One-Way Road

• fandom: MAFIA III
• oneshot (two-shots)
• 2900 words
• PRE-SLASH
• Lincoln Clay/John Donovan (implied), Lincoln Clay/OFC (minor, past), Lincoln Clay & John Donovan, Lincoln Clay & Father James Ballard
• Lincoln/John only hinted at, implied.
• break-up, missing scene, friendship, gen or pre-slash, implied relationships, religious guilt, moral dilemma

“Lincoln made it out to California and worked at the shipyards for a few years. Met a woman, seemed like he was going to get married. But then, then it all came apart. Don’t know why.”

Father James knows why. He wishes he didn’t.

-----

1. The Ultimatum

He was halfway out the door.

“You can’t fucking do this. Linc, I love you. But if you go out of that door, if you leave, it’s over. All of it. This ring? This house? This… us, all of it, gone. You’ll never see me again.”

Lincoln turned around and slammed the door shut. She let out a breath. That was close. She could have lost him, just like that, after everything they’ve been through. The door was shut, but the murder was still in Lincoln’s eyes, and the bag still over his shoulder. She never asked, but she wasn’t stupid. She could connect the dots. She knew who he was, who he had been. He kept watching her, quiet, fuming, breathing hard. She wasn’t scared for herself. He would never touch her. And yet, her heart was hammering in her chest. “I’m sorry.” She was. “Real sorry. Lincoln. Talk to me. You know I don’t… I mean well. I just…” She was stammering, and it was going nowhere, and he should be the one apologizing for even thinking about leaving her behind. 

But he was not apologizing, and he sure as fuck wasn’t about to start.

“So I learn that my friend has been wounded,” he began, low and dark, and she shuddered at the tone, taking a step back, “and I get emotionally manipulated by a woman I wanted to marry?” 

“Wanted?” she breathed. “You would leave all this behind for a–“ She nearly choked on her anger. “You can’t go back!” she screamed, reaching the end of her patience. “The moment you show your murderous face in that city again, you are as good as dead!” She didn’t give a fuck that she wasn’t supposed to know, she had to kick around to make him see some sense.

Lincoln frowned. “He–“

“He nothin’,” she snarled. “I am your woman. We live here, we can have family and a future. You left the past behind. You told me so.” 

Lincoln seemed to be taken aback. He had said that, and she dared him to deny it. “And with the past, the man who ensured that I would have a future to speak of, you mean. You don’t seem to understand what actually happened,” he tried again, and it was the show of so-called patience, that patronizing but gentle tone that sent her over the edge. 

“You got your special friend shot, I understand perfectly,” she spat, coldly, half enjoying, half hating the way he flinched at her words. Oh God, he was going to go. What else was she supposed to do? How to act all kind and loving and understanding after learning that she meant so little?

“I owe him more than you can ever imagine,” he replied. As if that was any kind of a fucking answer. The war was over. For him, anyway. The hell in New Bordeaux was over, now she was supposed to be Lincoln’s priority, his world, his everything. She was supposed to be. She wanted to be.

“You go back there, you never come back to me again,” she said, hurriedly, to have it off her chest, because that was it, wasn’t it? He wouldn’t be back. And not just because he could get killed. “What do you think will happen once you are there?” 

“I find him,” he replied, tone held at bay. Speaking to her as if she were fucking twelve. As if she didn’t know what she was talking about. 

“And then go and find those fuckers who did it to him, yeah?” she laughed, it was a wet and ugly sound, and he shrugged – a mute ‘of course, and?’ of all things. He was the one who didn’t understand. “And then you go after them, and there will be more, and you won’t have enough, and there’ll be bloodshed, and there will be cops, and there will be consequences. You already did the impossible when you left. You will throw all that away if you go back. He–” She choked up again, not on anger but guilt, because she knew the wounded man, she knew his handwriting and his awful, purposely tasteless postcards (ain’t nobody that tasteless for real), she saw the way Lincoln’s whole face fucking melted when he got one, how he cradled them and hid them from her cleaning wraths, how he grinned at those stupid remarks at the back of the postcards. How she smiled, too, when she read the congratulations on their announcement. The man seemed to know everything, and he always went the extra mile to reach out, and she often wondered… she wondered. 

Lincoln never smiled as gently at her. He would smile, of course, he would touch, he would kiss, he would hug and make love and talk to her and laugh with her, but she felt that there would be something more if she weren’t… her.

