Chapter Text
Jon wakes up.
That's the first surprise. The last thing he can remember, through the haze of the deep, sucking pain of the knife in his chest, was the feeling of every part of him being pulled apart and down at once and the almighty screech of the tapes as the world itself unwound, and when he closed his eyes, he did not expect to open them again.
“Jon, Jon, come on, come on, you came back from a building falling on you, come on, come back to me, please, I can't be here alone, I can't do this alone, please, please, I love you, please, come back to me,” Martin babbles, clutching Jon's limp body with his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. His eyes close, tears streaming down his face, and he chokes out a sob as he rocks Jon gently back and forth in his arms. “Please,” he says, like a prayer.
Jon wets his bone-dry lips and croaks, “Martin.” It takes a Herculean effort to get the words out, his whole body shaking with shock even as he can feel the way his chest is starting to knit itself back together. He can barely breathe with the pain.
“Oh thank god,” Martin manages, his whole body going limp with relief, and he presses his forehead to Jon's, tears still flowing down his face and staining Jon's cheeks. “Thank god.”
They're both on the ground, Jon distantly registers, and Martin's arms are wrapped around his middle, holding his body up. Cradling him. He can feel hard earth underneath his limp hands, and as he forces his eyes open again he takes in the rest in bits and pieces: the faint rustle of trees at the edge of his vision, the splintered wood around them spreading out in a circle, the gentle call of an owl as it flits through the night sky. The world is dark, and he has no idea where he is. Where they are.
There is a long moment of silence, and Martin rocks him gently back and forth, keeping him cradled tight to his chest. Both hands over the wound in his chest as though he could hold the blood in by sheer force of will.
“Where are we?” Jon asks finally, and it hurts to form the words.
“I have no idea,” Martin says. “I'm still furious at you, by the way, don't think I've forgotten that part, but.” He breaks off, looking up at the sky, and all of his words leave him at once.
“What?” Jon croaks out.
Martin helps him tip his head back, his back to Martin's front. The two of them look up to the sky in frozen silence, not even breathing, the sound of the wind whistling through the trees the only sound in the clearing. The stars are wrong. Jon knows the stars, Knows the shape and age of each one, and there is not a single constellation above him that he recognizes.
“Oh, god,” Jon says, his eyes gone wide. The weight of everything crushing down upon him at once. They are in another universe, and they have brought hell with them. Jonah Magnus is dead, and will never find them again. Everyone they have ever known is gone, and will never find them again.
“Yeah,” Martin says hoarsely. “I think—I think we went through.”
“We're in another universe,” Jon whispers. It feels strange to speak it aloud. Like he's finally admitting the reality of it. They are people who are not meant to exist here. There is no place for them in this world. Underneath the pain, he can feel the anger bubbling up in him again. The Fears have joined them here; the Eye is distant and weak, but he can feel its presence. He would have wiped the world clean to give the other worlds a chance without them, and now that has been stolen from him. One split-second decision because he could not bear to let Martin stay and sacrifice himself alongside him.
There is a scrap of knowledge here. It lingers in the back of his mind, an irritant like a grain of sand, and he cannot help but reach for it. “There are other powers here,” he says, and as soon as the words leave his mouth he knows it to be true.
“New ones?” Martin wraps his arms tighter around Jon, his hands still pressed over the bloody wound in Jon's chest, still bleeding sluggishly but slower now. The night is cool, and he shivers, feeling the way the blood soaks into his shirt and leaves it tacky and clinging to his skin.
“I think so,” Jon says quietly. “I think... I think they have their own.”
“What happens if they have both? Like, do they—do they fight each other? Is it just twice as bad, or what?” Martin's voice shakes, and Jon knows the feeling. He doesn't Know. The barest scrap of knowledge has been left for him in this place, and when he reaches for more, he finds his hands empty.
“I don't know,” Jon says, and for the first time in a long time, it's true. He cannot see the machinations of the Web as it weaves its way into a new world; he is as blocked from being able to see it as he always has been. The rest of the powers will fight or starve. That much he understands. “Why did you tell them to go early?”
“You know why,” Martin whispers, cradling him closer. “I want to be sorry, but mostly I'm not sorry? You can be mad at me. I'll understand.”
