TEST DRIVE ∞ May 2025

[thediadem]

Test Drive ∞ May 2025

The First Collision

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Jump ⇅ :: Arrival — Panorama — Fringes — Invite Request

The Diadem is an invite-only panfandom game set in a retro-futuristic world where uprooted souls find themselves deep within an eerie wasteland of roads and highways frequently assailed by cosmic storms. Three united strongholds keep the population. Its capital is Panorama, a large metropolis at the planet's center.

Soon, you realize you aren't alone. Calling themselves fluxdrifts, the "locals" have similar stories to you, either for themselves or their ancestry. You speak to an old woman who claims she hailed from another star. You meet a young man who says his great-great-grandfather knew a strange language everybody spoke "back home." As you explore, you stumble across a coin you recognize or your sister's locket. How did it get here? What does this mean? That's for you to discover.

But first, you need to find a ride.

No invites needed to play on the TDM. Everyone's welcome! Use the Invite Request thread below to request an invite from another player.

∞ Summary ∞

IC-wise, arrivals are scattered throughout the month. Events described on the TDM are also ongoing throughout the month. If you'd rather jump right into the action, you're free to begin in media res with your character having already been on the planet for several days.

Post-impact, characters will wake up in a med tent by the Scrapyard. From there, they must accept a vehicle on loan and make the 2-hour drive to the nearest city, Panorama. If they refuse the car because they don't want the loan, they'll be in debt for medical bills instead...so just take the car. It'll come in handy.

Some things to keep in mind when bringing in your character:

• Pick an injury. At minimum, they got knocked out; at most, whatever they can recover from. Medicine is decently advanced so they'll heal faster if not painlessly.
• Decide items kept. Reasonable items on their person only: photos, keys, clothes, costumes. No pets or animal companions. Wildly out-of-place tech and personal cell phones will be damaged beyond repair.
• Select a weapon. Do this only if eligible. Guidelines about weapons and powers are on the FAQ.
• Choose a vehicle. Decide whether your character gets 2-3 options or if they're stuck with something they hate. Players can pick directly from our collection or source their own images. Anything under a similar aesthetic will work. If your character needs accommodations for driving, they can have them. Ask us for details.
• Get a phone. Characters have to obtain a phone (and a SIM card) themselves. If they've got one from home, it's damaged beyond repair. Phones are cheap. It'll only take a couple of weeks to afford one. You need to know the number before you text or call anyone. Read about phones and the Forum before you hop on it.

TDM threads can be canon if characters are accepted. Top-levels made to the TDM should be open to all.

TDM Questions? Here — Game Questions? FAQ

Setting — Taken — Reserves — Applications ::: ⇅ Top

Fluxdrift

Arrival & Introduction

Date: Throughout May

You've tumbled over a cliff. You were fighting for your life. You're on the cusp of death. You slipped in the shower. Whatever the catalyst, you struggle to cling to consciousness. As darkness overtakes you, a swirling vortex warps light and shadow in a way that defies all physics. A dark wail etches into your very bones. You couldn't describe it if you tried. You can barely comprehend what it is.

Then you open your eyes.

Through the figure's mask ©, you swear the face is grinning down at you. The tent you're in smells of antiseptic, and scratchy blankets line your cot. Injuries you've sustained have been bandaged. In the corner, you spot a MedBot that's fixed you up. Depending on the extent of your injuries, the doctor on duty might give you some painkillers before you go. Thankfully, your belongings are by the exit. Sorry if anything's damaged. Your landing was pretty rough.

You follow the figure outside. They are Yom Crook, here to lend a hand to fellow fluxdrifts like yourself. Their car's parked beside them. Actually, there are lots of cars around, but Yom Crook's stands out with its painted shark mouth. They explain they found you, unconscious, in a diffusion zone and brought you here. The nearest city is a 2-hour drive northeast. Forget about walking. You'll never make it. Also, you owe the doctor a lot of money for patching you up. But you're in luck: they've got some wheels for you and if you accept the vehicle on loan, Yom Crook will cover your medical bills. That's a good deal, right? It's not the shiniest car or motorcycle, but it'll do. If fortune favors, you'll get to choose between two or three options. Plus, if you need accommodations to drive—like adjustments to your seat height or modified controls—you'll receive all that for free.

Take the vehicle. (And the loan.) Yom Crook assures you that you'll have six months before collectors come around. Any time you're ready to pay a part of it down, return here to the Scrapyard. You'll get a receipt and everything. Paying off the loan in six months isn't impossible, but it will take a lot of work. Just don't get too lax. There's a good chance you'll be juggling multiple loans as you try to get by.

You either know how to drive, or you'll have a bare-bones manual to get you started. Road rules are more a suggestion than enforced, so just hit the pedal and go. The car has some basic features. The built-in compass will help you navigate.

