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eponine

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These days, Marcus doesn't smoke as much as he used to, especially when he's working a shift at the Children's Home, but every now and again he gets the urge and so this night finds him sitting just outside the front door of the Home on a bench, one boot propped up against the ledge of the wall, a cigarette in one hand and a pencil in the other.

He's sketching in his Bible, casually filling the margins with drawings of birds in flight. Bennett had always especially hated the birds for some reason and now Marcus draws them on the rare occasions when he's missing the other man. They'd never been friends, but they'd been allies, and in a life like Marcus Keane's, an ally had tended to count for more than a fried ever could.

And although he's on a break, he's also on the lookout for Eponine, who's once again out past curfew. The other staff are far more worried than he is, because while Marcus is well aware something is out of sorts in the Home, he doesn't think it has anything at all to do with Eponine. He's eliminating possibilities one by one and if there's a demon in her, it's more than just well hidden. If she's out past curfew, either she's avoiding the same things he's hunting or, equally as possible, she's just being a teenager.

Still, when he sees her walking up the dark street on the arm of a boy, he can't help but watch with an amused smirk. Given the way she's walking, he suspects she's been drinking, suspects the boy she's with is probably responsible for that, too, but he says nothing, just smokes in the low light of the front door and waits for her to see him.

If she's here, she's probably intending on ending her night out, but he has to wonder if the boy is aware of her plans.

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Eponine has been avoiding the Home; more than ever since the blood in the bathroom, since Bev's living with Hopper, and she can't pull herself from a particularly bad dream -- or those knowing whispers, those shadows that might be a dream and might be real and might be madness -- and go curl up next to her friend shamefully until they're both feeling more easy. Even when there's nothing in particular that's happened, the whole place feels wrong.

It keeps her at school, well enough, but it's not a good incentive to come home.

And maybe this boy, murmuring suggestions in her ear and buying her drinks, isn't a wonderful solution, but he's better, and he hasn't tried too much really, which makes him almost a gentleman in Eponine's view. She's tipsy and letting herself act it, giggling at his jokes, but she's thinking ahead to how to put him off soon.

"...hang at my dorm?" he's asking and she laughs and kisses him and says "My flat-mate is going to think I'm dead in a ditch."

"Fuck your flatmate," he says, "can't you just text her?"

That's when she spies him, smoking on a bench in the light of the home, all backlit but still recognizable in his short hair and angular profile, rangy limbs and cigarette, eyes on the street. "Marcus," she says without thinking.

"Marcus?" the boy says, confused and suspicious in his drunkenness. "Who the fuck is Marcus? You live with a guy?"

"No, he's," she can't give away her address, or explain properly, and her mind whirrs forward to an answer. A solution, in fact. "My uncle. You should meet him," Eponine exclaims, over-giddy in the way that she imagines smitten girls are, wrapping her arms around the boy's arm and tugging gently. "He's great, he'll like you!"

"Oh. Um. Maybe I..."

"I've had such a wonderful night with you," she babbles away, leading him by the hand. "Marcus!" She waves.

"You know, I really gotta get going," the boy says more firmly, and smiles pacifically, leaning to kiss her on the cheek as they hit the intersection. "How about I call you?"

"Well, I suppose, but don't forget," she says, and lingers for just a moment, then watches as he takes off. She feels a bit heady with drink, but it doesn't mean she isn't sharp enough to watch, still.

"All right," she says to Marcus, plunking herself down next to him on the bench, a little less gracefully than she'd have like. "You caught me, or whatnot. It was good timing, though, wasn't it? Introducing a boy to family straight off always shakes them." She can't help a giggle.

Edited 2018-03-29 04:26 (UTC)

It's quite the show and Marcus watches it without saying anything, without feeling the need to add anything to the story she's telling, her voice carrying toward him on the breeze. He catches the word uncle and sees her trying to drag the boy along with her, as if there really is someone she wants him to meet and Marcus knows exactly what she's doing, even though it appears like the boy hasn't the slightest clue.

He doubts the boy is a threat, but he watches anyway, keeps an eye on him as he heads down the street and away from Eponine.

"Never been anyone's uncle before," he says when Eponine sits down beside him and laughs, then offers the cigarette to her. If any of the staff catch him, he's sure to get a rather spectacular verbal lashing, but he's not so stupid as to think the kids under their care don't smoke. He'd started when he was thirteen, after all, hiding the cigarettes from Father Sean and taking the beating without tears when they were inevitably found secreted away under his mattress.

