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Continuation of Lacuna. I probably shouldn't continue this, but I really want Martin to have a chance. Also, Earth-2 Jax. So, um, apologies in advance. Also, apologies for any first aid mistakes, and warnings for ex-Deathstorm Martin's complicated relationship with the idea of death.
Title: Recuparare
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Earth-2 Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Earth-2 Martin Stein, original characters, mention of Zoom, Earth-2 Harrison Wells and Earth-2 Ronnie Raymond.
Summary: On Earth-2, Jefferson Jackson finds a half-dead old man getting beaten up behind the autoshop and intervenes. He quickly discovers that getting beaten for being a metahuman in a city terrorised by Zoom is the least of his new friend's worries. And possibly his own
Wordcount: 6058
Warnings/Notes: Fix-it, survival of canon death, aftermath of captivity, violence, bigotry, fear, hurt/comfort, protectiveness, promises, developing friendships
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Recuparare
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Flash (2014)
Characters/Pairings: Earth-2 Jefferson "Jax" Jackson, Earth-2 Martin Stein, original characters, mention of Zoom, Earth-2 Harrison Wells and Earth-2 Ronnie Raymond.
Summary: On Earth-2, Jefferson Jackson finds a half-dead old man getting beaten up behind the autoshop and intervenes. He quickly discovers that getting beaten for being a metahuman in a city terrorised by Zoom is the least of his new friend's worries. And possibly his own
Wordcount: 6058
Warnings/Notes: Fix-it, survival of canon death, aftermath of captivity, violence, bigotry, fear, hurt/comfort, protectiveness, promises, developing friendships
Disclaimer: Not mine
Recuperare
The first Jax knew about the old man was the sounds of a scuffle in the alley behind the autoshop. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly an unfamiliar situation these days. There were a couple of gangs in the area, though most of them usually had the sense to avoid the shop. Jason had made it plain what would happen otherwise a while back. Most of them didn't ignore that, not unless they got distracted or they just really hated whoever they were pounding on.
It sounded like a pounding, too. Too many jeers and not enough comeback to be a two-way fight. That had Jax already downing tools even before he heard the thin cry, a shocked whuff of pain, barely audible underneath the catcalls. Then some words made it through, and he was bolting out back without a thought.
"Where's your fancy powers now, meta? What, not gonna fry our asses?"
They'd cornered the old man down the end of the alley, next to the dumpsters. Four of them, Dmitri's people. And it was an old man. Jax could see the grey the second he made the alley, a flash of silver and blood from a head wound as the man went down under a fist. Absolute fury spiked through him, and next thing Jax knew he'd ploughed into the back of the closest target. Max, he recognised distantly. Big heavy guy, lived down on Sanderson. Bastard had enough strength to kill a fit man twice over, let alone some poor old bastard. Jax socked him straight under the jaw as he turned. Man went down like timber.
The rest of them scattered a bit at that. Reaction, coming around to regroup. They skittered back, left a gap clear in front of the old man, and Jax was there inside a second. He planted himself in front of the guy, fists knotting furiously, and snarled out at the lot of them to back the fuck off. One against three, not good odds, but he could hear the rest of the guys coming out behind him already, Jason at the front. The shop was off limits. Everybody knew that. Nobody messed with anyone around the shop, and definitely not with metas.
There'd been a while there, after the particle accelerator and after the meta watches came online in particular, where Jax' life had been absolute hell. Jason had saved him from that. Gave him a job, gave him a safe space. Made sure nobody messed with him. Jax had started paying that forward not too long after. Jason had had his back the whole way.
"... Not smart, Davidoff," Jason said quietly as he came abreast, looking at the leader. "Thought you'd learned that by now. You know you don't come down here."
"Fuck you," Davidoff spat back, but he'd backed off another few feet, his two still-standing guys along with him. One of them made uncertain motions towards Max, clearly wanting to get him pulled out of the line of fire too. Jax had absolutely zero sympathy.
"Man, we told you not to mess with people on our turf," he growled, angling himself consistently between them and the old man as they retreated. For his part, the old guy seemed content to just lie there and blinked dazedly at them. He wasn't focusing too good. Jax felt a twinge of alarm at that. He knew head injuries from his time on the field. Bad news, man. They needed to get the old man inside and looked at pronto.
"It's some fucking meta," Davidoff snarled, rocking forward with his fists clenched. He knew, he had to know they were the wrong audience. His watch alone oughta tell him that. He didn't give a shit. "You heard what Zoom's been doing lately? You heard all them stories from downtown? We're not having that out here! All of you bastards, you should just get the fuck out!"
Jax swallowed hard. Raised his chin, glared at the guy defiantly. Wouldn't make a difference. He knew that. The longer Zoom ran the worse this was going to get. Hell if he backed down for that, though. This was his life. That superpowered bastard was not his fault. Not any of their fault, the ones the particle accelerator had messed with. That was all on Zoom himself, and the sooner somebody murdered the bastard the damn well better.
"Right," Jason said, with that eerily calm face he got when shit was about to get bad. "That's enough of that, I think. Time for you boys to be going."
They didn't need telling twice. Pounding on helpless old men was one thing, but Jason in a bad mood was something else altogether, and the boys had pulled some tools along with them as they left the shop. More than enough to be intimidating, especially when Jason was known to be perfectly happy to use them when absolutely pushed. He hadn't made the area relatively safe by being nice. Davidoff's two guys dodged forwards to grab Max and pull him clumsily upright, and then the four of them hastily and angrily beat a proper retreat.
Soon as they were safely out of sight, the rest of the boys melted back towards the autoshop. Jason stayed, standing a little bit away. And Jax turned around and crouched down to get a better look at what this was all about.
The old man blinked blearily at him. He'd pulled himself in against the wall, shielded on one side by the dumpster, and managed to raise one arm defensively across his chest. He looked rough. Not even just 'freshly beat up' rough, but rough as in 'living out of garbage cans' rough. His eyes were blue under the trickle of blood from the split hairline. The pupils looked a bit uneven.
Jax wiped his hands against his jeans angrily, and then held them both out in a carefully non-threatening gesture. "Hey," he said, watching as the man made every effort to focus on him. "I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? My name's Jax. I work at the shop just behind us. You think you can come with us for a sec, man? You look like you need a first aid kit."
Or a hospital, but one thing at a time. Way the guy looked, skittish and defensive and like he'd been living rough for a bit, talking about going anyplace official might be risky. Especially with a meta. Some places weren't safe for them anymore, and most of them knew it.
"... That's all right," the man croaked, lowering his arm a bit. "You shouldn't worry. It doesn't matter."
He grimaced faintly, his eyes trying to squeeze shut in pain or in an attempt to focus. He shuffled backwards, clearly trying to get his feet under him. When Jax leaned forward he froze, waited until Jax went still again, and then slowly and laboriously pulled himself up the wall behind him. His chin came up as he did it. There was a certain fierce, incredibly stubborn defiance about him in that second, and Jax felt a surge of exasperated fondness at the sight of it. Without knowing anything else about him, Jax thought he might like the old bastard just for that.
