#fogheaded

                          THIS IS THE BOSS. I’M S I C K OF WAITING!                                            I    WANT   PIKACHU!                              AND THIS TIME, DON’T     SCREW IT UP!

Elias started a bit at the sound of Martin’s voice, sitting upright in his office chair. He’d been dozing off, massaging the sore spot on his neck in slow, comforting circles that had his eyelids drooping. Of course, he could still See everything around him -- he never stopped Seeing, and had long since grown accustomed to it, such that it wasn’t obtrusive or disconcerting anymore -- but it had felt nice to rest his body after everything that had happened. As necessary as these attacks on the Institute were, they did produce a great deal of paperwork that had to be slogged through. Elias was, on his best days, a filing machine: hundreds of years of the office grind would do that to a man; but he had his limits. He wanted to watch the street, wanted to tune in on what Jenny who worked in the canteen was saying to her coworker about the latest falling out with her boyfriend, wanted to do anything to eke some stimulation out of being in the building... but these forms demanded signing, and he wouldn’t put his name to anything he hadn’t read through. Yes, that reading happened almost instantaneously, but still: the damage from the worms, the hospital bills, police inquiries, time taken off, balancing the cheque system regarding that time off... then the usual scanning for unearned overtime ( he ran a business, after all, and nobody could lie to Elias and say they’d been working longer than they really had ), and purchasing replacement furniture for the archives, and then the upper floors’ carpets needed to be cleaned this week... it was a lot, even for him. 

WHAT  IS  MARTIN?  MIST,  OR  MEMORY,  OR  NOTHING  AT  ALL?      jon used to know.  he’d been unimpressed at his colleague, unwanting of his kindness, cruel, even.  but he’d known martin.  known his steadiness, and except in some moment of deception, in a way, needed it.  but something is different now, and it isn’t just the knowing  :  it’s where his knowing runs out.  its in the empty spaces he sees in martin that didn’t used to be there.

he who stands in front of him is not the martin jon remembers, and he is not the one he used to see.  jon stares and stares, and sees martin, but something is never right.  he cannot look away, but never learns anything.  it’s not the thing that has stolen sasha, it’s not a different form in front of him.  it’s something inside. 

it’s as unclear as staring head - long into heavy mist.  jon’s eyes are not the problem.  it’s a more fundamental sight  :  it’s the pieces of him that are becoming that have detected this newness.  he knows that he doesn’t know something, and the paradox of it makes his head ache as it had when he’d wandered within the distortion, or felt paranoia crawling as a cold sweat down his bony back.  he needed martin.  in a strange way, that he cannot understand, that is new to him, he’d needed him  ----  and it doesn’t feel good, when martin thinks he hates him.  had he been so cruel, or is his ignorance withholding something crucial?  does his anchor moor him, or does he grip him as they sink, drowning, toward the ocean floor?

“  of course . . .  martin, of course you’re wrong.  ”   jon uncertainty wavers in his voice, and he clears his throat, and a tape recorder is running in his pocket, unbeknowst to him.  “  you’re not a good assistant but you’re not a waste, you’re not worthless.  not to me.  ”  he’s never been one to convey emotion, but there’s a tension in his throat that he cannot ignore.

“Wh-“

It was true, obviously. He didn’t belong here. Some royal fuckup of a time flex had brought him to the institute, had mangled his mind and left the gorey bits to crawl around and cry. Levi knew things, but never the same things. Sometimes things seemed to slip their mind between meetings, even. He related to that too much.

Still, he clung to Levi, doing everything he could to keep from losing them. He barely had anyone left. He couldn’t afford to lose even one.

Levi tugged uselessly at his arm, trying to free himself from Martin’s grip. A mangled mind they could mostly handle, and the lingering press of the Lonely that clung to him like mist before the sun was up. What they couldn’t take was the back-and-forth, never knowing what to expect. There were days when Martin held tight to him, seemed to want him around; and there were days when he seemed to want nothing at all to do with Levi, spurned their attempts to talk, and withdrew into himself. That in and of itself wasn’t an issue -- maybe it was to be expected, given what Martin had been through, and the way that isolation had marked at him. Surely being around other people ( in a temple of the Beholding, no less ) was stressful, perhaps even painful. Even so-- Levi had lived with hot and cold before, and their nerves were worn down to stubs. Not knowing what to expect, they’d just as soon avoid the anxiety of guessing. If they were stronger with the Eye, maybe they could have read Martin ahead of time, to determine whether or not he was willing to talk on a given day, at a given time... but his mind was so fragmented, they could barely get a hold of him.

