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Ms Blackwood had always been stubborn.
From his childhood, Martin remembered her as warm and gentle. He recalled long, dark nights of fearing the cold emptiness creeping in from the corners of his bedroom, and the gentle glow from the lamp beside her bed when he crawled in next to her. She would turn to him from the book she was reading, or the show on her small television and tilt her head, face half-disappearing into her blanket of dark hair across the pillowcase. Can’t sleep? She would ask in that voice of hers—a voice that he was convinced could sink ships and command battlefields—and when he nodded, she would simply raise the arm closest to him, and he would slot himself against her side. It could have been hours or days or years that she held him, smoothing over his newly-forming curls and pressing gentle kiss after gentle kiss to his forehead. He could still feel the warmth there, sometimes, if he pressed his fingertips to his temples on nights when he struggled to rest.
Martin remembered her as his mother. Who she was before flickered like a candle at the end of a dark hallway, but he remembered what it was like to need his mum, and he often chose to ignore the rest. Even after everything. Even now.
Once upon a time, she had loved him fiercely. She was a short and severe woman, and she rapidly lost weight as Martin gained it. Nobody could figure out why, since school meals were expensive and Ms Blackwood’s low-income job wasn’t covering any extortionate meal plans, but as she fell victim to the gauntness of life on the poverty line, Martin grew into soft, round cheeks and big, gentle lines. Eventually he was too tall for gymnastics, and too curvy for ballet. The other girls were petite and slim, with the type of lines that made the Madame smile with pride. The Madame did not smile at Martin. She frowned, examined his stiff wrists and soft arms, and quietly told Ms Blackwood that her child was too clumsy for ballet, has she considered rugby?
His mother had the mind to tell the pigeon-faced ballet teacher that her child would not be discriminated against for something they could not control, but she came in too strong, too fast, and without sufficient funds. There wasn’t really a way to cover the costs of ballet, anyway, and Martin was already embarrassed enough. Outside the studio, she puffed her frustration through cigarette smoke and hauled him close to press a kiss to his head and call them a bunch of self-righteous, artsy-fartsy arseholes who you are better off without; you are far too special to abide to their rules anyway, darling.
He didn’t want to be special. He just wanted to dance like everyone else.
Mum had a habit of doing that. She was outspoken in every sense of the word—too loud, too aggressive, too strong-willed—especially when she didn’t take her medication. Martin didn’t know that she was on medication until he was eleven, when she forgot to pick him up from school. When he finally made it home—a walk which wasn’t long, but made him uncomfortably sweaty and breathless—he found her asleep on the sofa. The medication left on the coffee table had a purple label. He didn’t know what Valium meant, until he found its name again in one of the books about bipolar disorder on the big bookshelf in their living room. He read it from cover to cover, and then placed it very carefully back where he found it; he felt dirty, like he had seen something he wasn’t supposed to.
He brought down Mum’s duvet from upstairs and laid it over her. She didn’t stir as he tucked her in snug, and left the television on one of her favourite channels. In the morning, she had grumbled about the electricity bill and poured the last of the milk into his cereal.
At its core, it wasn’t a physical sickness that took his mum, but in many ways it was. He remembered Dad leaving, how it had been the same week as his last godforsaken dance show and how they’d argued in the car on their way home. Martin had been so proud of himself, but all Dad could talk about was the fit of his leotard, how it had made Martin look frumpy and bigger than the others, and all Mum could do was warn him to be quiet, don’t talk like that in front of her. Martin’s skin felt three sizes too small, and he shouted at them both. He couldn’t remember exactly what he said, but the car was quiet after his outburst. Dad’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. Mum pinched her nose and rested her head against the window. Two days later, Dad was gone, and Martin stayed with his Nana for a week. He loved Nana, her tin of sherbet lemons, and trays of biscuits warming the oven, but he didn’t understand why he was staying with her, why he couldn’t go home. When he asked, she simply told him that mummy is sick.
At fourteen, when he came home with his hair cropped short for the first time, Mum took one look at him and walked—calmly and quietly—upstairs. Later that night, he hid under the covers and covered his ears as she vomited in their small bathroom, the shower running in an attempt to cover the sound. Then, when all was quiet and still, he took a cup of tea into her bedroom.
She was on her side in bed, turned away from him. At first, he thought she was asleep, but when he got closer he could see that her eyes were open and blinking at the blank wall which, five years ago, had housed a collection of happy family photographs. He sat very carefully on the empty side of the bed and stared at the off-colour patches where the sun had bleached around the frames.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Her shoulders rose and fell. She smelt like mint.
