Chapter Text
It only took a few seconds for there to be ground beneath Martin’s feet again.
That was what it felt like, at least, between the moment he had felt the knife slide out of Jon’s chest and the instant later, when he found himself on his knees in a clearing, sunken into soft grass and sunlight filtering in from the branches above him.
It took too long for his mind to catch up to where he was, aware of himself again and flooded with too much information at once– the sun was warm against his face, there were tears still sticky and cold on his cheeks, his hands were clammy and grasping the handle of the knife, still poised directly above the chest of the limp frame in his arms.
A shuddering gasp tore itself from Martin’s throat as he threw the knife aside, hearing it landing in the grass somewhere beside him, but he was far past thinking to keep it on him. The safety of a weapon in his hand was no longer comforting, his mind had narrowed completely to focus on Jon.
It was difficult to see exactly what was going on when there were still tears filling Martin’s eyes, arm shaking as he wiped them from his face with his sleeve. Jon’s eyes were open, but he knew how little that meant in terms of his state, instead pulling him closer and searching for a stab wound, heart hammering in his chest and breaths constricted with his panic as he brushed a bloodstained hand over Jon’s chest.
His fingers shook, breaths twisting in his throat and silently pleading that he had taken out the knife fast enough to let Jon heal the wound, or that wherever they had ended up had somehow erased the damage when they had arrived.
If it was enough to transport them to god knew where, where the sky was a colour that it was generally supposed to be and there was no audible tortured screaming, then it could take care of a fatal stab wound– right?
Before hope could bloom any further in Martin’s heart, he felt something.
There was something warm and viscous was pooling beneath Jon’s shoulder, thick on Martins fingers as he pulled his hand away, dread coiling tightly, painfully in his gut. The deep red staining his hand shimmered in the light of the clearing, and he felt the air collapse from his lungs.
Martin choked, voice hoarse and trembling as he panickedly wiped his hand off in the clover beside him. “Shit. Shit- Jon, I’m–”
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t– they couldn’t have been brought somewhere that appeared safe only to make Martin watch Jon die, to make him watch the light fade from his eyes beneath a sky too cheery and hopeful to be watching over something so cruel.
He wouldn’t let it happen, whether the sky was clear or filled with every eye in the universe. He wouldn’t be alone again.
He shifted Jon to lie down in the soft grass around them, already stained with flecks of red as Martin took the edge of Jon’s coat, pressing it as hard as he could over the wound. As he did, Jon lurched forward, eyes glassy as he blinked harshly and gasped in pain.
It was movement, though, a sign of life, and Martin felt his throat constrict with tears as Jon’s gaze focused sharply on the trees above him, pupils dilating in the bright light.
“Stay awake, stay awake, please–” Martin rasped as he continued to fight to stop the bleeding, cursing himself for immediately taking the knife out after stabbing Jon- as if it would have done anything to save him, to take back what he had done. “Are- are you there?”
“I’m here.” Jon nodded weakly against the grass, voice hoarse. Martin let out a shuddering breath, panic still flooding beneath his skin, feeling blood seeping through the part of Jon’s coat he was using to keep pressure on the wound. “Where…”
“I- I don’t know, I don’t…” Martin sniffled, hastily lifting one hand from the wound to wipe his nose on his sleeve before moving back to press on it, blinking the tears from his eyes. He couldn’t cry now, he had done more than enough grieving for what was to come, and it was about time to face it. He swallowed, shaking his head. “Somewhere else. Please just– just don’t close your eyes, okay?”
“...Okay.”
He heard Jon breathing, still, inhales slow and so deceptively steady as he continued to stare at the fractalling light from the trees, glowing spots dancing on his face as the leaves shifted above them.
His eyes glinted green as the light fell on them, crossing over the stark, pale scars on his ashen skin, and even as warm blood kept seeping, so insidiously out beneath Martin’s hands, Jon was still the same frustratingly beautiful man he had fallen in love with.
And Martin couldn’t lose him.
“I don’t… feel good.”
Jon’s voice was too quiet, blinking up at the light in the clearing, and the brief moment Jon’s were shut seemed to last forever, the image seared deeply and painfully into Martin’s mind. He didn’t want to have to see it, unless it meant Jon was asleep, free from the grasp of the eye and finally able to rest.
“I know- I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’ll fix it, I can- I can make sure it’s okay, there’s– there’s blood, but it’ll stop soon,” Martin promised hurriedly, voice trembling uncontrollably despite how he pressed as much determination into his words as he could. There were tears on his face, his breathing wouldn’t calm, and he was talking just as much to convince himself as he was to convince Jon. “It’s gonna stop soon, and we’ll- we’ll get you patched up, we’re gonna be okay.”
“Okay.” There was an agonisingly long pause, accentuated only by Martin’s pained sniffles and Jon’s slow, patient breaths. “I… I can’t feel much of… the eye here.”
Martin nodded, unable to tell how much the wound was still bleeding. He could only feel the blood on Jon’s coat and drying over his hands, throat almost too tight to wrangle out words in response. “Okay. Okay, that’s good.”
