Chapter Text
Ending 1: Cannon Compliant
Martin lies awake, in the darkness. Jon, tucked under his arm with his face nuzzled close into Martin’s neck, is small and warm and still entirely made of bones. The gentle rise and fall of his back marks the seconds, the minutes, the hours, while Martin looks blindly at the ceiling. The blurry sluggishness that the tunnels exact on his mind is nothing compared to the race of his thoughts, tripping over themselves and tangling up in knots of guilt and morality and fear and hope and dread. For the first time in a very long time, urgency presses down upon him, a deadline, a constraint upon his ability to dither, to second guess, to think. The choice has been made, of course, but it isn’t that simple. Ultimately, the choice is not a collective one. He alone can act. And thus, the action is his alone.
He turns his gaze down to Jon. If there is one thing he cannot doubt, cannot question even now, it is how much he loves this man. He could, perhaps, doubt that love’s legitimacy, if he so desired – love built around trauma, he knows, is not always love built to last. But the future is nothing – there is only now, and now, he loves Jon so deeply and desperately that it hurts, it physically aches down to his very core. He wants to do anything to protect this man. He wants to turn the world upside down until he is safe. He wants to love him for forever.
But then Martin thinks of another world, where another pair lies together, feeling that same aching love. And he thinks of the world after that, and the world after that, world upon world upon world of lovers and parents and siblings and best friends, thinks of the billions upon billions upon billions of people who would also turn the world upside down for the people they love. He doesn’t have to do the math, doesn’t have to ask Beholding for the statistical analysis. He knows the way the numbers shake out. The risk cannot be worth the reward.
He holds Jon tight, for just a moment, burying his nose into his hair and breathing in deep and forcing himself not to cry. “I love you, Jon,” he whispers, and his voice shakes, and he has to talk himself down from just staying, just holding this man and letting what happens, happen. Because he knows what’s right. And by god, he’s going to do it.
The trip up to the Panopticon feels shorter this time. Martin isn’t sure if it’s an actual, physical change to the world, the Eye shortening the journey for its favorite lamb, or if it’s just the whirling of his mind, the way he doesn’t really see the stairs at all, that creates the illusion.
Rosie doesn’t even look up as he walks past and opens the large double doors to Jonah’s self-made prison. She doesn’t see the knife in Martin’s hand, doesn’t see how his fingers clench and unclench around the hilt as his eyes find the paralyzed form of his target. “Jonah Magnus!” He yells. The old-young man doesn’t move. Martin scowls, glares up at the ceiling. “Ceaseless Watcher, you know why I am here. Release him.”
The green glow that had completely consumed Magnus’ eyes gradually fades, and he abruptly falls back, taking long, harsh breaths as if coming up from deep below water. “Jonah Magnus,” Martin repeats, slowly crossing the space between them.
“Martin?” Magnus sounds groggy, disoriented, “I-I-Is that you? Uh, I, I was having the most wonderful dream…”
“Oh you absolute – get up.” Martin’s voice has never sounded like this before. Perhaps he has never felt such visceral, all-encompassing hatred.
“What’s – ? Wh-what’s going on? Where – ?” Martin reaches down and pulls Magnus to a kneel by the shirtfront, pressing the blade to his throat. “Oh. I-I see.”
“It’s over,” Martin growls, face inches from Magnus’.
“Is it?” He sounds unperturbed, perhaps mildly disappointed. “Yes, yes I suppose it must be.” His eyes flick beyond Martin, toward the doors. “Where’s Jon? I rather thought he’d be the one to do the deed.” Martin’s jaw clenches, his lips drawing into a thin line. “Ah, I see. Going it alone, are we? Probably for the best. Empathy only holds you back in the end.”
“What the hell would you know about empathy?”
“Mm. Quite. And look where it’s gotten me.”
Martin gives the man a shake, “No, Jonah. It’s gotten you nowhere. You’ve failed.”
“Have I?”
“You’re going to die, just like everyone else, just like fear. Entropy wins, every time.”
Magnus sighs. “Yes… pity. I suppose I always knew that, deep down. But it was wonderful while it lasted. I’ve seen more than I could have lived in a thousand lifetimes, and every moment was so –“
“Oh my god shut up!.” Martin throws Jonah down to the floor. It doesn’t seem to bother him. It only makes Martin’s voice darker, “Enough, enough of this. I’m ending it, all of it. I’m going to take it and drive it straight to hell, until all that’s left is the barren, lifeless void, and me. And when I’m all that’s left, I’ll go too, and then these things that you serve will get to feel a fear all their own as they slowly and painfully die.”
