The church was empty, apart from the tall, bony priest in green chasuble muttering away in Latin in front of one of the side altars in the transept, and a blond boy in a white robe kneeling behind him while swinging a brass censer. He sometimes replied in Latin. On the altar lay an thick, open missal, and there was a small chalice, and a host. The priest knelt down for a moment, rose again, and continued mumbling away in Latin which he read out loud from the book. Then he took a part of the host and put it into his mouth, before drinking from the chalice. He turned to offer the other part of the host to the boy.

It had been quite some time since Karen had walked into the church, especially since Father Kemble came along. That man was... an interesting specimen of a priest according to those who had talked to her before she became the source of wagging tongues. In the months that followed the births of her babies, she had been in the grips of loneliness because her brother busied himself doing things, she had no friends, and Father Gabriel had left town. She'd become wrapped up in the clockmaker, Fred, who she thought she had fallen in love with but really, he was merely just a stepping stone and a mistake. She'd met a man more like her husband and was trying her hardest to keep busy so as not to notice him.

She entered and advanced into the church, then she tilted her head when she heard a familiar voice in prayer. Karen moved to kneel at the front pew, keeping quiet while he prayed and pulling out her rosary. She did not have the children with her, they were being watched with her employer's daughter.

As Gabriel turned, he saw the woman enter the pew. She was too late to receive communion with dignity and he did not know her spiritual state, and so he only distributed it to the altar server. He turned again and continued the Mass.

When he was done, he turned and made the blessing in the direction of both the altar server and the woman. Then he disappeared into the sacristy followed by the altar server and they both emerged again, Gabriel in his familiar black cassock and the boy in regular but fine clothes. Gabriel had been in favour of letting poorer boys serve at the altar as well, but father Kemble had reversed that, on the ground that such boys hadn't been trained in the appropriate decorum and weren't educated enough to memorise the Latin. They had no chance of going to seminary anyway, so the opportunity was wasted on them.

"Thank you Thomas. Please put everything away and you may go." Gabriel told the boy.

"Yes, father."

Then the priest made his way over to the kneeling lady, slowly so as to allow her to finish her prayers. Last time they had seen each other was under less dignified circumstances. But he was eager to know how she and the infants were doing.

She finished her lamentations, then put her rosary back onto her person. She stood and then turned to look at Gabriel. "Well now, it's good ta see a friendly face again! Father Gabriel, how are you?" She would have hugged him if it was appropriate, but she was keeping a distance from all men, for one, and for two, hugging one's priest was just not done. Karen looked as tired as a new mother would, being that she was raising two babies on her own at the moment. "I didn't imagine I would see ye any time soon."

[[CW: Gonna put a content warning here for spiritual/mind control and all related shit, just to be sure]]


Gabriel did notice the overfamiliarity or her using his first name, even though she called him 'father', but he did nothing to correct her or display unease. Father Kemble would probably have corrected her, since the man seemed obsessed with formality, but Gabriel had just spent considerable time in a convent where there had been bitter little familiarity of any kind. Friendships were forbidden. All interactions had to be for the greater glory of God. He hadn't spoken to the sisters he had ministered to, had even been forbidden from hearing their confessions; he had been alone with his thoughts and God and the counsel of his spiritual director. It had been a desert. But it was in the desert that one repented, found God, and found vocation, and Gabriel had been renewed.

Still, hearing someone call him by his name felt like a warm blanket being put over him.

"It is good to see you too, Mrs. Calloway. You recovered well, I trust? How are the children?"

"They are well. They've both discovered their feet recently." She gave a tired smile. "I've moved into a cottage and have taken on work as a laundress elsewhere..." She sighed softly. She was lucky not to be pregnant again, thank goodness she had her menses during the several months since the disaster with the widower, Fred, who seemed to have left town without a word. She was still feeling reproach from that.

"I am glad ye're well, father," she said softly. She glanced toward the booths and grimaced, then, for it was the reason she came to the church in the first place. She was finally ready to confess the sins of flesh and such, as embarrassing as that was.

"I'm delighted to hear," Gabriel said, when she said the children were well. His eyes followed her gaze. "Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Calloway?"

"I've come to confess me sins," she said, relieved that it was him and not the older, grumpier man that would hear her at this time. Assuming he followed, she moved to one booth, the one designated for the people, and she waited for him to open the little door between them so she could start talking.

After a moment of silence, she said, "Bless me, father, for I have sinned..."

But Gabriel did not follow. Instead he said: "Certainly. I can't hear your confession right now, but I'll fetch father Kemble for you."

"N-no." she changed her mind, coming out of the booth quicker than going in. "Why can't it be ye?" she asked, appalled at her own reaction to his words about getting the older man everyone was talking about. She hadn't personally met the man, but she had been there for one of his masses...