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Jake is truly born in the moment that Marc desperately, desperately wants to defend himself, but more than that, actually wants to hit his mother, and can't deal with his overwhelming rage. Steven has no place in this, will never know about this.
So Jake is the one that catches her fist, Jake is the one that shoves her away, Jake is the one that says in the Spanish they learned from Tío Mateo, "No más. Inténtalo de nuevo y te rompo la cara." And means it. The look on her face says she knows it, because she takes another step back, staring like she's seen a ghost.
He's never met their father face-to-face. Elias Spector is a good memory for Steven, a memory of disappointment and love and frustration for Marc, but he is nothing to Jake. Nothing but a stranger he's watched and avoided.
They are fifteen.
- Chicago -
He is nameless, at first. Nothing in that first moment named him, there was no shape to him except Marc's need and rage, he was just... there. A shadow. A reflection of a reflection, somewhere behind Steven, in Marc's blind spot. He watched. He learned.
He surfaced again, when Wendy got drunk again, and then the two of them had a secret about the bruise on her face, a secret from everyone, the way the beatings were a secret for too long. It didn't stop Wendy's tongue, but it held her fists off more often, now that Marc was taller than her, now that she recognized someone looking out of Marc's eyes when she was about to go too far.
(He wonders, sometimes, about Wendy's father. Wonders what she inherited from him, what the man taught her, and what she handed on to Jake. If she recognized someone else, something besides his own presence, in the expression in Marc's eyes.)
Jake observed Elias, judged him, and dismissed him. He stayed watchful, eyes on Wendy, always.
And he whispered in Marc's dreams that they should go. They had to go. Go go go go go. You can't keep this up forever. Steven is going to find out, if she keeps getting worse. You gotta have a plan.
It took over two years, a high school diploma, and one last horrific epic scene with Wendy, but Marc had already packed by then, bought the bus ticket, read the map, found the address for the Marine recruitment office.
He watched as Elias tried to talk Marc out of it, ready to take over if Marc wavered, but he didn't.
Marc thought he was a bad guy, but wasn't. Jake never knew their brother, but thought that Randall would have agreed with him.
Jake, on the other hand, was... well.
Just as well he never met their little brother, either.
- U.S. Marine Corps -
You wanna know what happened to get them kicked out of the Marines? ...read the file. That not good enough for you? Tough shit.
Marc will tell you they were discharged for going AWOL, that only the psychiatric stamp saved them from jail time. He even believes it, although he maybe, sorta, remembers a little of what was happening right before he blacked out. Blocked out.
Jake ain't talkin. You make a deal, you stick to it, entiendes? He made a deal: no jail time, and he wouldn't tell anybody what those assholes in his squad were doing that brought him out in the open. Marc was trying to stop them, because he draws a hard line at hurting innocents. Civilians. Bystanders who are just unlucky enough to live in a goddam war zone. But this was before Khonshu, and the suit, and Marc had the same trouble as before-- it's hard for him to hurt people he knows. Makes him feel like–- (A monster, a murderer, selfish–) He was gonna do it, yeah. But it would've been one more injury to him, too. Something he wouldn’t heal from. And Marc wouldn't have been fast enough.
Jake's always been faster. Comes from always being ready. And he mighta known those guys, second-hand, but they sure didn’t know him.
So if you can get the Marines to cough up his file, you can see what the discharge says about 'refusing treatment,' and Absent Without Leave, and 'unfit for duty'. You can check how many of the guys in his squad were in the hospital when he was let go. If you can connect those dots, congratulations, you're very clever. Have a coffee, and a gold star sticker for your forehead.
Jake still ain't talkin'.
- New York City -
Jake was fronting a lot for the year after that. Mark doesn't remember much of that time before they got the call from Bushman, and doesn't Jake wish he'd blocked that call. It seemed legit at the time, though. And it wasn't like Jake had any other plans.
Mark was down, was the thing. The boot from the Corps was one more kick in the teeth that seemed to reinforce all the crap Wendy used to shout at him. Being discharged. (Murderer. Your fault! Worthless, useless, trash!) It was taking all Marc had not to just fade out. Give him credit, he was trying to hang on, but he just didn't have it in him to do much more.
Jake was driving. Cabs. Limos. Trucks, even, sometimes. And driving the body, doing the day-to-day stuff, when Steven wasn't taking it on field trips. New York was great for those.
Nobody ever asks to see Steven's diplomas, you know that? He and Marc, they got real good at faking passports and IDs, and diplomas? Not even that hard. But the reason people never ask, is Steven sounds like he's got his freakin' doctorate already. All those afternoons in every museum in the five boroughs. All those libraries, on their off time. All those book stores, all those tours... If you could get a PhD without attending classes, Steven would have three, at least.
