loficharm | (no subject)

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gwenny blake

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2 August, 2023

It's been so long since he received a hand-written letter that its arrival almost made him suspicious at first. He'd stared uncomprehendingly at the little envelope, the child-like scrawl of his name and address, and the sender's name, thinking Who the hell is Gwendolyn Blake? before he'd finally realized and torn the envelope open with a mix of disbelief and feverish curiosity.

He'd read the letter three times, first shocked, then ashamed, then finally with an odd mix of amusement and regret. It was just so... sweet, down to the bit where she explains that she'd have to stab him again if he ever tried to stab her. He'd clutched the thin sheet of loose leaf, the sort of thing he'd normally associate with school work, tightly between his fingers for several long seconds, trying to think what to do and how to do it.

There hadn't really been much to ponder. Poor Gwen deserves to be set at ease, and the only thing that had been holding him back was the assumption he and John had more or less shared, that she wouldn't want anything to do with them. But now that she's made this clear of an overture, there is nothing to hold him back.

It had been too late in the day for it, so he excuses himself from work the next day, heading straight for the Children's Home. He still has the letter, folded neatly in his pocket. He's not sure why, exactly. He supposes he could show it to someone if there are questions about his intent to see one of the kids, though it's not the sort of letter that should be shown around, either. Maybe it's just for some kind of odd moral support.

The woman who greets him doesn't ask for any such evidence, anyway. She just asks his name and relationship (with some hesitation, Martin offers that he's a friend, for lack of a better option), and then has him wait while she goes to find Gwen herself.

So he waits, as patiently as he can. He doesn't really know what to expect. Maybe this was stupid. Maybe he should have written her back first, asked if this would be okay. That would have been a lot more considerate. Christ, she might be scared he's come to get her in trouble. Why is he always so impulsive?

But before he can even consider the possibility of finding another adult to mitigate any potential misunderstandings, the woman he'd sent returns, with Gwen alongside her.

"Gwen!" he blurts before she can say anything, and he offers a slightly strained smile, awkward, but hopefully reassuring. "I, erm... I got your letter."

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She looks like she does have more questions, and she obviously wars with herself on if she should maintain their arrangement or if she should accept his offer. After a few moments of looking down at the microphone still in her lap, she sighs.

"I guess I don't need to ask how he did it. That'd be like you asking me how I dream real things. It's just... something he can do. It doesn't matter how." She sighs softly. "Can you do anything like that?"

He tilts his head slightly, a little surprised at her assumption, though she's not entirely wrong. He supposes he wouldn't expect someone who's already familiar with the otherworldly to ask how so much as, perhaps, why. But that would be much harder to answer, ironically.

The question she does ask is a bit easier, at least. "No, I can't," he says. "I... I might've, if some things had been different. I'm not sure." That's an awfully esoteric thing to offer, and he hesitates, fidgeting a bit with his hands. "If we hadn't come here, I mean," he amends. "I might've been... changed, I guess." He doesn't much like thinking about it — what Peter Lukas might have teased out of him, what could have become of him if he'd fallen deeper down the path he'd been pursuing. Sometimes he wonders if he was changed, if it's just in ways he doesn't notice. It's not as if it was apparent to John, not at first. And it's not as if the Lonely didn't leave its mark.

An involuntary shiver runs up his spine and he rubs absently at the back of his neck. He's not sure any of this was enough of an explanation, but he sort of hopes she doesn't ask for a follow-up.

That makes it sound like the man with the eyes used to be just a regular guy, maybe, and got changed by where they used to be. Or maybe he was always like that but there were other things that could change other people, like Martin. That seems like a complicated line of questions, though, so Gwenny only nods and considers the ones she really wants the answers to.

"What if...?" She presses her lips together, like she's afraid to even ask it out loud. But she has to. She tries again. "What if I accidentally dream about it again? A real dream, I mean. I can't control it, you know. What if I dream myself there, and he puts eyes all over everything? L-like my fingernails and my belly button and the ends of my hair?"

