Chapter Text
I'm wasted, losing time
I'm a foolish, fragile spine
I want all that is not mine
I want him but we're not right
The insistent knocking of Jane Prentiss kept him from sleep. That should hardly be the worst thing about the whole situation. There was the very real fear of being devoured by worms, of them just burrowing into his skin and Martin had thought about that a lot. What else was there to do but think about worms and if they had mouths? If they had teeth, because surely not. They were worms, but then - what? They would just push and crawl until his skin split, until this last defense was gone and his soft flesh was all that was left?
And still it was the knocking that really did him in. The horrible monotony of it, and how that terror was just his new normal now. How, even if each noise felt like a bolt of electricity through his mind, he nearly yearned for something different. A new kind of flavor of fear, just so his mind didn't feel grainy like an old movie. Just so he could focus on anything else in this world, where all there was was his flat, and fear, and no other noise but this knocking. Where nobody was coming, nobody had noticed him missing, and he was going to die. He was just struggling against it in the single tiny wish that somehow-
Someone was in here with him.
For one endless, heart stopping moment Martin was sure it was Jane. That the door had finally broken down under her monotonous torture. But it wasn't.
The eyes staring back were intense and too many and cut through Martin with a blinding hope, he hadn't experienced in a long, long time.
"Jon?"
Martin woke with the name still on his lips. With a furious, pounding heart in his chest. His blanket was kicked down, yesterday's shirt clinging to his back as he got up.
It was hardly the first time he'd dreamed of Jon, god no. Jon had haunted him the first weeks after the Unknowing, his voice in the back of his head, his presence lingering in every space Martin had carved out in this life. How even when he entered the archives, it would smell like him or Jon smelled like the archives or whatever. A punch in the gut wherever Martin went, wherever he turned his eyes, whenever he breathed in.
But the dreams hadn't been like this. Not as intense, not as real.
Those had been Jon's eyes resting on him, watching him, drinking in his horror and Martin cursed himself for not letting him do so. For offering himself up, if only that would fill the lack.
If only to have another moment of his full attention.
The hospital's visitation hours wouldn't be for another couple of hours, but Martin had learned how to move unseen, and well, the way to Jon's room was mostly abandoned. The nurses did their jobs, yes, but with a hushed whisper about the man, with no heartbeat but still alive.
So Martin burst in, barely an hour after waking up, fully expecting to find Jon sitting there, waiting for him. His dark eyes, intense and imploring, but maybe, maybe, they would soften when they saw Martin. Martin had noticed that, shortly before the Unknowing, before they got ripped apart - figuratively and literally - how Jon would do that. Change his tone of voice, how his gaze would linger for a moment too long on Martin, touches that could be accidental but had never happened before-
Jon wasn't doing any of that now. He was asleep, gone, ever unchanging. Just a hull of the man he used to be and whatever battle he was fighting within, Martin had found no way to help. To tip the scales, in whatever direction, because that had to be better than this standstill.
"Jon?"
Martin touched his hand where it rested on the crisp white sheets. He might have put it there himself with how static this room was, even though he hadn't been here in the last couple of weeks.
Even he wasn't that self-destructive, chasing what was lost.
Nothing. The skin felt familiar, not cold, not warm; a neutral like anything else here. The in-between between sleep and waking, between life and death.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Just a dream.
The dreams didn't stop. That more than anything gave Martin the inkling that something was changing, was shifting, because Jane Prentiss had stopped being the only horror story in his life.
His nightmares about her had long since faded into the background. Still there of course, he could hardly forget about it, but he'd painted over that with new colors. With the calming blue of the coworker sitting across from him, who wasn't his friend, who wasn't even a human; or the pitch blackness of finding a dead body in a maze of danger; or the bright yellow of doors that only contained endlessly winding corridors and fingers like knives.
(Tim and golden light. Just Tim and him at a pub, drinking their pint and nothing more. More yearning than horror-)
The newest dream, bright red with danger and burgundy gore, when The Boneturner had burst through their doors and Martin had just stood there, helpless.
(Gray. All his dreams about his mother were gray and desaturated. But they had been all his life)
Ever since the Unknowing his dreams had been a kaleidoscope of horrors but it wasn't like Jane Prentiss had been the most vivid one. She was a part of it, sure, a constant he'd gotten used to.
Now she was like an old friend, Martin's heartbeat picking up eagerly when he found himself in his old flat, waiting for his end in some form. Because each and every time Martin would ignore the knocks now, the worms finding their way inside, his food running out, just to look around. To check on the endless corners of his prison until he found Jon.
It always got him, even if he expected it. The recognition, the realization that this was Jon. Not a dream, or him going insane and yeah, maybe the doubts would sneak back in once Martin was awake. But not here, not when he was hurrying through rooms that had long stopped being his, never really had been, and found him there. Looming and dark and full of eyes and still- still his Jon.
And each time it startled him awake.
Martin's new office was pristine, his desk heavy oak and meticulously organized. Then again, he'd always been organized. He had never been able to afford not being.
His knick-knacks were missing. Those stupid things he'd put on his desk, back when it had been part of a trio down in the bullpen. A fake plant, the stupid hang-in-there cat picture (Jon had smiled at it in that first week of working together, and Martin's heart had stumbled through the interaction somehow) and the little plush cow he'd gotten himself for Christmas.
When Peter Lukas had whisked him away, from down in the basement to all the way to the top, Martin had taken all of these things with him. But soon they had vanished one by one, locked in a drawer and out of sight. He'd caught Peter too often looking at them, the dismissive way his lips had curled. Like Martin was a child, and any attempt to force warmth and familiarity into his new life was futile, but it was cute of him to try.
Now his desk was a blank slate that could belong to anyone. Or no one.
It was also where Peter would just appear.
"You needed some signatures," he said conversational, like he hadn't just stepped out of thin air to bring cold and salt into Martin's office.
"I needed your signatures last week."
"I'm a busy man, Martin."
Martin highly doubted that, but he kept his mouth shut. He handed some papers over for Peter to sign, but honestly, it was just a farce. Forging Peter Lukas' signature was something he'd learned in his first month as his assistant. The institute wasn't about to run itself.
Peter signed without looking at the documents and Martin had used that quirk often enough for his expense reports. For someone who could go days without talking to anyone, he had an awful lot of business lunches.
"Your Archivist has returned."
Peter said it as nonchalantly as anything, but he was meeting Martin's eye. Always a dangerous sign. But no matter the cold rushing through him while he was looking into that pale gray, Martin kept his face neutral.
"So?"
"Nothing. Just figured you should know."
Martin's heart was pounding, something that would've given him away if he'd been talking to Elias. But this was Peter, and while Peter had some tricks up his sleeve, Martin had been working under Beholding for years now. He'd fooled Elias.
"Does Jon's return change anything for us?" he challenged Peter and was pleasantly surprised when Peter was the first to break eye contact.
"Not at all. It changes nothing."