Content warnings: canon events and triggers of media used, uncensored cussing, violence, etc.
Media: Moon Knight S1E3 "The Friendly Type", Moon Knight S1E4 "The Tomb"; references to Primeval S3E3, Primeval S3E5
Word count: 2,681
They acquired themselves a vehicle after collecting the bags, and Layla drove while Marc sat beside her and Sarah laid down in the backseat. She took two paracetamol dry, hoping to avoid overdoing it, and applied an instant ice pack to where Bek had hit her. The bruises were doubtlessly already forming.
"I really liked that jacket. Oh well." Marc muttered and tossed the item in question into the backseat, careful to avoid accidentally hitting Sarah in the face with it.
"What was Harrow talking about?" Layla asked, her voice brokering no argument or evasion.
"Everything that comes out of his mouth is a load of rubbish, if you ask me." Sarah grumbled truthfully. "'Running from something'- the man's bonkers, which I already knew, but being an Avatar and all that- shouldn't he be, I don't know- more likely to suspect a supernatural reason for me having to fake all my records?"
Momentarily diverted from interrogating Marc, Layla asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Sarah sighed. "It's a long story, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you. But I'm not some criminal with a dark past. I was a researcher, and my life took a turn. I nearly died and Lagaro helped me start a new life. The finer details aren't relevant. I should've bloody known better than to go back to the British Museum."
"Your turn, Marc. What was he talking about?" Layla returned to grilling her husband.
"What do you mean?" He mumbled, as if he could avoid the subject.
"He said I had a right to know."
"I have no idea." He lied. Well, Sarah though he was probably lying.
"I never told anyone why I really moved." Layla said. "I mean, but he knew, he just saw right through me."
"I don't know honey, he's just trying to mess with you. You know, he's trying to get in your mind." Evasion tactic as it was, Marc's words were true. "No, don't let him do that, you know? He's got this idea that he can see the true nature of people or some… baloney like that. If that were true I don't think he'd have a bunch of homicidal maniacs as his disciples, would he?"
"So it's not true, what he said about you and-?"
"No, no, it's not true." Marc told her. "Of course not. No, he's just trying to divide us. Don't let him get in your head."
"Every time I learn something new about you, I think, 'That's it. There can't possibly be any secrets left between us.' And then something else pops up, and it's like I've not known you at all."
"Yeah. You haven't." Marc said coldly. "You don't."
Sarah didn't have the energy or the guts to try and interject on either's behalf. Instead, she shut her eyes and tried to rest but not sleep until they reached their destination.
Layla brought the vehicle to a halt somewhere in the desert. Mountains surrounded them, but no buildings, and the sky was open for them to see the moon and stars.
They gathered around the bonnet of the vehicle, all three of them frantically trying to assemble the puzzle. Having chugged three bottles of water consecutively during the drive to alleviate the dehydration side of her throbbing headache, Sarah eventually had to step away to relieve herself.
"I'm not getting any whole constellations. It's just little pieces and fragments." Marc reported as she returned. He slammed the pieces down onto the bonnet angrily. "This is gonna take forever."
"Marc… we need Steven." Layla told her husband, whose head was in his hands. "He understands all of this. I really think it's worth giving him a shot."
Sarah scanned over the pieces with fresher eyes, but her headache wasn't helping. She shook her head. "Even I can't put all this together. Steven was always better at this end of things than I was, and I can't think straight right now."
Marc cast a glance up above the roof of the vehicle as Layla pressed him. "Marc, we can't wait. It's okay, just let go." He exclaimed in frustration, wrenching at one of the side mirrors as she continued, "We don't have time."
Marc tore off the mirror and snatched the pieces and roll of duct tape off the hood. "What are you doing?" Layla questioned as he walked away.
Sarah watched him go until eventually he paused, holding up the mirror and throwing the other items to the ground. "Alright, go ahead. You're in." He told his reflection tiredly.
Sarah only had the back view, but she could see the infinitesimal shifting in his posture and body language. "Cheers, thanks a lot." Steven's English-accented voice reached her ears a moment later, and most of the tension tight in her back, neck, and shoulders released. "Alright, yeah." He got down on the ground, quickly assembling the fabric. "Here we go."
Layla approached him slowly as he continued muttering to himself, seemingly in awe at how quickly and simply he was handling the situation. Maybe it was because the last time she'd seen him, he'd gone from a terrified nervous wreck to an enthusiastic but inexperienced combatant, only to abruptly switch over to Marc minutes later.
