Chapter Text
“For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.”
- D.H. Lawrence (son of Arthur John Lawrence, which I couldn't have planned if I tried.)
Somewhere Else’s equivalent of Valentine’s Day is in late fall, and is called Saint Bart’s Bloody Day.
This is ridiculous for a number of reasons, the least of which is that there are no saints here.
No one even knows what the word means. Jon knows that because he’s listened, and the loss of that etymological knowledge is just one of many mysteries about this place.
It’s infuriating—but it certainly won’t stop him from participating.
Walking home from his job in Dandridge, a ribbon-wrapped gift hidden in his leather satchel, Jon slows to time his arrival with Martin’s.
It isn’t the subtlest manipulation of circumstances, but that’s never been his strong suit, anyway.
Jon finds it adorable when he “catches” Martin just home from his work in the community—covered in dirt, slightly sun-reddened, shoulder-freckles brightened by his time outside. Martin is always so flustered by it.
And, as always, as Jon crests the final hill before the cottage comes into view, he looks into the sky.
It’s there. Faint, so distant that it could be chemtrails or could be atmospheric weirdness, but Jon knows it’s not.
The Eye is stuck between, like the rest of them—but it’s too tethered to him to be completely invisible.
It calls to him, still—patient, terrifying, a colossus with the forbearance of distant suns. Calls, as always, because it wants him to start the apocalypse again.
And, as always, he ignores it.
It’s hard to ignore the Eye.
It knows him.
It wants him.
Too bad.
From the top of the hill, Jon can see Martin trudging in from the West Village green, hoe over his shoulder, whistling.
Jon knows there is dirt under his fingernails and sweat down his back. A little too much sun (an effective way to never feel the fog) and the satisfaction of work that means things have made him glow.
It doesn’t hurt that Martin has worked his way into the heart of the community here. Everyone likes him. Everyone trusts him.
Always playing the game, Jon thinks with a tiny smile, but the smile fades.
There are always, always, webs around Martin Blackwood.
Not on him. But close. Too close.
Martin says he does not see them.
Jon does not think he is lying—but refuses to look to see if that’s true.
It’s one of too many things they keep undiscussed, out of sight, like apples stored for winter.
Martin spots him. His whole being lights up, back straightens, grin widens. And he tips his straw hat like some sort of country dandy.
Jon laughs.
He’s timed it right, and they reach the cottage at the same time.
#
“Hey, you’ll ruin your jumper,” Martin teases as Jon reaches up, presses in, kisses.
“It all needs to be washed, anyway,” says Jon, intentionally rubbing his bearded face against Martin’s clean-shaven one.
Martin laughs, grips his waist. “You’re hopeless.”
“Not so long as I have you,” Jon whispers in his ear, and then it’s all very real, and very big, and they stand still and hold one another for the few bad seconds while memories rocket by.
“Root vegetables tonight,” Martin murmurs against the side of Jon’s head, moving right along.
“Mm,” says Jon. “I picked up some filets in Dandridge.”
“What, steak? Jonathan Sims,” chides Martin.
“We can afford it,” says Jon. “I’ve been saving for just this occasion.”
“The Saint Bloody whatever?” says Martin.
“For us,” says Jon, because it’s not really about the day.
Martin sighs; his breath is warm, and Jon shivers.
“You do need a shower though,” Jon says, and Martin laughs and heads inside.
They don’t lock the door.
They probably should, humanly speaking, but it just seems so… pointless.
The things that stalk their home, that watch him day and night, that wait for a moment of weakness, calling him, do not care about locks.
There isn’t much to steal, anyway. The cottage isn’t even real.
While Martin cleans himself, Jon prepares their special dinner.
The champagne they’d stolen when Jon removed the last of his stitches. It’s been chilling for six months.
The homemade, simple cake mix they’d splurged on as a forward-looking celebration when Jon had snagged the job in Dandridge, the next town over—a town, they were amazed to find, that housed what Somewhere Else possessed instead of schools: small and ancient academic centers called Groves, which were spaced fifty miles apart throughout the isle.
