Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If Jon didn’t acknowledge how much his kidnapping changed him, hurt him, he could keep all of his vulnerability and shame and grief hidden deep down inside him where no one had to look at it. No one would have to think about it; he wouldn’t have to think about it and it would all go away.

Right?

It wasn’t like he’d been beaten, or injured beyond where the ties bit into his skin as he struggled in vain. As far as kidnappings go, Jon rather thought his experience tame when compared to what could have happened.

Nikola could have kept all her many promises, could have taken his hide.

She could be wearing it right now, readying herself to dance the Unknowing.

Micheal could have killed him had Helen not so fortuitously appeared and whisked him away.

So, shouldn’t he be grateful? Focus on the positive; that he was alive and mostly well despite the tectonic shifting of his sense of self?

Wasn’t it ungrateful of him to take this gift and squander it, to feel sorry for himself when so many others never had even a chance? Stories already written once they drew the attention of that which crawled and choked and blinded and fell and twisted and left and hid and wove and burned and hunted and ripped and bled, and died. Like Tim’s little brother, Danny. He hadn’t a hope in the world once the need to know and to understand and to discover grabbed hold of him, leading him right into their claws.

Leading Tim right to the Institute.

Leading right to him.

Jon scrubbed a too-soft palm down his face, digging the tips of his fingers hard into his temples in an attempt to stave off his steadily worsening headache. Lord, he was tired, so tired of it all. Coughing lightly into his elbow, he curled up under the quilt, silently thanking Martin when it soothed the chills wracking him from top to toe. He was just rundown. That was all. Anyone would be after spending a month in those accomodations.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

Repeat.

And gradually, Jon began to sink, the exhaustion rooted in his marrow tugging him further and further away from document storage and into something adjacent to sleep. Underwater, rocked back and forth by an undulant current, Jon let it all go.

A veritable mountain of paper carpeted the surface of his desk and Jon wished he could lose himself in the work of untangling the myriad threads connecting each statement to another (to another to another) if only to stop his mind descending into darker thoughts. He drank the tea Martin provided, even ate a biscuit or two when he wasn’t paying close attention, and poured over hundreds of files with the feverish ardor of one living on borrowed time. The answers were here, in the tapes, in the pages yellowed with age. He just wasn’t quite certain of the question. Even now, the statements seemed random, and Jon wasn’t willing to ask anyone else to put themselves in danger poking around alone. The Unknowing was coming. Nikola would find another costume eventually and for that Jon was so, so sorry.

Unfortunately, no amount of Martin’s tea seemed sufficient to clear away the fog that settled over his mind like clotted cream, thick and impenetrable. It was a wonder he could keep a thought in his head at all. The door slammed open, startling him enough he dropped his pen and scattered his notes.

“Here.”

“Uh.” Jon stared at the folder in Tim’s outstretched hand, bewilderment written all over his pallid face. If Tim weren’t so interested in his petty revenge, he might’ve worried.

“You asked for this.” He hadn’t. Hadn’t asked for anything lately. But Tim had been messing with him for days now just to regain some sense of control over this place. Let Jon be paranoid about something real for once.

“I, I did?” Nope.

“Figures.” Tim threw the folder down on the desk and watched Jon scramble to keep the pages together when they spilled across the blotter. “You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”

“I. No.” Somehow, Jon’s face fell even further. “But I, I’m making progress! At l’least--at least I hope I am.” Watching Jon struggle because of him assuaged the creeping, crawling desire to lash out at anything that moved, and Tim reveled in it.

“And you,” Tim paused, articulation pointed and sharp enough to cleave, “think that’s good enough. That you’re the one we should be trusting to make decisions.”

“I don’t--” Jon cut himself off, a flipbook of emotions passing over his face too quickly to interpret. “I don’t.”

“Spit it out.” That earned him a stern look, some of the old Jon peeking through the veil.

“I don’t want anyone else to be hurt.”

“As if you have any say in that.”

“Maybe I don’t.” Jon drew himself up to his full, diminutive height in his chair, squaring his shoulders and furrowing his brows. He’d always seemed bigger than he was. His nettlesome personality was successful as both a mask and a barrier that kept everyone at arm's length enough to hide the deep well of insecurity growing at his core. Now, he just looked small, like a child playing make-believe against real monsters that would do harm. “It doesn’t mean I get to stop trying.” For all the good it did any of them.

“And what does that mean for us?” The force of Tim’s palms striking the edges of the desk triggered an avalanche of documents, the susurrations of shifting paper interspersed with collisions like thunder. Jon shrank back, all pretense of bravery gone, and Tim smirked. He’d done that. Made him afraid. In the quiet, the creak of wood under Tim’s grip echoed like a gunshot. "You're no hero." His bitter laugh was the last nail in the lid of Jon’s coffin, and he crumpled under the weight of Tim’s stare, turning away, bottom lip quivering. Tim left him gathering horrors with trembling hands.

“Going out. Get your coat.” Jon startled. Tim never spoke to him if he could help it. Not since before he'd been taken, and certainly not after their last conversation.

“Wh’what?”

“Pub. Martin’s coming.”