“Of course I'm mad at you,” Jon says, laughing hollowly, his eyes still fixed on the constellations. On the gentle twinkle of every star that he has never seen before. “I—I love you, but. I never wanted anyone else to have to live through this. To have to carry that guilt.”
“Maybe they never will.”
“Maybe they will, and I could have stopped it.”
“But they have their own fears without us,” Martin says. His hands are covered in blood when he entwines his fingers with Jon's.
“I--” Jon closes his eyes. Remembering the words spoken through him about the way the fears were born. The tendrils reaching out into reality, asking to be heard, unable to communicate in a way that anyone could understand, created and fed by the desire to share, “I'm afraid.” They will starve in worlds without fear. They may still yet grow, in worlds that grew to have fears different than their own. “It doesn't make it alright.”
“No,” Martin agrees simply, pressing a kiss to the top of Jon's head. “And I am sorry. But I couldn't—I couldn't doom everyone I've ever known knowing that there was a way out, you know?”
“I know,” Jon says, letting his eyes slip shut. Blocking out the world he cannot recognize. “We might have to save this world,” he says, and the weariness of all of his past years threatens to crush him at the thought.
“We might,” Martin agrees, slowly stroking through Jon's hair. “But not yet. They're new to the world here. We have time.”
All at once, the pain bursts through Jon again, and he clutches a hand to his broken-open chest, gasping. He squeezes his eyes shut, and the world behind them goes hazy, fading from a dull red to black to red again.
“No, no no, not again, stay with me, you promised, not again,” Martin says, clutching him tight, and he is still babbling the words when the world around Jon goes dark once more.
*
The sun is streaming down when he wakes, and he blinks into awareness with the warmth of it, still cradled in Martin's arms. Martin is asleep, too, gently snoring, his face pressed into Jon's hair, and Jon can't help but smile at it even as he feels a bit of drool begin to seep into his hair. He tries to catalog the world around them as best he can; the place where they lay is in a faint crater, the dirt and trees all around them a splintered mess, as though they impacted here at great speed, and just beyond it is a forest so tall and thick it takes his breath away, all lush greens and soft wind rustling the leaves, the interior fading out into shadow just beyond his line of sight. Above the trees, far in the distance, there are mountains, a deep gray-blue with snow-capped sides, stretching up into the sky with the peaks wreathed in fog. The area around them is so quiet. The whispers of the wind through trees, the calling of distant birds, and Martin's gentle snoring the only proof he has that the world still exists at all.
“Martin?” he tries, entwining his fingers with Martin's where they are still pressed over the wound in his chest. It has closed now, even if it has stained the front of his shirt a bright crimson and the remnants of the blood still linger all over Martin's hands.
“Mm?” Martin asks, muzzy with sleep, and all at once he blinks into awareness, his whole body tensing against Jon's. “Jon? Jon! Are you okay?”
“I'm alive,” he says, and Martin takes in a long, shuddering breath; for now, that is enough for the both of them. “We should--” He wants to say figure out where we are, but there is no chance of that. Not here. They have been set adrift from everything they know.
“Just a little while longer,” Martin murmurs, and so Jon lets himself relax into Martin's arms. To feel the solidity of the earth under his body and take in the bright, electric blue of the sky and the gentle swaying of the trees in the wind. The leaves are half-formed, budding with the promise of a summer to come.
“Alright,” Jon says, and brings one of Martin's bloody hands to his mouth to kiss the back of it gently. “Just a little while longer.”
*
“I think,” Jon says, testing the words, a few hours later, when the sun has warmed him through his bones and he has settled in, boneless and relaxed with the comforting weight of Martin behind him, “I think I might be hungry?”
“For--” Martin hesitates, and under normal circumstances, he would be right to. “For food, or--”
“I could eat,” Jon says, and has to smile at the way it makes Martin's whole body go limp. He can feel the faint curl in his stomach, so strange and distant he has forgotten entirely what it should feel like. It's been so many years, now.
Martin blows out a heavy breath. “I took some of the cans, after the cult left,” he confesses, rooting through the rucksack on his back. “I, uh, I have no idea what kind of food a can of melancholy is, but we can try it.” He holds it out to Jon for inspection; it looks like a regular soup can in grayscale, all of the life and brightness sucked out of it.