Jon does not know why they are called Groves because no one around him knows why they are called that. It seems no one knows who built them, either, or set them as the only acceptable form of education. So much mystery in a place created for knowledge scares him, and he doesn’t know why.
At any rate, only the smartest of the smart are allowed to attend or, heaven forfend, teach. Which is weird, because everything taught is so… vague.
The library consists of multiple copies of the same six books, covering the last three-hundred odd years of history. Why? No one knows that, either.
The classes consist of studying those six books, spaced over three years, for no reason Jon can see. There doesn’t seem to be an application.
Still, Jon cheated his way into a job. The only qualification needed was his ability to answer obscure questions, covering a range of topics he’d never heard of until his interviewers brought them up. He may not know nearly as much as he had during the apocalypse, but he could still do a pretty decent mind-read.
He cheats his way teaching classes, too, absorbing information from other teachers before regurgitating it to his own dull-eyed, broadly-aged class.
Some of the teachers are shielded from him, though, their minds behind an impenetrable mist. Yet another mystery.
At least it pays well. Very few people could qualify for a job like this, and they all seem to assume he learned in a different Grove.
They are all very afraid for him, too, but he can’t dig out why.
Jon frowns at the handwritten baking instructions. Knows they did not get eggs.
Jon sighs. “I’m an idiot,” he mutters, and goes to the doorless shower stall, a space like a closet between bedroom and kitchen. “I have to run to the Village. We need eggs for the cake.”
“I can do it,” offers Martin, who is soaking wet and covered in rivulets of dirt and sweat.
“No, it’s fine.” And as casually as he can, Jon leaves the ribboned gift on top of Martin’s clean clothes. “I’ll be right back.”
He won’t be walking to Dandridge for this, of course. His workplace is further, whereas Martin’s little base of operations is only a few minutes away.
And though Jon has seen it often, he still turns twenty feet from his door to see the cottage just… disappearing.
Wavering as it does, like heat rising from a road.
As always, it scares him.
They hadn’t known it did that when they’d found it at first. How could they? Jon had been carried in, bleeding and gasping bubbles of blood, and then… Jon isn’t sure, doesn’t remember, refuses to see Martin’s memories of what occurred.
But somehow, Martin staunched the blood.
And somehow, Martin stitched him up.
And somehow, Jon did not get infected, which seemed a miracle in itself.
The cottage had been abandoned, filled with web and dust. It had broken-down furniture, six forks, one knife, and an ancient sewing kit with the thread gone brown from age.
Martin had used thread from his shirt instead. Somehow.
And they’d made it.
After a week, when Jon no longer sounded like he was trying to breathe through mud, they’d decided to stay until someone kicked them out.
No one had come knocking.
#
Jon looks at his right hand again. He’d gotten a paper cut this morning while presenting the history of Gaul, across the Channel. It had healed within minutes.
Jon’s not much of a scientist (he really lacks the patience), but he also knows his little experiments have yielded an interesting thing: The Eye is still actively healing him here—except for the stab wound he arrived with.
Assuming it’s the Eye doing it, and he’s just not… inhuman, now.
The Fears aren’t here. They’re stuck—wedged, Jon thinks of it, half-way between here and there, fortunately not so close that they can make domains and remove comfort and turn it all to hell. Jon doubts the Web had this planned out. But then again, She might have.
They’re close enough to call him.
They all know him now—know too well that he’s the one who brought them through before, that he can do it again, should he choose.
He does not choose.
The disappearing cottage worries him. But there just wasn’t anywhere else to go at first, and now, they’re sort of… dug in.
It feels like home. Jon worries about that even more.
Still. They’d been living there for a month and a half before Martin—who’d been sneaking out at night to nip eggs from chicken coops and excess vegetables from overgrown gardens—reported that the cottage went invisible from too far away. It was some kind of protection, maybe.
Maybe. But from what? For whom?
“Hello, Rebecca,” Jon says to the poulterer, who smiles and states she hopes Martin is well, and that Martin will be welcome two weekends hence for a child’s name-day, and that Martin is right and the apples will be good this year.
He’s well, I’m sure, and I wouldn’t know seem to satisfy requirements, and she sells him half a dozen eggs.
