✎ Fel's Creative Journal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tinfoiltennis) wrote2020-12-22 01:51 am
tinfoiltennis) wrote2020-12-22 01:51 am
Entry tags:
[ more... tma ffx au... i'm literally just using this journal as a dump for my WIPs at this point ]
i am a simple person, i hear Suteki Da Ne, i turn the volume dial up to 11. (Y'ALL KNOW WHAT SCENE THIS IS).
Even at night, the woods of Macalania are filled with strange lights. Martin follows the winding path away from the clearing they chose as their hiding space and picks his way carefully past a particularly lethal-looking thicket of sharp crystal. There’s a heart-stopping moment where he thinks he spots the uniform of one of Bevelle’s warrior monks on the path ahead and has to double back among the trees to avoid being spotted; but whether through some weird trick of how the leaves of the wood reflect the moonlight, or through something more mysterious, he manages to pass by unseen.
After a few minutes of wandering, he spots Daisy up ahead at a bend in the path. She’s got her helmet tucked under one arm, seemingly staring off into space. Martin’s travelled with her for too long by now to think that she’s in a position to be caught off guard, though.
Sure enough, she stiffens as he approaches, only relaxing once she’s caught sight of his face. She gives him her usual once-over before curtly inclining her head.
“Jon’s up ahead,” she says, before Martin can say anything. “Near the lake.”
“Oh,” Martin says, a little foolishly. “Thanks?”
Daisy’s expression, hard and unyielding, remains unchanged, but her eyes glitter with quiet mischief.
“Go,” she says with a nod. “He’ll be glad to see you.”
“People keep saying that,” Martin mutters, feeling his cheeks heating up.
“Might be a reason for that.”
Daisy goes back to pretending to stare into space after that, her face inscrutable, and Martin takes that to mean that the conversation is at an end. He rounds the bend, more quickly and less stealthily than before now that he knows Daisy’s there to watch their backs, and follows the narrow trail through the glittering trees until the path abruptly opens up into a wide clearing.
Daisy said there was a lake, and that’s what Martin notices first; it takes up most of the clearing, shimmering, crystal clear water catching the light and scattering it back in a thousand slivers of silver. Between that and the thick canopy of trees encircling the grove on all sides, the entire clearing seems lit up from the inside, the light of the full moon above dancing brighter within the guarded embrace of the trees than it does in the sky itself. There’s an ancient tree with a great, gnarled trunk growing within the lake itself, incubating some other soft light at its heart that might be another sphere.
And Jon’s there.
Even with all the beauty surrounding them, Martin’s eyes are drawn to him. He’s standing a little ways into the lake itself, either not noticing or simply not caring about the frigid water that envelops him almost up to his knees. Even with his back turned, he looks lost.
Martin aches.
He could stand there forever watching and never close the distance, but what good would that do? Martin draws in a breath and moves closer to the water’s edge.
Jon must hear him coming. He starts, turning to look over his shoulder, and when his eyes find Martin he spends a long moment just… looking.
“… Martin,” he says eventually, the name falling soft into the night-time.
The edge of the lake brushes against Martin’s shoes. “Hi, Jon.”
Jon goes back to staring up at the tree in front of him, his arms swinging listlessly at his sides. “Does everyone want me back?”
Martin shakes his head, and then remembers that Jon can’t actually see that.
“No,” he says softly. “I just wanted to check on you.”
Jon’s breath catches; he exhales on a soft ah. There’s tension in every line of his body, from the slope of his shoulders to the way his fingers are curled into his palms at his sides.
“I can go,” Martin offers.
Jon shakes his head emphatically. “No – please stay.”
That settles that. Martin crouches down at the lake’s edge before sitting himself cross-legged on the damp grass beneath him. “Alright. I will.”
Some of the tension seems to bleed out of Jon at that. His shoulders drop a fraction, anyway. Martin makes himself as comfortable as he can and wonders if he should speak first, or wait for Jon to gather his thoughts. There’s so much that’s happened; so much that has to be said.
