Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jonathan Sims had died, and that suited him just fine.

After all, he had expected to, even if it hadn’t happened quite the way he’d envisioned. Still, one way or another, he had accepted that the moment he ascended the god-forsaken tower alone, everything that made him human – all that remained that made him Jonathan Sims – would die at its peak. An Eldritch monster would emerge from his carcass; a necessary evil with the ability to enact a mercy killing upon the entire suffering world. To bring the endless nightmare to an end. He had long since made his peace with that. 

In the interest of honesty, then, Jon had been more prepared for a metaphorical death. He hadn’t accounted for a hero to ascend the tower after him. For that hero to be his own boyfriend, Martin. 

And what do heroes do to monsters skulking at the top of ominous towers? 

A car door opened somewhere at Jon’s side, and a flurry of panicked voices circled him. 

“Jesus Christ, what happened up there?”

“O-Oh my God…Jon?” 

“Martin, what the fuck?”

“J-just drive! Drive, please!”

“I’m not driving until you tell us what is going on! Is Jon—”

“He’s…He’s…! I…I…I…! He asked me to! I-I-I didn’t want to do it, but…Basira, he was going to…”

Martin’s voice shattered around sobs, as he’d carried all his grief and despair down from the tower’s peak too. 

What sort of hero carried the monster’s carcass out of the tower to weep over? 

The display moved whoever sat in the driver’s seat, however, as the screech of wheels told Jon that they’d finally made a move. 

“What do you mean, he asked you to kill him? Wh-what about Elias? Is he dead too?” Basira prompted. 

Elias. Elias wasn’t the monster, Basira, Jon thought. That was me. What he made me. He was Doctor Frankenstein, killed by his own creation. Nothing more.

A wayward speed bump sent Jon – and a number of empty energy drink cans on the floor – jostling, knocking him out of his rumination. 

Wait. 

He shouldn’t be ruminating at all. Jonathan Sims was dead. 

So why was he thinking? Why could he hear the rumbling of tarmac under speeding wheels, the panicked voices around him? Why could he feel the crusty wool of a knitted jumper under his cheek, the warmth of an arm supporting his cradled form? 

Martin sniffed, managing to answer Basira after a moment to gather himself. “Y-yeah, Elias is gone. Jon, erm…Jon killed him and, erm…took his place. I-I was too late. If I’d been a bit quicker, i-if I’d set off sooner, I might’ve—” 

“I can’t believe you brought him down with you,” a familiar voice said from somewhere in front of him, cutting across Martin’s lament. “What were you thinking?” 

“I-I couldn’t just leave him there, Melanie!” 

“Pfft. I could have…”

“Right, no, I’m sorry, you know what, Melanie? I appreciate you’ve had a pretty rubbish time of it, I really do, but we all have. A-and I’ve…I’ve killed my boyfriend, and I know you don’t like him, but for once, could you…could you…” 

Oh, Martin, Jon thought, his heart cracking at the same moment Martin’s voice did. That tightness in Martin’s tone only showed up when he tried to hold back tears. Whenever he got frustrated at himself for their prickling presence. 

“Martin,” Basira warned, her steady, calmer voice momentarily taking command. But Martin wouldn’t back down this time. 

“No! No! I-I…I’m not going to apologise for not leaving him there to b-burn, Basira! I’m not! It wasn’t his fault! He was…He was doing what he thought was right! H-He wasn’t trying to replace Elias, I swear! He doesn’t deserve…”

“I’m not arguing with you on that, Martin. You weren’t the only one to lose your…your partner in all this. I get it, all right? Just shut up and look outside for a second.” 

Silence settled over them, save for the continued rumbling of the speeding car. Jon, still prone against Martin’s chest, pretended he didn’t notice the flash of green behind his eyelids forming a bizarre monochrome painting of London as he tried to pinpoint what Basira was referring to. 

He was dead. He wasn’t breathing. He certainly wasn’t Seeing. They were gone. The Dread Powers, Elias’ macabre guests with all their gifts, had been vanquished atop the towering Panopticon, exiled to other realities. Jon had died in the knowledge that he’d damned other worlds to the Fears, swayed from his stubborn stance to keep them locked in this world by one simple, human desire.

The idea of the world viewing him as a monster brought nothing but indifference to Jon these days. But for a brief moment, back at the tower, Martin’s eyes had shone with true horror when he looked up at Jon. For one awful second, the man he loved had looked at him and seen a monster too. 

Jon’s heart twisted cold with shame at the idea of releasing the Fears upon other worlds. But the idea of Martin considering him a monster made it lash out against his ribs in utter despair. 

So he’d done the only thing he could do. Jon had told Martin to slay the beast atop the tower. To save the world. Be the hero. 

After all that, surely they had to be finally free of the Fears. Basira was right; his death acted as the last brick in a long road to a bittersweet victory, but many more stretched out behind him. Gerry. Tim. Sasha. Daisy…

“Basira…Those people watching us. Who are they?” Martin asked.

“No idea. But I’ve seen three of those suited weirdos since we left the Magnus Institute. All with the same lanyard round their necks, did you see? Look, push him out of sight, would you? I’ll get us out of the city.” 

If he could move, Jon might have protested at the notion of being shoved away like cumbersome luggage. But in Martin’s defence, he didn’t push him as Basira suggested. Instead, he maneuvered Jon with careful hands so that he was lying horizontally across the back seats of the car. Someone’s legs pressed up under his calves, and the denim of Martin’s jeans rubbed against his cheek – no one would be able to see him from outside unless they pressed their faces against the windows. 

Unless they can See, Jon thought. But that would be impossible, even for him. 

No more Seeing. 

No more Knowing.

No more ungodly powers of any form for anyone. 

──── •✧• ────

How long they drove for, Jon couldn’t say. Enough time had passed for Martin to finally break down crying, then ebb away into sniffles and sobs several times over. His fallen tears dried on Jon’s cold cheek, but he couldn’t do anything that might have soothed the poor man of his guilt. 

How could he? He was, as Jon kept repeating to himself like a mantra, dead. He’d died once before. All the signs were present and correct. The creeping cold sliding into the miniscule space between his muscles and his skin; the agonisingly locked senses, save for his hearing, strangely enough. And this time, no nightmares on rotation plagued him. 

The Eye has gone, Jon assured himself. This is proof. I should be drowning in nightmares right now, but there’s nothing. They’re gone…They’re gone…It worked, Martin. Please don’t cry…

The creak of faux leather caught his attention then. Melanie had evidently leant forwards to turn the volume up on the radio, because soon the air was filled with the booming voice of an RP-accented newsreader who sounded, in Jon’s opinion, like he was on the verge of tears or laughter. Perhaps both. The poor bloke probably hadn’t been trained on how to deliver the news after the apocalypse. 

“Christ, how’d they get back on the air so quickly? It’s been, what, two hours?” Melanie scoffed, voicing Jon’s own view on the matter. “Guess nothing keeps a proper journalist from a good news story. Or a bad news story.”

“Maybe he was stuck in a Domain that happened to be his workplace? Woke up and got back on with his job,” Basira retorted. Jon couldn’t tell if she was joking; he’d never been very good at that. With her often deadpan and even-keeled tone coupled with his own lack of skill with reading social cues, Jon found himself blundering with Basira more often than not.

“Shh! He said something about weird goings-on,” Georgie piped up by Jon’s feet, her voice having taken on a strangely raw tone. Had she been crying? And God, had he been half-lying on his ex-girlfriend for the last few hours? 

Might explain Melanie’s bad mood, Jon thought. World might be saved, I’m dead, but somehow, I still manage to make Melanie grumpy.

“—conference hosted by the Ministry of Defence in the last few minutes. The MOD has confirmed the existence of what it is calling ‘visual reflections’ in some parts of the country where the nightmare zones were strongest.”

“Nightmare zones? That’s what they’re calling the Domains?” Melanie commented with a tut of disapproval. “Well, at least they’re not pretending it didn’t happen.”

“Hard to pull off a cover-up for something the entire world experienced. Besides, they’re probably calling the Domains a thousand different things around the world,” Basira said. “We’re going to be hearing about the ruined world for years in a bunch of different ways. Better get used to it.” 

“That’s what you’re getting from this? Didn’t you hear what he said? ‘Visual reflections’ of the Domains…” Georgie’s comment trailed off, and Jon pretended he wasn’t watching her through the green mist dancing behind his closed eyelids. She looked out of the window, as though she might spot such a dreadful echo manifesting right by the car. 

“We can dig into it more after we’ve dealt with Jon,” Basira remarked, bringing the car to a sudden stop. “Speaking of which…this’ll do.” 

A heavy silence squashed its way into the already overly packed car. In a small voice that might have killed Jon on the spot were his heart still beating, Martin asked, “What’ll do? Where are we?” 

Basira opened her door and headed out of the car. A few seconds passed, then the door at Martin’s side above Jon’s head opened, letting a blast of cold air and the scent of wet grass and soil surge in. 

“Daisy used to use this place for…sorting this kind of thing out,” Basira finally answered him. Two hands gripped under Jon’s armpits then, but two larger hands grabbed his shoulders and kept him in place. 

“Wh—no! We’re not…We’re not burying him in the woods, Basira! What the…no! Why would you even think that—”

“Martin, listen to me! Jon is gone. He’s gone, and I know it hurts, but…but people saw him. People know him. And eventually, someone’s gonna figure out who caused all of that before.” 

“It wasn’t his fault! H-he didn’t do it on purpose; Elias made hi—”

“It doesn’t matter, Martin! Not to them! People will want answers. They will look for someone to blame. Is that what you want? For the whole world to remember Jon as a monster? To drag his corpse to every laboratory across the world to be picked apart and studied? For him to be cut to bits a-a-and auctioned off as relics of the Antichrist to morbid collectors or some shit like that? Or do you want him to rest?” 

Cold splashes found their way to Jon’s cheek once again. The truth of Basira’s words struck colder though. Would that fate be worse than what she proposed? Probably. But then again, being buried in the woods – these woods in particular – among his fellow monsters, still able to hear, able to think. No. No, that would stop eventually, Jon assured himself. Surely it would stop eventually. 

“I…That’s…Look, not here. He hated what happened here. Said he’d never felt as helpless as that day with Daisy. I can’t…I can’t bury him here.” 

“It’s a good spot. No one will dig him up, Martin," Basira assured him. "I promise you.” 

“I don’t care! He’d hate it!” Martin snapped, hysteria threading into his words. The muscles in his thighs tensed under Jon’s cheek, as though he’d debated standing up before remembering where he was. “He’d hate being shoved here of all places, a-a-and being buried! No, I…We’re not burying him!” 

“Fine,” Basira snapped, drawing her hands away from Jon. “Then we cremate him. I’ll take us somewhere people won’t see the flames, and—” 

“N-no, no, no, no burning either! He’d hate that too!” 

“Martin, we don’t have a lot of options,” Georgie tried to convince him, taking a softer approach. “I mean, he’d hate a burial at sea too, right?” 

Martin sniffed. “Yeah…Too cold and…Lukas-y.” 

“Exactly. It has to be your choice, Martin, of course it does. But we have to do something for him. Jon deserves to rest, doesn’t he?” 

Another sniff. Fingers found their way to Jon’s hair, brushing above his ear. Then, after a long time of pondering, Martin spoke again. “I…I need to think. I need to figure it out. What’s best for him, you know?” 

“I get it. You’ve been dragged through hell and back, more than the rest of us. You need some breathing room. Listen, why don’t you leave Jon with me for a bit and go clear your head? Maybe a little walk, a bit of fresh air? I’ll keep an eye on him, I promise.” A rustle of fabric overhead told Jon that Georgie had moved to place a hand on Martin’s shoulder, but something about her offer set Jon’s teeth on edge. Martin must have sensed it too, because he didn’t relax; his muscles remained bunched under Jon’s cheek and torso. But, for lack of a better resolution, or simple buckling under the emotional exhaustion of it all, Martin relented. 

“Y-yeah…All right, that…that might help. I’ll…I’ll be ten minutes. Erm…Yeah, give me a second to think…” 

Martin lifted Jon up as he got out of the car, and Georgie scooted over into his seat so that Jon’s head would rest in her lap instead. No footsteps sounded, and Jon pretended the green haze behind his eyelids didn’t paint a picture of Martin hesitating at the side of the car, hands twisting together with nervous energy as he lingered there. 

Georgie leant forward and patted his elbow. “It’s all right, Martin. Go on.”

Finally, footsteps padding across grass and fading sniffs heralded Martin’s departure. Quiet descended on the car once again; guilty looks exchanged across the three women, no doubt. 

Basira confirmed the plan with three words. “Ten minutes, then?” 

“Still got the lighter, Georgie?” Melanie asked. 

A click of metal near Jon’s head sounded. “Yeah. Yeah, still got the lighter…” Georgie said, her words weighed down with clear discomfort. 

“It’s for the best, Georgie. You know Martin won’t agree one way or another. Come on. Nine minutes – and you bet he’ll be back on the dot.” 

──── •✧• ────

Which was worse? The flames growing under his back, starting to lick at his clothes and skin? Or knowing that Martin wasn’t there to say goodbye? 

Because surely, surely the pyre would end this strange limbo Jon found himself in. He prayed it would. When the fire purged everything from him – his scars, his marks, his mistakes, his archive, his brain – surely then his consciousness would leave. He would rest. 

He and Martin had said their goodbyes, he supposed. Back up in the Panopticon. As far as Martin was concerned, Jon had left him then. He didn’t know that he’d heard everything since. 

It’s just me, Jon thought. I suppose I…would rather you were here, is all. You’ve made me sentimental.

Georgie had swiftly taken the ring off Jon’s right middle finger before Basira had hauled him atop the haphazard, makeshift pyre of whatever thin pile of branches and twigs they could find within five minutes. Jon could only hope that she planned to give it to Martin, though Martin deserved a much more symbolic memento than Jon’s ring. Martin had bought him it as a gift after all – a plain black band – and told him he should wear it on his right middle finger. Something about pride. About acceptance. 

The conversation had been so long ago. It had been the one Jon had always had to have with his partners at some stage in their relationship. The one that usually sounded the death knell on said relationship. Usually, after telling his partner that he didn’t have any desire to engage in bedroom activities, they grew steadily more distant with each passing day. Until it was finally time to hear ‘It’s not you, it’s me, honest’ and ‘No, no, it’s not because of that’ all over again. 

Not Martin, though. No. No, Martin Blackwood had gone out and bought him a little present for it all. Of course he had. He was Martin. 

The fire rose to Jon’s sides, coiling around his shoulders and snapping at his ears. Strange. The heat radiated all around him, as expected. Darkness took the place of the fire’s light, as his eyes were still shut. But the pain never arrived. He ought to be in silent agony, but instead, Jon almost enjoyed the sensation of this warm cocoon enveloping him. 

Lightless heat, wrapping around him and scorching away his shackles. Nothing hurt. His blazing god, roaring in the darkness, scorching the earth without so much as a sparkle of comforting light, would keep him safe so long as everyone else burnt. Nothing would ever hurt again if he stayed here in the dark desola—

No!

But it was too late. Something in Jon’s chest stirred. 

Thud. Thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud. 

The green mist behind his eyelids bled, pouring down the vague picture like lava. The heat of the fire wormed into his melting skin, into his boiling muscles, into his burning heart. No, not heat. 

Power. 

“Stay here,"  the fire hissed in Jon’s ear. “Stay here and die in the warmth, in the comfort. Rest now, Archivist, and maybe we’ll all wake up and drag ourselves from your ashes.”

Despite the heat suffocating him from every angle, Jon’s heart pulsed cold. Still, the whispers continued, resonant and tripping over itself in its glee.  

“We who crawl and choke and blind and fall and twist and leave and hide and weave and burn and hunt and rip and bleed and die. We’ll awaken and claw our way out of your sad, broken body, but that’s all right. Hush now. You’ll be resting.”

The voice tangled and mutated, becoming something eerily familiar. Becoming someone’s particular drawl that Jon had hoped never to hear again. 

“It won’t be your problem any more, Jon. All you have to do is let them go. You’ve done it once already, with my help. It shouldn’t be so difficult to do it again.”

The choice appeared before Jon once again, though this time, it travelled on black flames that crawled up his body and blinded his eyes. 

Wake up…or stay asleep. 

Somewhere behind the hissing voices, the undercurrent of wicked laughter, and his hammering heart, someone screamed. It shattered through the burning air with ice-cold proficiency, slamming straight into Jon as though it had burst from his own throat. 

“No! Jon! What are you doing? You promised! You said…! Jon! JON!”

Martin’s desperate pleas faded as the whispering returned, curling around his ears with a tempting offer of peace. 

“Come now, Jon. Don’t you deserve your rest?” 

It had to be more than a stubborn desire to run contrary to anything Elias Bouchard might say that caused Jon to open his eyes and behold the soaring inferno he lay within. 

But it certainly helped. 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

The skin down the back of Jon’s knees pulled taut and shattered into ashen shards as he shifted to stand up from his funeral pyre. A dramatic reemergence into the world had not been his intent, but when one is on fire and needs to stand up, one must embrace the side effect of macabre theatrics. 

Jon managed to get to his feet, but he had no plan as to how to put out the flames. He looked out across the gathered guests at his funeral; each of them returned his gaze with varying levels of shock, horror, and disgust. Even Martin trembled and stepped back. The only person who seemed unsurprised was Melanie. Impatience made her movements sharp, tilting her head from Jon to Georgie at her side, seeking answers in the silence and growing more impatient for the lack of them. 

“What is it? Don’t tell me – Jon’s doing something spooky again, isn’t he?” she said with a groan. 

Georgie, dark eyes wide and unblinking, swallowed. Without breaking eye contact with Jon, she tried to explain to her girlfriend. “I, err…Y-yeah. Yeah, something like that.” 

Melanie threw her arms up, letting her hands clap back down on the sides of her legs in exasperation. “I knew it! There’s always something when he’s involved, even if it’s his own bloody funeral!” 

“Melanie…” Georgie started, but Basira cut their blossoming argument off. 

Drawing her gun, the ex-detective trained her sight upon the burning Archivist. “Georgie. Melanie. Martin. Get back to the car.” 

Two refusals and one eager agreement clashed against each other in response. 

“No way!”

“Yup, good idea, find us when it’s done!” 

“I’m not letting you shoot him, Basira! Give me your jacket; w-we need to put him out! Why am I having to point out that we should be helping and putting out the burning man?”

“Martin, get back! Do you wanna set yourself on fire too?” Basira barked. 

Jon watched the bickering, wondering how he’d become so oddly detached from the simmering chaos. The fact he ought to be screaming in agony hadn’t escaped him. But without pain, why should he scream? In the place of the expected white-hot agony, numbness rolled over him. So he contented himself to watch the others through the shimmering, heated air. Their fear comforted him, and were Jon fully present within himself, that fact might have disgusted him. 

It’s the familiarity of it, that’s all, he assured himself with minimal effort. An echo, a habit, nothing more. You’re dead anyway. It’s fine. 

“You go back to the car then, Melanie. I’m staying,” Georgie said, finally facing the other woman, unrepentant in her determination. The sting of her words registered in Melanie’s recoil, however, letting fragments of vulnerability seep out. 

“Oh, charming! Let your blind girlfriend blunder off back to the car, is that it?” 

“Wh–no! No, I didn’t…No, I was—”

“You were just thinking about Jon. God, I’m so sick of this! Don’t you get it?” Melanie demanded, almost shouting. “Every bad thing that’s happened to us over the last few years, practically every single one can be traced down to either Elias doing some weird paranormal stuff through Jon, Jon not leaving well enough alone, or Jon not doing something obvious. And now, now it’s meant to finally all be over, we’re finally meant to be free of all this nightmare bullshit and rest, maybe even build a normal life, what happens? Lo and behold, Jonathan Sims is here to make sure that doesn’t happen for anyone!” Melanie threw a wild gesture out in the direction of the Archivist in question. He offered no rebuttal in his defence – his vocal cords had long since crumbled to ashes. 

Instead, Martin piped up. “That is not fair! And for God’s sake, do you really think Jon is choosing to walk around on fire right now? Can we please address that first?”

Melanie’s jaw dropped, then snapped closed again. “He’s…? No. Right. Of course he is. Of course he is!” 

She laughed then, stepping back from the group and pinching the bridge of her nose. “Fuck this. I’m out. I was out months ago. I’d have been out months ago if it weren’t for him! We survived the nightmare, Georgie. Don’t you dare go running back into it. I’m not chasing after you if you do.”

She turned then, cane tracing the grass, and walked off in the direction of the car. 

“Melanie, don’t! Melanie! Wait! Rrgh! ” Frustration rolled from Georgie, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She cast one last look back at Jon, pity and concern silently offered, before she broke into a jog to catch up with Melanie. “Melanie!” 

With two of the group gone, Jon turned his attention back to Basira and Martin. Strange. Staring down yet another police officer – former or not – pointing a weapon at him in this particular woodland ought to have coaxed a traumatic response. At the very least, he assumed he should be yelling in deranged horror at the entire situation in general. Maybe the flames had burnt away his nerves. Yes, that explained the physical side of it. 

Ah, there! The delayed onset of panic hurried into him like an actor late for his entrance on stage. It welled up from his chest and clawed up his charcoal-lined throat. The urgent need to put out the flames and end this nightmare pushed him to move.

