Wake // for John

[loficharm]

[CW: implied extreme violence & death, excessive blood, related trauma]

October 31st - November 1st, 2019

This has taken him far too long already.

Martin sits at his desk in his office, the door shut and locked as it's been most of the time for the past month, staring at his phone, at the open history of his texts with John. The last message exchanged is dated the 19th, John asking with exceptional care if he was planning on being in that day, forcing Martin to reply very briefly that he had in fact been there for several hours. No response. Before that, only scant business-like exchanges. He knows, and he'd known then, that John was testing the waters, trying to get a sense for what was going on. But he hadn't needed to delve much further. For better or worse, the message had been received.

The phone's screen dims, and he absently taps his thumb against it to wake it up.

Three days ago he'd made a decision. Twenty-two days before that he'd made another: to reacclimate himself with the Lonely, to give up all his tentative progress toward the recovering warmth of social connection and to return to the path on which he'd been set. The justifications were many, and they were easy: because he'd seen firsthand what form the Extinction might take, and even if it wasn't his world it felt too awful to ignore; because the Lonely is still here, breathing down his neck and threatening John in his dreams, and even if those threats are empty they still burrow deep into his heart; because none of this feels real or permanent and he ought to know better than to allow himself something nice when it will only get taken away, just like everything else. Because he wants to be ready, because he wants to be useful, because he wants to keep John safe.

The 19th, he realizes, had been the day Luke came. So they had in fact seen each other briefly; Martin had seen John with him, how different he'd been. Kind and gentle, comforting this little boy who seemed, impossibly, to have become close to him. It had hit Martin in ways he hadn't expected; it was like he was missing something he didn't know was there.

That had hurt, even more than the rest. It all hurt, it hurt so much, and he'd hated it. He'd gotten a cat to cope with the suffocating emptiness of his flat, and that had helped, but not enough. He'd justified it all to himself in a thousand different ways, and each time he had the conversation it felt emptier and more circular, like he couldn't quite keep track of all the threads of it. He'd tried to sink, but he couldn't, he can't, not here. Here the water is different and there is not enough to drown him.

He hated it and it hurt, but that wasn't enough to stop him. Not even seeing John with Luke was enough, not on its own. Maybe nothing would have been enough; maybe he'd have found a way to drown himself anyway, to disappear into the cold dark embrace that clutches him every night. Maybe that would have been it, if Kat hadn't forced it. Needling into him with questions and counters too precisely on the point of it. Promising that he was making John miserable.

That was far more than three days ago, but it took that long for him to arrive at a conclusion. It took him so long to decide, enough. He is tired. He is lonely. And whatever purpose this might have held feels so far away it's like he can no longer see it clearly at all.

So he stares at his phone. He'd meant to catch John before he left for the day, but they've become good at avoiding each other even in this small space. And it's become difficult. He'd allowed it to become difficult. He makes so many false starts and deletes them all, jiggling his knee with nervous, manic energy. He just doesn't know what to say. What can he say? What can he possibly say after all this?

He's sorry?

He is, it just doesn't feel like it'll ever be enough.

But he can't keep sitting here and staring at his bloody phone so he finally just starts somewhere.



It's easy to assume, at first, that the lack of response is simply John giving him a well-earned cold shoulder. It doesn't seem particularly like John - for all he was once rather unkind to Martin, he has never been petty - but Martin tries to content himself with that assumption. He tries as he keeps sending messages, as he locks up the Archive and heads feverishly toward the Bramford. The sun has set already, the earlier darkness still catching him off guard, as does the realization that it's Halloween. He'd forgotten, sequestered as he's been. Not that it matters. He's halfway to the Bramford when he tells John he's coming over; and when he arrives at the front door, there has still been no word and he's beginning to feel a tightness in his chest, a certainty that something is wrong. He just wants an answer, anything - John can be as angry as he likes, John can hate him, just as long as he's okay.

But there's no answer, and the longer Martin stands on the stoop, waiting for anyone to pass through, the sharper that sense of dread grows. He's starting to consider doing something genuinely stupid, like scoping around the building for an open window or something, when the door clicks open.

Martin stares at it, uncomprehending. It opens slowly, with a soft creak and all on its own, which is impossible; reaching out to catch it, he feels the weight of it, how this could not be caused by wind. Someone would have to push it open.

"H-hello?" he asks, feeling a bit foolish, but the only answer he gets is a chilly breeze and the distant sounds of trick-or-treaters and those who've gotten an early start on the drinking.

Well, no time to wonder about it now. He steps instead, letting the door fall shut behind him, and heads quickly down the hall to John's flat. He's reaching out to knock automatically when he realizes the door is open, cracked just barely ajar, but open.

It should not be open.

"John?" He pushes it the rest of the way and takes a few short steps into the entryway, startling for just a moment as he thinks he sees a person, pale and slight with very long hair, standing there at the end of it, but it was such a brief impression, like an afterimage on his eye, he scarcely gives it a moment's thought as he steps further into the room and

and

"No," bursts out of him, breathless and already halfway to a sob. "Oh god, oh god, no, no, no, John, John-!"

There is so, so much blood, and it is everywhere, an arc of arterial spray across the wall and spatter from what may have been a struggle and mostly pooled thick and already drying on the floor around the body, around his body, around John's body.

Martin doesn't remember moving forward, only realizes there's dull pain in his knees as he hits the floor and leans over him, grasping desperately at his shoulders as if this is something he can simply wake up from. There is a knife in his chest, stuck into his heart, and Martin can only stare at it, his breath hitching frantically as he begins to hyperventilate, tears spilling hot and startling down his face.

