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Jon’s feet carried him down the stairs on autopilot, the wall rough on his good hand as he wilted towards it. His cane was long abandoned on the floor of Mike Crew’s flat, and as the cool basement air washed the adrenaline out of him, the vicious ache of overexertion rose and rose.
Some small, naïve part of him had expected – or rather hoped – his confrontation with Elias would be cathartic, the fear and exhaustion of the previous weeks spilling over as anger. And at the start it was; adrenaline rising like a cresting wave of static as he’d channelled the voice sleeping within him for so long. Dragging, tearing answers from that smug mouth. But it had fallen flat. Of course it had. It was him. That wave had come crashing down, drenching him in icy cold terror as he could no longer deny what he’d had been dancing around for months. He’d walked right into a trap. And even worse, had dragged 4 – no, 5 now – people with him, confidently shouting that this was the way. He thought back to the last thing he’d asked in that office, head spinning.
Am I… Elias, am I still human?
He thought of Sasha, gone for almost a year without his notice, of Martin, of the people he’d compelled into giving statements. Tim’s face suddenly swam into his mind. Can’t lose something you never had, boss.
Emerging into the archives, another thought struck him. Tim. His assistants. They would surely still be here. They would have questions. They would… He eyed the fire exit at the end of the corridor. Perhaps if he could just slip out… The dark of Georgie’s flat called like a velvety blanket. With any luck, she’d still be out and he could curl up, away from the constant noise, the lights beating down on him with their fluorescent hum-buzz. Curl up and wait for the pain to fade into its usual background static.
Realization of his appearance threw him slightly off balance. How had he not… A fog had been slowly rolling over his mind ever since he left that office. He was covered in grave dirt, the bandage on his right hand filthy and soaked with blood and a clear-ish fluid. But most obvious was the gash at his neck, mostly clotted now, but having stained his shirt and sweater dramatically crimson. His chances of getting through London without some concerned citizen calling an ambulance – or more likely the police – were near zero. And he’d had enough of the police for a lifetime at this point.
He’d have to clean up a bit then. There were spare clothes in his office and a first aid kit in – he made a small, defeated sound. There was no avoiding it. Avoiding them. He limped into the bullpen, head down, breaths slightly ragged. The room tilted slightly, but the edge of a desk rose up to meet him. His hand trembled slightly as he held himself up and pushed back off towards the breakroom.
Almost instantly it seemed, he was there. The fluorescent lights reflecting dully off the linoleum floor. A mug – Martin’s, he dimly registered – sat abandoned by the kettle, tea cupboard left half open.
It was quiet.
Jon breathed something that should’ve sounded like relief. No one was here. He bent down gingerly, wincing as his knee crackled and grated with the movement, opening the cabinet he vaguely remembered tossing a first aid kit into months ago.
“Jon?”
He shot up, face twisting in agony as his knee popped loudly, blood rushing from his head as darkness crept into the edges of his vision. He stumbled forward slightly, grabbing the table for support as his vision cleared. He tried to control his breathing. It was ok, he told himself, it was just Melanie. And Basira. And Tim.
“What. The fuck. Is going on?” Tim half shouted.
Jon instinctively raised his hands as they came towards him.
“It’s been weeks, Jon, and you show up just for –"
“This whole time – did you – did you know this whole time?” Melanie’s voice cut shrilly across Tim’s. They were crowded around him in a semi-circle now. Jon couldn’t hear what they were saying – just that the room seemed to be closing in as their overlapping voices grew louder. He tried to step back but the ground had turned to treacle, the floor warping away from him as the darkness crept back in.
“Jesus christ, guys. Give him some space!”
Jon managed to look up towards that shocked yet indignant voice, his vision tunnelling towards a familiar round face, strawberry blond hair flopping over oversized glasses.
“Martin?” He breathed, before he saw the man bolt for him, eyes wide. His knees buckled, darkness inescapably flooding in as the voices garbled and swirled around him. He was vaguely aware of soft hands wrapping around him, his head gently cradled, before the world fell away completely.
~~~
Warmth came back to him first, gentle, like watery sunlight breaking through the clouds. Then stronger, as he noticed the heavy heat wrapped around his bad knee, the warmth deep and soothing on the aching joint. He felt something soft covering him. A blanket? No, too short. A sweater? It smelled of floral tea and old paper – like…
Jon’s eyes shot open, darting wildly around the room as he frantically tried to prop himself up. With the scape of a chair, he heard someone rush over, and in an instant, there was a large hand on his shoulder, easing him back onto the breakroom couch.