Spurred by the swelling dread, Jon began to run, heedless of the threat of the gun, hoping to find a stream, a river, anything. Charcoal flakes of flesh and skin rained from his burning body as he ran, the blurry green of the trees bobbing up and down in his line of sight, promising salvation. Before he could reach the treeline however, he lurched to a halt; his entire arm had exploded into a smoldering mess as a bullet tore through fire-fragile bone. 

It took Jon a moment to realise Basira had fired at him. Blown his arm clean off. 

He crashed forwards, landing on the grass in a cloud of smoke and smoldering plant life. He clutched the frayed stump of his left arm. Once again, the pain eluded him, but the shock of losing his limb in such spectacular fashion surged panic through Jon once again. 

“Basira, no!” Martin yelped, scrambling forwards and standing between her and the burning Archivist. Meanwhile, Jon scrambled to his feet, stamping in an effort to put out some of the burning grass around him. 

“Martin. Move. ” Basira kept her firearm trained on Jon, dark eyes unblinking as she held the target in her sights. “Whatever that is, it isn’t Jon.”

“But it might be!” Martin pleaded, casting a slightly fearful glance over his shoulder at the burning man frozen in fear behind him. Jon dared not move forwards, lest the ex-detective shoot another arm off. Besides, accidentally setting Martin on fire too wouldn’t win him any points with Basira. So instead, he risked nodding enthusiastically, sending more burnt skin and ashes snowing down to the ground.

Of course it’s me! You should know who you set fire to! Don’t rush to help me either, no, I’ll just continue to combust, shall I? he thought to himself, turning his head as best he could to see if he could spot a nearby river or stream to end the dramatics. With the density of trees and shrubbery around them, Jon had assumed there must be a water source nearby to feed them. Along with the corpses of Daisy’s victims, rotting in the marshy ground, feeding the roots above and helping the trees to flourish. 

The mental image sent a shudder through him, and he tried not to consider the fact he’d have been one of them if not for the strange hand of fate. Though he might well still join them, if Basira had her way. 

“He’s on. Fire.” Basira growled, brow furrowing ever so slightly. “For all of Jon’s weirdness, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t do that.” 

“W-well, no, b-b-but…but maybe he can now? Let me talk to him! Look!” Martin threw an arm out backwards, gesturing at Jon. “He’s staying still; he’s not trying to hurt us. Just…give me one minute to try to find out what’s going on. Please!” 

A muscle in Basira’s jaw shivered. For a moment, it looked like she might take a shot at Jon’s head from right over Martin’s shoulder, risks be damned. But then, as Jon almost resolved to make his move, she lowered her gun a touch. A jerk of her head was all the signal Martin got that his minute had started. 

He didn’t need telling twice. Martin spun around and faced Jon properly for the first time since their shared agony at the summit of the Panopticon. Guilt and relief swirled in Martin’s grey-blue eyes, and Jon noticed how his attention kept flicking to his chest, as though the stab wound would be framed in dazzling embers. 

“Jon, are…are you still…you?” Martin asked, kept back by the radiating heat. 

Jon tried to reply, but his crumbled vocal cords refused to operate. So instead, he nodded. 

And none of this can wait until AFTER I’m put out? he thought, making a wild gesture with one hand towards the trees. Martin blinked a few times, a pink flush staining his cheeks. Strange how he knew when he was being reprimanded even without words. 

“I don’t, erm…I don’t quite know what you…I-I mean, you can’t go in there, Jon, you’ll set the whole place on fire.” 

Jon, wishing more than ever that he could scream, gestured down at himself with a flat palm from shoulder to hip. 

I’M. ON. FIRE. MARTIN. 

“R-Right! No, I-I-I get it! Fire, fire bad, erm…”

He glanced over his shoulder at Basira. It seemed that Jon’s ability to translate grouchiness even in the throes of combustion had convinced Basira that he was Jon, because she holstered her gun with an air of irritation. “You’re not having my jacket, Martin; pretty sure he’s past the ‘pat it out’ stage. There’s a reservoir in walking distance, though. Guess it’s your lucky day.” 

If Jon had eyebrows, they’d have shot up in disbelief. 

Lucky. Day. Are you seriously suggesting that being stabbed and set on fire constitutes a—

“Okay, reservoir, excellent!” Martin trilled, as though privy to Jon’s surly thoughts. He almost made to guide Jon away by the shoulders, quickly thinking better of it the moment he raised his hands. “L-Let’s go. We’ll, erm…we’ll be right back?” he called to Basira as he half-coaxed his burning boyfriend away with multiple ‘shoo’ motions at a safe distance. 

──── •✧• ────

The reservoir stretched out behind a framing of greenery and reeds, an almost-still sheet of grey that blended seamlessly with the cloudy evening sky. The calm tranquility erupted, however, when a blazing five-foot-five torrent of vaguely human-shaped flames burst into a sprint, trampling through the plants on the water’s edge, tripping over one of them, burning several, then landing with an inelegant attempt at a dive into the murky waters. 

The light disappeared along with him, leaving Martin to call out in the gloom.  

“Jon? Jon! Jesus, hang on, you’ve set fire to half the shrubbery.” Martin took off his dirt-caked jumper and began beating the smoldering plantlife, casting worried glances to the flailing man in the shallows. “Jon? Can you even swim?”

Jon, in fact, could not swim, owing to the fact his grandmother had never taught him. That important point had not registered before throwing himself into the reservoir, on account of being on fire. 

The stirred-up silt stung his eyes as much as the ashes, and while the freezing water soothed his almost-cremated body, it proved no less vicious in its chill than the flames had been with their heat. His one remaining arm, blacked to charcoal, clawed at the water despite its lack of depth.

Martin waded in behind him, grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him out. He dragged him through the sodden waterside plants to a small clearing. 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” Martin repeated over and over with every step, lying the soaking Archivist down on his now-splayed and ruined jumper on the ground. “Sorry, sorry, sorry…H-here, lie down. Oh God. Oh God, Jon, how are you even still a-a-alive? I thought…I thought I’d…” 

With the flames quenched, Jon finally found a moment to catch his breath, aching and rattling though that breath might be. He wanted to comfort Martin, to absolve him of his guilt and assure him he’d done nothing wrong. He wished he could sit up and push the other man’s tears away from his freckled cheeks with his thumbs. 

But right now, it was all Jon could do to keep breathing, his adrenaline spent and his panic dying in his veins. So instead, he stared up at the inky sky with lidless eyes, knowing the light pollution would keep any emerging stars at bay, knowing no songs would ever be written about the beauty of the boring, dull, lifeless overcast canvas that hung almost perpetually over England. 

Tears trickled from Jon’s eyes all the same for the sight of it. 

The sky had never been so beautiful to him. 

It was the sky. 

The grey, normal, unassuming sky. 

It wasn’t looking back anymore. 

The rustle of fabric to his side told him Martin had sat down, no doubt fretting over the charred should-be corpse of his boyfriend. Jon twisted his neck with great difficulty, looking up at Martin, all his energy depleted in the mad dash to the reservoir. 

Tears rolled down Martin’s face, painting tracks through the dried blood and filth. This moment was the first either of them had had to sit down and breathe since the Panopticon. Since Jon had rushed off on his own. 

Since Martin had killed him. 

“Jon, I…I’m sorry, I…” 

Jon shook his head, immediately regretting it as the jumper under his skull rubbed raw against the scalded flesh. 

Don’t you dare apologise. If I have to admit to being wrong in the path I chose, the very least you can do is keep telling me that your path was the right one, he thought. God, he missed his voice. 

Instead, Jon tried to communicate as best he could. He turned his gaze back to the sky, lifting his arm up and pointing with a trembling finger. Martin’s attention followed, confusion furrowing his brow and wrinkling the bridge of his nose a little. Somewhere in his ashen ribcage, Jon’s heart fluttered at the sight; he hadn’t expected to ever see Martin again, all things considered, much less enjoy his little quirks. 

“Huh? What? What am I looking at?”

He checked back with Jon for clarification. Jon tapped under his own eye, then pointed back to the sky. Martin glanced up and down a few more times before realisation sparked, brightening his expression and halting the tears for a moment. “Oh! Oh, right! It’s not looking back! Y-yeah, it’s, erm…it’s nice, isn’t it? Everything being back to normal again?” 

A long silence stretched between them – a well-done former-Eldritch creature and his boyfriend relaxing at the edge of a freezing reservoir in the middle of the night, painting the very picture of normality. 

Martin snorted and started laughing. Even Jon managed a rattling wheeze, his body spasming in some attempt at a chuckle. Before long, his rasping devolved into an echo of a cough, bringing Martin out of his momentary levity and back to fretting again. “Oh Christ, Jon, what are we going to do with you? You’re…”

Quite the mess; yes, I agree. I shouldn’t even be alive, Jon replied in his head to the one-sided conversation. No more Seeing. No more Knowing. Presumably, then, no more healing either. Maybe this is me now. Burnt to a crisp and unable to speak. Hmm. A fitting punishment for the Archivist who asked too many questions, I suppose.

He glanced up at Martin, knowing full well none of that rumination had translated to whatever expression his burnt face could conjure. He tried to manipulate his cracked lips into a sad smile, but all he managed to do was to chisel more fissures into the crumbling skin. 

Where Martin didn’t reply, however, the crackling whisper from the pyre snaked into Jon’s ear once more to fill the silence. 

“Don’t be so sure, Jon.”

Heat radiated from somewhere deep within him, as though summoned by the disembodied voice. Like a bundle of energy stored from his cremation, the scalding sensation threaded through his veins and down his limbs, wriggling up to his head and wrapping behind his eyes, ensnaring his very mind. So much loss. So much loss. A clear understanding shoved its way into Jon’s mind then – if the Eye had not taken him, the Desolation might have taken a fancy to him. Maybe it already had. 

“Ah, you noticed, then? Same offer, different dealer. Not that it truly matters, Jon. You know that now. They’re all one and the same, really. And besides…you made the same choice again after all.” 

Choice? What choice? There had been no choice! How could he have rested, conscious to the world as he still was? 

The silent protest did not sway whatever power scorched through his quaking form. The boiling pulses swept him away, leaving Jon floundering in a thick cloud of disorientation. In the distance, Martin’s voice swirled, distorted and foggy, no doubt calling out Jon’s name. Jon would have given anything to reply. He wanted to assure him that everything was back to normal again; that they could start building a normal life together now. 

You want my choice? That’s my choice! Jon begged in vain. A normal life! For Martin! Let him have some peace now, for God’s sake…Let me give him that now, at least! 

The pyre-born whisper chuckled as Jon’s consciousness finally failed him. His eyes rolled back into his skull, and the world went quiet.  

“You? Wanting a normal life? You always were a terrible liar, Jon…"  

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

In the weeks of sleep that followed, Jon found no solace in the unusual emptiness of his dreams. Where the carousel of nightmares that had once been a trademark of his nighttime hours had disappeared, another terror had slipped into the vacant role. 

Whispers. Endless whispers, some in voices Jon recognised, others of those he did not. Sometimes, Martin called to him, pleading with him not to go without him. To stick to the plan, to remember his promise. Other times, the whispering transformed into jagged laughter, cold and calculated, framed by pitiful coos of his name. 

The word ‘Archivist’ spat through bloodied lips, snarled around hunger. Croaked through dirt, hissed through the shadows, coughed from rotten lungs. A thousand gleeful sing-song exclamations, the title unravelled around laughter, mangled around clicking pincers. Faded and echoing sobs, garbled through broken bones, stolen from his throat by the rushing void. Burnt from his tongue, he talks too much, he talks too much, he talks too much.

Through the swirling heat trapped under his skin, Jon’s body began the painstaking process of healing. His eyelids had been the first to regrow, followed by days of new skin painting itself over burnt flesh. But his left arm remained a stump just above where his elbow had been, cauterised and scarred. 

Snapshots of a dark room around him faded in and out of his consciousness. Occasionally, Martin would be there, fussing over him and placing cold towels across his forehead. Other times, the man would be asleep in a chair next to him, looking thoroughly uncomfortable in that position. 

Right now was one such time. Jon turned his head to the side and attempted to tell Martin to go to bed. The poor man must be exhausted. But nothing other than a croaking, slurred grumble made it past his lips, and Martin remained asleep. 

So instead, Jon decided to try to get out of bed and put Martin there. He managed to sit himself up and swing his legs over the edge of the bed before he crumpled forwards, landing in a heap in Martin’s lap and waking him up. 

“Ju-huh! Oh, Jon! No, no, no, back to bed!” Martin yelped, scooping up the tangled pile of gangly limbs and blankets from his lap and depositing it back on the bed. 

“Nuurr… You’re tired…” Jon said, making a feeble grab for Martin’s sleeve with his one available hand. “Y’should sleep.” 

“I was sleeping. Someone woke me up,” Martin pointed out, rearranging the blankets over Jon and smoothing them out. Jon wriggled, trying to slip out of the cocoon.

“Who woke you up?” he asked, blinking up at Martin. “S’no one else here…?” 

Martin offered him a little smile, then tucked the blankets a little tighter around Jon’s sides. “You did.”

“I did?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Oh. Sorry…” Jon settled back down again, if only because he felt guilty for waking Martin up in the first place. Had he done that? Memories slid from his grasps before they could even fully form, chased away by the uncomfortable heat that refused to leave him. He groaned and tried to escape the tucked-in sheets once again. “M’too warm. You take the bed, and I’ll…I’ll sleep in the chair.” 

Martin sighed, but he began to unravel some of the blankets from around Jon. “You’re still riddled with fever, Jon. You’re not sleeping in a chair. Get some rest, all right? I’ll be fine.” He smoothed back some of Jon’s hair from his forehead, delighting Jon with the knowledge that his locks had already grown back. He’d been quite sure they’d burnt off in the pyre. Unless that hadn’t ever happened. 

“Martin?”

“That’s the I-have-a-question-or-seven way you say my name. If I answer one question, you have to promise to go back to sleep.”

Jon thought about the offer for a while, then nodded. 

Martin sat back and gestured for him to continue. 

“Was I on fire, Martin?” he asked. “I think I might have been on fire, which doesn’t make a lot of sense because if I were on fire, I’d not be lying here feeling pretty fine right now. So maybe it was just a bad dream. But then, if it were a bad dream, how did I end up here at all? That’s not two questions, it’s more a…primary question and then a supplementary question attached to the primary question that’ll get answered at the same time.”

His ramble died away as the wave of fever rolled across him again, stealing his senses for a moment and replacing them with nausea. Martin took the opportunity to get a word in edgeways and replied. 

“Y-yeah. Yeah, you were. But we, erm…put you out! A-and you seem to be on the mend, s-s-so that’s good!” 

Something in the way Martin said that – too brightly, too animated – suggested it wasn’t good. That maybe they ought to be worried about all that. But between the fever dulling his wits and the nausea demanding he go back to sleep to avoid its discomfort, Jon couldn’t ask Martin to tell the truth. 

He’d promised to ask only one question after all. 

So, with a weak scowl that told Martin he’d remember this conversation and perform a follow-up investigation on it later, Jon let his eyes close. 

The moment he did so, all memory of the interaction boiled away under the fever’s cruel command, and Jon drifted off to another dreamless sleep. 

──── •✧• ────

Jon awoke with a start, air rushing into his lungs in a noisy wheeze. He sat bolt upright in bed, all scrambling limbs and pawing hands, eyes wide as he searched the dark room around him. 

His breathing settled as he examined his surroundings, familiarity making its slow descent over his raw senses and soothing them. The ridiculous, fleecy bed sheets patterned with cartoon clouds on a light-blue background. The absurd number of pillows behind him. Shelves that lined three of the walls like angular horseshoes, each one displaying a staggering collection of sword-wielding knights or bow-touting elves in intricate armour. The lingering scent of disinfectant that had engrained itself through the entire house like a bad memory. 

Martin’s house. Martin’s room. But no Martin. 

Jon granted himself a moment to sit in silence, save for the slight rasping of his lungs. He brought his hands to his lap, intending to ground himself with something real. 

But only one hand showed up. Odd. Jon was quite certain there ought to be two of them. Still, he made a thorough examination of the one present, deciding to worry about his absent left hand later. 

Scar-paled skin covered decidedly unburnt flesh, and as he turned it to check the back of it, Jon found himself more concerned by his lack of anxiety over it all. 

Had he been dreaming? No. No, the fire was real. It was still real; bubbling and flickering under his skin, inflaming his veins and making every motion sluggish and uncomfortable. But the embers no longer danced over his body. 

A light frown tugged at Jon’s brow, the pieces of the puzzle spinning in his head and avoiding any attempt he made to put them together. He couldn’t have healed. The Fears were gone, and his abilities as the Archivist along with them. He was just Jon now. Just Jon, and he had died. 

The need for answers forced him out of bed, as though invisible strings tugged at fever-tired limbs. Groaning, he managed to get to his feet, his body throwing a bout of shivering at him as a reward for his efforts. He padded across the room in bare feet, opened the bedroom door, and skulked out across the hall. 

The gold-tinged light from the living room spilt out from below and up the stairs, casting the upstairs hall in a warm glow. Thanks to that, Jon managed to navigate the stairs without falling down them, though the world kept swimming and tilting around him. 

A cold shock under his feet informed him he’d made it to the kitchen, the tiles biting at his soles. He crossed through and into the living room, blinking away at the brighter light in there. 

The TV rumbled away, the volume on low, playing a movie Jon recognised. Something about an author trying to protect her characters from an overly keen film producer. One of Martin’s favourites. 

“Jon! Jesus, when did you get up? You should be resting!” 

Large hands clamped on Jon’s shoulders, snatching his bleary attention away from the film. He blinked up at Martin, studying the portrait of worry before him. 

The curls of white hair that twisted through his strawberry-blond locks would forever spear guilt into Jon’s chest. A souvenir from his trip to the Lonely, a trip Martin would never have made if Jon had woken up sooner. Coupled with the unkempt stubble that bordered on a beard, and Martin bore more than a passing resemblance to the man who’d sent him to the Lonely to begin with. 

“I…woke up,” Jon slurred, annoying himself with how slow and stupid he sounded. But Martin lit up with a little smile, making it all worthwhile.

“Yes, I can see that.”

Tears shone in Martin’s eyes, and Jon became acutely aware of how deeply the other man was looking at him, as though every second together were stolen from time itself. One teardrop tumbled from Martin’s eye down his cheek, breaking the spell and making him shake his head.

“But you’re still burning up, Jon,” he said too brightly. “C’mon, let’s get you back to bed…”

“M’not burning up!” Jon protested as Martin spun him around and began to march him back through the kitchen. “No, no, look! If I were still burning up, you’d have caught fire too!” 

“Burning up as in fever, Jon.” 

“I don’t have a fever…”

“You don’t have to disagree for the sake of disagreeing, you know.”

“I’m not…”

“Urgh. Bed.” 

Their brief spat entertained them all the way up the stairs and back to Martin’s bedroom. Jon flopped down on the bed, then plopped down onto his side, smooshing his face into the pillow. But when Martin made to leave, he sat back up again, offended in every way. “Whurr? No! You too!”

Martin paused at the door, his lips taking on a tight smile as he held back laughter. “I’ll be right downstairs if you need me.” 

“I need you.” 

The smile shattered. Martin’s gaze dipped to the centre of Jon’s chest for a fraction of a second, then a sigh made his shoulders sag. He stepped back into the room and sat down on the bed next to Jon. 

Jon waited, assuming Martin wanted to say something. Then, all of a sudden, Martin barrelled into him, wrapping his arms around Jon and squeezing a shocked wheeze from him. 

“You’ve got to stop doing this, Jon…!” Martin sobbed into his shoulder. Befuddled with fever, it took Jon longer than it should have to realise what had upset Martin. 

He lifted his hand up to rub circles across his boyfriend’s broad back. “You want me to stop coming back from the dead? That’s not very nice.” 

“No! Yes! Well, no, I mean…I-I’ve said goodbye to you twice now!” Martin tried to explain, leaning back. Red, puffy skin framed his eyes and blotched the skin near his nose and mouth. He began to tremble, either fighting with his sobs or frustrated at himself for letting any of it out. “Both times I thought I’d never see you again, a-a-and one of the times, it was because I’d…I’d killed you, a-and I thought I’d lost you forever and—” 

“And I came back.” Jon smiled at him, enjoying the simplicity of his rebuttal. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” 

“Yes, but—”

“And I suppose it means technically, you didn’t kill me.”

“W-Well, I don’t know—”

“So no jail time for you. Just as well. You’d do terribly in jail.” 

Considering the matter resolved, Jon let himself flop back down in the bed. After a moment’s pause, he patted the empty space next to him. 

The mattress creaked as Martin shifted, crawling up next to Jon and curling into a ball, his head resting near Jon’s side. 

“I really thought I’d lost you this time,” he said in a small voice.

Jon reached out to brush some of Martin’s locks back behind his ears. “I know.” 

“A-and then the pyre…I didn’t know, I swear, they weren’t supposed to do anything before I got back!”

“I know.” 

“And then you walked out of it like-like some kinda Game of Thrones scene, and I…I just…And then you fainted, and you’ve been asleep for weeks; I-I thought you were in a coma again. And you didn’t wake up for me last time, and I’ve been having a total nightmare tracking down that Oliver guy, and—” 

Martin uncurled a little and frowned. “Wait. What do you mean you know? Know as in…little ‘K’ or big ‘K’?” 

“Little ‘K’. I think. I didn’t Know it. I heard it. In the car,” Jon explained idly, his eyelids already growing heavy despite being told he’d been asleep for weeks already. “Guess it’s a natural thing. Hearing is meant to be the last sense you lose when you die. Read that somewhere. I think.” 

“Riiiiight. But for hours after?” 

“Of the two of us, who has active experience of being dead?” 

“Okay, fair point, but how does that explain this?” 

Martin prodded a finger into Jon’s side, making him yelp and twist into an awkward croissant shape in the bed. 

“Ow! Explain what?”

The bed shifted again as Martin propped himself up on one elbow. “The whole surviving a stab wound thing! The whole walking out of the funeral pyre thing! The healing from thirteenth-degree burns thing! Any one of those things!” 

Jon opened and closed his mouth a few times. The answer stung the tip of his tongue, but he feared to speak it aloud in case it would make it real. In case some residual power of the Archivist remained, waiting to breathe truth into the horror once again. 

Before he could offer a limp excuse, however, a knock at the door made him jump, narrowly avoiding elbowing Martin. 

The two men stared at each other, silently telling the other that it definitely wasn’t for them. Martin shuffled to the edge of the bed and got out, heading out into the hall. “Stay there. No, I mean it, Jon!” he added, pausing and stepping backwards to point at him in warning. Jon, who had already swung one leg over the side of the bed, froze and stared up at him. “Stay. There.”

Martin left the room, returning once more to point two fingers at his own eyes then back at Jon, then exited a final time. Footsteps sounded down the stairs, a chain rattled, and a lock turned. The front door opened, and Jon sat up in bed, straining to hear. 

He needn’t have bothered. From downstairs, Martin yelped; someone or something burst through the front door with enough force to make it bash against the wall, and they’d apparently collided with Martin. A loud crash told Jon both Martin and the uninvited guest had fallen over. 

He threw the blankets away and darted from the bedroom, almost tumbling down the stairs in his haste to help. “Martin? Who—?”

He missed a step and fell the last few, landing on the floor alongside Martin and a horribly familiar face. 

Simon Fairchild scrambled to his feet, eyes wide and full of terror. Gone was any sense of wilful carelessness or airy nonchalance. He threw himself at the door, pushing it shut as though he were expecting a tiger to barrel in after him. He slammed the chain back in place then fumbled with the key still hanging from the lock, twisting it until it clicked. Then he turned and shoved his back against the door, sliding down the length of it until he was upon the floor once again, chest heaving. 

Simon caught his breath, then put on an impression of his former dazzling smile. 

“Hello, you two! Sorry to burst in like this, and without so much as a bottle of wine, but, aahhmm, well, everyone’s a bit twitchy out there. Not fond of former Avatars like ourselves, it seems. So I thought, I thought, well, w-w-we should stick together! Safety in numbers, right? M-m-maybe I could just hunker down here with you lovely chaps until all this blows over. What do you say?” 

Jon and Martin turned to look at each other, then back to Simon. 

“I’ll pick him up and fling him out if you can unlock the door,” Martin said, getting to his feet.

“I can manage that,” Jon said, wobbling as he stood up too. 

Simon paled and launched himself upwards again, holding his hands out in front of him in desperation. “No! No, no, wait! Erm, wait! I-I can tell you things!” he yelped, looking at Jon in particular. “I-I-I mean, ha ha, a-aren’t you wondering how I found you, hmm? Aren’t you worried other former Avatars might track you and your boyfriend down too? After all, you made quite a name for yourself in the ruined world, Archivist.”

Martin stopped, halfway through rolling his sleeves up in preparation of throwing Simon out onto the street like a bag of rubbish. He shook his head at Jon, but the seed had been planted. 

“And what, we’re going to trust you to tell the truth?” Jon asked Simon, eyes narrowing. “You know I can’t compel you anymore. The Fears have gone.” 

Simon’s smile transformed into something far more genuine, his only answer being a quirk of snowy-white eyebrows and a knowing look. 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

The silence waited at the table with the three men gathered there, waiting for one of them to break it. Jon looked at Martin; his boyfriend kept staring at Simon, his face darkened with an expression Jon could only describe as blame. Under the table, he gave Martin a gentle kick. 

Startled, Martin snapped his attention back to Jon. “Hmm? What?”

“Are you, erm…are you all right?”

Across from them, Simon picked up his mug and held it between his skeletal hands, pausing as though he had recently acquired an appreciation for the simple pleasure of warmth, then took a noisy sip of tea to block any answer Martin might have given. He issued an equally loud sigh of contentment afterwards, complete with a theatrical closing of his eyes. “Oh Jon,” Simon said, opening his eyes again and smiling at the couple before him. “Please, don’t rush to my defence. I wouldn’t want you two squabbling on my behalf!”

The tittering laugh that followed suggested that Simon would love nothing more than for people to argue because of him. Jon went to fold his arms, remembered his predicament, and settled for thudding his elbow onto the tabletop and resting his chin in his palm. “I think I liked you better when you were scared of me,” Jon commented, enjoying the little shiver of recollection that knocked Simon’s mocking smirk ever so slightly. “You were far less irritating.”

“The threat of being destroyed does make it hard to live one’s best life, I find,” Simon retorted, his usual faux-jolliness wilting. “But, as you claim, you haven’t got any powers anymore. The Fears have gone…”

He took another loud sip of his tea, set the mug down, and had just inhaled to speak again when Martin suddenly cut across him.

“Or have they?” Martin said, taking on a mock-spooky tone, his hands out in front of him, fingers wiggling. 

Simon, pale eyes wide and face the picture of insult, stared at Martin. Jon watched them both, locked in a strange freeze frame for a whole second. When it became clear neither Martin nor Simon would make the next move, Jon leant forwards a touch, deciding to answer Martin’s rhetorical  question. “Erm…yes. Yes, they are. They’re gone. I can confirm that they were sent away.” 

Martin, to Jon’s surprise, didn’t look convinced. He turned to Jon, gesturing out towards Simon. “Well, he clearly thinks otherwise! He reckons he knows something, Jon, and honestly, I don’t think we should hear it!”

“What?” Jon’s heart fluttered – in panic, he told himself, and certainly not in delight of the prospect of fresh information – and he wished that he could compel Simon right now, just once more. He turned to the former Avatar, trying his best not to look too enticed, but the curl on Simon’s lips told him that was a failed endeavour. Irritated, Jon tried to block Simon somewhat with his shoulder as he addressed Martin instead. “Martin, what are you talking about?” he hissed, keeping his volume low. “We gave up so much…so, so much to send the Fears away. If it didn’t work…”

“It worked enough!” Martin’s chair squeaked as he kicked back a bit, apparently in two minds as to whether to leave the table. Tears prickled in his eyes, his hands bunched into fists on the table in front of him. “The world’s back to how it was! A-a-and better yet, you’re alive! We weren’t even sure the first bit would happen, and we were pretty sure the second part wasn’t going to! Can’t we just…Can’t we just be satisfied with that? Everything’s back to how it was! That’s what we wanted, isn’t it?”

“It’s not quite back to how it was, actually,” Simon interjected, dipping a biscuit Jon was pretty sure no one had offered him into his tea. “But, if you don’t want to know, you don’t want to know.” 

“I—” Jon started, but this time, Martin got to his feet.

“We don’t,” he answered firmly. “I-I’m sorry if it seems selfish o-o-or unexpected, but we’ve done more than enough to bring the world back to what we have now. So whatever you have to say, Simon, it’s not wanted. I-I think you should leave.” 

Simon’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and though he made a valiant effort to keep smiling, he revealed his hand with a single look. 

A look at Jon. 

He knows I won’t let him go, he noted bitterly, knowing Simon was right. Knowing he’d be going against Martin’s wishes. 

“Archivist?” Simon’s question cut through Jon’s thoughts with a quiver of desperation that robbed him of his usual lighthearted tone. 

Jon hesitated, stuffing down the urge to demand Simon tell them everything he knew. To reveal where they’d gone wrong, where their solution had failed. After all their hardship, had it all been for nothing? Then, like a blade of sun through stormy clouds, realisation struck Jon. 

He didn’t have to know. Not anymore. This desire, this compulsion, it must be all him. The Eye was gone. He was the Archivist no more. 

Why, then, did the inside of his mouth burn as he shaped words of rejection? 

“I think you should leave now, Simon,” he said, with all the finesse of dragging himself over broken glass. Instinct made Jon get to his feet, his chair scraping behind him, and stagger away from the table. 

It’s just the fever, he told himself, as another wave of sickly warmth pulsed over him. It’s just the fever.

Behind him, a loud clatter sounded as Simon leapt to his feet, a sudden rush of terror setting a strange tenseness to his usually loose-limbed, angular frame. His hands splayed on the table in front of him, and Jon thought he might actually attempt to jump over it to grab him. But luckily, Simon did no such thing; his mouth opened, presumably to take a second shot at convincing Jon of his usefulness, when a series of three short, sharp knocks at the door set the air in the kitchen to an icy silence. 

Simon froze. Only his eyes moved, shifting to look towards the front door from the very corners of his eyes. 

Martin either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He got up, placing a gentle hand on Jon’s shoulder on the way past – “Stay here,” he muttered in gentle warning – and made his way to the hall again. 

Simon unlocked his limbs at that moment, throwing himself towards Martin. “W-wait! Don’t!” he hissed, grabbing Martin’s arm. “Do. Not. Open. That. Door.” 

He flung his free arm to point back at Jon. “He’ll be the first person in this room they kill, mark my words!” 

Martin didn’t yank his arm away, but instead, exchanged a look with Jon. Jon took a moment to think, then wordlessly, looked towards the hall and then back to Martin. 

Martin nodded, and with a strength that always startled Jon, pulled his arm away from Simon’s grip with ease. “It’s probably just the postman,” he said, though no one in the room believed that for one second. 

He headed off again, followed for a moment by another flailing attempt on Simon’s behalf to grab him. The former Avatar of the Vast had lost some of his spritely manner, however, and he missed, falling into the wall by the door instead. “Martin! Martin!” he half-whispered after him. 

Once it became clear that route was pointless, Simon whirled upon Jon. “Do you know who is at the door?” he asked, a level of accusation in the word “know” that Jon didn’t appreciate. 

“No,” Jon replied firmly. “But if I had to take a guess, it’s the angry mob you were running from. I really don’t really see a reason not to fling you back out to them, to be honest.” 

Simon’s lips pursed, crinkling his already lined features further. He started pacing towards Jon, a finger wagging in the air between them. “A mob? You think that’s what’s coming for you? For all of us who enjoyed the world of ruin?”

“I didn’t enjoy—!” 

“Oh, please!” Simon had closed the gap now, and from here, Jon could see just how much his decades-crafted mask of whimsy had shattered on the bumpy landing back to reality. “That world was practically made for you! Made by you! You can lie to your lovely lad all you like, but between us monsters, dear boy, I know exactly how that world felt to you.”

“Really not presenting a very good argument to keep you here,” Jon said coolly, just as the door opened and the low sound of voices in the hallway reached them, robbing Simon of what little colour he had left in his face. “Should I shout your friends through, Simon?”

“Don’t you dare!” Simon spared a frightful glance over his shoulder, then whipped his head back to Jon with such force that his combover of white hair jostled from its usual position and began cascading over his brows. “Listen to me. Every single person in the world experienced the horrors. And the first thing every country in the world did was look for who to blame! They’ve set up task forces to investigate it all; there’s not a place on this wretched little rock that we can flee to, Archivist, particularly not you! Not unless you put them back!” 

A stunned, hollow laugh burst from Jon then, sending Simon into another tizzy of panic, looking towards the hallway to make sure he was still safe. “Put them back? What, the Fears? Not a chance! Even if I could – which, I cannot emphasise enough, I do not want to do – the Fears are gone, Simon. Sent off to some other poor universe.”

Jon had to take a second there to shove away the twist of guilt that threatened to rise in his chest at that. Right now, as he bickered with Simon, the Fears twisted themselves around a new world. Billions of innocent lives unaware of the path Jon had sent them down now. 

Refusing to think on it further, Jon spoke again. “Everything that happens to us now, Simon…is penance for our actions as Avatars. I’ll face that if I have to. I suggest you either do the same or start running.”

Jon stepped to the side then, offering Simon an escape out the back door of the kitchen. He even gestured to it with an open palm, a small smile on his face. The sound of muffled conversation still hummed from the hallway; Martin was either stalling or gathering information. Or both, Jon hoped. 

Simon, however, didn’t take the bait. With a snarl, he advanced upon Jon again. “Archivist. Listen to me. I know where the Fears are. Send these agents away. If you don’t, they’ll drag me away, and you’ll never know the truth.” 

“What truth?”

The resonance in Jon’s voice had been imagined, surely. The sensation of hooking ghostly barbs into Simon’s thin chest had been a phantom sense. Those very hooks pulling words up through his victim’s throat, shaping them with eloquence and detail, they were nothing more than phantom limbs, Jon told himself. He had not compelled Simon; he couldn’t compel Simon. 

If the other former Avatar grinned, it was born of the triumph of getting Jon to cave and ask at all. 

“I remember exactly where I was when the world of ruin shuddered. Soaring through my very own Domain – beautiful and endless and agonising – watching old Junior lumber about. He did such a wonderful job, you know, I barely had to get involved in tormenting people myself. I did, of course, from time to time, just to keep my spirits up. But most of the time, I simply soared. I could soar forever, you know. There’s no feeling quite like it. And in that beautiful world, I could have soared forever. 

“But then, it all stopped. The air grew still, no longer whistling around me. One moment, I was gliding, the king of the skies, watching poor souls rain through the Vast or scramble to climb back upon the hulking goliath of crushing pain they’d tried so desperately to escape from. The next… I was the poor soul. Falling through endless grey and blue and white, the breath squashed into my lungs, no way in, no way out. 

“It wasn’t until I hit the ground that I realised what had happened. You see, in that perfect world, there was a tower one could see from any distance, even in the Vast. And that tower had vanished. In its place was a plume of fire and spirals of burning threads that lashed towards a sky of wide, bloodshot eyes. Each one began to roll back on itself and close, one by one by one. 

“They hadn’t gone yet. The Fears, that is. If they had, I’d have been so much jam upon the ground at that point! But no. No, I had survived the fall. At the very least, the Vast was still there, though its roaring gales had dwindled to nothing more than a wheezing cough of air. 

“As I lay in the misery of my lost Domain, waiting for my bones to piece themselves back together from shards, I wondered what had happened. Had dear Jonah finally imploded? He wasn’t meant for that job, you know. We all knew it; the only person the Eye wanted seated upon the throne of the Panopticon was you. The Pupil of the Eye, that’s what he called it in his joyful announcement to the world. I suppose you didn’t hear that bit. I can just imagine you curled up and crying for days and days in the realisation of what you’d done, Archivist, so sadly, you missed all the parades! I digress – a testament to your own diminished abilities, I guess, but also a point in favour of what I am going to tell you. 

“Of course, if Jonah had died, the Fears would not have cared. They had their tower now; they were anchored safely to this reality. But the tower had gone up in flames too. What were the odds? That Jonah had been killed just as the tower had erupted. You see, he couldn’t have died in the explosion. He’d have seen it coming. The Eye would have protected him. No, no, it had to be something he couldn’t see. Something stronger than him. Something the Eye preferred. Something like the Archivist.

“But for whatever stupid reason, you’d destroyed the two anchors the Fears were using to remain in this world – the Pupil of the Eye and the Tower. When both of those anchors failed, they clawed at everything that was left to them, flailing and grasping like men falling through the skies. I felt it. We all felt it. Little claws under our skin – the Fears trying to grab onto those who they’d marked. But we couldn’t be their anchors, Archivist. I could bear the weight of the Vast, maybe, but the other thirteen hanging off it? No. They’d have dragged us through the abyss. And the same problem, I assume, happened with each Avatar they tried to grab onto – none of us were built to bear the strain of all fourteen Fears. None of us could survive being marked by all fourteen Fears. 

“But the Archivist could. And that’s the truth of it, dear Jon. I don’t know where the Web intended the Fears to go, where you think they went, but I assure you, they have not left. Why would they? They had their fully marked little totem just waiting in the wings; a little back-up plan, so to speak. They’re sleeping in your flesh, boy, all fourteen of them. I can hear the Vast whispering to me, practically a death rattle, begging for something to devour, but what can I do now? I can’t deliver anything to my patron without my abilities, but the Vast has no strength to spare to give me my blessings again. They’re so small, so withered, so…hungry. Barely clinging to existence.”

Simon faltered with his faux-statement. It was all a mockery, Jon assured himself. It couldn’t be a real statement. He didn’t have abilities anymore – the Fears were gone. They were gone. Simon had to be lying, and the proof was in how rambling and ill-structured his supposed statement had been. That and, of the two of them, it seemed like Simon had regained a spark of energy from the ordeal rather than the Archivist. 

Simon placed two spindly hands upon Jon’s shoulders, a mix of mania and panic swirling behind his pale eyes.

“But they’re alive, my boy, and if we’re going to fix any of this damned mess, you’re going to have to be the one to feed them.” 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

A protest bubbled on Jon’s tongue, ready to lash out. But the manic glint in Simon’s pale eyes vanished as a hand clapped upon his shoulder in turn. The cool, even-toned voice that filled the room weighed down the very air around them with its gravitas. 

“Settle down now, Mr Fairchild. A man of your years shouldn’t be getting so animated.” 

Simon let Jon slip from his grasp as he whirled to face his adversary. Jon’s heart leapt at the sight of the sheer dread that etched across every line of Simon’s face, his heartbeat rising in anticipation. No. Worry, he told himself. He was worried at what would cause a former Avatar to panic. Not delighted. 

Not delighted. 

A tittering, nervous laugh broke the tension. Simon backed away from the newcomer, hands reaching behind him to blindly grasp at the kitchen counters. “N-now, now, Miss Kelley, a-a-as I told you before, this is a case of, ah…ah, m-mistaken identity!” 

The woman Simon had addressed didn’t seem convinced. Dark, almost black eyes bored into him, unblinking and without a glimmer of mercy. She wore a deep blue suit, her greying hair kept short and tidy in a way that made Jon all too aware of how horrifically unkempt he was by comparison. Around her neck, a red lanyard winked out at him from under a pressed white collar. 

Despite Simon’s obvious attempt to find an escape route, Miss Kelley made no move to close the gap between them. Still, she kept her flat gaze trained upon her target. “If that is the case, I assure you, you will be released after questioning with a full apology from the O.I.A.R., and I will be suitably embarrassed. However, I doubt it’ll come to that.” 

Simon clenched his teeth, his bony fingers now scuttling across the countertop behind him – Jon realised with a bolt of horror that he must be looking for something to use as a weapon. Instinctively, he made to stand between Simon and the woman, but she put a hand out to stop him, her palm hovering just shy of his chest. 

“That will not be necessary, Archivist.” 

Jon lurched to a halt, narrowly avoiding colliding with Miss Kelley’s outstretched palm. She hadn’t moved other than that, but she gave him a sideways glance as she retracted her hand, almost going to wipe it down on the front of her blazer. “Mr Fairchild knows it would be incredibly foolish to attack me.” Once more, she realigned her focus upon the cornered former Avatar. “Mr Fairchild, I’ll be blunt. If you manage to find a knife, my external colleague positioned in the rear garden of this property will shoot you. If you move too quickly towards me, she will shoot you. Frankly, if you stand there for too long, she may very well shoot you. She would be formally disciplined for the latter, I assure you, but given her accuracy scores, I doubt that would bring you much comfort.”

Simon’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his gulp comically audible. Jon, meanwhile, tried to angle himself to look out of the kitchen window and into the garden, hoping to spot this unseen assassin. 

She has a sniper out there? How? When? What the hell have you brought to our door, Fairchild…?

A shuffle of feet finally made Miss Kelley move. She raised one finger – just one – and waggled it, a ghost of a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Oh no, Mr Fairchild. I really wouldn’t recommend trying for the back door. You’ll cut her line of sight from the window, yes, but…”

As if on cue, a series of loud barks boomed from the garden, thuds and scratches making the back door shudder in its frame. Both Jon and Simon jumped in unison. 

“M-Miss Kelley, ah…the man who answered the door…” Jon said, his voice creaking through an increasingly dry throat. 

“Mr Blackwood? He’s in the hallway still. Unharmed,” she added, clearly intending to assure Jon. However, the idea that Martin could be in danger hadn’t crossed his mind until that moment. He made to speak, but the woman shook her head. “Before you propose it, Archivist, no. I have no interest in trading Fairchild for Blackwood. I already have Fairchild.” 

“Like hell you—!” 

“Simon, don’t!” 

Too late. The caged Avatar lunged at Miss Kelley, settling on using nothing but his bare hands to fight his way out. The window behind him exploded, showering the trio with glass. But it was Simon who screamed the loudest – a bullet tore through his left shoulder, sending a spray of crimson across Martin’s spotless kitchen. 

Jon, his arm up to shield himself, cowered away from the chaos, the gunshot shattering his ears with a dizzying ringing. In stark contrast, Miss Kelley's only reaction was to make one lazy step to the side to allow Simon space to fall onto his front, howling in pain. Her face tightened with irritation, and she glowered out of the now-broken window. 

“He wasn’t armed, Mowbray,” she grumbled, low enough that Jon was quite sure her colleague outside couldn’t possibly have heard her. Still, a gruff chuckle rolled in from the garden, along with the unmistakable click of a gun reloading. 

From the hallway, the sounds of a struggle finally cut through the fading ringing in Jon’s ears. 

