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marcus keane

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Her head is spinning, and Kat doesn't think it's from whatever painkillers are in the IV she's been hooked up to, though they probably aren't helping on that front. There's just too much to take in, and she barely knows where to start with any of it. What happened to her mother, the months she's apparently missed, the impossible nature of what she's been told about this place, even if she has no choice but to believe it — that alone would be enough to have anyone thrown. Add to that having shown up in this state, straight from a demon inhabiting her mother's body torturing the rest of her family, now having words like comminuted patellar fracture and unstable, the prospect of surgery hanging overhead and the knowledge that she really will never dance again this time, impossible to get out of her head, and it's no wonder she can barely begin to process any of it.

As if it wasn't enough that her life already got turned so upside down repeatedly over the last few months. Her accident alone — and not an accident after all, she reminds herself — would have been bad enough. This, now, is nothing short of an unpleasant reminder of it, the white hospital walls and the too-clean chemical smell lingering in the air bringing her back to that night. At least the pain in her knee has dulled some, though she doesn't expect that to be the case for long. There's no easy recovery from something like this. She doesn't need a doctor's careful explanation to know that.

And yet, when she thinks back on it, remembers her father's screams and the expression Casey wore, how she'd seemed the night before, reading about the paramedics who were killed, she knows she would do the same thing all over again if she had to. Better her knee than her father's life. Better that she do it herself than give Casey one more burden to bear.

Mostly, there hasn't been much for her to do but wait, as is so often the case in hospitals. On a whim, she reaches for the remote for the TV, starting to flip through channels. Chances are, she won't know any of the programs, being apparently in another fucking world and all, but she might as well have some background noise. She's finally settled on some trashy soap opera when she sees the light change, hears a noise at the doorway, and turns toward it, not expecting to see someone she knows instead of another doctor or nurse.

"Father Marcus," she says, smiling faintly. She owes him one hell of an apology and she knows it, but right now, she'll take whatever familiarity she can get. "I guess you heard the news, huh?"

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It's a habit he doubts he'll be able to get her or her mother to quit and Marcus smiles when Kat addresses him and he steps into the room, taking in the sight of her in the hospital bed, the IV they have her hooked up to. Angela has told him most of what he needs to know, all the things that had happened to her family while he was following Brother Simon on his quest to find the Pope and he knows Tomas had saved Angela, had saved them all, but it's still good to see Kat here, whole and alive.

There's guilt, too, of course. He wishes he'd done a better job, that he hadn't been fooled by the demon, but he had been so focused on Casey that he hadn't seen the most obvious thing. By the time he had, it had been too late. Mother Bernadette had been dead and Marcus had needed to go where Simon was leading him, but he wishes he could have done more for Angela. For Kat.

"Katherine," he says, crossing to stand by her bed. "It's good to see you, though I wish the circumstances were better."

In spite of everything, Kat can't help the laugh she lets out at that, the sound weak, though the accompanying smile is a surprisingly genuine one. "Yeah, I have to say, that makes two of us," she replies, wry. "The whole smashed kneecap thing... not really my idea of fun." At least other than her own physical state, it's mostly good news she's received since she got here, though she wishes like hell that the rest of her family were, too. They only just got Casey back. In a way, they only just got her father back, too, when he's come such a long way over the past few weeks, so much more himself now than he was when all of this started. She's not sure there ever would have been a normal again for any of them, but if what her mother has told her is true, and Kat does trust that it is, they might have come close to that.

God, she misses normal. She'd take even a broken facsimile of normal, all of them with their burdens to bear and their recoveries to make, if she could.

Instead, she has a city she's never heard of and an injury that may never fully go back to normal. She has her mother, but little else. It makes it that much easier to appreciate Father Marcus's presence, even if she doubts he could blame her for wishing she could have Casey or her father instead. "On the bright side, at least I won't set off the metal detectors at the airport when they finish putting screws in my knee. Nowhere to fly, and all."

Edited 2017-07-29 04:57 (UTC)

This family astonishes him at times, but then, the families who deal with possession usually do. For Marcus, it's more than a job, it's his calling, the only thing he's ever known is what's right for him, but for these families, it's something out of a horror movie. There aren't many people who come into this world and go about their daily lives preparing for something like this to happen to them and yet they repeatedly surprise him with their strength and their ability to pull through.

And here she is, her knee destroyed, probably far worse than the initial accident could have done, and she's making jokes about it. He's glad Angela is here already, that Kat has her mother, because he thinks he'd be a poor excuse for comfort.

