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Jonathan wasn’t one to immediately give up on anything.
After all, he was one of the top scientists working on Alchemax’s toughest project, full of initial failures and screw-ups. He had numerous opportunities to quit during his lengthy years of schooling and career, but he never did. He was always incredibly self-driven, and having a family in edition to that motivated him to succeed even more. He married you—the most wonderful person in the universe to him, and had a beautiful daughter named Dottie he couldn’t wait to raise with you.
That is, until he woke up on the Alchemax floor that dreadful day, surrounded by debris from the destroyed collider.
He remembers seeing his hands first, ghost white with a couple black spots on each. But they weren’t like a bruise or mole that stayed it place—they were fluctuating and pulsing like dark matter. Convinced he was just seeing things, he tried to rub his eyes, only to feel nothing and instead see his fingers come out through a hole on his leg.
He screamed in terror, pushing his gangly body off the ground and stumbling towards the nearest reflective surface he could find.
“No, no, no-” his voice shook, looking at himself for the first time.
He turns away, too horrified to look any longer. He couldn’t go home to you like this, let alone live any sort of life at all like this. He scans his gaze over the rubble, running to the first intact thing he sees. “I can- I can fix this. There has to be a way to fix this!”
Jonathan wasn’t one to immediately give up on anything.
He got to work searching for anything salvageable from the labs and collider, theorizing and writing equations and running tests for weeks, not that he realized it had been that long. His mind bordered on madness, obsessing over every single detail that could possibly fix him.
“I have to fix this, I have to fix this…” he muttered to himself over and over, voice cracking. Every test and experiment failed day after day, nothing worked. He didn’t want to give up, but maybe this was something not even his genius intellect could fix.
Jonathan wasn’t one to immediately give up on anything—but now he had to.
He slumped onto the floor, wailing into the void of the abandoned building. He screamed and cried as much as he could without having tears, begging to anyone who could hear to be put out of his misery.
His face fell to his hands, or at least what was left of one. His thoughts returned to you, with your sweet eyes and smile he adored so much and the heartwarming memories you’ve shared over the years. You’re his everything, his other half, and everything he’s ever wanted. He thought about holding your daughter for the first time, wanting to give her the world and more.
He couldn’t go back to you like this. He couldn’t even look at himself, so why would you? His daughter would surely be afraid of him and he’d lose everyone he loved in an instant. He couldn’t put himself through that, he just couldn’t. You probably think he’s already dead, might as well let you remember him as he was.
-
You never thought you’d have to deal with being a single parent. You and Jonathan have an incredibly healthy relationship and marriage, so you figured you’d be together forever. You never thought you’d have the unthinkable happen to you, having to go on after the death of a husband.
Each day gets harder and harder, and everything that was fine or even good before becomes a struggle. You know pretty soon your emergency savings will run out and paying rent will be a problem, and you’ll have to start picking up overtime at work and have to spend less time with the baby. You’re more alone than you’ve ever been in your life, and you still don’t even know for sure what happened.
No one dares stand up to Alchemax, not even after a disaster like this. You had asked Jonathan multiple times to consider somewhere better to work, but he assured you it was the only place he could do the full extent of his work, which you understood. Still, if he had left this wouldn’t have happened to him.
He wouldn’t be dead.
All you want to know is how he died. Was it painful? Was it quick? Was it peaceful?
Every night you lie awake, the questions racing through your mind. Most days you’re thankful that Dottie is not a fussy baby, but sometimes you wish she was so you’d at least have something to distract you.
-
It’s been a few months since the accident, and Jonathan is still crippled with fear. He refuses to look at himself, covering himself with layers of clothing to get around the city and avoid seeing his own skin. He tries to keep ignoring the voice in the back of his mind telling him to go home, muffling it with the anxiety of being seen by the one person who could completely shatter his soul.
But if he did go to see you, at least he’d finally know. He wouldn’t be left wondering his whole life what you’d say and how you’d react. He might not have the both literal and metaphorical hole in his heart aching for closure forever.
He knows you’re usually home by the hour, the baby probably down for a nap while you have some free-time. He approaches the door of your shared apartment, hand hovering next to the door. He knocks quietly, and hears you shuffling towards it.
“Who is it?” your voice is like honey, and his heart wrenches.
