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The window was swung right out, open as far as it would go, but the smoke still drifted back into the room enough that Martin could smell it before he stepped into the kitchen. He was unsurprised, therefore, to see Gerry sitting awkwardly on the narrow ledge, the kitchen table moved at an angle to give him room. He braced one foot against the frame, the other balancing him against the ground, and Martin did not think he could be comfortable in the slightest. Perhaps if having the window open made much of a difference he would get it, but he could see the tendrils of smoke hovering around Gerry’s head, and he knew for a fact that the man would trail it around with him for hours to come.
“Is there really any point?” he asked, setting the handful of empty mugs down on the draining board. “There’s no wind out there. I don’t even think there’s any weather.”
“I guess it’s habit,” Gerry answered, without turning around. “Something about going and sticking my head out of a window when I smoke. Comforting, you know.”
He delivered the words in the flat kind of way that told Martin that he didn’t believe them at all. Having set the cups down, he turned back to the window, frowning. Ordinarily he kept the curtains closed, for very obvious reasons, and it was never pleasant to see what had become of the outside world. It seemed to be stuck in permanent twilight, but the air had a reddish glow that reminded Martin of the pictures he’d seen from towns ahead of oncoming wildfires. For a while he had been worried that something like that was heading their way, but there had been no sign of it yet. He supposed that was just what the air looked like now. So long as it remained breathable, he wouldn’t complain.
Gerry, on the other hand, much preferred to have some idea what was going on outside. It didn’t change much, admittedly, and he was quite certain that they would be safe here – for whatever definition that meant anymore. Either way, nothing from out there would bother them in here, and he supposed he might as well get an eyeful while he was here. Things like this didn’t come along every day, after all. He’d never expected to live to see it – he’d hoped he’d never live to see it – but here it was, and he didn’t much see the point in hiding away behind some strips of floral fabric.
“Why do you… do it to yourself?” Martin asked tentatively.
Gerry finally turned, fixing him with a questioning stare. “Do what?”
“I mean, look out there,” Martin said. He leaned back against the counter in what he hoped was a casual manner, though it was quite clear to both of them that he was trying to shrink out of sight of the window and the unblinking sky beyond. “We know what’s out there, we know the sky is full of eyes, we know there’s nothing coming this way, and Jon—well, Jon keeps us updated on the kinds of things waiting out there, whether we like it or not. I guess I just wonder why you want to sit there and just… stare at it.”
“Curious, I guess,” Gerry said, with a shrug. “That’s probably bad, right?”
“I don’t know,” Martin said, exasperated. “I mean, it’s already pretty bad out there. I doubt a little bit of curiosity is going to make a difference now.”
“Morbidly curious,” Gerry amended. “I spent a lot of time trying to stop something like this, you know.”
“Right,” Martin said. “With Gertrude.”
“Yeah.” Gerry took a long drag from his cigarette, turning his head at a slight angle to blow most of it out of the window. “Back when we thought it would actually do something.”
There was a long silence, slightly but not unbearably uncomfortable. Martin had never really worked out how to address this particular elephant in the room, and Gerry, for his part, had not wished to discuss it. Jon had explained everything in great detail, of course – the rituals, why they had failed, what Jonah Magnus had worked out about their relationship to one another – and Martin had listened in both horror and despair. His thoughts, of course, had been with Tim, and the idea that his friend had died for nothing had reopened that wound – never really properly addressed, thanks to Peter Lukas – in its entirety. By the time he had surfaced to the rest of the implications, Gerry had settled into stony silence on the whole matter.
To tell the truth, Gerry hadn’t thought much about it himself – or at least, he’d done his best not to. The realisation had been cold and humiliating, and quickly followed by anger. All of those years spent tramping around the planet, looking for clues, taking obscene risks, and it had been for nothing at all. He had been separated from Gertrude before she had worked it out, and part of him was glad for it. He didn’t know what he would have done, having to live with that knowledge as well as all the bullshit he had to put up with thanks to the Hunters. At the same time, he had to wonder what Gertrude had made of it all. No doubt she would have been pleased she’d worked it out, because such a thing was in her nature, but for every atrocity Gerry had committed in the name of keeping the world safe, Gertrude had committed ten more. Sometimes Gerry was sorely tempted to ask Jon what Gertrude had thought, how she had felt. Other times he told himself, firmly and bitterly, that he couldn’t care less.
