Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Sorry Elias, I can’t hear you. There’s a door in the way.”

“I think you can, Martin.”

The next statement burns. He drops it into the pile of flames, feeding it as it crackles. and slowly, he begins to feel it. the sweltering heat. 

“I think there’s something I should tell you… if you’re still set on causing a disquiet.”

“A disquiet? Is that what you think i’m doing?”

“No. I know it’s what you’re doing.” 

He can hear the smirk in Elias’s voice. He wants to walk over there and punch him through the glass.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he crumples statements and throws them, carefully, into the burning mass of ash.

“We all know you’re starved of attention, Martin, but this is hardly the solution.”

He breathes in. He breathes out. He trembles.

“Attention? You think I’m doing this for - goddamned - attention?”

“Actually, yeah. Do you think that someone will pat you on the shoulder and say “Good job Martin, we’re proud of you.” Do you miss your mother that much? Don’t worry, Martin, You won’t have to deal with anyone much anymore. Your mother's-”

“Stop it!”

“Everyone’s going to leave you. You know that, right?”

“I said stop.”

Martin’s voice goes quiet. shaky. 

“Finally gotten some sense?”

He does not speak. Instead, he walks to the boxes of statements. He fills the contents of his backpack with them. Jon wouldn’t want them burned, would he?

“I swear, Martin, I’m going to get the key right now-” 

Frantic, hurried footsteps become quieter and quieter. 

The fire is catching, now. the walls and ground are filled with the scalding red, weaving up to the ceiling.

The books are alight, he thinks. The books are alight and they shouldn’t burn. 

But he can’t. he can’t breathe anymore. 

_

Nikola chuckles. 

“It’s me, Jon, it’s Martin.”

“Martin?”

“Yes, I’m Martin. Your friend. What’s that in your hand, Jon?”

“A detonator, I think… be careful, Martin, there are people here you can’t trust.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be…. careful,” Nikola smiles, her head dropping to one side. Blood is everywhere, rivulets streaming and leaking into the old wood of the museum. 

“This isn’t a detonator, Jon, you’ve-”

It starts slowly. Contained. The fire spreading through Jon's hands, flames winding up the walls. 

They do not want to contain it. And even if they did, they couldn’t anyway.

They taste sleep - is it sleep? Or is it something else? The sharp tang of lighter fluid?

The walls blacken and crumble. The fire burns.

The archivist burns.

Chapter Text

One

The nurse monitors the hospital cot. 
It’s quiet here. No rush of midnight teenagers, no broken bones. No whiskey-drunk, slurring voices demanding to see a friend. The names they mention are unfamiliar and Oliver is tired as hell. 

There’s nothing but the small beeps of the heart rate monitor. Flat silences long enough to make you think the patient was dead. And suddenly, something. A gasp. A shudder. 
And silence again. 

In all reality he should be a corpse. In all reality he should be in the morgue, but the hospital was barely in business and the Lukas family’s... Benevolent offer of funding led them to watch as the man breathed too frequently to be dead but not enough to be alive. 

They’d found the patient in the wreckage of an old London building. The hot topic of archiving centers, he’d said to the receptionist. The body burned, unconscious, and holding an untouched backpack filled with various stories. 

Three months later, the burns are gone, and the backpack is nowhere to be found. 

_

Sixteen doors down another patient is crying.

They’re conscious. Only here for another day. There is nothing to do but watch as the figure waits, crying and babbling things that no one would understand. At least, things that the rest of the staff would not understand.

The Lukases were filthy rich - with money that no one should have. Money that belonged to the poor and the starving. Oliver writes in the log he’s been provided. Nothing happened today.

The ink blots the paper as he runs over to the monitor, the patient’s heart rate rocketing forwards, his hand twitching near the connection point of the IV. 

He opens his eyes. 

“Where’s Jon.”

Oliver sees the tendrils - once wrapped tightly around the patient - begin to shrivel and recede. 

“Well, shit,” he murmurs softly. “Guess I’ll have to alert the family? Even if it’s not exactly possible for someone - someone human - to heal from burns that severe and come out untouched?” He rambles on to himself for a few more minutes, forgetting the once-dead man standing a few feet away.

In another situation, Martin would have stammered an apology. But he didn’t have time. Still, he might be too late. Maybe he was.
“Tall guy, brown skin, dressed like an oxford professor except looks homeless. Worm scars.”
“Oh, that guy. Yeah, he’s… he’s not doing well.”

“Where.”

His voice is ragged, hollow.

Oliver steps towards him, slowly taking the iv out of his arm, repeating the words the Lukas benefactor instructed him to speak.

