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“And did it suck? Getting rejected from the Field of Reeds?”
Steven falls, facing the sky in the sand. The wind was knocked out of him during the fall. But the sky, it’s beautiful. Purple and dark blue, just like that night of a thousand nights when he helped Khonshu turn back the stars. He almost doesn’t want to get up and see the boat sailing away like he knows it is, leaving him behind in the sand. He doesn’t want to get up and try to drag his feet after him, after Marc who he can still hear screaming for him, for his mother, for his brother.
Their mother, brother. Marc’s. Steven doesn’t know anymore, nor does he want to acknowledge that he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to think about all of this. Any of this.
So, he lies on the sand, stares at the sky, and wishes he could freeze time.
(The cave was dark and damp and the water was rising with every passing second and they had to go now, but Randall was stuck and it was too dark to make anything out and Marc could hear his breaths growing shorter and thinner and he— they had to get out—)
(“He manipulated you.”
Marc watched himself talk to Khonshu, accept Khonshu, half dead and desperate to live not for himself, but for Ro— for Steven. For all the people who died because of him. For all the people he failed to protect. Marc watched the god, in his statue high above staring down, speak to him, offering.
And all he could hear was ‘it was your fault.’)
It’s dark and cold in there. He’s not claustrophobic, not at all, but it reminds him— of— things he isn’t supposed to know about. Then again, he isn’t exactly supposed to know about anything because he isn’t supposed to exist. But he sure as shit isn’t supposed to know about wet, slippery rocks, a sharp edge coated with blood dripping from the back of his head, blue lips, screaming for help, for anyone to come.
He isn’t supposed to know about any of that, but he does. It’s easier to share the guilt, the memories. For Marc, at least. Not for him, but whatever, he’s dealt with it. He'll deal with it.
So he closes his eyes, hums Shalom Chaverim, and opens them again to darkness. Then he starts pushing.
Steven gets to his feet and takes a step forward. The sand swallows them. Gets in his trainers, in his socks. It’s bloody annoying, and Steven’s had enough of this. Of everything. Of dying and being trapped and then going through door after door of things he wishes he could remember. Of being a stress ball, even if he knows that’s not what he is, of being imaginary even if he knows that’s not true either.
(There was nothing but fury in her drunken gaze, burning Marc from the inside out. He didn’t remember her coming in, he didn’t remember why he’d been putting pencils back in the holder, or why she was so angry. He knew she wasn’t his mother, because Marc’s mother was bright laughter and her hand run gently through his curls, working out the knots and helping him light the Menorah.
No, the woman gripping his wrist with iron, hard enough that he could feel the bones grind, with a belt in her hand that she brought down and down, over and over until his tears of pain blended with those of fear and he couldn’t remember which he shed for the mother who’d been replaced, and which were for himself, she was not his mother.)
It’s starting to get really fucking annoying, being trapped. He slams his face against the…whatever’s in front of him, out of our anger and frustration, and ends up with a nose that feels misplaced and dripping with blood. Great. Fantastic. Protect protect, that’s all he supposed to do but there he is, stuck in some goddamn musty ass box while the people he’s supposed to protect protect protect are out there doing who knows what, getting themselves hurt or killed or drowned or—
He slams his feet against whatever’s in front of him with more fervor and sees nothing, hears nothing but protect protect protect protect protect.
(Her hand was soft and gentle, stroking his cheek and patting it gently. Her eyes flicked to Ro.
“Keep an eye on your brother,” she whispered with a smile. “Protect him.”)
The thing is: Steven’s not ready to die.
He hasn’t been, doesn’t think he ever will be. For many reasons. One, he’s got Gus to feed when he gets back home and it’s not a matter of if but when. If Gus is still alive, hopefully, he is. Two, he needs the world not to end and he needs Marc to prevent that from happening because yea Steven’ll pitch in, but he’s not exactly the superhero type. He’d argue Marc isn’t either but…
Steven shakes his head.
Three, finally, Steven doesn’t want to die.
And he comes to this realization as his feet stop moving, too buried or frozen to be pulled forward by sheer will anymore. He doesn’t want to die, he thinks, he knows, because Marc is still on that boat and is screaming and needs him and wouldn’t be able to live with himself if Steven—
Then again, he’s not even sure if Marc’s been really living.
But Steven doesn’t want to die. He wants to go home, he wants to go back to London with Layla, he wants to visit his father because they haven’t seen him in so long and they’re all each other has got, he wants to talk to Gus and become a tour guide and get rid of Khonshu so Marc can do what he pleases. Not be consumed by the need to protect and self-loathing. Be happy.
