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It was never anything that Martin had intended to do. Nothing in him had ever wanted to harm Jonathan, or Tim, or anyone really. Not since he started working for the Institute, or when he’d learned just what was going on in this place and what Elias had in store for them. All that he was and he still couldn’t manage to set out to harm others. Not unless he had no choice. Like protecting others, not that he’s been on top of that since he came to the Magnus Institute.
Too many times that he thought he was there for them and he’d find himself too slow, not willing enough to harm another, not anything that legend and myth would say that he was meant to be. Or perhaps it was the lack of desire to hurt another human being. It wasn’t as if he had ever had the desire. Not now, not then.
Even if it had been centuries since he’d made the mistake of sharing one pint too many with an older gentleman in a tavern who just happened to be traveling through the village. Martin had been much too naive for his own good, and a pint or half dozen of such hadn’t helped the situation at all.
There’d been laughter and teasing jokes that Martin himself had not understood but laughed at anyways. Eventually it was just the two of them and the barkeep there, and he was dozing off behind the scarred wood counter when Martin’s companion asked him what he might do if he could live forever. He had said how wonderful it might be.
He was just a boy really. At least compared to most of his compatriots that had truly matured as they had grown. Martin hadn’t. Not enough. Certainly not enough to know what to fear in that moment.
Later, if he ever talked about it, Martin would say that was the last time he hurt someone intentionally. Not that it was true. There had been no intent in his actions when he woke the next night just as the sun began to set, twisted and tucked up behind the bar as he was, as he had been left the night before when his strange, and now very much gone, companion had left.
Certainly there was no intent in those first blinding moments when the world came back to him in too bright light and a desperate need that Martin had never known. The hunger came over him faster than anything he might have imagined, and by the time it was satiated enough for Martin to realize just what he had done, the man was much too far gone for the help of anyone. Doctor or otherwise.
Realization and sense led Martin to move the body, to hide him deep in the privy behind the tavern. It was also that same sense, childish in not seeking help, that led Martin to disappear that day, last seen by anyone sharing drinks with a stranger.
For years he wandered about, alone and hungry. Petite in size and shy in demeanor, others began to see him as little more than a street urchin. A dirty and starving child that often garnered quite a few coins that he so often gave over to others, finding no need for them. No need except one.
When the hunger became too much, he would pay others for what he needed, being as judicious as he might so that he caused them no true harm.
In truth Martin wasn’t truly sure how my decades that it all went on for. He did what he had to, protected people as much as he could, and he avoided people as he needed to. Except with time, he didn’t have to. The hunger came less and less. There was a hollowness that he felt deep within, yet as one century turned and then another, he realized one day that he hadn’t fed. Not for months.
At least not in the ways he knew.
It took years before he figured out what was truly going on. Years where he had tested all of the other things he had lost after that fateful night.
The sun still burned his skin, leaving blisters that took days to heal. Food could not sit well in his stomach. And despite what he might do to himself, he didn’t die. He couldn’t. He just didn’t need to feed on others to stay alive.
He was well into the early part of the Twentieth century when the truth finally began to dawn on Martin.
Still looking like the petite child he hadn’t quite been, Martin was clean now, looking health and rosy cheeked and quick with a wide smile. Even if those around him didn’t smile as often as he did. Not that they didn’t seem happy enough, but there was so often yawns and early bedtime handwaving of being too tired for anything just now. Not just one person but all of them. Everyone that took Martin in, that showed him hospitality and offered him a home. It was then that he realized the truth. He might not be feeding from their veins, processing their blood to help and keep himself alive, but he was feeding from others around him just the same.
He was feeding from their energy, from the very essence the blood gave them. He might not be risking draining them, but he was killing them. Just more slowly, and without the vivaciousness they might otherwise have in their life.
This, unlike any other type of hunger though, was easier to overcome.
Martin began to distance himself from others. He made sure that he didn’t become close to others. Staying in inns and lodges rather than personal homes. Spending time in public places so that he was only feeding a bit from others rather than risking taking too much from any one person. It led to a lonely life, but it meant he was keeping others alive, making sure they were healthy and no worse off than before he came into their lives.
It worked though. He fed a tiny bit from each person he encountered. He fed from this person and that person and perhaps they needed a few weeks, a month, to recover, but they would be fine as he left and went on to the next town. By horse and by rail. Bicycle and car and boat even. Whatever it took to put him in a new place, around new people, ensuring that they would be fine and that he would never lose control, never hurt them, never feed from them out of control lost rather than desire to satiate his own needs.
