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Chapter 4

Carl waited for the others to leave. He avoided their eyes by touching his forehead to his clasped hands as he murmured the Our Father over and over. No one bothered him then. Monks were gossips, but they were not cruel, and would murmur "Brother Carl has sinned" over the holy water and speculate on the manner of this sin, but they would not interrupt his prayer.

Not that it mattered for that reason, anyway. His heart wasn't in it. Carl could say the Our Father in his sleep—according to Gabriel he sometimes did, though Carl suspected that was mere taunting.

That day he stayed after Nones praying while in his head he prepared himself for a chat with Father Moretti. Of all the men in the Vatican, Moretti frightened Carl the least and struck him as the purest. Somehow though Cardinal Jinette was pure, his closeness to the Order made that pureness almost less legitimate. Carl spoke to Jinette about his chemicals, not about his soul. Sometimes Carl felt Jinette absolved him simply to have him back to work.

Moretti knew of the Holy Order and kept away from it.

And Carl was going to speak to him. Yes, he was. He imagined argument and snapped against it. He wasn't ready, but he would manage. It was important enough to step past his comfort. He needed to discuss—

"Brother Carl?"

Carl startled up from his prayer. The priest sat beside him in the pew; how had Carl not noticed him arrive? Well, it didn't matter. "Father, I must speak with you." If Moretti needed something, he would have to wait. Carl could help no one until he had helped himself. For a week now, a week since he sinned with Gabriel, he had barely spoken to anyone, Gabriel especially. It was eroding his soul; Carl practically felt himself dying from the inside out. "Please. It's about a sin—"

Moretti shook his head. "You know you cannot repeat what you heard in confession."

"It wasn't in confession, Father, it was my—Father, I'm just a friar. I've never heard confession. But—no, that's not important, it was my sin," Carl babbled. "Only I'm not sure it is a sin. Because how do you know if it's a sin? It didn't feel like a sin." He thought of the ending, how he had felt more intensely alive than ever before, the safety of lying in someone's arms and feeling vulnerable and charged with the electricity of skin on skin in places no one had ever touched. "Well… sometimes it felt like a sin." It had hurt, too. Though he was held and kissed and told wonderful things and given a joy beyond prior knowledge, there had been pain. "It's…"

"Ah. Is this in the wives and children vein of things?" Moretti asked, and Carl's mind leapt back six years to the young woman in Romania. It had been so strange. The things she did, his body liked them, but he was thinking about the Wolfman and what could have made Dracula what he was and where he hadn't looked yet in the house for information.

But he had done with her something in many ways very similar to what he and Gabriel had done, so Carl answered, "Yes, Father." Yet there was nothing of wives involved, and it was not the way of children, so Carl had to amend, "And… no, Father. Not with a woman, but—"

"Ah. That."

That? Was it as simple as that? What he had done, sins he had committed against the church, felt huge to Carl. His sins chewed him over. They defined him more than his greatest deeds, and every time Carl helped Van Helsing defeat evil he considered at least a part of that his good deeds.

While Carl reeled in shock, Father Moretti continued, "Not to worry," and clapped Carl on the shoulder in a way that made Carl jump. "Only once in twenty years, you should have pride. It happens to the best of us. God will forgive you."

Oh. That. That was that to Carl. "No, it… I know that's a sin."

Moretti smiled, understanding. "Yes, but it feels very good, doesn't it?" he asked. "Not like a sin."

"I wouldn't know, Father."

Moretti raised his very bushy eyebrows and asked, disbelieving, "Really?"

Carl nodded. "Well yes. I came to the church before I—well, it hardly seems to matter," he murmured. How did this still happen? The truth was that no matter how attracted Carl was to men, well to certain men, he felt very uncomfortable and inferior around them.

Moretti nodded in response, though Carl had the distinct impression he was being overlooked, his words ignored. "So, you've come to me about a sin that might not be a sin?" Moretti asked. "I'm afraid you're going to have to tell me what that perhaps-sin was."

"Yes…" Carl took a deep breath. "Father, I have known another man."

There was a moment of silence that was more than an absence of sound. It was a full absence. Carl could not speak, could not continue, could not explain how a man baffled by poetry felt his heart was singing, because he could not breathe. He opened his mouth but there was no air. Every part of life had been taken from the room.

Then Moretti sighed and said, "Gabriel Van Helsing."

Not understanding, Carl looked around, but Gabriel was not there. He had simply assumed, since Moretti was looking away, that he was stating Gabriel's name because Gabriel was there. Then he realized that Moretti was stating the name as the man Carl referred to and nodded. "Yes, Father."

Moretti shook his head in clear disappointment and stood. He said, "You must pray for forgiveness," and he walked away.

By the time Carl managed to protest, "But… Father…" the priest was gone. Carl sighed and slumped down in the pew. Was it so simple? Could that be all there was to it, so simple, the way Moretti dismissed him without so much as penitence, because no penitence could amend for such a sin?

This sin, Carl understood suddenly, was not the problem. He sat still in the pew, staring ahead and feeling his heart thud dully, trying to register in his mind what had been said. The problem was not what he did, but that he did it at all. Normal people did not do what Carl had done. Normal people would not think to. Carl had committed this sin because he was innately wrong. He did not need to do penance, because he could not be redeemed.

to be continued