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“Even if it’s just messing around, or you’re just pretending to be nice to me— // Even if the you, there, isn’t really the real you…”
The fire at his fingertips felt familiar. Grounding. Destructive—like everything his hands brought about him.
When he has first learned the spell that drew wrath out of a lantern, he had thought it amusing—vampires were only hypothetically real, and regardless of if they were or not, swinging a giant ass lantern on a pole reminded him of times when a sword and bow were his only lines of defense with red creeping all over his skin.
But then more and more proof began to arise about the truth of this world: the two who took flight from the edge of a cliff, the boarded-up castle ruins, and the desecration of the beacons they’d put so much time and energy into exploring to find. Something was at work against them—and Martyn was more than a little annoyed.
At first, he had thought it might be C.H.E.S.T.; even when he wasn’t actively looking for then, the fuckers managed to find him. He was psyching himself up for another fist fight, maybe a little bit of fire if his lantern attack burned them to a crisp. Then he’d grab the L.O.O.T. and beeline it the hell out of this world. But C.H.E.S.T. had never humored the laws of the world—he’s acutely reminded of the time he sucker punched an agent in a Pokemon world—so it made no sense for them to start now. Besides, they would have had to actively follow Martyn into this world, which was completely stupid as they could just attack dozens of other worlds in the meantime.
Not C.H.E.S.T. then.
(Heh. Sucker punched. Ah, his humor was truly terrible, no wonder Doc hated it.)
Martyn’s second idea were creatures told in legends—or rather, fractured log entries left at his platform. He’d found them digging through the system, waiting for a new rift to open up. The author’s name had been corrupted, and many parts of the code had been destroyed as well, but he’d managed to piece together that there was once another “Datastream Defender” long before the datastream was a thing, and that otherworldly beings named, well, Otherworlders were like their version of C.H.E.S.T. He failed to find any substantial info on his predecessor, but the one uncorrupted file was the extensive research they’d done on Otherworlders.
But they were recorded to be completely wiped out, at least substantially enough to no longer pose a threat, and he himself had never encountered such creatures—it would be highly unlikely to encounter them here, and the things Martyn had been seeing were not necessarily lining up with eldritch interdimensional beings.
Not Otherworlders then.
…Damn, he was all out of ideas. Vampires it was then.
So he took up his lantern, crashed the quartet vampire meeting, and summoned fire to surround him and burn the vampires alive. The bright flame warmly illuminated the abandoned castle basking in the blood moon’s glow. Bats scattered around them, climbing their way into the sky and over the cliff’s horizon, but Scott and Pyro stood at the altar in front of the warm beacon, confusion covering their faces.
(Oh, how Martyn wanted to wipe that look off of his face so badly.)
Accusations fell from his lips, playing his natural cocky grin and tone as he hefted his lantern pole across his shoulders, twirling the silver sword in his hands. Scott raised an eyebrow, his vividly ruby-red eyes matching his nobleman attire perfectly and yet standing out amongst it all. He questioned Martyn on what he was talking about, feigning innocence. Then, in just a few short moments, Scott was up in Martyn’s face, sword against sword. Martyn pushed his sword back, going in for a slash to—
(save him save him don’t let his time go to someone else i promised i’ll keep you safe i don’t want to hurt you i trust you i’ll save you right through your chest—)
—draw the food they craved so readily out from his own body, but Scott was too nimble. His eyes lit up, a fire burning in them that Martyn was oh-so-familiar with, and he quickly dove back into their fray. Sparks flew, their feet moving in a dance that was familiar to Martyn; he grabbed his abandoned lantern pole and ignited the familiar destruction burning in his veins. Fire caught onto Scott’s coat as well as his own; Martyn bounced away from the vampire, desperately extinguishing the flames burning into his skin before he fell unconscious. He turned back around to see Scott standing on the table, his head held high with a confident smirk. Cleo, near him, was bent over, obviously in pain.
Martyn brandished his sword. Scott twirled his axe.
“Dawn comes yet again.”
And in a single moment, Scott had turned into dust under his fingers.
(He vaguely remembered the events after: him and Cleo running, her still holding the side of her neck; the pure horror he felt at seeing Scott alive once more and bloodlust in his eyes; how he ran and ran until a strike from Scott in the back threw him over the edge of the cliff and down the side of the mountain. He passed out somewhere during that.
He remembered feeling guilty as he fell over, though.)
“Even if you’re actually a demon, or you’ve just played me all along— // Even if the you, there, isn’t actually the person I’m fated to be with—”
Scott didn’t return to the village after that. None of the vampires did. For some reason, Martyn was disappointed at that.