“Oh. Uh, alright then.” His assistant was already gone, Jon could hear him shouting at Martin from across the archives. It sounded good. Right, like a missing puzzle piece finally found and it lifted the weight sitting heavy in Jon’s stomach enough for him to breathe around the ache. Maybe this was Tim’s way of letting Jon know he was ready to forgive him. He pulled on an old uni jumper, now large on his lanky frame, and joined Martin at the door, offering up a tentative smile when he was greeted in kind.

“Glad you could join us, Jon.”

The walk was pleasant, Tim filling up the space with good-natured chattering while Jon hurried to keep pace. He didn’t want to think about how exposed he was out here, instead pressing as close to Martin as he dared, hoping the bigger man wouldn’t take notice. It felt safe, or something close to it, and Jon swiped his eyes as surreptitiously as he could in the dark when the sodium glare on the pavement began to blur.

It wasn’t a good idea, but Jon downed the shot Tim handed him anyway, losing himself in the burn of cheap vodka long enough to be pushed into a booth, a pint shoved into his hand. Martin took pity on him and slid beside him, his warmth rushing in, blanketing Jon in the faint smell of bergamot. He took a sip of foam.

Hours passed. Jon was pleasantly loose, head fuzzy, the sounds of other patrons a far-away hum. Tim was telling stories about their time in research; pranks he’d pulled at the expense of Jon’s pride, those times they’d taken turns dragging the other home after they’d gotten caught up in one project or another. Jon caught Martin grinning at him more than once, a flush drawn liberally across his face as if with a wide brush. Jon grinned back; shy. Blaming it on the drink to no one but himself. Good lord, he was tired, body heavy, the desire to just allow himself the relief of leaning against Martin, soft and shielded, becoming impossible to ignore. Surely, he wouldn’t mind. Would let him rest. For a moment, nothing more.

“--Sasha loved that.” Like a bucket of ice water, reality flooded in, sharp and sour. “Right, Jon?”

“Eh. R’right.”

“Never could leave well enough alone, could she? Our Sash.”

“Tim?”

“Jon here has some stories, I’m sure! Never been against a bit of rule-bending, ‘ey?” Tim’s inhospitable expression belied his jovial tone.

“Um. N’no.”

“And yet, for all your daring, she’s the one who’s gone.” Martin went stiff beside him, catching on in the time it took for Jon’s head to straighten itself out. “I mean. You’re supposed to Know everything.”

“No. It. I n’never--” Tim cut him off, voice even and razor-keen.

“It should have been easy, Jon. Did you even try to keep us safe?” Pushing himself away from the table, Tim scoffed. “I’m just trying to understand here.”

“Oy, leave off.”

“What? You don’t like it? The truth? Without you and me, Martin, he’d be completely alone.” Tim slugged back his drink, slamming it down with enough force to make Jon flinch, curl into himself in shame. “Who else wants anything to do with you?”

“Tim-!”

“N’no, Martin. He’s. I suppose he’s right, yeah?” Just please don’t leave him alone. He’d made mistakes. He understood. And even if Tim had planned this all along, even if he’d faked all his niceties, Jon preferred that to abandonment. He’d never recover if they left him. Please.

Please.

“Yeah,” Tim agreed, laughter limned with cruelty. “I’m right.” He reached over- sneering when Jon couldn’t suppress a tiny yelp of fear- to drain his pint too. “I’m always right and you always wanted this job.” Jon felt his jaw drop at the accusation, throat working uselessly. “You took it from Sasha because you knew, didn’t you?” The way he said it was so matter of fact that Jon almost thought it was true.

“No! That’s-- that’s not what happened!” Even to Jon’s own ears, it sounded as though he were whining despite the hoarseness of his voice.

“Sasha was better qualified than you and you couldn’t just let her have the thing she’d worked for her whole career.” Of course she was. Talented, beautiful Sasha whose face he couldn’t even remember without that thing in the way. “Gertrude saw her potential.” Tim leaned in, breath stinking of beer. Jon was trapped. Which was ridiculous. This was Tim. Tim wouldn’t hurt him. No matter how angry he was. “Just admit it, you’ll feel better.”

“I. I didn’t.” Didn’t he though? Hadn’t he basically asked Elias for the job by accepting that interview?

“Makes a man wonder just what you had to do, Jon. To get here.”

Martin may have made sure he got back to the Institute, but Jon didn’t remember the walk, just the numbness and trembling of his arms, like Jude hadn’t left well enough alone with his hand. Martin was gentle with him, more so than Jon could ever deserve, and he couldn’t even thank him. All the words he wanted to say were stopped up behind the lump in his throat.

Martin didn’t apologize for Tim, didn’t make excuses, and for that, Jon was grateful. It was already taking everything he had left in him not to break down and beg him to style; to admit he was scared of being alone because the fragments of himself were that much harder to keep hold of without the constant reminder of his presence.

Martin left him to the cot, slipping away with a quiet, “good night.”

Jon dreams.

He dreams that he’s still there and wakes with the taste of blood behind his teeth from his screaming. Nikola may not have taken his skin, but she may very well have taken the rest of him. He feels the phantom press of her plastic fingers as she draws imaginary lines across his skin, slick with lotion that overwhelms his senses, that floods the room with a smell he can’t quite describe but would know anywhere. Unscented. Not quite. Not when there was so much of it covering every part of him.