It’s getting all pink when he heads back, sun going down, warm breeze still carrying hints of grasses and distant farms, but just edged with cool.
He is grateful Somewhere Else never got quite as… industrialized as home.
They never really developed things like radio or mass factories. Vehicles are not a thing. There is no space travel.
If there is war, no one actively thinks about it.
The only major technology Jon is aware of—distantly—is a massive amount of diving bells, devoted to mapping out the sea.
It’s foggy to him, which makes him think it’s being intentionally hidden, and he has no desire to poke around in it and get something’s attention.
It’s bad enough being stared at all the time.
He feels them.
The Fears want him to bring them fully into this place. They wait, calling him, always calling.
No, he thinks at them, at the growing dusk, at the unheard whispers drawing claws along the edges of his mind, and goes back inside.
#
Martin got his present.
He’s teary as Jon walks in, looking up at him with a nakedness that lurches Jon’s heart in warm, warping ways. “You didn’t,” says Martin.
“Of course I did,” says Jon. “Just because we’re scratching along here doesn’t mean you have to give yourself up, you know.”
Martin clutches the notebook. It’s fine leather, soft and supple; his name (with the K that means nothing) is inscribed in gold on the front.
“Oh,” says Jon, and pulls a fountain pen from his jacket. Then he looks apologetic. “I couldn’t find any ink—the students bought it all up for their upcoming test—but I’ll purchase it as soon as it’s restocked.”
Martin’s kiss is so soft, so gentle and warm, and it peels lingering melancholy from Jon’s soul like the skin off an orange. “Don’t spoil me any more. We can’t afford it, Jon.”
Because they didn’t actually know how long this cottage would last, or if someone would claim it, or if they’d have to flee in the middle of the night.
Because they didn’t know what the world was really like (too foggy, its denizens too vague), and were so damned lucky the language was mostly the same, even if the history varied.
Because they had only the safety net they built themselves.
“It is more important to me,” says Jon, “that you are whole, and able to write your amazing poetry—”
“You hate poetry,” says Martin, but he’s smiling.
“—than we have a few extra guilders in the cookie jar. We’ll manage, Martin. This world… we can manage in it. Just not needing government identification is in itself its own magic.”
Also another mystery. In what reality was no identification required? How could nations function that way? Why would they want to?
Martin sighs. “I suppose I can’t really argue. I got you something, too.”
Jon’s eyes widen.
“You didn’t peek, right?” says Martin, firm, and they both pretend it is a joke.
“I did not.”
Martin grins. “Good. Just in case, I just made sure someone else picked it up, so it didn’t linger in my head, and it wouldn’t take up my time or anything else.”
Jon accepts these machinations. He hasn’t peeked, hasn’t looked, but once, he hadn’t kept his word. So. He smiles. “Sneaky, were you? Well, show me, then. I have a cake to bake.”
Martin got Jon a very nice shirt.
It’s silk, which means it was expensive; a deep green, with dark wooden buttons, and it’s perfect for the upcoming matriculation for the higher classes.
Jon worries about matriculation. The whole Grove seems to know what to expect, and assumes Jon does, as well. They also have very specific, very expensive outfits to wear to this event, whatever it involves, which is... unclear.
Jon is allowed to dress differently. In fact, they expect him to—something to do with his status as a “refugee,” whatever that means—which is good, because he has no formal clothes. He has what Martin stole a few months ago off someone’s washing line, miles away.
But now, he has a silk shirt.
“Did… how did you know I needed this?” says Jon, running his fingertips over the material.
“They were talking about it a couple of months ago,” says Martin, taking out some old, battered cooking utensils. “It’s a whole thing, you know? Everyone’s looking forward to see who actually gets to graduate.”
“Matriculate,” Jon corrects automatically, because the meaning is different. “They’re going on to something else afterward, apparently, though I have no idea what. Martin, this is silk.”
“It is indeed,” says Martin smugly.
“Where did you even find this?”
“I think you’re going to look absolutely devastating in it,” says Martin, possibly deflecting.
“Ah,” says Jon, cheeks burning. “I, ah. I mean.”
“I mean, I know it’s not the uniform everybody else will be wearing, but I don’t think they’ll expect more than this.”
