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voiceless-terror · 4 years ago

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Perchance to Dream

@aspecarchivesweek Day Three: Drinks

Characters: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood, Tim Stoker, Sasha James

Jon comes out to Martin. Twice.

(Ft. Kiss-Averse Jonathan Sims and Hamlet References)

__________

“Ugh, no thank you.”

Martin pauses. Sasha and Tim titter behind their hands.

And Jon, well. He’s got a look of vehement disgust written across his features, not unlike when he’s laying into what he claims is a fabricated statement. Martin can feel his face turning red at the words.

Getting Jon to come out for drinks had been the hard part. It’s one month into his tenure as Head Archivist, and everyone’s starting to feel the scope of the task ahead of them. Tim thought a ‘monthiversary’ drink was in order, and the only way to get Jon to come out was to threaten him with some sort of ill begotten information, the likes of which Martin couldn’t hear behind the closed door. Ten minutes later, Jon emerged, looking grumpier than usual (and very dashing) with a scarf around his neck. And now he sat next to him in the cozy pub booth, Martin trying very hard to remain stock-still because Jon’s leaning into his side. Perhaps he’s cold? Either way, Martin isn’t going to discourage it.

But then he’d had a few drinks and they all loosened up; even Jon’s laugh came easier. And Martin- well, Martin’s opening up a bit more than usual, chattering about his time in the library and bolstered by the smiles he receives in turn. Tim changed track to the personal, regaling them with his latest outdoor adventure while Sasha and Jon gave witty, sarcastic commentary. But then Tim directed the conversation towards him, and they seemed relatively interested in his poetry. He even felt comfortable enough to rattle out a few lines from his phone in a desperate hope to impress, and he stupidly chose one that referenced ‘lips like a rosebud’ and Jon reacts like he’s read a particularly saucy bit of a smut novel aloud. How embarrassing.

“Whew,” Tim whistles lowly, folding his arms behind his neck with an exaggerated wince. “Harsh, boss.”

“No, that’s not it,” Jon says, shaking his head and putting a hand on Martin’s arm. Putting a hand on Martin’s arm. Putting a hand- “Martin, your poetry is fine, if a bit derivative.” Jon thinks his poetry is fine and he’s got his small, fine-boned hand on Martin’s arm and god, he’s got a poem about that too, somewhere in his phone-

Tim guffaws, slamming a hand on the table and startling Sasha. “What a compliment!”

“It’s just…kissing. Lips. Ugh.” Jon smashes his fork rather violently into a dumpling, sending bits of food flying across the table, one of which hit Tim directly above his eye. “I eat with my mouth.”

“Wise observation.”

“Very astute of you.”

Martin would join in on the banter but Jon’s hand is still on his arm and his warm weight is pressing into his side. Honestly, what’s Jon playing at? He could rip the poetry to shreds in front of him but as long as that hand remains on his arm he’d just sit there, not saying a word. Hell, he’d probably even agree.

“So the bossman doesn’t like kisses,” Tim says, taking an obnoxiously loud sip of whatever fruity beverage he’d decided on. “Is that why you ripped down all of my mistletoe back in research?”

Jon. Mistletoe. Hand still on arm.

“I don’t like any of it,” Jon says, removing his hand from Martin’s arm to make a decisive gesture across the table which nearly sent his drink flying. He instantly misses the pressure but the warmth is still there, burning through his sleeve. Jon looks incredibly drunk, now that Martin’s got a better angle to view his flushed cheeks and bright eyes and lips- “All that touching. I don’t understand why everyone’s so hung up on it. No thank you, not for me.”

A brief flash of understanding lights Sasha’s eyes but Martin’s not in a place to decipher it. He’s not sure if it’s the drink or the Jon-of-it-all that’s impeding him. He’s never seen him so relaxed, so animated about something that’s not work. He can’t even focus on the words coming out of Jon’s mouth at the moment.

But Sasha leans forward- once she’s got an idea in her head, she won’t let go until she’s seen it through. Martin recognizes that look. “You’re asexual, then?”

“Mm,” Jon mumbles, his head tilting back dangerously as he puts on an affected, exaggerated voice. “Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.”

And then Martin’s gone, suddenly struck by a vision of teenage Jon, silhouetted on a stage by a dramatic spotlight, reciting Shakespeare like a born thespian- look, Martin despises theater, but even he’s not immune to Hamlet. In a dream world he’d be Ophelia, no, not Ophelia, idiot- maybe he’s a stage hand, or no, he helps Jon with his quick changes, that’s a job, right? So caught up is he in this pseudo-high school fantasy that the words being said don’t actually dawn on him until a full minute later, when Tim’s laughter reaches a crescendo.

“Boss, did you seriously just come out via Shakespeare?”

Jon’s not even denying it, giving a lazy, good-natured smile in response. Fuck. Here he is, having some stupid fantasy over his boss who is very much right next to him and very much not interested. God, is he taking advantage? He jumps to the side, trying desperately to put a few more inches of space between them for Jon’s comfort when that small hand comes back to his arm, the sudden and strong grip stopping him in his tracks.

“No!” Jon’s voice is low, those dark eyes so intense. Martin can feel his face go scarlet from his gaze alone. “This is nice. I like it.”

Tim and Sasha share an evil little smile and Martin’s out of commission, the night’s revelations and Jon’s insistent snuggling having taken their toll. He couldn’t tell you what happened after that, how many drinks were shared or how he got home. All he remembers is the feel of Jon’s hand on his arm, his insistent closeness, and the sound of his laugh whenever Tim teased him.

The next day Jon comes in late, looking about as bad as the rest of them felt. From the way he interacts with them, it’s likely that he doesn’t even remember last night, what he did or what he said. Martin tries not to let it sting, and goes back to work, knowing there’s a side of Jon that he’ll likely never see again.

__________

“Martin, we have to...talk, if that’s alright.”

Martin pauses, a lump building in his throat. “Okay.”

He settles in on Daisy’s lumpy couch, trying not to let his apprehension show. It’s been a week since Jon got him out of the Lonely and they’re still adjusting, but Martin likes to think they’re settling into a nice routine. There’s such a natural ease to their domesticity; they had their differences, sure, but he’s never seen the man so soft and unguarded, puttering around the cottage, making sure everything’s nice and comfortable for the two of them. And of course, there’s the bed situation. Only one, like in all the cliché fanfiction Martin had taken to reading back when he lived in the Archives and his biggest problem was worms. Maybe Jon doesn’t want to share anymore? He’s been strangely distant the past day, keeping space between them and hovering about in a nervous manner. He goes back through their interactions, trying to think of what he could’ve done wrong.

Jon sits down next to him, his face showing his own apprehension. “I know we’ve been getting...close, this past week. But if we’re going to ah, have an, er- well, you know, relationship- there’s some things you need to know.” Relationship. Jon thinks they're in a relationship. Martin didn’t want to put a label to it, too afraid it would shatter the fragile trust they built. But to be in a relationship with Jon, well, that’s something he’s always dreamed of, right?

So he relaxes minutely, tries not to show the utter joy he feels at the words. “Alright. What’s up?”

Jon takes a steadying breath, looking so oddly grave that Martin immediately wants to take him into his arms. “I don’t...well, I’m asexual. So I’m not really interested…” he makes a vague gesture down towards Martin’s crotch and then freezes, clearly embarrassed by the crudeness of the action. “I’m not interested in all of...that. Or kissing, for that matter. It’s just a personal boundary for me, if that’s alright.”

Oh. Martin blinks, taking in Jon’s serious countenance and hopeful eyes and while he wants to match it, he can’t control the laughter that bubbles out of his throat. “Oh-oh Jon-”

Jon immediately blanches, his brow furrowing in confusion and probably hurt. “W-What? What’s so funny?”

“I’m sorry! Fuck-it’s, it’s not that, that’s fine, it’s just-” Martin tries desperately to keep his laughter under control and fails. Christ, he can’t breathe. “Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither!”

“Why are you quoting Shakespeare?” Jon’s looking at him like he’s lost his mind. Perhaps he has.

“Because you did, you daft thing!” Martin’s shoulders shake with the effort of containing himself, and he wipes a tear from his eye. He immediately puts a hand on Jon’s arm, a mirror’s reflection of that night at the bar and yet it’s still his hand that burns. “Jon, it’s fine. I already know. You told us over drinks my first month in the Archives.”

Jon’s face takes on that peculiar look of confusion and concentration that Martin loves, as if he’s searching his mind or maybe even the Eye for information. “I-oh. Oh!” He puts his head in his hands with a groan, ignoring Martin’s comforting pats to the back. “How embarrassing.”

“It was adorable.”

“No it wasn’t,” Jon whines into his hands even as he leans into Martin’s touch.

“It was,” Martin assures him, drawing him close to his side and letting him lean his head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I laughed- you were just so serious, I couldn’t help it-”

“Yes, well,” Jon sighed, settling into his arms, the beginnings of a smile on his face. “It’s fine. As long you’re alright with…”

“More than alright.” It’s Jon, of course it’s alright. Being here with him, in their little shabby oasis- well, it’s more than enough. They sit there in silence for some time, Martin enjoying the closeness of the man he’d fought so hard to protect finally in his arms. He’s starting to think they just might be alright. He smiles to himself, perching his chin on top of Jon’s head.

“To be or not to be-”

“Shut up, Martin.”

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28741983

#my writing #aspecarchives #tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #asexual jonathan sims #cw drinking #gratuitous use of hamlet #the gay agenda

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leighistired · 4 years ago

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Out Loud

A Martin character study AO3 Link

“G’night mum, love you.”

“Make sure you put the trash out, don’t want it stinking up the house.”

At 12 it occurs to Martin, he can’t recall the last time his mother said “I love you” to him. She must have. He knows she loves him, so why can’t he remember her saying it? Was it before dad left? It can’t have been that long ago. He knows if he brings it up she’ll just tell him off for being silly so he just decides to not say it unless she says it first. She doesn’t say it.

“Look how nice our neighbor’s garden is,” she says instead. “If only we could have such a nice garden.”

“The neighbors hire a man-” Martin tries to explain. He had just done law maintenance over the weekend; he would have to bring up memory issues next time they saw a doctor.

“Aren’t you happy with how I provide for you?” She snaps. “Ever since your lousy father left us I have done my best even with my health and all you can talk about is getting a bloody gardener.”

“Sorry, mum,” he says. It’s better not to argue when she gets like this.

“Forget it. Just get me my tea.”

He goes and brews her a cup of Oolong tea. It’s far too bitter for his tastes but it’s all he buys when he does the shopping. Perhaps that was it, instead of saying she loved him she just provided for him.

Martin tells himself that until she gets too sick to work and begins needling him to get a job at 14. Suddenly he’s providing for her on top of school and everything else but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him. She was just sick and the medication she was on made her tired most of the time so it wasn’t like he could expect her to be excited to see him; especially not when he’s the one bringing it to her.

“Is soup the only thing you buy?” She asks one evening when he brings her dinner.

“You didn’t have soup last night,” he reminds her patiently after a long day of school and work.

“Oh, so you think I’m ungrateful? I am your mother! I gave birth to you! You should be happy to take care of me!”

“It would be nice if you acted like a mum for once!” Martin snaps back. He regrets it as soon as he says it and doesn’t wait to hear her response. He leaves the house and sits in the park near his house for a long time and cries. Of course she loves him. It must be so hard on her to be stuck at home all day with no one to talk to and there he went snapping at her. She’s asleep by the time he comes home and neither of them mentions it in the morning.

Martin doesn’t know what he expects when he starts to transition. He hadn’t even called it a transition at first, he just likes how he looks with short hair, baggy clothes, and a sports bra. His mother disagrees. There are days she won’t even look at him and when she does it’s usually even worse.

“You cut your hair again,” she mentions one morning over breakfast. “Just when you were starting to look like a girl.”

“Yup,” Martin replies tight-lipped. He had been thinking it over for a while and he’s slowly coming to terms with the fact that he isn’t a girl. The way she says it hits him sharply. If she was never going to say “I love you” to a daughter, why would she say it to a son? He doesn’t bother coming out to her properly because he can already see the disgust on her face when he gets a proper binder.

When she decides to move into a full-time care facility, it’s almost a relief. He feels foolish for expecting her to say it when she leaves. He feels even more foolish when he says it in goodbye. The receptionist gives him a sympathetic look when she doesn’t say it back but the receptionist probably assumes his mother has memory issues and forgot who he was. She doesn’t. Still, he appreciates the gesture.

Dating is nearly impossible for most of his life. It’s easiest to blame his busy schedule; he doesn’t even have time for friends outside of school. The fact that no one even asks him out isn’t something he wants to think about. After he drops out of school and his mother leaves, dating and friendship don’t get any easier. He can’t let anyone he works with get close enough or they’ll find out his real age and utter lack of qualifications. Online dating is also out of the question for similar reasons. If one of his coworkers saw him with the age 19 in his profile they would either know he wasn’t actually 25 or they would think he was a creep and he didn’t exactly feel comfortable lying about his age to potential dates. Meeting people organically isn’t the worst thing in the world but it’s difficult. He makes a few passing friends at a local trans support group but even then, he can’t get close to anyone without risking someone discovering his falsified CV.

He doesn’t have his first real boyfriend until he’s 23 years old. They meet at a Holloween party thrown by a mutual acquaintance and date for almost five months before Martin ruins it.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Dominick, I love you,” Martin says as he serves dinner.

“Oh, uh, it’s a little fast to say that, don’t you think?” Dominick had stammered awkwardly. Was it? It didn’t seem like it to Martin and even if it was, it was true. He loved Dominick.

“I-I don’t think so,” Martin replies nervously. Some distant part of himself starts to berate him for being so needy.

“It kind of is. Let’s just pretend you never said it and we’ll see how we feel in a few more months, ok?”

“You mean we’ll see how you feel,” Martin says a little bitterly.

“Why can’t you just relax and enjoy the holiday?”

Martin had sighed in resignation and picked at the rest of his plate. They broke up a week later because Dominick felt like they were “looking for different things.”

Martin doesn’t have another serious boyfriend after that. He goes on a few more dates over the years but nothing that lasts longer than five months. Nothing that lasts long enough to say “I love you.” In some deep dark part of him, he wonders if he was ever meant for love. His father hadn’t loved him enough to stay, his mother hadn’t said she loved him in over a decade, and he’s not even sure he was in love with Dominick. He gets crushes, sure, but he just throws himself into his work at the Magnus Institute instead.

Working in the library isn’t bad. He gets along with his coworkers well enough but he can never get close to them. Not close enough to love them as friends or be loved in return.

Then he gets transferred to the Archives.

Jonathan Sims is not the first asshole boss Martin has ever had. He doesn’t understand why Mr. Bouchard sent him down to work in the Archive in the first place and his first impression with his new boss is less than stellar when a dog follows him into the building. It doesn’t help that Jon is good-looking and every once in a while Martin catches glimpses of a version of the Archivist without a stick up his ass. Like when he spends Martin’s ice cream birthday talking about emulsifiers. If only he would be clearer about what he actually wants from Martin. No report or follow-up seems to be good enough, even with the help of Tim and Sasha.

Martin works hard for Jon’s approval. He doesn’t know why he wants the recognition but it’s either this or quit and he really, really can’t quit. So he spends three full days looking for every woman named Angela over fifty in Bexley only to be berated for actually talking to one of them and then he offers to look into a case about spiders that clearly upsets Jon only to get trapped in his flat by a zombie worm woman.

When he finally escapes, he takes a few worm corpses with him and he dumps them on Jon’s desk while he’s in the middle of a statement. Let Jon try and disprove that When he gives his own statement he makes special emphasis on reminding Jon how hard he worked to meet his exacting standards. He refuses to be yelled at for this.

Except Jon believes him. More than believes him, in fact. He offers Martin a place to stay. Of course that would be enough to ignite a crush in Martin.

As soon as they get to document storage Martin sits on the cot and begins to cry with exhaustion. He expects Jon to leave but again he surprises him.

“I-it’s alright, Martin,” he says awkwardly as he pats Martin’s shoulder. “You’ll be safe here and I’m certain Elias will respond promptly to my request for extra security.”

“Thanks,” Martin sniffs. He can’t remember the last time he cried in front of another person.

“Would...would you like me to stay until you fall asleep? If- if you think it will help.”

“Oh, er...no...I’ll be fine, thank you. You should be getting home, anyway. It’s Saturday, Jon.”

Martin blacks out as soon as Jon shuts the door to document storage. When he wakes up he finds his crush on Jon stubbornly still in place.

He can’t help himself after that. He starts taking special care of Jon in hopes of encouraging the kind man he saw that night into emerging. At the very least Jon doesn’t yell at him as much and he even thanks Martin for the tea he brings. It’s then that he notices other things about Jon, like how rattled he gets by certain statements and how he’ll often go an entire day without eating or drinking anything unless someone brings him something. That someone being Martin. He also notices how late Jon leaves, if he leaves at all.

It’s on one such night of Jon still being in his office at 11 o’clock that Martin knocks on Jon’s office door.

“Jon?” He calls gently.

“Hzzmt! Martin?” Jon responds, having been startled awake from dozing at his desk. “You should be asleep.”

“And you should be home.”

“I see your point,” Jon sighs. “I’ll finish up here and head home. Unless you need something?”

“Actually….I-I was thinking,” Martin beings. “Since I sort of kicked you off your cot...D’you want to come back to document storage with me? You know, get some sleep?”

“What?”

“Er...forget I-”

“The cot would be rather cramped with both of us,” Jon warns as he gets up from his desk. “If...if you’re sure you want me to join you.”

“Yeah...I thought you had work to do?”

“It can wait until morning, no use keeping you up longer than necessary.”

Martin only half regrets offering to share a bed with his crush. Jon was right, the only way to fit both of them on the cot is for both of them to sleep on their sides (or for Jon to sleep on top of Martin but even the thought has his face burning) and it’s difficult for him to fall asleep with Jon’s back pressed against his. It’s good to hear Jon fall asleep, though, and as time wears on it’s easier for Martin to goad Jon away from work to sleep a few hours.

The more of himself Jon reveals the harder Martin falls for him. Especially after Jon accuses him of being a ghost during the Prentiss attack. Even with the guilt Martin feels every time he looks at Jon mummified in bandages. That was Martin’s fault. If he had just paid more attention then he wouldn’t have lost Jon and Tim in the tunnels. He does everything he can to try and make up for it; despite Jon becoming more and more closed off by the day. Intellectually, Martin knows that Jon has gotten like that with everyone, but something deep down makes Martin feel like it’s his fault Jon’s gotten so cold. It doesn’t help that Jon seems to have gotten friendly with the policewoman investigating the murder of the previous Archivist. Tim even seems to think they’re having an affair which does wonders for Martin’s self-esteem. Jon wouldn’t be the first straight man Martin has ever had a crush on but Martin was pretty sure Jon wasn’t straight. Again, he wonders if he’s done something wrong to push Jon away.

After Jon stumbles out of his office covered in blood claiming to have had an accident with a bread knife Martin finds all the excuse he needs to regularly drag Jon to the canteen to make sure he eats something. The silences during those lunches are hard. They had eaten together before but now Jon wasn’t talking to him. The most Martin could get out of him were a few one-word answers. He tries not to think about how it reminds him of his mum.

“So,” he tries for the millionth time while Jon picks at his sandwich. “Did I tell you what happened while you were at physical therapy the other day?”

