A/N- I wrote this because I love the Scarlet Letter, dangit. I may be the entire SL fanclub right here, but I don't mind so much. This idea sort of occurred to me at some point in the last few days, and I've been nursing it until at last it sort of demanded to be written tonight, so I typed it and post it all an hour after my bedtime. Meh.

At first glance, the little room was bare.

The walls had once been white, but now they seemed nicked and scarred with age. A crude crucifix hung high, too close to the ceiling to reach without a stool. A black cloth was crumpled in the corner, presumably to cushion the knees of he who spent hours kneeling in the little room, his hands clasped and head bowed before the little cross. There was hardly enough leeway for him to fall prostrate without bruising his brow.

It was a simple room.

On closer inspection, signs of the room's true purpose could be found. The even floorboards dipped slightly, worn in the places where his knees had brushed it so many times every day for so many years. There an unnatural bulge was apparent through material of the black cloth, indicating that its purpose was not what it seemed. The whitewash of the simple walls was still present near the crucifix, closer to the ceiling, out of the reach of one who stood with an arm outstretched. All below had been nicked away. One letter, repeated so many times that it was nigh undecipherable. Little white flakes and chips of wood had been swept into the corners, creating piles of dust.

Nothing about the room seemed out of the ordinary.

Yet no one ever approached this room but one man. There was a dark feeling about it, an unnatural presence, which seeped from the corners, from the scarred walls, from beneath the black cloth. The room contained a secret.

The secret was dark, potent, had only ever been spoken aloud between these walls, beneath this cross. The room had softened the sounds of bitter cries, groans of agony, and desperate pleas. The floor was littered with small black stains.

A shadow lurked about the door of the room, its own evil repelled by the anomalous atmosphere. When the door had been closed, locked from the inside, the shadow appeared, stooping and pressing itself against the crack, hungry for a morsel of its own twisted justice. The room was never slow to deliver.

Each scream that leaked through the heavy door, each frantic supplication for mercy, seemed to feed the shadow, giving it strength to remain in the presence of the room, yet diminishing it somehow, making it more enigmatic with each cry.

And then, an unnaturally loud shout and a resounding thud. The door shook. The shadow dissolved.

All was silent.

The physician came hurrying through the house, straightening his coat. He knocked upon the door, calling out. The room was silent.

With strength unnatural in a man of his age, the physician slammed one of his uneven shoulders into the door. The heavy lumber shuddered and cracked. A sound of crunching wood and a clatter told him that the lock had been wrenched from the wall, and he pulled the door outward.

The reverend's head had been propped upon the door, and when the physician opened it the younger man fell into the corridor. Both of his white hands were tangled in the folds of his vestments, and the physician carefully pried the delicate fingers away. The garment fell open, and the physician, even as he was, stepped away in surprise at what he saw. He seized the young man's slack arms after a moment and dragged him from the little room. Another slight clank, and the physician saw a bleeding knife fall from the twisted robes onto the floor of the room.

Steeling himself, the physician reached into the room and seized the black cloth. He wiped the blade of the knife clean, returning it to its corner, and draped the cloth over it as he knew it had been before. The physician then closed the vestments of the reverend over his chest, using it to blot at the blood with both hands, until the cloth would be of no further use. Upon the reverend's chest the physician at last recognized, beneath the blood, the mark, fresher than it had been the first time he had seen it, standing out beautifully against the young man's pale flesh. The mark was the source of the blood.

The reverend's white skin had been stained scarlet.

The physician leaned down to clean the spots from the floor of the room, and that was when he saw the letter again. It appeared to him on the wall and then retreated when he sought it. Bringing his face closer to the woodwork, the physician saw the letter there, along with hundreds of thousands of others like it, nearly every speck of whitewash gone from the wall, chipped away and replaced with the letter a thousand times over.

He smiled, withdrew from the little room, and closed the door softly.

The physician had a purpose in life. Touching the rough wood of the door, he knew that he was not alone.