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Sometimes, when a stranger says ‘Hello’, ‘How are you?’, or some other bland and friendly greeting, as superficial as a breeze, Jon is seized with the urge to fix them with his gaze and tell them, ‘My name is Jonathan Sims and the worst thing I ever did was save the world’.
To say, ‘I hold within me a love so strong that it doomed worlds, a warped corruption of all that should be most good and beautiful; my hands will never be free of blood, nor my sleep, from the screaming.’
It’s an urge which he has, so far, admirably resisted.
Jon’s feelings on poetry might be rather less clear cut these days, but he has precisely zero interest in turning into the Ancient Mariner: leaning his own metaphorical rotting albatross on the shoulders of unwilling listeners, and spouting off about the slimy things he’d wrought, with something almost of pride, mixed in with his confession; because, sure, anyone can have guilt, but his … oh, his spanned a universe.
And the idea of his story becoming twisted into something lyrical, something beautiful, was a jarring and painful one. A love so vast and so very powerful? Some people would hear that with stars in their eyes, would drink it in like nectar, squeezed directly from the nipples of the gods.
Would think of their own love - which had begun to bend and dangerously fray in the face of wet socks on the floor (again) or that one excruciating joke, which was cute at first, maybe, but wore very thin after a decade - and secretly, or not-so-secretly, wish that for themselves; consequences be damned.
As for Jon, he thinks that he might just hate love, these days.
Though, not Martin, of course. He could never hate Martin - not just the centre of his heart, his reason for being, ‘his’ anything at all, but something far better: a good and decent human being in his own right. Martin, who stuck to his principles all the way through; who made the wrong choice - in Jon’s opinion - but kept to that choice, even though he had to kill his dearest love to do so.
Jon hadn’t been that strong. He had seen the Fears clearly, in his mind, gnawing through worlds like all-you-can-eat buffets, ripping and tearing at them hungrily: in mere nibbles, at first, then building up to great, raw gobbets, in time, until they too, would fall. He had seen all this and vowed to prevent it, no matter what; then had unleashed them anyway, because, at that moment, everything had crumpled away and seemed meaningless, with the loss of the lighter, the tearing of reality, and the knowledge that even this last, most bitter, decision was being stolen away from him.
The sense that the Web had seen it all, even his defiance, and pulled his strings right to the last.
Everything had seemed unreal and broken and already lost; all but Martin; the only thing worth saving.
As for Jonathan Sims; he was someone who could twist and break anything, even love. Perhaps there was a reason that he had felt that sharp, painful connection with Jane Prentiss, when he read her statement, so long ago; felt her fear and her love and her aching need for love, all mixed up and curdled together, desperate and rotten; and so very understandable.
Jon, too, had clutched at love, in his hunger and desperation and despair, and he had poured everything he was into it; had lifted it above all things.
But love was never meant to bear so much, to be all the words that had ever been written of it, in hope and reverence and plea; to be thrown up onto a pedestal so high that no one could see more than the outlines of what they worshipped, so devoutly.
Jon’s starved love had surged up like a savage, rampaging beast, destroying all in its path, and there was nothing he could do in this life, or any other, to take that back, or to unwind the damage he’d done: all for one single, small world, amongst multitudes, and for a man who liked cows and quiet and helping people in small, important ways; who was kind, all through, except for a thin streak of bitterness and a chill, persistent, layer of fog.
All he could do was live, however much that hurt him, and give Martin all the better parts of his love - the ones which didn’t gnash their teeth and clutch at their breast, in wailing (and embarrassingly melodramatic) agony; help whomever he was able to, in whatever inadequate ways he could; and take as little as possible more from the world which had unwittingly taken in its own destroyer, cradled him and nurtured him back to health; even as the timer had been set to its own, as yet distant, apocalypse.
“Jon? You okay? You seem … distant, today.”
I ruined a billion, billion, lives, because I couldn’t bear the world without you, and every step I take is weighted with the corpses.
“Sorry, Martin, just … thinking about paperwork. My new job might be refreshingly free of eldritch abominations, but it has regrettably retained all the horrors of filing.”
”Ah, of course, filing, the true destroyer of souls.”
Martin smiled at him, with a mixture of amusement and just a hint of relief (Jon was so much better at lying these days) then kissed him with all the sweetness he didn’t deserve. And they walked on, hand in hand, in the fading light of evening; while Jon’s own secret albatross, its carcass putrid with worms, pressed close and heavy and private, against his breast.