Chapter Text
Another sharp branch reaches out from the fog and drags a jagged line across Martin’s face. He hardly feels it; what’s one more scratch when he’s already stumbling and shambling on a twisted ankle, hopelessly lost? The fog hasn’t shown any sign of thinning, and he hasn’t seen any indication whatever of daylight, but it’s impossible that it’s still the night he got lost. It has to be. Every inch of his body is burning and sore, mind blurred with fear and despair. Sometimes he thinks he hears a voice in the shade of a tree, and never can seem to get any closer or further from it, or make out any real words. Sometimes he does hear words, like they’re being whispered directly into his brain.
She’s going to think you abandoned her, too.
Stop. He’s too tired to even think it properly, can’t hear his own thoughts over the whispering of the woods around him.
Left with friends you never even bothered to tell her about and never came back. Left her to her sickness, left her to die. Left her alone. Just like he did.
But he didn’t, he hadn’t, he wouldn’t do that to his mother, no, she knew better than that. A gust of frigid air nearly blows him over, twists his ankle back the other direction and sends a white hot shot of pain through his leg.
Actually, you might be right about that.
He's losing his mind. It's like the fog is laughing at him, laughing in his face, every rustle in the leaves and rush of biting wind mocking him for his failures.
If she ever finds out, she’ll probably thank those boys for leaving you out here.
Please stop.
She deserves to finally be rid of you, the fog says, curling bitter-sweetly through his hair, the taunt of a tactile memory he didn’t even know he missed. Something in him cracks like shattering glass and he spins hard, fighting his ankle the whole way round and tries to flee out of the ghostly embrace. It brushes invitingly along his skin, freezes the burn of the cuts and bruising.
No one needs you, sighs the voice just as Martin turns and walks face first into a spiderweb.
This, for some reason, is the final straw. As it just so happens, however, the final straw does not quite tip the scale in the direction the fog would’ve liked.
So what? Martin thinks with such clarity he startles himself. I don’t deserve this. The forest around him seems shocked still as well, the air no longer oppressively heavy on his mind. He has no idea where the thought even comes from- seems a bit optimistic for him, really- but the whispering sighs away with the retreating fog and suddenly there’s so much stark silver moon light shining on the wet leaves and the ankle deep grass that it stings his eyes.
He’s definitely losing his mind. There’s a lake. An enormous, still, black expanse of water surrounded on all sides by flowers and reeds that should not be able to thrive in this chill and enormous bramble skinned vines climbing the crumbling tower wall of a ruined castle. At the center of the pool is the shining crescent of the moon, and Martin knows, he knows with an unsettlingly sudden certainty, that the lake can see him as he collapses to his knees in the dirt. Then the feeling is gone. Martin runs a shaking hand down his face and winces as he finds a deep gash on his cheek. He looks at the sticky black stain of his blood on his fingertips, lets out a pathetic little hiccup of a laugh, and lets himself really breathe. The crisp lake air grates his burning lungs and his entire leg is throbbing beneath him, but he’s… he’s alive. He’s alive and he’s still lost but he’s not lost in the forest anymore, not pulled this way and that by phantom voices and tearing branches. He readjusts, stretches his leg out in front of him and gingerly touches the swollen ankle, sighing at the state he’s in.
At least there’s water, Martin “King of the Optimists Apparently” Blackwood thinks just as he’s spooked by a fluttering of wings across the lake.
And then he's transfixed by the sight of a swan landing in the center of the circle of moonlight, head bowed deeply against its chest. The silver light shimmers against its feathers, mesmerizingly reflecting against the dying ripples caused by the landing, and Martin realizes he's holding his breath but can't find it in himself to inhale. The swan hugs its wings to its side tightly and shrinks into itself right before the dark water below opens wide, a swirling maw gaping beneath the bird, and then the lake snaps its jaws shut and swallows. All is very, very still.
Oh, fuck off.