Like clockwork, they came.

He hears her words and trembles under her unwanted touch and heaves when she pours all her wretched knowledge of skinning a being alive into his eyes until he’s so full of dread he thinks he might die from it. Jon can see his own terror, trace where she had traced, an invisible scar no one would ever understand mapping the road of arteries and veins she threatened to nick.

Messy business, she’d said, being flayed.

But she'd had so much practice.

His office is abruptly too small, the walls closing in on him, sliding closer and closer until he’s certain he’ll be crushed. He stood, violently enough that his chair went skidding into a corner, crushing statements in its wake, and nearly collapsed when dizziness washed over him. Out. Out. He had to get out. The door stretched farther away with every step Jon took, reaching, scrabbling for the knob, nearly panicked enough he failed to open it on the first try. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t. All the air was gone, squeezed from his chest with a hacking cough that wouldn’t stop. Black threatened to swallow him up, steal him away.

The cement of the archive floor pressed painfully into every joint, exacerbating their ache, and a warbling noise very gradually transformed itself into his name repeated anxiously.

"Jon?" Martin coalesced above him, out of focus but unmistakable. Strong hands pressed along either side of his face, holding him still. One slid carefully to his brow. "Warm," muttered to himself as though confirming a hypothesis. "Jon?"

"Hafta…" like marbles in his mouth, Jon's words slid over each other, crashed together, more syllable and sound than anything intelligible.

“Shh, take a minute.” Martin’s voice reverberated in his ears, fading in and out like it was coming from underwater, while Jon tried to pull together all his disparate pieces. “Are you with me?”

“Wi...M’with…” He couldn’t bring himself to speak above the whisper catching on a desert-dry tongue flooded with salt. He could barely bring himself to breathe for fear of cracking completely in half and exposing his sawdust insides.

“Okay. Just relax.” Martin stroked his cheek, let him stay there, pillowed in his lap, and cocooned in safety.

He woke later, muzzy and distant, blinking up at a familiar ceiling and hemmed in by file cabinets. The sound of a page turning drew his attention and he let his head loll to the side. Martin looked up from the little book of poetry he was flipping through, smiling with what might have been relief.

“Hey there.”

“‘Ullo.” Jon croaked, letting his eyes drift closed again.

Jon was at a loss, caught between all the wrong choices, and while he wouldn’t admit to outright hiding from Tim, he certainly wasn’t going out of his way to find him. Instead, he tried to keep away from everyone and their judgment, too fragile to sustain the enormous weight of it on his brittle heart. Ever since coming to with Martin and his poetry beside him, Jon had felt wrong, somehow. Like he was lingering a half-step behind his own body and watching himself perform a poor imitation of one Jonathan Sims.

Inhuman.

Disconnected.

Nothing felt genuine or substantial, as though, if he attempted it, he’d be able to pass through walls, straying aimlessly through dark hallways and winding up places with no memory of how he’d come to be there. Mugs, files, pens, tape recorders all seemed the same. Only objects, unfamiliar in his hands until he’d come back from wherever he’d gone away to and startled, badly enough once that he dropped the tea, long cold, convinced it was spiders. He didn’t remember slicing open his burned hand on broken ceramic until Martin tugged him into a chair to bandage it. There wasn’t much feeling in it anymore and while his skin was so sensitive the brush of his oversized clothes was like claws raking across his body, the pressure exerted by Martin’s skillful fingers as he dabbed away old clotted blood and wrapped it neat and tidy with a bright white bandage, was grounding.

“Jon?”

“Mm?” He got the sense that Martin had been trying to get his attention for several minutes. He had to look away from the worry in his face, lest he break down entirely.

“I was saying, you don’t look well.”

“It’s fine, Martin.” Jon pressed the heel of his good hand against a closed eye. The throbbing behind it made it hard to think. “Tired, is all. Please.” He had to take a moment to get himself under control, the ache of being witnessed cloying in his throat. “Don’t.”

“How can you justify whatever you do in here all day while we’re being hunted?”

“Tim.” Jon couldn’t keep the pleading note out of his voice. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to argue.

“What, Jon? What?”

“I’m trying to help!”

"You're bloody well taking your time!”

“I, I don’t know what you want from me!” He didn’t mean it, didn’t mean to yell. He didn’t want to fight, least of all with Tim, but everything was so mixed up, pieces missing, and his coworker spinning riddles like yarn. “Just tell me! Tell me and I’ll do it.” Tell me how to fix it. Tim’s unkind laughter cut through him like an icy winter wind.

“But you're not trying, are you?" Tim got close, so close that Jon’s ears shook with his roar. “You just let things happen to you!” Red washed over everything, blotted out Jon’s vision.

“Oh yes, Tim!” Hurling his name like an expletive, Jon stared up at him, narrow chest heaving, uneven and fast. “I just let the Circus have me. I just let them t’t. T, touch me!” Breath catching in his chest, Jon felt the tears begin to fall, hot and embarrassing. “You know nothing about how hard I'm trying!” The whole of him was shaking now, shuddering as he sucked down noisy gulps of air. “Always sulking! Maybe if you’d been paying better attention you’d have noticed Sasha was gone!”

