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In retrospect, probably not a great idea to put great big eyes on the front of their base.
Cute as he is, Baxter’s a big bit of decoration, and his eyes are sized to go with it. This hasn’t actually bothered Martyn yet so far this season, which is funny, because right now it’s making him feel claustrophobic in the middle of a wide open stretch of badland.
“Alright?” says Jimmy, from behind him.
Martyn flinches. “Good question.”
It’s harder, with Tim. There’s only five of them left, from those days, and of those five only three of them have actually passed the bar of keeping memories around from prior seasons. Timmy doesn’t know how many times, how many futile, agonizing times Martyn has been around this block by now - doesn’t remember failed coups or hollow victories - probably wouldn’t even recognise Ren’s name.
Timmy never believes the Watchers are the reason they’re all in here, over and over and over again. Martyn has tried to convince him, a couple of times. It doesn’t work.
“S’it Baxter?”
“Not Baxter, he’s a good boy,” he says, fidgeting with the handle of his pickaxe where he’d stopped himself short of just gouging the damn thing’s eyes out. “I just worry, y’know. And Pearl helped us make it.”
“It’s made of concrete.”
“Does that matter? They can See us all the time, Tim, they’re not made of concrete, they’re real fucking things and they want us dead.”
It wasn’t about the fucking dog statue, not really. He’d just - it had struck him, walking by it, that the facade currently staring down at him with its goofy little stuck-out tongue and matching bubble butt on the back of the base was… reflective of the larger problem. The prison problem. The time loop problem. The endless cycle of death games problem. The way that they’re fucked with and dragged back and forth and made to dance like fucking marionettes, over and over again, on the strings of the Watchers who seem to think they taste better when they’re suffering and scared.
The way Timmy never gets to live long enough to mourn, and no one’s in the habit of mourning him, either. They’re all numb to it, now.
“D’you want me to take ‘em out?”
Oh. The concrete eyes again. “No, it’s - ‘s not about Baxter, really. Just reminded me. Of the rules.”
Jimmy thinks that Martyn is crazy. This, he knows. Personally, Martyn doesn’t think it’s paranoia if it’s true. This would be far from the first time that the Watchers have made them both their personal playthings, and Martyn doesn’t think that’s such an unreasonable leap of logic. They’re never really going to be safe from a force that can see literally everything in the universe, right? Not if it’s taken a fancy to them. They’re never going to be sure that the Watchers have stopped Looking, as long as they’re there to be seen. So he can never breathe easy, and the rest of them would do well to always have their hackles up too. There’s a reason that he learned to say “eyes” instead of “be careful”.
“You don’t remember,” says Martyn, “do you. Any of the other times.”
“No.”
“And you won’t remember this time when you’re home.”
“Oi,” he chides, “don’t count me out just yet.”
“Oh, come on, look at you,” says Martyn.
“Shut up! I could win!”
“Never ‘ave. Never. Not in all the times I’ve been around the block. They must blimmin’ hate you.”
“Stop it, they don’t!”
“Or maybe they love you, and that’s why they keep chasing you out to the losers’ lounge as soon as they possibly can.”
“We don’t know it’s them,” he says, because he knows that it’s his job to keep Martyn in check when he gets paranoid like this, even if he can’t remember why. “We don’t.”
Martyn scoffs. “Do you seriously have a better explanation?”
“Well, yeah. It’s Grian.”
“Oh, come on, Tim, you and I both know he’s one of ‘em these days. If anybody would be in on it, it’s him.”
Jimmy’s expression is dark. “He’s our friend. If they were still trying to - to mess with us… he wouldn’t let that stand.”
“He can and he has and he’s gonna keep doing it as long as they’re hungry, Tim.”
“It’s supposed to be a game,” he says, exasperated, “why can’t you just have fun with it?”
“I tried having fun with it!” He’s shouting, suddenly, right up in Jimmy’s face, yellow wings bristling at the corners of his vision. “I tried, and I tried, and I tried, and then I fucking tried again, and I even won the last game, and it doesn’t do anything. I’m still here.” He swallows. “Still stuck in this fucking border prison. With you.”
Jimmy’s face falls.
He’s wrong for that. He’s evil. He’s a bastard, but he needs to make somebody else feel as awful as he does. “Shackled to you, Tim, you and your stupid curse, ‘cause there’s no shot that’s coincidence. ‘Cause they know what we did, back then. They know who we were talking to, they know the plans we made, they know - everything - and they want us to suffer for it. We’re not safe, we never have been. And it just keeps going and going and going and we don’t break out and we can’t go home, as if I’ve even got a home, not since our home fell apart and everybody else decided they could just - move on and forget about the very real threat that’s come back around and trapped us.”
“You’re out of line,” says Jimmy, cold and quiet, which is maybe worse than if he’d started shouting right back. That’s what Martyn wanted, he realises - a screaming match. Something to make him feel like he’s earned this horrible black feeling that’s spread all through him.
“Yeah? Well, I don’t see why I would have to play nice, anyway. It’s not like you’ll remember it.”
He stammers something incoherent, irritated. There it is - that’s the fire he wants.
