Work Text:
Marc concentrates hard on the pink-tinged water gurgling down the drain. He does not look at the figure perched in the corner of the room. It isn’t speaking to him; a fact for which he’s grateful, but his awareness of its presence, of the gentle swaying of its dust-pale rags, crawls sticky over his skin like the discomfort that lingers after walking through a cobweb.
It’s better to focus on the details of the task. Small, tactile, mundane details. Real-world details. It’s early spring, and the water is icy enough to burn his skin numb, but he doesn’t adjust the temperature. Cold water works best for blood stains, he knows.
Marc.
He squeezes the thick-sodden fabric in his fist, and there’s a little less pink this time. He can’t tell whether it’s still blood, or whether the fuschia dye is beginning to run. He knows he won’t be able to remove the outline of the stain entirely. Not after it’s been setting in for a week. But immaculacy was never his intention. He just wanted to remove the starkness of the bloom before he returns it. Like it’d do anything at all to lessen the shock. He tries. He knows it’s useless, but he tries to fix the mess he made.
He shuts the water off, and turns away from the cracked basin, draping the empty wet skin of the scarf over the back of the chair in the middle of the room.
As far as safehouses go, this is one of the better ones. There’s a bed, at least, and windows affording a view of night sky leading onto the roof. Practically speaking, it’s safer to have more than one exit point, in case of intrusion. But secretly, he clings to that sliver of black as an anchor to the world outside. If he were to look down, he’d see cars, trash, bicycles, maybe a cat in the street. He is here. So are others. This is real.
He collapses onto the edge of the bed, heavy as a sack of grain, and stares down at his hands. He’d broken open his knuckles last night. He remembers the pain precisely. He’d missed a swinging blow at the man he was hunting and clipped the edge of a dustbin instead. Marc’s vision had filled with light and the pain disappeared. The man had been frightened, but not fast enough.
He was a maggot. His stepdaughter rejoices quietly in his death. This is justice.
His knuckles are completely smooth, not even a hint of bruising. He looks at the places where his skin should be marked and thinks of all the mornings in years gone by when he has woken up with inexplicable welts and tender ribs. He never knew for certain who earned those injuries. He doesn’t think it was Steven. He’s not sure whether the strange inversion he sees now is better, or worse. Did last night’s fight really happen? Or did he imagine it?
He leans down to untie his shoes, and feels the blood pooling in his face.
Marc.
He’s so fucking tired. Tired to the point of pain, down to the base of his skull, aching in his jaw. He has the memory of seeing a child’s skeleton in a history program once, exhumed from a ceremonial burial site to be analysed (he usually hates documentaries, is this one of his memories? He isn’t sure) and the image returns to him now, along with the factoid: children are born with all their teeth. Grotesque stacks of little bones running up nearly all the way to the nose, dormant and sharklike; neat rows waiting their turn to descend through gums. First the baby teeth, then the adult ones. He imagines he can still feel them, throbbing in the pressure of his tiredness. There isn’t enough room inside his head to fit all of the as-yet unborn potential that never had its chance to break to the surface.
He kicks the shoes off, sitting up too fast. Black spots dance across his vision. He’s lived without sleep before—a necessity—but it’s a delicate balancing game. Too little, and he feels his grasp on things blurring, shifting. Control becomes harder.
The last time he was awake this long, he lost a week, and woke up half-naked and bloody two provinces away from where he was supposed to be. He hadn’t been able to look the rest of his squad in the face on the drive back, but he’d heard the muttering.
Marc.
Now would be a good time to get some sleep. It’s past midnight, he’s in a secure location, and there’s nothing much he can do until morning anyway. The Westminster address is scribbled on the back of a prescription for a sleeping pill he’s been meaning to fill but just never seems to get around to. But surely, now, he’s tired enough not to need it.
The mattress is lumpy, and as he unfurls onto his back, a cloud of dust puffs up from the covers. It feels unbearably fucking good to stretch out.
Bone moves in his periphery. He squeezes his eyes shut, but it makes no difference. Locking the door made no difference. Flying out through a private charter from Abu Simbel with the doctored papers of a now-dead contact made no difference. He suspects there’s nowhere on the planet he could go where it would matter. It’s already inside his head. He’s inside his head.
Stand up, Marc Spector. We have work to do.
He shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he strides across the green.
He hopes he looks like a tourist. Between the baseball cap pulled low and the backpack, he could be part of any number of sightseeing groups wandering through the street; unworthy of note. He’s spent several stretches in London, whenever he could, over the years; long enough to know that blue days like these aren’t common. Though the wind still has an edge of sharpness, people have splayed themselves out on the grass, sleeveless and barefoot, playing music from portable speakers, desperate to soak in the cloudless afternoon sun.
He catches a glimpse of grey in the sky over his shoulder, and walks faster.
Marc.
He doesn’t remember telling it his name. This is not a new feeling: more than once, he’s met somebody for what he’d thought was the first time, only for them to laugh and say they’d met before. He doesn’t always make an excuse for this. It’s too hard remembering the lies. And there are already plenty of things he does not remember. He wishes there were more. He’d like to be able to select which memories to remove, and which to keep.
He passes a Western Union with its side wall splashed bright in street art, and turns the corner. He has always liked London for its separateness, his foreignness inside of it. It’s a good feeling. Like he could just let himself disappear. Drop Marc Spector’s passport into a drain and keep walking.
He comes to a stop. The storefront is far more modern than he’d expected; all glass and light and minimalist typeface. He doesn’t exactly frequent antique stores, but the version of events he’d outlined in his head had been set on dimness and dust. He doesn’t have the time to reconfigure his expectations.