“I brought you tea, if you—”
“Go back to bed.”
Those four words hurt more than anything he had ever felt. He wanted nothing more than to crawl under the covers, under her arm, like he had done so many times as a child. He wanted his mum, more desperately than anything in the world, but she didn’t want him. She wanted him to go back to bed. She wanted him to leave her alone.
As much as he had hated it, he missed her veracity, and he missed her passion. He hated himself for missing her mania, which could have killed her, but he couldn't stand the silence of her depression. Most days, she struggled to get out of bed. He brought her tea to make up for his secret cruelty, even though she wouldn’t drink it, and he did their weekly shopping, even though she would shout at him for buying the wrong things. When she didn’t have the strength to bathe herself, he set her gently in the tub and carefully worked the knots out of her hair. Sometimes, as he parted it into two neat braids, he would catch her eye in the mirror above the sink, and she would look at him with a quiet sort of nothing and avert her dull gaze back down to her knees, pulled up to her chest.
He had taken care of his mother because he loved her. He had taken care of her because if he didn’t, he would become her, and nothing scared him more than that. And then, he met Jon—perfect, put-together Jon, with his slicked-back hair and his careful words and his cautious demeanour. Jon was sober detachment, he was stability, he was everything Martin had never had.
Jon was sick, too. Martin knew that now.
He wasn’t sick in the way that his mother was. At least, Martin didn’t think so. For a while, he thought he could have been; he saw a lot of her behaviour in him, a lot of her instability and irritability and sombre silence. But, well, it was the Archives, and Jon was the Archivist, and it eventually became more than obvious that his sickness was not a natural one. Those early days, though, Martin had kept a very careful eye on him, one that he didn’t even mean to. Looking out for signs was second nature, and Jon had a lot of signs. Martin couldn’t be sure what it was, though, and he wasn’t a psychiatrist, so he just kept watch in the way he knew how; he brought him tea, and asked him questions, and put a blanket over him when he fell asleep at his desk or on the sofa in the Archives. Jon shouted and snapped, and Martin kept being there, because it was what Jon needed.
In the cabin, the day after the end, he sat Jon down in the small tub and pushed soap suds through his hair. He avoided the new eyes—the ones on his forehead, his arms, his hands—as if they had always been there, and let Jon pretend that the tears on his cheeks were stray rivulets of water from the showerhead. They didn’t have a hairbrush handy, not like his mother did, so he brushed Jon’s hair with his fingers and spent a long time braiding it at the nape of his neck.
Martin had always taken care of those he loved, even when they—frankly—didn’t deserve it; his mother, although she hated him; Jon, although he had brought about the end of the world. He didn’t begrudge it. He didn’t complain, even silently. He just did, because to him, they did deserve it. Everyone deserved to feel warm and loved. Everyone deserved someone to wash their hair.
In that cabin, on those nights, Jon would hold his arms open and Martin would crawl into them. He would curl all six-foot-three-inches of himself into Jon’s side, somehow, and Jon would hold him. They didn’t sleep, because they didn’t have to, but Jon held him because it was what he needed. It was what he deserved: to be held, to be loved, to be cared for.
In those final moments, on that floor in that impossible tower, Jon saw all of it—every last second etched into the lines on Martin’s face. He pushed a bloody thumb over the small, worried crease in the centre of Martin’s brow, saying I see it, finally. I know. I'm sorry for looking.
Martin closed his eyes against the weight of Jon’s touch. He didn’t think of his mother when he turned the blade on himself, he didn’t think of her sickness or Jon’s or even his own. He thought only of that cabin, of those dark moments bathed in candlelight, of Jon’s hair slipping between his fingers. Jon could feel it, like silk in his hands.
His hand slipped and left a bloody ring around Martin’s wrist. He grasped as tight as he could with what little strength he had left, but Martin was strong—he was always strong, Jon could see that now, even with the Eye’s power draining from him with his blood—and he pulled just enough against Jon’s grip to get the knife against his own throat and pull. His eyes widened, the blade clattered to the ground beside them and Martin collapsed with it, crumpling over Jon’s chest. The hand cradling the back of Jon’s neck tightened and pulled Jon into him. If they were to die, which they would, which they were, they were to do it together. Held together by the last of his immeasurable strength.
Martin Blackwood had always been stubborn.