“I am your soon-to-be wife,” she tried again. “If you don’t see this… if you don’t realize that I should… we two should be your priority, then it’s as good as over between us. You aren’t visiting a friend in a fucking hospital, Lincoln.” With fucking flowers and grapes, just wish the guy a swift recovery and get him a colorful balloon. He would make them all pay. “I know it. You know it. Everyone in that cursed city will know it once you show up.” She would have gone with him to the fucking hospital. She would have gone and bought the man flowers and oranges. She would have gone and kissed him on his cheeks. She didn’t know him, but she liked him.

She had seen the way Lincoln stiffened at the news. Everything was fine before the call. And after, it all fell apart like her fragile homemade burgers. He’d been so shocked, and she watched him as she stood in the kitchen, looking after their dinner so it wouldn’t burn before he came back from the phone call. Instead of coming back to her and taking over, instead of smiling apologetically, instead of telling her the news of his friend getting hurt, he stood there by the wall and stared at nothing. She could see even from behind how his jaw tensed, how his whole body took a fighter’s stance, and she had known she was losing him every second that passed them by.

“Father James will take care of him,” she whispered now, the last resort. He chuckled. It wasn’t a happy sound. She bristled. “What? He already is!”

“Father won’t do what needs to be done,” he snapped. “He was the one who decided to keep me in the dark about this. Marshall was the one who called.”

Well, the Father apparently knew as well as she did that once Lincoln learned about this, all hell would break loose. Fucking Marshall, whoever the fuck that was.

“What needs to be done. Cause another bloodbath, you mean.” And she knew, she had been told many times that she could never understand the men’s bonds, especially not if they came back from the war together, and she tried real hard to be understanding and gentle, but this was simply… this was making her wonder again, and again. “If you stay, he can recover, and come to us. I will welcome him. I will take care of him. I will help. But if you go–”

This was a fucking ultimatum. She had been told to never give them, not if she wasn’t sure that the man would pick her. And she wasn’t sure in the slightest. 

No. She was very sure. 

So she didn’t flinch when Lincoln turned away from her and walked out of their house. Her house, she supposed. 

2. The Infinite Loop

“I had him on my mercy, and I wondered… if that was my chance to redeem myself. For being quiet, for standing by while Lincoln brought chaos upon the city. I wondered until the devil himself stopped me.”

He met a pair of blue eyes – and it was ridiculous, how angelic the man could look, how supposedly clean, while having his soul rot and blacken. Blonde hair was matted with blood and dirt. The light blue shirt was ragged and dirty and bloodied. 

He’d been a good man as far as he sat by Lincoln’s bedside and kept him company. As long as he smoked and was quiet and lost in thoughts. The moment Lincoln woke up, the moment the plans started, John Donovan became the devil. Or maybe he just showed his true colors. And Father James hated how Lincoln never quite hesitated, how he leaned into the advice, the touches, and how the man dug his way deep under Lincoln’s skin. This was so much more dangerous than manipulation could ever be. Genuine fondness. Lincoln cared, he cared hard. 

Giorgi’s betrayal wouldn’t have hurt as much, Father James supposed, if Lincoln hadn’t loved him, hadn’t considered him a friend. 

He also knew that if Lincoln was ever about to learn what James had a chance to do, or not do, it would break him once again. 

The camera waited, as it always did. “I won’t lie to you – the first thing that came to my mind when I saw him there, bleeding, was to finish him off. Somehow it looked as if God gave me these tests, and I kept failing. Dragging Lincoln out of that fire was a good deed, you would think. You know what that brought upon the city. And dragging Donovan out of the streets could turn out the same. Worse. Or better. It was the look in his eyes that made me make the final decision. There was…” The priest took another drag of smoke, and he seemed distant suddenly, as if re-living the scene, seeing it right there in front of him. “This sardonic smile he gave me, the one I would call a devil’s, even. He seemed to know exactly what I was thinking. He expected me to do it. To finish him off. With that look, he dared me to do it, and I thought – this was yet another test. To ask a man of God to kill him. And would it be wrong?”

He smiled, a small and bitter thing that barely lifted the corners of his mouth.

“Over and over, I seemed to be the only thing that could have stopped it all. Helping Lincoln wasn’t a secret. Only John Donovan knew, though. Nobody came to ask. I’d have never gone and said anything on my own. But I do like to think that if anyone had come to me, anyone at all, I would have told them everything they would have needed to know. This was a chance. For what, I didn’t know. Or maybe I do. Because with Lincoln, I saw a boy I took care of, I saw a boy I’d been raising for the better part of his life. I wanted to save a boy I loved as my son. I had no idea what it would bring. But with Donovan, well… I knew. That made it all worse, somehow.”

He stubbed the cigarette.

