the narrow, hidden tracks

Relationships: Jake Lockley & Marc Spector, Jake Lockley & Steven Grant, Jake Lockley & Marc Spector & Steven Grant

Characters: Jake Lockley, Marc Spector, Steven Grant, other minor character appearances, minor original characters

Additional Tags: Character Study, Non-Chronological, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe—Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt/Some Comfort, Unreliable Narrator, Abuse, Protective Jake Lockley, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Jake Lockley-Centric, Nonlinear Narrative, Vignettes, Occasionally Leans Towards Humor, Is Jake Perhaps Out of Character? I Don't Care He's Mine Now

Beginning Notes:

this was first inspired by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (as can be seen with marc & steven on the boat) and An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge before rewatching Jacob Geller's The Golem & The Jewish Superhero and doing massive edits about 4k words into writing this lmao. the version of the golem that i abridge in this fic is from David Wisniewski's beautiful book, and the title from Gustav Meyrink's novel: "It is the narrow, hidden tracks that lead back to our lost homeland, what contains the solution to the last mysteries is not the ugly scar that life's rasp leaves on us, but the fine, almost invisible writing that is engraved on our body."

originally posted on ao3, which is why there's all those "tags" above, but i wanted to put this here as well because some people exclusively use . not being able to use html has kind of hurt me in that i can't use hover translations on , but i have persisted nevertheless. spanish-to-english translations have been italicized.

things i don't know a lot about: dissociative identity disorder, judaism, egypt, new york city, chicago, how crime works. i've written these things to the best of my knowledge but pretty please lmk if there's anything that should be fixed or improved upon.

also, trigger warnings: childhood trauma and abuse, graphic violence, depersonalization, non-graphic depiction of self harm, and mistreatment in a psychiatric setting. let me know if there are other things i should add and i absolutely will!


One hour before becoming the servant of an Egyptian god, a man in a desert encampment raises his hands in the air at gunpoint. Jake doesn't know why a squadron of mercenaries have guns aimed his way, but he reckons it's for a good reason.

The moon shines brilliantly above them. A harsh wind blows across the landscape, making the dunes hiss as they shift under the force. Jake wonders if he can break the distance to the nearest gun to take control of it before he's fatally shot by any of the others pointed his way. It's too far.

Bushman raises one hand in the air, calling for a ready.

A skipped heartbeat. Well, shit, Jake thinks. If he's to die, at least he's the one who faces the final bullet—at least he's the one who will get the pain. The other two won't have to know a thing before they succumb to the final sleep. Solo en la vida, solo en la muerte. Alone in life, alone in death.

Bushman closes his hand into a fist, calling for fire.

Jake falls. The sand that reaches up to meet him is cold, wet with his blood and others'. He falls, and doesn't stop falling as the sand envelops him, sucking him down. Above him, the stars wink out one by one as his vision is covered until nothing is left but the darkness.

Jake thinks to himself, grimly satisfied, that he shielded Steven and Marc from the worst all the way to the very end. But he much would have preferred to see the dawn, one last time.


Two men lounge on the deck of a boat that sails through a sea of sand under a twilight sky. One reclines back, propped up by his elbows. His head is tilted up to the stars, but his eyes are closed. The other is sat curled into himself, back hunched, shoulders up to his ears. He rolls a gold sater across his knuckles anxiously and is covered in sand. Nearby the Scale of Justice groan as they struggle to balance two hearts that are yet to be full, despite all attempts.

The boat crests a dune, spraying sand as the keel slices through like a knife. There's a brief moment of unsteadiness as the bow points to the moon, followed by sickening vertigo as the boat tips down and reintroduces itself to the ground. Behind them, the rudder swings violently, uncontrollably. No one is steering the boat.

Sand tosses itself onto the deck, drenching them. Marc sputters indignantly.

"Fuck me," he curses as he stands and shakes himself off. He'll never get all the grains out of his clothes and hair.

Steven doesn't attempt to brush off. Soon enough there will be another crest, and another spray of sand, so he finds it pointless. Instead, he rests his chin on his knees and flips the coin—a gold sater—in his hand and conceals it. "Heads or tails?"

"Tails," Marc bets.

The sater has neither heads nor tails, but instead bears an owl on one side and on the other, a papyrus. Steven had tried to tell Marc that this kind of coin was first minted by Pharaoh Teos in the thirtieth dynasty so that he could pay the salaries of Greek mercenaries, but Marc hadn't much cared. The two of them had decided to agree, though, that owl was heads and papyrus was tails.

Marc and Steven have both extensively studied the coin. They know, with certainty, that there are two sides.

Steven opens his hand to reveal a blank face of unpressed, smooth gold. He turns the coin over, and there is a papyrus. Turns it over again, and there is an owl.

Marc stands over Steven's shoulder and peers down. "Another score for heads."

"But it's not heads, yeah?" Steven says as he continues to roll the coin over his knuckles. "Just because the other side is tails, don't mean it's heads."

"It's a coin," Marc says with barely concealed impatience regarding the topic being brought up once again. "Two sides. If one side is tails, it means the other side is heads."

Steven sniffs imperiously, but doesn't continue arguing it. For now. He'll bring up the subject again after five more dune crests, or twelve more coin flips—whichever comes first. "Alright, then. What's the score now?"

Marc lays back down on the boat deck, propping himself up on his elbows and tilting his head back. Star bathing. "Was I supposed to be keeping track?"


The heat and busy sounds of Brooklynn fall away as Jake ducks through the door, welcomed by the cheery ring of a bell. The diner is deserted, caught in the no man zone of after all the old men finish their morning coffee rituals and before all of the blue collar workers in the area get their lunch break.

The only souls in the building are Gena, rolling silverware at the diner counter, her two boys, engrossed in coloring books in the furthest corner booth, and the line cooks, chattering as they prep for the lunch rush. Gena perks when she sees Jake, a lovely smile spreading across her face.

"Never thought I'd see you again, what with those questions you were asking the other day," she says as Jake collapses onto the barstool across from her. His face twitches in an aborted wince at jarring his bruised—perhaps broken—ribs. Gena's brows furrow the smallest amount. "You need a pick-me-up, honey?"

Jake flicks up the brim of his cap and offers her a tired smile. "It'd be appreciated."

A cup of coffee materializes by his elbow and an order for flapjacks is shouted into the kitchen. Gena then continues to roll silverware, and after a few sips of coffee, Jake helps.

"You find what you were looking for out there?" She asks, coy-but-blatant.

Jake doesn't play at beating around the bush. If he's one thing, he's a forthright man. "Slocum's men are out of the picture, but the big guy was absent." Knife, fork, spoon, rolled up in a napkin and set next to their brethren. Next one. "Was wondering if you heard anything about him, but I'm not holding out hope."

Gena clicks her teeth. "I haven't seen his mug in the paper for a month or more. Slocum's keeping his head down. But—" ah, Jake's favorite conjunction to hear, "—his woman's been seen around Harlem. She's been spending a lot of time with bookies."

It tracks. When he's running out of cash and his trafficking ring takes a significant blow thanks to Marc, Slocum has his girl bet on the ponies to pad his pockets. Find the girl, follow her to Slocum, and then everything will play out as it will. When Jake's business is done at the diner, he'll call Layla to give her the information and tell her not to ask where he got it from.

Jake grins at Gena, even as it aches the bruising around his eye. "Mi hacedor de milagros." My miracle worker.

She snorts, swatting at him with a cloth napkin. "Lay off the compliments and drink your coffee, Lockley. You and yours are the ones doing the heavy lifting, clearing these streets." Her eyes drift to her boys. Ray and Ricky—both good kids. The last time that Jake had swung around Gena's diner, the two of them had been a furious whirlwind of winter decorations. Ray had wanted to put up string lights, while Ricky wanted the tinsel, and the two had tussled endlessly over the rights to the hanging decorations.

Those are the only kinds of things that kids should worry about: simple stuff. That's why Gena tells Jake all the things she hears—if Jake and his are keeping the streets a little bit cleaner, then Gena and hers have one less thing to worry about Ray and Ricky getting caught up in. Jake gets that. He's got a couple of boys to keep an eye on too and, boy, they're a handful.

