Work Text:
(--there is a cold beyond cold. An icy, liquid chill that surrounds you, embraces you--)
Jon is rowing, trying to return to the tunnels, to Melanie and Georgie. It had been the last thing on his mind before he left the camera’s crosshairs, the first coherent thought when he returned to the Eye’s clarity.
The reason is lost to him now, but he knows one exists. He feels it in the frantic, desperate churning in his stomach, dread scraping up and down his gut like ice clawing at the hull of a ship.
That same desperation had him stumbling onto his boat, rocking the damn thing and sending water everywhere. Even his face is wet now, salty water drying in splashes across his cheeks. He needs to see them, and…
And what? He thinks he needed their help. He and Basira needed their help? Why isn’t Basira with him? They went in together, but he left alone. No Basira, and no--
(--Yes, you remember. The darkness around you, the forever of it all. Sometimes you forget just what it is that keeps you gripped so tight, suspended in place above nothing--)
--Martin. How come he doesn’t have Martin?
The water below him is still, but when he remembers he is alone, his stomach lurches as though his boat were braving a storm.
There must be a reason he left. He wouldn’t have just abandoned them, so there must be a reason that it’s just him, that he’s heading back to the tunnels alone. He wouldn’t just leave them.
(--When did you last breathe? How much longer can you hold out? --)
But rowing is exhausting, and worse, it doesn’t require as much thought as he’d like. Certainly not enough for someone so prone to spiraling.
Did he leave due to danger? No, that doesn’t make sense. You don’t set foot in a web and flee when you see spiders. That shouldn’t have been enough to have Jon running like this, and how could he leave Martin and Basira if they were in danger? Did they ask him to leave? Why? He could be trying to get help, maybe, but from who?
(--to invite the impossible cold into yourself, through your lungs and into your core, will bring no end to it, no relief--)
It wouldn’t be fair to ask Melanie and Georgie. They’ve got their own people to watch out for, and they’ve already risked a lot to help where they could. He can’t go ask them to leave the tunnels, or any of the people they’re trying to protect. They already said they couldn’t go with him to Hill Top Road once.
So, maybe not them. Does Jon even have any other allies? Most of the people he knows--ally or enemy--are already dead.
What could he possibly be running for, running from? Why doesn’t he just turn around?
(--your blood shoots through with a cold that has nothing to do with the water. Why does your mind recoil and beg you to stay down, to hold fast in the darkness--)
His stomach rocks again, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think he were getting seasick.
No, there must be a reason. He’s looking for Georgie and Melanie, and he’s doing it alone, and it must be for good reason. He must be.
But Basira and Martin are intelligent, capable people. If they’re trapped, or hurt, or--
Well, Jon won’t just lead Melanie and Georige into a trap. If he’s going for help, he should at least be able to give them some idea of what they’re up against.
Jon stops rowing, letting them rest in the locks. He drops his bag off his shoulder and sets in on the empty bench in front of them. Even if he doesn’t remember what happened in that bubble, the tapes will. That must have been why they sent him--The tapes will follow him, and he can play it for Melanie and Georgie, and they can help him with whatever they need. He might as well listen now, though, while he heads back. He’s got nothing better to do than row, anyway.
(--until you find something. Someone. Land, perhaps, or just another who is suffering as you are--)
Jon empties the entire bag on the floor of the dinghy. A change of clothes, some untouched first aid supplies, and some of Martin’s useless maps make up the padding on which he pours thirty-two tapes. They’re all unmarked--Nothing to distinguish one vented statement from another. It’s only when Jon resigns himself to having to listen to all of them that he realizes he doesn’t have a tape player.
Since when has Jon ever not had a tape player? He’s been hounded by these things for years, but now that he needs one--
It’s fine, though. One’ll show up. Or maybe he left one with them? Though Georgie's probably destroyed any stragglers, and he’s recorded any statements the Eye would ask of him between here and the Institute. So where is he going to get one? What is he going to do when he gets back?
