Work Text:
And: the soft, sharp sound of a cup being set on a table.
It is gently muffled, as all is obscured in this musty, warmthless place. As devised, Robert Smirke worked in reverberation, in lack. The walls are absorbent: they eat sense.
It is a dank refuge, where the rats bury themselves to hide from the hawk’s search.
The archivist is humbled here, in the refuge of a blindfold, of tied wrists and gagged tongue. The quiet feels like dry fabric on his throat. A dull, pounding headache. Here, he wishes he had not left his broken glasses seven worlds behind, and has accumulated several bruises for the clumsiness.
There is refuge in the dim hunger of this intruder, a willing prisoner of war. It is better this way. The blankets are ancient, thin, but soft.
“For the nerves,” Martin mutters, gesturing somewhat weakly at the tea. ‘March 2nd’ of course has gone on for months now, and no spring has come. The tea is cold.
But therein is still the luxury of tasting something meant to soothe. To go through the motions of human living.
“It should help you sleep, or-” He looks down, sheepishly, the most useless hint of frustration in the tired sympathy. “- relax, at least. I know it’s been…” He gives up. “It might be nice.”
Jon reaches out a hand, the other clutching the blanket with a trembling grip. “Thank you- it’s. It’s alright, Martin. Thank you. Really. Thank you,” He repeats, glancing clumsily up and down as if he has forgotten how to speak.
Martin sighs and walks across the room, lowering himself gently onto the edge of the well worn mattress, laid as best as it could be on the concrete floor. “I just put a packet in a bit of water and stirred, Jon. It wasn’t a bother.” A little hopeless laugh. “Not my best, I would say. You were just… shaking is all.”
Jon waves his hand dismissively, swallowing a mouthful of cold chamomile and sitting back. “Just- just the withdrawal. Since we’ve been- down all day, it’s. It’s fine. It’s better.”
It’s a heart rate which has sustained itself at 100 beats per minute for about 48 hours now. That terrible feeling, of letting it fade, letting it calm only to be shocked like a bolt the moment the body realizes it’s still there. It used to happen, sometimes, that dull, prolonged panic. When he was a teenager. One could only try very hard to ignore it until it went away.
These last two years he’s gotten used to the feeling again. Taking sleeping pills. Waking up anyway.
No use for that now.
He squeezes his eyes shut tight, in attempt to ground his wandering breath. Hearing, tasting, feeling the ache of pressure, the beholding sat underneath the eyelids.
Every single one of them.
Two his own. All more that bulged and split his skin when that deepest betrayal spilt from his blaspheme mouth. Sometimes there are more or less. They do not match his own, that were, for most of his life a deep brown- they do not belong to him, pupils a camera-clear, radiant green.
They do not open in the tunnels. They behave. The slits they emerge from are only raw scars outlining his face, barely even noticeable in the dim lightbulb glow. When they are closed, Martin doesn’t even mind meeting his gaze.
“God, I’m. I’m sorry.” Martin is silent for several beats, and Jon can feel the brutal jumble of words fighting to stay inside his partner’s mouth.
He sighs.
“I’ve sort of run out of soothing statements I feel in any way comfortable saying.” Martin hugs his legs, the stained sweatshirt loose about his frame. He used to fill it out better, Jon realizes, and feels a pang of guilt. “Like- what am I supposed to say? It’ll all be over soon?” A sad laugh. “Whatever happens, things will not continue as they are?”
Jon stares into his cup, as his reflection distorts. He recognizes himself, but that is a sorry disappointment. The more-than-occasional strands of white in the long overgrown hair. The pitted, scarred skin, that mark of use , deep, bruised circles beneath the eyes, like dirty handprints dug across his face.
He knows without a doubt that this is himself. That it has been his choices which led him to this place, this body, every step of the way. That he is more himself than he has ever been, and nothing like him at all.
It’s true. An end is near. One end or another. Martin’s words sink into him like hot candle wax, a soothing pain.
