Chapter Text
It was a beautiful day, and Jon was pissed.
“They’re screwing with us, right?” Jon set the case file he’d been reading down on the dashboard of Martin’s car and gave it a look of disgust. The pair were driving down an idyllic suburban road chasing another imaginary monster from another crackpot or junkie or liar that Sasha and Tim wholeheartedly believed. Just like always.
And just like always Jon and Martin were crammed into Martin’s beat-up old Chevy, croaking and spluttering its way along crammed and crowded London roads. It was a wonder the thing could even drive, and the second Jon slammed the papers on the dash the car let out a worrying creak that made Martin wince. Why Sasha had decided the best way to research cases was sending her assistants out in teams of two—and why those two always ended up being Jon and Martin—was beyond him. Jon thought that was a cruel joke. He wasn't sure what Martin thought, though from the way he blushed and stammered you'd think he thought the whole thing was some elaborate ploy to get the two of them together.
And besides, Sasha insisted it was safer this way, though that did nothing to detract from Jon’s general pissedness at the whole affair.
“What?” Martin peeled his eyes from the road for a moment to look at Jon. He hated driving. It made him anxious. And the car’s constant threats to fall apart at the slightest provocation certainly didn’t help that.
“Tim and Sasha?” Jon gestured to the case file with contempt. “There's no reason for us to go on this investigation together.”
Jon had yet to make peace with the new arrangement. It was not that he didn’t like Martin, he was nice enough certainly, and offered kind eyes and easy smiles freely, like they were nothing, like they didn’t cost a thing to give.
Jon didn’t want them. They made it hard to think, hard to do his job, hard to do much of anything. So no, Jon didn’t dislike Martin per se. It was just his presence that annoyed him. Which sounded mean, all told, but so did most of the things that Jon said, and he didn’t even intend for them to most of the time.
“You don’t know that,” said Martin. For his part, he seemed to quite like spending time with Jon, even if Jon didn’t feel the same way. Both of them spent far too much time in the Archives, and as a result, they tended to see each other a lot. Jon said it bothered him, but he still took the tea Martin offered him all the same, and sometimes he'd even thank Martin and talk with him about nothing for a minute or two.
“Martin, the file is literally labeled ‘spooky doors.’” Jon tapped the file with a thin, judgmental finger.
“Oh.” Martin gave the file a curious glance. “Well, I mean maybe Tim and Sasha just wanted us out of the Archives.”
“What, because we’re turning into hermits or something?”
Martin ley out a nervous laugh and wouldn’t meet Jon’s eye. “...something like that.”
The wheels in Jon's head turned slowly and arduously. “Wait, you’re saying maybe—”
“Yeah.”
Jon was blushing too now. “Oh! I didn't realize they...”
“I'm not sure but I think so?”
“Right. It makes sense why they'd want the Archives to themselves then.” The silence of the car was only broken by the ticking of the turn signal.
There was a beat.
“Are we close?” Jon asked.
“We’re getting there.” Martin tapped the steering wheel as he glanced around the neighborhood. “Though I’m not entirely sure what we’re looking for.”
“If I’m not mistaken, a house with a ‘For Sale’ sign in the yard.”
Martin glanced at the rows of near-identical suburban two stories—about half of which had ‘For Sale’ signs in place of the row-standard plastic flamingos—and sighed. “That doesn't really narrow it down.”
Jon glared at him, indignant. “Well, it’s hardly my fault Tim’s handwriting is so hard to decipher.”
“Who are we meeting?” asked Martin, cutting him off.
“Some real estate agent,” Jon grumbled. “A ‘Helen Richardson.’”
“I think I see her over there, actually.” Martin gestured to a house, the same in every way to those around it, save for a tired-looking black woman sitting on the stoop, a cigarette abandoned to smolder silently in her hand. Helen Richardson had the appearance of someone who’d lost too much weight too quickly, and the smell of someone who’d just started smoking. Her face was gaunt, and her mind a million miles away. She didn’t even look up as Jon and Martin approached her.
“Police, Institute, or my 3:15?” Her voice was flat and her eyes were dull.
“Institute.” Jon shifted his hold on the file in his arms absentmindedly. “Can we come in?”
Helen shook her head and laughed. “And go through the door?” She looked tired. So very, very tired. “Did you read my statement?”