He steps inside, letting the door close silently behind him. Shelves of books, paintings, vases line the walls. Everything is simple, white, seamless with individual lights over each item like inside a museum. There is a glass counter filled with jewellery in the centre of the store, unattended.
He shifts on his feet. He feels underdressed. He’s leaning close to examine a ceramic brazier when a young man dressed all in black appears from a door in the wall.
“Can I help you?” he says, unsmiling.
Marc feels a nauseous lurch as he looks at the young man’s face, searching for hints of familiarity in his dark eyes. He forces himself to unfreeze and speak. “Are you Abdallah El-Faouly?”
Marc has never been good at reading emotions, but even he understands the sense of total confusion as the man frowns at him. “My uncle’s working. Usually when he’s on a dig, he’s gone for months.”
They don’t know yet. He’s not surprised; the site was remote. Even Bushman had trouble pinning down its exact location. And there was nothing Marc could have done to tip off the national police to the spot without incriminating himself. Maybe he should have, anyway. Handed himself in.
I wouldn’t have allowed it. You are too important.
The thought of those still-unfound remains desiccating under the sun…
He feels sick, but he forges ahead. “No. Not Doctor El-Faouly. I’m looking for his son.”
The man’s confusion seems to linger a moment longer, then his eyebrows raise. “Why are you looking here?”
“I was told by a…contact…that this’d be the right place to ask.”
The man’s mouth presses tightly closed as he considers Marc. Then, he pulls a phone from his pocket and flicks the screen with his thumb, turning to face away as he brings it to his ear.
Marc’s Arabic is passable, but the man speaks too quickly and too quietly for him to make out more than a handful of whispers: “…can’t tell…at the shop…American.”
Clearly, whatever’s happening, the man’s unhappy about it. He hangs up, and shoves the phone into the back of his jeans with the air of somebody wiping their hands clean.
“Wait here, please,” he says. Then he disappears back through the same door he entered from.
Marc stands, his arms hanging at his sides. A moment passes, then another, and he realises he wasn’t being given a choice so much as an order.
He wanders in circles, looking at the things on the shelves. No other customers enter. The silence begins to prickle at the back of his neck, and pound in his head.
He glances up into the corners of the store, where security cameras are mounted to the ceiling. The familiar weight of the 9mm at his waist offers little in the way of comfort, though his hand itches towards it. He yanks his jacket a little lower.
You do not need your gun.
He ignores this, biting the inside of his cheek and scowling. The jewellery underneath the glass is laid out on individual squares of velvet; gold rings, bangles, a pendant of lapis lazuli carved into the shape of an ibis. The blue of the stone is run through with veins of gold. It’s beautiful.
The door opens behind him, and he turns toward the sound of the street.
A woman in a leather jacket strides inside. For a moment, she’s backlit by the sun and he only sees her silhouette; high-waisted twill trousers belted to show legs softly curved, full curls haloed around her head. Then his eyes adjust, and he sees her.
She’s young. Younger than he is by at least several years, in her early twenties. Everything about her is gentle-edged. Her lips, her nose, her cheeks; all rounded and soft and lightly freckled.
He catches the faintest hint of perfume as she approaches the counter. Powdery, slightly spicy rose. It’s sentimental, and strangely old-fashioned on somebody so youthful. He watches her eyelashes flick as she sizes him up shrewdly, from his jeans to his hands to his face.
“Who gave you this address?” she says by way of greeting.
He stares at her for a moment before he remembers how to work his mouth.
“I—a friend. I’m looking for—”
“I know who you’re looking for,” she says, impatient. Her top lip is a little fuller than the lower. The rings on her fingers and thumbs flash in the light as she tucks a curl behind her ear. “I want to know why you’re asking here.”
The young man reappears from somewhere in the back, and he glances tersely from Marc to the woman and back again. “Layla…”
“Yeah, I know, I’m leaving.” There’s a little line between her brows as she turns to head back toward the door. “Come with me,” she tosses over her shoulder.
Marc doesn’t understand the exchange, but he obeys. She lets the door swing shut and he catches it just in time to prevent it hitting him in the face, pausing, stunned.
She’s almost at the corner before he catches up with her. “Hey! Wait, Layla, is it? Can you wait—”
“Not here,” she hisses. She doesn’t break stride, and he finds himself lengthening his own steps to match hers, though she’s very nearly his height.
She’s leading him back up toward the green. The sunlight is beginning to deepen into lateness, and he watches the red light pick out strands of gold in her dark hair.
This wasn’t the plan. He was supposed to find the archaeologist’s son, hand over the scarf, offer as much penance he could, then disappear. He’s not naive enough to believe his conscience will feel any lighter afterwards. He just hopes it’ll be one less regret among many, that he didn’t do at least this small thing.
But now, he’s heading in the wrong direction. The woman—Layla—darts a furtive glance at a black panel van parked illegally on the opposite side of the street.
“Hold my hand,” she says. He stares. In the five minutes he’s known her, she’s rendered him speechless no fewer than three times. She sighs quietly, clearly exasperated with his slowness, and seizes his hand inside hers, sidling closer as they walk. “Could you please try to look a little less suspicious? No wonder Mahmoud thought you were a cop.”
He can feel the fine bones of her fingers between his. He hopes his hand isn’t sweating. Trying to force his facial expression into something softer than the stony scowl that it feels like, he finally manages to respond, muttering the words from the side of his mouth. “How d’you know I’m not?”
She laughs as though he’s just said something immensely funny. “Cops don’t freak out when they see CCTV cameras.”
He realises with a jolt that she must have been watching him remotely before she entered the store. It’s not complicated tech; it’s been publicly available for years. But the fact that she took the precaution tells him she has reason to be wary of more than just parked vans.
