Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Stats:
Published:
2024-07-07
Updated:
2025-06-16
Words:
218,428
Chapters:
71/85
Comments:
924
Kudos:
617
Bookmarks:
95
Hits:
16,075

There's a Cat in the Archives

Chapter 16: Scorch Marks

Summary:

A lighter and a photo

Notes:

Spoilers for season one

vague/implied spoilers for Jon's lighter

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

It was really hard to avoid Martin when the man was living at their workplace. Each time Jon saw him he silently pleaded with whatever deity might be watching that the falling and wearing a box as a hat incident not be brought up, and so far he had been spared just that.

It had been embarrassing, and painful. Jon was used to scaling the shelves of the archives, good at it even, but it had to be the one time that Martin caught him in the act that he fell.
In hindsight he could have just let his assistant see his ears and have been done with it, but he had panicked and covered them up as a reflex.

At least Tim hadn’t seen him scurrying to his office with a box on his head.

At that point he would have just taken it off and told them both.

Mercifully, it had already been a week and Martin hadn’t said a word about it so Jon wasn’t about to bring it up.
He’d hardly been able to focus all week due to the overwhelming awkwardness of the memory, so he was just pacing around his office replaying the scene over and over again in his head when Tim walked in.
“Heya, Boss.”

“Tim! Haven’t you heard of knocking before?”

“Doesn’t ring any bells. Anyway I just got back from the library and saw Elias, he wanted to know about the delivery from last week.”

Jon felt his ears twitch under his scarf. “What delivery?”

“That’s what he wanted to know. Didn’t Martin tell you? He took a package for you and something was delivered right to Artifact Storage.”

That did jostle a memory for him, one of the few interactions he had had with Martin recently where he had stammered about leaving something for him in the office.
“Actually, now that you mention it he did say something about that.” He rummaged through his drawers until he found the little cardboard box he had tucked away without thinking.
“It completely slipped my mind.”

Tim was leaning over his shoulder, curious as to what was in the box. Jon opened it and held up the lighter for the other man to look at.

“An old Zippo lighter with a spiderweb pattern.”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“I don’t, and I don’t allow ignition sources in my archives.”

But as Jon stared at the lighter he felt a strange sensation wash over him. It reminded him of how he had picked up A Guest for Mr. Spider and began to read it without hesitation. It felt like trust.

It was as if this lighter wanted him to trust it, to keep it, to listen to it.

He should throw it away, smash it or lock it up. There was something wrong with it.

He put it in his skirt pocket in a motion so natural he would have thought he had done it a thousand times before.
He could throw it out later, we would throw it out later, just not now.

Jon turned back to Tim who had an inquisitive look on his face.

“You said there was something else?”

“Oh, yes, yeah, it was sent straight to the Artefact Storage, a table of some sort. Ah, looks old. Quite pretty, though. Fascinating design on it.”

Alarm bells started to go off in Jon’s head.
“Tim… Tim, it doesn’t have a hole in it, does it? About six inches square?”

“Ah, I don’t know. Maybe? I’ll be honest I didn’t really notice. It was quite…”

He was liking the sound of this table less and less. “Hypnotic, yes. Do you know who made the delivery? Did they sign in?”

Tim seemed to be having a hard time recalling details. “Um… ah no, sorry no I don’t know.”

“Right, I’ll talk to Martin about it.” The very thing he had been avoiding.

“Do you think it’s trouble? Evil, spooky table?”

“Don’t use the word spooky.”

“You’re not the boss of me.”

Jon gave him a disparaging look and Tim only grinned.
“Whatever, I’m going to go find Martin.”

“Go get him, Tiger.” His assistant did finger guns at him.

Jon paused to stare at him. The finger guns were not lowered and Jon didn’t blink for way too long.

“Don’t do that.”

Tim put his hands down. “Yeah, okay.” Apparently even he could tell that the joke hadn’t landed.

“Right then. I’m going to go find Martin.”