Honestly, Martin’s a little scared to be the first one to break the quiet. Instead he watches the myriad shards of moonlight catch on all of Jon’s grey hairs, turning each and every one of them to liquid silver.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jon murmurs.
Martin draws his knees up to his chest and leans on them. “About the pilgrimage?”
“Mm.” Jon bends just enough to trail a finger in nonsense patterns on the surface of the lake, sending ripples of light billowing outwards. “Elias is – it’s clear to me now that he’s obviously planning something outside of usual doctrine.” Jon laughs, bitter and derisive. “Not that ‘usual doctrine’ seems to count for anything, in the end.”
There are a lot of things Martin could say to that, but he doesn’t. He swallows down an irrational surge of rage at even the mention of Elias, and asks, “You thinking of quitting?”
Jon is quiet for a long moment. Martin’s heart beats painfully against his ribs.
“I – I don’t know,” Jon says, in a strangled voice.
If Martin doesn’t bring it up now, he never will. He gets back to his feet with a whoosh of breath, wisps of wet grass clinging to his legs, and takes an abortive, agitated couple of steps along the very edge of the water.
“The others told me,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and wills his voice not to waver. “About what’s going to happen to you when you fight Sin.”
There’s a loud splashing sound, too much lake being displaced all at once as Jon makes a panicked, clumsy turn in the water. He stares at Martin, eyes wide, lips pressed together into something unsteady and horribly fragile.
“You know?”
Martin meets Jon’s eyes, and feels himself caving in.
“I know,” he nods. He swallows, his throat suddenly too tight and too dry, and tries to blink away that horrible, tell-tale prickling in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jon.”
Jon’s face twitches in confusion, his eyebrows scrunching. “You’re sorry?” he asks, sounding utterly bewildered.
Martin nods, biting his lip hard to try and keep the tears at bay. “I’ve been saying all these – all these stupid things about after the pilgrimage is over and I – I didn’t know, Jon—”
Martin takes a breath, and it’s like pulling the stopper on a carbonated drink – he’s gone. The pressure in his chest is too much, and Jon blurs into a wet mess of colour in his vision as Martin chokes on a handful of quiet, pathetic sobs.
“Oh –” Jon gasps, and there’s more loud sounds of sloshing water as he wades and stumbles his way towards the lake’s edge. “Martin, hey, hey hey hey…”
The soft edge of distress in Jon’s voice is too much. So is the way he lays a hand on Martin’s arm, like Martin isn’t the one who’s been unthinkingly throwing reminders in Jon’s face for weeks of how there is no after the pilgrimage for him.
“I swear I had no idea—” Martin sniffs. As if that makes it any better.
“I know,” Jon reassures him, making a soft shhh. He’s rubbing Martin’s arm now, trying to soothe him. “I know you didn’t. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” Martin pulls his glasses off, dashing the tears away with the back of his hand. “It’s not okay at all!”
It’s not okay that he said those things. It’s not okay that he was the only one that didn’t know. It’s not okay that Jon is the one who’s going to die, and yet Martin is the one standing here crying about it. None of it’s okay.
Martin lets out a miserable laugh. “No wonder you hated me to start with.”
“I never hated you.” Martin’s face must do something then, because Jon hastily adds, “I’ll grant you, I was – suspicious. I didn’t know if I could trust you. But I never hated you.”
He sounds so earnest. Like the idea of Martin thinking that Jon ever hated him pains him. Martin swallows, slipping his glasses back on his face.
“It’s alright if you did,” he says, feeling a bit steadier now that everything is all out in the open. “All the things I said—”
“I liked them,” Jon says, soft as a summer breeze.
Martin’s breath catches. Jon drops his hand, ducking his head awkwardly. “I – I knew there was no chance of them ever coming true. But I liked hearing them. I liked – it was –”
Jon stares wistfully at a point somewhere past Martin’s shoulder. “It was nice. Imagining a world where those things were possible.”
