to sit and watch you stare at your feet.
summary. || you're the avatar of anubis and the biggest secret you harbor is your relationship with jake lockley and the daughter you share. when the scarab falls into the hands of a cult, you delve into the fray and hope you can balance saving the world with protecting your secrets.
pairing. || moon knight system x f!reader (established relationship with jake, marc and steven join in later)
count. || 7.8k
notes. || posted on ao3 here. you guys leave the sweetest comments, thank you!! i love sharing the drama with y'all. if you would like to be part of a taglist, just throw me a mention! or you can follow. :)
taglist. || @cilliansfriend
part one. || part two. || part three. || part four.
You're still seething by the time you reach your sister's flat, taking the stairs up to her floor two at a time. The spectral jackal had dissipated half a block away from your destination and left you alone to properly sulk about Harrow's arrival in London. You and Marc had been careful in covering your tracks on your way back from Austria. You have no doubt about his ability to disappear in this city when he intends to considering how long it took for you to find him hiding here in London.
Then again, once you had discovered his weak spot to be Steven, it had been all too easy to unravel the tangled web of his aliases. Perhaps Harrow had realized the same: through Steven Grant and Eliana Lockley, maybe you and Marc would always be easy to pin down. Your daughter is the greatest part of your life as much as she’s your deadliest link. Even Harrow had known it when he mentioned her in a bid for your sympathy on the bus. When will he grow impatient of appeasing your sense of morality and choose a more intimate form of blackmail?
The thought needles you up until you reach your sister's front door and find it locked. You can hear a television droning on with the morning news, and your sister's laugh followed by an echo of your daughter’s a split second after. You close your eyes in silent gratitude. At least here and now, you beat Harrow to them.
You unlock the door with the spare key under the mat and make a note to remind your sister to move it. She left it there for your return, no doubt, but it still makes you uneasy knowing Harrow is loose in London and he knows your name. He wouldn’t be so easily fooled by a welcome mat and thin walls. He would not feel obligated to pity your family as innocent bystanders if it meant using them would get him the scarab.
"Mama!"
That excited shriek is your only warning before Eliana flings herself up into your arms. You barely made it a half-step into the entryway. You catch her, thankful for both your instincts (finely tuned by years of toddlerhood) and the hypersensitivity from your servitude to an ancient Egyptian deity that gives you speed and dexterity.
"Hello, habibti," you whisper, pressing a kiss to her temple. She burrows her face into the crook of your neck with a mumbled greeting, her wild curls tickling your cheek, and the tension from your encounter with Harrow dissipates into nothingness. You can smell lavender and honey in her hair from her bath last night, and the tinge of mint from her toothpaste when she gives a happy sigh.
“I missed you,” she tells you. It’s a tad grumpy, a complaint without heat now that you’re home safe and sound, but it tugs at your heartstrings all the same. She owns the softest spot of your Anubis-claimed heart for a reason.
“I am always with you,” you assure her. It’s not even a lie, but you rub a hand up and down her back to soothe her anyway. You trace your hand up along her spine to the back of her neck, underneath her unruly mop of dark curls, fingers alighting on the invisible mark forged there. Warmth fizzles at your touch like hearth fire, bright and comforting.
One day, you think, you might admit to her that you granted her this silent protection. When she’s older, more experienced and worldly, she might even appreciate it. You won’t tell her what it cost you, but at least she could comfort herself with the half-truth.
For now, though, you want her to stay just like this. Eliana melts into your embrace, and you indulge in her cuddliness just like when she was a baby. She’s not the squalling newborn you first took home from the hospital, but you can’t help but remember how it feels to cradle her to your chest and marvel at her very existence. She is the very best part of you and the best of Jake, merged into an independent being with boundless energy and wide-eyed amazement at daily life.
She is also five years old and full of boundless energy, so she finally starts to squirm in your arms until you let her drop down back on her feet.
“We had Weetabix for breakfast,” she announces, and you barely have time to shut the front door behind you before she’s yanking your hand to lead you to the kitchen. Your sister is at the sink, soaking the morning dishes in soapy water with her cellphone tucked against her ear, but she grins and offers you a quick wave before turning back to her conversation. Your heightened hearing can catch a few words from the other line, something about quarterly financing and market prices, so you tune it out. Your sister is older than you by four years and works as an investment advisor for a private company, and her life seems foreign in its… normalcy. She rents a nice flat in London, has an oversized fluffy black cat ironically named Luna, and she takes the Tube to her company’s office twice a week and works from home the other three days.
