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ollieofthebeholder · 9 months

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to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

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Chapter 42: January 2017

“Compassionate leave my ass. We barely even knew him.”

“He was a cop,” Daisy said, her face blank and inscrutable. “Same as us. It could’ve been any of us, partner, so just take the damn leave, huh? Go be thankful it isn’t you.”

Basira snorted. “Come on. You know that’s just so they figure out what the official story is.”

“Yeah. But it’s not like we can talk about it anyway.” Daisy shrugged into her coat. “I’m going for a drink. You coming?”

“No,” Basira said, after a moment’s pause. “No, I’ve—there’s something I need to do.”

Daisy stared at her for a long moment. Then, without another word, she turned and slouched off. Basira watched her go, then headed in the opposite direction. She might’ve been able to get there on the Tube, but maybe the walk would help her clear her head.

It didn’t. By the time she reached her destination—which she’d only half-realized was her actual destination—she was still as keyed up and muddled as ever.

The place seemed deserted. It was only when Basira shrugged her way past the empty desk and headed for the steps that it occurred to her that it was Saturday. Police work meant she didn’t have consistent days off, exactly, and it was easy to lose track of what day it was if you didn’t have anything to ground you in the linear flow of time. Still and all, she’d been able to get into the building, so that probably meant someone was here.

She headed down into the basement and opened the door, exposing a single occupant, who looked up with a smile that immediately morphed into a look of confusion and concern. “Basira?”

Basira grimaced and made a helpless gesture that even she didn’t fully understand. “Sorry. Forgot what day it was.”

“It’s fine. I mean, I’m here.” Blackwood rose to his feet, looking uncertain—and also, she noticed, not making eye contact with her. “Are…are you okay? Do you want a cup of tea or—or cocoa or something?”

“Tea’s fine.” Basira wasn’t particularly thirsty, but she recognized that she probably needed something. “Where is…everyone else?”

“We don’t normally work Saturdays. I just came up to do some reorganizing. These shelves are a mess, honestly, and we don’t always get time to sort during the week if we’re not also investigating.” Blackwood hesitated. “Jon’s supposed to be coming by, but not until later. For now it’s just me…hang on, let me go get you that tea.”

Basira sat, rather hesitantly, at the desk and watched as Blackwood walked away. Martin. If she was here as a civilian, if she was going to…she needed to stop thinking of him as a suspect. He wasn’t, hadn’t been for a long time. She still didn’t know who’d killed Gertrude Robinson, and frankly at this point she didn’t care. Let it be another cold case. There were hundreds of them on the books; statistically speaking, if a homicide wasn’t cleared within a week of its happening, the likelihood went down every day. Maybe someday someone would find the answers, but for now, she could just wash her hands of the case and be done with it.

Her dad would’ve had a fit over her thinking like that. Stick to a task until it was done, that’s what he’d always taught her. Don’t give up just because it’s hard. She could hear his voice now: Do the job not for respect of the person who gave you the task, or respect of the person at the heart of the task, but for respect of the task. Any work worth doing is worth doing all the way. It was why she’d become a cop in the first place, never mind why she’d stayed. Yet here she was, not only giving up on a murder case, but seriously considering why she was still wearing the badge at all.

She looked around the Archives. It was the first time she’d really…looked at it, as something other than a crime scene; even when she’d been here before, she’d been focused on finding Blackwood—Martin—swapping out the tapes, and getting out before anyone noticed her. Now, though, she took in all the details she’d previously dismissed as irrelevant: the cardigan tossed casually over the back of one of the chairs, the framed photograph on another desk of the dark-haired assistant grinning cheekily as he dangled from a climbing rope, the messy collection of flyers and memos tacked to the bulletin board. Idly, she skimmed her eyes over them. It didn’t look that different from the board in the station, actually—the memos were about different things specifically, but there were still references to file numbers, requests for follow-ups, and reminders about procedures, typed on official Institute letterhead or scrawled on sticky notes or torn from a notebook. Interspersed with the official, or official-adjacent, memos was everything from the menu for a nearby takeaway to a picture of a kitten dangling off a branch with HANG IN THERE written above it to a crumpled picture of a sign she couldn’t quite read from where she sat. The place was still kitted out for Christmas, in a really over-the-top way; that, and the fact that it was dead silent save the faint hum of the climate-control system rather than jam-packed with uniformed cops answering phones, badgering witnesses, and arguing, was really the only difference between the Archives and the police station, where the few holiday decorations the captain allowed came down promptly on the twenty-sixth.

Suddenly, it wasn’t a repository of creepy things and spook stories, or the site of a murder, or the aftermath of an infestation. It was just someplace to work.

Basira kind of liked it. And kind of resented it at the same time. When had the station stopped feeling like that?

Martin came back into the room with a mug in each hand. Because she was a cop and trained to spot those kinds of details, she noticed that one of them was the same mug that always seemed to be on his desk when she came by, an oversize blue and green striped one that looked like it had been done at one of those paint-your-own-pottery places. The other was a matte black with a flat grey silhouette of a forest, complete with a deer standing alert. He handed it to Basira, still not looking at her. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Basira wrapped her hands around the mug and stared at it for a moment, then back up at Martin. He, too, was staring into his cup like it held the secrets of the universe. It suddenly irritated her, and she couldn’t help but snap, “I’m not going to arrest you or anything.”

“I know you’re not going to arrest me,” Martin said, sounding surprised. He looked up at her, just for a moment, then flinched and redirected his gaze again. Before she could call him on it, he gestured vaguely in her direction and added, “It’s just you—your—the scarf came loose.”

Startled, Basira reached up and realized Martin was right—the pins had come undone and her scarf had slipped back, exposing her hair. Even if she wasn’t as devout these days as she’d been growing up, there were some things that were still important to her. And it kind of surprised her that Martin knew enough, and was respectful enough, not to look at her when she wasn’t wearing hijab.

“Thanks,” she said again, pulling the scarf back in place and pinning and tucking it with movements that were more than half mechanical. “Okay. I’m good now.”

“Are you?” Martin asked pointedly, but this time he looked her directly in the eye and she knew he wasn’t asking about whether she was decent.

“No,” she admitted. “We lost Altman. Just…wasn’t…paying attention. Don’t know what they’re going to tell his family.” She took a long swig of her tea. “Guess it could have been worse, though, if I hadn’t talked to you first. So…thanks.”

“Glad I could help,” Martin murmured. Something flickered in his eyes, just for a moment. “At least they’re not making you do a lot of paperwork.”

“If I have to fill out one more form, I am going to scream.” Basira kind of wanted to scream anyway, but she held it in. “They’ve given us all a few days of ‘compassionate leave.’ I think they just want us out of the way while they figure out the official story.”

Martin hesitated, then frowned at something on the desk before looking back up at her. “Do you…want to talk about the real version?”

Basira did. She desperately did. That was why she had come here, she realized. You could only talk about Sectioned cases with other Sectioned cops; any cops who’d been on this case probably didn’t want to talk about it, and most others wouldn’t want to hear about it. Really, most of them wouldn’t swap stories unless they absolutely had to for a new case. The Magnus Institute was the only place she’d ever gone where she could talk about it, and Martin was the only person she’d ever felt like listened to her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Where do you want me to start?”

Martin took a deep breath. “You said it started with a kidnapping case?”

That was as good a place to start as any. Basira exhaled—and began to talk.

Just like last time, when she’d made her official statement, everything came pouring out, little things she’d barely registered at the time and the way she’d felt. No dispassionate report, this, she was telling him things she never could have admitted on an official form. There was no place for these things, literally or metaphorically speaking. And just like last time, Martin listened, his attention fully on her, his eyes understanding and sympathetic. He prompted her when she got stuck, asked a question here or there, but mostly he just…listened. It was honestly a relief to tell someone all of this, and have them listen without judging, without condemning, without interrupting. And something about Martin—maybe it was the sincerity in his eyes, or the stillness in his bearing, or the fact that he reminded her of nothing so much as all the pictures and videos she’d seen of capybaras—made her want to tell him everything. He’d have made a great cop.

No, she thought with a moment of sudden clarity. He’s too good a person to make a great cop. He’d have been drummed out of the force ages ago.

"All in all, there were five people killed in that building, including Leo Altman,” she concluded at last. “Aside from Rayner and the woman, who was identified from an old report as Natalie Ennis, two more were shot and killed when they attacked some of the officers. Three more were subdued and arrested, but as far as I know they haven’t said a word. God knows how they’re going to process them with all the secrecy around the operation, but thankfully that’s not my problem. I think they were connected to that cult group from way back, the Church of the Divine Whatever.”

“The People’s Church of the Divine Host,” Martin said quietly. “You’re right. I know the report you’re talking about—the one that identified Natalie Ennis—we have a statement from the man who made it, he was her roommate’s boyfriend. I should…probably reach out and follow up with them, let them know she was involved. I presume it’ll be in the news in some capacity, at least.” He took a breath, then looked back up at Basira, his gaze steady. “What are you going to do now?”

Basira was, admittedly, taken a bit aback. “Do?” she repeated. Was he asking her what the police procedure was at this point?

“I mean you, personally. Not the police,” Martin clarified. “What are you going to do after your ‘compassionate leave’ is up? If I understood you right when you made that first statement, once you’re Sectioned, you get called out on all the…weird cases you’re available for, right?”

“Right.”

“Do you want to keep doing this? I don’t mean walking into dangerous situations and rescuing people. I’d imagine that’s not the part you mind. I mean the part where the ‘dangerous situation’ is something no amount of police training can prepare you for. Because I’ll be honest, Basira, you keep doing that, you’re going to end up on the wrong end of one of these statements. Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.” Martin held her gaze. “I should know.”

Basira blinked.

She was a good cop. She knew the law forward and backwards, she applied it more or less evenly across the board, she followed procedure and did her duty. She’d been commended by her superiors and relied on by her fellow officers. People took her word for things and trusted her instincts. But by whose standards was she good? Did it mean she was doing the right thing, or did it mean she was toeing the line? She thought about what she’d realized about Martin, how he would have been either broken or discarded rather than allowed to continue to be the kind of person he was now if he wore the badge. What did it say about her that she was still on the force, still in line for promotion, still considered to have a future in this career?

Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.

