(no subject)

[symphony-muted.insanejournal.com]

Who: Iwan David and Bridget
What: trying to explain
When: Saturday afternoon (Originally posted by David)
Where: Bridget's place in NJ



David walked slowly along the corridor to their- Bridget's- bedroom. He was not looking forward to having to explain all of this in a way that she would understand and believe. He didn't want to hurt her.

When he reached the door, he knocked gently and opened it. "It's only me," he said, giving her a smile. "Hi." He felt like he was meeting her again for the first time, only this time he was a whole person, and he knew himself. Still, he stood in the doorway a little awkwardly, waiting to be invited in closer.

She wouldn't know he was back to normal. How could she hope to understand?

Bridget grinned at him when he opened the door, and she waved him over. "Hi there," she said with a smile. "Did you have a good talk? Your brothers seem really nice, Iwa- David. Gosh, sorry! That might take me a while to get right!"

David stepped into the room and went over to sit by her. "My brothers call me Dewi. You can too, if you like. I know it's strange." He took her hand gently in both of his, folding his fingers around it to keep it safe within his grasp. "Bridget, I remember everything. I know who I am." He ran his thumb over the back of her hand, and glanced up at her.

Bridget's mouth opened a little and she stared at him in wonder. "Dewi," she said, trying it out. She rose and moved over to him. "Dewi, that's wonderful! Seeing your brothers brought it back to you?!"

"In a way." David nodded. He hesitated, wondering where to begin. "I did live in New York. I remember leaving for a trip, but on my way I was attacked and mugged. One of the guys stabbed me by accident and I fell off the bridge. I guess they panicked and ran, because next I remember is waking up in hospital."

"Oh, Dewi, that's horrible!" Bridget said, wringing her hands to think of him attacked and mugged. "You poor thing. Come here," she said, extending her hand to him.

David took it, feeling rather detached from the event. He hadn't remembered it for so long, and now it didn't hold any danger to him. "There's something else. You deserve to know. I am Christian, and I take it very seriously. I-" He exhaled, slightly uncomfortable. "You know how we joked that- well, I was. I swore an oath of chastity and worship."

Bridget widened her eyes, but she didn't drop his hand. As a lapsed Catholic, she understood the religion, even if she didn't follow it very closely anymore. "Oh. Oh. Oh god...I'm sorry," she said, suddenly flustered and feeling rather like a slut.

"It's not your fault! It's not! I didn't know either, it's not anybody's fault. It just happened. I wouldn't take it back even if I could," he said quickly, squeezing her hand. He didn't realise that was what he felt until he said it. "I just have to figure out what to do now. I have certain obligations and duties to my faith... Oh dash it all, Bridget. I know it sounds mental, and it's really too much for anyone to understand, but you have to know the truth. I'm a Saint. I am Dewi Sant." He looked her in the eye, absolutely serious, bracing himself for her response.

Bridget did drop his hand then, and her eyes widened even further. Oh god, he had hit his head again. Or maybe this had been lurking in the shadows the entire time. Maybe he had been insane before and he had forgotten, but now it was back...

Bridget backed away from him, raising her hands up a little. "O..okay..."

David sighed and ran his hand over his forehead. "My brothers healed me. They are Saint George and Saint Patrick," he said, his voice flat. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He didn't try to go after her or pull her back in. "That's why the garden grows so fast, that's why there are so many birds in the garden, that's why eating meat makes me sick, and I'm such a lightweight when I drink. Which is another thing I can't do any more." He rested his elbows on his knees and covered his face with his hands.

Bridget just stared at him as he sat in front of her, looking dejected.

"You...your brothers are Saint George and Saint Patrick and you're Saint David?" she asked, edging towards the phone. This was breaking her heart. She wanted Iwan back. If only the damn FBI hadn't shown up here-

"David, the garden grows because I use fertiliser and the birds are around because they like the plants." The rest didn't prove anything either. "I...I just have to make a call, okay?" To the hospital. To get him a CAT scan.

"Please- Bridget, wait," David said. "Just let me show you, okay? Just give me a chance to prove it? I won't stop you calling the hospital but I won't wait for them to get here. I don't want to be a prisoner again in the figurative, the literal, or the medical." He closed his eyes and took a calming breath, sending up a silent prayer for help. It had been too long since he'd last expended any energy like this. He didn't share Patrick's vast reserves.

