swerved | (no subject)

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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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"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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