Scar Tissue

The church was tucked on the corner of two roads lined with palm trees. Its eggshell white facade shone in the moonlight, giving it a terribly sad and lonesome air. Everything about it seemed abandoned, left behind, down to the intricately carved archway at its entrance that completely stood out from the LA architecture around it. 

“Just here, thanks.” Dorcas signalled to the limo driver Mary had let her borrow. 

There was a soft breeze blowing as she exited the car, heading for the large wooden doors at the front of the building. As she pushed it open, she noticed that the church seemed just as hollow and sad on the outside as it did on the inside. She walked down the centre, rows of dark wooden benches on either side. The walls were lined with small archways in which Dorcas could make out the statues of saints, wrapped up in colourful silk and halos. 

She wondered if she was on a wild goose chase, if Marlene was actually just tucked away safe and sound in her bed. Mary would call her if that was the case, she thought. 

Looking around her, everything seemed still. That was, until a sharp intake of breath caught her attention, coming from the front of the church. Dorcas’ feet moved unconsciously faster until, next to the altar, Dorcas spotted a figure with dark curls. 

Marlene. 

She wasn’t looking forward, but instead sitting on the right-hand side, looking towards what Dorcas figured was one of the statues of saints that lined the wall of the church. In her hands Dorcas could spot a bottle of rum, catching the light in a white-knuckled grasp. Her chest was rising harshly, as if there was a heavy weight on it. Despite the utter mess she looked, the way Marlene was sitting there, on her knees, moonlight filtering through the stained glass windows, made her seem like a statue herself; delicately made, holding bottomless grief. She looked like one of the saints in front of her. 

Silently, Dorcas walked up next to the girl. Getting closer, she could see that her eyes were puffy and tracks of fallen tears were drying on her cheeks. She sat down next to her without saying a word and looked up at the statue Marlene was looking at. It was the virgin Mary, Dorcas could recognise, hands clutching her deep blue robes, eyes and face twisted with utter despair. 

“You found me.”

Marlene’s voice was soft, defeated. 

She had. Somehow, she’d remembered. When Mary had asked her, she’d felt it in her gut where to go. Her mind wandered back to the conversation a few hours ago…

“Hey, have you seen Marlene?”

Dorcas was in the middle of a conversation with some boring tech crew guy bragging about the clarity of the amps for the concert. She welcomed the interruption Mary had brought when she tapped her shoulder as she was wading through the crowd.

Dorcas shook her head in response - she hadn’t seen her for a few hours. She had just figured Marlene was with Mary or James or someone.

The other girl’s lips formed into a tight smile, “Well, tell me if you see her.”

“Is everything okay?” Dorcas followed after her as she started pushing her way towards the front door. 

When they had found a less populated area, Mary turned around, “None of us have seen her for a few hours.”

Dorcas felt a sick feeling in her stomach, “Maybe she found someone…”

The other girl rolled her eyes, “You know damn well she didn’t. Besides, it’s not like that.”

Dorcas tried to ignore the way the knot in her stomach loosened at that. In front of her, Mary kept scanning the surroundings, her jaw set. Dorcas felt another feeling make her stomach drop. 

“Wait, what do you mean?”

Mary laughed lazily and humorlessly, “I mean, that I should have seen this fucking coming.” she put a hand up to her temples, “She ran off whilst talking to this ashhole from her past and she’s been due for a major fucking breakdown for weeks now but she’s been too busy distracting herself with you and I knew that this was going to happen and now no one knows where she is and…”

Mary cut herself off, as if she couldn’t finish her thought. Dorcas had always seen her so calm, so collected, but now she was pacing side-to-side. It made Dorcas fucking nervous. 

With a long sigh, Mary looked back at her, “Look, I’m sorry-”

But before she could continue, Lily appeared through the wall of people, determinedly pushing through, “Some rando says that they saw Marls leaving the party like two hours ago.”

Mary just nodded quickly, taking it in, “Well, she could have just wanted some peace and quiet and drove home…”

Lily looked at her like she didn’t believe her at all, but nodded anyway. Mary took a deep breath. 

