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bubonickitten · 4 years

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Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Chapter 3 is up!

Chapter 1 (tumblr // AO3) | Chapter 2 (tumblr // AO3)

Full text + content warnings under the cut.

CW: brief claustrophobia; some grief and loss stuff; a few more instances of casual misgendering (not malicious; just some wrong pronouns here and there due to the speaking-in-statements thing, but thought I'd mention it just in case); a single LORGE spider. Also, Jon gets to do one (1) swear, as a treat. SPOILERS through MAG 169.

Chapter 3: Rift

Jon doesn’t remember the hill being this steep.

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it’s not like he has anything left to lose.

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

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

He waits for the Distortion’s inevitable appearance, determined not to let her startle him this time. As if on cue, a door creaks open on the ceiling above him.

“Interesting.” Without preamble, Helen lands noiselessly on her feet beside Jon and peers around curiously. “I wondered whether Annabelle would let me in.”

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

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

Honestly, that’s mostly because Jon hasn’t figured it out yet, either. He only Knows that this is where he needs to be.

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

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

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

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

“What are you looking for?”

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

“I won’t be ignored, Jon –”

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

“You aren’t being very kind to me right now, you know.” She tries to sound wounded, but really she just sounds pleased to have gotten a reaction from him.

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

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

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

And yet…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon chuckles quietly to himself and takes another step forward.

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

“A scar in reality –”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon flashes an entirely unapologetic smile.

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

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

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

God, she’s persistent.

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

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

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

“There was nothing left to save.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I live for the monologue,” he deadpans.

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

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

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

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

Jon reaches out and grips the doorknob with one hand.

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

“Thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose.”

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

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

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

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

And, oh, it does.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a nice voice.

“– really need you –”

A safe voice.

“– Jon.”

Wait.

“– bad. I – how much longer we can –”

Wait, it’s – that’s Martin’s voice.

“We – I need you.”

It’s Martin. Martin!

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

“And I – I know that you’re not –”

Oh.

“I know there’s no way to –”

Oh, no.

“But we need you, Jon.”

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

“Jon, please, just – please.”

No. No, no, no, no –

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

Martin, I’m here!

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

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here –

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

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

“I – I can’t –”

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

“I’m – I’m actually with him now.”

Martin!

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

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

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”

Martin, don’t –

“Yeah. Sure thing.”

Martin!

“I’m sorry.”

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

“Goodbye, Jon.”

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

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

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

Fuck.

End Notes:

me: i could go into some long-winded exposition about the space-time continuum also me: OR, alternatively, i can handwave it and say It's The Power Of Love, Don't Even Worry About It

anyway, my gay little heart knows what it's about.

- Jon’s dialogue is taken from the statements in the following episodes: MAG 146; 054; 151; 139; 168; 101; 134; 010; 037; 008; 019; 167; 108; 103; 146; 048; 013; 146.

- Jon gets some original verbal dialogue starting next chapter. Thought I'd mention it just in case anyone is getting tired of the Archive-speak (though there will still be some of that). :P

- Psst, if you want to read a detour about Jon and Martin's talk about Annabelle and free will and Not Obsessing Over The Web, I wrote that here. (I'm linking it here because it actually originally started as part of this fic but I decided to make it its own thing because my ADHD brain ran with it and it was waaaaay too much of a tangent sdsdhshgh)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonmartin #long post #spoilers through MAG 169 #tma spoilers

17 notes · View notes

monstersqueen · 5 years

Text

CAiL to TMA, episode 158 - Panopticon (s04e38)

[ETA: i just basically threw my reaction on a post as soon as i read the title. Also i’m scared and near tears]

Panopticon? really?

Events leading to the disappearance -wait what?

Performance: not!Sasha AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Ok, time to listen

Martin: That’s a Leitner

Peter: Yes!

Martin: And the blood on it?

Peter: that’s Leitner’s too!

