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Chapter Text

Steven sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps.

At some point he gets up to use the loo. Which isn't in the place he remembers it being, but it flushes, so it's probably good enough.

The sky out the window is a fresh, clear blue, so he's probably meant to be up by now and going to work, or something. He can't remember what. It certainly doesn't feel more important than going back to bed.

...Someone else is already there.

As Steven tries to work out if he's got the wrong bed, which is like trying to solve a very long calculus problem when you don't have any of the variables and somebody's spilt water across half the board, the other person sits up on her elbows. "Well, come on," she says softly, patting the mattress beside her. "You're allowed to be here."

"Yeah, awright," mumbles Steven.

He crawls back into bed, and sleeps some more.

Chapter Text

The next time he wakes, the sky is the dazzling gold of sunset.

Or maybe it's sunrise, and he's slept clear through the night into the next morning. Can that be right, though? He feels stiff and sore and exhausted, in a way he can't ever remember feeling in his life, as if he hasn't slept at all.

"Hi," Steven says to Layla, who's now sitting in an armchair by the window. A bland hotel armchair, against a bland city view framed by bland hotel curtains. Could be the sunrise/set in any city on Earth. "It's me. Um. Can I ask where we are?"

"Still in Cairo," says Layla, looking up from whatever she was doing on her tablet. "When Khonshu took his powers away from Marc -- and from you too, I guess -- you pretty much passed out right afterward. I thought it was safe to get some distance, so we're not in one of the five thousand hotels with pyramid views, but we didn't make it out of town before sunrise. Wanted us to get inside before we lost the cover of darkness."

"Ooh." That all sounds smart. She's really smart, Layla is. "Thanks for bringing us with."

"You think I'd leave you behind? I was fully prepared to chain you to the bed."

Layla keeps her tone light enough that it sounds like she's joking. Or...mostly joking. (Either way, Steven really hopes she can't see how hard he blushes at it.)

"Turns out I didn't need to," she adds. "You've been basically dead to the world for about eighteen hours now."

"Mmm." Steven rubs the sleep from his eyes -- his joints creak, he's got pains in muscles he didn't even know he had -- and tries to do math in his head. "Is that...sunset outside, then?"

"That's right."

She's not being pushy, but there's a sense of restrained anticipation in her voice -- she probably wants to talk to Marc, Steven realizes. Marc is the one she really wanted to chain to the bed. (Possibly for multiple reasons.)

Not that he can blame her, he also wants to talk to Marc...and this is when Steven realizes his head is worryingly quiet inside. They had such an easy, fluid exchange going on last night, but now they're out of the groove and he's not sure how to get back.

"Excuse me a second, would you?" he asks, and makes his way stiffly to the loo.

A bit of business, a wash, a drink of water, and he faces himself in the mirror. He looks, to put it in the kindest possible terms, half-dead. (Better than all-dead, but still.)

"Marc?" he whispers. "You in there?"

No answer. The reflected face is still Steven's.

For a horrible sinking second he thinks something has gone dreadfully wrong -- that losing Khonshu's favor has somehow killed Marc off, or maybe that Marc has just made good on his promise to leave Steven alone forever --

-- but no, he can feel that other consciousness, sort of leaning sleepily against him. 'Sfine. Anybody shooting?

Steven could just about cry with relief. "No."

Anybody fighting?

"No, Marc. We're safe. Go ahead and rest, I promise I'll wake you if I need you."

Mmkay, thinks Marc, and drifts back out of Steven's mental reach.

Steven finds a more substantial drink in the hotel fridge -- the label is in Arabic, so he can't read a word, but there's a picture of an orange under the logo, which seems promising -- and joins Layla by the window. "Marc's doing all right. He can't talk right now, though, he's...sort of still asleep? He's really wiped out. Sorry."

"You don't have to--" Layla puts down her tablet. "Steven, you two just died, and the minute you came back, you went straight into fighting with a god -- don't apologize for either of you being tired! I'd be more worried if you weren't wiped out."

Steven nods. He's not blaming himself for being tired. When Marc gets up, Steve will be all over Marc not to blame himself either. It's just..."I know how badly you must want to talk to him, is all."

"Well...yes," admits Layla. "But I -- I do want to talk to you, too. Steven."

