[for Marcus]

[fifthbeatle]

When Vanya was invited to play the theatre gala, she was thrilled. It offered substantial pay for a featured musicians and - what do you know - they need an experienced violinist. The audition pieces are complicated, but what violinist worth their salt can't play "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?"

By the time she found out the gig included glad-handing donors, it was too late to say no.

She considered more extreme measures of terminating her contract. Perhaps she could hide herself in green room trash. She'd have to wait until she was emptied into the dumpster to escape, but she thinks she can wait it out. Maybe she'll bring a book.

Her attitude changes when they mention in the final rehearsal that the dress code for men and women is the same. This is the best news Vanya's heard since the world didn't end on Valentine's.

So, Vanya gets a suit that very much on purpose does not resemble any suit she might have had in the past. The first time she tries it on, she finds she's smiling like a silly goon in the mirror.

It's been more than 6 months that she's been off those pills, now; she has her family and a fresh start. A whole range of feelings exist between anxious and resigned, and she has a ton of support when any of that gets to be too much.

Does that mean that she's feeling herself? Hell yeah.

The performance goes well, it seems. She hit all the right notes, she had a fucking blast with the double-stop harmonics and people were generally very kind. Of course they are. Very few people tend to tell others they suck to their faces right after a performance. A benefit, especially.

There's an elementary school principal chasing her down to try and make her into the entire music department and she's not about to do it. Vanya managed to dodge her once with a lucky swoop by a local radio DJ whose hand was way too low on her back.

It's possible she broke his champagne flute using mic feedback from the podium, but maybe he was just unlucky.

This second dodge gets intercepted. The woman catches her from across the room and powerwalks toward her. Vanya considers the garbage escape again, but she can't do that to this suit: one of the first really nice things she's ever owned. She's going to spiral. This woman is going to ask her to take a job she doesn't want and Vanya's going to say yes because she won't be able to help herself. Then she'll die slowly from the inside until she loses control of her powers and levels the city. She shuffles around a bit...

And she sees a man standing at a table, close enough that maybe she can arguably say she was engaged in a conversation. They happen to meet eyes at the same time. A few synapses fire.

"Excuse me," she says, eyes a little wider than the average person at rest. "You don't happen to have a cigarette, do you?"

Comments

[fifthbeatle]

Oh, it is certainly a piece of Vanya's soul. For as long as she's known the truth about herself, she's wondered how much of her relationship to music was an accident. It's a neat little fantasy, the idea that Vanya was drawn to music because a part of her could not be suppressed. Despite her father's control of her memory, her heart couldn't forget the feeling of rightness in sound, in controlling it.

These days, she wonders if people notice she's magic, that the air in the room changes when she and her violin become one instrument. This one doesn't seem to have, and he's proven himself to be sharper than many.

"That is a very nice thing to say," Vanya says, just like one of her therapists taught her. On the rare occasion (though it happens more and more these days) someone pays her a compliment, she has no idea what to do with herself. Thank you seems arrogant. Saying nothing is worse. She does like to hear it, though, and that's a whole other shame convection.

Vanya doesn't shift to look at him until he suggests a detour. Being a woman, a formerly-ordinary being among her powered family, being small and unassuming, Vanya finds herself anxious. Still, her feet carry her forward, and her voice says quietly, "okay."

He doesn't seem like a creep, but her judgement has not been sound before. All she can do is hope she isn't put in a situation where she can hurt him.

[pushbackthedarkness]

He would have to be an idiot not to notice the hesitation, the bit of anxiety, so he takes care to keep a bit of distance between them as they walk. The place he wants to show her isn't far, just the next block over, well lit and bright with people and music.

Even before they get there, Marcus can feel the thrumming of the guitars through the street and he closes his eyes briefly, then smiles.

"My husband doesn't love this place," he admits. "Too many people for his tastes, but the music..." He trails off and shakes his head in obvious pleasure. The doorman raises his hand when Marcus gets close enough and he's treated to a smile in return.

"Hullo, Henry," Marcus says in greeting. "Who's playing tonight?"

"Viv," Henry answers. "Your favourite goddess on the guitar. Go on in."

[fifthbeatle]

They walk in easy silence - a gift. Marcus keeps an obviously respectable distance. Vanya is comforted for both things: the silence and the space. The music hits her ear before they've turned the corner. She can't help but smile over at her companion. Bringing an anxious, troubled musician from the barren wasteland of the post-concert benefit to a charming little box of a place alive with music that awes him to where he can only appreciate it silently - it's the kind of gesture only a couple types of people would make. She can only hope he's one type over the other.

"How have I never heard of this place?" Vanya marvels, tilting her little head all the way up to look at the top of it, over the sides like maybe it's a mirage or a projection.

