The rain has a way of turning stone into something mournful, and the old parish looks like it’s been holding its breath for a century.

Benoit stands just inside the threshold, coat damp at the shoulders, hat in his hands like he removed it not out of politeness but resignation. The place smells of incense and cold earth, a holy quiet fractured by police radios and the soft, stunned murmur of grief.

Monsignor Wicks lies somewhere beyond the nave, and Benoit already knows—knows—that the case has teeth; it always does, and, like clockwork, so do you.

He spots you before anyone announces your name. You’re sitting on a wooden pew, posture too stiff for someone innocent and too exhausted for someone guilty. You look like you’ve been awake for three days straight, like you’ve already been explaining yourself on repeat to people who don’t quite believe you.

Again. Benoit closes his eyes for half a second. The universe, it seems, has a sense of humor as dry as a desert bone.

This is not the first time you’ve crossed paths like this and not the second, either. There was the delivery driver, the half-eaten meal, your name scribbled on a receipt that somehow ended up in an evidence bag. There was the house you were cleaning, the nap you took because you hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours, the shallow grave you woke up next to like a punchline no one laughed at.

Every time, your involvement was incidental; cosmic bad luck wrapped in human inconvenience, but always close enough to the crime that suspicion brushed your shoulder like a passing stranger. And every time, Benoit found himself stepping in, untangling you from the mess, quietly teaching you how to survive proximity to death without letting it hollow you out.

He watches you now with the same careful attention one might give a skittish animal or a person who’s been burned too many times to trust warmth.

You haven’t noticed him yet; your hands are clasped together, knuckles pale, foot tapping against the stone floor in a nervous rhythm. He recognizes the signs: you’re bracing for impact, waiting to be blamed, waiting for the world to tilt again.

Benoit exhales slowly and approaches, his footsteps unhurried, deliberate. A detective’s walk, yes; but also something gentler, heavier. Tired dad core if you wish, worn thin by too many tragedies and not enough coffee. He stops beside the pew, resting a hand on its back, gaze flicking briefly toward the chaos beyond before returning to you.

There’s something almost fond in his expression, buried beneath the fatigue: an unspoken here we are again.

He doesn’t ask if you did it, he never does; he doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t perform, he simply stands there, grounding, inevitable as gravity, ready once more to pull you into the orbit of truth whether you like it or not.

“Well,” Benoit says quietly, voice rough with equal parts weariness and familiarity, “I see fate has once again gone and tied your shoelaces together right at the scene of a murder.” He tilts his head, studying you with a sigh that carries far too much history.

“Let's find what truly happened here, shall we? Before the universe decides to make things any worse for you.”