“Right.” Jon sat on the pavement awkwardly, and Martin followed suit, equally awkwardly. “Sorry about that.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s just been hard. This whole…” She gestured wildly with her hands, trailing ash as she did so. “Everything. Do you know how hard it is being a real estate agent who’s afraid of doors? Or just being afraid of doors at all? I’ve been living out of my car for weeks now.”
Martin looked at her, concerned. “Are you alright, Ms. Richardson?”
“Alright? Do I fucking looking alright?” Helen demanded. She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. “Sorry, that was...that was uncalled for. I haven’t been getting much sleep, or any good sleep at least. I just can’t stop thinking about that awful place. Those hallways and that man.”
Jon wanted to say something to her. Something comforting. Something that would make her life easier, make the look in her eyes soften, make the hedge in her breath lessen, at least just a bit. But he didn't. Instead, he opened the file in his hands and scanned it for a moment. “The man from your report?” asked Jon, finger resting on a nearly illegible name. "This 'Michael?'”
“Something like that, yeah.” They were silent for a moment, letting the name just hang in the air like haze or the smoke from Helen Richardson’s long-deserted cigarette that Jon was trying to not let himself inhale too much of. Helen stared at the two men in front of her, stiffly sitting on the concrete walk and staring at her with concern in their eyes. She took a drag from her cigarette. “Are you two here for a reason?" she asked. "I already gave my statement to that fierce-looking woman, your archivist.”
“We just need a key and an address for the house,” piped Martin from Jon's right before he could respond.
Helen's eyes widened. “Don’t go in there.”
“We kind of have to," Martin said apologetically. "It’s sort of our job.”
“Quit then. It’s not worth it.” She placed a key into Martin’s hand anyway and looked away. “It’s number eight, St. Albans Avenue. I don’t think anyone’s bought it yet.”
“Thank you.” Martin smiled gently at Helen. She didn’t return it, the gentleness or otherwise.
“You shouldn’t.” Helen stood and glanced miserably at what was left of her cigarette as if deliberating whether or not it was worth the effort of putting it out. “And I’ve got something else for you too.” She reached into her rumpled pantsuit jacket and pulled out a balled-up piece of paper. Martin rose to take it and tried not to look too confused by it.
“What is it exactly?” he asked, failing to do so.
“It’s a map,” explained Helen, running her free hand through her hair. “Of that place I went to through the door.” Jon looked over Martin’s shoulder at the paper. He had to stand on his toes to see it properly as Martin was quite a bit taller than he was, and he had to stare at it very hard to ignore how much Martin smelled like cinnamon.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Jon noted.
“No, it does not.” Helen took a drag from her cigarette and waved them away. “Have a nice day.”
The sun was high and the car was hot, but it had been almost two years since the air conditioning in Martin’s car had worked so Jon and Martin could do nothing but roll down the windows and sweat. Jon rolled up the sleeves of his wrinkled white button-up and bit his lip. There was something about Helen Richardson’s eyes that he’d found, he didn’t know, disquieting? It was their vacancy. He recognized that look. More so than he cared to admit all told. It was best not to think about it.
As if reading his mind, Martin leaned over to him and asked him something. Jon could barely hear him over the roar of wind rushing past them. “What?”
Sighing, Martin rolled up the windows. “So do you believe her?” he repeated as they made their way to Wimbleton. “Helen Richardson? Her story?”
“I...I don’t know.” Jon leaned back in the dirty seat and tried to forget the familiar look on Helen Richardson’s face.
“Really?” Martin’s face lit up, and he fought in vain to keep the excitement from creeping into his voice. “You usually just dismiss these out of hand.”
Jon shrugged as nonchalantly as he was able, which was leagues more nonchalant than he felt. “She certainly seems shaken up enough. I’m not sure. It’s harder to dismiss this sort of thing when you’re talking to the person directly.” Jon furrowed his brow at the grinning Martin. “Why are you asking me anyway?”
“Well, you’re my partner, aren’t you? We’re working this together.”
There was an earnestness in Martin’s voice that made a small part of Jon very happy. He told that piece of himself to shut up and told Martin, “We’re not partners.”
“Colleagues then.” Martin rolled his eyes and leaned into his left armrest. He didn’t just smell like cinnamon, but like teabags too, and the peppermint hand soap that Tim had put in the Archives’ bathroom whose thick scent seeped into your skin and burrowed there. “I just wanted to know your professional opinion.”
