Chapter Text
But I am no longer a human being; I am a worm, despised and scorned by everyone! All who see me jeer at me; they stick out their tongues and shake their heads. ‘You relied on the Lord,’ they say. ‘Why doesn’t He save you? If the Lord likes you, why doesn’t He help you?’
- Psalm 22:1-8
As a child, Vincent’s body is just that: a body. It is skin, limbs, fingers and toes, the hair that never stays neatly tucked behind his ears, the hands that allow him to cup a baby bird fallen from its nest. He exists within it wholly, no tearing or stretching at the seams. At night he sleeps between his brothers and though they tease him, saying that if he wriggles too much they'll feed him to the monster under the bed, he feels safer there than anywhere else. Vincent's body is home, and he never has reason to doubt it.
His body fails him for the first time when he is nine, and in the mission school. There is no one to cling to there, no mother’s skirts to hide behind. When he reaches out to another boy after a nightmare, wanting the weight of a hand in his, he is pushed away. A sister tells him that the flesh will always hunger for what is sinful, and that he must keep himself in line; sin, it seems, cloaks itself in the need for touch, the need to have yourself anchored by another person.
This is where he learns that the body is a stain. It is fallible, dirty, wrong. It is sweaty palms and forbidden aches; it is skin that does not, the sisters complain, show the dirt, and so must be scrubbed raw. It is the shame of wetting his bed as he sleeps, and the agony of a belt upon his bare flesh. You are unclean, the sister with the strap tells him as she bends him over, and you will never be pure, not at this rate.
Christ’s body alone is something sacred. His is one that can feed a crowd of the devoted and leave them sated. In comparison, Vincent’s is hardly fit for an alleyway cat. He learns this, and he takes it into his heart where it roots so deeply he will never be able to dig it out.
His childhood body is much like his home, in that he will never return there. It is lost to him now.
In the shelter there is one young patient who inexplicably takes a liking to him, sixteen-year-old Abeti. Already six months pregnant when she comes to them, she insists on following him every day like a shadow, ignoring any attempts made by volunteers and nurses to dissuade her; it is not proper, after all. You're a godly one, the diocesan bishop tells him, but you're still a man. After what these women have seen and lived through, some of them will never trust you. Don't give them any reason to come to me, understand?
Abeti cares for this not at all. Vincent is her favourite, she argues, and she wants to be around him; and she especially wants him at the birth. In the end this is given the green light, although Vincent is pulled aside the next day by a nurse and told in no uncertain terms that if he does anything wrong her second step will be reporting him, and her first will be chopping off his manhood with a kitchen knife. He assures her she will never have to lay an eye, or a blade, on said manhood.
The birth lasts almost thirty-six hours, and Vincent is at Abeti’s bedside for all of it. He tells her stories from the Bible to distract her and when that vein runs dry, anecdotes from his childhood before the mission school. She takes great delight in his listing all the street animals he tried – and failed – to house, the stray cats he invited to sleep on his pillow. When she cries he runs a dampened cloth over her forehead.
Finally, when the pain is so great that she comes close to passing out, he is given permission to hold her sweaty, shaking hand. “Give your pain to me, my child,” he instructs her, and she does, squeezing so hard his fingers are bruised for days after.
The baby is a girl. It is named Vini; there really isn’t, Abeti informs him, a proper feminine version of Vincent. He holds the baby in his arms and thinks of all the pain in the world that can find its way to one fragile body.
Vincent stops eating a week after the surgery, the revelation. At first this is because food turns to dust in his mouth; on the rare occasion he manages to swallow something a wave of bile rises in his stomach. He spends a lot of time, in those days, cowered and vomiting. His knees ache with this, with his hours of prayer; exorcising himself in more ways than one. Then it becomes deliberate, a calculated act. Whittle the body down. Cut away what is wrong the same way doctors of old would use maggots to nibble away the diseased flesh around a wound. Besides – there is already so little to go around, and so many mouths to feed, hundreds more deserving than him. Unclean, unclean, unclean; it rings in his ears as he kneads dough, spoons soup into bowls. Nuns, after all, starved themselves down to bone to imitate the suffering of Jesus all throughout the Middle Ages, and in another life - if just a few more of his chromosomes had skewed a certain way - he could have joined their ranks.
Vincent does not starve himself for long; with the life he leads it quickly becomes unpracticable. It takes away from all he can do, saps his strength so that he staggers and drops things and must lean against walls before he faints. It becomes the worst kind of punishment, one of self-indulgence.
He picks up a fork, puts it to his lips. He tastes nothing.