Martin swears he can feel his heart break clean in two.
“Jon…”
Jon seems to shake himself, sucking in a brusque breath. “It was selfish of me not to tell you. Georgie must have told me so a hundred times, I just… I knew I had to. But I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and I just—”
Jon absently brushes a rogue strand of hair out of his face, and then he actually looks at Martin instead of past him. “Everyone else, when they look at me… I can see that they know they’re looking at a dead man walking. But not you. You never had that – that haunted look in your eyes when you looked at me, and. I wanted to pretend for just a bit longer. Can you forgive me?”
Jon sounds so small that part of Martin would forgive him anything. Of course it must have been so hard to even think about saying it – when everyone else in Spira grew up knowing it since birth, practically. When actually saying it would make it real. When there was already so much pressure on Jon’s slight shoulders.
But then Martin thinks about how it would have felt to see Jon drop dead after performing the Final Summoning, being the only one who had been kept in the dark about what was coming, and his blood runs cold.
“Would you have told me? Or would I have only found out when the Final Aeon killed you?”
Jon sucks in a sharp, wounded breath. Martin decides he doesn’t want to hear the answer to that question. Going off the stricken look on Jon’s face, maybe he doesn’t want to give it, either.
“I don’t want you to die.” He’s pleading, now, and he knows it. “How can people be okay with this? How can you be okay with this?”
“If that’s what you think, I must be doing something right.” Jon’s wry smile is a terrible thing to see. His voice gives him away, though – the more he goes on, the more his words run into one another, trembling together. “I wake up every day and I’m – I’m terrified. I keep thinking about the end of this journey and – I freeze up. If I let myself think about it too long I think – I’d probably just stop walking.”
Martin watches Jon trying to hide his shaking, and all he can think is: how many times has Jon thought this and kept it to himself? Because he had to, because summoners are Spira’s hope, because no one wants to see a summoner scared to go to the death that everyone else is happily waving them towards.
A very ugly part of him wants to hurt every single person that ever made Jon feel this way.
“You don’t have to do this,” Martin says, the words toneless from how badly he’s trying to tamp down his anger.
Jon laughs, hollow. “If not me, who else?” he says pointedly, but the words sound rote.
“You don’t owe anyone your life, Jon!” Martin snaps, unable to take it anymore. Jon stares at him like Martin’s just handed him some great revelation, one that he isn’t sure he should believe. Martin fervently wishes he’d thought to break a few things back in the temple in Bevelle.
“Please,” he begs. “Don’t do this.”
Jon’s eyes are shadowed and horribly, horribly sad. He opens his mouth a couple of times, breathing in like he’s about to say something before he thinks better of it. Martin watches as he turns back towards the centre of the lake, until he’s up to mid-calf in the water.
“Maybe I should stop,” he says, so quietly that Martin barely hears it. Jon tips his head back, looking up at the moon in the sky, and says in a stronger voice, “I could run away right now, couldn’t I?”
Martin doesn’t trust himself to say anything. Jon turns back to him, his eyes shining. “I – we could. You and me, together,” he says, and Martin’s heart stumbles.
Jon is gathering steam, one hand gesturing with every word. “They already excommunicated me, it’s not like they can do anything more to me, and whatever else Elias actually has planned, I doubt me quitting my pilgrimage is involved. It – it could be worth it. The others would understand. We could just leave.” His voice catches, alight with possibilities. “Go far away from all this, find, find a way to your Zanarkand, or, or maybe somewhere even further away that Sin’s never touched, and just… leave.”
He raises both arms and drops them, as if trying to encompass everything with that single word and gesture alone.
Martin can feel himself smiling. But it’s the sort of smile that threatens to tear him in half as soon as it drops. Jon’s excitement is infectious; the warmth in his eyes pulls Martin in. Martin presses his eyes shut for a shining moment, and allows himself to imagine it.