You, on the other hand, just fought cultists in Austria to recover an ancient Egyptian artifact disguised as a golden scarab that could lead to the end of the world. Your mother would have a heart attack if she ever found out.
“That sounds like a good breakfast,” you reply, and Eliana beams at you. You can see the carton of strawberries on the counter, nearly empty, and you grin. Your sister likes to spoil Eliana, but she can be a bottomless pit when it comes to fruit. “Did you have it with berries?”
“Yes,” she says, smugly. You don’t mention that you can see a smear of red juice at the corner of her lip, but it makes you laugh to yourself as she turns away. This morning ritual almost feels normal. Almost.
All you’re missing is the ability to look over your shoulder and find Jake there. To hear his shared laugh over your daughter’s berry obsession, or to watch him sit at the kitchen table scouring through the newspaper for any hint of local trouble that might need attention. He likes to present as the gruff, ruthless Fist of Khonshu, but you know he also likes to check in on the wellbeing of your local community. Plus, he likes to read the cartoons to Eliana.
It’s not quite your definition of normal, but it’s enough to be able to kick off your shoes and settle into a seat at the table, Eliana chattering excitedly about your sister’s cat and her neighbor’s dachshund. Your sister holds up the box of Weetabix in silent offer and frowns when you shake your head, but she’s too distracted by her phone call to properly fuss over your refusal.
It’s almost normal, except all you can think about is your missing knife and the fact that Harrow could be closing in on Marc at any moment.
You hope he can handle it until you are able to slip away again to help.
***
There is no ambush from Ammit’s cult, though you check the news for any sign of trouble periodically during the day. Your sister retreated to her home office for work, so you and Eliana decided to cuddle on the couch and watch movies together. It’s a calm, unremarkable afternoon, and yet you’re fraught with tension, listening intently to the sounds of the neighbors around you. There’s the dachshund next door that yaps when their owner scolds them for chewing on their shoes, and the upstairs neighbor seems to be vacuuming for three hours straight with brief pauses for loud phone conversations, but there is no sign of trouble.
You can’t help but feel worse off because of it. Harrow is planning something, and he still has your knife. It’s effectively useless to him, as he doesn’t have the favor of Anubis to imbue it with power for ceremonies, but its absence feels like a gap in your armor. What could he expect to achieve with it? What if this is a ploy to lure you into a trap? What if he intends to break your vow of service to Anubis by depriving you of your tools needed to do so?
It bothers you. A lot.
You would go out searching for Marc, except Eliana falls asleep with her head pillowed in your lap. You spend the hour she naps watching the midday news coverage, combing your fingers through her curls in a half-hearted effort to untangle some of them, and the lack of city-wide carnage only makes you more restless. By the time she wakes up, you’re too wired to spend the rest of your day sprawled lazily on the couch.
It’s fortunate that your sister finishes her workday shortly afterwards, because you convince her that going out to dinner would help you feel less cooped up in her flat. She knows you too well to believe that pathetic whine of yours, but she merely rolls her eyes to make Eliana laugh before you head out to eat.
Dinner tastes like ash, as always, but you hardly notice. Your sister and Eliana can chat enough for the whole table, so you can listen with a well-timed nod or laugh while taking the time to encourage your daughter to eat her vegetables and keep an eye on the restaurant around you. There are other tables surrounding you, nearly all of them filled with people, but the atmosphere is spilling with light conversation and the clattering of utensils on plates. Calm.
No one is looking at you, but you can feel the faintest weight of a jackal’s muzzle pressing to your calf, insistent in its silent warning. Anubis had been scarcely present all day, merely a whisper in the back of your mind, but now his presence is a shrill whistle in the dark of night. It commands your attention. It pleads for your service.
Someone is dying.
“Can you watch her? I need to use the restroom.” You hardly wait for your sister’s answer before making a hasty retreat towards the back of the restaurant. There are less people seated here, but you don’t need to worry about an audience. As soon as you turn the corner to the employee’s only corridor, you summon your ceremonial armor with a whispering swish of displaced air. Anubis’s jackal form falls into step beside you instantly, paws silent against the linoleum floor. He leads you further down the corridor and out of a door left propped open for the kitchen staff.
The moment you step out of the restaurant and into the brisk night air, you can sense the floundering soul. You turn to the left and head further into the winding maze of alleys, careful to keep your face ducked low into the hem of your keffiyeh. There aren’t many people around, but the few people milling around unconsciously turn away and busy themselves with other things.