“I…” Martin eventually said. “Well, I get the feeling you wouldn’t want to hear that I’m sorry.”
“You’re correct,” Gerry said tersely.
“But…” Martin sighed helplessly. “I mean, that sucks.”
Gerry snorted. “Yeah. It does.” He stubbed his cigarette out on the outside ledge and flicked the butt into the weeds. “But I mean, welcome to the world, right? There’s not a damn thing in this place that’s fair, and it’s always been this way. The apocalypse is just same shit, different pile. In fact, I probably came out better in the apocalypse than I’ve ever done in my whole damn life.”
“I am sorry about that,” Martin said.
Gerry looked at him sharply. “Sorry? Why would you be sorry? It had nothing to do with you.”
“Yeah, well?” Martin asked. “It doesn’t have to be my fault for me to feel sorry for people, Gerry.”
“Waste of time, if you ask me,” Gerry muttered.
“I guess I just think that… I don’t know, people don’t deserve to be terrorised by evil monsters?” Martin said. “I’ve read a lot of statements, alright? A lot. And never once have I put one down and thought you know what, yeah, that guy was a proper arsehole and he totally deserved to be consumed by worms or lost forever in endless hallways or something.”
“That’s because the people who deserve it rarely give statements,” Gerry said. “They’re too busy terrorising others or regretting their poor choices.”
“I think this is overkill,” Martin said. “I really do, Gerry—don’t look at me like that. I struggle to understand what crime could possibly deserve anything statement worthy.”
“Some people seek it out,” Gerry said. He’d meant to leave once his cigarette was done, well aware of the slippery slopes he only just managed to avoid going down, and even then he avoided it primarily by refusing to engage in any serious discussions. Something had reached its boiling point in him today, though, and instead of standing and leaving he found himself lighting another. “Some people go after it, for whatever reason – fame, power, glory, whatever. It’s all a stupid reason, when you think about it. I mean, look at Magnus. How fucking arrogant do you have to be to doom the entire world for your own gain?” He laughed. “I hope whatever he’s doing, it hurts.”
“Alright, Jonah Magnus is a bit of an exception,” Martin said.
“Why?” Gerry asked immediately. “Because it affected you personally?”
Martin folded his arms. “That’s unfair.”
“It’s just a question.”
“For your information Peter Lukas was the one who harassed me most efficiently, and I still feel profoundly sorry for him,” Martin said, a little shortly. “No, I’m pissed at Jonah because of what he did to Jon. That’s just… and I’m not saying this just because it’s Jon! I’m saying this because it’s a rotten thing to do to someone, to manoeuvre them into a situation like that and then just use them. It’s dehumanising. It’s evil.” He sighed. “And alright, maybe some of it is because it’s Jon, but not because he’s my boyfriend or whatever. Jon’s just… I mean, he blames himself for everything. If it had happened to somebody a little meaner…”
Gerry snorted. “Like me. Or you, maybe.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You have a bit of a mean streak. But anyway, fine. I get what you’re saying.”
“Even so…” Martin sighed. “We don’t know what he was like before all this.”
Gerry raised an eyebrow. “Jonah Magnus? Probably an officious little twat, if I had to place a bet.”
“He might have just been an idiot,” Martin said. “Being an idiot isn’t a crime, Gerry. Maybe he just… I don’t know. Got so caught up in the excitement of the questions that he didn’t think of the implication of the answers. Haven’t we all done that, from time to time? Hell, that’s what the Beholding is about. It’s not just, fear of being watched or whatever. It’s knowledge that… well, that’s scary. That you don’t want to know or that you shouldn’t know. That endangers you. And from what I understand, even… even avatars fear the thing they serve, even if it gets twisted up with a weird kind of love or devotion.”
“I swear to God,” Gerry said, leaning his head back against the frame. “If you’re going to come in here and try and make me feel sorry for Jonah fucking Magnus—”
“I’m not—I’m not as big a hypocrite as you seem to think I am,” Martin said suddenly.
