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The Archivist opened his eyes to sunlight.
But that wasn't right. Sunlight wasn't a thing that existed anymore. Last he remembered, the world had crumbled and he had been stabbed by Martin, his lover.
Martin.
"M-Martin?!" Jon called out. He sat up, wincing at the pain in his abdomen. When he looked down at it, there was still a knife in there, blood oozing from underneath it.
"Jon?"
A familiar voice. Jon looked up at Martin with a shaky smile. His lover looked just how he did before—with white hair and fog coming off of his pale skin. The Lonely avatar wore a worried expression on his face.
"Jon! Do you know where we are…?"
""M-must be Somewhere Else…" Jon muttered, finally taking the time to look at his surroundings.
Jon and Martin seemed to be in the middle of some kind of plaza. They were on pavement, and painted below them was a symbol of two rotating arrows. In front of them loomed a green metal tower…with some kind of giant catfish wrapped around it?
"Somewhere Else is…quite strange…" Martin muttered.
Just then, Jon heard a scream, and flinched. It didn't come from Martin, but a panicked woman that was now running up to the two lovers.
"What the hell happened here?!" the womab exclaimed. Jon furrowed his eyebrows when he realized that the woman didn't have hair—instead, she had long orange tentacles on her head.
"Ma'am, we're ok—" Martin started to say, but he was interrupted.
"I'm calling the police!! You aren't getting away with murder in broad daylight!"
Jon stared at Martin with wide eyes as he realized the woman's false perception. But there was really no explaining the true situation to her, she would never believe it.
As the woman picked up her phone with panic, Martin quickly took Jon's hand. And in an instant, with Martin's powers of being a Lonely avatar, the two of them had teleported away from the strange plaza.
—
"Don't you find it strange?" Jon asked.
"How that squid woman thought I was murdering you?" Martin said, turning towards Jon with confusion.
"No, how she didn't even acknowledge our forms," Jon said. "I mean, I'm an eldritch creature with too many eyes. You're practically made of fog. Neither of us look remotely like the same species as that woman."
"Maybe she was too busy panicking about a perceived murder," Martin muttered.
"No, there must be something else going on," Jon said—but he stopped short when he saw his reflection in a nearby window.
He didn't look like the avatar he had been in the previous world. Neither did Martin. Instead, bith of them looked similar to the panicking squid woman—Jon had long squid-like green tentacles, while Martin had short orange tentacles like an octopus.
"Oh," Marrin said. "That's…odd."
"Certainly," Jon answered. "That must be how others see us here…"
"Well, that's convenient," Martin said. "I mean, not so convenient that we had the police called on us, but—"
"Martin. Listen," Jon interrupted. Martin looked at him with confusion, but he could hear the sound of crying nearby.
Jon walked until he found an alleyway where the crying got louder. He realized it sounded like the crying of a child.
And he soon got his answer when he looked down the alleyway and saw a small squid child, sobbing.
"Jon, we should be careful—" Martin muttered—
"It's a child. Of course we need to be careful, but he's not going to hurt us."
Jon carefully approached the squid child, who soon looked up at him with large green eyes. His skin—if it could be called that—was green as well, though the shade could reasonably be called yellow as well. The child's eyes glimmered with tears.
"H-hello?" the child mumbled. "Are you…here to take me b-back…?"
"Take you back where?" Jon said softly, careful not to scare the child.
"Back to Mama and Papa," the child muttered, averting his eyes from Jon. "I runned away from them."
"Why did you run away?" Martin asked, crouching down next to the child.
"They…they are very mean," the child said. "They hitted me…and they didn't give me dinner…and I runned away today with only my Rainbow Dash stuffie…"
Jon noticed the child was holding a battered stuffed animal of a blue pony with a rainbow mane. Martin met Jon's eyes with concern, before Jon said, "We're not taking you back to your parents. Don't worry."
"What's your name?" Martin said.
"W-well…Mama and Papa call me Rosie, but I don't like that name," the child mumbled. "It's a girl's name…"
"What would you like to be called, then?" Jon asked.
"I always liked the name Rider," the child said, looking up at Jon with shiny eyes. "That's a boy's name, and I want to be a boy."
"If you want to be a boy, you can be a boy, Rider," Martin said, smiling.
"R-really?"
"Of course," Jon said.
Rider smiled widely, hugging his plushie to his chest. "What are your names? Can you be my new daddies?"
Jon looked towards Martin. Rider was cute, but he wasn't sure if he was ready to be a father. Especially since he and Martin weren't even native to this dimension.
"My name is Martin, and this is Jonathan," Martin said softly. He briefly met Jon's eyes and gave him a nod.
Jon sighed. He supposed he could take care of Rider for a bit, at least until they found a good home for him.
"We're not sure if we can be your daddies, but you can stay with us for a bit," Jon said.
—
By the time night fell, Jon and Martin had bought some food for Rider—they had found some money in their pockets when they arrived Somewhere Else—and checked out a hotel room to sleep temporarily. Rider had been excited to be with Jon and Martin, jumping on the bed before wearing himself out. Now the kid was sleeping on one of the beds with his plushie, while Jon and Martin lay down in the other one.
"Are you sure we can stay here?" Martin whispered to Jon.
"What other choice do we have?" Jon answered. "It's not like we can dimension hop."
"I know, but…" Martin sighed. "I don't know how long we can make it here."
"They see us as one of them here," Jon said. "And we miraculously have money somehow."
"But…what about the fears?"
"What about them?"
"What if they followed us here, Jon? What if this world is in danger?"
"Then we'll deal with that."
"Just like we did last time." There was a bitterness in Martin's voice.
Jon sighed. "It'll be fine, Martin. The apocalypse last time took millennia to happen. We're not in immediate danger."
"And neither is Rider."
Jon glanced back at Rider, still peacefully sleeping on the other bed. "You…you know we're only staying with him temporarily, right?"
"We're not taking him back to his abusive parents—"
"I didn't say that we were. I'm saying we need to find him an actual home."
"…We could be his actual home."
"Have you ever raised a child?"
"There's a first time for everything. And I must admit, I've grown quite attached to Rider."
"We've only known him for a couple hours."
"And?"
Jon sighed and turned away from Martin. "We'll figure this out in the morning, okay dear? Get some sleep."
A few seconds later, Jon felt Martin's lips press against his head, and a small smile appeared on his face.
"Goodnight, Jon," Martin muttered.
"Goodnight."
As Jon closed his eyes, he thought about the time he had spent with Rider. The kid was so enthusiastic to be away from his previous parents, and he seemed to think that this arrangement with Jon and Martin was permanent.
Maybe it would be, but there was one thing that Jon knew for sure.
Tomorrow, Rider's abusive parents would be dead.