“No, no. That’s… fine. It’s… comforting as it can be. I’ll take anything.”
Martin smiles, a despicable, sorrowful thing. He sighs, and begins to get ready for bed.
Jon watches him as he does it.
Not for any… reason. Out of any hunger. He has simply already done so, in that overlarge sweater he borrowed back when the world did not stare as it does. He waits for nothing except for the lights to be cut, and for nothing to remain worth watching.
It is a useless, admiring feeling, the archivist half-lidded and mute as Martin strips the sweater, folding it upon the makeshift side table and replacing it with his one other. He has brought two with him in the world forsaken: blue, and grey. The blue one has turned grey as well. He folds the grey, shivering slightly, all his little hairs standing on end. Puts on the one that was once blue.
He had so many nice clothes. Tried to wear them a lot, back before it all. Ties, jackets, jewelry. Now it is just this.
Dim and blurred, Jon recalls Martin’s time trapped living in the Archives. Watching him fumble to stay out of the way, watching him struggle and collapse under the weight and still stay to tear the worms from under Jon’s skin. Holding him down as he screamed under a bloody, vodka soaked corkscrew.
There was something utterly grotesque about how deeply he resented the man for trusting him- how unsuited he was to witness any moment of vulnerability as simple as the bare skin of his body. How little difference it made to Martin’s love.
Now he watches, as is his domain, unpunished, and waits for his lover to come to bed.
At last, Martin sighs and crosses the stained concrete, closing the threadbare curtain pretending to be a door and reaching for the cord hanging from the bare light, the ceiling criss-crossed with rusting metal pipes, the long-shriveled veins of the metal cadaver.
“Sorry for the wait, Jon…” He rubs his eyes, voice small and worn. He gestures to the light. “You done with your tea?”
Jon blinks a few times before it registers, and looks up, nodding and setting aside the near-empty cup he absentmindedly clutched.
Martin smiles, as only he can, and plunges them into darkness.
A mundane darkness. A grey darkness, that outlines can still be made out within. Yet the solidness of the man is hollowed out to make room for his eyes, and in this severed place, hugs the blanket in dull discomfort until he can feel soft flesh against his.
Jon takes a shuddering breath, as Martin lays down beside him and pulls the blanket around. Martin smells of sweat, and dust, and familiarity. The small monster feels for his lover, blind and weak, and clumsily grasps a hand. It’s warm. He wishes to be enveloped, smothered, ended. No more thinking about the choice he knows in his mold-pale, rotten core is already made.
“Oh, Jon,” Martin half-whispers, finally feeling the cold of his hand. The frantic, too-fast beat of the heart, and he pulls the sorry thing into an embrace, the man’s head resting under his chin. “That alright?”
The bulk of long, tangled hair at Martin’s chest nods.
“That’s it,” the man soothes, and stares out into the nothing, an expression of deep exhaustion as he slowly combs his fingers through Jon’s hair. “Just relax. Just…”
He breathes. Tries to breathe, a manually difficult thing, drinking in the warmth of a lifetime. All the warmth of his lifetime. Perhaps all lifetimes. A void of love, Martin, and he, and the great and terrible eye, still so new.
And his breath comes shallow and fast, and catches, bringing with it half a wail.
“Martin,” is whispered, rapid and loose, and the voice upon it breaks. “I’m-”
He feels like a child.
“I’m scared.”
He is an academic, who has spent his last two years doing nothing but recording a thousand thousand words about the experience of being frightened.
That is all. There is nothing better. It is an overwhelming, all-consuming dread. All the world and all within. It is the only thing which feeds him, and cut off from the world, the stomach consumes himself.
Martin’s arms wrap around him tight, fighting off any further thought.
“I know,” Martin mutters. “I know.”
And Jon closes his eyes against Martin’s chest, and begins to weep.
He knows he is doing it. Yet it registers as nothing. Aching and terrible against that stained sweater.
