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januaryembrs · 1 year

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LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant x Reader [1]

description: Steven finds his life slowly turning upside down when the man in the mirror starts talking back, he's sleepwalking all the way to the Alps, and the woman he's besotted with from work finds herself more caught up in all of it than he'd ever wanted. [Last Night in Soho inspired]

word count: 11.1k

trigger warnings: gore, blood, swearing, reader has a dark past that will be explored more read at discretion, third person & no use of Y/N, death, reader will become an avatar eventually,

main masterlist | series masterlist

Authors note: I have been in love with this show since I watched it and have finally started the fic I’ve been wanting to since it came out! The chapters are going to be long and readers backstory is dark but this is a piece very personal to me and I hope you enjoy!!!

She felt someone picking up her limp body. The museum lights had long since been shut off, but through the darkness of the exhibition she caught a tall figure standing over her. Her lids were heavy, vision bleary, yet she blinked a few times to try and straighten her mind that still felt like it was pulsing stiffly in her tight skull. Her voice was no better, the only sound she could let out was a guttural whine as the stranger pressed hard on the three deep lacerations on her abdomen that were now gushing blood like a scene from a 90s slasher movie.

They were broad, blocking out the minimal slither of light as they crouched over her and seemed to be yelling something. Probably scolding her for getting copious amounts of thick blood over the freshly mopped floors, she thought numbly. The sound came to her in something akin to static, a muffled string of nonsense. All she knew was they were talking loud and fast. Or maybe she had a concussion too? That thing had thrown her through that glass wall pretty hard.

She couldn’t see a mouth moving, nor could she actually see their face, just two beams of white blinking down at her.

This couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be happening for real. She thought maybe someone had slipped something in her drink when she was at the club, but that was two days ago. There would be no reason for her to be feeling the effects only just now. And when she had been jumped on by one of those things she’d sure as hell felt it. She'd seen it with her own two eyes the way her clothes had been ripped as something plunged its claws deep into her, heard the air whoosh out her lungs as it hurled her through the partition wall.

She’d felt, still felt, the open wound seeping so harshly that she knew it was going to be fatal.

There was no coming back from whatever fever dream this was.

She blinked again up at the mystery guy who seemed to be holding her heavy head gently, but the hot, red wetness on his hands that smeared on her cheek said he also knew how fucked she was. He was muttering something, was there someone else here? Oh god, where was Steven?

“Stev-” Came her broken murmur, but the metallic taste crawling its way up her throat cut her off as a blob of viscid blood rolled down her chin.

“He’s here, he’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” Said the voice back to her, his grasp on her hair tightening as she garbled. The breath, life, was leaving her now. Every time she tried to get air into her lungs, she was met with more of the thick liquid spraying into her mouth, her chest retching for oxygen.

She didn’t have long left, she realised numbly.

The room was blackening round the edges even more now, sped up by the way she felt her hands grabbing his arm in a panic. She’d thought she would welcome the cold hands of Death, it wasn’t a stranger in her home. Death rooted himself in her very soul, and yet as it dragged her under consciousness, she couldn’t help but feel like a scared little girl and she tried to cling onto the mystery figure as if he could keep her from Death’s greedy clutches.

It was sweet poetry, knowing she was drowning from the inside out. She had always known her biggest monster lay within her, in her every cell, festering and rotting her, since the moment she was born. There was really no other perfect way to sum up her whole life than it ending this way, choking on her own body. Grabbing onto a stranger, trying to plead for help as a few precious tears wet her face and she realised she was crying. Scared, vulnerable to her own demise like she had always known she would be.

How do you fight off a monster coming from within? You don't. You can’t. So she didn’t.

No amount of soft words or desperate touches on the figure helped her, it only made the departure messier, a bigger pool of blood for them to find her in.

The world felt surprisingly calm the moment she was snatched ruthlessly into Death’s open arms.

FOUR DAYS EARLIER

“Come the fuck on, Steven” Cursing under her breath, she cradled the two disposable cups of coffee tightly, her rosewood coloured lipstick surrounding only one of the lids. The London air whipped her coat around her shins, frigid and unwelcoming as it was even on a good day.

As per usual, Steven was late for work. The two of them had an agreement to meet each other outside the museum every Wednesday and Thursday, which meant his lateness slid in her own time. She could of course just meet the undoubtedly dishevelled man inside, but what kind of a friend would she be then? Leave him to face Donna’s wrath on his own? No, if he was in for a bollocking then so were she.

Friends didn’t exactly come easy to her nowadays, either. So if waiting in the bitterness for another five minutes meant she could keep this one, then so be it.

She had even taken the time on her commute to work to grab him a drink, the thin, black ink on the sticker reading: LATTE, + CARAMEL, -XTRA ESPRESSO SHOT, -XTRA HOT. she had banked on him being late despite the fact she had left him three messages this morning asking if he was awake (he wasn’t) and called him last night before bed to remind him not to sleep in.

A minute or so before she would have figured he was just calling in sick today, she caught sight of a slouched figure dashing off the bus, the grey knitted cardigan belonging to only one person his age in London. His thatch of messy black curls were a next dead give away, as well as the bags under his eyes that never seemed to budge even if he were to sleep two days in a row. Yet, she couldn’t help but smile at the way he seemed to apologise to a flock of pigeons he nearly trampled on in his haste up the many steps leading to their workplace.

“Donna’s going to serve our heads on sticks to scare away rude customers, you know that right?” She said, handing him his drink, now lukewarm, as he nearly crashed into her own body.

“Thanks, Dove,” He said absently as the two of them headed quickly to the entrance, “Yep, I’m aware I’ve buggered us. Bloody weird dreams again,” Steven shook his head as if to rid himself of the odd thoughts. “Sorry though, love. You must be freezing,”

She was freezing, but the way he was quick to worry over her warmed her insides more than she’d care to admit. The nickname crafted just for her, the bird symbolising ‘Quiet innocence’ in Ancient Egypt, as Steven had once told her. Sure enough, the endearing term had stuck quickly, and it warmed her to know she had a special enough place in his life to have a pet name.

It was plain to see just by looking at the twenty-five year old she was smitten with her co-worker. No sane person stands outside in Brittain’s April winds for just a friend. But Steven was different, which she knew was what every naive young girl said about their work crush, but he truly was. Steven had a kindness she had never known someone to offer without wanting anything in return, which he didn’t. He was so sweet to her she understood why he loved the sugary caramel syrup in his coffee so much, she thought often it glazed his every word with a honeyed tone. His face was a blend of a greek god and a lost puppy, a combination she never would have banked on being so damn attractive until she met him.

Even his smell alone of a quiet library, a rain soaked meadow and freshly brewed coffee had her inebriated.

“It’s fine,” The woman reassured as she cut through the main lobby where it was already lively with school kids. A few queued up at the gift shop to pay for their treasures; she smiled when she saw a girl with an Anubis plushie tucked under her arm. “I’m sure she would have found a reason to snap today anyway,”

She adored her job, she really did. Graduating university with a degree in Ancient Languages, working in London’s heart of archeological texts had been a linguist’s version of Broadway. Sure, her talents were beyond soured working in the gift shop, but anything was better than the life she’d fled to get here.

No amount of sneers and dry remarks from Donna could ever drag her kicking and screaming back to that time before she left for Soho.

“What did you dream about this time?” She asked, her black, kitten heels clicking against the freshly polished marble floor.

A ghost of a smile spread across his face, and her eyes couldn’t help but linger on the way his brows lifted, giving away his amusement at his own head. “It was the weirdest thing. I felt like I was flying over London, but not, like, in an aeroplane or anything, like I was flying. Like, me. No wings or anything. Like I’m bloody superman or something.” Steven shook his head again and she gave a small laugh.

“Certainly beats getting the underground. You know, I saw a rat the size of a dachshund this morning, swear on my life. I thought it was about to ask me for spare change,” Steven smiled at his colleague as they entered the Ancient Egypt area. She took a sip of her own hot latte, sweet cinnamon with whipped cream that had long since melted, the liquid already half devoured when she was waiting for him to show up.

“Don’t you ever have dreams like that, then? That feel so ridiculous. It's like, how can my head even come up with it?” Steven asked, and her smile wobbled a little as she saw her manager set her predatory gaze on the two of them. The people pleaser in her wanted to cower at Donna’s furious expression.

In all honesty, she wished for dreams as ludicrous as flying over Piccadilly like a Mary Poppins wannabe. She wished she had Steven’s innocent look on life, that the world around her didn’t terrify her, that it could be as gentle with her as he was.

But that was not real life.

Her dreams were not filled with silly fantasies of flying like heroes. They were filled with dark monsters that looked too much like men to be supernatural, that managed to catch her no matter how many times she ran, begged, screamed. They always caught up to her. Always. Leaving her clawing at the duvet, drenched in sweat and a pulse that could challenge a hummingbird’s.

“Brace yourself,” She ignored his question, muttering the words to him as the blonde came strutting over to them with a daggers look. Ah, Donna. The woman that made her job so joyful, so easy, a delight to be around.

Donna hated her almost as much as she made it clear Steven was on a metaphorical hit list the moment he stepped foot into the museum.

“You pair better have a good explanation,” Donna snapped, dumping a tower of boxes in Steven’s arms.

“Bus times-” Steven said at the same time she came out with:

“Road works-”

They both stopped, hesitating a glance to one another. The blonde looked between them, shaking her head with a furrowed brow and a scornful sigh.

“It’s like tweedledum and tweedledee having you two together,” She muttered, nudging the younger girl towards the stands in the middle of the gift shop, “Dum, you’re stock shelves today, love,” The term didn’t sound nearly as friendly coming from her mouth, nor did it make her chest flutter like it did when Steven said it. It was condescending, rude. Made to make her feel inferior, which it did. She pointed at the man then, shoving a basket of insect themed sweets to him behind the till, “Dee, you’re selling these.”

Donna looked between the two of them one last time, her steely blue glare never wavering, as if checking they could be left alone together without wasting company time, before going to set her unforgiving jaws on some other poor creature.

The girl set her bag behind the counter and got to work organising the merchandise, twisting the ceramic scarabs to all be facing the front.

It was a menial job at best, being stuck stacking shelves as mothers and fathers reached over to inspect the new stock, most of the time messing up the meticulous order she’d put them out in. Kids got their grubby mits all over the glass pyramid paperweights, making her eye twitch since she knew she’d need to polish them up again, only to flash them a smile and ask them kindly if they had the pocket money to pay for it.

They didn’t, kids just liked to fiddle with priceless things and their parents were too busy on their phones to notice.

She was half way through showing two young girls to the sarcophagus themed pencil cases when she caught sight of Dylan at the front counter, leaning in to talk to Steven.

Dylan was a nice woman to work with. She was one of the only people who’d tried to coax conversation out of the greenie the first week she started there, which had been painful for both of them since she had never been known to be sociable. Companionship did not come easy to her and it was only by sheer luck that Steven seemed so similarly awkward in a charming way that she was able to feel comfortable around him.

It was childish really, a silly work crush that she had no intention of ever letting slip. He was too good for her anyway. He was sweet and kind, gentle, innocent. Everything she was not.

Steven Grant deserved someone who could give him the world. Which is why it shouldn’t have come to too much of a stab to the chest when she heard what the two of them were talking about.

“We still on for seven tomorrow?” Dylan asked, her hair falling in those beautiful, tight curls over her shoulder. Dylan was the type who showed up to work every day looking effortlessly gorgeous which clawed at the younger girl more than she cared to acknowledge. She liked Dylan, she really did. She was friendly in a way that was genuine, didn’t have her second guessing whether she meant the compliments she gave to anyone.

Some days she wondered if Dylan pitied her. A plain Jane girl with no family to lean on, trying to make ends meet in a city as extortionate as London and chin deep in university loans. It was enough for any attractive, confident adult woman to kiss their teeth and “Awww”.

The girl watched the two of them, waiting for the teenagers to decide which stationary sets they wanted. They were looking for ‘different but matching’ they had said, not that she was paying much attention to them. Steven’s face was the picture of lost as he stared at the grown woman, seemingly entranced with her face. And she couldn’t blame him. Dylan flashed him a teasing smile, brilliant white teeth poking out from behind her luscious dark lips.

“Seven tomorrow?” He asked, despite nodding happily as if he understood what she was talking about. But his friend didn’t miss the confusion blaring on his face, his eyes as brown as the coffee she’d bought him scrunched up slightly in bewilderment.

“Best steak in town?” Dylan prompted, her smile not faltering though she seemed to also be slightly thrown off that had forgotten.

Their unknowing audience kept her head down, not wanting to watch for a second more of their conversation. She didn’t need a degree to see the way Dylan had leaned in, her body language turned completely towards him as if to tease him with what could come if their date were to go well, her own almond eyes trailing over him with the air of confidence her younger counterpart lacked.

“Oh right, yeah. Yeah,” Steven replied. She could tell he still had no clue what Dylan was talking about.

“Yeah? Okay,” Dylan replied, oblivious to his dilemma, and stepped away from the desk to go tour the new group of school kids waiting in the hallway.

Steven followed her trail hotly before she could leave, “Sorry but,” He stepped towards her to talk a little quieter, almost embarrassed about how forward he was being, “Are you asking me out?”

Dylan stopped, reeling slightly in shock before she wagged a finger to him and chuckled. “You’re funny. I’ll see you then.” She seemed unbothered by his ‘joke’ though she could hear in his own voice he was muddled. The woman walked away with a sultry looking smile, her eyes flicking to her where her other coworker silently arranged the pencil sarcophaguses. “Morning, babe,” She gave the girl a friendly squeeze on the upper arm as she passed. It only made it more difficult to writhe in jealousy knowing the woman he was seeing was downright lovely.

“Morning, Dylan,” She returned the smile, though the bitterness festered inside her. She had no claim over him, and she really couldn’t blame the two of them for gravitating towards one another. Not only was she merely twenty-five, a decade under Steven and Dylan’s thirty-five years, but Dylan was sexy, confident, flirty. Knew what she wanted. She was incredibly smart too, not an airhead like some other people trying to live the big dream in London. Dylan was a tour guide at the British Museum, and what was she? A graduate with a dead degree, pun intended, and a job that could be done by any wannabe walking in here.

Taking a moment to rearrange her feelings, shoving down the way her heart wriggled in her chest as the little green monster worked its way through her veins, pumping disappointment around her body like a drug.

The two young girls seemed to only then decide which pencil boxes they wanted, unbeknownst to her inner turmoil, and she remained silent as she led them over to the till to talk to Steven, more for her own benefit than theirs.

“I didn’t know you’d asked her out,” She said finally, though it came out as a croak, which she cleared from her throat quickly. Steven scanned their items as the girls both fiddled with ten pound notes, the great Queen Elizabeth staring at the woman from their hands as if she even knew how childish she sounded.

“Neither did I,” Steven replied honestly, printing off the receipts for them, “And you would think for a woman like her there’d be no chance I’d forget a date, you know what I mean?”

Ouch. She smiled tightly, waving the younger girls off as they caught up with Dylan’s tour group. The woman of the hour. Of course he’d be elated at the sound of that, what man with eyes wouldn’t? Anyone would count their stars lucky to be given a chance by a temptress like her.

“Must have needed that coffee today after all,” She joked, though she couldn’t bring herself to smile properly, instead finding a middle ground between a grimace and a simper.

Steven chuckled at her, shaking his head. “Must have. What would I ever do without you?” She grinned painfully at him, looking away to try and hide the way her face grew hot at his thoughtless words. “Am I still walking you home tonight?”

Another of their routines. She lived closer to Islington than the lovely apartment Steven had in Whitechapel. Despite paying a lot per month to live so close to the city centre, some areas of London like the borough she lived in was still ridden with some of the highest crime rate in the county. Steven was more thoughtful than anyone she had ever met, a rarity in this place, and on the days they were at work together he would ride the underground home with her before detouring around to his own apartment even further away.

“Uh, no,” She replied, busying herself with unloading one of the boxes Donna had dumped in Steven’s hands earlier. She loved spending time with Steven, loved it so much that she felt guilty of lusting over him without his knowledge, but she couldn’t bear to hear any more about this date that he would no doubt want to pick her brain apart over. He’d want to ask what to wear, how to style his hair, if he should buy her chocolates and flowers even though she already knew he would. And the whole time she’d be hoarse in the throat from holding back the urge to say Date me instead, I’m begging you. “No, I have a date of my own tonight,”

Liar. Liar. Liar.

It was like their monarch Elizabeth was still glaring at her, judging her through her inky lashes and driving the dagger in further at the fact that this kind of behaviour was exactly what made her too immature to be considered for a real date with Steven.

He raised his brows, surprised. It wasn’t uncommon for her to have an occasional fling with a guy every now and then. But none of them really progressed to a date, just a single night of passion to groan over in embarrassment when Steven asked how her weekend went.

“Oh, who’s the lucky guy?” Steven asked, nudging her shoulder in a tone that was nothing but teasing.

“No one, just someone I met on tinder,” She brushed off, the lack of excitement making the man stop trying to pry a smile out of her.

“What’s the matter?” She shrugged at him, not coming up with a response in time. What he took as nerves was in fact guilt and disgust feasting on her insides at the fact she was lying to him. Lying. There was no mystery man, no one coming to save her from this awkward display of what pure jealousy can do to a reasonable person. “You can always cancel if you don’t want to go.”

“I just…” she trailed off, stuck for what to say. He was looking at her with those puppy eyes no grown man should be able to perfect. And yet he was patiently waiting for her to stumble on the right set of words, his entire focus on whatever it was troubling her. That was another thing, for as chatty as a person as Steven was, he was just as good a listener, and she could tell he gave her everything every single time they would talk. “I just don’t know what to wear, is all,”

He seemed content with her answer as his eyes trailed down her body. She squirmed under his gaze but hid it well (not at all) by pulling her cardigan sleeves over her hands and balling her fists to fidget with, “Wear what you’re wearing now,” He said simply, as if it were obvious.

She looked down. A large top and casual jeans did not exactly say date worthy, though she wasn’t sure if there were actual rules to hypothetical dating, seeing as her man was fucking imaginary.

She giggled at him nonetheless, shaking her head, “These are my work clothes, Steven. I can’t go like this.”

“Why not? I think you look lovely,” Steven’s comment was passing, tiny in the scale of things. Yet it sent her heart scrambling for a grip on reality. He was just her friend, complimenting her on her perfectly ordinary clothes. Nothing more.

It wasn’t until she found herself smiling at a set of metal Pharaohs that she realised she needed to get a date for this evening fast. If Dylan and Steven could find someone in this wide city, surely it couldn’t be too hard for her to.

Sound was the first thing that came back to her. The crappy animated kids show she had been watching out of pure boredom last night was still playing after being left on all night. No doubt running up her already high electric bills. The exaggerated, slapstick bangs blared through the speaker. That caught her attention, drawing her into the awake like a fog horn from shore. The midday sun slipped through the open curtains, flicking over her lids and coaxing her to open them. She did so gently, lashes batting over her cheeks as she tried to make sense of where she was.

Her sofa.

The two empty mugs glared back at her from the coffee table, making her eyes wince in confusion. Why was she making tea so late last night?

Then the stench hit her. The smokey yet overwhelmingly powerful smell of a gentleman caller named Jack Daniels wafted up her nose and brought back a panorama of memories flicking through her head; The date. A real date that had been scheduled since Thursday. A completely ordinary blonde named James. The restaurant. Him being almost too charming. Fake laughing at his jokes she had already seen on Twitter weeks ago. Him touching her thigh every chance he could get. Suggesting they go to a club. Dancing. Shots. More dancing. Sharing a beer she pretended not to think was the most horrendous thing she’d ever tasted. More shots. More dancing. Him grabbing her hips. Her waist. Him kissing her neck, cheek, lips. Him grabbing her more, something she would find sleazy if she wasn’t desperate to force Steven out of her intoxicated brain.

