🌙 Inbox - Marc Spector's Dead Drop

[reflectedlight]

If he's told you how to find it, a loose ceiling panel above the Lyfe Boat on the first floor is where you can leave hand-written notes inside of library books if you're trying to reach Marc Spector.

If he hasn't told you how to find it, you shouldn't be here. Marc doesn't exist. You want Steven Grant's Inbox.

This functions like a normal inbox, but it is mostly text which can lead into spam.
Put date in the header, please!
Marc tags from reflectedlight
Steven tags from de_nile

Comments

[reflectedlight]

"Oh, yeah. I was in the army, and I'm ... American, which doesn't mean much to you. She's been working in the Middle East and North Africa for like a decade as, uh ...

I don't know a nice way to say antiquities thief.

Just... different culture, she grew up in it, she knows it better, her family's established. And I don't do stealth much. She does."

Shrug.

[mercurialize]

"So you're the murderer and she's the thief. Interesting duo you make."

Sounds lucrative, really. Wetwork and thievery don't tend to cooperate, the two professions don't even acknowledge the other and wetwork always considers themselves the best of the best in the Shinga and all its underworld webbing. Kylar doesn't know the last time he bumped into a real thief that wasn't a double crossing noble or a guild rat.

He thinks for a minute, almost a hum within the thought.

"Think you'll stay once you graduate? Aim for a deal? Could protect her. Could protect Steven and you. Keep Khonshit off of all of you, might salvage the abilities, if you even wanted to keep them. Admiral can do a lot more than find two kids for someone."

[reflectedlight]

"Well. I mean, she's got a whole - I'm not going to be able to explain it, she steals mostly from Western collectors, there's this whole political, colonial-"

Too complicated. He waves. "... never mind.

And - none of that's why I love her.

"I don't know. I kinda left right in the middle of, uh - ... I said I don't save the world, but this guy Khonshu has me after is sure trying to end it."

[mercurialize]

Western... yeah, he doesn't get it. He lacks the context. She steals from other thieves? That's his best guess as to what Marc is trying to explain with all the contextual gaps.

"And whatever it is you're supposed to be going after, that's the thing that did you in? Or was it some kind of freak accident that caused you to wind up here?" He's been in freak accidents, they aren't fun.

[reflectedlight]

"Yeah. Cult guy, got shot and fell out a window. Bad luck."

[mercurialize]

"Got shot with an arrow to the back once while impersonating someone else." It's supposed to make you feel better, Marc. "Worst part, if I hadn't been using an illusion to make myself taller, the shot wouldn't have been fatal. Oh. And I knew the guy who did it. He had the fucking balls to apologize as I was losing consciousness." Scarred Wrabble was one of the good ones. If wetboys could have friends, he'd probably be the closest to a 'friend' Durzo dared admit to. Maybe co-conspirators was a better way to put it. Yet he still went for Durzo's head. Just part of the business, alas.

An open hand shrug. "Bad luck."

[reflectedlight]

"You can get the other guy as many times as you want, the other guy only has to get you once."

Marc makes a cut-throat gesture. Game over. Sucks.

"Shitty line of work."

[mercurialize]

"Ehh.. more or less. But as I told you before, I wanted this. I still do. I'm good at it."

He can't help but grin a little.

"You know, I tried to quit. Leave everything behind. It lasted two months. I moved, set up an apothecary. I was doing honest work. Believe it or not."

He shakes his head with an exaggerated frown.

"Worst mistake of my life."

[reflectedlight]

Alright, yes, you have caught him and his hey remember that part where John Wick retired? shit he's doing -

"You already had enemies, huh?"

[mercurialize]

"I apprenticed to the best wetboy in Cenaria. I had enemies from day one."

He shrugs. He is and was well aware what he signed up for, there are zero regrets about it and that is maybe hard to convey to Marc.

"But it wasn't me they were after. An old friend tracked me down, came asking for my help, get back into the business. Things were bad." He sighs heavily. "He was shot with an arrow in the neck, mid-conversation. I buried him myself. I left after that. Elene hated it, hated me. But I had to."

[reflectedlight]

"Oh - partner?"

This is the first time he's heard that name. Girlfriend, wife, platonic female professional you are both too emotionally weird to label as a friend but you can trust to fly a helicopter for you any time, any place, zero questions asked, something in that zone?

[mercurialize]

He folds his arms, heaving a heavy breath. It takes him a moment of just breathing to get stability. "Wife." He says it quietly.

"She died."

To his credit, he's no longer a puddle on the floor any time he has to explain it. But it still hurts.

[reflectedlight]

Marc huffs out a rough breath. Fuck. That's gutting.

"It's not right," he says, by which he means: people that are trying to just live in a regular way getting obliterated from death in a random direction, when people that basically dare it to happen every single day keep living. "I think about this place - why it does this. Why it pulls out guys like me, instead of somebody who really deserved to keep going. "We don't have to -" get into it. We don't. "We can talk about something else."

