Chapter Text
Sometimes Marc really does feel like a ghost. An apparition with chains knocking into walls like some Charles Dicken’s character. To roam amongst the stars until he became stardust or something else poetic like that.
It wasn’t any bit new, he’s been feeling as if his chest stilled for eternity since they pulled their barely conscious body out of that stupid cave, but he did try to keep these feelings under wraps.
A bit hard to explain to the other guys in your head or even your wife that you pass by day to day believing you’ve been dead this whole time, nothing more than the reflection of a preserved corpse in time.
If he told them this, they’d either get worried (even if he’s trying to accept that that’s okay) or think he’s… well not crazy because they wouldn’t say that, but saying ‘didn’t believe him’ didn’t feel quite right.
He’s adamantly ignoring his thoughts on how he serves as the warrior for a literal Egyptian god and has defied death three whole times with one of them truly after being dead but he just brushed the pesky thoughts away.
He knew it was an irrational anxiety, but he also did pack and book it with the bare minimum to run away from his wife the second she might’ve realized something, further, was up with her husband’s mental health.
His track record said he wasn’t much a “rational” thinking guy and more of a “hide the accidentally broken plate under the rug so you can get rid of it later and peace out of the house to play the ‘I was out with friends all afternoon so it wasn’t me’ card when the remains could possibly be found at the bottom of the trash can” mommy issues kind of guy.
It was easier with all the walls put up in their headspace when he was fighting tooth and nail to keep Steven happy and unaware. Because then he didn’t have to worry about a stray thought alerting the others of his feelings about his state of existence.
But it honestly made everything worse at the same time, especially when he tried to disconnect from Layla. When he was spending his days wrapped in honorary mummy decor for a god that looked like death, spending the least amount of time fronting so Steven only thought he had a sleeping disorder, being reminded sometimes that Khonshu found him essentially dead, and just in whole living his life feeling like this was proving he was a ghost in every shape and form…
Well, it didn’t much help him with him discerning his realities that was for damn sure.
Sometimes it got so bad, Marc would just.. Wander. Maybe it was in their apartment or outside, he’d just get so caught up in his lack-of-existence he’d forget reality around him and just start walking around, watching silently. The world quieted for himself without switching for once as he phased throughout this plane.
He tried to not let himself get that bad in the first place because everyone would know something was up, but sometimes he’d honestly just forget that he was “alive”.
I don’t have a son. He died. He died on a rainy day. I don’t have any sons.
He died.
He died.
He died.
Sometimes, he would have bouts where he could swear his lungs were filling up with water or blood, it didn’t matter as he was drowning and he was dying but he was already dead.
One of these bouts freaked Layla out when she found him panicking on the floor saying he was drowning over and over again. He at least passed the episode off as a combination of just PTSD and Survivor's Guilt at the time just to keep his little secret for a bit longer. Even if he might’ve had a spotty memory of the episode towards the end.
In some ways, Marc knows that what he’s feeling isn’t “abnormal” for some alters. He used to research (always making sure no one would know he was even doing such) their condition a lot after he couldn’t ignore it anymore from his Marine days.
He’s read about Ghost alters, but in a way, he was scared to connect to it. Because it would mean he’d have to finally acknowledge these feelings instead of denying and hiding them under the rug and acting like he wasn’t around when it broke.
It would also mean acknowledging that that day RoRo died affected them way more than just the death of their brother. That trauma had to go somewhere after all. And Marc refuses to be so selfish and identify himself as the subtly planted fractured result of his own mistake.
Even if his first defining memories were of confusion and thinking his parents must be crying over a flat-toned sound despite the monitors saying otherwise.
Sure, he was slowly getting better about feelings discussions and not blocking everyone off at first nervous ping. But he still struggled to alter his way of thinking he’s reinforced to himself for decades now. Steven kept suggesting they see a therapist for a reason after all.
There was no “original” Marc, Marc knew this. From his research, he knew this. Marc was just as much an alter as Steven even if Marc passed the ‘host’ baton to the nervous brit without him realizing.
But he would also fight tooth and nail denying he was anything beyond the other angry, trauma-holding alter who was most certainly alive because he knows this, he knows this- and as “normal” as a man like Marc Spector can get.
Even his last name was Spector for fuck’s sake.