“Room 115. Your clothes are in a locker on the third floor, change into them first, you look terrible. The big guy told me to tell you. Or whatever you know him as. Peter Lukas.”

No time. 

Martin runs out of the door, and the corridors are nearly deserted. He makes it a few steps before he trips, out of breath, and grabs a cart to steady himself. 
The cold steel burns the scarred skin of his hands, but he walks on. 

_

The archivist died.
For ten minutes and thirty-six seconds.
The world did not mourn. If anything, it rejoiced. 
For all intents and purposes the archivist is still dead. In this hospital bed lies a broken shell of a survivor.

The patient's hair is greying and ragged. Long unkempt waves of silver-black cover the pillows. Burn scars cover soft skin. 

They’re awake, eyes open and staring out of the window. Sleep invites too many things that should stay buried. Ragged hospital robes and dark-bagged eyes, they stare at the figure that opens the door. 

Martin stands in the middle of the room, wearing the same crappy hospital robes. He sits in the chair next to the bed. He cries, and he doesn’t know if the tears are painful ones, or relieved ones.

He doesn’t say anything.

“Martin?” Jon says quietly, recognizing him.

Later, he’ll think of everything he could have said. He’ll draft sentences, phrases, words, but now… now, his throat is cracked and dry. 

And when he closes his eyes, he will see ash flying through the air. the sweltering heat will descend, unwavering. the only clear thing he will be able to hear is elias’s yells of his worthlessness, before everything goes dark again.

_

They find Tim Stoker half-dead in an abandoned parking lot near Sussex. The only words he can mutter are these: 
“If he’s dead, maybe I’ll find some fucking solace.”

It is  listed, at least on the news, as a gas leak. The old theatre must have had outdated heating systems. An easy cover-up. Did it count as a cover-up if no one knew what happened?
Well, everyone except for Jon. And they weren’t likely to forget. 

The city did not plant flowers in the ashes of the Magnus Institute. Nor did they leave its wreck to stand there, a reminder to the passerby that any evidence the world might have had of the supernatural was now nothing more than a heap of rubble.

It was flattened by wrecking balls, and wet cement was spread across the uneven ground. A “for sale” sign now stands there, frequented by a woman with fading blue hair. 
No one recognizes her as she spits on the ground. If the people listened closely enough, they would hear a grunt of “good riddance.”

Sometimes, another will visit with her, an oversized t-shirt with a what the ghost? slogan on it. She’ll reach out like she’s going to wrap her arm around the other’s shoulder.

She hesitates. She steps a few inches away.

___

The body of Elias Bouchard is found charred and dead on the beach of the canal. The waves lap slowly across his ruined shoes. Every day before the retrieval, the waves bring him once foot closer to the hollow, darkened water.

They bury him, closed-casket, in the old victorian cemetery. The funeral has one attendant - a tall, gruff bearded man in a sailor’s cap.

He is not the type of man to cry. But he does. A tear trickles down his cheek and if Elias was still alive he’d be shaking the casket, laughing. 

The casket is still and lowered into the ground. The man leaves. The funeral ends. The day goes on. 

_

The locker room is cold,  like the other locker rooms Martin's been in. Well, the one. 
This time, the room is bare. No middle school girls laughing about things that don’t matter. 
Come to think of it, the only similarity is the scratched locker-filled walls that stretch up to the ceiling, locks dangling from half-open doors.

He finds the one with his name on it. It’s open, and his clothes are there. 
He wasn’t wearing those clothes when… when it happened. Did the staff go through his things? Did they break into his house? Does it still count as a break in if he was in a coma? Was he in a coma? What day is it?

He puts on the sweater, the soft pumpkin wool numbing the chill of the air conditioner.

_ 

“They never - they never told me you were here.”

Jon sits on the hospital bed, still draped in the robes.

The room only has three seating options: the footprint-tracked ground, the folding chair, and the bed. Martin does not sit on the ground. He does not sit on the bed, even though it’s wide enough.

“I thought - fuck, I thought-”

Martin starts to almost-cry again, quietly. He stares at the ceiling until the drops trickle back beneath his eyelids. 

“I thought you’d died.” Jon can’t read what’s happening. Not like before. they almost reach out - but hesitate. they don’t know where to put their hands anymore. they don’t - they don’t know if he'd flinch and back away.

Martin speaks for the first time since entering.  “I’m here.”

“I thought-”

“I know. So did I.”

“Tim- shit, Basira and Daisy… oh god, Melanie?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re alright?”

Martin stammers. He doesn’t know.

“I’m fine.”

He does not think Jon will believe him, but he doesn’t have the energy to try harder.
They sit in silence, fiddling with their sleeves. They breathe, in and out. Because they’re alive.
Because, at least for a little while, they’re safe.