@fogheaded​ asked: “Tim.  Listen,  I...  I  know  I’m  not  the  most  stable  person  in  the  world.  I  know  everything  seems  awful.  But  I  need  you  to  hear  me,  okay?  You’re  enough.  You’re  doing  enough.  You  couldn’t  possibly  have  done  any  more,  and  the  fact  that  you’ve  already  pushed  this  far  is  incredible.  We  have  already  hit  the  climax.  It’s  time  to  take  a  moment  of  rest.  You  can  relax  now.  We’re  safe  now.  Let  the  tension  out,  okay?  I  love  you.”  -fogheaded

it  feels  like  a  punch  to  the  chest.  each  sentence  makes  his  chest  ache.  he  swallows  thickly,  presses  his  forehead  into  martin’s  and  he  squeezes  his  eyes  shut  so  he  doesn’t  have  to  look  into  those  washed  out,  grey  ones.  so  maybe  martin  can’t  see  the  way  he’s  about  to  cry.  the  way  his  words  reach  into  tim’s  chest  and  wrap  in  a  vice  grip  on  his  lungs,  squeezing  all  the  air  out  until  he’s  gasping,  taking  a  shaky  breath.  

❛  i--  ❜  it’s  not  that  he  doesn’t  believe  martin.  he’s  got  more  self-confidence  than  just  about  anyone  he  knows.  he  knows  he’s  enough.  he  does.  (  then  why  does  it  hurt  so  hard  to  hear  ??  why  does  it  claw  at  the  inside  of  his  chest,  make  him  feel  so  small  ??  )  another  breath  shakes  through  him  and  he  leans  into  martin’s  bulk,  curling  into  the  welcoming  space  between  his  arms.  martin’s  not  that  much  bigger,  all  things  considered,  but  tim’s  always  been  good  at  making  himself  small.  ❛  i  don’t--  ❜  he  opens  his  eyes  and  the  first  tears  spill  over,  stinging  and  hot.  

[Inside, a short note.

Hey boss.

Sorry about kicking you in the ribs. Not sorry about punching you in the face.

Martin]

This had not been how he envisioned this week going. The arrival of the... other Martin had caused problems that frankly had Elias’s head spinning, though he was doing his best not to show it to any of the staff. Was this Martin from the “future”, then? Looking into his mind, through the fog, he could occasionally catch glimpses of a large house sprawling across an otherwise empty stretch of moorland. Sparse furniture. Poorly decorated. Yes, that was the Lonely, but not as they knew it now, in this time. A more powerful Lonely, a more fully-realized Lonely. Had Peter’s ritual somehow worked, without bringing all the rest of the entities into the world? He was going to get that information out of Martin somehow, even if he had to have circular conversations with him for hours; and if it was true, he would eat his own foot -- and then he would figure out a way to stop it, because there was not a snowball’s chance in Hell of Peter outdoing him on the one thing he’d been fighting two hundred years for. 

       But that was for later. Right now, he had to deal with the fallout from the dropping of this particular bomb. It was a good thing that the Not-Them possessed no powers of Sight, and that Elias controlled every room and hallway in his Institute. He couldn’t rearrange them like the tunnels, no, but he had Eyes everywhere. If it began to move, he would Know immediately. If it even realized what was going on, he would Know. He would feel that shift in the air. And he’d brought Jon, and Tim, and Martin up to his office for that very reason. “Not helping, Tim,” he said scathingly, and felt the gushing wave of outrage from everyone else in the room. Not helping! was the echoed thought again and again. Right, they were all mad at him.

He sighed through his nose, and brushed fog from his lapels, watching it cascade to the floor and break in a way that was distinctly un-fog-like. Or had been, when the world had been bound to such silly things as logic and physics. Fog could shatter like glass now, he supposed, if it wished, but maybe then they’d need another name for it than fog. It was difficult to categorize, in the new age, but he was Learning rapidly. Every day, his mind expanded, as he sat on his throne with his Eyes rolling in his head-tower-sky and his heart racing fast enough to kill a man, but he was no longer a man. When he had become Aware of Martin -- not that when made much sense; he had always been Aware of Martin, was becoming Aware, would become Aware, infinitely. But, for tradition’s sake: when he had become Aware of Martin, it had been a sort of bump in the waves of his consciousness. It had actually been difficult for him to withdraw back into something even resembling a human form, to materialize in a way where communication would be possible. He chose Elias, because Martin had known Elias, and wasn’t he there to comfort? Not really, no. He was there to Observe. Which he could have done perfectly well from his tower.