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Hallowed Ground	By : uiggu Category: +S to Z > Trigun Views: 1235 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Trigun, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Hallowed Ground
- 1
Hallowed Gd

You�re in, now, in proper. It�s cool and dim and
quiet. Your eyes still haven�t adjusted from the brightness outside; you can
barely see a thing. But that doesn�t matter yet. After the scorching sun
outside, simply the cool dark of the wide low atrium is as welcome as a
bucketful of cold water.

Sweat makes your collar damp. You slide a finger
between it and the hot back of your neck and hope you haven�t been burnt.
You�re not stupid: ordinarily you wouldn�t be walking about at the hottest time
of the day. Ordinarily you�d be in a dark deserted bar or stretched out
insensible on a hotel bed, waiting out the sun, like everyone else. But
ordinarily you aren�t given errands as irresistible as this. For this you would
have waited in that heat for four hours, lying low like a sniper, every fibre
of your soul focused on the entrance of this church, a black open mouth in the
white glare. The best snipers you�ve known aren�t the flashy, dashing sort in
movies but those staid, stolid, imaginationless individuals who can treat the
waiting as an art in itself: no reading the paper or drinking coffee or
catching up on theirresprespondence for them. Like Caine. Can�t imagine him
reading the paper. You�ve heard him speak maybe twelve words this year. Of the
whole bunch, he�s the only one to make you even mildly uneasy. Aside from the
boss, of course; but then, he�s something else entirely.

Now that your eyes are a bit more used to the gloom
you can begin to take it all in properly. Glancing to your left and right,
quick assassin�s glances, past the Give What You Can box, you note the tired,
faded paint covering the unevenly plastered walls in a dark, oppressive red, a
colour you recognise from somewhere; the scarred wood bench upholstered in faux
plasticky leather (though who would actually want to sit and contemplate this
thoroughly depressing entrance hall you don�t know); the large crucifix above
the inner door. The brass nails pinning Christ�s palms to the cross gleam like
jewellery. You�re standing on the bar of a yellow G painted on the stone at
your feet, almost a yarz high. God Is Light, the message reads. Which is
odd, given just how dark it is in here. For all it�s a place of worship there�s
an indefinable seediness here that seems to seep from the very woodwork. You�re
feeling vaguely claustrophobic, uneasy and nervous, with the low-key stomach
ache and dry mouth which usually go with pre-performance jitters. The walls
seem to press in. The colour of old blood. Where have you seen it before? Old
blood� God, it�s a grotesque colour, really, and you really should � but you
can�t quite �

And then you�ve got it. You laugh, a reflex action,
pleasureless, short. You can taste the acid from your stomach at the back of
your throat.

The whorehouse. His church walls are painted the
same colour as the whorehouse.

Who chose this colour? Who picked a red so dark it
is almost purple for church walls? Perhaps it was him. After all, this
is and has always been his place, his rightful place in the order of things,
just as the whorehouse was yours. His place. Most likely he has dragged his
fingers along the dusty scratched top of this bench, feeling out the scars; he
has probably touched the faded paint of these walls, perhaps peeled a bit more
off with his nail, just for something to do. He has stood where you stand now,
on the step worn smooth with years of Sunday shoes, in front of the heavy wood
door. You can practically smell his aftershave, like blood off a wounded animal.

You place your hands flat on the door. Not pushing,
just resting. It feels odd not to fling it open and just stride in. You haven�t
waited like this outside a door since you were nine years old. Nine, hands
pressed to splintery cheap wood, staring, counting the lines in the grain until
you were shooed out by one of the ladies. Can�t go in while your mama�s
working, hon, casual, wiping the sweat from between her breasts with a
tissue. Ladies. No more ladies than you were. And then hours of playing in the
street until the other kids got bored or called in to supper by their mothers.
Hours of wandering around until you got too tired and then you�d sit under the
wide low porch of that place, in the dirt, waiting until ma was finished and
you could go up to the bed that you and she shared. She�d stroke your hair in
the fast, desperate way you hated, the way snotty Magdalene stroked the fur
coat one of her besotted regulars had sold his premium bonds to buy for her.
And then while you pretended to be asleep she�d cry, which you hated a thousand
times more.