There are a lot of things Steven wants but won’t get.
(“All this time I thought I was the original, but I’m just something you made up.”
And Marc didn’t know how to react, not properly anyway. The proper reaction was beaten out of him, the lashes still red on his skin if he thinks too hard about them, about the hand dolling them out. So, he yelled, said shit he knew he shouldn’t be saying because he’s done everything to make Steven's life easy but has done everything but. He thought he had it all under control, that the blackouts he’d had when he was still living with Layla were just some shit with his PTSD or some sleeping disorder. Ironic.
Then Marc was living in the gaps in between, waking life and dreams, mirrors and fish tanks, postcards and a never filled voicemail box, messages ended with ‘love ya mum, laters gaters.’ Doing everything possible to keep everything bundled up inside so Steven could live.
“But it was all a lie, wasn’t it?”
“So? What does it matter?”
Who’s real, who isn’t. Who’s the original, who’s not.
It didn’t fucking matter, never did. Because there they were, and there they remained.)
You know what? Fuck Khonshu.
Fuck Harrow, fuck all of his damn followers, fuck those stupid ass gods who say they care, put Marc on trial because he told someone and asked for help, then had the gall to say, ‘this is a safe place’. All of them could go to hell, and Jake will help their sorry asses there if he has to, right after he gets to Marc and Steven and makes sure they’re ok, quell that incessant, rising voice screaming at him to protect protect protect protect protect! But he can’t very well do that from where he is, stuck in a cold, dark, damp—
He sucks in a breath and leans his forehead against whatever’s in front of him. In three out three, right? That’s— that’s what Layla had said once. Not to him, even though she was talking to him it wasn’t like she knew that. Ok in, out.
One last push. And it opens.
Jake topples out, on his hands and knees, vision filled with white. He wonders if he’s dead, if they died, again. He hoped not. And he must not be if there are drops of red falling from his probably broken nose on the floor. His face hurts. That’s not what’s important.
He gets to his feet and walks to the door of the tiled walled room he’s in. An asylum, ok. Ok, no more traumatic memories please, alright brain? No more of the padded rooms they shoved him into when Steven was deeply asleep and Marc was too close to the front, sometimes waking up and thinking he was dreaming. A nightmare.
Ok Marc, nightmares are all they’ll ever be. Ok Steven, stay in the dark.
Ok Jake, the voice whispered, protect them.
“I don’t know why, but I miss her.”
Steven fiddles anxiously with the Rubix cube on the table in front of him. The only color against the white. His fingers itch to flip through a book or assemble another doll or do something to get rid of the restlessness that just refuses to fade on its own.
“Why?”
He shakes his head. He doesn’t really know. He supposes, knows, he shouldn’t, not after what he saw. Not after— not when Marc—
He thinks he shouldn’t love her. After everything his, Marc’s, their mum said, did, didn’t do, and didn’t say. The cold looks and crushing words, the raised hands and stinging leather that Steven only half remembers, like reading a book and having a dream vaguely resembling it, then recalling bits and pieces in the morning. He thinks, knows he shouldn’t love her.
“I don’t know,” he says.
He wondered if she ever loved him. She had to, right? She trusted him, Marc with their brother’s safety. She gave them hugs and kisses and took them to the theater when their father was too busy leading Shabbat services. She must’ve loved them because Steven doesn’t think she could hate them so much if she never did.
“Yes, you do.”
Yes, he does. He knows why he misses her. Because he loved— loves her. And he knows he shouldn’t. And Marc loved— loves her too, and he knows he shouldn’t.
Steven chews hard on his lip, keeping it from wobbling as he blinks hard. He doesn’t want to think about it, talk about it because it hurts too much. He looks up from the toy, into his own eyes on another person, bandage across their nose, cast in shadows.
“Is it… wrong that I do?”
(“Marc?”
He released a great, shuddering breath that racked through his frame. The hand mirror was broken against the table, he had to cover the rest of the mirrors, pieces of glass littered around the phone, the envelope, the fucking letter—
Layla reached for the letter. Marc snatched it away.
“What’s—“
“Nothing.” He shook his head and pressed his palm against some of the broken pieces on the table, drawing blood that she didn’t see. “Just— nothing.”
She stared at him, and maybe before she’d press. Before he went radio silent for weeks on end, only to return and sleep on the couch or rent a hotel room rather than stay in the same room as her and risk her falling into the same trap everyone else did, everyone else who got to close. Maybe before, she’d yell and try to snatch it away from him and it’d devolve into a fight and tears.
