signed_sabrina | [for marcus]

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marcus

[for marcus]

Sabrina holds it together as long as she can.

She holds it together until she can't.

It's a Wednesday night and she's taking care of the dishwasher before she heads upstairs to study. Studying gets more pointless by the night, but maintaining her grades seems like a benchmark in normal and will ensure that she moves through the year with as little trouble as possible.

Salem sits on the counter, the rest of the household not really caring if he does so, so long as they clean it. Where he'd once roamed the city in wide loops, he's now in her orbit most of the time.

She picks up a glass, not registering how wet it is until she turns and it flies from her hand, shattering on the ground. Sabrina looks at the pieces of glass, her hand shaking.

A sob rips free in a voice she hardly recognizes as her own, and she sinks to the ground. The tears tear through her, painful and wracking, loud until she can hear herself echoing through the house. She can't stop, she can't stop.

Salem finds his way into her lap, and she clings to her familiar, trying to muffle her sobs in his dark fur.

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Marcus hears the breaking glass first and he's already on his way into the kitchen when he hears the crying. With a concerned glance back to Dan, who remains on the couch, Marcus picks up speed until he enters the room and finds Sabrina and Salem on the floor, the broken glass nearby. He grabs the broom and sweeps the glass away from them, taking care to get every last shard, before he sinks down onto his knees in front of her.

"Come here, duck," he says softly, putting his hands on her shoulders and urging her into his embrace. "Come on, we've got you."

Because Salem isn't going to move, he knows that, and he wouldn't want her familiar to go anywhere regardless.

Even knowing Marcus is there, she can't make herself do anything but hold onto Salem and weep.

She should be out of tears, she thinks, she should have spent them already. They fall anyway, and finally she manages to scoot up against Marcus. Her frame holds stiff, though. So many people are poisoned by her existence, and it shouldn't be that way anymore.

Not unless she's just wrong, a thing that ought to be on the throne of Hell not because she's born to it, or because she's tossed the previous occupant into the pit, but because it's a natural order, the best place to keep her.

She doesn't know how to begin to say it, not to Marcus, who knows would only fish her right back out, regardless of the price or consequences.

Salem chatters worriedly, and she knows it's because he suspects her train of thought.

Marcus doesn't know the source of all this, doesn't know if it's Nick or Halloween or something else entirely. Or everything. Everything she's been through, everything she's had to do, all she's suffered.

All he can do is wrap his arms around her and although Sabrina doesn't relax against her, Marcus smooths his hand over her pale hair and kisses her temple and murmurs soothing things in a low voice.

"Get it out, duck," he says softly. "It's alright. Get it all out."

If she can. He knows better than most that not everything can be gotten out and some poison just stays inside, gathering strength.

Sabrina's not sure how long she cries, only that when she can even start to think again, her face feels hot and snotty, her eyes sore, her hands sweaty where they hold her familiar. Even then, the tears just keep trickling out, like she can't control them at all.

Slowly she's able to breathe more evenly, even if she can't exactly breathe through her nose.

"I'm sorry," she says, in a small voice, not really sure what she's sorry for, only that she is.

"You've nothing to be sorry for," Marcus answers, covering his hand with his long sleeve and using it to gently wipe Sabrina's face. He wipes tears from her cheeks, gently wipes her nose, anything he needs to. "Absolutely nothing. Well, maybe ruining my sweater, but I suppose that'll all come out in the wash."

It's a silly joke, but he's trying to see if he can at least get a small smile out of her.

Marcus kisses her head again and then shakes his own. "No, duck, you've got nothing at all to be sorry for."

Releasing Salem so he can settle down on her feet and start trying to return his coat to a neater state, she closes her eyes and lets herself be held by the only father she'd allow it from. Her only real father, as much as she struggles with the one who'd had so much control over her existence.

"I feel like I do," she says. "I should be handling things better, I--"

She's not sure how to put any of it into words.

"This isn't how I'm supposed to be," she tries.

"You're not supposed to be any particular way," Marcus answers, still stroking her hair. "You can be anything at all you need to be. You're not disappointing anyone by needing to cry, darling girl. You're certainly not disappointing me."

He wishes he could do more to help, certainly. He wants to make things right for her, fix everything that hurts, give her the life she wants. He also knows he can't do those things. There is no fixing a life, because that isn't what's meant to be done with them.

There's no going over. There's only going through.

"I'm--"

Sabrina's still searching for the words. "I feel lost," she finally confesses, in a small voice. "I thought I had some idea of what I would do, when the year ends, when I'm supposed to be... grown-up, sort of. Or if I didn't know for sure, I felt like I could figure it out."

