Marie felt like a perfect sinner, coming home again. She'd been running all over hill and vale, through fog and forest, and back into the thicket of the city streets and city lights. A dramatic entrance was uncalled for as she once again entered the cathedral. Something about the gigantic building reminded her exactly how small she was in the universe. If God was watching and wanted to smite her down, this was his house, his playing field. She'd done right to her name, her honor, her da, right?

The boys were trying to get her to take over the family business, or the American branch. It was going to be a piece of cake, right? Basically running the show in the name of her brothers? Sure. Still, it seemed that Patrick was secure with the weight resting on her little freckled shoulders. She'd need a lot of help from her brothers, and she didn't want to end up like Da. Maybe it was impossible, maybe she was just givin' up the fight a bit too early.

Anyway, she was home, or at a second home, a leather-bound black Bible with silvery, cracked letters on the front that declared it as being the Holy Bible. A pale green rosary hung free around her neck, slapping against her shirt as she walked quickly between the pews like a woman on a mission. It bounced as she did with the long strides. She was dressed conservatively, modestly, in a way proper for a good day goin' to church, a funeral, or a dinner with the stuck up part of the family.

She wasn't very religious, but she did believe in God, and praying the Rosary was out of respect for Him. It was her appeal to the Big Man, being in this church on this day. The day after she'd returned to the USofA after a trip to see her brothers, she had to find some solace. They'd just told her that she had to take on a tremendous job, after all. Honor, family, God, and innocence. Patrick had his four pillars, she had hers. Marie, the bouncing little redhead with her hair back in a tight red bun with gleaming fly-aways, knelt before the altar of the not-too crowded church after Mass had died down, reciting the prayers of the Rosary as she'd been taught. First the Sign of the Cross and Apostle's Creed, then an Our Father, and then she got to the Hail Marys.

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death.

Hearing someone behind her, Marie looked up and behind her, a bit paranoid. Why did she need to be paranoid in a church? Was nowhere safe? Maybe just getting caught off guard caused her disquiet.

"Hello?"

'Why am I here?' seemed to be like a main theme in Ian's life.

He found himself asking himself that question constantly. Most of the time it was when he was wondering why he is still in the job that he took. Each day that went by seemed to just take another week and a half off of his life. He was constantly stressed out, hating the enviornment and almost everyone around him. Anyone who didn't piss him off was too decent to be able to stand him. That was one of the things that made him question his sanity slightly, constantly questioning what he's doing.

Another thing that made him utter that question to himself was him walking into a cathedral...a cathedral for crying out loud. Ian hadn't been to church in longer than he can remember and, hell, he wasn't even catholic. He was a lutheran, and lutherans as a rule found catholics to be certifiable wackos...not that he had really practiced his religion since he had communion all of those years ago.

Why was he here?

The funny thing about that question, is that he usually knew the answer, it just pained him to face the fact that he actually signed up for the shit he was in. His job, for example, was a family thing. He was the superintendant of the bulding that his father was. His father passed the job to him, he couldn't just give it up. He was an asshole, but he just couldn't bring himself to do that to his father. For everything that Ian was, he loved his family.

As for why he was in a catholic church, walking down the catholic aisle and sitting in one of the catholic pews...well he knew the answer to that, another thing he didn't wanna face, only this time it was for a different reason. His uncle was sick and it was getting worse...he didn't even know if he would ever see the man again.

His Uncle Thomas lived in upstate New York near his parents, and he got a letter from them the other day that he was in the hospital, and that it wasn't looking good. Ian sighed, leaning forward, resting his head against the pew in front of him, praying for the first time since he can remember. The one thing he would always remember about Uncle Thomas was that he was always very religious, he was catholic, he prayed to God and blieved in his word.

So the only thing he could think of to do was to come here, it made him feel somehow closer to his uncle, though he was so far away and fading fast. His eyes welled up with tears...was he crying? No fucking way was he crying.