"Th-thanks." Oh, dear, he's blushing again. "It's funny, innit...I'm the one who's been chronically sleep-deprived for, oh, probably a few months now...and Marc's in much better shape than I am, you'd think he'd bounce back faster..."

Layla frowns. "Don't you have the same--"

"...but we've both barely slept at all for the past few days, I can't even remember when we last ate...!"

Out of what seems like nowhere, Layla produces a couple of protein bars. All at once Steven is too ravenous to do anything but grab them and tear them open, not stopping to check the ingredients for animal products, barely even stopping to chew.

"My understanding from Marc is, the suit fixed up any problems you would get from being hungry," says Layla, while Steven chows down. "Or tired. Or fighting too hard, pulling muscles, things like that. But I guess now that you don't have it anymore, those things should start catching up with you."

Steven barely swallows his latest mouthful of blueberry-oatmeal-chocolate bar before blurting out, "Is that why everything hurts?"

Next thing he knows, Layla is shaking a couple of Midol into his palm. The pills are awfully large, but he chases them with a gulp of his orange drink and they go down well enough. Gosh, he hopes they'll kick in soon.

The bottle doesn't rattle as Layla puts it away. "I didn't take your last ones, did I?" asks Steven, stricken.

"Don't worry about it, I can absolutely get more if I need them," says Layla. "...Or if you do."

Chapter Text

After a hot meal and a cold shower, Steven borrows Layla's tablet (she has a toggle that automatically signs out of anything sensitive before sharing it) to do some research.

It's the first chance Layla's had to see Steven at work when she isn't distracted by anyone trying to kill them. He is...dangerously attractive like this, she thinks. Where Marc would be sharp and intense, glaring at books/artifacts/websites like he thinks he can intimidate them into giving up information, Steven is curious and open.

Also, where Marc would've ruthlessly combed back his wet hair, Steven left it flopping all over the place. Occasionally a drop of water will gather at the end of one of his curls. Layla finds it harder and harder to resist brushing each one off before it falls.

"I can't believe this," breathes Steven. "It's incredible."

Layla hesitates only a second before sitting on the bed next to him. If either Marc or Steven has a problem with that, they'll just have to say so. "What?"

"The news hasn't broken about where Alexander the Great's tomb is!"

He turns to Layla, eyes pleading. "Maybe it's just not on the English-language news sites yet? Would you have a look at the Arabic-language ones? Please?"

"I can look," admits Layla, taking the device back. "But...how would anyone have found out? You and I haven't told anyone."

"There's a whole dig site set up! Wasn't that far from a road, even! Wouldn't somebody have noticed? On a satellite view, if nothing else?"

"There are dig sites all over the desert. No reason to assume this one was more significant than a hundred others."

"Well, one of the cultists could've told someone, couldn't they?"

"We might've killed everyone who was there..."

"Not everyone! We very specifically did not kill Harrow! And anyway, they had a whole afternoon before the fighting started -- lots of them were just loitering around the streets waiting -- wouldn't at least one of them have been excited enough to text a friend? Biggest Egyptology find of the decade, and they all had the self-control to keep their mouths shut?"

"...and I don't know if any of them actually realized what they found," finishes Layla. "They were laser-focused on getting Ammit's ushabti and nothing else, remember? After they..."

She can't say it. Which is absurd, they were both (all?) there, they remember what happened -- but for some reason, the words shot you won't come out of her mouth.

"...after they got it, they left. Pretty much immediately. Didn't stay around to investigate the decorations."

"Wasn't exactly hard to notice, though, was it?" protests Steven. "The writing was on the wall! Literally, there was Macedonian writing on--"

"Steven!"

Steven cuts off. He looks a bit caught off-guard, only just noticing himself how vehement he was getting about this.

"I know why you care about this," says Layla slowly. "And I know why I care. But. Why are you so sure any of them would care?"

Steven's lips purse, brow furrowing, as he thinks about it.

Layla is sort of expecting an answer along the lines of doesn't everyone care about this? Marc gets like that too, sometimes. It's rare for him to put that confusion into words, even with Layla...but she's learned to spot the particular intense look he gets when he's cataloging the behavior of everyone in the room, knowing he needs to fit their standard of "normal" and trying to reverse-engineer on-the-fly what that is.