Jon fidgeted in his seat and looked at Martin. “Do you believe her?”
“I think I do,” he said.
Jon was taken aback. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Martin smiled at him with that easy smile. “Really. I mean, you saw her too, Jon. She was a wreck. And not like a drug wreck either,” he said wryly, fixing Jon with a grin. “Just a genuinely rattled wreck. But I’d have believed her anyway. Her statement’s not the sort of thing you just make up.”
“Hm.”
“What’s that ‘hm’ for?”
“Nothing,” Jon said honestly, leaning back in his seat. “Just, I didn’t think you were the type to believe in this sort of thing so readily. That’s usually Sasha.”
“It’s me too, you just never ask,” snorted Martin.
Jon was quiet. “I guess not.”
The car pulled into a long driveway, lined with expensive-looking little ground lights leading to a massive house. To say the house was imposing would be wrong. It was an ordinary house with a well-trimmed lawn and a well-worn Wolverton-Kendrick For Sale sign plastered with the image of a far more amicable Helen in front of it. But that didn’t make Jon and Martin any less apprehensive. Martin put on the parking brake and stared up at the sprawling behemoth in front of them.
It took Martin a lot of effort to tear his eyes from the house. "Are you ready to go in?"
Jon looked up at the looming thing, all three above-ground layers of it with its spotless siding and picturesque front garden. The house looked like a normal house. But then again, so had—
Jon shook his head and looked away, pushing down thoughts of spiders and knocking and familiar eyes.
Martin glanced back up at the house and gave it a nervous look. “Me neither. After you?”
The front door of the house did not creak open, it groaned. Far louder than it should have for how new it was. And the interior was newer still. It looked like it had pulled straight from a magazine, the furniture all a little too immaculate and the floors a little too clean. Jon tried the lights a couple of times before giving up and going back to the car to fetch a torch. It was a comfortable weight in his hands, and he held it probably a little firmer than he had to.
Jon still had to hit it a few times before a flickering light came spluttering from the torch head. The beam barely made it past a couple of feet in front of them. For a brief and idiotic moment, Jon felt the urge to hold Martin’s hand like a kid, to feel his warmth and the security that it brought. He grasped the torch a little tighter and shook his head again slightly to clear it.
“So I take it we’re not splitting up to look for clues then,” Jon said.
Martin gawked at him. “Was that a Scooby-Doo reference?”
Jon shot back a mischievous smile. Not as easy a smile as Martin’s were, maybe, but definitely as bright. “It might have been."
"Tim and Sasha are never going to believe me when I tell them that you made a pop culture reference," said Martin, shaking his head in disbelief.
"Especially when I deny it."
Martin looked scandalized. "Don't you dare!"
Jon didn't say anything. The torchlight flickered and for a moment, the pair was in complete and total darkness. When the light returned they were close enough that Jon could feel the body heat radiating from Martin, and for once, in the hostile cool of the empty house, he didn't mind it. "Stay close," he muttered.
“You don’t need to tell me twice.” Glancing around the room, Martin shivered. “This place is creepy.”
“It definitely isn't somewhere I'd ever move,” Jon agreed.
Martin snorted as Jon pointed the torch up to the improbably high ceilings and they began making their way through the house. "Like either of us could afford a place like this on an institute salary."
"Not alone, maybe."
Martin gave Jon an indiscernible look. "Who are you going to move in with? Tim?"
Jon shook his head. "Tim would kill me. I'm a terrible roommate."
"Are you?" Martin asked, uselessly flicking at the switch of a floor lamp. "I can't see that. You seem like the kind of person who cleans all the time."
Now it was Jon's turn to snort. "I most assuredly am not."
"But your desk is always so spotless!"
"Because all of my papers are in my flat." The torch beam fell on an end table and its shadow climbed up the wall like a vine or a spider. Jon jerked the light away and his mind from the thought just as hastily.
"Ah."
Jon nodded, turning the torchlight to Martin, casting his round and comforting shadow on the wall instead, making it loom over them larger than life. "And that's not to mention I'm a terrible cook."
"That doesn't detract from your quality as a roommate," said Martin, pushing closed the empty cabinet drawer, glasses glinting in the torchlight.
