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Jake Lockley stares at Harrow shaking in the backseat of his cab with the neutral expression of a killer. He aims his handgun at the space between Harrow’s eyes and he does not wonder if those are the eyes of a man who could be redeemed. He pulls the trigger and does not wonder what it feels like to be shot in the head. Marc would have wondered. He would have felt the blood on his hands like weights on his shoulders and he would have been sick with guilt. Jake Lockley does not feel sick. There are a thousand things he will always be ashamed of, but killing Harrow would never be one of them.
In Jake's eyes, Harrow had been a dead man the moment he threatened Marc. This was a man who would have killed them without hesitation if he was given the chance, who had killed them . That alone robbed him of the right to mercy. That alone was a death sentence.
So he pulls the trigger. He does not feel sick. He does not feel sorry. He smiles when he shoots the dead man, then he turns back to the wheel and drives away.
“You did well, my son.” The bird tells him. He’s got this loud, booming voice that rattles around in Jake's ears. It’s giving him a headache.
“Vete a la mierda, asshole.”
Khonshu huffs out a long breath that makes it feel like the whole car is shaking.
“If this arrangement is to work, you will have to be civil with me.”
“You want this to work? ¡No me llames tu hijo!” Jake mutters.
The bird seems to decide that he’s had enough of this conversation, because the backseat fills with smoke and then suddenly Jake is alone in the car.
His hands tighten on the steering wheel. Stupid goddamn pigeon. Jake tries not to look at his hands. Tries not to look at the blood tracing his popped out veins, tries not to stare at the dried crimson that flakes off his fingertips and cakes in his nail beds. It isn’t Harrow’s blood. He’d been far enough away that none of what’s left of the man lives on Jake. Harrow’s blood is staining the leather in the backseat of his cab, but it does not stain his hands.
There isn’t really any blood on his hands, but it looks as real as anything else in this world. He knows it isn’t really blood, but he still sees it every time he wakes up in the body. Jake’s been scrubbing his hands down to the bone ever since the marines.
There’s blood on his hands. There isn’t. The blood is as real as his Brooklyn accent and as real as Steven’s mother. Jake is a half Guatemalan kid from Brooklyn. Jake is a jewish boy from Chicago. There’s blood on his hands. There isn’t.
A traffic light turns yellow. Jake speeds through it. He fucking hates London drivers. Idiotas, todos ellos.
His head swims with thoughts that aren’t his own. He can feel Marc bubbling close to the surface, like water boiling over a pot. It’s been so much harder to control the switches these past few months. If he keeps this shit up, they’ll find out about him. He can’t let that happen. Jake pushes Marc down as far as he can and keeps driving. He’ll switch back when they get home. He can hold it off that long.
He takes a detour to the Thames, where he throws what’s left of Harrow into the river. The man is a mass of limp bones and dried blood. There’s a hollowed out cavern where his forehead should be, and it looks sort of like a third eye. Jake thinks Harrow would have appreciated dying like that- spiritual cabrona that he was . He’s tied down with weights and sinks to the bottom like an anchor. Jake does not feel sick. He does not feel sorry. He does not wonder what it feels like to drown.
There’s blood on his hands. There isn’t.
~~~
When Jake gets back to the apartment, he ties a brace to his ankle and surrenders himself to the soft hold of sleep. Gives the body back to the others and hides behind the mental walls he’s built around them. He won’t wake up again until months later.
~~~
Jake spends most of his time outside of the body. He watches Marc and Steven learn to live with each other from a bird's eye view. He hears Marc on the phone with his wife every Sunday. They’re trying to make things work again. Jake hopes for Marc’s sake that this whole thing doesn’t blow up in the kid’s face. He watches Steven make friends with a man named David. He owns the deli across the street from their apartment and has a scar the size of a mountain stretching over the left side of his face. David smiles at Steven’s jokes but gets cagey when he asks too many questions about his life. Jake doesn’t trust the guy.
He watches Marc throw all their grains away at the end of March. He hasn’t celebrated Passover with his family in years, but he still burns all the extra bread on the first morning. Still buys a box of matzah for the week.
Jake watches them job hunt, circling offers in the newspaper and dry-cleaning their one suit every time they have an interview. He watches as they fail to find a single museum in London willing to hire the guy who vandalized the British museum’s bathrooms.
Jake watches Marc and Steven do their best to fairly divide up time in the body. He watches as they leave post-it notes for each other on the bathroom mirrors;
“Need to pick up drycleaning. -Steven”
“Fed new Gus at 3:15 A.M. -Marc”
“Stop staying up so late. -Steven”
“Fed new Gus at 2:26 A.M. -Steven”
As much as Jake hates that Steven knows about their condition now, he thinks it’s not nearly as fucked as it could have been. They’ve been worse off.
He still remembers how awful it had been when Marc found out about Steven. Still remembers when Steven had surfaced during the marines and just… left.