It’s like bliss, the dull sting, the bloodletting. Like catharsis. For a moment, he can almost taste absolution, forgiveness, grasping and clawing just out of reach.
Martin does not know it is for the last time.
That tomorrow, he will take his place, as a dislocated shoulder is returned so violently to its joint, and all the world will feel it as the body screams and cries and is whole.
All he is is that limb. A volatile element. One moment of agony, of heartbreak, of despair. And there will be nothing left but sight.
One more night like this, a man capable of grief, worthy of pity. A body which can feel the weight of horror’s archive.
Martin does not try to stop him, to say anything, just holding him steady with the slow drone of his breath, holding him tight, safe, shivering and warm in terror.
And in a moment it is broken, as Martin spasms away from him in sudden fright, a hand wrenching his shoulder away.
“ Jon ,” he rasps, in confusion, feeling in the dark, the archivist’s face just visible through the crack of dim light past the curtain.
“Wh- what- what’d I do-”
For a moment, in delirium he is convinced Martin can see it on his face- the conviction, the betrayal, the utter proof that there is nothing left of him to love.
But Martin cannot see like the Archivist can. No one can. It’s almost a shame.
His eyes shoot down, to Martin’s chest.
The place over the heart is sullied by his tears- a damp spot, dark, and thick and corroding. In confusion, Jon places a hand on his face. And:
“...Oh,” he whines.
The human body creates tear ducts for this purpose: to purge, to comfort, to cleanse. But all the eyes upon him are not so kind. They have grown upon him with no permission from nor acknowledgement of humanity.
Sticky and hot, a metallic stench. They weep blood.
Martin stares in horror for only a moment, and then only deflates, numbly stripping the sweater and laying back down shirtless, mumbling.
“Can’t have shit in Armageddon,” he jokes, but it has gotten to him, his voice worn.
Jon laughs. But it is with a derision. A diminutive apathy.
It felt good, didn’t it? If that pathetic bleeding could ease the night he would take it. If there is one proven thing about the Archivist, from first cigarette to last rites, it is that he will always take it, till his body be naught but dry, blackened tar. But he only has so much blood. And he could surely cry all night long.
“Fuck, Jon,” Martin sighs, grey and blurry in the darkness. Soft at the edges. “I’m- am I helping? Should I… try to ignore it?”
“I…”
Jon collapses back onto the pillow.
It bothers Martin. And he cannot be blamed for not wishing to hold in embrace the dread creature of eyes and nerves that wears the body of Jonathan Sims. He shudders a breath and stops his tears.
“It’s alright. I feel better now. I feel better.”
He speaks no truth. But that is alright. He lets Martin breathe a sigh of relief, and close his eyes, one arm loose around Jon’s waist.
“I love you,” Jon confesses, as if it makes any difference.
He does. This is not a lie. Perhaps that makes it all the worse.
“Love you too,” comes a sleep-addled reply, weak. And Martin is gone, and the night sets in.
He lays still and beholds.
Martin is a wreck. His face is pale and red, eyes lined with grief, strands of thin, whitened hair caught with cobwebs, smudges of dust and grime on the back of his hands.
The only thing he could think about… from the moment he realized Martin had been taken by Annabelle was-
It wasn’t even about getting him back, that he would be in danger. He knew Martin would be alright. He knew- really, in a way, Martin had gone because he wanted to.
It was about apologizing. He hadn’t gotten to apologize, and that was all that mattered the moment it really set in. In all his eyes, alone in that dark room surrounded by cameras, staring at the memory of Martin’s stunned, disgusted face.
Jon needed to prove that he knew himself wrong. That he wasn’t truly that selfish, that beneath his skin still lay something else but a black hole, in great and growing lust of fear.
But by the time he had the chance- and the next hundred times after, he-
Couldn’t.