"When Harrow...uh, I suppose you'd say kidnapped me," begins Steven, and huh, that wasn't where Layla expected him to go at all. "In London? He was awfully polite about it, but it was technically a kidnapping, yeah?"

"If you're not allowed to leave, and they enforce that with violence, then yes, that counts."

"Right." Steven draws his knees in toward his chest. "Well. He showed me around the place, and told me about how much they all value knowledge. Learning new things. Making connections with other cultures."

Layla raises her eyebrows. "And you believed him?"

"I'm not saying I thought it was worth it! None of it justified the 'pre-murdering children because Ammit says they'll do future crimes' part of his little setup. You're meant to walk away from Omelas." (Not a word Layla recognizes, but she gets the general idea.) "I'm just saying, he showed me things -- introduced me to some of the people -- they really were having casual conversations in three languages each. I heard it."

All right, enough of this Alexander-searching. Layla starts pulling up a set of older English-language articles.

These are hard to just stumble over -- Harrow assigned his followers with SEO skills to the cult's Google results, the same way he probably assigned all his trilingual followers to gather on one street while he led Steven through it -- but she knows where to look.

"You heard what Harrow wanted you to hear," she tells Steven, handing him a page full of testimonials from people who escaped Ammitology.

At first Steven skims. His scrolling fingers slow to a crawl, some paragraph capturing his attention enough to make him drink in every word. Then he's skimming faster, faster, expression curdling until he has to look away from the screen.

"Do you need me to read all of it?" he asks. "I will, just -- not all at once. If that's all right?"

"I needed you to read enough to get what I meant. That's all." Layla eases the tablet back out of his shaking hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean for it to upset you..."

"'M not upset," says Steven unconvincingly, hugging his knees tighter against his chest.

Marc would want to be left alone, in a moment like this. Would prefer Layla to act like she doesn't even perceive his existence, until he's finished working through the feelings and gives her a signal that he's ready for human interaction again.

Does Steven handle things the same way? Maybe. But then...he seemed so desperately lonely.

On a hunch, Layla offers a distraction. "We should call someone with a tip about the tomb. Alexander's tomb, I mean. I can do it so it won't be traced."

She gets a quiet rush of delight when it works, Steven sitting up straighter. "We should, shouldn't we! Where do we start? CNN? No, we're in Egypt. Al-Jazeera? But, oh gosh, it has to get to people who can protect the site first! Before the news starts going around to tourists, or grave-robbers, or, I don't know, Instagram influencers..."

"Definitely not calling a TV network first," agrees Layla. "I have contacts in the archaeology world, you know?"

Steven's brow furrows. "Are these...reputable contacts?"

"The kind of 'reputable' that matters to me, yes."

Meaning the kind that will make sure everything stays in Egypt, and doesn't get squirreled off to, say, the colonizer museums of ex-empires. Layla is right on the verge of saying as much, when she remembers that Steven is British (or...thinks he's British? It runs deeper than a cover identity, whatever it is), and worked at a museum. She wouldn't have meant it as a personal dig, but he could easily take it as one.

"Anyway, you'll be glad if they're not too respectable," she says instead. "We want investigators who can agree to blame any damage on the undead monster guards, and not feel ethically compelled to check for evidence."

"Ohhhh," says Steven softly. "Oh, that's right, we did sort of desecrate the tomb, didn't we? And I left so much evidence. I've never done crime before, I didn't think about being careful at all. Alexander the Great's coffin has my fingerprints on it! I -- we -- bled out on the floor!"

They bled out in a puddle, as Layla remembers. And that water was much too clear to be stagnant -- it's probably washed the blood away by now. Can't say the same for the fingerprints, though. (And wouldn't that just blow Interpol's minds, if they ever got a chance to match it up...)

"Monsters still down there, too," adds Steven. "We didn't squish them all, there were a few that ran away from Marc and me when we came out. Probably scared of the suit. Maybe they lost their power when we defeated Ammit? But in the moment, we didn't exactly stop to chase them..."

"I'll put that in the tip," says Layla. "Caution, undead guards, do not approach without Avengers-level backup."

