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- two drifters
Sometimes, he feels like a ghost.
Which, Jake guesses is his fault. He doesn’t make a habit of fronting because he isn’t really supposed to exist. And sure, neither of them really are, but Steven’s been around for longer; for much, much longer. Steven has a clear purpose: be everything Marc wishes he was. Be kind, be gentle, be boring and mundane and content. Where Marc is rough edges, Steven is smooth corners.
Jake is sharp.
He isn’t meant to exist, not like Steven does to balance Marc. He doesn’t do emotions, he doesn’t have hobbies — and maybe that’s because he’s never fronted long enough in a civilian environment to have one, but he’s not going down that rabbit hole anytime soon — and he sure as hell doesn’t talk to people.
The most human interaction he’s had are those times he’s been thrust forward in the middle of a conversation or training with their drill instructor and forced to improvise. A smile here, a well-placed chuckle there, and he’d last long enough to make it out the interaction with their secret kept under wraps. You can’t exactly join the military with DID, after all.
But it’s what Marc wanted, so it’s what Jake was made to handle. That was his purpose for a while, then the mercenary group, and now…
And Jake is fine with keeping that unknown. He’s fine with the only person he’s spoken to, really spoken to as Jake and not pretending to be someone else, being Khonshu if he even counts. He’s fine with sometimes waking up mid-mission, the armor unraveling itself at just the wrong moment and he’s forced to deal with a gunshot wound in his gut until he can get his shit together enough to figure out how to summon it again.
He’s fine with putting a knife through someone’s gut and washing his blood stained hands when push comes to shove because he’d rather that be on his conscious than Marc’s, or God forbid Steven’s.
He’s fine with not properly existing and being a ghost. And he intends on keeping it that way.
“Marc? Is that you?”
But of course, it never actually works out.
Jake freezes at the window, his back facing the rest of the room and the darkness behind him that he doesn’t want to turn to, squint into to see her. He prods at Marc carefully, only enough to nudge him if he’s not out of commission, but he doesn’t get a response.
“…Steven?”
He’s glad Marc is resting because he needs it after that fucking meeting with those Ennead assholes and so does Steven, but Layla isn’t supposed to know about any of this, let alone Jake, and now not only she, but the other two are going to find out. And that’s kind of the last thing any one of them needs.
He finishes shutting the window, as slowly as he can so he can spend as much time as possible thinking about which accent would be easier to impersonate and why they both must have impossibly unique speech patterns. Words, he’s good with them, not so much the emotion that’s supposed to prop them up so it’s not just pretty phrases. Steven is though. Goddamn it.
He straightens his shoulders a little and pushes them back in what he hopes is Marc's signature confidence. Or stress. “Marc, yea, sorry,” he pauses to clear his throat and his mind of that awful accent he just did. Something a little more subtle this time. “I was, out. Getting something.”
“So, you climbed out the window?”
Yes, because she wasn’t supposed to be up, and he just meant to slip out and come right back. He holds the little bag up above his shoulders without turning around and shakes it as proof.
“Just a few things.”
Her footsteps move toward him and he knows it’s going to be suspicious if he doesn’t try and act as normal as possible, so he turns around and keeps his eyes fixated squarely on the stupid convenience store bag in his hands. Her gaze burns holes into his face. He can handle it.
“Like?” she pushes.
“Postcards,” which he wasn’t going out to get.
Booze was his priority, but Khonshu would’ve bitched about it if he let himself fall into a drunken stupor to drown some of Marc’s crushing sorrows, and Jake usually leaves the cards buried in Marc’s suitcase so when he gets back to London, he’ll have something to give to Steven. He’s seen them posted up in the apartment on the rare occasion he’s there, with little messages signed ‘Love, Mum’ in handwriting that’s imperceptibly shaky, unsteady.
“Why?”
He doesn’t need to buy them anymore, considering Steven’s in the know because Marc’s a fucking idiot, but he likes them. “The pictures are nice.”
There’s a long moment of silence and it throws Jake off. He’s not used to it, the quiet, not when he can constantly hear Steven’s quiet murmurs or Marc’s brusque statements or their bickering or Khonshu. Not when his first memory is their drill instructor screaming at him, and his second is being dragged behind a building and having to fight his way back to the barracks.
So, he looks up, which is his first mistake.
Layla’s eyes widen, then narrow, then settle into something scarily unreadable. “You’re not Marc.”
