Mysterious Ways: A "Fourteen Days" One-Shot

Mysterious Ways

Sal here, with a note: If you're looking for Freddie or a depiction of Freddie, or any of the other members of Queen, you won't find them here. As warned in the synopsis, this story will not make much sense unless you've read any of the story In the Year of the Cat; it's a kind of continuation, bridge, or add-on, to that book. So, start there if you are interested, and then come back to this. You have been warned. Thank you!

Father Thomas looked out over the congregation gradually filling the expansive sanctuary, and sighed. Every time he officiated services at Westminster Cathedral, it seemed to him, the flock seemed to thin a little more. True, he was the ripe old age of eighty, and his spectacle-reinforced eyes were not as sharp as they used to be, but he knew attendance from non-attendance. Even with all the unrest ensnaring London in these trying times, the country's Catholic faith was weak, at best.

His weak eyes wandered, as they often did, across the rows closest to him and his bench. A few families, a few people standing alone, the groups separated by an easy two feet, as strangers seemed loath to sit any closer to one another. Again, he sighed. Mass was set to begin in a few minutes; the sunlight in the stained glass windows was fading, leaving most of the illumination to the candles all around.

Father Thomas's eyes roved over, then came back, to a huddled woman in the third row, sitting well away from everyone else. Her head was down, hands clasped apparently in her lap, so her face was not visible at first. All he could see was the top of her head, upon which her hair was smoothed and pulled back, the collar of her conservative black top, and the tip of her nose. Why she caught his attention, he couldn't say. Something about her body language set something to stir in the back of his mind.

As the choir made magnificent use of the cathedral's acoustics, Father Thomas continued to rack his brain. There was something strangely familiar about that woman, and he hadn't even seen her face. Look up, my dear lady, he coaxed her in his mind. Look up, this has me flummoxed.

The woman seemed to receive the message. For a moment later, she lifted her head and looked to the side, dabbing quietly at her eyes. I know that profile! he exclaimed to himself. Then, indiscreetly, he squinted, peered harder. But from where?

She turned her head back toward the front, and her eyes met his. Much to Father Thomas's surprise, her pale face pulled into a smile of recognition for just a moment, when she stopped. All of a sudden she carefully shifted out of the pew, taking her time. In the seconds Father Thomas looked away to read his watch (ten minutes till Mass began), she had walked all the way to the confessional booth. With a single, pointed look at Father Thomas, she disappeared into the small stall and closed the door.

And suddenly, Father Thomas remembered. Funny, how forty years could pass, and thousands upon thousands of confessions could be heard, but certain ones stuck in your head, and stayed with you forever.

His mind rewound four decades, and suddenly he was thirty-nine, a still-learning vicar of Roman Catholicism. It all came back to him...

Confession One: In Nomine Patris

The girl just sat there tongue-tied a moment after Father Thomas entered the confessional booth. She seemed calm enough; if there was anything to be gleaned about her soul from the fuzzy curve of her profile visible through the screen, she was not in any uncontrollable pain; her face was dry, her lips did not tremble, she was cool-headed and steady-handed.

"Yes, my child?" he coaxed.

"Oh, um," she murmured a little nervously. "Hi. Uh... I wanted to, um, confess my sins?"