Their cover was blown—obviously—and the townsfolk knew the truth behind the desecration of the beacons. They had all come to talks about what to do, but before Martyn could really process what all just happened in said meeting—his feverish state didn’t really help with his memory—he found himself standing with the others, back at the castle, with Owen in front of them, a grave and enraged expression etched onto his features.
(His eyes were just as vibrantly red as Scott’s. But they stirred nothing in Martyn.)
He dully listened as Owen recounted the last massacre of Oakhurst, and his anger with the human race. Against the wishes of the humans, Owen turned into a flock of bats and disappeared once more, leaving them with only fractured pieces of a tale two hundred years old. How Scott got entangled in it, Martyn had no clue.
“For Oakhurst!!” was the cry that lifted from the humans’ tongues on top of the broken stone wall where flames once burned Martyn and Scott.
…But there was something more important. Martyn’s communicator had finally finished scanning the world. When Martyn first entered this world, it was a complete accident. Although rifts with L.O.O.T. in them automatically closed once safely removed, some worlds simply opened and closed without any patterns. He’d been drifting around the datastream while Doc was working on a new backdoor into their enemy’s organization, and— whoosh! He found himself crumpled on the ground of a dreary landscape, beside a road, the rift closing behind him
He had thanked his predecessor that his communicator’s functions—primarily the changing clothes function—still worked… mostly. Something about this world interfered with its scanning ability, and thus, figuring out how the hell to get out of this world was also taking a freakishly slow time.
So Martyn resigned himself to his fate and played the role of a spoiled noble’s son who didn’t know how to get about in the world. And yet, the face of the Datastream Defender couldn’t be further from the truth. The amount of bloodshed he’d seen and caused with his own two hands had long become background noise for him. The scars on his skin that never stuck outside of the world that made them, the way he was incapable of leaving traces of his existence behind, the fleeting touches had become a fool’s dream—thus was the Datastream Defender.
(He’s still annoyed that the only failsafe on that transporter was a game of Pong. Really, Doc? Not even two-factor authentication on a highly unstable digitization device?)
And then—Scott was here. Once more, the man with blue hair was everywhere Martyn went, never leaving his side despite never remembering him.
Martyn shook Scott’s brilliant red eyes from his vision, his snobby noble’s cloak (his beach attire decorated with scales) lighting a fire in Martyn that he wanted to squash. He clicked open his communicator and read the new message labeled “WORLD SCAN COMPLETE.”
RIFT: change the presence of vampires in Oakhurst (current status: PRESENT).
…So he had to get rid of the vampires, then? He tucked away his communicator and grabbed his lantern pole, slinging it across his shoulders. The sun was bright at its apex—Martyn scoffed, the sun probably didn’t burn them, just like how his silver sword didn’t kill Scott. What stories about vampires that Martyn had grown up learning about were true at this point?
The wooden stake in his inventory gained ten more pounds. He yanked it out and stared at it for a few moments before he rolled his eyes, shoving it back in his inventory.
Kill the vampires and leave this place. He had killed before—had won an entire timed death game by spilling the blood of everyone there (even his own teammate partner soulmate)—and vampires were no match against the Datastream Defender. He’d taken down entire organizations, defied eldritch beings that wanted him to die. Four vampires wouldn’t last long now that Martyn had an actual stake in the game.
(Heh. Stake. He really needed to stop making dad jokes in his head.)
However, Martyn quickly ran into a problem: their whole “turning into bats” thing was exceptionally annoying, especially considering that they no longer cared about hiding their true identities. Beacons were desecrated and reilluminated as Martyn traveled the nearby lands alone. Sometimes he’d encounter his fellow humans: Cleo joined him to consecrate the beacon in the pale oak woods (it was weird seeing her skin so… natural), Sausage babbled his ear off at the Town’s beacon (he liked the version of him who was a ghast, less trying-to-amputate-Martyn’s-limbs), and Ren and his cursed tongue kept him company at the lake (…he wasn’t sure how to feel about Ren still).
But eventually, standing on the beach at dusk, with most of the beacons reilluminated—only the Castle still under dark influence—Martyn finally found one of them. He was just standing there, his leather boots off as his toes curled into the sand; Martyn couldn’t read his expression as he stared out into the sea where the blood moon was peeking over the horizon once more.
Scott was as beautiful as the day they first really met, back in Limited Life. When green was the color that Martyn loved, and green was the color that Scott wore then.
(It was not the color he wore best.)
“…You’re staring.”
Martyn scoffed. “You’re out here in the middle of the beach staring at the moonrise when you’re actively wanted by the entire town. One of us is not like the other.”
“You haven’t attacked me,” Scott looked at him and smirked.