“Don’t.” Tim’s voice was low and dangerous, the rattling warning of a snake fixing to strike. But Jon couldn’t stop, filled to bursting with recklessness, intoxicated by danger and dizziness.

“You claim to know me so well, Tim, but clearly, you never knew her!” Lunging with a hoarse cry, Tim snatched him up by his collar to yank him close enough he was on his toes.

"Should've been you." And it was Daisy, of all people, that shoved herself between them and stopped it going any further.

“He’s not worth it, Tim.” She jeered as she pulled him bodily away, his fingers separating from Jon’s collar with a reluctance Jon could feel in his bones.

He wasn’t. He wanted to be.

He shouldn’t have said that. Not to Tim.

He had to start doing the right things. Acting the right way. Then Tim would stop looking at him like that. Like he’d been replaced.

Like Sasha.

With legs made of jelly, Jon limped along the hallway in the opposite direction and took refuge in the restroom, begging his innards to calm while he splashed his face with cool water from the tap. He stared grimly into the mirror, setting his shoulders, and examined the gaunt lines of an unfamiliar mask, watched the liquid trace paths he didn’t recognize. The dissonance was overwhelming. This was someone else. This was a stranger. This was unequivocally, irrevocably him. Without looking away, Jon reached for a handful of paper towel and scrubbed his face clean. When the reflection gawking back at him seemed no less alien, he scoured his skin until it was raw and red, until his eyes watered with unshed tears.

Maybe he’d been replaced after all. Maybe Nikola took his skin and left him with this. Or maybe he was still there and this was just his hell.

So, he forced himself to look. To look, and look, and look until moisture stung his cheeks, dripping from a trembling jaw. Until he lost the battle with his stomach and was sick with the sight of himself, his not self, turning just in time to dry heave into a toilet bowl, violent spasms arching his back, drawing straining muscles tight enough Jon could feel his shoulder blades trying to escape his skin as he clutched the porcelain for dear life and was finally, finally allowed to close his lips around a silent sob.

He collapsed, then, against the tile, his chest heaving, hitching, fists curled, convulsing.

No noise. Mustn’t make noise. Noise means violence. Threats. Fear. Touching.

No. No noise. His voice was worth less than nothing anyway.

Chapter Text

Jon wasn’t certain, but he thought he might confess to feeling very ill if Martin was brave enough to ask again. There was a pounding ache behind his eyes and he couldn’t draw a full breath without a sharp pain behind his breastbone nestled gently beside the panic fluttering there like a caged bird. The cough he’d struggled with since Helen returned him had become deep and wet and desperate. As he moved through a haze, trying to remember if there was any paracetamol in the archives, Jon very nearly ran into Tim, who must’ve taken one look at him and found some leftover pity.

“Figures.” Tim ridiculed him before turning to fish around half-heartedly at his desk. “Always making yourself our problem.”

“That’s. That isn’t true.” Even to his own ears, his argument was pathetic, whinging. “I don’t need anything.”

“You look like death and I don’t want what you have.” He shoved the crumpled box into his hands. “Stay away from me.”

“Thank you, Tim.”

“Whatever. I know you, Jon. Don’t forget that.” All Jon had to do was walk away and ignore the vitriol pouring out of Tim’s mouth, but, as always, he let the fear of what he was becoming dig his hole ever deeper.

“Wh’what do you know?” He didn’t even recognize his mistake until he was swept across the hallway and pinned against the wall. The static in his head was deafening, drowning out whatever words he’d forced out of Tim with his accidental compulsion. The hands holding him down were like iron, digging into skin and muscle brutally enough to bruise, and he was just as helpless against Tim as he had been against the Circus. It was all Jon could think about; being held down, being forced to the ground, being touched against his will no matter how hard he begged or cried or even bled from the ropes biting into the skin of his wrists. Like the peal of a bell, Tim’s voice echoed around him, the brassy roar of it too much for Jon to make anything out, just a cacophonous symphony battering him from all sides. Pressure built, rising like an inexorable tide, higher, higher, higher, closing over him and crushing the air out of his body.

Tim’s arm drew back and the shadow it cast fell over him like a shroud.

“D’don’t.” Panicky, Jon flinched, awaiting the rain of blows and remembering the cold intensity of two pairs of huge hands on him.

Of Nikola’s hands on him.

Of those things’ hands on him.

“Tim!” Darkness parted like storm clouds, the fluorescent lights shining suddenly on his face, blinding him, and while Jon had never been very religious, this had to be of the divine.

Martin was there. Tim was gone. Martin was everything there ever was and ever would be.

“Jon?” Worried, he sounded-- He sounded worried. But there was nothing to worry about now. He was here. “Jon, can you hear me?” A beautifully cool palm cupped the side of his neck, thumb gracing the skin over the vulnerability of his pulse point. Gently, so gently it hurt, Martin brushed his thumb over his tingling, numb skin and Jon leaned into the gentle pressure, covering Martin’s hand with his own. What else was he supposed to do with his hands?

