Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

At the end of the world, a tape recorder clicks on, uncountable eyes open wide, and the Archive begins to speak.

“There is a tower at the center of creation.

"Jutting up from the scorched earth, it casts its oppressive shadow over all, so certain of its rightful place in this world. But although it may appear sturdy and eternal, it is, like everything else in this place, decaying – more slowly than the rest, but moving inexorably toward its own extinction all the same.

“In the dying light of a ruined world, it Watches over all that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and leads and dies. For now, it is sated and gorged on the fear permeating its perfect world – but what happens when the fear runs out? There will come a time when each pinprick of life blinks out around it, one by one, taunting it with the dreadful knowledge of its ultimate, encroaching fate: a slow, agonizing death of boredom and isolation and starvation. 

“And it will hurt.

"Nothing lasts forever, but rest assured: the tower will be the last thing standing, wilting alone in a barren and desiccated realm of its own making. It will be outlived only by death itself, and even then, only for the briefest of moments.

“The tower is a monument to hubris, and as such, it is destined to collapse.”

The recorder clicks off and Jonathan Sims comes back to himself, standing alone before the menacing bulk of the Panopticon. The statement was shorter than he's used to, but it isn't surprising – he can't See much here, in the Watcher's domain. Still, it took a lot out of him.

He barely has time to take a breath before a familiar door opens up in the ground just in front of him, its yellow paint chipped and faded. The Distortion’s ringing laughter ripples up from the ground. Jon closes his eyes, sighs heavily, and counts to ten.

“No ‘hello’ for me, Archivist?” Helen pulls herself up and out of her door to loom over him. “You’ve become quite rude these past few… how long has it been?”

Shaking his head, Jon readjusts the straps of his backpack and starts to walk. Helen, of course, prowls after him. Her gait seems different, Jon realizes, and when he trains his sight on her – yes, apparently she’s added an extra kneecap to her left leg. She watches him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes, daring him to comment on her latest modification, but he’s learned by now that it’s best not to encourage the Distortion.

“That was a rather short monologue for you. I very much doubt your patron will be satiated.”

“Oh, how I wish he’d go away,”  Jon mutters under his breath. The pronoun is wrong, but it still gets the point across, and Helen is familiar enough with his current mode of communication to catch his meaning.

“Still voiceless, are we? It must be very frustrating for you. Reduced to rifling through others’ trauma, forced to appropriate someone else’s terror any time you want to talk. It really is a shame your lexicon is so… limited. You’ve always had such a lovely voice. It seems a waste to deny it any novelty.”

Ignore her, he tells himself. Just ignore her.

“Silent treatment?” Helen pouts. “Well, that’s fine. I can speak enough for the both of us.”

Jon wishes he could comment on the irony of It Is Lies telling the truth, but the Archive doesn’t offer up any fitting statements. Probably for the best, really; as a rule, he tries not to let Helen rile him. Tries being the key word.

“Off to see the Watcher? I do wonder how our dear Jonah is doing these days. You’re curious too, aren’t you? You can’t See anything in there. You have no idea what you’re walking into.” Helen’s lips curl in a too-wide smile. “That must drive you mad.”

Jon ignores her. Even if he had something to say, he expects he would be speechless at the moment, beholding the Panopticon. The tower bears no resemblance to the Magnus Institute he remembers. It’s the tallest thing left in the wasteland, now; standing at its base and looking up, it’s impossible to estimate exactly how high it stretches. He could Know, but he doesn’t care to. (The Eye bristles at his refusal to ask the question. Jon dismisses it with an almost childish defiance.)

All of the surrounding buildings have been reduced to dust and rubble, and there is no remaining evidence of there ever having been a street. The composition of the tower's walls is entirely obscured by a viscous coating of –

…aqueous humor, grave dirt, assorted viscera, sawdust, flensed dermis, dental pulp, spider silk…

– Jon closes his eyes and shoves the knowledge away with a practiced resolve. Its content is no more unsettling than anything else he’s encountered, but even after all this time, having the Beholding hijack his thoughts is still nauseating. He had experienced intrusive thoughts long before becoming the Archivist, but Knowing takes the experience to an entirely different level.

After the moment has passed, Jon opens his eyes to resume surveying the tower. He can’t tell if it no longer has windows, or if they’re just hidden by the horror cocktail smothering its exterior. He supposes it doesn’t really matter either way; the Watcher doesn’t need windows to See outside. The staircase stretching to the entrance is impossibly long, and the stairs are of the narrow, shallow variety that never accommodate anyone’s stride.

Jon sighs as he places one foot on the bottom step.

“That looks like an awfully long climb,” Helen observes. “And a tripping hazard. I would offer you a shortcut, but… well, you know.” She winks and flashes him a wicked grin just as her door materializes beneath her feet, dropping her down into a vertical corridor. “See you at the top, Archivist,” she calls cheerfully, her door slamming behind her and vanishing.

Jon rolls his eyes and ascends the stairs.

The enormous doors to the tower are already open when Jon reaches the top of the steps. The moment he crosses the threshold, he is bathed in a blinding white light. Every one of his eyes reflexively snaps shut. One by one, the eldritch additions to which he has grown so accustomed wink out of existence until finally, for the first time in forever, he has just the two eyes he was born with. It’s jarring, having his hundredfold, 360-degree sight so suddenly reduced back to a binocular field of vision, but it feels oddly freeing.   

At the same time, he doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Does the Watcher want him at a disadvantage? Is there something inherent to the Panopticon that allows only the Ceaseless Watcher itself to See, rendering all others – even its Archive – effectively blind? What if - 

“Look at you!” Helen chirps directly into his ear, cackling when he startles. “My, you spook easily, Archivist. Not very becoming for one who Sees all and revels in the terror he has wrought.”

Jon is already walking away, albeit with small, uncertain steps. The light isn’t as overwhelming as it was before, but he still has to squint against it. As far as he can see, the interior of the tower is a flat expanse of white. He can't perceive any walls, a ceiling, even the floor, making it impossible to guess the size of the place – or if it has an end at all.

“Do you actually Know where you’re going?”

“I was finding it really hard to get a solid idea on where we were,”  Jon admits.

“Yes. It’s quite like the tunnels, isn’t it? You never could See down there, either. What did you call it – ‘a universal blind spot’?” Helen tilts her head in disingenuous consideration. “Strange, how your voyeurism touches everything except your own domain.”

“I come to you not to wallow in my condition – but to request your assistance.” 

She hasn’t been any help in ages, but Jon figures it’s worth a try. Helen simply laughs.

“What assistance could I possibly give? You are the most powerful thing the apocalypse has to offer, Archivist. Aside from the Entities themselves, that is. I’m certain you can figure it out on your own. As I’ve told you so many times, all you have to do is embrace it.” Jon glares at her. “Now, as much as I would love to stay and watch you get terribly lost, I believe there are more interesting things going on in the world.”

With that, her door swings open on the invisible ground in front of her.

“I thanked them as they left, even though they had been of no help whatsoever,”  Jon grumbles to himself. 

“You are tetchy today,” Helen teases. “Well, I’ll check back in with you later.”

She steps off the ledge and plummets down through her door again, pulling it shut after her. Jon pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. It’s incredible how after all this time, even a short encounter with the Distortion leaves him feeling drained.

But she did have a point. He never could See in the tunnels, but that was before he became the Archive. As he is now, he probably has a better chance of finding his way than Helen would. It’s just that doing so is bound to be… unpleasant.

No use putting it off, though. He closes his eyes, looks inward, opens the door, and –

A churning deluge of information crashes into him, sweeping him along in its undertow. All at once, he’s drowning.

…the equatorial circumference of Jupiter was 439,263.8 kilometres before it was devoured by the ravenous Falling Titan…

…Mr. Spider has taken up residence behind innumerable doors – not every door, but any door. It has an average of one guest for dinner every thirty-nine minutes and still it is hungry… 

…the Sandman and the Buried wage war over scraps within the catacombs of Paris, now located approximately 6,294.2 kilometres below creation and sinking…

…as of 23.8 seconds ago, the Crawling Rot and the Lightless Flame have completed their race to consume the endless apartment block located at the corner of Nowhere and –

Jon shakes his head and tries to refine his search.

Tell me about Jonah Magnus.

…Jonah Magnus was born in –

Tell me where I can find Jonah Magnus.

…Jonah Magnus is –

A wave of force crashes into Jon like a freight train and then he’s back in the white space, eyes open, gasping for air and struggling to fill his aching lungs.

It comes as no surprise that the Ceaseless Watcher doesn’t want him to Know the way, but if the Eye didn’t want to be Seen, it should have picked someone less inquisitive. Or less stubborn.

He takes a deep breath, steels himself, and dives back in.

…in a hollowed-out sanctuary of bone and gristle, the Boneturner scavenges uselessly for –

Tell me where to find Jonah Magnus.

A harsh buzz of static starts to ring in his ears.

…the Distortion in its corridors waits for –

Show me how to reach Jonah Magnus.

The static pitches up into a shrill whine.

…Martin Blackwood’s last –

A̵N̴S̸W̴E̸R̶ ̷M̷E̷.̷

The noise reaches an earsplitting crescendo, then cuts out abruptly and –

When the Archive opens its myriad eyes, it Knows the way.

Once the knowledge settles in his mind, it's as if a veil has been lifted. As the empty, directionless white void resolves itself into perceptible details, Jon finds himself standing in a cavernous, cylindrical space. Countless iron-barred prison cells are recessed into weathered red-brick walls, stacked vertically one on top of the other and stretching all the way up to an impossibly high vaulted ceiling covered in… cobwebs.

Of course. It figures the Web would have infiltrated this place. In fact, it probably staked out its territory when the initial foundations for Millbank Prison were laid and had simply never left. 

Jon shudders and looks away. Or tries to, anyway; there are always a few recalcitrant eyes that linger on the things he does not want to See.    

He turns his attention to the observation tower. Its looming presence seems to take up the entire room, radiating a palpable sense of dread. There is nowhere in this world that its gaze cannot reach, but being this close to it is nearly unbearable.

It hurts.

Jon forces himself to stand there, to experience and endure the sheer weight of its omniscient scrutiny concentrated wholly on him. This is what it’s like to be Seen by the Archive, and Jon needs to Know how it feels – how it felt when he turned the Ceaseless Watcher’s gaze upon the monsters he met on the journey to the Panopticon.

And it hurts.

It’s like having his consciousness torn to shreds, every memory and thought and experience comprising his existence ripped out of him, pinned under a microscope, dissected with precision, classified and then hoarded away by a dispassionate curator. It’s sharp angles and blinding lights and throat-rending screams and scalding heat; it’s burrowing worms and scalpel blades and crushing earth and cold plastic hands; it’s fear and pain and love and loss and it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts –  

Jon’s knees give out and he crumples to the floor, panting, resting his head in his twitching hands as the aftershocks of white-hot pain ripple through him. He lets himself roll over onto his side and curls into a fetal position while he waits for the tremors to stop.

Martin wouldn’t have approved, but Jon had to Know. He had to Know what it was like, if the monsters he killed deserved it, if the punishment was proportionate to the crime, and –

They did and it was. He can confidently say that each sentence he handed out was justified, and it’s somewhat of a relief.

Beyond that, though, experiencing it firsthand was the best way he could think to fully appreciate the consequences of allowing his potential to go unchallenged and unrestrained, and to make clearer the distinction between Jonathan Sims, the Watched and the Archive, the Watcher – or conduit of the Watcher, at least. If nothing else, the memory of it will be an anchor going forward – a searing reminder of how much is at stake and the ultimate cost should his plan fail. 

And, of course, it was also an effective way to assess the power he has at his disposal, to determine whether he’s strong enough for his plan to work. He did survive it, at least, which seems like a good sign. Hopefully it's a good sign.

As the pain fades to a dull ache, he pushes himself to his feet and takes a minute to compose himself before entering the observation tower. He has not come eye to eye with Jonah Magnus since before the world ended, before he forced himself through the domains of each and every fear that marked him, before he completed his metamorphosis. That was the point of the journey, he realizes now: reliving the terror and retracing every mark was necessary for him to emerge as the fully-fledged Archive.

He hopes it was all worth it.

Jon takes a deep breath, braces himself, and crosses the threshold.

Jonah Magnus is a pitiful sight.

He sits slumped on the Watcher’s throne within his lonely observation tower, ropes of spider silk binding him in place. The look in his eyes when he beholds his Archive is entirely unreadable, and Jon doesn’t care to Know. 

Well – his two original eyes, in any case. The other eyes bulging through Jonah’s skin – bloodshot, rolling and twitching in all directions, and glowing a repellent shade of green – belong to the Watcher, and all they contain is a cold, measured fascination. Jon wonders absently whether they might cluster beneath the skin as well, a fitting mirror of Albrecht von Closen’s gruesome fate. Martin would have appreciated the poetic justice of that thought.

Jon takes a step forward.

“I don’t think I’ll ever know what they expected to happen.”

The Archive’s voice rips through the silence like a clap of thunder on a clear day. There is something of a command threaded through the words, a power that brooks no argument and permits no lies. Jonah flinches at the force of it, and Jon takes that as his cue to continue; he has Jonah’s full attention now.

“It’s weird, isn’t it, the things that can change your life?” Jon wonders, briefly, how Tim would feel about his statement being repurposed like this. Hopefully he would approve, seeing the way Elias – Jonah – is rendered silent and cowed in its wake, even if Jon’s voice is the vehicle. Either way, stolen words are Jon’s only option, and so he presses on: “You can plan for all the devastating, terrible possibilities you can imagine, and it’ll always be those tiny, unexpected things that get you. You know, the things that you never even noticed as they were happening, just… just nudging everything into motion. But even if there was a way I could have known, I really don’t think I’d be able to have stopped him.”

When Jonah opens his mouth as if to speak, Jon catches a glimpse of a roving eye sprouting from Jonah’s tongue. What comes out is not words, but a small spider, creeping languidly over his lip and up his cheek, as if summoned by the Archive’s mere mention of manipulation. Even from a distance, Jon can See all eight of its eyes focus on him.

The Spider perches there, patient and waiting. Whether she is issuing an invitation, a challenge, or simple, curious observation, the Archive does not Know, and Jon will not waste his energy searching for the answer.

Curiosity always has been Jon's fatal flaw, he thinks. It can be an asset in moderate doses, but he habitually took it to endangering and self-destructive extremes. By now he has learned how to wield that curiosity with precision, patience, and careful calculation. It was a lesson hard learned and at great cost, but now he knows: there is a difference between a constructive avenue of inquiry and a dead end. One leads to answers that need knowing; the other only sates the Eye’s voracious appetite and leaves Jon adrift and wanting. The trick is to prioritize – which means accepting the existence of questions that aren’t worth asking.

The Eye balks at an unsolved mystery, and the Archive’s every instinct drives Jon to seek, to ask, to know at any and all costs – but this is not the first time he has weathered the dueling instincts of Archive, Archivist, and human, and it will not be the last. If he stands in the crossfire long enough, breathes through the dissonance, and allows himself to simply exist as the strange, contradictory gestalt his apotheosis has made him… eventually, he can find the quiet.

In any case, the Archive’s eyes outnumber the Spider’s by far, and Jon meets her gaze with a resolve that still feels new and untested, but unyielding nonetheless. Neither of them blink, but the Spider does eventually – slowly, so slowly – crawl away and out of sight.

A stalemate. Jon expected nothing more or less; these confrontations with the Web never have a satisfying conclusion, only a protracted, stop-and-start hiatus. 

When Jon feels the Spider’s presence fade away, he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. For all his bravado, the fear never has gone away. He suspects that the Eye would never give him the choice in the first place. It isn’t enough to Know or See the contents of his library – he has to live them, feel them, share in them, or else the knowledge is not comprehensive. The Beholding requires more than facts and words and retellings. It demands the insight and dread that comes only from lived experience, and it has no use for an Archive that cannot fully experience its own catalog.

If Jon was given the choice, though, he still wouldn’t give up the fear. It’s the fabric of this world, which makes it a reliable anchor as long as it exists. It tethers him to his humanity; it reminds him of his reason; it keeps him moving forward.

And so, he approaches the Watcher’s throne, and the Archive resumes its recitation:

“I continue to see in you the reflection of my own past hubris.”

It’s a nice touch, Jon thinks, using Robert Smirke’s dying words to rub salt in the wound, and the surge of stunned outrage on Jonah’s face confirms that for him.

“Why does a man seek to destroy the world?"

Jonah’s human eyes widen ever so slightly as he recognizes his own words.

“…you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness, to place yourself beyond pain and death and fear.”

Jon kneels before the throne, a mocking gesture of fealty to a man who so arrogantly believed that he was to be –

“…a king of a ruined world” – he pauses, fast-forwarding the statement in his mind, picking through disparate fragments to cobble together something that can convey his intended meaning – “had miscalculated.” Another pause, and then: “The ritual failed."

Jonah squirms against his bindings, though whether it is in fear or frustration or anger, Jon does not know. He does not need to know, and he strangles that alien part of him that wants to taste exactly what flavor of distress struggles in front of him. He refuses to feed the Eye, even if it is at Jonah’s expense.  

“…as much a victim as any” – Jon gives a curt nod to indicate Jonah – “trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world.” 

When he sees the glint of the knife, Jonah’s eyes widen further and he redoubles his thrashing. Jon is flooded with memories of his month held captive by the Circus – rough ropes chafing at his bare skin; cold, plastic hands slathering him in strong-smelling lotions; bruises that lingered long after he escaped through the Distortion's door. Part of him wishes that he could enjoy seeing Jonah like this – the one who orchestrated that trauma and so many others – but all he feels is that familiar revulsion that rises up in him any time he catches a whiff of bergamot.

Another, louder part of him is relieved to find that even after everything, he still can’t quite bring himself to find pleasure in torture.

Taking revenge on Jude Perry, obliterating the NotThem, casting the Ceaseless Watcher's gaze upon countless other monsters prowling through this ravaged world… it felt good in the immediate aftermath – to make them appreciate the terror and pain they had wrought, to stand in their presence not as a victim but as a long-overdue consequence. As soon as the adrenaline wore off, though, he would always crash. Whether or not they deserved their fates was never what haunted him the most. It was the simple act of using the same power that destroyed the world that always left him feeling sick, guilty, divorced from what remained of his humanity, and terrified of what he could become if he embraced his role as the Archive. It felt good in the same way that compelling live statements used to, and that frightened him.

Still, Jon has a point to make. He draws the knife to Jonah’s face and holds the tip mere centimeters from his right eye, poised to strike. Jonah freezes and Jon stares him down. The Archive’s innumerable eyes open wide and focus laser-like on Jonah's, and it waits for the would-be king to blink first.

And he does.

With that, Jon stands and drops the knife. As it clatters to the floor, Jonah opens his human eyes cautiously, looking first at the discarded weapon and then back to his Archive with uncertainty etched onto his face.

“…didn’t even have the decency to kill me,” the Archive says. Jon has to swallow down a wave of hatred at the memory of Peter Lukas’ voice, but he needs Jonah to understand this choice his Archivist has made. To truly appreciate the fate to which he is being condemned.  

The Archive reaches for Gertrude next:“They might even stop death entirely, deny us the one last escape, keeping us alive and afraid – forever.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in, but the existential terror slowly dawns in Jonah’s eyes. His greatest fear may have always been mortality, but faced with the reality of what an immortal existence could actually entail, well…

“You’ll get used to it here, in the world that we have made."

Jonah Magnus’ own triumphant declaration reverberates through the cavernous space in the voice of the Archive he forced into being. The words sound as smug and gleeful as they did the first time the Archivist read them to an empty room, on the day he opened the door. 

Behind it all, though, is Jonathan Sims. Not the Archive, not the Archivist, just… Jon. He feels no catharsis, no gratification, no closure. He just feels tired.

But he didn’t come all this way to the Panopticon just to monologue at Jonah Magnus. This is the stronghold of the Eye, and that makes it Jon’s best chance of actually communing with the Beholding.

He places the tape recorder on the floor next to the discarded knife and turns his back on the man who sought to reign over a desolated world. As Jon walks away, the recorder clicks on, and the Archive’s final statement begins to play:

“There is a tower at the center of creation…”

Chapter Text

Jon waits until Jonah is out of sight before he lets himself fall apart.

With the Archive taking the lead, it was easier to distance himself from the human experience of it all. He could set aside Jonathan Sims' real-time reactions to the situation, shelve them to be processed at a later time. Now, all those memories are rushing back in at once. He's trembling all over as he sinks to the floor, fighting back tears, his breath coming in shallow gasps.

Clearly he underestimated what seeing Jonah Magnus again would do to him. Staring into the eyes of the man who stripped him of agency and humanity, taunting and gloating as he led him into trauma after trauma, setting him on the path to becoming a weapon and a monster and a hapless victim all at once…

Jonah’s statement wormed its way into Jon's head on the day the world ended, and it’s lived there ever since, playing on a loop and consuming him from the inside out.   

…when you came to me already marked by the Web, I knew it had to be you…

Did the Web choose Jon from the very beginning? Or did he just have the bad luck to stumble upon the book, only then to catch the Web’s attention? How much of this broken future is due to an insufferable child’s inability to stop being such a nuisance and just sit still for five minutes? Even back then, he had that restless, insatiable curiosity, driving him to wander off and ignore any sign of danger.

…attacks on the Archives were not uncommon during Gertrude’s tenure, and while she was always prepared, I made sure you would not be…

He had always been fumbling in Gertrude’s shadow. Tim and Basira always thought that everyone would be better off if Jon had tried to emulate her. He disagrees with that now, but still, Gertrude wouldn’t have fallen for such obvious traps. She never let the Eye turn her monstrous, never let Jonah turn her into such a pliable sacrifice.

…I waited until the worms were in you before I pulled the lever. I needed to make sure you felt that fear all the way to your bones…

And he did, he did; the sense memories still haunt him, as marrow-deep as the worms once were. Some days he can still feel them burrowing and his fingers curl around an imaginary corkscrew as he’s swept away by the panicked urge to dig. 

…it was just a matter of feeding you statements to lead you to a few Avatars I thought were likely to harm you – but probably would stop short of actually killing you…

At every turn, Jon had played right into Jonah’s hands. Georgie warned him that his stubborn investigations would destroy him, and he pressed on anyway. He may have been dependent on the statements by then – though he didn’t know it at the time – but he didn’t have to seek out Jude Perry or Mike Crew, did he? Is it any wonder Georgie gave up on him?

…I made sure to trap her here, so when her rage bubbled over you would be right here, a ready target. I didn’t foresee the mark coming from surgery gone wrong, but it was a very pleasant surprise…

Melanie. God, Melanie. She had fought tooth and nail to make a place for herself in a world that underestimated her. She was the protagonist of her own story until Jonah forced her to play a supporting role in Jon’s. It was never Jon’s intention, but the fact remains: if it wasn’t for him, Melanie would never have been trapped.

…you needed more than just the marks; you needed power. And that was something the Unknowing served to test, though it posed no actual danger in the grand scheme of things…

More meat for the grinder, more lives sacrificed solely for the Archivist’s progress. Tim died for nothing, Daisy was subjected to the Buried for nothing, and –

…it inadvertently pushed you to confront death, a mark I had been very worried about trying to orchestrate…

– Martin was ushered into Peter Lukas’ machinations, all for nothing.

…you should have seen my face when you voluntarily went to him…

Jon feels sick imagining Jonah’s unbridled delight at watching his ignorant, malleable chosen one so willingly offer himself up to the Boneturner. Could Jon have made it any easier for him to win?

…how is Martin, by the way? You will keep an eye on him when all this is over, won’t you? He’s earned that…

He’d promised, he promised he would protect Martin, and his best just wasn’t good enough.

Jon leans against the nearest wall, curls in on himself, and gives in to the wracking sobs. He hates Jonah – hates him in a way he never thought he would be capable of hating anything – but even now, the anger is eclipsed by the fear and the scars it left behind. He feels more like a victim than a survivor. He could take retribution on Jonah in a million ways and Jonah would be powerless to stop him, but it doesn’t change anything: all the power in the world won’t chase away the grief, the nightmares, the incessant fear and pain the Eye filters though him every moment.

One look at Jonah, and the memory came rushing back: Jonah using him as a mouthpiece, the statement slithering into Jon's mind and commandeering his tongue, forcing his eyes to open, moving his jaw like a ventriloquist’s dummy, only to cut the strings and send him buckling to the floor as soon as he’d served his purpose. He had tried to scratch out his eyes, claw out his throat, but every wound would heal before the pain even registered. And Jonah – 

…I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence, but I have worked so very hard for this moment, a culmination of two centuries of work. It’s rare that you get the chance to monologue through another, and you can’t tell me you’re not curious…

– it wasn’t enough for him just to get the result he wanted. He had to take the opportunity to degrade his victim one last time; had to use Jon’s own voice to do it. There are times when Jon can’t even listen to himself speak without flashing back to that moment and unraveling into full-blown panic. He hadn’t felt human for a long time by that point, but the Ritual… it was dehumanizing in a way he could have never imagined. He’ll never be free of that memory, no matter how far he runs, no matter how much Jonah Magnus suffers, and no matter whether he manages to reverse the damage –

Stop, he tells himself. Spiraling isn’t helping. Play it back again, slower this time, and think. How would Martin respond, if he was here? 

Running was never an option. You’re probably right. Jonah Magnus’ suffering has no impact on Jon’s state of being. He still deserves to have his eyes gouged out – yes, okay, fine! Priorities, I know. (A nearly imperceptible smile tugs at the corner of Jon’s mouth at that.) Reversing the damage, though, making things right – that’s still on the table. There’s still a chance. Then I’d say it’s worth a try, Martin would say, and between the reassurance of his smile and the sincerity in his eyes, Jon would believe him.

Jon imagines Martin sitting beside him, arm around his waist, a warm and comforting weight for him to lean on. Thankfully, blessedly, it’s just as strong a sense memory as the nesting worms and Jude’s searing handshake and the Boneturner’s groping fingers in his chest cavity. Martin helped him relearn that physical contact is not always synonymous with pain and fear and violence. Safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch. Jon holds fast to that thought and lets it anchor him until the storm passes.

Eventually – Jon doesn’t care to Know how much time has passed – his sobbing dissolves into broken hiccups, and then into exhausted sniffling. He sits up, scrubs at his face, and forces himself to breathe. The guilt is still there, the pain is still acute, but he has a job to do.

Once he’s composed enough, he forces himself to stand and lets his feet take him to where he Knows he needs to be.

As Jon mounts the spiral staircase leading to the top of the tower, Helen’s door creaks open on the wall ahead of him.

“That little confrontation was a bit dramatic, Archivist.”

Ten many-jointed fingers curl around the frame. Or twelve, or maybe sixteen, or – it’s not important. Jon stops counting and continues climbing.

“And what did it accomplish?” Helen’s face peeks through the opening now. “You've changed nothing.” When Jon does not reply, she leaves her doorway and plants herself on the staircase a few steps above him. She leans down close to his eye level and tilts her head at a disquieting angle. “Ah, but that wasn’t the point, was it? That spectacle was all for you.”

Jon doesn't have to Know to determine that Helen is bored, which means she isn’t going to leave until he entertains her. Better to get it over with, he figures, and so he finally focuses on her and shakes his head fervently.

“Oh, of course. Martin.” Helen smiles – cruel and condescending as always, but Jon thinks he can detect some fondness there as well. “He really did rub off on you, didn’t he? He would have enjoyed that little performance. The sheer pettiness of it all.”

Jon allows himself a rueful little smile. She’s right: Martin would have loved that little standoff. Jon can picture the moment of awe in the aftermath – the lopsided grin, the stammering insistence that Jon, that was amazing, and the inevitable moment once the adrenaline wore off when Martin would tell him: I know I keep saying this, but I didn’t think it was possible for me to be any more attracted to you. And much later, once they were safe and the dust was settled, they would joke about it: Martin would do a terrible impersonation – always fond, never cruel – and Jon would point out that it did have the intended effect –   

“Daydreaming, are we?” Helen barks a laugh when Jon startles, his face heating with embarrassment. “Even after all this time, you really are adorable.”

Jon groans and makes a shooing gesture in Helen’s direction. Her laughter reverberates even more than usual; it leaves Jon with the distinct sensation of chewing on tinfoil, and his teeth begin to ache.

As the echoes fade away, Helen pantomimes wiping a tear from her eye. “So, do you really think this plan is any better than your standard fare?”   

Honestly, Jon has no idea.  

“I’m well aware that” – a brief pause as he skips ahead in the statement – “to try and prevent whatever fate is coming – is likely impossible anyway, but after what I saw, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”  

It’s odd, using Oliver’s original statement like this to express a worldview so antithetical to his current stance. Comparing the person Oliver used to be – desperate to change fate, then desperate to escape it – with who he is now… it’s still unsettling, to see how much a person can change after coming into contact with one of the Entities.

“Hmm. I still think you're fighting a lost battle. But I am very curious to see what happens when you try.”

Jon shifts from one foot to the other, hitching his bag higher on his back and giving Helen a pointed look.

“Impatient to meet your god? Well, don’t let me keep you.” Helen steps back over the threshold of her door. “Try not to get vaporized, will you?”

The door swings shut on Helen’s delighted cackle and Jon lets out a long, exhausted breath before continuing his ascent.

Jon doesn’t know how long it takes, but eventually he reaches the top of the tower. The staircase opens up into a circular, empty room: stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. The only noteworthy detail is a stylized eye carved into the very center of the floor. As far as Jon can tell, there’s nothing arcane about the symbol at all – just a bit of trite aesthetic flair for an otherwise bare temple. Still, now that geography has ceased functioning, it marks the exact center point of the wasteland, and it’s exactly where Jon needs to be.

He has no way of Knowing whether this will work. He still isn’t even entirely sold on the idea of the Fears being sentient, rather than just… forces of nature, no more or less conscious than gravity. But it’s the only idea he has left, and it’s something that he and Martin planned together, which makes it worth trying. If it doesn’t work, then… well, with any luck, hopefully he won’t live long enough for it to matter. Not that Jon has ever been particularly lucky –

Several of his eyes swivel and train themselves on a single speck moving down the far wall. He hears his voice before he even makes the conscious decision to speak:

“Leave.”

The word comes out as a cacophony of overlapping tones and Jon staggers with the force of it. The spider, for its part, scuttles through a crack and out of sight at the command, leaving Jon alone and swaying with vertigo.

This is why he hates vocalizing single words: it means replaying every instance of the word stored in the Archive simultaneously, and it always leaves him feeling like a blown out speaker. It’s safest to stick to full, unique phrases – anything with an exact combination of words that occurs only once in all of the Archive’s records.

Ears still ringing, Jon shakes his head and tries to reorient himself. If he’s quick, maybe he can get what he needs and retreat before the Web interferes again. He hurries to the middle of the room, stands on the pupil at the center of the eye motif, and –   

As the Ceaseless Watcher turns its gaze on him again, Jon prepares himself for a repeat of its earlier scrutiny. It starts slow: a searing, infectious ache jumping its way from cell to cell like a charged current, seizing upon every scrap of conscious thought, building up to a crescendo of rending, electric agony. 

This time, though, the Archive Watches back.

Helen had said it best: There are exactly two roles available in this new world of ours: The Watcher, and the Watched. Subject, and object.

What happens when a part of the Eye allows itself to embrace both roles? What happens when the Eye’s pupil shifts its focus on itself?

An eye can’t see inside itself, Jon had said once. And much later, out of the blue, Martin had mused: But what if it could?

Jon has averaged at least one identity crisis a day ever since becoming the Archivist – or he had, at least, back before "day" lost all meaning as a unit of measurement. Over time, Martin grew accustomed to sitting through Jon’s hand-wringing over how much of his humanity remained. Martin always maintained that, first, it wasn’t as simple a dichotomy as Jon wanted it to be, and second, Jon was human in all the ways that mattered.

At some point as they journeyed through the dying world, though, Martin suggested a new theory. Jonah Magnus had presented a one-way progression from human to Archivist to Archive. His Ritual was meant to be a final act of dehumanization, wherein Jon would cease to exist as a person and become instead a perpetual conduit for the Eye. But in Martin's estimation, Jon never fully lost himself. It was more like he had fractured into multiple states of being.

After he opened the door, Jon could – was forced to, really – See everything that the Eye could See. The part of him that was Jonathan Sims felt the fear and suffering as it was (that is to say, horrific); the part of him that was the Archive felt only detached fascination and a sense that everything was just as it should be, because this was the role it was born to serve. The result was a dissonant, twilight emotional state wherein everything felt both right and horribly, irredeemably wrong.

It was reminiscent of reading statements. When he first started out, he hated it – he could literally feel the fear of the statement givers as if it was his own, and it always left him feeling exhausted. Then, at some point, came the physical dependence. Without his realizing, the statements became life-sustaining rather than draining. Even then, though, the fear never actually went away – he was just forced to vicariously feel the Eye’s perverse satisfaction in it. Sometimes it felt like being made complicit in his own terror; sometimes it just made him feel numb. It was like having a parasite tucked away inside his mind, passing its own wants and needs onto him and making him feel them as if they were his own.

And now, every instance of fear in this new world is a statement to be taken in by the Beholding and dutifully filed away inside the Archive - and all of it has to go through Jon first.

He also has some control over the Eye, though: he can focus its gaze and, as its Archive, he does theoretically have access to most of its knowledge, so long as he knows where to look. He's taken to it just as much as he hates it, constantly flitting between roles from one moment to the next like a moth wavering between funeral pyres.

How is it that I can Know almost anything, but I still can't come to any conclusions about myself? Jon stormed during one of his self-targeted, not-so-infrequent tirades between domains. What even am I now? Not human, so - Archive, Archivist, both? And what does that even mean? Does it even matter?

Martin waited until Jon finished venting and lapsed into an exhausted silence before taking both of Jon's hands, meeting his gaze, and telling him, very seriously: How about all three?

Jon initially took it as a dig at his habitual indecisiveness, but Martin was being sincere. He suggested that Jon try to embrace being a walking paradox, to use that multiplicity to his advantage – and that was the premise upon which they’d built their future strategies. As they pressed on toward the Panopticon, they each took turns acting as the other’s anchor, and Jon practiced compartmentalizing. Now, finally, it's time to put the hypothesis to the test.

So, what does happen if an Eye learns to See within itself?

What happens is this: the Archive Beholds the Watcher –

…the Eye in the sky scans forward, back; stares into, through; sweeps above, below. Nothing escapes its gaze: not the bloated bodies swaying listlessly in the vast deep; not the cooling cinders of an endless building at last consumed and rendered to nothing but ash in the wind; not the algal bloom suffocating a corpse-choked lake long-dead and fetid; not the merry-go-round with its rusted gears and peeling-paint horses…

…far away, the Falling Titan drifts aimless in a void where the stars flicker in and out and eventually not at all; emaciated beasts of the Hunt stagger listless in search of a chase, falling one by one in the dust as the prey remains scarce; the endless war has been reduced to pilotless technology running through the same protocols over and over, few human minds remaining to witness or suffer the collateral damage…

…closer, the paint continues to flake away from the Distortion’s doors; the Sandman is running out of eye sockets to plunder; the Forsaken despairs the absence of lonely souls to appreciate its embrace; the Corpse Routes continue their inexorable crawl toward the center of creation, wilting all the way…

…there is nothing new under the roving Eye; moments blur together, time runs down, and every grain of sand in the hourglass is the same, the same, the same, the same…

…closer, closer, honing in: follow the woven threads and observe how all the lines converge on a single point…

– and the Watcher blinks first.

When Jon finally comes to, he’s sprawled on the floor, all twitching limbs and exhaustion. Dazed, unfocused eyes blink in and out of existence around him, making his vision go pixelated and wobbly. He swats uselessly at them – or tries to, anyway, before realizing belatedly that he can barely lift his arms. Like a cat waking up from anesthesia, he thinks with a delirious little chuckle. What he wouldn’t give for a cat video compilation – no. Focus.

Standing up is out of the question right now, but the brain fog is starting to clear. It was so much all at once, but he tries to parse it.

The world is running through the same loops now, over and over and over again. He could revisit every domain he trudged through on the way to the Panopticon and any statement he could offer up would be nearly identical to the one he gave the first time around. Victim after victim fed to the endless slaughter, sacrificed at the eternal maypole, retracing the same lonely paths in the fog. The same buildings burning again and again in the exact same way; the same worms struggling one-step-forward, two-steps-back in the same tunnels day after day; the strangers on the merry-go-round trading the same limited supply of faces in a closed economy of uncanny horror.

It’s… monotonous. Predictable. Stale. And the Ceaseless Watcher never was satisfied by stale statements – oh. Oh.

The Eye is bored, Jon realizes all at once. Or – no, maybe that’s not the right word. Malnourished, perhaps? Or is that still too anthropomorphizing? Even after coming into direct contact with the Beholding, he still can’t say with any certainty whether it has any mind or will of its own. It could just be that the metaphysical concept itself is unraveling without anything to meaningfully oppose or contextualize it – much like trying to conceive of the Lonely without the existence of others, or how the Buried and the Vast shore up one another's definitions simply by being so polarized.

Or, ironically, perhaps the Eye is simply weakened by its visibility in this new world.

The Beholding is the fear of being watched, of being judged, of having one’s secrets exposed. Or, how did Gerry put it… the feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch. Jon thinks back on his months-long bout of paranoia, and he remembers that one of the most frightening things about it was his inability to trust his own judgment. There was always that creeping fear that perhaps it really was all in his mind, and – when he thinks about it, that paranoia might not have had the same bite to it if he knew for a fact that he was being watched and precisely who or what was doing the watching.

The fear of the unknown is an important variable. Once all your secrets are known, what else can the Eye take from you? Once your suspicions are confirmed and the source of your fear has a name, how can it use your doubt to taunt you? In this new world, everything can behold the Eye in the sky. Everyone is fully aware that they are being watched, and the identity of the Watcher is indisputable. It dilutes the fear. The Ceaseless Watcher may well have been at its most terrifying when it was at its most subtle, in the world where the Dread Powers still lurked in the shadows. 

And now – now, on top of all that, the End’s promise looms nearer and nearer every day. What is an observer with nothing to observe? What is the Watcher without mortal minds to experience the terror of being Watched? Jonah Magnus’ nightmare kingdom is as inimical to the Ceaseless Watcher as it is to all the other Fears and all of their victims.

It takes a minute before Jon realizes he’s laughing at the absurdity of it all.    

Jon still feels a bit lightheaded as he exits the Panopticon, mind abuzz with hypotheticals. He’s jittery, excited – afraid, yes, but the anticipation is tinged with hope. He isn't prepared for Helen's sudden presence. 

“So, how did it go?”  

Jon scowls at her before he can think better of it, and her mouth quirks in amusement as she soaks in his momentary burst of alarm. He closes his eyes and begins to shuffle statements in his mind. 

“…spent so very long staring into” – a brief skip ahead – “infinity and knowing, truly knowing.”  

“You’re telling me you had a staring contest with the Eye?”  

It’s a simplistic and annoyingly flippant way to put it, but she isn’t entirely wrong. When Jon doesn’t deny it, Helen claps her hands together in delight.

“It just sat there and stared at me,” Jon continues. “I didn’t like staring back at it. It made me feel strange, like it was sorting me into cuts of meat. There was more in those eyes than I’d ever seen -"

“Jonathan, won’t you stop speaking in metaphor and get to the point?”

Judging by the twinkle in her eye, she’s enjoying his struggle to communicate. He really should know better than to let her rile him, but he feels himself growing irritable all the same. 

“…a new door,” he says. “And it wasn’t there before. The man asked me again what was inside –”  

In a flash, Helen has her deadly sharp fingers at his jugular, just barely brushing his skin. A few pinpricks of blood well up and heal almost immediately.

“Don’t you dare repurpose my words, Archivist,” she hisses.

It’s not easy to press Helen’s buttons, and Jon won’t deny the flicker of spiteful self-satisfaction that flares up in him at how the tables have turned for once. He doesn’t plan on provoking her further, though; they both know that she can’t kill him, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt to have his throat skewered.

But he wasn’t using Helen Richardson’s statement just to antagonize her. It’s just that his library isn’t forthcoming with accurate words. After a few moments of perusal, he finds something that might work. There’s a risk of further inflaming Helen’s temper by using a statement about the Distortion right now, but…  

“…staring at them, measuring the patterns they created – the maths behind them – he was on the verge of a great truth.”

Jon pauses, watching for Helen’s reaction. The dangerous look in her eyes remains, but she lowers her hand.

“I’ll allow it,” she says. “Go on.”

“He was going to shake mathematics to its foundations once he figured out the truth, hidden in those cascading fractal patterns.”  

To Helen’s credit, she seems to be seriously attempting to interpret his meaning now.

“You Saw into the Eye’s inner workings,” she begins slowly, waiting for Jon’s affirmative before continuing. “And you think you learned something about the underlying patterns of this reality.” Jon nods again, more vigorously this time. “You think that you can use that understanding to… what, close the door you opened?”

Not quite wrong, but not quite right, either.

“He wanted to close it, lock it back in place and get some semblance of control back,” Jon concedes.   

But there is no other side of the door anymore, and the Fears can’t be exiled if there’s nowhere to send them.   

“It was, to put it quite simply, impossible, and I must have approached it from a hundred different angles trying to make sense of it.” 

“Then what?” Helen lets out an incredulous little laugh. “You think you can… unravel this reality? Tug on the strings holding it together, reshape it to your liking?”

He doesn’t quite approve of the phrasing – to your liking – but it’s close enough. He’s actually pleasantly surprised that she managed to read that much into his clumsy attempts at an explanation, so he gives another nod.

“…to circumvent physics, and suspend natural laws,” he says excitedly, gesturing with his hands and tripping over his words as he stitches the sound bites together. “Rewrite them wholesale – petty rules like space or time –”  

“And how exactly do you plan to do that?” Helen scoffs. “You may be overpowered now, but even you don’t have the capability to meddle with the fabric of reality.”

“You are prepared. You are ready. You are marked.” Jonah’s words leave a bitter taste on Jon's tongue, but hopefully it gets his point across. “The power of the Ceaseless Watcher flows through you – in the world that we have made.”  

“That’s – you’re giving yourself far too much credit.” Helen sounds flustered now. That’s… rare, and Jon doesn’t quite know what to make of it. “You’ve always been a conduit, not a conscious actor. A tool, not an architect. All you did was open a door.” She gives him a severe, almost affronted look. “Reality is malleable, but that doesn’t mean you can manipulate it. You are not the Worker-of-Clay. You are not of the Web. The only ‘power’ that the Ceaseless Watcher grants you is voyeurism. You Watch, you observe, you… you sit on the sidelines and curate reality. You do not shape it.”

But I did, Jon thinks.

Compared to some of the other Avatars, his powers can seem passive. He has no command over insects or disease; he can’t reach into someone’s chest to turn their bones or cook their heart; he can’t drop people into the sky or disappear them into the fog; he doesn’t have the prowess of a Hunter or the berserker strength of the Slaughter. He Watches, he Knows, he Sees. He asks questions and he compels answers. And yet, he’s just as dangerous as the rest. He doesn't need to make physical contact in order to prey on others, nor does he need to lure his victims into a pocket dimension. He invades them like the Crawling Rot and haunts them like Dark and traps them like the Buried, and all he has to do is use his voice. The insidiousness of it is part of what makes it so terrifying.  

So yes, Watching and Knowing may not seem like much compared to the flashier abilities of the other Avatars, but being marked by each of them in turn molded him into something new – something with a voice that shattered and reshaped the world with a single invocation. The concepts of Watching and Being Watched are the metaphysical building blocks of this universe, and both of those are within his purview. The most fundamental law now is the interplay of Watcher versus Watched, and Jon balances precariously on the tightrope of a boundary between the two. His essence is unavoidably mercurial: he exists at multiple points along the spectrum simultaneously, darting from one end of the dichotomy to the other and never quite touching down on either side of the equation.

The power threaded through the tapestry of this reality is a part of him as much as he is a part of the Eye. And if he pulls in just the right way, in just the right place…

“All you did was open a door,” Helen repeats, but softer this time, almost to herself.

But there’s power in the small things, isn’t there? Helen owes her current state to the simple act of opening a door, after all. For Jon, everything was set into motion when he opened a book. Curiosity is so very human, Jon thinks – it seems unfair that it could lead both of them so far astray from their humanity. Perhaps Jon’s life is a Rube Goldberg machine painstakingly orchestrated by the Web, and finding the book was just the first domino in a long chain of missteps; or maybe his fate was just a perfect, unfortunate combination of bad luck, his own restless curiosity, and an entitled old man’s god complex. It doesn’t really matter; the consequences are the same.

As Jon starts walking, Helen paces after him. He watches with faint surprise as she wrings her hands uneasily – or a close enough approximation to it, anyway. It’s disorientating to watch, like an Escher woodcut in fluid motion. Several eyes attempt to track her movements, but the endeavor only succeeds in making Jon dizzy.

“Where are you off to now?” Helen asks, voice leaden with uncharacteristic uncertainty.  

“It felt like if you picked a line, any line, you could follow it through to the center, to some deep truth, if only your eye could keep track of the strands that had caught it.”  

“The Panopticon is the center.”

Jon stops, turns, and shakes his head. “A stronghold of the Web.”  

“Oh,” Helen says, eyes brightening in recognition.

Jon rubs the back of his neck and grimaces. “I was returning to Hill Top Road, no matter what I might feel about it.”  

“The axis of the Spider’s web…” Helen gives the ground a long, pensive look. Then her eyes narrow and flick back up to meet Jon’s. “And what exactly do you expect to do there?”

“A scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers.”  

“Yes, we all know about the rift,” Helen says impatiently. “What do you plan to do with it?”

“She was going to wait and see.” With that, Jon begins walking again.  

“I changed my mind,” Helen practically whines. “This Archive nonsense was funny before. Now it’s just obtuse.” When Jon doesn’t bite back, she heaves a theatrical sigh. “Fine. As usual, I would offer you a quicker route, but you’d be something of an allergen in my corridors.”

Jon flips her off over his shoulder.

“Rude,” Helen calls after him. Apparently she’s recovered enough to goad him, because he can hear the smile creeping back into her voice. “Try not to get lost traipsing back through the Lonely, Archivist. I would hate to have to come in after you.”

Her laughter is still ricocheting inside his skull when he hears her door swing shut. Already, he can feel a headache blossoming in his temple.  

Jon takes a moment to collect himself before he turns his back on the Panopticon and sets out into the wasteland once again.

Chapter Text

Jon doesn’t remember the hill being this steep.

Or maybe he’s just winded from the long trek through the wasteland. He’d had to pass through a long stretch of territory fought over by the Buried and the Vast. The ground there was practically a minefield, pockmarked with sinkholes. They would start out as quicksand traps and suffocating tunnel entrances, only to be hollowed out into yawning chasms and cenotes, then ultimately collapsed all over again by a retaliation-minded Choke. It was an endless cycle of petty rivalry and animosity, and passing so near their battlegrounds left Jon breathless with a discordant mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

Worse was when the Dark managed to sneak its way into the mix. Whether it was Too Close I Cannot Breathe or the Vast’s abyss, the Dark could always find a way to exploit subterranean spaces – and it could never resist reaching out to needle at an Avatar of the Eye, no matter how inadvisable it was to cross the Archive these days.