“…Your guard is down. It would be an unfair fight.”
“Oh? And your little ambush at the Castle wasn’t unfair?” The vampire raised an eyebrow. “We weren’t expecting you, you know.”
Martyn shook his head. “You knew,” he whispered.
“…You intrigue me,” Scott replied, his smirk fading as he looked back to the blood moon. “You’re not a nobleman’s son, no matter how well you craft your web of lies nor how much you insist upon it. But… you’re not like the others, either. There’s something about you that interests me; it’s something I never would’ve expected out of a human.”
“I’ve heard that before.” From a dog-king, from a siren, from a zombie, from a teleporter, from a Watcher, from a mushroom man, from a giant, from a rat—
Scott turned to him, his eyes turned into sloshing blood by the glow of the celestial body that began its solidarity reign in the sky once more. He opened his mouth to let saccharine words fall from his lips:
“You feel like a vampire.”
Martyn tried to hide the way his shoulders squeezed and how his hand gripped his pole a little tighter. How dare Scott compare him to the beings who were keeping his stuck in this world and had tried to kill his friends—
“Not in the bloodsucking, creatures of the night way,” Scott cut his thoughts off, flipping his hand mindlessly, “but in the… time aspect. The way you hold yourself underneath that snobbish attitude of yours… You feel as though you’ve weathered many horrors, and yet physically you cannot be more than 16.” The blood red eyes languidly eyed him up and down. “Immortal, in a sense. Like myself.”
“…I’m 23, actually.” He didn’t know why he admitted that to the man he was trying to kill, but he’d done crazier things with Scott. “But I was 16 when I started.”
“Started?” Scott cocked his head. Martyn glanced away, biting his lips closed. “…I see. Well, I suppose we should move onto the main act, then.” The sound of the diamond axe made Martyn look up. An otherworldly aura cloaked Scott as that look of bloodlust coated his face.
(Oh, how Martyn wanted to wipe that look off of his face so badly.)
Martyn readied the pole in his hand, then took a deep breath. He reached into his inventory and pulled out the wooden stake he had crafted back when he was first establishing his presence in Oakhurst. It was clean and sharp; if he didn’t know himself better, he would’ve been impressed for his first try.
With a flick of his wrist, he threw it into the ocean to be subjected to driftwood status.
Scott stared at him, wide-eyed. For just a moment, the bloodlust had completely vanished, leaving behind the Scott Martyn had encountered over and over again. Martyn let out a sharp laugh; guess he wiped it off this time.
“Silver doesn’t kill you and the sunlight doesn’t hurt you either. I’ll just kill you with my own abilities, then.”
Scott’s surprise melted back into his cocky bloodlust, and he dashed for Martyn. Martyn took a deep breath and pulled back his lantern pole. Then, in a wide arc, the fire in his chest threw Scott back with a low scream. Martyn leapt through the flames, ignoring the searing marks burned into his skin as he brought his lantern down on Scott. The vampire blocked it with his axe, but seemed surprised when Martyn landed on his feet, still holding his weapon.
“…Your pole should be broken,” Scott hissed. Martyn gave him a smirk.
“You already know I’m different.” Then he let the flames loose one more time; a wall of passion separated the two, bringing light to the deserted beach.
“Your cooldown—!” Scott glowered at him. “All the holy abilities have cooldowns, you yourself said so! You shouldn’t be able to just ignore it!”
“I can if I want to; consider it one of those ‘vampire-like’ things you sensed about me. Like you, however, I don’t want to bring attention to myself. This is the first time I’ve disregarded it.” He brandished his lantern again. “There’s no need to hide it anymore. I just need to kill you and your friends, then I can leave.”
Scott took a hesitant step back. “…It seems I’ve mistaken you. You are no vampire. So then… What are you, Martyn Woodhurst?”
—The question surprised Martyn more than it should have.
“What happened to you?”
Red coral had ingrained itself on the side of his head, channeling red madness he’d experienced three times before. What was once a beautiful crown given by his king had become a deadly symbol of eternal loyalty.
He’d grown to not push down his undying loyalty. He tried, after Ren, and yet he couldn’t stop how he would grow so, so close with his partners, until it was impossible to tell them apart.
The sea itself had dragged them together, given him the boost he needed to save his partner. Where blood had been spilt so much onto himself that it coated his eyes permanently, his consort’s crown beautifully matched his own lover’s crown. When he turned red, he knew that his lover’s own would grow even more great. More in majesty to his subservience.
“I suppose it’s just a byproduct of turning red,” he laughed. “Like how you’ve been growing gills and scales and sometimes have a tail in the water.”
