Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It all started when Jake shaved his head.

Marc didn't particularly care. Hair grew back. 

Steven, on the other hand, was furious. For someone who apparently didn't give two shits about his appearance, and was normally pretty unconfrontational, it was a temper tantrum worthy of Khonshu on his worst day.

It escalated.

Jake bought clippers.

Steven donated them to the charity shop down the road.

Jake bought more.

Steven donated those.

Jake used a razor instead.

Steven suggested throwing out the razor and growing a beard, but Marc pulled rank and put his foot down at this.

Mercifully, Jake had declared that he was bored anyway, and stopped his game.

And Marc had heaved a sigh of relief and forgotten all about it.

Steven, being Steven, had decided to figure out how the magic of the suit worked. 

Khonshu had, unsurprisingly, bitched about disrespect and the foolish preoccupations of the Worm. And then, equally unsurprisingly, had gone all in with assisting Steven in his experiments.

The piles of books that made the flat a permanent fire hazard started to include anatomy and psychology textbooks. Then progressively wierder philosophy and new age books. Marc began to wonder if he needed to stage some sort of intervention. Whether this would be for Steven or Khonshu was debatable.

The final straw had come when Marc finally had some downtime. He'd slumped on the couch, feet up, ready to catch up on some truely mind-numbing TV. And Khonshu had damn well appeared.

"No." He'd said flatly. "Absolutely not."

But Khonshu wasn't there with a mission. No. He was there to visit Steven. Apparently they wouldn't bother him.

So he'd sat and tried to watch his movie while a skeletal Egyptian god perched on the other end of the couch and flipped the pages of some massive textbook - by magic - in front of a mirror, for Steven to read. And discussed it. Like they were some sort of book club. It was infuriating. And explained why he tended to trip over books whenever he got out of bed in the morning. Housekeeping was clearly not a high priority for interdimentional godlike beings.

He'd intended to have a word with Steven, but it seemed like his silent fuming must have made an impact. They never did it again.

So that seemed to be that.

Of course, it wasn't. 

Marc's sick of audiobooks.
They started as a way to get Steven to shut up occasionally, like putting on the radio in the car when you wanted to ignore a passenger. He's now been subjected to Lord of the Rings (too wordy), Wheel of Time (too freaking long), some equally long wierd shit with space trains (Jake seemed to tolerate that one best) and now he's working his way through Discworld (at least they're funny). 
It's OK, he can live with it. What he can't stand is finding Khonshu doing his levitating-book-thing in the flat, catching up on the bits he's missed. Apparently he likes the ones with the wizards. Particularly the one where they go on holiday.

Marc's pleasantly surprised when Steven tags him back in after his solo mission. No panicked summons in the midst of combat. No Khonshu berating him for letting the Worm take charge. Everything seems to have gone well.

He scrubs his hand through his hair. Hmm. Getting a bit long, better get it cut before Jake takes exception and starts bickering with Steven again.

"The devious little fucker is up to something, and Khonshu is in on it."
Jake's pissed off.
He swears that every time he takes over from Steven he's three inches shorter than he should be, but that's ridiculous. Right?

It's all gone, as Steven insists on saying, a bit Pete Tong.

"Let me take over!" He's frantic, banging on the misty steel reflection in the elevator wall. "Fuck sake Marc, I can fix this!"

Marc. I do not often say this, but let Steven take control. The roof of the elevator is low, far too low for Khonshu to stand, so he's folded inelegantly into one corner of the metal box. It's unusual for him to stay if they are trapped in such tight confines.

There's the moment of disorientation, and he's on the inside peering out again.

"Alright!" Steven says and cracks his knuckles. "Let's give it a try."

That doesn't sound promising. It's Marc's turn to bang on the reflection's phantasmal surface.
"Give what a try? Steven? Steven! Answer me!"

The suit whirls into existence around him as Steven seats himself carefully in the centre of the lift, cross-legged, hands palms up on his knees.

If it didn't seem ridiculous, Marc would swear that Khonshu is watching eagerly. There's something in his posture that is somehow keen.

He tries to sound calm and reasonable, he really does, but both Khonshu and Steven appear to be out of their tiny minds right now.

"You're meditating. In an elevator. When we're about to be either arrested, or have to fight half the police department. Which, as they have me on cctv entering the building, will come back and bite us whether we walk out in the suit or not. Please let me find a way out of this."

"They're the Metropolitan Police, Marc, or The Met. And, shut up! I mean it!"

And treacherous old bird that he is, Khonshu just nods in agreement.

So he's stuck watching Steven, in his Mr Knight suit, meditate in a 6 foot square box that's stuck between floors in the tallest building in London like it's a perfectly sensible thing to do. Of course, he could go elsewhere but he can't help feeling he needs to at least stay and supervise because this is beyond normal, even for them.

The elevator lurches, and they start to descend. Unless Steven snaps out of this and hits the emergency stop again, Marc estimates they have about 45 seconds before they reach the lobbyful of police waiting below.

"Righty-o," Steven's voice is level. "Marc, I need you to do something for me, yeah?"

Marc breathes a sigh of relief. He'll ask him to switch back in and he'll get them out of their predicament.

He certainly doesn't expect Steven to very calmly ask him to take control of an arm and punch him in the face.

"Hard as you can please, yeah? I know you're dying to."

So he does. And doesn't take any pleasure in the way Steven goes over backwards. None at all. None. And certainly not in the dazed "Oh, fucking hell that hurts!" that follows.

He stands up, slightly groggy, shaking his head and rubbing at his face. The suit dematerialises.

"So how do I look?" Steven says. Well, someone does. The face beaming at him through the fuzzy mirror finish of the walls is not exactly their own. Paler, a different nose and chin. Different enough that he could walk past an entire building full of people without being recognised. 

"I figured it out." Even with the wrong face, and distorted by the lift wall, his smug grin is exactly the same. "How the magic works."

Morphic resonance, agrees Khonshu. Just like in the books with the wizards. You heal while in the suit because you try to remain as you see yourself. It is most impressive that a mere human could imagine such a thing.

Afterwards, the bit that Marc tries very hard not to think about is whether the suit worked that way before Steven filled a reality-bending cosmic entity's head with all that stuff.

And just what it was, exactly, Steven figured out.

Chapter Text

This will be easier if you kill the cultists.

Bloody murder pigeon. Always with the killing. He doesn't even grace Khonshu's grumbling with an answer. He can't. He's gotta keep running and his lungs are on flipping fire and how the fuck does Marc make this look so easy in the same body? Stairs. Bloody buggering stairs are going to give him a heart attack, suit or no. 

Khonshu rematerialises on the marble balustrade on the next floor up as Steven takes the turn on the landing at a skid, windmilling his spare arm wildly for balance as the other cradles the statue he's currently… retrieving. Or, as his treacherous conscience points out, stealing.

Run, Steven.

As if that's not what he is doing already. Doing anything with the others' help is like being one of those cartoon characters with the angel and the demon on their shoulders. But in his case, it's all a little unbalanced, with the three of them all perched precariously on one shoulder; a tiny Rugby scrum of stating the bleeding obvious, bad ideas and violence. At least there's only the one today. The really murder-y one.

He charges through the grand double doors at the top of the staircase, feet echoing in the shadowed grand hall beyond. If he remembers correctly, there's an exit to a roof terrace on the other side of this, the Elizabethan exhibit.

The white suit picks up every glimmer of moonlight in the unlit gallery, making him practically glow in the gloom. A perfect target for the cultists who melt out of the shadows as he starts to cross the open expanse of tiles. Ten out of ten for symbolism Old Bird, zero out of ten for common sense.

Gripping the statue to his chest with one elbow, he grabs one of his batons with his free hand. Then it's another one of those moments that will become a jumble when he tries to remember it later. A slide on his knees under the display table filled with loan items from the Royal Collection -Sorry Your Majesty- as a spear jabs and shatters the glass top. Swinging the baton to sweep the knees of an attacker, sending him reeling into the case containing a genuine Book of Common Prayer from 1594 that mercifully absorbs the impact to the glass. Shoulder-charging another into the wheeled board that explains the neighbouring layout of artefacts from an Elizabethan soldier's pack excavated in Wiltshire. Tripping the bugger who smashed the display earlier with a quick swing that leaves his opponent at the bottom of a pile of fallen replica pikes. And all the while cradling the statue he's pretty certain is one of the stolen ushabti he's been trying to retrieve.

He goes through the doors without stopping for any niceties like unlocking or turning handles, emerging in an a shower of glass and wooden fragments. Behind him he can hear yelling as his original pursuers, the ones who had prompted his sprint up the stairs, encounter their downed co-conspirators.

He scrambles over the fancy marble railing and onto the narrow ledge beyond, inconveniencing a number of actual, non-spooky, pigeons that hoot at him with disapproval.

Khonshu materialises beside him, craning his non-existent neck to look over the edge.

Jump, Steven. You will be unharmed. My power will protect you.

"Righty-o. Jumping. Yeah." 

He takes a deep breath. Bends his knees. Stands back up.

"It's an awful long way down…" He points out.

It is. If you believe it is too far, I'm sure you will triumph against - the skull tilts as if considering - a dozen cultists with spears.

Right. Spears. He's not a fan of chaps with spears. He's learned that people with spears tend to stab first, ask questions after. It's very inconsiderate of them. And he can hear the sound of running feet and jingling weaponry that suggests he's likely to encounter more of them in the near future if he doesn't get a move on.

He pauses for a moment, settling in his mind that this is fine, he'll land and he'll still have legs at the end of this. He will.

If Marc were in control it would be a graceful leap, with a dramatic landing and the statue held aloft in triumph. Jake wouldn't even have hesitated and would have barrelled over the side without pause, trusting to luck to bring himself and the statue down in one piece. Serious Superhero Shit, like the guys on the news.

Steven plummets from the building, eyes squeezed shut, screaming and flailing his legs, arms tightly crossed to hug the statue to his chest. 

Khonshu watches inscrutibly from the rooftop as only a skeletal moon deity can. Far below, there's a crunch. A voice drifts up from the point of impact.
"Unharmed my arse! It still flipping hurts!"
The expressionless skull tilts to the heavens, a gesture that in a flesh and blood creature would probably be accompanied by a sigh and an eye-roll. He dematerialises in a flutter of linen and a squall of air that sends the roosting pigeons around him scattering into the night.

Steven sits up as the suit fades away. Examines the potential ushabti in his arms for signs of damage. Wiggles his toes to make sure they're still there. Works out just where the hell he's fetched up. Post-landing checks complete, time to get the hell out of here.

He hitches up his jeans and stumbles to the car. The suit may patch them up, but it doesn't do a lot for the fatigue and the jelly legs that go with it.

There's the inevitable yellow square of another parking fine under the wiper blade. Jake seems to think parking restrictions are something for other people. He stuffs it in his back pocket. He'll pay that online. In a week or two. With Jake's card.

It's amazing the bloody thing is still here, with the keys still in the ignition and totally unlocked. Sliding into the driver's side - still not used to that, and even now it brings back memories of cupcakes and guns and having no fucking clue what was going on - he wraps the ushabti in his jacket and nestles it gently on the passenger seat. He tucks the seat belt around it for good measure. Can't be too careful. Puts on his own too. Likewise.

Time for the getaway driver to take over. He slaps his palms onto the steering wheel.

"Jake, you're up, mate."

Fingers tighten on the faux-leather and foam. Relax.

Jake pats his pockets for his cigarettes, but course, he's just taken over from Stevie-boy, who systematically bins the cartons whenever he finds them. Little shit.

He takes stock. The car's just as he left it, keys in the ignition, ready for a quick departure. Well, quick-ish. Only Steven would hire a Nissan Leaf as a getaway car. Goddamn ecowarrior. Anyhow, he'll drop whatever the thing on the passenger seat is back at the apartment, return the car and call at the store on the walk back. He'll use Steven's card. And go for a steak to balance out the hippy car.

He knocks the gearstick to drive, goes to step on the "gas"… and is completely baffled when his foot misses the pedal.

Chapter Text

His mother-in-law adores Steven. Marc's still in the dog-house over the whole attempting-to-divorce-her-beloved-daughter thing. Which is, he admits, entirely understandable. So Steven usually takes over when she comes round.
Linda El-Faouly is most definitely a woman with an Interesting Past of her own. He's never quite dared to ask, but his money's on British Intelligence at some point. Whether that's still the case is up for debate, but she's probably the best forger he's ever encountered and has a network of contacts that seem to be able to acquire anything. Quite how she ended up married to an eminent Egyptian archaeologist is a mystery to him. He's never asked, because, well, family stuff. It still makes him uncomfortable. Despite having to come to terms with the same realities of their past, the same can't be said of Steven. If there was anyone primed and ready to imprint like a duckling on the first half decent maternal figure he encountered it was Steven. So he did, and she thinks he's absolutely lovely.

Jake, on the other hand, is Not Allowed to take charge when she visits. Ever. It's a definite never again on all sides after The Flirting Incident. Which Marc would gladly forget ever happened, if only he could. He suspects that this sentiment is shared by everyone involved.
In Jake's defence, he claims that he was trying to help as he thought he was taking over for Steven when he bottled it on a date.

Not Marc.

Trying to set things right with his mother-in-law.

This doesn't entirely ring true, as even before he'd met Layla the only women Steven had even tried to ask out had all borne a striking resemblance to her.  Both this little detail and Jake's motives during The Incident are two of the ever increasing number of things Marc has decided not to consider too deeply.

They had only recently returned to London, with everything raw and precarious. Keen to get it over with, they'd gone to meet with Layla's mother in a pub by the Thames and give her a minimalist version of the truth. In retrospect it was probably too soon. Layla had gone to get drinks, leaving Marc to make awkward small talk with Linda.
And then she had asked how his parents were. Because, in the flimsy net of half truths he'd woven in the past, he had an entirely boring if slightly distant relationship with them.
Marc had bolted away, flinging Steven to the fore and leaving him face to face with the mother of the woman he was desperately in love with. Who only knew them as Marc and didn't have the first clue that Steven even existed. So Steven, overwhelmed by terror about just how badly he could fuck this up, panicked. Which naturally dragged Jake into the fray. Who, having not been paying attention in the slightest, took in the location -pub-, context -two near empty drinks-, and company -a woman-, and promptly put two and two together to make about a million. To everyone's embarrassment and/or horror.
From Layla's perspective, as she returned to the table it had been all too apparent what was in the process of happening, so she had lunged forward to clap a hand over his mouth, while yelping, "Jake, no!"
Which had led to a number of complicated questions about why Layla was calling her husband Jake, and why exactly he was hitting on her mother. And why, in the fleeting moment between his garbled initial reply and propositioning her, he'd briefly looked ready to burst into tears.

So, the bottom line is, Linda knows pretty much everything now. Fortunately, it turns out she has a mind as broad as the Pacific Ocean.
Well, she knows everything except for the parts about dying (twice), pacts with Egyptian gods, healing armour, vigilantism and the fact that one of the aforementioned Egyptian gods is most likely currently hanging out in Jake's room reading comic books. And that the other occasionally pops in for a visit as it's the only place she can get five minutes peace. All those inconsequential tiny details with no bearing on their situation as a whole. As far as she's concerned,  they're working for the Egyptian government, retrieving stolen antiquities. Which they are. It's just a government that's been out of power for a millennium or two. 

He's currently observing from alongside Guses 2 and 3 on the polished surface of the fish tank as they have tea and biscuits at the kitchen table. He hates to break it up but they really do need to get on. He pulls gently, just enough to get Steven's attention.
"Hold on, Marc wants word. Laters, Mrs El-Faouly." 
He gives a wave as the swirl of their switch begins, that changes half way into Marc brushing his hair back from his face and removing Steven's reading glasses. Reluctantly he unwinds his fingers from where they're tangled with Layla's under the table and gives her leg and apologetic pat for cutting short her chat with her mother.
"Are you sure this won't put her in any danger?" Steven asks fretfully from the glass of the fishtank as Marc carefully places the box containing the ushabti on the table. As well as being able to get hold of just about anything, Linda also has access to some remarkably secure storage. He slides the box across the table, and in turn receives the classic brown envelope of documents.
"Passport, plans of the vault in Rome." Linda regards both Marc and Layla sternly. "Be careful."
They know exactly where they're going. They know how to get in and out.

Rome will be a piece of cake.

Chapter Text

Rome is not a piece of cake.

In fact, Rome is a total shitshow and Jake Lockley is having the time of his goddamn life.

Marc's a man on a mission. He promised Layla gelato from a particular gelateria, so gelato there will be. He ducks into a narrow side-alley he knows cuts through towards the hotel. 

And is felled like a sack of rocks by a blow to the head as he rounds the corner.

The pair of street punks out to mug an unsuspecting tourist certainly don't expect their target to immediately flip over and rise like the proverbial, grab them by their scrawny necks and smash their weaselly faces together a few times. Serves them right, little pricks. He drops the stunned and bleeding trash to the floor, dusts his hands off on his knees, flicks a few flecks of grit from his shirt, scoops up the dropped gelato tub and leaves the cut-through. All of thirty seconds have passed since Marc decided to take the shortcut. And we'll be having words about that lapse in operational security, Bossman.

Steven scampers crabwise in the glossy shopfronts, flickering near-and-far along the street as Jake strides through the maze of quaint narrow tourist shops.  
"Oi, Jake! What the fuck, mate? Tell me you didn't kill them." 
"They'll live," he growls. Goddamn hippy.

Khonshu is rifling through their case with currents of air when he makes it back to the hotel room.
Tell the Worm he did not bring enough books. I have read all of these.
Jake ignores him in favour of grabbing one of the wooden spoons clipped to the top of the gelato tub and digging in. Layla had better hurry up getting out of the shower if she wants any. This shit's good. Probably not worth-getting-mugged-in-an-alley good, but still pretty damn fine.

They can't get Marc to wake up. So, while Jake makes the most of the plush hotel room, he has to be the go-between for Steven and Layla and the goddamn vulture as they finalise their plans for the raid on the vault. They all talk too much. The plan should be is straightforward; go in, get the collectible god memorabilia, get out. They're overthinking it, as always. 

As he damn well told them, overthinking doesn't goddamn work, and they should have listened to him. Kept it simple. Clear the way, in and out on the same path. None of this non-confrontational secret agent crap. Because, obviously, since the plans for the place were drawn up someone spotted the massive fucking security hole of having a vent someone could crawl through running into the vaults. So they've tweaked it and now there's no way this body is fitting through that space. Layla probably can, but it's going to be tight.

Steven pushes the recovered god trap, whatever they call the damn things, into Layla's arms.

"It'll be a piece of cake, love," he says, "you scoot out that way and I'll meet you back at the hotel."

In the surface of the removed vent panel, Jake rolls his eyes as Steven ducks down to press his lips to Layla's temple. Priorities, Stevie-boy, priorities.

"Good work on not sounding like you're about to piss your pants, kid."

Layla tangles her fingers into Steven's hair to pull him down for a brief, fierce kiss. Behind his back, Steven sticks two fingers up, indicating just how much he appreciates Jake's input.

If you are done with the unneeded romantic displays, we have work to do.

Oh great, the bony old cheerleader's along for the ride. Just perfect.

"Right." Steven bounces on his toes, gathering himself to open the door that will take him back out into the maze of corridors that make up the vault. "Yeah. Here we go. Doing the old Fist of Vengeance thing. Yeah."

"Out."
This isn't a fight for Stevie-boy. Jake's watched him on missions before, and now he's gained a little confidence and isn't running on empty in a collapsing world he can handle himself fairly well. But tonight, in this tight packed maze of tunnels, his pinball ricochet style of fighting isn't going to do him any favours. There's too many of them down here and nowhere to go. Their enemies need to go down and stay down, not bounce off walls and come back to swing at him again if he's got no way to simply not be there when they do.
"I mean it, kid. OUT." It's an imperative Steven can't resist; Jake imagines it as dragging him out of a car by his collar, leaving him banging on the window as Jake fires up the engine and roars off.

In the steel of the vault wall the reflection of pristine white fades to a dark grey. Jake has his own version of the suit now, totally utilitarian and armoured, not even the slightest nod to its mystical origins remaining. That suits him down to the ground as there's no way he'd be seen dead in that melodramatic Halloween costume get-up any more, let alone looking like Fred Astaire dipped in white paint.

He knows the glee he feels is wrong. Doesn't give a damn. He only does this to people who deserve it. Steven can dance around and avoid it, Marc can try to justify it, but only Jake accepts the truth - at a deep down gut level they all enjoy the vengance.

He opens the door, steps into the corridor. Sees the first of the enemies ahead. Alpha Mike Foxtrot, boys.

To one side, Khonshu looks on approvingly. On the other, the reflected Steven in the steel wall gives him a thumbs up. The wicked, moonbright blades fit perfectly into his hands.

Go time.

"Jake!" He fades out of the battlelust at Steven's horrified wail.

"I think that was a Rembrandt. You can't use a Rembrandt to stove somebody's head in." 

How the hell does Marc put up with it? The two of them are far more intertwined, each showing up frequently when the other is in control and jabbering endlessly together. He'd do his nut if he had to put up with that all the time.

"OK. No more using our 'precious cultural heritage' as a weapon," he says placatingly. He looks around. They're out of the vault and back in the stupidly ostentatious residence above. In the mirrored wall, Steven watches him nervously. To be honest, he looks a little green around the edges.

"So," Steven says at last. "That went well. Bit messy, but, uh, well. Are you going to hand back over and..." he waves his hands vaguely in a tumbling motion.

"…let you get back to your wierd polygamy shit with Layla?" Jake finishes for him. "Nah, I'm good tonight."

"Polyandry. Technically, this way round it's polyandry. Sorta. Given the whole two blokes one body bit. Polyamory's the general term…"
Jake cuts him off. He'll ramble on for ages if he doesn't.
"Whatever, you and the Bossman can get your jollies however you like as long as you leave me out of it."

And that's the thing, he's not Steven. He's not Marc, either. But since all the mystical crap he doesn't understand went down, he's not just a bundle of fury and pain that wants to hurt things any longer. He has a cast iron conviction that he's Jake and he doesn't just have to fill in for the other two when things get too much for them any more. They're a team, even if he does think they're all a bunch of morons most of the time. And for now it's his turn at the wheel and there's a city, an entire goddamn world, out there for him to explore.

Enjoy my hangover tomorrow, Stevie-boy."
Steven looks resigned.
"Alright, alright. Just, let Layla know. And check she's ok." He fades from the glass, leaving Jake staring at his own, shaven headed, bearded reflection.

Rome may be a shitshow, but Jake Lockley has figured out exactly who he is, and he's having the time of his goddamn life.

Chapter Text

Heathrow Airport is not improved in any way by a hangover.

