Chapter Text
Marc stared out the window of his dirty apartment, eyes cloudy with memory. The few stars visible through the polluted London sky twinkled far above. These gave no illumination on Marc, physically or psychologically.
His ankles ached. He absolutely despised having to wear the awful, clanking ankle chain, but a look to the calendar told him that there was work at the museum tomorrow. So, for Steven’s sake, he stepped away from the window and headed over to pick up the heavy chain.
“You really ought to sort this out,” advised a voice from the far corner of the room.
Marc spun around sharply, not quite surprised, in fact more frustrated. The majority of the population would likely be cowering in fear at the sight of a seven-foot humanoid with a falcon skull for a head standing in the corner of their room. Unfortunately, this was just an everyday occurrence for Marc Spector.
“Yeah, I know. Believe me,” Marc added for emphasis, as he turned back around to adjust the chains wrapped around his bed frame. “You think I want to live like this?”
“You are an Avatar of a god. You should not be living in such… squalor.”
Marc laughed bitterly as he sat down roughly on the bed. It creaked unpleasantly, in the way a door with a broken hinge sounds.
“You think the problem is squalor? Nah, the problem is,” he waved at nothing, which was to say everything, “London. England. The passports. The quirky little guy hidden in here-” he tapped his forehead in emphasis, “who thinks he’s in charge of everything, but he knows nothing, nothing at ALL-”
Red flashed in front of his eyes, and he took a few steadying breaths. Khonshu hovered, silent and still, though the edges of his robes fluttered in an ethereal wind. The air of the apartment was stale, tinged with the dust of old books and the wafting scent of fish tank water. Only two sources of light illuminated the scene: a warm bulb from a bedside lamp, and the cool moonlight through the window, cutting deep shadows into the floor. Adding to the ever-present eeriness of having an ancient god in a cheap London flat, Khonshu’s visible form cast no shadow across the uneven floorboards.
“Marc. Will he continue to be a problem? We have spoken about-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve talked about it. It’s fine, I’ll handle it.”
With a final yank and a noisy clanking, the restraint was secured. Marc grabbed a bottle from the pack on his bedside table and began to chug. He was determined to not stop until his vision swam. It was that familiar wobble in his vision that he craved, the only way he could stop the endless rush of thoughts and worries.
“Spector, you cannot hide forever.”
“Maybe not,” replied Marc in between swigs, “but I sure as hell can try.”
One bottle turned two, turned four, turned six.
“Another couldn't hurt,” Marc muttered to nobody as he shuffled to the side of the bed he had been sinking into for who knows how long now.
He flung his legs over the side, angling his weight forward in an attempt to stand up. In this attempt, he pitched too far forward. Trying to course-correct, he began to take a step with his left leg, but hooked the top of his foot on the chain holding him to the bed. There was no regaining his balance, nothing and no-one to grab onto, and so he fell with a crash, slamming his head into the floor.
Of all the untreated concussions Marc had developed over the course of his life, the effects of this one immediately set in, aggressively so. With the unwanted calls of Khonshu rushing through his ears, the Fist of Vengeance pitched into darkness.