Chapter Text
Rain beat down on Ron while he trudged through the forest. His boots were caked in mud, his arm wouldn’t stop bleeding, and he was starting to feel light-headed.
He looked down occasionally to check on his arm. Ensure blood was still spilling from between his fingers and not flowing again. He couldn’t look down for long, however, because water would drip from his hair and into his eyes.
His leg was fucked up, too. His knee had been dislocated, and he put it back in place, but it still hurt.
Ron’s head throbbed. He was pretty sure he had a concussion. His vision was all blurry, and he could barely figure out where his own feet were.
He stepped into an ankle-deep puddle of mud and fell flat on his face.
He was tempted to just stay there. He was dead, already.
There was too much blood. Too many bruises. His nose was probably broken, and he had no idea where he was.
All signs pointed to Ron allowing himself to sink deep into the mud and let the worms gnaw at his fingernails.
Yet, for some strange reason, Ron found himself pushing himself up with his very sprained wrist and continued walking on.
A new issue had presented itself now, however. The gash in his arm was absolutely gushing blood now. Instead of a steady spill down his arm, it was haphazard, and Ron started to feel like he was going to pass out.
Whatever. Whatever, he liked the rain. Thunder was booming, lightning was flashing, he’d have a dramatic death, and then he’d melt into the forest floor.
He could deal with that, and it was probably a damn good thing he could deal with that because he felt himself falling. He watched the world turn sideways as he landed heavily on his back.
Ron looked up at the sky for as long as he could before it became painful due to all the raindrops going straight into his eyes.
He closed his eyes. He felt the rain seep into his shirt, his hair, everything.
Then, it all stopped. The rain stopped falling on him, and he could open his eyes again. He did.
There were two people above him, he couldn’t make out any features, though. Whether that be due to his vision beginning to go dark, or the lighting making them seem as nothing more than dark shadows hovering above him, he couldn’t tell.
Maybe these weren’t people. Maybe they were two angels of death getting ready to whisk him away to someplace so much better than where he was.
“Should we help ‘im?” One asked.
“Blessed are the healers, for they mend the broken and soothe the afflicted.”
“Yeah. We should ‘im.”
The last thing Ron remembered was being lifted up by one of the angels as his vision went completely black.
Ron very rarely had dreams. Or at least ones he remembered.
Most of the time, he would wake up with a feeling of eeriness he couldn’t quite shake no matter what he did to try and ease it away. No amount of ice on his palms. Ice on his face. Or breathing exercises allowed him to send it away, so he lived with it until it went away on its own.
That morning was no different. Except he had no clue where he was.
He woke up with a chill down his spine and in a cold sweat.
He sat up and found his arm attached to something.
Ron glanced over. An IV. He ripped it out.
He saw something else, though. His arm was no longer gushing blood but instead bandaged nicely. His sprained wrist, too.
Ron reached up and felt his nose. It hurt, but it didn’t feel as horrible.
“You’re up.”
He recognized the voice. One of the angels from…last night? How long ago was that?
No matter how long ago that was, they couldn’t have been angels, because he was alive.
The girl in front of him had blond hair.
“You were in pretty bad shape when we found you.” She said softly. “What happened?”
Ron blinked and rubbed at his eyes. “Car crash.” He coughed. “How long—” “‘bout a day.”
“God…” Ron groaned.
He finally processed it. He wasn’t in a hospital, he was in a tent of some kind. He could hear birds tweeting. Could smell the outdoors, and light filtered in through the fabric sides of the shelter.
“Why were you walkin’ out there? All alone.”
Ron shrugged. “I don’t…where am I?”
The girl smiled. She looked sweet. “Fellowship of the Shrouded Veil.”
Ron frowned. “That some kinda Catholic thing?”
“No. We’re not… Catholic.”
The flaps of the tent parted and in stepped a man dressed in dark red and black robes. He was bald with a small bit of facial hair.
