Archive of Our Own ^beta

Steven blinks. 

Now, right off the bat, there are three things he notices: 

1. He’s by the Thames. 
2. Khonsu is at his side.
3. His hands are covered in blood. 

“ Ah .” Khonsu clicks, his voice tense and strung up. “ Steven. Now, really ?”

Steven blanches. He’s heard so much about Khonsu recently, felt so much stewing, bubbling hatred. Now they’re face to face on one of the many jetties alongside the Thames, of all places. He doesn’t know what to say. 

The moonlight shimmers on the flat surface of the water, stirred by the dying ripples of some far off motor boats. The wooden planks were stained with seawater and a dark, red liquid, pooling, pushed off the pier in slow rhythmic waves. 

Right. The blood. 

Steven laughs. “Don’t really ah- have a choice, sorry for the inconvenience. I can go-”

Khonsu beckons dismissively. He’s near the end of the dock and Steven can only make out his silhouetted frame.  “ I don’t care which side of my hand I have. An open palm may be as useful as a fist, so do take a seat. ” 

Steven carefully creeps over, picking his way over the damper sections of the dock. Should he actually take a seat? Or is that disrespectful? Does he even CARE about respecting Khonsu, knowing his exploitative nature? Oh, he’s never been good at making decisions like this. Steven settles for an awkward hover, halfway between a crouch and standing. Khonsu pays him no mind. 

“So uh- what’s going on here? Little bit of casual homicide?” Steven asks after another quiet moment. 

Khonsu rattles out a breathy laugh. “ Marc had some things to take care of. I had hoped he would remain for a conversation, but I am not that fortunate. ”

“A conversation?” 

“ For his ears. ” Khonsu says. His tone is impossible to interpret as always, shielded in five layers of cryptic phrasing. He turns away, tilting his head up towards the sky with an almost melancholic gesture, like an old man reminiscing on younger years. His body language is always so odd. 

Steven opens his hands placatingly. The blood is congealed, a bit sticky on his fingers when he spreads them. He stamps down the rising panic at the sight, at the coppery smell. “No, no, mate- what were you just saying? Fist and an open hand or whatever? I can always tell him for you.” 

Khonsu tilts his head back down towards Steven, the skull swinging to a stop mere inches from the bridge of his nose. “ I suppose. ” 

Steven grits his teeth. All the reasons he hadn’t liked Khonsu to begin with flared up like a phantom pain. He’s aloof, pretentious, just a massive prick with a god complex. Well. That last one- 

“ Tell my avatar that I have another mission for him. Tell him to meet me here, in a week's time, preferably less. ” 

(The ‘or else’ hung unspoken in the air.)

“What?” Steven says dumbly. 

“ Do you need me to repeat myself? ” 

Steven turns away, abruptly aware of the god’s presence watching him. “No. I just thought- he said that you’d be done with us soon. He said that you’d find a new avatar and I thought- you know…” 

He glances over to his right, but Khonsu is gone. Like some dramatic Victorian ghost, or the drunk bastard who always lingers outside his flat.

 Despite the distance, Khonsu’s voice hisses in his ear. “ He’s done when I said he’s done. You’d do better to not stick your nose in business that isn’t yours. ” 

Steven turns in slow circles on the dock, trying to pinpoint where Khonsu went. “Oh yeah?” He shouts, overcome by a prickling anger. “Well you’re being a real prick and a just- a bad person right now. Let him take a bloody break !” 

“A bad person?” Khonsu mimics, and the wind picks up speed, spraying water up through the planks of the dock. “You call me wrong, you call me ‘horrible’ for dealings you are not partial to. We buried it together, and now you go digging? I am a god, Steven Grant.” 

Steven bites the inside of his cheek. He can feel something stirring in the back of his mind. An underlying dread, like a gut sense but stronger, foreign. It’s fear and not his. 

The realization shocks him more than he cares to admit because, well, what did Khonsu do that scared Marc? 

“ I am not evil, as you claim. I am a god. ” Khonsu flickers into existence in the corner of Steven’s vision. He’s already walking, an angry fury to his momentum. “ And we are impartial. ” 

Steven stares down at his hands, at the blood stuck like grit under his fingernails. “But you’re not impartial. You picked m- us, as an avatar. You black out the bloody sun because we ask! Pardon me if that doesn’t seem ‘impartial’, don’t be getting all high and mighty on me now you old mummy!” He shouts, letting his bitter anger seep into his tone.

Khonsu slams his staff down with a loud wooden thump that reverberates, a sound much too loud to be the hollow planks of the pier. Steven jerks backwards and looks up to where his head is- or, where it should be . A stale wind blows there instead. He steps back and the starch dry fabric of the god’s shendyt bumps up against his spine. 