But. But.
“But you’re not going to do any of that,” Martin says, opening his eyes and banishing the fantasy into a dark corner of his heart.
That’s not who Jon is. Jon, who stayed up all night burning through his magic to heal people; Jon, who almost gave himself over in a ritual because he thought it would let him find the truth, or at least protect them; Jon, who knew from the start that his life would only buy Spira the most fleeting of reprieves, and still thought it was worth it.
He could never abandon this.
“I – I could,” Jon says defiantly, but he sounds like he’s desperately trying to convince himself.
“But you won’t.”
Pain flashes across Jon’s face.
“… No,” he agrees, finally. “I won’t. I. I can’t..” He shakes his head, his breath hitching.
“I can’t,” he says again, imploringly, and –
Jon starts to cry.
He tries to stifle it, one arm wrapping tight around his middle while his other hand presses hard against his mouth, like that alone will stem the tide. For all his efforts, though, he can’t stop the shaking of his shoulders, the choked gasps that escape in place of sobs.
Martin wades into the lake in three great strides until he’s holding Jon in his arms.
“I know,” he says helplessly, tucking Jon close against his chest. He can feel his own tears welling back up for a second round. He’s always been a sympathetic crier, but this is too much. Jon buries his face in Martin’s shirt, twisting one hand tightly in the fabric as he wails silently.
“I know,” Martin says again, because it feels like it’s all he can say, in the face of the unfairness of it all. He rubs soothing circles into Jon’s back and gives up on trying to stop his own tears from falling. “I know you can’t walk away, I know – but I can’t let you die, Jon—”
Jon lets out a choked sound at that, clinging to Martin with both hands. Martin clings back just as tightly, burying his face in the top of Jon’s head and breathing him in, trying to get himself back under control. It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there, holding each other in that freezing lake water like they’ll both break apart if they let go. But eventually, Jon’s breathing begins to even out. Eventually, Martin stops sniffling. Eventually, Jon lifts his face from Martin’s chest and meets his eyes, breathing in sharply through his nose. He looks like a mess. Martin probably doesn’t look much better.
He feels calmer now, though, in the way that only a really good cry can do. Calmer, and uncharacteristically bold. Before Jon can open his mouth and do something ridiculous like apologise for having feelings, Martin lifts a hand to his face, brushing a stray tear away with the backs of his fingers.
“I won’t ask you to quit,” Martin tells him. “But I’m going to think of another way. There has to be one.”
He’ll chalk the confidence he feels in that statement up to post-cry clarity, but he’s still sure of it. There’s got to be something out there that everyone’s missed. He’s not going to roll over and let Jon die without a fight.
Especially now that he’s had time to process the last half an hour, and he’s pretty sure that at one point Jon asked him to run away with him.
Jon snorts. “I wish I could share your optimism.”
“Well,” Martin says lightly, “Sorry if I’m not ready for complete despair yet.”
“Ah—” Jon blinks up at him owlishly, wrong-footed. Then he chuckles. It’s such a genuine sound, after the abject misery they’ve just shared, that Martin’s heart swells.
“Of course,” Jon says fondly. “That’s one of the things I like about you.”
Martin flushes. Jon looks somewhere between embarrassed to have said it, and undeniably pleased to have caused that sort of reaction. His eyes, still puffy and red, crinkle at the corners.
He nods to himself, as if coming to some sort of decision, and takes a deep breath.
“May I be selfish one more time?”
It’s an utterly nonsensical question, and Martin’s sure that his confusion must show on his face. Still, he nods, cautiously, not sure where Jon’s going with this. It’s difficult to guess what Jon might classify as selfish.
Jon smiles, leans up, and kisses him.
Martin’s brain short-circuits.
Jon pulls back, still smiling, although there’s something shy and unsure creeping in around the corners.