Vincent is the Pope, and nothing fits. Even the smallest set of robes hang on his frame; the shoes slide around on his feet; the bed is far too big for one person. It feels, he thinks in the dead of night, as if the papacy is trying to spit him out. As if it knows he does not belong. At times he feels so loose, so untethered to the world around him, that the old childish urge to cling to another rises within him. Of course he swallows it down, bitter but familiar medicine. Even if he were not a grown man with some sense of dignity, his role stops him from reaching out. He can see the lines that keep him separate as cleanly as if they are drawn in the air. Overnight his body has become holy, and it is only fit for holy duties; he is no longer called upon to cook, or fix, or even iron his own clothes. Those tasks are beneath you, he is told time and time again, you oversee the souls of the Church now - but how can Vincent tend to a soul if he does not know its name? How can he call himself Father if he does so from behind such high walls?
Amongst all this there is Thomas Lawrence, and at first Vincent allows himself to hope. Thomas welcomed him with such warmth when he was nobody, just a stranger from Kabul brought to Rome on the word of the dead. He holds Vincent's hands in the Room of Tears, and he helps him dress, and he offers his arm to escort Vincent out. He is, maybe, someone Vincent can find safety with, but then his papacy begins in earnest, and Thomas - Thomas begins to worship Vincent in earnest. At times he says things, little throwaway comments about how his faith has never felt stronger and how he feels God whenever Vincent speaks, and the ache it causes inside Vincent's chest overwhelms him. He knows his Dean means it all as complimentary, and in another time Vincent would have been happy to remind him of God's love. But he does not want Thomas to see him as a totem, or an idol; he wants to reveal the whole of himself, his fears and weaknesses, cough up his horrors one by one. Cut himself open on Thomas's piercing gaze.
Yet how can he place that burden on Thomas? Chasing down the sins of his brothers exhausted him; realizing even the late Holy Father had been spying and scheming all but broke his heart. There is a lightness to him that did not exist during the conclave, the tender newness of a man reborn. Vincent would never forgive himself, placing such a burden on those shoulders. The most he can allow himself to do is to say my Thomas, ask for help as he struggles with bad dreams, clasp his hand in greeting. Nothing more.
He keeps his mouth closed. He does not speak even as the lines of his body fade away, as he feels more like an ideal than a man of flesh and blood. He wraps his arms around himself as he tries to sleep and he dreams of home, of suffering, of Thomas's arms around him, and that is kept between him and God.
Five from his old diocese dead; not just dead, but killed. Bullets through the head for each one, bodies found almost a day later. Vincent reads the cold clinical words of the report - fracture, trajectory, headshot - and digs his fingernails into his palm. It is just another piece of mail to those who delivered it, slotted in between letters from fellow Cardinals and visiting pilgrims, and that is what tears at him so. He will hold a thousand pieces of paper like this during his papacy; he will know death after the fact, neatly typed up. He will never again give last rites, or take the care to bury a body near their family.
One of the dead was a young woman, Leena, who had excitedly waved him off to Rome. Send us a postcard, Father, please, she had all but ordered as he packed his bag, and he had pointed out there probably wouldn't be enough time. How he wishes-
Vincent rises and walks, as quickly as he can without looking panicked and worrying those around him, to St Peter's Basilica. There is a confessional there that has seen better days, the doors hanging open and the lattice ripped in some places; no one else seems to visit it, and it has become a sanctuary of sorts. He will sit there, he bargains with himself, and he will pray, and perhaps he will allow himself to weep, just a little; and then he will return to his office, and think of something he can do.
He does not realise until he opens the door that it is already in use, Thomas caught resting his head against the wall as if in a daze. They start in unison, Vincent nearly tripping as he steps backwards.
"Holy Father!" Thomas flushes. "I'm sorry, Vincent, I didn't - no one ever comes here, I thought I was the only one who still remembered it."
"I thought much the same," Vincent admits, trying to slow his beating heart. "I am glad you have a place to find a moment of quiet." This is the truth; Vincent firmly believes Thomas works too hard. "I will leave you in peace now."
"Are you here to confess?" Thomas asks, and then flushes. "Forgive me, that is none of my business, I only meant that- if you were needing-"
Vincent makes confession every week, but he has never made it to Thomas. He cannot imagine it would bring much relief.
"No, no, I just...enjoy the quiet." He feels oddly embarrassed, as if he has intruded across Thomas in his bedroom. "But there are many other places for me to do so, and you have found this one first, so I will not bother you."
"Please." Thomas pats the wall in a familiar gesture of welcome. "Share freely with another, and take delight with it - I do believe that is mentioned in scripture, just a few times." At this he smiles and Vincent realises he is teasing, joking with Vincent, and it causes such a glow in his chest that he is forced to move into the confessional very quickly before his face gives him away. Even separated by the screen he fears Thomas will somehow feel the joy radiating from him, an improper joy.
(He dreamt of Thomas the night before, as he knew he would - not Thomas as his guardian angel but Thomas in his bed, in his arms. He woke clutching a pillow to his chest).