"Oh Heavenly Father." He clasped his hands together in an attitude of prayer, letting the heavenly light fill him for the first time in decades. It was incredibly strengthening. There were reserves his brothers had give him there too. To Bridget, he seemed to exude warmth and serenity, his body giving off a glow that made him difficult to look directly at, and it seemed like the raised voices of a church choir in a Welsh valley were just out of earshot.

Bridget looked away from him, the glow too bright to handle. More than anything, all of a sudden, she was overwhelmed with the desire to be home in Wales. Her heart ached for it now, and when she looked back at him, she had tears in her eyes.

She sniffed deeply and she managed to whisper, "...am...am I losing my mind?"

"No, oh no. Our Father loves us all, for all our sins." David felt deeply calm, and reassured by the intensity of the experience. He let the light diffuse, and sighed when the last of it was hidden away one more. He got up and went to Bridget, and reached out to take her hands in his. "I am so sorry. I don't want to hurt you. I can do nothing but plead for your forgiveness for involving you in this. I love you." Tears stood out in his own eyes too, overwhelmed as he was by the love he felt for God and for Bridget. There had never been a second place so close before.

Bridget pulled her hands out of his, using them to wipe at her eyes. "Iwan, you can't just- You can't just come up here and-" Bridget shook her head, so flustered that she called him the name she had given him. "How is this even possible!? You're dead! And you're telling me I just met Saint Patrick and Saint George?! In my living room! They're dead too, you're all dead! Am I dead? Is that what happened? Did I die and now I'm in some strange limbo? Oh god, am I in Hell?!"

David felt deeply saddened that Bridget was so distressed. He kissed her on the forehead, blessing her to try and give her some calm. "No. We're both on Earth. I will ask them to go if it upsets you, and I'll go too. I don't want to cause you any pain."

At the suggestion that he leave, Bridget's hand shot out and curled around his wrist. "Don't go," she whispered. She had always felt so at ease around him and maybe that feeling of serenity was for some insane reason, like saints were real and among them and he was one.

"Please just...I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you just have to understand how crazy this sounds. But I don't want you to go, David. Are...are you going to leave me now?" Surely a saint, if that was truly what he was, wouldn't be bothered with a vet nurse like her.

She was breaking his heart. His conflicting emotions and principles tortured him. "I won't go. You don't have to apologise to me. I have dropped this on you and it isn't fair, but I thought it was worse to lie, when you have been so important to me. I know it's crazy." It was perhaps better not to drop the word 'immortal' into the conversation just yet.

Bridget sniffed again, staring at him and finally going to kneel in front of him. "I thought maybe your brothers would tell you you were married or you had twelve kids. Not...not this. I assumed if anything took you away from me, it would only be someone else. Not God."

"No, please don't, please get up, I'm no better than you," David said, trying to stop her kneeling. Bridget's pain was difficult to watch, but he had to be here. "I'm so so sorry." But he didn't deny her words.

Bridget didn't get up. Instead she leaned her head against his knees wearily. "It's not your fault," she whispered. "I love you. David, Iwan...whomever. I love you. Do you still love me?"

"Of course I do. I do." Since she wouldn't get up, he knelt down, and wrapped his arms around her, wanting to both comfort her and hold her close. "I don't know what to do. I've never loved anyone like I love you."

Bridget leaned against him, glad for the comfort now. "Then we'll figure it out together," she said, her voice suddenly sure. The rest of this was too much, but that was the one thing she knew. They could figure this out together, surely. "We've gotten through everything else."

David nodded. "Yes. We can work something out." He hadn't expected this all to happen, kneeling on the floor of their bedroom like this. "I don't want there to be secrets between us. I want to be honest, completely."

Bridget leaned back, her back flush against the end of their bed. She turned to him slightly, her legs drawn up to her chest then.

Questions. She could ask him questions. It would give her something to focus on. "Your brothers...they...are they good people? What are they like?"

"Oh yes. They are good. George is brave and protective, and funny! He has an excellent sense of humour. And Patrick, he is very dear to me. He's incredibly compassionate. He has a stupid adorable dog called Downpatrick- but you saw the photos of the animals. There are more... Andrew is clever, but he keeps to himself quite a lot. I think some of the Scottish coming through there." David tried to laugh at the joke, but it was a little weak. "Agatha was a martyr, she's stronger than she looks." He hesitated a moment before mentioning John, not because he was ashamed of his brother, but because Bridget would come to the same conclusions George and Patrick did, that he should be perfectly fine with being in a relationship.