Jonah has the nerve to quirk a little smile. “That we serve.”
“Not anymore.”
“Well. As fun as all this melodrama is, enough is enough. We both know you don’t have it in you-“
Magnus cuts off in a gurgling gasp as Martin leans down, pulls him back up, and in a single fluid motion slams the knife through his ribs to its hilt. “That’s for Sasha,” Martin says, low and dangerous, his eyes drinking in the fear that has leapt onto Magnus’ face.
“M-martin, wait-“
He withdraws the blade and sinks it in again, lower, “That’s for Tim.”
“P-please, Martin!”
A third blow, with hands now slick with blood, “For Jon, and Melanie, and god dammit for me.”
Magnus can barely speak now, lungs clearly struggling as they fill with fluid, “P-please, Martin. I don’t want to die.”
Martin laughs, a mirthless, vengeful thing. “No? Neither did we.” He lands a final blow, deep and vicious and filled with every ounce of hate he’s ever felt, “But no-one escapes, at The End.”
He watches the life seep out of Jonah Magnus, listens with a sick, disgusted glee as the man he most loathes in the world, the man who made him into a monster, who shaped him into a weapon of pain, and regret, and anger, gasps and cries and pleads for a life that is already slipping away, slowly sinks into oblivion. When he finally falls still, Martin withdraws the blade and drops him to the floor, stepping back. “It’s better than you deserve,” he spits as blood spreads viscously across the floor.
A surge, in his mind, and Martin’s vision splinters, a dozen landscapes laid over one another haphazardly in a chaos of motion and sound. He gasps, the knife dropping from his limp hand as he is inundated, an ocean flooding into his brain unrestrained as the entire world, the entire universe, climbs into his head and demands to be Seen. There’s no room for thought, no room for breath, only the unending hurricane of screaming and pain and terror and sorrow and panic and torture and despair and-
Close the door, a voice that might just be him yells from the back of his mind, close it, before it’s too late. With the final vestige of his strength Martin pushes back, pressing against the deluge of visions until they finally start to give, carving out a path for himself within his own mind. And with a final shove, the latch clicks shut.
Martin comes back to himself on his knees, throat raw from screaming and power thrumming through every vein. He feels Beholding, feels it flexing him, pulling him, testing him out like a new limb, feels its loving caress as it pulls fear into him, through him. He feels strong. He feels whole.
“Mr. Magnus sir?” Martin turns, sees Rosie standing timidly by the door, “Is everything alright? I, I thought I heard-“
“Hello Rosie.” Martin smiles. Nosy Rosie. He’d always liked her. And now, he has the power to save her, free her. “You can go.”
“I, uh.” Her eyes flick from him to the body on the ground and back again, “I, I’m sorry, Mr. Blackwood, but-“
“Rosie.” He presses his newfound power into his voice, watches as her eyes go wide as she snaps to attention. “Go.”
She blinks, opens and closes her mouth a few times, then finally says. “Right. Y-y-yes, of course. S-sir.” She backs away without taking her eyes off of him. Just as she is about to slip through the door, she stops, and he Sees her shake off her Domain in its entirety, sees her become herself once again. “Thank you.” She says, her eyes filled with tears, though what kind he could not say, before fleeing.
Jon gasps his way up the final steps and sprints full tilt through reception, sparing no time to notice Rosie’s absence. Throwing the doors open, he calls, “Martin? Martin!”
He spots him across the room, his back turned, begins to run to him.
“Jon? What are you doing here?” His voice is too resonant, fills too much of the space.
Jon doesn’t notice. “Oh thank god, you’re still here, you’re still-“ He slams into Martin’s back, wraps him in a crushing, restraining embrace. Martin doesn’t fight it. “Martin, listen to me, you need to wait, you need to stop, and think about this because-“ He spies creeping red on the floor past Martin’s shoulder. He leans, sees the crumpled form on the floor. “What’s… who…”
“Elias.” Martin’s voice is calm, light and almost wistful, as if caught in a dream, “Jonah Magnus.”
Jon’s heart plunges through the floor. “No. No, Martin, you, you didn’t…” He drops his arms, backs away in denial, disbelief.
“I’m sorry, Jon.” He doesn’t really sound it.
“No, no no, this, this can’t, you can’t have…”
“I did. I am.”
“Why?!” Jon demands, stepping forward again to pull Martin around to face him. His eyes are pure green, edge to edge.
“You know why. I can’t let them take more worlds, inflict this upon countless others.” Jon opens his mouth to object, but Martin cuts him off, “I can’t, Jon. And now it’s too late.”