“Easy, easy.” Martin said softly. “It’s just me. The others are gone.”
Jon looked at him properly for the first time after weeks on the run. His pale blue eyes were rimmed with dark circles, his hair flopping long and shaggy over his glasses. Something tender blossomed in Jon’s chest before a spike of fear pushed it down. He once again struggled upright, wincing slightly as the heating pad he belatedly realised Martin had wrapped around his knee slid off and onto the floor.
“Tha-" He cleared his throat; his voice having come out thin and reedy. “Thank you Martin, really, but you didn’t need to do this. I’ll just clean myself up a bit and I’ll be out of your hair.”
Martin’s face seemed to cycle through several emotions before setting into an irritated frown. “No, Jon. No. You’re not doing this again.”
“Doing what Martin?” He snapped. “Like I said, thank you, but I’m fine. I just need to-"
“Christ, Jon!” Martin exploded, running his hands through his hair desperately. “You’re so determined to run away even when I’m convinced you’re not physically capable. You’ve been gone for weeks. Someone was murdered in your office.” His voice was rising with every sentence. “Did you know, every day I’ve had the same detective round, asking the same questions. Every day for –“ He took a steadying breath, Jon’s eyes widening as he noticed the tears welling in Martin’s. “Jon, you’ve been through hell. Anyone can see it. And I know the last thing you want right now is to answer questions, but please,” he locked eyes with him, “Just let me help you.”
Jon’s heart stuttered a little at the sincerity, every instinct screaming at him to flee. Get out of there. Don’t let me hurt him more. But even as he began to swing his legs over the couch, he could tell it was no use. The past few weeks had well and truly caught up with him, and he was in no state to be going anywhere. Martin or not. He sank back into the couch with a groan, the aborted half-movement seeming to reawaken even the aches he had forgotten about.
“Well, if you’re going to be that insistent…” He sighed deeply and looked away, all the fight drained out of him. He heard Martin approach and tensed slightly on instinct before feeling the warmth of the heating pad envelop his knee again, his hand lingering slightly as he wrapped it around.
“Thank you, Jon,” he said quietly, and for the life of him Jon couldn’t understand what he was thanking him for. Why he wouldn’t just leave him to it, like any reasonable person would given the circumstances.
He heard Martin move away again, the sink starting to run, and he found himself oddly interested in the popcorn ceiling, eyes tracing the swirls and bumps, and wondering who had ever thought it was a good interior design choice. He heard the sloshing of a basin and the scraping of a couple of chairs as Martin puttered about the small kitchen, stubbornly refusing to tear his eyes from the ceiling until a soft voice called out to him.
“Jon? That bandage on your hand looks pretty crusted on, so I don’t want to remove it right away. I was thinking you could soak it in the basin first, if that’s ok with you?”
If that’s ok with you – Jon’s chest ached with a softness he could hardly remember after the horrors of the past few weeks. He finally tore his eyes from the ceiling and gingerly lowered his hand into the basin, the sting quickly replaced by the soothing coolness of the water. He looked up, finally meeting Martin’s eyes as he swallowed nervously.
“Look, I know you don’t want to deal with questions now a-and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he stammered nervously, “but it would be quite helpful to know what I’m dealing with under there. A cut or -?”
“A burn.” Jon said flatly. He really didn’t want to get into this, but out of everyone, Martin deserved answers. And, a quiet part of his mind supplied, maybe with Martin the truth would be a bit easier to get out. He’d already gotten the others off his back and was now so careful. So undeservingly gentle in his questioning. The least he deserved was some answers – and maybe once he had them, he’d realise it was no use trying to help. He’d realise it’d be better – safer – if he just stayed away.
“When I was on the run, I ended up staying with,” he paused, “an old friend, I guess you could say. From Uni.” Martin quirked his head slightly, but made no move to interrupt, simply nodding his head encouragingly after a moment. Jon sighed. “Elias found me. Somehow. Because of course he did and started sending me statements. So, I followed up on them and –"
“Jon!” Martin admonished.
“Well, what do you want me to do? Sit around and wait for the police to break down my door?”, he snapped, then deflated slightly. “Sorry. It was just pretty much the only thing I could do. To give myself any sort of sense of – I don’t know. Control. Anyway, one led me to Jude Perry.” Going by Martin’s sharp intake of breath, he’d come across some of those statements too. “She offered me, as she put it, some advice, if in exchange I, well… shook her hand.”
“You didn’t,” Martin said incredulously.
“I did. And the outcome was… predictable,” Jon said, gesturing to his hand.
Martin shook his head in disbelief. “Well, I hope that advice was worth it.”
“It wasn’t.” Jon said flatly. “The information was completely useless. But do you want to know the worst part?” He looked up at Martin almost desperately. “I don’t regret it.”
The room was silent, Martin appearing to struggle with something for a second before sighing, almost defeatedly. “We should probably have a look at your neck while that soaks.” Jon didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
Martin rummaged in the first aid kit for a bit, retrieving sterile wipes, gauze and tape, before washing his hands again and sitting down. “Sorry, this is going to sting a little. Lift your chin up for me?” Jon leaned his head back on the cushion his head was rested on when he’d first woken up, gaze landing back on the ceiling. He winced as Martin began to wipe the dried blood from the gash. “Sorry, sorry. Just try to hold still,” he murmured.
Jon stared at the ceiling and willed the tears back from his eyes. He didn’t deserve this. He’d put Martin in danger again and again, trapped him in the archives under some eldritch employment contract. And Martin knew this now. So why was he still here? Why was he so kind?
Suddenly, Martin’s hand stilled and he breathed in sharply. Jon realised with a lurch that he must’ve been such a mess that Martin couldn’t see the dark bruise he knew was blossoming around the cut. He shuddered, trying not to remember the terror he’d felt out in those woods, the blunt blade – Daisy had wanted it to hurt.
He’d started talking before he even knew what he was saying. Desperately. Words spilling out in some ironic parody of the statements he’d extracted. “You said there was a detective constantly asking around the archives these past few weeks – I take it that was Daisy Tonner?”
Martin seemed confused for a second before his face contorted in fury “She did this?”
“Martin – I – just let me explain,” Jon said urgently. He had the strangest feeling that if he didn’t get the words out now, he’d never manage again. “After Jude, I realised the statements were leading me to avatars of the fears. People – once people – who devoted themselves so completely that… that there was nothing human left in there, just a whole load of terror. And glee. Anyway, I’d tracked down Micheal Crew – he’s mentioned a few times down here – had me experience skydiving from the comfort of his kitchen table, but it seemed Daisy had tracked me down too.” He paused for a second, unsure how to tell the last part, before taking a shaky breath. “She killed him.” He said numbly. “Tossed us both in the boot of her car and drove out to some woodlands.”
He could feel Martin’s hands shake as he rolled the gauze over his neck. “Daisy hunts monsters. I’m only alive because Basira convinced her I could get some answers out of Elias.” He closed his eyes.
“The thing is, she wasn’t wrong.”
He felt Martin still and ploughed on before he could say anything. He had to make him understand, even as his voice started shaking and traitorous tears began to flow down his face. “I’m not human anymore, Martin. I – I’m becoming like them. Like Jude. Like Micheal. I can rip stories out of people, make them recount things they don’t want to remember. I didn’t realise – or at least that’s what I was telling myself – but I did it to Daisy and – and I – I don’t know how far back it goes. Like when you gave your statement about Jane Prentiss, I don’t know if I-"
He gasped for air, eyes streaming as his heart thundered in his chest. He was going to – he was – turning into one of those monsters. He’d spent so long scoffing at the statements, now he was the thing that went bump in the night. And now everyone else, and Martin. Poor, stupid, kind Martin… His chest heaved and he dimly registered a hand rubbing gentle circles on his back. When had he sat up?
“Jon? Jon, breathe.” He forced himself to look around at Martin, his blue eyes filled with worry. He took a gasping inhale, breath catching in his throat, before letting out a juddering exhale. “Just like that, Jon. Nice deep breaths,” Martin said soothingly, continuing to rub circles on his back.
After a few minutes, Jon awkwardly cleared his throat, staring at the floor and wishing it would swallow him whole as he wiped his eyes. All he’d needed to do was make Martin understand. That it was no use. That he ought to just leave now, before he did any more damage. And instead of that, he’d forced him to stay – to comfort him – while he’d had a panic attack. Pathetic.
Martin wordlessly handed him a tissue, waiting until he was ready to speak. “I’m sorry, Martin,” he said quietly. “I don’t –"
“Jon.” He said firmly, “Don’t you dare say what I think you’re about to. You’ve had possibly the most understandable response to a truly horrible experience. You have absolutely nothing to apologise for.”
Their eyes bored deeply into each other, each trying desperately to make the other understand. A moment passed, and Martin took Jon’s dripping hand into his, ever so carefully starting to unwind the now loosened bandage. Jon simply looked on numbly as he worked, still reeling from his seemingly unending, terrifying compassion.