(--How long have you been moving now? Seconds? Years?--)
Explain? What would he even say? He has no idea what happened, and no way to tell if any of these tapes actually tell him. There’s no records. If Jon is supposed to get help, he’s doing a shit job at it. He doesn’t even know what he’s getting help about.
He might as well ask them to follow him off a bridge.
(--the gentle pull that promises to be down, and then you begin to swim, a desperate crawl up through the black towards the vague hope of--)
Turning around is somewhat difficult when the sea bears no real landmarks in any direction, but the Eye can at least tell him when he’s facing the right away again.
The dinghy hits the shore, and Jon is out of it just a moment later, slowed only by the instability of the wood below him. It doesn’t matter. He just needs to go in, to-- To leave some kind of record, maybe, or-- It doesn’t matter, honestly. He just wants to know. Why would he have left?
(--when you thrust your hand forward you feel something change--)
The unending weight of the Eye’s gaze lifts from Jon’s shoulders, and with it goes more of Jon’s mind than he’d like. The sudden easing of his burden leaves him stumbling and off-balance, forcing him to catch himself on the fence of a neighboring yard. It’s approaching evening, the newly-returned sun resting comfortably within the golden hour.
Jon walks up the street, looking for the house he still remembers from long before the world ended. The air is silent, save for a few birds, chirping carelessly in their small sanctuary. It could be peaceful, almost, if the silence didn’t feel so much like anticipation.
Click. Somewhere to his right, a tape begins to play. Jon only sort-of hears it, his own voice droning to him from… Where is that coming from? Is that in a tree ?
Jon can barely even hear the thing, and he refuses to let looking for it distract him. He presses on, catching a snippet of it as he passes its hiding spot. Another Web statement, of course.
“-gedy of Francis: A comic puppet show in all acts. Act forty-eight thousand, sixt-”
Jon rolls his eyes and keeps moving. She won’t scare him with that same trick twice.
When 105 Hill Top Road finally comes into view, Jon sees the door already open. It cuts a hole in the building’s old facade, blacked out by the backlit brick. Other than the lack of visibility, there’s not actually anything particularly strange about the entryway--Not even cobwebs strewn up in the opening.
Inside the house is dark. There are no lights that Jon can see, though it’s not as though he expects any. All he can do is head towards the back of the house, searching for the source of the fading sunlight. He picks his way carefully through the foyer, but for all his caution, he sees very little to be cautious of. It’s all… dust and old furniture, untouched save for proof of his first visit. There isn’t any proof he and Basira were here earlier, nor is there anything suggesting Martin or Annabelle are here now.
(--a new panic begins to overtake you, but it is too late--)
Jon pushes to the next room, and then another. He follows the sunlight to its source--A room towards the back with large windows, curtains pushed aside to let their light in. It’s there he finds what he’s looking for, in the form of familiar hair sticking up over the back of an old chair.
Martin’s back is to the door. Jon doesn’t exactly run to Martin’s side, but it’s a near thing. He stops just short of touching Martin, but a quick once-over finds Martin uninjured and unrestrained.
“Martin, are you alright? Where is Basira?” Jon asks. Martin doesn’t look up, even as Jon places a hand on his shoulder. His eyes are closed, and his head leans slightly to the side. For one long, terrible moment, Jon’s heart seizes with terror, but then Martin’s eyelids flutter and his chest rises softly. It seems as though he’s fallen asleep in the chair. Even the click of a tape recorder on the table beside Martin doesn’t do much to dampen Jon’s relief.
Jon smiles despite himself, squeezing Martin’s shoulder in time with the feeling of fondness that circles his chest. Martin’s shoulder gives a little more than Jon expects it to, but Martin doesn’t stir.
“Martin?” Jon asks. He stops in front of Martin, watching his eyelids twitch as if holding back a nightmare. Jon moves his hand, intending to cup Martin’s cheek, but his palm stops short. There’s something in Martin’s mouth.