“M’tin?” Oh. That. He. That didn’t sound like him. Fear, far away and muted, that he wasn’t him surfaced and was swept away just as quickly.

“It’s me, I’m here.”

Martin tried to catch Jon’s eyes, concerned when it became clear he wasn’t altogether there. Under the incandescence, like banked coals beneath his fingers, he detected a languid heartbeat, slow and thready. Jon grimaced, breathing agonized and labored.

“M’m’sorry.” Jon’s knees buckled under him, glassy brown irises rolling back behind fluttering lids as he collapsed further into Martin’s arms. “Think...think I needa lie down…”

“That’s alright, s’alright.”

“Sorry. So. M’so. . .” Bare more than a near breathless exhale, and tears beaded along Jon’s dark lashes, slipped down gaunt cheeks. Martin moved swiftly to support Jon’s head as he lost total consciousness. He was burning up, the damp, furnace heat of him sweltering even through their clothes. Martin neatly boxed up the panic threatening to overwhelm him and put it away. He’d be no good to Jon if he broke down and Jon desperately needed someone to be good to him.

Putting him down amongst the tousled sheets and duvet woke Jon with a dazed whimper and Martin soothed him with sweet noises and soft words, pushing back sweat-soaked curls as he came around. Half out of his mind and sluggish with fever, Jon gripped the sleeve of Martin’s jumper as he made to leave, a plea in his half-lidded eyes.

“Stay?” He asked, raspy and weak, “please.” Jon seemed to melt, strength oozing out of him, chapped lips parted around his gasping breaths.

“What do you need, Jon?” Choking on a cry, Jon’s tears kept coming, faster now, even as he closed his eyes tight against them.

“My, my hand?” He’d dropped it to the cot, thin and hot to the touch. “Jus-” Jon pressed his lips into a thin line, shaking with his silent weeping. “P’please?” Tender understanding dawned on Martin and he took up his hand, weaving their fingers together.

“Okay, Jon, okay. I’m here.”

“I don’t know what’s real.” Shivery and small, Jon’s words fell heavy between them. “Sh’sh’she’s in my head, Martin. She’s here. Nikola.” His other hand moved violently, erratic, like it didn’t belong to him. It yanked his hair, punctuating broken syllables, before moving to swipe the side of his head.

“Shh, shh.” Martin caught it mid-strike, holding both of Jon’s hands between his own. “You’re hurting yourself.”

“Wh’what?” He sounded undone, so lost, so confused.

“Pulling your hair, love.” Jon needed caring for. Rest. “She’s not there.”

“B’but. She. She has to be. If, if, she’s not, it m’m’means-”

“It’s not you, either.”

“I don’t understand.” A painful cough erupted from his chest, strangling him until Martin tugged him up flush against his own. Jon twisted his thin fingers into a wash-worn jumper, letting Martin take his shaking weight. “I d’don’t, I- I. Nngh.” Spent, his head fell to rest on Martin’s broad shoulder.

“I know, I know.”

Martin did not consider himself a violent man.

But oh.

This urge.

To destroy everything. Light a match. Take an ax to Tim’s desk if he so much as looked at Jon the wrong way.

He’d gone limp and loose against Martin, quiet save for the whistling in his chest that accented each rattling breath.

“Jon?” Nothing. He was well and truly out, enough that he didn’t so much as twitch when Martin tucked him under the covers. Shadows hung severe below each eye, cavernous and infinitely deep above cheeks ruddy with fever. He shouldn’t have let things get this far and now Jon was paying a steep price for Martin’s indecisiveness, sick from the effort of keeping such sadness and terror inside. Sparing one more look at Jon, Martin left to gather the supplies he would need: medicine, water, soft flannels, dry clothes, anything he thought might help. Purposely, he avoided Tim’s favorite haunts so he wouldn’t be tempted to lay into him for his part in all this and to his credit, Tim seemed to have made himself scarce. Good.

Martin set everything up, falling into the same rote patterns he’d cultivated when caring for his mother most of his life. While this was infinitely more pleasant, the parallels didn’t escape him, but the familiar ease of it helped keep the hysterical dread locked away.

“Up you come. Hush now, it’s alright. You’re alright.” Gently, Martin lifted Jon, talked him through his bleary waking, reassuring him with soft murmurings and sweet nothings. “I know, was a good sleep wasn’t it?” Jon whimpered, hiding his face in Martin’s side, muffling a cough there that made his no doubt aching bones pop.

“This is going to make it all better, promise.” If it was a lie, Jon wasn’t coherent enough to tell. Swallowing hard enough that Martin could hear the click of it in his throat, Jon forced his heavy lashes apart, fixing his unsteady gaze somewhere past the both of them. He accepted the tablets slipped onto his tongue easily enough, downing them with a greedy gulp of water that left rivulets streaming underneath the collar of his shirt before Martin could pull it away.

“Slow, love. Slow.” Jon seemed to listen, taking as much as he was allowed before letting his head fall back over Martin’s arm, panting with the effort. He handled Jon as though he was made of thinly blown glass, antique and fragile and precious, sweeping away sweat in broad strokes with a damp flannel before maneuvering his wayward limbs into clean pyjamas.