“Jon? JON?” Martin’s voice called out, along with a grunted, “Get off me!” 

“I-I’m fine! I…” Jon quieted as the crunch of glass alerted him to Miss Kelley moving. She made her way to Simon, who was still sobbing on the ground and clutching his shoulder, and moved to grab him by the neck of his shirt, hoisting him to his feet. 

“This way, Mr Fairchild,” she instructed him, half-guiding, half-dragging him through the kitchen towards the front door. 

She paused momentarily. “You too, Archivist. I trust you will come quietly in exchange for Mr Blackwood’s continued safety?” 

──── •✧• ────

They’d been bundled into the back of a black van parked outside Martin’s house, the letters “O.I.A.R.” emblazoned in red on its side. Not long ago, Jon would have Known their meaning at a glance. But now, the answers remained maddeningly elusive. 

The vehicle rumbled through the streets, jostling the three in the back. Jon stayed close to Martin, pressing so close to his side that he was practically in the other man’s lap. 

“I’m sorry. Again,” Jon mumbled bitterly, fiddling idly with the sleeve of Martin’s jumper. Though he was watching the curled form of Simon groaning on the floor in front of them, it was clear the apology wasn’t aimed at Simon. 

“Why? It wasn’t you who brought some dodgy government officials to our door,” Martin said. 

“I wasn’t talking about that.” Jon shifted, squishing himself even closer. Other than the absence of his arm, Jon felt stronger than he had in weeks. No new scars had been added to his collection despite the horrific injuries he’d sustained. For all intents and purposes, Jon was acutely aware that he looked almost exactly as he had prior to arriving at the Panopticon. 

He was healed. Strengthened. 

Fed. 

The statement he’d unwittingly coaxed from Simon in the kitchen had been sloppy, yes. But it had nourished him in a way that weeks of bedrest could not. A quick glance up at Martin told Jon that the same realisation had crossed his partner’s mind too; even if he hadn’t heard the statement, Martin had clearly noted Jon’s renewed energy. 

“Maybe it’s just a bit of…residual spookiness?” Martin offered. The hopeful note chimed a little too cheerily, though. 

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s right. Maybe the Fears haven’t entirely gone. I mean, Annabelle said she intended for them to follow my voice along the tapes. But she can’t have intended for me to become the Pupil of the Eye. She wanted us to kill Jonah after all. What if becoming the Pupil changed things? My abilities, my voice, it would have been stronger than ever then. I-I spoke the words, Martin, before you arrived, I-I told them I wouldn’t let them go. What if I compelled them? Compelled them to stay here? What if they…followed my voice along me instead of the tapes? O-or what if the marks they put on me, what if they are enough to anchor them? Maybe they had a choice? Or maybe proximity, I-I-I was just closer to them at the source than the tapes were, and—” 

At his feet, Simon wriggled and let out a loud, aggravated groan of irritation. “Good God, you really are an addict, aren’t you, boy? Doesn’t he drive you mad with all those unaimed questions?” 

Jon’s face burned red, made all the worse by the nervous chuckle to his right from Martin. He shot Martin a scowl, which quickly killed the laughter. Martin shoved him lightly with his shoulder in response. “Hey, don’t get grouchy at me! Look…that was a lot of questions. A lot of maybes. But we’ve seen the outside world a bit now, Jon. It looks normal enough to me!”

“The parts we’ve seen. What about what was on the radio? Back before my, err…funeral. They mentioned something about visual reflections…”

Martin’s expression fell. “Jesus, you really did hear everything in the car…”

“I already told you I did!”

“I-I know, but I didn’t realise you’d remember it all!”

“Why not?”

“You were dead, Jon!”

“Speaking of, I never thanked you for telling them not to bury me in that forest.” 

“Oh God, imagine if they had! Night of the Living Archivist scenes…”

“They’re coming to get you, Martin…!”

The two descended into snorts of laughter before an exasperated sigh cut between them. “If you are both quite done! Need I remind you that we’re being carted off to be dissected o-or worse!” Simon pointed out, sitting himself up, one hand still clamped over his wounded shoulder. 

Seeing Simon be anything other than infuriatingly jovial about everything did give Jon pause. 

“You don’t actually know what this O.I.A.R. does, do you?” Jon asked, arching an eyebrow at Simon. 

“Neither do you,” he replied coolly. The sly jab at his loss of abilities wasn’t lost on Jon. “But I do know they’ve scooped up a fine collection of former Avatars since the tower fell. Swooped in almost immediately. Your gloomy friend Oliver Banks was one of the first they caught, you know.”

Martin tensed at Jon’s side, and Jon had to try very hard not to look too concerned. “Oliver?”

“Mmm. Haven’t heard from him since. I doubt they’ve let him go with a full pardon, now. Now, unless we all want to find out first hand what they did to him, I suggest we start thinking of a way to get out of this van. And quickly!” Simon hissed, casting a wary look to the partition that cut them off from the driver. 

“What do you suppose O.I.A.R. stands for?” Martin asked aloud, his bottom lip jutting a little in thought. 

“No idea,” Jon replied, bitter at having to admit that. “Which I suppose is more evidence against what you’re saying, Simon. If the Eye were still here, I’d be able to Know things.” 

“And if the End wasn’t still here, you’d be burnt to a crisp, Archivist,” Simon retorted. “Death maketh the Avatar, as you so very well know. All fourteen have pitched in to keep you alive again, not the least the End itself. But you’re a tiny, half-broken vessel, and you dealt them a decisive blow with your ridiculous tower-torching plan. They’re withered. Echoes of their former selves. The Eye likely doesn’t have the power to Know much itself right now, let alone offer you anything.” 

“Organisation of…Interesting…Avatar Research? Bit on the nose, I think,” Martin said, apparently not wanting to feed Simon’s theory with any of his attention. “Office of Investigating Avatar R…rrrr….Remnants? ” 

Jon half-expected Simon to snap at Martin then, but a curious quiet had settled over the man. He knew that expression all too well, though – a solution had presented itself to Simon. An answer. 

Glee sparked into his eyes once again, and he grinned at Jon. “That’s it.”

“What, Office of Investigating Avatar Remnants?” Martin scoffed. 

“Not that!” 

Simon shuffled closer to Jon, eagerness pushing him past his injury. Jon, however, recoiled, drawing his knees up to get as far away from the man on the floor of the van as possible. It didn’t dissuade the former Avatar, however. “I can get us out of here. I just need a little of my old abilities back!” 

“For the last time, I can’t—”

“You can, Archivist! They’re weakened, yes, but like you, they can heal if fed. They’re dormant, like weeds in winter. We just need a little springtime to make them grow again!” 

“A truly horrifying concept,” Jon drawled, still trying to curl himself closer to Martin to get away from the madman at their feet. “And you’re missing the point, Fairchild. Even if you’re right, the last thing I’m about to do is feed the damn things.”

“They’ll torture you, boy. You most of all!”

“Then I’ll endure it. God knows, I probably deserve it.” 

A stony silence settled over them. Somewhere among it all, the van had stopped vibrating. 

They’d arrived. 

Time had run out. 

The doors to the van opened, spilling daylight over them. Simon tried to scramble away, but injured as he was, he didn’t make it more than a few inches before an agent grabbed his ankle. 

“No! No, Archivist…! Jon! Wh-what about Martin? What about him?” he yelled, still clawing in an effort to prevent himself from being dragged out of the van. “Did she say he’d be safe? She lied, Jon! Think about it! He’s marked too! ”

Jon’s throat constricted. 

Of course. Martin. Martin had a Domain too. He wasn’t here as leverage at all. 

If this O.I.A.R. intended to study them, that would include Martin. 

“I—”

Simon yelled, grabbing on to the outer lip of the door in a valiant and somewhat impressive display of pure survival. With his last ounce of strength, he cried out to the Archivist.

“Feed the Vast. Now!” 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

“Feed the Vast. Now!” 

The panicked retort of asking Fairchild how he was supposed to do that withered on Jon’s tongue. A surge of concern for Martin – of fear, he admitted to himself –overwhelmed him, and for one horrible moment, he thought he would black out. 

But instead of darkness swamping his vision, a completely different scene stretched out before him. 

He looked down and saw his own white-knuckled hand gripping a biting-cold metal bar in front him. The wind whipped around his ankles and wove up to wreak havoc with his hair, almost blinding him to his surroundings. It forced him to work a little harder for each breath; not enough to truly scare him, though. Not him, at least. But the scream laced through the gales spoke of someone who was terrified. 

Eagerly – no, no, he was worried, not eager – Jon searched for the source. He walked around the small viewpoint, wondering which tower upon what corner of the world he’d found himself upon. 

“Martin? Simon?” he called, the rushing air swallowing his words almost as soon as they’d left his throat. 

“H-Help! Help me!” 

Strange how the winds could smother a scream into little more than a whisper’s strength. Still, Jon managed to find the poor soul in question – in fact, he almost stepped on their clawing fingers as he made his way back around the tiny viewpoint, the toes of his shoes butting into their knuckles. 

Stopping, Jon looked down and saw a young man clinging to the edge of the tower, his tanned skin blasted red raw at the cheeks and forehead. How long had he been holding on, brown eyes wide in horror, throat ripped raw with pleas for help? 

Jon crouched and immediately went to grab the man’s arm, his reassurances lost to the raging winds. 

“I’ve got you! Hold on, just—”

Realisation washed over Jon then, bringing an icy pang of disgust that halted all his efforts to help the man. 

The ground…was not there. Jon stared downwards, and nothing but a white abyss leered back at him. Not clouds. Not fog. Just sheer, unblotted nothingness. 

A memory of something he’d heard in the car weeks ago flitted to the forefront of Jon’s mind.

The MOD has confirmed the existence of what it is calling 'visual reflections’ in some parts of the country where the nightmare zones were strongest.

This, Jon realised, must be one of them. A fragment of a Domain, clinging to existence as its creators clung to Jon. Hardly more than a snapshot of a moment in a bad dream, but manifested upon the world all the same. This man had likely been hanging from the impossible tower for months, as terrified to be helped and risk falling as he was to be left dangling above the emptiness below him. 

Feed the Vast. 

Jon slowly got to his feet, every limb shivering cold at what he had already decided to do. What he had to do. 

“I…I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry,” Jon said, though he was certain the other man couldn’t hear him. 

He won’t die, Jon reassured himself. He can’t die. Not here. The Vast…doesn’t need that. It only needs him to fall. 

Jon lifted his foot and stamped down on the man’s fingers. The man howled in pain and horror, both at what Jon had done and the fact he’d done it, but before he could cry out curses or questions, he’d lost his grip and fallen screaming into the air beneath the tower. 

The pure white emptiness greedily swallowed its long-awaited victim as Jon watched. 

“I’ll come back for you,” he whispered, ignoring the tears of shame prickling in his eyes. “I promise, I’ll—”

The air around him raged in delight, reignited by the meal the Archivist had delivered, snapping up the rest of his oath with equally joyful hunger. The gales swirled around him, stealing his breath and stifling any attempt to draw another. The blankness below rose up to greet him, as though to bestow an immediate punishment for his cruelty, sweeping over his vision and—

—snapping back to the greys and reds of the walls of the van, Martin’s pale, panicked face, and Simon’s wide, triumphant grin. 

Gasping for breath, Jon couldn’t tell either of them what had happened. But from the look of it, he didn’t have to. Could Simon feel it too? The renewed, cold rush of energy roaring in his veins? The breathless void that threatened to overwhelm the other Fears, making them squirm with discomfort and jealousy in Jon’s chest, demanding they be fed too…

“That’s more like it!” Simon said, suddenly letting go of the back of the van. The agent that had grabbed him nearly fell back as the resistance to his pulling suddenly ended. Simon, devious in how he weaponised his unexpected energy despite his apparent age, appeared to have miraculously regained his balance. Jon noticed, however, that the Avatar had done so by hovering slightly above the ground. 

With a toothy smile, Simon pirouetted, placing a hand on the agent’s shoulder. “Take a breather, my lad!” he said, clapping his hand on the man’s shoulder. “I insist!” 

A rush of air and a clipped gasp later and the Vast devoured another victim. 

“Simon,” Jon managed to splutter, still wrestling with the churning conflict under his skin. Was he trying to warn him to rein in his theatrics? Partly. But mostly it was the fact that he’d heard the front door of the van open again – no doubt Miss Kelley was about to investigate the hold up, and Jon doubted she’d fall for Simon’s tricks. “You owe me.” 

Simon, sitting in the air with his legs crossed and smiling like a skeletal Cheshire cat, nodded. “Oh yes, yes, I think I can agree to that. One free Get-Out-of-Jail card for you both, then, and we’ll call it even?” 

“Take Martin and go. Take him somewhere safe,” Jon added pointedly, finally getting to his feet, one hand on the inside wall of the van to steady himself. It made sense to him – if they all went, this organisation would immediately pursue them. If Jon stayed behind, they’d pause to…well, do whatever it was they were doing to Avatars. It would give Martin a head start. 

Martin, of course, opened his mouth to protest, but Simon had no such qualms. Just as Miss Kelley rounded the back of the van, Simon reached forwards and grabbed Martin’s shoulder. With a surge of air, the two men were gone, leaving the Archivist to weather the full brunt of Miss Kelley’s irritated glower. 

He managed a wry smile. “Sorry…You just missed him.” 

──── •✧• ────

An unspoken agreement between Miss Kelley and Jon kept their short walk to the O.I.A.R. building mostly uneventful. Despite the woman’s vice-like grip on his elbow, if he made a break for it, Jon was quite certain he could get away. But the moment he did, the hunt would be on. 

And he wouldn’t be the only target. 

They walked down a set of stone steps that snaked from street level down to an unassuming weathered door. No sign. No marking. Hell, no real lock, as Miss Kelley simply reached forwards and opened it. The surprise must have been evident on Jon’s face, because the older woman finally spoke. 

“Our security system is external,” she said smugly, with a knowing tone that grated against Jon’s pride. Because he didn’t know. 

“Right,” he muttered as she guided him through the doorway first and then closed the door behind them, turning the roar of London’s streets into a muffled white noise. She flicked a switch and bright strip lights hummed to life above them, revealing their surroundings. 

The first thing that Jon thought of was, perhaps oddly, the Magnus Institute. Not for any similarities between the academic building and this one but for its stark differences. 

Where the Magnus Institute had greeted its visitors with old oak and worn leather, this place – the O.I.A.R., Jon assumed – confronted them with stark metal and cheap plastic. Where the Institute lined its walls with dusty old books, untouched for years and mostly displayed as a symbol of the work that went on there, the O.I.A.R. kept its walls bare. Unlike the Institute, no reception desk awaited. Only a small lobby, devoid of decoration, and two doors to choose from. Left and right. 

Miss Kelley half-dragged Jon towards the left-hand door, apparently satisfied not to tell him anything about the place. But the questions welled in his throat. If he was being kidnapped again, he wanted to know where he was. 

“This is the O.I.A.R.?” he asked, attempting to sound politely curious. 

“If you ask me one more question, Archivist, I will consider it an attempt to attack me and have your tongue removed. I expect you’ll heal from it, but it would grant me a few days’ peace,” came Miss Kelley’s tart response, not even giving him a sideways glance as she marched him down the gloomy corridor. Finally, she did look, making a note of Jon’s missing arm. “Or perhaps you won’t heal from it.”

Jon pursed his lips, deciding to keep quiet for a while. The dedication to sulking lasted only a few more steps. After all, she’d said no questions. He could investigate without questions. 

“This place. It looks like old utility rooms at best. The guts of an office above, maybe, but not intended to be used as a workplace itself. Not built for purpose. Your purpose, I mean. You’re not as organised as you pretend to be.”

“Your concerns over the quality of our workspace are duly noted, Archivist, but I assure you – the O.I.A.R. has operated from far more trying environments than this.”

Miss Kelley paused before another door, identical to the last and offering Jon a frustrating lack of clues. Jon continued searching for a while, assuming he was being ignored. So he found himself surprised when he looked back at Lena and discovered she was watching him. This time, her veiled disgust lifted, offering Jon a brief glimpse of an expression he knew only too well.

Pain. Endured, survived pain. 

“We are still piecing together the exact steps that led up to the world’s ruin, Archivist, but one thing that became very clear early on was that, even as far as the end times go, it was botched. Something had either gone wrong, or some thing wasn’t working as intended, as a small number of people around the world either did not get pulled into a nightmare zone or were able to escape them.”

Jon, parched of answers, remained silent as he drank in her offering. Her conclusion coaxed more questions into his head – the ritual had been botched? How? 

Just as quickly, answers slotted into place. 

A curling smirk that refused to tell Jon the truth. Too-old eyes watching Jon from a face that didn’t quite match. A usurper sitting atop his tower, tethered to the Eye in such an ugly, ill-fitting way. 

“You’re not wrong,” Jon admitted, hoping to prise more about the O.I.A.R. from Miss Kelley in exchange for his cooperation. “The man who instigated the ritual…he placed himself at the centre of it. But he wasn’t, ah… made for the task. I suspect that is why the result was so…”

Imperfect? He couldn’t say that aloud; God forbid he sounded like he thought the worldwide torture of all mankind could have been improved. 

But if Miss Kelley noticed his almost-poor choice of wording, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she gave a soft hum of agreement. “Precisely. If that was the first mistake of the forces that sought to harm us that day, then it was the catalyst for the second mistake.”

She opened the door then, reached back, and grabbed Jon’s elbow once more to continue their journey. 

Jon almost tripped over in his effort to follow her, still staring up at her profile as they walked. “The second mistake?”

A muscle in Miss Kelley’s jaw twitched, and if Jon wasn’t mistaken, a brief smug smile echoed on her lips. “They didn’t round up those of us who escaped their nightmares. Humans are a resilient lot, Archivist. We have a knack for survival. As I said before…the O.I.A.R. has worked out of far more trying environments than this.”

“I, err….I see. Sorry, what exactly does ‘O.I.A.R.’ stand f—”

“Jesus, Lena, I swear this place waits for you to leave before doing something weird. All the Sky-Huggers have started acting up, we think— ” 

A door to Jon’s right burst open, making him recoil so sharply that he practically ended up in Miss Kelley – Lena’s – arms like a startled cat. But as shocked as Jon was, he’d clearly delivered a worse one to the newcomer. 

The younger woman’s face fell as she looked at him, recognition flashing in wide, bright eyes. She staggered back, dropping a folder of papers to the floor, and she grabbed the door frame for support. “Oooooh my God, that’s…Dreaming Eyeballs Bloke. You…y-you’ve bloody got Dreaming Eyeballs Bloke. Here. You’ve…y-you’ve brought Dreaming Eyeballs Bloke from all our nightmares…here.” 

“An astute observation, Alice. I’m sure you understand, then, when I need you to be succinct about your reason for barging in on us?” Lena asked, one perfectly plucked eyebrow arching. 

Still gawking at Jon, Alice managed to pull herself together long enough to report to her boss. She cleared her throat and made a show of trying to smooth out the band shirt she was wearing, despite the fact that it had never been in the same postcode as an iron before. “O-Oh, right, erm…Y-yeah the ones with the Vast? They started getting really chatty about ten minutes ago. Sam’s put the camera in there, but honestly, I don’t feel very protected having only a broken camera between me and being nightmare fodder for the monster people. No offence,” she added, nodding at Jon. 

Jon nodded back. “Plenty taken.” 

The last of the colour in Alice’s face drained away. “Shit. Really?” She turned a desperate look to Lena. “C-Can he still…do stuff? He can’t still do stuff, can he? Can you?”

Jon opened his mouth to respond, but a swift pull on his arm told him not to encourage the other woman. 

“A lot less than he used to, I assure you, Alice. Now, tell Sam to bring me the artefact. I suspect I know where their new lease on life has sprung from.” 

With that, Jon was hauled away again, leaving Alice to stutter in their wake. 

The Avatars of the Vast she’s rounded up here…They must have felt their patron being fed, Jon realised, a pang of guilt shaking his core as the image of the Vast’s victim flashed before his eyes. 

Lena led him to one final room, as gloomy and sparsely furnished as the corridors they’d walked. The metal-plate flooring stretched out, signalling this as a room simply by its slightly wider width compared to the hallway. A white-topped table with flimsy metal legs was pushed against the far wall, one chair tucked under it. In the middle of the room, a cylindrical glass case stood out as one of the few elements that had not been part of the building’s original design. 

Jon had a sinking suspicion he knew exactly who it was for. 

“The Watcher becomes the watched, is it?” he asked Lena dryly as she pushed him towards his prison. 

“I confess, the irony amused me too,” she replied, shoving him into the small space without care, then closing the door. This one, he noticed, did indeed have a lock system in place. So much for relying entirely on external security system.

“You will be watched, Archivist, but not by me,” Lena announced, striding across the room to the table as someone else entered the room. A young man with dark swept back in a way that said he’d mimicked the style from someone else rather than knowing what suited him scuttled in, pointedly avoiding looking at Jon too obviously. Still, he kept stealing glances from under his bowed head as he hurried towards Lena, handing her black box. She took it from him without thanks, her attention still squarely on Jon. “Much of our research regarding the ruined world phenomenon pointed us towards a location I suspect you already know about. Hill Top Road. During one of our investigations there, we came across a rather curious artefact. It proved itself invaluable in our efforts, but I suspect it’s about to surpass itself now.”

Lena opened the box, and though Jon couldn’t make out what was inside of it, the sudden pulse of weakness that washed over him told him everything he needed to know. 