Which led to her apartment. The sofa, as classy as it sounded, was seemingly a better option than her bed. She had been quick to shut him down when he suggested moving it to her room; that was too intimate. That was her space, which would only be tainted by this stranger wanting to bend her over. So the sofa it was.

Whiskey served in old mugs she got from the gift shop being chugged for Dutch courage. The same mugs she had bought with Steven as part of a set. They had taken two each, promising that they would be used whenever the other visited.

She had given him Steven’s mug out of spite, even in her vodka riddled brain she was burying her feelings six feet under.

Her hand shot out when she heard her phone buzzing, not wanting it to wake up her actual gentleman caller.

The phone was clumsily brought to her ear, not even bothering to check who was calling before she swiped the green icon.

“Hullo?” It came out a horrible croaky mess and had her coughing the second she’d asked.

“Hi, Dove! Just called to see how your date went.” Steven’s voice blared through the speaker, which only served to have her pulling it away and groaning. “And also to tell you about my dream, I think it was the weirdest one to date!”

“Woah, slow down, Steve-” She tried to say, but the man had clearly a mouthful to tell her and continued on regardless.

“I was in the alps, but it was all so real. There was this group of people taking it in turn to hold hands with this weird American guy, and then I got into a high speed cupcake-van chase with the lot of them because they started saying I’d stolen this little scarab thing from them, I don’t know where I get this stuff from-” Her eyes scrunched together in pain, though she lay in the quiet and tried to gather her bearings. She sat up from the sofa, shivering when she saw it was around midday outside and she had forgotten to close the window.

“Sounds intense,” She mused to keep him talking, pulling a blanket over her still nude body as she stood to close it and preserve the heating. Her head spun as she stood, a rush of bile rising to her throat dangerously, which she choked back down and looked around the room. Quickly realising she was alone in her flat, she shuffled over to the kitchen in her blanket cocoon to find her purse to see how bad the damage her little excursion had done to her limited stash as any responsible youth did after a night out in London.

“It was! I swear it was like I could feel the cars smashing into me- Oh right! How was your date?”

She blanched, head still pounding, “Uh. Yeah it was great.” It was average at best. “He was super funny,” For a Twitter fraud. “So romantic,” If romantic was the new word for ten minutes of missionary and not even making her cum. “He took me wine tasting,” She was sure she’d be tasting the wine she’d bought at the club any second now judging by the way her head spun, “Yeah, he was great,” He wasn’t you, Steven.

“I’m so pleased for you, love!” Her best friend cheered, a part of her writhing in repulsion that she had lied to him again. Though maybe that was the wine begging to make an appearance. She stuck the lever down on the kettle to get the water boiling, sure that a fresh cup of strong tea would be the only thing to pull her through this hangover.

Part of her, the dark, twisted part, wanted him to be jealous. Wanted to make him as frustrated and envious as he had unknowingly made her. But he would never, could never. Steven was tender and good. He was too sweet to ever think a single bitter thought towards her, towards Donna even. Which only served to make her feel even more rotten inside.

“How was your date with Dylan?” She forced herself to ask. It was selfish for her to think, but she wished more than anything for him to tell her that it went horribly. She hated the part of her inside that sang with glee at the idea of him hating his date. She truly was wicked inside, and the idea only reminded her more of why she would never be asked on a date by him. Maybe he could see it too, how sick she was for wanting the world to suffer if she couldn’t have the one man she’d ever truly wanted.

“That’s not until tonight, love, remember?” He said casually, as she fumbled around her kitchen for her handbag. She locked eyes on the little black clutch sitting on top of the counter. Her brows furrowed in confusion, she could have sworn Dylan said they were meeting Friday, two full nights ago. Her heart plummeted, maybe it was a second date.

Ofcourse it was. Ofcourse they hit it off, who wouldn’t. He was as smitten as anything and Dylan wasn’t that kind of woman that was too afraid to tell him exactly what she wanted. If she wanted to see him again, then Steven would give her exactly what she asked for.

“Tonight?” She asked, squeezing the phone between her shoulder and her head as she popped open the clasps to her bag.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t forget a woman like her twice in a row,” Steven joked. But what should have made her gut curdle in pain only fell on deaf ears.

Her purse was gone. Her purse that never left her damn bag, that she had stuffed her rent money in as soon as she’d gotten it was missing.

“I-I’m gonna have to call you back, Steven,” She uttered through the heart sized lump in her throat. Her palms were already clammy with sweat, both from the drink and from her sheer panic, “Good luck on your date,”

“Alright, gators!”

She barely got a chance to murmur their goodbye back before she had thrown her phone down on the plain, white counter and dumped out the contents of her bag.

Hair ties, the odd two pence, a pen she stole from the bank. But no purse.

She turned her coat pockets inside out, the blanket falling down her waist and exposing her round breasts to the cold air. But she couldn’t care less. The goosebumps slithering up her arms did nothing to fight the hot panic as the sofa cushions were thrown off their frame, the young girl still turning up empty handed.

Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.

This could not be happening. She hadn’t opened her bag all night, even when she got out of the taxi she had her phone readily in her hand and the bag tightly closed. Someone could have taken it in the club, sure, but that made no sense seeing as her bag was definitely still heavy with the wallet when she had gotten home, not near empty like it was now.

Which only meant…

Her date had fucking stolen from her.

“FUCK!” She yelled, throwing her vacant bag across the room with tears brimming her eyes.

It seemed life had been digging a trench underneath Rock Bottom reserved for her at a time like this. And she was left clutching at the muddy walls, trying to drag herself to safety and anywhere that wasn’t her shitty situation where she pined over a man she could never have, where she was still walking the line between sane and whatever else was brewing inside her, fighting against tendrils of hatred and chaos, malignance, that wrapped around her organs and reminded her where she came from, what she was. A life where she got mugged by the men she fucked at her expensive pity parties.

She just hoped Donna wasn’t too hard on her tomorrow after this shit show of a weekend.

“Late, again,” Came the chiding voice the moment she stepped in the building.

Sweat dripped down her back from her long trek through London to get to work. 48 minutes of power walking is what she had been reduced to, unable to get the bus or underground for lack of money.

And she was still late. She was expecting a nice, fat kick to the teeth any time now.

“It’s five minutes, Donna,” You pleaded, yanking an earphone out. Music was the only thing that could block out the thrum of anger and agony she was in from the weekends chaotics.

“Even Stevie-”

“Steven,”

“-Was on time today and he’s the worst for it,” Donna snapped, and the young girl could do nothing but slump in defeat.

“I’m sorry, Donna. It won’t happen again.” She promised. She wasn’t sure if she meant it yet with her lack of transport, but she couldn’t lose this job. She didn’t even know how she was going to pay for this month’s rent let alone catch the bus, breakfast itself had been skipped in an attempt to conserve food. Her stomach ached from the exercise, crying out for anything to fill its distressed cavern. “I got robbed yesterday so I walked,” She murmured, avoiding the blue eyes that had narrowed in on her. She hated feeling pitied, feeling as though people were sorry for her. But it was the truth, and the truth sucked sometimes.

She wasn’t sure what beam of light had shone out of Donna’s ass this morning, or whether she really did look just that pathetic, but the blonde woman just sighed and nudged her towards the gift shop.

In perhaps the nicest tone she’d ever spoken to her, Donna quietly said “Last warning, girl, alright?” The younger woman thanked her quickly, her small voice sheepish. Her boss looked down at her in discontent, “Alright, get going. And you’re on inventory with Steven tonight so best behaviour, I mean it,”

She nodded, turning on her heel to speed towards the gift shop.

Turning from the main lobby to enter the Ancient Egypt exhibits, she’d not gotten halfway there when she’d caught up to Steven seemingly helping a customer. Odd considering the fact he wasn’t even in the shop yet, but knowing Steven he’d probably stopped to chat the guy’s ear off about something he knew too much about to be just a giftshoppist.

She went to wave when he looked up and met her gaze, but the forlorn, scared expression she found there had her already negligent smile drop completely. Steven seemed relieved to see her, too nervous to say anything to the man himself as he stood too close for his comfort.

Her eyes fell to where the stranger held Steven’s hands tightly, murmuring something to him that seemed to have her friend freaked out. The whole sight threw her for a loop, and she called his name on instinct, the new man’s head shooting up to stare at her blankly.

Speeding up her pace, she met the two as Steven pulled away from the stranger’s strong grasp. “Steven, are you okay?” She asked gently, looking from her friend to the lithe figure of the man. He wasn’t tall by any means, but his presence, the way he dressed and held an intricately woven cane seemed meant to make himself superior. His hair was long and greying, still young enough to be attractive but probably a bit older than Steven. A neat sort of scruff sat on his chin, and old blue orbs took her in head to toe where she stood. Not out of lust, but out of intrigue.

“We were just talking, weren’t we, Steven?” The man said calmly, seemingly sizing her up himself. She looked over her shaken friend quickly, the alarm written over his face that had near brought him to tears telling her all she needed to know.

This man was no friend.

“Sorry, I don’t remember asking you,” She snipped in the cold politeness English people all knew how to enact, bringing her friend’s hand into her soft one for reassurance. Steven had never seen her so infuriated. And perhaps it was the weekend she’d had or the way the man so gentle he refused to kill insects seemed to be trembling beneath her hand, she wasn’t sure, but a fierce frown was deep set into her face that dropped into concern the moment she looked back to him, “Are you alright?”

“Can we go, please?” His round, nut brown eyes were soft and welled up as he quietly spoke, as if asking for her permission to be away from here despite being the older of the two. Her heart dropped at his sad expression, and she felt him squeeze her hand as if needing to reassure himself someone was there to save him.

She had no time to note the way the butterflies swelled in her stomach as he did so, focused on getting him away from the strange man.

“Ofcourse,” She said softly, turning to direct him to their little corner of the museum, hoping that the stranger would get the hint and just leave them be.

That seemed short lived when a cold hand wrapped itself around her lower arm, a gasp drawing its way from her lungs. She could feel the panic of being grabbed by the unfamiliar man crawling up her spine, her limbs going numb, her hearing dipping in and out of static at the adrenaline flushing through her system.

She heard Steven say her name as her head snapped to where the man’s strong grip tightened around her wrist. He seemed to stare at her with something calculating, and she wished she hadn’t run her mouth despite the fact she did so to protect the same person who was now behind her, a deeper sense of panic blaring in his eye than before.

“Let go-” Taking a deep breath to overcome the bubbling fear rising in her chest, her only words were cut off by a much clearer voice.

“There is a darkness in you,” The stranger said, as if he knew it for a fact.

Her heart plummeted.

Was it so obvious? No one had ever been able to see it, she buried it so deep in the hopes no one would ever get a glimpse beneath her kind shell. But it was a facade, and even he knew it. The shock must have read clear on her face as he pushed on, as if to reopen scar tissue with his bare hands.

“And chaos, oh there is chaos.” Her lips quirked between her teeth as she tried to stop them from trembling, “A shadow looms over you, little dove.” She felt Steven pull her closer to him, but this man had her every morsel of attention. How did he know, if he knew then surely Steven knew too. Knew she was born so dead she felt she was living a lie by being here. The man laughed to himself, just a small breath but it was enough to break her spirit, “What is it those witches say about Macbeth? Something wicked this way comes.” He asked though he already knew the answer, as if to entrance her with his own spell, “And I see you are truly something wicked.”

Her breath left her chest. The voice escaped her throat. Every intention of protecting Steven had practically evaporated out of her body as her co worker tugged her arm hard enough that the stranger let go of her.

“Leave us alone or I’ll call the police, alright?” Steven murmured with a new sense of courage, “I don’t care if you’re friends with the security here, you leave us alone,”

But the man’s eyes hadn’t left her, as if he knew just how deep his words had struck with her. He wormed his way into her brain even as Steven led her away with a kind hand on her back, his own words of reassurance coming to her as if she were underwater. As if she were being dragged under a current.

“He has no clue what he’s talking about, love. He was trying to get into my head too,” Steven said, but he could tell by the lost look in her eyes it was barely being registered.

“Who the hell was that?” She asked after a moment, the feeling in her fingertips just about awakening once they were far enough away to be considered safe.

“You won’t believe me if I told you-”

“Steven, please,” She begged, looking up at him with a desperation he had never known from her. That man, Harrow, one of the women in the alps had called him, had truly shaken her up with the near omen he had given her.

Steven couldn’t understand why, she was possibly the loveliest girl he had ever met. There was no one who so much as held a torch to her light in Steven’s eyes. She was kind. Gentle. Good. This Harrow had no idea what he was talking about saying she was wicked. She was anything but.

Steven sighed, looking at her gravely. “Remember yesterday when I said I had that dream the other night. When I was in the alps, and those men were chasing me for some scarab I’d stolen,”

She blinked at him emptily. In her defence, her brain had still been riddled with alcohol when he’d been rambling, and she had gotten caught up in her own personal issues since then to take much notice. But the scenario sounded familiar as she wracked her brain for the information, some light sparking in her eyes when it clicked to their phone conversation the day before.

She stayed silent, eyebrows furrowing, “You said that was a dream, Steven. That man is very much real,”

“I know, I thought it was a dream,” Steven explained, “But now they’re here, and they keep saying I’ve got this scarab and what not. I don’t understand any of this, love. I’m sorry. I just know he’s dangerous and we need to stay far away from him,”

The younger woman looked at him sadly. He was clearly in distress himself, and she felt a flash of sympathy run through her at his lost expression, yet his eyes were full of concern for her well being.

She knew what it was like to struggle to know what was real and what was not. What it was like to feel as though you're barely keeping your head above the waters of reality. Yet she trusted Steven would tell her if he knew what was happening.

She knew he was more honest than anyone she’d ever known, so she didn’t push.

“Alright,” She said with a heavy sigh, rubbing her eyes to relieve the pressure building in her frontal lobes, “Alright, let’s just steer clear of him, okay? And if he comes back, we go to the police together.”

Steven seemed relieved, which wasn’t a surprise since he knew it was a big ask to have someone trust such a ludicrous story. Yet he didn’t know why he doubted her. She was loyal and would never dream of ridiculing him like other people might. She just took his word as gospel.

She was too good to him.

“Okay, yeah. Good plan,” He said, nodding and checking behind him to see if the guy was still after them when a smaller body pressed its way into his chest.

She didn’t know why she did it, whether it was for his benefit or hers, but she hugged him. Tightly too, as if she had been holding back for a while (she had). They hugged all the time, when saying goodbye at her train stop, when they saw each other on a morning given they weren’t running late. But it never felt like this, so intimate. So much like she needed him so desperately.

Perhaps it was childish, but the way he drew her closer, resting a head on top of hers as if he needed the contact as much as she did made her heart flutter even with the strange circumstances. For a moment, they both felt safe, like Harrow couldn’t get in their heads entirely because they had each other to ground them, reassure the other that they were not alone in the web his ominous words had spun them into, and that was enough for now.

Yet the two of them barely spoke all day.

Whether it was they were too busy with their actual work, or they were both in their heads thinking just what Harrow had meant by his prophesying.

It wasn’t until inventory was nearly done that she spoke first.

“We’re going to be alright, aren’t we?” She asked, his head cutting to hers from where he was scanning some Beefeater Rubber ducks. He seemed to notice the slight glint of fear in her tone, “As in, they don’t know where you live do they? Or me?”

“No love, of course not,” At least he hoped they didn’t. Steven realistically couldn’t promise anything, he had no idea how far this Harrow’s network of followers ran. But he knew for certain he couldn’t stand to see her so scared. It ran a streak of anger in him that was unusual. Steven never found himself particularly angry, but it had run red hot when he saw the way Harrow had grabbed her and knocked the soul out of her with his words alone. “If you want, you can stay at mine tonight? I’ll take the sofa, you can take my bed,” After he’d swept away the giant ring of sand of course.

She smiled at him finally, maybe the first proper one she’d shown him all day. And he couldn’t help but feel his chest grow lighter that he had done that. Gods be good, she was pretty when she smiled, he thought.

“Thanks, Steven,” She said quietly. He was confident the two of them could figure this out together, and if he was sure of her, then how wicked could she truly be?

She knew it was a cop out, that she hid so much from him that he didn’t know the real her; that if he did he would turn tail and run as far as he could from the monster in front of him. That he would curse himself once he realised Harrow was right; she was polluted down to her marrow.

“I’ve only got this box left to do, love, then we can get out of here,” Steven promised, his eyes flicking over where she collected two half full crates of merchandise and headed out of the gift shop to the stockroom.

“I’ll take these out and meet you in the lobby?” She called over her shoulder, hearing him agree as she walked away to the area meant for employees only.

Sighing deeply, she put the crates down gently, sliding them into a bottom shelf out the way of clumsy feet (most likely her own). A thought jumped in her tired brain, and she was quick to turn out her pockets for any spare change she could use for the train fare back to Steven’s apartment.

Just as she suspected: empty. Because why would she be so lucky as to have anything good happen to her. She could always try and persuade Steven to walk home and save the embarrassment of revealing what actually happened to her Saturday night, but she knew the pitiful look he would give her if she told him the truth of her date. The sad eyes that would flash that neither of them needed after a morning of such anguish.

They didn’t need another of her pity parties today, and she grimaced at the thought of how horrendously the last one ended. Though she knew Steven was different, that he would never do anything so cruel to a stranger let alone herself.

It only made her heart yearn for him more.

Sighing, she thought on her feet as to what to tell him as she left the stockroom, locking the door behind her with the key Donna gave them all a copy of. Her heels rhythmically clicked on the freshly polished floor that reflected her frowning face back at her as if to remind her to stop looking so tormented.

She saw the light of the main exhibit at the end of the darkened hallway, heading towards it at no rush since she figured Steven would likely just about be done himself. Lost in her own head as to what excuse to give the man she called her only friend, she almost missed the deep sound snarling in the shadows behind her.

Whipping her head around with a wide eyed expression, her eyes flicked around the hallway for any glimpse of what made that sound.

But she saw nothing. Not in the way shadows were nothing, dark patches of nothing, as in she saw nothing there. Had anything been lingering behind her, she would have at least caught or heard any movement.

She paused for a second to take another look, only to still come up empty. Her foot warily continued its original path, figuring the sound must have been the cleaners dragging something against the floor.

“Hey, Steven,” She called upon approaching the lobby where he’d be waiting, “Do you reckon I could owe you a coffee for my train fare? It’s just-”

Her voice cut out when she heard the low growl again, much louder this time. Loud enough to have her wince and stop in her tracks in the centre of the room.

She caught sight of the navy blue jacket she knew too well walking backwards slowly, his eyes trained on something in the adjacent corridor.

“Steven-” She whisper yelled, his panicked eyes snapping to hers, “What the hell is that-”

His arm raised out to point at the shadow illuminating the wall. Her gaze fixed on the shadow of a wild dog of sorts, its snout long and open in a fierce grin. She could practically see the outline of the drool dripping from its sharp teeth, at least she hoped it was saliva she thought gravely.

Her breath left her instantly. What the fuck was that? Her knees felt as if they were about to buckle underneath her, calves going numb as the adrenaline flushed over her body in tidal waves. She was always a dog lover, she’d had two as a kid, but something told her whatever kind of beast this was, it was not nearly as friendly as a tamed canine would be.

And it seemed Steven realised it too as he was quick to cower behind a display of an ancient relic clutching his bag to his chest tightly.

His frantic eyes pleaded for her to move, but she seemed frozen to the spot.

The overhead tannoy rang melodically, as if God was preparing to make the announcement that they were truly fucked, something she didn’t need a bulletin to know.

“Steven Grant of the gift shop.” The sound of that familiar voice had her heart plummeting into her gut that twisted painfully. Did this guy have attack dogs or something? How had he gotten them past security? They looked huge. “Give me the scarab and the two of you won’t be torn apart,”

The scarab? Everything Steven had said about his dream was true. And if that was true then that meant this guy was a nut job capable of having his entire team hunt her down for so much as associating with poor Steven who looked as lost as she felt.

