Content warnings: uncensored cussing, canon events and triggers

Media: Moon Knight S1E3 "The Friendly Type", references to Primeval S3E9 and S3E10

Word count: 1,834

Sarah was surprised to learn that Lagaro was the 'associate' and 'family friend' that Layla had talked about. After collecting a handful of items from Sarah's flat, Layla had brought them to the woman's home. Introductions had been unnecessary and Sarah had made a beeline for the toilet to give herself a few minutes to calm down.

She left twenty minutes later.

Hey, she was having a rough few days.

"And then I, uh, I- I found him, with the scarab, living twenty minutes from our old place." Layla was venting. Lagaro gave her a hand signal, and she abruptly sat up straighter, pasting on a fake smile. The camera flashed. "Now he's, uh, he's probably going to get himself killed running around Cairo."

"Himself, and my best friend with him." Sarah grumbled as the camera took another picture.

"That's why you look so unhappy to be going home."

"Anxious, maybe." Layla corrected, looking annoyed. Lagaro opened a desk drawer and placed something on the top- a jar of… marpoles? "It's been ten years."

"Not worried you might've burned too many bridges, all those stolen relics and cheeky antiques?" Lagaro asked as Layla opened the jar and took a bite out of a marpole.

Sarah's eyebrows raised at this new information, and Layla took the passport from the printer as it finished. "I don't steal. They've already been stolen- that's what people forget. I take them off the black market and return them to their rightful owners." She continued, beginning to laminate the paper. With a cheeky smile, she admitted, "I might keep a few to pay the bills."

"Clever you." Lagaro assented. She picked up the laminated sheet. "Not so innocent anymore, eh? I wonder what your father would think of his little scarab now."

Placing a pair of special magnifying eyeglasses over Lagaro's eyes, Layla replied, "Hmm. We'll never know. I can't believe he let you teach me how to do all of this."

"Ha! The man indulged you. You think his dig sites were any place for a child?" Apparently satisfied with the passport, she got up. "Archaeology- one big mess of obsessive bookworms."

"Whatever happened in that desert is lost to the sands." Layla answered as she selected a binding for the passport, and Sarah sensed that it was a hard subject for her.

"It's a hard thing, exhuming the pain of the past. Easy to get stuck… fixate on what's hurt us." Legaro noted, pressing the entire item together.

Sarah willed herself not to think back to her own past, her own hurts. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stood up, plucking a marpole from the jar and stuffing it in her mouth whole.

"Great. Then I won't do either." Layla returned.

Lagaro stamped it. "Like you aren't already. I miss him too, is all. But that's your baggage, not mine. Just… avoid your old haunts. Call me sentimental, but I worry about you." She sighed, handing off the passport. "It's your turn, Sarah."

Twenty minutes later, her own fake passport was in her purse, and they left Lagaro with a parting kiss on the cheek from Layla. Sarah was used to the motorbike by now, and she didn't mind it (Layla was a fast but safe driver), but she looked forward to the 10/11-hour flight that awaited them. It would give her some time to sleep.

Egypt's familiar heat enveloped Sarah comfortingly, and she let out a pleased sigh as the sun already burned into her skin. Most of the country was dry, but Cairo was humid thanks to the Nile and nearby Mediterranean coast.

She had been here before, on many digs and expeditions and trips. It never got old. Although this time she didn't feel the usual swell of excitement in her ribcage that she had all the times prior- the heavy weight of stress and worry canceling out her typical eagerness- she still felt somewhat rejuvenated by the African sunshine.

Layla procured them a hotel room, where they both showered and changed and left their belongings before venturing out again. Sarah let Layla take the lead in picking their way through the vendors and streets, knowing that a native would always be a better guide than a seasoned traveler.

It was completely unexpected when the sky began to darken, and the women looked up at the sky to see… the moon eclipsing the sun, of all fucking things. It was an annular- that was the name, despite it not being a yearly event- and only a ring of golden red light was left around the shadow of the moon.

"Fifty quid says Khonshu's got something to this." Sarah muttered after a few moments of staring up at the celestial event.

"You're really calm about this." Layla noted.

Sarah shrugged. "When you've seen what I've seen… Egyptian deities causing eclipses really doesn't compare."

Layla tore her gaze from the sky, meeting Sarah's eyes. "What can you have seen if that's the case?"

Sarah chewed the inside of her lip. "If I told you without proof, you'd think I was mad. And I'm sorry, Layla, but I don't know or trust you enough yet to tell you everything."