Until the Magnus Institute.
Elias had known the moment they met. Taken one look at a boy with pale skin, and perfectly white, slightly sharp teeth and smiled. He had seen Martin for what he was, and he had smiled. Martin should have known then the mistake that he’d made. A mistake he wouldn’t truly learn about until months later.
He hadn’t meant to hurt Jonathan. He hadn’t meant to hurt any of them. It was just that he couldn’t leave. A month or two, it shouldn’t have hurt. It should have been enough but not done anything to hurt them. Not in the long run. And then he had found out the truth. He had learned he couldn’t leave. Martin, despite his strength and his fortitude, and his centuries of time to think on what he had become, just couldn’t leave. It was the first time since that night that he had truly and wholly been just like everyone else around him.
And he hated it.
He hated that he couldn’t protect them. These people that he had come to care about, to be concerned for, to love in some way, different for each case, and he couldn’t escape the fate of slowly murdering them. Each and every one of them. Everyone but, perhaps, Elias.
It was because of Elias that he held that hate. Hating that there was no where for him to go where he might protect them. He was glad to take assignments, to go out in the field where he could feed on others, be around people he didn’t care about and wouldn’t see again. They would be tired, worn for a few days, but they would recover. Those he’d truly come to care about, they might not. Not if he couldn’t find a way out.
There was no way out. It was worse than he had thought, than any of them might have imagined, and Martin knew he had to find a way to fix things before he hurt the others. Before he hurt the man he might have let himself love if he hadn’t known just what Jon’s expression might be if he knew what Martin had become so many years ago.
And then Jon had gone missing.
For so long in that dark, desperate time that seemed to go on forever, Martin had blamed himself. He couldn’t mention it to anyone, couldn’t talk about it with Tim or Basira. He could only push on, hoping that Jon was able to heal himself during that time.
Avoiding Tim was nearly impossible. He worried about Martin. He worried about Martin’s long silence, and his paleness, and how much he tried to avoid them all in those moments when Martin tried so hard not to be in the Institute, tried to distance himself from the others.
The harder he tried, the more Tim seemed to hover and Martin found himself panicked in ways he hadn’t known since he’d still had to use his fangs to live. He had tried to run twice before he had been hunted down. First by Tim. Then by Elias himself.
“He’s back.”
Martin had been gone for three days when Elias just appeared behind him in the marketplace. People milled about around them, their energy high and energetic and it felt like a feast as he stood there in the shadows of a building, enjoying the sensations as they eddied and swirled about him.
Startling, he very nearly stumbled out into the last rays of sunlight that cast long shadows over the square.
“Elias! Could you not… not do that? Bad enough you do it there, but did you have to do that?”
“I apologize. I certainly have no desire to send you out into the sun,” he said, smiling in that way that was cold, and heartless, and made Martin assume he meant the exact opposite of what he said. “But I thought perhaps you might return if you knew that we’ve found Jonathan. He’s been returned to us.”
“R-Returned?!? What does that mean?”
“The circus had him.”
It was all that Elias said, turning and heading back into the shadows, leaving Martin behind. He didn’t look back, obviously having no doubt that Martin would return.
He had.
Others might not see it given how sick and well lotioned Jonathan was, but Martin could. He could see how the darkness beneath Jon’s eyes was new, was not the result of Martin’s own needs. Not like Tim’s shadows; dark and deep and Martin couldn’t blame on anyone or anything else but himself.
Coming in early, leaving quickly to rush out into the field before the sun came up, Martin did everything he could to avoid harming those he cared for. Especially tried to avoid hurting Jon most of all, no matter how much he just wanted to linger, to be near him, and yet forbidding himself one of the few things that brought him happiness in the time since he’d been trapped in the Magnus Institute.
He could hear Jon’s voice reading into the recorder, and for a moment Martin had lingered outside the door, listening. Indulging in the rhythm, the tempo that he was so familiar with both in person and having listened to so many of the recordings that Jon had made. Leaning against the wall outside the door, his eyes closed, and feeling the words coursing over him, washing against his skin like cool water. It was like swallowing spring water and lemon after a week of nothing, and it wasn’t until he heard the slightest hitch, the stumbling of Jon’s tongue over the words, that made him realize what he was doing.
Heaving a sigh, Martin grabbed his back and took off, rushing for the door. It was in sight, so close to freedom and suddenly a wide, towering figure was blocking Martin’s way.