He has not apologized. And now he cannot. Because he is going to choose the lesser evil. The evil he can see, see all of in excruciating detail. That he can extinguish.
Martin could not understand, and never will. It is not as if he does not understand it is cruel- lord, he has passed cruelty. He walks as god among men and smites as he pleases. But he could not let them go free.
He will put them all to sleep. And it will be horrible, and slow, and crown him in a glory of which love he cannot refuse. But then it will end, and nothing will matter anymore.
God. He is really going to do this. He is. He cannot believe himself. The morrow is dreaded with the deepest, most profane longing. And Martin is asleep, and will not know.
The mattress is a stained and mildewed thing, bowing under the weight of them. It is still preferable to being on his feet. He should be singing praises that there is a mattress to be had at all. But it is hard, and slightly damp, and he does not sleep, not really.
Jon tries to turn his mind to something kinder.
…
…Static. A great, blurry mass. He blinks, wading through cotton, fearing, for a moment, that all was gone forever.
A solitary spark, grasped clumsily.
-The time the admiral took a nap on his chest while he was recording. He couldn’t reach to turn it off for nearly fifteen minutes. Yes… that was nice.
He tries to focus his mind on it, to grasp the feeling of fur, the afternoon light through the window, the sight of that contented cat’s face. But it is like trying to scoop molasses with a fork.
He… he cannot think here. Everything just slips through his fingers- memories, thoughts, attempts to communicate. His convictions, his own personality, even… patchy, and vague. Sightless.
Yet he lives in antithesis to refuge. If he wishes to have it, he must take it from another.
And it tears at Jon, an erosive and cumulative loss of self.
It didn’t used to be like this. He remembers what it was like to live before the eye. It was not long ago at all. It did not seem as if he was operating without half his mind. He could function. It did not feel like he was always starving… or… did it?
What if it was? What if his life has always been this lacking? Jon was a miserable, friendless, irritable man in the life he lived before. What if it is true, that the eye was the only thing which could ever have saved him?
Which would be worse?
Or is it simply that he is dead? That he is dead, as he was dead, as he should have stayed dead, and the eye is the only thing which lives in a mass of cold unrotting brain matter?
He cannot remember Salesa’s. It is a blank, bleeding hole. The archivist attempts to imagine what it might have been like, from those last dreamlike impressions, leftover emotions he was able to barely grasp.
A fuzzy sun. Birdsong. A deep, life-consuming weight of exhaustion.
He remembers needing to sleep again. Needing to eat again. He does not remember the sleeping, nor the eating. The feeling. The release. Just the sudden lack. Just the dying. Because those things- those things belonged to Jonathan Sims, the man whose body he inhabits.
The one that thinks: that horrid, beautifully winged thing which emerged from his chrysalis: this is the Archivist.
Who was Elias, after all, before he was Jonah? No one. Someone. A perfect host.
Jon shivers, wrapped close in Martin’s loose embrace.
He should have died.
Martin would have been devastated. This is a thought which comes immediately to follow it. He would have disappeared with Peter Lukas, and never bothered once to look back.
But is he in any better way now?
Maybe. Maybe not.
There is a world where Martin is alone, and he likes it. Where he is fed, and he is powerful, and the world goes on as it was meant to. Where Melanie and Basira cannot fault Jon, because he is dead, and he did what was right, and was above the loving gaze of the watcher.
That is selfish of him. Of all people he knows to be loved by fear is not to be free of fear. Why would he wish it upon Martin, even if he insisted he wanted it?
Upon the soft man, he is a parasite. Nothing like a lover.
Jon is beset by another shiver. Martin’s eyelids flutter, and he makes the smallest sound. But does not awaken.
For a moment, Jon does not breathe, in great pains not to be a bother. It- it cannot be easy laying beside him. The restless witness. He waits, staring. And… at last, exhales. Face buried awkwardly against Martin’s chest.