Misgivings clamour like crows in your mind. Dusty,
musty silence presses in like a living thing, into ears nose and mouth. It�s
hard to resist backing out of this place, slowly, as if away from a dangerous
toothsome thing, into the sick heat of the noonday sun. But you do resist,
because you�ve got to. And because if you weren�t you you�d be slapping
yourself for being such a pussy, standing here dithering, spooked by your own
imagination. How can a church be like a whorehouse? It sounds like a riddle.

You push hard and the door gives immediately,
moving inward on newly-oiled hinges that still glisten.

Candles. Hundreds of candles, lining the walls,
nestled in alcoves, dripping on to threadbare scarlet carpet. Candles, at noon.
Bizarre. But they�re necessary, you realise, if your priest doesn�t wish to
preach in darkness. The sunlight barely pierces the thick layer of dust coating
the high stained glass windows, creating a sinful twilight, flavoured with
incense and sweat and guilt (Christ, it even smells the same, exactly
the same). In here it probably always feels like night, however fiercely the
suns beat down outside. And they are beating down now, opening cracks in the
dirt, invisible white-hot fingers prying the very ground apart, splitting the
foundations of this church. White dizzy spots pop in front of your eyes and you
have to reach out for the pillar in front of you, fingers gripping gritty
plaster as tightly as if the floor might crack beneath you any minute.

How can a church be like a whorehouse? With ease,
apparently. God, the elaborateness of this place. Reds and golds and browns.
Rich fabrics are a shock in a poor area like this, where outside you saw
overrunning weeds poking out through sandy topsoil, dirty children, shanty
houses, thin mangy cringing dogs. There are frills and flounces of architecture
everywhere, all nestled under a high plain ceiling, like lace petticoats
peeking out from under an imitation silk dress. And those candles: tall, dark
red, almost phallic. You thought churches were supposed to be austere places
where man and God could commune, bare places with no draperies to muffle
prayers and no twiddly bits of architecture to tangle them. You never imagined
anything like this. The whole place looks like some upmarket madam�s waiting
room. On the far wall hangs a large tapestry of a woman in blue holding a very
young child. They�ve got gold circles over their heads. Your mother, holding
you to her, rank with the stench of four, five, six different men. You tend to
remember your childhood most vividly by its smells, and it�s a nightmarish
olfactory mess: sex and booze and blood, gun smoke and tobacco and too much
cheap whorish perfume.

The candle perched in a wall bracket on your left
hand side hisses, sputters, and drips hot wax on the carpet. There�s the hint
of magnolia in the air. Maybe the candles are scented. (Unbelievable.) The
incense is getting up your nostrils. You swallow a sneeze, but it�s one of
those painful sneezes that makes the back of your throat feel raw and hurts
your lungs. Uncomfortably hot now and what with the pressure in your chest like
a hot hand grasping your heart and squeezing irregularly so that the blood
gushes round your vessels in painful spasms you haven�t felt this trapped since
� since � Oh, God, don�t get so goddamned melodramatic. You take a long
breath of warm dusty air. A moment later you�ve forced yourself calm. Sure,
you�ve got problems � show you someone brought up by a prostitute who kills for
a living and who doesn�t have problems � but you can deal. It�s not like
you need a therapist. All that crap about do you hate your mother and did your
father beat you. Don�t need it. Don�t want it.

Couldn�t afford it, anyway.

Today the boss had been going to send Dominique.
You remember the hard stab of jealousy and annoyance you felt towards her, smug
bitch, when he told everyone. It should be you. But then the boss
stopped, mid-sentence, and looked at you, and he was even smiling a tiny little
bit. Ouch, he said, with deadly soft humour. Everyone else looked variously
confused or nonplussed. Dominique, he said, sliding his gaze on to her, if
thoughts could kill you would not be standing there now. And she looked at you
and understood, then looked at Legato for guidance. Legato shrugged, a slow,
elegant lift of his shoulders (his mouth tightened minutely when he did this,
as if he felt some deep-seated pain � which was fair enough, you thought, given
that he�d been a broken pile of human being at Knives� bare bloody feet only so
many months ago) as if he couldn�t care less. So: Take it, Dominique said, with
an amused sneer twisther her pretty mouth. I sure as hell don�t want to
kiss him hello. Just watch out for that B.F.G, Middy, love, while you�re
declaring your adoration, won�t you? No one reacted except Zazie, that midget
freak, who smirked. It�s an open secret. The only one who doesn�t know
is probably Caine, but he�s got an excuse. Tranquilliser addiction, after all,
ain�t very pretty.

