Despacito (Slowly)

Darkness.

Then voices.

Steven Grant, what are you doing here?

I followed you, of course. Where are we?

I can see that, and it doesn’t matter.  Let us take you back to the others.

Khonshu and… himself?  But… younger. When?

A shock ran through his body as he tried to chase the voices.

Then darkness again.

*          *          *

“STEVEN!” Both Jake and him ran towards Steven, but before they could catch him, his body disappeared from the inner world, as if he was fronting. However, Marc could tell that he wasn’t. He couldn’t feel Steven at all, just like he hadn’t been able to feel him at Anubis’s ship when he had thought he was back at the asylum. It wasn’t a feeling that he liked at all.

Jake looked devastated as he kneeled right where Steven had been, hugging himself and crying.

“¡No de nuevo! No de nuevo!” Jake kept repeating, as a madness mantra. And while Marc couldn’t understand the words, the tone was clear. Jake felt as broken and useless as Marc did, seeing their third just… disappear when he had been trying to help them. “¡Con una chingada, no puedo perderlo de nuevo!”

Marc felt the temptation to join Jake in his grief, to just shut down because without Steven? There was not much reason to go on. However, he knew that it wouldn’t help. If Steven wasn’t there, one of them had to be strong, had to kept them going so they could find Steven.

Fortunately, thanks to Steven’s panic attacks when they had just gotten to know each other again, Marc knew what to do. At least, this time he could do it physically -well, as physically as it could be, given that they were in their mind- rather than just yelling at the body while Steven controlled it.

So he walked to Jake and slapped him once, HARD.

“Get yourself together, man!” He said, looking at his startled Alter’s eyes, seeing them narrow in anger as he knew Jake was about to retaliate. “If we’re going to get Steven back from wherever he went, we need to work together.”

Jake glared at him, opened his mouth as if to speak up then shut it as he probably remembered that whatever he told Marc would be gibberish to the other man.

“First Steven, then your bird, yes?” Marc repeated. He still wasn’t completely sold on Jake’s loyalty to Khonshu, but he realized that Steven had been on to something when interrogating Jake. They needed the full story and arguing about it would not help at all.

“Primero Steven, luego Khonshu. Sí.” Jake agreed. “¿Cómo?”

As Jake said the last word, he opened his arms, half shrugging, in a motion that Marc recognized as the universal sign of “How?”. How indeed. It wasn’t as if they had a Spanish dictionary among Steven’s books. In fact, the only person Marc knew who spoke Spanish was…

“Layla!” He grabbed Jake’s shoulders, shaking his other alter who was now surprised. “You front, she translates, and you don’t yell about her goddess until we get Steven back!”

“Primero Steven,” Jake repeated, which Marc took as an agreement, as his alter also disappeared from the mind space. However, unlike Steven, Marc could still feel Jake with him, surrounding him and protecting him as he took over the body. It was a strange feeling, but one that Marc realized was familiar. Something that he had felt before, when things felt dire and hopeless, and he’d black out because he couldn’t let Steven front in those situations.

He realized that what he was feeling now, what he had felt then, was Jake Lockley’s protective streak.

*          *          *

Steven Grant, you should not be here.

Steven looked up, confused as the darkness cleared a bit. Looking down on him, bigger than ever, he could see Khonshu. But, if he didn’t know better, he’d say that the old bird sounded… concerned?

“Yeah, well… Jake was worried” He heard himself reply. But it wasn’t his voice, not really. He sounded a lot younger, and far less annoyed or scared than how he had always been around the old god. “You haven’t been around.”

I am sorry about that. My statue was taken to New York, so I am no longer able to manifest in Chicago. And that’s not what I meant, little scholar. HOW are you here? You couldn’t have followed me to this place this time.

“Jake was worried,” Steven’s mouth was moving, even as Steven couldn’t remember saying those words. “I just… took the same path? Are you going to come back? Can we help?”

Khonshu laughed. But it was not the laugh Steven remember, the haughty sound that made clear that the god saw humanity as inferior and a hassle. It was a warm sound, one that strangely made Steven feel safe near the being.

How?

When had this happened?

HAD this happened?

Another shock, stronger than the last, accompanied by a voice that Steven feared, but couldn’t identify.

And then darkness again.

*          *          *

Her Boys, as she had started to think about them, were going to be the death of Layla, she was sure.