"Small mercies, I suppose," he agrees with a faint smile. "I suppose your mother has explained as much as she can about this place and how it works." There's really only so much information anyone can give her, but Angela would have done her best.

"I can't say I understand any of it, but she has," Kat confirms, nodding. "Though it probably doesn't help that they're giving me the good stuff." She gestures up absently towards the IV, whatever painkiller they're providing just enough for her to feel the equivalent of slightly buzzed, like she would after a glass or two of champagne but without the pleasant part. There's far too much weighing on her for that. There would have been even if she hadn't suddenly and inexplicably found herself in what is, apparently, an entirely different world than the one she was just in.

It's insane, is what it is. The longer she's here, though, the easier it is to believe that it's actually happening, however little sense that makes.

"She's — she's really her, right?" she blurts out before she can help herself. With everything that's happened since she found herself here, she's had to trust that that's the case, but there's still no way for her to be sure. If anyone would know, though, it's him. "Just, it's kind of weird to go from having someone possessed by a demon torturing your family to her being normal again, just like that."

"It's a valid concern," Marcus says. If she hadn't asked, he would have been surprised and it speaks to her logical mind that she's allowed herself to question her mother's current state instead of just being overly relieved she seems to be herself and overlooking any possibility of danger. With something as powerful as the thing that had been inside first Casey and then Angela, it's best to be cautious. To question.

"The first thing I did when I saw her is fling holy water at her," he admits with a small smile. "And I spent the following few weeks watching her very carefully, but in all honesty, I do believe she's really Angela Rance."

If nothing else, the day she'd caught him kissing Neil on the street would have indicated whether or not the demon was still there. An opportunity like that would have been too much to pass up as a chance to torture him and Angela had been more uncomfortable than anything else.

She'd expected as much, or at least believed as much, but Kat still lets out an unsteady, relieved breath at Marcus's confirmation. If he thinks it's the case, then she trusts him — a far cry from how she'd felt listening to his first attempted exorcism of her sister, what she'd taken to be torture, but a lot has changed since then, and she knows perfectly well now that no psychiatrist could have solved Casey's problems. She'd been tricked, manipulated, and now she's been maimed on the same demon's behalf, her jaw set when her knee throbs.

"I'll take your word for it, then," she says, head ducking in a nod. "I thought so. I — The way she looked when I told her what happened, how it happened, she seemed... That didn't seem like the demon. But I was wrong before, so I figured I ought to be sure."

It isn't quite an apology — that, she'll have to work up to — but it is, at least, an acknowledgment of how epically she'd fucked up that night, how naïve she'd been. Granted, she doesn't think it's at all unreasonable to have been skeptical of the idea of demonic possession, but even so, if she hadn't called the police, maybe they would have succeeded that night. Maybe those paramedics wouldn't have been killed, not to mention the grandmother she hadn't known she had. Maybe all of this would have been over a hell of a lot sooner.

Even without her having said it, Marcus can sense the blame in those words and he knows he isn't always the most comforting person in the world, but he shakes his head and puts his hand on Kat's shoulder. He knows how easy it is to blame yourself for something beyond your control and she had done what she believed was best for Casey's safety, which is the only thing Marcus had ever asked of her.

The possession isn't her fault, the accident isn't her fault, none of those deaths are her fault, but he knows from experience those things are often easier said than believed.

"You're not wrong," he says, giving her shoulder as gentle a squeeze as possible, not wanting to hurt her at all. After such an experience, even on the medications, she must feel wound tight, her muscles sore and sensitive. "We're alright here. Alright as we can be, I suppose, in a city that has us trapped and unable to go anywhere."

A city that still has demons, as far as he can tell. Vampires and werewolves and fictional men. That's information that can wait for a little while, though, he'd rather she deal with her injury first.

"And with a shattered kneecap," Kat adds, though she's smiling in spite of everything as she does. It's about all she can ask for, really, all she's wanted for a long time, just for her family to be alright. Of course, there's only half of them here, and there isn't much she wouldn't do to have her father and Casey here with them, but if she got here, maybe they will, too. Maybe they'll be able to have a chance to be together and safe, however long it might take to put the pieces of their lives back together. Not being able to go anywhere wouldn't bother her as much if that were the case. Then again, she's not sure that part has really sunk in yet. There's been so much to take in already, and she's barely been able to wrap her head around it, and the very prospect seems impossible.

Later, maybe, when she isn't confined to a hospital bed, it will seem more significant. For now, it's one thing that doesn't seem entirely unbearable.