He almost flinches and stops himself from stumbling back. There’s an emotion, one he can’t really put a name to, that wells up and makes his breaths come up short and jagged, and his limbs buzz with the need to fight. Suddenly, he’s struggling, grasping for words like Steven and unable to say what he really wants like Marc, and he just wants to fall back and let someone else deal with this. The last person he talked to said he was ‘possessed’, and he’s half inclined to believe them.
“I am,” he finally says, but all his smooth-talking skills and charm have left him, and it sounds more like a question, one they both know the answer to.
Layla steps forward, closer too close. “You’re not Steven either.” Suddenly, she’s inches away and her eyes roam his face, and he swears she can see right through him, and she can’t know— “who are you?”
He clenches his jaw tightly and has to force the words out between fear and teeth. “Layla—“
“What’s your name?”
It’s soft, quiet, and the air stills around her words. There’s nothing in them, on her face, but curiosity, but a genuine desire to know. It’s simple.
“… Jake,” he breathes, and it has to be the first time he’s ever said it to anyone, “Lockley.”
It takes a moment for her to process that, and he can see the gears turning in her head, accepting it he hopes. Then, she smiles.
"It's nice to meet you, Jake."
When Layla looks at them, at him, he feels a little more real.
- dream maker
Steven shifts the stars.
Well, before that.
He's trapped. It's weird, terrifying when he tries to take control, he can barely move, and he's just a voice in Marc's head. How the turntables, he thinks bitterly as he watches Marc turn away and stare past Steven in the rearview mirror after breaking Layla's heart. Again. Steven wants to yell at him, demand him to turn around and apologize and talk to her or give up control so Steven can. But.
There are lines between Marc's eyebrows and his throat keeps bobbing and spasming and his blinks are heavy and hard. He doesn't turn back around for the entirety of the car ride, but Steven doesn't say anything. He looks like how Steven felt when Gus was replaced.
They pull over in some random spot and then Marc's tearing the mirror off the side of the car and staring hard at Steven in the reflection.
"Alright, go ahead you're in," he relents, sounding beyond tired and done.
Steven doesn't wait to jump in. "Cheers, thanks a lot." He drops the mirror and frowns at all the pieces thrown onto the ground, his mind working. "Alright then."
He gets to work. He'd probably take a bit more umbridge with it if he were doing anything else that didn't relate to Egyptology, but if Steven's anything it's a massive nerd and wannabe tour guide. He mumbles to himself as he pieces together the scraps and can forget where he is.
In Egypt, being hunted by some crazy child-murdering cultists and his — or Marc 'the American living inside him who's also an international criminal and Gus 1.0 murderer' Spector’s — wife. Plus, some pigeon-headed bloke who's really the Egyptian god of the moon. It's all a bit ridiculous, a little bonkers really, and not what he expected to be doing last week when he was restocking shelves.
He misses it all, but that doesn't change the fact that he is where he is, who he is, or who they are. Or that Layla's settled next to him, observing him as he works. Steven looks up at her. It’s hard to make out her expression, with the light behind her and her hair framing her face. It’s hard to see much of anything out here. But his hands shake as he grabs the roll of tape.
Half her face is lit up. Not that it helps much, she’s still, unreadable and Steven is still panicking, and he can feel Marc still panicking, even if that’s buried under layers of forced apathy. It’s paper-thin since Steven can still feel his self-loathing, self-hatred. Its… really sad.
“Steven?”
It’s his name, he hears it every day. But when she says it, carefully, it’s a command. He stops and turns his head to her.
“E-Egyptians invented modern navigation,” he says, decidedly fixing his gaze on everywhere but her eyes, even if she refuses to look anywhere but him as he rambles his way through an explanation that makes sense in his head but sounds like gibberish out loud. He's a right mess, isn't he?
“Et voilà," he finishes with forced casualness, presenting the taped together map to her and he can feel his heart hammering against his chest in a mixture of his usual anxieties and a feeling that doesn't feel like it belongs to him, some deep burning feeling that makes him want to shove the scraps into her hands and run away or find a way to wipe her memory. It feels like someone else is having a panic attack—
“Woah,” Layla breathes as she leans forward and grasps the edge of the star.
“It’s… French,” Steven tacks on lamely.
Layla chuckles softly. “I know.”