"Nononono," he moans feverishly, his hands trembling as they brush through John's hair like he's trying to smooth it back. His face is still, relaxed, but not peaceful. He thought people were supposed to look peaceful. "John, no, no, no, please, I - I can't, I can't lose you, I- I said I wasn't gonna let this happen again, I said, I - you can't, I need you, I-"

The words are already pouring out in an incoherent mess, but he can't maintain even that as he gives way to outright sobs, crumpling over him, his head pressed against John's unmoving chest. He was too late. He doesn't understand why this happened, what's even happened, but he was too late, he drifted away and he left John alone and now he's - now-

What bloody good is protecting John when he wasn't here to protect him?

"John," he whispers, shaking so badly he feels like he can't breathe, like he's going to be sick. He lifts his head to look at John's face, as if he'll see any sign that this isn't real, and instead his eyes fall to the scar across his throat.

That wasn't there before. That is new; more to the point, it's fresh. Just a thin neat slash across his throat, his neck and shoulders stained with the blood of it. And it's healed.

"What-" He sits up, reaching out delicately to touch the scar, not quite able to bring himself to do so. He pulls back, blinking through tears as he tries to cobble together some sort of understanding. His thoughts are racing as much as they feel frozen; like he exists in two states at once, panic and surrender. Some part of him, the stubborn part that needs made him a target for the Eye in the first place, the part that needs to understand, struggles against the tide of despair until it reminds him suddenly, simply: again.

He said he wouldn't let this happen again.

Nobody could explain how John woke up from that coma. Nobody could explain how he'd managed a coma and not death to begin wtih. Martin hadn't questioned it; it didn't matter. But it matters now. It matters more than anything's mattered in his life.

Martin lets his fingers move slowly from John's hair down the sides of his face, tracing the trail of little round scars down his neck to his shoulder, letting his hands drift back over John's chest. There is nothing intentionally reverent in it; he is moving slow because he can barely control his body, and because he is afraid.

He wraps his shaking hand around the handle of the knife, his lips moving wordlessly in a prayer that is not a prayer - perhaps just please please please please please - and with a strained grunt he yanks the knife out of John's chest.

It clatters to the floor beside him, and Martin sits there with his blood-stained hands curled tight into the fabric of his trousers, staring, waiting, begging. Please, John, please be okay. I need you to be okay. I need you to be here. I need you.

He waits and watches and prays to whatever horrible intelligence is listening, and for the longest sprawl of red seconds, nothing happens.

Comments

cw: more blood, gore, general panic

[statement_ends]

It had been quick. John might consider that a mercy, later, when he's able to consider things again. But he had left very quickly, retreating somewhere deep inside the body lying arrested on the floor of his flat, and it was the Archivist who did the waiting, the Archivist who retained some tenuous awareness as he drifted off in search of a dream to occupy. A hermit crab that had temporarily lost its shell.

It's almost like being asleep, when all is said and done. Not peaceful, because his dreams are never easy, but... familiar.

There is nothing familiar about the waking. The sensations that drag John back out of the dark he was nestled in are sharp and unpleasant: the burning contraction of a heart that is still knitting itself back together, lungs that are screaming for air. He pulls in half a breath and then chokes, back arching off the floor and then slamming back down as his body curls itself into a mindless expulsion, a cough so forceful it almost becomes a retch.

And then his mouth is full of blood, thick and clotted into a slippery mass that threatens to lodge itself back in his throat. He writhes, all of his awareness centered on this nascent threat, and manages to turn his head enough that his body's next panicked seizure forces the clot out onto the floor. He pulls in another ragged breath, the air ammunition for another round of coughing, fire still burning in his chest and neck, and Christ, he misses the ignorant dark that had held him, he wants it back.

[loficharm]

"Oh thank god," he blurts quietly and on a single breath, still weeping openly even as John convulses violently back to life. Martin has to stop himself reaching out to him as he begins coughing up blood and gasping horribly for air; for a moment it's all he can do to to keep himself at bay, hands reaching helplessly as he tells himself to wait, give John space, give him air.

But he can't; he can't just let him lie there like that, suffering so plainly the after effects of what's been done to him. Martin waits until the coughing subsides just enough and not a minute more, and then he reaches down and heaves John gently, carefully into his arms, not wanting to jostle him overmuch but instead to provide support, to get him upright. Martin lifts him easily, god, has he always been this light? and pulls him close, pressing him to his chest, gentle and desperate all at once, as he sobs shudderingly onto his shoulder.

It's for him as much as it is for John; he needs this, needs to promise himself that John is real and solid and not going anywhere, as much as he needs to make up for so much wasted time. There's so much he could say, apologies and questions and apologies again, but he doesn't know how, if he even could string words together through his tears. Maybe it's better to say nothing, to just hold John while he comes back to himself, give him something familiar to - well. Not familiar. Not familiar at all, really. But something good, there to grasp onto when he's ready to come down.

[statement_ends]

John might miss the ignorant dark, but ignorance has never been the Archivist's purview. The moment his gasping breaths have satisfied his body's base need for oxygen, the moment his brain might consider the possibility of firing on all cylinders, the Knowing hits him like a brick. He held the knife in his heart for fully half an hour, and even as it had stilled him, he'd taken it in.

