Tweak says, "oh no you didn't!"
Content Warning: Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempts
The Moon Knight system is (currently) comprised of three alters that front; Marc Spector, Steven Grant and Jake Lockley. They are autistic, and have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) caused by significant and prolonged childhood abuse, along with a number of other mental health issues, although they do not all have the same issues. Marc has PTSD, depression and is sometimes suicidal, where Steven has insomnia, anxiety and memory issues, and Jake shares the anger issues with Marc. All three of them dissociate at times and can have panic attacks.
There may be other alters in the system, but they have not fronted or made themselves known at this time. Marc and Steven are aware of each other, but not of Jake. Jake is aware of Marc and Steven. **
Marc Spector is a very serious person. He doesn’t make jokes or kid around with people, and he’s terrible at small talk, mainly because he’s usually masking very hard and idle chatter is a massive distraction. He struggles with making friends, partly because he’s bad at talking to people and partly because he has Khonshu talking in his ear almost all the time, telling him where to go and when to do things and what’s needed next – having friends does not help with Moon Knighting, apparently.
He finds it very hard to trust people. He has trusted exactly five people in his entire life; his little brother, who’s dead because of him; his parents, which was obviously a massive mistake; Layla, his wife, who is amazing and he adores her; and Steven, his alter, because he’s Steven and how could you not trust him? He especially doesn’t trust medical personnel – after multiple long-term residential stays at Putnam Medical Facility as a teenager, where everything was discussed with his father and Marc was never told what was going on or anything like that, he can’t bring himself to believe they would ever have his best interests at heart. All he remembers is heavy doses of unpleasant medications in order to “fix” his DID, trying to run away and being punished for it, and a few sessions of electroshock therapy.
He’s very protective of the few people he has let get close to him. He loves Layla so much that he was willing to leave her if it would keep her safe from Khonshu – he missed her so much, but he wasn’t there to drag her down with him, and Khonshu wasn’t around her insisting that she would be his next Avatar. He’s beyond over-protective of Steven – setting him up with an apartment and a job, letting him have a life while Marc only took moments here and there, keeping all the bad memories away from him so that he only remembers good things and so on.
His temper sometimes gets the best of him, and he can be quite destructive when he loses it, although usually with his surroundings or himself. He has broken more than his fair share of mirrors and windows with his fists, and hits and slaps at himself when he gets very worked-up. He has a number of pre-Khonshu scars that came from losing his temper in this way, when he didn’t care if he survived or not. He tends to pull and tug at his hair when trying to keep himself grounded in some way.
He's extremely vulnerable, especially at the moment. His mental health is at rock bottom, having spiralled when he heard about the death of his mother, his main abuser as a child, and he struggles to see his own worth at all times. Khonshu is very willing to take advantage of this, which only serves to make Marc worse. He’s offered to just fade away and not front any more on a number of occasions to Steven, so that the other alter can just have his own life without Marc’s stupid bullshit getting in the way.
**
Steven Grant is an extremely lonely man, more than used to being talked over and ignored by his work colleagues. So much so that he considers it a bonus if they actually get his name right, even though he wears a name badge all the time when he sees them. He lives alone, along with his very-well-cared-for goldfish, Gus, and his only friend is a street performer who spends all day as a gold-painted statue that never ever speaks to him. He still manages to be kind and friendly to everyone, though, and goes out of his way to help people or have a chat with them. Unlike Marc, Steven has never masked at all. It’s very rare for him to lose his temper in front of people. When he’s feeling confident enough, his sarcasm and sense of humour comes out.
He can be extremely anxious at times, panicking about forgetting where and when he’s supposed to be places or having to talk to people like his line manager, Donna. His sleeping schedule is all over the place because of his sleeping disorder where he sleepwalks all over the place (which was actually Marc doing missions for Khonshu), so he only sleeps for a couple of hours a night, which doesn’t help his anxiety levels. Having black-outs, missing days and weekends, and “waking up” in strange places only added to his anxiety, but all he could do was power through.
That said, he is very brave. He routinely forces himself to do the scary things like making phone calls or speaking up against the cult leader guy who wants to kill kids because of things they might do in the future or exploring the tombs and caves filled with undead mummified heka priests. Or pushing through the horrific memories his alter’s had to live through so that he can understand and help in some way. He is also the only alter willing and able to stand up to Khonshu, pushing back against the God’s demands of his knight in order to stand up for their own wellbeing.
He is beyond curious, and wants to learn all the things. Mainly about Ancient Egypt, of course, but he didn’t just stop at reading about the building of the pyramids or the mythology or the basic stuff. He also read up on the politics at the time, and the trade with different kingdoms and cultures, and that lead to the geology of the various areas, and so on and so on, because you couldn’t know about the Egyptians without learning about the Persians or the Nubians or the Nabataeans or the Greeks and Romans, and this same drive to know all the things applies in other parts of his life. He needed to know about all of the memories on Taweret’s barque, for example, and had no problem with running on ahead of Marc if it meant he got to know how and why things happened how they did, even if it meant upsetting himself in the process.