As Jon drew closer to Hill Top Road, he left the warzone behind for a mostly featureless landscape punctuated with the occasional foxholes of the Slaughter and pockets of the Forsaken’s fog. Eventually those too gave way to a seemingly endless dust bowl of soot and ash – a sprawling domain claimed by the Lightless Flame.

The house at Hill Top Road is the only thing still standing in the midst of an immense expanse of Desolation-scorched earth. The charred terrain stops abruptly at the foot of the hill, a stark line demarcating the boundary between the Blackened Earth and the territory that Annabelle Cane has staked out as her own. Jon had half-expected an invisible barrier to stop him there as well – the last time he was here, Annabelle had forbidden him from returning – but there had been no resistance when he stepped over the border.

As he hikes up the incline now, he finds himself worrying over what that might mean. Is Annabelle expecting him, inviting him in? Is she simply tolerating his presence, curious to see what he’s up to? Could he be powerful enough now that even she cannot stop him? Or is he once again wrapped up in the Web’s machinations, doing exactly what the Mother of Puppets wants?

He shakes his head. No. He and Martin talked about this. There’s no point in obsessing over the Web’s motivations, letting the memory of Annabelle’s statement paralyze him with indecision. Better to just… keep moving forward.

It’s not like he has anything left to lose. 

Jon continues up the hill, increasingly winded, his bad leg throbbing angrily, and he thinks to himself again: he really, really doesn’t remember it being this steep.

Before long, he’s standing at the threshold of the house at Hill Top Road. The dread permeating the place is just as palpable as he remembered.

He waits for the Distortion’s inevitable appearance, determined not to let her startle him this time. As if on cue, a door creaks open on the ceiling above him. Without preamble, Helen lands noiselessly on her feet beside Jon and peers around curiously.

“Interesting,” she says with a hum. “I wondered whether Annabelle would let me in.”

So did Jon. Maybe he should be concerned about – no. He shuts down that train of thought before it can pull out of the station.    

“You still haven’t explained what exactly you plan on doing here.”

Honestly, that’s mostly because Jon hasn’t figured it out yet, either. He only Knows that this is the way.

The Eye wants things to change – as much as it can be said to want anything. Setting the question of its sentience or lack thereof aside, at the Panopticon he had been able to Know things that the Beholding had previously withheld from him. He might be stronger than the other Avatars and monsters lurking about the world, but he’s not arrogant enough to believe he could overpower any of the Fears themselves. If the Ceaseless Watcher gives him access to knowledge, it’s because his Knowing will facilitate – or at least not inhibit – its actualization, which means that he must have the Eye’s… blessing, to be here? He shakes his head; he’s getting caught up on semantics again.

Point is: he Asked a question and – as usual – he was given a scrap of an answer and left to puzzle the rest out for himself. All he Knows for certain is what he wants to happen, and that this is where he needs to be in order to make it happen.

“Jonathan.” Helen says his name with a playful lilt and leans further into his personal space. “Are you going to share with the class?” 

Without a word, he sidesteps around her and walks further into the house. In her statement, Anya Villette had mentioned a door under the stairs leading to the basement. The last time Jon was here, it was nowhere to be seen. He can only hope it’s there this time.

“What are you looking for?”

Jon drags one hand down his face and sighs. Having Helen tag along is like taking a road trip through hell with an easily bored and… well, deeply annoying child. Huh.   

“I won’t be ignored, Jon –”  

Jon bristles, redirects his gaze, and stares daggers at her with a few more eyes than strictly necessary. “Some magically appearing door.”  

“You aren’t being very kind to me right now, you know.” 

Jon gives an irritated huff and continues forward through the entrance hall. He treads softly, all too aware of every subtle creak of a floorboard. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering muffling his footsteps. It doesn’t matter how quiet he is; Annabelle will know – probably already knows – that he’s here regardless. There’s just something about the house that demands a certain amount of fearful reverence. Disturbing the silence just feels like a bad idea. 

Helen doesn’t appear to have the same concerns. In fact, it almost seems like she’s going out of her way to announce their presence. Of course.

Jon catches a glimpse of the staircase as he rounds the corner and – yes, there’s a door under the stairs. A plain, painted white door with a brass handle, otherwise unremarkable and entirely unassuming.

And yet…

As he tries to approach it, he finds himself rooted to the spot, overcome with a sense of trepidation. He feels his breath coming faster, shallower; feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Every one of the Archive’s eyes locks onto the doorknob and for a moment he swears he feels tiny, feather-light legs scurrying down his spine. He pulls his pack tight against him, using the physical weight of it to dampen the tactile hallucination.     

“I hate it,” Helen says darkly. Jon jumps just slightly at the break in the silence, and a few of the Archive’s eyes suspend their rapt scrutiny of the door handle to glance in her direction. Her posture is tense where she stands, staring warily at the door as if it might lunge at them. Jon has never seen the Distortion look so… unsettled.    

She’s right, though. The door is wrong. More than that, it’s the exact same flavor of wrongness that he felt the first time he saw A Guest for Mr. Spider, and again when he reached out to knock on the monster’s door.

Back then, he hadn’t known that the concept of wrongness could be broken down into so many distinct subtypes: the uncanny disquietude of the Stranger feels fundamentally different from the depths of the Coffin, the sensation of worms tunneling through flesh, the Distortion’s nonsensical corridors, the Lonely’s suffocating fog.

The pull of the Web is in a class of its own, and the sight of the door in front of him drops him right back into the memory of the day he opened the book – the day he took the first step on the winding path that led him, inevitably, to this exact moment. It’s such a fitting parallel, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was orchestrated down to the finest detail. He knows the Web plays a long game, but precisely how much of what has happened was in perfect accordance with the Web’s plans? What even is the Web’s –

No. Stop fixating on the Spider, he reprimands himself for the umpteenth time this… day? Whatever; it’s not important. He forces his legs to move.

“You’re sticking your hand in a bear trap, I hope you know.” 

“I knew opening the door was a stupid thing to do,” Jon says, feigning nonchalance. “So I opened the door.”  

Helen breathes a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke?”

“The idea that this is all some grand cosmic joke,” Jon rattles off drily, “thousands of us running around spreading horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible unknowing things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we caused –”  

“Terrible.” Helen groans and puts her head in her hands. “Here I was, ready to compliment you on finally finding a sense of humor, and you have to ruin the moment with – with existentialist brooding.”

Jon chuckles quietly to himself and takes another step forward.  

“Wait.” Helen reaches one long-fingered hand in Jon’s direction, then falters and pulls back. For a moment, she seems to wrestle with whether or not to continue. “What’s behind the door?”

“A scar in reality –”  

“Yes, I know about the rift. What do you expect to find in it? An answer? An escape? A means of suicide?”

“A metaphysical quirk of this new reality’s divorce from the traditional concept of time.”  

Jon pauses, chewing on his bottom lip as he looks inward and browses through his catalog.

“It bends and twists and returns to what it was,” he settles on eventually.  

“I told you not to use my words.” Helen gives him a warning look, but it’s fleeting, because a moment later his meaning sinks in and she huffs out a short laugh of disbelief. “Wait – wait, wait, wait. You think you can… what, turn back time?”

Jon grimaces and makes a noncommittal seesawing motion with one hand.

“…could emerge back into the world that she remembered.”   

Helen starts laughing in earnest now. “You think you can time travel?”

Jon just shrugs, unashamed. He knows he should feel embarrassed – back when he first took the position as Head Archivist, he would have scoffed at anyone making such a suggestion – but at this point, is it any more unrealistic than anything else that’s happened?

“Alright,” Helen says, stifling another giggle, “I’ll grant you that there’s a rift in space and time. People have traveled through it before.”

Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. After her encounter with the crack in the house's foundation, Anya Villette had found herself temporally displaced. What would stop Jon from also –

“However,” Helen continues, “what makes you think you’ll just rewind your position on this timeline? It could just take you to a parallel world, leaving this one behind to suffer and decay. Would you abandon what remains of humanity like that?”

Seeing as Anya Villette appeared to have also been spatially displaced, Jon has already considered this possibility. Helen probably knows that, too – she’s well-acquainted with his tendency to overthink things. She’s just trying to tap into his chronic self-loathing, demoralize him, make him doubt his own perceptions. It’s a familiar pattern, one Jon used to submit to far too easily.

“…better than staying here with this strange woman.”  

“Ouch.” Helen brings a hand to her chest in mock offense. “You’re being awfully cruel today.”

Jon flashes an entirely unapologetic smile.

“I was being serious, you know.” A knowing mischief creeps into Helen’s eyes. “You’ve always been selfish, but would you really run away from your mistakes, save yourself and damn the rest?”

Unfortunately for Helen, she’s arrived too late to this particular debate. Jon already spent the entire trip here berating himself and second-guessing his conclusions, and he’s just about gotten it out of his system for the time being. Self-recrimination as an inoculation against the Distortion – now there’s a concept, he thinks wryly.  

“Do you honestly believe you deserve to escape an apocalypse that you brought about?”

God, she’s persistent.

“Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value,” he says simply. “That I love. And I cannot lose him.”  

It’s the truth: the final deciding factor for him was, as it so often is, Martin.

“You would potentially forsake this entire world just to reverse your own loss?”

“There was nothing left to save.”  

It never gets easier to admit it out loud, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. This world is already forsaken. Humanity is dying out, slowly but surely, and Jon harbors a guilty feeling of relief that their torment will not be eternal after all. As far as he can See, there’s no way for him to save the ones who remain. There never was.

His power was never meant to help anyone. For a long time, the only action within his grasp was to hurt – and so, he went after those who deserved to be hurt, because the only other option was doing nothing at all. But seeking revenge never saved anyone, never even made himself feel any better. If anything, it only made him feel emptier, more and more alienated from whatever human part of him still lingered – and that was a very dangerous place to be.

And when he and Martin decided together that he needed to slow down, to maintain some distance between himself and the Eye? Well… nothing substantial changed in the slightest. He didn’t get any worse, but he also didn’t get better. The world continued to suffer just as much as if he were to sit down and take no action at all. Nothing he did or did not do made any impact whatsoever.

He Knows intimately that he cannot banish the Entities from this world as long as one person remains to feel fear. Once that last person dies, there will be no one left to save. Hell, depending on how human he still is by that time, he may very well be that last person, and the Dread Powers will just have to ration him. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve all had a taste of him more than once. He’s an unfinished meal. They could just resume hacking away at him, demanding their respective pounds of flesh one after the other until nothing remains – until finally, mercifully, the Fears themselves would wither and die as well. He just doesn’t want to consider how long that could take – no. Best not to dwell on it.   

The point is, there is no future for this world. There is nothing left for him to do here. His only hope is to prevent all of this from coming to pass in the first place, and this… this is the only lead he has. And besides, Martin –

“You do realize that you have a vanishingly small chance of seeing him again, don’t you?”

“I decided to take a risk and try it anyway.”  

Helen looks put out at his easy dismissal, but she really ought to know better by now. He might be chronically plagued by self-hate and a visceral fear of being controlled, but Martin is his anchor in more ways than one. Their relationship is proof of Jon’s own capacity for free will, and his decision to go after Martin in the Lonely remains one of the only things he’s done where he’s never once wondered whether he made the right choice. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more confident about anything than he is about their love for each other, even if he doesn’t always feel like he deserves it. Helen really couldn’t pick a worse seed with which to sow self-doubt.

When she sees that Jon isn’t taking the bait, she changes tack. 

“And assuming this scheme somehow works as you hope it does, and doesn’t just get you shunted to some hellish pocket dimension – which it almost certainly will – you do realize that your little scene with Jonah Magnus will mean nothing, don’t you? This future will be erased, he will not suffer for eternity – he won’t even remember that it was ever a possibility.”

“For all her anger, there was no thirst for revenge in the Archivist, only an eagerness to expunge an infection that had gone unnoticed for too long.”  

“Then why bother confronting him? I know it wasn’t for closure – if you were at all capable of letting go or moving on, you would never have been a candidate for the Beholding in the first place, and we wouldn’t be here now.” Jon just barely manages to not flinch at that. Luckily, Helen doesn’t seem to notice that she struck a nerve, instead staring up at the ceiling in contemplation, as if trying to decipher Jon’s motivations on her own. “So, why? All those messy emotions it dredged up, and for what – the drama of it all?”  

“I live for the monologue,” he deadpans. 

“Jonathan!” Helen gapes at him in exaggerated shock. “Was that another joke?”

She could stand to tone down the condescension, Jon thinks. It isn’t his fault if people overlook his sense of humor just because they never think to listen for it.   

“Are you certain about this, Archivist? You have a history of reaching these points of no return and choosing the worst imaginable path.”

Here, at the very end of things, the Distortion just can’t resist one last chance at undermining his confidence. Despite the cockiness underlying her taunt, Helen has a hungry, almost pleading look in her eye – desperate, like everything else in this place that feeds on fear, for scraps in the midst of a famine that will never be remedied.

Jon reaches out and grips the doorknob with one hand.

“Even the end of the world can’t stop you throwing yourself on a grenade. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m not following you in there, though.”

“Thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose.”   

“I am trying to have a heartfelt goodbye, Jonathan,” Helen says, not sounding sincere in the slightest. “I doubt this will go as you hope it will, but I’m fairly certain that no matter what happens, I won’t be seeing you again. I won’t wish you luck, but… it will be interesting to see whether one of your half-assed plans might pan out for once – not that they ever have gone according to plan.” When Jon’s resolve remains strong, Helen sighs – and this time, her disappointment does sound genuine. “Well, if you’re sure…” She trails off, giving him one last hopeful look – once last chance to fall apart under her skillful denigrations – before her shoulders slump in defeat.

Not content to leave it at that, though, she does offer one last parting shot: “Do say hello to the Spider for me, won’t you?”

An involuntary shudder courses down Jon’s spine as he remembers Anya Villette’s statement – the massive spider legs reaching up to pull her into the crack in the foundation – and compares it with his own memory of the book, the door, and the monster lurking within. Helen breathes a contented sigh at his ripple of unease – basically a snack for her, at Jon’s expense. Fine. She can have that last little morsel of fear from him, as a parting gift.  

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” Jon says firmly, turning the handle. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”  

And, oh, it does.

Miraculously, Helen allows him to have the final word. As he pushes open the door to the basement, he hears Helen’s door creak open in unison. By the time he’s staring down the stairs into the dark, her door has snapped shut and popped out of existence. 

The staircase pitches down, down, down, stretching far deeper than it should. It’s too dark to see much of anything, and it takes a full minute of descent until Jon notices that there’s a slight curve to it. With every step, the air grows warmer and more stifling. The revolting sensation of walking through cobwebs becomes a constant, but any time he reaches up to brush away the web clinging to him, he feels nothing but his own bare skin.

A few minutes in, his bad leg starts twinging again, and he holds on to the wall to steady himself. Before long, his mind begins to wander to the horrifying possibility that the staircase is interminable, and he’s overcome by an image of a funnel web spider waiting patiently for unsuspecting prey. He tries to push the thought away. Just keep moving.

Between the lack of visibility and being lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice the sharp turn in the staircase until he plows right into the wall, a sharp pain erupting in his left shoulder from the collision. He throws one hand back to steady himself and only barely manages to stay on his feet, his bad leg protesting as he throws his weight into it. After briefly taking inventory of himself and experimentally putting weight on his leg again – painful, but not unbearable – he gropes blindly for the wall again and uses it to guide himself forward, more slowly this time. It isn’t long before the stone of the wall gives way to cool, damp earth, and he shivers with the memory of the Buried.

After several more sharp, nearly 90-degree twists and turns, a faint glow starts to permeate the darkness. A few minutes later, the staircase opens up into a large, dimly-lit space, garlanded with spider silk. The ceiling, walls, and floor are composed of tightly-packed dirt, and Jon has to fight back a rush of claustrophobic panic at the thought of being surrounded on all sides by the crushing earth. It’s short-lived, as it’s crowded out by a much deeper, more primal fear when he sees the fissure in the ground ahead.

It’s a repulsive, crooked thing, oozing with a pervasive, tangible feeling of wrongness. It should not be there. It cannot be there. And yet there it is, boldly existing where it has no right or reason to be: a gnawing, open, inflamed wound in the fabric of reality, pulling him toward it like a black hole. It’s a compulsion stronger than the coffin, an abomination more uncanny than the Stranger, a malice deeper than any Dark, an inevitability on par with Terminus itself.

Jon hates it. At his first glimpse of it, every one of the Archive’s eyes fly open, greedily drinking in the oppressive presence of something so unfamiliar and anomalous, leeching off of Jon’s terror as he beholds it. The scrutiny is fleeting, though, as the sight of it turns corrosive and blistering; all at once, the eyes shrink away and retreat, like a school of fish spotting a bird of prey swooping down for a meal. It takes some of the edge off, having fewer eyes with which to see the thing, but it still weighs him down with dread and revulsion.

He doesn’t know how long he’s stood there, staring unblinkingly at the fault line, before he senses a presence – something colossal and hungry and wrong, malevolence and foreboding given physical form – climbing inexorably toward him. He hears a faint rustling, the whisper of tiny avalanches of dirt scraped loose and sent sliding down the walls of the crevice. He knows exactly what to expect, and still he isn’t prepared when the first of the spider’s legs peeks up over the lip of the fissure.

How is it that after a lifetime to process a childhood trauma, it still throttles his heart and squeezes the air from his lungs at the mere thought of it? How is it that, despite being the most formidable thing in this world outside of Fear itself, he feels as small and helpless now as he did on the day he met his first of many monsters? Why is he just standing here, letting those hairy, spindly limbs hover and curl around him like an enormous clawed hand, waiting for a fate that is as unknowable as it is inevitable?

Focus, Jon thinks to himself. Listen to the quiet.

He slowly reaches into his jacket and breathes a sigh of relief as his fingers close around the notebook safeguarded there. It’s Martin’s, full of poems and sketches and stream-of-consciousness journal entries. Jon has had it with him for a long time now, but he’s never been able to bring himself to look inside it. Martin would occasionally share its contents with him – mostly completed poems, and only rarely works in progress, as he was always self-conscious about his creative process – but Jon doesn’t want to accidentally see something that Martin would have preferred to keep to himself. Martin might not be beside him right now, but he still deserves to have his privacy respected.

Still, for Jon, just having it with him is a physical reminder of his anchor, and running his thumb over the cover grounds him in the present. He closes his eyes and looks inward.  

The Archive gropes blindly for something solid amidst the noise, some elemental truth to serve as a starting point in the chaotic tangle choking this place. The edges of his mind brush against thread after thread and none of them are what he’s looking for. They stick to him, filling his head with cotton, rendering him sluggish and confused, obfuscating his sight. The Spider watches as he flails, becoming more and more snarled in the web.

“I closed my eyes and remembered in as much detail and with as much love as I could muster in my despair,” he whispers to himself, anchoring himself in the truth of the statement. He swallows a terrified whimper as something coarse and fuzzy brushes against his face, and he weaves a command into his next words: “Eventually, I opened my eyes again –” 

The Archive obeys, hundreds of eyes materializing on his skin and blinking open in the space around him, grotesque satellites of varying sizes all seizing on a single question, and suddenly he can See –

There.

A single thread, out of place among the rest, pulled taut and leading down into the deep gloom of the chasm. He spares a brief thought as to its origin point – Is its anchor here, now, or do its roots begin on the other side? – before silencing it. It’s not a question that needs answering right now. The Beholding objects; Jon reflexively shuts it down and takes an aggravated swipe at the nearest cluster of eyes he can reach, like swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes. He doesn’t think it actually does anything concrete, but when they disperse it brings him a small measure of satisfaction all the same.

He gives an experimental tug on the thread and – it feels right. That’s good, right? Well, he supposes it could be the Web trying to trick him into –

God, he’s like a dog with a bone. He could be trapped in a burning building and find part of his mind wandering off to idly ponder the melting point of steel –

…around 1370 °C for carbon steel; between 1400 and 1530°C for stainless steel, depending on the specific alloy and grade…

– which, yes, he has done. It’s a good way to dissociate from a crisis. Unfortunately, it’s also a good way to get killed, and the giant spider is still there, Jonathan, focus.    

He holds fast to the thread – make a path for yourself, tune it to the frequency you need –

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me,” he tells himself, louder this time, “it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already.”  

– and he follows it, stepping carefully around and between the spider’s legs. He has no idea why it isn’t attacking him – what if this is exactly what Annabelle – no. He shakes his head as if it will jostle the thought loose. Just be thankful for it and keep moving before the damn thing changes its mind.

Moments or hours or perhaps days later, he’s standing at the precipice of the fissure and looking down. Several eyes are riveted on the massive hairy form poised above him, but most are staring into the unknowable darkness with a gnawing, longing fascination. He stands frozen in place, torn between an overwhelming urge to flee and an overpowering need to Know what’s down there: something new, something fresh, something different – any reprieve at all from the excruciating monotony of this nightmare world.

The spider shifts above him. It’s now or never. He has nothing to lose, and if there’s any chance at all of changing this doomed future – of seeing Martin again…

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” he reminds himself, shutting his human eyes tight, one hand clutching the notebook and the other clenching into a fist until his fingernails cut into his palm. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”  

He takes one last deep breath, thinks of Martin – safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch – and he takes a leap of faith.

Jon can’t see anything. He can’t See, either. There is an incessant, high-pitched whine screaming in his ears and drowning out his thoughts. When he moves to put his hands over his ears, he realizes all at once that he can’t feel his body. He has no sense of up or down, no fingers to flex, no breath to hold, and – and he can’t See.

It’s… terrifying. It’s liberating. It hurts, but in the same way that his first gulp of fresh air hurt after three days asphyxiating in the Buried.

He doesn’t know how long he floats there in that near-senseless limbo, but between one moment and the next a blanket of fog drops over him and the shrill static is muffled. Through the haze, he can just barely make out a voice, coming from so far away – like he’s drowning, and someone is speaking to him from above the water’s surface. He drifts and listens in a daze as the voice cuts in and out.

“– just – thought I’d – by. Check in – how you’re –”

It’s a nice voice.

“– really need you –”

A safe voice.  

“– Jon.”

Wait.

“– bad. I – how much longer we can –”

Wait, it’s – that’s Martin’s voice.

“We – I need you.”

It’s Martin. Martin!

Martin is here, he’s here – Jon doesn’t know where here is, but it doesn’t matter, because Martin is here, and – and Jon is so overwhelmed with euphoria that he isn’t actually processing what’s being said. Calm down, focus – focus on the words –    

“And I – I know that you’re not –”

Oh.

“I know there’s no way to –”

Oh, no.

“But we need you, Jon.”

All at once, Jon knows where – when he is.

“Jon, please, just – please.”

No. No, no, no, no –

“If – if there’s anything left in you that can still see us, or –”

Martin, I’m here! 

“– or some power that you’ve still got, or –”

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here –

“– or, or something, anything, please! Please.”

Martin’s voice breaks, and Jon’s heart fractures with it.

“I – I can’t –”

Jon can just barely make out the buzz of a phone and – oh.

“I’m – I’m actually with him now.”

Martin!  

“You were right.” A pause, and a heavy sigh. “I – will they be safe?”

Peter Lukas. It’s Peter Lukas. Peter Lukas is still alive, Peter Lukas is hunting Martin, Peter Lukas wants to feed him to the Lonely, Peter Lukas is –

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”

Martin, don’t –

“Yeah. Sure thing.”  

Martin!

“I’m sorry.”

Jon tries to scream, to reach out, to do anything at all, but he doesn’t have a body and he doesn’t have a voice and he can’t See –

“Goodbye, Jon.”

Martin, look at me! Hear me, please - see me! 

He tries to thread a command through the words, but the compulsion doesn't come through, and - 

Jon hears the rustle of clothing as Martin stands to leave, followed by the soft click of the door as it closes behind him. 

Fuck. 

Chapter Text

Calm down, Jon tells himself, quaking with panic. Breathe. Four seconds in, hold seven seconds, eight seconds out. Just –

Wait. He has no body. He has no lungs. How – how is he supposed to breathe with no lungs? He can’t – he can’t –

Stop, stop, stop – shut up and think about it, he reprimands himself.

No lungs means he’s not hyperventilating. No heart means there are no palpitations. He still has a body, he’s just – disconnected from it right now. And even if he wasn’t, during his first coma he had no pulse or respiration, so – so there’s no way he’s experiencing the physical symptoms of a panic attack right now. He’s imagining it.

Forget about breathing for now. Think about – think about the positives –

His plan worked. Sort of. Yes, he’d hoped the rift would take him back to the very beginning – before he started reading statements to that damn tape recorder, before he’d started compelling answers without even realizing he was doing it, before Prentiss and paranoia and burned bridges and the Circus and Sasha and Tim –

Oh, God. If he could have showed up just a few months earlier, he could have stopped –

Stop, he thinks, imagining Martin talking him through his racing thoughts, like he used to do whenever Jon got like this. Think about what you can change.

This is still an improvement on the future he left behind. The world hasn’t ended yet, and now he has an advantage that he didn’t have last time. He knows who Elias really is, what his plans are, and all the little traps that he set along the path.

Jon can still stop Jonah's Ritual.

Okay. What else?

He might not have been able to prevent Daisy from ending up in the Buried, but he can still save her, just like he did before.

And he knows more about Peter’s intentions this time, knows about the Extinction and the extent to which Peter is exaggerating its imminent threat. He… he can keep Martin from succumbing to the Lonely.

…can’t he?

Yes. Yes, he can. He won’t entertain any alternative. He knows Martin much more intimately now, knows himself more intimately. The first time around, it took Jon far too long to identify how he felt about Martin, to find the right word for it, to admit it to himself – and then, it took him even longer to confess it out loud. He was almost too late.

There is the pressing question of how to approach Martin now. It depends on how soon Jon can wake up and how much of a stranglehold the Lonely has on Martin by then. Lonely or not, though, he probably won't be receptive to a love confession at this point in their timeline. From Martin's perspective, it would seem to come from nowhere. He wouldn't believe it. As difficult as it is to accept, Jon knows that he can't corner Martin with a declaration of love and expect to pick up where they left off. 

But Jon also knows what words used to comfort Martin and how he liked to be held and where his boundaries lay. Jon had painstakingly learned the best gestures to convey his affection – how best to help Martin believe that he is loved, that he deserves to be cared for, that he doesn’t have to be lonely. Hopefully it will be enough. Hopefully those things are still true, present tense. And if they aren’t, Jon will unlearn it all and relearn how best to be there for Martin here in the past – present, now.

Jon is feeling calmer already. Okay, good. Go on.

This is before he started to actively hunt for statements. It’s too late for him to save the ones who came before – and even though they came to the Institute willingly, and even though he didn’t know at the time he took their statements that the nightmares were real, he still feels guilty about it – but now he knows better, and he knows he can stop.

He will not take live statements this time. He won’t. It doesn’t matter what it does to him, he just – he won’t do it.

Keep going. What about the others?   

Jon isn’t sure exactly what the date is, but based on Martin’s visit just now - his last visit, Jon thinks with a pang - Jon is definitely too late to warn them about the Flesh attack. That means the Slaughter likely has a strong hold on Melanie by now - but if Jon can wake up earlier than he did before, maybe he can save her before she gets any worse. Maybe this time he can find a better way to approach the bullet situation. Maybe. She probably still hates him, but it’s worth a try.

He can warn Basira about the true motives behind Elias' false leads. Last time, Basira felt like she had to carry everything on her shoulders. Maybe this time, he can give her the support she needs - if she lets him. Maybe this time he can earn her trust again. Maybe this time he’ll even deserve to be trusted.

And maybe… maybe he can even salvage his relationship with Georgie – assuming she's open to the idea, that is.  

All of that is bound to be easier said than done, but at least it’s a starting point.

Now if only he can figure out how to wake up.

Time has even less meaning here than it did in the apocalypse. Jon can’t Know or even guess at the passing of time as he drifts aimless in the void. He splits his time evenly between panicking, talking himself down from the panic, planning, and sleeping. Or – something like sleep, anyway. It’s more like his mind just goes blank, and it’s – rather nice, actually. It’s the first dreamless rest he’s gotten in years, even if it is under such grim circumstances. 

It doesn’t last, though. One moment he is nothing and nowhere at all, and the next he’s in a very familiar graveyard surrounded by very, very familiar fog. 

So much for dreamless sleep, he thinks. A moment later, the muffled sound of crying reaches him through the mist.

He waits, then, to be overtaken by the nauseating sensation of being puppeted. It was a familiar routine. The dream would string him along, stopping him before each victim in turn. He would be compelled to behold their torment, unable to flee or speak or even close his eyes. It never got any easier, but at some point it had become his new normal, and during his previous coma, after six months of the same endlessly looping nightmares, he did start to feel numb to it all.

During the apocalypse, though, he didn’t sleep. He didn’t dream. There was no need, not when the nightmare was all around him and he could See all of it at every moment. A creeping sense of dread washes over him at the prospect of returning to this again every time he tries to sleep, and he realizes that the old numbness has worn off. He isn’t looking forward to cultivating it all over again – and he doesn’t know if he can take months of this nonstop a second time.  

As he stands there lost in his own head, time ticks by second by second until finally he notices that he’s waiting for a compulsion that… doesn’t seem to come. It never takes this long for the dream to commandeer his body.

Jon decides to take a step forward, and his legs surprise him by obeying. That’s new. He stares blankly at his feet until another choked sob, louder this time, cuts through the fog. He cautiously takes a step toward the sound, and then another, and another, expecting the entire time for the dream to rip his agency away from him again. It doesn’t. He finds himself at the lip of the grave, as usual – but for the first time, he came here of his own volition.

When he looks down, he sees her sprawled at the bottom of her lonely plot, one hand scrabbling weakly against the earthen wall. The skin on her arms is pallid and covered in gooseflesh; her face is covered in dirt, but where her tears have eroded watery tracks down her cheeks, the skin underneath is ashen. She looks… grey, colorless, as washed out as the mist clinging to her. The moment she sees him, a soft, broken wail clambers up her throat.

Naomi Herne.

“Why are you doing this?” Naomi croaks weakly. It’s a refrain that Jon has heard time and time again, and he feels his heart clench painfully in his chest – or at least, a convincing psychosomatic simulation of it. “Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

“I’m so sorry, Naomi,” Jon whispers.

They both flinch simultaneously. Naomi flings herself bodily against the wall and Jon jolts backward into thin air so abruptly that he loses his balance and ends up in a heap on the muddy ground.

He’s never, ever been allowed to speak in this place. Years of apologies have sat heavily on his tongue, piling up and crowding his throat with every live statement he consumed, and never once has he been able to let them out. And more than that, it’s – it’s his voice. It’s not the Archive, it’s just… it’s just Jon. Staring ahead in stunned silence, he brings one hand to his throat and lets it rest there.   

“I… I…” Naomi’s hoarse voice drifts up into the fog, confused and frightened.

Limbs still trembling, Jon crawls over to the edge of the grave and looks down again. Naomi watches him, her eyes wide and pale and wet.

“You… you spoke to me.”

“I…” Jon clears his throat uncertainly. “I – yes, I – I suppose I did.”

“You’ve never spoken to me.”

“Yes,” Jon murmurs, massaging his throat again.

“Why?” When Jon doesn’t reply, Naomi smacks her palm against the muddy wall of her plot and raises her voice. “Why?”  

“I –” Jon shakes his head and tries to corral his thoughts into some semblance of order. The fog in his brain just might be as thick as the haze choking the cemetery. “This is the first time I’ve been allowed to speak.”

“That’s not good enough!” Naomi shouts, rising to her knees now. “Do you realize – do you know how long it’s been, how many times I’ve been forced to sit here, watching you just stare down at me with… and – and how many times have I asked, how many times have I begged for you to just – just say something, or look away, or do anything else other than – than watch me?”

“I…” Jon clears his throat again. “You gave me your statement on the thirteenth of January, 2016. I’m not sure what the exact date is right now, but – I think it’s December? 2017.”

“Almost two years!” Naomi’s voice cracks. “I can count in double digits the number of decent nights’ sleep I’ve gotten in two years.”

“I know,” Jon says quietly. “I know, and I’m – I’m so, so sorry.”

Naomi looks like she wants to rail against him some more, but she seems speechless.

The apologies are throwing her off. She wants to scream at a monster, and you’re robbing her of the opportunity –

Jon had forgotten how strong the Knowing is in this place. He swats at the nearest group of eyes hovering around him, and the influx of information is interrupted as they scatter and fade out. Whether he successfully distracted the Eye or simply redirected his own attention, he doesn’t know, but either way, he finds the quiet – at least for the moment.  

Naomi watches the movement with utter bemusement, then schools her expression back into defiance and suspicion.

“So what changed?”

“I’m… not sure, exactly. This is the first time this has happened, and…” Jon pauses, suddenly feeling self-conscious staring down at Naomi from six feet above. “Do you want –” He cuts himself off. He’s going to have to get used to dancing around questions again. “I can help you out of there. If – if you’d like.”

“Why?” She sounds less incensed now, but fire still simmers just below the surface of the word.

“I’ve – I’ve wanted to this entire time,” Jon says haltingly. “I did try, at first, when all of this started. I tried to reach down to you, but I – the dream has never let me move or talk or – or blink before.” 

Naomi stares at him with narrowed eyes, arms crossed over her chest defensively. “I don’t trust you.”

“I… yes, I suppose that’s fair.”

Naomi falls silent. Jon watches her gaze flit nervously from eye to eye to eye as they blink open in the open air out of nothing and then pop out of existence again like bubbles, an endless shuffle of Watchers of varying sizes. The light they emit bounces off the water molecules in the air around them, illuminating the fog and bathing the entire area in a sickening greenish glow.

“Here, let me try…” Jon trails off, closes his human eyes and focuses on shutting the others, hoping to make himself appear just a little less monstrous. At one point he manages to pare their numbers down to just a couple dozen before all at once several dozen more blink open again, every one of them immediately swiveling to fix him with a reproachful stare.

He’s so preoccupied with glaring back at each of them in turn that he jerks when a hysterical giggle bubbles up out of Naomi’s throat. Now it’s Jon’s turn to look bemused. When his human eyes meet Naomi’s, she laughs harder. She still sounds tear-choked, but Jon can feel the fright draining away from her.

“Naomi…?” Jon tilts his head slightly, brow furrowing in consternation.

Naomi wipes tears from the corners of her eyes as she tries to catch her breath. “It’s – nothing, nothing. You just… you looked so put out, and it’s just – it’s hard to feel intimidated by a monster when it’s pouting like a toddler chasing peas around a plate with a fork.”

Jon feels his face heat, and then suddenly a quiet, involuntary chuckle is clawing its way up and out of his throat as well. It’s just – the tenor of her teasing is so, so reminiscent of Martin.

“Sure,” he says, his voice taking on the same teary-and-tickled tinge, “bully the penitent monster.”

Naomi stifles another giggle and doubles over, shivering with the surreal hilarity of it all. Both of them stay like that for a long moment, fighting back the bizarre combination of tears and laughter. Jon can’t remember the last time he’s laughed like this, and the realization brings another swell of tears to his eyes.

Eventually, Naomi stands on wobbly legs and rubs her eyes, carelessly smearing the moisture and dirt on her cheeks into a thin paste.

“Well?” She stands on tiptoe and stretches one hand up toward him. “Are you going to help me out of here?”

With a surge of gratitude – he’s being allowed to help someone for once – Jon stretches out flat against the ground and reaches down. A single eye sprouts uninvited on his palm and he scowls at it until it melts into his skin and sinks out of sight. He looks back at Naomi, expecting fear and disgust, but she just looks fascinated and more than a little amused. When he extends his hand again, she reaches back. Their fingertips just barely brush and he scoots closer, head and shoulders leaning over the edge until Naomi’s clammy hand is clutched firmly in his.

“Are you actually going to be able to pull me out? You don’t look like you have any upper body strength.”

“Every day with the schoolyard bullying,” Jon sighs, reaching out a second hand to grip her wrist more firmly. She takes his cue and does the same, clasping his wrist with her other hand until it aches. “It’s a dream, Naomi. I don’t think physical laws matter much.”

She begins to pull herself up, her bare toes digging into the wall as she clambers up. She slips a few times, and Jon grimaces as he takes more of her weight.

“Seems like the dream’s decided your noodle arms are just as useless here as they are in the real world,” Naomi says with a strained grunt.   

“Watch it, I might just drop you.” Jon panics as the retort leaves his mouth and he hastens to add, “I’m – I’m kidding, I wouldn’t – that was in poor taste, I’m sorry –”

“I know,” Naomi says with a breathless laugh. “Are you always this awkward?”

With one final burst of energy, she heaves herself upward and Jon shuffles back, pulling her over the edge until she has enough leverage to drag herself up the rest of the way. They both lay there for a few minutes, waiting for the adrenaline to fade.

“Thank you,” Naomi murmurs shakily.

“The least I can do, right?”

“The absolute least.”

Jon breathes out a tired chuckle. When he realizes that one hand is still linked with one of Naomi’s, he starts to pull away, but she tightens her grasp and the look in her eyes turns panicked.

“Please,” she blurts out and then looks away, embarrassed. “I’m – I’m not trying to make it weird, I just –”

“It’s okay,” Jon says quietly, and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I understand. We can stay like this for now.”

Naomi nods gratefully. She still looks a bit mortified – the color is returning to her cheeks, Jon notes – but more than anything else, she seems relieved. They spend the next few minutes in a slightly awkward but mostly companionable silence.

“I really am sorry, Naomi –”

“You said.”

“– but I don’t know how to stop this from happening.” When Naomi doesn’t reply, Jon continues: “I – I promise that if I find out, I’ll do whatever I can to stop it. I just – I wanted to say that, if this is a fluke – if next time we find ourselves here, I’m back to…” Jon hesitates for a moment. “Remember your anchor.”

“My… anchor?”

“The first time you got lost in the fog – think about how you found your way out.”

“Evan,” Naomi whispers, and Jon nods.

“Next time you find yourself here, if you’re alone, or – or if I’m… unresponsive, remember your anchor. And - and it doesn't have to be Evan, it can be anyone or anything that tethers you to the world you came from. I don’t know if it will lead you out of the fog in a dream – it might not even allow you to leave the grave – but it should… it should help you remember that you're not lost. That this is a dream, and you will wake up from it.” He swallows and closes his human eyes. “That the fog doesn’t actually go on forever, even if… even if sometimes it might seem like it.”

Naomi is silent for a long moment before she speaks again.

“Will you stay with me until I wake up?”

“I – I – yes?” Jon stammers, astonished by the idea that she’d want to willingly pass the time in his company. “Yes, if you – if that’s what you want.”

“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,” Naomi says. She rolls her eyes, but it comes off more as indulgent than annoyed. “Keep talking?”

Jon opens his mouth – and promptly closes it again. He’s never been a great conversationalist, especially with people he doesn’t know well, and it’s not like he’s had much chance to practice for… a long time. Not since he lost Martin. There was Helen, of course, but their chats were seldom rewarding, even before Jon was reduced to speaking in statements.  

Apparently Naomi senses his struggle, because she fills the silence for him. “Do you have an anchor?”   

Jon is glad of the assistance. Answering questions – that’s something he can handle.

“Yes,” he responds, just a bit dreamily, fighting back a smitten half-smile. “Yes, I do.”

Naomi raises an eyebrow.

“I… can tell you about him, if you’d like?”  

“Sure, why not?”  

“Alright then.” Jon fidgets nervously; being open about this sort of thing doesn't come naturally to him. Where to even begin? It would be easier if he had a specific prompt. A question to answer. Or perhaps… “Statement of Jonathan Sims,” he says before he can think better of it, “regarding his anchor, and all the intricacies of being Seen.”

“Wow,” Naomi says flatly. “I take it he’s the one responsible for changing you from an arrogant prick to a besotted puppy?”

“He… may have had something to do with it,” Jon says, simultaneously fond and abashed. “He’s a poet and a hopeless romantic, and it may or may not have rubbed off on me. Now, do you want to hear a story or not?”

“Definitely, but I reserve the right to make fun of you when you’re done.”

“That seems like a fair deal, considering the past couple years.”

“I think so.” Naomi gives him an expectant look. “Well? Go on.”

“Well, his name is Martin K. Blackwood.” Jon doesn’t bother holding back his smile this time. “The ‘K’ doesn’t actually stand for anything – he just, and I quote, ‘liked the way it looked’…”

Once he's started, Jon needs no further prompting before he's rambling on about Martin. It takes him a few minutes to remember that Jonah might be listening in. He hadn’t been planning on mentioning the apocalypse to Naomi, but he reminds himself to be careful not to mention any major events that haven’t happened yet, anything that might hint at his foreknowledge of Jonah’s plans.

There is a risk of raising suspicion just by talking about Martin in such affectionate terms. At this point in his timeline the first time around, Jon was fully occupied with routinely having his life threatened – and then studiously refusing to process that ongoing complex trauma in any remotely healthy way. He didn’t exactly have the time or breathing room or emotional capacity to examine his developing feelings for Martin, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to tolerate the vulnerability of admitting it to himself, let alone to Martin. 

But Jonah can’t always be watching them; he has to assume that he misses out on things from time to time. He probably won’t think too hard on mundane slice-of-life moments involving tea and poetry and debates about what criteria should be used to identify a good cow, as long Jon is vague about the time frame and contextual details of each story. He avoids explicitly putting a label on the nature of their relationship and tones down any particularly romantic interactions. In the end, he succeeds in sounding like he has a not-so-subtle crush on a coworker and is both too emotionally repressed to acknowledge it and too unobservant to realize that it’s reciprocated. (It’s… not a difficult act to pull off.)

Jon manages to get through several non-incriminating anecdotes like that before Naomi wakes up. He hopes he’ll still have his voice the next time he sees her. It’s… nice, to talk to another person after so long with only the Distortion to keep him company.

He stands and brushes himself off as well as he can, which isn’t much. Resigning himself to the drying mud clinging to him, he steels himself and prepares to continue his well-traveled tour of the dreamscape.

Jon’s first stop is Dr. Lionel Elliott’s anatomy lab. Jon manages to snatch the apple away from him before either of them have to catch a glimpse of the molars hidden inside it, but it doesn’t stave off the bone-crunching contortions that always dominate this part of the dream. It takes Jon some very long, very painful minutes to talk Elliott down from his fear long enough to redirect the dream’s trajectory, and even longer to convince the man that he means him no harm.

Jon does eventually manage to coax him out of the dissection lab and into the hall – (“I think sitting on the floor out there is preferable to staying in here with all the…” – and here, Jon gestures at the nearest blood-spurting heart) – but they don’t get very far into their conversation before Elliott wakes up.

They’ll have to see each other again the next time Elliott sleeps, though. Jon can try again.

Next up is Tessa Winters, sat at her computer. She nearly has the keyboard to her lips before Jon manages to reach her. In his haste to stop the dream sequence, he overturns the table and sends the entire setup crashing to the floor, yanking the keyboard away from her for good measure. Tessa promptly drops to the ground and makes a grab for the nearest shard of glass from the broken monitor.

Unable to control her own body, she shoves the glass between her lips and crunches down on it before Jon can wrest it from her. When it slices into the roof of her mouth, an identical gash opens up in Jon’s, and soon both of them have blood running down their throats. As Tessa reaches out a shaky hand to snatch up another piece, Jon catches her wrist.

“Tessa, listen to me – you don’t have to do this anymore.”

The look she gives him is a perfect mix of enraged and terrified, and she tries desperately to pull away.

“Tessa – Tessa!”

Shaking her head frantically, she shuts her eyes tight, sending tears streaming down her cheeks. Jon chokes a bit on the blood still pouring freely out of the cut in his mouth. He can only imagine what a sight he must be right now: covered in mud, teeth stained red, all those hungry eyes looking on. He’s loath to use compulsion, but…

“Tessa, look at me.”

She abruptly stops struggling and a glimmer of cognizance flares in her eyes. A moment later, she rips her hand away from his grip and backhands him across the face.

I probably deserved that, Jon thinks. He puts both of his hands up in a nonthreatening gesture and leans away from her, giving her space. He can at least feel the cut in his mouth healing now that the nightmare sequence is fading, but the taste of blood lingers on his tongue. 

“What is wrong with you?” Tessa seethes. She spits blood onto the ground through her teeth, never once breaking eye contact with Jon. With his human eyes, he notes. “I’ve been having this dream for nearly a year and – and…”

“You… know that this isn’t just a dream.” It isn’t a question; Jon already Knows the answer.

“It’s a very lucid dream.” She’s clearly aiming for decisive, but Jon can detect the waver of uncertainty concealed underneath. Tessa looks away and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, painting a crimson streak across her skin. 

“You don’t really think that, though,” Jon says gently. He could tell from the first time he met Tessa in her nightmares that she knew there was an element of the supernatural at play.

“Then what? You’re – you’re secretly a monster in disguise, siphoning off people’s ghost stories? Feeding on nightmares like some kind of – what, dream vampire?” 

“I…” Jon frowns. “I’ve never heard it phrased that way, but I suppose? Sort of? I mean, I was – I was human once. When you first gave your statement, I hadn’t realized what I was becoming just yet. I was having nightmares like this, but back then I still thought they were just… bad dreams.”  

“So why are you suddenly talking to me now?”

“The dream has never let me talk before. Usually I don’t have control of my body, I just get piloted around and made to… well, Watch.”

“And what, I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?”

“No, I – not at all, I just –” Jon sighs. “I’m answering your question. The reason I’m just now speaking to you is because this is the first time I've been able. I don’t intentionally bring you here. In fact, I hate coming here so much that I sleep the bare minimum amount just to avoid dreaming. But…” He falters, struggling to get the words out. “But it is because of me that you’re brought here, and so I – I owe you an apology.”

“Why?” Jon looks at her questioningly. “You’re saying you don’t bring me here, and that you didn’t know what would happen when you took my statement. So, what are you actually apologizing for? Because you feel guilty, and you think saying sorry will make you feel better? That’s not an apology, that’s a cop-out.”

Jon’s first impulse is to deny it, but he stops himself, because that is the impression he’s giving, isn’t it?

“I do feel guilty,” he admits, “but apologizing isn’t going to make me feel better, trust me. I’m sorry because… like I said, even if I didn’t expect or intend this specific outcome, it’s still because of me that you’re here. I need to take responsibility for that.”

Jon gnaws on the inside of his cheek nervously, trying to organize his thoughts. Taking Tessa Winters’ statement was, in retrospect, a watershed moment for him. He had taken several live statements by that point, but all the earlier statement givers had made their way to the Institute independently. (Well, except Helen – Jonah had confessed that he was the one to lead her to the Institute – but Jon didn’t know that at the time.) Tessa was the first time Jon actively and knowingly brought someone to him – and he did it under false pretenses.

It’s been eating away at him ever since that first nightmare they shared.

“The forum post that drew you to me,” he says in a rush, “asking for statements.”  

“What about it?”  

“I’d never solicited statements before then. People would just come to the Institute on their own.”

“And?” Tessa fixes him with an intense look. “What changed?”

“Well, I… I had an ulterior motive in posting on tech savvy message boards specifically.” Jon picks at his cuticles, human eyes carefully averted from Tessa’s. “The laptop you helped me with, it belonged to my predecessor. I didn’t learn until after I was selected to replace her that she was murdered. It was an unsolved case, and I… I needed to know why. I thought, if I could get access to her computer, maybe there would be a clue somewhere.”