The knife has a total length of 8.14 inches, comprising a 3.74-inch handle and a 4.4-inch trailing point blade, steel with a satin finish, and the shop where it was purchased is near the corner of Madison Avenue and Revello Drive, and it sat in the display case for sixty-two days before the man took it home on the seventeenth of August, 2018, purchasing it for thirty-two dollars and fifty cents, plus tax, and he'd made good use of it, always found it dependable though it was nothing fancy, and before the 3.8-inch cutting edge had come to rest in John's heart, it had taken the life of Nathan Parks during an early morning jog, and before Nathan it had found Leslie Wittenburg as she stumbled back to her flat after an evening drinking with friends, and before Leslie it had caught Adam Marshall in the instant between realizing he wasn't alone and letting out a scream, and none of them were really monsters but it hadn't mattered to the knife or to its wielder--

John becomes aware that he is mumbling to himself, the words leaking out of him between lingering coughs. He's coming back to himself the way a sleeping bag comes back to the stuff-sack it's kept in, too much trying to fit in too small a space, his body shuddering and straining with the effort of holding it all. It takes several dragging minutes for the built-up Knowledge of the knife to subside, and for more immediate facts to make themselves known.

He is sitting upright, somehow, slumped against something warm and soft, both supported and gently constrained by a pair of arms. It's another body that he's leaning against. Someone is holding him. Their shoulders are quaking; it takes John a while to notice, to differentiate their shaking from his own, and he blinks, bleary-eyed, focusing with difficulty at the expanse of blue-jumpered back that he's spackling with crimson.

He drags his eyes upward, and briefly sees a pale figure near the door, and breathes, "Edith?"

And then she's gone, leaving him with the person who's holding him, and they're... weeping? Weeping.

He has felt these arms around him once before.

"M--Martin?" John lifts one arm, weak and uncoordinated, his fingers curling against the bewilderingly solid presence of Martin's back. Martin, here, in his flat, somehow. Martin, who'd barely exchanged ten words with him over the past week, holding him as gently as the dark had. Far closer now than the knife, but so much harder to understand. "You're here...?"

[loficharm]

John starts to speak, but they aren't words that make sense, and Martin has to struggle not to pull back or interrupt or fall deep into despairing fear that John's lost his mind. The barely coherent shape of his speech and the seeming disconnect of the words themselves has him thinking at first that this is all nonsense, but gradually he realizes that isn't it at all. These are details; facts apparently gleaned from the knife that had spent god knows how long lodged in his body, preventing the otherworldly power that governs him from healing his heart. Christ. Christ. Martin shuts his eyes, waiting it out for what seems like a very long time, until the mumbling subsides into a single name that means nothing to Martin, pitched slightly different from the rest of it, like a question rather than a fact. Martin has no time or inclination to wonder about it when finally John returns to the present moment and perceives him.

John is too weak to grip onto him properly, but his arm does shift around Martin's back, fingers curling gently, and Martin doesn't let go.

And then John speaks again, and the note of surprise hits Martin like a blow to the chest. It's awful. It's utterly unsurprising and wholly deserved. Another, fuller sob breaks out of him as he holds John a little tighter.

"Yeah," he says softly, his voice weak and quavering. "Yeah, I'm here." He rests his chin on John's shoulder and moves his hand to cup around the back of his head, fingers sifting into his hair, embarrassment or shame or propriety the absolute furthest things from his mind at the moment. "I'm not going anywhere."

[statement_ends]

"Wh--" John starts, halfway to why? before another, weaker cough interrupts him. Martin's been pulling away for weeks, even since he woke up in the hospital, and it hadn't been hard to guess why, and he hadn't known how to argue against it (stop trying to save our world, this temporary waystation is more important, our temporary, amiable truce means more to me, unthinkable). He didn't have the right to expect anything different, anything more. Anything like this.

He'd hated it, though. He'd missed him. Christ, he'd missed him.

A few more coughs shake their way out of him, and he curls into Martin, half-convulsive and half-instinctive, his hand fisting into the soft material of Martin's jumper. The burning in his chest has been supplanted by a dull ache, and though his throat still feels raw and ragged, it's more the result of his coughing fit than...

--the hand grips his hair roughly, and he feels that more than the light pressure and the faint sting of the blade in his throat, it's so sharp, it's so sharp he doesn't even know what it's done to him until the blood, his blood hits the wall and fills his mouth--

John shudders, a strained noise escaping him as Martin gently cradles the back of his head, his hand unwittingly soothing the remnant ache from that rougher treatment. His other arm curls around Martin's back until he's clinging to him with what little strength is at his disposal. He wouldn't have thought he had the energy for tears (let alone the fucking hydration), but his eyes burn, the intention there if nothing else, and he unthinkingly turns his face into Martin's neck as if he might hide there.

[loficharm]

"Oh," Martin whispers unthinkingly when John clings on tighter, grabbing at his jumper, both arms around him now, his face turned inward against his neck. This would be unthinkable under any other circumstances, which is part of what makes it so impactful now, that he's this desperate for contact and comfort. Martin can't help but feel grateful, relieved, that he's accepting it at all.

"I'm sorry," he says, not sure what else he has to offer yet. His own crying fades into light sniffling and a faint headache, less important now in the face of John's distress. Martin keeps one hand in his hair and rubs his back slowly with the other, desperate to soothe. "I'm so sorry."