"O-oh, er—" Martin stammers, thrown almost completely off balance by this sudden turn in the conversation as well as the hyper-specific details she's imagining. It could almost be funny in abstract, but he feels no amusement. Her initial encounter with John in that dream was what had scared her in the first place, and it makes perfect sense to fear it happening again. And the worst thing is it's very possible, for more reasons than she might imagine.

He's not sure how it works, though. He's never really asked John for the particulars on the Archivist's doings, for more reasons than one. Primarily, selfishly, he rather likes to pretend it isn't happening however he can; but there is also the suspicion that John only barely understands it himself, and that asking him to dig deeper would just be... unpleasant, if not somehow unsafe. But would the Archivist invade Gwenny's dreams, now that they've had a direct encounter? Or is it only Statement-givers who suffer that fate?

Maybe it doesn't matter. He knows John. He knows how John has got around this in the past, or tried his very best to do so. He knows that John would likely stop at nothing to keep himself out of this poor girl's head, much less anyone else's. Maybe... maybe that's a safe enough assumption to be getting on with.

"W-well," he says slowly, feeling like he's picking his way through an active minefield, "I'm not sure how your dreams work, exactly, but for him, it's... I don't think he would do that again. A-at least he'll... he'll try not to."

Even that feels unfair, though. Unfair to her, unfair to John. Christ, this was difficult. Maybe coming here was a mistake. Stupid to think he could really help, could assuage her fears when her fears go so far beyond him. Stupid to think he could somehow thread this needle of wanting to defend John and knowing he can't.

He hates this, though. He hates knowing that John is the monster in the dark for this little girl. It grates on him more than he'd like. He wishes more than anything he could undo it, somehow convince her that he is no monster, that he did not mean to scare her. But he can't. He can't say that, because deep down he knows it isn't true. John may not have been himself at the time, but that distinction doesn't really matter. The Archivist is part of John, and the Archivist did mean to scare her, and the outcome doesn't change because of the particulars. Martin can't dictate any of that, no matter how much he might like to.

It makes him feel a bit sick to think about, and he hunches over a little bit, sighing heavily.

"I don't know what will happen," he admits. "But I know he will try to- to leave you be." Biting back the desperate urge to say He doesn't want to hurt you, because he already has. "That probably doesn't sound very comforting, but... it's what I know."

Edited 2024-08-02 23:29 (UTC)

He's right: it doesn't sound comforting. Gwenny knows she's just a kid, but she doesn't understand how Martin can tell her that the eye man will leave her be now, when he didn't before. It's not like he's some old man on his porch, guarding his property from brats who are trying to break his windows. Gwenny didn't mean to share a dream with him. She doesn't even know how she managed to, and that makes her want to blame him for it instead of herself. He accused her of trespassing, she remembers that much, but she stands by her response then: she can't trespass when she hasn't left her bed.

Can she?

Martin looks as lost as Gwenny feels, and that should be comforting too, and still isn't. He's the grownup here, and grownups are supposed to be the ones to protect kids, and know more than them. But when has that ever been true for Gwenny? Grownups didn't stop The Grabber from taking those kids. Daddy didn't protect Finney. Mommy couldn't protect herself from whatever it was that made her...

Anyway. She doesn't know why she expected any differently from Martin, just because he's nice.

Oh, fuck. What if he's not nice? He's friends with the eye man. Works with him, even. How can he be nice and be friends with a creep like that?

Well... he'd told her to ask her questions...

"How do I know I can even trust you?" she asks, which isn't how she meant to ask it, but it's how the question came out. "I mean... you're friends with him, right? You seem so nice and he..." She trails off, because calling The Eye Man evil now seems like it would only make things worse. But it's what she's thinking.

Martin huffs softly, halfway to amused, for all that this really isn't funny. It's a fair question, one he'd sort of expected sooner or later.