There is no can opener, but there is still the knife. The distant ache in Jon's chest, healed over already, reminds him exactly of how sharp it was as Martin sits cross-legged across from Jon and stabs down into it with a determined expression on his face. It takes a few tries, and with every stab, Jon can feel the breath leaving his own lungs with the memory, but after a while, Martin holds it up, triumphant, cracked open enough for the two of them to share.
Somehow, the can tastes exactly of the sort of chicken noodle soup Jon would make himself when he was sick and his grandmother was out. Slightly over-warmed, salty and good but with an undertone of hurt to it, and as he passes the can to Martin and watches him take a sip, he can see the way Martin's face twists and knows he is not alone in that. “At least it's food,” he says softly, looking out through the trees. There is a path through the forest. One that looks man-made. Around its entrance, there are a hundred great, leafy ferns and darker, smooth shrubs, and he cannot see the end of the path except to see that it diverges in two ways, one curving to the right and one straight ahead.
“Which one?” Martin asks, and for once, Jon does not Know the way.
“Right?” he suggests, entirely on impulse. It's strange, to not be able to feel everything. Know everything. His mind keeps trying to reach out only to find the threads of connection weak and faltering.
They go right. The path curves deeper into the forest, until the sun is lost to them entirely, a lush, green wilderness all around them, and all around are the distant cries of birds. Once or twice, they hear a call they recognize, and Jon watches the way Martin's face lights up with it. The way they cling to familiarity even in these moments. The forest surrounds them from every side, and for a long moment as they walk, even knowing that there is fear in this world and so something that is capable of feeling it, Jon wonders about the possibility that they are well and truly alone on this new planet.
“Do you think I'll have to, um. Do you think we're going to have to learn how to hunt?” Martin asks, a speculative eye to the birds, and Jon pictures him fashioning a sling out of the spare bits of fabric stuffed into his rucksack. He can't picture Martin actually using it, though. Even with the closing wound in his chest reminding him that Martin would be capable.
“I hope not,” Jon says, biting his lip. He doesn't know. In some ways, it is wonderful to not know. To know that the pull of the Eye is so weak in this world that all he can do is wonder and not be fed information. “I, ah. I don't think you would be very good at it.”
“Oh, fuck you, I could hunt if I had to,” Martin says, scowling at Jon reflexively. He opens his mouth to say something further, but all at once sunlight begins to stream in on them again; they have found the edge of the forest. “Oh, shit, that's a village,” he blurts, pointing out ahead of them.
The forest opens into a clearing, wide fields with the first sprouts of spring beginning to poke their way up into the world, and beyond them, there is a cluster of small thatched-roof cottages, cobbled together from wood and stone and straw. Maybe ten or fifteen at the most, with a clearing at the center where a well sits. There are a handful of children playing in the dirt between the houses with muddy faces and muddier limbs, laughing and splashing water at each other from lingering puddles. It must have rained here recently. There are a handful of adults outside, too, two older men leaning up against the well, deep in conversation, a woman sitting in a chair outside her house busy with the task of mending a long piece of cloth that drapes all over her lap. Men and women with tired eyes bustling down the one packed-dirt street carrying baskets filled with an assortment of colorful contents, smiling at each other as they dodge the children running back and forth. A goat or two tied to the side of a building, braying at everyone that passes and trying to reach out for a nip of clothing. Chickens as scattered among the passers-by as the children are. Jon's primary impression of the village—and for a long time to the two of them, it is just The Village—is how alive it seems.
“Do...” Martin hesitates, looking out over the field and then back to Jon. “Don't suppose there's any chance they speak English?”
“They might,” Jon offers. If nothing else, he's hoping the universal translator aspect of the Archivist has not left him. It's hard to make any sort of educated guess as to time period without his usual reference points; the town looks old, that much he is certain of, but beyond that, just slightly different. Left of center of the way medieval buildings look in history books.
He can see beyond the village now; at its edge is a gently trickling river, bringing water down from the mountains that shines in the bright morning sunlight, and there is a bridge over it with a path that leads further into another clearing, covered in weedy grasses that have grown faster than the fields. Grazing land, if he was to guess, and if he squints, he can see signs of shapes in the distance, slowly ambling around and occasionally ducking their heads down to nibble at a piece of grass.