Jon doesn’t say anything but he looks up with a gaze that bores into Martin.

“Uh...A little girl came in alone with a statement, she must’ve only been eight years old,” Martin says. Jon looks at him with an expression that almost seems afraid. “Don’t worry, it recorded fine on digital. She walked right down into the Archive, walked up to my desk, and said ‘Excuse me. My name is Beatrice Walker and I’d like to make a statement about a supernatural occurrence.’ She sounded so grown up and she refused to leave until I had recorded her statement. Turns out her dad was using the library for research and she had just wandered off.”

“What was her statement about?” Jon asks to Martin’s surprise.

“Oh, a hamster with mysteriously changing spots.”

“Ah,” Jon replies thoughtfully. “Not much need for follow-up there, I suppose.”

“Not unless you really need me to track down the shop where her parents picked up the new hamster.”

He catches the briefest of smirks from Jon before the conversation dies again.

After that Jon’s coldness and paranoia comes out in the form of a screaming accusation over letters Jon found in the trash. Martin barely manages to make it to the bathroom before he bursts into tears after coming clean about his CV. Tim thankfully doesn’t check on him while he silently curses his taste in men. Jon doesn’t meet his eye for the next week in what he bitterly hopes is guilt. He does seem slightly more willing to talk with Martin at lunch, though.

Then Jon goes missing. After trying to get Martin and Tim to go home early because Jon was feeling under the weather; he disappears. Not before apparently bludgeoning someone with a pipe and isn’t that exactly what he and Tim need to see as soon as they get back from a two-week kidnapping by a spooky door monster?

With Sasha gone, Jon missing, and Melanie King being suddenly hired by Elias, whatever’s left of Martin’s relationship with Tim deteriorates. More so when Martin becomes the only one in the world to believe Jon could be innocent. It’s probably that that makes the police detective “investigating” Jon so actively hostile toward him. Apparently, people say he and Jon are “close” and that probably only means the lunch thing but he wants to imagine it’s something more. Like people are somehow picking up that Jon likes him back.

When Jon comes back to confront Elias it’s all Martin can think to do to fall back on his tea-making. He ducks into Jon’s office with a piping cup of the overly sweet tea he spent months perfecting to Jon’s taste and finds him with his face buried in his one non-bandaged hand.

“Jon?” He calls as gently as he can while he closes the door behind him. “I brought you some tea.”

It’s when Jon looks up that Martin notices the bloody mess down the front of his shirt.

“You’re hurt. Let me go get the first aid-”

“No!” Jon interrupts frantically. “Just...Could you just stay with me for a moment?”

Martin acquiesces and they sit side by side on the sofa in Jon’s office in silence until Jon starts sniffling into his tea. He offers Jon a hug and Jon all but dives into his chest to cry. It’s the saddest most broken thing Martin has ever heard and it’s all he can do not to pull Jon into his lap and curl around him protectively.

“Martin...I-I...I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “For everything. For Sasha and Prentiss and...and for the way I treated you. You didn’t….no one deserves that.”

“None of that was your fault and I sort of deserved it. I didn’t actually know what I was doing.”

“You didn’t deserve it,” Jon insists before going back to quietly crying into Martin’s jumper. Martin doesn’t respond. He can’t recall the last time someone’s apologized to him. At least not like that. He’d been told off most of his life for not doing things up to people’s standards. A few people over the years had told him he didn’t deserve it but Jon was the first person to apologize. No wonder Martin was falling in love with him.

Damn it.

Cuddling doesn’t become a regular occurrence for them by any means but Jon begins doing more to seek Martin out after that. They eat lunch together more often and Martin stays up late to talk to Jon while he’s abroad. It drives home how deeply buried into Martin’s heart Jon has become. Especially after he comes back after going missing for a month and has the audacity to joke about being moisturized by a clown mannequin for a month.

He wonders if Jon feels the same way. Sometimes Jon will smile shyly at him, and he can almost believe that Jon would be interested in a relationship if the world wasn’t ending. The last time they speak before the Unknowing they’re in document storage.

“Are you ready?” Jon asks as he shifts nervously.

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Martin signs. He heard what happened to Melanie. He knows what’s likely to happen to him. Some small part of him is screaming to just tell Jon his feelings like it’s the climax of an action movie.

“Stay safe,” Jon says.

“Come back,” Martin replies. Jon offers him a hug. It’s no movie kiss but it allows Martin to hold Jon as close as possible. Jon himself is hanging off of Martin’s neck and it feels like a final goodbye.

Then Elias confirms what Martin has always suspected deep down. That his mother never loved him or if there was a time when she did, she stopped when his father left. Even after everything. After he spent years taking care of her. After he had to quit school to care for her. All she ever saw was his father. All his transition did was to remind her further of how much he looked like his father’s son. At least it was worth it. To distract Elias so Melanie could find evidence to arrest him.

Then Peter Lukas shows up and reveals that Elias planned to get arrested. Worse than that, he offers Martin a promotion of sorts.

Then they get the news from Yarmouth. Tim’s body is found in a charred heap, Daisy is missing, and Jon is dead in all but brain activity. At least Basira is physically alive.

Martin spends as much time as he can next to Jon. He’s used to loving someone who can’t love him back. Maybe this is all he’s destined for. Love unrequited. He talks to Jon’s dreaming corpse. Tells him about his day, reads him poetry, even a statement, but nothing draws Jon out of his coma.

Then his mother dies. He barely has the emotional strength to mourn her. Instead, he scatters her ashes and mourns his childhood lost to trying impossibly to earn her love.

After the Flesh attacks, Martin makes a decision. He’ll join Lukas. It’ll probably lead to his death but what did that matter? His mother was gone and didn’t care about him anyway. Tim and Sasha were gone. Jon was basically gone. Basira and Melanie were the only people left that he vaguely cared about and by doing this he could at least protect them.

He visits Jon one last time in the hospital. He’s still covered in wires and his eyes still flit around violently behind his lids as Martin sits down next to him and takes his hand.

“Hey Jon,” he says quietly. “I...This is the last time I’m going to see you...Probably ever. I know, I know old dramatic Martin surely he’s exaggerating. I’m not. The Institute is in danger and...I have a way to keep Melanie and Basira a little safer, so I’m doing it. I just came by one last time to say...Jon, I...I love you. Goodbye.”

He gets up and presses a kiss on a part of Jon’s forehead not covered in wires before leaving. It’s alright that he doesn’t say it back. No one ever says it back to Martin.

When Jon wakes up everything becomes that much harder. Suddenly he had a reason to live and the way Jon pursues him makes him almost believe...No, even completing the thought would be dangerous for all of them. Jon trusts him enough not to be constantly badgering and that makes it worse. When Jon is there the Lonely makes Martin resent his presence and when Jon’s gone Martin resents his absence.

The final, most excruciating pain is when Jon comes after him in the Lonely. He’s excepted his fate in the chilling numbness of the Lonely. Maybe that’s why he says it. The certain, inevitable rejection would be numbed utterly. So he says it.

“I really loved you, you know?”

And Jon looks broken. Even after he rips Peter’s statement from him. Even when he reaches for Martin’s face with hands that seem far too warm and makes him See. Knowing Jon loves him isn’t like “knowing” his mother loves him. Instead of a lie born in Martin’s mind to stamp down the fear of rejection, it’s a reality pouring from Jon’s mind mingled with Jon’s fears of rejection.

Jon’s hands still feel too warm compared to the icy chill of the Lonely as he leads Martin out. Still, he refuses to let go all the way through the tunnels, the Institute, talking to Basira, packing at each other’s flats, and on to the train. The way to Daisy’s safe house feels like a blur and when they finally arrive it’s all Martin can do to remember to take off his binder before collapsing into bed with Jon’s warm arms around him.

He wakes to Jon’s quiet crying. The awful, stifled thing that breaks Martin’s heart.

“Jon,” he whispers.

“Martin? Did I wake you? I’m sorry, I’ll-”

“It’s alright, Jon,” he assures as he swaps their positions so Jon is tucked firmly against him. Jon makes another broken noise and Martin can’t stop himself from crying, too.

“I-I’m here, Martin. You aren’t on your own,” Jon soothes and Martin almost has to laugh. They lay crying and comforting each other until they both fall back asleep.

When they wake up properly they take stock of the safe house’s pantry and make a list of things to pick up in the village after breakfast. Martin gives in to the temptation to buy a new notebook to try and write poetry in. They have enough canned food to survive to the next ice age so they pick up perishable items like milk, bread, butter, and eggs. Jon also picks up fresh peaches and a box of Martin’s preferred tea. It’s easy to pretend like they going on a normal shopping trip as they walk up and down the aisles to check things off their list.

They return to the cabin and settle in. Martin sits on the sofa and tries to write out a poem while Jon tries to read a book from Daisy’s personal collection. After a while, Martin beings to feel Jon’s gaze on him.

“Is there something on my face?” He tries casually as he’s met with an expression he’s never been on the receiving end of.

“I was just thinking about how much I love you,” Jon sighs. Martin can’t stop the noise that comes out of him. All his life trying to earn love and Jon just says it while Martin’s thinking of a synonym for ‘yellow.’

“I-I don’t expect you to reciprocate,” Jon says quickly, his soft expression suddenly turning worried.

“But I do.”

“Oh…Oh!”

“Yeah.”

Jon starts giggling and it’s impossible for Martin not to follow suit until happy tears stream down both of their faces.

#the magnus archives #martin blackwood #jonmartin #jonathan sims #I wrote a fic #this was supposed to be posted on valentines day

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phoebenavarro · 3 years ago

Text

and on you stumble on (ch 1)

part 6 of my Jon trusting Tim s2 AU, we’ve reached the end of season 2! woo let’s go

the magnus archives, established JonTim, pre JonMarTim, 1642 words

read this part and the rest of the series on ao3 here

Jon sits, frozen, as his mind struggles to process everything. He told Tim what Melanie said about Sasha, the two Sashas, but he’d kept the rest of his little investigation to himself. It wasn’t fair to Tim, but Sasha is a delicate subject for him, and Jon wanted to be sure. And maybe, as long as he kept it to himself, it wouldn’t be real. Sasha wouldn’t have been replaced by a monster that looks nothing like her, the real her. But the time for that willful denial is over now; he knows the truth, much as he wishes he could change it. Sasha’s dead, and she has been since Prentiss.

Tim. He has to tell Tim. He deserves to know, and he deserves to help kill it.

Especially after the tapes. The tapes with the real Sasha’s voice on them. He presses play on the recorder with a shaking hand, and the voice he still can’t recognize as Sasha’s crackles through the speakers. He sits there and listens and hates himself for not figuring it out sooner. That thing hasn’t even been trying to be like Sasha, the real Sasha, and he still didn’t realize that his friend had been replaced by a monster.

He’s listening to the tape—her statement about her encounter with Michael—for a third time when the door to his office opens.

“Alright boss, you about ready to go?” Tim asks cheerfully, striding in, but he freezes when he sees the distressed look on Jon’s face. “Jon. What’s wrong?”

“I, um…” Jon says, at a loss for words.

“What happened? Did Michael come back?”

“What? No, no…” Jon sighs and rubs his eyes. He’s so tired. “No, it— it’s not that. I suppose it’s easier if I show you.” He gestures Tim over to his desk. “Do you remember what Melanie King said, about there being two Sashas?” Tim nods slowly.

“Yeah, what— did you figure out what’s going on?”

Jon sighs again. “Yes. Tim… I’m sorry.” He hands Tim the paper copies of the statements. Tim frowns, but he doesn’t say anything, he just starts reading. Jon tries not to stare at him while he reads, heartbroken for him and a little bit terrified for how he’s going to react. Jon’s own grief for Sasha hasn’t hit him yet, he’s too preoccupied with thinking about what they’re going to do now. He’s got a plan forming, but that will entirely depend on what Tim wants to do.

Tim sets the papers down and rubs his eyes. “Fuck,” he swears quietly. “That’s it, then. She’s dead,” his voice is disturbingly flat, and Jon aches to reach out to him, to comfort his boyfriend, but Jon’s never seen him like this.

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

“When did it happen?” Tim asks.

“I uh… It seems like it was during the Prentiss attack, when she got separated from Elias and ran into Artifact Storage.” Tim breathes in sharply and swears again under his breath.

“She hated Artifact Storage,” Tim says quietly.

“I know.”

“Or are our memories of her even real? If this thing could replace her and change what she looked like in our minds, why couldn’t it completely change everything?”

“I… I don’t know,” Jon admits, “It’s certainly possible, but we can’t— we can’t start questioning every little memory. I think that’s what it wants, what it feeds on, and besides, it’s just not feasible.”

“Yeah,” Tim says quietly. Jon reaches for his hand, trying to find some way to comfort Tim, to make this news a little more bearable. Tim lets him.

“I think our memories are our own,” Jon continues, “I mean, we both remember her being different before the Prentiss attack. She… changed. We both noticed. We didn’t know why she changed, but we definitely noticed.”

Tim nods, but he doesn’t say anything, so Jon just launches into the next thing he needs to tell Tim about.

“I-I found the missing tapes,” Jon says, and he chuckles bitterly, “They were in Sasha’s desk. Not even well hidden, almost like it wanted us to find them. Finally figured out what those tapes had in common, they all had Sasha— the real Sasha’s voice on them.

Tim cocks his head. “How do you mean? I thought the monster changed pictures and recordings too.”

“Yes, but not polaroid photos, for some reason, and apparently not tape recordings.”

Tim’s breath hitches. “So, what’s on the tapes— that’s real?” Jon nods.

Tim swallows. “Can I— Can I listen to them?” he asks, and Jon’s chest feels tight.

“Y-yes, of course,” Jon says, and he starts rewinding the tape with Sasha’s statement. “I-I don’t think you want to listen to all of them, a-at least not right now, one of them is from the Prentiss attack, when it h-happened.”

“I need to know what happened, Jon,” Tim says, “I need to know how, if it was painful, if she…” Tim trails off. Jon thinks about Sasha’s scream, and he shudders.

“It was awful. I wish I hadn’t heard it. And- And I don’t think there’s much point to you listening to it if you’re just going to use it to punish yourself for not doing anything about it.” Tim glares at him, but Jon keeps his voice steady. “I know you, and I know you’re gonna blame yourself, but it wasn’t your fault.”

Tim mutters, “Yeah, right,” and he turns his head to stare at the floor.

The tape finishes rewinding, and Jon presses play without another word. They listen in silence as the Sasha on the tape tells her story, Tim gripping Jon’s hand so hard that it hurts. Jon can’t help but be hyper focused on every one of Tim’s reactions, every sharp intake of breath, every sigh, every small exhale of laughter. Jon remembers Sasha being funny, and it seems like she was. Jon notices a few tears on Tim’s face, and he pulls Tim close to put an arm around him.

When it ends, Tim wipes his eyes with his free hand.

“I still can’t believe she did something that reckless,” he says, “She was always going on about being the rational one.” Jon smiles. He moves to switch the tape out for the one where Sasha interrupted him to talk about the proper way to pronounce calliope, and he fast forwards to around the point where she walked in. Tim listens just as intently, like he’s trying to catalogue every little thing he can gleam about the real Sasha from these tapes. Then the Jon on the tape resumes reading his statement, and they let it play out in the quiet of the office.

Eventually, the tape ends, and Jon stops it. Jon looks to Tim expectantly, but Tim is staring at the wall with a far-away look in his eyes.

“What are we going to do about that- that thing pretending to be Sasha?” Tim asks, finally breaking the silence.

“Ah,” Jon says, “I’ve been thinking about that. It’s tied to the table, so it seems like destroying the table will kill it, or at least weaken it.”

Tim nods slowly. “Makes as much sense as anything else around here.” He runs a hand through his hair. “When?”

“Tonight? After everyone’s gone home, artifact storage will be empty.”

Absently, Tim presses a kiss to Jon’s hand. “I’m not letting this go, by the way. I want to listen to all of those tapes. But… Maybe you’re right. Maybe now isn’t the best time.”

“That’s reasonable, I suppose,” Jon replies.

Tim stares off into space again for a few minutes, clearly thinking, before he speaks again.

“Should we tell Martin? In case something happens?”

“No,” Jon says immediately, and he can’t ignore the panic that rises in his chest when he thinks about getting Martin involved in this, “No, he’ll insist on staying to help and I won’t put him in any more danger.”

Thankfully, Tim agrees. “Yeah,” he says, “He’ll be pissed when he finds out, though.”

Jon thinks back to the stern lecture Martin had given them on trust, on treating him like an adult, and when he thinks about how Martin is going to react when he finds out, he does feel guilty. Just this, he thinks, This is the last thing we’ll keep him in the dark about.

“We can deal with Martin being angry at us, if we live, but I can’t lose anyone else. It’s my job to protect you all, and I’ve already failed Sasha…”

“Hey, no—“

Jon cuts him off, “I know it wasn’t my fault, what happened to Sasha, wasn’t anyone’s fault, really, but I should have been able to protect her. And Tim, if I could, I’d send you home too, deal with this on my own.”

“Jon…”

“I know you won’t go, you’re too stubborn, and I won’t make you, because I know this is just as important to you. But I’d rather you be safe.”

“How do you think I feel?” Tim says, “That’s two of the most important people in my life, dead, and I did nothing to stop it.” Jon opens his mouth to protest, but Tim plows on, "I don’t want you to be number three, and it seems like, as Archivist, you’ve got a target painted on your back. I also know that you’re too damn stubborn not to put yourself in danger, and well, we’ve got a better chance of not dying if we do it together.”

“I certainly hope so,” Jon agrees, “Have I mentioned recently how much I love you?”

“Once or twice,” Tim replies, “I love you too. Now how exactly are we going to go about killing this thing?”

“Did you know, it is remarkably easy to buy an axe in central London?”

Tim smiles.

#the magnus archives #tma #tma fic #fic #jontim #tim stoker #jonathan sims #reblogs are encouraged #mine #my writing

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rosy-cheekx · 4 years ago

Note

from the dialogue prompts! 6: “go away” “no, not until i know you’re okay”

Oh boy this one was hard to write for whatever reason, but she’s done! just in time for us to pretend a world in which Jon or Martin’s lives are ever in real danger doesn't exist....right?

AO3 Link in source on OP

On Being Fine, Absolutely Well-Adjusted, and OK

Martin supposed he should count himself lucky. He hadn’t needed to go to the hospital after the Prentiss attack, had come out with only a few worm scars to show for it, god especially when he thought about Jon and all the worms he and Sasha had had to corkscrew out of him, his face and neck and arms and legs—

See? Martin shook his head, clearing his mind’s eye of the silver and crimson kaleidoscope. It could have been worse. He scratched at his calf, where a close trio of scars had begun to heal, skin-tight and shiny, and, at last, remembered he was supposed to be washing his hands. He was glad the unisex Archive lav didn’t have a mirror by the sink; he didn’t need a reminder of how tired he must look.

The return to work had been difficult, but not as bad as he had expected it to be. Knowing Prentiss was dead had made it easier to return home, though he had immediately spent his first pain-free day rearranging the furniture, as recommended by his therapist. (He had lied to her, of course, claimed an attempted break-in + assault had traumatized him. It wasn’t that far off from the truth, anyways.) So Martin had been spending his evenings repositioning, redecorating, cleaning; anything he could to erase Jane Prentiss and those horrid things from his mind. It wasn’t easy, and Martin still spent nights awake, hyperaware of the smallest sound of squelching or the smell of rot. But he was alive, he reminded himself at home in the mornings, concealing eye bags and trying to reassemble his appearance into some approximation of normal, and shouldn’t that be enough? He hadn’t been seriously injured, like Jon or Tim, hadn’t had to risk a lonely end save them all like Sasha. He should be the most well-adjusted of the three of them.

