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Heavenly and cool beneath his cheek, Jon let the worn wood of his desk leach some of the heat from his face, closing his eyes against the throbbing at the base of his skull. He’d lost track of the days since they’d started rationing his statements in an attempt to break him of his unfortunate habit. Every dull sound, every pinprick of light making its way through the crack under the door was an assault on his senses and made his stomach roll, toss like the sea and someone was groaning, making it worse, scratching against his eardrums, tearing, clawing please stop, stop, stop.
But it was him wasn’t it. There wasn’t anyone else here. Never anyone else here except the Beholding whispering its seductive, sinuous promises always tempting because if he just gave up, gave in, followed that come-hither thread to its end he could stop fighting. The weight of it pressed him deeper into the flaking varnish and he pulled a shaking breath into his body with an effort that barely filled his lungs.
Footsteps tap, tap, tap down the hall past his door and he chanced a look at the clock hanging above the jamb. Somehow he’d made it another night without realizing its passing and his heart lurched in his chest when he forced himself upright, skipping beats as it attempted to travel up and out of his throat without permission. Dizzied and hurting, Jon caught himself on any available surface, praying it was Basira he’d heard arrive and not Melanie or he’d have no chance.
38.7
A lancet through his spine, the Eye made itself known.
“Shut it…” weak and without venom, his own voice reverberated ten fold and he bit his tongue to cage the whimper behind his teeth. He took a moment. One. Two. To gather the disparate bits of himself together and tamp down the nausea cresting over him in battering waves. Careful. Cautious. Control yourself.
“M’Melanie…”
“Jon.” Icy and cold, still not forgiven.
“Was, was.” Swallowing hard and closing his eyes against the blinding fluorescents beating down on him from above. “C’could I. A statement, pl’please?” Scathing, an eyebrow rose as she regarded him with disdain.
“Begging isn’t a good look on you.” Either he was swaying on his feet or the room was spinning around him and Jon wasn’t sure he could tell. One. Even a small one. Take the edge off and give him some room to think. “It makes you look desperate.”
Wasn’t he just?
“Not. M’really. Don’feel well.” His skin crawled with Prentiss’ worms, inside, out, burrowing, and he knew he’d drawn blood scratching at the phantom feeling because it was embedded under bitten-short fingernails.
“Drying out isn’t meant to be fun.”
“It’s, it isn’t--”
“I don’t have patience with your dramatics, Jon.” When she sighed, it was out of annoyance. “You know that.” He cast his gaze down, trying to focus on the discolored tiles.
“M’s’sorry.” A clear dismissal, she said nothing more and Jon didn’t wait to be told twice, stepping unsteadily backwards before turning away to limp towards storage and lay his aching self on the cot, clinging to the rails like he was a ship in a storm. Slowly, slowly Jon breathed in an attempt to calm his frayed nerves, to keep the pain in his head at a bearable level. He’d spent years being afraid, what was one more day? Two? Three? Tears welled, slipping between closed lids to snake their way into his sweat soaked temples and he longed for soft hands, gentle hands, familiar hands to hold his own. Someone to speak soft things and gentle things and he’d ruined it. Driven them away. Killed them and he choked on a sob, on the grief tangled in his chest, creeping up his throat, suffocating and thick and oh god what had he done?
Just by being him, by being the way he was, the way he’d always been. If he’d ever truly loved them, wouldn’t he have done better by them? Done his best?
But even his best was a far cry from what his friends had needed.
And now.
Now.
Now.
He couldn’t breathe for crying, smothering himself in the pillows and stifling his pathetic keening.
“Jon?” Basira’s voice cut through the self pity and he swallowed his noises in time for her to step into the room, shining a beam of light like the sun into the room. She didn’t comment on his tear streaked face or red rimmed eyes as he laid there, a gutted fish. “Melanie told me you were asking for extra statements.” He nodded, pressing the heel of one hand against his temple and letting go of a shuddering exhale. “Is that what you want?” He couldn’t quite make out her features but he recognized her disappointment easily enough. “To give up? Go back to whatever you were turning into?”
Be something less than human?
Jon shook his head.
“N’no.”
“Good man.” Because he’d made the right choice for once. Said what he was supposed to. And the small praise very nearly made it worth the agony. “I’ll bring you some water.” He must have fallen asleep again because when he opened his eyes there was a bottle of water and a blister pack of cold medicine within reach.
Shape and sound and heat, red, red, red flame licking along beams, melting plastic faces spinning and whirling mad and wild in time with the calliope’s song. Thick and hot rolling waves of flame. The cloying taste of iron at the back of his tongue built and built and built until he gagged.
I know.
Tim. Tim Carnage reflected in his irises, soaking up the red. Dripping with it like ink. Eyes accusing because he would never, never forgive him.
