Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the field of behavioral psychology, there’s an idea known as the ironic process theory.

Martin remembers learning about it during his first – and only – semester of uni, back before his mum’s health had taken a turn for the worse and he’d still had time to entertain dreams of a proper education. 

The ironic process theory explains why deliberate attempts to suppress a particular thought usually make that thought more likely to surface, and it works a little like this: 

Don't think of a pink elephant .

Go on, try. Don’t think of a pink elephant. Think of anything else. Think of the color of the sky during a sunset or what you have to cook for dinner later today. Think of your favorite song or the school trip you took to the aquarium when you were nine.

You get the idea.

The pink elephant is, of course, not really the point here. When you try not to think of something, what you’re really doing is pitting your conscious and subconscious minds against each other. One half of your brain says think about something else , while the other says great, okay, don’t think about that . 

Two halves of the same coin, maybe, but your working memory isn’t great at multitasking. More often than not, attempts to execute these conflicting directives leave you trapped in something of a loop. It’s a classic case of cognitive overload, a recursive display of ‘ think-about-this-not-that wait fuck ’ mental gymnastics that eventually drags you, kicking and screaming, back towards the very thing you were trying not to think about.

The brain is well-intentioned. 

It is also sometimes very bad at its job.

Martin Blackwood is good at thinking. That's not to say that he's particularly smart or anything, just that he has a lot of thoughts and most people aren't overly keen on hearing them. He keeps to himself, mostly, keeps his head down and his mouth shut and tries to be useful.

It's easier that way.

Right, so . There's this thing at his door and it’s shaped like a woman who might have once called herself Jane Prentiss. It stinks of iron, rusted through, of old sweat and earthy decay. It knocks on his front door like it expects an answer. 

Martin is in his flat and he's thinking.

More specifically, Martin's on the floor of his bathroom, pressed against the far wall with his knees tucked up to his chest because he'd really needed to piss and there aren't any windows in here anyways.

He’s as safe as he’s going to get, locked inside this tiny room with an afghan stuffed under the door for good measure, but he can still hear the low, insistent thud of the woman-shaped-thing out front.

Knock.

Knock .

Look, okay, Martin’s afraid . There's no use pretending otherwise, not when it's just him and Prentiss and the cheery purple Ikea bath mat he'd bought on a whim last month. His palms are clammy, his heartbeat rabbit-quick in his chest. He feels sick.

Honestly, though, that might just be the tinned peaches.

How long has it been? Living in a perpetual state of fear for your life does weird things to your perception of time, and there’s no real way to be sure. The power's still out and he has no idea where his phone is. He's been staying away from the windows just in case. 

More than three days, he thinks. Less than a week. Probably.

Knock.

God, has anyone even noticed ? It's not like Martin has many– read: any – friends, but surely his co-workers must've picked up on the fact that he's been gone. Sasha's observant. Tim tolerates him.

Jon is... Jon. Which is fine.

Knock.

Then again, they might just be enjoying the reprieve. Martin’s not an idiot. He knows he gets in the way of things, knows that he's clumsy and not particularly good at his job. He has rotten luck and a tendency to make things worse, even when he's trying his best to help.

So, it's possible that his co-workers haven't noticed.

It's also possible that they have noticed and that they don't care.

The thought is insidious, gilded, threaded through with equal parts shame and resignation, and it catches him by the throat. 

After all, it’s not like Tim’s stupid enough to let a dog loose in the Archives. Sasha’s never misfiled a document in her life . Without Martin around, Jon wouldn’t have to waste his time cleaning up a hundred stupid mistakes. 

Without Martin around, things would be easier, smoother. 

And fuck , he hates the ways his eyes sting at the thought. 

They aren’t his friends. It’s fine. It’s fine . It’s not like it makes a difference either way, right? He’s more than used to walking through life as an afterthought. 

Christ, this is pathetic .  

It doesn’t matter if they’ve noticed or if they care . Hell, it doesn’t even matter if they’re throwing a bloody ‘We Hate Martin Blackwood’ party in Artefact Storage, because there is a quasi-sentient pile of bugs with legs at his door and this is not the time for fatalistic spiraling. 

Martin digs his nails into his palms, hard enough to hurt; tries to focus on the quiet instead of the awful swell of self-loathing bubbling in his chest.

Wait. 

Quiet?

