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She hadn't texted or called ahead. Maybe she should have. Maybe she hadn't so she could turn around if she changed her mind before reaching the flat. Maybe she just wanted the first time she spoke to them again to be in person. Layla wasn't entirely sure.
"Them" instead of just "him" was going to take some time to get used to. It'd been three full days since she'd said a quick goodbye to Steven and left a note for Marc.
Layla had spent that time pacing around her dingy hotel room, processing and thinking and even started to do some research on DID, though not much. Steven had done some on the flight back to London, sharing a couple of articles with her. She'd gotten two sentences into the paragraph on how and why it develops when a lump formed in her throat. She couldn't make eye contact with Steven for a few minutes, skipping over the rest of that section, all the while thankful that Marc had receded to wherever he goes when he wasn't around.
No, she'd rather know only as much as they wanted to share with her. It didn't have to be everything, but it had to be enough, if she was going to be in their life. Whatever enough was.
Her mind had been made when she'd climbed onto her bike, but, now, a block away from Steven's flat and getting closer, she's second-guessing— tenth, twentieth-guessing. The same anxieties she'd dismissed over and over the past three days inevitably return: that Marc would cut her out, emotionally and then all-together, again. That he was somehow hiding more horrible secrets from her, again. That any openness and vulnerability she'd show would blow up in her face, again.
There'd have to be changes if they were going to try and make this work, for her to be in their life in any capacity. And Layla needed to lay them out and not budge on them.
She parks around the corner from the entrance, still wanting some time to sit with her thoughts before she goes knocking on their door.
As she takes off her helmet, she spots him across the intersection. She almost doesn't recognize him, his back turned to her, hair tucked into a flat cap, his posture and gait all... wrong.
Not wrong, she edits herself, just different. When she'd first seen Steven, she'd had the same thought— no, not wrong, just wrong for Marc.
Her instincts takes over, and she goes into subterfuge mode, stepping off her bike and behind the car in front of her. Through the windows, she eyes him carefully.
He's crossing the street at an angle away from her, his hands in his jacket pockets; the collar of which is popped up in a way she'd never seen Marc do, and she can't for the life of her see Steven doing. He turns his head— to check the road is clear, she thinks— or maybe he senses someone watching. She can't be sure.
The fraction of an expression she catches is unreadable to her. His jaw is set differently, with a hint of a frown, but it's neutral, she thinks. His eyes are piercing.
This. This was their third. She had no doubt.
She follows him, debating all the while whether to try and catch him or just... watch.
His gait is confident and forceful, but not tense. Marc's tension and precision of movement is missing, Steven's hunched shoulders and fidgety unsureness even more so.
Layla can't help but consider the way he moves, if it lines up with the brutality of Marc and Steven's blackout in Cairo. Similarly, the focused nature of Marc's fighting style had been missing then. That had been raw power, dealt out ruthlessly to everyone in range of his fists and then Harrow's commandeered cane.
Not everyone, she amends. Not her.
In two and a half meandering blocks, it seems he reaches his destination, stopping at a cab and pulling keys from his pocket. He unlocks the cab and slides into the driver's seat in a single steady motion.
In the cab, he's obscured from view, but Layla still stares, as if her eyes will burn through the metal while the vehicle pulls out and onto the road. When it turns onto a different street, she lingers on where it was, the image still in her mind. License plate number included, of course.
She isn't sure what to glean from all this. The pieces didn't add up to a whole, with no way to know where or how they fit together. But the pieces did finally make this amorphous idea of someone into something solid. What was formless and fluid like sand was now stone, more than just an unknown third or blacked-out violence. A man with his own motivations, tastes, quirks— his own life. And, undoubtedly, his own secrets.
There isn't much she can do other than return to her bike and ride back to her hotel. She wouldn't be speaking with Marc tonight.
If she'd caught up, she wonders, would she have been able to? Would whoever this was disappear and send Marc or Steven forward as soon as she saw him, like he'd done in Cairo? Or, maybe they'd found a way to communicate with him, and it'd be more like it was after the tomb, able to speak and work in tandem. She hopes it'd have been the latter; that this other part of them wasn't still running around with them kept in the dark. She doesn't like the idea of knowing more about him than they do.
The cool night air blows her hair out of her face as she walks, her mind swimming with the pile of new information to process. A second breeze pulls at her jacket and hair as a cab pulls up to the curb next to her, making her stop in her tracks.
