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Martin knows he used to care, once. He can remember it, in a sort of vague, objective way. As if caring was a thing some other person had done. Not him, never him. It’s like the memory of a book read long ago, the shape of it remaining even as the details have faded, a thing observed rather than within himself.
And he’s fine with it, really. It’s comfortable, even. Caring about things took so much energy. So much easier to exist like this, floating through life with a plan and goal and no pesky emotions getting in the way. It’s straightforward. It’s easy.
Sometimes he thinks he misses what he was like, before. Misses what it was like to truly feel things. Even the bad things. There was a vitality in it that he’s now excised from his life. The excitement of tracking down leads on a statement and finding just what he was looking for. The fear of dealing with Jane Prentiss and her worms.
(The flutter in his stomach he used to get any time he walked into a room and saw Jon.)
And perhaps a bit of that still remains. The Martin who used to be within this shell of a Martin he’s become. His emotions deadened but still present. His feelings surrounding Jon buried within him, not yet completely extinguished. But it’s a near thing, muted almost to oblivion. He can’t afford the distraction. And it would be nothing but a distraction to let those feelings free, benefiting no one, so he ignores them.
And mostly he can’t find it within himself to care. This is how he is now. His apathy is a shield, a sword, a defense against anything that might try to bother him. He ignores everyone, eliminating their existence from his focus. He hardly even exists to himself. He fades into the background. Fades away entirely. No more emotion. No more Martin. Just a creature that will do what it has to.
Because that’s the plan, right? The end he’d started down this path for. But it’s hard to remember why he even felt so strongly about that. Oh, certainly, it’s the right thing to do. Stop the end times, save the world, get what needs to be done done. But doing it is more habit now than intention. Once set upon, continuing to follow this path rather than having to start on anything new is...well, it’s easy. The way it’s easy to stop talking to anyone. The way it’s easy to box up his feelings and put them away and pretend they never existed. The way it’s so, so easy to just stop. To be on his own without bothering anyone else. Without letting them bother him. He exists for nothing but the plan.
He hasn’t written poetry in months, now. He can no longer find that drive within him to create that he once had. It all seems so utterly pointless. Why bother putting in the effort for something no one cares about? That even he doesn’t care about? It’s a waste of time, a waste of energy, a waste, a waste, all a waste.
He thinks, maybe, that he should feel lonely. That this isolation should feel bad, or wrong, or unnatural. Instead it’s anything but. It surrounds him, blankets him in a comforting numbness, an immunity to the world and all the ways it might try to touch him.
Martin is alone. And that is exactly how he would want to be, if he cared enough to want anything.