Very little is known about Jake Lockley, other than he’s extremely protective of both Marc and Steven, and is very willing to kill people in order to keep them safe. He has pretended to be either Marc or Steven in the past, any number of times, in order to keep things ticking over. He rarely does anything that's just for him, but he does enjoy driving. He almost always appears completely calm and unfazed no matter what his actual mood is - if Jake is visibly or obviously angry, then he's pretty damn livid.
Content Warning: Child Abuse, Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempts Marc was born on 9th March, 1987, the eldest son of Rabbi Elias and Wendy Spector. A few years later, his brother Randall was born. Marc can't remember a lot of his childhood. When he was 8, he went to play with his brother in a series of caves near their home. A sudden rainstorm caused the caves to flood, and trapped the boys. Marc nearly drowned. Randall did. Wendy never got over her younger son's death and blamed Marc, resorting to drinking in order to try and cope. Ten years of horrific abuse at home followed, and Marc's mind soon fractured under the weight of it. Steven and Jake were the result. He spent a lot of time in Putnam Medical Facility, where the doctors spent a lot of time and drugs trying to "fix" him back together. They failed. He left home as soon as he could and joined the Marines. He was good at being a Marine, although he lied on his application form about his mental health history. He was given a dishonorable discharge when he went AWOL for some reason he doesn't remember. Jake remembers. He became a mercenary and spent most of his time in North Africa and the Middle East. His old CO, Bushman, eventually caught up with him and hired him for a few gigs. Their last gig, working with Dr. El-Faouly on an archaeological dig at a temple for some Egyptian god, is where things went weird. Bushman decided to kill all the archaeologists and steal the artifacts from the dig. Marc tried to stop it, and ended up pistol-whipped, gut-shot and left for dead. He managed to crawl into the temple, intending to kill himself, when the god of the temple offered to save his life and in return, Marc would serve as his Avatar on Earth. He accepted and became the Moon Knight, the Fist of Khonshu. He met up with Dr. El-Faouly's daughter, a beautiful woman called Layla, and fell head-over-heels in love with her. Eventually they were married, and worked together. She found out Marc was Moon Knight, and was fine with it. However, Khonshu was manipulating Marc, trying to drive a wedge between them and that along with his worsening mental health meant that six months ago, he left her because he believed it was the best way to protect her from things (Mainly himself and Khonshu). A couple of months ago, Wendy Spector died. Marc's mental health spiralled down from there, and Steven began fronting again, something he hadn't really done since they were a teenager. Marc was content to fade into the background and only come out at night, while Steven got a flat and a job and an actual life. And a load of anxiety around blacking out and having weird dreams and so he decided to try and stop sleeping, which was a problem for Marc. Khonshu had Marc hunting for a scarab that would lead to the location of the Goddess Ammit's ushabti, a small stone statue that she was imprisoned in. Khonshu's previous Avatar, Arthur Harrow, had decided that bringing Ammit back to judge all of humanity and consume their souls if they were destined to do evil even before they had done or thought of anything evil was the best way to bring about a utopia. Steven got caught up in this, and even managed to bring Layla back into this hunt, despite Marc's best efforts. They all wound up in Cairo, racing to find the spot where Ammit's ushabti was buried. Steven was the one to find it, in the tomb of Alexander the Great, but Harrow soon caught up with him and Marc, and shot them twice in the chest, killing them almost instantly. They woke up. Weird, given that they were dead. Marc was supposedly heavily sedated, but recognized that they were in some sort of psychiatric hospital. He managed to get away from the orderlies eventually, and found Steven trapped in a sarcophagus. They met up with Taweret, and realized that they were on her barque sailing through the Duat, the Egyptian Underworld, and in order for them to pass on to the Field of Reeds (one of the many Afterlifes in the MCU) their scales had to balance. This meant going through each other's memories to understand each other and themselves as best they could. When they didn't balance, undead sand zombies from the Duat came to take them both and trap them in the sand forever. Steven was taken, falling overboard as he protected Marc, and turning to sand. Then their scales balanced. Marc was worthy of the Field of Reeds. He left almost instantly, because he couldn't leave Steven behind - he chose to spend his eternity in the sand beside Steven, rather than stay in the Field of Reeds where he could know true peace for the first time since his brother died. Osiris himself was impressed by the behaviour of the two souls, and allowed them to return to life. GAME ENTRY. Marc clung to Steven as he dragged his still-mostly-sand leg along, and they made their way through the Gates of Osiris - - and woke up floating in the water surrounding Alexander the Great's sarcophagus with a searing pain in their chest. Steven was back where he should be, in their mind alongside Marc, and his presence felt like their hug was still going on and that was great because Marc currently felt like shit. He pushed himself up to sit, and then leaned over to cough up the two bullets Harrow had killed them with, catching them