So here you are, in your resistant, recalcitrant
�lover�s� church. Come to collect this grown man, drag him out of his dark
crawlspace by the ankle like a naughty runaway child. You position yourself
half-hidden behind a thick column on the back and right, carefully out of
sight, and focus on the empty pulpit. God, you�ve missed him. You wonder
briefly if he�s been sleeping with anyone else. Probably not. Like you, he�s
too self-serving to keep a lover. In the bright light of day, he wouldn�t know
how. You�ve been celibate too: compared to him, none of those sluts hanging
round the hotels held any attraction whatsoever. You couldn�t have been more
faithful to him if you were married.

So it�s been what, a year since the last time you
were all called together? Twelve months since you�ve seen him shoot, handling
what Dominique calls that B.F.G. with all the easeif iif it were made out of
plywood. You love to see him shoot. He holds the gun just so, with an insolent
tilt that is him through and through; squeezes off rounds from his killing
machine with something like tenderness. Spends hours oiling and cleaning it
afterwards. His shots are precision-perfect poetry in bloody motion. He is
better with a gun than you, but you don�t mind: you�ve got Sylvia, after all.
You and Chapel are something to be reckoned with. The kids no one gave a damn
about, grown up into men of skill, men who can put the fear of God into all but
the bravest or the most ignorant. You�re successful together, too. The handsome
priest and the nice-looking guy with the even smile walking out of the bar tend
to be the last ones fingered for the pile of corpses inside. The only thing
more private and more powerful than committing murder is watching someone else
commit murder, standing close enough that the blood spatters on your face, on
your white jacket. A most amazing thing, the taking of a human life. You have
shared it with him many, many times, and it never gets any less breathtaking.

Dominique?
Ludicrouow cow could it not be you today? You and he are bound in blood.

At last
terviervice has begun. Shaky orgasic sic starts playing. You don�t recognise
the tune. Some of the women adjust their hats and bid their offspring sit up
straight.e ofe of the men clear their throats and fidget. The others stare
straight ahead. The pulpit stands high and solitary: a little box with a
lectern, on which rests a large open book. It�s all so mannered, so
orderly. And then there he is, black and angular as he hops up the few steps,
as if he hasn�t a care in the world, to stand in front of the book. He makes a
wincing �sorry� face to his expectant audience; they practically squirm with
delight at his appearance. He is obviously adored here. Allowed to get away
with murder. His dark blue eyes flicker over the congregation as if counting them.
He�s not even aware of it, you�re certain, but his feelings are written as
clearly across his face as the huge REPENT banner strung out above his
head. Where�s the rest of you? The congregation shifts on its hard seats
with guilt. These trusting idiot people, trying to trade their time for
salvation. How you want to l at at them all and how you want, with a
sharp almost physical pain, how you want him, how you want him here, now,
amidst the trappings of his over-elaborate religion, in this superstitious
whorehouse. You�d like to have him right there, on the deep scarlet of the worn
carpet, under the mournful doe-eyed stare of the picture of the woman in blue
cradling the tightly-swaddled baby. He�d sob your name and take the Lord�s in
vain and it would amuse you, like it used to. Hiin uin used to be like anyone
else�s, and having him beg used to do it for you. That used to be all you
wanted. Amusement. A q fuc fuck. A cheap, guiltless screw. A good-looking guy.

It used
to be a hell of a lot easier before you fell so hard.

Not that you can slip into soft focus thinking
about that now. Sniper, you remind yourself. You were sent. You have a job to
do. But he�s so magnetic, so effortlessly sexy as he pushes his hair out
of his eyes and wipes the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand that
you (and most of the housewives in the congregation, no doubt) can barely take
your eyes off him. How many of those housewives must fantasise about him, you
wonder, while their middle-aged husbands grunt and sweat away? Understandable,
though. Twenty-six, lean, tanned, and positively radiating the kind of
mustn�t-touch sex appeal that will always, always fascinate this type of
woman. Maybe I�ll be the one, they think. I�ll be the one he breaks his vows
for. They�re not to know that whatever vows he made were broken years ago.