"Hello?" He heard a voice say

He looked up, wiping the tears away from his eyes, looking around to see the origin of the voice. His eyes caught the girl who was sitting in the pew across the aisle from him. "Hi..." He said in a voice that was softer than usual.

Marie looked down at her Bible, a little bit insecurely to tell the truth. Being alone when she had such a huge and rowdy family was... different. Although now there was a person near her, she had no modicum of familiarity with him. Well, that was definitely going to change. Like her grandda, she couldn't stand meeting a stranger. There were no strangers for the little woman, even in the big city. At least her extended family was easier to keep up with in Cork.

At his quiet salutation, the short woman rose from her knees, brushing any invisible dirt off her stockings before she rose to the full height of just over five feet. Clutching her book of words that were supposedly divinely inspired in one hand, tucked up in the crook of her arm, she tilted her head and looked at the man curiously for a split second. After the miniature stare, the unlikely mafia princess, being groomed for full-blown boss station, cracked a smile.

From the look of him, the only way she was able to look down at him was because he was sitting on a pew. If he stood, he'd look like a giant in comparison to the intrepid young ball of fire, but it was no matter to Marie. For not the first time since she'd entered the church, she lamented her lack of a better presentation for church. Then again, who was she to care if the other churchgoers minded the scuffed boots that culminated her outfit in a rather unceremonious clash with the modest long black skirt and white collared blouse. In fact, it seemed she was giving him more scrutiny, but of a deeper sort.

His manner of speaking quietly made him seem slightly... ill-at-ease? Maybe the church just wasn't his element. Unlike the others she'd seen pass through, he didn't even possess a Bible, Rosary, or at first glance, even a cross necklace around his neck. Odd, maybe he was like a real life version of one of the movies in which a man down on his luck turns to God in a pinch. Who could blame him, after all. Was she doing the same thing?

Almost unlike herself, Marie gently and unassertively seated herself on the pew a few feet away from him, resting the black Holy Bible beside her on the seat and looking up at him innocently. After another moment of silence, she asked,

"So what brings you here?"

The words were quiet, but the near-empty cathedral made them echo almost surrealistically, as though the walls were asking the question as well.

Ian swivelled a little bit in his seat to get a better look at her. One of the first things that he noticed were her eyes, her eyes seemed to stand out. He wasn't usually the type to notice this sort of thing, but this case was different. Even more than the fact that they stand out...he felt different being here. He spoke softer, saw more, heard more and felt more, as thought the atmosphere itself was giving his senses a boost. It amazed him and freaked him out all at once.

His cold gray eyes followed her as she stood up and walked over to a pew that was closer to where he was sitting. Once again, something caught his eye and made him think a little bit. Though she was rather short, must be a good foot smaller than he was, she still carried herself in a way that would make her seem taller, grander. He could tell that she had great confidence in herself. It was a switch from the people who prowled around the halls of his apartment, shoulders hunched over and not wanting to meet anyone's eye.

Somehow. even though she had walked over and sat closer to him and there were no other people around, he hadn't expected her to adress him, so he turned around once more. He was used to people avoiding them when they could. Not that he minded of course, most of the people who he had to deal with were the type of people he didn't want to deal with either, serving him just fine. It just made him assume that others would be the same.

Hearing the voice behin him, he turned towards her, resting his arm on the back of the pew to make himself a bit more comfortable. His eyes met hers breifly, wondering just how much he should tell...wondering how much she actually wanted to know. He let out a small sigh.

"I barely even know myself..." Ian said, his voice still rather quiet, lips curving into the smallest smile. He was still trying to keep himself from getting too emotional again. He always liked to think of himself as the type who didn't let anything bother him, the fact that he was crying scared him a little, especially crying in fron of this girl whom he didn't know. "My uncle...he's sick. I'm not even a religious man but he is." He explained. "It just..I dunno, seemed like the right thing to do." He said with a small shrug.

Woah. The waterworks had turned on, the tears were flowin', all over a simple question. One part of her mind, the part that reacted first and asked questions later when her brothers started to threaten her authority, remarked, Jaysus, what a pussy. Another part of her mind, which chastised previous part of her mind, tried to compose the outside to reflect a bit less hardened sarcasm at the display of pathos. Glad he can't read minds. That wouldn'a gone down well... think, think, what to say...