in his hand as he did so. The pain eased once they were out of his body, and he felt like he could take a deep breath again as he felt Khonshu's power once more. "Layla's obviously freed him," Steven commented from the reflection of the water they were sitting in, and Marc nodded as he got to his feet. A quick mental tug on where his Suit was kept meant that he was soon being wrapped in bandages that quickly formed into Khonshu's ceremonial armor. For all the crap the God put him... no, them through, he did have to admit that the Suit was somewhat comforting in its own way. If only just because it meant they weren't going to die again any time soon. His arms dropped to his side, and then they were leaving the tomb to head back out to meet Khonshu and then go deal with Harrow and Ammit. At least, that was the plan. They had no sooner begun to run past the sarcophagus when a fog or mist of some sort began to seep in and around them, curling round their knees like the bandages had done seconds earlier. "What the fuck, Marc?" Steven said quietly, even though nobody else could hear him, "Where's that coming from?" "No idea," he replied, as he skidded to a halt and the fog wrapped around him completely. He couldn't see a frickin' thing in front of them, no matter what direction he looked in. The water around their ankles felt colder as well, and their footing shifted a little as if... they were standing ankle deep in water at some sort of shoreline? As the fog started to clear all of a sudden, Marc realized that yeah, that's exactly where they were and he suddenly felt sick with panic as he tried to back away from the water, but he caught his heel on a stone or something and wound up sitting in the water. Quick as a flash, Steven pulled him from the front and took his place, their suit swapping from Ancient Mummy to whatever Marc had called it before... Psycho Colonel Sanders? That. "I gotcha, mate," Steven muttered, letting Marc curl up in their head, and quickly got to his feet so he could get out of the bloody lake. "Where the bloody fuck are we?"
Content Warning: Child Abuse, Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Suicide Attempts SECRET: Severity of Mental Health Issues Marc has lied for years about his mental health, a hang-up caused by his dad's insistence on not letting people know just how bad things were. Wendy wasn't an abusive drunk, she was "ill" or "Not feeling well today". Marc wasn't depressed or suicidal or dissociating or, y'know, being someone else entirely, he was just "being a teenager" or "having an overactive imagination" or whatever else he told people. Yes, some things were obvious. Layla worked out fairly quickly that he had PTSD (although he let her think it was because of things he'd seen and done in the Marines) and sometimes self-medicated with too much booze, and he even admitted to her that he'd been diagnosed with autism as a young teenager, and she helped work out coping techniques and ways to help ground her husband when he was obviously having bad days. But he hid his DID (and Steven) for years, and some of his scars are self-inflicted. (Mostly) SECRET: Scars and triggers Layla is (mostly) aware of these, but not of the reasons. Their body is covered in scars. None are less than ten years old, since that's when Marc accepted Khonshu's offer. His back and back of his thighs are covered in scars from the leather belt his mom kept in his room, and which she frequently beat him with - it was a good day if she held onto the buckle end. His arms and hands are criss-crossed with scars from punching mirrors and windows or from stopping knife blades from hitting him. A few of them are deliberate. There are a few bullet wounds from his Mercenary Times. Until recently, Steven was unaware of most of them, and had come up with mundane reasons for the ones he could see. They can be triggered at times by: upset children, especially if it's because a parent is yelling at them; sudden heavy rain; being told something is 'your fault' (especially relevant to Marc); sometimes belts; doors slamming or locked doors being rattled nearby. There are bound to be others, unfortunately. Sleep issues/Nightmares Although Steven is the one who has insomnia, Marc also has problems with sleeping (Jake has never fronted for long enough to actually fall asleep). While he can fall asleep much quicker than Steven can, he is a very light sleeper, and startles awake very easily. Both of them suffer from horrific nightmares, although Steven has always struggled to remember what they were until now. Marc dreams of his traumas. Steven will have a new nightmare from now on, though, because he turned to sand from the feet up in the Duat and it was terrifying. Aquaphobia Marc is terrified of floods, larger bodies of water and very heavy rain, due to almost drowning as a child. Steven hates thunderstorms, but could never work out exactly why. Jake is the only one who can properly swim out of the three of them, and was the one who did any water training in the Marines, but it does lead to some heavy dissociation afterwards. Speluncaphobia/Claustrophobia. Again, Marc has the worst version of this. He's terrified of caves, especially if he can hear water dripping in them. Jake doesn't do well in dark enclosed places, but part of that is due to some of Wendy's "punishments" that Jake would shove himself to the Front to deal with so that Marc and Steven wouldn't have to (she locked them in a broom cupboard for hours at a time). Steven quite enjoys a good cave or tomb, because you never know what sort of interesting things you're going to find, but dark cupboards and stock rooms freak him out a bit. Again, he's never really been sure why until now.
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