Marc must be a complete idiot or a heartless bastard or both (probably both). The lighting is shit, it makes her look washed out and her hair is understandably frizzy from almost being killed and her eyes are still red and a bit watery from whatever Marc said to her in the car. Steven hasn’t had a conversation with her that hasn’t involved solving an immediate problem or being interrogated about being Marc. All he really knows is that they have the same favorite poet and love for Ancient Egypt and understanding that Marc’s an ass (though that last part is inferred).
Steven knows this. All of this.
‘I would never divorce you,’ he’d told her in his apartment.
Then, Steven shifts the stars, and it hurts more than he ever thought it would. He swipes and feels the cosmos and stardust on the tips of his fingers, cold and like sparks that make them tingle and feel weird. But for a moment, when he can find himself again between the sheer power and Khonshu's presence behind him, he manages to glance at Layla and sees the purples and pinks and blues flash across her face, her eyes, her mouth parted in a small smile and awe. Then she remembers what she's meant to be doing and starts scanning. Then Steven turns back and has one last thought before he focuses on the sky again.
He’d marry her, again, if he could.
"Marc? Where’ve you been?”
There's that name again, the one he doesn't recognize besides the weird feeling in his chest that he gets whenever he hears, "Layla?" say it.
They end up on the bike together in a weird position and Steven's not sure where to put his arms so he keeps them respectfully on her shoulders while she berates him, or this Marc person she must be mistaking him for and rides through the city. It's odd, being so close to this woman he doesn't know, but it isn't uncomfortable or awkward.
It's... nice. Yea, that's the word. She's very pretty and warm and Steven can't remember the last time he was this close to someone, to anyone. Then the bike jerks forward and so do his arms, but she doesn't complain when he wraps them around her waist to keep him from falling off the bike which is frankly the only thing he can think about. He thinks he sees her look at him in the rearview mirror, eyebrows furrowed.
They make it to his apartment.
“She’s my favorite poet.”
“No, she’s my favorite poet.”
Right, of course, because the apparent wife of his internal American person has the same taste in Egypt and poetry as him. (Or he has the same as her, but that wouldn't make any sense because he's rather certain he's his own person and he's liked that poem since, well since...)
She's glaring at him while holding out the divorce papers that he doesn't like to look at because no, he's not going to sign them he'd have to be a madman to do that (Steven very clearly glares at his reflection in the mirror over Layla's shoulder, and his reflection dips his head) but he also has no idea what is going on.
"Look," he starts and can hear his voice shaking, then break when he says, "do- do you want some tea, maybe?"
He hopes, prays she says yes, because this is all getting quite out of hand and he's not sure how much more he can take before he well and truly loses it—
"Ok," she answers, and he doesn't miss the way her frown deepens as she does.
"Right, lovely." He hurries over to the tiny kitchen and quickly sets the kettle on the stove, then regrets that he did it so quickly because now he's got to... make small talk or answer her questions that he doesn't have the answers to while ignoring Marc whispering to him from the mirrors. He never noticed how many he had until now. He's really got to get rid of some of them.
“How long have you lived here?” She asks as she sits at his tiny table, picking up the completed Rubrix Cube that's sitting there and holding it up. "Can I..?"
"Yea yea, go right ahead." He watches her twist the Rubrix Cube, undoing it into a mishmash of colors all out of order, then twist it around and slowly start working at it. Until she glances up at him with a questioning, raised eyebrow and he spins around to save him from the embarrassment of being Steven Grant and tend to the whistling kettle.
She asked a question, he almost forgot. “Um, how long I've lived here, a bit. I’d reckon maybe a few months? Yea, that sounds about right. It’s— it’s my mum’s flat.”
Layla gives him a strange, oddly sympathetic look that he can't decipher. “You mentioned.” She sets the cube down. It's not complete, but she still tilts her head and nods in satisfaction, then accepts the cup he offers her while eyeing the fish tank. “Your fish, what’s his name?”
Steven follows her gaze to the glass, where Marc is watching her, lips pressed into a thin tight line. He looks away and clears his throat. “Gus. Ah, well, New Gus. Old Gus, Gus 1.0, died in rather mysterious circumstances that I’ve deduced were spawned from one very angry, very intrusive American man.”
She laughs, in time with his heartbeat. “You seem to be intimately familiar with the person I’m looking for.”
“Unfortunately.”
Her smile lingers until she sighs, and it slowly drops. She fiddles with her cup. “Are you… really not Marc?”