The body went AWOL for almost two months. A platoon finally found them passed out on the shore of the Tigres sometime in March, and Marc ended up being medically discharged after a psych eval. Jake had been freaking the fuck out the entire time. Because Marc knew something was wrong, and Marc wasn’t supposed to know shit.
Things had worked out, of course. But things had also been fucked for a long time. Marc and Steven were both so stupid sometimes, both so stupidly selfless.
At least they still didn’t know about him. At least someone in here is holding them steady.
So Jake watches the two of them from a bird's eye view. He keeps the body’s eyes searching for danger. He keeps them safe. He makes sure they don’t feel his presence.
~~~
When Jake comes back to, it’s with his hands balled up into fists and his eyes searching for danger. He wakes up like he always does, ready to fight. He wakes up ready to claw and snarl and fight tooth and nail for the only two people he’s ever given a shit about.
His fist goes flying through the air on pure adrenaline and memory, but there’s nothing to hit. He’s alone in Marc’s apartment. There’s nothing to fight. He can hear birds chirping through the window and people chatting on the streets. It’s bright outside- late morning, maybe.
This isn’t supposed to happen. Jake only ever takes over the body when there’s danger. He’s not supposed to be out here when he’s not needed, doesn’t want to be out here. He tries to find Marc or Steven, tries to pull them back into the body, but they’re nowhere to be found.
“You’ve been gone a long time.” A disembodied voice bellows into Jake's ear.
Jake nearly jumps out of his skin. He tries to pull a pistol out of his holster but there’s nothing there. The body isn’t wearing it.
Khonshu appears like a ghost in front of him.
“Maldita sea!” He curses. “Fucking hell, don’t do that again!”
“You’ve been gone a long time.” The god repeats.
“Yeah, well I’m not really supposed to come out unless I’m needed.” Jake mutters.
He pauses, assessing the apartment again. Everything looks fine, but something has to be wrong. There’s always a reason why he gets pushed to the front.
“Did something happen? Marc and Steven, are they in trouble?”
“The others are fine, as far as I am aware.”
“Good, good.” He sighs. “Fuck, okay, I guess I’m stuck in here for awhile.”
“Yes, It seems so.” Khonshu agrees. “Come, there are people that I want you to kill. Loose ends that must be tied, as you humans are fond of saying.”
“Yeah, I guess I should have expected you to put me to work.” Jake laughs some kind of fucked-up evil villian laugh. “Lead the way, cerebros de pájaros.”
~~~
Three hours later and Jake is shoving religious extremists into body bags. They’re all followers of Ammit. They’re all looking for Harrow. Most of them seem convinced that Marc is to blame.
Jake throws a blonde woman with a tattoo on her wrist into another body bag. She has unbelievably kind eyes for a corpse. Ten minutes ago, she wanted Marc dead. Ten minutes ago, Jake killed her for it. Now she just looks peaceful.
He hates this part of the job. The violence is fine. It’s a necessity, It’s self defense, sometimes it’s even a little fun. But the clean up? That shit stinks. He hates the smell of death, hates the blood on his hands and the weight on his shoulders. Jake wonders if the people he killed will be missed. He tries not to look at his hands. He gets back in his car. He drives to the Thames. He dumps five more bodies in the river.
The real question is what the fuck does he do now?
Khonshu doesn’t have any more dirty work for him to do. Steven and Marc are still nowhere near the surface. For the first time in decades, Jake has time to kill. He hates it.
The thing is, he doesn’t like being in the body. It’s loud, heavy, and garishly bright in the real world. Strangers on the street try to talk to him. People ask him for directions, try to sell him flowers, try to hail his cab. It’s fucking exhausting.
But he’s out here, and he doesn’t really seem to have a choice in the matter. Jake gets back in his car. He starts driving.
~~~
“Thanks, mate.” A short, stocky, blonde man says as he pulls himself into the back of Jake’s cab.
“Yeah.” Jake grunts. “Where ya headed?”
“West End Theatre?” He asks from the backseat, and it sounds more like a question than a request. Fucking Brits, always so goddamn polite.
“Sure thing.” Jake hums, before promptly running through a red. The streets are practically empty, so he doesn’t think it matters much.
“You from the states?” The man asks.
Jake resists the urge to kick the guy out of his cab. The whole reason he’s doing this is to make some extra money for Marc and Steven, but that doesn’t mean he has to enjoy it. He hates small talk.
“Yeah. Brooklyn.”
“That’s in New York, right?”
“Yup.” He answers, popping the P.
“Always wanted to visit New York, I’ve heard it’s bloody magical.”
“Nah, it’s fucking disgusting.”
The guy laughs good naturedly.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that too.”
Jake still remembers the first time Marc went to New York. He’d been fifteen, Marc’s dad had taken them to the city over summer break. Wendy didn’t come. That wasn’t a surprise but somehow it had still been a disappointment.