“He was as weak as a kitten. I knew he wouldn’t even hold it against me if I tried to kill him. John Donovan had always been understanding to a fault. He wouldn’t hold his own death against those that marked him as an obstacle. Standing in someone’s way was a reason enough to get killed in his mind. Thinking of the greater good as well, or whatever he thought was good, anyway. As if someone called John simply didn’t exist. Someone called John who wanted to live, who was afraid to die. As if the man didn’t have his agenda, his dreams. As if he were a tin soldier that could be replaced at any time. I’ve met my fair share of brave men who begged for their lives when their time came. Donovan saw death and smiled. It was that smile that stopped me.”

His eyes were glassy with fever, and his breathing rattled too loud in his lungs. And again, as Father James squeezed the cloth dry and tapped the man’s face, he wondered whether Lincoln’s rage would’ve been less dangerous if he were to see Donovan surviving and clinging to life, or if he were simply told the news of his unfortunate passing. And although accidents happen all the time, however impossible or improbable, Father James knew that Lincoln wouldn’t believe a story about a car accident for a single second.

An unhappy chuckle, a huff of smoke. “The devil on Lincoln’s shoulder was in my guest room, and a single pillow could have ended it all.”

And he wondered and wondered, and the days passed them by, and he wondered even as Donovan could sit in the bed for a few minutes before collapsing again, and as he formed a few sentences, albeit incoherent and not always English. He wondered some more and the days kept passing by and he worked and he sat by the bed and watched the phone and waited and asked for signs and directions. 

Until he noticed a car in front of his house that had been parked there for a week, leaving only for a few hours at a time, until he noticed the curly-haired man staring him down across the street. Father James was ready to guard the man in his guest room with his own life, God knew why. The irony of his whole existence. 

Only if the man wanted Donovan dead, a priest would have been no obstacle. That man was a friend, and Father James knew what it was to feel fear once more. Not for himself, not for Donovan, but for the whole city. And those who thought they could attack John Donovan and get away with it. 

One day, he walked to the car. The curly-haired man behind the wheel gave him a strange look. “Is he still alive?” he asked.

“Don’t tell him,” Father blurted, and he really had no idea where he got the certainty that this man wasn’t here to inform whoever had tried to kill Donovan in the first place. “New Bordeaux will bleed if you do.” 

“New Bordeaux will bleed more if I don’t. Only a bit later,” the man replied as he flicked off the cigarette butt out the window. 

“I wanted… to let him die in sleep. To forget to clean the wound or to change the bandages, to not try to break the fever. But every time I had such a thought, I remembered the quiet moments we spent together while waiting for Lincoln to wake up. He was… not as sharp of a knife with only me around. Not as razor-like when there was nobody he needed to fool. He could hold a thoughtful conversation, and he could have waited for Lincoln to recuperate anywhere else. Yet he sat by his bed, he kept him company. Talked to him when I had nothing to say. Talked about everything and nothing, mostly nonsense Lincoln seemed to lean into. When Lincoln needed a friend and comfort, Donovan had provided him exactly that.”

Since then, Father James waited. He continued to care for his patient, he continued to work and take breaks to check on Donovan, and he continued to look out the windows and wonder.

The priest rubbed his forehead and took a pitiful look at his empty cup. “What am I supposed to tell you?  I– I couldn’t do it. All I could see was Lincoln’s heartbreak. And the fact that it hadn’t been Donovan’s fault, not entirely. He might have been the devil on Lincoln’s shoulder, but… if Lincoln woke up and decided to forget it all, to turn the other cheek, so to speak… Donovan wouldn’t have tried to talk him out of it. He had come prepared because he knew Lincoln better than I did.“

The other shoe dropped a few days later. Heavy combat boots, the sound of the door opening, no knocking, no ringing, no asking. Father James was in the kitchen, and he froze at the sound. Closing his eyes and mumbling a prayer, he turned around to face his visitor. 

Lincoln looked… awful. There were circles under his eyes and there was painful-looking tension in his jaw, and it was obvious he was holding back whatever he wanted to spit at Father James. He had seen it all in Lincoln’s eyes, he had seen it all and then some, and yet it made him take a step back. It had never been directed at him.

The stove was now painfully digging into his lower back. Lincoln didn’t move. He didn’t ask, either. So the Father broke down. “I was afraid, Lincoln,” he whispered. 

“Of what?” Lincoln asked, and there was a knowing tone to his question because he knew, but he wanted to make him say it. 

Father James tried to swallow, to take a deep breath, but his throat was too dry. “Just take him. Take him somewhere safe, care for him, nurse him back to health, and stay there. Nobody tried to hurt him again. There is no need for–” he snapped his mouth shut. “Please, once was enough.”

There was something feral about Lincoln’s smile now. “So I thought, Father. So I thought.”

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