OPTIONAL PROMPTS: a flat tire; a body on the road (is it a trap?); a fender bender

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Panorama

Explore & Settle In

Conditions: Warm spring temperatures, light showers

After 2 hours on the road, you find civilization. The largest of the strongholds, Panorama is where the economy thrives. Massive power plants glowing red make it visible from a distance. The city is divided into three districts. For now, you can access the Pavilion and the Blocks. Don't worry about the Sanctum; they're not letting you in.

You only need to know two things about Panorama: 1) it's big, the size of a modern metropolis, and you'll need your car to get around; 2) anything goes as long as you don't pick a fight with the wrong person. Street smarts will get you far. Despite its geographical size, the population isn't huge. With roughly a million people in a city designed for over twice that number, Panorama is far from deserted, but nor is it overcrowded. It's a good thing. Resources are limited as it is.

The Pavilion: Free Samples

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Like any large city, Panorama features a couple of supermarkets. The stock's not as consistent as a proper supermarket. On occasion, shelves can remain cleaned out for a week or two. Regardless, the long tradition of free samples remains. If you're not already shopping, you'll notice the crowded parking lot and clusters of lines inside.

Try samples, push through the crowds as you shop, or give yourself a five-finger discount. If you're cautious, you can pocket a few small items without consequences. The Pavillion doesn't have the infrastructure for surveillance; unless someone sees you, you won't be caught. Steal from the store or pilfer someone's wallet. Maybe you even make a new friend if you bump into another fluxdrift. Or, start a fight with somebody who cut you off in the cheese line. Don't make too much of a ruckus, or you'll be thrown out.

As you look around, you'll see posters advertising temporary positions for the cash register or graveyard shifts in the warehouse. Seems they might've lost several employees recently (how'd that happen?), which is good for you! It's just a 6-week position, but it'll get you on your feet. The city has temporary positions like this all over. Permanent ones are harder to come by when you're new.

Samples include: steamed cabbage dumplings, synthetic cherry juice, cheddar cheese, and chocolate-covered alien eggs (it's crunchy and weirdly tasty). They're served in the usual throwaway paper cups with little toothpicks.

The Blocks: Power Outage

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Power's finicky in Panorama, especially in the Blocks. Saint Margery's Hospital, located in the same area, has priority for power so the first to go are the motels. Maybe you've been in your room for a couple of weeks, maybe you just got here—and by the way, every motel desk is happy to put the fee on your tab if you don't have the money upfront—but all the motels on the east side are in a blackout, leaving only the west side motels up and running.

What do you do? You have three choices:

• Risk leaving your room and head to the other side where there's power. Knock on some doors and negotiate with another to share the room. They might shut the door in your face, ask for a favor in return, or be nice enough to help you with no strings attached. There's no guarantee your unattended room will be untouched, though, and you'll be on the hook for any damages an intruder causes.
• Sit in the dark and deal. It's not the worst idea, but the TV's down, the vending machines are powered down, and with the entire place plunged into darkness, you risk getting robbed. If you struggle with defending yourself, you might want to find some trustworthy company. You can also sneak out of there and let them take your leftover pizza. It's not like you've got a ton of valuables, right? Plus, clobbering someone in the face with a frying pan sounds great until you realize you've gotta do something with the body. And what if this person's got a friend waiting?
• Get in your car and drive (or grab a friend for a road trip). If you scroll the Forum, you might notice reports on diffusion zones southward. Besides, these motels are hardly your forever home. The city can only provide so much. Why not go for a ride and see what you can find out there?

OPTIONAL PROMPTS: clean up on aisle 3 (what is that goo?); a knock at your door but no one's there; you hear screaming or a commotion down the hall

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The Fringes

Quad 3: Lockdown

Conditions: Stormy, with flooding roads

Felix Bjurstrom
> Date: 125-05-17
> Time: 02:15:57

> Emergency road lights have been reported in Quadrant 3! Please, can someone go see what's there? When last we chasers investigated emergency lights, a whole truck filled with sour candy had tipped over. Our stores were stocked for weeks! Oh, be careful - reception looks bad in that zone.

Whether you end up here on your own or you were following a tip on the Forum, the outcome is the same: you come to a stop in front of a 2-story office building that's flooded several inches deep. Emergency lights from a roadblock flicker through the stormy night. Stepping out of your car, you're soaked within seconds. When you check your phone, you don't have any bars. No calls in or out.

Through the open windows, a computer awakens and displays a cheerful smile. The lights inside switch on.

Pick your scenario role below. Your thread partner doesn't need to take the opposite role! They can join you in the same scenario (i.e. trapped together). Players are also free to create a generic NPC for the other side to facilitate the thread.

After characters escape, they'll find one bottle of antibiotics in their pocket or car, whether they remember taking it or not.

A: Sealed In
As you peer through the windows, you see crates of medicine floating around. Antibiotics in the diadem are valuable. Hospitals and doctors are always buying. You can keep it for yourself or make a quick buck. Or maybe you're compelled to help somebody back in the city who's in need. Whatever the reason, you decide to take the risk and step inside.