More specifically, it is somehow made indefinably worse by having what is most definitely not his own hangover. And worse still by the fact that this is Jake's fault and Jake is not dealing with it himself like a decent person would, instead leaving Steven to endure the wait while Layla chases their luggage round a conveyor belt in the Terminal 5 baggage hall. With Jake's hangover. And an impatient Egyptian god who refuses to be more than a dozen feet from the carry on bag containing the second retrieved ushabti.

It had been an interesting flight.

Overall, Steven has had better days. Some of those may even have included running and screaming. 

This is very inefficient.

He holds his phone to his ear, a convenient cover they've taken to using to mask their apparently one-sided conversations.

"You don't have to be here, yeah?" He reminds the god. "Phenomenal cosmic powers an' all that, right?"

The blank skull cocks appraisingly. 

I am concerned. The same group tried to prevent us retrieving both of the prisons of my kin. Without Marc to protect it, I am loathe to leave this one untended.

Steven presses his free hand to his aching forehead. 
"I'd prefer for him to be here too." He grouses.

Perhaps he is avoiding your inane chattering for a time, Worm. Khonshu rumbles. Much as I would love to do.

Marc hasn't said a word for over twenty four hours.

From Layla's point of view, having Khonshu around the place must seem like living with a very well read poltergeist.

A book drifts past, heading for the corner that serves as their library.

"Shelf, Khonshu!" She chides, as it clatters to the floor.

Steven's unsettled by Marc's abscence. Jake waves his concerns away, saying Marc's probably taking a mental 72. Which means nothing to Steven, but Jake doesn't seem worried so he lets it go. It doesn't change the fact that both Steven's head and the flat feel oddly empty without him.

Layla hasn't noticed anything is amiss, and he's happy to keep it that way as long as possible.

Marc has been silent for three days now. 

It's been a week. This really can't be right.

Marc's been silent for two weeks. 

Something is wrong.

Chapter Text

"On three?" 

"On three. One. Two." They both twist away elsewhere, a co-ordinated evacuation.

The body, completely abandoned, pitches limply forward from the chair onto the rug.

"Oh, bugger," says Steven indistinctly, having been pulled unceremoniously back to fill the void. Then, "We really need to hoover in here." He sits up, dusting stray grains of sand from his cheek. The no-mans-land has long since gone from around their bed, but the sand still persists, trapped in fabric and floorboard cracks. He looks up at Jake, reflected in the wall of the fish tank. The Guses drift placidly to and fro, oblivious.

"Not gonna lie, I thought that was going to work better than it did." Jake smirks. "Still, better you than me, Stevie-boy."

"Git." It's good-natured, but heartfelt.

"Do I even want to know what that was about?" asks Layla from the kitchen nook.

"Jake being a git." He replies. From his watery prison, Jake gives him the finger. Yep, 100% git.

Layla laughs as she carries over two steaming mugs. "That goes without saying. Before that I mean, the unmistakable noise of one of you hitting the floor."  She claims the vacant chair, sips her tea. "Should I be worried I recognise that? It feels like I should." Steven scoots back to lean against her leg and gratefully accepts the mug she offers.

"Another failed attempt in operation Wake Up Marc, I'm afraid, love," he sighs through the steam. "I really thought we had something there." She squeezes his shoulder, a small gesture of sympathy he returns by squeezing back with his free hand.

"At this stage I'd be willing to, I dunno," he casts about for something to suggest as he's running painfully low on ideas, "try setting our hair on fire to see if it helps." He regards Jake's wavering reflection balefully as he brushes his hand over the scant quarter inch that has regrown since their trip to Rome. "But I can't, can I, because we don't have any, do we mate?"

Sniping at Jake over trivialities is childish, he knows, but distracts from the looming Marc-shaped gap that overshadows everything they do. Just another example of the three of them, Steven, Jake and Layla, going through the motions as days slip into weeks. It helps a lot less than it should.

He meets Jake's eyes in the reflection in the tank. Whispers, because he can hardly bear to to suggest it.

"What if it's something we've done?" Jake, normally so stoic, looks stricken.

I do not believe that is the case. Now he no longer seems to feel the need for constant shock and awe, Khonshu has developed the annoying habit of appearing with no warning. A bell around his neck would be in order, if only he had a neck. As it is, tea slops from Steven's mug onto the floor with an audible splat. In the fish tank Layla's reflection mouths "Khonshu?" and he gives her a fraction of a nod in return. Her eyes roll back, and he can see her murmuring urgently under her breath, doubtless communing with Taweret.

The old buzzard has been almost as distant as Marc the last few days, and Layla had mentioned that her patron was worried about him. Worried, about Khonshu. Steven had laughed at the idea at the time, but now he would swear Khonshu sounds exhausted, his staff more support than symbol. Unease settles into his gut at this; anything that can leave the old vulture fatigued and dispirited can't be good at all. He glances to Jake, sees his own disquiet mirrored there.

"Why not?" He asks. He almost doesn't want an answer. Almost.

There are places, the god rumbles. Places where forgotten knowledge is still carved into stones that mortal eyes have not seen for millennia. Things that were meant to be forgotten. I travelled to them, searching for answers. I fear I may have found them. Rage re-animates him, and Steven feels an echo of the old fear, from back when Khonshu was still the most unreal and terrifying thing he had ever encountered. Forbidden places have been reopened! What was sealed away revealed. The foolishness of the Ennead that has left my kin scattered or trapped has allowed evils that were rightly shut away to return. It cannot stand! He pins Steven with the full force of his blind stare. There were spells written there. The only truely dark magic that was gifted to your kind by one of ours. Spells that could bind a soul. Spells I suspect have been used on Marc. We need… he breaks off abruptly, and whips around towards the door, a jerky movement that makes Steven think of film forced too-fast through a projector. 

No! He exclaims, sweeping his staff in a wide arc. The air ripples where it passes, creating an expanding bubble of distortion that makes the view of wall and door shiver as it grows. The shiver becomes a tremor that Steven can feel through the floor, and it dawns on him that it's not Khonshu's doing; the wall quakes, bows, and blows in towards them.

Oh for crying out loud, Steven thinks while debris clatters to the floor as it encounters Khonshu's wall of air. Wasn't the door enough? Did you really have to take out half the damn wall? And, I hope that's not load bearing. And, How the hell am I going to explain this to the Residents Association?

"Time to tag out, Stevie-boy," Jake says in his head, not bothering with their usual mirror game.
"Go look for the Bossman. I got this." He finishes aloud, their body his without a moment's pause.
As the flat fades away, Steven sees Layla rising, arms outstretched for her wings to shimmer into being as Jake surges to his feet, a blur of grey and silver. Then he's tumbling elsewhere…

…to open his eyes to the moonlit grey-white of the mindspace.

He avoids it as much as possible; it's a construct of their shared subconscious, built from fragments they cannot escape. Naturally, it's an absolute mess; a labyrinthine tangle of rooms and corridors with no fixed pattern, all walled and floored in the glossy tiles of what was once the organising principle they had overlain on the Barque of the Dead.  Here it is an empty shell, roofless and windowless, filled with scattered objects and windblown sand from the endless desert that surrounds it. He doesn't want to assign blame for the individual elements, although it seems fairly obvious to him who has contributed what. For his part, it's unavoidable; a sky burned into him like a brand, ancient and cold, a pattern of stars he will see forever that arches over the boundless plain of sand. And high above, merciless and unknowable, the luminous disc of the moon.

They could have had anything. And they're stuck with an derelict asylum in a desert. Way to go, subconscious.

From here he is aware of Marc and Jake in a way he's not when he's awake, be that in control of the body or just along for the ride. Then, even though they share a body, they are distinct, their thoughts their own. Here the edges get blurred; he can feel Jake's racing heart and intense focus as he deals with the invaders, can try to tune in to Marc, but gets only static in return. 

There's nothing to do but walk. So Steven does.

Corridors turn to rooms turn to corridors again. All bleached white and featureless, soundless but for his footsteps. Around him, the jagged tops of the walls cast deep, sharp, shadows across the rooms in the silvery light. C'mon Marc, where are you mate? He thinks. Khonshu thinks some kind of magic spell has you trapped, and where better than here for that sort of shit? It's practically purpose designed for it.

Eventually he comes to a room that's larger than any he's encountered so far. Sand dusts the floor and scattered around are reminders that whatever else this place is built from, hospital is by far the greater part. Trolleys, overturned chairs, drip stands, all bare metal and hard white plastic, utilitarian and hard wearing. For the first time he has a choice of where to go; the walls are lined with doors, all identical, all paned with scuffed opaque plastic. 

What's the old trick they always talk about with mazes? Follow the left wall so you don't get lost? Yeah, sounds about right. Although that probably doesn't apply in an infinite construct within your own subconscious. 

As he reaches the centre of the room his shadow cuts sharply across an abandoned trolley, half eclipsing the silver glow of reflected light. It gives him pause; where he blocks the moon's luminance his shadow is a shapeless black stripe across the tiles that becomes a perfect silhouette against one of the doors. It's as good a reason as any to pick a door, so he changes direction, goes through.

Yet another corridor stretches out in front of him, windowless and empty, unremarkable compared to all the rest.

Except for one thing.

The blind end of the passage is rent apart, as if it has melted and torn. Bubbled black stone flecked with tiles stretches on, vanishing into a darkness the moonlight cannot pierce.

's just a tunnel, innit. He thinks. Creepy old tunnel tucked away in our brain. I'm sure everybody has creepy old tunnels kicking about in their subconscious somewhere. It just means we watch too many horror films. Nothing else. Just another bit of the weirdness that's always been here waiting to scare the shit out of me when I least expect it.

There's something moving down there, in this place where nothing changes.

"Marc?" He half whispers.  
The buzzing sound that answers is distinctly un Marc-like.

It's a steep learning curve for Jake. He's not used to someone having his back. Most of his fighting has been of the desperate one-man last stand variety, him versus the entire goddamn world. Layla at his side and an angry god getting his hands dirty rather than just bitching from the sidelines is quite the gear change. It's one he thinks he could get used to.

These cultists, on the other hand, he's getting very tired of. For one thing they're too goddamn co-ordinated. And quiet. It's the quietest fight he's ever had, and he's been in a few. It's unnerving. He's not going to lie, he usually finds the screams satisfying, so these creepy fuckers are not just annoyingly persistent, they're somehow deeply disappointing when they shake off a slash that should have made them howl for him. And they just won't go down.

It doesn't help that he's holding back, refusing to let the red joy take him completely. He doesn't know if he's capable of telling friend from foe when he is fully in its grip. He's fighting in his own home, he has allies for once, and he doesn't want to test his control over something so volatile when it could hurt his family. And that's what they are he realises, an odd dysfunctional little family that extends beyond the boundary of his own body for the first time in his life.

So he slashes at another arm; ducks under a stabbing blade; drags the blank eyed and silent man trying to impale him into the path of a chair flung by the magic of a vengeful god, sending him flying away to impact against a wall.

Layla practically dances around him, shielding them both from their attackers. She's fast, intercepting blows he would have relied on the suit to withstand. He catches her sudden lunge to the floor from the corner of his eye and follows her down into a crouch as the chair scythes overhead, scattering their foes like pins.

Then they're fluidly back to their feet in unison, Jake cannoning into the first cultist to charge at them and sweeping the guy into a crushing bearhug before tackling him onto Layla's waiting blade. She shakes her sword free, dropping the corpse to the floor as they both turn their attention to the next invader foolish enough to attack.

They're lucky that the whirling chair is close enough to send their formerly downed foe careening through the window as he rises impossibly to his feet again.

Steven is caught, watching in horror as some nightmare iridescent thing from the Carboniferous Era crawls from from the rip in the wall. Huge and shimmering green-gold-purple, it crouches, abdomen bobbing repulsively, as it shakes out translucent wings crumpled by its passage through the narrow space. It's a creature plugged directly into fears buried deep in the lizard-brain, and seeing the wings starting to flutter to life is enough to break Steven from his stupor.

"Oh no. Nope. Nope. Nope." His feet squeak on the glossy tiles as he turns to run back along the corridor. That thing is alien, it should not be here. Every last bit of him is screaming killitkillitkillitwithfuckingfire, a visceral reaction to the wrongness. He slams through the doors that led to the corridor, darts to the side, kicking an abandoned medical cart in front of the doors in a desperate attempt to slow it down. He can see the doors crack open as it bumps against them. The cart rattles as the edges of the doors snag against the metal ridges of the trays, then slides away with a screech.

That thing can't possibly be real, he thinks as it drifts into the room. Then, Steven, you absolute muppet, none of this is real. It's quite literally in your flipping head. Here, it doesn't have to be real to get you, and that thing just crawled in from the pits of fucking Moria to come after you. Then, oh god oh god oh god. Let me wake up!

The incessant buzzing resonates in his head, making it hard to focus. He tries to surface, to get back to consciousness and Jake and Khonshu and Layla and a world that, no matter how royally screwed up it is, doesn't involve giant fucking wasps. But the hum is like oiled glass between him and his path away and he's locked in the mindspace with the winged monstrosity.

The draught from the thing's wings is warm and damp, and smells of decay and moisture and old stone. Tombs and mineshafts and tube stations at night. Dead and dying and rotting.

As he backs away, his heart lurches as he feels something rattle against his hip. He gropes behind himself, grappling at the thing as if it is a lifeline. Cold metal meets his questing fingers, some sort of pole. With a scream he swings the wheeled drip-stand, batting the thing away. Still screaming he throws the stand after for good measure, turns and runs for a door, any door.

He needs to be faster, get ahead and find something to fight back with. In his terror, Steven doesn't even notice that he's summoned the suit.

Chapter Text

They ain't zombies, Jake tells himself. Just because they come back from damage that would leave your average guy on the floor, that don't make them zombies.  
He feints in under yet another co-ordinated strike from a pair of silent attackers, one clearly designed to have him dodge the first spear into the path of the second. Instead, he's under and alongside before they can react, slashing at the back of a knee to leave a gash that should drop his opponent to the floor. It doesn't.
They might as well be fucking zombies. He thinks, as the cultist continues to limp, slowed but not downed. He's sure Steven would have a list of a dozen reasons why they're some obscure variety of not-a-zombie, but functionally? Fucking zombies without the biting. He's rapidly coming to the conclusion that he really hates probably-not-zombies. For one thing, they're no fun. 

So he carries on with this death of a thousand cuts nonsense, trying to find the off switch for a bunch of vacant puppets. He's beginning to think this may end up being rather messy.

He's circling one of the dumb fucks, wondering what to try next when the suit is suddenly gone, and he's left empty handed and in Steven's idiotic pineapple-print shirtsleeves.

He knows with utter certainty that the suit has gone because Steven has called it. He knows this so absolutely because, at the very moment the suit faded away, a tiny ball of abject terror took up residence at the edge of his awareness. And no-one can radiate panic quite as well as the kid can.

In true nightmare fashion, Steven is able to keep pace with the grotesque insect, not extending his head start, but equally not letting it catch up. It's close enough behind him that the drone of the wings and smell of damp and stone are all around him, the oppressive underground smell that comes with a whole host of unpleasant associations. As he runs, he notices that the walls are curving in overhead, shifting from flat to arched as the white tile underfoot shifts to grey asphalt. Above, fluorescent tubes flicker and blink, adding to the mental fog that's making it hard to concentrate.

"Steven!" Jake's voice echoes through the space, as if through an aging tannoy system. "Give me the suit back right now, or so help me I will end you!"

He risks a look down at himself. Well, bugger me, that's unexpected, he thinks. But at least I have a way to fight back now.

"Kind of can't, mate. Trying not to die here." He replies breathlessly, feet beating a steady rhythm as he pelts along the curving tunnel. He has no idea whether Jake will be able to hear him, but it's at least polite to try.

It must have worked, as Jake crackles "Whaddaya got, kid?" a moment later.

To his right the tiled wall ends abruptly and the floor drops away to a lower level, revealing triple train tracks leading off into the darkness ahead. Oh, so we're being that literal about the underground thing then. Could be way, way, worse I suppose.

"Creepy wasp monster and, uh, Holborn tube station, I think. You?"

The platform ends in a solid wall, so there's nowhere else to go except over the edge and down onto the track. He leaps, avoiding the rails. He knows one of them is dangerous, but hasn't a clue which and doesn't want to gamble on whatever is creating this having skipped a detail like the electrified rail. If that is somehow him, as he suspects it may be, it could be any of them.

"More goddamn zombie cultists. Piece of cake even without the suit, right?" Jake crackles as he leaves the bright lights of the station and heads into the tunnel. He certainly hopes so.

It's dark enough that he needs to keep one hand on the wall as he goes on. In the real world it's only a minute or so from Holborn to Covent Garden, so that surely must be less than half a mile. With any luck he'll have light again soon. He can't quite figure out why that logic doesn't quite seem to fit. It the buzzing wasn't so loud he might be able to think it through.

He stumbles to a halt.

Oh bollocks.

There's no station ahead. The tunnel ends not much further into the gloom. Dirty concrete fades into a patch of familiar white tile that in turn unravels into bubbled black stone. 

End of the line, he thinks bitterly, and turns to face back the way he came. 

"The kid needs the suit," Jake pants as he comes back to himself fully. Once again he's grateful for Layla's backup as she skillfully interposes herself between the cultists and his undefended self.

He doesn't entirely get how needing the suit inside that creepy maze they're stuck with is supposed to work, but as far as he's concerned it falls squarely in that 'mystical shit' category he's more than happy to leave to Steven and Marc. And he's plenty capable of defending this body without any magic armour. Did it for years, no problem. Might wreck one of Steven's godawful shirts in the process, but them's the breaks. It does leave him without his knives though, which is a shame. He likes those knives.

A spear sneaks in too close for comfort, so he grabs and gives it a vicious twist that sends the woman at the other end unsteadily into the path of one of her compatriots. Jake curses when she doesn't let go of the spear as she falls, still leaving him empty handed.

Layla's obviously noticed the problem. As she whirls past, she catches his eye and flicks a glance to the bronze sword in her off hand. He nods gratefully, and snatches the hilt from the air as she tosses it over to him, converting the motion into a low swing that forces his nearest attacker to take a step back. It's a little longer than he's used to, but the weight of it is well balanced, equally suited to catching a blow as dealing one. It'll certainly do for now.

His internal debate with Steven has made him lose track of where they stand, so he tries to figure it out. They're still outnumbered four to one by the stabby little bastards. There's one on the floor he's fairly sure is staying down, and one out of the window thanks to Khonshu's well timed throw. Plus another two staying further back, which makes him suspect they've got some other schtick beyond the whole poke first ask questions later routine the rest of this crowd seem content with. Whatever it is, they don't look happy dodging Khonshu's onslaught of thrown furniture.

Only twelve? That's insulting after his night out in Rome.

He stays close to Layla, trying to press the advantage their easy teamwork gives them.

As she blocks the two attacks, catching one with a wing and knocking aside the second with her sword, Jake tackles a third cultist who tries to take advantage of her momentary overextention. His shoulder catches the man low in the gut, sending him tumbling into the base of the floor to ceiling wall of books. 

Something creaks, a horrible portentous groan.

There's a moment where nothing seems to happen, before the ramshackle shelving starts to collapse in on itself, scattering books and accumulated junk from above. The ladder scythes down sideways, narrowly missing Jake as he leaps backwards, away from the tumbling structure. The whole thing tilts and shifts, and with a crash the fish tank falls to the floor. Even as he scrambles back, he expects to be caught by the inexorable descent of all that clutter. Instead, the tilt of the shelves halts and a mad swirl of flying books and dislodged shelves fills the room. At the centre of it, Khonshu's gaunt figure is a hurricane of fluttering linen, controlling the flows of air that sustain this improbable sorcerer's dance.  Threading through the chaos, the water from the toppled tank is a silver bubble filled with bobbing weed, sparkling rocks and disoriented fish. With obvious effort, the god brings his staff round and the remaining uprights and fixed shelves inch back from their precarious angle and settle back into place.

The flying debris batters at their foes, but it's not enough to do serious harm, just a distraction. In the onslaught, not one thing strikes Jake or Layla. He's not about to tell the vulture, but Jake's honestly rather impressed.

In the midst of the cloud Layla spins, ending face to face with him, one wing flexing to block a strike from behind that would have split his skull had it landed.
"Thanks, Reret," she calls over his shoulder.
As she does, Jake's blade flicks out to the side, catching the wrist of another attacker and a spear clatters to the ground. They separate, shoulder to shoulder again and ready for anything.

Jake's never tried dancing, but he thinks this must be how it feels.

The longer Steven is enveloped in the drone of wings that keeps him trapped here, the harder it gets to think clearly. He's at an impasse, and needs another way to fight the bloody thing, but just can't see a solution as his thoughts skip and jump erratically around the problem.

What's abundantly clear is that the batons just aren't cutting it. Quite literally. They bounce the creature back away from him, but do nothing to harm it. He might as well be a child patting at a balloon.

He needs to find something better suited to battling a giant bloody wasp, in a place where nothing is truely real. He nearly fumbles his grip when the baton in his hand obligingly changes and he swings whatever he's now holding desperately as the monster drifts closer again.
"What the fuck!" He yelps, as the rolled up copy of The Times makes contact. "Really? That's what I come up with? A newspaper?"

Maybe something a bit sharper, yeah? He tells himself sternly. The newspaper squirms in his palm and he glances down. A kitchen knife. Oh for Pete's sake. The stubby little blade is just enough to divert a reaching limb. He's disgusted to see the spindly leg is tipped with sharp barbed claws.

Heavier? He tells himself, willing the thought to continue through the treacle he finds himself wading through. Thinks of boundary hits and sending the bloody bug soaring away from him.

There's a satisfying crunch as the cricket bat makes contact, sweeping the insect away sideways, far further than he's managed so far.
"Got you, you bloody flying piñata, you!" He taunts, readying his bat for another stroke. He turns, setting his feet to really put some power into his next hit, studying the hovering body to choose just where to strike…

…and meets the crystalline stare of the creature dead on for the first time.

He can't look away.

The insectoid face moves closer, pearlescent faceted eyes glittering like opals, reflecting a whirling mess of the glow from his own. Over his shoulder, the bat drops from slack fingers as the buzzing forces thoughts to slip away before they can fully form. Numbed arms drop to his sides. Adrift, he spirals back to his earlier refrain of killitkillitkillitwithfuckingfire. It's not even a full thought any more, it's a fervent wish, little more than a shapeless prayer as the barbed feet caress his cheek through his mask, pulling him closer.

Jake can feel Steven becoming fuzzy and indistinct somewhere far off. It distracts him enough that he lets some cabrón land a blow that bites viciously into his arm.
"What the hell kid?" His shout of pain makes the words come out out thick and panicked. "Kid, wake up! Steven!" He can still feel him fading even he howls, "Goddammit, WAKE UP, you lazy hippy!" The words jumble together with Khonshu's shriek of fury. 
You dare use your tricks on my Knight, Spiteful One? They are far stronger than you, you insignificant fly!
Around them, the maelstrom of whirling objects rains down as the god continues to roar his rage, staff raised defiantly to the sky. 
Blood makes Jake's grip on the loaned blade sticky and uncertain as he swings it up to block the next stabbing spear. The hilt slides unpredictably, jarred askew in his hand. He can't control it enough to intercept the next thrust as it slides in under Layla's outstretched wing.

A dreamy cottonwool softness surrounds Steven. He's warm and safe and everything is far away, no need to think, just drift. Let his breath slow, and sink into oblivion. Something nags at him on the edge of his awareness. A gnatlike irritant that won't go away. "Oh piss off, Jake," he mumbles. "'m trying to sleep." He curls in on himself, feeling his hands and feet becoming pleasantly heavy and remote as he lets himself slip deeper into blissful sleep. But the moonlight is too bright, and Jake is yelling, and there's no chance of him stopping until he gets a rise out of Steven, and so inevitably, the perfect state of calm is slipping through his fingers like water.
Shaken by this intrusion from outside, the terrible inward press of lethargy trembles, and fades enough for him to latch on to a drifting thought. Fire. Kill it with fire.

This time, when his hands come up with a weapon he's willed to existence, the flamethrower spouts a gout of flame that washes over the creature. It rears back, crystalline wings flashing to char as it drops to the floor, the shimmering carapace blackening and cracking. The unreal veil that numbed him rips apart as the immense wasp twitches and curls in on itself.
For a moment, Steven stares at the charred lump and the spitting, hissing contraption in his hands in mute incomprehension. Then he punches the air.
"Alright! Take that Shelob!" He whoops, caught up in the rush of victory. His triumphant dance is cut short when he doubles over as red hot pain lances through him. Shit! Jake!

The impact of the spearpoint to his shoulder is enough to send Jake staggering backwards, pain flaring through his chest. Layla is knocked sprawling as Jake and his attacker, linked by the haft of the spear, lurch in a drunken waltz that neither controls. They reel together through the wreckage until something gives within his shoulder and the spear pulls back with a horrible organic sucking sound, dragging Jake further off-balance. The bronze sword drops with a clang; his arm hangs uselessly at his side. Layla still lies where she has fallen, curled under the protective shell of her wings and besieged by the mechanical stabbing of spears. Khonshu is a statue beyond her, silent now, but with arms still raised and his blank stare locked somewhere above. Alone and weaponless, he falls back, and raises his functioning arm in a futile attempt to ward off the return strike that rushes towards his heart.

It glances off his grey-armoured forearm as the suit winks into being around him.

He rocks into a crouch, wickedly bright knives slipping into his hands as the healing power of the suit floods through him. Behind his hood Jake's grin is a feral snarl. Zombies or no, these fuckers are toast.

The red joy rises and Jake gets to work.

Around him there's a soft clicka-clicka-clicka as the tiles of the ruined asylum flow back into place, until he is back in the sand-dusted corridor. Steven turns, hoping that behind him will be another of the identical doors that make up so much of their mindspace, but the tear in their internal reality is still there, a warped mess where tiles meld with black glossy stone.

It would be incredibly stupid to go in there. He should turn right around, get the hell away. No good can come of poking around in… oh, who am I kidding? He thinks. He's already at the threshold peering in.

"Marc?" He calls. Because that was such a good idea last time.

But, he reasons, he's already come this far; and what would be the point of all that if he doesn't finish the job?

One step, and the world stretches. Marc feels closer, but still distant; a glassy marble of sensation, closed in on itself and tantalisingly just out of reach. Jake, on the other hand, is abruptly muted, his glow of elated rage - and let's not think about what's making him so bloody happy; what was left of the flat's going to be completely destroyed - a faint ember at the back of his mind. He reaches out to pull Marc to him and feels himself stretch again. The marble's no closer, but the tiny glowing coal that is somehow Jake might as well be on the moon. He feels too far from himself, the fraying elastic cord that tethers him strained to the point of snapping, one cord at a time. He can't go further, can't reach Marc, can't afford to stay at this extreme any longer. Has to go back. Turning is an effort, a struggle against inertia that he's losing until suddenly he isn't; with a jolt he's facing back the way he came. The point where the rough stone walls melt and blend with tile and sand is impossibly far. He runs, but the sterile white tiles of the asylum kaleidoscope endlessly away. He claws himself along, hands and feet scrabbling at the hard stone in a futile scramble, losing ground, the blackness swallowing him. Framed in the closing mouth of the tunnel, the illusory moon is the last bright spot in his universe. In desperation, he reaches for that light, and pulls, a burning eternity that ends in a staggering step that, oh thank god, lands on grey-white tile. Panting, he sags, hands on knees to prevent himself from keeling over onto the floor. A breath of air in this place where no breezes exist raises goosebumps across the back of his neck. Oh please, no bloody more! He all but screams internally. Wearily, he turns, raising leaden fists. 

Haloed in the unwavering moonlight, Khonshu's skull seems to brush the star-sprinkled sky, even while bent to examine the smouldering remains of the monstrous insect. Steven hadn't even known he could show up here.

It as I feared. Marc is the victim of dark magic, he rumbles.

No shit, Old Bird, Steven thinks, you don't say. And at last, long long last, lets himself fall out of the mindspace and into sleep.

Chapter Text

Far too quickly Steven is being shaken awake and back in control of their body. He cracks one eye experimentally, not entirely sure what to expect. His first impression is that the roof's still there, which is a good start. Flashing blue, which doesn't entirely make sense, but the fact it's there at all does at least suggest the building is still standing. And that he's probably not trapped in the mindspace any longer, which, now he thinks about it, makes this an excellent start no matter what follows.
"Steven you need to wake up now." Another tally on the excellent start side, as it's Layla waking him which means she's ok. Still slightly dopey from sleep he beams up at her.
"Do I have to?" 
She gives him a Look. He's starting to recognise that look; it speaks volumes about how mystified Layla is that three of them can share a head and still not muster a single braincell between them at times.
"Fine," she says eventually. "Jake can deal with the Police."
Yes. I am certain we can persuade them to leave.
"Wanna trade out, kid?"

And just like that, the excellent start evaporates. Not even bone-deep exhaustion stops Steven from being back on his feet almost before she's finished the sentence. Some things are just too horrible to contemplate. The Old Bill encountering Jake Lockley, with Khonshu in an advisory role, quite possibly tops the hierarchy of things he really does not want to happen right now. This body is already on several international watch lists. It does not need adding to any more.

"How many coppers are we talking about?" He asks, taking in the state of the flat. He very carefully does not follow up by asking "What the fuck happened here?" as he already knows that a large portion of that answer will be that Jake happened here. He can tell. Oh, heavens above, can he tell. 

At present, there is only one. He is still in the hall as he seems unwilling to enter for some reason. There are more in the street below. Khonshu is leaning against one of the beams that bracket the windows, staff propped against his knee. The crescent moon leans out into the night through a window-frame edged with glittering fragments. Something or someone must have left that way at speed. 

"When you say more, Old Bird," he prompts, reluctantly trying to judge just how bad this is about to get.

A great many.

"I'm pretty sure it's not all of them." Layla says to the other open, but thankfully intact, window. "I'm sure it will be fine, Reret."

Fan-fucking-tastic. They have far more important things to worry about, but this is all rather immediate. On the other hand, the solution here seems pretty straightforward compared to everything else - to not be here any longer before their visitor gets up the courage to come in. 

Too late.

There's a nervous cough from where the front door used to be.

"Is everything OK in there?" Which seems a rather redundant question, given the missing front wall, scattered bodies and general post-hurricane look of the place.

It is hard to believe, but this policeman makes you look quick on the uptake, Worm.

Well, things can't be all that bad, if we're back to random personal abuse. Steven thinks.

"All good mate. Just give us a sec." He calls back, then whispers to Layla, "Now what?"

Jake of course, has a suggestion, given from the fragmented remains of a mirror.
"Just knock the dumbass cop out."

Because that's always the bloody solution, isn't it Jake? He doesn't bother to answer, just glares and rolls his eyes at his headmate, who, naturally, gives him the finger. He returns the gesture with a two finger salute of his own and turns back to Layla.

 She's back in her armour, without her bronze swords, but with the addition of an elaborately beaded headdress and veil. It seems Taweret doesn't really do functional where she can go to town on embellishments.

"Very nice. Very Elizabeth Taylor," he remarks. "Time to go see Mr Plod, eh?" 

"Maybe you should do the same?" She indicates his very torn and bloodstained shirt.

Oh for fuck's sake. He'd really liked that one. 

"Don't go blaming me, kid, someone apparently needed the suit more."

PC Sam Evans is very much Out Of His Depth.

It's all very… …red. It is quite possibly the most red that Sam Evans has ever seen in one go. And he supports Liverpool.

He sincerely wishes it wasn't.

He's radioed it in, even if he had trouble finding the words for what to radio it in as. He's pretty sure the training manuals mention special teams for stuff like this. The er… red, and the er… rest of it.

The rest of it is that he's pretty sure London has superheroes now. Like New York or somewhere cool like that. There's two of them, but only one of them is trying to talk to him. Unfortunately it's not the really fit one with the wings. 

This guy's nothing like any of the guys Sam's seen on telly. For one thing, ninety percent of the heroes he's heard of are American. And don't usually wear literal suits. Plus this guy just called Sam bruv and he doesn't think superheroes do that. Or Americans. Although, don't those Asgardians sound British even though they're aliens? But they all sound posh, and he's sure posh people don't say bruv. She might be an Asgardian; she's definitely got the whole hot but terrifying thing going on. And like, they've got costumes and everything. Hers would fit right in with the whole 'amazonian women who kick ass' crowd that make something in Sam's brain go ping.

The lads at 5-a-side are never going to believe him. It would be really unprofessional to get a selfie, right? And of course there's all that, er, red to consider.

"Hello? Earth to Sam?" A white gloved hand is suddenly waving right in his face. "You ok there, mate?" The masked man is crouched in front of him, peering up inquisitively. The hood obscures his expression but he positively radiates helpful concern. It's all rather at odds with the red.

"Uh," says Sam. "Yeah. Right. Can you tell me what happened here please, Sir?"

Sam's sure he's seen them somewhere before, but he can't for the life of him work out where. The word bus keeps cropping up in his head, and something about the Pyramids a few months back, but the bulk of his brainpower is focused on quite how much of an idiot he's making of himself. And, oh god she's so hot and he's really making himself look like a total knob-end.

It's OK, Mr White Suit doesn't seem to be doing much better. He seems to be arguing with …her? …himself? An invisible sidekick? Maybe they're psychic superheroes? Oh god, maybe they can hear what he's thinking. Is crying unprofessional?

"Look, they're not… I told you they're not…" He presses one palm to his forehead. "I'm not saying… No. It's ridicul… No! He's a policeman, I can't… Right! Fine." He throws his hands in the air in an unmistakable gesture of defeat and turns back to Sam.

"It was, uh. Zombies." He definitely sounds defeated when he says it. "It's, it's okay though 'cause we got 'em all. No outbreak here, go us! All done and dusted, yeah?"

Sam writes this down in his notebook. It looks a bit silly, but the nice man in the suit did say zombies. 

"Who are you?" Sam asks. Coughs, tries again in his best professional voice. "Could I please take your names, Sir? Ma'am?"

"Scarlet Scarab," she says, and he's sure she's smiling at him from behind her headdress. Oh god. She even sounds hot. Sam Evans is in love.

He turns expectantly to the man in the suit.
"Uh, S…sss…ah!" He hisses. Did she just kick his ankle? "Mister Knight." He sticks his hand out. It takes Sam a moment to realise he's expecting a handshake.
"Sam Evans," says Sam mechanically, completely forgetting that he's already introduced himself once, and shakes the proffered hand as if it might explode.
"Well, it's been lovely and all," says Mister Knight, as he extricates his hand from Sam's frozen grasp, "but we're just gonna, er…"

They both back away towards the broken window. As he leaves, the white suited man waves awkwardly at Sam.

Equally awkwardly, Sam waves back.

Once they're gone, he checks around the flat, just in case there are any more superheroes lurking out of sight. In actual fact, there's not much more flat to check as most of it seems to be piled in a heap in the middle of the room, carefully separated from the …red bits. All that's really left to check is the tiny bathroom. There's not a great deal in there, beyond an inordinate number of toothbrushes for such a small flat and, unexpectedly, two goldfish swimming placidly in the bathroom sink. Flakes of fish food are still caught on the surface as if freshly sprinkled by unseen hands. As he turns to leave, a draught catches his hat and he has to grapple with it to stop it falling into the loo.

Shortly after, some Very Serious People arrive and Sam is led away to sit in the back of a Police van and drink extremely sugary tea, while a very nice lady talks to him about suspected gas explosions and how superheroes and zombies and red are the sort of things that one does not talk about. Not even to the lads from 5-a-side.

Much, much later, poor confused Mr Grant and Ms El-Faouly, having returned from their rudely interrupted evening out to find their building at the centre of a Police cordon, are escorted past the blue and white tape and up the emergency stairwell so they can collect their belongings.

The shiny black vans and Very Serious People have long since departed, leaving the flat in complete disarray, but notably probably-not-a-zombie free.

Before they are allowed in, a very earnest policeman explains at length that any rumours of a fight breaking out in their flat are totally unfounded but unfortunately there has been a gas leak, and an explosion has damaged their front wall. They'll need to speak to their insurance company in the morning, but for tonight the police will make sure no one wanders in without permission. At no point does anyone attempt to explain how a gas leak explosion could carefully deposit a pair of goldfish in the bathroom sink. Some things are clearly best left a mystery.

Fifteen minutes later they are back outside the blue front door with a couple of bags, Layla's laptop, reservations at the hotel up the road, and a mixing bowl from the kitchen containing the Guses.

Steven looks from the oblivious fish to where Khonshu is perched on an empty market pitch.

I did not wish for the books to be damaged by water.

Chapter Text

Jake is stuck in a cheap hotel room and it feels like the setup for a particularly lame joke. Maybe it is; he's sitting in an excessively soft bed with a beautiful woman, but there's some god or other in a bottle on the nightstand, an invisible hippo on the couch, a frustratingly non invisible bird-skulled bastard lounging on the desk beside a plastic mixing bowl full of goldfish, and he's floating somewhere behind the eyeballs of a goddamn history professor. He's painfully aware that any one of those provisos on the 'in bed with a beautiful woman' part tip things over into a farce, but for some reason the world has seen fit to gift him with all of them at once. And then, of course, that beautiful woman is Layla, who he won't deny is attractive, but no way in hell is he getting mixed up with whatever is going on there.
At least the god-in-a-bottle, the hippo and the fish are quiet. The rest? Not so much, not even Layla, who's usually pretty easy to get along with.
It's also seven in the morning and they're off down one of their rabbit holes that he and Marc can never quite follow, and Steven hasn't even had the decency to sort out any coffee. Normally he'd just drift off, or maybe hang around to keep Marc company while they ramble, but without Marc to be the voice of reason someone's gotta at least try to be the grown up here. Sure as hell isn't any of these clowns at the moment.

For Layla's benefit, they're trying to share the body as much as possible, with Taweret relaying what Khonshu says. It works about as well as can be expected; they've been talking at cross-purposes for the last hour. It was too damn early when they started. It's still too damn early now.

"They're not zombies, Jake." Steven sounds weary, which seems unfair given that he's the one being a pain in the ass.
"It don't matter a damn anyhow, kid. You're all missing the point here. What we should be figuring out is who sent the zombies and your nightmare wasp, and where they are, so we can go get Marc and give them hell. Everything else? Just noise." Every time they seem to be going in a productive direction, someone derails them onto something else. Jake's always had a suspicion that 'bag of cats' is the best description of Steven's mental process. This, right here, is proof. 
"Before everything went to shit last night, it sounded like you had some idea what was going on." He says to Khonshu. He's not willing to go round in circles all day, and if he has to drag answers out of the vulture with his bare hands, that's what he's going to do.
I suspected but was not sure. Steven's encounter with her servant has confirmed it. Ahti, Lady of Misfortune is free.
"Are you telling me there's another god with a grudge against you out there? Is there anyone in the entire damn pantheon you haven't pissed off?" Given what he knows of their patron, Jake suspects that if they were to make a list, it would likely be rather short.
She is no god!  She is a mere demon, the Spiteful One, who delights in chaos. Her followers come to her through her empty promises of petty revenge on those who they feel have slighted them.
"Well doesn't she sound bloody lovely. What sort of nutter would want to get involved with a god of petty revenge?" Steven remarks, all horrified concern.
Internally, Jake winces as Khonshu fixes them with a cool, level look that goes on just a hair too long, before continuing. She was imprisoned long ago for the crime of teaching humans to cage the souls of others. The one form of magic that can never be justified. An abomination.
"Isn't that the same as trapping one of you lot in a bottle?" He's gotta ask, as he's starting to see a picture here and it's one he's pretty damn sure he doesn't like.
"Ushabti, Jake," Steven can't help but correct him. Just for that, Jake resolves to never use the word.
Yes. It's flat and absolute; a lead weight dropped in the conversation. Touchy subject there, clearly.
It is likely she believes me to be the only god to remain active in this realm after Harrow and Ammit murdered the Ennead's avatars. She thought to make me powerless by imprisoning my avatar's soul. If I am all that remains in this realm, leaving me diminished would give her free rein. She did not know that not one but three souls inhabit your body. A very fortunate circumstance. Khonshu cocks his skull towards Taweret's couch, clearly she has something to add. No, he rumbles, I do not believe she is aware of our alliance, which is surprising given she knew enough to attack Marc.
Layla drums her fingers on the bedcovers.
"I've read about this," she says thoughtfully. "To seal away the Ba they needed the name of their victim and their hair and blood to bind them. When would they have managed to get that?"
The little punks in Rome. Goddammit, I should have known Marc wouldn't get jumped that easily. Shoulda checked it out more thoroughly.
"Rome," he says. "They got it in that alley Rome."
"Ah, shit." In the mirror, he can see when Steven figures it out too. "We shouldn't have assumed…"
But the blame's not on the kid, not really. It was Jake's own carelessness in not checking out the 'mugging' more thoroughly.
"So how come she's not still bottled up?" He asks, trying not to go down that road of self-recrimination. Plenty of time for that later. For now, work the problem.
The Ennead were supposed to guard her after they imprisoned the previous guardian set to keep watch for daring to intervene in the affairs of mortals. When they lost their avatars, it would seem her prison was left untended.
"And she, what, decided to go on a god collecting spree? With Marc as a bonus?" No sooner than Jake has finished speaking, Steven seizes the body.
"She's, like, keeping track of the competition, yeah? If I was an angry spite demon, I wouldn't leave a bunch of potential enemies just lying about for some tosser to find and release." Steven does, Jake admits, have a point. It makes sense that Ahti doesn't want to risk any god who might be inclined to lock her back up getting loose. 
"So who's that one then? They were damn keen to take it." From the mirror over the desk Jake nods his head to the god-in-a-bottle on the nightstand.
"The one we really don't want Ahti getting her grubby little paws on as she might see him as an ally. Set."
"Not really up to speed on the whole who's who of ancient Egypt, remember?"
"Set was the…" Steven is more than happy to explain.
Jake, Khonshu interrupts. Oh hell, first name time. The bird's serious. Set is, in terms you will understand, a "goddamned asshole". Without the Ennead to counter him, I would not dare risk him being freed.
"What about the whole not getting involved thing?" Steven asks.
For Set they would make an exception. Well shit. That seems… bad.
"So, why aren't the Ennead all over this?" Steven picks up the god-bottle and turns it over and over in his hands. He continues, "After the whole Harrow fuck-up I'd bet the last thing they'd want was to risk someone who could be worse than Ammit being freed." Good question, kid. If this guy is top of the Ennead's-most-wanted list why leave him lying around where anyone could find him?
To my knowledge they have not taken new avatars. They are most likely unaware.
Jake places Set carefully back on the nightstand. He knows from Steven and Layla's chatter that there's no way he can be released outside the Ennead's meeting place, but holding a god's prison just feels wrong.
"Well can't you, do some god thing and speak to them?" He asks.
I cannot. I am an outcast, barred from our realm. The rumble is subdued, and the god looks downcast.
Leyla and Khonshu both turn to Taweret's couch.
"Are you sure, Reret?" Layla says, biting her lip. "I know you've been putting off going back." She glances over to Steven and Jake. "She's offered to go and speak to the Ennead in their realm. She thinks that Hathor will be willing to talk even if the rest won't. She's worried they'll be cross with her."
And they would be fools for it. Had you not intervened, Ammit would have been successful. To judge you for that would be hypocrisy beyond even their usual standards. Khonshu's displeased rumble cuts off with something amusingly close to a squawk. Judging by his awkward posture, Jake guesses that he's been wrapped in a hug by an affectionate hippo goddess. It looks like it must be as overwhelming as it sounds. One bony arm comes up to pat uncertainly at thin air. I… I am grateful that you did. I believe we all are. Then he sags back, straightening his robes. No use old bird, Jake thinks. We saw.
"Take care, Reret." Layla says, reaching out towards where Jake guesses the goddess is standing. She nods to something he can't hear, and gives a reassuring smile. "Of course I'll keep an eye on them."
From his seat on the desk, Khonshu raises one hand in farewell.
"She'll be back as soon as she can," Layla looks anxious, but continues, "hopefully with some help."
Jake pushes Steven aside before he can speak.
"We could certainly use any help Taweret can scare up," he agrees, " but it gets us nowhere if we don't know where they are keeping this Marc-bottle." And that's the problem they're all trying to avoid. They need the where for any of it to count. 

There is one way to discover where he is imprisoned. The old vulture sounds reluctant. Jake's not one for premonitions but this is setting off all kinds of alarm bells. Anything Khonshu is presenting as a last resort is bound to be Bad News.

Sure enough, it is.

"That hasta be the dumbest thing I ever heard." Jake laughs, mentally fending off Steven's desperate attempt to seize back control. "Can't you just tell us?"
These are not things I know.
And clearly that makes perfect sense, you dessicated old seagull.
"Let me get this straight," Jake says and rubs wearily at the bridge of his nose. "You are seriously suggesting that our best option at this point is to cast a magic spell to make you tell us something you don't actually know."
"Oh mate, it's not a bad idea at all." Steven is still eagerly scrabbling at Jake's grip on their body. Jake doesn't need to look at the mirror to know he's starry-eyed. "Just think, we'd be first in centuries to do it. We could learn so much. It would be bloody brilliant!" He sounds positively rapturous at the idea. Because of course he does.
"No kid, it is a bad idea. A damn awful one. From what you said, we have a hole in our brain from some other asswipe messing around with magic, so I'm not overkeen on us messing around with it too."
"But it's the quickest way to do something about fixing that hole." Steven's voice takes on a wheedling quality that would, were he not sharing the same body, drive Jake to throttle the little shit. And of course he has to add, "And getting Marc back." The one thing that can shake Jake's resolve.
"It's not even an option Stevie-boy, we're aren't casting any spells." He knows as soon as he says it that he's going to lose this one. They're going to cast a goddamned spell.
Ain't that just grand.
Next time he makes tea for Steven, he's putting his hippy milk on the teabag before the boiling water. He may even go as far as using hot water from the tap. That might just about get across how monumentally pissed off Jake is right now with him. And goddamned magic.

