Chapter Text
Marcus Kane was 8 years, 137 days, 5 hours and 24 minutes old when he had the first inkling that he wasn't quite like the other kids. Or anyone else for that matter.
His mother loved her garden in the backyard of their house in the small town of Arkadia, and young Marcus loved to see her mother happy. So when her most prized bonsai tree eventually died after years of careful pruning and watering, Marcus did the only thing he could to bring the smile back on his mother's face and gave the tree a light touch. In an instant, its leaves turned green, and the trunk and the branches rose up the skies with vigorous life again. The frown on his mother's face was replaced with an astonished smile when she saw the tree no longer grey and mottled after leaving it just for a moment alone with her son.
At the time it had seemed perfectly ordinary for Marcus to be able to touch dead plants and bring them back to life in order make his mother happy. He didn't feel the need to question his peculiar ability the other children seemed to lack since he quite enjoyed the way Vera ruffled his hair, kissed his forehead and called him her "little miraculous helper."
Marcus only realized that his gift was something bigger and far more dangerous than he had previously believed after he encountered a dead body for the first time.
The body happened to belong to his father who had collapsed into his armchair after coming home drunk late one night and hadn't risen up in the morning. Marcus didn't particularly like his father who more often than not brought his mother to tears by just a few, biting words, so even far into the late afternoon he hadn't felt the need to wake him up from his slumber. His slumber happened to be of the eternal kind for his heart had given up not long after he had slumped into the chair.
This Marcus realized only after noticing the alarming amount of flies his father was attracting.
After the snaps of Marcus' fingers in front of his father's face failed to draw a response, Marcus lowered his ear to his chest and didn't hear a single heartbeat. His father was dead.
While trying to decide how he felt about this fact, he absent-mindedly brushed his father's bare arm with his fingers. Marcus gave out a shriek when the dead man twitched, lifted his head and looked around, confused, until his eyes fixed on Marcus.
"Why the hell are you gaping at me like that?" he snarled at Marcus. "Get out of my sight, my head is killing me and you're making it worse."
When Marcus didn't immediately scram, and just stared at his father with his mouth hanging open, the scowl on the older man's face deepened. He rose up from the chair and approached Marcus with frighteningly heavy steps.
"Listen to me, brat—" he started, but the very minute his fingers wrapped around Marcus' wrist to wrench him closer, his whole body stiffened and turned into the sickly, grey color it had been moments before. He crumpled down on the floor like a ragdoll.
Marcus crouched down and took hold of his face, trying to shake him back awake, but the man remained cold and lifeless. When his mother came home and saw the body, Marcus told her everything else except how he had resurrected his father for exactly fifteen seconds. He was old enough to understand that revealing this secret wouldn't bring anything good.
He had a chance to test the exact limitations of his powers when a bird collided with the window of the church during's his father's funeral. While everyone was too busy trying to make up nice stories about his father, Marcus slipped outside and searched for the bird. Just as he had expected, the poor creature was dead, its wings bent in an unnatural position on the ground. But when Marcus flicked his thumb over the bird's head, the animal immediately lifted its head and let out a surprised coo.
Marcus watched as the bird straightened its wings and started to walk around like nothing had happened to it in the first place. It was too dazed to try to fly away before Marcus patted it on the head again. The bird immediately slumped on the ground again, cold and dead under his fingers.
"I'm sorry bird," Marcus said, swallowing back a lump in his throat.
The two rules started forming in his head.
1. First touch: Life.
2. Second touch: Death for good.
There was also a third rule he wasn't aware of yet. But at the time the first two were overwhelming enough.
If young Marcus had been a shy, cautious boy before, he was that even more when burdened by his secret. Vera Kane didn't know that the reason her son had turned so sad and timid was that he wasn't too keen for his peers to discover that he could wake the dead and kill them by touching them again. However, his mother thought that there was nothing a little friendship wouldn't solve.
The perfect opportunity to get his son some company arose when a nice family called the Griffins moved to the house next to them. They had a son who was of the same age as Marcus and Vera couldn't have been more excited to introduce the two.
That's how Marcus found himself deserted to his neighbors' yard with a strange boy while Vera gave a tour of her greenhouse to Mr. and Mrs. Griffin. Their son, Jake, was a tall boy with a mop of dirty blond hair, and his smile seemed to be permanently fixed on his face.
"What do you want to do?" Jake asked.
Go home, Marcus wanted to say but remained silent. He hoped his aloof demeanor would make Jake go away. And he should go away from him. Marcus was a freak, after all.
But Jake never stopped smiling. "Wanna go jump in the leaves?"