"If you're really keen on scaring them next time, give me a bit of notice, love," he says. "I bet I can find a collar at a costume shop and then you can offer to introduce him to your priest."

She grins back, widening when he offers her the cigarette. Marcus may not encourage her dislike of the Home, but he's much less scolding than almost any adult she's met. "I would've said father," she says freely, and accepts the cigarette, taking a long drag. The smoke rakes her lungs in a way that feels almost better. "But I like you rather too much to imply something like that." She passes it back to him. It's cool out here, this late at night and she pulls her booted feet up onto the bench, resting her arm on her knee.

Eponine snickers. "Dieu. I don't think anyone would believe I had a priest. Or perhaps that's why we're on such good terms. I'd be having to go to confession every other day." If her soul is savable, which she doubts seriously.

She likes the idea of Marcus as an accomplice in her cons. "If I gave you notice, though, you'd tell me not to go," she suspects, raising an eyebrow.

"Maybe," he agrees and the tip of the cigarette glows, lighting his face in the dark as he takes a drag. "Or maybe I'd just recommend you find a more deserving companion. Being away from this place isn't the worst thing in the world right now anyway."

If he could pinpoint the source of what's going on right now, he'd recommend they all leave this place, but since he can't, it's better to keep them all in the same area while he works it out. His suspicions are strong, but until he can prove something, he needs to tread carefully.

It's not Eponine, though, he's quite sure of that. Not Beverly either, given the odd things that continue to happen while she's found an alternate place to stay most nights.

"A companion deserving of the likes of me," she scoffs, "can't imagine what they'd have done." But Eponine smiles at it nonetheless, pleased and just tipsy enough to show it.

"No, it's not," she says after a moment and looks up at him. "You feel it too? I thought at first it wasn't anything to fuss over. Food turning, crawlies where they oughtn't be. Nothing I haven't seen. But that was before all the --" She waves a hand, generally at the home, shuddering.

Edited 2018-04-04 19:43 (UTC)

Had he not been convinced before -- which he was -- the blood in the pipes certainly would have done it and so Marcus nods when Eponine asks if he feels it, too. It's more than just feeling it, though, there's plenty of evidence something odd is going on and he's seen enough in his life to know what he's looking at, even if most other people wouldn't. There's some sort of demonic presence working in the midst of all these children and teenagers and until he finds the source, there's not much Marcus can do about it.

His very presence in the home has to be angering it, given everything he's done.

"It's different," he says with a nod when she waves her hand. "It's not just food going off or bugs where they shouldn't be, it's something bigger than that. These are only the symptoms of the rot, as it were."

Symptoms of the rot. It's so very much what she's been feeling, and what she and Beverly have been whispering about.

"Yes," she says back, hushed, wide-eyed and nods. She's not used to being believed, or at least adults here admitting they believe her. She knows the staff are ill at ease, but they brush away the worries of everyone here as though it feels any better to be told they're making it up. Perhaps it just makes them feel better.

"Beverly said there was a ...a thing, back home for her, that made blood come out of the pipes. She didn't name it, she just said it. I don't know if it's the same Thing." She wraps her arms around her knees. "I don't think it can be," she confesses, staring ahead, the voices and touches she feels at night whispering over her skin in echo. "Whatever it is, it knows me. It knows...things about me. I'd think I was going mad, but it's not as bad, outside the home."

She turns to him, almost confrontational, puts her hand on his arm, emboldened by fear and liquor. "You don't think I'm going mad, though."

Edited 2018-04-09 04:59 (UTC)

"No, love, I don't," he answers with a small shake of his head. When he's working, he doesn't go out of his way to talk about what he used to do, but he thinks in this case, it's warranted. He's told Betty, but then, the situation had been a bit strange in that moment and he'd felt it had been necessary.

He has suspicions when it comes to Betty, after all. Telling her had been a calculated decision. He supposes it might be the same sort of decision now, because Eponine might see and hear things he won't have access to and it'd be good to have someone who trusts him and might be willing to help.

"I used to be a priest," he says. "Did I ever tell you? Not in the traditional sense, I suppose, I never had a church of my own or a congregation. Never was much of a preacher, but the Church still found use for me. Especially in situations like the one we seem to be in now."

It's so comforting, enough so that if she were entirely sober she'd be wary of how nice it is. As it is, worn out by the Home and by avoiding it and staying up, she just relaxes, grateful for the trust and grateful, too, for the fact that Marcus isn't rushing her to go back inside or even move from where she sits beside him on this park bench.