Chapter Text

Marc still feels asleep, and Steven doesn't want to spill too much of Marc's personal business while he's not there. But he does want to share the outlines of what happened between them in the Duat. Layla should understand a little about why he and Marc are cooperating so much better now.

It turns out Taweret already gave Layla some details!

...They're filtered through the perception of an immortal ultraterrestrial intelligence, who doesn't quite understand which parts humans find most important, so Layla still asks for a fair amount of it re-explained. But it does mean Steven doesn't have to convince her "this was a real set of interactions we had on a post-corporeal plane, not a meaningless dying-brain hallucination."

It's going pretty well, until he gets to the part about the dig where Layla's father died.

"Harrow's people showed me a CIA report about that, and then you asked Marc questions about it. So I had a whole picture in my head of how it went," says Steven. "Then I saw Marc's memory of the aftermath...and, um, I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear this, but he was holding a lot of things back."

It gets a bitter laugh out of Layla. "Gosh. Tell me something I don't know."

"...that's what I'd like to do, yeah."

Layla gives him a sharp look, at the same time as he feels Marc, in the back of his head, start to stir. In a tightly-neutral voice, she says, "Is there a reason I can't hear it directly from him?"

Don't, thinks Marc. He doesn't try to take the body, though, or to shut Steven down. He just thinks it. It's fine. You don't need to.

"Hold on a mo'," says Steven out loud, holding up a hand between himself and Layla. There's no reflections handy -- they're sitting by the window again, and the curtains are drawn, he can't even get something off the glass -- so instead Steven closes his eyes, and pictures Marc sitting beside him.

It works. Shockingly well, in fact. Steven would swear he can feel the warmth of another human body next to his, and has to fight not to open his eyes and double-check.

"Hi, Marc," he says. "I'd like to, though."

It's not gonna do any good. Hearing more details won't make her happier. It's not worth it.

"Sort of think it will make her happier, long-term," counters Steven. "And she deserves to know. I won't go diggin' up all your personal private history, just the parts Layla deserves to know."

She deserves to hear it from me, thinks Marc miserably. You weren't even there. She's gonna think I'm a coward, hiding behind you.

"Maybe," says Steven. "Can I tell you something I think?"

...sure.

Eyes still closed, Steven takes a deep breath. "I think...that you've got a lot of experiences of being in places where Bad Things Happen, when you can't stop them, and then you get accused of making them happen. And not a lot of experience being able to say 'I didn't do it, it wasn't my fault' and having anyone back you up. Not even the people who are supposed to love and support you the most. So you've got a huge mental block against even trying -- and why wouldn't you, perfectly normal defense mechanism to pick up, after all that -- but, good news, you've also got me. Let me handle this one."

He can feel Marc drawing closer to him, like a man who really wants a hug but can't bring himself to ask for it. So, just...treat you like my stress ball again? I thought we agreed you deserve better than that. I shouldn't have made you just to use you for that.

Frankly, in light of that last speech, Steven is starting to doubt that Marc did make him. Sure, Marc was around first and Steven came second, he's not questioning that part -- but that doesn't prove little Marc was some kind of mutant prodigy, with the power to willfully conjure his imaginary friends into life. It makes far more sense that Steven was one more Thing That Happened while Marc wasn't in control -- just in the room.

He isn't sure how to lay that out in words yet, though. And it's a bit more than Steven wants to get into while Layla's still listening.

Instead, he says, "If I was walking home one night, and some mugger jumped out of a dark alley and tried to attack me, you'd swap in and fight them for me, wouldn't you?"

Of course! thinks Marc, a fierce protectiveness rolling off him in waves. Of course I would. I would never abandon you to handle something like that on your--

He breaks off mid-sentence. Either he figured out the parallel on his own, or he felt the gratified smile spreading over Steven's face.

Okay, he says at last. If you really want to -- okay. Go ahead and try.

*

So Steven explains. About how the killer wasn't Marc's 'partner', he was the boss. How Bushman was even Marc's old CO (he has to double-check with Marc what that means), so Marc already trusted him. How Bushman would've been hired on that dig, and decided to murder everyone, whether Marc was there or not. How Marc just happened to be one of the people he reached out to, offering them a spot on the team, thinking they would follow orders no matter what.