"You ought to let Jax have a look at you," Jason said quietly from behind him. Still a ways off, being careful not to crowd them. "He knows his way around a first aid kit. If you're worried that he'll be like Dmitri's assholes, you needn't be."
The old man snorted. He regretted it immediately afterwards, eyes scrunching closed and a scraped hand flying to his temple. A tear trickled silently out of one eye. He didn't appear to notice.
"I can ... I can tell that Mr. 'Jax' has little in common with ... those other gentlemen, thank you," he said, a hint of pomposity creeping in at the edges, probably without meaning to. "It just ... It doesn't matter. I'm not in need of help, gentlemen. I'm overdue as it stands. I was just ... I was trying to find someplace quiet. Somewhere ... empty."
His voice faded off a bit at the end there. Not a loss of consciousness, though. An expression sleeted across his face instead, a sort of quiet, despairing longing, and alarm bells went off all the way down Jax' spine. That was not a good expression. Despair, quiet, looking for someplace 'empty'. That didn't bode well. The man didn't look to have anything on him, though there was a bit of a bulge in one pocket, but there were plenty of stray bits of metal or worse down under the monorail line, and the river wasn't too far away either. Jax had seen it before, a time or two. Lot of homeless people and suicides followed the monorail. Since Zoom and the watches, more than a few of them had been metas.
He came up from his crouch, bit too fast for the old man's nerves, but Jax made sure to back off a step at the same time. He didn't want to crowd the guy, didn't want to run him off. Not that the old man would get very far in his condition, but Jax didn't want to do this the hard way. The man needed help, not somebody else to pick on him. He was clearly at the end of his tether as it stood.
"... Let's just have a look, yeah?" Jax said quietly. He held out his hand again, a gentler, more pleading gesture now. "This happened right on our doorstep, man. We feel responsible. It can't hurt just to let us have a look, huh? Get you cleaned up a bit. You're bleeding all over your sweater."
The old man glanced down. Cautiously, this time. He studied the small stain on an already distressed collar with vague surprise. No alarm. No particular concern at all. The sight of his own blood seemed like only a small curiosity to him.
Yeah, that wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.
"Come on, man," Jax said again. He moved a little closer, waggled his hand to indicate that the man should take it. Let Jax support him, keep him on his feet. The old man only blinked at it, like it was as odd and distant a thought as the blood. He didn't move as Jax came in close, though. He didn't protest either. Jax stepped right up to him and cautiously slid his arm under the man's shoulder, down around his waist. The old man closed his eyes, trembling violently, but he didn't say anything. He leaned a little, let himself sag. His head came to rest on Jax' shoulder. Jax could feel the slow seep of the head wound start to drip onto his collar instead.
It was a kind of fury he felt, he thought. While they shuffled gingerly and carefully towards the shop, the old man's eyes firmly closed and his lips white with pain, Jason walking guard a few careful steps behind. The feeling in Jax' chest was a fierce, deeply angry thing, bright and grieving. It shouldn't come to this. Goddamnit, it shouldn't happen to people like this.
Jason waved them silently into his office once inside, closing the door behind them and moving towards the cabinet with the first aid kit. Jax eased the old man down onto the battered, oil-stained sofa under the window. People took breaks in Jason's office sometimes. Came in to shoot the breeze, get away from angry customers, pull themselves back together. Jason looked after his people. Jax propped the old man's head gently against the sofa back. The white curls were dirty, though he seemed to have made some vague effort at brushing them. With a hand, probably. The cut on the hairline was starting to slow.
"Here," Jason said, handing a stocked plastic toolbox over to him. In an active autoshop, not to mention with the gangs around here, the kit could double as a small field hospital at a push. Anything up to poisoning or broken bones was probably doable. Jax didn't think they were that bad, though. Aside from the head wound itself, nothing else seemed to be bleeding much. Scrapes, bruises. A scattering of small cuts on one arm, like he'd skidded across glass or something. Antiseptic wipes, a go-over for foreign bodies or hidden wounds, then just bandages and a couple of butterfly stitches for the deeper cuts. Not that bad, for a man who'd been beat on four-on-one.
It was the man's reaction that was troubling. He turtled in on himself, closing his eyes and seeming to try and distance himself as much as possible from what was going on. Pretending it wasn't happening to him. He seemed to quiver at every tiny pain, tears trickling silently, almost like a kid. He made absolutely no sound, though. He'd set his jaw against that, his one little defiance towards the situation. It set a lead ball in Jax' gut.
"All done," he said quietly, smoothing the last stitch down at the man's hairline. "Not too bad, really. You made shit of your sweater, but at least your skin's still mostly in one piece. Keep stuff clean, mind the head injury, you shouldn't have too many problems."
The old man made a noise. Took a second for Jax to figure out it was a chuckle, a little bark of a laugh in the man's throat. He opened his eyes, leaning back against the sofa to look up at Jax. His gaze was still a little dazed, but there was a glimmer of a sharp, angry sort of mind underneath it. The old man looked up at him with a whole lot of knowing in his eyes.
"I'd hoped that wouldn't be a problem much longer," he said softly, holding Jax' gaze as he admitted it. There was no fear in him. No particular grief. Just disappointment, and some vague amusement at Jax' expression. "Really, you know, the universe is determined to be cruel. How long is a man supposed to wait for death to get up off its ass, hmm?"
Jax swallowed. His first instinct wasn't a good one. The surge of anger at the blithe admission, the snap of temper at the quiet despair. It wasn't a good instinct, he knew that. He swallowed it carefully back down. The old man saw it anyway. Shook his head, a gentle, strained expression on his face.
"Don't look like that," he said tiredly. "You don't know. I was ... I've been dead for days now. Supposed to be. They killed me already. It's just ... taking a while to catch up. I'm not sure why. I thought I'd get some hours out of it. See the weather. Move around on my own for a while. Haven't had that in a long time. But it hasn't stopped. I had to eat, sleep. It isn't going away. I don't know why it isn't going away."
There was a deep, genuine confusion in his voice, in the scrunch of his face. His forehead wrinkled around it, tugging lightly at the stitches. Jax stared down at him. He'd no idea what to do with that. Be angry, be sympathetic, what?
"... What do you mean, you died?" he asked eventually. He figured that was a decent place to start. The old man glanced up at him, a flash of wariness in his eyes for a moment. Then it was gone again, that faded desperation taking its place.
"I was ... It's hard to explain. I've been ... I was part of something. We were killed. Very definitely killed. A crushed heart isn't normally survivable, and Raymond ... the others died. But I ... didn't. I woke up, I came back. I didn't die. I thought it would catch up with me eventually. It was supposed to. But it just keeps going. I don't remember how to do this. I haven't ... I haven't been alive in so long. I don't know how to do this. I can't remember."
His voice climbed as he went on, rapid and confused, a clear thread of panic running through it. Something snapped at 'remember', a stab of anger and despair, and his hands came up. Pale and bandaged, they crooked into helpless claws in the air above his chest. Jax caught them instinctively, his own anger swamped down by something else, something he didn't have a name for yet, and the old man's eyes snapped to his. They were wide, wild and unclouded, the vagueness of earlier forcibly dispelled by the strength of emotion. Oddly, Jax felt relief at that. In spite of the man's pain and terror, he felt a twinge of relief.