“I’m done,” she said decisively. “With the police, with Section Thirty-One, all of it. I’ve given you my statement, and that’s it. I’m walking away.”

Martin sighed and nodded slowly. “Good,” he said, surprising her. “Wait, hang on.” He leaned over to reach into a drawer on another desk, pulled out a small leather object, and handed it to her. “Here. Tim stopped using this weeks ago, he’ll never miss it. It’s not the strongest thing in the world, but it’ll at least keep you safe for now.”

Basira studied the small folded bit of leather. “You think I’m in danger.” It wasn’t a question.

“These things don’t like people breaking their toys. And they usually only let you think you’ve got away.” A shadow seemed to come over Martin’s face, just for a moment. “I don’t know if the Dark will be after you for sure, but it certainly won’t be happy if it figures out you talked to us. Just…be careful, okay?”

“I will.” Basira hesitated and studied Martin for a moment. “You should quit, too. This place…it’s not right.”

Martin shook his head. “I’ve tried before. Didn’t work. It’s far too late for me.”

“Any advice on how to keep from getting that far?”

“Stay away as best you can,” Martin said seriously. “Which means not going anywhere near people or—or things that have been Marked by…all this. The Institute. The bookstore. Me.” He pressed his lips together for a moment, then met her eyes. “Detective Tonner.”

Basira stiffened. “You’re saying—”

“Why do you think I got so nervous around her? She’s been part of this sort of thing—not the same aspect, but a different kind—for a long time, maybe as long as I have. Maybe longer, I dunno. She told Jon she’d been Sectioned for fourteen years, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t have some experience from before that. I’ve been mixed up in this since I was a kid.” Martin took a deep breath. “But she’s like me—too entwined, too deep into it to be able to walk away. So yeah, Basira, if you don’t want to ever have to deal with this again, and I don’t blame you in the slightest, you’re going to have to stay completely away. I might leave London if I were you, so you’re not even tempted.”

Basira stared at Martin for a long moment. Finally, she said, “I’ll think about it. Goodbye, Martin.”

“Goodbye, Basira,” Martin said quietly. “Stay safe.”

Basira stood and walked out of the Archives, for what she hoped would be the last time.

Part of her—a surprisingly big part of her—regretted that, actually. She liked Martin. Not like that, he wasn’t her type—she wasn’t even sure she had a type, if she was being completely honest, she genuinely couldn’t remember ever having a crush or anything like that—but he was a good guy. They’d deemed him the most likely suspect in Gertrude Robinson’s murder, but even then she’d been reluctant to believe it. And while their conversations during the tape exchanges had been brief, she’d found she looked forward to them. She’d never really been one to make friends easily; even in places where she was part of the majority, she’d preferred being on her own, immersed in a book or working through a crossword puzzle. Mostly she’d found people to be ignorant or cruel or just plain stupid, not worth her time. Sure, maybe there’d been times she’d wished…but on the rare occasions she’d reached out, it had never been worth it. The only people she’d ever really been able to get close to had been…well, Daisy, and now Martin.

And if she wanted to keep out of the crap she’d dealt with under Section Thirty-One, she would lose them both.

Standing at the foot of the bridge across the Thames, she clenched her fists and tried to think rationally. She couldn’t just…walk away, not like that. It wasn’t that easy. She had to put in her notice, and they’d probably want her to finish out the pay period at least. Probably she’d have to do the whole two weeks thing. Which meant she would almost certainly run into Daisy again, which…wouldn’t be a bad thing. Basira was a bit skeptical of Martin’s claim that Daisy was in it too deep to walk away, or maybe she just wanted to be skeptical of it, but either way, she needed to tell her to her face that she was quitting. She’d be on her own with Gertrude Robinson’s murder, and even if it wasn’t a case she relished—Daisy was the sort of person you wanted by your side when you were tracking down a murderer or chasing a fugitive or going through a door, but she wasn’t one for sitting and sifting through evidence when she could be out in the field—she at least deserved to know that it was wholly hers now.

Did she really want to quit? For just a moment, Basira stood torn with indecision. She’d got into police work to track monsters, and then she’d found out there were literal monsters that she could take down, and there were aspects of the job she enjoyed.

Either you’re going to end up as a victim, or you’re going to end up as a monster.

No. No, Basira wasn’t going to do that, she wasn’t going down that route. And even if she wasn’t worried about becoming the sort of cop that got smeared by all the papers—and she wasn’t stupid, she was a woman and a Muslim, she’d absolutely be the first person the higher-ups threw to the wolves if they needed a scapegoat or a sacrificial lamb—there was the other aspect of it. Whatever her doubts about his opinion on Daisy, she believed Martin when he said the more she dealt with these things, the less likely it would be that she could walk away from them. She didn’t know what her purpose in life was, but it wasn’t to die at the hands of a spook. She was not going to end up like Altman.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she began walking again. First things first. She had a few days off. She needed to head back to the run-down flat she’d been living in since her dad died and start typing up her resignation letter to hand in when she was back. The sooner, the better.

#ollie writes fanfic #to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest)#tma fanfic #tma #basira hussain #martin blackwood #daisy tonner #police work cw #slight misuse of beholding powers (maybe)#kidnapping mention

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sharoscylla · 1 year

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today’s quandary

me, kicking my legs: should i write more “where the heart is” aunt ripley or more “none sword” tia ripley?

my Dark Tower rewrite fic, my Dark Tower Romance/Political Intrigue AU fic, my Hunter Owlhouse Gets An Aunt Ripley fic, my One Sword Prequel that I started in literally 2018, my Lonelyeyedads fic, my sequel to Humility fic, my Martin Blackwood Single Dad fic, my 40 fics that are not posted anywhere but could be IF I FINISHED ANY OF THEM, my UNFINISHED SHORT STORIES THAT I ORIGINALLY INTENDED TO PUBLISH AS A COLLECTION IN MAY (not happening), MY NOVEL’S 2ND DRAFT, MY OTHER NOVEL’S FIRST DRAFT: could you spend 5 minutes on one of us

me: I should flip a coin

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p1nkwitch · 2 years

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[begin ID: a title card edit, depicting a panorama of a suburban, England street corner, with trees lining the road, and a large, orange house as the focus. The clouds are grey, but there is a rainbow that stretches across the entire panorama. Overlaid, at the top of the image, is the text: Family Matters. end ID]

Chapter 2 of the @tmabigbang is out!

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34932088/chapters/87287800

It's funny he thinks later on, how he keeps on bumping into Elias afterwards.

By accident for sure, but the surprise is pleasant, because unlike when he usually runs into acquaintances and does uncomfortable small talk, with Elias he has actual fun. Because the man, as he finds out, is infuriatingly clever and funny, although unfortunately he's also a smug bastard.

#lonelyeyes #single dad au #peter lukas #elias bouchard #martin blackwood #jonathan sims #timothy stoker

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subtly-shakespearean · 4 years

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Trans Martin hc’s are all fun and games until you remember why his mother hated him

#martin always looked more similar to his dad... and then he started T #and then every single day his mother would watch her son look more and more like him #oof amirite?#just a fun little rabbit hole to venture down #trans martin blackwood #martin blackwood #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives season 4 #tma season 4

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swordsonnet · 2 years

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this maze inside my heart

Jon/Martin, 6439 words, rated T. Angst with a happy ending. Spanning from S1 to MAG 159. Also on AO3!

written for day 6 of @jonmartinweek, for the prompt 'lost & found'.

content warnings: depression, self-esteem issues, child neglect/emotional abuse, isolation. references to bugs, blood, death, explosions, eye trauma

There are many ways to be lost.

Martin Blackwood has encountered so many of them over the years that he fancies himself a curator of them now, confident he could collect and catalogue them all, put neat labels on them and preserve them in his own little archive. He could create a chronicle on disorientation, alienation, that unshakeable feeling that no matter where you go, you will never find where you belong. It’s the only subject he considers himself an expert in.

There are the literal ways to be lost, of course. Those are simple, basic, beginners’ stuff. They’re easy to categorise, less ambiguous, free of the diffuse murkiness that comes with being lost inside your own head. Martin remembers racing through the labyrinthine tunnels stretching out beneath the Institute, terrified of ending up as worm food and even more terrified of being left behind forever; remembers wandering the shifting, treacherous corridors of the Distortion alongside an increasingly irritated Tim; remembers that time as a young boy when he strayed too far into the woods on his way home from school and was picked up by a police officer hours later, exhausted and dehydrated. Those memories aren’t exactly pleasant, needless to say, but at least he knows what to make of them. It’s normal to spiral into panic when you can’t identify your surroundings; it’s to be expected, even.

It’s much harder to justify being lost within a crowd, among a sea of familiar faces. Lost within a throng of excitable schoolchildren, so obviously out of place with his second-hand uniform and his insecure smile. Lost at the most excruciating job interview of his life, stuttering through his fabricated credentials while Elias Bouchard’s steely gaze bored into him, giving him the unnerving suspicion that he could see right through all his lies. Lost on the bustling streets of London, lost at a pub night where his wavering voice was drowned out by the raucous laughter of his co-workers, lost in the waiting room of a care home in Devon as a tired-looking nurse explained to him once again that his mother didn’t wish to see him. Yes, the figurative ways to be lost are far more manifold, and far more insidious.

Martin has learned the hard way that there are much fewer ways to be found.

Well, perhaps not for everyone. Perhaps other people are found every single time they stray from the right path, perhaps some people are lucky enough to never get lost in the first place. But he has never known that luxury.

That hasn’t stopped him from dreaming about it, of course. For weeks after his father left, he waited patiently for his return, spending hours sitting by the front door and staying up long after his bedtime to listen for the sound of a key turning in the lock. He was so sure that his dad hadn’t meant to stay away for so long, that he’d just gotten a little lost and would find his way back to his family any day now. But of course he didn’t return, and in the end, even poor, delusional eight-year-old Martin was forced to admit that his dad had left of his own free will, and that he was never coming back. He’d begun to draw comfort from a different illusion then, one even more ridiculous than the first one: that one day, some perfect picture book family would show up on their doorstep and whisk Martin away to their beautiful house with its sprawling garden and their three dogs, take him far away from the shabby council flat with mould creeping up the walls, from the bitterness in his mother’s eyes and the vitriol in her voice, from his dull, pathetic life, and shower him with all the toys and affection he could wish for. He could lose himself in that fantasy for hours when his mum was knocked out by her pain medication and didn’t need his help, watching re-runs of saccharine children’s shows on their grainy TV screen while doodling crayon pictures of his daydream family, a stick figure rendition of himself placed right in the middle with a huge smile on his face. He would glance over to his mum’s bedroom every few minutes or so, just to make sure she was still asleep, feeling, even then, a vague sense of guilt for even harbouring these dreams, as if his imagination alone was a form of betrayal.

