Chapter Text
It’s a perfectly ordinary house in a perfectly ordinary neighborhood. The house on the left is pink, the house on the right is white.
The house that Annabelle had directed them to is red brick with a yellow door.
Everything is too much.
One moment they were— there —the next they’re hand in hand upside down and rightside up and spinning and covered in blood but also in dirt and grass and Annabelle was right in front of them, telling them they had taken far too long to get here , but everything was set right up .
Neither Jon nor Martin had been in coherent enough states of mind to do much, they’d followed her to a taxi with a driver who seemed far too unperturbed by the mess coating them, she’d told them almost nothing on the trip, and when they arrived she pushed them out and pressed a set of keys into Jon’s hand, winked at them, and pointed them to a house before slamming the taxi door and leaving. They look at the house.
The house with red brick and a yellow door.
It doesn’t really make sense. Nothing really makes sense at the moment.
Martin seems to realize that there’s no chance of Jon opening the door, and he gently pries the keys from Jon’s hand.
They fit in the lock. The lock turns. Clicks.
Jon approaches and they both stare at the door. It’s bright, bright, bright yellow. Exactly the wrong shade of yellow.
But Jon feels eyes on them and he doesn’t want to stand here in full view of any person who happens to look out their window or walk out their door or down the pavement with their dogs.
He reaches out from behind Martin and turns the doorknob.
It opens into a long hallway. He flinches before he notices the stairs along the right side and the archway at its end. Just a normal hallway; an entryway for a house. Not an entry to anything else.
Martin steps in and Jon follows. The floors are pale wood and the walls are white. Sunshine reflects down the hall from the room at its end.
They walk together.
The room at the end is a kitchen. The walls are lined with windows and an entire wall is made up of a sliding glass door. There’s a table at one side of the room, where it switches seamlessly from “kitchen” to “dining room”. It’s a small table, circular, with three chairs equidistant around it.
On top of it is a box. A tidy little box, leather and metal buckles. A suitcase, perhaps. The box has a note atop it. Documents! :) it says, written in a spidery hand.
Beside the box are two cellphones. Each cellphone has a sticky note attached with a string of numbers and a, Don’t forget to change your password.
In front of the box, on top of the perfect little table, is an envelope. It’s cream-colored and thick. When Martin picks it, he turns it to discover red wax sealing it. The wax is stamped with a spider.
Jon and Martin exchange a look. There’s rolling of eyes from each.
Jon opens the suitcase instead.
It’s filled with papers. On top, two wallets. They set the wallets aside, next to the cell phones.
Beneath the wallets are their birth certificates.
The deed to the house.
The title to a car.
Martin picks up the next sheet of paper in the suitcase.
Before they have the chance to look at it, a cry sounds from upstairs. The paper drops from Martin’s hands and both men rush to the staircase.
The crying comes from behind the door just past the top of the stairs.
Martin opens the door. The room is a nursery. It’s painted in pastels with a crib in the far corner of the room. In the crib is a child.
In the crib is an infant . A baby girl with dark skin and darker curls, laying down on her back and reaching out to him.
Jon stays frozen in the hall, but Martin crosses the room in two long strides and scoops her into his arms.
“Hush, love,” Martin croons, “what are you doing here?”
The baby hiccups through her tears and leans into him. She lifts her hand and presses it against his chin, twiddling her thumb against the stubble.
She’s still crying, sobs that break his heart, and Martin instinctively starts to bounce her up and down, gently, gently, up and down, swaying side to side, humming.
“Martin,” Jon says, finally entering the room after multiple minutes (first of processing, then just of watching ). “Why is there a baby here.”
“Maybe… Maybe Annabelle expects us all to be roommates. Maybe this is her kid,” Martin says, without ceasing his rocking. The baby has started to calm down, although her fingers dig rather uncomfortably into his chin. Still, he pats her back and allows it. If it soothes her, who is he to stop it? She needs comfort.
“That’s not it,” Jon disagrees. He knows it, although he doesn’t Know it, but Annabelle doesn’t seem like the type. No, this is something different. “What else was in that box?”
The two trudge back down the stairs.
The paper Martin had been holding rests print-side-up on the table.
It’s an adoption certificate.
Sasha James Blackwood-Sims.