“Okay,” she began, all previous panic wiped off her face, “I’ll go back to ours, just in case she’s there. Have James and Remus go back to theirs-”

“I’ll have Sirius go back to mine.”

“Uh-huh,” Mary replied, “And then hit up the usual spots.”

“The usual spots.” Lily repeated, “Wow, I haven’t heard that in a long time.” she gave a sad laugh before pulling herself back to focus, “Okay, so that’s Gambino, Prewett’s, the Wells, The Garage, basically most of the San Mon strip - I’ll take that.”

“And then tell Pete to take the Westlake areas. I’ll start calling hospitals as soon as I get home.” 

Something about how familiar this was to them and how rehearsed it came off was unsettling to Dorcas. How many times had they done this before? 

A memory from a few weeks ago dislodged itself in Dorcas’ mind, “Where’s the church?”

In front of her, both girls turned their heads to look at her, confusion splattered across their faces. 

“Like, to pray?”

It was Dorcas’ turn to roll her eyes now, “No, the church she used to go to after Emmeline’s death.”

Still, there was no sign of recognition on their faces.

“You know,” she explained, “The one where the priest had to sign the NDA?”

How the fuck did they not know this?

“It was on-” she began before Mary cut her off.

“Whatever, I don’t care. Just go.” she signalled to Dorcas, “Take my limo and call me if she’s there.” 

She hadn’t called Mary yet, Dorcas remembered. Maybe she would do it later. It just didn’t feel right to do it now. 

“Marls, a lot of people are looking for you.” 

In front of her, Marlene made no sign that she had heard what Dorcas had said. She kept looking forward, even when Dorcas turned to face her.

“I know,” she finally replied, “but I couldn’t stay.”

Her voice broke at the end of the sentence and Dorcas felt something crush her chest at the same time. 

“I didn’t want to be found and my friends are familiar with most of my hiding spots.” she continued, looking down at the bottle on her lap, “One of the perks of being the hazard friend, I guess.”

She took a swig of the amber liquid and set it back down on her lap - it was already half empty. Dorcas didn’t know whether to stop her. All she felt was a desperate cry in her brain going stop this stop this fix this please. 

Because Marlene looked all wrong. 

“You’re not a hazard.”

Marlene didn’t look away from where her eyes were trained on the statue in front of her. She hummed a vague acknowledgement. 

“You’re not.” Dorcas repeated, wanting to etch the words onto the other girl’s skull if that’s what it took. 

Marlene still didn’t react, except for a fresh tear that ran down her cheek. 

The other girl breathed in, “I’ve always loved Mary.”

Dorcas turned to the statue in front of them, standing on a white altar-type square of polished stone. She didn’t know what to say - fuck, she wasn’t good at this. 

She answered with the first thing she could think of, “You know, I’ve never cared about religion at all, if I’m being honest.”

“Fair enough.” She heard a soft laugh from Marlene, and her heart fluttered, “Honestly, I don’t really care about most of it either. My family always went to church and I don’t think I retained a single thing. I hated it, actually - church is so boring. And it’s so…” she looked like she was trying to find the words, “it’s got a lot that I think got to me when I was young. In a bad way. But no matter how much of it I left behind I just… I could never leave her.”

Dorcas turned back to look at Marlene, at the way she was looking at the statue not with any kind of awe but with a strong sort of fondness. 

“It’s a latino thing I think,” she continued, clearly a drunken babble now, “I don’t even know why. My mom hung a picture of her over each of our beds when we were little and I guess I just… kept that with me, you know? I could give less of a shit about Jesus or whatever but Mary? She’s… well, she’s motherly love.”

More tears had begun streaming down Marlene’s face and she made no movement to wipe them away. 