“I,” he falters. “I want you to stay with me. Please.”
Martin takes Jon’s hand and presses his lips against it in a lingering kiss.
“Where else would I be?” he asks.
Even at night, the woods of Macalania are filled with strange lights. Martin follows the winding path away from the clearing they chose as their hiding space and picks his way carefully past a particularly lethal-looking thicket of sharp crystal. There’s a heart-stopping moment where he thinks he spots the uniform of one of Bevelle’s warrior monks on the path ahead and has to double back among the trees to avoid being spotted; but whether through some weird trick of how the leaves of the wood reflect the moonlight, or through something more mysterious, he manages to pass by unseen.
After a few minutes of wandering, he spots Daisy up ahead at a bend in the path. She’s got her helmet tucked under one arm, seemingly staring off into space. Martin’s travelled with her for too long by now to think that she’s in a position to be caught off guard, though.
Sure enough, she stiffens as he approaches, only relaxing once she’s caught sight of his face. She gives him her usual once-over before curtly inclining her head.
“Jon’s up ahead,” she says, before Martin can say anything. “Near the lake.”
“Oh,” Martin says, a little foolishly. “Thanks?”
Daisy’s expression, hard and unyielding, remains unchanged, but her eyes glitter with quiet mischief.
“Go,” she says with a nod. “He’ll be glad to see you.”
“People keep saying that,” Martin mutters, feeling his cheeks heating up.
“Might be a reason for that.”
Daisy goes back to pretending to stare into space after that, her face inscrutable, and Martin takes that to mean that the conversation is at an end. He rounds the bend, more quickly and less stealthily than before now that he knows Daisy’s there to watch their backs, and follows the narrow trail through the glittering trees until the path abruptly opens up into a wide clearing.
Daisy said there was a lake, and that’s what Martin notices first; it takes up most of the clearing, shimmering, crystal clear water catching the light and scattering it back in a thousand slivers of silver. Between that and the thick canopy of trees encircling the grove on all sides, the entire clearing seems lit up from the inside, the light of the full moon above dancing brighter within the guarded embrace of the trees than it does in the sky itself. There’s an ancient tree with a great, gnarled trunk growing within the lake itself, incubating some other soft light at its heart that might be another sphere.
And Jon’s there.
Even with all the beauty surrounding them, Martin’s eyes are drawn to him. He’s standing a little ways into the lake itself, either not noticing or simply not caring about the frigid water that envelops him almost up to his knees. Even with his back turned, he looks lost.
Martin aches.
He could stand there forever watching and never close the distance, but what good would that do? Martin draws in a breath and moves closer to the water’s edge.
Jon must hear him coming. He starts, turning to look over his shoulder, and when his eyes find Martin he spends a long moment just… looking.
“… Martin,” he says eventually, the name falling soft into the night-time.
The edge of the lake brushes against Martin’s shoes. “Hi, Jon.”
Jon goes back to staring up at the tree in front of him, his arms swinging listlessly at his sides. “Does everyone want me back?”
Martin shakes his head, and then remembers that Jon can’t actually see that.
“No,” he says softly. “I just wanted to check on you.”
Jon’s breath catches; he exhales on a soft ah. There’s tension in every line of his body, from the slope of his shoulders to the way his fingers are curled into his palms at his sides.
“I can go,” Martin offers.
Jon shakes his head emphatically. “No – please stay.”
That settles that. Martin crouches down at the lake’s edge before sitting himself cross-legged on the damp grass beneath him. “Alright. I will.”
Some of the tension seems to bleed out of Jon at that. His shoulders drop a fraction, anyway. Martin makes himself as comfortable as he can and wonders if he should speak first, or wait for Jon to gather his thoughts. There’s so much that’s happened; so much that has to be said.
Honestly, Martin’s a little scared to be the first one to break the quiet. Instead he watches the myriad shards of moonlight catch on all of Jon’s grey hairs, turning each and every one of them to liquid silver.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jon murmurs.