“M’tin?” He was cross-eyed with the effort of looking at him, face framed with unkempt curls. Adorable. Martin would have to take that to the grave.

“Go to sleep,” he soothed, combing through the tangles and standing watch as the space between each slow blink grew longer.

Jon was getting worse, shivering fit to shake apart and struggling to draw a full breath with the congestion packing his lungs. The cough dogging him was wet and painful, but whenever Martin so much as mentioned seeing a doctor, Jon panicked at the thought of a stranger’s clinical touch.

Martin was holding him now, through violent chills that threatened to tear him in two, wrapping Jon up tighter because even if he couldn’t stop the shakes, he could provide some comfort through the nightmares.

“It’s over, Jon. It’s all over. You’re safe now.” A delicate litany Martin wasn’t sure he even understood but persisted with anyway. Sometimes it worked, and Jon would slip sideways into troubled sleep. More often it didn’t, and he would come apart at his tattered seams and relive each of the over thirty days he’d been away in quick succession, crying so silently it was eerie.

And sometimes.

“Martin, Martin, MartinMartinMartin, you can’t, you can’t be here.” Martin pressed a cold cloth against his neck, his cheek, forehead, again and again in rhythm while Jon muttered his stilted staccato warnings, fevered and frantic. “She...Nik’Nik--” convulsing with a cough, Jon’s urgent attempts for oxygen might as well have been through a coffee stirrer. “T’touching, Martin. They, I, I didn’t, please, please, please stop. Stop!” He bolted upright, crumpling forward immediately around a harsh, unproductive attack, teeth clenched so hard Martin feared they might crack as he tried to contain the noises his body wanted so desperately to make.

“Shhh, shh, she’s gone.” Martin gathered him up, bones like a bird’s, fragile and light. “It’s over, it’s over, all over. You’re safe. You’ve got to breathe, love.” He let Jon cry himself out on his shoulder, ugly, messy, loud, until there was no more than the occasional hiccup and shuddery, exhausted inhale. Chest to chest, Martin could feel each struggling pull for air, each over-warm exhale ghosting against his own pulse point, humid and a little fast. He felt him swallow. Once. Twice.

“She c’can’t have you too, she can’t, she can’t…” Small and miserable, the clench of his jaw a twitch pressed along his neck. Jon went on and on, convinced he was back in that place. “Have to get out. Have to, it’s me she wants, it’s me. I’ll--”

“Hush, sweetheart, hush now. Drink this down. That’s a good man, there you go.”

“No, you, you have to, have to go.” Martin thumbed away tears, rocking Jon just slightly and holding the water bottle to his lips, praising each mouthful.

“Take these, good, good. There we are. Don’t think about anything else but getting well.” Jon sniffled, staring up at him like he’d hung the very moon among the stars. “Can you do that for me?”

“You'll. She’ll hurt you.” Jon whispered, trembling, at his limit and pushing beyond.

“She won’t. I won’t let her. Me nor you.” He traced the sharp angles of his face, mapped constellations between the hoary scars left behind by Prentiss' worms. “I promise, Jon. I promise. You trust me, don’t you?” His affirmation was a physical thing, cautious and subtle and no less precious.

“Close your eyes then, close your eyes, let yourself rest, love.”

Tim had never considered himself a cruel man.

But oh.

The sounds of fear, of sorrow, leaking like petrol fumes from under the door to document storage nurtured the kernel of guilt taking root in his gut. It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed how Jon seemed to be fraying at the very edges of himself, but, being so choked with bitterness, he just hadn’t cared.

And now he was hiding from Martin, listening to Jon weep and shout by turns, begging for mercy from invisible assailants. Listening to him plead with Martin to escape. To leave him behind and save himself.

Tim didn’t know what to think. It was easier when he wasn’t. When he let the anger make decisions for him and paint Jon as the selfish villain.

Against his better judgment, Tim knocked quietly. Martin didn’t look impressed. In for a penny and all that.

“I... heard.” Awkwardly, he held out the thermos, looking past the sturdy bulwark that was Martin at the slight body panting on the cot near swaddled in the duvet. Really, it was a wonder Martin had opened the door at all, considering.

“How, uh. How’s he doing?”

“What do you want, Tim?” He bristled with irritation. Martin hadn’t known Jon even half as long as Tim and he--

Well, he probably assumed Tim wanted nothing to do with him.

Tim’s own feelings regarding Jon were muddled at best. A heady, churning mix of hatred, anger, and disgust, but below that, below what he tried so hard not to see, there was worry. Love. The desire to be something like friends again. Isn’t that why it all hurt so much in the first place? Because he loved Jon that much? Because he’d thought Jon loved him too?

“Can’t I worry about one of the only people left in this damned place?” It wasn’t the whole truth. Tim wasn’t sure he’d recognize what that looked like anymore.

“Weren’t worrying when you did your level best to drive him mad.”

“I’m angry, Martin. Jon, he--”

“He what? Chose this? I’m sure.” Martin folded his arms, aura of calm belying his true opinions of Tim. “If you can’t be kind, or at least stop making things actively worse, then stay away, just as you have been.” Familiar irritation crawled up his spine, rung by rung on the ladder of his ribs.