Gerry looked at him again. “When did I call you a hypocrite?”
“I’m not stupid, either,” Martin said firmly. “I can see the things you’re really asking, Gerry. And I get it. They’re—they’re questions that have to be asked.” He took a deep breath, trying to find the words. “You wonder a lot, I think, about why I don’t seem to want to accept—well, accept what Jon is. As though I can’t see that he’s covered in hundreds of creepy blinking eyes and is basically a switchboard of terror right now.”
Gerry snorted, but didn’t argue. He would be the first to admit that he could be both very judgemental and not very subtle about it. It was one of the traits he had unfortunately inherited from his mother and could do nothing about, try as he might – though at the very least he admitted he was terrible at hiding it, whereas Mary had looked down her nose at everyone quite openly yet firmly believed, at the same time, that she might have a promising career in espionage.
“It’s not because I think it’s different with Jon,” Martin continued. “I mean, obviously the context is different, because this is my boyfriend we’re talking about, but the concept is the same. Jon didn’t ask for this, and a lot of other people didn’t, either. And even if they grow to like it, or want it, they might not have chosen it initially. You have to adapt, you know? And if you have no other choice, and there’s no way to go back, then… I guess it’s a reasonable coping mechanism, to force yourself to like it. Maybe you eventually do. I don’t know. But the point I’m trying to make is that I might look like I’m being hypocritical when it comes to Jon, but I’m not. I think it’s the same kind of thing. It’s just… Jon doesn’t want to hurt people, and Jonah Magnus does. Peter Lukas did. So I can look at them and feel sorry for the people they might have once been, or might have been if things had turned out differently, but if the person they are now is going to act like that then I don’t really see anything morally wrong with… stopping them.”
“Killing them,” Gerry said bluntly.
“If that’s what it takes,” Martin said, before sighing. “I mean, I wish it didn’t, but… yeah. If that’s what it takes.”
Gerry thought for a long moment, smoking half his cigarette before he finally let his breath out in a long sigh. The smoke hovered in the still air outside, and once again Gerry thought it was eerie. There was something about there not being a single breath of wind that put him on edge, and he wondered just how often it had happened when things had been normal. There had always been at least a breeze, every now and then. Still days were unusual, charged with something that had always put him on edge. To the best of his memory, the air was only ever this still right before a storm.
“Martin,” Gerry finally said. “This is not a situation where you can start applying human morals. It’s not that simple.”
Martin looked affronted. “I’m not saying it’s simple, I—”
“I don’t mean that in an insulting way,” Gerry interrupted. “I don’t mean to say that I think you’re an idiot, or that you’re oversimplifying it, or that you don’t get how bad this is. That’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is that it’s very difficult to fully wrap your head around situations that you have very little experience with, and while you’ve been caught up in the Institute for a few years now, that’s just a drop in the ocean. I don’t pretend to know everything myself, but I’ve been in the business since birth, and over the years I have seen and I have learned a lot. You can’t come into this trying to weigh up good and evil. That’ll just get you killed. Good and evil – they’re human concepts. It’s like assigning all these things names, or worshipping them, or whatever people are doing. Yeah, you’re right. Some of them, it’s a coping mechanism. But for others, they just… exist in a place that’s beyond the understanding of an ordinary human being, alright? Most humans, they don’t think that way at all. It’s unfathomable to them, and good! But it means that the parameters you’re using to try and get the measure of these things are completely inadequate. It would be like trying to measure wood for a roof with a measuring jug.”
Martin didn’t know what he wanted to say in response to that. He only knew that it had made him angry for reasons that he couldn’t quite explain, so he did what he always did when he needed a moment to think: he turned around and busied himself with the kettle. Either by a stroke of luck or some deeper understanding that Martin resented him for potentially having, Gerry seemed to know to remain quiet while he did so; for several minutes the increasing bubbling and hissing of the kettle was the only thing to break the silence. By the time it clicked itself off and Martin was fishing out teabags from one of the many boxes on the counter, he thought he had managed to understand, at least broadly, what it was about Gerry’s speech that had irked him.
