversal of fate.

The small crowd of followers were losing their mind, trying to escape, some trying to come after Ben only to get thrown back by the glowing and suddenly angry Benedict. There was a light beneath his skin that poured most brightly from his irises as he stared down Asmodeus, who snarled back. It might have been Finley's imagination, but a dark energy that seemed the opposite of Ben's light emanated from the pastor.

"You — cannot — destroy me!" Asmodeus croaked out from under Ben's fingers that were slowly collapsing his throat.

"I can try," Benedict answered. His voice, at least, remained the same even as everything about his demeanor and appearance seemed to shift. He was Ben, yes, but he was more - more than Finley could encompass or comprehend as a white static filled his mind and drowned out all the thoughts of the others in the room. He had heard Jeri say that Benedict's 'light' drowned out everyone else's, and now he understood. Benedict was more than human, and now he knew it. Finley could remember it with him, seeing it play out before both of their eyes as Benedict remembered the first stars that were born, as he too had been born and plucked from the searing heart of creation just before them. Everything everywhere had been an endless inferno of light before it had been divided.

It was the same light that burned from him now. Asmodeus began to dissolve in Ben's hands, as if flakes of him were being burnt by Benedict's light. His robes began to smoke before they caught fire, but the pastor did not blink, did not flinch, he only snarled - and burned faster. Ben said something that wasn't audible over the thrashing of the crowd of cultists, Finley couldn't hear - he was still bound in place and losing feeling in his limbs, but he felt hope stir in his chest as RJ stopped struggling and seemed content to wait. He took his cue from his sister and watched as Benedict's fire, whatever it really was, burnt the pastor alive.

Ben let go of his throat after a certain point and Pastor Malcolm collapsed in a heap of burning flesh that flaked into the air and dissipated into the crowd as the cult members tried to find a way out and pressed against each other in the attempt to do so, some running back through the menagerie and causing even more chaos.

One of them ran at Finley, bound as he was, and pressed him into the ground with his feet and screamed, "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?" As if he knew somehow Finley was responsible. Fin was largely numb by that point, and mostly annoyed by his predicament, but Benedict took it seriously and bodily picked up the person who had done this and tossed them into the crowd where he landed on a few other people, and Ben turned his focus toward unbinding them. He started with RJ, pulling at her ropes until they broke and she was able to slide out of them, and then turning his focus toward the multitude of knots that Aidan and Finley had been bound in.

After a few seconds however, Benedict gave up and simply touched them both on the shoulders and teleported them to the other side of the altar out of the ropes. It was such a sudden transition and the air popping around his ears due to the pressure surprised Finley. It was a painless transition, but discombobulating.

"That's damn useful," Aidan commented, flexing and grasping his jaw to get used to the feeling of it without the gag. Finley was doing the same thing.

"I can still taste gag," RJ commented, and kicked at the remains of the pastor with her bare foot and was surprised that it didn't burn her toes. "What did you do to him?" She looked at Benedict in raw admiration, and the expression made Finley uncomfortable, not just because she was naked.

"Can we get out of here?" Finley begged.

"Sure, where do you want to go?" Benedict commented, just as the light around him faded back into his eyes and then went back to his normal green-brown hue. He took in the sight of the chaos all around them in the chapel with aplomb. They had to dodge a few cult members that were running around, panicked. "Everyone, grab my hand or my arm, as long as you're touching it should work," Ben instructed, and everyone grabbed onto him as he teleported them once more, somewhere that the sound abruptly cut off into silence.

This time, it was to the hallway with all the cells, on the other side of the locked door to the menagerie. Fin hadn't been aware that the door locked from both sides, but it was convenient, as the church and menagerie and its connecting hallway were now only accessible from their side. They could simply leave the cult members locked in and turn them into the police. Someone banged against the menagerie hallway's doors but the door did not move.

