Beneath Our Disguises

Your Savior (Priest x Reader)-Part 2

(Part 2!!! Also, sorry, this is like really long, I got excited while writing it!)

"Order, order!"

The crowd screams and rants, fists in the air as you sit silently, watching the spectacle as you attempt to hold back tears again. The 13th woman cries openly on the stand, sobbing into her hands as her own father declares her death by fire, claiming it will burn the sin and demons from her soul.

The magistrate's daughter, who would have thought that after everyone that has been committed to this terrible fate, she would be next. She wasn't very pretty, but she was intelligent, a virgin just like the others. Unmarried and nearly 20 years old, poor Maggie, she was said to have been seen drawing strange symbols in the forest and communing with spirits.

But you know better, she was an artist, but of course, no woman could be an artist. She must be possessed, a witch, to be destroyed by fire just like the others. You just don't understand how they could possibly believe such folk tales, such terrible folk tales. This young woman can make beautiful things! But if you protest, you know, you will just be burned along side her.

Breathing slowly you try to calm yourself, watching as she is led past you in chains, her feet scabbed and bleeding from her walk across the coals a few days previous. If they had healed, she would not be burned, if only she had healed.

You clench your fists tightly, you can't let this happen, you can't let another woman die. What if you are next? What if you are seen reading? The fear grips you tightly at the thought, what a horrid world to live in where you shall be accused of witchcraft if you are merely caught with a book. You muse silently, walking out of the courthouse behind everyone else, your mind made up.

With night fallen, you slip past into the cell, wandering past the empty ones to gaze upon the poor girl curled up in the corner tightly, asleep.

"Maggie?" You whisper, your voice quiet so as not to catch attention. Of course, it isn't loud enough to wake her though and you call louder, "Margaret!"

She starts, terror in her eyes as she scoots back against the cell wall, eyes bleary and unadjusted to the dark as she blinks rapidly trying to find who had called her name. Her face breaks with relief upon seeing you and rushes to the bars, gripping them tightly.

"(Y/n)! What. .  You shouldn't be here! If you're caught. . "

"I had to see you Maggie, I'm so sorry, I can't believe this is happening!" You whisper urgently, unshed tears choking your voice as you try not to cry. You had cried so often for woman that you hadn't been able to help.

"I know, I shouldn't have been so stupid as to do that, if only I had been smart enough to just stay home, but I had to do something, I was going crazy locked up with that horrid man." She shudders, tears leaking from her eyes yet again. The glistening trails making tracks in dust, her ragged hair in knots and touched with straw, she looks a mess.

"I know, I can't believe your own father would sentence you to the fire." You murmur back, still in disbelief of the sentence, it was like he hadn't even be remorseful to do it, his wrinkled toad of a face full of only loathing as he watched his daughter dragged away in chains and ordered the pyre be prepared for the next morn.

"I can." Her voice is so full of despair that you can't help but take her frozen hand in your own, holding it tightly as a single tear escapes your wells.

"I brought you something, to help, it's not much, but I did what I could." You say, offering her a small vile from your shoulder slung bag with the other hand. "Drink it, before you are taken out of here in the morning, alright?"