"Steven?" Layla queried, crouching beside him. Sarah came around her other side, sitting down on the sand crisscross applesauce. Steven's head snapped over to Layla, and he just gazed at her for a moment. Sarah's tired and sore eyes flicked between them, wondering if Steven was beginning to develop a crush on his other side's wife.
"Egyptians invented modern navigation." Or maybe not. Or maybe it was a terrible attempt at flirting. He tore off a piece of tape with his teeth as he continued to work. "There's not a lot of landmarks in the desert-"
"No, they built or had someone build most of them." Sarah interjected.
"-so, they came up with a way to get about using the sun and the stars." Steven continued. "It's bloody genius, isn't it?" He sat back, holding up the completed star-shaped star map. "Et voilà."
"Whoa." Layla breathed, reaching out to touch it.
"It's French."
"I know." She laughed, but not mockingly. She turned to look at him, but paused, and from what Sarah could see she wore the same expression on her face that Steven had worn looking at her.
Oh no.
With a pang, Sarah thought of Jenny; specifically, two conversations she had had with her old friend on two momentous days, the day that Nick Cutter had died and the day that Jenny herself had as well, albeit briefly, before leaving the ARC. The first one had been rather lighthearted, and Sarah remembered hoping that her friend wouldn't get her heart broken if Nick's interest in Jenny wasn't like Jenny's interest in him. She'd gotten her heart broken anyway when Helen murdered Nick just hours later.
The second conversation was much briefer, when Sarah had innocently inquired about the origin of a torn picture of who she had thought was Jenny. Horrified, her friend had told her that the photograph found in the late professor's belongings was not of her, but of Claudia Brown, the specter of a lost love that seemed to haunt the Scotsman with Jenny's face and Jenny's voice. Rattled by the realization that she had once been someone else, Jenny had been unsettled the rest of the day, and Sarah knew that it had been a major contributor to her decision to leave the ARC. Sarah hoped she had found happiness and love without asterisks.
It was a damn shame that she was watching something quite similar happen all over again. Steven and Marc shared the same face, and the same voice give or take an accent. It was clear that they both cared very much about Layla despite seeming to be two separate people, but Layla's growing feelings were far more complicated than the men's. Was she drawn only to the Marc she saw in Steven, or was the pull an entirely separate feeling? Sarah resolved to stay out of it if she could, but prayed that they would be able to resolve the matter with far less tragedy than her other friends.
"So what do we do with it?" Layla asked, bringing Sarah back to the present.
"Well, I'm not sure, but if- wait, hang on a minute." Standing, Steven held up the star, letting the vehicle's lights shine on it. "You see that? You see those little pinpricks there? That's a constellation."
Standing up, Sarah peeked at it over Layla's shoulder. "We should be able to triangulate the stars into coordinates, right?" Layla realized.
"Took the words right out of my mouth." Agreed Sarah.
"Let me just scan it…." Layla produced her tablet, a camera function activated as she held it up to read the constellation.
"Well, um, actually- unfortunately, it's not that simple." Steven admitted.
"Ammit was entombed literal millennia ago, right?" Sarah queried rhetorically, realizing. "Stars drift, so this isn't accurate. Unless we have a way of seeing the night sky from that night, we have no way of knowing where the tomb is according to this map."
Steven's gaze was suddenly drawn to the crest of a sand dune, away from either woman. Instinctively, Sarah looked that way, but saw nothing. "Khonshu?" She guessed.
"Yeah." Steven replied, looking back over at them for a moment. He gestured to them, and they headed up the dune.
"Can he help us?" Sarah asked.
Steven didn't answer her, looking around. "Khonshu?" He called. A moment later, he asked, "How?"
The still air moved into a breeze that started picking up into a wind, and sand swirled around their feet. Then Steven spread his arms, face pointed to the sky, and his Avatar suit- the actual suit, not Marc's fancy mummy robes getup- formed around him. "Steven, what are you doing?"
"Turning back the night sky, apparently." He replied. He looked behind him, ostensibly at Khonshu, and raised both hands as if in surrender. "Yeah? Like this?" He apparently verified with the moon god. A moment later, he began to move his arms, as if wiping a rag across a window.
Sarah gasped as the literal night sky began spinning, its domed shape obvious as it spun like a globe west-to-east. The sky, purple and blue and filled with the stars, moon, and Milky Way, raced overhead, turning back one night at a time. Glowing lines appeared in the sky- the paths of the moon over the centuries.
"Oh man! This is mental!" Steven voiced.
At last, the sky slammed to a halt again, but not the way it had been before they started moving it. "This must be it." Sarah breathed, still in awe of what she'd just witnessed.