The passenger side window rolls down and he only gives her a fraction of a glance as he says, "Hop in," jutting his jaw towards the back seat. Before she can even think to respond, the window's rolled back up and this stranger in her husband's body is now waiting on her to get in his car.
She stares blankly for a second, questioning whether this is a good idea or not. His finger taps the wheel in a fixed rhythm, and her curiosity gets the better of her.
As she climbs in, her eyes never quite leave the man in the driver’s seat. Diagonal him, the angle on his face isn't ideal, but the mirror is well placed to see his eyes; they're unwavering, focused forward as he pulls back into the light evening traffic.
After a long moment of watching him, she takes a quick scan of the vehicle's interior. It's not a new cab by any means, but it's nice. Taken care of. No mess, nothing in the seats or floorboards. No weird smell, a hint of tobacco smoke at worst. Not much for her to go on.
There's a noticeable lack of a phone mount or screen in the dashboard for GPS or otherwise. Old fashioned, perhaps to avoid being tracked? Maybe old-fashioned for the sake of it too, she thinks. His flat cap, gloves, and jacket don't strike her as unintentional in their style.
He isn't stiff in his seat, but still. Steady. He drives the fastest he can without having to brake hard, coming to a stop far closer to the car in front of them than feels comfortable, and makes no show of it. His timing is impeccable, shifting gears without even the tiniest of stutters to the momentum of the car, the vehicle practically an extension of himself. He doesn't acknowledge her all the while, or even make any sign she's there at all.
After a couple of minutes, Layla starts to think she'll have to be the one to speak first, but he finally breaks the silence.
"Y'know, driving on the left's never gonna feel right to me." He says it aloud, more a general statement than directed at her.
"Yeah?" She eyes him, processing the difference of his voice. It's far closer to Marc's than Steven's, not just accent-wise, but pitch and tone. Enough so that it's strange to hear. "Did you drive a cab in the U.S.?"
"No, the Maldives," he deadpans. It takes Layla a second longer to catch than she would like, and she isn't sure if it's playful or rude. Maybe both.
She can assume the answer's yes either way, though. Not the best start.
"What's your name?"
His eyes finally find hers in the mirror, his brow raised. The brown of his irises are black in the low light. "Getting personal, now, are we?"
She tightens her jaw at that, but she doesn't snap back at him like she wants to. She can't afford to be confrontational. At least not recklessly so.
"Lots of cab drivers get personal," she offers with a shrug, sitting back against her seat.
"Not this one."
He considers himself a cab driver, then. If Steven was a "gift shoppist" then she supposes whoever this is can be a cabbie.
It also says a good deal about how much he intends to share. He wasn't going to lay everything out for her, nowhere close. He was giving her a slab of stone and if she wanted to carve it into the shape of a person, she was going to have to do it herself, with nothing but her bare hands.
"That tells me something about you though, doesn't it?" She observes with her own pique of an eyebrow.
He just grunts in reply.
She studies him. Some things about him feel oddly familiar; not his face or body, those are a given— but his presence. It doesn't feel as alien to her as it did initially. It's in the way he turns the wheel, how he holds his head, how he doesn't meet her eyes, the undercurrent of intensity to him.
"Is this the first time we've met?"
"Nah."
The direct answer surprises her, and she presses on. "In Cairo, with Harrow?"
"I don't think I'd count that as us meeting, hermosa." She notes his word choice for later, but that's more than enough confirmation.
In this moment, it was almost a stretch to picture the man in front of her now with what had seemed like such uncontrolled wrath displayed on that street in Cairo. His body relaxed and his voice quieter, he was more subdued and sure than both of his counterparts. He held his cards close to his chest and he knew he had a damn good hand.
"So, before then?" She says it more as a question than the statement she feels it to be, but gets nothing in response. More specific, then. "Once or more?"
"A time or two." He shrugs. Layla doesn't quite believe that, but lets it go. For now. He pauses, and she thinks she sees a thoughtful clench of his brows and a tiny shift of his jaw before he allows, "I'm not out much."
She takes the opportunity, clawing at the stone, "How come?"
"Don't need to be." His tone is sharp and sure. Cocky, even. "I get shit done."
She sits forward in her seat, interest piqued. She's made a crack in the stone, or just found one. "Like what?"