What will it take for you to realise I’m not worth it.
“And as for you not being human,” Martin scoffed slightly, smiling, “Jon, I think you’re the most human person I know. You’re dedicated to the point of obsession, stubborn as a mule, fussy about the oddest of things -”
Jon frowned, confused. As much as he agreed with the assessment, none of these were good things, and yet Martin said them so fondly. He opened his mouth to say as much, but Martin stopped him.
“Let me finish. You have so many quirks, so many things that make you, you – but underneath it all you can be so thoughtful and kind. Sure, you’ve done things in the last few months and years that have hurt people – hurt me. But Jon, that does not make you any less human.” Martin’s determined expression softened, his voice taking on a far-away quality as the right words seemed to come to him all at once. “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”
Jon gave a tiny, wet laugh. “Don’t quote poetry at me, Martin. And you don’t need to try and make me feel better – I think we both know that’s not true.”
Martin sighed in frustration. “Do you remember last year? After the first Prentiss incident, when I was terrified to go back to my flat?”
“Well, yes, but I don’t see how –“
“And you let me stay in the archives for months afterwards. Even when Elias was against it, you fought him on it.”
“Well, I suppose, but-“
“Do you remember that night – I think I’d been living out of the document storage room for about a week at that point?” Jon did, and he cringed slightly at the memory. “I’d had an awful nightmare – well Y’know the usual subject matter – but that night, for some reason it genuinely felt like the end of the world. Like every corner I turned, I’d be faced with a giant wall of those worms.” He shuddered slightly at the memory.
“But then I stumbled into the breakroom, and you were there – working ungodly hours I assumed – but you’d made me tea. And then you sat and listened to me ramble for god knows how long. I must’ve told you it was the pipes, that the groaning, creaking noises they made at night that really got to me, because you know what I find the next day? A white noise machine, plugged in on the chair I was using as a nightstand.”
Martin was smiling so fondly, as if Jon hadn’t done a million things to outweigh that one small kindness. As if Jon wasn’t the reason he’d had to live in the archives in the first place, sending him to investigate that statement out of some juvenile vindictiveness over bad filing. Of course, Martin also didn’t know he’d been working late every night that week, overhearing two previous nightmares and ignoring them after dithering by his office door. Too awkward to know how to help and too cranky about the 2 AM interruption. He didn’t know that Jon wasn’t even planning on talking to him that night, simply wanting to leave him some tea and hide back in his office. He’d simply mistimed it and come face to face with a terrified, sleep-mussed Martin.
Martin caught his eye again, pulling him from his thoughts. “Hey. Jon, I don’t know what you’re telling yourself there but stop it. I don’t know how else to tell you, but you are exhaustively, inextricably human.” He laughed slightly, “I mean, are you perfect – pretty far from it. But you’re trying – I know you are, even if you try to hide it – that’s what makes us all human.”
Jon’s eyes filled with tears again as Martin taped off the clean, new bandage. Fragile parts of him exposed, not to harsh winds or driving rain, but to a gentle sunrise, filtering through strawberry blond leaves and telling him it would be alright. Holding those parts and folding them in soft white gauze, protected from the world.
He took back everything he ever said about Martin being a terrible, whiny poet – he truly had a way with words sometimes. Would he still believe him when he wasn’t sleep deprived, injured and crushed with exhaustion as the last of the adrenaline leeched from his body – maybe not. But tonight? Tonight it was almost enough.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Jon let Martin lead him, limp like a ragdoll and half carried, down the corridor towards document storage. He felt wrung out, hollow, like a reed held up to the wind. He was wrapped in Martin’s sweater now, his own spare clothes long forgotten, and it drowned him in an ocean of vintage tea and vanilla, drawing him down into sleep even as he swayed, dragging his feet.
Gentle hands guided him to lie down, and he felt a soft blanket pulled over him, eyes fluttering shut. He was sinking into a deep, warm ocean, and for once he didn’t have to – didn’t want to – fight it. He knew tomorrow there would be work to do. That it would bring questions – from the others, from Georgie. But tonight, for the first time in a long time, he felt safe. Exhausted. Frayed. Fragile.
Human.
On the edge of his consciousness, he heard a soft voice – far away, above the water. Something about just down the hall. He didn’t know. Neither did he know of the soft hand, lingering for just a second to card through his dark hair. He was already asleep, his dreams for once expansive; blue, fresh, and many-winged.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.