“It’s funny what you end up turning to when you’re low.” she sighed, looking back down again with intensity at the bottle of rum, laughing humorlessly, “You know, there’s a saying my mom used to say when I was younger: ‘when Peter closes the door, Mary opens a window’ - Peter guards the doors of heaven, deciding who’s allowed in, who’s not. But Mary is a mother and she… she loves like a mother and so she lets things slide. She opens a window for you to get into heaven and I just- I just hope that-” her voice broke, like she was trying hard to get the words through, “And I just hope that she opened a window for Emmeline because- because I know she wasn’t the best biblically but she was… she was good and I don’t even believe in an afterlife but I fucking envy people who do because then they’re not so afraid of losing what they have left of them.”

Marlene had started properly crying now, her breaths rising harshly in sobs. 

“Did you know that her parents didn’t go to the funeral?”

For the first time since they had started talking, Marlene turned to look at her. Her eyes were glassy and red with tears, but they were also fucking angry. Her eyelashes were clumped together from the tears. In the moonlight, her eyes looked like dark pools of water. Dorcas had to hold herself back from grabbing onto Marlene and never letting go. 

“Emmeline, I mean.” The girl continued, “They- they said that the daughter they knew had died the moment she touched a needle, that who they were burying was not her daughter.”

She was frowning, like she was trying to make sense of it all. 

“And I just.. I mean… Emmeline was… she was so much.” she spoke with such unbridled awe that Dorcas almost felt her heart break, “She was funny and so confident - not that bold, brazen confident but that sort of quiet, didn’t give a shit what you thought of her type of confidence.”

She wiped away some of her tears with the back of her right hand. 

“She was just… she wasn’t no one, you know? She was something big. She deserved for her death to fuck someone up so bad that they could never go on. She deserved it to be impossible to even wake up in the morning at the thought of her not being around.” she looked back up to the statue, “You shouldn’t be able to just fucking move on. She was too important. I mean, at what point do you say that someone’s death only fucked you up this much? How far away from moving on is forgetting? If someone could tell me then I would really like to know because I don’t know how to go on without feeling like I’m telling her I didn’t care about her.”

The last few words were spoken with such broken, bottomless sadness that Dorcas didn’t know what to do. In that moment, looking at her, she saw Marlene for what she really was: a martyr to her grief. 

A martyr for a girl that was already dead. 

“Marls…”

“No.” Marlene interrupted. She shook her head, wiping her eyes with the mesh sleeves she had on, “No, this is good. You should know who you’re dealing with here.” 

She laughed without any sort of warmth to it. The sound made Dorcas shiver.

“I don’t know how I’ve managed to fool you for this long but you should know what everyone eventually finds out when they get to know me: that I haven’t moved on because I don’t want to. I don’t want her to just fade into nothing.” her words were getting faster now, almost tripping over themselves, “When she died, she didn’t leave anything. I mean, she had no fucking possessions - there’s nothing I have of hers. So if this fucking grief is the only thing I have left of her then so be it, because- because imagining a world in which I go months without even thinking of her is… it’s honestly worse.”

But Dorcas understood - maybe not in the same way, but she understood. She knew what it was like to give your life over to something. She knew what it was like to feel something so strongly that you would let it rip your body into pieces. 

Dorcas let the silence settle between them. A comforting stillness. 

It was Marlene who broke it, “You know that time after Caradoc’s?  When you said that me liking you wasn’t enough? That it didn’t undo anything?”

Of course Dorcas remembered that because she remembered how untrue the words had been, even then. Marlene was enough. Everything about her was like being dipped with calamine lotion, healing to the bone in a way Dorcas didn’t think she’d ever experience. 

“Well, you were right. It wasn’t enough. It never is. And I know that what’s between us is casual but you should know… I’m a fucking bomb, Cas. I explode on people. I blow them up.”

“What do you-”

Marlene shook her head, “Stop. I don't want… I don’t want you to make it better.”

“But-”

“No.”

Dorcas reeled her words back, trying not to choke on them, trying to achieve the impossible task of simply sitting there and listening. 

“Just because some thoughts are awful doesn’t make them less true.” 

Dorcas failed in her task.

“Nothing about you could ever be awful.”

Because it was true, honestly. Marlene could probably murder someone in front of her and Dorcas would still feel the same way she did now. It was not a crush more so than it was a permanent devotion - every freckle on her body, dip behind the collarbone, small birthmark on the calf - Dorcas worshipped all of it. It was like her soul was locked in a confessional, making penance for everything she had ever done, hoping that she could be worthy of Marlene because just fucking look at her. 

