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"Johnny, I'd like you to meet Father Mulcahy." The insistent voice of Reverend Purdy drew Johnny Smith out of his contemplation of what on earth he was doing at this fund raiser for... whatever it was for. He had been sent an invitation by dint of being the Institute's pet project but he been fully intending to ignore it. Spending the evening at home with a good book and, maybe, a glass of better wine had so much more appeal. Root canal surgery had more appeal. As far as he could work out his mistake had been off-handedly mentioning the event to Bruce. Bruce had wanted to go and somehow that had resulted in him being bored, be-suited and surrounded by lots of people he had no desire to talk to. Bruce probably wasn't what they had had in mind with the traditional 'and guest' but that there wasn't anyone else who he could have taken and would have wanted to. It was alright for Bruce because he could just fade into the background and enjoy the free food, drink (such as it was) and music. Johnny had to deal with the looks and the repetitive conversations that either revolved around long denunciations of his 'supposed' abilities or morbidly obsessive requests that he provide a demonstration. He had started taking bets with himself which way each conversation would go. He mentally placed a spot on the denunciation as he shuffled through the crowd to where the reverend stood.
"Father, I'd like you to meet Johnny Smith." Reverend Purdy said it with total assurance that the Father would have heard of Johnny. The Reverend stepped aside and Johnny was presented with a friendly but bemused smile. The smile was in a face that had been wrinkled by long immersion in the waters of time. Fine white hair that had probably always been pale topped skin that long exposure to sun had burnished a constant shade of slightly burnt. A roughly cut but carefully polished stick helped to support the old bones but the eyes still sparkled brightly behind round glasses. The cleric seemed to be watching him very intently but it was not the normal car-wreck fascination he was used to.
"I'd shake but I think one of us would end up on the floor" The voice was still young and had a certain self-deprecating humour as he waved a slight 'snap' gesture with the end of his cane.
"Johnny doesn't shake." the Reverend explained to the Father in that jolly condescending way he often had when he wasn't after money or support. "He's a psychic."
Johnny was curious how the old gentleman would react. He'd already revised his bet, the soft spoken priest with laughing eyes didn't strike him as the blood and thunder type. Although he had been surprised before.
"I knew one of those once." Mulcahy said a bit wistfully "We didn't call it that of course but Radar always just seemed to know, that was why we called him that. His real name was..." he thought for a minute "O'Reilly, Walter O'Reilly. That was back in Korea of course, during the war." The Father smiled sadly at the two stunned men.
"He saw things?" Johnny recovered first. Feeling a bit guilty that despite having endured the same thing himself his gut reaction was to wonder about the man's sanity.
The priest blinked thoughtfully "I don't believe so. He never said. He just knew - when there were choppers coming with casualties, sometimes what people were going to say. It was like he tuned into their frequency. Wonderful boy, and he really was a boy when we first met, and one of the most gentle, caring men I have ever known. Kept animals." Father Mulcahy added helpfully. "He'd get ever so worried if one of them was off their food. Used to ask me to come and bless them." He chuckled. "Transferred a lamb home once because he couldn't bare to see it killed. Everyone else saw the first good meal they were going to have in months but he just saw another living creature. Private Charles T Lamb. Got home a lot quicker than most of us."
Johnny found he was enthralled. He just couldn't imagine what the priest could have been doing in such a situation. Or how he could have come out of it so seemingly untouched. And yet he apparently had. Johnny was darkly amused to see Reverend Purdy was less interested. In fact the Reverend excused himself with a speed that was only just on the polite side of haste. Obviously the good Father didn't have anything to offer the institute other than his memories so was being disposed of to an equally superfluous ear. Johnny could understand the reasoning; the unpredictable elder wouldn't bother anyone that mattered and Johnny would be pinned down in case the Reverend wanted to show him off to someone important later. Whatever the reason he suspected he had just been introduced to one of the few interesting people who had somehow come to the event by mistake. Father Mulcahy didn't seem bothered, in fact he didn't even seem to notice, he just laughed quietly at his memory.
"The doctors managed to make a fake lamb, out of Spam I believe."
"A Spam lamb?" Johnny found himself chuckling with the priest. "Didn't anyone notice"
Father Mulcahy gave fake a conspiratorial glance around the room "I think the amount of Ouzo that accompanied the meal may have... saved their bacon, as it were." A sudden burst of noise from behind the Father alerted Johnny to a sudden swell of movement in the crowd nearby. "The doctors were always pulling some stunt or other. There was one time..."