Jake has everything he needs, but then it's time for flapjacks and gossip before the bell rings as lunch customers start to trickle in. His time's up. After a quick goodbye and slipping a tip into the jar for his favorite gal, Jake ducks out the door and pulls out Marc's phone.


This isn't his first time in a coffin, he thinks. The who, what, when, where, and why won't filter into his brain, but—maybe this isn't his first time in a coffin. The dark is familiar. The cold that matches the black hole sucking away within his chest. The sensation of the world folding down around you, pressing on your shoulders, closing in on your eyes. The things you start to see in the dark if you stare for too long.

Having a possibility of experience doesn't make him any less disoriented, confused, or pissed off.

He slams his hand on the stone in front of him. The sound is hollow on the outside, so he hasn't been lowered into the ground yet. Feeling out the dimensions around him in the dark, the coffin is ridiculously oversized—sad, that his own final resting place isn't custom-made for him.

First, he starts pushing: bracing against the back of the coffin and wedging his hands against the lid. Shoving until the tendons in his arms quiver and give in, before kicking at it until he breaks a toe, and then clawing at the stone with his nails, and clawing, and screaming.


A scary story, once told to Randall by Marc in the depth of Halloween night:

Back in the old days, before they had real doctors or medicine or anything, people got buried alive all the time. It got to be such a problem that sometimes, coffins would have tubes built in 'em, for breathing and also for the cord—uh, they'd put a bell above the coffin, right? So that if the person's still alive, they can pull the cord, and people'd hear and come help 'em.

They didn't have phones back then, dummy. Besides, who'd put a landline in a coffin?

So one night, the gravedigger was walking through the cemetery—why does which cemetery matter? All cemeteries are the same. Fine, it was Waldheim Cemetery. The gravedigger was walking through Waldheim, and he heard a bell ringing. Sometimes it was just kids messing around or the wind, but for the first time in his life he actually saw the cord being pulled from underground!

So he ran over and put his ear to the tube to the coffin, and he could hear breathing on the other side. Then, he heard a lady talking, saying that she was still alive, that she needed to be dug up!

The gravedigger looked at the headstone the lady was buried under and asked through the tube, "Is your name Shannon Acker?"

"Yes!" the lady cried. The voice isn't silly. Shut up, Ro.

"Were you born on August 9th, 1817?" the gravedigger asked.

"Yes!" she said.

The gravedigger said to her, "The headstone says you died on May 12th, 1868."

"No," she said. "It isn't true! I'm not dead! Dig me up, I'm still alive."

The gravedigger cut the cord on the bell before using his shovel to plug up the tube leading to the—shut up, Ro, I'm not done yet—to plug up the tube leading to the coffin. "Sorry, miss. This is 1978. Whatever you are down there, you sure aren't alive, and you sure aren't getting up here!"

Well, duh, it wasn't scary. You kept interrupting. Mom says you need to listen more.

Alright, your turn. What's your scary story?


Steven likes to watch that pretty tour guide. The one that took the job at the National Art Gallery that he'd been gagging for. What's-her-face. Dylan.

It didn't start as puppy love. To the surprise of anyone who doesn't have direct access into the mind of Steven Grant, under that meek, bashful, bumbling exterior is a man who will bitterly hold a grudge. The person who stole his dream job position from under his feet is worthy of a grudge that he'll take beyond the grave—so long as that thief isn't an attractive, competent person who occasionally deigns him with a good morning.

The grudge held for five days—but ay, for those five days did that bitterness burn.

Then came the insipid months-long puppy love.

Marc never had this kind of phase with Layla. The two of them had met and then like a gunshot, they were off to the whole nine yards. Engagement within six months, married within a year. Neither of them fucked around with that kind of stuff. Layla had been so upset when Marc had disappeared and left nothing but divorce papers behind.

To protect her, Marc had told himself when he walked out of her life. It had been a lie, but Jake had understood. Protecting the people you care about is important. Even if you occasionally refer to those people as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.

Tweedle Dee wants, desperately, to ask Dylan on a date. He's gagging for it just as hard as he gagged for the tour guide position. Daydreams about it: taking it slow, with dinners and walks and something fun, like a zoo—a zoo for fun? really, Steven?—and then maybe he'll take her back to his place to make dinner, but he's got to get rid of all the sand and probably the ankle restraint.

Slow down there, jefe. The first step is mustering the guts to ask her out, which will be an issue. While Steven can, in both the most opportune and inopportune times, have a steel spine, he melts into a mumbling puddle at times like this.

Case in point.

This is the fifth attempt to ask Dylan on a date in as many days.

Dylan leads her group of vacationing foreigners into the gift shop at the end of the tour, her smart heels clicking loud on the stone floors. This, management believes, is the most important part of being a tour guide: not your knowledge base, but how well you can sell the concept of Egypt to people who will buy souvenirs. Dylan does her job damn well, both Jake and Steven can admit, which means that there's a steady line of people lining up at Steven's till, the first one of which Dylan is still chatting with.

Not the best time to ask her out, Stevie.

"Uh, Dylan—"

Damn it, Stevie.

Ten seconds of fumbling for words later while Dylan waits impatiently, Jake takes the reins in an act of mercy killing as Steven falls back into absentia. It happens in only a flutter of eyelashes and a deep breath before Jake turns a lopsided, shy smile to Dylan. He can't act too out of character. What's the point of setting up Steven for a date when the lady's got unrealistic expectations of how smooth of an operator he is?

"Sorry," he says. The British accent feels weird then coming out of Jake's mouth, even if he's perfected it by this point. "Nerves. You're just class at everything you do. But I was wondering—do you have any free time this weekend? To catch a dinner?"

Dylan blinks her pretty brown eyes at him, mouth half-open in a shocked smile. "Steven, are you chatting me up?"

"Depends on whether you want to be chat up."

Dylan leans her elbows on the shop counter, head tilted just so. "I think I might give it a chance." Hook, line, sinker. Wasn't that easy, Stevie?

Shit. How's Steven supposed to know that he scored a date?


Jake fronts to the sound of his nose breaking. It's a hell of an alarm clock.

The world swims in black and white as his head rocks back, eyes rolling. Marc's out. Steven's out cold. Jake can't join them when everything around them is in chaos. The eyes are forced open, wide, wild. Black: shadows. White: stage lights. Beneath him, a dirt floor. Around him, a ring. It's not blood rushing through his ears, but the roar of a crowd.

Marc's back to fighting for cash. Alright. They could use a little extra walking around money.

Just means that Jake has to win, but if he's one thing, he's a fucking champion.

He pulls himself back from the edge of unconsciousness and slings a fist forward, more out of instinct than a real attack. It whiffs, but he managed to graze skin. The world still wobbles and there's all kinds of hurts radiating throughout his body, but he could brawl blind and deaf.

Another wild swing, clipping a jaw this time. Take two hits to the chest, that's fine. He'll walk it off. Another swing. Another. Another. He reaches out, grabs the collar of his opponent's shirt. Twists them to the ground, gets on top, and hits. The crowd is going wild. Hit, hit, hit, hit. The crowd is going insane. Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. The crowd is about as crazy as him at this point.

The world isn't a mishmash of black and white anymore. It's black, white, red, and red and red—


"You know, I think we're missing something."

Marc's head lolls toward Steven. "Go on."

For the first time in a long time—thirty-seven dunes, or one hundred and seventeen coin flips—Steven is sitting up straight. His entire body is a study in discontent, from his low shoulders and stiff back to the pinched expression on his face. Sand that had slowly been piling on him sifts off as his body wakes up.

"Well, before we," Steven makes a quick motion across his neck with his hand and Marc nods amiably, "there were things that still didn't make sense. About us. And right before Taweret disappeared, what did she say?"

"That she sensed 'a disturbance'," Marc drawls.

"But what could disturb her?" Steven asks as he twists around to look at the doors that lead into the ship. The doors that were closed now, and so long as they had anything to say about it, will remain closed. They already saw all that they wanted to see within. The cave. The funeral. The murdered. "So, I was wondering… I was wondering… what was I wondering about?"

