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The first time he opens his eyes after the Panopticon collapses around them, Martin isn’t quite sure what he’s looking at. He doesn’t see any dust or rubble, just pristine apartment buildings and a sliver of sky.
It’s blue , the sky. And it isn’t looking back. Martin smiles, and he sits up.
Something is wrong. There’s not… enough of him? After so many uncountable hours and days schlepping across what used to be England, traipsing through fearscapes, Martin had gotten pretty accustomed to the feeling of his body relentlessly pushing on. Right now he feels too small, too slight. He looks down at his hands and they… aren’t.
They aren’t his hands.
He’s missing freckles and his thumbs are too long and his nails are too short and there should be a scar over that knuckle but it isn’t there . He starts to reach for his own face when he hears someone stirring beside him.
Jon . Jon, who he had to kill. Jon, who is covered in dust and blood but is alive and making noise on the pavement beside him. Martin’s heart leaps as he watches Jon push himself up. And then Jon looks at him and the expression on his face is not relieved, but furious.
Everything worked out. They ended up Somewhere Else. Is Jon angry with him for derailing his plan? For forcing him to go along with what Annabelle and the Web wanted?
But then Jon spits out, “ Jonah . You can’t be… wh— Where’s Martin ?”
“Oh,” Martin says, in a soft voice that is not his own. “Oh.”
The first time he showers is rough.
Elias still had a wallet in his pocket, and cash in that wallet, and the inn that Martin and Jon find doesn't notice that the money was minted in a different universe. All the same, probably.
Martin is covered in ash and plaster and soot and blood. He’d have offered Jon the first shower, but Jon slumped onto the bed as soon as he saw it and fell fast asleep. Leaving Martin alone with a mirror, and the wrong body, and the task of undressing.
He chokes down a hysterical bubble of laughter at the thought that he may finally get to discover whether Elias Bouchard had any secret tattoos.
He doesn't look, when he strips, just slides off the bloody remains of Elias’s three-piece suit and climbs into the shower.
He’s used to ducking to fit under most showerheads. It’s novel, his newly diminished stature. He wonders if he can turn the water hot enough to melt off all his skin and put him back the way he was.
It’s funny. He used to fight with his body so much. If it wasn’t dysphoria, it was self-consciousness about his size. He got used to feeling like he was too big, too much, taking up too much space.
God, he’d give anything to be back in his too-big-too-much-too-tall body again. It didn't even come through behind him. He doesn't even get to bury it.
Martin gets a job. He and Jon start renting a flat. Jon goes for groceries one day and gets lost on the way back, and they have to confront the reality that being severed from the Eye the way he was may have lasting repercussions on his mental acuity and his memory.
“It’s pretty much what we expected,” Jon reminds him. Somehow, he’s taking the knowledge of his impending cognitive degeneration much better than Martin is. “I’m okay, Martin. Really.”
Martin is not okay. But that has more to do with his face than with Jon’s mind.
They’re lying in bed together one day, and Jon reaches up to cradle the side of Martin’s face. He flinches away from the touch. “You shouldn’t have to look at me like this,” he mumbles, but of course Jon is looking at him. Has been looking at him. It’s been weeks. You can get used to anything. Jon got used to Martin’s eyes peering out from the face of his worst enemy.
Martin hasn’t quite gotten there.
“I like looking at you,” Jon says softly.
“But it isn’t me,” Martin says. “It isn’t my face.”
Jon’s voice is quiet. “It wasn’t Jonah Magnus’s face, either. It never was.”
Sometimes it’s easier to think of it as Elias Bouchard’s body— the first Elias, the real Elias. The scared stoner who signed up for something the scope of which he could never really understand. It’s easier, sometimes, to think of that man when he spots himself in the mirror.
But that line of thinking presents its own challenges, too. Now instead of feeling trapped in the body of a monster, Martin feels more like the monster himself. Yet another unwelcome presence walking around in Elias Bouchard’s skin.
“Think this world has its own Martin?” Martin asks Jon one night, curled up with him in bed. He used to like being the little spoon, despite his size. ( Jetpacking , Jon called it once.) Now he prefers it the other way, so Jon doesn’t have to look at him.
Jon holds Martin’s hand against his chest, stroking a thumb over the back of it in gentle, even motions. “Maybe.”