She comes to a halt outside a pub neighboured by a Portuguese chicken restaurant, and motions for him to enter first.
It’s crowded and noisy inside; people laughing over pints, an Arsenal game playing on the screens over the bar. Nobody pays any attention as Layla leads him to a booth in the corner and slides across the vinyl seat facing toward the doors.
She waits until he’s seated before she speaks. “You need to tell me the name of the person who gave you the address.” Her voice is sharp and low, and her eyes don’t move from his face.
He considers lying, or stalling. He does neither. “Duchamp. I need to track down Abdallah El-Faouly, and Duchamp said to ask at the shop.”
Layla’s suspiciously narrowed eyes widen as he speaks. She leans back in the seat with a little huff. “Jean-Paul? That idiot. I told him I’d stopped using the shop as a contact point.” She chews the side of her lip, considering him. Then she slips out of the booth. “I’ll be right back.”
He watches as she disappears into the crowd at the bar.
Marc.
He’d almost forgotten about his tiredness. He brings his hands up onto the tabletop, sticky with spilled beer, and turns them over. Her fingers had woven between his as naturally as though they’d grown there, like ivy through iron. The last time he’d sat opposite a woman in a crowded bar, he’d been on leave in Darwin. He can’t remember her name. He’d walked back to base from her house at sunrise, slowly sobering into a pounding migraine and drenched in sweat from the humidity.
Layla slides back into the seat and deposits two glasses of blush-tinged soda on the table. He frowns at the bubbles rising to the surface of the one closest to him. “What the hell is this?”
Her cheeks lift until her dark eyes are curved into little crescents. The force of her smile slams into him. “Pink lemonade. It’s not good to do business without drinks. And I don’t drink. So, cheers.”
He clinks his glass against hers and takes a sip. It’s far too sweet, like drinking pure sugar syrup. He puts the glass back down. “Look. Layla. I really need to find Abda—”
“What’s your name?” she interrupts. She leans forward as she speaks, and he can’t quite tell from the lilt in her voice whether she’s making fun of him or not.
He sucks in a frustrated breath. “Marc. Spector.”
She nods, her eyes glinting. “Okay then, Marc. Spector. Are you buying or selling?”
She’s definitely making fun of him. He can feel his scowl deepening, but he does nothing to soften it. “What?”
She props her elbow on the table. “I should probably introduce myself. My full name’s Layla Abdallah El-Faouly. Named for my father.”
Marc’s blood freezes in his veins. The noise in the pub disappears into an indistinct buzz cupping his ears. Of course. It’s right there, in the point of her chin and the roundness of her mouth and the way her nostrils flare when she speaks. He stares in horror.
Layla’s lips press together tightly, and she stares right back across at him, lifting her face slightly in challenge. “Problem?”
This was a mistake. A colossal mistake. He can’t do this. He can’t sit across from this quick, sharp, pretty girl and place a bloodstained scarf into her hands. He can’t be the one to tell her that her father’s body is full of bullet casings, bleaching in the sand. Not over pink fucking lemonade. He unclenches his jaw. “No, no problem. I just…I think I got the wrong person.”
A glass-sharp smile lifts one side of her mouth. “But if I’d been Abdallah, I would’ve been the right person.”
He’s automatically shaking his head before he can stop himself. “I don’t mean it like that.”
“Then why don’t you explain what you mean.” Her booted foot brushes his calf as she crosses her legs under the table, lifting her eyebrows expectantly.
The best thing to do here is probably just to let her believe he’s a sexist asshole and leave. It’s better than the truth. And he’s been called far worse. “I’m not buying anything. Or selling. I think Duchamp misunderstood what I was asking for.” Shut up, Marc, he thinks. Shut up. “How do you know him?”
She takes another sip of her drink, biting the straw. The piercing look hasn’t left her eyes, but she answers anyway. “I rented his place in the 5th arrondissement while I was at the Sorbonne. And then a year later, I got mixed up in some…trouble. He helped me out.”
“What kind of trouble?”
She grins. “The kind involving lifted antiques.”
That’s unexpected. He feels his eyebrow quirk up. “So the stuff in the shop…”
“All clean. I’m not stupid. Which reminds me…” She distractedly pushes the same errant curl as before behind her ear as she pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, revealing tiny gold earrings shaped like lotuses. From here, he can see why that curl keeps springing free. He can tell exactly where to tuck it in, to keep it in place. He could reach across the table and do it for her. It looks soft.
He’s so fucked. He needs to get out of here.
“I told him the shop was compromised,” she mutters as she taps something into the screen. Her fingernails are bitten right down to the quick. “It isn’t safe for me to work out of there anymore. And Mahmoud’s put his foot down anyway, he’s running a legit business.”
Duchamp didn’t know about Marc’s contract with Bushman. At least, he’s pretty sure he didn’t. And Marc certainly didn’t tell him why he needed to speak with the old doctor’s family. He’d just assumed—correctly, it seems—that Duchamp’s involvement with the archeological black market would mean there was enough of a connection to find what he was looking for. He just hadn’t known how close a connection.
“You don’t seem too worried about telling me all this,” he comments tightly. While she must be pretty fucking good at moving her stock for Duchamp to be involved, she clearly lacks experience when it comes to covering her tracks.
She glances up at him, her full upper lip curling dismissively. “I trust Jean-Paul. Even when his information’s out of date.”
If she’s already in trouble, she shouldn’t be trusting him—Duchamp or not. Marc’s a complete stranger to her. She shouldn’t have come to the store in-person, either. She should have arranged to meet elsewhere instead of leading him here. He doubts her phone is secure, or that she’s armed. He shifts closer toward her, and makes a quick survey of the pub over his shoulder, keeping his face under the shadow of his cap.