In his thrashing Jon tumbled off the cot, landing gracelessly and painfully and curling around every aching, agonized place and nearly blind with the stabbing pain in his head. He was going to die here in this place. In the dust of statements he wasn’t allowed access to and he couldn’t stay here another moment, needing desperately to get out, get out, get out! before he crumbled to ash with the rest of it and even if he deserved it, every ounce of it, he was too much a coward to accept his punishment. Somehow he was standing, fingers tangled up in the wool of Martin’s oversized jumper, right over the lancing pain in his heart and he could scarcely breathe.
The body he wore wasn’t his. It couldn't be. He didn't recognize it. Skin stretched tight over bones rattling and loose and trembling all over Jon caught himself on the door frame before hauling this stranger’s corpse into the pool of emergency lighting, wading through it like he was hip deep in a swamp.
He paused at the door. Paused again outside on the steps of the Institute, cement freezing beneath his bare feet, gripping the handrail so tightly his fingers felt one with the metal. The earth seemed to move underneath him, rolling up and down, threatening to throw him over the side of the railing like he was about to be tossed overboard in a squall.
If Basira caught him leaving, would she kill him?
Did it matter?
More than once, Jon ended up curled around a convulsing stomach in a narrow alley, dry heaving, and he thought for sure he’d collapse the next time and never get up. Just sink into the grime and rot and trash and disappear. He weaved on the pavement shaky and unsure, movement stilted and drunk, and the few people he encountered gave him a wide berth and that was fine with him.
More than fine.
Because the Eye wanted what they had, what they hid. Wanted to taste and consume and devour their fear.
But something else drove him ever forward
Tugging him relentlessly on heavy, leaden legs.
Martin.
Martin Martin Martin
Shameful and wanting. Ignoring the first and last thing Martin ever truly asked of him. To stay away.
And he couldn’t do it.
Not as he was now, selfish and exhausted and so tired of hurting alone in the dark and dim of the Archives.
So he teetered down the streets, taking intersections he’d never seen before but Knew were right, half blinded with tunnel vision. Shaking with chills, freezing in the cold night air, Jon went numb. Fixed on one goal and one goal alone. No thought to what would happen if he even made it to his destination and leaving behind him more than one bloody footprint.
Stairs loomed. An impossible obstacle and it took the rest of whatever he had in the depths of himself not to curl up right here on the concrete. Let Martin trip over him in the morning on his way back to work for Lukas. The glare of each little globe light lining the walk insisted on trying to pluck his very eyes from their sockets and he'd do it himself if he thought it would truly fix anything.
One. Two. Seven. Counting stairs until he crashed into the landing, holding himself up by railing, by wall, by the doors of people with statements, and those to room after empty room until he stood unsteady before a number both foreign and familiar.
It was late. Or early depending. And he whimpered. Disgusted with himself. Torn between choices and torn apart himself. Shreds of whoever he was before hanging from brittle bone.
He knocked.
He waited.
He burned.
“Jon.” Martin was angry. He could hear it in the flat, unfamiliar inflection of his voice, once so warm and inviting, now as cold as winter wind. He could see it in the way he held himself. Stiff and formal and distant. Eyes little more than chips of polished seaglass. God, it was so much to see him again. Too much. “Are you, are you drunk?” Jon stumbled back, narrow shoulders colliding painfully with the wall and its florid paper, fingers scrabbling at the filigree texture in his quest to remain standing.
He hurt.
Was filled up with it, toe to tip.
How much was he expected to hold before he burst?
“I. I didn’t know where t’to go.” No wonder Martin accused him of showing up to his flat soused with his words slurring like that, body trembling, his grasp on “up” such a tentative, unsure thing.
“Hm.” Non committal, like a knife he’d all but placed there himself twisting in his gut.
“Th’there is nowhere to go.” No place that was his own. No place with kind hands or words. Only threats and anger and blame.
“You shouldn’t have left the Institute. You know that.” The panic at the thought of being sent back there had to have shown in his face and of course, Martin was right. What was Jon thinking? Showing up here? He couldn’t have been expecting a warm welcome, open arms?
“I.” What? The only phrases ever on his lips were fruitless apologies and he let his stare drift across the yawning chasm between them. Staggering, Jon tripped over his own feet, vision fading in and out, and he expected to make fast acquaintance with the parquet flooring only to be caught by Martin’s arms.
He sagged there.
Exhausted.
He should move. He should leave.
“I…” good lord he was sorry. For so many things. But it was disingenuous to say it now and Martin’s sigh was one of resignation and Jon would have fled from it if he thought he was capable of running. Pushed far past his limits, he was ready to give up and melt into the floor, into nothing.