“This is dangerous. He’s dangerous. Or at least not completely human anymore.”

“So we abandon him? That’s your answer?”

“Don’t forget--!” Fabric shifted and Jon coughed lightly, moaning in pain. Martin’s eyes narrowed dangerously enough that Tim dropped his volume to a low, harsh whisper.

“Don’t forget. Jon’s the one who started this! The stalking and paranoia and keeping secrets and disappearing for days on end instead of just letting us in!”

“He was afraid.”

“And we didn’t know we had to be!” High pitched, hopeless. “If we, if Sasha--”

“Tim.”

“If we’d known sooner, if Jon, if.” Hot tears threatened to fall and Tim dashed them angrily away. “She’s gone, Martin. She’s gone and we didn’t even notice. I didn’t notice.”

“I won’t tell you to stop feeling, Tim, but Jon is just as much in the dark as we are and we’re going to lose him too if we don’t start working together. He needs you.”

“He doesn’t need anyone. Never has.”

“T’Tim…?” Really, Jon never had known what was best for him. After everything Tim had done to him, the damage he’d caused, there was hope written into the cracks of his name. “Tim… what?”

“It’s alright, Jon. He was just leaving.” Martin re-wrung the flannel and swept it over his face, even offering him the thermos of overly honeyed tea when another cough ripped its way through him. “Here, it’s warm.”

“Where?”

“The archives, love.” Jon may have struggled his way into sitting up, but it was Martin’s arm around him that was keeping him there. Tim’s guilt grew. Jon looked awful; ashen and sick.

“Don’t, I don’t.” Breath stolen, Jon let his head hang, tangled curls limp and damp. “Don’ feel well.” To hear him admit it… Tim shifted nervously from foot to foot.

“Lay back.” Martin pressed a cold cloth against the galloping pulse in his neck.

“Tim.” And god, those were tears slipping into the greying hair at his temples. “I th’thought--” Tim didn’t want to know. It had been enough to listen these past few days and if he became privy to the nightmares, he wasn’t sure he’d recover.

“I’m going.”

“Wait!” Distraught, Jon tore at the bedclothes, hopelessly tangling his legs in the sheets. “Wait, pl’please.” Wide, damp brown eyes pinned him like a butterfly beneath glass. “Tim, I, I.” His face crumpled and he bit his lip hard in an effort to stop crying. It made no difference. A week ago, it would have made no difference to Tim. Today found him sitting beside Jon, Martin glaring a warning.

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” He didn’t want apologies. Not right now. He wasn’t strong enough to accept them. Not yet. “You need to listen to Marto, buddy.” An old protectiveness surged in Tim that he was helpless to ignore and he tucked Jon back in, brushing his palms over imaginary wrinkles.

“I lost you.” Watching, unblinking, crystalline tears beaded on his lashes, shame and longing pooled in Jon’s eyes. Tim wet his lips, inhaled sharp and short and tried to remember what it was to be gentle.

“I’m right here.”

They worked as a team, now, or at least under a tentative truce, plying Jon with tea and medicine when he was aware enough to take it. Tim brushed his fingers over Jon’s hot forehead. He was barely awake, an old mercury thermometer sticking out of his mouth with orders to keep it under his tongue until told otherwise. Tim was taking his turn playing nursemaid while Martin braved going outside the Institute for a different medication to try. If Jon had been more aware he’d have protested, no doubt, but--

“He can barely breathe, Tim.”

“He wouldn’t want you to go. It’s. It isn’t safe.”

“Safe as it’ll get in broad daylight and he needs something else. I’ll be back, quick as I can.”

The requisite number of minutes passed and when Tim removed his hand from Jon’s hair to take the thermometer they both made a sound of disappointment. 39.8. So high that Tim was sweating where Jon's body was plastered against his, head tipped back over his shoulder as he sucked in strident, uneven breaths. They’d stripped him of his layers and left him in only an old tee of Martin’s that hung to his mid-thigh and a pair of joggers. The fever and strangling discomfort in his chest didn’t allow Jon to sleep very deeply or for very long and he shifted restlessly, swallowing down stray noises of distress in his efforts to be silent. Tim checked his phone to find a message from Martin indicating he was on his way back and just as Tim thought he might relax, Jon lurched forward, listing sideways as a wet cough catapulted him out of sleep. Tim pulled him up, keeping him in place against him with a hand sprawled across his chest, Jon’s cold fingers scrambling at it. He could feel the panic in the stiffness of Jon’s shoulders as he choked.
“Hey, hey, hey, shhh. Hey. Listen, Jon. Listen to me.” Forcibly calm, compartmentalizing his own panic. “You can breathe. I know, I know it’s hard, but you can. Relax. Just listen. Listen.” Tim inhaled, deep and even. “Just like that, breathe with me. In and out, you can do it.” He demonstrated again, and again, and again as the moment strung out infinitely ahead of them.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’re still getting air. In, out, come on.” He felt Jon try, the resulting gasp such a stuttering, feeble thing. “Good. Good job, bud. Again, come on. One at a time.” He palmed tangled curls back from Jon’s blazing forehead, almost frantically, until the attack finally passed and Jon became an exhausted, dead weight. Tim counted each labored, wretched breath, trying to calm his own rabbiting heartbeat. The reality that he might lose him, that after everything they’d done to each other, Jon might slip away without any resolution, chilled Tim to the bone and he embraced him, tight as he dared, rocking them both gently until Martin appeared and fixed him knowingly with a look.