Surprising her, Layla only nodded. "I understand that. In a way, I'm… I'm kinda relieved you're not just spilling your whole life story to the first person who asks you about it. I'm not the type of woman to use someone's past against them without good reason. As long as you don't hurt Marc, or help Harrow, or hurt children or something… we're good."

Sarah offered her a small smile. "Likewise."

Layla paused by a wandering vendor, exchanging rapid Arabic with him. After a few moments, she handed over some money and received two plastic bags filled with brown liquid, straws sticking out of them. "Here. It's sugar cane juice." She said, handing one to Sarah.

She took it in surprise. "Oh- thank you. You didn't have to do that."

"It's no problem. Besides, I couldn't let you wander around Cairo all day on foot without anything to drink. If you drop dead I'll have to explain it to your boyfriend."

"My boyfriend?" Sarah frowned, taking a sip of her juice. It tasted basically like very sugary water, but was cool and pleasant.

"Yeah, Steven. I think I'm finally starting to believe that he's a real person and not just a very complex alias."

Sarah nodded in understanding. "If you get the chance to get to know him, I think you'll like him. He's a really sweet bloke, very caring and supportive. He's also not my boyfriend."

"Really? You two seemed close."

"We are. We've got a lot in common and we've known each other for about four months. But we're just friends. Really. He's never seemed interested in me, and…" she trailed off, allowing her mind to turn back to her ARC days. "…well, I've got feelings for someone, but I haven't seen him in a long time. He left and went on this mission, and it was a dangerous one, and he wouldn't let me come with him. We tried to follow afterward but I… got separated from the group, and that's why I started working at the museum and met Steven."

"And you're not over this other bloke?"

Sarah shook her head, closing her eyes to imagine the last time she'd seen Danny's face. "No."

"Well, I hope you find each other someday." Layla said, and Sarah knew she meant it.

"I hope so too."

The silence that ensued was broken when the soft expression on Layla's face dropped into a scowl, her eyes fixed on something over Sarah's shoulder. "There he is."

Sarah turned around immediately, and very quickly picked Steven/Marc out of the crowd. "Please tell me you mean to confront him."

"But of course." Layla led the way, blazing through the crowd with Sarah close behind. "I hope you like attention." Remarked Layla, strolling up beside him. Sarah came up on his other side, catching the irritated look on his face. "Right guy, right place, but you're not Egyptian."

"Layla, what-" Sarah could immediately tell from the accent that this was Marc, and she frowned, wondering if Steven had had a chance to surface again since two nights ago. "-what the hell are you doing here? You shouldn't be here, and neither should she." He gestured to Sarah.

"Why?" Layla demanded. "Because my name pisses off a few people in Cairo? Who cares?"

"It's not the locals that I'm worried about." Marc returned, eyeing someone or something on the rooftop of a building behind Layla. Sarah directed her gaze there, but could see nothing and no one. Khonshu, probably.

"Come with me. I'll help you find what you need." Layla told him.

At last, Marc relented, and when they reached the women's hotel Sarah was just finishing her juice. "Get changed. Nice, but not too formal." Layla instructed her as they entered. "You can borrow something of mine, if you need to."

Layla took almost no time to gather an outfit from her luggage, stepping into the loo to change. Marc was standing at the window, staring out into the sunny cityscape.

"Everything alright?" Sarah chanced to ask, holding up two tops side-by-side, trying to decide between them.

"Everything's fine." He replied gruffly. "Are you both okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine. No major injuries from the jackal, and we haven't run into trouble since." She answered. "How's Steven?"

His broad shoulders stiffened slightly. "I'm fine physically, so he is too."

She shot him a glare. "That's not what I meant, and I think you know it."

Marc looked into one of the mirrors in the room, glaring at his reflection. After a moment, he spoke again. "Steven doesn't like being locked up in my head, but what he doesn't like even more is that you're here, in danger. He knows you can take care of yourself, and with Layla and I with you you're more than likely to survive anything that comes at you, but he really hates the thought of anything… coming at you." The corner of his mouth twitched in the barest hint of a smile. "He says he can't wait to tell you what the inside of the Great Pyramid of Giza was like."

Sarah literally dropped both tops in shock. "You were in the Great Pyramid of Giza?! What? Why?"

"You see that eclipse earlier?" She nodded, and he continued. "Khonshu did it, to summon the rest of the gods. 'The Ennead', he called them. The summit was held inside the pyramid. Don't ask me for more than that; I'm not gonna know which details you'd like to hear."

Sarah nodded understandingly, a little disappointed but mainly thrilled at the thought of hearing a firsthand account. Layla emerged from the bathroom and Sarah went in after, getting dressed. She dressed similarly to how she usually did on digs and excavations, but forewent the sunhat and braided her hair back.