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Martyn is panting, his lungs wheezing like they don't know their job, his hands are trembling where they fist around a balled-up shirt he holds to his chest.
And he's alone. He's so so alone.
A mirror is shattered and scattered across the floor in pieces, surrounding Martyn and stopping him from walking in any direction lest he gets his bare feet impaled.
The rage that had risen in his chest, that had pushed him to punch the mirror, now simmers in his ribcage as if it had never risen at all. It had struck when Martyn was weak, and now Martyn is reaping the consequences of bloody knuckles and a dangerous mess.
If the mirror was still up and in one piece, he would be able to see what set him off. But even with the large fractals on the floor, it is too much for his eyes and he has to look away from his reflection before the rage is reignited.
The two diamonds on his spine– the ones that had appeared under Jimmy's palms– are nothing but faded scars. No latent glow. No branching stems that stretch across his shoulders. Nothing.
Just two scars.
And both of them too. The greater diamond on top, which had always glowed the brightest, and the lesser diamond on the bottom. Both of them are completely dead, nothing but relics of Martyn's past.
If it wasn't official before, then it certainly is now.
Martyn is no longer a Listener, and there is physical evidence to back this up.
Martyn wants to give way to grief. Wants to wallow. Let his heart be consumed. But he can't. Because his grief is transformed into rage the moment it raises its head.
Martyn is not allowed to grieve.
Taking in a long breath that makes his lungs ache, he tries to think of anything else– anything at all.
"I need to clean up the floor," he says aloud, solidifying the thought and redirecting his attention as best as he is able. "I need to clean up the floor and throw the glass away."
Looking to the ground, and doing his best not to see more than the wooden floor, he carefully tiptoes out of the bathroom, not letting any of the shards stab into the bottom of his bare feet. His tail curls tightly around his leg, out of danger, and he runs the palms of his hands over the fur of his flattened ears, trying to self-soothe the monster in his chest.
Outside his bathroom is a quick-dug room Martyn had made for himself the moment he had gotten back on the Rats SMP. An out-of-the-way hidey-hole where it would take a very determined rat to sniff him out. Martyn needed space. Distance. Solitude so that he doesn't risk himself or the others around him.
He knows he'll have to come out eventually. If he takes too much time to himself the others will start to worry and they'll come together like a pack of hounds to flush him out of his hiding spot. But Martyn needs time. Just a few days to get a handle on his rampant emotions, to learn how to function with this new hollow in his spine and with these ugly snap-fast urges to maim.
Martyn quickly finds he doesn't have anything to clean up the shattered mirror with. He has a few sticks and some string, but it's not enough to make a broom, and he doesn't have any wool to make a sack either. He tears pieces of fabric from his bloody shirt to wrap his stinging knuckles. What's left of the shirt is nowhere near enough to make a sack with.
"Oh come on," he groans to himself, dragging a hand down his face until his chin rest in his palm. "Can't I have one thing go my way?"
He needs to leave and get supplies. As much as he would like to shut his bathroom door and forget about the evidence of his most recent breakdown, the shards are a hazard to his health. The last thing he wants to do is to get up in the middle of the night only to go stepping in the mess because he was feeling people-shy. Martyn has enough problems and he's going to do his best not to add to the pile.
Grabbing a spare shirt from a barrel, he slings it over his head and tucks it into his pants, trying to calm down and hype himself up at the same time.
It would all be fine. The end of the server is wrapping up anyways. Stories and role plays have been winding down as people started to bring to a close their personal fun and prepare for moving on to another server. Everyone's starting to pack up and searching for new worlds to make a fresh start in. This gives Martyn some leeway.
The server is quieter than it's ever been before. Martyn has nothing to worry about. The likelihood of running into another player is much less than it ever was before and even if he does happen to run into a player, their interaction won't be as roleplay-heavy as it would have been a couple of months ago.
(He doesn't have to worry about snapping when put under pressure.)
Martyn groans and runs both hands down his face, hesitating at his door.
Everything will be fine.
(He tries to stay optimistic, but it's not really working.)
The kitchen and dining room have always been a hotspot for activity and resources. Martyn should have known better than to go there or even pass through it.
Jimmy must have been waiting for him. Loitering about. He is talking with Tubbo and using his position as Safety Rat as an excuse to hang around longer than necessary. The moment Jimmy's eyes caught on Martyn's sneaking figure he was excusing himself from the conversation and making a beeline straight for Martyn.
