#and obsessed

The tapes are the eye, the tapes are the web, the tapes are jon…

Consider with me. The tapes are Martin.

(This is not a theory post this is basically an au concept but I’m obsessed with it)

Consider a world where the last little threads Jon always had to cling on to, the tapes that told his story, told Martin’s story, helped him cling to his sanity and his humanity and chase Martin into the Lonely like a Big Damn Hero, none of them were there. I mean, tape recorders exist, but they’re just hunks of plastic and magnetic tape. Nothing supernatural about them.

Martin goes into the Lonely and there’s no helpful tape on Jon’s desk letting him know. By the time he tries to rescue him it’s too late, he’s fading into obscurity and emptiness with no connections and eventually Bad Ending—Lonely!Martin lost and lonely Jon.

But! The world doesn’t end. Elias fails because Jon basically vanishes. And Martin has vanished quite literally, now that he’s a lonely avatar who has embraced his invisibility powers. And he can’t stop thinking about Jon and everything he’s lost. And finally he decides not to just sit around, he’s Martin fucking Blackwood he needs to figure out how to fix it.

So he goes to the rift in hilltop road and he figures out his way through it and poof! He’s back at the beginning (yes this is another time travel au but HOLD ON WITH ME PLEASE)

But he’s still a lonely avatar, he’s still invisible, he’s too far gone to interact with anyone. He tries to talk to jon and he can’t, he passes through him like a ghost. He can’t fix anything. He can’t warn anyone. He’s just gonna have to watch it all play out again, and it’s almost too much to bear.

But then as he’s sitting and watching his old self, old jon, he hears again that conversation that feels so so very long ago. About how all Jon wants is to not be a mystery. And he thinks, even if I can’t save him, at least I can give him this.

And when he focuses, he can click on the tape recorders.

Just turn them on when he remembers things were important, at first, but later he feels solid enough to carry whole tapes around and slip them into Jon’s bag or put them down when he wants to capture something. Some of it is guesswork, he wasn’t there for all of it, but well, he is a writer. He can recognize a relevant moment in the plot of Jon’s life. His own life? Mostly incidental.

Though he does stand silent and invisible in the room as Elias mind breaks his former self, and he makes sure the tape gets it all. Someone wants to hear this. It can’t go unrecorded.

That is, up until the moment he sees himself disappear into the lonely again, but this time he can leave that tape on Jon’s desk. And isn’t it shocking to see how beautiful it is, Jon who has the strength of remembering who he is, that martin is there, he pulls them both free from the Lonely together. Future martin hadn’t even thought that was possible. He hadn’t thought the world allowed this kind of happy ending.

So he leaves them mostly alone, their happiness together can be just for them, until he’s caught just off guard as they are by the apocalypse. Elias hadn’t managed it in his universe, and he doesn’t know what to do. All he can do is drift along behind them as they go, trying to continue recording the story.

Until one day, Martin walks into his own domain, and for the first time in years and years and years, someone can see him. And well.

Also martin thinks it’s only polite to offer a cup of tea.