Chapter Text

_

“Did you kill him?”
Georgie pours tea into delicate china adorned with tiny ghosts. She shuts the kettle off and places the cup near Melanie, sitting down beside her. 

“Because if you did, then he deserved it completely & I have never been happier about a murder before.”
Melanie laughs. a small one. She drinks the tea, and it burns her throat, but she doesn’t care.

“Sadly, no.”

Georgie leans back in her chair, and her face crinkles into a sad smile. The silence isn’t awkward, surprisingly. they’ve become comfortable with it.

“I need to ask you something,” Melanie mutters, quietly. 

Shit. Georgie fidgeted with her hair. “I- I, uh, yeah. go ahead.”
How did she find out?

“Why does all of your stuff have the WhatTheGhost logo?”

Georgie lets out a breath. “PR companies like to… send me a lot of random stuff in the hopes that i’ll use it as official merchandise, or at least advertise it on the podcast.”

“That doesn’t explain the light-up skull vacuum cleaner,” Melanie laughs.

“Look, it was on sale, and the handle had a cute little design of pumpkins on it. What would you have done?”

Melanie wants to lean across the table and kiss her, kiss this beautiful woman with an adorable obsession for the supernatural, god, she’s - 

Instead, she sits further down into the chair. She brushes her hair away from her face. Her expression is cold and unfeeling.

“Thanks.”

_

The day is cold. What day is it again?

They walk from the hospital, half-started sentences muttered under breaths. There is too much to say but, whenever Jon tries to speak, the words come tumbling out of their lips too fast, a jumble of what are- and I- . 

Why are they even walking together, anyway? They have their separate lives. They have their separate ways. The one thing that connected them is gone. There’s nothing, Martin thinks, that’s keeping Jon from walking away and never coming back.

He hesitates. he wants to tell Jon they’re free to leave him alone. he begins to speak - 

“Where are we going?” Jon breaks the silence.

“Hm?”

“I don’t - I don’t have anywhere to go.” 

“Yeah.”

Me neither, he wanted to say. 

“Oliver kept saying something about Peter Lukas watching you - what’s going on?” Jon fiddled with the hem of his jacket, looking at the pavement.

“Yeah. it’s probably nothing.”

“But you’ll tell me if he tries to end the world, right?”

“Yeah. I will.”

They turn to cross the street, and suddenly Martin’s struck with it again. 

Jon. Here. Alive. 

And in the background of his head - “ Everyone’s going to leave you. You know that, right?”

“I should probably go - check on the others. Are you going to be okay?” Jon shifts and looks up at him. 

“Yeah. I’ll be fine.”

They linger for a moment before turning the corner and walking away, footsteps becoming quieter and quieter until there is nothing left but the sound of Martin’s breathing.

_

It’s been three days.

Strings of fairy lights blink on as Martin plugs them into the wall. The room is scarce. a silver wire-frame bed, a soft comforter, a throw pillow. A thrift store candle glistens in the dim light of the floor lamp. Smoke drifts through the room, enveloping everything in the scent of tobacco, vanilla, and old books.

The floor is cold and empty. the walls are freshly painted, but nothing hangs on them except for a few out-of-reach cobwebs. the rest of the space is empty and cold.

Satisfied, he sinks into the covers. The mattress is soft. If he closes his eyes, if he shuts out the noise of the fan enough - 

It feels like an embrace. 

he shakes his hands, breathing in and out. The kettle boils. The water shivers as it’s poured into a porcelain mug. 

The tea bag drops. The surface bubbles. The kettle shuts off. the clock ticks. The ground creaks. 

Everything is fine, Martin whispers as he leaves the tea unattended by his bed. 

Everything is fine, Martin whispers, as the days pass and the groceries shrink and the milk expires.

Everything is fine, Martin whispers, as he quietly falls asleep.

_

“It’s been a while, Stoker. How are you?”

The publishing office is quiet and cold. It’s been renovated recently - the space he remembers had chipped-paint walls. These were cement.

“I’m fine.”

“Look - we do actually have a job open. My assistant manager retired - Benny, the old guy - and I’m looking for a replacement. I wouldn’t do this if i didn’t know you - but the company would benefit from your help. Anyway, this is probably against company policy.”

Tim smiles. 

“Tell me when to start, Boss.”

_

It is quiet here. The ground is cold against Jon’s grass-stained trousers.
They breathe in and out. 
The feeling is strange. Out of what seems like nothing comes the awareness of how delicate bones can be. 
They breathe, therefore they can stop. Therefore disease can rot their lungs. Therefore they are weak.