He was holding a book bound in leather. Ron assumed it was a bible, but the blond girl said they weren’t catholic.
Whatever. His head was still throbbing, and he felt sort of like death.
“Thank you, Beth.” The man said kindly. The girl beamed.
“Ron, this is Father Gabriel.”
He chuckled and waved her off. “Please. Just Gabriel.”
He got close enough to reach his hand out. Ron took it and gave his hand a shake.
“What’s your name?” Gabriel asked.
“Ron.”
“Do you have a last name?”
“Unfortunately.”
Ron didn’t mention his last name. He didn’t want to, and they didn’t need to know.
Ron stood up. He stumbled and Beth grabbed his arm to keep him steady. “I really just wanna go home.” He said.
“Of course. But, you’re not stable. Not yet. You’re still recovering. Stay here until you’re recovered,” Gabriel offered. “We won’t charge you. We have food and shelter. Beth is quite a gifted doctor in training.”
Ron saw something off with it. How wide Gabriel was smiling. How soft Beth’s grip was.
The robes—Beth’s were white with very prominent black stitching. She had a hood, as well. Hers seemed more like a cloak in contrast to Gabriel’s—the name of the place in itself was off-putting.
What the hell was a Shrouded Veil, and why did it need a fellowship?
The very fact he was in a tent and not some kind of building was weird.
But, he was broke. He wouldn’t have been able to afford any kind of medical care anyway.
“What’s the catch?” Ron asked.
Gabriel chuckled. “I can’t blame you for being skeptical. I would be, too. Everyone is. It’s human nature. All we ask for is some kind of work while you’re here. Nothing excruciating, especially not in your condition, just perhaps help set the table before dinner, round up the clothes that need to be washed.”
Ron swallowed.
Everything in his being screamed that this was wrong. Wrong and weird.
Something his mother would warn him about, and he would see on some true-crime documentary.
At the same time, the way Gabriel rocked back and forth on his heels and twitched nervously brought some kind of comfort.
He clearly wasn’t a confident person. Not at all.
Despite his better judgment, Ron reached his hand forward once more, and Gabriel took it eagerly.
His palm was sweaty this time. Clammy. Ron grimaced and pulled away, wiping his own palm on his jeans.
“Good. Uh… Beth, would you?”
She nodded. “C’mon. Let’s go get you some water.”
“Yeah. That’d be nice.”
Beth led Ron out of the tent.
The sun burned into his eyes.
What he was met with when they left the medical tent was…beautiful scenery, actually.
Lush green grass. Flowers sprouting up from every corner. Willow trees surround the area. He could hear a stream coming from somewhere.
There was a statue in the middle of it all with a pit in front of it. A pit that was full of ash. A fire pit.
The statue was stone with moss weaving in and out of the cracks. It was a hunched-over, hooded figure, holding a lantern.
The lantern was actually lit. It didn’t impress Ron much, given that the sun was already so bright, and the lantern seemed to barely provide any kind of illumination.
There were pens of animals closer to the edge of everything. Sheep. Pigs. Cows. Chickens.
There was a garden, too. The only thing he recognized were tomato plants.
The most interesting thing to Ron, however, was immediately to his left. A large, wooden church painted maroon. It was tall, and there was the image of the hooded figure painted on the doors.
Ron whistled. It was an impressive building.
“You like it?” Beth asked.
“You guys build this?”
“No. It was here long before I was here. I think Father Gabriel knows who made it, but he never told us. That’s where we need to go, anyway, c’mon.”
She led Carl to the doors of the church and pushed them open. The inside was bare. No pews. Just an altar with a baptism behind it, and the hooded figure painted onto the wall. This time, it had its arms open and wasn’t hunched. In fact, one white eye could be seen from within the darkness of the hood.
There were two doors on either side of the altar. Beth led him through the door on the right.