Steven opens his mouth, then closes it. The wooden pattern of the table is suddenly very interesting. “Just— Just Steven. With a v.”
He sees Layla nod from the edge of his vision, bobbing her head wildly up and down, trying to discreetly wipe her eyes. “With a v, got it.”
- heart breaker
She looks beautiful, in the light.
‘Then why don’t you tell her?’ Steven whispers.
“That’s not really what I do, is it? Never really been able to just… talk about everything.”
They lace their fingers together until he pushes hers away.
“Anything real.”
“Yes.”
She looks beautiful in the light and the music is nostalgic. Brings to mind stomping on glass at their wedding and a honeymoon on the sea. Before Khonshu, the dig site, and everything fell apart. He misses that.
‘Your fault, mate.’
“Shut the hell up,” Marc hisses at the water, then snaps his mouth shut when he turns back to Layla and sees her observing him. He grinds his teeth together and clenches his fists.
“We can start, now,” she says, hesitating with her hands in her lap before crossing her arms over her chest.
“You don't need to know.”
“Right,” she scoffs, tossing her head to the side, “because it’s not like we’re married or anything.”
“If I had it my way—“
“I don’t want to hear about your way, Marc, because it’s very clearly not right.”
She glares daggers at him for a split second before even that seems to be too much and she quickly glances away. The lights make the tears that sit in her eyes shine bright pink and deep blue. Marc decides he’s not going to notice it.
“How long…?”
Now that is something he won’t answer. Can’t. Doesn’t want to. Thinks he won’t make it off the boat, not out of his mind if he does. Steven exists, that’s all that he knows and cares to know and if he tries to find the root of that (“the unconfronted trauma that caused your personality to fracture,” the psychologist told him, clinically, peering over his glasses and analyzing him, “to protect yourself.”) —
“I’d prefer not to talk about it.” He doesn’t need another alter. He doesn’t think he can protect another person or protect anyone. He doesn’t want to admit anything is wrong because nothing should be.
“…I don’t— it’s… hard.”
(“I am. I am… unwell,” Marc choked out and felt everything he’s worked so hard to hide, everything no one was ever supposed to know, slip between his fingers and shatter by his feet as he stared up at the Avatars, faces cast in shadows. He’s fine, he’s fine, it’s what he told himself to get through the blackouts and hiding them from Layla and doing everything he can to make sure everyone is fine without him—
“I need help,” and that hurt the most to admit.)
“I get that.” Marc almost forgot Layla was there and nearly jumps when her quiet voice breaks the lull between them. She licks her lips and fiddles with the crescent-shaped necklace around her neck. The gold gleams and reflects off her skin.
“We don’t… even if we aren’t together anymore, divorced or whatever it is you want, you can still tell me things. I want you to. If you’re… if you’re comfortable with it.”
“It’s nothing with you, Layla,” he whispers. He can’t get his voice any louder and can’t get any more words out.
“…Just tell me next time, yea? I— I do care.”
That’s kind of the issue, isn’t it?
Marc is in Ancient Egypt. Or a museum. He isn’t sure how he got there or what he’s doing there. The last thing he remembers... the mercenary group had a job in Cairo. What day it is, what time it is. It’s missing, all of it, and it’d be troubling, he’s sure, if he felt anything. Currently, he’s watching himself read the plaque on Osiris, or stare at it. It’s like he’s watching a puppet show, people moving on strings while his are pulled taut and held there. He spectates.
Nothing is real, is the conclusion Marc quickly comes to as he sees his legs start to move and awkwardly carry him to another plaque. Moon deity. Khonshu. Or Khonsu. One name is missing an h, you see, which is very important, one letter can make all the difference. There’s Marc, with a c, not a k because his father named him and it was apparently a big deal, being Marc with a c and not a k. His mother never spelled his name correctly, and always neatly corrected his sloppy c’s with k’s. There’s Steven with a v and not ph, and it’s a bit funny how his mind chose that name. Marc with a c, Steven with a v, Khonshu with an h.
It’s all very important, and Marc is dreaming.
“…you’re that American man from the café a few months ago,” someone says beside where his body is standing. Distinctly familiar. “Um, Marc Spector, right?”
The words barely break through the blanket that’s smothering his mind, and it takes a moment to process and have what he’s thinking force itself out of his mouth.
“With a c.”
They chuckle. “Right, with a c. And what are you doing here?”