Your favorite aspect of serving as Anubis’s Avatar is his ability to make you seem unremarkable to random passerby, both as a jackal or dressed in your ceremonial armor. It makes completing your job far easier. Without having to dodge curious gazes or physically hide yourself from the public’s eye, you reach your destination quickly. It’s fortunate, because there isn’t much time left to travel between your worlds.
The soul calling for your arrival is an older man, his face darkened with salt-and-pepper scruff across his chin and jaw, dark bruising shadowed beneath his closed eyes. He’s slumped over on his side, his frayed coat pooled over his shoulders as a makeshift blanket. You think he might be one of the vagrants that wander London’s streets, now succumbing to the elements of his lifestyle, and you hurry over to crouch by his side. There is no reason to prolong his misery in this cold.
“It will be okay,” you tell him softly. He twitches at the sound of your voice, his breathing shallow and wheezing, but he doesn’t have the energy to answer. The furrow of his brow eases at the comforting warmth of your hand settling on his shoulder, and you offer him a quiet, “I am here.”
Then he dies. It’s a brief transition, quiet, as his muscles slacken and he lets out a final rattling breath. No one else is in the alley except for you, and the spectral jackal that lowers his muzzle to press his dark-tipped nose to the man’s temple. He had once given you the same comforting gesture when you had laid dying.
Without your knife, you cannot offer this man that same comfort. You grit your teeth against the surge of seething anger and helplessness, but there is not much you can do about it right now. You can only sit there, kneeling beside the man’s body, as the jackal beside you slowly dissolves into Duat-tinged sand, coalescing upwards into a towering being.
His presence consumes the alleyway, but you don’t make any attempt to move. You aren’t frightened of him. Like Khonshu, he is over twice your size, a lithe manlike figure with the distinct head and neck of a jackal with black fur. His eyes are the same sand-dust shade of the Duat, tinged with the indigo of its cloud-speckled sky. In this form, he is far from the docile, lap-sized jackal he portrays himself as.
Like this, he is the Egyptian God of Death and its Afterlife.
MY PRIESTESS, he says. His voice rumbles through the air with the same skin-tingling weight of a lightning arc, a litany of voices stacked all upon one another like a chorus, languages blending together in a blur of clashing dialects. Every word sounds as if a stadium of people are uttering it in perfect tandem, and you can hear every single voice with precision. Even though the maw of his jackal’s mouth never moves, you hear him with clarity, because he does not speak to you in this physical realm of being. It’s all in your head.
“Anubis,” you say tiredly. You still have your hand on the stranger’s shoulder as if you could remove his unweighted heart by touch alone. Soon, your gentle touch on his body will come back cold and tepid, merely a husk of its former self. You know the feeling well; dead things do not get to keep this intoxicating warmth.
YOU ARE MISSING YOUR CEREMONIAL BLADE.
The cacophony of his endlessly echoing voice sounds more concerned than scolding, and you grimace. Of course, Anubis knows why you haven’t enacted his will in serving this man his rightfully earned final rest. You have not denied him this service in many, many years, and there is no reason for you to do so now. Except for the fact that you physically cannot.
“Yes.”
WHY DO YOU NOT SEEK IT OUT?
“The man who has it is nearby,” you say. “But seeking him out will trouble more people. I am willing to wait for the better opportunity.”
Anubis does not speak for a long moment, studying you with his otherworldly gaze. His eyes could strip you apart down to your bare bones and marrow; there is no hiding from the god that owns the very fabric of your sandswept being. There is, however, something to be said about the way he defers to your plan with merely a dip of his head. He trusts you, and you don’t blame him for it. You have far more to lose by failing him than lying to him would be worth.
SERVE ME WELL, LOCKLEY.
The wind shudders with a discordant hiss of air, and Anubis’s figure breaks apart into minuscule grains of sand, his towering figment of being drifting off into nothingness. The body under your hand does not move, but you can sense the lonely emptiness of its vessel, now a husk without its life-vibrant heart. If you had your knife, it would have been your duty to sever his connection to his mortal form and guide him to the Duat’s weighted scales. Without you, Anubis cannot usher him there. He will wander without rest as long as he remains unjudged for his worthiness through the heavenly gates of Aaru.
At least until you get your knife back from that fucking cult.
You squeeze your eyes shut and mutter out a curse, then another. It doesn’t help ease the frustration or restlessness, but it does distract you long enough that you catch your breath and rise to your feet.
“I will be there to guide you,” you tell the stranger’s body. Maybe if you repeat it often enough, you can make it come true. “I will take you there. I swear it.”