"It's..." Complicated would probably sound like he was putting her off. He always hated when adults said things like that. He needs to give her the truth, or at least some approximation of it.

"I knew him before," he says. "Before we came here, and before he was... like he is now. His name is John." She probably knows that, since she's found out his name, but it feels important to draw some distinction here. "The man you met in that dream, that... version of him, I suppose, is called the Archivist. They're sort of the same and sort of not. I would say John is the one who doesn't want to hurt you, but it's not always up to him. And so maybe it doesn't really matter what he wants." It feels bitter on his tongue to say it like that. There's more to it, John's relative innocence or culpability not nearly so easy to define as he might like, but that will have to do, for now. He's not keen to explain the whole damn mess of it, and she didn't really ask about that, anyway. She asked about him.

"But for me," he says, "I don't think of them as the same. I can't. Because it's John I care about. John is my friend. More than that." No sense hiding it, really. She's already judging him; no point in fearing judgment over this. "He's my partner. My- my boyfriend. So I'm not exactly neutral. And I understand if that makes you not want to trust me. You can tell me to leave if you need to, whenever you want, and I'll go. I should've said that first, really."

He looks at her, distantly surprised at his own calm. "But I didn't come here to get you to trust me. I came because I wanted to tell you I was all right and that I wasn't mad. And because I felt like you deserved some answers. I can't really speak for him, so maybe my answers aren't worth much, but I wanted to try."

She doesn't know what she was hoping for, but it wasn't all of this. Maybe she'd been hoping he'd trip up, get defensive and angry, stand up and start pacing like almost every grownup she knows and give her some sort of ammunition to lose her temper on him. But he stays as calm and fucking earnest as ever, stammering less than before, like he'd found his footing at last. And even though trying to explain the difference between The Eye Man an the man behind The Eye Man is like trying to explain the difference between The Grabber and the man that kidnapped Finney — Gwenny will always believe that they're the same — this is still more reassuring than anything Martin's said before. Because it's honest, even if it isn't gentle. It doesn't have to be gentle. Gwenny doesn't want to be talked to like a kid. In a lot of ways, she hasn't been a kid in a long time.

The revelation that Martin is boyfriends with The Eye Man, though, that makes Gwenny's eyes go a little wider. She shifts in place, worried suddenly that she might have said something out of pocket during their conversation so far. Whether or not Martin is trustworthy, whether or not he's, he's dating The Eye Man, Gwenny isn't going to be hurtful about something he can't control. And she's never thought that that is something someone can control.

She thinks about Finney and Donna, how he got all blushy and embarrassed and squeaky-voiced when Gwenny teased him about liking her. She thinks about how relaxed and easy his shoulders got when Robin was around, the trusting look in his eyes because he knew, no matter how tough and strong Robin Arellano was, he'd never hurt Finney, ever. She thinks about those bullies she'd jumped when they'd cornered him, the way they're always calling him a girl and saying he's a Nancy and a fudgepacker and a f— She's always wondered if there's been some shred of truth to it, like maybe he could half-like boys and half-like girls. But when she thinks about all of those things, she can't, not even with the most imaginative, wild part of her mind, picture Martin and The Eye Man looking the way Finney looks when he's teased about Donna.

"Oh," she says, realizing she should at least say something. "N-no, you don't have to leave. I just... Really? Him?" Maybe that's not the most important thing he's said, here, but... Really?

Martin does his best to wait patiently for what he assumes will be a dismissal. It's too easy to imagine at this point. He tries not to feel preemptively stung by it, even though he knows that might be unavoidable. He'd wanted to help, or at least not do any further harm by coming here, and it'll be hard not feel like he's failed if he's sent away now.

But instead Gwenny distractedly tells him to stay, almost like it's an afterthought, and then—

"W—" he starts, blinking at her in open shock as he's momentarily caught between impulses to burst out laughing or raise his hackles. It's just so... absurd, so surprising, that for a moment he's completely frozen.