“Ah, the joys of refugee status,” Jon says.
“Whatever that’s about. It’s weird. I keep waiting, but nobody’s asked for more information. Not where we came from. Nothing.”
Nor had they asked Jon.
Which was so strange. There were no other refugees around them; everyone here had been here for generations, family all connected and familiar. But refugees did happen in this world— runners, escaping something no one thought about clearly enough for Jon to know, distant and strange nations, where things were apparently bad.
Whatever it is, it is hidden. They’ve both learned not to ask questions. It weirds people out.
This inability to ask makes Jon feel a little crazy. It’s not a good feeling.
He does not talk about it.
“But it’s silk,” he says. “Hardly a local material. This is… Martin, how did we afford this?”
Martin grins. His eyes crinkle; Jon wants to kiss him. “Did an extra favor for old MacDurden at the other end of the Village.”
“Ugh,” says Jon.
“Yeah, he’s pretty nasty,” Martin says with pride. “He just needed help cleaning out some old rooms at the back of ‘The Manor House.’” Martin rolls his eyes.
So does Jon. It’s an earned disdain. “Please don’t tell me he propositioned you again.”
“He just needed me to haul a bunch of junk out the back,” says Martin. “He paid me fifty guilders for it.”
“Fifty!” That’s nearly as much as Jon will make in half a year. “What, were the couches stuffed with bodies?”
“I didn’t ask.” Martin grimaces.
“For the best, I’m sure,” says Jon, staring at the shirt again. “It’s stunning.”
“Your color, too.” Martin pauses. “I mean. I know it… it’s an Eye thing, but it felt right.”
Jon decides not to engage with color theory, and smiles up. “Happy Not-Valentine’s, Martin.”
“Happy Not-Valentine’s, Jon.”
“I’m not done spoiling you tonight, so you know,” says Jon, and waggles his eyebrows.
Martin laughs. Then his eyes go wide. “Oh.”
Jon’s kiss is deep and slow and heavily invitational. “But after dinner.”
The cake is a fallen, gooey mess.
They still eat the whole damn thing.
#
Jon wakes that night for no reason at all.
He’s still in Martin’s arms, skin to skin, draped on top of him, his cheek on Martin’s chest. He lies still for a moment, listening to Martin’s strong, wonderful heart, to his slow and sleeping breaths.
Knowing it won’t wake him, Jon presses a kiss to Martin’s chest.
They don’t have sex often. Jon doesn’t mind it, but doesn’t crave it, and there are other ways to satisfy Martin’s needs. They make it work. They make everything work, and it is good.
This was one of the rare nights when sex was great. Jon feels loose, warm; languorous. He feels positively worshiped and very deeply loved.
Then he knows the reason he woke, and all the good feelings vanish in a wave of sharp-edged fear.
Something is outside the cottage.
Something not remotely human.
It waits patiently. Knows he’s awake. Isn’t calling or compelling.
Is utterly confident Jon will come to it, and communicates all of that without a word.
It doesn’t feel like a Dread Power, but it’s in the same category. It feels alien, enormous. Huge.
Jon closes his eyes. Wants it to go away.
It does not.
Extricating himself from Martin is easy enough. Martin works so hard for them; he sleeps like the dead, practically, with an ease and depth Jon envies.
If Jon is quiet, Martin should stay asleep. And if that thing out there causes trouble -
Jon hasn’t killed anything since they arrived here. He doubts he still can, but if this thing threatens them in any way—threatens Martin—Jon is going to try, and every ounce of everything he is will go into that attempt.
Quietly—grateful Martin oiled the hinges on the front door—Jon walks outside.
He shivers. Should have thought to put on more than trousers, but he already knows (knows) this thing doesn’t give a fuck what he’s wearing.
It’s big. A tall being, some three meters high, and oddly wide—not quite the right proportions for a humanoid creature.
It wears a yellow cloak, its face hidden behind a weird white mask.
It seems to be studying him back. Jon feels seen in a way he has not since the Panopticon, examined from cell to soul, from ankles to ego. Does that feel good or horrible? He doesn’t know.