....is it my sense of humor of peter’s that’s horrible.

Great, Elias has ran away. of course.

“the current occupant - jonah Magnus, of course’ WHAT

‘i need to kill him’ ‘yes. don’t worry though, i brought a knife’

...yeah taht’s sure is the probem. and te solution

‘Where are his eyes?’

WHAT IS HAPPENING OH GOD

...WAIT ARE WE FINALLY GOING TO LEARN ABOUT GERTRUDE’S DEATH???? NOW ???? ARE YOU SERIOUS

ok i love gertrude’s tone on ‘elias’ . You can hear the quotation marks

WHAT THE FUCK SHE TRIED TO BURN HIS BODY????

‘so either shoot me or -’ *gunshot*

...i’m not surprised except i am

well i’m glaf there’s no delay between us confirming that theory and everyone else learning it. it was time

‘can a man just watch his own death’ ‘what! hwta! how(re you evn here’

oh, martin.

Martin : No.

?????oh thank god. oh my god what is going to go wrong now. am i misinterpretating. please martin come back

DAISY PLEASE NO

....wait did martin’s lack of self-esteem just saved the world? well probably just helped me not become a pawn between peter and elias but. what. nope.

Wait no before i hear what comes after ‘it’s time’ - what if the whole thing is just peter and elias making a bet. is that the kind of things those assholes gamble on. i mean i’d believe it.

did martin just get disappeared into the lonely??

also this whole ‘oh no you haven’t won yet’ is ABSOLUTELY MAKING TI SOUND LIKE A BET I’M SORRY.

‘my you have grown’

...this is about the watcher’s crown isn’t it. i mean elias and jon in the panopticon with no one else?

time to test jon, i guess, after martin :(

....oh god jon looking into the lonely? he escaped the buried and looked into the dark this season!!! THAT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA!!!

also. for martin? please.

(though honestly i wish he WAS presented with the option ‘start the watcher’s crown or lose martin’. i would LOVE to see him chose there. but if you don’t present him with the option - just guide him towards not asking the questions - welll sure he’s going to go further and go for martin. I’M WORRIED)

----

Well. Fuck.

#myposts #continued adventures in listening to the magnus archives #fuck fuck fuck #tma spoilers #I AM NOT SURE I'M OK #the magnus archives

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tune-collective · 7 years

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James' Tim Booth on 'Sit Down' Soundtracking New 'Game of Thrones' Trailer: 'You're Very Happy to Be in Their Hands'

Fans getting their first taste of the upcoming seventh season of HBO’s flagship action drama Game of Thrones via the show’s new trailer were greeted with an extremely unexpected musical accompaniment: a haunting remix of “Sit Down,” the early ’90s anthem from British alt-rock group James.

Though James is likely more familiar to American audiences via their 1993 smash “Laid,” it was actually “Sit Down” that marked their biggest hit in their home country, peaking at No. 2 on the U.K. charts in 1991. And while the group has licensed “Laid” for many movies and TV shows in the past — including for several of the films in the American Pie franchise — they’ve been relatively restrained with allowing use of the more serious “Sit Down.” But, as huge Thrones watchers, they couldn’t resist the opportunity.

“We trusted the makers of Game of Thrones with ‘Sit Down,’ because quite frankly, they haven’t put a foot wrong,” frontman Tim Booth says. “It’s the best adaptation of a book that I’ve ever seen, and stands alongside it as genius.”

Booth discussed the trailer, as well as his favorite Thrones characters, and James’ progress on their next album — the band’s 15th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxWfvtnHtS0

Can you tell me how and when you were first approached about the Game of Thrones trailer?

Maybe four months ago, we were told they wanted to use “Sit Down” in the trailer. We had protected that song for years from advertising, because we knew it was dear to a lot of people’s hearts, so we only allowed it to be used in a couple of things. But Game of Thrones… Jimmy [Jim Glennie] — our bass player, who I wrote this with, along with two other guys — Jimmy’s read all the books, I’ve read all the books, I’ve seen the show a couple of times with my wife, with my kids, and I love it.