And suddenly, there's gravel in his voice. "You saw what."
"Killing people?"
The car brakes hard and he slams the gearshift, narrowly reversing out between cars-- earning honks from other drivers-- and into a parallel parking spot, one-handed, with expert ease. Well, not ease, exactly. The maneuvers jostle Layla around the backseat, nearly giving her whiplash, but the cab doesn't so much as get a scratch.
He whips forward in the driver's seat, gripping the wheel with both hands.
He exhales through a taught jaw, "Get out."
"Excuse me?"
"Get. The fuck. Out."
"Why?"
That gets him to turn.
"No voy ha hacer esta mierda," he says under his breath as he twists around, and his hard eyes meet hers again. "Get outta my goddamn car if you're gonna sell me righteous bullshit."
His words give her pause. The questions have built and built, and, like a chisel and hammer, the final blow of "why" splits the rock and a massive chunk slides away. It's the most he's raised his voice, and his body is a live wire, the ease of earlier gone. His accent's thicker, too— New York, she's positive now— like Marc's Chicago becoming more pronounced under stress.
She reorients. "Okay. What would you call what happened then?"
"Mierda—" he starts, but she cuts him off.
"I meant that as a genuine question. I'm not trying to be rude."
Maybe she is, just a little. What she really wants to do is yell in his face, demand answers, demand he get over whatever it is keeping him from communicating with Marc and Steven, because whatever it is incredibly stupid and not worth the effort nor pain it will inevitably cause them and him. But she's carved out enough to know that yelling at him to get his shit together wasn't going to help.
The tide of his anger is still holding despite her attempts, but it recedes some as he admits, "Look, I get that the fucking jig is up." It isn't an answer, and that doesn't go unnoticed by Layla. "They know I exist now, but that's all they're gonna fuckin' know. ¿Comprendes?"
There's fire in his eyes; engulfing, uncontrollable fire, but she pushes; "Why?"
The tide floods back in. "This. Is not. A fucking. Interrogation," he says through gritted teeth, flaring.
"Then what is it, exactly?" She counters. He mutters what sounds like a mix of Spanish and English swearing, the sound bleeding into annoyance more than anger. She throws her hands up, exasperated. "Hey, you're the one who invited me into your car and expected me not to ask questions."
There's a pause, and a hint of a sigh before his mirrored eyes find hers. "I'm telling you now, you and both of them," he says, slow and pointedly. "You mind your business—" He turns back to the road, left hand taking the gearshift. "I'll mind mine."
He drives, and Layla just stares.
She lets out a small huff of a laugh, crossing her arms over her chest. "That's not going to work for me. And I doubt it will for Marc or Steven."
"It will, is the fuckin' thing. You're the one I need to convince here."
"It may have worked like that in the past, but it won't anymore."
"Yeah? You know those pendejos so well?" He shoots at her, his eyes cold. Its a low blow and he knows it.
"I have actually talked to them. You should try it," she returns, refusing to let him get under her skin. "You might learn something."
He doesn't respond to her jab either, no shift in his expression.
She sighs and continues, "Talk to them or don't. They're not going to turn a blind eye forever."
He snorts at that, almost laughs. It's a dark sound— makes her uneasy, if she's honest. "Ignoring shit is what they do."
She much prefers the fire of his anger to the cold sharpness of his eyes now. But she thinks she knows how to get it back.
"Not you, though?"
And just like that, the lens is back on him, and he snaps.
Once more, he maneuvers the car like a madman to the curb, though Layla holds on this time, leaning against the momentum and maintaining her position in the chaos of his making.
In the stillness, she can hear the grip of his leather gloves tightening on the wheel. He practically spits, "Vete a la mierda," out of the side of his mouth, straight forward and rigid in his seat.
Layla didn't consider herself fluent in Spanish by any means, but she wouldn't have to know a single word to get the message here.
"Fine." She says, tightly. With a yank of the handle, she throws the door open and pulls herself up and out. Before slamming it behind her, she finds herself pausing, grip on the handle unreleased. With a quick breath, ignoring the twitch in her face, she turns and leans down enough to see him. "For what it's worth, thank you for saving us."
He says nothing, doesn't turn around, doesn't even so much as glance out of the corner of his eye as she shuts the door and steps away from the cab. But she thinks she sees a shift in his posture before he drives off. Another crack in the stone.
The next day, she calls ahead.