“And if it wasn’t for that post…”

“You would never have come to the Institute. You wouldn’t be here now.”

A full minute passes before Tessa speaks.

“Did it even help?”

“Not as much as I would have liked, no,” Jon says with a short, humorless laugh.

Tessa’s lips move wordlessly for a few seconds before she eventually snaps, “Why the hell did you feel like it was your job to solve a murder, anyway?”

“It seemed unlikely that it would ever be solved – the police certainly didn’t seem invested in it – and I was worried that I would be next.” Jon rubs the back of his neck for a few seconds before twirling a lock of hair around his finger, tugging gently. What does it say about his life that he misses when things were as simple as a workplace murder? “There’s more to the story, but – suffice it to say, I was paranoid and stubborn and - and unstable, and people got hurt because of it.”

The silence stretches between them for several minutes this time before Tessa speaks again.

“I don’t forgive you.” Jon winces before he can think better of it, and Tessa continues: “But your apology is accepted.”

Jon gives her a baffled look. “I… I don’t understand.”  

“I can appreciate a genuine apology, and you seem sincere enough.” Tessa shrugs. “Sounds like you acted out of disregard for others, rather than out of malicious intent. Still not great, but I don’t think one action defines a person.” Her expression hardens and her voice turns firm. “But that doesn’t mean I have to forgive the action. And I’m not ready to forgive, not when I’m still living through the consequences. Maybe not ever.”

“That’s fair,” Jon says, and he means it. “Especially since – well, I don’t know how to stop the dreams. If I find a way, I’ll do it, absolutely, but for now… I can’t promise an end to this.”

Tessa makes a noncommittal noise.

“I am hoping that I’ll maintain basic bodily autonomy going forward. That way, I can – I can try to intervene again, the next time you get trapped in the loop. I’ve done this a couple times now, with other dreams. So far, it seems that if the script gets interrupted, we can ride out the rest of the dream without the nightmare component.”

“And if you go back to how you were before?”

“Then I’m forced back into the role of Watcher, I suppose.” The thought of it fills him with dread, but he isn’t about to make Tessa process that with him, so he quickly moves on. “But – but I think maybe you don’t need me to break the script? It might be enough to just… memorize how you feel right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“This is the first time you’ve been here and still had control of your own actions. The moment you’re sat in front of that computer, you become a passenger in your own body.” Jon gives his hair another light tug as he hunts for the right phrasing. “Find something – a word, a gesture, a memory, anything – that you can associate with how you feel right here, right now. Something sensory, or at least simple enough that you can remember even when – when your thoughts start to disintegrate.”

“'The angles cut me when I try to think,'” Tessa recites quietly. It sends a shiver up Jon’s spine, and he Knows it does the same for her.

“It’s an accurate description, isn’t it?”

Tessa gives him a suspicious look. “You can feel it?”

“Yes.” Jon shifts uncomfortably at the memory of it. “Like having your consciousness torn apart until everything is sharp edges and… and noise.”

Jon can feel Tessa’s anger soften a bit, and he Knows that it’s not out of forgiveness. It’s because she feels vindicated, knowing that the one responsible for her suffering is at least facing the same torture as she is. She feels a twinge of shame over that feeling, he Knows, but even if she didn’t, he wouldn’t hold it against her. Honestly, he isn’t ready to receive forgiveness any more than Tessa is ready to give it.

“Anyway,” he says, unceremoniously shoving the Knowing away, “breaking the association between the computer and the loss of control might be enough to snap you out of the usual dream sequence.”

“Trick my brain with a bit of classical conditioning?” Tessa snorts. “That’s your advice?”

“Just a suggestion.” Jon shrugs. “I’ve found it helpful from time to time.”

“Alright then, Pavlov’s monster.”

Jon gives an awkward little laugh. “Never heard that one before, either.”

“I’m sure I can come up with more,” she says, and graces him with a very small, very tentative smirk. It feels remarkably like an olive branch – or maybe just the ghost of one. He doesn’t feel like he deserves even that.

Tessa refuses Jon’s offer to stay with her until she wakes up, so he stands and takes his leave.

Jon isn’t walking for long when the dreamscape shifts around him again. Rain patters down on the asphalt of a lonely road, stretching onward and outward with no end in sight. The harsh police lights refract off of the rain and the mist, the incessant bright flash sending a stabbing pain right to his temples.

He drifts towards the coffin on autopilot, never once breaking his stride, and he throws the chains aside. Before he can think twice about it, he walks down those familiar steps, taking two at a time in his haste to get through this segment of the dream as quickly as possible.

The instant the soil closes in around him, he reflexively calls Daisy’s name. It takes him three desperate shouts before he remembers with a sinking feeling that he won’t find her here. The coffin doesn’t allow for sleeping or dreaming, and it will be another few months before Jon can go in after her.

As soon as he resigns himself to that realization, the earth falls away and he’s standing in a coffin of a different sort, watching Karolina Górka from across a sweltering, buckling train car. All around them, the twisted metal groans and strains under unimaginable pressure. Karolina does not respond to his explanations, his apologies, his offers to help, his questions. She simply watches him, as he used to watch her, and smiles, until the train car collapses in on her and the scenery fades.

Next time, he tells himself, fighting back nausea and guilt. There has to be some way to reach her, and he has plenty of time to figure it out. Next time.

When Jon finds himself in front of Helen’s door, standing solitary in open air, he’s half-tempted to fling it open, to finally see where it leads in this place. He has to force himself to turn away – 

Which, as expected, gives him a full view of the undulating carpet of ants. He scans the swarm diligently, watching it writhe and twist until he catches sight of a hand reaching out to him, and he lunges to grab hold of it. As soon as Jordan is free of the horde, he shrinks away in terror, and Jon can feel the way his emotions vacillate: gratitude, confusion, fear, suspicion.

“This way,” Jon says urgently, trying to keep his own mounting fear out of his tone and waving Jordan forward. Jordan looks hesitant until the incinerator door materializes beside them, heralding the appearance of Jane Prentiss. “Keep walking.” Jon's voice is definitely taking on a panicked edge now, despite his best efforts. “Don’t look at her.”

Much to Jon’s relief, Jordan listens and hastens after him. In this part of the dream, Jordan has always stood there frozen, eyes darting between the Archivist and the Hive, unable to decide which was the lesser of two evils. This time – for now, at least – Jordan seems willing to take his chances with Jon.  

Jon, of course, can’t fully avert his gaze. Even as he walks away, a few mutinous eyes watch behind him, captivated by Jane and the simmering worms wriggling and tunneling through her flesh. Jane’s burning stare burrows into him like larvae. He fights the urge to scratch.

“Cover your ears.” Jon is careful to keep the compulsion out of his voice. Luckily, Jordan complies of his own volition – and not a moment too soon, as the hive begins to screech out its death knell only seconds after the words leave Jon’s mouth. Jon watches as Jane’s eyes liquefy and run down her cheeks. All the while, she screams and screams and screams until finally her throat crumbles to ash along with the rest of her.

Jon stops then, bending over with his hands on his knees, trying to quell his trembling. Jordan nearly runs right into him, throwing himself backward at the last moment and hitting the ground with a grunt. He takes one look at Jon and begins to scramble away. Now that Jane Prentiss is gone, all of his terror can be directed at the sole remaining monster.  

“W-wait,” Jon says, voice raspy. “I – I don’t want to hurt you.”

Jordan stops moving, but he continues to stare with wide, terrified eyes.

“I know what I look like, and I’m – I’m sorry about that, I don’t have much control over them.” Jon gestures halfheartedly at the eyes phasing in and out in the air around him. Their focus darts about in all directions, greedy and possessive and eager to See everything there is to See. Even just a momentary glance at their restless movements elicits a burst of annoyance, and he can’t resist once again striking out at the nearest grouping of them. They instantly dissipate and Jon turns his human eyes back to Jordan. “But I want to help.”

“You’ve never helped before,” Jordan says hoarsely. 

“I know. The dream wouldn’t let me.”

“But now suddenly it will?”

“Yes, and I’m hoping it stays that way. But – but if it doesn’t –”

Before he can finish, Jordan flickers out of sight as his real body wakes. Jon groans in frustration. He would have liked to outline a contingency plan in the same way that he did with Naomi and Tessa, but… hopefully the next time Jordan sleeps, Jon can continue the discussion. 

The eyes that he had previously banished pop back into existence one by one to his left.

“I really, really hate you, you know that?”

In unison, they all blink and reopen, slow and purposeful. He tries not to assign personality to them, but he can't help thinking that they look amused. 

Jon swears, turns away from them, and kicks at the ground uselessly. Hopefully Jonah isn’t watching this impotent little outburst, but just in case, Jon takes the time to glower up at the Eye looking down on him before he stalks off. It definitely makes him look even more like a petulant child, but at the moment, he can’t bring himself to care.  

Jon paces feverishly in front of the door to the dissection lab, scratching absently at the back of his burned hand as he tries to calm his nerves. In one fluid motion, he reaches out to grab the door handle, then shrinks back again and runs his fingers through his hair with an agitated sigh. At this rate, she’ll wake up before he works up the courage to go in there.

He reaches toward the handle again, but stops at the last moment and raps his knuckles lightly against the door instead. Knock-knock, his mind supplies, sending a chill through his veins.

Even though he’s expecting it, he still starts at the answering, “Hello?”

Jon braces himself and opens the door, and suddenly he’s eyes-to-eyes with –

“Georgie…”

The customary sadness and pity in her expression fade away, replaced by faint surprise.

“Jon?”

Chapter Text

“Hi, Georgie,” Jon says meekly. There’s a raw quality to his tone that he didn’t anticipate. Don’t cry, he warns himself. Don’t you dare cry.   

Georgie surveys him – not with fear, of course, but with a combination of caution and interest.

“My eyes are up here,” Jon says with a small, hesitant smile.

“Jonathan Sims, was that a joke?”

“People might assume otherwise, but I do have a sense of humor.”

“Not like that you don’t.”

“It’s Martin’s,” Jon admits. When he feels himself start to flush, he averts his human eyes. Useless, really, considering how most of the others are still concentrated on Georgie, but it’s just force of habit at this point.

Georgie grins for a brief moment. Jon is suddenly struck with the magnitude of how long it’s been since he’s seen her smile, and then it fades.

“You’ve picked up quite a few more…” Georgie motions vaguely at Jon and his general vicinity.

“Yes.” Jon shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “They aren’t, ah… manifesting in my hospital room, are they?”

Georgie looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. Though, that may have less to do with his question and more with yet another eye that just emerged unsolicited on his left cheekbone. Great timing.    

“Uh… no?”

“Oh, good.” He doesn’t bother to understate his relief. Everyone already saw him as a monster last time; retaining his post-apocalyptic nightmare ‘he’s-all-eyes’ look would have made an already difficult challenge nearly impossible.

“So, you… know where you are, then?”

“Yes.” 

When he doesn’t elaborate, Georgie’s eyes sweep up and down his figure again. Jon feels exposed. Seen. She folds her arms and jerks her chin in his direction.  

“You’ve got mud all over you.”

“I… had to help someone climb out of a grave earlier.” In an attempt to distract himself from his own self-consciousness, he begins playing with a lock of hair at the nape of his neck.

“And the blood?”

“Dream pica,” Jon says guardedly. “And a dissection lab.” He looks around the pristine room they’re standing in. “A – a different one. With more… blood.”

“Right.”

The awkward silence drags on a bit too long.

“It’s… it’s good to see you, Georgie,” he ventures.

“Jon, is it really you?”

“Yes.” Georgie doesn’t respond, and her expression is unreadable. “I – I don’t have any way to make you believe me, but… listen, Georgie, I – there are some important things I have to tell you before you wake up.”

Before she can stop him, he plunges into the first bullet point on his agenda.

“First, Melanie. I don’t know how much she told you about her trip to India, but she still has a bullet in her leg, and it’s poisoning her. It didn’t show up on any scans then, and it probably still won’t, but it needs to come out. I know she’s been hurting, growing angrier–”

“How do you–”

“Please trust me, Georgie. I don’t know whether Melanie will listen to you, especially when you tell her the information came from me, but – but I think she already knows about the bullet, knows what it’s doing to her. She might not want to give it up, and – and it’s not my place to make that decision for her, but – the Slaughter wants to claim her, and I don’t think any good can come from becoming an Avatar.” He laughs bitterly. “Maybe – maybe that would be enough to convince her. Just tell her she could end up a monster like me.”   

“Jon–”

“I just wanted to let you know,” he interrupts again. “You know her better than I do, and she can trust you more than she can trust anyone at the Institute. I don’t know what your relationship is like right now, if she would listen to you, and – and you don’t have to tell me. But you both deserve to know about it. And she… she deserves a chance to heal. She deserves to know that she has a choice.”

“Okay. That’s... a lot to unpack.” Then, businesslike: “What else?”

“Martin. He needs to know that I’m coming back. It – it might take another month or two, but I’m going to wake up.”

“Jon, I’ve never even spoken to him.”

“I know, and – and right now, he’s distancing himself from the others, too. But he’s in danger.” Georgie raises her eyebrows. “A new kind of danger. If you could ask Melanie to get a message to him, to just – tell him that I’m asking him to wait a few more months before giving up on me.”

“I’ll pass the message on to Melanie,” Georgie says evenly, “but I’m not going to pressure her about it.”

“I understand.”

“You… think you can wake up, then?”

“Yes. And I will.” He pauses. “Soon, I hope.”

“You going to explain, or keep being mysterious?”

“I… listen, Georgie, I want to tell you, I do–”

“But you can’t, because as usual, you think you know what you’re doing, and you’re going to rush ahead and throw yourself at–”

“No,” he says hurriedly. “I know it seems like I’m falling into a – a familiar pattern, but that’s not what this is. I want to tell you, and I will tell you, it just – it can’t be here.”

“And why not?”

“Because Elias is probably watching us right now.”

“Your boss Elias?" Georgie gives him a blank look. "Your boss Elias who is in prison right now for the murders he framed you for? That Elias?”

“Yes.”

“You think he can, what, snoop on your coma dreams?”

“And most places in the physical world aren’t safe from him, either.”

“Right,” Georgie sighs. She’s known Jon long enough to tell when he isn’t going to budge. “Where, then?”

“The tunnels under the Institute. It’s a universal blind spot; he can’t See there.”

“And you aren’t worried about him overhearing that?”

“No. He’s likely already aware that we know about the properties of the tunnels. Besides, this isn’t some secret battle we’re all fighting. Everything is out in the open. I don’t have to hide my suspicions, and he’s stopped pretending not to be evil. He can safely assume that I’m keeping secrets and plotting behind his back just the same as he is.” Jon glares up at the ceiling and the Watcher beyond it. “I just don’t want him to know the details.” 

“Can’t he read minds?” Georgie looks away. “It’s just – Melanie mentioned–”

“It’s… complicated.” Jon folds his arms and starts pacing slowly, retracing the same six-foot space back and forth as he pieces together an explanation. “Elias can See things that happen almost anywhere, but he has to concentrate in order to do it. He can Know a person’s secrets and details about their past, but I don’t think it’s mind-reading, per se, it’s just… Knowing, and – and there are limits on it. And he can implant images and knowledge into a person’s mind, but I think he has to actually be within eyesight in order to do it.”

Jon abruptly stops pacing and stares transfixed at his feet.

“It sounds like there’s a ‘but.’”

“I don’t think he can actually read a person’s thoughts in real time. Sometimes it seems like it – he has a gift for reading people, and he always seems to know how best to manipulate or… or break a person. But I think that’s an entirely non-supernatural gift.” Jon hugs his sides and draws his shoulders in, suddenly feeling both too small and too noticeable. “It’s monstrosity, but of a very human sort,” he murmurs softly. 

“You’re sure?”

“Fairly sure, yes, though it doesn’t hurt to take as many precautions as possible. I do plan on explaining things after I wake up, but only in the tunnels.” He gives Georgie a pleading look. “I wouldn’t ask you to come to the Institute if there was another option, but it… it has to be there. And I – I get it if you don’t want to see me in person, I can tell Melanie and then she can tell you, but it just – it still has to be in the tunnels.”

“Jon, it isn’t that I don’t want to see you. I’ve been visiting you in hospital–”

“I know.”

“You could hear me?”

“Not – not quite. I only just started being able to hear what goes on out there. But I… I know you’ve been visiting. Thank you.” Jon pauses, biting his lower lip. “Though I know that you… weren’t expecting me to recover.”

“It’s been four months, Jon. You have no heartbeat, you’re not breathing–”

“I know. And you’re thinking I’ve passed a point of no return and that you should cut ties with me before I drag you down with me.”

“Well, have you?”

“Passed a point of no return?” He looks up at the ceiling and closes his human eyes. “Yeah. A few of them, actually. I’m not fully human anymore, and I don’t think there’s a way to reverse it. But I – I’m still me, and I want to stay that way. You told me once – not long ago, I suppose – you said that if I was becoming something inhuman, I needed people in my life. To remind me of my humanity. You were right. There are more points of no return I could stumble into, I could get worse, and I don’t…” He swallows hard, fighting back the threat of tears. “I want to get better.”

“Do you, though?” Georgie’s voice is gentle, but firm. “Actually?”

“Yes,” Jon says without hesitation. “I really, really do. I can’t escape from the Institute, or from the Beholding. Not any time soon, anyway. Even when I was staying with you, I was physically dependent on reading statements – I just didn’t realize it yet. Running away and staying out of danger isn’t really an option for me anymore. It… hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe ever since I took the job.”

Georgie presses her lips into a thin line, and Jon can tell he’s losing her.

“But I’m not – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not seeking out danger or heroics. I’m not… I’m not playing the martyr, or – or trying to court tragedy. I would love to go a month – hell, a week without the threat of death or worse hanging over me,” he says with a short, humorless laugh, “but that won’t happen as long as I’m the Archivist. So I – I don’t know what ‘better’ looks like for me now that I’m like this, but I want to try. I think this is a second chance, and I… I want to take it.”

“I want to believe you, Jon. It’s just…”

“You’ll believe it when you see it.” One corner of his mouth twitches up in a rueful smile.

“Yeah.” Georgie’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

He can’t really blame her for being skeptical. They had a conversation remarkably similar to this one before, shortly before their breakup – minus the supernatural elements, of course. He’d had a breakdown, finally admitted that he needed help, agreed to go to counseling – and then quit after two sessions. She’s seen his obsessiveness, his refusal to take care of himself, the self-destructive patterns he falls into, his apparent allergy to emotional vulnerability. He’s never shown her any other side of him. Come to think of it, he didn’t know he had another side until… all of this.

“Look,” Georgie says after a moment and a sigh, “I – I’m not going to cut you out, not completely. But I may need some distance, you understand?”

“Of course.”

“And I can’t be your only support.”

“I wouldn’t want that.”

“And I have to decide how much I’m willing to get involved in… all of this.” Georgie frowns. “It’s just complicated, what with…”

“Melanie.”

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t want you trapped there, either – I think all of you should quit, actually. If you ever figure out how. Maybe even burn the place down just to be safe.” If she’s joking about the latter, Jon can’t tell. He doesn’t disagree with her, per se, but he does take a moment to wonder, not for the first time, how he’s managed to surround himself with so many people who see arson as a first resort. “It’s just–”

“Listen, that’s actually the last thing I wanted to mention – I might have a way for Melanie to quit.”

“What?”

“I – I think the only reason she hasn’t been completely taken over by the Slaughter is because of her connection to the Eye, so it would be safest to remove the bullet first, if she decides that's what she wants, but – yes, there’s a way for her to quit.” He runs one hand through his hair and grimaces. “It’s drastic, but everyone needs to know they have the option. I can’t talk about the details here, though, and I – I’d rather everyone hear everything I have to say before making any decisions.”

“You get more and more cryptic every time I see you, you know that?” 

“Trust me, this is an improvement on…” Being the voice of the Archive, he does not say. “It could be worse.”

“See? Cryptic.”

“That can’t be the most off-putting thing about me.” As if on cue, another eye opens on his throat, centered on the scar that Daisy left him, and he cringes. More impeccable timing. 

“Nah,” Georgie says after a contemplative hum. “I think the weirdest thing is how you just had an entire conversation about your feelings and didn’t once try to change the subject. Who are you, and what did you do with Jonathan Sims?”

Jon laughs. “I guess I’ve… grown, a bit.”

“Yeah, but when? Since you’ve been in a coma? This place doesn’t exactly seem ripe with opportunities for personal growth.”

“I…”

“Let me guess: you can’t talk about it.”

“Not here.” Jon gives her an apologetic smile.   

“Right.”

Jon looks down again, scuffing one foot against the floor to fill the quiet.

“So when can we expect you back in the world of the living?”

“No more than a few months, I think. Hopefully sooner. It depends on how long it takes me to figure it out.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to?”

“If I can’t do it on my own, someone else will do it for me. This in-between state doesn’t suit the Beholding, and there are at least a few interested parties who will force me to make a choice if I take too long. The Archivist has a role to perform, and right now, I’ve removed myself from the game board. Either I submit to the hand that moves me, or I die and make room for the next unsuspecting pawn in line.” Jon looks up. “Sorry, that came out more dramatic than I intended.”

“A bit,” Georgie says, not unkindly.  

“What I mean is, the coma has a time limit no matter what I do or don’t do. I’m not human enough to die, but I’m too human to live, so I have two choices: I accept what I’ve become and I wake up. I’ll still be me, but I’ll be even less human than I was before, and I’ll have to… make the best of that. Or, I sever my connection with the power that’s keeping me alive, and I die – not quite human, but not a monster, either. A slow death, though,” he adds bitterly. “To make sure I have plenty of time to change my mind.”    

“Sounds to me like you haven’t made up your mind.”

“I have, actually. It’s just… I don’t know how to finalize my choice, I suppose?”

“You can’t just ask to speak to a manager?” One look at Georgie’s playful grin, and Jon feels himself smiling in return.

“I wish. No, I – it’s… hm. Like I need to find my way to a crossroads, but I don’t have directions or a map.”

“Maybe you just need a chaperone.” When Jon gives her a serious look, her teasing smirk fades. “What, seriously?”

“Yeah. I haven’t given up on finding my own way, but if I take too long, I expect a guide will pass this way and… encourage me to choose a path and follow it to the end.”

“I’d ask you how you know all this, but I doubt you'll tell me.”

“I Know it because of the Eye, broadly speaking, but there’s a more specific answer I want to give you. Just… not here.”

“Fine," Georgie says, but she doesn't sound upset, much to Jon's relief. "Anything else?”

Jon almost says no, but…

“Maybe… maybe one more thing,” he says, lowering his gaze, suddenly showing keen interest in the floor. “I’ve never had any control in these dreams, and I’m terrified that I’ll lose it again. If I do, just… behind all the eyes, it’s still me. I can see you, and hear you, and I was wondering if… I know it’s stupid, but if it’s alright with you – and I completely understand if it’s not, I don’t want you to feel obligated–”

“What, Jon?”

“Could you still talk to me, maybe?” Jon says it so quickly that it comes out all as one word. “I won’t be able to answer, but it would still be nice to hear your voice. Tell me about the Admiral, or your current knitting project – or the newest What the Ghost, and the weirdest listener feedback it got, or… or the latest dick move your landlord pulled. Anything.”

When Georgie doesn’t reply right away, Jon keeps his head down and braces himself for disappointment. He didn’t mean to sound so desperate; now he’s made things weird. He probably shouldn’t have –

“Huh,” Georgie says finally. “Are you sure you haven’t been able to hear me talking to you out there?”

“Not… not that I know of?” Jon cautiously looks up at her. “Not consciously, at least.”

“Hmm. Well, next time I see you, if you’re as unresponsive in here as you are out there, I’ll just do what I usually do when I visit you in hospital, which is natter on about my personal life and tell you all about the Admiral’s latest adventures in protecting the flat from spiders.”

“Brave boy,” Jon says fondly, and Georgie snorts.

They spend some time talking about the Admiral and his newfound obsession with bread ties until, mid-sentence, Georgie wakes. Jon is left alone in a sterile dissection lab, the harsh fluorescent light underscoring the emptiness of the place.

The conversation went… better than he had dared to hope, really. He’s both stunned and relieved that Georgie hasn’t written him off yet, but also terrified of messing things up again, of squandering his second chance. He can’t count on getting a third. This is his one opportunity to fix things, to do better, to be better, and he needs to make it count.

No pressure, he thinks to himself grimly, and he heads for the door as the scenery around him begins to fade out.

Time is difficult here.

It was difficult at the end of the world, too. Towards the end, Jon didn’t even bother to keep track of it, but he could have Known, if he had wanted. Here, though, he can’t seem to Know anything about what’s happening outside of the dream.

He relies on his conversations with his fellow dreamers to gauge the time and date in the outside world, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize that his perception of time is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes what feels like hours to him translates to a week on the outside; sometimes a single night in the real world is stretched into days for Jon. There are indeterminate lapses of time during which he drifts in that directionless void again – times when, he assumes, all of the other dreamers are awake, leaving no nightmare settings for him to occupy.

At least the passage of time seems to be progressive. Time travel is difficult enough without hopping around to different points on the timeline. He’s glad to see that, his initial leap backwards notwithstanding, time still seems to be moving in one direction.

It's taken a long time for Jon to stop waiting for the moment when he will lose his agency and become the Watcher's marionette again. A small part of him is still waiting for the rug to be ripped out from under him, but for the most part, he’s allowed himself to relax into it and silence his customary pessimism. He still isn’t sure exactly why he has so much control now. It’s a… well, not best-case scenario – that would be freedom from the dreams altogether, for himself and for the others – but it’s still an unexpected boon that he never would have even thought to consider.

The best theory he can come up with is that he’s simply stronger now, after completing his metamorphosis into the Archive. If so, it’s somewhat worrisome. It would mean that coming back in time rewound most of the timeline, but he remains a product of its original trajectory. He is an artifact of a cascade of disasters that never happened – that will never happen, if he manages to foil Jonah’s plans. There’s no way of telling how the world might react to his presence in it. Is he an allergen of sorts, a paradox that cannot be reconciled? Is he something akin to the rift itself? He hopes not – it will be difficult to convince anyone of his humanity if he radiates the same sort of wrongness as the crack in the foundation at Hill Top Road.

Most of all, he wonders what it means for the Archivist’s progress.

At this point in his original timeline, he had been marked by the Web, the Eye, the Corruption, the Spiral, the Desolation, the Vast, the Hunt, and the Stranger. If he isn’t already marked by the End, he will be by the time he wakes up. That leaves the Slaughter, the Buried, the Dark, the Flesh, and the Lonely. He still has to rescue Daisy, so a second encounter with the Buried is a given. Avoiding the Slaughter and the Lonely may be difficult, considering they’ve both already taken up residence in the Archives. He can try to avoid Jared Hopworth and Ny-Ålesund, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t stumble across the Flesh and the Dark some other way. Jonah Magnus is nothing if not resourceful – he won’t give up just because Jon happens to evade two of his traps.

Not to mention, Jon has an unfortunate tendency to serve himself up to the Fears on a silver platter. He’s gotten better at tempering his recklessness, at trusting others, at not going it alone, but still – in the past, he’s had an almost supernatural ability to make Jonah’s job easy. It’s possible – probable – that the Web was – is – pulling strings, but trying to account for the Web is like searching a beach for a single grain of sand.

Then there’s Jonah Magnus’ suggestion that Jon’s life amounts to a truly unfortunate streak of bad luck, but luck is a nebulous concept, and a lot of Jon’s so-called chronic “bad luck” could be a direct result of the manipulations of – speak of the devil – the Web and Jonah Magnus. At this point, Jon suspects his misfortune probably has more to do with his being easily manipulated than it does with any sort of intrinsic unluckiness or tragic destiny.

Jon’s initial encounter with the Web may or may not have been chance, but becoming the Archivist had nothing to do with luck. Jonah chose him because he knew that Jon would be easy to isolate, terrorize, and control. It was a deliberate action, not some passive twist of fate. Everything that unfolded from that point onward was carefully orchestrated and monitored by Jonah, and he always had contingency plans to keep Jon on the intended path. Yes, Jon made it easy for him in many ways, and he’s still responsible for his choices – but on a good day, he can force himself to acknowledge that regardless of what choices he made, Jonah likely would have been ready with an equally effective backup plan to counter any move Jon did or did not make.

Which is exactly why now, even with the advantage of foreknowledge, Jon is still absolutely terrified of Jonah Magnus.     

But the more Jon thinks about it – and the more his attempts to Know yield nothing – the more he worries that all of that is moot. He recalls Jonah Magnus' statement with a shudder.

…if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this nightmare kingdom. Do you see where I’m going with this, Jon?  

It wasn’t enough to have the Entities cause him bodily harm. The scars are just physical reminders of the encounter. Some of the Fears didn’t even leave him with visible scars. No, the real mark always depended on Jon’s lived experience of the confrontation: the terror, the pain, the confusion, the desperation, the alienation from himself, and the lingering, compounding trauma.  

Knocking on Mr. Spider’s door, looking on as the monster took its substitute victim and saddled him with lifelong survivor's guilt. The worms gnawing and tunneling through his skin, wriggling against bone, lavishing praise on the give of his flesh, crooning that he will be cherished, he will be perfect, he will be a home. The pandemonium of the Distortion’s corridors; the razor edge of the bones in its hands. The white-hot agony of melting flesh; the terror of terminal velocity without an end; the inexorable press of a knife against his throat.

An entire month of nothing but raw sensory input, disjointed and unfathomable: chittering, faceless things; ropes chafing and eroding furrows into skin; the ache of a jaw forced open by a length of cloth; cramping muscles and screaming joints; chill air and tailor’s tape on bare skin; layer after slimy layer of lotion; the scent of lavender cut through with the metallic tang of blood; so many hands, hands, hands, ever-present and unyielding. Nikola would mark dotted lines onto his skin with a felt-tip marker, providing a cheerful running commentary as she worked – the sorry state of his skin and her promise to get it into proper shape; vivid descriptions of how it would feel to be flensed alive, exquisitely painful yet so very liberating; how grateful he should be that he would get to be part of something so much greater than himself – all of it overlaid with Jon's unquestioning conviction that no one was coming to help him. 

And encore after encore: an explosion, an endless nightmare, an impossible choice; the aching strain of bones bending, the agonizing snap of bones breaking, the unsettling vacancy left behind; the damp, earthy press of the coffin; the terrible beauty of unknowable darkness burning holes in his Sight.      

Martin paling, fading, vanishing –

“Are you scared, Jon?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect.”  

– almost disappeared, almost lost, almost alone. 

Jon remembers it all in perfect, visceral detail, every sensation and panic-stricken thought seared into him and easily accessible at the merest twitch of an overactive imagination. He witnessed and experienced worse during the apocalypse, but still those tired old flashbacks would overtake him and bring him to his knees without warning as he passed between domains.

The question of mind-body dualism is well-settled at this point, at least as far as Avatars are concerned. Jonah Magnus has been body-hopping for centuries, discarding vessels and possessing new ones on a whim; Jon himself is currently a living mind tethered to a body that is in most other respects clinically dead. What if the body is irrelevant, and what really matters is the conscious mind?

In that case, it does not matter whether this body encounters those final five marks. As long as Jon remembers receiving them, his consciousness is still scarred by all Fourteen of the Dread Powers. What’s more, traversing the ruined earth retraced those marks several times over, branding him more deeply with every passage through an Entity’s domain. 

It means that Jon is still a living chronicle of terror, fully prepared and ready and marked – and he’s delivered himself to Jonah Magnus months ahead of schedule.

Once again, Jon has played right into Jonah's hands. He can only hope that Jonah doesn’t Know it. Even if he doesn’t, it seems foolish to hope that he won’t find out eventually.

“You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”

“Absolutely not,” Naomi wheezes, doubled over with laughter.

Jon groans and covers his face with his forearms, still lying on his back in the mud. He'd been helping Naomi out of her grave, as had become the routine, but she lost her footing just as she reached the top. In his scramble to catch her, he lost his balance and toppled in after her. Now they’re both stuck down here.

“Break any bones, old man?”

“It’s a dream, Naomi.” Jon sits up and halfheartedly wipes the dirt off his hands, to little effect. “Also, I’m only thirty.”

Well, sort of. Physically, at least.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

He glares at her, but it’s tempered by an amused twist of the lips that he can’t quite suppress – which just makes Naomi snicker again.  

“So,” she says after a moment, “still haven’t woken up?”

“Still trapped,” Jon says, all the levity bleeding out of him in an instant.  

“No luck with the anchor?”

“No luck.” Jon leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. “Not for lack of trying – or practice. Just the thought of him has saved me more than once. But I guess it’s… different, when it involves trying to manipulate the hour of your own death.”    

He should have suspected as much, really. Escaping a pocket dimension is different from trying to meddle with the End’s sphere of influence. In all the statements he’s consumed regarding Terminus, no one has ever been able to truly hold sway over it in any direction. It does not want anything, because everyone and everything succumbs to it eventually, given enough time. It doesn’t answer to summons or worship or pleas. Sometimes it elects to play games, but it engages only on its own terms, and no one ever wins – they simply accrue enough debt to delay the inevitable for as long as it takes to repay their dues.   

“You’re being spooky again,” Naomi says brightly.

“At this point, I think it’s my default setting,” Jon deadpans back. “More importantly – did you end up going to meet the distinguished Duchess Jellybean Toes?”

“Yes!” Naomi leans forward with her hands on her knees, practically buzzing with excitement. “She’s gorgeous. A bit rude, though – she climbed up under my shirt, stuck her head out though my collar, and refused to budge for the entire visit.”

“Are you going to adopt her?”

“Mhm. I still need to buy some things and get the flat ready for her, but I already paid the adoption fee. Her name is a bit of a mouthful, though. Might have to change it.”

“Don’t you dare,” Jon says, giving her a severe look. He meant it as a joke, but when his voice dips lower than intended and too many eyes join in on the staring, he winces.

Naomi doesn’t react, though; she’s well past the point of finding him intimidating. “Hm. I’ll have to shorten it, at least.”

“Could just call her the Duchess,” Jon says, regulating his tone more carefully this time.

“It doesn’t sound too… I don’t know, pretentious?”

“Not at all. It sounds regal,” Jon insists. “I’ve told you about the Admiral, and he carries his title admirably.”

“If that was a joke, it was terrible.”

“That one was unintentional, actually.”

“Good. I almost had to reevaluate my opinion of you.”

“Can’t have that,” Jon says drily, and then his expression softens. “Seriously, I’m glad the adoption worked out for you.”

“Yeah. I think it’ll be good for me. Less lonely, you know,” she says, voice growing so faint that Jon can only barely hear her. Then, in a louder, more conversational tone: “Besides, I’ve always wanted a cat.”

“Me too,” Jon admits. “By the time I finally got a flat that allowed pets, I was… always at work. It didn’t feel right, adopting a cat and then leaving it alone all the time.”

“Well, you’re not dead yet. Not too late to develop a better work-life balance, even if you are…” Naomi wiggles her fingers. “You know, spooky.”

“Maybe,” Jon says, pointedly ignoring the jape.  

“Oh.” Naomi sits up straighter and looks at him. “I just realized – are you going to be able to get out of here once I wake up?”

“That… is a very good question.” Jon smirks at her alarm. “I’m joking. It’ll fade out when you do. Then it’s either back to the void, or on to the next nightmare.”

“Spooky.”

“That’s your third strike. Quota met for the day.”

“You really are a buzzkill.”

“So I’m told,” Jon says. “Now, if you’re finished harassing me, tell me more about the Duchess.”

“Well, she’s a calico – unbelievably fluffy – and she’s only a year old…”

Jon has never been the most social person. He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends, conversations typically feel like minefields, and he has a propensity for going off on informational digressions that most people find annoying. He asks too many questions, frequently misses social cues, and has always had difficulty modulating his tone of voice. Becoming the Archivist only made things more complicated, since now a conversational misstep can easily mean unintentional compulsion or Knowing (and sharing) something that he shouldn’t.

Over time, he’s nonetheless become more dependent on human interaction and less tolerant of being alone. He knew he had been starved for companionship since he lost Martin, but he didn’t realize the extent of it until he started talking again, and in his own voice. So, when the voyeuristic nightmare sessions turn into social calls, he finds himself thriving on it in a way that he never expected.   

There’s his budding friendship with Naomi – unexpected, but far from unwelcome.

He still finds Dr. Elliott a bit insufferable, but Jon finds himself insufferable as well, so he can’t judge too harshly. He always peeks into the anatomy lab to check that Elliott isn’t in the throes of the nightmare. Sometimes they find some shared academic interest to discuss; other times, Elliott dismisses him, citing a disinterest in conversation at that moment. Jon never asks him to elaborate.

Tessa usually declines his company, but occasionally she’ll wave him over and immediately launch into a discussion about neural networks or machine learning or some other tech-related subject that’s been on her waking mind. It’s usually more of a one-sided lecture than anything else, but Jon always finds himself riveted, listening hungrily as Tessa shines light on an unfamiliar subject.

The first few times he asked follow-up questions, she took it as feigned interest or ridicule, but once she realized that he was actually interested and not just humoring her out of guilt, she began to brighten every time he offered a new tangent for her to explore. He wouldn’t call them friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she seems to enjoy talking to someone who doesn’t tune her out when she begins to ramble. If nothing else, it’s better than devouring a computer.

Jon doesn’t have much in common with Jordan, to be honest. It doesn’t take long for them to exhaust all avenues of conversation and lapse into an awkward silence. Jordan is skittish; he finds Jon’s less-than-human appearance perpetually unsettling, but apparently prefers it to being left alone in this place. Eventually they settle on an unspoken arrangement of just staying within eyeshot of one another for the duration of the dream, even when the conversation runs dry.

In the silence, it’s more difficult to stave off the Knowing, though, which means Jon gets treated to ceaseless updates on Jordan’s mental state – and Jordan is more repulsed by all those eyes than he is by even the worst infestations he’s encountered on the job. By the time Jordan wakes up, Jon usually feels like an insect half-dead and twitching in the aftermath of an insecticide assault. He can’t blame Jordan, but it does take its toll on Jon’s already abysmal self-esteem.

Karolina remains largely unresponsive. Jon sits with her, talks to her – at her, really – and hopes that he isn’t just annoying her. Her eyes follow his movements, and sometimes she smiles, but otherwise, she’s uncommunicative – whether by force or by choice, Jon doesn’t know, and the Beholding doesn’t seem inclined to tell him. Although he has yet to completely interrupt the dream sequence, there have been a few instances where the train car didn’t collapse. He can’t say conclusively whether that indicates progress, but at least it’s evidence that the script can change. 

On the one hand, it’s probably a good sign that Jon doesn’t have as much control over the Knowing as he did in the future. On the other hand, it’s like having his wings clipped after learning to fly, and he hates it. The Beholding did withhold some things from him during the apocalypse, and there were subjects on which it could provide no insight, but for the most part, Jon had unfettered access to an ocean of knowledge. It’s maddening to have it restricted once again.

Even before becoming the Archivist, he always hated unanswered questions; it may as well have been a core facet of his personality. But after so much time with the Archive at the forefront, to not Know is wholly incompatible with his nature in a deeper, existential sense. For the human part of him, it’s like having an itch that can’t be scratched; for the Archivist, it’s excruciating; for the Archive, it’s utterly incomprehensible.

The balance he’d found in the future is shifting. He isn’t sure what that means for him just yet, or how he feels about it.

“How is Melanie?”

“Struggling,” Georgie says, “but hopeful, I think. It’s really not my place to say much more than that.”

“Yes, of – of course. I’m… glad to hear that she’s recovering.”

“She’s still angry that you won’t tell me how she can quit.”

“I will, I promise, I just… I need to explain everything first.”

“She said to tell you that it’s patronizing to assume she can’t make her own decision without you holding her hand.”

“I’m not – I just want it to be an informed decision.” Jon frowns. “That sounded condescending, didn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah.”

Jon looks down and rubs his temples. There’s a likelihood that if he tells Georgie right now, Melanie will blind herself before he even wakes up. It’s her choice, of course, but a choice never really feels like a choice when it’s presented as the only option, when vital information is being withheld that might affect one's decision.

Namely, the fact that his death would free all of them without a need for eye-gouging. He’s going to tell them – it doesn’t feel right to keep it to himself – but that’s something that he would rather Jonah not overhear. Jonah might be willing to lose Melanie if she takes an awl to her eyes, but if he thinks there’s a chance that she or any of the others would kill his Archivist just when he’s starting to show some promise, well… there’s no telling whether or how Jonah would choose to intervene. 

“It’s not just that.” Jon glances up at the ceiling and the Eye just beyond it.

“Tunnels-only information?”

“Yeah,” Jon says, contrite. “She might not want to hear it, but please tell Melanie that I’m sorry. I’m hoping – what’s the date right now?”

“First of February.”

“She shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”

“How do you know?”

“I just… do.” Jon winces at his weak delivery. He hates being so cagey, but he really has no other option.

“Right.”  

“How is… how is Martin?” Jon asks tentatively, perking up ever so slightly. Georgie’s expression turns sympathetic.

“Melanie says they haven’t seen him,” she says gently.  

“Oh.” Jon deflates, his cautious hope abruptly snuffed out.

“I’m sorry, Jon. Melanie did send a few emails, and when that didn’t get a response, she slipped a note under his door. But it’s been radio silence.”

“Oh,” he says again, almost a whisper this time. He covers his face with both hands and takes a minute to collect himself. “Um, c-can you tell Melanie I said thank you for trying? I–”

Georgie is gone before Jon can finish his sentence. The Admiral must have woken her for breakfast. He always has been a natural alarm clock.

The dissection lab dissolves around him, plunging him back into senseless, empty space. Left alone with his own thoughts once again, Jon immerses himself in worrying about Martin and a rotating litany of what-ifs. 

Chapter Text

Jon is back in that blank vacuum, and time is doing that thing where every moment feels like an eternity. He suspects it might have just as much to do with his innate intolerance of boredom as it does with sensory deprivation. The lack of any sort of stimulation in this place is unbearable. He never has been able to sit still for long periods of time, and he can’t even fidget here, for fuck's sake.

It’s like he’s a child again...

...seven years old and lying face-down on the kitchen floor, swinging his legs in the air and complaining loudly about how there’s nothing to do. Normally, his grandmother might snap at him to go outside and stop pestering her, but a vicious thunderstorm is passing through and she won’t let him play in it – and besides, he’s technically grounded.

Just two days ago, he had wandered off after being forbidden from leaving the yard. Again.

In his defense, there was a cat sunning itself just beyond the fence, and he wanted to say hello because he loves cats but his grandmother won’t let him have one, and then the cat stood up and yawned and trotted off, and obviously he had to follow it, and then – before he knew it, two officers were escorting him home. Again.

His grandmother had been shocked to find the police on her doorstep with her intractable grandson in tow – she hadn’t noticed he was missing – yet again.

After they left, she had been furious with him for embarrassing her like that. Again and again and again. 

So, now he’s under house arrest – a new term that he had picked up from the officers: “Your grandmother is going to put you under house arrest if you keep wandering off like this, kid.” The first couple times, they had found his meanderings and adventurous nature cute, albeit worrisome; by the third time, the charm had worn off and the weary indulgence vanished along with it; the fourth time, he received a stern dressing down about safety and recklessness and making things difficult for his poor grandmother; and now, the fifth time, there had been a not-so-subtle warning about contacting social services to investigate neglect....  

With each scolding, Jon would feel appropriately abashed in the moment, but it never took long for it to fade into the background, drowned out by a mind understimulated and screaming for some novel distraction. Somehow, courting negative attention was preferable to receiving no attention at all. When adults were being charitable, they called him precocious and clever. When he was testing their patience, though, he was a difficult child, a nuisance, a bother – and he had a tendency to exhaust even the most tolerant adult’s patience very, very quickly. He's always been... difficult.

God, why is he even thinking about this? Is he really so starved for something to occupy his attention that he’s digging into the annals of his childhood?

(Yes. Yes he is.)

He throws his head back with an aggravated sigh. Or he would, if he had a body here, but whenever there’s no dreamer around to witness him, he’s an incorporeal mind floating in (agonizing, boring) nothingness.

What he wouldn’t give to be able to just jiggle his leg right now. Tap his fingers. Play with his hair – or better yet, Martin’s; his hair was always so soft and he would always lean into Jon’s touch like a cat. It will probably be awhile before Jon gets to touch him again. If ever. What if –

Stop, he tells himself. You’re only going to catastrophize, and then you’ll get depressed, and then you’ll be useless. Why are you always so difficult? You–

He throws the brakes so quickly he can almost feel the screeching halt. Crashing a train of thought like that is like ignoring an itch. Itch, itch, itch, the word echoes in his head – and now he wants to scratch at his worm scars.

Stop thinking about them – it’ll just make you itchy, and you don’t even have a body, which means you won’t be able to scratch, and – and, yes, now you’re itchy, and – damn it, can’t you just sit still and clear your mind for five sec–

“Um. Hello, Jon. Do you… mind if I call you Jon?”

Wait. Is that…   

“I mean, you don’t actually know me. It’s just, well. ‘Archivist.’ It’s so formal, isn’t it?”

Finally, Jon thinks with relief.

“Dreams are like that, you know. No matter how lucid you think they are, there’s always that part that just drags you along. Guess I don’t need to tell you that. At least, not right now.”

Oliver. Oliver, can you hear me?

Oliver sighs. “Wish I could tell you why I came here.”

Apparently not.

“Wish I knew why I came here.”

When in doubt, blame the Web.

“Sorry to go on, I – I don’t talk to many people these days. Putting my thoughts outside myself, it gets a bit, er, clumsy.”

Jon knows the feeling.

“Be easier if you could talk back, right? Ask me questions, have it tumble all out?”

Easier, sure. But far more unpleasant.

“But no. It’s – it’s just me. Wish there was a better way, but touching someone’s mind, it’s not as simple as that? Doesn’t always make things clearer, you know?”

Again, Jon does know.

“Still, I gave the old woman a statement, so maybe I owe you one as well. That’s how it works, right? Give your terror, give your dream?”

Unfortunately.

“It’s not like I don’t have them to spare.”

Preaching to a choir, Oliver.   

“Let me tell you about how I tried to escape.”

No – let’s – can we just move things along?

“So. My name is Oliver Banks. In my other statements, I used the name Antonio Blake, but…”

Suppose not.

This probably counts as a live statement, and Jon had been keen to avoid those this time around. He wishes he could cover his ears, shut his eyes, block it all out – but then again, even if he could, would he? That familiar single-minded fixation is settling over him like a heavy fog, and it’s as unnerving as ever – a craving that he doesn’t want to indulge, but once he has a taste, it feels right. The guilt never comes until after the need is satiated.

It’s nearly impossible to stop a statement once it starts. His mind starts to go fuzzy, restless, full of static and pressure. He’s always wondered: is this what compulsion feels like to the people he turns it upon?

The static fades then, everything becoming sharp and clear and real, like a picture coming into focus. The Archivist is hungry, intent on every single word like a cat, motionless and unblinking, watching a moth beat itself senseless against a light.

And the Archive – the Archive is ravenous. Its presence looms in the background in a way that it hasn’t since before Jon passed through the rift, weighing heavily on the back of his mind.  

He gives up on trying to reach out and touch Oliver’s mind for the time being, gives in to the need, and listens as the story twines itself around and through his thoughts. It's one that the Archivist has heard before, but he laps it up greedily all the same.