For Jake, Marc’s mother not coming had been a relief. Three whole weeks of being free of that monster. Jake watched from mirrors and windows as Marc ate ice cream with his dad, visited bullshit tourist attractions, and smiled wider than he had in years. The bruises faded, the streets buzzed with life. It was the kind of relief that felt impossible. Surreal, but wonderful.
Jake thinks that trip is where he got his accent from. Marc must have picked it up from the old coffee shop owner that worked across from their hotel. By the time they got back to Chicago, Jake didn’t just speak Spanish, he also spoke Brooklyn.
Jake makes a sharp left onto Piccadilly and scrapes the car onto the curve just a little.
The guy in the back grips onto the edge of his seat and mutters something that was either “Blimey” or “Bloody hell”.
Jake ignores him. He runs another red and thinks about the view of Brooklyn from rooftops.
Jake also remembers the second time Marc went to New York. The body had been twenty-one. It had only been a few weeks after Marc almost blew his brains out, and instead enslaved himself to a god. Khonshu had him on some kind of man hunt, but the kid couldn’t handle it. He was a shaking mess, trying to cope with all the fucked up shit that had only just happened. Marc never slept, barely ate, and couldn’t be trusted to go through with a mission without getting himself killed.
So Jake stepped in.
He pulled himself into the body, and gave Marc some room to breathe. Jake spent eight months in NYC doing everything that Khonshu asked him to. He killed and maimed and spilled blood all throughout the city. The bird swore up and down that they were only killing people who deserved it. Jake wasn’t sure how much that mattered. Death was still death. Blood was still blood. You could commit every sin there was to commit, and there would still be people left to mourn you.
Jake supposed that was the kind of self-loathing bullshit Marc couldn’t cope with back then. He still can’t quite cope with it, even now.
When the overly friendly British man gets out of Jake's cab he tries not to remember being a taxi driver for eight months in New York, where only the tourists tried to talk to him.
All those years ago, all those miles away, but he still misses it. He misses the crowded streets, the buildings taller than the sky, the smell of trash and piss in the summers. He mostly misses those eight months of having a life to himself. He molded himself into the city. He didn’t make friends, but he knew the name of every asshole in Brooklyn. He had a life, a job, a whole world to himself.
And then Marc woke back up. Resurfaced all those months later, and unknowingly ignored the jump in time. He was better. Better equipped to cope with Khonshu and this new life he’d signed up for. Jake wasn’t needed anymore.
This was how it went, how it was supposed to go. So Jake didn’t hold it against Marc. He didn’t feel bitter. He didn’t feel angry, or cheated, or lost. When they moved back to London, he didn’t miss the city.
~~~
Jake drives back to the apartment. He’s got the radio playing so loud it hurts his ears. He stares straight ahead and doesn’t look at his bloody hands gripping the steering wheel.
When he gets home, he ties a brace to his ankle and tries to sleep.
~~~
Life goes in slow motion when you’re watching it happen from the backseat. It’s a sort of half consciousness. He can see Marc and Steven flitting about, living their lives- but he’s not really paying attention.
Right now, Jake’s watching Steven from the reflection of a pond. He’s feeding the ducks again. Fucking hell, ¿quién demonios sale solo a dar de comer a los patos?
Sometimes Jake doesn’t understand how he shares a body with these people. They’re so unlike him. He’s spent so much time trying to follow the thread that connects the three of them together, but he’s not sure if it leads to anything. They’ve all got the same past, the same body, the same bones. That feels like it has to count for something. He’s not sure if it does.
“Layla’s coming to visit next month. Isn’t that lovely?” Steven murmurs. He’s talking to the damn birds again. Esta jodidamente loco.
Jake’s pretty sure it’s a replacement for that street artist who used to work the corner by their apartment. The guy hasn’t been at that park bench in months. Probably found a new gig. Hell, maybe he died.
Even now, after all this time, Steven still just needs someone to talk to.
~~~
David offer’s Steven a job at the deli. It isn’t a museum guide, but it's something. A way to make some money at the very least. Jake is happy for him. He still doesn’t really trust David, but Jake doesn’t really trust anyone.
So Steven works at the Deli. He makes sandwiches and deals with rude customers, and he isn’t really happy- but he survives.
Life goes on.
~~~
A month later Marc’s girl flies in from egypt. Jake watches in exasperated silence as Marc fusses with his tie in the mirror. She won’t be here for another hour.
Pobre bastarda.
~~~
They go out to dinner at a local restaurant that tows the line between cheap and fancy. It's got candle lit tables and grimy floors, but the food is good so neither of them really care.
“So… how’s London?” Layla’s tracing circles on her thigh with her fingers. Her nails are a bright scarlet red. She must have gotten them done recently.
“It’s been good. Steven got a new job.” Marc isn’t looking at her. He keeps staring at his reflection in the diner window, willing something to appear.
