Chapter Text
Martin started sprinting as soon as he saw the green and grey clouds swirling overhead, the shadow of great glowing eyes peeking from behind the storm; as his feet hit the ground there was an overwhelming feeling of wrongness washing over him, like the phantom but very real sensation one gets when they know someone’s watching.
When he left Jon to the statements, he knew that staying close to the cottage was a good idea. He’d never liked the statements in the first place, and although he understood that Jon physically needed them nowadays, there was just something about that box that rubbed him in all the wrong ways, something that somehow made it weigh more in his arms.
And so, when he left Jon to it, he made sure not to stray too far, and to keep alert.
And right at this very moment he’s so goddamn glad he did so.
When Martin throws open the door to the cottage he clearly hears Jon’s booming voice, sees his shaking limbs, feels the compel in every word he utters, hands gripping the papers with the statement so tightly they’re almost completely crumpled in his clenched fingers. He vaguely hears the words in the chant that Jon’s fervorously reciting, and in a fraction of a second he understands their meaning, knows what’s happening with a dread that makes his body lock up in the spot.
“No!” He screams, the sound of his own voice snapping him out of his frozen shock, and he propels himself forward in three quick strides, a hand clasping firmly over Jon’s mouth as the other pulls the statement out of Jon’s grip. Jon jumps, and although at first he offers little to no resistance to the assault and allows himself to be pulled back and gagged, Martin soon feels a sharp inhale followed by the feeling of Jon’s lips moving almost mechanically from behind Martin’s palm, the mumbled words muffled but still there. “Stop it!” Martin pleads, wrapping his free arm around Jon and covering his nose and chin in a desperate attempt to stop the words from flowing forth, sure somehow that they still hold power even if no one can hear them, and Jon chokes, struggles and squirms in Martin’s grip.
Martin’s heart hammers painfully in his chest as he presses his face against the back of Jon’s head, feeling the pressure of the Beholder’s powers weighing over them like a physical thing. Jon struggles to free himself of Martin’s chokehold with jerky and twitchy movements that Martin reckons are not all voluntary, almost as if Jon’s struggling against it just as much as Martin is, and Martin refuses to let up. Jon might not be fully human anymore, but he’s still a slight man, much smaller and weaker than Martin himself, and the adrenaline rushing through his veins allows him to overpower whatever’s compelling Jon to resist.
Martin brings them both down to the floor, straddles Jon as he presses his body over him to keep him in place, to have him still. “Snap out of it, Jon!” He begs, desperate, lips trembling and throat tight. He finally opens his eyes and looks at Jon’s face, gasping in fear as he sees his glowing, glossed over eyes, at the physical manifestation of the Beholding covering his skin, surrounding his aura. And yet he regains his composure in a second, tightening his firm grip, whole body shaking with not just the effort but also the dawning realization of the horror that Jon’s become while he was gone, when he wasn’t here with him by his side, and it hurts. “You’ve got to stop! Because if you don’t-”
He stops, chokes. His whole body becomes cold as Jon redoubles his attempts to escape, as his eyes glow brighter with a fury that isn’t Jon’s, as the pressure builds and builds in the room until Martin can barely breathe, the storm outside raging and shaking the windows almost as if the Beholder is trying to get in, almost as if it’s sending a message, a warning, a threat.
And as the tears finally roll down Martin’s face, his trembling arms tighten around Jon, and he squeezes his eyes shut to hide from the horrors surrounding them in the place that’s supposed to be their haven, focusing only on Jon, Jon, Jon, warm and real and right there, he might’ve not been here before but he’s here now and he’s not letting go.
A thought occurs to him, of what might happen if Jon doesn’t stop struggling, if he’s unable to bring himself to keep the words from flowing out of him; something tells him that The Beholding can most likely puppeteer Jon for longer than Martin could physically hold him down, and as he looks outside, at the sky that seems ready to collapse onto itself, a cold dread mixed with nausea pools in his stomach as he realizes the only thing that will stop The Beholding from using Jon to finish what he’s started.
“I-if you don’t, I might have to,” he gasps, feeling his own tears choking him, “t-to kill you, and I...!” Martin clenches his jaw, bears his teeth, sobs desperately. “Please, Jon, please don’t make me do this!”
Martin cries and cries, focusing on not loosening his hold, so it barely registers in his mind when Jon reaches up, fingers touching the back of Martin’s hand in a weak supplication, but when he feels a trickle of something from behind his fingers, running down his knuckles, he lifts and turns his head to look at Jon’s face. He thought it was blood, at first, warm and sticky on his skin, but the thick fluid is pitch black like tar, and Jon’s eyes, despite still looking very much green and very much wrong, are now half-closed, dim, his pupils almost visible behind the fog.