He can not look away, not even when the last gasp of bubbles weakly breaks against the surface, and not for the next few minutes after, far too long for anything to survive-
And then from the shallows nearest Martin the water spits up a man, a wracking sob ringing out into the air. They both inhale sharply in unison, and the eyes that snap up into his shine green like a startled animal's faced with a torch.
He'd always sort of assumed the moment a person finally lost their last grasp on reality would be… harder to pinpoint, somehow, on the occasions his thoughts veered in that direction.
The man stands up slowly, using one hand to push the black and silver strands of soaked hair from his face and the other to pull the sopping sack of a gown he’s wearing around his thin frame before stalking over to Martin, eyes aglow and locked on target. Martin reels a bit, casting about for any coherent thought he could offer this.. This magical swan person he’s obviously trespassed upon that might convince him not to curse him or kill him or…
"Who are you?" The man’s voice takes hold of Martin’s skipping thoughts and hangs on tight. He wishes he could avert his eyes, just for a moment, but he’s unable.
He answers.
"Martin Blackwood." What the hell? It’s not like he would’ve lied about his name in the first place, but the words are pulled from him and leave his throat raw, already hoarse from screaming for help as he went running through the forest and the fog before.
The man blinks once, owlishly. Something inside Martin hysterically supplies the thought, ‘Oh. Pretty.’
"What are you doing here?" The moonlight sits behind the man’s head like a halo, catching in the droplets falling from his hair and fingertips and the frayed hem of the nightgown and shattering silver on the ground.
Martin is so, so confused.
You were a swan a few minutes ago. The lake ate you. I saw it. "I don't know. I don't know where I am-” Martin doesn’t want to talk about the fog, but he doesn’t get the choice. Why can’t he stop talking?
“I got lost in the fog and I don't know how long I was out there and I was..” The man’s face changes at this, softens ever so slightly as the glow dies away slowly from his eyes. The grip around Martin’s mind loosens. “I was alone, and I-"
"You- you came through the fog?" His voice is suddenly so soft Martin barely hears him, shock plain on his face.
"I'm sorry, I didn't.. I mean, I-" Martin isn’t sure what he’s trying to apologize for, really. Scaring him? Trespassing? Getting lost in the first place? The man stares at him, or maybe through him, before muttering something to himself and pacing back and forth a few steps. Martin can practically hear his thoughts whirring around, and something about the flurry of sympathetic energy it sends through him calms his own nerves, a bit. His ankle throbs once, a reminder to readjust, and the movement draws the other man back out of his thoughts, startled as though he’d forgotten Martin was still there. “I-I didn’t mean to intru-”
When their eyes meet again, Martin would swear he sees a flash of curiosity flit through them before the walls go back up behind them. "No one else gets through the.. How?"
Martin does not miss that while asked intensely, the question doesn’t wrench the answer from him this time. "I… I don't… know?” What does he mean, how? Is there a tactic to it? Before he can ask what the hell this guy’s talking about his ankle decides to remind him again of his fall, and Martin winces and shifts again, trying to find a way to sit that won’t put pressure on it or leave rocks digging into the swollen flesh.
“Are you hurt?” His voice is calm, carefully casual, but when Martin looks up there’s concern on his face, around the edges. One of the man’s hands is twisting uncomfortably in the wet gown as he looks down at Martin’s leg, and Martin notices a shiny scar across the back of it, wrapping around to his palm. It looks like it hurt, whatever did it.
“My ankle’s twisted, I think, but otherwise n-no, not that I know of.” When the man opens his mouth to respond, a gust of air blows across the surface of the lake and bombards them both with frigid wind. Martin pulls his coat more tightly around his shoulders and braces best he can against the blast and the misty spray.
The man’s knees threaten to buckle and he hugs himself tight against the wind, teeth chattering, wet tendrils of hair sticking to his face and neck. “You c-can’t stay here. I-I-I d-don’t know w-when he’ll b-be back.” The droplets of water that blow out of his hair and onto Martin’s cheek are even colder than the wind, burning his skin on contact.
Christ. He must be freezing. “Christ, you must be freezing.”