Steven hardly dares move, eyes surely blown wide as moons. Khonsu shifts behind him and lets out a noise akin to a scoff. “ I am partial to my own wishes. I do not block out the sun for you, you have nothing to prove by stopping Ammit. That is my bidding, you merely act upon it. Know your place. ” 

A noise, like something halfway between a low clicking and dry rice- or maybe sand- falling, and then Khonsu was gone again. 

Steven closes his eyes and tries to steal himself. He’s never been the strongest of heart, so this, this is his nightmare. Adrenaline still thrums in his hands and blood pulses in his ears over the faint wind that seems to follow the god around, creating a terrifying abundance and absence of sounds. Still, he refuses to glance down into the reflective surface of the river. 

( Marc needs him now, not the other way around.)

He opens his eyes and isn’t surprised when Khonsu is there, perching over one knee on the wooden post not two feet from his face. The vulture skull remains completely expressionless, even as the god continues his gritty tirade. “ You are my avatar. I am partial to you, as you are an extension of myself. You being in my favor does not make me evil, and to dare accuse me as such- ”

“Oh fuck off, you can still be a bad person without being evil.”  Steven says. Khonsu draws back abruptly, as if struck. Steven, deeply embarrassed of how terrified he is, keeps going. “You can say Ammit’s evil, sure. You could call uh- Harrow, call him evil, I’d be fine with that. But not all bad people are like- end of the world, end of all humanity scale evils. And I think you’ve been a real prick to your avatars. Harrow turned to Ammit because of what you did to him. She’s just his rebound.”

The same, hissing sand noise, and Khonsu has scattered. This time, it takes Steven a second to pinpoint him on the opposite end of the pier. Their victim’s blood stain, framed perfectly between his heels. “ You DARE compare my relationship with my avatar to a failed romance ? ” 

“Listen, mate! I’m not saying you and Harrow had a thing, but you were both really bad for each other.” Steven pinches the skin of his wrist, the pain stinging him awake. “Not evil, toxic. He says you used him. You say he failed you! There are no winners!” 

Khonsu is silent. A stirring rage bubbles just beneath the surface. 

“I’m sorry if this is like- blasphemy. Or something.” Steven drags a hand down his face. The force of his exhaustion- and Marc’s apparently too, from however much effort killing a man took out of them- swept like a wave, spreading like ink in the water. Once he started to pay attention, it became ten times worse. 

“It’s not. ” Khonsu admits, shifting his weight onto his staff. “ But I choose the people I trust with my image with more intention than a heartbroken suiter, no? ” 

“You picked me.” Steven says, voice soft. “So maybe not.” 

Khonsu dips his head. From this angle, at this distance, he looks almost small, dwarfed by the scale of the moon behind him, dwarfed by the neon spires of the city. “ I didn’t pick you. I picked Marc. ” 

“And that’s the problem, yeah? You picked bloody Marc , a trained killer, a- a- and here I am, a guy living in his head-“ 

“ If anything, Marc may have been my mistake,” Khonsu interrupts. “ He is impulsive. His stoicism is a fault. Yet, he is loyal. Steven Grant, or if you’d prefer, ‘guy living in his head’, I am grateful you are here. But to throw a fit over my past manifestation? To tread where you don’t belong? You’re sounding an awful lot like his worst aspects. I had wondered where those went. ”  

Steven can practically feel Marc writhing around, flickering like a ripple at his stream of consciousness, a mirror image of Stevens own tamped down emotions. His anger feels almost childish from this distance, so Steven chuckles out a dry laugh. “Mate, I’d hardly call this throwing a fit-”

 “ Your arguments are flimsy enough that this might as well be. ” A dry whoosh of air, and Khonsu’s shadow materializes beside his own. The clicking sand noise again, and maybe that’s irritation? Steven should really be taking notes on this.

“For the love of God, I’m not arguing with you! Stop doing that thing-” 

“ What thing ?” The god says, with an almost mocking tone. Steven goes to level the most passive aggressive stare he’s ever shot in his life, but Khonsu is little more than dust in the wind when he turns. 

Steven growls, whirling around. “You’re a bloody child , I swear.”  

“ In more ways than one , it seems. ” Khonsu says, as close to a laugh as Steven has ever heard him. Despite being far- in one of the rowboats bobbing in the pier, alone on the small vessel like a gondolier without a passage, like Charon on the Styx, his voice is as clear as ever. He’s distant- but for the first time tonight, Steven can see the god’s full body, and the extent of the crimson stains that cover his hood and various drapes. Bloody. He thinks he’s clever. 