Marc mumbles, lax. "I couldn't tell you, Steven. We're not exactly mind melded anymore."

Steven sighs and returns to position. Shoulders hunched, back curved. "Yeah. Alright. It'll come back to me. I just feel like I'm missing something, and it's—it's shouting right at me. Heads or tails?"

"Tails."

Steven opens his hands to reveal a blank, unpressed face.


A scary story, told to Marc by his mother while camping for his seventh birthday:

Two sisters were walking down a railroad under a full moon. They were sharing ghost stories, because the older sister, Maria, knew that her younger sister was easily frightened by them. As the railroad twisted by to pass a graveyard, Maria told her sister a rumor that she had read: if you stand on a grave, the person underneath will snatch your legs and drag you down with them.

Anna, the younger sister, was so scared of this idea that she shook. But Anna had also grown tired of Maria teasing her for her cowardice that she told Maria that it was nothing but a tall tale.

Maria wasn't ready to let it drop, however. So she picked up a spike from the railroad and handed it to her sister, telling her that if it was only a tall tale, then Anna would run to the furthest grave in the graveyard and stick the spike in it for proof.

Despite her fear, Anna didn't back down. She took the spike from her sister and ran through the graveyard as fast as her feet could carry her, dodging tombstones and trees until Maria could no longer see her in the dark night. For five minutes, Maria waited for her sister to leave the graveyard, until—what was that? A scream!

Fearing for her sister's life, Maria ran toward the sound, cursing herself for pushing her sister so far. At the furthest grave, she stopped only when she stumbled over something in her path. In the light of the full moon, she could barely make out what she tripped over, and when she realized what it was, Maria let out a scream of her own.

It was Anna, laying on the ground, dead. Horrified, Maria looked to the grave that Anna laid on top of, prepared to see the arms of the dead burst from the ground, holding onto her sister's legs—only to see the railroad spike, speared through the hem of Anna's dress, holding her to the ground.

When she did as her sister told her, Anna couldn't see that she had pinned her dress to the grave. Then, when she had turned to run away, she mistook the spike for arms holding her down, and had died of fright that second.

No, no, mijo. Don't cry. It's just a story, okay? No one really grabbed Anna, did they? She just scared herself. So if you're scared, just think to yourself: is there really someone grabbing me, or have I nailed myself to the ground like some silly-billy?

Okay, no more stories for tonight. How about a snack? Goldfish crackers, again?


Crouched in some family's backyard under the camouflage of a new moon, washing blood from under his nails with the water faucet attached to the house, Jake hums an idle song to himself. Satisfaction buzzes sharp on his tongue.

Sometimes, Marc starts fights. This is good: the people he fights are the wicked. Scum. The killers and the kidnappers, the assaulters and arsonists. If an unbloodied hand kills a murderer, there are just as many murderers in the world. But if you kill two, five, fifteen, thirty? Well, the score changes.

Sometimes, Marc doesn't want to do what he needs to end the fight. This is okay: Jake will pick up the slack. Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty. Who knows?

Taking control of the body has been easy over the past few months. The wall between Marc and Steven is crumbling, with the two of them in a constant lockstep as they bounce back between one another, fighting for the wheel—even if Steven is still unaware of it. Neither of them are ever prepared for Jake Lockley to swing a brick over their heads and steal the wheel all for himself.

He doesn't do it often. For most of their life, he has always waited politely for his turn to front. Jake doesn't mind being the phantom in the back of Marc Spector's head; the man who is unseen, unheard, unknown. If he's one thing, he's low maintenance. But when there's a struggle, and someone's having trouble pulling the trigger, taking the punches?

Jake won't hesitate to step forward.

Even if he has to clean the blood from his hands so they don't know.

Turning off the faucet and drying his hands on his pants, Jake hops over the backyard's fence and lands in the neighborhood alley. A ghost of a song floats around his mind, frustrating in its broken nature. He whistles the refrain as he walks under the streetlights, eyeing the graying horizon. There's only a few more hours until Steven expects to wake up, and a long way to walk home.

A flash of white catches Jake's eye. He dances back a few steps and looks at the scattered guts of a trash can, probably tipped over and ripped apart by scavenger animals. Untouched in the rubbish is an envelope, ripped open and discarded. It had done its job, and had been laid to rest.

Jake picks it up and brings it under a streetlight, squinting. Just like he suspected.

A stamp from the wildlife of Barbados collection. One he doesn't have yet.

Tonight just keeps getting better. Grinning, Jake folds the envelope and puts it in the pocket of his jacket. Later, he'll dig out his stock book from where he's hidden it in plain sight in Steven's mess of a library. The stamp will be carefully pulled off the envelope and pressed on the page next to its brethren before Jake slides the book back on the shelf. Then he'll change his clothes and put his ankle in the restraint and return to the back of their head until the next time he gets to come out and play.

For now, Jake sings while walking toward the growing dawn. Me importas tú, y tú, y tú, y solamente tú, y tú, y tú. Me importas tú, y tú, y tú, y nadie más que tú! Ojos negros, piel canela que me llegan a desesperar


Banging, shaking, slamming.

He had clawed at the front of the coffin until his nail bed bled before resorting to fury. Not fear—he's never touched fear. Now he slams his hands on the coffin lid. Screams. Throwing his body back and forth, left to right, trying to tip over. Screams. Slams his face on the coffin lid. Screams.

"Let me out!" he howls, wrath and malice and fury dripping from his vocal cords. "Let me out, let me out, let me out!"

There's no one to answer.

There's no one else in his head. Someone took away Marc and Steven. Someone took them from him, and when he figures out how the fuck that happened and who did it, he'll shove his thumbs in their eyes and stick needles under their nails and break their shins and bite off their fucking nose.

Who's going to make Marc get any rest? Who's going to keep Steven from picking up every street cat he sees? Is someone helping Marc with his punches? Steven with his panic attacks? Who's out there? Is anyone out there? Hello?

Where are they. Let me out. Where are they. Let me out. Where—?


"Lot of people out there tonight?"

Jake doesn't pause from swinging the door shut and locking it. He shifts his face into something appropriate. Would Marc feel relief at hearing her voice? Guilt for spending the entire night away? Nothing but exhaustion? Maybe a little bit of all of the above. Jake relaxes his shoulders and tightens the corners around his eyes before he turns around.

Layla sits snug in her reading chair in the corner. The lamp illuminates her in a soft glow of gold. A spot of light in Marc's life—ha, cheesy.

Not untrue, though. Jake's glad they found each other. Marc needs people in his corner, not just his head. Layla's stood by him, even when she figured out the pact with Khonshu, and when he struggles to communicate, and when the only person on his side to show up to the wedding had been an old mercenary buddy. Hell, she's probably further in Marc's corner than Marc himself.

Jake appreciates that.

"Nothing I couldn't manage," he says, flattening out his accent into that plain Americana accent that Marc has. He frowns at the dark circles under her eyes. "You didn't stay up waiting, did you?"

When Layla smiles, it's something softly sad and amused. "You're not the only one with things that keep you up at night." She raises her hand up, and Jake knows what to do. He crosses the room and takes it in his own, sitting on the chair's arm so that Layla can rest her head on his shoulder. Her hand is icy, and so small when he holds it. Manos frías, corazón cálido—cold hands, warm heart.

Jake wants to ask, but holds his tongue. If Layla ever talks about what haunts her thoughts when the sun goes down, it's something that Marc should hear.

For now, though, Jake can hold her hand and offer her a few minutes of easy breathing before herding her to bed.


Someone's panic rips Jake from a half-lucid dream. The body is in full flight-or-fight mode: erratic heartbeat, shaking limbs, gritted teeth. Ice rushes through veins, stomach dropping to the feet. Hands are grabbing, trying to tear—his clothes, his arms, his face. People in his head are screaming.

Stop, Steven thinks frantically. Stop, stop, why won't they stop?

Marc is fighting to take control. They can't get the scarab, he thinks desperately, not on my life.