That was a lie. It wasn’t necessarily good at all. It meant that the part of Jon that belonged to the eye was either gone or replaced by something else, but Martin didn’t want to think about it.
“Martin?” Jon’s voice was too soft.
“Y-yes?”
“If I don’t… if I don’t make it out of this–”
Martin couldn’t help a strangled, pained note escaping from his throat, any discernible words lost to how much he didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want it to happen, it couldn’t, not when they had made it this far. It wasn’t fair.
“Don't say that, God- please don't say that, I- I…”
Jon drew in another one of his gradual, patient breaths, chest rising beneath Martin’s hands before speaking again. “I need to tell you now, I… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, and I-” Jon’s gaze finally trailed from the leaves above him to meet Martin’s, and he felt his heart fracture. “I love you so, so much.”
Martin couldn’t fight back the sob that followed, hot tears bubbling over in his eyes again as he nodded quickly, biting down on the inside of his cheek until he could taste blood.
“I- I forgive you, I love you too, okay? You know that? I love you and you’re good and deserve to survive, and- and-” Martin’s voice broke before he could word anything else in the emotional hornet’s nest that was his mind, tears spilling down his cheeks, so he just continued to nod. “It’s gonna be- it’s gonna be okay. I know that.”
Jon’s lips twitched with a weak, sad smile, and Martin realised like a blow to the gut that Jon didn’t think he’d survive. He immediately did his best to silence the thought, fighting to steady his breathing as he felt more blood drying on his hands.
“I’m going to take… I’m going to try to see if the blood has stopped. Try- try to stay here a little longer,” Martin sniffled, mouth burning with the words he refused to believe he was saying.
“As long as I can,” Jon promised quietly.
Martin then slowly, carefully lifted his hands from where they were crushed over Jon’s coat, sticky with drying blood and beginning to move to peel it away from the wound. The fabric was soaked and darkened, glistening and the light making all the blood so painfully visible. It stained the material of Jon’s shirt in a wide pool, and it was all Martin could do to gently lift it away from the skin with a wide, trembling hand.
Jon’s breath hitched on a brief gasp of pain and Martin felt regret dig, hot and painful, into his chest.
“Sorry, sorry, I’m so… it’s…” Martin took a deep breath, blinking enough tears out of his eyes to look at the wound properly.
He could see the near-black strip along which the knife had fit, ringed with a wide patch of deep red, but he felt his lungs continue to fight for the right amount of air as he realised that it… was thinner than he had expected. And while the blood around it still left stains on Martin’s palms and fingers, it didn’t look to be blooming outwards any further– it had begun to slow.
His bag was weighing down on his shoulders, a sheet of sweat between his shirt and back, but he let go of Jon for just long enough to rifle through it for what he had brought of first aid supplies. He had brought it anyway, despite knowing it was practically impossible for Jon to be hurt. He would just heal any blow anyone was brave enough to deliver, the wounds instantly closing up as–
“Jon–” he croaked, voice unsteady. He felt lightheaded with the beginnings of hope, something bubbling up without his permission.
“Mm.”
“You, um- you said you can’t feel much of the eye here, does that mean you… you can still feel a little bit of it?”
There was a pause, heavy and crushing in the forest air around them, before Jon spoke again.
“...Some. I think… I think it’s fading. Just what’s left over… lingering for a bit longer, maybe? Or just… sensing myself,” he swallowed, head sinking back into the grass. “It’s… hard to think.”
“That’s okay, that’s okay–” Martin breathed as he shifted Jon enough to wrap the wound, slipping an arm beneath his shoulders and resisting the urge to just sit there in the grass and hold him, instead forcing himself to continue tending to the damage.
But his mind was churning with the idea that he had taken the knife out fast enough, that it had given the wound time enough to heal some of the damage, it didn’t matter how much, as long as it was enough to give Jon a better chance of making it out of this alive.
By the time Martin had finished cleaning and wrapping the wound, sweat beading on Jon’s face from pain, his hands were still shaking past what he could fight, fingers trembling as he wiped the blood off on his shirt.
“Still here?” he asked, unable to keep the horrible blend of panic and hope and dread from his voice.
“Still here,” Jon replied. And though his voice was weak in return, he didn’t sound as if he was fading any further, still clinging to life as Martin brushed a stray lock of hair out of Jon’s face.
“Good. Thank you, th- yeah. Can you tell how bad the bleeding is, or–? But if it’ll tire you out more, though, then–”
Before Martin could finish his fragmented sentence, Jon’s brow was furrowing with concentration, and Martin wanted to stop him from using up the little energy he had left, but he also wanted to know just as much as Jon did if the wound had been shallowed enough to keep him alive.
“It’s… urgh. I can’t… it’s– bad, but…” his frown deepened further. “I think that when–”
“B-Because I took the knife out before we got here there was enough time for it to start to put itself back together, a-and if you stay awake and we take good enough care of it, then you’ll make it out of here?” Martin replied hurriedly, the words spilling panickedly over his lips before he could fight them.
