2022-12-07 0:56:53 ¶ ●

How great is the pain of loving someone who’s avoiding you? Too great, I would say. To know why is often little comfort, Jon knew that Martin was working with Peter Lukas but know why does not stop you needing to know why.

To know so much, to know information you shouldn’t, even to be able to know where Martin was, at times! It doesn’t help. It hinders. You could know every piece of factual information in the world but it will never reveal to you the intricacies of human emotion.

Jon’s very soul is embedded with that undying need to understand, to know! And to lose someone who’s always been so open, so understanding to that need, so willing to help, provide any information, conform to his needs… To lose that at such a terrible time in his life? What more could that do that deepen the maddening desire to know and understand WHY.

Martin always thought he understood why, whenever anyone left like that. Obviously it was him, who else would it be? He wasn’t good enough, he didn’t do enough, didn’t give enough. But when he left Jon what cause would he have to believe that he’d think that? Jon, always so sure of himself, so committed, so strong; he’d never be insecure. Martin would be able to leave him to protect him, and I’m sure he believed that Jon would barely miss him.

The pain of a thing like this often lies in the small details, the things you never really notice when they’re happening, but that stab you in the gut when you realise they’re gone. The morning cups of tea, the gentle insights into eachother’s projects, short conversations over hurried lunch breaks, subtly prolonged goodbyes at the end of a workday…

Stumbling into a cold, empty break room where you might once have had a nice chat (out of politeness of course, nothing more… ) to find yourself alone, the kettle still warm, freshly boiled.

The pain of loving someone who’s left is immense, and so much more so when you’ve only just admitted to yourself that that love is there.

2022-12-27 22:04:43 ¶ ●

The things we leave behind are often thought of as irrelevant- it’s not what we leave behind, but who. I would argue, however, that what we leave can say much about how we lived, which leads me onto my point: what did Jon and Martin leave behind?

By the end neither of them really had many belongings. Martin might’ve had a flat during season 4 but the chances of him keeping it or anything in it when moving to the safe house are quite slim. At the point of moving there they each had all they’d be able to carry on a train to Scotland, not leaving much space for sentimentality.

But when the apocalypse started how much of this would survive? The cabin was the epicentre of the change, would anything there really last in a meaningful way, return to normal? But of course they did take some things with them.

Martin jokes about the bandages turning into snakes, so clearly they’ve had issues with some of their own belongings changing based on domains, so even what was valuable enough to bring with them could have been discarded.

Everything that survived the journey with them would have ended up in their makeshift home of the tunnels under the institute. No doubt it ended up spread out through their shared space, a homely mess, but as we all know there was no chance that it would ever last.

As the institute crumbled and Jon bled in Martin’s arms they were lost, evidence of their existence crushed and broken down to dust; but not all of it. Passed off to Basira, abandoned in a location that somehow survived.

One golden lighter with a spiderweb design, and one tape recorder loaded with the last conversation of Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood. Their remains.