“Alright,” he said, still not looking at him. He dropped a bag into one of the cups and stared at it, as though the leaves within might suddenly spell out the answers. “Yeah, OK, I don’t know as much about this as you. In fact, I probably know a little bit less than I should, because there were a lot of things that I didn’t want to see or I didn’t want to think about. I admit that, and I admit that I’m probably… I don’t even know. Maybe a bit naïve about all this, or overly optimistic, or—I don’t know, but whatever it is, I’m sure it can be criticised. But I do know what it’s like to be… tempted, I suppose.”
“Tempted,” Gerry repeated.
“Yes.” Martin sighed, turning back to look at him. “This whole, becoming an avatar thing. It’s not a mystery to me, Gerry. I know how it happens to people. I know what it does. I know the kinds of thoughts it makes you have and how tempting it is, and how it’s possible to hate something and fear something but to want it all the same – want it more than anything else. I came like, really fucking close to it, you know that? Like, super close. And I don’t know if we’ve all forgotten, but I was also offered Jonah’s place? Like. It could have been me sitting there doing God knows what, having all the power he sought? Whether or not he has that power I don’t know, it could have all gone horribly wrong, but the fact stands that it might have also gone horribly right and I was offered that. I could have had that for myself, and I said no.”
Gerry couldn’t help it. He let out a snort. “Right. Because you’re just so much more—”
“Shut up!”
Gerry raised an eyebrow. He didn’t think he’d ever heard Martin speak above a stern tone before; this bordered on yelling. He was surprised to see Martin’s face was flushed with real anger.
“I know everyone likes to have their opinions of me,” Martin said, his voice unsteady, “and that everyone likes to think I’m either some helpless fucking idiot or some, I don’t even know, snotty little arsehole who’s too good for everything, but if you would listen to what I have to say about myself for once, I was going to tell you that I didn’t refuse out of any grand notions. I refused because I felt pissed off.”
Gerry blinked.
“That’s right,” Martin snapped. “I was pissed off because I found out I’d been manipulated. That’s why I said no. I thought, fuck you. I’m not doing that when I’ve had no say in the matter. I mean, if I’d been approached and Peter had been upfront and caught me in the right mood? It might have been different. But that wasn’t what happened, and I refused just to be a brat and make a point, and then there was this whole thing and I still wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to come back out. Of the Lonely, I mean. It was nice in there. It was safe. There was nobody to bother me, and being alone isn’t exactly something I’m unused to. So I get it. I get what it’s like to be offered power, but I get the other side of it as well – to just want it. And it would have been sad, because I’m not the sort of person who would like to torment everyone for eternity, so if I’d become an avatar I would have ended up nasty and just… not who I am at all. It would have been understandable if somebody wanted to stop me. But look at me now, Gerry, and tell me: would I have deserved it?”
Gerry sighed. “No.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s true that everyone has their own path that leads them to these choices,” Gerry continued, “and that we often don’t realise we’re on them until it’s too late. But don’t forget that some people do seek it out, Martin. They do understand that it’ll make monsters out of them. There are people out there who want to get rid of their humanity. They find it limiting. They see it as worthless, an embarrassment, even. That’s all I’m saying. Regular humans, we don’t think like that. But some people do.”
“But something would have had to have made them like that!”
“Nature versus nurture.” Gerry shrugged. “It’s a debate as old as time.”
“Jon didn’t want this for himself,” Martin said quietly. “I didn’t want this for me. You wouldn’t have wanted it for you.”
“I’m not debating that.”
“So why do you act like I’m somehow less for—for—”
“For being frightened of Jon?” Gerry asked.
Martin swallowed. “I’m not frightened of him.”
“He seems to think otherwise.”
The word Gerry had actually meant hung unspoken in the air between them. Jon didn’t think otherwise – he knew, and this realisation left Martin standing there dumbly, feeling like the idiot he’d just professed himself not to be. How had he overlooked it? Suddenly it dawned on him that overlooking and ignoring were two completely separate things, and because he was so terrible at the former he had become very, very good at the latter.
