Lovely Hues | Fillie AU

Chapter Seventeen

Growing up, Finn had always attended Catholic school which meant he was baptised, taught and confirmed in the faith. But that didn't mean that he was altogether enmeshed in the whole church scene. As a kid, he and his family rarely missed a Sunday mass but since becoming an adult, it's been a more sparse relationship.

The war obviously didn't allow him much time or opportunity to go and worship. Any church he came across was typically either in flames or serving as more of a hospital than a prayer center. Once in a while he'd run into a priest among the soldiers, offering last rites to the dying or blessings to the injured. Advice to those in better health. But he hadn't actually seen a whole real mass since he was about nineteen.

After returning from the war, he had attempted to sit through a full service, but once he saw Malcolm and Olivia and their kid walk in, he left through the side door and never looked back. His parents had suggested he just find another parish but they didn't fully understand that it wasn't just about his ex-wife. There was so much that he found he no longer connected with when it came to his faith.

To reconcile all of the death and hate and turmoil and destruction he'd seen with an all loving God. . .it just didn't sit right anymore. He couldn't make sense of it and going solely out of obligation seemed like it would be missing the point of church altogether. So he just stopped going.

But when Finn woke up the morning after his first official date with Millie, a date that had gone well for the most part but ended on a note that made him fear that there wouldn't be a second, he felt something calling him to go to mass again. Something like a gut feeling told him he should just go to church and not think about his worries for a bit. He hadn't been to this town's church before and maybe it was a good one. Not all of them were, he knew that, but he hadn't even given this one a chance yet. And maybe a little prayerful reflection was just what he needed to better understand what exactly went wrong last night.

There was a flyer in the lobby of the motel that held all of the information for the town's churches and he quickly found that St. Mary's had both a nine a.m. and eleven a.m. service. Checking his watch, he saw it was already nine-seventeen, so he'd have to go to the later mass.

Were his father here, he'd have been scolded for not making the most of his Sunday by attending the early one but this way he'd be able to get some breakfast first and not even have to worry about eating too close to receiving communion.

He never quite understood why, but eating an hour before communion was a no-no. So he walked back to his room and poured himself a nice bowl of cereal and made some coffee.

Somewhere between eating his cereal and reading the day's newspaper, time completely got away from Finn. He felt it was getting a bit late and when he looked down at the watch on his wrist, he jolted in his chair. He had just five minutes to get to church!

"Shit." he hissed, pulling his shoes on as fast as he could then grabbing his sport coat from the hanger on the back of the chair to throw on over his collared blue shirt.

He ran to where he remembered the church to be, all the while thinking that maybe he should invest in a bicycle, then got to the front steps just two minutes late.

Not bad, he thought, I've certainly been later in the past.

He took a moment to catch his breath and straighten himself out before walking up the stone steps to the big wooden doors and swinging one open, hoping that the entrance song would still be playing and that people wouldn't notice his late arrival. Sure enough, the last refrain of Christ the Lord is Risen Today was being sung, the Alleluia bit being drawn far longer than it seemed the music called for.