Water splashes around your ankles. The lock buzzes behind you. If you try to break the windows, you discover they're unnaturally resistant to shattering. With the whole place locked tight, the water begins to churn. Then the computer lights up again.

Warning, it flashes in large, bold text. Quarantine in progress. Release code required for exit.

• To find the code, you'll have to search. Duck under the water, go through sopping envelopes and sticky notes or pick the locks on the filing cabinets and desk drawers. You can also try hacking the computers. Use your computer knowledge or fall back on the age-old trick of seeing who wrote down their password.
• The files, notepads, and emails start innocuous, but as you look through them, disturbing phrases jump out at you—a dark thought you've had or a cruel taunt from someone in your past. The longer you're fixed on the terrible words, the higher the water begins to rise. Only another can break you out of your trance.
• With the rising water comes fear. And the more you're afraid, the more the water also rises. You begin to see faces in the water, bobbing like balloon heads. Do you recognize them? If you move to take a closer look, they will sink back beneath the surface as if never there.
• If you manage to swallow your panic, you can eventually find a triple-laminated binder with the release code and instructions. Bad news: you need someone on the outside to punch in the 6 strange symbols in order. The instructions explain that the code panel is located at the back of the building.

Let's hope a friendly face comes along.

B: Set Free
As you peer through the windows, you see not just the crates of medicine but someone trapped inside. They look like they might be in trouble, and from your vantage point, you notice that the water is bubbling strangely. It's definitely not normal rainwater. As you watch, the water rises unnaturally, stopping and starting. It's as if the water level is responding to an external stimulus.

• The glass is soundproof. You can't hear what the person inside is saying, so you'll have to communicate with each other another way. Try charades, typing on your phone, or whatever you think of. Eventually, you determine that they're stuck and that you need to enter some sort of code onto a pad located—according to your trapped partner—at the back of the building.
• Around the back, shadows swallow your surroundings. The panel must be pried open, but a slippery substance makes it hard to get a good grip. Each time the substance touches you, you grow uneasy. You swear you see eyes watching you, though when you turn around, nothing's there.
• You can't seem to keep the instructions in your mind. And those symbols...they burn into your retinas. Through them, you glimpse an incomprehensibly massive figure unfurling in the darkness, pulsing as if in a deep sleep. When you snap back to reality, you realize you've injured yourself, slicing your hand on a sharp edge or a bruise you can't remember getting.
• Once you manage to release the doors, the water inside the office drains upward into the sky as though sucked out by a giant hose. The darkness spreads. Get out of there fast before the shadows drag you or your partner into the void.

Of course, you don't have to help anyone. You can leave the individual there, make a deal, or outright extort them. But remember, you're not the only person on these roads. You might want to play your cards carefully, even if altruism isn't your first instinct.

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Comments

[eyesite]

( really, martin doesn’t need to feel a lick of jealousy toward oliver banks, because his visit had been less of a “pep talk” and more of a “reality check”—he’d been frightened into a neutral, passive state, simultaneously too afraid to allow himself to die and too afraid to see what exactly he would wake up as should he decide to live on. he’d justified his choice, of course. he may be an avatar of the Eye, one of the selfsame creatures he had treated with such trepidation and wariness, but he was still himself; enough so that he could still do as they had been doing before in foiling the rituals of the other Powers’ servants. ah, but he’d told himself that at the time, anyway. he isn’t sure what he thinks about that decision now. selfishly, of course, he wants to live (he’s still afraid to die), but—the knowledge that the rituals were all doomed to fail anyway and how he himself would eventually be used as an unknowing instrument for one that actually succeeded… weighed heavily. ultimately it would have been better for everyone if he had chosen differently, though that wouldn’t safeguard some other poor fool for falling into the same in the future.

his expression falls as he considers his response; he’s tired, so tired, but he’s also… present. the calamitous series of events that had landed them right here felt as though it’d just happened, and yet when he tries to cut apart and cross-examine the things he’d done and the decisions that he’d made… he knows that he made them. but he has no idea how much of that was him truly believing it was the best plan, or perhaps he simply thought it was the safest, or it was the guilt that would come with loosing the Fears upon other worlds, or perhaps it’d just been too difficult to resist the Eye’s call to take his place as its pupil himself. that, or maybe he’d just really wanted to kill jonah magnus himself (sorry, martin). the truth is probably a fine, indistinguishable melange of all of the above; it’s just a shame he has no idea of the composition. )

I still made the decision without you. Without any of you. ( but— ) And… you suspected as much and did the same.

( the lighter. it had always been a blind spot. regardless, the sting of perceived betrayal tends to hurt less when one did essentially the same thing. he exhales a sigh. ) So, let’s just say we’re… even.

