Fic: Home for Christmas

[dolevalan]

Title: Home for Christmas
Fandom/original: original
Rating: G
A/N: rougen prompted me with "hanging by a moment." I honestly have no idea how this came out from that but... eh.



Despite the cold, it wasn't snowing in Chicago. Instead, the rain was coming down as evil, icy slush, running down the back of my neck and into the places my shoes weren't totally watertight. It was a miserable night to be out - a miserable night to be anywhere, really, but walking through the streets was probably the worst option.

I ducked into a church. It was a Thursday night, three days before Christmas, and the place was decorated but practically empty. The confessional was open, but I had nothing I wanted to share with a man of the cloth these days. At the rear of the sanctuary, above me, an organist was running through abbreviated versions of Christmas carols and hymns, taking his time on the hard parts and handwaving the easy ones.

I've never been especially religious; don't get many religious guys in my line of work. But hell, it's never done me any harm either. I paid a quarter to light a candle, figuring that, if nothing else, you could look at it as a fee for getting in out of the wet. I sat on the back pew, listening to a complicated arrangement of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" as I dried and thought through the case I was working.

Then my brother sat down beside me.

Except he didn't, since that was impossible. My kid brother Daniel Sloane was halfway across the world, killing Nazis and Japs for God and country. So whoever or whatever it was sitting next to me couldn't have been him.

In his defense, though, when he glanced at me, he looked just as shocked as I felt.

"...Art?" His voice was weak, a little scratchy and somehow far away, like a record. But it was him. I don't know how, but it was. He chuckled, brokenly, "Well, this wasn't quite what I was expecting..."

"Danny, what the hell are you doing here?" I looked at him closer, though he was sitting half in shadow. He looked lean, a little ragged, but mainly tired. Like he'd seen things no one should ever have to see, again and again. I reached to touch his arm, but he waved me off.

"Wells'll be back in a second. Look, Art..." He reached up and ran a hand over his hair, brushing loose a few melting snowflakes. "Arthur. I got shot. I'm sorry."

I could feel the blood draining out of my face, and I remember thinking It's just a hallucination. Keep it together, Sloane. "Well," I said gamely to the hallucination, "you'll have a heroic scar to show Kitty."

Danny groaned, and pressed a hand to his stomach. "Kitty... Christ." He cocked his head. "...is that... an organ?"

The organist had switched to "Silent Night." The arrangement was simple, but he was playing it at a normal speed even so.

"Yeah," I said, quietly. "We're in a church."

"I - I think I am too." He looked around, clearly seeing something else, or somewhere else. "It was, anyway, before it got blown up. Just like me." He laughed, and it turned into a cough.

"Danny - " I wasn't sure what to do for him. It must have showed, because he looked sympathetic, as if it was my guts had a slug in them.

"I wish you could see this window, Art. Walls all blown to hell, and the stained glass ain't even chipped." Another hard cough. "Tell Ma and Kitty I love 'em, okay?"

"Alright," I said, choked. What else was I going to do, refuse?

He looked right at me, his eyes meeting mine. "I'm glad you were here, big brother." He smiled a little, that heartbreaking smile that made so many girls crazy back in high school. "Merry Christmas." He leaned back, draping his arms along the pew, and began to sing, his melodic, low tenor blending with the organ.

"Christ the savior is born... Christ the savior is born..."

I closed my eyes, shaking at the simple sound of him singing a Christmas carol, despite his ruined voice.

When I looked back, he was gone. Just a slight wet spot of melted snow on the pew back and the scent of gunpowder lingering out of place among the incense and pine.