Chapter Text
I think I saw you in my sleep, darling
I think I saw you in my dreams
You were stitching up the seams
On every broken promise that your body couldn't keep
Martin held on tight as the world unwound. A noise unlike anything he'd ever heard before, that ripped everything apart down to a molecular level. Martin shut his eyes against the color, unseen before by any human, and buried his face in Jon's hair. He had to hurt him with how tight he held, but Jon didn't protest. His head had sunk against Martin's chest, even as the world around was unwritten and then- and then-
Then Martin breathed. Vagitus. The first cry of a newborn. That word was distant in his mind, unimportant, and he forced his eyes open.
Jon was already looking at him. Pale, shaking, his mouth half opened like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words.
They were- somewhere. Half familiar, very much not important. Martin pressed his hand against Jon's chest, the button-down creased and with stains on it. But not blood. Not blood, no wound and when he pushed down he could feel the ribs there. No convenient lack for a blade to sink in.
"Martin?" Jon's voice, hoarse and unsure and that was the last shred he needed to realize this wasn't a dream.
Martin kissed him.
With all the emotions in his body, the fear and adrenaline and betrayal and love.
Jon's hands came up, burying in his jumper. Martin must've startled him, because his head hit the wall behind before turning away.
"What-"
And that's when Martin saw the blood. It was on his own hand, smeared over the knit wool of his jumper and soaking Jon's pant leg. It was pushed up to Jon's knee, revealing a dozen holes that bled sluggishly. Worms.
Martin looked around. They were in document storage and now that his heart had stopped trying to escape his chest, he could also smell it. The damp scent of rot.
"Jane Prentiss?" he asked and found the first aid kit next to his knees. He opened it and turned back towards Jon's legs. It looked bad, but he would be fine. Martin knew because he had been fine before.
So… time travel? At this point he couldn't even be surprised, that made enough sense as anything else. Or was this one of those other worlds? An alternate dimension? He looked around, trying to figure out differences, like in one of those magazines. A world where chairs only had three legs or- or Jon was a blonde or whatever.
Jon was very much not a blonde. He looked exactly the same as back then, younger, still overworked and stressed, but healthier. His eyes had lost the sharp edge to them, which was probably for the best. With the way he was watching Martin, he was also trying to spot his five differences.
At least until Martin brought out the disinfectant and left Jon hissing and winding. It should hurt his heart; it did, really! But then Martin reminded himself of waking up alone to find Jon gone and there was a sick taste of satisfaction in his mouth.
"We're going to talk later," he told him with enough iron in his voice that Jon ducked his head.
"About..?"
"Don't play dumb."
The fire alarm made both of them jump and Jon's shoulders slumped. "Sasha made it."
Sasha.
Martin stopped trying to look for bandages, he stopped moving altogether, and suddenly everything turned sharp. The reality of the situation set in: Jon was hurt, but not stabbed and the insistent throbbing of Martin's head had stopped. No debris had hit him, painting his vision red with blood. The adrenaline in his veins was because Jane Prentiss and after everything… after everything, she wasn't that scary. He'd survived her before.
Turning towards the door, he watched the worms cover the small window. Sasha was out there and what had happened then? She's pulled the fire alarm, she alerted Elias and had gotten separated from him to end up in artifact storage and-
But there was still time.
"I can save her," Martin muttered as the realization sank in. Sasha was still alive, was still Sasha. Not for very long, for a few more minutes but maybe that was enough.
"I can save her," he said, more sure now and found Jon frowning at him.
"What are you talking about?"
"Sasha. Before she enters artifact storage. I can- I can reach her!"
"Going out there would be suicide!"
Yeah. Back then it would've been. The archives were overrun with worms and opening that door meant certain death. But he wasn't the same bumbling assistant he had been back then.
Shoving the bandage into Jon's hand, he got up from the floor. "Stop the bleeding. Tim should be with you in a couple of minutes." He pointed to the wall that very soon would make way to the tunnels, and Jon stared like he had officially lost his mind. "Stay in the tunnels until we activate the fire suppression system."
"What are you-"
"Can you just do what I tell you?" Martin hissed, with a bit more venom than he wanted to. "Just for once."
Jon's mouth snapped shut. Not for long, never for long, before he tried again, "You can't go out there."
"Really don't have the time to discuss this now."