( it doesn’t feel particularly worthwhile to self-flagellate now. as far as… roughly five or so minutes of casual observation can tell, it seems as though annabelle cane had been right. the Web’s plot had gone off exactly the way they planned for it to. concerning… but, well. at least they seem to benefit from it in the small way of still being alive, and all.

what martin offers him is helpful, healthy, even, but john doesn’t seem too receptive to it just yet. he frowns, shifting in the cot in discomfort. ) I’d rather not miss literally being a part of the fear and suffering of all creatures in the world… ( because that was a piece of it. he’d just spent so long so deeply saturated in it. it’s obvious to him he’s no longer as close to the Eye as he had been, but, well, prior to being stabbed, he was basically as close as he could be to it without losing himself to it completely. that was no longer the case, as was the fact that he was no longer connected to the world he had created (presumably because it had changed when the Fears had been pulled out of it). as for being completely severed from the Eye, though… he’s not sure. hadn’t what annabelle said pertained to him if he’d actually stayed in the world once the Fears were removed from it? what about now, when they’d seemingly been pulled along into the crack in reality after them?

no… no, it’s probably not that easy, nor that simple. but he will probably have to figure out where those borders lie later.

when john tends to look inwards and self-reflect, he tends to get… dark. he, at times, can be a critical person, and he’s especially critical of himself and his own mistakes. but—he feels martin’s hand brush across his brow, and his attention is pulled back and toward him. he focuses on his face, on the steady warmth of his hand grasped in his own, and so much of that tension and anxiety slackens and begins to fade away entirely. martin… he’s a better reminder of who he is, or who he wants to be, than anything else. but this is what they had ended up becoming to one another—just as john had managed to give martin enough vision to see, to bridge the immense emotional distance of the Lonely and climb out of it with him, so too did martin continue to find ways to keep him from losing too much of himself to the Eye. a glimpse of humor returns to him, hooking in at the corner of his mouth and tugging it upwards into a smile. ) Yes. I do. ( he listens to all the tapes, remember? some, he’d listened to more than others. sitting up still feels a rather tall order, but moving his arm is far more manageable; he lifts it so he can place a kiss on the back of martin’s hand—the romanticism of which gesture is probably immediately disrupted by his smile cracking wider, another couple of hoarse laughs, and him continuing, ) For whatever reason.

( it’s not just him being self-deprecating, martin!! he had been so mean!! he listens to all the tapes!! he knows! but, hey, he’s not about to start complaining!! )

Time, though. Right. ( he lowers their hands. ) Hm… When was the last time we had time off?

( though… they’re probably about to learn about all the caveats of their new-found time off from being constantly embroiled in end-of-world scenarios. yom crook and the medical staff have very politely given them some time to sort all of this out (surely they get this every one in a while from certain fluxdrifts?), but their particular wake-up call and reality check was just as similarly predestined as oliver banks’ had been. )

[positivelyroomy]

[ Then there’d been the coffin. The idea of anchors had largely been misinterpreted by them both. John believed he’d needed a piece of himself on the outside, which hadn’t been a terrible idea – just... grim? When John hadn’t returned, though, Martin had gotten the bright idea to leave dozens of recorders around the wooden box that had swallowed Daisy months ago. It was such an integral part of John those days that it had just made sense...

He’d privately listened to statements that followed John’s return – because he... he needed to know how to help, what to push his way to quell the frustration John clearly felt regarding what direction to go next. For the sake of Peter’s plan, he couldn’t do much more. (Not even hope when it started to sound like John was feeling a certain sort of way about him, because why?)

That feels like a lifetime ago.

He’s fine with accepting what they are to one another. And for now, he will simply let it be when John says that they’re even (even though later, he knows he’ll be just as guilty of getting in his head as John is on the daily). ]

Pure unadulterated masochism. [ He is being a menace, delivering it in the flat, unamused tone John would often take back in those earlier days. Oh, the feats of projection that man had been capable of was impressive. He’s smiling as well, though it’s in that stupid...besotted way he gets whenever John looks at him. Kissing his hand? Strike him down (only don’t). ] No, no... You— I just like taking care of people, and you were cute. Shut up.

[ Emotionally constipated is his type. He lets out a breathy laugh, taking a moment to glance over his shoulder. Then he returns his attention to John, and from the flicker of uncertainty, it could be assumed that he doesn’t want to put it out into the open, where anyone else can overhear. Those weeks in the safe house in Scotland belonged to them – a stolen, glowing patch of sunlight after years of doing the Institute’s bidding. Plucked from the Lonely, to be very much not alone. He doesn’t want to sully it, knowing what they know now. He settles on a quiet smile. A shrug. ]

Now. Well... soon, if we’re lucky. [ a pause, and he sounds less wistful and more, ironically amused? ] It’s weird. They didn’t act all that surprised to see us? Maybe we aren’t all that special for once.