It’s thin, tan, and segmented. It’s about the size of Jon’s finger, reaching out from the corner of Martin’s mouth to tap gently on Martin’s chin. A second one follows suit, then a third, and Jon only barely has the ability to draw his hand to his own chest before one of the furry, twitching things brushes his skin.
“Martin?” Jon’s voice is quiet. It is not the fond softening he normally reserves for Martin, but the whisper of someone who fears breathing life into his nightmare by giving it a name. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
The things in his mouth retract. Martin’s chin twitches, his lips parting as if for a sigh. His chest heaves, but Jon realizes too late that the motion is not the gentle rise and fall of breath. It is the ripple of something moving beneath the surface, of something skittering under the skin.
“Martin...?” Jon asks, one last time, and then Martin’s eyes open.
What Jon sees behind them is not the faded blue of Martin’s iris, but a solid black. It’s depthless in the way it disguises shadow. Jon wants to recoil, but he’s frozen in place, helpless to watch as the void twitches.
Jon might be speaking. He might be screaming, or crying. He might be shocked into silence. He doesn’t know. He’s barely aware of his own body, his feeble hold on his already-scattered mind completely severed. In Martin’s eyes lie twin walls of minute spiders, which ripple slightly as they hit the air. His eyelashes flutter, and Jon realizes with a renewed horror that they are not eyelashes at all, but instead legs, pinning his eyelids into place.
With the curtain drawn back, the mass shudders to life, and they begin to crawl. Up and down Martin’s face, across his brow, his cheek, the bridge of his nose. His shoulders sag not with a sigh, but as though deflating.
Jon feels the ground below him pitch out of existence. He wants to stumble back, to run, but his legs can barely support him. He makes a frantic grab for the arm of Martin’s chair just to avoid collapsing entirely, and hopes nothing crawls to his fingers.
He might vomit, though the moment he thinks as much, he imagines coughing up webbing. The idea nearly pushes him over, but he screws his eyes shut and forces down both the image and the bile. He tries to ignore the hissing of thousands of wretched things crawling below Martin’s skin. His fingers tighten against the fabric of the chair, his hand shaking enough that he hears the wood beneath creak.
Or, no, that wasn’t him. It was--
Jon’s eyes snap open as he feels Martin’s hand lie overtop his own. It’s cold--Not freezing, like when they left the Lonely, Martin’s palm nearly frosting Jon’s. Now, Martin’s skin is only cold in that it is not warm, in that what runs beneath his skin is not blood. There’s no biting, supernatural chill, except the one that shoots down Jon’s spine when Jon raises his head to see Martin is looking at him.
The curtains of skittering arachnids part, receding back into the socket or towards Martin’s hair, ears, or the collar of his shirt. Martin’s eyes are listless, but still point directly into Jon’s, puppeteered by twitching limbs piloting his optic nerves.
“Hello, Jon.” Martin’s mouth is open, but his lips do not move, and his voice is not what comes out. Or, no--His voice does come out, but through hundreds, thousands of smaller, quieter mouths, exactly in time, echoing across every part of his body, ushered forth by two long, bony limbs. They slip out once again from Martin’s lips, claws finding purchase on his cheekbone.
Jon already knows exactly what’s attached to the other end, but his stomach still quails when the spider pulls its face into view, out from the corner of Martin’s mouth and into the last rays of day.
Absolutely nothing processes in Jon’s mind as the furry, lumbering thing emerges. When its last leg finally clears the slight part of Martin’s mouth, it’s while dragging Martin’s lips behind it. It pulls one half of his mouth into some horrible approximation of a smile, “You’re here. You came for me.”
“I--” Jon’s mind goes in a thousand directions at once, and crashes headfirst into denial. “You- You aren’t Martin. You- I didn’t come for- Where is he? What did you do with him?”
“A little late to start pushing the skeptic thing again, isn’t it?” Martin asks. The spider drops his mouth and closes in upon Martin’s shirt collar, and Jon shudders as it disappears beneath the fabric.