So why was he here, in the Archive toilet, gripping the edge of the sink so hard he might crack it?

Martin released his grip and watched his blood flow back into his fingers, flexing them. He should really go do...something. Work, probably, if Jon ever decided to stop speaking to him like he was a jigsaw with too many pieces. He splashed some water on his face and exhaled deeply. He was fine, he could-

“Oh shit!” Martin yelped as he turned to face the door into the bullpen. In the reflection at the corner of the mirror that hung on the back of the door was a shiny, squat, silver worm. “Fuckfuckfuck!” Martin cursed, backing into the door and pulling his shoe off with one hand. He patted for his beltloop, where had taken to keeping his corkscrew, and huffed to find it gone. Of course. He was trying not to be paranoid.

Picking up his shoe, he threw it at the worm, half-hidden by the rubbish bin. It bounced harmlessly—or, maybe it hit? Martin couldn’t tell. Either way, the worm moved, and that was when Martin’s vision greyed dangerously, heart leaping to his throat. Oh god, he couldn’t breathe? Why couldn’t he breathe? Was it the carbon dioxide? No. The fire alarm wasn’t going off. Martin’s thoughts raced and he desperately jiggled the door handle, only to find it turning against him. Oh god, it was her. It was-

“Martin?”

It was Jon.

“Jon? Jon, fuck, hey, don’t come in, okay? There’s a worm and I don’t want any of you getting hurt.”

…is what he would have said if he could catch his breath. Instead, all he could let out was a raspy, strangled “Jon.”

“Martin, are you alright in there?” Jon’s voice was too calm, too casual for the bile rising in Martin’s throat.

“W-worm.” Martin sputtered as he heard a click of a cane through the door; probably Jon taking a step backward at the word. “Got-gotta kill it,” he babbled, more to himself than to Jon. He could try with the shoe again, but it hadn’t worked the first time, and that would leave him unprotected if he wanted to step on it.

“No! Martin, don’t-”

Oh, he could step on it. Seized in a moment of something, a peculiar blend of bravery, fear, and plain exasperation, Martin crossed the few squares of lino between him and the worm and moved to step on it with precision. To his great surprise, it rolled out from under his foot, glinting against the overhead lighting.

“What?” Martin mumbled aloud, and the realization hit him all at once: this wasn’t a worm at all. Cautiously, he picked up the metal tube and spotted a small label on the bottom. The thin silver tube contained MAC #239: Not Like Other Girls, according to the reddish-brown sticker.

“Lipstick?” Martin whispered to himself, slumping against the wall of the bathroom and letting out a relieved sob. He had been terrified of lipstick?

The realization that should have calmed him down instead sent him spiraling. Martin Blackwood wasn’t always the calm one, but he was always the shoulder to lean on. He couldn’t do this, not have a breakdown in the middle of his workplace, not with—

Tapping came from the door outside. “Martin? Do I need to break the door down?” Jon was still outside, Martin realized with a start.

“Uh-” Martin choked back a sob. “No, no, it’s alright, Jon. I’m fine.”

“You certainly are not.”

“It was just a-a bloody lipstick tube, Jon, I’m alright. Just leave me alone.” Martin shuddered a breath as he swiped at his eyes with the hem of his sweater, praying to anything and everything that for once Jon would just do as he was told.

“No.” Of course not. “Not until I know you’re okay.” Jon’s voice was softer now, a part of Martin realized. The gentleness of his tone struck Martin and he found himself shakily standing and moving to the door. Unlocking and opening it, he saw Jon, leaning heavily on the medical cane he had been given after the incident, eyes a mix of panic and concern, like the way one might eye a wounded animal. Somehow, that look managed to make Martin feel small, protected, loved, and it warmed something in him.

It was that look that broke something in him and Martin felt a taut string inside him snap loose. Tears welled up in his eyes and he desperately swiped at them with the sleeves of his sweater, leaning against the doorframe. “I feel so stupid,” he mumbled, choked laughter mixing with his tears. He held up the lipstick tube, which he had pocketed earlier, and held it up to the light. “It doesn’t even look like them, not really, I-I-I just saw the squat and silver and panicked.”

Jon’s hand was on his arm, but he was quiet, not saying anything until Martin had collected himself, heaving sobs to hiccups to shallow breathing as he brought himself to baseline again. “Martin,” Jon said quietly, flexing the fingers that held his bicep, “I know you’ve had a rough few months.” Martin scoffed. “Fine, okay, maybe rough doesn’t begin to cover it. What I mean to say is, well…” Jon’s mouth floundered for a word properly, lips forming a few different shapes before settling on, “are you, you know, getting help?”

“Yes, Jon, I’m in therapy.” Martin surprised himself with his own honesty. “But there’s not really much I can say, you know? Not without getting carted off to a sanitorium or getting doped up on meds of some kind or another. I mean, evil worms haunting my house and my workplace? A worm woman determined to kill me and everyone I care for? Not exactly something cognitive behavior therapy will fix.”

Jon sighed in assent, nodding. “That’s fair, I suppose. I just-Martin.” The hand squeezed his elbow and Martin felt a jolt of electricity run through his skin. “You’re allowed to hurt, you know?” Martin’s eyes must have given away his thoughts because Jon continued, voice soft and gentle.

“We all suffered, Martin, but you were the one who was locked in your home, and then the basement where you work, for months on end. Just because you’re not-” he shifts to wave his cane idly, “-doesn’t mean you haven’t gone through hell alongside us.” Jon’s voice has taken on a hardness to it, an insistence Martin last remembered seeing when they were locked in Document Storage together, when Jon was so afraid of being forgotten. It made Martin shiver, not from fear but from something in the way Jon’s eyes bored into him. He was determined to make Martin believe him. Who was he to refuse The Archivist’s words?

So Martin listened, letting Jon’s insistence settle in his chest. He had suffered; he had lost months of his life to Jane Prentiss, he couldn’t sleep without a fear of worms crawling into his skin and mouth at night. He didn’t feel safe until he was in the Archives at his desk, the one that surveyed the whole room and had two fire extinguishers still tucked into the drawers. As Jon spoke, Martin let his muscles relax slowly, until he was leaned up against the alcove in which the door to the toilets stood, helpless under Jon’s gaze and yet feeling the strongest he had in weeks, if not months. Tears welled in his eyes and he heard Jon hesitantly break off.

“Ah-Martin? You-ah shit, I’m sorry.” Jon’s voice had lost the severity it had previously held and was back to its quiet insistence. “I’m sorry, you-you didn’t ask for a soapbox.”

“No, no,” Martin shook his head, raking his nails through his hair. “I...I think I needed to hear that.” He smiled; a shaky, fragile thing. He scratched the back of his calf awkwardly, trying not to dislodge Jon from where he was precariously balanced between the hand on his arm and the hand on the cane. “Thank you, Jon, really.”

Jon smiled and shifted his hand from Martin’s arm to his hand, squeezing gently before releasing it and sliding the lipstick tube from his hand before turning to the bullpen. “Anytime. C’mon, let’s see if this is Sasha’s or Tim’s. I think it’s more Tim’s color, hmm?”

#jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jmart #fanfic to a tea #cw panic attack #tma #the magnus archives #the magnus archives fanfic

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yellowocaballero · 4 years ago

Text

Hey wouldn’t it be funny if I wrote a crossover between canon and the roleswap AU.

So I did <3. There’s no reason for this to exist, I was just bored and self-indulgent and amused myself by thinking about how fucking insane the Space Cadet team has to be in comparison to canon. This takes place at S4 Canon!Jon’s time, and basically between chapters 2 and 3 of solitaire. It is not canon. Do not think too hard about it. Enjoy. Story under the cut.

“Yes, in almost every way.” Jon wiped his mouth with a napkin, balling it up and dropping it on the table. “Jonathan Sims, thirty one years old, Aquarius. Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. The Archivist.” He paused a beat, uncertain of how to broach this. “I think Helen may have deposited me in an alternate dimension? Best case scenario.”

Everybody stared at him blankly.

“Well,” Basira said finally, “sounds like the kind of bullshit you get yourself wrapped up in, Jon.”

“I knew it!” Sasha cried, before deflating. “I mean, I didn’t, really, not at all, but that’s fascinating! Will you answer some questions? Who’s the Queen in your universe?”

“I’m back from the dead for a week and my life’s already stupid again,” Tim said blankly.

“Two Jons?” Martin asked, far too excitedly.

“Can I leave you alone,” Melanie gritted out, between clenched teeth, “for five minutes?”

Jon woke up at his desk, which was so common that it was somewhat pathetic.

Not that a lot of things weren’t pathetic about Jon, but seeing as he no longer technically had anywhere to live he’d give himself a pass. Or was it pathetic to be homeless too? Jon felt strongly as if it was, but he was working on the judgemental thing. Martin had always -

Martin. Jon blinked blearily at his empty desk, scrubbing a little at the sleep that had accumulated in the corner of his eyes. Right. Speaking of pathetic. Jon didn’t like admitting that Martin was the first thing he thought about when he woke up and the last thing he thought about before he went to bed, but he was working on being more honest with himself. Denial about the situation didn’t do anyone any favors. Denial was what made him start stalking and hunting people like - like some sort of awful predator. No more denial. Jon knew who he was, and he knew what he was, and he was going to try and be as good a person as he can be despite it. It was the least he could do.

Wait. Why was his desk empty?

It wasn’t completely empty. There was a laptop on the center of it, and some assorted papers stuck haphazardly underneath. The usual recorder was tucked into the corner, clicked off. He swiped his hand over the trackpad of his laptop, quickly logging in, and instead of seeing his usual research or theory maps, he saw...a video game?

Jon squinted at the video game. What was The Sims?

He looked around his office, well-lit with the harsh fluorescent lights. It was his office, complete with the couch on the far wall that Daisy had taken to napping on and the two walls of metal shelving that held filling boxes and collections of tapes. Several filing cabinets were lined up behind Jon, holding his favorite statements. Organized by Entity. He was quite proud of it.

But the Statements seemed to be gone. Some loose papers were always scattered around, slipping out of boxes or sitting in haphazard piles weighed down by tape recorders. None of them were there. Basira must have taken them. Jon stood up, moving around the desk to pull out a box and peer inside. Empty.

Some part of Jon’s brain, growing louder every day, wailed and gnashed its teeth that someone had stolen his Statements, his knowledge. Most of Jon was just worried over what Basira could possibly be doing with them.

Unconsciously, Jon’s hand drifted down to his stomach. It was purely a habit, of course - the hunger never gave him stomach pains. He was so hungry all the time, he could barely feel it anymore.

The Statements were all gone.

Was Basira trying to starve him out…?

Jon shook himself. She wouldn’t - well, she wouldn’t go behind his back to do it. She knew that he’d just start preying on people -

His life had gotten so pathetic.

A loud crash and a yell echoed from the other side of the door, and Jon recognized Melanie’s voice. He winced, and decided to stay in his office for the time being. Best to stay out of her way. She always reacted somewhat explosively to him -

Then the faint, muffled tones of Martin’s voice echoed through the door, and Jon forgot all hesitation as he burst out of his office.

The bullpen was just slightly different from where Jon had seen it last - the desks arranged differently, different detritus scattered around, no sleeping bags or hair dryers - but he wasn’t paying attention to any of that. He was only paying attention to Martin, who was sitting at his desk as easy as you please. He was smiling.

Jon hadn’t seen Martin smile in so long.

He also hadn’t seen Martin wear those adorable little sweatervests in so long, but that wasn’t important right now. Jon cried out softly, like he had been punched - he did feel as if he had been punched, it wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation - and Martin turned slightly in his chair to look at him. He smiled when he saw Jon, so kind and happy and Martin, and Jon felt like he was dying at the sight of Martin just smiling, just looking at him.

“Look, you don’t need to worry about me,” Martin was saying, to an unamused and remarkably composed Melanie. He held up a large combat knife, the metal glinting off the fluorescent lights. “Jon likes it.”

“See, it’s not you I’m worried about,” Melanie said, arms crossed. She was dressed - in her jeans and green flannel, like she used to. Her hair looked clean. The crop top, cut-off shorts, and fishnets, that Jon hadn’t seen her take off in the last month, where - “It’s poor Jon. He’s too desperate for affection to stand up for himself.”

“Jon, you okay?” Tim asked, sitting behind Martin and sipping a margarita. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

That was when Jon - hungry, tired, hallucinating - felt his legs give out. It was just in time, too. He collapsed to the ground just as Martin threw the knife, sending it whistling where his head had been half a second ago.

Then he hit his head on the floor, and blissfully fainted.

****

“ - she’s not his mother, it’s not Georgie’s job to make sure he eats.”

“It’s because Daisy isn’t here.” That was Basira’s voice, almost mournful. “Daisy always used to remind him to eat.”

“How did this guy make it to thirty again?” An unfamiliar voice asked.

“If it wasn’t for this ragtag bunch of lesbians, I would have killed him months ago,” Tim said, then paused a beat. “What? I’m owning up to my mistakes.”

“Remind me to give you a sticker later,” Melanie said dryly.

Jon opened his eyes, to see five faces crowded in front of him. They were all bending over him, identical expressions of mild intrigue on their faces as they bickered with each other. Martin looked very, very mildly concerned, as Melanie and Basira just looked exasperated. Tim - and the woman - who was the woman?

Instinctually, Jon reached out with his mind and sought the answer. But it was as if he was reaching with a limb that had been cut off. No, a limb that had never existed. Dazed, Jon lifted his real hand, if only to make sure that he could still move - and found himself staring at an unmarred, smooth, healthy hand.

“Martin didn’t cut it off,” the woman said helpfully. She had a thick mane of curly brown hair, and brown skin a similar shade to his. She was holding a granola bar, and she easily stuffed it in his outstretched hand. “If that was a concern or anything. When’s the last time you ate, Jon?”

The question spent a spike of anxiety through him, Jon instantly interpreting it as an accusation. The granola bar wasn’t going to do anything. Of course he was hungry, he’s always hungry -

Jon wasn’t hungry.

Jon sat up, letting the assorted people, both alive and dead, step away. He mechanically unwrapped the granola bar and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing lethargically. It didn’t taste like sawdust and cement. It tasted like salt, and nuts.

He swallowed the granola bar, forming a hypothesis. He looked at Basira, who at least was the most familiar here. It galled him even having to ask, not just knowing, but - “What year is it?”

She stared at him, unimpressed. “If you hit your head we’re taking you to C&E. We can’t afford for you to get any stupider, Jon.”

“Your concern is noted,” Jon said, strained.

“Don’t make fun of him, he’s a concussion victim,” Melanie scolded. She smiled at Jon - hideously novel. “It’s 2018. I’m calling Georgie and getting you home, you’re useless to us with a brain injury.”

He no longer had a hypothesis. Jon shook his head mutely. The last person Jon wanted to field questions from was Georgie. “I’m fine,” Jon said hoarsely. “I think I just need to - lie down a bit.” And not look at Tim. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt, and was still slurping his margarita obnoxiously. He was leaning against a desk, somewhat heavily. “I’ll be fine.”

Everybody looked at each other, then shrugged. Melanie reached down and helped him up, gently pushing him towards the couch set up in the corner of the bullpen, and he found himself stumbling towards it and lying down. Martin loudly offered to nurse him back to health, which incentivized Basira and Melanie to quickly push him inside the recording room and lock the door for...some reason. Jon wanted to go talk to Martin, figure everything out with him. But he didn’t - paralyzed, or maybe just frightened, or maybe just very tired.

The knife he had thrown was still lying on the floor, somehow innocently. The woman picked it up, inspecting it closely, and sighed.

“There is something off about that guy.”

“None of them are ever going to believe you, Sash,” Tim said dully, flipping through a brightly colored magazine on his desk. Jon’s breath caught in his throat. “Melanie thinks it’s freakier if you haven’t stabbed anyone.”

This was it. This was when Tim would say, ‘Everybody wants to stab Jon’, or something. It’d be fair. If this was a dream, a fantasy of dead friends, then that’s what he would say. But he didn’t. Tim - strangely small, strangely gaunt, with hollow cheeks that reminded Jon a little of Daisy - didn’t look up at Sasha, flipping through his magazine, and Sasha avoided eye contact with him. She looked at Jon instead, from where he was lying on the couch, and gave him a strained smile.

Jon found the courage to speak to her. It should have felt familiar, like Sasha, but nothing about her was familiar. He had listened to her tapes a dozen times, any scrap of her voice he could find, but - well, everybody sounded different on the tapes. “Sasha. Can you get me my phone? And a...Statement?”

Sasha brightened enthusiastically. “You want a Statement? Say no more, Jon, I’ll hook you up. Nice to see somebody taking an interest. Let’s keep this between you and me, okay?”

“What…?”

But she had already disappeared into his office, and the faint sounds of banging echoed throughout the room. Melanie and Basira were standing in the kitchenette, chatting lowly, Basira occasionally laughing at something Melanie said.

Jon wondered where Daisy was, and instinctively tried to reach again before hitting that wall. He gritted his teeth, head still swimming.

The most important thing was figuring out if this place was dangerous or not. Wherever he was, whatever was going on, he had to discern if it was a danger. Could this have anything to do with an unknown ritual? No, how could it? Elias? He wouldn’t put any of this past Elias.

With a twist in his gut Jon remembered the cannibal priest’s Statement. Any suspicion of unreality, any feeling as if things were not as they should be...or was this a pleasant, Lotus Eater’s dream instead? If that was true, would Martin be throwing knives at him?

“Here you go! First one I saw on your desk.”

Jon sat up, mutely taking the paper and phone Sasha held out to him. It wasn’t his mobile - it was much nicer and sleeker than his own battered thing - but he had to assume it was Jon’s. He took the Statement too, scanning it quickly.

Of course, of course. It was Anya Villete’s. Jon thought about this one frequently, captured by the prospect of multiple realities. Not worth the danger of exploring, but there was an intoxicating element of danger. Maybe the Jon that these people thought they were talking to had been reading it, and accidentally triggered something -

“What did I say!”

Before Jon could react, the paper was unceremoniously ripped from his hands. Jon cried out helplessly, only to see Melanie standing in front of him with an unamused expression and his lifeline in her uncaring fists.

“We’ve been over this,” Melanie scolded - scolded? “No statements, they’re bad for your tummy.” She frowned at Sasha, who didn’t seem very guilty. “And I told you to stop enabling him. He’s already sick, and you know these things upset him.”

“I’m gathering data,” Sasha said cheerfully. “Something weird was happening in his eyes when he was reading that Statement. Give it back, I need to record it.”

“Can I have that back, please?” Jon asked planatively. “I need it.”

“You do not.” Melanie folded up the statement tightly, shoving it in her jeans and ignoring Jon’s cry of despair. “If you’re feeling under-stimulated, go play knife monopoly with Martin. Otherwise relax and make sure you aren’t going to faint again.”

“I’m not going to -”

“I will call Georgie,” Melanie threatened, and Jon clicked his mouth shut. Melanie nodded, satisfied in having won the argument. If it was even an argument. “Sasha, if you let Jon find another Statement I will be locking the library and giving the key to Martin.”