He can also see his reflection swirling in the water. 

His reflection shouts distantly ‘You’re pushing too far, just drop it, okay? He’ll-” 

“He can’t hurt us.” Steven mutters under his breath and tears his gaze away from his increasingly agitated reflection. Whether it was to reassure Marc or to calm his own racing heart, he wasn’t sure. 

Khonsu chuckles, the sound reverberating like a sonar, echoing in waves that were so loud they felt almost physical. “ Is he angry again ? Irresponsible, childish, as always.” 

Steven stares at his grimy nails. 

Khonsu scoffs. “ Predictable. Refusing to keep his promises, refusing to keep his word. But you… you could serve me. You could finish what he never had the guts to do. ” 

“I’m not going to serve you- and- and I’m not letting Marc either. This is over.” Steven says.

“You can’t stop us. You can hardly control yourself, let alone Marc.” 

“Prolly’ not. But I don’t think he wants this either.” Steven says, and yeah, that feels like a cool line. He puffs out his chest. 

Khonsu downright growls and absolutely not, Steven thinks, absolutely not . He breaks into a sprint down the pier. 

Khonsu and Marc both exclaim at the same time, but Steven can’t hear either of them.

“ Steven - ” Khonsu’s voice sounds almost breathy, smooth baritone suddenly strung up like feeble threads into a snarl. Steven can feel a taloned hand snag the hood of his jacket. 

He runs into the heart of London and doesn’t look back. 

__________

The path back to Steven’s flat is, in the most technical sense of the word, unchanged. He slinks down a few alleyways and shoves his blood crusted hand into his pockets, but other than that? Nothing is different. 

If he keeps his head down, he can pretend he’s nothing more than another depressed East-Ender coming back from his nine to five. As if he hasn’t just finished arguing with a god because the other guy living in his head just killed someone. Marc, who then snuck away to hide in the recesses of his mind. Steven hasn't heard from him the entire walk home, not once in the aftermath of… it all. 

He scoffs under his breath. It fogs in the night air, illuminated by the brilliant yellow fluorescence  of the street lamps above him. He dances around the puddles and walks on autopilot back to his- their apartment. 

Steven fumbles with his keys for a moment before clicking the door open. He is greeted by the soft bubbling of the fish tank and the sounds of traffic outside, filtering in through the window he’d left open. It sounds like it might’ve started raining but he can’t be sure. 

He locks the door behind him, then dead locks it for good measure. If he was superstitious before you best bet he is now. Shakily carved warding symbols ring the chipped wood of his apartment door like a second frame. The swiss army knife resting guiltily on the keytable. He drops his keys stained red with fingerprints on top of them. 

A truck honks outside and he starts, jumping back against the door like a five year old in a thunderstorm. 

‘ You should close that.’ 

“Yeah, probably.” Steven mutters. 

He’s halfway to the open window before he processes the irony dripping off Marc’s words like gasoline. 

Instead of indulging the clear taunt he takes a sharp left towards the bathroom. It’s smoother in his head and he trips over a table that’s slightly further to the right than he expected. 

‘ Let me clean up, I know how to-’ 

“Yeah, you know how to hide evidence.” Steven flips up the tap. An experimental finger dip reveals ice cold water. “ Maybe you should consider the consequences of your actions before murdering someone and dragging the corpse to the fuckin’ Thames.” 

Marc is quiet for a moment. Steven finds himself looking up towards the mirror reflexively to try and assess the man’s expressions, but only finds blank subway tile. Marc insisted on it, although Steven was never quite sure why. Maybe seeing himself- themself- or - 

His hand tightens around his wrist. He pinches the loose skin.

‘ Stay focused.’ Marc says softly. ‘ Your hands.’ 

For once, there didn’t seem to be an alternate motive behind his request. Steven finishes washing his hand. He can’t get all the flecked blood off, but most of it washes off his hands, off the porcelain, and there’s hardly a trace. 

Steven leans over the sink and sighs heavily. “There was blood all over that dock, Marc.”

‘ Most of it wasn’t ours.’

“MOST of it.” Steven groans, curling his hands into his hair. “MOST of it is what every single serial killer says before getting caught! MOST of it is what you say before we get thrown in jail for the rest of our lives !” 

‘I was wearing his suit. Our blood can’t get through that, Steven, none of it is ours. Except the stuff on your hands. And that’s gone. So calm down.’ 

“Calm down? Can we even trust the suit, I basically just told Khonsu to fuck off! Oh my God…” 

‘ Yeah that was a really bad move man, I don’t know what you were thinking.’ 

Steven drops his hands back down to the sides of the sink, keeping his head bowed over it. Just in case he throws up. “ Really helpful Marc.” 

