exorkismos | @success

@success_story

It’s raining in Gotham, so hard the whole city feels like it’s underwater, and Marcus doesn’t make it three blocks after leaving the Evans house before he’s doubled over laughing. Hard, pained, endorphin-high noises that come right from the bottom of his rib cage. He’s soaked and glad for it, the rain sluicing off some of the grime of his work. He’s got a Tupperware full of leftover stew in his bag. Patricia Evans had insisted. She’d actually tried to make him stay the night in the guest room, but Marcus had needed to be out. Moving. Getting his head clear. He has a surprisingly okay and surprisingly cheap room not so far away, anyway. He wants movement and then he wants stillness, privacy. He wants to call Tim and purr smug and happy and tender down the phone at him. The demon in Adia Evans had been crying by the end of it, begging for forgiveness. Marcus had granted it and seen her eyes clear in that very moment.

In fact — but the rain blurs the touchscreen when he pulls it out, makes it hard to compose a message. He leaves it, tucks it back into his pocket. At least the phone is charged. He’s more vigilant about it since Vermont. He talks more to Tim, leaves fewer silences; he knows it’s not exactly what either of them want, but it’s better than not trying.

He should walk. Get somewhere dry. Heat up the leftovers. Make that call. But for now, he just leans back against the wall and lets the rain drench him, promises himself he’ll start walking again in just a second, just a moment: giving himself longer and longer to enjoy how easy his breath comes in moments like these, how the leaden weight of guilt has eased up off his chest. Done enough. He’s done enough.

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A long exhale through his nose, and Marcus relaxes his shoulders slightly. "I dunno," he says, and his voice actually softens. "Get to work with kids, that's pretty good. Following what God's telling me to do, that ain't fashionable to talk about at one of these events I guess, but. That's good, too. And I ain't ever had to wear a suit in my life, which is a nice little extra. That costume can't be comfortable."

He laughs into his glass, picks at the tie that he's already undone. "It's not so bad if you find one that works. It's the accessories that'll kill you.

"You know, if you're looking for work with kids, Gotham always needs another person looking out for our youth." Bruce peers at Marcus for a quiet moment (Adia Evans, not even thirteen, asking for him almost every morning for a week after, every evening when she had to give in to sleep) and pats his breast pocket. "The kids in this city see more darkness and tragedy before thirteen that most of America knows in a lifetime. Any friend of the Bishop..."

He rises, moving towards the opposite side of the desk for the righthand drawer. "Would've sworn I had a business card around here somewhere. We aren't the only ones, but Wayne Industries has a number of outreach programs that need help. There are more downstairs if you want introductions."

“I’m...” Marcus feels adrift. At the back of his skull the dull irritable boys’-school feeling of someone pretending not to have a laugh at his expense itches. And he’s got that elbows-on-the-table compulsion, too, has to fight off the urge to throw back the rest of the scotch to — what, prove a point?

Stupid thing to do, so he tamps down the urge. Instead he gnaws his lip, worries his phone in his pocket, says, “Nah. I ain’t staying. Sorry.”

He finds the card he was digging for and brings it over anyway. Settles hip against the desk next to Marcus, head tilting to get him by the eyes surely. "Just think about it. Like I said, we always need help with the kids. And it's good to have friends in any town."

Patricia Evans, trying to get back to work slowly with one eye on her daughter, talking Marcus' ear off every time he stops by, needing that point of contact. Sense of security. Quietly: "Where's God calling you next?"

After a moment, and with a palpable reluctance, Marcus takes the card. He doesn’t want to get mixed up in this capes bullshit. But.

But at least this way, if he ever comes back, it won’t be such a surprise. And if Bruce sees anything that needs his help, then maybe he can be of use.

“I dunno,” he says, stowing the card in his jacket pocket, where he’ll probably let it get dog-eared before he transfers the contact details to his phone. Just out of spite. “He doesn’t like to give hints too early. But I...might go visit a friend.”