His knees buckled under him, dropping him to the cold floor of his cage. His vision lurched and bled around him, a strange vertigo dragging him away from his body. A washed-out memory of his last encounter with this artefact wandered through the haze – blurry days in an impossible oasis of calm, barely able to remember his own name. 

Jon managed to lift his head long enough to see Lena standing by the glass wall of his cell holding a familiar broken-lensed camera.

Someone else burst into the room, though their identity faded through the fog of Jon’s fading consciousness. He made out the words “others have collapsed” before he too joined them, his cheek smacking against the metal plating beneath him and bursting copper across his tongue. 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

Neither sweet dreams nor nightmares plagued the Archivist’s prolonged sleep, but snippets of reality swam in and out as he drifted between wakefulness and stupor. The dark-haired man – Sam, Lena had called him – swiftly became a familiar face, first lugging in an old computer and monitor, later typing away at his makeshift desk against the wall. Once or twice, Jon thought he heard Martin, and the sound was almost enough to bring him back to himself. But by the time he managed to drag himself to sit upright, the only voices around him were Sam’s panicked stammers and the occasional drawl of Alice. 

“He's trying to sit up again!”

“Right, count him down. Five…four…three…two…see? Like clockwork.” 

“You’re telling me you’re not even a teensy bit nervous about that?”

“About what? Having the Archivist in a birdcage? Oh no, no, I totally don’t think that’s gonna backfire on us at all. It’s not like he has a history of ending the world and devouring our fears, no! I’m sure when he eventually breaks loose, he’ll be dead reasonable and realise this has all been one big misunderstanding!”

“...Okay, this? This right here? This is why we broke up.”

“Ouch. Right, I’ve changed my mind. I’m gonna get a coffee, and in the meantime, I hope Eyeballs wakes up and nibbles on your anxieties.”

Jon willed his heavy eyelids to open, grasping the opportunity before him. Of his two current jailors, Sam seemed the most likely to take pity on him. Clearly, the man wasn’t stupid; he was unlikely to simply unlock the door to Jon’s cage. But at the very least, he might let him borrow his phone. Make a call. 

Find Martin. 

The door snapped shut behind Alice, leaving Jon and Sam in the presence of little more than his computer’s humming and whirring, muffled though it was by the glass walls around him. Sam sat himself back down, watching Jon for a moment before focusing on his work again. From the snapshots of his working life that Jon had gleaned so far, Sam was some sort of…well…archivist. He read something on a screen, consulted a file, tapped in something on the computer, then repeated the process. Over and over and over. Unseen information being devoured before Jon’s eyes and then sent away before he could even get a look in. 

If it weren’t for the broken-lensed camera staring at him from its perch on Sam’s desk, watching Sam work might have been a perfect torture for Jon. But the unblinking observation from the peculiar artefact kept the Fears stifled and numbed, leaving Jon to deal with the nauseating sense of not quite being inside his own body. 

No hunger tormented him. No desire to know itched his throat, scratching questions on his tongue. Very little bothered him right now at all, save for the sluggish worry of where Martin might be, whether Fairchild had kept his word.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Find Martin. If he could just…find Martin…

The computer on Sam’s desk beeped and chirped, the whirring of fans rising to a crescendo as its old components shuddered and spluttered. Then, the speakers crackled to life, and an eerily familiar voice began a monotonous report. 

“Complaints form. Registered business name: The Magnus Institute, London. Complaint filed by: UNKNOWN. Complaint logged by: MARTIN K. BLACKWOOD. Date: 27th July 2019. Statement begins. All right. Uh— So, you— You’ve, uh— You’ve got to understand my job, okay? Uh, I work for Thames Water? Uh, mainly pipes and stuff, like, I-I mean, I’m a qualified engineer, but you know, most places it’s just manual stuff, like digging, and replacing pipe—”

Sam sighed and shoved his chair back with a loud screech, losing interest the moment the voice started. “Not another one…” he muttered, risking a glance over to Jon. 

Jon, from where he was lying on the floor, stared blearily back. It must have inspired some sympathy, because after a long pause, a slight softness faded the caution from Sam’s expression. 

Sam jerked a thumb at his computer, all while still looking at Jon. “These used to be rare before you showed up. I’m getting three or more a day now. Open to theories, if you have any.”

Jon blinked; the droning speech dribbling from the computer muffled against his dulled senses. Every so often, a word drifted through, but he couldn’t piece enough together to make anything of it. 

Instead, his lips fluttered around a name. “Martin…”

Sam sighed, turning back to his rambling computer. “Hmm, well, maybe today’s the day. Lena’s been out searching for him for—” 

A spark of realisation stopped him cold. “W-wait. This…?” 

He started typing, the clack of his keyboard almost drowning out the computer’s readout. Then, leaning forwards slightly, Sam read out from the screen himself. “Complaint logged by: MARTIN K. BLACKWOOD…”

Sam trailed off, leaving Jon with nothing to try to focus on but the continued drone of the computer. Somewhere, through the dense fog smothering his mind and abilities, an inevitable question materialised, one Sam brought into being soon after. 

“The monster in this statement is you, isn’t it?”

The sharp screech of Sam’s chair being pushed back again tore through the silence. Cautious steps brought Sam closer to the glass wall of Jon’s prison, then he squatted down to get as close to eye level with the semi-conscious Archivist as possible. “How do you go from asking people about their trauma to…to ending the world? How do you do all of that and still look so…”

“Human?” 

Another voice cut through Sam’s gentle interrogation. Jon craned his neck back a little, but he couldn’t quite make out who was standing in the doorway. The click-clack of heels on the metal flooring told him whoever it was, they had no such concerns as Sam about drawing closer to the Archivist. “It’s by design, Sam. They feed on our fear, but if they scare us too soon, we run away. They have to look appealing to us.” 

The newcomer appeared over Sam’s shoulder, looking down a sharp, thin nose at Jon. She dressed in a suit almost reminiscent of Lena’s style, but where Lena exuded effortless power for it, this woman looked like she was wearing a costume, despite the high-quality material and tailored cut. She held her chin a touch too high – a silent tantrum for respect rather than a quiet command for it – and the way the corner of her mouth curled into a mocking smirk reminded Jon of someone. “Well. Maybe not appealing. But at the very least harmless. At least until the final moment.” 

Sam put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up to stand next to his colleague. “I thought I was on Archivist-watch until Alice got caught up on her caseload.”

The woman’s pale gaze drifted from Jon to Sam, as though she’d really rather not have her attention pulled away. “In which case, you’ll be watching the Archivist until the end of time. No, it’s important for you to take breaks, Sam. Especially when you’ve been in the presence of an External. Even with the artefact, there’s every chance some of his powers can still sneak through and influence you.”

Sam took a sudden step back from Jon’s cell then, his face a picture of panic. “Woah, what? No, hang on, Lena said that the camera was—”

“—Did she tell you how we found its previous owner?” the woman asked. The eagerness to share something she knew that others didn’t betrayed her, her smile growing. “In a ruined little oasis of peace. Clearly, he’d enjoyed protection from the horrors for quite some time…but it didn’t stop him from being killed by one of the monsters in the end.”

He was killed in his sleep, Jon thought to himself, desperate to correct her or pick more information about Salesa’s death. The way he wanted to go…But…did Annabelle…?

It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Annabelle might have killed Salesa in his sleep and still done so in a horrible fashion. A manipulation of some kind. He asked to die in his sleep, but he never said it had to be peaceful, he could imagine her purring. 

But if she had killed him through more supernatural means, even in the presence of the camera, could there be a chance for Jon to endure its presence too? 

His blurry vision panned across to the innocuous-looking item on Sam’s desk. 

It stared back at him with its broken lens, the crack across the glass deeper and darker than it made any sense to be for such a small object. Whatever common ground ought to stretch between them as watchers was marred by the act of betrayal of this silent sentinel; an artefact of the Fears denying them their meals. 

No. No, that wasn’t right. He knew this. The camera, for all its quirks and promises of peace, was still an artefact in service of the Dread Powers. What had Salesa said about it? 

Jon watched the camera for a while longer, making a sluggish and clumsy attempt to recall how it worked. The door in his mind that shielded him from the roaring waves of knowledge behind it had been stuck fast ever since waking up in flames, but he had been able to still hear the dull roll of water back then. Now, held in the strange void of the camera’s pocket of protection, the unseen churning sea stood silent. 

But Jon’s rising concern would not be quieted. Something was wrong. The camera. This place. Former Avatars in captivity, watched by nervous humans who’d barely had time to process the horrors they’d endured at their hands. Knowing the only thing between them and more agonies was a small broken camera. And now, at the centre of this balancing act, the twice-dead Archivist has been planted like a wilted flower. Lena presented it as a prevention measure – a means to shield the world from the death rattle echoes of the ruined world that lingered. But something didn’t line up. 

The pieces lay in Jon’s palms, but for the life of him, he could not slot them together to see the full picture. Not like this. 

“Hello, Jon.” 

A cold pang of recollection yanked Jon out of his clumsy musings and back into the room. Sam was nowhere to be seen, and in his place were four metal chair legs and a pair of shiny black heels with a flash of red on their soles. He tried to sit up, his pride still bristling somewhere deep within the murky confusion of where Jon started and the Archivist ended, but once more, he managed only a brief strain before flopping back to the ground again. 

A scoffing laugh acknowledged his efforts. “No need to sit up on my account. I just wanted a little talk, and Lena being out and about seemed as good a time as any.” 

Jon inhaled deeply, bracing himself for another tirade of blame and anger. He deserved it, that much he’d made peace with, but it didn’t make it any easier to go through. 

“...Fine…” he whispered, though the woman likely didn’t hear it. 

“Very good. You see, Lena and the others are all very concerned about why you wanted to end the world, and—”

“I didn’t.” 

Despite his hushed and weak response, he earned the woman’s rapt attention.

“Excuse me?”

“I. Didn’t. Want it,” Jon clarified. “I caused it…yes…but Elias was…”

No…not Elias. Jonah. Jonah Magnus, he corrected himself, but before he could summon the strength to start his explanation, the woman leant forwards, latching onto the name with eager interest. 

“Elias? You mean the man whose remains we found in the ruins of the Institute?” she asked, her voice low as though concerned they may be overheard. Evidently, this was a topic she had been coaxed away from discussing – at the very least, she clearly was not meant to bring it up with Jon. 

“Yes,” he replied, managing to look up enough to see her face. 

“We theorised he had died stopping you,” she said, and the surge of anger that erupted from deep within Jon almost gave him enough strength to sit up and start yelling a stream of facts about Elias Bouchard upon the woman. “Is that not the case?”

“No…we….stopped him,” Jon rasped, his anger ripping through his exhaustion and demanding to be noticed. “It’s a…long story. And it’s…I can’t think…And you’d not believe it anyway…”

“...Try me.”

The temptation to sulk and hold it from her would give Jon a short-term burst of satisfaction. A little taste of control while he was stuck in this glass prison. But he knew it wouldn’t avail him much in the long term. Maybe he could barter honesty for trust. 

Still, it took all of Jon’s focus to keep himself together long enough to explain the simple truth. “Elias Bouchard…and every Head of the Institute before him…was Jonah Magnus.”

His interrogator sat back in her chair, pulling her face from Jon’s view and leaving him to imagine the incredulity instead. 

“Jonah Magnus?” she repeated. “As in the founder of the Magnus Institute? Born hundreds of years ago? That Jonah Magnus?” 

“...Yes. I said…you wouldn’t…”

“No. I believe you.”

Jon had dreaded the notion of trying to explain any of this, especially when he could hardly piece together who he was right now, suffocated as he was by the camera. Yet somehow, hearing the woman's lack of protest troubled him more. 

Validation of his concerns arrived swiftly as she spoke again. 

“My name is Gwendolyn Bouchard.”

…Oh God. 

She couldn’t know. He’d said they’d stopped Elias, that was all. She had no way of knowing that Jon had stuck a knife into her relative's chest. That he’d relished watching the man bleed out in front of him, knowing he would not be saved by the Domains’ strange rules surrounding death once Jon took over as the Pupil and dictated the next move on the macabre chessboard Jonah had designed. That in a few moments, everyone and everything would be pushed towards the End’s gaping maw. 

“...I…”

“Spare me the pleas to understand what you did or didn’t have to do.” Gwen waves away his unspoken explanations with one manicured hand. “I’ve always known Elias had…a uniqueness to him. I suspect I could tell you the exact day my uncle became…someone else. Someone with powers that didn’t make sense. No one believed me, of course. Finding his remains in the Institute finally gave me the chance to know more. But I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for.”

A newfound curiosity replaced Gwen’s previously cold demeanour. “What happened to him, Jon? How did he gain those abilities?” 

Every instinct told him to lie. To tell Gwen that this was all a big misunderstanding. That her uncle was simply a cruel man. But strangely, Jon found himself disgusted at the notion. Hadn’t Elias Bouchard been as much a victim of Jonah Magnus as anyone else? His face worn by a man who would commit such atrocities with his name? If Gwen could prove what had happened, perhaps she could clear her family name. 

Maybe it could be the first step to setting things somewhat right in the world. Fixing everything Magnus broke, one piece at a time. 

Gwen stood up, pushing her chair aside and shifting to sit on the floor in front of Jon’s cell, her legs tucked to the side carefully. “Jon. Tell me the truth,” she said, softer in a sadly obvious attempt to manipulate him. “If you help me, I can help you. I can’t let you out of here, of course, but I may be able to make things more comfortable. Maybe even get word out to Martin that you’re safe.” 

Ah, but there it was. No matter how poorly she may navigate this attempt to manipulate him, a chance to find Martin, to know he was okay, meant Jon could only answer one way. 

“...His eyes…check his eyes…” 

This earned him a smile but not the further questions Jon expected. Instead, Gwen got to her feet, brushed down her skirt, and turned on her heel. She picked up the chair on the way past and set it back down at Sam’s desk. 

Without so much as a prescribed word of thanks or farewell, Gwen left, shutting the door with a loud clang behind her before Jon could so much as whimper a protest of “Wait…M-Martin, you said…!”

Jon remained alone for a while, his neck craned so he could stare helplessly at the closed door. It had been an obvious bait, but how could he not skewer himself on that hook over and over? He owed Martin. He owed him so much. Any chance he could get to help the man reach the normal, happy life he craved, Jon would take. 

“Ah, Jon. I see you opted against resting in peace. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. You always were antsy.”

“Go away…” Jon’s lips fluttered. He remained staring at the door – it hadn’t opened again since Gwen’s departure. Jon was alone in his cell. 

“But I admit that I am surprised at this turn of events.” Overly polished shoes strode into Jon’s line of sight, yet they made no sound against the metal floor. “Are you really going to trust a Bouchard again? Then again, I suppose you never did.”

Stubbornness kept Jon from looking up at the phantom, but that didn’t save him. The spectre of Elias Bouchard stopped in front of him, then bent down in one fluid motion, bringing his eye-gouged, grinning face within inches of Jon’s. Pulpy red and black sockets dribbled blood and pus down pale, gaunt cheeks, but Elias beamed at Jon all the same, his dazzling teeth catching little threads of scarlet between them as bloodied tears made their way down to his lips. “You’ve never known one, have you? Not really.” 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

The rhythmic tapping of keys hammered like nails through Jon’s blurry consciousness, pushing pulses of discomfort through him with each strike of a letter. They drove down like nails through rotting wood, keeping him from being able to drift away on the numbing waves the camera smothered him with. He ought to be grateful for that, however irritating the form of the anchor may be, but Jon maintained his frown all the same. 

“Is that ‘Jon’ with a h, without a h, or is it short for something?” Alice asked, peering at him from around her laptop. 

“Jonathan.” Even lying on the floor, metal biting into his cheek, Jon tried to cling to his pride, pretending the cold, thick pool of drool gathering at the corner of his mouth didn’t exist. If he didn’t acknowledge his sorry state, perhaps no one else would. 

“Yeah, you look like a Jonathan,” Alice agreed, mirroring Jon’s accent in the last word and ducking back behind the monitor to keep typing. Any hope Jon had of peace after that was quickly shattered, as after a while, she chirped up again. “Do you have a middle name?”

“...Chester.”

How many people had he told that? Hardly anyone, he would wager. Why would he tell it to a stranger, one who was prodding information out of him in such a way? 

Karma, he answered himself bitterly.  

“Jonathan Chester Sims, wow, that’s…that’s one hell of a name, sir.” Alice chuckled, though her smile was far from warm. She went back to filling out the rest of the form in silence – something about ‘registering Jon as an External’ and ‘so not in my pay grade’, along with some mention of a trade for her caseload. 

Jon, meanwhile, went back to his unresolved staring contest with the cracked camera that watched him from the corner of Alice’s desk. For weeks now, Jon had lain upon the cold metal floor, pushing one idea at a time through his sluggish mind, desperate to find a way to escape the unending suffocation of the camera’s gaze. Every moment he spent stuck in this prison was a moment more that Martin could be in danger; Simon had only agreed to whisk him away somewhere safe after all. After that, Martin may very well have been on his own. 

The worst state to leave Martin in. 

More than once, Jon had found himself quietly cursing the artefact that kept him subdued. What sort of relic built for the Fears would operate by extinguishing the abilities of the Dread Powers’ own Avatars? 

But it is an artefact of the Fears, Jon thought for the umpteenth time, ignoring another rumble of questions from Alice. Its purpose remains the same: to serve them. Feed them. Not to protect people…

“Hellooo-ooo? Earth to Archivist?” 

All mockery from Alice’s voice vanished the moment Jon’s focus returned to her. She started in her seat, muttered something too quiet for him to catch, then clacked away at a few keys again. “Need a full list of your freaky powers. I’ve got ‘Additional Organs – Eyeballs’, even though you’ve only got the two of them right now, which I appreciate, by the way. Erm, what else, we got…‘Sustenance – Fears, Subcategory: Trauma’, and ‘Heightened Senses – Sight’, obviously. What other party tricks do you have, Mr Sims?” 

Jon watched her for a moment, then went back to debating the camera artefact again. 

“Oi! Don’t they teach you manners at Monster School?” Alice protested, gesturing wildly at the screen in front of her. “I’ve got to get this registration document submitted for Her Holiness, The Right Honourable Bouchard before she returns from…from whatever she’s buggered off to do…or she’ll chuck my caseload back at me. So come on! Show and Tell time!”

A pained silence settled between the two of them, and Jon noted with some satisfaction that the colour drained from Alice’s face. “I-I mean, don’t show. Just tell. Really don’t need a demonstration.”

“Can’t anyway,” Jon rasped, jerking his head as best he could towards the artefact. “Camera-shy…” 

This earned him a snort of laughter from Alice, but she quickly composed herself. “Fair point. So, that your lot then, is it? Seems a bit tame for a world-ending External, all things considered.”

“I…” 

Jon had held back telling Alice the extent of his abilities less out of rudeness and more out of kindness. The woman seemed terrified of him – plenty of the staff did – and the only reason she was able to sit in the room and question him right now was because Lena had assured her several times that the camera would keep Jon powerless. But despite all that, a flicker of uncertainty continued to tease the Archivist from just behind her eyes; she believed the camera would keep her safe, but she feared for how long that would remain true. 

That’s it! 

Jon almost sat up as the pieces finally snapped together through the gloop of his mind. The fear of its protection failing! Someone might steal the camera, break it, lose it…and that constant fear from its current user was quietly gathered and stored, until such a day that the inevitable would happen and it would fail. And all that stored fear would be served up to the Dread Powers. 

Which are…Oh God. They’re…me. 

At this, Jon began to push himself awkwardly with one arm, trying to sit up. “A-Alice…listen…”

“Woah, woah, erm, maybe you can stay on the floor?” Alice was already up and out of her seat, backing away and casting nervous glances to the camera, as though expecting it to explode and fail on her.

“Alice…th-the camera…!” The world lurched around him, forcing Jon to double over, his hand upon his thigh to try to balance himself. He took a few loud, steadying breaths before continuing. “It isn’t protecting you!”

“W-well…well that’s the lamest attempt at escape I’ve ever heard.” Alice tried to smirk, but the weak smile that resulted from the effort did nothing to make her look any less worried. “You think I’m going to yeet it out the window because you told me it isn’t working? Seems to be doing a ruddy good job from where I’m standing, mate.” 

“I’m not trying to—! Think about it! Alice, who found that camera?”

“Lena. Back when they were investigating the remains of the nightmare zones, looking for survivors and that. She brought it back here so we’d have some form of protection against the Externals. And it works a treat! So don’t you worry about that.”

“Did she tell you what it is? Other than a camera , obviously,” Jon asked, cutting off what he expected would be Alice’s first answer to the question. Speaking to her drew out strange echoes from the past for Jon, reminding him of several conversations he’d had with his former colleague, Tim. He quickly pushed them aside – a rumination for another time. 

Alice waved her hand dismissively, her brow creasing. “Some old dusty artefact that a rich bloke used to hole up all cosy during the apocalypse while the rest of us endured the horrors. I mean, you really did stick us the middle finger when you let capitalism stay at the end of the world, Jonny-lad, though I suppose that probably is the final horror. I bet he found a way to profit from his little oasis of calm in the—”

“And that rich bloke is now…?” Jon tried his best to keep Alice on track, wondering how on earth Lena dealt with her. 

“...Dead.”

With one word, a squeaking crack in the ice between them. For the first time, Alice looked at Jon almost as though he were a colleague. As though he were trustworthy. As though he were human. 

