loficharm: (panic)
[CW: this whole post is a severely upsetting abduction scenario involving threats of physical violence, restraint and imprisonment, verbal/emotional abuse, and some graphic choking. There will also be violence and death in the immediate follow-up, and just like a ton of trauma and some gnarly wound care after that. Please take care and read responsibly. <3

To avoid the choking scene entirely, skip from "We're disposable" to "Eventually, his patience seems to wear out."]



January 7th, 2020

It’s a cold, clear day Martin’s chosen for a walk through the woods, the earth blanketed by a thin layer of soft snow. He’s been taking these walks more and more often lately, each time venturing a little deeper into the relative wilderness beyond Candlewood. It’s lovely out here, quiet and peaceful, and even after so much time spent rebuilding himself from the lasting marks left by the Lonely, sometimes it is good to be alone. He needs that, needs to reclaim it as something healthy and wholly his. So, he takes walks.

Generally he’s quite used to the ambient sounds of nature, the little creaks and groans of wood, the subtle rustling of an occasional animal. Today, though, something feels a bit off. He’s not sure what it is or if he’s just imagining it, but he can’t shake the sense that there’s some kind of pattern in the sound, or that the silences feel too heavy. It’s difficult to parse or confirm, but there’s no allaying the curl of nervousness in his gut. Paranoia is like an old friend, and he trusts it more than he once did.

So when he stops, and the noise around him stops as well, that nervousness too easily turns to dread. He takes a moment to steel himself before he slowly turns around slowly, but he sees only the quiet, empty woods, which isn’t entirely reassuring. He peers into the stillness for a long time, the snowy earth, the barren trees, and listens. All he hears is the soft breath of wind sifting through sleeping branches, and finally, only a little mollified and thinking he ought to head home now, he turns back to continue.

There is no time to wonder )
loficharm: (alert)
There are an absurd few seconds where Martin doesn't remember who the hell Eaton is, or why he should be in his phone contacts. The text comes in while he and John are having lunch in the office, chatting comfortably as has become their pleasant custom, and Martin fishes his phone absently out of his pocket and looks at it, trailing off in the midst of an only mildly amusing anecdote about the copier. He's here is all the message says.

He stands bolt upright before he's had a moment to bloody think this through. He never told anyone about this plan, certainly not John, and just as he'd fallen into the uneasy complacency of assuming, more than a month later, that nothing would come of it, he'd also never considered the very real possibility that the tip-off would come while he was in John's company with no viable excuse to suddenly dash out. Right out of the gate he's already made a hash of it; there's no passing this off casually after that abrupt display. John is incisive and Martin is a poor liar when he's unprepared, and this whole thing is now beginning to feel very stupid indeed.

But there isn't time to work something out. There isn't time, because this is happening now, seven blocks away, and he's already scrambling to get his coat.

"I, er—" He shoves his phone back in his pocket as he pulls his coat on. It's awful, but his only recourse now is to just flee as fast as possible and hope John can't catch him, and that he can explain, somehow, later. "I'm sorry, I, I have to go, it's—something came up. It's fine, just, I need to—I'll explain later, okay?"

Christ, this isn't helping, he just needs to go. He winces and turns around, managing to keep his pace only to a brisk trot until he makes it outside, at which point he bolts down the sidewalk in the direciton of Madison & Revello. He doesn't look back to see if John is following him; he zig-zags his way there, up one block, over the next, and so on, hoping he's harder to follow that way. He feels awful doing this, but this is his problem, he invited it onto himself, and he's not about to let John just stagger into it.

Read more... )
loficharm: (cold)
November 4th, 2019

The weekend has been crowded. From John's murder to all that followed, Saoirse's party and Harry Goodsir's awful revelation to telling John what he'd learned, and finally to last night's late, surprisingly hopeful turn of events - Martin hasn't had many moments to really think about the next step. But he'd known there was a next step. He'd even known what it was. He knew it when he tracked down the establishment at the intersection John had named, dragged from the knife while it sat buried in his heart. He knew it when he picked up the knife while Eliot was focused on cleaning the floor, when he'd wiped it off and carefully pocketed it. Maybe he hadn't had time to think about it directly, but he'd known.

He'd have gone sooner if he could. The shop was closed on Sundays, or he'd likely have fit it in yesterday. Probably a good thing he didn't, considering it might have been difficult to conceal it from John that night. But there isn't really a rush. Now, after pocketing two hundred from John's absurd stash of drug money - between his own duties as accounting for the money and the fact that they aren't terribly careful about just swiping it for personal spending where necessary, he doubts anyone will notice - he leaves The Archive for the day and walks the fairly short distance to Madison Ave and Revello Dr, to the unassuming little shop with a bland sign proclaiming it to be Madison Tactical. Hunting gear as well as items of slightly less explicable purpose - the sort of place he'd never set foot in, generally. He hovers outside for a moment, peering inside until he's reasonably confident it's empty apart from the man at the back. Then he goes inside.

Read more... )
loficharm: (terror)
[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. )

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Martin Blackwood

October 2024

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