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“You deserve this.”
Maybe. Maybe not. But Steven doesn’t though and Steven, no matter how long Marc’s spent trying to deny it, is a part of him. And Layla doesn’t deserve this, the worry, the concern, the fretting she’ll go through when she sees him again, bloody and beaten. Because she will see him again.
Marc spits out a mouthful of blood and grins at his captor. “Really, that’s the best you can come up with?”
Rage floods the man that Marc doesn’t even remember, that he’d wronged at some point in his long history of hurting people without ever making a mental note of. This man, Marc knows, has to have come before Khonshu, back when he was a mercenary. He’d had, well, not morals then, he’d say, but a code, lines he hadn’t crossed. After Khonshu, every face of everyone he ever killed was seared into his memory. Steven had seen that.
Or maybe this is just some brother or lover or friend of someone he’d wronged, someone Marc never would have taken notice of because he wasn’t who Marc was after.
Or maybe Marc honestly doesn’t deserve this, maybe the so-called wrong he’d committed had been protecting someone – Khonshu’s travelers of the night. Maybe his captor is seeking revenge for Ammit’s plot, or for some of the other terrible things Marc’s put a stop to.
It’s hard to say; Marc’s head had been ringing terribly when he’d finally come to, tied to this chair, and his captor’s subsequent rant is a little fuzzy in his memory. A lot fuzzy, actually. And honestly, he hadn’t been listening. He isn’t listening now, as the man rants and raves, face turning red, spit flying.
Instead, tuning the man out, Marc finally gets the opportunity to evaluate something other than the knife in his thigh, the rope burns around his wrists, the ringing in his head, and the tightness to his ribs. The room they’re in is dimly lit in a cliché kind of way, single light bulb above their heads and everything. There’s a small slit window in the concrete wall to his left, but it’s the kind of glass you can’t really see through, and anyway it looks like it’s pitch-black outside. He’d been jumped an hour after sunset, so that tracks.
The room is concrete and barren, but the door looks fairly mundane. All Marc has to do is make it past one man, which shouldn’t be too hard as soon as he can think clearly.
A backhand across his face rattles his skull. His teeth dig into his cheek as his head snaps to the side, and blood fills his mouth again. He spits out yet another mouthful of the stuff and turns back to face his captor.
“You know,” he says, still grinning, grim and menacing. “If you’re trying to get my attention, try not to hit me upside the head so much. It’s making it hard to focus.”
The man leans forward to grab his shirt, bunching it up under his fist. The force of it pulls Marc up out of the chair slightly, tugging at the ropes around his wrists and ankles, pulling at his ribs. Twinges of pain run down his leg as the small knife still embedded there shifts ever so slightly.
“I’ll show you hard to focus,” the man growls out, and rips the knife from Marc’s thigh with his other hand even as he drops him again.
Marc lets the cry of pain burst forth from him, panting and a little out of breath as it dissipates. Gods but that hurts. He misses the healing power of his vestments. Thank goodness he’s not entirely out of practice at shoving Steven down and keeping him from being aware of what’s happening on the surface. Gods that hurts. He hisses, blinking and forcing himself to focus, to see where the knife goes next. That could be useful, if he could get his hands on it.
His captor is still holding it, looking obscenely proud as he stares down at Marc’s reaction. A second later, once it’s clear Marc is paying attention again, he surges forward and puts the knife to Marc’s throat.
“You think you’re so –”
Marc bites his wrist. He leans forward, teeth already bloody, tiny blade at his throat, and bites the man’s wrist. A strangled yelp rings through the room as the man pulls back, but, more importantly, as he drops the knife. It’d been a bad angle, to do any real damage, but the action had been startling enough that the knife is now in his lap. He shifts, quick as he can, as the man reels backward. Luckily, the ropes on his wrists are, while tight, fairly far down, which gives him some room to move. He snatches up the blade, ignoring the way his fingers dance across his still-bleeding thigh wound.
“You little –”
Marc’s not a little anything, but he tunes the man out again as he hacks at the ropes best he can, wrist twisted backward and hand straining. The knife slips, piercing into his skin, and then it’s gone, ripped out of his hand by his captor.
That’s okay. He’d gotten far enough. He yanks his wrist sharply upward, breaking through the last of the fraying ropes, and reaches out to grab the man’s shirt, mimicking the hold he’d been in not too long ago.
“I’ll take that,” he says, letting the man go and grabbing for the knife in the same breath, quickly, before he can move out of reach. He slices at his other wrist first, slipping the knife under the ropes and moving upward to avoid cutting himself, then hurls the knife at his captor. It pierces the man’s shoulder, sticking there with a cry of pain and giving Marc enough time to bend over and wrestle with the ropes around his ankles.