[ Wouldn’t that be a novel concept? ]

[eyesite]

( ooc: SO SORRY for the delay on this one! )

( a menace, indeed. he has to laugh despite the insidious ache it causes in his chest. ) I’ll say. ( he should probably count himself as lucky that the Institute hadn’t allowed anyone to quit in those days, because he certainly wouldn’t have blamed them. it was a real challenge listening to accounts from those early days, given that his past self’s alternating self-important pomp and affected, heavy-handed skepticism were truly unbearable to hear. ah, well. he supposes there’s no accounting for martin’s taste (not that he would even try, given that he ultimately benefits from his ability to look past his more trainwreck-adjacent qualities). though—taking care of people, hm? ) Ah. I see. It’s all starting to make sense now… ( the incredibly rare occasion in which the trainwreck-adjacent qualities were working for him and not against him? truly a match made in heaven (or in hell, as it were).

the worn, wry humor and the glimpse of hope at some manner of relief from the seemingly never-ending onslaught of unfortunate events that have plagued them since he took up the position of Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute are both things that exist for a moment, ephemeral and bright, before being swallowed in their entirety by a reflexive sort of fear—it has been ingrained too deeply in him that something good can’t possibly happen without something exponentially worse following it close behind. no, he certainly doesn’t discount the stolen weeks that they had spent in that cabin in Scotland, but it’s a bright light in memory that casts a very long, very dark shadow. that selfsame cabin had ended up being the epicenter for the Change once jonah magnus’ machinations had managed to find their way to them in the end, and then it had transmogrified into a self-imposed hermitage, a patient stomach content to digest them slowly over eons as they pickled in feelings of uncertainty, grief, doubt, and guilt. at this point, it feels a patent inevitability that the other shoe would drop; the only variable was when.

he just isn’t sure he has the trust left to believe otherwise. he has enough to trust martin—after the choices that he had made at the end, so willing to take on the mantle of the Eye’s pupil for himself, he rather feels as though he trusts him more than himself. but others, this place, their… circumstances? defensive wariness feels like the only option available.

it’s probably a very sad statement that “fear” is such a common, ubiquitous response he has to things that in this moment, it doesn’t even register in his expression. he merely acknowledges it with the grim certainty one would any unenviable and inexorable fact.

now, the information that martin gives him is new, given he’d scarcely been awake a minute or two before their reunion. he ruminates over it for a moment, thoughtful; if their arrival hadn’t caused any sort of waves, that would make it… what, something routine? that would be strange. what had just happened to them was anything but. though, he also hasn’t been approached by any person or creature already seeming to know who he is and calling him “Archivist,” so…

anonymity felt strange, after everything that had happened. it’s hard to say whether it’s a positive or a negative. surely more of the former, right? ) Did you happen to hear anything about where this place is? It’s—I mean, is it even Earth, or…

( being yanked through a fissure in reality into near-endless parallel universes left the possibilities wide open. )

[positivelyroomy]

[ His childhood and adolescence had been spent contorting himself into whatever version of himself was most palatable for his ailing mother. Martin had done his best to minimize the space he occupied; head down, voice quiet. He’d prioritized caring for her, and it had never been good enough. She had never, not for a second, made it feel as if he was easy to love. Love was an arduous chore that exhausted and whittled you down until only begrudging tolerance remained.

An overly critical boss hardly compared to his mother hating him, and John was objectively attractive, so the tradeoff was a net positive (MARTIN PLEASE). The first cup of tea had come after he’d overheard Tim and Sasha gossiping in the breakroom about not seeing their fearless leader for hours. Murmurs damning Gertrude had leaked through the crack under John's door, according to Tim (God, he misses Tim. Sasha...). It had been a bit intimidating, knocking on his door and handing the mug over before John could snip at him (he wasn't a snake, for the venom in some of his criticisms, and yet, Martin knew to tread carefully). The flash of surprise on John’s face after handing it over had made something twist inside his chest -- not enough to make him brave enough to stay, but enough to start a routine.

The urge to care had never felt like an obligation. He would do anything for him. Had. That said, John was excellent in doing things that sent Martin's eyes upward, begging for the strength to deal with whatever risk he was keen to propel himself toward. They were both bad at that, but that was beside the point! ]

You can handle cute, better than adorable, hm? Noted.

[ He considers the question for a moment, shaking his head apologetically when John trails off. ]

I’m sorry, I don’t have more information... Kind of just – got up and had to hope I’d find you. Nothing else really mattered to me.

[ Martin has priorities. John is alive, and he will not apologize for letting that fact shine a soft glow of optimism on whatever finds them on the outside. There is ... trepidation; an ache of anxiety bone deep, but that existed long before he even stepped foot in the Institute. His whole life was a matter of survival. He’d never felt safe -- until John, who makes him want to live so badly it aches. ]

How are you feeling? We don’t have to rush— I think we’ve done enough of that for the time being. [ It is an inevitability that they will have to leave, but Martin won’t push. ] Guess we have time to mull over that whole... post-archive life. [ Since he wouldn’t stab out his eyes and run away with you while he could. ] What are your thoughts on getting a dog? [ He doesn't even know who he's trying to distract more. ]

[eyesite]

( it would probably shame or embarrass john by this point to think about how they recalled that selfsame moment so differently; hindsight afforded as much, even if one might try to justify that he, at the time, had had plenty else on his mind. having inherited what he saw as such a mountain of troubles from his predecessor, the small team of assistants that came with the position had been alternatingly a tacked-on consideration for later (when presented with the state of cacophonous chaos of the Archives at the time) and an active source of open anxiety for him (when he lapsed into near-debilitating bouts of impostor syndrome only further complicated by how very palpable the unsettling feeling that settled over him was when reading one of those “real” statements).

the tapes from those days were some of the hardest for him to listen to, partially because of how cringe-worthy his former pompousness and forced ignorance had been, but also because the voices were like those of ghosts reaching through time and space to haunt him. hell, sasha’s voice on all the tapes they had left wasn’t even hers. not really. and tim—well, there were far more grievous regrets that he’s accumulated over the years than those petty ones of how he’d acted, and listening to them had only kicked up those layers of sediment.

he couldn’t have anticipated how much, how deeply he would grow to care about any of them, each in their unique, sometimes challenging ways. it was a bit of a surprise for him, really; it’s not to say he was completely stoic, but he had always been sparing, even cautious, about such things. but they had all been thrown into a rather unique, intense crucible together.

anyways. ) I allowed it, but don’t push it, Martin. ( the tone he affects is severe, yes, but in the particular way that ends up twisting humorous; reminiscent, yes, of those earlier times, and as an offbeat echo to the impression that martin had just put on a few moments ago. )

Well—that’s alright. ( though it does make him happy, a flickering warmth locked in his chest against the sterile functionality of their surroundings, that the first thing either of them had done was look for the other. ) It just… means we’ll have to go and find out together.

( and, God help him, even before martin asks him how he’s feeling, he’s trying again to sit up, though, to john, this is experimentation, testing boundaries and limits. once, his body’s ability to recover had been so instantaneous and comprehensive that it’d been actively frustrating; he’d pushed a knife through his knuckle joint a half-dozen or more times, but rather than sever, the wound just sealed back up the moment the blade was removed. if he’s still alive after being stabbed in the heart, he has to imagine some manner of the same factor is at play—though, to what extent?

it still hurts. his chest burns, feeling strange and wrong in a way that’s hard to define, and his breathing is short and harsh—but he does get the sense that it doesn’t hurt quite as bad as it had moments before. he’s at the very least able to stay sitting up (even if it does kill). a faint sound of pain escapes him before he answers, ) I’ve certainly felt better, but—I, I think it’s improving. Slowly. ( the good thing would be that they might get to leave here moderately soon, though the poison in the tail would be that it didn’t bode particularly well for just how eldritchly-entangled he might be.

that, or the fact that… yes, lying back and talking through all of these details would be a nice, pleasant use of their time. but also: the whole world outside this tent, the surroundings and the people and the situation, it’s all just one immense unknown. it’s like a vacuum of space that draws him inexorably towards it, as hopelessly transfixed as a moth to flame.

so he remains sitting up, even as the question startles another laugh out of him; he lifts a hand to his temple, shaking his head. ) A what? ( talk about a switch in gears… ) I don’t know—seems rather presumptuous, really. Do we even know if they have dogs here yet?

( and, hmm… is he more of a cat person? he’d always thought himself neutral in that debate, though his time with the admiral had done much to place a finger (or a paw?) on the scale. )

[positivelyroomy]

That’s not fair, John.

[ This was not Martin showing off the backbone he’d developed once the comforts of people pleasing no longer served him. It was not him pressing a finger to the boundaries he’d established to cobble together enough fortitude to endure, as he’d done with John once he no longer needed written statements to digest the fear from within. No, this was simply Martin not wanting to make a fool of himself for somehow having it in his lizard brain to find John teasing him unfairly charming.

Blame coming down from the adrenaline rush of having to stab John off his actual pedestal. Sure.

The stern affectation softens, as it often does around Martin since they came together. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it, but he has precious time that wasn't there hours (???) ago. Martin was gearing up to tackle that issue, already tabulating a list in his head on how to best explore vast unknowns, when John slowly drew himself up to sitting once more. A test, Martin knows, but God, if he doesn't make a choked sound of concern anyway. ]

Do you understand the concept of bedrest?

[ He’s in pain because of you. The snag of self-hatred does not keep him from responding to John’s adjusted position, shifting to sit on the cot behind John’s back with one foot planted firmly on the floor to keep himself steady. ] Lean back, you maniac. Felt better? [ John healing, even at a drastically slower pace than he’s used to as the Archivist, was a complicated blessing. It makes Martin fret, but he tries to keep his touch and tone steady. ] Who gets stabbed and says they’ve felt better?