The office he was shown had bookshelves on all the walls besides one. The one that wasn’t a bookshelf was a large window. Ron squinted through it and saw a person in the same robes as Beth. They had brown hair.
They were sitting on the grass, sifting through a basket of tomatoes.
Ron assumed they were determining the bad ones from the good ones.
“Here,” Beth said. Ron looked over and saw her holding a bottle of water out to him.
He snatched it from her hand and cracked it open.
He downed over half of it before he had to stop.
The water felt nice on his throat.
Ron hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. He pointed to the person outside. “What’s with the robes?”
“Oh, that’s Carl. She’s another disciple.” Beth explained. “It’s just the uniform. Not for like…the people who aren’t disciples, but it is for us.”
Ron wanted to ask more questions, but he didn’t.
“I’ll show ‘round. Show you your tent. Let you recover.”
“Peachy keen,” Ron mumbled.
His head still throbbed as Beth guided him outside. Most of the tour, Ron didn’t hear anything.
He was focused on the feeling of the condensation running down his fingers and how bright the sun was.
It scorched his eyes.
At some point during the tour, he realized he wasn’t wearing shoes.
His feet were bare against the grass.
“Where are my boots?” He was pretty sure he’d asked Beth, but he couldn’t remember if she’d given him an answer.
The only part of the tour he was aware of was when she took him behind the church to meet Carl.
“Carl.”
She looked up from the pile of tomatoes.
“This is Ron.”
Carl stood up and stuck her hand forward.
Three handshakes in one day.
“It’s nice to meet you.” She said and smiled.
Her eyes were this incredible blue color and all Ron could do was nod.
She looked at him a little funny but didn’t press him to talk, just dropped her hand to the side.
“This is one of the things you can do here to help while you get better, sorting out some of the garden crops like Carl’s doin’.”
“Garden crops?”
Beth hummed. “Yeah. We have a field not too far from here with wheat and larger things like that, but tomatoes, some beans, all that kinda stuff we keep here. Just for convenience.”
Ron nodded along.
Carl sat back down and kept doing what she was doing.
Beth took him now to an area with a bunch of tents set up in a circle.
She opened the flap to an unoccupied one. There was a sleeping bag on the ground, a copy of the same book Gabriel had been holding, and folded clothes.
The tent was tall enough that Ron only sort of had to hunch over in it, and Beth could stand to her full height.
“Get some rest,” Beth suggested. “You’ll hear the bell when it’s time for dinner. We eat in the church.”
“Wasn’t I supposed—” “Not today. Just rest today.”
Ron shrugged. Beth left him to his own devices, and Ron fell onto the sleeping bag.
He wondered if anyone had found his car.
He had swerved off the road and slammed right into a tree. There was smoke, fire, all of it.
Broken glass, blown airbags, someone had to have found it.
He wondered if anyone had found Sam—Ron shook his head violently.
If his mom were here, she would tell him there was “No use torturing himself.” but he had to think about it, right?
He crashed that car and he walked.
Walked straight into a forest during a huge storm and nearly died instead of calling for help.
Ron sat up and put his head in his hands.
What the hell was he doing?
He bit at his thumbnail. It was too long.
He ripped off the top part of it. It didn’t feel right.
Ron fished around in his pants pockets, trying to find it, but it wasn’t there.
Shit. Did he lose it? Did they take it?
He bit down on the inside of his cheek. It wasn’t hard enough originally, so he tried again, ground his teeth into the soft flesh until it crunched and split open.
Blood flooded into his mouth and his cheek ached. Stung.
“Oh god…” Ron groaned. He reached into his mouth. His fingers came back bloody.
He pulled his hand back into his sleeve and used the cuff of his sleeve to try and soak up the blood.
It didn’t do the best job.
Some of it drizzled down onto the material of his sleeping bag.
He kept his sleeve there until he felt like it would stop.
No new blood.
His mouth still tasted metallic and horrible.
Maybe that hadn’t been his brightest idea.