Layla slaps her phone screen-side down onto the table, and takes another sip of soda. “So, how long are you in London for?”
He shifts uncomfortably. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Have you been here before?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like it?”
He frowns.
She rests her chin in her hand. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
Marc presses his tongue to the inside of his teeth. His natural reflex when asked any question is to assume it’s an interrogation, and revert to deflection, denial, defensiveness.
He should leave. He doesn’t want to. Not yet. He tells himself it’s because he’s still unsure whether she was followed here, and not because her eyes are soft, and deep, and fixed to his.
But he doesn’t know how to do…this. Small talk. He isn’t chatty. He doesn’t know what to say, how to say it. He lacks the warmth, and the openness. That’s all Steven.
Still thinking of Steven, conversational inspiration strikes.
“I visited the museum. Last time I was here. Maybe I’ll visit again.” Painfully self-conscious, he clears his throat. It’s almost the truth. If by visited, he really means that he suddenly woke up there one day, standing open-mouthed in front of an urn on a plinth.
Layla is still looking interestedly into his face. Her lips have a knowing, natural curve at the edges, as though she’s just about to smile. “Which exhibit did you like the best?”
This is an easy question. Steven’s favourite. “There was one called ‘Experience Egypt.’ I…guess I found myself back there a few times.”
There’s a tight irony to her response. “I’ve always thought that name’s a little funny. Considering there aren’t many Egyptian treasures left in Egypt. Most are held by private collectors. Or,” she says airily, “they’re on display in the museums of colonisers.” His face heats, and she laughs at him. “I’m not attacking you. I used to visit a lot, too. I try not to anymore. Makes me homesick. And angry. But mainly homesick. Their replica of the sistrum of Hathor is completely wrong. The real thing is bone, not bronze or ceramic.”
Impossible.
Something brushes at the back of Marc’s neck, and he reaches for his drink in an attempt to disguise his recoil.
The sistrum of Hathor has been lost for centuries.
He has no fucking clue what this means. Layla checks her phone again, her eyelashes curved down. He watches, transfixed as the light from the screen glows up into her face.
The girl found it.
He feels too hot all of a sudden. He shifts in the seat. He can’t take off his jacket. Not without taking off the backpack first. He doesn’t want to risk lifting his shirt enough for anybody to glimpse the black grip over his belt.
She could find the scarab.
“What scarab?” he mutters.
Layla glances up. “Did you say something?”
“No,” he says.
She finishes the last of her drink and slides out of the seat. “Well, this was nice. Enjoy London, Marc Spector. Say hi to my Gebelein friend.”
He gets up and trails behind her to the exit, bewildered. “Who?”
The pub erupts with cheering as the team onscreen scores, and a bearded man in front of him sloshes a pint of beer all down his front. He sees rather than hears her laugh, and she shakes her head, holding the door to let him out first. “Never mind.”
The difference in temperature after stepping outside is stark. It’s a clear night; a faint scattering of stars barely visible beyond the usurped glow of light blanketing the city’s sky. Several people sit on the edge of the garden bed outside the pub, smoking and laughing.
She’s already walking away from him, and he takes a step forward without thinking.
“Layla?”
“Yeah?” She pauses, her hands in her jacket pockets.
He’ll tell himself later that he was thinking strictly in terms of necessity. He hasn’t fulfilled his purpose here yet. He’ll need to track her down again once he figures out how to confess to her the real reason that he sought her out, and he can’t endanger her further by going back to the shop.
He’ll tell himself all of this. But the truth is, in the moment, he doesn’t think about any of it.
“Can I have your number?”
She tilts her head to the side, smiling at him with her eyes. “I’ll think about it.”
He stands and watches until she disappears into the dark, past the puddle of yellow light outside a chip shop. It’s busy out here; a weekend night, he realises. He hasn’t been keeping track of the days.
A taxi pulls up beside him, and a group of young men loudly pile out, already half-drunk and laughing.
She could be useful to us.
Marc couldn’t give a fuck whether she’s useful. He wants to listen to the sound of her voice some more. He wants to take a closer look at the freckles on her wrist. He wants to ask her about her homesickness. How long has it been, he wonders, since she’s been home? Is it by choice, or is there something keeping her away? What does she miss the most?
Even now, years later, Marc finds himself craving the pizza from Angelo’s in Streeterville.
Another taxi pulls up, this one blaring The Clash. He grits his teeth. The tiredness is returning, along with a new migraine.
He needs to work out a new plan. He might have choked, but it’s not too late to fix this. He could come clean to Duchamp and ask him to pass along a message. Or he could write her a letter, and leave it at the shop. He cringes at both thoughts.
The taxi pulls out, then blasts its horn, braking to avoid the black panel van turning out in front of it without indicating. He just needs to rebalance and come back with a new approach. Maybe tomorrow. His mind is racing too fast. He needs sleep.
Marc.
“Shut up,” he mutters.
A young couple walking past shoot him a strange look. The shorter of the two men yanks his taller partner along by the hand, away from the strange American talking to himself on the street. He wonders if her lips taste like the soda she’d been drinking.
The panel van’s red tail lights disappear around a corner at the end of the street.
Marc.
Realisation pierces the fog in his brain like a bullet.
“Oh, fuck.” He’s already running.
People turn, startled, as he shoulders through them. He doesn’t slow to vault over a cement bollard, nearly knocking a woman off her feet on the other side.
He throws his entire weight forward as his feet hit the ground. Cold panic pounds in his head, but he ignores it, letting physicality take over.