"Sorry t'hear it. Know I'd be angry if my uncles were sick, damned scared too. It's okay to feel sad."

Lord's fockin' name, I sound like Mr. Rogers.

Marie shrugged and looked back up at the man again. Either he was an overgrown emo masquerading as normal, 'in touch with his feminine side', or the illness of his uncle was really affecting him. After all, what would she do if one of her brothers got sick? I'd tell'em to suck it up... no, don't think like that. She dug for a moment in her ditch of compassion and pulled out a bit of the murky matter to offer up to the crying grown man. It didn't do to tell a crying stranger to cry a river, build a bridge, and get over it.

"So you're prayin'? Don't worry too much, God'll listen... I guess. Sometimes things just don't work out the way humans want, though. You can pray and pray all you want to sometimes and things just don't go right."

Most of her own uncles were either dead or estranged, or they'd be running the show instead. It wasn't as though her Da came from a small family. Mostly aunts still survived, though, and they didn't want part of the family business usually unless they could get on the sunnier side of it all. Da. She remembered when he died, but didn't cry about it. There was a wake, there was a funeral, there were many tears and much blood shed over the whole affair. Maybe living through her father Thom's death and swearing to kill all who stood against the family had hardened her beyond tears. After a fashion, she felt vaguely ashamed for being so rough and uncouth in her thoughts of him. At least it wasn't aloud.

"Don't worry, though... things'll come out alright. You're not tryin' to get God to raise the dead."

Ian turned away, not liking the way she was looking at him. It was obvious that she could see how emotional he was feeling and, once again he didn't like it. "Not scared, just...taken off gaurd is all." He said, raising a hand to run his fingers through his hair. He was going to say that he wasn't sad but he figured there was no point in trying to say that. He inhaled deeply, trying to compose himself a bit more than he was. As he exhaled be felt himself rid of the over emotions that was causing him to act so unlike himself, at least for the time being. He sat a bit taller, once again meeting her eyes.

"People say that all the time...he used to say it at any rate." He said, his voice a bit stronger now. "He would always tell me to go to God when things were tough, that he would help me through whatever was bothering me...I never did it though." He muttered with a small shrug, his eyes once again meeting hers. In a way he wanted to show her that he wasn't going to lose himself...not that he should really care much about what this girl thought of him, but still in his weakened state he felt a bit self concious.

"I never felt right going to God when things were tough." Ian explained. "I never went to him when things were going well, so it didn't seem quite right to go to him when I had a problem. I was never one to be a fair weather friend." He said with a small grin

"Somehow I don't think that praying to God will bring him through..." Ian said after a few seconds of silence. He was going to elaborate further, but then he stopped. There he was, telling all of this to her and she probably didn't even care that much, just wondering why he was opening up to her as if she knew him. "Whatever though...doesn't matter..." He muttered, ending the thought.

At least the tears stopped. For some reason, she had never really been one to like crying, or see it as an accepted thing. With five brothers and a mob family, maybe she'd just been desensitized. The last time she cried was three years ago, silently, at her Da's wake. He didn't seem to confident in his uncle making it out alive, and now he was a bit wary of her too, or so it looked. Am I that obvious?

"Y'know, no matter what they say, nobody has it figured out. Usually people tell you to go to God so you'll leave them alone. When my Da started pushin' up daisies, I was told to go to God, go to church, basically go the Hell away from them with my problems. I used to go to God for everything, to tell him every happy thing that I was thankful thing, every sad thing that I needed guidance with. That's back when I was a naive kid."

Marie lowered her voice almost conspiratorially and continued.

"Shh, don't tell these Catholics, but I don't believe in Church, or the Pope, or the other excess pomp and circumstance. Still believe in the Holy Trinity though, so they can feel warm an' fuzzy inside. Trust me, God don't mind if you come to him with your problems."