It means many things. He's sorry this happened, he's sorry John was so horribly hurt and that he's suffering from it now, and he's sorry for everything, that he hasn't been here, that he didn't find some way to stop whatever this was, that his being here now is so unexpected. Martin's not sure he could gravitate decisively to one particular meaning even if he were inclined to try. They're all of equal import, all free for John to interpret.

"It's okay," he murmurs, needing to say something else even if it's wildly far from the truth. He tries again: "I-it'll be okay. I've got you. I'm here."

It doesn't feel good to say it second time, like it's unproven, a promise he has no business making. Why should John believe that when he's been so absent for so long? But he swallows the urge to keep talking, to account for himself. Not right now. Not yet.

[statement_ends]

Panic threatens to swamp him, belated and wholly useless. There's no point to it now, not with him long since left for dead. The man who did this isn't stupid; he'd used the general commotion of the holiday as a cover for any noises that might have otherwise been alarming, and he would have gotten out and away from the crime scene as quickly as possible. The knife will be clean of prints -- not counting Martin's, he supposes.

Christ, Martin must have pulled it out.

Martin found him like this.

That horrible realization combined with a ridiculous desire not to make things worse is enough motivation for John to pull himself together a little. His breathing slows, and he forces himself to focus on the feeling of Martin's fingers in his hair, the soothing passage of his palm over John's back. Christ, that ought to be all he can think about -- he has not been touched like this, with such tenderness, in longer than he cares to remember -- but the fragmented recollections of his own brutal murder make for unusually stiff competition. John takes a slow, shuddering breath, in through his nose and out through his mouth, and notes something familiar beneath the blood and the terror, something that takes him back to when he was small and different and stretched across the vast expanse of Martin's bed. He clings to that familiarity a little shamefully, as if, despite being unwillingly saddled with a cat's senses for a week, he should still have no business recognizing Martin by scent. But he does. It's as well known to him now as Martin's voice.

Martin apologizes to him. Reassures. Says I've got you and I'm here, and John huffs out a breath at the fucking irony of it all, an unkind part of him ready to offer a derisive, 'oh, now you're here! Where the fuck have you been?' But he doesn't have the breath to waste on questions whose answers aren't a mystery, and he doesn't have the requisite spite to voice something so unkind, whether there's an argument to be made about Martin deserving it or not.

And he's glad Martin's here.

He lifts his head from its hiding place, instead tucking his chin over Martin's shoulder. He'll have to sit up eventually, operate on his own steam, but right now, he suspects he'd simply collapse without the additional support. "How'd you get in?" he asks, his voice hoarse and his tone at first bewildered. A peevish note creeps in as he adds, "How's everyone keep getting in?"

[loficharm]

"I - I don't know," he admits, relaxing his hold just a little as John seems to be slotting back into place. "The front door just... opened by itself. And your door had been left open."

Which really doesn't make sense. If someone had wanted to kill John, why leave the door open for anyone to stumble easily upon the crime? Though the mystery of that is far less pertinent to Martin than the one it begets.

The questions rise up naturally, and it's almost like he can taste them on his tongue. It still feels too soon for that, when John's only barely recovered, and only by the loosest of definitions; but the need to know aches within him, along with a baser need that boils somewhere deep, to make someone sorry.

"John," he says quietly, feeling like he really ought to pull back now, look him in the eye for this, only he thinks John still needs it, and in some ways it'll be easier without. "Who did this?"

[statement_ends]

John makes a soft sound that might have been a hum, were he in better shape. It comes out as more of a grunt, instead: general acknowledgement that eventually gives way to a sluggish pulse of understanding. He'd seen Edith in the entryway for the briefest of moments. Had she opened his door? This would be the first time, to his knowledge, that she'd had a physical impact on the environment that went beyond the subtle impression of her voice on a cassette tape. But just because he hasn't seen it before doesn't mean she can't.

And he can't imagine anyone else in the building who would be interested in providing him any assistance, capabilities aside.

Martin's question stills him so completely that even the involuntary tremors pause for a moment. He knows exactly who did it. He might know the man better than anyone else in the city does, honestly, and the truth clamors to be told. But while John might hoard information for the sake of it, he suspects Martin would want to do something with whatever knowledge John shared with him. And there's nothing Martin could do about the man who attacked him. Christ, the thought of Martin even attempting some sort of recourse is enough to make John's remaining blood run cold.

He takes a slow, careful breath, then quietly replies, "No."

In the wake of that denial, continuing to accept Martin's gentle reassurances doesn't feel entirely fair. John winces, loosening his grip on Martin's jumper and attempting to sit up instead of just slumping against him. It makes his head swim, and there's a horrible moment where they stick together, John's blood having dried into a tacky sort of glue where they'd been pressed skin to skin, but he braces his hands against Martin's shoulders and takes a few shallow breaths and manages, finally, to straighten his spine.

"Christ," John hisses, eyes shut while he waits for the room to stop spinning.

[loficharm]

It's impossible not to notice how still he goes at the question. As the seconds drag out, Martin resumes the motion of his hand on John's back, slow and a bit more hesitant, waiting nervously until the answer comes.

The answer is simple, to the point, and carries the weight of finality. Like there will be no more said about it.

He wants to protest, but he doesn't. There'll be time for negotiating and wheedling later, if it should come to that. It was too soon to ask and he knew it, and he can leave it there for now. Now John is pulling away from him, attempting to sit up. The blood sticks between them; it's on Martin's hands, his neck, all down the front of him. It doesn't matter. He moves his hands to John's arms, offering support as needed as John braces back against him, and leaves them there as John finally sits up, ready in case he collapses again.