I’ve written about it actually. The NME interviewed me, and they had a big piece interviewing musicians who loved Game of Thrones and what they anticipated the outcome to be.

What predictions did you make?

It was the last series, and I got the Jon Snow bit right — coming back and all of that. It’s not predictable; that’s what’s so good about the show. For me, you’ve got Harry Potter and you’ve got Dickens, and then you’ve got Game of Thrones in terms of the anticipation in which people are waiting for the next installment. It’s an old tradition of that level, around the world, people really want to know what’s next. And they’ve managed to maintain through killing off major characters to being unpredictable. Being more true to life than true to morality, or how we wish things to turn out. The show is more about how things usually turn out, which is never quite as you expect, and with a few casualties on the way.

Did they say anything about why they wanted to use “Sit Down”?

Not really. You know, we’ve been doing this for a long time. You get some amazing offers, and a lot of them fall away at the last minute. I kind of assume they probably had six songs, that they told six bands they were going to use [their song]. We totally assumed they would “medieval” the song — they would take it and do something radical with it that fit their style more. We were looking forward to it.

I remember the episode with Joffrey’s wedding, where they have Sigur Rós playing at the bar at his wedding, and he kind of throws coins at them and thinks they’re crap. It’s a brilliant piece of music, that piece that Sigur Rós did, and we quite hoped that that would happen to us, because we lived with that song for a long time, so we’re quite happy to hear adventurous versions of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew7Zkkucos8

Do you know who did the remixing of it? Were you involved with that process at all?

No. It’s such a great show, you’re very happy to be in their hands at that point. They did do a weird version, that was probably more in keeping with their style. We got sent that probably a month ago, sung by a female singer, and you couldn’t tell it was “Sit Down” until you heard the chorus lyric. It was so different, the chords were different, everything was different about it. It was pure Game of Thrones. We thought, “Great! Bonkers! Fantastically mad!” We were OK with that.

And then about a week ago we got a message saying the producers love James, they’re really attached to the original and want to use the original. And they went back to the original and stripped it down. It took awhile to find the original — they went to a lot of work, because that was about four records companies back [for us]. So they got that, and they effected it and slowed it down a little bit. But it’s pretty much “Sit Down” as we recorded it, and there’s no additions to it, no changes — they’ve just taken a few things out, distorted the guitar a bit, put the vocal back a bit.

When you think of a song in a Game of Thrones context, do you see any sort of themes or lyrics to the song that would speak to the show-runners and make them think, “Oh, this would make sense to lay over shots of Jon Snow and Daenerys”?

I mean, you can see what they’re connecting the song to — it’s the throne, basically, and who’s going to get the throne. So yeah, they’ve used those lyrics, and they clearly loved the lyric “Those who find they’re touched by madness.” Cersei [Lannister] certainly seems to be heading in that direction.

You mention that you’ve given the OK for “Sit Down” to be used in a couple other sync opportunities before. Can you think of any off the top of your head?

No, I can’t. We’ve not let anyone use it for years. It varies from song to song — there are some songs where you go, “OK, this is a light-ish song, it can be used for whatever.”

It seems like “Laid” has been used in a number of movies before.

We’ve had no problem with [licensing] “Laid” — it’s a humorous, 2:20 burst of wit, hopefully. So you know it’s not going to damage someone’s love for that song, hearing it in a different context. Whereas there’s a couple of songs — there’s a James song called “Moving On,” which is about my mom dying, and people are playing it at funerals and people are using it in hospices in England for children who are dying. We’re not going to let that song be used for anything that would abuse that for people, because it’s found its own way to people that need that song.