At least the man was present now. Confused and terrified, yes, but most of the way back. That could only be a good thing.
"It's okay," Jax said firmly, tugging gently at the man's hands. "Look at me, man. You're okay. Maybe you don't know what happened, but you're still here, you're still breathing. You've got time to figure it out. Just take a deep breath for me, okay? Relax for a bit. You're safe. We'll figure this out."
Figure it out, yeah. Figure it out fast, because even as disjointed as that explanation had been, something clearly terrible had happened to the guy. He'd been attacked, obviously, badly enough that he thought he should be dead, but there'd been something before that too. A long time since he'd moved around on his own. He hadn't been alive in so long. There was something lurking there, something really bad, and the old man was a meta. It might not be normal, run-of-the-mill sort of bad. People were getting taken. Zoom, most of the rumours said, though a lot of people thought the government either. Whatever this old man had been through, it sure sounded like something in that league, and that probably meant they should get it figured out fast, before whatever it was really did catch up with the guy.
Who was blinking at him. Right now. The old man was blinking up at him, his hands shaking where Jax had caught them, something startled and suspicious in his eyes. An intelligence, a wariness. The old man was all over the place emotionally, which the head wound probably hadn't helped, but there was still something sharp underneath it. A grim, defiant sort of a thing. Jax liked the look of it. He admired the hint of steel.
"You don't even know who I am," the old man said, resting quietly with his hands held in Jax', squinting suspiciously up at him. "You know I'm a meta, but you don't know who I am. I could have anything after me. I could be anything. What does it matter to you?"
Jax glared at him. His hands tightened instinctively around the man's fingers, enough to pull a vague wince and a flash of defiance, and after a second Jax decided against letting go. It wasn't tight enough to really hurt the man, and he wanted him focused enough to actually hear this.
"It matters because you washed up on my doorstep half dead and with idiots beatin' on you for something you couldn't help," he growled out. "It matters because I know what that's like. You're not the only one a meta watch would go off around. I didn't get anything out of it. No powers, no nothing. Don't know if that's good or bad, all things considered, but I still trip the watches anyway. People still look at me like I might be a monster waiting to happen. That's not my fault. That ain't on me. It ain't right that I gotta pay for that, and whatever the hell happened to you sure doesn't sound right either. It matters to me because it oughta matter to somebody, and I'm right here, right now, so I might as well be it. Ain't nobody else steppin' up that I can see. So screw that. You washed up here and now you're stuck with me. Might as well get used to it."
The old man started crying in earnest at that. Which ... shit. That had not been the reaction Jax was hoping for. Or planning on. But, okay. Head wound, trauma, whatever the fuck he'd been through lately. Probably excusable. Panic-inducing, but excusable. Jax sat down hurriedly beside him, tugged him over and into a hug. Mostly just to give him something to hold onto. So that Jax wasn't just standing over him and watching him cry. That would have been ... worse than weird, and probably cruel as well.
It took the old man a few minutes to come back. Jax looked over at Jason helplessly, his boss sitting quietly over behind the desk to keep an eye on them. Jason just shook his head, his arms crossed across his chest and a thoughtful expression on his face as he watched the old man. Jason was withholding judgement, apparently. Waiting for things to become clearer before deciding what to do. That was fair enough as well. It just left Jax holding the can. Or rather, the shaking mess of a battered old man.
"... I'm sorry," the old man said eventually, quiet and between his teeth as he leaned exhaustedly into Jax' chest. "I'm sorry, it comes like this now. I didn't used to ... I haven't had a body in a while. I haven't figured out ... I can't control it like I used to. Things come out. I'm sorry."
Jax blinked down at him. Haven't had a ... Okay. What the actual fuck had happened to the man? Because, man, the metas were one thing, and Jax had seen a few freaky things since Zoom had started screwing with the city and everyone in it just for kicks, but that ... that sounded like a whole other level. That sounded worse and worse by the second.
"... Who the hell are you, man?" he asked softly. There was horror in it, a distant sort of awe, he knew that. Couldn't really help it. The old man went still and careful against his chest. "Everything you say, every word that comes out of your mouth ... who are you, and what the hell happened to you? 'Cause I've seen some bad shit, but you ..."
The old man didn't answer. Not immediately, not for a long minute. He leaned against Jax, breathing carefully between his teeth, and clearly thinking very, very carefully about what to say. Jax could feel the tension in him, just on the edge of tipping over into trembles. He wasn't sure if it was fear or memory or what. And then, just as Jax was starting to think he wouldn't get an answer ...
"Martin," the man said quietly. "My name's Martin. The rest ... It doesn't matter. There's no one left. I ... I'm reasonably certain I've been legally dead for some years now. And actually dead for some days. Don't worry about it. I'm sure it will stop mattering soon enough."
Except he didn't sound so sure about that now. And more, he didn't sound so blithely accepting of it either. There was a note of uncertainty in his voice. Something else. He didn't want to die, Jax thought. He just didn't know how not to, and there was something else behind him. Something that he wanted one whole hell of a lot less, and which scared him a whole hell of a lot more. The man had steel in him. He was a surprisingly tough old bastard, head wound and trauma or not, but there was something behind him that he'd cheerfully crawl all the way into death's arms to escape. He wasn't going to talk about it, that much was obvious. Maybe it wasn't something you could talk about, not with just anyone. But it was there.
And as long as it was, as long as he was that afraid of it, there was every chance that he would just crawl off and find himself some quiet, empty place to take care of matters. Jax wasn't going to let that happen. He couldn't.
"... What if it doesn't?" he asked gently. He could feel the flinch, the tremor through the man in his arms. He didn't acknowledge it. Just leaned back, held the man carefully in against him. "What if it doesn't stop. What if you survived for a reason. What if death's not coming after all. What then?"
Martin drew a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to curl into himself for a moment, the movement seemingly instinctive, another turtling away. Then his spine stiffened. His bandaged hand curled gently into a fist against Jax' chest.
"Then," he answered very softly, "I am in a very great deal of trouble. I've no name. I've no legal identity. I've no ... no anything. I barely remember how to function anymore. My wife ... My wife is dead. And apparently there are a significant number of people who would quite like to kill me whether they know who I am or not. I don't ... I would rather not die in pain. I'd forgotten it. I haven't had a body, I'd forgotten what it felt like. It is ... a great deal more intense than I remembered. I'm afraid I'm not very good at it anymore."
... Jesus, Jax thought. Shit. Well. That explained a lot of his reaction to being patched up, anyway. Insofar as 'haven't had a body' explained much of anything. But yeah, okay, pain threshold knocked right back down to nothing. Like a kid, he'd thought. Not too far wrong. He could see why that would be terrifying.
Right. So they could start with that. Start with a few things. From a standing start, he could see why all that would seem like too much effort and too much fear to bother with. But bits of it could be fixed. They could start that now.