“I... w-what?“ The man puts on a valiant show of stopping himself from shivering but absolutely does not succeed, undermined by a second biting gust of wind. Martin somehow manages not to openly roll his eyes at the misplaced pride, but the deepening furrow of the man’s brow makes him think he may still have made some sort of face.
He asks, “Did you not hear me?” right as Martin asks, “Aren’t you cold?”
They look at one another for a long, still moment before the man sighs and darts his eyes around. Martin finds himself oddly bereft at the loss of eye contact.
“Don’t move,” the man says, and Martin feels his body lock up in the spot where he sits. He should be scared, probably, that this man can just command him to do things and he does them, can tear words from his throat and force the truth out of him, but mostly he just thinks the precaution is pointless, given the state of his ankle. He watches as the man walks over to a small stone bench near the shore and shakes out a heavy-looking cloak from beneath it, wrapping it around himself as he turns and briskly makes his way to the ruins of the castle, leaving him alone in the silver light of the moon.
---
Jon’s wet footsteps echo through the empty stone halls of the castle, touching every gloomy corner and cobweb adorned crevice. The hearth in the entryway roars and crackles with its lightless flame (you could probably touch it now, Jon, don't you think?), and Jon shudders away from it and pulls his cloak closed over his shoulders. He finds his boots with only a little difficulty- Quatre’s been moving things around in the castle again, wretched old thing- and uses a shard of glass from a shattered window to slice a strip of fabric from one of the tapestries.
Compression for the swelling, something supplies. But unless you want to risk him to the water you won't have a cold compress.
And there's still the god forsaken woods to trek through. Jon casts his thoughts in the direction he knows the nearest town to be and groans. That's all night lost for certain, spent hobbling through the fog with a stranger.
Will you send him alone?
This is indescribably foolish, even though he’s relatively certain Elias won’t come tonight. It’s only been a week since his last visit, and the lake certainly hasn’t shown him anything of particular note since, but he never does really know, can never be certain.
He thinks about the man, Martin Blackwood. ‘Christ, you must be freezing’ rings through his head and tries to nestle into the softer corners of his mind, but he refuses to consider it long enough to allow it purchase and sighs at the scrap of rough fabric in his hands. This will have to do.
Martin Blackwood must leave, and quickly.
Jon makes his way back through the castle, eyes cast firmly on the shifting stones beneath his feet (It took 40 steps from the hearth tonight, and they were glinting yellow in the wrong directions and your steps echoed thrice, towards you instead of away, how odd) and away from the taunting whispers from the library (There's one in here that Bleeds, Jon, one that Bleeds, one you haven't read yet, what if it says something important?), curling together with the smoke from the fireplace. He breathes deep when he steps out into the rustling grass around the lake, thankful for the disorienting shift into a less oppressive quiet. Martin is where he left him, of course, and when he looks back up at Jon’s arrival he seems to have calmed a bit; the color in his cheeks is more even, though still flushed from the chill and the wind. Jon tries to ignore the phantom knowledge of the pain in his ankle- it aches in Jon's own leg like a distant memory and he's briefly overwhelmed by the shock of hurt, Martin must've been running on it for days- and crouches down, showing Martin the fabric before gingerly taking his ankle and wrapping it as best he can. Martin allows this easily enough Jon worries he'd over done the compulsion for a moment before it chimes in again.
He's just exhausted. A bit of shock. Don't flatter yourself so.
“You really do have to leave,” he says quietly, wincing alongside Martin’s sharp intake of breath when he ties the makeshift compression in place.
When he looks up, Martin looks terrified, on the verge of panicked tears, and Jon’s heart clenches hard in his chest.
“You’re.. you’re g-going to send me b-back into the fog?”
Martin had heard the other boys at work, the Evans twins Gavin and Neil, talking about the forest for a few weeks before they approached him. He’d been suspicious, of course- they’d never really spoken to him before outside of something work related, mostly to “delegate” restocking or shelving (get Martin to do it) or let him know they were taking a “break” (leaving for the day just before lunch)- but they were friendly enough in their pitch. The plan had just been to wander up the path a ways, maybe take a knock or two of some cheap wine Gavin had stored away for a silly adventure, and Martin had gotten his hopes up.
