Chapter Text
Martyn wakes up and stares at the sky for a few seconds, briefly forgetting that he can see past it and past the interface at all while he tries to sort out why he woke at all before he registers the red, red eyes watching him.
"Hi." Martyn's voice is more of a croak than he would like.
"We're a long way from home." says the deep voice of the Red King. It sounds a little like reproach and Martyn thinks about squeezing his eyes closed again and just pretending to be asleep, whether or not it would work.
"It was an accident." He's reasonably sure of that. He wouldn't have done this on purpose — he still can't fucking remember. Fragments, but it's all still so unclear. "Ren doesn't …"
"From him, you can hide it." RK responds. "But not from me, my Hand."
"I know."
RK's hand is soothingly cold when he touches Martyn's cheek. "But the challenge you've made is well-constructed. We will reach our goal and return home. You have my word on that."
"Don't make promises you can't keep." God, his head hurts. RK pulls him close and Martyn struggles to think past the pounding in his temples. He can vaguely hear when Doc and RK start talking, voices low and calm.
He's going to lose track of his tally marks if he doesn't wake himself up, Martyn thinks, the thought itself rolling around loosely in his head and Martyn can't quite catch it.
A smooth, cold hand touches his shoulder — Doc's prosthetic arm.
"Martyn," he says, like he's said Martyn's name several times. "It's alright. We can rest longer."
"No," Martyn mumbles back immediately, trying to force his eyes open. His face is pressed in the Red King's shoulder. "Have to move. Get going."
"I can carry him." RK rumbles.
"I got it." Martyn objects, but RK rises in one smooth motion without shifting Martyn at all. "Oh."
Doc snorts, and Martyn raises a middle finger in his general direction.
So Martyn lets his king, ancient spirit of blood and war, carry him piggyback further up the cliff-face. The sun (it's not real) rises higher in the sky, casting better light over their progress (and it's not warm, just as Ren had pointed out the day(?) before), and Martyn lets his head bob against RK's shoulder, eyes half-lidded, gazing out into the middle distance. When he thinks of it, he checks on the stream stability, but things haven't changed there at least. Past the interface, Martyn can see the proverbial ice spreading from every step RK takes, red cords extending outwards from the King. Several bonds go from Martyn to RK, vows made and still kept.
"Rest." RK tells Martyn softly, his voice rumbling through Martyn's bones. "I have you."
And Martyn's traitorous eyes can't help but close.
The next time he feels a rumbling, it thinks at first that it must just be RK talking to Doc, but the sensation grows, and suddenly Martyn is being frantically pressed up against a rock wall — when his eyes shoot open he catches a glimpse of the Red King's flashing red eyes in the dark of the alcove, the light beyond him, and then cascading darkness is coming down.
Martyn tries to lunge forward, but he's thrown back against the wall instead as rocks crash, and he overbalances and tumbles on the uneven surface, scrabbling for control. Around them, the stream twists, spasms, and Martyn digs his finger into it, try to smooth it back out by force.
"DOC!" He shouts. "Where are they?!"
The computer's voice skips as it tries to answer, and Martyn shoulders through the stream debris with adrenaline setting his veins afire as he rushes towards the light he can make out through the epileptic cacophony. The world isn't real and still manages to go cold when Martyn lunges through RK's orbit, meeting his King's eyes just long enough to see that RK is still grounded before he rakes his eyes over the void searching for Doc.
A flash of fracturing code leads Martyn's eyes and Doc's prosthetic glows brightly as he scrabbles for a handhold that isn't there, about to be flung off into the stream if Martyn doesn't do something — so Martyn doesn't hesitate. He jumps.
The stream bends around him, like walking on water, and Martyn grabs Doc's arm in two hands, dragging him closer with all his strength. Doc's expression flares — he probably can't parse what he's seeing, what's happening, but he grips Martyn's forearm in return like he knows that this is help — and Martyn tries to put them back on solid group but whatever hold he has on the stream is not strong enough to get them back within the bounds of the interface.
"RK!" Martyn screams, turning his head back to where, in some amalgamation of space, RK must be.
Even amongst the roiling stream, the Red King is a fixed point, a singularity around which it all moves. It's easy to forget that he's a figment of the universe itself, merely contained in Ren's skin, and the red whipcords that tether Martyn to Doc and Doc to Ren/RK and Martyn back to Ren and RK both pull them like the wind in a storm on the sea; inevitable, unresistible. "Hold on!" Martyn yells at Doc and suddenly sunlight through the clouds is bursting through, the stream vanishing into blue sky and the cliff-face is barreling towards them.
