Chapter Text
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Voicemail 16m ago
When Martin got the call he had simply stared at the name as it rang, unmoving. Now he sits at his desk, unable to pull his gaze away from his mobile screen. His finger hovers shakily over the play button, but he can’t bring himself to press it.
Six months. It’s been six months since Jon and the others stopped the Unknowing at the cost of Tim and Daisy’s (and, it seems, Jon’s) lives. When Jon had ended up in the hospital, Martin had visited every day that he could, sitting somberly at his bedside and rattling off one-sided conversations to fill the crushing silence. Elias had seemed determined that Jon was still alive, which was the only reason Martin held out hope as long as he did; he may hate the man with every fibre of his being but Elias knows things, and if he was so certain about this then maybe there was still reason to hold out hope. Even if the doctors all thought Jon was a lost cause. Even if he’d seen firsthand how still and lifeless Jon’s body was in that hospital bed every time he visited.
It took him over four months to finally give up. He’d lost everything at that point, and Peter’s mission if nothing else seemed like a pretty good way of getting himself killed. He hasn’t spoken to anyone other than Peter in weeks, not that anyone really wants to speak to him or vice versa. He never got on with Melanie very well and Basira… he knows it’s petty but he can’t bring himself to speak to her due to the simple fact that she made it out in one piece while the others didn’t. So, when his phone had buzzed on his desk, he’d frozen. He figured it wasn’t Peter, as nowadays he opted for either texts or brief, in-person discussions. He had cautiously picked up the phone, and when he’d read the name listed on the caller ID his heart had dropped.
The fact that the hospital had called him could only mean one of two things: either Jon had woken up, or he had been officially declared dead, and Martin had long since given up hope of the former. That still hadn’t stopped the new, fresh waves of grief from hitting him hard, leaving him breathless. He can’t bring himself to listen to the message, because he is certain of what news it will bring. Once he hears it, it will be final.
He sits there at his desk in silence for a long time, trying to compose himself enough to just listen to the damn voicemail. Just rip the plaster off, the sooner you get it over with the sooner you’ll get over him, he tells himself, and finally presses play.
The tinny audio playing from his phone fills the empty archives and Martin exhales shakily as the voice of one of the nurses he’d spoken to during his visits identifies herself over the phone. He braces himself for the news he’s sure to come.
“I’m calling to let you know that patient Jonathan Sims is now conscious and in stable condition. He’ll be released in two days and will be available to visit tomorrow…”
What.
Of all the things he’d been prepared to hear, Jon being awake and stable was most certainly not one of them. He frantically scrambles with his phone, rewinding the audio because surely he had misheard. Jon couldn’t be awake. He couldn’t .
He relistened to that voicemail another five times, then ten, then twenty. Finally, the words began to set in, and there was nothing he could have done to stop himself from breaking down into quiet tears. He shrinks into his chair, clutching himself as relief and grief and regret overcome him. He hasn’t allowed himself to cry over this for months, doing his best to numb himself to it all, but now it was all too much. Jon was awake.
But Martin can’t go to him.
As much as he aches to, as much as he longs to hear Jon’s voice again, to see his face once again animated and alive and not just a husk behind an oxygen mask, he can’t. He’s committed to this job, and if any part of what Peter has told him is true, he can’t just give up on it now. Now that he knows Jon is alive, he has a reason to want to continue beyond his own pathetic death wish. He has to do this. For Jon.