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Chapter Text

The banquet hall of the hotel was designed to resemble an ancient earth castle, sweeping staircases and crystal chandeliers, holographic tapestries draped across the Mercurian stone walls. It was swimming with people, attendees from every corner of the solar system, making the jeweled translator hooked into Peter’s ear an absolute necessity. Words swirled around him like a maelstrom, some intelligible, some gibberish, and the jumbled mess coming from the earpiece was almost worse than the tangle of disembodied voices. 

But as irritated as Peter was, Juno was a thousand times worse. 

"Relax, love," Peter said, sliding an arm around the lady’s shoulders and pressing a kiss to his temple. "It’s a party."

"You know, I would, but Buddy says I'm not allowed to drink, so I don't think that's gonna happen." Despite his words, he settled into Peter's easy embrace, half a smile flickering across his face. 

"Oh, poor dear. I'm sure we'll be able to find something for you when we get back to the ship." Peter's eyes floated across the room to the door to the kitchens, where server after server emerged carrying trays of champagne. If he could find the source, perhaps he could smuggle a bottle or two back to the ship for after the heist. He found there were few things that couldn’t be smoothed over by good champagne, and was eager to see if it would have any effect on the tension in Juno’s shoulders. 

He caught Juno following his gaze, and he smirked. Observant as always, his lady love. He gave Juno’s shoulder a squeeze and steered him towards the center of the room, Ignatius Lark leading his dashing wife Juniper towards the dance floor. 

Juno gave a soft groan. “Oh, hell no…”

“Oh hell yes, my sweet,” Peter purred. He spun Juno away from him with a smooth twist of his wrist and pulled him back in, his left hand finding Juno’s waist while his right fingers tangled with Juno’s. Despite himself, he could see a pleased flush rise in Juno’s cheeks, and ducked in to press a kiss to the lady’s forehead. “Can you see the mark from here?”

Juno pressed his cheek into Peter’s chest, a show of affection that made his heart skip a beat. “Over by the buffet. Eating some of those weird yellow things.”

“Weird yellow things?” Peter frowned and turned his head. “Ah. Those weird yellow things.”

“What are they?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Peter dropped his chin onto the top of Juno’s head, humming softly.

“You know this song?” Juno murmured.

“It’s familiar,” Peter said. “I’m not certain when I first heard it, though.”

“Hm.” There’s contentedness between them, a gentle, easy rhythm of breath and movement, until Juno’s fingers tightened on Peter’s with silent urgency. “He’s moving.”

“What direction?” Peter asked. 

“South corridor.”

“The restrooms are in that direction,” Peter said. 

“I’m gonna follow him.”

Peter sighed. “Anything to get out of a dance, I see.”

“Don’t take it personally,” Juno said. He lifted his head from Peter’s chest and rose up on his tiptoes to press a soft kiss to Peter’s lips. 

Peter suppressed a fond smile, and spun Juno away from him, before dropping his hand. “Hurry back, love.”

Juno rolled his eyes and grinned before disappearing into the crowd. 

Perhaps Peter looked like a lovesick fool, standing still and alone on the ballroom floor staring after his retreating date, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind overmuch. Besides, the view of Juno walking away, hips accented by swishing red silk, steps made delicate by expensive high heels, was just too much to pass up. 

“Oh, chin up, darling,” Buddy’s disembodied voice crooned in his ear. “Let the lady do his job in peace.”

Peter chuckled and left the dance floor, moving towards the buffet table to inspect the strange yellow pastries Juno had observed. 

As he approached, however, he could make out something unsettlingly familiar on the wall behind it: a door. 

Old dark wood, with a worn brass handle.

***

Juno dropped the act as soon as he made it to the hallway, out of sight of all the people and, well, to be honest, Peter. He could feel the thief's eyes on him as he walked away, and who wouldn't put on a show for those eyes?

But in the hallway he was alone, the sound of the crowd muted by the doors behind him, and he was tailing their mark to the restroom. Which, when you put it that way, was...just kinda weird. 

Juno studied the long corridor, black marble floor making the click of his heels loud, doors lining each wall as far as the eye could see. There was no one in the corridor with him though, which meant he needed to figure out which door led to the restroom…

He sighed, looked to the left. To the right. Dozens of doors, uniform in shape and color and spacing, and he needed exactly one of them. He turned to the nearest one and reached for the handle, turning the smooth brass over and pushing through--

Into a corridor that was just like the one behind him, but wrong. It went on forever, dozens of doors becoming hundreds, old dark wood and brass knobs. He whirled around, ready to leave, and found nothing but a smooth, solid mirror, reflecting his own panicked expression back at him. 

Juno took a deep breath. Then another.

Then he punched the mirror. 

There was a sharp crack, but not from the glass. 

“ Fuck!”

Juno cradled his broken hand, trying to ignore the way its shaking sent jolts of pain up and down his arm, and stared at the unbreakable mirror. There was a new thought blooming in the back of his mind, rolling through him on a wave of terror that made him break out in a cold sweat. 

Old wood, brass knob, old wood brass knob, old wood, brass knob...he’d seen that door before. He’d seen it the day Peter had disappeared from the Endeavor, when the woman with the terrifying hands--Helen?--had pushed Peter Lukas through it. 

This was her door. 

Juno had gone through Helen’s door. 

Fuck. 

Juno breathed in, and out, and turned around, reaching for the plasma knife strapped to his thigh. It was an awkward angle, since he normally would have been reaching for it with the other hand, but well. He wasn’t so sure about his grip at the moment. 

The soft buzz of the knife was almost soothing, as he looked down that endless hall. He adjusted his grip, kicked off his shoes, and, after a moment’s thought, tucked them under his injured arm. Peter would probably kill him if he left such an expensive pair of shoes in spooky no-man’s-land. 

The floor was cool and dry under his feet, dusty, even, and Juno disliked that very much. Every so often he set his foot down on something moderately sharp and had to fight back a slew of curses, not wanting to make too much noise in case he wasn’t alone. 

The sounds of his footsteps echoed down the hallway, but...wrongly, too many times and too loud. God, he was glad he’d taken off the heels. 

He tried to count the doors for a while. Quit after about four hundred. After a while some of the doors are replaced by mirrors, or paintings. And Juno was an aficionado of bad art, but these were just... awful. Some were landscapes, but of nothing Juno could rightly recognize, and some were portraits, but the subjects were all wrong, their faces twisted or their bodies misshapen, and their eyes seemed to follow him. Juno shuddered under their gaze and moved on, willing himself not to look back. 

There was a distant scuttling sound, like something with too many legs moving just a little too fast. Juno cataloged that and filed it under “to deal with later.” The knife sizzled in his grip. 

The mirrors are worse, reflecting his own image back at him but, again, wrong. That seemed to be the gist of this place: something, but wrong. Something, but twisted. 

Against his better judgment, he leaned in to study one of the mirrors, meeting his own eyes in the glass. 

The THEIA stared back, the warm brown of his iris drowned out by blood red. He had the horrible sensation that the THEIA was studying him, reading off his stats in the mirror-Juno’s mind like a demon whispering instructions to its host. His mirror self, for that matter, didn’t look too good either. It’s good eye was bloodshot like it had been on a bender, but the rest of it was clean-cut, almost terrifyingly so, in one of Ramses’ pressed suits. It was watching him coldly, and for just a second Juno wondered how... real it was. 

Then it pulled out a blaster, aimed at the glass between them, and fired. 

The mirror cracked. 

Time to go.

Juno stumbled backwards, feet catching the silk of his gown, and it was a long, terrifying moment before he righted himself. In that time, his reflection fired again, the glass spiderwebbing with cracks until all it needed was just one more shot before it fell away entirely. 

Juno got the hell out of the way. 

He dropped the damn shoes, and cut the train of the skirt with one jagged swipe of the knife until he could move unhindered, gritting his teeth against the pain in his right hand as he tried to grip the fabric long enough to cut it. 

The glass rained to the floor, and he looked up just in time to watch his reflection step through the empty space where it had been, eyes, fixed on Juno where he crouched, fiddling with his skirt.

“Hey, buddy,” Juno said, keeping his voice light. “Fancy meeting you here.”

His reflection raised the blaster. 

It wasn’t set to stun.

Juno jerked to the side, hissing as the beam grazed his shoulder. “Figures you’d be a good shot, you copycat bastard.”

He glanced down either side of the corridor, weighing his options. Back the way he came, there was nothing. Door was probably still gone. Other way? Weird noises. Not keen on those. 

Right in front of him? Doppelganger with a license to kill, and a wide open space in the wall behind him. And to be fair, he didn’t know where that went, either, but after a split second of truly faultless decision-making, he decided he was going to find out. 

Juno struck at his reflection’s hand, hoping to disarm it, though he wasn’t surprised when he failed. His reflection’s wrist was unpleasantly solid, like granite under his sleeve. Like the mirror blocking the way he’d come. While his good hand stung like it was in shock, Juno aimed a kick for it’s abdomen, hoping just a little to catch it off guard. 

Nothing. 

“Christ,” Juno muttered, praying he hadn’t just broken his foot too. “What are you even made of?” He stumbled back, picking up the shoes and chucking them out of frustration more than anything else. His reflection turned abruptly, and they sailed into the darkness behind it.

The thing opened its mouth, and from it poured Helen’s unsettling laugh, like a recording, like a migraine. 

“Alright, nope, done with that.” As his opponent moved its gun to be more squarely aimed at Juno’s heaving chest, he ducked around it, hurling himself through the hole in the wall it had crawled out of. He expected his foot to hit something solid, but it didn’t, and suddenly he was falling, flailing through the dark nothing as the light of the opening grew fainter and smaller overhead. 

Terror coursed through him in waves, and he closed his eye against it, praying for...well. Whatever you pray for, when you’re falling to your death. Mercy. Deliverance. One last chance. 

At least I straightened things out with Peter, he thought dizzily. They’d had a couple of good weeks; he didn’t need to suffer any regrets over that.

Juno hit the ground hard, seconds or hours or days later, and fought to suck in a breath. His lungs refused to cooperate at first, but they got with the program eventually, and he did his best not to cough up a lung. It was a long moment before he attempted to move, and when he did it was to assess his injuries. Right hand still broken, what felt like a nice little bruise forming on his left arm. His foot hurt too, but not in a way that screamed “broken,” and despite the fall all of his ribs felt like they were still relatively in the right place. 

All in all? Average. 

Juno peeled himself off the floor--tile? Linoleum? He squinted at it in the low light. 

Light . He turned his squint up and around the space he was in. There was just enough light to make out the outline of a door, and some unintelligible shapes around him. He didn’t quite have space to spread out--trying to move knocked over about four things that made an ungodly amount of noise as they hit the floor. With a groan, Juno pushed himself up onto his hands, then to a seat, wincing as the whole damn room started to spin. 

“I’m telling you, I heard something.” 

Juno held his breath, tucking his head between his knees. The knife was still in his hand, though silent, somehow turning off during his descent. 

“It’s a storage closet, Daisy. Unless Martin’s been sleeping in there again, I’m not sure what could possibly be in there.”

“Really? You work in a place like this and you can still say things like that?”

One of the women on the other side of the door sighed. There was a rattle as the door handle turned, and Juno was grateful for his fetal position when the door opened, as just the light reflecting off the linoleum was enough to make his head hurt.

“What the fuck.” 

“Ugh, you and me both,” Juno said, before he could stop himself. Slowly, he lifted his head, squinting up at the women standing in the doorway. One was tall, muscular, wearing a navy blue canvas jacket, a hijab, and a glare that cut Juno to his core. The other was smaller, with a frail, brittle energy that reminded him of Vespa. She had wide eyes and thin blonde hair, shoulders hunched as though to keep the world at bay. 

Looking between the two of them, Juno knew he was in trouble. 

“Who are you?” the tall one asked.

“Name’s Juno Steel,” he said. Private eye was on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t say it out loud. Because he wasn’t, anymore. He wasn’t quite sure what he was, and honestly? For the moment, he was okay with that. 

“Right. And where did you come from?” 

“Uh.” That was a great question, actually. “I was at a masquerade on...Thalassa? Then I walked through a door, and well. Here I am.” He winced. That was the worst possible explanation for what had just happened. 

“Wait a second,” the tall one asked. “You’re not from space, are you?”

“Uh.”

“Do you know any...ugh, what was his name? ‘Peter Nureyev’?” 

Juno’s heart stopped and then restarted, beating twice as fast. “Wait, where am I? Is this the, hell, is this the Magnus Institute?”

The tall woman groaned and rubbed her temples. “God, not another one.”

***

Chapter Text

Peter muted his end of the covert comms and darted towards the door, leaning his back against the wall beside it in the greatest show of detached observation he could muster. The figure behind the door flinched, then froze. “Mister Bell?” 

“Mister Sims,” Peter said coolly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“For fuck’s sake,” the man swore. 

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked crisply, eyes fixed on the soiree before him rather than the creeping figure behind the door. 

“That’s a bloody good question. I asked Helen to take me to the center of the tunnels under the Institute, but I highly doubt that’s where I am. ”

“Indeed, since this is an extremely exclusive masquerade ball on Thalassa in the twenty-sixth century, and I rather think your precious Institute somehow remained in twenty-first century London.”

“Thalassa?”

“Satellite of Neptune, Mr. Sims.”

The man swore again. 

Peter sighed. “You’d best come out of the corridor before Helen decides you’ve been loitering,” he said. More muttered curses preceded Mr. Sims as he ducked out into the ballroom, looking painfully, obviously, horrendously out of place. Peter winced to look at him, from the rumpled jacket and khakis he wore to the dark circles magnified by his square glasses. The moment he was clear of the door, it slammed shut and melted away, leaving only Mercurian stone in its place, smooth and shining. 

Mr. Sims blinked at it for a long moment, as though he couldn’t quite comprehend what had just occurred, before Peter grasped him by the upper arm and started towing him towards the coat closet. “Come with me, Mr. Sims.”

The poor man didn’t even bother to protest, only allowed himself to be dragged along in Peter’s wake, looking rather like a lamb being led to slaughter. 

Peter almost pitied him. 

***

“ Mister Algernon.” Buddy was seething over the comms, her voice ice cold and brittle. “ What are you doing?”

Peter waited until he was in the quiet safety of the coat closet to reply, having choked out the attendant carefully and propped him up against the wall. “Buddy, dearest, we have a situation.”

“And what is that?”

“Remember a few weeks ago, when I made a rather abrupt departure from the Endeavor?” 

“I do. It sent our detective into quite a spiral.”

“Well, one of my...acquaintances from that adventure has made an appearance.”

Said acquaintance was standing stock-still in the doorway where Peter had left him, staring wide-eyed at the coat room attendant. 

“Where’s Juno?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said. He started rifling through coat pockets, removing discarded jewelry and wallets from the garments draped over the racks. “I decided to remove Mr. Sims from attendance before he could jeopardize our operation.”

“Fair point,” Buddy said, taking a breath. “Tell me, Mister Algernon, what are the odds that our detective has disappeared?”

Peter froze, wrist-deep in a red velvet overcoat. “Likely very high.”

“Wonderful. Should we call the operation now, Mister Algernon?”

Peter fished his hand out of the coat pocket, staring blindly at the watch ticking in his hand. His eyes cut over to Mr. Sims, frozen in the doorway. “...No,” he said slowly. “I think it’s salvageable. After all, we’ve been running this con for over a week now, it would be a shame to abandon it now.”

“If you think you can hold up your end of the plan, dear, then I’ll leave you to it,” Buddy said. “However, I’ll send Jet in just in case. I don’t like leaving things to chance.”

“Neither do I,” Peter assured her. “But I’m afraid we have little choice now.”

Buddy’s end of the comms went quiet as she relayed instructions to the remaining crew on the Emerald Endeavor. Peter started paying more attention to the coats as well as the contents of their pockets. “Mister Sims, take the attendant’s suit, if you please.” 

“W-what?” Mr. Sims turned his owlish gaze on Peter, and there was a hint of panic in his eyes.

“Take the attendant’s suit. You stick out like a Martian rabbit at a garden party.”

Mr. Sims didn’t move. Peter sighed. “Mister Sims, I am in the middle of a fairly high-stakes heist, and I need you to do exactly as I say. Put on the attendant’s suit.”

“Why do you need--” the other man’s voice was small and meek and Peter couldn’t bring himself to let him finish his question. 

“Because I happen to know you have a rather valuable skill that I may be able to put to use, and because since you’re here, Juno is likely missing, so I have to work with the tools at hand. Now, please, Mister Sims, put on the damned suit. ”

“Jon.” 

Peter looked up, confused. “Sorry?”

“Call me Jon,” the other man said, with a sigh. He crouched next to the attendant and started to gingerly relieve the man of his clothing. “It’ll make things easier on both of us.”

***

The suit fits Mr. Sims--Jon--passably well, and could be made to look more appropriate with some strategic folds and a smattering of stolen jewels. Peter even found a mask tucked away in a handbag and affixed it to Jon’s beaky nose. Jon averted his eyes, a blush rising to his cheeks.

“Alright, Jon?” Peter asked, clasping a watch to his wrist.

“I-I’m. No.”

Peter snorted. “I’m hardly surprised. What’s wrong?”

“I’m supposed to be saving Martin,” Jon said hoarsely. “I don’t...have time for masquerades, or heists, or any of this. Martin--” 

“Martin?” Peter asked, frowning. “I don’t recall meeting him.”

“No, I. Haven’t seen him in a while, either,” Jon muttered. “He’s been...keeping to himself, lately. Hiding away in the Institute somewhere, working for Peter Lukas…”

“Peter Lukas?” Peter asked sharply.

“I--yes. You know about him?” 

“Unfortunately,” Peter growled. “Unpleasant man. Spent several hours on our ship terrorizing the crew, from what I hear.”

“That’s, uh,” Jon took a shaky breath. “That is rather unfortunate. Wait, when did that happen? When did you come into contact with Peter Lukas?”

“The same time you and your colleagues came into contact with me,” Peter said. “We switched places, thanks to. Well, Helen.” Stalling for a few more minutes, he straightened Jon’s tie. “Mr. Sims, I must be honest with you. I dearly want to help you. But we have a very limited window before our mark leaves this masquerade, and we may well have already missed it. So if you give me just twenty minutes of your time, I will do my best to help you save your...Martin.”

Jon looked him in the eye for an uncomfortably long moment. “All right,” he said finally. “Okay. What do you need me to do?”

Peter smiled. 

***

Jon was not proud of the tremor in his step when Peter Nureyev-- Ignatius Lark-- led him out of the coat closet. On the one hand, he was exceedingly uncomfortable with the fact that he was wearing another man’s clothes (though not a dead man’s, he’d made certain of that). On the other, he caught the eye of a few other attendees as they exited the cramped space, and the amusement glittering in their eyes put him even more on edge. He couldn’t read the rest of their expressions behind their masks, but something about their knowing smirks made his skin itch. 

“Keep up, Jon,” Ignatius murmured, taking Jon’s hand and leading him along like a creature on display. The mask on his face itched. The clothes tucked to fit his narrow frame itched. The jewelry heavy on his wrists and neck itched. 

It was starting to seem more and more likely that Jon was just having some sort of allergic reaction. 

It was a miracle that Peter was able to keep his head; Jon felt himself developing eye strain every time he looked in the man’s direction, the glittering midnight blue of his gown shifting in the light. It was...elegant, Jon supposed, but between the shimmering dress and the silver mask and lipstick on Peter’s face, it was also jarring to look at. 

They barely made it halfway across the room before they were accosted. “Ah, Ignatius!” 

Jon hadn’t the faintest idea who the stranger greeting them was, and Ignatius didn’t seem inclined to introduce him.

“Mister Atlas! A pleasure!” Ignatius’s fingers become a vice on Jon’s. “I lost sight of you after the waltz.”

“Indeed.” The stranger looks Jon over with shrewd eyes behind a glossy opalescent mask. “This doesn’t seem to be the partner you had for the waltz, my dear man.”

“Oh no,” Ignatius simpered. “Poor Juniper went back to the room. Not feeling well, you see. I wasn’t quite ready to join her, so I found myself a distraction.”

Ignatius turned to Jon and winked. He could feel the ensuing blush burning in the tips of his ears, and was grateful for the mask, as little of his face as it covered. The other man raised an eyebrow, a slow smile spreading across his face. It was predatory, obscene. 

Jon did not like that smile at all. 

“Didn’t figure you for the type, seeing you with your lady, Ignatius.”

Ignatius’s smile went sharp at those words, a sensation running through his (and Jon’s) chest like a forest fire. Possessive and furious and consuming. Jon had felt that kind of anger before, reading certain statements. He cast his mind about, trying to remember which entities fed on that anger. Desolation, perhaps, or Slaughter. There was certainly murder in Peter Nureyev’s eyes in that moment. 

“Ah, Ignatius…” Jon stammered.

The fury cooled considerably, but Ignatius’s eyes remained hard. “Juniper and I, we have an arrangement.”

“Ah, my mistake.” Mr. Atlas looked smug, somehow, and Jon felt a pull in his mind, the same pull he’d felt towards the woman in the coffee shop, towards the sailor on the ship to Ny Alesund. 

“Mister Atlas,” Jon said, feeling the Eye gathering behind his words. “Tell me, what kind of business do you do?”

Much as he tried to soften the blow, the man still looked bowled over by the question, though he began to speak immediately. “I work as an investment manager…”

Jon maintained his focus, trying to ignore Ignatius’s fidgeting beside him as he activated the recording device clasped in his palm. The man’s life story spilled out of him at Jon’s behest, and Peter Nureyev caught it on tape. It struck Jon just how...similar, this was, to his own work. 

Atlas’s tone didn’t change, but at the words “THEIA project” Peter’s hand tightened again, and Jon couldn’t help but wince. 

“What is this...THEIA Soul?”Jon asked, and felt the Eye’s hunger flare, felt his throat close up with need. He didn’t even realize he’d taken a step forward until he felt the pull on his hand from Peter. 

“The THEIA Soul was a device designed to save people from themselves.” With every word, Jon felt the horror mount in his own soul even as the eye was sated, even as he felt some of his weakness start to drain away with the sustenance of a live statement. 

Mr. Atlas started to look shaky and pale, and Peter pulled on Jon’s hand. “I think that’s enough,” he said quietly. “Mister Atlas, you’re looking rather ill. Should I find you a place to sit?”

“What did you do to me?” the man finally gasped, doubling over, clutching at his chest where his heart must have been racing. “Did you drug me? What did you do to me?”

As his volume grew, Peter took a deep breath. “Time to go.”

Mr. Atlas grew louder and more discomposed, and eyes started to turn in their direction. To his credit, Peter seemed to take this in stride, backing up abruptly and looking astonished at the man’s outburst. Jon likely wore a similar expression, he expected, but it was hardly intentional. 

“Gentlemen.” Jon startled and looked up and up and to his right to find a man approximately the size of a small building standing at his elbow. “I believe it’s time for us to go.”

“I concur,” Peter said smoothly. “If you’d escort Mister Sims? I want to make one more sweep to ensure that Juno isn’t here.”

Jon was passed off to the massive man like an object, like a toy. He stumbled trying to keep up with the man’s strides, and found himself abruptly slung over one of the man’s shoulders like a sack of potatoes. “Hey! Hey put me down!”

“I cannot,” the man said, his voice as solid and expressionless as the rest of him. Jon couldn’t even read him with Beholding, couldn’t siphon information off him like a parasite. “We need to make a quick getaway, and you cannot slow us down.” 

“I can walk!” Jon insisted. He looked around at the other guests, whether for help or to simply see if they had noticed his plight, he wasn’t certain. But they seemed to be preoccupied with, well. His meal. 

Mr. Atlas was still screaming on the other side of the ballroom. 

“I believe you. But I am faster.”

Despite Jon’s endless protests, he wasn’t returned to the ground until he was dumped without ceremony into the back seat of a sleek green car, the engine of which was already running. 

