"WHAT IS THIS place?" Noor asks, stepping inside an entirely white tiled corridor. "It looks like..."
"A psych ward," Marc finishes for her. "That's what it is."
Noor can feel a strong hand on her arm before she even realises that she flinched at the sentence. She shoves the memories deep down, out of habit, before slowly sighing through her nose.
That's exactly what's wrong with her. If she keeps it tightly locked away in a corner of her brain, she can pretend that it never happened. But right now, that's exactly what's going to cost her her life.
"I was in a psych ward," she pronounces softly, hoping to not be heard.
Of course, it doesn't work. Marc sharply turns to her, taken completely off guard. She's half-sure Steven almost broke his neck from how fast he whirled around to look at her.
"What?" he lets out. "You never said."
"He's right, you should wear a sign around your neck to warn people," Zagreus ironises.
"They can hear you now," she feels the need to remind him.
She did good, because Zagreus suddenly blinks in confusion. "Oh, right, forgot about that."
Marc narrows his eyes at Zagreus, before focusing on Noor, because clearly the egotistical god is less important than the absolute bombshell his soulmate just dropped. "Are you okay?"
He has this thing, where he always asks the right questions and it always surprises her. She expected questions like 'Why?' or something like that. Definitely not this.
"Let's just get this over with," she settles for. "How are we supposed to do this anyway?"
Steven offers Noor a pat on the shoulder, before walking forward. "Not sure," he answers her. "How was Layla before you left?"
She almost stops dead in her tracks. She kind of swept the whole 'before you left' under the rug, for the time being. Which, she knows, is typical of her but she had other things to do.
"She's uh... buying me time to get you out of there," she quickly explains.
Zagreus stops himself from saying that she also might be traumatised. This whole not existing only for Noor thing is quite cool because he gets to touch her, but he wishes he could just say the usual stuff. How else is he supposed to be comedic relief?
"Knowing her, she'll go on a suicide mission to stop Harrow herself," Marc says, face scrunched up in a frown.
Zagreus pats his back. "Better hurry then."
Marc looks back at the door from where they came from. "Know what Layla would be okay with?"
"Don't. Just don't say it."
"Can we not go down the 'kill the hippo' road again?"
"Humans."
"I'm just saying there is one hippo and four of us, including a god, and that ship can't be that hard to steer. So... And we don't have to actually–"
"Have to what?" Steven stops him, going from door to door to watch what's going on inside through the windows. "Kill the goddess Taweret?"
"No, just, you know, find me a rope and..."
"Is this always like this in your heads? Because that's damn loud," Noor remarks thoughtfully. "For now, let's just do what she says so we can maybe get our hearts back, yeah?"
Marc sighs. "Noor, I don't know about you, but my memories are a fricking mess."
"Yeah, mine too."
They turn to Steven, standing in front of a door. Through the window, they can see Moon Knight beating down a jackal in a bathroom, which Noor instantly recognizes. She can see herself, curled up under a sink.
"Your typical meet-cute," Noor says lightly. "I can't believe you asked me out after this."
Zagreus snorts. "I can't believe you said yes."
Behind them, Marc groans. "We can hear you."
"I know."
"When was this?" Steven asks, standing in front of the door next to them, luckily distracting Marc and Zagreus before they try to fistfight each other.
Noor walks over to him, and tilts her head at the sight. "That's me?"
She remembers it. It's from the boat, when they were going to what's-his-name. Maggot! This can't be her memory – it'd be a bit narcissistic to have her own face plastered around her mind.
So she turns to Marc with a bashful grin. She could swear he's blushing. "Is this yours?"
"Well it's not going to be Steven's, is it?"
"That is so cute–"
"Okay, let's move on, we have something to do!"
He takes her by the shoulders and leads her towards another door, the bond tingling with fiery sparks between them, Steven sending Noor a wink of mutiny. He totally planned this.
Marc, his hands still on Noor's shoulders, stops. She looks up at the door. It's that night Khonshu showed them the night Senfu designed the map to Ammit's ushabti. The sky has the same circular purple waves tearing through it, and they can see Steven, in front of Khonshu, while Noor and Layla watch with wide eyes.
"Woah," Marc can't help but let out. "That's wild."
Steven nods, turning away to the next door. "Oi. What's this?"
The others walk up to him, to watch the memory of Marc, drinking in the middle of the street.
He tenses up. "Steven, what are we gonna do here? We're gonna revisit every single memory I've ever had?"
"So it's yours," Zagreus says. "What's going on there?"
Marc looks back and forth between them and the memory. "I don't know, it's just a street, you know. How many streets have you walked down your whole life?"
"Not any made it to my top 10 memories."
Noor turns to Zagreus with a frown. "What about the Boulevard?"