"This is surprisingly painful." Steven informed as Layla stood up, holding up her tablet. Sarah observed that many stars were much bigger and brighter, and Orion especially shone blue and red.
"It's working." Layla reported. Sarah reached into her jacket pocket and produced her phone, snapping off as many pictures as she could.
"It's working. Yes, good." Steven muttered, straining with the apparent effort of holding the night sky two thousand years behind. A few moments later, he dropped to his knees. "I can feel my energy leaving me." He groaned, and the mask of his suit disappeared, along with the glow of his eyes. What was happening? Was Khonshu draining him of power to maintain this event, or was something else at play? "Oh God, I don't know how much longer I can do this."
Worried, Sarah ducked her head and looked at the screen of Layla's tablet. "We're almost there, just a few more seconds."
"Coordinates found." Layla's tablet announced. "29 degrees North, 25 East."
"That's it; we're good!" Sarah cried.
Steven let out a groaning breath, collapsing onto the sand as the wind died out and the sky abruptly snapped back to the modern night. Layla and Sarah each grabbed him, pulling hm to his feet. But to their dismay, he pitched forward again, unconscious. "Steven! Steven!" Sarah cried, dropping to her knees beside him. She rolled him onto his back and patted his face, but he didn't wake.
Layla joined her on the ground, equally distressed. "Steven! Marc! Come on, come on. Where are you? Marc! Come on."
And so two women sat beside the one body of (at least) two men, despairing and frightened under the starry Egyptian sky in the moonlit Sahara sands.
"Not again. Please, not again." Sarah breathed, not even realizing that she was repeating the same words Connor Temple had said as the team had desperately worked to revive Jenny from her frozen state.
"Steven, wake up! Come on! Wake the hell up!" Layla all but snapped. Looking to Sarah, she said, "We've got to get him back to the car."
Sarah nodded, and she picked up his legs while Layla grabbed the open front of his zip hoodie. Light erupted behind her, illuminating a look of terror on Layla's face, and the sound of an engine reached their ears. "Harrow's nutters?" Sarah guessed.
Layla didn't even have time to nod as gunshots rang out, striking the sand around them and sending up little grainy clouds. Sarah yelped in surprise and fright, and Layla reached over Steven's unconscious form to yank her to the ground. The Egyptian herself dropped to her back, still holding onto Steven as she rolled all three of them down the tall dune.
The shooters' vehicle pursued them, driving down the hill of sand, thankfully without running any of them over. Layla pushed herself up, looking between their vehicle and their enemies'. "Stay here; stay with him." She ordered breathlessly, taking off in a run downhill before Sarah could respond.
Sarah remained hunkered down, hovering over Steven to shield him- from bullets, if need be- as she watched Layla go. Reaching their vehicle, she hid herself behind it, slipping around to the back and climbing inside the cargo bed. The other truck drove around theirs, searching for people with their bright lights. As said lights moved toward Sarah and Steven, Sarah panicked, but dropped to the ground on her back beside Steven and shut her eyes, forcing herself to slow and regulate her breathing as she played possum.
"Looks like they're dead." One man said in Arabic.
A moment later, another man was shouting. "Turn, turn! There she is!" As the blinding headlights of the truck moved off Sarah and Steven, she risked opening her eyes, and was met with the image of Layla standing beside her borrowed vehicle, holding in her hand a flare that burned vermillion. It was brighter than anything else around them, even the half-hidden moon far above them.
They began firing at Layla, who took cover beside the truck. Sarah could see the magenta glow of the flare shining under the vehicle as the other truck approached. Beside her, Steven groaned quietly, eyes opening blearily.
And then Layla was crawling out from under the opposite side of the men in the truck, another crimson-ended stick in her hand as Steven sat up. Eyes still fixed on Layla, Sarah took his hand and helped him stand, and they both hurriedly stumbled down the dune toward the vehicles. Layla hurled the second flare at the cargo bed of the other vehicle, and yellow flames and white sparks erupted out of it as something in the back ignited and exploded.
Layla turned to see Sarah and Steven both watching only a meter or so away. "What?" She asked flippantly, as if what had just occurred was nothing unusual or spectacular. For a moment, Sarah felt a pang. She was sure that Abby and Danny would've liked Layla, maybe even Becker.
"You are damn lucky you're not dead." Sarah said as she turned to Steven. "I'm not losing any more friends." Fiercely, she threw her arms around him, pulling him tightly to her. "No more friends."
Steven reciprocated the embrace. "Don't worry, love, I'm not going anywhere."