“Yes, boss,” Sasha said, depressed.

“Tim, you’re with me, we need to design our plan of attack for chasing down Daisy,” Melanie barked, and Tim straightened in his seat. Jon saw for the first time that there was a folded up cane on his desk. “I need your dumb fear demon powers.”

“That’s not how they -” Tim started, but at Melanie’s look he quailed. “Yeah, boss.”

“Great.” Melanie folded her arms, frowning down at Jon, and at the receiving end of the look Jon found himself quailing too. “If you leave the Archives to do anything other than go to the bathroom the rest of the day, I will tell Georgie that you were exerting yourself while sick again. And she will call you a poor little dear and give you lots of hugs and lots of soup. You will hate it. Is that clear?”

“Yes, boss,” Jon said, depressed.

“Good. I need to go psychologically torment more people, I’ll be in the library. Tim!” She snapped her fingers, and strode off to the library as Tim scrambled up and limped after her.

Jon watched her go dazedly as the library door clicked shut behind her. Sasha sighed and went back to her desk, cracking open the thick books on the top and relaxing. They weren’t even research books, just nonfiction about the Mayflower. Basira was back at her desk too, this time with her chin resting on her arms folded on the desk as she watched a...movie. Was that a romcom?

This was dangerous. The situation was dangerous, doubtless the plot of some force or another that hated Jon personally and wanted him to suffer. He had to do some research, find out what was going on, track down Elias and find his power and dig into that source of infinite knowledge lying dormant in his mind, uproot every terrifying thing that hated him and shake them down for answers.

But he was more scared of Melanie. Just because she didn’t seem to have any knives on her didn’t mean that it was the case. Unless Martin had them all. So Jon lay back on the couch, rotely pressed in the passcode to his phone, and idly opened up the internet browser in complete comfort and relaxation.

The couch was so comfortable and soft, in fact, that Jon soon fell asleep. Easy and smooth, as if he really was still a human, who needed sleep at all.

And when Jon dreamed, he dreamed of blissful and restful nothing.

******

He woke up to someone shaking his shoulder, and Jon screamed himself awake as his eyes flew open.

But it wasn’t anybody dangerous, or anything willing to hurt him. It was just - Basira. Just Basira. Jon exhaled in relief, ignoring Basira’s incredulous expression.

“It’s five, we’re heading out. You feeling well enough for pub night, mate?”

They were going home. The strangeness registered first, the fact that Sasha was shrugging on a jacket and Melanie was stuffing a laptop in a backpack, before Jon remembered where he was. Or where he wasn’t. He mustered a faint smile for Basira, but judging from her frown it came out closer to a grimace.

Pub night. They were going out for drinks, then going to their own flats. Eating dinner. Sleeping. Waking up the next morning, then heading off to work. The mundanity boggled.

Maybe it was a Lotus Eater, Jon thought, dazed. A world where there were no Entities, no fears or harm. Where everybody was human, and happy.

Maybe. He hadn’t actually been allowed to look at any of the Statements, so he didn’t actually know. He couldn’t imagine that this group would be so casual if the Statements really were true.

Part of him wanted to beg off, curl up and sleep in document storage so he wouldn’t have to interact with these people for any longer. He was out of practice: these days he rarely had long conversations with anybody who wasn’t Daisy, and he hadn’t seen Daisy all day. Basira exchanged a few curt sentences with him each day. Melanie...cried and screamed, a lot. Not exactly conducive to social skills.

Sasha’s face was buried in a book, not even looking up as she navigated the desks. Tim was talking a patient Melanie’s ear off about Nietzche.

“I think I can make it,” Jon found himself saying. “Just a pint.”

Besides, he had the feeling that if he curled up in document storage Georgie would...be mad at him. Or something. They were flatmates? Or something?

They walked out the door in a herd, talking and laughing. Jon found himself hanging in the back of the group, next to Sasha. She wasn’t looking up from her book, so Jon felt safe in staring unabashedly at Tim. He was using a cane, just like Daisy had for two or so weeks right out of the coffin. He even used it in the same way: not favoring one leg or the other, using it for strength instead of balance. Muscle weakness. He was just as emancipated as Daisy had been too, in that particular corpse-like way that made him look like a zombie. His hair was long and lanky, brittle strands reaching to his chin instead of his normal lush and gelled look.

The faces in the lobby were the same - Sabrina behind the desk, Roy playing security guard - even as the decorations were different. No portrait of Jonah Magnus, or of the other directors. They broke out into the London street, as smoggy and crowded as ever, and Jon found himself trailing behind the others in a direct route to their usual pub. The same one he, Basira, Melanie, and Daisy go drinking at sometimes. Only sometimes. They went without him more often, but Jon didn’t blame them, really -

“Something on my face, mate?”

Tim’s wry voice startled Jon out of his reverie, and he flushed. Tim smiled at him, thinly and without humor, and gestured him forward as he dropped behind Melanie. Jon stepped forward, tucking his hands into his jacket, fighting the rising swell in his throat.

“You’ve been staring. I’m not that much uglier, am I?” Tim asked lightly, a parody of his old good humor. That, at least, was familiar - Tim’s fragile and brittle humor, tightly leashing rage.

“You...you look good,” Jon said. He buried his hands deeper in his jacket pockets, fighting the lump in his throat. He couldn’t stop himself from adding, “It’s good to see you again.”

It was probably a strange thing for Jon to say - but Tim just smiled, even more bitter than the last. “You’ve always been too nice for your own good, Sims.” First time that’s been said about him. “You forgive too easy.”

“Grudges...aren’t worth it, in my experience.” Jon exhaled slowly, watching Melanie’s red hair glint in the sunlight in front of him. “Life’s too short and all.”

“Really? Thought you people loved grudges.” Tim blinked a second, before clearly remembering something. “We love grudges, right. Still, Jon, I never really…” He trailed off awkwardly. “You know.”

He did not. “Right,” Jon said.

“Apologized,” Tim said hurriedly, when it became clear that Jon wasn’t about to say anything committal. “For trying to kill you all those times. Uh, and trying to get you arrested. And helping frame you for murder. And that whole kidnapping incident -”

Something began to occur to Jon. A rational thought seeped into his brain.

“In the woods,” Jon said slowly. “Because you thought I was a monster.”

Tim winced, confirming Jon’s suspicion. “Right. Trust me, I’ve had a lot of time to think, and I know I was wrong. I’ve turned over a new leaf and everything.” He brightened. “Did you hear I’m bisexual now?”

“Everybody heard you were bisexual now,” Basira said, bored. “Ten times.”

“Good for you,” Jon said, as sincerely as he could. “That’s...great. Bi rights.”

Tim beamed. “Bi rights!” He clapped Jon’s shoulder supportively with his other hand as Melanie held open the door to the pub for them, ducking inside. “Man, I never thought I’d see the inside of a pub again. I only got to go a few times with you guys before everything. Can Martin still hustle the room at pool?”

“One way to find out,” Martin said serenely.

“Please don’t start a pub brawl,” Melanie said, pained. “We’ve been kicked out of three places already, I don’t fancy making it a fourth.”

But when Jon looked backwards, he saw Sasha looking up from her book, staring directly at him, blinking owlishly.

They crowded into a corner booth, squishing up against each other and all talking at once. Jon wanted to drift towards Martin, get him alone and ask what was going on, but after one look at him eyeing up the pool cues speculatively he changed his mind. Only Basira was acting even remotely normal, so he settled for sliding in between her and Sasha. He was dizzy with the noise and the clamor of the familiar pub, overwhelmed by the familiar-unfamiliar tide of voices, and it was taking all of his energy not to spend hours just staring at Sasha, memorizing every line and crease of her face.

The first thing he did was order every single crummy, greasy, soggy serving of pub food he found on the menu, ignoring the way his Assistants laughed at him, before settling in the corner of the booth and pulling out his phone. Jon wasn’t even hungry - he wasn’t hungry - but he was shoving every soggy chip into his mouth until he puked. A human body was a drastically underrated thing.

Out of curiosity, Jon turned on the front camera of his phone and scrutinized his reflection. He had noticed that his hair was shorter, tied back in a puffed bun instead of his customary ragged ponytail, but beyond that he hadn’t checked.

He looked...good. No longer gaunt and malnourished, he was a healthy weight. No bags under his eyes. Well kept fade and modest, well trimmed facial hair. No scar over his throat, no circular worm scars. That was less of a surprise - Tim, Martin, and Sasha were all missing the worm scars.

His eyes were brown. Just brown. No electrifying green, no spinning iris, no churning wheel of knowledge. Just his normal, boring brown.

He hadn’t known how much he missed it.

As the others started arguing passionately about...vlogs? Or something?...Jon pulled out his wallet. Money had the same old Queen on it, along with his old collection of take-out receipts that had all started disappearing when he stopped eating. A photocopy of a picture of his parents, heavily worn and creased. Still an orphan, then. Jon missed the days when that was his biggest problem.

His driver’s license was the same as ever too. Same name - Jonathan Andrew Sims. Same birthday - February 14th, which he had always considered life’s practical joke on him. The United Kingdom still existed, which was either a good or a bad thing.

He replaced his wallet, ignoring Sasha’s curious stare, and pulled out his phone. He had only gone so far as making sure that major world events were the same before passing out. This time, he pressed his text messages, and scrolled down his most recents. As usual, it was only a few people - almost all of which were at this table - but there were a few other people too.

Georgie was the obvious one, and the most recent. He clicked on that conversation, unsurprised to see an immediate photograph of the Admiral looking angelic as he rolled around in some grass in a patch of sun.

Georgie: Baby at the park soaking in some rays!!! <3 <3 <3. I caught him terrorizing a stray dog. Naughty baby!!

Jon blinked at the message. The Admiral did seem a little...more evil, than he once did. Why were his eyes green? Underneath was Jon’s own text, sent twenty minutes before he had woken up that afternoon.

Jon: He’s committing atrocities and you’re laughing. You’re laughing.

Jon couldn’t fight a smile. He missed Georgie.

He switched over to the text conversation just underneath. He squinted at the contact name. That couldn’t be right.

Gerry: can u pick up milk from aldis? and scented candles

Gerry: for necromancy reasons

Jon: Can you raise the dead tomorrow? Helen said she wants to talk to me so I may be home late. If you don’t hear from me in five hours she’s likely kidnapped me. As a heads up.

Gerry: OH, SO LONG AS I HAVE THE HEADS UP?

Gerry: I’m making Georgie give Melanie the money to buy that toddler leash she’s always threatening to get for u. If u die im not resurrecting u.

Jon: Have fun with one less person to share the rent

Gerry: we dont PAY RENT

Gerard Keay. Jon blinked at the phone. That conversation raised as many questions as it answered. Gerard Keay was alive? He was Jon’s flatmate? He practiced necromancy? None of it seemed very relevant right now, but it made Jon wonder who else was resurrected from the dead. Was necromancy common in this universe, like knitting?

Still, Helen explained quite a bit. It also suggested what Jon was already wondering: that the supernatural was far from foreign. If Helen was supernatural, and not just...a jerk.

If Tim was an Avatar of the Hunt...if he had been in the coffin...and Daisy’s been hard to track down…

Jon was interrupted in his increasingly coherent train of thought by his food arriving, and all thoughts were thrown out the window. His basket of fish and chips slid in front of him, and he wasted absolutely no time in cramming the fries into his mouth three at a time, not wasting time salting or putting vinegar on them. They were dripping with crease, soggy and burning his tongue.

They were perfect.

The waiter, looking somewhat intimidated, slid his bacon butty on the table too, and Jon took barely a moment to swallow before stuffing that in his face too. Bacon, butter, brown sauce - it exploded on his tongue, a cavalcade of salt and seasoning. Increasingly terrified, the waiter put his pie and mash on the table and quickly fled, as Jon finished cramming the sandwich into his mouth before moving back to the fish. It was hot, crackling on his tongue, strong and fishy and perfect.

Jon looked up from his food long enough to grab a glass of water and gulp half of it down. It wasn’t until he put his glass down that he saw the looks on the faces of his Assistants. All of whom ranged from frightened to terrified.

Everybody except Martin, whose chin was propped on his hand and was sighing dreamily. “It’s really hot how you can pack it all away, Jon. Do you want to come over to my flat and let me cook for you? I’d make a lot of food. ”

Jon choked on his fish.

That was it for Sasha. She slammed her book down, expression intent, and jabbed a finger at a now wheezing Jon. “Jon would never choke at Martin’s creepy flirting! That isn’t Jonathan Sims!”

Jon stole Tim’s glass of water, ignoring his squawk, and downed that too.

Now everybody really was staring at him, and Jon felt heat rise to his cheeks. As the kids say, busted. He should probably stop eating and make his escape while he still could, before Tim decided to change his mind on his ‘murdering Jon’ stance.

But outside did not have pub food. Inside had pub food. Jon made his decision with the knowledge that, if his Assistants reacted from a reasonable place of Imposter-based trauma and killed him for pretending to be Jonathan Sims, he’d deserve it. He was not moving from this spot until his food was gone or his Assistants killed him.

Jon finished off Tim’s water, dropping it back on the lacquered table, and hoarsely said, “I’ve been having a very strange day.”

Nobody leaped for his throat or pointed a gun at him, which was always nice. It was more than Jon had been expecting. Instead, everybody looked at Melanie, who narrowed her eyes. Jon realized, a second too late, that they were waiting for her. Whatever happened to him, Melanie would decide.

...why Melanie?

Melanie rested her elbows on the table, steepling her fingers in front of her mouth. She locked eyes with Jon, breaking him down like a judge at a dog show, and Jon tried to shovel mash in his mouth as innocently as possible.

“Sasha. What’s your evidence?”

“He’s been acting weird all day,” Sasha said promptly, as if she’d been expecting the question. She shifted her arm purposefully, and Jon realized with a start that she was concealed carrying. Was that legal? “Jon never asks me for Statements outright, he always just sneaks them behind Melanie’s back. If he really fainted because he was hungry, he would have eaten his lunch too, instead of just my granola bar. And he hasn’t talked to Martin since he fainted - he isn’t even sitting next to him.” Sasha drew herself up triumphantly. “And, he looked actually scared when Martin threw that knife at him. He’s never scared of Martin. He normally just role-plays the fear bit.”

“Which I appreciate,” Martin said supportively, making Jon blanch. That elicited more suspicious looks from everyone, which Jon couldn’t even begin to parse. “But he has been acting strange today, hasn’t he?”

“Tim?” Melanie asked sharply.

Tim sniffed loudly, wrinkling his nose a little. “Smells like him.” At Melanie’s intense look, he grudgingly added, “No sawdust or plastic. Flesh and blood, boss.”

Jon began stuffing forkfuls of pastry and meat crumb from the pie in his mouth as Melanie went back to squinting at Jon. Not glaring - just an intense, sidelong look, fingers steepled in front of her. “You aren’t denying it, Jon.”

Jon mumbled something.

“Swallow your food.”

Jon carefully swallowed his mouthful of dough. “I have not eaten human food,” Jon said delicately, “in five months. I will answer your questions momentarily.”

And then Jon cleaned all three of his plates, to the dumbfounded looks of his Assistants.

Finally, after everybody else’s drinks had arrived - including Jon’s pint, which he reached for so quickly that Martin stole it away from him and refused to give it back - and Jon had cleaned all three of his plates, he felt ready to talk. He thumped on his chest, burping a little, and leaned back in his plush seat. Melanie was nursing her pint, sipping from it slowly, as Basira gave him her usual ‘I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you’ look.

“Okay,” Jon said finally. “I apologize for not - ah, clarifying before. I thought I was dreaming. To be honest, I worry that I’m still dreaming.” He looked down at his empty basket and plates. “I dearly hope that wasn’t human flesh or something horrid like that.”

Sasha perked up. “Like in the cannibal priest statement? That’s fascinating -”

“Shut up about cannibal priests,” Melanie groaned, and Sasha guiltily shut up. Oddly rude, but nobody seemed surprised. “You are Jon, right?”

Everybody stared at him blankly.

“Well,” Basira said finally, “sounds like the kind of bullshit you get yourself wrapped up in, Jon.”

“I knew it!” Sasha cried, before deflating. “I mean, I didn’t, really, not at all, but that’s fascinating! Will you answer some questions? Who’s the Queen in your universe?”

“I’m back from the dead for a week and my life’s already stupid again,” Tim said blankly.

“Two Jons?” Martin asked, far too excitedly.

“Can I leave you alone,” Melanie gritted out, between clenched teeth, “for five minutes?”

Then everybody was talking over each other, arguing and exclaiming and yelling, and Jon frantically drank his pint. They were so loud.

Finally, Melanie chopped a hand through the buzz, and everyone quieted. She pursed her lips, looking Jon up and down, and he anxiously let himself get looked at. “How did you know it was an alternate universe? What’s the difference?”

“Martin threw a knife at me and Tim and Sasha are alive,” Jon said instantly.

“I’m not actually dead in your universe,” Tim said quickly, “just trapped in an infernal demon hell coffin. If you can get me out, I’d be really thankful -”

“No, you’re quite dead,” Jon said apologetically. “That happened to Daisy in my universe, though. A - a lot of what you did here, I think, Daisy did.” He looked at Basira, frowning. “Where is Daisy? She’s not…”

“She’s fine,” Basira said curtly, folding her arms and leaning back. “Having lots of fun ditching us and having fun at her little secretary desk. It’s fine. I don’t care. She can do what she wants, she’s an adult.”

“Basira’s been pining tragically ever since Daisy ran off to go work for Peter Lukas,” Melanie said sympathetically.

Jon felt a little called out. “Ah. That’s - that’s very unfortunate.” He slowly turned to Martin, who still seemed caught up in the ‘two Jons’ aspect of this. “And you’re...you would define yourself as full of rage?”

“At all times, all the time, without cessation,” Martin agreed affably. “Why? That’s not weird to you, is it?”

“Uh huh.” Jon slowly turned to Sasha. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to insult you, but...did you happen to once work as a Constable for the Met?”

Everybody winced. Sasha sighed. “I regret all of my actions and I’m very sorry that I was once a pig and I’ll never do it again because I value due process now.”

“Word, sister,” Tim said, raising his pint.

“Hm,” Jon said, far too much coming together. But that left a big question, one thing that didn’t make sense. “What about me? Do I - eat trauma?”

Basira stared at him blankly. “You try, sometimes, but we usually just spray water at you until you stop.”

“That explains it,” said Jon, despite the fact that it didn’t explain anything.

“Your questions are pointless, and this is a waste of time.” Melanie clapped her hands sharply, making everyone straighten to attention. She stood up from her seat, everybody scrambling to protect their glasses as Melanie clambered on top of the table. “Helen! Get out here!”

“She’s not - she’s not Beetlejuice, you can’t just call her name and make her appear,” Jon said blankly. “How’s she even supposed to hear -”

“She can hear me just fine,” Melanie called, “because she’s been sitting at the bar this whole time.”

Everybody’s heads craned around to look at the bar. Through the stream of people, carrying drinks and laughing, Jon could faintly make out a tall, willowy figure with a large afro sitting on a barstool at the bar, tapping the rim of one elegant martini with a long, manicured fingernail.

Then she swiveled around, and Helen grinned broadly at all of them. She waved cheekily with one hand, fingers waving and rippling strangely in the dim pub lights. “Hello! You rang?”

