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The fish is dead.
“Shit,” Marc curses, stumbling through the door and over to the tank where the fish is belly up, floating in the middle. He drags a hand down his face and winces when he pulls on the wound. “Fuck.”
‘It seems you’ve misjudged, ’ Khonshu rattles and his voice grates against Marc’s bones.
“Shut up.”
He goes through the nightly ritual: cleaning up, throwing away the shirt in a dumpster around the block, scrubbing his hands until they’re pink and not from the blood then continuing to scrub until they’re red again, checking Steven’s voicemail box.
It’s Saturday. He forgot the date.
(He’s not even sure why he asked. Maybe it was the dark curly hair, or that smirk, or that look in her eyes when they started talking about the Ennead. The echo of Khonshu’s threat, the need to do something.
“I’ve been waiting here for hours and you don’t even have the decency to call with an excuse,” she spat into the phone. Marc grimaced. “You’re a right prick, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t agree more.)
He deletes the message.
The fish, however, is still dead. Gus, its name was Gus. Marc’s heard it before, in Steven’s voicemails to…
Right, Gus is dead. Marc hobbles over to the tank and stares at its body. He reaches a hand in and carefully scoops it out then stares some more.
‘There is no resurrecting this creature, no matter how much you stare,’ Khonshu says condescendingly from somewhere— everywhere.
“Not like you haven’t done it before.”
‘Its life had little value.’
And mine does? It sits on the tip of his tongue, then vanishes once Marc wraps Gus up in a paper towel and flushes it down the toilet. Steven will be devastated if he finds out.
“I could do with some healing,” Marc says while shrugging on a jacket and making plans to somehow find a one-finned fish before morning.
‘It’s quite unfortunate we don’t all get what we want.’
Marc bites the inside of his cheek and glances at Khonshu. He’s seated on the window sill, moonlight from nowhere spotlighting him. He glows, not bright enough to light up a room, but it’s there. Marc can only glance.
“Steven can’t wake up with a wound in his side and a new fish without being suspicious.”
‘Tch.’
There’s the sound of a staff slamming against wood, hard enough to make it splinter if it existed on this plane, and Marc can feel the tissue, muscle, skin knitting itself back together, the cool rush of fresh air burning his skin and lungs. He rubs the spot after a sharp inhale and feels nothing. It’s done.
Khonshu moves, and Marc knows even if he can’t hear it, not really. ‘I don’t understand why you keep the idiot around. You don’t need him.’
Marc doesn’t answer, because Khonshu doesn’t like to be told he’s wrong.
There’s glass on the bottom of his shoes that crunches when he walks.
I can scarcely move—
Marc flags down a taxi with a dirty window and makes for the airport. His hands shake when he loads his bags. There’s the pressure against his mind, in the middle of his brain and he wants to close his eyes and fall asleep but he can’t. He’s had practice, not sleeping. He’s managed to go without it for a week.
That blood is on my hands!—
There must be a mistake with the tickets because they give him the window seat. He pulls down the cover as soon as he’s seated, but he doesn’t miss the desperate look in Steven’s—
“Refreshments, sir?”
Marc snaps his attention to the flight attendant, smiling at him and gesturing to the cart. He swallows and tries to remember where he is, not to focus on how his breathing is too fast or his heart feels like it’s about to be crushed.
“I’ll— I’ll take a coffee, please.”
She nods, some dark curly hair falling into her face, and pours some in a cup. She moves to hand it to him, he reaches out to grab it—
Everything you touch turns to ruin.
He snaps his hand back like it burns. It almost does.
The flight attendant blinks then takes it in stride. She sets the cup down in front of him and bids farewell then moves on. Khonshu laughs, wind whistling through millennia-old stone.
Marc wraps his hands around the lukewarm drink and rations.
‘You killed Gus.’
It’s the first thing Steven’s said in days. The mirror is right across from him. Marc doesn’t look up at the reflection. It’s not a question.
He’d only been gone for the weekend, and he’d read goldfish can survive two weeks without food. He even left extra food in the tank.
“Yes,” he sighs.
‘And— and you replaced him,’ Steven says and his voice is airy and shaky. Marc doesn’t look up.
“Yes.”
‘Why?’
To protect you. It’s always to protect. But Layla found the scarab, and Khonshu dragged him to Egypt.
And here Marc is, and there Steven is.
He dips his head. I’m sorry, he thinks. “It was just a goldfish,” he says and starts unscrewing the bottle of vodka in his hand.
‘Y— you killed Gus.’
“We’re going in circles now, Steven,” Marc bites out dangerously, taking a swig of the drink and holding back tears from the burn. Or from something else. “What are you trying to tell me.”
There’s silence. Marc doesn’t like it, he’s not used to it. He exhales harshly and looks at the mirror. “What—“
Steven has the blanket wrapped around his shoulders tightly, staring at the ground but Marc can see the tears in his eyes, on the verge of spilling but he’s trying so hard not to let them. He’s shaking, his shoulders shudder and his breath comes out in soft, broken gasps. He grips the edges of the blanket harder.
Marc grabs the neck of the bottle with enough force to snap it, just to still his hands. “What are you trying to tell me?” And it’s gentle, ginger, even if it’s a struggle to keep all the pieces together long enough to say it.
Steven shakes his head. ‘ Nothing that hasn’t already been said,’ he mumbles.
Sunlight streams in through the gap in the curtain, shining off the mirror. There’s a sheen of light over the glass, in front of Steven and if Marc tilts his head just right and doesn’t stare too hard at the details of his own face, he can pretend he isn’t real. He can pretend he’s just another one of Steven’s bad dreams, a reflection in surfaces that does nothing else but mimic, an off-color, out of character thought in the back of a gift shop employee’s mind.
Marc takes another drink, stands, and walks the short distance to the mirror. He puts a hand on it, not completely used to his reflection not obeying him.
“Steven,” he says quietly.
The other looks up. Makes eye contact.
He curls his hand into a fist and slams it against the surface. Once, twice, he loses count between the pain and the rage that doesn’t feel like his. Boiling and bubbling and molten. He hits and hits and doesn’t let himself scream.
It feels a lot like London, like stomping on that mirror until he couldn’t seehearthink of Steven, like he’s doing the opposite of the one thing he promised he would.
Protectprotectprotectprotect—
But it breaks.
(“Let me save us,” he told Steven but it wasn’t about us. There is nothing of Marc left to save.
Let me save you. )
I will never give you a moment of peace, I promise.
Marc watches the blood drip from the cuts on his knuckles and pool by his feet. The sound of a staff echoes and all that’s left of it is a shattered mirror and smooth skin. He flicks his gaze up. He thinks he can still see Steven between the cracks. Or himself.
He steps on the broken glass and hopes the scars don’t heal.