"What can I do?" says Martin softly. "What do you need?"

[statement_ends]

He half-expects some sort of objection, and it's a relief when one doesn't come. Instead, Martin offers a different sort of question, one that still manages to be a struggle to answer. Not because the truth is something John needs to keep hidden, but because the potential answers are so numerous that he doesn't know where to begin. He needs a--a bloody time machine, that's the only thing that would actually sort all his current problems: his exhaustion, the faint itching of his new scars, the fucking mess of it all, the crime scene his flat has become, the invulnerability that he'd taken for granted and that now feels shattered despite his eventual, characteristic survival. The impossibility of sleeping here tonight, or anytime soon, or perhaps ever again. The gnawing hunger that isn't so much in his belly as behind his eyes, the desperation to replenish the energy it took to come back from the brink yet again.

What the hell is Martin supposed to do about any of that?

John opens his eyes, looking at Martin properly for the first time in days. He's a mess, blood smeared all down his front and stamped against his neck, coating his hands. An impossible amount, and also the least of it. But his face is unbearably earnest, and his hands are solid and steadying on John's arms.

He tries to imagine a need, one that didn't and couldn't lead to a knife in his chest.

"Erm," he blinks, then swallows thickly. "Water? Please."

[loficharm]

Martin watches him, his eyes remaining shut for a while, so that John catches him looking when he opens them again. He doesn't flinch from it, just waits for the answer and nods promptly. "Of course."

Water had been his first thought, really, but he wasn't going to get up and leave him until there was a clear direction. He stands up, keeping his hands on John until the last moment, finding himself unexpectedly shaky as he does so. He's worried for a moment that he might stagger and fall, but he grits his teeth and forces himself steady. John needs him. He's got to be strong.

He makes his way to John's kitchen, reflecting briefly and a bit hysterically that this is only the second time he's ever been here, while John is intimately familiar with his flat - and he has to search about a bit before he finds a glass. He fills it up and brings it back carefully, kneeling back down so he can hand it over more easily and stay close in case John has any trouble. He's functionally back to normal, but the signs of wear are still very present, his hoarse voice, the continuing tremors, his clear and evident distress. He's so pale, the normally rich tone of his skin having gone lighter and somewhat sickly. Martin wonders, a bit aghast over the whole thing, if the Eye can just... make new blood for him? Is he going to need a transfusion? Will it all balance out in time?

Well, clearly he already has received some sort of metaphysical transfusion or other, or he probably wouldn't have been able to get back up. Martin realizes belatedly that John hadn't even been cold, exactly, when he'd first fallen to his knees over him. He'd been ready to go; just needed someone to take the knife out.

He wonders, though it's far too awful to wonder much or to ask, if John had been... awake, sort of. If he'd been waiting. If he'd been aware.

Martin represses a shudder and watches quietly as John drinks. He's getting blood on everything the touches, of course, there's no helping that, but Martin can also see smudges of blood on the glass from his own fingers.

"Will you be all right if I pop into the WC?" he asks at length. "Just - just to wash my hands." There's far more to deal with that, for both of them, but he doesn't want to leave John that long. The rest of it will come later.

[statement_ends]

John accepts the glass with a hand that's far from steady, though at least he's able to keep hold of it without sloshing water all over himself. As if a little water might... what, make a mess? That ship has well and truly sailed, vanished beyond the bloody horizon. He could upend the glass over his own head without making matters worse.

He drinks, instead, the water cool and soothing and nothing like blood. The temptation to just knock it all back as quickly as possible grips him, but he forces himself to go slowly, to take sips and pause between them. He isn't even really sure why; it's not as if there's an established method of recovering from a fucking murder. Human standards need not apply, and really, the idea that chugging a glass of water might be too much for someone who had a knife in their chest ten minutes ago is fundamentally absurd. But he still feels awful, and he doesn't want to push his luck.

Also slightly absurd is the thought of Martin just nipping off to wash his hands, as if that'll make all the difference. He needs a shower and a change of clothes, and John probably needs a--a fucking fire hose, to say nothing of his flat, which needs... Christ, he doesn't even know what. Enough hydrogen peroxide to drown a horse, to start.

But he nods, huffing quietly and without humor at the question's other implications. That he won't survive being left alone for a minute. That Martin's absence, in particular, might be more than he can bear -- as if it's not his sudden, attentive presence that's unusual. Or unusual compared to how things have been recently, at any rate. "It's fine," he says, his voice marginally less ragged.

He continues to sip at his water as Martin goes off to wash up, then risks a look down at himself. His shirt is a blood-soaked mess with a tell-tale gash in the middle, and he hooks one finger into the tear, plucking at it in morbid fascination for a moment before letting it go. He's sitting in a pool of his own blood, and he draws his knees up as if to rise before realizing he doesn't have the strength for it, yet. And besides, what would be the point? He doesn't want to transfer all this mess to the couch. He grimaces, setting the almost-empty glass aside on a clean patch of floor, then braces his arms on his knees and listens to the faint sounds of Martin splashing around in the WC. The sound of company, knowing it's Martin, is as bewildering as it is reassuring.

When he reemerges, John looks up at him, his brow furrowed. "What are you doing here?" he asks, only appreciating how bluntly confrontational the question is after he's asked it. He winces, wanting to soften it, not knowing how or even if he can dull the edges of the underlying implications: that Martin has been distant and avoidant for the bulk of the month, and there's no obvious, outward reason for him to have changed his mind before he arrived here. "I mean, why did you...?" he huffs, flapping a blood-soaked hand in lieu of finishing the sentence.