“No, it’s--” Jon starts, but Martin’s head jerks to the side. He shakes loose a few small spiders, leaving them swinging from his teeth and chin by short, soft strands. One flailing spider hangs off his earlobe, dangling like cheap jewelry.
“You were too late.”
”I’m so sorry.” Martin’s unoccupied hand jerks to life, reaches towards Jon’s cheek. It’s clear of any spiders, and Jon watches it without thinking to move. It looks dry, but when it connects with Jon’s face, he feels water under Martin’s fingers.
Martin closes his eyes again, and suddenly, Jon doesn’t see any spiders on him at all. It just feels like Martin, his hands a touch too cold from being outside in winter, holding Jon’s face in the first moments of consciousness after yet another nightmare. There’s a horrible, hazy moment where Jon considers leaning into the touch, but it’s broken by a click somewhere behind him, and Annabelle’s voice fills the air.
“Are you ready to hear me out yet? ”
All at once, Martin’s hand feels unnaturally still, and the wisps of hair that escape Jon’s hair tie feel like legs crawling all over the back of Jon’s neck. He jerks back, and Martin’s hand jerks with him--thick, white web sticks between his palm and Jon’s cheek, and Jon only stops himself from screaming because he’s afraid of what might try to take advantage of the opening.
Martin’s hand comes loose with a tearing that feels far too loud, shoved off of Jon’s face with all the meager strength Jon can muster in his current state. He spins around, but Annabelle isn’t there--It’s just him and Martin, alone in the house.
Or, no. Not alone. They’ll never be alone again.
“Jon.” Without being able to see the way Martin’s mouth stays closed when he speaks, Martin almost sounds like himself. The chair creaks, and Jon stumbles back, turning to see Martin rise. He sways, slightly, a few spiders tipping from his left ear and onto his shoulder. They latch onto the fuzz of Martin’s jumper, and some distant, frantic part of Jon realizes that the wool seems lighter than it was the last time he saw Martin. “Listen, Jon, you should know--”
"No. No, I'm not--" Jon starts, spluttering, stumbling another step back. Martin sighs. A larger spider swings from the corner of his mouth, dragging his lips down.
"It's okay if you're not ready yet," Martin says. He sinks back down into his chair, watching Jon with expectation. "I know you'll come back for me."
So Jon runs. There’s nothing else he can do but run.
He wants to see Melanie and Georgie. Not for help--He knows there’s nothing to be done here, not anymore. He just wants to see them, because that’s all that would be able to save him. If he could just get to Melanie and Georgie, he wouldn’t have to be alone here.
Some quiet, traitorous part of him reminds him as he approaches the outer edge of the camera’s sights that he’s going to forget again. He’ll burst the bubble, and all this pain will go with it. For just a few minutes, he’ll have Martin back.
Stepping out of the bubble has Jon stumbling, but he catches himself before he can fall. His mind is clear, but his stomach is in knots. He wants to go back to Melanie and Georgie. He needs to see them, to… to…? It doesn’t matter. He knows he needs them, so he’ll go.
(--There is nothing else. No boat to save you, no land to make your escape, not even another soul who shares your torments. Deep down, in the icy depths, you could imagine. You could hope. The darkness hides terrible things, but it could also hide salvation. You cannot know what is down there, but up here it is laid out in such terrible, stark detail that there is nothing--)
Jon is rowing, trying to return to the tunnels, to Melanie and Georgie. It had been the last thing on his mind before he left the camera’s crosshairs, the first coherent thought when he returned to the Eye’s clarity.
The reason is lost to him now, but he knows one exists. He feels it in the frantic, desperate churning in his stomach, dread scraping up and down his gut like ice clawing at the hull of a ship.
That same desperation had him stumbling onto his boat, rocking the damn thing and sending water everywhere. Even his face is wet now, salty water drying in splashes across his cheeks. He needs to see them, and…