He gestured towards the enormous pile of yellow, red and brown leaves his parents had raked up into the middle of the yard. It looked like a perfect, fluffy pile to sink himself into and forget all the worries of the world. Marcus gulped.
"Looks good, doesn't it?" Jake asked. "My parents put a lot of work into creating that magnificent pile. It would a shame if something happened to it."
Jake flashed him a grin and dashed towards the pile. Marcus saw the boy plunge deep amid the leaves that started flying and whirling around at the sudden impact. The ringing sound of his laughter revealed that he had made a soft landing. It looked like so much fun, and Marcus didn't want anything more than to follow suit.
"Your turn!" Jake called out, trying to gather the leaves back together into a pile with his hands.
Marcus, who desperately craved acceptance that didn't come from his mother or one of her bonsai trees, found his feet running almost involuntarily towards Jake and the pile. He only realized that he was jumping into dead leaves the moment he sank into the crisp cushion of the pile.The colorful colors of the fall were immediately replaced with lively green everywhere his skin grazed.
Marcus staggered up to his feet, his breath caught in his throat at the sight of the revived leaves. He prepared himself for the worst. Jake would call him names, tell his mom who would tell the police, or the priest, or whoever managed these sort of supernatural quirks and they would take him away from his mother and...
"Was that you or the leaves?" Jake asked, staring at the pile with a bemused expression on his face.
As an answer Marcus sighed and swept his hand over the leaves, turning them brittle and brown again. "There's nothing I can do about it, dead things just come back to life when I touch them and die when I touch them again."
Jake didn't even blink."Ah, cool," he said. "Could you fluff the leaves now that you're done? I wanna jump again."
Now Marcus was thoroughly confused. "You're not freaked out by this?"
Jake shrugged. "I have seen weirder stuff on tv. "
"But— but I'm not normal!" Marcus exclaimed. He couldn't understand why Jake was still even standing there. He should've run away screaming ages ago.
"My mom used to say that normal people are overrated," Jake said, smiling. "Besides, it's the coolest thing ever that my new friend has superpowers."
"Your friend?" Marcus repeated as if the word was the most astonishing thing he had ever heard.
"Of course you're my friend now." Jake smiled. "C'mon, let's go test what happens if you touch that half of a worm I found in the bucket before my parents get back."
Marcus watched how his new friend ran towards the shed, and for the first time in forever, he felt that he could be himself with someone. He followed after Jake, and after he returned home in the evening, he had a best friend for life.
Jake made Marcus quickly see the perks of his gift as he started the same school as him.
When the cafeteria had nothing edible to offer, the rotten apples fallen from the apple trees near the school were delicious again with just one touch.
When the goldfish of a cute girl in their class died, Marcus was able to make it happily swim again, earning them both a kiss on their cheeks, Marcus for "doctoring" and Jake for assistance.
When Cage Wallace, the notorious bully of the Arkadia middle school, called Jake a wimp, Marcus touched the frogs Cage and his gang were supposed to cut open during science class. The boys screamed and clambered up on their desks to escape from the frogs that had turned out be alive, and it was the most glorious sight ever.
"I swear, that was the face of a boy who just shat himself," Jake recounted later during recess. "Cage will never live this down."
"I'm just worried about the frogs," Marcus said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I didn't have the time to catch them and turn them dead again."
"Does that matter?" Jake asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"It's just weird that there are suddenly four creatures alive that were not before. This whole resurrecting dead stuff is starting to feel like something that could throw the whole cosmos off balance."
Jake pondered it for the moment.
"I think," he mumbled. "You have read too many comic books and now you're overthinking this. You gave the frogs life. That makes you a hero. And heroes are ones who protect the balance of the universe."
"I guess," Marcus said and attempted a smile.
If the boys saw exactly four dead squirrels on the lawn below their science class window as they passed by, they certainly didn't mention it to each other. The family of squirrels had plunged to their abrupt demise exactly 60 seconds after Marcus had touched the four dead frogs, but neither of the boys was, nor wanted to be, aware of this fact.
As the years went on and they both finished school, the two men chose different paths of life but remained close friends. Jake chose to study engineering while Marcus followed his mother's footsteps to gardening. He moved to the city to tend his own greenhouse up on the roof of his apartment house. He had never wanted anything big or glorious from his life like Jake and was quite content with a quiet, happy life with his flowers, and tried not to draw too much attention to himself or his gift.
He was still discovering new things about his mysterious ability. The latest peculiarity was that the more he revived dead plants in his garden (which admittedly made his work a lot easier), the more living plants in the proximity seemed to die. This was something he wanted to study further but never quite found the time; the reason being that despite having his own dear garden, he never passed the opportunity to pay a visit to his mother and help the aging woman with her yard.