"...and, well, Marc didn't," says Steven flatly. "He signed on to protect the archaeologists. Far as he was concerned, that was always the job. When the killing started, he put himself between them and Bushman, and Bushman shot him too."

Layla's eyes go up and down Steven's body -- no, he realizes, up and down Marc's body. Which she has seen naked (probably quite a lot, in fact), so she'd know where the scars are. "Where?"

"Stomach," says Steven. For a hot second he thinks about asking Marc for more specifics, but no, Marc has been fully checked out for a couple minutes now. "I, uh, don't know enough about anatomy to tell which specific bits got hit? But it had to have been some of the important ones. There was a lot of blood, I know that much."

"There would be." Layla bites her lip. "You shoot someone in the gut when you want them to die...but not quickly."

Steven's present-day stomach rolls, and he doesn't think it's because he ate too much. "Ooh. Would not have picked up on that part."

Layla keeps shifting position in the chair, like she can't remember how to get comfortable. "But he didn't die."

Steven isn't sure how to answer that. He's wary about taking too much of Khonshu's melodramatic bellowing at face value, past or present-day alike...but he's about fifty-fifty certain that Marc did die, actually.

"Did someone come and pick him up? Get him to medical treatment in time? If Duchamp knew...I'm not actually sure if they'd met yet by then, but..."

"Um," says Steven. "It wasn't...human medical treatment, exactly."

Her face sharpens. "You mean he already had the suit at that point?"

What?

"But...then he could've saved them, if he really wanted to...so why didn't he..."

"Layla," interrupts Steven, "do you happen to remember what specific archaeological site your father's team was excavating?"

Layla thinks. Thinks some more. Her brow furrows, hard.

Her eyes go wide.

She puts her face in her hands, and mutters a phrase in Arabic that Steven doesn't recognize, but has a feeling would translate as something like "well, fuck me."

Then she's sniffling, rubbing her temples hard, fighting back tears gathering in the corners of her eyes.

"I just -- he could've told me," she says, audibly choked-up. "I don't understand...why wouldn't he just..."

"Do you really want me to try to list all of Marc Spector's issues?" asks Steven earnestly. "How much time have you got?"

Layla lets out an undignified snort of laughter -- and then the dam bursts and she is crying. Steven has no idea how to comfort her -- it's not like he's ever had to process the news that his husband was almost murdered on the same night his dad was -- but he puts a tentative hand on her shoulder, and she clutches at it and draws him closer, and the next thing Steven knows he's on his knees next to Layla's chair, both of them clinging to each other while she sobs into his shoulder.

You made her cry, thinks Marc, from a long way off.

Normal crying, thinks Steven in reply. A sad thing happened and she's sad about it. It's healthy crying. That's all.

It crosses his mind, then, as he turns the timeline over and over again, that Khonshu wanted it sad. What if the horrible old bird could've intervened sooner? Reached out and offered Marc the suit before the massacre started, instead of waiting until Marc was bleeding out and everyone else was a body cooling on the sand? That would've started Marc's whole Moon Knight career from a point of triumph and relief, a Big Damn Hero moment, the kind they make movies about. Not a pit of grief and guilt and suicidal despair.

...or maybe Steven is giving Khonshu way too much credit. The god is manipulative, sure, but also impulsive and short-sighted and absolutely pants at making good plans.

And, not that he'd ever admit weakness, but it did rather look like he didn't have the power to do anything until a body with a compatible soul delivered itself to his front door.

Well. They'll probably never know for sure.

(And it's not like it matters now anyway, right? They're never going to have to see the stupid pigeon again.)

Out loud, Steven stays perfectly quiet until Layla pulls herself back together, sniffles a bit, and mumbles into Steven's damp shoulder, "As excuses not to talk about something go...I guess 'trauma from being literally murdered' is one of the better ones."

I would've blacked out, thinks Marc. I couldn't do that. Especially not in the tomb. Leaving you and her alone, with Harrow's people right on your heels? I would've said anything, agreed to anything, to keep from doing that.

Steven relays that, the bit about blacking out. "And obviously the immediate life-or-death peril made it extra-touchy...but the same thing would've happened if he tried it on the nicest, most peaceful day in the world, you know? Probably I would've swapped in. And, gosh, if that happened any time before yesterday, I would've been no help at all."