"We can work on some of that, you know," he said. "You could stick around for a while. Crash with me for a bit. Most people around here know not to mess with me or Jason now, with the shop. If you were with us, they might be less likely to mess with you either. So that cuts down on the pain for a start. And if you were staying with someone ... might help with the figuring stuff out, you know? Might be easier to remember stuff if you can watch someone else in action. A name, an identity, that part I'm not too sure on ..."
"I might know some people," Jason piped up from the other side of the room. Jax felt the old man, Martin, startle a bit, like he'd forgotten Jason was there. Hell, Jax startled a bit as well. He'd kind of figured Jason was gonna sit this one out a little longer. Apparently not. His boss looked over at them thoughtfully. At Martin. He nodded to himself. "Can't make promises, but I might be able to get you something to work with. Martin Somebody, yeah? For preference?"
"... Grey," Jax said, before he'd much thought about it. Martin, who'd been leaning back to look at Jason, swung back around to look at him instead. There was a sceptical arch to his eyebrow now. A glimmer of something to his personality beyond pain and confusion and determination, like that hint of pompousness from before. Jax grinned for it. He raised his own eyebrow right on back. "Martin Grey. You look the part, man. First thing I noticed about you. You should go for that. Think it'd suit you."
Martin stared at him. "Yes," he said slowly. "Because naming oneself after one's hair colour is obviously the key to a fine alias. What an excellent idea. And thank you for that, by the way. Lovely to know I'm still as attractive as ever."
Jax laughed at him a bit. "Hey, man, you're not too bad. For an old man. You're welcome."
There was a flash of temper at that, and a touch of reluctant humour too. A touch of life, of real personality. Jax delighted in that. It felt like something a man could be proud of. It faded again after a second, though. The humour slipped back out of Martin's eyes, and that grim, cautious thing came back once more.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked quietly, looking between Jax and Jason. "You haven't known me more than two hours. Why offer to help me? What do you hope to get out of it?"
Jax' own humour died neatly there. Something cold slipped in instead, something hard and deeply angry. Not necessarily at Martin. With whatever it was he'd been through, man probably couldn't help being suspicious. It was ... it was everything else that Jax was angry at. Zoom, the watches. Whoever had hurt Martin so fucking bad he'd rather die than go through it again, made him paranoid enough to be looking for pain behind every corner. This whole fucking world, where everyone was scared and angry and shitting on each other in the process. Probably mostly Zoom, then. Zoom and Deathstorm and the like. He figured they were responsible for quite a lot of it. Though also that asshole at Star Labs. Harrison Wells. The man whose accelerator had messed them up in the first place, the man whose damned watches had made Jax' life so much harder since. He'd probably only been doing the best he could at the time, but hell with it. He could have a share of Jax' anger too.
None of which was the point right now, of course. None which was the answer Martin was looking for. Except ... except maybe it was. Maybe it was enough of one.
"Don't know about Jason," he said, glancing over at him and then back to Martin. "Can't speak for him. But for me? It's called paying it forward. Somebody helped me. When my leg got torn up by that explosion, when those watches outed me as a meta whether I had powers or not, somebody helped pick me up and put me back on my feet. Somebody did that for me. So I gotta pass that on. People should help each other. People shouldn't be left alone to ... to handle shit like this. You seem like a good guy, man. I mean, maybe I don't know that much about you, but you've been through a lot and you seem tough. You don't want to be a burden on anybody. I can respect that. What am I gonna do, let you walk out of here on your own, knowing that chances are you're gonna end up dead? Man, screw that. You died, and the universe brought you back. That sounds like a pretty strong vote of confidence to me."
"... I just thought it was being perverse," Martin said distantly. There was a look on his face. Something alarming, something wild-edged and hollow. Jax reached out towards him in concern. Martin flinched back a little bit. "You don't ... You don't know what you're getting into. You don't know who I am. I've seen ... I've been part of things. Watched things. Been unable to stop them. I don't know that there's anything in that worth saving. It would ... It might be better if ..."
"You don't know that," Jax interrupted firmly. "What, you gonna tell the universe what it wants now? How are you supposed to know. Look, Grey. You're not dead yet. You've been waiting for it, and it didn't come. Maybe you oughta just ... see why for a while? See what happens. Death ain't ever that far away. It's not like you can't catch up to it later if you need to."
Martin squeezed his eyes shut. "It can be," he whispered. "It can be kept away. People can keep you away from it. Make it so you can't ... so you need to and you can't ... I can't. Not again. I can't. I'm sorry, I shouldn't-- I can't."
Jesus, Jesus Christ. Whoever did this, whatever the flying fuck they did, Jax hoped to hell that they were very, very dead for it. Worse than dead. What the hell would you have to do to a man to make him terrified that maybe he wouldn't die?
Didn't matter. Whatever it was, whatever the hell it had been, it wasn't happening again. Not to Martin, not to anybody. Whatever Jax had to do to ensure it, he was promising that right now.
"You're not gonna have to," he said fiercely, leaning forward and gripping Martin's arms in his hands. He held on, held onto the man until Martin looked at him. "I don't know what happened to you, I don't know who did it, but it's not happening again. Okay? Not while there's a damn thing I can do about it. I'm gonna keep you safe. Just ... Just stick with me for a bit, and I promise I will try to keep you safe."
He brought one hand up, some strange instinct, and touched the man's face. Touched the cut on his hairline, the butterfly stitches over broken skin. Something rolled through him, something fierce and protective and deeply, blindly angry. He cupped his hand around the man's cheek. He knew he was shaking a bit himself. Martin blinked rapidly at him. Martin looked at him with a deep, terrible confusion in his eyes.
"... There was a boy," he said finally, distant and nonsensical. "A boy from another world, there at the end. When I-- You'd get on well with him, I think. I've a feeling that he'd like you."
Jax blinked at that. He wasn't entirely sure, but that sounded a lot like he'd just been compared to an angel. Which, wow. Definitely not. Martin had closed his eyes, though, a stark sort of exhaustion showing on his features, and Jax figured now wasn't the time to argue about it. The man had been through a lot in a few days. He shouldn't sleep, not properly, not with that head wound, but that didn't mean he shouldn't be allowed to rest for a bit. Hell. They could argue about it later.
"I think you need to lie back for a bit," he said gently, settling the old man back against the sofa once again, smoothing his dirty hair around his face. "We'll sort the rest out later, yeah? I'm gonna get you a cup of ... tea or something. I don't know. Don't go to sleep. You got your head cracked open. Try not to go to sleep. I'll be back in a couple of minutes, okay?"
Martin waved a hand at that, a vague, somewhat imperious gesture of agreement. Jax stifled a snort at it. Another hint, there. Another glimpse at the man behind the curtain. Must have been hell on wheels, once. Martin Grey must have been a deeply annoying man once upon a time. Might be again yet. That probably shouldn't seem as hopeful a thought as it did.
Jax stood up, pulled himself carefully away. "Be right back," he said again, glancing over at Jason, waiting for the nod. "Jason will watch you for a bit. I'll be right back, okay?"