Her eyes go a little wider at that revelation. "A priest?" As much to point it out as anything, she steals the cigarette back from his hand and takes a drag, laughing uncertainly as she passes it back. "No, you never did. And I thought you were joking..." There's something about her that feels like she ought to get struck down by lightning, right here, having been acting as she was in front of a priest. Hardly existing in front of one. But he says used to, and he hasn't disapproved, really, either. It's nice, and strange.

She lets his words roll around in her head. "Situations like this one," she repeats, and looks over at him, taking it all in, what use he might have had for a Church. "Demons, that's what you mean. Devils. You got rid of them?"

Edited 2018-04-12 05:25 (UTC)

"I got rid of them, yes," Marcus agrees. Eponine seems to believe him without much of a fight and he doesn't know if that's a product of the world she's from or the time or something else entirely, but whatever the case, he's grateful for it. There's usually someone who doesn't believe in what he's doing, someone who stands in his way, but Marcus has always found them relatively easy to ignore, especially when the rest of a family tends to be in support of what he's doing.

This is a much different situation. No one has called him here, no one has asked for him to come and he intends to help, but he knows it might be more difficult dealing with the staff. They're not likely to believe him, none of them seem to be particularly religious or even particularly inclined to pay attention to what's going on in the Home. It's going to be necessary to have the children on his side in every possible way.

"I wasn't called here," he admits. "Usually the Church would have sent for me after a family had come to them for help, but I'm just a volunteer in this case. The right place at the right time, as it were, but I can tell something is going on."

She's heard of exorcism, of course, though Eponine's never seen such a thing completed. Though she herself isn't anything one could call devout -- if there's a God out there, He's busy listening to the prayers of better people than herself, anyway -- she did grow up in the shadow of Notre Dame, and such things as devils and angels seem plausible. She doesn't think they must manifest in the body of a man for men to be quite capable of evil all on their own, but if he says he knows of such things, well -- it does a better job of explaining this place than anything she's come up with.

"Something's going on, all right," she says, almost laughs, for if she doesn't laugh she might cry. "So you think it's a demon, in there." That sounds so beyond her capability to understand and yet, having the barest whisper of a cause, of something that can maybe be defeated, it almost settles her. At least she has something she can blame. If there's something to name, there's something to vow she won't be afraid of.

"And can only a priest fight a demon?" she asks. "Or is there something we can do?"

"I think it's a demon in someone," Marcus answers. "And that someone just happens to be in there."

It's a purposely vague statement, because while he has his suspicions, he's also not entirely certain he knows who is carrying the demon around with them. Or why. He's seen all kinds of attacks, demons picking people because they're vulnerable in some way, because it can consider them weak, though what constitutes weakness to a demon certainly isn't what Marcus looks at as the same.

And that's why he and the people he's helping tend to win.

Children are all vulnerable. The older they get, the harder it tends to be for demons to get in, but children and teenagers are ripe for picking without even knowing it. It's not all that surprising to him that one has come into the care home.

"Have you noticed anyone acting out of the ordinary?" he asks. "I know it's a lot, maybe asking you to betray someone's confidence, but I can only see so much."

"Someone's possessed by a demon," she says, half a question, and half understanding. She can understand that a demon might try to claim the soul of someone, she knows her tales, but she hasn't ever thought that it would cause this sort of havoc. If anything, the devil is supposed to cause temptation, isn't it? Lure sinners in with greed, pride, lust?

"Why cause us to know something is wrong?" she asks curiously. "Stir these memories, cause these signs? I don't want to be in the Home at all anymore, and --" She pauses. "That's it, isn't it," she declares, a bit overloud, but on the edge of figuring something out. "Part of it? If we don't want to be at home, if we're afraid, we'll all be too busy with our own messes to help out someone hurting. To notice, until it's too late."

She thinks about what Marcus is asking. "Not many who are my confidants, except Beverly. She hasn't been there and it's still all going on. And I don't know about the younger ones, too much. But..." She tries to think about them all. Verity, who'd been one of the first to discover any of it? "It started not long after Verity arrived, so I don't know how she acts at home. She's not having mood swings, but it is odd, the way it happened." She counts back through who she knows. "I'd say Cosette's handling it nearly too well, but it's not her. It was like this before she arrived." She's actually been impressed by how sweetly and sunnily Cosette has taken it, given the sort of shelter she'd had at home. "And Betty...she's an odd one. I haven't sorted her out. When I got here, she was so earnest and naive it put me on edge, you know? But lately it's like she's distracted, impatient or just staring off and not saying anything at all. And then she went disappearing the other day, too. But I can't say for sure what it means. None of us are sleeping well..."