Mulcahy, in another country and seemingly oblivious, did not notice the problem until the party grew a stray elbow and shoved him hard in the back. Johnny found he was half way through calling a warning before he realised the words were out of his mouth. Leaping forward he balanced the old man as both their canes clattered to the ground with the sound of an explosion...
Shards of metal are falling out of the sky as the sound of artillery rips the air. A young blond man in a dog collar runs through the exploding camp, the silver cross on his chest bouncing as he dodges through the torn up ground. Reaching a tall, wire wreathed enclosure he skids to a stop. The guards that were normally a constant presence outside the locked enclosure were gone, either driven off by the fighting or numbered among the dead and injured. The noise from inside the compound was almost as loud as the screaming shells. Scared voices clamouring for help, for salvation. Salvation has always been his business, although normally in a more spiritual sense. He wrestles with the locks and throws the door open, yelling at those inside to get out, to get under cover. He doesn't know if they understood him but they run and he runs with them. He nearly outruns the explosion but the wave of noise picks him up and slams him down...
The world comes back but he is not sure if he is really awake. The world seems strangely muffled except for the ringing in his head and in his ears. 'silent night' he thinks hazily 'holy night'. He watches the doctor's lips and tries to tell himself that it is God's voice that he hears when everything else is silent.
Johnny shook his head slightly, trying to clear his mind of the vision. Every time he got a vision of war it made him resolve to do whatever he had to to stop Stillson. He had seen the destruction that would result and he hoped he would be the only one. The borrowed memories of conflict stuck with him in a way the others didn't. The young Vietnamese boy, the smell of smoke and explosives... This time it was Korea but the noise and the fear and the blood were the same. The voices of the other guests seemed louder and harsher. A battlefield cacophony, deafening and threatening.
"Thank you" The priest's soft voice brought him back to himself.
"Uh. No problem." The fighting had moved on for now. "You lipread very well, by the way. I didn't guess until..."
Father Mulcahy smiled, slyly pleased at being caught.
"It helps that people expect you to be a bit vague when you get older, when I get it wrong they just pass it off as senility creeping in. I find it is actually an advantage at these events."
Johnny felt himself shivering slightly and wanted nothing more to than to withdraw. From all the noise and crowds and people, even from himself. To be back in his own head and stay there rather than having to worry about one of the serving staff brushing his arm and putting him off the food for the evening. Or the graze of the crowd forcing on him secrets he didn't want to know, catching snatches of what they said about him when he wasn't in earshot. Sometimes you could hear too much and for a moment Johnny envied the Father his silence.
"I might have to agree with you there Father." Johnny made sure the old man was firmly on his feet again and began looking around for the priest's cane. The world was pressing in too close and he wanted an excuse to ignore it for a while longer. The Father had obviously noticed his distress .
"I took a vow of obedience," Father Mulchay nodded towards the very visible form of a bishop who appeared to be in deep negotiations with someone who was probably a potential backer of some kind, "which explains my presence. So what's your excuse?"
"I was wondering that myself." Johnny admitted. He spotted the cane and bent down to pick it up. The stick was in easy reach for him and, while he didn't want to patronise the other man, he figured he had to be about a third of the Father's age and more likely to be able to stand up straight again afterward. He bent down swiftly and scooped the twisted staff up...
A ragtag group of children stare at him sadly as the oldest one steps forward and holds out a roughly carved branch with all the pride of a craftsman. He takes in with the solemnity the moment deserves and is pleased and surprised to find that despite it's crooked shape the wood is smooth in his hand. He doesn't know what he will do with it but he is sure he will find something. He holds out his arms and they all swarm forward, surrounding him and hugging him. They know about goodbyes but the youngest children are still crying and he can feel the tears on his own cheeks as he sends them back to the waiting nuns. He fingers the splinter of Korea he has been given as he waves goodbye and turns away.
...and handed it back to it's owner. "My friend wanted to come and..." Johnny stepped back to allow the now steadied priest to stand unaided and indicted both his suit and his presence with a shrug. "Sometimes it is just easier to agree."
"Your girlfriend?"
Johnny wanted to laugh but the sound choked in his throat. How was he supposed to explain the mess that was his love life. At this point Bruce was probably the nearest thing he had to a social life. Not that he really minded. Bruce had been there for him, was there for him. Understood him even when he didn't seem to understand himself. Respected Johnny's wish to keep clear even when it was so hard to stand back and watch him fall. Not touching Sarah was hard - seeing them together like they used to be and seeing her with her new family. It wasn't easy to let go. But Bruce - he was afraid of what he would see when they touched. And he wasn't sure if he was more scared of seeing them together or apart.