He shouldn’t have let her walk off alone. He shouldn’t have gone to the shop. He shouldn’t have been anywhere near the fucking dig site in the first place. Whatever happens to her now, it’s all his fault.
He skids to a halt at the end of the street, panting, his head swivelling. The van—and Layla—are nowhere in sight. Just more people, everywhere, in the way. He continues anyway, slipping sideways around a busker.
She came this way. She mustn’t be far. He moves faster.
People are darting nervous glances at the expression on his face, but he doesn’t care.
He turns down a quieter laneway, then another, away from the main street.
His heart pounds. His hands curl into fists. He pivots, looking both ways, finding nothing.
Grey flicks over his head, and he glances up to the corner of a rooftop, where a rag-wrapped finger points down behind the building.
There.
The panel van hulks in the shadow, parked in front of a roller door. He can’t see any way through from here. There’s no connecting alley or lane; just more walls. It must be an enclosed courtyard, he realises, sick.
He leaps for the bottom of a window frame, his knuckles whitening with his grip as his feet kick for a foothold against the bricks.
Use the suit.
He doesn’t need it. His body remembers the motions of this exercise perfectly.
He pulls himself up, the burn of exertion pleasant across his shoulders, already reaching for the next handhold. The wind lifts the front of his jacket as he forces himself higher, grasping at a ledge above his head.
He hears voices below, but he can’t make out what they’re saying from here. The edge of the rooftop is angled down; no lip of gutter to hold onto.
He doesn’t have time to think about this before kicking off from the bricks. He bites down a grunt as he hits the wall, too hard, knocking the wind out of his lungs as he pulls himself up.
Laughter below. The gable is precariously steep, and he drops to a crouch, flattening his palms for balance.
“...asking nicely, and we needn’t get ugly,” a man’s voice is saying.
“Who’s getting ugly?” Layla’s voice returns, sharp. “I have nothing to say to you.”
Marc leans over the edge, one hand reaching for the weight of the gun at his waist. The internal walls of the courtyard are even worse; no windows, no ledges. He’s too high. If he jumps from here, he’ll need to roll to cushion the impact, and he can’t even see the ground in the dark. He yanks the hat off his head and drops it onto the roof at his feet, squinting.
Layla stands directly beneath him, narrow slivers of light striking lines across her face. Her arms are folded protectively across her chest, and as he watches, she takes a step backwards.
Away from the man reaching out toward her.
“We’re giving you a chance to make it up to us after that clever shit you pulled in Lausanne.” His accent is boarding-school crisp, the top of his pale bald head shining. “Come, Layla. What did you do with it?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she snaps, her back at the wall. “It’s not for sale. Not for you.” Two figures melt out of the shadows, then two more from the opposite side.
Marc’s hand closes around the familiar curve of polymer at his hip, flicking the release open with his thumb in a smoothly fluid motion. Nothing about this situation is ideal. He can’t see shit. He has no easy way down. He can’t risk a miss.
Unbidden, he feels the memory again: the hot bite of lead in his chest, bubbling wet up into his throat, the grit of sand stuck to his lips. The shock had been excruciatingly slow to set in. He had felt everything, at first.
Skeletal grey crouches beside him. Marc doesn’t look up. Layla turns one way then the other, cornered.
This is foolish. You are wasting time.
He doesn’t want to hear it. This is irrelevant. His heart may be lurching sick-fast and bitter, but his body still knows what to do. He isn’t frozen. He just needs to be able to see.
One of the men lunges forward. Marc draws and aims, his hands steady.
What he hadn’t counted on–evidently what none of the men below had either, was her.
The old man was not a fighter. But his daughter is.
Layla seizes the first man around the neck and drives her knee into his groin, then his throat as he doubles for air. She grits her teeth and wheels to the side, ducking underneath the arms of the second man.
He grabs for her and she kicks back. Her boot meets his jaw with a hollow-sounding crack. She wrenches her arms free from the grip of the third, already stepping up into the space behind her and tumbling with him into the shadows.
Marc only remains stunned for a second before he’s up, bracing to jump, the confusion of alarmed shouts below only serving to further obscure precisely where bodies are meeting fist-to-skin.
Put the gun away, idiot. Use the suit.
“Fuck,” he grits, blinking down. Holstering the gun screams against every instinct remembered in his muscles. Limbs flash in and out of the light, too quick to follow. A man’s furious voice curses. Then Layla, gasping, high-pitched, in pain.
He leaps without thinking.
This feeling is still new, but he knows somehow that he’ll never grow truly used to it.
Strength; terrible and ageless, wraps itself around his limbs as the night wind rushes up to catch him. Light bursts inside his head and the world is thrown into instant clarity, brighter than midday, as though his eyes had always been attuned to the night and they simply hadn’t been open until now.
But now, he sees everything.
Two of the men are still scrabbling on the ground. A third grips a handful of Layla’s hair, dragging her backwards. She kicks desperately out at the remaining two, who have both paused to look up at the crescent-shaped shadow cutting through the sky. Their hands reach down for their hips.
Marc doesn’t give them the chance. He snaps his elbow into an eye socket as he lands, feeling it shatter into powder. He whips around, seizing an outstretched arm and snapping it clean through as the man’s howl of pain cuts short, Marc’s knee cratering his skull and sending bone shards splintering up into his brain.
The remaining man drops Layla, and she grunts. His open palms wave in front of Marc’s face. “What the fuck is this? Who the fuck are you?”
Teeth scatter in a spray of blood as Marc pulls his fist back, preparing to hit him again, finding it unnecessary. The man collapses in a heap, his jaw hanging loose.