For two people who’ve known each other for almost a decade, Layla and Marc’s conversations are really fucking stilted. Jake watches the two idiots from a birds eye view, rolling eyes he doesn’t have.
“That’s good, I’m really happy for him.” Layla’s eyes crinkle in a smile. “But I was asking about you, Marc.”
Jake can feel the blush creeping up Marc’s cheeks even without control over the body.
They're gonna be alright. He thinks. Una pareja de malditos tortolitos.
“I uh- I’m good. It’s weird, learning how to be a normal person again. I think I’m still just adjusting.”
“That’s good. I’m glad you’re giving yourself time.”
“Me too. It feels good to have my life back”
Layla shifts her legs from one side to another. She places her hands in her lap.
“About that…” She murmurs. “Are you really free from- him? ”
Marc frowns. “Of Khonshu? Yeah, of course. I completely broke my bond to him.”
Jake doesn’t like where this is going.
“Look, Marc, I really want to believe you but-” Layla leans over the creaking diner table just a little. “I’ve been hearing rumors in Egypt that-.” She’s whispering now. “That Moonknight is still active.”
“ What?”
Jake really doesn’t like where this is going.
~~~
“Maybe- Maybe he got a new Avatar?”
They’re back at the apartment now. Layla is sitting cross legged on the bed while Marc paces in circles across the hardwood floors. Jake is watching it all from outside himself. He keeps wondering if it would make things better or worse if he took the body over and knocked out Layla with one of Steven’s books.
“This quickly? Taweret told me that it takes decades for gods to find new avatars. It could take centuries, even.”
Marc throws his hands up in the air like a child. “Well it wasn’t me!”
“It has to be someone, Marc!”
“Oh fuck you!” He bursts out. “We don’t even know if these ‘rumors’ are true!”
Layla gets up. Her whole body is a tightly wound string. Every inch of her is seething.
“Fuck you too, Marc. Call me when you’re going to start being honest with me.”
She stomps out of the apartment on platform boots. Slams the door behind her as she goes.
~~~
Jake has no goddamn clue how he’s going to fix this. Everything is so deeply, irrevocably fucked.
Layla is angry as hell and already headed back to Egypt. The voicemail she leaves Marc as she’s driving to the airport is downright venomous.
Marc is… suspicious . He seems to know now that there might be someone else in their head, and that- that’s bad. It feels fucking world ending. The very idea that Marc or Steven could find out about Jake terrifies him. Jake doesn’t work if they know who he is. He won’t be able to protect them from their own stupid choices if they know he’s there.
Steven and Marc keep trying to talk to him in mirrors. Keep leaving him post-it notes on the fridge.
“Hello mate! If you’re reading this, I’d love to meet you! -Steven”
“I know you’re there. -Marc”
“There’s nothing to be scared of, we just want to say hello! -Steven”
“My wife doesn’t trust me anymore. Fucking explain yourself, asshole. -Marc”
“He doesn’t mean that. -Steven”
“Yes I do. -Marc”
Jake ignores the post-it notes. Ignores the strange looks given to window reflections and bathroom mirrors.
~~~
The deli guy- David, keeps asking Steven if he’s ok. Steven smiles, says he’s ‘quite alright’, and moves the conversation along diligently. But David keeps giving him looks like he knows something’s up. Just watching those knowing glances makes Jake uncomfortable. He doesn’t have a body right now, but Jake swears he can still feel the phantom sensations of his skin crawling.
“Look, mate.” David starts one morning. He sets his vegetable knife down and looks straight at Steven through his good eye. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but something isn’t right with ya, and I’m worried.”
Steven opens and closes his mouth, caught off guard. Jake hates how openly Steven expresses his confusion or his fear. It’s the kind of vulnerability that could get them killed.
“I- well. I just- I suppose It’s just that I’m scared for someone.” Steven says at last.
David raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?” He asks.
“Yeah, my- well my mate is in a bit of trouble. He was in a bad situation before and we thought he’d gotten out of it, but now… we're not so sure.”
“I hear ya.” David nods sagely. “Know all about tough spots. You think he’ll be ok?”
“I hope so. We uh- we’re trying to figure it out. There’s another... friend of mine who might be able to help, but he won’t talk to us. It’s all rather complicated.”
David sighs. “It’s always complicated, innit?”
“Yes.” Steven agrees. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
~~~
It’s been two months. Layla never answers they’re calls. Marc rarely fronts. Steven stops visiting the ducks. Jake remains a silent observer to it all.
Somehow, life goes on.
~~~
Jake wakes up again in the bright fluorescent lights of a Tesco. He’s holding a box of Cheerios in one hand and a shopping basket in the other.
“Fuck.” He mutters to himself. He’s already on edge and ready to fight. White-knuckling the cereal so hard he can feel the cardboard denting underneath his fingers.