The shadow moved, shifting around the corner of the hall to enter the open lobby. A scratch-like sound found her ears, as if someone were running knives over a cold slab, and she realised with a shiver this thing must have claws.

And they were approaching.

An open mouthed growl echoed through the room, which only served to confuse her even more. From the volume alone she knew the thing was big, and in the very same room as her. Which meant she surely should be able to see it as she could see the entire length of the room it had to be walking down.

But that was the thing. There was nothing there.

“Steven,” She whimpered quietly. It was stupid, making that noise and attracting attention to herself. But she was scared. She wanted to know what to do. Wanted comfort that she wasn't going insane, that maybe this was all a practical joke and there really was nothing there.

A second set of razor sharp nails entered the room from the same direction, yet again she could only decipher that on sound alone. The chorus of snarls that only got closer did nothing but have her step back on instinct.

“Steven-” She said again, only to see him standing in a rush.

“RUN!” He yelled, taking off towards the exit.

She didn’t need to see the dogs to know they were in the way of her and the same route Steven had taken, so she settled for scrambling back the way she came. The black heels she wore for work to seem professional only proved to be useless when running from wild animals, it seemed. Who’d have thought it?

Her feet pounded down the maze of exhibits, trying to make it to the exit where Steven had headed towards. But for every one step she took, two paws advanced on her like an apex predator heading for its kill.

Which she no doubt would be.

Turning past the Anubis exhibit her stomach dropped when she heard a strong body colliding with the same wall she had practically skidded past. Her lungs burnt with effort, her breaths coming out in wheezes. She had one last turn and before she would be seconds away from the fire exit that she could barricade from the outside.

The feeling of the dog’s hot breath on the back of her ankles had her pushing herself harder, too scared to look over her shoulder. She was coming up to where the hallway split into two and she headed for the right where she was sure the back exit was. She couldn’t help but wish Steven was able to outrun the mutt on his own heels, having not heard from him since she had taken off in separate directions.

Taking the turning past a remaining chunk of what was once a Cleopatra statue, her eyes adjusted to the dark corridor. Where were the slab paintings of the sphinx? Where were the memorials to King Tut? They should be here, they’re always next to this exit-

Her chest constricted when she realised her mistake. Her grave mistake.

In the panic of escaping the creature, she had taken the wrong turning. She should have gone left.

Yet judging by the way the animal grunted with the effort of the chase, she had no option but forward.

Forward to a dead end. To the Setekh exhibit room.

The walls were alive with paintings recovered from ancient tombs. The god of Storms, among other things, was feared through all of Egypt in the later dynasty. He was associated with all things evil, mysterious and disordered. The huge altar that held the statue of Set, his long face foreboding and as cold as the stone it was preserved in, looked down at her in almost malice as her feet took her into the one place she had left to go.

It wasn’t until she felt the walls surrounding her, the penny dropped how fucked she was. There was no way out, no cutting back the way she came as the creature ran into the vast room with her. Dodging one of the plinths containing statues of the demon god, she had barely a second where her pace slowed down as she considered how she was going to turn back before she felt it.

A force stronger than a freight train hit her from behind. She heard every molecule of air get pushed from her lungs at the sheer weight of it, her throat audibly yelping. Its body collided with hers with a weight that she was sure must be pure muscle, and she was thrown to the hard floor with less effort than a child tossing a ragdoll.

The impact had her ribs rattling in her chest, brain bouncing against her now bleeding forehead. The cold floor was harsh against her raw skin. Her nose made a loud pop as it smashed against the marble, a hot sting erupting over her entire face.

But the worst was yet to come.

There was a moment when she was collecting her thoughts, head spinning from the collision. She was sure she’d damaged something in her skull as it pounded, harder than it ever had with any hangover.

She’d give anything to be back on her sofa feeling sorry for herself.

She hadn’t the time to pick herself back up when she felt something large do it for her. It must have been eight feet tall with how big its behemoth paws were as the one grabbed her leg and dragged her on her stomach towards itself. Like a cat playing with a mouse. Not ready to devour, not yet. Just playing. Torturing. Tormenting.

Then came the claws. Her eyes looked down at her ribs, the thin air surrounding them making her cry out in horror - there still wasn’t a fucking soul in sight. No dog, or animal. Or human even. Nothing. Yet her shirt ripped almost too easily as it let out a deep hiss of what she would call a near laugh and sunk its talons into her side.

That was when she started screaming.

Her throat hurt from the volume alone, a banshee shriek akin to a horror movie. It reverberated through the museum halls, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

Vision started slipping then. Whether it was panic or her mind protecting her from what was coming next she didn’t know, but all she knew was everything felt weightless for a moment.

She thought maybe she was dying and ascending at that moment there and then. But she wasn't so lucky. She was still being made this creature's bitch as the God of chaos watched. What beautifully horrible irony.

It was then that it clicked in her stress-addled brain that she was not in fact weightless. That the reason she felt so was because she was now being suspended midair by the thing that had her in its vicious grasp.

It took shockingly little effort for the creature to throw her through the wall-sized fortified glass surrounding the monolith and for her whole body to crumple to the floor.

Steven slammed the bathroom door shut with a panting “Oh God”, his coffee brown eyes never leaving the thick metal that shook with the weight of the monster throwing itself at it violently.

What the fuck was his next move? What even was that thing? He retreated further into the bathroom with a lost expression, clutching his arms for a semblance of comfort.

“Steven,” The man in the mirror spoke in the same American accent he’d been hearing in his own home.

Looking at his reflection, he was agog to find the man identical to him moving on his own, as if independent from Steven himself. That was not his reflection, he knew that much, no matter how much it looked like it. “Steven, I can save us,” He said darkly, his eyes and frown much meaner than any expression Steven would ever wear.

The way he stood was entirely different too, as if he were bigger in stature despite being encased in the exact same body as Steven was.

“W-What?” Steven whispered, backing away from the door that weakened by the second.

He thought of Dove. Had she been able to get away, run out the front door and get help from anyone who would believe her? He hated the thought of those adorable little heels she wore clattering against the floor, he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d slowed her down. He always heard women complaining about walking in heels let alone running from fucking monsters in them.

Where was she?

“But I can’t have you fightin’ me this time,” He had felt like he’d been playing tug-of-war with his body for some time. But against what, he hadn’t known. His own reflection? This man staring back at him in the mirror with a scowl he knew wasn’t plastered on his own expression? “You need to give me control. You understand?”

He swivelled on his heel to see the man in the full length looking glass behind him, who seemed to tower over him in frame.

“No, what? Control of what? What are you talking about?” Steven bumbled, his eyes looking over the stranger’s shoulder to see the door shaking on its hinges now. Dents were appearing now where the monster was caving its way into the bathroom, and one look at the length of its claws told Steven all he needed to know. He stood no chance against this thing alone.

“That thing’s about to break through the door. We’re out of time.” The man said, realising their predicament as much as he did. This couldn’t be real. This had to be a dream, the lot of it. The entire day. From that Harrow guy to the idea that he could possibly lose her to some ancient wild dog.

“No! No!” Steven cried, flinching as the door clattered one more time, the frame whining with the effort at which it held the assailant at bay.

“All right, hey. Listen to me,” The mirror man tried to reason, but Steven was panicking too much to hear him.

“Dammit, no! Stop it!” Steven slapped himself around the face a few times, begging with anything listening to wake him up from the worst nightmare he’d had yet. The image of her being chased by that thing wouldn’t leave his welled up eyes. He wanted to run to her, god knows he would have if that thing hadn’t been stood in between the two of them, blocking his way to her. “This is not real! You’re not real!”

“This is real. I’m real.” The man spoke calmly, as if a diametrical opposite to his own mood. He seemed to know more about what was happening, what that thing was, what it could do. Perhaps that was why Harrow had been chasing him in the first place.

Either way, Steven didn’t care. Not now at least. When the only person outside of his parents that he had ever held affection for was in danger. Imminent danger.

“No! You’re not,” Steven yelled back at his reflection through tears.

It was then he heard the screaming. A howl of visceral pain enough to rattle his bones at the familiar feminine tone to the voice.

It was her.

It was like nothing he’d ever heard, like an animal in a slaughterhouse. He trembled in his place at the thought. She was in danger. Oh god it had her.

“I’m gonna die- She’s gonna die-” Steven whimpered, the tears rolling down his olive cheeks at the thought. He really was useless.

“Steven, look at me.” He finally listened to his reflection with a pitied sniff, “You’re not gonna die, I can save us. But she is if you don’t give me control right now. Let me save her, okay?”

That was the straw that broke Steven’s resolve, the idea of her dying. He had never found it so easy to concede.

He just hoped the man using his body got to her in time.

She couldn’t see a mouth moving, nor could she actually see their face, just two beams of white blinking down at her.

She’d felt, still felt, the open wound seeping so harshly that she knew it was going to be fatal.

There was no coming back from whatever fever dream this was.

“Steve-” Came her broken murmur, but the metallic taste crawling its way up her throat cut her off as a blob of viscid blood rolled down her chin.

She didn’t have long left, she realised numbly.

How do you fight off a monster coming from within? You don't. You can’t. So she didn’t.

No amount of soft words or desperate touches on the figure helped her, it only made the departure messier, a bigger pool of blood for them to find her in.

The world felt surprisingly calm the moment she was snatched ruthlessly into Death’s open arms.

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januaryembrs · 11 months

Text

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [2]

description: She wakes up with a killer headache and a million questions when she realises two things: 1. the man in her room is not infact Steven Grant and 2. her body no longer belongs to her but to the God of Death. [Last Night in Soho inspired]

word count: 9.6k

trigger warnings: GORE, blood, very briefly Reader/Dove has worries of SA but absolutely none happens nor was there the intention of it happening and it is only implied, swearing, talks of infidelity (we love Layla el Faouly in this house so she will stay in the story but not as a romantic partner for Marc/Steven)

main masterlist | series masterlist

authors note: so as promised this is now an avatar!reader series. all the Ancient Egyptian facts mentioned are simply researched off google and some books I have on Egyptian mythology so someone please correct me! Also to avoid confusion Seth goes by many names eg Set/Seth/Setekh and is only really known as God of Death in the marvel comics, not in real mythology! Again, my knowledge of DID is purely researched so if anyone is upset with my phrasing or what I have written please tell me!

Please reblog and comment for your authors!

Marc cradled her wounds harshly, guilty chipping at him when he heard her whimper at the sheer force he was putting on the lacerations.

“Konshu!” Marc hissed over his shoulder where he felt the bird poking at the Jackal’s dead body. He had arrived five minutes too late, barely just pulling the monster off her before it could set its teeth into her leg and start feasting. The dark haired man had been quick to snap its neck, throwing the carcass behind him and tend to where she twitched and writhed on the floor.

It was bad. Her thick blood smeared all over the ceremonial armour that would somehow clean itself of the stains like it did with the blood of the others he’d killed.

He’d had blood on his hands before, but not like this. Not an innocent woman that slipped away under his touch, the eyes he’d seen from inside the body batting up at Steven with golden innocence.

He knew how Steven felt about her, the way his heart, well their heart, would pick up when the two of them got even the slightest bit closer. The way doubt ate away at his quiet counterpart, doubt that someone her age would find a man ten years older than her even the slightest bit attractive. She had dozens of men after her, he saw how their eyes trailed up and down her figure when she would be so much as stood minding her business and stacking shelves.

Marc knew despite Steven never admitting to his feelings, despite the fact he’d tried helping him get over his crush by asking his other gorgeous co-worker on a date for him, he knew Steven would be devastated if anything happened to her.

The two of them shared a friendship first and foremost. She was possibly the only person Steven had to rely on that he found comfort in, the only real friend he’d got. And she was good, Gods above Marc could see even when he was on the inside that she was good to him. When she would leave him notes to remind him to wake up on time, bring Steven little trinkets she’d found that reminded her of him. She hadn’t batted a single eyelid of judgement when she’d seen the sand around his bed, or the foot cuff. In fact she’d made a joke about his unique tastes in the bedroom and then asked if he would like to buy mugs together.

She was pure, and kind, and good. It was Marc’s job to deliver vengeance to those worthy of it, and she was the furthest thing from it. And it was his conflict with Harrow that had gotten her into this mess in the first place.

He couldn’t let her be taken from Steven, not like this.

“KONSHU?” Marc called, louder this time to get the God’s attention, “Will you quit poking that thing and get over here?”

The skeletal figure paused, his staff still half way through prodding the corpse out of intrigue as he took note of the pitiful little human dying on the floor.

“She’s a lost cause, Marc. The worm can make more friends. We have work to do,” Came Konshu’s booming voice, the figure walking towards where the blood pooled on the floor messily.

“That is not an option, what happened to protecting ‘the travellers of the night’?” Marc seethed back, compressing the wound harder. But it was no use. He felt the liquid seeping through his clothed fingers, how it pumped out of her rapidly. His heart dropped sadly when he saw she was looking right at him, her eyes wide and wet with fear.

“Steve-” She started. Even so close to death she was worried about him.

Marc’s chest constricted with sadness. Steven would never get over this if she were to die like this, calling for him, clinging to his alter for dear life. It was his job to protect Steven at all costs from the tough realities of life, and watching her die would torment his alter in a way he just couldn’t allow.

“He’s here, he’s okay. It’s gonna be okay,” Marc shushed her, eyes narrowing on the way blood dribbled out her mouth and he heard her chest rattle with a clogged airway.

She didn’t have long left.

“Konshu, do something!” Marc yelled, his hand cradling her neck gently, trying to tip her head up far enough that she could breathe still. “We need to do something now!”

“There is nothing to do, Marc Spector.” Konshu said simply, yet his boned beak snapped to the plinth the two humans rested on, his concave eyes trailing up to the monument that watched over them, “Unless…”

“Unless what? Just do something, she’s going to bleed out any minute now,” Marc rushed, a hand coming to hold her head up more as she started choking on herself.

He had seen gruesome things before, done gruesome things. But this was heart wrenching, watching the one person his alter cared for die so horrifically. Slow. Messy. Painfully.

“I cannot do anything to help the little runt,” Konshu snapped, raising his staff to the behemoth, looming figure behind the two humans clinging on to one another, “But he can,”

Marc’s head whipped to where the bird-faced demon was gesturing, the man’s near black eyes trailing up to the statue of the god watching over the three of them. “Who is that? Anubis? Ra?”

“Seth. God of Chaos, Storms and Foreign lands.” Konshu spoke of his old friend fondly. Marc’s eyes squinted in suspicion at the admiration in his voice. “Sometimes seen as the God of Death.”

If there was anyone who loved vengeance and all things violent as much as the moon deity, it was the one who created it all.

Spector’s heart squoze in fear at the idea of throwing her to a life of servitude like the one he had been forced into. But there was no way of healing her deep wounds in any other way than giving her up to a god that would find use in her survival.

“God of Death?” Marc asked, “Is there no one else who would take her?” Nothing about Seth screamed out that he would be gentle to her. Konshu was bad enough, and he was merely the God of the Moon, let alone the embodiment of violence.

“None that would accept a vessel so weak.” Konshu said darkly, kneeling down behind Marc and calling upon his dear friend in arms, “She is bleeding onto his monolith as if she’s given herself up to him as a sacrifice, he’ll like that,”

“No, wait-” Marc wasn’t sure he liked the sound of a deity so dark taking control of her, but he hadn’t the time to protest any further before his own God’s voice rattled the shards of glass laying on the floor with its volume.

“Seth! Old friend, we have a gift for you,” Konshu bellowed, his head lowering as a sign of respect to his superior. The god killer. The brother slayer. The evil serpent of the Ennead. Konshu could only revere in the footsteps of such a god equally, perhaps moreso, hated by the higher council.

Konshu’s avatar opened his mouth to protest when a snake-like hiss rolled over his back and every hair on his body stood on end. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before, everything warm inside of Marc’s body being robbed at the very sound of it, his breath included.

It was neither man, nor animal, nor monster. A mix between a snarl and a spit of anger from being woken from a deep slumber.

Death overcame the room.

“Konshu,” An ancient voice came from above. For the first time in Marc’s servitude to Konshu, he was afraid to see where the sound came from. What had made such a noise.

What Death looked like when you stared him in the face.

“It is good to see your face, shadow dweller,” The voice of Death spoke, every scratching syllable running through Spector’s body like a fear he’d never known.

He couldn’t face the thing that caused such a feeling, and kept his head down as a result. Down to where she was. Still looking at him with such desperation, oblivious to the unholy conversation happening around her.

The light in her eyes was dimming, the tears slithering into her hairline pitifully. She hadn’t got long left. He’d failed her. He’d fail her if Seth couldn’t get to her in time. Yet the selfish part of him didn’t want him to, wanted to keep her pure and untainted by such a cruel being.

But this was for Steven, he thought. Keep her alive for Steven’s sake.

“We have a body for you, dark one,” Konshu said, gesturing to the girl’s weak body that his pathetic avatar clung to fiercely.

“To see through the afterlife?” Seth questioned, the lights in the museum hall flickering as if indicating he was in every atom of the room with them.

“To have as a vessel, Seth,” The Moon god prompted, his staff gesturing to the pool of blood the two humans sat in, Marc’s arms by now drenched in it. “See how she bleeds for you. I know you feel it as I do, the darkness in her heart, the chaos-”

“Oh,” Seth’s aged voice hummed in delight, “Oh, how her corrupted heart sings to me. You have done well, Konshu,”

That had Marc gripping her body just that bit tighter. What had he done? The god seemed so thirsty for her blood, for her body.

But it was too late now. Death had taken a fascination to her. Two long tendrils of pure, cold darkness emerged from the shadows and wrapped around where her weak state was slipping away from Marc’s arms. Hands that had trusted him to keep her safe fell from his bicep, falling slowly into her lap as the blackness took her.

“Be gentle,” Came from Marc’s mouth before he could help it, not wanting to make himself known to the old god. Her body was raised into the air before the statue, her head limp as it sagged over her shoulders, heavy and lifeless. Shadows wrapped around her limbs, crawling up her nose and under her closed lids like an infection, spreading, consuming, digesting.

“Gentle?” The hoarse voice rumbled with laughter, “She is going to be my most prized possession,”

There was something so peaceful about the way she slept despite the trauma of the last couple days. Marc had flown the two of them back to her apartment, figuring it was a much easier way than getting on public transport with a sleeping woman in his arms. He knew it would garner too much attention, even with the way he’d wrapped her in Steven’s jacket to cover the sight of the blood from the security cameras.

He’d laid her in her soft bed, slipping her shoes off and draping the soft duvet over her body, the whole time she’d not murmured one bit. He would have almost been concerned that Seth hadn’t healed her in time had he not seen the two gods emerging from the dark corners of her bedroom like the boogeymen they were.

If Konshu was nerving to look at, then Seth was something straight out of a child’s nightmare.

Unlike Konshu, he was not bones. He had the body of a goliath man, arms taught with dark muscles, and a small piece of cloth to cover his dignity. Gold chest armour rested over his shoulders and wound around his thick arms. Hair lined his arms and chest in thick mounds, and he held a staff similar enough to Marc’s own god that he could see Seth’s was much more intricate than his counterpart. It had dark hieroglyphs running down the sides, a pointed skull of a jackal atop the weapon with a gold headpiece weaving its way over the animal's forehead neatly.

But that wasn’t what scared Marc. It was the beast’s head that sent chills down his spine. His head was that of a lithe dog, like a Doberman on steroids, ears and snout thin and long as it stared down at him. A predator if ever he saw one. Seth’s eyes were black, brimming with menace and plague, his jaws lined with what seemed like hundreds of teeth sharper than any blade Marc had ever seen.

