#but the Jude Perry comment got to me!

[kaz-oooo]

People are making fun of Jon for shaking Jude’s hand????

This is the first time he’s met her, he completely out of his depth in this scene, he hardly knows anything about what the fears are and what their avatars can do, he’s speaking to Jude because he wants to learn that information (even if she laughs at him and mocks him for those questions) but despite all that he knows she’s a monster, knows she can and will burn him without hesitation so before this scene even starts he refuses to shake her hand.

And Jude offers him even more information, something he desperately needs at this point in time, information she’s dangling over his head. When she asks for the handshake he hesitates — like we see at the start of the episode he knows what will happen and wants to refuse, but right now he needs that lead more than he needs his hand and (exactly as stereo-sys pointed out) Jude is a threatening him, if he refuses again he’s risking far more than just a hand.

And when he does agree he’s not naively trusting her. It’s “fine”, he’s giving in to her terms, not naively falling for her trap.

I love being silly about these characters and calling Jon a dumbass as much as the next guy. But Jon isn’t stupid, he’s quite smart actually. I mean take the table thing as another example. Even Jon berates himself in the episode for misreading the statement he found and breaking the table but the odds against him aren’t fair

Jon is running off very limited information, he has been paranoid for the past few months, probably hasn’t been sleeping properly, Elias is very intentionally keeping him ignorant, not!Sasha is leaving hints and clues all around to manipulate him into breaking the table — of course he fucks up and makes the wrong choice. But, based on that information he made the connection to the table and the not!them entity, realised they were tied and assumed that if he destroyed one he’d destroy the other… that’s a fair conclusion to come to, a little sloppy and rushed but far from stupid.

I could rant forever about this, but I think I’ll cap it there.

JONATHAN ARCHIVIST IS NOT STUPID SQUAD I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU

[neverwalka1one]

Magnus Protocol 20

Bite me Alice, I'm getting out the red string.

Me cackling at Celia's 'are we sure the Institute didn't deserve to be blasted out of existence? Because it probably definitely did. So much. How do I know? IDK. ...

The institute killed JFK didn't it. DIDN'T IT?

Alice... is terrified of the protocol. WHAT DO YOU KNOW, ALICE? Don't give me this vague 'don't poke the government' crap, you poke the government on the daily just by coming to work.

Hey, Ink5oul has a name! Welcome to the chat, Grace! OMG she has such a mean girl vibe I love it. She also sounds a lot Jude Perry when talking about the power she has. Same purr. Which is awesome, because Jude was definitely mentally stable.

'The mean comments hurt' ... Oooh, I sense a theme methinks.

... I gave in to temptation and googled Prince Albert and tattoos. ... I mean, he got it pierced, evidently, good for you Queen Victoria, but. IDK if it was tatted, though the article I found suggested both of them had 'intimate' tattoos. ... I need some bleach.

At least we now know why Grace is digging up people. Does not make it any less creepy. Now go graced (hah) with the image of her cracking open a casket and finding a strip of perfectly preserved skin over a moldering corpse. Great.

So, hear me out: If this is how Gwen dies, it's because she's a classist idiot. She knows she's trying to recruit Grace as an external. She knows externals are several shades of terrifying. SHE'S MET TERRIFYING EXTERNALS and has wanted security when meeting them. So tell me why she took that particular tone, which she would have never dreamed using on Lady 'omg she's married to a peer' Mawbrey. Yeah hun, you're getting a tattoo.

Also (credit to @yraelviii), that was a statement. Gwen asked a question, and got a statement. And now in true archivist fashion she's gonna get marked up by a pissed-off power-happy person

Bye Gwen! (but for srs NO not Gwen she has a thing with Alice I need more of that come back here)

[bracefacefreak]

Thoughts on Mag 62

Oh, I’d totally forgotten this statement but IT IS SO GOOD!!! There is so much here, so much foreshadowing, so many little things you won’t get listening the first time round. It’s definitely worth a re-listen. 

Anyway, here are some of my thoughts/feelings/ideas about this episode. Please be warned there will be spoilers for other later episodes of TMA. 

Mary is such a little bitch towards Gertrude; her low key snark and clear disdain for what Gertrude does is palpable right from the start. And I love it. 

And we have Beholding Pun #1 - “ I know the Institute and me haven’t always seen eye-to-eye...” - Perfect. Flawless. Amazing. 

I love how Mary refers to what Leitner did as having “stamped them (the books) with his mark...”  I just adore how this parallels what Elias later says about Jon having been marked by the fears. It’s almost as if Leitner hoped that by marking the books he is able beat the fears at their own game. Well, look how that turned out...

Also love Mary opening up the question as to what happened to the books prior to Leitner - what adventures these terrible tomes got up to before they were found and placed in his library? Did others try and collect them? 

