tell me about the AU you commissioned lunehowls for please…I’ve seen desolation Martin exactly one other time and that fic brought it up like once
let that boy set shit on fire
OF COURSEEE GRINS. the au is mine and @klackwood ‘s !! their muse is martin and mine is jon, as if right now it’s mostly a twitter rp thing (which u can follow if you’d like! just dm me for the details we haven’t started our main plot thread yet) but i do have plans to write something that couuuld become a fic.
the main things we’ve felt out so far is a bit of martin’s Becoming, how jon’s desolation mark would be from him rather than jude and the fallout/toxicity of their dynamic that’s a big focus on maybe slight codependency.
it’s very monster x monster while also remaining a bit sweet on the side because i am writing with my partner and still get cheesy sometimes but jon has major issues and no problem with allowing martin to feed with or even off of him when it’s needed. they enable each other in that way
jon is technically still aligned with beholding but all things end up swallowed by time and nothingness, he didn’t even realize turning into the catalyst for an apocalypse was turning him into something more until his eye given abilities began to hurt him; his feeding needing to become more violent. sustaining the eye still sustains him only just barely.
any wounds he acquires fester as if the skin has died completely, charred and burnt and keeping him in a state of healing for much longer. over exerting himself with beholding can reopen these wounds as well which is Not pretty. his blood is almost black and slick like an oil spill, untreated scrapes ooze like toxic waste
as for martin weeeell he’s always been a bit angry, hasn’t he? it was pushed down for so long that he didn’t even realize how much of it controlled his life, he can’t Allow himself to be angry because it feels so bitter and wrong when he snaps like that. it’s both unfamiliar and comforting the way it warms him from the inside out to simmer in those feelings. i vaguely remember us also discussing how his hatred of burns could tie in with desolation already being something that had its sights on him from a younger age (similar to jons web encounter)
also Points below
and a funny one for the masses
aaand a sweet one
(blue is them white is me in the attached images)
UMM DAS IT? i think.
god if you’re still reading this i do still have lots to say on the topic but unfortunately my better half is asleep at the moment and im totally blanking on other lore/don’t want to share a whole lot of their writing without consent BUT IM HERE. we are in this building i love deso martin
Martin finds out that Jon’s going to meet with Jude Perry and acts to intervene. It goes… poorly.
Chapter 1 / Chapter 2 / Chapter 3 / Chapter 4
on AO3
Martin had never been a fan of the old idiom that time heals all wounds. In his experience, if time made you forget about certain wounds, it was only because newer ones took precedence. That being said, however, by the time Martin returned to the cafe where the life he’d known had ended just twenty-four hours ago, his mood was as least somewhat better than it had been the previous night. He still was all too aware of what had happened, but it didn’t sting quite as badly as it had when it was fresh.
He still had a purple smudge on his finger that had not in fact washed out during his bath, or rather his mostly-unsuccessful attempt at the same, but that was... fine. It would be fine.
Martin had made a point of being on time to the meeting he had arranged, but even so, he saw as he had arrived that both Jon and Jude had beaten him to the punch, having taken a seat at opposing sides of an outside table.
Jon was wearing the same ridiculous fluffy pink coat as he’d worn the day before, though if it was especially chilly out Martin couldn’t feel it, and Martin felt a pang as he got closer and saw that it was still visibly stained where his waxen hand had brushed against it.
As Martin approached the table where Jon and Jude sat, he found that that same coat he had fixated upon was apparently the current topic of discussion.
“Look, I lost my normal coat, and i-it’s cold. Some of us actually feel it, you know?”
Martin’s stomach sank a little further at that confirmation that it was indeed cold out, that he simply couldn’t feel the cold anymore, that that was yet another sign that he was no longer human. (Even if it was kind of amusing to watch Jon get so indignant about that coat, of all things...)
“You wouldn’t shake my hand.” There was a strange grin on Jude’s face as she spoke, a grin matched in intensity by Martin’s growing certainty that this conversation was going to be... well, simply “uncomfortable” was probably a best-case scenario, now, wasn’t it?
Martin pulled up a chair and sat down between Jon and Jude; Jon glancing his way for a moment before returning to staring at Jude, and Jude nodded vaguely in his direction but didn’t otherwise acknowledge him. That was fine, though. There were worse things to be than overlooked.
“Well, no, I’m not stupid! I saw what happened-”
Jude’s grin only got even wider as Jon spoke, and evidently he noticed, as he switched conversational tracks quickly enough.
“L-look, will you stop that?”
The wild grin turned to biting laughter, though only for a brief moment. “Oh, alright. Ah… I hate explaining jokes, but, um… Imagine you’re, um… a butcher, and one day an injured little lamb walks into your workshop, and strides right into one of the mincing machines, but when you go up to it, knife in hand, it shakes its head and tells you ‘I’m not stupid’. Do you get why that’s funny?”
“Right.” Jon didn’t sound the least bit amused even after the explanation, but honestly, Martin didn’t exactly blame him. “But no more abattoir metaphors, please.”
“Suppose it’s not really me, is it? Would you rather be a really stupid piece of firewood?” Jude’s grin and the playful tone in her voice suggested that she was amused enough by her own jokes for the three of them.
And then Jon just... plunged ahead, asking questions about names and dates and places that Martin by and large didn’t recognize; perhaps it had been foolish of him to assume that Jon’s research, Jon’s search for answers, would have stopped just because of a little thing like, oh, being on the run for murder. In hindsight, Martin knew Jon well enough that he really shouldn’t have been surprised that the man kept searching for information come hell or high water, kept seeking out danger even when he was already knee-deep in it.