Jake’s eyes scan the supermarket. There’s isn’t anything out of the ordinary. No one seems to even be looking at him and there’s nothing he can see that would have caused him to surface. He stares down at the basket in his hand. He wonders why this keeps happening.
Three hours later Jake finds himself driving home in Steven's car, the trunk stuffed with groceries. It’s such a normal task, and yet it was excruciating. Jake can’t remember the last time he had to do any of that tedious being a person shit. Stuff like making small talk with the cashier while she’s scanning your shit or trying to remember which oreo flavor it was that Marc likes.
He’s pulling into the space closest to the apartment when Khonshu fucking teleports himself into existence.
“Hello, Jake Lockley.” The bird greets from where he’s sitting cross legged in the backseat.
Jake jumps- just managing to pull himself back from the visceral instinct to grab the pistol stashed in the car's glove compartment.
“Hola, mierda de pájaro.” Jake mutters back.
“It has been months since you last surfaced.” The god points out without missing a beat. No preamble, no ‘ hey Jake, how ya doing?’
Fucking asshole.
“Too fucking soon if you ask me.” Jake pulls himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him. He starts grabbing groceries from the trunk.
“You have done little work for me in the past year.” Khonshu seems to apparate out of the car and into the wide open sidewalks. He’s looming over Jake like a shadow.
“Well fuck you, too.”
“Jake Lockley, if you are to continue to be my avatar, you must be present.”
He laughs lowly. Closes the truck with his free hand and starts walking towards Steven’s flat.
“Yeah, that's not gonna happen buddy.” If he starts taking over the body more consistently, Marc will notice. Marc can’t notice anything. He already knows something’s up, Jake can’t afford to add to that.
“If you wish to continue being Moonknight, then you will ensure that this happens.”
Jake doesn’t reply because he doesn’t want the guy working the lobby to think Steven’s crazy. He does, however, roll his eyes. Muy dramáticamente.
When he finally gets back to the apartment he slams the door behind him and whirls around on Khonshu.
“You-“ He jabs a finger towards the god. “You are not my priority.”
“Appeasing you is not important to me, remaining as Moonknight is not important to me, fucking having a life is not important to me. Marc and Steven are my priority.” Jake balls his hands up into fists. Starts pacing.
“I took the job you offered me because Harrow was a threat to them. I kept working for you because the people you wanted me to kill were the same people who wanted to kill Marc. My priority will always be the two of them, and making sure they don’t know who I am is how I keep those assholes safe. Regularly surfacing? That shit isn’t doable. At a certain point they will start questioning the lost time.”
He pauses again, looks Khonshu dead in the eye.
“Marc didn’t trust you, and if you think that I do then you haven’t been paying attention.” He spits out.
The air feels heavy. There’s a half-second beat of absolute silence that feels like it stretches on to eternity.
Then Khonshu smiles. He takes his long, bony talons and begins to clap. The sound is something like shattered glass.
“That was a lovely little speech you gave.” Khonshu leans down, towering over Jake. The grin stretching across his beak shows entirely too many teeth. Do birds even fucking have teeth?
“The idea that you think you have any control over this is laughable.” The god murmurs. He takes a long, bony hand and rests it on Jake's face like a father consoling a child.
“You are my avatar, Jake Lockley. The only choice you have in this matter is one between obedience and death.”
Jake swallows. Feels dry fingers resting just above his neck. He makes a choice.
“Fuck. You.”
Jake spits in the face of an ancient god.
The thing is, Jake doesn’t fucking believe him. Khonshu can threaten and preach all he wants- but he doesn’t have any follow through. He wants Marc back. It was probably his ploy from the beginning to use Jake until he could convince Marc to trust him again. A way to bide his time.
Having shared a head with him for over two decades, Jake knows that there’s a part of Marc that wants to be Moonkinght again. Despite everything, Marc had always loved saving people. And maybe there’s a world out there where Khonshu and him could still work together. Jake doesn’t think he’s living in that world.
In the end, Khonshu broke Marc’s trust. The rest doesn’t matter.
It makes Jake's head spin to know that if Khonshu had just been honest about the missions and the artifacts and all the other bullshit, that maybe they wouldn’t be here.
But they are here. Standing in Marc and Steven’s London apartment. Jake stares up at a God double his size. Khonshu towers above him, spit splattered on his bone white face.
“You will regret this, Worm.” He thunders.
And then he’s gone. And Jake is alone again.
~~~
The fact that he’s waking up more often isn’t entirely terrible. There’s a part of him that enjoys being in the body more consistently. It almost reminds him of New York.
He gives cab rides most of the time that he's out. Soon enough, Jake knows all the London gossip like the back of his bloody hands. Sometimes, when he’s making a sharp turn, he swears he can see his reflection staring back at him from the car window. Jake tries not to think about what that could mean.