The forest had its reputations of course. Any forest old and deep enough had secrets and history, and even slacking in a library you hear rumors, stories. There were the usual disappearances, hunting accidents, and twisting trails forests tended to accumulate of course. There was also the talk of wolves- 'No, no,' Neil had insisted, 'it's one loner, does it just for the thrill!'- who stalked the wayward passers-by to a grim and bloody demise near the heart of the wood. Martin had read even an old legend once about the answer to eternal life tucked away in the leaves and the gloom, and the boys had all snorted at that.
On they walked, Martin ignoring the nagging unease at the glances cast his way as they talked and joked in favor of hoping he might make at least a casual friendship through this. It was starting to get dark, not just from the setting of the sun but from the canopy above, the branches of the trees seeming to twist around one another in a bid to block out the starlight, when Gavin made a comment about being alone in the dark. Unthinkingly, Martin replied, 'But you aren't afraid of being alone in the dark. You're afraid of not being alone in the dark.'
He regretted the words the moment they left him.
Neil and Gavin shot one another matching conspiratorial smirks and had just opened their mouths to respond when they came to the fog, and the sight of it brought them all to a harsh stop. Neil let out a low whistle.
The fog stood in place like a fortress wall, a pale, shimmering barrier smack through the trees. Cold seemed to radiate out from it, and Martin took an instinctive step away from the wispy tendrils curling around his boots. He backed into Neil, who seized him by the shoulders. Hard. Gavin stepped beside him, identical grins stretched across their faces.
Then they shove him forward through the line of mist and leave him there. Martin lands hard, foot caught on an exposed root and searing, writhing pain seizing up through his leg as his ankle gives to the torsion. He can hear the laughter- 'See you back at the library, Blackwood!' Gavin shouts over his brother's vicious cackling- but when he lifts his gaze the fog stretches far into the woods all around him. There is no sign of the place he was pushed through.
All at once, Martin Blackwood is alone.
Every detail of Martin’s horror as he wanders through the fog, in terrible pain and berated by his own despair, floods into Jon’s mind unbidden and he has to steady himself against the heavy, choking shroud filling his lungs. He spends a moment forcing it from himself and pointedly ignoring Martin, who reaches out briefly as if to try and steady him and recoils from the mist as Jon exhales.
Jon doesn't want to know what the man's seeing right now, the sight of him suddenly gasping for air and biting back a swell of sympathetic sadness he'd thought he'd long forgotten, breathing out the fog that just tried to consume him.
Are you sending him alone? It sounds almost eager, curiosity piqued. We could see if he makes it here a second time.
“No,” he manages, faltering a bit as he stands and offering Martin his hand- the left one, mostly unblemished- to help him to his feet. He can't find it in him to be frustrated with the wary look Martin gives him for the gesture. “No, I’ll take you to the edge, at least. But we have to go, and we have to go now.”
---
Martin follows the man into the forest, trying to keep his suspicions buried. Every time he needs to stop the man makes a face or sighs, but accommodates as best as he can in the midst of his obvious urgency to have Martin leave. Now and again he sees him dart towards a large branch and test its integrity, leaning his weight on it and tossing it aside when it threatens to snap, then casting a quick glance behind him to Martin and moving on. Once the branch actually does snap, and Martin has to bite his lip to keep from chuckling when he nearly pitches forward onto his face, but the man bristles quietly and mercifully doesn’t acknowledge the snicker that manages to escape.
Martin gets the distinct impression that mentioning this attempted kindness would just earn him another frustrated huff, but he appreciates the thought nonetheless.
The fog still brushes against his skin, twisting misty tendrils along his wrists and cheeks and trying to whisper to him, but it seems to be avoiding the man huddled into himself beneath his heavy cloak. Every time the voice tries to start back up- he’s going to leave you here, she won’t even miss you, they tricked you and you were stupid enough to fall for it- Martin winds up staring into clear, dark eyes, and the woods go quiet once more.