All the hair stands up on Martyn's body, panic flushing through his system moments later.
Martyn's body is moving before he can think things through, bolting out of the room as Jimmy gives chase, leaving behind a confused Tubbo.
Martyn's eyes water from the wind as he runs furiously through the corridors, claws skittering and scraping on the wood floors and getting snagged on the carpet at the most inconvenient moments. He's dodging under tables and ducking and weaving– anything to try and shake Jimmy off his figurative and literal tail.
(He's not doing this. Not here. Not now. Not ever.)
(He can't. He doesn't know what will happen if he does.)
"Martyn! Martyn stop!" Jimmy calls, huffing and puffing. Being the more unathletic and more clumsy of the two, Jimmy's falling behind fast. He nearly slams into a table leg, barely dodging to the side in time.
Martyn's knuckles throb and he runs.
He can feel the rage rising again. It makes him pant even though he's not that tired. It's one spark away from burning him from the inside out. One misplaced word and he'll go off like a firework.
Martyn can't afford to stop, even if he wants to. He is the definition of a loose cannon.
(At least he got the wood and string he went to the kitchen for.)
(How cute. Risking others and his own safety for some wood and string.)
(What are going to be the consequences if you can't escape?)
"Martyn!" Jimmy calls again. Jimmy shouldn't have spoken. It's too much of a distraction. Jimmy tumbles to the ground, head over tail with a yelp, tripping over the edge of a carpet.
All to Martyn's benefit.
It's just enough time for Martyn to slip away, darting into a hole in the wall and clambering his way upwards, scampering through the cramped and endless tunnels pocketing the farmhouse. The balance, the jumping, the climbing, all of it coming naturally to his rodent limbs. It's a blur as he scrambles and runs and pants and scrambles and runs, further– further– further–
His chest is still burning. He's escaped.
His tail is thrashing too violently and his claws are digging too hard into the wood for it to be normal, but he's escaped. He escaped and that's all that matters. It's all he has to think about. It's all he can bring himself to think about.
(But it's Jimmy. He never should have had to escape in the first place.)
(In another world, he would be running to him. He would be calling Jimmy down like a man of god, begging on his deathbed, praying for him to fix his mistake.)
(Going to Jimmy because Jimmy isn't an enemy.)
(You're the enemy, Martyn. Not him.)
Shaking his head like a dog covered in water, Martyn squeezes through a tight space and into more tunnels that are so narrow they crowd his shoulders, determined to breathe through the heat encompassing his lungs and heart.
He's escaped.
He's still running.
(If Martyn can't bear the rage on his own, there's no way Jimmy could withstand the rage directed at him either.)
Shaking his head again, even more violently than before, Martyn presses onwards.
He has the materials, so he can finally make that broom he wanted.
All for the want of a broom.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Martyn's own footsteps drill holes into his head.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
He paces the length of his small room. He's thinking about enlarging it simply so he has more room to pace.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The sound of his claws against the floorboards reminds him that his nails itch. He's already picked them raw, crusted blood forming rings around the edges of his nails and cuticles. It doesn't help the itching but he can't stop himself from digging his teeth into his fingers in a desperate attempt to lessen the incessant burning that lingers beneath his skin. The burning plagues his waking and sleeping mind and drives him to pace.
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Back and forth he walks as the rage rolls and lunges cyclically beneath his collarbone, a dog constantly at the end of its leash. Pulling. Tugging. Gnawing at the chain.
Lifting a hand, Martyn drags his fingers through his hair until his scalp aches from his fingers catching in the snags and knots that had formed. He needs to brush his hair but hasn't been able to get himself to sit down and do something like self-care in several days.
Everything has gone downhill since Martyn's grand escape from Jimmy Solidarity. In only a few days of his self-imposed entrapment, he's started to unravel.
He needs an outlet. A relief. Something that isn't tearing his server mates into fleshy confetti.
(It's a thought that reoccurs. Over and over and over again until he wants to drive a hammer through his skull.)
(He's felt the blood of his friends before. He can imagine what it would feel like again.)
So Martyn paces and pace and paces. His calves ache and his feet are numb and starting to bruise for certain, but he can't stop. He's been pacing for more than twenty-four hours, the clock on the wall confirms, but he can't stop or he doesn't know what he might do.
Cry.
Run.
Collapse.
Maybe all three in that order.
(Attack.)
(You might attack.)
Martyn tries to distract himself. He really does.