[pushbackthedarkness]

"It took me about three months before I made my way here," Marcus answers, lifting his voice over the music as they descend the stairs that takes them into the basement bar. Given that it's literally underground, a tiny hole in the wall sort of place, it should seem dark and sullen, but instead it feels alive to Marcus. There are lights and music, people laughing and talking, and on the stage is Viv and her band.

She wails away on her guitar, fingers dancing over the fretboard in movements so quick Marcus can barely even see them. The music is lively and people are dancing, but Marcus nods toward the bar instead, leading Vanya toward it.

"Just a glass of water for me tonight," he calls to the bartender, then looks at Vanya. "Would you like something?"

[fifthbeatle]

"Water would be great, thank you," Vanya replies loud enough for the bartender to hear. She only looks at them for long enough to be polite and then her eyes are back to the stage where this woman - Viv - is smashing on an electric guitar with the most astounding grace.

She always liked the guitar. An unsuitable instrument, Number Seven remembers. The violin in the case strapped around her chest was a means to make herself more extraordinary, a power she could give herself. In some other universe, maybe this is her.

A few people start to applaud her in a run of fabulous arpeggios and Vanya joins in herself with a little whoop. She smiles up at Marcus and asks, "how did you find it?"

[pushbackthedarkness]

"I've been all over the world and I always make it my mission to find the live music," he admits, thinking to all the places he's been. Often, it hasn't been as easy as that. He's been busy, wrapped up in trying to save a life, but at the end of it all, when it goes well (which it always had, right up until Gabriel), Marcus found the music.

"My parents died when I was seven," he tells Vanya. Died is too nice a description for it, but he doesn't think this is the place to get into all the gory details. "I lived in a boy's home until I was twelve, when the Church bought me. The best way to escape everything I hated about my life was through music. I would listen to anything I could get my hands on, but I loved rock."

He smiles and says, "The nuns, on the other hand, loved it much less."

[fifthbeatle]

When Marcus looks down he will see a sad, knowing smile devoid of pity, from one orphan to another. It's not the same, but Vanya can't find it in her to count the robot she called Mom as Mother anymore. Not one adult in her life - from the woman that birthed her on down the line, human and otherwise - ever did right by her. Two-thirds of her caretakers died by her hand. The last would deserve nothing less, but he had the good sense to die before Vanya knew who she was.

Deep down she sometimes wishes her mother were dead. She suspects it might be easier to understand than knowing she sold her kid to a billionaire of unknown origin.

"My -- the guy who adopted my brothers and sister and me wasn't a fan either," she commiserates, the dry tone to her voice still belying her distaste plenty.

"Did you ever want to play?"

[pushbackthedarkness]

"I never thought about it much," he admits. "I think when you feel called to something, you know it, and music, like art or exorcisms, is something you need to be called to."

Marcus can draw, he can paint, and he does so beautifully. He knows he has taken, even if he often uses that talent to explore and try to deal with the awful things he's seen and experienced. Art is an outlet for him, a place where he can put all the darkness that has lived inside of him and around him for his entire life.

"By the time I would have had the chance to try, I was too busy with other things," he continues. "I started training to be an exorcist when I was just twelve and from then on, it was all I did."

[fifthbeatle]

She almost says it, gets as far as the little huff of a laugh that comes before she calls herself ordinary, but he's right. She always knew music was her path to freedom, she just didn't know how right she was. Or that her life had already been written for her until she landed here.

(So many dark, quiet night, she wonders how much of any of her life was an accident. Did Dad leave the violin out for her to find? Did he always know the apocalypse was going to happen, did he know it would always be Vanya? If so, how can he purport to have been trying to stop the world when he had such a large hand in it?)

Is that what they're doing here? Has he brought her here to gauge her level of belonging after she stammered and quietly freaked out about the concept of evil (like a very niche dumbass)?

Twelve is a hell of an age to start learning to exercise demons, but if a calling's a calling, Vanya was about that age when she decided her purpose was to play music. And she was right. So, he may have been, too. Which brings her to a question:

"Do you think it's what you were meant to do?" Vanya asks, no hesitation in this earnest query from deep within her, even as she scream-whispers it over the music.

[pushbackthedarkness]

"Yes," Marcus answers. "Beyond all doubt, I was meant to be an exorcist."

He understands now that he's meant for more than that, though he wouldn't have said so five years ago. Now, though, he has other callings. He's a counsellor to children, he's a father to Sabrina, he's a husband to Dan, a best friend to Neil, brother and partner in crime to Sam. He's meant for all these things and more. It's been incredibly freeing, the Church having cut him off.

"I was excommunicated, though," he adds. "So now I have to do it under the radar, so to speak. Which is easy enough in Darrow. The Catholic Church tends to keep to itself here."