“Jon-love?” Martin cupped his jaw, tracing his pale bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. “I’m going to boil some water. He’s not getting enough oxygen.”

“Hospital?” They’d discussed it before, both with Jon and without, when it became harder for him to track conversation. Even Basira had given her unsolicited opinion and the callousness in her voice sparked outrage in Tim. She hardly knew Jon, let alone who he was before this place got hold of him. It was one thing for Tim to lash out; he wasn’t about to let that cop get Jon killed.

“How many times are we going to let him be kidnapped?” Martin asked and Tim didn’t have an answer. He accepted the tablets. “Give him these if you can.”

Awareness swept in and out like a tide, the divide between asleep and awake a blurry line in the sand, and Jon had to claw his way through the muddy layers of his consciousness, sluggish and suffocating and slow, just to breach the surface and heave for barely half a lungful of stale air.

It was easier to let the dark have him. Fold him up in wings made of shadow that didn’t protect so much as once remove him from the painful, clotted tangle that took up every bit of room in his lungs and made thinking any thoughts impossible.

That was fine.

Jon was done with thinking. With words and questions. With moving relentlessly, restlessly forward in a vain attempt to distance himself from loneliness and lack. There was a peace in accepting the ways that Nikola had unmade him, the disfiguring fear that came with remembering softer when he gave into it, too used up to do more than escape the incessant struggle it was to just be.

This time, he let the hands have him without protest. Shift him back and forth, touch him like he was precious to them, like he was something more than a toy to break. What did it matter, if he let himself pretend?

“You’re doing so well, Jon.” And that didn’t make sense at all. Nikola never praised him or called him anything but Archivist. “Just breathe, that’s it.”

Martin, his jumbled memories provided. Maybe he was dying, already in the midst of being meticulously parted from his skin when his mind decided to take pity on him.

“Can you open your eyes for me?” No, he didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to see for fear it might shatter the illusion. “Hold him up a bit? Over the basin, good.” A wave of steam redolent of the peppermint tea Martin preferred bathed his face, eased the congestion tied in thorny knots around the arthritic cage of his ribs.

“Jon? It’s okay, buddy.”

Tim. Like before. Soft and gentle and, and…

Why now? Why now, when he’d never see either of them again?

Tears welled behind his tightly closed eyelids, slipped down the bridge of his nose and when the sob finally broke free he choked, coughing hard enough he thought the pain of it would tear him in half. This was it. The end of all things. He’d never-

God.

He was going to die here, torn apart by bad taxidermy and haunted by the people he’d damned right alongside him.

“Jon.” Firm and demanding. “You need to calm down and breathe.”

How? How?

A buzzing drone filled his head, drowning out the phantom ghosts in his ears. The flat of a hand, a real flesh and blood hand, forcefully pounded his upper back hard enough that the wet in his lungs shifted and he bent double, reflexively gripping the plastic sides of the bin in front of him. Jon hacked, coughed, gagged until he convulsed, shuddering in the firm embrace of the hands holding him up.

A damp coolness swept across his face as he faded away with the hum.

Jon hurt.

There was ice in his blood and thunder in his bones and fire in his chest whenever he so much as thought of taking a breath. He was done up in ribbons of agony, twisted up in their razor wire embrace all tied off in a bow. A gift. For Nikola.

A breath like drowning.

Too loose in his skin. He didn’t fit. He didn’t. He wasn’t. Wasn’t his.

“Hush.” The eye of the storm. Words like soft rain pooling in his empty spaces quell the tempest.

Martin listened to Jon sleep; the slow inhale-exhale the most beautiful poetry. Tim had helped change him into the last set of dry clothes they had, stripped the cot and dug out extra linens when Jon’s fever broke in the small hours of morning. Circling one narrow wrist with his fingers, Martin tracked the thrum of Jon’s beating heart captured just below the surface.

When Jon finally woke almost a full day later, it was with a whisper of fluttering lashes and a deep lungful of air that Tim echoed. He blinked. Slow. Weary. Swallowed down their offering of tea sweetened liberally with honey, and had nearly slipped back out to sea when:

“Martin…?” Shivery, exhausted. Jon made a noise of frustration, tears welling up and threatening to fall when he thought he’d be left alone. Martin cupped his pallid face, locking eyes with Tim on the other side of the bed.

“Shh. I’m here.” Another strangled attempt, more tears, faster than Martin could brush them away as Jon reached for him. “Okay, okay.” Martin smiled gently when he finally understood. There was no strength in him, limp and shuddering with the gale force of his silent weeping as Martin lifted him into his lap to press him close. “You’re here, Jon. You’re safe. It’s over, sweetheart.” Jon buried his face in his shoulder and there was no more need for words.