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lizzie-is-here · 1 year

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lonely is a man without love

part ii- the scarab

“the moon taught me there is beauty in darkness too” - marine ashnalikyan

summary: you meet marc spector, and he meets the real you

wordcount: 2.4k

warnings: language, violence

a/n: yuhhh so excited for this. part three coming very soon hope y’all enjoy!!! also tfw your professors let you take finals early so you can go to the taylor concert. if any of y’all fellow swifties will be in nashville on may 7, i’ll see y’all there! feel free to leave feedback, i love it and love u all 🫶🫶🫶

taglist: @thefictionalgemini @ravenz-hope @undiscl0sed-d3sir3s @iateall-yourcookies @disregardedplant @sunflowers-4 @yellowumbrelllaaaa @bagsy-not-it @local-mr-frog @thescarletredwitch @jupitersmoon167 @creamecafe @stevenknightmarc

sorry it wouldn’t let me tag some of y’all 😭

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For all accounts, you think you’re handling the situation pretty well.

Your sort-of-friend sort-of-target that you thought was innocent and also British turns out to be not-innocent and American? Shocking.

He’s also covered in blood and tried to knife you when you broke into his apartment because he doesn’t know you’re secretly an ex-Russian agent turned Avenger that could kill him easily? Arguably less shocking. Reasonable, even.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” you say, holding a hand up. Steven- no, Marc, sighs exasperatedly, waiting. “You are a mercenary?”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Just answer the damn question!”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. Yes.” You sigh, leaning against a bookshelf full of volumes on Egyptian history, mythology, and archaeology.

“So what? Was ‘Steven Grant’ just an alibi?” you ask.

You really hope not. One, because he’s sweet and kind and an absolute nerd. And two, because if he isn’t, then that means that Marc’s dedication to a cover is better than yours. And that simply will not stand.

“No, it’s more complicated than that. He’s, like, a facet of me. Another personality. We share the same body, but when the other is in control, it’s like the other is asleep. You’re stuck.” You perk up, visibly relieved.

“Oh, so he’s an alter? Like, you have DID?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“Do you… Do you not know the name of your own personality disorder?” His silence speaks volumes.

You chuckle under your breath, watching him stammer to try and recover from his fumble. Taking out the gun from your waistband, you go to set it on the table. In an instant, Marc has your wrist in a death grip, attempting to jostle the gun from you.

“Again, seriously? This went so well for you literally a minute ago,” you snark.

With a dramatic eye roll, you effortlessly twist under his arms, kicking out his legs. He rolls over and stands back up, kicking the gun from your hands.

You take a moment to watch his fighting style, scanning him as he circles you. He’s good, yes, but his form is sloppy. Basic US military training, most likely nothing specialized.

Deciding to take one out of Nat’s book, you leap up, wrap your thighs around Marc’s head, and flip him over, holding him in place as he thrashes on the floor.

“Заткнись, ты такой чертовски громкий, Иисус, черт возьми, Христос [Shut up, holy fuck you are so damn loud Jesus fucking Christ],” you hiss. Eventually, he taps your leg, wheezing.

“Truce,” he sighs. You roll off of him, nodding.

“Sure, truce.”

He’s huffing as you stand, checking your gun and finally setting it down.

“So, why are you here?” Marc asks.

You shrug. “Heard there was a vigilante, so I was sent to check it out.”

“By who?”

“None of your business.”

“Why are you Russian?”

“Also none of your business.”

Marc rolls his eyes, but accepts that that is as far as he’s gonna get for the moment.

You frown, glancing around the room. All of the items in here seem very Steven-ish. Mostly Egyptian decor and books. You have a hunch, though you hope it isn’t true.

“Steven doesn’t know about you, does he?” you ask, already knowing the answer.

Marc shakes his head. “I was the… original, I guess? I set him up with a safe place here, but vigilantism is part of my job. Can’t stop, even if you want me to.”

“I’m not asking you to.” Observing the fish tank, you watch the one-finned goldfish happily swim around. You’ll have to tell a certain one-armed assassin about him. “I just need to make sure you’re hurting the right people.”

“That seems subjective,” he jokes. You chuckle, but shrug. He gets oddly contemplative before speaking again. “Do me a favor?”

You haven’t known this man for ten minutes, but you nod. “Sure.”

“Don’t tell Steven about me.”

———————————————————————

It’s not even a week later when trouble comes calling.