The enormous man shut the door behind him and slid into the driver’s seat, sitting silently, perfectly still.

“Excuse me,” Jon finally croaked, leaning over the console into the front half of the car.

“You are excused,” the man said. 

“I, ah. My name is Jonathan Sims. Who...are you?”

“Jet Siquliak.” The man met Jon’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “Ordinarily I would not share my name with you, but I suspect you will learn it soon enough. This is easier.”

“Ah,” Jon said weakly. 

The passenger door swung open and Peter slid into the car, looking troubled. “I think we’re ready to leave now, Jet.”

“There was no sign of Juno?”

“None,” Peter said. He looked exhausted, suddenly. Worried. Jon could feel his worry, seeping out into the car. Tentatively, he reached out a hand and set it on Peter’s shoulder. Peter flinched, and Jon almost pulled away, but before he could Peter met his eyes and gave him a distant smile. 

“We’ll-we’ll find him,” Jon said. 

“I know we will,” Peter replied. “It’s just a matter of...what state he’s in, when we find him. All the things he’s survived...I’m afraid it’ll catch up with him someday.”

“It is a valid concern,” Jet assured him.

“Thank you,” Peter said dryly. “That was incredibly comforting.”

“You’re welcome.”

They sat in silence for a moment longer before Jon asked, “...don’t we need to leave?”

“You are not wearing your seatbelt,” Jet said. “Safety is important.”

“Ah, sorry--” Jon scrambled to sit back and buckle in. Jet responded with a decisive nod and put the car in drive. 

Jon watched the cityscape slink past, marveling at the buildings, their shapes and colors and construction utterly alien to him. Some things were vaguely recognizable--vehicles, streetlights, the shapes of people walking down the street. But overall, it largely felt like the Stranger had reached into Jon’s psyche and shifted everything until it was unfamiliar, and the thought made him break out into a cold sweat. 

“Are you feeling all right Mister Sims?” Jet asked.

“A bit faint,” Jon said, faintly.

“That is all right,” Jet said. “Soon we will be back to the ship, and we will be able to get you medical attention.” 

Jon only nodded, mind spinning over thoughts of ships: trading ships, like Mikaele Salesa’s; spaceships, like the Fairchilds’ Daedalus. 

The thought only serves to make him more dizzy.

Chapter Text

The ship he ends up on, much to his dismay, is along the lines of the Daedalus. A massive, sapphire-blue transport that he’s only seen scraps of in Peter’s memories, the lights of the cargo bay bright white and searing as they cruised into the cargo bay. Jon blinked, then fiddled with his seatbelt when the car went still and silent and the two men in the front seat made to get out. He stumbled out of the car and into the cargo bay, marvelling at the metal tiles stretching out under his feet. He could feel the Eye watching, cataloging, no matter how much he wanted to turn it away, to tune it out. He was the eye of Beholding, and he could not help but see. 

“Jon?” Peter’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder, feather-light but solid, grounding. “Still feeling unwell?”

“Only a bit,” Jon said, and it was true; outside of the confines of his mind, it felt less like he was spiralling off into the vast incomprehensibility of space and time. “Did you get what you needed?”

Peter squeezed his shoulder once and let go, face grim. “More than enough, I think. This was...Juno’s mission, so I won’t know for certain until I talk to him.”

“What did Juno have to do with the THEIA Souls?”

“After he lost his eye, he was fitted with a cybernetic one that was a...prototype, for the THEIA Soul. He had it removed, eventually, only to return to Hyperion and discover the proliferation of Souls in the place he grew up. He nearly killed himself destroying them.”

Jon could feel the truth in every word, and the weight of it. He studies Peter, setting him against the prickly man that had stumbled into the Institute several weeks before. Even missing his lady, he seemed softer, less brittle. Jon supposed that was a good thing, realizing that their talk must have gone well. 

His own heart ached in his chest, and he was suddenly, horribly reminded of his own dilemma, and why he had ended up chasing after Peter Nureyev in the first place. All the air in his lungs escaped with a single gasped word.

“ Martin.”

“Ah, yes,” Peter stood up a bit straighter. “You have your own rescue to arrange. Come, we shouldn’t be here when the ship takes off, it gets a bit rocky.”

He led Jon further into the ship, and Jon couldn’t even bring himself to catalog his surroundings, instead absently noting the way the edges of his vision dimmed like a vignette. Finally, Peter led him into a room that was recognizably a kitchen and gestured toward the table. “Tea?”

Jon let out a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “Yes. Please.” 

Before long, there was a steaming mug cupped between his hands and Peter Nureyev’s lanky figure seated across from him. “The others are busy with takeoff, so we have a moment to ourselves,” the man said. “I think it’s time you told me more about your place of work, Mister Sims. I feel rather like I’m missing a few key details.”

And so, without so much as a hint of compulsion, Jon opened his mouth and let the whole, sorry affair spill out of it. Stilted in places, stammered, but complete. Tim, Sasha, Melanie. Daisy, Basira, Martin. Those he had thought he’d saved, those he’d realized he couldn’t. The one he hoped to save, now. 

And Peter Nureyev listened. Like Jon had, so many weeks ago, though with perhaps less mind reading. He asked clarifying questions as needed, taking in Jon’s story with shrewd eyes and a curious set to his mouth, barely touching his tea. Jon drank most of his, each sip giving him a moment to find more words. It was hard, without compulsion, he realized. People weren’t built to tell stories like that, not all at once. 

By the time he’d finished, he and Peter were no longer alone in the kitchen; Jet had found his way in, followed by two formidable-looking women that had Jon immediately cowed. One was tall and charismatic, hair falling across half her face in crimson waves, her single visible eye sharp as both of Peter’s put together. The other was smaller, slight, with the same haunted look that Daisy often wore, and the same dormant ferocity coiled in her gait. 

“Is this your acquaintance, James?” the redhead asked, taking Jon in with one swift glance. 

“He is,” Peter said. “I swept the gala for Juno before we left, I do believe he’s been abducted and taken to Jon’s...residence, as it were.”

“Why does this keep happening?” the woman asked. The question seemed to be directed at Jon. “I’d like an explanation, if you’re in a position to give one.”

Jon and Peter spoke in unison, Jon’s voice a tired sigh, Peter’s a bewildered chuckle. “Helen.”

The woman raised her one visible eyebrow, and Jon added: “she’s a sort of...avatar of chaos. She sent me here because she finds it amusing, and she likely took Juno for the same reason.”

“Well, that’s less than ideal,” she sighed. Her eye cut to Peter. “Can he be trusted?”

Peter hummed. “Yes, I think so.”

She nodded. “Buddy Aurinko. This is my wife Vespa, and you’ve met Jet.”

Jon managed a stiff nod in return. “I’m Jonathan Sims, the Archivist.”

That didn’t seem to mean anything to them. Jon supposed that made sense.

Peter frowned. “Where’s Rita?”

Almost as if summoned, one of the smallest human beings Jon had ever seen careened into the room. “Alright, I’ve been tryin’ to get a read on Mistah Steel’s comms for about half an hour now and I got NOTHIN’. Miss Buddy, I’m gettin’ real worried--” she stopped dead, blinking owlishly at Jon through thick-lensed glasses. “Who’s this?”

“Friend of mine,” Peter said. “Jon Sims. We met on my unexpected excursion a few weeks ago, you know the one.”

“Oh. OH. You know Mistah Lukas!”

“You--also met Peter Lukas?” It was Jon’s turn to be dumbfounded. 

“Oh, yeah! He was real weird with Mistah Steel, kept talkin’ about him like he was food or somethin’.” She kept talking, but Jon couldn’t keep up with her, too caught up in the fact that she had met Peter Lukas, the man who had been holding Martin hostage for months. 

“Who is he?” Peter asked. “I don’t believe you’ve said. I had the...dubious pleasure of meeting him myself, after Helen brought me back.” 

“My...boss, I suppose,” Jon said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve never met him, but Martin--Martin’s been working for him. For the last few months.” He thought about the man’s voice on the tape that had been left on his desk, and his breath hitched. 

Peter sighed. “Well now I dearly wish I’d thrown him out of the airlock, instead of handing him over to Helen.”

“He did seem to inspire that urge, didn’t he?” Buddy remarked, taking a seat at the head of the small table. Vespa moved to stand behind her, hovering jittery in her periphery. Again, Jon was reminded of Daisy, silently occupying her corner in his office while he sorted statements, a brittle sort of energy coming off her. 

Jon wondered what else she and Daisy would have in common. 

“So,” Buddy said. “How can we go about getting our detective back?”

Jon laughed mirthlessly. “That’s a wonderful question,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to get back for the last hour or so, myself.”

“Pressing business?” 

“A...rescue,” he admitted. “One of my friends is in trouble, and when I asked Helen to take me to him, she brought me here instead.”

“...Who is she, again?” Buddy queried.

“That’s rather a long story,” Jon said bleakly, “and I doubt we have that kind of time.”

She shook her head. “Fine. So. Any ideas so far?”

Reluctantly, Jon shook his head. The creases around Peter’s mouth deepened into a scowl. 

“I’m stuck here, aren’t I?” he realized abruptly. “I’m stuck here, six hundred years away from Martin, and I can’t do anything to fix it.” 

“I wouldn’t--” Peter said before Jon cut him off with a swear. 

“He’s going to die. He’s going to die, and I’ll be here. Useless.” The strength he’d gained from Mr. Atlas’s statement at the gala started to feel like a mockery, like Elias’s smug, thin-lipped smile after sending the police on their way when Jon tried to confront him. Perhaps he felt well for the first time in months, but what could he do with that?

Nothing. 

Jon buried his face in his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp. There was silence in the room around him, bated breaths and worried glances. 

“It’ll be okay, Mista Sims,” Rita said softly. “We’re gonna figure it out. We always do.” 

“I hope your track record is better than mine,” he said, words muffled by his scarred palms. 

“I don’t know what that means, but me too,” she assured him. 

“What’s the plan, Buddy?” Peter asked. He sounded tired, the same sort of effete exhaustion Jon felt curling in his gut. 

“For now, we’ll put Mr. Sims up in one of the empty cabins,” Buddy said thoughtfully. “And we’ll have to proceed as planned, for now. We have an appointment to keep.”

Peter sighed. “I don’t like the idea of doing this without Juno.”

“Neither do I,” Buddy agreed. “But we have all the information we need, and if we want to stop the THEIA project for good, we’ll have to act fast.”

“What do you mean?” Peter asked sharply. “ Juno stopped the THEIA project, this operation was just to get evidence.”

“No, Mistah Algernon, that’s not actually true,” Rita said, sounding small. “Newtown was just one of the places the THEIA project was implemented, there are lotsa others across the solar system that are still runnin’.”

“ What?” Jon was startled into looking up as Peter shoved away from the table, his face a mask of fury and disgust. “ Other planets let this--this filth into their cities, into their homes? This is worse than New Kinshasa--”

“Deep breaths, James,” Buddy said, laying a hand on his rigid forearm. He complied, but only just, clearly seething. 

Jon fought the tugging sensation in the back of his mind for only a moment before finally giving in and saying, without any force behind his words, “tell me about the THEIA project, again.”

“Mr. Atlas was fairly succinct,” Peter said tightly. “I don’t know that any of the rest of us here could explain it any better.”

“It was horrible,” Rita said. The quiet in the room changed, then, turning to absolute stillness as all attention turned to the tiny woman hugging herself as though to keep from coming apart at the seams. “Mistah Steel had to go...deep undercovah, to stop it. We needed a way to plug my virus into the main towah and it couldn’t have been me, so he--” Her words choked off abruptly, and Jon gritted his teeth to keep Beholding at bay. He wasn’t going to feed on the people trying to help him, damn it, he wasn’t. 

“It’s like he wasn’t in there at all,” Rita continued after a moment. “He sounded like Mistah Steel, but he didn’t talk like him, didn’t move like him. I’ve. I’ve nevah been so scared in my life.” 

“I’m. So sorry, Rita,” Peter murmured. “I forgot you were there, too.”

Rita sniffled. “‘S okay. I usually try to forget, too.”

Jet put a massive hand on her shoulder, and she patted it appreciatively. “Anyway,” she said, wiping her eyes. “We gotta stop it. We don’t gotta choice.”

“We never thought otherwise, my dear,” Buddy said smoothly. “Now. It’s been a long day. James, if you’ll show Jon to one of the spare cabins, I think he could use some rest. We all could.”

Murmurs of assent sounded throughout the room, and there was a flurry of movement as Peter and Buddy both stood. Jon pushed himself to his feet as well, clutching at his cup like an anchor. 

“Come on then, Mr. Sims.” Peter smiled, but it was a tight, tired gesture. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He led Jon through the ship, stumbling to a halt between a pair of doors and reaching up to touch one with a shaky hand, as though to take some comfort from its stillness. It was Juno’s door, Jon understood suddenly. He recognized the heartsickness in that gesture from every time he’d borrowed Martin’s damned mug from the archive’s break room just to feel some semblance of the other man’s presence. 

“Sorry,” Peter said, clearing his throat. He closed his hand into a fist and dropped it to his side. “I was...going to get you something to wear, I thought...I thought Juno might have something that would fit you.”

“It’s all right,” Jon said. “I. I understand.”

Peter didn’t give any indication that he’d heard, silently pushing the door open and stepping inside. Jon stayed outside, unwilling to intrude. There was...intimacy, in that room that he didn’t want to disturb. It wasn’t for him, it wasn’t for the Eye. A moment later, Peter emerged, a bundle of fabric bunched in his hands. 

Jon took it silently, and said nothing until Peter gestured to another door, the same sterile white as the rest of the hall.

“There should be linens in the closet,” Peter said. “I’m sorry, I’m not feeling very well.”

“It’s no problem, really,” Jon said. “I don’t imagine I’ll need much else.”

Peter nodded, once, jaw set, eyes weary. “Good night, Jon.”

“Good night, Peter.” 

***

There was a fun little standoff before the women let Juno out of the closet.

“So...you know my name. Do I get to know yours?”

“Basira,” the tall one said flatly.

“Daisy,” the other one added. “Sorry, but. What are you doing here?”

“Hell if I know.” Juno shrugged, then rolled his shoulders. Falling to your death really took it out of you. “I just walked through a door and it definitely didn’t go where I wanted. Like, at all.” He moved to stand and stopped short with a whimper when be put weight on his hand. Damn, he'd forgotten about that. 

"What?" Basira asked. 

"Uh. Hand. Broke it in the…" Hell maze? Danger hallway? "Anyway. Punched a mirror. Broke my hand instead of the glass."

Daisy snorted. "Smart."

"Right? I'm a lady of intellect," Juno quipped. He pushed gingerly to his feet, feeling every joint and vertebra crack on the way up. 

Basira raised an eyebrow, and he couldn't tell if she was impressed or concerned. "Uh huh. What are you wearing?" 

Juno glanced down at his dress, torn off at the knee, and ripped in several places besides. He sighed. "What used to be a fairly expensive dress. Buddy's gonna kill me."

"Well, that's gonna make an impression on A&E. Come one, let's go get your hand looked at."

"Hospital?" Juno squeaked. "Can't we just get a, a brace for it, call it a day?"

The woman gave him a Look that defied description. "Only if you never want to use your hand again."

Juno's shoulders slumped. "Yeah, okay, that's--that's a pretty good reason to go to a hospital, I guess."

"That's what I thought."

Chapter Text

"Soooooo where am I?" Juno asked, as he was led up and out of the bowels of what seemed to be a massive and barely-maintained old building. 

"Magnus Institute," Basira said. "London."

"Earth?" Juno clarified. 

Basira sighed. There was a lot behind that sigh. "Yeah. Earth."

Daisy passed a soothing hand between Basira's shoulder blades. "Not the weirdest thing we've heard all day."

Basira just sighed again. 

There were a few scant moments of silence before Juno spoke again. “Okay, so assuming this is a repeat of the BS that happened a couple of weeks ago...if I’m here, then who are you missing?”

Basira stopped so abruptly that they narrowly avoided a three-idiot pileup. 

“That’s a good question,” Daisy said, a crease of worry on her brow. 

“Might be no one,” Basira said. 

“But it could be anyone. Martin. Jon.”

“God, you’re right.” There was exhaustion in Basira’s tone as she pushed through the heavy doors to the outside.

The first thing that struck Juno was the cold--a heavy, damp cold that clung to your skin, seeped into it. 

The second thing that struck him was raindrops. 

He flinched back into the building, and both women stared at him like he’d grown another head. “What? It’s just rain.”

“But what about the--” Abruptly, it occurred to him that Earth rain might not actually contain the skin-searing acid he was used to. Especially in this century. Tentatively, he reached out a hand, collected a few drops of water. It was just...cold. Ice-cold, pearling over his palm like tears. 

It was beautiful.

“Whenever you’re done grinning like an idiot,” Basira drawled. “We’ll go.”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry.” Juno shook off the water and followed them out into the rain, his smile widening with each pinprick splash against his skin. He wondered if Peter had ever experienced rain like this. Juno would bet he had, as many planets as he’d been to. 

Peter. A bit of the cold seeped deeper into Juno’s skin, and his smile faded a bit. What had happened to Peter? They might have been able to finish the heist, but then what? Juno felt sick, wondering if the Endeavor had left Thalassa without him. It would have had to, right? Once they got their intel, they’d have had to go. 

And it was stupid to be worried about being stranded on Thalassa, anyway, he was half a solar system away and six hundred years in the past. 

Basira led them to a nondescript black vehicle on the street and yanked the passenger door open. “Get in.”

Juno waited until the car was in motion to begin his onslaught again. “So seriously, why does this keep happening?”

“Your guess is as good as ours,” Basira said testily.

“Helen,” Daisy said. “She...thinks its funny, I think.”

“Helen,” Juno repeated. “With the...fingers?”

“That’s the one.” Daisy seemed mildly amused. “She’s sort of a...resident cryptid, I suppose.”

“Uh huh,” Juno said. “What... is she?”

“Avatar of the Spiral,” Basira said, in a tone that clearly said he was an idiot for asking but also that she didn’t expect him to understand in the slightest. Juno looked from the back of Basira’s head to Daisy’s pale face, scowling.

Finally, he said, “Okay, you’re gonna have to level with me here.”

And that’s how he ended up sitting through a crash course on fear entities on the way to the hospital. 

“So you’re saying...that the mirror version of me I had to fight to get here...was made up by Helen to mess with me?”

“I think ‘made up’ is probably a mild way to put it, but yeah,” Daisy said. “It was real enough to kill you, I guarantee it.”

“Great! That’s...great.”

The doctor seemed less than impressed when Juno explained how he’d gotten into a fight with a wall, suppressing a sigh and prepping him for an x-ray. Once they’d determined the severity of the break (there was no denying that it was broken), they reset the bones and fitted Juno with a cast and sent the three of them on their way. 

“What...is this?” Juno asked, poking the plaster with his good hand. It was wrapped in bright pink gauze that was starting to make his eyes burn. 

“Have you never had a cast before?” Daisy asked incredulously, eyeing him in the rear-view mirror. Juno scowled back.

Basira was driving, her hands steady on the wheel, and next to her Daisy had her feet propped up on the dashboard, crunching her tiny frame into an even smaller shape. Juno had been banished to the backseat, wearing the remains of his gown and an oversized jacket that Basira had scavenged from the closet they’d pulled him out of. 

His eyes cut over to the window, staring out into the darkness outside the vehicle. It was a lot darker than he was used to; though it was well enough lit, it was nothing compared to the light pollution of Hyperion City, all the neon and the towering highscrapers casting light onto the dome. Here...it was bright on the ground, sure, but. He looked up and felt like, if he looked up high enough, there would just be...nothing. Nothing but darkness. It was disconcerting. 

Basira pulled into a parking spot and turned off the car. Juno blinked and looked around, but didn’t recognize their surroundings; icy panic trickled down his spine. 

“Where are we?” he asked sharply. His hand went for the plasma cutter, which he’d tucked into the seat before the hospital. It’s presence in his hand was almost comforting.

“It’s been a while since we stocked the breakroom, so. This way you won’t starve,” Basira said.

“What do you mean I won’t starve ?” Juno asked sharply. 

“Well, I’m not letting you run about in London, so you’ll have to stay at the institute. Don’t worry, we’ve got a cot set up in the storage closet.”

“You mean the--”

“Yup. That one.” 

Juno tried to think of a way to argue, he really did. But honestly? He was tired, and so far out of his depth that treading water was the best he had in him. 

Juno couldn’t remember the last time he went grocery shopping (Jet usually handled supplies) and so he wasn’t certain if the store looked foreign because it was twenty-first century Earth or if it had just been that long since he’d been in a grocery store. He got several odd looks for his tattered evening gown, but a harsh stare was usually enough to make the other person look away. Still, he crossed his arms tightly across his chest and waited for the ordeal to end. 

Twenty minutes later, feeling stupid and utterly exhausted, Juno followed Daisy and Basira back into the institute, hands weighed down with shopping bags full of food. It was late, so they didn’t see another soul on the way in, and Juno was kind of grateful. He didn’t know what kind of cover story he would even have been able to come up with, at that point. 

So he went along with it. Helped shove food into cabinets and the refrigerator, fighting more and more frequent yawns. Finally, there wasn’t anything left to do, nothing left to put off confronting the fact that he was going to be stuck in this building for god knew how long, alone. Juno could feel the walls pressing down on him, heavy and creepy and grim, and he shuddered. 

“Alright?” Daisy asked. 

Juno bit back a sharp retort, answered instead with a clipped, “not really.” Then, after a moment, “I’m just. Tired, I guess.”

She quirked a smile at him, the hollowness in her eyes somehow softening and growing more palpable at the same time. “I. Think I understand.” She glanced towards Basira. “‘Sira?”

“Yeah?”

“I think we should stay in the archives tonight.” 

Basira looked from Daisy to Juno, then back to Daisy. They did that... thing, again, where it looked like they were having a whole conversation with just their eyes. 

“Come on, what?” Juno groaned. 

“Fine,” Basira said. “I didn’t want to leave him here alone, anyway.”

Juno found himself face to face with that same damn closet again, scowling at the dust coating the edges of the door. 

“Move,” Basira said. Careless of his disdain for the tiny room, she headed inside and started rattling around, making exactly the amount of noise you’d expect from someone who was put out with existence in general. 

Juno could relate. 

She dragged out a cot barely wide enough for someone Daisy’s size, as well as a frankly alarming pile of blankets.

“Why do you even have that many blankets in here?” Juno asked.

“Apparently Martin used to sleep here,” Basira grunted. “It was before my time.”

Juno glanced down at his dress. Or what was left of it, at least. “What are the odds of there being a change of clothes in there too?”

She shrugged. “Have a look.”

So Juno pushed past her into the tiny space and rummaged around until he found something useful. 

It was a decent sized closet, as closets go. Big enough for the cot, at any rate, and a couple of filing cabinets that looked like they’d seen better days. He struck gold in one of them, finding a haphazard bundle of clothes tucked into the back of a drawer. He wrinkled his nose as he pulled them out--a pair of rumpled khakis and a patterned button-down shirt that absolutely screamed “Duke Rose,” which was...surprisingly comforting. They smelled musty, you know, like clothes that had been shoved in a drawer for god knows how long, but they were better than nothing. He changed quickly (making sure to keep the translator tucked into his shirt; he didn't feel like testing his Ancient English skills) and tucked the dress in the drawer in their place; at least this way he’d know where to find it. 

Before he could close the drawer, his eye caught on the other contents: a small stack of notebooks. It shouldn’t have caught his attention; this was an archive, surely there were hundreds of notebooks in this place. But these weren’t at all uniform, a collection of shapes and sizes and colors, and each one had printed, in neat, tidy script on the front cover, “Property of Martin K Blackwood.”

On a whim, Juno took one and tucked it into his waistband. A little light reading before bedtime never hurt anyone. 

***

Peter slept fitfully, and eventually gave up entirely, rising early with the rest of the crew. Buddy seemed surprised to see him but said nothing, only quirked her brow at him. He gave no response at all, making himself a cup of tea and joining Rita at the table. The hacker seemed far from her usual perky self, pushing food around on her plate dejectedly and failing to meet anyone’s eye. 

“It’ll be okay,” he assured her softly, squeezing her hand. She squeezed back, and continued moving food around on her plate.

Jon stumbled into the kitchen about an hour later, looking groggy and rumpled. He hovered in the doorway for a long moment, eyes fixed on the table, a nervous energy making his fingers twitch. 

“Tea?” Peter asked finally. Jon’s face flooded with relief, and he nodded.

“Please.” 

Peter pulled out a chair next to his as he stood and gestured for Jon to sit down.  “We keep it in this cabinet,” he said, taking down the tin. “Milk? Sugar?”

“Ah, no. Just black,” Jon said. 

“There is plenty of food,” Jet said. “Please. Help yourself.”

“...Thank you,” Jon said, reaching for a muffin. He picked at it as Peter set his tea down in front of him.

“Do they not have muffins in twenty-first century London?” Peter asked, suppressing a smile. Jon’s answering glare was a delight. 

“We do,” he snapped. “I’m just not hungry.”

“Boys,” Buddy sighed. “Don’t make me separate you.”

Jon’s mouth snapped shut and he went red. Before he could say anything, Peter asked, “so, in Juno’s absence. What’s our plan?”

“Our plan,” Buddy said, leaning back in her chair. There was a steaming mug in her hand, though she rarely took a sip, her radiation-ravaged organs only tolerant of the mildest substances. “Mr. Atlas was kind enough to give us the names and locations of the THEIA buyers, which, I’ll be the first to admit, are beyond even our scope. There were...how many sales, Rita?”

“Fifty-six, Miz Buddy, everywhere from Mercury to the Outta Rim.” 

“Thank you. Obviously, that’s too many locations for us to tackle alone. Therefore, we’ll be enlisting as much help as possible. I have contacts on several of the planets the THEIA project has migrated to, and I’m certain we’ll all find its disappearance to be in our collective best interests.”

“A safe bet,” Peter agreed, considering the technology’s Martian debut. The risks of its continued existence would likely outweigh any temptation another crew would have to steal it for themselves.

“However, I don’t have contacts everywhere, so we’ll have to take care of a few of these ourselves. I’ve had Rita compile a list of cities we’ll have to target, and she’s taken the liberty of researching them to determine which ones will be the most serious threats. We’ll start at the top and work our way down.”

“How many cities are on the list?” Vespa asked, voice hoarse. Though she’d made a great deal of progress since they’d set out together, she still managed to look particularly haggard in the mornings. Jon seemed startled at her words, and Peter realized that was the first time he’d heard her speak. 

“A dozen,” Buddy admitted. “We’ll be fairly busy.” 

“Fairly busy,” Peter said dryly. “Excellent.” Another question came to his lips: When will we have time to find Juno? But he didn’t ask it. Buddy wouldn’t know. No one in that room would know. 

Except perhaps Jon, but the man seemed frail enough at the moment that a stiff wind would blow him over, so Peter wasn’t inclined to bother him about it just yet. 

He studied the man next to him out of the corner of his eye. Peter was grateful that he didn’t resemble Juno more closely. He had taken clothes at random the night before, the first pair of sweatpants and the first shirt he’d found that were clean. It had hurt badly enough to be in Juno’s room, surrounded by the gentle darkness that bore his scent; it would have been far worse if the first thing he saw when Jon entered a room was his missing lady. 

No, Jon was so thin as to seem brittle, his hair a bit too long and unkempt and streaked with grey. Deep lines furrowed his brow and the corners of his mouth, the deep olive of his skin managing to seem pale, though whether it was from his own constitution or the harsh kitchen lights Peter couldn’t tell. He gripped his tea cup like a lifeline, a wistful twist to his mouth as he looked into it. 

Peter looked back to Buddy. “Where to first, Captain?”

Chapter Text

Juno had never been one for poetry. Art, sure, when it was clearly bad in the kind of way that meant it had been a labor of love, or when it reminded him of home. Ben, or even Hyperion, after he left. But poetry? And love poetry, at that? Nah. Not for him. 

That said, it was clearly a labor of love, in a way that did catch Juno’s attention. His light reading turned into something else, as he studied the way the writing grew harder, messier on certain pages, the way many of the poems clearly fit together to discuss one...subject. One man. 

Juno scowled at the book when he finished it. Something about it was bothering him.

It stood to reason that there would be books of poetry in an archive. What didn’t stand to reason was that they would be shoved in a filing cabinet in a closet instead of in the special storage boxes lining the archive shelves. These notebooks weren’t archival documents. They were something else. 

Juno stayed for a bit in the camp Basira had set up in the staff room before he wandered off, notebook under his arm. He didn’t linger before leaving the breakroom. He didn’t need to; the image of Daisy asleep on the cot, her hand hanging off the side to grip Basira’s where she lay on the floor...well, it was pretty much burned into his brain. It made his chest hurt in a special kind of way that he’d come to associate with Peter, in the weeks when they weren’t talking after they’d first joined the Endeavor’s crew. God, he missed him.

The archive was quiet like a tomb was quiet, making his careful footfalls seem to echo in the dark. He was glad it was a short jaunt over to the storage closet, because he wasn’t certain he would have been able to stand it otherwise. Juno kicked his heels out if the way, not wanting to acknowledge that those deathtraps were currently the only shoes to his name, and knelt down in front of the filing cabinet and pawed through the drawer, pulling out as many notebooks as he could find. In the end, he counted six, each a varying level of battered and worn, each inscribed with Martin K Blackwood on the cover. 

He would have stayed there to study them, but the closet wasn’t particularly well lit and his knees were already starting to protest, so he gathered them into a stack and wandered back out into the hallway, looking for a good place to do some research. 

He was wary with the doors, peering inside for far longer than strictly necessary before reaching for a light switch. Finally, he found one that looked like a cramped office, maybe twice the size of the storage closet. It was barely big enough to hold the desk that sat in the center of the room, flanked by more filing cabinets and overshadowed by a towering bookshelf against the wall. Every surface was covered in boxes and stacks of paper, a handful of old-fashioned (even for this time period, if Juno remembered correctly) tape recorders interspersed throughout the room. In keeping with the rest of the archive, most of the furniture looked like it was just shy of falling apart. Juno sighed as he took a seat in the rickety office chair, propping his feet up on a bare patch of desk and barely suppressing a yelp when the chair leaned back way further than he was prepared for. 

Once he’d righted himself--and his heartrate--Juno shakily laid out the notebooks on his lap, opened the next one, and started to read. 

***

That was where Daisy found him four hours later, his head craned unsettlingly over the back of the chair, soft snores following each deep breath. She crept closer, careful not to wake him, and peered over his shoulder at the pages spread across his lap. 

Was that... Martin’s handwriting? She squinted and leaned in for a closer look, her shoulder brushing against Juno’s on the way down. 

He jolted awake with a shout, and tumbled abruptly out of the chair, statements falling around him in a cascade of paper and tapes. Daisy took a step backwards to cover up just how startled she’d been as well, forcing out a shaky laugh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

Juno pressed a palm to his chest, shaking his head and wincing at what must have been a fairly impressive stiff neck. “Give a lady some warning, won’t you? Fuck.”

Daisy put out a tentative hand to help him up. “I did say I was sorry.”

He waved her off and started gathering the papers he’d knocked over, not bothering to stand. “So what are these?”

“Statements,” she said. “Hard to say which ones are real and which ones are shit, but. That’s the job.”

Juno grunted, studying one a bit more closely. “Statement of...Juliet Taylor, regarding her experiences with a street musician in Edinburgh.”

Daisy shrugged, kneeling down slowly next to him to help pick up the pages. “Sounds tame compared to some of the ones I’ve heard, honestly. Jon read one a few months ago about a ritual for the Hunt.” The name of her former patron was sour in her mouth, and she swallowed it with a grimace. 

“What on earth could a street musician do?” Juno muttered, eyes still scanning the page. Daisy watched as his eyebrows went up a few moments later, followed by a subtle widening of his eye, followed by him abruptly putting down the paper. “Ah. That.” 

“Yeah,” she said. 

She studied him out of the corner of her eye while they worked. He was about her height, but built thicker than her, strong where she had always been lean and fast. He looked ridiculous in Jon’s clothes, the khakis rolled up so they weren’t too long, the atrocious Hawaiian shirt he’d come back from America with surprisingly not-awful against the dark hue of his skin. She could see the remnants of his makeup--he said he’d been at a party, before this, she remembered--and scars, so many scars. She almost reached for hers, the scar from which she’d gotten her name, but stopped herself abruptly. 

Juno noticed the movement and paused. “Something on my face?” he asked.

She shook her head and reached for more papers. 

“Did you find anything useful in Martin’s notebooks?”

Juno snorted. “Not really. Wait--you know him? Martin K Blackwood?” 

“Yeah,” Daisy said. “He works--worked--here with us. Why?”

“Do you know who he was writing about? The man in the poems?”

Now it was Daisy’s turn to snort. “Probably Jon.”

“Jon...Sims?”

“Yeah. The Archivist.”

Juno set down the stack of papers in his hands and looked around. “This is his office, isn’t it?”

“I think ‘office’ is generous, but--” 

Juno didn’t seem to be listening anymore, instead looking around rather like a cat on the verge of a breakdown. His hands found Martin’s notebooks, seemingly of their own volition, as his eye fixed on various objects around the room. He furrowed his brow. 

“Jon’s the one who’s missing, isn’t he?”

“We don’t know that for sure--”

“I think we do,” Juno said sharply. “There’s a sleeping bag and a pillow under the desk and a box of granola bars under that stack of papers. You guys have a cot in your storage closet, for fucks sake, I don’t think any of you guys are going home between shifts. So the fact that you don’t know where he is? Means he went through one of Helen’s doors too.”

Daisy was quiet for a long moment. She knew from experience that her face was impassive, stony, but inside she was waging a war with her blood, fighting to ignore the pounding of it in her ears. Her hands shook, fingers twitching as she clenched them into fists around the statements. They needed to find Jon, not Hunt him…

Juno was still talking. “So this could be Helen playing games again, but I’m willing to bet it’s not. Why pull the same prank twice? No, something was going on, probably with Jon, and she didn’t like it, so she sent him away, and got me instead.”

Daisy swallowed hard against the rushing in her ears. “So then...what was he doing?”

Juno studied the stacks on the top of the desk. “I don’t know, but something up there can probably tell us.”

Juno heaved himself to his feet, grimacing when various joints made audible cracking sounds as they straightened. He offered her a hand, and, with a shaky breath, Daisy took it. His touch was grounding, his hands rough and warm, and she gripped them perhaps a little too hard as she stood. 

“Okay,” Juno said, eye sweeping over the surface of the desk. “Okay.” He reached for the first stack. “What should I be looking for?”

“What do you mean?” Daisy asked. Her head was still spinning a bit, and that made Juno’s mania hard to follow.

“Is there anything he’s been looking into specifically? Anything that would send him over the edge?”

“I--” she thought about it, chewing on her lip. “Probably. He’s been fairly preoccupied over the last few weeks.”

“Do you know what about?”

“Not really. He didn’t like to talk about it.” The Dark, the Web. Statements, and feeding. Suddenly, Daisy hoped Juno was right, and that Jon had gotten sucked into Helen’s maze. Because otherwise she wasn’t sure she wanted to know where he had gotten to. 

“Okay. Uhhhhh...how about you take another stack, or listen to some of the tapes? I’ve got this one.” Now he seemed distracted, rifling through the papers and gesturing vaguely to the rest of the statements. Idly, Daisy mused to herself that this was hardly the strangest thing she’d ever done at four in the morning, and reached for the nearest tape recorder. She hit “play” and froze when the voice that left the device wasn’t Jon’s. 

“Will I be coming back?”

“You’re not going to die, if that’s what you’re asking. But--no, if all goes well, you won’t be.” 

It took Juno a moment to look up and catch the look on her face. Then he looked at the recorder and his face went cold. “Who is that?”

“Martin,” Daisy breathed. “Martin, and--” She didn’t know the other voice. She didn’t like it, it’s too smooth, too slick. Like Elias, but rougher around the edges. 

“Peter Lukas,” Juno snarled. 

Daisy frowned. “That’s not--” But she stopped. What was impossible about it? None of them had ever met Peter Lukas, interim head of the Magnus Institute. 

None of them but Martin.

“Oh, it is,” Juno said savagely. “I’d know that smarmy asshole anywhere.” 

“Wait, how do you know Peter Lukas?” 

“Shot him,” Juno said simply. He dropped the papers on the desk and dove for the notebooks. “What’s the date on that tape?”

“No, hang on, when did you shoot Peter Lukas?”

“Couple weeks ago. He got onto our ship. What’s the date on that tape?” 

“Bell,” Daisy said suddenly. “Of course.”

“What?”

“Bell--Nureyev. When he came through. You said someone is missing from both places, so...when Bell came here, Lukas went there. ” 

“You...didn’t know?” Juno asked.

“None of us have ever met him,” Daisy said. “Only Martin.”

“So you wouldn’t have even noticed he was missing,” Juno muttered. “Great. Date?” 

Finally, Daisy glanced down, squinting through the little plastic window, and read off the date. 

Juno flipped through each notebook, then huffed and set them down. “These are all dated months before that tape,” he said. “Probably not going to be much help.”

“Probably not. It’s just poetry.”

“Eh. Got me this far,” Juno said. “How long ago was that?”

“The tape?”

He nodded. 

“Couple days.”

“So what are the odds that that tape is what sent Jon Helen’s way?”

Daisy considered that. “Fairly high,” she said. “He’s been worried about Martin for ages. We all have, I guess, but Jon...it hit Jon hard.” 

“Were they…” Juno looked like he was struggling to come up with an adequate word. Finally, he landed on “...together?”

Daisy shrugged. “Not that I know of. Martin had the biggest crush on him, though. Like, you could have seen it from space kind of big.”

“But Jon--?” Juno pressed.

“--Was an oblivious bastard on the best of days,” a dry voice said from the doorway. “Why the hell are you two up?”

Juno and Daisy both nearly jumped out of their skins. “‘Sira!” Daisy gasped. “Don’t do that!”

Basira held up her hands, expression flat save for the apology in her eyes. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to. But seriously, it’s almost five a.m., why are you even awake?”

“Mysteries wait for no one,” Juno deadpanned. Daisy snorted. 

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“What kind of mysteries?” Basira pushed off from the doorframe and approached the desk, looking suspicious. Daisy’s heart warmed at the expression; it was familiar, like an old t-shirt. A holdover from their police days. 

“Jon,” Juno said, and yeah, that seemed like the best way to sum it up. 

“What about Jon?”

“What he was doing, and why Helen sent him away.”

Basira didn’t look convinced. 

Daisy played her the tape.

Chapter Text

Peter was less than pleased to find himself in the Outer Rim. Too close to Brahma, too close to the planet he’d called home the longest. But those planets were impoverished, decimated by the War and desperate for governance. More than likely, the THEIA project presented itself an ideal solution to their plight. 

Jon was deeply uncomfortable with this information. 

Susano-o greeted them with dark streets and frosty silence, the city of Aorus utterly still. Vacant. 

Rita looked on from her seat at the console, comms splayed across her lap as they landed. She was pale, her face set grimly against those dark streets. 

“Are you all right, Rita?” Peter asked. Her eyes flick to him, and it took her a moment to answer. Or it would have, if Jon hadn’t spoken first.

“She’s just remembering Hyperion,” he said. His own eyes were similarly shadowed, as if they were his own memories, playing out behind his eyes. “She finds the similarities unsettling.”

Rita whirled on him, mouth gaping, her preoccupation with Aorus momentarily forgotten. “How did you--how did you do that?” 

“I, ahhh, read minds?” Jon said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry, I can’t help it sometimes.”

Rita’s eyes swung to Peter, and he shrugged. “I find it rather irritating,” he informed her. 

“Okay, you’re not gonna believe this, but that reminds me of a stream I saw once a long time ago--” and she was off on one of her tangents, gone with the wind. 

“Rita,” Buddy said. “Please. Not now.”

“Sorry, Miz Buddy.”

“Excellent. Now, are we all clear on the plan?” Buddy scanned the room. Jon did as well, taking in the emotions running through the room. There was an energy there, an anticipation. These people were professional thieves, they were no stranger to this. Though curiously backwards, this case--instead of taking something away, they would be leaving something behind. 

“I believe we are,” Peter said. 

“Excellent,” she said again. “I’ve seen no signs of peacekeepers, but we’ll want to be careful anyway. James, Jet, if you’ll kindly head down to the cargo bay. I think it’s time to begin.”

The two men left the room, Jet stolidly, completely focused on his task, Peter with a wink in Jon’s and Rita’s direction. 

“Be careful out there,” Rita called after them. Peter gave a flippant wave, though Jon knew it was a facade. The thief was as anxious as Rita, just doing a better job of hiding it. 

Buddy and Vespa stayed, occupying opposite sides of the navigation console. Buddy was poised to watch Peter and Jet’s progress on their way to the THEIA central tower, carrying the virus Rita had devised in Hyperion City. This version was a bit newer, a bit sleeker, more efficient. Designed to bring utter ruin to the system, to disallow any sort of reboot. 

Jon could feel Rita’s savage joy at that knowledge. 

Vespa waited on the other side of the console, silently watching the outside of the Endeavor for any incoming threats. It was her job to keep them safe, should the peacekeepers come to call on them while the others were away. 

And Rita watched with Buddy, fingers poised over her keyboard in case she needed to help them from afar. Jon stuck to her side, mind reeling with the many moving pieces around him. 

“You doin’ okay, Mistah Sims?” Rita asked. “You’re real quiet ovah there.”

“I--yes, I’m fine,” he said. “Is my silence...really so strange?” After all, the rest of the room was quiet enough for him to pick up on the humming of the console, the shrill sounds of the lights. 

“No, I guess not,” Rita sighed. “I’m just...real worried, you know? First Mistah Steel goes missin,’ then we gotta run his heist without ‘im, and...I’m just real worried.”

Jon pulled his knees up to his chest, hunching in his chair like a child. “I understand,” he said. “I was trying to save one of my friends, and Helen brought me here, instead. I’m worried about him too.” 

Them. More than Martin, Daisy, Basira, even Melanie and Georgie. Every second he was gone from the Institute was another second where something could go wrong, and he would be helpless to do anything.  

“It’ll be okay, Mistah Sims,” Rita said, patting him on the elbow. “We gotta believe that.”

Jon offered her a tight smile, keeping his misgivings to himself. “I suppose we do.” 

“They’re en route,” Buddy announced, eye fixed the console. “Rita, be ready.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Jon looked over at Rita’s comms, watching the camera feed as the Ruby7 zipped through the empty streets. The speed with which she flipped from security feed to security feed was almost dizzying, but Jon refused to let himself look away. There was...power, in this. In watching. 

The thought made him feel ill, but he did it anyway. 

Just in case. 

The Ruby7 reached the tower easily enough, perhaps too easily. Peter seemed to spring from the car before it had even reached a full stop, long legs carrying him into the Aorus city council building. The camera they were watching from was mounted above the front doors, giving them a perfect view of Peter as he mounted the steps. Jon felt a strange kind of terror at the sight of him, striding towards the doors like an avenging angel, eyes cold and determined. 

Tentatively, Jon looked away, Looked, instead, into the building itself. It seemed empty, no sign of human movement anywhere in its labyrinthine halls. Jon could see as far as the control tower itself, a column of silver light rising up through the rotunda in the building’s heart. Something about that column made him feel sick; something about the way the light spun in its shining obelisk. Shifting forms and patterns that he couldn’t quite grasp…

Peter entered the rotunda and promptly swore over his comms. “It’s...absolutely massive, Buddy.”

“Well, it’s reach has to be absolutely massive, so it’s size stands to reason,” she said. “Can you get to it?”

There was a moment of silence as Peter looked the pillar over, stalking the edges of the room like a predator honing in on his prey. “I believe I can, but I would appreciate it if you could narrow my focus a bit. Rita, dearest, where do I need to be?”

“Uh…” There was a chorus of shrill beeping sounds as Rita typed rapidly on her comms, code and schematics reflecting on her glasses. “You need to get up to the top floor, and there’s gonna be a port…”

Jon saw more than hears the remainder of her explanation, Eye fixing on the tiny port she described. It was so small, the most miniscule chink in the pillar’s armor, and it would be enough to bring the whole system crashing down. 

“Thank you, dear.” Peter was moving, then, finding the nearest staircase and beginning to climb. 

Jon felt more than saw the movement to Peter’s right and full-body flinched, giving a little cry.

“Mr. Sims?” Buddy asked, voice sharp and expectant. 

“To the right. Something--”

“James, to your right!” she barked. Peter ducked, just in time to avoid the wrench that had been flying towards the back of his head. It clattered to the floor, and he was moving before it even hit, adversary pressed firmly to the stairs, arms twisted behind their back. For half a second it seemed like Peter had him, but in the space of a blink the other man rose up, throwing Peter down the stairs like a rag doll. 

Jon choked on a shout; Rita shrieked. “Mistah Algernon!”

Peter got to his feet, wiping a trickle of blood from his lip. His eyes were fixed on his opponent, icy, his hand reaching into his jacket to draw his knives.

“Non-lethal parameters, Mister Algernon,” Buddy said warningly, and Jon felt a flash of relief that was entirely his own; relief that he would not have to see the kind of animal Peter Nureyev had been about to unleash. 

Peter curled his lip and put the knife back. He rifled through the pocket for just a moment before pulling out something else.

Jon’s breath caught, and he asked, incredulous, “are those brass knuckles?” 

“It pays to be prepared, Mister Sims,” Peter said, in a voice suspiciously close to a snarl. 

Then he moved. 

Peter fought like he was dancing, never staying in one place for any longer than he had to in order to land a blow. He moved with the kind of grace that took Jon’s breath away, the kind of grace that made it clear that Peter knew exactly what he was doing--where to strike and how hard, how fast. 

The parameters may have been nonlethal, but that did not make them merciful.

Buddy sighed into the console when Peter moved on. “Rita, can you tell if he’s still breathing?”

“I--I think so, Miz Buddy,” Rita said faintly. “The Soul’s pretty banged up, though.”

Jon could see that too, the tiny chip implanted on the man’s breastbone, flickering as it slowly died. He could see the silver thread, tying the man to the control tower, could watch as it abruptly broke, fizzling out in the air. 

Interesting.

Peter launched himself up the stairs, moving faster. Jon could see more figures coming out of the woodwork, and told Buddy as much. 

Peter cut through them like they were nothing, on his way to the top floor. 

“That’s a bit of a gap, Miss Rita,” he panted into the comms, eyeing the space between himself and the column and the empty air below. 

“I didn’t design it, Mistah Algernon,” Rita said shakily. “Can’t help ya there.”

Jon watched with his Eye as Peter climbed gingerly onto the railing, looking surer of his footing than he felt, and prepared to leap. He wished, more than anything, that he could stop Looking. 

Rita squealed when Peter jumped, hands outstretched to grasp the tower the moment his body struck it. “Ohmygod, did he make it? Did he make it?”

Jon winced at the grip she had on his upper arm, slightly astonished at the strength of her tiny hands. “He made it,” he said, hesitantly patting the back of her hand. 

Peter grunted, heaving himself up into a more secure position, finding footholds where he could and gripping the structure with desperate determination. The port was a meter above his head. He was so close. 

On the balcony behind him, there was a crowd gathering. 

Jon could feel their restless energy, their antsy, anxious terror. Perhaps they didn’t know exactly what Peter was going to do, but they could see that he was a threat, and they didn’t know how to get to him without threatening their precious tower of light. 

Peter began to climb. Slowly, painstakingly, he climbed. Jon could see trickles of blood where the structure dug into his flesh, but Peter ignored them other than adjusting his grip. Inch by inch, the space between him and the port disappeared.