"So how long have you been here?" she asks. "My mother said six months, which is... It's crazy. It should be crazy."

"A little longer than that for me, but not much," he says, letting go of her shoulder and settling himself into the chair near her bed. He's in no rush to get anywhere else and given her current state, given everything she's just come from, he has to imagine Kat needs the company right now. Angela can't possibly be with her all day and night and while he knows he'll eventually be asked to leave, not being family, he can stay for awhile yet.

"I know it all sounds impossible," he continues. "And nothing at all I can say will make it any easier to believe, but I can assure you it will come with time. Bit by bit, the strangest things about this place won't see quite so odd any longer."

And it may not be that much of a comfort, but it's the most honest one he can give her and that feels important to him. That he be honest.

"I'm kind of sensing a running theme here," Kat says, wry, though she offers him a small smile as he takes a seat beside her, more grateful for the implicit promise of company than she wants to say. Hospitals are miserable, though, and she already spent more time in one than she ever wanted to after the crash. To be doing so again now, under circumstances arguably even worse, is nothing she's the least bit pleased about, the intermittent cycle of doctors and nurses with their reminders of just how fucked she is not exactly proving to be helpful, save for the fact that she knows she'd be a lot worse off without them. "I mean, what, two weeks ago, I thought possession was impossible, and now I've seen it in both my sister and my mother."

"I'm so sorry about that, Katherine," he says, looking down at his hands for a moment. There is still charcoal under his nails and in the creases of his knuckles from the drawing he'd been doing earlier and he scrubs at one knuckle thoughtlessly, simply for the task itself.

"There was so much going on at the time, but I should have been more careful. Your mother never should have left that room as she was." He knows Tomas was able to help her and he's very grateful for that, even if he might not say it in so many words if Tomas were here, but he still feels the need to apologize to them all for having missed it in the first place.

"I don't think anyone could have known," Kat says, shaking her head. "We didn't, either. Not at first. Casey figured it out." In retrospect, even she thinks it should have been so obvious, but there'd been so much going on and they'd all been under so much stress. It's strange to think now that it was only a couple of days ago. It seems like so much longer. She isn't sure if that's just because of the drugs, leaving her just fuzzy enough to feel a little distant, or if it's because a change this drastic makes her feel much further removed from home than that.

Probably it's a little of both.

"At least apparently we all got out. I think I might've lost my mind if I'd shown up here and had no way of knowing that."

"It wasn't easy," Marcus agrees with a faint, humourless smile. It hadn't been all that long until Angela had been able to tell him otherwise, but for several weeks he'd wondered and worried about all the them, including himself. Maybe he was alive here in Darrow, but he thought he ought to be dead back in Chicago with the way he was bleeding. It had helped, having Angela tell him things had worked out in the end.

There was trauma, but there always is with possession, and at least everyone was safe.

"I do wish it could have been different, though," he says. "If I'd been more careful you and your mother might not have been injured like this." Certainly Kat's injury he could have prevented, though perhaps not Angela's.

"I think," Kat says slowly, then pauses to take a breath, "that there are things we all could have done differently." It is, perhaps, something of an exaggeration — after all, it isn't as if Casey had any control over what was going on, and their father was only just coming back to himself while all this shit was going on — but there's enough truth to it that it doesn't feel too out of place to say. If nothing else, they had no way of knowing what would wind up happening. Hindsight is always 20-20, and there's no sense in dwelling on what ifs, especially when there are so many of them. She learned that the hard way after the car crash that killed Julia.

The demon was responsible for that, too.

"But nothing to do about it here, right?"

"Not much we're able to do about it at this point no matter where we are," he says with a faint smile. Of course they're going to have regrets, it's inevitable after such a traumatic experience, but Marcus has been doing it for a very long time and he still feels as if he ought to have known better or tried harder or seen something the others couldn't have possibly seen. He'll blame himself for Gabriel until the day he dies, just as he'll blame himself for Angela and Kat being injured.

He can't take it back, but he can carry the guilt.

"Though Darrow does lend a sort of helplessness that other places don't," he agrees. "Something about being stuck in one place, I think."

Kat hums thoughtfully by way of agreement, glancing briefly towards the window. It's all she's seen of this place, save for the glimpse she got when the paramedics came to take her out of her mother's apartment and down to the ambulance. Maybe all of this would seem less strange, if only slightly so, if she were more familiar with her surroundings. As it is, that unfamiliarity doesn't help any of this feel more real. It's almost hard to believe there is anything outside of here. It wouldn't be surprising, at least, considering how bizarre and impossible all the rest of this has been.