He walked off, then, at Martin's nod of acknowledgement. To get some tea, to get some space, to get his head back in proper order. Hell of morning to have. Hell of a thing to have to work your head around. But Jax had made promises now. He'd promised a man he'd look after him, and he was not going back on his word. He'd get it done. One way or another, he'd see to it that Martin stayed safe and that whatever had happened to him would never happen again.
He glanced down at his palm before he left, though. He glanced down at his hand, the one that had been resting against Martin's skin, and wondered if he'd imagined the flare of heat he'd felt from it as he'd pulled away. A spark, almost like light, where his fingers had touched Martin's face. He might have imagined it. He hoped he'd imagined it.
Because dammit, he knew there was a reason the watches kept tagging him as a meta, but this was a hell of a time for him to start developing powers now.
The first Jax knew about the old man was the sounds of a scuffle in the alley behind the autoshop. Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly an unfamiliar situation these days. There were a couple of gangs in the area, though most of them usually had the sense to avoid the shop. Jason had made it plain what would happen otherwise a while back. Most of them didn't ignore that, not unless they got distracted or they just really hated whoever they were pounding on.
It sounded like a pounding, too. Too many jeers and not enough comeback to be a two-way fight. That had Jax already downing tools even before he heard the thin cry, a shocked whuff of pain, barely audible underneath the catcalls. Then some words made it through, and he was bolting out back without a thought.
"Where's your fancy powers now, meta? What, not gonna fry our asses?"
They'd cornered the old man down the end of the alley, next to the dumpsters. Four of them, Dmitri's people. And it was an old man. Jax could see the grey the second he made the alley, a flash of silver and blood from a head wound as the man went down under a fist. Absolute fury spiked through him, and next thing Jax knew he'd ploughed into the back of the closest target. Max, he recognised distantly. Big heavy guy, lived down on Sanderson. Bastard had enough strength to kill a fit man twice over, let alone some poor old bastard. Jax socked him straight under the jaw as he turned. Man went down like timber.
The rest of them scattered a bit at that. Reaction, coming around to regroup. They skittered back, left a gap clear in front of the old man, and Jax was there inside a second. He planted himself in front of the guy, fists knotting furiously, and snarled out at the lot of them to back the fuck off. One against three, not good odds, but he could hear the rest of the guys coming out behind him already, Jason at the front. The shop was off limits. Everybody knew that. Nobody messed with anyone around the shop, and definitely not with metas.
There'd been a while there, after the particle accelerator and after the meta watches came online in particular, where Jax' life had been absolute hell. Jason had saved him from that. Gave him a job, gave him a safe space. Made sure nobody messed with him. Jax had started paying that forward not too long after. Jason had had his back the whole way.
"... Not smart, Davidoff," Jason said quietly as he came abreast, looking at the leader. "Thought you'd learned that by now. You know you don't come down here."
"Fuck you," Davidoff spat back, but he'd backed off another few feet, his two still-standing guys along with him. One of them made uncertain motions towards Max, clearly wanting to get him pulled out of the line of fire too. Jax had absolutely zero sympathy.
"Man, we told you not to mess with people on our turf," he growled, angling himself consistently between them and the old man as they retreated. For his part, the old guy seemed content to just lie there and blinked dazedly at them. He wasn't focusing too good. Jax felt a twinge of alarm at that. He knew head injuries from his time on the field. Bad news, man. They needed to get the old man inside and looked at pronto.
"It's some fucking meta," Davidoff snarled, rocking forward with his fists clenched. He knew, he had to know they were the wrong audience. His watch alone oughta tell him that. He didn't give a shit. "You heard what Zoom's been doing lately? You heard all them stories from downtown? We're not having that out here! All of you bastards, you should just get the fuck out!"
Jax swallowed hard. Raised his chin, glared at the guy defiantly. Wouldn't make a difference. He knew that. The longer Zoom ran the worse this was going to get. Hell if he backed down for that, though. This was his life. That superpowered bastard was not his fault. Not any of their fault, the ones the particle accelerator had messed with. That was all on Zoom himself, and the sooner somebody murdered the bastard the damn well better.
"Right," Jason said, with that eerily calm face he got when shit was about to get bad. "That's enough of that, I think. Time for you boys to be going."
They didn't need telling twice. Pounding on helpless old men was one thing, but Jason in a bad mood was something else altogether, and the boys had pulled some tools along with them as they left the shop. More than enough to be intimidating, especially when Jason was known to be perfectly happy to use them when absolutely pushed. He hadn't made the area relatively safe by being nice. Davidoff's two guys dodged forwards to grab Max and pull him clumsily upright, and then the four of them hastily and angrily beat a proper retreat.
Soon as they were safely out of sight, the rest of the boys melted back towards the autoshop. Jason stayed, standing a little bit away. And Jax turned around and crouched down to get a better look at what this was all about.
The old man blinked blearily at him. He'd pulled himself in against the wall, shielded on one side by the dumpster, and managed to raise one arm defensively across his chest. He looked rough. Not even just 'freshly beat up' rough, but rough as in 'living out of garbage cans' rough. His eyes were blue under the trickle of blood from the split hairline. The pupils looked a bit uneven.
Jax wiped his hands against his jeans angrily, and then held them both out in a carefully non-threatening gesture. "Hey," he said, watching as the man made every effort to focus on him. "I'm not gonna hurt you, okay? My name's Jax. I work at the shop just behind us. You think you can come with us for a sec, man? You look like you need a first aid kit."
Or a hospital, but one thing at a time. Way the guy looked, skittish and defensive and like he'd been living rough for a bit, talking about going anyplace official might be risky. Especially with a meta. Some places weren't safe for them anymore, and most of them knew it.
"... That's all right," the man croaked, lowering his arm a bit. "You shouldn't worry. It doesn't matter."
He grimaced faintly, his eyes trying to squeeze shut in pain or in an attempt to focus. He shuffled backwards, clearly trying to get his feet under him. When Jax leaned forward he froze, waited until Jax went still again, and then slowly and laboriously pulled himself up the wall behind him. His chin came up as he did it. There was a certain fierce, incredibly stubborn defiance about him in that second, and Jax felt a surge of exasperated fondness at the sight of it. Without knowing anything else about him, Jax thought he might like the old bastard just for that.
"You ought to let Jax have a look at you," Jason said quietly from behind him. Still a ways off, being careful not to crowd them. "He knows his way around a first aid kit. If you're worried that he'll be like Dmitri's assholes, you needn't be."
The old man snorted. He regretted it immediately afterwards, eyes scrunching closed and a scraped hand flying to his temple. A tear trickled silently out of one eye. He didn't appear to notice.
"I can ... I can tell that Mr. 'Jax' has little in common with ... those other gentlemen, thank you," he said, a hint of pomposity creeping in at the edges, probably without meaning to. "It just ... It doesn't matter. I'm not in need of help, gentlemen. I'm overdue as it stands. I was just ... I was trying to find someplace quiet. Somewhere ... empty."