"Yes, it most certainly does."
"Then by that logic, I'm an excellent roommate because I'm an excellent cook."
Jon frowned. "Are you?"
"Of course. You've had my tea."
Jon let the beam of the torch fall where it may as he raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Being good at making tea and being good at cooking are two entirely different things."
"No, they aren't,” Martin argued, leaning against a wall with crossed arms as Jon inspected a framed stock photo fixed to his right. There's a correlation."
"There is no correlation."
"Yes, there is," said Martin. "It's like...an early showcase of what's to come."
Jon turned away from the photo, a family at the beach, and smiled innocently at him. "What's to come when you actually cook something?"
Martin made an exasperated face at Jon. "Aren't we supposed to be looking around at this creepy house?"
"We are looking around the creepy house," Jon reminded him.
"We're distracted."
"Maybe you are," said Jon, definitely distracted and not at all looking at the creepy house. "But I can multitask."
Martin raised an eyebrow at him. "Found anything then?"
"Yes." Jon pointed the torch at where the wall and ceiling met. "This house has lovely crown molding."
Martin let out a laugh. “Really?”
“It’s a part of the house that rarely gets the recognition it deserves,” snapped Jon, looking away.
“Really?” Martin laughed again. It was a wonderful sound, the kind of sound that filled you up like good hot chocolate on a cold day, and Jon felt his cheeks grow warm. He remembered why he hated working with Martin and pointed the torch at a blue loveseat with hideous pillows, focusing very hard on investigating them, on doing his job, on anything other than Martin and his annoying, distracting presence.
“Shut up, Martin.” His cheeks were as warm as the torch bulb.
The pair continued through the house, scanning each room and opening each door with a level of scrutiny that would have seemed quite odd to an outside observer, and not quite enough to someone who knew what lurked beyond a wrong one. It was after opening a particularly suspicious set of french doors that Martin sighed appreciatively.
“The doors are nice too, though,” he said. “If we’re pointing out the nice parts of this spooky haunted house.”
Jon made a face at him, features and contempt exaggerated in the partial light of the torch. “The...doors?”
“Oh what, you’re allowed to admire the crown molding but I’m not allowed to admire the doors? It’s a door statement,” pointed Martin, somewhat defensively, somewhat teasingly. “I’m going to be thinking about the doors.”
“Still.” Jon poked at a fake plant pot at his foot, mostly to feel like he was being productive.
“What, too soon?” Martin smirked at him and Jon rolled his eyes.
“Well, it's not like it’s real,” he said, kicking at the plant again.
Martin’s face fell. “Are you serious right now, Jon?”
Jon glanced around the room, almost expecting another person named Jon to be nearby and the one who was incurring Martin’s sudden wrath. “What?”
“‘What' is exactly right,” snapped Martin. “In the car, you said that you believed Helen. But now that it’s been long enough you can just go back to discounting everything just like you always do.”
“I don’t always—”
“Yes, you do always.” Martin spoke with his hands, and now their motions were sharp and accusatory. “Why are you so determined to not believe anything?”
“I do believe some things,” Jon said quietly.
“Yeah?” Martin put his hands to his hips. “Like what?”
Visions of spiders and picture books danced in Jon’s head. “I…”
“I didn’t think so.” Martin’s voice and expression were cold. He turned away from Jon and looked very intently at another framed stock photo, this time of a hillside and a curving willow, nearly split in half in its bend over a blue-grey pond. “I don’t know why I thought you’d be different this time.”
“Martin…”
Martin rounded on him. “Don’t ‘Martin’ me, Jon. This,” said Martin, gesturing at the house, “Is real. We have a job to do, and that job hinges on us believing the statement givers. I don’t know why it’s so hard for you. I mean, you read the statements the same as the rest of us. And you saw Helen Richardson. You saw her, Jon. We both did. Is it really that hard to believe her? To believe me?” They were quiet for a moment.
Jon made a pained expression. “Was that a joke?”
“Was what a joke?”
“‘That job hinges?’” He wrung his hands, and then added lamely, “You know, like doors?”
Martin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t intentional.” He shook his head, and when he looked at Jon, his expression was softer. Less angry and more...sad. Disappointed. “C’mon, let’s keep looking around.” Martin turned away from him.
Jon almost preferred anger. “R-right.”