Marc’s head turns on its own to the person that’s speaking to him. It’s that woman, Layla, he didn’t forget.
“I don’t… know,” he says.
Her eyebrows furrow a little. “Would you like me to stay with you?”
He doesn't say anything.
She grabs his hand, tentatively, and eases his palm open. “It’s said Khonsu also had some dominion over time and could manipulate it to an extent…”
Layla talks. Marc wakes up, eventually. She never lets go.
He’s stationed in Cairo. It’s where they first meet.
It isn’t easy, getting a doctor to sign off on his medical forms, proving he’s fine, really, he is. The concern (read: bewilderment) from others, primarily his mom, is sweet. It almost makes him second guess joining the Marines.
(“So, you’re finally cured?” His mother had asked on the other side of the table, not able to meet his gaze.)
Almost.
Marc manages to get the medical documents sorted, get all records of his time in the institution scrubbed clean, and look like a picture of perfect mental health on paper. Or near perfect, the therapist’s notes are vague enough to be overlooked and were the one thing he couldn’t seem to shake.
Regardless, he enlists and manages to keep everything under wraps. There are only a few gaps in his memories that he chalks up to brief episodes because he’s certain Steven’s gone if the gaping hole of his absence is anything to go by and nothing is too out of the ordinary outside of a few weird looks here and there, and the general avoidance of him. That’s not anything new, anything he can’t deal with the same as he always does. Ignore it.
Cairo. He’s stationed there after boot camp, and it’s fine. It’s nice. It’s nothing like how he expected it to be, which was mostly desert and the pyramids. The shit they show in movies, with that crappy piss-colored filter over everything. The city is pretty and vibrant and the cafe he’s sitting at reminds him a bit of the one his father used to take him to in Chicago, by the water where they’d watch the boats go by.
“Homesick?”
Marc turns his gaze to the voice, a woman who’s seated at the table next to his. Curly dark hair and dark eyes and grinning over the mug in her hands. Marc swallows.
“Not at all,” he lies, pushing thoughts of the cafe and his father and his mother from his mind, and busies himself with his drink.
She scrunches her nose. “I saw that look.”
It’s a trap, he knows, but he can’t stop himself from asking like an idiot, “What look?”
“This one.” She points at her face and looks off into the distance. Her expression softens, eyebrows settling somewhere between pinched and furrowed, mouth set in a slight grimace. She turns back to him and smiles. “The homesick American look.”
Marc snorts into his drink. “I’m not homesick.”
“Right, because you couldn’t wait to get away from New York and spend months in Cairo.”
“Chicago,” he corrects and why is he correcting her?
She tilts her head, curiously. “Huh,” is all she says about that.
Normally, Marc would let the conversation die and the pretty— beautiful woman from the cafe just becomes another little memory of a missed opportunity, of one of the three people he talks to in a year that might stick with him. But he knows she’ll do more than stay in the back of his mind and sue him he’s feeling a bit adventurous today.
“What’s your name?” He asks and stills his hands by gripping the cup. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous, it isn’t like she’ll know just from speaking to him for a few minutes.
She perks up from stirring her drink and grins. “Layla, and it’s nice to meet you, Marc Spector.” She gestures to his dog tags. “Don’t worry, I’m not a creep.”
“Wouldn’t take you for one.”
“Ah, a gentleman I see,” she says with a smirk.
“Not all the time.” Only when the fear of being found out and shipped back to the States only to be locked up in some room like everyone wants is quiet enough that he can recall his manners. There’s a stray, flirtatious thought of adding on ‘only for beautiful women' and it’s so out of character he almost chokes on his coffee.
Layla's grin becomes a full-on smile, it's beautiful, actually is, and Marc thinks his mind is quiet when he sees it and he doesn’t think it’s possible to forget her— oh. Shit. He's fucked.
“Do you think I’ll be seeing you here very much?” she asks.
“Some version of me, I’m sure.” It's surprisingly candid and he almost regrets saying it, but Layla seems to take it at face value. He lets out a quiet exhale, a moment of relief. “If— if that’s ok.”
“I don’t own the cafe.”
Marc nods. “Right.”
There's nothing for a bit, just the sound of the city and her spoon clinking against the inside of the cup. Then, a hand on his shoulder, feather-light touch, and they make eye contact. Marc holds it. Layla's gaze is steady, true. “…every version of you is ok.”
And for that instant, he believes her.