The guilt only grew when Martin dragged him inside and deposited him in an old wingback chair. Tastefully furnished though it was, Jon shivered in the cold, surprised he couldn’t see his own gasping breath in the air before him. In frosty silence, Martin made up the couch and, ever polite, wished him a good evening before leaving him where he was. After ducking under the quilt, tugging it over his head to hide from the light and noise from the street outside, Jon warmed gradually. The blood flooding back into his fingers and feet made them sting but it was as a papercut was to a missing limb compared to the pounding, pulsing pain throbbing fiercely behind his eyes and he willed himself to sleep.
Escape everything. The ache, the agony, the gnawing hunger and weakness.
Please.
Please.
Please.
A face that didn’t belong followed Jon in his nightmares and from it a voice, saccharine sweet and oh so dangerous, twisting, turning, twining in his ear as he ran, ran, ran through the tunnels.
Bands of white hot iron coiled around his body, burning him, branding him, everything now just errant thought and spare snatches of copper breath. Too-long fingers glinted, honed razor sharp and reflecting his own terrified expression back at him.
I see you.
Tangled in sweat-soaked sheets and sick from terror, Jon barely managed to struggle free in time to reach the bin, emptying himself of nothing but sour bile and bitter ink, barely registering his crumpling to the rug, groaning low and clutching his stomach with trembling fingers. He was splitting open, in half, veins and arteries and sinews a roadmap of this awful affliction, spilling onto the floor, staining it and he would never scrub out. The effort to be sick, intolerable with pain, bent his back as black consumed him, ate him up and spat him out in pieces, jagged and rough, enough to cut those foolish enough to come closer.
Swimming endlessly up, Jon surfaced with enormous difficulty to a hand on his back, his brow, cheek mashed into the fibers with just enough awareness to embrace the shame coursing through him so cold, so awful, so real.
Martin should have sent him home before he made a mess of things here too. But it was so hard to think, scattered thoughts mere wisps of cloud slipping through grasping fingers, oozing all over the ground and picked apart by vultures scattering his bones to bleach in the sun.
“Jon?” Tentative, the palm on his forehead cool, too cool, but blissful. “That’s quite a fever. Are you ill?” So soft and gentle Jon cried with it, tears tracing hot cheeks before he could even attempt to stop them. He couldn’t answer. Couldn’t move. And when Martin lifted him from the floor he felt like nothing more than an empty skin, nothing left but the emptiness, the loneliness, that fueled him these days. So disoriented, Jon wasn’t sure which way was up, content to pant fruitlessly and hide his face in Martin’s pyjamas. “Sheets are soaked. You can’t sleep here.” Martin’s contemplative murmur was like the peal of a bell, ringing in his ears, and he moaned, helpless. Moving limbs Jon could barely control himself, Martin helped him change into soft new things before tucking him into bed and his head hurt so badly he couldn’t move and the lamp light in the room made it feel like there was glass behind his closed eyelids and the quietest sounds were needles in his ears. He’d run out of room, the shallow breaths hitching, shuddering, with no place to go for the pain filling him up. There was a noise. High pitched. Deplorable. And it was too long before Jon realized that it was him, from his own throat so tight with the effort of holding back an ocean.
The cold compress was a singular blessing that both hid tears and blocked all remaining light and he could hear now that Martin was whispering something. Gentle fingers ran over the top of his head, through sweaty, matted curls, broad and applying just enough pressure that some of the hurt bled away. Repeated. Over and over, Martin massaged his temples and that tiniest bit of relief made him sob, tears coming too quickly now to be contained by the flannel. Carefully, like he was something precious, something worth it to somebody, Jon was tucked into Martin’s neck.
Jon woke alone and warm beneath an unfamiliar duvet, to an unfamiliar ceiling. He slipped through fog and mist, afterimages flitting through the room, other worldly and ethereal and overwhelming. And though the splitting agony of the last however many days was gone, it had been replaced by a dull ache like that which accompanied a bad flu. He took his time. Remembered the night before. Being held by Martin and kept safe by him, drifting on that soft memory alone. Slowly he allowed himself to trace over the room with half lidded eyes. Ostentatious. Old. Certainly not a décor Martin would choose, Jon was positive.
Which meant he was most likely in a flat owned by the Lukas family.
He couldn’t stay here. Shouldn’t be here.
Wincing, stiff and sore like a man thrice his age, Jon levered himself up on quaking arms to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. His clothes, freshly laundered, sat folded in a low chair accompanied by socks and an old pair of trainers. Jon didn’t linger, instead easing his way carefully through the room, paying careful attention to every ginger step.
A single manila folder and cup of tea were set on the simple dining table and drawn to it, Jon sat in the only chair.
It was a statement. And Jon’s throat closed against a devastating need before he lifted the pages, taking a sip before beginning to read.
Still hot.