His lover had given him such sad eyes then, and gently cradled his hand. “Martyn…”
“...I like it,” he admitted. “It matches yours.”
“Does it hurt?”
Martyn couldn’t lie to him. Even though he was now a man with no sense, only destruction, the vestiges of Red Winter were sign enough of Martyn’s true beliefs. “Feels like I’ve got a permanent headache. It’ll go away, though.”
Scott sighed, bringing his hands up to massage the base of the coral headpiece. Martyn felt himself relaxing, leaning into the soothing touch. “I’ll take care of you, okay? You’ve done so much now, take a breather. You can trust me.”
Martyn hated how Scott didn’t use his song.
Martyn recollected himself from the sudden memory, and found Scott waiting patiently for him. The aura around him had faded, yet not completely vanished. Like a hunter, trying to gauge how truly terrifying his prey was.
Martyn hated it. He hated how Scott wasn’t fearful of him, trying to save his life from the man trying to kill him. But he hated that he wanted Scott to feel that way. Limited Life was one thing—Scott had given him his time over and over again of his own free will. But here, there was no partnership, there was no bond, there were no Watchers bearing down on them to kill kill kill.
“A lost pirate.”
(And yet.)
“No, that’s not what you are.” Scott held himself a bit higher.
“An icy mountaintop rancher.”
(And yet.)
“No.” He took a step forward, then two more.
“A gold-loving sailor. A rat, too.”
(He hated how it wasn’t there.)
“No, these are all lies.” The fire licked at his coat and yet Scott moved through it. Martyn felt a sad smile creep on his lips, letting his weapon fall to the ground.
“A nobleman’s son, abandoned on the side of the road near Oakhurst. Your slayer, the one who killed you first. The one who watched you reappear from the dead, and the one you knocked off the side of a crumbling bridge.”
Scott was right in front of him. The bloodlust had been replaced with a lust for knowledge, as if he would starve without knowing who Martyn was—who Martyn really was. The boy dressed in green, never abandoning his pitch-black headband no matter what.
(Just like every other time they’d met, Scott always had to know who Martyn was—the Datastream Defender underneath. And just like every other time before, Martyn couldn’t tell him no.)
“I find myself hoping again.”
He should’ve batted away Scott’s outreached hand that grabbed the side of his face—he could claw him open with the points of his claws—and yet he could only lean into it. Just like the webbed hands that rubbed into his head that day.
“…I am the Datastream Defender. I protect the datastream from those who wish to ruin it. I travel between worlds to do so, and am stuck in this one. In order to leave this world, I must remove all vampires from Oakhurst. I have to leave to protect the world.”
Scott stared at him for a few moments; his thumb began caressing Martyn’s cheek, the cold finger raising goosebumps all over his arms. “Tell me.” His voice was husky, like all the times he’d coaxed Martyn under his siren’s song. Perhaps he was luring Martyn into a thrall here, but he could no longer care—here was Scott, holding him so preciously.
“I was your lover in another world. And you’ve found me again, like you always do.”
“Even if that sweet voice of yours you whisper with // Even if our memories together that swim through the dark, even if they’re all lies…”
The night mountain wind nipped Martyn’s face, reminding him of the many nicks and scrapes he’d acquired over the years. Scott, a creature of the night, was infinitely colder. And yet, Martyn accepted the touch of death settling itself on top of his hand planted in the rocky dirt as if it was warm once more.
“You could stay here,” Scott finally broke the silence. “In Oakhurst. You wouldn’t have to leave again.”
They’d come up here to leave their battle behind and properly talk. Martyn didn’t want to talk—he wanted to get the hell out of this world, but he killed Scott three times already; talking with Scott was the least he could do, he guessed.
“I’d get stir-crazy,” Martyn laughed. “And Doc would come ripping this world apart eventually, which would just kill you.” Regardless, I haven’t even told Doc of our relationship, Martyn sighed inside. After Ren…
“What if I turned you into a vampire?” Scott smiled. Martyn glanced away, unable to face the look on his face. “…Martyn?” His voice had gotten much quieter.
“It won’t stay,” he murmured. He didn’t need to speak up—he knew Scott had exceptional hearing, even ignoring his newfound vampiric abilities (if he had those). “Anything that happens in this world doesn’t carry out of this world. Besides, I’m as good as immortal anyways. So anything you do to me here… it won’t ever stay.”
“…How many times have we met, Martyn?”
“Too many times,” Martyn let out a bitter laugh. “More often than not in death games.”
“Is that where we met for the first time?”
“…Yeah. In the fourth one… we partnered up. Became lovers. I won.”
“How did you win?”