Interesting how Mary comments on Leitner being too slow, gentle and boring- you get the impression she did not feel he was worthy of having so many books within his possession. I like how it mirrors Gerry’s only interaction with Leitner, when he stopped beating him because he couldn’t believe such a pathetic man could be THE Jurgen Leitner. 

SO MUCH FORESHADOWING! - “ You… don’t really go out and look for yourself “ and “They don’t understand up there. They don’t know what this place is.”

 Mary’s attempts to get Gertrude to reveal how much she knows - “You do, though, don’t you?” And Gertrude’s answer is just to play completely dumb and act like she has no idea what Mary is talking about. Hahah. 

Also “We’re on the same side, really” creeps me out so much. Because in some ways Gertrude and Mary are really similar - strong, independent women, who know what they want and will do anything to get it, no matter what the cost. If Gertrude had rather focused on gaining control of her abilities and becoming “The Archivist” she could have very easily become something quite similar to Mary. On this note, interesting how Gerry finds an almost motherly figure in Gertrude. 

SHE WAS NINE YEARS OLD! WTF!? 

Mary talks about her mother’s poor pay - I hope Jonah has realised that you can’t pay people sixpence for a day’s work anymore! 

From the information we get here, it seems like was Mary’s mother who was from the von Closen line, rather than her father. Given the timeline, I’m going to say that Mary’s mother was also Mary (given in Mag 023 Jon states Mary Keay was born in 1924, when here it’s very clear this Mary was born in 1946.)

Just having fun imaging a young Mary creeping out all the local shopkeepers while looking for something strange and dark to catch her eye. 

“...Slavish devotion to you and your patron...” - Jon what on earth do you think she meant by this!? I love that he just ignores all these strange little comments, weren’t you a researcher before moving to the Archives?

People’s different relationships with the fears just fascinate me. We have those using them to gain Power (Elias/Jonah), those who worship them like Gods (The Lukas Family), those who just want to have some fun (Jude Perry), those who give themselves to a power to save themselves (Mike Crew), those who get dragged into it against their will (John, Jane, Oliver.) And then you have the Keay’s who believe these primal fear Gods are somehow watching over them. Also Mary what does that even mean

Jewish Keays anyone? 

“...a scent like wet dirt rolling through the building and settling in my chest..” - maybe grave dirt? 

I wonder, how Tellison obtained the books I wonder? And how did she learn how to use them? Mary, had some knowledge about the fears beforehand from her family, how did Tellison discover what the book did? Did she have any idea how the books fit into the bigger picture? 

Mary’s whole sense of superiority is chilling. 

“My inclinations, predictably, were more toward watching than doing the deed myself.” - hahaha. This is so fucking creepy and so clever.  

“After a lifetime, I know all its secrets, save one. And I have a pretty good idea about how to find that.” - Except she fucked it up 2 months later.

Also love how we get more hints that the fears are not just a British thing but rather seem to be present in diifferent cultures i.e. the mention that both books are written in Sanskrit. Seriously, where did this doctor get these damn books? 

“I could never truly serve it – I just don’t find death that interesting.  But I’ve always found a singular devotion far too restrictive.” - I know that Mary couldn’t complete the ritual fully cause of the blood loss but I do wonder if this didn’t have something to do with failure as well. 

“Just a bit of viscera” - Hahah. She’s so fucking dismissive. I definitely get the feeling that everyone else looks down on the Flesh as a lower rate entity. 

“...though it came back to me after the attack.” How!? 

“He’s not exactly big on action though, is he.” THE FUCKING FORESHADOWING! !

“....though, I do rather hate the smell of burning skin.” Funny how both Jon and I didn’t find this a strange thing for Gertrude to say. Definitely the words of a sweet old grandmotherly archivist who definitely does not go around blowing shit up and killing avatars. 

“...odd relationship with death is the least interesting part of it” Really John!? Really!? Like I know you’re paranoid but,,,REALLY!? 

“The Magnus Institute is not what it appears to be, and until I know what it is, and what it’s for..” - oh sweety! *proceeds to grossly sob*

No strange skin page. - I hope this means that Gertrude destroyed Eric’s page and let him rest. 

[misnomera]

On racial stereotyping of the Haans in TMA...

Right so as someone who is ethnically Chinese I have NO FUCKING clue how I didn’t notice this more distinctly in my initial binge of tma (going too fast and not paying closer attention to character names and descriptions, probably) but the Haan family storyline is, all horror elements aside, pretty fucked up in terms of racial representation re: stereotyping. This got long as hell, but please please please take a moment to read through if you’ve got time for it. thanks.

To start off, the Haans are one of the few characters in tma with an explicitly specified race and ethnicity—Chinese—and pretty much the only explicitly Chinese characters in tma, other than the mostly unimportant librarian (Zhang Xiaoling) from Beijing. But like, Haan isn’t even a properly Chinese surname, at least not in the way that it’s spelled in canon (it should be Han, one a. A quick google search tells me that Haan as a surname has...Dutch origins??).

