Chapter Text
Where you go, I go. That's the deal.
--
Martin and Jon cling to each other as the Panopticon collapses around them. Martin's grip is iron tight and blood-slick, and he clutches Jon tight to his chest as though he can make up for the way that Jon's grip is loosening, fading, his hands going slack against Martin's back, his head heavy on his shoulder.
Their world is dissolving around them.
Or maybe they are dissolving out of the world. Martin knows that the walls around them are crumbling, can feel the floor beneath them shudder and shake, on the brink of dropping them into oblivion below. But there is a distance to it, like he's watching it happen to them from somewhere slightly outside his body. Stronger than any sensation of collapse is the pull of the tapes, like Jon's compulsion, like gravity, pulling him away and down and out of this world into somewhere else.
Martin clings tight to Jon--his Jon, so impossibly small and terribly still now in his arms--and he closes his eyes, and he falls.
--
This is not the world. This is a world.
--
Somewhere else, a man wakes up, his heart pounding from a nightmare he can't quite remember.
There was chaos, upheaval, a sensation of falling--and something--someone?--that he was trying to hold onto. Someone he couldn't bear to lose.
He doesn't remember who they are, or where they might have gone. He is only left with the desperate feeling that his world is collapsing.
A howling, empty grief fills his chest and he curls up in his bed, and he cries, and he doesn't know why.
--
Somewhere else, another man wakes with a gasp on a cot in a climate-controlled storage room, his hand pressed to a nonexistent wound in his chest. He can still remember the feeling of the knife plunging into his heart.
He doesn't understand the overwhelming sense of relief he feels when his assistant taps timidly at the door, asking him if he would like a cup of tea.
--
Somewhere else, Jon wakes in an empty field, a scar seared across his chest. Martin's hand is held in his, and he has a brief heady moment of joy as he realizes they made it before he turns to look at Martin lying next to him and sees the blue of the sky reflected in his open, staring eyes.
--
Somewhere else, it's Martin who wakes in the barren field, and Jon who stares emptily up at the clear blue eye-less sky.
The wound in his chest is still bleeding.
--
Somewhere else, two skeletons lie in a field splashed blue with forget-me-nots, wisps of early-morning fog dissipating around them. They lie facing each other, fingers still entwined. If you look close, one of the skeletons is missing two ribs.
The mist that swirls around and through them is just mist, fading quickly in the growing heat of a clear day, and beyond the field the world turns on, full of ordinary hopes and fears, love and loss, beginnings and endings. The wind blows gently, tossing the heads of the flowers and sending a scattering of petals over the bones.
--
Somewhere else, Martin Blackwood tears through the Tube station on his way to work and just manages to squeeze onto the train before the doors close. He breathes a sigh of relief and leans back for a moment against the wall of the train, then stumbles and barely catches himself as it jerks into motion. He stammers an apology to the man standing next to him, and wishes he could hide the flush of red that spreads over his cheeks and ears when the man smiles back at him, his eyes a rich, warm brown.
--
Somewhere else, Jonathan Sims stands on tiptoe in the canned goods aisle of the supermarket, debating the merits of giving himself a boost by stepping on the lower shelf against the possibility of someone telling him off.
Suddenly a hand reaches over his shoulder and pulls down the can of peaches he was reaching for. The man hands it to him with a shy, apologetic smile, and Jon smiles back and stutters a thank you.
He thinks as he walks away that the man's eyes were the same color as the sky.
--
Somewhere else, Jon offers his new co-worker a hesitant, awkward smile and a soft thank-you as Martin sets a mug of tea on his desk.
They have only worked at this library together for a week, and Jon already knows he will never enjoy any tea as much as he enjoys Martin's. Martin is working on not turning red every time Jon smiles at him.
Neither of them have ever heard of the Magnus Institute, and when they sleep, their dreams are full of ordinary, mundane fears and oddities.
Most of the time, they don't remember them at all.
--
Maybe, maybe everything works out, and we end up somewhere else.
--
Somewhere else, two men are in the kitchen of a small cottage in Scotland, making breakfast. They move around each other with the ease of long practice, slicing toast, cracking eggs, dropping bacon into a pan to fry. One of them drops a quick kiss on the other's cheek before reaching into the pan to steal a piece, and the other makes a move to bat his hand away, laughing. The laugh comes easily, lines at the corners of his eyes worn deep with years of smiles, as evident as any of his scars. The first man munches his prize as takes the whistling kettle off the stove and pours boiling water into the waiting teapot, swirling it to warm the ceramic before adding tea and more water and leaving it to steep.
He brings the pot to the table just as the other finishes plating up the food, and pours two mugs, adding milk to one and an absurd amount of sugar to the other. He passes the sugary mug over and is met with a smile and a soft thank you that he will never, ever tire of.
They sit at the table, eating breakfast, drinking tea, watching the mist burn off the hills through the kitchen window. They talk of plans for the garden and what they need from the market for dinner, the conundrum of sleeping arrangements for when their friends come up from London next week to stay. The morning light illuminates a precarious stack of books at one end of the counter, umbrellas and a cane in a stand by the door, a refrigerator covered in lists and scribbled recipes, in pictures of smiling faces and holiday cards and several clumsy children's drawings.
After breakfast, they wash up and leave their dishes to dry while they make their way out into the brilliant morning, hand in hand. They walk along the familiar path up into the hills, a path they have walked a thousand times and will walk many more, knowing, with a confidence they once would have barely dared to dream of, that the path will always deliver them safely back home.