Melanie jabbed a finger at the table pointedly. “Michael’s too young to be here too, Helen!”

“They’re eighteen, they’re a big non-Euclidean concept!” Helen tittered, as she hopped of the stool. Jon’s draw dropped as a much smaller, slight figure next to her hopped off too. They were a teenager, with a curly mop of blonde hair and big, watery blue eyes that seemed just a little strange. Everything about them was on the edge of familiar, and not in the usual way of the Spiral.

“She was waiting for us to figure it out,” Basira murmured, catching Jon’s attention. “It’s definitely funny to her.”

“Helen defined schadenfreude, I’m afraid,” Jon said, depressed, as Helen and her tagalong popped up at the edge of their table. Melanie had said Michael - and the kid did look like Michael, younger and alive and wide-eyed. Their watery eyes caught on Jon, and they tilted their head curiously. The sight of them hurt Jon’s head more than the Spiral usually did - a testament to the human body he was borrowing.

Human. That was no defense. He was vulnerable, and judging from the angle of Helen’s smile she knew it.

“Enjoying your vacation, Archivist?” Helen tittered, folding her hands girlishly as Melanie hopped off the table and back in her seat. “I’ve been having so much fun in this universe I thought I ought to bring a friend! Buy one plane ticket get one free, you know. I have this coupon for a great spa around here -”

“Helen,” Melanie intoned dangerously.

Helen tittered a nervous laugh. Was she...scared of Melanie? “Don’t worry! Your darling little Jon’s perfectly safe. He’s having a great time in one of my favorite dimensions, this wonderful post-apocalyptic adventure with a werewolf -

“Helen,” Melanie said slowly, danger building with every word, “we talked about what happens when you remove Jons from their native ecosystems.”

“They get sick,” Michael said somberly, nodding their head. “An’ wilt.”

“It is very stressful for the Jon, Helen. You know what we don’t like?”

“A stressed Jon?” Michael volunteered.

“Yes, Michael.” Melanie smiled pleasantly at Helen, who blanched. “A stressed Jon. Because when Jon gets stressed, my girlfriend gets stressed. And when my girlfriend gets stressed, I get stressed. And when I get stressed, everybody is about to have a very bad time. Get it? Helen?”

“Completely understood, very sympathetic, I see your point completely,” Helen said hurriedly. “Really, you can say that I did my dear Archivist a favor! He hasn’t had a human body in almost half a year, the poor dear was so sad about it. It’s a break, really!”

Tim squinted at Jon. “You’re really full on fear demon, then?”

Jon squirmed guiltily, ashamed. “I prefer the term Avatar. But...yes, I’m an amoral monster distant from humanity, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Melanie said impatiently. “You’re about as far from humanity as I am. Having stupid superpowers or cramming shitty food into your mouth doesn’t make you inhuman, it just means you hang out with the wrong crowd. Go back to your own universe and get some rest, I bet you’re stressing out all your friends.”

“I’m really not,” Jon said weakly. “I - I really only have one friend.”

“No wonder you look so tragic all the time,” Sasha said thoughtfully. “Jon gets all mopey without affection. Like an unwatered plant.”

“I eat trauma,” Jon said, bewildered at the perception of harmlessness.

“You and half of the YouTube vlogging community.” Melanie clapped her hands again sharply, pulling everyone to attention. “Helen. Put Jon back where he came from or so help me.”

“Ruining all my fun,” Helen pouted, but at Melanie’s glare she sighed. She held up one hand, and static rippled through the air. The hand elongated, twisted, and turned into Helen’s signature lengthy claw. Michael eyed it with interest, before holding up their own hand and doing the same. “Fun while it lasted, Archivist! Now hold still. I wouldn’t want to lobotomize the wrong lobe.”

“Nice meeting you,” Sasha said politely, to a very freaked out Jon. “Don’t come back, though.”

“Come back if you want,” Basira yawned. “My life’s boring, spice it up a little.”

“Sorry I’m dead in your universe or whatever,” Tim said, waving a hand. “Life and death is meaningless anyway, so I’m sure it’s for the best.”

“I want my Jon back,” Martin complained. “Go on and get out, then.”

“Tell your friends what we told you,” Melanie said. “Don’t they know that you get all tragic when you’re lonely?”

And Jon didn’t know how to say it - that they didn’t know, or if they did then they didn’t care, because they had so many bigger problems than if Jon was sad or not. With Elias’ strange plans, with Jon’s encroaching monsterhood and his slow and steady starvation, with Martin’s loneliness and Basira’s desperation and Melanie’s instability, Jon’s feelings were the least important thing in the world.

Did it matter, to anybody but Jon, that he thought of Martin first thing in the morning and last thing as he went to bed at night?

“Hold still and look straight at me!” Helen said, and Jon had to be thankful - because that let him look at Sasha and Tim, eyes wide and intrigued, as Helen speared her finger through Jon’s forehead.

Jon blacked out, but the images of Sasha and Tim stayed burned behind his eyelids. He dreamed calm dreams, of him and Martin and Sasha and Tim, laughing together, as the world faded away.

****

When Jon woke up, it was with a crick in his neck, and he knew immediately he had fallen asleep on the battered old couch in his office again.

There was a heavy weight on his chest, and when he pried his eyes open he saw the top of Daisy’s head in front of him. Dusty blonde hair pooled on his chest as Daisy snored, deep asleep, arm stretched over his torso.

The taste of salt and grease was on his tongue, and Jon let himself go back to sleep. The dreams would be terrifying and desolate, but at least in them he was never hungry.

#my writing #tma #the magnus archives #tma fanfic #the magnus archives fanfic #im also doing an UNBELIEVABLY self-indulgent tim character study but im not sure if i should post it because tim's not funny #melanie king #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #slaughter!martin #basira hussain #sasha james #helen richardson #michael shelley

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welcometogrouchland · 3 years ago

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Archivist!Sasha AU?

1. Not!Jon is that guy who is gratingly friendly but in a way that feels overwhelmingly fake. He's interested in your life in a way that feels overwhelmingly impersonal. If Jon is someone who struggles navigating personal interaction but overwhelmingly cares about the people he's talking too, not!Jon is the exact opposite. He's also a HUGE oversharer. Can't go more than a few minutes without dropping an excruciatingly personal fact into the conversation. He's like an energy vampire from wwdits. I've also decided that I think he looks like my original vision of buff Jon.

2. The person to take Sasha in while on the run in season 3 is Annabelle pretending to be a "friend from school".

But seriously: Annabelle being Sasha's roommate in season 3 lives in my head, mainly because yeah Annabelle is scheming as she's won't to do but also, narratively it'd be a great chance to humanise her? We'd get to see her in (an approximation of) the comfort of her own home. Maybe see her quirks and likes and dislikes. And it'd leave Sasha conflicted in later seasons, both because she can't be sure how much of Annabelle's help was a whim of the Web, and how much was her own action, but also...Annabelle kept her safe. I think that up until the end of season 5 Sasha would be holding out hope that maybe there's still something worth saving in Annabelle cane (and who knows? Maybe she's right...)

3. Tim partially blinds himself. I don't quite know the details of how, but I think he manages to get at least one eye removed, but for reasons, can't go through with the other. Mainly because a partially blind person in the eyepocalypse isn't something I've seen speculated about? And I'm honestly not sure how it would work entirely. I think Sasha can still See him, unlike Melanie who she has a blind spot with, but I'm not sure what kind of power he'd have in the apocalypse. In terms of other entities he's aligned with, I've seen the End thrown around as a possible option for Tim, and I think it works. Tim wants the possibility of finality in a world seemingly determined to keep you tortured beyond death. I'm not quite sure that he'd have the same will to live as Martin? I think he might be more accepting of the fate of him having to kill Sasha to release the fears in the end

4. Speaking of season 4, it's still Basira and Melanie (now with Tim for company) in the archives pre Sasha waking up. Melanie is obviously still ruining her life under the influence of the slaughter and her own trauma- but I think it hits slightly different in this au? Melanie doesn't actively dislike Sasha the way she does Jon. I think they might actually be somewhat close? Obviously not close enough for Sasha to say, hide out at her place during season 3, but close enough for Melanie to maybe talk about Georgie to Sasha and offer her condolences over the loss of Jon, even if she never liked him. So, when Sasha goes into the coma, Melanie takes it hard! And she takes it even harder when Sasha has to perform surgery on her to remove the bullet. I think in this au there's at least an attempt to ask Melanie for permission, but she was always going to say know. It hurts- Melanie likes Sasha. She cares about Sasha, she knows she was just doing it to help, but she still sees her face in her nightmares before she wakes up screaming (consequently, I don't think Georgie likes Sasha very much when they finally meet. Ironic considering Georgie and Tim get along swimmingly).

5. And a lightning round: I think Mike crew actually likes Sasha in this au. When they met and he tried to throw her into the vast I think she panicked and punched him and was like "oh you're fucked! Nice, I respect that". the desolation is one of the later marks sasha gets (from Agnes Montague in this au). It's not as actively malevolent a gesture as Jude's handshake, but I think the whole encounter is definitely unsettling for Sasha. Lastly, I think that while Peter doesn't have as active an agent (or rather, as clear a victim) in season 4 in this au, but I think he does work with Basira (not unlike Elias in that season). After all, when you think you've lost your trusted partner and are starting to shut everyone out in the name of preserving your sense of control and morality, well, you can start to feel oh so very...lonely

#ask games #ramblings of a lunatic #archivist!sasha #OOF this post is long i did NOT think i had as many thoughts as i did #anyway most of these were made up on the fly? i had the annabelle one brewing in my head for some time but beyond that #the not!jon was just me trying to make a sort of. bizarro jon? so i went with personality traits that i see as opposing Jon's #its the same thought process i had with not!daisy in the spiral sasha au #also carefully avoided describing the exact nature of tim and Sasha's relationship in this au because i don't actually know how I'd do it s

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supercasey · 4 years ago

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TMA Child Avatars AU

Alright, so ever since I listened to the episode about Agnes’s origins, I keep thinking about an AU where a bunch of the other Entities, after realizing that it’s at least possible to create an avatar from birth, perform their own rituals and make a bunch of the future Archives gang. This AU has a lot of potential for angst, but since TMA is sad enough, I’ll probably mostly focus on the world building and fluffy/funny stuff (‘cus god knows I’m a slut for that shit).

To all my followers, I’m sorry I keep making kid AUs; I got told in like 2015 or so that I sucked at writing kids and it’s Never Left My Mind, so now I always wanna make stupid AUs in order to practice writing kids better (I also have an original story I wanna write soon with a ten year old as the main character, so yeah, I need all the practice I can get).

Anyways, here’s all I’ve got on the AU this far (explanation under the cut; a very long post is up ahead):

Character Backstories

Jonathan “Jon” Sims - Apprentice Archivist of the Eye

Jon is a very complicated story, at least from everyone outside of the Eye’s gaze. It was Elias’s idea to create him, and were it not for Gertrude getting lucky, no one but Elias, Peter Lukas, and Simon Fairchild would have ever known that Jon existed until he was ready to become the next archivist. Gertrude found out by pure chance when she accepted a live statement from one very frightened Delores Sims, who told the archivist about how a strange man had been stalking her ever since she found out she was pregnant. Out of completely nowhere, her husband died a month after she conceived, and even though it looked like an accident, Delores swore that she saw an arm surrounded by fog push him down the stairs. Things only grew worse for her over the next few weeks, as in the midst of her grieving her dead husband, Delores began seeing green, glowing irises out of the corners of her eyes, watching her every move as she lived her life, which was followed by the stalker in question appearing constantly in her dreams, always watching her from afar, an unpleasant and frankly unnerving grin on his face the entire time.

Suspicious, and finding the description of the stalker all too familiar by the end of the statement, Gertrude investigated Delores’s claims on her own time, going so far as to break into Elias’s office in order to dig up more information on whatever he was up to. No matter what her theories may have been, none of them were anything like what she found in his letters to his associates. Somehow, Elias had conspired alongside the Lukas and Fairchild families to find their heirs/avatars together, and Elias was the last person to acquire one of his own. Gertrude was unsure of the details at the time (and she still unfortunately is), but from what she could gather, the child growing in Delores Sims’ body was somehow touched by the Eye because of something Elias had done, and they would be born with the perfect framework to have the powers that an archivist learns over several years of training at birth! With no time to lose, Gertrude got back into contact with Delores, and after much discussion between the two women, she convinced Delores to come to her apartment when she eventually went into labor, and to give Gertrude the baby after they were born so that she could keep them safe from Elias.

The birth was meant to be done in secret, but the second the first contraction occurred, there was a knock on Gertrude’s door, Elias waiting for her on the other side with an unhappy grimace on his face. He came armed with a gun, and threatened to murder Gertrude if she didn’t allow him to claim the child as his own. Aware she still had many rituals to stop in the near future, and that none of her assistants were experienced enough to stop them by themselves, Gertrude reluctantly agreed to let him inside, but on one condition; the child had to be shared between them. Elias was abrasive to the idea of course, but he eventually complied with his archivist’s demands, not wanting to replace her so early on in her career. The sight of her stalker coming into the bedroom to watch her give birth unfortunately sent Delores into a panic attack while she was still very much in labor, making the rest of the birth a rather dangerous thing, but the child survived, leaving his mother terrified and shaking. Gertrude had planned on letting her go on her merry way after the baby was born, but Elias wasn’t taking any chances, and he shot her as soon as he deemed it safe to.

Since then, Gertrude and Elias have had dual custody of Jonathan- the name was Gertrude’s idea, on the grounds that it was a nice, proper name for a young man- trading him back and forth every other week. It’s been hard, especially with the adults he calls his parents wanting to kill each other, but Jon’s oblivious to most of the fighting right now, assuming his folks are just going through a messy divorce.

Martin Blackwood-Lukas - Adoptive Son of Peter Lukas

Peter ended up running very behind in the whole child avatar thing (a first for his family, something Simon reminds him of on a daily basis), and he really struggled with creating a baby avatar that would actually be able to “keep up” with the other young messiahs that were coming to be. Eventually he realized that his family’s usual method would take too long, so out of desperation he went to Elias and Simon for help. It was Simon’s idea that worked; he suggested that since the normal methods weren’t working, and kids usually don’t become lonely until they’re older, that Peter should try his own summoning ritual like the Lightless Flame did with Agnes. Peter was hesitant at first, but he gave in quickly, sacrificing a number of lonely souls to his entity in a well-timed manner, until finally, he found a small, swaddled baby in the midst of the fog; a supposed gift from the Lonely for his loyalty.

Peter was delighted by this discovery, and so were his colleagues, the men relieved that their hard work had actually paid off for once. After naming the little boy Martin- it was Elias’s idea, though he didn’t have much of an exact reason for the name, simply claiming that it “suited” the child- and before long, Peter began raising his newfound son much the same as he was; in almost total isolation, save for a variety of rotating nannies and caregivers. Unfortunately for Peter, this went horribly wrong almost as soon as he got started, as by the time that Martin was six months old he had accidentally forced five different nannies into the fog out of fear of them leaving like the ones before them had. With no other options available, and being able to actually leave the fog if Martin threw anymore fits, Peter was forced to raise his son by hand, which again went wrong, but for very different reasons, as to his shock, he became quite attached to his adopted child.

This evolved into Peter having doubt of the Lonely for the first time in his life, but he refused to acknowledge it for as long as he could. But he was finally forced to when, after Martin turned five years old, the rest of the Lukas family insisted on performing a test on the child to see how well Martin could handle the fog without any guidance. He had been inside the fog before of course, with Peter holding his hand or carrying him through the dense chill, but the family wanted to isolate Martin inside for a full month. This secretly scared Peter like nothing else ever had, but out of fear of what his family might think, he didn’t say anything at the time, simply watching from afar as his son was dragged into the fog and left to fend for himself. The ritual went wrong within the first week, Martin having a full-scale breakdown and nearly hyperventilating to death, and yet the family kept him in there for another week before the intervention.

The results of the test of course disappointed the other members of the Lukas family, who suggested that they simply leave Martin to disappear into the fog and look for a new, more sufficient messiah to serve their god. The news hit Peter incredibly hard, and despite his previous inhibitions and fear, he knew he couldn’t let the Lonely consume his one and only son. So, without telling anyone of what he was up to, he ventured into the fog, rescued Martin, and fled to live with his estranged ex-husband the Magnus Institute. Since then he’s been living with Elias at his house and avoiding his family at all costs, all while young Martin has grown up alongside the other entity kids and has struggled to figure out his role in everything, but at least he has his dad on his side through all of this.

Sasha James - Chosen Daughter of the Mother of Puppets

(Note: I headcanon the Mother of Puppets as a giant spider, so that’s how I’m writing her… sorry if this is inaccurate, but I’m only on MAG 152, y’all. Besides, I think this is cool af.)

Sasha was very much planned, even more so than Agnes was so many years beforehand. The Mother of Puppets had her minions gather hundreds upon hundreds of orphaned infants and bring them to her nest. She swaddled each every one in her webbing and kept them like this for several weeks, allowing them time to adjust to the webbing and adapt. Unfortunately, most of these children weren’t cut out for the Web’s influence, and while a few indeed held their adoptive mother’s mark, almost none of them were marked deep enough to become a fully realized avatar. The unsuccessful batches were subsequently sent off to orphanages across the world and replaced with new babies, this process repeating for years and years, until finally, Sasha was born. There was nothing special about her parents, yet she not only bore The Web’s mark, she seemed to have it embedded into her very soul. This, of course, was met with celebration from the Web, and plans were quickly made as to how to raise her moving forward, as no one wanted Sasha to end up like Agnes did.

Annabelle Cane ended up being the one chosen to home Sasha for the first few years of her childhood, and she was dutiful in her new, rather honorable role, as she not only cared for the child well, but she treated Sasha as her own, though she was careful to be seen more as an older sister than a mother to the girl; that role was, of course, reserved for Sasha’s real mother. When Sasha finally turned five, the Mother of Puppets announced further plans for the young avatar, calling on Annabelle to take Sasha to the Magnus Institute and give her to one of their hidden agents there so that she could learn more about how the Web uses it’s influence over other entities. This worried Annabelle, who wanted to keep the child near her and prove that she was the most loyal of the mother’s children, but she would never disobey a direct order from the being that had given her life such meaning. So, rather reluctantly, Annabelle gave Sasha to another member of the Web, watching from the shadows as this unworthy follower took the blessed daughter into the institute for further training.

This went wrong within only a few months. Gertrude ended up finding out who the Web’s spy in the institute was, as she had suspected that another entity was trying to control her from the shadows, and after disposing of the threat and searching their home for anything useful that she could use against the Web, she found Sasha. The archivist was tempted to kill the supernatural child on sight, but while she can murder her assistants and enemies without much remorse, on the grounds that it’s always for the greater good, killing a child is a very different story. So she took Sasha in, raising the Web’s child as her own alongside the Eye’s own prodigy Jon, all while trying to help Sasha control her slowly budding powers. The Mother of Puppets has been trying to get Sasha back ever since, enraged that the child is so close to her yet just out of reach, but with no luck, though there’s no telling how long that will last.