He leans forward, supporting himself on the
lectern, hands braced as if pushing something, as if wishing to show with his
body just how sincere he is. His black hair shines when the light hits it.
Bloody light, from the small stained glass panel above and behind him. He�s had
it cut since the last time you met, to just above his collar. It looks more
respectable now. Still long enough, though: long enough to tangle your fingers
in, to hang on to. A rush of warmth in your stomach, there and then gone with
the suddenness of a match flare. Devouring him with your eyes never seemed so
attractive before (mostly due to your abhorrence of clich�, granted) but that�s
exactly what you�re doing now, head to toe, dark hair to grubby once-white
socks. You rake him over greedily, mentally stripping off his clothes and
redressing him; you can�t decide if you want him more in his black and white or
stripped and tanned and gloriously nude and half-smiling and wanting it and
yours and soon, soon, hallelujah.

But it�s not even just that any more. You want to
make him coffee; you want to call him �sweetheart� and �gorgeous� and �Nick�.
You want to kiss him chaste on the mouth. You want to take him by the hand and
lead him out into the sunshine. So this is what being in love feels like? So
this is love? You really wouldn�t know. People talk about loveless sex and they
think of two people doing it in silence, mechanically, like a health demonstration.
It�s not like that at all. It�s just like normal sex, except completely
selfish. Two bodies straining for separate goals. Taking from each other not not giving back. Instead of the wordless shuddering gasp or the sharp �Oh,
fuck� you want him to look into your eyes and say �I love you� and mean it.
Whether you just want someone to say it and mean it or whether it would
only work with him you don�t know and don�t care to find out. Did your
mother love you? Can�t afford a therapist.

Strange,
isn�t it, that you�velen len pretty damn hard these last couple of years for
someone you a) have barely seen and b) hardly know anything real about. When
was the first time he killed? Who was it? When did he lose his virginity, and
to whom? When did he start smoking, and why? You don�t know these things. You
only know what�s on the surface, what�s within easy reach. How he takes his
coffee (black, sugary); which side of the bed he prefers (the right, or
whichever is closest to the window). It always did make you jealous that while
all you got was the inconsequential stuff, the boss, talented in that way, got
to find out all the deep things.

And you
know he has found them out. When your priest stumbled out of his company white
and shaky didn�t you recognise the symptoms? The dizzy, not quite awake,
what-just-happened look; the way his hands trembled when he attempted to strike
a match and light the cigarette that stuck defiantly out of his mouth. All
forced insouciance. It had happened to you, too. You weren�t so sure about the
others. But it wasn�t that uncommon to find yourself the play toy of the day,
so you assumed it had been their lot too at some point. What else, after all,
does a bored telepath devoid of morals do but delve into the minds of his lackeys?
The boss knows all the deep things about you and then some. But you don�t
begrudge him this. You owe him. You know it. He knows it. He never talks about
it � that would be entirely too crude, not his style at all � but you�re aware
of the depth of your debt every time you happen to glance into his strange gold
eyes.

Fifteen,
you were � fifteen-and-a-half, actually � and well on the way to following in
Ma�s footsteps when he came, like some kind of beautiful gold-eyed avenging
angel, reached out his hand and pulled you out of that squalor. Ma, she�d been
stabbed by some drunk jealous customer who thought he had some kind of
ownership over her while she was in flagrante delicto with another and
even though she�d always begged you to get out as soon as you could, you�d
somehow became enmeshed in the game too, too deep to hoist yourself out without
help. You needed money to get out, after all, didn�t you? And what else could
you do to get money? Sex was all you�d ever known; it went on round you, over
you, creaking floorboards and squeaking mattresses above your head. It did not touch you, though; not until Ma
got herself murdered and you found yourself faced with an ultimatum: work or
starve. You found yourself taking over
a lot of her clients, like some appalling legacy in lieu of a will. She had
nothing to put in a will, anyway. You�d always lived hand-to-mouth. If she was
ill and couldn�t work, you didn�t eat.