The little woman straightened up proudly in the pew and smiled. Maybe she could get it out of him what his uncle was going through. There was no way she was going to go all gushing Oprah or give him the third degree about his home life, but she'd like to help him. After all, who could save humans except for other humans? Jesus was human... to a point. Marie never saw the whole "the son of God" so much as "a son of God" but a damned good one. Still, she wouldn't bring that one up at family dinners with a bunch of Roman Catholics.

At least Ian seemed to be doing a bit better. Maybe, just maybe, she could do something to bring a smile back. It would be more than most of her family did for her when she had tough times, even though she would defend the honor of each and every third cousin twice removed and closer with her life. For some reason she got the image of one of her brothers saying 'A round'd cheer 'im up!' in her mind, and she almost laughed, but contained the brightness so that he wouldn't possibly be offended.

"So... what's wrong with 'im, if you don't mind me asking?"

"We were all pretty naive back then." Ian said, trying to think back to the time when he had been naive enough to actually believe in religion. "There are just so many things that we didn't understand..and we didn't know enough to realize that there doesn't have to be an easy explanaition for everything." He said with a small sigh. He used to wish that he still believed. He used to wish that he could put his faith and trust in something more powerful and wiser than himself. Now he knew that he didn't have that luxury, so there was no point in wishing for it. "Basically God was the simple solution to keeping you out of their hair." He concluded with a small laugh.

Ian couldn't help but let out a small laugh at that. This laugh ecoed throughout the church, making it sound rather eerie. He made a mental note to never laugh in a church anymore...maybe that was the idea, cathedrals weren't for happienes. They were for prayer and all that holy crap. "I don't really believe in that stuff either...well thats not saying much, because I don't believe at all. When I used to be into church and whatnot I didn't believe all of the stuff that they taught us. There are too many contradictions to take completely seriously."

He began to wonder slightly, however, just why she was being so pleasant to him all of a sudden. Not that she was particularity unpleasant before, but he sensed a small bit of scrutiny in her tone and in the way that she looked at him. Now that didn't seem to be the case, she seemed like she was trying to actually talk to him...possibly help? He couldn't think what had made her shift gears like that.

His past dealings with people tells him that, most of the time, when someone was being nice to you for no apparent reason, they do have their own angle. So when she asked him what was wrong his uncle, showed an actual interest in his situation, he was slightly wary as to why she wanted to know. He raised an eyebrow, once again wondering just what to tell her.

"He's just sick..." He said softly. He let out a small sigh, figuring there wouldn't be any harm in telling her what was ailing him. "He's got...lung cancer..."

"Well that sucks. At least it's easier to beat than a bullet to the head, right? There's hope, got medicines and stuff... and if all else fails, maybe he'll go quick and painless."

Oh God I'm the fockin' queen of decorum, ain' I? Maybe it wasn't the best thing to say... but since when did she think about the politically correct thing to do? Well there was that one time, back in the eleventh grade... Once again she forced a softening of her manner. It might have been easier if she'd grown up around womenfolk all her life instead of a bunch of rowdy boys. If she'd learned more about sewing than guns, maybe she would have turned out softer. Or institutionalized.

Marie smiled a little bit, gradually, more of a social expression than one of true happiness. If he were well versed in body language, reading the face, he would have been able to see by the lack of upper facial expression that it wasn't quite true. That was, until she looked around a moment at the stained glass. Something about it made her feel at home, even in a big dusty church. Churches had almost been a second home all her life, since the family was all there at Mass together every Sunday. More'n God, church meant family.

Whatever it was Ian was expecting here, he would find God more within himself than in the musty old books or the cold, hard statues. Churches, when bare, were places of repentance and rectification instead of warmth and familial love. It seemed God was out of his house when the people left, as though he'd gone a'visiting to a friend on high or somewhere off to the side. Maybe God was the people who believed... oh, that would have to go down in a composition book somewhere, to probably be forgotten and found later and wondered about how high said author had been at the time.