“Yeah. Go. Shoo.” Tim did a shooing motion with his hands, like they weren’t still standing in Jon’s office, but he wasn’t going to get into it with the other man.

It seemed like he spent an awful lot of time wandering around the archives looking for his assistants. Was that normal? Was any of this normal?

He finally found Martin at his desk of all places, although he hadn’t been there when he had passed it earlier.

“Martin, there you are, last week you signed for a delivery and I-” Jon stopped as something in Martin’s hands caught his attention. He was holding a statement folder open, and paperclipped to the open page was an old photo of a woman.

“Who is that?” He asked.

“Oh, this is the statement of Jason North. I was just finishing up some follow up work before bringing it to you.”

“Sure, sure.” Jon shook his head a little. “Who’s that a picture of?”

Martin followed his boss’ gaze to the little photo of an elderly woman. “Gertrude Robinson, I think? I was actually just about to ask Sasha to confirm since she’s the only one of us that ever met her.”

“Let me see that.” Jon held out his hands for the folder. His assistant handed it to him and he sat on the floor to read and record it right there.

He poured over the words on the paper, seeing them, reading them and feeling them. Living the fear of Jason North, feeling the boiling water in his mouth, the morbid fascination when he found the charred animals and the sick curiosity that turned to terror when he had dropped the bottle.

During the time it took for him to record the statement he was there, in that scorched clearing in the Scottish forest, soaking up a stranger’s terror and spitting it back out.

When he finished and turned off the recorder it occurred to him that he hadn’t brought one with him, and yet there was one sitting next to him on the floor. He looked up to see Martin peering down at him from over his desk, eyes wide and looking more than a little concerned.

“What was that???”

“What was what?”

Martin had hurried around to him to help him up and was just being generally fussy. “You just sat down and read the thing aloud, but you were so engrossed in it I was getting worried.”

“Well, I suppose…” He knew that recording real statements completely engrossed him, but he hadn’t realized how odd it might seem for other people to watch.

“That’s not important right now. This statement….. I need to talk to Sasha about this picture.”

He tried to stand on his own but he was shaking and his legs gave out when he tried. Martin caught him and helped him to his feet.

“Jon, are you okay?” The large man was still holding him, a hand settled on his lower back and the other gently clasping his arm.

“I-” He wanted to answer his assistant's question, but his head was spinning with thoughts of burning and rituals and the woman in the photo.

“I need to talk to Sasha.” He pulled away from Martin to find her, but it seemed that Martin’s voice had carried and both Tim and Sasha were now standing in the bullpen looking confused.

“Sasha!” He held up the photo. “Tell me if you recognize this woman.”

“Um….” She looked to Martin who could only shrug. She adjusted her glasses and took the photo from him. “It’s Gertrude Robinson.”

Jon felt the floor tilt under him but he kept his balance. “It can’t be.” He muttered under his breath.

“Jon….. What’s going on?” Sasha asked but he wasn’t really paying attention to anyone else at the moment.

He had worked for the Institute for years, and in all that time he had avoided her. He had heard of the cranky woman in the archives who could kill plants with a look, and he had firmly decided to never go near her, to never speak to her, to never meet her.
To never hear her voice or see her face.

“Are there any audio recordings of Gertrude?” He asked, hoping that someone might say yes.

“Maybe? I’m not sure.” Sasha and Tim were exchanging worried looks and he was sure behind him Martin’s face appeared similar.

“This can’t be real.” He looked down at the little photo in despair. “It can’t have been her all along. It can’t.”

“Oh my god.”

“Does this mean that-?

“Jon, are you okay?”

They were all asking him questions but he could only look at the photo of his predecessor. At the photo of his mother.

Four years.

Four years he had worked at the Institute and had been aware of the archives and the archivist.
He could have walked down to this dusty basement at any time and found her. He could have gotten over his trepidation and met her face to face and then his search would have been over.
He had played out the scene in his head a thousand times over the years, even the ones where he was too late, but none of them had gone like this. Never had he held her photo in his hand only to realize that he had been a fool who had let his fear debilitate him and keep him from reuniting with his mother.

