100moods/Grateful

ER/Luka Kovac 046 Grateful
Title: Faith
Fandom: ER
Characters: Luka Kovac
Prompt: Grateful
Word Count: 557
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Contains Spoilers to the Bishop Stewart arc.
Summary: Luka finds his thoughts turning to a friend gone too soon.

As the mass ended Luka rose and made his way to the small alcove to light candles for his family.  The very fact that he was here said much for how far he had come and to the man who had made it all possible.  With the Bishop entering his thoughts Luka found himself lighting a candle for him as well.  How did he begin to thank the man for giving him back his faith?

As he knelt in prayer before the flickering candles it was hard for him not to think of all the years he'd been without his faith.  He'd missed the comfort he found within it.  When Danijela and the children had been killed he'd needed someone to blame and God had seemed a natural choice.  All of his life he had believed in God's protection yet at the time he was needed most he had failed them.  It hadn't been easy walking away from the Church.  For as long as he could remember the Church had held an important place in his life, in his parent's lives, in Danijela's.  Maybe that was why it was so easy to lay blame there when he'd needed someone to take it.

Even as he knew he'd needed someone to accept blame, he knew too that there were too many other memories to be found within the walls of the church.  It was hard enough forcing himself to get up and go through each day, knowing they were gone, how could he possibly go back to the one place that meant so much to Danijela?  He'd tried once after the funerals, thought that he might find comfort in the familiar service but all he'd found was more pain. 

With the Church out of his life he'd felt lost, and maybe in a way that's what he felt he deserved.  His parents had begged him to return home, begged him to return to the comfort he would find within the Church, and instead he had fled. 

For 8 years he had been running away and it had taken a dying Bishop to finally make him stop.  He hadn't made it easy for the man, he'd used all the tricks that he'd developed over the years but the man had refused to give up, and in the end he had allowed him in. 

How do you begin to express how grateful you are to someone who is gone before you can tell them? There had been so many things he had wanted to say to the Bishop, but time was not on their side.  In a way he wondered if that hadn't been part of the man's plan, for with him gone he'd found himself returning to the man's Church and within those walls he'd finally begun to find some of the peace he'd been missing during the years he'd been away.

He'd found more of course, for within the walls of the Church he'd found that he felt closer to Danijela, Jasna, and Marko then he had at any time since they were gone.  Amidst these flickering candles he had found he could reconnect with all that he'd lost and he would always be grateful to the Bishop for guiding him back to that which he had walked away from all those years before.