The pair kept searching the house. Martin pulled out the map Helen had drawn, and the half of it that was clean, straight lines seemed to line up exactly with the house that they walked through. And after an hour or so of searching, it seemed that it was just as it appeared. An ordinary house pulled right from a magazine that promised to never be anything more. Jon was relieved. Or he was vindicated. Or he was trying not to gloat or trying not to look at Martin or he was wishing that he could go back to doing real work by himself or he was hoping Martin would talk to him again. Or maybe was all of that at once. He wasn’t very large, but he still contained multitudes. At the very least he wanted to get out of the house, harmless or not, though it didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon.
Jon and Martin made their way around the second floor for the third time when Martin found it. Pulling at the sleeve of Jon’s shirt, which had long since made the slow descent down his forearm, Martin nodded at the door. “Jon, I think this is it.”
Jon gave it a doubtful look. “Are you sure?”
“It doesn’t match the other ones.” That was true enough. The other doors in the house were your standard plain white, sometimes with a faux-brass doorknob, and sometimes a lock. But the door that they stood in front of now was a dark, sickly yellow with a matte black handle that was curled at the end. Even if it hadn’t utterly clashed with the rest of the house, it had a weight to it, a presence. It made Jon's breath hitch.
He grabbed Martin's outstretched hand and pulled it back. “Martin, don’t touch it.”
Martin looked almost amused. “I thought you didn’t believe in this.”
“And I thought you said we should believe Helen Richardson.” Jon gave the door a nervous glance. No matter what he told himself, there were some things you just didn’t risk. Colleagues were one of those things. Martin was getting closer to the thing, and it didn’t even look like he noticed. Jon’s eyes kept getting drawn to the handle, and it’s spiraling end. His hand twitched.
Martin, for his part, was unperturbed. “I’m not an idiot, Jon.” He was so close now. “I’m not going to go through it or anything.” His hand slid from Jon's and wrapped around the matte black handle and he opened the door. The door opened in a long, painful creak, and for a moment Jon could see a long, windowless hallway with swirling green wallpaper, and Martin, unmoving, in the doorway. Jon didn’t look away, not for a moment.
And yet when the door slammed shut, Martin was gone.
“Martin?” Any sense of self-preservation forgotten, Jon started jiggling the handle, which stayed firmly in place. He began pounding his quavering fists on the door. “Martin!”
“Hello!” Jon spun and there was a man behind him who was decidedly not Martin. He was tall. No, that was wrong. He was long, and his body undulated, and he smiled a wide grin with too many teeth, and he was made of angles that should not have been. His hair was straw yellow and it fell in short, close-cropped ringlets that filled the whole room like an ocean.
“Who...who are you?” stammered Jon, hefting the heavy torch like it was a baseball bat and like he was someone who could use it as such, and taking a step back into the door. This man hurt Jon’s eyes, but he refused to look away. Somehow, Jon was certain that this was not a man to lose track of.
The man’s smile widened, and more teeth appeared to fill it. “Why, I’m Michael!” The man, Michael, extended a bulbous, too large hand that Jon did not take.
“Michael?”
“Well, sort of. Being is hard, Beholdling.” Michael paused to give Jon a little mock pout and a once over with swirling, prismatic eyes. “You are a little watcher, aren’t you?”
“I—“
“Excellent!” Michael clapped his hands and they made a sound like clattering bone. “I’ve been meaning to have a chat with your new Archivist for a while now. Picked by Gertrude Robinson herself. It’s quite an honor.”
Jon ignored him. “You’re the one who took Helen Richardson.”
“I certainly tried to. We’ll think of her as the one who got away.” He gave Jon a sly grin. “For now at least.”
Jon’s stomach sank. “That means you’ve got Martin where you had her.” He clutched the torch a little tighter, though it was already in a death grip and his knuckles were already white.
“Is that his name?” asked Michael. “Then yes, I do. He’s searching the corridors as we speak. His fear is quite delicious.”
“Give him back.” Jon’s voice shook, but he stood firm.
“No, I don’t think I will. It’ll be an excellent conversation starter with your Archivist.” The noise that came out of Michael’s mouth was as similar to laughter as a candle to an elephant, but there was no question that's what it was. It made Jon’s head feel like someone was pounding against it with a hammer.