"More bishops down the coast?" Bruce smiles, warm in his mask and in a little bit of scotch. "Very social for a man who doesn't do society."

“Ha. No.” He opens his mouth, then closes it again, then tries, “What are you angling for, seriously, because this is — pointless. Isn’t it?”

His brow pinches, head shakes once. "Pointless? You're a guest, I'm the host--this is what we do, Mr. Keane. Are you used to people...angling for something from you?"

“Mm,” Marcus says and — gives up. “Yeah, okay. Sod this.” He gives into that urge to swallow down all the scotch left in his glass and does just that, not wincing this time. His hackles are too far up for him to enjoy the burn or really feel the warmth of it. He pushes off from the desk to stride off, back turned to Bruce: “Thanks for the offer of, uh, collaboration. Maybe some day. And cheers for —” He holds the glass aloft, taps his fingernail on it: fine crystal, it rings out bright. He puts it down on the arm of the chaise longue instead of exerting himself to reach the end table a mere step away from it. “This. It’s nice stuff.”

"Marcus." Warm and comfortable, he's had these conversations in this face before, and they don't always end well. That's just fine. There's no need for hook pulling at his stomach (but it pulls anyway, his gut knows that he wasn't given a first name during this meeting). Another drink would help quell it, but Bruce sets his glass down on the desk in kind. "Hold on, have I said something to offend you? You're upset."

Marcus catches the supposedly-untold name and it stops him, settles him a little: good, that'll do as a start. He hesitates, considers just walking out, but — he's still curious. And fine, if Bruce is only going to give him the half-said version of what's going on, well — maybe it's better than nothing. He grips the back of his own neck and sighs and says, "Yeah, it's — nothing. Place like this, makes me prickly. Claustrophobic. Paranoid, maybe. Too many portraits, too many people, if you knock something over or spill someone's wine you're out a couple hundred." Thousand, more like, he corrects himself mentally with a grimace. He carries on, turns around slightly. "You don't feel a bit like you're living in a mausoleum, ever? Antecedents glowering down at you the whole time."

He does take a drink at that: too spot on. It only helps his stomach a little. There's a small, framed photograph of his parents on the desk that Bruce looks to briefly. "You know, the Waynes have a mausoleum. My parents refused to be entombed there, they wrote individual plots into their wills.

"But my sons are there. Two of them." That hook yanks again, and the human thing would be to heed it and sober up. The human thing is weak, though, and this is still half put on, and Bruce continues as if he's teaching a lesson and not learning one. "As fast as my youngest is growing up, I'll be one of those antecedents sooner than later. I don't mind a mausoleum, Mr. Keane. Maybe it isn't chipper, but it's grounding--knowing your place in the world."

Which ones, he thinks, and wonders with a sudden twist in his stomach if he knows one, if that's the story —

He can look it up. Later. There would have to be obituaries. Christ. "Sorry," he says, brief but not unfeeling, and after a moment he nods. "Yeah. Okay. I see that. 'Spose I've always preferred moving. If I get too grounded I'll sink." He half shows his teeth, not quite a smile. That's the sort of thing he have found easier to say a few months ago. Just now it's all a little more complicated.

"And what about the people you help? The kids you work with. You don't think they'll sink without you?"

"No." He's actually surprised, eyebrows tipping up. "No, I don't. They're stronger than that. For the most part, I do...brief interventions. And for the most part, that's all they need. Get them to a place that can get better and let them take charge."

Most of the time. He gets caught up, he always does, but he can't afford to play favourites. And the people he works with, people who get possessed, people who come out the other end — they aren't served best by someone else deciding what their happy ending is and devoting their life to securing it. It doesn't work like that.

Which is hypocritical, he knows, given that he's still in communication with Samuel and Ana. He should stop that. It's not fair to get attached.

They aren't friends, so Bruce doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong outright. Just listens and watches over the rim of him glass as he eases closer, folding the gap between them. But people, especially children, especially after trauma, need stability. Need someone to protect them from the world, from themselves.