He remembers hearing it. Muffled through the wall. He took- in desperation sometimes, while Peter haunted the institute- to camping out against the back wall, one ear pressed to the great oak door of Martin’s self-imposed prison. Of course he always fled the second it sounded like Martin might open it- but he rarely did. Hours spent this way, with nothing but the occasional sigh or mutter to himself.
Peter’s voice, that once, came like a wisp of sad, damp air.
“Elias is right, you know. All this, over a man who really… doesn’t seem to like you at all?”
An unenthusiastic chuckle.
“Of course, why do this for Elias? He doesn’t like me either, not in any real way. We have our fun. But I wouldn’t waste a tear on him. Would I.”
The last bit veering low, almost condescending.
And deep silence. A horrible dampened earth.
“There’s no good in becoming attached. Because there is no such thing as unconditional love, Martin. Hm?”
It made Jon so sick he stood and stumbled off, walking nauseous and shivering back to his office.
It was… feeding, wasn’t it. Listening. Knowing, unwanted, unannounced.
He- he hadn’t meant it that way. But he wasn’t… empty after doing it. Just sick, like even his body knew it was wrong, this perverted, masturbatory thing, gorging on his own hatred.
The worst part about it was that it was true. Back then… back before all this, before Prentiss-
He wasn’t… playing hard to get, or just being shy, in any conceivable way. It was a deep, personal, purposeful rejection of trust.
Why he acted the way he did- even he does not understand. Cannot give any excuse.
The first time he met Martin, he had barely sat in that dusty office- his office- for an hour, shot full with the nervous ego of a completely unqualified promotion. In his head there was, at least, a notion of defense- of a prestigious gaze to which he must either hold firm or crumble beneath. That it was either to eat or be eaten. But it was… deeper than that. The idea of knowing Martin at all, of having any interest in what he did, who he was outside of work… repulsed never would have encompassed it.
There was… a fear. It was a fear , he knew in the core of his bones. An ugly, shriveled thing, fed by a lifetime of friendless, awkward mediocrity, meaningless honors lists, short, failed relationships. Jon was a flat, brick wall, and it was the only way he could possibly survive. God, what if he were to grow to care? How lost, how hopelessly lost would he be?
To love was to destroy himself, he knew.
To love is to destroy the other, he knows.
And it is a whole new world, a heart pinned open in horrible yawning affection; yet it is a whole new world, one which rewards nothing but fear.
This is the world made for them, walking hand in hand together through the grass and reeds, his skirts ruffled by the wind, Martin’s cheeks red with cold. Lonely and hungry, the light in the sky a sick green, the romantic lives out his dream.
Martin lives in the real world. He almost- almost is glad to deny the watcher his mind.
He despises himself no less in this world than in those where he is alone and miserable. He hurts people here. So many people. But he loves Martin, and it is still the most joy he has felt in his entire sorry life.
Who is the Archivist to put this all on him?
At that thought a deep pang of guilt blooms within him, spreading from the bottom of his throat to the tips of his fingers, a curling shudder.
Jon- does not want to do this anymore. To know that there is no step left, no action nor inaction to take in these boots that does not result in the pained cry of a thousand underfoot. He does not want the ability to make any more decisions. But even the action of leashing himself, of forcing the lead upon another- it could only-
He who wore the Watcher’s Crown, that became as fully as any mind might ever become, would know this all the more deeply. But he would be so full of eyes… he would not be able to feel anything else.
That dreaded, beautiful consummation of sweet finality. The ultimate joining of flesh and raw power. It- he knows… it would feel so, so good. His body is no longer human enough to want anything else. He never wanted anything like this before.
He must stop thinking upon it. He must not let himself desire it. To be anything but resigned- Otherwise he would be no better than Jonah in his ivory tower, a selfish, cowardly tyrant.
There is only one correct emotion. It is not hard to feel it in this world, though all that runs through his veins now is its reward. Is he a monster for wishing to be rid of it, to take the easy relief for only a moment? Now-
It is not hard to feel it, Archive. Feel it.