Timothy & Daniel Stoker - Dancer and Future Ringmaster of the Stranger

Both Tim and Danny are chosen ones of the Stranger, created as soon as their god had gained enough spare power to create them. Tim was born first, being the Stranger’s first attempt at birthing an avatar that might be powerful enough to help lead the Unknowing, but Gertrude interrupted midway through the ritual. By some miracle, Tim survived the ordeal, but he was left “incomplete” to some degree, leaving him simply marked and not fully connected to the Stranger. The entity’s followers ended up keeping him around though, both because Nikola Orsinov was too fascinated by the newborn baby to give him up, and because his parents wanted him to survive, but it was agreed that another attempt would be made, this time with more planning involved. Four years later, Danny was born, and with Gertrude too preoccupied to intervene this time around (and because she didn’t realize they’d try again so soon), the ritual went much better and created a far more suitable vessel for the Stranger’s powers.

After that, Tim and Danny’s parents died, fully succumbing to the Stranger’s transformation and leaving them orphaned. Not that their presence was strictly necessary after the kids were born, as Nikola Orsinov was more than happy to take over in most of the child rearing, genuinely growing quite fond of the two boys, particularly Tim, as despite his lack of supernatural abilities, she found him to be rather endearing, which is probably the closest she can get to genuinely caring about someone. Both brothers were raised more or less the same way, save for Danny being showered with more praise and being trained as a future ringmaster while Tim was mostly ignored and trained to be a dancer. Some followers of the Stranger feared that Tim might harbor resentment towards his little brother and try to kill him someday, but to their surprise, Tim only grew more protective of him over the years, swearing to keep Danny safe as he grew up to fulfill his destiny and help their family mold the world in their image.

Eventually though, when Tim was eleven and Danny was seven, Tim realized what was actually happening behind the scenes, and not wanting his brother to risk being sacrificed for the world’s destruction, he told Danny everything, leading to the young messiah to run away with him to London (they were raised primarily in Russia, but moved with the circus a lot, and were in France at the time that they finally ran away). There, Tim found the infamous Gertrude Robinson, who he knew had the power to stop the Unknowing, as she had once saved him from becoming the Stranger’s avatar, and inadvertently led him to having a little brother. Tim and Danny have since moved in with Michael, and they visit the Magnus Institute whenever they get the chance, as both boys have grown to become friends with the other avatar kids. You’d think that the Stranger’s followers would be furious about all of this- don’t worry, many of their acolytes are- but Nikola has laughed it off entirely and keeps insisting that the boys are just having a “sleepover” or are away at “summer camp” (in fucking January, apparently).

Melanie King - Cadet of the Slaughter

Honestly, the Slaughter wasn’t as into the whole “let’s make an avatar from scratch!” thing that the other entities’ followers were doing, but hey, sometimes child avatars just kinda wind up on your doorstep, ya know? Melanie ended up being found at about four years old, sobbing on her hands and knees outside of a burning hospital and calling for her mommy and daddy to come back to her, but no one answered her cries, and she was left to weep for quite some time before someone found her. The hospital, you see, had been overrun by the Corruption and promptly burned to the ground by the Desolation, neither of which bothered to stick around for some worthless child. Melanie’s parents were both inside when the entities clashed, leaving her orphaned and scared, and while Alfred Grifter, who had been on his way to a show with his bandmates at the time that he found her, had intended on just leaving her be, he saw the overwhelming rage and blood-lust in her crying eyes, and realized in that moment that she was touched by the urge to kill, just like he was.

Melanie was promptly taken in by Alfred Grifter and the band, who honestly had no idea what the hell they were doing. On one hand, Alfred knew that keeping a kid around was unbelievably dangerous for all parties involved, but on the other, he really didn’t want to leave Melanie all by herself, for fear of what she might do if left without any guidance from “people” who knew what she was going through, at least to some degree. That isn’t to say Alfred and his bandmates were all that great at raising her- they mostly just brought her to gigs and let her play on her Gameboy backstage while they started massacres- but they did at least try to give her somewhat of a home. It wasn’t until five years into this that some other Slaughter followers found out about Melanie’s existence, to which they told Alfred to give her to them for proper training. Knowing her life would be horrible with them, Alfred gave his ward a backpack full of everything she ever owned, a kid sized guitar, her Gameboy, and sent her on the run.

Melanie was scared out of her mind at first, having grown to see Alfred and his bandmates as her new family; she had already lost her parents, so why did she have to lose the band, too!? But there were no other options, she had to run, so she did just that, attacking any adult who tried to stop her along the way. She didn’t actually know about the Magnus Institute when she made her way to London, and Alfred didn’t tell her to go there or anything, but she ended up being spotted by Adelard Dekker while she was looking for a place to stay in the area. Seeing that Melanie was an avatar of some kind, Adelard managed to convince her that he was safe, and to let him take her to someone that could help her. He brought Melanie straight to Gertrude Robinson, who agreed to house the child since Adelard couldn’t, though she ended up letting one of her unofficial assistants (*cough* Gerry *cough*) take her to live in his flat so she wouldn’t be as easy for Elias to monitor/get ahold of.

Julia Montauk & Alice “Daisy” Tonner - Children of the Hunt

(Watch as I fuck with timelines so badly that the people who keep track of this shit will order a hit on me) The Hunt found both of their avatars in strikingly similar yet different ways; Julia was first, born from the womb of another entity’s follower, but bound for so much more than anything the Dark could give her. Years after her destined birth, Julia’s mother was viciously murdered by the People’s Church when she was just five years old, her father Robert Montauk going down the path of becoming a fully-fledged Hunter, and in the process he unknowingly marked Julia with his newfound entity, which in turn unlocked an unprecedented potential inside of her, not that it was fully realized until another tragedy struck her. This next tragedy, unfortunately, claimed Julia’s father. Mr. Pitch was mistakenly summoned, and in it’s rage, it destroyed Robert while he was in the midst of a sacrifice. The monster would’ve gotten Julia next, had it not been for the intervention of a nearby Hunter.

Trevor Herbert honestly didn’t mean to get involved, but when he witnessed a little girl screaming as she ran out of a house, a giant mass of darkness chasing after her, and no one willing to so much as call the damn cops, he knew he had to rescue the poor kid. In a flash he ran over, picked Julia up, and ran away with her to safety, managing to get her in his car (which he stole, but that’s not important) and drive as far away from her old home as possible. In the aftermath, Trevor had no idea what to do with Julia, since he had never actually wanted any kids of his own, but… well, he ain’t heartless, and that monster was still out there somewhere, just waiting to sink it’s cursed teeth into this young child’s flesh. Trevor ended up keeping her after that, becoming her adoptive father as he traveled with her around the UK, slowly but surely training her to hunt the same monsters that claimed her beloved parents.

You’d think that would be the end of Trevor Herbert adopting little girls marked by the Hunt, but nope, he just can’t catch a fucking break! He found Daisy about a year later, when Julia was eight and becoming more adjusted to her new lifestyle. Again, Trevor wasn’t really planning on going on any hunts at the time that this happened, he was just traveling through the area, but upon finding a bloodied up, terrified little girl being chased by a boy who looked possessed… well, it wasn’t like Julia wasn’t lonely, and again, Trevor isn’t heartless, and he sure as hell can’t let things go. So yeah, he kidnapped another child touched by the Hunt, even though this one actually had a living parent, and once again he took to traveling the UK with his adoptive daughters, secretly reveling in his new role as a father. Daisy, while scared at first, quickly grew fond of her new family, and even fonder of her new nickname after Trevor patched up her wounds, and noticed a flower-shaped scar on her back, prompting him to start affectionately calling her Daisy.

Yep, things were going pretty good for the family of three, but of course, shit eventually caught up with Trevor, not that he thought he could avoid it forever.

The police eventually caught wind of “Trevor the Tramp” traveling with two little girls who looked an awful lot like the missing thirteen and ten year olds Julia Montauk and Alice Tonner, and in his desperation to keep from getting arrested and having his children taken away, Trevor fled to downtown London in order to lie low for awhile and raise his daughters in relative peace, only ever going out for food runs and the occasional hunt. It was through one of these hunts that he ended up meeting Gerard Keay, the two of them chasing after the same book that had been summoning shadow people to wreck havoc on the city, and after a bit of back and forth banter over the campfire that was once a Leitner, Gerry convinced Trevor to move in with him so that the girls and him would be safer and actually have a home. Although he was hesitant to accept an offer he thought was too good to be true (also, he’s not gonna lie, he thought Gerry was a vampire when they met), Trevor agreed and moved into Gerry’s flat with his daughters, and has since helped Gertrude and her assistants with monster hunts.

Oliver Banks & Georgie Barker - Fetchlings of The End

Georgie and Oliver are an odd story, with the latter of the two having gained his powers as a mere toddler, being plagued with horrible, ghastly dreams that would keep him awake through the night, leaving him absolutely haggard by morning. His father tried everything to help Oliver through this torment- counseling, medication, bedtime rituals- but nothing worked, and before long, Oliver’s beloved father was claimed by his nightmares, dying of a heart attack that he couldn’t stop. Alone and misunderstood by everyone who tried to raise him, Oliver ran away countless times, coming across Georgie during his last attempt. He found the little girl to also be on the run for similar reasons, but unlike him, she wasn’t the least bit afraid. She wasn’t exactly happy, but she wasn’t a bawling mess like he was. Together, the two of them struggled to survive, relying on kindhearted drifters for support while they avoided the police until, at long last, something took pity on them, that something being a large, fat tabby cat.

As it were, the tabby cat- dubbed The Admiral by Georgie- wasn’t a normal cat in the slightest, and although it couldn’t speak, it’s intentions were clear; it was there to help these lost, orphaned children. Oliver was skeptical of course, but Georgie wasn’t about to look a gift cat in the mouth, so Oliver reluctantly followed the cat and his little sister to an apartment building, and from there, into an unoccupied flat. Since then, the two children have been living with Admiral in that very same flat, the cat providing them with a fully stocked fridge, warm beds, and running water. It’s still unclear what the Admiral is, but he seems kind enough, and is obviously quite protective of his newfound children, accompanying them on their outings and occasional visits to the institute.

Michael Crew - Prodigy of The Vast

Out of all avatars to be raising children for their entity, Simon Fairchild absolutely has had the most fun with it all, treating it almost like a fun game or pastime. He was the first (save for the Lightless Flame having Agnes, of course) to “create” an avatar child, and from minute one he was overjoyed with the results. A few years after news broke of Agnes’ origins, and the followers of other entities were all arguing over whether or not to follow suit, Simon didn’t bother waiting for anyone’s input or permission, simply throwing himself into the deep end and praying he could make his plan work. Seemingly overnight, Simon somehow acquired a baby later identified as the missing and presumably dead infant Michael Crew, who he referred to as Mike when he finally introduced him to his friends/associates. He still hasn’t told anyone how he even got the kid- not even Peter or Elias know what he did!- but by some means, he illegally adopted Mike and took to raising the kid like a duck takes to water; a bit unsure at first, but growing to love it fast!

When Mike was introduced to the rest of the entity followers community, many were shocked (excuse the pun) to see that the infant had a long, frightening Lichtenberg scar running down his right arm, his back, and his right leg, the scars glowing a bright blue whenever he took to the sky or, as Elias learned the hard way after accidentally annoying Mike by bouncing him on his knee for too long when he was a toddler, used his powers to electrocute people. Even with his child being such an oddity, even among other avatars, Simon took it all in stride, proudly bragging about Mike to anyone who would listen, most of these people being victims of the Vast, who were hardly able to hear Simon’s excited rambling over their own shrieks of terror. He usually also insisted on bringing Mike with him, even when he was a mere infant, though he at least kept the kid in a tight harness on his chest. In all honesty, Simon being such an excited parent was what kick-started a lot of other avatars to start acquiring their own child avatars, as he made it look so easy!

However, things weren’t always perfect, especially on Mike’s end as he grew older. Being the eldest and more or less “firstborn” of this new generation of entity-made avatars put a lot of pressure on him at a very early age, pressure which Simon tried to help him deal with by not acknowledging it, which unfortunately didn’t help in the slightest. Thankfully Mike started to feel less unsure of his place in the world as he reached his teen years, seeing as the younger kids were now getting all the attention and giving him a chance to breathe. Even now that he’s an angsty teenager, Mike loves Simon like a father, referring to him as such without hesitation. This, of course, delights Simon to no end, and makes all his peers low-key high-key jealous of the awesome relationship he has with his son.

Helen Richardson - Droplet of The Spiral

Not much was known about Helen when Michael first found her. After being sent into The Spiral by Gertrude on what he thought to be a suicide mission for the greater good, Michael was half certain he wouldn’t find anything but his end in that place. Instead he found a small, strange toddler where he was meant to find… well, he didn’t actually know what, but certainly not a baby, that’s for sure! With no one watching baby Helen, and therefore making him believe that she had been abandoned by The Spiral’s other creations, Michael had no reservations against scooping her up and taking her back to the physical world with him, where he was met be a very confused Gertrude Robinson. Michael wasn’t exactly keen on killing/abandoning a baby after he got out, so he and Gertrude brought her back to London with them in hopes of finding out more about the odd child. Along the way, it became clear that the baby was gifted with The Spiral’s powers, the giggly toddler continually screwing with reality, though she wasn’t aware she was doing so.

Back home in London, it took another three weeks of research, but Gerry eventually found out more about the child Michael had more or less adopted. Her name was originally Helen Richardson, and her father, a rookie paranormal investigator who had once been marked by The Spiral, was obsessed with the distortion, and was willing to do anything to become more than simply marked by it. He ended up finding a map similar to Gertrude’s, and a few years before she even knew it was possible, the father went into The Spiral and used his own daughter as a vessel for the entity, hoping she would be a good enough sacrifice to earn it’s favor. This of course ended in disaster, with the father “disappearing” while Helen absorbed The Spiral’s power, but seeing as she was so young, it couldn’t manifest properly, even after two and a half years spent trying to “raise her” within the deepest depths of it’s domain.

With research still being done on what to do about the child, and whether or not the team can remove her powers without killing or permanently injuring her in the process, Michael has agreed to take Helen in, secretly delighted to be raising a baby. With the Stoker Brothers already under his roof, Michael has his hands rather full with them and baby Helen, but the boys take her antics in stride, having learned quickly how to deal with the apartment they live in occasionally “growing” some new doors and changing color at random. Luckily for Michael, he has back-up in the forms of Gerry and Gertrude, who occasionally take Helen and the brothers off his hands for him so he can take a break/fix whatever Helen may’ve accidentally broken with her powers.

Character Roles in this AU

(Feel free to add your own OCs/other characters if you wanna do stuff with this AU, I’m just naming characters I know about/remember!)

Avatar Kids: Jonathan “Jon” Sims, Martin Blackwood, Sasha James, Timothy “Tim” Stoker, Daniel “Danny” Stoker, Melanie King, Julia Montauk, Alice “Daisy” Tonner, Oliver Banks, Georgie Barker, Michael “Mike” Crew, and Helen Richardson.

Avatar Kids Semi-Reluctant PTA Group: Elias Bouchard, Gertrude Robinson, Peter Lukas, Gerard “Gerry” Keay, Trevor Herbert, Michael Shelley, and Simon Fairchild.

PTA Allies: Basira Hussain (Daisy’s best friend and the local Normal Child™), Agnes Montague (Everyone’s emergency number for avatar child advice), Alfred Grifter (Just shows up to hang out with Melanie and cause problems on purpose), The Admiral (Guardian to Georgie and Oliver and occasionally the other kids; best babysitter), Adelard Dekker (Comes around the archives sometimes and always brings presents for the kids + assistants), and Rosie (Elias’s assistant and the only sane and sensible adult in this Chili’s tonight).

PTA Enemies: Nikola Orsinov (Tim and Danny’s “Mom” who keeps kidnapping Jon on accident), Annabelle Cane (Hates the institute and wants Sasha back), Jude Perry (Hates the kids but loves Agnes; worst babysitter), and Jared Hopworth (Nightmare flesh man that needs to fuck off; mediocre but funny babysitter).

Character Descriptions

(Feel free to tweak the physical designs if you want; I’m just going off my own headcanons, and seeing as my drawing skills are pretty shit, it’s not like I’m gonna be doing much art for this outside of writing. So yeah, go off with your own headcanons if you want to!)

Full Name: Jonathan “Jon” Sims-Bouchard-Robinson Age: 7 Birthday: October 26th (Scorpio) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Eye, Marked by Literally Fucking Everything Guardian(s): Alexander Sims (Biological Father - Deceased), Delores Sims (Biological Mother - Deceased), Gertrude Robinson (Adoptive Mother - Current), Elias Bouchard (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark brown skin, worryingly short for his age, dark brown eyes that glow bright green when he’s using his powers, long black hair with a few green and grey hairbands tied in, constantly “borrows” Martin’s sweaters to wear, occasionally wears skirts but most of the time he wears slacks, constantly looks sleep deprived, has a very intense stare, and occasionally he can be seen carrying his stuffed moth around. Personality: You’d think he’d be a quiet kid, considering his entity, but no, he has Questions and he wants them Answered, goddammit! He wasn’t raised around many kids his age, being home-schooled by Elias and Gertrude all his life, so he struggles to connect with the other avatar kids. Is only close to the S1 gang at first, but he gets closer to everyone else over time. Idolizes Gerry and thinks he’s the coolest guy ever. Appears rather cowardly at a glance, but he’s braver than most people give him credit for. Would die for his friends/family.

Full Name: Martin Blackwood-Lukas Age: 8 Birthday: February 29th (Pisces) ((This one’s for you, Dane)) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Lonely, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): William Blackwood (Biological Father - Uninvolved), Edna Blackwood (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Peter Lukas (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Polish heritage and pale as a fucking ghost, average height for his age but growing fast, pretty chubby, covered head to toe in little red freckles, short and curly red hair, bright brown eyes, wears big round glasses, wears sweaters and comfy trousers almost 24/7, carries a backpack full of “emergency tools” wherever he goes, usually has a cup of tea in-hand, and sometimes wears a small sailor hat that Peter gave him. Personality: Incredibly reserved, much like Mike, but he’s been trying to come out of his shell more. He’s “Best Friends Forever” with Jon, and gets along well with Tim and Sasha as well. Fears Melanie and Daisy. He likes hanging out with the other kids, but he often gets talked over, leading him to withdraw for awhile if it’s bad enough. Adores his dad, and is so much braver than anyone knows. Incredibly snarky when he feels like it.

Full Name: Sasha James Age: 10 Birthday: November 18th (Scorpio) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Web, Marked by The Eye, Marked by The Stranger Guardian(s): Francis James (Biological Father - Deceased), Patrick James (Biological Father - Deceased), Annabelle Cane (Adoptive Mother - Uninvolved), Gertrude Robinson (Adoptive Mother - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of African and Caucasian with dark brown skin, slightly taller than average for her age, long dark brown hair, wears big round glasses, sometimes wears a little make-up if she can get away with it, wears a lot of turtleneck sweaters and long skirts, always has at least one cobweb on her, carries around a stuffed spider that she brings with her to the archives every day, and she wears a headband most of the time. Personality: Easily the most level-headed of the kids, as she’s been raised around paranormal stuff the longest and is rarely bothered by the stranger things that happen. She hates Artifact Storage with a passion, but other than that, she loves exploring the institute and occasionally stealing Gertrude’s laptop to mess with it. Very tech savvy, and even more curious! Incredibly smart, to the point that she can even outclass Gertrude and Gerry with her quick-wittiness.