His voice faded off a bit at the end there. Not a loss of consciousness, though. An expression sleeted across his face instead, a sort of quiet, despairing longing, and alarm bells went off all the way down Jax' spine. That was not a good expression. Despair, quiet, looking for someplace 'empty'. That didn't bode well. The man didn't look to have anything on him, though there was a bit of a bulge in one pocket, but there were plenty of stray bits of metal or worse down under the monorail line, and the river wasn't too far away either. Jax had seen it before, a time or two. Lot of homeless people and suicides followed the monorail. Since Zoom and the watches, more than a few of them had been metas.
He came up from his crouch, bit too fast for the old man's nerves, but Jax made sure to back off a step at the same time. He didn't want to crowd the guy, didn't want to run him off. Not that the old man would get very far in his condition, but Jax didn't want to do this the hard way. The man needed help, not somebody else to pick on him. He was clearly at the end of his tether as it stood.
"... Let's just have a look, yeah?" Jax said quietly. He held out his hand again, a gentler, more pleading gesture now. "This happened right on our doorstep, man. We feel responsible. It can't hurt just to let us have a look, huh? Get you cleaned up a bit. You're bleeding all over your sweater."
The old man glanced down. Cautiously, this time. He studied the small stain on an already distressed collar with vague surprise. No alarm. No particular concern at all. The sight of his own blood seemed like only a small curiosity to him.
Yeah, that wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.
"Come on, man," Jax said again. He moved a little closer, waggled his hand to indicate that the man should take it. Let Jax support him, keep him on his feet. The old man only blinked at it, like it was as odd and distant a thought as the blood. He didn't move as Jax came in close, though. He didn't protest either. Jax stepped right up to him and cautiously slid his arm under the man's shoulder, down around his waist. The old man closed his eyes, trembling violently, but he didn't say anything. He leaned a little, let himself sag. His head came to rest on Jax' shoulder. Jax could feel the slow seep of the head wound start to drip onto his collar instead.
It was a kind of fury he felt, he thought. While they shuffled gingerly and carefully towards the shop, the old man's eyes firmly closed and his lips white with pain, Jason walking guard a few careful steps behind. The feeling in Jax' chest was a fierce, deeply angry thing, bright and grieving. It shouldn't come to this. Goddamnit, it shouldn't happen to people like this.
Jason waved them silently into his office once inside, closing the door behind them and moving towards the cabinet with the first aid kit. Jax eased the old man down onto the battered, oil-stained sofa under the window. People took breaks in Jason's office sometimes. Came in to shoot the breeze, get away from angry customers, pull themselves back together. Jason looked after his people. Jax propped the old man's head gently against the sofa back. The white curls were dirty, though he seemed to have made some vague effort at brushing them. With a hand, probably. The cut on the hairline was starting to slow.
"Here," Jason said, handing a stocked plastic toolbox over to him. In an active autoshop, not to mention with the gangs around here, the kit could double as a small field hospital at a push. Anything up to poisoning or broken bones was probably doable. Jax didn't think they were that bad, though. Aside from the head wound itself, nothing else seemed to be bleeding much. Scrapes, bruises. A scattering of small cuts on one arm, like he'd skidded across glass or something. Antiseptic wipes, a go-over for foreign bodies or hidden wounds, then just bandages and a couple of butterfly stitches for the deeper cuts. Not that bad, for a man who'd been beat on four-on-one.
It was the man's reaction that was troubling. He turtled in on himself, closing his eyes and seeming to try and distance himself as much as possible from what was going on. Pretending it wasn't happening to him. He seemed to quiver at every tiny pain, tears trickling silently, almost like a kid. He made absolutely no sound, though. He'd set his jaw against that, his one little defiance towards the situation. It set a lead ball in Jax' gut.
"All done," he said quietly, smoothing the last stitch down at the man's hairline. "Not too bad, really. You made shit of your sweater, but at least your skin's still mostly in one piece. Keep stuff clean, mind the head injury, you shouldn't have too many problems."
The old man made a noise. Took a second for Jax to figure out it was a chuckle, a little bark of a laugh in the man's throat. He opened his eyes, leaning back against the sofa to look up at Jax. His gaze was still a little dazed, but there was a glimmer of a sharp, angry sort of mind underneath it. The old man looked up at him with a whole lot of knowing in his eyes.
"I'd hoped that wouldn't be a problem much longer," he said softly, holding Jax' gaze as he admitted it. There was no fear in him. No particular grief. Just disappointment, and some vague amusement at Jax' expression. "Really, you know, the universe is determined to be cruel. How long is a man supposed to wait for death to get up off its ass, hmm?"
Jax swallowed. His first instinct wasn't a good one. The surge of anger at the blithe admission, the snap of temper at the quiet despair. It wasn't a good instinct, he knew that. He swallowed it carefully back down. The old man saw it anyway. Shook his head, a gentle, strained expression on his face.
"Don't look like that," he said tiredly. "You don't know. I was ... I've been dead for days now. Supposed to be. They killed me already. It's just ... taking a while to catch up. I'm not sure why. I thought I'd get some hours out of it. See the weather. Move around on my own for a while. Haven't had that in a long time. But it hasn't stopped. I had to eat, sleep. It isn't going away. I don't know why it isn't going away."
There was a deep, genuine confusion in his voice, in the scrunch of his face. His forehead wrinkled around it, tugging lightly at the stitches. Jax stared down at him. He'd no idea what to do with that. Be angry, be sympathetic, what?
"... What do you mean, you died?" he asked eventually. He figured that was a decent place to start. The old man glanced up at him, a flash of wariness in his eyes for a moment. Then it was gone again, that faded desperation taking its place.
"I was ... It's hard to explain. I've been ... I was part of something. We were killed. Very definitely killed. A crushed heart isn't normally survivable, and Raymond ... the others died. But I ... didn't. I woke up, I came back. I didn't die. I thought it would catch up with me eventually. It was supposed to. But it just keeps going. I don't remember how to do this. I haven't ... I haven't been alive in so long. I don't know how to do this. I can't remember."
His voice climbed as he went on, rapid and confused, a clear thread of panic running through it. Something snapped at 'remember', a stab of anger and despair, and his hands came up. Pale and bandaged, they crooked into helpless claws in the air above his chest. Jax caught them instinctively, his own anger swamped down by something else, something he didn't have a name for yet, and the old man's eyes snapped to his. They were wide, wild and unclouded, the vagueness of earlier forcibly dispelled by the strength of emotion. Oddly, Jax felt relief at that. In spite of the man's pain and terror, he felt a twinge of relief.
At least the man was present now. Confused and terrified, yes, but most of the way back. That could only be a good thing.
"It's okay," Jax said firmly, tugging gently at the man's hands. "Look at me, man. You're okay. Maybe you don't know what happened, but you're still here, you're still breathing. You've got time to figure it out. Just take a deep breath for me, okay? Relax for a bit. You're safe. We'll figure this out."