He could also see Jake whenever he drove up to his mother's place. Jake's parents had left him the neighboring house, so Marcus could catch up with his oldest friend during the same visit by just walking up the next door.
Marcus was exactly 24 years, 99 days, 7 hours and 11 minutes old when he once again knocked on Jake's door. But this time, everything changed. Not in the subtle way that made him years later unable to pinpoint exactly when his life had turned brighter than the sun. No, he knew immediately that nothing would ever be the same as he laid eyes on the person who opened the door.
There was a tiny woman standing in the doorway, curiously peering at him from under her long, dark lashes. Her golden brown hair cascaded down to her back as wild curls from her messy ponytail, but a few wispy strands had escaped from her hair tie and were hanging by the sides of her faces, framing her pretty features. Her lips were naturally slightly inclined downwards, but it didn't make her look her sad. No, her impossibly warm, lively brown eyes told a different story.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
"Hi," the woman said, offering him a tentative smile. "You must be Jake's friend."
"Hi," Marcus faintly uttered back, the walls of his throat suddenly turning into sandpaper at the sight of her smile. "And who are you?"
The question sounded a little gruff said aloud than in his head. He hadn't meant to be so abrupt but had suddenly found himself so desperate to learn her name that he forgot his manners.
"I'm Abby."
Abby, he mouthed. The beautiful name fit her perfectly.
But a name wasn't enough. Marcus felt the need to know everything about her, from her favorite color to her biggest dreams and fears. But then Jake materialized behind her.
"I see you've already met my lovely fiancée," he said, wrapping his hand around Abby's shoulders.
When Jake saw Marcus' dumbstruck face, he grinned. "That's right, I'm getting married."
"Oh," Marcus said, suddenly feeling an odd, heavy weight settling down to the bottom of his stomach.
Abby Walters (who would later become Abby Griffin, and even later Abby Kane) was 22 years, 34 days, 13 hours and 45 minutes old when she met Marcus Kane. She didn't think much of him at first. Many years later she was, however, able to look back at the moment she first met him and cherish the memory endlessly.
But now she only looked blankly at him as Jake introduced him as his "old friend Marcus".
Abby attempted to shake hands with him, but he didn't even seem to see her held out hand. Only when Jake cleared his throat Marcus realized to give Abby's hand a squeeze.
"Nice to meet you," Abby said.
"Likewise," he grunted and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket.
Abby furrowed her brow. The man certainly didn't seem too keen to make a good impression on her.
Jake sat them both into the coffee table and started eagerly recounting the story of how he and Abby had met (Jake had accidentally bumped into Abby and made her spill her coffee on the ground, he had asked for her number in order to buy her a new one, and the rest was history). Every once in a while Marcus nodded and smiled at Jake while he talked but Abby he avoided even glancing. At the door he had stared at her like he was confused by her whole existence, and now he was actively ignoring her. Abby didn't know which annoyed her more.
"Abby is studying to be a doctor," Jake said proudly and laid a hand on her shoulder.
"Ah," was Marcus' only answer to that. When he remained silent, Jake tried desperately to keep the conversation going. "Marcus here is a bit of doctor too. He's a gardener and can nurse any plant back to life," he chuckled.
Marcus shot him a glare. This seemed to some sort of an inside joke Abby clearly wasn't a part of.
"So what do you grow?" Abby asked.
Marcus looked up, startled at having been directly addressed. Jake has some lofty friends, she thought.
"Mostly roses. Some other flowers too, my mother likes tulips..."
"What about sunflowers?"
"Huh?"
Abby smiled. "Do you have sunflowers in your garden?"
"Not really, they take up a lot of space and need too much sunlight," he said, fiddling with the coffee cup in front of him. "Why?"
"It's just that if I were a gardener, I'd only grow sunflowers. They make me happy."
When Abby lifted her gaze from her cup, the man was looking at her in an awestruck way. "Sunflowers," he repeated with a marveling, soft voice.
Abby wondered if he was mocking her. "What, did you peg me for a rose girl?"
Marcus smiled at her and shook his head, and only then Abby noticed how kind his eyes were. Maybe she had been too hasty with her judgment. The impossible warmth of his gaze sent a tiny somersault in her stomach. Abby pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear and averted her gaze, feeling her cheeks get warm under his scrutiny.
Only when Marcus was sitting home with a large, just-bought bag of sunflower seeds under his arm, he realized that Abby might be a problem. He would have to stop dropping by Jake so often if he wanted to smother his budding attraction towards her. And he would have to throw out the sunflowers for his own good.
After a month and a half of not seeing Jake Marcus grew frustrated at himself. A woman shouldn't come between him and his best friend, and it was ridiculous that he had even allowed that to happen. He went to see Jake immediately after making this decision and returned home feeling almost intoxicated by the sheer beauty and wit of his fiancée. I have it under control, he thought as he bought another bag of sunflower seeds to replace the one he had thrown away, all the while humming the song Abby had named as her favorite.
The next time he visited them, Abby gave him a goodbye peck on the cheek. After Marcus had staggered back to his car and gotten in, he had lowered his head on the steering wheel and let it rest there for a long while.
He was done for, and there was nothing he could do about it.
Marcus Kane frustrated Abby endlessly. Whenever the man came to visit nowadays, Abby could barely get two words out of him. He didn't share anything about his personal life and seemed to withdraw into himself every time Abby asked him about his work or family, or why he never took off his gloves. If they were left alone by Jake, Marcus stayed quiet, but sometimes Abby would catch him gazing at her, only for him to guiltily look away a moment later.
He was truly an enigma.
But what puzzled Abby more than his lack of words was the fact that he seemed extremely aversed to her touch. One evening when she had been cooking and Marcus had been sitting on the couch, waiting for Jake, Abby had asked for his help. Marcus had agreed to chop the vegetables but had flinched every time Abby's fingers did as much as brushed his own as they worked together in the cramped space.
She had wanted to thank him for his help by giving him a friendly hug, but the man had evaded her touch like a slippery eel.
The more he tried to avoid her, the more desperate she grew in her pursuit of making some kind of contact with him.
She would often go lean against the fence separating the two yards whenever she saw Marcus working in his mother's garden and tried to strike up a conversation. He only offered her one-worded answers, and every now and then glanced at her nervously, as if to see if she was still there. If she didn't get to chat with him, at least she got to watch him. She would never admit it to her fiancé, but his friend was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen with his strong arms and tousled dark curls that fell to his forehead while wordlessly worked.
One warm summer night during Vera's garden party Abby was tipsy and desperate enough to fling her hands around Marcus' neck and ask him to dance with her. The outcome was unsurprising.
"No thank you," the man said, and wriggled his way out of her hold.
Those three words seemed to be the ones she would most often hear from his mouth. "No thank you," he said whenever Abby offered to set him up with someone. "No thank you," he said when Abby tried to give him lemonade while he worked. "No thank you," he used to say even before Abby had even opened her mouth. It was slowly driving her mad.
Finally Abby voiced her concerns to her fiancé.
"I have a feeling Marcus doesn't like me very much," Abby muttered, curling up against Jake on their couch.
"Why do you think that?" he asked, lazily playing with her hair.
"He never speaks to me if not spoken to, hardly looks at me in the eye for a few seconds longer, and flinches whenever I touch him."
Jake remained silent for a long while before answering.
"He's like that with everyone. Don't you worry about it, baby, " he said and pressed a kiss on her forehead.
Abby knew for a fact that this wasn't true (she had witnessed several hugs and lively conversations Marcus had had with other people) but found it sweet that her fiancé didn't want her feelings to get hurt, if not slightly annoying.
She resigned to her fate; Jake's best friend disliked her for some unfathomable reason and she would perhaps never find out why.
The day before her and Jake's wedding there was a knock on the floor. When Abby opened it she was faced with an abundance yellow-brown flowers in an enormous vase. They were sunflowers, taller and more radiant than Abby had ever seen, and her hand found its way up to cover her mouth from the sheer astonishment.
She had to crane her neck to see who had left the flowers, and her smile grew radiant as she saw the familiar, tall frame of a certain glove-wearing man walking at a brisk pace towards the neighboring house. Abby suppressed the urge to run after Marcus and plant his face in kisses. It appeared that he had his own way of showing affection for her and it wasn't physical.
She carried the flowers inside, a whole new, warm feeling towards Marcus blooming inside her chest. Interestingly, it never quite faded away but persisted quiet and lingering in her heart for years to come.
The sunflowers she received never wilted.
To Jake and Abby's wedding, Marcus wore his best suit and a smile so broad his cheeks ached. He was happy for Jake. He couldn't have found a more perfect wife. This he kept repeating in his head as he downed one drink after another. Eventually, Abby found him nursing a glass of wine in the stairway.
"Thank you for the flowers," Abby said, smiling one of her maddeningly soft smiles at him. She looked like an angel in her white wedding dress. Marcus took another large sip of his drink.
She settled herself next to him on the stairs.
"We are friends, right?" she asked.
Marcus snapped his head around. "Of course we are," he said, perhaps little too quick, little too drunk.
Abby smiled down to her lap. "Good, because I do care about you, no matter how difficult you make it sometimes."
"I care about you too," Marcus said weakly. More than you know.
"Can you keep a secret?" Abby asked, entwining her fingers with his. Marcus watched as she placed their joined hands on her stomach and let them rest there. His eyes widened at the implication.
"Jake doesn't know yet," she whispered, her eyes glimmering from happiness.
Marcus' mouth twitched into a smile. He flung his arm over her shoulder and drew her closer to press a kiss on her forehead which made Abby let out a surprised laugh.
"I'm happy for you," he said, and his words couldn't have been more sincere. In that moment he realized that what he truly wanted was her happiness, nothing else.
Eventually, Abby gave birth to a daughter she named Clarke who was the most beautiful child Marcus had ever seen. Abby graduated from medical school and became the best doctor in the whole county. Jake climbed the career ladder in the company called Jaha industries and earned them enough money to move to a bigger house, but they decided to stay as neighbors of Vera Kane for her son had become an integral part of their little family.
Abby and Jake's marriage flourished while all of Marcus' relationships crashed and burned as his girlfriends saw the way he looked at Abby.
But Marcus wasn't unhappy, on the contrary. He loved Jake, and he loved Abby and their little daughter, and his love for them made him happier than anything else would have ever done. He had long ago accepted that his feelings for Abby would never go away or be reciprocated, but he didn't grow depressed about the fact. Instead, he relished in her friendship.
Unbeknownst to him, one evening as Abby watched Marcus play with Clarke she realized that she loved him too. Whether this love was too similar to the one she felt towards Jake wasn't something she was particularly interested in exploring. She, however, didn't try to stifle it since she understood that not all love needed fulfillment. All that mattered was that they both were happy.
Sometimes it even felt that they had a mutual understanding on the matter, especially on nights when Marcus stayed over after babysitting Clarke and Abby was so tired after work that she just slumped on the couch and rested her head on his shoulder. Marcus would tilt his head to lean against hers, and just stay quiet.
Abby never wanted it to end.
On the morning of the worst day of Marcus' life, his mother was baking him a pie. Vera Kane was 63 years, 18 days, 3 hours and 57 minutes old when a blood vessel in her head burst, killing her instantly.
At the same time, Jake was sitting on his patio, drinking his morning coffee when he noted that some of the roof tiles of his house were in desperate need of fixing. He went to get ladders and equipment from the garage.
Marcus knocked on her mother's door. When he received no answer, Marcus grew concerned and climbed over the fence. He let himself in by the back door and found his mother sprawled lifeless on the kitchen floor.
Meanwhile Jake whistled while he carried his ladder to the backyard.
Marcus let out a weak wail at the sight of his mother and crouched down on the floor beside her. He didn't stop to think when he took off his gloves. All he knew was that he had a gift of life at his fingertips and he'd be damned if he didn't use it on his only mother, the person who he loved more than anything in the whole world.
The very second Marcus' finger touched Vera's skin the woman's eyes snapped open.
60 seconds. Jake put up the ladder against the side of his house.
Vera's gaze shifted from Marcus' concerned face to her surroundings until she realized was lying on the tile floor of her kitchen.
"Oh, I must have slipped! How clumsy of me," she laughed, and Marcus offered her his hand to help her back to her feet, only to withdraw it immediately. I can never touch her again, he realized.
45 seconds. Jake mounted the first step of the ladder.
Vera picked herself off the ground on her own by taking support from the wall as her son seemed strangely unwilling to help her and only stared at her with a pained expression on his face. Vera dusted off her apron. "Is everything alright?" she asked Marcus.
30 seconds. Jake climbed.
Marcus nodded and attempted a smile, but Vera remained skeptical. His son rarely shared his troubles with anyone, but with enough practice over the years, she had learned how to read him like an open book. And something was definitely wrong.
15 seconds. Jake had almost reached the roof.
Perhaps Marcus was just worried. His eyes followed Vera's every movement as if he was expecting her to collapse again any minute now. Vera pushed his strange behavior out of her mind when she heard the loud ping of the timer.
"Oh, the pie is ready!"
0 seconds.
Jake's grip on the ladder loosened. His slack fingers unwrapped themselves from around the rail as the weight of his body pulled him down. He collapsed on the lawn with a sickening thud.
The third rule of his gift Marcus discovered after finding Jake's lifeless body; keep a dead thing alive for more than a minute and something else had to die.