He tries to see into this thing, just a little—avoiding any action that might accidentally call the Eye closer to this world—but just that glimpse is enough.
Fear shortens Jon’s breath, shivers up and down his form, because this thing is a god.
There’s no other word for it. Ageless; maybe endless. It certainly doesn’t seem to have a beginning or boundary that Jon can feel.
A strange mind in there, not precisely cruel, since that requires an intention toward another’s suffering—but such disregard that Jon is certain it is very cruel, indeed.
He desperately hopes it is merely curious. He desperately hopes Martin stays asleep.
“So you are the invader,” says the being, and the voice is a deep bass, powerful and resonant, echoing somehow before and after itself, and Jon can feel it in his bones.
“Not an invader,” says Jon, aware how small he sounds next to that voice, though this is hardly his first conversation with an eldritch thing. “Merely a refugee. We don’t want any trouble.”
“That’s a curious statement, given what you brought with you.”
That wasn’t a threat or a warning. The tone sounded… pleased. That can’t be good.
“It wasn’t intentional,” says Jon, carefully, because that’s a lie. Half a lie, anyway. He hadn’t brought them anywhere on purpose—but he had taken them with him, surely enough.
The god laughs.
It’s an even deeper tone, buzzing through the ground under Jon’s feet, and it is, without exception, the most wicked sound he has ever heard.
Jon shudders violently.
“A lie?” says the god. “Not a very good one.”
Fuck, Jon thinks.
The Eye tells him to reach for it, to wrap Beholding around himself as armor, to use its power to keep his loved one safe.
Damned Eyeball. Awfully manipulative for a muscle spasm, aren’t you? he thinks at it, and does not comply.
“I apologize,” says Jon, and decides to try to end this before it goes worse. “I’m afraid of you, and I’m not thinking clearly. Perhaps we can… have this conversation some other time?” Away from Martin. Desperate volley number two launches: “I work tomorrow, and I need my sleep tonight to perform optimally.”
The being laughs again, and it’s no easier the second time. “You, hardly human yourself, telling me how humans work. Rich! I can’t decide if you’re arrogant or stupid.”
Nothing in that sentence is good.
Jon swallows around the lump in his throat. “I’m trying to be honest. I don’t know what you know about me, or my species, or anything else. I have no idea what you are. Can you blame me for hoping to lay some foundation of understanding?”
So, the god has tentacles. Big, thick, scary ones, blacker than the space between stars, and Jon knows because one of them shoots out from under the cloak and grabs him by the face.
Its casual strength almost lifts him off the ground; Jon goes to his toes, trying to relieve pressure on his neck.
“But you are afraid,” the god rumbles, which is a strange sensation under and over the voice, something Jon’s brain translates as sound though he’s fairly sure it’s not remotely related to vibrations in the air.
Jon makes one small, panicked noise.
“A herald,” says the being, as though finally making up its mind.
“No, I‘m not,” says Jon.
“You dare argue with me?” says the being, a click or two louder.
Oh good, it’s got a hair trigger, he thinks. “I know what I am,” says Jon, and decides to go for broke. “If I were a herald, if I were any kind of… servant of the things that arrived here alongside me, they’d all be here in this world now. I’d have done it. Brought them in, ruined everything. I have not because I will not. Ever. I’m no herald, prophet, harbinger, or any other damned thing.”
“Then what are you, Jonathan Sims, Archivist?” says the god, and how it got that out of Jon’s head, Jon does not know, because he’s consciously avoided that title for months.
“A man who would like to go back to bed and forget this ever happened.”
The creature laughs again and finally lets him go.
Jon is shaking badly. He’s still good (he thinks), but the panic is bubbling, rising like dough, and he is not going to be good once he has the space to freak out.
(Though he’s proud of himself. He didn’t reach for the Eye. Not even now, when in genuine danger. That has to count for something.)
“It does,” says the being, confirming access to his head. “It counts for foolishness. They followed your voice. There are those who think I should remove you—cut you out like a tumor, burn you out like reproducing cells before you can kill your host.”
There are ‘those?’ There are more of these things? Jon swallows again. “If you’re going to do it, I… fine. It’s fair. I’m connected to all of them, marked. Just please don’t… touch my lover. He’s not part of this. Let him go.”