Chapter Text

Somehow they've found instructions for the spell to make the vulture talk. As if he doesn't do more than enough of that of his own goddamned accord.

Jake's last faint hope that they'd have to give up on this simply because they had no way of knowing how to cast their spell has been dashed by the twin powers of Steven's encyclopedic knowledge of the British Museum catalogue and the technological power of digitised collections. And the unexpected convenience of an out of copyright early 20th Century translation of the text they need being on literally every slightly woo-woo website out there.
According to Khonshu, at a shockingly recent near two thousand years old, the papyrus is a barely recognisable approximation of the spells they used to have in the good old days. But it will, apparently, suffice. Apparently, the 'good old days' were back when people knew how to venerate their gods properly. Not at all like nowadays, when people have a tendency to do things like answer their god back, or throw things through their non-corporeal forms when they're not looking. Neither of which is acceptable. Apparently.
Apparently everyone would also really appreciate it if Jake could please stop calling it a spell in a tone that practically makes sarcasm condense on the walls. He's not inclined to co-operate. Because he still thinks all this is a bad idea.

Khonshu peers curiously at the laptop screen over Layla's shoulder as she carefully copies down the text it displays.
This device holds many books? His sepulchral voice is bordering on wistful at the thought. You will teach me how to use it, Worm. He reaches out to touch the screen reverentially, the screen dims to darkness around his fingertip.
"The vulture wants to learn how to use your laptop." Jake tells Layla flatly as she frowns at the greyed spot on the screen, and they exchange a horrified glance. The words "oh hell no" hang heavy and unsaid between them. Khonshu gets internet privileges over Jake's dead body. Letting him loose there would do no-one any favours.
"Another time, yeah?" Even Steven seems to have picked up on their dread through his haze of fascination with their current project. "Maybe we could start you out with an ereader or something like that? Keep it nice and easy-peasy." Something with no access to anything that they haven't put on there themselves.
Then he's back to tugging at Jake's control again. "Come on Jake, mate. You know all this is a 'me' thing now." Trouble is, he's not wrong, but Jake's gut feeling is that this is dangerous, and even now the part of him that was once the last resort is reluctant to let go and hand over something that could be risky to anyone else. Particularly the kid. Grudgingly he cedes the body to him; it feels like he's having to prise himself out of the way, as if he were the one having to displace the other by force.
Steven doesn't seem to notice the effort he had to put in to switch out, thanking him with a cheery "Cheers," and leaning in to rest his chin on Layla's shoulder to read with her.

Once she's finished making her copy of the ritual, Layla takes her notes to work at the desk leaving Steven crosslegged on the bed with the laptop. 
He knots his fingers into his hair and groans.
"How the bloody hell am I supposed to remember all this?" Scrolling through the text takes a while, long enough that Khonshu cranes forward to see what Steven is reading.
Ah, I had forgotten how tedious the invocation was. Here they have somehow made it worse. You do not need to recite it all. A bony finger skims down the screen. Ignore from here to here. And the first three lines on the next page. That paragraph is unneeded.
Steven peers at the edits Khonshu advised, lips moving silently. He frowns and turns to look at the skeletal god where he sprawls across the bed behind him.
"You just had me cross out all the bits that aren't about how all powerful you are, Old Bird," he accuses. 
It is a prayer to your god, Worm. That is the entire point of it. The skull tips appraisingly. You can recite it all if you wish, but this will be quicker. 
"It's still bloody long," Steven grumbles, "and it's not like l can read it as I go, can I? It says I gotta have my eyes closed."
"I was thinking about that," Layla interjects. "I don't fully get how the whole thing works for you boys, but could Jake read it it to you?"
"Neither do I," Steven's laugh is short and more than a little bitter, which surprises Jake. Isn't this supposed to be the kid in his element? "I tried reading up on, er, things," Oh. It's part of that conversation. The one we all still avoid like the damn plague. "But the textbooks don't tend to cover extra factors like trips to the afterlife and, well, gods sticking their oar in. So I think we're a case study of one. Or three, depending on how you want to look at it." He shakes his head slightly. "So yeah, he shouldn't be able to, but I reckon it could work for us. What do you say Jake? I know you're not dead keen on this, but could you give me a hand?" He looks so hopeful Jake can't bring himself to let him down.
"Sure thing, kid. Whatever you need."
And just like that Steven's back to the task at hand. He looks over to Khonshu, and asks,
"Can we do this in English or has it gotta be Demotic? Could be a problem, there, Jake doesn't know it." He fiddles with the laptop cursor, drawing small circles as he speaks. And thinking about it, even Demotic's not going to be the original, way too modern innit."
It is the intent of the words, not their sounds that matter. Khonshu assures him. As long as you understand the words, it will work.
"Why bother with all this then?" For all his misgivings, Jake's genuinely curious about it. "The meaning's pretty clear. Could just go with 'Hey Khonshu, get your bony old ass here and answer my question' and be done with it."
The intent should also include respect for your god, the god rumbles testily.
He probably shouldn't needle the vulture as much he does, but as far as Jake's concerned, if they're going to have to quote goddamn poetry extolling his greatness to find Marc, the decrepit bird is owed at least a little pre-emptive insolence to balance things up. "Would 'get your bony old ass here please' do?"
No.
Somewhere in the bathroom there's a tinkle as a water glass implodes.

"Oh damn, this one could be a dealbreaker," says Layla, stabbing at her neatly copied version of the instructions with her pen. "Everything we need we can get, except sand. We need sand from the Nile. We can't exactly nip and get that from the local shop." 
"National Gallery gift shop," Steven says without looking up from the screen, where he's transcribing the shortened version of the incantation. "Believe me, when you've counted boxfuls of something as pointless as keyrings filled with 'genuine Nile sand' more than once, it's kind of hard to forget that they exist."
She adds that carefully to her list.
"Are you done with the incantation?" She asks. "I think I could use your help."

You have everything you need from me. Khonshu says suddenly, rising from his sprawl across the bed. There's an edge of something unfamiliar in his voice. If Jake was pushed to identify it, he'd struggle. Apprehension, perhaps. It certainly sits strangely on the god. I will leave you to your preparations. There's an odd moment where Jake is sure he has more to say, but instead he blinks away.
Steven looks up and catches Jake's eye in the mirror.
"Bit of a strange exit, that, even for the pigeon." He looks thoughtful.
"Sure was, kid.

Jake drifts for a while, leaving his headmate and Layla to try and unravel the last part of the puzzle, just what exactly this mysterious 'eye ointment' they need is supposed to be. The instructions are so much noise to him, so he can't really contribute. He's jarred to wakefulness when Steven leaps to his feet from where he's been sprawled on the carpet, waving the pages covered in his appalling scrawl.
"Layla! We've been looking at it all wrong, it's not a problem with the translation at all. This is basically an alchemical text, right?" He beams at her, and she nods enthusiastically in agreement.
"So they'll have put part of it in code." She finishes for him. They share a triumphant look that would normally have Jake scrabbling elsewhere in a hurry, as it tends to lead to the two of them celebrating their success in a way Jake wants no part in. Instead he tries to keep them on track by willingly inviting a lecture. From Steven. The things I do for you, Bossman.
"So what does that mean, for those of us who don't eat dusty old books for breakfast?"
"Well, um, there's three lines that are exactly what they say they are: Stibium, eye paint and the Sher-o flower and seed. That's obviously kohl, malachite powder and blue lotus, which is actually a sort of waterlily not a true lotus at all" - Obviously, thinks Jake. How could they be anything else? - as Steven continues, "but the rest looks like nonsense. You see, that's how alchemists kept their secrets, by recording bits of the recipe using a sort of code that only other alchemists would know. Dead clever, innit?"
Layla sets aside the laptop and takes the stack of papers and studies them with a frown, then spreads them on the bed to compare them.
"Almost right," she observes, "but it is partly the translation. It messes up the order. If you reorder them, you end up with pairs; each clear text has a corresponding cryptic one." She shuffles the pages around and taps a nail on the first pair. "I think this first one is the key. 'Set stone'. If I'm right, it's not supposed to say 'Set' but 'Set's' Stone. The stone sacred to Set. Carnelian."
"That's Khonshu's 'goddamned asshole' that's currently in the bottle over there, right?" Jake asks from the mirror.
Steven nods absently.
"Looks like, but you know Khonshu can be more than a little black and white about stuff, yeah, and Set is the classic grey area. He's the god of a lot of the bad stuff in life, and of course he's the one who kills Osiris in the myths and challenges his son Horus for the throne, but he also fights against Apep alongside Ra, so he's not totally evil. Either way, our lad there's not got the best reputation."
"No prizes for guessing why he's in a bottle then?"
"Nah, not really. And I dunno about you, but I think I'm happy to keep it that way for now."
Stones and gods and stuff from stories, even now Jake is still stunned by how unlikely it it all is. And I wonder what stone is sacred to the vulture? A half-brick through the window at 2am?
Steven perches on the edge of the bed and joins Layla as she studies the next cryptic reference.
"A stone again," she says. "Ankh-stone." Steven flops backwards across the foot of the bed, carding fingers into his hair and tugging as he thinks. "The ankh's the symbol of life and kingship," he says to the ceiling. "If we go with the god thing again, that's going to have to be something to do with Osiris, I guess."
"Turquoise?" Layla suggests. "Associated with Osiris in the same way Carnelian is with Set. It would fit, and would mean that the last one's got to be another stone, but it doesn't seem very clear. 'Blood of hoopoe'. What could that be?"
"Not sure," says Steven brightly, "but I'm bloody glad it's not literal. That was the one that had me worried. Saves me from a bit of a moral quandary to be honest; Hoopoes are adorable. And I have no idea where we'd have found one anyway, poor little bugger. Anyway, I'm drawing a blank on hoopoes and anything specific. You?" 
Layla drags the laptop back into her lap. "Nothing, I'm afraid. I'll see if I can dig up any references." She drums her fingers on the metal case. "Hmm. Commonly depicted in hunting scenes. I can't see that being relevant. Or held by children in paintings and carvings, usually to denote an heir. Seems a bit general…"
"If you've got Set and Osiris already, and you're looking for a kid, how about the son from the Soap Opera of the Gods earlier?"
"It can't just be any child Jake," Steven trails off, staring vaguely at the ceiling. Then he props himself up on one elbow to stare at Jake in the mirror in shock. Jake resists the urge to make an uncalled for but entirely accurate comparison between his stunned expression and Guses 2 and 3; just because Jake doesn't give a damn about this crap, it doesn't mean he doesn't think.
"Oh my days, I think you might be right. The Ancient Egyptians tended to group their gods into threes, and using that for a code would be the sort of thing an alchemist might do - make the first two obvious, and the last rely on working out the right third to complete the triad. In that case it would be Horus." 
"Thanks Jake," Layla's smile is heartstopping, and, he notices, directed to Steven's reflection in the mirror rather than their body. He appreciates the thought. "The last must be malachite then," she continues, "but does it fit well enough?"
"I mean, malachite's green," Steven say as he tips over onto his back, talking to the ceiling again, "so not particularly bloodish, but then, so's Horus. Green, I mean. In pictures at least, I'll have to ask Khonshu if the bloke actually is green. Or maybe you could ask Taweret, love? Because she actually is a hippo, so there's precedent for the representations to be accurate. She's…" 
"Steven," Jake jumps in, sitting back up and interrupting through gritted teeth. "It does not matter whether or not some guy is green right now. He can be the Hulk on vacation for all I care. I am just barely tolerating this scheme as it is, so do you think you have the right damn rocks or not?" He may think this is the worst idea any of them ever had, bar originally signing up with a deranged god, but If they're going down this road they can at least try to avoid any more detours. 
"…yes." The hesitation is slightly longer that the switch back would account for. Okay.
"And you gotta handle on what you're supposed to do with them to make your magic paint?"
"Yeah." That one's a little more confident.
"And are any of these things a good idea to rub on your damn face?"
Steven doesn't need to say a word. His expression makes it abundantly clear that these are most definitely not typical skincare ingredients.
"It could be worse," he offers, "quite often blue lotus is mentioned alongside opium poppies in these texts."
That's not in any way as reassuring as you seem to believe it is, kid, Jake thinks.

Then it's all logistics, as Jake's objections on the grounds that this is a) impossible, b) ridiculous, and c) should "a" not apply, definitely fucking dangerous, seem to have fallen on deaf ears somewhere along the way. 
Layla's taking charge of getting the flat secured, temporary lodgings for the Guses, and cleaning out a "dark chamber" for Steven to muck about with the occult in, Google Maps having confirmed that the door to Marc's old storage unit is sufficiently south facing for Khonshu's liking.
And somehow, without Jake agreeing to anything, he's back in charge of the body while Steven tries to sleep, or do whatever it is he feels he needs to do in preparation for trying to do goddamn magic.
The shopping list he's been left with is certainly the oddest he's ever seen. The only normal thing on it is a bag of bread rolls.
"You expecting to get hungry, kid?" He asks.
"They're, um, kind of an offering."
Crumbs for the bird, thinks Jake, and doesn't bother to explain why he's laughing.

The door to the storage unit shuts with a rattle as Layla leaves to stand guard outside.
"This looks goddamn ridiculous." Jake says, yet again. And it does. Totally ridiculous.
Steven glances across at the mirror propped against the wall by the laptop.
"Mate, you spend half your nights beating up criminals on the say so of an ancient Egyptian god. How is this any more bizarre than anything else we've done in the last few months?" He asks, snapping the end off another keyring and sprinkling the sand across the floor. Jake's not going to concede this one to a man busy pouring keyrings full of sand onto the floor of a freaking storage unit. This is way weirder than anything he's ever done in service to the vulture. He stares pointedly at the arrangement in the middle of the storage unit. 
"What, our '4cc of mouse blood and three small sticks'? I guess it is all a bit Tracey Emin, innit." Steven says with a shrug, taking in the trio of housebricks with bread rolls balanced on them surrounding a cereal bowl filled with olive oil, rocks and the tragic remains of the baby aloe vera plant Jake had bought earlier. "When we're done, we could sell it it the Tate."
The last of the keyrings emptied, he dusts off his hands on his impeccably tailored white trousers, flicks off the light and settles cross-legged beside the demented still life.
"So now what?" Jake asks as a makeshift oil lamp sputters into life and Steven slots it carefully between two of the bricks.
"Well, either you just wasted a day on a scavenger hunt around London and I'm about to blind us," he picks up the bowl containing Jake's chief objection to this whole scheme and raises it in a toast towards the mirror, "or we're about to do actual magic." He sounds excited. Excited! The kid's nuts.
"Or you're about to drop acid through our goddamn eyeballs, Stevie-boy." It needs to be said, because the world's flipped on its freaking head. The kid's not supposed to be the reckless one, and Jake doesn't like it. Doesn't like that they're playing around with all this bending the edges of reality shit. Longs for a problem that can be solved with a solid punch. He swears he will never give Marc a hard time ever again, as coping with this, this bullshit is goddamn exhausting.
"Or there's that, yeah." Steven says quietly as he gathers a smear of the shimmering green paste on his thumb. He hesitates for a moment and Jake briefly thinks his wish has been granted and the idiot is coming to his senses. Instead he reaches up and deliberately draws his thumb across his eyelid and temple. Repeats for the other.
It burns. Even without control of the body, Jake can feel it burn. He itches to jump in, make it stop, but forces himself to endure. This is something he can't fix by snatching control and getting them the hell away.
Steven's motionless for a time, just breathing, then eyes still closed, raises his hands and begins to speak. Jake startles, remembers his role in this as a human teleprompter and reads from the glowing screen of Layla's laptop in tandem.
"Homage to thee Chons-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, the noble child who came forth from the lotus, Horus, Lord of time, one he is…"
"Homage to thee Chons-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, the noble child who came forth from the lotus, Horus, Lord of time, one he is…"
By the time they're done, the chant no longer seems to be words, just sounds that draw the darkness closer around them, making the flicker of the lamp seem smaller and dimmer with every syllable.
"…let him make me answer to every word which I am asking here today, in truth without falsehood therein. Hasten, quickly."

Steven's eyes snap open. 

Jake can't explain it. He's watching from the mirror, and one moment it's just Steven sitting alone and cross-legged in a darkened room with a faceful of potentially hallucinogenic paint, arms raised uncomfortably; the next, Khonshu looms above him, bent so that his skull is framed between Steven's outstretched hands. If Steven's tripping, then Jake's gotta be too. Shame they're both hallucinating Khonshu, really. There have to be better things to see in an altered state of mind than the old vulture.
Jake's gotta hand it to them, the Egyptians and their damned gods certainly had style. Even with their improvised tools, it's a scene worthy of one of the adventure movies the kid still loves watching, despite his own life being significantly stranger than any scriptwriter could ever dream of.
Then Steven goes and ruins it by grinning like a loon and exclaiming,
"Bugger me, it actually worked!"
Khonshu is a ghostly figure towering above Steven, but the cutting remark Jake is expecting never comes.
"It don't look like anyone's home, kid." Jake says, "think we did it wrong?"
"Oh, we did it right, mate," Steven breathes, beaming up at Khonshu's immobile form. He turns to face where Jake watches from the mirror directly, and oh fuck, what with the slightly manic grin, glittering strip across his face, and pupils blown wide enough that Jake's damned sure that paint's fucking with his head, he looks genuinely terrifying in the dim light. In Jake's theoretical movie, he can't help but recast Steven from dopey sidekick to the villainous High Priest. Thankfully the impression fades a little when Steven reverts to his normal rambling self as he tries to explain why a silent and frozen Khonshu is a good thing beyond the obvious reasons Jake can think of for himself.
"So," he begins, "there's Khonshu the angry pigeon we know and love, right?" He holds out one hand, palm up. "Well, know anyway," he continues wryly, "and then there's the God of the Moon, which I think is a construct of belief, and that leads to all sorts of…" He trails off, holds out his other hand. "Anyway, that bit's not important. What matters is that it's kinda the same deal as one of us and being his avatar. It's us, but at the same time more. We just summoned the God of the Moon into the the pigeon and compelled him to obey us." He brings his hands together, and the slight vindictive smile makes Jake shiver as the High Priest reappears for a moment. "And I think somewhere in that empty skull of his, Khonshu is probably enjoying it about as much as Marc did when Khonshu spoke through us."
Jake watches as Steven turns back and tilts his face up to meet the blank stare, the green shimmering around his eyes as it catches the light from the flickering lamp.
"Tell me how to find Marc Spector," the High Priest commands.

And The God of The Moon does.

Chapter Text

With one last satisfied flick of her ears, Taweret, Lady of Heaven and Mistress of the Horizon, and currently acting goddess of practically everything that doesn't primarily involve splitting skulls, steps back from the neatly coiled rope on the foredeck of the Barque of the Dead. She's put it off with busywork for long enough, but she did say she would try to speak with the Ennead for darling Layla, and she couldn't bear to let her wonderful avatar down. And of course it would be simply marvellous to pop home for a bit. She's been so busy what with everything, and having to keep the afterlife on an even keel, that it's been positively ages since she last had the time.

Eyes closed, she takes the step that should drop her round-and-through into her home realm, but the swoop and fall sensation she is expecting doesn't come. When she open her eyes, the Barque of the Dead still drifts through the endless sands of the Duat.

"Oh bother," she says in dismay. Tries again. Still the boat and boundless dunes. Tries again. Still deck underfoot. Again.

From behind, a voice breaks the silence of the Duat.
I am also unable to get through.
She turns. Khonshu leans against the cabin of the barque, arms folded and staff tucked on the crook of his arm. She honestly despairs at his theatrics sometimes.
Oh Khonshu, could you please not do that, dear? She chides gently. The silent intimidating arrival act is all very well when you're trying to impress the mortals, but it is completely wasted on me.
It is not an act. She's sure he thinks this sounds terribly forbidding, but to it just puts her in mind of a pouting teenager. She gives him a Look.
His skull tips up just a little, a tiny tell of cocky insolence. She resists the urge to roll her eyes at this. Ridiculous child!
Anyway, I thought you were forbidden from entering Heliopolis?  She says as she brushes past him on her way to the back deck. It's his turn to give her a Look as she goes past.
When did I ever abide by the rules, Ipet? He says from behind her as they walk along the narrow gunwale that runs alongside the cabin. I am not the god of travellers for nothing. I have ways around the prohibition. Paths I have learned that are not watched.
Always pushing the boundaries you foolish sparrow, she thinks, more than a little fondly.
Of course you have, she says as she settles herself against the raised coaming of the rear deck and stares out across the waves of sand. And you're sure that your 'ways around' haven't been closed off after your little sky trick made Osiris ever so cross with you?
He leans against the planking beside her, and shakes his head.
This is unlike the bar they have placed upon me, which merely prevents my travel by normal means. My secret ways lead to nowhere now. He grips the edge of the railing hard enough that the wood creaks beneath his fingers. That should not be possible. He pauses, and seems to come to a decision. Layla will probably call on you soon, she will need your support tonight.
Taweret's ears flick in consternation at the abrupt change of subject.
What have you done this time, Khonshu? She doesn't even try to keep the weariness from her voice.
I may have introduced my Knight to the more priestly side of his duties. At least he has the decency to sound more than a little embarrassed.
You do keep pushing things so! She exclaims. First you insist on having your avatar be an active force rather than observer and now bringing back things not done for centuries. Steven, I assume? Jake is such a sweetheart, but he does struggle so with the more fantastical parts of this life. A tiny bit of disapproval creeps in when she adds, do you think they realise the power you have given them over you? And doesn't continue, even though she want to, always acting without thinking Khonshu, you're far too impulsive for your own good.
Possibly. He admits, shifting his staff uncomfortably as she pins him with piercing stare. The Worm will either be completely oblivious, or have fully understood the potential of what I have shown him. There is no in-between for him.
Nor for you, old friend, she thinks.
Oh my! That may have been a little silly, dear. Whatever will the Ennead think?
The skeletal body beside her rocks back away from the rail, as Khonshu pulls himself to his full height and drops the butt of his staff to the decks with a sharp crack.
Right now, he thunders, they owe us enough that they can damn well live with it. Calming a little, he looks down at her and says earnestly, Ipet, if our kin insist on closing themselves off, only we remain on this plane to deal with Ahti and watch over Set. If I choose to use everything at my disposal, that is my choice to make.
She can't really argue with that. It's not like it looks like they have anything else to fall back on.
I hadn't thought of it that way, the goddess admits. But you do have a teeny tiny habit of not letting your avatar know the whole picture. I can't help worrying that you didn't here.
What do you think? He snaps. Jake would have been difficult if I had.
Khonshu. She sighs, equal parts warning and exasperation.
I do what I must. He sounds resigned, and she's startled when he settles himself down to the deck, back to the low rail and staff across his knees. Always what I must.
The tickle in her mind that tells her that Layla is calling for her blooms, fierce and insistent.
I have to go, she tells him, Layla needs me.
He laughs, low and mirthless. I believe I will be joining you shortly.
Taweret looks down at him as he rests his skull against the planks behind him and stares up into the vast expanse of sky.
Then the pull from her avatar comes again, and she steps between to see what Layla needs.

