It Don't Matter If I'm Coming Home To You

[Emprexx Plush]

((Marco Hart Continued From The View From Halfway Down))

It got dark quick after he left the garden, or he got back slow. He hadn't looked at the sky since he left Marceline behind. Marco's head stayed on a swivel, the experience hadn't shook him so much that he was going to throw his life away shoegazing, but he'd settled into a sort of autopilot. All the thoughts he didn't want in his head right now were kept at the margins by the one that weighed on him most. Unless he saw a movement or a face he didn't recognize around the edges of the path, all his attention stayed on what he was going to say to Katelynne.

There was a temptation to take another path. He could find shelter elsewhere. By morning she'd understand why he didn't come back and she probably wouldn't want to see him once she did. Then again he figured she would have run him off long before now if she was going to, but instead she'd helped him each time he lost his head. She'd armed him, planned with him. If Kayla had bothered her she never got around to mentioning it. It stood to reason that if she could forgive that without a word between them she would understand Marceline equally well.

Unless the determining factor had been time. Unless she expected better now that they were together. Unless she didn't want to take the risk of hanging around a known killer this late. Unless a lot of things that could go wrong when he reached the front door of the manor, and he hadn't come up with solutions for any of them when his knuckles came to rest against the wood.

Knock.

Knock-knock.

Knock.

When he had left they set patterns. Nothing complicated, just a few short ways to say a few short things just between the two of them. Knock, pause, two knocks, pause, knock meant that there was no one outside with him making him say whatever he was about to say. It was the weirdest one because it was the one that should look the most abnormal, the one they hoped too use most, because if one of them was just knocking like normal it meant there was somebody on the other side with them.

Marco waited until he heard Katelynne's pattern in reply from somewhere within the front room before he called out. "It's Marco, Kate," because their voices were important just in case somebody managed to get the pattern from them, "I." He hesitated. "I don't know if you want me to come in. I've got to tell you something."

[Jilly]

There was no response for some time. Moments, seconds, all were quiet.

And then, (( a knock )) came.

Pause.

Another knock, followed by a clap.

"I'm still here."

Claps and knocks and stomps... it was such a dumb system. But Marco wanted it, so Katelynne just agreed and let him have it. Marco wanted to run around outside that morning, so Katelynne just let him. If Marco wanted to never come back, Katelynne would let him.

Not that she wished he didn't come back or anything. Just.... she was kind of surprised he actually did. Pleasantly surprised, maybe, like an outdoor cat that comes and goes wherever it wants. Might show up again in a few hours, might show up in a few days, might show up never again. He wouldn't be the first.

Katelynne reached for the door handle on the inside before hesitating as Marco spoke.

She didn't open the door, letting her hand caress the rusted knob instead.

"Why? What happened? Are ya hurt?"

[Emprexx Plush]

She was worried he'd gotten hurt. What a kicker. From her voice she was close, just on the other side of the door, so he lowered his voice. "No I'm-" fine? Was he? "I"m not hurt. I just."

There was no thinking his way around it. All he could offer was the truth.

"I saw Marceline."

And then.

"I told her to drop her weapons."

And then.

"She tried to draw on me."

And then.

"So I shot her."

Marco could barely make out his last sentence. He didn't know what else to say. A beat passed and he leaned in to slump against the door; he might have a long way to walk still, he should take what rest he could.

[Jilly]

"I see."

Katelynne didn't open the door. It was even longer before she said something again, her words mumbling through the door.

"I mean... are you, are you sure you're not hurt? Are you okay?"

[Emprexx Plush]

"No."

It all came spilling out.

"I didn't want to do it. I-if she'd put down the guns we could have, I mean, it's not okay it was never gonna be okay but I wanted to let her go and it was like, like she wanted me to do it, she drew and I shoot and she, she didn't...." Marco felt like his breath should be quickening, or he should sweat, or cry, or anything more than his nervous stutter in the outline. "She didn't die and she...she stopped fighting." His bag dropped from his shoulder to the ground and his voice followed after it. "I asked, I, I didn't want her to suffer but all she asked was I sit with her. She wanted me to be there when..." Plastic scraped on plastic atop the water bottle before he took a long pull. His mouth felt so dry, drier than after the scream. "She asked me to forgive her."

The bottle dropped into the bag. For a few moments he was quiet.

"I don't think I did."

[Jilly]

A faint sigh barely passed through the wood.

And then it was quiet, until it wasn't.

"I ain't saying if you should or shouldn't've. That ain't my call to make, that's between you and a higher power. But Marceline knew what she was doing. Nicholas wasn't her first. She was accountable. She ain't innocent... but I also can't say if she was sincere or not. I wasn't there.

"I know... I know if I ever see Blaise or Erika... I don't know if I could forgive them. But I dunno... again, with Marceline, ain't my call."

There was another beat before the voice continued.

"I mean... are you okay with the outcome, whatever that means going forward from here?"

