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There is something undeniably strange going on in the studio, but even after weeks of observation, Marcus and Ed haven't quite been able to figure it out.

It's not demonic, he feels fairly sure in that assessment, so they both seem to be leaning toward a ghost of some kind, but trying to put their fingers on exactly what is happening just seems to be impossible. So far it's not as if anything truly frightening has happened. They'd come to the studio in December to find their canvasses blank, but beyond the occasional moving objects and the shifting of paintings neither of them can deny, it's been relatively quiet since then.

Marcus isn't a medium, he can't enter a room and sense things the way he knows Ed's wife was capable, but he likes to think if anything dangerous was really going on here, he would be able to notice. And yet, dangerous or not, there is something here. Something he hasn't yet been able to determine or get rid of. And whether he wants to admit it or not, sometimes he gets a sense of waiting. As if there's something hanging in the air, just hovering there, readying itself for the right time.

Whatever that might mean.

He's made no secret of the studio, though, both Dutch and Matthias know where they can find him if he's not at his apartment or at the Children's Home. He's only just arrived and draped his jacket over a chair when the easel and canvas he'd set up the night before topples over. Heaving a sigh, Marcus rights the entire thing, then turns his back to reach for his charcoal and hears the easel tip over once again.

"Really?" he asks the empty air, holding a bit of charcoal between his fingers. At the same time there's a knock on the door and he stares at the easel for a moment longer before going to see who it is.

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There's no real rhyme or reason for her visit other than watching to see Marcus. When she'd lost her voice, she'd lost the ability to talk to him, ask him questions, learn more about him so she's been making more of an effort to have conversations with him like she's missed so much. It was one week but she relies heavily on her voice so she's trying to make up for lost time and then some.

So, she arrives at the studio and knocks, tucking her hands into her pockets and hoping Marcus is in. There are a few places he likes to haunt and this is the last of the places that he's regularly frequents. If he's not here, she'll have to text him but she'd needed the exercise so she'd just walked and checked each place.

"Marcus?" Dutch calls. "It's me. Hopefully you're in there and I'm not talking to thin air."

"Rest assured, even if I wasn't here, you'd not be talking to thin air, love," Marcus answers as he pulls open the door and smiles at Dutch, pleased to see her. At this point there's no reason for him to think the studio isn't safe, it's only an annoyance not to be able to work out what's really going on in here and he has to wonder if inviting someone else inside is going to increase the activity or cause it to cease entirely.

Were anyone else in their situation, he suspects they would simply break the lease and find somewhere else to work out of, but Ed and Marcus aren't most people.

"I'm fairly certain we've a ghost," he says, then his smile grows as he reaches up toward Dutch with his free, clean hand and tucks his fingers under her chin so he can press a kiss to her mouth in greeting. "It's nice to see you."

"Well, those are quite the words to say before you kiss me," Dutch says once she's gotten her fill, lingered enough to warm her up and relax her shoulders. She knows enough about ghosts to know that they're probably not going to be visible but that doesn't stop her from taking a look around once she's stepped inside.

"Good ghost or a bad ghost? Or is there such a thing? Maybe a bad ghost is just one who's having a constant bad day?"

Dutch pauses and then chuckles, shaking her head. "I obviously don't know much about ghosts. Are you all right?"

"I did warn you I've never done this sort of thing before," he points out with a small, teasing grin, because he doesn't really think she minds his choice of words all that much. Opening the door further so that they might both head inside, he shakes his head at her question and looks around the place. For the moment, all is quiet and he's glad for it, because it's one thing to tell Dutch about the ghost and another thing entirely to have it immediately begin to throw things around the studio.

"We're not quite sure yet," he admits. "Good or bad, that is, I'm fine. It's not the strangest thing I've dealt with, nor the most frightening. I'd just like it if it were to stop tossing my easels over every time I get them set up."

He goes to right the easel that's on the ground again, then waits a moment, watching it, before he turns back to Dutch. "Seems as if the ghost isn't interested in performing for an audience just yet. It's probably for the best."

Dutch steps in, still looking around like she might be able to see this ghost but there's nothing here but herself, Marcus and the items that are kept in his studio. If there's a ghost here, it's definitely not visible.