He doesn’t respond physically, but you don’t have to look over your shoulder to know that his specter is clinging to your shoulders. People like you carry your dead, and he is merely another shadow you will cast with every step until you set him free.
“I swear it,” you repeat, and then there is nothing left for you to do except turn around and leave him there to be found by the neighbors.
***
Not every soul will be judged by the Scales of Justice, but there are people who dedicate their lives and faith to the Ennead, and Anubis depends on you to serve them in their final journey through the Duat. Except you can’t do that when you have a cult breathing down your neck, salivating for any chance they can get to reclaim the scarab.
Time is running out. You managed to finish dinner and head back to the flat with your sister and daughter without issue, but you can feel eyes on your back like a sniper’s pinprick aim. Harrow won’t be content to leave you walking around freely for much longer.
You have something he wants to use to decimate the human race.
He has something that you need to ensure your own survival.
Right now, you are walking a thin line between disaster and calamity, and it won’t be much longer until you slip off the precipice and plunge into chaos. Right now, you need help.
You still have just enough time, as the phone rings, to muse over Marc’s reaction. He will be rightfully furious with you; he may prefer to work alone, but that is only because he refuses to endanger the people he cares for. The only reason you accompanied him to take the scarab is because he could not physically stop you once you caught up with him.
Ambushing Marc feels like a betrayal, but you have very few options. Besides, hadn’t he betrayed you first by fleeing Cairo without warning? You are his partner. Maybe not in the same way Layla is, but isn’t that for the best? You are the Avatar of Anubis, a loyal priestess to the dead, and he cannot possibly lose something he thinks he never truly had.
“Alo.”
You’ve missed how short and sweet she can sound over the phone. You know she doesn’t recognize the number of your recent burner phone, but that has never stopped her from picking up when someone calls. In Layla’s world, a missed phone call can mean a missed opportunity for a good job.
Not to mention that you know she’s been waiting for any news of Marc, just as you had been. The guilt of not calling her immediately once you found Steven in the gift shop sours in the back of your mouth like bile.
“Salaam, Layla.”
“Lockley?” Her voice shifts from the disaffected composure of a stranger answering an unknown number to instant concern. The guilt sticks firmly in your throat. “You burned your alias in Tunis and took Eliana with you. Are you alright?”
“Yes…” you hesitate a heartbeat too long. It’s too late to second guess your choice, so why are you so afraid to tell her? Are you that worried about scaring Marc again?
Or are you afraid that you will do something far worse, like convince him to stay here in London and settle back down?
“Lockley?”
“I found Marc,” you whisper. You’re glad you chose to retreat up onto the roof for this conversation. The lights of the city are speckled around you in the polluted dark of the night, but from up here, you have a clear view of the surrounding streets and adjacent rooftops. You’ll notice a cultist if they come close.
Or if a familiar shrouded figure cuts across the night sky, lit by the moon’s favor.
Layla makes a strangled sound. “Marc? He’s with you?”
“He’s in London.” Well, no turning back now. He’s going to be so pissed at you for this. Endangering your own wellbeing is one thing, but endangering his wife is another. “Layla, he doesn’t know I’m calling you, but you deserve to know.”
A tension-laden pause, then Layla spits out a curse. There’s a muffled bang on the other end of the line like she’s slamming a cabinet closed, and you grimace. There had been a moment when you swore never to interfere in their shared life, but that had been before Marc’s careful compartmentalization of his alters crumpled into dust. There had been a time where it had been Marc and Jake, shadowed sides of the same coin, with Steven peering out in brief glimpses out of your sight.
That opportunity is gone now. You refuse to lose any of them to the consequences of Marc’s sheer stubbornness. Even if that means inviting Layla into the fold for the preservation of the scarab.
“Layla, look, I—”
“What happened to him?” Layla demands. Another resounding bang on the other end of the line, and you realize you can hear the whirling clamor of traffic. She must have stepped out of whatever place she was staying at. You know she has rarely stayed overnight in her flat with Marc these past few months after his abrupt disappearance. If she isn’t searching for clues for his whereabouts, checking in with you periodically, she’s been working with her nose kept pressed to the grindstone. It’s another reason you refuse to keep her out of the way; you need her connections in the international network for artifacts.
“He moved here to keep a low profile,” you say, choosing every word carefully. It’s not a lie; Steven was a facet of himself that he wanted to keep hidden, so he intended to coast through daily life with little flair. At least until his midnight adventures as Moon Knight thrust him straight back into the line of fire.
“He’s acting British to throw them off, then,” Layla scoffs. Softer, like she turned her face from the phone, she mutters out, “Marc, you stubborn fucking idiot.”
