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Stray // for John
Things are quiet. Things are cold. This is familiar, and there is no reason to be afraid.
Sometimes Martin knows he's dreaming and it's frustrating, because he can never quite assert control of the circumstances, never make himself fully lucid; he can only ride along the twisting corridors of his wandering imagination, helplessly aware.
Sometimes Martin knows he's dreaming and he doesn't care, because it doesn't matter. The awareness sits unimportant at the back of his head, present but irrelevant. A flavor note. A watermark.
Things are quiet. He stands on the quiet wooden deck of a quiet wooden ship anchored at the center of the quiet empty sea. He doesn't need to see below to know he is alone, he doesn't need to see through the murky dark water to know there is no life in it, and though the knowledge that he is dreaming sits unimportant at the back of his head, that isn't why he knows there is no reason to be afraid.
Things are cold. The wind shudders delicately through his clothes. The salty sea spray wets his face in an impossibly fine mist. The sun does not show here. Fog blankets the world, thick and heavy and dark. He shivers, but he does so at a distance. The cold is part of him. The cold is natural. There is no reason to be afraid.
This is familiar. He knows (because he knows that he is dreaming, surety sat unimportant at the back of his head) that he has dreamed of this quiet ship and this cold sea many times before. He is alone, which is familiar, and there is no reason to be afraid.
He is afraid. He knows he is dreaming, present but irrelevant, and the irrelevance frightens him. That he doesn't care, that he doesn't resist. If this were another kind of dream he would try to make himself swim away, or to change the scenery to something bright and sunny and warm. But he doesn't do those things. He stands there on the deck in the sea and he is so incapable of imagining himself anywhere else that it frightens him. He doesn't want it to be familiar. He doesn't want to feel so calm. He doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to be alone.
Wood splinters and cracks and the sea roils beneath the ship. Martin staggers, falls. The shock of it, the shattered quiet, the seething cold, the strange and sudden newness of it all collapsing inward, hits him like a blow to the chest. The ship is coming to pieces; the dream is coming apart. Water rushes in, overtakes him, draws him down, down, down into the murky black abyss.
But drowning is the Buried, and murkiness the Dark, and emptiness the Vast, and finality the End. He does not belong to these. Too Close I Cannot Breathe has had its fun with him, and it makes another grasp as he sinks into its crushing depths, but it has no right to keep him, and it doesn't.
Martin wakes up, or it seems like he does. He knows he is still dreaming, though he's no longer sure he doesn't care. This is familiar, but not like the rest of it. This is only familiar because it happened. It happened yesterday, while he was awake.
He stands, or perhaps is suspended, within a thick, languidly swirling sea of fog. It coils gently around him, fills his lungs. There again, with no language spoken and no words formed, the message roots itself within him: Do not stray.
Martin tries to move. On the ship, movement was possible, though he rarely felt the need. Here, though, the fog weighs him down, heavy and clinging. He isn't being restrained, not exactly, but he feels bound up in it nonetheless. As though the effort of breaking free is too much, not worth the trouble. Easier to let it wrap and curl around him in a protective sheath.
It wants him back. He's been taken somewhere else, somewhere different that it doesn't understand, but it can still reach him, and it wants him. It's nice, isn't it, to be wanted. To be held.
"No," he whispers, so soft it takes a moment to realize he's spoken at all. He hadn't been able to make a sound when this happened on the street, but here - "No," he says again with the little force he can muster. He struggles, and the fog thickens into something that can grip him properly, and when he struggles harder he realizes there is no fog at all, that someone has their arms wrapped around him and has pulled him close.
Greta's cottage is easily recognized. He sees it all in dizzying clarity. He feels the warm, gentle pressure of her arms around him, comforting him for no reason other than he needed it. When he tries to pull away, she lets him, and when he looks at her, she meets his gaze with a querulous expression. Like she wants to ask him what's wrong.
The fog seeps back in, carpeting the floor, rising up around the table. She doesn't seem to see it. It climbs up around her, and still she looks at him with that open, kind, concern. He reaches out, but his hands only sift through mist and smoke. It washes over her until she disappears completely, and when he lunges forward to pull her out, he finds nothing there to grasp. The cottage is gone. She is gone.
"No!" he cries again, panic finally, finally breaking through the veneer of calm indifference. "No, don't, don't-!"
It's too late. It's done. She's gone, and all because she had the audacity to show him kindness, and he had the audacity to receive it.
Do not stray.
"I'm sorry," he sobs, casting about helplessly for any sort of direction even as the fog enfolds him once again. "I'm sorry, I - I didn't-"
His voice grows muffled and distant, swallowed in the impenetrable haze. He shuts his eyes against it all. It doesn't want to hear his excuses, but it isn't punishing him. The Lonely doesn't punish. It comforts. It holds.
He is alone, and that's where he belongs, and it is familiar, and there is no reason to be afraid.
Sometimes Martin knows he's dreaming and it's frustrating, because he can never quite assert control of the circumstances, never make himself fully lucid; he can only ride along the twisting corridors of his wandering imagination, helplessly aware.
Sometimes Martin knows he's dreaming and he doesn't care, because it doesn't matter. The awareness sits unimportant at the back of his head, present but irrelevant. A flavor note. A watermark.
Things are quiet. He stands on the quiet wooden deck of a quiet wooden ship anchored at the center of the quiet empty sea. He doesn't need to see below to know he is alone, he doesn't need to see through the murky dark water to know there is no life in it, and though the knowledge that he is dreaming sits unimportant at the back of his head, that isn't why he knows there is no reason to be afraid.
Things are cold. The wind shudders delicately through his clothes. The salty sea spray wets his face in an impossibly fine mist. The sun does not show here. Fog blankets the world, thick and heavy and dark. He shivers, but he does so at a distance. The cold is part of him. The cold is natural. There is no reason to be afraid.