“Maybe you could find him,” Martin suggests, letting out a self-deprecating laugh. “Could, y’know. Have a me who actually looks like me.”
He hears Jon grunt his disapproval, and then Jon lifts his hand to his lips. Kisses it. This is the hand that pulled the trigger that killed Gertrude Robinson , Martin thinks, the sharpness of his own disgust cutting deep. “I don’t want any other Martin,” Jon says solidly. “I want you.”
Martin puts on weight and grows out his hair and buys non-prescription glasses that kind of look like the ones he used to wear. It doesn't really work. He just looks like he’s wearing himself as a costume.
The first time Jon calls him Elias, Martin feels as though he is going to crack in half.
Jon gets disoriented a lot, these days, and it’s clearly getting worse over time. Late in the evenings, or when he first wakes up, he often struggles to remember where he is, or what year it is, or what he’s supposed to be doing. He asks Martin where his tape recorder is (they haven’t seen a single one since they arrived in this world) or panics at the thought that he’s late for work (he hasn’t got a job.)
Martin’s bringing him a cup of tea one night when Jon sits bolt-upright on the couch and meets his gaze suspiciously. “Elias?” he asks. “What… what are you doing here?”
The mug trembles in Martin’s hand, and he sets it down. His heart crumples up like a piece of paper, bad poetry destined for the bin. “Jon,” he says, trying so, so hard to sound like himself. He can never get his voice quite the way it should be. “It’s me. Martin.”
“Martin?” Jon says, disbelief and mistrust swamping his face. But then he stares a moment longer, and his shoulders sink inward. He sighs. “Right. Of course. Martin. I— I’m sorry.”
Martin loves Jon. It is a fact buried deep in his bones, even though these bones may never feel like his. He loves Jon, and he always will, and he’ll do what he can to take care of the man he loves. Even when it hurts. Even when Jon’s deteriorating, paranoid ramblings burrow beneath his skin. ( Not his skin .)
Even when he brings Jon soup or helps him back to bed and Jon’s eyes flash toward him, seeing the face of the man he hates for a moment before he sees Martin , and Martin has to crush down the voice in his head that says, Isn’t this familiar ?
Martin spends a long time wishing Jon’s memory would improve.
At a certain point, he finds himself wishing for it to get just a little worse. Just bad enough that Jon doesn’t recognize his face. He thinks the confusion might be better than the rage and fear he sometimes sees in Jon’s eyes.
It’s an awful thing to think, and he spends a sleepless night berating himself for wishing anything but lucidity and peace for the man he loves. He’s groggy and miserable with exhaustion by the time the light outside turns gray.
He’s nearly fallen asleep, finally, when Jon wakes up and screams at him, demanding to know what he’s done with Martin.
Physically, Jon can get in and out of the tub alright, but if he’s alone for too long he sometimes gets confused. Martin sits on the toilet lid and reads while Jon bathes, and sometimes they talk, and sometimes they listen to music on Martin’s phone. When Jon asks if Martin would please wash his hair for him, it’s a request in the name of intimacy and comfort, not a necessity. Not yet.
Martin tips his head back in the water and runs his fingers through Jon’s hair, trying to let the warmth of the bathwater seep into his hands. Trying to feel it. Jon looks up at him adoringly, even though he’s seeing the face of the man who destroyed his life. “I love you,” he says.
Transcript of a Voice Memo Left on Jonathan Sims’ Cell Phone
[RETRIEVED FROM JONATHAN SIMS’ SIM CARD]
Hello, Jon.
Heh. Poor choice of words, I suppose.
Listen. I know how paranoid you— I— can get. And I believe my memory is only going to worsen in the coming months. If… when… I start to become suspicious and afraid of everything, I hope that at least my own words might serve as some kind of stabilizing force.
You are Jonathan Sims. You used to be the Archivist, but now you’re just Jon. And that’s okay. You weren’t born in this universe, but you live here now, with Martin. You love Martin. You always will.
He doesn't look like Martin anymore, but I promise you, it’s him. You can trust him. It’s the man you love. If you ever doubt that, just look at his eyes. His face may be different, but his eyes are the same.
He loves you. He always will.
Um. Right. Statement ends.