Really, the surprising part was that Jude actually cooperated, more or less. Sure, she protested, she threatened, but she also answered Jon’s questions in the end.
(Some might have found it even more surprising that Martin managed to remain little more than an onlooker in the conversation, but not Martin himself; he was too used to it, too used to being overlooked and underestimated, and honestly, given the circumstances, he didn’t much mind not being the center of attention at the moment.)
“Yes, yes, I understand, you could easily kill me, I’m at your mercy...” Jon barely blinked an eye at Jude’s latest not-so-veiled threat, a reference to a statement Martin actually did remember and a man who ended up horrifically burned because of the events within it. Martin doubted anyone else could sound quite so bored when being threatened with agonizing pain and disfigurement by a woman who had already proven that she could easily make good on such threats if the mood struck her. “So... why haven’t you done it?”
“We’re in public.” Jude, for her part, seemed more amused with the situation than anything else, the grin on her face sneaking its way into her voice once again.
“Well-” Jon started to say, but Martin interrupted before Jon could finish the thought.
“That didn’t seem to stop you before, now, did it?” Martin didn’t bother hiding the aggravation in his voice--it was one thing to discuss weird happenings Martin wasn’t privy to without including him in the conversation, but ignoring the events of yesterday, ignoring the very relevant fact that Jude had burned him in a setting every bit as public as the current one, went a bit too far for his taste.
Jude tilted her head to one side, and both she and Jon looked Martin’s way for a long, silent moment; Martin couldn’t read the look in Jude’s eyes, but Jon’s contained something like guilt, or perhaps pity.
“I was a bit careless there, wasn’t I?” The upbeat tone of Jude’s voice was only slightly dampened, far from the apologetic tone her words might otherwise have signified. “I shouldn’t have given you time to scream. If I moved fast enough, I could-” Jude turned her gaze back at Jon as she continued to speak. “-reach through your chest like runny wax, and hold your heart while it cooked, and no one would even notice.”
“Right. R-right.” Jon finally sounded at least slightly affected by Jude’s threats rather than just bored of them; perhaps it was the graphic nature of this one that did the trick, or perhaps being reminded that Martin was now living proof that Jude’s threats weren’t empty ones was enough to make the seriousness of the situation start to sink in. “So why don’t you? Does your ‘god’ not want you to?”
“...mmm, hard to say. When I look at you, I feel that burning liquid pain, eager to flow out and purify your rotten carcass...” Jude glanced over at Martin, and her gaze looked almost conspiratorial, like she was expecting him to be in agreement, but all Martin felt upon hearing that was a bit sick. “But I feel that a lot.”
“Oh.” Jon looked a bit peaky, and if Martin had to guess, he felt at least as ill as Martin himself did upon hearing the graphic details of Jude’s desire to burn and destroy. “M-more or less than normal?”
“Hard to say when every nerve ending’s on fire. Hard to tell degrees.” Another glance Martin’s way, looking for something in him that wasn’t there. (Or wasn’t there yet, at least--Martin thought back to Prentiss’ statement, how she could recognize that something was wrong before becoming little more than a worm-filled husk. Maybe that’s where he was now, in the in-between period, no longer human but not yet monster.)
“Third degree, maybe?” Jon muttered, the words probably meant mostly for himself rather than for the benefit of his conversational partners, but Martin still snorted with amusement, though Jude looked more annoyed than amused (apparently in her mind, she was the only one allowed to make jokes in this conversation).
“Sorry, sorry, it was a...” Jon trailed off before finishing his sentence, and when he started speaking again it was to start on another train of thought. “I have a god too... right?”
“Is that another joke?” Jude’s wry grin was back, despite the fact that what Jon had said didn’t strike Martin as a joke, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that any laughter in response to it would have to be at his expense.
“N-no, I... I’m new to this. Everyone keeps calling me ‘Archivist’, like I’m special, and that... that I serve the Eye. Trying to kill me for it.”
“Yes.” Jude leaned back a little in her chair.
“S-so... i-it’s like your ‘god’, right?”
“Oh please, your god is nothing!” Jude wrinkled her nose, apparently disgusted by the mere thought of comparing the two “gods” on equal terms. “The Eye, Beholding, Ceaseless Watcher... whatever you call it, that’s all it does. It watches and knows, sitting bulbous and comfortable in the ignorance of infinite knowledge. I serve a reckoning, a surging tide of destruction and pain.”
Martin could feel his pulse racing as Jon breathed, “The Lightless Flame.”
“The Desolation. Blackened Earth. The destructive, agonizing heat of burning flesh and land scoured of life. The light, the comfort of fire stripped from it, leaving nothing but the terror of its approach. When it triumphs, it will leave The Eye a burned and shriveled husk that sees nothing but its own agony.”
Jon spoke up again, starting to get into yet another tiff with Jude by the sound of it, but Martin wasn’t really listening as the two went at it, too preoccupied by dissecting the information Jude had just given him about the “god” she worshipped, the power she had pulled him into serving by force.
Martin rather preferred the term Jon had offered up for it to those Jude had given; lightless flames could still provide warmth if one didn’t get too close, after all, while desolation, blackened earth... those phrases spoke only to landscapes with all the life in them stripped away, spaces emptied by force of any comfort that might once have been found there.
The mere thought of it made Martin’s stomach turn a little... and yet, part of him wanted to agree that their “god” was the better one, the stronger one, destined to reign superior, even if all it could cause was destruction and pain.
Martin hoped, distantly, that he hadn’t reached the point where all he could cause now was destruction and pain.