So he pulled fog around him and made his way. Today, the Lonely answered eagerly. No surprise, Martin had felt it creep in ever since waking up without Jon by his side. It had pressed into his lungs when he'd found him, less human than ever before and of course-
Martin shook the thoughts off. Later. Later, he could deal with that. Or preferably never. For now he had to navigate this fog.
He'd never quite mastered whatever this was, moving unseen, like he was on the flipside of the world. It felt dreamlike, like moving through molasses. Doors didn't exist here, something he had quickly learned after Peter showed up in his office out of thin air. There were no worms, nobody at all. Just fog and an abandoned building, and the fog was calling to him. Lapping waves against the shore, inviting him to sit down, take a breath, try to grasp all the things that had happened. So much since he'd opened his eyes, the end of the world and the end of his world and the knife in his hand and now- Now everything felt fuzzy. Like a jetlag, only that he never really had jetlag, but it sounded about right.
Still, that had to wait and when he fought himself free from the flipside and into reality, he found himself in front of the library. Not quite right but at least far away from the archives.
Time was weird while being in the Lonely. The trip felt like it had only taken seconds, maybe a minute, but nobody was around. The alarm was still blaring but nobody was evacuating, nobody was in any of the rooms and halls Martin passed.
He hurried down the stairs, and there were worms here. Not as many as in the archives but still a considerable amount. Why? What was up here? Elias?
Now, maybe Martin enjoyed the thought of Elias meeting an army of worms. Maybe he enjoyed the thought of pushing him into a whole ocean of them. Nobody was around to see his smile so he could indulge.
The worms weren't much of a problem. Either the fog trailing behind him froze them or he wasn't present enough for them to notice. And the closer he got to artifact storage, the fewer worms there were until the hallway was clear. So apparently not even Prentiss wanted to mess with whatever was hidden behind those doors.
The very open doors.
"Hello?"
The voice nearly made Martin stop in his tracks. Firstly, because he didn't recognize it but very much did, but then he saw the woman standing in the dark, way too close to the damn table. Sasha didn't seem familiar but looking at her felt like looking at an overexposed image. He knew what he was meant to see, what she was meant to be, but couldn't quite grasp the edges. Where reality ended, and the in-between began.
"I see you! Show you-"
Not him. She hadn't noticed him because the table was moving, warping.
Martin crashed into Sasha and took her straight from her feet.
Her shout of surprise rose, got caught in the lines of the table and twisted. It echoed back all wrong, but familiar as well.
"Martin?" she asked, where they'd landed, eyes big behind her round glasses and it hurt looking at her. A sharp pain somewhere behind his forehead made him wince. Her hand found his arm, holding. "Are you hurt? How did you-"
The thing in the table didn't have a form and still Martin saw them. The mess of limbs, all different skin colors and lengths. From old woman to young child, from scared to hairy. They reached for them and Martin also saw himself. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror. Not quite right but close enough to recognize.
Next to him Sasha had fallen silent, and he saw her as well in this mess of… of beings. Pale, with a different nose and no glasses. That one wasn't moving, it was grinning with greed, reaching out-
The real Sasha pressed against him, or maybe that was Martin. Something about having another human in the face of this unreality, like it would help, like if they were scared together, it wouldn't be a full feast for this- this thing.
"What the fuck," Sasha breathed out in a voice that was hers and Martin jerked his leg back and out of reach. He could still feel it, the wrongness of the nearly touch and they were too close, still way too close-
"Hold on tight," he snapped at Sasha like she wasn't already doing just that. "And whatever you do, don't let go!"
He'd never before taken someone into the Lonely, the thought alone had always disgusted him, but this was an emergency. The Not!Them was old, way older than he was and more powerful than him. He didn't think his fog could do anything against it and so he threw himself into the sea foam and sand and biting wind.
Sasha gasped when the cold closed over their heads like the ocean and her nails turned to claws, scratching over his back. But she didn't let go.
Martin didn't check where he was going, it was hard to because the presence of something this powerful was twisting his reality even here, and it was hard to see anything with the fog churning like a storm. Just away.
When he resurfaced, the pull of the Lonely scared him. It wanted to keep him, or maybe Sasha, most likely both of them. It was always hungry, and today Martin had already used it more than ever before. He was playing with a thing he still didn't fully understand, but before that new flavor of fear could set in, he was through.
They collapsed into a heap in the hallways before artifact storage, gasping and shaking. Both of them got to their knees, throwing themselves against the heavy metal door until it closed with a satisfying bang. Sasha was working on the complicated locks, her fingers pale from the cold, but Martin was no help. He leaned against the door, trying to catch his breath, to catch his thoughts.