When Oliver finishes his account several minutes later, Jon feels brighter, more alert, reinvigorated. The disgust and shame will creep up on him later, he’s sure, but for now, it feels right. He feels whole. 

“Right,” Oliver says. “That’s, uh, it, I suppose. Maybe you heard me. Maybe you’ll dream.”

Oliver, Jon tries again. This time, for the briefest of moments, he thinks he can hear a subdued hum of static. Can you hear me?

“Then again, maybe I just wasted my breath – but I don’t think so. Honestly, I’m still not exactly sure why I’m here. But you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head.”

You don’t need to rub it in, Jon mutters to himself. 

“Easier to just do what she asks.”

I beg to differ. The static picks up again, more of a persistent buzz this time. Oliver, listen–

“The thing is, Jon, right now you have a choice. You’ve put it off a long time, but it’s trapping you here. You’re not quite human enough to die, but still too human to survive.”

Yes, yes, I know. The buzz becomes a shrill whine. Oliver!

“You’re balanced on an edge where the End can’t touch you, but you can’t escape him. I made a choice. We all made choices. Now you have to–”

Oliver Banks.

“Um?” 

Finally, Jon thinks, exasperated.  

“Jon?” Oliver ventures. “Or, uh – Archivist?” 

I prefer Jon. 

“Huh.” Jon can pick up a soft squeaking noise, as if Oliver just leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how you’re even doing this.”

Neither do I, actually? Jon realizes with a start. But– but I don’t exactly have time to worry about that right now–

“I suppose it’s not unheard of,” Oliver muses, almost to himself. “I’m given to understand that Bouchard has the ability to broadcast knowledge into another person’s mind. I didn’t realize it was something the Archivist could do as well. I thought your job was more… pulling answers out of people. Acquiring knowledge, not giving it.” 

I’d… really rather not dwell on it, Jon says, tamping down the momentary burst of fear that surges through him at the thought of comparing himself to Jonah. His mind has gotten trapped in that particular rut many times before, and it's never a good place to be.

Either Oliver respects Jon's wishes or simply doesn't care to waste energy pressing him on the matter, because he drops it and moves on to the main reason for his visit.  

“Have you made your choice, Jon?”

I made my choice months ago. I just couldn’t figure out how to act on it. How to actually wake up.

“I confess, I’m surprised to hear you declare your choice with such confidence.” Jon hears fabric rustling – Oliver crossing his legs, maybe? “I was led to believe that you were… almost pathologically indecisive.”

I… usually am, Jon admits, though Oliver’s phrasing is a bit too incisive for his comfort. But I made my choice, and I’d like to follow through on it now.

“Ah. Well.” Oliver sounds… perturbed. It almost reminds Jon of himself when he's unable to Know something. “Not sure why you couldn't before?” 

Jon wonders if it has something to do with being newly well-fed. Or maybe he just needed direct contact from the End, a psychopomp of sorts to facilitate his transition in either direction? He still doesn't know exactly when he received the End's mark the first time around – whether it branded him the instant he technically died in the Unknowing, or if it needed time to fully settle. It's possible that encountering an Avatar of the End was necessary to finalize the mark – in which case, maybe Jonah or the Web didn't want him waking until that happened? But would they really have enough sway over Terminus to delay its work? Influencing one of its Avatars to awaken Jon is one thing; postponing or halting it would be something else entirely.

Speaking of, he can feel Oliver’s eyes riveted on him, quietly observing and calculating as if trying to get an accurate estimate of the Archivist.   

“But – but you can now. I think. The roots are…” Oliver falters, and Jon thinks he can feel him lean in closer. “There’s something… off about you. The roots, they look… sick. Wrong. And the threads are – tangled.” Another pause. “Can you explain it?”

Not here. I don’t want Elias listening in.

“Doesn’t he have eyes everywhere?”

Almost everywhere. The tunnels under the Institute are… a blind spot, sort of.  

“And you would discuss it there?”

Within reason, Jon says warily.

He doubts whether Oliver would ever be an ally – judging from the statement he gave during the apocalypse, he’s too fatalistic to intervene one way or the other – but he doesn’t feel like an enemy, either. Maybe he would be interested in sharing information, or even just letting Jon bounce strategies and theories off of him? It might be helpful, having a mostly-neutral Avatar to consult.

Also, there's just something… lonely about Oliver.

If nothing else, it would be a break from the monotony for you, Jon adds.  

“I don’t know how I feel about visiting the Institute again. Not out of concern for my safety, mind. Just don’t like the feeling of being watched. Feels… I don’t know. Slimy.”

That’s one word for it.

“Apologies. I’m not a wordsmith, if you haven’t noticed.” Jon can hear Oliver shifting uneasily in his seat now. 

I don't know, I’m sure you could put together a decent sermon on… existentialist philosophy, or macroeconomics, or the inevitability of death and taxes, or – or something.   

“I’m not exactly pleasant company.” Oliver’s tone is matter-of-fact, but Jon thinks he can detect a trace of melancholy underneath the customary stoicism. “People tend to be… unsettled when they meet a walking, talking memento mori.”

No more unsettling than talking to an incarnation of paranoia, invasive surveillance, and terrible knowledge, Jon says sardonically. Maybe some of the more vexing aspects of academia as well. 

Oliver chuckles at that, but cuts it short. It's almost like he didn't expect it. Jon thinks maybe he can understand. Go long enough without laughing, and then when you finally do, it will come out sounding all wrong to your ears. Like an out-of-tune piano, Martin said once. You have a nice laugh, Jon. You just aren't used to hearing it, and right now it's a bit rusty from disuse.  

“I don’t know that I was ever good company,” says Oliver after a moment. 

Can’t be any worse than I am. Maybe you’re just out of practice.

“Perhaps,” Oliver says evasively.

Well, consider it an open invitation. Just… I don't know. Keep it in mind.

“Not like I can forget anything.”

Quite a curse, isn’t it?

“I’ve made my peace with it.”

I know, Jon replies. He can’t help but envy Oliver to an extent – how secure he is in his role, his tranquil embrace of his destiny.

Jon isn’t being fair, though, is he? Oliver went through hell to achieve his current level of humble acceptance, and regardless of either of their current perspectives on fate and free will, the fact remains that they were both forced into making impossible choices under duress. They’ve both become something they never expected or wanted to be, and… it doesn't seem like Oliver deserved it.

On his good days, Jon thinks maybe he didn't, either.

“I’ll… consider the offer.”

Jon can detect just a hint of curiosity beneath the reticence. Before he can respond, though, he hears the door open and close.   

“Can I help you?” Georgie’s voice, slicing through the quiet like the crack of a whip.

“Oh, I – I’m a friend,” Oliver says quickly, clearly taken by surprise. “Of Jon’s.”

“Are you, now.” The hard edge to her tone turns icy. Jon can’t help feeling sorry for Oliver, no doubt pinned under that uncompromising stare of hers.   

“Uh, y-yes.”

“Right. Just haven’t seen you visiting before.”

“Um, I’ve… been out of town!”

If Jon had any control over his body, he would put his head in his hands right now. Apparently Oliver is just as bad at lying on the spot as he is. Unfortunately for Oliver, Georgie happens to be a natural lie detector.

“Right,” Georgie replies flatly. “The nurse didn’t say anyone else was here.”

“Oh! Oh – oh, well. Sorry if I surprised you.”

“It’s fine.”

It’s not.

“I’m Antonio,” Oliver blurts out. Jon cringes with secondhand embarrassment.

“Sure,” Georgie says, voice dripping with disdain. “I think you’re done here.”

“Oh. Uh, right…” Oliver’s chair scrapes against the floor as he stands up. “Have I upset you, miss–”

Bad move. Georgie hates being referred to as 'miss.'

“No, you just remind me of someone.”

“Ah. I’m sorry. Were they–”

“Evil. Yes.”

“Uh. Okay, then.” It’s almost funny, an Avatar of death itself shrinking under Georgie’s scrutiny. Then again, she would likely be a force to be reckoned with even if she hadn’t lost her ability to feel fear. “Well, I just – well, I guess I should just go.”

“I guess you should.”

“Um. Goodbye, Jon. I guess I–”

“Goodbye!” Georgie says, putting on a transparently false cheery tone.

Jon can make out Oliver’s harried footsteps as Georgie ushers him out. Once the door clicks shut, Jon hears her approach him again.

“Sorry about that, Jon, but you really don’t need friends like tha– wait. Did…?” More footsteps; then the door opens again, and Jon hears Georgie’s voice echoing distantly down the corridor. “Hey! Hey, get back here! I need to talk to you!”

Jon wonders if Oliver's already gotten away.

Oh, Jon thinks suddenly, she’s… not going to be pleased if she finds out I tried to make friends with a death prophet. Neither is Martin, come to think of it.

Jon feels a twinge of guilt and worry. He’s not yet woken up, and already he’s doing things that Georgie might see as careless and self-destructive. Still… he doesn’t think Oliver is evil, or even particularly threatening. If anything, Jon thinks he knows now how Naomi must have felt, watching some eldritch monster fumble a conversation like any other mundane human grappling with social anxiety.

Well, what’s done is done. Oliver might not even take Jon up on the offer. No use worrying about it at the moment.

He needs to focus on waking up.

Unfortunately, Oliver didn’t explain exactly how Jon should go about waking up.

His first instinct is to think of Martin. With practiced ease, he reaches out for a memory, and–  

Jon has always had an unexpected sweet tooth. He never really mentioned it to any of his coworkers. It’s not that he’s self-conscious about it; it’s more that he just never thought to share unsolicited facts about himself. Most people would take one look at Jon and either assume he takes his tea black, or that he’d prefer to fix it himself – and the latter wasn’t an unfair assumption. Martin, though… somehow, he figured it out.

It took some trial-and-error, though at the time, Jon never noticed that Martin was deliberately trying to puzzle it out. Eventually he settled on the exact right formula, and Jon – well, by the time he realized, it felt like too much time had passed to remark on it. He was never very good at compliments anyway, giving or receiving. From that point forward, though, whenever Jon was having a particularly rough day – which, by their standards, was saying a lot – Martin would make Jon’s tea sweeter than usual. It was such a small gesture in the face of the horrors that permeated all of their lives, but in retrospect, it spoke volumes.

Jon took forever to notice all those little gestures. He still feels ashamed of how ungrateful he was back then, but it just never occurred to him that anyone would put that much time or effort into learning his preferences, especially something so inconsequential as how he takes his tea. Jon barely put any thought into his own comfort, let alone that of others.  

But Martin isn’t like Jon.

Jon has long marveled at how kindness seems to come so naturally to Martin. As much as it might seem like he just preternaturally knows the exact right things to say and do when he sees someone hurting, though, it was never effortless: Martin cares deliberately, painstakingly, actively. He prides himself on that attention to detail, on all the little acts of kindness and consideration that, when put together, make him the most thoughtful person Jon has ever met. 

Of course, Jon also feels a wrench in his heart every time he thinks about how and why Martin cultivated that caretaker skill set in the first place. They talked about a lot of things, after the Lonely, and the truth had come out little by little: Martin had never had anyone in his life who loved him unconditionally. From an early age, he tried desperately to curry favor with a mother who resented him for reasons he could not help and that she would never explain. It bled into all areas of his life. Every adult role model, every passing friendship, each of his few short-lived intimate relationships was a link in a long chain of appeasing and sacrificing and carefully policing himself to meet others’ expectations at the cost of his own vivid inner life – and never once did he receive anything meaningful in return. For too long, Jon was a link in that chain himself. 

Martin had learned to measure his worth by whether and how he could be of use to others, and always found himself wanting. Jon could relate to that unhealthy preoccupation with making himself useful, but for him, it manifested as workaholic tendencies, harsh self-criticism, and a fear of letting anyone get so close that it would actually hurt when they inevitably grew tired of him. At the time, he would have said he just had a preference for his own company. (Funny, in retrospect, considering he's never been good company for himself.) Martin sought to be noticed and loved; Jon ran headlong in the other direction, unable to tolerate the vulnerability of being known or the risk of being abandoned.

He suspects that Martin would be compassionate regardless of his circumstances. And it's admirable, it's beautiful, it's brave, and Jon loves that about him – but Martin shouldn't have had to go through hell in the process of nurturing that trait. Trauma didn't help him grow. It only twisted his definition of caring until it became an instrument of self-harm. As they navigated their relationship, Martin did get better at setting boundaries and communicating his needs. It never made him any less caring towards Jon or anyone else. He just learned that he deserved compassion as well - from others and from himself.  

Jon will always be in awe of how after everything – how Jon treated him in the beginning, how Jon left him alone and grieving in the aftermath of the Unknowing, how thoroughly the Lonely pervaded his life – Martin never once lost that instinct. He admitted to Jon that by the time Peter threw him into the Lonely, caring didn’t feel natural anymore. He was too numb and isolated to really feel a connection to other people. His empathy had been drained away. But even in its absence, Martin still made the conscious decision to care. He still thought that human connection and compassion were important, even if he believed that he couldn’t experience those things himself.

After the world ended, when Jon was deep in his grief and hopelessness, Martin stayed by his side. Jon told him that it was no longer a world where they could trust comfort – and Martin responded with patience and kindness. He put comfort into a world where it seemed like none could exist. Jon will always be in awe of how Martin could just… do that, and with such confidence – with such stubbornness.

I think our experience of the universe has value, Martin had told Simon Fairchild once. Even if it disappears forever.

It didn't matter to Martin whether or not the universe noticed or witnessed or cared. What mattered was that he cared, and the fact that he cared would never go away – even when the inevitable day came when there was no one and nothing left to remember them. Those stubborn acts of compassion meant something to him in the moment, and their meaning lingered long after Jon lost him.

To hope, to care, to try – these things had meaning; these things were worth it, no matter how bleak circumstances became. It mattered to Martin, and so it mattered to Jon. As an anchor, it paled in comparison to actually having Martin at his side, but Jon held fast to it all the same: a reminder of the kinder, gentler side of humanity that could be kept alive even at the end of the world, even in the face of untold horrors and insurmountable odds. Time and time again, it was a lighthouse that kept him from getting lost in the Archive's sea of terrible knowledge.  

And right now, Martin is Lonely, but he isn't lost. He'll be okay. He has to be. Jon just has to find his way back to him. He’s done it before; he can do it again. He just has to wake up. 

“–m trying – help – came to me.”

Lost in thought, Jon almost doesn’t register the voices. They’ve been there in the background for a few minutes now, he realizes belatedly – they just hadn’t penetrated his conscious awareness. It’s like listening through six feet of soil – he curses his brain for immediately reaching for that mental image – and he strains to translate the dampened noise into coherent words.

“I came to Melanie.”

Georgie!

“Well, sorry. Right now, I’m it.”

Distantly, Jon can hear the steady ticking of a clock. He spares a moment to be thankful that he couldn’t hear it the entire time he was asleep. It would have made his restlessness even more intolerable, and – as his thoughts veer off track, the voices go muffled again. Damn it.

It takes him a few seconds to refocus his attention.

“– don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder?”

Basira.

“You’re the detective,” Georgie says.

“And you’re sure it was him who left it?”

“I mean, the nurses said there were no others visitors, so…” Georgie takes a breath. “Unless it appeared by magic?” A pause; Jon can practically hear Basira’s eyebrows raise. “What, seriously?”

“I don’t know,” Basira sighs. “The whole tape thing is… I don’t know.”

To be honest, Jon doesn’t Know, either. That was always one of the things that the Beholding kept to itself, much to his chagrin. 

“Right, well… I showed you like you asked, so–”

Breathe, Jon tells himself. Time to wake up.

“Shh,” Basira interrupts. Jon can hear movement nearby. “Down here.”

Come on. Inhale–

Jon can feel his lungs expand ever so slightly.

“I told you.”

Good. Exhale, now.

Jon’s lungs contract, and some of the feeling starts to come into his extremities. He experimentally tries to move his hands and one of his fingers twitches, brushing against the coarse hospital linens. At least it's something. 

“This is the one?”

Wake up, Jon, he tells himself, attempting to overlay his thoughts with compulsion. He tries to wiggle his toes, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten the memo just yet. This is the part where you woke up before. Just – just wake up–

“Sure.”

Jon feels a brief stab of panic – Why can’t I wake up? – and then he feels his heart stutter in his chest. A telltale pins-and-needles sensation begins to spread in his fingers and – this is probably the first time he’s been relieved to experience the precursors to a panic attack.

It’s a good sign, he tells himself. You’re connected to your body again, so just– 

“You don’t sound very sure,” Basira says.

It isn’t working. Why isn’t it working?

Come on, open your eyes–

“I mean – I don’t know. It might be a different model, maybe? I thought it was plastic – but yeah.”

Just sit up, just – wake up, Jon.

Nothing.

Neither Basira nor Georgie speak. The ticking of the clock is deafening.

Wait, Jon thinks. What if…

“So what does it mean?” Georgie says eventually.

Open your eyes, Archivist.

His eyes fly open and he sits bolt upright with a gasp.

“Jon!” Georgie yelps, as Basira simultaneously breathes, “Jesus.”

Clutching his throat with one hand, Jon continues to struggle for air in deep, rasping gulps. Each breath comes with a wrenching pain and an uncomfortable tightness in his chest, his lungs protesting after months of disuse and refusing to completely expand, feeling as though they're packed with shattered glass.

Eventually, although he can still only manage half-breaths, he looks up at Georgie and Basira. Intending to apologize for startling them, he opens his mouth and– 

The tape recorder under his bed clicks on with an earsplitting, static-leaden whine.

Both women start again, and Jon’s posture goes rigid, his other hand coming up to rest against his throat.

Sorry, he tries to say again, but nothing comes out, and the tape recorder emits another blast of white noise.

Basira and Georgie are watching him closely now – Georgie with concern, Basira with suspicion. Jon looks back with terrified eyes, panic blanketing him with a weight reminiscent of the Buried.

No, Jon thinks to himself, not again–

As his vision starts to blur, both trembling hands leave his neck and reach up to cover his mouth.   

“Jon,” Georgie says gently, approaching his bedside again, “what’s wrong?”

Jon’s eyes squeeze shut and he shakes his head frantically. He tries desperately to stifle the whimper building in his chest, but it’s creeping up on him anyway.

“Breathe, Jon.” When Georgie rests her hand gently on his shoulder, he flinches violently away. She pulls back, holding both hands up palms-out in a pacifying gesture. “Okay,” she says evenly, “okay. No touching.”

Jon has had these episodes for most of his life. Georgie witnessed more than a few while they were dating, though they were nowhere near as frequent then as they are now. It's been awhile, but Georgie easily slips into the same soothing tone she would always use. 

His brain is already tuning her out, though.

I can’t – I can’t–

The Archive prowls forward and settles in just behind his eyes, an opportunistic vulture watching intently for its next meal. If he really needs to use his voice, the library is available for reference. There are plenty of statements from which he can borrow. If it isn't enough, he can always curate more. He just has to–

No – please, no–

Who is he even talking to?

Jon draws his knees up and locks his arms around them, curling his shoulders in and hunching forward to hide his face. He takes a shuddering breath in. It comes out as a strangled sob. The tears brimming in his eyes finally spill over, sending twin streaks trickling down his cheeks.

What is he supposed to do now?

Chapter Text

There are hushed voices coming from somewhere deep below the unbroken whine of static filling his ears. Nearer, Georgie is saying something, but her words are too garbled for Jon to wring any meaning out of them. He isn’t sure exactly how long it’s been since he woke up, but he can feel his muscles cramping from holding the same position for some time now, curled tight and taut and small.

…catatonia: a state of –

Fuck off, Jon thinks dully.

At least he’s not crying anymore. That stopped some time ago, all of a sudden between one moment and the next. Now he just feels hollowed out and raw. He knows what he would see if he looked in the mirror: puffy, reddened eyes, so reminiscent of a human – but with a glint of something hungry and monstrous behind them. Any sympathy or concern that anyone might feel at first glance would be quashed with one long look into those eyes, leaving only fear and revulsion and hostility in their wake. And they would be right to fight or flee or freeze, just as they might when confronted with any other predator. 

Jon keeps his eyes closed.

“– a sedative,” comes an unfamiliar voice, finally reaching him through the haze.

“Does he look like he needs a sedative?”

Basira, Jon recognizes.

“We – we should really do some – some tests…” The first voice trails off uncertainly. A nurse, Jon assumes. He can feel the apprehension coming off them in waves. 

No one knows what to do with him. There is no standard of care for a patient who spent the last six months as a seeming corpse with frantic brain activity as its only signs of life.

A zombie, Jon recalls wryly. The statement calls to him from within Basira’s bag: a taunt, a balm, and a poison all at once. He pushes the thought of it away.

None of the hospital staff like entering his room, he Knows. They certainly don’t want to deal with him now he’s awake. His circumstances present a medical marvel – the kind of mystery that most researchers would kill for a chance to study – but their curiosity has been tempered by that overpowering sense of wrongness emanating from him. They are wisely dissuaded by the sheer dread of coming close to something so unquestionably inhuman. 

Most people aren’t so curious that they would run headlong towards an ominous fate like the first person to die in a horror film, he supposes. It’s just one more way in which Jon was – is – such an easy target for someone like Jonah Magnus.   

Distantly, Jon can feel himself start to shiver.

There’s movement to his right as Georgie sits on the edge of the bed, within arm’s reach but careful to leave a buffer of empty space between them. She tells him that he’s safe – he’s not, and neither is anyone else while he still exists in the world – and that she’s here – for now, but once she realizes how far gone he is, she’ll leave again – and that they’ll sort it all out – yes, and when they do, they’ll never stop looking at him like he’s a monster, and isn’t he?

The door closes behind the nurse, but the fear lingers for several minutes afterwards, like blood diffusing through water.  

“Jon,” Basira begins, her tone resolute and impersonal.

“Give him a minute,” Georgie says.

“He’s had a minute. He’s had six months.” There is no malice in her voice, only a bone-deep exhaustion. Basira has been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders since the Unknowing. She’s barely had a chance to mourn Daisy; she’s wound tight from hypervigilance, made worse by the Flesh’s attack on the Archives; she’s had to put practicality above all else, because sentimentality is a luxury that has long since been stolen from her. “He needs to answer some questions.” 

Georgie huffs and turns back to Jon.

“Jon, can you hear me?”

He nods without looking up.

“Are you nonverbal?”

Jon can feel a faraway part of himself balk at the clinical flavor of the word. Intellectually, he can appreciate having a term to summarize nebulous human experiences like this. Emotionally, he has difficulty tolerating how exposed the practical application of those terms makes him feel.

Besides, the word doesn’t really apply to this situation, does it? Not in the traditional sense, at least. Not completely. So he shakes his head no.

He takes a deep breath and reluctantly looks inward to the Archive. There’s a spark of excitement, or relief, or maybe smug vindication from that alien part of himself when he finally gives in to the need, and he tries his best to ignore it and get it over with. He doesn’t delve too deeply, instead settling on the first thing that might work.

“I’m sorry, it won’t let me say the words,” he says, voice strained and scratchy with months of neglect.

“O…kay,” Georgie says. “I guess that’s a no?”

“Hmm.” Basira doesn’t say anything else.

Jon starts picking through his library again, but nothing jumps out at him. His thoughts feel sluggish, his mind packed with cotton. Or cobweb. Usually he’d shudder at that thought, but right now, he’s just too tired for that familiar fear to actually reach him through all the fog. He’s just spent months literally sleeping like the dead; why is he so tired?

When a full minute passes without a reply, Basira speaks up again. 

“Georgie, could you give us some time alone?” 

“No.” The immediacy of the refusal surprises Jon. He feels Georgie’s eyes on him, and he tenses. “I’m staying, Jon.”

“I need to talk to him.”

“Then talk to him.”

“I thought you didn’t want to be involved in Institute business.”

Georgie hesitates, and Jon finally looks up at her. He’s careful not to make eye contact. It’s alright, he wants to say, you don’t have to stay – but he can’t.

“…anyone who doesn’t want to be a part of it, they can…” Jon says instead, faltering when he can’t find a good way to express the rest.

Back to the charades, I suppose, he thinks sullenly. He holds one hand out and walks the middle and index finger of his other hand across his upturned palm.

“Why are you–” Georgie cuts herself off with a short exhale. “Do you want me to stay?”

Jon bites his lip. “Probably putting you in danger.”  

“Yeah, probably, but that’s not the question I asked.” She sighs when she sees Jon’s blank expression. “Look, the only way I can think to approach all of… this is to break it into smaller pieces. It doesn’t mean I’m committing to anything else, it doesn’t mean that I can’t change my mind, it doesn’t mean that I can’t walk away later. I’m not asking whether I should stay, and I’m not offering to get involved indefinitely or unconditionally. Right this moment, all I’m asking is whether you want me to physically leave this room – for now – and come back later.”

For a few minutes, Jon says nothing. If the question had been whether it’s safe to be near him, she already knows that his answer would be an emphatic no. Unlike him, Georgie knows when to cut her losses and leave. It would be condescending to assume that she needs him to protect her from her own choices, especially considering how, of the two of them, she’s the one who actually has a self-preservation instinct. She doesn’t have a choice, really. She can’t feel fear – one of the most basic survival tools – and as a result, she has to evaluate her circumstances much more constantly and painstakingly than others.

It must be exhausting, Jon thinks to himself. He knows what hypervigilance is like. Even if Georgie can’t experience the fear that goes along with it, it probably still saps her energy in much the same way.

He tries to force himself back on track. The question: Does he want her to physically leave in this moment? 

No. He really, really doesn’t.

Jon closes his eyes, and Naomi’s statement is the first thing his mind touches: “Could you stay please?”  

“Okay.” Georgie looks at Basira. “I’m staying.”

Jon feels some of the tension leave his shoulders, but he can’t help feeling selfish.

“Are you really okay with that?” Basira says, eyeing Jon. He can detect the unspoken question: You know what I’m going to ask. Do you really want her to hear the answer?

He does. Georgie deserves to know. They all do. What he doesn’t want is to hear what she has to say to him after the truth comes out.

But he nods anyway.

“Fine. What are you?” Basira says without preamble.

“’Are you secretly a monster?’ probably would have been a great opener,” Jon says acidly.

He flinches as the words leave his mouth. They were Sasha’s once – the real Sasha – said with a hint of playfulness, but now they just sound bitter. He’s fully aware that he has an overflowing stock of resentment bottled up inside him, hidden somewhere deep underneath all the layers of guilt and grief and self-loathing, but he wasn’t expecting the vitriol to slip out quite so easily. He really, really can’t afford to start burning bridges, especially so early on.   

But Basira seems unruffled.

“Alright,” she says with a shrug. “Are you?”

It’s complicated, he does not say.

When he reaches up to run a hand through his hair, the movement jostles the hospital bracelet affixed to it, catching his eye. He brings his hand back down and stares at it, hanging loosely from his wrist. He’s always been scrawny, but his arms look thinner than usual. Fragile. With a pang, he notices the scarring on his wrists, left there from where the ropes cut into him during his month in captivity with the Circus. By the time the world ended, they had faded somewhat. As they are now, they’re impossible to miss.

SIMS, JONATHAN, the wristband reads. Date of birth. Sex. Blood type. Patient identification number. Barcode. An allergy alert: amoxicillin.

Is he still human enough here in the past for an allergic reaction to pose a threat? He could Know, he supposes, but–

“Jon?” Basira prompts.

He sighs, closes his eyes, and consults the Archive once again. 

“It seemed almost human, from a distance, but as it got closer, I saw that it was–”  

Jon quickly skims through statements looking for an appropriate fragment.

“…some newly-birthed monster,” he settles on. It’s blunt, and a bit petulant, but he may as well be honest. He resigns himself to whatever comes next.

Martin would have hated to hear him think like this.

Martin’s not here, some destructive, cruel part of his mind supplies.

“Why are you talking like that?” There’s the faintest tinge of aggravation in Basira’s tone now. 

Before Jon can answer, Georgie gives him a skeptical, chiding look. “I doubt it's that simple, Jon. Why don’t you try that again?”

“I could see myself becoming one of those people and I fought very hard against the feeling of wrongness that seemed to be trying to worm itself into my mind,” he amends. Better. Probably more accurate, if he’s being kind to himself. (He’s rarely kind to himself.)

“That sounds more constructive than just giving up and deciding you’re a monster,” Georgie says.

She must be baffled by the unusual quality of his speech, but it seems she’s trying not to draw attention to it. Probably thinks it’s some neurological aftereffect of the coma. Not-coma. Whatever. Who is he kidding? Georgie is sharp. She must suspect that this is some supernatural nonsense – and there’s a simple, straightforward way to confirm it for her.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be the same person I was before.”  

“I think that could be said of anyone. We all change from moment to moment, and – wait.” Georgie gives him a shrewd look as she registers the cadence with which he speaks. It’s undeniably familiar, but it’s not him. It’s his voice, but those aren’t his words. “Was that my…”

“Statement – regarding the last words of a possible corpse,” Jon says wearily.

“Jon,” Basira says, her eyes widening just barely, “are you quoting statements?”  

“The words repeated, as though on a recorded loop.”  He gives an affirmative nod, just in case his meaning is unclear – which is often the case. 

“Care to explain why?”

“I started to say something – but my voice died in my throat,” he says.

Then: “…but it – it didn’t seem to be working right; all I could hear from it was the – faint noise of static, and…”  

They probably don’t care how it feels, though, do they? They just want to know what it makes him now. His hands flutter in agitation as he tries to redirect, mind racing to find another statement.  

“Okay, alright, I get the gist,” Basira says. There is a long, considering pause. “Can you just… write it down?”

The simple answer is no, but the easiest way to make them understand is with a demonstration. He holds one palm flat and with the other hand mimics writing on it. 

Reaching into her bag, Basira produces a small notepad with a pen stuffed into the wire spiral binding. Jon pulls the pen out, rips the cap off with his teeth, and–

“Seriously, Jon?” Basira complains.

“Honestly, what did you expect?” Georgie snorts. “You can’t tell me Jon’s desk isn’t a graveyard of gnawed-up pens.”

Jon manages a tiny smirk at that. Most people were well-acquainted with his treatment of writing utensils after the first week of working alongside him. It had quickly become an office joke. About a month into his tenure as Head Archivist, he’d managed to chomp down on an exploded ballpoint pen. Tim had found him at the bathroom sink twenty minutes later, still trying to get the ink off his face and hands – and, of course, never let him live it down.

Well, until Jon burned the bridge between them, anyway. The good-humored ribbing and inside jokes gradually dwindled away, only to be replaced with corrosive distrust and resentment.

Jon’s smile fades just as rapidly as it had appeared. He flips to an empty page of the notebook.

He sets out with the intention to write a sentence of his own: Regardless of the mode of communication – verbal, written, sign – I can only borrow from statements.

It sounds too stiff, too academic, but it doesn’t matter. The moment the tip of the pen touches paper, Jon’s hand seizes. The tape recorder underneath the bed emits a brief crackle. When Jon tries to press down and begin writing, his fingers and wrist start convulsively twitching. A scalding pain starts to seep through his fingers and crawl up his arm, the recorder’s static oscillating along in time with the throbbing. When it upsweeps into a shrill screech, Georgie starts.

“Jon–”

Picking the pen up off the page, Jon holds up one trembling finger: Wait.

With a pained hiss, he shakes his hand out until the ache recedes. When he starts writing this time, it’s with the intention of reproducing a verbatim line from the statement of Jane Prentiss, regarding a wasps’ nest in her attic: I have tried to write it down, to put it into terms and words you could understand.  

The words flow easily. The handwriting is a nearly illegible scrawl, but that has nothing to do with the Archive. Jon has always had poor handwriting, and it’s only gotten worse since his encounter with Jude. While his dominant hand is still usable, the burn scar contracture still affects his mobility and coordination to some extent.

He’s tried grabbing individual words from statements to piece together a novel sentence before, but just like speaking a single word in isolation replays every instance of it recorded in the Archive and leaves him reeling in the aftermath, trying to write a standalone word is risky. When he writes a word with the express intention of removing it from the context of a statement, every occurrence of the word floods him all at once. The force of it always overwhelms him before he can even start on the next word in his intended sentence. Usually he ends up dropping his writing utensil. Sometimes he passes out. Always it’s unpleasant. 

It’s as if whatever power is enforcing the rules knows when he’s trying to bend them. Or Knows, more likely. Assuming he can assign self-awareness to the Ceaseless Watcher, that is.

Stop, he tells his wayward brain. Stay on task.   

He shoves the pen back into the notebook’s spiral binding and hands it back to Basira, who returns it to her bag. The cap he keeps for himself, rolling it between his fingers.

“What about BSL?” Georgie suggests.

Jon shakes his head no.

“How do you know?” Basira asks.

There are two answers to that. The first is that he just Knows. The second is that he’s tried. Martin knows a limited amount of signs, but Jon’s hands never cooperated when he tried to copy Martin’s motions. His fingers never wanted to curl into the correct shapes, his joints would lock up, and subtle movements would turn into violent tremors. Once, in a fit of stubborn frustration, he kept pushing back against the thing controlling his body. His arms went limp and numb, and he couldn’t use them for hours after.

Simple nonverbal signals – nodding, shaking his head, giving a thumbs up – seem to be, for the most part, whitelisted. Most charades and expressionistic gestures will also pass through the Archive’s filter. Formalized signing, though, is usually blocked.

The deciding factors seem to be intentionality and whether or not an attempt at communication is deemed to fit the definition of formal language. Sign languages, systems of writing, spoken words – all off-limits unless being used to reproduce the Archive’s existing records. The more imprecise and abstract the attempted communication, the more likely it is to escape the Archive’s strict conceptualization of language.

He and Martin experimented a bit with illustration and found mixed success. It was difficult to ascertain any concrete limits. More abstract drawings are easier to produce, but it tends to leave him drained and with a splitting headache regardless of how successful the attempt is. Intent typically seems to matter more than the result – which is probably for the best. Jon is no more of an artist than he is a poet, and it shows.  

Any time Jon tried to ask the Beholding for clarification on the rules governing his new-and-impaired communication abilities, it gave him nothing but static in return. He and Martin had to find things out mostly by trial-and-error. Luckily for Jon, Martin is observant and intuitive when it comes to reading people, and he’s a poet with a mind for the abstract. He was usually able to interpret Jon’s meaning with alarming speed and precision, and whenever Jon grew frustrated with his inability to express himself in a way that felt right, Martin would pose yes-or-no questions to help him narrow it down. He would always keep going until Jon was satisfied that he was understood. Even when they were in disagreement. 

But Martin isn’t here, Jon’s treacherous brain reminds him again.

“Let me guess,” Basira sighs. “You just know.”

Jon gives a tired shrug. Even if he could use his own words, he may have had the same response. He’s never managed to have a conversation about his ability to Know that didn’t leave him feeling defeated. Sometimes it doesn’t seem worth trying to explain.

“Alright,” Basira mutters to herself, rubbing her temples now. “This makes things more complicated.”

You think? Jon wants to snap. He’s thankful that he can’t. None of this is Basira’s fault; she doesn’t deserve his ire.

“So, what does this mean?”  she continues.

“I often find myself locked in a sense of esoteric paralysis on how to proceed,” Jon quips, borrowing from Adelard Dekker this time. He wonders if Dekker would have tried to kill him on the spot. He wonders whether he would have been right to do so.

Georgie stifles a laugh. Jon can hear the relief coloring it, and one corner of his mouth twitches into a smile again. She’s intimately familiar with his ill-timed gallows humor, and the fact that he can still draw on it so readily is a good sign. Another small piece of evidence added to the Jonathan-Sims-isn’t-too-far-gone column. She wants to believe it’s still him, he Knows, and wants to believe that he can get better – but there’s still a tiny, nagging ghost of doubt somewhere deep in her mind. He doesn’t blame her for that. 

Basira isn’t as amused.

“Jon,” she groans, “please be serious.”

“It was definitely human once I could see, as it grasped desperately” – a skip ahead – “it was trying to say: ‘I’m sorry.’”  

“It’s fine, just…” She sighs. “Try to answer the question.”

Jon closes his eyes again, brow furrowing in concentration.

“…so aware of the position I’m in, and keen to use that power to actually help people.” Referencing Tova McHugh’s statement makes him nauseous – the hatred and disgust he felt the first time he read it was directed at himself as much as it was at her. But it’s a fair comparison, considering what he was doing back then. “I’m trying to do good,” he adds, and hopes it sounds more sincere than Tova’s flimsy rationalizations ever did. 

As expected, Basira looks unconvinced.

“Look, Jon, a lot has happened–”

“He already knows,” Georgie interrupts. “We talked – in the dreams, you know. About Tim and Daisy and Martin. And… and Melanie. He’s the one who told me about the bullet.”

“I thought Melanie figured it out on her own.” Basira’s eyes narrow as she looks at Jon. “How did you–”

“He said he knows things because of the Eye.” Georgie gives him a look that he can’t quite parse. Sympathetic, maybe? An undercurrent of disappointment, but without accusation. Frustration, but not directed at him – rather, it’s for him, on his behalf. “And he said that when he woke up, he would explain everything where Elias couldn’t overhear, but…”

“Maybe somewhere in your library are the words to explain what happened,” Jon says, unable to mask his dejection. “I suppose I’ll just have to try.”  

“Still want to wait and do it in the tunnels?” Georgie waits for Jon’s affirmative. “Fair enough. I brought you a change of clothes.” Jon gives her a questioning look. “I’ve been bringing a bag each time I visit for the last couple weeks, in case you woke up. Just some things you left at my flat. I couldn’t find any trousers, so I just grabbed a pair of my joggers – which are definitely too big for you, but I figured you’d prefer that over a hospital gown.”

Jon feels a grateful smile tug at his lips. He didn’t expect this level of consideration, doesn’t deserve–

“We should probably wait until a doctor signs off on your release, though.” Georgie stands and starts to move towards the door. “I’ll go to the nurse’s station, and–”

Jon shakes his head. “I cannot imagine what they would have thought of a person who could not die.”  

“Well, you can’t just walk out of here. I don’t care how inhuman you think you are, you still need to be cleared for discharge.”

“I’ve no interest in becoming a resident medical marvel.”  

It’s a hollow excuse. The first time around, the hospital staff couldn’t wait to rush him out the door. He doubts they’d ever processed a discharge so quickly before or since.

“Just stay here.” He’s halfway to ripping off his ECG sensors when she shoots him a stern warning glare. “Leave them.”

Jon responds with a peevish huff. Those sensors haven’t been connected to anything since the first week he was here. No one wanted to hear the incessant flatline, and–

Suddenly, he Knows all about the heated argument that was had regarding his DNR status. He had no next-of-kin to consult, so they were hesitant to mark him as DNR in advance. That meant that, since he was unresponsive – and since his case was so unprecedented as to make any speculation regarding an outcome impossible – they should have been trying to resuscitate him.

But they’d already tried that, and the consensus was that he should have been declared dead by the first responders. (Rumor was that his boss of all people had managed to convince them to bring him to the hospital for treatment instead.) Under normal circumstances they would have declared time of death several times over by now and moved him to the morgue – except that brain death hadn’t occurred, and it didn’t seem like the absence of a pulse or respiration was having any effect on that in the slightest. Didn’t that render the entire discussion altogether moot?

And then Jon Knows how the only reason he was admitted and examined for brain activity in the first place was because Elias had a brief chat with the director of the hospital. He was, as always, very persuasive.    

“I don’t want to hear it,” Georgie says when she hears Jon sigh. She stops at the threshold and looks back at him again just as he starts fiddling with the IV cannula in the crook of his arm. He freezes and folds his hands in his lap, like a toddler caught reaching for the cookie jar. “Jonathan Sims, you’d better still be in bed when I come back.”

Jon rolls his eyes, but stays put. As Georgie leaves the room, Basira lets out a soft chuckle.

“No wonder she and Melanie get on so well.”

Jon refocuses at the mention of Melanie’s name. He makes a circular motion with one hand: Go on. When Basira gives him a blank look, he has a quick rummage through his catalog.

“…see any obvious signs of previous slaughter.” Trevor Herbert’s statement leaves a nasty taste in his mouth, but given Basira’s expression, it seems to have gotten his point across.  

“Oh, the bullet?” Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. “Yeah, we, uh… we removed it. Melanie was reluctant at first, but I guess Georgie won her over. She’s… recovering. Physically, at least. She’s still angry, but not like before. Mostly, she just seems lost. And…”

Basira hesitates.

“…whatever protection it might have afforded you is severed.”  

“Don’t read my mind, Jon,” Basira snaps.

Jon shakes his head: I didn’t.  

“Whatever.” She drops into the chair next to his bed. He can see the fatigue in the way her shoulders slump. Basira has always had excellent posture, but right now, she looks ready to crumple. “Brought you a statement, by the way. If you want a fix before we leave.”

Something famished and greedy rears up inside him. It’s only with some difficulty that he manages to force it back. He can feel Basira watching him intently, and he avoids meeting her gaze.

“Well? Do you want it or not? You have that hungry look to you.”

Involuntarily, Jon’s eyes flick to Basira’s bag. He squeezes them shut again, shaking his head.

“Hm.”

Jon opens one eye and chances a glimpse of Basira. Her poker face is as flawless as always.

It’s stale anyway, he tells the persistent thing inside him. You’ve already got that one. Just pull it up and reread it if you want it so badly.  

It continues scratching at the door.

Can’t you just be satisfied with Oliver’s statement and go back to lurking?

He isn’t sure why he’s acting like the craving belongs to something other. The Archivist, the Archive – they’re both him, even if they feel distinct from the human he used to be. It just helps sometimes, to talk to those parts of himself as if they’re backseat drivers. He used to do the same thing to his intrusive thoughts, back when he was still his own person. It wasn’t difficult to adapt his inner monologue to apply it to the Eye’s influence, even if it is ultimately a self-delusion.

When Georgie returns, the nurse trailing behind her looks like she would rather be literally anywhere else.  

Here we go, Jon thinks sourly.

The hospital staff are clearly out of their depth. As it turns out, a rotating cast of specialists have been overseeing his case throughout the past six months, but each of them did so for only as long as it took to hand him off to the next unlucky person in line.

Once he’s disconnected from all the (mostly inoperative) sensors and monitors, a nurse – he drew the short straw, Jon Knows – goes through the motions of taking his vitals a final time. Jon does him the courtesy of keeping his eyes lowered and tries to ignore the way the man avoids turning his back. He does not speak except to give short instructions – sit up, lay back, hold your arm out straight, take a deep breath – and Jon obeys without saying anything in return.

The current attending physician on duty makes only a cursory show of evaluating his condition. During the brief neurological assessment, she makes no comment on the fact that Jon hasn’t verbally answered any questions or even said a word. She’s barely there for twenty minutes before announcing that she should go work on his discharge papers. 

“Shouldn’t he have a treatment plan?” Georgie tries. “Or – or referrals for follow-up, or something?”

“I, ah, have to discuss things with his treatment team,” the doctor says, already halfway out the door.

She doesn’t, Jon Knows. He hasn’t had a treatment team since the first month he was admitted.

“This is ridiculous,” Georgie mutters as the door closes.

Jon reaches out to touch her arm, and shakes his head when she looks at him.

“It is. It’s unprofessional.”

“Understandably, I think – it was entirely my own fault.”  

“Stop that. You’re still a patient, you deserve some sort of – continuity of care.” When Jon chuckles, Georgie shoots him an indignant look. “What? You do.”

Now that there are no lines restricting his movement, he’s finally able to stretch properly. Doing so yields a series of devastating cracks and pops from his joints, and Georgie gives him a horrified look. He just raises his eyebrows at her: What?

When he sidles to the edge of the bed and puts his feet on the floor, Georgie stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to stand?”

No, he’s not, but if he has to sit here a moment longer he’s going to lose his goddamn mind.

Predictably enough, he does have trouble standing on his own at first, but Georgie has no problem supporting his weight. Even when they were dating, she probably could have picked him up if he’d let her, and he weighs even less now. The bathroom is small, and he waves her off when she offers to help him dress. She hasn’t seen the extent of the scarring on his body, and he’d rather her not. Once he demonstrates his ability to stand using the handrail, she agrees to wait outside, but she stands near the door just in case.

Jon shouldn’t be able to stand at all, this soon after waking up from a six-month coma. He should have more muscle atrophy. He should need extensive physical rehab. He should still be in bed. Hell, he should probably be in some research facility somewhere, being poked and prodded and tested every which way.

He keeps waiting for the moment Georgie decides it’s all too much, tells him to take care of himself, and leaves.   

Although he’s been here before and he knows what to expect, he still has to brace himself before looking at his reflection in the mirror. He’s haggard. Gaunt. His hair isn’t as long as it was where – when – he came from, only barely touching his shoulders now. It needs a wash. The burn on his hand is almost fully healed, but newer-looking than he's used to. Same familiar dark circles under his eyes; same familiar speckling of shiny, pockmarked worm scars. His ribs are visible, and – he’s hit with a bolt of panic in the split second before he remembers that, yes, twelve pairs of ribs is the normal amount that he should have. Hopefully this time he can keep all of them.   

The eyes staring back at him – only two – are still his own for now, back to the deep brown they’d been for most of his life before the Archive claimed its place. But he can see something sinister skulking behind them even now, and he knows that everyone else will be able to see it, too.

When he emerges dressed in a What the Ghost hoodie two sizes too big and practically swimming in a pair of Georgie’s joggers, he’s surprised to see that she’s still here. That she hasn’t changed her mind and written him off yet.

“Better?” she asks, and he nods appreciatively, if a bit timidly. “Sorry it’s not more your size.”

Jon doesn’t care. He hasn’t been this comfortable in… well, he doesn’t feel like calculating the time frame of the apocalypse. He doesn’t wait for the Beholding’s disapproval to hit him before he sends it a silent rebuff. At this point, it’s just reflex.

“I found you a wheelchair,” Basira says from across the room. “Just in case you need it.”

The measured look she gives him makes him feel like he’s being tested. It makes sense. The speedier his recovery, the less human he seems. But he isn’t going to feign infirmity. They deserve the truth from him.

There is a familiar dull ache in his bad leg, though. He could do with a cane, but his should be in his office about this time, and he doesn’t want Georgie to have to support half his weight until he has a chance to retrieve it. 

“Well?”

He wavers a moment longer, then nods an affirmative and has a seat.

Just then, the door opens and a nurse enters, a new one this time. Jon makes the mistake of looking up, and when their eyes meet, he Knows that she has a story to tell.

The sound he makes as he claps his hands over his eyes is something like a strangled, panicked whimper.

“Jon?” Georgie places a hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, um… sorry if I startled you, uh – Mr. Sims. I have some paperwork here, we just need some signatures before you–”

When she was nine years old, she was playing with friends in a drainage ditch. It was nearly dusk when they dared her to enter the tunnel, but she always was the bravest of them. She–

Jon digs the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees sparks, rocking back and forth slightly to distract himself from the compulsion snaking its roots through his thoughts.

–spent days wandering the gloom, and all the while, the frantic calls of the search parties echoed off the walls. Whenever she tried to call out a response, it would tighten its grip on her ankle: that warbling, mangled, broken-jawed thing with the–

“Leave it here,” Basira says curtly, crossing the room in a few long strides. “I’ll bring it to you when we’re finished.”