When he was close enough to touch the port, Peter reached into his jacket pocket. The drive slipped from his hand, once, twice, and he gritted his teeth against a curse. Then he caught it between his bloody fingers and held it tight, bringing it out into the light. 

The crowd on the balcony seethed, a roiling mass of fury, and Jon held his breath, praying that Peter would finish the job before they moved. 

The first body struck the tower the moment the drive touched the port. 

It missed Peter, but it shook the whole structure, almost causing him to drop the chip. Everyone in the ship held their breath, Jon, Rita, Buddy, Vespa…

Peter gave a shaky exhale, utterly still. Another body leapt for the tower, then another. They held on, just barely, and started to gather themselves to climb. 

Peter lunged. 

For a moment, Jon was afraid that the drive had splintered, cracking and breaking instead of sliding home. Instead, however, the entire tower flared, so bright it hurt, so bright it burned. Peter choked on a cry, fingers slipping from his handholds, and he fell. 

Peter Nureyev fell, and the tower fell around him, shattering to pieces as the THEIA Soul flickered out. 

Jon felt Peter’s leg break as much as he heard it over the comms, gasping in phantom pain as the other man hit the ground. 

“Buddy,” Peter hissed, through gritted teeth.

“His leg’s broken,” Jon rasped. “He won’t be able to walk on it.”

“Jet,” Buddy snapped. “James needs extraction, immediately.”

“Yes, Buddy,” Jet said. His path through the building was not marked by eerie silence but by the presence of panicking people, ripping Souls from their sternums and grasping at their heads like they were in pain. Jon watched the strings falling from them, trying to understand, to figure out what they reminded him of…

Jet scooped Peter off the floor with barely a sound and carried him out to the car, ignoring Peter’s occasional whimper other than to assure him that “everything will be all right.” He didn’t seem to notice the grip of Peter’s bloody fingers on his arm, until he had to pry himself free.

Peter leaned across the back seat, hissing breaths through his teeth. 

Jon cast his gaze wide.

“To the right,” he said suddenly. “Something big--”

“Jet, to your right!” Buddy barked. Jet shifted the car into drive, taking off abruptly and narrowly missing the thing that lurched out of the shadows.

“More,” Jon croaked. “Two blocks ahead, three of them--”

Buddy relayed his warning. With his eyes, he saw her glance at him, a flicker of new consideration in her eye. With his mind, he was watching the Ruby7, moving with dizzying speed and taking in the world around him as it passed. His stomach churned, to be two places at once, both conscious of the grip of his hands on his forearms and the things stalking Jet and Peter in the streets of Aorus. 

Each time he saw movement, he voiced it, ignoring the pain growing behind his eyes. All the strength he’d gained the day before was draining away, the Eye taking and taking as Jon used more and more of its gift. Before long he was trembling in his chair, clinging to consciousness with the barest thread of willpower. It was as though he were looking through a pinhole, straining to see. 

The Ruby7 flew up the ramp and screamed to a halt in the cargo bay, and as the doors began to close behind it Jon let go, out cold before his limp body could hit the floor.

Chapter Text

Juno didn’t sleep that night. 

That wasn’t...unusual, for him. Instead, he made a pot of coffee (praying the whole time that it wouldn’t wake up the women sleeping on the other side of the room) and spent the rest of the night (morning?) poring over statements on Jon’s desk, trying to get a feel for what was going on. 

Juno couldn’t tell if Basira believed them or not. After the tape had run out, she’d stared at it for a long, long moment before blinking once. “I’m not dealing with this right now,” she’d said. “I’m going back to bed.” Daisy had followed close behind, with an apologetic look, and Juno had been left in the office, confused. Wondering if they even cared, to be honest. 

Not about him . He wasn’t worried about whether they cared about him, they’d just met him. But Jon? Martin? One of whom was missing, the other of whom was...planning something post-Miasma-Juno-level-stupid? That unnerved him. 

The files in Jon’s office were a mess, but a mess in a way that made sense after a fashion. Juno clung to the rundown of fear powers Daisy and Basira had given him as he skimmed them, and managed to conclude that the stacks were organized by fear. There were fifteen stacks, spread across the desk and the floor and the cabinets, fourteen of them haphazard and towering, and the fifteenth thin, consisting of only a handful of pages and tapes. That stack had its own box, labeled Jon in the same handwriting as the poetry. A gift, then, from Martin. 

As the time approached eight (that was a normal time to show up for work, right?) Juno set out to look for this Martin K Blackwood, archival man of mystery. He was certain he looked out of place, brightly patterned shirt and heels and all, but he moved with a kind of confidence he’d seen Peter use to get away with almost literal murder, and it seemed to work. He didn’t meet many people, since he kept to the archive for the most part, but those he did meet simply gave him an odd look and let him pass. It wasn’t not long before he found a distant office, its door labelled “M. Blackwood” with a plaque that looked like it was as old as the building itself, chipped and yellowed where the plastic should have been clear. 

Juno stopped in front of it and squared his shoulders, adjusting the armful of notebooks he was carrying. Then he knocked. 

“Come in,” said the voice from the tape. It sounded as bored and inflection-less as it had on the cassette, and Juno filed that away for later. He pushed into the room and paused, giving himself a moment to study the man at the desk. 

Martin was tall and mousy-haired, his frame large and well-rounded. He blinked grey eyes at Juno from behind round glasses, and there was a long moment before anything resembling an emotion crossed his face. Confusion, Juno thought. Maybe bordering on alarm. “Who the hell are you?”

Juno eased the rest of the way into the room, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. “Juno Steel, private eye. I’ve come to return some things.”

“Return some--this area is off limits to the public, Mr. Steel, so how you got ahold of--” Martin’s eyes fell on the things in question, and his protests died on his tongue. When he spoke again, his voice was icy. “How did you get those? Where did you get that shirt? Who the hell are you?”

“I the hell am Juno Steel,” Juno said. He stepped forward and dropped the notebooks on the desk, bracing his hands on either side and fixing his gaze on Martin’s face. “And I have some questions for you.”

Martin sat back in his chair like he was coiling to move, and Juno took a step back. Casually, just to show the man he wasn’t a threat. “So,” he said. “I hear you’ve got a crush on the archivist.”

If possible, Martin’s expression grew colder. He reached out slowly and took the notebooks, stacking them carefully on the edge of his desk. Juno watched his hands, noting the tremor running through them. “Where did you get these?”

“Storage closet on the other side of the archive. Heard you spent some time there. Like, a lot of time. Practically lived there.”

Martin took a deep breath and laced his fingers together on top of the desk. “If you keep ‘hearing’ these things, what are you here for? Confirmation?”

“Not really,” Juno admitted. “I don’t care if you have feelings for your boss. What I do need to know is why your boss is missing.”

Martin went absolutely pale. “What’s happened to Jon?”

“That’s a great question,” Juno said. He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why was there a tape with your voice on it on Jon’s desk?”

“What tape?” Martin was wringing his hands ever so slightly now, as if he didn’t realize he was doing it. 

“‘Statement of Adelard Dekker, regarding a potential pandemic originating in the town of Klankbull, Germany,’” Juno recited. “And it’s endnotes.”

Martin swore. “How did he get that tape?”

Juno raised an eyebrow, and didn’t answer. His mind was spinning, though, turning over this new revelation. Well, minor revelation, if that. If Martin hadn’t given Jon the tape, then who had? “And the box of statements, about the extinction?” He asked. There was a rush of cold air across the open toes of his shoes. 

“Well, yeah, I gave him those...I thought he might need them, after…” Martin scrubbed at his face, momentarily dislodging his glasses. As he rubbed his eyes, Juno made an adjustment to his observation--his eyes weren’t grey, they were blue, blue as the dome over Hyperion. “God, I must have put it in there by mistake. I didn’t realize that conversation would be on it.”

“After what?” Juno asked. His voice was softer now; it didn’t need to be so sharp, now that the wall between them was starting to break down.

“After whatever ritual—”

“Detective!” The back of Juno’s neck prickled, and he fought the urge to pull his shoulders up to his ears in defense. “What a lovely surprise!”

“Not the word I’d use,” Juno said through gritted teeth. His eyes met Martin’s across the desk, and he watched that wall start to build itself back up in the space between them, the other man’s gaze shuttering abruptly, his face going smooth and expressionless.

“Well, that’s a shame. It’s been really quite some time since Martin had some company.” There was an edge to that voice, something pointed that Juno knew somehow wasn’t for him. Juno turned, shoulders rigid.

“Peter Lukas,” he said, flatly. “Gotta say, it’s been a while.”

“I agree, Detective.”

“Not long enough for me, but hey. Who’s counting.”

The old man honest-to-god tutted at him, shaking his head. “Now, now, Detective, what kind of attitude is that? We were having a perfectly polite conversation just a moment ago.”

“Yeah, but the first time we met you spent a frankly uncomfortable amount of time comparing me to a five-course meal, so. Excuse me if I’m not charmed.” Juno couldn’t afford to break eye contact with Lukas, so he couldn’t see the look on Martin’s face, but based on the sputtering sound he made, it would have been extremely gratifying. 

In spite of Juno’s best efforts, Peter Lukas kept a politely neutral expression, one eyebrow slightly raised. “In my defense, Detective, it was very filling. Not so much now, though--tell me, how is your Peter Nureyev?”

“Doing just fine, no thanks.” It made Juno’s skin crawl just to hear Peter’s name on Lukas’s lips. “I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear you asked after him.” 

Lukas’s mouth twisted into a cold smile. “Delightful. Now, Detective, I doubt you’ve been made aware, so I’d like to officially let you know, that this part of the archive is off limits to visitors. So I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stop badgering my employee for the time being.”

“Aw, I’m not badgering anyone, am I Martin?” Finally, Juno cut a glance towards the man behind the desk. He didn’t like what he saw--Martin seemed to have sunk into himself again, eyes dull behind his glasses. 

“Actually,” Martin said, voice curiously flat. “You have been a bit of a nuisance, Mr. Steel.”

Juno sighed. “Well, never let it be said that I’ve overstayed my welcome. It was a joy to speak with you both.”

With a careless salute to mask the shaking of his hands, Juno shouldered past the old man in the doorway and back out into the archive proper. He wasn’t prepared for the relief that followed: the rush of warm air, the way heat seemed to infuse back into his soul the farther he got from that room. He rubbed unconsciously at his arms as he made his way back to the break room, trying to work the cold out of his skin. 

He found Daisy and Basira blearily having breakfast, toast and microwave breakfasts set half-finished in front of them, a fresh pot of coffee perfuming the air. 

“Where have you been?” Basira asked. She sounded like she wanted to be angry, but didn’t quite have the energy--it came out only as mildly irritable. 

“Went to see Martin,” Juno said, helping himself his third--fourth?--cup for the morning. He made his voice casual, fishing for a reaction from the others.

There was...none. 

“Did you now?” Basira replied. “What did he have to say?”

Juno frowned into his coffee. “Only that he left the box of statements on Jon’s desk in case he needed them after Lukas’s ritual. I didn’t get much more before Lukas showed up to kick me out.”

“How do you keep running into Peter Lukas?” Daisy asked, sounding amused.

“He likes to feed on my loneliness,” Juno said, voice bitter as the drink in his hand. “Honestly, be glad you’ve never met him. He’s a dick.” 

“Still better than Elias, ” Basira muttered. 

“Who?” Juno turned away from the counter and leaned against it, the edge pressing sharply into his back. Though his hands had finally stopped shaking, he still appreciated the warmth of the cup in his hand. In fact, he was starting to wonder where he could find a jacket around here, because it turned out London was fucking cold. 

“Old boss,” Basira said, at the same time as Daisy growled, “creepy little bastard.”

Juno raised his eyebrows, taking a long drag from his coffee. “Sounds like a fun guy,” he said. 

“He really wasn’t,” Basira assured him. 

“What happened to him?”

“Got arrested,” Basira said. “We had to run off north to stop the Stranger’s ritual, and Martin and Melanie stayed behind to distract him. After we...got back, Martin turned him over to the police.”

“For what?”

“Murder. Only thing we could pin him too, but he was a right bastard in other ways, too.”

Juno stared at her for a long moment before finally asking “what the hell is this place?”

Basira opened her mouth to answer and he waved her off, sloshing hot coffee over his wrist. “No, no, I know what it is. I just--what the hell is wrong with you people? You got your own boss arrested for murder! Your coworker is missing, and you don’t seem at all upset about it, and your other coworker is currently right-hand-man to the psychopath who replaced your boss, and you still don’t seem that upset about it. What the actual hell , guys?”

Basira glared. “Do you want to know what it’s like working for this place?” she asked coldly.

“Enlighten me.”

“It’s. Hell.” Her dark eyes were obsidian chips, biting into Juno like knives. “I’m surrounded by spooky statements, and psychopath bosses, and idiots who think every new danger is a chance to off themselves so they don’t have to do this anymore. I didn’t even choose this, I was blackmailed. So excuse me, for not falling to pieces every time one of the other fucks in this archive decides to throw themselves at something that’ll tear them to pieces, because I have spent enough time trying to keep them alive. I’m tired, Juno. I’m so fucking tired.”

After a moment, she stood up, taking her breakfast from the table with the type of precision that spoke of a lot of underlying rage, and stalked out of the room. Juno, to his credit, didn’t say anything, his jaw slack and mind reeling; Daisy was pale, staring down at her plate and looking like she wanted to cry.

Juno heaved a sigh and dropped into a chair across from her. “That...went well.”

“Yeah,” Daisy choked out. She swallowed hard. “I knew...I knew she was stressed. But I didn’t...realize…”

Juno set down his mug and reached for one of her hands where it lay on the table. It twitched, but she didn’t pull away. “Sometimes it’s hard to know how much someone else is hurting, because they don’t want you to. I’m. Sorry. For making her explode like that.”

“You’re right, though,” Daisy said. A tear broke free of her lashes and trailed down her cheek until she reached up to scrub it away. “We don’t care, like we should. It’s...oh, what’s the word. Compassion fatigue, maybe? We’ve just gone through so much that it’s hard to keep caring when you know it won’t get better.”

Juno couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that. His mouth was dry, his brain useless, as he was struck by just how much he didn’t know what they’d gone through. What had happened to bind Basira to the archive, what had turned Martin cold and blank and distant. What had made Daisy the fragile husk of a person she was putting on a brave face to hide. 

So he just squeezed her hand and let go, silently returning to his coffee and promising himself that he was going to find a way to make this shit stop.

Chapter Text

The whole archive was quiet, but Jon’s office was the only place that offered a true sense of solitude. Basira finished her breakfast and stacked her dishes neatly on the corner of the desk, lips pressed into a thin line. Of course she was worried about Jon. Of fucking course. 

But when wasn’t she? 

When she’d met the man, he’d been a murder suspect. Then a missing person, still suspected for murder. Then a coworker, a co-conspirator, a...friend? Basira gave a bitter laugh--when would they have time to become friends, between the late-night talks in the tunnels under the institute and planning for the Unknowing? And now…

Who the hell was Jon now? 

And it wasn’t even just Jon. Tim was dead. Melanie gone. Martin...absent. Daisy weak and tired as a fucking baby bird.  

Basira couldn’t afford to fall apart every time someone in the archive got hurt, because if she did there was a chance--a big one--she wouldn’t be able to pull herself back together.

There was a tentative knock at the door, and she sighed, slumping behind the desk. The chair creaked, just enough noise to give away that she was inside. The door cracked open. 

“Basira?”

“What do you want?” 

“I wanted...to apologize.” Juno looked and sounded a bit sheepish as he entered the room, leaning his back against the wall by the door as if he thought he might need an easy escape. “I didn’t realize what kind of stress you were under, and. Uh. Maybe I should’ve been less of a dick.”

“Maybe,” she said, looking him over. She looked at the way he stood there in his ridiculous heels and his ridiculous shirt, arms crossed over his chest awkwardly, with the cast, expression open and sincere. She wanted to be angry with him still, but…

It had been a long time since she’d gotten an apology that genuine.

“I don’t know what you want me to do,” she said finally. “About any of it.”

Juno shrugged. “I don’t really know, either.” He huffed a tiny laugh. “Just...care, maybe.”

“Of course I care,” she snapped. 

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have doubted that.” Juno sighed. For a moment, it looked like he was going to slump further back into the wall, make himself smaller until she wore out her frustration. Instead, he squared his shoulders and looked her in the eye. “How can I help?”

“Sorry?”

“Based on your, uh. Speech, I’m guessing you’ve been the responsible one this whole time, trying to keep everything together? That’s why you’re so stressed? Well, I’m here. Use me. How can I help?”

Basira bristled at being read like a book, but the way Juno did it was...different. He didn’t know things he shouldn’t, he was just conjecture and bluster and sometimes he got something right. She pushed that annoyance away, forced herself to think critically. 

She could use Juno. Use his skills, his intuition. And without the inherent risks of Jon’s power, to boot. 

Juno watched her watch him, made no sign of fear at the calculation in her expression, and didn’t even flinch when she finally cracked her knuckles, stretching as she rose from the desk. “Alright,” she said. “Let’s go talk to Elias.”

***

Basira got them through each security check in the prison with a grim expression and the repeated phrase, “he’s with me.” Juno didn’t miss the looks he got from the prison guards, and he didn’t blame them--he knew what he looked like, high heels and khakis and a thick sweater just this side of too tight, brightly-patterned shirt collar crowding his neck. He had to stop himself from reaching for the translator pressed against his sternum; the guards seemed to have accepted it was just a necklace, and he was keen on keeping it that way. Finally, they reached their destination, and Juno had to admit--

Hoosegow had gotten pretty close.

“Detective.” The man greeting them seemed perfectly collected, hair smoothed back, blue eyes steady and cold. It was an expression totally incongruous with his prison uniform, and one that made Juno’s hackles rise instinctively.

“Still not a detective,” Basira said flatly.

Elias hummed. “You know I just like the way it sounds.” He turned his eyes on Juno. “And who’s this?” 

“Juno Steel. Actually a Detective, since you seem into that.” He glanced towards Basira, trying to get a read on the room. 

Elias gave him a once over and replied, dismissive: “suits you less.”

Juno shrugged, putting on a smirk. “Works in my favor most of the time.” 

“Where’s Jon?” Basira asked flatly. Juno shifted his weight and shut his mouth. She was tired of their game already, then. Probably just as well; for all that Elias seemed to be cold-shouldering him, the man was trying to take Juno's number just as Juno was trying to get his. 

“And you suspect it has something to do with me?” Elias chuckled. “I can assure you, detective, it most certainly does not. After all, what can I do from here?” 

Basira scoffed. “Send me and Jon on a wild goose chase up to Norway, for one. I know you’ve been keeping an eye on us, Elias. What’s happened to Jon?” 

“I haven’t the first clue.”

“No idea where he’s gone? He can’t have just up and vanished, he hasn’t left the Institute in weeks.”

“I really don’t know what to tell you, Detective.”

“Oh come on,” Juno rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. “You can use your spooky all-knowing monster powers to push your employees around but you can’t use them to make sure they aren’t in trouble? Actually, no, that makes a lot of sense. Never mind.”

Basira snorted. Elias turned his icy gaze on Juno, and it turned his blood cold. Unbidden, memories of Miasma’s eyes rose to the surface, shining with the same pure, unadulterated crazy he saw in front of him. The corner of Elias’s mouth twitched, and Juno didn’t like that at all. 

“I see you’ve received the full lecture,” the old man said. 

“Got the crash course when I got here,” Juno said. “Gotta say, I’m not super impressed with this whole eldritch horror thing you’ve got going.”

“Oh don’t lie,” Elias purred. “Tell me, Detective Steel, how do you really feel, so far from home? So far from your precious family?”

When Juno spoke it was through gritted teeth, horror and terror making his voice reedy: “scared shitless, to be totally honest.” He clenched his jaw around any other errant words trying to climb out of his throat, biting down till it hurt. He could feel Elias rummaging around in his head, and he couldn’t help but wonder if that’s what it had been like for Peter, during Miasma’s tests. 

Elias smirked, the smug satisfaction in his gaze utterly unbearable. “I thought so.”

“So you know nothing, then,” Basira said, like her boss hadn’t just cracked Juno open like a cold drink. “Great. Let’s go, Steel.”

Juno followed her out, still bristling with fear and revulsion. Behind them, Elias called out, “I do hope you find him, Detectives.”

“Sure,” Basira said.

“Fuck you, Douchard,” Juno called back.

It wasn’t until they reached the car that Basira finally huffed a laugh. “Douchard? Really?”

“The fuck was that back there?” Juno snapped.

“His spooky all-knowing monster powers at work,” Basira said. “Thought you knew.”

“I didn’t know it was gonna be like...like that! I need a shower. With bleach.”

“Oh, yeah.” Basira started the engine, unruffled. “Awful, isn’t it.”

“Understatement of the century,” Juno muttered. He took a deep breath. “So he really didn’t know anything?” 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Hard to tell with Elias, but he seemed about as lost as the rest of us.”

“Awesome. Back to square one, then?”

“Back to square one.”

Juno stared through the windshield without seeing anything on the other side, working through what “square one” meant. He had a working theory of where Jon was, but no why or guarantee that was even what had happened. He did have a pair of former police officers, though, and a box full of tapes and files in an office full of tapes and files in a building full of tapes and files. 

“We should keep an eye on Martin,” he said finally.

“Sorry?”

“Whatever Jon was doing when he disappeared, it probably had to do with Martin. His voice was on one of the last tapes Jon listened to before he...whatever. So this has something to do with Martin, and Peter Lukas, and probably Elias too. He seemed a little too smug for a man in a jail cell.”

“He’s always like that.”

“Not reassuring.”

“Right. So. Who’s going to tail Martin then?”

“I could, but I’d probably stick out too much. Plus I think Lukas can like...sense me, when I’m around? God, I never want to say that again.”

“You’re right,” Basira said, tapping the wheel thoughtfully. “Might ask Daisy. Out of all of us, she’s probably the most nonthreatening. Easiest to overlook. And after the coffin, she...well. She doesn’t like to be alone.”

Juno paused. “Should we have brought her with us?”

Basira sighed. “I don’t know, maybe. But she didn’t seem...I didn’t think she’d want to come.”

Juno thought about the brittle way that Daisy had moved after Basira’s explosion, and didn’t have a conclusion to come to. “So--if she’s up for it--she can tail him, and we can go through the files again to try and figure out what’s going on.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Why, any suggestions?”

Her tapping grew a little more agitated. “Not really.”

The drive back to the Institute was terse and quiet with the weight of uncertainty and the impending sense that they were running out of time. 

Daisy agreed to the plan easily enough, though before she left Juno noted the tentative touch of her fingers on Basira’s wrist, an earnest look on her face that was a question and an affirmation all in one. He also noted the tenderness in the way Basira laced her fingers through Daisy’s in return, just for a moment, just long enough to squeeze gently, a tiny, grim smile on her lips. Juno found himself suppressing a smile at the moment of weary, easy camaraderie passing between them, his eye pricking dangerously.

It was a moment he and Peter had shared in the tomb. 

Basira watched Daisy leave the room for a long moment, and Juno couldn’t look away fast enough to escape detection. 

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“ What?”

Juno shrugged. “ Nothing. Just...you really love her. I guess.” Smooth, Steel.

Basira looked taken aback. On anyone else it would have been a flat stare, but after twenty-four hours or so of her particular brand of flat stare, Juno could recognize the faint deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes, the way her jaw had gone faintly slack. The wheels were turning in there; Juno could practically see the smoke filtering out from under her hijab. 

“Is this...news?” he asked. “Sorry, I just--assumed--”

Basira blinked. Once, twice. Then she took a deep, unsteady breath and when she blinked again, the look was gone. “Come on, Steel. We’ve got god knows how many files to get through.” 

She pushed past him towards Jon’s office, and Juno frowned after her. 

Huh.

Interesting.

Chapter Text

Peter was still in the ship’s infirmary when Jon woke up. It wasn’t a pleasant waking, a jolt and a flinch and then the sound of sharp, uneven breathing as he took stock of his surroundings. Though his head was swimming with pain medication, Peter managed a greeting. 

“Well, Mister Sims,” he said, voice weaving through the air like a drunk. “That was quite an adventure.”

Jon offered him only a grunt, shifting onto his side with what sounded suspiciously like a whimper of pain. 

Peter squinted through his drug haze. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Jon said curtly. He sounded like he was going to be sick, and indeed looked a bit green. 

“Ah. Is there anything…” I can do? He let the question go unfinished, realizing that any assistance he tried to offer would more than likely make things infinitely worse. 

“No, I just. Overused my powers,” Jon said. His eyes were clenched tightly shut. “It catches up eventually.”

“How so?” Peter asked with interest. Jon was silent for a moment, shifting as if trying to find a more comfortable position.

“It’s like...the world’s worst case of the flu, mixed with...the world’s worst hangover,” he said finally. “I’ve felt it...once before. I tried to Look into the Lonely. To see if...if Martin was okay.”

Peter felt a pang of sadness. “He’s your Juno,” he mused aloud. 

“I-- what?” Jon’s eyes were suddenly open and fixed on him, bright and green and...furious. Peter wondered for a moment if he’d dramatically misread the situation.

“He’s your Juno,” he repeated. “Better half. Partner.” Love of your life. 

Jon sputtered, casting about for words. Peter watched a vast array of emotions cross his face in quick succession, growing increasingly concerned. 

“You can correct me, if I’m wrong,” Peter said finally.

Jon didn’t correct him. 

***

The Endeavor left Susano-o immediately, not waiting for the fallout of the THEIA’s fall. They beelined for their next mark, a resort city on Charon that Peter knew from experience was a breeding ground for experimental recreational drugs. The Ice Palaces of Charon was also a high-traffic destination, making it an ideal spreading point for the THEIA. 

Rather than risking the need for a daring escape on his broken leg, Peter was relegated to Buddy’s surveillance position. Jet took his place as bearer of the virus drive, leaving Buddy to drive the Ruby7 as backup. 

Peter settled in his chair by the console, wincing. His leg twinged at even the thought of movement, and while he knew that made him a liability, he was still mildly frustrated to have been left behind. He didn’t anticipate that surveillance duty would be a particularly exciting part to play.

Vespa took her own place rigidly, eyes fixed on the screen. Between them was Rita, her own machinery spread across the console and her lap in a system that made sense only to her. And perhaps to Jon, based on the way he seemed to be reading the arrays without issue over her shoulder.

If possible, the man seemed worse off than usual. His eyes were sunken and shadowed, their green hue dull and tired, and his lips were raw, as if from being constantly bitten. He was folded in on himself, chin propped up on his bony knees, arms wrapped around his shins, and if Peter looked closely, he could almost see the man trembling. From cold, perhaps. More likely from weakness; he’d started to notice Jon catching himself on walls and furniture, as if he were struggling to stay upright. 

Peter hadn’t been the only one to notice. Buddy had asked Jon about it several days previously, and Jon had only waved her off with a vague explanation. Rita had shown her own concern by constantly plying Jon with snacks (a truly meaningful gesture; she even offered up her salmon chips). 

Peter only watched.

Watched, and waited, to see what Jon was going to do.

After all, that’s all that could be done, with a man keeping secrets. 

Jon had been very quiet since their conversation in the infirmary, and Peter wasn’t certain why, but he was very keen to find out. 

The Ice Palaces were far more populated than Aorus had been, forcing Jet to keep a much cooler head than Peter had. For such a large and inexpressive man, he did surprisingly well undercover, navigating social situations with as much ease as Peter could have, if with less drama. Peter found himself sinking onto his forearms, eyes glued to the security feeds but boredom rising up in his chest like a sigh. 

“Okay Mistah Jet,” Rita said. “This towah’s built a little different from the othah one. Here’s what you’re gonna have to do…”

Peter listened idly to Rita’s explanation, tapping out a rhythm on the console with his fingers. 

“Stop that,” Vespa said flatly.

He stopped. 

Jet made his way down towards the sub-basement of the Ice Palaces, a maze of hallways that culminated in a wide open space in the middle, newly renovated to house the THEIA control tower. Peter’s eyes wandered from his display to Jon’s face, studying the perplexed set of the other man’s features as he watched the screens. He was looking at something specific, that much was clear, but even Jon couldn’t make sense of whatever it was he was seeing. 

There was a dispassionate grunt over the comms, and Peter jerked his eyes back to his screens, only to find Jet in the middle of a small mob, beating back assailants at every turn. 

“I appear to be under attack,” the big man said. 

“Indeed you do,” Peter replied. “I see...seven? Eight?”

“That is information I already possessed.” The sentence was punctuated by the sound of a body crumpling to the ground. 

“I’m sorry, Jet, my view isn’t the best.”

“Mister Sims,” Buddy’s voice drawled over the coms. “Now would be a good time to pull out your magic trick again.”

Jon went pale. “I--can’t,” he said. 

Overused my powers. It catches up eventually. 

It’s like...the world’s worst case of the flu, mixed with...the world’s worst hangover. 

Peter thought about the shaky manner in which Jon had been picking his way around the ship, the way he seemed gaunt and pale and exhausted even after a full meal and a full night’s rest. 

Overused my powers.

It catches up eventually.

“What do you need?” Peter asked sharply.

There was fear in Jon’s eyes when he met Peter’s. “No,” he said. 

“ What do you need, Jon?” Peter demanded. “We are risking our lives to stop this monstrosity, and we cannot do that blindly. You’re part of this team, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone--” Jon stammered. 

Peter closed his eyes, took a breath. Listened to the sound of Jet, beating back the crazed puppets in the basement, being beaten in return. 

“Take what you need, Jon,” Peter said. “I give it freely.”

Jon sucked in a breath, studying Peter’s face for a long moment, before whispering, with all the force that drawn Peter’s name from his lips that day in the Magnus Institute, “tell me about the morning Juno left you.”

Peter did. 

Vespa and Rita watched in horror as Peter stammered out the story of Juno promising him companionship, and Juno leaving, disappearing in the night like a ghost. Of all the misery and loneliness that came after, that had followed him for months. 

It had been years since Miasma and the tomb. Nearly long enough for the nightmares of her cruelty, her inhuman countenance, to stop calling upon him at night. It had been years since Juno left him alone in a hotel room after a night of promises and tender passion. 

Those nightmares, he still had. 

He still woke in a cold sweat, reaching across the sheets to ensure that Juno was there, body warm and solid and right, still pressed himself into Juno’s skin to ground himself in his presence. 

Peter’s voice broke as he spoke, admitting to things he never would again, desperate bids to cut off the broken emptiness in his chest that followed Juno’s betrayal. He could see the sorrow and the pity in Vespa’s eyes, the raw heartbreak in Rita’s, but those were nothing compared to the look of ravenous hunger in Jon’s bright, poison-green eyes. 

His story came to an end, a minute of his life that had cut him to the core, and Jon held his gaze for a second more, an apology in his eyes that Peter couldn’t quite bring himself to accept.

Then Jon turned to the screen. “Jet, there are six more to your left, four to your right.”

Peter sucked in a breath, clutching his chest as if to calm his racing heart, and watched Jon talk Jet through the fight in the Ice Palace basement, realizing that, perhaps for the first time since he’d met Jon, he’d just met the Archivist. 

***

The moment the Ruby7 was at rest in the cargo bay, Jon excused himself and went to his room. He hated how he no longer had to brace himself against the wall to walk straight, hated the new strength in his limbs, the way the fog around his mind had lifted. The way he felt sated, like he’d eaten his fill for the first time in weeks. 

Jon slammed the door shut behind him and turned the lock, breathing heavily not out of physical but perhaps emotional necessity. He pressed his hands to the surface, cool against his palms, solid and grounding and… not the door he needs.

With a choked cry, Jon slammed his palms against the door, rattling it in its setting. He hit it again, and again, and again, not quite realizing that he was sobbing until his eyes were nearly swollen shut. He sank to his knees and pressed his forehead to the wood, weeping into his bruised hands. 

“Please, Helen,” he begged. “Please take me back.”

There was a tentative knock on the other side. “...Jon?”

“Please go away,” Jon croaked. 

There was a sound like someone taking a seat on the other side of the door. 

“I’m...not sure that’s a good idea,” Peter said hesitantly. “I believe we have some things to talk about.”

“I told you,” Jon said. “I told you I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“And I didn’t listen,” Peter replied, tiredly. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. But I’m not sorry that we saved Jet’s life.”

Jon couldn’t quite bring himself to regret that, either. 

That wasn’t nuance he needed, though. He didn’t need the knowledge that he could use his powers for good, didn’t need that sliver of doubt, that voice that told him he could make sacrifices for the greater good. 

That was how he became Peter Lukas. 

That was how he became Martin. 

“You were right, you know,” he said finally.

“About what?”

“Martin.” Jon took a deep breath. “Being my Juno.”

Peter hummed in agreement, or perhaps encouragement. 

“I...it took me so long to realize. I was so caught up in my own problems, from the beginning, that he almost got eaten by worms and I wouldn’t have noticed until it was too late. Might not have even cared.” Jon laughed, hollowly. “But he was always there. Always outside my door with a damn cup of tea, exactly how I liked it even though I never told him. Always listening, always talking me down when I got bad…and I couldn’t do that for him.”

Peter said nothing. Were it not for the Eye Jon wouldn’t have known if he were even there, on the other side of the door. 

“I let him slip into the Lonely, with little more than a backwards fucking glance,” Jon whispered. “And now...it’s been a week. If I wasn’t too late to save him before...I almost certainly am now.”

“I’m...so sorry, Jon,” Peter said, and Jon could hear his thoughts, on the other side of the door. Hear how Peter was reflecting on the statement he gave, and wondering how much worse he would feel if losing Juno had been his fault.

My fault, my fault, my fault… Jon choked on another sob. 

“It may not be,” Peter protested weakly. “You don’t know that--that you’ve lost him.”

Jon took a shuddering breath. That was...true, actually. Jon’s eyes went wide behind the shield of his fingers as he Looked, reaching as far and wide with his mind’s Eye as he could, looking for the knowledge that Martin was dead, or lost. There was...nothing. No cold certainty, no sudden epiphany. 

Perhaps he was just too far away, through time and space, to Know something like that but…

Without certainty, he had hope. 

“You’re right,” he breathed.

“Careful,” Peter said from the other side of the door, amused. “Say that too many times and I’ll get a big head about it.”

Jon huffed a laugh, wiping his eyes. “You’re...insufferable.”

“So they tell me.” 

There was a soft groan as Peter stood, leg still sore, and Jon reluctantly pushes to his feet as well, unlocking the door and sliding it open. Peter was waiting on the other side, a small smile on his face, despite the weariness shading his eyes. 

“I was going to make myself some tea,” Peter said. “Would you like some?”

“I--yes. Thank you,” Jon said. He was all too aware of the bruised feeling around his eyes, of the way the green would be standing out against the red splotches on his face. But Peter, despite everything, was still standing before him, still being kind, and that, in itself, was a relief. 

Chapter Text

Peter felt like he was going to be sick. 

Twenty years, since he’d seen the surface of the planet below. The delicate swirls of clouds, backlit by an endless cityscape of golden light. He knew what those streets looked like, up close. Far too close, far too intimately. He pressed a hand to his belly, as if to remind himself that it was full. That he was no longer the orphan scampering across the street after scraps, praying the death-dealing beams of the Guardian Angel System would pass him by. 

“It’s beautiful,” Jon said softly.

“It is,” Peter said, just as soft. He felt faintly surprised to realize he meant it; among the whirlwind of emotions churning in his gut, there was homesickness, longing for the city Mag had opened his eyes to. The city of wealth and opportunity, the city of poverty and hunger. Both in equal measure, if you knew where to look. 

“It’s been...a long time,” Jon said. 

“Mind reading is still rude, Jon,” Peter mused, glancing at him out of the corner of his eye just in time to watch the smaller man blush.

“Sorry.” 

Peter hummed, eyes still fixed on the planet below. “This is going to be...very trying,” he said. “So I’ll apologize in advance, for...anything I might say, or do, to offend. Before this is over.”

“I understand,” Jon said, and Peter got the sense that he truly did. 

“Well, team,” Buddy said lightly. “This one’s a bit higher stakes than we’ve grown accustomed to so far.”

And that was true. Peter could feel the prickling sensation of being watched, the apprehension that came along with the knowledge that beams of death could rain down at any moment. They hadn’t even landed yet, and already he could feel New Kinshasa breathing down his neck. 

Jon’s hand landed on his shoulder, and he clenched his jaw, looking away. From the grim expression on the other man’s face, he could feel Peter’s fear, and Peter was distinctly uncomfortable with that. 

“We’ll have to be especially careful in New Kinshasa--is everyone here familiar with the Guardian Angel System?”

Intimately, Peter thought bitterly. Jon glanced at him, frowning. 

He didn’t ask Buddy for an explanation. 

“Excellent. So I won’t have to warn you all of the dangers of being caught. The system hasn’t been put to use in decades, but its threat still stands; I’d rather not be its first victims in twenty years.”

***

“I don’t know how many more times we can go over these files,” Basira said finally, frustration and exhaustion creeping into her voice. Juno sighed and paused the tape he’d been listening to on repeat. 

“Yeah. Me neither.” He stared, unfocused, at the piles on the desk. “They really...huh.”

Basira snorted. “Martin’s been a fool for Jon since before I got here. Jon...I don’t know. He’s been different ever since the coma.”

Juno didn’t say anything. His mind was still spinning, turning over Jon’s insistence on trusting Martin and Martin’s growing bleakness with every mention of Jon. Months of silence and near misses and loneliness and all of it made Juno ache for Peter.

He sighed again. “No wonder Jon ran off half-cocked. I’m not...I don’t know what to do with this.” And that bothered him. He wanted to help. To do something, anything. But it was becoming increasingly clear that there may not have been anything for him to do.

Basira’s comms-- phone-- blared to life, startling the both of them. She answered it abruptly, silencing the grainy music mid-beat. “Daisy?”

Juno couldn’t hear the reply, but he could see the look of growing concern on Basira’s face. 

“Okay. We’ll be right there. Don’t follow them, you know how it’ll get.”

Daisy’s tone was clearly exasperated across the receiver before she hung up, and Basira seemed less than amused. 

“What happened?” Juno asked, already getting to his feet.

“Martin’s left with Peter Lukas.”

“Wait--then why did you tell her not to follow them?”

“Because she would hunt them.” There was steel in Basira’s answer. “And I’m not going to lose her again.”

“Well, I guess that’s a pretty good reason then.” 

They dashed across the archive to Martin’s office to find Daisy leaning against the wall outside, clenching and unclenching her fists, eyes dark. 

“You okay?” Basira’s hands rose to Daisy’s shoulders, seeming to pause before taking a gentle hold. Daisy relaxed at the touch, sagging against the ancient paint. 

“I’m fine, ‘Sira.”

“Where did they go?” Juno asked. 

“Tunnels,” Daisy said. “I saw that much before I called Basira.”

“ Tunnels? You have tunnels under your office building? How on earth isn’t this place considered a dungeon?” 

“It is.” Daisy smirked at the same time as Basira gave him a flat stare, their combined voices forcing an unexpected laugh out of him. For just a moment, it didn’t feel like their lead was slipping away into the darkness below, like their little bubble of peace and stifled amusement could last. 

Then, the moment was interrupted by the entrance of two Hunters. 

“Juno,” Basira snapped. “You go. Get Martin, figure out what the hell is going on. Daisy and I will deal with them.”

“Where--”Juno didn’t get the question out of his mouth before Basira looked at him, and the knowledge of where he needed to go bubbled up in his brain with the same sick sensation of Elias’s meddling.

Their horrified expressions were perfect mirrors of each other.

“Just go,” Basira said. “Wait--here.” And then she pressed something familiar into Juno’s hand. 

He studied the gun, then nodded. “See you on the other side?”

“Be careful, Steel.”  

***

In the last hour before the run, Jon waited in the kitchen, sipping nervously at an ice-cold cup of tea. His hands weren’t shaking yet, but he could feel the tremors biding their time in his churning gut. 

“Mistah Sims?”

Jon nearly jumped out of his skin. “Rita. Christ, I--I’m sorry, did you need something?”

“Miss Buddy sent me to check on you.” Rita took a tentative seat across from him and clasped her hands on the table in what even Jon knew to be a distinctly un-Rita-like gesture. “And I have a statement for ya.”

Jon’s blood went as cold as his tea. “No, Rita, I--”

“I volunteered,” Rita said quietly. “You need the juice, and. And. It’s only fair, Mistah Algernon went last time.”

“I don’t want--”

“I don’t think it much mattahs what you want, Mistah Sims. Show’s gotta go on, and all that.”

She was...right. She was right, and Jon almost hated her for it. He took off his glasses and scrubbed his eyes, tears of frustration pricking behind them. “Rita, I don’t want to hurt you. Do you--you don’t even know what you’re getting into!”

She shrugged. It was a gesture as muted as the clasping of her hands. “What am I signin’ up for, Mistah Sims?”

Jon sighed. “You will tell me...everything. Even the parts you didn’t know were important. Even the parts you’d rather keep to yourself. You will give me all of it, and I will give it to the Eye. And while this happens, you will relive every ounce of fear you felt that day, so that the Eye can take it.”

Rita was pale. “Is--is that it?”

Jon shook his head. “And then, when it’s over. You’ll dream. Perhaps not every night, but you will dream. You will relive it again, and again, and I will be there as well, watching and silent and we will both be helpless.” 

She blinked once, twice. Gave a shuddering breath that Jon realized was an aborted sob. “I gotta do it, Mistah Sims.”

“I--” Jon rubbed his eyes one more time, then replaced his glasses. “I know. I just...I wanted. I wanted you to know what will happen. And that I. I can’t help it.”

“That’s okay, Mistah Sims.” She slid a hand across the table and took one of his. 

Jon laughed darkly. “How do you figure?”

“Well, it sounds like you got it way worse than I do, anyway.”

That startled a laugh out of him; he almost took his hand back. “ How?” 

“Well, I’m only gonna have the one nightmare, right? And I already lived through it, so I’ll know I’m gonna be okay. But it sounds like you’ve got a lotta nightmares, Mistah Sims. Sounds real exhausting.”

Jon’s laugh started to sound suspiciously like a sob. “You’re...not wrong.” He took a deep breath, and flipped his hand over to squeeze Rita’s fingers. “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll evah be, Mistah Sims.”

“Alright, then.” Jon cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and said, “tell me about the THEIA Soul, Rita.”

And so she did. 

As she spoke, Jon felt his gaze go sharp and hungry, his hands turn to a vice on hers, no matter how much he tried to relax his grip. For her part, Rita held his gaze and her voice was steady, even as tears rolled down her cheeks. 

She told him about a man named Mick Mercury, a friend, whose voice and demeanor changed the moment they realized his actions weren’t his own. She told him about hiding on the balcony, of Juno’s near change of heart, of the thing’s assault. She told him about Juno shooting his best friend, and stopping his heart. 

That sounded like the Hunt. 

She told him about her plan, and its requirement--that Juno submit to the Soul, in order to carry her virus to the system’s core. She told him about the change in Juno, the reckless, ruthless pursuit through the old police station. 

Definitely Hunt.

She told him about the people enslaved, building the control tower in the police station. She told him about the way Juno seemed to glitch as he tried to fight the chip embedded in his flesh, the way his eyes glazed over as he battled his own mind. She told him about the way Juno had collapsed when it was all over, the chip falling smoking to the floor, Juno’s breathing and pulse erratic and stuttering. 

Hunt?

She told him everything that Juno had told her later, when he had recovered, in a small, broken voice as he pounded through a bottle of bourbon on her couch as though it were an anchor. The way it had wormed its way into his mind until he was no longer himself, until he was but a servant of the machine. The way he was nothing but a body, a fly, trapped in its--

Web. 

***

The tunnels did, in fact, remind Juno of a dungeon. Much like the one Andromeda had been forced to puzzle through in the Castle of Aquarius , one of Benten’s favorite Andromeda episodes. They had the same creepy, drippy, musty ambiance of the castle’s catacombs, and none of the nose-hair-searing metallic stink of the Oldtown sewers. The incongruence of it set Juno’s teeth on edge. 

After a few hundred meters, Juno heard the echoing sound of voices and slowed down, measuring his footsteps more carefully as he neared. 

“Are you sure about that map? I’m pretty certain the tunnels change.” Martin’s voice, testy and skeptical. 

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Lukas’s voice, slimy and amiable. “Ink’s practically still wet. Not to mention, if they do change, well. I happen to have something that will change them back.”

Juno crept closer, the gun pressed comfortably into his palm. By the time the two were in sight, Martin was speaking again. 

“That’s a Leitner.”

“It is!” Lukas sounded pleased. 

“And the, um. The blood on it?” Martin pressed.

“That’s Leitner too!”

“Right.”

“Do you want to see how it works?” Lukas asked, and despite Martin’s protests, he started flipping through the stained pages. Juno’s palms started to grow clammy. For a few tense seconds, nothing happened. 

“Very impressive,” Martin deadpanned. 

“I’m reading, shush.”

Then came the sound of grinding stone, and every hair on the back of Juno’s neck stood up on end. Lukas and Martin tucked themselves into a nook in the wall, silent. 

“ So you finally decided to let me out, Jon?” The voice emitting from the...thing that emerged from the tunnels grated on Juno’s ears like the scream of the THEIA, and he flattened himself against the wall, one hand clapped over his mouth to muffle his breathing. “ Don’t be shy...I just want to say thank you…” 

The creature was made of unnatural angles and twisted flesh, twice as tall as anything had a right to be. It craned its rubbery neck around, the expression on its inhuman face growing darker with each passing moment. “ ...alright, have it your way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some unfinished business.” With a laugh, the thing scuttled in Juno’s direction, and he pressed himself further into the wall, praying desperately that it wouldn’t notice he was there. 

To his profound relief, it didn’t seem to, though he got a much closer look at its eldritch form as it moved past. As it disappeared into the darkness, Juno turned over the phrase “unfinished business” in his mind until it made sense--coupled with the fact that the thing was headed in the direction from which Juno had come. He froze, angled towards the monster as it made its way toward his friends.

“You could still go help them,” Peter Lukas said. Voice light, suggestive. 

Juno lurched, looking over his shoulder, but the words weren’t directed at him. Instead, they were meant for Martin, who was staring, wide-eyed, after the creature Lukas had just released. He blinked, several times, and finally gulped in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. Lukas smiled widely, showing altogether too many teeth, and murmured, “very good.”

Juno’s skin crawled, but as the two men continued down the tunnels, he followed. 

Chapter Text

The tunnels ended in a cavernous room, its walls carved with countless cells stacked one atop the other, and its center adorned by a spindly dark tower rising from the stone, a spiral stair twisting around it like a rusting cage. 

Juno hung back in the shadows as Martin and Lukas ascended the rusting metal stairs, listening as Lukas lectured Martin on the place’s history. The panopticon, he called it. Juno glanced around it again and shivered. He waited until the others disappeared behind the tower for a moment, before ducking forward and making a break for the stairs. He took a moment to catch his breath before beginning his own ascent; he could see the others through the grating of the stairs when he looked up; he would have to be silent enough that they didn’t look down. 

Stealth had never been Juno’s strong suit, but he was gonna give it a good old academy try. 

It helped that they kept talking while they climbed. 

“I don’t understand,” Martin said. “Why are we here?”

“It’s quite simple, really,” Peter said liltingly. “I want to use the powers of this place to learn about the Extinction--what it’s doing, where it’s manifesting...then we can stop it.”

“And you need me for this?”

“Correct! Without a connection to the Eye, any attempt to use it would likely end very messily indeed. But thankfully it just so happens that you hold such a connection.”

“So that’s it,” Martin said dully. “Both Lonely and Watching.”

“You must admit you’re the perfect candidate.” 

They’d reached the top of the tower, standing on its platform overlooking the rest of the room. Juno paused, a handful of steps behind them now. He kept his eyes forward and his free hand pressed to the tower wall, feeling his stomach swoop threateningly any time he so much as considered looking over the edge of the stairs at the drop below. There weren’t even safety rails, whose fucking idea--

“Who is that?” 

Juno’s fingers tightened around the grip of the gun. 

“Jonah Magnus!” 

His fingers relaxed slightly. 

“His body, at least.”

What the--?

“Sitting here, watching. Binding it all together, growing ever older. If you want to take his place, well…”

“I’ll need to kill him,” Martin breathed. 

“Yes. don’t worry, though, I brought a knife.” There was a sound of grinding stone, and Juno almost expected the creature from the tunnels to reappear, but when he glanced around the corner he could see that it was only (only!) the lid of a stone sarcophagus, being lifted and shoved aside. 

“Where are his eyes?” Martin asked, voice trembling. 

The voice that answered was not Peter Lukas, and Juno had to fight the urge to swear aloud in startlement and frustration and panic. 

“Exactly where they’ve always been, Martin,” Elias said coldly, stepping out of the shadows on the other side of the sarcophagus. “Watching over my Institute.”

“What are you doing here, Elias?” Lukas asked, equally frosty. 

“Oh, you needn’t worry. Two against one? I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to. I just wanted to be here at the end. Can a man not watch his own death?”

Martin, perfectly mirroring Juno’s fractured thought processes, stuttered, “ What? How are you even here?”

Elias opened his mouth to answer, but Lukas cut him off. “Don’t let him distract you.”

“Peter,” Elias tutted. 

“Elias.”

“Both of you just--just shut up. Just give me a second to think.” Martin snapped, harried. 

“Of course,” Lukas said smoothly. “You can take all the time in the world.” 

Juno listened to them argue, wheels turning. Struggling to juxtapose the corpse in the sarcophagus with the man standing behind it, condescending to Martin as he struggled to understand. 

“If I do kill you...will the others survive?”

“The short answer is, I don’t know , Martin. I guarantee it won’t be pleasant for them, but I honestly don’t know if their ties to the Institute are quite as strong as I may have implied. YoOu, at least, should be insulated from the fallout by your new allegiance. Jon... might be powerful enough to weather it. Melanie’s well out of it now, so that just leaves Basira and Daisy. And the rest of the Institute, of course, and you can’t tell me you care about them .”

“Of course I do!” Martin protested. 

“Do you, though? Do you really care about any of them? Or is that worrying just simply an old reflex?” Elias paused, studying him. “Goodness, Peter has done his work well, hasn’t he? No, the only choice I think that matters is whether you want to kill me or not.”

“I do.” Martin laughed darkly, and the sound sent chills down Juno’s spine. “I really, really do.”

“Then do it, Martin,” Lukas said. His voice was suddenly gravelly, like he was too close to getting what he wanted to keep up his facade of pleasantness. “We’re the same, you and I. We don’t need anyone else. Watching from a distance, that’s always who you’ve been . Haven’t you enjoyed it these last few months, drifting through the Archives unseen, unjudged? You’ll like it in there. I promise.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I would,” Martin said, sounding wistful. Even though Juno could only see the back of him, he could tell that Martin’s eyes were fixed on the sarcophagus. The room was growing colder, Juno’s breath puffing out of him like smoke. 

“Then do it. Kill him, and help me save the world.” Lukas’s eyes glittered in the dark.

There was a long, long pause, during which Juno clung to the tower wall, watching. He needed to do something, but...what? Whose side was he on, down here? Peter Lukas, who brought out Juno’s worst, dragging him back to the person he’d been in Hyperion City? Elias, who gave off the vibe of a very dedicated serial killer? Or Martin, who seemed caught between them, like a fly in a web? 

Who here needed saving? 

When Martin spoke, it almost startled him. 

“No.”

***

“So you mean to tell me, Mister Sims,” Buddy said slowly. “That this world is beholden to a host of dread powers and one of them is vying for dominance by means of the THEIA Souls?”

“Beholden is...an interesting and not entirely incorrect word, yes. But,” Jon shook his head; semantics were hardly important. “But I cannot stress enough how dangerous it would be for the Web to have the upper hand.”

Buddy’s arched brow and solemn mouth hid the intellectual turmoil stirring behind her eyes as she made room for this new information. “If that’s the case,” she said finally, “I believe you’ll be joining Mister Algernon in the field today. If the stakes are as high as you say, there’s no room for error, and I’d rather James have all the warning he could possibly have at his disposal.”

Jon paused, mouth open to argue that he should be accompanying Peter on the excursion instead of staying behind on the ship, before Buddy’s words registered and he snapped it shut again. “Yes. Good. I--I agree.” 

“Excellent. And your ability--” Her eyes sharpened. “I take it that comes from one of these dread powers as well?”

Jon clenched his teeth. Somehow, he had never felt quite so seen as he did under Buddy’s keen eye, Watcher or no. “Yes.”

“Hm. In any case, you’re prepared to use it?”

“I am.”

“Good.” She stood up abruptly, smoothing out her dress before meeting Jon’s eyes again. “If you’re waiting for me to be afraid of you, Mister Sims, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait a very long time. Go join James in the cargo bay, please. I believe he’s finishing up his preparations.”

If anything, Jon was relieved. 

***

If anything else, Peter was torn. 

Jon had his merits, that much was true. He could see danger coming at a distance, and when he didn’t he seemed to have the bare minimum luck required to survive whatever thing had the means to sneak up on him. And that was before you even counted the ability to read minds and coerce truth from a person by simply asking. 

However, in many ways he was also a liability. And one that Peter did not want to have to account for on the streets of New Kinshasa. 

Correction: he was a liability that was currently standing there with one of Juno’s t-shirts hanging tent-like from his shoulders, arguing with him, and bringing up all kinds of emotions that Peter had already labelled “For Future Consideration” and shoved away. Like missing Juno. 

Like irritation. 

“Jon, I don’t care what the captain said, I cannot be responsible for you on this heist. Surely you remember the part about death raining from the sky.”

“I do, in fact. And I also have an inkling of why.”

Peter sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not hard to have an inkling of why, Jonathan, the Outer Rim has been a breeding ground for crime and unrest for quite some time.”

“Not the human reasons,” Jon said. His arms were crossed over his chest; somehow, in the space of his sentence, it went from a gesture of stubbornness to one of defense. 

Peter studied his face, reading the spaces between his words. “Which fear?”

“The Web. The...manipulator.” Jon laughed hollowly. “ Mother of Puppets.”

“It wants...what. The Souls and the Guardian Angel System?”

“How better to control a planet, than violence and mind control?” Jon asked. “It’s a dangerous combination, even you must admit.”

“Even I--? Jonathan Sims, whose side do you think I’m on, exactly?”

“Yours,” Jon said, without hesitation. “And hopefully the one that will let me do my damn job.”

Peter took a deep breath, and exhaled it rather explosively, still pinching the bridge of his nose. “...You do realize how dangerous this is going to be?”

“I don’t know how much clearer I can make my conspicuous lack of self-preservation,” Jon said dryly. 

Peter snorted. “In what way was that supposed to reassure me?”

Jon smiled wryly. Finally, Peter shook his head and gestured towards Jon’s bare feet. “At least find some shoes. I can’t have you falling over--over a rock, or some such thing.”

“Ah…” Jon paused. “Should I borrow some from you, or…?”

Peter sighed. 

In the end, they made a pair of Juno’s boots fit him reasonably well with an extra pair of socks, and found him a better-fitting shirt (it was Rita’s, but Jon didn’t seem bothered by the abundance of frills; personally Peter thought it suited him better than Juno’s old t-shirts). That done, the three of them--Jon, Peter, and Jet--were fitted with earpieces, and then there was little left to do by way of procrastination.

It was time for Peter to face Brahma. 

***

New Kinshasa was eerily silent as the Ruby7 glided over its streets. Peter felt the tension of its quiet climb up his spine to settle in his shoulders, weighing him down with the heaviness of everything he’d thought he’d stopped over twenty years before. 

Their approach felt too easy; the streets were in disarray, debris left behind as though people had left rapidly, and pushed to the sides of the street as if a street cleaner had come to clear the way ahead of them. And yet, the Ruby7 moved unhindered, unassailed over the city’s dishevelled streets. 

He caught Jon’s eye in the rear view mirror, taking in the pinched set of Jon’s mouth, the clench of his jaw. 

“It’s already here,” Jon said softly. “Just like Aorus. Just like Charon.”

“And we will destroy it,” Jet replied, firmly, his hands steady on the wheel. “Just like Aorus. Just like Charon.”

Jon jerked his head in a nod, eyes fixing on something outside the window. Peter followed his gaze, in time to see the smashed remnants of a guitar pass them by. 

The tension in his shoulders worsened. 

Before them loomed the New Kinshasa administrative building, stately and resolute against the backdrop of the city. As they passed through the courtyard Peter turned his gaze upward, looking for the window he had looked down from so long ago. There were so many, he wasn’t sure which it was. 

“...James?”

He startled, whipping his head around to look at Jon. “Yes? Sorry.”

“It’s. It’s here, J-James. Under our feet.” Jon’s eyes didn’t meet Peter’s; instead they were fixed as though on the ground under the car, wide and scared. 

“Excellent,” Jet said, brusque but determined. “That means we are exactly where we need to be.”

Chapter Text

Jon felt watched. 

It didn’t matter that there had been no faces peering out from the windows of the darkened buildings, that there were no figures walking the streets and alleys they had passed. He felt a familiar prickling across the back of his neck, dark and heavy and watchful.

Not only did Jon feel watched, no. He felt beheld. 

From the looks of the other men with him, so did they. Jet seemed focused on his work, carefully picking the locks of the outer doors and breaking the chains that held them shut from the inside, but it was the kind of focus that spoke of underlying distress. It was a performative focus, meant to hide oneself from prying eyes. 

Jon recognized it from his first few months as Archivist. 

Peter, meanwhile, made no show of calm for the entity breathing down his neck. His eyes flicked across the plaza, watchful and slightly wild, before landing on Jon.

“Is this the Web?” he asked, voice low.

Jon shook his head, smiling wryly. “No. This is the Ceaseless Watcher.” He turned his face up to the gloomy sky, half expecting to see it looking back. “This is my patron.”

When he looked back, Peter’s eyes were still on him, but they had hardened, sharpened. “Of course,” he muttered. Jon felt a rush of cold panic in his chest, and it must have shown on his face, because Peter waved him off. “It’s the same feeling I get when you Ask me things, just. Stronger.”

The last of the chains fell away from the gap between the doors, clanking loudly as they hit the floor. With a grunt, Jet pushed himself to his feet. “The doors are now open,” he said. “Are we ready to continue?”

“Jon?” Peter prompted.

Jon took a deep, shaky breath, and nodded. “I don’t suppose I have much choice, do I?”

“Indeed you do not,” Jet said. He drew his gun, checking that it was set to stun, and put a heavy hand on the door handle. Without another word, he pushed through, and they entered the New Kinshasa Administrative Building, braced against whatever they might find inside. 

Jon’s first thought was that it was surprisingly well lit, for all the wreckage they had seen outside. His second thought was less a coherent thought than mindless panic, as the sensation of being watched deepened until it was all he could do to remain standing on his trembling legs. 

“Jon?” Peter’s voice sounded distant, but he latched onto it, swinging out wildly until he could grasp Peter’s sleeve with his shaking fingers. 

“It knows we’re here,” he choked out. “It--fuck, it’s waiting for us.” 

The mass of light at the building’s core pulsed beneath their feet, as though in agreement. Jon squeezed his eyes shut, forcing himself to breathe, but the image of it was trapped behind his eyes; a vast honeycomb of light and energy, threads reaching out to the people it had ensnared. Through the gaps in the Web’s hold, Jon could see something else seething below the surface, something dark and furious and just barely restrained, a chimaera of anger and hate--

“Jon, get down!”

Peter’s sleeve was torn from his grasp, at the same time as he was abruptly shoved back against the doors. When he opened his eyes, they were no longer alone in the entryway, surrounded instead by a dozen people, each glassy-eyed and impassive. On the inside, though...

Jon couldn’t help but remember Daisy holding a knife to his throat, the bright, searing focus in her eyes--that’s what they looked like on the inside. 

How many entities were gathered here?

He barely had the chance to finish his thought before the hunters fell on their prey. 

Peter fought silently, dancing gracefully around his opponents like a cat. His knives were sheathed, but that didn’t make him any less formidable; his skills likely outpaced even Basira’s, which Jon had only had the dubious pleasure of witnessing a handful of times. Jet, meanwhile, fought as a boulder fights a river, letting each adversary bounce off him in turn. The shots he fired were expertly placed, leaving the recipients still as corpses where they fell. 

So caught up in watching them fight, Jon didn’t notice the one that got through until it had him.

It was a child, small and gaunt and wide-eyed, and it held his gaze for one long moment before reaching out with the speed of a striking snake and pressing a Soul to Jon’s chest. 

He screamed like he had been burned. Hell, he was being burned; the THEIA raced through his veins like liquid fire, tearing him apart and piecing him together all in one go. He crumpled to the floor, barely feeling the impact as he twitched and trembled and was made new. 

He was tethered to it then, that mass of light and knowledge planted deep below. The silver cord of the Mother of Puppets binding him to her, leading his mind away from his body as it dissolved and towards her core. He beheld her with bleary confusion, mind’s eye swimming in color and light for half a moment before he was ensconced in it. 

Within the silver net, he saw, finally, what they had come for. 

Each entity, spread before him like a tableau:

The Vast, embodied by the floating city sitting in judgment of all of Brahma, the Buried in the tumorous ritual at its core. 

The Eye, in New Kinshasa’s endless surveillance. 

The Hunt and the Slaughter, in the Guardian Angel System’s joy of the chase and the kill, and the End in their success. 

The Stranger in the empty mask of each human being lost to the THEIA Soul, the Spiral in their broken, twisted thoughts, the Lonely in the isolation of each one to their own bodily cage. 

The Corruption and the Flesh, in the way the hosts no longer regarded their bodies as their own, but instead as a part of a great whole. 

The Desolation in the fire in his veins, burning away what it found distasteful and leaving a blank slate in its place. 

The Dark in the grim, detached limbo Jon occupied outside of his own mind. 

And of course, the Web, binding it all together. 

Jon looked at each of them in turn. It felt as though his skull was splitting open as he focused in, taking in the contours of the horrific faces they showed him, cataloging each one. Then he spoke, with all the force he could muster, and informed them: 

“ I see you.” 

Then Jon’s vision splintered, for a long, long time, he saw nothing at all. 

***

Lukas’s face went slack at the same time as Elias’s smile widened. “Martin. What are you doing?”

“I’m saying no. I refuse. Game over.” Martin dropped the knife with a clatter that sent adrenaline racing through Juno’s veins. He adjusted his grip on the wall, and the gun. 

“Martin, this is not the time for petulance. There are bigger things at stake here--” Lukas said, suddenly almost frantic. 

Martin laughed like it was punched out of him. “You know, I think that was actually the problem. You made the stakes too high. All the little details that didn’t add up...it made them more obvious. Exaggerated.”

“The Extinction is coming--”

“Oh, I’m sure it is! But that’s now what this is about , is it? This isn’t about saving the world, it’s all just some power play against him. I might not know exactly what’s going on, but I don’t think I want any part of this However much I want to kill him...I’m out.”

“But you said--”

“Honestly, I mostly just said what I thought you wanted to hear.”

“I see.” Lukas turned to Elias. “This is your doing, is it?”

“Hardly,” Elias said, clearly amused. 

“It’s not him! It’s not anybody. It’s just me. Always has been I...when I first came to you, I thought I had lost everything. Jon was dead, my mother was dead, the job I had put everything into had trapped me into spreading evil and I...I didn’t really care what happened to me. I told myself I was trying to protect the others, but honestly...we didn’t even like each other. Maybe I just thought joining up with you would be a good way to get killed.” Juno’s breath caught in his throat, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Superimposed over Peter Lukas was suddenly Ramses O’Flaherty, the old man’s eyes burning into Juno even long dead. Maybe joining up with you would be a good way to get killed. 

Martin wasn’t finished. “And then...Jon came back, and...and suddenly I had a reason I had to keep your attention on me. Make you feel in control so you didn’t take it out on him. And if that meant drifting further away, so what? I’d already grieved for him, and if it now meantmeant now saving him...it was worth it. 

“When you started talking about the Extinction, though...you had me actually, then, for a while. But then.” Martin huffed a laugh, derision creeping into his voice as he turned to Lukas and smiled bitterly. “Then you tried to make me the hero . Tried to sell me on the idea that I was the only one who could stop it. And that I’ve never sat right with me. I mean, I mean, look at me, I’m not exactly a-- a chosen one . But by then I was in too deep. So I played along. Waited to see what your end game was, and here we are. Funny. Looks like I was right the first time. It’s probably still a good way to get killed.”

“I warned you, Peter,” Elias said, grinning, eyes glinting. 

“But you do serve the Lonely,” Lukas sputtered.

“Oh, I’m getting there,” Martin assured him. “But if this is the final test or something? Then bad luck. The answer’s still no.”

Peter Lukas...stomped his foot, all at once dispelling the illusion of Ramses from Juno’s vision. Juno choked back an incredulous laugh. “No. No! This isn’t fair! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? You knew, he must realize--”

“Elias-- Jonah had nothing to do with it,” Martin said firmly.

“No, that’s not--you can’t--”

Elias was beaming. “You’ve lost, Peter, admit it. He played you like a...like a... cheap whistle .”

“ No !” Lukas’s eyes were wild. “Shut up!”

“Peter.” There was command in Elias’s voice then, that made Juno’s blood run cold and that even Lukas couldn’t seem to ignore. “It’s time.”

“Fine.”

“Great,” Martin said. The rest of his words were swallowed by the fog that seemed to rise from nowhere, clouding the panopticon until it was too dense for Juno to see the wall beside him. The air was filled with whispers, with icy liquid cold that seemed to seep into him until he felt he’d never be warm again.

And then it was gone.

And so was Martin. 

“What the--what the fuck?” The words were out of his mouth before he even realized it. Done hiding, then. Juno slid out from behind the wall, gun raised. “What just happened?”

“Ah, Detective Steel,” Elias said. “I wondered how long you were going to stay in the shadows.”

“Long enough, apparently,” Lukas said. His voice had returned to its amiable pleasantness, but his expression was still furious, and Juno didn’t like the way those two things mixed. “Who are you here for, Juno?”

“Martin,” Juno spat.

“Hm. Pity. You’ve just missed him. Can I take a message?” 

“Oh, come now, Peter.” Elias spoke before Juno could, smooth and measured, and Juno didn’t like the sound of his words. “Perhaps you could take him. A consolation prize, perhaps?” 

Lukas’s eyes were fixed on Juno for a long moment as Juno tried to gather his thoughts long enough to figure out what to do. Where was Martin? Where had he gone? Juno had a horrible, horrible thought, but he refused to look over the edge of the platform to confirm it. And he hadn’t heard any sort of...landing, right? So where--

Lukas grunted. “S’pose you’re right, Elias. Consolation prize it is.”

And then, before Juno could protest, his vision went white, and all he knew was cold. 

Chapter Text

It took a number of blinks before Juno determined that his eye wasn’t playing tricks on him, because the signals he was getting were...a whole lot of nothing. He strained his eyes to see past the fog, succeeding only in making out vague shapes that he was pretty sure were just rocks, even if they were suspiciously person-shaped. 

“What the hell is this, Lukas?” Juno growled. 

The reply seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, echoing through the smothering fog. “This, Detective Steel, is the Lonely. It’s an...aggregate, you could say, of any time you’ve ever felt alone, right alongside each time every other person has ever felt alone. Neat little pocket of space, if I do say so myself.” 

Juno spun in a slow circle, taking in the view. He could hear the ocean, maybe even make it out between patches of mist if he looked hard enough. The sand under his feet shifted as he turned, the sound of the grains stirring strangely dull. 

“So this is your lair, then? This is where you hang out when you’re not terrorizing people?” 

“If that’s the way you want to think about it, sure.”

“Is Martin here? Is that what you did with him?”

“Hm. Clever one, aren’t you?” 

“Where is he, Lukas?” Juno snapped. 

The mist didn’t answer. 

“Are you kid--Lukas! Lukas!” Juno whirled around, but the view hadn’t changed. Fog and sand and sea, and nothing in between. 

Biting back curses, Juno picked a direction and started walking. 

***

Despite the damp air surrounding him, Juno’s throat was dry. Still, he continued to call for Martin Blackwood, the archival assistant he refused to leave without. 

***

“Martin,” Juno croaked. He eyed the surf bleakly, even though he knew better, even though the salt could only make his throat worse.

“Persistent, aren’t you?” the mist asked. It sounded impressed despite itself.

“What, like you’re surprised?”

Juno asked. “Pretty sure I majored in ‘stubborn bastard’ at the academy.”

“And funny, too,” the mist mused. “That’s good. Only company you’ll ever need, if you’re funny.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“That means, it’s just as well that you’re in good spirits. Let’s just say it’ll be a while before you find company.”

“ Hey!” The word came out rough, and instead of railing at the air Juno choked on it. 

The mist only laughed.

***

At some point, Juno’s legs gave out He still had the presence of mind to be surprised it took so long; there was gravel in his shoes, and he could see blood seeping out of the open toe. He wrenched the things off, choking on a sob. 

Doesn’t matter. There’s no one around to hear it. 

***

He wasn’t sure if going barefoot is better or worse. 

Before long, Juno was wading through the edge of the water, letting the icy chill seep into his bones. At first, the salt had stung as it stripped away the dried blood. But then there had only been the aching cold of the water.

It was easier, somehow. 

Juno stumbled to a halt, eye on the shapes in the distance again. It was hard to look at them; his gaze seemed to slide away each time he tried to focus. 

He tried to call for Martin again. 

His voice came out a raspy whisper.

***

The salt water tasted just as horrendous as Juno expected. It took a couple of tries before he managed to swallow any of it, and several more before he could keep it down. For the moment, it seemed to help; at the very least, his mouth wasn’t so dry. 

As Juno knelt in the icy surf, he turned his gaze to the horizon. He could see it in patches, the same gunmetal grey as the rest. Sea, sky, air. It was all the same. 

Juno fisted his hands in the sand, and screamed. 

***

The crunch of sand and gravel under his feet. Silver mist and the slow crash of the waves in the distance. 

The crunch of sand under his feet. Red dust and the endless empty of the Martian desert. 

Juno took a breath. The air was thick and cold, and it smelled like salt and earth. His nose was running; he scrubbed at it with his sleeve. 

Juno takes a breath. The air is thin and dry, and smells like iron and heat. His nose is bleeding; he lets the blood run. 

“MARTIN!” 

Juno is silent. He doesn’t know if he could speak if he wanted to, and it doesn’t matter.

There’s no one around to hear.  

***

The harder he looked, the more shapes there were in the mist. It was only with dogged determination that he managed to approach them; adjusting his trajectory each time they shifted out of his path. Finally, he reached out a hand, and touched something solid. 

It was a young woman, eyes grey and lifeless as they met his. Twin tears slid down her cheeks in a mockery of sadness. 

Juno stumbled backwards, and the mist swallowed her whole. 

***

“MARTIN BLACKWOOD!”

The fog was cut through with whispers, ringing in Juno’s ears like Miasma’s furious rasp. He thought he could hear Martin somewhere in the cacophony, voice flat and toneless. He couldn’t make out the words.

“God DAMMIT, MARTIN!” Juno strained his eyes to see past the fog, to find the shape in the mist that was Martin-shaped. “ANSWER ME!”