Martin draws his knees up to his chest and leans on them. “About the pilgrimage?”
“Mm.” Jon bends just enough to trail a finger in nonsense patterns on the surface of the lake, sending ripples of light billowing outwards. “Elias is – it’s clear to me now that he’s obviously planning something outside of usual doctrine.” Jon laughs, bitter and derisive. “Not that ‘usual doctrine’ seems to count for anything, in the end.”
There are a lot of things Martin could say to that, but he doesn’t. He swallows down an irrational surge of rage at even the mention of Elias, and asks, “You thinking of quitting?”
Jon is quiet for a long moment. Martin’s heart beats painfully against his ribs.
“I – I don’t know,” Jon says, in a strangled voice.
If Martin doesn’t bring it up now, he never will. He gets back to his feet with a whoosh of breath, wisps of wet grass clinging to his legs, and takes an abortive, agitated couple of steps along the very edge of the water.
“The others told me,” he says. He shoves his hands in his pockets and wills his voice not to waver. “About what’s going to happen to you when you fight Sin.”
There’s a loud splashing sound, too much lake being displaced all at once as Jon makes a panicked, clumsy turn in the water. He stares at Martin, eyes wide, lips pressed together into something unsteady and horribly fragile.
“You know?”
Martin meets Jon’s eyes, and feels himself caving in.
“I know,” he nods. He swallows, his throat suddenly too tight and too dry, and tries to blink away that horrible, tell-tale prickling in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jon.”
Jon’s face twitches in confusion, his eyebrows scrunching. “You’re sorry?” he asks, sounding utterly bewildered.
Martin nods, biting his lip hard to try and keep the tears at bay. “I’ve been saying all these – all these stupid things about after the pilgrimage is over and I – I didn’t know, Jon—”
Martin takes a breath, and it’s like pulling the stopper on a carbonated drink – he’s gone. The pressure in his chest is too much, and Jon blurs into a wet mess of colour in his vision as Martin chokes on a handful of quiet, pathetic sobs.
“Oh –” Jon gasps, and there’s more loud sounds of sloshing water as he wades and stumbles his way towards the lake’s edge. “Martin, hey, hey hey hey…”
The soft edge of distress in Jon’s voice is too much. So is the way he lays a hand on Martin’s arm, like Martin isn’t the one who’s been unthinkingly throwing reminders in Jon’s face for weeks of how there is no after the pilgrimage for him.
“I swear I had no idea—” Martin sniffs. As if that makes it any better.
“I know,” Jon reassures him, making a soft shhh. He’s rubbing Martin’s arm now, trying to soothe him. “I know you didn’t. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” Martin pulls his glasses off, dashing the tears away with the back of his hand. “It’s not okay at all!”
It’s not okay that he said those things. It’s not okay that he was the only one that didn’t know. It’s not okay that Jon is the one who’s going to die, and yet Martin is the one standing here crying about it. None of it’s okay.
Martin lets out a miserable laugh. “No wonder you hated me to start with.”
“I never hated you.” Martin’s face must do something then, because Jon hastily adds, “I’ll grant you, I was – suspicious. I didn’t know if I could trust you. But I never hated you.”
He sounds so earnest. Like the idea of Martin thinking that Jon ever hated him pains him. Martin swallows, slipping his glasses back on his face.
“It’s alright if you did,” he says, feeling a bit steadier now that everything is all out in the open. “All the things I said—”
“I liked them,” Jon says, soft as a summer breeze.
Martin’s breath catches. Jon drops his hand, ducking his head awkwardly. “I – I knew there was no chance of them ever coming true. But I liked hearing them. I liked – it was –”
Jon stares wistfully at a point somewhere past Martin’s shoulder. “It was nice. Imagining a world where those things were possible.”
Martin swears he can feel his heart break clean in two.