Chapter Text

The world swims into focus. Steven fervently wishes it hadn't, as it brings a whole raft of funhouse mirror memories with it. Oh. Oh shit. Jake's going to fucking slaughter me.

"Back with us, Mr Leary?" He winces. Syrupy sweetness sounds horribly wrong coming from Jake. "Aw, not feeling too hot there, kiddo? Got a few regrets?" The mock concern is biting.
He's felt better, it's true, but Jake's obvious disapproval is somehow the worst part of it. And now, in the cold fluorescent light of… -he looks around- …an aeroplane loo?… he's beginning to think Jake may have a point. Caught up in the rush of excitement at the potential of it all he may not have thought things through quite as well as he could. Or, quite possibly, at all, you absolute muppet.
From the mirror over the plastic sink counter, Jake asks,
"Did it occur to you, at any point, to check how much of that shit would be safe?"
Jake's right, it was a serious oversight. He'll need to speak to Khonshu, see if they can do some systematic testing to work out what the minimums are for the spell components.
"Steven."
Starting with whether the paint can be significantly less potent and still do the job.
"Steven!"
And there's a whole bunch of factors for that they'll need to account for in just that; how much active ingredient is needed, are the effects enhanced by the…
"STEVEN!" Jake scowls expectantly from the mirror.
"No," he admits. "But next time…" 
"There ain't gonna be a next time Stevie-boy," his headmate interrupts. The warning's clear, but grudgingly he does continue, "No need anyhow. Even though it was a goddamn stupid way to do it, you got what we needed."
Steven can't help but grin at this. It really had worked! He'd summoned an honest-to-god god, had commanded them to answer his questions.
And they had obeyed him.
"We really bloody did it, didn't we." He can't keep the triumphant note from his voice, even though he's well aware it's only going to aggravate Jake. "The old bird told us exactly what we needed to know."
"He did," Jake agrees. "As far as I can tell, he's still sulking about it. But still. I'm more bothered about what happened after you ditched the suit."
That's the point where his memory gets blurry. Dismissing the suit. After that it all gets rather jumbled and includes lots of tiny details, some excruciatingly embarrassing, which he suspects may contribute to why Jake is quite so furious with him.
"I had to get your sorry ass back to the hotel. Which was a total bitch of a job. Coulda towed you like a damn kite. You were very…" He pauses, clearly searching for the words, and settling on something Steven suspects was not what he originally planned to say. "…persistent about getting the body back. I hafta say I'm kinda impressed. Mostly disturbed, but yeah," he raises his eyebrows, "damn, Stevie-boy."
"Oh bloody hell. Do I need to apologise to Layla? For being, you know…"
"Persistent?"
"Uh, yeah." Utterly mortified, he can feel his ears burning.
"I shouldn't think so, Kid. You were both pretty, uh, persistent at the time." Jake coughs, and Steven's not sure which of them is finding this whole conversation more painful; it seems a close run thing. "Anyhow, once you flaked out, I took back over. Scrubbed myself raw trying to get rid of your goddamn fairy-dust, then summoned the suit and spent a while cussing out the vulture, but he didn't show up. Realised the suit made me feel less of a space cadet, so I got on with sorting things out so we could go after Marc. Didn't think you and Layla would want to wait. So," Jake waves a hand, taking in their surroundings, "plane. You're in seat 45H, which is thattaway." He jerks a thumb over his shoulder in the mirror. "Flight lands about 11 tonight New York time. You're travelling on your passport and not Marc's; the address for where we're staying is in with it." He pauses, moving his fingers unconsciously as he works down his mental checklist. "The asshole-in-a-bottle and the pointy guy we left with Layla's mom are in the carry-on bag under the seat."
"Set and Thoth, mate." Steven corrects automatically. 
"Yeah, like I said, Asshole and Pointy. Anyhow, the way I see it, I've done my bit for now. I've gotten the pair of you onto this plane and now I am going to goddamn sleep until we're safely in New York. I can't believe that I gotta say this, but try not do anything stupid before we land."
Jake doesn't give Steven a chance to object, and is gone elsewhere almost immediately, leaving Steven staring at his own reflection.
"Thanks mate," he says, but Jake's already completely beyond his reach. 

His arms locked straight on the scuffed plastic of the counter are the only thing stopping him from collapsing onto the floor in an ungainly heap as he stares blankly into the sink. When he raises his head to assess just how bad he actually looks, because he certainly feels like a wrung out dishrag, he's shocked to find Marc staring back at him. Since Rome, Jake's face in their reflection has been unchanging, shaven headed and bearded regardless of the state of their body, while his own reflection is always slightly dishevelled at the best of times and this is very much not the best of times. The face watching him from the mirror is clearly neither, clean-shaven and neat. But now he looks closer, not Marc. Whatever it is, it's using an approximation of Marc's face, but the cold stare makes Marc's grimmest scowl seem positively rosy by comparison. The Mirror Marc-Thing's mouth pulls up in a sharp predatory smile, and it leans forward, studying him back intently. Their eyes meet, and instinctively Steven steps back, pressing himself against the opposite wall of the cubicle, fingers clawing at the smooth plastic panelling. The face in the mirror tilts curiously as his not-reflection raises one hand and places it against the mirror's surface. Ripples radiate out from where it touches, like rings around a pebble dropped into a pond. The light overhead flickers and buzzes, a drone like wings. Between one eyeblink and the next, the reflection of the cubicle wall behind the Thing has warped and distorted, streaks of plastic melting into sickeningly familiar bubbled black stone.
He doesn't dare turn around and check that the wall is still behind him. The glide of his fingertips across plastic isn't quite enough to convince him.
"Get out of my head!" He near howls, before biting at his fist. He can't scream. Not here. Not with people sitting feet away from him, oblivious. It would lead to far too many questions he'd not be able to answer in any satisfactory way. And he knows where that leads; "Do you think that is sense, or nonsense?"
And shit oh shit, that wasn't even real and wasn't even me. That's Marc's memory. Oh bloody hell! How do I know what's real?
"Jake!" He hisses, "wake up mate!" But Jake's out for the count, exhaustion must have driven him deep under.
Steven tries to keep his breathing under control as the mirror distorts around the Marc-Thing's palm, pushing outwards into the tiny space. Its eyes flicker white like opals as it starts to climb up onto the counter, bringing its other hand up to press on the glass. The bubble stretches to encompass that second hand, becoming thinner and thinner as it pushes out beyond the counter edge.
The only thing he can think to do is bring his own trembling arms up to try and force the Thing backwards. Cold, smooth glass presses against his palms, and he has to set his back as hard as he can against the wall to counter it. His eyes dart everywhere but the Marc-Thing's pearlescent gaze. If you're what I think you are,at least I'm not falling for that again.
"Jake," he pleads, "Khonshu, help me!" It's not much more than a whisper. 

It feels like when Jake used to switch in and out without notice. One moment Steven is face to face with the creature wearing Marc's face, the next he's plunged into near darkness.
The space is lit only by the tiny wavering flame of an oil lamp. Khonshu's eye sockets are cavernous pools of shadow above him. Am I remembering or hallucinating? I'm not entirely sure.

AH, LITTLE ONE, I SHALL SHOW YOU WHAT YOU NEED TO FREE MARC SPECTOR.

He hears the words again, just as they were the previous night, almost lost amongst a sea of harmonics and coming from what seems a very great distance. But this time reality blurs in a way he doesn't think it did before, and he is compelled to stand.
 It quickly becomes apparent that he's also still sitting crosslegged on the floor. Seeing your legs disappearing into your own head and shoulders is yet another thing he adds to his tally of things he never expected to see and would rather not see again. The list is getting long enough he thinks he may need to write it down in order to keep track.
He feels oddly detached. There's the undercurrent of sheer terror from his stalemate with the Marc-Thing, which twines uncomfortably with the remembered euphoria of the self still seated before the makeshift altar, but neither seems relevant. The other Steven and Khonshu grow fainter, leaving him standing alone in darkness.

YOU CALLED FOR AID. LET ME GUIDE YOU

The voice surrounds him, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. 

"Much appreciated, yeah, but not quite sure how I'm supposed to do that." His own voice seems tiny by comparison.

LIKE THIS, LITTLE ONE

Everything bleeds to white, and the air in his lungs turns to ice. For the first time he can feel the curling tendrils of power that coil through their body, the gift from patron to avatar. They follow well worn patterns, but he can see where his tug of war with Jake has created new eddies and whorls in their paths. Can see tiny knots where the magic is still reknitting recent injuries. And above all else, can see how they can be pulled and manipulated just so to push beyond their normal bounds.

SEE, THE KNOWLEDGE WAS ALREADY YOURS. YOU HAVE DONE THIS BEFORE.

He steps back into himself.

Palm to palm, he faces the Marc-Thing and pushes. This is not how this should be, he thinks. This is how this should be.

There's a moment of resistance before the stalemate suddenly ends and the fragile bubble that was once the mirror shatters. The creature screams as the shards of glass force it back. They scythe through it, and it shatters like dropped pottery; pieces of the empty shell flying apart. Back through the rift in the wall they tumble, as if falling down into an abyss. The glass fragments seem to multiply as they shower across the space, forming a glittering seal over the rent in the wall.

For a moment the world is frozen, the barrier between the real and the image obliterated. Then Steven's vision shivers briefly to white brilliance, and all is back as it was and should be. The reflection above the sink is his own; hair askew, the grey stain from the ritual paint making his eyes look even more sunken and exhausted, skin washed out under the steady fluorescent light of a perfectly ordinary washroom.

No broken mirror fragments anywhere. No rift to who knows where.

He screws his eyes tight-closed, opens them.
Steven-in-the-mirror is still wild eyed and very definitely not the Marc-Thing. He's never been so glad to see his own face, even if he really does look like absolute shit.

Sinking down to sit on the loo, he stares up at the low ceiling. Not real. It wasn't real. This is real, the white and grey plastic, the chemical stink of disinfectant and drone of the engines. He doesn't turn his head, peeks cautiously sideways at the mirror. Unbroken. His reflection his own. Real.
One thing's for sure, he's not sleeping until Jake is awake again. Their body's just going to have to keep going on zero total rest until they get this thing figured out. He can't stand the thought that the Marc-Thing might be more than an hallucination. Might take control. 

The walk down the cabin is torturous, a trek on unsteady legs, using the headrests of the seats he passes to keep himself upright. It earns him some dirty looks, but is significantly better than having his legs totally betray him. He peers down at the row numbers on the plates screwed to the floor; 42 - 43 - 44… the relief that he's made it to his seat is enormous as he goes to collapse next to Layla, but it drains away instantly as he realises there's someone already sitting there.
He freezes. Oh no. No no no.
"Ah!" It's a strangled scream, "Taweret!" 
Oh hi! The hippo who has stolen his seat chirps cheerfully. How wonderful! You can see me. Just one moment, and you can have your seat back, dear.
In the seats around him their fellow travellers look at him curiously.
"Uh, yeah," he says vaguely. "Stubbed my toe. All hunky dory though, just gonna sit back down with my wife now."
Shhh! The goddess brings a finger to her lipless mouth. She's sleeping. She's had barely any rest, poor darling.

Chapter Text

Jake's got to give credit where credit is due, Layla's damn good at this. 
"Practice," she says, pulling at the rope that secures his ankle to the chairleg, and the chairleg to the bedframe. "You're not going anywhere unless I let you go." He gives her a knowing look.
"Jake!" She swats at his shin with the back of her hand. "Lots of practice rock climbing! If you're going to trust a knot you want to know it's done properly." She checks his other ankle.
"Anyway, it's your rope," she points out, "and so far I have resisted the urge to ask why on earth you keep rope in your apartment. Or, how come you have an apartment in New York in the first place."
She looks up at him questioningly, but before he can form any sort of answer her eyes go wide and her smile fades to shock.
"Khonshu." Layla's so startled that she tips back to sit with a thump. "I can see Khonshu. I mean, he's," she waves her hands vaguely, "kind of see-through, but he's right there." She indicates a spot somewhere above and behind Jake.
"Where?" Jake tries to turn, but Layla's done too good a job with the rope around his shoulders and he's completely stuck in place.  
This is most unexpected. Khonshu rumbles from behind him. You should not be able to see me. There's a pause, which makes Jake wonder whether the god has immediately departed at this discovery. Much to Jake's disappointment,  he then continues, Why is Jake restrained? I cannot say I have not considered doing so at times, but this seems remarkably thorough. The god stalks into view at the edge of Jake's vision and settles himself on the foot of the bed, spindly legs stretched out across the threadbare carpet. A small cloud of dust puffs up around him which he waves away with a gesture that sends a gust of wind through the tiny bedroom, sweeping the dust of more years than Jake wants to consider out of the window.
"Good to see you too, you old vulture," Jake says, trying to suppress a sneeze. "Got over your sulk yet?"
Ah Layla, the god intones, ignoring him. You appear to have forgotten the most important thing. He can still talk. Layla's face contorts in a way that makes Jake certain she's biting her lip to keep from laughing. Just when I was starting to like you, he thinks grouchily.
"Oh my days, I thought I was imagining things on the plane when I saw Taweret." Steven sounds intrigued. "She wasn't ghostly though, she looked real as bloody anything." The mirror on the dresser is at a terrible angle from where Jake sits, so he keeps bobbing in and out of the sliver of glass Jake can see. He briefly considers asking Layla to move the mirror somewhere easier for Steven to watch from, but decides against it.
"I think we've established that you're having some trouble in that department, kid." Jake observes.
"Which department?" Layla sounds baffled.
"Steven and identifying reality," Jake explains. "He thinks he saw Taweret on the plane, but he's not sure." He may not be able to move, but he can still roll his eyes at this.
"Wait a moment. Let's check." Layla tips her face up and mumbles indistinctly. 

And suddenly, without warning, there's a gigantic hippo-woman standing in his bedroom, golden headdress brushing the ceiling. 
"Fucking hell!" He exclaims.
Hi Layla! Why is Jake tied to a chair? Taweret trills, before her face crumples a little as she looks around the tiny apartment, leaning over slightly to peer through the door into his living room. Where are we? It's a little grubby, isn't it.
"I think we can safely say that it's not just Layla," Jake hisses through gritted teeth. He's kinda glad he's fixed so well in place, it stops him doing anything stupid like pointing or scrambling away. "You said she was a hippo, but I don't think I took onboard how fucking ridiculous that was." He's well aware that Khonshu's pretty strange, but he's had time to get used to the skull-headed old vulture. "Uh, no offence meant, lady. Just a bit surprised."
Steven takes the opportunity of his stunned reaction to grab control.
"Hi Taweret!" He tries to wave, but has to make do with flapping his hand uncomfortably from the wrist on the chair's arm. "Wow, you really are good at this, love." Jake can picture the damn sappy grin he's giving Layla along with the praise, and pushes him aside before he can get too settled.
Oh isn't this wonderful! Taweret bounces on her toes with glee, headdress phasing through the ceiling as she does, and claps her hands together. Jake dies a little inside. Goddamnit, why did no-one warn me she's like a giant Steven? I can barely cope with one, let alone two over-cheerful knuckleheads hanging around.
"So how?" He begins, then groans. "Oh you freaking idiots. It's gotta be Steven's goddamn fairy-dust."
"'Then you see the shadow of every god and goddess.'" Steven sing-songs as if reciting something. "It was right there in the bloody text, weren't it! The eye-ointment lets you see all the gods, not just the one you summon."
But that would not explain Layla seeing me? Khonshu's rumble is questioning. She did not perform the ritual.
"Don't ask how. You don't want or need to know." Jake grumbles, wishing he could rub at his face. "Just know that some people have a habit of getting a bit carried away." At least Layla has the decency to blush at that. "And Layla ended up getting a dose of Steven's magic face paint."
Well that was a little silly. Taweret chides gently. She fixes all of them, including Khonshu, Jake notes, with a stern look. You all need to be more careful. Speaking of which, why the chair?
"Because while Steven was on the plane, he's convinced he saw another of Ahti's minions in the mirror." Jake says wearily.
"Bit more than saw, mate." Steven interjects. "Had to fight off, more like."
"So he wants to check there's nothing creepier than usual hanging around in our head before he'll let the body sleep, and as I'm goddamned exhausted I agreed to go along with it."
I still don't quite follow, dear. Taweret frowns, which Jake decides is not an expression that sits easily on a hippo's face. How does that end with you like this? She indicates his current situation with a wave.
"Because he's worried it will possess our body if we both duck out to go look, so this is a precaution. And," Jake glares at the mirror, "because I can't trust Stevie-boy to behave for five minutes at a time I'm hanging on to the body for now."
Yeah kid, I told your hippo friend you're in timeout, he thinks at Steven's outraged whine.
"Shall we get this over with?" Jake says. Steven pushes for control, and Jake relents, letting him take charge before he answers.
"Guess so," he says shakily. "Laters, you lot."
And they both let the room fade and fall elsewhere.

Chapter Text

The mindspace is as bleak and silent as Jake remembers, a patchwork of stark shadows and unwavering moonlight. Of all of them, he has probably spent the least time here. To him, it falls into the category of creepy mystical crap that Marc and Steven can deal with. Their collective memories may be patchy and splintered, but he's damn sure this horror movie set didn't exist before Marc's deal with the vulture tipped their lives from a chaotic jumble of fighting and lost time to a chaotic jumble of fighting and lost time and incomprehensible bullshit. So he avoids it. If he tries hard enough he can pretend it's all down to Khonshu's influence, that he's had no part in making it the personal hellscape it is. He chooses not to contemplate why, if it's their patron's creation, it leans quite so heavily on the hospital motif that features so frequently in his own nightmares. Or why the dusty old bird would bother.
Tonight's backdrop is apparently a broad ward corridor, roofless and jagged-walled, lined with doors and complete with a deserted nurse's station in an alcove. And sand. A lot of drifted sand.
"Mate, I think you should grab your suit," Steven says. He has a cricket bat resting over one shoulder, which Jake finds a little unexpected. It is yet another odd contrast in this mismatched place; Steven with his reading glasses and shaggy absence of a haircut, toting a bat with clear violent, if nervous, intent. 
"Sure you wouldn't rather have it yourself, kid?" He asks as his grey body armour flows into place around him, knives appearing in his hands like some TV conjurer's trick. Flexing his fingers makes the blades jump in and out of being; flashing between open empty palms, ice-bright steel and grey-wrapped fists and back. He's not going to lie, this is the one bit of the mystical crap he's happy to use himself, but he doesn't need it if things go south. Not like Steven does.
The bat twists in Steven's fingers, the flattened face making it bounce on his shoulder, a distracting heartbeat rhythm.
"Nah, If we find anything, I'll bloody well hide behind you," he says with a weak laugh. It's a passable attempt at sounding calm, but here there's the bleedthrough between them which lets him feel just how nervous Steven really is. He half expects him to have changed his mind when he speaks again. Instead he says, hesitantly,
"So, before," and Jake just knows this is gonna be something he doesn't like again, "after I found the tunnel and the wasp-thing. I think I called Khonshu here." Yeah, definitely not something he's gonna like. Sure enough, the follow-up comes out in a rush, as if Steven thinks Jake will cut him off before he's done. Which is, to be fair, pretty tempting.
"I think it might be a good idea to call him again. Just in case, like." Goddamnit kid, why don't we install a revolving door while we're at it? "Safety in numbers an' all that."
In the scale of bad decisions over the last few days Jake's willing to admit it's not the worst Steven's come up with, but even if he doesn't understand - doesn't want to understand - how inviting the vulture for a visit to the construct in their head can possibly work, it makes him uneasy. If they call Khonshu here, really provably here, not the imaginary Khonshu stand-in Jake half expects, it makes Steven's wasp and Marc-thing that much harder for Jake to dismiss as unreal. He's accepted that something is messing with their head, but the step from 'magically induced creepy vision' to 'attempted possession through a tunnel in our head' is somehow one he's resisting.
"So how does that work?" He asks, knowing the answer is invariably going to involve magic yet again. And after the last few days, Jake's decided that the one thing he really fucking hates is magic.
The bat on Steven's shoulder continues its infuriating slow thump-thump skip.
"When I was in the tunnel," he begins.
"When you were fucking where?" Jake's voice is solid ice, and he swears that this is it, this is the omission that will make him throttle the kid. 
"I was looking for Marc!" Steven snaps back. "That was the whole bloody point of me coming here then, remember?" It's true, but Jake's damn sure that 'go look' is not the same as 'jump into something you don't understand with both fucking feet'. He sighs. At least Stevie-boy's consistent.
"Look kid," he says placatingly, "I get it. We didn't know what was going on," still don't, is the addition he swallows down, "but you need to goddamn tell me this shit so I'm not constantly two steps behind with even less of a fucking clue what's going on."
"Sorry mate," he sounds honestly contrite. "Anyway, the important bit is that when I was in the tunnel, everything seemed really far away. I must've panicked," Really Steven? Never would have guessed that one. "and all I could see was the moon at the end of the tunnel." He glances up at the unmoving sky above them. "It's hard to explain, but I reached out and pulled like we do to call the suit. It dumped me out of the tunnel, right, which is what I bloody needed at that point, but I'd somehow dragged Khonshu in at the same time. Bit of a shock, I'll tell you, finding the pigeon standing there waiting for me."
"And you want to try to do it again." Jake can't help the resignation that creeps into his voice. Because of course they fucking do. He gestures to the middle of the hall. "Go on then, call up the old bird."

Steven leans the bat against the wall, and steps to the centre of the moonwashed tiles. Then he raises his arms towards the moon that hangs unmoving in the ancient sky above them. He stands for a moment, the suddenly drops his arms and turns to look at Jake over his shoulder.