"Totally not the same."
"Help!"
Head snapping towards the scream, Noor can't help but take a step forward, stomach churning in apprehension.
"Did you hear that?" Steven asks, eyebrows cinched.
"That's a kid," she breathes out. "What's a kid doing here?"
Before her question is even finished, she's burst through a door, Steven right behind her.
They stop so abruptly that they bump into each other. "Oh god."
It's filled with corpses, sitting there, on chairs, at tables, as if they weren't well, corpses. Goosebumps run up her arms.
Zagreus and Marc walk in soon after, just enough time for the other two to recover.
"Just a creepy caff filled with dead bodies," Steven says. "That's all it is. No prizes guessing whose this is." He turns to Marc. "Yours."
"Steven," Noor hisses, gesturing at him to shut it.
He rolls his eyes, before walking to the Scales in the centre of the room, the only thing illuminated by a divine spotlight.
"Gabon," Marc suddenly says, catching Zagreus' attention. He goes to another table. "New York. No way... oh, man."
"You know all of them?" he asks. Marc just sends him a look. "Ah."
Steven catches on quickly. "No. Oh, no." He shakes his head. "Surely not all of them?"
Zagreus didn't expect Marc to have killed at least two dozen people. "All of them?" he asks.
"They were criminals," Marc quickly says. "Murderers. Predators. The worst of the worst. Khonshu wanted them punished." He searches for Noor, but she's all the way in the corner, staring at 6 corpses he doesn't immediately recognize. Good. "It's what he meant by protecting the travellers of the night."
"And you remember each person?" Steven asks, surprised.
"You try taking a life," he fires back. "See how quickly you forget. Kept wishing I'd fail and one of them would kill me instead. The healing ended up being a curse."
Quickly, Zagreus watches over the body with glinting red eyes. "Yeah. They had it coming."
Now, he's getting worried by Noor's silence staring in the back of the room. As are the other two, from what he gathers with the glances they keep giving her. She should be screaming at the top of her lungs that Marc doesn't deserve to die, that he's worthy of love and she'll hammer it into his brain until he agrees.
Eventually, quietly, and with unmistakable sobs in her voice, Noor says, "It's not all you, Marc."
Marc and Steven look at each other, confused and concerned.
Zagreus, who was there to watch Knight Mare in all its bloody glory, immediately catches on and walks to her, taking her hand. She yanks it away, taking a step back.
"No, no," she whispers, wiping her tears. "Don't tell me they deserved it, I know that." She shakes her head, the thought that she'd been hiding from herself bubbling up to the surface. "But their parents? Their moms, their children–" She starts to gesture, arms flailing. "Some of them have a soulmate mark, and oh god." She clasps her hands on her mouth. "I murdered them."
"Come here, come here." Steven holds her just like he had when she was having panic attacks, rubbing her back, forcing her to tell him 5 things she can see and so on.
Marc walks up to Zagreus, who's still staring ahead, shocked. "What happened?"
"What do you think?" he snaps, before forcing himself to calm down. "You died," he says. "And she would have been killed by those mercenaries." His gaze is lost for a second. "I thought... I thought she'd be safe from the Curse. I gave her the Armour, and then..."
And then she butchered them.
"I told her they deserved it," Zagreus goes on. "Because they did, I can see it. But I didn't realise she'd hide behind it."
Marc had long before made his peace with the deaths that came with the suit. But Noor... "Is that what Taweret said, about her heart being cloaked?" he asks. "Hiding things from herself."
Zagreus nods. "Everytime something happens, she bottles it up until she can't remember it." He looks over at her and Steven, now helping her regain a normal breathing. "I know there's worse things coming. I might take up your offer on killing Taweret."
Anything to keep Noor in that sweet denial of hers, if it means not breaking her heart.
Noor finally regains normal breathing. She's not having a panic attack anymore, but the burn of guilt has branded her soul with a seal that will never go away. If this is the reality she has to face, she's not sure she'll make it out.
She knows what's coming for her. Kitchen tiles, broken glass and a tear.
"The Scales," she manages to get out, walking to them. "They're slowing down."
Steven is still holding her arm in support. "It's working."
Marc walks right past the Scales and towards Noor, who stares up at him in slight bewilderment. One of them is holding his heart. Marc knows which one.
Before he can even ask if she's okay, she lets go of Steven and tugs him down to hold him against her chest. "Don't ever think you deserve to die again," she says, voice heavy. "There's nothing I would change about the person that you are. You deserve every bit of life that comes your way."
As sudden as this was, Noor lets him go, his arms falling back to his side with no purpose anymore now that they stopped holding her, breath effectively taken away.