[loficharm]

At John's rather bland assurance, Martin picks his way to the WC and shuts the door as delicately as he can, trying his best not to spread more blood around. He turns around to face the sink and immediately sees himself in the mirror, stands and just stares for a while at the blood soaking into his clothes and drying on his skin. John's blood. Someone made that happen; someone did that to him. They broke in, cut his throat, stabbed him in the heart, left the knife for what, good measure? and left him to bleed out.

Martin realizes he's pulled his hands into fists, his fingers digging hard into his palms, and takes a slow breath as he wills himself to relax. Christ, he's a mess, in every sense. He tips his head back down to avoid his own visage and elbows the faucet on, trying to let as much of the red rinse off his hands as possible before he starts in with a liberal application of soap. Once he's got them a bit raw but cleaner, he splashes at his neck and face, soaking the collar of his shirt, but what does that matter. He lets the water run a bit until the sink is clean.

He tries not to think about how long he just held John, about John clinging back, about how it took something unbearably, overwhelmingly horrible to even make space for that to pass between them. He shuts the water off with a finality that he hopes to transmit to his own thoughts. Letting himself slip into that self-pitying abyss would be the most selfish maneuver he could make right now. Not the time.

When he comes back out, John's question stops him short, not that it's undeserved. It's even something Martin has had occasion to ask John; it's not like he's the first of them to show up unannounced and without apparent explanation at a rather critical moment. But unlike John, he doesn't have any otherworldly help in Knowing when something's wrong.

John seems to regret the question, or at least want to rephrase it, and he tries, but the new one isn't much better. It's worse, actually, to Martin's mind; the confrontational but still objective what are you doing is so much better than the simple, personal why. Why is he here, why did he come, the implicit extension being that his isolation had been so understood it simply doesn't follow that Martin would ever seek him out again.

It's awful, but it's fair, and Martin responds to it with a moment of quiet solemnity, tipping his head down to avoid John's gaze as he thinks how to answer.

"I guess the really horrible answer is it's sort of a coincidence," he says softly. "I was trying to get in touch with you and you weren't answering your phone. So. I came here."

It's only an answer by technicality; those are the facts of the matter, the mechanics of why specifically he is here right now. But that's not the answer John's looking for and not the one he needs.

Martin refuses to have that conversation like this, standing above John at this impersonal distance. He comes back over to where John is still sitting in his own mess, and settles back down into the same approximate spot where he can see, a bit ghoulishly, that he already carved out the rough shape of himself in the pooled blood.

"I wanted to talk to you," he says, still not quite able to meet his eyes, settling instead somewhere around his shoulder, avoiding both the scar on his neck and the tear in his shirt. "I know it's weeks too late-" he coughs out a nervous little laugh, weak and without much humor, "it's probably months too late. But I don't want to be this way anymore. I don't want to keep you at arm's length and try to pretend that anything I'm doing is helping anyone when it's not. I'm just... I'm sorry it took me so long." He pushes a hand up over his face, breathing through his fingers for a moment. "If I hadn't be such a bloody coward and just caught you before you left work like I'd planned, maybe this wouldn't have happened, so."

He drops his hand and finally looks at John. "But I'm here now, all right? And - whatever harm I've done, we can... we can talk about that later." The issue at hand still feels profoundly more relevant, and he thinks he can atone better by just being here for John than by trying to make excuses for himself.

He draws a breath and says, "Will you please tell me who did this?"

[statement_ends]

John's initial, uncharitable response is a quiet scoff. He shouldn't, he knows it's unfair, he knows that isn't the whole answer, but he can't restrain that little burst of incredulity at the thought of some unanswered texts being at the root of this. Especially when they'd been speaking so little to begin with.

But then Martin sinks back down to the floor nearby, and elaborates, and John's expression slowly relaxes out of its skeptical twist. It... it shocks him, perhaps more than it should, and probably for reasons Martin wouldn't have anticipated. He puts forth the idea of too late as if John might have simply tired of waiting, or written him off as a lost cause -- responses that John can barely imagine, let alone execute. He'd never liked Martin's cooperation with Peter Lukas, but he'd always assumed there'd be an end to it. That Martin would need his help, eventually. And he would have waited for as long as it took, for either the request or the inarguable necessity. There is no 'too late.' Certainly not one measured in months.

He doesn't get the chance to feel properly perplexed at the idea of Martin having harmed him -- a charge that feels particularly absurd under the current circumstances -- because he's too busy being chilled by the thought of his murderer having to go around Martin to get to him, which might have easily translated to going through Martin to get to him. Christ, just the idea is enough to haunt him; he couldn't have stood the reality of it. Maybe it's just as well Martin hadn't summoned the courage to catch him before he left the Archive.

"No," he says again, meeting Martin's eyes, his own probably more pleading than he'd like them to be. "I can't... please, stop asking. There's nothing you can--can do about him."

[loficharm]

Martin chews his lip, trying to tamp down the inevitable little swell of frustration when John denies him again, but he can't help a quiet huff of his own with that excuse. "Nothing I can - John, they're sti- he's still out there. This is a, a crime scene, we could call the police, there's all kinds of things we can do. I'm not gonna let this just..." he waves a hand in exasperation, "happen to you."