Full Name: Timothy “Tim” Stoker Age: 12 Birthday: August 3rd (Leo) Entity/Mark(s): Marked by The Stranger, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Markus Stoker (Biological Father - Deceased), Olivia Stoker (Biological Mother - Deceased), Nikola Orsinov (Adoptive Mother - Uninvolved), Gerard “Gerry” Keay (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of Latino and Korean with dark tanned skin, slightly on the taller side for his age, messy/spiky black hair that looks impossible to comb, dark brown eyes, is described as a “handsome young man” by strangers, has a very charming smile, wears a lot of Hawaiian shirts and shorts (even during the winter), needs to wear glasses but he refuses to wear them in the archives out of self-consciousness. Personality: Probably one of the brightest personalities of the avatar kids, Tim comes off as very cool and funny, but underneath all of that he’s rather paranoid, afraid that the circus will come and force his baby brother into becoming a monster. Protective of his little bro and the archive kids, but he still teases them to no end. Smarter than he looks, and isn’t afraid to break his cool guy persona to tell someone off.

Full Name: Daniel “Danny” Stoker Age: 8 Birthday: August 1st (Leo) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Stranger, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Markus Stoker (Biological Father - Deceased), Olivia Stoker (Biological Mother - Deceased), Nikola Orsinov (Adoptive Guardian - Uninvolved), Gerard “Gerry” Keay (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of Latino and Korean with dark tanned skin, about a head shorter than Tim, somewhat neat black hair that sticks up in odd places, eyes are impressively dark and glassy looking, slight gap between his front teeth, is described as being a “handsome young man” by strangers, wears a lot of tank tops and shorts as well as the occasional hoodie if it’s cold, and loves running around barefoot. Personality: A lot of people describe Danny as being a “smaller and cuter Tim”, but that’s just not true. Danny is a lot like his older brother in many ways, but he has a much more refined taste for adventure, constantly getting himself into trouble with Jon on the grounds of “exploring” or what have you. He idolizes his big bro to the moon and back, and loves hanging out with him alongside the other kids. More of a follower than a leader, but he doesn’t mind. Secretly fears the day that the circus will come back to make him into their future ringmaster.

Full Name: Melanie King Age: 9 Birthday: June 7th (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Slaughter, Marked by The Corruption, Marked by The Desolation, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Boris King (Biological Father - Deceased), Carrie King (Biological Mother - Deceased), Alfred Grifter (Guardian - Uninvolved), Gerard Keay (Guardian - Current) Appearance: Irish heritage but not terribly pale, rather short for her age, incredibly thin from malnutrition, short brown hair with the ends dyed bright blue, bright brown eyes, brings her leather jacket and her guitar with her everywhere she goes, wears a lot of pink/blue skirts and band t-shirts, wears black leather boots, has a lot of bandages on her knees and knuckles, and always has a camera ready to record things. Personality: Melanie is probably the most disconnected of the avatar kids (save for Helen), seeing as she only just recently joined the group, but already she’s beginning to befriend Sasha and Basira. She’s very protective of the other girls, and she keeps challenging the boys to fight her (only Danny ever agrees; he always loses). Secretly idolizes Julia and Daisy, but will never admit it. She sees Gerry as her big bro and Alfred Grifter as her adoptive dad; she misses Alfred more than she let’s on. Would stab as a warning.

Full Name: Julia Montauk Age: 13 Birthday: April 19th (Aries) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Hunt, Marked by The Dark, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Robert Montauk (Biological Father - Deceased), Linette Montauk (Biological Mother - Deceased), Trevor Herbert (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Indigenous heritage with dark tan skin, tall for her age, skinny enough to look malnourished, close-cropped red hair that gets her mistaken for a boy a lot, metal grey eyes, a scar runs diagonally across her right eye, often wears medium length skirts and oversized t-shirts, always wears athletic shoes, has a lot of scrapes and bandages on her knees most of the time, and has abnormally sharp canines. Personality: Before the deaths of both of her parents, Julia was considered rather normal for her age, being interested in horses, dolls, and dress-up games. After her mother died, she became more tomboyish, which only became more extreme after her father’s death. Since being taken in by Trevor, Julia’s been trying to act more like an adult in an attempt to seem less vulnerable, to varying degrees of success. She adores Trevor to the moon and back, and sees Daisy as her little sister. A bit standoffish around other children, but she’s got a good heart.

Full Name: Alice “Daisy” Tonner Age: 10 Birthday: March 15th (Pisces) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Hunter, Marked by The Slaughter, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Greyson Tonner (Biological Father - Deceased), Antoinette Tonner (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Trevor Herbert (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Welsh heritage with cream colored skin and a light tan, average height for her age, short and shaggy blond hair, has a number of tiny scars all over her face and hands, has a huge scar on her back that Trevor has told her looks like a daisy, striking green eyes, wears a lot of sleeveless shirts and shorts, refuses to wear dresses or skirts, prefers to be barefoot, and has abnormally sharp canines. Personality: Is already rather hot-headed at her age, especially after her encounter with Calvin while he was being possessed by a spirit of the Slaughter. Even so, she’s protective of her newfound family of Trevor and Julia, and while she misses her mother, she believes it’s best if she stays where she is. She loves playing outside whenever she can, and will spend hours chasing after squirrels and rabbits if left alone for too long. A bit argumentative, but she gets along really well with Julia and Basira.

Full Name: Oliver Banks Age: 10 Birthday: June 14th (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The End, Marked by The Hunt Guardian(s): June Banks (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Isaac Banks (Biological Father - Deceased), The Admiral (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark skin, has an array of pitch black freckles on his face, short and neat black hair that reaches just below his ears, ghastly grey eyes that look almost clear and turn black when he’s using his powers; used to be dark brown, worryingly thin from years of malnutrition, wears a lot of baggy and long-sleeved shirts, wears sweatpants, has boots on everywhere he goes, and he’s almost always shivering. Personality: The more distrustful of the “End Siblings”, the only person Oliver even sort of likes is Jon, and even then he’s still scared of him. Constantly fidgeting and yawning from both his paranoia and fatigue. Is protective of Georgie, but more out of obligation than friendship. Prefers to be alone, and rarely visits the archives. He knows something bad is coming, but he’s too scared to do much about it. In the end, he knows he’ll do the right thing, but for now he’s hiding until the bombs finally fall.

Full Name: Georgie Barker Age: 7 Birthday: December 9th (Sagittarius) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The End, Marked by The Hunt Guardian(s): Georgie Grounding Sr. (Biological Mother - Deceased), Sarah Grounding (Biological Mother - Deceased), Jason Barker (Adoptive Father - Deceased), The Admiral (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of African and Indian with dark brown skin, fairly chubby, has an array of light brown freckles all over her arms, back, and face, has long and curly black hair done up in poofy buns using colorful hair bands, paints her nails all the time with different colors every week, cutest little smile you ever did see, wears a lot of ghost-related clothing (mainly t-shirts and jeans), and she brings her ghost backpack with her everywhere she goes (it has her stuffed leopard inside). Personality: Despite being an avatar of the End, Georgie has a very upbeat personality, having no time for her adoptive brother’s endless worrying and fearfulness. In fact, all her fear has been gone since she was little, so she’s never scared to explore something new and parade into danger! She’s very close friends with Jon (even if he’s distant sometimes) and best friends with Melanie, though she gets along with most everyone else as well. She may be a chipper person, but look out, she’s carrying more baggage than she let’s on. Loves The Admiral more than life.

Full Name: Michael “Mike” Crew Age: 14 Birthday: May 13th (Taurus) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Vast Guardian(s): Ramsey Crew (Biological Father - Uninvolved), Whitney Crew (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Simon Fairchild (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Caucasian and pale as a ghost, shaggy white hair that’s almost always wind-swept, strikingly pale blue eyes, smells of ozone and burnt hair, incredibly short for his age, very bony and thin, tends to wear a lot of oversized hoodies on the grounds that they make flying more fun, clothes are almost always pristine and clean, his back, right arm, and right leg are covered in a Lichtenberg scar that glows bright blue when he’s using his powers, permanent bags under his eyes. Personality: A very, very quiet kid, at least around strangers. He’s much bubblier around Simon, but otherwise he’s viewed as an “old soul” by most adults. He does have a sense of humor though, taking a bit too much pleasure out of sending people soaring into the air against their will, especially if they insulted or annoyed him beforehand. Secretly a bit protective of the other avatar kids, and has been known to take them flying if they promise not to let go of him when they do so. Nice kid, but don’t make fun of his height or he might just electrocute you out of spite.

Full Name: Helen Richardson Age: 3 Birthday: February 23rd (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Spiral Guardian(s): Tiara Richardson (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Dexter Richardson (Biological Father - Deceased), Michael Shelley (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark brown skin (has the beginning patches of vitiligo on her face and hands), fairly chubby but Michael swears it’s just baby fat, has bright purple eyes with swirling yellow irises, has short but frizzy black hair that cannot be tamed, is often dressed in very colorful onesies and footie pajamas alongside the rare dress, and occasionally she’ll have a child leash vest on (though it often disappears because of The Spiral). Personality: She honestly doesn’t have much of a personality yet, being a toddler and all, but she’s a very giggly child, and loves nothing more than making Michael “be silly” with the use of her powers. Speaking of which, she has very little control of her abilities, and although she’s too young to understand their impact on the world, she still feels bad when she accidentally goes too far and gets Michael hurt. She adores Michael and Jon, and loves it when Michael brings her to the institute with him. Very playful and mischievous.

And that’s all I’ve got for now! I wanna write some fics for this at some point (particularly I wanna write a fic that has all of the kids’ origin stories in better/more detail), but for now anyone is free to fuck around with this AU, so long as you’re not doing too much shipping between the kids (hints at ships are fine, but they’re still kids, y’all) and ESPECIALLY not any shipping of the kids with the adults/guardians. Feel free to PM me or scream about this AU in the notes/tags; I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

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captaincravatthecapricious · 4 years ago

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Black Eye- Prompt Fill

Three times Jon gives himself a black eye.

Cw alcohol, minor injuries, mentions of misgendering

@thevengefulhufflepuff

I have one more bingo fic left to post, and after that I am doing the "things you said" prompt list, so if there is something you want written for Jon or Martin or Tim, please please please send me a prompt because I need at least one by Friday, because that be writing day! Card by the wonderful @celosiaa

Jon is nine years old. Jon is nine years old and he’s given himself a black eye.

He doesn’t want to go home to his grandmother.

Technically it had been her fault anyhow. If she’d gotten him a book of activities for Boys instead of one for Girls, it probably would have better explained how to make a sling shot… and how to avoid punching yourself in the face while trying to use it.

But no. He has a book of activities for Girls. It has about seven different ways to braid your hair, and how to sew (which Jon does find useful so his grandmother won’t scold him for tearing his clothes), how to make dolls out of yarn, a handful of useless ways to use a bandana, a dozen crafts with doilies, and so on. Useless.

It wouldn’t help him protect himself, which clearly he Needs to protect himself after…. After That. Not to mention, he isn’t a girl, no matter what his Grandmother and teachers keep trying to tell him.

He thinks it’s the hair. If he could cut it maybe they would start getting it right. Grandmother probably wouldn’t mind, it would make him easier to deal with. No stray hairs on everything, no urging him to brush it, no forcibly making him get it out of his face.

Still. He doesn’t want his grandmother to see his black eye, because that will mean scolding him for fighting, which he wasn’t, and getting told it isn’t ladylike. He isn’t a lady.

Still. He can’t exactly wander as far as he used to. He knows his Grandmother will be no help at all with the Things he knows are out there now, but the illusion of safety is better than nothing.

He doesn’t try to cover it with makeup. He’s seen characters do that in books and in movies and it never works. So why bother? (Not to mention he doesn’t want to touch his eye. He’d been so afraid that he’d broken his glasses. He wouldn’t be able to explain that, and then his grandmother would have to pay for another pair and the thought of her spending more money on him makes his stomach twist with guilt. But his overlarge glasses that earned him many ridicules slipped down his face before he’d punched himself. (For a moment he’d worried he’d popped his eyeball, before remembering that eyes don’t pop like squished grapes… or at least not as easily as most people thought. There were tougher parts of the eye not to mention he could still see through it, and open it (mostly) and there wasn’t any blood or virtuous humor leaking out of him, so it was probably fine… or so he’d thought until he caught his reflection in a window and seen the darkening contusion.) He’d rather get the yelling over with. So he calmly washes up before supper and sits at the table.

“Have you been fighting?” She looks over the table at him with cold disapproval.

“No.” Jon stays calm. He is practically an adult. He can have a discussion as such.

“Then, how did this happen?”

“I made a slingshot and was practicing my aim in the yard, and I hit myself in the face.”

She studies in, trying to gauge if he’s lying.

The yelling never comes, so he guesses she believes him. But he does get the lecture on ladylike behavior.

That night he cuts his hair short with scissors. It effectively distracts his grandmother and his teachers from his black eye.

Jon is freshly appointed as head Archivist. Already piled down with paperwork, struggling with the keys to his office. Cursing as several papers escape his pile and drift to the floor. He can hardly see over the stack he’s carrying, and he’s afraid some of the files will fall instead of the loose papers on top. Mostly his notes and instructions and to-do lists. He wants to cry. Barely a week in and he’s already in over his head.

Why did He get this job? Why not Sasha?

There is already an aching chasm between him and the people that have been his friends, and he’s carved out a rift between himself and Martin. And what for?

He can’t do this on his own.

He can’t even do it, period.

Can’t even open his office door.

No. No. He isn’t going to cry in the hallway.

His key is in the lock now, but he can’t turn it. Can’t even manage to turn it half the time when he can see the lock and isn’t carrying things.

“Heya Boss!”

Jon jumps, just as the door unsticks.

His files tumble to the ground, his glasses slide off his face, and the door smacks him in the eye.

“FUCK.” Jon is knocked on his ass.

Tim snickers, because of Course Tim came along just in time to startle him.

Jon stifles a sob. “Go away, Tim.” If he isn’t going to help, and evidence from the last week points to Tim not helping, he can leave Jon to his stress and exhaustion and bruising eye.

Something in Jon’s tone must give him away, because it shuts Tim up, and he kneeling by his side, prying his hands away from his face, and giving a low whistle at the rapidly forming bruise.

“Shit Jon, do… do you need some ice? Do you want a hand with… Jesus, Jon how did you even carry all this?”

Jon curls away from him. “Not like you were helping.” Petulant like a child. Christ, what happened since his childhood, he had been irritating and rude, sure, but much less needy… right? Surely his nine-year-old self wouldn’t have been near tears in the hall because his friend might hate him. Stupid and sensitive. When did he start needing people? He’d been fine alone. Always fine. And no one got hurt when there was no one to hurt.

“I’m fine.” Probably would be more convincing if he weren’t curled up like a frightened child.

“Sure. How about we get you to the breakroom, and you can have a sit-down on the couch with some ice on that eye of yours, and I clean up this mess, okay?”

Jon doesn’t have it in him to say no. Because that sounds very, very nice.

Jon nods off there and wakes to find significantly less work than he had before, and all the files reassembled and organized.

It’s New Years, and Jon is struggling with a bottle of champagne.

He’s never really opened a bottle before. He’s not have champagne that often, in all fairness. A couple of office parties that were terrible and the drinks were cheap, despite the dress code. And there was the time Georgie bought them a bottle. But Georgie had opened it with a satisfying pop and it had tasted strange to him, but it had also tasted like happiness and contentment and safety.

Jon can’t get the foil off, and Tim is laughing at him.

Sasha is trying to help him, but she’s laughing too hard to get a word out, let alone stand up.

Jon is faking a pout, and fighting actual irritation, and trying to bite down his pride and ask Martin for help.

He gets the foil off, but can’t get a grip on the cork.

Tim is giggling something about his little noodle arms, which Sasha smacks him lightly and tells him to be nice about, but they are both laughing harder now, and it’s… all so Good. In a way that Jon hadn’t thought possible.

Or it Was good until the cork slips out of his hands as he finally pulls it free and it hits him in the eye. Again, knocking his glasses sideways (but thankfully not breaking them).

He stands there startled, only a little champagne spilling.

“Oh shit, Jon!” Sasha takes the bottle from him.

Martin comes running. “Jon! What happened?”

Jon is still processing what happened.

Tim is still laughing so hard he’s crying.

“Fine, Martin, just got punched by the champagne.” It honestly doesn’t hurt (especially not after everything else he’s been through), but Jon is very aware that it is likely bruising before their eyes. Damn his EDS.

“Ice! You need some ice!” Martin already reaching for one of their Many ice packs.

“Really, Martin, doesn’t even hurt!” He appreciates the care, it feels good to know that people are looking out for him… even Tim who still has tears of laughter streaming down his face.

“BOSS, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU GOT IN A FISTFIGHTTTTT REMEMBER WHEN YOU WALKED INTO THAT DOOR.”

Jon hmms in his driest academic voice, “I seem to recall that was your fault.”

“I REMEMBER THAT, JON WOULDN’T TELL US WHAT HAPPENED!” Sasha’s laughing again now too.

Jon is biting back a smile. He’s glad he has them back.

“You sure you’re alright?” Martin examines his eye, before handing over the ice, and leading Jon to a seat, with a kiss.

“Perfect. Promise. …Although I wouldn’t say no to some of that champagne.”

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #sasha james #tim stoker #timothy stoker #cw misgendering #trans jonathan sims #cw alcohol #cw black eye #cw minor injuries #jonmartin #happy ending #my art #my writing #my words #fic #my fic

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ieattaperecorders · 4 years ago

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Something's Different About You Lately - Chapter 14: After the Fire

Jon has some visitors.

Note: This chapter contains a few small instances of well-meaning people touching a blind person without warning in a way that startles them.

Read on Ao3

---

He knew that he was in a hospital before he was fully awake. The texture of the stiff sheets and gown, the antiseptic smell, some indistinctly medical quality to the air filled him with the memory of wandering through distant dreams, of emerging into a cold and brightly-lit room. He came to himself gradually, slowly growing aware of an uncomfortable heaviness, of something wrapped around his face and something else restricting movement on his right side. He shifted experimentally and felt a twinge. Quietly, he groaned.

"Hey," came a voice from nearby. "You actually awake, boss? Or is this another false alarm?"

I'm not your boss anymore, Tim, he thought. Then he thought, wait a minute.

"Tim . . . ?" his voice came out hoarse and thick with grogginess. "Where – augh . . . ."

Pain shot through Jon's body as he tried to lift himself into a sitting position. He heard Tim get up and felt a careful hand on his left shoulder, guiding him back down.

"Oooh, don't do that. They've got you on the good stuff, but you're still a mess on that side. Don't be such an impatient patient."

"Where's Martin? Is he –"

"Relax, Martin's fine. Well, not fine, he's been shot, but he's doing a lot better than you. Bullet glanced off your shoulder before hitting him, tore up some muscle and fat but didn't get anything vital. He was awake before you were even out of surgery."

The hand stayed on Jon until it was clear he was going to remain still, then came away. There was an audible scrape as a chair was pulled closer, and Tim sat down again.

"We're all fine too, by the way," he added, as if offended he hadn't asked. "Just so you know."

"And . . . Jonah?"

Tim was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was subdued.

"Didn't check if he was breathing when we left him, but he wasn't getting up," he said. "And I can't see anything coming out of that fire."

Jon lay still and tried to process it all. He wasn't sure what he should feel. What he did feel was a distant sort of unsteadiness, whether it was shock or whatever painkillers were coursing through his system, he didn't know.