[ It is rhetorical, because who else but John? The following sigh is low and drawn out as if he’s slowly deflating – lungs and heart and woe wrapped neatly in imagery of a balloon in the hands of a bored child. Here’s where the fight and tension actually release. He wants to just be in this moment, ribs pressed against John’s spine due to the angle he’s taken. He can feel every breath; he tries to match the tempo. ]

Fine. Pet rock. I’m sure they have those scattered all over. [ They’re not facing one another, but the smile is obvious until it’s concealed by John’s shoulder in a kiss (and don’t they fit the trope of black cat/golden retriever to a T?). ] I just pray that we don’t have to walk to wherever it is we end up.

[eyesite]

( fortunately, he knows when to relent. even if it’s, for the most part, light-hearted and in jest. he breathes out sigh—more ragged than normal, yes, but still warm and worn from tested affection. )

Right, right. Of course.

( what’s any relationship without its careful arrangement of arbitrated compromises? speaking of—john is bull-headed enough to persevere on this second test of his physical state, but he doesn’t make any move or sound of criticism as martin shifts his position onto the cot with him, steady and warm and solid with support that… well, Christ. thinking along the lines of what he “deserves” gets into a thorny place entirely too quickly. he instead resolves just not to take him for granted, as he knows he has in the past.

dryly: ) After six months in a hospital bed, I think I understand it better than most.

( even if it had been a personal, moral conundrum he had been grappling with over that time, rather than the battle of a body slowly convalescing from sickness or harm. it was that experience, and the embedded, shared experiences of several other somewhat-related statements, that make him eager to not be here any longer than he has to. the undeniable allure of the boundless unknown is also a sizable, heavy incentive. the itch of curiosity is as deep and pervasive as any physical hunger.

he sniffs, dismissive. ) It’s hardly the first time I’ve been stabbed. ( michael, melanie… would one count the Boneturner reaching into his chest and pulling out two ribs as being “stabbed?” martin joins an upsettingly long list. and, really, getting stabbed is rather old hat when one has, say, had a building fall on them, or had their hand scorched by a person made of molten wax, or who spent three whole days within the crushing heart of Choke itself. ) You just had better aim than most.

( he does lean back against martin, though, head coming to rest against him. ) Mm. Even after we’ve gotten so good at it?

( pros: no longer walking through a patchwork of literal hellscapes full of tortured souls. cons: actually feeling the effects of exhaustion, hunger, thirst, elements, and the like would probably make it far too much of a pain. martin’s right, of course; he’s just being a smart-ass.

all of that acerbic humor leaks out of him, though, as he lapses into a brief, pensive silence. when he speaks again, his tone is more sober. ) It does already feel better. ( his hand moves closer to the bandages across his chest. ) It—I mean, it still hurts, but, I…

( he seems to struggle to find the right words, beset with a sinking feeling in his stomach. perhaps he had been too hasty to say that it was all gone? it’s so hard to tell at this point—with how immense his awareness had been as the pupil of the Eye, even briefly, he feels so dull, dim, and minuscule in comparison. is this how it would feel to be human after everything he’s gone through? or… was it ridiculous to even think that in the first place? after all, how many people are cracking jokes after getting lethally stabbed? )

[positivelyroomy]

[ Honeymooning in the Apocalypse meant for complicated compromises. This, in comparison, was refreshingly mundane; the expected exchange of a year-plus relationship, not the existential debates and petty hurts occasionally thrown like poison barbs on their trek through the wastes.

John wouldn’t be John if he weren’t stubborn to follow his plan despite Martin’s sneaky, sneaky ways to alleviate the burden; at least this time it’s simply to test how his chest feels after stitching itself back together. Sure, the doctors had probably had some impact on his healing, but probably less than either man was comfortable putting a voice to.

Martin is torn between laughing and wincing at the throw-back to one of the darkest times in his life. John had juggled an existential crisis, unknowing of what was left of his team. Being the last of his original assistants, Martin had felt an obligation to try to keep on a brave face – but he’d found himself at the hospital enough that the nurses had come to recognize him, and he’d seen the pitying looks exchanged. They mirrored the ones he felt like a brand from his mother’s caretakers.

Thinking back on those evenings, he believes that they probably wouldn’t have raised much of a fuss if he’d crawled into John’s bed and just lay there in mournful silence, but he’d called himself pathetic enough for the intrusive thoughts of hoping he’d somehow wake up, and look at Martin, and know how unapologetically deep his affections ran. He'd always been prone to those lovesick daydreams. Peter would have probably found it wildly encouraging to his protégé’s development to experience the juxtaposition of physical closeness and heavy, immovable emotional distance. Loneliness was widely accommodating to what spurred and fed it.