He grew out of that fantasy soon enough, as children grow out of so many things, and realised that this wasn’t a fairytale. No one was coming to save him. That simple, brutal truth stuck with him for decades to come. Sure, he would occasionally dream of being found, of having someone grab him by the hand and steer him to a safe haven. Over the course of his early adulthood, he went through a handful of unsatisfying one-night-stands and a couple of even more unsatisfying relationships, but all of those men turned out to be locked doors instead of corridors, all of them were just further meanders in the labyrinth that was his life. Eventually, he gave up on the whole pointless endeavour entirely, contenting himself with stealing furtive glances at attractive strangers on the tube or in the breakroom at the Institute, never long enough for them to return his gaze, absorbed for just a moment in a fleeting fantasy of a life he could never have. It wasn’t such a bad way to exist, truth be told. It was almost comfortable. It hardly even registered as loss anymore.

It wasn’t until he was transferred to the Archives that the real trouble started. The issue wasn’t that he was lost there, although he certainly was, more so than ever before – first badly out of his depth and constantly berated by the pompous prick who called himself his new boss, then trapped inside his own flat for two terrifying weeks with nothing but cans for company. No, the trouble began when he was hiding inside an airtight Document Storage room, faced with the very real possibility of imminent death, and his aforementioned arsehole boss confessed that he had been feigning scepticism all along, and then, out of the blue, asked Martin if he was a ghost. Despite the direness of the situation, the sheer absurdity of that question startled a laugh out of Martin, a laugh more genuine than he’d been able to produce in a long time, and in that moment, something clicked into place. Something important. Martin was well aware he’d been nursing this ridiculous crush for a good few months now, but he’d just taken it as further proof of his terrible taste in men, and preferred not to dwell on it. Now, though, amid all the chaos of a worm attack on his workplace, an unbidden thought entered his mind, loud and clear as a divine epiphany: he would rather like to be found by Jonathan Sims.

He just about stifled a frustrated sigh as he reached over to turn off the tape recorder, then slumped back against the wall. Shit, he thought to himself. Shit.

Of course, the following months only saw him, and everyone else working in the Archives, getting more lost. Jon was descending into paranoia, Tim was turning into a bitter caricature of his former self, there was something off about Sasha that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, and Martin was… well, Martin was hanging in there. Or trying to, at least. He had been lucky enough to not have dozens of worms burrow into his flesh, after all, so the least he could do was keep it together for the sake of the others. Try to talk some sense into Tim, make tea for Jon and nag him to eat lunch or go home to get some much-needed rest. He’d always been a helper, could never imagine a purpose for himself outside of doing things for other people, and so helping was what he did, even if his none of his ministrations seemed to lead to any tangible change. Even if, for all his effort, he was as invisible as if he really was a ghost. At night, he tossed and turned for hours on end, trying in vain to shake the indelible images of Gertrude’s rotten corpse, the bullet holes in her chest. His ears constantly perked up for the dreaded noise of Jane Prentiss’s knuckles rapping on the wood of his front door, an echo of which haunted him even during his waking hours. He’d get up in the morning, bleary and disoriented from lack of sleep, and go to work pretending like nothing was wrong. He was fine, he told himself, clinging to that hollow denial like it was his lifeline. He was fine. And yet every step he took seemed to move him further from the fabled exit of this grand maze he was trapped in.

There was one day he remembered in more detail than anything else. He was out for lunch with Jon – Jon who maybe kind of thought Martin was a murder suspect; Jon whom Martin was still harbouring a stupid, stubborn crush on, despite the glaring warning signs – and they were eating overpriced sandwiches in a mediocre coffee shop, and Martin said something that he thought quite trivial and silly, really, and Jon… smiled. A proper smile, one that showed a hint of teeth and made his eyes gleam with mirth and a fondness Martin hoped he wasn’t only imagining. The kind of smile he hadn’t believed Jon was even capable of. It was a moment so monumental and ephemeral that Martin wanted to preserve it in resin, wanted to hold on to it for the rest of his life like a precious keepsake. It was like being found just for a fraction of a second, before losing his way again. It was so fleeting that it shouldn’t make any difference in the end, but somehow it did. Somehow, it made all the difference. For one brief, shining instant, Martin’s world was still alright.

Martin couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he had fallen in love with Jon, when his intense, but still superficial infatuation had turned into something deeper, but he wasn’t surprised to find it had happened. It was inevitable, in a way. It was always going to be like this. Jon was bright and distant as a star, and Martin was always going to be sucked into his orbit. It didn’t cause him any grief; he found he rather liked the feeling. It was no coincidence that they called it ‘falling in love’, not just a random turn of phrase. It perfectly encapsulated how dizzying it was, how disorienting, how much like being lost. But if being lost could feel like this, he would gladly be lost for the rest of his days. He didn’t hold out much hope for Jon to return his affection, or for them to be in any way a suitable couple even if he did, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to sit with his feelings, clutching them close to his chest like a secret treasure yet never letting them see the light. The point was pining from afar, the point was furtive glances across a crowded room, the point was halting, awkward conversations that Martin cherished like love songs. Sometimes he felt like he could live on those little moments alone, like they were all the nourishment he needed. Jon was gone far more often than not, out of the Archives or even out of the country, and even when he was around, he wasn’t really there, would just rattle off a list of research requests before setting off on his next doomsday mission. Martin lived for those rare times he was in the same room as Jon, even just briefly, even if they hardly spoke. It was like he spent most of his days in a deep slumber, still going through the usual motions but utterly numb inside, and the only time he was awake was when he was with Jon. That couldn’t be healthy, he knew that only too well, but when had he ever been able to form a healthy attachment?

Jon called him, once, all the way from America, just as Martin was getting ready for work. It was deep into the night over there, but Jon, as usual, couldn’t sleep. His voice sounded hoarse, almost raspy, roughened by exhaustion and things Martin could only guess at. He paused in the process of rooting around in his overflowing clothes drawer for a clean jumper and allowed himself the momentary indulgence of picturing Jon, stretched out on a hotel bed, his thin frame huddled beneath the duvet, the side of his face pressed into the pillow. His phone placed close to his head, almost as if Martin was lying there beside him. He wondered what Jon wore to bed. If he let his hair down. If he was a restless sleeper or as still as a stone, if he hogged all the blankets or threw them off because he got hot, if he talked in his sleep…

But then Jon asked him a question about Gertrude’s arrest records, and Martin had to force himself out of his embarrassing (and tragically hopeless) reverie, cursing the light tremor in his voice when he answered. The first part of their rather brief conversation was taken up by professional matters such as those (if preventing the apocalypse fell under ‘professional matters’), and Martin was sure that Jon would hang up the second he had gotten all the information he needed, but the lull that ensued when Jon had run out of questions stretched on for longer than natural, both of them breathing down the line and oddly hesitant to end the call. To his surprise, Martin found himself filling the silence by babbling on about whatever trivial topics came to mind, meaningless snippets from what little life he had outside the Institute, disconnected rambles about his poetry and the sci-fi show he was watching at the moment and the cute dog he’d seen in the park the other day. He broke off with a sheepish chuckle when he realised he’d been talking about himself for far too long, and asked Jon about his travels, receiving an equally rambling response about jetlag and roadside diners. He tucked his phone between his ear and his shoulder as he slipped into his trousers, smiling to himself. This was all so normal, just ordinary small talk between co-workers, maybe even friends, maybe even… no, he shouldn’t go that far. Not for the first time, he was spellbound by Jon’s voice, the rich timbre and careful inflection making even his sleep-deprived musings on hash browns sound Shakespearean. Martin knew with perfect clarity then that even though he was standing inside the flat he had lived in for the past decade, his home was an ocean away stuck inside a dingy hotel, his only anchor was a voice travelling to him across the phone.

He reluctantly brought their aimless stream of conversation to a close after Jon had failed to stifle a yawn for the third time, making him promise to get at least a few hours of sleep before leaving for Washington D.C. the next morning.

“Good night, Jon,” he whispered, once more letting himself, just for a few seconds, imagine that he was right beside him on that hotel bed.

“Good ni- Ah, I mean, good morning to you, I suppose,” Jon said awkwardly, and Martin smiled again. “I- I’ll see you soon.”

Martin stared down at the phone in his hand for at least three minutes after the call disconnected, replaying Jon’s words inside his head and scrutinising them for hidden meanings. He hoped nothing would disturb Jon’s sleep. He hoped talking to Martin had granted him even a small fraction of the comfort it had given Martin. Was Jon also staring at his phone with a soft smile on his face this very moment, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean? Would he fall asleep cradling it close to his chest, would he dream of being wrapped in Martin’s arms? But no, that was absurd. Martin wasn’t in this for reciprocation, because he knew all too well how astronomical the odds of that were. If anyone was ever going to find him, rescue him from the labyrinth of his life, it was not going to be Jon, he had no illusions about that. What was the use of getting his hopes up? Of making up silly fantasies about his unattainable boss? Of course, what complicated matters slightly was that in recent times, his unattainable boss had also become the only person in the world he might truly call his friend, but that didn’t have to mean anything. He’d learned from experience it was best not to open his heart, lest it become irreversibly broken. Still, when he went to work that day, his steps felt much lighter, like an immense weight had been lifted from his shoulders, like he was walking on air.

Given that the majority of the following weeks was occupied with preparations to stop the end of the world, and given the deteriorating mental state of most of his colleagues, Martin felt a little guilty to admit that those weeks were among the happiest of his life. For once, he felt like an active participant in his own life, not just a silent bystander doomed to watch from the sidelines and never intervene. He had come up with a plan, and he had a crucial part to play in that plan, even if it was still closer to backstage work than the lead role.