Layla is still sprawled on her back, her face pale. He can’t tell whether she’s hurt. His hot breath, insulated inside the suit, fans over his skin. He kneels in front of her, the mask drawing back to free his face to the cool air.
“Layla? Are you–”
A gunshot cracks out behind him. He curves his body protectively over hers, barely feeling the impact through the suit. He rears back, reaching for the crescents curved around his chest.
The bald man crawls backward on the seat of his pants, firing again. The bullet flicks harmlessly away. Marc releases the blade, and gold bites into the skin of the man’s hand as he drops the gun, swearing.
Marc pulls another blade free. He strides forward through a slant of light, and the man gapes up at his face in bewildered horror, clearly not expecting any human man to be the source of so much carnage.
He’s right to be surprised, Marc thinks. As he steps over one of the bodies sprawled across the courtyard, he’s met with the smell of blood. He doesn’t feel particularly human. He feels monstrous. He deserves this.
He kneels, his fist gathering the man’s shirtfront as he yanks him up.
Now, kill him. Cut his throat.
“He’s unarmed,” Marc mutters, panting, his pulse chop-chopping thick as butter in his veins.
Cut his throat, Marc. Cut it open. Do it now. MARC. CUT HIS—
The crescent in his hand flashes sideways through sinew and cartilage, halfway down to the spine. Blood sprays the brick wall.
Barely a minute has passed since Marc dropped into the courtyard. He drops what’s left in his hand, sucks in a breath, and turns.
Layla is already on her feet, panting hard, her eyes wide. “Did you follow me?”
He shakes his head, his hair sticking to his forehead. “I saw the van. It’s my fault. For going to the shop.”
She steps toward him. He expects her to shrink back from him. He expects fear, horror, disgust.
But her expression is one of awe.
She reaches out a shaky hand and traces the inscription on his chest. “What is this? What… are you?” He doesn’t know how to answer that.
He stands stiff and watches her lips move as she sounds out the symbols, one by one, forming a name from the syllables. He hadn’t known how to read it on his own. But now that he knows what the markings say, it seems laughably obvious.
She looks up at him, her chest rising and falling with her breathing. Her voice comes out sounding detached from her body. “This is. I mean, when I was little…my father used to tell me the gods walked among us. Protecting us. Watching.”
There’s a little trickle of blood running from her hairline down to her eyebrow. Marc keeps his eyes fixed to it, so he doesn’t have to look directly at the curved grey beak of bone hovering over her head. “Yeah, well. I don’t know about any of the others.”
She huffs out a shocked little laugh, running her hands back through her hair, smearing the runnel of blood up into her curls. “Are you…?”
“Me? No, no, fuck, no. I’m…I’m a servant.” The word tastes strange on his tongue. Is that what he is? Did he agree to that? He doesn’t remember.
There is a very weak, very quiet cry of pain from somewhere behind him, and he remembers where they are. “I gotta get you out of here,” he says, flatly. “Can I walk you home?”
She’s still staring at him, dazed. “Yeah. Sure. It’s not far.”
He releases the suit, feeling it draw away from his body as she watches, her eyes wide.
The garage door opens from the inside, and he leads her out, letting it close again behind him.
He knows he’ll have to come back here once he’s seen her to safety. He’ll have to clean up the mess he made. This will include silencing the rattling, pain-shallow breaths from the shadows. He doesn’t say any of this out loud.
She doesn’t speak again until they’re outside a row of townhouses, each door painted a different colour. She pauses in front of the bright yellow one, opening and closing her mouth as though trying to think of something to say. “Thank you,” she finally settles on.
His face feels hard, and he nods, stiff. He waits until she’s inside with the door shut.
He isn’t sure why he feels so cold. He saved her. He protected her; succeeding where he had failed to do so for her father. This should feel something like redemption.
He stands and watches the light glowing in her window, his heart aching.
Then he gets back to work.
A week passes.
He paces the street outside her place, his hands in his pockets.
He’s spent a lot of time here.
Not on purpose. It had just become automatic. Once he’d finished whatever task he’d been set for the night, he’d stop past and stay for a while. Watching the yellow door. Keeping an eye out for anything suspicious; vans, strangers, cops. He hadn’t known the details of the attack the other night, or whether her home was compromised. He’d just wanted to make sure everything was okay.
It has not escaped him that his own behaviour is far from normal.
He runs through the rehearsed script in his head once more.
Your father is dead. I tried to save him, but I couldn’t. I’m sorry.
He hasn’t brought the scarf. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want her to see it before he’s had a chance to explain why he has it, and not because it means he’ll have an excuse now to see her again.
He’d bought a bunch of dingy-looking white chrysanthemums on the way here, then tossed them in the trash after thinking better of it, feeling stupid.
From the little that he knows of her, he can easily imagine how she’d respond to such a brittle gesture.
Marc.
He grits his teeth, hops up the steps to her door, and presses the bell.
He can’t hear anything inside. He waits, blood rushing in his ears.
Maybe she isn’t here. Maybe she peered out through a window, saw him, and is now waiting for him to leave.
The door opens slowly. “Marc?”
He hates himself for the elation he feels upon hearing that she remembered his name.”Hello.”
Her arms are wrapped around her body, the shadows underneath her eyes stark. There’s a red-edged swollenness to her features. He wonders if she’s sick.
Then she tries to smile at him, and her lips quiver, pulling downward instead of up, and he knows.
He’s too late.
“Sorry,” she’s saying. “You caught me at a…weird time. Come in?” She pulls the door wider, stepping back.
He swallows as he trails her inside, his throat clicking.
Sun streams through high windows into a bright sitting room. Layla drops onto the edge of the sofa, drawing her bare feet up underneath her body. “Don’t mind the mess. It’s usually a lot tidier than this.”
