Chapter Text
Marc Spector was good at disappearing.
It was something he had always prided himself on as a child. He was always the last to be found in hide and seek, able to hide in plain sight like he had been made for it.
When his brother was old enough, they would disappear into the woods together for hours on end. Marc taught him all of his favorite hiding spots, showed him all of those little places that had once been just for him. Until one day his brother disappeared for good.
Soon Marc began to disappear in different ways. Still in plain sight.
This worried his father, especially when he would look for his son and instead find… Not Marc.
Not Marc would insist that Marc was simply spending time in one of those old hiding spots he liked so much, and that he'd turn up sooner or later. His father told himself that Marc was just playing a game of pretend, as kids often do, never mind the fact that he was getting a bit old for this game. Too old for hide and seek.
Not Marc seemed altogether unconcerned by this.
When Marc reached middle school and was still playing this game so often that his school counselor had noticed, his father realized how much of a problem this game was becoming.
Marc had been talking to a friend of his when one of his classmates made fun of the friend's kippah, so Marc punched him. Hard. When asked who his friend was, Marc did not reply. So Marc was sent to the principal's office and the classmate was sent to the nurse since Marc's friend wasn't there to confirm Marc's side of the story.
Meanwhile, Marc's disappearances were only becoming more frequent, and so the school counselor recommended that he see a doctor. Marc's mother was vehemently against this, and his father wasn't too thrilled about it either but the disappearances were beginning to have side effects. Marc would seem to forget entire conversations hours after having them, and he was often unable to recognize relatives he'd seen only a year or two prior. His father knew he was running out of options.
By the time he was 14, Marc had seen several different therapists (most handpicked by his mother) and given almost as many diagnoses. Depression, bipolar, PTSD, psychosis, and eventually even plain old brain damage.
The summer before he would have begun high school, one of Marc's doctors recommended that he receive the help he needed at an asylum, and that with more extensive care and observation they could come up with better and more effective treatment strategies. Reluctantly, painfully, his father agreed. Anything to help him find his son again.
And so Marc spent the next three years in and out of the mental hospital. He would stay for a few weeks, return home for a month or two until he had what the doctors called a "relapse", and then he would have to go back in for more Treatment. Eventually it was decided that Marc suffered from a very rare case of early onset schizophrenia that none of his doctors had ever seen before. The length of his stays increased and his Treatment increased and before long he was spending more time at the hospital than he was at home.
When he turned 18 and was discharged once more, Marc returned home for just long enough to grab the wad of legal documents his father kept in a filing cabinet. He very carefully ignored the death certificate he found there, and then he disappeared for a very long while. When he finally returned, he packed up what few things he wanted from his childhood room, signed himself up for the military, and left home for what he thought would have been the last time.
He had been wrong.
Now, he stood across from that very same house, knowing that inside was that very same room, likely untouched since the day he had left.
Preserved like a body in a tomb.
After that, Marc did what he was best at. Maybe the only thing he was good at. He disappeared once again.
***
Jake's earliest memory (or at least the earliest memory he could be sure was his and his alone) was of the night before one of their returns to the hospital.
Jake had, quite frankly, had enough. After what happened last time he had absolutely no intention of ever going back there again, and so he shoved some clothes, food, money, and whatever else he could think of into a backpack and slipped out the back door after the rest of the house had gone to sleep.
The relatively late hour meant little in downtown Chicago, and so it wasn't long before Jake was able to flag down a cab, hand the driver a wad of crumpled bills he'd been saving up, and settle in for the ride.
The driver's question of "Where to?" had caught him off guard. He hadn't really stopped to think that far ahead, so he simply said, "Away from here."
The cab driver peered at Jake through the rear view window, nodded, and continued to drive.
A few minutes had passed before the cab driver spoke again. "What's your name then, kid?"
Jake said nothing.
The cabbie nodded again, almost knowingly, as if Jake had just shared a secret with him, and kept driving.
Several minutes later, it was becoming obvious to Jake that they had just been making the same circle around town and hadn't actually gotten very far from "here" at all. He opened his mouth to say something, but the cabbie just held a hand up, and the words died in his throat.
"Alright kid, this isn't my first rodeo. You're not the first to sit in my backseat there and have me drive you to god-knows-where with no destination in sight, except that those people are usually middle aged drunk guys who've recently been dumped. And pardon me for assuming, but you don't seem the type." The cabbie chuckled at his own joke.