He hadn’t seen all that much of Jon since the latter had returned from the States, busy as they both were with getting ready for the Unknowing, but the snatches of conversation they shared here and there made everything worth it, and made it clear that their relationship was moving towards… something. Martin wasn’t quite sure where it was heading, but he was excited to find out. On the night before Jon left with the others, Martin gave in to the impulse to hug him goodbye. Instead of immediately pulling away as Martin had feared, Jon melted into the embrace and let out a contented sigh, like he had secretly always wanted this and been too afraid to ask. Martin’s heart made a dangerous little leap in his chest. They lingered in the hug for what must have been a full minute at least, neither of them willing to let go, and when they parted at last, Jon brushed his fingers against Martin’s in a gesture too fleeting to comment on but too emphatic to be accidental. Martin felt the imprint of his touch all through his sleepless night, like a dull phantom pain where Jon’s hand should have been, where his slender fingers would fit perfectly in the gaps between Martin’s. Once Jon was back from Great Yarmouth, Martin vowed to himself, he would ask him out for… a drink, or something like that. Something wonderfully mundane, just a commonplace outing between two co-workers who might have some kind of feelings for one another. They’d go for a drink, maybe even dinner, and then they’d take it from there. One day at a time. Maybe Martin shouldn’t give up on the hope of being found just yet.

What a difference a single day could make.

How quickly everything could fall apart, shatter into a thousand jagged shards that could never again be assembled into an unbroken object.

How laughable to think he’d known loss before. He’d known a feeble imitation of the real thing at best, had only glimpsed its flickering shadow, while now he saw the true creature in the terrifying flesh. All his life, it turned out, he’d been walking with an invisible safety net beneath his feet, a thin protection that kept him from slipping through the cracks completely. Now, he knew what it was like to experience that net being ripped away from you. Every misstep might hurtle him into a vast abyss from which there was no escape.

There was no way to spin the tale that contained even a tiny grain of hope. No gentle lies to tell himself to make his situation bearable. The man he loved was comatose and would probably never wake up, his mother had always hated him, a colleague he had once called his friend had died in a brutal explosion, and the Lonely had taken over the Institute. At least that last point made sense, didn’t it? The Lonely had always been a part of him, running through his bloodstream and engrained in the marrow of his bones, even long before he had encountered any of the Fears. And right now, he was more alone than ever before.

When Martin decided to accept Peter Lukas’s offer, he didn’t do so because he wanted to be found. He wasn’t naïve, not anymore. He knew that the Lonely could never offer him a home, but at least it could give him a space where his solitude didn’t feel out of place. Where being lost was the natural state to be. Where his grief and anger and despair were dulled around the edges until they seemed almost merciful. It gave him a twisted sense of purpose, that what he’d viewed as a personal failing all his life could instead be his destiny, his true vocation. The Lonely told him no lies. Didn’t try to seduce him with beautiful, treacherous hope.

Maybe Jon waking from his coma should have changed things, but it just fuelled Martin’s determination to see this through to its bitter end. At least Jon had been safe inside that hospital room, even if it came at the cost of him being all-but-braindead. Now that he was awake and swanning around like nothing had happened, walking and talking and getting into unnecessary trouble, Martin was all too aware of everything that could hurt Jon out here, all the ways he might still lose him. But Peter had promised his protection, and while that was a doubtful assurance at best, right now it was the best chance Martin had. And if it required even more isolation of him, required him to lose himself more with every passing day, then what about it? Any sacrifice was a small price to pay if it meant keeping Jon safe. Martin could be Ariadne, handing Theseus the thread he needed to escape the labyrinth after slaying the minotaur, then being left behind on his own while his almost lover set sail for more promising waters. He was used to loneliness, after all; he excelled at it.

It would be much easier, however, if Jon could just accept that. If he took Martin’s withdrawal as proof of his devotion, not as a rejection. Instead he seemed hellbent on catching sight of Martin, with the help of his strange new powers, and roping him into a conversation, no matter how hard Martin tried to evade him. He asked about his poetry, offered his condolences for his mother’s death, told him he missed him, for Christ’s sake. All those things that Martin had dreamed of, that he had never thought possible, and now they were just sharp blades in his chest. It was like everything he had ever wanted was being dangled right in front of his nose, but he was drowning in the fear of losing it again, too weak to keep his head above the water. He couldn’t afford to let his guard down around Jon, much as he might long for it. It wasn’t safe. On each of the select few occasions that Jon had managed to hunt him down, there was an incandescent heat radiating off him, even with Martin keeping his distance as much as the narrow corridors would allow, like there was a furnace at his core. Like his whole body was made of light. Despite everything, part of Martin couldn’t help being drawn to the flame, circling around Jon like a poor, doomed moth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt warm, and he couldn’t just blame it on the glacial outside temperatures. The heating in his office had broken months ago, in tandem with the one in the flat he rarely returned to anymore, and he hadn’t bothered to try and get it fixed. Even his thickest jumpers failed to give him a modicum of warmth. If he tried to touch Jon, he wondered, if he just lightly brushed their fingers together like Jon had done the night before the Unknowing, would it burn his skin? Would it be worth the pain?

But he resisted the temptation to reach out to Jon. To let him in. It was for the best, he reasoned with himself. Martin was already much too far into the labyrinth to ever find the exit, but there was still hope for Jon, he had to believe that. One day, Jon would come to understand that as well. One day, he would realise how pointless it was to waste his energy on someone who had always been, and would always be, a lost cause. Maybe then he would stop seeking Martin out, and maybe then all this would stop hurting so goddamn much.

Time got funny, after a while. The days still passed – the bottom right hand corner of his computer screen displayed a different date each morning – but they had become insubstantial, intangible, impossible to hold onto. He would blink his eyes and hours, days, weeks would have gone by, and he had nothing to show for it, nothing to fill the great emptiness. It was a relief, in a way. If time passed him by, at least that meant he wouldn’t have to wait so long for… whatever it was he was waiting for. For this to be over, he supposed. For better or worse. Probably for worse.

There was a mug of tea sitting on his desk. One of the collection of Sports Direct mugs that had accumulated in the breakroom over time, not one he would have ever picked if he had the choice, though it had been a long time since he’d cared about things like that. Had he made it for himself? He must have, even though he had no memory of the act, because who else would make him tea these days? Who else had ever made him tea? Peter had supplied him with a spacious office that included its own kitchenette, freeing him of the necessity to enter the breakroom and risk running into people there. Most days went by without Martin exchanging a single word with another human being, barring the occasional visit from Peter. He was grateful for that, secretly, though he’d never express it to Peter. People were… difficult. Exhausting. Unpredictable. He couldn’t understand why he had ever bothered with them. Why he had run himself ragged in his futile, ridiculous mission to gain their approval, their affection. It was better to accept that he would never get it, and that he didn’t need it anyway. He didn’t need anyone.

He took a cautious sip of the tea and found it to be ice cold, bereft of even the faintest echo of warmth. Less like it had cooled down, and more like it had never been hot in the first place. He left the rest of it untouched.

Even now that winter had given way to spring and then to summer, temperatures rising and leaves sprouting on the trees without him taking notice of any of it, warmth still eluded him. On the rare occasions where he ventured outside, the heat of the sun didn’t seem to touch him, like his entire body was encased in a thick shroud of ice, impossible to melt or break through. He’d started to make his peace with that. The cold barely even bothered him anymore. Maybe warmth was simply a luxury he couldn’t afford anymore.

He'd almost forgotten what warmth felt like when Jon came bursting into his office after months had gone by without any kind of contact, his eyes alight with desperation and something dangerously close to hope, proposing his ridiculous, harebrained scheme like it had any chance of succeeding. Gouging out their eyes and running away together. Like the premise of a macabre romance novel. The heat waves emanating from him were even more intense than they had been before, and Martin was sure that if he came any closer, they would both be set on fire. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad outcome.

He kept expecting Jon to falter, or to reveal that the whole thing was just a cruel joke, but his voice was as sincere as the unguarded expression in his eyes, and Martin realised, with a jolt of horror, that he was completely serious. He truly believed that he’d found a way to escape the labyrinth, and while it would hurt like hell, it might all be worth it in the end. His steadfast faith was enough to break what was left of Martin’s heart.

He was so close to saying yes. To saying of course I’ll do it, Jon, of course I’ll come with you, I would follow you anywhere. To throwing over everything he had worked for in the past year and risking it all on a plan too ludicrous to possibly work out. Risking everything on the sheer hope of it all. But even if, against all odds, Jon’s plan was successful, even if they managed to escape the clutches of the Institute, Martin knew, deep down, that they still wouldn’t be able to find their way out of this maze. They would both be blindfolded in a very literal sense, stumbling around in the dark without ever finding each other, without ever finding where they were meant to be. More lost than ever before. No, they just weren’t the kind of people to have a romantic elopement that didn’t end in tragedy.

But Jon – bless him and damn him – was too stubborn, too caught-up in his foolhardy idea, to accept that unless he witnessed it for himself, and Martin couldn’t do that to him. So he opted for the fastest approach, which was also the cruellest. Keeping his voice as cold and level as possible, not letting the slightest hint of emotion shine through, he told Jon that he didn’t want this, not really, that his only reason for asking Martin was to have an excuse not to go through with it. It wasn’t the truth and they both knew it, but the harsher Martin was now, the more walls he built around himself, the sooner Jon would realise it was futile trying to save him. And that would make it easier for both of them, in the end.

The crestfallen expression on Jon’s face pierced right through some part of Martin that hadn’t calcified yet, that was still soft enough to hurt, but he swallowed down the pain like he swallowed down all other feelings these days. When the door fell shut behind Jon and Martin was left alone in the lifeless void of his office, he almost wished he still knew how to cry.

There are many ways to be lost. Martin used to think that he knew them all, had recorded every single one of them in the private collection of his memory. But nothing could have prepared him for what it’s like to be truly lost. To pass the point of no return. The surprising thing about it is that it doesn’t feel like being lost at all. Like most human experiences, after all, being lost is defined by its opposite, and in the absence of a concept of being found, it simply ceases to exist. Just like everything else. There is nothing here, save for the soft lapping of waves on some distant shore and the faint scent of sea salt in the air. Here, the very idea of being found is absurd, like some fairytale notion that only children believe in. All that remains is the firm knowledge that he will never find a way out, that there is no way out to be found, an ironclad certainty that is almost comforting in its lack of ambiguity.

