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It hurts like a toothache. Like a phantom limb. It hurts from someplace faraway that leaves him shaking, crying, red-eyed and snot-nosed and all at once very, very, very calm. It hurts like an absence, like a space in his mind that should be sharp clarity and is instead clouded in fog. He resists thinking of it as drowned out by static. The memory fades, and then comes pack into stinging focus, then warps and warps until it wasn't Elias – no, how could it be the man who still sends Martin memos, who he will still meet sometimes in the breakroom or in the halls, who looks at him with such distance, not even that nauseating gratitude he wore when– no, no, it wasn't Elias who's nails left irregular patterns of crescent moons over his hips, no, it was some monster. Some other man. Some other monster.
It hurts, and it doesn't. When it does hurt, it hurts like a burn; sharp and deep and shooting through him, leaving his skin feeling wrong and ragged and sticky. When it doesn't, well. Most days it doesn't. Most days, it feels like it happened to someone else. Most days, when he walks past Jon's office and Jon is not sat in his chair sipping from lukewarm tea he has only just remembered, his mind jerks away from thinking of it at all. That room when Jon is not there is a yawning void of eldritch proportions, with tendrils and teeth and a sweet song that beckons him in, sets all his nerves alight with a blind panic that he refuses to put into words. He cries in a supply closet, feeling whatever it is he's feeling without naming it, thinking in disjointed images that he pushes desperately away, until he can get back to his desk and ignore it once again. It works well enough.
When Elias passes him in the hall, his eyes follow him with such detached superiority that it's easy to think of him as a different man. A different monster. The man that haunts his nightmares looks at him with a secondhand fever, his smooth face cracked open with a shark's smile. The man who gives him brief and cutting performance reviews, who snaps at him to do his job instead of fussing over his coworkers seems nothing like the starving creature who pounced on him that night. He leans into the doublevision, and it works well enough.
He gets in the unfortunate habit of throwing up in the middle of the night. He wakes shaking and numb, floaty and wrong, inside out and adrift in a flotsom of memories all like nettle-stings, and stumbles to the bathroom to spend fifteen minutes on his knees, tongue and teeth accomodating bile, and when he can think at all, he thinks about how he can handle this. He can take this, secrets and all, and everything will be okay, he can keep going. He checks for blood, and then he showers, and then he brushes his teeth, and then he goes in to work. He takes painkillers in the mornings and keeps some in his pocket, because being sick always gave him splitting headaches.
Once, he does find blood dripping red and hot from his mouth, and sits for a long while just watching it fall. Knowing distantly that this means he should go to a doctor. Breathing in, and out, and feeling such an acute numbness that he can't quite bring himself to pick up his phone where it is lying on top of the laundry basket, playing the same song it always does when he wakes up with that dead-thing cold twining around his heart; because despite everything, Martin Blackwood is still afraid that someone will find out he is sick. That someone will hear him doing this every night in the small hours, and will know there is something wrong with him – something wrong at home – and it will get someone he cares about in trouble. It doesn't make sense, for a start Martin has lived alone for years, but it isn't supposed to. This kind of muscle memory doesn't need to make sense.
Eventually he works up the courage to type out an email to Jon, then to stand up, rinse out his mouth, and oh, there's a sting. A sharp twinge in his cheek, and when he presses the spot with his tongue it burns and tastes like iron. He takes a few minutes to laugh at himself, at the idea that anything so mundane as a stress-tear in his digestive tract being the thing that kills him. Then, he thinks about nails like freezing metal puncturing the skin in places he has never let anyone see, and has to bite back another wave of nausea.
He sits for a while, knowing he should send another email saying that he will be coming in today after all. He doesn't. Sometime shortly after six, Martin gets a call from Jon. He answers after the fourth ring, and is rewarded with a sigh of relief when he says Hello? and he almost wants to laugh again. Jon asks if he's alright, what's going on, his email was very vague and he was – worried, Jon supposes. It all seemed rather too familiar for his comfort. He's glad to hear Martin's voice.
Martin answers, waves of emotion wracking him as he carefully doesn't explain. He was always an anxious guy, and, well, things have gotten – it's gotten worse recently, he doesn't know why, he has no idea why, he can't figure out for the life of him why it's worse than its ever been, now, so bad that he's waking up before sunrise and throwing up his guts most nights, and tonight there was blood in his mouth – sweet iron and bitter salt – and it was nothing, actually, just a little cut in his cheek, but, well, he's an anxious guy, and he meant to email back that he's fine, but he would really rather not come into the Institute if he can avoid it because – Martin stops. Cuts himself off with a definitive clack of his teeth colliding. There is an electric-shock of memory, the taste of sour ink and dry dust, but he shakes it off. Practiced. Jon waits.