“Detective Steel,” the mist chided. “Shouting is hardly polite.”

“Fuck off, Lukas,” Juno growled. 

The mist tutted back. “That’s just unnecessary.” 

“Felt pretty necessary on my end!” 

The mist hmphed. There was no further reply. 

***

Juno ran into...altogether too many people. It took so much focus to find anyone in the mist, that the idea of finding a specific someone was starting to feel like a cruel joke. 

On top of that, the idea of getting anyone out of the Lonely was starting to feel like a cruel joke. 

Juno had lost count of the lost souls he’d seen. Some of them he’d spoken to--asked if they’d seen Martin, or tried to break them out of their silver trances. The result was always the same; their mouths would open and words would come out, but with an echo that rang in Juno’s bones as it faded. Their eyes never focused, never lost their glassy grey stare. 

Every time, Juno stepped backwards and watched the tide of fog take them again, and every time it felt like a failure. 

Maybe he was only here for one person, but...damn it, if he wouldn’t spend the rest of his life dreaming about the people he’d left on that beach. 

He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or horrified to finally find Martin; to know that one quest had ended just so another could start the moment Martin turned his grey eyes to Juno. 

“Martin?” Juno asked. He hadn’t understood how tall the man was, but now that he was standing right next to him...dammit, Juno was short. He craned his neck up to meet Martin’s empty gaze. 

“Hello, Juno.” The Lonely echo ripped through Juno and he winced. 

“Martin, I’m gonna need you to snap out of it, because we’ve got to get out of here.” 

“Why, Juno?” There was...almost enough intonation to express confusion. For its part, his brow furrowed ever so slightly. “It’s quiet here.”

“Yeah, like a tomb. ” Juno reached out to wrap his fingers around Martin’s upper arms. “Come on, Martin.”

“That’s not such a bad thing, Juno.” Martin frowned, looking out over the surf. “I like the quiet. Nothing hurts here.”

“Nothing h--” Juno choked on a hysterical laugh. “Martin, are you kidding me right now ?”

“Why would I be?” Martin’s eyes were still on the water. “It’s all just...numb. I don’t have to worry about anything, or anyone. It’s peaceful.”

“It’s apathy,” Juno snapped. 

“It’s safe,” Martin said, and Juno could almost hear something in his voice, something deeper than the echoing isolation and bland tonelessness that matched the color of his eyes. 

“Who is it safe for, Martin? You? Because in my experience, not caring usually ends up as a recipe for disaster. It hurts people. Especially the people you don’t want it to.” Juno hung his head and laughed at the sand. 

Martin’s skin was cold through his jacket; Juno knew better, he knew he shouldn’t…

“Ben? Ben! Oh god, please, no--” 

Juno tightened his grip and clenched his jaw and glared up at Martin. “So this is how you repay the people who care about you, Martin? Leave them behind and disappear to a beach in the middle of fucking nowhere?”

“ No one cares about me.” Martin’s eyes were still grey but they were wet, his chin quivering slightly. His eyes shifted focus from the sea to Juno, the furrow in his brow deepening as he forced out the words. 

“Bullshit,” Juno said. “Jon’s missing because he went looking for you. ”

Something in Martin’s expression flinched. 

“ I’m here because Daisy and Basira care about you.” Juno huffed a tiny, bitter laugh. “And you know what, maybe I care too, okay? Because by all accounts, you’re just a big...fucking... teddy bear of a human being, and I can’t let you do this to yourself. Your brain lies sometimes, okay? Don’t listen to it. Please.” 

Martin stared at him for a long, long moment, before he gave a shuddering sob and crumpled in on Juno like a collapsing highscraper. He was warm against Juno, if clammy, and Juno knew without looking that his eyes were blue again. 

“It’s okay, big guy,” Juno murmured, awkwardly patting Martin on the shoulder. “It’s all right.”

“God, I’m --sorry-- ” Martin stammered between heaving sobs. 

“Hey, don’t be. It’s been a long day.” 

***

Over time, Martin quieted, and eventually he straightened, taking off his glasses to scrub the last of the tears from his eyes. His eyes swept the clouded landscape and he gave a watery laugh. “So this is the Lonely, is it?”

“Yeah. Juno glared at the surf. “Fuckin’ sucks.”

Martin giggled, sniffed, and put his glasses back on. “How...how do we get out?”

Before Juno managed a reply (something along the lines of “hell if I know”), something about the fog...changed. The air grew darker, heavier; alarm bells were ringing in Juno’s head before he even saw the shape standing at the edge of the water. 

“You don’t,” Lukas said. His face was a mask of fury like a thundercloud, so far from the usual amiable bastardry Juno was used to seeing. 

“See, that’s where I’m gonna have to disagree with you,” Juno countered. “Because I’ve gotta say, my feet really hurt .” 

“Afraid I’m going to have to side with Juno here,” Martin said, scowling. “I think we’d like to leave, Peter.”

Lukas laughed, a sound devoid of any humor. “You don’t get to leave, Martin. You chose this, remember? You said so yourself in the Panopticon that you serve the Lonely. This is your home as much as it is mine.”

“Not as I recall, Peter,” Martin said. Juno felt pressure on his lower back, then a distinct lack of it. He twitched, forcing himself not to reach for the gun Martin had just taken from his waistband. “I recall refusing your final test, remember?”

“There are more ways to serve the Lonely.” 

Martin started down the beach towards him. “Oh? Like what? Wasting away here in a fugue state so it can feed on the lies I tell myself?”

“What makes you think they’re lies?” Lukas cocked his head. “The people you think you love don’t exist, and vice versa. We’re all just illusions other people create. At least here, the illusion is yours.”

“You know, Peter, I think the illusion is yours.” Martin stopped about six feet from Lukas, not bothering to hide the weapon in his hand. “I think you’re the one with such... misanthropy that you can’t fathom a universe where love isn’t inherently lonely. So if that’s what this is? Your illusion? Then I’m out.

“Now,” Martin raised the gun. “Tell us how to get out.”

“You won’t shoot me, Martin,” Lukas said, eyes wide with incredulous amusement. “What was it you said, about not being the hero? That’s not a mistake I’ll make again, Martin. If telling you that you’re nothing is what I need to do, then I’ll say it. You’re nothing, Martin Blackwood. Nothing to me, nothing to our detective over there, and certainly nothing to your precious Archivist.” 

Juno saw Martin’s jaw set. “Last chance, Peter.”

“There is no way out of the Lonely.” 

Martin’s level gaze never changed. He took one breath, released it. 

“Alright,” he said.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Lukas looked almost cartoonishly shocked as he staggered backwards, dropping to his knees in the surf. He raised a hand to the blooming stain in his jacket, seeming fascinated by the blood wetting his fingers. 

Juno stumbled forward until he was even with Martin, wincing as the sand dug into his skin. Lukas looked up at the both of them for a long moment, his mouth opening and closing like he had something to say before he slumped over in the water, his body released to the ocean’s icy tug of war. 

“You weren’t lying, were you?” Martin asked, voice trembling. “About Jon being missing because he was looking for me?”

“No,” Juno said. “As far as I can tell, that’s the last thing he was doing before he disappeared.”

Martin let out a shaky breath, and wiped his eyes. “Good,” he said. “Good. Because...I don’t know if I could take it, otherwise.”

Juno hesitated, then put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

“Again, I ask: how?” 

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Juno muttered. He held out his hand for the gun, and when Martin passed it back he stuffed it back into his waistband. “I imagine it’ll be about the same as trying to find you in this place.”

“Which was…?”

“Wandering around until I got lucky.” 

Chapter Text

Jon opened his eyes to the blurry med bay ceiling weaving in and out of focus overhead. For a moment, he was aware of nothing but the stark white of the panels and the blue of the shadows between them, of the dull hum of the ship and the distant beeping of the machines.

Then he remembered.

Trying to sit up pulled on muscles in his torso that he wasn’t aware of having previously possessed, and he hissed out a swear as he brought a hand to his chest. Somehow, that was worse; when he looked down, the space between his pectorals was padded with bandages, the sharp pain of movement dulling to an ache underneath. 

Gentle hands pressed him back onto the bed. “Careful,” Peter warned. “The burn was rather extensive.” 

“Burn?” Jon rasped. “What--”

“From the THEIA,” Peter said. “It caught fire when you...well, when you did whatever it was you did.” 

“The ritual,” Jon murmured. He turned his eyes to the man beside him, fighting to focus. “Did we stop it?”

Peter looked tired--exhausted, really, with dark circles shadowing his eyes, but he smiled. “We did. The system more or less shut itself down  a bit after you lost consciousness.” 

“Did it really…”Jon sank back, eyes on the ceiling again, vision swimming. “That’s...interesting.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Peter said, shifting in his chair. “What did you do to it?”

Jon hummed a mirthless laugh. “I Beheld it. I looked Them in the face--all of Them--and I saw them. And I was not afraid.” 

“Sounds Biblical,” Peter remarked. 

“Something like that.” 

“So it’s over then?” Peter asked.

Jon sighed. “For now. One of them will gather itself again, but it takes time. Perhaps even lifetimes.”

“That’s a relief,” Peter said dryly. “That means the next time round won’t be our problem to deal with.” Jon shot him a look, and found the other man grinning, pointed teeth gleaming. “A joke, Jon.”

Jon shook his head minutely, smiling faintly as he closed his eyes. “Now for… the rest.”

“The rest?”

“Rescuing Martin. And--and Juno.” Speaking was growing more difficult; Jon’s head felt full, but not with anything important. Just air and cotton, warm and heavy, making him drowsy. He almost didn’t notice the tense pause of Peter’s silence before a long-fingered hand patted his shoulder. 

“The only rest you’ll be handling for now is healing, Jon. Then we’ll worry about Martin and Juno.”

Jon tried to nod, and he might have succeeded, but it was hard to tell before he succumbed to the dark comfort of sleep. 

***

Basira pressed herself tightly into the space under Jon's desk, gun gripped tightly in her shaking hands. She was out of bullets, but that didn't matter, not anymore. Around her, the archive was quiet; upstairs were the sounds of people shouting as they handled the carnage left by the Hunters and the Stranger, but their concern hadn’t made its way down the stairs into the archive yet. 

In that splintered solitude, Basira broke. 

The gun clattered to the floor as she cupped her hands around her mouth to muffle the sobs, as though there were still people around to hear. 

As if Daisy might still be around to hear. 

At the thought of Daisy, her breath caught in her throat and she choked, the sound of a bitten-off wail clawing its way out of her mouth. Juno had been right, dammit. All this time ignoring the signs, repressing the warm affection that bloomed in her chest whenever Daisy caught her gaze with a smile, and now she might never have a chance to rectify that. Because Daisy was gone, tearing through London on the tail of a creature that stole faces, her own humanity ruptured and shot through with the sound of the blood in her ears. 

Listen to the quiet, her mind supplied uselessly, and she keened again. 

Somehow, slowly, she was able to rein in her grief long enough to listen for the sound of footsteps in the hall, any sign that someone had finally turned their attention towards the archives. The cacophony largely seemed to have remained upstairs, but she thought she heard something a bit closer, something so quiet she almost missed it. Two sets of footsteps, one muffled, and the labored breathing of someone in pain. 

“What the hell happened to this place?” one voice asked. Even through the hoarse rasp of it, she recognized the speaker as Juno. Feebly, she tried to drag herself out from under the desk. 

She heard the door open, and the sharp intakes of breath as the people at the threshold surveyed the damage the Hunters had left behind. Basira’s hand slipped on the chair, pushing it out from the desk a few inches.

“...Basira?” Juno’s voice was soft, a little uncertain.

“Here,” she said. It came out much higher than she’d meant it to. 

There was a grunt and a swear as the muffled footsteps came around the desk; when he came closer, she could see he was barefoot and bleeding, the detritus on the office floor no doubt worsening his pain. Juno dropped to his knees at her side, his hand on her shoulder and concern in his eyes. “Are you okay? Where’s Daisy?”

“Gone,” Basira said, and it came out a whimper. “Daisy’s gone.”

Juno swore and yanked her in for a hug. Over his shoulder, a shadow rounded the desk, and she flinched away. When she looked back up, though, it was Martin, eyes wide and distressed. When he spoke, his voice was soft and almost shy.

“What do you mean, gone?”

Basira swallowed, took a few breaths into Juno’s shoulder. “She’s not...dead, I don’t think. Just. Gone.”

“We’ll get her back,” Juno murmured. “We’ve got a one hundred percent success rate so far.”

She sat up. “Jon?”

Juno sighed. “Okay, a fifty percent success rate. I was talking about Martin.” Behind him, Martin waved awkwardly. 

“Are you done working for Peter Lukas, then?” she asked, her voice perhaps a bit sharper than necessary.

“Um. Yeah.” Martin looked suddenly uncomfortable, at the same time that Juno snorted darkly. 

“Peter Lukas is dead,” Juno said. “He, uh. Died in the Lonely.” He shifted, reaching around to the side, then held out her gun. “You can have this back.”

“Did you really shoot Peter Lukas?” Basira asked incredulously. 

“Erm, no. I, uh. I did,” Martin said sheepishly.

She turned her gaze to Martin and held it there until he started looking panicked. Then she shook her head and took a deep breath. “Whatever. One problem solved.” 

“What’s next?” Juno asked. “Daisy or Jon?”

The question caught her somewhere around the solar plexus, and she momentarily forgot how to breath. She waited for it to pass, pretending to take a moment to think. 

“Jon,” she said. “Daisy’s...she’ll come back, I think. When she’s done.”

Juno studied her face for a moment, then nodded and got to his feet. He held out a hand, and she took it, letting him pull her from the safety of her isolation and into the light. 

***

It was a long several days aboard the Emerald Endeavor. Jon recovered, as was expected of him, ignoring the boring hunger of the Eye in his belly as he partook of Rita’s snack hoard and Jet’s cooking. Long before the drugs were removed from his system, he was limping about the ship in search of companionship, not content to be left to his own devices in the med bay. 

Rita, of course, was delighted by his company, and bored him through several lengthy tv shows--streams--to prove it. Peter was content to keep quiet company whenever necessary, and Buddy was quick to offer a reassuring smile when he passed her in the hall. Jon felt...surprisingly at home, among the Endeavor’s crew. More than he had ever felt in the Institute, even among friends. 

So it was almost a surprise when Helen’s door appeared again.

Jon was in the bathroom, brushing his teeth with a spare toothbrush that Peter had assured him was brand new. One moment, his eyes had been fixed on the swirling drain; the next, he was looking up at the mirror, eyes fixed on the door behind him. Dark wood, with a brass handle. 

His hand was on the knob before he paused, eyes fixed on the grain of the wood, drowning in it. He could go to Martin, now. Make sure he was all right, make sure he was safe. 

But he paused. 

“Peter!” Jon shouted. His voice was hoarse; a side effect of his diet, he supposed. The ritual had taken a lot out of him, and he hadn’t had a meal, as it were, since. 

Across the hall, he heard shuffling, before Peter appeared, face washed of cosmetics and eyes half-lidded with exhaustion. “Jon?”

“The door,” Jon said. 

Peter followed his gaze, mouth falling just slightly open. 

Juno. 

Jon smiled, knowing the thought wasn’t his. “I’m going,” he said. “Do you want to come with me?”

“A moment, please,” Peter said, already turning away. Jon kept his hand on the knob, willing the door not to disappear. Peter was back in less than a minute, wearing proper trousers and shoes. Jon met his gaze, tried to smile. Peter returned it, and tried to smile back. 

Then Jon twisted the handle, and they stepped over the threshold. 

Helen’s hallways were as confounding as he remembered, the tiling of the floor slipping up onto the walls, mirrors confounding the turns, the distant sound of shouting and snarling prickling the hairs on his neck as he walked. Jon ignored it all, following the Eye’s guidance through the twisting pathways until he found the door he needed. It looked just like the others; dark wood, brass hardware, but he Knew. The Institute was behind this door. 

Martin was behind this door. 

He paused, his fingers closed around the knob, as Peter slipped his hand into Jon’s, squeezing reassuringly. Jon glanced over his shoulder, meeting the other man’s eyes, and smiled, before turning his wrist and letting himself through. 

His office was a wreck. Years ago when he’d taken the position, he would have been appalled. Now, though, he was hardly more than amused; Gertrude had had her reasons for keeping the archives in disarray, and Jon understood that now better than anyone. 

“Basira?” he called, tentative. His voice was soft, barely carrying throughout the room. Peter stepped through behind him, eyes sliding over the messy shelves and high-piled desk with no apparent judgment. Jon squeezed his hand. “Daisy?”

There was no answer. 

The two of them crept down the halls, hands linked; in his mind’s eye, Jon could map the knives strapped to Peter’s body, could feel the handle of the plasma knife between his fingers as they walked. He felt safer that way, although perhaps it was Peter’s safety he felt. These days, weak as he was, it was hard to tell. 

He followed the hall to the break room, followed the sound of soft voices, the sense of quiet misery. There, he found what he was looking for.

Gathered around the table were--almost--all the people he thought of with affection; Basira, grim and tired, with a mug clutched between her hands, and Martin, slouched in his chair and sipping exhaustedly from his own mug. Next to Martin was someone that Jon could only assume was Juno, hair cropped close to his scalp, mascara smudged across his cheekbones as he slurped at his beverage. 

Juno was the first to look up--and light up--at the sight of Peter behind him. 

“Nureyev!” Juno nearly fell to the floor in his rush to stand and rush to them, mug dropped and forgotten on the table. Peter dropped Jon’s hand to catch Juno, wrapping him in an embrace that Jon couldn’t help but covet. 

“...Jon?” At the sound of Martin’s voice, Jon couldn’t help but refocus on the rest of the room, eyes meeting the blue ones that had risen to meet his. He felt frozen, unable to so much as twitch as he languished in the doorway, waiting for Martin to come to him. 

And come to him Martin did. 

Jon found himself wrapped in a pair of burly arms, face mashed against Martin’s sternum in the best possible way. Jon noticed that Peter had let go of him, only because he found himself wrapping his arms around Martin, breathing deep the smell of tea and detergent and brisk salt air. 

“Martin,” he breathed. 

“Jon,” Martin replied, nose buried in Jon’s hair.

Despite the cocoon of comfort and affection drawing him in with each breath, Jon could feel the pulse of Basira’s thoughts, could hear the bitter sorrow coursing through her as she looked on. He let himself melt into Martin’s embrace for a long moment, inhaling the scent of wool and sea and Martin, before drawing back and turning his gaze towards Basira. 

“Hi,” he said, voice small. 

She took a fortifying sip of her coffee. “Hi.” 

“It’s...been a long few weeks, hasn’t it?”

She snorted, and Jon felt the reluctant warmth in her mind as she tried very hard not to find him endearing, or at the very least reassuring. 

‘Jon paused. He nearly asked about Daisy, nearly asked what had happened to her, before he Knew. He could Feel her on the other side of the city, tearing after a creature as bitterly twisted as she was, bloodlust on her tongue, nothing on her mind but the chase. He swallowed his questions and broke from Martin’s grip to approach Basira, slowly, hesitantly, before sinking into the chair next to her and reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder.

There was a long moment where her expression was unreadable, before she folded into him and pressed her forehead into his collarbone.

“We’ll get her back,” he found himself promising. “It’ll be alright.” 

And honestly? For the first time in a long time he found himself believing it.

Chapter Text

Maybe it was the warmth of Peter’s hand at the small of his back, or the grudging bloom of affection in his chest for Basira and Martin where they sat, somewhat awkwardly across the table from him, Jon between them like a bridge, or maybe it was just the weight of exhaustion, but it was almost easy to utter the words “...so I have an idea.”

“What kind of idea, love?” Peter asked. His fingers twitched, smoothing down the rumpled fabric of Juno’s shirt, knocking free a small cascade of sand. Juno tried not to think about the grains finding purchase in his waistband. 

“This place... sucks,” he said, meeting first Basira’s eyes, then Martin’s, then Jon’s. “I know it does. So what if...what if you didn’t stay? Here?”

“Where would we go?” Basira asked, voice still rough, tight-fitting in her throat. Beside her, Jon was staring at Juno with wide eyes.

“Are you sure?” he asked. 

“Sure of what?” Martin asked, glancing, bewildered, between them. 

“Well, Buddy’s always going on about her crime family,” Juno said, shrugging. “And you guys...you’re close. You try to pretend you’re not but. You’ve been through so much that I don’t know how true it is. And I can’t say our...the future is perfect , but it’s got to be better than this place.”

Jon’s eyes were fixed on the faux-wood grain of the table, contemplative, Martin’s and Basira’s on Juno’s face. Juno tore his own gaze away and turned to Peter. “What do you think?”

Peter was silent for a moment, long enough for Juno’s heart to sink, before he spoke. “Well,” he said finally. “I believe she rather enjoyed having Jon on the ship. His talents are useful, to say the least. It’s possible that she could find use for...two? Three more on the ship.”

“Four,” Juno said firmly. “One’s missing, for now.” 

“Missing?” Peter asked, eyebrow raised. 

“Tearing through London after a monster,” Jon said darkly. “And not...particularly human, herself.”

“That’s a risk,” Peter said frankly. 

“Of course it’s a risk,” Juno said. “But...what’s their alternative? Can we just leave them here, without helping them?”

Peter looked into his eyes for a long moment, then sighed. “No, I suppose not. What’s your plan, love?”

Juno smiled, and set down his cup. 

***

After a long, well-deserved cup of tea (coffee, for Juno, who didn’t look like he’d slept in...several days at least), and a long, thorough discussion, Jon went in search of Helen’s door. Happy as he was to see Martin again-- ecstatic as he was to feel the man’s warmth at his side--he was perhaps the most familiar with her, and he was hoping to be persuasive. 

The door was easy enough to find, after all this time searching, tucked into the back corner of his office where he had to shift a filing cabinet to get to it properly. Jon took a long, deep breath, and knocked. 

Helen answered immediately, with a smile that felt like eyestrain. “Ah, dear Archivist. It’s been too long, hasn’t it? How was your little vacation?” 

If Jon weren’t standing in his office, Martin only a few rooms away and safe, he would have had far more words for her than the wry “illuminating,” he voiced. Helen beamed. 

“I, actually.” Jon cleared his throat. “I was hoping to ask a favor. Possibly two.”

“Ask away, Archivist, I’m in a giving mood,” Helen crooned. 

“Could you return us to the Endeavor? We’d like to speak to the captain.” Jon’s voice wavered, and he scrubbed at the back of his neck, the sensation steadying. “I know that’s a strange request, but--”

“Oh, no, no, Archivist!” Helen said, flapping her frankly alarming hands at him. “Strange requests are certainly in my wheelhouse. When would you like to leave?”

“Ah, just a moment. I’ll have to go gather the others.”

She flapped her hands again as he turned to go. “Don’t be long! I’m fascinated to see this little plan you’ve cooked up!”

The others were, of course, ready at a moment’s notice, with nothing to pack, nothing to gather. Helen looked their motley little crew over with her migrain-colored eyes, grinning. “Are we ready, then?” 

“I believe so,” Jon said, a bravado in his voice that was only partially real. 

“Excellent! All aboard, little ones! Keep your hands inside the vehicle and enjoy the ride!” 

Jon swallowed hard, glancing about to see that the expressions on the others’ faces were much the same, before setting foot in Helen’s corridor for the second time that day. 

Like every time he entered, it felt like going blind. His eyes still worked, of course, or as much as they could in the Spiral’s realm. But the Eye couldn’t reach him there, couldn’t supply him with the steady stream of information he was learning to integrate into his own thoughts. It was unnerving, unsettling, in a way that itself was unsettling. When had he become so reliant on the Ceaseless Watcher? 

Ahead of him, Helen ambled easily through her halls, gesturing this way and that and rambling over the decor, as if it were a particularly nice house that she was trying to tempt them into buying. Jon recalled the Helen Richardson that had given her statement, the feverish terror as she’d tried to map this very place, and he felt ever so slightly sick. 