“You’re probably right,” is what he says, wandering past Marcus back towards the hall. “Maybe you could give me a few pointers there. I’m sure if you asked Damian, he’d call me a hover parent.” Or nosy. Or over-bearing. Or possessive. Damian’s vocabulary is extensive.

"No, you?" Marcus says, thinking, Yep, no doubt, and wondering exactly how inappropriate it would be to make a point of meeting Damian. Whether it goes against what he promised Tim, what he's mostly stuck to. He's got that nosy, hunting impulse now, the sort of itch in his fingers that leads to him opening people's letters or rifling through their wallets. Hands in his pockets he saunters in Bruce's wake, abandoning his glass to leave marks on the chaise longue. "Doesn't seem like you're hovering right now. You must trust him with some of the socialising going on downstairs." Back past some of the portraits. Marcus carefully doesn't look. "I dunno. Don't have my own, and working with kids is different from raising them."

"Well, he is twenty-one." Bruce grimaces, which is half true and half code for I can leave him in charge while I keep exorcists from snooping around my house. "One thing I have learned is that the Dad Card doesn't work so well past nineteen. Once they hit twenty-three, they all develop, ah--anti-hovercraft measures. I'm trying to wean myself off."

Unhelpfully, Marcus' brain presents him with the mental maths: twenty three is about when Tim would have left here. His jaw tightens a bit, smile getting more strained as he tries not to think about any of that. "Mm. A skillset's a skillset." He's not doing well, at all, at keeping his eyes off the pictures, so he just decides to be overt. "I don't know — sorry. Ain't from around here, don't keep up with high society stuff. These all your kids?"

"Some of them." A laugh as he turns, walking a little slower backwards. "Ah, not all of them. So many of these were commissioned after--we lost Jason years ago. About fifteen years ago. After that I learned to keep records like this."

He lingers in front of the larger portrait, pointing as he explains. "My oldest, Dick. He was a little younger than Damian when this was commissioned. He captains a precinct in Bludhaven, just down-river. Damian, whom you'll see. Tim, he must have been...fourteen, fifteen here?"

The beat that he takes speaks to man whose child is dead, but his delivery of the fact sounds more like a man whose child's dog ran away. "We lost Tim a few years ago, actually. Train accident in New York."

Marcus' eyes track along the portraits, lining them up alongside what Tim has told him until Bruce says we lost Tim like maybe Tim just slipped out and didn't come back. He does a bad job at controlling his expression, his mouth tightening slightly. It's a cliche and it's stupid but it feels like someone's walked over his grave, it really does. Shiver between the shoulders, a superstitious urge to check his phone, send Tim something stupid and irrelevant just to get something equally trivial back, just checking up. Testing the line. He knows it's just a smokescreen, a necessary one, arranged between Bruce and Tim for Tim's own sake, but seeing him memorialised makes his stomach twist.

"Yeah. That's awful," he mutters, after too jagged a moment of silence. "Sorry. I'd go fucking crazy, probably."

Marcus does a sorry job of keeping himself opaque. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce watches him and reads. He didn't get this reaction out of mentioning Jason. Maybe it's the photograph. Possibly. Some people are sensitive.

Marcus looks at the picture with familiarity that makes him wonder, though. "...You said you don't have children?"

He's startled into a laugh by the question, even though it feels like an inopportune moment and he quickly cuts it short with a brief expression of self-rebuke. He just doesn't get that one often. "No. Uh, never a thing I thought about, really. Even after I left the priesthood." Which they haven't discussed while Bruce is wearing this mask, but the scotch is settling in and Marcus doesn't really have much patience for delicacy when sober.

"But you're missing someone right now." Soft but fast, meant to catch him off guard just a little. "If not a child, who are you missing?"

Marcus spears him with a look, and says, prompt and deadpan as anything, "I mean, I reckon by now Bishop Conlan downstairs will have just about convinced himself I've fucked off and he can relax. I'm ready to ruin that moment of relief."

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