He sinks down beside her, his hands pressed between his knees. There are empty mugs and books piled on the table underneath a vase filled with scarlet anemones, their heads drooping over the sides.
He scans the names on the spines, recognising none of them, filled with words in languages he cannot understand.
He is desperately, desperately out of his depth.
She clears her throat. “I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again. After the other night.”
He forces his stiff shoulders down. “I’m sorry to show up like this. I can come back, if it’s a bad time.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m glad. I’m just—it’s just my father. I’ve just had some news?” Her voice pitches up at the end of the sentence, as though she’s asking him a question, and he catches a split-second glimpse of her face crumpling before she covers it with her hands.
Panic rises in his chest. She hunches over, silently shaking.
He doesn’t know what to do. Emotional outbursts make him acutely uncomfortable. He’s not equipped to handle this—has no touchstone on which to base his responses. He feels utterly lost, and entirely useless.
His head swims, and he closes his eyes against a wave of dizziness.
The absolute worst thing he could do right now is black out in front of her and make things even more complicated.
So, hoping it’s not a mistake, he leans forward and wraps his arms around her narrow shoulders, drawing her into his chest.
She sucks in a raw, burnt-sounding gasp, clutching at the front of his shirt, and her crying is silent no more.
Her body wracks and heaves. She bends with the weight of it; her breaths rattling, a hollowed-out gourd of grief.
He needs to tell her the truth. But as she clings to him, soaking his chest with her streaming face, he knows he can’t.
He can’t bear to see the accusation in her eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He cups her head with his hand, feeling the softness of her hair, keeping her upright. “I’m sorry.”
He stays there for hours. She grows limp and quiet several times, calming, breathing, then breaking apart anew. She tucks her face into the space between his neck and shoulder, and he presses his closed lips against her damp temple.
He holds her as the light through the windows changes and shifts and finally dims.
It’s half-dark when she lifts her face, leaning back. She looks as exhausted as he feels, and he sits and watches as she rubs her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
“So, I thought about it. And I’ve decided you can have my number.” Through the hoarseness of her voice, her lips have an ironic, embarrassed lift.
The ash-coloured figure watching from the hall says nothing.
Later, when he gets back to his empty, draughty safehouse, he is unable to look at himself in the mirror.
Ask her again.
Marc drops the knife into the sink, and runs his viscera-slimed hands under the water.
Neither of them slept well on the flight back from Tangier. Another dead end. Another pointless, bloody fight with nothing to show for it. He’d thrown his body around hers, wondering whether this would be the time he’d finally fail to keep her safe.
He turns and slides the raw chicken he’s just finished cutting into a bowl with chili oil and ginger. She loves ginger. He adds a little more before covering it and putting it away to marinate. He has no particular talent for nor interest in any of this, but the first week after they’d moved in together, he’d learned that her idea of preparing a meal was picking sugared violets straight out of the jar.
There is the muffled sound of music and voices from outside. The woman from upstairs, inexplicably elated to see them back from the vacation they’d told her they were taking, had invited them to join a party on the rooftop terrace of the building; an offer they’d declined. It’s a warm night, and the smell of smoke drifts in through the open windows.
He steps around her bag, left out in the middle of the room, and finds her asleep on the sofa.
Ask her again.
“I’m not fucking asking her again,” he says under his breath. “We only just got home.”
She breathes slow and even, her hands curled into loose little fists at her chest. He leans over, gently extricating the crumpled book from between her body and the armrest.
The page it had been open to is half-torn, and he smooths it down before he drops it silently onto the end table behind him.
He’d asked her, once, what she was reading. She’d been sitting by the window, the little green paperback in her hand bent back on itself. She dashed the heel of her hand to her eyes, chewing her thumbnail as she read.
She’d tried to explain. “It’s about losing things, like love, childhood, memories. And regret, I think. Being punished for our mistakes.”
He had tried very hard to look as though this made any sense to him at all. “Why are you reading it, if it makes you cry?”
“It isn’t sad, it’s just beautiful.” She’d given him a half-pitying smile. “You wouldn’t get it.”
But he had wanted to understand. He still does.
“Baby,” he says, laying his palm on her warm cheek, pushing her hair back from her face. “Hey. You gonna come eat?”
Marc.
She reaches up toward him, blinking sleepily. “Mmm. I’m not really hungry.”
He kneels down onto his socked feet to let her drape her arms around his neck. The rug underneath the sofa is woven in yellows and soft under his knees. Something they’d chosen together at the market the last time they were in Ankara.
She arches her neck, and he leans down to catch her lips; soft, and faintly sleep-sour. She winds her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer and sighing.
He knows that sound intimately, now.
His thumb coasts the edge of her jaw, down to the side of her neck where her heart pushes warmth under her skin.
She nudges closer, and he grasps her knees, shifting her to the edge of the sofa.
This is the first night in weeks that they haven’t been pulled in two different directions; her, chasing potential leads with black-market contacts; him, chasing shadows in the dark.
He kisses her slowly, lazily, taking his time, his hands smoothing lower.
He palms the small swell of her breast through her shirt, and she exhales with impatience, leaning back just long enough to pull it over her head, taking her thin cotton bra with it.
She reaches down to press his hand back into place, and he feels the goosebumps rising on her skin as he brushes the hard peak of her nipple.
He ducks his head, breathing in the smell of her, nosing a line from her neck to the hollow between her breasts.
He’s left it too long without shaving, and he tries not to scrape his skin against hers as he closes his lips around the pillow of her breast.
She arches into him, her nails raking his scalp and loosening the curl at the front of his hair that always falls in his face when he’s trying to work.