“Jon…”
Jon seems to shake himself, sucking in a brusque breath. “It was selfish of me not to tell you. Georgie must have told me so a hundred times, I just… I knew I had to. But I kept putting it off, and putting it off, and I just—”
Jon absently brushes a rogue strand of hair out of his face, and then he actually looks at Martin instead of past him. “Everyone else, when they look at me… I can see that they know they’re looking at a dead man walking. But not you. You never had that – that haunted look in your eyes when you looked at me, and. I wanted to pretend for just a bit longer. Can you forgive me?”
Jon sounds so small that part of Martin would forgive him anything. Of course it must have been so hard to even think about saying it – when everyone else in Spira grew up knowing it since birth, practically. When actually saying it would make it real. When there was already so much pressure on Jon’s slight shoulders.
But then Martin thinks about how it would have felt to see Jon drop dead after performing the Final Summoning, being the only one who had been kept in the dark about what was coming, and his blood runs cold.
“Would you have told me? Or would I have only found out when the Final Aeon killed you?”
Jon sucks in a sharp, wounded breath. Martin decides he doesn’t want to hear the answer to that question. Going off the stricken look on Jon’s face, maybe he doesn’t want to give it, either.
“I don’t want you to die.” He’s pleading, now, and he knows it. “How can people be okay with this? How can you be okay with this?”
“If that’s what you think, I must be doing something right.” Jon’s wry smile is a terrible thing to see. His voice gives him away, though – the more he goes on, the more his words run into one another, trembling together. “I wake up every day and I’m – I’m terrified. I keep thinking about the end of this journey and – I freeze up. If I let myself think about it too long I think – I’d probably just stop walking.”
Martin watches Jon trying to hide his shaking, and all he can think is: how many times has Jon thought this and kept it to himself? Because he had to, because summoners are Spira’s hope, because no one wants to see a summoner scared to go to the death that everyone else is happily waving them towards.
A very ugly part of him wants to hurt every single person that ever made Jon feel this way.
“You don’t have to do this,” Martin says, the words toneless from how badly he’s trying to tamp down his anger.
Jon laughs, hollow. “If not me, who else?” he says pointedly, but the words sound rote.
“You don’t owe anyone your life, Jon!” Martin snaps, unable to take it anymore. Jon stares at him like Martin’s just handed him some great revelation, one that he isn’t sure he should believe. Martin fervently wishes he’d thought to break a few things back in the temple in Bevelle.
“Please,” he begs. “Don’t do this.”
Jon’s eyes are shadowed and horribly, horribly sad. He opens his mouth a couple of times, breathing in like he’s about to say something before he thinks better of it. Martin watches as he turns back towards the centre of the lake, until he’s up to mid-calf in the water.
“Maybe I should stop,” he says, so quietly that Martin barely hears it. Jon tips his head back, looking up at the moon in the sky, and says in a stronger voice, “I could run away right now, couldn’t I?”
Martin doesn’t trust himself to say anything. Jon turns back to him, his eyes shining. “I – we could. You and me, together,” he says, and Martin’s heart stumbles.
Jon is gathering steam, one hand gesturing with every word. “They already excommunicated me, it’s not like they can do anything more to me, and whatever else Elias actually has planned, I doubt me quitting my pilgrimage is involved. It – it could be worth it. The others would understand. We could just leave.” His voice catches, alight with possibilities. “Go far away from all this, find, find a way to your Zanarkand, or, or maybe somewhere even further away that Sin’s never touched, and just… leave.”
He raises both arms and drops them, as if trying to encompass everything with that single word and gesture alone.
Martin can feel himself smiling. But it’s the sort of smile that threatens to tear him in half as soon as it drops. Jon’s excitement is infectious; the warmth in his eyes pulls Martin in. Martin presses his eyes shut for a shining moment, and allows himself to imagine it.
But. But.
“But you’re not going to do any of that,” Martin says, opening his eyes and banishing the fantasy into a dark corner of his heart.