"Yeah, tell me about it," she says, wry, nodding towards the bed she's in. "Being stuck really doesn't help on that front."

"And no one's allowed to push you around in a wheelchair yet?" he asks, glancing toward the door briefly, wondering what might happen if he were to try. He wouldn't take her far, just outside and around a little, letting her see bits of the city where she's found herself and he's not worried about breaking the rules so much as he is Kat's knee. If she can't move because it's bad for her injury, he wouldn't press it.

If she's stuck, though, just because there's no one available in the hospital to give her a hand, he'd be willing to help.

"Or are they just leaving you to your own devices because they haven't the staff to spare? Should I ask them if I can take you out?"

"I think they want to wait until after they've put my kneecap back together," Kat says, making a face as she speaks, "and put it in a real cast. As soon as it's set, though, I'm definitely taking you up on that." Were she not currently stuck in a hospital bed, she knows full well that that might be a different story. She'd barely left her bedroom when she came home after Julia died, never mind the house, and already she's looking forward to shutting herself up in the apartment that's been assigned to her and dealing with all of this as little as possible. Being in the hospital, though, one like any other, with a chemical smell and everything white or pastel, is stifling, not to mention uncomfortably familiar. Just to get a little fresh air would make a world of difference. "I already thought I'd had enough of this to last a lifetime."

"That does make sense, but I was hoping they might have done something that meant we could move you at least a little," Marcus says. From what Tomas had told him of Kat, back when Angela thought she might be the one possessed, she had spent a lot of time locked away in her bedroom after her last accident. Marcus knows he'll be seen as a bit of a pain in the ass, but when the time comes, he plans on making sure she does as little of that as possible.

She'll be so annoyed by having to hang out with a fifty year old former priest that he's sure she'll find new friends just to get him off her back.

"Would you like me to bring you anything? Better food?" he asks. "A decent cup of coffee? I'm sure I could find you some interesting books."

"Any of the above?" Kat asks with a tired but genuine smile. "I hate hospital food. I was kind of hoping to be done with all of that." Just as she couldn't have foreseen the car crash that she initially thought would be the end of her career, she could never have guessed that something like this would happen, either. A few weeks ago, she thought possession was impossible and that Casey needed a psychiatrist. Now she's very much convinced otherwise. "At least there are bad soap operas no matter what dimension you're in. Nice and mind-numbing."

"Have you already discovered Space Hospital then?" he asks, looking amused. "I guess being in the hospital does help in that regard, I was watching it on my first day, too."

Although he imagines he'd been in considerably less pain than Kat and on drugs that weren't even a fraction of the strength. More than anything, the doctors had been concerned he might hurt himself, because they hadn't believed him for a second when he insisted the injury to his arm hadn't been self-inflicted. Not that he blames them, really, it had looked very much like he'd tried to kill himself.

"Not much else to do," Kat says, head tilting to the side in confirmation. "It's kind of gloriously awful. So at least that's something." It's entertaining, if nothing else, and she's going to need a lot of that in the weeks and months to come, doubting that she'll do much in the way of going out once she's been released from the hospital. In the meantime, she'll have a few days here with even less to do, anyway. Watching mind-numbing television doesn't seem like the worst way to spend them. "Is that, like, a bit thing here, then?"

"Huge," Marcus answers with a laugh. "And being in a place like this, where no one can leave, it means all the stars are locals. I've seen some of these poor people surrounded while trying to eat a bloody bagel."

He knows some would say that's simply the price they pay for fame and fortune, or whatever the Darrow equivalent might be, but he disagrees that people somehow deserve to have their privacy taken away from them in exchange for being successful at their careers.

"Oh, God, I can only imagine," Kat says, rolling her eyes, though she sounds more amused than anything else. As far as what she's heard about this place so far, that barely registers in terms of weirdness, but it's still a little odd. She's used to people flocking around sets when things film in Chicago, would expect as much, but when this place is all there is, of course an actor on a fucking soap opera would be the equivalent of an A-list celebrity. "Those poor people."

For her part, she can't say she cares. It's just more entertaining to watch than to stare into space, constantly hung up on the pain in her knee, however dulled, and just what that means.

She nearly asks if there's a dance company here, what that's like, but she recognizes the impulse for the masochism it is. It isn't as if it will do her much good either way.

"I mean, yeah, it's funny, but really?"

