Martin Blackwood

January 22nd, 2022


"How does that feel?"

Martin had not intended to snoop. He'd expressly intended not to, in fact, in a way that had taken some conscious effort. With John needing to go to work for a few hours — needing to record Statements, as he'd sheepishly implied — Martin knew the temptation would be stronger than ever. His curiosity about his life here, their life together, is almost overwhelming at times. But just because this is all technically his doesn't mean he has any right to it, really.

He'd assured John he'd be fine, that he'd find some way to occupy himself. He'd thought perhaps he might read, or poke around on this universe's odd simulacrum of YouTube. He should've anticipated it would be harder than that, and he has a hard time believing that John wasn't fully aware of the possibility. So in a way, being left alone in the flat might almost be tacit approval of his own urge to search it.

He'd decided to clean, instead. Something active, helpful, allowing him exploration in a limited capacity. It had worked, too. Until the bedroom. Until the box under the bed, specifically. Filled with tapes, just like the ones they'd used at the Institute, with labels in John's handwriting, proclaiming them to be... innocuous things. Personal things. He'd picked up one off the top of the pile. Christmas, it said. Simple. Straightforward. He'd noticed the cassette player, sitting there on the bedside table, had glanced at it suspiciously, almost sure it hadn't been there before. He should've just put it back. He should not have slotted the tape into the player, and he should not be listening to it now.

But that is what he's doing, perched on the edge of the bed, the player clutched tight in his hands as he stares down at it, tape spooling away as his own voice grits out a response to John's question amid some layers of rustling fabric and creaking wood. "Jesus Christ, John," he says.

( Read more... )

[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.

( Twenty minutes later he finds himself outside the Bramford. )