Now that he is inside the ingrained urge to make confession weighs on him, presses like a finger worrying a bruise. Thomas is quiet on the other side, but still Vincent feels he is waiting for something. Maybe he wants Vincent to confess. Maybe he sees the sadness in Vincent's eyes and wants to make it all better, offer to bring him a mug of warm milk for his bad dreams. Vincent breathes out slowly.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been four days since my last confession."
If Thomas is surprised at Vincent's change of heart it is not reflected in his voice, calm and assured. "What is your confession, my child?"
Vincent twists a hand in the fabric of his cassock. "I have received news of - of five new deaths, from my old diocese." The air feels sour, all too close now, and he takes a shallow breath before continuing. "I confess to the sin of anger. I confess to the sin of asking God why, instead of trusting in His plan." A loose thread catches on his nail and he pulls it free, twists it around his finger. "I confess to letting my despair overwhelm me, and to-"
This is the closest he has ever come to letting Thomas know the depths of his unhappiness and he waits- balances on the very edge- he prays for forgiveness and understanding and a thousand other things before he lets himself fall.
"I confess to wanting a different path for myself. For my papacy." Vincent tugs at another thread, clasps his hands together. The calluses on his palms, he suddenly realises, are fading back into softness, and this - of all things - unleashes the despair within him, for his hands will never again be used to bandage a wound or hammer in a nail; he will die with them neat and clean, kissed by a thousand pilgrims. Sobs tear themselves free from the very pit of his belly, ugly and hoarse, and he curls in on himself like an animal waiting to die. Thomas makes a soft noise of surprise.
"Vincent?"
"I want to go home," Vincent wails, and it is the most honest thing he has said since the conclave began. "God forgive me, for I have despaired at the path He has placed me on, but I cannot bear it." Tears run into his mouth, hot and salty. "I do not belong here, Thomas, I cannot be of any real use while I have this role. It is not for me! There has-" he chokes at the blasphemy on his tongue, spits it out "-there has been a mistake, please, I - I cannot let them just die, I need to return to Kabul, I must."
For a moment he dares allow himself to hope that Thomas, clever and clear-headed and loyal, will be his salvation; that he will clap his hands and come up with some brilliant plan to undo the papacy. Let me be released, he prays, let me go. Let me put my body to work again in Your service.
Thomas's voice, when it fills the confessional, is heavy with regret. "You cannot, Vincent. Forgive me, my dear, the last thing I would do is cause you pain, but you-" he breathes out, a shaky sound "-you can never return, not now. God's will has been done."
A desperate keening sound leaves Vincent's throat, one he will feel shame for later but in this moment his grief takes him over. He is a dog who has pulled on his chain to the point of choking, and it has not loosened one bit.
"I understand," he says, and it comes out as a sob. "You do not need to ask for my forgiveness, Thomas. You have done nothing wrong."
Distantly he thinks of how he had calmed down frightened children in Kabul, how he had asked them to focus on one thing around them, hone in on it until their hearts did not beat so quickly. Smell, that is a useful one; the smell of old wood and furniture polish and a faint cleanness that must be Thomas's soap. He leans his head up against the lattice and breathes it in until his tears slow.
"I feel I have committed a great wrong," Thomas says. Vincent does not dare look at him. "I feel as if I have broken your heart."
The sweetness of the statement forces an unexpected laugh from Vincent, and it feels good. "My heart is very strong, Thomas. I expect it will beat for a good while yet."
Thomas hums, falls silent. For a moment they are both at peace. Vincent's breathing returns to normal.
"Could you close your eyes for me, my dear?"
Vincent raises his head in confusion and sees that, during their conversation, Thomas has moved up against the screen; he is now close enough for Vincent to study every line, every crease, of his lovely face.
"For my penance?"
"For mine." Thomas places his hand to the lattice and Vincent - Vincent suddenly has the thought, one that makes his face heat, that if they were closer he would be resting his hand on Vincent's cheek. That perhaps, even, he is imagining the screen is the curve of Vincent's face.
He closes his eyes obediently. He gives himself, for once, not to God but to another man.
"I want you to imagine - to believe - that you are back in Kabul." Thomas's voice is low and gentle. "You are in a confessional - and if you did not have one then you are improvising, you are using a closet if necessary - and you have all the time in the world." His words catch, just for a second, in his throat. "When you step out they will be there, waiting for you, waiting for your blessings, with arms open wide. Can you feel that, Vincent? Can you hear their voices, very distantly?"
Send us a postcard, Father, please-
Vincent stands so quickly he bangs his head and cannot stifle a cry of pain; from Thomas's side comes an answering gasp.
"Vincent? Holy Father? Are you-"
"I must go," Vincent chokes out, dimly aware that he has not yet received penance. "I - I do not feel well, I may be coming down with something and I do not want it to spread-"
"Vincent - Christ - wait-"
Vincent does not wait, and he does not bother this time to walk slowly; his footsteps sound like thunderclaps in the halls, yet they still do not drown out the whisperings of never pure, never pure, never pure that ring in his ears.