"Would've gotten off to a rough start, I'm sure," says Layla ruefully. "I still would've thought Marc was having a bad joke...you still would've been scared and confused about why this stranger was yelling at you..."

She plants her hands on his shoulders and pushes herself upward, using one arm to brace herself while the other one wipes her face. Steven keeps very still.

After a moment, Layla gives him a crooked smile. "But I think you -- Steven -- could've helped a lot more than you give yourself credit for."

Chapter Text

The next time Layla wakes up, it's afternoon, Steven is the one who's already out of bed, and Marc is up again.

He and Steven are doing the kind of fluid switching they did in the battle -- the night before last, now. Even with the accents, it's harder for Layla to keep track when their whole outfit doesn't conveniently switch along with them. But she talks about a couple of personal things -- nothing serious enough to trip any new emotional landmines, just, things only her husband would know -- and he's definitely awake.

Keeping the two of them straight feels like the kind of thing she can get better at. With practice.

She realizes that, yeah, she wants to get that practice.

...but first, Marc deserves a disclosure from her.

"Marc thought about going out to pick up some supplies," says Steven, taking a polite seat on the edge of the bed. "I only managed to talk him out of it by convincing him that, if you woke up and we weren't there, you would murder him when we got back and I wouldn't even stop you."

"Steven, you are a prince among men," declares Layla. "And...I believe I could let you two take a short trip right now, if you're up for it. Or I can go, if you just wanted the supplies but you'd rather relax a little longer."

"We could, uh, all go together?" Marc swings his legs up on the mattress and crosses them. "Unless you're trying to say you need a break from us. Or giving us a test? I get it, I deserve some testing at this point."

"It's not either of those," admits Layla. "I'd just really rather someone stay in the room."

"Sure. Yes." Marc presses a hand to his heart. "Of course. Anything you say. ...Why?"

For answer, Layla swings over to hop off the side of the bed, and pulls out the camping backpack from where she stashed it underneath.

Marc (or is this Steven?) gets on all fours and leans over the edge to watch as she undoes the buckles, opens the flaps, and carefully unwraps some of the padding.

Steven lets out a high keening sound like a broken kettle.

It cuts off with a snap as Marc swaps in, and does a much better job of staying calm. "When did you even...?"

Layla holds up her hands. "In our new spirit of honesty, and open communication, and so forth...I haven't given up the Avatar of Taweret role quite yet."

She gestures down at the backpack that currently holds the stone-bound ushabtis of eleven Egyptian gods.

"There weren't any other Avatars left to take care of them, and it was absolutely not safe to just leave them in the Great Pyramid, so...for now they're in my custody. I promised I'd keep working with Taweret until they're taken care of."

And after that...well. She hasn't decided where she wants her life to go next.

(Other than the bit where she wants Marc, and Steven, to stay part of it.)

"What does 'taken care of' mean?" asks Marc faintly. "Are we moving them somewhere? Are we smashing them? --Steven, relax, Layla's an expert, she could write a frickin' textbook about safely transporting precious objects. We're not gonna break any by accident. Guarantee it."

"Taweret said she's not comfortable making any big decisions without hearing from the rest of the Ennead. And it might take them a while to get their act together." Layla starts gently re-wrapping the ushabti of Anubis. (It seemed like Taweret was extra-tempted to release that one and hand back control of the Duat, but she held off.) "She has a temple -- a place where she still has enough influence to make sure they aren't disturbed in the meantime. I'm taking them there for now."

"Makes sense." Marc sways a little on his hands. "Uh. Sorry, Steven's just freaking out a little in here."

"Freaking out...enough that we shouldn't split up for that supply run?"

Some part of Layla wonders if she's being an idiot -- after all these years, still daring to hope that maybe, finally, this is the time Marc Spector will admit that he needs help.

Maybe Steven had the same thought, because suddenly he's out front again, shared body heaving for breath. "No, no, but we are going to need a minute," he pants. "Or. Maybe two. Maybe two for every statue you have in that backpack...in your backpack full of gods. That you just. Had. Under the bed. Oh my days, I need to lie down."