The insidious smile plastered on the demonic jaws was what got him. As if Seth knew the fear he instilled in him. As if he saw how much he regretted listening to Konshu already.

Seth was every awful feeling you had in your gut before something terrible happened. He was the last breath a person takes as their soul leaves their body, a cold hand of a corpse. A dark shadow in the corner of your eye. A premonition of death. He was every ounce of pain, burden and agony any being had ever felt in the thousands of years they had existed in this small corner of the universe. He was torture and misery hailing down upon the world straight from purgatory.

And she was his now. His to ruin and vanquish as he pleased.

The two gods stood on either side of her bed, staring down at her in fascination as Marc sat on the chair at her desk, his dark eyes flicking between the monstrous creatures.

“Do you need to watch her like that? I thought we had work to do,” He prompted, hoping to take their attention off her vulnerable body.

“Harrow was onto something with this one, Marc Spector,” Konshu chuckled, taking a seat on the window sill to watch Seth caress her head, his hands gentle yet Marc sensed there was nothing kind about the gesture. As if on cue, her face scrunched up, still riddled with sleep, and she twisted in mental torment. His touch alone had given her a night terror, he was the king of chaos after all, “If you saw the yearning for vengeance in that girl’s heart, you’d find her fascinating too,”

“She’s not evil, you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Marc’s jaw clenched harshly as she whimpered and tried to roll away from the hand that poisoned her dreams. His eyes darkened at the sound of Seth laughing to himself at his cruel trick.

“She’s not what you think, runt. She will do well as my avatar,”

Marc finally set his gaze on the unholy deity, the slim, mutt like face staring down at him with inky black slits. He couldn’t hold the stare for long, the creeping feeling of unease that washed over him the moment he met Seth’s eyes was enough to knock the wind out of him.

Tugging on his collar to free some space for breath, he turned away.

“What will you make her do?” He asked quietly, sparing a quick, pitiful glance to her face that had now smoothed out in peace once more.

“Nothing she doesn’t already want to,”

She felt the uncomfortable scratch of jeans against bed sheets before anything else. The detergent, that was almost unscented from the countless years she’d used it, was homely against her nose and she stretched out under the covers to pop the joints that had been curled into the foetal position for however many hours she’d been asleep.

There were about ten seconds between waking up and remembering whatever the fuck happened last night where she remained in a beautiful state of blissful peace. There is a virtue in remaining ignorant, she realised. Remaining unaware. In fact, she would go on to cherish those ten seconds when her eyes took in the same plain wall that had always been next to her bed, when her head was not loud and the air was not tight in her chest.

Ten revered seconds when things didn’t hurt.

Yet by the eleventh second, the whole evening came flooding back to her, ripping through her synapses with the feeling of dread.

The man in the museum that had grabbed her and Steven. The dogs, the running. The creature tackling her, its teeth, oh god, its teeth and claws, the way she’d been thrown through the glass like it was child’s play.

Sitting bolt upright in bed, the early morning sun illuminated the room enough that she barely took note of the figure sat opposite her. Throwing the duvet off herself frantically, she scanned every inch of her body for anything that hurt, that was bleeding and needed immediate attention.

But, as was a recurring theme in her life these days, there was nothing there.

Not a single scratch, or scab, or scar in sight. Her shirt was ripped to shreds, dark red and spattered with something lumpy that she didn’t want to even consider what it was. That would need to be thrown away. But lifting up the torn fabric to reveal her bare stomach, there truly was nothing there that indicated what had happened was real. Were it not for the evidence on her shirt she wouldn’t even believe it had happened.

What the fuck was going on?

As if on cue, she raised her fuzzy head the slightest bit and caught the man sitting at her desk, looking straight at her with cold, brown hues. The short, dry yelp she let out had her lungs wincing, her hands raising in front of her to protect herself from any oncoming attack, before it clicked in her head that it was Steven.

Ofcourse it was. Ofcourse, Steven had gotten her home safely last night.

“Oh my god, Steven!” She rushed out of bed as he stood, though the dead expression hadn’t yet left his face as he stood to meet her.

Marc had barely opened his mouth to explain when he was tackled around his waist by her open arms. She was strong now, strong enough to hug him tightly and have his ribs jitter painfully, no doubt a side effect from becoming an avatar.

The older man had just about talked Konshu and Seth into leaving him to explain to her what was happening, knowing how terrified he was when he first started hearing the God of the Moon addressing him. He knew for anyone so soft to the world, hearing voices and seeing giant creatures ordering you to do their bidding would mean a one way ticket to a hospital ward.

“Steven, I’ve been so worried about you! What on earth happened, what were those things- wait!” She pulled away quickly and checked him over for wounds himself, searching him up and down until she was satisfied he was okay.

Marc would have laughed snidely at her concern, knowing he was more than capable of taking care of himself, had she been anyone else. But it was endearing how her first thought was for his alter’s safety.

Now came the hard part.

“I’m fine, everyone’s fine. How are you feeling?” He saw her gaze snap to his, brows drawing down into a frown at his accent.

“I’m-” She paused for a moment, and he watched as her eyes took in his whole demeanour. He knew he behaved differently to Steven, even by voice alone it was clear, but she seemed to be catching every small manner that he differed from him within seconds. “I’m fine, I could have sworn-” Eyes trailed over his face again as if to confirm her suspicions. She stepped back, shaking her head and bringing her hand to her temple, walking over to her mirror to check for any bruising. “Did I hit my head?”

He could have lied then and there. Marc could have washed his hands of her and convinced her she’d just had an awful fall, that nothing that happened last night was real. But Seth was coming to collect his dues, there was no stopping that now. Marc knew it was already his fault that she was in shit’s creek waist deep, it wasn’t fair of him to just up and run like he did with everything else in his life.

She deserved the truth. As so many people in his life deserved the truth; Layla, Steven. He had brought trouble to their doors and buried his head in the sand the moment he saw consequences. He’d ran away, denied, denied, denied until he started believing it himself in the hopes the guilt so familiar to him would let go of his chest.

But this was different. Dove was the only thing Steven had in his odd little life, the only person who cared for him. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself knowing he wasn’t only fucking up his own life but now Steven’s too, Steven who he had always tried to protect. Nurture. Perhaps he would have left her to the wolves were she his friend. But she wasn’t. She was Steven’s girl. His dove.

“Listen, you-” Her ears pricked at the sound of his new voice again. Marc saw how her posture straightened alertly, and her eyes snapped to look at him in her peripheral vision. Not necessarily panicked, but wary. As if trying to not give away her awareness of his change. A reflex, as if she’d done this before; hidden her fight, flight or freeze response. But Marc being the skilled mercenary he was, was one step behind her, clocking her reaction immediately. “You did hit your head pretty hard last night so I think you should sit down for this, princess.”

She turned slowly to look at him with wide eyes and he almost winced. She knew something was off, wrong. Princess? That was certainly new. Practically a million miles away from the nicknames he’d already established for her. She carefully sized him up with her cautious eyes, looking him head to toe as if to find the flaw that gave him away, the exact thing that made her feel the uncanny effect.

Truthfully, she had been able to tell just from the way he had hugged her. The barely there hand on her sides, the way his body went ironing board stiff in her arms, the way his head was held far away from her as if she were a bad smell instead of falling into the open space her shoulder provided like Steven normally would.

He was looking at her as if she were a wild animal on the side of the road, lame and ready to succumb to a terrible fate any second now. As if he was sorry, as if he’d been the driver knocking her down and had to be the one to see her shrivel pathetically on the pavement.

His voice was colder than Steven’s had ever been, formal. Everything about him screamed unfamiliar in the worst way despite being the double of him. But the way his face seemed tired, not in the way Steven was always tired but like he was tired of everything around him, tense, forlorn. Sorrowful. The way he stood straighter than Steven’s usually slumped over figure, he seemed immediately bigger and broader than her friend ever had because of it.

Whoever was looking at her was not her friend. Foe? She didn’t know, but she knew this man was not Steven Grant.

The next thought struck her harder than the glass wall had. What if it was? What if this was Steven, and their whole friendship over the past year had been an act to get her weak and vulnerable, cowering in her bedroom like a deer at the end of a rifle barrel.

“Who are you?” She murmured quietly, as if she were afraid to approach the clear fact he was not the man she’d known for the past few months.

The stranger took a sigh, raising his hands up to calm her as if to approach a spooked animal. “Look, I can explain everything, but would you please just sit-”

“Are you twins?” She asked, taking a step away from him. Please be twins. Please let me keep Steven, the only one who was ever good to me. Marc stopped in his place, realising his presence was scaring her. She looked pitiful, the warm eyes that had seemed so relieved to see Steven were now on high alert, nothing about her shrunken body seemed relaxed. Her eyes drifted past him to the door, and Marc was quick to realise she was gauging if they were in her apartment alone. “Is Steven here?”

One single beat.

“Yes.” She’d already caught him in his lie. He was hoping to get by on the technicality of his words, but his hesitancy to answer had her eyes snapping back to him in fear, “It’s difficult to explain. He’s here, he can’t talk right now,”

That did nothing to reassure her. In fact, it made it sound like Marc had hurt the one person she’d hoped to get her out of this situation. The man chided himself for his cold demeanour, but he couldn’t help but wince at the onslaught of information that was to come.

For this to make sense, he would need to tell her alot.

He saw it in her eyes. The way her body gave away her next moves, her slight, gentle step towards the door. Her chest puffed out as if she was building false confidence in herself for her next move. To run.

It didn’t matter that he looked like Steven, that he was wearing his clothes. That was not him. Had something happened to him with the invisible dogs? Or the white figure that had haunted her dreams that had held her as she had fallen into that cold darkness? Or was she truly going so far down the rabbit hole she was losing all sense of reality?

Either way, this man was a stranger. And he was in her room. Alone. Unbothered by the blood and gore on her shirt. And he wouldn’t let her see Steven, wherever he was.

A walking red flag.

Another single beat of silence passed between the two of them, before she bolted for the exit.

Maybe it was his military experience, or the fact her innocent face had made it so easy for her to read. But Marc was quick to catch her by the waist, tackling her to the floor and pinning her easily.

The scream she let out was awful. Her newfound strength and sheer terror made it a little more difficult to reach a hand over her mouth but the way she thrashed as if fighting for life clutched at Marc’s chest heavily. A free swipe of her arms, the blood and dirt still buried deep under her fingernails, came up to push his cheek, scratching deep into his skin enough to cause three red marks on his olive complexion and have him hiss in pain.

“Please, STEVEN- Please just let me go- Don’t- STEVEN” She yelled, her legs kicking up to try fight him off. Her eyes welled up as she screamed more, her throat audibly going raw from the sheer effort.

“Shhh. I’m not gonna hurt you, just please calm down,” Marc begged as he put his hand over her mouth. He saw the fear in her eyes that told him all he needed to know. He was a stranger to her, a stranger in her room that had pinned her to the floor.

Of fucking course she was terrified.

Her cries for help were only muffled by his large fingers as his eyes peered down at her in sorrow, “He’s here, I promise. Steven’s here, just please let me explain.”

Her eyes stared up at him through glassy, fat tears. The voice, that voice. The way he held her so gently despite having the strength to hold her in place. The stranger, the same stranger that held her last night was - what? Steven’s twin brother?

Marc watched the moment she recognised him, somewhat. Alteast recognising him out of the suit. It felt too reminiscent of the moment he’d watched her die. Call him selfish but he preferred when she’d held on to him in a fleeting moment of trust than the fear that she gazed at him with now.

“I saved you and Steven last night, from those things, remember me?” Marc asked sternly. Her eyes remained wide and frightened, but she seemed to give up struggling. Her face was the picture of confusion, conflicted whether to trust a familiar stranger or keep throwing her entire weight into fighting him off. “Yeah, see? Now I’m gonna let go of you but you’re gonna need to trust me for all of five minutes. Your life is in a lot more danger than those things that attacked you, and I’m not gonna be able to help you if you don’t listen to me. You got it?”

He felt her body relax the slightest amount, before she nodded helplessly. Marc checked over her face one last time for any immediate signs of fleeing. When he found none he let go, leaning back to stand, rubbing a hand over his stinging cheek. Not bleeding, but raised and hot with impact.

“Who are you?” She whispered, still laying on the floor in shock, her chest heaving with a nausea that had washed over her the moment he had gotten on top of her. Call it a reflex, but the idea of a man who wore her best friend’s face invoking such a power over her curdled her stomach to its very core.

Marc looked down at her, her eyes neither trusting nor looking for a reason to run. She needed to know, he repeated to himself, were it not so important he would have left with no query. No traumatic incidents needed.

But Death was around the corner. Sooner or later he’d appear to her, ask her for things Marc could only dread.

He owed her an explanation at the least.

Sticking out a hand, the same hand that had stopped her squeals for help, he offered her help up off the floor. Her eyes flicked from the tawny digits to his stiff expression in caution. “I’m Marc Spector. Nice to meet you,”

She sipped her tea silently. She liked it strong, unbearably sweet and piping hot. Sometimes she joked with Steven it was how she liked her men too. But she was in no joking manner now, and Steven wasn’t here anymore.

Well he was, and wasn’t at the same time.

They shared a body, that’s what Marc had said. She’d read about stuff like that, seen it in movies, but funnily enough the phenomenon of two people in one body wasn’t even what had her jaw clenched in disbelief.

Egyptian gods walked among them. Lived with them, had their own societies and laws, puppeteering random strangers to do their bidding.

And one, perhaps the worst one she could think of, had her in his clutches.

Of course she’d heard of Seth. She stacked around fifty of his statues a day in the back of the gift shop, his wolf-like face not nearly as friendly looking as one would hope if they’d learnt he was now their master.

If Marc was telling the truth, then that’s essentially what Seth was to her now. A puppet master, a dictator, a tyrant pulling the strings on her every move for the inevitable future.

He was the body of everything chaotic. Nefarious. Evil. Violent. And yet she couldn’t help but sigh at the dramatic irony that she expected nothing less from an ancient god that had taken an interest in her soul. It saw in her what she knew had always grown. What that Harrow guy knew immediately, supposedly the gift of his own god, to see the disruption inside people's hearts. What Steven and now Marc were so blind to.

Seth had seen the pollution that cursed her down to her marrow and licked his lips in glee.

“Are you okay?” Marc’s American accent met her ears. They sat in her kitchen, the small breakfast counter being the only thing holding her up as she rested her elbows on it, barely feeling the way the scalding hot tea slid past her silent lips.

“Mhm,” She murmured, hands wrapping delicately around her clean mug. She’d given Marc Steven’s mug, mindlessly making him a tea the way Steven loved his cuppas, only to have the new man wince and spit the liquid back out.

More of a black coffee guy, he’d said apologetically as she visually sank in realisation they were truly completely different people.

“I know it’s a lot to process, I know I freaked out the first time I spoke to Konshu.” Marc explained, his tea going cold with his lack of interest in the drink. He watched her expression meticulously, as if trying to pick over every tiny change in her face as to any hint how she was feeling.

She stared at the white table deep in thought. Blank and empty as the surface itself.

“What will he want from me?” She asked quietly, meeting his eyes for the first time since he confessed he was the other half of her best friend that happened to share a headspace with him.

Marc looked at her blankly. “I don’t know,” He answered honestly. He would love to tell her Seth would be kind and graceful, gentle as he’d put it. He’d love to take it back, dig her out of this mess in any other way than offering her as a sacrifice, a mess he’d made by listening to his own God’s orders.

Marc would love to leave her and Steven in peace to pining and mixed feelings and words unsaid, but he couldn’t. She was in the gates of Hell now, deep in the Underworld. And there was no point of return. No do over, or waking up and pretending the whole thing was a silly dream like he’d been pulling over Steven.

This was out of his hands now.

“He wouldn’t make me-” She paused, taking a deep breath and putting her mug onto the counter to stabilise her shaking hands, “He won’t get me to-” Kill was the word she kept silent, but Marc understood nonetheless. Seth was the god of death and violence and all things lawless. There wasn’t anything Marc could promise wouldn’t be coming her way. His expression must have been grave enough to warrant her to let out a rattled sigh, tucking her hands into her lap to pick at her dirty fingertips. “Oh,” She said simply.

“Look, once I’ve stopped Harrow from raising Ammit, then I can worry about how to get him to release you, okay?” Marc said shortly, running a weathered hand over his tired face.

It was odd, seeing a man look so much like the sweetest guy she’d ever met brush her off as if she were a minor inconvenience. Which she was. She knew he felt guilty for letting his god give her up to the higher being, but he seemed tired of this whole situation by now, reaching his limit on being tender with her.

Marc didn’t have time for this. He was trying to help the poor girl, but the best way he could think to fix their problem was to clear his plate of his own agenda first. Which meant leaving as soon as he could to get the scarab somewhere hidden and Harrow off his back.

Her eyes steeled over at his words, furrowing her brows. “Once we’ve stopped Harrow, you mean?”

“What?” Marc said with a huff, looking at his tea as if it poisoned him, wishing it were a black drip coffee she hadn’t got the money for.

“We can stop him, right?” She asked, an edge to her tone that she’d never used on Steven. Everything reserved for him was purely saccharine sweet and gentle, loving beyond what friends should be.

“We?” Marc bit with a scoff.

“Yes-”

“We?”

“Yes we, what, do you have a French man living in there too?” She barked, slamming the mug down with a blaze in her eye at the disdain he looked at her with, “Now look, I know it’s a little unavoidable for you and Steven, but I’m not one to have people fix my problems for me,”

“Yeah, you seemed to have it completely under control last night when you were bleeding out,” The man snapped, watching her jaw tense with an anger he’d never seen from his time watching her through Steven’s eyes.

They glared at each other for a moment, the red welts on his cheek staring back at her as if to remind her of her new strength. She needed him. Her body felt cold, as if she were carrying a corpse around not her own limbs, her every breath tasted of smoke and rot. She felt like she had bugs crawling over her spine, the hair on her arms never laying still with the goosebumps that dotted her skin. She felt dead. Casket, buried and six feet under. Then again, she sort of was.

“I’d like to speak to Steven, please,” She said quietly, polite despite the fact she was angry.

“I told you, you can’t talk to him right now,” Marc replied, stepping away from the kitchen and heading towards the front door to her apartment, “Look it was nice to meet you but I have work to do. You just stay here-”

She stood up, nearly knocking the mug over as she pursued him, grabbing his arm with a jolt.

Marc could have sworn she nearly ripped his arm out his socket with the unknown vigour she had. He made a small yelp that he choked down as she yanked him back to face her.

“You are not leaving me to deal with a God of Death alone, are you kidding me?” She seethed, unaware of how tight she was grabbing him. She was gonna leave one hell of a bruise, Marc thought, but the desperation in her voice was clear as a bell. “I don’t care if I have to stalk you myself, we both know you can stop this Harrow guy a lot faster if there’s two of us,”

“I won’t be stopping anyone if I only have one arm so would you please let go and stop mauling me, I’m trying to help you here, princess,” Marc retorted, as if to snap her out of her rage. Her eyes fell to where she was gripping him harshly, her hand alone turning the bottom half of his arm red with lack of circulation.

Her face visibly drew back in shock, letting go of him quickly. “Sorry,” She muttered, sheepishly.

Well, that was new.

Marc sighed, looking down at her crestfallen expression. She was scared, he knew she was, but putting her into the line of fire was exactly the last thing he wanted to do after already watching her suffer enough for his mistakes.

But she was persistent. And smart too, he knew she was right in saying they could figure out how to push back against Harrow a lot faster with two brains. At least if she was with him, he could keep an eye on how Seth was treating her.

If he was being much too greedy and insidious, which is what Marc expected from him, then maybe he could ask more of the Gods to step in. Or even the God of the Dead could help them find a way to stop Ammit from being resurrected. What was the point in conjuring chaos if another god was going to end everyone who had it in them?

