Work Text:
[RECORDING BEGINS]
Sharp intake of breath, as if the subject is in pain
MARTIN
Fuck. It's been a while. How does one go about these things again?
Brief pause
MARTIN
Statement of Martin Blackwood regarding… well, the aftermath I guess. Recorded directly by subject on the twentieth of February, two thousand and twenty.
Statement begins
Mild huff
MARTIN
There you have it. It wasn't that hard. It's a bit like riding a bike, isn't it? Muscle memory and all.
Now with the formalities out of the way, let me just say.
Hello, Jon. It's been a while. Sorry for not getting around to do this sooner, but there was a lot to take care of after the Unknowing. You'd be pleased to hear that life returned to normal. Well. To the baseline madness we got used to while working in the Institute, to be fair.
We took stock of our losses - Daisy and Basira are also gone. We found no bodies, so we are not sure what happened to them exactly but it's been months and we haven't heard anything. And I fail to maintain my old optimism.
The others and I, we did a bit of recuperating then returned to business as usual as best as we could. For the first time ever we had some idea as to what to do with the Fears, these nightmares personified and we were able to provide more than meaningless counselling for the victims of the supernatural. We began to offer a bit more than a sympathetic, if a bit empty, pat on the back.
That, admittedly, was nice. It felt a bit like triumph. A bit like vengeance. As if all the pain and suffering wasn't completely pointless, arbitrary and unjust. It almost dulled the grief. Almost.
But then we were appointed with a new Archivist and I knew I had to go. Even without the compelling bond to the Institute, it's strange how easy it was to leave it all behind. I thought that the things we've been through together would make the others and me inseparable. But at the end of the day the only thing I regret is not parting sooner.
I know that our friends think that I've simply fallen back to my old patterns of behaviour but I fucking dare them to pity me. After all, we all had to make sacrifices in order to face our Fears. Melanie, for instance, will never cease to look like a molten waxwork after fighting the Lightless Flame. Not that Georgie cares much. Reckless as ever, she doesn't mind loving a person branded by a terror in such an obvious way. The renewed isolation I have to pay for trapping the Lonely inside me seems trivial in comparison, really.
But you'd know all about sacrifice, wouldn't you?
I largely left because of what the new Archivist said about you. He'd said that in order to stop the Unknowing you had to become Unknowable yourself. That you had to die the truest death there is to die. Bullshit. As if I would let that happen. That stupid ass.
But it was becoming increasingly difficult, knowing you, with the distraction of other people around me. And as I am determined to commit you to my memory, I made my decision to come back here.
You could say that I was fortunate that the Archivist decided to keep me on the payroll despite not working in the Institute anymore - but honestly, that's the least I deserve after all I had done for them. And since Daisy's cottage stood empty anyway and I happened to have the keys still, I now live up here, rent free, my meager wage plenty enough to sustain only one.
Please, you mustn't worry about me. The only truly lonely people are the ones who never had anyone to begin with. And I had you, however brief our time together may have been.
That's the only thing I regret sometimes, you know. How little I had you for. I feel that rememberance would be much easier if we'd spent years in close proximity and I had the luxury of learning the shape of sleepiness in your body as you woke in the morning, the dusting of gentle contentment on your features at the end of a Sunday spent lazing. But that's just me being greedy. I'd known you for years, I have an abundance of memories to go by. There's the image of your hand, curling around an endless succession of mugs of tea that I supplied, unprompted. And you always accepted, despite never drinking it - such as the love language of the emotionally deaf mute, I suppose. I can still picture you, perched in your chair, the distinct way you supported your chin in your palm as you idly doodled on the margin of whatever piece of paper lay in front of you, lost utterly in deep concentration as you confessed your scepticism to the tape recorders. Or there's the array of increasingly eccentric shirts you'd wear to work, I could still list them if I tried hard enough. The level of disgust you felt with yourself for pouring your heart out - because you'd been certain we would meet our death, trapped in the Archives by Jane Prentiss - is still etched deeply on the wall of my atriums and ventricles. You thought you were being a coward. I'd never met anyone braver since.
There's no knowing anyone more intimately than that. I had the shape of you firmly imprinted in me from that day onwards. Why do I still have this dread that it isn't enough?
It's the small things that bother me. The fact is, your eye colour moved on a spectrum. And while I have pinned the bleached, hazy quality of your tired gaze and the dark intensity of you boring stare firmly down, I can't put an image next to a whole range of other emotions. What was the colour of your contempt, your joy? I don't think I'd seen it and now it's lost forever.
To tame my anxiety, I began a little private investigation. I borrowed all our tapes from the Institute. And by borrow, I mean I took it without asking for permission. And why should I? If they send some poor, unsuspecting archival assistant to harass me about it, well… I have enough of the Lonely in me to teach them a lesson. Don't worry, I won't let anyone be devoured by it. A couple of days spent in there would convey the message well enough.
Anyway, I began to listen to the tapes and categorize the quality of your voices. I only wish I'd have a smaller sample of your Paranoia. And a bigger one of you talking about me with such concern. And when the nights are especially cold and cruel around here, I simply replay the words I love you as you said it to the Admiral and then wrap myself in their warm deceit, pretending that you addressed them to someone else.
Heh. Here's some Martin Blackwood poetry for you. I know you wanted to insult when you likened it to Keats, but I still can't help feeling gratified by that snide remark.
I tried to dig up everything there is to know about you, to solidify the edges of you in my memory. There's dry stuff to kindle the fire - birth certificates, degrees and bank statements. I even have your red book here, I could see the time and date of all your vaccinations. You really didn't look like you grew up in the nineties - a tidbit that leaves me tender, aching. This and the fact that despite how big an impact you have on the world, your traces are so few. My fault for meddling with data. Data always renders everyone insignificant. I was aching for a teenage diary, a school project, really. But it proved to be impossible to get hold of that. Where did it all go? All I found is a handful of pictures of you with your grandma. Your image is blurred on every single one of them - a result of becoming Unknowable, I assume. Un fucking fair, if you ask me. I wonder if all your evidence will fade over time. God, I wish I'd began searching sooner. It's just that I thought that continuing your legacy would keep you memory alive best. But that's been taken from me and now I am forced to content myself with peeling the alienity away from your grandmother's portray, hunting for your features in her face. You have the same nose as her. Lucky you didn't inherit the stern mouth. Though her scorn has a protective quality. She may have been inept in telling so, but even from this picture, it's evident that she would have slayed a thousand monsters to keep you safe. Looks like she would have managed it too. Sure wish I could have done it myself.
Instead I spend my days reconstructing you from the pieces I find scattered around. If it sounds a bit like a Ritual, like magic, well. Don't worry. I'm not building you a shrine. It's the gentlest, most sanitary magic that there is. It means taking note of every single good cow I see, even to this day, every time, always. You know. Just in case.
It was the best decision ever, moving out here, frankly. It feels a bit like being in the Lonely again, in that sense that all the pain in numbed here. And I can almost trick myself into thinking that you are about walk through the door at any given moment. It feels as if you are about to part the veil and come to my rescue again, like you did, through the mist on that strange, empty beach.
I guess what I am trying to say, Jon, is…
Noise of static as Martin speaks the next words
MARTIN
I still see you.
Static gets louder, more prominent
MARTIN
What am I supposed to do again? Ah yes. In the immortal words of the late Timothy Stoker, end of fucking state…
Static suddenly ceases
JON, overlapping
M-Martin?
A moment of silence, broken only by the mechanical whirring of the tape recorder, then...
MARTIN
Oh, Jon!
[RECORDING ENDS]