"I admit, I haven't kept up with the stories since I got out of the hospital, but it did make those few days go by faster than they might have otherwise," he says. "This place is odd in that regard. In most regards, but I think about media consumption and what it was like at home and even for someone like me, who was... well, a little busy doing other things, it's not as if you could avoid it entirely."

He'd known what movies were coming out, he would hear popular music on the radio, he could hum along to some of those songs, but it's not the same in Darrow It's as if nothing has managed to cross over except for them and sometimes a few of their personal belongings.

"Here, though, it's all foreign," he says. "I haven't the slightest idea who these pop stars are or what the movies are based on."

"God, it's like living in a bubble, isn't it?" Kat asks, though really, there's nothing to compare to on that front. She's seen things that ought to be impossible over this past while, but at least they'd all taken place within a world that she was already familiar with. As far as things that don't make sense go, she would definitely rank alternate universe city over demonic possession, which is really saying something. Maybe she can't deny either anymore, having seen both firsthand, but she's always going to have a little bit of a hard time accepting such strange things. "Some weird little... science fiction bubble."

"It is," he says. "And a lot of the time it's a pain in the ass."

Marcus has never felt settled here, but then, he's never felt particularly settled anywhere and that had never been a problem before Darrow. Until he'd found himself here, he'd had the sort of job that took up most of his time and his focus and the entire world had been more or less at his fingertips. The Church had sent him all over and when there was no work for him, they had mostly left him alone and so he'd been able to choose whatever he wanted. While that had usually been research of some kind, it had still been his choice, his life.

And now the Church has been taken from him. The world. He's never sure what to do any longer.

"But it's not all terrible," he adds, not wanting Kat to feel as if there's no future for her here. "There are some fascinating people who live here."

"More fascinating than the people who are from here?" Kat asks with a wry quirk of her mouth, clearly expecting that to be the case. As far as she's concerned, at least, that's more weird than fascinating, something she would really rather not think about. It's impossible to imagine, knowing nothing outside of this, having people from other, foreign places arriving without any notice. Maybe it wouldn't be as strange as showing up here in itself, but she's had a rather significant dose of weird lately, and that still seems weirder than she can wrap her head around. "'Cause that's kind of a trip. How do they even do anything? Where do they think everything came from?"

Now is, all things considered, probably not the best time for questions verging on existential, but it's hard to help. She's going to have to start getting used to all of this at some point; it might as well be now.

Marcus thinks of the church when she asks, he thinks of the priests who work here, the ones who don't seem to understand what it's like to preach to a different sort of people than the ones who are in Darrow. They struggle with the Catholics who come from somewhere else because they don't understand them and Marcus is of the mind they never will. It's not his place. It'll never be his place.

Beyond that, he also doesn't particularly care whether or not their sermons land.

"It's not that hard to be willfully blind," he answers. "But I think you already know that, we see it all the time in day to day life. In a place like this, it just seems to have become more pronounced. For some... well, for many, I suppose, it's easier not to question, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Kat says, half to herself, nodding in agreement. "Like you said, you see it all the time under normal circumstances, right?" It's hard not to hear willfully blind and think of her parents, the edge in her mother's voice when she'd referred to Julia as her friend, when that hadn't been what the two of them were. She thinks, deep down, her mother probably knows that, too, though Kat has ever outright come out to her family. There'd be no reason for her to use that tone otherwise. It's just one more thing she doesn't want to have to deal with.

She hasn't managed to, isn't trying to, think beyond her injury just yet, but there's every chance it will only be a matter of time before her mother has to confront the truth about that head on.

"People... They don't see things they don't want to see. Or don't let themselves acknowledge things they don't want to acknowledge, anyway."

"Isn't it easier to be oblivious?" he asks with a faint smile. That has almost always been his experience, people who find ease in pretending they don't know what's going on. Even the families of people he's helping often disappear into themselves and pretend they don't know what's going on in order to save their sanity and he doesn't always blame them, but it can be frustrating, especially when he needs their help.

"If you only see what you want to, you never have to confront your own biases or your tendency toward thinking a certain way when it might not be the best." He smiles then, wider this time and shrugs. "I say this as if I'm not as guilty of it as the next person."

"I did spend a long time insisting that Casey only needed a psychiatrist," Kat says, a little wry, her head ducking in a slight nod. "And then there's my parents..." She trails off then, unsure what, if anything, needs to be said on that subject. He must have heard what the demon said about her, using Casey to do so, but given everything happening at the time, she doesn't know how much, if any, attention was paid to the statement.

It was wrong, anyway. It wasn't curiosity, and Julia was so much more than that to her. Without prompting, though, she won't breathe a word of that.

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