It would be even more absurd to feel defensive. She has a right to her incredulity, after all, for more reasons than one. And she's just a kid. Except somehow this kind of thing always feels worse coming from kids. He'd told himself he wasn't afraid of being judged, but that wasn't entirely true. Not when it's about something as insignificant as taste. It's hard not to fall back into the mindset of a bullied, insecure kid himself. It's one of the reasons he's never considered himself very good at talking to children.

He hears himself protesting as if at a distance, too late to stop himself: "Y-yes, really," he blurts, feeling his cheeks flush. "I-I happen to think he's very handsome."

Oh, god. He tips his head down immediately, his mouth snapping shut. Mortifying. Stupid thing to say.

"He's kind," he adds, sheepish, and then shuts his eyes tight, lifting one hand to press against his brow as he struggles to get himself back on track. "He's— W-well, it doesn't matter. That's who he is to me. I care about him, and I try to help him remember himself, just like he's done for me. Sometimes it's... it's just not enough."

Feeling slightly more pulled together — if only slightly — he lifts his head and levels a wry, apologetic look at her. "And I'm sorry for that."

And just like that, she doesn't have to imagine it, because here Martin is, getting all blushy and embarrassed, and maybe not squeaky-voiced so much as stammering so much that she's amazed when he finally manages to get a whole sentence out. She snerks and then lifts a hand to cover her mouth, eyes wide first with guilt, then with realization.

"That's why he got so mad," she says. "That's why you got in the way! You're totally crazy for each other and in the movies when people are totally crazy for each other they do stupid shit!" Like jump in front of a knife, and scare the hell out of little girls. "I didn't even think about that 'cause I'm not used to—" She really needs to learn the right words for this... "—to boys being with boys, but makes so much sense!"

Again, Martin feels himself pulled up short, and he stares at her in abject bewilderment for several seconds until finally, the only option left to him is to laugh. He drops his head back into his hands, his shoulders shaking slightly as he tries to get a hold of himself.

"I mean," he says haplessly, "yeah. Yes. I... yeah." Christ, this is ridiculous. But she's not wrong, or she's near enough to right that it feels pointless to argue. "He's usually the one stepping in front of me. So I think it scared him, a bit." He smiles faintly, self-deprecating and a bit fond. "We tend to be a bit stupid," he agrees, finding some strange pleasure in saying so.

Gwenny purses her lips to the side to stop from grinning at him, and looks down at her knees. There's something soft and kind of pretty about Martin when he laughs.

"I'm not gonna say it's not weird," she says, looking back up at him. "I mean... not because you're both boys. Just that..." He's a big scary creep who yells at kids?

She suddenly feels like she has to be careful of how she says things. If Martin loves The Eye Man the way he says he does, then he probably doesn't like hearing her say all the mean shit she's been saying — well, the true shit, but it's kinda mean, too, to call someone's boyfriend a creep or a jerkface. He's let her say it up to now with only some argument, but maybe now that she knows, he'll expect different.

"Well, I don't see it, that's all."

"I certainly don't expect you to," Martin says with a soft smile. He still can't quite believe the conversation managed to take a turn for the lighthearted, but he's grateful to her for it. Her assurance that she doesn't find it weird because they're 'both boys' is terribly endearing.

But as tempting as it might be to let that levity stay, it would be too easy, an escape hatch he hasn't earned. She brought this up because she wasn't sure she could trust him. With that air cleared, it's time to return to the point.

"You're very much entitled to feel however you like," he says. "My... feelings for him don't change what he did."

It's difficult to say, and he feels his gut clench slightly. But it's true, and it probably needed saying. "So all I can promise is that he'll do whatever he can to leave you be," he says firmly, "and I will help him."

Gwenny nods, smiling small. "Okay," she says. She believes him, she finds, and it's a good feeling to have. "And I'll try not to dream about that place again. I mean... it doesn't work like that, but maybe if I know I'm doing it, I can wake myself up, right?" It seems a little weak, but at least it's something.