This is familiar. He knows (because he knows that he is dreaming, surety sat unimportant at the back of his head) that he has dreamed of this quiet ship and this cold sea many times before. He is alone, which is familiar, and there is no reason to be afraid.
He is afraid. He knows he is dreaming, present but irrelevant, and the irrelevance frightens him. That he doesn't care, that he doesn't resist. If this were another kind of dream he would try to make himself swim away, or to change the scenery to something bright and sunny and warm. But he doesn't do those things. He stands there on the deck in the sea and he is so incapable of imagining himself anywhere else that it frightens him. He doesn't want it to be familiar. He doesn't want to feel so calm. He doesn't want to be alone. He doesn't want to be alone.
Wood splinters and cracks and the sea roils beneath the ship. Martin staggers, falls. The shock of it, the shattered quiet, the seething cold, the strange and sudden newness of it all collapsing inward, hits him like a blow to the chest. The ship is coming to pieces; the dream is coming apart. Water rushes in, overtakes him, draws him down, down, down into the murky black abyss.
But drowning is the Buried, and murkiness the Dark, and emptiness the Vast, and finality the End. He does not belong to these. Too Close I Cannot Breathe has had its fun with him, and it makes another grasp as he sinks into its crushing depths, but it has no right to keep him, and it doesn't.
Martin wakes up, or it seems like he does. He knows he is still dreaming, though he's no longer sure he doesn't care. This is familiar, but not like the rest of it. This is only familiar because it happened. It happened yesterday, while he was awake.
He stands, or perhaps is suspended, within a thick, languidly swirling sea of fog. It coils gently around him, fills his lungs. There again, with no language spoken and no words formed, the message roots itself within him: Do not stray.
Martin tries to move. On the ship, movement was possible, though he rarely felt the need. Here, though, the fog weighs him down, heavy and clinging. He isn't being restrained, not exactly, but he feels bound up in it nonetheless. As though the effort of breaking free is too much, not worth the trouble. Easier to let it wrap and curl around him in a protective sheath.
It wants him back. He's been taken somewhere else, somewhere different that it doesn't understand, but it can still reach him, and it wants him. It's nice, isn't it, to be wanted. To be held.
"No," he whispers, so soft it takes a moment to realize he's spoken at all. He hadn't been able to make a sound when this happened on the street, but here - "No," he says again with the little force he can muster. He struggles, and the fog thickens into something that can grip him properly, and when he struggles harder he realizes there is no fog at all, that someone has their arms wrapped around him and has pulled him close.
Greta's cottage is easily recognized. He sees it all in dizzying clarity. He feels the warm, gentle pressure of her arms around him, comforting him for no reason other than he needed it. When he tries to pull away, she lets him, and when he looks at her, she meets his gaze with a querulous expression. Like she wants to ask him what's wrong.
The fog seeps back in, carpeting the floor, rising up around the table. She doesn't seem to see it. It climbs up around her, and still she looks at him with that open, kind, concern. He reaches out, but his hands only sift through mist and smoke. It washes over her until she disappears completely, and when he lunges forward to pull her out, he finds nothing there to grasp. The cottage is gone. She is gone.
"No!" he cries again, panic finally, finally breaking through the veneer of calm indifference. "No, don't, don't-!"
It's too late. It's done. She's gone, and all because she had the audacity to show him kindness, and he had the audacity to receive it.
Do not stray.
"I'm sorry," he sobs, casting about helplessly for any sort of direction even as the fog enfolds him once again. "I'm sorry, I - I didn't-"
His voice grows muffled and distant, swallowed in the impenetrable haze. He shuts his eyes against it all. It doesn't want to hear his excuses, but it isn't punishing him. The Lonely doesn't punish. It comforts. It holds.
He is alone, and that's where he belongs, and it is familiar, and there is no reason to be afraid.
no subject
Martin feels himself surrendering by degrees, losing the will to fight against the bitter wind that holds him fast, the smothering despair that threatens to drown him; maybe he falls to his knees, maybe it's more metaphysical than that. It doesn't really matter if there's no one here to see.
When the world rips apart, it's not like it was before, the sinking ship, the devouring sea. This time it does not collapse inward, but is breached from without. Martin sees - he doesn't understand what he sees. A swirling display of impossible celestial bodies, each one an eye, unraveling and exploding outward from a singular point of orbit. The point originates from everywhere; this is impossible, but that's what it does. The eyes are looking everywhere, in every direction at once; this, too, is impossible, and yet. They seek and search until, in harmonious unison, they find him. They surround him, pushing back the storm, and as the fog drains rapidly out of him, a pent up scream escapes along with it.
There are slender hands upon him, long-fingered and delicate, drawing him in; arms that enfold him, fitting close against his back; a looming body that curls over him in a protective embrace. The wind, the fog, the oceanic squall, it remains, raging, trying to reach him, but he can feel it break upon the back of the body that holds him, anchoring him here to this lighthouse of a man.
Huddled against a narrow chest, Martin looks up, blinking away mist and salt-spray like he's emerging from darkness into light, though there is little light here. John looks down at him. John looks down at him. He speaks, bewildered, human, and Martin has no time to panic or recoil or have any idea what to do with his hands before John vanishes as abruptly as he'd come.
The storm settles. The fog encroaches. Martin does fall this time, crumpling softly to his knees on the quiet deck of a wooden ship in a cold, familiar sea. The fog curls back over him, reproachful and weak, an animal licking its wounds. It holds him, it comforts. It reaches into his heart and tries to tell him he's been abandoned. The sentiment rings hollow; Martin knows better than that. But he also knows it doesn't matter. It's better this way. There is no reason to be afraid.