Ron reached over and grabbed one of the water bottles. Blood still on his hand smeared across the bottle with the condensation.
He opened that bottle in favor of drinking the rest of the water in the already open bottle Beth had given him. He took a long drink of it and swirled the water around his mouth.
He couldn’t bring himself to swallow, though.
He spit out the water, and it landed in the grass.
Ron took another drink. This one didn’t taste as metallic. Not as twangy. He could swallow.
Yet, it still felt like razor blades down his throat.
That was the only way he could bring to describe it. Razor blades going down his throat. Cutting up and scarring his insides while he willingly swallowed them down, knowing full well it would kill him.
Ron gently tossed the bottle across the area of the tent and fell onto his back.
He stared upward at nothing.
His cheek throbbed, and he kept swiping his tongue against it.
Even though it stung.
Ron liked the raw fleshy feeling it brought about. The texture felt good on his tongue, even if it hurt to do so.
Ron never heard the bell for dinner go off. He just continued to lay there on his back.
A voice broke through his thoughts, though, thank God.
“Ron? It’s Carl.”
He scrambled upward and opened his tent.
Carl was there with a plate and a baby. Plate in one hand, baby in the other. “You didn’t show up for dinner. Gabriel asked me to bring you this. Are you okay?”
“Uh…yeah, sorry just…fell asleep.”
“You must be a deep sleeper. Swear, there’s no way I could sleep through that bell.”
Ron nodded, then realized he should probably take the plate. “Uh…come on in.”
Carl looked confused for a moment but shrugged.
She stepped into his tent and sat down with him. Ron took the plate of food graciously.
There was mostly fruit and vegetables, but also some carefully cut pieces of grilled chicken.
A fork, no knife.
Ron picked up the fork and started to stab pieces of food onto it.
The baby in Carl’s lap was babbling happily and reaching up to try and mess with her hair.
“She yours?” Ron asked.
Carl nodded. “She’s my sister.”
Ron looked down and realized he’d already eaten most of the chicken. He hadn’t even felt hungry.
“What’s her name?”
Carl smiled. It was such a warm smile, no wonder the baby was giggling along with her.
“Judith,” Carl answered.
“Pretty name.”
“Thanks.”
There were strawberries on the plate. Ron set the fork down and picked one of the strawberries up.
When he bit into it, some of the juice spilled down his chin, and Ron’s eyes widened. “Cover her ears.”
Carl raised an eyebrow, but she placed her hands over Judith’s ears.
“Holy shit these are the sweetest strawberries I’ve ever tasted.”
Carl chuckled. “Yeah…we all like our fruit sweet. Can I uncover her ears?”
Ron nodded and ate the rest of the strawberries. “How do you guys get them like that?”
“Just…a little love. That’s all.”
Ron ran out of strawberries and moved on to carrots.
He felt like a toddler, eating the way he was, but it was fine.
Judith started to cry, loudly. Carl stood up with her and cradled her close to herself.
She couldn’t have been more than a month old, at least that was Ron’s guess.
“She’s tired. I’ve gotta get her to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning, Ron. Oh, and when you’re done with that, there’s the kitchen in the church. It’s the door that’s not Gabriel’s office.”
Ron didn’t have time to say thank you before Carl took off with Judith.
Whatever. Ron remembered how his mom was with Sam when he was born, she was always running around. He wondered how she managed, sometimes.
He looked down at the plate. It was black glass.
Upon further inspection, Ron found that a small part of it was wiggling on the side.
Ron took two fingers—one on top of it one underneath—and wrestled with it. The piece broke free.
It was small, no more than four inches long, but it would do.
Ron looked around and saw the leather book. He picked it up and placed the piece of plate under it.
The only thing left on the plate was an orange.
He picked it up to peel it, but it was moldy.
Ron frowned and laid back onto his sleeping bag.
He would bring the plate to the kitchen in the morning.