Marc had been intriguing, sweeping off her feet when she was trying to find out what happened with her father, and falling in love with him had been like standing in the eye of a hurricane. Now she figured they had married too soon, but she couldn’t make herself regret it. Not the marriage, not the adventures, not even the heartbreak when he had suddenly disappeared from her life for two months.

Falling in love with Steven had been almost inevitable. Not because they were so alike -and Layla figured later that it was because Marc had a very clear type. She may be a bit more action-driven than their boyfriend, but she could see where she and Steven were similar. She could easily see why Marc loved his softer alter, and to be perfectly honest when she realized she was also getting feelings for Steven? She had embraced them wholeheartedly. Part of it -and yeah, that was one of the reasons why she had stayed in Cairo, to put that in perspective – had been because Steven wasn’t Marc. He was honest, open, and, in many ways, safe where Marc was shifty, closed and dangerous.  But the bigger part of it was because it was very, very easy to love Steven. Something that Marc surely agreed with.

Jake… Jake was different, she thought as he peered at her from behind what she was used to think about as her husband’s eyes. She wasn’t in love with him, she didn’t know him enough. But she could see herself becoming his friend. They also had things in common, besides their mutual love for Steven and Marc. And after hearing just a bit of her past? She couldn’t help but want to protect this man, whom she knew could kill anyone who attacked him physically but was so vulnerable emotionally speaking.

“Marc quiere que le traduzcas lo que digo,” Jake said, not moving from the lotus position Steven had left the body in. “Steven desapareció y necesitamos encontrarlo.”

Layla inwardly screamed. Apparently, every time her boys decided to speak away from her a new bomb dropped. She managed to keep her expression neutral, even if she wanted to cover her face with her hands and scream. Why couldn’t they get a break? Hadn’t they just saved the world?

“He’s… gone?” She tried to understand, she really did. But it was complicated, even without adding the extra layer of Jake’s language. “What happened?”

“Creo… “ Jake looked down at his… their? Hands, flexing them in a way that was familiar to Layla. Was he letting Marc control part of the body? To prove that he wasn’t a danger to her? She figured that would calm her husband a bit, especially after her last encounter with his Hispanic alter. “Creo que Steven estaba empezando a recordar.”

“What do you…?” She started to ask when she remembered that Jake had said that Marc needed a translator. That Marc could listen to what she said, even if she couldn’t hear him and while repeating Jake’s words to him in English would make the conversation long and tiresome, she could phrase her answers in a way that Marc could also understand and ask his own questions to Jake.

It was going to be a challenge, but she was now the Avatar of a goddess and had fought alongside Marc and Steven to save Cairo from Harrow’s cult. She could do this.

“Steven was starting to remember your past together? That’s what you meant?” Layla asked, and Jake nodded, his hands relaxing a bit. So that was probably Marc, and this was so bizarre that Layla wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. “And that made him disappear?”

“No es la primera vez,” Jake closed his eyes, as if he was fighting down tears. “En el hospital… así fue como nos separaron.”

“At the mental hospital?” Layla clarified, and Jake nodded. She could see the tears starting to form and she wanted nothing more than to hug this man who shared her beloveds’ face and past. And hug Marc, who had never talked to her about her past but given how he spoke about his mental health sometimes? Probably also remembered that place. “You said before… they gave you electroshock therapy…”

Jake’s left hand closed in a tight fist, tense and angry, and Layla figured that perhaps Marc had not quite understood the implications the first time Jake had said they had been mistreated. Then again, he had said so in Spanish and Layla hadn’t translated then.

“Cuando…. Cuando nos llevaban ahí, quien quiera que estuviera al frente cuando nos electrocutaban desaparecía por semanas,” Jake’s voice trembled as he spoke, dragging memories the man obviously didn’t want to remember. And, as much as it pained her to do so, Layla started repeating what he had said, just in English, to make sure Marc understood. That he wouldn’t miss any word of what Jake said. “Al principio, sabíamos lo que pasaba. Cuando era mi turno… el shock me mandaba a un cuarto vacío, sin ventanas, sin puertas. Una prisión lejos de Marquitos y Estebancito. Donde no podía oírlos, ni verlos, ni sentirlos… pero podía recordarlos. Y cuando regresábamos a nuestro lugar… sabíamos que había pasado. Pero luego… luego empezaron a subir el voltaje.”

By the time he got to that part, Jake was openly crying, and Layla decided to throw caution to the wind, hugging the man tightly, as she hoped Marc could also feel her touch.

*          *          *

Little Scholar, you must stop coming here for your own sake! Human minds are not made for the Other void!

Khonshu sounded quite concerned, now Steven was sure of it as his consciousness came out of the darkness to this new memory.

It was so strange, to really feel as if he was living these moments, instead of just witnessing them from the outside he had seen Marc’s memories in Anubis’s ship. Was it because he was alone now?  Was it because he was pretty sure the body wasn’t dead? Or did it had something to do with the way he had reached this place, going farther and farther into himself? Steven didn’t know.

Although now he had the feeling that Khonshu did. Especially given how the bird reacted every time the new memory began, concerned about Steven’s presence there.

“We need your help!” He heard himself beg, his voice raw and hurt, as if he had been crying. “I need to bring Jake and Marc here before they erase us!”

Khonshu’s head tilted left, and Steven could swear he saw the bird frown, even without any muscles to frown, even when the eye sockets of his bird skull remained in place.

Erase you, my son?

Steven couldn’t hear the rest. A new shock threw him off the memory and back into the stubborn darkness.

But now, he was sure. Despite everything he thought he knew, despite how Khonshu had always acted as if he couldn’t wait to get rid of Steven back in the present, back when Steven thought they had met for the first time?

In these memories, Khonshu cared. Because the way he had called Steven “Son”? Was exactly how Steven had always figured his mother would call him that. Full of love, full of concern, and barely hidden anger at whoever had hurt him.

*          *          *

Marc had never wanted to hurt his father as much as that precise moment, when Jake recounted how it had felt to be on the receiving end of electroshocks.

The thing was, Marc himself didn’t remember those.

He remembered the mental hospital very clearly, how, not long after he realized that Steven was not quite real, but not an imaginary friend either, his father had started taking him to see Dr. Emmet, a red-haired woman who always was smoking mentholated cigarettes and talking to Marc as if he was a small toddler who couldn’t even tie his own shoes. First it was weekly sessions at the hospital, but he was still allowed home after everyone. Until the night where he had been left there and not allowed to leave for two long years.

He also remembered the pills, so many pills, all of them forced on him to make him more pliant, more receptive to Dr. Emmet’s words. The pills that made it hard to hear Steven, first through a haze, a fog that invaded their mental space, but then became harder and made Steven disappear for hours, days, weeks at a time. That made Steven suddenly stop talking to him and just… ignore that he existed.

Marc had started to find ways to avoid taking those pills, faking their effects. Because he was terrified that he would also forget Steven, that one day, he would wake up with no time lost, nothing changed in his room… that Steven would be completely gone, and Marc wouldn’t even remember that Steven had been there in the first place.

But apparently, he had been too slow. He had saved his memories of Steven, but he hadn’t been able to save Jake. He didn’t remember the shocks, but he did remember the waking up in that empty, closed room, not knowing where his friend was, panicking because he couldn’t feel Steven. Now he knew it was not the pills but something worse, that Jake and Steven had taken the brunt off them, and that's why Steven couldn't remember Jake either.

And it made sense. Because Dr. Emmet never thought of Jake and Steven as real, so she would use the worst punishment for them when they surfaced. She was paid to erase them, after all, to kill them and make Marc be the perfect little son for a woman who hated him and a man who was ashamed of him.

If the woman hadn’t died years ago in a freak fire caused by the Snap? Marc would’ve tempted to find her and give her a piece of their mind.

“How did you manage to remember?” He heard Layla ask, and he focused back into the conversation as he had given Jake a little distance to allow him to cry. Being co-conscious with Jake was strange, not as easy as it was with Steven now, but now that Marc thought about it, not as hard as it had been with Steven at the beginning of their new agreement, when Steven still didn’t remember everything. More proof that, no matter what Marc had thought, Jake had been there for them all this time. Probably had co-fronted with Marc without Marc noticing, long before their impromptu dance lesson.

And Marc couldn’t believe they had been friends, or in speaking terms, without being able to understand each other. So what had happened? Did Jake forget his English, or had Marc and Steven know Spanish?