"And it couldn't be anything else?" Dutch asks curiously, coming over to take a look at his easel. "Stupid kids managing to get in and causing trouble? A mouse? Not that I doubt your words, I'm just used to eliminating all possibilities when it comes to things like this."

"Ed's done a fair bit of investigating," he says as he sets the bit of charcoal down and wipes his fingers on a cloth. "That was his job back home. I was the man who was called in once a demonic possession was actually verified, but Ed was sent out by the Church to find a logical explanation for hauntings and most of the time he did. Faulty pipes or a hoax perpetrated by family members."

Ed is good at what he does and Marcus trusts him.

"Nothing he's found so far suggests it might be a prank and-" Marcus is cut off as the easel behind him is tipped over again and he sighs, then looks at Dutch with a faint smile. "And it does seem to be directly targeting my attempts to work today."

"You'd think your friendly ghost doesn't like the arts or something," Dutch says lightly, trying to keep any worry from her voice. Marcus and Ed both know how to deal with ghosts better than she does but she cares about them both and doesn't want something to happen should they take a wrong step.

"Is there anything I could to help?" she asks him, walking slowly around the studio. "My gun probably won't do much for a ghost but I could happily curse until I'm blue in the face. Or I could just hold your easel up, see if this ghost decides to go through me."

It's such an innocent offer, but it still makes him pause for a moment, because there's really no telling what a ghost might actually do. So far it's simply items moving around their space and their paintings going blank when they're not around, but he doesn't like to think what might happen if someone like Dutch were to try to interfere.

"I don't know," he says honestly. "It might not be worth the risk. So far there's been no particular danger, but there's really no telling what else might happen before we know what's really going on. If it's more than just a simple spirit..."

This is part of what he's worried about in getting closer to Dutch and Matthias. Being close to him puts them in danger, especially in a situation like this and he suddenly thinks he must be a fool to have her here when he's not even sure what's happening.

"I understand, I get it," Dutch says. If this had been a different situation, she might have insisted on being involved but she's smart enough to admit that she doesn't know ghosts. She wouldn't know what to do with one and how to take one out if it popped up in front of her face. She doesn't know how they work beyond the little she's learned from Marcus and Ed.

"But what about holding your easel?" she asks lightly, trying to pull him out of the worry and uncertainty she can sense. "Or what if I try and paint you and embarrass you in how badly I am when it comes to anything art related?"

"Are you telling me you're not a painter, then?" he asks with a smile. It's astonishing, how good she is at distracting him. He reaches down and rights the easel, but turns his back on it and ignores it for the time being, instead moving back across the studio toward Dutch.

He tends toward using charcoal himself, but there's plenty of paint in the studio, since Ed uses it more often than not. Taking a paint brush out of one of the cups and offers it to Dutch.

"Let's see just how bad," he says. "Maybe I can teach you a thing or two."

"I can't remember the last time someone gave me a brush and some paints and told me to make them something beautiful," Dutch says with a laugh. She doesn't mention painting walls with blood when she'd been under Khylen's thumb because that was a thing she so rarely talked about it and it didn't fit the conversation at all.

"I'm a lot better with guns and knives," she explains before taking the charcoal and stepping closer to the easel. She holds it up, lets it hover over the paper before glancing over and asking, "What should I draw?"

Marcus leans closer for a moment, then looks at Dutch and says, "I don't know. Somewhere you liked visiting as a child? A place that holds memories for you? Good or bad? I tend to draw a lot of forests, they have... I think about them a lot. My mum used to take me for walks in a forest near where I grew up. It was one of the few nice things she did for me before she died."

And even then, it hadn't always been nice. She'd told him stories, awful ones, the sort that had given him nightmares. His mother had never been cut out to have a child and he'd carried the brunt of her anger, her hate.

"When you think of something that made you feel good when you were small, what does that look like?"

"My childhood..." Dutch trails off, frowning. It was a convoluted mess for the most part. Her parents had loved her, cared for her, but then the harem had happened and she'd thought her life was set. She'd thought she'd be protected and set forever. She hadn't expected Khylen. She hadn't expected to be made into a weapon, into a killer.

