THE EIGHTH SACRAMENT
Title: The Eighth Sacrament
Written By: luceononuro
Timeline: Post Season Five
Rating: No Rating
Warnings: Joan Kinney is dead.
Summary: What if Joan Kinney died and Brian went to the funeral.
Author's Notes: dreambee read a version of this a long time ago – she may be cringing now – but she still deserves thanks for putting up with me.
Theme: What If... Challenge.




Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

The Dixie Chicks




Joan Kinney was dead.

Deceased.

No more.

Yet her legacy managed to live on in her son, morphing in transmission from twisted bitterness to well-masked insecurity, but living just the same. The tendrils of Joan’s lasting gift wound through Brian’s core attaching firmly to the places he was most vulnerable, his heart and his faith in his own worthiness.

Joan’s vitriol lived in Brian the same way knotweed lives in dirt. It could be whacked at the very root, ripped out and destroyed. Yet always the smallest traces survived, waiting for the right conditions to flourish again.

Brian hardly knew Joan’s inheritance was there most of the time. But, it tightened its grip in the times when he felt successful and strong. It was then that a voice whispered, “You’re wicked.”, “You don’t deserve this.”, “Something bad is going to happen and all of this will be taken away.”

It spoke louder when things were going badly. “I told you so.”; “I knew this would happen.” “God is punishing you.” It was then that he could feel it growing, tightening around his chest, choking out the air and keeping the pain inside.

And, that’s how he felt now. Breathless. Constricted. Trapped.

In an effort to ground himself, Brian rubbed his fingers along the wood of the pew in front of him. It felt solid and cool to the touch, slightly rippled from the grain. His fingertips found a pattern of their own, as had thousands of hands before his. The grain polished by the skittering fingers of restless souls, anxious for the final hymn to signal their release. The wood burnished by the rhythm of prayer.

Brian’s first repudiation of the church had been his rejection of prayer, the sanctioned begging to a fickle God. Why, he wondered, would a God that loved us all, only save the ones who knew how to pray? Who had the strength to pray? And, even then there were no guarantees. He began to think of prayer as a lottery, with winners and losers. His attention turning to those who had no one to pray for them, who had been taught that they were unworthy of even God’s mercy. None of it fit with his sense of justice. Instead, he decided he was responsible for his own miracles.

Brian was a boy of eleven when he rejected the concept of prayer. Still a child when he knew with certainty that no one was coming to save him. “Count on yourself”, became the cornerstone of his personal credo. The Bible according to Brian.

And, he had never looked back.

Until now. Standing again in this church, in this pew, all of the claustrophobia he had experienced as a child weighed in on him again, as oppressive as judgment. As a distraction he reflected on the events that had brought him to this moment.

The night he received the phone call from a sobbing Claire, he had been at Debbie’s, celebrating Christmas Eve with his collected family. He finished passing out gifts before telling anyone that his mother had died and he had to meet his sister at the funeral home.

In years past, Brian would have left without telling anyone where he was going. But that was then. He knows now that telling others what he’s doing isn’t so much an invasion of privacy, as an acknowledgment of connectedness. Brian isn’t alone anymore.

Justin was visiting from New York. They’d made the distance thing work, both successful in their own right and together by choice. Brian loves Justin in a way he didn’t think possible. He laughs when Justin compares him to the Grinch and brags that he had caused Brian’s heart to grow ten sizes. Brian teases Justin and calls him Cindy-Lou Who, but he knows it wasn’t his heart that needed to grow, but his trust. Justin’s love has quieted Joan’s voice, but they both know it lingers. Patient. Like knotweed.

Melanie, Lindsay and the children had long since returned from Canada, their flight of fancy cut short by the pesky details of immigration law. Their return had been appreciated by everyone, and not surprisingly, it was Debbie and Michael that had thrown the welcome home party, smothering mothers and kids with kisses and hugs and admonishments to “Never do that again.” Brian had been more reserved, still keeping a distance that was noted, but rarely commented on.

After he had relayed the news of his mother’s passing, Brian reassured Justin, and everyone else, that he needed to go alone but would be back soon. His hand had tightened on Justin’s when he insisted again that he would be fine and that he would be back soon.

Justin let him go with worried eyes and a troubled heart. He could almost see the tendrils of that insidious weed awakening and looking for cracks to gain purchase.

When Brian arrived at the funeral home, the staff made it clear that they were anxious to get home as well, and he assured them that he was only there long enough to write a check. Heading for what looked like the closest office, Brian was taken aback to find Reverend Last-Years-Fuck sitting with his sister.