As Martin wanders the icy shores of the Lonely, he knows deep in his bones that no one is coming to save him. When he was a child forced to take on responsibilities that most grown adults would struggle with, no one came for him. When he was trapped inside his flat for two full weeks while Jane Prentiss and her army of worms stood guard outside his front door, no one came for him. When everything he had ever loved had been taken from him in the span of two horrible months and he had no choice but to turn to the Eldritch manifestation of loneliness, no one, nobody, not a single living soul came for him. Why would anyone come to his rescue now?

But Jon does. Of course Jon does, because for all his Knowledge, he is still the same old fool who can’t see the obvious truth right before his eyes. As usual, the fierce heat radiating off him warms the frigid air around them, and as usual, Martin recoils from his warmth. He speaks to him, though, because he can’t quite stop himself from doing so, but only to tell him to leave. To finally, finally give up on him. His voice echoes, and sounds alien even in his own ears, like it doesn’t belong to him, like he isn’t really here. And maybe he isn’t. Maybe he’s just an echo himself, a fading ghost of the man he used to be.

“I really loved you, you know,” he says. The mournful past tense, grieving not what once was but what could have been. What was never meant to be.

Jon leaves in the end, but only to retreat deeper into the bowels of this unending labyrinth, not to find an escape as he should have. Maybe there isn’t an escape for him anyway. Maybe he knew full well when taking on this suicide mission that it could only end in tragedy. Once upon a time, Martin might have felt anger at that, or grief, or guilt, but all his emotions have turned dim and muted, blurred shapes glimpsed through a murky window, too distant to touch him. This place only has room for numbness, and he tries to tell himself it’s a mercy. What use have feelings ever been to him, after all? It’s best to exorcise them, to cast them out before they leave a lingering mark.

When Jon returns, he is drenched in blood and radiant with purpose. Martin can’t bring himself to mourn Peter Lukas, or to have any emotional response whatsoever to his death, which he supposes is what Peter would have wanted. He longs to disappear like he did before, to dissolve into thin air where even Jon’s all-seeing eyes cannot ferret him out, but he finds himself drawn to Jon again, and this time he’s powerless to resist the pull. Jon is the flame and Martin is the helpless moth, and he’s doomed to circle around his only source of light even as he knows it will be the death of him. Even as he knows that so much brightness will kill him.

“Look at me and tell me what you see,” Jon says, and the words sound like the very essence of Beholding, but they’re all Jon, the dread powers relegated to a distant afterthought. Jon wants Martin to look at him, to see him for what he truly is and not flinch, and Martin wants nothing more than to follow his order, but he’s so afraid. Scared that it would be like looking straight into the sun, that even one glimpse would burn his eyes forever.

Look at me and tell me what you see, echoes in Martin’s head. Isn’t it funny, how he believed his whole life that he would never be found, held on to that certainty so hard that he lost sight of himself? Perhaps there were always people willing to find him. Perhaps that was never really the issue. Perhaps he couldn’t be found until he found himself first. And the truth, as simple as it is earth-shattering, is that he is still here. Even as a mere shadow of who he once was, even as a paltry spectre of who he might have been, he is still here. And that has to count for something in the end. No matter how far he has strayed from the realm of the living, he can always find his way back to it. It’s not too late for him to find his way back to himself. And there’s nothing wrong with needing a little guidance along the way.

He looks at Jon, and Jon’s gaze finds his, and his gaze finds Jon’s, and the fog evaporates. For the first time in ages, maybe his entire life, he can see clearly.

“I see you, Jon,” he says in a voice free of echo. “I see you.”

Jon’s relieved smile melts the residual ice within Martin, and he takes his outstretched hand without fear of burning himself on Jon’s incandescent skin. It turns out to be the perfect temperature to warm his frozen fingers.

“Let’s go home,” Jon says, and Martin follows him without hesitation. It’s been so long since home was a place he could point to on a map, but now he knows it’s less about the coordinates and more about the connection. His true home, his magnetic north, is a warm hand pulling him out of his own misery towards the light.

There are many ways to be lost, and nowhere near as many ways to be found. Martin has learned that over the years, but he has also learned that other people can only find you once you have found yourself. Once your body doesn’t vanish into smoke at the slightest hint of intimacy. He has also learned that no matter how strenuous the way out of the labyrinth may be, it’s much easier to navigate alongside someone else.

There are many ways to be lost, which is to say there are many ways to be alone. But Martin Blackwood isn’t alone anymore.

#jonmartinweek 2022 #tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonmartin #my writing #this one's my personal favourite :3

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bluejayblueskies · 3 years

Text

philautia

n. a love based on deep connection to one’s well-being and built upon a love for one’s self; a centered wholeness

Words: 2.3k

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Relationship: Sasha James & Tim Stoker & Martin Blackwood & Jonathan Sims, Past Tim Stoker/Sasha James, Minor Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood

Characters: Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims, Sasha James

Additional Tags: AU - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff and Humor, Statement Fic (but not in the way you expect!), Aromantic and Asexual Characters, Implied/Referenced Homophobia (very minor), Implied/Referenced Arophobia (also very minor)

Summary:

SASHA

So, according to Tim, I’m supposed to be recording a statement on, quote, my “most swashbucklingest experience as an esteemed member of the LGBT community.” He left this recorder on my desk and stole my scone. Timothy Stoker, I will not forget that.

---

Statements of members of the archival staff at the Magnus Institute, London, regarding certain facets of their aspec identities. Statements compiled by Timothy Stoker on 10th June, 2016. For personal use only.

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Or read below:

[CLICK]

MARTIN

—really don’t think this is necessary—

TIM

Aaaaand we’re recording!

MARTIN

(exasperated) Tim.

TIM

Oh, come on Martin, it’s more fun this way!

[MARTIN MAKES A NOISE OF DISAGREEMENT]

TIM

You cannot look me in the eye and tell me that this doesn’t appeal to your, and I quote, “retro aesthetic.”

MARTIN

(reluctantly) It… might.

TIM

See! So it’s perfect!

…

[HE SIGHS]

Obviously you don’t have to if you don’t want to, Martin. I just thought it might be nice—to have something to look back on when we’re all old and sick of each other, you know? Here, I can go first.

MARTIN

Tim, you don’t have to—

TIM

(overlapping, adopting the ‘Archivist’ voice) Statement of Timothy Stoker, regarding the first time he went to Pride with his brother, Danny. June 10th, 2016.

(cheekily) Statement begins.

TIM (STATEMENT)

(in his normal voice) I realized I was into blokes too when I was 15, you know. Think it took me a while because of the whole ace thing, though that took me until I was in uni to really figure out. I was still fine with sex, you know, always enjoyed it when it came up, just… never really wanted it with anyone in particular. So I suppose I’d assumed for a while that the things I was feeling toward other guys weren’t romantic because I never had the sexual parts to go along with them. (with wry humor) Almost ruined a few relationships that way, actually.

But I’m getting a bit off-topic. Can’t be one of those rambling statement givers Jon hates. God, I can see his face now, that thing he does with his nose—Martin, you know the one, the- the way it looks like he’s just smelled something really, really rank.

MARTIN

I thought you said you weren’t going to ramble.

TIM

Cheeky, cheeky. Okay, where was I. Right.

TIM (STATEMENT)

Mom and Dad weren’t real big on the whole bi thing, so the first time I got the chance to go to Pride was in uni. The first time I got the chance to go with Danny was after he turned 18 and got his first modeling gig. At least, I think he was already modeling back then. Point is, we were both out of the house, and Danny had been dying to go to Pride with me ever since I sent him pictures of me and Sasha eating an entire box of rainbow-colored donuts that first year. I’d figured out I was ace by then, but it had been pretty recent, so when we got there, I found one of the vendors selling those big flags you drape over your shoulders and got an ace one. Felt a bit weird having the ace flag instead of the bi one like the other years, but I had worn that pink, blue, and purple button-down Sasha got me for Christmas once, so overall, it felt all right.

And Danny—god, he loved it. Pretty sure he ate his weight in fried food that day.

[HE LAUGHS]

Almost got the aro flag he’d borrowed from Sasha dirty, actually, when he—

(quickly changes course) Ah, nothing! Sasha, if you’re listening to this, absolutely nothing happened to your flag, and I definitely did not have it laundered before I returned it to you.

TIM

Aaaaand that’s it! Statement ends, I guess.

See—easy! (a bit more seriously) But really—you don’t have to record one if you don’t want to, Martin.

MARTIN

…

No, I- I want to.

TIM

Are you sure? I don’t want you to do that thing where you just do something because you think someone else wants you to.

MARTIN

I do not—!

…

Okay, okay, fine. Point taken. But yeah, I- I’m sure.

[RUSTLING AS THE TAPE RECORDER IS PASSED FROM TIM TO MARTIN]

MARTIN

(with an audible smile) Statement of, er, Martin Blackwood. Regarding… a crush. No, no, wait—god, that sounds so juvenile. Regarding himself, and a person who- er, someone whom he—

[HE SIGHS]

Fine. Regarding a crush. Statement given June 10th, 2016.

Statement begins.

MARTIN (STATEMENT)

I’m always a little embarrassed to tell people that I’ve never dated anyone before? Okay, a- a lot embarrassed, actually. I try not to bring it up, but people will say things like, oh, you know how it is to shop for a partner or meeting her parents is definitely nerve-wracking—which is wrong on, er, two accounts, actually—and then I feel more awkward not telling them that I don’t know, actually, because I’ve never been in a relationship longer than a week or so. Then, they’ll get all sympathetic, like it’s some- some tragedy that I’m not involved with someone, and that’s worse, because then they’ll offer to set me up with people, or say that they don’t understand why I’m single because I’m a catch or whatever, and I have to give them some excuse about not interested at the moment.

It’s not that, not really. Dates with strangers, they- they just never work out for me.

I think I fall somewhere on the aromantic spectrum? I didn’t think about it much until Sasha mentioned it once over drinks—I think you were there, Tim, although you were (laughs) very drunk by that point. I told her I hadn’t had a crush on anyone since sixth form, and she threw around a bunch of terms. I- I honestly don’t really remember, it was kind of overwhelming and (laughs) I was also pretty drunk as well. But yeah, it… it sounds about right.

