LAYLA EL-FAOULY (MCU)

There was something about summer in New York City. A warm reprieve was more than welcomed after months of a seemingly endless gray. Egypt cooled in the winters, but it was nothing what America's east coast subjected its residents to. Long called a citizen of the world, Layla had only visited New York once as a child. The trip had actually been to an archaeological conference in Washington D.C. Somehow, Layla had convinced Abdallah to make the train ride up the coast to New York so they could spend a day or two in the city. After visits to the Natural History Museum and Met, she had all but tugged him into the blinding lights of Times Square. It may as well have been a different world from the one they normally spent their days in, and both had been relieved to go home.

Now, home looked different. Home was in the shape of a many minded man whose arms were the start of her world. There was more to her life, of course, but the London flat or Cairo apartment were just spaces she had a key to. Layla had been a child often on the move. Her sanctuary, once found in her father, was now in Marc. It had been all the more devastating each time she lost him because of this. It wasn't just an empty half of the bed that taunted in the night. It was a lack of security that ate at her.

The Midnight Mission of Earth-Prime was only temporary housing. It was occupied by another Marc who was not her Marc and a cast of characters that was foreign outside of Jean-Paul. Even though it was nice to have a place to stay, Layla tried to be outside as much as possible. Her schedule often conflicted with Marc's. The two avatar's remained perpetually busy, which made the time they did together all the more valuable.

Sunlight warmed freckled cheeks as Layla scanned the crowded paved walkway. Central Park was full of tourists and locals who lounged on blankets and played fetch with their panting dogs. They were all inconsequential in that moment. All Layla cared about was the one hand that was wrapped around Marc's, connecting the two spouses through intertwined fingers. In her other hand she balanced an iced coffee; before her contract with Tawaret, the caffeine would have left her buzzing. Now, it was just a pleasant sweetness. She felt revitalized in ways she couldn't have imagined herself being, even with the mess they found themselves in.

Plans were for the privileged. To be able to say something would occur and then have it actually do so without life — or, for the unfortunate, deathless deities — intervening required a certain kind of assurance not found in the capabilities of the common man. That was not to say, however, that one could not achieve that which they put their mind to. Goals were something entirely different than plans. Goals accounted for far more than the scope of most plans. Goals were constantly shifting and evolving. It felt easier to realign a goal than account for a ruined plan.

This had been a hard lesson for Layla to learn. As a child, she had meticulously planned her future from the dig sites she shadowed her father at. Abdallah had always encouraged his daughter to reach for the stars, as if she could touch Nut herself. She would go to university, follow in her father's footsteps. One day she would have children of her own to carry on the El-Faouly name. Her life did not need to be grand in order to be satisfying.

Shai had other plans for her.

A massacre. That's how she first heard of it: a massacre. A group of archeologists slaughtered in cold blood. As the daughter of a researcher, the news had sent her into a panic. She had called every contact in her phone and driven out to to the dunes herself only to be met with government agents and caution tapes. Blood as red as the scarf she had made her father mingled with the sand, wails lost to the wind that howled through the night. It seemed impossible that Ra's would rise through the sky in the morning, but he had. The world had kept turning even though every idea that Layla had carefully constructed for herself had been shattered.

From there, her plans changed. The black market became a second home that she embraced as a means to an end. Find stolen artifacts. Return stolen artifacts. Dole out justice where she could, all while creating a tourniquet around her heart because she couldn't find justice where she desired it the most. It would have been all too easy to substitute the justice she craved for vengeance. The hard truth was that no matter how satisfying the latter would be, it was not what her father would have wanted. And so, Layla persevered.

Marc Spector was the final straw. Meeting him, marrying him, loving him. Being with Marc required a kind of reckless abandon that laid all of Layla's plans to rest. There would be no children to fill their halls or wear the scarfs made by a mother's loving hands. There was only uncertainty and danger. Layla rushed into the relationship headfirst with a bullheaded determination to make it work. Being the wife to Khonshu's fist often meant coming in second to Marc and his demons. She was self-sufficient and independent because she had been raised to be. That didn't bother her. Surprisingly, letting go of her plans didn't either. They had to take each punch as they came no matter how much it hurt.

And gods, did it hurt at times.

Steven Grant certainly wouldn't have fit into the plans that Layla could have conjured up. Her husband having some kind of crisis and leaving her was easier to fathom than the truth that the breakdown was caused by a dissociative identity disorder she hadn't known about. Even after all the nights they had spent sharing a bed and each second his hands had spent roaming her body, there was still so much about the man she had made vows to that Layla had yet to uncover. Just like her father had devoted his life to exploration and the quest for knowledge, Layla would do the same. Surely but slowly she would unspool Marc's secrets and learn to live with them.

Steven was, admittedly, complicated. She looked in his face and saw Marc's dark eyes, his strong jaw sometimes lined with stubble. But those eyes were different, softer. The jaw wasn't clenched in a perpetual frown. Marc was not Steven, even if her brain kept contributing Steven to Marc. He had to be approached differently. The dynamic between the three of them was new and still very much learning to be maneuvered. It had been difficult before they had been sucked through the multiverse. Marc, Layla, Steven, and Frenchie. It was quite the group if there ever had been one. All lost, all trying to figure it out. It felt like that was the best they could do with the group constantly being pulled out from underneath them.

It was with great self-control that hands remained by Layla's side. After a lifetime of being surrounded by her own culture and embracing it freely, there was a strange detachment to see parts of it locked up in a museum across the world from where it should have been. The trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Arts hadn't officially been dubbed a date, but it still carried the weight of nervous butterflies that had taken flight in Layla's stomach. Instead of running her fingers across the smooth stone that composed Hatshepsut's sphinx, Layla occupied herself but folding the museum map that she didn't really need.

"I always loved her when I was a child. Hatshepsut, that is." Layla gestured to the sphinx. "I know you know the story, about how Thutmose III smashed her statues and tried to have her removed from history. A woman pharaoh? She wasn't Egypt's first female ruler — that was Sobekneferu — but she's not remembered like Nefertiti or Cleopatra. Even though history tried to turn its back on her, we're still standing here remembering her. That's something beautiful about that, isn't it?"

Marc and Layla discussed history, of course. There had been countless nights of takeout and wine as Layla reported on artifacts she was searching for. Marc had indulged her, but talking history with Steven felt different. Conversing with him sparked a part of her that her father had helped kindle when she was a child. The past was the past, yes, but it informed the present. It was hard to put into words, but Layla felt Steven understood. It sometimes felt like he could see her in ways Marc couldn't — and Layla meant no disrespect to her husband with that realization.