"Everyone has a point where they would believe in anything. I used to believe in pixies and faeries."

Marie laughed a little self-consciously, then grinned it off and sat up in that self-possessed posture, regarding him with her bright eyes. Would he retort with some silly belief of his as a kid or simply let it be and laugh with her/at her? Some people just needed a good laugh to will away fear, pain, sadness, and worry. Some needed mood stabilizers. Whichever Ian was, she was at least giving him the courtesy of a quick upper.

Ian wasn't really in the mood to reveal much more to her. He had bared somewhat as to what had been wrong, why he was at the church, but that had came at a rare point of weakness. He didn't trust people normally. Under any other circumstance he would have just told the girl that he didn't want to talk to anyone and, if she still persisted and it wasn't actually in a church, would have told her to fuck off to get the point across. Of course he had his moment of weakness and he could feel the scrutiny...or maybe he was just being paranoid. Either way he was more locked up and reserved even more than he usually was at that point.

He was listening to her, how she said that maybe it'll be quick and painless. At that point he raised an eyebrow. What he wanted to do was ask her what she was smoking and what planet she was from. Quick and painless? Had she ever heard of cancer before. Since when had any sort of cancer, let along lung cancer, been quick in painless. It was going to be slow, painful, and it would most likely get to the point where his uncle would barely be even recognizable to the rest of the world. Maybe it was because he was in church and he didn't want to be so much of an asshole. "Maybe..." Was what he muttered softly.

Ian was suddenly wishing he hadn't come here at all. All it had done was make him more upset, and get him feeling extra uncomfortable in front of a complete stranger. He let out a small sigh, he would have been better just staying at the office, working out a little bit and trying to grab a nap. Then later on he could drink himself stupid and maybe forget all of this shit was happening.

Coward's way out? You bet your ass. Did Ian care a lick? I think the answer to that would be obvious...

He was brought back to reality by the notion of her believing in pixies and fairies. For some reason that took him off gaurd. He couldn't explain it but she just didn't seem the type to do the pixies and fairies and that sort of thing. He shrugged it off. "Really now..." He said, his cold eyes meeting hers. He was wondering what he should say to that. Should he tell her something random about himself...well he tried that approach and it didn't really get anywhere. He decided to just stick with a small nod and a sigh, being as nondescript as possible.

The man seemed standoffish, even when she decided to make a fool out of herself to get some levity. Gotta be fockin' kiddin' me. Shows how much a waste that was. Impatiently, she bounced her Bible on her knee like a petulant child and looked up at Ian. This really was getting nowhere. She'd come here to pray, she'd prayed a bit, then this guy came and interrupted her after her Hail Mary. Now what?

Picking up on his first sigh and raising an eyebrow, Marie turned her body a little to give a more open expression for a moment. Then she turned away slightly, some of her back turned to him as she looked back over a shoulder, waiting to rise to leave. Not like he wants to be here anyway, an' I got other things to attend. Should she leave contact information? No, he was just some stranger, and he'd definitely misinterpret that. Gahd, don' wan' a man calling me and Pat thinking that I picked me up a strange man in a church.

Marie let the last eye contact between the two be coolly courteous and rose with her back to him. The little woman looked over her shoulder one last glance and nodded politely to him. Well, that had been an eventful return to the States. Just went to show how New Yorkers really were how she remembered them. A courtesy "hallo!" could get yer ass shanked if to the wrong person. So America hadn't changed at all even though her world as she knew it definitely had.

"Hope yer uncle feels better an' all that."

With that as her only oral warning, Marie stared to exit the church, the heels of the only shined up pair of feminine shoes clicking on the floor hollowly. Magpie kept her head set forward and eyes ahead, carrying herself as though she were a foot taller. She was never one to try to make herself inconspicuous, though she did discreetly tuck her Rosary under her blouse before she reached for the handles of the door, so large and intimidating in comparison to the little woman. When she pulled it open and exited, she checked her cell phone and noted a new voicemail from Pat. Finally, impatiently, she hailed a cab to catch a ride home.