(hesitantly, as if bracing himself for impact) So… this person. Who I, er. Recently, that is, who I…

[HE CLEARS HIS THROAT]

It’s really strange, that’s all. And a- a lot. I—heh—I don’t really know what to do about it.

MARTIN

…

Uh, statement ends? I guess? I, uh, don’t really have anything else to say. (jokingly) It’s not like there’s any, er, follow-up or whatever. (to Tim) Was- was that okay?

TIM

(audibly smiling) Yup! Most excellent, Marto. (more seriously) You felt okay, right?

MARTIN

(huh) Yeah. Yeah, I- I did. A bit nice, actually. (quickly) As- as long as this stays in the archives, though. It… it is staying in the archives, right?

TIM

Oh, definitely. Right next to the section on love potions, I think.

MARTIN

Tim!

TIM

(laughs) Yes, Martin, it’s staying in the archives. Pinkie promise. Just you, me, Sasha, and Jon. (in the tone of a man who knows a great secret and wants nothing more than to share it) Speaking of Jon—

MARTIN

(quickly) Uh, recording ends!

TIM

(undeterred) —is he the—?

[CLICK]

SASHA

Right. So, according to Tim, I’m supposed to be recording a statement on, quote, my “most swashbucklingest experience as an esteemed member of the LGBT community.” He left this recorder on my desk and stole my scone. Timothy Stoker, I will not forget that. It was white chocolate raspberry, and I’m stealing the money it cost out of your wallet.

…

Anyway.

[SHE CLEARS HER THROAT]

Statement of Sasha James, given 10th June 2016. Subject of statement is… hmm. Let’s say… (laughs) A brief relationship with one Timothy Stoker.

Statement begins.

SASHA (STATEMENT)

Tim, I know you’re listening to this, and I just want to preface this by saying that yes, it was Italian that we had for dinner that night, not Greek. You’re thinking of a different friendship-turned-hookup-turned-awkward-aftermath-turned-friendship.

[SHE LAUGHS QUIETLY]

Anyway, I guess the best place to begin with this whole thing is by saying that I’ve known I was aro since I was 16 and that I’ve never been very good at talking about it. I’ve ended plenty of tried and failed relationships with the it’s-not-you-it’s-me talk because I didn’t know how to explain that I just… wasn’t interested in romance.

I wanted to explain it to you beforehand, Tim, I really, really did. We’ve had this conversation, I know I know—I won’t rehash it over tape.

[SHE SIGHS]

But the important thing is that I like you so, so much, and—god, this is stupid—I guess maybe I thought that it wouldn’t matter with you? That you could like me romantically and I could like you platonically and it would be fine. Like I said, stupid, but you asked me out to that Italian place—yes, Italian, for god’s sake, I had the chicken parm and you had some sort of lasagna abomination—and I just… couldn’t say no. And it was nice, really. I had a lot of fun.

And then we slept together. And… that was really nice. But then, the next morning, the… the guilt set in. Because I felt the same as I always had about you—which is to say that I loved you, just not in the same way you loved me—and I became convinced that I’d gone and ruined the whole thing.

Ignoring you for a week was probably not the correct response. (quieter) Yeah, definitely not my finest moment. But I’d gotten it in my head that the moment I told you that I didn’t feel that way about you and that I would never feel that way about you—or about anyone—you’d hate me. And you don’t have to say that you’d never hate me—I know you wouldn’t. I think I knew it then, too. But fear is a powerful thing.

…

Anyway, you know how it all turned out. You finally dragged me out to coffee and I finally told you why I’d been avoiding you and it was really, really awkward for about a month after that and then it just… wasn’t anymore. (audibly smiling) And you’re still my best friend, Tim. Even if you did steal my scone.

[THE SOUND OF PAPERS RUSTLING AND A CHAIR ROLLING BACKWARD]

Recording ends.

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Kyle Henning, regarding a strange mushroom he found growing in his garden. Original statement given April 15th, 2011. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begi—

[DOOR OPENS]

TIM

Hey boss! Got a moment?

ARCHIVIST

(irritated) Tim, please at least knock when the door to my office is closed. I was just about to record a statement.

TIM

(unbothered) So if you were about to, that means you’re not recording one right now, which means you do have a moment.

ARCHIVIST

(flatly) Shut the door on your way out, Tim.

TIM

(brightly) Right you are, boss! Juuuust going to leave this here on your desk. Bring it back whenever you’re done!

[PAPERS RUSTLE AS SOMETHING IS PLACED ON THE DESK]

ARCHIVIST

(dryly) I’m fairly certain that I’m the one who assigns you tasks to complete, Tim.

TIM

That you do! I guess I better get back to them then. Have fun!

ARCHIVIST

(firmly) Tim—

[DOOR CLOSES]

[HE SIGHS]

ARCHIVIST

Right. Well, given that this recording is essentially useless now and I hadn’t even gotten to the statement, I may as well start over. (mutters under his breath) Bloody waste of tape and my time—

[CLICK]

[PAPERS RUSTLE. FOR A MOMENT, THERE IS ONLY THE SOUND OF BREATHING. THEN, JON SIGHS.]

ARCHIVIST

Before I begin, I would like to make it very clear that this is not an appropriate use of working hours or the tape recorders, which should be used for statements that won’t record digitally as per Elias’s request.

…

That being said, I am… not entirely opposed to this project. So, I suppose…

[HE CLEARS HIS THROAT]

Statement of Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London, regarding… regarding a black ring worn on the middle finger of his right hand. Statement recorded by subject, June 10th, 2016.

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

I’ve often been told that I am not a very open person. I don’t necessarily intend to be closed-off, but I’ve also never found the need to disclose every aspect of my personal life to everyone I come into contact with. And yes, Tim—because I trust that you and you alone will be listening to this tape—that is a perfectly respectable way to live one’s life. Not everyone needs to know what I ate for breakfast that morning or who my favorite primary school teacher was.

…

I… will admit, though, that in certain circumstances, I… could probably stand to be more transparent regarding aspects of my personal life. Perhaps that’s why Georgie bought me the ring.

It wasn’t a special occasion. She just brought it back from the shop one day, a few weeks after a… particularly illuminating conversation about certain sexual identities, and dropped it atop my copy of Wuthering Heights. Honestly, I had no idea what it was at first. I- (heh) I tried to make a joke about unorthodox proposals, but I- I don’t really think it landed. Georgie just looked at me and said that she’d seen it on one of the online forums, that it was called an ace ring, and that she thought I might like it. I think I was more surprised about the fact that the ring fit perfectly than at the fact that she’d bought me the ring in the first place.

So I wore it. And it felt… nice. Understand, I don’t keep quiet about my romantic and sexual identities out of shame or embarrassment or indecision; I simply don’t feel the need to announce them at any given moment. So I’ve always been fond of small things—pins and stickers and such—that I can incorporate into my life, insignificant enough that they aren’t readily apparent to anyone but me, as they’re for me more than for anyone else. My ring is one such thing.

[THERE IS A MOMENT OF SILENCE. MORE WORDS SIT IN THE AIR, WAITING. EVENTUALLY, HOWEVER, HE SIGHS, AND THE WORDS REMAIN UNSAID.]

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends.

…

Right.

(with something that might be a smile) As for your other request, I do have a prior engagement with Georgie and Melanie this weekend. Though if you’re willing to accommodate two more, I’m sure they wouldn’t be opposed to coming along. Georgie’s always telling me that Pride is more fun when you’re with a group, after all.

End recording.

[CLICK]

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #the magnus archives fic #AspecArchives #asexual jonathan sims #gray-aro martin blackwood #aromantic sasha james #asexual tim stoker #sex-favorable tim stoker #biphobia //#arophobia //#(minorly for both)#my fic #my writing

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bigowlenergy · 4 years

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NOW ITS ERIC DELANO LOVING HOURS

eric delano. ERIC DELANO. GOD. eric ‘i was terrified of her so i knew i HAD to date her’ DELANO. eric is a tragedy not just because he spent his whole life in unwilling service to a god he didnt choose just to get nerfed by his shitty ableist wife after he managed to be the FIRST PERSON in the entire history of the institute to QUIT and had the sheer strength of will to blind himself to do it. no, thats the main tragedy. the REAL shame is that he was dtf monster women and the actual monsters would have treated him better. dude got shafted by ending up with a human monster of a woman with monster envy and shitty parenting tactics instead of a REAL fear eating menace. would have fucking FLOURISHED as a single dad who told an ancient fear deity to fuck off and WON. could have dated the fuck out of any monster woman with a complex moral compass and they would have LOVED him.

human out of spite. king of taking control of his life. supported his terrifying wife in her supernatural bullshittery. competent assistant to the Archivist. survived jonah magnus’ AND gertrudes’ piles of bullshit unscathed. good dad. polite as hell. got every monster woman on the block drooling. mary keay u ungrateful bitch u lost the one good thing u had

eric delano walked out of the institute for his shitty faux-monster wife so martin blackwood could run away to scotland with his monster husband. i simply must stan.