He counted aloud. Backward from 100 in English and then in Japanese when the first language lost its appeal and started to sound less like words and more like meaningless noises.
He tried to remember quotes from books. He didn't remember many and that ended as soon as it started.
He sang. It sounded dreadful. The tune was broken, and the lyrics were muddled, but he could only keep that up for a few hours before he had no voice with which he could sing anymore.
And, of course, he paces.
Martyn has run out of ideas. He's about ready to chew off his leg if it gives him something to do, because with every second that passes, and he's not occupied, the searing of the rage grows more and more like a fire that licks at his esophagus.
He could lock the door. Trap himself inside his room and let himself go wild. Just to get a few hours of relief from the burn.
Martyn shakes his head viciously from side to side until he's dizzy, stumbling in his pacing between one wall and the next. No. Those thoughts are a slippery slope. The slipperiest of slopes, he could say. Martyn does that once and he'll never recover. There would be no turning back.
(If I do that, the guilt will never leave me. I've already dug my grave– I don't need to make it any deeper.)
Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
The frustrated sound that comes from Martyn's mouth is raw and cracking, his throat decimated from his endless singing. It drives him to coughing, bending nearly in half from the strong hacking as he continues to stumble forward. Martyn's knees shake from the force and he has to sit down on the corner of his bed before he falls over instead. Immediately, his knee is bouncing.
Up-down, up-down, up-down.
Martyn glares at his leg, exhaustion drawn tight across his gaunt face.
How does it still have the energy to bounce when I can barely stand?
Martyn's fingers come up to his mouth unconsciously before they are quickly snatched away and pinned beneath his thighs. It burns the open wounds and he hisses past clenched teeth. Grimacing, Martyn tips backward onto his bed. He can't enjoy the relief of laying down though, as the moment his head hits the mattress, the rage rolls in his chest, a hiccuping volcano. His breath staggers and his teeth grit. Each exhalation is acid along his tongue.
Is this my life? Is this my punishment? To suffer with this rage for the rest of my days, a permanent reminder of my treachery?
Dragging a pillow down from the headboard, he digs his teeth into the fabric and withholds the urge to scream and tear it into a bunch of crimped feathers and fabric scraps. His entire body quakes with the effort, the rage pulsing through every inch of his tense muscles.
It burns so bad.
Yet all he can think about is how a dead and cold pillow is not what he truly wants to be shredding to a million pieces.
Instead, a green cloak comes to mind.
Martyn eyes his walls with horror. He had finally decided to expand his temporary room. His pacing just couldn't continue to be confined to the 10x10 area. It was driving him batty to pace, pace, pace.
But he had lost himself anyway. Instead of pace, pace, pace, he had dug, dug, dug.
And now his room looked more like a wooden cavern than a room. No flat surfaces existed anymore, even his flat ceiling had been decimated as he tore through anything he could reach.
His hands throbbed and spasmed. Once his axe had broken he had started to use his hands. He didn't take breaks or even a few seconds pause, and now he's reaping the consequences. His knuckles, which had been slowly healing before, are busted open and torn, blood soaking the cloth he had tied around them. Streaks of rusty red decorate the walls and smears splatter across the floor and ceiling as he had refused to stop working even as blood flowed endlessly. It's a grisly sight. There's so much blood it looks like a bad paint job rather than what actually happened.
Martyn's a bit woozy.
His bed, held aloft on an elevated platform he had dug around, is the only thing that escaped the mindless terraforming. It's a wonder he didn't hit soil for how deep he dug. He wearily flops onto it, his entire body going lax with relief. Except for his hands. His fingers curl and flex without his permission around the sheets, shaking and giving out with no more energy to continue their work, but trying anyway. The tips of his fingers are bloody, several of his nails torn completely off, probably lying somewhere around the room.
He knows he should bandage and clean himself, but even the idea of moving is too much.
(His chest and the rage is so quiet he can almost pretend it's not there anymore.)
(It's blissful. He wants to bathe in the feeling of this loss. He feels so cold he could shake.)
(It's almost enough that he forgets about the empty slot in his spine.)
Eyes sliding shut, he collapses into the firm mattress and soft pillows.
And as he succumbs to exhaustion and dreams, he tries not to think about the gaping hole he had opened up in one of the corners of his room.
For the want of a broom, Martyn's control was lost.
For the want of control, their safety was lost.
For the want of safety, Martyn's freedom was lost.
For the want of his freedom, Martyn's mind was lost.
All for the want of a broom.