“And here--” Helen came to a stop, whirling to smile at the troupe following her, and indicated the door to her left. “--is your stop!”

She pulled the door open and waited, like an eerie flight attendant, for them to exit. Jon gestured for the others to go ahead, and stepped aside. 

“Helen,” he said. “I mentioned, perhaps, a second favor. Would you...wait? For us?”

She blinked. “You’ll be wanting to return?” she asked.

“Hopefully just once,” Jon said. “I don’t...know how hard this is, for you.” 

If possible, Helen looked bemused. “I suppose, Archivist,” she said. “You certainly are a curious man.”

He smiled thinly. “I like to think so.” Then he stepped over the threshold and found himself aboard the Endeavor once more. 

They were in the kitchen, crowded inside as the original crew filled the doorway, looking alarmed. 

“Juno,” Buddy said. “James. Would you care to explain?”

“Gladly, Captain,” Peter said, casting Juno--then Jon--a fond look before peeling himself away from the huddle of Archive staff crushed against the counter. 

Peter, more eloquent, it seemed, than his lady love, laid out Juno’s plan, occasionally looking to Juno for affirmation. Juno, for his part, was eager to butt in on occasion, eye alight. Jon couldn’t help but smile, wondering if this was what it would have been like, to have a friend beg for him to stay the night. 

Buddy stared the pair down as they spoke, and when they had finished, she turned her eyes on the rest. “It’s a risk,” she said, echoing Peter’s earlier words. “Jon, I would certainly accept without question. He’s proven himself quite useful these last few weeks. But the rest…”

Jon’s heart leapt into his throat as she looked back to Juno and Peter. “You will vouch for them?” she asked, voice sharp. “I require that this ship run like a well-oiled machine, and you know that. Do you honestly think that these three will be worthwhile additions to our family?” 

“Four,” Juno said. “There’s one more we’ll have to...rescue. Before they can stay. But yes,” Juno said. “I’d...I’ve been working with them for the last couple days, Basira’s got a mind for strategy and Martin’s loyal to a fault. And Daisy...when we get her back, she’s a quick thinker herself.”

Buddy’s eyes were hard as she stared Juno down, and he didn’t so much as blink. Martin’s hand slipped into Jon’s, and he squeezed hard. 

“Very well,” Buddy said. “Family? What are your thoughts?”

“The more the merriah!” Rita exclaimed. Jon couldn’t help but smile, meeting her eye from across the room and wishing there was a better way to express his gratitude. 

“It would be a more efficient spread of the workload,” Jet said simply. “Provided they can be trusted, I see no issue with this arrangement.”

“Vespa?” Buddy prompted. 

Vespa met Jon’s eyes. Her gaze was probing, sharp, and he simply gazed back, trying desperately not to parse the thoughts swirling through her like the universe’s worst carnival ride. Finally, she gave him a brusque nod. “Whatever Bud,” she said to her wife. “What’s four more assholes on board?”

Buddy’s smile was soft. “You’ll need time to go collect this Daisy, then. How much?”

“Ah, that’s a situation in and of itself,” Jon said past the lump in his throat, and shouldered forward to explain. 

***

Helen was happy enough to return them to the Archive, listening raptly to Jon’s explanation before clapping her hands delightedly. “Oh, I do love a caper!” And so Jon found himself following her through her corridors once again, unsteady and accompanied by Basira and Juno, blasters in hand, and Jet, a sedative on his person just in case. 

“You’re sure you know where she is?” Basira asked.

“Of course,” Helen said. “She’s got quite a noisy aura.” 

Jon snorted, and shut his eyes as a swirling sensation of vertigo washed over him. Christ, he hated this place. 

“Here we are!” Helen singsonged, casting open a door on the right. Jon all but launched himself over the threshold, eager for the dizziness to end. He paused there on the other side, leaning heavily against the wall as the cacophony of knowledge washed over him again.

“Hello, Jon.”

His chest seized, and he couldn’t help but sputter wordlessly at the sight of Elias leaning back in his desk chair, fingers steepled delicately over his knee. 

“Fancy meeting you, well. Here,” Elias said, tilting his head to indicate the rest of the office. “I rather thought you had finally made it out.”

“Very nearly,” Jon said, only a hint of a stammer in his voice. Weakness trembled in his limbs but he held himself up through sheer force of will--if he’d looked all of Them in the eye and refused to blink, then he could handle this. “And why do you care?”

Elias scoffed. “Oh, I don’t, Jon. But perhaps you should.”

Jon steeled himself. “And why do you say that?”

“Oh, you know why, Jon. You’ve felt it, the sickness. You can’t walk away from this place. Not even to wherever that wretch’s doorway leads.” Jon glanced to the side to see Helen’s door, shut tight. He was alone, only the slight turning of the handle indicating that anyone was on the other side. 

“That won’t keep us here,” Jon said. “I know how to put an end to that.”

Elias raised a brow. “And have you?” Jon’s pause said all the man needed to hear, and he smirked. “I thought not. Melanie was the only one foolish enough for that.”

Jon huffed a bitter laugh. “She was the only one smart enough,” he snapped. “What else do you have to hold over us, Elias?”

Elias eyed him with mocking wonderment. “Are you really bold enough to risk their lives on this little game, Jonathan?” he asked. “I can always call you back.” 

All of you are like fingers on a hand, and I am the beating heart of it. 

Anger seethed in Jon’s chest, replacing his weariness with some simulacrum of strength. “Then I suppose I’ll have to find some way to stop you, then,” he said through gritted teeth. 

“Will you now?” Elias asked coolly. 

Should I, or the Institute, be destroyed, you will all, unfortunately, follow suit.

Jon let the memory wash over him like a bitter wave, filled with regret for the poor sod who had once received that speech. Now, though, Jon could see the lie. 

Jon grimaced as he straightened, muscles screaming, as if his body knew what was about to happen. “You know what, Elias,” Jon said, his own tone arctic. “I think I will.”

And then he cracked . Jon became nothing but a vessel, filling and filling and filling, endlessly, the ocean behind the door spilling into him in an agonizing flood. It was almost funny, how much more it hurt. The Entities in New Kinshasa had been united, certainly, but transparent in their own ways. Elias was a twisted, gnarled web of lies and plots and secrets, Jon’s own god made incarnate, and Knowing him was much harder. 

But that didn’t make it impossible. 

Jon met Elias’s eyes through the haze of pain and information, watched them widen as the essence of him was drawn into Jon to be broken down and catalogued and found wanting. 

Jon screamed through his own clenched teeth as he shredded the man who had once reassured him he was perfectly qualified for the Archivist position, who had invited himself to Jon’s birthday party, who had made a show of being a reasonable human being. The man who had pretended to care for Jon, for Sasha, for Tim. The man who had let each of them die. 

When it was over, Jon slid down the wall, shaking so hard he worried for a moment that he was seizing before the door slammed open and Basira burst through it, eyes wild and searching. “Jon?”

“Here,” he croaked. “ Christ .”

“What happened?” she demanded. In the background, he could hear Juno shouting at Helen, something about refusing to open the door. 

“Elias,” Jon wheezed. “He’s--I think--” Over her shoulder he could see his desk chair, splintered and broken, a single silver cufflink glinting in the midst of the wreckage. Jon sucked in a breath. “ I killed him .”

Basira whipped around to look for herself. “ Are you serious?”

“He was lying, Basira,” Jon said. “When he said his death would kill us all. He was the heart of the Institute, but. It hasn’t beat in a long, long time.” 

Jon could feel it in his very bones that the Institute’s heart was beating now, between his own ribs. 

Basira’s mouth opened and closed a few times, like she was thinking too fast and hard to actually speak, before she shook herself and turned back to him. “Can you stand?”

“I think so,” Jon said, wobbling into something resembling upright. Basira wrapped an arm around his ribs for support and walked him the few steps back to Helen’s door, where Juno was standing on tiptoe, finger jabbed aggressively into Helen’s amused face. 

“--She’s not even here, is she?” Juno shouted. 

“Of course she isn’t,” Helen said. “But our little Archivist had some unfinished business to attend to.” Her fragmentary eyes met Jon’s over Juno’s head, and Jon realized that she had brought him to Elias on purpose. She thought she’d done him a favor. 

And somewhere deep in his chest, Jon thought she just might have. 

“Do you know where she is?” he asked, through his shredded throat. 

Helen cocked her head and smiled brightly, her outline doubling and snapping back as though he were piss drunk. “Of course, Archivist,” she said sweetly. “Follow me.”

Chapter Text

Helen released them into a pub. 

It had certainly seen better days; not only was the wood chipped and patchy, but the chairs had been thrown aside, the tables overturned. The bar itself was covered in scratches and patches of what was likely blood, though Basira tried not to think about it too terribly hard. 

She followed Jon out of the doorway, Jet and Juno slightly behind her as they slunk out into the pub. The air was tinged with wheat and iron, and Basira felt faintly ill. She scanned the room, taking in the broken glass and splintered wood as she moved, her steps tremulous across the floor. 

The blood was spattered across more than the bar. It was on the floor, the walls, the scattered tables and chairs...Basira’s eyes skated over it, wide and glassy, as she searched.

Against one of the walls was a twisted, broken figure. Eyes glassy, hair lank and matted. Even so, Basira could see in its features the woman she’d thought to be Sasha James.

Juno gave a low whistle behind her as he crossed the threshold into the destroyed pub, the soft crunch of his footsteps nearly drowned out by the sweep of glass and low growl that burst from the far wall. The four of them froze, weapons snapping towards the sound. Even hers. 

Jon, still leading, held up a hand, picking unsteady steps across the floor towards the massive shape bristling under the empty windows. He was speaking, but his voice was so low and soft Basira couldn’t understand the words.

The thing might have been a wolf. It was huge, coarse-furred, all teeth and blood and wide, panicked eyes that snapped from one of them to the next, always coming back to Jon. Jon, who was still walking towards it. Jon, who was still speaking in his quiet, gentle tone. The creature bared its teeth further, its snarl coming louder from it’s open mouth. Basira’s hands started to shake. 

“Jon,” she said. He didn’t acknowledge her, only continued, heedless of the beast’s increasingly threatening display. 

“ Jon.” He was within arms reach of it, and-- idiot-- was reaching out with one mottled hand. 

“ Jon!” Basira fired. The sound was deafening in the empty room, but nothing compared to the wail that erupted from her target--from Daisy-- on impact. It whipped around, flinching from the bullet in its flank and knocking Jon to the floor with the movement. Basira darted forward, hitting the floor and hardly wincing at the sensation of glass shards and splintered wood biting through the fabric of her trousers. She shoved Jon behind her with one brusque move and raised her weapon for another shot. 

She didn’t need to. There was a series of peculiar sounds from behind her, and the-- Daisy roared in pain. Blaster fire, Basira thought, the words hysterical against the blood pounding in her ears. Listen to the quiet listen to the quiet listentothequiet--

The Daisy-creature heaved laboriously to its feet, and the room seemed to go curiously still. Basira could still hear the others shouting, Juno’s noisy panic and Jon’s warning cries, but the air had turned to gelatin and it was all muffled. 

Basira looked up into the creature’s eyes and realized she could see Daisy there, in the scant cornflower blue iris barely visible around the pupil. There was something about the set of the shoulders that was reminiscent of her partner the moment a call came in, combative and just the slightest bit defensive. The creature looked cornered and terrified, and she could see Daisy in that, too.

Basira dropped her gun. 

The room didn’t swing back into focus, but she signalled the others to hold their fire anyway, the motion slow and shaky. She couldn’t hear their compliance over the sound of her own pounding heart, but Daisy stopped flinching so they must have stopped firing. She thought Juno may have said something, but she couldn’t make out the words. All her attention was on Daisy. 

Basira knelt there in front of the monster she loved, and listened to the quiet. 

Her heartbeat didn’t slow as she held Daisy’s gaze, watching the blue ring expand ever so slightly as she studied her back. She moved the shaking hand still in the air to signal cease-fire, inching it closer to Daisy’s bloodied muzzle. A low growl rumbled through Daisy’s chest, and Basira forced herself still.

“Please, Daisy,” she whispered. “Don’t make me do this. I know I promised, but I’m not--I’m not strong enough. Not for this.” She reached out for her gun, and sent it skidding away from her across the floor. “I can’t do it, Daisy. Please.”

The growling faded. Daisy’s posture didn’t change; it was as tense as ever, bristled like a wild animal in a cage. Basira swallowed hard and shuffled forward on her bloody knees, the debris crackling beneath her. 

Daisy’s growl rose up again, her hackles rising and her ears falling back against her skull. Basira froze, held her breath, and waited. Calculated. Prayed that she got it right. 

Daisy shifted, then lunged. Jet and Juno shouted, the sounds of their blasters filling the room. 

Basira ducked the teeth aimed at her throat, then launched herself upward, wrapping her arms tight around Daisy’s brawny neck. She buried her fingers in the rough fur there, gripping the thick under coat, and squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to let go. 

The growling was so much louder up close, thundering in her own chest and shaking in her bones. Daisy snarled, thrashing, but Basira refused to let her go, knowing that if she did then she would lose. Not just the fight, not just this chance. She would lose everything. 

She refused to let that happen.

“Please, Daisy,” she murmured into the beast’s neck. “Please come back to me. Listen to the quiet.” 

The moment that followed was endless, and fleeting. Behind her was still shouting, still the sound of blaster fire. In her chest was still the frantic pounding of her heart. What changed was the figure in her arms. 

Slowly and abruptly, the thrashing stopped. The growl dulled into a shrill whine, then a whimper. Basira felt the grip of her fingers loosening, and panicked for a moment before she realized that the fur in her hands had come loose. Had she pulled it out--? She tightened the circle of her arms, her shoulders protesting. So focused was she on holding Daisy still that she didn’t notice the way she had to shift her grip to keep it, didn’t quite hear the popping of bones and gutteral groans of pain as Daisy came back from the Hunt. 

“‘Sira.” Daisy’s voice was hoarse in her ear, shredded and gravelly. “‘Sira, you’re choking me.” 

Basira loosed a watery laugh, and slackened her grip enough that Daisy could draw breath. The other woman coughed, a wracking sound that Basira could feel vibrating through her own body. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“I--I don’t know,” Daisy said. “Ribs don’t feel...great, I’ve got to admit. Think there’s a bullet in there.” 

Basira finally drew back, pointedly ignoring the layer of fur covering her shirt, and took in the sight that was Daisy, curled in on herself on the floor. Daisy stared back, all bruised bare skin, face still smeared with gore, eyes despondent and exhausted. 

“I told you to kill me,” she said, softly. “You promised.”

“I know,” Basira said. She smoothed a hand down Daisy’s cheek, ignoring the blood. “I couldn’t do it.”

Daisy’s chuckle was rough. “I noticed.”

Basira leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her temple before wrapping her in her arms again, gentle this time. “We’ll need to find you some clothes,” she said. 

“Don’t suppose there’s anything left in the storage room?”

Overhead, a throat cleared. Basira glanced up to see Juno, pointedly looking at the wall and holding out his coat. She took it, and wrapped it around Daisy’s trembling shoulders. 

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Daisy eyed the destruction she’d wrought, and her shoulders slumped. “Yeah, let’s...let’s go.” 

Basira kissed her hair as she helped her up, and steadied her as they picked their way across the room towards the garish yellow door that stood waiting. Jon appeared on Daisy’s other side and, with a brittle smile, put his arm around her waist to brace her as well. 

“Jon,” Daisy sagged into their combined grasp, sounding a bit surprised. “Long time, no--see.”

“Yes, well, I have a perfectly good explanation for that,” he said. 

“I can’t wait to hear it.” 

***

There were no tricks, this time. Helen, true to her word for once, escorted them back to the Endeavor, waving them graciously through her door. “Come back soon, Archivist! This was such fun!”

“Right,” Jon said dryly. “ Fun.”

Juno snorted, but wisely held his tongue. 

Seeing the state they were in, Buddy immediately ordered them to the medbay. As they passed through the kitchen, Jon took stock of Martin at the table, fingers loosely clasped around a cup of tea as he attempted haltingly to explain what sounded like Doctor Who to a rapt Rita. Peter excused himself from the conversation to join the medbay brigade, falling in next to Juno to look him over for injuries. 

“I’m fine, Nureyev,” Juno groaned, but there was fondness in it. Jon couldn’t help but smile. 

Seeing Daisy and Vespa together at last was...surreal. It was harder, somehow, to see the similarities up close, and yet there was a sense of sameness to them, a kinship of vitreous exhaustion that was impossible to miss. 

Vespa gave Daisy a gown to put on (“--your coat is hardly sanitary, Steel, I can’t believe--” and, while she was waiting, gave the rest of them a once-over. Jet and Juno were untouched, so she shooed them and Peter out immediately. 

“This room is way too small for all of you assholes. If you’re not hurt, get out.” 

Jon saw Basira flinch, conflicted as to whether she should stay or go; he caught her eye and gestured to her knees, which were a bloody mess from the pub floor. She frowned, then looked perversely relieved, and leaned wearily against the wall to wait her turn. Jon nearly turned to leave with the others, but she returned the favor, catching him by the wrist and holding it up so he could see the various pieces of glass still embedded in his palm. 

“Ah,” he said, then leaned against the wall next to her. 

There were only five of them after that. Him and Basira. Daisy, accepting Vespa’s medical care through gritted teeth. And Buddy, wearing a thoughtful expression as she worried a thumbnail between her teeth. 

Jon could see the wheels of her mind turning. Contemplating the new ship dynamic as the crew nearly doubled. Assigning and reassigning tasks and responsibilities and roles. She caught Jon watching and gave him a wry smile. 

“We’ll have a family meeting sometime tomorrow to get things ironed out,” she said. “I still have a lot of questions, and I’m sure your friends do as well.” 

“You do--” Daisy hissed a breath as Vespa pulled Basira’s bullet from her skin. “--owe me a story, Jon.”

“It’s a pageturner,” Buddy said, grinning. “But it can wait until debriefing tomorrow. For now, I need to rearrange the sleeping quarters.” And with that, she excused herself as well, sauntering back to the kitchen to dole out room assignments to the rest of the crew. 

“How many rooms are there on the ship?” Basira asked. 

“Six,” Vespa said. “So you’d better make your peace with buddying up.”

Jon felt a flash of terror at the thought--his time at the Institute notwithstanding, he hadn’t had a proper roommate since….Georgie? And that had been a whole flat, not a single room, who would he--

“...Then again, I guess it’ll be easier, with so many damn couples on board.” 

All at once, the terror turned to mortification, and Jon felt himself blush. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Basira’s cheeks take on rather the same hue. 

On the operating table, Daisy all but laughed. That’ll be Juno and his boy, then. And Jon? Did you ever make your peace with Martin?” 

Beside him, Basira’s shoulders trembled with suppressed humor, and Jon realized abruptly what “family” meant, now:

He was stuck with this--mortification, vulnerability, affection, friendly ribbing, all of it--forever. 

It was a relief to realize that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Chapter Text

“ [sigh] Well, I suppose…Statement of Jonathan Sims, to Melanie King and Georgie Barker.

I hope these tapes find you well. I don’t know what you’ve heard regarding our disappearance, but I wanted you to know that we’re safe. Elias has, ah, stepped down, as head of the Institute, so you should be safe. I’ve asked Helen to deliver them, as we’re rather unable to do it ourselves. 

I suppose you’ll want the full story. I debated telling you, as it’s a bit far fetched, but. Well. What’s “far-fetched” after the Institute?

Helen, being, well, Helen, abducted me and deposited me with a spaceship crew a few hundred years in the future. (No, I wasn’t aware she had that particular talent either.) In my place, she brought back one of that crew, and he helped Daisy, Basira, and Martin remove Peter Lukas. I hear it was a rather dramatic affair, but I’ll leave that telling to them, if they so choose. 

In the end, we decided to stay in the future, all four of us. The Entities are different here. Not any easier to manage, but at least we’re not tied to the Institute anymore. I can’t say I have any complaints.

Don’t worry about us. Even if you don’t believe the contents of my letter, just know that we made it out in the end. 

Give my love to the Admiral.

Yours,

Jon”

Click.  

“Melanie-

Jon said he was sending a recording too, so I hope I don’t repeat too much of what he says. Elias and Peter Lukas are dead--Jon and Martin killed them, respectively. I know that sounds...unbelievable, but trust me the rest is much weirder. Jon got switched with a detective from the future, and, well. The Institute shouldn’t be much of a problem, now. 

I’m glad you got out, Melanie. You deserve to be happy.

Have a good life.” 

Click. 

“Hey, Melanie, it’s Daisy. I know we didn’t talk much, after. You know. But I wanted to say that I’m happy for you. Jon says you have a girlfriend now, or. Then. Listen, we’re a ways into the future now, so I don’t know how tenses work? But Jon says you’re doing good, so. Congrats, I guess. 

I’m sorry, this is really awkward, just. Take care of yourself, okay? Don’t worry about us. We got better than we bargained for.”

Click. 

“Hi Melanie. I know it’s been a..long time since we had a proper conversation. I’m sorry about that. I know I was...a bit of a prick, at the end. Jon says you got out, though. He says you’re happy now, so. Congratulations. 

We’re happy now, too. We’re space pirates! It’s...a bit like Doctor Who, honestly, after all the time travel. Well, the Endeavor-- that’s our ship--can’t time travel, that was all Helen...anyway. We’ve been part of the crew for...a month now? And it’s so much better than the Institute. I know, it doesn’t take much to be better than the Institute, but it really is. Jon’s doing much better now--he and Basira are the recon crew, they gather intel before we pull a con, and Daisy’s learning how to tail people without shooting them. Juno’s not... really helpful with that, short fuse, that one, but we have blasters now, and we can stun people instead of. You know. Shooting them. They put me in charge of the kitchen and honestly...it’s a lot better than it sounds. We go through a lot of food, and it takes a while, but. I like taking care of people, so. It all works out, doesn’t it?

--God, d’you remember that conversation we had about Daisy and Basira? We were right. They share a cabin now and everything! And….you all were right. About me and Jon too. We’re--we share a cabin too, these days.”

***

Martin glanced up, meeting Jon’s eyes where he stood in the doorway. “You’re telling them everything, aren’t you?” He asked fondly. Martin didn’t answer right away, still taking in the vision that was Jon in the doorway to their bedroom, wearing a sweater stolen from Martin over a skirt stolen from Rita. 

“Of course I’m telling them everything,” he said, eventually. “They deserve to know.”

“I didn’t say they didn’t.” Jon traipsed closer, draping his arms over Martin’s shoulders. “I just. Well. I don't have your way with words. My message was significantly shorter.”

“Was it?” Martin said, a little lightheaded. It didn’t get old, the weight and warmth of Jon leaning on him. “I haven’t listened to it.” 

“You can if you want,” Jon said, dropping a kiss on his brow. “I don’t mind.”

“I don’t need to,” Martin replied. “That’s between you and Melanie. I’ll stick to my own.” 

“Sweet of you,” Jon teased. “Very thoughtful.” 

“That’s me,” Martin said, blushing. “Sweet and...thoughtful.” 

Jon snickered and kissed him again, very gently, on the mouth. 

There was a sharp rap at their door, and they turned to see Juno standing in the doorway, shoulders hunched as if he didn’t know quite how to stand. His expression declared that he was deeply uncomfortable with his intrusion.

“H-hey!” Martin stammered. “We were just--”

“Yeah, no, it’s fine,” Juno interrupted. “Look, Buddy’s calling a family meeting, we’re hitting port soon on Neptune, so...be in the kitchen in ten, okay bye.” 

Martin bit down a laugh as he watched Juno all but run down the hall. “I don’t…”

Jon scoffed. “I don’t understand it either, Martin. This is our room…” 

“It is, isn’t it?” Martin said dreamily, with a wide smile that crinkles his nose. He tilted his head up, murmuring, “one more for the road?” 

Jon obliged, and Martin smiled into his kiss, before the both of them went to meet the rest of their family in the kitchen.