"But I've also seen more than a couple kids runnin' away from a bad situation only to end up in an even worse one. So I won't ask why you're needin' a ride at-" He checked the dash. "-12:36 AM on a school night, because I gotta feeling you're not gonna tell me. Am I right?"
Jake said nothing.
"Yeah, thought so. So tell you what. I can take you as far as 36th street, and then take a nice scenic route back to the spot I picked you up from. 'Cause if you ask me, kids don't just up and leave without a damn good reason, but at the same time I can't be leaving you on the streets to fend for yourself, and I can't drive you around to nowhere all night long either. But I can give you a break from whatever was goin' on back there, how's that sound?"
Jake said nothing, but nodded his head just a bit.
"Glad to hear it. Say, pal of mine works at this pub up here, you ever met her? Nah, I'm just kidding, you know a kid like you’s not allowed in a place like that…"
This went on for the better part of an hour, turning left at the same pub every couple of minutes and all the while Jake said nothing, just quietly listening.
All too soon, the cabbie had broken the ritual the two of them had fallen into during the past hour, turning right at the pub instead of left.
By the time the cab pulled up to Jake's street for the second time that night, Jake felt exhausted, but considerably more clear minded. He reluctantly slid out of the backseat of the cab, already dreading what the morning would bring. Anything was better than the hospital, but he found he didn't have the strength to run anymore. And it wasn't like he'd had any sort of plan for after he managed to get away.
As he turned to wave goodbye to the cabbie, he was already rolling down his window. "You take care of yourself, kiddo. Even if no one else will," he said, and pressed the wad of cash Jake had given him back into his hand.
Jake looked up at him, but the cabbie waved his hand dismissively. "Way I sees it, I didn't actually take you anywhere, did I? Couldn't possibly accept payment for that."
"Thank you," Jake said. His voice felt hoarse and choked.
The cabbie tipped his hat at him, said, "See y'around, kiddo," and drove away.
When Jake was around, they spent a lot less time at the asylum. Marc was good at disappearing, and Jake became good at playing pretend.
***
Marc had met Steven in the months following his brother's death. He was being bullied by some of the same kids who used to harass Randall, and so Marc, falling into instinct like it was a second skin, fought them off, protecting him in the same way he used to protect Randall. Their father always hated it when they got into fights, so Marc would always take the blame- and the brunt of his disappointment- so his brother didn't have to. It was nice, feeling useful and needed once again. Marc wished he had been able to protect himself in this same way.
Marc liked space and Steven liked movies, so when they spent time together they usually compromised and watched movies about space. Marc would tell Steven about all the things the movies got wrong ("How are they talking? There's no sound in space! Or air!") and Steven would tell Marc about the movie he was going to make when he was older. ("One day, when I'm rich and famous I'm gonna send you to space, and you can say hi to Luke Skywalker for me.") ("Luke Skywalker's not real, stupid.")
Marc and Steven got on very well.
***
Marc's total disappearance following their final discharge from the asylum left even Jake and Steven stumped. They suddenly were very much on their own, and the time spent in the hospital meant they had no money saved up, no friends to stay with, not even a high school diploma.
The first few days passed by in a confusing haze, like a dream that you're not sure if you've woken up from yet. There were moments of lucidity, but they were just that: moments. Fleeting and evasive. Between the two of them there are memories of nights spent in abandoned houses or homeless shelters, or sneaking onto a bus without paying for a ticket. Whatever it took to get away from here.
They found a place with cheap rent and worked wherever they could get some kind of paycheck. Cleaning toilets at gas stations, washing dishes at local diners, things like that. Manageable things.
Steven started working on finishing their GED at a local community college and Jake got his license. After a few months Steven was able to save up enough money to buy an only slightly broken down car for them, and Jake, who was quickly becoming the more personable out of the two of them, got to know a guy who helped them fix it up. Jake started driving people around for a few extra bucks here and there. The present slowly became clearer and more tangible, and for the first time in years they were able to think about the future.
Until a week before they were set to finish their GED and their father showed up. He said he had been looking for them for months but finally he had found Marc, and wanted him to come back home. He said that things were different now, and that they could be happy again. They would be happy again.
Marc had enlisted in the marines by the end of that same week.