Just like that, Jake has two goals: get these fuckers off, and keep some kind of scarab. He jumps to the front violently, ripping both Steven and Marc back into the small, quiet place in their head. Someone's face is right in front of Jake's, which earns them a broken nose from a head bash. The person who's holding him from behind gets their foot smashed under his heel, and when there's two less hands holding him still it's easier to rip his arms out of other people's grasps.

How many are there? Doesn't matter; everyone's too close for comfort, so it means they've all earned themselves some brutality.

The air smells like fresh bread. It makes his mouth water. When was the last time he had fresh bread?

Jake grabs a fistful of someone's hair and slams their face into his knee. There's a burst of blood from their nose as they fall. Elbows the person behind him hard in the gut, then turns and matches it with a fist to the side of the head. His punches hit harder than he expects, on account of the metal scarab gripped tight in his fist. When his thumb presses on it, the wings fold out into improvised blades.

A burly fucker tries to grab him again. Jake doesn't let that happen, and then there's a spray of blood.

He's not going to let anyone touch them. Not while he's around.


The first thing that Jake thinks when he forms into existence is that, certainly, he's going to die if she doesn't stop soon.

Begging won't stop her. Marc learned this. Jake begs anyways, because he doesn't know what else to do; he pleads between choked, heaving sobs while hunched on the floor, arms protecting his head. The skin on his back is wet.

She doesn't stop. The belt comes down, buckle-first, on him again, and again, and again. Her silence scares him most. Mom only stops spitting vitriol when especially angry.

Grab the belt, a little voice in Jake's head whispers—his own voice. Grab the belt and don't let her take it back. And if she hits you with something else, take that from her too. And take from her, and take from her, and take from her, until she's left with nothing but her hands. And then bite off her hands so she doesn't have those either.

Jake doesn't grab the belt from her hands.

But he thinks about it.


The scariest story of all, once told to Marc/Steven/Jake by his father as a bedtime story:

In the year 1580, in the beautiful city of Prague, the Jews were bearing the ignorant fury of others. Enemies had accused them of mixing the blood of Christian children with the flour and water of matzoh. The great Blood Lie inspired actions of violence against the Jewish people who, trapped within the walls of their ghetto and unprotected by law, could do nothing to cease the violence.

Troubled, Judah Loew ben Bezalel, chief rabbi of Prague, entered his study to fast and pray for the deliverance of his people. He fell into a restless sleep and dreamed of fire and ruin. When all seemed lost, a great hand of light appeared and wrote one glowing word upon the smoke and ashes: GOLEM.

Rabbi Lowe woke with a start. Golem was a giant of living clay, animated by Cabala, mystical teachings of untold power. Only the most righteous man, a tzaddik, could create and control such a creature. In the face of the curses and threats hurled at the Jewish people, this had to be the heavenly answer.

The next day, Rabbi Loew, along with his son-in-law and his best student, prayed and purified themselves in preparation to use the Holy Name of God that night. When darkness fell, the three men left the ghetto through a secret opening in the wall and hurried to the cold clay banks of the river Vltava to dig. By midnight, an enormous mound of clay lay before the rabbi. Praying softly, he plunged his hands into the vast lump, shaping it. Hours later a crude clay giant lay lifeless on the riverbank.

Raising his arms, Rabbi Loew chanted zirufim, mighty spells from the Cabala. The words soared aloft and unleashed the power of Life itself. As lightning strikes iron and flashes to earth, so the infinite energy of creation blazed through the rabbi into the coarse clay. Staggering, the rabbi lifted his arms higher and uttered the Holy Name. Howling wind and torrential rain lashed down. Writhing columns of steam shrieked from the figure.

There, wreathed in vapor, lay a giant man: complete and perfect. The rabbi knelt and engraved the word emet—Truth—upon the creature's forehead. Instantly, the giant's chest expanded like bellows. A deep breath shuddered from his lips.

"Golem!" commanded the rabbi. "Awake!"

Golem's eyes opened, murky and unblinking. "Father," his great voice rumbled, "was this wise to do—?"


"Heads or tails?"

The score, as Marc has kept it in his head: one hundred and thirty-seven for heads, one hundred and twenty-one for tails. "Heads."

Steven flips the coin. A flash of gold in the air, catching the sunlight, before being slapped onto the back of his hand. It will come up blank. Steven will flip it over. The backside will be heads, and when it's flipped back over to reveal the tails, Marc will call it tails.

But it isn't really tails. When the coin is flipped it comes up blank, ready to be pressed into the shape that it always has been.

Marc has spent a lot of his life in denial about a vast number of things. Maybe it's time he's stopped.

Before Steven lifts his hand to reveal the coin, Marc admits something that he's suspected for a long time. "We have to go back inside."


Rain and wind beats down torrentially on the AMTRAK as its treads roll over the debris-filled street. Trees, cars, buildings, power lines: nothing remains untouched. Inside the vehicle, no one speaks—no one dares to, as if breaking the silence would provoke the hurricane's wrath. All are tense. All are prepared for the door to drop and be met by ruin.

Jake breathes deep. Adjusts the straps of his vest. The rain doesn't bother him as much as it would others.

The AMTRAK stops. The bay door drops. The hurricane bursts inside, and Master Sergeant Blackwood shouts for them to go, go, go. The six of them pour out, into the storm, water up to their sternums. Above, the sky is black with rage. The first floor of the church has already been washed away by the flood, but on the steps up to the second floor refugees huddle with their arms reaching out to the approaching military men, crying, exhausted. Help, they weep. Please.

Matthews grabs the first. Campos, the second. Jake scoops up the third: a twig of a teenager that grabs onto his shoulders with a grip that threatens to never release him.

"Gracias, gracias, gracias." She chants her thanks under her breath, only just audible above the torrential rainfall as Jake wades through the storm, back to the vehicle.

Jake shakes his head, tightening his grip on her as the water threatens to sweep her away from him. "No. No tienes que agradecerme." You don't have to thank me.

"Pensé que iba a morir," she stutters as they step into the AMTRAC. I thought I was going to die.

Jake sets her on the seat and falls to his knee before her, rubbing warmth into her freezing arms. "No vas a morir, cariño," he tells her. You're not going to die, sweetheart. She looks up at him through tear-clumped eyelashes and he stares back at her, resolute. "No vas a morir por mucho tiempo." You're not going to die for a very long time.

The girl lurches forward, trapping Jake into a tight hug as she breaks down. Jake closes his eyes tight as he wraps his arms around her.

Outside the vehicle, the hurricane rages on.


The square is busy tonight. Crowds ungulate into one great mass around the various street performers—the fire breathers, the buskers, the magicians. Jakes slides past them all, tugging his hat down low. None of them are the man that he wants.

On the bench by the fountain, a gold-painted man points. Jake stands in front of him and waves a twenty pound note in front of his eyes.

"Talk to me, Crawley," he says.

The eyes flicker from the note to Jake before Crawley slowly, arduously, stretches. "My boy, not that it isn't a joy to see you and your money once more, but lately I am far more used to you talking to me."

Jake clicks his teeth. Why was it Crawley that Steven had to view as a discount shrink? "Just—ignore what I'm saying when I talk to you in a British accent. It's nonsense."

Crawley presses one hand to his chest, rapidly blinking. "My, it's never nonsense to me," he says, faux-offended on Steven's behalf. "Why haven't you told me plainly how lonely you are, Jake? Or how poorly your coworkers see you—they don't even remember your name! Though, I suppose you don't even remember your name, on occasion."

Jake rolls his eyes heavenwards and prays for patience. He waves the twenty pound note as a reminder. "I need information, Crawley. People with tattoos of scales on their arms. Where do they gather? I know you've seen them."

A moment of stillness as Crawley weighs the information with the monetary gain, eyes flickering from the money to Jake. Crawley has shrewd eyes, made even more so by the gold paint that surrounds the hazy blue of his irises. Finally, he reaches forward and plucks the note from between Jake's fingers and drops it into the hat on the ground.

"They pass through here at times," he says. "There's nothing suspicious about them except for their eyes. Indeed, it's their eyes: so very self-assured. All different types of people, they are. The young, the old, the wealthy, the poor. They pass though the square, going east. Chelsea, perhaps. Mayfair. I wouldn't know exactly where."