He regretted all of it, from the moment it formed on his tongue to the silence hanging after he said it, but he was stupidly, stupidly hopeful and he would not lose Jon.
A weak smile pulled at Jon’s lips, head tilting back against the grass again but his eyes remaining open. “...Th- that’s what I’m hoping.”
It took everything Martin not to let all the hope building in his chest bloom forth, knowing that it would only hurt more if something went wrong, if they failed or Jon had lost too much blood or if they were truly in the middle of nowhere.
He pressed the feeling back, instead just nodding shakily and sniffling again, brushing his fingers over the bandage he had wrapped over the wound. No more blood was seeping through, the gauze still appearing clean, and Martin knew it didn’t mean anything for sure– but it eased the pressure in his chest the slightest bit more.
He looked over to where Jon’s head was still resting in the grass, grey and red streaking a few of the strands that were splayed out in the clover around him, a loose crown decorated with blood.
His eyes were still slightly glazed, but his chest was still rising and falling, and after a moment he tilted his head toward Martin, exhaustion lined deep into his face but finally beginning to mirror the hope Martin was struggling to contain.
“I can’t… I can’t see very far, but there’s a… path just beyond those trees. Manmade, it… it, um… it leads…”
Martin wrapped a hand around Jon’s, his fingers cold but a pulse still beating beneath his wrist. “It leads…?”
Jon let out a shuddering breath. “I don’t know. But I think… I think it’s safe.”
“‘In case I don’t make it out of this.’ You idiot.”
Martin’s hands were trembling as he hung up the payphone, running a hand through his hair and walking back over to the bench Jon was slumped against.
Standing was still an issue, as it was almost impossible to stay upright without instantly getting nauseous and collapsing against Martin again, but Jon still had just enough of a sense of direction to navigate the two to a rest stop along the trail– he had no idea what it had actually been, he had only vaguely felt something that wasn’t more trees and clover and stumbled his way toward it, eventually allowing himself to be carried when Martin told him that his face had gone completely grey.
Martin sank down beside him on the bench, taking Jon’s hand and inhaling deeply. “There are people here, they’re- they’re real and everything, sending help as soon as they can. We’re pretty far away from things, but not too far– said just under an hour should be enough time to get here. Think you can manage until then?”
As faint as he felt, nothing feeling quite steady beneath him as he weakly squeezed Martin’s hands in return, Jon nodded. Sure, exhaustion was quick to set in, but he had been fighting the overwhelming urge to pass out for most of his life, and was plenty practised at keeping it at bay.
“Yeah… an hour– that’s not too bad. I can make that.”
Martin nodded, letting out a shaky breath as he set his bag beside him and shifted closer to Jon. A warm arm wrapped around his side, careful not to jostle the wound, and Jon sank into the hold, resisting the urge to shut his eyes. He couldn’t leave Martin stranded in the middle of unfamiliar woods with a payphone and an unconscious body, even if he was feeling more drained by the minute.
A hand moved to wrap around Jon’s cheek, palm wide and calloused as Martin pulled Jon closer. Weakly lifting his chin, Jon could see the fear that had been churning behind his eyes, something so scared and damaged that Jon knew he had done so much to cause. Guilt was piling in his chest, ghosts of fluttering hands over the wound in his chest and Martin’s horrified cries to him only serving to deepen the pain.
“You scared me, okay? I thought I was– I was going to have to go on my own.” Martin swallowed, bringing Jon to his chest, and Jon shakily brought an arm around to rest on Martin’s back. Even through the pain still throbbing in his chest, Martin was warm and safe, chin resting gently on the crown of Jon’s head.
He found that he didn’t even want to let himself slip away, not when it meant having to leave Martin’s arms, and certainly not when it would be leaving Martin alone again.
“I- I know,” Jon breathed against Martin’s chest, hoping that it was enough to get across how much it had hurt to commit to saying goodbye, to splutter out what might have been his last apology as he felt the blood soaking into the gauze over his chest.
He was more confident that he would survive now, fighting sleep in a comforting, agonisingly familiar hold that felt so much warmer than he had expected, and he melted further against it. “I’m sorry, I was just… I wanted you to know.”
Martin sighed. “I know. I just- I’m not going to lose you, Jon. Not after everything, not when we have another chance.”
Another chance.
Through his fight to stay conscious, Jon hadn’t even had the capability to process it, too busy bracing himself for the impact to wonder what would happen if it never came. It was something he hadn’t even really let himself think about, knowing there was still a chance a life with Martin would be ripped away from him– but every moment he remained there on the bench, Martin’s arms wrapped around him and knowing someone was coming to find them, the more he realised it might have been something… they could have again.
He couldn’t find a response, only nodding against Martin’s chest and still trying to fit the possibility into his mind.
Martin’s hands were warm and secure on Jon’s shoulders as he pulled away slightly, tear tracks dried on his cheeks and expression far too kind and patient for Jon to doubt. “We’ll be okay.”
And sitting there, the pressure of bandages tight over his chest and staring up in soft brown eyes, steadying breaths filling the forest air, Jon believed him.