"Look, mate, why don't you give it a go?"
Jake tries, he really really does, but copying Steven's pose and trying to pull the moon from the sky just feels so goddamned silly that he can't bring himself to believe it's going to work.
"Get your miserable ass in here, you overgrown vulture," he yells in frustration, dropping his arms limply to his side. Fucking ridiculous.
"Fine." Steven sighs, turning back and raising his arms again.
Behind him Khonshu blinks into the corridor, frozen in the pose he must occupy in the real world. Unfortunately for the god, his habit of lounging against furniture and walls does him no favours here, and without whatever support he was relying upon he topples towards the tiles. Jake resolutely Does. Not. Laugh. Maybe there is a use to the rest of this spooky shit after all, doesn't look like the vulture had any choice in that. Much to Jake's disappointment, he is robbed of what would have surely been a cherished memory when the god blinks away just before he sprawls fully to the floor, rematerialising in a much more dignified manner seated on the counter of the nurse's station. He lowers the heel of his staff to the ground with an audible click.
As we thought, it appears you are able to call me into this inner space of yours. He says to Steven, carefully avoiding Jake's smirking face. Nice save you melodramatic crow, but we both know Steven just dumped you on your bony ass, Jake thinks.

"So where do we find this thing?" He asks, starting to walk down the corridor, past the desk and towards the double doors at the far end of the ward. Steven falls into step with him, bat back on his shoulder and watching each door they pass warily, as if expecting them to burst open at any second. Khonshu glides along a step or two behind, the sharp lines of his shadow a pool of black that stretches out along the white tile ahead.
"Last time?" Steven frowns. "I just walked, then it kinda showed up. Then I, uh, ran away and it just showed up again."
"Seems simple enough," Jake says as he pushes open the doors. "We walk until it shows up." He's damn sure they'll find it soon. After all, he's here with the kid, and he's beyond over how much of a trouble magnet Steven seems to be lately.

Sure enough, they don't have to walk for much longer before the corridor they're following ends in a blind wall with an unmistakable tear in the centre. White tile melts to black bubbled obsidian, but the gaping wound Steven has led him to expect has been replaced with a glittering plain of mirrored shards, all sharp edges and points. Steven stops dead, unwilling to go any closer, shifting the cricket bat uneasily from hand to hand. 
"I can't feel him at all now," he says quietly. "I could before, like he was there, right, but far away. There's nothing now if I try." He rests a hand on Jake's shoulder, eyes pleading. "The suit helped." Jake knows what he's asking, shakes his head. He can feel Steven's unease leaking into his mind, but where he'd expect a corresponding something from Marc there's less than nothing, an odd echoing gap which bounces his own exhaustion and bewilderment back to him. Steven's hand drops from his shoulder.
What you have done will not have harmed Marc. Khonshu says, as he approaches the wall. This is a barrier, nothing more. Jake follows, leaving Steven to watch anxiously from behind.
Khonshu runs his fingertips across the jagged surface, and in the silence of the mindspace Jake can hear the tiny sounds of the rough linen snagging on the tips of the fragments. The god leans closer, tilting his head this way and that as he studies the wall of glass. When he taps his staff against the surface the impact seems as loud as a gunshot. Unconsciously, Jake shifts his grip on his blades, half expecting the barrier to crumble to a spill of splinters. He feels a spike of red hot terror at the sound, but it's not his own. 
Khonshu straightens from his scrutiny of the wall and stalks over to where Steven still stands behind them.
I believe this will hold, he says. See.
He waves a hand, and the fragments of glass are outlined with glittering white light that writhes along the edges and points.
Mesmerised, Jake reaches out one hand to hover over the surface. He can feel the prickle of static under his palm, see tiny curls of light lift from the points towards his skin. As he pulls away, the curls of light follow, pulling thinner and thinner to threads that dwindle to nothing. And then, whatever the god did fades, the reflections of corridor and sky fade back, no longer washed out by the glow.
"You patched the hole in our brain with a bathroom mirror, Stevie-boy," he says, eyes still fixed on the jumble of jagged glass. "Which is too fucking weird for me to get my head around, but it sounds like Khonshu agrees nothing's getting in past it." Reluctantly he turns away, and appeals directly to him. "There's no-one here besides us, so if I promise to check the closet for monsters when we go back, will you please let us get some goddamn sleep? We're running on fumes, and you know it."
Steven's still clutching the bat like a lifeline, but eventually he nods.
"You wanna take charge?" He says. "We're at your place, after all."
He absolutely does. Real sleep, in his own apartment, even if he will have to let Layla take the bed, sounds like the best idea ever right now. 
"Sure," he says, and falls back to their body.

Steven has never seen someone leave their mindspace before, so he watches with interest as Jake gradually fades to nothingness. 
We should also return, Khonshu rumbles, regarding Steven with open curiosity. I am certain there is nothing here for you to worry about. Wondering why I was so quick to let Jake have the body after all our bickering, old bird?
The god stands from where he leans against the tile wall, clearly readying himself to shift back to his own body.
"Wait," Steven catches his bony wrist. "There's something I wanna check now Jake's gone, OK?" Khonshu looks down at where Steven's hand grips his arm, and the tilt of his skull screams of disapproval.
Something Jake would not agree to.
Steven ignores this but does release his hold on the god's wrist before he continues,
"I reckon we've got more control here than we think, right, but Jake's a bit cheesed off with all my experiments."
And you would like me to remain for moral support? The god's dismissive tone makes it clear what he thinks of that idea, but Steven's not about to let that bother him. 
"Um, yeah."
The hollow stare goes on for long enough that he thinks the god might refuse after all. Finally, he nods in agreement.
Very well, Worm.

Chapter Text

They've left the glittering shards well behind before Khonshu asks,
What do you intend to do?
Instead of an answer, Steven holds out the cricket bat to him. After a moment the god accepts it, gingerly holding it up by finger and thumb to inspect it as if it might bite him. That could be a good demonstration, Steven thinks, then reconsiders. He's not here to aggravate the old bird, no matter how tempting it is.
"Yeah, so I created that," he begins, accepting the bat back from Khonshu and returning it to his shoulder. "I did it before, right, but I thought it was a suit thing. This time, it was just me and, well, pop, cricket bat." He gives the bat a swing, not entirely sure whether he's demonstrating a square cut or imagining sending a giant insect soaring away. "If I can do that, maybe I can do something, I dunno, bigger."
Bigger. Khonshu says flatly. Bigger how?
Steven turns in a circle as they walk, outstretched hand taking in the ragged walls and glimpses of endless sand through empty windows. 
"Where do I bloody start?" He says with a laugh. "This place? It's a bit shit, innit? Can't exactly make it any worse." He tips his head back to gaze up at the long ago stars. "Might keep that sky though, we worked hard for that."
I do not think… Khonshu sounds dubious, and Steven cuts him off with a raised hand. Imagine telling myself I'd do that a few months ago, he thinks, I'd never believe it.
"Nothing like that yet," he says placatingly, "I thought we should maybe start small, see if we can open a door to a memory. A good one, mind. Did enough of the crap ones before."
That seems reasonable, the god agrees, but can that not wait until later?
"I'm not just playing silly buggers here," Steven says earnestly, "I've got to learn how this place works and soon. We're bloody well getting Marc back, and I know that's going to involve taking down our wall of mirrors at some point. I want that to go fucking badly for anything Ahti sends after us."
Khonshu's skull dips in a solemn nod.
So do you have a memory in mind?
"I thought we could kill two birds with one stone. Try it out and get you caught up on something you might not remember yourself."
Ahead, the corridor takes a sharp right turn. The change in direction means they are walking directly towards the unnaturally bright moon, and the light reflecting from the blank walls overwhelms any detail they might make out from where the corridor ends in deep shadow. They are mere feet from the dead end before Steven can see the corrugated metal door,  the hasp lock hanging open, padlock and key dangling. So far, so good.
He pauses, and leans the cricket bat next to the door.
"This should be when we summoned you, Old Bird," he says, then adds. "Either that, or the day I threatened to shop Marc to the police and you scared the ever-living shit out of me."
You were being most uncooperative at the time. Khonshu rumbles reproachfully.
"And you were being a pair of absolute bell-ends, so I reckon we're equal." 

Khonshu has to crouch to get through the door, blocking Steven's view of what lies beyond. He's barely through when he freezes, leaving Steven waiting for him to move and let him pass.
"Does it look like the right one?" He asks impatiently.
I am not sure. I believe so, however I do not recognise this, even though I am clearly present. Khonshu's skull tips in the birdlike gesture Steven has come to think of as puzzled as he looks at the memory.
Not willing to wait any longer, he squeezes past the god's angular frame and takes a step or two into the room.

Oh bollocks, Steven thinks. This might not have been the best memory to choose.

It looks strange. Kind of blurry at first glance, until he looks more carefully. Then it resolves to reveal not one blurry scene at all, but image upon image upon image overlaid, all slightly different but centred on the same two figures. Other, fainter, shadows surround them; here a mirror image of Jake frozen mid-word overlaps with Layla seated with a book open in the v of her crossed legs, elsewhere a laptop screen is a faint grey-blue glow. Jake, impossibly present, cups a hand around the frozen flame of his lighter before his face. The ghostly impression of Layla's wings a shimmer of bronze in the doorway. There's more people he doesn't recognise, interspersed with others he does. JB, the security guard from the gallery, holding his phone out as if filming; Crowley the street performer, without the familiar gold paint, caught in a gasp of disbelief; Harrow, of all people, one hand extended before him and mid question; strangers and acquaintances all somehow caught in the moment where the memory hangs, stalled. Around the shadows, the room itself flickers as his eyes track over them. The metal walls of the storage unit blink to honey-gold stone, a damp arch of brick, museum displays, a hilltop under the night sky, shadowed library shelves, an endless black void. 
And at the centre, himself and Khonshu. He's somehow unsurprised to see the god in a multiplicity of forms; after all, how many of them are images he's seen in his books and graven on artifacts? The child; the king with skin with the colour of spring; the falcon-headed man; hollow-eyed skull; all co-existing in the same place, unmistakably the same even as they are distinct. He can pick out the individual bodies even though by rights they should meld into a single cloud that is somehow Khonshu. The gauzy streamers of his wrappings halo a jumble of suits and linen, all pale luminescence in the darkness.
At his feet, Steven is the one near constant in the chaos. His position varies from sitting to kneeling to fully prostrate before the god, but he's always himself, and predominantly in the shirt-sleeves and trousers of his suit, barefoot and maskless. There's a faint suggestion of Marc's cloak and cowl from a handful of selves, bare arms and even a flicker of palm-trees and denim from one incongruous self who clearly missed the dress code.

It's overwhelming.

"Now what?" Steven whispers, "I thought it'd be like when me and Marc were in the Duat, watching things happen from the outside. This is different, innit?"
I… Khonshu begins, and the tableau explodes. Every image bursts to life at once, and the blur becomes a smear that fills the nebulous space they occupy as the images splinter into ever more variations. The indistinct figures at the outermost edge turn to little more than mist as they move and split, swirling past and through where Steven and Khonshu stand on the fringes. A chorus of voices builds steadily from a mere handful he could have followed individually to a deafening roar as the possible plays out around them. Steven claps his hands over his ears and recoils from the onslaught, his stagger landing the back of his head squarely against Khonshu's chest. He fully expects the prickly old pigeon to step away, but instead he grips Steven's upper arms, holding him upright as his legs turn to jelly, the bony fingers digging in painfully and pinning him in place. A cautious glance up reveals that the old bird's beak is tucked down against his own angular shoulder, the curve of his skull pressed against his staff where he holds it tight to his side with his arm. Steven suspects that if he had eyes, they would be squeezed shut. And it all just keeps building; the wall of sound growing ever louder even through his shielding hands, the multiplying images merging and overlapping into a brightness that forces his eyes to close then burns through his eyelids with a red glow he can't escape.

And then it stops. There's nothing. No sound, no light, no sharp pressure of skeletal fingers.

YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE. OF ALL THE POSSIBILITIES, YOU TWO ARE THE MOST TROUBLESOME. THIS IS A MOMENT YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO WITNESS FROM THE OUTSIDE.
The voice is from everywhere and nowhere. Now the glow has subsided to nothing, Steven risks opening his eyes. They hang in a void, Khonshu off to his left. He looks over to the god with wide, frightened eyes. Khonshu stares back, and Steven can see that he is gripping his staff in fingers so tight the linen wraps are pulling into strings around them.
"We thought it was a memory," Steven says, apology and explanation rolled into one. Beside him, he can see Khonshu speaking, but no sound reaches him. The god extends his hand as if explaining something, posture subservient in a way Steven would never have been able to imagine if he were not seeing it.
IT IS AND IT IS NOT. YOU WILL REMEMBER WHAT YOU NEED FROM IT WHEN IT IS REQUIRED.
There's a finality to the words that makes it clear that this place they have somehow reached is unequivocally out-of-bounds. It makes his breath catch in his throat. He's used to bloody creepy now: he can handle that, the weak knees and screaming are something he can at least try to control. Being caught in the focus of something so vast that even Khonshu is cowed by it is, quite frankly, terrifying beyond measure. It bears them no ill-will, he knows this with steely certainty, but the scale makes that seem irrelevant. His instinct is to twist away, leave this for Jake or Marc, but in this place there's nowhere for him to go.
IF YOU BOTH SURVIVE YOUR PATHS, SOONER OR LATER YOU ALWAYS END UP HERE.
"Always?" He croaks, speech near beyond him. At the periphery of his vision he can see Khonshu answer in chorus, his words lost to the void.
I CAN SHOW YOU THE ALTERNATIVES IF YOU WISH.
Steven has a strong suspicion that those 'alternatives' are going to involve a lot of bleeding out in temples for him and being ground to dust as a statue for Khonshu. Neither of those seem like something he's keen to experience, even as an observer. His voice is a barely audible squeak.
"I think we're all good taking your word for it, yeah?"
Alongside him Khonshu is shaking his head desperately, and Steven wonders if they both just received the same offer.

The dark void they hang in brightens into formless light so bright that Steven can somehow feel it shining right through him, ice cold in his bones. It fades away to reveal the dead end and storage unit door, Steven's cricket bat still leaning against the tile next to it.

"We don't ever do this again, do we Old Bird?" He says shakily, apparently talking to the cricket bat that still leans where he left it against the tiles beside the metal door. He can't quite bring himself to look at Khonshu with the memory of all that so fresh.
No. We do not. The pigeon's tone is aggrieved, and he shifts from the inner world without another word.
Even though he's pretty certain that it will have vanished the next time he enters their mindspace, Steven takes a moment to padlock the storage unit door, then, after a moment's thought, conjours an extra combination lock and snaps it into place alongside the replica of the real lock. He gives the door a quick rattle, just to be sure, before he too falls back to the real world.

"How did Steven convince Jake to talk to him the first time?" The voice is sharp, and it takes Jake a moment to place it. Layla.
"Huh?" He grunts stupidly, not having taken any sense from her words.
"How did Steven convince Jake to talk to him the first time?" She repeats herself, even sharper this time.
"What?" He says, trying desperately to make sense of the question.
Layla's eyes are narrowed, and she pulls back slightly on the tire-iron that's already poised to strike. His own damn tire-iron she must have found while they were off on their little walk. If she connects as hard as she no doubt will given that he's a completely immobile target, he's not just going to be knocked out, they're probably not going to have a head any more. He tries to bring his hands up placatingly, but of course they're still secure against the arms of the chair. If he really went for it he might be able to break the chair apart at the joints, but she's going to be quicker.
"Stop! Stop! It's me! I'm Jake, OK!" He says, fighting to get the words out in some sort of coherent order. She relaxes, fractionally, at that, but the heavy metal socket on the end of the iron still hangs high over her shoulder.
"So how?" She asks.
It takes him a second, but the answer is finally there.
"The goddamn idiot threw himself off that wobbly bridge," the words are a gasp of relief.
Beside Layla, Taweret wrings her hands together.
Do you believe him? She says anxiously.
Layla nods, and lowers her makeshift club.
"Any chance of a little help here?" He asks. "I'd rather not have to break the chair, I've had it a long time."

Layla sets to work freeing his hands. Jake hopes the knots are quick to release, as now the adrenaline is starting to drain from his system he's becoming aware of a whole raft of itches and aches he can't do anything about.

Behind her, Khonshu comes back to life as if a switch has been flipped, straightening from where he leans against the doorframe. If Jake hadn't been stuck staring directly ahead due to Layla's excellent ropework he would have missed the momentary shiver that grips the old vulture.

Taweret, he rumbles, might I have a word? and ducks into the living room.

The goddess hovers one hand over Layla's arm for moment, until Layla looks up and nods, then follows. She too ducks to get through the doorway, but as always, forgets to take into account the extra height from her headdress.

"One day she's going to do that through something that's completely solid for her." Steven observes from the mirror.

Chapter Text

Glory of fucking glories, they actually slept.

Jake wakes rested and in his own bed no less; Layla having thankfully talked him out of any idiotic display of chivalry by pointing out the numerous times they'd woken in the same bed, and that they were both, allegedly, adults who could cope with that. Exhausted adults who were not going to sleep on a too-small couch just because Jake fucking Lockley said someone should out of some misplaced sense of propriety.
Not that either of them could have, given that his living room is full of Egyptian gods, he reflects as he blearily shuffles to the bathroom. Against all odds, he'd briefly managed to forget that. Technically there's only two, plus a couple in bottles that probably shouldn't count towards the total, but in his tiny three room apartment that's already two too many. He'd thought this would be better, having this goddamn circus somewhere he's more comfortable with, but it's somehow worse.
Taweret is curled up on the couch, transfixed by some telenovela or other, while Khonshu is slumped sideways in Jake's favourite armchair, legs dangling over the arm and blocking his path to the bathroom door. It's utterly ridiculous.
"Couldn't you have disappeared off to wherever it is you lot go when you're not bugging us?" Jake grumbles. He wants a shower and clean clothes - his own clean clothes without a cheery palm tree or goddamn pineapple print in sight - and he's not in the mood for gymnastics.
The empty eye sockets peer at him over the book that hovers above one outstretched palm.
No.
He walks through Khonshu's legs. If the vulture's going to be a dick, he'll be a dick right back.

Feeling far more himself than he has in a long time, he heads to the bodega on the corner to grab breakfast, and is delighted to find it's still run by the same aging couple he remembers. He can start his day with the fortifying combination of grease and caffeine that he's tried to replicate many times but never found anywhere else. He doesn't have the faintest idea what to get for Layla; when he left she was still an unmoving lump under the comforter. As far as he can tell the woman is a walking sweet tooth, so a box of pastries seems to be the safest option.
Sadly, his luck doesn't quite hold until he's finished this breakfast of kings. He's watching with a mixture of admiration and horror just how efficiently Layla can demolish a Danish when Steven wakes up.
"Oh, mate, no," Steven groans. "Why does it always have to be bacon?" Jake washes down the bite with another slurp of coffee. "Bacon and awful table manners. You're gross, you know that, yeah?" Jake mumbles his agreement through the next bite, then scarfs down the last few mouthfuls, deliberately licking his fingers clean in the most uncivilised way he can manage when he's done. Across the table, Layla chokes on a crumb and goes a rather amusing shade of pink. 
"You with it enough to get on with planning our day out, Stevie-boy?" Jake asks, and cedes control near seamlessly. 
"Oh eurgh, I can still taste it!" Scrubbing the back of his hand against his mouth, Steven grabs for the near empty coffee and takes a huge slug, before snagging one of the pastries that has thus far survived Layla's attack on the box.

"Any particular reason we're dressed like an undertaker?" He asks as he fires up the laptop and waits for it to chug into life. Layla scoots closer so they can both see the screen, and Steven slings one arm across the back of her chair.
"Fancied not looking like goddamn wallpaper for a change," Jake shrugs from the blank screen. He dusts imaginary lint from his white shirt and straightens the rolled up sleeves. "This is smarter."
Steven ignores him.
"So," he says, as the screen finally brightens. "Last ushabti yeah? We get this, we've kept all three out of Ahti's grubby little mitts." There's a moment where he grins his sharp, feral High Priest grin and Jake has to fight the urge to step in. "Then we can pay Ahti a visit." He sounds entirely too happy at the prospect for Jake's liking. Oh hell no, kid, you'll be sitting that one out right here.
"Any ideas on who it is in the last bottle?" He asks, keen to redirect. Please let it be one who doesn't get lumped with Asshole.
"Not the foggiest, I'm afraid. The auction lot description was pretty vague." Steven pulls up the map program. "Sold to a private collector who keeps their collection at their summer home in The Hamptons, which is," he pans the map Eastwards, "right about," zooms, "here." The aerial view shows a sprawling modern mansion, right on the beach. Serious money, then. Serious security most likely.
"How do we get there?" Layla asks as she traces the route across the map with one finger. "Do we need to hire a car? It's a lot further than I was expecting."
"No," Jake says, giving Layla's shoulder a squeeze as he stands. "We don't need to hire anything. This ride will be on the house."