Of course, that could be chalked up to shoddy anglicization processes within family histories, which certainly isn’t uncommon with immigrant families, so I’m not going to dwell on names too much (although I also find it interesting that John Haan’s name is so specifically and weirdly anglicized that he changed his own surname?? Hun Yung to John Haan is a very big leap of a name change and frankly not very believable. ANYWAY, this is not that important. I don’t expect Jonny, a white Englishman, to come up with perfectly unquestionable non-Cho-Chang-like Chinese names, though it certainly would be nice. Moving on).

What really bothers me about the Haans is how they almost exclusively and explicitly play into negative Chinese immigrant stereotypes. I don’t even feel like I need to say it because it’s like...it’s literally Right There, folks. John Haan (in ep 72) owns and operates a sketchy takeout restaurant. They’re all avatars of the Flesh—and John Haan is Specifically horrific and terrifying because he cooked his wife’s human meat and fed it to his unknowing customers. Does that remind you of any stereotypes which accuse Chinese people of consuming societally unacceptable and ethically questionable things like dog/cat/bat meat (which, if it’s not already crystal fucking clear, we don’t. do that.), which in turn characterize us as horrible unfeeling monsters? John Haan’s characterization feeds (haha, badum tss) directly into this harmful stereotype that have caused very real pain for Chinese people and East Asians in general. 

And Jonny does nothing to address that from within his writing (and not out of it either). And, speaking on a more meta level, Jonny could’ve easily had these flesh avatars be individuals of any race (like, what’s Jared Hopworth’s ethnicity? Do we know? No? Well then). Conversely, he could’ve easily, easily had a Chinese person be an avatar of any other entity. So why did he have to chose specifically the Flesh?

(This is a rhetorical question. You know why. Racial stereotyping and invoking a fear of the other in an attempt to enhance horror, babey~)

On Tom Haan’s side, Jonny seems weirdly intent on having other characters repeatedly comment on his accent (or rather, lack thereof) in relation to his race. Think about how, in ep 30 (killing floor), the fact that Tom Haan had spoken a line to the statement giver in “perfect English” was an emphasized beat in that statement, and a beat that was supposed to be “chilling” and meant to signify to us that something was, quote-unquote, “not right” with Tom Haan. Implicitly, that’s saying that it was unexpected, not “normal”, and in this case even eerie, for someone who looks Chinese to have spoken in fluid, unbroken English. Mind you, the line itself was perfectly scary on its own (“you cannot stop the slaughter by closing the door”), so why did Jonny feel the need to note the accent in which it was spoken in? Why did Jonny HAVE to have that statement giver note, that he initially “wasn’t even sure how much English [Haan] spoke”? 

This happens again in episode 72 with a Chinese man (and again, his ethnicity is Explicitly Noted) who we assume is also Tom Haan. This one is rather ironically funny and kind of painfully self aware, because the statement giver expresses surprise at Haan’s “crisp RP accent” and then immediately “felt bad about making the assumption that he couldn’t speak English,” and subsequently admitted that thought was “low-key racist.” Like, from a writing perspective, this entire passage is roundabout, pointless, and says absolutely nothing helpful to enhance the horror genre experience for listeners (instead it just sounded like some sort of half-assed excuse so Jonny or other listeners could say “look! We’ve addressed the racism!” You didn’t. It just made me vaguely uncomfortable). And again, having other people comment on our accents/lack thereof while assuming we are foreign is a Very Real microaggression that east asians face on the daily. If Jonny needed some filler sentences for pacing he could’ve written about Literally anything else. So why point out, yet again, that the crazy murderous man was foreign and Chinese? 

At this point, you might say, right, but yknow, it was just that the statement givers were kind of racist! It happens! Yeah sure, ok, that’s a passable in-universe explanation for descriptions of Tom Haan (though not John Haan, mind you), but the statement givers are fake made up people, and statement’s still written by Jonny, who absolutely has all the power to write overt discrimination out of his stories. And he does! Think about just how many minor (and major!!) characters are so, so carefully written as completely aracial, and do not have their ethnicity implicated at all in whatever horrors they may or may not be committing. Think about how many lgbtq+ characters have given statements, and have been in statements, without having faced direct forms of discrimination, or portrayed as embodying blatant stereotypes in their stories (though lgbtq+ rep in tma certainly has their own issues that I won’t go into here). Jonny can clearly write characters this way, and he can do it well. So why, why, am I being constantly, repeatedly reminded in-text of the fact that the Haans are East Asian, that they’re from China, that they’re Chinese immigrants, that they’re second-generation British Chinese or whatever the fuck, and that they’re also horrifying conduits for blood, gore, and general fucked-up-ness? It’s absolutely not something that is Needed for the stories to be an effective piece of horror; the only thing it does is perpetuate incredibly harmful and hurtful stereotypes.