And now
you were the one providing the bread, now there was no one else who would care
if you starved. You hated it, of course; hated every minute, every man you had
to do, every low demeaning shameful act and every minute on youring ing knees
and every endless shower afterwards � cold, not hot, because the electricity
bill was hardly ever paid on time � where you scrubbed mercilessly for half an
hour, like some cruel clich�d parody of a rape victim, and still did not feel
like yourself again. Not for you the comfortable acceptance of some of totheother whores of their lot. You strove to better yourself, to make yourself more:
taught yourself to read music and to play your second-hand saxo (yo (you�d
found it, covered in dust in the cellar, cleaned it up and kept it and no one
had said a word) to make a bit of extra money. How you wished you could make
enough for music to be your living. Every night, as the thin sheaves of notes
stacked up on the dresser and the faces changed, the flushed drunk guilty faces
of these men who were straight, yeah, and don�t you forget it, but who
fucked around with boys, yooughought about what it would be like to be free
from this. To choose whom you slept with. What profession could you go into,
besides music? You could always become a priest. They were celibate, weren�t
they? That would be so perfect.

When
Legato Bluesummers came you thought he was another client. You�d done three
already that night and you ached, a whole-body ache, deep, under your skin. You
wanted a bath. You wanted to crawl under something and hide. You hadn�t felt
this low in months, low and cheap and miserable and exhausted. Oh, it wasn�t
enough to just lie there and let it happen; you had to do your bit, too, or
else they�d complain and you�d have to do it again, better.

So it
was understandable that you looked up wearily as he came into the dim room that
was rank with the sweetish smells of sweat and sex and stale air. He looked
straight at you: into your eyes instead of at your legs or your backside. His
look, the reptilian stillness of it, made you feel cold all the way through. It
felt for a second as if everything had been sucked out of you. And yet at the
same time you thought you might not mind doing this one; this one you might
actually enjoy. He was young, you thought, only a bit older than you, twenty
maybe, and he was beautiful. It certainly made a change. Honest-to-God beauty
was rare in here. And because he was so good-looking he had to be kind, too;
yeah, he�d probably be really sweet. Nobody that pretty could be anything but
sweet. And he smiled as if he�d heard, a weird, thin smile. He held out his
hand. You remember looking at it, bewildered. Did he want to shake on what was
about to happen, or what?

That
smile again, chilly and almost condescending.

Would
you like to take a walk? he said.

You
couldn�t comprehend his meaning. Was this slang for some practice you hadn�t
heard of yet? Or, if he did mean take a walk as in take a walk, where
would you walk to? There was nowhere to go.

�My, news travels, don�t it, he says quietly. That
or you�re a damned good guess. You always were.

�You�re joking. (God, you can barely speak,
gasping, almost, a fish flopping around and choking on air, and all the time
his eyes, cool and passionless as marbles under the dark spikes of fringe.)
Wolfwood � Nicholas � tell me you�re �

�Jesus, don�t give me the betrayed spiel, he
says acidly. What did you expect me to say? �No, Midvalley, because I was
saving myself for you?� That it? Well, like hell. I owe you
precisely zilch. >

It is like hell. Exactly like hell.

�I�m through, he says, and spreads his hands. We�re
througow gow get the fuck out of my church. Run back to your boss. And tell him
when he comes, I�ll be ready.

�Knives will kill you, you tell him. Your voice
doesn�t even shake. Your throat feels completely numb. He�ll kill you.

�Leave now, Midvalley.

�He�ll kill you.

This time he doesn�t even acknowledge that you�ve
spoken. Just nods towards the doors. And when you reach them, just before you
reach out and push them open, you stop. Like so many other jilted lovers, you
think, It can�t end like this. You�ve known him nine years, been his lover for
four, been in love with him for one. Maybe if you can look into his
eyes, really look, remind him of the time when you and he screwed slow and
sweet right there in the sand two or three iles outside October while you
waited for Legato, or the time when he got shot in the thigh by a hick with a
shotgun and nearly bled to death and you were the one who saved his goddamn life,
you were the only one who knew how to make a tourniquet. Then he might
show a flicker of feeling. He might even call you back, say he�s sorry, say he
was just kidding, of course he�s coming back, of course he�ll do the job.

You turn, turn to cast this one last meaningful
look at the man you�re in stupid shameful pointless love with, putting everything
you have and every ounce of love you ever felt for him into your eyes until
they must be as powerful as the boss�s gold ones, until he must see
�

He�s not even watching you go. He�s back up in the
pulpit, tidying up, closing his heavy Bible. Then � sensing somehow that you�re
still not gone yet � then, slowly, he looks up. He finds you easily, skulking
here at the back. He holds your gaze, and there�s nothing like pity in his
eyes.

Then he leans forward and blows out the two
candles, and the pulpit is darkness.
- 1
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Hallowed Ground