Jake drops a ten pound note into the hat.

"A neighborhood in Chelsea has recently seen good fortune," Crawley says, leaning forward. His smile is sly. "A benefactor cleaned up its streets. In exchange, well—from the outside, I suppose, it seems as though he's gained a cult following. Perhaps you'll find what you need there."

A pleased grin stretches across Jake's face. "Appreciate the tip, Crawley. Stay safe out here, alright?"

Crawley sniffs as he leans forward and points. "There's only so much trouble a statue can fall into, my boy. What about you?" Then his eyes unfocus, and he stills, calcified. A living sculpture, with his eyes and ears ever open.

Jake sniffs before turning on heel and walking out of the square, digging the phone out of his pocket. He stops right before imputing Layla's number before rubbing his brow and flipping it back closed. Right. No more Layla.

"You'll get Marc there, right?" He asks the air.

A rumbling hum fills his mind, deep and powerful. I shall point him in the direction, Khonshu answers. Your assistance is appreciated as always, dear interloper.


Cold walls. Cold walls. The walls are so cold. Jake is so cold.

The nurse said that it's only a side effect of the medicine cocktail.

"What prompted you to join the Marines, Marc? You had done well, hiding your illness, before. Why join them when it would put you under so much scrutiny?"

Jake blinks languidly. Doctor Ellis blinks back at him, that fakeass half-smile on her face. Her office tastes like… old carpet. Mustiness sits heavy on Jake's useless, fat tongue. How the fuck do they expect anyone to get treatment in this shithole when they drug their patients up to their fucking gills? No, shit, that's right. They don't really treat anyone in this place, just uses the patients to squeeze out government funding. Padding their fucking pockets. Pigs.

Doctor Ellis taps her pen on the table, gaining Jake's attention once more. He fucking hates when she does that, like he's some kind of fucking fish. Tap, tap, tapping on the glass. "Did you crave the structure of the military? The, hm, companionship in a band of brothers?"

Why the Marines, why the Marines? Why would a homeless youth join the military as soon as he could? Who knows, doc. Make the connections on your own. Pinche pendejo.

Jake drifts for a bit. He's tired. Marc is tired. Steven—Steven hasn't been around for a while. Not since the dishonorable discharge. So tired, and so cold. There's a black hole in his chest, eating up his heart.

"Marc. Marc Spector? Anyone home? Jesus. Just another body to fill the rooms, I guess. What a waste of a man."

A burning hot hand takes his chin. Jake's eyes flicker open, startled, as Doctor Ellis peers down at him, eyes flat.

"I wonder what made you crack," she hums. "Violence, likely. That's what happens to people like you. Do you think you deserved it, Marc? Did you deserve to be hurt?"

Jakes squeezes his eyes tight. Six seconds later, Doctor Ellis lays flat on her desk, choking on her own blood with that stupid fucking pen stuck in her throat. To her, it had been a writing utensil. To her dog, a chew toy. For Jake Lockley, it was a weapon.

Whoops. His bad.

Rolling his shoulders, Jake stands. Wobbles a little, catches himself on the corpse of Doctor Ellis. The drugs make everything spin, but he'll fight through it. He has to if he wants to get out of this hell.


Within the black of the coffin, rage eventually washes away and leaves him crumpled at the bottom, curled in on himself as much as he can be. A doll with its strings cut. The only effort at escape he makes is slapping his palm on the wall of his stone prison slowly, weakly. Thump. Thump. Thump.

This place can only be Gehinom. Being confined in a stone coffin is an odd purgatory, certainly—he had expected more heat and pain as his soul is cleansed. Maybe it's a self-led, do-it-yourself purgatory. Realize your mistakes on your own and repent.

He's made a lot of decisions in his life. The number of people who have been harmed by his actions are astronomical, but he regrets only a handful of them—the others had received what they deserved. But those that he regrets, those few true mistakes that he's made?

He slaps at the wall of the coffin. Thump. Thump. Thump.

I'm sorry. Let me out. I'm sorry. Let me out. Please. Please. Please.

The story told to them by their father, continued:

Rabbi Loew led Golem to the attic above his study. "You have been created for one reason: to protect the Jews. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Golem.

"You will guard the ghetto at night and catch those planting false evidence of the Blood Lie. They are godless men, carrying bottles of blood or the body of a missing child. You must bring them unharmed to the authorities. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Golem.

"By day, you will be a servant in the synagogue—a shamash. Your name will be Joseph. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Golem. He stared at the rabbi. "How long shall I live?"

This startled Rabbi Loew. "Until the Jews are no longer in danger," he replied. "Then you will return to the earth from whence you came. Do you understand?"

Golem said nothing. "Do you understand, Joseph?" repeated Rabbi Loew.

"Yes," said Golem.

Golem's arrival shocked Rabbi Loew's people, but the rabbi calmed them, telling them that Joseph was a blessing unto all of them. And so it was: every night, Golem frustrated efforts to spread the Blood Lie, and upon every morning, Golem stared at the sunrise. "The sky changes from black to blue," Golem said one morning. "It is very beautiful."

Rabbi Loew thought Golem as simple, for the creature was filled with wonder over the smallest things—the scent of a rose, the flight of a pigeon. "Joseph!" he replied. "Finish your work. Then you can watch the sun rise—"


A whiskey glass smashes on the wall next to Jake's head. He presses back, far into the corner of his room, while his mother seethes in the doorway. Her face is a rictus of fury, disgusting in its transparency.

"You never fucking learn," she says, dangerously soft when compared to her stone-carved expression. She walks on light feet to his closet, reaches in—but the belts are missing. Jake moved them under his mattress the night before because he knew this would happen again. Every anniversary, like clockwork, she brings out the worst monster that hides in her soul. Jake wanted to be proactive, this time.

Mom hangs her head and huffs out a laugh. "Very smart, Marc." Slowly, like a true carnivore, she stalks over to him before kneeling and putting her hand on his shoulder. Slowly, her face distorts from rage to a blank tranquility.

Jake's heart stills.

Mom moves her hand to his throat. "Did you really think you could escape your punishment?"


Jake jogs across the pedestrian crosswalk, waving a thanks to the car that stopped for him. Passes by Horner Park, crosses over the bridge. His schoolbag hits his back with every quick, excited step. At North Maplewood Avenue, he starts scanning the shopfronts until he finds the Brownstone Antique Mall—a dusty, hole-in-the-wall building smashed between two larger structures. Through the glass front can be seen furniture stacked to the ceiling and shelves bending under the mass amount of junk placed on top of them.

A perfect place to find hidden treasures.

An electronic bell rings when Jake goes inside. The taste of decades gone by is nearly overpowering, but it's the same way in every antique and thrift store, so Jake's gotten used to it. He skips up to the man at the counter—a glass counter, where all the real valuable stuff is locked away. Jake isn't interested in any of that.

"How may I help you, son?" The clerk asks, voice thick with a Polish accent. He's a ruddy-face man, with a shock of white hair and wrists as thin as bird bones. The nametag reveals that his name is Bernie.

Jake nods, concealing his hopeful excitement with a mask of maturity. He has to be serious. This is a business transaction, and business transactions are of the utmost importance. "Yeah, I was wonderin' if you got any baseball cards? Or stamps, or coins. Or all of 'em."

When Bernie smiles, his eyes practically disappear into the wrinkled folds of his face. "I do believe that I have a few things that would interest you. Follow me, yes."

Traversing the shop is difficult. Jake watches as Bernie naturally moves between the rickety stacks before copying his movements. Squeeze between this armoire and bookshelf, duck under this fake hanging plant, shimmy over the seat of this armchair. It's a bit easier for Jake, on account of his smaller size.

Then, like a hidden grotto, there's a clear space in the forest of furniture and tchotchkes. A smaller glass cabinet stands, with spotlights and everything inside it. Bernie motions Jake closer.

"The high shelf items are too pricey for the pocket money of a middle schooler," he says with light humor, "but I shall see you walk out of here with something. Do you like baseball cards, coins, or stamps most?"