"Let's see what I can remember," Dutch says, foregoing any elaboration and stepping closer to the easel. The only thing she can think of some of the other girls in the harem but she knows she won't be able to draw them. They're too complicated. Her husband is another option but that seems wrong.

So, instead she draws what she remembers of her bedroom. The bed with the red blanket, the window with stars pasted onto it, the rug that was ripped in one corner. The drawings aren't good but she's trying.

It surprises Marcus a little, that she tries as hard as she does, not because he thinks Dutch isn't capable of it, but most people would laugh off his request, draw something silly. Dutch doesn't. It makes him smile and he steps a little closer to her, sliding his hand along the small of her back, around her waist, watching from his position behind her.

"Most people would probably tell me to piss off if I asked them to draw something from their childhood," he says in a low, pleased voice. "It's nice that you didn't."

That she's actually tried.

"My childhood is one of those things that seems to be shrouded in a fog," Dutch murmurs, leaning back into him a touch even while she keeps drawing. "It's not that long ago but it feels like another lifetime."

She had been such a different person. Her name, her ambitions, her goals, her wants, her needs. "I think about myself as a little girl and sometimes have to really concentrate to realize that that person is me. So much has happened since then. It's hard to believe that I was that young and innocent once, I suppose."

She's still so young, so much younger than he is, and he watches her profile for a moment as she speaks, brought to silence by the things she's saying. The familiarity of the words. His life before the boy's home seems like an impossible dream, even with how unhappy it had been, because even seeing his father beat his mother regularly, even feeling the icy lack of love between all three of them, it had been better than the home. Better than the violence and the loneliness. Better than the demons, both literal and metaphorical, that had followed.

"I understand," he says softly, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "After my parents died... after he killed her and I killed him, everything was different. The life I had before, when it sometimes felt like maybe they loved me, it's like a dream. That's why I draw it so often."

"Yeah. Don't get me wrong, my parents were good parents." Dutch had been the one to go bad. She can't even imagine what the Yardeens would think of her now, after having been all she's been and done all she's done. She's managed to get out of that life but it doesn't erase the people she's taken, the blood she's spilled.

"I don't even know where my parents are anymore," she tells him, drawing a few lines to symbolize her bed. The drawing itself is not very good because she's not very good but she's going from a memory that is half formed and rotted at the edges.

It's probably better that way. A way to show what she's done to that part of herself with all her wrongdoings.

"Do you miss them?" Marcus asks. Even with everything they'd done to him, he misses his parents every now and then. Mostly his mother, his father had been too cruel for real love, but his mother had occasionally been kind, had been almost maternal. Those walks in the woods had meant something to him as a child and he does sometimes miss the feeling those moments gave to him.

"I miss my mum sometimes," he says. "Not so much my dad, but my mum... she's been gone a long time."

The demons he exorcises tend to bring her up, though, as if dozens of their rotten brothers before them haven't done the same. He sees her face two or three times a year, depending on how often he's working.

"I think I miss the idea of them more than anything," Dutch murmurs, drawing a window and dotting some stars that she can remember looking out on and wanting to travel to when she'd been younger. It's one of those things that she's glad she stuck to, one of those ambitions that she's pleased came true.

"I don't remember too much about them these days." That was intentional. After she'd gone to the harem, she'd tried to put them out of her mind. They were better off and she was supposed to have been better off. After she'd gotten out of the harem, she hadn't sought them out and she doesn't regret that.

"They're still alive, as far as I know," Dutch tells him, sighing. "I still don't think, if I'm able to get back home, that I would ever go to them. They're better off."

"Why would you think that?" he asks, coming to stand beside her again, to watch as she draws. It's true she's might not be displaying her work in a gallery any time soon, but Marcus isn't either. That's not what drawing and painting are about for him. They're a release, a way to get the things inside his head out and onto paper, a way to put them out of his mind in a way. In some ways he thinks she understands that rather well.

But he's curious about her statement. The Dutch he knows is a rather remarkable woman, someone he can't imagine a parent ever wanting to lose touch with, but he knows there are untouched years he's never even heard about. She doesn't know all the things he's done either, the people he's hurt even while he's loved them fiercely. No one knows about Mouse.

"I've done things that I'd rather not tell them about," Dutch says quietly, shaking her head. "I'd rather not tell anyone about them if I'm honest but especially my parents. They don't deserve that. To know."

She doesn't think she's going to be able to outright tell him what she's done but it's a step in the right direction. It's something more than vague dismissals. "It's worked well that way for years. I don't see them, they don't see me and we all live happily ever after. They're fine without me."

And she was fine without them. She had Johnny and she had D'av and her job and Pree and the Royale so she was doing better than most. Better than she had been.

That's a statement he relates to rather well and Marcus nods thoughtfully, looking back at the drawing for a moment. He'd run from Mouse, not only because he loved her and knew nothing could come of it given their respective choices -- him, a priest and exorcist, her, a young woman mere weeks from taking her vows -- but because he had failed her, too. Because he knew if she came out on the other side of that possession, one that had been his fault in the first place for even allowing her to get close to the demon, she would be changed. She would hate him.

He hadn't been able to save her, but he also hadn't wanted to stick around and be forced to tell her all the ways in which he'd failed her, beginning with the moment he'd fallen in love with her.

"Do they know if you're still alive?" he asks, his voice soft.

"I don't," Dutch says, shaking her head. "I would look in on them every once in awhile back home using my contacts but considering I've been here..."

Well, there's no telling. She hopes they're okay. Her father had always been smart and knew the right moves to make to become both wealthy and well known but never in a way that made him cruel. He'd been a good man and her mother had been a good woman. They'd let her go into the harem for many reasons and she doesn't hold that against them. It had been good for so long. They couldn't have known.

"I'm going to hope they are," Dutch says, shooting him a slight smile over her shoulder, "because my father's too stubborn to go out without a lot of noise but I just don't know."

Marcus nods and smiles back when Dutch looks at him. There's really only so much they can do here and he knows it. When he'd arrived, he'd been bleeding out, close to death, and he still doesn't know if Bennett survived. It hurts, not knowing, never knowing if there's anything he could have done better. At least they'd both avoided the possession, he can be comfortable in that regard, but that doesn't give him much peace when it's possible Bennett hasn't survived.

"It's not an easy thing, is it?" he asks. "Not knowing, not being able to find out. I've some people from... well, from Chicago, though I wouldn't call the city home. At least there are some things they can tell me, which has been helpful, but there are plenty of others left up in the air and I just wish there was a way to know."

For all he likes to complain about Bennett, he cares about the man. He's annoying and stubborn and rigid in ways Marcus hates, but he's also family.

"The not knowing is the worst part," Dutch murmurs, nodding and staring at the terrible picture she's drawn. It's nothing special but it's not her worst. She's able to make out what everything is even if it's roughly drawn, asymmetrical, and crooked. But, it's still a good imitation of the room she remembers when she was younger.

"I can make up the best and the worst possibilities in my head but not knowing what's real and what's not is going to be the thing that sends me off the deep end, probably," Dutch says with a snicker. "This stupid city, not even letting us know what's happening. I suppose if they give a little, we'd want more."

"And isn't that the folly of man?" Marcus asks with a smile, reaching out to take the charcoal from her. Her fingers are black with it and Marcus rubs his thumb against her fingertips, smearing it slightly. For so much of his life, there's been charcoal on his fingers, under his nails, in the creases of his knuckles. If he wasn't working, he was often drawing, and it's nice in a strange sort of way, to be on the other side of this. To be able to smudge the charcoal off her fingers and onto his own.

"We always want more," he says. "That's part of the reason for the vows we took as priests. To eliminate desires for alcohol and material things and sex was to eliminate the need for more. It did away with distraction, made it easier for us to focus on one thing. It's nice to be able to focus on more than one thing these days."

He looks at the picture, then back at Dutch before he bends to kiss her again. His hand lifts, cupping the side of her face and he realizes only too late he'll have gotten charcoal on her cheek.

It's nicer to do this than to think of her parents. His lips banish those thoughts back to the doors and trunks she keeps her past in and she focuses on him, his lips, his mouth. The charcoal on her cheek smudges and swipes a nice line but she ignores it and wraps an arm around his neck to tug him closer to her.

The specter of her parents is still lurking but she's putting them back into their box and concentrating on the present. On him and how it's getting easier to talk about the things in her past that she's never spoken about before.

Not easy but easier. And she's still doing it in bits and pieces. Dutch pulls away a bit and says, "Well, if you keep doing that, I'll want more too."

For barely a moment Marcus allows himself to consider what might happen if Ed were to decide he needs a little time at the studio, too, if he were to walk in on any of this, but it's a hard thing to worry about when Dutch wraps her arm around him and pulls him closer. He sinks into the feeling of the kiss, letting himself get lost in the softness of her mouth, how smooth her skin feels under the sweep of his thumb.

When she pulls back to speak, he can't help but grin, shrugging one shoulder as if he can't possibly be blamed for wanting to kiss her and in truth he doesn't think he can be. She's absolutely beautiful, she's smart and strong, capable of anything. He's never had much freedom to investigate what he wants, but even before Mouse, he'd known he was attracted to people who were certain of who they were.

"Did I say folly?" he asks with a soft laugh. "I meant to say it was one of our redeeming qualities. Wanting more."

"Oh good, I was going to start doubting everything about my desires if you hadn't said that," Dutch drawls, snickering. "Now, I can safely want more and not worry that I'm being selfish and greedy."

Dutch knows she can be selfish and she can be greedy but she's gotten better at knowing when that's okay and when it's not. She'd felt terrible at wanting things when she'd been in the harem because she'd been provided with so much. Now, she wants what she wants and if she can get it, she will.

"Now, before I want anything else, have you gotten your dirty fingers all over my face?" she asks, trying not to smile. "I can feel whatever it is that marker's made of on my cheeks."

Marcus pulls back a little further to look at her, then uses one of his clean fingers to draw a line through the smudge of charcoal. "It's fine," he tells her with a smile. "It washes off easily enough. It's all over your fingers, too, so chances are you've just smeared it on the back of my neck."

Not that he minds at all. He's usually got charcoal on him somewhere. It's surprising Dutch and Matthias haven't had charcoal rubbed on them more often already. He reaches blindly for the edge of the easel, his fingers finally closing down on the damp cloth he keeps there for cleaning his hands and he smooths it against the mark on Dutch's cheek.

"Better," he says, still smiling.

"It's not the first time I've been dirty anyway," Dutch says, smiling at him before turning her finger in a circle so she can see the back of his neck. Her fingers are pretty blackened and now that he's mentioned his neck, she wants to see.

"And though I would offer to lick it off your neck, I think that might not be a good idea considering what it is that's on your neck. So, we'll have to table the idea of me licking something off you until that's probably not going to be gross and toxic for me. But, I still want to see."

She reaches for her his arm to turn him around, contemplating maybe drawing a little stick figure in the residue she's probably smeared on his neck.

"Mm, maybe don't lick the charcoal, love," he agrees with a laugh, then turns so she can see the back of his neck. There's probably not much there at all, she'd only been touching him for a moment and further to the point, he really doesn't much mind. He goes home from the studio with more charcaol than that on a daily basis.

"But now you've got my interest," he says, with his back still to her. "At least when it comes to something other than charcoal. How's it look? Have you made a terrible mess of me?"

His tone suggests he wouldn't mind that either.

"No, I didn't and I'm honestly disappointed I didn't try harder now," Dutch says, laughing and reaching to smudge the slight bits of charcoal that were dotted on his neck. She presses her thumbs into the black dirt and smears them a bit before laughing.

"Let me see that washcloth unless you'd rather leave it be," she says, reaching to rub his neck (and probably picking up more charcoal as she did) because she couldn't help herself.

"And if you truly want me to make a mess of you, find me something better than charcoal and I will," she croons, grinning.

Marcus hands the cloth back to her before saying, "Oh, just give me a bit of time, I'm sure I could come up with something. Perhaps not in the studio, though, I'm not sure Ed would ever forgive me if he showed up and found one or both of us having lost our clothes."