"Uh no." Johnny automatically scanned the crowd for Bruce as he spoke. He couldn't help smiling as he spotted the familiar figure juggling plate and glass as he tried to work out how to eat at a reception without having three hands. The sight reassured him and unaccountably he felt stronger. Able to push the past back into it's place and not haunting the edge of his mind. He looked back and met the knowing gaze of the old priest. He felt the blush start at the back of his neck. "No. We're not... he's not... I'm not." Johnny stammered.
"Not what Mr Smith?" The guileless blue eyes blinked at him.
"Err" Johnny coughed self-consciously at the halo of innocence the cleric seemed to have around him and couldn't find it in himself to explain what he had thought the other man had thought. "Nothing."
With an unerring instinct for when to cause him the most embarrassment Bruce seemed to have caught Johnny's glance is his direction and taken it as a summons. Father Mulcahy smiled happily at the new arrival as Johnny made the introductions.
"I should thank you for forcing him to come." The priest's eyes glittered with not so innocent amusement, or possibly it was just the light reflecting of his glasses "My evening would have been much duller without him."
Bruce raised an inquiring eyebrow at Johnny.
"I didn't say you made me come." Johnny back peddled quickly and then found himself flushing again as Bruce's eyebrow climbed even higher.
"I should probably take him home." Bruce confided in the attentive Father. "It's always better to get him away from people when he starts blushing. It was a pleasure to meet you Father. Put in a good word for me with Him upstairs."
Father Mulchay smiled. "I will. For both of you. Not that I think you need it, but a little extra help never hurts."
"Could use all we can get." Bruce assured him, shaking the old priest's hand. Without thinking about it Johnny did the same. Years of politeness still overcame his need to restrict his contact with people when he was with people he liked, or knew well, and he liked the old priest. The skin was warm and wrinkled, leather worn and tanned by many years but without the calluses of manual labour. Hands that would touch and comfort. Hands that parted the air in blessings and now trembled slightly like leaves in the wind. But the hand that Johnny shook was firm and strong, skin still supple with youth but rough from too long living in a muddy campsite and being scrubbed to what passed for sterility.
Slipping into the supply room to 'requisition' some supplies. It isn't really stealing. Both Hawk and the Colonel had told him he could take some stuff for the orphans as long as it wouldn't leave them short. The recent surge in fighting has swelled the numbers of the already full orphanage and they are in desperate need of everything. He knows the Colonel will organise something when things settled down again but right now just some spare blankets and bandages could make the difference between children living or dying. He isn't worried about them running out of either - long experience has shown that in times like this they would run out of beds and blood before lack of cloth became an issue. In was dark outside but this was the first break they had had in forty-eight hours. He had seen the Colonel on his way to the storeroom, passed out in the mess - gown bloody and cup of coffee forgotten. He assumes that everyone else is crashing in their own ways, catching these few precious hours to eat, sleep or do whatever it was they did. It has in fact been a good day for him, his skills as a stand-in corpsman and runner more in demand that those of his calling. He pulls a pile of blankets off the shelf and stops at the view that is revealed. Two heads, both short-haired, one dark, one light, so close together there could be no doubt as to what they are doing. Two bodies, clearly male through their operating scrubs, embracing and caressing. He tries to turn a blind eye and an other cheek to the goings on in the camp. Despite the way it sometimes seemed, he knew there were more goings than comings in the camp and now he realises why. He felt surprise he hadn't worked it out sooner. Soft whispered voices give way to soft moans as he watches, transfixed and unseen.
"Oh my" The voice is his own but he hardly recognises it. He is glad he was quiet enough that he hasn't disturbed them. With the blankets still clutched to him, the cross pressing into his breastbone, he backs slowly out of the room. Making sure that the door shuts quietly he leans against it. The words of an obscure Greek text he had read once come back to him.
"Grant unto them, Lord," he murmurs, "to love each other without hatred and to abide without scandal all the days of their lives, with the help of the Blessed Mother of God and all thy saints, because Thine is the power and the kingdom and the power and the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
The blessing spoken, the priest took himself off to the elsewhere where he was going to claim to be should anyone ask.
Johnny shared a smile with the Father as he released the young priest's hand and wished him luck knowing they would probably never meet again. Ready, he tapped Bruce on the arm to attract his attention away from where ever it had apparently drifted to. The smile never left his face as he allowed Bruce to take him home. With just one quick stop on the way.