But now, she stared. And Marc said nothing, did nothing but look down at the ground and not the letter with the words ‘shiva’ ‘Mrs. Spector’ ‘passing’. Tried not to think about his mother with kind words and hotdogs, tried not to think of his mother with sunken eyes and a belt.
Tried not to hear Khonshu laugh.)
Fuck, what was he supposed to say to that?
No, because she fucking beat Marc, me, us? Yes, because that's what sons do, love their mothers no matter what? No because he’s pretty sure moms are supposed to love their children, yes because Marc thinks it was his fault and deserved it. No, yes, Jake has no fucking clue.
“You’re asking the wrong person, bud.”
“I’m asking you.”
Jake didn’t appreciate the emphasis on you like it was supposed to mean something.
“Don’t ask me.”
“But I am.”
“I’m not qualified to give an answer.”
“You are.”
“Why?”
“Because you are a part of us.”
Sure, the part of them that switched out with Steven and took a beating without a whisper. The part that switched with Marc when he was having a full-on breakdown in the barracks and decided fuck it, their mental health was more important than the fucking military, even if Marc wholly disagreed. The part of them that’s ‘violent’ and ‘uncontrollable’ because his only goal is to protect.
Protect protect protect protectprotect, and all he could do when their mom walked into the room and took the belt off the hook on the back of his door was close his eyes, shove Marc and Steven back, and take it. They love her, Jake doesn’t want to think about if he does. He can’t think about it without his rage swelling and vision turning red and—
He slams his hand on the table between them, doesn’t feel bad when Steven flinches, he doesn’t, and leans in dangerously close. “And I was left behind in that fucking casket, wasn’t I?”
Steven blinks. “I fell off the boat.”
“And?”
“It balanced the scales.”
Jake pales.
(She was right.
Of course, she was right, it wasn’t like Marc didn’t already know that. Know that he’d been deluding himself into trying to believe it wasn’t, running off to the Marines, then the mercenaries, now with Khonshu. She was right, he thought as he took a swig from the flask he didn’t remember buying, staring at the window across the street from behind the car. Trying to hide as much of himself as possible.
His father came into view, paused, and made eye contact. Desperate. He waved for Marc. Marc shook his head and turned down the street.
She was right. She was right, she was right, she was right, and now she’s dead too. Just like him, just like Randall, but unlike the two of them, Marc didn’t have the decency to stay dead. Marc just kept crawling back from his grave, more broken every time. Marc didn’t know how to protect so he stayed away, and he didn’t know how to stay away so he just ended up getting people killed.
She was right she was right, and he couldn’t even bring himself to attend her shiva, to do anything but stumble down the street, sobbing and holding onto his flask like it was a lifeline, like it’d done or do any good stifling the crushing weight sitting on his heart, muffling the rattling in his mind behind a drunken haze.
She was right and it was too heavy, so Marc fell. Never strong enough to hold the weight so he ripped off his kippah and slammed it on the ground, over and over like he could, by some force, resurrect them in exchange for himself. But of course, it doesn’t work.
She was right, so he picked the kippah back up and cradled it against his chest in a silent apology, rocking back and forth and wishing praying needing to not be for just a moment, just so he doesn’t suffocate under it all because he can’t—)
Marc stands. Hands hanging by his sides, reeds tickling his knuckles as they sway in the breeze. Perpetual sunset, golden horizons. It’s bright. Sweat clings to his face.
(“I shouldn’t have brought him in that cave, I shouldn’t have brought him in that cave.”
“You were just a child,” Steven said, earnest and pained and Marc couldn’t hold his gaze, so he looked down, where he’s always looking. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He wanted to shake his head, bury it in the sand outside the boat, scream into the void. Steven was wrong, will always be wrong, Marc knew this because Marc is the reason— his mother said— if Marc had only protected him, he would’ve—
Steven was the first person to ever say those words.)
He thinks he hears some music playing. An old Spanish song, like the ones his mother used to have on records and out on the player. Slow, sweet, even if his Spanish is as rusty as his Hebrew.
He kneels. The reeds reach the top of his sight, blocking out the sun.
(Ro— Steven— They’re—
“Stop the boat!” He screamed. ‘Please wake up Ro!’ He heard.)
Marc takes a deep breath. His eyes burn.
(“It wasn’t your fault.”
Marc hoped to believe that.)
Steven would like this.
“Well, that doesn’t make sense because I’m not dead, am I? … am— I…?”