“Martin…” Jon feels himself crumbling, hope leeching away and, for the first time, leaving true and total despair. When he speaks again, it’s barely a whisper, “Oh god, Martin, what have you done?”
“Go tell the others. It’s over.”
Despair flashes into anger, “No, Martin, you don’t understand!” He lets out a strained, hysterical laugh of disbelief, hands tangling in the roots of his hair as he looks into the impassive face of what was once the man he loved.
“What?”
“I told them to go early!” Jon yells, gesturing vaguely back, “I knew you were going to do this, because you just can’t get it through your thick, stubborn head that it’s not all about you. I knew it, I knew you were going to crucify yourself for the crime of not being perfect. So I told them to do it now, and that I’d come and keep you talking until it was too late, but now… now…” He starting to cry, tears of frustration and terror and regret and bone deep sorrow.
“Oh, Jon.” He thinks he can hear some of Martin in there, now, genuine hurt, empathy, even beyond his untouchable veneer.
It only makes it worse. “How could you do this?” Jon shouts, his voice rough with emotion, “How could you – you promised, Martin, you swore to me that you wouldn’t. How could you leave me?”
“I’m still here, Jon.” Martin reaches out to caress Jon’s face.
He swats it away. “No you’re not. You’re a puppet, a plaything for a god. And you did it on purpose. Without me.”
Finally, a true response – Martin’s face crumples, and he steps back, hurt. “I’m still me, Jon. I’m still… I’m still here.”
“How would you even know.”
Martin visibly steels himself. “I’m sorry Jon. Really, I am. But it’s too late. You can hate me, you can scream at me, but I can’t change it back. I had to do this. And you promised.”
“I promised? I promised? What, like you promised not to throw yourself away at the first opportunity, like that promise?” He shoves Martin with both hands as hard as he can. It barely makes him take a step back. “Like the promise that you wouldn’t leave me behind, that you’d always stay? Like that promise?” Another shove. Martin looks caught between the urge to reach out to Jon, and the knowledge that he’ll reject it. “Like the promise that you’d protect me, that you’d protect everyone, instead of slowly killing us all? Like that promise?” A final shove and Jon turns away, bringing his hands to his face to muffle his furious sobs and try to stave off the hyperventilation that threatens.
“I’m not leaving, Jon. We can still be together, here. Until it’s over.”
“You aren’t. Listening. How can you still not be listening? Georgie, and Melanie, and Basira are down there, right now, fighting those, those things, and they’re going to blow it up, now!”
“Don’t worry, Jon, I can call off the servitors. The others will be fine. Everything will be fine. They can’t light it, they don’t have… they.. they don’t…” Martin frowns, moving normally for the first time as he pats his pockets down searching for… “Oh… Oh, no.”
The world rocks, a deep rumble shaking the foundations of the Panopticon, and Martin screams, his voice distorted and warped as he crumples to his knees.
Jon’s anger evaporates in an instant, “Martin!” He drops down beside him, gripping his shoulders.
“Jon, I – aaagh!” Martin hunches over, bracing against some unseen force as the world starts to bend, melting and twisting and snapping back in stuttering jolts.
“Martin, we need to go,” Jon says as firmly as he can manage through the still streaming tears, grabbing at Martin’s arm and pulling.
“I can’t, Jon,” he gasps, his eyes wide as he looks up at Jon, two pleading green beacons.
“We don’t have time for this,” Jon snarls, digging in his heels and pulling. He drops him though when Martin cries out in agony, clutching at his head as the world shakes again, another distant rumble rolling up from below.
“I can… I can withstand it,” Martin grits through his teeth, “I… I just, need to-“
This time, the sound is not a rumble but a clear explosion, scattering debris a high counterpoint to the low boom. Martin’s voice distorts further as he screams again, clawing at the stone floor.
“You don’t have to withstand it, Martin, just come on!” He slots his arms under Martin’s and tries to physically lift him. He doesn’t get far.
“No, Jon, I can feel her, The Mother, the tapes, she’s pulling, and I…” he growls inarticulately against some unseen pain, “I won’t let it.”
“Martin, it’s too late.” Jon insists, placing his forehead against Martin’s in the vain hope that it might help him see. “We need to go.”
“I can’t, Jon,” Martin says, meeting Jon’s eyes again, and suddenly his expression changes, to one like panic, “Jon. Jon, you need to get out of here, now.”
“Not without you.”
“I don’t… I don’t want you to see me, after. What’s left of me.”
“Then come with-“
“I can’t protect you from this, Jon. Go.”
Jon grabs the sides of his face fiercely, “I am not going anywhere without you, Martin.”