Where the hell he gets that part of them, Jake has no clue. He just stands back and watches, makes sure no one wants to shove the little nerd into a ditch. Listens, sometimes, as Steven talks to himself about today's obsession. It's-- comforting? Soothing? Something. Something good. Safe. Small and quiet. Like driving a car, listening to the radio, with happy background chatter from the backseat. Next week, the Thutmose exhibit at the Met! After a visit to see the Obelisk in Central Park, can’t believe I’m seeing it in person….
Jake doesn't really have parents. He has Mark and Steven, big and little brothers, only they switch places about who's big and who's little all the time.
New York was good for them. But he was getting tired, letting Mark rest, and watching out for Steven. Learning what he could to look after them, for whatever Mark decided to do. He's never had any goals of his own beyond the two of them. They’ve always been enough.
There were a few times there, where he came roaring up out of the abyss of their subconscious to take on someone Steven couldn't handle. Everything else? It just kinda developed over time.
Plus, New York was great for acquiring all kinds of stuff. Money, papers. Bolt-holes. New skills. A few enemies. Weapons. His last name. Lockley was on a locker he raided, with an ID for some schmuck who wasn't going to come back. It was convenient, and kind of funny, locker-Lockley, so he kept it.
Lockley he stole. Jake, that's for their grandfather. Mark named Steven, but didn't know enough about Jake to name him, just to warily acknowledge that Someone Else was around and then forget as hard as he could. Jacob, then Jake, just fit.
Nobody but Mark or Steven will ever get to know that, though. Or why. And only if they ask.
… so yeah, the call from Bushman, it just seemed like a new direction. A good plan. Jake Lockley didn’t have those. Marc Spector did. Why fight it? Save the fighting for when it was needed. That’s what he was. It was a relief, not to have to be in the world any more. To fade back into the background, ready with a knife, a punch, a gun.
That’s what he was made for. Everything else was just more shadows.
(There were moments, very, very far back. With a baby crying, and Mama cooing to it. Him. Trying to get the baby to stop crying, for him to stop clinging. The sting on his, their, skin, when she wanted him to go away, leave her to the new child, not bother her.
No eres un bebe ahora. Deja de llorar, mijo. ¡Dije alto! ¡Vete!
But that might be someone else’s story. Someone else’s memory.)
- Egypt -
Steven wasn’t really awake for Egypt, but he was listening, Jake is sure. There’s stuff he’s come out with off the top of his head, that Marc heard while on that dig. Jake recognizes it, but can’t pull it out and put it together with new stuff the way Steven does.
A three-month gig, running perimeter checks, setting up barriers around the site. Checking who went in, who went out. What went in, what went out. Nothing you’d call strenuous at the beginning. Marc liked it though. Bushman had him as his main back-up.
“You see this?” Dr. El-Faouly was brushing sand off a carving on a cliff face, delicately, with a tiny brush like you’d maybe use to brush a baby’s teeth. “It says that this is the main temple to the protector of travelers of the night! Khonshu!”
“Gesundheit.” Marc was smirking, arms crossed as he scanned the horizon.
“No, Khonshu– ahh, you are laughing at me, Spector, I can see it, but this, this is magnificent! The possibilities, that maybe, perhaps this will lead to– I don’t dare imagine, it could be so important!” Abdallah had thrown back his head, crowing in victory. Delight.
“I’ll take your word for it, Doc. Just let me know when we gotta start hauling buried treasure out.”
“Pah, treasure. I am talking about proof! Proof of the gods! Not jewels and gold! … Well, perhaps. One never knows, until one opens up the cave of wonder. But I want truth more than I want trinkets.”
There’d been an expression on Bushman’s face, when he heard about that, gotten the details. Marc didn’t clock it then, but it fell into place a month or so later. The moon had been full. Windless night. So many clicks from the nearest city, or any other witnesses, and Bushman told him to wake the dig team up–-
(Jacob was the second-born son in the Bible, the one that took everything from Esau by deceiving their father. The twin who shouldn’t have gotten anything, and wound up with everything. But that guy’s mother loved him best, and the best Wendy ever gave Jake was leaving him the hell alone.)
Jake wasn’t looking to take anything from Marc when he stepped up for that fight, not anything that was his. You can’t live with someone, breathe with them, day in and day out, without wanting them to live. Wanting them to thrive. Survive.