"Have you been sitting up with me?" he asked.

"Don't get too big a head about it," Tim smirked. "I've only been here a bit. Sasha's come by to peek in as well, and we've visited Martin too. I was just lucky enough to be the one to see your grumpy little face when you woke up."

"Huh." Surprise and a strange melancholy rose in Jon at the thought. He smiled wryly, "and for my part, the first thing I hear on regaining consciousness is Tim Stoker's terrible puns."

"Excuse you, I am a delight to be around and my puns are charming."

Jon laughed softly, lapsing back into silence. The quiet stretched on for a while, solemnity beginning to creep in at the edges again. Then Tim spoke.

". . . You think he's actually dead?"

"Jonah? I think so. Avatars can be hard to kill, but he was very afraid of death." Jon tapped his less encumbered hand against the mattress, considering. "I think . . . if he had reached to the Eye in his last moments, it would have simply watched as his life faded away, doing what it does. Drinking in his fear."

"Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy," Tim muttered, something unsettled in his tone. "What about the circus?"

". . . Depends what you mean, I suppose." Jon tried to choose his words carefully. "I'm not the Archivist anymore, so I don't think they'd have any interest in me now. We're not protected from them, but I don't think they'd have reason to come after any of us. Unless, of course," he added pointedly. "Someone draws their interest by going after them."

"Even if we get away, they're still out there," Tim pushed, something limping in his voice, "Doing what they do to people. Am I supposed to just be okay with that?"

Jon was quiet for a while.

"If you could destroy the circus," he said softly, "which is a big ‘if', but if you could, the Stranger would continue manifesting in other forms. Possibly even as a circus again. You can't keep fear from the world, you'd only be changing details. In the end I don't know if it would save anyone."

"It would hurt those things, though. Wouldn't it?"

"Maybe," Jon said. "Maybe not. Certainly not as much as it would hurt anyone who cared about you."

It was Tim's turn to be quiet. He let out a long, frustrated sigh. "Not sure I like this new, future-memories version of you Jon," he said. "He's kind of a know-it-all."

"You should have seen me when I was literally all-knowing."

"Nightmare. Don't know how Martin put up with you."

"Neither do I." Jon smiled, warmth running through him at the thought. He took a long, slow breath. ". . . You died hating me, you know. In that other life."

"Yeah?" Tim didn't sound very surprised. "What'd you do?"

"Plenty," Jon laughed mirthlessly. "Though by the end I'm not even sure how much it had to do with me. We were lost, hurt, broken people, lashing out in fear and pain."

"Yeah. Starting to think that the Magnus Institute didn't exactly facilitate a healthy work environment."

"No . . . ."

He heard a soft, electronic tapping in the pause that followed. Maybe Tim was texting the others, letting them know Jon was awake? He couldn't tell. A gentle shove hit his uninjured shoulder, making him flinch.

"Well. Let's try not to fuck it up this time around, huh?" Tim said. "I'm gonna go get a nurse and tell them you're up, they'll probably want to check your vitals or rotate your tires or something."

"Right. Uh, right . . ." Jon stammered, "thank you."

The footsteps faded, and Jon let his head sink back onto the pillow. He felt . . . adrift. More so than he had in a while.

He'd been confused and frightened through all of this, half the time he hadn't even known what he was looking for, but at least he'd known he was looking. Even in the long, terrible walk across the nightmare domains, the constant pull of their destination had given him purpose. He'd known what he was hoping for.

And there had been Martin there. Of course.

For better or worse now, Jonah was dead and he was alive. He was severed from the Eye, the others were freed, and dark and terrible powers still lurked beyond the edge of human perception, waiting to Become.

Jon wasn't sure what he was hoping for now. He lay back and waited for the nurse to arrive.

* * *

Time passed in a haze. He had little sense of how much he slept, and the divide between sleep and waking blurred together.

Sometimes he had visitors. Georgie came in not long after Tim, having gotten a very incomplete version of events through Melanie. He hadn't exactly intended to tell her anything when she sat down, but somehow after a few confused inquiries, and a gentle "try me" or two, he found himself spilling everything. It was far more disjointed and emotional than his recounting in the tunnels, but the bulk of it seemed to get across.

When it was over, she just said, "sounds like you've had a hell of a time."

It was the calmness as much as the sympathy that affected Jon. As if he'd just told her about a bad relationship he'd gotten out of, rather than his place in the universe's nightmare cosmology and the end of the world.

He didn't know what to say to it, really, and frankly saying anything at all risked letting the tightness inside his chest come spilling out - the pressure bandage would hide any tears, but Georgie would be able to tell. She saved him by breaking the silence, asking if he had any stock tips or winning lottery numbers from the future to share.

Melanie's visits were less steadying, twice devolving into arguments. It seemed to be a constant between them, that no matter what happened or what forces were acting on either of them, their ability to rile each other was inevitable. She was also insistent that he explain every detail he remembered about what she'd begun calling the "dark timeline." When he complained that framing it as an alternate timeline was likely inaccurate and, frankly, horrifying in its implications, she threw a pen at him.

Still, she came back again afterwards. And still, he was glad that she did.

Sasha reported that her hand was healing, though when pressed admitted he'd been right about her range of motion not returning. She also helped him set the voice assistant up on his phone, which was a great relief. Though it was a bit embarrassing to reveal how little he knew about his own device's functions.

"Honestly Jon, you're only thirty-one," she said, going through some final setup that he'd already forgotten her explanation of. "You've got no excuse at all to be so tech-illiterate."

"Yes, yes. I've had other priorities lately."

"I don't mind you asking for help, understand. But what are you going to do if I get eaten by another evil table someday?"

He felt a stab of shock at the blazingly conversational reference to it. Something must have shown on his face because he heard her pause..

"Sorry. Too soon?"

"Ah. . . depends on your perspective of time, I suppose," Jon said, trying and failing to make it sound like a joke.

"Right. You know, it's all a little distant for me. Unsettling, sure, but on my end it's really just a story. . . ." she trailed off. "Hey, what were you doing in Hainault?"

"Gertrude's storage locker was there -- are you going through my location history?"

"Just the more recent stuff," she made it sound as if he was the strange one for asking, and he grunted with annoyed resignation.

"You should be careful about that."

"About what?"

"Prying into other people. Invading their privacy," he lay his head back against the pillow. "Don't forget that you were part of a temple to the Eye until very recently. You're free of the Institute now, but the power behind it might not be through with you."

She was quiet for a while. Whether it meant she was contemplating what he said or ignoring him so that she could continue digging through his phone, he couldn't say.

"All I'm saying is that it can be addicting," he continued. "That urge to push past the boundaries that people raise against you. Trust me when I say that I know."

"I'd imagine you would." She paused. ". . . What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"Being all knowing?"

". . . Hard to describe."

There was a pause, and when it became clear he wasn't going to continue, Sasha pushed out an annoyed breath and said "well you could give it more of a shot than that."

"I don't know. Overwhelming," Jon said. "In the most complete sense of the word. Sometimes I had answers, but so few of them were helpful in the end. And the things I saw, the nightmares, the pain of everyone trapped in them. Having to watch that sort of thing, all the time . . . either it destroys you, or you learn to distance yourself. At least a little. If only to keep from breaking down. Neither is very good, but one lets you survive."

Sasha made a thoughtful humming noise.

"It isn't anything you want. Believe me," he said softly. "Even if the world hadn't ended, if I'd just been another avatar . . . any rewards aren't worth the price that others have to pay."

"Yeah," she sighed heavily. "Sounds about right."

Jon relaxed, some tension he'd been carrying in him slowly unlocking. Sasha continued.

"Well. Talking about privacy, while I'm here let me at least show you how to stop broadcasting your location to anyone and everyone," she tsked and scooted her chair closer. "Honestly. No wonder you got kidnapped all the time."

"I don't really think supernatural manifestations of fears needed GPS to find me."

"Couldn't have helped though, could it?"

"Probably not," Jon smiled sadly. "Should've had you around."

"Yeah. Can't imagine how any of you managed."

* * *

Even with his visitors, there were long stretches of time Jon spent entirely alone. Laying in the dark and the quiet, his thoughts shifting like a tide. Sometimes he'd drift back to those first years at the Institute, or the time-beyond-time after the change. Other days he'd lay contemplating the past few months, all the things that he'd re-written and the worries he still had.

Mostly he thought of very little, the twin sophorics of boredom and pain medication fogging his mind into an uncomfortable stasis.

When the knock came, he'd been listening to the soft, white noise of the air conditioning and thinking of how much it resembled distant waves, putting him in mind of a cold and empty shore. Then he heard two soft taps against the door, along with a familiar voice.

"Knock, knock," Martin said.

It was the first time he'd heard his voice since the fire, since the two of them were falling to the ground together. Without really thinking he asked, "who's there?"

"Oh! Right –" he sounded embarrassed. "Sorry, it's Martin."

"Yes, I -- ah, yes." Jon sounded pitifully eager, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "C-come in. Please."

* * *

If Jon was asleep, Martin decided, then he'd come back later. He probably needed the rest -- had needed it a good long while before they'd both been shot. Really, Martin ought to be at home resting as well. But when he knocked softly on the half open door, Jon turned in his direction, wide awake.

"Who's there?" he asked.

"Oh! Right –" stupid, he can't see you. Going to have to remember that. "Sorry, it's Martin."

Jon nodded, inviting him in and slowly shifting into a seated position as Martin pulled a chair up to his bedside.

He could see the edge of a dressing covering the bullet's exit wound, just peeking up from under Jon's collar. The bandages had been removed from his eyes, and the area around them was still a little bruised and swollen. He looked wrung out, small and tired. But then, Martin supposed, everyone looks small and tired in a hospital bed.

"How are you doing?" Jon asked, "they told me you've been recovering as well . . . ."

"Yeah, just got released this morning." He stretched, rubbing over the bandage that was hidden below his shirt and jacket. "Went home, had a shower, then came right back to the hospital."

"Sounds like an exciting day."

"What about you?"

"Mmm, still looking forward to a few days here, at least. They don't think I'll be needing more surgery, fortunately, and they're weaning me onto less intense painkillers. It's a little exhausting, but apparently I'm recovering well."

"Considering you took a bullet for me," Martin muttered.

A startled-sounding laugh came from Jon. "I'm not really sure that's what happened. More like we both got shot at the same time?"

"Suppose so," Martin said. Didn't quite feel that way, though. "Honestly, I don't even know if he was trying to shoot us at the end, or if the gun just went off when they tackled him."

"Neither would surprise me."

"But then I didn't even think he had a gun, let alone murdered people with it."

"I suspect he was desperate. He probably only resorts -- resorted to things like that when some disaster crept up on him. Like us, or like Gertrude. He wasn't the hands-on type. Which came back to bite him with the ritual. In a way it's the reason I'm here -- or, the memories are, I suppose."

"Right . . . ."

Martin had plenty of time to think about it all, laid up in his own bed on another floor of the same building. About all that happened, about the things Jon told them in the tunnels. More than anything else, it just made him feel foolish. Like he'd been left out of a conversation that had been going on behind his back, and now everyone was looking at him and expecting him to catch up.

Which was pretty foolish itself, of course. Jon hadn't told anyone the whole story -- there'd been no conversation, no loop he was kept out of. It wasn't as if ‘post apocalyptic time-traveling memories' was a conclusion he could have somehow come to if he'd just paid closer attention. It was a ridiculous way to feel.

Sasha had told him, between games of dominoes, that she was glad he'd been there that night because she didn't think anyone else could have talked Jon out of his plan. Which was a lot to unpack, but didn't help with the sense of being out of the loop. Not if it was that obvious. Of course, she might have just been trying to make him feel useful. The way he saw it, he hadn't done much that evening except quietly panic, shout a bit and get held at gunpoint. And get shot. And get Jon shot with him, because he'd stood in front of him.

"I'm sorry . . . ." Martin said, softly.

". . . For what?"

"I saw what was happening, just before the gun went off. I could have pulled you away if I was faster, or thrown us to the ground, or done something. Instead I just froze."

"Martin . . ." Jon tilted his head in his direction. "Even assuming you could have been fast enough, most people freeze up when a gun is pointed at them. I did the same the first few times."

". . . First few times." Martin repeated flatly. "Jesus, Jon."

"I know. It's been a difficult few years."

"I didn't even know . . . ."

"I didn't want you to know," Jon said. "I couldn't tell any of you, Martin, not until everything was ready. You saw how close things came as it was, if he'd gotten wind of things sooner . . . ."

"Right . . . of course."

The two of them fell into an uncertain silence. Jon's hand worried at a thread on the edge of the bedsheet, twisting and twirling it between his fingers. Martin thought about that hand moving slowly and smoothly over his own, about the sorrow on Jon's face when he'd pulled away. Doubt anyone else could've talked him out of it, Sasha's voice repeated in his mind.

"About what you said. In the tunnels . . . ."

Jon visibly tensed, the edge of the sheet twisting in his fingers. "Er . . . which part?"

"The part about me," Martin said, praying that would be enough, that Jon wasn't going to make him actually repeat the words. "About us?"

"Ah. Right," he smiled weakly. "Funny how much easier it is to say these things when you think you're not going to be alive much longer."

"You were really going to tell me that and then go off to die a minute later, weren't you?" There was something quiet in Martin's voice as he spoke. Calm. Like the eye of a hurricane.

"I . . ." Jon hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."

"Bit rude."

". . . Suppose it was."

Martin went quiet. What could he say to that, to any of it? It wasn't as if he didn't get it, insecurity only goes so far when there's a declaration that explicit. He knew what I love you meant, he just . . . felt like he'd only now joined the conversation.

Before the silence could grow too powerful, Jon spoke again.

"We were together. In that other life. By the end of it, at least. I --" he laughed softly. "It took me too damned long to even realize my own feelings, let alone imagine that -- but we were together."

I can't watch that happen again, he'd said. Martin had more or less guessed that was the situation, but it was still strange to hear it confirmed. Surreal to think that Jon had a history with him, or a version of him, that he wasn't a part of.

"Were we happy?"

Jon was quiet for a while before answering. "I -- I'd like to say we were. I don't know if happy is a word I can use. At first we were in hiding, and then after the Change it was . . . well, it was a nightmare. But we had each other, and that made all the difference. And --"

He took an unsteady breath. "I think I was happier in those desperate weeks we had before the world ended than I'd honestly been in years? And there were times I'd see you in that cabin, and you'd be complaining about something, or humming while we cleaned and laughing to yourself. And you'd look different somehow, and it felt like -- there was a part of you that had been tucked away in all the time I'd known you, that was letting itself breathe again, and I was so lucky to be allowed to see it," he laughed lowly. "Or maybe all that was me projecting. Maybe I was the fool who should have paid better attention before. I don't know."

Martin tried to picture himself tucked into some remote hideaway, hiding from sinister supernatural monsters but relaxed enough to be humming and laughing while they tidied up. Tried to imagine what Jon could be referring to, how he'd been different and whether that was a good or bad thing, even. He found that he couldn't do either.

"What was he like?" he asked. "That other me."

A soft smile spread through Jon. "He was like you, Martin. A little older . . . a great deal more tired. More short-tempered, or maybe just more vocal about it," he added with fondness. "He was brave, and frustrating, and . . . and wonderful. Just wonderful."

". . . Sounds like quite a guy." Martin managed.

Jon nodded. Then the smile slipped from him, and his hands came together in his lap,

"I know that you aren't him. That is -- you are, in a sense you're the same person, but you also aren't?" he gestured outward. "Our experiences, they shape who we are, they change us. I know that."

". . . Right."

A part of him had suspected something like this might be coming, and he shouldn't have gotten his hopes up. It still hurt, and he felt guiltily relieved that Jon couldn't see his face just now.

"I just . . ." Jon continued, "I don't want you to think, ah, that I expect anything--"

"No, I get it." Martin tried to smile, tried to sound like every word wasn't twisting in him. "I probably remind you of him? And -- heat of the moment, you thought you were gonna die. I get it. I don't expect anything either."

Jon frowned, looking momentarily confused.

"I know I'm not him, like, it's not the same," Martin continued, clearing his throat. "It doesn't have to be a thing, you know, if you don't want--"

"Martin." Jon cut him off. "I meant every word I said down there. I still do."

The words dried up in Martin's throat as Jon continued.

“I love you. Just as much as I always have. I still want to have a life with you, and I’m still terrified of that life being torn from us. And I don’t know how you feel about me, but I know -- even if any, ah, feelings are returned, I--” He took a deep breath, “What I feel for you, it’s, well, it’s a lot? There are so many things I’ve been through with you that you haven’t been through with me, and that’s good, I’m glad you haven’t been through them because they were mostly horrible. But I can’t deny that many of them brought us closer --”

“Jon . . . .”

“And -- and I don’t want to scare you off with the -- the intensity of my feelings but I’d understand and I wouldn’t blame you --”

Martin reached out and put a hand on Jon’s arm. The flurry of movement and talk came to a sharp standstill.

“Jon,” he said again.

“Oh. Um,” Jon’s voice was small and quiet. “Oh.”

". . . I don’t know how I’m different from the Martin you remember. And I don’t know how he felt about you, or how what I feel is different,” he said slowly. “All I know is that when you said you were going to go off to find a quiet corner and kill yourself, it felt like the whole world was falling apart.”

Jon was still under his hand, barely breathing.

“Don’t do it again.”

Quietly, Jon nodded. Martin pulled his hand away, settling back into the chair. For a while neither of them said anything,

“I mean, listen . . .” Martin finally broke the silence, shrugging uncertainly. “I’m willing to give it a try if you are?”

An unsteady sound came out of Jon, his hand flew up to cover his mouth and when he pulled it away he was smiling. "I -- I'd like that. Very much," he said.

"Okay." Martin smiled back, feeling airy, lightheaded. "Cool." He laughed. "Getting shot together'll make a hell of a first date."

"Wh-- that was not a first date!" Jon protested, his own laugh coming out sharp and startled, "that was a -- a terrifying escape from our sinister employer."

"Kind of romantic though, right?" Martin teased, "in a bad action movie sort of way."

"Everything else aside, I refuse to entertain the idea that our first date involved Jonah Magnus in any respect," he shuddered, shaking his head. "Though it -- it honestly may be a while before I'm up for anything much better. I'll still be in the hospital a bit, and afterwards . . . well, I know there's a lot I'm going to have to adjust to."

Martin felt a twinge at Jon's voice, at the anxiety creeping back into it. ". . . You won't have to do it alone," he said.

Smiling weakly, Jon reached a hand over the hard plastic rail meant to keep patients from falling out of bed. Martin took it and squeezed. Jon nodded and let go, settling back.

"There's still so much . . ." he said. "So much you don't even know . . . about us, and about other things."

"You could tell me now, you know. If you wanted."

Jon paused, looking uncertain. "Are you sure you want to hear it? I don't know what you're expecting but it's not going to be some sort of --- pleasant office romance. It's just a series of horrible, traumatic experiences, one after another."

It was a fair question, really, and Martin thought about it before answering.

"I want to hear it," he said. "If you're okay talking about it, that is. I want to know what you've been living with all these months. And . . . I want to know more about that other life. Even if it's all just awful."

Slowly, Jon nodded. "All right . . ." he said, "but it really is a very long story. It's going to take a while."

"I don't have anything on today," Martin smiled, standing up. "I'll go and get us some tea."

#tma fanfic #tma #sdayl #man it's almost done wild

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