He'd been able to track enough of John's initial muttering to catch the implication that this knife and its wielder have taken lives before, but he doesn't quite want to bring that up as a point. Both because the way things are going, he's not keen on letting John know he got anything useful from all that, and because as awful as it is, those other victims don't matter to Martin like this does. Like John does. And perhaps it's stubbornness as much as selfishness, but he wants this to hinge only on what's happened here.

Because it should be enough. John has enough scars to show every awful thing that's happened to him, and no one's ever stepped in, no one's ever cared. This refusal to speak about it is bloody well par for the course, but this is different, to Martin's eyes. This wasn't something he threw himself into, or a hazard of their ridiculous work environment. Nothing like this has ever happened before, and Martin cannot imagine just filing it away under nothing to be done.

"I'm assuming you do know who it was," he says with a tight frown and a pointed look, "since otherwise there'd be nothing to not tell me."

[statement_ends]

Martin picking up on the pronoun has John averting his eyes with a faint wince, annoyed with himself for giving up even that much. Not that it narrows down the playing field by all that much -- it isn't even that hard of a detail to guess, when all is said and done. It's not impossible that a woman would... dispatch someone this way, but it's not terribly likely, either.

What's worse is Martin's insistence that he's not going to let this happen to him, as if that isn't what everyone's always done, Martin included. John's covered in scars that no one's bothered to avenge, and while one could argue that those situations were different, their enemies less human and less assailable, he still balks at the idea of this action requiring an answer. He can just collect his new scars and carry on, as per bloody usual.

"You think Darrow's police department is going to make this a high priority?" He coughs out a short, bitter laugh. "There hasn't even been a murder, not really. And the city's institutions aren't exactly overfond of the immigrant population."

It's a shallow argument. John has no actual idea how useful the police might be, but they haven't caught him yet, and they've had several opportunities involving more sympathetic victims -- hell, involving actual victims, not an evidently alive Archivist with a wild story and a messy flat.

He frowns tightly at Martin's accurate deduction, but doesn't deny it. "It's no one you know," he replies, true but reassuringly useless.

[loficharm]

"Well I should hope not," Martin says stiffly. His hands have curled into fists again, stuck on his lap. John's excuses probably do carry some weight, but not enough to dissuade him completely. He knows as well as anyone how unhelpful the local institutions can be, and the situation is an odd one, but surely there's enough here to show that something did happen. Maybe it isn't as simple as he wants it to be, but there has to be something they can do.

"Do you at least know why?" he asks after a moment. "I mean, this - it's so much, it had to be work to get in here, this couldn't have been random, could it?"

[statement_ends]

John sighs heavily, his eyes finding his water glass and focusing on it, the better to avoid looking at Martin. Of course he knows. Even if he hadn't been soaking in the knife long enough to pick up something as subtle as the wielder's motivations, he would have known why this, why him. There's a ghastly sort of logic to it, to the point where he doesn't even know if he has the right to an objection, let alone retaliation. Trauma for trauma. A fair fucking trade.

"It wasn't random," he says, his voice a flat croak. "Just... just leave it, Martin."

[loficharm]

The answer, though it is an answer, would have set him on edge even without the additional request, which he has some trouble not finding infuriating. He opens and shuts his mouth in short order, sputtering a bit before he manages to blurt out, "No I will not leave it! Jesus Christ, John, haven't you been through enough on your own? I - I know I haven't been here but I'm here and I won't just... You don't have to be alone with this, okay?"

Mortifyingly, he feels himself getting a little choked up again. This is too close to his heart, and his own hand in this is becoming staggeringly clear, that by trying to shoulder everything on his own he left John to do the same. He swallows thickly, trying to hold himself together as he grits out, "Why won't you just tell me?"

[statement_ends]

Christ, he can't take this, this refusal to just preserve a status quo that is at least familiar, even if it was never particularly good. Why does Martin have to get all bloody noble now?

Except it's not that. Or not just that. It's that Martin's fighting so hard for an answer that would immediately shatter his idea of what he's fighting for. That he thinks John is some kind of innocent victim, that he can't possibly have courted something like this. That he wants to help, that he thinks he'd be doing the right thing by bringing John's attacker to justice, that it doesn't even fucking occur to him that perhaps justice has already been served. And John wants nothing more than to sit on that godawful knowledge, but he can't. The truth will out; trying to prevent that is like trying to stop himself from breathing, and maybe it's all he can do to try and point Martin's horror in the right direction: away from the monster who might actually hurt him, and towards the monster that wouldn't.

"Because I fucking deserved it!" he snaps, finally turning to look at him. "I earned this, all right?"

[loficharm]

Martin goes very still. He was halfway expecting to be snapped at, almost as if he'd hoped he could annoy John into giving him the truth just to shut him up. But this, this is so far from what he could possibly have imagined that he just goes completely quiet for several long seconds, trying to make sense of the outrageous assertion.

He cannot; there is no sense to be had. "...What?" he says eventually, his voice going briefly small and timid before righteous anger surges back up. "No you didn't, there's no way you could possibly deserve any of this, John! What are you talking about?"

[statement_ends]

That awful silence feels like the first truly appropriate reaction Martin's had, but it doesn't last. Martin rallies, scrapes together enough bewilderment and righteous denial to lean on. And why wouldn't he? He doesn't know. He has no idea how John has really been surviving, here.

Which means John will have to tell him.