RJ cackled and banged against it with her bare hands and taunted them. Then she started pulling on the handles of doors, perhaps forgetting that she was still naked, or not caring, and became frustrated when they wouldn't open. Benedict started simply destroying locks, however, with his bare hands and the doors opened fairly effortlessly after that. He seemed the most surprised of all by his new strength and didn't seem aware that his eyes glowed whenever he used it.

Most of the people inside were Benedict's age or younger, and only a few were unoccupied. One contained a deceased person in an early stage of decay that they could do nothing about, and Fin did his best not to think about it too much.

All of them were desperate but now hopeful that they were getting released and covered in grime from days - sometimes weeks - of imprisonment. His heart went out to them. Fin stood at the door at the top of the dark stairs and held it open for them to file through. "GO! Run, go to the police, get to safety," he instructed, knowing only a few of them were likely do so, and most would most likely scatter to the winds. He couldn't keep mental track of them all, but he was glad for the silence they left in their wake once the cells were vacant.

RJ stood in the cell with the corpse, staring down at it. It was once a young person, in jeans. She turned the corpse over, and Fin saw that the sweater they were wearing was of her band. The faded lettering of the capital R's was unmistakable. She sniffled. He had to pull her away.

"Let's burn this fucker down," RJ said darkly as Fin grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the corpse's presence. For a moment, he was afraid he'd see what she saw from the close contact, but she kept her mind blocked off from him quite carefully.

"Is that what you want?" Fin asked her.

"You don't know the history this place has. It's ugly. It needs to die," she vowed. She looked at Benedict, who nodded, and the light returned to his eyes as she started clapping like a destructive child.

"I'll be fine, but everyone else should run," Benedict instructed in a strangely calm voice. "I'm going down to free the animals . . . Then I'll be out shortly."

"Ben?" Fin said, dubious.

"I'll be fine," Benedict repeated, this time with a reassuring smile as he disappeared with a pop of displaced air.

RJ smiled brightly and wickedly. Finley helped Aidan up the stairs and his sister followed after them, crossing her arms and rubbing them with her hands to shelter her chest from the frigid November air. Once they were at the top of the steps, Aidan abruptly took off his sweater and handed it over to Jeri, who donned it gratefully. "Now I just need to find some pants up before Benji sets fire to this bitch, and I'll be set—" RJ commented as she stepped into the hall and nearly ran face-first into Jack, who almost barreled the three of them over.

"Sasha, holy shit! I found you!" Jack gushed and enveloped Finley in a hug that Fin surrendered to without thinking. He could feel the worry, terror, and relief flooding Jack's young body. Then he pulled back and took in Fin's appearance. "What the fuck happened? Where's Charlie?" He asked, bewildered.

"Jack, this is my sister RJ, and my partner Aidan, we just escaped downstairs and set everyone free," Finley summarized, gesturing to them in turn. "Now we should leave. Charlie's, uh, fine. His, he's setting fire to this place as we speak."

"This place is going to be a fucking beautiful church-fire," Jeri concluded eloquently. She stuck out her hand toward Jack and seemed to forget for a moment that she was not wearing pants. "Call me Jeri by the way! Nice to meet you. Let's get the fuck out of here, yeah?"

"What?" Jack blurted as Finley grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the church as they broke into a jog for the exit, after all the fleeing people.

"Did you get Demetrius out of here?" Finley thought to ask Jack as they tore to the central hall, past the atrium and through the doors, all of them on bare feet except Aidan who had thought to put on tennis shoes before he left the rental, and luckily he hadn't been forced to disrobe. He outpaced them all.

"I—everyone went home by the morning but—hang on, did you say there's a fire?" Jack realized and stopped in his tracks.

Finley stopped with him as did Aidan, but Jeri did not and continued to run out of the building. He figured she was safe enough at this point even if she would be barefoot in the snow, since the Pastor had simply . . . Burnt up, and no one from the cult downstairs had escaped yet. Fin rubbed his raw throat and impatiently affirmed, "Yes. Can we go now?"

Jack walked up to the wall next to them and quickly pulled the red painted fire alarm that nestled into a safe notch in the wall. Fin felt a little foolish for not thinking of that in the first place, and then Jack nodded and followed them out of the church of First Advent for good as sirens blared overhead.