Still, she looks a little uncomfortable, and she fidgets with her nails a little, the microphone long since forgotten.

"Why eyes?" she asks, but there's a worried grimace on her face, like she's afraid of the answer.

Martin hums softly, considering how to answer that. It's a good question — he might even consider it an interesting question if this weren't all so fraught. He's not sure how much to tell. There's a point where wanting her to be fairly informed crosses into sharing too much, giving her more to fear than she really needs. A difficult boundary to mark.

"Well," he says slowly, angling for simple and to-the-point, "where we come from, different kinds of fears would sort of... manifest in different ways. And the one that was drawn to him was sort of about knowledge. Like the fear of being watched. So it often comes out like... eyes."

Granted, it's never quite happened to him this way. John's occasional intrusions into his nightmares are unsettling, but he's never had his body altered like what seems to have happened to Gwenny. It sounds horrible. But he's not certain if it would scare him as much as it scared her, or in the same way. To him, the deepest and most abiding fears planted by the Eye were more about being vulnerable and being perceived. The better for the Lonely to swoop in like it meant to protect him from all that, he thinks with a faint, bitter wince.

"It doesn't always happen like... like what you're describing," he says, because that might sort of be comforting, if you squint. This is still all leaning on his own guesses, for the most part, and he would prefer to be truthful, even when the truth is frustratingly vague. "Unfortunately we don't really know a lot about how it works. We were brought here before we could learn much." He rubs the back of his neck and looks away. "Though I think it would've also been much worse for both of us if we'd stayed."

Gwenny can understand that. That fear. She thinks she'd felt it in that dream. She remembers a prickling sensation in the back of her neck, and the discomfort of those eyes staring… She shivers as she remembers it and rubs her hands again. But then Martin says he thinks it would have been worse if they'd stayed instead of coming to Darrow.

“Your home was that bad?” she asks. Her voice is softer, now, with more concern for Martin than her own discomfort in it.

Martin feels a little guilty for turning the discussion to him — he certainly wasn't trying to draw sympathy — but he can't begrudge Gwenny her curiosity, nor the possibility that she might feel some small relief at shifting the focus away from her own fears for a moment.

"It was," he answers, equally soft. "We were involved in some very dangerous things, and we didn't really know how bad it was until it was too late. Being brought here saved us, I think." He smiles faintly, then looks at her. "But it left its marks, and as you've seen, that's quite bad enough."

He hesitates, supposing now might be as good a time as any to turn the conversation back to asking mutual questions. She's borne the weight of that long enough, he thinks.

"Back home, did you know anyone else who... dreamed like you did?" he asks. "Or was it just you?"

That's a fair question, though it does make Gwenny feel a little nervous, like she really shouldn't be talking about it. But she and Martin have already talked about so much together, so she knows it's just an instinct carried over from Daddy and their screaming matches. Still, she hesitates for a second or two, then finally says, "Well, Mommy did. I think she could see stuff, too? Daddy said that she'd hear things." She purses her lips to the side, trying not to remember the way Daddy talked about her. Gwenny has her own suspicions now, after what happened while looking for Finney, but now that she's here, she can't tell Daddy or Finney. She's not sure they'd even believe her if she did. Well, Finney might.

And maybe Martin would, too.

"I think," she begins, then hesitates and trails off.

Martin watches her with a small frown, a little worried and trying not to show it. He was curious, but maybe he should've just held onto that. He feels bad turning the conversation now to her mother, when the first thing he even learned about this poor girl is that her mother is dead.

There are hints, though, of something that needs to get talked about. That little mention of her father is telling. And the way Gwenny seems to be starting a sentence, only to stop with clear uncertainty. He gives her a moment, but when she doesn't continue, he sits forward just a little.

"You don't have to tell me about any of it if you'd rather not," he says softly. "But also, if you need to talk about it, you can. Whatever feels best to you. It's okay."

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