#❝ dark skies and trouble up ahead ❞ . . . alt01; tma

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tag drop - verses

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@audaciiae (martin) said: i have survived, but i have not been spared / accepting

“ martin… ” but i fell silent when i realised that i didn’t know what to say. what was there to say to something like that? I couldn’t relate to him, not really, i couldn’t offer any kind of comfort, or suggestion. there was nothing. just a sickening pity that i would never allow myself to show to him; nobody deserved that. sometimes i wondered how many of the things i saw in my dreams were just ghosts of the stories i heard, the things that flickered just out of view in the storage room, and how many were true. was i marked? would i ever be able to tell? how long would i be able to walk that fine line of ignorance before i lost?

would i be the next employee to die for the institute? But even as the thought appeared, it died, a callous reality reminding me that i didn’t work in the archives, the death toll was significantly lower. i’d liked tim. i’d liked sasha. i’d even had a begrudgingly respectful relationship with jon, even if he had always seemed like i was more of an irritant than a colleague. i couldn't imagine how martin felt watching them fall one by one, leaving him behind. and there was nothing i could do to fix it. jon still might wake up… but how was that going to help in that moment? i took a breath, and looked down at the empty cup in front of him.

“ look… why don’t i make you some tea, yeah? ” it wouldn’t change a thing. “ i just… i think we need some tea. ”

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@vanishinq said: “Because it makes the sadness feel at home. Turns it from a burden into… An indulgence.” tma au 🥹 / accepting

i wondered, listening to him explain his condition, if i should have listened when he'd told me to forget him and leave. it was far too late for that now, even if he was compelled to continue pushing me away, even as his words twisted something metallic and cold into my chest, and made my eyes burn. so i blinked, and turned my head away from him, swallowing the raw, bitter, sticky emotion and pushing it as far down as i could. away, unacknowledged, until it was gone. " bullshit. " i hissed. " you always insisted on being alone, it has nothing to do with - this shit. " i still couldn't look at him. couldn't even try, and i knew all that was doing was feeding into his patron, but i was a coward, terrified of my own undoing. i'd let someone in once, and he had disappeared, and now i didn't even know if he would still be there when i looked back. " i'm going to figure something out. " i said, turning back toward him, my chest tightened, but i pressed on. " you're not going to wallow in this, you're not going to dissolve until there's nothing left, and you're going to stop fucking disappearing. do you understand? " there was more conviction in those words than there was in my heart. i knew enough to understand that i was probably talking absolute shit.

funny what love will do to people. " you're not alone. you were, for a while, and that's my fault. but you're not. i'm going to... i'm going to try. "

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@audaciiae (martin) said: ❛ i’m alright, i’m okay… ❜ / accepting

my heart was still pounding, although guilt was coiling itself around me - absolute top notch work, beau, i thought, only bastard who doesn’t avoid you like the plague and go and you do that. “ this is why you should tell me when you’re coming in here. ” i chastised, gently. it wasn’t really martin’s fault, i’d heard his footsteps behind me and had a moment’s panic, completely understandable in my position; artefacts weren’t always the most charitable of colleagues, especially after dark, but when i’d spun around, my elbow had landed a sharp blow in his ribs. i grimaced, apologetically, and rested a hand on his arm, “ i’m sorry, i didn’t hurt you did i? ”

i patted his arm once more, and shot a suspicious glance behind me. perhaps i was a little more jumpy than usual, perhaps it was nothing at all, but i was sure i could feel something looking at me. “ what are you even still doing here? ” i asked, dropping my hand, “ it’s so lat- oh. You’re still staying in the archives, then? ” now i felt even worse, martin had already been through enough without being smacked around by me. “ look, i was about to leave. how about i buy you dinner before i go? ” i smiled up at him, “ make up for turning you into a punching bag? ”

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@vanishinq said: ❝ you have to hold on to the little joys when you find them. ❞ / accepting

for all he talked about wanting me to leave, to stop looking for him, casper really didn’t seem to get it. even now, as he reminded me to escape, to go out into the world and find things that made me happy, to get away from the institute, he was still missing the point. it was never going to be ‘oh well, found out what happened to casper, off i go into the sunset.’ how could it be?

“ i do. ” i said, sincerely, with a shrug, and pushed myself up onto the artefact viewing table, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back on my hands. “ anyway, i quite like it here. ” i hummed, and my eyes slid over the shelves of … well… weird shit, as the researchers called it all too often. it wasn’t a lie, not really, i’d been dealing with things like them for years before i’d gone to the institute, except now i was less likely to also get shot, which made a nice change. not that the risk was gone completely. “ if i get out what am i going to do? it doesn’t make any sense. ” casper wouldn’t listen to me. he wanted to push me away, but, unfortunately for him, i was as stubborn as i’d ever been.

“ hey, when you’re invisible can you like see other invisible people? like you cancel eachother out? ” i asked him, changing the subject before i had to tell him that the little joys i clung to were every interaction i got to have with him.