She doesn't like not knowing.

"That's a thing I can do, though," she says earnestly, "keep my eyes out. I know how to keep it quiet that I'm looking, too." Hadn't that been her role, at home, so often: the spy? Even for Marius? It might feel better, too, having something to do. "What should I be looking for?"

Marcus has been watching Betty, too, as much as he doesn't want to, and hearing her name from Eponine in this manner doesn't relieve him as much as he would have liked. He doesn't want it to be her. He doesn't want it to be anyone, but he's gotten to know Betty a little, likes her inquisitive nature and the skeptical eye she tends to cast on the things deserving of it.

He doesn't want it to be her. He doesn't want to have to hurt her, even unintentionally, even in the process of trying to save her.

"Any odd behaviour," he says. "But specifically people who show any aversion to religious symbols. I know they're probably not as common in the home as they might have once been, but if you've a cross you might wear and see who reacts, that could help. Self inflicted injuries are significant, too."

In a care home, he knows that might be harder to weed out, especially when he'd done it himself, but it's another sign, something to look for.

She nods solemnly, as though this is a sacred duty, and so it might be, who knows? It is coming from a priest. Or an ex-priest. Which is funnier than it should be.

It should sound ridiculous as well, searching for a possessed child in an orphanage, but nothing that is happening in this place can surprise her at this point. Not regarding the Children's Home. "I can find a cross, I'm sure," she says, thinking. Why, Cosette would probably be happy to see her wearing something like that, brought up by nuns as she was, and she could easily excuse a sort of latent Catholicism on her French upbringing. She is religious in that way, a bit, not in a way that holds a crucifix, but still might whisper prayers on the off chance once in a while.

But if it'll stop all of this from getting worse, she'll get a whole rosary.

But injuries... "I don't want to -- snitch if it turns out it's only someone hurting themselves," she says, tentatively. "I know that we ought tell an adult, the other carers look for it, too. But you ought to tell the Home about this, too, and I don't think you will," she adds, pushing carelessness to the front as she gestures to them and where she was standing with the boy. "Sometimes it's better, to do the harm yourself..."

Eponine's being more honest than she ought to be, too, more than she is with anyone save Beverly, but she can blame that on the drink come morning.

She presses her lips together. "Is there any sort of harm a demon might do someone? That I could tell apart? Something meaningful?"

Edited 2018-04-19 02:06 (UTC)

"I know," he says and he hopes Eponine can hear the sincerity in his voice. She can't see his shoulder and he's not about to start taking off his jacket to show her now, but he will at some point. He has to, he thinks, after this conversation. To show her he's not just saying things for the sake of saying them. The marks on his shoulder are a tattoo now, a choice he made to darken the scars he put there himself as a child, but if she knows about self harm and the thoughts and feelings that go into it, she'll recognize them for what they once were.

It's not something he's done in years and he hasn't felt the urge, doesn't imagine he ever will again, but Marcus understands better than most might think.

"I do, duck, I can tell you that much," he says. "And I can also tell you unless there's danger to someone's life, I won't go to the other carers with any of what you tell me. They won't know what they're dealing with when it comes to the demon and... well, I might be the better bet in either case. Given that I've lived in one of these places myself."

He considers her question more thoroughly and nods. "In my experience, they tend to be partial to burns far more than cutting," he says. "Curling irons, hair straighteners, even frying pans and the like. You might notice an uptick in someone feeling ill. Needing to be alone. Things like that."

He sounds like he does know, and for not the first time, Eponine wonders about the boy's home he's spoken about before, wonders about before, what got him there and how much he does understand.

He calls her duck, and she should shy from it, toughen against that sort of affection that creeps in and makes you weak. She should put up walls against an older man who needs her for something, who's willing to keep secrets. And she will, perhaps, in the morning. But right now she hasn't slept or even eaten properly in a while, and Marcus is trusting her with his own suspicions, isn't he, and it's like he hasn't even noticed that small bit of affection.

It's a bit of safety, for tonight. It's nice. It's nice to have something to do, too.

"I can look for that," she says, and nods solemnly. "I'll give you any information I get. I'm good at seeing things, at keeping them quiet," Ponine adds. "Always was at home."

She sighs a little and leans against him all at once. "I have to go back, tonight, don't I."

Edited 2018-04-21 04:18 (UTC)

He wishes he could tell her no, that she doesn't have to go back there, and he supposes if she really doesn't want to, she doesn't have to, but when it comes to the options she has, they're limited. The workers at the home will come looking for her and if he offers to let her stay the night, he's sure he'll lose his position as a volunteer. It's different with Verity, because he signs her out, makes sure they know she's with him, but they're probably already expecting Eponine to be in her bed right now.

And instead she's out here with him. That's probably enough to get them both into trouble already.

"You do," he says and he hates it. "I know it isn't easy right now, but I swear I'm doing all I can to make it safe again."

She feels a little flare of jealousy of Verity, right at that moment, of Beverly too, and it's not either of their faults that they have people, nor that Marcus is one of the only people old enough to count that she'd consider tolerable enough to stay with. She doesn't begrudge them, exactly, even.
It's more just that she shouldn't have to stay here.

"I know," she says, and she's quietly uncertain if he'll be able to do anything, but she knows that he's doing what he can.

Then Eponine takes a breath and shakes it, lifting her head. "It's better this way, anyway," she says loftily, waving a hand, and unfolds herself, getting up and brushing off her dress, offering him a hand. "If I go back, I can report to you, like a good little spy, and we can get rid of this thing. I don't know why I'm acting such a child. Demon or not, it's a good bit better than the bridges were. That'll get into your head, in the winter. Just let some demon try to spook me after all that."

Edited 2018-04-30 03:32 (UTC)

"If you do need to get away, I've always a couch," he says. Verity will vouch for him, as will some of the other children, he's sure. And he'd be happy to let Kat talk to Eponine as well. "We've only got to make sure we do that through the proper channels. I need to keep my volunteer position in order to help whoever it is that might be possessed."

And, if he lets himself think about it honestly, he needs his volunteer position just because he needs it. Because it gives him something to do besides think about his life and draw. Marcus doesn't need the money or he'd find work, but if he can't work with the Church again, then he knows the Children's Home is the right place for him to be. It's a place where he can truly help people, even if it's just with their homework.

Besides, he's always liked kids.

"Bridges," he echoes, shaking his head. "What bridges?"

It's so very on the mark, and said so casually without any to-do or sighing over it, that Eponine blinks, feeling unsettled, as though he must have read her mind or as though she's revealed too much about her quiet wishes. But she doesn't think she has. It's simply that Marcus doesn't see a problem with it. She nods. "I'll be all right," she says carefully, not wanting to appear too anxious to take advantage of his kindness, "but every once in a while, that might be nice. Just a little break, if the staff is all right with it, so you can keep an eye on this place. And so I can," she adds, liking the idea that she has a job of some import.

She shrugs and starts to braid part of her hair away from her face, for want of something to do with nervous hands. "We didn't have the rent, always," she says bluntly, dispassionately "so time was we'd sleep where we might. Especially starting out, we didn't know well enough where to look for a bit of assistance. Azelma - my sister - and I, we'd stay under the bridges when it got cold. Keeps the snow off, you see, but that chill and a few nights hungry and the shadows can look eerie on the river. If I ever get too frightened, I can just say to myself, Ponine, you've thought you might die or go mad, and you haven't done either, so there."

Yet. In Paris, she's dead, she knows, but she doesn't have to go home, yet.

He knows it's how people live, how they've lived in the past, how they live now, and yet it still hurts to hear her speak of it with such ease. Without the Church, for all its faults, he'd have likely found himself in the same position, starved and desperate for a little bit of warmth. The home and the Church and Father Sean had certainly all been cruel, but at least he'd always had a place to stay. Food in his belly. A warm bed, if not necessarily a comfortable life.

"Well, at least the home here gives you a place to sleep," he says with a sigh. It's far from perfect, especially given the circumstances there now, but it's better than a lot of other options. And it's better than the places he's stayed in his own life. The staff do their best to swiftly put any bullying to bed and he knows it must still happen, but it's not the sort of violence he'd endured.

"I know that's hardly a comfort, especially with things as they are now. I just... I hate to think of you having to live under a bridge."

"And food, too," she says, airily -- even if that food was off sometimes these days -- "so you see? I'm just complaining about nothing. Poor little Eponine, with a spooky bedroom. This place is spoiling me, I swear."

He's so gentle about his reassurance, though, and his regret so genuine and hesitating about what to her is simply a fact of life for years now. It's almost hard to listen to, tugging at something in her chest that she keeps locked away. In Paris no one looked twice at a couple of half-grown wraiths haunting the underside of a bridge, or if they did it was with distaste; their father would have just exclaimed at their chapped hands and frozen hair as fortuitously pitiful and sent them off to beg charity.

"You're a good man, monsieur Marcus," she says quietly, and leans up to kiss him on the cheek.

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