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Marc is brave in pieces and reckless in full form.
And so he’s quick to take the bargain; half-dead and bloodied on the steps of Khonshu’s idol, the coarse and scorching sand eager to swallow him in seconds.
He’s quick to tread the parts of it that Khonshu fails to mention.
That the healing is his own bones sharpened to cut out the damage and rot. And in its place, a cold godliness forges something flesh like.
That memory will now only mean a barebone list of fresh corpses and lives not yet snuffed out.
And Marc takes it all, a numbing weight that always bares on his mind just enough so he doesn’t think.
Especially about the body that now withers under burning heat outside the gates of the temple.
Gray and bearded.
Lifeless eye behind glasses speckled in blood, one hand loosely grasping on a burgundy scarf–
"She made this for me, you know.”
Layla.
Her name sits patiently in the back of his mind for months. She’s the safest in there, a maze is built around her, jagged and bent with lines in any which direction.
Maybe it will buy him time.
But it'll be any day now–one of Khonshu's many righteous missions will one day lead him to her.
It does.
It comes sooner than he is ready.
On a bleak London afternoon accompanied by a cold drizzle, he meets her.
"Layla El-Faouly" is spoken, followed by a small smile and her hand extended out.
It's not the response he's ready for after he gives his own name first, but the moment moves too fast for any confession he could have made.
‘It’s only temporary’, he tells himself.
She is nothing but.
An adventure falls at their feet soon after and Layla comes out the other end with stitches, broken bones and a long stay at the hospital.
Marc watches her sleep, an angry speech ready to chastise her the moment she wakes; she is foolish for trusting him, for following his lead.
As unknown to her as a stranger on the street.
Instead, he talks about the past.
Not all of it, not just yet. But just enough to let yearning sprout in him as her eyes widen and her hands reach for his, a soothing warmth glows in him.
So soon after, he forgets.
Days pass and he forgets how he’s here, why she is wrapped in white sheets stuck in a cold room sharing stories of her own life and him, eager to memorize every detail she recounts.
Why no one else comes to see her.
Why when she presses her lips against his own back in her cramped flat, there’s no trace of any memory of an older man with wide brown eyes much like hers.
Very much dead.
Marc sinks in the guilt of it, of loving her in a rush.
A once small hope morphs then into a conviction— the love will swallow her whole and in its abundance, he's forgiven.
He's forgiven for knowing her grief, knowing why it's there—for keeping it all a secret.
He's forgiven for his failures that came before her, before her father.
He's forgiven, most importantly, for how regret slips off of him as easily as her father's blood mingled with his own that day.
'I could have only found you because he's dead.'
It’s a month later when she talks about Abdallah. They’re sitting on a rooftop against a starry night in the middle of nowhere.
“I want my father back.”
It’s how she says it, how she turns to him so her eyes meet his, how there’s a ghost of a smile tugging at her lips– sorrow casts its spell on her and she's asking him to break it.
But he can’t because he’s back home now, the echoes of his footsteps still ring against the murmurs and quiet sobs that fill the empty spaces between the mourners. Marc’s hand is pressed down hard on the railing, his head low enough to hide but just enough to see the woman on the couch—
“I want my RoRo back.”
“Marc?”
Marc wants him back too, to fill in the hole that just gets deeper with each minute that he’s dead.
He’ll try to find a way, as long as it takes. In the meantime, he’s gonna be a good kid, he’ll try to be both–
And it’s all this, sitting on the tip of his tongue and ready to be spoken. He walks down one more step and looks up, his mom watching him.
Even as he stays sick with hating himself and missing Roland, mom and dad won't.
At least, they can forgive him down the line.
At least, they can love—
“Marc!”
Her hand shakes his arm and he blinks back into reality.
Now.
Now is the time to tell her that all her father spoke about is her, even leading up to the last moments of his life.
Now is the time, as she’s staring at him with concern he’s never deserved, to tell her that Abdallah El Faouly raised her to have the strongest heart— it bears more than Marc's ever could.
And that Marc wishes, wishes desperately, that he could bring back her father, but he can’t. That it isn’t his fault in the slightest, but it is.
But he’s willing, he’s willing to seek anything from her.
Any redemption, any exchange.
Anything that is his, is hers.
“Would you forgive them?”
“Wha—”
“The people responsible, would—”
Pause.
Layla pulls her hand away and she’s wrapping it around knees close to her face, her other one lacing fingers to keep the position.
Fear pricks at his skin as her eyes fall into a trance — and Marc knows it all too well, it's the same infestation that puts venom in his mother's mouth and a belt in her hand every time she ever catches sight of him.
“Would I forgive them for how they let him rot for days under mounds of sand? Or how they mercilessly shot him in the back of the head?”
“You were supposed to keep him safe.”
“I have… nothing. Nothing of his during his last moments. Nothing to hold, nothing to mourn, no body, no goodbye. Just a letter on what the authorities did when they found his corpse and the others. “
Keep me , he begs in silence. Keep me because I'm worth forgiving in the end.
“What would I forgive him for?”
For daring to sit next to you.