Chapter Text
On the fourth day of being trapped in his flat Martin realizes he is going to have to ration his food. It’s absurd—he has loads of food, his diet consists solely of things he can buy cheaply, in bulk, and require no skill to prepare. His cupboard is overflowing with ready meals, canned food, and packets of ramen. At a glance it should be enough to last through this siege, but the fourth day is when Martin realizes that it may be weeks before anyone comes looking for him. If they ever do.
Martin thinks he might go mad by then. From boredom. From loneliness. Has anyone at work (has Jon) noticed his absence? No one to bring him tea or make sure he eats lunch—
(But that’s wrong, Martin only started fussing over Jon while living in the Archives, after—)
He’s startled out of these thoughts by a knock on the door. It’s as though she senses when his mind has wandered, that his terror is not focused solely on her. After the knock Martin is acutely aware of the slick sounds of thousands of worms, the noises painting a vivid portrait of waves of silvery gray worms crawling over his door, looking for cracks, a gap, a way in.
Martin can feel the worms crawling over him, can feel their blackened heads burrowing into his skin. He moans in fear and strips to his boxers, running hands over every inch of skin he can touch. Nothing. He looks at his discarded clothes on the floor and gathers them up, staggering toward the door, meaning to add more fabric to his makeshift barrier blocking the cracks in door.
Martin has only gone a few steps when he sees the Archivist in the corner of his living room. The Archivist is shrouded in darkness; all Martin can see clearly are eyes. Two on the Archivist's face and a multitude glittering in the shadows that stretch behind his shoulders like black wings.
Martin freezes. Closes his own eyes and exhales. Counts to ten while hot tears slide from the corners of his eyelids.
“Hi Jon,” Martin whispers. He says this every time he has this dream—for this is a dream, he knows that now. Jon wouldn’t be here otherwise. He hasn’t had to deal with dreams for months now, although he supposes he should’ve seen it coming.
The Archivist doesn’t respond. He never does, he simply watches.
“I’m still angry with you,” Martin says next; another thing he says every time. The months may pass but it’s still true. Some wounds time can’t heal. The words are the same but the tone varies wildly. Sometimes he spits them out in a rage, sometimes he bursts into tears, sometimes it’s almost affectionate. Teasing. This time the words are tired. Resigned.
The Archivist doesn’t move, show any indication that these words have an effect on him beyond something to observe, to categorize, and to file away.
Martin is dimly aware of more knocking from the other side of the door, but he doesn’t pay any heed to it. He knows that Jane Prentiss died years ago, that this is only a dream, a record of horror that he’s occasionally forced to relive. He also knows that this means the Archivist will leave soon, now that there is no more terror to consume. That Martin has only seconds, a minute or two if he’s lucky, to talk to him.
“I think of you every day,” Martin whispers, “I think of the way you would bite your lip when you were reading something that had you absorbed. How the heel of your left hand was always black with ink or pencil after writing a report. I think of how you used to record statements, how your hands would just…fly around. I think of how you were in Scotland. You laughed so much. Both of us did,” Martin’s voice cracks and he squeezes his eyes shut, spilling more hot tears, “I miss you so much.”
Martin opens his eyes, hoping against hope that he will see Jon instead of the Archivist. But he sees neither one, the corner of his living room is empty and everything foggy and gray. Instead of knocking or the sounds of worms he hears a gentle patter of rain falling against the walls of a neoprene tent. A scrap of poetry floats through his mind:
…but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply…
Then Martin is blinking his eyes open, becoming aware of the hard ground beneath his sleeping bag and the dim gray morning light. He remembers where he is then, and why.
He closes his eyes again; and an unknown amount of time passes where he ironically wishes to be back in his nightmare.
In the end the grumble of his stomach forces him to get up and dress. His fingers are stiff and clumsy from cold, and his bones ache from sleeping on the ground. Daisy’s cottage doesn’t exist in this world so he’s made do with pitching a small two-person tent in the approximate location of the bedroom. Once he’s dressed he grabs his rucksack and heads out for the day.
The rain has mostly tapered off by the time he unzips the tent flap, ghosts still present but less insistent. He pauses for a moment to look around him at the familiar view of the Highlands. Steel gray clouds, distant mountains swathed in mist, the loch a few shades darker than the sky. The same view Martin saw every morning for three weeks when he finally was able to stumble out of bed. Martin usually woke up before Jon and the other man would cling to him stubbornly like a human octopus, plying him with kisses to stay in bed.
