“Moon Knight and his Midnight Mission. The Midnight Mission and its Moon Knight”
Just received this absolutely beaUTIFUL commission from @ynnu-64 of Marc and the House of Shadows, and I’m running up the WALLSSS ABOUT ITTT!!
I want to give a huge thanks to him again for being so up for this oddball request. This pairing is so niche but I have so much love in my heart for it and I’m absolutely blown away that they now get to have a piece of fanart like this. The texture and little expressions and everything about it just captured what I was thinking sOOo well and just auGggHHHHh ALL THE FEELINGS FOREVERRRR
It’s been a little over two years since I wrote the first piece for the House of Shadows and Marc, and since then it’s become my favorite Moon Knight ship and expanded to a love for all the dynamics the MK sys can have with this interdimensional house creature. Here’s to many more years and many more weird and lovely moments between them :-)
You’d think having niche made up ships would make you immune to creators introducing new lore and retcons that suddenly make it problematic or uncomfortable. However. I just got told my sentient cannibalistic Haunted House is a minor.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Rating: G
Relationships: Marc Spector/The House of Shadows (Marvel), Clea Strange & Marc Spector
Word Count: 2,105
Summary:
Marc stumbles out of the Mansion Ravenous with new doubts about his relationship with the Midnight Mission. Clea proves to be the perfect aid in finally allowing them to have a proper conversation.
———
Or: I give my perspective on the “reveal” that the House of Shadows is a child for its species, and explore why disagreements with that choice can still square with canon
So ermmmm 😳 if anyone wants one of these for like. 2-5 dollar Venmo/Ko-Fi and then sent in the mail… lemme kno. Approximately 1k of fic inside covering three mini stories with the House of Shadows and each main member of the MK system. Some mild horror elements/violence in story two! Shoot me a DM!
This ramble has been posted on BlueSky for a while now, but I finally decided to post it here as well.
I talk about the Moon Knight system x the House of Shadows so much as a ship, but I feel I don’t really dig into it or explain it much outside of my fics. But I have so many thoughts, about why they work, about why they mean so much to me, and about the draw I have to their varying dynamics overall.
Like just to start, I love the House of Shadows as a character, especially with Jed’s writing. It’s a demonic psychic interdimensional house, and that is so cool and also a wonderful thing to explore on a deeper level and in a relationship context. Especially when its partner(s) in this case are a fucked up slowly healing and recovering human system with a brain touched by a god. Like what else could you want?
More seriously though, the levels of intimacy between the system and the Mission speaks to me a lot as a lover of nonhuman romance and exploration. Marc directly offers to give the Mission a purpose in being his home and his base of operations, and the Mission accepts, showing a marked sense of loyalty and protectiveness to Marc and the system afterwards.
Marc understands the Mission's ache for acceptance and presence in the physical plane, and he offers it those things by his side. The Mission doesn't take that lightly, and its intense focus on keeping Moon Knight safe and serving its role as their home and a secret weapon shows a dedication and care of its own. I like to think there's an understanding it has of the system that mirrors Marc's understanding of it. It isn't thrown off by plurality or violence or dramatics. It isn't expecting the system to act in a certain way because it itself is not human and as such can accept them fully in a way outside of human social norms.
This opens the door for a new type of connection, a vulnerability wholly specific to their dynamic.
The Mission making sure Marc's room shifts with the light outside so his sleep cycles function as well as they can. Steven making sure to have casual conversation with the walls while in his office, knowing it wants to be recognized. The Mission making a garage so Jake can park his taxi. Jake bringing home leftovers to toss into the void of a hall closet so the Mission can taste Gena's food. Brushes of vague psychic presence over the surface of their brain. A close clutching of the curtains to the windowpanes when they come back bruised and bloody. Reassurances mumbled to the bathroom mirror. Fingers skirting down to scratch affectionately at a banister or over the carpet threads when they sit down to catch a breath.
The Mission sees every moment they sway, every morning they wake up with a headache and take time to come to themselves. It sees those flashes of panic when memories surface, sees Marc curling in on himself in the shower or Steven working himself ragged trying to clean a spot of blood from one of their oldest suits. It sees because they live inside of it, bear themselves to it, trust it with that vulnerable aspect of who they are. It is their home. And they, in return, have become its. A soul to anchor to. A presence it expects to return to its halls. A mortal jawline and human fingers. Stubble and swapped out cologne.
They free each other from what they were before. The mission is a partner absent of the baggage and traumas the system has had with human partners in the past, and the system to the Mission is a human that knows what it Is and wants it, loves it, gives it a place, despite all the malicious views others had of it before.
In a lot of ways, they’re similar. Beings trying to become better versions of themselves, to change, to be seen in a new light and earn it. And really, like I said before, the strangeness circles back to not being strange anymore. The system can't judge the Mission because they know what it's like to be outcast, and if they have a slip in respectability, who's going to judge them? the walls? the ceiling? the lights that thump with consumed heartbeats? the drapes that flutter in breath-like wind? there is no judgement from something so unlike them already. and what a comfort that is.
They don't have to be anything for each other. The system only has to continue making the mission their home, and in return, allow the mission to find its own home with them.
(and then they kiss its walls gently and let the floorboards croon beneath their feet but thats neither here nor there)
Someone else drew their ship after it got past preliminaries on @marvelrarepairbracket so I decided to do so fic wise with MidKnightMission bc they’ve obviously been on my mind again.
(Usual house levels of horror-adjacent-ness, current Fist of Khonshu run references, takes place after the most recent 50th birthday issue and the Mission’s revival)
This is just a short n sweet reunion piece :-)
Ao3
———
After the party—after the guests have gone home and the food has been put away and Diatrice has been tucked safely into bed—Marc takes a moment to himself. He slips away, a slice of silver waning into the dark, and lets the halls lead him forward until he arrives in a small room alone.
No… not alone. The thought makes him shiver, emotion pluming in his lungs. Never alone anymore, not here.
His feet carry him shakily to the wall, to old paint that flutters under his fingertips as he runs a hand along it, down the feel of solid weight and warmth and the curling sense of a presence beyond his own.
“My Mission…” he mutters, throat catching.
There is a swell beneath his fingers, the buzz of life and churning blood. Not empty concrete. Not smoke scorched floors. Not the rotting shell of something that used to be.
Marc knocks his forehead against it, still masked, nuzzling forward nose to cheek to aching temple. He pauses then, ear against the paint, still caressing the expanse of its body exposed to him here, and listens as if for a heartbeat. The air around him warms in affection instead, the room creaking as it closes in and down to wrap itself around him.
“My Mission,” he whispers again, and the floorboards have cracked to grip his thighs. “My beloved House.”
There are teeth against his neck, a thousand warm mouths seeking to kiss his arms and chest and covered face. He works an arm up to slip the mask free, meeting red eyes in the closing void, endless darkness hugging desperately to his light.
“I don’t think I’d ever seen such a lonely creature as the midnight mission. Well… I guess I could think of one. They were two of a kind. They needed each other. Moon knight and his midnight mission. The midnight mission and its moon knight”
IM GOING TO BE SO FUCKING SICK JED MACKAY ARE YOU KIDDING ME