He hasn’t been working as Moonknight at all lately. Khonshu is still being pissy, and he won’t let Jake summon the suit anymore. He isn’t too worried, though. Jake can protect the body just fine without all that bullshit magic.
It’s strange though, he’s been waking up in the body more and more- but he has no idea what to do when he does. Since Khonshu is giving him the silent treatment like a fucking toddler, Jake doesn’t have any Moonknight duties to fill up his time. He drives the cab for some extra cash, but besides that, Jake doesn’t know what the hell to do with all this time.
He wasn’t ever really meant to have a personality. For as long as Jake has existed his primary goal had been to protect. And now? Now he was supposed to do other things? To have some semblance of a life?
He tries to remember what he did to kill time back in New York. He’d gone to a lot of concerts, hadn’t he? Underground rock bands and heavy metal raves- the kind of shit that makes your ears bleed.
He buys a used electric guitar next time he’s in the body. Keeps it in Marc's old storage unit. The beginner lessons he finds on Youtube are surprisingly easy to follow.
~~~
“Look man, I don’t know why you won’t talk to us… but I’m done feeling like I have no control over my life. If there really is another person in this head, I need you to talk to me.”
Marc is standing in the bathroom of their apartment, staring into the mirror above the sink. He’s waiting for the reflection to change, silently praying that a voice will answer his own.
Jake watches. He says nothing.
“Please. Fuck I- if Khonshu really does have control over the body I need to know.”
Marc doesn’t need to know. He wants answers, sure, but they aren’t good for him. Knowing about Khonshu won’t help to keep Marc safe.
So Jake says nothing.
“Come on man, just give me something! You don’t want to talk about Khonshu, fine . At least tell me your name.”
Marc holds out one of his hands towards the mirror.
“Hi, I’m Marc. Who the hell are you?”
Silence. Jake watches. He says nothing.
Marc drops his hand and sighs. His face is going red, his eyebrows knit together.
“ What is your problem? My life is finally getting better and you have to come in here and ruin everything! I’m exhausted because you keep taking the body at night, and I’m terrified that you're working for Khonshu. My wife is mad at me, and Steven is worried about me, and I’m scared. All while you get to sit there in the shadows and refuse to answer me!”
Marc is breathing so heavily that it’s fogging up the mirror in front of him. He’s gripping the edge of the sink so hard that Jake is worried it might crack. He’s shaking.
Jake thinks he’s shaking too. Fuck. All he’s ever wanted was to help Marc. But this- whatever he’s doing, it isn’t helping. Marc might be safe from the things that want to hurt him, but he’s isolated, and scared, and he doesn’t know why. Jake needs to fix this. He tries to say something. The words form around him, but he can’t get them out.
‘Of course Khonshu is still here. I thought he would keep us safe. I still don’t know if I was right or not.’
‘Hi, I’m Jake. I was supposed to protect you.’
‘My problem is that I’m supposed to keep you safe and I can never manage to. I’m sorry. Nunca debiste haber tenido que vivir con tanto dolor.’
Jake tries and tries to speak past the lump in his throat, but his lungs are sore and his tongue feels heavy. Can a body that isn’t real fail you? Jake swears can feel imaginary knots in his imaginary stomach and he thinks they might eat him alive.
“Please.” Marc says from the other side of the mirror. His voice rings out hollow and scared but it's real. He’s so completely real. 3D, and tangible, and so utterly devastated.
“Please.” Marc begs.
Jake tries, and he tries. He says nothing.
~~~
Jake’s been taking punches for Marc since they were ten years old. It’s what he was made for. He was carved out of Marc’s brain, was molded into something that could handle the heavy hand of a belt, the venom soaked words of a cruel mother.
When things got too hard, it was Jake who took over the body. When Wendy was too much for even Marc to handle, Jake was the one who lived through it. He was built for survival mode. He helped the three of them survive Wendy, survive the marines, survive Khonshu, and Harrow, and every other fucker who ever tried to hurt them.
Jake was made for survival. But this shit? Living? Jake didn’t have a clue how to live. He has no idea how to protect them from this kind of pain, he wasn’t built for handling the emotional side of things. So he didn’t know how to fix Layla’s anger. And he didn’t know how the fuck he was supposed to talk to Marc.
Everything was fucked, and it was entirely Jake’s fault for agreeing to work for Khonshu.
There’s blood on his hands. He can’t wash it off.
~~~
Time continues moving. Steven makes sandwiches, cries most days, and pours his heart out to ducks that don’t listen. Marc leaves rude notes on mirrors, never cries at all, and spends most of his time afraid. Jake learns to play guitar and tries to figure out how to protect people from themselves.
They’re walking on whip thin icicles and Jake is waiting for something to give. They’re hanging on the edge of fraying laces and Jake is waiting for the shoe to drop.
It doesn’t take long.
~~~
Jake wakes up in the body to the taste of blood in his mouth. He’s in a dark alleyway. There are three figures in front of him, but he can’t make them out from just the streetlights.