That’s… new. Martin pauses, and, after a moment’s hesitation, scoots forward to press an ear against the space between the door and the jamb. He holds his breath, straining to hear something, anything , over the sound of the blood rushing in his ears and the unsteady thump of his stubborn heart.

The knocking’s stopped.

This is the part in the horror film where the monster bursts through the door with a… a chainsaw, or something. Jane Prentiss doesn’t have a chainsaw, but she does have a small army of evil worms, and Martin really, really doesn’t want to be killed by evil worms. 

So, he waits. And waits. The seconds tick by in sluggish increments, but Martin stays still and listens and actively tries to avoid thinking about Jane Prentiss with a chainsaw.

There hadn’t been any sounds of a struggle. Maybe she… got bored? Or needed to use the loo? Even monsters have to get peckish, right? 

It’s grim, given that he’d be the main course in this metaphor, but the mental image of Jane Prentiss popping down to Gregg’s for a sausage roll has him biting his lip to stifle a fit of semi-hysterical giggles.

God, he misses actual food. 

Speaking of which, this might be his chance to grab something from the kitchen. Escape’s off the table, at least until he can be certain she’s gone, but food might not be. There has to be something in there besides peaches and tinned sardines. 

Martin doesn’t even like sardines.

Right, then. That’s… that’s a plan, of sorts. Open the door, run to the kitchen, grab a can or two of whatever non-sardine food he can find. Run back. 

...It’s a shit plan. 

Martin is not a brave man. 

He is, however, a hungry one. Rising from his awkward half-crouch, he takes a moment to collect himself, one hand hovering over the doorknob. 

Now or never.

The sound of the front door giving way is a curious thing: a wet, muted thud, followed by the pulpy splat of rotting wood. It’s unceremonious, so anticlimactic that it takes him a moment to realize what’s happened.

Then comes the smell.

It’s overpowering, even in here– earthy and cloying and sweet, like over-brewed tea mixed with mulch and decay. Martin slaps a hand over his mouth as he scrambles back, trying desperately not to gag. 

Even from the bathroom, he can hear it: the steady thump-drag of footsteps in his living room, the barely-there whisper that insects make as they writhe on the ground.

They're getting louder.

He's going to die.

The panic is back, high and sharp in his throat, and there’s no use trying to be calm and rational about this situation because Martin is going to die, holed up in this shitty, overpriced one-bedroom flat in Stockwell. He's going to get eaten by worms or drown in his own blood or keel over from sudden cardiac arrest because the fear might just win out before his bathroom door has a chance to fold like a wet paper towel and he's not cut out for this .

He's not a hero, he's not anything , and he's going to die and–

And—

And no one is coming for him.

No one is coming for him.

The thought hurts, and Martin makes another halfhearted attempt to course-correct, to steer clear of that line of thinking. He's well-acquainted with this particular flavor of existential despair and knows that it never leads anywhere good.

He doesn't want his last thoughts to be pathetic, self-pitying rubbish, but he can't help it, not here, not right now.

Don't think of a pink elephant .

No one is coming for him. This isn't an epiphany; this is a statement of a fact he's spent his whole life running from.

The sky is blue and the grass is green and no one is coming for him .

There are only a handful of people in his life that are going to notice he's dead, and none of them will care, not really. Why had he spent so long pretending otherwise? His own mother can't stand the sight of him. For fuck's sake, the last person he'd spoken to before all of this had been Katya, his vaguely anti-Semitic landlady, and it's not like she’s going to sit shiva when they find his maggot-riddled corpse in the bathtub.

Because here’s the thing, right? It's not that Martin's scared of dying.

It's that he's scared of dying alone.

The doorknob rattles. The scent of rot is stronger now: it sticks to his lungs, makes his head swim and his chest hitch. It tastes of cough syrup, forced down his throat, of spoiled milk and honey, and, in a moment of lightheaded clarity, Martin swears he can hear it... calling to him.

He's alone, isn't he? He's always been alone, but they can help. They can love him and they can keep him safe and isn't that all he's ever wanted? To be kept, accepted, consumed , unconditionally and without reproach.

They can help.

Their promises buzz under his skin, rattle behind clenched teeth, hook into the pink flesh of his gums, and in that moment, every part of Martin wants to reach back, wants to take what they offer. He wants a family, he does; he wants to belong, more than anything, but–

But.

He doesn't deserve it.

He doesn’t deserve it. Why would he? He has nothing of value to offer. There’s no room for his mistakes and his doubts, no space for his ham-handed, fruitless grabs for connection. Martin Blackwood is a wrench in the works, a walking complication, a liability. Their acceptance is fabricated, conditional, and it’s only a matter of time before they'll come to regret it.