#eric delano #my man #gone too soon but damn did he go #tma #the magnus archives

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shkspr · 4 years

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i’m very attached to the K and all that it stands for (pun intended) so my theory is this: trans icon martin blackwood spent a long time trying to find a name that Fit (”sorry, sorry, i just wanted to try it out”) and when he went to change his name legally he couldn’t commit to a middle name, so his legal name is just martin blackwood. he always knew he liked the sound of a k in his name, it made for a good middle initial, but he couldn’t land on one name.

and i think, for all his faults, jon has always been vocally accepting and supportive of his colleagues when they get a bit personal on a night out or something; he’s a good man to talk to about gender and sexuality feelings because he listens and he always has the dry rational angle covered to combat whatever strong emotions his friends are feeling about their crises. but he is still openly disdainful of martin, so it’s a unique balance.

so it’s sometime in season one, or maybe even pre-archives, when martin “tells jon his middle name.” they’re all together, the two of them and tim and sasha, and it’s not something martin would usually just offer up in casual conversation, but he’s just changed it again and he really likes the sound of this one and he wants to test it out aloud to see how it sounds and how it feels. so when sasha jokingly calls him “martin jeremiah blackwood,” he says “that’s not my middle name,” and she says “no, it’s tim’s, i just like the way it sounds with any name”

and jon says “what is your middle name, martin?” and martin has a moment of panic because jon doesn’t usually ask him questions, jon doesn’t usually show an active interest in his life, but then he remembers that he has recently changed his middle name (in his head because that’s the only place he has a middle name) and he actually wants to tell them, to test the waters. so he says “kalidasa,” and they all look at him for a second just to be sure he isn’t joking. and he isn’t, or at least he isn’t copping to it, and it’s at that moment that jon has to leave, always a stickler for the rules, not willing to go over his scheduled lunch break time.

and then when he’s gone, sasha says “that’s a really nice name. what’s it mean?” and martin explains, because the meaning is the bulk of the significance: it means “servant of [the hindu goddess] kali” and it was the name of a classical indian writer whose work is very important to martin personally. there was a single hardcover book with no dustjacket on a low shelf in his home on the day, months after his father had left, when his mother finally decided to get rid of all his things. just one book, that’s what eight-year-old martin managed to squirrel away while his mum directed moving men to take his dad’s boxes away, and so he cherished that book, a slim volume of classical sanskrit poetry.

martin recites a bit of it from memory, his eyes going a bit fuzzy as he stares off into the distance and murmurs, “look to this day: for it is life, the very life of life. in its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence. the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of achievement are but experiences of time. for yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision; and today well-lived, makes yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. look well therefore to this day; such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn.”

sasha and tim don’t let on that they’re aware he picked the name himself, nor do they make any derisive comments or poke fun at him. they know where to draw a line, they know martin’s sensitive about anything to do with his dad, and they know it’s just generally a dick move to make fun of someone’s name. sasha smiles and tells him that’s very touching, and then she says “my middle name is josephine, after my mum’s aunt,” and that’s the subject easily changed, and they move on as normal as anything.

martin lasts about two weeks before deciding he hates “kalidasa” and he hates himself for picking it, it sounds stupid and pretentious and everyone already thinks he’s trying way too hard, he doesn’t need to go and make it worse. but it never comes up again like that, with all the shit that keeps happening, so he never gets the chance to set the record straight with jon. he tells tim, at some point, what he’s thinking of changing it to now, and tim is very supportive. but jon goes several years thinking his name is martin kalidasa blackwood, and martin is painfully aware of that fact at times.

so. when jon becomes post-apocalyptic google and martin asks what his middle name is... well, he’s not quite sure what he expects. he’s stuck with the same middle name for a while now, since around the time his mum died. they didn’t always get on perfectly, but he loved her; he’s not in denial, but that doesn’t mean he has to let his every memory of her be tainted. anyway, he was getting sick of his last middle name, and he wanted to honor his mum. iris was her name, it means rainbow.

and despite their rocky relationship, she gave him his faith, which has so often been a source of comfort and community when he had none, and he’ll always be thankful for that, he’ll always cherish that. it all sort of fell into place, really, it seemed to fall into his lap that the hebrew word for rainbow happens to start with a k. so he’s been martin keshet blackwood for about a year, give or take an apocalypse, and he doesn’t anticipate changing it anytime soon, and not only because he doesn’t have the time to think about his name while he’s trying to fight the world.

that’s it, he thinks, this is as permanent as things get in this world, so he figures that’s what will pop into jon’s head, but it doesn’t and that’s fine. nobody knows how any of this works, and so jon gains the knowledge that martin doesn’t have a middle name in any legal or official capacity. and jon says “i actually believed you! that’s ridiculous, i thought, that’s not a real name, but he wouldn’t lie to me!” and martin feels a tiny little warm flowers blooming in his chest at that because - well, because jon thought of him, back then, asked him a question and then ruminated on his answer after the fact and concluded that martin wouldn’t lie to him, and that’s a sight better than where he thought he’d stood at the time.

there’s some guilt, too, of course, because he was lying to jon at the time, and he felt bad about it at the time and he feels bad about it now but they’re so far past that, aren’t they. and he clears it up, later. the next lull in their journey, the next quiet moment that they have to just talk to each other, he clears up the whole issue and explains the whole story and jon laughs, because it’s funny. and then he says something awful sappy, something like:

“the journey to the man you want to be is one that i will gladly travel, too. whatever name you choose is fine with me, so long as it’s a name that pleases you. keshet is lovely, for that’s what you are: a burst of color in a dreary sky, a ray of hopeful beauty from afar, a comfort from the ever-present eye, your smile a pot of gold i treasure so. each color leads me deeper in this love, to places inside you i’d like to know, to all the little things that you dream of. if one day soon you find you wish to change, your life and name are yours to rearrange.”

martin cries, of course he does, and he gets a little indignant through his tears - “it’s not fair that you can just spin that off the tip of your tongue; poetry is supposed to be my thing; i try so hard, and here you come, just spouting rhymes like nobody’s business” - but there’s no real rancor in it, only fondness and warmth and the affirming knowledge that even here, they can learn new things about each other; even here, they can be together in a way that feels like home to them; even here, they have their love, and they won’t let it go.

#tma spoilers #tma s5 #ok to rb #mag164 #i've been sitting on kalidasa for a while now bc i don't think he'd keep it but he would definitely try it #under a cut (assuming the cut works) bc it got looooooooooooooong #optma #meta #jm

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the-ss-horniest-book-club · 4 years

Text

Tuesday 3-3-20 - it's time for another HBC 24 Hour Surprise Drabble Challenge!

The theme this time is AU! Alternate Universe - choose any AU (list below, or create your own) and Seb/Any Seb Character(s) and go wild!

Rules For AU Challenge Drabbles:

You do not need to reserve a prompt.

You do not need to tell us which prompt you're writing.

You can write as many or as few as you'd like, and there is no word minimum or maximum.

Smut/Fluff/Angst/any combo accepted, please adhere to HBC Guidelines.

To get on the masterlist, DM the link to your drabble(s) to HBC - All AU Challenge Drabble links received in 24 hours will be added to the masterlist.

AU Prompts:

Actor

Alpha

Angel

Astronaut

Baker

Barista

Bartender

Biker

Bodyguard

Cam Boy

Captain

CEO

CIA/FBI

Chef

College Student

Cowboy

Dad/Single Parent

Dancer

Demon

Doctor

Fairy Tale

Fireman

Gladiator

Gods/Goddesses

Lawyer

Lumberjack

Merman/Mermaid

Mobster

Musician/Rock Star

Paramedic/EMT

Pirate

Police Officer

Private Detective

Professor

Regency

Royal

Space Opera

Stripper

Sugar Daddy/Sugar Baby

Tattoo Artist

Teacher

Vampire

Viking

Warlock

Werewolf

Writer

OR CREATE YOUR OWN!

Character List:

Tony n' Tina's Wedding - Johnny Nunzio

Red Doors - Simon

The Architect - Martin Waters

The Covenant - Chase Collins

The Education of Charlie Banks - Leo Reilly

Rachel Getting Married - Walter

Spread- Harry

Hot Tub Time Machine - Blaine

Black Swan - Andrew / Suitor

Gone - Billy

The Apparition - Ben Curtis

The Bronze - Lance Tucker

Ricki and the Flash - Joshua Brummel

The Martian - Dr. Chris Beck

Logan Lucky - Dayton White

I, Tonya - Jeff Gillooly

I'm Not Here - Steve

Destroyer - Det. Chris

We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Charles Blackwood

The Last Full Measure - Scott Huffman

Gossip Girl - Carter Baizen

Kings - Jack Benjamin

Once Upon a Time - Jefferson / The Mad Hatter

Political Animals - T.J. Hammond

Labyrinth - Will Franklyn

I'm Dying Up Here - Clay Appuzzo

Picnic - Hal Carter

MCU - James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes

If you want to do headcanons/moodboards/art instead, PLEASE DO and tag us/DM the link!

Have fun playing!

Love, The HBC 💋

#hbc au drabble challenge #hbc special 24 hour challenge

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legacysam · 4 years

Text

It’s a day late for the fic challenge with @fieryfurniss, but it’s almost 3k instead of like... 500 so I think I’m okay with that. Completely unedited bc I am TIRED and I want to at least draft today’s fic before bed so I’m not TOO far behind. Anyway I have feelings about season 4 Martin, enjoy:

[SOUND OF SHUFFLING PAPERS]

MARTIN

Oh. Oh, hello. Suppose you’re all ready, aren’t you? Do you... I mean, we’re going to record the statements, it’s kind of what we do around here. You don’t have to keep turning up all spooky-like and turning yourselves on, we aren’t that bad at our jobs. I mean, not that performance reviews are... standard here, but still.

Do you just, do you enjoy it? Do you... I dunno, feed on this stuff? Eventually going to evolve into a, a boombox or something, like a tape recorder pokemon?

No. No, I suppose not. Probably for the best. Only just starting to get used to you at this size...

[CLEARS THROAT]

Alright, so. Martin Blackwood, assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute, recording statement #0070105. Statement of Marina Adamos, given first of May, 2007.

Statement begins.

MARTIN (STATEMENT)

It started in January, right after I got back from my parents’. Or, maybe a week or so after. Came back right after Christmas, it was just too much in that awful little house will the whole family there, all the nieces and nephews and my gran going on about why didn’t I have kids yet, all those people and since I’m the single one, I got the couch for the duration, might as well have booked a hotel really. In any case, got through the holiday, answered all the usual questions, took the dog for a lot of long walks, and got out of there as soon as I decently could.

I don’t mean to sound awful, I love my family, I do. I just get used to the quiet here, in my own place, and when we’re all together it’s a bit... overwhelming.

In any case, I was back in Exeter, getting good and settled in for the rest of winter. I’ve been writing my doctoral thesis, and I’d been at it for... god, must be four years now, four and a half maybe? And I finally got a grant to just sit down and write for a year. No teaching, no committees, just me and the thesis and field trips to a few of my favorite archives. Not this one, sorry. Don’t think I’d even heard of this one until last week.

Anyway, I suppose there was part of me that... I don’t know, maybe missed home? Had some lingering feelings about home, anyway, made my flat seem too empty to get proper work done, and I thought a change of scene might be helpful to get my gears going again after the break. There’s a cafe on the corner across from my flat, one of those that’s coffee during the day and wine and beer at night, can’t miss a chance at getting all the university students in for their various vices. Vices including poetry, apparently.