She sighs.

"But nothing feels like it matters when I'm at school. None of it feels like it's for me, and I'm trying so hard not to draw the wrong kind of attention to us. Rosie and me."

"Maybe you aren't meant for it," he says honestly, considering. "Traditional education as it stands, I mean. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You're not a traditional girl, love, and that's not a bad thing."

Marcus hadn't attended high school. He had been educated solely through the Catholic Church and he knows some would argue that isn't much of an education at all, but he had taken care of the rest of it himself.

"Do you think you can get through the year?" he asks.

Sabrina has to really, truly think abut what's being said, and while it takes a moment to make her brain grind away from the alternately self-pitying and self-loathing paths it's been on, she manages.

"I don't know," she says, and the honesty of it terrifies her. "I can't leave Rosie there by herself, and with Charlie in college..." The idea of doing something else makes her stomach flip, because it's both right and still goes against everything she's believed she ought to do. "I don't feel like I'm myself when I'm there. I don't," and she takes a deep breath. "I don't know if I even want to go to college, not the way other people do. I don't know what I want to do at all."

She can feel her eyes brimming again, swollen and sore as they are. "I feel like I lost so much of what makes magic more than being a Morningstar, when I lost Nick, and I'm trying to hard not to cause any more trouble for Rosie that I'm just-- I'm there, but I feel like I'm not."

Marcus nods his understanding and says, "Then I think we need to consider other options for you. I know with the way Darrow works we'll need to prove there is other education happening, at least until you turn eighteen, but we can do things from home. You're a smart girl, you can take the test for the GED certification."

He rubs her arm again. "You don't have to follow the same traditional route others are following. Maybe it's not what you're meant for. I don't want you to feel forced into some sort of box, a place you don't feel comfortable."

Her chest tightens up, and the fresh wave of tears rolls down her cheeks, spurred on by the shaking of her head.

"I can't leave Rosie there alone, not with those people, not when I'm part of the reason they've been awful to her. Last year, I just took care of it, and they were scared of me, too scared to do much, but it..." She trails off. "It's just me and Rosie against the school, it feels like, and the best way to make sure she's okay is keeping my head down."

Sabrina gives a watery hiccup. "I should have told you, I know. I wasn't, I wasn't ready, and I did have them handled, but I screwed other things up instead."

"Do you need me to visit the school?" he asks.

Rosie may not be his, not in the same way Sabrina is, but she had been at the Home for a time and between that and how important she is now to Sabrina, he feels responsible for her in some ways. Enough that he has absolutely no problem taking their problems to someone else at the school, someone who might actually be able to make a difference.

But he'll also keep his distance if she wants him to.

"It isn't that much longer," he says. "I'll do whatever I can to help."

Do you need me to visit the school?

Sabrina has to think about that, because the answer only comes with more complications, and things she's not sure she's ready to say. Only-- only, she can't do this any longer.

And she can't leave Rosie vulnerable.

"It might be a good idea," she says, quiet, subdued. "They-- they knew that between Charlie and Rosie and me and Nick," and she manages to get his name out without a sob, "we had some unorthodox relationships. There were rumors. It wasn't so hard to deal with then, I felt like I could handle anything."

But she can't.

"But with Nick gone, it's harder," he says in a soft voice. "I know, duck. I know."

Maybe he doesn't, not in any way that he can relate to what she's experiencing, but he understands what she's implying. With a more solid foundation, all that nonsense would be easier to put aside, but when one is mourning and hearing such garbage, it only weighs heavier.

"I'll go," he says. "But do you think Rosie might consider finishing out the year with something like home schooling?"

"It was easier to feel better about my... not so human side, with Nick around. Like maybe even if it was just us, I could change what being a witch or the Path of Night or even Hell, I could make something good out of it, because we were something good."

It's not something she's voiced to either Charlie or Rosie, not to anyone, but she feels the truth when she says it. She knows whatever Path she's walking, she's not alone, and she still has to admit it's not the same.

"I don't know. If I try not to think with the part of me that's perpetually ready to rain down hellfire on my classmates... I think it's easier this year. Maybe it's faded, or maybe it's because I'm trying. I guess I have to really talk to her about it."

"You're the only person here like you," Marcus says. In a way, he understands that. There's no one else quite like him in Darrow, no one who hears God, who can begin to understand what it's like when He's inside Marcus's head.

"You two should talk," he says. "And come talk to me about it, too. With all the volunteer hours I put in at the Home, I know a thing or two about the home schooling curriculum. I could help you both with it."

It might mean he would have to take fewer hours at the Home, at least until the end of the year, but he'll do it happily for the two of them.

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