Jeri sat on a bench outside and Aidan caught up with her, as she folded her feet under her and dragged the sweater over her knees. "My ass is cold," she complained, but she seemed happy enough, and was protecting her bare feet from the snow on the ground. Jack didn't seem to be conscious of it and stared at the building in anxiety, waiting for something - anything - to change or happen. Fin at least was wearing socks, so he decided to sit down next to his sister on the bench, mimicking her position and waited for the authorities to arrive.

"What should we tell the police?" He asked his sister.

She grinned at him. "You leave the talking to me."

"Wouldn't it be better to leave it to me?" He joked and raised his hands to his temple to flutter his fingers, mocking the imitation she always did of when he used his abilities.

She blinked. "Oh yeah. Good point. I guess . . . I ought to trust you know what you're doing more often," she conceded, hugging her knees closer. Fin took off his jacket - her jacket that she'd let him borrow for his outfit - and passed it over to her. She draped it over her legs and feet and sniffled a bit, complaining, "I wish I had a smoke."

Aidan sighed and sat down next to Finley and leaned on his shoulder. Aidan's body was flooded with exhaustion, pain, and relief. "I wish I had morphine, my eye itches like crazy," he said.

Finley's heart leapt into his throat at the closeness, and he wrapped an arm around Aidan, drawing him close. Aidan laid on Fin's lap after a while and fell asleep as the snow began to start to gently fall above them. Jack approached and RJ scooted closer to Finley, patting the bench next to her as they made space for the teenager. Jack accepted this and she gave her jacket over to him, which he gratefully took without a word.

"What happens now?" Jack asked after a time.

RJ stared into the distance. "Whatever was blocking me before isn't," she said after a moment of concentration, and her eyes stopped seeing hidden images. "I think whatever happens, Jack, we'll be okay."

Benedict reappeared right in front of them, still shirtless and with glowing eyes. This startled Jack so much that he leapt out of his seat and set the jacket to the ground, which caused RJ to cluck her fingers and pick it back up to put in her lap. Finley blinked and tapped Aidan, who snorted gently and then awoke with a yawn.

A few things were different. Behind Benedict was a collection of stacked kennels and howling animals inside, causing Finley to cringe and cover his ears. Benedict had a tortoise-shell patterned cat in his arms, a relatively small kitten who clung to him desperately and purred in a mixture of comfort and distress. Ben approached them, waving at Jack and his eyes stopped glowing as he addressed RJ, handing the cat over. "What do you think I should name him?" He asked with a smile.

Jeri picked up the cat who meowed at her gently, and then let the little kitten curl in her lap and start kneading the jacket covering her legs. "Let me think about it," she said with a mysterious smile.

Ben looked over to Finley, who raised an eyebrow at him. "Should I let the cult people out? I left the door locked," he asked, and it raised a moral question for Finley that he hadn't fully considered.

"That's not up to me, that's up to you," Fin told him. "You saw what happened to Olivia?" He said, meeting Benedict's eyes.

A moment of understanding passed between them. RJ was distracted with the cat. Benedict did not leave, did not unlock the church doors. Everyone who had mattered to them had escaped, except for one individual in the basement who hadn't, Finley's mother and aunt, and the pastor himself. "What happened to Asmodeus?" Finley wondered, curious. "Is he dead?"

"I doubt it," Benedict frowned. "I-I'm not sure what happened. I tried to . . . Stop him, but he just sort of. Fell apart in my hands? It was really weird, an-and gross." He sounded more like himself in that moment, and looked it, without the wig and hoodie.

Benedict grasped his bare arms, and eventually RJ passed over her jacket and the kitten toward him. It mostly fit him, and RJ stood on her bare feet and offered her hand to Jack hesitantly. "Let's go, we've got a place you can stay at for a bit," she offered with a grin. "If you don't mind couch-surfing. Although maybe we can draw straws to see who gets the bed."