He’s acting British. Your blood chills into ice. Marc can be callous and temperamental, but he isn’t very good at pretending to use disguises. He’s all or nothing.
So how would Layla know it’s him speaking and not the British alter he has been trying to keep under tight wraps these past years?
“What do you mean, Layla?”
“I just called him!” There’s the slam of a car door, then Layla speaks in rapid Arabic to someone before switching to French to keep your conversation private. Taxi driver, you assume, because she’s been prepared to take off the moment she had a lead for Marc’s location. “He actually picked up this time and then acted like he didn’t know who I was talking to. He sounded like he was being watched or something. Do you know who would be chasing him?”
Fear curdles in your gut. You stare down at the streets of London around the flat, scouring the shadows, but there is no sign of Harrow or his cultists. Not when they have other prey to tend to. Why would they bother to chase you out of your hiding hole when they know you lost your best asset and gave away the scarab? No reason to chase you when they have what you need to survive as an Avatar.
“We took a job together,” you manage to say. “They definitely followed us back here to London. One of them trailed me onto the bus earlier after Marc and I had already split up.”
“He’s in deep trouble then,” Layla grits out. “Are you still close? Can you check on him?”
Rationally, you know Marc is a skilled mercenary with the wits to know when he is being followed and how to properly outmaneuver his opponents. You also know Jake is imbued with the abilities of Moon Knight and protected by the favor of Anubis, and he will not let the system die without a long, bloody fight.
Above all else, however, you still remember the fear in Steven’s face as he stared at your blood-streaked cheek in Austria, blissfully inexperienced in the realm of godly servitude you are forever shackled to. If he answered the phone earlier, then he must still be close to the surface of the body’s consciousness.
If he’s piloting the body when Harrow tracks them down… then there is very little that Marc’s strategy or Jake’s favors can offer in helping him survive that encounter.
“I’m close,” you assure her. Half of it is a promise to her, and half of it is an unspoken promise to Steven, too. A comfort he cannot hear, but one you offer regardless. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.”
Layla gives you strict instructions to call her with news as soon as possible, gives a sincere thank you for the call, and hangs up with a curt reminder that she is only a flight away. You’re just as eager to get moving, teeming with all of your restless adrenaline from the encounter on the bus this morning and discovering the body during dinner. As much as your servitude as an Avatar complicates your life to the Duat and back, there is a marrow-deep satisfaction in being able to summon your ceremonial armor with a whisper of wind and sand, cloth wrapping over your figure and draping across your face between one breath and the next.
Your greatest purpose is protecting the dead, guiding their wayward souls from one transition to the next. It was ironic that Jake guarded the travelers of the night while you herded the travelers of the Duat, their souls already lost to the call of death, but you understood his fierce protectiveness of the people Khonshu deemed worthy of care.
More than anything, you understood the importance of protecting the people seeking safe passage in the dark. Just as much as you understood the cost of failure in that protection, when they were left with no other choice but to cross through to their afterlife. A lonely, frightening journey.
Which was why you refused to let Jake, Marc, or Steven experience it at all.
Two taps to the emblem on your chest, and then your body transitions from a figure of flesh to a scattering of sand. You summon the image of Steven’s confused face in your mind, sinking yourself into the memory of his furrowed brow and stuttering accent, and let yourself get lost to the whims of the late night’s wind. Dizzily, you drift through London’s sky only to coalesce perched on the roof of an ordinary building merely a minute later.
You steady your crouch on the roof by pressing your palms to the slanted tile, panting against the wave of nausea that swells up in your throat. The weakness is temporary as long as you get your ritual knife back soon. The longer you deny your purpose to Anubis, the sicker you will get. Just another reason to pull the trigger and track down Harrow as quickly as possible.
Below you, drifting through an open window, you can hear an accented voice mumbling to himself. The words are a dull murmur, just enough for you to sense confusion, but there is no whisper of death on the wind.
A sharp rap thuds the roof next to you, and you startle, tilting your head up, up, up to see Khonshu’s abyssal eyes staring back. He hits the roof with the heel of his staff again, and below, you can hear Steven’s frantic voice rising in response. He’s outright terrified.
You glare up at Khonshu. “Are you trying to give him a heart attack?”
He doesn’t bother to respond. Instead, the wind whips around the both of you in a brief surge of power, displacing your sand-forged shape, and when you blink back the disorientation you find yourself standing in a hallway. He transported the both of you to a spot inside the building; you’re crouched in front of a dirt-smudged window overlooking the London street below.