No one is coming for him. 

No one has ever come for him.

And maybe that’s for the best. Here, no one looks down on him as he hugs his knees a little closer to his chest and tries not to choke on a sob. Alone, he doesn't have to bear the weight of other people's expectations, their judgement and inevitable disappointment. 

Here, at least, he can be himself, even if that isn't much of anything in the end.

The door gives way.

The terror that grips him then is absolute. It’s bile-sharp, flashbang white; an abrupt spike of fear that makes every muscle in his body lock up. It’s a single, piercing thrill that drives every rational thought from his mind. 

Time slows to a crawl.

He’s going to die.

The worms are fast, surprisingly fast. Instinct has Martin leaping to his feet, rearing back to lash out with clumsy kicks that smear swathes of foul-smelling carcasses along the tiles. He’s a big guy – always has been, ill-suited to violence but sturdy enough to take a hit – and in ordinary circumstances, his frantic bid for freedom might have been enough.

These are not ordinary circumstances. 

These are not ordinary worms. 

It doesn’t matter how many he kills because they just keep coming .

When Martin finally falls, he tries not to cry out, even as the worms scrabble for purchase over, under his clothes. The thought of those things in his mouth, pushing down his throat, burrowing through the meat of his soft palate, is enough of a reason to keep his lips tightly shut.

They want to make a home of him, for him, he knows that, but they’re too close and he hates it. Every fiber of his being rejects their proximity, rebels against the cloying scent of decay and the syrupy promise of security that’s been laid at his feet.

He hates it, he’s scared , and he doesn’t want this.

What he wants is to be left alone .

When Martin was twelve, he’d broken a rib. 

One of the boys in his class had shoved him, not hard enough to actually hurt, but Martin was puberty-awkward and terribly uncomfortable with the amount of space he’d suddenly occupied. A small push had been more than enough to send him headfirst down the flight of concrete steps in front of the school.

He’d cried, which had been mortifying at the time, and it’d taken his mum an hour and a half to pick him up from the infirmary.

Breaking that rib had felt nothing like this.

This is vertigo, that feeling of falling backwards but also forward and also down, the same slick rush of nausea you’d get from riding a roller coaster or hearing a particularly bad piece of news.

His world narrows down to a sudden chill, bone-deep. 

There’s a dull rush of static and a high-pitched whine that sounds more like a teakettle than any sound made by a human mouth. Pressure builds, unbearable for a moment, before something… something comes loose in his chest.

And then: nothing.

When he opens his eyes, all he sees is white.

Chapter Text

In a way, a city is a kind of living thing. 

Its breath is found in the metallic clatter of traffic and trains, in the ambient, tireless shuffle of everyday life. Cities are full of people and people make noise: even in the dead of night, London is never properly quiet. 

So, when Martin comes to, alone and shaking in an empty bathroom, the quiet is the first thing he notices.

Well. That’s not entirely true. Martin’s first thought is an inarticulate string of terror-laden expletives mostly along the lines of worms holy fuck shit worms goddamnit aaah . His second thought is why am I still in my bathroom , followed closely by another round of worms fuck holy shit aaah .

It takes a few minutes to get his breathing under control, and several more before he manages to stop dry-heaving into the toilet, but the panic does subside eventually. When it does, Martin’s first coherent thought is have I gone deaf ?

And– no. Or, at least, probably not? He can hear his own voice just fine. Any noise beyond that, though, seems to get swallowed up in this blanket of thick, unnatural silence. No cars driving past or people milling about; even his upstairs neighbors, the ones who walk around like they’ve got bowling balls for feet, have gone quiet.

The outside world is right there. It’s three floors down, of course it is, just made heavy and muffled by a stretch of distance that doesn’t actually exist. 

Abruptly, Martin feels very, very alone.

It takes an embarrassing amount of time to summon the nerve to leave the bathroom. Pep talks don’t work super well when you’ve recently escaped certain death, and the spooky vape cloud currently enveloping his flat isn’t doing much to inspire confidence.

His dithering, however, turns out to be an unnecessary precaution, because Prentiss is just... gone .

She isn’t hiding in his closet or under his bed. She’s not in the hallway outside, either, or in the stairwell leading down to the second floor. In fact, save for the massive hole in his front door– there goes his security deposit– and the small mountain of empty cans in his recycling bin, there’s no evidence that she’d ever been there at all.