“He doesn’t begrudge you for it,” Gerry said, after Martin continued to stand there, stunned and guilty and embarrassed. “He gets it. He even said to me, you know, I’ve seen a lot more than you have. I’m not as easy to shake, but you – I’m not saying you’re easily frightened, Martin, so close your mouth. God knows you’ve done some crazy shit, and anyone who’s put up with a Lukas for the amount of time you did and not run screaming for the hills deserves a medal of bravery. They even freak me out. I’m just saying that it’s always been slightly removed for you – things you’re witnessing, or people you don’t care about the way you care about Jon.”
“I cared about Sasha,” Martin said bluntly. “I loved her. She was my friend. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me.”
“But that—” Gerry sighed, thinking for a moment. “Martin. That wasn’t Sasha, in the end. I know about that thing. It isn’t her. It killed her, and replaced her. Sasha died. You weren’t speaking to her, through any of that. She was gone, and she was—she was safe.”
“Safe?”
“Yes, safe!” Gerry said irritably. “You’re doing it again! You’re thinking of all these words through a human lens.”
“That’s because I’m a human!” Martin snapped. “How else am I supposed to think of it?”
“You need to stop loading all these words with human connotations,” Gerry said. “When I say safe, you’re thinking oh, he’s saying it’s good Sasha died. Well? Am I wrong?”
Martin said nothing. He did give Gerry an incredible glare, however, which Gerry interpreted to mean he was correct.
“What I mean by it is that she can’t be tarnished by the entity that claimed her,” Gerry continued. “She died. She’s gone. She had no say in what that thing did with her identity afterwards. The Sasha you knew, she died still as you knew her. She remains as you knew her. It isn’t the same thing as what’s happening with Jon, and that’s why you’re frightened.”
“It’s still Jon, though! It’s not like—”
“But Jon has changed,” Gerry said firmly. “Martin. Listen to me. You do not become an avatar and come out of it the same person you were before. You are not even still human, in the strictest medical sense of the word. We’re not talking morals here. We’re not talking about what makes somebody human – conscience or empathy or all that bullshit. We’re talking in the strictest possible sense. You have avatars of the Desolation who have burned themselves to death and come back made of wax. You have avatars of the Stranger who are literally made of plastic. Annabelle Cane had her head caved in and plugged up with spider webs. Jonah Magnus is a pair of eyes rocketing around in a stolen body. Simon Fairchild is about five hundred fucking years old. Medically, these people should be dead and they are not. Medically, they have ceased to be recognisable as humans. A normal human being would not be capable of these feats, and normal humans tend to not be made of plastic or wax.”
Martin swallowed. “And Jon?”
“Martin.” Gerry sighed. “Jon was dead for six months.”
“He—”
“His heart had stopped,” Gerry said, cutting him off, “and he was not breathing. For six months. Martin. Please. Have some sense. Remember, stop using human morality. I am not insulting Jon by pointing out that he’s no longer human. I am stating a fact.”
“Alright!” Martin had the sudden and childish urge to storm out of the room, but he forced himself to remain where he was. “What’s your point, then?”
“My point is that you never had to see what Sasha might have become, but you will with Jon,” Gerry said quietly. “You love him, and you care about him, and you worry about him – but you’re frightened of him, too, because what if Jon turns around and decided he likes this? What then?”
“He won’t.”
“But what if he does?”
“He won’t!” Martin repeated, louder. “Have you seen the state of him? It’s all I can do to persuade him not to hate himself for what he thinks he’s done!”
“We don’t know how he’s going to feel,” Gerry said simply. “You don’t know until it happens, Martin. And that’s why you’re scared of him. He looks like a monster now. You’re scared he’ll start acting like one.”
“Shut up,” Martin said, turning abruptly back to the tea. He couldn’t bring his hands to move, so he just stood there, glaring at the mugs through increasingly blurry vision.
“I’m not saying this to hurt you, Martin,” Gerry said. “I just want you to know.”
“How do you know what I’m feeling?”
“I have extensive experience.” Gerry sighed. “Alright, fine. Seems I’ve put you on the spot: I learned this through my mother.”
Martin swallowed. “Your mum?”