"George is married to Sebastian, and Patrick is involved with John, er, the Baptist. It sounds ridiculous telling this to an outsider, like some sort of absurd fantasy." David shrugged.

There were other saints in relationships then? She hardly thought twice about the saints being together knowing she had slept with one herself. "They sound wonderful," Bridget said sadly. "You can't lose touch with them, I...I know how bad that feels. Were you happy, David? Before me?"

David thought for a moment before answering that. "Content, perhaps, is a better way of looking at it. Things had a routine and I followed them and I was content with that. I was conflicted too, especially over Patrick's relationship..." He waved a hand to dismiss that old argument. "That's why I was traveling. I was going on a pilgrimage to find myself again. I barely made it out of New York."

"So you...you've never been with anyone?" Bridget asked, feeling ridiculous. "Ever? How...how is that possible?" Quickly, so he wouldn't feel she was making fun of him, she went on. "I don't mean I think it's bad, I just...erm- I mean, you must have been lonely...?"

"I chose the path I walk. Others used to follow it too, but times changed. It's lonely, at times," he conceded, nodding. "But I have my family, my congregation. I can hear their prayers, if I chose to. It reminds me what I'm doing is right."

And she wasn't right.

Bridget set her jaw as she watched him, her hands wrapped around her knees. "How old are you?" she asked quietly.

David worried at the stump of his little finger with the other hand as he tried to think of a way to soften the blow. "I was canonised in 1120, so I have lived like this for 891 years. I can't remember exactly when I was born, but it was around 542, and I was over 100 when I died, so in total I guess it's around 995 years old. I only really count from canonisation though. It has been... long." The full weight of his years seemed to sit on his shoulders all of a sudden, and he sighed the last word tiredly. "That's a long time to be stuck in your ways, you know," he added quietly.

Bridget had listened, unable to imagine even living the hundred years of his first life, let alone nearly nine hundred years like this. "I can't imagine," she whispered. "I must seem like...like such a silly girl." She took his hand then, watching him worry at it. He fingers graced where a pinky had once been. "Can I ask how you lost this finger? Is it too painful to tell?"

"No, that was recent, actually. I... sacrificed it, to keep Patrick safe. I could have lost worse." David shook his head. "You're not silly. I was naive. I didn't understand." He raised his other hand to lift Bridget's chin. "I have nothing but respect and admiration and love for you, Bridget," he said, and kissed her lips gently.

Bridget closed her eyes as he kissed her, that same longing for Wales rising in her heart again. He was reassuring even when she was panicked and confused and that was pretty incredible.

Bridget reached out to cup his face in her hands, leaning towards him as she did so. "You sacrificed your finger to keep your brother safe. I respect and admire that too. Do you want to go back to New York then?"

"Yes. I need time to adjust. I have to work out what I should do." He didn't want to leave her though. He wanted to hold her close and have her become part of him. But those weren't pious thoughts and he'd have to work hard to school himself back to the ways he'd stood by for so long.

Bridget nodded, even though tears welled up in her eyes again as she did so. "Okay," she whispered, not liking the thought of being alone again. "That's...that's fine. I understand. I could come to New York, Dewi. I used to live there."

"I couldn't ask you to leave behind everything you have here," David said. "Not for me. I just need a little time."

Bridget clenched her teeth and she looked at him sternly. "It wouldn't just be for you," she said. "I'll give you time, David. But if I came to New York, it wouldn't be just about you."

David shut his mouth, a little taken aback. It wasn't often that Saint David was accused of thinking too much of himself.

"I just don't want to rush you," he said a little lamely.

"I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't willing to go," Bridget said honestly. "I was content here in my little life too, you know. But I met you, and now I know how much better it can be. And I realise I was hiding. I was hiding from things so far in the past they shouldn't keep me from having what I want now. So you are not rushing me into anything, David. You made me realise I don't want to be content, I want to be happy."

He couldn't think of anything to say to that, but he wouldn't forget her words. This was the first true test of their relationship, if only he realised it.

"Thank you for being so forgiving. This is a bigger change than I'd ever thought I'd have to deal with."

"Yeah, you're not the only one there," Bridget said, though she didn't say it unkindly.