“Alright,” She perked up instantly, those wide eyes looking at him with elation that he was going to stop being difficult and pushing her away, “You can help, only if you promise to do exactly what I ask of you. We can’t have you going rogue, that will make my whole plan just messy, okay?”

“Aye, aye, captain,” She said smoothly, flashing him a toothy smile, “Thankyou, Marc. Really.”

“Alright,” He nodded, reaching for the door, “Get some more sleep, I’ll call you when I need you,”

The smile dropped from her face as fast as it had come. That phrase was not comforting in the slightest. How would she know he was honest, that he meant his word? Steven always meant his word. Steven she could trust with her life.

This man was not Steven.

She knew it was childish, but she was quick to grab his hand again, gentle this time, not nearly as forceful as before. His empty brown eyes snapped to meet her gaze, the hair on his arms standing to attention as if he'd been electrocuted by her touch alone.

“Promise me?” She asked, eyes wide and imploring him to understand how desperate she was, “Promise me you won’t leave me alone?”

He took a moment to look her in the eyes, her lashes framing the pure anguish held in her sweet face, batting up at him with woeful hope.

He could see why Steven liked her. She was the embodiment of everything good, everything that needed protecting in the world, that needed cherishing and kept safe. He felt her small hand squeeze him in need. Having someone so kind and so blatantly enchanting to look at essentially begging for his refuge awoke something primal in him, something caveman that said I would never let a hair on her head be harmed. Something not even sexual, just purely carnal that overcame his senses as he imagined it did Steven’s, that had him nodding on instinct.

“I promise,” Marc said calmly, squeezing her hand back, before he shut the door coldly and left her flat.

She did not in fact wait for Marc to call her. In fact, by the time she’d woken up she had two missed calls from Steven and a flurry of messages had filled her screen all from one of her four contacts in her phone.

Steven

Are you okay, Dove?

Please respond A S A P

I don’t know what’s happening, they’ve said I’ve destroyed the loos

They said I carried you out of the building but I don’t remember seeing you after we got split up

Oh god don’t be dead

That would make me a proper maniac who killed the only bloody friend I’ve ever had

Please don’t be dead

Dove please message as soon as you can I need to know you’re okay

She huffed a breath of relief. Steven was back. Anxious and worried for her life, but he was back. She had barely a few hours of sleep since she’d seen Marc leave her apartment around 5 am that morning, but by now it was well into the afternoon.

Talk about being dead asleep. No, that’s not funny, she chided her brain.

Rubbing aching hands over her eyes to remove the last remnants of exhaustion from her face, her hands floated over the keys to reply to him.

Yet she could think of no way to tell him just how she felt; as though she were both relieved and dreading the idea that she could now talk to him about everything that happened, that she wouldn’t be alone with his stern counterpart in fixing the situation she had found herself in.

Yet the thought settled deep in her stomach. What if he ran from the very sight of her? It was obvious Seth wanted her out of interest, not just convenience. How he lusted for the cruelty and anguish in her bones. The venom that bubbled under her skin, infecting her brain and thoughts, the part of her that made her a disease, contagious to everyone around her.

Steven could take one look at the woman she truly was and wish for nothing more to do with her. Then what? The loneliness she had always known awaited her? The feeling of being left to the darkest corners of herself she knew waited for a moment of weakness to strike. Is that what she was to be subdued to?

She couldn’t say she was surprised. But she had to see him. Even if to beg for forgiveness of the bitterness that lay inside her, get on her knees and ask him to stay for her.

Words on a screen simply wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t redeem her enough to keep him like she wanted, if she could ever repent at all, that is. She needed to see Steven.

“Let’s just get this over with. You sent these papers but you never signed them.” Layla sighed as she yanked the thick wad of documents out her bag. She had no idea what Marc was playing at, perhaps creating a new identity was his way of running from responsibility again. He was always good at that.

“Did I? Uh-” Steven fumbled for his reading glasses as the vibrant woman shoved the files under his nose.

“This is what you wanted,” The woman, Layla, the only person who could help him understand what it was this Marc guy had plunged him into, said to him with an unmistakable bite to her words.

“Let’s have a look here,” His coffee ground eyes scrunched in confusion as he read over the papers. He brought them closer to his face as if in disbelief as to what he was reading.

“After everything, you told me that we needed to move on,” Layla seemed to have calmed slightly, bitter still but more heavy than anything as she watched him look at her in astonishment.

‘Divorce/dissolution/judicial separation petition’ stared back at Steven, an offer to end a relationship he knew nothing about with a woman who frankly scared him. Yet he could see the pain in her dark eyes as she avoided his glance. The way she’d swallowed her pride to come after this Marc guy to get the papers signed once and for all, though by the sounds of it it was his idea completely.

This little American man seemed to like starting fires and not waiting to find out if they burnt. If people got hurt. Which they did.

Steven was still waiting for Dove to message him back. If Marc had hurt her in any way he swore he would hand himself over then and there, particularly after finding a bloody handgun in his storage locker listed under his name. A gun? A wife? His best friend’s body? Who knows what else this Marc was hiding?

“Divorce?” Steven asked, looking at Layla in confusion, “You- We? I don’t know- You two were married?”

“Yeah, we doing this or not?” Layla snapped, though the gloomy look on her face told Steven all he needed to know. She was hurting. She hated every second of this as much as he did.

He flicked through the pages a few times, clearing his mind on the matter. He felt he had no right to meddle or sign away anyone else's relationship yet this woman looked at him expectantly in a way that had him curling over in near fear. He opened his mouth to ask her more about this Marc guy she was so angry with when a pounding on his door met his ears.

“Steven,” It was her, “Steven, are you home?”

Oh, thank the heavens and every cloud in them. The tension that had grabbed him by the throat and laced it with emotion all morning melted away at the melody of her words. So eager to hear her voice, to convince himself she really was safe, he dropped the papers onto the nearest table and rushed to the sound of her knocking frantically once more.

“Who is that?” Layla asked, annoyed that the papers she’d dragged across the globe had been discarded without a second thought. But her question fell on deaf ears as Steven swung the heavy door open.

The two of them stared at each other for a brief moment, both of them looking equally as shocked, confused and exhausted by the events, yet still not quite believing that they were seeing each other alive again.

“Oh my god- Love-” Steven heaved as she bolted into his arms for the second time that day. Though this time he hugged her back just as strongly as she’d expected. His body soft, gentle, warm with the way he encompassed her figure with his entire being. Not like how Marc held her in the slightest. He squeezed her tight, as if letting go of her again was the last thing on his mind, his hands flat on her spine and his head burrowing into her sweet smelling collar.

God he was so relieved to feel her again. Her face was smashed into his chest, her new found strength bringing him as close to her as physically possible, hoping to everything he wasn’t going to leave her the second he knew about her new, um, condition.

“Steven, oh my god, I thought it was you, the guy in my room- and last night! I was so worried about you- how do you feel, are you okay?” She rushed, unaware of the way she was being watched by two enraged brown eyes.

She had been so enamoured with Steven holding her so close, she hadn’t even seen the stunning woman stood a metre away with an aghast expression.

“Dove, I was so worried, Marc said I had to give the body to him so he could help you, I-” Steven’s voice was clogged with guilty and sorrow as he drew back from her, watching her expression scrunch into concern, entirely focused on his every word, “I couldn’t help you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, love-”

“Hey, look. I’m okay, see?” She reassured, squeezing his waist lightly, wishing to soothe away the tears building in his waterline, “Marc got to me in time. I’m okay-”

“You met him?” Steven said the same time a new voice met her ears.

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

Her head snapped to her left to where a woman stood, her fists clenched and full lips pursed into a sneer of disgust at her presence. She was gorgeous. Perhaps the most gorgeous woman she’d ever seen. The type of face you’d see on a billboard, effortless and striking, the kind that had even her fawning over her rare beauty.

The woman looked all the more annoyed at her gawking expression.

Layla’s head cut to Steven’s flustered face, looking between the two women in surprise.

“This is-”

“Is this why you wanted a divorce, Marc?” Layla barked, the two embracing each other immediately pulling apart at the accusation that came crashing down on the two of them. “Is this your girlfriend?”

Divorce. The word echoed in her head like a stab to the chest. He was married. Steven, well Marc technically but Steven’s body was married. To the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. It only made sense. No matter which way he was packaged, whether he was Steven or Marc, he was a god among men even without Konshu.

And she currently looked like a mistress.

“No!” They chorused, Steven turning away from her and leaving her standing in the doorway confused.

“No, she’s my-” Steven paused as the younger woman spoke over him in just as much panic this woman would get the wrong idea.

“We work together,” She rushed, walking towards the woman with her arms up in surrender. Of course this looked bad. Awful. The guilt of falling head over heels for someone else's husband churned in her stomach.

“Me and her work at the museum, well worked I suppose,” Steven said, shutting the door behind her, hoping Layla didn’t start shouting like she had done a few times already. He was as tired of taking Marc’s shit as she seemed, but he supposed it was just as confusing for her to be married to someone who claimed he was someone else.

He just hoped the woman he was enamoured with entirely didn’t get the wrong idea also.

“I’m so sorry, I suppose I should introduce myself,” The younger woman attempted a friendly smile, which was entirely shut down by Layla glaring at her and snarling at her pleasant tone.

“You’re supposed to introduce yourself to a woman before you fuck her husband,” The woman said, leaning over the woman intimidatingly before turning to Steven’s scared mouse expression with a growl.

“I’m not sleeping with Marc,” Dove piped up, though her chest was rattling with the furious nut-brown gaze that met her the second she opened her mouth. If looks could kill, she’d be clinging to the shreds of life that she had left all over again. She saw Steven look at her with reddening cheeks at the inference of her words, “Or Steven! I’m not sleeping with either of them,”

Layla scoffed, looking her up and down, “What? So you’re just his young, pretty co-worker who just so happens to give them fat fucking heart eyes the minute she sees him?”

It was her turn to become flustered now. She felt the embarrassment hail down on her in waves, heat crawling over her cheeks as she stared at the woman who had managed to see her feelings for her husband within seconds. Women had sixth senses for things like that. Which wouldn’t be a bother, except Layla was married to him. Not Steven himself, but his body yes.

This was all so complicated for the half-dead girl’s already mithered head.

Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, hoping to god that Steven had somehow miraculously become deaf for five seconds and he truly hadn’t heard what his alter’s wife had just said.

“Exactly,” Layla huffed, reaching to grab her backpack and leave her husband and his mistress to their little roleplay where he was an English, ex-gift shoppist and she was his young co-worker too innocent to so much as tell him how she felt. What a joke.

“Wait, please,” The girl tried to slow her down, as she headed for the door, “Please, I can explain.”

A new knock on the door stopped Layla in her tracks.

“Steven Grant? Can we have a word?”

A female voice. Unfamiliar to either of them.

“DC Fitzgerald and DC Kennedy. We’re here about the disappearance of your co-worker,” The young woman’s face scrunched up in confusion as they said her name. Her full, legal name.

Steven and Layla simultaneously turned to look at her.

“You’re missing now?” Steven whispered, to which she shook her head.

“I spoke to the police on the way over here. Donna gave them my number when they saw you carrying me out of the museum,” She said back in a hushed tone, “I told them I was safe, that I fainted and you took me home.”

Layla’s eyes flicked between the two of them, her mind clicking as the voice on the other side of the door continued more forcefully, “They’re not real police officers,” She hummed quietly.

Steven and Dove looked at eachother. A look of panic passed between them as they shared the same thought; Shit.

“Marc said Harrow had connections all over,” She whispered back, watching as Steven reached for the multitude of locks slowly, if not to stop the fake officer from battering his door then to seem as though he were co operating.

“What are they looking for?” Layla asked, a moment of clarity snapping in Steven’s eyes as he reached into the gym bag he’d dragged from Marc’s storage locker. His hand emerged with the scarab, the same jewel he could have sworn had been plucked from his dream. Layla’s eyes widened, then narrowed at the man in question. “The scarab? What we fought side by side for? So this whole act was so you could run away with your mistress and keep it for yourself?”

“I am not-” The younger of the two started in a tone loud enough to have the officers stop their barrage on the door. Fearing they’d heard her, she huffed and started again, snatching the scarab out of Steven’s hands and turning to Layla, “I am not sleeping with your husband,” She breathed, “But the three of us are in serious trouble if they catch us with this, that’s what Marc said-”

“Yeah, I know,” Layla snapped, glaring at the woman who stared back with a now annoyed expression, “You might be new around here, but I know all about my own husband and his messes, thankyou,”

With the final growl, Layla wrapped a surprisingly strong hand around the girl’s forearm, dragging her to the open window.

“Woah! Woah- I know some things were said but throwing me out a window is a bit heavy, don’t you think?” She exclaimed, her feet sluggishly tripping over themselves as she followed the woman obediently.

Layla sucked her teeth, flashing her a death stare, “I’m not going to kill you, though I’ll wring your neck if you keep talking,” She snipped, pointing onto the ledge the roof offered as a place for them to hide, “Get out, they suspect something already, we’ll see where they take him and go from there,”

Flicking Steven, one last glance, he nodded for her to listen as he called to the ‘Detectives’ that he was complying with their orders.

Be careful, she wanted to say, please just be careful. Please don’t leave me alone.

I love you.

I spent all night worrying about you. Dreaming about you. I want you more than I wanted life again. I want you to know Seth can never have my soul no matter if I am his avatar because it’s not mine anymore, it's entirely yours. My heart that rots and withers beats for you. Not even to sustain this carcass I’m in, just for you.

Please don’t leave me.

But she couldn’t. She couldn’t say a word less she’d risk their safety. Risk the scarab.

So she simply nodded back, and climbed out onto the slanted tiles.

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januaryembrs · 7 months

Text

LAST KNIGHT IN SOHO | Steven Grant/Marc Spector x Reader [7]

description: Marc, his ex-wife and his supposed mistress head to Mogart’s to find Senfu’s sarcophagus, whatever could go wrong when the god of Chaos wants to be involved?

word count: 14.4k

trigger warnings: blood, gore, violence. Knives, stabbing. Small description of a drug overdose (accidental) and it doesn’t happen to reader. Themes of domestic abuse/grooming/prostitution. minors dni. [Based on Last Night in Soho dir. Edgar Wright]

main masterlist | series masterlist

Sipping her carton of juice, Dove’s eyes scanned the busy bazaar for any signs of recognition in the shoppers eyes as they bustled past her loudly. This exact square that had been a blood bath, a hunting ground, for her yesterday seemed to barely blink an eye at the primped and preened woman, thick sunglasses resting on top of her head.

“Anything?” She asked, the sweet taste exploding in her mouth as Marc returned from questioning one of his leads on Senfu’s whereabouts. It was surprising to her just how many people seemed to know something about the black market, then again it didn’t cross her mind that she knew how deceiving looks could be. She knew that the average person on the street likely had a dark secret, so twisted and vile they searched for their equal in maleficent places like the backstreets of Soho, or a normal town square in Cairo.

Marc shook his head, handing her a new cup of something saccharine for her to try.

“I hope you like attention,” The woman nearly choked on the liquid as a chirpy voice snuck up behind them. She spun, wiping the back of her spluttering lips with the cuff of her cardigan, to meet two honey eyes peering down at her amused.

“Right guy, right place, but you’re not Egyptian,” Layla teased, sipping on her own cool drink.

Marc huffed, his ex-wife’s eyes looking at him in smirking satisfaction. Dove couldn’t deny the sun clearly agreed with the older woman, her skin bursting with sweet freckles that were hidden in England’s cold grey, her hair just that bit more luscious. Her stomach twisted with a mix of jealousy and captivation as she watched the woman who made being beautiful look so easy.

“Layla, what the hell are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here,” Marc clipped, making the woman roll her eyes and Dove turn away from their catfight, chewing her cheeks nervously.

“Why? Because my name pisses off a few people in Cairo? Who cares?” She snapped, only just then taking in where the other woman bit the end of her straw.

“It’s not the locals I’m worried about,” Marc muttered, his eyes catching sight of Khonshu and his hauntingly smug partner that stared down at the three of them, watching the chaos unfold.

Dove followed his eye line, her blood running cold at the way he vultured around her, waiting for another chance to slip up, to take her body as his. Would he even need to? Now she realised she could conjure the suit herself, would he even need to puppeteer her anymore or would he simply put some sick whims in her head and let her have at it?

Would she be able to fight back? Would she be able to say ‘no’ and have it mean ‘no’ to him?

“Come on. I’ll help you find what it is you need,” Layla sighed, taking a hand to the top of the woman’s back to direct her away from the crowd. “And for the love of gods, girl, you need sunscreen on, you’re burning up,”

The three of them, smothered in cream, had spent the best part of the afternoon in the hotel room while Layla worked her magic and contacted her own informants. She knew the black market perhaps even better than Marc did, and it took her no more than a couple of hours to find Senfu’s sarcophagus from a source she said she trusted with her life, though Dove caught the split second of fear in her eyes when she’d said it.

It was fair to say she was not filled with confidence as they sat on the small boat taking them to the place the informant said they’d find it. Layla seemed ever more stunning in her make up, loose hair and with the purple tinged string lights the boat had weaved over its canopy. Dove felt selfishly glad she could barely look at Marc without gritting her teeth, she had no idea how she would feel if their marriage stood a chance at rekindling, then she really would be the other woman. Except not at all. It wasn’t like Marc looked at her in any way other than a nuisance, a thing he had to take care of for Steven’s sake. A stray to feel bad for, to have a vet euthanize out of duty, not out of care.

It wasn’t like Marc liked her any more than he disliked her, she was sure he felt near enough indifferent to her.

His kiss still burned a hole in her temple, his hands still phantoms at her cheeks, holding her gently, cleaning her, sewing her hurt back together. He had no idea the way his touch seemed to mend the tiniest parts of her together yet shatter her all the same. So desperate to be touched by him, so disgusted with herself she wanted to curl into a ball of solitude and never recover.

“So what exactly are we gonna do here? What’s the plan?” Marc asked in a hush, avoiding the ears of the few other passengers. A group of older women chatted animatedly on the other end of the boat, laughing to themselves wildly. The entire opposite of what she felt between the feuding exes, the salt river lapping behind her, knocking her to and fro in her seat.

“Oh,” Layla bit, her face twisting into a grim smile, “It’s not pleasant being left in the dark is it?”

It had been like this all day, Dove staying silent as they hashed it out. Well, moreso Layla ripped into Marc who simply laid there and took it willingly, knowing he had immorally screwed her over by disappearing into thin air. His feelings for her may have dwindled over the past year he had been away from his wife, but he at least owed it to her to suffer the consequences. It seemed to be all he was doing now, taking on the repercussions of his actions, ever since she lay dying in his bloodied hands begging for Steven to save her.

She tuned them out, much too occupied by her own dilemma; the water. The tiniest movement of the boat, the slightest of rock in the waves, had her twitching to grab his arm out of nerves, settling on gripping the wooden seat beneath her instead. Her leg jumped, eyes darting to where the moonlight reflected off the dark ripples under them, visualising how it would feel if she were to go tipping off the edge, head plunging under the surface, sinking, thrashing, succumbing.

“Would you please just cut that out?” Layla snapped, and Dove’s head whirled from checking over her shoulder to meet the woman’s fired gaze. It had been all of four hours and whatever civility the two had the evening with Harrow’s men was gone. Following her orders, Dove forced her leg to relax, picking at her thumbnail almost instantly only to have Layla roll her eyes, “For fuck sake,” She cussed in Arabic, “Is something the matter?”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” She responded, releasing her fingernail despite the itching feeling to pick at it once more, “It’s just the uh, water’s a bit choppy,”

Layla nearly glared at her, “Well, we were a little short on time, princess. This was the only option we had,”

“No-no not like that, it’s fine, this is perfect,” She stopped, feeling her face heat in embarrassment as the woman seemed only more annoyed at her skittishness. Plastering a smile that was clearly tinted with a veil of fear, whether it was of the woman who looked like she could wring her neck or the water itself she wasn’t so sure anymore, “This is fine. I’m fine,”

“Are you fine?” Layla asked, annoyance leaking in her tone though Marc, who had known the woman the best part of five years, heard the amusement behind it.