Martin hears a dozen ways he could say it. He thinks of asking Jon to Ask him. He feels the weight of this in his mouth, hot and thick and he wants to spit it out. But he can't. He knows in the small part of him that knows the weight of what happened that it will hurt Jon so badly, but it's so wrong for him not to say, he has to say, has to tell Jon, this is so wrong and he needs to fix it but he can't get the words out and– there he goes, he's crying. Hot salt and no iron and he can't get a single word out from under the irregular sobs that wrack his whole aching body.
Shit, shit, fuck, Jon is saying something on the other line and Martin can't hear it over the sound of his own beating heart – can you drive yourself mad with the sound of your own heart beating wrong? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, you can drive yourself so mad so quickly with the right reasons, Martin of all people would know – and then Jon is knocking at his door, and Martin is letting him in, and Martin missed all the steps in between but it's okay, Martin sits down and Jon sits down next to him with his fingers twitching on his knees, leaning in, but not too close.
He's saying something, a lot of something's, over and over, and there is no anger in his voice; so much gentleness that the only thing that can convince Martin this is real, not some sort of fevered hallucination from his dying brain as he lies unconscious and convulsing on his bathroom floor, is the way Jon doesn't try to touch him. In Martin's dreams, even the softest ones, someone is always asking if they can touch him. In the infected-wound dreams, no one asks at all.
Jon's voice makes him cry harder, wrings him out like a bloody rag until he's rasping could you – um, there's glasses in the cupboard to the left of the sink, could you please – and Jon rushes to accommodate him, with a fervent and incurious generosity unfamiliar to both of them.
Jon's presence is like antiseptic to the hollowed out and rotten something in Martin's belly, his eyes like fresh mud rubbed into a skinned knee. He makes the aching fog in Martin's head ease like standing on a dead foot: sharp and hard and then, suddenly, easy. All of a sudden, approaching normal. Heavy and hard but right.
When Martin finishes his first glass, still sniffling, Jon asks if he wants another, and when Martin nods slowly, he says before he stands, I'll be just a second, don't worry, and so Martin doesn't worry. Isn't sure he could if he was asked to. He's sure he'd make a valiant effort, but, well, effort is something Martin Blackwood can give until he collapses, but has very rarely been sufficient in his life.
Looking back, he isn't sure he felt anything at all that morning, even as his body juddered with sobs and his face was rubbed raw by shaking hands trying to wipe away tears, even as Jon spoke unthinkable rhythmic kindnesses to him, for however long he did.
As Martin sips at his third glass, trying to feel if anything hurts and finding his body a carefully blank space in his mind, Jon almost asks, then thinks better of it, and Martin is almost grateful. They sit there for a while. Martin apologises, a few times, and Jon waves them away with a tone biting back frustration. Just like old times. Maybe Jon doesn't like him, after all. Maybe Elias was lying. Maybe this flutter of his heart is safe, and his alone, after all.
Jon offers to stay with him for the day. Martin shakes his head, and Jon doesn't push. He looks so worried it would make Martin ache, if he wasn't too full of his own aching to carry any more. Martin takes a few painkillers on the presumption that there's a headache somewhere past this mist, and sleeps fitfully through the day. He returns to the Institute the day after, and keeps himself busy with making tea and loitering outside Jon's office once he's finished everything he was assigned. Jon tells him half a dozen times to go home, to take the day off, to rest, but Martin thinks he might drop dead if he spends a second undistracted.
It hurts like a ringing in his ears. No number of showers – scalding hot or pounding cold – can pull the sense of wrongness out of his pores, so he takes them quickly, in the dark, and it hurts like a ringing in his ears. Something he learns to ignore.
No number of cups of tea made for Jon, made for himself, drank slowly and quietly side-by-side, can scrub the guilt off of his heart. Can shake the memory of the words out of his head. Jon looks at him like a man dying of thirst looks at a bottle of million-dollar wine. Like something he's not sure he's allowed to even look at. Like something he's not sure what to do with. Martin looks at Jon like a he might look at a 5-star hotel, like a stray cat might look at a sanctuary already overcrowded. Like something not for him. Like something he isn't sure he's even allowed to want. Like something he can't find the energy to be angry with for not letting him in. Like something he's quietly convinced himself is rightfully out of his reach, just so it doesn't sting so much.