Jake glues himself to the glass, eyes wide. The cabinet is a treasure trove. There are all star, team leader, and league leader cards; commemorative coins and error coins; and rolls upon rolls upon rolls of stamps.

"I like 'em all," he says. Sure, he started with baseball cards because Marc also liked baseball cards. Then he heard about coin collecting, and then he heard about stamp collecting, and now he has three different stock books for his things hidden throughout his bedroom where no one would find them.

Collecting feels good. There's always a lightness sitting under Jake's rib cage when, late at night, he flips on his desk lamp and drags out his books to look through his pages. Everything was safe and neat and tidy behind their plastic covers. Adding more things to his collection results in nothing but pure, uncomplicated joy. If he's one thing, he's a simple soul.

Jake points. "I'll take those, please."


White sterile halls stretch out into infinity. The only psychiatric wards that look like this are the ones from fiction, Marc knows. He doesn't remember much about the one he was involuntarily admitted into after being discharged from the Marines, but he recalls thinking that it looked startlingly like a plain and unkempt office building, complete with drab carpet squares and dull fluorescent lights. Nothing as blindingly bright as this. And it had smelled bad. Or—tasted bad? He can't recall.

He and Steven creep forward lightly, tentatively. Marc keeps his eyes forward resolutely, while Steven's occasionally stray towards the windows in the doors around them before snapping to the ground. Sand trails behind them with each footstep.

"It's the missing time, innit?" Steven says. One of his hands rubs his thumb on the coin while the other keeps a stranglehold on the front of his shirt. "Those blokes in Cairo."

Marc bites the inside of his cheek. He doesn't want to say it. If he speaks it into life, then it becomes a truth: something blatant and impossible to ignore any longer. Staying silent would be apropos to keeping those secrets that have hurt every relationship he's been in, though, and Marc—he's trying to do better. Be better.

"It's more than Cairo," he admits, forcing his voice flat and unaffected to hide how much he is truly shaken by this. "Ever since all this started, there were times that I would black out completely. When it happened, I always thought that it was just you and that I was being shoved back somewhere that I couldn't see anything. Earlier, you were right. There's something we're missing, and it's keeping our scales from balancing."

"That's less than reassuring to hear," Steven mutters. His voice is more upbeat than discomforted by this new information. Maybe, at this point, there's nothing that can take the wind out of his sails. "So, if you weren't in control of the body, and I wasn't in control of the body…?"

Marc doesn't say anything. The conclusion is obvious.


"Jake," the voice over the phone chokes, "it's my boys. Please, you've gotta help me. Someone took them. They just—my god, they took my babies."

Despite being surrounded by fresh bodies there is nothing more important in Jake's world at this moment than the tears audible in Gena's voice. The cape of the ceremonial armor snaps as he jumps over the corpses and runs out of the Manhattan dockyard like a white bolt of lightning in the night. "Gena, sweetheart, I'll help. Of course I'll help, you've always been good to me. Take some deep breaths for me, alright? Tell me what happened."

Her breaths slowly even out, but the words still come out in a rush. "We were locking up the diner, and this van—it pulled up, and these guys got out. They tried to get me, but I keep pepper spray in my pocket, you know? But Ricky and Ray, they didn't have anything and I—I tried to get them back but—they pulled them into the van, and then they were gone."

The black hole in Jake's chest expands rapidly, eating up every scrap of warmth in his soul. A snarl forms on his face, hidden by the wrapping of the mask, but his voice stays even. "That's good info, Gena. You got any cameras outside the diner? Anything that would catch the plate number on the van?"

"No. But I do have the bastard I pepper sprayed locked in the diner's freezer."

"That's my gal. Sit tight and I'll be there soon. After tonight, no one is gonna touch you or your boys ever again, you hear? Never again." Jake snaps the phone shut and stuffs it in the lines of the suit. His hands itch for the warmth of blood to cover up the cold fear that sits in his chest.

Purge the perpetrators of this world, my knight, Khonshu hisses. Never give them rest, never give them slack. Go forth and enact my will.

The prompting was unneeded. Jake's already taking off for Brooklyn.


Jake has already experienced the inevitability of death once.

The second time, the feeling creeps up slower. More maliciously. Marc and Layla are arguing. They're distracted thanks to interpersonal issues, again. Jake's paying attention, despite tucked away in the back of the shared mind: he hears the footsteps that Marc's urgent words speak over and feels that creeping shiver that slithers up Marc's back and listens to the metallic sounds of guns being checked over in preparation of being fired.

Déjà vu hits Jake hard—ha, as hard as a bullet.

He struggles to get to the front of the mind, but Marc's too solid, sharp with his worry about Layla, about Khonshu, about Ammit.

Pay attention! Jake screams. They're here! They're going to—let me out—let me take the bullets—they're going to—let me out!

Jake had failed the first time, when Bushman had betrayed Marc and the archeologists. He had been strong enough to front in time to take the bullets, but was too weak to stay in the front long enough to be the one to bleed out. Marc had been the one forced to drag himself to Khonshu's temple, looking for a place to die.

It was only by the grace of Khonshu that Marc survived—Jake had been useless. Now, Khonshu isn't around to perform miracles anymore while Marc is about to meet his death and once more and Jake is still too weak to do anything of worth.

Layla disappears. Marc picks up the ax. Harrow and his men step out from their cover.

Let me do this for us, Jake begs, unheard and unseen. Let me die for us, once and for all. Let me take the hit.

Two gunshots ring out in the tomb, and for the second time, Jake Lockley has failed to do the one thing he was made to do. If he's one thing, he's a failure.


The story told to them by their father, concluded:

With the jail full of Golem's arrests, the thoughtful people of Prague began to see the Blood Lie for the slander it was. This enraged the enemies of the Jews. They gathered a mob and marched to the ghetto, hoping to start a riot.

Rabbi Loew summoned Golem and hurried to the gates of the ghetto. The giant seemed taller than before; the rabbi could barely see the mark of Truth on his forehead.

When the mob stormed the gates, the massive doors swayed but held with Golem standing before them while the Jews, outnumbered and weaponless, waited silently. When the battering ram arrived, Golem stood taller and taller, holding them closed, until the very wood of the gate splintered.

Then the gates came crashing down. The mob poured into the ghetto.

The first wave of attackers screamed in terror when they saw Golem looming above them. With the back of his hand, he swept them aside. Still the rabble surged in, propelled by those in the back. Golem took hold of the battering ram and, snapping it in two, raked great furrows in the crowd.

Leaving the dead and wounded, the mob fled in panic, and Golem threw the broken battering ram after them. He then lifted the shattered gates and hung them on their ruined hinges before he plodded back into the ghetto.

The next day, Rabbi Loew was summoned to Prague Castle. "What will you do now?" demanded the emperor. "Will you conquer this city with your giant and enslave us all?"

"Would a people celebrate the end of their own slaver to inflict a slavery on others?" replied the rabbi. "No! Golem was created to protect the Jews. He has no other purpose."

"How long will the monster live?" asked the emperor.

"Until the Jews are no longer in danger," answered Rabbi Loew.

"Then I guarantee the safety of your people," the emperor declared. "Destroy Golem!"

"It will be done," said the rabbi. "But if we are threatened again, Golem will return, stronger than before."

In the ghetto, the rabbi found Golem in the cemetery, gazing at the tombstones. "Joseph," he said softly. "Come here."

"No," said Golem.

"Why not?" asked the rabbi.

"The Jews are safe," Golem said. "Now you will return me to the earth."

"Yes," said Rabbi Loew. "Your purpose is at an end."

Golem regarded the setting sun. He raised his face to the fading light. "Father," said Golem, "will I remember this?"

"No," said Rabbi Loew. "You will be clay."

Golem leaned down to him. "Then I shall not obey you," he said.

"You have no choice, Joseph." The rabbi lashed out with his staff, erasing the first letter—aleph—from the word on Golem's forehead. At this, emet—Truth—became met: Death.

Golem staggered and fell to his knees. "Oh, Father!" he pleaded. "Do not do this to me!" Even as he lifted his mighty hands, they were dissolving.