“Jon?” He asks, and the trickle becomes a constant stream as Jon stops struggling and finally goes slack under Martin’s body, the black ooze covering Martin’s fingers and dripping down to the floor as Jon’s eyes water with fresh tears. “Jon!” He calls out again but Jon’s eyes are already closed, his hand falling limp on the floor. Martin pulls back and sits up, and Jon’s upper body slumps to the floor without Martin holding him up. The black liquid quickly pools under Jon’s face, trickling down from his nostrils and mouth, and a cold dread runs through Martin’s body.
Jon had recently told him, during a night in when they were being a bit more honest to themselves than usual, that he was physically unable to stop reading statements, even if people interrupted him, even if unspeakable things were happening around him. He felt weirdly entranced by the words once he began reading them, completely enraptured in the stories behind them almost as if he was there, participating in the very moment being narrated, and no matter how painful or grotesque or disturbing the scenes were in his mind’s eye he just couldn’t bring himself to stop, not even to pause and recollect himself. It was unnerving, and yet he was bound to them, like a prisoner of his own mind. A servant of the Beholding, through and through. And it scared him like nothing else ever did; he hated it, hated all of it. The Beholder, for taking his humanity. The avatars, for bringing so much suffering onto the world. Himself, for being a part of it, helpless to it all, unable to do a damn thing. For being so much like them.
And now Martin’s managed, somehow, to break that thread, to interrupt the flow of words from that wretched statement that promised to bring bad, bad things onto the world, despite Jon trying to resist him all the way through. As he stares down at the puddle of black ooze on the floor, at Jon’s soft but still pained expression in his sleep, he wonders if this is a direct result of forcefully stopping whatever it is that compels Jon to read the statements, but his thoughts don’t go much further than that as he notices that Jon isn’t breathing.
“Oh no...” Martin whispers, cold dread running through his limbs, numbing his whole body. “Oh fuck, oh no, Jon!” He scoops Jon’s body off the floor, brings him to his lap and lifts his head off the floor, his tears now back at full force after having momentarily receded from the earlier shock. “No, no, no, no no... Please! No, please, fuck!” Martin cradles Jon’s face, gently, trying not to think too much about the black ichor that stains his face, or the tears gathered on his lashes, under his lids.
Martin’s own tears fall in thick droplets over Jon’s cheek, and he shudders as a sob wracks through his body.
“No, please...” he whispers, voice cracking, and he pulls Jon even closer, gathers him in his arms, rests his cheek against his forehead, terrified of how cold it feels. “Fuck, Jon, I-I didn’t mean it, I’m so sorry, shit...!”
And, suddenly, Jon’s body tenses and he gasps, like a drowning man coming up for air.
“Jon!” Martin exclaims, pulling away as Jon bends down and coughs and coughs and coughs, choking in the black tar, his whole body shuddering with the effort to expel whatever it is that’s blocking his lungs and airways. “Oh my god, holy shit, Jon, I really t-thought you were done for,” he says, laughing awkwardly as he holds Jon through his coughing fit, hugging him close once hacking turns to heavy, unsteady, raspy breathing. “P-please don’t make me do that again, because I d-don’t know if I could’ve... if I could’ve killed you, even if... even if it was to stop the world from ending.”
He pulls away to look at Jon then, eyes wide and pleading, and Jon looks back, first in terrified shock, then in dawning horror as realization washes over him.
“Jon?” Martin asks, gentle, as Jon lifts his hand and touches his shaky fingers to his lips, and Martin watches, helpless, as Jon bends his head down, hides his mouth and lips behind his ooze-stained hand, and closes his eyes tightly as fresh tears roll down his face.
When the first loud whimper falls from Jon’s lips, high pitched and terrifyingly pitiful, Martin flinches as if he’s been slapped. He’s never seen Jon break down like this, and it feels like a punch to the gut, his heart breaking into a million tiny pieces.
“J-Jon, it’s okay, I promise,” he murmurs, but he’s unable to hold back his own tears, incapable of hiding the tremors in his voice. “I’m here, Jon, I’m here,” he whispers over and over, pulling Jon into a full-body embrace, and Jon instantly gives in, hiding his face over Martin’s shoulder, free hand wrapping around his neck. His body shudders and trembles with wracking sobs, and if Martin thought hearing Jon’s compelled chanting before was awful, this, to him, is even moreso.
He buries his nose in Jon’s hair and looks to the side, at the open window, the wind billowing the curtains. The sky is blue once more, and the grey clouds have all but dissipated completely.
And both him and Jon are, despite it all, still here. Alive.
---
When Jon stops crying, Martin carries him, bridal-style, to their bedroom. He takes the hand towel from the bathroom, dampens it, and uses it to rub the black, ink-like fluid from Jon’s cheek and hands. By the time he’s done Jon's long fast asleep, eyes closed tightly, hand curled over the pillow; it doesn’t look like a peaceful rest, but it’s rest all the same, so Martin takes care not to accidentally wake him. He throws the towel into a random corner in the room and crawls onto the bed, pulling the covers over them both, wrapping his arms around Jon in an overprotective embrace. Jon doesn’t even stir, and Martin passes out as soon as he settles down with his forehead touching Jon’s cold and damp nape.