“Yeah. I mean, you’re probably aware of what a—well, she wasn’t a nice woman. She had different priorities to most mothers, but as a young child I loved her dearly and I thought she knew everything. I thought she was the best person in the world, and that everything she told me was true, and that it was normal for mothers to love books more than their children. It hurt, but I figured that I had to be brave about it. I loved her, so I tried to love what she loved.”
Martin wiped his eyes roughly with the back of his hand.
“So, I grew a little older,” Gerry continued, “and I started to realise that things weren’t quite right with Mum, more than I thought beforehand. At first I’d thought she was just a little odd, but that her intentions were good and that she loved me. The more I grew, the more I realised this might not be true, and the more I feared her. I felt bad about it, because I read a lot, and in lots of stories – especially for kids – parents are either nice and lovable, or they’re dead and the children remember them as nice and lovable. I knew I shouldn’t be scared of my own mother, so I wondered if I was the problem. Then I grew up a little bit more, and I realised that my mother was a monster. I was frightened of her for many years before this realisation, not because she showed me frightening things – or at least, not only because she showed me frightening things – but because I recognised those frightening things in her, and I was scared of the day where I’d finally have to admit that my mother acted like a monster, and therefore was one.”
Martin didn’t turn around as he spoke; Gerry got the strong impression he was crying. He stood with his back to Gerry, hunched over the counter, his hands now gripping its edge. Gerry got the distinct idea that this was a position that Martin had spent a lot of time in; an act that he had perfected. Go and put the kettle on, hunch there while it boiled, have a quick cry, and then get back to it. Gerry felt guilt stab at him then, despite the necessity of what he had told Martin. Necessary though it was, it still felt like kicking an injured puppy – but then again, so did watching Jon after Martin had made his quick excuses to leave the room. Or at the very least, watching Jon was like watching an injured puppy getting kicked. The only way to try and avoid both scenarios in the future was to put Martin on the same page once and for all, and hope that he learned from it and stopped treating Jon in the same way a person might edge nervously around a dog known to bite.
You have to be cruel to be kind, he thought wryly. Of course his mother’s words would come back to him now.
“The difference is,” Gerry finally said, quietly, “my mother relished it, and Jon does not. That’s the major difference I see. All I’m saying is that it’s normal to be frightened. I’m not having a go at you for feeling the way anybody would feel. I’m just saying you need to accept why that is. Until you accept that Jon does have that potential, you’ll never be able to push it aside and look at how likely it actually is. You’re scared of a possibility, Martin, and that’s not worth avoiding the whole situation. You of all people know what it’s like to be left alone – how easily you can be tempted by the things that give you even a sense of being understood.”
“Yeah,” Martin said quietly. “I. Um. I’m sorry. About your mum.”
Gerry shrugged, even though Martin couldn’t see it. “I’ve had a long time to get over it. It hurt once. It’s OK now. Mostly.”
“I get it, kind of,” Martin said. He took a hitching breath and reached for the kettle, flicking it on to boil again – they had been talking for so long, the water had begun to cool. “I mean, not the same thing, obviously. But I was—well, I was kind of scared of my mum, too.”
Gerry paused, about to light his third cigarette. “Yeah?”
“Seems kind of silly, in comparison,” Martin said. “I’ve never… admitted it out loud, either, but yeah. Um. She was very sick, when I was growing up. She started getting ill when I was a kid, and my dad had enough, and he left. I was eight.” He stared hard at the steam beginning to rise from the kettle, blinking rapidly. “I looked after her, as best as I could. When I was seventeen it got really bad, and I dropped out of school to care for her full time. She got worse and worse, and she decided to go into a care home, and we needed money, so I…” He let out a weak laugh. “I lied on my CV, gave myself a degree in parapsychology, and got a job at the Magnus Institute. Elias interviewed me. I thought I did a really convincing job, too, but—well, he would have known the whole time, wouldn’t he?”
Gerry laughed. “Still got the job, though.”