Jon can discern the shape of the statement, but it’s not enough. He needs her story. She needs to tell it in her own words. She has to walk through that tunnel again, relive every twist and turn and shade of terror, and he has to experience it alongside her, all eyes–

“O-okay,” the nurse stammers, “I just – I thought I saw–”

–a second shadow, starkly visible even in the deepest dark, all dislocated joints and distorted–

Basira shuts the door on her mid-sentence and turns to face Jon.

“Jon. What was that?”

“…you’re not going to give the Watcher a statement,” he says, panting shallowly, hands still pressed to his eyelids. “You’re better than that.”  

He isn’t sure whether he’s saying it for himself or for Basira. Both, maybe.

“She… has a statement?” Jon nods. “And you could tell just by looking at her?” Another nod. “That’s… hmm.”

“I could hear in her voice that she was afraid of him.” His elbows dig bruises into his thighs as he leans forward and draws his shoulders in tighter. "I was, too.”  

“Does covering your eyes actually help?” Georgie asks, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. An attempt at grounding him. It helps.

“…it was enough to ease the relentless pressure,” he says, “if only a little bit.”  

Jon pauses for a moment as he selects another statement.

“…wear a cloth across his face – hold my hand in front of my eyes–”

“Oh,” Georgie says. “Hang on.”

She withdraws her hand, but Jon can still feel her standing over him. A few moments later something is being lowered over his face. He goes rigid.

“It’s just my scarf, Jon. I thought we could use it as a blindfold.” Jon signals assent. “Okay. You can put your hands down now. Just keep your eyes closed.”

He waits patiently while she ties the scarf off at the back of his head and adjusts it, ensuring that it covers his eyes completely.

“Better?”

Jon lets out a shaky breath and nods. It’s a lengthy scarf and one end sits in his lap. He takes it in his hands and runs his fingers over the fabric: a nice texture, soft and warm and comforting. He wonders if – no, Knows now – Georgie knitted it herself.

For a few moments the room is quiet but for the scratching of pen on paper as Basira forges Jon’s signature on the paperwork.      

“I’ll go hand this over and then we can get out of here,” she says brusquely. “Don’t take off the blindfold until we’re back in the Archives.”  

Jon wasn’t planning on it.

Chapter Text

Jon is physically alone for the first time since he woke up, and he hates it.

The tunnel is bleak and empty except for a circle of five rickety chairs, brought down by Basira and Georgie in preparation for their… well, calling it a strategy meeting would be generous. It’s bound to be more like an interrogation. A maddening one, considering his current circumstances.

He could sit. He should sit. Instead, he paces – nearly limps, really – in circles near the bottom of the ladder leading up to the trapdoor entrance of the tunnels, practically vibrating with restless energy. Every time he puts weight on his bad leg, a shooting pain races from his knee to his hip, like a spark traveling through a live wire. It’s grounding, in a way. Still, he probably should have stopped by his office first for his cane.

Or he could just take a seat until Georgie and Basira return with the others, but something about sitting there surrounded by four empty chairs makes his loneliness feel more acute.      

Stop being dramatic, he chides himself. They’ll be back soon.  

In his defense, he’s always hated the tunnels, and for good reason. Historically, coming down here has often ended badly for him. The trapdoor is still open, which takes some of the edge off, but ultimately it’s no more comforting to him than a dying nightlight would be to a child in the throes of sleep paralysis: the monster under the bed might just be a hypnogogic hallucination, but try telling that to a terrified child. Even for an adult, knowing that would be no consolation in the moment, when that alien presence in the darkened room is hovering just overhead.

That’s not even a good comparison, though, is it? The monsters that Jon has met down here have all been very, very real. 

He scratches absently at his worm scars, trying not to think about Jane Prentiss and the death knell of a writhing, withering hive. He tries not to think about the Distortion, but he still finds himself double-checking the walls for a door that shouldn’t be there, dreading its sudden manifestation – he really isn’t ready to see Helen again yet. He tries not to think about the NotThem – still down here, just waiting to be set loose again. He tries not to think of Jonah Magnus’ undying body waiting in the Panopticon with its empty eye sockets, or Gertrude’s remains left moldering for months just under their feet, or what became of Jurgen Leitner – and, of course, now that’s all he can think about. 

Jon has seen worse since then, but that sight haunts him: the unrecognizable lump of meat and bone where the man’s face used to be, bits of brain matter and skull fragments littering the floor around him, the steady drip-drip-drip of gore from the lead pipe, its end left hanging over the edge of the desk. When Jon returned to work months later, he would still find overlooked droplets of blood spatter from time to time. It was a constant reminder of his own failing. The answers were right there, and if he had only stayed to listen to what Leitner had to say, maybe Jon could have put all the pieces together sooner. But no, he was overwhelmed and frightened, and he ran away instead of staying to deal with it. And he’d needed a cigarette. 

It should have been enough to turn him off nicotine, but it still took the end of the world for him to leave off smoking. Even then, he’d really only replaced it with a different vice, hadn’t he?

Jon nearly jumps out of his skin at the first squeak of a footfall on the top rung of the ladder.

“Well, Martin isn’t coming,” Basira says as she climbs down.  

“So this was all reasonably distressing, but at least it had the advantage of not being unexpected.”  

Basira reaches the bottom of the ladder and brushes her hands off on her trousers before giving Jon an appraising look.

“I really can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, or if that’s just the best statement you had lying around.”

Jon shrugs. Honestly, it’s a little of both.  

He hadn’t been expecting Basira to return with Martin. It seemed safe to assume that the situation with the Lonely would be more or less the same as it had been the last time. Apparently he was right not to get his hopes up.

“Peter’s office was locked and no one answered when I called. And Martin’s office was empty. Freezing, too, like he was blasting the air conditioning.”

“Lends itself to isolation well,” Jon says distractedly, still pacing. Well, limping. “Too well, sometimes.” 

You’re being ominous again, Martin’s voice plays in Jon’s head – which brings on alternating waves of affection and grief and worry and, yes, pining, all rolled up into a nebulous ball of feeling that Jon… really isn’t equipped to untangle right now. 

The discord must show on his face, because Basira is staring at him, her expression hovering somewhere between unimpressed and curious.

“Uh huh,” she says eventually, opting not to ask for clarification.

The silence that settles between them then is neither awkward nor comfortable. It’s a muffled, creeping sort of tension, like the hush of a courtroom in deliberation: full of sentences not yet determined, culpability not yet assigned, and the looming promise of a judgment to be made. Jon doesn’t know if he’s defendant, plaintiff, or some voiceless, unnamed victim. Maybe all three.

It isn’t long before he hears footsteps above, followed by Georgie descending the ladder. Melanie climbs down after her, Georgie standing at the bottom to steady her.

One look at Melanie, and Jon can see the strain writ large in her demeanor. Her jaw is set and clenched, her spine is braced and rigid, and her entire body looks taut, like a coiled spring brimming with potential energy. She looks, in a word, volatile: a bundle of frayed nerves and brittle composure.

She turns and her sight locks onto Jon, pinning him in place like a moth to a board. She stands stock-still for what feels like an interminable moment, eyes wide and dazed-looking.    

Then, in the span of a blink, she’s directly in front of him, grabbing hold of his jumper in two fists and nearly knocking him off his feet.

“How do I quit, Jon?” Melanie asks, her voice wavering on the edge of breaking. “Tell me, Jon. Tell me – tell me right now or I’ll – I’ll–”

Meeting her eyes fully for the briefest of moments, Jon can see the raw desperation there. The first time around, she was all hatred and rage. There was fear there, too, but the all-consuming wrath of the Slaughter kept it at bay. This time, she’s been stripped of that armor.

Jon and Melanie have always had more in common than either of them like to admit. The insatiable curiosity, the stubborn willfulness, the habitual distrust, the visceral fear of being trapped and controlled. How they’ve both lived their lives on tenterhooks, constantly waiting on bated breath to be underestimated or condemned or dismissed. The preemptive antagonism in which they both cloak themselves to ward off and conceal that chronic feeling of insecurity that hangs over them. It’s really no wonder they rubbed each other the wrong way from the moment they first met.

But Melanie neither wants nor needs that sort of empathy right now, especially from him. It’s difficult enough to weather the sheer vulnerability of being seen and known and understood by another human. When an Avatar of the Eye Sees and Knows someone, it’s like being flayed alive.

And in that fleeting moment, when Jon looks into Melanie’s eyes, he sees – and Sees – himself. When he breaks line of sight, it’s for himself as much as it is for her.

Then Georgie is there, hand on Melanie’s shoulder, her tone of voice so very familiar: unyielding and soothing all at once.

“Hey, hey – he’s going to explain, yeah?”

“I – I–” Melanie makes a distraught, wounded noise.

“Trust me. Jon promised to explain, and he will. Right, Jon?”

“I’m here to provide a statement – and I will,” Jon says, nodding yes, yes, yes, trying to pour as much sincerity into it as he can without actually reestablishing eye contact. “And I promise it will be relevant by the end.” 

Melanie bounces on the balls of her feet, eyes darting to and fro as she wages a war with herself. When she finally releases her grip on him, her fists immediately go up to ball in her hair instead.

“Please?” she says desperately, almost wails, as if Jon is withholding the information arbitrarily, just to see her beg. It stings. He was prepared for this – the bullet is gone, but the effects haven’t completely disappeared just yet, and it was never just the Slaughter fueling Melanie’s distrust and resentment – but it still feels like layering more bruises atop a sore spot. “Please just – just tell me, just–”

“He will, Melanie,” Georgie says gently. “It might take some time – remember I said he’s having trouble speaking? But he’s–”

“Keeping secrets – like Elias–”

Jon visibly flinches. The shame creeps up on him immediately after. His head is bowed, but he Knows that the way she’s looking at him right now is the same way she looks at Elias – at Jonah Magnus.

And what right does he have to take offense to that? It’s not an unexpected comparison. It’s not even an unfair comparison. Even if he was unwitting and unwilling, he was still Jonah’s accomplice. Intent doesn’t matter much when the consequences mean the end of the world, does it? Some actions are unforgivable, no matter the intention, no matter the remorse, and no matter the reparations made in the aftermath. The victims in the domains he passed through, on those rare occasions when they could actually perceive his presence, would see no distinction between him and their tormentors. Even his fellow monsters saw him as an apex predator – and they were right to.   

So, yes, it’s a logical comparison. He’s the one who opened the door. He’s the one with the blood on his hands. He's the one whose existence became synonymous with the Ceaseless Watcher. Jonah didn’t have to lift a finger. Of the two of them, Jon is the one with the true destructive potential.

And just because it hasn’t happened yet from this timeline’s perspective, and just because Jon would readily sacrifice himself before letting it happen again, it doesn’t make the wrong – or the guilt – go away. Even if he’s the only one to remember it, all that suffering happened, and it happened because of him, and he has the power to make it happen again. The potential lurks there, not too far under the surface. It’s a power no one should have, least of all the one who’s actually used it.  

“Can you sit down for me, Melanie?” Georgie is saying now. “Jon can’t explain if we don’t give him some space to talk, yeah?”

Melanie is shaking with pent-up energy, but she allows Georgie to guide her to a nearby chair. She collapses into it and hunches over, bringing her knuckles to her mouth and biting down with a frustrated whimper. One foot is tapping rapid-fire on the floor. The rest of her is drawn taut as a bowstring.

Georgie hooks another chair with her foot and drags it closer until it rests flush with Melanie’s. As soon as she sits, Melanie presses up against her and Georgie puts an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. She allows Georgie to gently guide her hand down and away from her mouth. Jon catches a brief glimpse of the indented tooth marks before Georgie coaxes her fist open to intertwine their fingers together.

“Right,” Basira says, folding her arms and squaring her shoulders. “Talk, Jon. What’s going on?”

For a moment, he just stands there. His right leg is trembling badly now, shot through with pain, so he puts all his weight onto his left. He lets his hands hang at his sides, fingers flexing and rubbing together nervously as he tries to order his thoughts.   

Where to start? How to start? 

He can feel three pairs of eyes boring into him now.

“Jon,” Basira says again.

Just start talking, Jon thinks, and he does.

“The Eye – Jonah – has marked me for something – his talk of a grand ritual – to try and wear the Watcher’s Crown.”  

It comes out all in one breath. For an unbearably long stretch, they all just stare at him.

“Okay, you already need to slow down,” Georgie says, speaking softly so as not to jostle Melanie, whose head now rests on her shoulder. “Who is Jonah, and what's the Watcher’s Crown?” 

“Jonah Magnus?” Basira asks, brow furrowed.

“I will call him ‘Elias,’ for that is how I’ve known him for most of our… acquaintance.”  

“Elias is–”

“…originally known as Jonah Magnus, the founder of this Institute – also as James Wright, the previous head of this Institute.”  

“What?” say all three women simultaneously, Melanie jerking upright now.  

“It was so very close – the grand ritual – would open the door to a world of – the fear,” Jon says before any of them can interrupt further, stopping and starting like a scratched record as he splices together the scattered fragments of a single statement. “We were to slice a hole in the world, and this – fear – would flow through the wound – that I had created.”  

He pauses, debating, before…

“I was complete,” he adds. They should know what he became – what he is.  

“Okay,” Basira says, pacing now, “so Elias – Magnus – whatever – wants to try his turn at a ritual.” She doesn’t wait for Jon’s affirmative before asking the first of many questions that no doubt just skyrocketed to the top of her list: “What’s your part in it?”

“…a battery, a ready source of constant terror.”  

Jon pauses to scan his library.

“…to unlock and open the door.”  

“Right,” Basira mutters, massaging her forehead: a familiar gesture that Jon has seen many times before, whenever she’s trying to solve a problem or devise a strategy. “And how is it you know this?”

“…travel through time,”  Jon says simply, thankful to find those words in exactly that order only once in the Archive’s stores. He isn’t a poet; he's grateful for any opportunity to avoid speaking through symbolism. 

“You have got to be kidding me.” Melanie’s hands curl into white-knuckled fists on her knees.

“I’m honestly not, I’m dead serious.”  

“Bullshit,” Melanie and Georgie say together – Melanie scathingly, Georgie simply in bewildered, almost amused disbelief – just as Basira says, “How?”  

“Statement of Anya Villette, regarding a cleaning job on Hill Top Road.”  

“The Anya Villette who never existed?” Basira asks.

“And then I noticed the crack. It seemed to split the floor right down the middle; it was–”  

“–a scar in reality, that I believe has since been compounded by the interferences of other powers–”  

“I get the idea,” Basira cuts him off. Melanie, face buried in Georgie’s shoulder again, mumbles something unintelligible.

“Well, I don't. Anyone care to enlighten me?” Georgie asks. At Melanie’s muffled reply, she adds, with an indulgent little smile: “Melanie? You have an audience of one right now, and it’s my jumper.”

Melanie picks her head up and scowls at Georgie, who just laughs softly and smooths an unruly lock of hair down behind Melanie’s ear. The gesture seems to have a potent effect on Melanie, whose shoulders relax for the first time since she made her appearance.

“Crack in the foundation of a spooky house,” she says, sounding almost calm now. “May or may not lead to a parallel universe. Or something.”

“Like… what, a wormhole?” Georgie asks.

Melanie shrugs. “Or something.”

Jon doesn’t realize he’s grinning until Melanie glares at him and demands, “What?”

When Jon shakes his head – Nothing, nothing! – Georgie has to stifle a laugh.

“Back to the point,” Basira says.  

“I had been offered the chance to return,”  Jon says simply. He doesn’t exactly have the words to get caught up in semantics right now, even if he wanted to.

“Bullshit,” Melanie mutters again, but there’s little bite to it this time.

“Jon, this is…” There’s a soft hiss as Georgie sucks air in through her teeth. “It’s really hard to believe. You realize that, yeah?”

“But the only other explanation I could come up with was that Alex was lying, and I just needed to look at her to know that was even less likely.”  

Jon keeps his eyes downcast, unsure of how Georgie will feel about hearing her statement used. A long, agonizing few seconds pass, Jon picking absently at the back of his hand, before she gives a nervous chuckle, and Jon can let out the breath he was holding.

“Okay,” she sighs. “Fair enough.”

“You believe him?” Melanie asks – but with genuine curiosity this time, hostile skepticism discarded for the time being.

“Well, I doubt he’s lying, at least. Jon can’t tell a lie to save his life. Especially not to me. So…” Georgie puffs her cheeks out and exhales heavily through her nose. “Either it’s true, or he’s mistaken, and… I think the former is more likely, given, you know – everything else.”

Unfortunately, Jon thinks wryly. If only he could chalk it up to a coma-induced fever dream, or even a complex but mundane delusion – something serious, but with an avenue of treatment. No, he actually is a red button one invocation away from initiating the apocalypse. So to speak. He's not a poet, he tells himself again, but he’s grown accustomed to speaking figuratively nonetheless. He isn’t sure how to feel about that.  

“Set all of that aside for now,” Basira says, watching Jon carefully. “For the sake of moving the discussion forward, let’s assume for the moment that I believe you. You’re saying you have memories of the future?” Jon nods. “How far ahead?”

A full minute passes as Jon thumbs through statements. His mounting frustration must show, because Basira rephrases the question: “How close did Elias come to completing his ritual, where you came from?”

Now, reluctantly, Jon actually does make eye contact.

“That’s why I’m here: because I didn’t dream that. It happened.”  

Basira’s expression is unreadable.

“I hope someday I’ll forget what I saw when I opened that door, but I won’t,” he says quietly, looking down at his hands.  

“You keep talking about a door–”

“…for the most part – treat it as though I’m talking in metaphors,” he says with a resigned sigh.

“Right,” Basira says under her breath. “So that makes you, what, a key?”  

Jon shuts his eyes tight, forcing back the tears quickly gathering there.

“Jon.”

“There isn’t a day goes by I don’t curse myself,” he blurts out, the words cascading off his tongue one after the other in a flood. “Soon I was giving my account as a full confession, and I could not keep from crying as I described what happened – I have never felt despair on the sheer scale I did at that moment–”  

“Jon,” Basira says forcefully, and he comes to an abrupt halt, like a jammed cassette tape. “Focus.”

She’s right, he thinks to himself. He ended the world and here he is making it about how it made him feel. Perspective.

“So,” Melanie says flatly. “You kick-started the apocalypse.”   

She sounds more disbelieving than condemnatory – and Jon isn’t sure why that’s what does it, but one tear finally trickles loose. He hurriedly rubs it away with his sleeve.

“I tried to tell them what happened, they looked at me like I was making it all up.” A bitter, brittle laugh. “At least, when they could stand to look at me at all.”  

“Jon.” He recoils at the sound of Georgie’s voice, calm and quiet as it is. “I’m going to ask you a question. It’s not an accusation, and it’s not a judgment. Okay?” Not yet, he thinks, but he nods. “Did you know what you were doing?” When he starts to shake his head no, she holds up a hand to stay him. “I’m not asking whether you knew exactly what would happen. I’m asking if you opened a door not knowing what was behind it – not intending harm, but taking the risk of hurting yourself, or – or someone else, just because–”

“…my curiosity was the fault that brought this on me?”  

“Yeah.” Georgie says nothing else until he looks at her. “Did you find yourself in a situation where you could have walked away, and didn’t?”

It’s a loaded question, all tangled up in the Web with all those nagging doubts about choice and fault. He had plenty of time during the apocalypse to inventory all the watershed moments in his life, scrutinizing each and every crossroads, weighing the evidence of free will against the illusion of choice, navigating his impossibly blurred boundary between personal accountability and victim blaming. At what points could he have walked away? Which point of no return had been his last, his most reprehensible?  

“I’m not talking about in a broad sense,” Georgie says, sensing his characteristic descent into rumination. “I’m talking about the specific event, ritual – whatever. Could you have walked away in that moment? Could you have just not opened the door?”

As much as Jon feels he’s to blame for what happened… he had been trying to walk away, hadn’t he? He and Martin both. Martin reminded him of that constantly – they were trying to get out, get away, get better. Jon didn’t go looking for a grenade to jump on. Jonah came looking for him.

So he forces his way through a lifetime’s accumulation of self-loathing, and he shakes his head no.  

“Tried to escape it, but some things follow you no matter where you go.”  

How is it that that one sentence – confronting that longstanding loss of control, admitting the extent to which he’s been subjugated – is so liberating yet so unbearably terrifying at the same time? Survivor’s guilt and self-blame have only ever been a poison, and yet they were a comforting shield all the same, offering some semblance of agency, however tenuous. For so long, it had seemed like a fair tradeoff.

Georgie nods, apparently satisfied with his answer. “Okay.”

“You believe him?” Melanie asks again.

“Yeah.” Georgie shrugs. “Jon blames himself for everything. If he’s willing to say he didn’t have a choice, I can believe that.”

Jon looks away, feeling uncomfortably seen. Georgie’s perceptiveness isn’t new, but it never gets any less mortifying to have it turned on him.

“So how did it happen then?” Basira asks coolly.

“Statement of Jonah Magnus regarding Jonathan Sims, the Archivist,” Jon says.

On reflex, he claps both hands over his mouth, suddenly flooded with the sense memories of Jonah sliding into his skin and wresting that last little bit of personhood away from him. Ever since that moment, Jon has had a knee-jerk association between the sound of his own voice and Jonah Magnus’ monologue. He wonders – doubts – whether that association will ever go away. Most of the time, it's in the background. Other times – like now – it’s like the ground falls out from underneath him and he's dropped right back into that memory. It’s unpredictable and largely inescapable. It’s difficult to avoid a trigger when that trigger is one’s own voice.

He’s learned to live with these moments when they overtake him. Or, rather, enough time has passed for him to become at least somewhat desensitized to it. Most days, he can swallow the nausea, dissociate from the panic, and succumb to a temporary state of numbness that should probably worry him more than it does. On bad days, he just doesn’t speak. The latter isn’t an option right now. So, he reaches for that familiar detachment.  

But as he walks himself back from the edge and the seconds pass by, he realizes that they’re expecting him to recount the statement for them.

“…not – reading this statement out loud,” he manages to choke out.

“But he gave you a statement.” Basira says. It’s not a question. Jon makes a vague tilting motion with one hand and gives a half-nod: Sort of? Basira’s eyes narrow. “Or did you compel him to give you a statement?”

Jon shakes his head, making a diagonal slicing motion down through the air with one hand for emphasis: No.

“But he offered you a statement, and you accepted it?”

Growing frantic now, Jon shakes his head vehemently: No, no, no, no, no–

“Then what?”

“…chased me – deceit – follow me” – a skip backwards – “read it – tried to read me back–”  

“Jon, slow down,” Georgie says, sensing his onrush of panic – but he can’t.

“I’ve been tricked into–”  

“–unable to look away–”  

“–there was now a tragedy to it that flowed from the words–”  

“–nothing to do but fall into it – it felt right, like it was all I could do–”  

The words come in a halting staccato, his mind speeding through statement after statement without him like a microfiche machine caught on fast-forward.

“–even as I did so, in the back of my mind I hated myself–”  

“–I didn’t stop, though – didn’t know what to do, and my mind was swimming with – the collective horror of all the things that I had seen and felt–”  

“–I struggled and fought, but it was far stronger than I was, and I could barely keep its jagged teeth from finding my throat–”  

One hand finds his throat now. He can only distantly feel fingernails digging into his skin.

“–‘alien’ might be the best word for that presence – because what it made me feel was–”  

“–something in the back of my mind, a frantic, scuttling terror – didn’t do any good, though – no matter what I might feel about it – choice didn’t even come into it–”  

The Archive was born with a purpose, and it fulfilled its role eagerly, skillfully, instinctively. It felt good, it felt right, and even now, the instinct lingers. He misses it. He craves it. He wants it back. He–

“ –the agony of being opened and remade – to have your who torn bloody from your what, and another crudely lashed into its place–”   

There is a rushing noise in his ears, drowning everything out, and he stumbles–

“–I did what I did because it was what I was supposed to do – I’m not sure I really recognize who I became–”   

Both hands go to his mouth again, clamping down in an attempt to stop the flood, but he’s stuck on a loop, a broken record, a scratched disc, a–

“–it felt right, like it was all I could do – felt right – it was – right – all I could do – all I – do–”   

He bites his tongue and he tastes blood.

“–the flowing tide that swarmed and scuttled as soon as the door opened – the door opened – the door opened–”  

Since when does an Archive have blood? Since when does an Archive have a will? How can an Archive be more than it is, what it was made for, what it is destined for? 

“–it felt right–”  

Vertigo. A body listing sideways. A name being called.

Someone’s hands are on someone’s shoulders. Why does the Archive know that? It cannot Know anything here. That isn’t right; this is not where it belongs–

“Jon!” Georgie’s voice finally reaches him. Georgie’s hands on his shoulders, steadying him. His blood rushing in his ears. His name being called. “Breathe.”

He can’t. He can’t.

His bad leg finally buckles beneath him, but Georgie catches him and holds him upright.  

“Catch your breath. There’s no hurry.”

Jon watches, unfocused, as Melanie brings her knuckles to her mouth again and chomps down, clearly biting back a strong dissent. Basira has no such qualms.

“Actually, there is,” she says. Georgie glares at her. “Sorry, but we need to know the rest. Pull yourself together, Jon.”

Jon shuts his eyes, tense and miserable with teeth clenched, hands curled into fists, fingernails biting into his palms. The Archive frequently used to lose control like that when Jon first started losing his voice – especially during his early attempts to suppress it – but it’s been awhile since it’s unraveled to such an extent.

“Sit down,” Georgie says emphatically, coaxing him down into a nearby empty chair. “Breathe.”

It takes a minute for him to fully convince himself that that’s even something he can do, and a few more to actually feel himself doing it. The edges of his mind finally brush against that hazy, detached calm, and he lets it take him. As his breathing begins to even out, he motions for Basira to continue.  

“So Elias gave you a statement.” Jon gives a listless nod. “And you hearing it was part of the ritual?” Jon shakes his head. “Reading it, then? Out loud?” Another wordless nod. “And you did it.” Jon ducks his head and stares fixedly at his hands, clasped tightly in his lap. “Why? What did he do – corner you, project horrors into your mind, hold a gun to your head? What could he have possibly done to convince you to help him at the cost of the rest of the world?”

This would be much easier if he could give them Jonah’s statement in full, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to get through it. Even if he could, it feels like an unnecessary risk to recite it aloud, even the parts that don’t include the actual invocation.

“…not – choosing to continue reading this statement out loud,” he says, borrowing from Annabelle instead. “But think about it, Jon. When’s the last time you were able to read a statement quietly to yourself without instinctively hitting record and speaking it aloud – by then you’re away; the roller coaster is dropping, and you’ve no real choice but to hold on and hope that – I don’t crash you.”  

“So it’s like compulsion?” Basira asks.

“Statement of Jonah Magnus,” he forces himself to say, “regarding Jonathan Sims” – a pained grimace – “the Archivist.”  

He has to catch his breath again before continuing.

“…felt a… a presence within myself, inside my being. It was a feeling so utterly awful it’s hard to put it into words. Like a reflex reaction, your muscles moving without any instruction from your mind, but rather than a quick twitch of the leg, it’s a slow movement of your jaw, your lips, forming your mouth into words – I could not deny then that there was something inside me.”  

He casts about for the next statement in his queue.

“And I read them. I read them all, and saw the doom of everyone who lives and breathes and hopes for life and happiness. They were pouring from the air around me and threaded through my mind, and no matter how I begged, they would not stop–”  

Another pause; another fragment.

“–and then the sky blinks.”   

The others stare at him – whether processing the information or just waiting to see if there’s more, Jon doesn’t know. 

“Okay,” Basira says under her breath. Then, speaking up: “Could it happen again? If you were given the statement again – today, right now – would you be compelled to read it?”

“Yes. At least I think so.”  

“And would it have the same effect as it did before?”

Jon signals a maybe, but it's like someone else is moving his hands. He's floating somewhere outside himself and when he speaks, his voice no longer feels like a part of him. And that's fine. Good, even. It means that Jonah Magnus can't touch him.  

“I was marked–”  

“–I had a few close calls myself – that marked me so distinctively–”  

Jon brandishes his burned hand, motions at the scar on his throat, points out the several worm scars visible on his exposed hands, neck, and face – all of it happening in slow motion, somewhere far away from him.   

“Every moment moved us towards, towards the completion of the task and the culmination of our charge’s terror–”  

“–fourteen powers – each with an aim no more or less than manifestation. Apocalypse. Apotheosis.”  

“Fourteen.” Basira murmurs soundlessly to herself for a few moments. When she speaks up again, it's with a suddenness that startles Jon halfway out of his daze. “Coming in contact with all of the Powers – is that a necessary condition? For the ritual to work?”

Basira may not have been a detective, but she could have been, Jon thinks. He makes an affirmative noise, adding: “The marks won’t come off, no matter how hard I scrub.”  

“But you aren’t marked by all of them. Not yet.”

Jon frowns and gives an exaggerated shrug: I’m not sure.

“There was still a chance – of this strange ritual–”  

“–having been there once already–”  

“–lingered in my mind and–”  

“–some thought – she was powerful enough already–”  

“–I wonder, are those same words still there, squatting and biding their time, or have they already changed into some new unknown terror that I can neither know nor avoid, waiting to spring on me–”  

“ –I can feel it sometimes like it’s still there–”  

 “This read-between-the-lines bullshit is like a literary analysis assignment,” Melanie grumbles.

“Meaningless strings of words, or weird little fragments of poetry – repeated over and over again, hundreds of times,” Jon agrees, gesticulating to emphasize that the frustration is very much shared. “Vague, occasionally contradictory descriptions of what they actually wanted – broken or algorithmic English – had to scroll through almost word by word–”  

“Jon,” Basira says tersely.

“…the words we use are clumsy, vague things, always at the whim of interpretation and decay,” Jon concludes quickly, unable to resist getting in the last word.

Basira paces slowly back and forth. “So you might still be marked by all Fourteen.”

Jon gives an affirmative, but this point requires elaboration. He stares into the middle distance as he consults the Archive.

“I know your work brings you into contact with all sorts of fantastical terrors–”  

“–it warps us and changes us and feeds on us – that’s the only part any of them beyond actually care about – they only care about what feels right, what freezes your belly with terror–”  

“Jon, answer the question,” Basira says.

He is answering the question. He points at his mouth and hopes his meaning is clear: Listen to what I’m saying.

“…the fear never really went away. I’ve heard that being exposed to the source of your terror over and over again can help break its power over you, numb you to it, but in my experience–”  

“–it is an enduring terror–”  

“Yes, we get it, you’re traumatized,” Melanie hisses. “We’re all traumatized.”

Jon shakes his head, increasingly exasperated: You’re not getting it.

He takes a breath and continues, haphazardly seizing on any snippets that come close to his intent:

“…he still got terrible nightmares–”  

“–I remember feeling a surge of terror–”  

“ –can remember how it felt–”  

“Can you stop being self-centered for one minute?” Melanie growls.

Jon makes an upset noise and looks to Georgie, willing her to understand.

“I remember it so clearly–”  

“ –I remember it like it was yesterday–”

“ –no matter what happens to me, the memory of that – panicked terror will stay with me–”  

He traces an X mark on his forehead with one finger, not breaking eye contact.

“Oh,” Georgie exhales, and Jon watches her expectantly. “Psychological scars. As long as you remember the experience – the trauma – it still counts as a – a ‘mark?’”

Jon nods vigorously.

“Oh,” Basira echoes. “That figures,” she says with a huff. “The fear itself is the scar, then. The feeling is all that matters to them.”

It’s not a question, but Jon confirms it anyway, finally stumbling across a suitable statement:  

“…the damage wasn’t something they could see – I knew they went further, went deeper than would show on my skin – just went on and on and on, far beyond me.”  

That should be clear enough. He wishes he could have gone with that to–

“You should have gone with that to begin with,” Melanie mutters.

“…had to scroll through almost word by word,” Jon snaps back. He could put the conversation on hold every time he has to speak, spend long stretches of time consulting the Archive to find the closest approximation to his meaning, but he doesn’t have the patience for that, and neither does anyone else. He’s long since taken to grabbing whatever is nearest to the top of the pile, so to speak.

Melanie rolls her eyes. She doesn’t seem particularly angry with him, though, just tired and irritable in general – and they both always have had this effect on one another. It’s almost comforting, to slide so easily into that old routine.

As the seconds tick by and it becomes clear to Jon that the others are speechless, he breaks the silence.

“But you know how – sometimes you quit because you want to, and sometimes you quit because you’ve got to?”  

That piques Melanie’s interest.

“…a way out,” he continues, “a way to escape.”   

Everyone’s eyes are on him again.

“…that James could watch us from any eye, even an illustration. What did you do? How did you sever that link?”   

He watches them back, waiting for the penny to drop.

“…to cause me to blind myself, for I shall not deny I did so willingly–”  

He closes his eyes, rests his thumbs over the lids, and presses gently. 

“Fuck off,” Georgie whispers, and Jon only barely keeps from laughing, remembering Martin’s identical reaction. 

“So we just have to blind ourselves?” Melanie asks evenly. Georgie shoots her a worried look.

“Just so long as they’re useless,” Jon confirms.  

Melanie is staring off into space, cool and collected, as if the solution Jon just presented is as simple and painless as flipping a switch. He supposes it is simple, in its own way. Painless, not so much.   

“Is that the only way?” Basira asks.

Jon shakes his head no. “I was left with pretty much two options.”  

“Okay, and what’s the other?” Georgie asks, still watching Melanie’s blasé reaction with apprehension.

“One sacrifice,” Jon says. “Just one.”  

“And?” Basira presses. “What is it?”  

Jon swallows hard. He’s realizing now that he hates accessing statements he collected after the world ended, but there’s nothing for it.

“Angus Stacey had, in the long tradition of Institute Archivists – died,” he begins, pausing to rewind and reorder the statement. “And – when Angus Stacey died – she had the chance to walk away.”  

A drawn, heavy silence in which Jon feels… nothing. Maybe the dissociative haze didn't entirely clear after all. Or maybe he’s just tired from this prolonged, slapdash communion with the Archive.

“…there are plenty whose lives might well have been easier with my death,” he continues, just in case they need further clarification.

Georgie goes rigid. “Jon–”

“Are you even able to die at this point?” Basira interrupts.

“I had no guarantee it was even possible for me to die,” Jon admits.  

Then:“…it was likely he was no longer human enough for me to remove him without the aid of – a Hunter.”  

Basira gives a contemplative hum. “Without you, Elias can’t initiate his ritual,” she points out. It’s not a question.

Jon nods. But it isn't that simple. 

“…just a small delay–”  

“–even if it was only brief or might compromise some of the work–”  

“–he would return eventually, when he was finished with–”  

“–lying low, recovering, before returning–”  

“–look into appointing a successor–”  

“–began what would eventually become a campaign of – terror–”  

“–eventually the door opened–”  

He cuts himself off there and gasps, winded from stitching together so many disparate soundbites back-to-back.

“But he would be delayed until he managed to prepare another Archivist,” Basira says.

“I’ll not deny it,” Jon answers, breathless. 

“You can’t be serious,” Georgie says, looking between them. “This – you can’t actually be considering this.”

“We need to explore all our options,” Basira says. “Even the last resorts.”

“It isn’t an option at all,” Georgie says heatedly, then looks at Jon. “I thought you wanted to get better. I thought you were done with reckless self-sacrifice–”

“You may rest assured I’m no suicide,” Jon says hurriedly, rousing himself at the prospect of losing Georgie again.

But…

“The choice – was not entirely mine, as my circumstances had driven me into a very particular situation.”  

His laugh is jarring, closer to a bark.

“…too much of a health and safety hazard–”  

“That isn’t funny, Jon,” Georgie snaps. Jon puts his hands up, placating: Sorry, sorry.

“He has a point, though,” Melanie says, mirroring Jon’s pacifying gesture when Georgie turns the glower on her. “I’m not saying we should kill him. I’m just saying that, if there’s no other option, and we have to choose between one person and many people–”

“–all the world, utterly destroyed,” Jon supplies. It comes out flatter than he had intended.

“Then we might need to make a difficult choice,” Basira summarizes.

“Look,” Georgie says, all of her attention focused on Jon, ignoring the other two now. “I understand why you feel this way, but no.” She doubles down when Jon opens his mouth to speak. “No, Jon. Because given your track record, I don’t trust you to treat it as a last resort. If we – if I give you permission to think like this, you'll let it become a reassurance. You won’t think twice before courting death if you can do it guilt-free. So, no. You don’t have my approval. You promised me you were going to try, and – Jon, look at me,” she says as Jon lets his gaze drift away. She waits until he meets her eyes before she continues. “If you know you have this contingency plan waiting in your back pocket, it will keep you from finding alternate solutions. I know you.”

“…didn’t want to die, the idea of death terrified him–”

“Good,” Georgie says curtly, though she doesn’t look entirely convinced. “Take the option off the table, then.”

Jon worries his lower lip between his teeth. The thing is, he doesn’t want to die.

Admittedly, he’s lapsed into that mindset in the past. During this part of his timeline the first time around, he could likely have been categorized as passively suicidal, much as he wants to dismiss it. At some point, it had taken up permanent residence in the back of his mind. It ebbed and flowed, but even in its quietest moments, it was there: a constant, comforting weight. Looking back, he realizes that finding comfort in the idea of dying – to the point of treating it like an anchor, in retrospect – should have been a cause for concern.

After he lost Martin during the apocalypse, that ever-present ideation rushed to the forefront of his mind, loud and active and erratic. There was a stretch of time where, if he hadn’t been physically incapable of dying, he would have gone through with it. But by then, even starving himself wasn’t a viable option. There was no tuning out the endless flow of statements filtering through him every moment.

That was back when his only course of action was to hurt – himself, other monsters, it made no difference. It never helped anyone, never saved any of the victims, never fixed anything. Using that power only made Jon feel more and more estranged from the person he wished he could be, closer and closer to the entity Jonah Magnus groomed him to be, and more and more beholden to the Ceaseless Watcher.

He came so close to losing himself. Not dying, not ceasing to exist, not even losing consciousness, just – being lost in the noise, unable to rest and unable to act. Like the Buried, except this time the coffin would be his own mind – and this time he wouldn’t be able to escape. 

But things have changed. Right here, right now, he actually has a chance to help. Even just talking to his victims in his nightmares – it’s the bare minimum, but it’s so much more than he’s been able to do in ages.

Even if he did want to die, he still has things he has to do. He has to save Daisy. He has to save Martin. He has to stop Jonah Magnus – hopefully permanently. Now that Jon has experienced the man’s nightmare kingdom firsthand, simply postponing it indefinitely seems unconscionable.

And even after he does those things… assuming Martin can still find it in himself to love Jon in this new timeline, how could Jon abandon him? It was reason enough to stay alive during the apocalypse. It certainly has to be reason enough to stay alive now, when there’s actually a chance of making things better.

His eyes drift to the fifth chair in the room, unclaimed. The sight is enough to chase away the remnants of that earlier numbness that had been stubbornly clinging to him. 

“I had to live. I couldn’t die, not then.”  

Basira is watching him, pensive, motionless, silent. It's unbearable. Reluctantly, he calls up the testament she recorded before they all left to stop the Unknowing. 

“My options… they’ve gotten a lot narrower,” he quotes. “If you don’t like something, you accept it and you adapt–”  

“That’s enough,” Basira says sharply.

“–or you fight and you change it.”  

The ensuing quiet is charged. Jon forces himself to look up and into her eyes, at the impulses warring there. He cannot Know what she’s feeling, not here in the tunnels, but he does know her – both through past instances of Knowing and through the gentler, more conscious, more human experience of learning a person. He wishes he had more skill with the latter and less experience with the former, but either way, between the two, he thinks he can make some educated guesses: she wants to scream at him – he has no right to those words; she wants to break down – she misses her father, she misses Daisy; she wants to believe him – because she can’t do this alone anymore, she can’t, and having no one to trust is terrifying and exhausting – and Jon knows what that’s like, doesn’t he?

Jon takes a breath, steels himself, and tells her: “I’m going to fight, and change it.”  

She holds his gaze, intense and stony, for a moment longer – and then her shoulders sag and she exhales through her nose, sounding thoroughly rundown.

“Stop looking at me like that, Jon,” she says tiredly, sinking down into the nearest chair. “I don’t want to kill you. I’m not planning on killing you. I’m just trying to account for all the variables. It’s nothing personal. I can’t afford for it to be personal. Not anymore. I’ve had to be practical. You haven’t been here–”

“I asked her – I’d like to help.”  

“That’s fine to say, but you can’t expect much in the way of trust. By your own admission, you’re not human anymore.” She pauses, giving him an opening to contradict her. He doesn’t. “And even if you were, you just – you aren’t exactly known for coming up with workable strategies. Hell, if anything you attract trouble, intentional or no.”

Jon chuckles at that. It’s not an unfair observation. For a fraction of a second, the corner of Basira’s mouth quirks up in a grin, and Jon is reminded of their dry banter from back when they first met. Other than Georgie, Basira was the only one to consistently pick up on his wry sense of humor.

“Do you have a plan?” Georgie asks. “Bad or otherwise?”

Jon holds one hand palm up and mimics writing on it, looking at Basira’s bag. When Basira hands him the notepad and pen, he flips to an empty page and scribbles a few rudimentary drawings: a stylized eye, a flower, and a teacup. The representations are just barely oblique enough to pass through the Archive’s filter. The flower in particular is almost too on-the-nose, and it brings on a momentary tremor in his hand, but he prevails in the end. The final result is shaky, but identifiable enough.

He’ll almost certainly have a migraine later, but he’s already resigned himself to that, given how much he’s been taxing himself accessing the Archive. There’s a reason he started avoiding long conversations. (Not that he had much incentive to push his limits once Martin was lost to him. Who was he going socialize with, his own shadow? His insufferable entourage of eyes? Helen?)

He holds up the notepad for the others to see.

“I thought if I could deal with him” – Jon jabs his pen at the eye – “and save a few lives” – he taps the flower and teacup once each – “I might as well.”  

Melanie squints at the drawings. “Obviously the eye is Elias, but–”

“The teacup–”

“Oh, is that what that is?” Melanie asks, interrupting Georgie and giving Jon a goading look. He just rolls his eyes. He knows he’s no artist, and it doesn’t bother him in the least.

“–is Martin,” Georgie continues, hushing Melanie with a stern glance that doesn’t quite conceal her amusement. “Jon used to go on and on about how good his tea was. And he’s been asking after him every time I sleep. Bit of a one-track mind, really.”

“I need them to be safe,” Jon says, only a little defensively. “I need him to be okay.”  

It feels both peculiar and yet fitting to speak through Martin’s testament from so long ago. Well, only months earlier from the others’ perspective, but – it’s not important. Melanie snorts, and Basira just shakes her head.

“What about the flower?” Georgie redirects, gesturing at the notepad.

“…Daisy’s coming,” Jon says.  

Throughout the conversation, a tiny sliver of warmth had started to peek through Basira’s composure. Instantaneously, it bleeds away.

“Daisy is dead.”

“…she’s solid,” Jon insists, parroting Basira’s testament again. “She’s a… a fixed point, and–”

“Don’t,” Basira says, a distinct note of warning in her tone.

“–she’s there, I know exactly where–”  

“Shut up, Jon.”

He can’t, but as a compromise, he abandons Basira’s statement and forages for another.

“…the casket, a hungry thing of the earth, a – tomb that will not let you die because it is too much what it is for death to find you there – buried alive.”  

Basira’s demeanor shifts again, some of the hostility ebbing away. “What are you talking about?”

“When that Hunter killed him – it was there.” Jon suppresses a grimace of pain; the exertion of tapping into the Archive is really starting to catch up with him now. “It was waiting – fed her to it – she doesn’t get to die – gets to live – entombed forever – tied to the casket – can climb in and join her.”  

“Is this another metaphor” – Jon shakes his head no – “or a literal casket?” 

“It was almost a month before–”  

“–a delivery addressed to me – a coffin.”  

Basira digs her phone out of her pocket, pulls up the calendar app, and holds it up to Jon.

“When?”

He navigates to March and taps on the third day of the month.

“And it’ll be delivered here?”

Jon nods. Basira is quiet for a long moment.

“And Daisy is in there.”

“…real and alive – I swear to you.”  

“Because it won’t let her die,” Basira says, a hard edge to her tone. “Buried alive, and unable to die – how is tortured for eternity better than just dead, Jon?”  

“…the last time I went there–“  

“–to get her out–”  

“–it almost destroyed me. But it didn’t – in the end – I succeeded – we had succeeded.”  

“You can bring her back?” Basira’s guard drops even further, revealing just a glimpse of cautious hope.

“I said yes, we were very close.”  

“No offense, but I wouldn’t call us ‘close,’ Jon–”

Jon shakes his head, touches the pen tip to the flower drawing and then points at himself.

“You and Daisy?”

“…the closest thing this world had to real monsters–”  

“–despite this – or maybe because of it – we became friends–”  

“–there was a camaraderie that came from being the only two people in that weird place, and it didn’t take long for us to become good friends.”  

Georgie frowns. “Daisy, is she the one who–”

“Slit his throat?” Melanie gives Jon a pointed, almost mischievous look and then flashes a grin at Georgie, like a sibling tattling to a parent. “Yep.”

Jon stares daggers at Melanie, who has the gall to feign innocence.

“Jon,” Georgie groans, dragging one hand down her face.

“I wanted to act, to help, to do something,” Jon protests.  

“Are you sure you'll be able to make your way back?” Georgie asks, staring him down. Jon gives an affirmative. “And this isn’t a death wish, or – or some roundabout suicide attempt?”   

“I somehow managed to live through one horror movie.”  

Georgie lets out a breathless laugh and shakes her head. Then, she sighs and adopts a serious air again.

“Look at me.” Jon does. “You’re an adult, I won’t stop you from making your own decisions. But I get to make my own choices too, and a choice isn’t a choice when it’s based on lies and omission. So tell me the truth: is this more of the same, or can you sincerely say that you know what you’re doing?”

“If you had asked me before, I would have told you that there was no difference, but I know better now.”  

“Do you promise?”

He nods, but holds up one finger – wait – as he roots around for the best way to make the promise meaningful. It takes some time and no small amount of effort, but he needs to be precise.  

“…I am alive, and I desperately wish to keep it that way.”  

He looks into her eyes as he says the words, hoping she can hear the unspoken sentiment: I meant what I said. I do want to live. And even when I don’t, I want to want to live.

“We were simply seeking a better life.”  

He infuses it with every ounce of sincerity he can muster: I meant what I said. I want to get better. I don’t know what that looks like, but I want to find out.  

“This, I knew, was to be my chance.”  

The first time, Georgie didn’t see this as a second chance – and neither did Jon. But this time: I meant what I said. I do think this is a second chance, and I want to take it.

“I didn’t see any other option than to try.”  

It’s the only thing that got him through the journey to the Panopticon, through losing Martin, through the Archive’s death grip on his mind: I meant what I said. I want to try. I’ve been trying. I am trying. I will keep trying.

Georgie continues to hold his gaze, and Jon forces himself not to look away. Eventually, she nods.

“Alright then.” He smiles – cautious, relieved – and this time, when she smiles back, it actually does reach her eyes. “I’ll hold you to that, Jon.”

Thank you, he thinks. He still doesn't believe he deserves her support, but she's owed his gratitude all the same, and he truly does want to earn the trust she’s placing in him. Thank you, thank you, thank you.  

“So,” Georgie sighs, smile fading into a frown. “Save Daisy, save Martin, deal with your evil monster boss.”

“And get as far away from this place as possible,” Melanie says.

“And into therapy,” Georgie adds. There isn’t even the hint of a joke in it, and no one refutes her. “For anyone who wants it, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t mind burning this place to the ground, either,” Melanie says. There’s a ghost of a joke this time, but it falls flat. Once again, though, no one raises any objections.

Basira takes a deep breath and composes herself.  

“Right,” she says, businesslike, sitting up straight and turning her attention back to Jon. “Where do we begin?”

Chapter Text

Jon is unsurprised when such a straightforward question – “Where do we begin?” – quickly devolves into a second wave of interrogation.

Georgie wants to know what they should look out for in the coming weeks and what preparations they can start making now. He’s come to expect (and appreciate) that sort of one-step-at-a-time approach from her, but he’s stunned to see her so actively engaged. He had assumed that even if she did choose to stay in his life, it would be from a safe distance. On the one hand, her support is heartening; on the other, he would rather not involve anyone else in this part of his life. But Georgie is as sensible as she is resolute – she isn’t one to recklessly endanger herself, and she knows when to cut her losses. And, of course, she isn’t just doing this for Jon. As long as Melanie is trapped here, Georgie is embroiled, too.    

Melanie, for her part, has fallen eerily quiet, one hand held in Georgie’s and the other curled into a fist on her knee, white-knuckled and trembling almost imperceptibly. She wears a determined scowl, and Jon doesn’t have to Know to have an idea of what equations she’s running in her mind and what questions she’s queuing up for him to answer later.

Meanwhile, Basira wants explicit details about the Coffin – its provenance, the details of its impending arrival, a play-by-play of what happened the last time Jon went in, Daisy’s condition. Jon doubts he’ll be able to answer as comprehensively or precisely as she wants, but he can try.

For several minutes, he indulges a barrage of questions – answering mostly with simple yes and no gestures – but his vision is starting to grow pixelated, interspersed with the occasional flash or sparkle, and he can feel the pressure growing in his temples. Surefire precursors of a migraine, in his experience – and he still has one more pressing matter to attend to before it renders him useless.

“I want to focus on the casket for now,” Basira is saying.

“Makes sense if its delivery is only a few weeks away, as long as – Jon, is there anything else coming up before then that we need to–” Georgie’s expression shifts from focused to concerned in an instant when she catches a glimpse of him. “Are you okay? You look–”

“Before I continue – this is – very, very important for you to know.”  

“What is it, Jon?”  

“…that Eye of yours,”  he begins slowly, “warps us and changes us and feeds on us–”  

“–part of being the Archivist – to harvest the fears of the other entities, dragging out the suffering of those who come to give statements and claiming their terror.”  

He struggles for a few moments before settling on, “I don’t want to, but it’s in my nature now, and you can’t fight what you are. Or even what you aren’t.” 

“That’s not exactly a revelation,” Basira says. “We already know that you feed on the statements.”

“There’s – more to say about that.”  Jon hesitates. It isn’t that he doesn’t have the words to explain. It’s that he’s afraid.

“Go on,” Basira says, watching him suspiciously now.

Jon closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces the words out.

“…feverishly hunting for–”  

“–someone in person.”  

“Live statements.” Basira has that hard edge to her voice again, like she’s assessing a threat. Which is… exactly what she’s doing, Jon supposes.

“Like the nurse at the hospital?” Georgie asks.

“What nurse?” Melanie finally speaks up, eyes flitting between Georgie and Jon.

“Apparently Jon can sense potential statement givers on sight now,” Basira replies, not taking her eyes off of Jon.

“What did he do?”

‘He’ is sitting right here, Jon thinks tiredly.

“He didn’t do anything,” Georgie says, calmly but with a faint hint of admonishment and an apologetic glance in Jon’s direction. His heart glitches in his chest a little at how immediately she comes to his defense. “He noticed what was happening, stopped himself, and asked me to blindfold him until we got somewhere safe.”

Jon keeps his eyes downcast. He categorically does not deserve this benefit of the doubt – and she’ll realize that momentarily, as soon as he tells them about all the times that he didn’t stop himself. 

“‘Safe,’” Melanie scoffs. “The Archives?”

Safe, Jon thinks to himself with exactly the same bitter incredulity. Yet, it’s not entirely inaccurate. This is the safest place for him right now – in terms of both avoiding the other Powers and protecting the rest of the world from him.

“You know what I meant,” Georgie says, but there’s no irritation in her tone.

“So, you really aren’t human anymore,” Melanie says blandly, watching Jon. He doesn’t object.

“It woke something in me. Something truly awful. And I hurt so very many people.”  

“You went hunting for victims,” Basira says, comprehending. “How many?”

Jon holds up five fingers.

“Jesus,” Melanie mutters. Georgie’s expression is unreadable – and somehow, that’s worse than any of the possible negative reactions that Jon had anticipated.

“When?” Basira asks. “Before the Unknowing, or in your future?”

“…that bit was some ways in the future.”  

“Hm.” Basira’s eyes are fixed on him, impassive and calculating.

“There were very few points where I’d say that I was entirely sober and even fewer where I acted like it,” Jon continues quietly. “I realized too late that I… I was thoroughly lost.”   

“Were you doing it voluntarily?” Basira asks, getting right to the crux of the matter. Jon can feel himself burning under the weight of her scrutiny – now more accusing than assessing, and deservedly so. “Or were you ‘compelled’ to do that, too?”

Jon knew that question was coming, and he dreaded it all the same. How much time has he spent obsessing over it? How many roadside breakdowns and late-night soliloquies and circuitous debates about the nature of free will does he have under his belt by now? Far too many to summarize in a few words – certainly considering his current limitations.

He fishes around for a statement that might at least convey the complexity of the question.

“My memories of a lot – are, well, not exactly foggy, but feel almost like I’m watching someone else’s memories. I remember that it sometimes felt like I’d do things without actually deciding to do them. Like it was just a muscle memory moving me, or a string gently guiding me. I did what I did because it was what I was supposed to do – I’m not sure I really recognize who I became.”  

It really was like a trance, at least in the beginning. The first time, he had gravitated towards his victim without even realizing what was happening. The second time was just after he was stabbed by Melanie and found himself wandering the streets in a near-fugue. He had locked eyes with a passerby and the need overtook him. Despite the haze, he could recognize it as the same impulse that had washed over him when he encountered his first victim. Looking back, although he wasn’t entirely lucid, he thinks he might have been able to stop himself if he had tried harder. When he found his next couple of victims, he had been actively hunting – on autopilot, certainly, but not entirely unaware either. Although he was fully enthralled during the statement itself, he – the human part of him, at least – knew that it was wrong both before and after the deed.

And Floyd… well, there’s no denying that that was premeditated. Jon knew exactly what he was doing when he chose that ship. He rationalized it by telling himself it was in line with Gertrude’s trademark utilitarianism – which is what Basira wanted from him, what Tim had wanted from him. But it was never just that. It wasn't even primarily that. The simple truth is that Jon was hungry, and he wanted it as much as he needed it, and it felt good. Everyone already knew he was a monster – there was no point in pretending otherwise – and he was becoming desensitized to that conclusion himself. Helen had been right: no amount of hand-wringing or guilt would stop him from feeding the Beholding and walking the path Jonah Magnus set before him.   

“I know that my will and my actions were my own, but even at the time I knew that – I was – so very wrong but… it didn’t feel like at the time I could have made any other choice.”  

Because it really didn’t feel like it, did it? But he did have a choice, in retrospect. He changed his behavior, after all – too late, and he still has no idea whether resisting indefinitely would have killed him, but he stopped. It doesn’t make him any less accountable, and it doesn’t alleviate the guilt, but once he knew he could resist, he did. Meaning he probably had the choice all along.   

Without Martin’s intervention, he would have continued on that path: being the monster he and everyone else expected him to be, just because it didn’t feel like there was any other choice. It felt right; it seemed unnatural and fruitless to fight it; it was easier to give in and lean into it, and he figured he may as well use that power to make himself useful.

“Were you in control of yourself or not, Jon?” Basira asks again. “Clarity, please.”  

Jon bites back an annoyed huff. What he wouldn’t give for some clarity.

“…told me that her will was still her own but that it – felt like something was in her head, changing what she saw and felt and thought.”  

That’s probably the most accurate he can get, given his limited speech options: it was a bit of both. He was influenced – by the Eye at the very least, and possibly by the Web – but he also had some measure of self-control. He just didn’t exercise it until he had already victimized five people, and only then because someone else intervened. Jonathan Sims would never have done those things, but the Archivist was another matter entirely. In the end, though, they were and are the same person. Even if they weren’t, the consequences would still be the same.

“Is it like an addiction?” Georgie finally speaks up. Jon nearly jumps at the sound of her voice, and he has to take a minute to hunt for an appropriate statement.  

“It’s funny how fear can just become as routine as hunger – at a certain point I just accepted it.”  

“That… doesn’t answer my question,” Georgie says, not unkindly. “Is it an addiction, or – or sustenance? Do you need it to survive?”

Define ‘survive,’ he wants to say. Starving himself hurts in a way that goes far deeper than mere physical pain, but he doesn’t know whether it will actually kill him – or, if so, how long that would take. It doesn’t matter, though. This time, he isn’t going to hunt, no matter how bad it gets.

“I resolved to find out.”    

All three of them look like they’re about to start speaking at once, and he holds up a finger: Wait. He needs to get all of this out while he still can.

 “Reduced once again to feeding on the unsuspecting and confused. That is who I am–”  

“–much as it may pain me to feed the sick voyeur that lurks in this place–”  

“–something I was desperate to avoid doing.”  

He stares at his hands, clenching and unclenching on his knees. Miserable though it feels, he pulls up Jane Prentiss’ statement – another Avatar who had seemed so human before she was hollowed out by the thing that called to her.  

“You must understand – I need it, but I am afraid. It isn’t right and I need help.”  

“So, what?” Georgie frowns. “We keep you under constant supervision?”

Jon nods, resolute. Judging by Georgie's expression, she had meant it as a hyperbole, but it's exactly what Jon had in mind. 

“…to keep an eye on the monsters–”  

“–they were keeping me under observation–”  

“–under constant scrutiny and given no chance to harm anyone–”  

“–which would keep – away from people.”  

“We can’t just keep you under lock and key–”

“No, we can,” Basira says, uncompromising. Her eyes haven’t left him this entire time. He expected nothing less than decisiveness from her in this matter, and he’s glad of it. He can only hope she can read his sincerity when he looks back at her and nods in agreement. 

“…for the safety of society at large–“  

“–I don’t go home anymore. I’m afraid of what might happen–”  

“–knew it was only a matter of time before he hurt–”  

“–I am dangerous–”  

 “–and here I have remained.”  

“So you’re going to just… stay cooped up down here?” Georgie asks.  

“…sleep in the – cot I keep in my office,” Jon replies with a shrug.

“Well,” Melanie says, “it’s not like he’d be the only one. Basira and I have been living here for months. Barely ever leave.”

“Are you sure this is necessary, Jon?” Georgie asks again. “You aren’t just – punishing yourself for things you didn’t even do yet?”

“Still, at the end of the day, I did it,” Jon says vehemently.

When she opens her mouth, he signals wait again, taking a moment to queue up the statements he needs.

“…I know – I remember – never forgive myself–”    

“–acknowledged that it had happened–”  

“–very much accountable for–”  

“–all the horrible things I’ve done–”  

“–I remember a life that was – shouting, recriminations – I was abandoned–”  

“–so much silence and distrust – passed between us–”  

“–neither could I say I have not earned it–”  

“–trust me when I say he had it coming–”   

“–deserve its ghoulish reputation–”  

“–deserves the things that come after–”  

“–should have fought harder against the temptation–”   

Lightheadedness overtakes him for a moment; Jon has to pause and ride it out before he can dive back in.

“…I’m well aware that – I have – responsibility to try and prevent–”  

“–real harm in him going out into the world–”  

“–hoping against hope that this time–”  

“–this time I was going to–”  

“–resist – to – avoid being drawn in, like a moth to the flame.”  

He allows himself a brief pause, just long enough for one deep breath and a shaky exhale.   

“I don’t want you to think I’m some selfish monster grinding people up just to extend my own ghoulish life,” he concludes, scratching absently at the back of his burned hand.

Georgie says nothing for a long moment, and then she sighs. “If you’re sure.”

“…insisted that this was what he wanted,” Jon assures her.

Then: “I didn’t want to go back.”   

He falters before also adding, in a near-murmur: “It wears you down to be someone whom nobody wants to see.”  

He knows it makes him seem self-centered, talking about his own feelings when the real victims are the people he hurt, but… well, there’s no denying that alienation has only ever made it more difficult for him to cling to what little remains of his humanity. If possible, he would like to avoid becoming a pariah this time around – for his own selfish need to belong, yes, but also because isolation has only ever made him more dangerous. He needs that human connection to remind him of who he is – who he wants to be.    

“Alright,” Georgie concedes, though she still sounds dubious. “Well… I managed to save some things from your flat before you lost it. I can bring them in, if you’d like.”

Jon nods distractedly, only half-listening. He feels himself flagging now, and there’s one more thing he has to get in before he crashes.

“On the subject of Elias – has certain… abilities of clairvoyance, which allow him to perceive out of any eye, real or symbolic, so be wary. Play ignorant as long as you can while you expand your own research – the longer he is ignorant of how much you know, the better.”  

“All of this is tunnels-only information,” Georgie translates.

Jon nods.  

“…ensure that they always under- or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans.”  

It makes his skin crawl, adopting Annabelle’s mindset, but it’s the only way he can think to deal with someone like Jonah Magnus. And he can’t really bring himself to care overmuch at the moment. Lethargy is dropping over him like a lead blanket.

“Jon?” Georgie’s voice sounds like it’s coming from three rooms over.

“I just needed a break, some time to get my head right,” Jon mumbles through several layers of exhaustion, his tongue feeling thick and heavy and out of place in his mouth.

“Later,” Basira says. “We’re not done yet.”

To Jon’s credit, he does try. But at some point, he tries to draw on the Archive and hits a wall of static. Georgie seems to pick up on it before anyone else. When Jon struggles to answer a simple yes-or-no question for a solid two minutes, she jumps in to rescue him.

“I think that’s enough for today,” she says. For a moment, Basira looks like she wants to argue, but Georgie cuts her off. “Jon’s an insufferable workaholic. If he was physically capable of continuing this discussion, he would. Look at him.”

The insufferable workaholic in question can’t quite work up the energy to glare at her for being right. Basira only needs to take a cursory look at him before her shoulders sag and she relents.

“Fine,” she sighs. “We’ll pick this up tomorrow, then.”

“Good,” Georgie says brightly. “In the meantime – takeaway?”

“Pizza,” Melanie blurts out with an almost alarming passion, bolting upright like a sleep-talker after nearly a half-hour of total silence. Jon chokes on a laugh. Almost immediately, the color starts to rise in Melanie’s cheeks, and when she glowers at Jon, Georgie can’t hold back a giggle.

For a moment, things almost seem… normal. Like there’s a way forward after all.

We have a chance of making this work, Jon thinks, and he tells himself that he believes it.

It feels strange, being back in his office after so long away. It’s not comfortable by any means, but it’s at least familiar. It isn’t safe, but it’s at least relatively predictable.

Still, he feels on edge. The Archives have always effused an ever-present sense of being watched. Even outside of this place, Jon can’t remember what it feels like to not be subjected to constant voyeurism. By now, he’s used to it. Although this is the Eye’s temple and the Watching here is impossible to ignore, it’s nothing compared to the reality from which he came: a tower that sees all, a sky that blinks, the Watcher’s eyes embedded in his skin and winking in and out in the air around him.

And yet… somehow, standing in his office right now is almost as unbearable as standing right beside the Panopticon. It’s a lot like the cabin, in a way. The illusion of safety, if only because the horror you know seems preferable to the unknown waiting just outside your door – but no matter how much you delude yourself, there is always something lurking nearby, letting you suffer just so it can watch. He isn’t sure he remembers what safety even feels like. That illusion may well have been shattered with a simple knock-knock, taking root in his childhood and echoing down through the years.

He tolerates the discomfort for an entire five minutes before giving up and heading for the cot in Document Storage instead.

As soon as he sits down on the edge, his mind – predictably enough – drifts to Martin. For months he slept here, clutching a corkscrew for comfort and writing letters he never intended to send to a mother who resented him, because he had no one to confide in except for a notebook and cobwebs. There were so many nights that Jon was just down the hall, sleeping in stops and starts at his desk. After Martin’s encounter with Prentiss, Jon started spending more and more days working late into the night, finding more and more excuses to not go home at the end of the day. At the time, he told himself it was because he had so much work to do; the truth is that he couldn’t stand to leave Martin alone overnight in this place.

Sometimes they would stumble across each other in the breakroom in the middle of the night, matching shadows under their eyes, and Jon never knew what to say. He never was good at comforting people – or being comforted. At least, not at that point in his life.  

The way Jon treated Martin back then, how little he appreciated him, how much he pushed him away just because he was too afraid to–

And now, what he wouldn’t give just to–

Jon sighs. Coming to Document Storage may have been a bad idea.

Georgie walks by the open door with purpose, belatedly catches sight of him, backtracks, and enters the room.

“Hey, I was looking for you. You weren’t in your office, and…” She trails off. “You’re crying.”

Is he? He brings one hand to his cheek and it comes away wet.

Oh.

Georgie approaches and sits next to him on the cot.

“Do you want to talk about–” She cuts herself off with a grimace. “I guess that might not be an option right now.”

It really isn’t. He can barely string his own thoughts together, let alone pull something from the Archive. He gives her a weak smile, though – he appreciates the offer.

“In the dream, then? I know there are things we can’t talk about there, but…”

She sighs, then looks up, returns a small smile, and opens her arms a little – leaving him with the choice of whether to initiate contact. When he was living with her, he had become so jumpy – both touch averse and touch starved at the same time. She’d picked up on it without him saying a word, and adjusted accordingly: she would extend the invitation, and let him decide whether and on what terms he would accept. It was remarkably similar to her approach to the Admiral, Jon had joked once.

The fact that she still remembers – well, it hasn’t been as long for her as it has for him, he supposes, but still, the consideration is enough to bring more tears to his eyes. He doesn’t have to think twice before he practically collapses into her. He tries desperately to stifle himself because he knows, he knows that if he lets go, he’ll shatter into the kind of heaving sobs that leave him feeling raw and vulnerable. It doesn’t work. The dam breaks and she says nothing for several minutes, just lets him cling to her and cry until all that remains are hiccups and shallow breaths.

An eternity passes before he finally releases his grip and draws back, hiding his face in his sleeve.

“I’ve never seen you cry so much,” Georgie says softly. When he tenses, she adds: “It’s not a bad thing. I think it’s long-overdue.” Not entirely true; he’d shed plenty of tears during the apocalypse. Georgie must interpret his reaction as disagreement with the first statement rather than the second, though, because she continues: “When it happens, let it happen. It won’t make everything better, but it will make things feel better, at least for a little bit.”

She is right, he knows. If nothing else, it takes the edge off, at least momentarily.

“Listen, I have to get back home. It’s late, and the Admiral hasn’t eaten yet.”

Jon nods – I understand – and without being prompted begins to unwind her scarf from where it still rests draped over his shoulders.

“Keep it,” she says. “You like the texture, right?” He suddenly notices how he’s rubbing the fabric between his fingers, and wonders just how much he’s been doing that over the past few hours. Almost nonstop, he’s willing to bet. “Besides, it looks good on you.” He scoffs, still a bit tear-choked, nudges her with his shoulder, and tries to ignore that hateful voice in his head telling him that this is a going-away gift. And then: “Take care of yourself, okay?”

He goes rigid. Georgie – of course – notices immediately.

“I’m coming back, Jon,” she says gently. “I’ll probably be back tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring some things with me. If you’re going to be staying here… I know this place will never feel like a home, but maybe we can at least make it feel a little less…” She wrinkles her nose. “Well, sinister.”

Given how long he’s gone without any stable base, homelike or no, it actually is better than nothing. Even before he ended the world, he hadn’t had a place to call home for years. The closest he got was the safehouse in Scotland, and that… that was only because Martin was there. Jon Knew that there was no such thing as a place where they could be truly safe, but Martin made him feel safe, which meant that he could pretend that they were safe, if only for a little while.

And then Jon destroyed that, too.

“Hang in there,” Georgie says. “Try to get some sleep. You look like you need it, and if we dream at the same time, we can talk there.”

She holds her arms open and once again he welcomes the contact, though this time he manages to keep from completely crumbling. It’s just… he spent so long without any kind touch at all, let alone a full embrace. After losing Martin, the closest he got was Helen touching his shoulder once, and that was only to startle him. It made his skin crawl, and her resulting laugh made his bones ache, and he hated it – but the worst part was how much his heart sank when she withdrew her hand.

When Georgie releases him and stands to leave, she pauses at the threshold. “Do you want the door closed?”

Jon’s heart stutters in his throat. With a quiet, strangled noise, he shakes his head no. He looks away in embarrassment, berating himself for the overreaction. Georgie certainly notices, but she doesn’t call attention to it. It’s just one more item on the list of reasons to be grateful to her.  

“Okay. I’m off to say goodnight to Melanie.” She smiles. He can see that it’s intended to be reassuring, but exhaustion and worry show in the lines under her eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Promise.” 

Jon doesn’t sleep, of course. He doesn’t even try.

He just can’t stop thinking: What if his inability to use his own voice carries over into the dream? Or what if he can’t speak at all? He doesn’t know which would be worse. What if he finds himself back in the role of unblinking, unmoving Watcher? How would he explain the sudden change to the… to his victims? All the rapport they’ve built up over the past couple months will be undone. 

He will be the monster in their nightmares again – all eyes, all eyes, all eyes – and he doesn’t have it in himself to deny it. Even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t have the words.  

The prospect of it is more than enough to keep him awake. 

The next day, Jon is practically useless.

“Did you even sleep at all?” Georgie asks, arms crossed.

Jon doesn’t look up to meet her eyes when he shakes his head no.

“Why not?”

Because I’m terrified, he wants to say.

Instead, he shrugs. “I’ve always had problems sleeping.”  

The words are difficult to string together and even more difficult to voice – like talking through a mouthful of peanut butter. 

“Yeah, I know that,” Georgie says. “But there’s more, isn’t there?”

Sometimes he wishes Georgie wasn’t so perceptive.

“Something I didn’t want to talk about,” he says vaguely, wincing as he speaks.

“Fine,” Georgie sighs. “You don’t have to talk about it right this second. But this discussion isn’t over. You need to talk to someone, even if it has to be in metaphor or whatever. It doesn’t have to be me, but you can’t keep these things bottled up. Okay?”

Jon lets out a heavy sigh, but he does nod.   

“Right. You hungry? You didn’t eat anything last night.”

He shakes his head no.

“What about in the other way?”

Jon shuts his eyes. There’s no point in lying to her – she would know – and he is trying to be more open about these things. He dreads the others looking at him like he’s inhuman again – no matter how deserved – once they know how all-consuming the hunger becomes. But they need to know how dangerous he is at any given time, so they know what steps to take to keep him from hurting anyone. His self-esteem is low-priority.

“…it’s always there at the edges,” he admits. He tries to cover his grim tone with a tight smile.  

“Well, this is an archive. You have plenty of statements lying around.” She pauses. “Will those work, or…?”

“…might have made his present state slightly more bearable – he could still feel the hunger, but–”  

“–that was enough for my purposes–”

“–just to appease the thing–”  

“–can help with the pressure–”  

“–some satisfaction in the end.”  

“Do you want me to… bring you one? I don’t know what I’m looking for, exactly, but if you–”

“…perhaps they asked you if you were going to record, and you shook your head: maybe later.”  

He would rather hold off on the statements – even the stale ones – until absolutely necessary. It’s doubtful that detoxing will work in this situation. Last time, starving the Beholding didn’t do anything to alleviate the need. If anything, it made it worse. But by this point, he’s made a hobby of spiting the Ceaseless Watcher whenever possible, no matter how fruitless or petty it ultimately is. How much control he has over his life is a question that will never be answered to his satisfaction, but he’ll grab those moments of agency whenever he can, even if he is only fooling himself. 

“If you’re sure,” Georgie says uncertainly. “But if you aren’t going to sleep or eat, maybe you want to get some fresh air–”

Jon shakes his head adamantly.

“If you’re going to be staying here, you’ll need some things. We could just go around the corner and–”

“…the danger was too acute.”  

“You’ll have supervision. We can cover your eyes, and–” Seeing the expression on his face, Georgie stops herself. She forces a smile, but he can see the sadness in it. “Okay. Make me a list – or, I’ll help you make a list – and I can pick some things up for you.” Jon gives her a grateful nod and a thumbs up. “I’m going to go check in on Melanie. Think of what you need and I’ll be back later.”

In a private prison cell, Jonah Magnus – also known as Elias Bouchard, née James Wright, née Richard Mendelson, née nearly a dozen other hollowed out and discarded vessels – sits placidly, biding his time and watching the proceedings with great anticipation.

He is inordinately pleased to see that his Archivist has finally chosen to accept his role. Granted, he does not know what his role entails, any more than he knew what he was agreeing to when he accepted the Head Archivist position. But does it really matter whether he was privy to all the fine print? He may not have wanted this, but he did choose this nonetheless – and oh, how he's taken to it, like a moth to the flame.

Jonah will proudly admit that his greatest gift has always been his ability to read a person, even before his allegiance to the Ceaseless Watcher. He didn’t need the Eye’s assistance to know from the very beginning that Jonathan Sims is as near perfect a candidate as he could have hoped for. The details revealed to him by the Beholding only confirmed his first impression of his target: Web-marked at a tender age, leaving him primed for future manipulation and a chronic fear thereof; a desperate yearning to make himself useful, having learned young that the surest pathway to lukewarm approval was to avoid being a burden; isolationist tendencies, left over from a childhood characterized by loss and rejection and an acute awareness that he was unwanted and unlikable; a nigh-insurmountable intolerance of emotional intimacy, because he never quite learned how to trust and, thus, how to let himself be vulnerable.

Jon has always been either too much or not enough, and from that revelation he gleaned an important lesson: it is safer to keep people from getting too close or knowing him too well. That way, the abandonment he has come to expect will never leave too keen a sting. And if his conviction regarding the inevitability of rejection is precisely the problem, well… Jon cannot tolerate that kind of scrutiny long enough to break that self-fulfilling prophecy, even – perhaps especially – from himself.     

Jonah has found over the years that the lack of a support network is a vital ingredient for managing a target. When Jonah selected him, Jon had no close attachments and seemed highly unlikely to develop any. Even when he wasn’t being deliberately abrasive to keep people at arm’s length, he turned people off with a tendency to either talk too much (he never quite outgrew that childhood reputation as an insufferable know-it-all) or too little (making him seem haughty and unapproachable). As far as Jonah could tell, it was rare that someone would tolerate Jon long enough to see a palatable side of him – and Jon knew that, and used it as a shield. 

Jon is a perfect mixture of distrust and self-doubt and impulsivity and, yes, loneliness, though he would never admit to that last. As a bonus, he came prepackaged with the heavy weight of survivor’s guilt, which is always an easy weakness to exploit. It took only a few subtle nudges and the ambient influence of the Eye to tip him into full-blown paranoia and self-sabotage. He has a truly impressive propensity for overthinking and indecision; he overwhelms himself with so many variables and possibilities that he can never actually reach a conclusion, which means that no matter how close he comes to solving a puzzle, he will never actually place that final piece.

Most importantly, there is his insatiable curiosity. The obsessiveness. The stubborn refusal – the inability – to let a question go unasked or unanswered. These things are innate to him, fatal flaws that marked him long before any of the Dread Powers took note of him, necessary qualifications for an Avatar of the Beholding.  

All of that together makes Jonathan Sims so very, very easy to manipulate. It’s as if he was born to be consigned to the Ceaseless Watcher. Jonah could not have chosen a more suitable Archivist, and he is nothing but pleased with the progress and promise he has shown.  

And yet… Jonah must force himself to admit to some apprehension regarding these newest developments. He did not expect – did not even imagine the possibility – that the Archivist would awaken without a voice of his own.

In some ways, this is a boon: it will no doubt exacerbate the preexisting strife and miscommunication between the Archivist and his dwindling band of grudging allies. If it hasn’t yet obliterated what fragile trust still remained between them, it’s only a matter of time. The estrangement will push Jon further and further into despair. Left alone with only his own catastrophizing thoughts, he will be unable to drown out the call of the Beholding; he will act recklessly in pursuit of any shallow pretense of control; he will have no one to keep him in check when he inevitably gives in to his new existence and all that it entails.

He will, in a word, self-destruct – and in the vacancy left behind, the Archive will take root and thrive.

However, there is the possibility that Jon's new… limitations will curtail his use of compulsion. He can likely still exercise that power even if he must do so through others’ words, but it won’t be as convenient or as easy. If he has to put forethought into using the ability, he may be less likely to use it by mistake or on a whim – and part of what Jonah likes so much about Jon is just how much he spirals in the aftermath of his mistakes. Compelling people – especially accidentally – would whittle away at Jon’s already flimsy sense of self-control, which would have been ideal.

Also problematic is that Jon seems to have already noticed his growing need to feed on live prey, such that he has apparently placed himself under house arrest in order to avoid doing so. It’s only a temporary setback, however. Jon won’t be able to resist forever; he always has had an addictive personality. Regardless of whatever newfound sense self-control he may think he has, Jon does not actually have much choice in whether he serves the Beholding, only how and when and at whose expense. He’s already pledged himself to the Eye, and there’s no going back. Its call will only grow louder, and the Archivist will be compelled to answer it, regardless of Jon’s feelings on the subject.

Finally, there’s the matter of how much Jon claims to Know. It isn’t that his Knowing is unexpected; to the contrary, it shows progress, and he had already been showing those promising signs of growth leading up to the Unknowing. But Jon seems to have made a sudden leap in aptitude, and Jonah can’t pinpoint a reason why – just as he cannot fathom why Jon should suddenly have such control over his nightmares.

Jonah would be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed and more than a little incensed when Jon not only Knew about Melanie King's situation, but managed to convey that information to Georgina Barker. Melanie's encounter with the Slaughter had been so serendipitous. She was perfectly situated to provide Jon with the mark of the Slaughter: she already detested him even before he fashioned himself into a pariah among his team, which made him the readiest target for her simmering rage. If the bullet had still been leaching its poison into her when Jon returned to the Archives, it would have been only a matter of time before she tore into him.

No matter; Jonah can improvise. This isn't a devastating setback, just an inconvenient one. Primarily, Jonah simply hates not knowing things, perhaps even more than his Archivist does.

In any case, Jon seems convinced that he has acquired game-changing information. If it was anyone else, Jonah may be tempted to write it off as undeserved confidence. Jon, however, has never been a confident man, despite his occasional bluster. Moreover, he has of late shown some surprising and frankly infuriating competence when it comes to avoiding Jonah’s surveillance. He doubts that Jon Knows anything that would lead him to discover Jonah’s plans, but Jonah would still like to learn the exact details of what Jon thinks he Knows – whether it will amount to a minor inconvenience or a more serious delay.

It is… possible that Jonah underestimated the man.

Jonah is not the Archivist. His abilities of Seeing and Knowing are comparatively limited, and much of his advantage relies on the Archivist never recognizing just how much latent power he really has until it’s too late. Another reason why it was vital for Jonah’s chosen one to be so susceptible to insecurity and self-loathing: Jon is both unlikely to believe he has any power in this situation and too unambitious to seek dominance in the first place.    

A pawn with the capacity to strategize is somewhat more difficult to manage, but Jonah isn’t overly worried. He is the chessmaster; he holds the advantage; he is ultimately in control. His pawns can run around scheming in tunnels and chasing red herrings all they like. They haven’t the faintest idea of the Watcher’s Crown, nor any bread crumbs to lead them to knowledge of its existence. Without the complete picture, they don’t even know what game they’re playing. They stand no chance of denying Jonah his destined throne.

This is uncharted territory, so it stands to reason that there will be unforeseen developments. If nothing else, Jonah is pleased to have gotten so far on his first try. It might even be a good thing that the distinction between the Archivist and the Archive is blurring so soon, that Jon is already losing his grip on his humanity so thoroughly. The more his sense of self unravels, the closer he comes to his fated apotheosis.   

Jonah Magnus is good at waiting, but he cannot deny his mounting impatience as his long-awaited victory looms ever closer. He focuses his gaze on his hapless Archivist – alone in his office, once again immersed in some foolish, truly futile attempt to defy his nature – and he smiles.

Entertainment is hard to come by these days. If nothing else, this certainly is fascinating to watch.

Jon hisses as he flexes his fingers, trying to chase away the pins-and-needles pain rippling through his hands and up his arms. It had seemed safe to assume that the Beholding would enforce the same restrictions on typing as it does on writing, but he figured it was worth a try.

All he wanted to do was pull up an online shopping catalog – it didn’t even matter which one, he just wanted to be able to point at things on the screen. It would at least give him a starting point, and from there Georgie could ask him questions to narrow down what he was requesting, instead of having to delve into the Archive for some roundabout way of saying, if you could get me some unscented bar soap that would be great, because I can’t handle most of the popular scents ever since that time I got kidnapped by the Circus, and liquid soap feels too much like lotion so that’s always an ordeal; and some disposable gloves would be nice because when I need to wash my hair I usually can’t handle the texture of shampoo either and I prefer to avoid direct skin contact as much as possible and I got used to Martin helping me but he isn’t here; which, speaking of, some two-in-one shampoo/conditioner would probably be good, because that way I can just get it over with and I only have to risk one undue emotional breakdown per shower, so if you could – actually, never mind, please forget the last several things I said, that was way too much information; I spent the last… a long time just surviving in the wreckage of a ruined world, so I have no idea why I’m being picky; I’m grateful for anything you can bring me, you’re really going out of your way for me and frankly I don’t deserve it; and I’m terrified that you’ll realize that, and then you’ll leave, and you would be right to, but I don’t want you to, and isn’t that selfish of me, isn’t that–

Whatever; it doesn’t matter. Jon got two characters into a search query before the tremors started, and attempting to follow through on his intention to press another key brought on the avalanche of pain still crashing over him. He’s half-tempted to push through it – it’s not like he's unaccustomed to physical pain – but the moment he has that thought, his joints lock up. He doesn’t know why he even bothered.

A post-apocalyptic Google, reduced to this, he thinks viciously.

It’s not that he misses being a post-apocalyptic Google, it’s just…

He sighs.

Who is he fooling? He does miss it. And he hates that about himself – these little bursts of longing for what he left behind, these moments of nostalgia for the fucking apocalypse – but there’s no use denying it. There was an overwhelming sense of comfort and security in being able to just Know things – and having that ocean of knowledge at his fingertips had felt so natural, so right.

He’s spent his whole life grappling with that incessant need to know – fueled, of course, by a poorly-masked fear of the unknown – and for such a long time, he had the freedom to nurture the first and the power to strangle the second. He had near-complete control over his ability to Know, excepting the occasional tidbit that would slip through when he wasn’t paying attention and a select handful of questions that the Beholding refused – or was unable – to answer. Now, he’s back to grasping for scraps leaking through the crack in the door and being subjected to whatever intrusive trivia the Eye wants to drop on him without warning. It’s just… frustrating, and–

Jon snaps to attention, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. The feeling of being watched is background radiation in his life at this point, and it’s part of the atmosphere of the Archives for everyone who finds themselves here. There are some moments, though – like now – when that awareness intensifies, like a microscope slide being brought into focus.

Jonah, probably, Jon tells himself with a shudder. It was only a matter of time before he started making his presence known again. Thinking back, Oliver might have been onto something when he referred to the Eye’s influence as slimy. It certainly does feel like a residue – one that can never be truly scoured away.

He’s just about to write off the gooseflesh and chills as the sort of casual, low-level, pre-apocalyptic voyeurism he needs to readjust to, to force himself to ignore it and not give Jonah Magnus the satisfaction of seeing him rattled, when Jon registers the drop in temperature.

The moment he notices his breath fogging, he bolts upright in his chair. Without thinking, he calls out.    

“Martin?”

The name tears its way up and out of his throat in dozens of overlapping tones, each instance recorded in the Archive layered one on top of the other and broadcast simultaneously. He flinches, both from the way it shakes him to his core and with a fear of how it might be received.

He can just barely make out a sharp intake of breath, coming from somewhere near the open office door, and he could swear his heart stops.  

Jon stands, takes a step toward where he Knows Martin is standing, and begins a mad scramble for words.

“I called for him to stay still, to wait there–”  

“–I wanted to say something reassuring, to reach out and let him know I was still there–”  

“–I knew I would do everything in my power to help him–”  

“–I asked him if I could help–”   

Martin probably doesn’t know why he’s speaking like this. What if it scares him away?

Panicked, Jon combs through Martin’s statements, always close at hand:

“I need him to be okay–”  

“–I’m sorry I left you – we got separated – I – I tried shouting, but you didn’t answer. I was trying to go back – I wanted to get out of there – I was looking for a way – to get – back–”

“–to come back to you–”   

“–I’m sorry – I’m sorry I left you.”  

Silence. Jon tries again, borrowing fragments from other statements this time, throwing it all together haphazardly:

“…the last time I saw you before I disappeared – I couldn’t–”  

“–reach out and let him know I was still there–”  

“–I’m sorry I left you–”  

“–I was still there–”  

“–do everything in my power–”

“–to keep a grip on that anchor–”  

“–to come back to you–”  

Jon breaks off with a ragged gasp, but holds one trembling hand out.

“I need him to be okay,” he says again, desperate.

There is a faint shuffling noise, and then he Knows that Martin is turning to leave. Frantically, Jon reaches for Naomi’s statement – morbidly fitting, being the first record of the Lonely he ever encountered.

“Could you stay please? I don’t want to be alone – stay please – don’t – be alone–”  

Martin’s breath hitches audibly.

“Please – stay please – don’t – be alone – please…”  

For a moment, he seems to waver at the threshold. Then come the soft footfalls, moving… moving away, pace quickening with every step, echoing with resolve and purpose.  

Jon can do nothing more than whisper now – stay, please, stay, I’m sorry, come back, don’t be alone – but it doesn’t matter. Martin is well out of earshot, and he’s taken the cold and the fog with him.

No warmth rushes in to fill that empty space.

Jon could chase after him, maybe even catch up with him, but… he knows – not even Knows, just knows – that it would make little difference. He’s been here once before, after all.

He lowers his hand and sinks to the floor with a sigh, leaning back against his desk with his eyes closed.

Now what?

Chapter Text

It’s okay, Jon tells himself, forcing himself to breathe the way Martin taught him: Four seconds in; hold seven seconds; eight seconds out.

Well… okay, it’s not okay. It’s very, very not okay.

…but – four – it – five – will – six – be – seven… okay, exhale.

Some time later – eight minutes, thirty-six-point-eight seconds, he Knows, though he didn’t ask – his breathing evens out and his thoughts clear with it.

That interaction with Martin wasn’t unexpected. There’s little reason to expect things to be different this time around, especially this soon after Jon woke up. He knows this.

There is a wall between him and Martin right now, constructed from a lifetime of rejection and loneliness that Jon himself contributed to for far too long. It’s been recently bolstered by a mountain of grief, loss, and mourning – what should have been years’ worth condensed into the last six months – and it’s been further reinforced by Peter Lukas’ manipulations.

It will take some time to coax Martin away from the Lonely. Hopefully it won’t take as long as it did the last time, especially now that Jon knows the hypothetical threat of the Extinction is not as imminent as Peter claims, but still: Martin needs time and space. Besides, Jon simply can’t force the Lonely out of him with a few words and a prayer. Martin has to choose to reject it of his own volition, or it will always cling to him.

And, most importantly: Martin deserves to make his own choice. Jon has no right to take that from him, any more than he did when they passed through the Lonely’s domain.

It would have been nice to be able to physically see Martin, though. Or even just hear his voice outside of his own head. Memories can only provide so much reassurance, and for so long.

Jon had every intention of continuing yesterday’s strategy meeting this afternoon, but already his brief conversation with Georgie and painfully brief interaction with Martin have left him fatigued. The migraine he had expected yesterday failed to reach fruition, but the threat of it still lingers, accompanied by a painless but still unpleasant sensation of pressure in his head, making him feel off-kilter. As of right now, he can still pull on the Archive to speak. Sitting down and strategizing is another matter entirely. Planning ahead has never been part of his skill set. Anxiety, sleep deprivation, and a supernaturally-imparted speech impediment aren’t doing him any favors.

“Let me guess: you’re out of commission.”

Basira looks him up and down, taking in his hunched gargoyle posture in his desk chair, his half-lidded eyes, his fidgety hands: one resting uneasily on top of his desk, fingers twitching and tapping with no discernible rhythm; the other wound up in the scarf Georgie gave him, still draped over his shoulders. 

Jon can’t tell what characterizes Basira more in this moment: frustration with him, or simple exhaustion. Despite his own hypersensitivity to how others perceive him, he has a feeling that right now, it’s the latter.

“I think it can wait until tomorrow,” says Georgie, perched on the edge of Jon’s desk.   

“Fine,” Basira concedes. “Tomorrow, then.” She knocks twice on the doorframe. When Jon looks up, she catches his eye. “Get some actual sleep tonight, Jon. It’s not just your personal mental health on the line here.”   

“She is right about you needing to sleep,” Georgie says as Basira leaves. He avoids eye contact. “I’m serious. You look exhausted. I can get you a sleep aid–” Jon shakes his head slowly. “Why?”

With a sudden burst of energy, Jon stands, grabs her hand, and leads her to the entrance to the tunnels. He waits until they’ve both descended the ladder and the trapdoor is closed behind them before he turns to her and blurts out:

“…too afraid to go to sleep.” 

“I can sit next to you while you fall asleep if you–”

“…would serve no purpose except to start me having the nightmares again,” he mumbles, sinking into the nearest chair.

“You’ve been having those for a long time now,” Georgie says, following his lead and sitting across from him. “And you’ve figured out how to cope with them. What’s actually scaring you?”

Jon bites his lower lip and bows his head.

“Then I would watch – once again–” 

“–paralyzed with fear–” 

“–tried to scream but I couldn’t find my breath, I couldn’t move–” 

“–I couldn’t talk to anyone–” 

“–unable to move its body, though – its eyes darting around wildly–” 

“–unable to move – to cry for help–” 

“–unable to look away–” 

“–could only stare at him as he slowly, achingly crawled towards his doom–” 

“–being unable to reach him–”

“–stare at it, knowing how your – friend suffers, knowing how powerless you are to help–” 

“Slow down. You’re worried you’ll go back to how you were before?”

“…could only watch from the sidelines, getting a… a–” 

He stops, leaning forward with his head in his hands.

“What is it, Jon?”

“And the worst part was that, somewhere in me, I – I liked it–” 

“–it drew me in almost as much as it disgusted me–” 

“–getting a… a sad vicarious thrill from–” 

“–when people look at me… that fear” – Jon’s breath hitches – “it feels amazing.” 

He looks up at Georgie.

“Underneath all that awful fear, it felt like… home,” he whispers in a haunted tone. The shame crashes over him and he breaks eye contact, ducking his head again.

Georgie is quiet for a long moment. Then, she leans forward, reaches out, and takes his hand. He flinches and freezes.

“It sounds to me like you don’t want to like it,” she says. “People sometimes have feelings and urges that they aren’t proud of. Things that would hurt other people, if acted on.” She takes a breath. “But… I think it says more about a person’s character when they fight back against it.”

“…a presence within myself, inside my being–” 

“–will strip us of what it means to be human, and leave us something alien and cold.” 

“I know your circumstances are… different–”

“…it was the product of an otherworldly evil and called to me,” he says miserably.

“I know,” she says again. “There’s something in you, something that came from outside of yourself, and it’s trying to change you. Consume you.”

“…should have fought harder against the temptation–” 

“But you’re fighting it now, aren’t you? You want things to be different.”

“I suppose I had to believe that the darkened natures of our terror could be kept in check – a rather feeble hope, for my own salvation–” 

“–as if it might ward whatever awful thing waited inside that door.” 

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s a feeble hope. This is the most sure I’ve ever seen you be about anything.” She jostles his hand until he looks up at her. “You’re not a bad person, Jon. You’re taking extreme steps to make sure you don’t hurt anyone. It might not change the things you’ve done in the past, but neither will beating yourself up over it.”

Jon laughs, wincing when it comes out sounding a bit tear-choked.

“I try to think that I’ve left my past behind, but that sort of denial doesn’t help me sleep.” 

“Maybe not. But you don’t have to deny the past in order to move beyond it. You can remember your mistakes and learn from them without letting them define you. And I think… I think you’re going to have to do that, if you want to move forward.” After a moment, Jon nods. Apparently unconvinced, Georgie adds: “Also, I don’t know if you need to be told this, but getting better means actually taking care of yourself.”

Jon chuckles at that, some of his tension bleeding away. “Thank you for indulging me, you’ve been very patient.” 

“Stop that. You’d do the same for me. You have done the same for me.” He opens his mouth to argue. “Yeah, you’re not great at comforting people, I know. But I’ve seen you try.”

He must still look dubious, because Georgie sighs heavily.

“Do you remember when I was going through that medication change in uni?”

Jon nods warily.

It had been before they started dating. Jon has never made friends easily, but somehow Georgie had managed to tolerate his company long enough for him to start letting his guard down. At that point in his life, she really was the only one who he could confidently call a friend.

So when the antidepressant she had been on for over a year lost effectiveness and she had to start the arduous process of finding a new one, Jon had a front row seat to a depressive episode – and he felt irretrievably lost. He had no script to follow; he worried incessantly that he was making things worse, that he wasn’t making himself useful enough, that he was intruding on her personal space and she just didn’t have the energy to tell him the truth. He would pace restlessly and trip over his words and lapse into uncomfortable silences, wringing his hands and brooding – being more of a nuisance than a help, he was certain.   

“You didn’t know how to help,” Georgie says, as if reading his mind. “You couldn’t make me better. I could tell it was driving you mad, not having an answer, because there was no simple answer. It was just… something that had to be lived through, coped with – and you’ve never been able to tolerate that concept, I know. You’re not good at waiting.” Jon huffs – only because she’s right. “But,” Georgie says emphatically, “you spent time with me, even though I was no fun. Brought me takeaway, set alarms to remind yourself to ask me if I’d taken my meds, did all this – this reading and research on how to support a loved one in crisis, which was” – she chuckles – “very you.”

Jon focuses intently on the weave of his scarf, petting it absently with his free hand, tracing the knit with his fingertips.

“You stayed anyway, even though you were uncomfortable. You didn’t say as much, but you’re fairly obvious when you’re anxious. At one point I told you I didn’t want you to fix it, I just didn’t want to be alone, and… you respected that. Which surprised me, to be honest. I was certain you’d be stubborn about it, act like you knew better than me.” Jon smiles at that. It was a fair assumption for her to make, especially back then. “Probably never would’ve considered dating you if you hadn’t proven me wrong then.”

“Until he became me–” 

“–moody, short-tempered, constantly on edge.” 

He gives Georgie a wry look as he says it, though, and she laughs.