When Brian quickly scanned the rest of the room, he saw the women from his mother’s church group huddled in the corner; the little gaggle becoming noticeably troubled when they saw he had arrived. They seemed loathe to occupy the same space as Brian, afraid the earth might open up and accidentally swallow them along with Joan’s wayward son.

They comforted themselves with murmured Hail Mary’s, praying for Joan’s soul and its release from Purgatory. Praying for her liberation from the “final purification of the elect”. Completely confident in her son’s certain “punishment of the damned.”

Claire was appropriately teary-eyed and distraught, wadding and re-wadding the same damp Kleenex in her red, tight fists. When Brian leaned in to ask her how much money she needed, he was cut short by the Priest who asked if he might speak to him in the hall. Brian complied, almost relieved to deal with someone besides his sister.

Quick to get to the point, Brian greeted the other man’s attempt at comforting small talk with a raised hand, reiterating his desire for the bill and not salvation. The priest just sighed softly and said that he didn’t manage the business end of these matters, he took care of the spiritual needs of the family and friends.

Brian’s sneer was immediate, “Well you’ve already taken care of my needs as you might recall, and since there’s no chance of a repeat, how about you save yourself some time and find me somebody who’s familiar with the business end of planting people. I want to get back to Justin and my son.”

“You have a son?”

Brian instantly became more angry and agitated, almost distracted in his desire to be anywhere else, so he wasn’t prepared for the hand that extended and touched his arm. But instinct spoke for him, with more venom than even he knew he felt.

“Listen to me, Father,” he hissed, “I want to get the fuck out of here, now. I want to never, ever see the faces of anyone here again. I do not miss or mourn that frigid old bitch, and I only agreed to come so that I wouldn’t have to take any more phone calls from that sobbing cow in the other room. I don’t need anything from you. And, whether I have a son or not, is none of your fucking business.” Brian’s voice dropped an octave when he said, “But if it comforts you, I don’t see him enough to contaminate him.”

Brian stepped back and regained his composure, “I can be invoiced. Claire will make the choices, I will make the payments. Do you need that in writing?” When the other man shook his head, Brian turned and walked out.

And, that would have been the end of it, until Justin convinced Brian that showing up for the funeral was the right thing to do. Justin was still attached to gestures, despite Brian’s years of effort to convince him otherwise. Brian worried that this was because Justin was still waiting for his father to do the right thing. So it was probably his sympathy for Justin’s little reservoir of hope, that made Brian agree to attend Joan’s service.

As Brian stood in the pew with Justin, he was joined by his friends, who despite being threatened with a slow and painful death, had decided to risk Brian’s wrath to do the right thing themselves. They weren’t prepared to let Brian stand alone in a place that rejected his core truth, in a place that made sexual preference reason enough to be condemned to hell’s fire.

And there they stood, a collection of folk. A flamboyant oasis in a sea of dark wood.

Lindsay and Mel seated themselves right behind Brian. And Gus, resplendent in a small suit was acting the part of usher, guiding the rest of the family into the seats around them. Jenny Rebecca stood on the pew and surveyed the crowd when she wasn’t accepting love and hugs from her adoring extended family.

Michael, Hunter and Ben joined Debbie and Carl. Debbie provided a running interpretation for Hunter of the icons in the church, including a rendition of the Stations of the Cross, which would have stunned theologians with its intricacies if they could get past the expletives.

When Hunter quizzed Debbie about her Catholicism and its rejection of homosexuality, Debbie launched into a diatribe on the church belonging to everyone born into it and that she didn’t give a shit about what the Holy See had to say about homosexuality, she took her direction from God, and fuck anyone who told her differently.

Brian rubbed the bridge of his nose. Trust Debbie to have a blasphemous declaration of faith.

Emmett sat with Ted and Blake. He had chosen a stunning ensemble, which included a burgundy jacket, explaining that he had heard it was an important color for Catholics, the color of kings. Brian briefly wondered about the color of queens, until his eyes fell on a statue of Mary. He shrugged internally. Blue really wasn’t Emmett’s color.

Brian watched as the candles were lit around the alter and in the sanctuary, noticing when one sputtered and failed, and was then re-ignited.

Lost in thought, his eyes returned to his hands, still wrapped around the pew ahead of him, and slowly he realized there was a wash of colour reflected across his skin. Lifting his eyes, he saw that the sun had broken through the clouds outside and now shone through the stained glass windows casting prisms of light around the church. He watched as Justin raised Jenny Rebecca’s hand to catch one of the rays, feeling a strange sense of irony as the church was filled with the glory of rainbows.

The Priest began the funeral mass and taking their cue from the people around them, Brian and company sat and stood as required. Justin had wound his fingers through Brian’s at the beginning of the service and Brian had immediately begun stroking his index finger on Justin’s palm, a nervous gesture that soothed them both.