"Please!" Golem cried. "Please let me live! I did all that you asked of me! Life is so… precious… to me!" With that, he collapsed into clay—

Jake doesn't like this story very much. He stops listening.


The house is quiet, except for the rasp of Jake's breath against his swollen throat. Unconsciousness teases at him, tugging him between oblivion and alertness. His bed is only feet away but he stays where he had collapsed earlier. There isn't much reason to get up, not when the black hole in his chest eats away at his every care in the world.

He grabbed the belt this time. He grabbed it and took it away from her, just like he's been thinking about since the beginning.

Somehow, the resulting pain hurt worse than anything she'd dealt out before. There was something to the combination of the torment mixed with his own frustration at his failure. Nothing will ever change, no matter what he does: if he hides what she beats him with, if he takes it from her hands, if he stays still and takes the pain dealt out. Being proactive, being reactive, everything he does ends with Jake on the floor.

The black hole in his chest widens, expanding throughout his entire body. Cold and corrupting. No more, he tells himself as he stands on shaking, smarting legs. For Marc, for Steven: no more.

The house is quiet. Jake glides down the stairs, unnoticed by the night's shadows and stars. In the living room, his mother sleeps on the couch, her hand grazing the bottle of whiskey tipped over on the floor. The muted television throws rapidly-shifting light throughout the room. He ignores the scene in favor of the kitchen, opening the cutlery drawer and retrieving a steak knife.

Jake stands above the sleeping form of his mother. Despite being the one fronting, he feels impossibly far away from the body he inhabits. He's up in the sky, in the stars. Jake's sitting on the hook of the crescent moon, watching as his hands wrap around the handle of the knife and raise it in the air.

Where should he stab to give her the quickest death? Even if she doesn't care about the pain he endures because of her—for her—he doesn't want his mother to have to experience the same. The heart? The throat? The head? He doesn't think that a knife can go through a skull. Slowly, he brings the knife down until the point touches her chest, bearing down just enough that her shirt wrinkles.

In sleep, her face is loose. Dreams wipe away the furrow between her brow, relax the strained lines around her eyes. There's a gentle smile tugging at the corners of her lips; a smile that's likely reserved for a dream of her and Randall and Dad, shopping for school supplies or going camping or having some other perfect, benign day.

Does hurting him make her sleep easier? Does it give her something to feed the black hole in her own chest?

Jake remembers when she used to smile at Marc like she now only does in her sleep. A lifetime ago, Mom smirked while slyly cheating during game night, or grinned because Marc effortlessly repeated her Spanish, or beam simply because she saw him walk into the room.

How could he think of hurting his mother? His mamá?

Jake takes one step backwards, then another. He wavers, for just one moment, before breaking for the stairs and fleeing as those horrible thoughts nip at his heels—the good thoughts, and the bad ones. In his bedroom, he throws the knife under his bed before crawling beneath the covers.

The house is quiet.


No one is going to save him.

He rests his head against the back of the coffin. With every breath he tries to take, his lungs hiccup. His nails weep blood, and his broken nose stings. The palm of his hand is raw from scrabbling against stone.

Maybe it would be best if he stays locked away, like the secret he always has been. The other two never liked the aftermath of the things he did in order to protect him. Time and time again, they've been horrified by the blood that he leaves behind on their hands.

It's always been a bit fucking ironic that he claims to be their protector. From the very beginning he failed to truly protect them—always reacting to the pain instead of being proactive. Now finally comes the time where Marc and Steven grow out of needing him around. The brand of safety he brings along with him isn't necessary any longer.

If he's one thing, he's a blade that should be locked away and left to rust.


Jake sits on the apartment balcony with his feet propped up on the railing, listening as the rest of London wakes up to a gray dawn. The night sky is always a beautiful tapestry but if he were to be honest, Jake's always liked to watch it be bleached away before his very eyes before the solar rays dye it in vibrant shades of ombre. The rise of every dawn is a blessing that can only be appreciated, and never expected.

The coffee in his grasp keeps the cold in his hands at bay. Petrichor hangs in the air from the night's rainfall, intoxicating and metallic. Curtains flutter open as neighbors rise and allow the birthing light to chase away the remains of drowsy dreams. On the street below, cars trundle on. Occasionally one cruises by with lowered windows that allow music to bounce up the brownstone buildings. In a windowsill across the way, an orange cat jumps up and joins Jake in watching the world, tail flicking with interest.

"Good morning."

Jake tilts his head back to languidly smile up at Layla, who stands behind him. She's still in her rumpled sleep clothes, hair tied back into a bun that had been tight the night before, but now rests somewhere around her shoulders. She smiles back down at him.

"Es una hermosa mañana," he says. It's a beautiful morning. "¿Acompáñame?" Join me?

Layla hums, happily, as she takes the chair next to his. Jake passes over the coffee—he doesn't care for the bitter taste. "Por supuesto," she says as she takes a sip. Of course. "What are we looking at this morning?"

"Whatever the cat's looking at. I think they see things that human eyes can't. I'm wondering if we can learn the secrets of the feline race if we look at what it looks at for long enough."

Laughter bubbles up from Layla's throat. "And what kind of secrets would those be?"

"¿Cómo podría saberlo?" Jake asks, a clever light in his eyes. How should I know? "Secrets are secrets for a reason. If I already knew what I would learn, then I wouldn't follow the cat's eyes."

Layla huffs, tucking her feet under her. "Is that some kind of proverb? Something, something, something, you never know what you'll learn until you take action to discover it?"

"If it is, I don't know what situation a proverb like that would apply to."

Silence settles over them as a well-used quilt as they both look to what catches the attention of their neighbor's cat. The pigeons, the cars, the pedestrians, and occasionally, nothing but thin air. If both Jake and Layla especially strain their eyes at the latter—well, no one but themselves will ever know.

"I was thinking we could pop over to the bakery," Layla says when the cat jumps off the windowsill and out of sight. "Grab something for breakfast, and a baguette for dinner tonight. Thoughts?"

Jake's mouth waters. When was the last time he had fresh bread? The thought of it, warm out of the oven, is tantalizing in its power. Sprouted grain, brioche, challah, sourdough, pumpernickel, rye. Humanity, he believes, was created to bake bread. Heaven envies man for first dreaming of mixing wheat and water.

But it's time for him to tuck himself away again, back into the hazy nothing within his head. This balcony, the view, this sense of peace, Layla's easy companionship—none of it is Jake's to claim. The easy, simple, pleasurable parts of life are for Marc and Steven. Jake is only there to make sure they get to experience that.

"The bakery sounds good," he answers for Marc anyway, because even if he can't be the one to eat the bread, he sure as hell can get it as a second-hand experience.


An electronic bell rings as Jake steps into Brownstone Antique Mall, his bag tucked possessively at his side. The furniture maze has shifted once again—there's an oak dining table blocking the entryway, whereas a couple months ago, it had been a pool table.

Bernie raps his knuckles against the counter, face lighting up. "Jake, son. Look at you, taller again. Soon enough you shall be towering over me!" Jake is not especially tall, but Bernie is exceptionally short. This had flown over Jake's head when he first came to the shop as a twelve year old, but at seventeen, the difference is obvious. Bernie continues, face wrinkling in his signature mischievous smile, "I have hidden away something especially good for you. Just for you, something a collector of your caliber would appreciate."

Jake can't do this. He can't fucking do this. He wants to break down, right here.

But hunger is gnawing on his stomach.

"I gotta sell," he blurts out, ripping off the bandage. When Bernie blinks at him, surprised, Jake elaborates. "My collection. I gotta sell it." He puts his bag on the counter and takes out all three of his stock books, opening each up to reveal the results of five years of fervent collection. His cards, coins, and stamps: the only sign of Jake Lockley's existence, bought and paid for with scrounged pocket money and stolen afternoons spent working and being paid cash under the table.

Bernie draws the books closer, pulling his reading glasses from his pocket and putting them on. He paws through the pages, bushy white brows drawn low over his eyes. After only thirty seconds, he looks at Jake over his glasses. "You do not want to sell that which you love, Jake."