And “Sit Down” to some degree was a song that people needed, lyrically. You could see in Britain when it came out. It caused a huge stir. We refused to release it in America — the American record company came to us two years after we produced it, and we were like, “No, that’s in our past now. We’re moving on, we’re doing other songs.” So we actually refused to release it in America. It ended up on an album, but it never came out as a single.

Which was economically foolish of us. But that’s James — we’ve always followed our nose, our music… if somebody came along and offered us millions, we might have our arms twisted! But a lot of the time, we say no.

Do you have any favorite characters on the show or plot lines you’re looking forward to next season?

Of course. Tyrion is a big favorite, I think. Definitely Daenerys you want to see on the throne, because she’s the only ruler who seems to be born to it, who seems to have all the qualities that you’d like to follow. If you’re going to follow a leader, Daenerys. Jon Snow is impressive, but he’s a bit stupid. What he did in the battle [against Ramsey Bolton last season] was dumb, so you wouldn’t say he looks like a great leader compared to Daenerys.

And this whole show seems quite — for all its violence, and people complaining about the level of sexuality — it’s very strong women characters who are coming to the throne. You definitely again want Daenerys to be the one that comes out on top. But you know, the great thing about the writing is, there’ll be a price to pay if that happens. You’ll get this, but you’ll also get this. Anything can happen.

And you guys are currently working on a new album. When can we expect that?

Yeah, I don’t know — we’re messing around with it right now. We’ve got all kinds of things going on. James is, for a band that’s 34 years old, we’re kind of having a re-peak. We sold more tickets last year in Britain than we sold when we were massive in the ’90s. We sold 50,000 tickets in a short space of time.

That’s what we’re really proud of, as a band that’s been going on for so long, to be a band that’s still making music that’s challenging us — we’re definitely making music that we’ve never done before. We’re moving into that category of aging acts that still seem to have their creativity intact. That’s always been our goal. It was always like, “Well, can you keep maintaining a standard?,” and we’re really proud of what we’ve done. We know what we’ve created and we’re continuing to do it.

All of our songs are written through improvisation. “Sit Down” was written in a 20-minute jam, and we were laughing so much we had to stop playing it because we knew we’d written a big song. We improvise our new songs and we love our new songs equally, but every so often, you get something that comes through that’s a clear gem. The lyrics weren’t complete in 20 minutes, but I had the chorus and the initial jam and I had bits of the lyric, enough to tell me where it was going. Literally, we were laughing, because we knew we were downloading a really big song and we were giggling so much we couldn’t continue to play it.

This article originally appeared on Billboard.

http://tunecollective.com/2017/04/01/james-tim-booth-sit-soundtracking-new-game-thrones-trailer-youre-happy-hands/

#booth #game #hands #happy #james #sit #soundtracking #thrones #tim #trailer

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bubonickitten · 4 years

Link

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3

Chapter 5 full text & content warnings below the cut:

CWs for Chapter 5: flashbacks re: canon-typical trauma (each of Jon's encounters with the Fears is mentioned, some more detailed than others - worms and Circus-related horror in particular); brief mentions of eye horror/gouging. SPOILERS through S5.

Chapter 5: Second Chance

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

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

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

“Jonathan Sims, was that a joke?”

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

“Not like that you don’t.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh… no?”

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

“So you… you know where you are, then?”

“Yes.”

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

“You’ve got mud all over you.”

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

“And the blood?”

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

“Right.”

The awkward silence drags on a bit too long.

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

“Jon, is it really you?”

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

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

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

“How do you –”

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

“Jon –”

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

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

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

“Jon, I’ve never even spoken to him.”

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

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

“I understand.”

“You… you think you can wake up, then?”

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

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

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

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

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

“And why not?”

“Because Elias is probably watching us right now.”

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon abruptly stops pacing and stares transfixed at his feet.

“It sounds like there’s a ‘but.’”

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

“You’re sure?”

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

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

“I know.”

“You could hear me?”

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

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

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

“Well, have you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Of course.”

“And I can’t be your only support.”