“Killed by…?” he prompted, gentler this time. 

“I-I don’t know. Sam said Gwen had mentioned something the other day, but—”

“He was killed by an Ava—by an External, Alice. That camera is an artefact of the Fears. It is designed to feed them, not to protect you.” 

Alice took another step back, though this time, she angled herself away from the camera warily. Jon, sensing his moment to make true progress at last, pushed onwards eagerly. “Listen to me. I know this camera. I know the Fears. And contrary to what you may think, I do not wish to hurt you or anyone here! That camera stores the fears you have. The fear that it might fail. Break. Get stolen. And the moment any one of those things happens, it’ll release all that energy. Remind me – how many others have you got registered under ‘Sustenance – Fears’ that are living in this very building, Alice?”

“I…I-I…N-no!” 

Alice shook her head, braving a step forwards only to swoop and grab her bag off the floor. “I’m…I’m not falling for this. You’re fucked up, mate!” 

As she swung her bag up onto her shoulder, the corner of it clipped the camera. It tumbled to the floor, smacking against the metal plates and spluttering green sparks on impact. But Jon fixated on Alice, ignoring the artefact for the moment while he scrabbled to grab his rapidly disintegrating lifeline. 

“N-no, Alice! Wait! I’m trying to help you! L-look, a̛̱ͨͥs̢̱ͬͧk̜̱̀ͦ M̹̦ͥ̀a̳ͥ͐̓r̯̰̐͘t̞̒͐͠i͐̏ͮ̇ň̵̻̫, ask him what the camera does, and he can help you get everyone to safety before it fails. We can help you!” 

To his surprise, Alice stopped dead in her tracks. She unfurled the bag from her shoulder, letting the bottom of it thud against the floor. Then, with a little fumbling, she pulled her phone out of her jacket pocket. 

Jon froze. He dared not speak, lest he somehow tip the balance and make her decide to put the phone away again. The previous weeks were littered with failed attempts to get one of the O.I.A.R. staff to agree to a single phone call to Martin. The sudden change in heart ought to have registered as odd, but Jon happily pushed that down in favour of a little hope. 

Finally, Alice turned and headed back to Jon without a word, her pace slow and meticulous. She opened the small hatch in the door to his prison that was used to deliver food, water, and other “approved accommodations” he requested – not that he’d done much of that. Jon, eager as he was to take the offered phone when presented, didn’t pay much mind to the way Alice’s hand trembled. 

He grabbed the phone and started typing in Martin’s phone number. As desperate as he was, he didn’t want to push his luck. Instead, once the number was typed, he handed the device back to her. “Thank you, thank you, Alice! H-here, look, you can talk to him, s-s-so you can hear for yourse—!” 

Alice snatched the phone from him, the force smacking Jon’s knuckles up against the side of the small opening. She brought the device to her ear, and it was only then that Jon noticed how much her hand was shaking, the visible pulse on the side of her throat, how wide her eyes were. 

“A-Alice? Are you all right?” Jon asked, but she kept her lips pressed tightly together. The call connected, and Jon could make out the crackly sound of a familiar voice from the tiny speaker. 

“...Hello?” 

Martin! Jon’s heart leapt, the oddity of Alice’s behaviour forgotten for the moment as he basked in the joy of knowing Martin was alive, and, from what little he could glean from a single word, safe. 

He almost called out to Martin, to ask him where he was, if he was safe. But Alice quickly cut in. 

“Hello, Martin. What d-does the camera do?” Her calm tone failed to match the horror etched in her expression. 

“Wha…Wh-who is this?” Martin asked. “What camera?” 

“Salesa’s camera. T-tell me what it does, please.” Though enunciated with clarity, a raw, pained reluctance clipped each word. 

Jon’s heart plummeted, his thin hand going to his scarred throat – his voice. The camera! Its hold must have loosened when it struck the ground, letting his desperation tinge his speech, transforming it into a compelling command. 

“Oh…Oh God, no, Alice, I-I didn’t…I didn’t mean—”

On the other end of the line, Martin piped up again. “How do you know abo—Jon? Is that you? Jon? A-are you with Jon?” 

“T-tell me what Salesa’s c-camera does, please,” Alice begged, tears finally falling loose from her eyes. “What does the camera do, Martin?” 

“M-Martin! Tell her, please, I-I…I compelled her, I didn’t mean to, just…tell her an answer!” Jon raised his voice, his hand pressed against the glass as he leant as close as he could, hoping Martin could hear him. “A-and where are you? Are you all right?” 

“I-I’m fine, Jon, just…Christ, how did you…? Right, erm, yeah, Salesa’s camera. It was sort of a-a, erm, protective bubble against the Fears, but it’d kind of…harvest the paranoia it created, s-s-so it’s not really as useful as you’d think. I-Is that enough?” 

Alice’s phone clattered to the floor, moving the speaker too far away for Jon to hear anything further. 

His heart in his throat, Jon tried once again to offer apologies to Alice. But she backed away, shaking her head, then turned and bolted from the room. 

“N-no, Alice. Alice! Dammit!”

As the adrenaline of his success – and failure – drained away, Jon’s knees gave out and dropped him to the floor again. 

He glowered at the phone for a while, debating if he might be able to reach it in any way. The hatch remained open, but it was too high up for Jon to reach through to grab the phone. The screen had landed face-down too, so he wasn’t sure if it was even worth trying to shout through to Martin, if he was even still connected. 

All of his debates ended, however, as the door to the room opened again. With a familiar click-clack of heels against steel, Lena entered the room, flanked by two sombre-looking guards dressed head to toe in scuffed black protective suits, mismatched and likely scavenged. 

Lena headed straight for the desk Alice had been working at, and she stooped down to pick up the fallen camera. She turned the artefact over in her hands, examining it from every angle, before finally looking over at Jon. 

He met her gaze, though he wasn’t sure what expression he ought to wear. Defiance? Remorse? What would she want to see in him now? 

“It is still functional. We’d have a riot on our hands if it wasn’t. Likely Alice knocked it over and caused a momentary outage.”

Lena straightened up, setting the camera back in its position with great care. 

Jon braced himself for a list of cold, matter-of-fact punishments from Lena. He could try to explain, to protest that it was an accident, but he was quite certain not a single thing he could say would sway Lena. At least not while the camera was still working. 

Lena, however, opted instead to smile. Somehow, this seemed far more threatening than any repercussions. 

“Maybe you’re due a little fresh air, Archivist. I have just the job in mind for you.” 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

Conflict held Jon back from fully appreciating his freedom from the camera’s oppressive gaze. True, though he could breathe for the first time in weeks, stretch his legs and move around, Jon didn’t entertain any illusions that this was a gift for him. Quite the contrary, as he sat waiting for his ‘field partner’, as Lena put it, Jon pondered just what punishment she had in mind for what he’d done to Alice. 

Every so often, Jon had got to his feet and wandered to the rather suspiciously large mirror in the room, but so many cracks riddled its surface that he could tell it wasn’t a one-way window, even without his extra eyes for assistance. The mirror only reflected the sparse room and Jon’s gaunt features, nothing more.

Hours or minutes may have passed, but eventually, the door opened, and Jon spotted a familiar face. 

“Oh, erm…Sam, isn’t it?” 

Sam groaned, though Jon couldn’t tell if it was from trepidation or resentment. He did his best not to look too offended when Sam asked, “You’re my field partner for this?”

Jon shrugged and nodded, though he still wasn’t sure what “this” was going to be. “So I’m told.”

Sam’s bottom lip threatened to jut, a barely restrained sulk simmering beneath. “Gwen said Lena wouldn’t be happy at the short notice last week, but this seems a little unfair…”

“Been off somewhere nice, have you?” Jon made little effort to keep the dryness from his comment. Of everyone he’d met in the O.I.A.R. so far, Sam had been the kindest towards him, but he’d still left Jon in a cage. Watched as he struggled to remain conscious. Winced at him as though Jon were some frothing, feral dog to be avoided. 

Sam closed the door behind him and dropped a ragged shoulder bag on an equally decrepit desk in the corner of the room. It wobbled and rattled against the wall. “Short notice medical leave. Not annual leave. We don’t really get paid time off anymore since…erm…you know.”

“Since I ruined the world?” 

The question lingered, delivered with a lightness that didn’t suit it. Jon liked to pretend that the more he confronted the fact that he’d caused every ounce of grief he saw around him, the easier it got to talk about it. 

It didn’t. Much less for the people he talked to. 

Sam fiddled with the strap of his unloaded bag. “That’s not…” 

“It’s fine, Sam. An observation is an observation. You’re allowed to voice them. I…I did ruin the world. Whether I intended to or not doesn’t change the fact that I did. I’m not going to do anything to you for pointing that out. I’m not a m—”

Monster? 

The word rang out between them, despite it remaining unspoken by either man. Jon dared Sam to offer it up, to finish his sentence, but he didn’t even meet Jon’s eyes. 

Instead, Sam cleared his throat and started pulling documents from his discarded bag. “So, erm…I take it you haven’t been briefed on this?”

“People seem very keen to keep as much information as possible from me,” Jon said, hoping he looked nonchalant about this. In truth, the answers whispering beneath the surface of this place, just out of reach, proved to be a constant source of irritation for Jon; like an itch in his ear he couldn’t quite reach. 

“Makes sense, I suppose. Well, the long and short of it is that we sometimes get tips about Externals – Oh, erm, sorry, did…did anyone explain those to you?”

“Only in so far as to suggest I am one, but the list of labels assigned to be grows longer by the day,” Jon drawled, arching an eyebrow. Sam laughed, but Jon didn’t need to peer into his mind to see how false it was. He’d been subjected to just such a nervous tick a thousand times before, usually accompanied by a hurried off to make him a cup of tea. 

“R-Right. Alice got you registered, huh? That was…Between you and me, it wasn’t official. Gwen thinks you should be classed as an External, Alice says you’re clearly not, but Gwen offered to take half her caseload if she registered you on the system, so…yeah. For what it’s worth, I’m with Alice; I don’t think you qualify.”

“My grip upon my dwindling sense of humanity grows ever stronger.”

Sam repeated his little false laugh, holding a pile of documents up to Jon half-heartedly for a moment before letting his arm fall to his side. “I guess you can just Know all this stuff?”

Jon’s throat tightened. It wasn’t an accusation, but it landed like one, harsh and heavy upon his conscience. “I… could . But I am told that it’s rather rude to do so; I usually ask first these days. Besides, your camera is still upholding its end of its bargain, for now. So, why don’t you tell me, Sam – what qualifies someone as an External?”

It was as though Jon had pressed a button. Sam sparked up, animated in a way Jon hadn’t seen till now, and began speaking so rapidly that, for a second, Jon worried that he might have accidentally compelled him. “Well, there are a few interesting theories out there as to why it happened, but basically, after the world went crazy, a small number of people around either didn’t—” 

Sam stopped suddenly, glancing down at the papers in his hand. Then, with an almost genuine smile, he shoved them back into his bag. “Actually, why don’t you learn from the source? Our assignment is to go interview a suspected External and register them on our system. Offer them a job, really. You’ll get to know one first hand.”

“Right. A bit of fresh air. But what’s the real reason I’m going with you?” Jon asked, folding his arms. “It must be something notable for Lena to let me out of here.”

“Oh, erm…We, err, we had an incident recently with an office employee and an unregistered External, so now, we only ever head out in pairs.” Sam paled at the memory, and Jon stuffed down the hungry instinct to ask him to tell him more. “And where we can, we take one of our Externals with us. Alice won’t go near the External assignments at the moment, Gwen’s on annual leave still, so…yeah. Lena said it would be a good way to let you get some fresh air anyway.”

“How awfully kind of her,” Jon drawled, all the more prickly now his hunger had been ignited by the vocal presence of a potential statement. What had happened with that employee and External? Untold horrors that ought not delight him, Jon had to remind himself. 

“It’s not without restrictions though,” Sam said. After a brief pause to pick his words carefully, he continued. “I, err…heard what you did to Alice. It’s sort of why she wouldn’t pick this one up.”

Of course you have, Jon thought, bitterness overtaking his previously cold irritation with a thick, coating sludge. He loathed himself as he started to protest. “That was an accident! And frankly, your concern should be that it could happen at all – I’ve been trying to tell you that camera is—”

“Right, but…before you go out, I’m to take you to the medical wing.” Sam cut off Jon’s tirade with all the efficiency of a well-trained mediator that had to talk down his colleagues and friends on a regular basis. Idle pictures of  salt-air fog and misted glasses sprang to mind. 

Sam continued, unaware of this resemblance. “Since I can’t take the camera with me, they said they have something else to temporarily restrain your ability to make people…do stuff.”

“Compelling.” Jon blinked himself out of his reverie to correct Sam. “We called it compelling. Back at the Institute.”

“Okay. To temporarily restrain your ability to compel people.”

“Did you request this?”

Sam swallowed, then chewed on the corner of his lip for a second, debating his answer. 

“...Yes.”

Jon sighed, shoulders sagging in defeat, though he appreciated Sam’s honesty. Still, Jon could act like it was a choice whether or not he agreed to these proposed measures, but they both knew it really wasn’t. The opportunity to get out of the O.I.A.R. for the first time in weeks proved too tempting. Whatever this temporary measure was, Jon would have to agree to it. 

A toll to be paid to get back to Martin and make sure he was safe. 

“Fine. Fine, right, so, what is it?”

“No idea. I’m just to escort you there, fill in some paperwork and get the forms ready for this External guy who called us, then collect you and head out.” 

Sam reshouldered his bag and opened the door, stepping to the side to let Jon out first.

Already regretting his complacency, Jon shuffled out of the room. 

“I’m sure it’ll all be precisely as easy as all that too,” he muttered. 

──── •✧• ────

Jon sat on the edge of the paper-covered mattress, his legs crossed. He looked around the bleak, brown-walled room that Sam had rather grandly called a “medical wing”. Where a doctor’s office might have an array of posters warning nervous patients of the dangers of drink, drugs and smoking, this one displayed only a smattering of scrawled notes, none of which were of use to anyone but the doctor. 

A small desk stood against the wall to Jon’s right, illuminated by a bright lamp that had been left on. Documents and folders scattered the top of the table, but the solitary pen and pencil had been lined up neatly in the middle of it all, as though their owner were worried about misplacing them. 

The door clicked open, catching Jon’s attention, and he sat up a little straighter. 

A tall, thin man in a ragged white coat strode in, all smiles and dark, blank eyes. He put down a clipboard that Jon was fairly certain was just for show, and sat himself down on an old office chair. It squeaked and tilted back a little, but the doctor didn’t seem to mind at all.

“Hi. You must be Jonathan.”

Jon nodded once. Why was this peculiar man acting like the entire world couldn’t match Jon’s name to his face in an instant?  “I must be.”

“A wonderful start! As for me, I’m Doctor David.”

He held out his hand, alarming Jon not just for the suddenness of the gesture, but the normality of it too. This doctor not only seemed comfortable with Jon’s presence despite his crimes against the world, he seemed thrilled by it.

Jon took the offered hand in a short, sharp handshake. The doctor’s Cheshire grin widened. Jon would mention to Sam once he was out of the medical wing and this bizarre man’s care that they might want to look a little closer to home for these Externals of his.

“How lovely! Right, now, down to business, Jonathan. Lena has asked me to help you with a rather concerning problem. All to help keep you and everyone else safe. Does that sound about right?”

“Ah, yes. Apparently so. Sorry, will this take long?” Jon fidgeted in his seat as prickling unease crawled under his skin, frustrated that he couldn’t just Know what exactly was wrong with the supposed doctor. The camera’s influence didn’t quite smother him from this distance, but it was enough to disconnect him from the comforting undercurrent of knowledge he’d grown accustomed to. 

Doctor David sprang to his feet, his blank eyes coming precariously close to something that might be considered a spark. “Not at all! No, we can get right to it, of course – you must be a busy man!”

His words dripped with condescension, but for the sake of getting things moving, Jon bit his tongue. He watched as the doctor rummaged through some drawers, muttering and pulling out tools and putting them back in turns. “Sorry, sorry, terrible supply chain at the moment…Well, you should know, I suppose!” 

Finally, Doctor David turned around, beaming. In his hands was nothing more than a needle and surgical thread. 

Jon frowned and tilted his head at the notion. “Oh, erm…I-I-I’m not injured. Sorry, did Sam not explain what it is that I—?”

“He explained. And from what I’ve been told about your stubborn little habit, I think this will do the trick just nicely! You know, I always find the simplest solutions are usually the most reliable, Jonathan. Lie back now! This won’t take a moment.”

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

“Jon, I’m really sorry. If I’d known that was how they’d, erm…assure me I was safe with you, I’d never have agreed to it!” 

Not for the first time, Jon found himself at the mercy of Sam’s continued apologies. Transportation had become a luxury after the Panopticon fell, leaving the two men with little more than a general direction to go on foot. 

So, once again, with a rucksack on his back, Jon made his way across the scarred landscape of London. Some semblance of normality had returned to the city – he could at least make out some familiar streets and signs, for example – but even with the Fears defeated, the world stood before a long road to recovery. 

None of the stores standing either side of the street had reopened, of course, though plenty sported new mouths of jagged glass where looters had helped themselves to whatever they could find. The roads, once flooded with cars that cyclists darted between like tiny fish, blended into the footpaths now, practically indistinguishable. This far from the ruins of the Panopticon, however, they were spared from the thick grey coat of ashes and echoing oddities that still prowled there – the lost terrors that lurked at the edges of Jon’s senses.

“I thought they’d just…Have you seen The Avengers? You know, that metal thing they put on Loki at the end to get him to stop talking? I thought they’d…Once we’re back, I swear to you, I’ll put in so many requests for the stitches to be removed that they’ll have to listen, I-I-I mean, how are you going to eat with your mouth sewn shut? It’s not reasonable, and—”

Jon stopped, closed his eyes, and held up a hand. Sam’s repeated apologies halted immediately. 

They couldn’t keep going like this. 

After a moment to think, an idea struck Jon. 

“Do you know sign language?” he signed. 

Sam’s confused expression answered before his voice did. With a flash of realisation, he stammered his answer. “Oh, sorry, n-no, I-I don’t know sign language.”

“No, me neither,” Jon signed back, letting his hands flop back down to his sides with a clap against his thighs. He really couldn’t keep denying it now. Simon was right; the Eye, at the very least, still lingered within Jon, feeding him knowledge. 

Did we manage to achieve anything at all in that damned tower, Martin? Jon thought.

Sam, meanwhile, had stopped. He squatted down to root through his bag, pulling out books and tools and placing them on the ground. “Maybe we can get by with you writing? I think I have some paper in my bag, might even have a pen. You can’t compel people with written requests, right?”

Jon shook his head, not really listening. 

Martin.

He’d promised never to use his abilities on him. To See or Know anything about Martin. But right here, right now, the best chance to reunite with Martin presented itself to Jon. 

Would Martin forgive him for another broken promise? Surely he’d understand.

“—this one doesn’t work, hang on…I swear I found a working one a few days ago, and… Woah. Woah, erm, J-Jon, what…that’s…that’s…!”

Eyelids split across Jon’s face like tiny footprints that trailed down his face, across his cheeks, and over his throat. Old scars reopened, but instead of exposing raw scarlet, the wounds revealed white and green as eyeballs rolled forwards to focus. 

Jon held his hands out, hoping his gesture translated as one of reassurance for Sam. He curled his fingers towards his upturned palms, asking for the paper and pen. 

With more than a little trepidation stalling his motions, Sam handed them to Jon. 

I’m going to try to See our External, Jon lied, writing quickly. That’s all. 

He handed the paper back, watching as Sam read it twice over. With an arched eyebrow, he looked up at Jon. 

“You’re going to See him? I…guess that would help. Lena said this External was somewhere in the old West End, but something more specific might be good.” 

Jon nodded once, making a mental note to maybe take a look at finding anything that might look like an External too. His lies required an element of truth to be effective. 

His focus swam away from what was in front of him, searching and pinpointing Martin with ease. His heart skipped to see his partner, unharmed and sitting on a wall facing the riverside, occasionally glancing left and right and over his shoulder. Simon was nowhere to be seen – was Martin waiting for him? Had the older Avatar gone to fetch something? 

No. No…Martin is waiting for–wait! I can’t do that, Jon reminded himself, closing some of his eyes in reflex and shaking his head. Seeing him was one thing, but Seeing into Martin’s mind truly would be an act of betrayal. 

“Anything?” 

Sam’s voice brought Jon back to his immediate surroundings. He shook his head, hoping that would be enough to convince Sam. 

The other man gave a hum and a shrug, starting to reshoulder his bag. “I guess your powers must have died a bit after Towerfall, huh?”

You have no idea.

Jon simply nodded, setting off again in the direction of Martin. 

Sam trotted along after him, his face twisting in a moment’s discomfort. Perhaps the weight of his bag was getting to him – he’d clearly packed for every eventuality. 

“It should be fine. Lena said the External didn’t have any powers it could use on other people, only itself. Err, themselves. Maybe that’s why she, erm…decided your abilities wouldn’t be needed,” Sam explained, catching up and falling into pace with Jon. 

Jon gave a one-shouldered shrug, pretending to be very interested in the ruins that surrounded them. Some of the buildings were occupied, with the occasional glow from every other window telling of families taking shelter or groups of survivors dwelling within. The adaptation of humankind. The will to survive. 

The aftermath of the Archivist’s folly. 