His right hand is starting to grow slick with the blood that drips down his wrist, and the wound in his leg is still bleeding, but he gets his fingers around the rough-hewn ropes, finds the knots and tugs. There’s swearing from above him but Marc doesn’t – can’t – pay those any mind. He gets one leg free, then something grabs his right shoulder and pushes him back into the chair. He growls. The leg he’d worked free is his right one, but…
Marc kicks out, raises his knee up to his chest and shoves his foot into the other man’s torso. Pain flits through him, ringing through his leg, blinding his vision for a moment. Nausea surges up his throat and dizziness overtakes his head. He’s losing blood and kicking out is only going to make his injury worse, but Marc’s dealt with worse pain. Hell, he’s died before. This is nothing.
Bending over again, feeling the wound in his leg press against his shirt, feeling the blood make the fabric sticky and wet, he wrenches off the final restraint. This time, when his captor moves to grab him, Marc tackles him first. They roll on the ground for a moment, grappling wildly. Marc’s weak from the head injury and the blood loss and from being smacked around, but he’s not afraid to fight dirty and he’s got more experience doing so than most people. It’s a matter of moments before he has the man under him and he reaches forward to wrench the knife from his shoulder.
There’s a cry of alarm and pain, and Marc’s almost tempted to take the dagger now in his hand and press it down again, to feel it pierce through flesh and see the blood squirt out as he pulls it out again. It would be easy. It would be so, so easy. “You deserve this,” rings through his head. Maybe he does. Maybe he is a monster, forever changed by his time in the military, his time as a mercenary, his time with Khonshu, because Marc can picture himself doing it, wants to do it.
Killing this man would stop him from coming after him again, would prevent him from hurting anyone else, because whatever reason he’d come for Marc, he’d come willing and able to inflict pain.
It would be so easy, to let the blade fall, to thrust it forward between two ribs, or slice the man’s gut open. He’d be ridding himself of future trouble. He’d be saving himself more injuries, if he had trouble continuing to subdue the man.
You deserve this.
Maybe he does. But Steven doesn’t. And his blood is at the scene, and his fingerprints are in the room. A body would complicate things.
Marc tosses the knife aside.
With his fists, he knocks the man out. Then, he staggers to his feet and takes a moment to evaluate himself. There’s no possible way he can hide this from Steven. The leg alone needs stitches, not to mention the ringing in his skull. He’s not sure if he has a concussion, or a head wound, or if he’ll just have a bad headache for a while, but either way, he doubts Steven will make it to work tomorrow. Today? It was Sunday, right, which, depending on how long he’s been here, means it may be Monday already. Marc pushes those thoughts aside; there are more important things right now.
Like the fact that he’s not about to bleed out anytime soon, and that unconsciousness doesn’t last nearly as long as they show on TV. He staggers back over to the chair, gathering up the now-bloody ropes that had been used to hold him, then makes his way back over to his captor. Pushing the man over so he lays on his front, Marc wrestles his hands behind his back and ties them tight. He doesn’t do the legs, but then, he’s trying to make it so the man doesn’t die here. This way, he can stagger out of here.
The man groans as he works, already coming to, so Marc does him the courtesy of flipping him back onto his back, then dragging him toward a wall and setting him up to lean against it. He tracks down the knife to pocket it next – no need to make it too easy – then looks around for any incriminating evidence. There’s plenty of his blood at the scene, but nothing specific to him. Steven had agreed Marc would have the evening to himself, so he hadn’t had any ID on him, nothing that could tie him to either Steven Grant or Marc Spector.
The leg, though… Groaning himself, Marc seats himself on the edge of the wooden chair he’d been tied to and peels back his pants around the wound. It’s in the middle of his thigh and still bleeding, but if the knife had hit an artery he’d be dead by now, so it can’t be that serious. Still, he has no idea where he is, and no idea where the nearest first aid kit is, and he’d really rather not go to the hospital no matter what Steven wants (at least, not unless the two of them come up with some kind of story to explain things that doesn’t involved being kidnapped by a thug with a grudge), so stopping the bleeding is top priority at the moment.
Wrestling with his shirt, Marc tears off a strip. It’s just long enough to wrap around his leg. He doesn’t make it tight enough to function as a tourniquet – that’s entirely unnecessary here – but he makes sure it puts a decent amount of pressure on the wound.
When he looks up, the man is watching him with a half-sneer, clearly dazed but still full of hate. Marc ignores him and stands, making for the door, then pauses and turns back.
“I wouldn’t recommend trying to find me again. I won’t be as merciful the next time.” He doesn’t intend to wait for a response, but his former captor’s already opening his mouth to speak as Marc turns away.
“You’ll get what’s coming to you,” the man says, spitting his own blood on the ground in a complete role reversal before Marc can fully exit the room.
Maybe. Someday, perhaps. But not today.