Intro:

Marcus waits. The cold night fog pools thick at his feet in blanking swirls of white and gray as he lingers deep in the heart of the forbidden forest. He pulls at the edges of the dark cloak closing the hood around his face casting dark shadows on his skin concealing the man within. The cold air whips around whistling a slow eerie lullaby through the trees. The conditions were enough to drive most men away and yet he waits, hoping to finally rid himself of years of emotional and self inflected guilt. Marcus is a person who bears many scars. Most are emotional, on the inside safe from site where only he knows where they hide buried deep behind loyalty and remorse. Those are the ones that torment him, the ones that wake him up in a cold sweet in the middle of the night. Sometimes he thinks staying awake would be better, but he never manages past a few days before collapsing in exhaustion. He always curses himself for not being stronger when he wakes and vows to give it another try. Yet there are some, a rare few that mark his skin… blurring the line between past and present. And this is why he waits. The burning pain on his left arm brings his past screaming into the future. It ties him to a history he didn't even know he had. The wind howled loudly behind him and if he listened hard enough Marcus swore it was whispering his name. He had half a mind to turn around and tell it to kindly fuck off, but the sound of sticks cracking under heavy footstep rang in his ears and he quickly turned on his heels to face the sound. He saw no one, but he knew that didn't mean anything. As best he could figure, he was being watched. It was a game of cat and mouse to see who was more powerful, who would budge first. Marcus smiled inwardly. Let the games begin.

Chapter 1: A Man Apart

Thunder cracked loud in the night sky over Marcus' one bedroom flat. Cold raindrops fell playing a staccato symphony on the cobblestones below. And yet there he stood, both hands clenching the black rod iron railing of the third story balcony while a steady stream of water dripped down off his dark hair and down his face. His head hung in exhaustion as water drops collected at the tip of his nose forming one big drop before it fell. His whole body ached and screamed for sleep, exhausted from four days of not sleeping. Marcus' eyelids hung heavy, but he would not give in. Not tonight. His hand shook as he raised his palm to his forehead pushing it hard against the cold skin as he tried to fight off the oncoming headache.

Marcus had been dreading this night for months. October 13, it was a date he would never… could never forget. The mere mention of it sent him into insomniatic fits binging and purging on states of awake and sleep. When he slept he was haunted by voices and faces of the past causing him to wake in a pool of cold sweat with his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest as he coughed and sputtered for breath. Staying awake was not any easier to handle. After going so long without rest your mind and body start playing tricks on you. There are enemies at every turn and shadows lurking behind every corner. Judging by his given state Marcus was definitely fighting his inner demons at the moment. Tears mixed with rain as he hoped the chill in the air would somehow numb him from the inside out and take away all emotion from his body. He would have readily given up ever feeling anything again if it would mean he could keep his sanity.

October 13…if he thinks about it hard enough Marcus can still hear his dad's voice, see his face. He cursed loudly at the memory slamming his fist down on top of the railing. He immediately regretted the decision once the pain struck. As if he didn't have enough pain to deal with at the moment. Marcus pushed himself away from the railing and walked into the kitchen, leaving the doors to the balcony wide open. Rain streamed in soaking the carpet as he reached for his bottle of Firewisky. If the cold couldn't numb him, this sure would. He raised a shaky hand to the bottle, tipping the lip of it to his mouth. The liquid burned a trail down to his stomach. One drink led to another and then another until half the bottle had disappeared. Marcus slumped hard against the kitchen counter as his memories did battle in his head.

He was only 8 when his dad died, but he could recount every detail of that night in perfect explanation as if describing a photograph he was starring at. The cold feel of the house, the creaking of the floor as his mother walked to his room all echoed perfectly in his mind. He can see the door to his childhood room opening in an almost slow motion as his mother appeared on the other side, the glow from the hallway warming her tan skin. She walked in closing the door behind her and motioned for him to sit down next to her on his bed. He remembers how warm she felt as he cuddled in next to her, looking up into her big brown eyes. It was her vacant stare he recalls most, the way there was no emotion, no expression behind her eyes as she told her only child of the death of his father. Marcus was young then and thought she was just hiding her fear and heartbreak; it was only as an adult that he realized it was the look of someone simply delivering a message.

"Cold unemotional bitch!" he breathed out in a hiss. "Stupid money grubbing cunt!" This time the words were whispered into the Firewisky bottle as he drank.

Marcus' relationship with his mother was never the same after that night. For him, the event was traumatic and something he would spend the rest of his life trying to get over. For his mom it was just an event she had to play "poor widow" at, wearing her all black robes and whore red lipstick. She only waited two months before she remarried. She told her son it was for him, to provide him with a solid father figure. Marcus knew this was untrue from the second he met him. The man despised kids and hated quidditch, a love his dad and instilled in him. So Marcus was pushed aside with all the forgotten toys of a discarded youth.

Another gulp of Firewisky hit his lips and he winced as it burned the soft pink flesh. "Still can feel, haven't drank enough yet" he thought to himself. Only one way to remedy that problem, he tiled the bottle way up in the air and prepaid to empty the entire contents into his mouth as he caught a glimpse of something through the thick yellow tinted glass.

"Oliver?" he called out as he lowered the bottle. He wasn't due home until much later tonight and Marcus shook his head trying to clear his thoughts.

"Get a hold of yourself Flint," he told himself as he drank. Then he heard it, a creaking sound in the corner. Marcus turned and threw the bottle at the noise. He breathed heavy and his heart raced as he walked over to the corner of the living room. Shards of glass lay on the hardwood floor while the tick amber liquid ran down the walls, staining the photos that hung there. Marcus hovered over the mess staring at the broken photo frames before abruptly turning on his heals and walking away.

This was a fight he would never win. He was 23 years old and slowly going crazy. He had spent his life haunted by a death that happened 15 years ago and it had reduced him to this, a man whose mind plays tricks on him, a man who fears sleep, a man he doesn't even recognize any more.

He couldn't stay here, not a minute longer. He couldn't face what he had become so he did the only thing he could think of... run. He wouldn't be gone long, he never was. It was like he was on some invisible tether that kept drawing him back in, but tonight he was going to see how far he could stretch it.