When Martin finally does leave, it’s to step out into a photo-negative of London, one that’s funeral-silent and shrouded in the same thick fog that had covered his flat. 

Everything looks  the same– the chip shop’s still on the corner, sandwiched in between a barbershop and a news stand that only sells poorly photoshopped adult magazines, off-brand diet soda, and expired beef jerky. 

There are people here too, same as always, but Martin gives up on trying to get their attention pretty quickly. It’s as if someone’s placed a thick sheet of glass between him and the rest of the world: no matter what he says or does, they don’t – or won’t – see him.

Am I dead?

And, like. Martin doesn’t feel dead, but it’s not like he has a lot of prior experience to go off of. 

Being dead would explain the unnatural quiet and the chill that’s settled over him like a second skin. It’d explain the wisps of mist that snake across the pavement and the way everything’s gone soft and monochrome around the edges. 

It would explain the emptiness that presses in on this almost-London, so at odds with the city that’s been his home for the better part of a decade. This place is cold and vacant, steeped in the sort of stillness that’s meant to eat away at a person bit by bit rather than swallow them whole. 

That should be scary, is scary, but Martin might be dead, and finds that he doesn’t mind all that much. 

He’s not sure that there’s much of him left to lose.

So, with nothing better to do, he picks a direction and starts walking. It’s a nice day, or it would be sans-fog, and people watching is actually kind of fun when they can’t watch back. His footsteps barely make a sound as he picks his way along the bank of the Thames.

When he looks up again, he nearly laughs.

Out of all places, of course he’d end up back at the Institute.

The lobby looks the same as always: slightly dusty, decorated in an eclectic mix of antique woodwork and generic corporate furniture. Martin walks past a handful of researchers loitering by the library entrance, gives Rosie a reflexive wave as he passes through reception and down towards the Archives.

Tim’s at his desk, doodling in the margins of a police report, one leg kicked out carelessly into the aisle that separates their desks. He shivers absentmindedly as Martin passes. Sasha, brow furrowed and lower lip drawn between her teeth, seems too engrossed in whatever project Jon’s set her on to notice the slight dip in temperature.

Martin’s own desk is farthest to the back. It looks the same as it did when he’d left, strewn with papers and chewed-through ballpoint pens. There’s an empty novelty mug balanced precariously atop a stack of manilla folders and his favorite cardigan is still hung off the back of the chair.

He’s not sure what changes. One moment he’s standing there, trying to come up with a way to check on Jon that doesn’t involve walking through a wall, and the next he’s—

He’s—

It’s like a bucket of ice water has been dumped on his head, like someone’s gone and attached a car battery to his chest. In the space between seconds, the dull shroud of fog is ripped away as sensation, raw and unfiltered, floods in to take its place. 

He feels seen , exposed, dissected and analyzed and found thoroughly lacking. It’s a critical, uncaring gaze that picks him aparta way that reminds him of his mum and her tendency to sink her teeth into the frayed edges of his shortcomings. 

Martin barely feels his body connecting with the floor, too caught up in the way the entire world has narrowed down to a senseless onslaught of light smell sound shame.

Distantly, he hears someone– Sasha? Tim?– shouting.

It doesn’t matter.

It’s hard to remember if anything has ever mattered.

White noise roars in his ears. It sounds like the sea, like the lonely whistle of air among the cliffs. His entire body feels hot, feels cold, feels like it belongs to someone else. 

Hands on his face. The touch is scalding. More shouting. He wants to disappear. 

The static reaches out, the uncomplicated ache of solitude drawing him close, and its embrace is as inexorable as the tide. 

Martin can’t think. Martin doesn’t want to think. 

Martin is unmoored.

It’s too much , all of it; he is afraid and he is alone and he is so, so empty. 

The fog rolls in, and Martin lets it take him once more.

 ---

From his office, Elias Bouchard watches the scene unfold with no small amount of interest.

Martin Blackwood. Poor, stupid Martin Blackwood, throwing himself headfirst into the Forsaken to escape a gory end at the hands of the Rot. Good lord, Elias had known the man was lonely– at this point, a mild case of clinical depression is practically a prerequisite for working at the Institute– but to this extent?

Elias is surprised by very little these days, but this certainly qualifies as an interesting turn of events.