“I wouldn’t want that.”

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

“Melanie.”

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

“See? Cryptic.”

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

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

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

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

“I…”

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

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

“Right.”

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

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

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

“Are you sure you’ll be able to?”

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

“A bit,” Georgie says, not unkindly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon almost says no, but…

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

“What, Jon?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No pressure, he thinks to himself grimly, and he heads for the door.

Time is difficult here.

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

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

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

It took a long time for Jon to stop waiting for the moment when he would lose his agency and become the Watcher again. A small part of him is still waiting for the rug to be ripped out from under him again, but for the most part, he’s allowed himself to relax into it and silence his customary pessimism. He still isn’t sure exactly why he has so much control now. It’s a… well, not best-case scenario – that would be freedom from the dreams altogether, for himself and for the others – but it’s still an unexpected boon that he never would have even imagined. Every time he searches for an answer, though, he gets nothing but noise and a blinding headache.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin paling, fading, vanishing –

“Are you scared, Jon?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect.”

– almost disappeared, almost lost, almost alone.

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

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

It might not matter whether Jon’s body encounters those final five marks. As long as he remembers receiving them, his consciousness is still scarred by all Fourteen of the Dread Powers. What’s more, traversing the ruined earth retraced those marks several times over, branding him more deeply with every passage through an Entity’s domain. That might be more than enough to initiate the Watcher’s Crown Ritual.

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

And if that’s the case, Jon has once again played right into Jonah’s hands.

He can only hope that Jonah doesn’t Know it – and even if he doesn’t, it seems foolish to hope that he won’t find out eventually.

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

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

Jon groans and covers his face with his forearms, still lying on his back in the mud. He had been helping Naomi out of her grave, as had become the routine, but she had lost her footing just as she reached the top. In his scramble to catch her, he had lost balance and toppled in after her, and now they’re both stuck down here. Jon sits up and half-heartedly wipes the dirt off his hands, to little effect.

“Break any bones, old man?”

“It’s a dream, Naomi. Also, I’m only thirty.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

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

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

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

“No luck with the anchor?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Are you going to adopt her?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That one was unintentional, actually.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Spooky.”

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

“You really are a buzzkill.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tessa usually declines his company, but occasionally she’ll wave him over and immediately launch into a discussion about neural networks or machine learning or some other tech-related subject that’s been on her waking mind. Well, it’s usually more of a one-sided lecture than anything else, but Jon always finds himself riveted, listening hungrily as Tessa shines light on an unfamiliar subject. The first few times he asked follow-up questions, she took it as feigned interest or ridicule, but once she realized that he was actually interested and not just humoring her out of guilt, she began to brighten every time he offered a new tangent for her to explore. He wouldn’t call them friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she seems to enjoy talking to someone who doesn’t tune her out when she begins to ramble. If nothing else, it’s better than devouring a computer.

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

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

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

On the one hand, it’s probably a good sign that Jon doesn’t have as much control over the Knowing as he did in the future. On the other hand, it’s like having his wings clipped after learning to fly, and he hates it. The Beholding did withhold some things from him during the apocalypse, but for the most part, he had unfettered access to an ocean of knowledge – and it’s maddening to have it restricted once again.

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

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

“How is Melanie?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A bit, yeah.”

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

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

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

“Tunnels-only information?”

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

“First of February.”

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

“How do you know?”

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

“Right.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left alone with his own thoughts again, Jon immerses himself in worrying about Martin and a rotating litany of what-ifs.

End Notes:

Sorry this chapter isn't very plot-heavy!! It was getting really long and I had to split it into two chapters. Things will move along at the beginning of Chapter 6. It should be ready before the weekend. (Probably by tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm almost done with it.)

There are two excerpts from the show in this one. The clip of Jonah's statement is from MAG 160; the brief "Are you scared?" interaction is from MAG 158.

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonathan sims #georgie barker #and others #tma spoilers #long post

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