The discussion of Khonsu brings back a fresh wave of paranoia. It rushes over Steven with such force he swears the room around him shakes with it. 

He shakily gets up and roots around for his empty milk jug filled with sand. He usually keeps it under his fish tank. 

‘ Steven,’ Marc starts. 

“Just- just shut up, I know. It’s silly.” Steven pours the sand onto the well traced circle. He’s careful and goes around once, then twice, before tilting the jug up and catching any spare grains in his left hand. It sticks to his damp palm and he brushes it off on his jacket.

‘ I just wanted to say thank you.’

He stills. Marc fumbles to recover. ‘ I mean- you’re stupid. You’re so, unbeliveably stupid-’ 

Steven quickly skips over the sand barrier and lowers himself onto his mattress.  “Wow, thanks.” 

‘ Let me finish! You’re stupid, that play of yours was risky, and we WILL talk about the things you said about me to him, but- thank you. For standing up to Khonsu.’

“ …can we not talk about him right now?” Steven asks. It feels stupid, and he knows it, but he can’t bring himself to bother. “Just for tonight.” 

‘ What is he, Voldemort?’ 

An awkward silence stills in the room, filled by the beeping of traffic outside. 

Marc can’t be any quieter but his tone shifts to something more gentle. ‘ ...okay. Yeah. For tonight. We got enough bravery out of old Steven Grant for one night.’ 

“Enough bravery for my entire life , mate. You have to- you’ve got to stop listening to him, okay? He’s just going to hurt you. You’ll never actually be free.” Steven says. “I’m not saying this like Harrow-” 

(“ What has Khonshu promised you? That this is your last mission? Then you'll be free? Well-) 

“-I’m just saying this can’t be healthy. It isn’t. Marc, it’ll never stop if you don’t put your foot down on this deal.” 

Steven fidgets with his hands, trying to pick the remaining pieces of blood from under his nail beds. Cuticles? He can’t remember. 

‘ I don’t want to.’ Marc says, barely more than a ripple against his mind.

“Why not? He’s hurting you. He’s hurting US, Marc, please.” Steven whispers to his palms. 

 ‘ I never meant to hurt you, alright? It doesn’t matter, this is the final thing. I’ll finish this, I can make sure you’re not involved-’ 

“That’s not what I want. I want you to be safe, I want you to get better. For both of us. And you remember what Harrow said.”  

(-trust me when I tell you Khonshu is a liar. There's always one last thing.”)

Steven chokes back tears, his throat feels heavy and wet, his words jumbled like he’s speaking through a handful of marbles. “You have to stop.” 

‘ I can’t.’ 

“Why not? Why won’t you just- fuckin’- 

And Marc pushes . He tries to force Steven out, tries to shove him to the back of their mind. He’s done it before but the sheer emotion causes the tears to prick at Steven’s eyes again. The feeble wooden supports that they’ve built in their mind, the flood barricades where a dam used to be, hardly keep him back. 

His eyes flutter but he forces them open, cursing under his breath. “ Stop . For the love of- I’ll stop pushing if you want, just… I can drop it.”

The wind whistles through the flat, like a heavy sigh. Marc curls back away from him. 

There’s a beat, then: 

‘ I just- I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you, and this is the only sense of purpose I’ve got left, and I’m scared, OKAY? I’m scared of what happens when I lose the only reason I’m here.’ 

Steven’s brow furrows. “Why would you lose- oh.” 

‘ You didn’t hear shit.’

“ It’s okay.” Steven clutches his hand to his chest, shifting into a tight ball on the tangled sheets. The pillow is cool on his cheek. “You don’t have to get rid of me and- in fact- I’d really rather you didn't.” 

He laughs tersely to himself, then falls still again. “But you have to get rid of him . Pushing yourself until you break isn’t going to do anything.” 

‘ You make this sound like I can just wave him away. He’s a GOD, Steven. He should be able to be here right now, I don’t even know-’  

“We made an agreement. He can’t come in this flat, not with those sigils- and - and we’re his avatars, he can’t do shit without us.”  Steven whispers, a soft smile forming. He parrots Khonsu’s earlier rantings easily. He’s always had a good memory, excluding the gaps. 

Steven flips the pillow over and nestles into the sheets. “But we’re going to sleep. I don’t know how you do this, but I want a break, and I think the ‘Fist of Khonsu’ ought to have one too. Alright?”

‘ Okay.’ Marc concedes.

Steven expected more of a fight, but he’s not angry about that. He reaches over and pulls the cord on his lamp.

‘ But I’m closing that window first.’ 

“Oh fuck yo-” 

(Marc blinks.)