[Post Canon Update Open Log] Wasteland, Baby!

[lofi_charm]

Wasteland, Baby!

The Day That We Watched The Death of the Sun [ Blackwood Brews ]

It's a rainy morning when Blackwood Brews reopens, brass keys jangling loudly as Martin pulls them from his pocket. It's strange to be back here. There's this constant feeling that there's another shoe waiting to drop. A phantom Sword of Damocles. Pumpkin Hollow is far from perfect, certainly, but it's that familiar imperfect, predictable and comparatively easy. But after everything that he and Jon endured for... however long, Martin's already forgotten what Jon said it was aside from it feeling far too short... Some of those worlds within the world, they felt so... real. Dreamlike and permanent, like they'd been there forever. The sick village comes to mind. Not to mention that dreadful house.

The scent of tea leaves snaps Martin from his introspection. There's a bit of dust. He should get that cleaned up before Jon gets here with the pastry order from Max.

Water boils as rain falls outside. Dishes are washed, tea sets prepared. The dark wood and bookshelf-lined walls of the shop feel cozy under the rainy sky.

Martin almost doesn't notice as someone finally enters once the shop is open.

He startles lightly, snapped out of his stupor as the bell on the door rings. "Oh--- Hello there! Welcome in! Have a seat wherever you like. Can I get anything started for you?"

The Cloud & The Cold & Those Jeans You Have On [ Morning Fog ]

Sometimes, in the very, very early morning, the fog will be much thicker than usual as it rolls in off the shoreline.

A figure stands on the beach, in the very thick of it, silhouette almost obscured despite its size. A Thermos-like flask in hand, Martin gazes out at the sea.

He came here to be alone. Mornings on the shore are quiet if you stand far away enough from the marina. Between the distance and the effects of his Lonely fog, the far-off shouting of the crew of the Mipha's Grace as they load up their ship for the day sounds almost unreachably distant, like the echo of another world. A world of people and gatherings, so otherworldly to Martin's solitude.

During their apocalyptic hike and their stay at the safehouse, Jon and Martin were separated meaningfully... maybe twice? In all that time that felt like years, just a few brief moments apart. And Martin loves Jon more than anything or anyone, but a thing like him... Well, he's always needed a healthy dose of solitude to think straight, and he won't find that at the cottage or at the tea shop.

But maybe occasionally it won't hurt to be interrupted, to be kept from sinking too deep. Either by a friend or a fellow seeker of a moment's peace in a loud and busy world.

You Gaze Unafraid as They Sob from the City Ruins
[Closed to Jon]

As things slowly start easing back to normal, Martin and Jon spend fewer and fewer days laid up in bed, dead to the world. But every so often, they take a day to themselves to just be.

Martin has been almost ghost-like, his own struggles to reconnect with this world drawing the Lonely to him in noticeable but largely innocuous ways. (Aside from a bit of fog in the house, but what can you do.) Jon is woken on a lazy morning not by hands and a lover's voice, but the phantom of a kiss to the forehead, the cloying smell of bacon being cooked, and the sound of the ocean through a window that was not open the night before. Traces of Martin's presence.

Jon will find the other man out on the patio, breakfast laid out on their garden table overlooking the bluffs. "Morning," Martin murmurs, smiling with a warmth reserved only for Jon these days. "Hope I didn't wake you too early."

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Comments

[lofi_charm]

"I-- don't want to go 'round about it again," Martin mutters.

There were perfectly legitimate reasons why they'd chosen what they had. Because the lives of all those people were worth trying to save. Because there was no guarantee that any other world would have an apocalypse. Because even in their own world, the amount of people who ever experienced the Fears was small enough that you had to be in special circumstances to have heard of them at all.

"The most important part was that we agreed. Jon was the only one not on the same page, and---- and it backfired, for him to go against the group. But it's done now, and--- according to Mortanne, it was all meant to happen. To bring us back here, stronger, so that we could help. This is our home now, for good, and we agreed to go back, end that story, and then come home."

Unable to look at Daisy for the moment, Martin glares into his teacup. "...I wondered if us just... dying early would have saved anyone. Mortanne told me no. That the Web, and Elias--- Magnus. Would just try again. Or the universe would just pause eternally in our absence. Hard to believe we were that vital."

[hadnoright]

Daisy raises a single hand in silent acknowledgement, not enough investment in the debate to turn it into a whole thing. Hard to fully imagine herself there with them, having that argument, without knowing every step of the way that led them there. Hard to even know for sure her opinion would stay the same.

(In the end, she wasn't ever meant to make it that far in the first place. She believes that wholeheartedly.)

"Mm. I can believe it. Or— I can believe either answer. The way things went. Magnus' and the Web's plans. It made you important. Made all your choices tangle you up in the fate of the world. Maybe if Jon had said no in the coma, Magnus would've just started over. But he'd've had a harder time, I think. Would've had to clean the board. He'd invested too much in the pieces he had."

Who was left, that would make for a good replacement Archivist? His only surviving backups were Martin, Melanie and Basira who all already distrusted his every word.

"So. Maybe that was the way it was always 'meant' to go." She snorts, lets her head sag against her own shoulder. "So far as anything's 'meant' to be anything. Dunno. Can't imagine my part in it ending any other way."

A breath. "This is home, now. For me too."