Jon gestured for the paper again. 

If this External’s abilities can only be used on themselves, that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you. What if they can transform into something? 

He passed the paper to Sam and waited for him to read it. 

“Erm…I-I guess that would be a problem. Definitely would help to have someone control them if they did that. But if that were the case, I don’t think Lena would have agreed to…to…you know.” 

Sam pointed at Jon’s sewn-shut mouth. “She said she’d reassure me since your abilities wouldn’t be needed. She seemed to think your presence would be enough to convince this External to join us. She’s not wrong, you know. You, erm…you have something of a reputation now.” 

Across the world, yes, Jon thought sullenly, wondering how many people still had nightmares with his face a key feature. 

They travelled in silence for a while longer, punctured every so often with Sam’s misguided attempts to spark a conversation with a man both unwilling and unable to engage with him. They had to stop once or twice for Sam to sit down and catch his breath, and he would sometimes take a stained cloth from his pocket to mop sweat from his brow despite the cool air of autumn around them. Just the aftermath of his flu, Sam had assured him with a smile. Harder to shake without easy access to medication. 

“I hope this one’s friendly,” Sam said as they turned the corner and moved away from what used to be a main street and down a narrow alleyway, walking towards the river. “The External, I mean. Lena said they’d called in themselves. Offered to take the interview with one of us. That doesn’t happen a lot. Externals are kind of the lone wolf type, you know?”

Jon shook his head. 

“Ah, right, I…guess not,” Sam mumbled. “W-well, basically, when the world ended, there were some…anomalies, I guess you could call them? People who weren’t given nightmare zones to rule, but they also didn’t end up trapped in them either. There were two types for that. On the one side, you had people who escaped their nightmare zones – we formed the O.I.A.R., or an early version of it. And those who were never pulled into the nightmare zones to begin with, we called them Externals. Originally, we worked together, but…”

Sam sighed. “Different goals, even in the most dire circumstances. The Externals got powers, though we’re not really sure how or why. Maybe from wandering around the spaces between nightmare zones. Impressing the Fears? I don’t know. But in the end, they didn’t want what we wanted.”

Jon nodded upwards: And what was that? 

Sam laughed. “Well, what do you think? The O.I.A.R., the people who escaped the nightmare zones, we wanted to save the world! We had a couple of plans; one was focused on this weird house we found during our scouting missions. Had this…I guess you’d call it a portal under it. There were some thoughts that maybe that’s how the Fears arrived here, so we were looking for a way to send them back that way.”

Jon smiled, the wires in his lips giving a painful tug. He took the paper again and scribbled: 

Correct plan. That is what Martin ended up doing, in the end. He cut the tether, and sent them away through that portal. 

Or that was what was supposed to happen , Jon mused as he handed the paper back to Sam. Somehow, the Dread Powers lingered, sequestered away in his very flesh. Twisting and writhing under his skin, starved and screaming. The Eye, at least, was being well-fed by the sheer act of listening to others. Their tales and their troubles. The Vast had quietened down since its feast too. But the others…

Sam frowned at the paper. “O-Oh, really? That’s…surprising.”

Jon’s attention snapped to Sam, a wordless demand to know what he meant by that. 

“W-well, we disagreed. The O.I.A.R. and the Externals. They…didn’t want to lose their powers, I guess. So they didn’t want to send the Fears away. Said we should find a way to contain them, o-o-or build a new world with the new rules. When we couldn’t come to an agreement, they set off for Hill Top Road and destroyed it. The house, the weird web there, all of it. I don’t know if it worked – I don’t know how they could close the portal, or even if they could. I guess they just wanted to make sure we couldn’t get to it or use it. Maybe it’s still open under there. But…yeah. They seemed pretty certain they’d closed it off.”

Jon’s heart pulsed a cold beat, another piece of the puzzle slotting into place. Had their exit out of this reality been sealed off? With their tether cut from the Panopticon, the Archives, and their path through the tapes to the portal removed, had they had no choice but to go back on themselves? Back to Jon? 

Stuck. 

Trapped. 

Waiting. 

By now, Sam and Jon had arrived at a path running close to the riverside. Ducking through a hole in some wire fencing, the two men crept carefully down the sloped bank towards a wall lining the edge of the river. The sun had started to set, painting oranges and pinks across the sky and bleeding the water’s surface. A chill began to prickle in the air, spurring Jon to find Martin that they might finally be able to return home to a warm blanket and pretend they’d saved the world. That it was all over now. 

A short distance away, Jon spotted a pair of broad shoulders filling a light blue woolly jumper, a tangle of unkempt strawberry curls housing the occasional flick of white. Without thinking, Jon set off at a jog, almost calling out Martin’s name and pulling the wires around his lips taut. 

Martin jumped as Jon came into view, leaping to his feet with a broad smile. 

“Jon! Jesus, I…I…Okay, this does not mean I’m not so unbelievably angry at you!” he said before pulling Jon in a rib-squeaking hug that lifted him off his feet. “I’m so, so glad you’re all right, but I am so, so, so mad at you! You-you…you bastard! How could you think Simon-bloody-Fairchild would take me somewhere safe? You’re…you’re…Oh my God, Jon, what happened? ” 

Martin had finally released Jon, and with wide eyes he spotted the awful adornments to his partner’s face. Luckily, Sam had caught up now, wheezing and holding his arm against the right side of his abdomen. 

“H-Hi, erm…I’m. Sam. Khalid. O. I. A. R. A-and…y’know…him…” Sam spluttered out, trying to straighten up. Sweat beaded on his brow again, a greyish hue creeping into his skin. He winced and pressed his hand to his side again. “A-are you…?” 

“Oh, erm, yeah! I’m your External!” Martin said brightly, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “A friend of mine mentioned your lot is looking for us, signing us up for work, and I, erm…”

Jon blinked up at him, then lightly kicked the toes of Martin’s right boot. 

Martin gave a nervous laugh. “R-right, erm…Okay, so, I might’ve…lied a little bit on the phone, b-but, erm…Look, Georgie said if I said I was an External, the O.I.A.R. would come running, and I knew that was where you were, so I was going to get myself a space on their programme, do an infiltration mission, and—Well, guess not now, since they sent you out, ha ha! Oh, r-right, Georgie! She’s fine! I found her!” Martin said, noticing Jon’s surprise. “You wouldn’t believe what she’s been up to since all this ended. Oh, and the cult? Taken a really weird turn, and erm…” 

An embarrassed flush stained Martin’s cheeks. “M-maybe for later. Look, right, we…we need to get you seen to Jon; what the hell have they done to you? Does it hurt?”

Martin stooped and reached with an investigative finger to prod Jon’s mouth. Jon flinched and swatted him away – Of course it hurts! he scowled at him – before both of them were interrupted by Sam. 

“That’s, erm…A-actually, I-I’m supposed to…I-If I go back without…with…out…” 

Jon turned just in time to see Sam’s eyes roll back. He darted forwards, catching Sam before he could hit the ground.

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

For what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes, Jon and Martin ducked behind a ruined wall, hauling Sam’s unconscious body with them to avoid being spotted by a wandering survivor on the hunt for resources. 

Huffing, Martin turned to rest his back against the wall, listening to the scavenger turn over some rubbish a short distance away. He sighed and shook his head. “This is going to take forever,” he hissed to Jon. “Look, I know you really don’t want to go back to the O.I.A.R., and – yeah, all right, don’t glare at me, I can see why! – but finding Georgie isn’t going to be easy. I-I don’t even really know if we’re going the right way!” 

Jon jabbed his thumb into his chest. I know the right way! he said wordlessly, eyes catching the light and glimmering with a dull hint of green. It was hardly a perfect image; wispy and fragile, more a vague sense they were going the right way more than assured knowledge. The Eye, tangled behind Jon’s own, had little energy to offer. Of all the broken Fears, only the Vast and the Desolation had settled somewhat. The Vast lurked behind his stomach, ready to enjoy the sinking feeling that burst there when one falls. Meanwhile, the Desolation prickled away in the palms of his hands, reliving the agony of the funeral pyre scorching his flesh. 

“Do you? Because you’re not supposed to!” Martin snapped back. “You’re not supposed to capital-K-Know things or capital-S-See things anymore, Jon! I really, really don’t think we should be encouraging a-a-a-a…a relapse.” 

Without thinking, Jon started signing, his hands an angry flurry of gestures. “It’s not my fault! And Sam needs help. Shouldn’t we use everything we have to get him that?” 

Martin’s face softened, a brush of guilt undoing the tension in his brows and jaw bit by bit. His blue-grey eyes shifted away from glowering at Jon to looking at the prone form of Sam. The fact he was a perfect stranger to Martin meant nothing. His heart, too big for even the Lonely to smother, still bled sympathy for everyone he crossed paths with. Jon knew this. He knew this without a single power to confirm it. 

“I…Yeah. Yeah, all right. But just this once!” Martin added hurriedly, holding a finger up to Jon. “I just…really, really don’t want a repeat of…” 

“Neither do I! Obviously!” Jon signed back. “And stop saying ‘really, really’!” 

“Well, I really, really, really don’t—Hang on, you know sign language?”

The two men stared at each other. 

“No,” signed Jon. “Hang on, you know sign language?”

“Yeah, learnt it years ago when—No, stop, you…you used the Eye to Know how to sign?” 

“Not deliberately…”

“Somehow, that worries me even more.” 

Jon had been about to snap back, but a peculiar sound sliced through their hushed conversation, and his heart dropped into the cold pit of his stomach. 

A door creaked open.

And the air filled with a hollow, fractured laughter. 

From somewhere over the wall they were hiding behind, the sound of scuffling, hurried footsteps and shaking panting told them their lurking scavenger had thought better of continuing their task and scampered away. Jon wished they could follow with as much haste, but with Sam still unconscious, the awful reality of what was about to happen demanded to be addressed. 

Martin had gone pale, though his brow had knotted slightly in confusion. He recognised the sound of that damned door, of course; they’d both heard it enough during their journey from the safehouse to the Panopticon. But how?

He stared at Jon, waiting for answers. 

Jon started to sign, but a falsely jovial voice cut him off, its words curling and tangling with one another. 

“Oh, Archivist…Is it really you?”

Tendrils of curly blond ringlets dropped like a curtain between Martin and Jon, and after a beat, both men looked up. 

Just above them, a yellow door, its wooden panelling cracked and radiating with scars of green, had opened. And hanging upside-down from it, with all the glee of a child playing on the monkey bars at a playground, was the Cheshire-smiling pale face of Michael Shelley. 

Or, at least, that was who Jon thought it was at first glance. On closer inspection, he noted some elements that, even for Michael, were off. His eyes, wide and blinking far too often to be natural, housed irises that seemed to have frozen in the middle of some strange attempt at fission, splitting like cells and getting stuck in the process. One half-iris shone a brilliant yellow, where the other was a murky purple slashed through with ribbons of green. His hair, hanging in long blond curls, did not move despite the man’s odd positioning and the breeze in the air. Jon could see stiff strands of dark locks interspersed within the tangled mess. But most peculiar of all was Michael’s skin. 

His pale face and stretched hands were littered with cracks, each one painted with a dull green edge that glowed in beats. At some points, the damage opened into larger gaps, revealing darker skin swirled with purple curls. 

Michael’s head bobbed as he laughed again, the sound impossibly loud despite his sharp teeth never once parting from their clenched, lipstick-framed grin. 

“Did you miss us, Archivist?” 

Still laughing, Michael slinked down from his open door, his long hands and fingers splayed to catch himself in a handstand as he fell. But the moment his palms hit the ground, they had warped into feet, and Michael stood before them, beaming as he adjusted the lapels of his mish-mash jacket. 

Driven by instinct, Jon scrambled to his feet and put himself between the Distortion and Martin and Sam. Despite the danger, however, his need for answers pulled at his tongue, trapped as it was behind his sewn mouth. 

Michael bent at the hip, smile disappearing for the moment, and oogled Jon’s face, making the hairs on his neck stand up. “Oh? Oh dear, Archivist. Now who’s gone and done such a thing to you? No, no, that won’t do at all, now, will it? You’re no fun when you aren’t asking questions!” 

He lifted one sharp finger and, before Jon could recoil, slipped the sharp tip underneath the first stitch in the corner of Jon’s mouth. Jon made the mistake of shaking his head in a desperate attempt to communicate, but he ended up catching against the pointed finger and pulling the stitch right out of his lips. 

Jon yelped, the sound muffled by the remaining stitches and by the scuffle of Martin getting to his feet. 

Michael, meanwhile, chuckled to himself and withdrew his hand. “One down, several more to go! Of course, if you stopped wriggling and whimpering, Archivist, we could pluck them all off your face in one fell swoop…Ah! Why don’t you hold him down for us, erm…Martin, wasn’t it? Our goodness, it has been quite some time!” 

Martin took hold of Jon’s shoulders and steered him away from Michael, though he kept a watchful eye on him. 

“We’re actually on our way to a doctor,” Martin spat. “So we really don’t need your help.” 

“Don’t you?” Michael laughed again, appearing now inexplicably atop the wall they’d been crouched behind. He tilted his head, though the angle went far too wide to look natural. “We disagree. See, there are no doctors around here, and even if there were , we don’t think they’d be very keen to help the Archivist. Us, on the other hand, well…one of us actually owes him a favour now. That one could take those stitches right out! But, then again, your unconscious friend down there does look a little worse for wear…” 

Michael’s fingers unfurled to gesture down at Sam. “So how about this – we let you use one of our doors to carry your friend to the nearest doctor. And we suppose the Archivist could get his mouth opened while you’re there. We’d call ourselves nice and even then, correct, Archivist?” 

Jon frowned, a thousand questions clawing behind his teeth. His lips strained against their stitches, not much looser now despite the impromptu removal of one of them, sending needle-prick pains through the flesh around his mouth. But his unspoken question was heard all the same, as Michael laughed again. 

“You’re wondering what debt one of us owes you? Have you forgotten already? You destroyed one of us, which made the other one very happy.” 

Michael tapped a long finger against one of the larger gaps in his cracked skin. “She’s still there, of course, just as he was still there when she emerged. But he’s very pleased to be able to stretch his legs again. He’d like to say Helen sends her regards, but…she really doesn’t.” 

Michael stood up from his perch and hopped down from the wall. With a flamboyant twirl of his wrist, his claws clacked against a door handle that didn’t so much materialise in the air in front of him as it grew out of his palm. 

He opened the battered yellow door wide and stepped inside, then bent backwards to peer out at Jon, Martin, and Sam. “Entirely up to you, of course. The offer’s here. We’ll leave the door unlocked for you…!” 

Trailed by an echo of laughter, Michael disappeared once more, and the door swung shut behind him. 

Silence followed as Jon and Martin each weighed up their stance. Naturally, Martin spoke first. 

“Right, then.” He bent down and pulled Sam up over his shoulder. “You hold the door open, I’ll carry Sam.” 

Jon’s eyelids fluttered, Martin’s matter-of-fact answer stunning him. He then darted in front of the door and put his back to it, arms splayed out, shaking his head. Martin, however, just sighed and readjusted Sam with a slight bump of his shoulder. “Jon, we haven’t got a choice. You know I don’t like those halls any more than you do – I spent far too long in there. I know the risks. But…Sam needs help. And honestly, you were lucky not to run into problems just now when you were looking for me. Not only ‘cause of the weird Not-Quite-Domain bits still floating around, but…” 

Martin stopped, and Jon’s eyes narrowed. 

Martin flushed and looked away, clearing his throat. “But…erm, right. Well, you know. People. Obviously, you know, people kind of…saw your face? A lot? In their dreams and stuff, and…yeah. They might have thoughts and feelings about you.”

No, no. No, Jon knew Martin far too well to let that comment slide. But time was of the essence, and Sam really wasn’t looking good. 

Jon signed back to Martin. “We’ll pick that bit back up later. For now, yes, Sam needs help. I’ll go through the door first, make sure it is safe and actually leads somewhere useful. Then I’ll come back and get you if it is.” 

Martin shifted his weight from one leg to the other, his bottom lip jutting and betraying his discomfort at being separated from Jon again so soon. But he nodded – one singular jerking motion stilted by premature regret. “O-Okay. I don’t love the idea, but…but all right. If you’re not back in ten minutes, or if Sam gets worse, I’ll set off with him. On foot, not through the door,” he added. “I’ll have less trouble if I run into people than you will.”

Once again, Jon cocked his head in question, but Martin shook his head. “I’ll explain later. We’ve really got to get going, Jon. Hopefully Michael’s opened a path to the Wardens, o-or maybe a proper hospital!” 

The two men looked at each other for a while. 

Martin sighed. “Yeah, no, he’s probably opened a way some…horrid pit of lava eels that all have human faces or something…” 

Jon grimaced at the oddly specific nightmare, snorted a dry laugh, then turned to the broken yellow door. 

Steeling himself, he grabbed the handle – Open it, and all this will be over – a shudder of memory clawing up his spine. But this time, the door didn’t rattle. True to his word, Michael had left it unlocked. 

The door opened up, and with one last look to Martin, Jon headed inside.

──── •✧• ────

The corridor, short and strangely straight, came to an abrupt end. Jon all but fell out of the door and onto the ground, a grunt announcing his arrival to no one. 

Pushing himself up from the dirt and chastising himself for even entertaining the notion of trusting Michael, Helen, or whoever the Distortion now was, Jon brushed off his jeans and looked around. 

He recognised the ruins he stood among – a wide circle of blackened stones and charred slabs of paper that had curled together and become one. With the walls long gone, the shattered staircase that once led to the top of the Panopticon was visible from the outside. It began to climb up through the too-still air, but its path broke away within a few steps. The ground, uneven underfoot, bore gaping wounds, scorched black at the edges. 

The sight ought to have filled Jon with pure dread. Instead, an acute sadness radiated from his chest. 

The Panopticon. 

His Domain. 

Where he belonged. 

Nothing but ashes remained now. An agonising cemetery of lost knowledge and forgotten fears. 

Jon made his way forwards, heading to what used to be the door to the Magnus Institute. Some of the steps leading to the old oak doors had survived the explosion, though they shifted a little in their settings as Jon climbed. The doors, now burnt to dust, left behind a blast-broken archway. He ducked inside, taking in the sad sight of the charcoal-coated lobby. To his left, Jon could see the stairs to the top of the Panopticon more clearly. Only a handful of steps had survived, yet he found himself straying towards them and starting to climb. 

And climb.

And climb. 

And…climb?

Jon stopped. He couldn’t be climbing still. There had, at best, been ten or so steps left on that staircase. 

Yet here he was, with the air whipping his tangled hair over his face, the landscape of a ruined London stretching out further and further into the horizon with each impossible step he took. A giddy elation nearly set him running. Would the top of the tower eventually greet him once more? No, no, no, he didn’t want to be the Pupil of the Eye, he didn’t, he couldn’t. 

Jon remained where he was, wrestling with the impulse along with the confusion of how any of this was even happening. He could look down, of course. Find out what he was walking on if not the staircase. 

There was nothing he wanted less than to look down. Not out of fear that there would be nothing there and he’d fall, but out of worry that if he looked down and found nothing there, he would be robbed of his chance to ascend. 

No. No, he didn’t want that! He’d never wanted that! 

So instead of looking down, to the thrill of the Vast within him, Jon reached out with one foot and slowly put it down on what ought to have been sheer air and a long drop. 

Something solid rose to meet the sole of his foot. 

Look down, the Vast whispered with its churning stomach.

Find out, the Eye croaked with its unblinking gaze. 

Do you even know where you are? the Stranger giggled with its shifting masks. 

Jon ignored them all, rooted to the spot in shock. The desire to look down tugged below his chin. The need for answers burned within him, something that he still wasn’t sure belonged entirely to the Eye or had simply been a part of his nature all along. 

Finally, he glanced down.

And whatever he was standing on looked right back at him. 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

Jon gasped, forgetting his stitches for one awful moment. The skin around his lips tore against them, painting trickles of blood down his lips and into his mouth, but he didn’t care. He scrambled back, his hands pawing in a frantic effort to find the broken staircase again. 

But the thing looking up at him, the creature he’d walked blindly upon, growled its displeasure. Lidless eyes followed the scrambling, panicked Archivist as he tried to hurry away. Painfully green eyes that sickened Jon to the stomach with deep familiarity. 

The need to survive outweighed any growing sense of curiosity, however. With a great rumbling, the monster began to move. Jon had barely managed to find the last step of the broken staircase before he was thrown from the creature’s eye-studded back. 

He landed on his front, his mouth already coated with the sharp tang of metal, hands and feet scrabbling at the stone steps underneath in a desperate effort to get himself upright. Looking back would be a terrible idea, foolish and pointless. 

Naturally, Jon looked back. 

Rising up from its coiled slumber within the ruins of the Panopticon, a gaunt, many-limbed creature rounded upon him. Why it had to, he couldn’t begin to fathom, for brilliant green eyes crowded its pupil-black hide from head to toe, pouring down its bony back as some macabre yet beautiful tattoo. Its sharp face held no discernible features, blotted out as they were by eyeballs upon eyeballs. From its forehead and temples, greyish bones protruded upwards like some macabre crown, and between each point there shone floating eyes of light. 

Four great sheets of skin peeled up from its back, creating wings formed of thin, veined membranes and whisper-soft images of eyes. These dragonfly-like wings fluttered once, twice, filling the air with a deep buzzing in staccato bursts. 