“Yep, I’m fine,” She nodded, clutching for dear life onto the seat. Flashing the pair an unconvincing smile, she stilled herself, waiting for them to continue their quarrel.

“So this Mogart guy, he’s really gonna have the sarcophagus?” Marc asked, wishing he could grab her shredded fingers in his, if only to comfort her in the slightest. He caught the way they twitched even after her scolding, how her eyes flicked every time water licked up the side of the wood.

“Yes, I asked around,” Layla said, relaxing against the side, her chocolate ringlets kissing her cheeks tenderly. “Mogart’s collection is prime gossip for those of us who deal in antiquities,”

“So like Indiana Jones?” Dove asked, the naivety in her eyes brightening as she looked to Layla for approval. The woman held back the scoff from passing her lips, knowing she was trying her best to win her over, and couldn’t help but stop herself from rebuking the otherwise dumb statement.

Layla was more like Marc than she gave herself credit for, burying kindness in a cold expression.

“Abit like that, yes,” Layla murmured, tugging her hair up into a low ponytail to keep it out of her face, better yet to busy herself from the guilt of snapping at the innocent girl.

The girl who had no clue how Marc looked at her, the way Layla caught onto immediately. She’d thought maybe it was just Steven besotted with her, but it took one glance at the man she knew like the back of her hand to see straight through whatever bullshit front he put up against her. And it wasn’t like he’d acted on it either, it was always whenever she wasn’t looking, always secret, always hidden.

It was what Marc did best, Layla thought bitterly. Hide his feelings when it mattered most.

The sour taste in her mouth hadn’t come from an open wound, no. Their relationship had since scarred over, healed, bled dry for Layla El-Faouly. It was the doe like girl that he strung behind him, that got entangled in the mess he left behind in his wake that angered her. It was the way she couldn’t help care for the girl and what would come of her when hurricane Marc blew over her, cattle flying, houses crumbling on his way the way he always did.

“Need one?” Layla held out a hair tie to the girl, her own hair messy from where she’d let it dry naturally. With no product, Marc’s fingers as a hairbrush and a need for a hair drier, it was obvious the girl had tried her best to fix it on the way, attempted to look her best for the evening.

Dove felt the lump grow in her throat.

“Sit still,” Grace hissed, running the wide toothed comb through her hair, her companion squished between her legs, squirming in pain.

“It feels like you’re trying to suck my brains through my hair follicles,” Dove murmured, face wincing in pain as the brush scraped its way through her locks once more.

“Brains? You’re giving yourself way too much credit there, baby,” Grace teased, only to receive a firm smack on her calf for the comment.

“Bitch,” She cursed back, her head being yanked back one final time by the honey haired girl and her damned brush, Dove grimacing and yelling “BITCH,”

“Quit your whining, now how do you want it?” Dove pouted, crossing her arms over her tummy, only to be toed in the ribs by Grace’s blossom pink socks, “Don’t take a stand of silence with me, how do you want it? Dutch braids?”

Dove nodded quietly, only for a rogue piece of hair to be tickled under her nostrils. Quickly realising the culprit being a small, pale hand holding the split ends and her an amused face leaning over her shoulder to see her reaction, she scrunched her nose batting away the hand with a growl, though she couldn’t help the way her mouth tugged into a giggle.

“Grow up, will you?” The girl scolded through a laugh, her head resting back onto Grace’s lap, eyes closing in bliss as the girl ran her fingers over her scalp, parting the hair into two sections.

“Why on earth would I do that?” Grace mused, giving her nose a quick peck as she split the right side of her tresses off with a claw clip, “You’re gonna be the prettiest princess by the time I’m done,”

—

“Thanks,” Dove replied forlornly, Layla’s skin burning as the woman dropped the tie into her palm. She was never good at braiding her own hair, it was always Grace who liked to do it for her. Anything fancier than her normal, low maintenance styles and she’d go to a cheap stylist. She’d loved doing Billie’s hair too, but for whatever reason her sore fingers had no perception awareness when they were behind her own head.

Settling for a low bun, she rubbed her hands on her thighs to calm her nerves, not missing the way the two of them seemed to watch her meticulously.

“What?” She asked, looking between them with the same nervous smile as before, “I’m fine,”

Layla huffed, shaking her head at the girl who looked between the two expectantly. She reminded her of a docile mouse searching for a cracker, fidgeting with her hands, so trusting yet meek, ready to be squished under Marc’s clumsy boot.

She couldn’t stand to watch this Greek tragedy anymore.

“Come on,” Layla hauled herself up, the movement rocking the boat the smallest amount, enough to make Dove latch onto Marc’s arm with wide eyes, “We’re almost there,”

The younger woman felt her face blaze with embarrassment, meeting her companions umber eyes that looked down at her with a cocktail of amusement and worry.

“You’re alright,” Marc whispered, Layla going to stand with the driver to confirm they were almost at Mogart’s. The two of them spoke calmly, the Arabic being foreign to Dove’s ears despite having spoken it clearly when Seth had control, though she noticed when Layla slipped him a few notes for his intel.

“I know, I’m just not a huge fan of boats,” She stopped, looking guiltily at the floor, “I didn’t mean to piss her off though, I just can’t stop thinking about what would happen if I fell in-”

“Then I’d be coming in right behind you and dragging you out,” Marc stopped her with a gentle hand atop her own, feeling her shake under his touch.

Her head whipped up to his, eyes staring up at him with the sugary glaze of trust in them, the same way she’d seen him the first night he’d met her. Perhaps that was why he felt so responsible, like she was his to take care of. While he’d loved Layla, loved her enough to marry her, loved her enough to let her go, she had always been fine on her own. She was independent, never let him forget it. The selfish part of him revelled in the way Dove needed him. Needed him of all people.

They shared a little smile between the two of them, heads shooting up as the boat stopped and the captain hopped off to dock the boat properly. Layla stepped up onto the planks, turning to hold her hand out to Dove who rose to her feet steadily.

“There we go, back on dry land, princess. You can put your big girl undies back on now,” Layla snarked, though Dove caught the way her almond eyes washed over the younger girl, checking she was okay, not too roughed around by the journey.

“I think I forgot to pack those,” Dove responded quickly, wiping her clammy palms on her tummy, looking around her at the estate. This was not what she’d pictured at all when Layla had said they were going to have to be stealthy. The place was filled with people chatting, enjoying themselves, as if they’d just docked in the middle of a party scene, interrupting the entertainment for the evening.

“This guy’s got a lot of friends,” Marc said cautiously, Dove feeling his presence at her back closer than her own shadow, as if he was watching over her shoulder for any signs of trouble despite only just showing up to the place.

“With a lot of guns,” Dove murmured, catching where the string lights glinted against the noir black of an assault rifle. Feeling her stomach churn with fear, she stuck herself in between the two of the more seasoned adventurers, not wanting to stray too far from their sides.

Layla shoved the bags with their own weapons under a step in the dock, avoiding where the waves lapped at the wood. Dove’s eyes trailed over the inky froth, the briny smell in the air still lingering around her nose, taking in the starry specks of Alexandria that reflected over the shore. She could almost appreciate it from here, on land, where there was no danger of sinking; that is until her eyes fell on the dinghy that lurked around the dock, three men aboard that stared her down with a predatory gaze.

She suddenly felt just as scrutinised now as she had in the pyramid.

“What is it?” Marc asked, sensing the way he body had stilled like a deer in headlights. He followed her line of sight to the men, his jaw feathering as he bit back a curse. “Harrow’s men keeping tabs?”

“Probably,” She replied, Layla watching the men with a cautionary gaze, her lush eyebrows turning down into a frown.

“Let’s go,” The woman said, tugging at Dove’s wrist gently to ward her away from the men’s smarmy smiles. The trios faces lit up with a warm glow under the lamp’s beams cutting through the night air, small stalls like a market flanking either side of the pasture they walked across. “Remember, your name is Rufino Estrada.”

“Right,” Marc said, the three of them taking off in between the partiers towards where the stately home, likely belonging to this Mogart guy, was. “And yours is-”

“Nadia Estrada. We just got back from our honeymoon in the Maldives,” Layla replied, her eyes wandering over the various stalls, intrigued as to what had brought the elated guests here. There was only little food, very few cups of alcohol like she’d expect from a party, so what were these people buying? “Figured we may as well use our old code names, save the confusion,”

Her eyes zeroed in on a fossilised tablet, an ancient painting etched into the slab. Relics. He was selling relics; ancient, irreplaceable pieces of history and he was just casually selling them out of his yard like they were friendship bracelets, or a pitcher of lemonade.

“You guys had code names, that’s so cool,” Dove piped up, leaning up on the tips of her toes to peek at the merchandise also. “What’s mine?”

Layla stayed quiet for a second, “Truthfully, I had only accounted for it being the two of us. I assumed Marc would have left you at home to keep you out of harm’s way,”

Dove’s energy wilted, slammed with the feeling of taking up too much space in their world of adventures, “Oh, okay,”

“I guess it just means you get to choose your own name and alibi, then,” Layla cut in, trying to save the moment. She’d never intended on causing the girl upset despite the short fuse she’d had with her the moment they’d met. If anything, she’d prefer her to be back in the hotel, not to make any moves on fixing her marriage but for her own peace of mind that the girl was safe. Seeing the interest spark in her eyes again as she peered at Layla, the woman pointed in a warning way at her, “But make it believable enough that you can lie on command,”

“Right, gotcha,” She replied, her eyes falling in front of her where they were heading towards, trailing after Layla’s assertive footsteps. “So what role will I be playing then? Your assistant? A distant relative?”

“No and no,” Marc protested with a wince, his stomach turning at the idea of pretending to be her cousin, no matter how fake it was, “You can just be our friend,”

“Friend that comes on our honeymoon? That’s not a friend, that’s a third,” Layla interjected, a doubtful look on her face as they neared the manor. From what she could see, Dove caught sight of a wide sand pit, spotlights lighting up the square as a dozen men on horseback circled one another in some kind of sport. Some of the partiers, not seemingly interested in buying the goods, walked over to spectate, surrounded by a lot of security guards donned in all black, matched only by the guns cradled readily in their arms.

Dove was already feeling the panic rising in her gut.

Steven’s voice blared clear in her head, yet another of one of his stories he loved to entertain her with when they had a long night of inventory ahead of them. Or on the underground, or even when he would walk her to her door and stay for a hot cuppa on the cold Winter evenings.

“Did your father tell you about Horus and Seth’s challenge for the throne?” She asked, turning to Layla and taking a shot in the dark at the woman who hated her guts.

She rolled her eyes, “Which one?”

“When Seth had killed Osiris and taken Isis and Nephthys as his wives and attempted to take the throne over Horus by claiming it was his blood right,” Dove explained under her breath as not to draw attention to them.

Layla was intrigued now, her eyes flicking to the woman, Marc doing the same with an identical lost expression.

“What’s your point?”

“Well, when Nephthys and Isis escaped Seth’s imprisonment together, Isis led rebellion against Seth by turning herself into a beautiful, young woman to trick Seth into admitting he was not the rightful king, outwitting him because he couldn’t hold himself back from some batting eyelashes and a pretty face,” She went on to say, looking between the pair. Marc seemed to catch on quickly, raising his hands in protest to cut her off.

“Absolutely no-”

“Perfect, that’s perfect. That’s just the distraction we need. He’d never believe I’d go for him right in front of my own husband, that’s brilliant,” Layla babbled, giving a supportive nudge to the young girl’s shoulder.

Marc just rolled his eyes in defeat, fists already clenched by his side as the women smiled between one another in pride.

“Did Horus win at least?” He asked, a semi sneer on his face at the idea of her making herself a pawn in their game of facades. Dove’s head shot up to meet his bitter gaze, feeling a twinge of guilt at the way she’d so readily put herself forward for the task of bait. But why? She was no more his than he was hers.

She tried to lie to herself and pretend the idea of him alluring a woman in front of her wouldn’t stab at her chest, just thinking how she’d almost jumped for Hathor’s throat when she’d so much as spoken to him. It wasn’t so strange, she had been smitten for Steven since the moment she’d met him, falling hard and fast for his gentle hands and even gentler words. It wasn’t far of a stretch to say some of it had transferred to Marc, even with his cloudy attitude and stormy expression that never seemed to weather.

It was probably the doppelganger effect and all that, she reasoned with herself. Probably just her idle brain confusing care with love, grasping at straws for any reason to be wanted.

She smirked at his question, shrugging her shoulders, “Well, supposedly, the Gods involved couldn’t come to a decision as to who the throne went to as both Seth and Horus were part of Osiris’s bloodline. So, in order to show superiority and a challenge of manhood, Horus, uh-”

Layla chortled, obviously having heard this story from her father.

“What? What did he do?” Marc asked with a huff, though he beat down the smile that threatened to tweak at his lips when he saw the two women chuckling together.

“The story goes that Seth, uh, ejaculated over Horus to show dominance, but Isis figured out his plan to make Horus seem unworthy for the throne, and sprinkled Horus’ semen over Seth’s garden so when he came to eat from the crops he was impregnated.” Dove said, her eyes turning away bashfully at the explicit nature of the story, though he heard her giggle on her final few words.

Marc’s jaw hung open in a mixture of disgust and horror, “That did not- Wow,” He spluttered, head shaking with disbelief, “Remind me never to take Horus’ throne,”

“Do you think Gods get morning sickness?” Layla asked, Dove smirking at her statement. Figuring since the god that trailed after her had remained so quiet after the meeting with the Ennead, she felt the opportunity too good to pass up to throw punches back at the one that had caused so much havoc.

“I can see it now, the horror that is the God of Chaos with swollen ankles and a midnight craving for pickles,” The younger of the trio snarked, and for the first time since she met the El-Faouly woman, she heard a real cackle of laughter out of her.

“He definitely got trapped wind and acne when he was carrying,” She added, making Dove crease into herself with suppressed giggles.

“Alright, that’s enough,” Marc tried to quell their hysterics, yet found himself joining in quietly, secretly, because he would never let her know how contagious her laugh was to him.

“Do you reckon his breasts got sensitive?” She asked, feeling Layla nudge her with a snigger.

Their little jokes all came barreling down around her as she felt a large, cold presence linger over her shoulder, swallowing the street light completely. Any and all laughter died in her throat within a hair's width of a second, her mouth going dry almost immediately when she realised just what was behind her.

Seth. Seth, the beast she was poking with a stick. Seth, who she would bend in any which way for were he to so much as snap his fingers, if even that. Seth, whose rage she could feel blowing out of him like steam out of a train flute as his snout breathed over her spine.

“You dare mock me, insolent mortal,” He growled, a clap of thunder running through her bones, shaking them beneath her flesh.

Marc grabbed her shoulder, attempting to pull her away from the creature, knowing her words had practically waved red at a charging bull. Turning to see the terrifying creature, leering just that bit closer, snarling just that bit louder, his breath pungent with wrath.

“I- We were- I didn’t mean-” Dove’s voice was small, childlike. A kid caught with their hand in the candy jar, caught smearing lipstick over the mirror. Tiny. Guilty. Punishable.

“You wish to behave as their little seductress that you so taunt me of bedding, then that is what you will become, mutt,” Seth snarled, his upper lip twisting to reveal his sharp canines that dripped with anger. He waved his staff, the hieroglyphs rippling with dark hum, singing with glee that they were being helpful to their master.

Before she could so much as gasp, so much as apologise, fall to her knees and beg him to see she was simply fooling with the woman she had been so deeply loathed by, she felt her clothes fall away into embers around her feet, the cold night air ravaging her skin despite the heat that rose to her chest.

What was left of the cloth robbed every single speck of her dignity; made her look like some prized mare, the same kind those men rode, the same kind she used to be. A body. A doll. A whore.

Her top half was nearly entirely exposed, save for a black wrap top that just about covered her tits, though they teased enough to turn heads nearly instantly as if they’d sounded an alarm of look at me, stare at me! Gawk all you like! I am nothing but whatever you see me as!

Her arms, neck and head was wrapped in spindling pieces of gold jewellery, the headdress, as she could have guessed, bowing down her brow and to her nose like a metallic pointed snout, only making her look more like Seth himself. Egotistical bastard.

The long, onyx skirt was the only part that gave her any sort of privacy, yet that didn’t help much since there were two enormous splits in the side, a slim gold chain resting over her curved hips, the material dragging over her crotch and buttocks. A single breeze could have her exposing herself, and she realised with a blazing face that the bastard had taken away her underwear in the process.

This was the first, last and only time she was going to make fun of the God of Chaos. Chaos indeed.

“SETH, Oh holy fuck-” She hissed, hands reaching to tuck the fabric inbetween her legs frantically, covering her breasts with the other.

“Woah, what did you do?” Layla asked, eyes wide as she scanned the girl’s, womanly, body from head to toe, “I thought he was the God of Chaos not God of Leia in Jabba’s palace-”

“Give me my clothes back, NOW,” She hissed, seething with a heat that could challenge the sun god Ra, “This is not funny, I will have you turned into fossils I swear-”

She heard a dark chuckle, malicious and vengeful as he was, and felt instantly a wave of stupidity had washed over her. Of course he would punish her, what a fool she was to think he wasn’t watching at all times. What an imbecile to have thought she would be able to live a single moment as a normal woman, a normal girl laughing with a friend, her mother always warned her of men and their damaged egos. She knew this lesson well enough. She knew this story. Why was she so stupid? So naive? Marc nor Steven would ever want such an ignorant girl, not when they had women as brilliant as Layla willing to marry them. Willing to re-marry them even.

She felt like a gullible child. Always falling into the wrong hands, into the snares laid out for her, a lame doe traipsing through a hunters meadow. Wandering down the garden path as a lamb led to slaughter.

The heat caught to her cheeks, burning her ears with embarrassment at her predicament.

“What the fuck do I do?” She spun to Marc’s eyes, though she seemed to catch his coffee gaze staring right at her. Flicking over her chest, flitting down to where the chain hugged her waist, her soft, supple waist he wanted to bury his fingertips in, and her thighs, her thighs-

His gaze snapped back to her after a second of weakness, seeing the fear waiting for him there slapping him out of his reverie. How disgusting he felt to have taken such a cheap look at her, art is supposed to be enjoyed not glanced at he chided himself, though the sick feeling in his stomach that she were such a divinity beneath her everyday wear, that she wasn’t just a pure soul but an angel woman outside as well.

She made every breath for him difficult.

“Huh?” He asked with a scratchy voice after a beat of silence. Blinking as if to drag himself from a daze, he looked away from her altogether to give her some privacy, though his chest never faltered from battering away at his ribcage, “I-”

“Bek,” Layla cut him off, and god he could have thanked her. Words seemed lost on him, stuck in a purgatory between enjoying the view and hating himself and everyone around him for besmirching her body with his worthless eyes.

A man had approached in the time it had taken for Marc to have his crisis; tall, broad, handsome the two strangers noticed quickly. Sticking out her hand for a friendly handshake, ‘Bek’ pulled the slender woman in gently, raising an eyebrow as he saw the woman to her right.

“Nadia, it’s been a while,” He said cooly, shaking her hand firmly, clasping her fingers in his familiarly in a way that told Dove they were friends. Not trusted enough to know their real identities but enough to not kill them on sight. It was what they had to work with, the younger woman told herself as she clasped her hands under her armpits to hide her exposed gooseflesh, “And who is this bewitching creature?”

Dove’s face tightened as his attention was entirely on her then. She saw it immediately, the lust in his eyes; the way they hooded with want, as if they saw through her whilst simultaneously seeing too much of her.