“Aprendí a fingir que era Marc, susurrar mis respuestas como si estuviera medicado para que no notaran que eran en español… cualquier cosa para evitar los electroshocks,” Jake replied, and Marc sighed once Layla translated. Yeah, that was pretty much what he had done too, only with the pills. Pretend he forgot Steven, pretend he was far more doped up than what he really was.

And it had been too little, too late. They had been three when they went in that horrible place, but they had been together. And they left being three, but so torn apart that only one of them remembered them all.

“And now that Steven disappeared… it was the same as back then?” Layla pressed, but Marc could tell by her tone that she was not happy about it. He could feel her phantom touch, as she hugged them both and found no jealousy in his thoughts. At this point, he wished he could hug Jake too.

“Sí,” Jake replied, but then stopped, and looked up at Not Gus and New Gus’s tank, frowning as he met Marc’s eyes there. “No. Lo había hecho antes… al menos un par de veces.”

*          *          *

My son, you are hurting yourself coming here. I must…

“We have no time left!” Steven’s voice, in his ears, sounded not much older than in the last flash of consciousness, but far more frantic and scared. “We’re starting to forget each other… And I can’t… I can’t save them!”

You will not be able to save them if you lose yourself to the Other void, Little Scholar. I am trying to…

“HERE!” Steven felt himself pushing something towards Khonshu. It looked like a school bag full of crystal orbs. His younger self hadn’t really been paying attention to it, and Steven was limited to see exactly what his younger self had seen which, in this case, was the confused and worried face of a god that, up to less than twenty minutes before, Steven had been sure hated him. “Please, Khonshu… keep them safe! You can give them back to me if… when… we see each other again!”

Thankfully for Steven, said god picked up one of the orbs from the bag. He took them in his bony hands with care and reverence, as if it was the most valuable thing in the universe.

These are your memories with Marc Spector and Jake Lockley, Little Scholar. Why do you want me to keep them?

“Because I’m forgetting! I couldn’t find them all and hide them like you showed me and I…” Steven’s voice broke in a sob. “You’re the only one who can keep them… us… safe.”

I am doing a terrible job of keeping you safe at the moment, my little scholar.

“That’s because your stupid statue is in Peru. One day I will be rich enough, we can have it in our living room and you can hang with us all the time,” Even as he said the words, Steven knew his younger self was trying to lie to himself and the god. Then, he felt as his foot moved forward and then he was hugging Khonshu. And, to Steven’s unending shock, Khonshu hugged back. “I put my memories of you there too… so I won’t be coming back again. I won’t remember how… or how to get back. Please… just… keep them? So they don’t disappear?”

I promise, my son. And I will see you home safe, at least this time.

“Thanks… Da…”

Steven didn’t hear the last word his younger self said. A final shock, harder and more powerful than all those before, plunged him back into the darkness of the void.

*          *          *

Layla looked as Jake fixated in his reflection on the fishtank, and waited. She knew, from working with Steven and Marc, that that was how they communicated among each other. She also had done some research about DiD in Cairo, after Harrow’s defeat, and had concluded that this was something new to the boys, not really common among systems, and was possibly their way to remind each other that they were there, not just voices in their own head. After what she had heard from the hospital? She couldn’t blame them.

With Marc and Steven, she knew they also talked to each other this way, sometimes out loud, sometimes in silence. But she didn’t know how it worked with Jake, so instead of interrupting with a question, she decided to wait.

Finally, after what seemed hours to them but realistically had to be just minutes, Jake spoke up.

“Marc no se acuerda, pero… cuando éramos niños… vimos algo.” Layla frowned as she translated. She had the feeling that Jake was keeping what they saw a secret not for her benefit, but for Marc’s. “Y Steven… siendo Steven… quería entenderlo todo. Y un día… desapareció de nuestra mente porque decidió… seguir lo que vimos. Regreso pronto, cuando Marc estaba empezando a apanicarse.”

When he finished, Jake waited for Layla to translate, then chuckled at whatever Marc said to him.

“Oh, claro que te apanicaste, Marquitos. No puedes decir que no, porque no te acuerdas y yo sí. Pero si sirve de consuelo… yo estaba aterrorizado.”

“Where did he go?” Layla asked, after translating the gentle teasing. She was curious too, especially since she knew that if Marc pressed, Jake may reveal what they had seen.