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, Martin thinks. Unlike the narrator of the poem Martin does remember what lips in great detail. They were a perfect cupid’s bow, a shade of pink contrasted against dark skin. They formed fascinating shapes as they said Martin’s name, they got dry and chapped because their owner couldn’t stop biting them when he was concentrating. Still warm and soft for all that when they were against Martin’s own. He remembers all the wheres as well, the first time being a few feet and another world from where he’s standing.
The last time had been outside of the house at Hilltop road, after Martin told Jon he wasn’t going to leave him, then or ever. Martin remembers how Jon kissed him that last time and gets angry. Shame on you for kissing me like that, like you really meant it. Like you weren’t planning to betray me. Like you weren’t saying goodbye.
One good thing about the rain is that it keeps the swarms of midges at bay as Martin walks across the fields toward the village. Ten minutes into his walk he hears a bark, and stops for Billy to catch up to him. The border collie is wet through and doesn’t seem to care, he’s wagging his tail and has a rock the size of an egg in his mouth. Billy belongs to one of the nearby farms and seems to roam this stretch of Highland at will, and he is a familiar sight whenever Martin heads towards the village. When he gets to Martin he drops the rock at his feet and steps back, crouching his forelegs down in a play stance.
“You’ll break your teeth,” Martin says, hunting for a stick to throw instead. Billy gives him an annoyed look and grabs the rock again, dropping it even closer to Martin this time.
You must be happy that Daisy’s safe house came with its own dog, Jon told him years ago in another world. It’s strange, really. Martin knows that two versions of some people live in both worlds, apparently that goes for animals as well. Although Billy was called Sammy in the world Martin spent the happiest three weeks of his life. He is still clearly the same dog, same black fur with a distinct splash of white on one side of his face, and the same bizarre fetish for fetching rocks.
Whatever happened to the one you let into the Archive?
You can’t still be upset about that. The Archives were evil. It would’ve been better if I’d brought more dogs into the place.
If only we knew that the best way to defeat Elias was a hoard of dogs.
It’s because you’re a cat person that it never occurred to you.
Martin finds a good-sized stick at last. Waves it under Billy’s nose, then hurls it as far as he can. Billy’s eyes follow it before he huffs and trots after without much enthusiasm. The dog follows Martin most of the way to the village, stubbornly bringing more rocks that Martin just as stubbornly refuses to throw.
There’s not much to the village—a guesthouse, a pub, a visitor center, a Co-op further down the road. Martin heads toward the guesthouse for a quick breakfast. He sits at his usual spot, near the window with a view of the loch, and does not meet the waitress’ eyes when she brings his food. She’s another person who exists in both worlds. Or existed, her counterpart (who always asked after Martin’s “young man” when he stopped in without Jon) is dead. Whenever Martin looks at her he sees with perfect clarity what The Flesh did to her counterpart. It looked like it had hurt.
Martin pushes the thought out of the way and digs out a battered copy of The Rough Guide to the Scottish Highlands and Islands. He pages through it, idly thinking he should get a new copy, a copy that was published in this world. Not that Martin could ever get rid of this one, it would just be nice to compare it to. The differences between worlds are subtle and so far he hasn’t run into much difficulty following their old book.
We’re not on holiday, Martin said sheepishly when Jon saw him paging through this book at Waverly Station. Martin hastily returned it to the shelf but Jon reached out to stop him.
Right, not on holiday. On the run from police and other monsters. But maybe…if. Um. Something’s nearby, in walking distance…it’s not as though we’re short on funds at the moment.
Tucked in the pages of the book is Martin Blackwood’s most prized possession—a polaroid photo of Jon taken the first day they arrived in Scotland. They took several photos of each other that day as insurance against the Not Them. This is the only one that has survived, Jon leaning against a stone wall, glasses slid down to the tip of his nose and a rare smile on his face.
Not so rare during those three weeks, Martin reminds himself, tracing the photograph with the tip of his finger. What lips my lips have kissed, he thinks again.
After a few minutes Martin carefully tucks the polaroid back into the book and finishes his breakfast.