That’s not who Jon is. Jon, who stayed up all night burning through his magic to heal people; Jon, who almost gave himself over in a ritual because he thought it would let him find the truth, or at least protect them; Jon, who knew from the start that his life would only buy Spira the most fleeting of reprieves, and still thought it was worth it.
He could never abandon this.
“I – I could,” Jon says defiantly, but he sounds like he’s desperately trying to convince himself.
“But you won’t.”
Pain flashes across Jon’s face.
“… No,” he agrees, finally. “I won’t. I. I can’t..” He shakes his head, his breath hitching.
“I can’t,” he says again, imploringly, and –
Jon starts to cry.
He tries to stifle it, one arm wrapping tight around his middle while his other hand presses hard against his mouth, like that alone will stem the tide. For all his efforts, though, he can’t stop the shaking of his shoulders, the choked gasps that escape in place of sobs.
Martin wades into the lake in three great strides until he’s holding Jon in his arms.
“I know,” he says helplessly, tucking Jon close against his chest. He can feel his own tears welling back up for a second round. He’s always been a sympathetic crier, but this is too much. Jon buries his face in Martin’s shirt, twisting one hand tightly in the fabric as he wails silently.
“I know,” Martin says again, because it feels like it’s all he can say, in the face of the unfairness of it all. He rubs soothing circles into Jon’s back and gives up on trying to stop his own tears from falling. “I know you can’t walk away, I know – but I can’t let you die, Jon—”
Jon lets out a choked sound at that, clinging to Martin with both hands. Martin clings back just as tightly, burying his face in the top of Jon’s head and breathing him in, trying to get himself back under control. It’s so unfair. It’s so unfair.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there, holding each other in that freezing lake water like they’ll both break apart if they let go. But eventually, Jon’s breathing begins to even out. Eventually, Martin stops sniffling. Eventually, Jon lifts his face from Martin’s chest and meets his eyes, breathing in sharply through his nose. He looks like a mess. Martin probably doesn’t look much better.
He feels calmer now, though, in the way that only a really good cry can do. Calmer, and uncharacteristically bold. Before Jon can open his mouth and do something ridiculous like apologise for having feelings, Martin lifts a hand to his face, brushing a stray tear away with the backs of his fingers.
“I won’t ask you to quit,” Martin tells him. “But I’m going to think of another way. There has to be one.”
He’ll chalk the confidence he feels in that statement up to post-cry clarity, but he’s still sure of it. There’s got to be something out there that everyone’s missed. He’s not going to roll over and let Jon die without a fight.
Especially now that he’s had time to process the last half an hour, and he’s pretty sure that at one point Jon asked him to run away with him.
Jon snorts. “I wish I could share your optimism.”
“Well,” Martin says lightly, “Sorry if I’m not ready for complete despair yet.”
“Ah—” Jon blinks up at him owlishly, wrong-footed. Then he chuckles. It’s such a genuine sound, after the abject misery they’ve just shared, that Martin’s heart swells.
“Of course,” Jon says fondly. “That’s one of the things I like about you.”
Martin flushes. Jon looks somewhere between embarrassed to have said it, and undeniably pleased to have caused that sort of reaction. His eyes, still puffy and red, crinkle at the corners.
He nods to himself, as if coming to some sort of decision, and takes a deep breath.
“May I be selfish one more time?”
It’s an utterly nonsensical question, and Martin’s sure that his confusion must show on his face. Still, he nods, cautiously, not sure where Jon’s going with this. It’s difficult to guess what Jon might classify as selfish.
Jon smiles, leans up, and kisses him.
Martin’s brain short-circuits.
Jon pulls back, still smiling, although there’s something shy and unsure creeping in around the corners.
“I,” he falters. “I want you to stay with me. Please.”
Martin takes Jon’s hand and presses his lips against it in a lingering kiss.
“Where else would I be?” he asks.