"Oh, I—" Jack began to object, but then looked at RJ's hand and glanced hesitantly over to Finley. Fin tried to smile reassuringly as Jack took her offered hand and shook it. RJ kept it in hers however and started to march off down the street.

"Think we can get a cab dressed like this? Nah, probably not. I still don't have pants," RJ reminded herself more than everyone else. Jack hadn't noticed and once he did, blushed to his ears despite the cold.

Aidan took a moment to get his bearings before following Finley, keeping his hand in hers. Ben followed behind them, looking at the animals in all the stacked cages outside for a moment before joining them. "I guess the authorities will take care of them," he reasoned out loud. "Should we call the police?"

"The fire alarm and people who escaped will have alerted everyone who needs to know, I think," Fin started. "But if it makes you feel better, Ben, we can borrow a phone somewhere or tell someone. Personally, I'd rather avoid questions by the police."

"Let's just go back to the hospital," Aidan suggested. "They have the good drugs, guys."

"We'll get you the good drugs, Aidan, don't you worry," RJ promised him.

Aidan frowned profusely. "That only makes me worry more." Finley squeezed his hand.

"I just feel bad for all those animals in the cold, especially the monkeys," Ben frowned, but nonetheless followed them and tucked the kitten close in his arms. "But you're right. They can figure it out. I want to go home."

"We'll call a ride for you from the rental. Our place is just a few blocks away, which is probably how they found us so quickly," RJ said without a care in the world, marching reddening feet on the ice-cold pavement. "Also, I'm losing feeling in my toes," she announced just as casually.

"Climb on my back," Ben suggested, and passed his cat over to Jack who took the little cat in his arms with a small smile. RJ happily climbed onto him piggy-back style, using the jacket around her waist as a makeshift skirt. "I'm used to the cold, I grew up here," Benedict said as RJ settled her face into his shoulder.

"We were born in Georgia," RJ confessed. "This shit is deathly. My toes are totally numb."

"A warm bath will fix that," Fin told her. "Just think of the warm bubblies awaiting you."

"Fuck," she sighed into Benedict's shoulder, making the man shiver as he stopped to wait to cross an empty street, "I hate Toronto."

Finley didn't bother stopping, figuring it was past midnight and well into the early morning before most people would be out. He led the way back to the rental mostly from memory, but Aidan corrected him on one turn, and soon enough they were standing in front of their rented condo. The door was unlocked, but there were no signs of struggle inside, just the shotgun that RJ had largely built, still unused on the couch - and the usual mess that living people leave behind. Finley could not stop the sense of exhaustion and relief that flooded his entire body at the sight of both the clean bathroom, and the messy bed that he'd left behind.

RJ ran upstairs with a loud 'whoop' and slammed her door shut for a while, and eventually Fin heard the sounds of water running through the pipes as she no doubt was running a bath.

Jack stood there inside, looking and feeling awkward with the cat in his arms. He passed the kitten over to Ben when Ben gestured for it, and he looked to Finley in a mixture of emotions. "So, what's really going on?" Jack asked, sounding hurt and confused.

Fin gently tossed the empty shotgun and its detached trigger formation onto the table on the counter and sat down on the couch and put his head in his hands. "You'd better sit down," he told Jack and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "Aidan, shower's yours if you want," he said to his boyfriend. Aidan nodded and left for the downstairs bathroom.

"Hopefully she doesn't use all the hot water," Aidan mumbled on his way, cradling his head. His medication was in the bedroom, at least, and would help with the discomfort of his injury.

"I'm going to go home," Benedict announced, and disappeared without another word, the cat in his arms going with him.

Finley stared at the empty space where Benedict occupied and momentarily panicked. They had no way of finding Ben beyond RJ's phone, and there was no way to guarantee his safety now that he was out of sight. But, RJ didn't seem worried about it - Finley knew she probably expected this to happen anyway - so Finley was able to calm himself down and think of the situation rationally.

First, Jack deserved an explanation. And then, he had a boyfriend to talk to.