Martin grabs him back, his fingers bruising Jon’s shoulders, “You will die here, Jon.” He’s beginning to cry too, tears flowing silently down his cheeks.
“Then I guess I’m going to die.”
“No!” Another blast, and ceiling caves in the space behind Martin. “Please, Jon, I can’t – I won’t lose you, not like this…”
“Well, tough. Where you go, I go.”
Even through the tears and the panic, Martin’s mouth quirks up fondly. “That’s the deal.”
There’s a loud crack and the building shunts down sharply to one side, nearly sending them both sprawling. Instead, they clutch tight to one another, faces buried in shoulders and arms locked tight. When things settle and they pull back, it is as if a switch has been flipped – Martin is suddenly alert, intense, and fully, fully focused on him. “Okay.”
Jon’s brow furrows, “Okay what?”
“Okay. You’re right. The knife’s just there. Do it.”
Jon reels back, distress and disgust and denial surging through him, “I’m not going to kill you, Martin!”
“You have to. Otherwise this is all for nothing, everything is.” He reaches out, grabs the knife, presses it into Jon’s hands “Cut the tether. Send them away.”
“No.” Jon looks to him with a plea in his eyes. He doesn’t drop the knife.
“Then why are you still here?” Martin asks, gentle, kind, cupping Jon’s face in one hand.
“I won’t leave you-“
“If you don’t do this, you will leave me. And I won’t be able to follow.” He guides the tip of the knife to his chest with his free hand. “Maybe we both die,” he says softly, eyes on the glinting blade, “Probably, even. But… maybe not.” His eyes come back to Jon’s, and for just a moment, he thinks he can see his eyes, his real eyes, red with tears and brimming with hope, “Maybe… maybe everything works out. And we end up somewhere else.”
Jon’s hands are shaking, his chest convulsing with unwept sobs. “Together?” He asks, aware it sounds weak, childish, aware that this is a fool’s hope, a mirage of salvation, and still utterly unwilling, unable, to abandon it.
Martin smiles, and it wavers, splinters, but remains. “One way or another. Together.”
Jon looks down at his hands, at the place where the knife presses into the soft fabric of Martin’s shirt, so close to the heart he so loves. “I… I c-can’t, Martin, I…”
A squeeze to his cheek brings Jon’s eye’s back to Martin’s. “It has to be you, Jon. The Eye won’t let me. I… I’m glad it’s you.”
Fresh tears, fresh sobs wrack Jon’s frame. “Are you sure, Martin?” Please say no, please say this isn’t happening, please say there’s another way, please, please, please.
Martin lets out the tiniest, breathy laugh. “No.” His other hand comes up, and now he’s fully cradling Jon’s face, his hands warm and soft and his. “But I love you.”
Fuck. “I love you too,” Jon chokes out through his weeping, looking out through tears to try to memorize this face, every freckle and curl, to try to freeze the world by sheer force of will, to simply refuse to take one more step down this Route.
But Time stops for no one, and when Martin leans forward, and places his lips gentle against Jon’s, he knows. Jon kisses back, a warm, simple, utterly loving thing. And with their lips still brushing, and Martin’s hands still cradling his head, and world collapsing around them, and Jon’s sobs making his whole body shake, he throws all his weight into the blade, and slots it straight into Martin’s heart.
Ending 2: So Cannon Non-Compliant It Wraps All The Way Around To Being Cannon Compliant Again
[Author’s Note: This one stretches the limits of the lore in some fairly substantial ways. If you’re not into that, choose a different ending.]
Jon knows what Martin is going to do. He can feel it from the moment the group comes to a consensus, he can feel it when he visits Martin as he broods above ground, staring out at the ruined landscape that was once London, he can feel it as he tucks himself against Martin’s side in a parody of sleep. He couldn’t tell you how, couldn’t point to any single word or action or quirk of the lip that tipped him off. He just Knows Martin, to his very core, and he knows what Martin is going to do. And he knows he himself made a promise, a promise to let Martin do what he needs to do. But, it seems like they’re both in the business of breaking promises these days, or plotting to, anyway, and fair’s fair, he figures. So he beats him to it.
He isn’t positive it’s going to work. Martin had said it would have to be him, after all. But Jon recognizes this knife, has held it once before, and if Peter Lukas believed it would kill Jonah Magnus then, he doesn’t see why he couldn’t do it now. And what’s the worst that could happen? He fails? Watches a knife slide into Magnus’ back and nothing happens? At the very least, it’ll be satisfying, even if it isn’t effective.
Rosie looks up as he clears the stairs, opens her mouth. Sees the knife in his hand, stalls. He’s not sure if it’s her, or some cosmic force that stops her, but all the same, as he passes her inert form and pulls open the door, he says, one last time, “Thank you, Rosie.”