They are going to look entirely out of place here, he realizes all at once. The clothing on everyone is simple, clearly handcrafted and faded with years of dirt and wear. Martin is wearing jeans. He is fairly confident that the people in that village do not know what a zipper is yet. And then he looks down at himself properly and remembers all at once his bloody shirt and Martin's bloody hands.
“I... don't suppose you have a change of clothes in your bag,” he says. They can try and wipe the blood from Martin's hands as best as they can but they are not going to be able to get it out of Jon's clothing. There's too much. His whole torso has gone dark with it.
“... Oh,” Martin says, blinking down at the mess the two of them are in. “I think so, let me check? I know I have a couple of jumpers at least, in case we got cold, though I don't think they're going to be enough to--” He waves a hand at the villagers clustered in the town square, and he doesn't have to say they are going to know we're not from around here. That much is obvious. He settles down on the ground and starts wiping his hands clean with the lingering beads of morning dew clinging to the plants at the edge of the forest, scrubbing them until all that is left is the blood under his fingernails, and as he does, Jon roots through the bag.
They have a map. Jon has to laugh a little hollowly at that. There's something they will definitely not be needing around here; the best they can do is to keep it as a little piece of home. There are a number of cans, two bottles of water, a dusty old box of tea that Martin unearthed in the safehouse all those months ago, a compass that is nearly meaningless to them now, having no frame of reference for what north and south mean in a world where they know none of the geography, and underneath all of that, a few spare changes of clothes and a handful of thin paperback books.
His own bag is smaller, but just as full of items that meant something more in the old world (a flashlight that will only work until its one set of batteries die, their phones, already dead, a lighter that will save them from having to learn how a flint and tinder works until it runs out of fluid, a small coil of rope, and a blanket. The last two, at least, they can keep). He pulls off his bloody shirt and balls it up, shoving it into the bag as he slips one of Martin's jumpers over his head and tries to bunch it up enough that it doesn't drape over him, but he's still swimming in it. Martin looks up at him and smiles as he flops his arms out, showing off how long the sleeves are, and Martin leans in to kiss him with his hands still damp from washing away the blood.
“Ready?” Martin asks, and Jon wants to smile, wants to scream, wants to run away from these people before he can corrupt them any further than their world has already been corrupted. He can feel the edge of a story on the lips of them all, even at this distance. But there is nothing for it. They have to find out what the Fears are already doing to this world and they cannot do that while staying isolated. Where they are beginning to creep in at the edges. If they have called out to anyone or do not yet know how.
And beyond that, they have to figure out how to live.
“I'll be ready,” Jon offers, taking Martin's hand. If this village is going to have a problem with the two of them, he wants to know now, before they get any further. If nothing else, they have the knife if they have to defend themselves. They stay to the edge of the fields as they approach, careful to step around the new growth and not trample it beneath their feet, their footsteps muffled by the soft, freshly-turned earth.
A handful of people look up as they draw closer to the village. The children, at first, and then their nearby parents, and then all at once there are a dozen eyes on them. A dozen tired faces that glance at each other, at their children, at Jon and Martin, and back to their children. Unsure of how to interpret these strange, ill-dressed strangers at the entrance to their town. Jon opens his mouth and then closes it again, unsure what to say, how to express that they are not a threat when he knows perfectly well that they are.
“Um, hi?” Martin tries, in the silence, and after a pause one of the children starts giggling.
“Your voice sounds funny,” the giggling little girl says. Her words sound like English, but different in a way that Jon cannot categorize just yet. She wears a large tunic of a dress dyed a dull pink, and her hair is carefully braided into two long brown braids at the side of her head, and she is grinning at them with all of her teeth. She's missing the front two.
“Don't be rude,” the older man beside her says, and then looks back up at the two of them. “...Who are you?”
“I'm Jon,” Jon says, wetting his lips and forcing the words out, even with his mouth as dry as it is. “We're... We're not from around here.” He hesitates. Trying to figure out how he would explain this to anyone. “We've been traveling a long time.”