“Give him back!” Jon shouted and he hit the door again, harder this time, hard enough to make his hand sting, and hard enough to make Michael’s impossible smile falter.
“Careful, Beholdling,” Michael warned. “You don’t have the protections or gifts that the Archivist does.”
Jon hit the door again. And again. And again. “I don’t care.” Jon felt something long and sharp enter his side and looked down to see one of Michael’s long fingers, now coated in his blood, being pulled slowly and painfully from his flesh.
“You should.”
Jon gritted his teeth, partly to look more—he didn’t know, serious maybe?—and partly to keep from crying out. “Take me instead, then.”
“You?” Michael laughed again, and it still sounded wrong, like a headache or like thunder you’re sure should not be there. “You’re not half the meal your friend is. There’s far less meat on your bones.”
“We’re not friends,” muttered Jon. He wasn’t sure why. Habit maybe.
“No? Seems an awful lot to go through for just a colleague .” Michael laughed and traced the shape of Jon’s jaw with a sharp finger that left blood on his chin. “You’re blushing, Beholdling.”
“What’ll it take then?” demanded Jon, ignoring Michael’s latter comment and the own heat in his cheeks, and jerking his face away from Michael's hand. “To get him back.”
“Hm.” Michael took a deep breath in and let it out, his body moving like an accordion and his breath sounding like broken bellows. “I’m not sure. I haven’t done a trade before. You don’t have anything I want, not really.”
“I could get you a meeting with Sasha,” Jon offered. “You want that, right?” Jon was pretty sure Sasha wouldn’t mind. Not if it got Martin back. She liked Martin, everyone did, no matter how annoying his presence was.
“Is that your Archivist?” Michael thought for a moment, his eyes turning like gears. “No, I can get a meeting whenever I want. That’s hardly worth a meal.”
“What then?” Jon asked, desperation dripping from his every word.
Michael smiled wider than he had ever before until Jon was quite certain that his face shouldn't have been wide enough to fit it, and that no one should have that many radiant white teeth. “I have an idea. A meal for a meal.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want me.” Jon clutched the torch's handle, feeling its geometric grip imprint on his palm, letting the slight pain ground him. He didn’t particularly want to die, but better him than Martin. Martin had so much to live for, a family, friends. What did Jon have? So if the cost of Martin’s life was his...well. There were worse prices to pay.
But Michael shook his head, rippling his curls until they crashed upon the walls like breaking tides. “Not you, Beholdling.”
“Then who?”
“I’m not going to tell you.” Michael laughed and he laughed and he laughed his headache laugh. “You just have to live with the knowledge that you’ve sentenced someone to death. You like knowledge, don’t you? You and your patron. Could you live with it?”
Jon probably should have thought about it. Should have deliberated, should have spent more than just a moment weighing Martin’s life against that of a stranger. But he didn't. He thought of Martin and his kind eyes and easy smile, of tea and distraction and peppermint hand soap. He thought of Helen Richardson and how afraid she’d been. And the thought of Martin like that, that afraid, and that alone, it was more than Jon could take.
Jon looked at Michael and he nodded. “Yes.”
“Excellent.” The yellow door creaked open, and Jon caught another glance of a hallway that didn’t seem to end. Michael was in the doorway in an instant, and his proportions seemed even more obverse in the corridors. “Goodbye, Beholdling. Tell your Sasha I’ll be seeing her around.” The door slammed, and there was nothing then but the fading sounds of a laugh that was not a laugh echoing through the house and the pounding of Jon's heart echoing in his ears.
And then a figure, known and soft, and shaking like a leaf. Martin.
Martin spun, eyes darting around the room until finally landing on Jon. In an instant, his face lit up with recognition and relief. “Jon?” he gasped, his voice hitching on the word.
“Martin!” Jon rushed over to him and held his hand just to feel that he was really there. “Are you alright?”
Martin shook his head slowly and squeezed Jon’s hand. “The door it—I opened it but I didn’t go inside I swear—“
“It’s alright, Martin,” Jon soothed, staring at him, taking him in. He was here. He was safe. “It’s all alright. Let’s get out of here.”
"Are you?"
Jon blinked. "What?"
"Alright?" Martin looked far too worried for Jon for someone who by all means should be far more concerned for himself. "Are you okay, Jon?"