Brian’s sister and her son completed the first two readings and as the Priest stood to deliver the gospel, a young alter server walked ahead of him, lighting the large candle to the right of the podium. When the gospel reading was completed, the Priest gestured for the congregation to be seated and then, unexpectedly, looked right at Brian. There was an unmistakable challenge in his eyes, an insistence to listen, and Brian responded by stilling his nervous hands and staring back.

The words that came next were surprising.

“In the Bible we are told that there are really only two commandments, to love your neighbor as yourself and to love God before everyone else.

And somehow, from these words, we have determined that forgiveness is the key to salvation. God’s forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of others.

The implication is that we are somehow wrong, some how less free, if we withhold forgiveness.



But is that true?

Are we really required to forgive?

What if no wrong has been acknowledged?

What if we just don’t want to?

“What if, for reasons so long and rooted in history, a child's self-concept has been reduced to the point where they begin to believe that they are unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy even of the natural birthright of all children; love and protection.

Where does forgiveness lie then?

What is expected of that child?

I choose to interpret God’s message differently.

No one has the "right" to forgiveness. Forgiveness can only be earned through actions.

I believe that part of what compels us to offer forgiveness, grows out of our desire to give the person who hurt us the opportunity to retract the words and actions that stamped worthlessness and insignificance like tattoos on our soul.

I also know this, the desire to forgive has to be coupled with the other person’s desire to be forgiven.

Forgiveness can’t be forced. It won’t cure you. And, you are not less of a person if you do not feel it.

So, if we remove the onus from ourselves to forgive the ones who have hurt us, there is only one more thing to do.

We must accept ourselves.

We have to make sure that the messages that defined us as children become rewritten in our head and in our heart. Without this we run the risk of passing the hurt along; of planting the seeds of our own pain in the hearts and minds of the next generation.

Damage isn’t always exactly duplicated. Each generation finds new ways to express the pain. And you can’t protect your children by withdrawing yourself from their lives. Children don’t experience distance as protection – they experience it as loss. It becomes just another link in the chain. A chain that extends back into the mists of time, when the abuser was the abused, and extends forward as long as we allow it to grow.

You carry the cure in your own heart. You need to know that you deserve to be loved and respected. And then make that love and respect your legacy.

And, when we find that self-acceptance, we ensure that the next link in the chain is strong and whole.

I think that’s what that God’s message is all about.

Love and accept yourself. And then pass it on.

You’re perfect the way you are.

Live your life

Leave the forgiveness to God."

And with that, the priest reached forward and snuffed out the candle beside him. He stood a moment and watched the smoke curl away as if it was carrying the message into the church where it could be breathed in by the people that didn’t have the capacity to hear it.

Then he turned and walked away.

There had been no call to celebrate Joan’s life. No reference to her being in a better place. Nothing that resembled the traditional Catholic funeral homily.

There was a moment where the regular congregation looked hesitant, not really knowing how to absorb what they had heard, and then rote response kicked in and they concentrated on preparation for communion.

But, Brian’s little enclave sat in a form of suspended animation. All of them had heard the message, and they were waiting for Brian’s reaction. As if somehow they could only interpret the world through whichever lens he chose to put on the Priest’s words.

It was almost at the moment when anticipation turns to discomfort, that Gus shot out from under Brian’s seat. Lying on his back he grinned up at his father, then extended his arms to be pulled the rest of the way through. When he finally settled in Brian’s lap, the rest of the group came back to life.

Emmett was the first to mobilize, debating whether he should make his first communion. Ted dryly observed that Emmett already regularly received communion at Babylon, on his knees with tongue extended. Debbie slapped both of their heads and the world righted itself on its axis.

Brian huddled Justin and Gus a little closer and then whispered to his son, “I’m glad you came up here, I’ve been missing you.”

When Gus whispered back “Me too, Daddy”, Justin felt his throat tighten, and he pulled himself closer into Brian’s side.

Brian rubbed his cheek across Gus’ head and said, “You know, you both came into my life on the same night. I’m a very lucky man.”

Justin laughed out loud when Gus responded solemnly “Yeah, you are. Wanna get out of here?”

Brian hugged his little boy to his chest and then stood, scooping Gus into the air and pulling Justin into the aisle in one sweeping movement.

As they exited the church, Brian could feel Gus over his shoulder, blowing kisses and waving good-bye to the congregation.

He stopped for a second and buried his face in Gus' neck, then wrapped his free arm around Justin and walked into the bright sunshine.

And, his next breath went deep, and felt like redemption.

~~~~

Maybe love kills knotweed after all.