She is never loud in moments like these. Her gasps are soft, as are her breaths. The whimper she bites back is almost inaudible.
He slides his hands underneath her thighs, and she lifts her hips as he rolls her sweatpants down off her legs. There are bruises already darkening thunderhead-deep on her knees. She’d thrown herself clumsily under the protection of his arms two nights ago as bullets flew overhead, hitting the ground hard.
He kisses these before he continues into the tender place inside her thighs.
She tips her head back as he nudges her underwear to the side, gently spreading her labia apart with his fingers.
He takes a moment to look up at her from his place below; at the length of her throat, the dusk colour of her nipples, the fine gold studs glinting in her ears.
He closes his eyes, and bows his head to taste the sharp slick cream of her cunt. He laves his tongue through the wetness between her curls, starting slow, growing greedy.
He presses his face into her, surrounded by her scent, her taste. For years, dreams of drowning were the only kind Marc knew. He had fought and thrashed and burned for air against them. Now, he drowns willingly, gratefully.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever want anything else more.
She flinches as he tongues at her clit, and he sinks his fingers into her thighs to prevent her closing them, feeling the full give of her skin. Every part of her is soft, soft, soft.
He’d like to sink his fingers into the welcome tightness of her opening, and then curl those fingers at the knuckles, finding the place that had once made her soak the covers beneath them.
But that would mean releasing his grip on her, so he contents himself instead with the slower, softer destruction of his mouth.
She pulls harder at his hair, her brows drawing together, and he knows she’s close. She bites her lip, her hips shifting up, her pubic bone bumping his nose.
He hears his name, and he pretends that it’s coming from her.
Then she’s finished, and he holds onto her, letting her rock herself against him, shuddering and trembling until she slows.
Her fingers smooth through his hair, and he sits back on his heels to find her already looking at him, a half-smile on her lips. “Are you staying home tonight?” she murmurs.
He has about a thousand things he needs to do. He needs to make a stop at the storage facility and stow the gear still sitting in his bag, as well as the most recent fake passport he’s been using when crossing borders. He needs to check up on the apartment. The other apartment. The one in Brixton, that he hasn’t used in months, with dust sheets draped over the furniture. The one costing him a fucking fortune in rent, that he’d never even begin to entertain the possibility of giving up. He never knows when he’ll need it.
But right now, looking up at Layla’s pleasure flushed face, he decides it can wait.
She doesn’t bother turning on the light as she leads him to the bedroom.
He lies on his side, shifting his sweat-sticky thighs away from his softening cock. He can’t tell whether she’s already asleep. Her hair spreads on the pillow, shivering with her breathing, her body dwarfed inside one of his t-shirts.
She had made a habit of stealing them when they first started living together. When he’d asked why, she’d told him sheepishly that they’re far softer than hers, and that they smell like him. He has left one out for her every night since.
He feels close to crying, though he doesn’t know why. He hasn’t cried in years.
He reaches over and pulls the covers up higher over her body.
He loves her so much it hurts.
He would like to be the type of man who is gentle, and soft, and good at feelings and words, so that he might be able to read to her from the poetry writing itself between the lines on his palms and into the soft meat beating underneath his ribcage. But he isn’t.
So instead, he never cuts onions until she’s in another room, so that the fumes won’t burn her eyes. Time and again, he painstakingly tapes the loose pages back into the books she leaves carelessly on the floor by the bed. Every time she falls asleep fully-dressed, he unclips her watch, her necklace, laying them on her bedside table so she won’t wake with tender marks impressed into her skin.
He would like to be able to tell her that the weight of her body alongside his is the only thing that helps him sleep. That the past year has been the best of his life. That he’s loving her the best way he knows how.
It doesn’t come easy for him, but he’s trying. He knows it isn’t enough, but he’s trying.
“Layla,” he says, his lips barely moving. “Baby. You awake?”
“Mmm.”
“Marry me.”
She shifts slightly, curling into the warmth of the bed. “Okay,” she breathes, finally, her eyes still closed.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
She reaches her hand out across the expanse of bed as though searching for him, finally touching the back of her knuckles to his chest. She falls asleep like that, with her arm outstretched, and he listens to the slowing sound of her breathing.
He isn’t tired.
He stares out into the gloom, past the scythelike beak of the grey figure looming motionless over the foot of the bed.
Layla has grown used to him being called away on nights when the moon hangs full. But it’s near dawn, and she doesn’t stir, so he doesn’t need to lie to her.
He slips silently out of bed, pulling on the same clothes he’d been wearing that day.
Kneeling in the dark, he slips his hand underneath the false base in the bottom drawer of the dresser. He finds what he’s looking for by blind touch.
The pale shadow drifts after him as he steps quietly out of the bedroom, into the hall, out of the flat.
When he reaches the roof, he has to step around a scattering of littered cans and bottles illuminated under a garland of lights strung from one side to the other. Plastic chairs have been left arranged around a portable fire pit, still smouldering, with a stack of logs piled to one side. Clearly, the infringement notice issued by the building manager after the last of these parties had been entirely ineffective.
Marc shifts the deep red embers until fresh warmth blooms; just enough to catch and hold the new wood he drops into the pit. He sits and stares into the glow, wrapping his arms around himself.
He has never entirely trusted his own judgement regarding matters of perspective, but there is a truth he can no longer avoid acknowledging.
The truth is: the moment he met her, it was already far too late.
He’ll take the best care of her he can, in as many ways he can manage. And if the time comes that he’s no longer sure of his ability to do that, he will remove himself from her.
This, he tells himself, is the only act of love that matters.
The moon is fading in the grey pre-dawn sky.
Marc.
He sits and watches the scarf burn until there’s nothing left but ash.