“Please don’t—please don’t freak out, okay darling? It’s Jonathan,”
The door swings open faster than he thought possible, and you fling yourself into him.
“Holy shit I thought you were dead, I-” you sob into his chest, your tears blurring your vision enough that you can’t see him clearly. “They said—they said everyone in the building died from that explosion-”
You pull away slightly, looking him up and down.
“Why do you have so many layers on? It’s super warm out,” you reach up to pull off the mask and glasses over his face, but he stops you.
“There’s something you need to know before you do that,” he says. “I survived, yes, but not without enormous cost. The explosion left me severely deformed,”
You try to fight his grip on your hand, attempting to reach up again, “Johnny, you know I will still love you no matter what. Please just let me see you-”
“No.”
A wave of deep concern washes over your features, “What happened?”
“I-I tried to fix it, but it can’t be fixed. I’m a monster now, I don’t even look human anymore. Somehow my body fused with a black hole I was carrying during the explosion, and now that’s all I am...just holes,”
You do your best to take in and process his words, but you know you won’t truly understand until you see it for yourself.
“I’m going to look at you, okay?” you tell him sternly.
He sighs in surrender, awaiting the inevitable. You start by taking off his gloves, interlocking your fingers with his white ones. He hums at your touch.
“I’m still here, Johnny,” you assure him. Next you unzip and slip off his jacket, revealing his torso and arms covered in black spots. It’s certainly strange, you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t, but it doesn’t scare you. The spots look like splotches on an artistic painting, and you already love them.
You decide to wait to take off his pants and shoes, and instead bring your hands to his head. You remove his hat, smoothing your palms over his completely white and bald head. Of course you loved his gorgeous hair before, but you’ll get used to this.
You hesitate your fingers around his face, waiting for a sign of approval.
Jonathan nods, but he grabs your hands once again, “Darling, I literally don’t have a face anymore. You’re not going to see what you want to see,”
“I don’t care. I want you no matter what,”
You rip off his mask and glasses in one go, met with a deep black hole staring back at you.
He sighs again, turning away from your gaze, “I understand if you don’t want to be with me anymore. You don’t deserve a life married to someone like me,”
“Johnathan,” you scold him. “When I married you I promised to love you no matter what. For better and for worse and all that shit, okay? Sure this will be an adjustment, but I want to adjust with you. I’m just happy you’re alive,”
You watch as his face spot fluctuates in size and shape, and you decide to interpret that as his new way of expressing emotions. You appear to be right, because he quickly pulls you into a tight embrace and whimpers into your shoulder.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he mumbles, his body shaking as he holds you closer and closer, to the point you feel yourself going through a couple of his spots. “But what about Dottie? She’ll cry every time she sees me,”
“You don’t know that,” you say, rubbing his back, tracing your fingers around one of his spots. “Her first word was ‘Dada’ you know. I talked about you a lot to her while you were gone,”
“Really?”
“Mmhm. She can crawl now too. I’ll go get her from her crib, this is usually around the time she wakes up anyway,”
Jonathan slowly releases his grip as you slip out of his arms, bracing himself for whatever might happen. He looks like something from a horror movie, of course she’s going to be afraid. He may have lucked out with you wanting to stay with him, but there’s no promises his daughter will feel the same.
You come out of the bedroom holding her, a bit bigger than the last time he saw her. You place her gently on the floor so she can crawl around, and she doesn’t even seem to notice Jonathan at first, more interested in the toy next to her. She grabs it and sits upright, and then finally sees him.
To Jonathan’s surprise, she doesn’t seem phased by his appearance. She simply cocks her head slightly to the side and stares at him.
“Dada!” she finally babbles, giggling to herself.
“She...she recognizes me?” he asks, in awe of her cute little face.
She continues to giggle, repeating his name over and over. She rolls forward onto her hands and starts crawling towards him, grabbing onto his leg. Jonathan leans down to pick her up, and she flails around happily, settling into his arms and poking her hands into his holes on his face and chest.
“How is she not scared of me?” he says, completely dumbfounded.
“Because you’re not scary, Johnny,” you smile, wrapping your arms around the two of them and kissing his cheek. “You’re family. Spots or not,”
Dottie squeals as if in agreement.
“I suppose so,” he hums, resting his head on top of yours.
Jonathan would never give this up for anything.