Death’ll come soon, they understand. It’ll come and it will be painful and real. If something happens - if the avatars find them - death’ll come, and it won’t be pretty.

The memories of the unknowing are lost, but Jon can feel the fire, even now. The burning. The flames that feel cold to the touch at first, and then suddenly - the searing pain. 

It’s a perfect place to be forgotten. in the undergrowth of a prairie off a deserted highway. Wheat bends in the midafternoon wind. The weather is filled with a coldness that does not go away - a coldness that sinks through skin, and remains however many layers are worn.

A backpack, half-filled with granola bars and bottles of water, lies a few feet away. 

_

A few miles away, Martin starts the car, hitting the dashboard until it flickers to life. He fastens the seat belt, and begins to ease out of a parking spot. Slower than usual, the car lumbers forward.

He drives. He doesn’t know where the hell he’s driving, but he turns at street after street. 

_

There’s a ruin here, but he doesn’t know which one. On the ground lies a charred piece of metal. The lightless flame, it reads, the rest of the sentence ash. 

No. The same word keeps playing in his head, over and over again. but now - they breathe easier. easier than before. the door that once shook with pressure from the knowledge that once taunted him is gone. They look down at their hands, scarred and patterned from the brusings of the… confrontations with Jude Perry and Jane Prentiss. 

The process of becoming an avatar is difficult to notice, and Jon can’t pinpoint the exact moment when they lost control. If they ever did. But they couldn’t have been like this forever - they couldn’t have. 

Memories rise to the surface - not forgotten ones, but the ones that were disregarded.

A child asks a teacher about her dog. She hesitates, but only for a second. She tells them about the cancer. About the slow decline, about the day when she called for him and he would not wake up. She held him and cried. In the spaces behind her eyes - near the tearducts,  she’d said, you’d find fear.

A child asks their grandmother to tell a story. the grandmother doesn’t tell stories, but she tells this one. One she’d kept hidden for too many years. She tells the story of her daughter, and how she met a man, and how they died. She wants to hold the child, but she doesn’t know how, because she’s crying and they’re both crying and they can’t stop, and the rain is trickling across the windowpanes and it’s late at night and none of them know what to do anymore. The child asks too many questions and receives too little answers. None of this should have happened. 

Jon’s first memory is a song, sung in a croaking, soft voice. 

And if that diamond ring turns brass, momma’s gonna buy you a looking glass. 

If the beholding is gone - then who are they, really? 

_

A song crackles through the radio. The first gymnopedie. Piano fills the car, each beat in tune with the engine sputtering along the highway. Martin doesn’t turn it off.

He stops the car, parking it against the road. By some turn of the subconscious, he’d ended up here. one of the first statements he’d done research on - the church of the desolation. 

He looks to the left - and there’s something out of place. Among the grass, there’s a figure, eyes closed, who seems asleep. 

He twists the key out of the lock and the lights blink off. It isn’t evening, at least not yet. Everything seems golden in the light of the slowly setting sun. As he gets closer, he walks faster, until he’s half out of breath from speedwalking by the time he reaches the figure. 

“Jon?”

“Martin? What are you - how did you get here?” Jon frowns, confused. 

“I - I don’t know, I was just driving.”

“But-”

“I can leave if you want to be alone.”

Jon speaks abruptly. “Don’t - don’t go, okay?”

Martin hesitates. after a moment, he sits down next to them, before asking quietly:

“Are you okay?”

Jon’s answer is barely a whisper.

“I don’t know who the hell I am anymore.”

Martin notices the backpack and the bottles of water. His voice croaks when he asks. 

“Are you - do you have somewhere to go?”

He facepalms, remembering their last conversation. shit - how could he not notice. 

“God - no. I’m sorry, Jon.”

Jon looks back with a gaze full of something difficult to distinguish. Compassion. 

“You don’t have any reason to be sorry.”

Martin sighs. 

“I’ll - that’s not important.”

“It is-”

“Listen,” Martin says, eyes closed and face covered with his hands, “Peter Lukas gave me… something. I got a weird email from a real estate agent listing a big property that I’d apparently inherited from some fake grandfather. I never had a grandfather. I think - I think he needs me to help him with something, and i didn’t have a home after the archives - well -”

He stutters. “Yeah. if you - if you need a place to live - which you do - I have room.” He cringed at the implications. “I have room.”

“I-” Jon buries their face in their hands. “Yeah. I’m- i’m sorry.”

Martin stares into the distance, hesitating a moment before standing up. He stretches out a hand, and Jon takes it, carefully, the backpack hanging half-closed off of their other hand.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Jon.”