Figure it out, yeah. Figure it out fast, because even as disjointed as that explanation had been, something clearly terrible had happened to the guy. He'd been attacked, obviously, badly enough that he thought he should be dead, but there'd been something before that too. A long time since he'd moved around on his own. He hadn't been alive in so long. There was something lurking there, something really bad, and the old man was a meta. It might not be normal, run-of-the-mill sort of bad. People were getting taken. Zoom, most of the rumours said, though a lot of people thought the government either. Whatever this old man had been through, it sure sounded like something in that league, and that probably meant they should get it figured out fast, before whatever it was really did catch up with the guy.
Who was blinking at him. Right now. The old man was blinking up at him, his hands shaking where Jax had caught them, something startled and suspicious in his eyes. An intelligence, a wariness. The old man was all over the place emotionally, which the head wound probably hadn't helped, but there was still something sharp underneath it. A grim, defiant sort of a thing. Jax liked the look of it. He admired the hint of steel.
"You don't even know who I am," the old man said, resting quietly with his hands held in Jax', squinting suspiciously up at him. "You know I'm a meta, but you don't know who I am. I could have anything after me. I could be anything. What does it matter to you?"
Jax glared at him. His hands tightened instinctively around the man's fingers, enough to pull a vague wince and a flash of defiance, and after a second Jax decided against letting go. It wasn't tight enough to really hurt the man, and he wanted him focused enough to actually hear this.
"It matters because you washed up on my doorstep half dead and with idiots beatin' on you for something you couldn't help," he growled out. "It matters because I know what that's like. You're not the only one a meta watch would go off around. I didn't get anything out of it. No powers, no nothing. Don't know if that's good or bad, all things considered, but I still trip the watches anyway. People still look at me like I might be a monster waiting to happen. That's not my fault. That ain't on me. It ain't right that I gotta pay for that, and whatever the hell happened to you sure doesn't sound right either. It matters to me because it oughta matter to somebody, and I'm right here, right now, so I might as well be it. Ain't nobody else steppin' up that I can see. So screw that. You washed up here and now you're stuck with me. Might as well get used to it."
The old man started crying in earnest at that. Which ... shit. That had not been the reaction Jax was hoping for. Or planning on. But, okay. Head wound, trauma, whatever the fuck he'd been through lately. Probably excusable. Panic-inducing, but excusable. Jax sat down hurriedly beside him, tugged him over and into a hug. Mostly just to give him something to hold onto. So that Jax wasn't just standing over him and watching him cry. That would have been ... worse than weird, and probably cruel as well.
It took the old man a few minutes to come back. Jax looked over at Jason helplessly, his boss sitting quietly over behind the desk to keep an eye on them. Jason just shook his head, his arms crossed across his chest and a thoughtful expression on his face as he watched the old man. Jason was withholding judgement, apparently. Waiting for things to become clearer before deciding what to do. That was fair enough as well. It just left Jax holding the can. Or rather, the shaking mess of a battered old man.
"... I'm sorry," the old man said eventually, quiet and between his teeth as he leaned exhaustedly into Jax' chest. "I'm sorry, it comes like this now. I didn't used to ... I haven't had a body in a while. I haven't figured out ... I can't control it like I used to. Things come out. I'm sorry."
Jax blinked down at him. Haven't had a ... Okay. What the actual fuck had happened to the man? Because, man, the metas were one thing, and Jax had seen a few freaky things since Zoom had started screwing with the city and everyone in it just for kicks, but that ... that sounded like a whole other level. That sounded worse and worse by the second.
"... Who the hell are you, man?" he asked softly. There was horror in it, a distant sort of awe, he knew that. Couldn't really help it. The old man went still and careful against his chest. "Everything you say, every word that comes out of your mouth ... who are you, and what the hell happened to you? 'Cause I've seen some bad shit, but you ..."
The old man didn't answer. Not immediately, not for a long minute. He leaned against Jax, breathing carefully between his teeth, and clearly thinking very, very carefully about what to say. Jax could feel the tension in him, just on the edge of tipping over into trembles. He wasn't sure if it was fear or memory or what. And then, just as Jax was starting to think he wouldn't get an answer ...
"Martin," the man said quietly. "My name's Martin. The rest ... It doesn't matter. There's no one left. I ... I'm reasonably certain I've been legally dead for some years now. And actually dead for some days. Don't worry about it. I'm sure it will stop mattering soon enough."
Except he didn't sound so sure about that now. And more, he didn't sound so blithely accepting of it either. There was a note of uncertainty in his voice. Something else. He didn't want to die, Jax thought. He just didn't know how not to, and there was something else behind him. Something that he wanted one whole hell of a lot less, and which scared him a whole hell of a lot more. The man had steel in him. He was a surprisingly tough old bastard, head wound and trauma or not, but there was something behind him that he'd cheerfully crawl all the way into death's arms to escape. He wasn't going to talk about it, that much was obvious. Maybe it wasn't something you could talk about, not with just anyone. But it was there.
And as long as it was, as long as he was that afraid of it, there was every chance that he would just crawl off and find himself some quiet, empty place to take care of matters. Jax wasn't going to let that happen. He couldn't.
"... What if it doesn't?" he asked gently. He could feel the flinch, the tremor through the man in his arms. He didn't acknowledge it. Just leaned back, held the man carefully in against him. "What if it doesn't stop. What if you survived for a reason. What if death's not coming after all. What then?"
Martin drew a deep, shuddering breath. He tried to curl into himself for a moment, the movement seemingly instinctive, another turtling away. Then his spine stiffened. His bandaged hand curled gently into a fist against Jax' chest.
"Then," he answered very softly, "I am in a very great deal of trouble. I've no name. I've no legal identity. I've no ... no anything. I barely remember how to function anymore. My wife ... My wife is dead. And apparently there are a significant number of people who would quite like to kill me whether they know who I am or not. I don't ... I would rather not die in pain. I'd forgotten it. I haven't had a body, I'd forgotten what it felt like. It is ... a great deal more intense than I remembered. I'm afraid I'm not very good at it anymore."
... Jesus, Jax thought. Shit. Well. That explained a lot of his reaction to being patched up, anyway. Insofar as 'haven't had a body' explained much of anything. But yeah, okay, pain threshold knocked right back down to nothing. Like a kid, he'd thought. Not too far wrong. He could see why that would be terrifying.
Right. So they could start with that. Start with a few things. From a standing start, he could see why all that would seem like too much effort and too much fear to bother with. But bits of it could be fixed. They could start that now.
"We can work on some of that, you know," he said. "You could stick around for a while. Crash with me for a bit. Most people around here know not to mess with me or Jason now, with the shop. If you were with us, they might be less likely to mess with you either. So that cuts down on the pain for a start. And if you were staying with someone ... might help with the figuring stuff out, you know? Might be easier to remember stuff if you can watch someone else in action. A name, an identity, that part I'm not too sure on ..."
"I might know some people," Jason piped up from the other side of the room. Jax felt the old man, Martin, startle a bit, like he'd forgotten Jason was there. Hell, Jax startled a bit as well. He'd kind of figured Jason was gonna sit this one out a little longer. Apparently not. His boss looked over at them thoughtfully. At Martin. He nodded to himself. "Can't make promises, but I might be able to get you something to work with. Martin Somebody, yeah? For preference?"