There’s a bright ding at your back, and when you stand up and turn to follow the sound, you find your husband standing in the elevator at the opposite end of the hall. He’s dressed nicely, even if his hair is hopelessly tousled as if he’s been running his hands through it, and the sight sparks a smoldering flame in the pit of your stomach.
You almost give your position away, prepared to surrender the facade of invisibility your armor gives you in this form, when you watch that painfully familiar face crumple in panicked fear. He turns to the elevator’s control panel, pressing frantically at the buttons and muttering desperately to himself.
Not Jake. Not even Marc. The disappointment is a sour tinge of bile in the back of your mouth. This facet of their body is still so foreign to you. Meeting Marc had been strange in the way that you noticed the tiniest details of differences between him and Jake, but his fierce stubbornness streak was the same mile-wide tread as Jake’s. Both of them could handle a fight; both of them, within context, relished in the adrenaline rush.
Steven does not face the unknown with the same bravado. He would not take well to watching you swirl into a physical being from what he presumes is an empty hallway. So you don’t move to expose your presence to him, and Steven does not recognize that you are there at all, his hunched shoulders slumping in relief as the doors slide shut.
HE IS INTERFERING WITH OUR BUSINESS.
You don’t have the energy to properly startle at Khonshu’s sudden reappearance, as much as he delights in it, so you offer him a helpless shrug.
“It’s not Steven’s fault. Scaring him won’t help with that.”
Khonshu rumbles out a laugh. HE WILL LEARN HIS PLACE, FLEA.
This time, when he disappears with a rush of wind, he doesn’t take you with him. You tap your chest and take the weight of tangibility with a deep sigh, yanking down the keffiyeh draped over your nose and scrubbing your hands over your face. At least Steven isn’t in danger from Harrow; he might find more trouble than he can chew with Khonshu, though, so you linger in the hallway, watching the elevator’s level drop by one floor before it stalls out with a stuttering of electricity. The building is quiet for a moment, then the lights kick back on with a whir of electricity.
The elevator switches floors again, climbing back up the top level, and you huff out another sigh. Layla had you convinced that Harrow would be here torturing Steven to get any information about the scarab, and instead you stumbled upon a plot devised by Khonshu to scare him into hiding in the back of Marc’s mind instead. Steven must have answered the phone call that convinced Layla it was actually Marc being tortured into acting ignorant about his identity.
So, how were you going to explain that to her when you called her back with an update? Better yet, how were you going to explain to Marc that she was on her way here?
The lights flicker overhead once more, just for a second, and you watch the elevator start to tick down one floor, then another, the doors sliding open to reveal that strange, familiar face.
Marc looks exhausted. His nice dress shirt is wrinkled and rumpled from Steven’s panic attack, shadows from the elevator’s overhead light casting his profile in stark turmoil. He must feel as miserable as he looks, too, because he merely waves you over to the elevator to join him. Wordlessly, he presses the button for the ground floor, and the two of you stand in silence, listening to the creaking whine of the cables and groaning of the overused deteriorated metal. In the elevator’s mirror, you watch his expression just so you don’t have to observe him face to face.
His mouth is set in that determined, moody grim line. There’s that downturn of his dark brows, hooded over his tired eyes. Above all else, though, you notice that he tamed Steven’s unruly curls into a more presentable style. It’s one of the only aspects of control he bothers to wrangle with.
You don’t mention the fact that Jake likes to wear a cabbie hat to distinguish himself from Marc’s presence, taking control in a way that could easily be shed without permanent remark. You don’t mention it, even as you watch Marc frown to himself, because it is one more secret wrecking havoc on his mind that is not yours to tell.
Marc doesn’t speak until you leave the elevator, cross through the cramped lobby, and escape out into the mostly deserted street. You follow him down the sidewalk, scanning for any sign of Harrow or his bloodthirsty cultists, but you two are mostly alone aside from a few distant pedestrians or the occasional passing car.
Well as alone as either of you can get without two Egyptian gods or Marc’s alters overhearing. You can’t see the shadow of Jake’s presence in Marc’s expression, but that doesn’t stop you from looking. It doesn’t stop you from hoping.
“Do I even want to know how you found out where he lives?”
You blink at the roughness of his voice, then the words sink in. You give Marc a long, thoughtful look. He lets you take him in, but he doesn’t do anything more than scrub a hand over his face tiredly once you look away. You won’t let him reprimand you for coming by the flat. Especially since Steven didn’t even notice you there.