And there is Jonah Magnus, still frozen in his unnatural pose – knelt on the center of the dais, his arms stretched out wide, his head thrown back in an unseeing stare as his entire body leans back at an impossible angle, canted to look straight up into the twisting lenses and mirrors that hang above. His eyes, no longer differentiated into sclera, iris, and pupil, glow a uniform green. Jon approaches him, flexing his wrist experimentally and watching as the blade reflects the light of Magnus’ eyes. “You can’t hear me, I don’t think,” Jon says softly. Magus continues to babble, unblinking. “But I’m going to say it anyway. Maybe you’ll understand, somehow, right before the end.” He steps up and places the tip of the blade against Magnus’ back, just hard enough to extract a tiny pinprick of blood. “You have lost, Jonah Magnus. All that time, torturing us, killing us in the name of bringing about your own immortality? Wasted. You are going to die, one way or another, and everything you ever fought for, everything you ever dreamed of creating? It’s going to be erased right along with you.” He leans in to hiss the last words directly in Magnus’ ear, whether or not the old man will hear them. “And god, am I going to enjoy doing it.” And he plunges the blade into Magnus’ back.
The ceaseless chanting cuts off in an inhuman shriek, a sound like microphone feedback piercing the air. Jon is brought to his knees instantly, his hands flying up to clap over his ears even as Magnus spasms and contorts before him, reaching ineffectually towards the blade lodged in his back.
It ends as suddenly as it started, silence falling as Jonah collapses into a lifeless heap, sightless, human eyes staring unseeing into the air. Jon takes a few gasping breaths against the adrenaline racing through his veins, before following the dead man’s eye line and glaring up at the Eye he cannot see. “Alright,” he growls, gaining his feet defiantly, “Now. That’s one pupil dead, and it would seem your Archivist is still MIA. So, who does that leave?”
And then, Jon is gone.
Martin runs. Sprints, actually. He takes turning after turning through the tunnels that are by now much too familiar, his heart pounding with an anxiety he somehow already knows to be true, but refuses to believe. He promised, he tells himself, over and over, he promised, he promised, he promised…
Rosie looks petrified, huddled behind her desk with her knees drawn up to her chin. Martin can’t spare the time. He rips the doors open, throwing himself through-
-and drops to his knees. “No,” he whispers, eyes filling with tears, “No, no no no no NO!” He slams a fist into the hard stone ground, then desperately drags himself back to his feet and across the intervening space, grabbing Jon by the shoulders where he hangs, arms flung wide and head thrown back, babbling nightmares blindly up at the ceiling. At the corners of his eyes, hairline cracks spread out across his skin, leaking green light as his body unravels under the full force of Beholding’s gaze. “Why, Jon?” Martin demands through his tears, giving him an ineffectual shake, “Why? It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, it was supposed to be me, Jon, why would you – why would you…” He breaks off as he begins to sob, wrecked, full throated things, and he pulls Jon into an embrace that goes unreturned. “You bastard, you bastard. You swore to me, you swore you’d let me do this! You bloody, self-sacrificing, stubborn prick!” Speech becomes impossible for a moment as the sobs become too violent, stealing his breath. “It’s going to kill you! It’s going to kill you and take me, and you’ll have died for no reason, Jon, why would you-“
The Panopticon jolts, Sending Martin tumbling to the ground, and a pulse of something rips through his mind, stunning him for a moment. When he returns to himself, he Knows. “Fuck,” he snarls, clambering back to his feet to look Jon once again in the face. The cracks have spread, weaving his skin with a surreal webbing, “Goddamn it, god damn it!” He steps away, clutching at his hair while his breathing comes faster, faster, faster. “We can’t, we can’t stop it. They’re, they’re going to do it, now, and-“ Another jolt, an audible rumble, and static once more pulses through Martin’s mind. When he comes to on the floor, Jon’s face is barely even perceptible as a face, anymore, more fissure than skin. And a knife Martin recognizes lies inches from his hand. He Knows he won’t need it. Slowly, Martin gains his feet, and wraps Jon into his arms one last time. “I’m sorry, Jon, I’m sorry,” Martin gasps, clutching what remains of his love to himself as he weeps. “I See, now, I See you, and I’m sorry. I tried, I did, I wanted… I’m sorry, I… I…” A rumble, and this time the shaking of the building doesn’t stop, but intensifies, starts to tilt… “I love you, Jon. I love you, and I’m sorry, and I love you…”
As The Panopticon tumbles, the fabric of Jon’s body splits apart in Martin’s arms, and the world goes white.