You get a text from Steven, who has been oddly silent this week. It’s asking for you to come to some storage lockers, promising to explain everything. He’s worried, and a part of you wonders if he’s more worried about the whole vigilant thing or about his alter.

Hopping on your motorcycle with no sense to put on your helmet, you speed through traffic in record time. Eyes flickering to signs as you zoom past, you finally spot him sprinting frantically out of the building.

He trips and falls as you skid to a halt.

“Shit! Steven, you can’t be running into traffic like that,” you curse, hopping off the back and grabbing your helmet from the seat compartment to give to him. “Hop on. We’ve got to get you back to your apartment.”

He awkwardly climbs on, holding your shoulders.

You raise a brow and drive off. “Why’re you grabbing my shoulder like that? I get you’re British, but come on, you’re not the queen.”

“Why’re you Russian, all of the sudden?” he asks.

You don’t respond.

Unsure about what to do, he wraps an arm around your waist as you speed up further, nimbly wearing between cars. Your breath doesn’t hitch and you don’t blush, but your heart rate quickens a bit anyways.

When you arrive back at the apartments, you head in together. Steven locks the door, catching a glimpse of Marc in the fish tank.

‘She shouldn’t be here.’ He can’t really tell Steven that you’re not a civilian yet. He can’t freak him out more. And honestly, Marc himself doesn’t even know what you are. A special agent? A military operative?

‘You need to get her out of here. You’re way out of your depth.’

“I just want my life back,” Steven replies aloud.

You stand up from where you’re feeding Gus. “What?”

“No, sorry.” He waves a hand. “I wasn’t talking to you, just talking to myself. Sort of.”

“Marc?” you ask.

He nods. “So… you met him?”

“…Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you; he didn’t want you to know yet.“

Steven doesn’t have it in him to be mad. Especially not when you pick up one of his books.

“Marceline Desbordes-Valmore?”

“Yep,” Steven mumbles. He begins reciting a poem, which you join in on. “She’s my favorite poet.”

You don’t have the heart to tell him you only learned her work for a mission in France, and every time you hear them you can see the gun you used to shoot down a politician that happened to be a literary buff. You’d gained his trust with poetry, convinced him to take you back to his home, and killed him.

You eventually smile and set the book down. “I’m more partial to Mahmoud Darwish. ‘ربما القمر جميل ‘فقط لأنه بعيد [‘Maybe the moon is beautiful only because it is far’]?”

Wandering over to his desk, you gesture at a paper.

“Why do you have Egyptian funeral rites here?”

“You speak French, Arabic, and read hieroglyphics, but have a Russian accent?” Steven seems almost in awe of you. No one looks at an assassin like that. “Who are you?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Before he can respond to your smirk, there’s a demanding knock on the door. You’re gone by the time Steven opens it.

You hear him greet the officers, followed by them forcing their way into the apartment and searching the place. All the while, you’re climbing onto the roof and ducking from view with a bag of contraband clutched close to you.

It takes all of your strength to not just kill them when they arrest him, despite how easy it would be.

———————————————————————

You track the car easily. It leads you to a sort of community, almost cultish. You’re in a black tank top and cargo pants now, weapons concealed all over.

A man lets him out of the car and frees him from the handcuffs as you jump from roof to roof, watching and waiting. He guides him around, pointing out a goat and speaking butchered Mandarin.

You watch as strange things begin to happen. A stack of trays shakes and falls, trash goes up in a whirlwind. A shadow flickers just beyond your vision.

Down at the table, Harrow’s pushing for the scarab.

“Maybe you know someone who has it?” he suggests.

In a bowl, Marc shakes his head.

‘No, don’t give her up. She’s a civilian, she’ll get hurt. Just give me the body.’

People begin surrounding the table as you ready your gun. Slinging the bag of money, weapons, and a small scarab over your shoulder, you drop into the shadows.

“Sorry, is that… Is that what… You’re all into that, like, killing children and that?” you hear Steven say. “Maybe that’s just me, but that’s- I kinda draw a line there at child murder.”

The man stands, raising his staff that glows purple with power and demanding the scarab. Steven begins backing away as the man gets confrontational, and you decide enough is enough.

“Hey, dipshit. I’ve got your bug right here.” You hold it up, gun raised in the other hand.

“You couldn’t possibly understand the value of what you’re holding,” the man says. “Let me have it, I’ll keep it safe.”

You stand next to Steven, training the barrel of a polished gold gun on the head of this cult leader.