“Blame the night wind,” you finally say. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Khonshu guided me here just to make me watch him torment Steven in his own flat with flickering lights and a faulty elevator.”
Marc winces. At least now he looks like the one feeling a little chastised. “He needs to stop looking before he gets hurt.”
“He needs help before he gets hurt,” you correct. “Ignoring his curiosity won’t deter him if he keeps running into Khonshu. Or if he runs into me again. He’ll have questions.”
“Then get out of here and go back to Tunis,” Marc snaps. You don’t deign to give that a proper response. He does not control you or your purpose as an Avatar, no matter how inconvenient he might consider your presence to be for his plan to keep Steven neatly tucked away in an impenetrable bubble.
Yet all the frustrated anger flees from his face a heartbeat later, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I have enough to deal with right now.”
“So do I,” you admit. He catches onto your despondence immediately and raises a brow. You would hate how easy it is for him to dismantle your defenses if you didn’t feel so much safer with him at your back. Having his help is easier to stomach than facing Harrow all alone. You just wish he felt the same about including you.
You tell him of the encounter with Harrow on the bus, his thievery of your knife, and then ending with the body in the alleyway. Marc listens, frowning, and you can see his shoulders shifting his weight in a bout of nervous energy with no outlet to indulge in.
“If Harrow is still hiding out in London,” you finish, “I need to find him and get my knife back. I can’t leave without it, Marc.”
“I’ll let you know about any leads,” he says. It’s reluctant, but he looks grimly committed to following through on his word nonetheless.
“Right,” you muse, faux thoughtful. “Like with the scarab?”
“Lockley…”
“I know you don’t like working together,” you interrupt. “I know it’s hard for you to worry about others when you think you can take the world on by yourself. I know that it kills you that you can’t just vanish into thin air without being missed by the people that care for you.”
“I’m not—”
“I know you, Marc. I just want you to know that I understand why you didn’t call. I just wish you would understand why it still upsets me anyway.”
Marc tenses his jaw, the muscle ticking in the curve of his neck, and looks away. As if any facet of this man could hide what he feels from you. You know every inch of his body like the back of your hand. You know his mind just as intimately. Maybe more, considering the favor that hums as an invisible branding in the crook between his shoulder blades.
“We’re a team,” you finish. It sounds hollow when it’s split between the two of you like this, but you refuse to let him believe otherwise. “If Harrow got to Steven, I would want to be there to help protect him. Same with Eliana.”
The mention of your daughter shatters the mulling look on his face like glass. This time, he gives you the long, searching look. It takes every inch of your fraying composure to hold onto your calm, but you manage.
“Why did you come to London with her?” Marc asks. “You didn’t come just to see your sister.”
That last part is not a question, but you know him well enough to see his silent desperation for an answer all the same. You already had this conversation outside of the museum on the first afternoon here, but this time your daughter is far out of hearing range and you don’t have an excuse to skirt around the subject.
“I came for my sister,” you admit. “I wanted Sophia to be with Eliana while I worked to find the scarab in case something happened. There’s not many people I trust her with if I never make it back.”
It’s too close to the truth. It rots inside your mouth and down through the chambers of your borrowed heart. It is far worse to have this conversation with a version of your husband that does not think of you more than anything but a persistent thorn in his side.
Marc looks away for a moment, pretending to think, but you don’t miss the twitch in his jaw. It’s a suppressed reaction you know all too well to be Jake’s. He’s close to the surface, then, and he is listening to every word you say.
Somehow, that feels even worse. You need to change the topic before you say something you can never take back. So you say the very first thing that comes to mind to distract him from that particular line of thinking.
“I talked to Layla.”
Fuck. So much for a topic that avoids something you can never take back. Too late to retreat now, though, and Marc whirls back to look at you as if you slapped him. His brows pull down in hurt, then his eyes light up in that torrent of fury you hate that you know so well. Poking at Marc is easy when you know his weakest parts, and Layla is the weakest spot of them all. Even more so than Steven, it seems, because at least Marc can stifle him with a little fear from adrenaline.
“What?” He demands. His voice echoes in the quest street around you. He takes a step closer, lowering his voice to a hush. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“She’s well-connected,” you say. You don’t have the feign the confidence that settles your racing pulse. You don’t regret calling her. Did Marc think he could avoid her forever? Maybe. “You can’t keep the scarab here in the city. She’s our best chance to let it disappear from the public entirely so Harrow can’t find it.”
Marc reels back to twist his fingers through his hair, spitting out a muttered string of curses you can’t quite catch, then points at you accusingly. “We do not involve innocent people in this work, Lockley. You’re putting her in danger by inviting her here.”