Everything was just happening, and this person next to him was a stranger, even though he knew she was not. Even when she sank to the ground next to him, shaking with shock and her breath like fog, he didn't recognize her. Their eyes met, a bond forged by nearly dying together between them and yet-
"What was that?" Sasha blurted out, instantly followed by, "How did you do that? How did you get out of the archives? What about Jon and Tim? Are you hurt? What about Jane Prentiss-"
It was giving him a headache, but Martin also had to laugh. God, she reminded him of Jon.
Jon, who was still somewhere down below and under siege.
"Later. We have to activate the fire suppression system first."
"Elias should've already reached the manual release."
"Oh, I don't doubt that." Martin forced his heavy body to move, to do this last thing after the day of days. "But he won't do it. Not until he got what he wanted."
"And that would be?"
"A mark on Jon."
She looked confused but also got to her feet. Her sneakers were streaked with yellowish worm guts.
"It's probably best for you to stay here," Martin started and already knew it would be futile. He had answers and Sasha was already marching ahead.
"Come on."
Martin didn't think he'd ever been in the security room. But he'd bet Elias loved it. The walls were filled with screens, showing all kinds of rooms in the institute. How many cameras were there? A whole corner of them only displayed static and according to the label, they should show the archives. Had the worms messed with the cables? Was that Jon using his powers? Jane Prentiss probably wasn't much of a challenge for the Archivist in his own damn throne room, but Jon had been hurt.
Whatever the case was, it left Elias blind and he probably didn't like that. Good.
He was in the room, illuminated by the cold light of the screens and not moving. Martin wanted to kill him.
If he'd still had the knife, if he had any kind of weapon in reach, he'd bash his head in. That's how his day should've gone in the first place, getting rid of Jonah Magnus. Instead he was in this mess.
"What's he doing?" Sasha whispered because Elias was just standing there. Eyes closed and if Martin wasn't so familiar with Beholding's power, he probably wouldn't hear the soft static all around. But it was there, disturbing the screens every few seconds and making the hairs on his arm stand on end.
"Watching."
Without the cameras, he'd probably slipped into any kind of portrait or even Tim's eyes to check up on Jon. But Jon wasn't stupid. He either had dealt with Jane by now, or was hiding in the tunnels until Martin could save him.
Which was exactly what he was planning to do.
The room wasn't big and he had to awkwardly reach around Elias to find the button. Big and red and neatly labeled. It gave a very satisfying click when Martin pushed it.
Unfortunately it also snapped Elias out of his focus.
Martin backtracked, like the proximity was the problem here and he searched for a weapon again. The plastic bin probably wouldn't be enough to cave Elias's head in but he was willing to try.
"There you are, Sasha." Elias didn't miss a beat once he spotted them. Reaching for the panel in front of him in a way too dramatic fashion. "A spell of vertigo. Maybe I'm getting too old for this."
Sasha didn't answer. She was standing in the doorway, her eyes jumping from Elias to Martin and back. Maybe Martin couldn't read people's minds but he could bet she was putting pieces together that Elias didn't want her to.
Fortunately Elias' attention was quickly diverted when he found Martin. "Now how did you manage to-"
He stopped, his mouth half open, his body frozen. But his eyes? His eyes grew big, greedy and they saw. Martin could feel Beholding's power; he was familiar with the way it tingled over his skin like soft electricity. How it vibrated in his teeth, whenever Jon's voice changed and tucked on a strand of knowledge that wasn't his own.
Martin tried to call on his fog but had little hope of masking himself behind it. Jonah Magnus was old and Martin didn't think he could try and struggle against him, but he wasn't going to go down without a fight.
He didn't expect Elias to frown, for the static to turn louder. Enough to distort the screens behind, enough for Sasha to yelp and clasp her hands over her ears.
Martin had always thought of Beholding as a scalpel. Sharp enough that the initial cut didn't hurt. No, the hurt came later, not when Elias slipped into his mind, when Jon knew about him. Most of the time, Martin had barely noticed, not until it was too late.
This time it was like a sledgehammer to his face. Martin dropped to his knees before he realized. Blood was spraying from his nose and onto the age-old parquet. Elias was standing above him, the cat that got the mouse, but his gaze was so heavy, Martin couldn't dream of lifting his head to at least face him.
"Now then," he said. "And who might you be?"
Martin couldn't answer, not that he would. The next wave of Beholding hit him, and everything went dark.