Just like those men, the horrid part of her brain whispered, Just like those who paid for you, just like those ones that would come in the night. The ones that used you, saw you as a thing to have, to conquer. Just like the one man who put you there.

If this was a dance she’d have to perform again, then that she would. She knew every step, every turn. She knew how to puppeteer these stupid men just as easily as Seth controlled her. Perhaps that was why they were such a clean match.

“Sandie,” She said coolly, a hint of a smile twitching at her lips. Enough to make him want more, enough to make him think he could be the one to give it to her. Men and their saviour complexes, “Me and Nadia are old friends,”

Holding out her hand for him to take, she tilted her head in discontent, watching as he took her own fingers as he had Layla’s, pressing a tender kiss to her knuckles, a Cheshire cat grin on his face when she seemed to watch him boredly.

They liked it when she was mean to them. She wished they would just see a therapist instead of seeking her body as a deposit.

“Right this way,” His voice was smooth in the buzzing atmosphere, the lamps suddenly too bright, the chatter too loud as they neared the ring. “After Madripoor, I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about, and perhaps something new to add,” His satin timbre stuck deep in her skin as he peered over his shoulder, trailing his eyes down her exposed legs.

Taking Layla’s hand in his own, if only to keep up appearances while they were supposedly married, Marc and Layla were but a step behind where Dove took the lead, her false confidence surprisingly convincing for a woman usually so quiet.

“Excuse me one moment, Mr. Mogart will be with you shortly,” Bek said, leaving the trio at the edge of the huge sand pit, the riders slowing their mounts at the approach of the burly man entering their training ring.

Leaning against the rail, Marc and Layla stood either side of Dove, the three of them watching as one man dismounted to talk to Bek, his shirtless body toned and lightly sweaty from what Dove could tell in the spotlights surrounding the place.

From what the girl understood, they were playing some sort of fencing sport, something similar to jousting she supposed only with less charging and more arm strength. The long wooden poles in each of their arms smacked against one another loudly, a whip like crack echoing around the open space. The sand sprayed out under the horses hooves, flicking towards where they stood in amazed silence.

“So what? This joker just puts on El-Mermah games in his backyard for fun?” Marc snarked, glaring down at every single one of the vain motherfuckers that seemed to all leer in their direction once they caught a sight of her. Yet, he simply let it happen, let her run her mouth with the new attitude she’d assumed, her new alias not at all his anymore.

“No, he gets private lessons by the best in his backyard for fun,” Layla replied, her eyes trained on the man that Bek had approached, a fine silk robe being slipped on over his arms as if he were too delicate to do it himself despite the size of his hulking arm muscles.

“I would love to get me one of those bad boys,” The youngest woman blurted, looking around the enclosure at where the rest of the men, equally as toned and attractive slid off their saddles, strutting around in their glory alongside their well groomed geldings.

The ‘married couple’ flicked a look at her, both their eyebrows raised at her statement, shock evident by their slackened jaws.

“Didn’t know you had it in you, princess,” Layla commented, eyes scanning each of the men that seemed to be waking up to the godly woman watching them ride, “I’m sure you could get any man you wanted looking like that,”

“I meant the horses…” Dove trailed off, her voice a song of innocence, perhaps even more embarrassed.

Marc was warm inside then, the four words alone reminding him she was still the same girl with the change of clothes, with the added seduction. It was still the girl sweeter than a honey pot that had trapped him like a fly and had yet to let go.

The man Bek had garnered attention from looked over at the three of them, his easy smile spreading when he saw the familiar face accompanied by two new ones. He, ofcourse, was quick to note the bare flesh the woman to her right flashed, the intricate gold spidering over her skin like a lovers touch.

“Nadia. Come in,” The man, who Dove guessed was Mogart from the way the staff scurried around him obediently. He gestured them forward, his eyes flitting over Marc who looked about as cheerful as a headache. “Such a delight to see you.”

But he was barely looking at ‘Nadia’, his dark eyes venturing over from Marc’s tight lipped smile to Dove’s exposed collarbones, flicking over her soft stomach, down over the curves of her bare thighs, even her calves got his attention. He was enraptured, taking the bait easier than she would have ever thought.

“You too,” Layla responded, shooting a glance in Marc’s direction, only to see his brow twitching. Gods had she seen that expression many times, normally before he would have stormed out of the house after one of their fights or gone to sleep on the couch. He was close to losing it already.

“How have you been?” He asked, finally ripping his eyes away from where Dove batted her lashes up at him shyly, a slight smirk to her lips that teased as he couldn’t help but glance at her face once more. Men were all the same in every country, it seemed.

“Good. Thankyou for having us over on such short notice,” Layla thanked gently, her own expression somewhere between wary and polite.

“Oh, please. I hope you realise you need no excuse to drop by,” Mogart said with his playboy smile twitching, looking cheekily at Layla, “So who are your friends?”

Layla nodded, reaching out an arm to gesture to Marc, “This is my husband, Rufino."

The women felt him tense up, holding his arm out much too forcefully for a handshake, “Nice to meet you,” Marc said, though nothing in his tone was nice by any means. Dove would have elbowed him in the side hard had Mogart and his men been watching them closely.

Dove couldn’t lie, the man was attractive. Not nearly as easy on the eyes as Marc and Steven, but he was attractive in the rich, bad boy kind of way. His scruff of a beard was dark, yet brushed neatly, not a single hair looking out of place. His nose was broad, making his face all the more masculine, bringing her attention to his mysterious dark eyes.

“Pleasure,” The millionaire looked down at Marc through disinterest, barely acknowledging his outstretched arm until he had taken a long look at ‘Rufino’. Seeming to brush Marc away almost instantly after they had shared a stiff handshake, he turned his mesmerising eyes back to Dove who leaned into his gaze, “And who is this?”

“Sandie,” She smiled at him, her eyes sparkling under the spotlights, holding out a jewelled hand for him to take. As predictable as they come, Mogart took her fingers gently and kissed them, just as Bek had, just as any other man being stared at with such allurance would want to, “Do you not get scared playing those games without a helmet on?”

The purity was clear in her voice, and it had Mogart’s eyes latching onto her mouth that seemed to call to him like a siren song.

“You are too sweet,” He said, yet to let go of her fingertips as she stepped towards him, his chiselled body turning to lead the trio towards his private collection, “You see, these horses are some of the finest Arabian thoroughbreds, mine has yet to throw me even once-”

The two of them took the lead, Dove making sure her shoulder brushed against his just enough for him to understand she wanted to invade his space, let him see her as closely as possible. She looked at him with the right amount of naivety, the rest seduction. Tilted her body towards his so he could see the way her hips curved, her breasts rounded.

“She’s good,” Layla whispered to Marc, seeing Anton’s face take her in for her entirety. It was as though she had him under a spell, even she as a woman mostly interested in men couldn’t help but appreciate the way the shadowy night seemed to preen under her glow. She wondered if it was Seth’s doing, yet he didn’t seem the type to deploy love potions. “I see why you like her,”

Marc’s chest froze. In the midst of glaring down the man’s hand that lingered at her lower back, guiding her towards his mansion of a house, he had barely even registered that Layla had been speaking until he’d heard that.

“I don’t- What the hell are you talking about, I can barely stand her,” He snapped, Layla’s short snort making his ears turn red. “I’m only keeping her around because she’d important to Steven,”

“Riiiight, for Steven’s sake, yep?” She drawled, the knowing look in her eye at how he squirmed under her gaze, “You know, we weren’t strangers once. I know what that look means,”

“What look?” Marc glanced back at his ex-wife, his eyes softening with the familiarity he found in her. He had loved her, he had loved her at one point with everything he’d had. But with her it was like trying to make two puzzle pieces go together when they were from opposite ends of the picture. They just wouldn’t fit. He’d loved her, she’d love him, but not enough to show her all of him; show her the full artwork.

She grinned at him smugly, reaching out to grab his hand as if to keep up the pretence they were still married, “Try not to ruin this one, will you? I’m starting to tolerate her,”

Marc scoffed to himself, “No, you like her. You just don’t want her to see past your big, cold independent badass thing you’ve got going on,”

“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, Spector,” She nudged him, her eyes trailing back to where the girl now had Anton pointing out his horses by name, hanging onto his every word as if she gave a shit. Then again, Layla didn’t doubt she was planning on talking the wealthy man into giving her one at this rate. Sighing, she leaned away from Marc, looking at the outfit that showed her off just as well as one of his livestock. “Just promise me something?”

Marc looked at her troubled expression but said nothing. He had learnt from Khonshu quickly not to promise anything before he knew what he was getting himself into.

“Get her away from Seth as soon as this is over,” Layla pleaded, quickly seeing the guilt that washed over his face as she’d said it, “Now he has a body weak enough for him to control at his whim, he won’t want to let go so quickly. Who knows what he would make her do? She’s not cut out for this life, Marc,”

How would you know, you’ve barely said two normal words to her, Marc wanted to snap, You don’t know her, she is so much stronger than I ever gave her credit for, she could do anything if you just gave her a chance.

But he knew that was selfish. He knew that was his own mind wanting to keep her needing him, the twisted part of him that craved to be needed wanted her for as long as he could. Yes he kept her safe for Steven, for her own sake, but the bitter part of him that hated the world loved every second of the euphoria that came with her desperation for him. He craved that high like the hardest drug off the Madripoor market, like he had forgotten what living and not just surviving this awful life felt like until that day she’d brought him the dead bird. She was good, she was the best thing he’d ever seen in his miserable life. She was a beacon in his dark mind.

But Layla was right, she wasn’t cut out for his life. She didn’t deserve a wretched man like him, she deserved Steven. He couldn’t get too attached, he knew he’d have to leave her as soon as they’d figured out how to get rid of Khonshu and Seth from their lives.

Maybe that's why he pushed Layla away with a bitter frown, dropping her hand. Sometimes the truth pill hurts to swallow, and Layla had just served him up an overdose.

“I hope you understand this is more than a collection to me,” Anton said, peeking over his shoulder at the couple that seemed to be all eyes on the younger woman. “Preserving history is a responsibility I take very seriously,”

“That’s a lot of responsibility for one man, surely you must get lonely,” ‘Sandie’ dared a sweet smile at the man who was on her like a moth to a street lamp.

He gave her a boyish smirk back, but she could still tell he held his walls high, kept his cards close after seeing Marc’s gloomy attitude. Trust it to be the masculinity competition the two had going on to ruin her bait.

“I prefer to see it as a philanthropic effort at preservation.” He replied, leading the way to a quieter courtyard where a few of the larger items seemed to be held under glass mimics of the pyramids, not a single fingerprint or speck of dust on the clear surfaces. The first one held what seemed to be a collection of effigies of the gods, similar to the one she had been thrown into that night at the museum only much smaller, most likely found in temples or the homes of wealthy members of Ancient Egyptian society.

Yet Anton led them to a halt outside the second one, opposite the statues, where thin pillars held up a collection of golden masks she recognised from Dylan’s tours as funerary masks, used to preserve the dignity of the deceased. They circled an even wider stand in the middle, a sarcophagus propped wide open for viewing pleasure in the centre, highly detailed from what she could see under the beaming lamps being stood so far away.

“Now, if I may ask, why such an interest in Senfu in particular?” Mogart questioned and the trio felt the air tighten around them, the silent accusation lingering close. Anton’s face was not amused, interested in the woman to his right as he may be, he was still smart and kept his wits about anyone attempting to pull wool over his dark eyes. Dove opened her mouth to pipe up with an entirely innocent excuse, something along the lines of Layla had told her all about Medjay and their burial practices and wanted to see what the fuss was about. But before she had so much as began her fabricated tale, Mogart flashed her a dimmed smile and held up his hand, “I’m sorry, I’d like to hear from the husband if you don’t mind, sweetling,”

Dove felt her breath hitch, covering it with a pleasant nod, turning to watch Marc meticulously, the pressing look of ‘don’t fuck this up’ in her eyes.

Marc seemed to get stuck on his words for just a second too long as he looked between Anton's unimpressed glare and Dove’s masked panic, feeling his mouth go dry as he had not prepared himself for improv.

Laughing humorlessly through his nose, he turned to look past the group and at the sarcophagus, gesturing with his open hand to fill time, “I think that- But I just think that we’d love to take a look,” He choked out, and a deadly silence befell the group.

That was perhaps the least convincing lie Dove had ever heard. They were so fucked.

Layla and Marc seemed to jump as she let out a loud laugh, her hand coming to clap on the man’s shoulder. “Ah, Rufino, you’re so funny,” She said, squeezing his muscles, turning to him with a bright grin. Shaking her head ditsily, she looked to Layla as if to warn her to play along before returning to Anton’s suspicious look, “This was all my idea. Nadia and Rufino were kind enough to let me crash their holiday so I could see some artefacts- a silly hobby of mine I rarely indulge in. They spoil me too much, I think,” She giggled, turning towards the glass pyramid with a hopeful look on her younger face, “You won’t mind if they look first?”

Anton seemed to bite his cheek, calculating the girl’s motives, yet even Layla would admit the words were smooth, believable. Had she not known the actual plan herself, she’d think she was crashing a couples post honeymoon glow with her mollycoddled, airhead act.

“By all means,” Mogart seemed in slightly better terms, though still slightly bitter as Layla and Marc headed straight towards the casket with a slight flash of relief on their faces. “So, sweetling, what is it about our history that intrigues you so?”

She leaned in towards him, her face smoothing out into young innocence, watching his reaction carefully. This job was like a mechanic tuning an old car, watching for every tiny movement in their body, waiting for that hum of enamourance where she knew she had them wrapped around her finger.

Men were the same in every country, in every part of history, in every facet of life. Every one of them except Steven. And Marc, she’d now realised.

“I don’t know,” She said, playing with her rings absently, head cocked like a placid dog waiting for a pet, “Perhaps I like the idea that people one day could be holding my things up in museums or paying hundreds to see what my life looked like. I like the idea that they were all once the same as me, you know? All just humans doing human things,” She hadn’t meant to be so honest, had never expected to speak from her heart, but her airy voice seemed to conceal her raw emotion well enough. Mogart seemed to warm under her answer, no doubt finding her cute, a little woman with a little brain having such big thoughts about life.

She knew Steven would have taken her answer as gospel.

“So about these Arabian Thoroughbreds, how much would one of those set a sweet girl back?” She asked, trailing her golden fingertips over his shoulder when Anton’s eyes cut over her shoulder, straightening a touch when he saw Layla there. She met the woman’s eyes, trying not to seem so thrown off by her appearance, her interruption in the plan.

“Rufino would like to show you something before we consider making any purchases,” Layla said, the push in her voice for her to not ask questions and to just head inside the pyramid telling her everything she needed. Their plan was not going so smoothly after all.

“Ofcourse,” Dove smiled back, beaming at Anton with a cheeky glint in her eyes. “I’ll be just a moment,” She promised, watching his eyes dilate as she ran her finger down his arm. Take the bait, take the bait and don’t ask questions.

“Don’t take too long,” He replied, meeting her eyes over her shoulder as she slinked into the glass structure, feeling his eyes dropping over her hips, over her bare thighs.

She entered the faux tomb, feeling hot under the blazing sets of eyes on her back as she came to a stop at Marc’s side.

“I’m starting to think I would make a great super-spy,” She whispered, leaning into him to keep up the pretence of two old friends on a relaxing holiday, “Maybe I should be Bond and you can be the sexy femme fatale I can save,”

Marc rolled his eyes, frowning and nudging her back, “Concentrate. These guys won’t hesitate to drop you no matter how pretty you look, princess,” It was a sneer, it was a bark of an order for her to quit messing around, that their lives were very much on the line here, and yet she couldn’t help look at him bashfully for his choice of words. He caught the girlish grin and the slight softness in her eyes, realising what he’d said to make her so coy. Fighting the heat that threatened to meet the apples of his cheeks, he turned away from her, staring hard down at the scrawl of writing inscribed in the stone, “Just read the damn sarcophagus, would you? Layla couldn’t get anything from it,”

Fighting the urge to snicker, she scanned over the funerary rites, her mind unravelling the translations she’d spent three years studying.

“It’s Hieratics,” She whispered, skimming the cursive writing, “Different to Hieroglyphics, it's known as the priestly script, the kind usually found on respected members of royalty, their blessings to carry them to the afterlife.” Marc gawked at her, the words sounding gibberish to him despite Layla drilling this stuff into him for years. He was sure if it were Steven in his place he would have been teetering on an orgasm by now, seeing her brows furrowed in concentration as she spurted knowledge about the writing styles. Taking a moment to skim the texts, the words became tales and spells, guidance for the deceased, wishes of good health in his next journey. But nothing about Ammit or his allegiance to her. Her brows furrowed as she flickered over the symbols, wondering if there was anything she was missing.

“What? What does it say?” Marc asked, chancing a glance over his shoulder to where Anton and Layla seemed to be watching them with hawk eyes now, though his ex-wife looked more nervous than anything.

“It speaks of how to cross through the gates at the Hall of Double Justice once you get to the other side of the Duat. It warns him of traps the gods may have set up; nets that will swallow him whole.” She leaning a little closer, some of the lettering worn away by its age, “There’s spells for repelling apshai-beetles-”

“Huh?”

“Apshai was the God of insects, said to be able to summon a horde of them that could block out the sun and devour men,” She brushed him off, searching further in the coffin for anything else, “It speaks of how to deflect them in the duat- all I’m seeing is how to guide the dead, no location indicated anywhere.”

She huffed leaning away from the relic with a defeated look on her face, giving the whole thing another read over.

“That’s because the information needs to be unlocked,” Marc’s head whipped up to the ceiling, where his reflection glared clearly back at him in front of the night sky. “It’s coded,”

Marc sighed, grabbing the girl’s attention. “What is it?” She asked, her eyes wide, worried their plan was entirely fucked.

“It’s Steven,” He said grumpily, watching her eyes light up in hope.

“Does he know the answer? Just let me talk to him, I’m sure we could figure it out,” She interrupted, flashing a quick and casual smile to Anton who had seemed to tense up at their rushed whispering, despite the fact her stomach was in knots.

“No, he’s not ready for- He said it’s coded, it needs to be deciphered,” He murmured back, watching her face smooth out into realisation.

“Ofcourse, priests did this all the time. Grave robbing was so common they had to hide their valuables, or in this case their information,” Dove smiled up at him, the accomplishment clear on her face, “So? Let Steven out, he’s great at puzzles and stuff like this-”

“Absolutely not, he won’t last two seconds if this starts getting ugly,” Marc snapped, gesturing to the sarcophagus despite the way her face fell, “Can’t you just do it? You guys solve stuff like this for fun,”

It was true, another of their weekly routines to pull out a board game of some sort and have a crack at it together. Or race to see who could put together a jigsaw the fastest. Ofcourse, they always wrote each other new rules for the games in other languages to add to the fun, she’d once thrown him completely off by writing out her best sanskrit. He’d been lost the entire hour. Yet even when they’d done an escape room together, Steven had been ten steps ahead of her at all times while she just stared after him, finding his intelligence dreamy.

“Yeah, and he almost always wins because he’s like the cleverest person I know,” She cut back, frowning at his stubbornness, “And incase you hadn’t noticed, Marc, this is an ancient encrypted casket not fucking UNO,”

Steven snorted, the sound only pissing Marc off even more as his gaze snapped to the ceiling, confronting his alter head on.

“Do you want a blood bath? Do you want her hurt? Because that’s the way it’s heading if you don’t start talking,” Marc cursed bitterly, throwing his hands out to the woman who glared at the sarcophagus like it owed her money. Soft eyes flicking to where Marc’s forehead creased, the worry was evident behind his mask of anger. He wasn’t worried about Harrow right now, or about the tomb, he was worried about her.

“Alright, have it your way,” Steven conceded, his own brown hues dropping to watch her from his place in the glass, a sad longing on his reflected face, “But this isn’t for you, I hope you know that,”

“Loud and clear,” Marc nodded, callused hands resting over the remains that sat inside the coffin, “Alright, what do I do?