He would, of course. Ed's probably the closest friend Marcus has ever found himself with and he supposes that's a bit sad, given that he's a fifty year old man who should have had a friend or two in his time, but his life hasn't been quite the usual sort. Most people have a certain path they follow and Marcus hadn't followed even a single a step of that. After Mouse, the people he had spent the most time with had been the possessed. Or priests and he mostly didn't care much for priests, despite being one himself.

"I'm sure I can control myself," Dutch says with a quiet laugh. She cleans the back of his neck up, leaning up to press a kiss to the now clear skin before patting him to signal that she's done.

"I wouldn't want to give Ed a fright," she jokes, shaking his head. "If he were unattached, I might ask him to join on in but I think that might freak him out even more."

She's kidding again, wondering how Marcus will react to something like that, something that she might absolutely do but not in this situation. It's just run to get a reaction out of people.

Marcus laughs, trying to imagine what Ed might think, then shakes his head as he turns to face Dutch once more. It's not that he doesn't recognize Ed as an attractive man, he certainly is, but he's also Marcus's closest friend, something akin to family.

"Ed is a rather understanding man, all things considered, but that might be a touch too far for him," he says, shaking his head in amusement. "He was... exceptionally open when I told him I'm bisexual. I think he might have been the first person I've ever said that word to actually."

Because until Darrow, it had never mattered.

"Were you worried?" Dutch asks, frowning. She's always liked everyone, man, woman, whoever and she's never been afraid of telling that to whoever might be around her. But, she wasn't in a position like Marcus was and she wonders if she'd been so open if she'd stayed in the harem, smothered by someone like Khylen.

"Of course you were worried, you wouldn't have been hesitant about telling him if you weren't," Dutch says, wincing. "Ignore that question. It's nice to be able to be open though, isn't it?"

"I was, a little," Marcus answers, even though Dutch has told him to ignore it. Whatever she says, it's a valid question, he knows she's from an entirely different world than he is and further to the point, Dutch has always struck him as someone who's significantly more secure in herself and her desires than Marcus has ever been. They exist and he's always been aware of them, but it was so easy to ignore them when he had the Church to blame.

"The Catholic Church has a lot of fire and brimstone stories directed at queer people," he says. "And although Ed has always been exceptionally kind, I've met plenty of others I'd have said the same thing about who turned on a dime when they found out their neighbour or their brother was gay. I'm not ashamed of what I am, but I... I grew up in a certain environment. It's better, being able to be more open."

"I absolutely understand that. I cannot even imagine how the Quad would be if there was hiding and suppressing yourself like that," Dutch says contemplatively. There were lots of secrets in the Quad but people tended to open about who they were and what they were. They slept with who they wanted because pleasures of the flesh were one of those rare things that didn't cost them money, didn't risk their lives (unless they slept with the wrong person).

"But I'm glad you can be more open here and that you're not worried about what people might think because fuck 'em," Dutch says, nodding. "Literally if you want to."

There are still times when he's worried about what people might think, but never strangers, because strangers have never mattered much to him at all. It's his friends he's concerned about, because these days he actually has those. Ed doesn't seem to mind at all and he knows Kat is more amused by his current romantic life than anything else, but he hasn't said a word about it to Angela. She knows he likes men, she'd caught Neil kissing him goodbye that day, but they'd never made any special effort to discuss it beyond acknowledging it had happened.

He doubts she would approve of what he's doing right now and he knows himself well enough to know outright disapproval would hurt him.

"Truthfully, when it comes to my decisions, it's God I'm most concerned about," he admits. "And I very much doubt He cares who I spend my time with in that regard. He's got bigger worries on his plate."

"Besides, if you're to be believed, He made everyone as they are, right?" Dutch asks. She's never really believed, never really entertained it but she knows enough from Alvis and now from Marcus to know what they believe about how the world came to be.

"So, why would He care who you love or who you want to be with? He wouldn't, right? I don't know much about religion or those who you believe created the world but if He's all powerful and all knowing, everyone's created exactly how He would want to be so you're fine in his eyes."

Dutch leans up and gives him a kiss on his nose. "I bet He cares and He's fine with it."

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