A hard knuckled fist goes flying into Jake’s face. He blocks it on pure instinct.
He’s being attacked. A muscled arm tries to grab his shoulder and Jake just manages to flip the guy around. He pins him against the wall.
“What the fuck do you-” Jake starts to say.
He feels a pressure at the back of his head, like something pulling at his hair… and then-
He’s lying flat on his ass, head knocking hard into the concrete as he goes down. Three men surround him on all sides. One puts a boot on his chest.
He’s outnumbered, he’s bleeding from his forehead, and he can’t breathe past the steel toe driving itself into his ribs.
“Marc Spector.” One of the goons says from above him. He’s sneering like a fucking telenovela villano . “A little birdie told us that you know what happened to our messiah…” The man digs his boot in a little further. Jake swears he can hear his ribs cracking.
The guy to the left with the eyebrow slit and the Czechian mob insignia tattooed on his bicep leans down to look Jake in the eye. He’s holding a freshly sharpened knife in one hand and has brass knuckles wrapped around the other.
“Tell us where Harrow is, or we’ll just have to find another way to get the information out of you.”
Fuck.
Jake swallows. Tries to think around the blood rushing in his head. He tries to summon the suit, but Khonshu’s still pissed at him. Nothing comes.
Double Fuck.
Jake knows how to fight his way out of situations, but he also knows when he’s outnumbered. And this shit? He’s gonna need to get creative if he wants to make it out alive.
He’s pulled from his thoughts by what Jake suspects is the group’s leader.
“Fucking talk !” The man barks out. He’s got shoulder length greasy black hair and a set of scales inked into his wrist. His eyes are an angry pale blue.
Jake smiles up at the asshole as he feels the man’s boot push further into his chest. He doesn’t say a word, just smiles sweetly up at them. What’s he supposed to say? Oh sorry- I shot your leader in the head and dumped his body in a river, pretty please don’t be mad at me.
“Do you think this is funny, pretty boy?” The man askes. He leans down until he’s fully looming over Jake. ”Marc Spector, I will ruin your life.”
A too-wide smile stretches over the man's face. Jake feels callous fingers tracing his face.
“You don’t want to talk? That’s fine.” He jerks his head towards the Czechain with the brass knuckles. “We’ve got ways to make you talk.”
The man’s hands cup Jakes face mockingly. Jake smiles. Time to get creative,
He leans his head towards the goon’s fingers and bites down hard. Smiles around it as the taste of pennies fills his mouth. The asshole screams and jerks back. Jake takes the opportunity to get the upper hand.
~~~
Less than ten minutes later Jake is heaving in a London alleyway. He’s surrounded by three dead bodies and a bloody finger he only half remembers biting off. His head is pounding. His hands are bloody. Seconds ago, his hands had snapped a man's neck. Now they’re trembling.
He drags the bodies into the trunk of his cab. He drives to the Thames. He wonders if that river has room for anymore death. It’ll be running red by the time he’s through with it. His stomach churns. He takes the long way home.
There’s blood on his hands. He can’t wash it off.
By the time he gets to the apartment, it’s almost midnight. He crashes into Steven’s expensive memory foam mattress, ties a brace to his ankle and surrenders himself to the soft hold of sleep.
Jake lets himself give the body back to the others and hides behind the mental walls he’s built around them. Ready to forget all of this.
~~~
He sleeps peacefully. He doesn’t dream.
~~~
Jake wakes up to the sound of Steven's alarm clock blaring. He tries and fails to hit the snooze button as he blearily comes alive. He starts to stretch, feels his muscles pop and strain, sore from… something . Eyes adjusting in the light, Jake attempts to read the clock.
Fuck.
It’s- It’s tomorrow. Fucking hell. No time has passed since the fight. Marc or Steven should have taken over the body. One of them should have woken up, no idea that Jake had ever been there at all. This isn’t how it's supposed to go. He’s supposed to front when shit gets hard and then he’s supposed to fucking leave. But it’s morning, and Jake’s still here. Something must be wrong. He must have missed something.
Jake thinks back to the fight in the alleyway. Three guys- followers of Harrow. Jake had fronted after the tall one tried to punch him. They had- how had they found him? Steven had been walking home from the Deli when the assholes ganged up on him. They’d been following him. They’d known Steven’s routine. The main guy had known Marc's name.
Shit .
If Harrow’s followers suspected Marc, if they’d been watching him, then more had to be coming. The threat was still looming, and it wouldn’t stop until Marc was dead in the ground.
Jake wasn’t gonna let that happen.
The whole cult has probably been gathering information on Marc, tracking his movements, learning his habits. They have to know where Marc lives- know where Steven works. Jake wonders if they would come after David. Fuck , Steven would probably cry if they went after David. The wife- Layla - would be safe at least. She was still off in Egypt doing dios sabe que. Jake didn’t think it was much comfort to know that the few people in Marc and Steven’s lives would probably be fine. Marc and Steven were still in danger. Marc had dangerous cult followers coming after him in the name of revenge. The assholes knew Steven’s routine- new where they lived .