I didn’t know it was an open mic, obviously, or I never would have stepped foot in the place. Awful tradition, listening to nineteen-year-olds go on about being hopelessly in love as if anybody you date at that age is some grand romance. I almost preferred the angry feminist ones about getting felt up on the tube. I’d already dragged my notebooks over there, though, and in fairness the wine was really good, so I stayed. I had a table at the side, well out of mic-range, and once I got started working I could tune it out alright. I think the only thing that interrupted me was somebody asking if they could take one of the chairs from my table, which was great, actually. Kept anybody from being tempted to join me.

It was maybe an hour or two later that one of the readers got my attention. I still can’t figure out why. He was nothing special, just some nervous, chubby lad whose friends must’ve had to shove him up onstage, because he looked absolutely mortified being there. Though thinking back, I don’t remember seeing anybody he seemed to be with. Nobody cheering him on or anything. Dunno, maybe he was just braver than he looked.

I don’t remember much about the poem he read. It was long, I know that. But there was a bit in there that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I don’t think I can forget it. He wasn’t looking at me when he read it, but it felt like he was standing at my table reading directly at me, like there was nobody else in the room, and not in a romantic way. In a really scary way, like when you accidentally make eye contact with somebody who’s been staring at you. But he was just looking at his notebook, and he said, “the winter snow that falls at night will cover us in purest white. The sun that comes at break of day will melt the snow and us away.”

It was spooky, I don’t think it fit with the rest of the poem, but I don’t remember any of that. Just those lines. I’m not a nervous sort of person, but I didn’t want to hear anymore, I just got up and left. I sat on my couch the rest of the night watching outside, waiting to see if it snowed. I don’t... I don’t remember seeing the guy leave the cafe, though. I don’t remember seeing anybody leave, but I must have fallen asleep at some point, so maybe that’s why.

I knew I’d been asleep because when I looked outside again, there was snow on the ground. A lot of it, and it was still snowing hard, and all I could think was “the winter snow that falls at night...” I could have strangled the guy, to be honest. Maybe if I’d seen him again I would have, or at least given him a piece of my mind about his creepy poetry.

Anyway I don’t know if it was his fault, what happened. Maybe it was all in my head from the start. That’s what anybody I tell seems to think, anyway. “Oh, poor Marina, the thesis pressure got to her. Such a shame.” Maybe it’s better if they think that.

I didn’t... I didn’t go out again until late the next day. It never got properly light, anyway, just that sort of glowy grey you get when street lights bounce off the snow and clouds. I stayed in and tried to work. It was... maybe 3 or 4 in the afternoon before I checked my phone. It was weird, normally I got loads of texts and things from my parents after I left from a visit, like they were trying to make it longer, you know? But I hadn’t gotten any. No missed calls, either. Everything was just... quiet. It didn’t worry me, I just figured with the snow people were taking a day off and curling up on the couch and not doing anything. I certainly wasn’t, kept reading the same passages over and over. That damn poem kept getting tangled up in them, I’d try to copy something out and find myself writing about snow and people melting.

Late in the afternoon I decided to go for a walk. Quit being a chicken about it and go out in the snow, see everything was normal and all that. And it was. I walked by houses and saw the lights on in the windows, shops were open with people behind the counters, just nobody shopping, really. It looked like I was the only one out, but that’s fair enough in a snowstorm, isn’t it?

So I went home and watched some reality cooking show until I fell asleep.

It was... different when I woke up. Still no messages on my phone. I was starting to think there was something wrong with it, so I opened up my contacts to call somebody and test it and... there was nothing. No contacts. No old messages. Just like as if the phone was brand new. I still know my dad’s number, of course, so I punched it in to call him but it just rang and rang, never went to voicemail. Mum’s too. It had to be broken, right? Factory reset or something, took it back to before it was programmed to make calls properly maybe? I told myself that anyway, though saying it now it sounds stupid.

I put the phone in my pocket and went to look out the window and... the snow was gone. I don’t mean it was melting, I mean it was sunny out and the street was dry. The sidewalks were dry. There wasn’t even any of that grey-yellow slush in the grass by the road, nothing. Like there hadn’t been any snow or rain or anything in days. And there was nobody out.

I told you, I don’t spook easily, I’m not nervous, but I was getting nervous then. Just a low level sort of adrenaline, I was not panicking, I was just... everything was weird and I still had that poem stuck in my head, and I wanted to make sure it was all just some fucked up coincidence, you know?

So I went to the cafe. It was the only thing I could think to do. I think I told myself I was going to borrow their phone, but I don’t think that was really the plan. I think I was looking for... evidence. Evidence of something.

There was nobody in the streets. Nobody. Not in cars, nobody in their yards. I couldn’t even see anyone through the windows. It was like everyone had left without me. Even the cafe, which should have been packed on a day like that, there was nobody. The door was unlocked and the lights were on, but I couldn’t find a single person. I tried to call my parents again. No answer.

I did find the open mic sign up from that night, though. They kept those in a binder by the register. I didn’t recognize any of the names, but I kept it anyway. You can have it, it just spooks me carrying it around, but I couldn’t think what else to do with it.

I don’t... I’m not sure I can properly explain how I felt in that moment. I stole a scone. Didn’t even think twice, just took it out of the case. Definitely tasted like it had been in there more than a day, but it didn’t really register with me. I sat in the window like that for ages, watching the street, just cold. I was thinking about how big whatever this was might be. Was I the only person left in Exeter? In Devon? Was it bigger than that? Had I missed an evacuation notice, was there some natural disaster coming? I’m not religious, but I had a school friend who was, and I wondered if maybe I was the only one terrible enough to be given a miss at the rapture. I was desperate to find something, some explanation, something sensible that would put the world back on track.

That was when I noticed the water in the street. Just a bit at the edge where something hadn’t drained properly, and it looked like it was moving. I went out to see, and it... Listen this is going to sound mad, and I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it’s true. It was... there were hands in the water. I don’t mean like physical hands, I mean it was as if people were standing over the water waving at it, and it just made waves of reflections of hands. It wasn’t trees, or clouds, or me, it was in the water. That was when I started to run.

I was in and out of shops, went in and out of people’s houses, through yards, everywhere I could think where people should be. I went to the university and opened every office and classroom door in the Washington Singer building. My advisor’s desk had a cup of tea on it, like she’d just stepped out, but it was stone cold and there was a ring above the tea like it had been sat there a while. She practically lives in that office. Something about that, that damn cup of tea, that broke me a little.

I didn’t know where to go. I sat on the steps outside and just watched the empty world. There were birds and things just like there always were, but there was no movement that could possibly be a person. No sound like a human voice. I think... I started to think about whether I ought to go home, barricade myself in and hope that people came back, or if it would be better to go looking. I didn’t have a car, but my landlady did. I knew where she kept her keys and everything. It wasn’t as if she was using it.

I laughed at that. I don’t know why, but I started laughing, sitting there all alone on campus, laughing at the idea of stealing my sweet old landlady’s car. I’d have to leave a note, I thought. She’d think she just forgot where she parked it and she’d go mad looking for it. If she came back. If that water...

I think I tried to ignore what I’d seen in the water, and the way the snow melted, and that damn poem. It was still in my mind, but I had closed off that part of it because it wasn’t helpful. It wasn’t helpful to think that maybe some stammering undergraduate with a terrible poem had somehow magicked the world into...whatever this was. I can’t remember how I locked it all away, but I remember walking down the street toward home just... muttering to myself. “No, no, no...” The kind of muttering that makes you look crazy to passersby. But of course there weren’t any. I could say whatever I liked and no one would know. I could stay in my flat for a week and no one would bother me to come out with them. I could ignore my phone and not miss any messages from my parents. They always worried if I took too long to answer them.

I yelled “FUCK” once, in the middle of one of the bigger intersections, just to see how loud I could be. It hurt my throat how loud I could scream.

I wonder if that was what did it, actually. Looking back, it was right after that that I saw the dog. I don’t know how that would make a difference, but it makes as much sense as anything. Just a glimpse, but I could see a tail and a trailing leash going around a corner a block away, and without thinking I started to follow.

I’d already done a lot of walking and running that day, but I think that was the fastest I’d ever gone in my life. All I could hear were my feet hitting the pavement, and then I started to hear the sound of tags on a collar. And then he was in sight, a big lab like my parents’, running full out, tail wagging like he was playing his favorite game. I didn’t think I could possibly catch him, but I kept going, because what choice did I have? I chased him through yards and parks and down empty streets, and when I finally got close enough, just as he was about to zig zag away again, I threw myself on the ground and got hold of the leash. I still have a scar from my elbow hitting the sidewalk.

It was... like when you unpause a movie and it’s not just that the world starts moving again, it’s like something that was just a picture becomes alive again. I heard a voice behind me, and a woman pulled up in a minivan thanking me for catching her dog, the kids were so upset when he got away from them. And then the kids were there, piling out of the van, and a lady came out of the house we were in front of and offered me a bandage for my arm. There was traffic again, I could hear music from a couple streets over. It was all back.

I didn’t go to the cafe again. I just... couldn’t. I couldn’t risk it. Whatever happened to me, wherever I was that day, I knew it all started there. I wasn’t going to give it a chance to get me again.

I don’t... I don’t know if this is helpful for you, I don’t really know what you do here aside from collect creepy stories, but I just. When I heard about you I felt like I should tell you my story, maybe get it off my hands. I’ve got things I want to do with my life, you know? Time to stop thinking about all this. Time to let it go.

Statement ends.

MARTIN

[LONG PAUSE]

The... the list from the cafe is here. It’s... I... yes. Yes, my name is on it and yes, I used to go read there, but this isn’t... I don’t recognize those lines, I didn’t write them. I didn’t... I wasn’t...

I think I need to talk to Peter about this. I don’t want to. If the Lonely was... I don’t think I want to know. I don’t want to have been... I dunno, destined for this. I don’t want any of it. I...

[DEEP BREATH]

I... I’ll ask Melanie if she can do the follow up on this one. I think she’ll understand.

End... end recording.

#martin blackwood #tma #the magnus archives #okay listen #i haven't read a single tma fic yet i only just caught up BUT #my assumption is that statement fics are a thing and i cannot wait to read some

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