Only he failed. For once he wasn’t fast enough; the best he could do was make sure Steven stayed asleep, once it was over. Marc surfaced again when everyone else was dead, nothing else for Jake to do, Bushman and his few surviving guys were long gone–-
(And someday, Bushman was gonna be very, very sorry he didn’t put a bullet in their brain, oh yes he was. Jake was gonna make sure of that.)
Marc was the one that dragged himself to the temple they’d finished excavating. Jake had been fading in and out, not caring why. Maybe Marc wanted to leave evidence that something had gone wrong. Maybe he just didn’t wanna die around all those corpses of the people he’d tried to protect. One more failure, in his mind.
Steven was dreaming, hieroglyphs and sand-storms, shhh, hermanito, todo está bien and Jake– Jake was just about ready to say hi, tell Marc he wasn’t alone. Say: sorry, pal. Mi culpa, lo siento. Adios.
Shoulda stayed in Brooklyn.
WHAT A WASTE.
…biggest shock of his fucking life, a voice in their head that wasn’t in their head.
At least their new friend had great taste in weapons. Infinitely re-loading knives and magic armor, those were definitely things Jake could appreciate.
- London -
He hadn’t liked that Marc had signed up for another hitch with someone else giving him orders. But he had a feeling, from the way the demon-spirit-whatever had talked, that maybe, just maybe, there was a way for Jake to make this work for them. Leave him to do what he did best, and keep Marc on his feet and moving forward. It wasn’t easy, and Marc took on way too much. Exasperating. But there was no way to keep Marc out of the loop when he was on a mission.
But then there was Layla (and Marc had way too much guilt there, but there wasn’t any way to fix that) and the hunt for Ammit’s ushabti, and life was good. Good enough, at least. Marc had a purpose, Steven had some moments in London, Jake had a break, now that they were just about unkillable. It was all working.
Then Wendy died. Marc mighta had mixed feelings. Severely mixed, messed-up, painful feelings. Painful? Frickin’ agonizing.
Jake? Not so much. Maybe some of his seething resentment was what brought Steven out of the attic again, unlocking some doors that Marc kept closed. Maybe those walls started breaking because Marc was hurting, but there mighta been one (or two) that Jake slammed open because why the hell Marc should feel sorry about that miserable drunken old– and Elias, just standing there–
Everything went to hell. Steven got in the driver’s seat and didn’t leave. Marc had to work around him, way more than usual, and Jake was practically stuffed in the trunk. Everything was a mess, between Steven not sleeping and Marc avoiding Layla and Jake trying like hell to keep track of if they were in danger through the four-plus different levels of trap doors and refracted headaches the two of them were putting out, and then?
Then. Harrow’s cultists tracked down the damn scarab, and Marc caught wind of it and barely had time to leave the country and interrupt the sale, swiping it before jumping off a balcony. Which was when Steven woke up on the ground in Austria, because Marc was exhausted from trying to push past him and keep him under at the same time, and that was the kind of luck they were having.
If Jake never had to fight Steven for control of a van again, it would be way too goddamn soon. Hermanito should never try to drive, was all he was saying. Only reason they survived that and Khonshu’s back-seat driving was luck, and Ammit’s cultists having no idea what they were dealing with. Marc was strong and focused, but Steven was stone-brained stubborn, and taking over past his persistence was a nightmare for all three of them. (Four of them, if Khonshu’s bitching was any clue.)
Harrow had a lot to answer for. Marc would’ve managed to keep Steven still in the dark if it hadn’t been for that demon jackal. One more reason for Jake to kick that guy’s ass.
Because now Steven knew Something Was Up, and there was no way he was going to leave a mystery alone.
- Cairo -
Have you ever walked into the middle of a bar brawl, and immediately known not who you wanted to win, but who you definitely wanted to lose? That’s what that fight was like, on the rooftops of Cairo. Jake had just been relaxing in the background, eating metaphorical popcorn while Marc laid a beatdown on the guys who’d killed their lead to the dig crew, when Steven did the equivalent of trying to tackle Marc at the ankles. Would’ve been frigging hilarious if it wasn’t going to get them all killed.
First Steven had control, and made a run for the airport, then Marc swerved over to chase the diggers again, then Steven was pumping the brakes– Next thing, they were knocked out. Because these two were fighting over who got to drive the body. So. Goddamn. Stupid.
Jake made the executive decision that they were outta control and too dumb to navigate out of the situation. Frustration gave him the edge he needed to be the first one to wake up.
Harrow’s guys had thrown them into the trunk of their car and driven them to a quarry outside the city. Probably the plan was a little light torture, maybe just a beating, maybe some scare tactics. Discouragement through violence. Amateur hour.
The lid of the trunk opened.