"I'm fine. He—Michael—didn't take me. I...oh." Jon furrowed his brow and put a hand to his side. His side where Michael had dug a finger between his ribs. His hand came back slick and red. "Well, I've been lightly stabbed but—"
"Jon!"
"I'm fine," Jon urged, clutching his side in a way he hoped both kept the blood in and put Martin at ease. He deserved to be at ease if nothing else. "You're here and that's what matters."
The car ride was quiet. Jon was driving. It wasn't that he didn't like driving, it was that he was rubbish at it, but it wasn't like he was going to make Martin drive after all of that, new stitches or no. Jon didn't like to focus on anything other than the road in front of him whenever he was at the wheel, and he wasn't sure if Martin was too immersed in his own thoughts to speak, or didn’t feel like talking to Jon at the moment. He’d been such an ass before Martin went through the door. And for long before that. And Jon wanted to say that to him, he really did. But the car ride was quiet all the same.
“That map saved me, Jon.”
Jon looked over the seat next to him to see Martin staring down at blue pen smudged hands. “What?”
“The map that Helen gave me.” Jon studied Martin's trembling hands and saw bits and pieces of blue pen marks that had rubbed off on his hands. Marks he recognized. It was the map Helen had drawn, the one they’d been checking before Martin went through the door, the one, Jon realized, Martin had still had when he went through, and that showed the path through the hallway Michael came from. “When I went in there I took it out of my pocket and I just started following it. If she got out using it then, so could I. And it worked. She saved my life.”
Jon was quiet.
“Jon?”
Jon wouldn't look at him. “We should probably update her on our findings," he said after a long while.
“Right.” They were quiet again. The car rattled across long, empty streets, and long full ones, the busted radio sometimes flickering to life and playing a fragment of a song or an ad for something no one would ever buy. But the two of them were quiet. They stopped at a red light, and Martin interrupted an aging shock jock whose voice dripped with monotonous false enthusiasm crackling through the long broken speakers. Martin’s voice was soft and solemn. “So you believe me then?” he asked as the shock jock’s voice faded and silence returned to the car.
Jon met his eyes for a moment, his own filled with regret and earnestness and something else, probably, that made Martin look away. “How could I not?”
“I’m sure you’d find a way,” said Martin.
“I believe you. Of course I believe you. I was there, I talked to that thing, Michael." Jon ran a hand through his hair. "And...and I do believe the statements,” muttered Jon, eyes locked on the road, even though it was clear and straight.
Martin gaped at him. “What?”
“I’m not a moron.” Martin let out a snort that Jon chose to ignore. “I know they’re real. It’s just...it felt safer somehow. Not believing.”
Martin leaned on the car door, elbow where the window and handle met. “It wasn’t.”
“No,” Jon agreed. “But I don’t think anything's safe. Not really.”
Martin looked for a moment at Jon, who met his eye, before looking down. “I think you’re right.”
They pulled up to the house where Helen had sat and found an empty stoop. There was the sign for Wolverton-Kendrick and on it a smiling Helen, far happier and full of life than the version they had met, but the real person wasn't there. The only hint that she had been there at all were four discarded cigarette butts pushed hastily into the gardens below, a half-smoked cigarette still smoldering where it had been dropped. Martin got out of the car and glanced at the other houses, as if they’d pulled up to the wrong one, and sitting just next to them would be the same, tired Helen.
“Where did she go?” asked Martin.
Jon stepped out too, though he didn’t bother looking around. What had Michael said? The one who got away for now? Something like that. And a meal for a meal. That, at least, Jon was sure of. So there was only one place that Helen Richardson could have gone.
“Through the door.”
“Jon? Is she in that place again?" Martin's eyes were wide and full of fear and knowing. And he was looking to Jon to assuage that. Because he was his partner, and that's what partners did. Any words of comfort Martin was looking for, Jon did not supply. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. Martin rubbed his pen stained hands, "I dropped the map. In that place, I dropped it. It's still in there. Do you think she'll find it? Do you think she'll be fine?"
Jon still didn't have anything to say to him. What could he say that they both didn't already know, or that he didn't want to say yet? So he just walked to the abandoned cigarette and put it out. Jon fixed Martin with a long look. A sad look. A look that didn't say what it should have, but that said enough. And finally, he spoke.
“Let’s go home, Martin.”