Work Text:
Statement of Jonathan Sims, The Archivist, regarding a final promise made to Martin Blackwood. Statement given in a hastily-written letter, left in the smoldering ruins of the Panopticon.
Statement begins.
Martin—
When all of this is over, we’ll live by the sea.
I grew up on the shore. I don’t believe I ever told you that. I grew up in Bournemouth, in a house that was a stone’s throw from the beach. The first thing I did every morning, if I didn’t have school, was run out into the sand and wade into the water. (Sometimes I did it even if I did have school. Yes, I skipped school, more often than I think anyone, including my old classmates, would have ever suspected.)
To people who grow up on the shore, the sea is more like a neighbor or a close family friend than a force of nature. It becomes a fond fixture in your life. As a child, I probably bathed in the ocean more often than the bathtub. I learned to love it as I loved brand new books by unfamiliar authors, as I loved very specific flavors of ice cream, as I loved being left to explore the town alone, physical exhaustion and the setting of the sun my only limitations.
I never dreamed, as a child, of living by the sea when I was older, because I never really imagined leaving it. When you’re young, you assume everything will last forever, for better or worse. For a while, I assumed I would live in that big, old house by the sea with my grandmother until the end of time. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, facing decisions about uni, that I had to consider an alternative.
Part of me was left behind when I left Bournemouth for Oxford. I’m sure that’s a common feeling people have when moving away from childhood homes, but it felt quite literal to me at the time. Lying in my dorm bed that first night at Oxford, I couldn’t sleep, but not because of nerves. After hours of tossing and turning, I realized it was the silence; for the first time in my memory, there were no sounds of crashing waves outside my window. The loss was like a physical weight on my chest. It didn’t improve much over the months. I lost so much sleep; I kept thinking I could hear the sound of the waves at night, like a phantom limb.
Of course I got used to it, eventually. I stayed at Oxford for several years and then I moved to central London, which is about as far as you can get from the shore, spiritually speaking. Whatever pound of flesh I had left in the sea, I’d long forgotten it by then, and my nights were filled with plenty of other noises to fill the silence.
But we both know, I think, that you never quite forget that sort of thing entirely. You can’t ignore those pieces of yourself forever.
Do you remember, on the journey up to Scotland, when the train went by that stretch of coastline for an hour or so, and I wouldn’t stop staring out the window? On second thought, you were probably sleeping and didn’t notice, but I was staring. I couldn’t stop thinking that perhaps we could get off at the next stop and live in a small seaside town instead. Hide away in a little ramshackle house a stone’s throw from the beach. Open all of the windows and breathe in the bracing sea air and hear the rhythmic, unending crashing of waves. We’d have to buy all new clothes, of course, but once we did so we could walk along the boardwalk in the evening, and head out onto the sand, and take off our shoes and let the water nip at our toes as we watched the sunset.
We’d hold hands as we walked, I think. Gently, without desperation, without necessity. We’d hold hands because we wanted to.
When it grew dark, we would wade into the ocean, and swim by the light of the moon and the glow of the distant boardwalk, the water still warm from the heat of the day. We wouldn’t be far from the shore, but we would hold onto each other anyway, not wanting to let the other go. We’d be alone, but not lonely. And when we finally tired of swimming, we would make our way back home, to the little ramshackle house that would be ours. We’d draw warm baths and then fall asleep together, in the bed we would share, and we would both be too tired to dream.
The days would pass slowly, but they would never be dull. Or, they would be dull, but in a comforting sort of way, like a well-worn coat. If we were too tired or if it was too cold to swim in the ocean, we’d walk around town, memorizing the streets, meeting the townspeople. I’d buy stacks of books for our house, and you would buy board games, and we’d argue about which one to play. I’d teach you how to cook and you’d teach me how to mend things. We’d collect seashells and rocks and our little house would be just crowded enough to be comfortable. We would have a television, I think, but an older one that didn’t work very well, and we wouldn’t use it very often. We’d talk. We’d talk and talk and talk, about all the things we wanted to say but never had the chance to. Important things, unimportant things. There are so, so many things I still want to tell you, Martin.
I want all of that, for the two of us. After we save the world, after the Panopticon falls into ruin and Jonah and his designs are nothing but dust.
If you want it, of course. Only if you want it, too. I think you would like living by the sea, though. I think the breeze off the ocean would mess up your hair just perfectly, and I think the sun would bring out your freckles. I think you’d like the feeling of your bare feet in the sand, just this side of too warm before the cold water crashes over them. I think you wouldn’t even mind the sandy shoes by the front door, or the dripping of the drying swimming trunks on the back porch. I think you’d have the chance to smile more, and laugh more.
It’s so easy to imagine you there. I can picture it—you in the sun, ears starting to burn, you on grey mornings, with tea in your hands, you in the water, you with sand in your hair, you eating an ice cream cone, you sitting on the edge of the pier, you watering plants, you sleeping in a deck chair, you steering a sailboat, you, you, you.
I think you would be happy, living there. I think we would both be happy.
We’ll fix all of this, first. We’ll put the world back to the way it should be. And then as soon as we’re able, we’ll catch a train headed to the shore. We’ll do it. We will. It really is going to be wonderful, Martin. I can’t wait for you to see it. I can’t wait to share it with you.
—Your Jon
PS: Please never forget that I lo
Statement ends.