Peace offering.

[mercurialize]

He can guess why the Admiral does pull who he does. He'll never agree with every choice and sometimes he's actively against others. But Elene? She'd never take a deal. She was at peace with her fate even when Kylar wasn't. It's sort of a comfort and one of the reasons his deal can't be for her.

He sniffs. "Yeah. Thanks." For offering to shift to another topic. Although he's in a rut now and he's not sure where to go from here. He should say a joke, something light-hearted and dumb. He can't. Damn, he shouldn't have even brought her up.

[reflectedlight]

"Was that kid you? In the hallway, all beat up?"

Maybe not a great pivot, but it's a pivot.

[mercurialize]

That pivot could literally not be any worse, Marc! His expression hardens and dulls at the same time. Something colder slips in, a distance.

"No. That kid's dead." He says it evenly, factually. He'll take the opportunity to hop over to another roof, if physical distance is enough of a hint against the topic. Now he has to steer away from it.

"You got away unscathed with that shitshow, I assume?"

[reflectedlight]

LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER SOUND.

Damn. Oops. Okay.

Marc shakes it off, bounds to follow him but gives him a buffer distance of privacy.

"I, uhh, I dunno unscathed, but I'm not messed up about it. I was a kid, but it was after I'd already figured out how to deal with everything a little bit, so I was just a littler, dumber version of myself with no training."

[mercurialize]

"Sounds pretty unscathed to me. Well, all things considered as far as barge fuckery goes." Is fuckery a word? Whatever. It is now.

"So..." A huff. Enough dallying. "What do you want while we're... here? I don't mean here, I mean," another gesture between them. "here. Temps. That sort of thing. Got a goal in mind? One step you think you want to aim to sort out before the next guy takes over and you have to do this whole song and dance again?" Sometimes talking about business is much, much easier.

[reflectedlight]

OoOOOh yeah there's one thing but he can't reveal he needs it without giving away that Steven's nooooot a warden...

"Temps can't give back capped powers, right?"

He read that somewhere.

"I wouldn't ask for most of the offense stuff, but Khonshu's armor can heal me, which was nice. No hangovers."

[mercurialize]

"I said goals, Marc. Not your shopping list." He scowls a little but, let's be honest. What can temps really do? He does not understand the purpose of this system.

"I'll ask about the armor. See if he can let you have the defensive aspects of it for now but.. yes. As a temp, we can't ask for Talent or magical capabilities to be returned. So don't get any hopes up."

Grumbly grumble. Fine. There's a sigh.

"What all can it do? Maybe with some specifics I can have an easier time to negotiate. You said it heals, poisons included. What else?"

[reflectedlight]

"...I don't know if I know the difference, then."

What are goals? He has never thought about this before.

"S'alright if you can't. Uh, when I'm in it a stab or gunshot will just go clean through. No blood. It'll leave a hole, but it won't ... hurt. It's weird.

And, yes, I know I should really not have, uh, got shot died if I had the armor, but I didn't ... have it, I was trying to be a little subtle. The thing summons in bright white and with a cape, it's not really stealthy."

[mercurialize]

"So same defensive capabilities, less flash for an entrance. Got it."

May as well get it over with. He pulls his communicator out of his pocket and makes a quick request.

"Anything else?" He asks glancing over.

[reflectedlight]

"... I don't know what you mean by goals."

He's been ambling up and jumping around things casually this whole time, and here he stops and thinks.

"Bright told me I needed to see myself as having value, but first of all, I don't like that guy.

Second of all, if it were that easy I'd just do it. And I don't think I'm an inmate because I don't like myself enough."

[mercurialize]

"You know it's multiple things, right?" He cannot speak to self-value whatsoever.

"If that's not why you're an inmate then what is?" He holds up a hand. "Don't say murder because I'm still doing that and I'm on the other side right now so that's not it." Granted he's far more selective about it than he used to be but murder is murder.

[reflectedlight]

Marc - who normally is so completely emotionally flat that he reacts to being stabbed by grimacing a little, and seeing a new form of magic he didn't know was possibly by raising 1 eyebrow, slightly - laughs hysterically.

It's a WILDLY out of pocket display of emotion, because, oh boy, isn't that the million dollar question? Isn't it? ISN'T IT?

"See! See, that's the thing! See, who even knows?? You graduated and you're fine, why am I not already just fine! There's no way I'm killing better people than you, right? Hah. Right??"

He's actually rounding on Kylar now, smiling weirdly, gesturing. It's like the thing he uses to keep his emotions leashed has very suddenly broken and uh, maybe underneath he is really, really not okay and never was?

"Because I actually kind of try! I kind of try to give a shit, and you don't. And that's fine, right? And if that's fine, then what's left? What's left that's still my fault?"

He laughs again, a short little burst of stress releasing.