Chapter Text
The first thing that Jon noticed was that his entire body was aching from the inside-out, his bones heavy and unmoving, his muscles feeling like they had been torn apart and then re-stitched together clumsily.
The second thing he realized was that he was alive, which, unsurprisingly, came as a shock.
He sat up straight, feeling a rush of dizziness, and blinked in the bright sunlight. Jon tried to catalog his surroundings (blinding open fresh alive alive alive), but a pounding in his skull felt like someone had stabbed him-
Martin, cradling him in his arms, tears running down his cheeks while he raised a knife above his head, mouthing endless apologies as he brought it down into Jon’s right eye with a broken whimper-
Ah, yes, that was right, he had been stabbed. Not for the first time, either, but this time was definitely more painful. Jon raised a tentative hand to his face, blood thick and sticky against his fingers. He realized he couldn’t see anything on the right side of his face, even as he waved his hand close to his eye socket.
Martin had plunged the knife in deep, he thought to himself. Oh, Martin-
All rational thoughts flew out the window as Jon stared around, squinting. He spotted a body lying nearby after a few seconds of frantic squinting and felt his heart drop into his stomach.
He tried to call out to him, but his throat was scratchy and dry. Feeling like he had tried to swallow several very angry spiders, Jon gave up and stumbled over to where he lay.
Martin’s eyes were closed, his face streaked with dirt and grime. Jon fumbled for his wrist, all the while thinking no no no no no no-
His hands were covered in blood. Jon’s blood. The dizziness roaring in his ears threatened to overtake him as his fingers fluttered up and down Martin’s wrist, searching for a pulse. Jon had never known exactly how to do this, how to look for life in the lifeless. The only thing he could feel was the pounding in his own ears, his heartbeat slamming loud enough for the two of them. He was reaching the brink of something terrible, something lonely, when he felt it- the barest jump beneath his fingertips.
Jon let out a sigh, feeling it rattle in his throat. He dropped Martin's wrist and skimmed his hand across his chest, needing reassurance that he hadn't just imagined it.
Sure enough, his heart was still beating. It was weak, sure, but it was there and that was enough for him. Jon traced the line of Martin's jaw with his thumb, watching him closely until he could detect the slight rise and fall of his chest.
"Martin," he tried again around his rusty mouth.
Martin made a small noise in the back of his throat, his eyelids fluttering.
Jon squeezed his hand, hard. "Martin! Wake up, wake up, wake up," he said desperately.
He let his head fall back, staring up at the sky uncomprehendingly. He needed Martin to be alright. He had to be. Through the rush of adrenaline, Jon's own pains slipped away, focusing in on one laser-light point – the man laying on the ground before him, groaning.
Jon squeezed his hand again, willing him to be alright.
Martin squeezed back. "Jon?" he said feebly.
"I'm here," he breathed. "I'm here. Are you alright?" he asked.
Martin opened his eyes ever-so-slightly, squinting in the bright light. Jon hurriedly moved to block the sun, shifting his body so he was shielding him. "I don't...I don't know." He coughed, the sound grating and painful.
"Just lay still," Jon said, brushing some of the dirt and pebbles from Martin's skin. "We're alive."
Martin nodded, looking like he was half-asleep.
His eyes slammed open and he made an incredulous sound. "J-Jon! You're bleeding!"
He had forgotten about that. At Martin's words, the dizziness returned in full force, almost as if his body had put all feeling on hold while he was makings sure his boyfriend was okay. "Uh, yes. I, I, I am," he said dumbly, staring at the blood on his fingertips.
Martin looked stricken. "Jon- the tower, Jonah, oh no I stabbed you!" His voice rose half an octave. "I'm so sorry, are you alright? I didn't want to, believe me, but I, I-"
Jon couldn't help it; he laughed a little, pain radiating up and down his spine as he did so. "Martin. I don't think anything could make you willingly stab me. You had to. And I-" He swallowed. "I'm sorry, too."
"Don't count out future stabbings," he muttered, sitting up and grimacing. "This is a conversation for later, yeah?"
Jon nodded. The movement caused blood to start flowing from the wound again, dripping sticky and hot from his cheek.
Martin grit his teeth in pain. He lifted his shirt over his head, pulling it off and ripping some of the fabric into pieces. "Lay down," he instructed.
Feeling too weak to protest, Jon slowly leaned back on his hands, lowering himself to the gritty ground. Every pain was returning in full force in the declining levels of adrenaline, his heart speeding up. Jon's fingertips went numb, his arms and legs tingling like television static. What he could see out of his good eye was splattered with black and white spots, his vision telescoping.
Martin tried to separate the clean parts of the shirt from the filthy ones, but it was a near-hopeless endeavor. After a moment of trying to clean the fabric, he gave up. "This is the best I've got," he said darkly. "I'm sorry, Jon."