She's still there. His pride and joy, tucked away in the corner of the underground parking garage. On the walk from his apartment he's played through all manner of awful scenarios; vandalism and theft and tow-trucks and parking boots, but she's still there, a bit grimy but still glowing and gloriously his. He can't help running his hand along the side of her hood as he walks up. Hi Honey, I'm home.
"This is a proper New York taxi, innit?" Steven asks from the driver's door window. His eyes go wide. "Oh god, we're not going to steal it are we?"
"Did you steal the goddamn museum, Steven?" Jake snarls, frustration making him grit his teeth. Thanks for immediately assuming the worst, Stevie-boy.
"Ah… wha… uh?" The kid's a goldfish again, mouth flapping hopelessly. "Museum?"
"Big. Full of old junk. Pays you to sit on your ass and yak on about the old junk," he leans close to the window, says slowly, "your job."
"No. Why would," Jake can see the moment realisation hits. "Oh."
"Yeah, oh," he says, turning away to check the tires. 
"How do you own a taxi in New York?"
"Job, kid. Think about it." Of course it's not quite that simple, and involves a complex web of obligations that keeps his taxi and apartment quietly in his name despite him quite literally disappearing for long periods of time. That, and the rise of Internet banking. But chewing over all of that can wait until after they rescue the bossman.
He pops the locks with the keyfob, pleased to see the battery's still good, and unlatches the hood.
"There was a while where I had a life too, ya know." He says contemplatively to the engine compartment. That shuts the little shit right up. For a moment at least, but Steven always wants to know the why and the how, so he bounces right back with more of his endless damned questions.
"When? Where does that fit?"
He's gonna have to answer. He's backed himself into that corner by coming here. By not doing the easy thing and being a tourist in his own city, keeping up the illusion that he never really was until recently. He checks the oil and water methodically before answering.
"When Marc was on leave. He didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do, so I just kinda took over." And let's not get into why that was necessary to start with. "It was just a bit here, a bit there at first, but then he started getting deployed to the really heavy shit and that came with extended leave he couldn't handle. Once he went freelance there was even more downtime, and I handled that too. But then, what with the vulture and Layla, I ended up getting squeezed out." He punctuates this with a slam of the hood, and doesn't elaborate any further, the memory of being gradually eclipsed isn't one he wants to relive. There had been no cosy parallel dreamworld for Jake, just a gradual stripping of self back to the essentials until all that remained was the rage at the injustice of it all and the urge to protect at any cost. Until Khonshu had pulled him back to the surface to serve as his knight where Marc couldn't. He refuses to consider whether the vulture unknowingly did him a favour there.
He slots himself behind the wheel of the cab, settling into the familiar seat. 
"Uh, Jake?" Steven is wringing his hands in the side mirror. "How much of this does Marc know?"
"He doesn't, kid." It's a flat cut-off. Apparently the slamming hood wasn't a clear enough hint. This is not the goddamn time.
He thinks he remembers parking up so long ago; if he's right, then - c'mon, Honey, please - he reaches across to the glovebox, and gropes around blindly. Wins the state fucking lottery.
He unwraps the bundle, shoved there when he last left her here. His gun, folded inside the rough cloth of his favourite hat, and, thank any-god-but-Khonshu, a half full carton of cigarettes. It's going to be sawdust from sitting in the glovebox for who knows how long, but between planes and hotels and acts-of-Steven he's been dying for a cigarette for what feels like a lifetime. At this point he's not going to be choosy.
Steven clearly can't decide which of the three options to get in a flap about, so settles on all of them. At least it distracts him from the thorny topic of the past.
"You keep a gun in your car?" Steven's disapproval is clear as he continues, "that's a bloody ugly hat," and finally "you can't smoke here, it's a taxi!" as Jake checks the weapon carefully, and tucks it into the concealed niche in the driver's door. Last resort only, until he can give it a proper once-over; it's gone a while with no maintenance and he doesn't want to lose a goddamn hand, no matter how well the suit patches them back together.
"My ugly hat looks better than this mop you insist on growing," he observes, settling it in place. It smells a bit of oil from the gun and aging tobacco, but it'll keep that floppy mess out of his eyes for once.
He meets Steven's eyes in the rearview mirror as he flips open the cigarette carton, selects one and fishes out the lighter he's eternally grateful his former self had stowed there. Deliberately tucking the cigarette into the seam of his lips and thumbing the lighter, he dares Steven to object. Oh ho kid, you really don't get to judge me for this any more. The powder dry tobacco catches, and he realises that sawdust may have been optimistic. He's not even sure it counts as a cigarette any more, but he smokes it anyway.
In the rearview mirror, Steven blinks in confusion.
"I remember this. Seeing you driving." His voice wobbles. "You drove me to the airport. How did you drive me to the bloody airport?" 
Oh shit, shoulda thought of that. He shakes his head.
"Not the time, Stevie-boy," he says. "That's one for after we've gotten the Bossman back. Let's go get Layla before she murders the vulture." He checks the mirrors. Moment of truth.
"C'mon Baby, you gonna start for me?" He coaxes. Turns the key. The engine coughs, stutters, dies. "C'mon beautiful," he pleads, trying again.
The car roars into life. I've missed you, Honey. You're so much better than any of those dinky electric toys Steven kept renting.
Jake smiles and drops her into gear. Home.

He pulls over outside the apartment block, where Layla is waiting with their holdall of gods-in-bottles and flanked by the less conveniently portable pair they're stuck with. She hops in the back and slides across, bag on her lap. And then, to his surprise, Taweret ducks through the roof and sits beside her. He can't help noticing her headdress doesn't quite fit. Nuh huh. Not thinking about how that one works. The door slams shut behind her. Which leaves… oh, goddamnit, no…
Khonshu folds himself into the passenger seat, all knees and elbows and disgruntled dignity.
"Khonshu, seatbelt!" Steven prompts.
The skull head turns, almost poking Jake in the ear. Very slowly, the god draws the seatbelt across his body and clicks it into place, before turning back to face the windshield.
"Thank you."
The cab pulls smoothly out into the flow of vehicles, but hits a snag at the next intersection. Jake tries to check the street to the right, but there's a goddamn god of the Moon in the way. He cannot believe his life has come to this.
"Khonshu," he says levelly, "do you know how to move the seat back?"
No.
Of course not. Mortal stuff, right.
"Could you kinda… go… for a moment, I can't see a goddamn thing with you in the way."
Everything shivers, and Jake's glad the light's still red as the figure in the passenger seat shrinks impossibly down.
"Is this more suitable?" The vulture's still ridiculously tall and pale as bone, but on a human scale now. Still got a goddamn beak on him, though, Jake observes from the corner of his eye. He lifts his hand from the gearshift to poke the shoulder of the grey-suited body. It gives slightly, like normal flesh, not the dessicated husk he always assumed Khonshu to be. 
"Have you been able to do this all along?" He asks.
"No," Khonshu says, "I have been practicing. It seemed like it might become necessary. It is not…" He searches for a word. "…comfortable to exist in this form."
"Why?" Steven asks, but Khonshu doesn't reply.
The light changes, and Jake accelerates away.
"Oh, that's interesting," Steven muses. "I don't think he can hear me when he's like this."
"Lucky guy," mutters Jake. Aloud he asks, "Steven wants to know why."
"Circumstances have changed." Still an unnecessarily cryptic old vulture, though.
Oh! That looks like it could be fun! Taweret giggles. I shall have to try it myself.
"I do not think our kin would approve." Khonshu warns. 
Well fiddlesticks to them then! If they're going to hide themselves away, why should we worry what they'd think? She says cheerfully. I think I shall look like this.
Jake's view behind the car suddenly improves as Taweret implodes down into her seat. She's so tiny he can't see much beyond the top of her head and her eyes in the mirror, which seem startlingly unchanged.
"I see what you mean. It's so terribly difficult to fold yourself down to three dimensions, isn't it? It does rather pinch in places." Taweret's voice is unchanged, but it's strange to hear it anchored to a single spot.
There's a ripple like a soap bubble expanding through the car and bursting, and Taweret pops back to her usual form.
That was most odd. I must practice too. In the mirror, Jake can see her crinkling her face in concentration. Oh hell no.
"Can everyone stay the same damn shape for five minutes, I'm tryna drive here," he says testily. The city is a hectic as ever, and half the drivers aren't fit to drive a damn go-cart. The last thing he needs is the two of them bouncing between shapes like a pair of demented flip-books.
"Very well," Khonshu concedes. "You must concentrate. We are very close to the car in front." Bony fingers grip the side of the seat in a hold that makes the leather of the seat cover groan.

The taxi merges with the flow of traffic Eastwards out of the city. Some time later, it veers suddenly across the stream of cars and pulls to a stop.
"Khonshu, out," Jake barks. "Layla, you're up front. My cab has a new rule. All gods travel in the back from now on." He pauses. "And they keep their goddamned driving advice to themselves."

Tucked in a corner of the cluttered room, the tiny replica of New York City looks like a spun glass ornament as ethereal as mist. The vast majority of the time it hangs, unchanging, within the sphere that contains it. Now, it is spotted with tiny starpoints of silver and spring green that trace a trail that starts with a tiny overlapping cluster of points dimmed almost to nothing somewhere in Brooklyn and zigzags across the city, growing brighter as it goes. A new starpoint, this one a vivid green and marginally brighter than the last, blooms and immediately starts to dim. The sound of a wet finger on a wineglass that started as the faintest of hums when the first sparks kindled grows almost imperceptibly louder.
The last time this room saw light, it was a flare like a supernova from one corner that had filled the space with a red glow and a howl of tortured glass. It's a gloomy, dusty space where forgotten things have been stored for decades, now lit by a golden glow in the palm of a hand. Another tchotchke from the horde is lifted to an ear and discarded.
 "What is making that noise?"

Chapter Text

Steven's getting used to being woken by insistent summons from Jake. 
"Steven," he nags. "Wake up kid, we're there." 
He struggles to shake free of sleep, that not quite restful fog that comes with dozing off when you aren’t truly tired. The jumbled shreds of a dream still cling; vague impressions of Jake with Khonshu’s staff and Khonshu with Jake’s hat, nonsense fragments that he forgets almost as quickly as they surface.   
The boom and hiss of the ocean greet him as he tunes back in. They’re parked tight up against a clump of stunted trees, crooked and bent from the prevailing winds and creating a sheltered cave that shields the car from view. Jake perches on the bonnet, the glow from his cigarette a bright spot against the twilight. They’re alone, no sign of Layla or either of the gods.
“Might not be as easy as we thought,” Jake says to the night in general, and gestures with the ember towards the far end of the beach. Light spills out from the floor to ceiling glass panels of the mansion and across the sand to glitter beyond the surf.
An' isn't that just the story of our bleedin' lives, Steven thinks, and pushes to share the body. Jake doesn't push back, and for the first time it comes easily; the give and take as fluid as with Marc.
“Security a bit tight?” he asks, fishing his glasses from Jake's top pocket and peering into the night, before dropping back as Jake takes a long drag on his cigarette.
 “Not exactly,” Jake sighs, “the guy’s throwing a party. Lamborghinis and Porsches far as the eye can see. Lotta rich fucks living it up." He stubs out his cigarette. "Layla went to take a closer look. We get to babysit the bottles," he nudges the bag at their feet with a toe, "because 'I would be distracted by the cars'." It's a passable impression of Khonshu.
"Distracted by cars?" Steven asks. That's skirting shockingly close to personal from Jake.
It happened once. Some dumbfuck went past in the most beautiful Bugatti, and the way the moron was driving was gonna destroy the goddamn engine." He shrugs. "I mighta let the guy Khonshu had me after get away while I was yelling at the the driver." 
You did, Khonshu agrees from the shadows, it was most careless of you.
Jake makes a noise that clearly expresses how little he cares.
"Caught him later. And the way that asshole was treating that engine was as much of a crime against the travellers of the night as some two-bit mugger."
Layla joins them, followed by Taweret, who seems mesmerised by the ocean.
"The place is packed," Layla confirms. "It's some kind of charity do they're hosting in the gallery."
“We're not gonna to be able to break in, are we?” Steven groans, dropping his head into his hands. He knows where this is going. 
“No,” Layla continues, inevitably. “But we won't need to. We're going to walk in through the front door. They're not even checking for invitations.” Well, whoop-de-fucking-do.
"That worked so well before," says Steven, muffled through his fingers, "I seem to recall that last time we tried that there were spears.” 
"I doubt the security this guy employs use spears, Stevie-boy." Jake observes, straightening from Steven’s defeated slump. "They're way more likely to have guns." 
"Mate, that's not any better."
"What are we going to do with this pair?" Jake pokes the bag with his foot.
Taweret tuts in disapproval and pops down to her human disguise. Glaring up at Jake she scoops up the holdall with the two ushabti.
“I’ll stay,” she offers. “I’m sure I wouldn’t be much help there, but I can watch over these two.”

Walking into the party proves as easy as Layla predicted. They wander in behind a loud group returning from the garden, and are accosted by a pair of waiters bearing trays of champagne. Layla snags a pair of flutes with murmured thanks, and hands one to Steven. Thus camouflaged, they follow the flow of people being directed towards the gallery. They're still strolling along a long art lined hall when Khonshu raises one hand and stops, head tilted as if listening intently.
Wait. There is something… he pauses. You must find the ushabti. I will rejoin you there. He stalks away the way they came, tension clear in every step.
"Because that's not theatrically ominous," Steven laughs weakly, rolling his eyes. It doesn't help.

The gallery is easily a third of the vast building, soaring to the full three storey height. And it is instantly, enormously infuriating. Everywhere Steven looks are artifacts that belong elsewhere. There's no rhyme or reason to the display, a mishmash of eras and cultures and locations; a collection gathered by a magpie for value and aesthetic alone.
Layla grinds her teeth, staring furiously at a cabinet of gloriously painted birth bricks. On each, Taweret stands guard in bright splendor.
"These should not be here," she growls. Jake pushes Steven aside.
"Mission, remember," he says, meeting her eyes in her reflection, "this can wait."
Behind them, Khonshu’s skull looms into view.
Ahti's drones are here, he rumbles, it was their arrival that I felt. He turns to watch the door intently.
"I bloody said so," Steven whispers, tangling his fingers into his hair. "I bloody did! Fucking spears!" He looks around. "Fucking spears and a crowd of slightly drunk," a voice raises in a braying laugh, "sorry, very drunk, New York bankers."
Layla takes his arm and half drags him towards the door. As soon as they're out of view of the guests, her wings shiver into place.
"Jake, mate, you thing or a me thing?" Steven asks, following her lead, smoothing cuffs and lapels as his own suit whirls into being.
"Still you for now, too many bystanders for me, kid." Jake says.
"I'll stay here," Layla says, "you get those people away and come back when they're gone." She gives her blades a couple of gentle swings.
I will remain with Layla, Khonshu intones, moving to stand beside her. There may be some way I can assist.

Righty-o, get people away. Where to start?
He glances round the gallery, and spots that at the far end is a raised platform topped with a table supporting a pair of extravagant ice sculptures. That table has to be pretty strong, he thinks. That'll do.
Hurrying past the displays, he makes his way and over to the table. Above him, two icy replicas of the Venus di Milo flank a box labelled 'donations', he moves it carefully to the floor and clambers onto the table between the the sculptures. A few faces are already turned towards him, but it's only a very few; he needs to get the attention of the rest as fast as possible.
Alongside, the Greek Goddess glitters under the spotlights of the gallery.
"Do it, kid," Jake urges, "you know you're dying to."
Steven reaches out. Pushes. The statue tumbles to the marble floor, smashing into a million tiny flecks of ice.
As one, the crowd of party-goers turn to look at him.  
"Um, hi," he says, and gives a half-hearted wave.
"Did you think any further than getting their attention kid?" Jake asks from the glistening surface of the remaining ice sculpture.
"No," he whispers, smoothing the cuffs of the suit with awkward fingers, "wasn't really thinking at all." Oh god. The sea of expectant faces is still turned to him. He can see the glitter of camera lenses peppered amongst them. Oh bugger, he thinks, it's going to be the bloody bus video all over again.
"Yeah, so hello," he repeats, with another wave, "my name's S—" and cuts off with a pained hiss as Jake slams their mouth closed. Over in the doorway, he can see Layla shaking her head.
"Steven!" Jake says tightly, "don't!" Oh yeah, gotta stop doing that.
"Mister Knight," he continues, forcing his arms out, palms to the crowd in an open, placating gesture. "Ever so sorry to interrupt such a posh evening, but there's some dead dodgy people on their way, right, and you might wanna," he swallows, seeing Layla shifting stance in the doorway, bronze swords glittering under the spotlights, "um, head outside. Nice and calm, like." He looks over his shoulder, realising too late that the only way out of the gallery is the doorway Layla is defending. Where Ahti's drones will be arriving at any moment. The glass walls are just that, solid panes unbroken by doors. It makes for one hell of a view out to the ocean, but is absolutely fucking useless for getting people out in a hurry. He can see heads turning at the edge of the crowd, feel their attention slipping as they start to search for an exit.
"Steven!" Jake's alarm is clear, "break the goddamn glass."
"Just a sec," he says, voice uncomfortably high and too loud in the expectant hush. With a flourish, his batons are in his hands and he leaps from the table, trying for as much momentum as he can muster. The enchanted metal strikes hard, and the window shivers with a deafening crash that startles a handful of shouts from the onlookers. Steven rebounds and lands heavily on his arse, sliding back towards the display table. Well, shit.
From behind the crowd, a heavy stone object - probably that fragment of a Mayan stele from the temple of the goddess Ixchel, Isla Mujeres, Steven thinks - arcs up and over to slam into the glass with a crash, before dropping to the marble tiles rather too close for comfort. It's a magnificent throw, but again the window rattles and stays in place. That's the last straw for the party guests, and they break into screams and shouts. 
"What are these goddamn windows made of?" Jake spits from the glass as Steven scrambles back to his feet.
"Dunno mate," he says as he approaches the window. Close up, it seems monolithic. "But they're not bloody budging."
Through the panic of the guests, he can hear the clang of Layla's sword catching against something; they're out of time.
"Jake, I'm gonna try something," Steven says stripping off his gloves, heart racing. He places his palms flat on the pane. "Don't freak out, OK? I know you don't like this kind of shit."
"Huh?" Jake sounds confused, his reflected face inches from Steven's own. "What ya thinki… oh, no, kid." He flickers and shimmers until the reflection is Steven's alone. "Khonshu," he bellows, "Get your bony ass over here before the kid does something dumb!"
Steven scans the reflected chaos of the gallery, but there's no sign of Khonshu anywhere. It's this or giving up, gotta get these people away. He closes his eyes, forcing his breathing to slow and pushing away everything but himself and the window. The shouts become distant, the clatter of Layla's wings and blades fades to nothing. Even Jake is swept aside, a dwindling voice, "…are you sure, can't we try…", his heart rate steadies until finally he can feel the twists and curls of the magic as it flows through him. He tangles the strands in his fingers, ravelling it up until it is gathered in his palms, tingling and stinging like he has plunged his hands into icewater. 
This needs to not be here, he thinks, hands gliding across the slick surface, as high as he can reach. The hiss from where his hands pass is barely audible, but he can feel the surface changing under his fingertips.
He steps back, and watches as the glass trickles down as a rain of sand. The borderline spreads out from where he touched, eating away at the window and allowing the cool night breeze to fill the gallery. 
People flow out past him, parting around him like he's a rock. The first few have to step over the dwindling strip of glass at the bottom of the window and pass through the falling curtain of sand as the margin inches ever upwards. Very few even pause, the sound of Layla's swords enough to override any concerns. Layla. Fuck.
The world rushes back.
He doesn't even need to push through the crowd that's trying to scramble for the disintegating window, they make way for him automatically. It's unnerving and he can't quite tell if it's from respect or fear; he's not quite comfortable with either. He bursts from the mass of bodies, batons springing to his hands as he does.
The cultists have gained ground, their relentless, mechanical advance driving Layla back into the gallery proper. 
"Jake?" Steven says as he barrels into the first cultist he can reach, "wanna switch in?" He slides in under a spear that was brought to bear a moment too slow and flicks his baton up in a strike to the extended wrist. The spear clatters to the floor, leaving his opponent unarmed. A kick sends the weapon skidding across the marble and out of reach, while a blow from his off-hand knocks the drone tumbling into the nearest display stand. 
"Let the rest of that rabble get out first," Jake doesn't sound pissed off, which is something of a relief.
Another spear is knocked aside, leaving him inside the next drone's reach. Blank eyes meet his own, above teeth bared in a silent snarl. 
"How about we take five to talk this through?" Steven suggests chirpily, but there's not even a flicker of sentience there. "Didn't think so. Shame." A kick sends the husk staggering backwards, knocking two of its fellows to the ground. He can hear the babbling, scrambling press behind, still not completely clear. Get a bloody move on, he thinks, I made a door. Use it, for crying out loud.
On to the next. One step closer to Layla.
"I have," he points out, grabbing the probing spear with his off-hand, "had it," twists and pulls, "up to," uses the butt end of the spear to clout a second attacker around the ear, "here with," drops the spear, "fucking," grabs the disarmed cultist by his stupid robes, "spear-wielding," and slams him into the nearest display, rattling the collection of Sumerian clay tablets within, "zombies." And those belong in a bloody museum.
"So you admit they're zombies now, Stevie-boy?" Jake says archly, smirking from the glass beside the cultist.
"Bugger off, Jake," he grinds out as the blank-faced man he has pinned in place grapples at his arms. A flicker of movement in the glass alerts him to an new attack; he spins, carrying the cultist with him, bringing the man across to intercept the spearthrust aimed at his heart. "Sorry," he mouths, as he shoves the body further onto the spear, leaving the attacker off balance from the sudden dead weight. 
"Think they're all out yet, kid?" Jake asks. The room is eerily quiet now, just the sounds of their exertion and the ring of their weapons break the silence. 
"Should be," Steven gasps. "Your turn?" 
"My turn," Jake agrees, as pristine white fades to utilitarian grey. He flexes his hands and his knives spring into being. Steven falls back to observe from the glass of the multitude of display cases.
He has to admit, Layla and Jake work together in concert in a way he doubts he or Marc could ever manage. Jake's ruthlessness and Layla's speed combine to make them unstoppable. As soon as they are close enough to act as a team, the tide is turned, cultists falling before them in a horrible, compelling wave. Bronze wings and blades whirl in a complex dance with the silver flash of Jake's knives. He knows Marc lets himself be too protective of Layla, too focused on her safety to fully apply himself, while his own unpredictable ping from place to place is not exactly easy to work with. This, on the other hand, makes both of them even more deadly.
No longer fully focused on the crowd or dodging spears, he's finally able to try and see where the Old Bird has got to. He doesn't dare call out for him, for fear of distracting Jake. But there's no sign of the spindly git anywhere.
And then the remaining cultists are suddenly in retreat, and he's suddenly back in the body as Jake swings them across. It's so disorienting he staggers and has to catch himself against Layla. 
"Sorry kid," Jake gasps, "had to. I would have gone after them."
Steven banishes his mask and turns to check on Layla.
"You ok, Love?" He asks, taking her hands. She nods.
"Is Jake? He went so suddenly." 
"Fine. Wasn't going to stop if he didn't step back." He turns to survey the mess. "Let's get the bloody ushabti and go."

The pedestal is empty. Steven drops to hands and knees, frantically searching the floor around it, finding nothing but blood and bodies and discarded spears. Shit, shit, shit.
"It's gone," he starts crawling in a widening spiral around the empty display. "They nicked it and ran while you were still fighting them." He slams a fist against the tiled floor.
Layla helps him to his feet, and together they leave across the pile of sand that had once been a window. Outside, he lets the white suit swirl away, leaving him in Jake's shirt and jacket. Alongside, Layla does the same, and they leave the property as just two more panicked people amongst the herd fleeing from the abandoned party. They don't speak until they're back at the car. After all, what is there to say?
Khonshu is waiting for them, leaning against the back door of the cab, idly twisting his staff to and fro.
"Well that went well." Steven groans as he sags with despair, hands braced on his knees. "I mean, we're alive, and so are all those guests, but Ahti's goons got the ushabti and we have no idea who it was they got. Bit of a bloody disaster, really." He hasn’t even touched on Khonshu’s disappearing act. If that bloody pigeon says one word…
Not entirely, Khonshu says. While you had everyone's attention I seized the opportunity that arose. He steps away from the car. Inside, Taweret, in her mortal disguise, cradles the third ushabti; a squat figure of coarse pale reddish sandstone that stands out in contrast to the goddess’ trembling hands. She holds it up to the window with a watery smile.
"Ugly little fucker, isn't he?"
Jake's not wrong. This ushabti, assuming that Khonshu has grabbed the right sculpture from the gallery, is very different from the elegantly proportioned statues of the other gods. It stands about half the height of the others, and twice as broad, with a grotesque face.
Steven looks from Taweret's shining eyes to the ushabti, and shares a glance with Layla. 
"Oh," he says.