Of course, Martin’s… situation does complicate matters. It’s far too early in his nascent Archivist’s development to involve the other Powers so directly. Prentiss is one thing, but to have a budding avatar of the Lonely mucking about the Archives? That simply won't do.

Jon is curious, insatiably so, and Elias intends to keep him in the dark for as long as he can.

He spares another glance downstairs. Martin is still unconscious– undoubtedly drained from his little foray into the Lonely– while the rest of the staff huddle over him, holding a half-whispered argument over their next course of action.

Jon, who has never had much in the way of an instinct for caretaking, alternates between hovering awkwardly over Martin’s prone form and casting furtive, somewhat desperate glances towards his office. Elias suspects it’s only a matter of time before he receives a call.

Really, the easiest thing to do would be to dispose of young Mr. Blackwood.

Unfortunate, perhaps, but it’s not as if the man is a particularly valuable asset. He’s hardly a threat, wholly useless on a practical level, and, if Jon’s poorly hidden disdain is anything to go by, an inefficient source of potential leverage to boot.

That being said, Elias does hate getting his hands dirty. Murder is a tedious affair, not at all his style, and Jon will need to be marked by the Lonely at some point. He’d meant to use Peter to that end, but the Lukas family could be… proprietary when it came to their patron.

No, if things go awry, it wouldn’t hurt to have contingencies in place.

He sighs as he picks up his phone. Best to get this over with, really– it’ll take at least three calls before Peter deigns to answer, five if he’s feeling especially petty– and Elias has a rattled Archivist that will soon need placating.

In the back of his mind, the Watcher drinks in this new development, savoring the uncertainty like a fine vintage.

Elias can’t wait to see how this plays out.

---

“–easy for you to say–“

“–popped out of thin air and then collapsed –“

Martin doesn’t want to open his eyes.

This is the second time he’s passed out today, and the experience is rapidly starting to lose its novelty. Before, Martin had been... not apart from his body, not exactly, but next to it. The cool relief of mist and silence had blunted his senses, dulling the stark contrast of physicality into shades of grey. 

This time around, Martin’s mouth is dry and his head pounds in that bottom-shelf-tequila-hangover kind of way. His body is a leaden weight against the polished wood of the Archives, a foreign mass of too-tight skin and staticky thought.  

Overall, he feels– well. He feels a bit like he’s been run over by a lorry. 

“There’s got to be a reasonable explanation for this.”

Oh. That’s Jon’s sharp, polished tenor cutting clean across Tim and Sasha’s harried whispers. It warms Martin more than is probably healthy for a terminally unrequited crush, but he likes Jon’s voice, always has.

“Reasonable explanation ? Jon, come on, that’s a bit much, even for you.”

“I’m just saying that it seems pertinent to explore more rational alternatives before jumping straight to ‘Martin is a ghost’,” Jon’s saying, a familiar thread of irritation lacing his words. “ Really , Tim. I never took you for the superstitious type.”

Tim makes an incoherent noise of frustration, which Sasha takes as her cue to step in.

“Jon, we know what we saw,” she says. “Martin hasn’t been in for nearly a week. He’s texted us, you’ve been microwaving the same cup of tea for the past two days– which, by the way, is really gross– and I know you’ve been keeping Elias updated on his absence–“

“Please stop reading my emails, Sasha, good lord, we’ve talked about this–“

“–so either we’ve all suffered a collective stroke and he’s been here the whole time, or you need to at least consider the possibility that something sp… that something abnormal is going on.”

There’s a long pause.

“Fine,” Jon says at last. It’s as close to a concession as he ever gets. “Tim, you took his pulse. He’s obviously not dead. That’s a start.”

Huh . That’s a relief.

“Er… yeah? For the record, though, I still think we should call 999.”

“The Institute has very thorough protocols for the involvement of emergency services, particularly if the incident in question is…” Jon sniffs. “Paranormal in any way. I’ve notified Elias and he should be down shortly.”

Someone, maybe Sasha, huffs out a laugh.

Martin wonders how long he can pretend to be unconscious before Tim bites the bullet and calls an ambulance, Elias be damned. 

God , this is embarrassing. Martin needs to get up, he does, but the idea of facing Jon and Sasha and Tim and their transparent attempts at faux-concern is just… a lot. 

They’re going to want answers, answers that Martin doesn’t have, because he doesn’t know what happened, not really. All he has are bits and pieces, a horrifying sequence of events that only vaguely resemble a linear narrative, and the vague certainty that something had happened to him.

He feels different.