"I..." An ugly noise bursts out of him, something between a sob and derisive bark of laughter, and he curls in on himself, head sagging towards his knees. His eyes well with tears, which he blinks back furiously. Terrified as he might be of Martin's response, and as bitter as the irony of it all is -- that Martin should come here now, determined to mend whatever it is that he thinks he's broken, only to find out that what he's actually been reaching out to is, is him, this -- he doesn't want to engender undue sympathy with his bloody tears. Poor Archivist, someone finally bit him back.

John swallows thickly. Tell the truth. "I took his Statement. He didn't want to give it to me, but I took it anyway. I... I forced him to tell me." It sounds too tidy, put like that; the words don't convey the horror well enough. "I tore it out of him." It's still not enough, and John starts to lift his hands to his face before realizing what a mess that would make and letting them drop. "So this doesn't require some sort of--of reckoning, Martin," he carries on, acidly, retreating into the sort of acerbic nastiness he hasn't indulged in months, throwing everything at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. "This is the reckoning. We're even. It's done."

[loficharm]

The urge to reach out and touch him again is difficult to suppress, not just because he's missed it so desperately but because John looks so abysmally unhappy, it makes Martin's heart want to break. As his thoughts scramble for purchase in the gulf between John's evident crumpling and the coming answer, he strays back to Kat telling him how miserable John was, that it was because of him, and how hard he'd fought to deny that. She hadn't said it to be cruel, she'd said it because she understood, better than he gave her credit for at the time. John's misery goes deeper than that, it's clear to him now, but Christ, if he could just fix it somehow, take it away, if he could-

John tells him why, and Martin's thoughts crash to a halt as he sits there, his jaw slack, his shoulders sagging a bit under the weight of it. John keeps talking, elaborating, trailing deep into the John he remembers from years past when this was just a job and John was just an emotionally distant, unattainable boss.

It takes so long for the words themselves to congeal into meaning. Far worse than the admission itself remains the assumption that this was somehow earned. That John deserved this. No matter what he'd done, how horribly it had hurt, Christ, no one deserves this. But Martin knows well enough there's no coming out and saying that, and it leaves him unsure what to do.

"Oh, John," he says eventually, soft and plaintive. "I-"

No. Pity isn't what he needs. Martin knows better than anyone how awful pity feels.

His fingers curl even tighter, such that his nails would be biting into his palms if they weren't so worn down from years of nervous habit. He'd hoped, he'd believed that they could head this off, that John wouldn't resort to it if they were working together. And then he disappeared into his dark little hole accomplishing nothing but making this necessary, and look what bloody happened.

He heaves a sigh but doesn't avert his eyes, refuses to look away from John now, much as what he has to say feels impossible. "I... I knew this could happen," he says quietly. "It was after you - I mean, you got pulled here before me, technically? So it - it hadn't happened yet. I thought it wouldn't happen, I thought we could..."

He stops, breathes out slowly. That's the problem, isn't it? There's been no we; he'd made sure of that. "There was a woman, er, I didn't get her name, but she came in to... register a complaint? About you. Having... done this. To her. She was an engineer, worked underground and in sewers, just... she had a brush with the Buried, and you..."

It doesn't matter. He shakes his head, frustrated by the awareness that he's making this worse. "I'd been planning to... I don't know, get Basira to talk to you, something. And then we were here, and I thought maybe it wouldn't happen, maybe you'd... It doesn't matter. It isn't right, John, but neither is this. You don't deserve this. What he did - it doesn't matter why, nothing you could do makes this okay."

Which is all well and good to say, and he believes it with all his heart, but he's still shaking a little, can't quite believe that this happened, that John was so bad off that he resorted to this and Martin didn't even notice, and that this was the result.

[statement_ends]

Martin says his name with far more sympathy than horror, and John glances over at him, sharp and furious, the don't you fucking dare feel sorry for me lodged in his throat but clear enough in his eyes. He doesn't want anyone's sympathy; he's carrying enough without the additional weight of this isn't fair or this shouldn't have happened, as if either sentiment has ever made the least bit of difference or been of any real use. It happened. It happened, and he just has to fucking live with it.

The last thing he expects is for Martin to say that he knew. About the possibility, if not the fact of it. John stares at him, initially incredulous: he knew, and he never thought to fucking mention it? He knew, and he thought... what, that the Statements they've managed to scrape together here would be enough to forestall what he'd been doing back home, where he had an entire bloody Institute's worth of them at his fingertips?

And then the hurt sets in. But it's not just that ill-advised optimism (to put it kindly) that really bothers him. It's the bitter realization that he doesn't even remember the woman Martin's referenced. He must not have met her, yet, and Martin thinks she was the first. He has no idea about the three (at least, Christ, maybe it was more) that preceded her.

Worst of all, though, is the absurdity of that 'we,' the way Martin holds it up as if it had ever really existed outside of his own hapless theorizing. They'd never faced this head-on, together. Oh, Martin had stepped up quickly enough when John's predicament was merely adorable (and conveniently brief), but he'd left him alone with this one. And Christ, he doesn't blame him -- or he wouldn't have, because this isn't his problem to fix, except for the part where he knew and he never said anything and never really tried to help and now, now he has the fucking nerve to wring his hands over the consequences.

John stares down at his blood-soaked trousers, quivering with something that belatedly registers as dry, humorless laughter. He doesn't know how else to respond, what he could possibly say. He's too fucking tired to rail at him, too angry for any reluctant concessions, too hopelessly wretched, just in general. So he huffs a quiet spell of laughter in the general direction of the floor, eventually trailing off into a momentary silence.

"Christ. You knew." Such a simple statement, and he can't get past it.