“Check the cartonage,” Steven instructed, “Now, take that first piece and fold it over the middle piece,”

“This one?” Marc pointed to the smaller piece of fabric on the right, Dove’s eyes watching his military smooth expression carefully.

“Yes, that one,” Steven replied, exasperated as Marc did what he said. Dove followed his movements, the pattern quickly forming in front of them. Jumping at the chance to help, she grabbed the middle piece of the map folding it in half in order to create the correct shape, handing it to Marc so he could tuck it into place-

“Hey, what are you doing?” A hand grabbed Dove’s shoulder, yanking her away from the sarcophagus with a gasp, her own fingers reactively reaching to grab onto Marc. For Marc it was like clockwork, him snatching the gun from Bek’s hands, him taking a step in front of Dove, her hands gripping the tail of his jacket tightly, peaking over his shoulder with guilty eyes.

“Marc!” The pair of them turned their attention to Layla, her hands raised in surrender, two of Anton’s men pointing pistols at her closely. Even if they were to miraculously get one of them away from the El-Faouly woman, the second would pull the trigger without thinking, “Don’t,”

They were caught.

A breath passed between the trio, defeat written in bold ink on the two women’s faces, before Marc’s nose scrunched in annoyance. “Shit!”

He shoved the gun back at Bek, who grabbed it before they had any chance to get out of his grasp, his lip curling into a sneer at the pair in front of him, the barrel of his weapon staring straight at them. His flirty nature was long gone as he glared at the woman who wished for the ground to swallow them up.

Anton stepped past his guards, entering the glass room with a grave look on his handsome face, dark eyes looking between Marc and the woman that shadowed him, afraid to move so much as an inch were she to get Marc or Layla hurt.

“Do you really think I’m an idiot?” Anton scoffed, Marc’s jaw flickered with tension as he watched Anton’s eyes slide past him to the woman who looked back at him meekly, “And you? I won’t deny I would have enjoyed a night spent with you, sweetling. But you have been a sly creature,”

He reached out to pinch her chin gently, eyes roaming her lips that parted with a held breath, Marc tensing at her side. He envisioned himself breaking every one of the man’s fingers, of blinding him for daring to look at her so longingly, so perversely, as if seeing her was an enrichment he wanted to keep all to himself.

Then, as if to dial Marc’s already hot temper to a thousand, Anton smirked at her.

“Ofcourse, you could always just tell me what it was your little friends wanted, and I can let the three of you go unharmed?” He proposed, his umber gaze meeting hers with a flick of fervour, “For an added expense, of course,”

“You piece of-” Marc began, the heat of Ra in his glare, his veins running hot under his sepia skin. She cut him off, without a second of hesitation, without so much as a glance at him or his ex-wife.

“Anything,” She practically heard Layla’s laboured breath, the way every heart in the room seemed to stop at her word. Anton’s grin grew on his boyish face, this brows raising in surprise, “You let them both go, and you can have anything you want,”

Marc’s jaw slackened as he looked at her incredulously. What was she doing? How could she throw herself to the wolves like that?

“And if I wanted you? If I wanted to keep you?” Anton asked, his white teeth a glint behind his full lips that seemed to purse at the sight of her. She nodded, ignoring the feeling of Marc’s vicious glare burning a crater in the side of her skull. How could she do this to Steven, how could she stoop so low?

If they got out of here alive, if she got Layla out safe, she would go as low as it took. Layla who hated her, Layla who wished her hung, drawn and quartered, Layla who was human and had no god to save her, to repair her wounds.

“Anything,” She confirmed, a distant look glazing over her eyes as she signed her name on the invisible dotted line, threw herself in with the dogs once more.

Just as Anton’s grin was about to spread just that bit wider, victory ringing clear in his chocolate gaze that swept over her fact. He’d always had an eye for the valuable things in life, and he felt as if he’d just hit the jackpot. Bek leaned in towards his boss, speaking in hushed tones that even Dove struggled to hear until she realised it was because he was speaking French.

Anton’s head whipped towards his manor, where three figures stalked forward towards them, the armed men nudging the trio to exit the glass sculpture and follow the millionaire to meet the newcomers.

But Dove already had a pit in her stomach that told her exactly who it was waiting for them.

“It appears we have a concerned third party here,” The handsome man said, traipsing over to where Harrow and two of his followers approached, not batting a single eyelash to the shit show they’d stumbled upon, his telltale walking stick thumping against the sand pathway.

She felt her blood simultaneously freeze and boil in her capillaries, terrified of just how well he seemed to know her as if he understood anything about the things she’d seen, the things that had led her to here, yet angered from it all the same. Of what he’d called her the last time they’d met. Of how he’d spoken about Marc.

This time there were no gods to save his throat if she were to rip it out.

“Whatever they’ve proposed, I’m sure I can offer you something much more tangible,” Harrow declared, unveiling his hand from his pocket to show off the scarab. The scarab they had lost, the same one that seemed to levitate in the palm of his weathered hand and point in the direction of the tomb. A compass, a navigator, she realised, “Why settle for anything less when you could have a god's share of treasure?” The little bug hummed in his hands, its golden wings glinting in the moonlight.

“Anton, don’t listen to this man, he’s trying to stop us-” Layla started, her hands waving between surrender and gesturing wildly, watching Anton become enamoured with a new valuable, something better than a woman for the night.

“Please, stop,” Anton brushed her off, scowling at her with disinterest.

“She’s telling the truth. He’s planning to kill millions, trust me,” Dove jumped in, her eyes avoiding Harrow’s all knowing gaze, the wealthy man’s frown diverting to her.

“Are the two of you seriously talking about trust?” Anton snapped, his eyes finding their way back to the solid gold figure Harrow held out to him with the promise of more. If there was one thing men wanted more than women, Dove had learned quickly, learned the hard way, it was money.

“Anything! I told you I’d give you anything, get you anything if you just listen to us, please Anton,” Dove begged, feeling the but of the gun pressing into her skull as she took a step towards him. Tossing her a look over his shoulder, Anton seemed to boredly take her in, as if his reverie of having her to himself had worn off, the promise of more wealth than he could dream of, an inheritance for a goddess herself, outweighing any sort of sexual or physical favour she could give him. “He’s planning to slaughter children,”

“Please, there’s no need to descend into violent accusations,” Harrow started, his calm voice only making her seem all the more hysterical as she finally braved a look at him. Just as she suspected, his cold blue hues were already staring through her body in amusement, as if her worry and wildness was all but a game to him. A tally on his leaderboard. Harrow: 2 - Dove: Nil. “Each one of you has so much more in common than you know,”

His gaze shifted to the woman next to her, his eyes filling with false pity, the smirk on his lips telling her otherwise, “Layla, you keep thinking that distance will prevent the wounds from your father’s murder from reopening, but something stands in your way. You know that Marc never told you the truth, you know he hid things from you, maybe that’s why you can’t bring yourself to love him anymore, because he could never be honest,”

Tears glinted in the woman’s lash line as she looked at Marc, every word of his conviction true. She could never love Marc as she had once, never love him anything past nostalgia, an old memory she was learning to shake. But she’d had her suspicions, that he knew more about what had happened to her father than he’d told her, she saw it in the way he tensed every time she brought Abdallah up, he was a worse liar than he thought, or perhaps she had just known him that well.

“And Marc, you never told her because you knew that if you did, she’d see you exactly as you see yourself, as unworthy of the love she could have given you,” Marc’s glare could have melted Harrow to the bone as the older man approached, the glass in his shoes clinking wetly with his every footstep, seeming to enjoy this game of cat and mice he had with the trio already at odds with one another. It was like he was setting a fox into the hen house just to see them scramble.

“You piece of shit,” Marc hissed, his lip curled in anger as Harrow set his gaze slowly back to where Dove stood frozen in place, all too aware of how much he knew, of what he’d seen in her.

“Which brings us to the little pup,” He smiled, a chill running over her spine the moment it grew on his features, a lump balling in her throat, “She cowers in guilt every waking moment knowing if the two of you, if Steven heavens forbid, saw the real her, if you knew what she’d done before she was the meek little bird that worked at a gift shop, you’d be truly horrified. Dare I say, you’d hate her,”

She felt their eyes on her in an instant. Yet she couldn’t drag her horrified stare away from Harrow, who only watched her victoriously. She felt her legs shaking under her weight, weak and numbed from his revelation. There would be questions, there would be answers she couldn’t give. People she only ever visited in her sleep, others she ran from every second of the day.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” She croaked, her face tightening with the lump in her throat, eyes hot, lip trembling. Harrow just scoffed.

“Don’t I?” He leered closer to her, slipping the scarab back into his pocket, “Why don’t you tell your new beau what you did to the last man who had you?” He gestured to Anton who seemed to look her up and down, not with lust anymore. No, with caution. Wariness. Worry. He was scared of her. Disgusted. Her eyes chanced a glance at Marc and Layla who looked equally as perplexed, watching for her reaction. They couldn’t see, they weren’t allowed to see. They saw too much, saw right through her. They would hate her, they would leave her for dead.

She’d have to tell them what she’d done to him, to the man who’d put her there. How she’d made him pay for what he’d done to Grace, for taking her away from her family. How he was unrecognisable by the time she was finished with him.

She was back in that room, the window empty, the curtains shut. Grace was… she couldn’t even stomach the thought of it. Of her lying in that room alone, choking on air because of the white pills he’d given her as a reward, as if they were in need of a reward for their good behaviour. In need of anything to satiate them, keep them quiet long enough he would be able to keep them just a little longer.

She wished she’d never taken his number that first night, wished she’d stayed balancing her three jobs to make rent money instead of running after him ‘down the yellow brick road’ as he’d said. She had been in love at first, then she had been scared, terrified when she realised the monsters that lay in wait for her chomping at the bit, empty when she found out Grace had…

But now, now all she felt was anger.

The letters, the damn letters she asked Oz to send to her brothers, the ones where she poured her heart out with apologies, ‘I love you’s and ‘I want to come home’. The ones where she sent the money back to them, the money she’d earned, the whole reason she’d left them, went with Oz on blind faith, the money she stuck around for knowing she was keeping them afloat back home. The same damn letters she’d found stuffed into a duffel bag at the bottom of his wardrobe.

She had been looking for Grace’s things, he’d had her room cleaned by his men who seemed to know exactly what they were doing when moving a body out. She’d wanted just her cardigan, the lilac ones that made Grace’s eyes look like a bed of bluebells, that brought out the buttermilk tones of her blonde hair. She’d missed her more than usual this week.

Yet all she found was the letters, each one addressed to her brothers, money still inside the envelopes, never sent, never opened like he’d promised.

She was angrier than she even knew was possible to feel.

The past two years had meant nothing. She had let those men, those bastards do whatever they liked to her. Had crawled into Grace’s arms when they’d left, when the nights were longer. Had been his dog, his mutt, his puppet for two years; left her brothers, left Billie, with no explanation hoping the letters and the money would be enough to see them through, enough to keep the house and have their bellies filled, their feet warm. She had watched Grace get drained just as she was, had cried every tear, laughed every laugh, danced every step with her just to see her wither under his cruel hand, just to see her take a bad cocktail of painkillers and see herself out of the savage life they lived.

Grace, her sweet saving grace, gone. And it was because of him.

She remembered him coming home, remembered hearing his footsteps beating against the wooden stairs, hearing the second one from the top that squeaked under anyone's weight. She’d learned quickly how to get around this house where no one could hear her the way a doe steers clear from a hunting ground. It was nature, survival of the fittest.

She heard him huff, scratch his thick black hair as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Oz, as known by his friends. Frank Osbourne, as known by his government. A dead man walking, as known by Dove.

He stepped into her room, the biggest bunch of flowers in his hands she’d ever seen. Red roses, cliche, the kind every man assumes his girlfriend wants. Oz plastered on a wide smile, too forced for her to appreciate, the coldness still in his eyes. She saw through his mask, his act. She saw how he seemed bored every second he pretended to care.

“Hey there, doll,” He leaned down to kiss her brow, shoving the roses into her lap as if he wanted rid of them already, “I got you these, you know just to cheer you up a bit after all this mess the past few weeks,”

“Mess?” She croaked, her dead eyes watching as he paced around her bed to open the curtains onto the night air. The abandoned hotel opposite had still yet to realise their Welcome sign was still blaring its neon red light after ten years of disuse. The ‘C’ and the final ‘E’ flickered every now and then, but other than that, the red poured into her dark room as if it were sat on her own bedside table.

Mess. As if Grace hadn’t been ripped from her arms whilst she screamed and wept and begged for her to stay. Don’t leave me, don’t leave me alone, you’re all I have left.

But now it was just the two of them.

Oz scoffed, her eyes following his figure that slumped on the bed, leaning down to undo his shoe laces. “Well, I was thinking,” He continued, “Since I let you have a few weeks off to pick yourself back up, I was thinking I could start taking you dancing again the way we did before? Find a new club? Get you another VIP lounge like at the Emerald so you could earn your keep,”

Before this house, when she’d met him. When he’d offered her a job as a barmaid. Given her his number on a little yellow slip, the red words “Follow the yellow brick road,” glittering back at her from his lapel pocket. True to his name, his club had been something out of a wonderland. The “Over the Rainbow” Gentleman’s club was tucked away below the streets of the town, away from prying eyes that would see through the glamour of the girls sold in red slippers. The VIP lounge, a room called The Emerald City, where the most expensive girls were expected to live up to their prices, where she’d served the parties alcohol, tidied when the girls were done, made sure they were all ready for their next show. That was how it had started.

Then his plans changed. Then he’d forced her into the ruby red heels, put her to work for him. Sold her to the highest bidder of the night. And worst of all, he’d convinced her it was a good idea, made her think it was all her own purpose.

She smiled emptily at him, reaching under the bed to grab the straps on the duffel bag. In one swift movement, she chucked the bag onto the duvet in front of him, the weight of her letters, her words that carried her every apology she’d uttered in the last two years, the weight of a girl missing home.

“Earn my keep?” She sneered, watching his handsome face stare down at the bag with a calculating coldness. “Why have you not sent these? That money was for my brothers- you said-”

“Now let’s not get hysterical, doll.” He held his hands up to stop her in her angered state, “I didn’t send those letters because I knew people would come after you. And I couldn’t risk losing my most prized possession because of some high school dropouts and that pill popping little brother of yours-”

That was when she had lost it. Her brothers had been through shit and back, and Mikey had picked up the same awful habit their mother had, but he was her brother. She would let him do what he liked with her, but she drew a line in the sand at her littlest boy.

Before she’d even known she had it in her, she’d thrown a fist at his face, hit him square across his cheekbone. Sammy always told her to aim for the nose or the chin, that boy was always getting into scraps, but she didn’t care. She felt the adrenaline coursing through her veins as she grunted with the effort.

“I would choose all of them a million times over if it meant being away from you,” She yelled, her breaths coming out in rattled gasps, “I don’t care about the money, I don’t care about you, everything I ever loved is gone and it’s because of you-”

She wished she’d been more prepared for the retaliation, but she still felt the vitriol wave of shock as his hand came across her face in a loud slapping sound.

“Because of you, my girl,” Oz spat, launching himself to grab her by her top, dragging her towards him as if she was a ragdoll, “I have only ever been good to you. You were nothing when I found you, remember?” She felt the tears brewing as his voice roared in her face, her brows furrowed in vicious anger, “Nothing, you were a street rat. You could barely afford to eat with that lot dog piling on you for your wages,”

“You say that like you’re any better, Oz,” She spat back. There was a single second where she saw the expressionless face turn, turn into something dark, something hateful.

It was all a blur from then, a harder hit striking her face, shoving her into the huge vanity mirror, her temple colliding with the glass. It smashed on its impact, shards spraying around her, littering her messy desk with tiny glints that looked like red stars in the light of the hotel sign.

She felt the dribble of blood from her hairline, the thickness of it rolling down her cheek like a cardinal honey, though the bitter metallic smell hit her faster than the pain. She was sure she was in shock, she felt numb to the prickling pain of the gash, though she doubted she’d ever feel anything deeper than the torment of knowing her life was gone. Knowing Grace was never coming back, that she could never go back home. It was gone, irreplaceably gone. No amount of rough hands or vile words could cut so deep as the aloneness she felt.

They stared at one another for a moment, her slumped over her desk, just about able to lean herself on her hands, meeting his abhorrent gaze in the mirror.

“I suggest you quit acting up, girl, or next time I won’t be so forgiving,” He spat, turning his back to her to begin unbuttoning his jacket, a huff passing his lips as if she had worn his patience thin, “Take of your clothes and make yourself useful, why don’t you?”

Her lip curled in anger, her reflection looking back at her as she tore her gaze away from his muscled back, ignoring the way he worked on unbuckling his belt, knowing what he wanted.

He wanted her to forget, to pretend as though she wasn’t torturing herself every moment of the day thinking about what she had lost. Looking at herself then in the mirror of the vanity, truly seeing what she’d become, the glass that seemed about as broken as her spirit distorting her view. It was no longer just Grace or her brothers or her job or her life that was gone. She had lost herself. She was not a person anymore but a shell, a phantom. A dead girl walking. She and Grace had always been two sides of the same coin.

She was nothing. He was right. She was nothing.

Her eyes were sunken, cold, dead. She wondered if it had been her who had overdosed in the next room with how ill she looked, smaller than normal. Weaker. Stony. Her skin was lifeless, her hair thinning. Her lips were dry, her eyes glassy. She looked like a corpse. A doll. A mannequin.

She was nothing.

She watched the blood trickle down to her jaw, tinier cuts from the glass shrapnel beginning to pucker and weep their own fresh redness, looking like crimson freckles.

She was nothing.

He lay back on the bed, his trousers slid down to his ankles to reveal a plain pair of grey boxers, his manhood barely concealed as he reached into her bedside cabinet and grabbed himself a cigarette and a lighter.

She was nothing.

“Well then?” He prompted, the white stick waggling between his pink lips as he spoke, “You gonna do as you’re told, my girl, or do you need another smack of the face to knock sense into ya’?”

And then she thought of every one of Grace’s laughs. She thought of the girl's heartbeat against her own whenever they hugged. She thought of the way she was so kind, so sweet on her. She thought of how Grace always had a way of fixing her bruises inside and out. She thought of every one of her freckles, how her eyes always seemed to be watching her with adoration. And then it was taking her brothers to school, the nights she stayed up with Joey to do homework, even though he was the smartest kid she’d ever known. It was Christmas, oh how she loved Christmas once, when they’d each scrimp to get each other something decent, it was the way her brothers pitched in to get her a bike she didn’t have the heart to tell them she couldn’t ride. It was the socks Mikey tried to knit her, that her pinky toe stuck out of on both sides. It was cooking them all breakfast before she went to work at her cleaning job, making sure not a child left her house on an empty stomach like she had when she was their age. It was her and Sammy dragging Dad in from the porch chair when he’d had one too many. It was Matty bringing home Billie the first time, the feeling of holding the tiniest little girl with the thickest hair. A child bringing her a child. It was dancing with the toddler in the kitchen, her soft feet stood on her own as she hummed Billy Joel’s Vienna. It was Mum and Dad when they were young and happy, when the boys had been small and Mum had been to rehab and seemed to stick to her promises for a few years at least. It was the day they went on their first and last family holiday, the day her and the boys had played on the beach until their little legs were sore and their tummies aching from laughing. The ice cream that stuck to their face, the salt that dried on their skin.

She was nothing anymore.

She was nothing but angry.

Vengeful.

She was a savage let loose.

Reaching over her desk, her dead eyes looking back at themselves, her fingers wrapped around a long shard of glass that had split off, toppling onto the wooden surface with a delicate clink, ignoring the way it cut into her own skin painfully.

She was nothing but chaos.

–

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