“Do you have a suit or something? That’d be really helpful right now,” you grumble.

“‘Do I have a soup’? What are you saying?” he whispers.

With an exasperated sigh, you hand him the scarab and start running. A man grabs your arm and you slam him into the wall, shooting him with little regard to Steven’s shriek.

You tuck the gun into your holster as you race up some stairs, attacking another man before throwing him off the high platform.

“That was awesome,” Steven gapes as you drag him along.

“Here, bolt the door,” you yell, backing away as you survey the room. A few windows are backup exits, but there’s not much here. Well, some dead bodies.

“Oh my god, I’m going to die in an evil magician’s man cave.”

There’s a pounding on the door as you start trying to calm Steven down. Admittedly, you’re a bit lacking in the social skills department.

“Ok, hey, we’re gonna be fine okay?” His breathing quickens. “Um, not to say that I don’t appreciate you, but is there a chance Marc could come out? He seems to be familiar with guns, yes?”

“No, no I can’t! Stop, please, both of you,” he begs, growing more panicked. Shit. You guide him to the ground as he rambles. “Please stop, leave me alone, both of you!”

You let him take a moment as the door starts splintering. It bursts open, but you don’t see anything?

“Jackal, jackal. Jackal!” Steven yells. Even though you don’t see any such dog, he gets tackled out of the window.

You run to the ledge, embedding a grappling hook in the ground and muttering curses in Russian under your breath.

The fall is familiar, and you land crouched as the hook retracts. Hurrying around, you finally see him, now in a white suit that covers his face, fighting the air.

He’s literally punching the air. His eyes are also glowing.

“Ok… what the fuck what the fuck,” you hiss. Firing off a few rounds, they embed in the air as something yelps.

A force grabs you by the throat before you stab at it with a shattered bottle on the ground, rolling away as heavy footsteps beat the rain-soaked pavement.

It drags you back as you cuss, firing off shots into air that occasionally connect. Letting you go, it targets Steven instead, knocking him against a car.

The man seems to have a conversation with his alter before rising.

“Get away from her, you.” He’s bouncing on his toes like a boxer. “Yeah, I see you, you plug-ugly coyote.”

This was about to end horribly. This random Brit was about to get absolutely murdered trying to keep whatever it was away from you.

“You’re in the wrong ends, mate. You’re in my yard now.” He throws his rather nice jacket on the ground as he continues taunting the beast.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, my name is Steven with a V,” he says at the same time you hiss, “Отлично [Perfect], he’s gonna die before I even recruit him.”

He throws a punch that seems to knock him off balance, cheering and whooping before, if unsurprisingly, getting kicked across the street.

Then it happens. Steven turns around, something about him changing. The suit morphs, becoming almost like mummy wrappings. Marc.

“Get it away from the civilians, I’ll follow,” you call.

He dashes away, with you following behind on the ground.

———————————————————————

Marc lands on the ground once the creature is dead, staring into the mirror.

He doesn’t trust this situation. Harrow, Khonshu, you. He doesn’t know who’s lying, who’s honest, and who’s halfway in-between.

Steven appears in the mirror, disrupting Marc’s train of thought. They go back and forth, bickering as the wind grows stronger.

“You told (Y/N) to keep you a secret from me, and then we left her behind,” Steven accuses, growing more frustrated in the glass.

“Oh, please, what do you even know about her? What do either of us know about her?” Marc yells. “We can’t trust her.”

Steven shakes his head, pacing. “She’s my friend. She needs to stay out of this, you don’t need to drag an innocent civilian in.”

“She’s not a civilian!”

“…What?”

“The night she found out about me, she disarmed me like it was nothing. She had a gun.”

“That doesn’t matter, I trust her, she’s helped me and saved me from muggers, and-“

Steven’s argument doesn’t provide much solace for Marc, who groans and runs a hand over his face.

The arguing continues, growing louder and louder as they start talking over one another.

By the time you’re there, Marc’s glaring at the ground. The chairs are scattered around (the work of Khonshu, but you don’t know that) and he’s ready to start his third fight with you that he knows he’ll lose.

“Who are you?” he asks again, eyeing the weapons covering your person. The Black Widow buckle on your belt should give it away, but you suppose the public isn’t quite aware of you, yet. “Why are you following me?”

You tap the buckle and watch him instantly tense up. “I’m with the Avengers. And you are my mission.”

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