Chapter Text

"Am I boring you, Colonel Spector?"

Marc looks up from where he's fishing something unidentifiable from his mug. He should know better than to trust the canteen coffee by now.

"No, Sir," he says, tipping his chair forward onto four legs and returning the mug to the table with a sharp click. He leans on the table, and steeples his fingers in front of him. "I'm all ears."

"If Doctor Grant would like to explain," General Hammond says, by way of introduction.

Marc's pretty sure that Doctor Grant will be delighted to explain. He looks across the conference table, and yes, Steven has folders. They could be here a while. Internally, he debates whether the foreign object in his coffee is significant enough for him to excuse himself for a trip to the infirmary. It probably isn't. Damn.

There's the expected amount of fumbling, dropping things, hunting for glasses and failing to get the projector to work that precedes any briefing from Steven. In the meantime, Marc considers his coffee mug once more, and decides that any damage from what ever it was that polluted it earlier is already done and he might as well finish it. God knows he needs the caffeine.

"So," Steven begins, gesturing to the map displayed on the projector with the folder he's still clutching. "P3G 616 is under the control of one of the Tok'ra's infiltrators among the System Lords, Khonshu. The planet has some Ancient ruins that he agreed to let one of our archaeology teams investigate. They'd only been there for a few days when something cut off all communication..."

Marc doesn't zone out. Much. But he's well aware that Steven's briefing will include details of not just the situation on the ground but copious background that will go right over Marc's head. He's got the jist already; missing archaeologists on a planet ruled by one of their some-time allies the Tok'ra, masquerading as one of their full-time enemies, the Goa'uld System Lords. It's pretty self-evident what they're going to have to do, and he doesn't need to know what the archaeologists were looking for to work it out. He does however study the map carefully as Steven rambles; getting a feel for the lie of the land, so to speak.

"Major El-Faouly, what have you been able to find out from Taweret?" The General's question brings him back to the briefing. What their one reliable contact within their secretive collaborators has to say may shed more light on what's happened. Or not, who knows how much they'll bother to share this time.

"Not much, Sir," she says, and Marc can't help the "typical" that just sorta slips out under his breath. Layla gives him a flat look, before continuing, "Just that Khonshu dropped out of communication with the Tok'ra a few days ago, around the same time the dig site did." Well doesn't that bode well. "She did say that Khonshu can be... difficult at the best of times, so hearing nothing from him isn't all that unusual."

Marc can only imagine what it might take to be classified as 'difficult' by a race that has elevated bloody-mindedness to an artform.

Of course, the disappearance of the archaeology team's host is going to be a complication they don't need. Chiefly because there's one person at this table who is going to take that disappearance personally.

The General fixes his stare on the final member of Marc's team.

"I want to be absolutely clear here; this is a rescue mission for our dig team. There are to be no diversions from that objective. Understood?"

The glare he gets in return is mulish, but eventually Jake gives a curt nod.

The latest addition to Marc's team doesn't talk much, but he's deadly effective. Marc hasn't entirely decided whether or not he completely trusts him or not. Jake was until recently the Avatar of Khonshu, right hand to the 'god', loaned to them for the knowledge of Goa'uld tactics he can share. He'll certainly know the territory, but as he's less than pleased about being passed around like a library book, there's a chance his priorities may be... divided.

"There's one more thing," Steven interjects. "The last communication from the dig site was to thank us for sending out SG-21 for support." he coughs nervously. "SG-21 have been on P3X-984 for the last two weeks."

Marc's stomach sinks. SG-21 is one of the most junior teams they have, and they have been bottom of the queue for assignments for a while now. Site security, equipment deliveries, all that jazz. Standard shake-down-the-new-blood stuff. It's easy to forget, but they're not the first team to hold that designation. It was put on ice for a while after the original team went rogue.

The team lead by his former CO. Colonel Raoul Bushman.

Chapter Text

It's boring, the drive back. Steven can't co-front because Jake's driving and Jake is selective about what he chooses to pass on, so it's a very quiet journey. All he can do is observe, and the quiet roads and darkness mean there's not much to see. Occasionally he thinks he catches sight of people or signs alongside the road in the gloom, but most of the time they prove to be nothing more than low bushes caught in the glow of the headlights. At least it breaks up the monotony.

Once they're back parked up in the garage, Jake suddenly turns in his seat and adresses the two currently corporeal gods in the back of the cab.

"So let me get this straight," he says, "Ugly Mug here is Taweret's husband, who was left to wrangle a bunch of demons. And some bright spark decided to stick him in a bottle despite him being the only one keeping them under control."

"Sounds about right for that bunch, mate," Steven says, surprised, "remember how blind they were about Ammit. Convinced they knew best without even bloody listening." Looks like Jake's been thinking things through too, he thinks. I wonder what he's spotted that I've missed.

" That would be an accurate summary," Khonshu confirms.

"And that's why you were willing to break the rules, and help us free Khonshu," Layla says, twisting in her seat to pat Taweret comfortingly on the knee.

"Yes," hiccups the goddess, once again on the edge of tears. "Khonshu may be a bit of a grumpy guts, but I couldn't bear to see another of my kin sealed away for caring."

Jake looks sceptical but doesn't say a word. Steven suspects his headmate's not entirely convinced 'caring' is quite what Khonshu does. Interfering, maybe.

"Bes is who I hoped to find. Because I owed it to Tawaret for her assistance, and because he was imprisoned for the same reason as I," Khonshu looks grave. Steven can't help but wonder how come the god has such a full set of human expressions if he's only been practicing this for a short while. Do they come built in with the body? Did he practice? His wandering thoughts are brought back into line when Jake says archly,

"Being a pain in the ass?" 

"No. For being too involved with you humans. He thought withdrawing was foolish." Khonshu falls silent for a time. "He told them as much to their faces and paid the price."

Steven's pretty sure he's never heard of anyone so unable to take criticism. Suggest sticking their heads in the sand might be a bit foolish? Instant banishment or imprisonment. Clearly the actions of a rational Council. Which reminds him,

"Ask him about Thoth," he prompts.

"How about Pointy there?" Jake says, nodding towards the holdall on the seat between the gods. 

"I was already banished by then. I do not know why he was sealed away. It is unexpected as I cannot believe he would have defied them." Khonshu sounds dismissive.

"Khonshu!" Taweret chides the other god. "Now that's not very fair is it? I know the two of you don't always get on, but Thoth is such a sweetheart."

"It matters not," the god huffs, "the past is irrelevant. Once we have retrieved Marc, we must release them. They are potential allies."

"Won't that piss off those Ennead assholes?" Jake's not pulling any punches tonight.

Khonshu considers this for a time, exchanging a look with Taweret that seems uncannily as if he's asking for her approval before he speaks. He sounds bone weary when he does.

"We have learned that the Ennead have chosen to withdraw completely from this realm. We are all that remain."

Well, that's reassuring.

As Jake goes to slam the door, Steven catches a flicker of reflection as if from a crack in the window glass. 

"Jake!" He yelps in warning, but not quick enough to prevent the door from closing. He's expecting the window to implode as it shuts, a spill of crystalline lumps across the seats, but the door clicks into place, glass is undamaged. A trick of the flickering fluorescent lighting and complex ducting on the ceiling of the garage then. "Sorry," he says from the smooth pane, "just being a div, ignore me." 

The feeling of something caught at the corner of his eye doesn't go away though, and he's jumping at ghosts for the whole walk up to street level.

The ripping pain in their head strikes out of the blue.

"Fuck," wheezes Jake, stumbling to a stop, hands clutching at their splitting skull, "you feel that, kid?"

"Yeah," Steven agrees weakly, struggling with the bout of nausea that follows in the wake of the now waning lightning-bolt headache. "I think we have a problem." 

Jake leans against the parking garage barrier, gulping down great gasping breaths of air.

"Go, kid," he says, as Layla and Taweret both rush to support him, "it's gotta be Ahti taking another shot at us."

Steven's fall into the mindspace is more controlled now. Tumbledown walls and boundless sky swing cleanly into place, one reality overtaking the other in a smooth sweep; he is at the centre of a sphere flipped by some unknowable hand, New York pulled away below, the ruined hospital spinning over and down to replace it. There's a moment of vertigo that forces Steven to take a staggering step backward before everything stabilises, leaving him at the centre of a broad white expanse of floor. He's where he needs to be without the aimless wandering; before him, the patchwork of jagged mirror shards juts like a fang from bubbled black stone. The maw of the tunnel has receded from around it, a spreading blight on white tile; rotting gums pulling back to expose a tooth. The creeping advance of the decayed stone is clear evidence that they're under attack again, the distant hum from the depths an ominous warning of what's to come if he doesn't act quickly. Feet placed uncertainly on buckled ceramic, feeling through his soles where ridges of lava have oozed through gaps and solidified, he crosses the apron of corrupted floor to stand before the inadequate patch. The tunnel is cavernous and echoing now, and he can feel the oiled-glass numbing effect of the drone of wings starting to grow stronger.

He reaches out to touch one glossy shard of the mirror barrier, feeling the cold burn of magic under his fingertip as sharp as the glass itself. The patch is still as stable as before, but needs to be bigger, to grow to fill the wound in their mind. As soon as he thinks it, the magic is being pulled through him and into the jumbled aggregation. Around the edge of the spike of glass new fragments form, multiplying and spreading in fractal curls that form a web, bridging the gap to meld with black stone. Further branches sprout, spiralling into the spaces between the curls, frost ferns on a window. The buzz dulls, growing weaker as the elegant whorls meet and merge. And there, briefly, on the edge of his perception, is Marc. Faint, a fleeting tickle of awareness that closes off abruptly as the geometric growth of the mirror wall slows to a stop. Shut down before Steven can get more than the vaguest impression. 

Not giving himself a moment to reconsider, his hand slams into the centre of the jagged surface, shards biting deep into his palm. He pushes, and there's a stomach churning moment of pain where he feels the fragments resist, then shift and move aside. In the cracks between the individual slivers of glass a mesh of red seeps outward, irregular at first as it meanders through the disordered mass of splinters, then blossoming into even sweeps through the new growth. Each thread is accompanied by a white hot filament of sensation unfurling along their path. The silver-white-crystal-crimson pulses in a kaleidoscopic swirl as Steven's head swims. I didn't call the suit first. Oh bloody hell, I've committed all the magic and I don't have the suit and my hand is shredded and...

...I don't need the suit here. This is not real. I can control it.

The world settles. Steven's hand is ice-water as he draws back some of the tendrils, setting them to  lacing around and through his hand, reknitting the phantom flesh. The pain subsides, and he's able to refocus the path of the rest of the threads of magic, weaving them into a single questing ribbon that winds out down the tunnel. 

As before, Marc is a glossy self-contained ball of thought, impossibly distant. Steven pushes the blindly seeking thread further, stretching it thinner and thinner; past the point of no return that caught him before, on through an endless unreal space that is simultaneously vast and nothing at all. As he does, a crystalline shell of glittering mirror flecks writhes its way up his arm, an unconscious attempt to hold himself in place as the magic pulls out to barely more than a hair's breadth. It spreads to elbow, shoulder, neck; armour and prison in one.

Contact with the marble that is Marc comes as a shock. The tenuous wisp of magic coils and slides against the surface, probing. There's a jolt, a whole-body sensation akin to foil against a filling, and the tendril catches. 

Marc is right there. With an agonising stretch Steven is doubled, simultaneously pulled into Marc's self-contained reality and anchored within his own in the mindspace. It's too much; unable to cope with the conflicting inputs his mind shuts down the one source he can control, leaving him hanging like a fly in amber, eyes rolling back in a mimicry of the glowing white of the suit. 

***

Jake's left with a profound feeling of what now? What the hell are you supposed do while someone fights a battle in your mind? Sitting and waiting seems pointless, but equally, doing anything normal seems plain weird. Hey guys, let's go grab a beer while Steven dukes it out with the magical brain wasps. Don't worry if I keel over or start buzzing at you, it just means the kid lost. Not really gonna work.

Last time they'd been in this position he'd been busy trying to keep their physical body alive, so what now hadn't even entered his head. This time everything around them seems so normal; no crazed zombie cultists, just a familiar street still crowded even at this time of night, shopfronts and bars spilling light and customers onto the sidewalk. If it weren't for the fact he trusts Steven to know when something's not right in the mindspace, he'd never even know something was wrong. He could almost be back before, when gods and wives and fucking magic didn't feature in his life, and the worst he had to face was speedily putting things on hold when Marc's phone flashed up a message from that asshole Bushman. 

Or getting caught off-guard by the goddamn Tracksuit Mafia. The most inept bunch of dumbasses to walk the earth. And he's just tripped over them like some sort of novice.

Back in the day, any Tracksuit straying into this corner of the city would have been in deep trouble, but it looks like the lines have been redrawn in the intervening years. There's a bunch of the assholes hanging around on the next corner like they own the place, cheesy matching outfits, the works. I'll bet that's down to fucking Fisk. Why couldn't they have kept on with their fine tradition of having a bossman so stupid he makes his lieutenants look sharp? A few years with that asshole in charge was sure to bring some changes. That's another thing he should have done right away; got the lay of the land. He has nothing to go on, no idea who's on the outs with who. No picture of how things are stacked these days. Are any of his favours still even worth something? On the other hand, he's been off the radar for long enough that there's still a chance they won't make him. The odds of anyone still on the street having been around before his sudden departure are slim. Of course, slim odds are not the same as impossible, and no sooner has Jake reassured himself that it's unlikely they will have a clue he has history with them, one of the men elbows the guy next to him, and points down the street. Directly at Jake. Fucking typical. Goddamnit, this is the last thing I need.

"Layla," he says, hand curling round her upper arm to draw her closer. "There's some guys over there who got a problem with me. Let me handle it, OK? Doesn't need to be messy if we can help it."

Hell, this is the sort of crap he'd prefer to hand over to Steven. Let him confuse the fuckers into leaving them alone. He's not sure he can talk them out of this himself; it's been too long and he's still caught in this 'punch first worry about the consequences later' loop that being suppressed forced him into. That Khonshu was happy to encourage in him, the selfish old bird. He goes to call Steven back, to switch places and take his chances against whatever trippy mental shit is going on, but before he can, a burning brand pierces through his hand. He stares at his palm in shock, but there's nothing to see, just the biting pain.

"Kid?" he hisses, earning himself a curious look from Layla. There's no answer. Clenching his throbbing hand into a fist doesn't help. Clearly no help coming from Steven any time soon.

He's gotta think. If he was alone he'd find a way to melt into the background, slot into the crowd and become invisible until the dumbfucks looking for him moved on. With just Layla in tow, he'd probably still manage it; Layla knows how to handle herself and he'd put money down that she's just as good at blending in as he is. But behind him, Khonshu's still in his ridiculous human costume. So much for blending in; he's a good six inches taller than most people they pass, and the whole Victorian gentleman get-up combined with the long silver ponytail makes him look like he's escaped from the set of some period-piece supernatural TV drama. Stupid fucking vulture. Jake can't help kicking himself for not getting him to tone it down before they left the cab. Taweret's less of a problem in terms of drawing notice, but he worries that should things go south she'll be hurt — can they even be hurt in these bodies? — or worse, pop back to normal and, from the perspective of any onlookers, apparently vanish. If anything's going to draw even more attention, a woman evaporating into thin air will. At least she looks like she's from the current goddamn century, a bit eccentric to be sure, what with all those bangles and layers of colourful clothing, but no more so than any other loony hippy wandering the streets of New York.

He scopes the street. Nothing here leads to an easy alternative route; no convenient side alleys, just packed bars and food joints. Sure, they could bust out through the kitchens and backroom, but that's entirely the sort of disturbance he wants to avoid, especially when he could drop at any moment from whatever it is that Steven's doing. Because holy fuck, this goddamn hurts. He can only hope that whatever Steven's up to he gets it done fast.

Chapter Text

Jake can't avoid a scene, but, he thinks, at least he can try to control what kind of scene it is, and where it happens. Right here, right now, isn't an option, and alternatives are thin on the ground. As the idiots on the corner have come to a decision faster than he would have given them credit for and are already picking their way through the jostling mass of people, he'd better get his ass in gear. 

There's less road traffic than usual at this time of night, so he makes a split second gamble; worst case, they get written up for jaywalking and the presence of a cop might send their new friends hightailing it for the hills. Decision made, he grabs both Taweret and Khonshu by their arms and wheels them around to face the way they came; Layla, proving to be as sharp as he knows her to be, is right with him as he tows the two protesting gods into the street. Horns blare as cars screech to a halt. It's sheer bravado that fuels him as he walks without pause across the lanes, ignoring the shouts of angry drivers as he propels his charges towards the far side of the street. 

His grip on Khonshu’s sleeve slips and falters as they reach the far sidewalk. The agony in his hand has faded to pins and needles, leaving his fingers rubbery and useless. He risks a quick glance behind them; their company are gaining ground, to be sure, but they're still on the far side of the street, unwilling to follow his reckless lead.

The pace he sets is demanding as they wind through the drunks and night people; the shouting, stumbling, roiling crowd that he knows so well. This is the city he belongs in, where he can anticipate the flow of people, predict and dodge and just plain know the moods of the throng. But now he's an unknown quantity himself. He finds himself misjudging the shifts and currents of the crowd, starting and stopping as groups of tipsily laughing men and women spill out of the bars. 

He can't let the dumbasses catch up with them yet.  

Up ahead, there's a break in the facade of buildings, a narrow alley between two towering brownstone tenement buildings. He's barely rounded the corner before he reaches out and pulls for the suit. But there's nothing, none of the chill flood of sensation that should accompany the whirl of the suit sliding into place, no familiar creak of leather as he moves. Whatever Steven is doing is sucking up all the magic they can access even as it gradually robs him of the use of his arm. He slows to a stop and brushes his good hand over his scalp, taking in the dead-end before him. Less than ideal, but it will have to do. A dumpster, scattered boxes and a poorly painted fire escape; the alley is short, but they are at least away from the press of innocent people. He can relax, not expend so much energy on keeping the urge to resolve this problem with fists and blades in check. If the assholes push too far, no matter. He's done this before without any help from gods and magic. He can do it again. He can. He…

"Are you going to explain what that was about?" The vulture strides past him to the fire escape, fastidiously brushing at a step with one gloved hand before settling with exaggerated dignity on the stair. Jake wants to answer, he really does, but his tongue feels thick in his mouth, leaden from something he refuses to put a name to. And then it's too late; footsteps at the mouth of the alley cut through the fog that's swallowing him whole and drags him into the immediate and now.  

"Lockley. The boss wants to speak with you," the drawl is like fingernails on a chalkboard, cocksure and far, far, too confident for the speaker's own good. 

Jake stuffs his hand inelegantly into his pocket to mask that it's useless. Only just in time; the numbness is at elbow level now and advancing steadily up his arm. What the hell are you doing Steven? he wonders, and takes a steadying breath and rolls his neck before he turns to face the thugs. They're blocking the alley behind them. Six of them. Matching tracksuits a bit threadbare and worn he can see now they're closer, and clearly showing the telltale bumps and poor fit that speak of badly concealed weapons.

"He can want all he wants," Jake makes a show of leaning casually against the post at the bottom of the fire escape, "but I don't come running when some petty mob boss calls." He considers the seams on his glove. "I don't owe your bossman anything, and I'm sure as hell not about to start now."

The mouthy dumbfuck is actually stupid enough to pull a gun. He hears Taweret gasp as the guy takes aim, not at Jake, but off to his left. At Layla. Smart move, he thinks. Piss me off, why don't you.

"Don't be a dumbass," Jake can't help the half-step he takes towards the mouthy asshole. "Threatening her is fucking stupid."

“What ya gonna do, Lockley?” one of the other idiots taunts.

This is so painfully predictable Jake can't suppress the eye-roll either. How have these guys survived in this city for this long? 

"Me? Not a damn thing," he says. "I'm just giving you a little friendly advice, kid. You lay one finger on her and she'll rip it off with no help from me."

They need to get this over with. The false air of confidence he's trying to project is beginning to waver; he can't feel his arm at all now, and if one of them starts something he's not going to be able to summon the suit. Not that he needs it. Even with one arm figuratively tied behind his back. Literally though? That's gonna be bad news. There's gotta be a way to avoid this getting heated.

"This is pointless," Khonshu observes from his perch on the steps. Enough of this time-wasting.

There's a shift in the air behind him that Jake recognises from their infuriating road trip. What the hell are you doing? He thinks. Goddamn vulture, doing a disappearing act.

The dawning looks of utter horror on the previously smirking faces before him suggest that disappearing might not quite cover it.

"What the fuck…" One of the goons quavers, eyes fixed somewhere above Jake's head. Roughly, Jake suspects, where a hollow-eyed skull would be if Khonshu had chosen to manifest in his usual bony glory. 

Crap. 

The Mouth drops the gun he had been so confidently waving at Layla moments before, eyes drifting with horrified inevitability to the same spot. The gang are frozen, all transfixed on what must seem to them like a nightmare given form. They stay like that for a few silent moments, before the former gunman lets out a whimper and bolts for the main street. The rest remain in slack-jawed stasis for a few more seconds before they too break free. Elbowing and pushing, each determined to avoid being at the back of the pack, they scramble to get away. 

Well that's just great , Jake thinks as he watches them round the corner, leaving them alone in the alley. Now these clowns will go running back to their friends with wild stories about how Lockley has shown back up and is hanging around with some kinda demon . Exactly the sort of attention he wanted to avoid. 

The pins and needles have shifted from his arm to his chest, making it hard to breathe. Iron bands grip him as he turns to glare furiously at Khonshu.

"What are you damn well playing at?" he rasps.

Khonshu steps down from the fire escape and looms over him.

They are not bothering us any longer, the god rumbles. A thank you would be appropriate.

He wants yell, scream at the stupid vulture that this will probably cause more problems than it just solved, but he can’t seem to gulp down enough air. He gags and splutters, choking on nothing. There's a moment where the world greys and swoops and shifts around him, and then Layla and Taweret are supporting him again. He wants to shake their hands free; he doesn't need their help, he can manage. Has always managed before. 

Khonshu cocks his head curiously, shrinking down to his mortal disguise as he does so.

"You seem to be in considerable distress," he observes. "What is wrong?"

Jake can't form the words. He shakes his head as Layla and Taweret guide him on unsteady legs to sit on the bottom of the fire escape, pressed against the rough brick of the building. There is nothing physical to account for this, he can tell. This is all in his mind, their mind. He's feeling the effects of whatever Steven is doing in the mindspace, and something has gone wrong. Very wrong. He meets Layla's worried eyes, wordlessly trying to let her know what he has to do. Then he is falling, tumbling wildly away into their mind.