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The pain is hot white. Martin is screaming. Jon is...Jon is making a noise that he thinks might be screaming.
He feels everything. The fire exploding up from the basement of the Institute. The chunks of roof falling over top of them. The panopticon crumbling beneath them.
There’s not much else to do except continue screaming.
The room is calm white. Martin is standing. Jon is...Jon is standing there too.
“Martin.” Jon says.
Jon says.
Martin is cursing him even as he’s throwing his arms around him, pulling them together. “You fucking idiot, you bastard, I cannot believe you made me do that!” He's gripping Jon's shirt so hard that he can feel the sharp pain in his knuckles.
“I’m sorry, Martin.” Jon’s voice is surprisingly level, given the situation. “I really, truly, am. I shouldn’t—”
“No, no, you listen to me.” He hisses and Jon lifts his head.
(Jon’s eyes are green. Not that unnaturally bright green that they flash when he would call upon the Ceaseless Watcher, but a soft color that is so achingly human that it nearly brings Martin to tears.)
“You are the absolute stupidest, most arrogant, bastard of a man I have ever known. You promised me one thing and went behind my back." Martin inhales, shaky but strong. "You did everything I asked— begged you not to. What on earth were you thinking, going in there alone? You're infuriating!”
(His free hand shakes at his side. Jon’s hand is calm when it wraps itself around his palm.)
He opens his mouth to continue but Jon just smiles. “I know.”
Martin is about to go off on another tirade of how can you be so bloody calm right now when he catches a glimpse of what's over Jon's shoulder.
The whiteness stretches off into infinity, a flat plane that he can’t see the end of. Looking the other way yields the same result. Neither of them cast shadows onto the almost reflective floor (could he call it a floor?).
"Er, where are we?"
“I don’t know where we are.” Jon pulls away, but doesn’t let go of his hand. “I don’t think it’s any sort of...afterlife or anything.”
"This is ridiculous." Martin can’t help but roll his eyes. Of course this would happen, because once he thinks he's had a thousand lifetimes of weird-and-scary, something else pops up.
"Maybe." Jon says, a few tiny buzzes of static coming off of him.
(Mr. Weird-And-Scary himself is certainly not helping the situation.)
Martin takes a deep breath. All at once, he feels the ache in his body, all the points where he was likely crushed by ceiling tiles and consumed by an explosion. Great. Of course the pain couldn't have just magically gone away, could it?
“You know what?" He says. "I'm tired. I’m sitting down. Nobody can make me stand up in an endless void.”
He sits down. The floor does not turn to flesh or dirt or bone. It stays a floor.
Jon looks down, that fond look in his eyes that he has missed so, so much. “I don’t believe anyone can make you do anything, Martin Blackwood.”
He was probably expecting a chuckle or something, but Martin just folds his arms. “Seems like that’s all anyone ever did. Just guided me around like a little puppet.” He doesn’t miss the face Jon makes. “Sorry, poor choice of words."
"Quite."
"Er, where do you think we are, then?”
There’s a fabric rustle as Jon sits down next to him, pulling his skinny legs up under himself. “Like I said, I don’t know. When I try to—” He closes his eyes and there’s the sound of static again, incredibly faint but still there. It squeaks for just a moment before disappearing. “I don’t get anything. It’s just...empty.”
“Huh.” Martin says, because what the hell else does he say. “How do we...leave?"
"I think we’ll go when we’re ready.” Jon says this with such confidence that he nearly feels reassured.
He takes Jon’s hand again, as though daring the universe to try and rip them apart again. "You're sure?"
Jon smiles.
(It’s been a long time since he’s seen that smile. The one he gave Martin when the curtains flew open to reveal the ruined world weren't the same. And neither were the manic ones on his face after he’d killed Not-Sasha and made Jordan Kennedy into a Watcher. Those were the Eye, not Jon.
This was the one he'd see hidden behind a hand after one of Tim's loud jokes, the one he woke up to every day in the safehouse and at Salesa's. The one that he saw out of the corner of his eye when he edited poetry under his breath or hummed a tune while they walked. This one is Jon, through and through.)
“So what do we do then? Why are we here?” He's unsure why he keeps asking if Jon doesn't seem to have the answers.
"I don't know." Is the answer he gets, the one he expected.
Time passes, or maybe it doesn't. It's quite hard to tell. They're silent for maybe a few seconds, minutes, or maybe they sit there for hours or days.
Their void remains, not too bright so that it hurts his eyes, but not dim enough that he can't see every detail of the scars on Jon's face.
“I wish this were the safehouse.” Martin says finally.
“What?”
“It’s purgatory, or something like that? Like, a space between worlds? You’d think we’d be able to change what we’re looking at instead of...this.”
Jon drops his head onto Martin’s shoulder. "I wish it worked that way."
(Martin remembers that night, the first time either of them had said ‘I love you’. They were lying on the ratty couch in what was probably the living room, more than a bit tipsy off whatever it was Daisy kept in the cupboards.
He doesn’t recall who said it first, though he’s unsure if it particularly matters.
Perhaps just that it happened at all was enough.)
“How do we know when we’re ready?” Martin asks, because maybe that’s a question he can actually get an answer to. They certainly have a lot to talk about. “Or how does...it? How does this place know?”
Jon’s fingers spin the ring around on Martin’s finger (the only thing he actually kept from his mother’s belongings). “It just will. Or we will. Whichever comes first.”
“Even when you're mostly cut off from the Eye, you can’t stop being cryptic for two bloody seconds?” Martin asks, but he’s smiling, an expression that feels wildly out of place on his face. It almost hurts, like it’s stretching his skin much farther than it was meant to go.
(He has to shake his head slightly to rid himself of that particular thought.)
Martin glances around again, though he knows he won’t see anything. That there's nothing coming for them.
(You can only live alongside fear for so long before it decides to build a home inside you, too.)
“Jon?”
“Yes?”
“Where will we go after?”
Jon lifts his head up and brushes a piece of hair out of his face.
(Jon is beautiful. Jon is ethereal and resplendent and brilliant. Jon is everything and nothing and all that’s in between. Jon makes his hands shake and his heart hurt and every vein in his body run red hot.
To say he loves Jon is to say that one loves to breathe. It’s as simple and perfect as that tiny inhale and exhale he does in such an automatic way, never quite noticing until someone points it out.)
“Perhaps you’re tired of hearing me say this but I don’t know.” Jon says.
(His eyes are green. They're green like moss, or maybe like the succulent that sat on Sasha's desk, gathering dust.)
“I need you to be there. You understand that, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
Martin doesn’t even know the tears are finally falling until Jon reaches up to wipe one away with his thumb. “And if you aren’t?”
“I’ll find you. I’ll find you, wherever you are.”
The room is calm white. The room is empty.