to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest)

a TMA fanfic

Chapter 5: February 2016

Content Warnings:

Canon-typical worms, canon-typical Corruption content, scenes of peril, slight misuse of Beholding powers

Martin still had a chance to turn back. He wasn’t going to take it, though.

This never would have happened if he hadn’t given in. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t do that, promised he wouldn’t peek, but the look in Jon’s eyes and the slight tremble of his hand that he couldn’t quite hide when he sent Martin to look into this in the first place had been telling, and in a moment of weakness Martin had taken his glasses off and let his control relax, just for a second, and he’d Seen.

So of course he’d gone to check. Of course he was going to investigate as thoroughly as he could. And as part of that, he’d let himself Look at the apartment complex, something he didn’t normally do. It wasn’t like he didn’t know who—or what—was involved here—it was fairly obvious—but he’d wanted to be sure it was gone, that it wasn’t still lingering. And it wasn’t, thank God, but he’d seen…something else.

And since Jon was still playing the skeptic, here he was.

It wasn’t, Martin thought as he stepped off the train and headed to the station exit, as though Jon would come checking behind him. Ever since he’d snapped back, Jon was treating him like they were more on equal footing, not second-guessing or challenging or demeaning him at every turn. So it wasn’t like anyone else was going to check up on this. Honestly, if he hadn’t caught that glimpse of something that shouldn’t have been there when he was crawling through the basement window, he would have left it alone. Or so he told himself.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Blackwood,” he muttered, hands on his hips for a moment as he squinted up at the clouds beginning to obscure the moon and stars. “You’re in this too deep to walk away from a mystery anymore. Better brace up and hope It likes you.”

He sighed heavily, pulled out his phone, and sent a quick text: [About to do something incredibly stupid. If you don’t hear from me in an hour or so, go to the Archives and tell them everything.] Then he swapped out his phone for his torch and headed for the Boothby Road.

The window was still open the way he’d left it, which was…well, not much of a surprise. Even as cold as it was, the landlord hadn’t noticed it being ajar, why would he notice it being wide open? Clearly nobody went down in that basement if they didn’t have to. Martin took a deep breath, exhaled, and pulled off his glasses for a moment, letting his eyes unfocus.

Nothing. Well, a faint trace of…but that was where he’d wiped the slime off his shoe after popping that worm earlier, so it made sense. On the other hand, that meant he was right. It was here.

Or at least it had been.

Martin was tempted, again, to turn back, but the desire, the need, to know the truth was stronger. He slid his glasses back onto his face and headed for the open window.

It wasn’t any less of a tight squeeze than it had been that morning, but Martin had more skill than he should probably admit at wriggling himself into places he wasn’t supposed to be, and he managed it. Once his shoes hit the floor, he clicked on the torch and swept it around the room.

The air smelled musty and stale, and the basement was far too warm for as cold as it was. It had been in the single digits all day, and the sun didn’t get this deep into the basement for enough of the day for it to have warmed up this much. For a moment, Martin wondered if he’d got it wrong about who or what was down here, but…no, he had to be right, he had to be.

The spiderwebs, at least, were empty and loaded with dust, true cobwebs. No spider had been down here for some time. But there was something. A presence he could just sense, a creeping, crawling sense of dread. Slowly, carefully, he swept the torch around, trying to look without Looking. Dangerous to do that too often, and he’d done it too many times today already.

The torch’s beam caught on something, and Martin sucked in a breath as he saw a pair of legs, bare but covered in what he didn’t need any sort of special ability or training to know were holes. The torchlight swept up, taking in a grey overcoat, a stained green handkerchief, and long, matted black hair. The woman who owned all of these things was staring at the wall, unblinking.

Martin had just about decided to take a Look, just to confirm what he already knew, when the woman raised the handkerchief to her mouth and…to call it a cough would be generous. It was a spasm of the body accompanied by a wet, tearing sound, like flesh being ripped away. A silvery-white worm, identical to the one he’d stepped on before, fell from the handkerchief to the floor with a plop.

That was enough, more than enough. Martin was out of here. He backed up, never taking his eyes off the form—but in his haste, his elbow hit something that rattled backwards. He caught it before it fell, but it was too late. The woman’s head snapped around to look at him.