“That’s what Jon said.” Martin smiled. “Said I was going for a research position, and I proved I’d researched it well enough. Well, that’s how I got to the Institute, um. To get back on topic, I did all that because I loved her, and I wanted to care for her, but even through all of this – and it was genuine, you have to understand, I did love her – through all of this I was also scared of her. I told myself she was so cruel to me at times because she was sick, and sick people… they can be mean. You can hardly blame them, and here was Mum, abandoned by her husband and left with a young child to care for, all while dying slowly at such a young age, in pain all the time… I understood why sometimes she was cruel. Anyone would be. But I guess there was a part of me that knew it was something else. That sensed something real about her hatred; something personal. I was scared of her, because—well, I suppose to use the terminology of the day, I was scared she was a kind of monster, too. A mother who hated her own child.”
They were silent as Martin finally poured the water. His hand was surprisingly steady, even though Gerry could see him struggling to stop his shoulders from shaking. There was something heavy in the pit of Gerry’s stomach, instinct telling him that this was not the worst part – that the inevitable conclusion would be somehow worse than he could have imagined.
“So, um,” Martin continued, trying desperately to keep his tone casual. “I never knew why she hated me so much. I thought it was just, she resented me because I was something else to worry about when she was already so sick, but it just seemed… wrong for that. I don’t know how to describe it. It was resentment, but it was something more, and I couldn’t work it out. Sometimes I’d do things and it would set her off, really innocuous things, and I guess I wondered if I reminded her of my dad, and perhaps it was painful, so I tried not to. Of course, that was difficult, because I didn’t know anything about my dad. I had a few memories of him, because I was eight by the time he left, but they’d faded over time and Mum had gotten rid of all his photographs after he left, so he just… slipped out of mind, I guess. I just tried to convince myself it was her sickness, and I did a decent job at that, but I guess deep down I knew.
“Fast forward, and I’m working at the Institute, and blah blah blah, we got to the point where we had to distract Elias.” Martin sniffed. “I don’t know how much you know about Elias’s abilities.”
“He can see anything happening in the Institute,” Gerry said. “He can know things, so long as he knows to look for them. Gertrude said that he had some kind of ability to read minds, and also to… to put knowledge into people’s heads. To make them experience things, things that had happened to them or otherwise.”
“Right,” Martin said, nodding. He stirred the tea, and then realised that in order to throw out the teabags, he was going to have to turn around and face Gerry. He stirred for a longer moment, trying to work himself up, and then realised it would only get worse. “So, we had to distract him, so he was focused and didn’t cast his sight out and catch us up to anything, and I volunteered to do it.”
In a well-practised move, Martin balanced all three teabags on the spoon and quickly turned, dumping them into the bin and turning back before Gerry could see too much of his face.
“I locked myself in Jon’s office and started burning statements,” he said, to Gerry’s sudden coughing.
“You what?” Gerry finally managed, thumping his chest with one hand, his cigarette held delicately out of the window with the other. “You burned statements?”
“Yeah.” Martin gave a thin smile. “Figured that would get his attention.”
“You’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”
“He’s an old man, and those doors down there are heavy. I just locked him out.”
“Martin,” Gerry said, not bothering to hide he was impressed. “I would not want to fuck with you.”
“Well, thanks,” Martin said, with a weak laugh. “Anyway, it went about as well as you would expect. Like you said, he can make you know things. Things you don’t want to know, at all. And obviously he can root around in your head, know just what would hurt you the most. He found mine. He showed me exactly how my mother felt about me – every horrible thought, every bit of resentment, every time I—” His voice hitched, and he took a moment before continuing. “Every time I would do something nice for her and she would look at me and feel nothing but hate. I was forced to understand that she asked to go into a care home to get rid of me, and that I was working so hard to keep her there and she was just—just so she didn’t have to see me anymore, because she hated me, and—”
“Martin,” Gerry said quietly.
Martin shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m alright.” He took a deep breath. “Then he told me why. Told me if I ever wanted to know what my dad looked like, I could just look in a mirror.”
“Jesus.” Gerry let out a long breath. “Martin. I—Christ.”
“In a way, I was kind of glad?” Martin said. “It was—this is probably a terrible thing to say, but it was nice to know? It was a question I’d had for forever, so it was kind of just… nice to know.” He moved over to the side to get the milk. “It was also nice because like, now I could stop making a complete idiot of myself. I made my excuses as often as I could and left Mum alone, and I’m sure she was happier for it. If she worked out that I’d figured it out, she never said. She died, not long afterwards. When Jon was—when he was in the hospital. So that was that.”
He opened the fridge. He hadn’t been for supplies since the day the world had ended, but there was the milk, along with all the other food they didn’t technically have to eat but that Martin made an effort to cook anyway. A little bit of normality was good, in his opinion. If the sky had to be made of eyes, they could at least have a decent cup of tea and some toasties. The cabin seemed to agree with him.
“But then on the other side, I was right. That gut feeling I’d tried to ignore for so many years – it had been telling the truth,” Martin said. “And I felt stupid for it, and horrible, because I’d so wanted to believe it was just her sickness, but it wasn’t. And if I’d only been a little braver I could have saved myself years of embarrassment and cruelty, but I wanted so badly to believe that my mum wasn’t—wasn’t a monster, I guess, that I didn’t. So you’re right. I am scared that Jon might go that way, and I do tell myself he would never, but at the same time what do I know? I was so wrong before. I deluded myself so much before. How can I trust myself now?”
He poured the milk with a little too much force. Some of it came straight back out of the mug, splattering the counter, and it made Martin want to hurl the carton away and scream. He swallowed hard instead, set the milk down, wiped up the spill with the sponge by the sink.
“Sorry for the monologue,” he added, when Gerry remained silent. “You probably didn’t want me to unload all of that. I don’t know where it came from.”
“No, it’s—it’s fine.” Gerry took another drag from his cigarette, still a little stunned. “Guess we both belong firmly in the Shit Mothers Club, huh?”
“I don’t know—I mean, I don’t know if I’d say—”
“You know it’s alright to hate your mum, right?” Gerry said suddenly. “I’m just throwing that out there. You seem to be a little behind me in terms of both monster interactions and mother hating, so I thought I’d just confirm it’s fine to hate them if they’re horrible to you.”
Martin floundered helplessly for a moment. “I wouldn’t say I hated her.”
“No? Not even a little?”
“Well. I mean. Sometimes I think about what Elias showed me – about how she felt when I’d come see her, and she’d just hate me for being too friendly, for being nice to her, my smile – she hated my smile, guess it was Dad’s… sometimes I think about that and I think about getting the—the fucking lamp from the side of her bed and just—”
Martin broke off, suddenly breathless.
“Yeah,” Gerry said quietly. “There it is.”
“Oh, God,” Martin moaned. “I do hate her.”
“Another word of advice,” Gerry said, stubbing the cigarette out and tossing the butt after the others. “You can love and hate someone at the same time. Sucks, but you can.”
“I don’t hate Jon,” Martin said suddenly. “I might be—OK, I’m frightened, not of him but of what might happen, and I get that’s wrong and—and stupid, but I don’t hate him, and I never will.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“So then you have nothing to worry about,” Gerry said. He stood, finally, and stretched; his back ached something awful. “Whatever happens, whatever he decides – if you know you’ll never hate him, you lose nothing investing in him now. Having some faith in him. Getting to know what the actual issues are, rather than being afraid of the hypothetical.” He paused. “Just talk to him, Martin. Spend a little more time with him. Get used to him. He’s still Jon in all the ways that count.”
“Yeah,” Martin said quietly. “I—yeah. Um.” He nodded to the cups. “I made tea.”
“I saw,” Gerry said, smiling. Martin glanced over his shoulder, caught his eye, and looked away again. “I’ll go shower quick, before I drink it. My back is killing me. You want me to drop that one to Jon on my way past, or…?”
“No,” Martin said. He wiped at his eyes again, and finally turned to look at Gerry. “I’ll take it to him. See how he’s doing. If he—if he wants some company.”
Gerry nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”
He came up to the counter, took his tea, and then paused. For the longest moment Martin wondered if he would say anything, and then Gerry simply reached out and squeezed his arm, once, gently, and turned for the door. Somehow more was said in that one gesture than in any sentence he had envisioned Gerry saying; Martin felt a little more present for it, a little more grounded in the world.
He turned back to the counter and looked at the cups. After a moment, he took a steadying breath, picked both of them up, and headed for Jon’s room.