But the creature remained upon the ground. One clawed hand grasped the broken wall at the top of the staircase Jon had landed on, another thudding down to the ground below as the creature loomed over him. 

Jon stared up at it, shaking from head to foot, his limbs locked and useless before the sight of this great demon. Worse than the monster drawing closer was its hesitation – Jon’s mind raced with a thousand possibilities of what it might do next, along with several curses for the Distortion and his own stupidity in trusting it. 

The crowned creature bowed its head further, its horrendous face now inches from Jon. Every part of him screamed at him to flee, even if it meant crawling down the remaining steps. Yet he sat there, sprawled on the staircase, watching this being’s every move. 

Why did he recognise it? He would certainly remember an encounter with such a horror, even a statement of its mention. Even in his terror, Jon couldn’t help but rack his brain, trying to find the answer. 

If the creature recognised Jon in any way, it did not show it. 

Its lower jaw began to stretch, and where its mouth ought to be, the black flesh tore open to form a wicked, ragged maw. The eyes that had been situated there loosened and tumbled backwards, landing in the creature’s throat and fusing with the flesh there, creating a dreadful tunnel of eyes that sank down its gullet. The monster drew in a deep breath, air rushing and howling, then spoke in a thousand resonating voices. 

“T̶e̴l̴l̴ ̸m̸e̸ ̸y̷o̷u̶r̴ ̴f̴e̵a̴r̸.”

Every word slammed into Jon, invisible barbed hooks burrowing through his mouth and down his throat, latching onto words he didn’t want to give life. 

But he had to. His mouth moved on its own, pulling against its stitched bonds until his lips tore themselves free. Between agonised whimpers and bubbles of blood at his lips, Jon answered. 

“I…I know, deep down, that Simon is right. In many ways, I-I think I knew before he told me. I refused to let them go. I compelled them to stay by any means necessary, and they did. When the tower fell, when Martin cut the tether between me and the Eye, I thought that they’d be trapped in some ungodly limbo with me; nothing short of what we deserved. But I-I-I was attached to more than just the Eye. I was marked by each and every Fear. I thought that, since I’d forbidden them from escaping through the web of tapes at Hill Top Road, and since they had lost their anchor to this reality in the Panopticon, then they would grab onto the last little sliver they had left. Me. B-but they were supposed to die with me. They were supposed to die with me…” 

Jon broke down in sobs, his tears falling and mixing with his blood-stained, tattered mouth. “They were supposed to die with me! But they…they kept me alive. Again and again, they seek to-to torment me a-a-and rob me of everything! My choices, my freedom, my…my life and my death! I’m scared that no matter what I choose, my path is already laid out for me. That I can’t change it. That…that all I’ll ever be, all I could ever be, is some awful herald for these insidious entities! And I can’t…I can’t…I won’t believe that…I can’t…I have to matter! My thoughts, my choices, they…they have to matter, they…!”

The monster bent down lower, its many-eyes face now practically pressed against Jon. Once more, it opened its ragged mouth, its tongue bubbled with eyeballs all staring at Jon.

“T̶e̴l̴l̴ ̸m̸e̸ ̸y̷o̷u̶r̴ ̴f̴e̵a̴r̸,” it repeated. 

Jon sniffed, quaking before the command. This time, when he spoke, it was barely more than a whisper. 

“That you’re me,” he admitted. “That you’re what I could have been.”

The monster emitted a low rumble, neither a growl nor a word. Acknowledgement, perhaps. 

Or sympathy, Jon thought. Neither felt like the better option. 

When next it spoke, the creature’s voice lowered, lightened from its compulsion, offering words to be heard rather than commanded. 

“I̶ ̴a̸m̷ ̴n̴o̵t̴ ̵w̷h̶a̷t̸ ̷y̵o̵u̷ ̶c̷o̵u̷l̵d̵ ̴h̵a̸v̸e̸ ̵b̸e̶e̶n̵,” it said, and Jon almost made the mistake of smiling with relief. But the creature continued. “I̷ ̷a̸m̵ ̴w̷h̵a̴t̸ ̶y̵o̵u̵ ̷s̴h̸o̴u̵l̶d̶ ̶h̴a̸v̸e̷ ̵b̶e̸e̶n̵.̸ ̴W̶h̸a̶t̴ ̸y̵o̶u̸ ̸s̵h̶o̸u̷l̴d̶ ̶b̵e̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̵a̵m̶ ̶w̶h̸a̶t̷ ̴i̶s̴ ̴w̶a̶i̵t̸i̵n̸g̵ ̶f̵o̶r̵ ̸y̷o̷u̸.̷ ̷A̶t̸ ̵t̷h̴e̶ ̵e̸n̶d̸ ̶o̸f̶ ̶a̵l̷l̷ ̶t̴h̵i̵s̸.̵ ̸A̸t̷ ̸t̵h̸e̴ ̸e̵n̴d̶ ̷o̶f̴ ̸e̸v̶e̶r̸y̷ ̷c̸h̸o̷i̴c̷e̵ ̷y̷o̴u̴ ̸m̴a̴k̸e̸.̸”

Jon’s entire body turned cold. 

No. No, you…you can’t be, he wanted to protest. It has to matter what I chose to do. What I want. What I…no! You can’t be all that can happen!

His voice remained trapped in his throat, caught on a thousand protestations and pleas for the monster to confess its lies. But all Jon could do was shake his head and try to push himself further and further away from the abomination, until another voice cut through. 

“Jon? Jon? Where are—Hoooooly shit!” 

It startled both Jon and the creature, and, in unison, they looked down through the empty shell of the Panopticon down into the lobby. There, standing in the rubble, craning his neck back to gawk up at the monstrous Archivist, was Martin. As though he had any chance of the creature not having seen him already, Martin gasped and ducked behind a shattered, overturned desk. 

A moment later, he peeked out over the top. 

Jon and the monster continued looking down at him. 

“Jon! Move!” Martin hissed, waving a hand towards himself. “Quickly!” 

A sad amusement radiated from the creature, and it began to turn away from Jon, moving to face Martin. 

No. No, no, no, get away from him!

The frozen dam burst within Jon, bringing a flood of adrenaline that unlocked every fibre of his body. He threw himself up to his feet and bolted down the stairs, skidding into the lobby and darting towards Martin. He grabbed his partner by the shoulders and tried to shove him back through the doorway. 

“We need to go. Now!” Jon said, not risking looking at what the creature was doing. 

“Yeah we do, and— Jesus, Jon, your mouth!” 

“It’s fine, go!” 

But despite everything, the monster did not give chase. It did not strike. 

It simply watched as Jon and Martin fled. Its eyes bore into the back of Jon’s skull as he scampered away out the archway, down the steps and into the vacant street again, seeking out the broken yellow door once more. 

Chest heaving with panicked breaths, Jon yanked open the door and stepped aside, pushing Martin in and then throwing himself into the corridor. Before the door shut, however, he caught one last glimpse of the monstrous Archivist. 

It stared at him, still nestled within the ruins of the Panopticon; the great dragon slain by the lonely hero before it could take flight. Then, without warning or words, its form wavered and began to peel away. Great petals fluttered from its body, yellowed and shot through with ink – papers, Jon realised. Thousands and thousands of pages, each one singing in silence to Jon, captivating him in a hypnotic trance so potent that he took a step towards the door. 

Statements. 

The monster had all but disappeared before the door finally clicked shut, cutting Jon off from the remnants of his Domain. 

──── •✧• ────

“...Are we going to talk about that?”

Jon ignored Martin’s question again. He kept his face doggedly ahead, staring down the endless corridor. Not one single part of his proposed topic of conversation appealed to Jon. The monster. The ruins. The statements in the wind. 

The fact the place had filled him with terror and delight. 

He sighed. “This corridor was a lot shorter on the way through. When I next see Michael, I swear, I’m going to wring his neck and—” 

“Jon.” 

Martin hurried ahead of him, blocking his way. Blue-grey eyes shifted from cloudy skies to steely waters, keeping Jon trapped in a whirlpool. “What was that thing?”

“Nothing! Just…an illusion. The ‘nightmare zones’, the echoes of Domains, they’re still… weird.” Jon stepped around Martin and waved him off. “It was trying to scare me, but there’s nothing to feed anymore.”

Yes there is, something hissed behind his ear. 

“Jon, if the Domains are still here in any capacity, that’s worrying! Surely they should have disappeared entirely when the Fears did.” 

“The Fears didn’t, Martin!” 

Jon stopped and whirled around, his outburst fractured by shame rather than anger. It only doubled when confronted with Martin’s shocked expression. 

“N-no…No, come on, you don’t actually believe what Simon was saying before?” Martin gave a half-hearted laugh. “He was just…y’know, trying to get his way. That’s all. The world’s back to normal, Jon. Mostly. If the Fears were still around—”

“Martin, where’s Sam?” 

Jon decided to cut Martin off, lacking the desire to explain or argue over what had become staggering clear to Jon in recent weeks. If Martin wanted to remain in denial, well, Jon wouldn’t be the one to take that from him yet. He could hardly blame him for wanting some semblance of peace after all, even if it was an illusion. 

Martin hurried to keep pace with Jon. “He’s right by the door. I didn’t want to risk bringing him in, in case Michael had set a trap a-a-and you’d got stuck. I figured if I walked into it too, Sam’s best chance would be to stay there, and maybe someone else would find him. But we’re heading back now, so…” 

Jon swallowed, his nerves bubbling nausea all along the back of his lungs and up his throat. “Right. Except…Martin, this corridor.”

His footsteps faltered, and he came to a halt, swaying slightly as exhaustion began to make itself known at last. Martin’s hand pressed against his shoulder, keeping him upright. 

“How long was it to get to…to wherever that was before?” Martin asked. 

“About thirty paces, give or take. You?”

“About the same.”

The two of them looked down the stretched hall before them, the door at the other side barely more than a speck. 

“Jon?” A touch of panic crept into Martin’s voice. Jon shook his head and started walking again. 

“It’ll be all right, Martin. If Michael knows what’s good for him” – Jon cast a sharp sideways glance at the wall to his right, catching a flutter of blond hair in the edge of the mirror hanging there – “he’ll let us out sooner rather than later. Unless he wants to have one more thing in common with Helen…”

“C-can you still do that? The smiting thing?” Martin asked, falling into pace next to Jon. “Can you even See him in here? ‘Cause I’ll be honest, I’m…I’m starting to really worry about Sam now.” 

“He’ll be all right.”

“But we could be stuck in here for days.”

“Martin…”

“O-Or weeks! What if no one finds him! I mean, people still walk around in London, you know, Georgie said people are still scavenging and are actually getting closer and closer to the London Exclusion Zone, which is really making things difficult for her and the Wardens. Oh, erm, the London Exclusion Zone is what they’re calling the area around the Panopticon. Georgie said the worst of what was left behind all sort of congregated there. Wait, actually, was that…was that where this corridor led to?”

“I suspect so,” Jon said. The door on the horizon remained stubbornly far away. If anything, Jon was sure the damned thing was getting further from them. “But I think right now, we need to worry about where this one is taking us…” 

──── •✧• ────

Chapter Text

The corridor stretched on and on and on, and despite knowing the fruitlessness of it all, Jon kept putting one foot in front of the other. But the door stayed its maddening distance from them. Sometimes, just to spite them, the damned thing appeared to hop even further away. Every time it did so, a whispering curl of laughter, like tumbling clouds drifting on the ground instead of the sky, would sound from the edges of the mirrors that lined the hallways. 

Jon stopped, hoping once again to convince Martin to rest. Neither of them needed to physically, despite the days of wandering they had endured – the Distortion saw to that. But mentally? 

“I need to sit down,” Jon announced, moving over to the side of the corridor and letting himself slide to the floor.

Martin stopped, but he remained on his feet. Jon had catalogued every evolution in the man’s expression over the many sleepless hours spent walking Michael and Helen’s damned winding pathways. Rising worry – would they make it back in time for Sam? Then sharp, crescendoing panic interspersed with bolts of running – Sam needed them! Then, a plodding pace, holding his head in his hands – this was all his fault, he had muttered over and over again. He’d left Sam behind. He’d thought he’d be safer there than in the corridors, thought Michael or Helen was on their side. 

All the stages had ended with a tirade of self-loathing, berating himself for his decision and apologising to Sam. 

“Jon, we need to keep going,” Martin said. “We have to get back for Sam. Look…I can carry you if you’re tired, maybe? But we really can’t stop.” 

“Martin, it’s been days…I…”

I don’t think we’re getting back in time, Martin. 

No. No, Jon couldn’t plunge that particular blade into Martin’s chest. Not when he was already blaming himself for not bringing Sam with him. But it seemed Jon had worn his answer on his face, because Martin’s eyes began to swim with tears. 

“H-He might still be there! Maybe he even woke up, I-I mean, he just fainted, right? And…and if we make it back…Christ, if we just knew if he was—”

Martin stopped. His eyes widened, seeing an answer before him. 

Jon started getting to his feet, already shaking his head. “No. No, no, no. Martin, don’t even think about asking me.”

Martin stepped forwards, hands outstretched, imploring. “But could you? Could you, you know, See if Sam’s okay? If you’ve still got some of your abilities, maybe—”

“They’re a fraction of what they used to be, Martin, a-a-and even if they weren’t, I don’t think encouraging their use is entirely fair.” Jon stepped back, the mirror on the wall behind him jostling as he bumped into it. “Especially if…if Simon’s right. If they’re all…trapped inside of me.” 

Jon swallowed down the nausea at the thought. The less they talked about the Fears the better. But that wasn’t the only thing that had stirred up discomfort. His bare-faced lie to Martin had a hand in it too. 

Ever since leaving the ruins of the Panopticon, since bathing in its memories of despair and power, since locking eyes with the shadow of the Archivist, the Watcher had ignited behind his own eyes. His powers were still diminished, yes, but to call them a fraction had been an understatement at best. 

“Besides,” Jon continued, starting to walk away again if only to cheer Martin up, “it’s different in other Fears’ domains. Seeing in the Distortion’s hallways has always been rather, erm…hit or miss. Chances are, whatever I saw might not be the truth of the matter.” 

Martin huffed a sigh, but he followed along in silence for a while, content with Jon’s answer for now. 

“...What about the mirrors?” Martin asked suddenly, glancing around at the many reflective surfaces surrounding them. “Didn’t Michael – err, the real one – smash a bunch of them? Mess the Distortion up?”

“During the ritual, yes. We’ve passed a few of them. Smashing them now probably won’t do anything…or worse, it might do a lot,” Jon mumbled, eyeing the mismatched array that lined the walls either side of them. “I’m not sure we want to annoy the Distortion when we’re in its realm. Or, indeed, its very existence. This is very much its turf.” 

“So, what, we just keep walking and hope for the best?” Martin snapped. 

“We keep walking and wait for Michael – or Helen, or both of them, whatever the situation is now – to get bored and give us up. And we stop entertaining them in the process,” Jon said pointedly, jerking his head towards one of the mirrors. It had chuckled at Martin’s outburst. 

Jon then smirked, an idea of his own forming. “Or…we wait for me to get bored and start trying to dabble with the Spiral’s powers. I mean, we could test it out, see if Simon’s theory is right. I must admit, this lengthy stay in the Distortion itself seems to be helping it tremendously. Perhaps I can start with shifting things around a little bit in here…?”

The chuckle from before blossomed into peals of laughter. Echoes of both Helen’s taunting and Michael’s headache-spawning giggle twisted in the air around them, vibrating against the now-shuddering glass of the mirrors. 

To the right of Jon, a long-fingered hand wrapped around one of the frames from the inside out. Another hand clawed around another, several mirrors down. 

“Now, now, Archivist. No need to make this territorial!” 

A booted foot stretched out from a mirror behind Martin, but Michael’s head emerged from one hanging impossibly on the ceiling. The Distortion grinned down at the pair. “I assure you, Archivist, if you attempt to resculpt me, I will fight back. And though you might be a touch closer to the Spiral now, you’re still far too certain and recognisable to fully wield its abilities. Me, on the other hand…”

Michael finally appeared in full, climbing his way up from the floor beneath them but landing on the carpet with a light thud, as though he’d fallen from the ceiling. He loomed over the two men, bowing with a stiff bend from his hip. 

He peered up at Jon from between curtains of blond and black ringlets, his grin both Michael and Helen’s in equal measure. “I’m still very much a master of my craft, Archivist. Perhaps even more so now, thanks to how deftly you unravelled me. I must admit, weaving me back together from all those scattered pieces was…frustrating at first, but exhilarating later. Truly becoming a stranger to all…even myself! Neither him nor her nor them nor it…”

“Enough, Michael.” Jon tried to puff himself up, dredging up what little authority might remain within him as the Archivist. “Or Helen, o-or whatever you’re calling yourself now.”

“Whichever bothers you more…” Michael smiled and fluttered his eyelashes. 

Jon bared his teeth, his fists clenching at his side. No matter which form the Distortion took, it always seemed to delight in infuriating him. Not only with its words and taunting, but its mere existence, standing as the enemy to knowing something for certain. Not quite as perfectly as the Stranger, but a creeping doubt in one’s own knowledge, or going mad from learning the answer to a terrible truth. That in and of itself only cut Jon up more, that something irritated him not through choice, but because it annoyed the Eye. 

“Fine. Michael,” Jon said, choosing the name he childishly assumed would annoy the Distortion more. Helen had always been keen to establish her identity and be acknowledged for it, where Michael had gone to great lengths to shirk any attempt to label what or who he was. Jon intended to brand him however he could. “You recall what I did to you before, don’t you? Or to Helen, at least. Turning the Eye’s gaze upon you, seeing every inch of your sad, failed existence, knowing every way in which you crawled so desperately close to success with your ritual, only to have it shattered at the final moment. Having the knowledge shoved into your cyclone mind that even if Gertrude hadn’t found your ritual site that day, even if Michael hadn’t walked into your corridors and derailed the whole process, that actually…you were destined to fail anyway. That everything you are and aren’t amounts to nothing in service to the Spiral.”

Michael’s lips parted in apparent shock, and hand hovering over his chest, wrist limp and letting his elongated branch-like fingers dangle. “Dear me! That is so very rude of you, Archivist. Don’t you agree that’s rude?” Michael asked Martin, bending over backwards to do so. “I mean, here you are, wanting to ask me for help letting you out of here to find your sorry little friend, and here’s the once-and-future Archivist…insulting me. Is that how he always asks for help?” 

Martin swallowed. “W-well, it’s not really asking for help when you stuck us in here in the first place.”

“I did not! You both walked in of your own accord.” Michael twisted his head 180 degrees, bones cracking and skin crinkling, so despite being bent over backwards, his face was upright before Martin. “I can hardly be held accountable for that. You know better than anyone that my corridors are lively.” 

He laughed again at that and then straightened himself up by folding in further. A headache began to blossom in Jon’s temples, his patience fraying with every passing second. 

But before he could open his mouth to attempt to threaten the entity again, Michael sighed and shrugged. “Have it your way. Frankly, I suspect the Eye and the Spiral might be feeling a tad better now after all this, so I’ve completed my little task. I’m off to collect my payment. I’ll do you a kindness and let you out to collect yours too.” 

He stepped aside, revealing the broken yellow door had jumped the great long length of the corridor and was now standing right before them. 

Michael, meanwhile, gave a great bow and stepped back into a broken mirror. As he raised himself up from the bow, Jon noticed how the shattered parts of his face moved like a kaleidoscope, settling into a more feminine appearance. His hair darkened and straightened, though flecks of blond still shone through. Before the entity fully disintegrated into the shattered surface, Helen winked at Jon and flashed a dazzling smile of sharp teeth. 

“See you around, boys!” 

And with that, Michael – or Helen now, Jon presumed – disappeared. Behind him, the door creaked open, and Martin’s hand found its way to Jon’s arm. 

“Come on! Let’s go before he…she…either of them changes their mind!” 

“R-right.”

But Michael’s parting words rattled loose something Simon had said, and Jon’s torment happily batted the discomfort around in his head as Martin led them both to the door. 

But they’re alive, my boy, and if we’re going to fix any of this damned mess, you’re going to have to be the one to feed them.

He almost tripped over the threshold, caught in his thoughts as he was.

How many had he fed now? The Vast, for certain. Jon shoved away the memory of that poor man’s fall. The Eye, likely by default. And now the Spiral. Had the days spent in his cell at the O.I.A.R. nourished the Lonely? All of it amounted to dregs and drips at best, indirect scraps of whatever lingered in the world, yes…but how much would they need to overwhelm him? To escape him and flee to their followers once again and enjoy a banquet of fear to feed upon once again? 

When had Martin’s hand slipped from his arm? Jon blinked, the door swinging shut in the air behind him and disappearing from view, leaving him in the eerie quiet of the ruins of London.

It was then that Martin’s sobs reached him. 

His partner was kneeling on the ground, his whole frame shaking as he wept. He kept shaking his head, sniffing and muttering to himself in desperate pleas Jon couldn’t quite make out. 

“Martin?” Jon started forwards, a scarred hand outstretched towards Martin’s shoulder. “What…Oh. Oh…Oh God…” 

He drew close enough to see over Martin’s shoulder. There, cradled in the man’s arms, was Sam. Pale. Limp. Lifeless. 

Jon might’ve acted, checked for a pulse himself or made a frantic attempt to resuscitate him, were it not for the ghost-like black root snaking out from where Michael’s door had closed all the way up to Sam’s torso.

Behind Jon’s dread-cold heart, the End gave a sigh of contentment. 

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