Jake needs to get them out of here. Needs to do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
~~~
He buys a business class ticket to New York. He doesn’t second guess himself. He doesn’t feel sorry for uprooting their lives. He packs as much of Steven and Marc’s shit into three luggage bags. He looks up protocol for bringing pet fish on airplanes. Shit, ok- he looks up how to smuggle fish past airport security.
At 7:00 PM exactly he drives his cab to the airport. At 9:30 he gets on a plane headed to America.
~~~
The view from up here makes him nauseous, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the window. Fluffed up clouds roll across a baby blue sky and Jake fights to keep his stomach from curling. It’s an alternative to looking at his hands. He knows that the blood stains are all in his head, but the red between his fingers looks so fucking real. It is real- as real as he is, anyway.
Jake isn’t ashamed of the people he’s killed. He isn’t sorry. Their hollow, lifeless faces don’t haunt him like they haunt Marc. Jake knows that every ounce of pain he’s inflicted has been justified, because these people were threats. They were threats to Marc, or to Steven, or to the body. Jake would do anything- would kill anyone to protect them. Sometimes it scares him, how far he would go for those idiotas.
Jake drums bloodied fingers against his cushioned armrest and adjusts his posture in the stiff airplane seat. He wonders how Marc and Steven will react when they wake up in Brooklyn, half their shit moved into a tiny apartment above a hair salon. He hopes they won’t try to move right back to England. He’s banking on them choosing to stay.
What the hell do they have in London worth going back for anyway? A deli job? An abysmal social life?
A royal blue electric guitar locked away in a storage unit, he answers himself. A duck pond. A friend.
He tries to keep his thoughts on track. Survival. It doesn’t matter if Britain will be missed- this is how they stay alive. He doesn’t care if the others don’t understand. He doesn’t give a shit if they’re angry- as long as they’re alive. As long as they’re both alive.
Jake looks out the window. He sees the neutral expression of a killer reflected in the glass. He sees Harrow’s tattoo in the rolling clouds. He sees blood on his hands. He sees Wendy’s cold icy eyes in the blue sky. He sees blood on his hands.
Jake pictures the faces of everyone he’s ever killed. They mill about in a hospital room. Their eyes are blurry, their features shifting and undefined. He thinks about all the lives he’s taken. He feels grateful that Marc and Steven aren’t part of that list. He thinks of all the lives he’s ruined. He hopes to god that Marc’s life isn’t one of them. Jake really fucking hopes that he’s making the right choice. He really fucking hopes that moving to another continent will keep Harrow’s followers off their trail.
He falls asleep between the headrest and the windowsill. He dreams of escape routes and exit strategies. He dreams of heavy metal concerts in underground clubs and being a whole person.
~~~
The plane lands in Queens at 5:47 AM. At 6:04 Jake hails a cab that takes him to east Brooklyn. He watches the city roll past him through the taxi window. So much of it is different from when he’d lived here all those years ago. So much is the same.
He stops at a bodega. Buys two packs of cigarettes, a bag of skittles, and a blush compact with a mirror on the top side. When he leaves the store he pulls out a folded up piece of paper with an address on it.
Jake knows a guy who owns a couple apartments in Brownsville that owes him a favor. He’d called last night and the guy had sent him an address and a security code for a place he could crash at for at least a year. It had been a pretty big fucking favor.
The walk to the apartment takes about fifteen minutes. It’s quiet out here. Almost peaceful.
~~~
He crashes on a beige mattress that Jake thinks was at one point white. He falls asleep in less than a minute. For the first time in years, Jake hopes that he’ll be the one to wake up in the morning.
~~~
Jake wakes up at 2:32 PM the next day, still very much on London time. It’s a Tuesday. The sounds of the city take him back to all those decades ago when he’d had some semblance of a life in this place. He hopes Marc and Steven can find something of a life here too.
Jake scans his eyes around the room. A beige mattress, a dresser, a door leading to the kitchenette, a window with a fire escape ladder attached. He stares at the three luggage bags he’d tossed on the floor the night before. They’re all filled with Marc and Steven’s shit, plus one goldfish that somehow managed to survive being smuggled onto a cross country flight. He stares at the plastic bag on the dresser, filled with one and a half boxes of cigarettes, a pack of skittles, and one mirror compact.
One mirror compact. It’s a small, light pink blush compact with a mirror on the top piece. He opens it. He stares at his own reflection in the glass.
For the first time in his life, Jake tears down the wall he built between himself and the only other people in his life.
He stares at his reflection in the compact. Two pairs of eyes stare back.
“Hey, I’m Jake. I’m here to keep you safe.”