“You’ve always been moody and on edge, including then. That wasn’t a new development that grew up overnight. What I’m saying is you’ve never been just that – which is why I have expectations of you, because I know what you’re capable of.” She gives him a serious look. “Like I told you years ago, you need to stop seeing things in black-and-white – including when it’s about you. Not everything has a clear-cut answer. You’d be happier if you could make peace with that.”

“And he was aware of it always – could not disagree,” Jon says with an exaggerated eye roll.

“Of course I’m right,” she quips back. “But you’re trying, and that’s all I ask.”

The ensuing silence is a comfortable one. Jon uses the lapse as an opportunity to search for a way to ask after Melanie.

“Statement of Georgina Barker regarding–”

Jon pauses. There’s really no way of saying the next part without drawing on more than one statement, but… Georgie is safe, and the phrase only appears a couple of times in the Archive, so it shouldn’t be too powerful. 

“Statement of Melanie King.”

There is a reverb to the words, but the lightheadedness that comes with it is mild and passes quickly. Georgie appears to notice the odd tenor of his voice, tilting her head slightly to track the sound, but she doesn’t pursue it.

“You’re asking how Melanie is?”

“I wanted to check in with them, find out what happened.” 

“She’s… having a rough day. I don’t think it’s my place to say more than that.”

Jon nods again: I understand. Then, he repeats again: “Statement of Georgina Barker.” 

Georgie leans forward, elbow on knee, chin propped up by her fist. Her other hand continues to hold Jon’s, but she loosens her grip somewhat. The crease between her eyebrows is familiar to him – Georgie is taking her time to inventory her thoughts before speaking. He waits.

“I’m… hm. It’s been a lot to process,” she says carefully. “I think I’m doing okay for the moment? I’m mostly worried about Melanie. I’ve been worried about Melanie, but… after what you said about quitting – it’s complicated things a bit. It’s something we needed to know,” she adds, seeing Jon’s guilty expression. “I’m glad you were honest with us. Actually, I think Melanie was surprised that you told us about the, ah, second way to quit. It… hmm. It doesn't fit with the image she has of you.” Jon snorts at the delicate phrasing, and Georgie gives him a sheepish smile. “Sorry, but she still thinks you’re a self-serving prick.”

Jon shrugs, unperturbed. He already knew that, and it’s not like he’s done much to dissuade Melanie of that assessment. Not yet, anyway.

“Oh, but she told me to reassure you that she isn’t going to kill you in your sleep, so that’s something? I told her that’s not why you pulled an all-nighter, but she said to let you know anyway.”

Jon laughs, and Georgie’s eyes crinkle when she returns a smile. After a moment, though, it fades.

“I did want to ask, though… did Melanie find out how to quit in your future as well?” Jon nods. “In that case – I’m not sure if you were planning on it, but in case you were… don’t tell me just yet what her decision was where you came from. I’ve been tempted to ask, but I haven’t talked it over with Melanie yet, and I think that’s her call to make. Okay?” Jon nods again. “And… she’s still angry with you – with a lot of things, really, but especially this place, and she sees you as inseparable from it.”

“They’re not entirely wrong,” Jon accedes.

“I did talk to her about it. She asked me to let you know that she does want to talk to you – I know she has some questions to ask – but that she doesn’t want you near her right now. She’s trying to sort through her feelings towards you – figure out how much of it is a you problem versus a her problem versus a both-of-you problem. She needs some space to do that. And it’s not the only thing she’s working through right now.”

Jon can appreciate that. Honestly, it’s better than he could have hoped for. Last time around, Melanie had eventually softened on him, had even tentatively called him a friend – but at that point, everything in his life felt like too little too late, and she deserved better than to have him poison her life again. When he sought her out that last time, he really had only been looking for someone to help him parse Martin’s intentions – Jon has always struggled with anything less than direct, explicit communication – but Georgie was right to be angry with him. Regardless of his intentions, he was inseparable from the Institute. There was no way for him to ask for advice that didn’t involve dragging Melanie back into exactly the kind of toxicity she was trying to escape.

When he left that day, it was with the intention of staying out of both of their lives from then on. They both set a firm boundary, and they deserved to have it respected. But he had plenty of time to brood during the apocalypse, and there were so many things left unsaid between him and Melanie and Georgie. Even if the world hadn’t ended, he probably wouldn’t have approached them again. They seemed happy, and showing up on their doorstep to talk, even if it was just to apologize, would have only been for his own benefit. It wouldn’t have felt right to intrude on them again and open up old wounds just for the sake of securing closure for himself.

Now, though? Truth be told, he could use some space, himself. He’s rehearsed it many times before – all the things he might say to the people in his life, both living and dead, if he had a chance to see them again – but now that he actually has that chance, everything he’s drafted in his head feels inadequate. It may take some time to get his thoughts in order before sitting down and openly discussing his and Melanie’s fraught relationship.

“So… Martin?” Georgie says, snapping Jon out of his thoughts. “Have you seen him yet?”

Jon makes an uncertain tilting motion with his hand, finding no succinct way to explain that yes, he did have a brief encounter with Martin, but it was a one-sided conversation, and Jon expected as much, but it still hurt; and moreover, Martin was invisible when he visited, no doubt intending to just see for himself that Jon was awake, to check in on how he was doing without being noticed; and Jon wishes he had been able to do the same, to have some irrefutable physical reassurance that Martin is alive and real and here and now, because it’s been so long, and…

“…he seemed determined to avoid – me,” Jon settles on instead.

“You care about him a lot, don’t you?”

“I need him to be okay–”  

“–the easy, charming man I’d fallen in love with.” 

“Oh,” Georgie says, sounding stunned. Jon meets her eyes with a quizzical expression. “I just – knowing you, I figured you’d still be in denial about how infatuated you are? Or, at best, you’d grudgingly admit you maybe, possibly had a little crush? I was not expecting a declaration of love.”

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me, it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already–”  

“–and together it seemed like we would get past our pain.” 

“Holy shit,” Georgie murmurs. “You’re absolutely besotted. I mean, I knew you were, you talked about him all the time and you’re not as subtle as you think you are – but actually acknowledging it?”

“…honestly it’s one of the few decisions I’ve ever made that I completely understand,” Jon replies, not bothering to hide his small smile.

“Wow. You’ve… changed more than I thought.” Georgie mirrors his expression, but then she falters, chewing the inside of her cheek for a moment. “Can I ask how it – if it…” Jon’s smile fades too, but he makes a beckoning gesture: It’s okay; go on. “Regardless of whether things worked out between you, I… well, I have a hard time thinking you’d come back to this time if it meant leaving him behind in your future?”

Jon looks down at their linked hands, expressionless as he begins to construct a response.

“I’ll skip over the bit where–” 

“–taking me in his arms and giving me the last and longest hug I would ever get from him–” 

“–he was gone. Just gone. And I was alone again. There was no one I could talk to about it–” 

“–I had plenty of time to mourn him–” 

“–it took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor, as I slowly dragged myself away from the edge of my lonely grave.” 

Georgie gives his hand a reassuring squeeze, which he returns gratefully.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I… I’m glad you have this second chance. You… are going to tell him how you feel this time as well, right?”

Obviously, he wants to say, but it’s not as simple as he wishes it was. He frowns thoughtfully as he searches for a way to explain the situation.

“…he’s been so lonely–” 

“–embraced the loneliness like an old friend–” 

“–for a creature of the Lonely, the urge is to isolate, never to communicate or connect–” 

“–I wanted to say something reassuring, to reach out and let him know I was still there–”

“But it was like this last time you woke up, too.” She waits for his affirmative before continuing: “So you can do it again.”

“…I managed it eventually, but my inability to speak–” 

“–I found him difficult to talk to at length.” 

“But,” she persists, “you aren’t going to give up, right?”

“…I knew he would return eventually,” Jon says.

“Good,” Georgie says with a relieved, somewhat exasperated sigh. “I swear to god, if you’d gotten fatalistic just then, I’d have had some words for you.” Jon chuckles. “Seriously, though, you’ll figure this out. You’ve always been stubborn. Every now and then, it’s even an asset.”  

“I’m grateful to her, of course.” 

“Again, don’t mention it. As long as you keep trying, I’ll support you. I might set limits on how much I’m willing to get involved with the actual supernatural bits – I haven’t decided just yet – but when I need to step back, I’ll tell you. I’m not going to ghost you just because you don’t grovel.”

Jon groans at the pun, which gets a self-satisfied grin out of Georgie.

“Oh, shut up. It was a good one.”    

Right, I forgot: comatose people don’t need pens, Jon thinks irritably to himself the next day, turning his office upside-down looking for a writing utensil.

He’s so thoroughly preoccupied with rummaging through his desk that he doesn’t notice Basira standing in the doorway until she clears her throat, startling him so badly that he jumps and slams one of his fingers in the drawer. He yelps in pain and pulls his hand back, shaking it out to distract from the throbbing. A moment later, the realization crosses his mind that it’s the same finger he’d tried to cut off the last time he was here.

It’s a coincidence, he tells himself before his mind can wander too far down the rabbit hole. He has enough to worry about without getting bogged down in the hypotheticals of time travel and sci-fi tropes about the changeability of the past. Besides, the Coffin hasn't even arrived yet; there are still a few weeks before the original date of his failed self-amputation attempts.

“Sorry,” Basira says, eyebrows raised. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Honestly, I figured you’d just know I was here.” Jon has nothing to say to that. Trying to explain the fine details of Knowing has never been a pleasant experience, and he couldn’t tackle that subject now even if he’d wanted to. “What are you looking for, anyway?”

“…think of me as an idiot who turned up to give a statement without a pen,” Jon says distractedly, opening another drawer and sifting through it. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Pens?” Jon nods without looking up. “Yeah, I threw them all out – don’t give me that look. Half of them didn’t even work, and the others looked like a puppy’s chew toys. Besides, most of what I threw out in here got touched by the Flesh. You didn’t want any of it back, trust me.” Jon grimaces. “Yeah. Anyway, there are boxes in the supply closet – but I think I can do you one better.”

She tosses something at him. He notices the movement belatedly and just barely manages to catch the thing, nearly dropping it.  

“Guess knowing things also doesn’t extend to being able to judge a trajectory without fumbling,” Basira deadpans.

Jon looks down at the phone in his hands, then back up at Basira.

“Got the Institute to cover it as a work expense. I have no idea where the one you had before the Unknowing ended up; I’m assuming it blew up along with everything else.” Basira leans back against the doorframe. “I’m sure texting will go about as well for you as typing has, but Georgie downloaded a few AAC apps for you to try.”

He gives Basira a tentative smile.

“You’re welcome,” she says with a curt nod. The look she gives him then is curious – almost like she’s still trying to get a read on him, debating how much closeness she can risk. Then her guard goes back up and her tone turns authoritative again. “You can practice with them later. Meeting’s in a half-hour.”

Before Jon can respond, Basira turns and leaves. He looks down at the phone in his hand again. It’s uncertain how the Archive will take to this newest workaround, but there’s only one way to find out.   

“Here, let me take–”

Jon unceremoniously drops the box of statements down through the trapdoor, where it hits the ground below with a dull thud and a puff of dust.

“…or not,” Georgie finishes.

“Was that really necessary?” Basira calls from the bottom of the ladder.

Completely pointless, Jon thinks to himself a bit giddily, ignoring the stabbing pain in his temples with relish. The Beholding can complain all it wants about him mishandling statements. Right now, he’s too tired and too delirious to care.

He had plenty of time during the apocalypse to develop methods of coping with the Eye’s intrusiveness. The most emotionally satisfying one he happened upon basically amounted to random acts of spite. It had no material effect on anything – aside from triggering varying degrees of headaches, but he already got those anyway. It was no different than a petulant child slamming a bedroom door, but it gave him that fleeting feeling of being in control of something, and it felt good.

“Let me go first,” Georgie says. He gives her a questioning look. “You’re using a cane, Jon. There’s a fifty percent chance you’re going to fall on your ass going down that ladder, and I’d rather keep you out of the hospital for the rest of the year.” Jon averts his eyes and frowns. She must interpret it as reluctance, because she clarifies: “You need a spotter.”

Jon signals agreement and she starts down the ladder ahead of him.

The thing is, he wasn’t trying to contradict her. It’s just… well, he’s still getting used to the idea of being cared for again, especially when it comes to insignificant things. Yes, his leg is acting up today, but it’s not that bad – the cane is just to keep it from getting any worse. Even if he did fall, it’s not like it would kill him. It would be inconvenient, unpleasant, and probably embarrassing, but too temporary to really register on his distress scale.

Anyway, he’s grown desensitized to physical pain. Or… no, that’s not quite right. What he’s desensitized to isn’t the pain itself, but the experience of being harmed. He’s come to expect it, and these days only the only permanent injuries he receives are those inflicted by one of the Powers. Everything else heals too quickly and completely to feel consequential. Most things don’t even scar anymore, and those that do – well, what’s one more scar?  

He knows it’s not a healthy mindset. Even before the world ended, he’d come to regard his body with a sense of detachment. In retrospect, he should’ve known that his rib wouldn’t work as an anchor. Most days, his body didn’t even feel like it belonged to him. Then, as if to confirm that inkling, Jonah reduced him to a mouthpiece; the Watcher’s eyes started manifesting on and around him; his presence became synonymous with that of the Eye to anyone who beheld him. He confirmed on several occasions that he wasn’t able to die. Even the Hunt couldn’t kill him. Jon would end one day, like everything else, but a mundane physical death was beyond him.

He doesn’t Know if that’s still the case now. He's been too afraid to chase an answer.  

So, yes, he’s developed a cavalier attitude towards personal safety. Avoiding minor injuries feels on par with what temperature the water is before he steps into the shower: relevant in terms of his own comfort, but otherwise frivolous. He’s always spared little thought as to his own comfort, and it’s only gotten worse since becoming the Archivist. The apocalypse didn’t exactly have much to offer in the way of comfort anyway, especially after…

Jon cringes as he stops to reflect on that train of thought. It took him fewer than thirty seconds to rationalize… well, Martin would have called it self-harm. Or self-sabotage, at the least. Georgie probably would, too, if she could see inside his mind right now. His judgment of what counts as worthy of concern is decidedly skewed, especially to an outside observer. It was easy to justify it to himself when it was just him alone at the end of the world, but employing a mindset forged in hopelessness and tailored to a doomed future is only going to be maladaptive here and now.

He should probably take some time later to unpack all of that. It would be easier if he could write it all out; it’s always difficult to keep track of his own thoughts without a visual aid, but–

“Jon?” Georgie calls up to him. “You can come down now.”

Deal with it later, he tells himself, tossing his cane down for Georgie to catch. As he makes his way down the ladder, his leg does twinge a bit, but it holds his weight well enough, and he reaches the bottom without incident.

“Where’s Melanie?” Basira asks.

“Resting,” Georgie says, handing Jon his cane. “She had a bad morning. I’ll fill her in on everything later.”

“Fine.” Basira nudges the box with her foot. “What’s this then?”

“Statements,” Georgie says. She’d watched Jon throw them haphazardly into the box before coming down here. “Not sure why, though.”

Jon moves the box to one of the chairs that they left in the tunnel last night. It isn’t too heavy – just some pertinent statements and tapes that he thought might make this discussion flow more smoothly. Taking a seat in the next chair over, he removes the lid from the box and begins rummaging.

“Statement of Joshua Gillespie, regarding his time in possession of an apparently empty wooden casket,” Jon says after a moment, holding up a folder labeled CASE #9982211 and containing the respective written statement. One page sticks out crookedly, and Jon’s heart skips a beat when he recognizes Tim’s handwriting. This had been one of his cases to follow up on.

He shakes his head and sets the folder aside, reaching into the box for the corresponding tape. Instead, his fingertips brush against a different loose cassette, and his breath catches in his throat.

“Statement of Detective Alice ‘Daisy’ Tonner,” he says quietly, removing the cassette. “Traffic stop of a delivery van.” 

“This is the statement Daisy gave you?” Basira says. “She said you compelled her.”

“I didn’t realize that was what had happened until afterwards,” Jon says softly. He pulls a tape recorder from his pocket and gives Basira a questioning look.

“Yeah,” she says roughly. “Yeah, go ahead.” 

Jon inserts the cassette and fast-forwards, stopping when he Knows he’s reached the right timestamp. His own recorded voice begins to play.   

        “If you don’t mind me asking, h-h-how long have you been sectioned now–”

        “I do mind,” comes Daisy’s clipped voice. Then, immediately: “Fourteen years.”

        “I don’t suppose you’d like to make a statement?”

        “About what?”

        “Whatever you like. Fourteen years – you must have seen a number of paranormal things.”

        “And you want me to tell you about them.”

        “Uh – I-I-I-I-I–”

        “Okay.” 

        “What?”  

        “Okay. I’ll give you a statement about – how I got my first Section 31.” A beat. “You look surprised.”

        “I mean, I was largely asking as a formality. Basira didn’t give me the impression you were the sharing sort.”

        “Maybe you caught me in a good mood.”

        “Right, well… good. Do you need me to go over our non-disclosure policy–”

        “Not as long as you understand my policy: if it gets out, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

        “There are worse things that could happen to them,” the Jon on the tape mutters.

Jon hits stop and looks up at Basira. There’s a sheen to her eyes; he does her the courtesy of looking away and not drawing attention to it. After a long few seconds, she clears her throat. When she speaks, her voice is even and impassive.

“So you really didn’t know you were compelling people back then.”

“…he had no idea what was about to happen to him.”  

He probably should have noticed sooner, but he was always so fixated on listening to the answer to a question that he paid comparatively little attention to the asking of it. Insensitive of him, really – far too like the detached fascination of the Ceaseless Watcher, in retrospect. The reality that he had the power to compel others didn’t really sink in until after his conversation with Jude. Disconcerting though it was, he couldn't deny the part of him that liked it - that ability to ask a question and receive an answer that he could know without a doubt was true. Eventually the discomfort and shame overshadowed the satisfaction, but in those early days, he appreciated that power to an extent.

Jon notices belatedly that the other two are watching him expectantly. He hadn’t planned on playing Daisy’s tape first, but since he already has it prepared to go, he fast-forwards to the beginning of her statement and lets it play through to the end. No one makes any comment in the few seconds it takes for him to swap the cassette out for Joshua Gillespie’s statement.

“So the Coffin makes people want to enter it,” Basira says as the second statement ends. “Is that why you went in, the first time? You were compelled?”

Jon shakes his head no. Daisy had asked him the same question last time. It’s true that the Coffin called to him, but its compulsion never got beneath his skin – not like that of the Beholding or the Web. In the end, going into the Buried was his decision.  

“Why, then?”

“…survivor’s guilt,” Jon says. “I should be dead, really – it’s hard to reconcile yourself with avoiding a death that you feel should have been yours.”  

There was more to it, though. He takes a minute to rifle through statements, to piece together his state of mind the first time he entered the Buried.

“I felt a great deal of guilt over my involvement with–” 

“–the path of the Eye–” 

“–when they looked at me, their eyes were full of – anger – blame–” 

“–looked at me with a mixture of hate and helpless terror, as though I could do something to fix it–” 

“–cut off effectively all human contact–” 

“–I decided I had to do something – anything to get out of the fog–” 

“–to lose myself in something that is not the absence of humanity–” 

“–desperate to remind myself that I could still feel something–” 

“–desperate for any human connection.” 

He pauses for a breath. Looking back, if Jon hadn’t been so thoroughly claimed by the Beholding already, he may have been a candidate for the Lonely himself back then. Peter Lukas didn’t have to lift a finger.

“I was starting to fear that if I didn’t manage to do something–” 

“–I would lose myself – forever–” 

“–I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try–”

“–it was – the most human part of it remaining–” 

“–to act, to help, to do something–” 

“–I need to not lose any more bits of me–” 

“–and worst comes to worst–” 

“–at least I felt useful.” 

Georgie’s eyes are on him now, reading between the lines.

“Did you even have a plan? Or did you just… rush in by yourself, not even tell anyone?” He nods. “Which?” He gives Georgie a pointed look, nodding a second time. “Both? Figures. Don’t know why I bothered asking.”

“…but this time was different,” he assures her.

“How did you get out?” Basira asks.

“It took all my self-control to keep a grip on that anchor.” 

“Meaning?”

“…her anchor. The thing weighing her down, tying her to this world,” he tries again.

“Something to ground you,” Georgie says questioningly.

“…to make finding my way back – that much easier.” 

“And you can do the same thing this time?” Basira waits for his confirmation before moving on. “What about the delivery itself?”

Jon pulls out another folder and cassette, both labeled CASE #9961505.

“Statement of Alfred Breekon, regarding a new pair of workers at his delivery company.” 

“Breekon and Hope?” Basira asks.

Jon nods, inserts the tape, and depresses the play button.  

“They’ve been in a few statements, haven’t they?” Basira says afterwards, forehead creased in thought.

As an answer, Jon removes one last cassette from the box before tilting it forward to reveal a handful of case files sliding around at the bottom. All of them contain minor references either to Breekon and Hope or the Coffin, but none of them struck him as significant enough to bother bringing the accompanying tapes.

The remaining cassette in his hand, label reading CASE #0020406, is only relevant for the last minute or so of the recording: Martin’s encounter with Breekon and Hope on the day they delivered the NotThem’s table and the Web’s lighter. Jon pops it into the recorder, skips to the relevant timestamp, and hits play. Breekon and Hope’s voices echo in the tunnel, finishing each other’s sentences in an uncanny back-and-forth volley.

“Hm.” Basira frowns. “And they just… got into the Archives without anyone seeing them?” Jon nods. “I’m assuming we can expect the same this time?" Another nod, but Jon holds up two fingers, gives Basira a meaningful look, and then puts one down. “Only one of them.”

“Statement of the surviving half of the being calling itself ‘Breekon and Hope,’” Jon says. Then: “When that Hunter killed him – took him from me, made us a me – the casket – was waiting – I fed her to it.”  

“Do we have to worry about a fight?”

Jon shakes his head no. “We did not kill them, did not lift a finger. We were bringers of their awful fate, not its executors – and we both tasted it together.” He fast-forwards the statement in his head. “I am without him now – can feel myself fading, weak, no reason to move, nothing to deliver. But I am no longer tied to the casket, so you can have it – climb in, and join her.” 

“So we just, what, let it deliver the thing and leave?”

“I told her that any real danger had passed–”  

“–fading, weak, no reason to move, nothing to deliver.”  

“And then you go in.”

Jon nods. There are more details, of course, but the basics of his plan are the same as they were last time: equip himself with Daisy’s tape, follow the pull of her voice, rely on his anchor to find the way back – hopefully with fewer hiccups this time.

Or fewer lost ribs, at least, now that he has a better grasp on anchors.

Several days later, a visitor arrives in the Archives, albeit not the one they’ve been expecting.  

Head pillowed in his arms on his desk, dozing and half-conscious, Jon is roused from a shallow sleep by voices in the hallway, filtering through the open crack in the door.    

“This area is off-limits,” Basira is saying.

“I’m just looking for the Head Archivist. Jonathan Sims? He still works here, doesn’t he?”

Is that…

“What do you want with Jon?” Georgie’s voice, sounding genuinely curious, but anyone familiar with her would recognize the protective edge to it.

“Look, is he here or isn’t he?”

It is.

Rubbing bleary eyes and shaking off the remaining wisps of brain fog, Jon stands, his joints cracking in protest. He grabs his cane, heads for the door, and peeks out into the hallway. 

Naomi Herne is here, standing in the doorway at the bottom of the stairs between the Archives and the rest of the Institute. She looked his way when she heard the creak of the door opening, and their eyes meet for a brief moment before he reflexively averts his gaze.

“Jon?” She sidesteps Basira and Georgie and starts walking towards him.

He digs in his pockets and brings out his phone. So far, the AAC app has turned out to be a decent workaround. Prolonged use will still give him a headache in much the same way that communicating through illustration does, but it’s helpful for making specific requests, asking direct questions, and conveying simple or general concepts. He’ll accept a headache if it means not being forced to use some convoluted metaphor just to say I don’t know or I’m short-circuiting, please give me some space or I’m going to make tea; would you like some?

“YOU ARE – HERE,” comes the computerized voice as he prods at the screen. “WHY.”

For a long moment, Naomi says nothing, staring at the phone in his hand.

“It’s been over a week since I last saw you,” she says slowly. “At first I thought it must be because you woke up – which was a good guess, apparently – but then days went by and no dreams, and… I was worried.” Jon tilts his head, confused. “What’s with that look?”

Jon opens and closes his mouth a few times, debating on whether to reach for a statement. It feels wrong to be dishonest with her, and a hopeful part of him suggests that Naomi wouldn’t react too badly. She’s seen worse from him, and none of that seems to have scared her away, so…  

“…I wasn’t worth worrying about.” 

Naomi rolls her eyes. “Why are you so stubborn?”

Georgie laughs at that. When Naomi glances in her direction, she starts approaching the two of them, seemingly satisfied that Naomi isn’t a threat. Likewise, Basira drifts off down the hall and into the break room. She leaves the door open, though – Jon Knows she still wants to listen in, just in case.

“He’s always been like this,” Georgie says.

“Figures,” Naomi says, then looks back at Jon. “So, why haven’t you been around? Did you find a way to sever the dreams, or…?” Jon shakes his head no. “Then what?”

“It’s not like I sleep enough to worry about dreams,” he says evasively.

Naomi opens her mouth to reply and at that moment Jon’s phone goes off. He nearly drops the thing as he fumbles to dismiss the alarm. Once the noise is silenced, Jon sighs and looks at Georgie.

“You want me to…?” Jon nods, giving her permission to speak on his behalf. “Okay then.”

Georgie looks at Naomi.

“Jonathan” – Jon huffs at the use of his full name – “has been depriving himself of sleep. But no matter how stubborn he is, he’s still human.” Georgie gives him a stern look, daring him to contradict her. He doesn’t; it isn’t worth getting into this discussion, especially in front of Naomi. “Now he’s started nodding off in spite of himself, he’s been forced to admit that he can’t go without sleep forever – but instead of actually sleeping, he’s decided that the best course of action is to just set alarms at forty-five minute intervals, to wake him up before he enters REM sleep. Which means he’s not getting any restful sleep.” She looks at Jon and smiles disarmingly. “Does that about cover it?”

Jon rolls his eyes – she really didn’t need to offer the detail about his new alarm routine – but he nods all the same.

“And why don’t you want to sleep?” Naomi asks.

“The only thing that worried me was sleeping. I think it gave me bad dreams,” he says.

“Not to be rude, but…” Naomi hesitates before blurting out: “Why are you talking like that?”

“He’s been having… some speech difficulties,” Georgie says, glancing at Jon. He makes a circular motion with one hand: It’s fine; go ahead. “Ever since he woke up, he’s only able to speak in quotes from the statements? It’s… challenging, to say the least.”

“Ah,” Naomi says, chipper, “just some new spooky developments, then.”

Out of habit, Jon glares at her for her word choice, but there’s no real ire in it. If anything, it’s a relief to find that Naomi’s attitude toward him seems unchanged despite said new spooky developments.

“But…” Naomi frowns. “You’ve been having these dreams for two years now, and you said you’ve mostly gotten them sorted. So how is sleeping now any different from the last few months?”

“He’s afraid that things will go back to the way they were before.”

“O…kay,” Naomi says slowly, “but you told me that most of the others have already learned to stop the nightmare sequence without you. And everyone knows now that you aren’t as scary as you look – which, by the way, is it weird that now it's almost more unsettling to see you with only two eyes? Sorry, not the point. The point is, it won’t be the same as it was before.”

Jon stares fixedly at a scratch on the floor. Left over from the Flesh attack, maybe? He could Know, but–

Focus, he tells himself before his thoughts can wander too far afield.  

He isn’t sure how to explain that the other dreamers may not be as forgiving or fearless as Naomi is. And even if they were to find it in themselves to overlook a relapse, even if they don’t start viewing him the way they did before… the prospect of having his bodily autonomy stripped from him again is more than enough to fill him with dread.

It feels too much like the way the hunger pulls him inexorably toward a victim. It will probably feel like how it does when the Archive takes control. It will definitely feel like it did when he was made a conduit for the Watcher’s Crown. Jonah wearing him like a glove. Locking him in place, forcing his eyes open, hijacking his voice. Making him into a possession, only to cast him aside like a broken toy once he had served his purpose.

“–Jon?”

With some effort, he drags himself back to the present.

“Something not moving but that wants to move. Wants to be free–” 

“–stopped being able to move under his own power – walk him like a puppet – directed and controlled–” 

“–unable to move – to cry for help.” 

Hands shaking, he inputs a response on his phone.

“I AM – SCARED.”

“That’s… okay, that sounds properly horrifying,” Naomi admits. “But you don’t know for sure that’s what’ll happen, right?” Grudgingly, Jon shakes his head no. “So you could be fretting over nothing.”

“So far, so normal, right?” 

“Smartass,” Naomi says, but with good humor. “Still, you can’t go without sleep forever – you’re going to have to face it eventually. You may as well get it over with sooner rather than later, and then you’ll know for sure. If nothing else, you’ll get some sleep out of it. But,” she says with a longsuffering sigh, “I have a feeling you’re going to keep pushing it, so…” She holds out her hand and crooks her fingers. “Phone. I’m adding my number to your contacts.”

It isn’t until Jon hands it over that he even consciously processes her words.  

“Just so you know,” Georgie says, “he can’t really text, either. Unless it’s in statements.”

“That’s fine,” Naomi says, typing rapidly. “You can just reply with emojis or whatever, Jon. Just something to let me know you’re still alive.” She hands the phone back to him. “And this way I can send you pictures of the Duchess.”

Jon perks up at that.

“The Duchess?” Georgie asks.

“Yep. Adopted a cat last week.” Naomi’s smile is wider than Jon has ever seen it. “She’s settling in nicely,” she says to him before looking back to Georgie. “I almost changed her name, but Jon insisted I leave it as is. Said I shouldn’t deprive her of a title she’d rightfully earned.”

Georgie snorts. “He said the same about the Admiral.”

“Oh, you must be Georgie, then? I’ve heard a lot about… uh–”

“Don’t worry; I’m well aware you’ve heard more about the Admiral than me. Pretty sure Jon prefers his company to mine half the time.” She ignores the indignant look Jon shoots her and holds out her phone to Naomi. “Jon was notoriously terrible at answering texts even before all of… this. Feel free to direct any, ‘Is Jonathan Sims still alive?’ queries to me.”

Jon watches in bewilderment as the two of them exchange numbers. Not for the first time, he wonders how this kind of thing seems to come so naturally to other people.

“I also wouldn’t mind seeing a photo of the Duchess.”

“What about a group chat?” Naomi says. “Spooky-free zone, cat-related updates only. Everyone gets their daily dose of cat antics, I get to honestly tell my therapist that I’m not self-isolating, and Jon can just like things to let me know he’s still breathing. Three birds, one stone.”

“Good idea.” Georgie gives Jon an exacting look. “It’ll give you something nice to obsess over. I’ll ask Melanie if she wants to be added, too. She could use the distraction.”

Jon can feel a smile tug at his lips as he hurriedly taps out a response.

“YES – PLEASE – THANK YOU.”  

Jon and the others try to retreat to the tunnels as often as possible – every other day, if they can manage it – even if there isn’t a pressing matter to discuss. More than anything, it’s a ploy to throw off Jonah. There’s every possibility that he would grow suspicious if the group only held their secretive meetings just prior to major events. Meeting frequently likely won’t alarm him too much, though. Jonah is likely to write off Jon’s furtiveness as paranoia, or simply his near-compulsive tendency to retread the same ground in aimless circles, obsessing over a single question ad infinitum.

Jon isn’t sure whether he Knows this, or if he’s just become uncomfortably familiar with Jonah’s thought processes. Either way, Jon is well aware of what Jonah thinks of him, of how the man can effortlessly dissect and predict Jon’s every outward action and inner experience. If he's honest with himself, Jonah’s scrutiny may terrify him even more than the Ceaseless Watcher’s.

At least the Eye is alien, operating entirely outside the bounds of human morality and emotion. It and all of the other Fears just… are what they are. Predictable, instinctual, amoral – or operating on a sort of blue-and-orange morality, at least. It brings to mind something Michael said to him, all those years ago: Am I evil, Archivist? Is a thing evil when it simply obeys its own nature? When it embodies its nature? When that nature is created by those which revile it?

Someone like Jonah Magnus, though – born human, raised human, spending several lifetimes embedded in human society – can understand his fellow humans much more intimately than any nonhuman Entity ever could, and he uses that understanding to torture his victims, knowing full well how it feels. On the one hand, Jon and all his other pawns throughout the centuries are nothing but means to an end; he cares little for them outside of their usefulness to him. On the other hand, he isn’t fully detached: there’s no denying the sadistic glee he took in gloating as he forced Jon to open the door.

Even in a world devoid of the Dread Powers, monsters would still exist, and a mundane human monstrosity is almost as dreadful as a supernatural one. Daisy derived joy from the Hunt with more complexity than a wolf would. Jon’s own hunts may have felt instinctual, but they also felt morally wrong in a way that tearing the legs off a spider would never feel to a cat – and he did it anyway. Even Gertrude embodied a certain flavor of monstrosity, despite never fully giving in to the temptation of the Beholding. She did not need to embrace any supernatural power; her ruthlessness damned innocent people all the same, as thoroughly as the Desolation and with as much precision as the Web.

Georgie and Martin – and Helen, even – may have a point about humanity and monstrosity not following a strict either/or dichotomy. Whether the Fears were birthed by humanity or preceded it, in the world as-is they would be toothless without human imagination to fuel and interpret and inspire them. The apocalypse demonstrated that fact rather starkly the more and more the human population dwindled.

Jon shakes his head, interrupting that line of thought. There are more important things to worry about right now. Namely: it’s the third of March, and the Institute is due a visitor.

Basira is with him in his office; Georgie is off keeping Melanie company, away from Breekon and any possibility of a confrontation. They agreed to this arrangement last night in the tunnels, and since they’ve been having those clandestine meetings so regularly, it should look like a coincidence to Jonah, rather than a prearranged setup. 

Breekon arrives right on schedule, though this time he cannot catch Basira alone. He comes directly to Jon’s office, dragging the Coffin behind him.

“Jon,” Basira says urgently, not taking her eyes off the hulking figure darkening the doorway.

They must tread carefully – not seeming so unconcerned as to let on that they were expecting the delivery, but not overselling the act so much that Jonah would sense something was amiss.  

“I wish I could say that was the last I saw of them – but they did return – started to make deliveries – Breekon and Hope.” 

“Where’s the other one?” Basira asks.

“That copper took him from me,” Breekon says balefully. He drags the Coffin over the threshold, lets it fall to the ground with a thump, and jerks his head at it. “So I fed it to the pit.”

“Daisy’s in there,” Basira says, bristling.

“That’s its name? Then sure, ‘t’s in there, whatever’s left. Find out if you like.”

“…get out of my office–” 

Jon’s voice crackles with static, and Breekon takes one step backward.

“What are you doing? Stop that.”

“Jon,” Basira says warningly.

“–as soon as they’d placed the box on the floor, they turned around and walked out–” 

The static continues to rise in volume.

“I said stop it!” Breekon grunts through gritted teeth, even as he turns and steps back over the threshold.

“–the door slammed behind them” – Breekon does indeed reach for the handle and pull the door shut after him – “and I was left – with this package.” 

The static cuts out abruptly, and Jon exhales heavily, winded.

“What the hell was that?” Basira demands, rounding on Jon. “Did you just – compel him to leave?”

“…apparently this was how it was done now,” Jon says quietly. That at least answers the question of whether he can still effectively use that power. He isn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Knew you could compel people to answer questions. Didn’t know you could compel actions, too.”

Jon shuts his eyes, still catching his breath. There were limits on his compulsion abilities even during the apocalypse; there are bound to be just as many now, if not more. He doesn’t have the mindset for muddling through a complicated explanation right now, though, so he opts for the AAC app instead.

“LITTLE,” he selects from the screen. It should be enough to get the general point across, at least for now.  

“Great. I’ll just put that in the ominous column, shall I?” Basira sighs. “Is it really okay to just… let him leave?”

“I told her that any real danger had passed,” he says simply.

“If you say so.” She stares intently at the Coffin, arms crossed. “So, what now?”

Without another word, Jon stands and beckons for Basira to follow. As he locks the office door behind them, Basira tells him to go wait for her at the tunnel entrance while she fetches Melanie and Georgie. He nods absentmindedly, but she’s already left without waiting for a response.  

The last time, two weeks spanned between the delivery of the Coffin and the day Jon actually opened it. This time, there’s no need to wait. He still has some preparations to make – there’s no need to visit the Boneturner, but Jon does still want to leave some tapes running to serve as physical anchors. He also has to plan for the possibility of something going wrong, even if he is fairly confident in his ability to find his way back again. Mainly, he’d like to leave a letter behind for Martin, though the Archive might make that difficult.

Other than that, it’s just a matter of mentally preparing himself for another trip into the Buried.

Knowing what to expect doesn’t make it any less terrifying. If anything, it might make it worse.

Chapter Text

The tunnels are as ominous as they’ve always been, but at this point, Jon just might be growing accustomed to them. The creeping fear he’s always felt down here has faded to the background – an ambient sense of dread. It's almost tolerable, or at least less oppressive than the omnipresent sense of being watched that he’s long since accepted as his normal.

Here, he can compose his letter to Martin without the risk of Jonah Seeing exactly what Jon’s eyes see.

After the Watcher’s Crown, Jonah did not Watch through Jon’s eyes anymore. Whether that was because Jon was stronger than Jonah at that point or because Jonah did not bother to try, Jon doesn’t Know. Once the ritual was completed, Jonah no longer had any stake in Jon’s trajectory, had no need to monitor his progress or ensure his survival. Moreover, Jonah’s inflated ego never allowed for the possibility that Jon could pose a threat to his reign. His Archivist – his Archive – had no further interest to him except as a source of entertainment, and he didn’t need to See through Jon’s eyes in order to behold the show. He could See all of creation from the Panopticon.

Jon is stronger now than he was the last time he was here, but he’s still nowhere near as powerful as he was during the apocalypse. He’s tried to Know how he measures up against Jonah now, but the Beholding seems intent on withholding that knowledge from him. Last time he made an attempt, the Eye treated him to a litany of trivia about the interactions between the human body and the venom of various species of spider.

Sometimes Jon thinks that if the Beholding is sentient, it might just be the pettiest of the Dread Powers.

In any case, Jonah Magnus is as much of a gnawing question mark as he’s always been. It’s safest to assume that he has the advantage until proven otherwise – and Jon will take the tunnels over Jonah’s voyeurism any day, no matter how harrowing they may be. Even if he has to be down here alone – which he is.

Georgie is with Melanie, and Jon is reluctant to ask Basira for any favors right now. He wonders again if this is how Martin felt, living in the Archives, spending sleepless nights with himself and the scratching of a pen as his only companions. Just like Jon, Martin was never very good company for himself, especially back then – and back now. He was primed for the Lonely long before he started working at the Institute.

Speaking of which…

Jon sighs, puts his pen down, and begins to read through what he’s written.

I’m sorry I left you. 

 

…now I’m here, trying to explain things– 

–had changed since he left– 

–it seemed he was alone– 

–as far as I could tell, all alone in the world, and rather unhappy about the fact. 

 

I will admit to taking a dislike to the man when I first met him – but– 

–I’d say that – was a foolish act of past me. 

Jon is worried about starting the letter like this, but this is a point in time not too far removed from his early mistreatment of Martin. Jon had made his apologies and explanations at length in his future, but this version of Martin hasn’t experienced that yet. Jon can’t just jump into showing affection before taking accountability for his past behavior – recent past, from the perspective of this timeline.

He can only hope that Martin will read through to the end, and that Jon’s intention – his sincerity – will be understood.

Soon I was giving my account as a full confession– 

–trying my best to fit this into a relatively coherent narrative. 

 

It’s plenty of things I’ve done I couldn’t explain to you. I mean, I’m constantly – looking back at my past self and thinking, what an idiot. How the hell could he have done such an obviously stupid thing? How was I surprised it went so badly? What a relief I’m now so much older and wiser. 

 

I’ve never really been the social type – I’ve always just been happier alone. Well, maybe happier isn’t quite the right word. I did get a bit lonely sometimes. I’d hear laughter coming from other rooms in my building, or see a group of friends talking in the sun outside, and maybe I’d wish I had something like that, but it never really bothered me – I didn’t need another people and they certainly didn’t need me. 

Jon looks down at the words with a dissatisfied scowl. Does this come off as too self-centered? As more of an excuse than an explanation? This would be so much easier if he could just say what he means. Then again, Jon’s always struggled with discussing emotional matter. He can’t blame it all on the Archive.

These thoughts, these feelings were always in my mind – until – I realized the deeper truth of it all. 

 

I tried to put it into words, but without any real success. Even here, with the time to compose it properly, I’m not sure I’ve caught the essence of what I felt– 

–I had a look through my library, and couldn’t find anything that matched it–  

–those are musings for poets, among whom I do not number– 

–it’s all very well to say ‘write down what you saw,’ but what if you don’t have the words? 

 

I suppose I’ll just have to try. 

 

I’ve always been more comfortable alone– 

–had few friends – reluctant to make the sort of connections that might lead to– 

–the prospect of being genuinely loved– 

–fully and completely known– 

–having people be genuinely lovely to me, I didn’t know what to do with those feelings– 

–I could never bring myself to try. It felt more comfortable, more familiar, to be alone. 

 

It is the fear of being watched, and judged, and having all your secrets known. 

Ironic, in some ways– 

–being what I am– 

–an Archivist pleading for knowledge–  

–to feed the sick voyeur that lurks in this place. 

 

Eventually, I opened my eyes– 

–feeling absurd about how terrified I was about being seen– 

–kicking myself for having been so stupid– 

–it wasn’t natural for people to live in isolation – we were creatures of community by nature. 

 

Soon enough, I could no longer fool myself– 

–the man I loved– 

who was by all accounts such a kind and gentle soul– 

–when I – saw him standing there waiting for me – I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than in that moment.  

 

He spoke words I thought existed only in my heart, and I loved him as the soil loves the rain–

–and it seemed he felt the same way– 

–and together it seemed like we would get past our pain. 

 

Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me, it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already. 

 

…to say – “I love you” – honestly it’s one of the few decisions I’ve ever made that I completely understand.  

It’s… woefully inadequate. Too devoid of context. Unlikely to reach Martin through the fog. But maybe it will be enough to convince him to at least talk to Jon. To keep the Lonely at bay, at least for now.

After leaving the hospital, the next thing that is properly clear in my mind is– 

–I need him to be okay. 

 

I couldn’t see him or hear him– 

–I didn’t even get a chance to speak to him – asked what had happened, he was just gone. And I was alone again. 

 

I wanted to say something reassuring, to reach out and let him know I was still there– 

–I wanted to act, to help, to do something, but – I felt helpless to do anything but watch as events progressed. 

 

I think he might be part of something really awful, and I don’t know how to make him see that – of course I did worry. I knew that, secretly, he was as well. 

 

I know how that sounds – but – I ask you to read on. 

For a split second, the memory of the ritual flits through his mind – Apologies for the deception, but I wanted to make sure you started reading … – and Jon brings his wrist down on the side of his chair, hard. The pain jolts him out of the recollection and brings him back to the present. He watches halfheartedly as the discoloration fades before his eyes, frustration with his overreaction itching in the back of his mind. Stupid.  

With a longsuffering sigh, he rereads the previous section again. The borrowed words sound patronizing, without the qualifying context he wishes he could provide more explicitly. He isn’t just nitpicking – it’s crucial that Martin knows that Jon isn’t underestimating him, despite a history of doing exactly that for far too long.

The first time around, he trusted Martin – more than he trusted anyone, including (perhaps especially) himself – and even knowing what he knows now, he doesn’t regret it. He heard the tapes.

       “But if I could just explain,” Martin had said.

       “And how do you think Jon’s going to react to that explanation, hm?” Peter had replied. “You think he’ll accept it calmly? Come through with a well-considered, rational response?”

       “That’s not fair.”

       “Or would he assume he knows better than you and do something rash?”

       “I don’t like being manipulated.”

       “That’s fair. But I’m not wrong.”

       “No.”  

In Jon’s original timeline, he had proven Peter wrong. He had trusted Martin, respected his boundaries, followed his lead. This time, though… Jon won’t be able to demonstrate that with non-interference, and not being able to use his own words doesn’t help him explain that this isn’t just another instance of Jon just assuming he knows better than everyone else, that he actually does have special knowledge, and – truthfulness aside, that sounds condescending, too, doesn’t it?

He doesn’t blame Martin for agreeing with Peter. For a significant portion of Jon’s life, it would have been a fair assessment. He didn’t trust people. He didn’t trust himself, either – not really – but at least he knew his own intentions. That bone-deep fear of being manipulated, of being rejected, of not having control… it never played well with the concept of trust.   

And when they first started working together, Jon made no secret of his knee-jerk judgment of Martin as being incompetent, clumsy, and unreliable. In retrospect, he couldn’t have been more wrong. He knows now that he was only seeing what he wanted to see, projecting his own insecurities and fear of failure onto Martin to distract from his own floundering.

After learning that Martin had lied on his CV, Jon readjusted his initial opinions. He was impressed. Martin was remarkably capable for someone with no prior qualifications, no experience, no degree. What he lacked in experience he more than made up for in effort. He was clever, and resolute, and dependable, and genuine, and… and god, wasn’t Jon a fool for taking so long to notice? And then for never saying as much until it was almost too late?

This version of Martin hasn’t heard that apology just yet – or the corollary apology for waiting so long to apologize. Georgie told Jon years ago that he needed to use his words, that sometimes people needed to hear explicitly that they were acknowledged and appreciated. Just because Jon had low tolerance for receiving direct praise – despite craving it deeply – didn’t mean that other people had the same hangups.

He’s since taken that advice to heart, but he should have done sooner. Georgie had been right about a lot of things.

Jon did eventually say as much and more, during those brief few weeks they had in the safehouse. Peter hadn’t been all wrong when he questioned how much they really knew one another. Between Jon’s early irascibility and the distance he felt obligated to keep given their employee/boss relationship; between preventing apocalypses and being in such constant life-or-death peril that it started to feel normal, so normal that Jon didn’t know what to do with himself when he wasn’t being chased or held captive; between the coma, and descending into inhumanity, and the Lonely… they hadn’t had a chance to get to know each other outside of a crisis situation.

Jon didn’t even know himself anymore. He wondered if he ever had.

For the first time, they finally had the time and space to remedy that. Both of them were changed and would never be the same, but they had each other. They were both willing to put in the effort, to learn how to communicate and accommodate and navigate boundaries, despite neither having much experience with healthy relationships. And for a little while, it had seemed that they could both learn how to be present in the world again – starting with their own microcosm, one day at a time, encouraging one another to be more patient and kind with themselves.

It wasn’t fair, how abruptly that hesitant, hopeful attempt was stolen from them. Jon didn’t feel like he deserved comfort and contentment – he still doesn’t – but Martin… Martin deserved – deserves – to be safe and cared for and loved. Martin deserves to be happy.

Jon desperately wants to help him See that.

Don’t… misunderstand me, please– 

–I trusted his instincts almost as much as I trusted my own. 

More than I trusted my own, Jon amends in his head – but the Archive isn’t cooperating.

But I knew that I – knew the future– 

–the promise of secret knowledge, of seeing something that no one else was privy to– 

–there was – a lot – we were missing. 