He'd stuck to the uncomfortably stiff hospital chair, holding John's hand instead, and he'd fed and fed and fed the hollow parts of himself. ]

Mm yeah, but that’s not… [ He pauses, flustered and annoyed – not at John but the fact he’s so good at collecting trauma. ] That’s hardly the lasting mark I imagined having on you. I am problematically romantic. [ He snorts, despite himself. ] Nothing is romantic about having ‘better aim than most’.

[ So they are… putting a voice to it. ]

Maybe it was because, good aim or not, I’m not part of the Hunt? You’d mentioned that with Trevor — [ It was hardly the first time he’d been bait; he was pretty good at using himself as a distraction, so he can hardly blame John. ] Well, maybe all I could have done in the end was knock you back to a more acceptable level of eldritch horror. Maybe this was just the easier way for the Eye to hitch a ride. [ No, he doesn’t like suggesting it. He’d hoped that the ratio of human to horror would have heavily favored human. Maybe it is; they won’t know for sure until enough time has passed. ] It could be a good thing…? We know how to avoid the situation from escalating, at least. [ Please don’t make the K standing in for his lack of middle name stand for Knife again. ]

[eyesite]

( precious few relationships could actually be said to have survived hell itself. even fewer of those included such other elements such as one of the parties being sort-of that hellscape’s Antichrist and also the other party technically murdering him at one point. but theirs was never going to play by any standard rulebook, even before the end of the world. it was probably best to not even bother attributing any normal expectations to them, either individually or together.

the moment of strained silence following his comment is one which arises from a disconnect in tone and understanding of that time. really, john recalls the time during and immediately after his coma through a lens of warped perspective; six entire months had been compressed into a unit of space and time that, while he wouldn’t necessarily be able to put it into standard temporal terms, had felt far more immediate than anyone else would have perceived. to him, it is just one link in a long chain of personal failures and shortcomings; it wasn’t that anyone who had visited him hadn’t managed to properly incentive him to wake up (martin most of all), but that he’d been too afraid of what the result might be if he did decide to abandon his humanity and live on. what if he’d gotten over himself and made that decision much earlier in that slow, circuitous process of deliberation? surely he would have been of use in fending off the attack the agents of the Flesh had made on the Institute. perhaps he wouldn’t have allowed peter lukas to get his hooks so deeply into martin; deep enough that he’d had to chase him down through the halls multiple times after his return before being rebuffed strongly enough to change tactics.

it’s not that he looks back on the time that they were preparing for the Stranger’s ritual attempt with nostalgia, but… it had been a time when they had all been together, working together. sure, it might have been under duress and without the option to leave, but there had been camaraderie. there had been shared purpose. he’d awoken to find the Archives team broken irrevocably in his absence. tim, dead; daisy, buried; martin, absent; melanie, practically homicidal; and basira, desperately trying to hold everything together. even his efforts to put things back together in ridding melanie of the Slaughter’s influence and bringing daisy out of the Buried hadn’t helped as much as he’d hoped. even together, they had suffered in disjointed, misled isolation.

the influence of the Lonely had suffused deeply throughout the Institute, in that way.

internally, john thinks over how it could be construed as very romantic, to fatally pierce the one you love through the heart—how many poems and love songs said as much in as many words? but, ah… well, by their perspective it had basically just happened, and it was far easier for john (as the “victim”) to attempt to make light while martin (the “perpetrator”) was still in the grip of guilt and consequence. he should have more sympathy for that. and so he keeps such comments for later. like… hm, in a few weeks’ time? as it is, he just makes a vaguely uncertain sound. )

Maybe, ( he speaks slowly, as if he’s mentally working through his thought process at the same time that he voices it, ) It all happened exactly the way Annabelle said it would, except—well, I wasn’t supposed to be the one acting as the pupil of the Eye at the time. ( yes, he’d made that bloody swap with jonah magnus shortly before martin had arrived. ) Since I was… closer to it. Maybe that pulled us in along after it.

( because he’d been connected to the Eye, and martin, by way of a knife, had been connected to him. kind of? he lapses into a brief pause before continuing in a softer, more earnest tone, ) …If we can assume it worked along those lines for us, that means it should have worked back there as well. Maybe—maybe everything’s back to normal.

( there’s something wistful and warm in that. it’s a comforting thought, even if they’re not there to share in it. ) …Because of you. ( after all, john had been content to consign them all to the End. )

It is a good thing. I’m here, I’m—present. ( there’s some tension in how he says that. when severed from the Eye completely, he tended to… lose himself. he’d worried he’d end up like how he was when he spent too long in the tunnels beneath the institute—or how he’d ended up in salesa’s manor, though he didn’t even remember that at this point. to john, this makes sense. when he’d made that choice to live on as an avatar, he’d closed the door to living as he had previously. that had been part of what had scared him into inaction for so long. ) Even if I am back to how I was before, we know how to deal with that. …So, hopefully we can avoid anything too extreme.

( no, he’s not looking forward to making this a recurring thing. he can only traumatize his boyfriend so much. )