Malachy O'Rourke
From DirtyWiki
Contents |
Out of Character
Rue really misses this guy. He's here just because he had to be; he went with Blackburn way back when.
In Character
Specifics
Full Name: Malachy O'Rourke
Species: Human
Birthdate: April 20th, 1980
Birthplace: Blackburn, Northumberland, England
Hometown: Blackburn, Northumberland, England
Currently Resides: Same as above.
Family: Father Alexander O'Rourke, mother Cornelia Greene O'Rourke, aunt Carolyne Greene O'Rourke, aunt Genevieve O'Rourke, uncle Hammond Greene, cousin Gideon O'Rourke, cousin-in-law Gabrielle St James, cousin Lilias Chase O'Rourke, cousin Adelaide Greene, cousin Philip Greene, cousin Adam Chase II, cousin Emily Chase, cousin Dagan Chase
Sexuality: Priest.
Relationship Status: See above.
Schooling: St Benedict's School, and Coram Point secondary.
Occupation: Priest.
Detailed Information
Physical Description
Malachy, at twenty-six, is the baby of the parish. He's six foot two, with deep brown eyes and close-cut brown hair -- and a slightly elongated neck, leading his cousins to sometimes call him Turtle. He has quite a few freckles and very expressive eyebrows.
Personal Information
There's that term, in fannish pursuits, "woobie." The kind of emotionally broken guy who still manages to hold it together and lots of people want to hug. In some ways, that's Malachy -- he's got a lot of problems and a family with a steadily rising death toll. His mother killed herself from post-partum depression, his cousin and confidant betrayed sacred vows and almost got blacklisted due to scandal ... and yet he's surprisingly together, still serving as one of the community's pinnacles, trying to hold everyone else together. More complex than he comes off, Malachy is still mostly all about the love.
And about the town. He knows the town, loves the town, and in some ways is the town.
Or he tries.
Backstory
As stated, Malachy is the baby of the parish. Since stepping into this role, Malachy has become further known for his allegorical orange sermons and for the fact that he is a twentysomething man as well as a priest and still, after his ordainment, finds time to do things like blog, skateboard, take pictures and hold Ben & Jerry's socials in the basement.
But that's not to say most people didn't already know him, for Malachy has always been a man of Blackburn. His family were men and women of Blackburn, and at least one O'Rourke a generation has been a priest of Saint Benedict's Church. In Malachy's generation he is the second -- his cousin Gideon was Father Gideon O'Rourke until he left the parish two years before Malachy completed his studies. And yet Malachy always knew that he was going to be one of the priests of the family. He and the church -- that particular church, as opposed to the Church -- had a connection. His mother Cornelia (Cornelia Greene O'Rourke, of another upstanding longtime Blackburn family) nearly gave birth to him there, and six months after his birth, she threw herself from its parapet and died there.
Malachy learned this when he was nine. He was not horrified. Sure, that balcony had always made him feel funny -- it always would. But he didn't love the place any less, and that's when he began to know that he had to stay. And that's when Malachy started to become a true man of that small town -- to learn every person, every detail, every intricate little thing.
He made many friends who would grow up and forget him, try to forget him just as he would always try to remember them, for Blackburn was near an orphanage, and had just as many sets of foster parents and adoptive parents as it had its old longtime families. Malachy noticed the patterns, just like almost everyone else did. It didn't bother anyone. What was normal for Blackburn was normal for its people, and normal for Blackburn were a large population of sometimes-residents and a firm international -- and yet always religious -- population. Malachy's own first cousin, his aunt Carolyne's daughter Adelaide, was adopted.
On Malachy's sixteenth birthday, his aunt Carolyne and her husband, his uncle Alexandre, were killed in a tragic train accident that also took the lives of seven other Blackburn residents -- all parents. Malachy's father, who had loved Carolyne in ways almost as strong as he had loved Cornelia, ways Malachy would not learn of until many years after the fact, fell apart. He didn't even attempt to worry about Adelaide, and as much as another set of the O'Rourke clan, parents of Gideon, tried to, there was nothing they could do. Adelaide didn't go far, though -- she simply joined the ranks of the town's fosterlings.
Malachy, Gideon and some of the other cousins O'Rourke-Greene had lost another friend, though, as Adelaide quickly became a vastly different person. They'd expected it, of course -- her parents were killed. So they didn't push it, just spending as much time around her as they could. But Carolyne's death, like Cornelia's, shattered a strong family, and ripped apart even the ones that remained. Malachy entered parochial school, Gideon finished at the seminary. Gideon stepped up to the clergy. Malachy continued his studies. Things were really a blur. Broken as they were, with the death toll rising at a steady increment, as one of the other Greene children, Mathilde, died at the early age of seven, nothing seemed as real as it had been.
And then there was Gabrielle.
Months away from his final ordainment, a deacon, Malachy learned -- thankfully firsthand, as had he learned it any other way their friendship would have been damaged past repair -- that Gideon had fallen in love. Fallen in love and had an affair, broken his vows, Rather than face scandal, Gideon stepped down under the guise of believing he had the wrong vocation after all, apologized to the diocese, and decided he was meant to be a father. He and Gabrielle St James had their first child shortly before Malachy turned twenty-five.
For his twenty-sixth birthday, Malachy took a ten-week sabbatical to Corfu, leaving Father Thomas Wallace Blackburn's only priest (again). He's only recently arrived back.