That hits the mark like the strike of a match to kindling. Your frustrated anger roars to life to greet him, and even when you know you will regret this outburst later, for now you revel in this chance to curse him out for being such a fucking self-sacrificing idiot.
“You lost the chance to cut her loose when you married her, Marc. Like it or not, she’s your equal in this life, and she can help us with the scarab.”
“Not if it could get her killed!”
“Not if you’re there to actually help protect her.”
“I can’t!” Marc shouts. Too late, you realize the two of you have gravitated closer together like orbiting stars, and he grips you by your upper arms tightly enough to make you stop breathing. He’s so warm, his touch scorching you through the fabric of your ceremonial armor. The blessing of Anubis he wears without his consent or knowledge sings to you through the contact alone. It’s a comfort that he does not want to give you. He’s too furious to soothe the panic that needles you. You’re not the one that should take his comfort in any form.
Yet you’re terribly lonely enough in this life to bask in it even as he shouts at you.
“I can’t,” he repeats, falling back into his shroud of bitter misery, but he’s still gripping you like you will turn to sand and fall straight through his fingers. “I won’t let her get hurt because she’s trying to help me serve Khonshu’s every whim. You could convince her it’s not worth coming here to help.”
“You have to stop running from it,” you say. Even uttering something like that makes you a blatant hypocrite, but he doesn’t know it. “Just talk to her, okay? She’s more angry that you are ignoring her. She thought you were dead.”
“Good,” Marc huffs out. It’s almost so quiet you second guess yourself, but when he finally releases you, he repeats, “It would be easier for her to move on.”
“No, it would not be,” you huff back, nearly amused. How often had you figured cutting ties would be as swift as cutting a lifeline? Death had once been a final frontier, the last destination of your every regret. Now it is nothing more than an illusion of choice. Your fate is tied to its place with no way out.
Marc must know that, especially after what happened in the wake of the shiva. He’s hellbent on severing all of his connections to other people, but he has done nothing but encourage you all to come and seek him out regardless.
Like it or not, he is stuck with you.
Like it or not, the same goes for Layla, too.
“Just… stay away from Steven for now,” he sighs. “The scarab is safe. We can figure out a plan after things settle down.”
“Things aren’t going to just settle down,” you say. You hold out your empty palms in emphasis. “He’s planning something, Marc. I can’t do my job without the knife he stole. I bet you’re going to have more trouble with Steven, too.”
“Just give it some time,” he repeats. He isn’t fit to argue the point with you, and he turns his back to head towards the flat. Likely, he plans to shuffle into the recesses of Steven’s mind until this day can be forgotten as nothing more than a bad dream.
“Stay safe,” you call to his retreating back, and you see his chin tip down in a silent acknowledgement before he turns the corner and vanishes from sight.
Despite yourself, you linger in the street for a moment longer to see if Marc chooses to double back, shrouded by the shadows of the distant streetlights. Anubis’s favor settles across your armor to mask your presence flawlessly, subtle enough that even a trio of boisterous college aged men don’t spare you a look as they wander straight by your hiding place and head towards another pub.
To the naked eye, you are nothing.
Under your skin, the call of death burns like wildfire. Someone is dying, and you can feel the discordant notes of your knife against flesh and bone, wielded in amateur violence. It is not a weapon used for war, and yet it is being spent towards a nefarious purpose, every turn of the blade scraping across your insides in an agonizing mirrored response.
Marc wants to give it time.
Harrow is sending you the signal as clear as day: you are running out of time, second by second, and he plans to use it to cripple you from the inside out.
Another slash of the knife, swift and fatal, and you stumble, knees weakened in nausea, to slam against the side of a building. The world rocks and tilts hazily. A wet muzzle presses to your thigh, insistent, but when you open your eyes nothing is there.
You are dying, and you are alone.
Marc wants to wait for things to settle down. He wants Layla out of the way of harm. He wants Steven to turn a blind eye and pretend he lives a normal life as a gift shop cashier. He assured you that he will stay attentive for any leads about Harrow’s location, but he hadn’t seemed so keen to go out hunting tonight.
“Okay, asshole, I hear you,” you grit out, tapping your emblem. Sand coalesces over your physical form, a sign that you should be intangible to the whim of bodily functions, but it does nothing to soothe the gut-wrenching sickness rotting inside every particle of your being.
You don’t have time for things to settle down. If Harrow wants this fight, then he will have it, all or nothing, even if you have to do it yourself.