Be only despair.
Jon tries to breathe, pressed sweating and feverish to Martin against the pillow. But he cannot see. It is so dark. He cannot see.
The archivist commands himself over the fear. Calm. See nothing but his lover’s face, his eyes closed.
Look only upon him, take one rattling, slow breath after another.
…
…thoughts of varying relevance. Softer. Numbed. The lukewarm tea swirling sluggishly in his grip. The fuzzy-edged half memories of a house where the sun came in the windows, like in that book he’d really liked, when he was eight. Martin’s old sweater, that really dumb one. The crawling of a spider along a near-infinite web.
The dregs of the tea. You couldn’t read the future in them. The cups Martin brought in after his mum died. Chipped and strange. They would only look right in some sort of parlor, tablecloth, blowing in a nonexistent wind. Is he remembering Salesa’s? He hopes so. Jon grips his cup, hoping dearly not to break it.
“More tea, young master?” Annabelle jokes, that familiar, too sweet voice, and Jon only sits still in confusion.
“Don’t call me that,” he wanders. Staring at the tablecloth. The table is broken, of course, under the tea plates. He did that. Best not to look at that pattern underneath.
But he is glad for it. A chance for some hot, fresh tea. He’s parched, really. He could cry- or, well, he couldn’t.
The curtain ripples around them, and keeps blowing in front of the table. In front of Martin’s face, though he doesn’t seem to care. Jon does, though. Jon wants to see him.
“Young mistress, then,” Annabelle smiles, as she pours a steady stream of a thick red syrup from the teacup andinhereyessheknowstherewillbenoreturnnoexitaboxofwanderforevermore.
“No, it’s… the principle of the thing…” Jon mutters, words fading as he looks down at himself. Are those Gertrude’s clothes? A little nicer than it seemed she usually wore. That prestigious old portrait of her they had, in the entrance hall to the archives. There were displayed every single one of them, the archivists, in a long line, their eyes all perfectly aligned. He thought it ridiculous then, how little the tastes of the institute had changed since it was founded. When he was promoted he had the gall to ask Elias when they wanted a fancy portrait of him .
Elias had only told him he would know.
Of course, he’d been too indisposed by the time Jon truly assumed that mantle to have one commissioned. But he wouldn’t be surprised, after all, if in that hall a perfect portrait of him had nonetheless appeared, his eyes identical now to all who came before.
Jon runs his hand across the lacy blouse, the long, pleated skirt.
“I don’t have any clothes this nice,” he mutters, but his protests are enveloped by overwhelming thirst.
It wouldn’t be rude to drink now, right? Martin is drinking his tea- the outline of him. He’s dressed nice too. The sweater he wore the first time Jon met him. He called it ugly. It was.
Martin’s mother had a terrible taste in china. But Jon takes the cup in both hands and empties it in a second, giving a great, shaking sigh. It spills down his chin, staining the tablecloth deep red itfollowsasthewindasthetreesashisownbreaththatheknowsnothingofsaveitfollowsanditisgettingcloser. It is spiced. Metallic, and smothered in adrenaline. With it his eyes are glazed.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Martin’s voice echoes, as the curtain blows across his face. Through his body. “It’s nice.”
He is still thirsty.
How have they become like this? What is wrong with their bodies? All the rules they were taught no longer fit.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” Annabelle repeats, and crawls onto the third seat wearing lace and velvet, raising her cup and letting it catch the dappled afternoon light. Whatever is in it moves. “It’s nice.”
“Martin, I miss you,” Jon’s voice wanders across the table. “I miss you when you’re asleep.”
“...I can’t help you with that,” his lover replies, voice slight, resources of empathy exhausted. There is a dragging pause. “Is this sleep to you? Does it feel like sleep?”
Jon shakes his head, mind foggy and aching. “No. I’m exhausted. Too aware. I’m just making things up.”