The god ignores that completely—love and sacrifice, of no consequence. “You vow not to call them.”
It isn’t a question. “I do.”
“I’d suggest you change that plan.”
Jon stares at him. “What?”
“Call them. Call your fear-gods. I want to see what they look like.”
The absolute arrogance in that statement leaves Jon stunned. “Wh… th… they’d destroy the world!”
“They would try. They would fail.” The god seethes under that yellow cloak, moving in some pleased, squid-like way. “Call the Entities.”
Is this thing insane? “I can’t do that. It’s not going to happen.”
“Bold, to disobey me.” Such simple words. Such absolute viciousness in the tone.
For a moment, Jon’s convinced he’s going to be destroyed.
“This stands to be interesting. I’m not the only one curious about you, after all,” says the god.
This thing isn’t a fear entity, Jon ponders, baffled. Death? Mayhem? Chaos?
The tentacle grabs him by the face again, and the intensity of the masked gaze stabs him through the head. “Not. Chaos,” the god says.
Right. Trigger-word. “Noted,” Jon wheezes.
It lets him go. He stumbles, shaking hard now, and he should be quiet, he should mind his tongue, but the need to know is so strong that it rises from inside, gripping him like his own horrible eldritch limb, forcing its way out of his mouth. “Not chaos, so—order? Is that what you are?” Shut up, shut up, he tells himself.
“As things should be. That is what I am,” the god says.
And Jon knows that’s a lie.
The god is saying what it wants things to be—not what they are.
“My proposal is simple. Call the Entities. Do so by choice, at my pleasure, and I will reward you,” says the god in yellow.
Jon clutches his fraying composure. “Thank you, but the answer is no.” He wants this thing to understand. “It has to be no.”
“That is a pity,” rumbles the god, sounding oddly sincere. “Especially when you have so many other ways you could amuse me until you finally give in.”
And the words are simple, but with them comes, like a rush of grit-filled wind, imagery of a place Jon can’t conceive, some place with too many dimensions and faceless dancers (not like Nikola this is something worse) mindlessly cavorting in some kind of worship, and—
The god is picturing Jon there, wearing some weird yellow harem-outfit like the dancers, reciting statements in a flat, vapid drone, his personality wiped, hollowed out, existing only as a repository of interesting knowledge.
That gets a response.
Jon staggers backward, gasping badly, and bangs into the rough wall of the cottage, struggling to get this vision out of his head, to make it less real, less like a memory of what is to come.
The god is watching him, unreadable behind its mask.
This was a poke, a gentle shove, not even a proper attack, just to see what he would do.
Jon thinks of sharks bumping into potential food before chomping down.
He’s gasping, can barely stand; fear has shaken his balance, inside and out. “Th… thank you… for the offer, but on the whole, I think I’d rather not.”
The being in yellow rumbles another laugh. “What a pity,” it says.
Then it’s gone. There’s no transition from there to gone. Just, poof—vanished.
Jon staggers away from the cottage to throw up. He barely remembers to pull his hair back in time.
Why us? he thinks, gasping, braced on his knees. He’s horrified (but not shocked) to find that he is crying. Why? We got away. Why… more attention from horrible things? Why can’t we just…
He’ll never be left alone. Never. It doesn’t matter where he goes. Whatever note his soul sings just brings out the worst in everybody. It isn’t fair.
Or maybe it is. It’s too consistent to not be.
Maybe he deserves this.
Jon feels he can be excused for a few minutes of self-pity out here, alone, under a clear and perfect night sky of unfamiliar stars, but that’s all. He needs to go back in, wash his mouth, and… in the morning, tell Martin what happened.
Martin will be upset Jon didn’t wake him, but this way, at least one of them will have gotten a full night of sleep.
Do we run? he thinks. Try to find this world’s Hill Top Road? See if there’s another hole out of here?
Would there be a point? Would the Dread Powers follow him again?
Would they just find more beings like the yellow-cloaked god?
Jon doesn’t end up getting back to sleep, but he rests on Martin’s chest, listening to him breathe, and for now, that is enough.