Of course he doesn't. There's nothing else for it, though—Marc is strapped for cash, and those off-books jobs aren't consistent. Right now Marc's living in a shitty, decommissioned taxicab that was bought with the last of the money so that he could have heat during the winter.

Jake spent five years arduously building his collections. He knows they're worth more monetarily than they are emotionally, in the face of starvation.

But he doesn't tell that to Bernie. He clenches his jaw tight and stays silent.

Silence lasts for nearly a minute before Bernie hums, closing the stock books and then talking so rapidly that his words are almost victim to the thickness of his Polish accent. "Business has been good lately. Very good! And you know you are my favorite son, yes? A good young man, you are. Good young men, good business, they go hand in hand. I cannot have one without the other."

Jake leans away from the counter as Bernie busies himself by organizing the many stray papers and payment stubs that litter his counter. Part of him wants to ask what the old man's on about, but he keeps his jaw clamped shut.

"Look at all this evidence of such a thing! Oh," Bernie continues, theatrically forlorn as he tosses papers around, "what would I do without the good business from my good young man? If he loses his collection, he may never start anew! Very bad for business, if he does not buy from me. So, Jake, son, I offer a proposition."

"Uh," Jake says. "Alright."

Bernie opens his register. "Your books are yours, forever. You always keep them, and when you are at a loss of what to do, you look to them and think of your good friend Bernard. And now I loan you this, so that someday in the future, you can come back and spend double. Yes, yes, it is an excellent plan, thank you for saying such."

From the register, Bernie takes two twenty dollar bills before grabbing Jake's hand and placing them in it. Jake stutters a denial, trying to shove the money back out, but the old man shows a surprising amount of strength by closing Jake's hand around the bills.

"No, no, I can't just—you earned this, I haven't done—" Jake stammers before Bernie interrupts.

"You have earned it for the many days you have come to keep a lonely old man company," he speaks, steady and sure. "I do not know what troubles you in the moment, son, but I know that you will overcome it. Take your books, now, go, go! Do not sell them, even for the price of a soul."

Two weeks later, Bernie the Antique Clerk passes in his sleep and leaves Jake with a debt that he can never repay.


A week after involuntarily being dragged along into becoming the servant of an Egyptian god, a man finally decides to introduce himself to the mysterious benefactor that saved the life of Marc Spector which had, in turn, saved a total of three lives. Jake has waited long enough to make himself known.

Dancing across the rooftops of Cairo, Marc is a phantom in the light of the full moon, complete with ghastly eyes of glowing white radiating from under the cowl of Khonshu's ceremonial armor. On his chest, the golden crescent darts glint on brief snatches of light: they are both a reminder of the god he serves and how easily he can draw his weapon and, in turn, draw blood. He is a knight, a fist of justice, a true Avatar—

The stupid fucking cape tangles in Marc's legs as he jumps, and he falls in the crevice between two buildings.

—and he is a man still learning to navigate his new armor and the powers that come with it.

Jake catches the lip of the rooftop before the body goes barreling into the street below. With a grunt, he heaves himself up and over, getting to his feet and dusting off his hands. He swears, both Marc and Steven have done something in their lives that made gravity pledge to do its damndest to take them to the grave.

When he looks up, a god looms over him. A thunderous sensation presses in on Jake's body, as though the weight of a god's gaze is a stress pressing in on him like water at the sea floor. Stars draw closer to the earth, elongating and distorted, and the winds blow in the taste of millennia long-past. You are not Marc Spector, Khonshu intones, the voice reverberating from everywhere and nowhere. He cocks his head to focus one massive, empty orbital cavity on Jake. Nor are you the worm. Marc has failed to mention your presence.

The Moon Knight armor slithers and falls away from Jake's body, disappearing from whence it came. He tilts his chin up. "Marc can't tell you things he doesn't know. Things he'll never know."

Khonshu stays silent for a few moments, contemplating, peering into Jake's soul. The pressure increases before falling away entirely: the examination of Jake is finished. You are an interesting interloper. Your mind… it twists. What is it you have to say?

Jake leans his hip against a vent and crosses his arms. "Not much. A thanks, for saving this body and everyone in it. And maybe to make a deal of my own—just between me and you."

Like any good enterprising devil, Khonshu is unable to pass up the temptation of a pact. I am listening.

There's a black hole in Jake's chest, and it's been leaking out of his body for a long time. Into his hands, into his head, chilling him down to the marrow of his bone. The black hole drips from his tongue when he speaks. "The man who tried to kill Marc, Raul Bushman. I want him dead and I want it by my fucking hand. Help me find him, and I'll be in your debt." For now.

Justice, Khonshu hisses. It shall come to pass. Your proposition is accepted, interloper. I will find Raul Bushman, and you will be the Knight to witness his last breath.

The smile that creeps across Jake's face is wholly satisfied. A week, a year, a decade—the amount of time until Bushman's execution doesn't matter. Jake will atone for failing Marc in the desert along with every failure up to this point, all of which are tallied into a neat score in his mind; all of which are proof that maybe, he has been unneeded for the entirety of his existence.

Bushman will die and then, maybe, the thing known as Jake Lockley will finally crumble back into clay. If he's one thing—well, he's many things, but most of all he's prepared for the inevitable.


Thump. Thump. Thump.

Books filled with collections, cash appearing in his wallet, combat that he starts and doesn't remember finishing, sporadic clues that lead him right to where he wants to be.

Marc counts up all the oddities in his already-odd life, and doesn't know what to do with the sum that lands at his feet. Is this how Steven felt, learning that a stranger bounced around inside his head, knocking books off shelves and staining white couches with wine? To have no idea what their motivation was, no idea what they use your hands to do?

No, that's not the entire truth. Marc has a vague idea of those motivations, those actions: collections, cash, combat, clues.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A darkly painted sarcophagus stands tall in a white sterile room—the very same one that he and Steven had walked past before meeting Taweret. Muffled screams no longer emanate from it, and the shaking has stopped. Now only slow, dull thuds break the silence.

That, and Steven. "Oh my stars," he utters as he peeks over Marc's shoulder, through the doorway. "Would that happen to be—?"

"Him," Marc finishes lowly.

"Really? I thought that some stranger was trapped on this boat with us." Steven snorts as he slips past Marc, who unsuccessfully attempts to hold him back. He crouches in front of the sarcophagus, fingers bushing against the carvings etched into the stone legs. "Though I suppose calling him a stranger isn't too far-fetched. No, I'm talking about this. A djed pillar, wadjet eye, cartouche, shenu… these all imply—"

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Startled, Steven bounces to his feet and jumps back from the sarcophagus while Marc steps behind him and grabs his shoulder. "Are they warnings about a Pandora's box situation?" he asks.

"Well, no—"

"Then we have to open it," Marc says. "To balance the hearts, and escape the Duat, and stop Harrow. No matter what he's like—no matter what he might have done—we have to stop Harrow."

Steven gives him a nervous smile over his shoulder. "Just another day in our lives, yeah?"


Stone scrapes across stone as dawn pierces through the desolate darkness. Crumpled at the foot of the sarcophagus, Jake Lockley tilts his face up to greet the white sun. After his eyes adjust, he grins and feels just a little bit warmer at the two men peering down at him. "Te tomó bastante tiempo."

It took you long enough.


In Steven's hand, a coin gains a third face: a djed pillar.


End Notes:

marc on the boat: [anakin skywalker voice] i don't like sand. it's coarse and rough and gets everywhere.

this was very fun to write and also happens to be the only piece of writing i've finished since college, so [confetti poppers]

thinking of making a sequel to this, and then maybe perhaps even a third part, but those ideas is suuuper hazy and honestly i'm blessed that i even finished this. honestly i just wanted to write this so i could make jake an old man with old man interests, such people watching and collecting things and bread enjoyment and gossiping while also being a violent lil guy and also perhaps a weirdo.

anyway, hope this was enjoyable. another reminder that should anything strike as off about any of the subject depicted, shoot me and then shoot me a message so i can fix it up. thanks for reading the fic, and then reading my super long and rambling notes. lots of love, sickapothecary.