The man nods, a faint furrow to his brow still as he takes this in. “... well, travelers are welcome here, as long as you're not here to cause trouble,” he says, and carefully, cautiously, opens his arms to beckon them into the town. He keeps his eyes on them with every step inside they take. The town doesn't feel hostile, even as all of the other eyes turn to train on them. Just—cautious. That's probably for the best.
The little girl by his side pipes up again. “Nanna Sorrel has a place that travelers can stay,” she says, pointing to a cottage at the edge of the town with a table outside it and two unlit lanterns, swaying gently back and forth in the breeze. “She likes interesting things. Come on. I'll take you!” She looks up to the man—her father, Jon would guess—and he gives her a nod, and so she grabs Jon and Martin both by the hand and starts dragging them on further into the town. She has a surprisingly strong grip for a girl who can't be more than eight.
“I don't know if we have anything she'll want,” Martin says, chewing on his lip, but they let themselves be led. Jon knew they would stand out, but he can't help the reflexive flinch as every eye turns to look at him. Children stopping their play mid-stride to stare wide-eyed at these strangers in clothes that look so different than their own. It doesn't help that they're obviously disheveled, barely hiding that they were covered in blood not ten minutes ago. Martin leans over to Jon. “Do you think they know what cans are?” he whispers frantically, and Jon has to laugh, trying to keep it muffled too.
“I would not give them one of those cans,” he whispers back, full of a familiar fond exasperation towards Martin. “They don't deserve that.”
“Right,” Martin whispers, watching the way two children who are in the middle of tossing a makeshift ball back and forth stop and look at the two of them and then point wildly at how tall Martin is.
That's another thing Jon is noticing as he goes through this village. Martin has always been a head taller than him and then some, but here, he is a head taller than everyone, even the burliest of the men, and the more Martin notices, the more he hunches in on himself, trying to make himself look smaller, face going a bit pink.
“Here you are!” the little girl with the twin braids says, grinning with all of her teeth, and her words lisp ever so faintly with the missing front ones. She gestures the two of them down to the ground, and so they both crouch, eye-level with her, and when she thinks her parents are not looking, she leans in and stage-whispers, “Where are you from?”
“I...” Jon hesitates. “That's a very complicated answer for someone so young,” he says, trying to figure out how he would explain this to a child, and she puts her hands on her hips.
“I just want to know,” she whines, and so Martin exchanges a look with Jon, sighs, and finally whispers, raising his eyebrows to look more dramatic, “can you keep a secret?”
She nods, her grin widening, her big brown eyes alight with mischief.
“We're from another universe.”
Her eyes go wide and shining, and she looks up at the sky, at where the stars would be, a question in her eyes, and he shakes his head. “Further.”
“Oh,” she says, her mouth hanging open a little, and Jon can tell that she doesn't understand. Can't understand. The concept is too big for her. It feels almost too big for him.
“Come here,” a voice calls, and the girl straightens up, sighing, looking over her shoulder at a woman that looks very much like her sitting outside a cottage just down the way, with kind brown eyes and one long, brown braid, a half-sewn shirt in her arms. “Don't bother the strangers, Sasha.”
“Coming,” Sasha calls, and Jon and Martin exchange a wide-eyed look. Jon feels like all of the wind has been knocked out of him.
“Did she say--” Martin mouths, and Jon has no idea how to answer, and so for a long moment they just sit there, shell-shocked, their clothes going muddy in the puddles outside the inn.
The door opens behind them.
“Are you two the strangers, then?” a voice calls from behind them, weathered but strong, and they turn to look. There is an older woman at the door, with deep lines beside her eyes and at the corners of her mouth, and she is short but stocky. Her arms, crossed over her chest, are still strong with muscle, even as her hair is beginning to thin and the curve of her spine is beginning to hunch. She has sharp eyes, but her expression is not unkind; there is a faint smile at the corners of her lips, like the sight of these two strange boys sitting in a puddle is more amusement than anything else.
She reaches out a hand to help the two of them up, her grip like iron around their hands, and from inside the building wafts the smell of baking bread, so comforting and familiar that it makes Jon's eyes start to water. “You must have come a long way,” she says, and she doesn't know the half of it. “Come on. In. I'm Sorrel.”