“A word?”
“Not right now, Tim. I need…” He glanced back, wide eyed and panicked, and saw that Basira was coming up behind him.
“Now, Martin. Besides, isn’t it too bright for you to be out there?”
“P-Pardon? What?”
“Martin, you’re not exactly subtle,” Basira said behind him.
“And, you know, the fangs show a lot when you smile at Jon.”
Martin faded, looking paler than usual which was quite the feat, truth be told. He shifted, moving from one foot to the other, clutching white knuckled at the strap of his messenger bag where it lay across his chest.
“I didn’t… I mean… what?”
Tim rolled his eyes, moving in and slinging an arm over Martin shoulders, dwarfing him. “We literally deal with this shite day in and day out. Our boss is a psycho who I’m certain is not even human, Jon controls people with his voice, and we’re constantly being watched over by some elder god or something. Do you really think you’re something we’re afraid of?”
Martin opened his mouth, closed it and then he was shaking his head, hard, almost as if trying to clear things so he could understand.
“We are afraid of you disappearing like you have been,” Basira noted, moving to fall into step with the pair. “Do you really want Jon heading out and searching for you? What happens when he goes out alone again and those carnival performers snatch him up again?”
Martin flinched, just as Tim wanted. He needed Martin to face the chances he was taking around here, and how protecting Jon was also putting him in danger at the same time.
“Right, so that’s a no,”: Basira said with a smile. “Which means taking care of you. All of you, Martin.”
“T-taking care of me?”
“From now on, Tuesday and Friday, we’re going out before you slide in here when things get dark. So we’ll go out to a pub, or an arcade, or anywhere that there’s lots of people and take care of things.” Basira paused and then, because she had to ask. “How do you do it? I mean, you always been like that?”
“Are you asking if I was born a…” He paused, looking around in case someone heard them. “I was born this way? No. Of course not. I’d be a baby then.”
“No,” she said, rolling her eyes and heaving a sigh. “How do you not…” She stuck out her teeth over her bottom lip, speaking in a bad fake Romanian accent. “Vant to drink our blood?”
Martin winced, his expression dropping to the floor and his shoulders hunching, though that may have been under the weight of Tim’s arm.
“I never talked like that, and neither did… No one I’ve met like this talks like that.”
“Are there others then? In London?”
“Course there are. With all we deal with, you don’t think there’s not more? But they’re not like me.”
“So how do you do it?”
“I don’t know. I hate hurting people. I was a sensitive man. My family mocked me for it, and so when I hurt the bar keep at the tavern… I vowed to never do it again. One day I realized I just didn’t have to. Mostly. I didn’t have to. Not until here.”
“Where you’re trapped and fucked and can’t just run before I started sleeping ten hours some days and all day on Sunday,” Tim guessed, nodding. “Another of Elias’ brilliant stupid moments. I assume he knows?”
“I assume that’s why he brought me here honestly.” Martin hadn’t said it to anyone else, but this was Tim… and Basira… and he realized he needed to say it eventually. To someone.
“Yeah, sounds about right. Okay so… plans. We’ll help you take care of it, and I can get back to going to the gym and not passing out in my damn porridge. And stop flinching,” he said as Martin flinched. “You’re a damn vampire, Martin. You’ve stood with me while I bled and didn’t do a damn thing to me when you could have blamed it on how many other things? Be proud of yourself, Martin, because you’re dealing with more here than some of us are, and if I’m saying that, what does it tell you?”
The wheels in Martin’s head seemed to visibly spin at that.
“That maybe… maybe it’s true.”
“Right. So get back in there, get your work done and stop swooping out and leaving me to clean up your mess,” he barked, squeezing Martin’s shoulders tight in against his side before letting him go.
“Tim, I didn’t mean…”
“Just fix it, Martin. Don’t apologize. Fix it. Let us help you fix it. Okay?”
Martin nodded. Slowly at first and then fast, dizzyingly fast. “Okay. Yes, of course. Okay. We’ll fix it.”
“That’s a good man,” Tim said, pushing Martin towards the door to the archives. “Maybe now we can assure Daisy won’t put a stake in your heart.”
Tim closed the door behind Martin before he could panic over that fear, one that he realized was truly behind what drove Tim and Basira to the meeting that day.
“I hadn’t thought about that,” he muttered softly, lowering his back to the crowd and settling in to start recording once more.