Martin wakes up at the break of dawn, with the warm orange sunlight beaming over his eyes, feeling a deep exhaustion that seeps into his bones and wracks him at his core. He gets up and off the bed, careful not to wake Jon, then closes the curtains to allow him to sleep in for a while longer. When he steps into the living room he pauses, looking down at the crumbled papers spread over the floor, the dried black stain on the wooden planks.
He doesn’t want to, not really, but he reads Jonah’s statement anyway, sitting on a rickety old chair in the back garden. Once he’s done he takes Jon’s lighter out of his pocket and burns it, watching with morbid satisfaction as the fire easily consumes the paper in a matter of seconds, as the wind takes the blackened ashes and the still glowing embers up and away from their tiny backyard. Hopes, deep down, that Jonah’s watching as well. He hopes that it hurts.
“You keep underestimating me, Elias,” he sneers, then walks back into the cottage, not looking back.
He’s just finished cleaning the black ooze off the floor when Jon wakes up, walking a bit unsteadily into the living room. Martin smiles and greets him when he sees him, throwing the cloth onto the water bucket, but Jon stays silent, turning away from Martin to sit at the kitchen table.
Martin understands and doesn’t press Jon. He keeps to asking simple yes or no questions, tries not to make too much small talk that would require Jon to participate in, and he cooks while Jon sits at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the box of statements in the living room. Martin promises he’ll look through them later so that he can veto any other statements in there, make sure Jonah hasn’t snuck anything else anywhere else, and Jon just stares blankly at the box, eyes tired, shoulders drooped.
Martin frowns, but knows that he can’t and won’t force Jon to be alright after what he went through, no matter how worried he is. What Jon needs is time, and care, and some sense of normalcy, and those are all things Martin can offer.
The next day, Jon still is silent, much like the day before.
Martin talks enough for the two of them. Jon is, at least, up and about, unlike the previous day; he offers to help with supper, goes out with Martin for a quick walk in the sun, smiles when Martin points at a grazing cow that comes close to the fencing that encircles the surrounding farm area. Martin feels a bit of that worry untangle inside his chest; he squeezes Jon’s hand in his, kisses the top of his head, wraps around his body in the evening when they retire for bed.
The next day Martin reads through a few statements to confirm they’re safe, and when he hands them over to Jon he simply nods before sitting down on the couch to read... in complete silence.
Martin's never seen him not pull out a tape recorder to read a statement, and it bothers him profoundly. The worry returns in full force, blooming in his chest like an overgrown weed that takes over a rosebush and suffocates it.
After a whole week of this odd silent treatment, during an awkward lunch where the only sound in the cottage is the clinking of their cutlery against the china, Martin stops and looks at Jon pleadingly.
"Have I done something wrong?" He asks, mortified of how his voice breaks and wavers, how his lower lip trembles pathetically, but Jon widens his eyes, shakes his head, getting up and walking the three steps towards Martin. He kneels on the floor next to his chair and places a gentle hand over his thigh, and Martin feels the telltale of tears prickling the corners of his eyes, but he sniffs, gulps, rubs his face. Gathers himself. "I'm so sorry, Jon, I... can you ever forgive me?" For saying he'd kill him? For later confessing that he'd let the world burn before he could ever harm Jon? For abandoning him when Jon most needed him to be there by his side? All of these are left unsaid, but Martin knows Jon hears all of it all the same. He knows that Jon Knows.
Jon shakes his head no frantically, places both hands on Martin's forearms, looks up at him with such a pleading expression it pains Martin deeply, like a fresh wound being scraped raw. Jon opens his mouth, closes it, clenches his jaw as he bends his head down. Martin slides off his chair to join Jon on the kitchen floor, cupping his face in his hands.
"Jon... is this... are you afraid to use your voice again, after...?" he asks in a low and gentle voice, almost as if he’s speaking to a frightened animal that he doesn’t want to spook, hesitant to name whatever it was that happened just the previous week. Jon nods, shaking, and Martin, feeling overwhelmed, holds Jon close against his chest. "You're not... you're safe, Jon. We both are. It's over now, it's..."
But Martin falters. He can’t finish this thought because he can’t be sure that it's true, and something in Martin wonders if Jon’s hesitation is something that Jon simply fears will happen or if it’s something he Knows for sure.
He almost doesn’t want to ask, too scared of the answer.
“C-can you check, Jon? See what might happen if you try to talk?”
Jon shakes his head again, burrowing closer against Martin. He doesn’t have to say anything for Martin to know that using his inhuman powers is also something he’s frightened of doing. Martin‘s heart aches.
“Okay, it’s okay Jon, I’m here, I’m with you... I’m right here. We’ll get through this.”