 

Please. All I ask is that I be allowed– 

–a chance to express myself– 

–said something about knowledge being a good defense here– 

–so here I am, pouring out my lunatic story on paper in the hopes that you might eventually read it. 

 

Statement of Georgina Barker regarding– 

–travel through time. 

Jon still has to ask Georgie if she can explain the situation to Martin, but he doesn’t think she’ll mind. It won’t be as comprehensive as Jon wishes it could be – he still struggles with explaining the fine details of the apocalypse to the others given his current limitations – but he’s done his best, and he can trust Georgie to do the same.

Some fears can only be endured for so long. I remember every second of that fall. Like it was happening in slow motion. I was certain I was about to watch him fall like I had. 

 

That knowledge I had gained – could finally be put to use. 

 

I shall do my best to explain, and hope that any revelations contained here in me sway you from the path you have started upon. 

 

I wanted to tell him to stop, to warn him – because I knew– 

–the Extinction – while I have seen evidence of its influence in other powers– 

–there was no sign of – imminent arrival – I resolved– 

–its emergence as a true power of its own– 

–wasn’t a threat. 

 

Whatever he was planning– 

–to try and rescue those trapped– 

–trying to protect me– 

–defending the world from the darkness… 

 

…I know – to talk to other people about it– 

–desperately wishing for another human being to talk to– 

–to take too much comfort in – people – would go quite strongly against the spirit of the experiment – had to really feel alone. That at least didn’t take too long to set in. 

 

All that remained was the fog – could wander there for years, and never meet another – utterly forsaken – there seemed to be no end to it. 

 

But it didn’t need to be forever, did it? 

“This too shall pass.” 

 

I tried to explain but all I could manage to get through the shaking sobs was, “I love you.” 

 

By then it looked like he was on the verge of tears, 

Jon stops reading for a moment, realizing that, aptly enough, he’s on the verge of tears right now. He swallows them back and continues.  

By then it looked like he was on the verge of tears, but I couldn’t leave it alone – just couldn’t let it go. 

 

I have tried to write it down, to put it into terms and words you could understand. And now I stare at it and not a word of it is even enough to fully describe the fact that– 

 

I cannot lose him. 

I – cared deeply about his well-being. 

I know he didn’t deserve what happened to him. 

 

He deserved to– 

–to be – beloved–  

–cared for – trusted– 

–being wanted and appreciated– 

–being genuinely loved– 

–no matter how wrong it might feel–

–when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. 

 

I need him to be okay– 

–and the world is so much better for– 

–the easy, charming man I’d fall in love with– 

–being in it. 

 

Please. All I ask is that I be allowed to– 

–talk to you, before it all comes to an end–  

–and I swear to you that– 

–if you decide to do it – if– 

–you want to be alone – and– 

–didn’t say much to me after that– 

–I made sure to keep – distance. 

There’s so much more Jon wishes he could say; so much that he wishes he could say in his own voice, rather than the stolen words of survivors recounting the most traumatic moments of their lives. It feels perverse, to use their statements like this. It might not be as bad as feeding directly on a victim, but it still falls on a spectrum of appropriating the torment of others for his own use.

At the end of the day, it really doesn’t feel all that different from Jonah’s brand of dehumanization. It’s just one more way Jon is complicit in the evil that thrives in this place–

“Hey,” comes Georgie’s voice from just a short distance away. Jon startles, sending his pen clattering to the floor. He had been so lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t even heard her descending the ladder. “Sorry,” she says with a wince. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Retrieving the fallen pen, Jon waves the apology off – it’s okay – and Georgie comes to sit next to him.

“Finished with your letter?”

“…I’m vague on the details,” he says. “I have to be.” 

“Want me to take a look?”

Jon nods; he had been planning on asking her to read it through. Even if it was in his own words, he would likely run it by her. He trusts Georgie’s judgment regarding relationship matters far more than he trusts his own, and he knows she’ll be straightforward with him if he’s said something… well, stupid. He’s gotten better at communicating, but that doesn’t mean his tendency to put his foot in his mouth has disappeared entirely.

He jiggles his leg restlessly as she reads, increasingly self-conscious the longer the silence goes on. He resists scratching at his hands – Georgie is sure to reprimand him if he starts that up again. It isn’t that she has a problem with his fidgeting; she was actually one of the first people in his life to tolerate it. Encourage it, even. She pointed out quite bluntly once that whenever Jon tried to force himself to sit still, his restless energy didn’t go away, it just came out as waspishness instead.

But she had a rule: no self-harm, no matter how mild. Personally, he didn’t categorize the scratching as self-harm, but she was firm about it. Lately, the scratching is limited mostly to his burned hand, and he’s tried explaining to her that it doesn’t even hurt – the scar tissue doesn’t register much sensation anymore – but she won’t hear it. For the past couple weeks, whenever she catches him at it, she gives him a look until he stops.

“I think it’s good,” Georgie says. “But…”

Jon tenses, but then he glimpses Georgie’s playful grin.

“It’s nothing bad! It’s just… well…”

He can hear the spark of mischief in her tone and somehow that makes him more apprehensive than the prospect of criticism.

“See, you say you’re not a poet,” she says, pointing at the letter, “but this part here…”

He spoke words I thought existed only in my heart, and I loved him as the soil loves the rain–

–and it seemed he felt the same way– 

–and together it seemed like we would get past our pain. 

“You go and use a sappy metaphor – and I know,” she says, seeing him ready to protest, “they’re not your words and you’re using what you have available.”

Yes, he wants to say, and my vast library comprised solely of people’s retellings of their supernatural trauma isn’t exactly forthcoming with declarations of love, Georgina.

“But,” she says, goading now, “then you go and rhyme the first and last lines.”

Jon squints at the letter, and…

Fuck. It does rhyme.

When he moves to snatch the paper away, Georgie swiftly stands and holds it out of reach, dancing backwards.

“No, nope, absolutely not,” she says, laughing. “Jonathan Sims, I refuse to let you change it. You’re leaving it exactly as is.”

“…being used against me in a cruel joke,” he huffs, glowering at her – but her laugh has always been infectious, and he can’t fight it as his lips twitch into a smile.

She hands the letter back to him after a minute, still grinning when she takes her seat again.

“I’m teasing you. You can change it if you want, but I think it’s adorable and you should leave it. Besides, Martin’s a poet, isn’t he? He might get a kick out of it.”

Honestly, it doesn’t bother Jon enough to rewrite the entire thing. And if there’s a chance of it coaxing a smile out of Martin…  

“On a more serious note – this part here, ‘statement of Georgina Barker’ – I’m assuming you want me to try to convince him that you actually are a time traveler here to stop the apocalypse?” Jon nods. “Probably easier than trying to write it all out. I don’t mind, but are you sure he’ll listen to me?”

Jon shrugs. He has the same worry, but…

“As for myself, I must cling to–” 

“–that most insidious of emotions: hope.” 

“Somehow both unexpectedly sappy and predictably ominous,” she replies, “but I’ll take it. Better than brooding, anyway.”

Despite the light teasing, the smile she flashes is genuine. Fleeting, though, as she continues.

“Oh, one more thing – that one bit, capital-E Extinction? One, don’t like the sound of that, and two – should I know what that is? Melanie hasn’t mentioned anything like that before.”

“I’m sorry – it won’t let me say the words,” Jon says with a frustrated sigh.

“Will Martin know what it means, though?” Jon nods. With any luck, Martin can be persuaded to fill the others in on it. “Good enough.”

She watches him for a few moments as he chews at his thumbnail, leg still shaking, staring at the floor.

“Something’s on your mind.”

Jon sighs and closes his eyes.

“I could feel hunger gnawing at me.” 

“You still haven’t had a statement?” Georgie says, frowning at him.

“Something he could salvage from the whole situation,” he mutters, not looking up at her. “Just a way of getting some control over his life, you know?” 

“Jon, you can’t just starve yourself–”

“Running was pointless,” he agrees sullenly. “To try to escape from my task would only serve to fulfill another. I finally understood what I needed to do–” 

“–some hungers are too strong to be denied–” 

“–you have to feed it – or it will feed on you.” 

“So why haven’t you?”

“Even as I did so, in the back of my mind I hated myself–” 

“–to feed the sick voyeur that lurks in this place.” 

“I’m not saying you should… go hunting, or whatever you want to call it. This is an archive, there are plenty of statements lying around.”

“…you’ve got all this… all these people’s experiences listened to and filed away.” 

“Right. They’re already given. They can’t be taken back. You’re not going out and hurting people, you’re just… reading what’s already here.”

She thinks he was just agreeing with her, he realizes – she didn’t comprehend his true meaning there. How could she have? He hasn’t properly explained to them that he is the Archive. He already Knows all of the statements housed here. Old statements were stale even when he hadn’t read them yet. Now, they’re even less fulfilling.

As a child, he hated reading anything that he felt like he had read before. It seems morbidly fitting that the Archivist in him is much the same way.

“Think of it like… like harm reduction,” Georgie is saying now. “From what I can gather, abstinence just isn’t an option for you, at least not right now. The next best thing is to meet yourself where you are. Even if you can’t stop, you can still take steps to minimize the harm – and that includes harm to yourself. Reading the statements that are already here – I think it’s justifiable, if the alternative is starving to death.”

“I am not sure how long this might continue for. Maybe years. Maybe forever.” 

“Maybe. But right now, you need to take it one step at a time. You’re getting ready to hurl yourself into danger. You should be at full strength for that. If you aren’t going to sleep, you at least need to eat something.”

She has a point. There is one other concern, though.

“It seems I cannot avoid the ceaseless gaze of – Jonah–” 

“–still there, still watching me–” 

“–eyes were always focused on something, always watching. And – I always felt afraid–” 

“–being under constant scrutiny and observation–” 

“–it may be worth your while to keep an eye on the statements – in case he finds his way here–” 

“–my mind has always been receptive to the thoughts that lurk in the written page–” 

“–that throw out strange or sometimes even dangerous things–” 

“–a simple ruse or deception–” 

“–quietly waiting for you to lose your footing, to slip up and fall.” 

“You’re afraid of getting tricked into reading the wrong statement again.”

Jon nods, not quite meeting her eye. All of the statements housed here are already catalogued in the Archive. He can recall them on his own word for word, if he concentrates. But something about that doesn’t feel right. Physically reading the statement, speaking it into the tape recorder… it’s like its own little ritual – like there’s an order of operations that has to be followed or it doesn’t count, somehow.

“…I outlined basic checks in due diligence–” 

“–checking and double checking–” 

“–before I finally felt safe enough–” 

“–to read a statement – hitting record and speaking it aloud.” 

“Well… we can probably vet them before giving them to you?”

“…they were also there as a backup in case something went horribly wrong – in case–” 

“–it tried to read me back.” 

“Okay,” Georgie says after a moment’s consideration. “I’ll let Basira know.”

Her expression is concerned, but there’s something else underneath it. It doesn’t seem like judgment, or suspicion, or any of the other reactions he’s come to expect when discussing his reliance on the statements. It’s definitely not fear; this is Georgie. Pity, maybe?

Whatever it is, it makes him feel small and exposed and uncomfortably seen.

“Jon, look at me.” He does, with hesitation. “I know things are bad, and I’ll admit I was skeptical when you first said you wanted to change, but based on what I’ve seen over the past few months? I believe in you. It’s okay to have a little faith in yourself, too. I think you’ll need to, if you want to get through this.”

His gaze drifts to the floor, self-conscious.

“Anyway, it's probably best that Elias doesn’t see us pre-screening statements for you, right? Might make him suspicious. I can just gather a box of them and bring them down here. I’ll bring Basira with me, and we can explain the situation.” She stands and starts to walk toward the ladder, then stops abruptly. “Wait.”

She does a half-turn, not quite facing him, watching the floor pensively.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for. Is there something particular – like, do you have preferences, or – are there… nutritional requirements or something?” Jon can’t help it; he smiles at the absurdity of it all. “Do you need variety? Does a balanced diet even apply in this–”

Realizing he isn’t replying to any of her questions, she finally looks up, sees his amused smirk, and pauses mid-flustered gesture. He chuckles softly and shakes his head, mortified by the idea of cultivating a preference for statements as if choosing from a menu, but also just a bit shamefully, morbidly touched by her thoughtfulness.

“Well, I don’t know!” she says indignantly, but she grins back. “Fine. I’ll grab a bunch at random then, and you can just deal. Ass.”

God, he missed this easy, playful banter even more than he had realized.

Jon watches as she climbs the ladder, preparing for the customary anxiety that tends to hit him whenever she leaves his presence – that conviction that it will be the last he sees of her.

When she pulls herself up through the trapdoor, though, he’s pleasantly surprised to note that the fear doesn’t come. He’s even more surprised that a half-hour later, when Georgie sends Basira with a box of statements but doesn’t accompany her, the fear still doesn’t overwhelm him. It shouldn’t be that surprising – he does trust Georgie – but intellectually understanding something isn’t the same as emotionally assimilating it. It seems that for once, his emotions have caught up with reality.

“Melanie needs company right now, so Georgie couldn’t come with. She didn't say exactly what you needed help with, but I think I have an idea.”

“…to keep an eye on the statements–” 

“–they were also there as a backup in case something went horribly wrong.” 

“Figured as much. Anyway, Georgie said she’ll come see you before she goes home today.” Basira drops the box on the floor in front of him. “I told her you probably wouldn’t want her present for the statements anyway. No need to expose more people to them if we can help it. I thought you’d agree.”

Jon nods, thankful that Basira is on the same page and he didn’t have to bother explaining it himself.

“So, any stand out to you?”

May as well get it over with, Jon thinks with a heavy sigh.

He leans over the box and sifts through them, eyes skimming over the case numbers until one catches his eye. CASE #0020312, the label reads. Figures, he thinks to himself with a grim, humorless smile, and he hands it over to Basira for her to inspect.  

She skims through it quickly – she’s a fast reader, Jon notes – and at several points her eyebrows raise and furrow.

“Seems normal enough – for a statement, anyway,” she says, handing it back to him. Then, meeting his eyes: “A bit on the nose, though.” Jon shrugs. “You want me to stay while you read it, right? Go on, then.”

The tape recorder clicks on in his pocket, as if to voice its agreement. Jon removes it and takes a moment to glare at it before turning his eyes to the statement, clearing his throat, and beginning his monologue.

“Statement of Tova McHugh, regarding their string of near-death experiences. Original statement given December 3^rd, 2002. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins…”

The Coffin sits where Breekon dropped it, hungry and waiting. It’s the densest, most solid thing in the room, as if it has its own gravity, a sort of metaphysical black hole. It’s not as bad as the rift at Hill Top Road, but it has a similar feel to it: oppressive, wrong, its existence impossible but unavoidably present all the same. 

Jon stands at the threshold of the office, blocking the entrance, Basira and Georgie standing behind him.

“So this is it, then,” Georgie says. “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

“…as you can imagine, getting out of there proved – difficult–” 

“–but they did return.” 

She still looks uncertain, watching the Coffin as if it might move on its own.

“…try to keep you far away–” 

“–didn’t want a good look inside that room – stopped at the threshold–” 

“–make it very little distance over the threshold before – swallowed–” 

“–you must trust me on that and not come looking–” 

“–supervise from a distance–” 

“Jon,” Basira says, cutting him off, “we get it. It’s dangerous, stay away, et cetera. I can feel the compulsion from here; you don’t need to tell me twice, let alone five times.”

Jon barely hears her, his mind already entirely occupied with what he’s about to do. He stands paralyzed, knees locked, hands trembling just slightly, pulse thundering in his throat. Already his breath feels constricted, and he hasn’t even opened the thing yet.

“Do you need more time?” Georgie asks gently.

Jon shuts his eyes, swallows around the lump in his throat, and shakes his head no. The longer he puts it off, the harder it will be to take the plunge. And Daisy has waited long enough.

“Hey. Look at me.”

Jon breathes out, opens his eyes, and turns to face her. She opens her arms slightly, offering an embrace – but he shakes his head, giving her an apologetic look. Pressure is usually good, grounding him, but right now – well, he’s about to have all of creation pressing in on him. Any reminder of that is only going to send him spiraling.

“Okay. You have everything you need?”

He nods, trying to project whatever thin veneer of confidence he can muster – more for himself than the others, really. He holds up the tape recorder with Daisy’s statement tape in it, then gestures vaguely at the tape recorders littering his desk.

“…like breadcrumbs taking us home. Home, in this case, was–” 

“Martin,” Georgie says with a knowing smile. “I’ll make sure he gets your message – and yes,” she says, seeing him about to interject, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t read it outside the tunnels. And I’ll explain… the situation. Don’t worry about things over here. Just focus on what you need to do on your end.”

Jon nods again, clenching and unclenching his fist at his side, stuffing the tape recorder back into his pocket with the other hand.

Time to stop dithering, he tells himself firmly.

“Tell Daisy I–” Basira blurts out, then pauses, struggling for words. “Tell her…”

She breathes out a short exhale and looks up at Jon. He nods at her: I understand.

“Tell her I’m waiting.” She pauses, biting her lip. “And Jon?” He makes a questioning noise. “Come back safe,” she says, then turns on her heel and walks briskly away down the hall.

“We’ll see you home soon, Jon,” Georgie says. Despite her reassuring tone, he can sense her lingering apprehension. “Don’t get lost.”

“…I’d – get out of there as soon as possible,” he says, trying to mirror her composure.

“You’d better. I doubt I’ll be the only one cross with you if you stay away too long.”

The tape recorders fill the room with a low, static-leaden murmuring – dozens of overlapping tones, unbroken streams of phonemes rendered nearly incomprehensible, discrete parts unable to compete against the cacophony of the whole. Although it sounds like the background noise of a crowd to Jon, he Knows every word being said: a litany of horror and dread unspooling into the air around him.

He also Knows that they will continue running, replaying each statement on a loop until he returns, no batteries required.    

A notebook sits on his desk, battered and careworn. It’s Martin’s, half-filled with poems and works-in-progress, many of them from the weeks he was living in the Archives. He left it here when he went to work for Peter. Whether it was meant as a deliberate symbolic gesture – leaving the past behind him, sacrificing this sentimental part of himself in order to become what Peter’s plan required him to be – or was simply an oversight after months of having no time or mind for writing, Jon still doesn’t Know. He never asked. In the future, after Martin started writing again, Jon felt it was best not to reopen old wounds for the sake of satiating his own curiosity.

If only he could have learned that lesson earlier in life.

Jon has never been a fan of poetry. It’s never really resonated with him; he’s never understood it, and he… doesn’t have much patience for things he cannot understand. But then, Martin went to work for Peter Lukas – and the last time Jon was here, he had burned every other bridge between himself and humanity.

When he was a child, he convinced himself that he didn’t need friends, didn’t need affection. He found human connection in books, and he told himself that it was enough. It wasn’t, in retrospect: he entered adolescence and then adulthood with stunted social skills, and practicing didn't seem worth the risk of failure. Between that and being the Archivist, it’s no wonder he chased everyone away.

By the time he woke up from his first coma, he knew that books would be no replacement for actual companionship, but he thought it might at least take the edge off, like it used to when he was a child. It backfired terribly. He would always Know how the story ended before even finishing the first chapter, and it would demolish any motivation to continue reading. It wasn’t just that his reading habits remained as particular as they were when he was young, having little patience for anything that felt like he had read it before. It was that he couldn’t have a moment of peace from the knowledge of what he had become.

One day he stumbled across Martin’s notebook in Document Storage, along with some spoken word recordings that Martin had made while living in the Archives. At first, Jon didn’t know what the tapes were, and listening to any tapes that turned up had long since become automatic for him. Once he realized what was on them, he probably should have stopped. Instead, he listened to every second of that handful of tapes, over and over and over again. He felt guilty – he had already violated Martin’s privacy once before, when he was deep in the throes of paranoia – but he justified it to himself because he… he’d needed to hear Martin’s voice.

The poetry was… well, Jon still didn’t get it, not really. But he found himself liking it anyway, because it was Martin’s voice and Martin’s words and Martin’s story, and Jon didn’t have to understand it for it to have warmth and meaning and value. He should have been content with the tapes, but he kept stealing glances at the notebook, itching to open it and start reading. Part of it was that simple curiosity that was always leading him astray, but for once, that wasn’t the loudest part of him.

It wasn’t a need to Know. It was a need for closeness.

So, he pushed that guilty voice in his head aside and… he read. Unlike the fiction stories he had been trying to lose himself in, he never once Knew anything about a poem before he finished reading it. He rarely Knew anything about it even after reading it, and then rereading it, and then rereading it again. For the first time in his life, not having answers was… refreshing. Freeing, even.   

It didn’t take long for Jon to memorize every word, cover to cover. He never grew bored of them, despite their familiarity.

Gingerly, almost reverently, Jon turns the pages. There are a handful of poems in here about him, and even now, indelibly etched into his memory, reading them on the page still makes him feel seen in a way that is all at once terrifying and comforting. Affecting, certainly, but in a way he could appreciate, once he gave it a chance.

You’re stalling, Jon tells himself, closing the notebook and placing one last tape on top of it.

He closes his eyes and forces himself to take several deep breaths – it’s the last chance he’ll have for the next few days – and he checks his pocket for the tape recorder with Daisy’s statement in it. Pointless, really; he already Knows it’s there, same as it was the last dozen times he checked.

Swallowing hard, he finally turns to look at the Coffin. The moment he lays eyes on it, the static rises in his mind.

Oh, shut up, Jon thinks tiredly. The Dread Powers are like cats yowling at overflowing food bowls, insisting that they haven’t had supper yet. At least cats are endearing. The Fears are noisy and intrusive with none of the charm. You’re all so goddamn needy, you know that?     

The Coffin carries on, and Jon rolls his eyes. Wrapping himself in annoyance does little to drown out the fear, but it offers a slight buffer. He’ll take it.

You’re still stalling, he reprimands himself.

With trembling hands he picks up the key, fits it into the lock… and he opens the lid. It lifts easily with only a slight creak, no heft or resistance to it: it wants to be opened, like so many other hungry doors lurking around this world, bear traps and snares and spiderwebs all lying in wait for somebody foolish and curious enough to ignore all the alarm bells for just one… peek… inside.

Knock-knock, comes the intrusive thought.

Shut up, Jon shoots back.

The tape recorder clicks on, whirring impatiently in his pocket, as if to urge him onward. You too, he snaps – but as much as his knee-jerk impulse is to be contrary, he has put this off long enough.

Jon steels himself, takes one last deep breath – savoring fresh air, full lungs, airways clear of dirt and grime and debris – and he begins his descent.

Martin is in Peter’s office, tending to some tedious administrative tasks. His brain feels fuzzy, thoughts sluggish and stunted from the lack of stimulation. The tick-tock of the wall clock drones on and on. He’s considered removing the batteries, but it’s the only company he’s had in days. Complete silence might be worse. Besides, the longer he sits here, the less and less the noise scrapes against the edges of his consciousness – and even when it does penetrate the fog filling his head, he can’t bring himself to care.  

If Peter intends for the monotony to highlight his isolation and desensitize him to the absence of… well, everything, it’s working.

Then, between one moment and the next, there’s a shift. It crashes into him, tears through the quiet, and the world around him comes rushing back in, sharp and blinding, a cacophonous flood of sensory input. There’s a palpable void where one shouldn’t be, and he knows with certainty that it’s distinct from the general sense of absence that he’s grown accustomed to over the past few months. The Lonely feels soft, quiet, gentle – natural, like a cocoon tailored specifically for him. This feels like a knife to the gut, a gaping wound, an alert screaming in his mind that something is wrong, wrong, wrong–

“Something’s happened,” he says to himself. He flinches at the sound. It’s jarring, hearing his own voice, raspy as it is with disuse.   

Before he even realizes that he’s moving, he’s out of the office and hurrying down the hallway, not bothering to close the door behind him.

“Jon,” he whispers with a passion and urgency that feels alien to him now, thoughts no longer muffled and detached. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does: Jon’s done something drastic, and given his track record, it can’t be good.

The only thought running through his mind is Jon, playing on a loop like a stuck tape; like the nervous stammering of the person he used to be, intimidated by and enamored with the man in equal measure; like a – like a prayer: Jon.  

Martin picks up his pace, making a beeline for the Archives.

Chapter Text

Martin is so single-minded in reaching the Archives, he forgets to shroud himself before descending the stairs to the basement. It’s a miracle that no one is around to intercept him before he can make it to Jon’s office and close the door behind him.

For a long minute he stands there at the threshold, staring blankly into the room, taking in the bizarre scene.

A long, wooden crate sits in the center of the room, loose chains snaking underneath and coiled on the floor around it. A heavy padlock affixed to one of the links yawns open. Dozens upon dozens of tape recorders are arranged like a summoning circle around the box and every single one of them is on, filling the space with a low, jumbled drone of indistinct syllables.

Curiosity getting the best of him, Martin draws closer. When he catches sight of the ominous DO NOT OPEN scrawled on the lid, the realization hits him.

“Is that a coffin?”  he says to himself, flummoxed.  

“We really need you, Jon –”

Martin jumps just slightly when his ears pick out the sound of his own voice from the rest of the chatter. His eyes wander to Jon’s desk where a single tape recorder rests, isolated from the clutter on the floor. As the statement continues, Martin recognizes it with a jolt.

“We – I need you. And I – I know that you’re not – I know there’s no way to –”

“Where did he get this?” Martin wonders aloud, reaching out to pick the thing up – and only then does he notice the notebook it sits on. “Where did he get this?” he says, a bit louder.

There’s a scrap of paper sticking out of the top like a bookmark. Bewildered, he sets the tape recorder aside and flips the notebook open to the marked page.

Were I prone to flights of fancy, I daresay I would call his words portentous, the paper reads. Jon’s handwriting has always been nearly illegible, and it only got worse after his burn, but Martin is intimately familiar with it after all this time. A tiny swell of affection begins to bloom in his chest before he forces it back.

You can’t, he tells himself, shutting his eyes. Peter’s plan – whatever it may be – requires Martin to steep himself in loneliness.

Yes, he agreed to the plan assuming that Jon would never wake up. And he’s glad that Jon woke up, of course he is – albeit in a muffled, distant sort of way. He should probably be more bothered by that, but he notes it with only mild interest. None of this changes the simple fact that his feelings for Jon were never actually going to go anywhere. That sort of thing just… isn’t for Martin, let alone with Jon.

At least this way, Martin can put those dead-end feelings to some practical use. He has no illusions about being a hero. Even if Peter isn’t mistaken or lying about the Extinction’s emergence, Martin doubts that he of all people could make any real difference. But with any luck, maybe he can keep Jon safe – or safer, at least.

Not from himself, though, Martin thinks, glaring at the Coffin. He’s so… 

He heaves a sigh before turning his attention back to the strip of paper with its cryptic message. The makeshift bookmark is held in place on the side by a paperclip. There is a drawn arrow pointing down, and his eyes follow its trajectory to see it pointing at –

Oh.

Martin can feel his cheeks flush. The arrow sits just above a stanza that he could best describe as blatantly pining, and…

“Oh, god, did Jon read this? That’s–”

“Embarrassing?”  

Martin whips around to see a woman standing in the doorway. He hadn’t even heard the door open.

“Martin, right? Your ears are very red right now,” she says with a smirk. “Don’t worry, he liked it. You saw the note, didn’t you? A bit heavy-handed. He’s always been dramatic, but he never used to be such a sap.”  

Martin opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. The idea of speaking with another person grates at him, bringing his thoughts to a grinding halt like a crowbar jammed between corroded gears.

“I’m Georgie. Jon’s friend.” Martin shuts his eyes and grits his teeth, willing her to go away. She doesn’t, though; doesn’t even wait for him to reply before continuing: “We need to talk.”

It’s worse than it was the first time. How is it worse?

Did the stairs end so soon last time? Did the walls close in so quickly? How long has he been here already? How much longer will he have to stay?

Jon stops for a moment, panting in short gasps, desperate for whatever stagnant air he can force into his lungs. As if to protest the delay, the walls press in tighter and squeeze a breathless whimper out of him. 

Keep moving, he tells himself. Just – keep moving. There’s an end, and if you keep moving, you’ll reach it faster.

Without warning or invitation, the tape recorder clicks on and Daisy’s statement begins to play.

“…kept walking into the earth” – a peal of static – “completely out of sight” – more static – “the lid closed very slowly, and then he was gone.”

That’s… not where he paused the tape the last time he listened to it, he realizes with crawling dread. Why did it pick up there? And it’s – is it making its own sentences, mimicking his clumsy attempts at communication? Is it mocking him, trying to stoke his fear? Can the Buried somehow affect the tapes? What else could possibly be doing it? The Powers usually hold little sway in one another’s domains – except for… except for the Watcher, after Jon opened the door.

He’s fairly certain that that no longer holds true. It’s not as if he can still direct the Ceaseless Watcher’s focus; that was in a future that has not – will not – come to pass. Still… curiosity is as much of a pest as it’s always been. Jon resists for a brief few moments before giving in to the urge to Know, even as he curses himself for it.

It becomes immediately clear that just like the last time, he can’t See anything in this place. Reassuring, in some ways – the Eye can’t reach him here, and neither can Jonah Magnus – but the Archivist in him still recoils at the confirmation: he can’t See, he can’t Know, he can’t–  

Attempting to tamp down his mounting panic, Jon lets out a shaky breath.

Breathe, he tells himself – and an instant later, he realizes his mistake. Predictably enough, when he tries to draw in a breath, the earth contracts again and chokes him before he can get to the two-second mark. The forced exhale comes out as a whine, and he hates himself for it.

You can’t stop here, he thinks. Keep going.

Blinking grit out of his eyes, he presses on.

“I shouldn’t be here,” Martin mutters to himself, frowning at the weathered stone floor.

“What was that?” Georgie asks, glancing at him as she reaches the bottom of the ladder.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

Georgie makes a show of scanning the tunnel.

“Well, I’m the only other one here.”

Martin’s gotten used to talking to himself, but he doesn’t bother explaining that. He’s already exhausted from what brief interaction he’s had with her so far, and he doesn’t care enough to push through the haze.

Georgie starts walking towards a collection of chairs arranged in a loose circle a little ways down the tunnel. Why are there chairs down here? Martin wonders idly, before discarding the question with deliberate indifference. He cannot afford to give his curiosity any quarter, no matter how mild.

“Well?” Georgie says, sitting down. “Pick a seat and fall into it. You look dead on your feet. Honestly, I’m starting to think chronic fatigue is a job requirement for you lot.”

Martin lets out the beginnings of a small chuckle. Almost instantaneously, he strangles it, but the noise echoes in his head, unwanted and unsettling. It sounds wrong to his ears, discordant and out-of-place. It’s only now that he thinks to wonder how long it’s been since he’s laughed.

It doesn’t matter, he tells himself automatically before repeating: “I really shouldn’t be here.”

“Listen,” Georgie says, taking on a more serious tone, “I promised Jon I’d pass a message to you, and this is the only place we can talk without your creeper boss spying on us.” She holds up a folded piece of paper. “He left you a letter, too.”

“Fine,” he says flatly, approaching and holding out a hand. “Give it here.”

“You can’t read it outside the tunnels.”

“Fine,” he says again through clenched teeth. She stares him down for a moment – he resists the impulse to back away – but she does hand it over. He meets her halfway, avoiding skin contact as he takes it from her. He doesn’t even have to put conscious thought into that anymore; at this point, it’s become second nature.

Taking a few steps back, he stares down at the paper held loosely in his hands. His thumb toys with one of the corners, peeling the top layer up ever so slightly before letting it snap back down with a soft fluttering noise. There is a part of him – shoved into a dusty corner of his mind, forcibly stifled and neglected – burning to unfold it. A more prominent presence overshadows the first, looming over his shoulder, whispering insistently about restraint and resolve and a greater purpose.  

When he notices that Georgie is watching him, he sets his jaw and forces himself to meet her eyes.

“I can read just fine on my own. I don’t need company.”

“Don’t know about that,” she says, not quite under her breath. Then, in a more conversational tone: “There are a lot of things that Jon couldn’t communicate. I’m here to fill in the gaps.”

“He went into the Coffin.” Martin barely recognizes the monotone as coming from him.

Georgie makes an affirmative noise. Something ugly and unwanted simmers just underneath Martin’s contrived calm, a nagging itch clamoring for attention in the back of his mind. When Martin takes a breath, he can only manage to fill his lungs halfway.

“Why would he…”

Martin falters. It’s too broad of a query, and just scratching the surface is enough to break the uneasy ceasefire between the Powers laying claim to him. Martin can feel the pull of the Eye begging the question, the pushback of the Lonely at the prospect of involving himself with others.

“It says ‘do not open’ in big letters,” Martin says instead. Not a question, just an observation: a tangible, easily digestible detail that he can latch onto, enough to distract the Eye but impersonal so as not to offend the Forsaken.

Georgie snorts at that. “No better way to entice Jon to do the exact opposite.”

If she was trying for levity, it falls flat to Martin’s ears. The carefully constructed stillness he’s grown so adept at cloaking himself in shatters. When he speaks, his voice comes out sharp, louder – more emotional – than he had intended.

“Why is he so – why would he go in there?”  

“Because–”

Martin makes an agitated noise before he can stop himself. The slight echo of his own voice bouncing back at him off the tunnel walls is already too much company; being repeatedly reminded that there is an entire other person here is unbearable. Every atom of his existence is screaming at him to turn his back on her and get away.

Georgie falls quiet and waits. After a few minutes cocooned safely within his own thoughts, Martin looks up and is surprised to see her still sitting there. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised; he didn’t see her leave. There’s just some part of him that cannot reconcile the concept of someone else being physically present in the same space as him.

“Sit,” Georgie says. Just a single word, spoken softly but with the weight of a command.

Before he even consciously makes the decision to move, Martin is closing the distance between them and lowering himself into a chair. Unthinkingly, he chooses the furthest possible seat from her, and when he sits, he scoots backwards a few feet, as unconscious and instinctive as breathing. If she's bothered by that, she doesn't say.

“It was important to him that you read that,” she says, nodding at the paper still clutched in Martin’s hands.

“‘Was’…?”

Georgie gives him a peculiar look. “It’s not a suicide note, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“What? I wasn’t – I didn’t…”

The thought hadn’t crossed his mind. Should it have? Is that something he should have thought to worry about – that he would have thought to worry about once upon a time? It – it is, isn’t it? He knows how Jon can be, how he spirals, how he’s his own worst enemy – how when he’s not actively putting himself in danger, he’s hurting himself through casual self-destruction and neglect. How much has Martin changed, that the possibility of Jon deliberately hurting himself didn’t even occur to him?

Wasn’t half the point of Martin doing this to protect Jon? Because he cares about Jon? When did he become so out-of-touch with that part of himself?

“Should I be worried?” he whispers to himself.

“No! I mean, not about that – not now, anyway – I mean–!” Georgie grimaces. “Shit. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give you something new to worry about. You just – you seemed hung up on the past tense?” She breathes a short laugh. “I think I’ve just been spending too much time with Jon. He overanalyzes things like that.”

“Semantics,” Martin says obscurely. He isn’t even entirely sure what he means, but Georgie nods as if she understands. 

“Always have to be conscious of word choice around that man. I have seen him brood over verb tense for days trying to find meaning where none was intended, instead of just asking–”

“So what is it, then?” Martin interrupts, his voice tight, staring down at the paper in his hands again.

“It’s… hmm.” Georgie gives him a look that he can’t quite identify. “I think you should just read it. Take your time, and let me know when you have questions.”

“I don’t think–”

“Trust me,” she says with a tight smile, “you’ll have questions.”

“Fine,” Martin says, grinding his teeth together. Georgie seems nearly as stubborn as Jon. The sooner he gets this over with, the sooner he can shake her off.

He heaves a longsuffering sigh and begins to read. As it turns out, he does have questions, the first of many making itself known mere seconds after he begins reading.

I’m sorry I left you. 

 

…now I’m here, trying to explain things– 

–had changed since he left– 

–it seemed he was alone– 

“Who is ‘he’?” Martin asks.

“Hm?”

“It keeps referring to a ‘he.’”

Georgie blinks. “You’re kidding, right? I know Jon is oblivious, but–”

“What?”

She frowns. “How far are you?”

“Only a few lines in…? ‘You’ is me, I’m assuming, since it is written for me, but then he jumps right into–”

“Oh,” Georgie says, sounding relieved for some reason. “Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t know yet – don’t get too tripped up by the pronouns. Ever since he woke up, Jon’s only been able to speak in statement quotes. Limits his options a bit.”

“That… explains some things,” Martin replies, remembering his brief encounter with Jon a few weeks ago. Martin had recognized some of the words as his own. It was bizarre, but he’s been trying not to dwell on the peculiarities of the one-sided conversation. Thinking about Jon at length would only make it more difficult for Martin to stay away. But now that the subject is free-floating in the air like this, his sense of curiosity is making demands again. “Why?”

“No clue. Jon hasn’t really said, and I haven’t pressed him on it. I can tell there’s some baggage there, but I wasn’t going to make him unpack it when he wouldn’t have the time or space to actually sort through it just yet. I think it’s safe to assume it’s supernatural, though. And it definitely isn’t by choice.”

Great, Martin thinks bitterly. Just what they need: more complications. When he turns his attention back to the letter, he doesn’t get much further in his reading before he has to stop again.

“Are you sure that Jon wrote this?”

“Mhm. He fussed over it for hours.” 

“It’s just…”

“Weirdly communicative?” Georgie suggests, a knowing smirk on her face. “Uncharacteristically revealing and insightful? Indicating a level of self-awareness seemingly not typical for one Jonathan Sims?”

“I… I was just going to say ‘open,’ but… yeah?”

“Yeah,” Georgie echoes. “Just keep reading.”

Jon is stuck.

One arm is pinned to his side, elbow bruising where it presses against the wall. The other is stretched out ahead of him, bitten-short fingernails digging into the dirt for purchase. Useless. The earth is packed so tightly, he can’t quite get a grip. His bad leg is throbbing painfully with every slight shift, and he can’t seem to move the other at all. He tries to breathe through it, but he can’t seem to force his lungs to expand, trapped as he is in–

“A squeeze can be a hole less than a foot wide, sometimes going on for a long way, the rock pressing in on all sides of you,” the Archive recites matter-of-factly. “In a particularly bad squeeze, there are parts where the walls and ceiling are so close that you can’t move your arms or bend your legs to push forward, and you just have to squirm your way to the other side like a worm–”   

Jon wriggles frantically, trying to pull one arm free to clap a hand over his mouth, but he’s stuck–

“–down, down, down, down, down below the earth, there was a worm. He had not always been a worm, of course, but time and tide and life had pushed him to it – and he was, as definitely always had been the case, trapped. Boarded on all sides with no escape and no recourse.” The words are strained and faltering, the pressure on Jon’s chest being what it is, but the Archive carries on, the statement punctuated with the occasional gasp or grunt of pain but otherwise unrelenting. “Even in his faint and fading memories of a life that wasn’t simply stone and rancid, reeking soil, he wasn’t sure he’d ever known a thing that might be called freedom. Choices he had had, that’s true, and certainly compared to the relentless press of all the weight and dirt now on him, the simple choice of left or right or stand or sit would now seem the most outrageous of luxuries–”  

Shut up, shut up, just shut up, Jon rails against the Archive, redoubling his struggling, but it forges ahead, as if to highlight the fact that Jon cannot.

“…this was a particularly bad squeeze. Near the end, it got so bad that, if Alena hadn’t gone in first, I would have told her to go back and forget Lost Johns’ Cave.”  

Very funny, he thinks acidly.

“When had the crushing pressure in his chest become literal? When had the empty promise of the horizon finally vanished completely, replaced by the pitch darkness of this – forever wall of earth?”  

Suddenly, the aforesaid earth expands outward like a vast beast drawing in a breath, and Jon pitches forward as the passageway widens just enough for him to move. It’s still a squeeze, but he can at least inch his way onward again. He takes advantage of the opportunity while it still exists, blunt fingernails scrabbling against the walls as he pulls himself along.

Something in Martin gives – an overlong tug-o-war brought to an unceremonious end by a snap in the rope, sending both sides careening backwards to the ground. Like a tightly-coiled spring let loose, he stands abruptly and begins to pace, trying to suppress the uncomfortable stirrings of emotion threatening to break through the fog.

“He’s only saying this because he thinks it’ll change my mind about working for Peter,” he mutters heatedly, running a hand through his hair, making sweeping gestures with his other hand. The letter still clenched in his fist flutters and crinkles with his sharp movements. 

“What?”

“He’s just–” Martin throws his head back with an aggravated sigh. “He’s always been insensitive, but mostly in an – an awkward, off-the-cuff sort of way. And he can be snappish, but that’s mostly when he’s… scared, or overtired, or… but this” – Martin smacks the paper in his hand with the backs of his fingers – “this is just cruel.”

“I don’t understa-”

“Of course you don’t,” Martin spits out. “Just – using my – my feelings for him to try to manipulate–”

“Hey, hey, whoa,” Georgie interrupts, “that’s not–”

“What, then?” Martin laughs, and it feels almost caustic on his tongue. “He just – he’s gone for six months and then he comes back and suddenly he’s – he’s giving a love confession?”

“Yeah, he was worried that you wouldn’t be-”

“He doesn’t even like me most of the time!” Martin’s voice cracks. He can’t bring himself to care. “Even after – I mean, he was nicer in the months before…” He closes his eyes and swallows, throat constricted, unable to say the words. “But he wasn’t around much, so it makes sense. He wasn’t having to put up with me on a daily basis. Made it easy for him to forget all the things about me that he hated.”

“I don’t think–”

“And – and even when he was here, he was distant. Avoiding all of us, like it would keep us… I don’t know, safe?” Martin’s arms fall limp at his sides, the fight gone out of him. “And – and then he… just…”

He trails off feebly, his burst of energy sapping away from him. When he doesn’t rally, Georgie begins to speak. 

“Well… being avoidant and snippy, that definitely sounds like Jon,” she concedes. “But trust me, he’s not capable of using your feelings for him to manipulate you.”

“What?” Martin eyes flick to her.

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s an ass sometimes. I know he mistreated you. He knows he mistreated you. He said as much when he was staying with me.”

He did?  

“Judging by your reaction, I’m assuming he never told you as much.” Georgie sighs. “I told him to try talking to you. He was isolating himself, and he needed more than just me – needed someone who actually knew about… everything that goes on here. I suggested you, since he talked about you all the time.”

He did? Martin thinks again, disbelieving.

“And based on what he said, it seemed like you cared about him? Though I don’t think he realized how much. Honestly, he didn’t even notice how much he went on about you until I started pointing it out.” She gives him an amused look, and Martin averts his eyes. “He’s astonishingly oblivious sometimes. He gets so focused on the little details that he misses the big picture. But you already know that, don’t you?”

Martin continues to stare at his feet, muscles tensed and knees locked.

“Anyway, he was worried about you, too. I kept nagging him about it. Eventually he did say he talked to you, but I’m willing to bet it wasn’t exactly a heart-to-heart.”

“No,” Martin says quietly. “I mean, he did talk to me after he was kidnapped for the first time–”

“The first time?” Georgie repeats. “It happened more than once?”

“Yeah,” he sighs, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. He hates that he has to specify which kidnapping. “And actually, it – thinking about it, it was technically it was the second time, I suppose, if you count Daisy. Anyway, he, uh… he said he wanted to check in with me before going traveling. And he… did seem worried, I guess?” After a beat, Martin adds hurriedly: “About – about all of us.”

“But he mentioned you specifically. Said you were taking on too much.”

“I was–” Martin sputters, pulling his hand away from his face and flinging his arm out in agitation. “How can he of all people say–”

“I know, I know,” Georgie says, placating. “He’s a self-destructive workaholic throwing stones at glass houses.”

“Boulders, more like,” he huffs. Georgie chuckles at that.

Martin thinks back. Elias had had him start reading statements to keep up with the workload while Jon was… in hiding, then doing independent investigation, then kidnapped – which Elias had neglected to even mention. Jon had always seemed fixated on the statements to the point of possessiveness, and Martin had been anxious that Jon would feel like he was… infringing, somehow? And Jon had been upset, but not jealous or territorial as Martin had expected. He was… he was worried, wasn’t he? That the statements would take a toll on Martin’s mental health? Because Jon knew what they were like, and…

More like unleashing an avalanche on a glass house, Martin thinks, pressing his lips together in a thin line.     

“Couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that someone might be worried about him.” It isn’t until he hears his voice that Martin realizes he’s spoken the thought aloud.

“Yeah. He’s always been like that. I think he’s working on it, though?” When Martin doesn’t respond, Georgie continues. “But, back to my earlier point… yes, he can be an ass. But saying that he loves you, just to convince you to come back? Does that really sound like him to you?”

“It’s more likely than the alternative,” Martin says stubbornly, and Georgie sighs.

“It’s just… not something he would even think to do in the first place. His guilt complex wouldn’t allow for it, first off. And he can be thoughtless, but even when he’s being harsh, it’s not premeditated. But more than that, he’s not… hm. How to put this nicely…” She taps the knuckles of one hand lightly against her lips. “Jon doesn’t have the emotional intelligence necessary for that.”

Martin blinks several times, lips parted just slightly.

“That was… uh, blunt.”

“Well, it’s true.” Georgie shrugs, unconcerned. “He’s clever in a lot of ways, but this sort of thing doesn’t come naturally to him. Has trouble enough processing his own feelings, let alone managing others’ emotions. He’s always been either hypervigilant or oblivious with not much middle ground.” She casts a pensive look at the floor. “He seems… better than he used to be – or he’s trying, at least – but I still wouldn’t call him socially skilled. Even if he was, he’s still just not subtle enough to be deliberately manipulative.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he’s a shit liar.” Martin snorts at that. “I take it you’ve noticed.”

“A little over a year ago, he got stabbed–”

“Of course he did,” Georgie groans.  

“Refused to explain how it happened. Said he cut himself with a bread knife.”

“A bread knife?” This time, she laughs outright.

“I know, right?” Martin exhales with a little heh. “He just – I knew he was lying, and he knew that I knew he was lying, but he just – he stuck to that story.” His lips curl into a small, timid, but inarguably fond smile. “Just… stubborn, you know?”

“Yeah,” Georgie says, the corners of her eyes crinkling when she mirrors his expression.

Martin clears his throat, smile fading. “But – but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“It does, though.”

Martin looks off to the side, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

“Look,” Georgie says, “I’ve known Jon awhile. We even dated for a time.” Martin’s knee-jerk flicker of jealousy must show on his face, because Georgie grins. “Don’t worry, we’re not romantically compatible, as it turns out. Strictly platonic.”

“I didn’t say any-”

“You didn’t have to.” Before Martin can protest again, she presses on. “Point is, you can trust me when I say that he’s not the type to throw the word ‘love’ around carelessly, let alone to use it for emotional manipulation.”

“Fine,” Martin says tersely, digging his heels in again. “Then he’s just mistaken. What he feels isn’t love. He just feels guilty, and – and lonely, and he thinks this will make it hurt less.” Martin scoffs. “Or, hell, even the opposite: he knows this won’t work and he’s hoping it hurts when I push him away, so that we’ll be even. Using me to – to punish himself.” 

“Yeah, I can see why you’d think that,” Georgie says. “But it’s not the case. He’s… changed a lot.”