“No, no, you get to go home all stupid and clueless about the shit we have to deal with, and here I am actually picking up after it, here I am, the only one who actually cares about our safety -”
“Stop it,” Jimmy insists.
“- while you keep pretending it’s all fine, it’s just a game, Martyn, why don’t you just ignore the death games and the curse and -”
Something occurs to him.
“and you’re part of it, aren’t you?”
“What?”
Oh, it’s obvious now. “Coming in here after I won, after I broke my back trying to give you people a spectacle and nothing happened, you’re trying to mock me. Keep me going when I’ve got every right to stop putting on a show. Well, you can’t fool me twice.”
“Martyn, I don’t understand.”
“I remember now. That’s your first mistake. I remember when you did this back in Last Life, I know this feeling.” He can see the imperfections even in the air around him, now that he’s looking. The inconsistent wiggle of the border. Pixels in the floor. Jimmy’s face doesn’t look like him, not quite. They can’t get everything perfect - more than likely he’s nothing but a pumpkin on a stand again.
“You’re scaring me,” says the thing that is not Jimmy, and Martyn snaps.
“Good! ‘Cause I’ve got you figured out!” He grabs the impostor, both hands on his collar, throwing it off balance so that if he is dealing with a moving target he still has the upper hand. Don’t I deserve to freak you out for a change, after all the years you’ve spent tormenting me?
“Martyn, stop!”
“Why, so you can wipe my memory again? Make me fall back in line like a good little puppet? I’m not - having - it!”
Now he shoves, sends the thing that is not Jimmy sprawling to the ground, wishing it would break the illusion when the pumpkin splattered on impact. “STOP!”
He can’t stop. Doesn’t want to. In this moment, with his enemy beneath him, all he wants to do is keep kicking. “Take his face off! I can tell you’re not him! I won’t let you keep lying to me!”
“Grian!” the Watchers’ facsimile calls from the floor. “Help! Time out! Why don’t we have a plan in place for this!”
“Don’t bother calling for help,” says Martyn, feeling a little like he’s floating, “we based all the way over here for a reason. There’s no one close enough to hear you.”
“Martyn - Martyn, when did they replace me? Do you think I died?”
“I’m not entertaining questions you already know the answers to.”
“I’m tryna make you think for a second, Martyn, jesus, please!”
So he pauses, just for a moment, just to run it through. Jimmy hasn’t died for good, at least not in front of him. They’re both red - that stupid blunder with the dragon made sure of it - but they’re not quite dead yet. Of course, there’s every possibility that Jimmy’s just gone somewhere else at the minute, that he’ll wander back over to find Martyn rambling to himself at the empty floor, maybe draw his sword and put the poor bastard out of his misery while he’s distracted. Wouldn’t that be rich. Certainly break the curse, at the very least.
“Please,” he repeats, “I don’t - never seen you get like this. Genuinely didn’t know it could get this bad.”
He feels very suddenly like a massive wave of fog has rolled over his brain. It’s too full and his head hurts, and there’s maybe black spots at the edges of his vision, and his mouth is dry.
“Just - back away. Please. For a second.”
Martyn stumbles back obediently, finding that his hand is ready on the hilt of his sword where it sits in the scabbard on his belt. Everything hurts.
He blinks, and keeps blinking, and tries to make the fog clear.
The figure that’s still lying on the ground does not become a Watcher or a splattered pumpkin. It doesn’t even vanish altogether. It’s just Tim.
Tim, who is staring at him, terrified, like he’d been fully convinced that Martyn was going to kill him.
… Oh, god, Martyn had been about to kill him.
“Are -” Jimmy’s voice breaks “- um,” he swallows, “are you okay?”
Martyn drops to his knees.
“Martyn?”
Everything hurts, and he nearly killed his best friend, thinking that it was a Watcher playing tricks.
“Martyn, can you say something, please,” says Jimmy hesitantly.
“Uhm -” what can he even say “- mm.”
“You’re okay?”
No, he isn’t. He’s beyond saving. He doesn’t deserve Jimmy making the effort to try.
“But you’re not - you’re not gonna hurt me,” he continues, without the response he wanted.
Martyn nods. He probably shouldn’t hold his sword, in that case. His hands dig fingernails into his upper arms instead.
“Okay.” Jimmy takes a deep breath and pushes up into a sitting position. He’s sweating badly, a sheen of it glinting on his face. “I, er. I’m gonna go inside, I think. So. You can come back in when you’re ready.”
Martyn watches Jimmy dart inside a little bit too quickly.
He sits, alone, in silence, for a while, coming back to himself.
He’s not carrying any water.
That’s what the dog bowl’s for, is the joke that pings at the back of his head, which is so stupid that it makes him laugh against the bad taste that’s sticking in his throat.
Eventually, he climbs the siding and takes a pickaxe to Baxter. As much as it wasn’t actually the problem, there’s a sick satisfaction in destroying the nearest pair of eyes anyway. When he’s done, he hops back down to the ground and ducks in through the doorway. Timmy’s in there, sitting on the edge of the bed, eyeing the furnaces.
Martyn doesn’t say anything when he comes in. He just comes and sits on the other edge, hands on his knees, letting himself be defenseless.
Jimmy’s arms wrap round him tight enough to make it all feel real again.