“Nunca nos dijo. Al principio porque era un secreto entre él y… lo que vio,” Jake explained, looking incredibly sad when he remembered. But it was different tan when he had been talking about the hospital. This was more like a wistful sadness. As if he remembered those times with love. “Y después… supongo que lo olvido. Porque nunca más lo vi desaparecer así.  Ni siquiera cuando Marquitos lo encerraba en su cuarto para que no descubriera la verdad.”

The last part was said with a glare towards the fish tank, which Layla found a bit hypocritical. Sure, Jake had never locked the boys in their head, as far as she knew, but he had also kept secrets… was still keeping secrets. So he had no ground to stand in in that regard. Then, Jake shook his head and looked at Layla.

“Marc quiere saber si has oído algo de la hipopótama.” Then, at Layla’s incredulous look, he raised his left hand. “Juro que fue él. Ahorita estoy más preocupado por Steven.”

Layla sighed, but couldn't say that Jake was lying. It was true that now he seemed to have forgotten his obsession with helping Khonshu and was now completely focused on Steven. And she also knew her husband. If they couldn't immediately help Steven?

“Sorry. She may be busy, as she usually replies immediately unless she’s weighting souls in the Other void.”

“Dónde viven los pinches cobardes del Ennead… ” Jake said, his contempt for the Egyptian gods quite clear in his voice. And Layla, honestly, couldn’t blame him much. The only two gods who had lifted a hand for mankind were her Tawaret and Khonshu so… cowards was a good description. “Maldita sea… si no fuera por ese chingado juicio que mencionaste… podríamos pedirle ayuda a Khonshu para encontrar a Steven.”

“What do you mean?” Layla asked, forgetting for a moment to translate, even as she realized that perhaps Marc would not like the idea to put Steven in Khonshu’s radar again.

*          *          *

Osiris was droning about the importance of choosing worthy avatars, noble people who were trained and groomed to become the eyes of a god on Earth and not just whoever was handy at the time, when Khonshu felt his phantom scapular feathers ruffle.

He hadn’t had feathers in millennia, but from time to time, he could still feel them. And, in the last thirty years or so, there was only one reason for him to do so: His Avatars, who despite what Osiris and Harrow thought? Were not unworthy.

Oh, and he had learned very early on to pinpoint which one of his avatars triggered which feeling. Marc Spector’s issues usually ruffled his crown, while Jake Lockley being in trouble reflected in his nape. Steven Grant… Steven Grant didn’t create much of a reaction anymore, but there had been a time where Khonshu was sure his Scapulars would forever be puffed and raised had he still had them when he meet his Little Scholar.

And that was the problem right now. Because there should be no reason why he felt that Steven Grant was in trouble, far closer to Khonshu than he was. Steven Grant should be sitting in that cramped little apartment that Marc Spector had gotten for them, completely ignorant of the fact that they were still technically his avatars because Jake Lockley was still under his wing, still not knowing that Jake Lockley existed and loved them so much that he was willing to remain mostly invisible even if he had gotten the courage to at least serenade them a bit.

Steven Grant should not be triggering that part of Khonshu that told him that yes, the curious little human soul had once again stepped into something far bigger than himself.

And yet, the feeling remained. Strong, and so close.

“Khonshu?” Tawaret was looking at him, worried. “Is everything ok?”

I… am not sure.

He didn’t elaborate more, letting her believe that he was worried about the trial, about Osiris’s words.  And he took advantage of the lack of any muscles around his skull, to close his metaphorical eyes and focus on that feeling that wouldn’t go away. HE might have to stay there, listening to Osiris and the other’s baseless accusations, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t try and hone his senses for a second, just to make sure that his Avatars were still safe and sound in London, where he had left them.

Khonshu didn’t know why he was surprised when he realized that at least one of them was not, in fact, where he had left them. 

*          *          *

Steven opened his eyes to the galaxy starred sky of the Other Void, no longer living in his childhood suppressed memories, but in the present, in his adult body.  There were still holes in his memory, and now he understood why they were there, but he remembered enough.

Enough that he wasn’t really surprised to see the steps of the old temple before him, floating in the middle of nowhere. There were no sands below them, no unbalanced souls to attack him. It was a really peaceful place, now that he really let himself think about it.

A place where a child would want to run away to, to escape from the horrors of Earth.

Steven Grant, what are you doing here?