"... Grey," Jax said, before he'd much thought about it. Martin, who'd been leaning back to look at Jason, swung back around to look at him instead. There was a sceptical arch to his eyebrow now. A glimmer of something to his personality beyond pain and confusion and determination, like that hint of pompousness from before. Jax grinned for it. He raised his own eyebrow right on back. "Martin Grey. You look the part, man. First thing I noticed about you. You should go for that. Think it'd suit you."
Martin stared at him. "Yes," he said slowly. "Because naming oneself after one's hair colour is obviously the key to a fine alias. What an excellent idea. And thank you for that, by the way. Lovely to know I'm still as attractive as ever."
Jax laughed at him a bit. "Hey, man, you're not too bad. For an old man. You're welcome."
There was a flash of temper at that, and a touch of reluctant humour too. A touch of life, of real personality. Jax delighted in that. It felt like something a man could be proud of. It faded again after a second, though. The humour slipped back out of Martin's eyes, and that grim, cautious thing came back once more.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked quietly, looking between Jax and Jason. "You haven't known me more than two hours. Why offer to help me? What do you hope to get out of it?"
Jax' own humour died neatly there. Something cold slipped in instead, something hard and deeply angry. Not necessarily at Martin. With whatever it was he'd been through, man probably couldn't help being suspicious. It was ... it was everything else that Jax was angry at. Zoom, the watches. Whoever had hurt Martin so fucking bad he'd rather die than go through it again, made him paranoid enough to be looking for pain behind every corner. This whole fucking world, where everyone was scared and angry and shitting on each other in the process. Probably mostly Zoom, then. Zoom and Deathstorm and the like. He figured they were responsible for quite a lot of it. Though also that asshole at Star Labs. Harrison Wells. The man whose accelerator had messed them up in the first place, the man whose damned watches had made Jax' life so much harder since. He'd probably only been doing the best he could at the time, but hell with it. He could have a share of Jax' anger too.
None of which was the point right now, of course. None which was the answer Martin was looking for. Except ... except maybe it was. Maybe it was enough of one.
"Don't know about Jason," he said, glancing over at him and then back to Martin. "Can't speak for him. But for me? It's called paying it forward. Somebody helped me. When my leg got torn up by that explosion, when those watches outed me as a meta whether I had powers or not, somebody helped pick me up and put me back on my feet. Somebody did that for me. So I gotta pass that on. People should help each other. People shouldn't be left alone to ... to handle shit like this. You seem like a good guy, man. I mean, maybe I don't know that much about you, but you've been through a lot and you seem tough. You don't want to be a burden on anybody. I can respect that. What am I gonna do, let you walk out of here on your own, knowing that chances are you're gonna end up dead? Man, screw that. You died, and the universe brought you back. That sounds like a pretty strong vote of confidence to me."
"... I just thought it was being perverse," Martin said distantly. There was a look on his face. Something alarming, something wild-edged and hollow. Jax reached out towards him in concern. Martin flinched back a little bit. "You don't ... You don't know what you're getting into. You don't know who I am. I've seen ... I've been part of things. Watched things. Been unable to stop them. I don't know that there's anything in that worth saving. It would ... It might be better if ..."
"You don't know that," Jax interrupted firmly. "What, you gonna tell the universe what it wants now? How are you supposed to know. Look, Grey. You're not dead yet. You've been waiting for it, and it didn't come. Maybe you oughta just ... see why for a while? See what happens. Death ain't ever that far away. It's not like you can't catch up to it later if you need to."
Martin squeezed his eyes shut. "It can be," he whispered. "It can be kept away. People can keep you away from it. Make it so you can't ... so you need to and you can't ... I can't. Not again. I can't. I'm sorry, I shouldn't-- I can't."
Jesus, Jesus Christ. Whoever did this, whatever the flying fuck they did, Jax hoped to hell that they were very, very dead for it. Worse than dead. What the hell would you have to do to a man to make him terrified that maybe he wouldn't die?
Didn't matter. Whatever it was, whatever the hell it had been, it wasn't happening again. Not to Martin, not to anybody. Whatever Jax had to do to ensure it, he was promising that right now.
"You're not gonna have to," he said fiercely, leaning forward and gripping Martin's arms in his hands. He held on, held onto the man until Martin looked at him. "I don't know what happened to you, I don't know who did it, but it's not happening again. Okay? Not while there's a damn thing I can do about it. I'm gonna keep you safe. Just ... Just stick with me for a bit, and I promise I will try to keep you safe."
He brought one hand up, some strange instinct, and touched the man's face. Touched the cut on his hairline, the butterfly stitches over broken skin. Something rolled through him, something fierce and protective and deeply, blindly angry. He cupped his hand around the man's cheek. He knew he was shaking a bit himself. Martin blinked rapidly at him. Martin looked at him with a deep, terrible confusion in his eyes.
"... There was a boy," he said finally, distant and nonsensical. "A boy from another world, there at the end. When I-- You'd get on well with him, I think. I've a feeling that he'd like you."
Jax blinked at that. He wasn't entirely sure, but that sounded a lot like he'd just been compared to an angel. Which, wow. Definitely not. Martin had closed his eyes, though, a stark sort of exhaustion showing on his features, and Jax figured now wasn't the time to argue about it. The man had been through a lot in a few days. He shouldn't sleep, not properly, not with that head wound, but that didn't mean he shouldn't be allowed to rest for a bit. Hell. They could argue about it later.
"I think you need to lie back for a bit," he said gently, settling the old man back against the sofa once again, smoothing his dirty hair around his face. "We'll sort the rest out later, yeah? I'm gonna get you a cup of ... tea or something. I don't know. Don't go to sleep. You got your head cracked open. Try not to go to sleep. I'll be back in a couple of minutes, okay?"
Martin waved a hand at that, a vague, somewhat imperious gesture of agreement. Jax stifled a snort at it. Another hint, there. Another glimpse at the man behind the curtain. Must have been hell on wheels, once. Martin Grey must have been a deeply annoying man once upon a time. Might be again yet. That probably shouldn't seem as hopeful a thought as it did.
Jax stood up, pulled himself carefully away. "Be right back," he said again, glancing over at Jason, waiting for the nod. "Jason will watch you for a bit. I'll be right back, okay?"
He walked off, then, at Martin's nod of acknowledgement. To get some tea, to get some space, to get his head back in proper order. Hell of morning to have. Hell of a thing to have to work your head around. But Jax had made promises now. He'd promised a man he'd look after him, and he was not going back on his word. He'd get it done. One way or another, he'd see to it that Martin stayed safe and that whatever had happened to him would never happen again.
He glanced down at his palm before he left, though. He glanced down at his hand, the one that had been resting against Martin's skin, and wondered if he'd imagined the flare of heat he'd felt from it as he'd pulled away. A spark, almost like light, where his fingers had touched Martin's face. He might have imagined it. He hoped he'd imagined it.
Because dammit, he knew there was a reason the watches kept tagging him as a meta, but this was a hell of a time for him to start developing powers now.