She grinned, obviously delighted, and Martin knew he’d been recognized in the seconds before she reached up and let the overcoat drop to the ground. If she had declared Grandmama, it’s me, Anastasia in a deep, throaty voice, he wouldn’t have been surprised at that point…except that her entire body, including her throat and probably her vocal chords, was riddled with holes, and out of each poked those black-tipped silver worms, emerging out of her as if from a honeycomb or a hive.

And every single worm dropped from her body to the floor and began squirming towards him.

Martin stumbled backwards, not wanting to take his eyes off the worms—that would be the fastest way to get into trouble—and fumbled in his pocket for something, anything. All he came up with was his phone, which he held in front of him like it was some kind of talisman to ward off evil. He didn’t know if he was going for his contacts to call someone or his camera app to take a picture for proof, but one of the worms got close to him and sprang straight at his face.

He yelped and fell backwards, backside hitting the stair. His phone fell from his hand, clattering to the ground, but the worm had missed him.

Martin knew he wouldn’t get so lucky a second time. Without even thinking about going for the dropped phone, he scrabbled up the stairs, hauled himself to his feet, and ran.

He wasn’t all that good at running, exactly, but this was far from the first time he’d got too close to something that wanted to kill him. First time in a while, but some habits never left you. He timed his breathing to his steps to keep from hyperventilating, kept his eyes on the ground far enough ahead of him that he wouldn’t run into anything unexpected, and kept out of the intermittent patches of moonlight, although he wasn’t sure if the worms hunted by sight or sound or scent or what. He skidded into the station, managed to leap onto the train just before it pulled out, and checked the seat over and over to make sure nothing had followed him before collapsing onto it, chest aching and tears pricking his eyes—whether from exertion or fear, he wasn’t sure.

Fuck, that had been close. Martin didn’t doubt for a minute that that had been Jane Prentiss back there. He didn’t know what she was doing there, but it had to be either her or one of her victims, and the description tallied with the one he remembered Jon giving the team. And she’d spotted him right away for what he was, he didn’t doubt that for a minute. He’d been Marked by It long ago, ever since he’d pulled his first book of power from a jumbled heap at a charity shop and his mother and Mary had realized he had a talent that could be exploited, and it had only got worse over the years between his almost pathetic desire to please and his need to help. The fact that he worked for the Magnus Institute had probably not helped; the library was bad enough, but now after closing in on a year in the Archives, he’d probably been steeped in it so thoroughly you wouldn’t need his vision to spot it.

Ordinarily, he’d have wondered why she cared, but…well. The Archives might be a world unto themselves, even amongst the Institute staff, but Martin’d kept an ear to the ground when he worked in the library and his friendly game of hide-the-biscuits with Rosie gave him another source to tap into. There were…rumors. Sideways comments about scorch marks and late-night visitors, whispered speculations on the fates of assistants, that sort of thing. And Martin’s little…side jobs put him into contact with a lot of people who knew Gertrude Robinson, by reputation if nothing else. She was somewhere between bogeyman and Caped Crusader, depending on who you asked, and there were stories of her raining vengeance on servitors and avatars alike. Probably a lot of the Community assumed it was the Archives and the Archivist’s job to do that rather than a personal vendetta held by a woman Martin had somehow never managed to actually meet despite working for the same place for ten years.

So yes. Jane Prentiss was probably after the Archives, or the Archivist. And he’d very nearly given her a neat little vessel to transport her worms back to the Archives in. God alone knew what she’d come up with to do now, but come up with something she surely would, assuming she had sufficient cognitive abilities left in the state she was in. Or else her…patron would.

Martin was weary down to the bone by the time he got to his stop. He wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep for a week, or at the very least call out of work the next day, but he knew he couldn’t. In the first place, he didn’t have his phone to call, and while he could theoretically send Jon an email, he didn’t trust himself to write coherently in his present state. In the second place, he had to go in tomorrow because he had to warn the others. They had to know what Jane Prentiss was up to.

And whether they would believe him or not, he would have to tell them everything.

Not now, though. For right now Martin dragged himself into his flat, triple-checked his door was locked, and fell face-down into bed, fully clothed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow.