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There was, and there was not…
It’s a phrase to begin a fairy tale, like ‘once upon a time’. It’s used in Armenian, he thinks, or maybe it was Arabic, or Persian, he can’t remember. He’s not even sure how he learnt it in the first place — probably something that bled through from Steven, it seems like the sort of thing he’d know — but it sticks with him, and in this unexpected quiet, it swims around inside his head, because that is how he began.
I was, and I was not.
There had been no point in fighting their mother. He thinks maybe he began at the height of their pain, in those moments when they thought they wouldn’t survive, but then maybe he’s just remembering how Marc felt. He isn’t cut off, the way Steven is, or was; he can remember more of their life, remember the first flames of anger as a part of them realised I don’t deserve this. That fire is a part of him now, but back then he wasn’t quite there, wasn’t Marc but wasn’t fully not Marc either.
When they left home, maybe that’s when he began. He remembers telling their dad where to get off with his whole ‘she needs help’ bullshit, and that feels like him for a moment, feels solid and clear, but then it drains away and he knows it’s Marc’s, not his, because it is faded and patchy and Marc won’t let him see.
(Marc doesn’t even know he’s there and he still keeps secrets from him. Typical.)
The first time he knows he was himself was when someone tried to kill them.
After they left home, Marc couch surfed for a bit but, well, he’s not great at making friends now and he was worse back then. They spent more time on benches and in doorways than on sofas, and somehow one of those nights Marc got into a fight with some guy trying to shake down one of the homeless kids for money.
Steven would think that was deplorable. Marc had been enraged. Personally, he just can’t see the sense in it. The kid’s living on the street, you really think he’s going to be flush with cash? Not worth the trouble.
It definitely hadn’t been worth the trouble Marc gave. He’d been in fights before, and he had the upper hand until the guy pulled a knife, like some proper bowie knife type shit, and it was less than an inch from their neck then suddenly Marc was gone and he was there and real and he tore the knife out of their attacker’s hand and slashed him right across the face.
He hadn’t killed the man that night. Marc and Steven probably think he’s some fucking serial killer, like in every shitty movie ever put out about people like them, but he doesn’t sit around wanting to kill people, he just only usually fronts when someone’s about to kill them and Marc hates himself enough to let it happen. He thinks maybe that’s why he exists, because Steven won’t kill and Marc hates himself too much to keep fighting sometimes, but someone’s gotta keep them alive and that’s him.
He doesn’t want to kill people, plural. But right now, he wants to kill one person specifically, and he’s being given the bastard’s head on a silver platter and all it’s going to cost is a soul he’s already soaked in the blood of everyone who got too close to spilling theirs. He’s just doing what he’s always done, because Khonshu’s right, for once: Harrow’s got a hundred cultists out there and any of them could come to free him and his lizard-goddess and then it’s their head on the chopping block faster than Marc can say, ‘I should’ve stabbed him.’
He’s protecting them. And maybe, just a little, he’s protecting himself.
Because he doesn’t know if Steven and Marc could kill him, doesn’t know if that’s even possible, but he knows they’d try, knows they’d cast him back into the dark if they could. And when Khonshu asks, ‘Do you, Jake Lockley, swear to protect the travellers of the night, and bring my vengeance to those who would do them harm?’ Jake is there, he’s real, he’s himself.
He is.
And when Jake whispers back, ‘Yes,’ and the moon god’s power envelops him once more, he knows that he’s alive.
And he’s about to kill the man who showed them what death feels like.