“I killed you.” He hated how easily he admitted it. “I was the last one standing. You offered your life to me. Multiple times.”
Scott was silent for a while. “Can you tell me about it? About the times we met?”
Martyn huffed. “No.” The memories that weren’t of Scott had become muddled and faded, and his personal encounters with Scott he hadn’t bothered to log into his entries. Didn’t want people to know.
(He didn’t want to recount all the ways they ended in Martyn returning to the datastream with only bittersweet memories that he alone possessed. He was selfish and tired. Oh so very tired.)
“Can I make you?”
Mattyn whipped his head to look at Scott, bug-eyed. “What the— the hell man, you can’t just casually suggest making someone do something!” And yet, a laugh slipped out of Martyn as he said all that.
Scott rolled his eyes, his lips pulling up. “I’m a vampire, Martyn. We have thralls.”
“Ugh, finally, something that’s true about you guys.” Martyn rolled his eyes, but didn’t feel opposed to the idea. “…What will it do?”
“You’ll feel like you’re drifting into a deep slumber, basically. When you wake up, you’ll remember what I asked of you, but you won’t remember doing it… if that makes sense.”
It did, much to his own chagrin. Too much. “It’s like a siren’s call.”
“Yes, actually. They’re quite similar.” Scott gave him a smirk. “Why the correlation, my dear Martyn?”
Martyn shuddered, offering Scott his hands. “You’ll find out,” he admitted quietly. Scott took his hands gently and put their foreheads together.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, and Martyn felt his body relax at the emotions flooding his voice. It wasn’t the raspy words Scott used to mix in with his siren’s call, but more of strawberry syrup filling you up. “You should share your burden with people. I’m here for you. Just focus on my voice and drift, Martyn.”
He was out faster than he expected.
“This is all an ephemeral dream, surely. // In the end, even if I’m just being {cat}fished here…”
When Scott made him do things under his siren’s call, back on their little island during brief moments of respite, Martyn only had a hazy recollection of what happened during it. Scott told him it was because usually, sirens used their calls to drown their victims; when not being used for that, they were primarily for distraction. So the careful way Scott used it on Martyn wasn’t its intended purpose—but like with many things Martyn had encountered over his years as the Datastream Defender, he’d learned to adapt.
Scott’s vampiric thrall was a bit different despite what the vampire himself said. Instead of lazily floating in a warm lake with the sun shining on his face, he felt as if he was wrapped in silken darkness, the weight of the moon comfortingly cradling him and luring him to slumber. He was weightless, and yet he wasn’t afraid of falling—someone would be there to catch him.
When he drifted back into the world of the waking, memories slowly trickled back in: of how Scott performed a “routine” check to make sure Martyn was comfortably under (which made Martyn think what the hell man do you do this regularly enough to need that), then asked him to describe the other times they’d met.
Scott’s arms were tightly encircling him, he realized as he drifted back into his physical body. He slowly brought his arms around him, his limbs slowly feeling like not useless potato sacks.
He didn’t just recount his encounters with Scott—he recounted the death games, the casual changing species, the pirates and the rats—hell he even recounted the Red Winter. He recounted every little thing he brought out of those worlds on his shoulders, and how always, always, Scott would appear when he needed him most.
(When he first saw Scott in Oakhurst, he thought that streak had finally broken. He was doing fine, ignoring the whole part where he accidentally fell through the rift to this place anyways. But in hindsight, he was kind of stupid. Doc liked to remind him of that usually, but he wasn’t here so Martyn had to do it this time. Or, he supposed, Scott did.)
“…I’m sorry,” Martyn murmured. Scott pulled away, his ruby-red eyes filled with a blood moon-dyed ocean swirling inside his irises.
“I’m here. Okay?”
Martyn laughed bitterly. “You’ll die. I’ll leave. What about this world is any different from all the others? You can’t do anything that will stick with me.”
“But we will find each other again. We have every time until now. I once promised you to never leave your side, so let me promise you something else, too:I will never stop looking for you.”
I will never leave your side, the siren promised with his song. Martyn believed him, watching him bleeding out in his arms.
I will always find you, the vampire promised with his thrall. Martyn wanted to believe him, holding his bleeding heart.
“So don’t give up. I’ll find a way to make it permanent,” Scott stroked his cheek, his fingers still icy cold. Martyn laughed bitterly once more, leaning into the fingers and baring his neck for Scott. Scott stared into Martyn’s eyes for an eternity.
“Okay,” Martyn breathed. Scott smiled, leaning into his neck and suckling it. Martyn let his eyes slip close as he felt the new day bathe them both in newfound support and belief, relishing the pain that reminded him of days spent under the sea.
“Dawn comes yet again.”