He was in no position to argue or talk back, even if he had wanted to. The steady loss of blood combined with the waves of pain now crashing over his body was jumbling his thoughts, stealing all consciousness or ability to think straight.
Hah, think straight.
Martin used a scrap to sop up the fresh blood on his face, wiping in gentle circles, trying not to jostle him too much. His hands were remarkably steady, and if Jon hadn't been bleeding out on the dirt in another reality, he might have enjoyed it.
Martin dabbed at a spot near the corner of his eye, making him wince. "Sorry, sorry," he muttered. "I don't know what I'm doing."
Jon gave him a thumbs-up, which, to his oxygen-lacking brain, seemed like the most sensible course of action.
Martin took one look at him then turned back to wiping up his face. "Shock," he said, more to himself than anyone else.
Shock? What from?
Martin leaned back on his heels, discarding the dirty cloth and tearing a fresh one from the shirt. "Almost done." He bent over Jon's face, biting his lip as he worked.
Jon saw the scratches riddling his face and hands, the burn tracing across his neck just behind his jaw, and the dozens of other smaller injuries, and tried to grab for Martin's hands. "You're hurt, Martin, why are you hurt? What happened to you? You need to take care of yourself, I don't know what I'll do if I lose you, I, I, I can't be alone, not again...Did I die? Is this heaven? I see the sky, Martin," he babbled, "It's not looking back at us, it isn’t watching anymore. But I can't see. What happened? Am I dead? Did you die too? I don't want you to die..."
The words flowed out of him like a stream, bouncing over rocks. The world spun beneath him, the ground folding around him like a blanket, like a straitjacket. His arms felt heavy, but he tried to lift them all the same. The air might have been made of lead and his muscles refused to listen to him.
"Hush, hush, love," Martin soothed. "I'm fine, just a little rattled, but you need to save your strength. No more talking," he said firmly. "You- you need to stay still."
He tried to sound comforting and smooth, but Jon could tell something was wrong. Maybe it was the slight quaver to his voice or the look in his eyes, but there was anxiety hiding somewhere nearby, ready to spring and swallow them both whole.
"I'm sorry," Jon said, his words feeling like insects in his mouth.
Martin said something in reply, but his words were swallowed by the darkness that swamped him like a suffocating blanket.
~~~
Jon didn't realize he had passed out until he woke up, which was strange. Normally fainting means loss of consciousness, but in his case, every moment he had his eyes closed his mind was filled with visions of the terrors he had helped to bring about. His dreams were the fears of other people; even his coma was a never-ending horror film.
Jon woke up and he wasn't sure if he had even passed out. The last thing he remembered was trying to say something to Martin, then everything went black. It was a deep, natural black, the color of the sky before the stars but after sunset, one that was comforting in its endlessness. He had grown accustomed to the monsters living in the dark, so this experience was...new. Unfamiliar, but not unfriendly.
His head was throbbing something awful as he opened his eyes. He shut them again against the sun, feeling his skin warmed by the noon-day light. There weren't any trees around them to cast shade, he noticed. The ground underneath him felt like a field, grass and tiny stones beneath his palms.
He tried to sit up half-heartedly but a hand appeared out of nowhere and held him down gently.
"Oh no, you don't." Martin sounded tired but otherwise fine, his voice a little hoarse from any combination of unuse, lingering effects of the apocalypse, and dehydration. "Lay down."
Jon relinquished without much of an argument. "What happened?"
He could hear the eye roll in his words. "You passed out, you utterly ridiculous man. Blood loss because someone forgot he had been stabbed in the head." There was an undercurrent of fear there, a lingering note anxiety from the tower-top decision that could have ended all. "D'you know where we are?"
He shook his head lightly, feeling for the edges of a makeshift bandage covering the wound on his face with an unsteady hand. "Somewhere new. Somewhere safe, I think."
Martin breathed a sigh of relief. "Are we- did we survive? Are we okay?"
Jon swallowed down a tide of his own unanswered questions to answer Martin's. "We made it. One way or another, for better or for worse, we made it out."
He didn't mention the things that followed them into this fresh world, he didn't say a word about the way the tapes had unspooled around his ankles with a thousand kinds of terror before being sucked into the void, he didn't tell Martin how close he had come to saving them all by dooming them to die.
Instead, he reached a hand out into the fresh air and Martin took it, squeezing hard, three times in a row.
I love you.
"What do we do now?" Jon asked quietly.
"I dunno. Is your spooky eye thing not working anymore?"
The ghost of a smile flickered across his lips. "No, I think we really did it. Severed my connection, I mean."
"Good," Martin said fervently. "I'm going to hazard a guess and say maybe, maybe, nothing is trying to kill us right now-"
"Bold claim considering our record."
"-oh, shut up. I mean we're safe here. We can rest, alright? You lost a lot of blood and I'm not too hot either. What do you say we just...not do anything for a moment?"
The sun on his face, Martin's hand in his, free from the strings that had controlled him his entire life, Jon was inclined to agree.