Jake smiled and launched himself at the guy above him, making sure to get that big knife he’d admired first. Anyone who licked a nice blade like that didn’t deserve to keep it.
By the time Steven and Marc were awake, only the kid was left, since he was no threat. Well, the kid, and the big skeletal bird-god.
THEY’LL BE BACK IN A MOMENT. BUT WE SHOULD TALK SOON, I THINK. JAKE LOCKLEY.
Jake swayed, then straightened, spitting blood out between his teeth, watching Khonshu warily. Ten years, and the old bird had never talked to him directly before. Interesting. Intimidating. He hadn’t known the guy even knew he was there.
“You think?” He nodded, feeling the undertow of Marc and Steven surfacing. “Me too.”
EXCELLENT. WE DO HAVE COMMON INTERESTS TO PROTECT.
Of course, they didn’t get around to that before Khonshu was locked up in an action-figure pose inside the temple.
He’d have been more pissed about that, if he wasn’t already stuck between being pissed that Steven and Marc each thought the other had gotten them out of that mess, and pissed as all hell that he’d come so close to giving the game away.
(Okay, pissed, and scared. He used to be better at this. At staying out of the limelight, just staying low. Marc and Steven teaming up was even worse than them fighting, it turned out. Who knew.)
Then there was a tomb. And Layla– everything about Layla was great, she made a hell of a partner, always had, but– she was problematic. Marc was an idiot. Steven was an idiot. Jake was never going to talk to her, the situation was already a frickin’ overwritten sitcom of relationship drama, he was staying the hell out of it. Pass. No gracias, comprendes?
Although maybe if he’d taken over there, next to Alexander the Great’s sarcophagus, picked up Layla no matter how irate she was, and booked it for the exit, they wouldn’t have gotten shot.
Fucking Arthur Harrow. Rest in peace?
You wish, buddy.
- An Intersectional Plane of Untethered Consciousness -
He was dead, and shoved into a small, dark space. A coffin. A sarcophagus. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t do more than throw himself forward, pound with his fists, try to get free with everything in him.
But he was also simultaneously there, listening to Marc talk to Doctor Harrow. And listening to him and Steven talk to a (giant?!) hippopotamus (!!!) goddess (what the ever-loving fuck).
Because they were dead, and these two were still doing their best to ignore Jake’s existence. The kings of Denial, floating down the Nile. Or the Duat. Morons. He was still part of them both. No locking out Lockley, not successfully.
But, fine. If that was the way they wanted it, fine. When they got out of this (when, damnit, this was not the end) some changes were gonna have to happen.
(If part of that determination was a fear that they wouldn’t need him any more, now that they had been all honest and over-sharing and bonded… no. No, they still didn’t know about him, they’d died and still managed to miss the obvious. He didn’t have anything to worry about. Nope.)
At least the whatever-it-was in the fake hospital dream hadn’t figured out who he was talking to. Jake still knew how to fake being Marc, at least long enough to make a break for it. Why the guy left such an obvious weapon on his desk was beyond him. Psychiatrists were nuts.
Too bad he didn’t get to kill Doctor Harrow before they were resurrected. Standing in the desert, alive again, together again, and Jake wasn’t going to think too hard about how relieved he was about that. And then Steven managed to get both himself and Marc out of the deal, and Jake had never been prouder.
….just you and me now, old man.
I KNOW. CONVENIENT, ISN’T IT?
-NOW-
The look on Harrow’s face when Jake shot him? Made all of the mess and extra exasperation worthwhile. Priceless.
Harrow’s body wasn’t gonna be found for a good long time, if ever. Not the way Jake weighed it down, and after he made sure all identifying features were gone. Nope. The fishies were gonna feast, and the cultists were just gonna have to wonder.
That pendejo had killed Marc. And Steven. Jake took that personal.
WILL YOU TELL THEM WHAT YOU’VE DONE?
What we’ve done, you mean? Not a chance. No more than I’m telling them I’m here.
THEY WILL FIGURE IT OUT, EVENTUALLY. A PITY THEY HAVE FORMED AN ALLIANCE. IT WILL MAKE THINGS MORE DIFFICULT FOR YOU.
One problem at a time. Marc and Steven are my problem now. Not yours. And they got Layla, and all the rest of their lives to think about. It’ll take ‘em a while.
AND WHEN THEY DO? WILL YOU SEEK TO BREAK OUR BARGAIN?
I keep my promises. And my secrets. They can yell at mirrors all they want. I got nothing to say.
Far as he’s concerned, everything’s Jake.
(And nobody better go telling his brothers anything different.)
-END-