Doc, thankfully, has the wherewithal to grab on. They swing wildly into the void for a moment, and Martyn's grip slips down from Doc's elbow to his wrist. Doc's metal hand tightens, so much that Martyn thinks he's more liable to get his wrist broken before Doc drops him.
Martyn looks up. RK is braced over the side of the cliff with Doc's flesh-and-bone arm in hand.
"I've got ya!" RK calls, and heaves.
Martyn ragdolls in Doc's hold and his chin falls to his chest, eyes on the nothingness below them, all fog and void and unstable stream. It's so tempting, to let it swallow him, because in the stream Martyn can rest and recover, but he has to remember that Ren and Doc don't stand a chance on getting out without him. They need him, and he can't leave them alone.
Doc pulls on Martyn's arm so hard that Martyn swears his shoulder his going to pop out of the socket, but without any further harm they're pulled up the side of the rock face. Martyn scrambles on all fours for a moment, breathing hard, before RK scruffs him like a kitten and pulls Martyn directly into his arms.
"Never do that again." RK says with a harsh exhale as he clutches Martyn to his chest.
"Can't promise." Martyn returns breathlessly. "Sorry. Doc," Martyn has to pause to get more air. "You okay?"
"Fine. As fine as I can be." Doc answers, up on his knees and breathing hard himself.
Martyn squirms, expecting RK to let him go, but his King does not acquiesce.
"We can stay a few moments more." RK insists, and Martyn is neither physically nor mentally strong enough to fight that.
When they summit, it's on a day that Ren is back. Martyn had worried Ren would have questions after RK faded from front, but Ren is himself, and his chipper nature does a lot to keep the three of them going.
The sun at the peak is not warm, but the grass is green, high enough to brush Martyn's waist, lower on Doc and Ren but still tall.
"What now?" Doc wonders into the blue, blue sky (that is still not real, whether he knows it or will admit it or not.)
"I can get you guys home from here." Martyn answers, pushing away from where he's leaning on Ren to sit down on a nearby rock. "There's enough of a connection." He's forgetting to moderate his words, to not make room for more questions, and Ren and Doc exchange several glances that Martyn is far too tired to try to read.
"What about you, baby? You're coming with." Ren says cautiously.
Martyn dips his hands back into the stream, slowly, then goes deeper. "It shouldn't be so rough getting back."
"Martyn." Ren says, stepping closer. "We're not going anywhere without you."
"S'okay." Martyn murmurs. The sun stops pretending to exist and the interface is rapidly fading.
"Martyn." Doc echoes, but when he steps forward too the ground beneath his feet is also not real.
Martyn lets them go, and closes his eyes.
But an ice cold hand grasps his shoulder, and when his eyes snap open again there is the shade of a shape of a war-thing with blood-red eyes and the Red King says, "I made ye a promise, my Hand,"
And Martyn is pulled down with them.
When Doc and Ren wake up, it's in the grass at Hermitcraft's spawn, like nothing has happened at all. The only thing to prove it is the alarmed look they share, and Martyn, passed out in Ren's arms, expression just nearly peaceful in unconsciousness.
"Doc," Ren starts at the same time that Doc begins speaking, bringing them both to an abrupt halt.
Doc gestures for Ren to go on.
"What … what was that?" Ren finally settles on.
"I don't know." It is the truth. Doc could hazard a guess, but he does not know. "Something like a bad dream."
"A shared bad dream."
"We have had things more strange happen to us." Doc points out.
Ren sighs. "I guess, man." His eyes turn down to Martyn in his arms, who shows no signs of stirring. "Do you think he's okay?"
Doc steps closer, reaching out to touch Martyn's face briefly, pushing his hair behind his ear. "He overworks himself."
"Yeah, and that's the cat calling the creeper sneaky, Docm." Ren fires back.
"Irrelevant." Doc dismisses. "He'll need rest. We'll have to keep an eye on him." Ren nods, then goes on to tilt his head like he's listening to something, and Doc waits patiently. "I imagine RK agrees?"
"That he does."
Martyn briefly opens his eyes ten hours later to blankets and the sounds of soft breathing, penned in on both sides by warmth. He raises his head long enough to see Doc and Ren, then stares at the ceiling while he tries to sort out his head.
They're safe. It's over. He doesn't want to answer any questions about what this was, and if he really wants to ensure that he could creep out now, but …
But he's warm, and tired, and more sleep couldn't hurt.
So Martyn lays his head back down, and lets himself rest.