“Jon?” Martin was touching his arm, unsure if he should do or say more.

“I need a moment. I need to think.” he managed at last.

“So that’s her then?” Tim asked.

He nodded. “I think so.”

Considering the contents of the statement it could only be her, it had that same phantom fire that he remembered.

He leaned against the nearest surface, in this case Martin’s desk. “I don’t understand.” he muttered. “She had been the archivist all along, some fifty years, and I never knew.”
He tried to compose himself, to square his shoulders and look determined. It didn’t seem to work because Martin’s hand was immediately on his back again, helping to keep him steady on his feet.

“Sasha.” He looked her in the eyes. “Everything you know about Gertrude Robinson, everything you can find, I want to hear it.”

“Alright.” She seemed a little unsure but he wasn’t going to let anyone talk him out of this. Even if he had found her he still had to know.

He went to his office and pulled out the binder, flipping through he found his page dedicated to Gertrude’s death.

Her death.

“I’ve done some research on the side on Gertrude, officially she’s still missing. Elias is no help. I've tried asking him about her. I even called the police. They were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality, but there’s no body.”

Sasha was standing closer to him than the other two and it was her that spoke. “Jon, I heard about what happened to Gertrude, or what little we know about it. There was a lot of blood, more than she could lose and survive.”

He pulled his eyes away from the binder to meet the gaze of each of his assistants in turn.
“I know she’s probably dead, I still need to figure out what happened to her. I-I have to. She was…..”

The word Mother had never been the right one. She had found him abandoned in the cold on a lonely London street, and she had taken him in, cared for him, given him a home and a name and a life.
Some might say he had just been her cat but it wasn’t that simple. To her he may have been just a cat but to him she had been his whole world.

His mother.

And she had died here.

He ran a hand along the desk. His desk. Her desk.

He’d never noticed before, but looking closely at the grooves of the dark wood revealed old stains that were almost invisible.
He needed to know what happened and why.

“There’s case #0151403 that says someone dreamt of her death, and #0151904 is about the People’s Church of the Divine Host, on May 15th 2015 the police were called back to the chapel and that’s the day she- she’s listed as having passed away. that statement has a lot of connecting themes with #00201312, then there’ statement-”

“Jon, hey. Jon.” Sasha was grabbing his wrists as he furiously made more notes for the binder and rambled. Having her forcefully stop him made him cut himself off mid sentence and finally face his friends.

“It just keeps going, Sasha.” He said as he looked into her eyes. She nodded once.

“But not right now.” She released his hands and stepped back. “Right now you should take some time to process before jumping back into this.

“You’re probably right.” He ran his fingers over the faint stain on the desk again.

“I think an early day is in order.” He said after a long moment.

“Are you going to be okay on your own?” Martin asked.

He would have to be. He’d been on his own since his grandmother had died and he couldn’t help but feel like now was no different.
“Yes, I just…… Yes.” While running his digits on the wood his index finger snagged on a splinter and he watched as a bead of bright red oozed out. He rubbed it into the desk’s varnish, adding his own blood to its collection. It only felt right. This way they could share some blood after all.

“I’m going home.”

No one stopped him when he grabbed his coat and marched to the stairs leading out of the archives.

“Call or text if you need anything.” Tim offered and Martin chimed in with a quiet, “Take care.”

As he walked, Jon felt an unfamiliar weight bump into his leg with each step. He paused to check his pocket and fished out an old Zippo lighter with a spiderweb design. He had already forgotten about it.
He should throw it in a gutter and be done with it, but…… he was tired, and it could wait for another day.
He put it back in his pocket and continued on his way home.

Notes:

Gertrude being voiced by Sue Sims is a fun fact that has plagued me since I first learned it.

I'm sure her many escapades as the archivist won't come back to haunt her cat son. Not at all