[Emprexx Plush]

It was funny all the sudden that he had thought some nursery rhyme simple patterns and the sound of each other's voices alone could guarantee their safety. Funny because with the wood muffling their words he could imagine almost any voice on the other side if he let his mind drift. Any at all, no matter how different in cadence, accent, vocabulary. An echo of one lingering question rippled into another, and with his eyes shut against the door Marco could have sworn despite the improbability of the translation that Katelynne sounded almost like Princess.

Was he okay with the outcome, whatever that meant?

Was this enough?

Was he satisfied?

Marco tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “I hated it Katelynne. When she went down I, I asked why she made me do it. Maybe she didn’t hear me. I dunno.” It wouldn’t go down. If anything it was growing. “I know I pulled another bolt back before she hit the ground though. Didn’t even think about it. I just did it like you showed me.”

It wasn’t satisfaction. Then again, being satisfied and being okay might be as different things as Katelynne was from Princess. Satisfaction, he recalled himself thinking, was an end point. One where he could exhale after reviewing what he had accomplished and feel at least for a time that it was enough. Princess had been trying to prepare them for that moment whether she knew it or not. Katelynne wasn’t asking him if he was ready to stop, because nobody stopped at ‘okay.’ ‘Okay’ was a way forward; ‘okay’ said that the path he was on was acceptable.

“I don’t regret that I shot her. Just that she made me do it. If Marcy-” No. Marco opened his eyes and straightened up. “If anybody went for a weapon on me like that, I’d do it again.”

Yes.

“I’ll do it again.”

He was okay.

Marco reached down to shoulder his bag again. “I just...I understand if that means you want me to go. You can have the house. I wanted you to hear it from me, though, not disappear on you to hear it in the morning alone.”

[Jilly]

The door replied to Marco with silence.

And then, clacking. And then it creeped open.

Katelyn stood in the doorway, her hand stuck on the handle as both eyed Marco down while simultaneously not looking at him at all. Her face stayed neutral.

"I think Nicholas and Princess would both be mad if I kept letting you run around unsupervised. C'mon inside... you're soaking wet."

[Emprexx Plush]

Marco looked down at himself in confusion at her comment. Rain had broken to sunshine before Marceline had died, it felt like that had been hours ago. He didn't think he had been in the storm that long before it died down. Then again the sun died soon after. He hadn't thought about his clothes clinging to him since before he'd seen Marceline and while soaking could be an exaggeration they were still too wet to be worn. Maybe he'd assumed it was sweat or...no. He had no explanation. There'd been too much on his mind to consider his body.

Katelynne's unflinching examination showed she had already moved from one to the other. Marco had to wonder if his answers satisfied her, if she was looking for evidence he had mischaracterized the encounter to her or body language less certain than his words. Her face was inscrutable. She looked almost exactly as she had the night he and Nick stumbled into the temple, never meeting his eye, never letting her expression waver, but even that told him very little concrete. Katelynne had been tight lipped about Kayla, about Princess, about Nick. It wasn't unlike her. If she wanted to discuss it further she would, and if he wanted to stay with her that would have to be enough.

Marceline in Hail Mary confession crept to the front of his mind. The words were already fading like he'd expected but the roller coaster from despair to desperation to delight stayed with him. The words might not have mattered to her so much either. What felt important was the opportunity to speak, more to excise, the sentiments behind them before she ran out of time. From the way her reactions developed she hadn't known she needed or hadn't expected to get that opportunity until the bolt was already in her chest.

Would they realize their last opportunity to clear the air before it came?

Or was Katelynne's neutral invitation indication she had nothing further to say to him about it, now or ever?

Marco's confidence had been forced to grow in leaps to keep his head above water. Two weeks ago he couldn't imagine saying his name. Kissing a man he loved. Standing up to a friend down the wrong path. Pulling a trigger. All that added up to someone beyond who he could have imagined in his most private fantasies, but he wasn't ready to force confrontation over what might go unsaid with the only person who would let him through that door. He swallowed again, that lump finally sliding down to twist into a knot in the pit of his stomach, and gave Katelynne a weak smile. "I don't have anything to change into, but maybe there's something in the bedrooms."

The front room behind her wasn't any less of a wreck than when they first arrived. Its stains told stories of all the death that must have passed through here; other than a couple of bolts that matched his crossbow Marco hadn't explored the house thoroughly enough to know if there was anything but someone else's bad memories inside. They were enough to remind him how stacked the odds were against them ever making it this far. Last time he could remember hearing a hard number there were just 30 of them left alive. By morning it could be five, fifteen, or even after Marceline they were the last ones on the entire island. No matter the number still hanging on, in another two weeks all but one of them would be stains telling stories no one else would see in person.

Marco paused in the middle of the room and looked at his feet.

"They'd be proud of us."

Katelynne had not felt it necessary to share all the stains left behind her, or examine the ones left in his too closely. They shared Princess and Nick if in little but their ends, though, and in all they might leave unsaid between each other Marco didn't want Katelynne to feel as if she was letting them down even as a joke. "So thank you. Again. I'm, I'm gonna try to find some clothes."

He disappeared up the stairs.

((Marco Hart Continued In Down In My Beast Hart I Build An Empire))

[Jilly]

Katelynne watched Marco flee up the stairs before pushing the door closed once again.

((continued the next day))