"Well," Zagreus lets out, clearing his throat. "What do we do now? Do we have a little heart to heart? Who goes next?"
Noor, still a bit away from the group, feels something tug at the sleeve of her t-shirt. She looks down at a child, confusion painting her face. "Hello."
Marc turns to her when he hears her voice, and the sight nearly makes his knees buckle.
Steven points at them. "Marc, why is there a child in a room filled with people that you've killed?"
Marc is too distraught to even think straight, let alone act. "Steven, look, don't go near him," he begs, voice trembling. "Noor, step back."
Before she can ask why, the little man tugs her along, running out of the room. She knows Steven is right behind her, Marc and Zagreus following hurriedly.
The kid leads her through a door and into a backyard. She can feel the sun on her face, and smell barbecue. He lets go of her hand as Steven bursts in, locking the door behind him.
Noor stares at him as Marc and Zagreus hit the door, screaming their names. "Why in hell did you lock them out?"
"Ziggy was just on the wrong side!" he immediately defends himself. "And Marc would never let me see this by myself." She goes to unlock the door, but Steven takes her hand. "Please."
She can barely discern Marc and Zagreus' shapes through the window. What harm could come with visiting a memory, right? "5 minutes," she tells Steven.
But Steven is too engrossed by what he's seeing, right behind her. "Mom?"
Noor immediately flips around, and looks at the woman. She seems in her thirties, with long wavy brown hair, cooking on the barbecue. "Food's ready!" she calls. "Who's hungry? Roro?"
"That's your mom?" Noor asks, voice soft and smiling at the woman with kind eyes.
Roro, the kid who held Noor's hand, is drawing at a table. "Mom, come check out my drawing!"
An older kid with a boyish grin watches above his shoulder. "He drew the fish with only one fin."
Noor exhales a laugh. "He's drawing Gus." Steven's fish, with only one fin. God, he really struggled to get him.
"Marc," the mother calls, "be nice to your little brother."
Her jaw goes slack, and Steven reflexively holds onto her for comfort. "I had a brother," he breathes out.
Marc leans forward, and whispers to his brother, "I'm not hungry, want to go to the cave."
Immediately, Roro stands up. "We'll eat later!"
As they walk away, Noor and Steven spot a man, building a shed. That tussle of curly hair... "That's your dad," she realises.
"Boys," the dad calls. "Don't be gone too long."
They nod, quickly walking away.
"Hey, hey, hey, Marc!" his mother cries out. "What do you do?" Marc turns to her with an eye roll, like he knows this by heart. "Keep an eye on your brother. Okay?"
He smiles, nodding again. "Laters, gators."
Noor's eyes sparkle when she turns to Steven, whose face lights up with a sense of familiarity. That's what he always says.
His mom waves them goodbye. "In a while, crocodile."
Letting herself be tugged along by Steven, they follow Marc and Roro through the woods, making sure to not lose them.
"I'll be Rosser, though," Roro says, then, he goes on in a bad British accent, "Can you hear that, Doctor Grant?"
"I sure do, Rosser," Marc says in the same accent. "Sounds to me like danger."
"Doctor Grant?" Steven and Noor echo at the same time.
Noor shakes her head. "Freaky coincidence," she says, brushing it off.
Steven only squeezes her hand. "Might be, yeah."
Out of nowhere, it starts raining hard on them, instantly soaking them to the bone.
Roro seems scared. "Mom said not to when it's raining."
"It'll be fine," Marc reassures him. "Don't be a baby."
He walks forward and, after a moment, Roro follows.
Steven walks forward, but Noor holds him back, heart in her throat. "I have a bad feeling," she says.
"I have to know," Steven whimpers.
So, she follows him inside the cave.
Barely one step inside, they instantly get why their mother said not to go when it rains.The cave is sloping, filling with rainwater.
"Oh god, no."
They start pushing forward through the thin natural corridors of the cave, as if they could even grasp the memory of the children, and yank them away from danger.
"Lads?" Steven calls. "You have to get out of there!"
"It's a memory, Steven," Noor says, still pressing forward, not sure who she's trying to reassure. "It's already happened."
"But we have to do something!"
The closer they get to the boys, the higher the water gets.
When it reaches their thighs, they have to crawl down a hole to get to the children. It's too tight – they wouldn't be able to make it through.
All they can do is watch, and scream their names.
"Marc!" Noor finds herself screaming, but she's not sure which one she's calling. "Marc, oh, god."
"Help us!" they start to hear the children yell in anguish. "Help us, please!"
"Roro!"
The water reaches their chests.
"Mommy! Mommy!"
It reaches their chin, the screams almost drowned out by the water getting in their ears, until the most blood chilling sound can be heard.
Complete silence.
Author's Note: well this was hectic!