The splash of water was the only sound in the room, though it did echo off of the sparsely decorated walls. Plain white linoleum. Plain fixtures. A gently used fuzzy rug by the bathtub was one of his few indulgences for the space. The rectory rooms were not large, but they were large enough, if rather formal once outside the bathroom.

Elliot turned off the tap, wiggling his toes in the rug as he reached for the towel to dry his face off with. He hung the towel back up--perfectly neatly, of course--and walked from his bathroom to the bedroom he slept in most of the time.

Even his bedroom was perfectly neat. Crisp corners on a bed that had been remade at four-thirty in the morning. Four-thirty gave him enough time to have time for himself, to clean and reflect, before having to go to the church for eight a.m. service. It also gave him plenty of time to wake himself up and pretend to be cognizant after not having gone to bed until midnight.

He was not early to bed, even if he was early to rise. Mondays were especially bad, having stayed Sunday evening at the house Diryas, Zebulon, and Tobias shared. This time had been extra especially bad, with disturbing dreams that kept him up much of the four-and-a-half hours he'd allotted himself for actual sleep.

The red light on his corded phone was blinking, and Elliot let the message play while he made himself buttered toast for breakfast.

"Father Isaac," his lips twitched upward as he lifted his toast to them. His confirmation name never had grown on him. The nun's voice was gravelly with age--Sister Gail, one of the oldest nuns at the church. One of the warmest toward him when he'd left seminary and been appointed there by the diocese. He hadn't had many friends, but she'd been happy to fuss over the new baby priest.

He had missed the rest of her message. Elliot muttered something unpriestly under his breath and restarted his answering machine.

"Father Isaac, Father Joseph has volunteered to take over today's services to get a feel for our parishioners." How kind of him. "He asked that you email him your notes at your earliest convenience." Elliot raised an eyebrow. Two hours before service started was cutting it kind of close. Why hadn't he asked yesterday? Better get his computer booted up-- "He was advised to ask you on Sunday next time. Have a good day, Father." Click.

Elliot chuckled as his computer came back up and he shot the requested sermon notes off toward their guest. "Have a good day, Sister," murmured he to the empty air as he leaned back in his chair. That gave him an unexpected amount of free time for his day. He supposed he could go check in on the older nuns, make sure they were able to get to their prayers.

'Monsters crawling from everywhere, rushing toward them, them rushing to get out of the way before they were eaten--or worse--' Elliot shook himself out of it, clearing his throat and glancing around to his empty apartment as if he expected someone to be there.

The only thing with him was the weight of his own conscience.

He muttered something unpriestly again and got to his feet to do the dishes sitting in the sink, humming along to the music he'd asked his virtual assistant to play for him. Mellow orchestrals, of course. It wouldn't do to have the other priests hear club music through the walls.

What was he going to do the next time he received word of a mission he couldn't avoid? How long was he going to be able to pretend to be busy, unreachable, or otherwise occupied? How long until he had to duck the inevitable questions from the others when he had to bow out of a 'sleepover'? He didn't know what he'd say.

He just knew, viscerally, that he didn't want them involved.

And shouldn't that be enough of a sign for himself?

Elliot glanced back to his answering machine. He wondered if Sister Gail was busy that day, if she'd mind him coming over to socialize.

Maybe he needed to go confession.

Maybe confession would be a bad idea.

Maybe all of it was a bad idea. Elliot rested his forehead in his hand, mulling things over. They'd said they were saving the world, but... at what point did he listen to his nagging doubts?

At what point did he see someone lose half of their face and not die and decide, 'you know, maybe this isn't for me'?

He could still vaguely imagine the feeling of the flowers blooming along his limbs. Snapdragons. White poppies. Geraniums. Was there significance to those flowers, specifically? Probably not, right? It wouldn't make any sense, even though they were very different types of flowers but still flowers Elliot was passingly familiar with thanks to Diryas...

But how would the magic youma scale have known that? He rubbed absently at the unmarred section of his side where he'd thought a scale had once lodged itself.

He couldn't ask Diryas. Diryas would want to know why Elliot was asking about flowers, which would only be fair, and Elliot wasn't exactly sure what he'd tell Diryas that would pass muster. Would 'just wondering' work? Elliot wasn't exactly the flowery type. If Diryas was suspicious, Zebulon would be, too, and it would only be a matter of time before Tobias was involved--

Elliot took a breath that was shakier than he expected.

He wasn't the superstitious type.

And yet...

And yet he was actively avoiding powering up as Ransomite, lest he be told to meet a quota of energy draining. The orders to pull starseeds were especially noxious. He knew very well what the starseeds were supposed to represent, and how could he rationalize the act?

Could he rationalize it under the banner of 'for the greater good'? He'd rationalized away quite a bit of his life into different sections, after all, never to cross. Elliot would spend the night with three other men, then go to Sunday service as Father Isaac, and this caused him no real stress. Could he do the same here, if it were for the greater good?

Or was his gut trying to tell him something he was steadfastly ignoring?