pushbackthedarkness | [powers plot

Marcus doesn't like this. Doesn't like any of it and yet there's not a lot he can do about it besides what he's doing now.

Matthias has given him Elsa's number, he'd told Marcus she has similar powers, that she'll be able to help, and Marcus doesn't really know what that means or how she's supposed to be expected to help him with this, but in the end he calls her all the same. It's dangerous, what he can do, and after a day of sitting alone in his apartment and causing snow storms to swirl around outside the window no matter what he tries to do to stop it, he has to accept he can't do this alone. If he buries the damn city, they'll all be in danger and Marcus can't do that. He simply can't.

She agrees to meet him so easily and even that makes him feel a little guilty. It's like he's taken something from her and even so, she's willing to help him, and Marcus doesn't know if he would ever be so generous with himself if the same thing happened to him. It's not as if hearing God is a power, not in the same way, but he's long since lost His voice and if someone were to ask him for help, if someone were to tell him they were hearing God and didn't know how to deal with it, Marcus might very well turn his back on them out of anger and jealousy.

But Elsa doesn't do that. She agrees to meet him and so Marcus pulls on the gloves he's taken to wearing almost all the time and makes the trek down to the beach. There are coves at the far end, she's told him, and she'll meet him there. Marcus is just pleased to know it's a secluded place and all he can do is hope, once he arrives, that he doesn't hurt her by accident.

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"I did," Elsa says. The memory of all the times she hurt Anna still pains her, more than she knows how to say. She wonders sometimes if anyone else understands the special sort of hurt that exists between sisters, if they don't have one themselves, and how much she would give for her sister if she could.

"I hurt her badly when we were young. And then I... avoided her for years, and hurt her again. I almost killed her." It's hard to say without crying, though Elsa has grown practiced over the years at keeping such pain locked inside. Even now, when she's more open than she once was, she hides as much as she can. "But that doesn't always stop someone from really loving you."

The relationship is different, but the things Elsa says ring so close to home that the snowball finally crumbles between his hands. No one else in Darrow knows about Mouse and he's always preferred to keep it that way, but she feels so close to the surface right now.

"I was a priest," he says. "An exorcist. She was preparing to take her vows, studying under me, learning about exorcism. It was a mistake, but she was young and I was so lonely and I fell in love with her."

And she'd fallen in love with him, too. He shouldn't have let it happen, he should have kept his distance and then maybe she never would have ended up in so much danger.

"She got too close to a woman I was trying to help," he admits. "Because she was curious and because I wouldn't let her. She almost died and I couldn't be there to help her."

Edited 2018-05-15 15:35 (UTC)

Elsa nods thoughtfully, taking in the story he tells her. There's a strange sort of comfort in knowing he was once a priest. Why he isn't anymore, she doesn't know, nor even if they're of the same faith, but she thinks knowing what it means to truly believe in something helps. The powers should be impossible, but they aren't. They require a certain faith, too.

"I've thought a lot about it over the years," she says. "I think... no matter how much we love people... we have to accept that they make their own choices and sacrifices. Sometimes that's what saves them. Her choices weren't your fault."

There's a lot of truth in what Elsa says and they're things Marcus has tried to convince himself of over the years, but the truth is, no matter how headstrong Mouse has always been, he can't help but feel like he's still the reason she ended up possessed. Without him, she would have been assigned elsewhere, she wouldn't have loved him, wanted to prove herself to him, and she would have been somewhere else.

Safe.

"No," he agrees. "Her choices weren't mind. But isn't it sometimes hard not to feel as if... if you were somewhere else, if you'd been something else, maybe they'd have made different choices, too."

Elsa nods, because she understands that. She made choices, did things, even by accident, that changed the course of Anna's life. The woman her sister became is in some part because of her mistakes. It's an awful, daunting feeling, to have so much power over someone else's life.

"It's a terrible feeling," she says. "It takes a lot of work to come to peace with it and even then... I try to tell myself that what's in the past is behind me. There's nothing I can do to change it. All I can do is try to be better going forward."

Marcus smiles briefly, the expression more pained than he'd like. All he'd done since Mouse was bury himself in his work, pour himself into being a better exorcist and he knows he's helped people in that way, but he doesn't think any of that makes him a better person. It doesn't earn him forgiveness of any kind; his own, Mouse's, or God's. And maybe that's not what he ought to be doing it for anyway.

All he knows is that he's a man in his fifties who's only now beginning to make connections that really matter. For the first time in his life since the woman he'd nearly brought to her death.

"Not as if we've really got a choice here, do we?" he asks, forcing his smile to be a little brighter. "Can't very well apologize to the people who aren't even here."

"Doesn't stop us wanting to," Elsa admits softly. She's apologized to Anna so many times, and Anna has forgiven her every time, but it's been years since she last saw her sister. It only makes it worse sometimes. They could have had so many years if Elsa hadn't failed her so thoroughly.

"But," she adds, "I think it just makes it more necessary for us to... maybe not quite forgive ourselves. I don't know if we truly can. But to... make some kind of peace. Accept what we've done. Otherwise, we only ever live in the past, and I can't do that anymore."

"You're too young, you know," he says. "To be this perceptive."

There's a hint of teasing in his voice, though, and he doesn't really mean it at all. There are so many people who would honestly believe such a thing, that Elsa is too young to really understand what she's speaking of, but Marcus isn't one of them. At twelve he'd been the best exorcist the Catholic Church had seen in decades and before he'd even hit his teens, he had seen more violence than most people do in their entire life. Age has so little to do with what people are truly capable of feeling.

"This isn't quite how I expected to spend the first week of the new year," he admits and then he looks at his hands again and concentrates, and very slowly, begins to build another snowball. "But now that you and I have met, I think I can look at it as a trade off worth paying."

"I have to be," Elsa says. It's an awful sort of truth, but she smiles all the same, pleased that he's glad to have met her. That's a good thing, both for her, since it's terribly flattering, and for his prospects. He seems to be in a better mood now than when she got here, and that can only help his control over the powers grow. It takes focus, but it takes a certain warmth, too.

"That's very good! You're making progress already," she says warmly. "And I know what you mean. I'm finally used to having those powers and now I have my —" She almost says my girlfriend's, but she catches herself in time. She doesn't want to give away her secrets. "Different ones," she finishes. "My girlfriend's trying to make me feel better about it, but I can tell she's worried."

"Is it nice or frustrating when she does that?" he asks curiously. She says girlfriend, so he has to expect she's not going to be particularly bothered by the idea of what he and Matthias are to each other. "Worry without trying to let on that she's worrying."

He's not sure how he feels about it himself. When Matthias worries about him, Marcus wants to tell him not to bother. He's been through so much and he knows how to keep himself safe, having someone worry about him seems like such an odd thing, something he doesn't know how to deal with most of the time. So it frustrates him sometimes and he wants to feel less like someone think they need to keep himself.

But at the same time it's not something he's ever had before. It's rather nice.

"It's... nice," Elsa decides, "but also not." She bites her lip, a little embarrassed. She doesn't want to seem ungrateful. She's lucky and she knows it, having someone wonderful as Jessica to care about her so much. But there's something uncomfortable about having anyone worry about her, as if she should be able to take care of everything herself.

"My parents used to do that," she says. "Worry about my powers and pretend everything was fine." It wasn't. The ice powers are terribly dangerous; she is dangerous.

[powers plot - Elsa]

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