The other girl’s head quickly turned to look at her, filling with tears, before she turned back to look at the statue, “That’s not… don’t say that.”

How could Dorcas not feel that way when, like some fucking saint she was healing the parts that she thought were long broken? It was-

“Dorcas, you can’t… I’m not good for you.” the words bubbled up from Marlene’s chest as she began crying again. She took another long swig of the bottle, “I mean it. You can’t… you can’t ever really fix this part of me.”

“I don’t want to.” Dorcas replied, simply, more vulnerable than she’d ever really been with anyone, “Not for me, at least. I like you the way you are.”

This made Marlene cry more, “You don’t mean that. You don’t know. It doesn’t just get like this every once in a while, I’m… at least once every few weeks I’ll see something or hear something that will remind me of Emmeline and it just… sends me down again.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well you will. Eventually.” she laughed in disbelief, “What, you want to be in a relationship with a dead girl and the broken shadow she left behind?”

Dorcas felt Marlene’s sadness rip a cavity in her chest.

“No.” she replied calmly, “But I won’t. I won’t be in a relationship with a broken shadow I’ll be in a relationship with you and Marlene, you’re the brightest fucking person I know. A supernova, remember?”

Marlene just looked down and shook her head, and Dorcas remained quiet, because she understood. In your worst moments, sometimes you just didn’t want to hear it. So, instead, she let the silence blanket them again, making no effort to move whatsoever. 

“No, no, I am the broken shadow she left behind.” she looked up, not at the statue but straight up to the ceiling, like she was pleading with someone, “I mean, what is it about awful moments in your life that make you grow around them - like one of those trees that grow over a boulder? Everything about me since she died has grown around her. All my life I’m either thinking of her or not thinking of her - that’s how I split up my time.”

She wiped away her tears with her hands and put her knees up to her chest, holding them in as she looked up at the statue of Mary. 

She spoke in a whisper next, a broken, tired whisper. 

“And you know, more often than not, I’m not thinking about her because I miss her, I’m thinking about her because I regret ever having met her. All the time.”

She put her head down in her knees, “God, that’s so fucking awful to think.”

And Dorcas didn’t do anything but sit there, letting her know that she didn’t care. Letting her know that she wanted to be there. That maybe she didn’t like herself at the minute but Dorcas did, so there at least was someone. 

When she drove her back home, she fell asleep in the car next to her. Dorcas carried her up the front door when she arrived at their house, ringing the doorbell. Mary opened it with a relieved breath that almost left her unable to move, before she helped Dorcas bring her up to her bed and put her there. 

“She was drinking, right?” Mary asked quietly as she accompanied Dorcas into the kitchen. 

All the lights in the house were off, and Mary poured them both a glass of water. 

“Yeah.”

The girl sighed, “Thought so.”

“But,” Dorcas was confused, “She drinks all the time.”

“It’s different when it’s like this.” was the other girl’s vague supply as she offered Dorcas the glass of water, “Thanks for everything, by the way.”

In her eyes Dorcas could see a genuine look of gratitude and it struck her that she didn’t think she had ever seen Mary spare any emotion her way other than dismissal. 

“Why don’t you like me?” she asked, unable to let the question simply rest.

Mary sighed, before she rolled her eyes, not entirely unkindly, “I don’t dislike you, I just want to keep you in check.”

And Dorcas understood. Of course she understood. Mary had probably seen more than a few of the breakdowns Dorcas had just witnessed and, even just seeing one left Dorcas on edge, wanting to hide Marlene up in a tower where nothing else could hurt her again. 

They didn’t say anything else to each other as Mary walked her to the front door. Just before she closed the door behind Dorcas, she spoke up.

“You probably won’t hear from Marls in a while, just to let you know.”

Dorcas looked at her, confused, “Why?”

With a sad smile, Mary sighed, “Well, this Friday marks seven years since the death of Emmeline Vance.”