“So,” he tries, finding it difficult to stomach the silence as they tread through the leaves and the mist. “What’s your name?”
The man’s breath hitches and Martin worries he’s overstepped, though he’s sure it was a fair enough question. Something he read in an etiquette book once about it being rude to demand a name before giving your own tries to rear its head pettily at his reticence, but he isn’t sure general social etiquette really applies to magical hermits.
“It’s..” He looks at Martin and Martin doesn’t miss the haunted look to his gaze, the walls trying to slam down. “Jon. My name’s Jon.”
He speaks his name so, so quietly, almost lost to the breeze through the branches, but Martin commits the tiny connection safely to memory and doesn’t miss the rush of warmth the answer pushes into his lungs, fighting the chill of the fog.
There is power in a name, after all, especially one freely given.
“Jon?” he says, not sure where the teasing tone bubbled up from. Jon actually looks at him properly when he turns, brow furrowed, and Martin shoves down the flurry of oh, cute, his brain tries to shove to the forefront of his thoughts.
“I- Yes?” Jon answers, looking affronted and trying to wrangle a still-dripping lock of silver hair back under the hood of his cloak. “What, you don’t believe me?”
“No, sure I do,” Martin says, casually dismissive and playful. Jon snorts.
“What?” Jon almost sounds amused now too, which Martin considers a soft win. “Why would I lie about that?”
“Plenty of people lie about their names,” Martin says, wincing as he missteps over a large stone. Jon stops and reaches out to brace him, but Martin catches himself. Jon waits for him to right himself and Martin’s so grateful he could cry. “It could be your name, sure, it’s a common enough name. But, I mean, you don’t really know me. I could be dangerous.”
Jon barks out a single, rough laugh that seems to surprise himself with it’s force, and Martin doesn’t bother to stifle his laughter this time around. They fall back into quiet from there.
He can’t bring himself to break the delicate peace again, but they walk in something approaching companionable stillness until Martin spots the beginning of a path and Jon stops him, gently laying a hand on his arm. He scans the forest before them for a moment and Martin watches a shudder wrack him from head to toe before he nods to himself.
He lifts Martin’s arm and points forward down the path, pupils blown even in the dim light. “Go straight down this path.” It’s another command, but as he slides his hand to Martin’s wrist and their eyes meet, Martin can’t be bothered by it. “Straight. It’s going to twist, and turn, and look like it’s vanished. It has not. Go straight this way, do you understand?”
“I- yes,” Martin says looking ahead and taking a deep breath to steady his nerves and the tremble in his hand at the thought of being alone again. Jon’s face softens again, sympathy in his eyes.
“One hundred and seventy-two steps,” he offers, voice soft and warm, releasing Martin’s arm and gesturing forward. “Straight ahead.”
And then he turns in a rush of dead leaves, and heads urgently back through the fog.
“Thank you!” Martin calls after him, but if he hears he does not show it, and Martin walks forward, keeping his hand up as best he can to keep his guideline in sight. He doesn’t need it, as it turns out, Jon’s command to follow the path keeping his feet where they need to be even as the path attempts to tempt him left or right, disappearing into bushes and tangles of dead vines, but he does count his steps. The one hundredth and seventy second step is met with the click of the town’s cobblestone road beneath his boots. He’s home.
He casts one last look back over his shoulder to the forest, dark boughs outlined in the golden glow of sunrise and filled with the sounds of birds and scampering animals, and thinks about the lake as he hobbles home. He hardly even registers his mother’s derision- ‘Three days, Martin, and not a word! What could possibly have been so important you’d forsake your own mother this way?’ she wails, not bothering to comment on his limp or the bruises and cuts along his face and arms- and sets about his morning routine to calm her before he makes his way to the library for work.
The looks on Gavin and Neil’s faces are almost worth the backlog of work they hadn’t bothered to do in his absence. Almost.