“And you can return this world to one that sleeps,” Annabelle smiles. “One where you can sleep.”
“Or one that does not wake up again,” Jon does not mean to respond. Monotone, half-voiced.
“Jon.”
Martin frowns. Deeply, a soft thing, but weary beyond belief. The curtain blows away from him now, though his voice is no closer.
For a moment they only look upon each other, in this not-room next to a window. He doesn’t dare touch those sheer, glowing curtains, because of course, the sun isn’t there behind them.
For a moment he almost thinks Martin is actually looking at him. The one that’s lying beside him, asleep and shivering. That the eyes which meet Jon’s are truly lucid. There beside him in this not place.
And Annabelle returns to the broken table, a steaming teapot in her hands. “More tea? Martin was kind enough to prepare another pot.” She smiles, the bruise-purple of her eyes empty and dark.
“I-”
But Martin- the realness of Martin is gone. He is there. But only in this imagining. Only a vision. And Martin is drinking out of his cup, and there is nothing in it but dust.
“More tea?” Martin offers, and drinks the air.
And the archivist is parched. Withering, his mouth dry and cracked.
As a weeping beggar.
“Please.” He accepts. Annabelle pours the blood into the china, and he takes it, hand shaking as he slowly, desperately brings it to his lips thesheerwhitecurtainoffersnowarmthasthelonelightsuggestsheisseparateandthiswillbeunchangedinthisimaginaryroomwhereherepeatsthesamenothingscriptandJonsitsbeforehimdrinkingbloodandheisbeautifulwithhishairuplikethisheissobeautifulandseesallandyetcanneverunderstandasinglethingatallandthespiderwomanwillonlyservehimwhathewillnotdrinkandhisloverwillonlydrinkwhatisnotservedandwhentheywakeuptherewillbenothingleftofhimtosaveifhecanbesavedwouldhewanthimtobesavedandjonislookingthoughhepromisednottolookandlookingeyesbleedingcannotlookawaypeeledlayerbylayerexaminingeatingstoppleasejonpl
Martin screams, and Jon is thrust from it, cold hand cupped around the man’s face torn away. The blanket is thrown away, and-
Oh- god… god…
It spills from his lips, from his eyes as proof of crime, and the archivist can barely force his lips to form words, his eyes to blink. Blink. Just-
A deep, shuddering breath.
“I am- I am so… so sorry, I-”
Martin shakes himself , slightly, his skin slick with sweat, clinging to the blanket. Jon is not much better off, and when they separate the both let a short noise of pain, the dried blood fused between the hair on his chest and Jon’s sweater. Molding together like dead things.
The separation is sharp and stripping. He wants it back. Wants to bleed until their bodies can no longer come apart.
The groggy dread of the morning sets in, with heavy clarity.
Martin glances towards him, for a moment, wiping away his shadowed eyes. “It’s- it’s alright. You just… startled me. Is all. It’s just…”
Jon blinks.
Has he-
That was not-
Did he imagine feeding from him like that? Half-dreamt the great flowing sea of terror in his eyes?
Or did it happen, and Martin would deny him apology?
It is the end day. Nothing could change that. They go on as decided, his transgression unacknowledged. Breathe water, or swim above and breathe smoke.
The watcher offers no answer but its call. To surface into the light of what replaced the sun and open his eyes, his eyes, to ascend the tower. To see.
And here is the end.
“...Nothing,” Martin shakes his head, and heavily, as though he had laid down only a moment ago, pushes himself up. “Morning, Jon.”
The Archivist only stares.
And the attempt of a lover reaches out a hand, weary and grey. “Right, then. Let’s be done with it?”
Memory of sun, of rest has had its last, in a camera's broken lens.
Deception, agony, apotheosis; love, ignition, collapse. Alone, together. Together, alone.
He takes it: an emaciated, scarred brown against soft warm nothingness, and rises, in mourning of night.
“Right.”