It hurts like a spasming muscle, like a bite from a wounded animal. It hurts like a sickness, invading every cell and colouring every thought sicky green. Green isn't a colour of life, anymore. Every young leaf on every tree feels intended for him, feels purposeful in the way it makes Martin smell decaying paper and new, cloying ink. Hurts dull, and hurts lasting. Hurts, increasingly, familiar.
He says the words victim and survivor to the poor bastard who meets his eyes in the mirror, speaks them with quiet force into every line of his face until he's certain they are legible in every one of his freckles. Every single scar. Jon never seems to be able to read them. Martin wishes he would ask.
Martin says I'm alright until it is muscle memory. Until he is certain it would take a Power to force any others out of him. How funny it would be, to have something forced out of him. Would it hurt in this same aching way? Would the violation of having something private layed bare ring in his ears so? Can anything truly feel his enough anymore to make it sting to be proved wrong? Would the space the words keep in his mind remain empty after they leave his mouth? Is he truly going to feel this hollowed-out forever? Like an apple, worm-eaten until only the wrinkled skin remains, and biting in rewards you with nothing more than the sour remains of something else's meal.
He misses Jon from across his desk. He misses not-knowing. He misses wanting in a way that didn't feel like asking, like a knifepoint demand. He thinks every day about telling Jon what Elias knows. Some days he finds himself digging his fingernails into the flesh of his arms, shaking and crying and half-conscious in document storage, knowing that he can't say. Knowing that he would need the memory ripped from him wholesale to be able to voice it at all. Most days, he says that it's better this way. This knowledge is a burden he can bear for the both of them. A bitter lie. Bitter ink staining his tongue.
He wonders, on nights when he gives up trying to sleep, when he gives up trying not to think: would the nightmares be easier with Jon there? Would the eyes in the walls being the colour of his make it feel worse, now? Could anything be worse than this? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, and Martin feels foolish for even considering that they couldn't be. Things can always be worse.
He thinks about asking Jon to Ask him still, the concept insistent and nagging like a loose tooth, but he keeps it safe under his tongue for a very, very long time. He keeps it contained as the guilt eats him alive, as Jon goes off to save the world and Martin stays behind. It feels good to have Elias look at him with anger, and the violation of knowledge he doesn't want being pushed into his mind is – it's alright. He has been coping for a long time. He can cope with this, too.
As he watches Jon's motionless chest and chokes on silence, Martin tells him things, mundane things, happy things, the sort of thing that he is coming to appreciate again. To be able to let in. Jon doesn't wake up. Martin says, once, in a small voice that can't scratch the surface of the tininess he feels, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Jon. I'm so sorry. Elias– I should've told you, I should've told you, but maybe you can– can hear me now. Jon, if you want, I can give you– if you'll wake up, Jon, I'll give you my statement. Please, Jon, I don't know if it counts, if– I don't know, if the powers were involved enough to make it count, but– Jon, please. Please wake up. I'll tell you anything you want to hear. I'll give you my statement, I don't care about the nightmares, just. Please. I need you back. Please. Please wake up.
Jon doesn't wake up.
After that, Martin doesn't tell him very much at all.
The fog settles. Deepens. Martin drifts away, to a place that is safe and alone, where no one's eyes can reach him, and no one's touch can hurt him. He drifts away, and the cold gloom feels like home.
Look at me, Martin, and tell me what you see.
I don't want to see you.
Look at me, Martin.
Jon, I can't. I've hurt you enough. I've hurt you enough. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
What do you see?
I see the man I love. I see someone who's out of reach. I see someone I've been lying to for a long time. I see someone I've hurt. I'm sorry, Jon, past-present-future tense, I'm sorry, Jon.
Tell me what you see.
I see – I see you, Jon.
Things are different, when the fog lifts.
There is a flurry of motion, there are clothes and supplies and necessities packed and everything else left behind. There is a memory of a gun heavy and cold in his hand, of a man – a monster – standing in front of him and daring him to pull the trigger. There is something hot, and angry, and bright inside of him in a place he thought would be hollow and rotten forever. There is a long, quiet train journey; a scarred hand carefully cradling his. There is a bustling day unpacking, unboxing, checking the house for eyes, and then there is nothing.
Then, there is nothing but the two of them, and time.