And listen, I love tma to bits. It’s taken over my blog. I’ve really loved my interactions with the fandom. And I am consistently blown away by Jonny’s writing and how well he’s able to weave foreshadowing and plot into an incredibly complex collection of stories. But I absolutely Cannot stop thinking about the Haans because it’s just. It’s such a blatant display of racial stereotyping in writing. And I’ve certainly seen a few voices talking about it here and there, and I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right places, but it certainly feels like something that is just straight up not on the radar for a lot of tma fans. And I’m disappointed about that. 

Just, I don’t know. Take a look at those episodes again and do some of your own thinking about why these characters had to be specifically Chinese (answer: they didn’t.). And in general, PLEASE for the love of god turn a critical eye on character portrayals and descriptions whenever they are assigned specific races/ethnicities (Some examples that come to mind are Jude Perry, Annabelle Cane, and Diego Molina), because similar issues, to an extent, extend beyond the Haans, though I haven’t covered them here. 

You shouldn’t need a POC to do point out these problems for you when they’re so glaringly There. But for those of you who really didn’t know, hope this was informative in some way. I’m tired, man. If some of the only significant Chinese characters you write are violent cannibalistic men with a perverted relationship with meat, just don’t do it. Please don’t do it. 

EDIT: Since the making of this post Jonny has acknowledged and apologized for these portrayals on his twitter and in the Rusty Quill Operations Update, which went up September 2020. A long time coming, but better late than never. This of course doesn’t necessarily negate the harm done by Jonny’s writing, and doesn’t make me much less angry about it, but is appreciated nonetheless. For more on this topic there’s a lot of productive discussions happening in my “#tma crit” tag and in the notes of this post

[cardboardqueen]

tma spoilers up to 197, tl;dr at the end

It’s long been my personal headcanon that martin will have to kill jon at the end of the show (or allow him to die, or prevent him from living, etc) for a few reasons

At this point we know Jon has a self sacrificial streak, jon dying wouldn’t be much of a surprise. But we also know that Martin is rather protective and has already gone to great lengths to keep Jon safe (going after him in S2, working with peter, etc)

and in s5, there’s been an emphasis on martin’s agency that I’ve really enjoyed with respect to them being equals in their relationship, but I think there could be more to it

I’m especially thinking of their conversation in 169 about whether to go into the burning building.  The “don’t make it my decision” and both of them learning that they need to communicate their feelings and desires better.  martin refused to make that decision and it was a bad time for both of them (in that their relationship was strained, martin was hurt, and killing jude perry did nothing for her victims).  Martin knows that standing back and letting things happen isn’t useful at this point

and time and time again, martin has shown an ability to contradict the world as it is now. 

He pushed for jon to leave the cabin

he wanted to talk to the soldiers in the slaughter domain

tells jared to lay off of jon in ‘The Gardner’

he is able to break jon out of statements (if with some difficulty) which we know jon can’t do by himself but can with martin’s help

with annabell cane’s first phone call he just fully “nope’d” out of a conversation with an avatar of the web

he sits on the extinction couch! the whole point was the fear of inevitable degradation and pollution and he’s just like ‘yeah its a bit gross but im tired’

he apologized for bumping into people in the processing line

after he’s grabbed by trevor we learn that the reason he could be killed was because trevor was the prey, not the hunter, even with his knife to martin’s throat

he’s able to find his anchor and leave the house in 170 even after being drawn into the lonely’s effect again (something that we’ve not seen from any other victims, even basira’s on her own hunt now)

he had a fairly normal rational conversation with the embodiment of his own suffering and misery and was able to walk away fairly easily

there are others, but it feels a bit like martin’s in the wrong genre, basically.  jon is such a part of the apocalypse that he couldn’t escape if he wanted to, melanie and georgie are immune to the fears’ effect for very good in-narrative reasons, but martin just repeatedly opposes the apocalypse in many small ways that would otherwise feel very out of place if he hadn’t been doing it all season, and the more we learn the more important it feels. 

I think martin’s trip with annabell told us a lot of things, but among them is that martin’s not scared to venture out on his own.  He’s scared of losing jon, sure, but he doesn’t feel dependent on him for safety and is at least somewhat comfortable leaving him and doing things that he knows jon would disagree with.  Over the course of the season he’s developed his own firm opinions re: eyepocalypse, evidenced by the evolution of his feelings about jon killing people. 

some very good screenshots by @lumberyjack​ point out that jon has been referred to both as “the archive” and “the eye’s pupil” in the past, and if what annabell said is true and they have to be destroyed simultaneously, then either jon and martin are going to have to split up to do it (which seems unlikely as they’ve just been reunited), or they’re in the same place

the importance of anchors has been well established in breaking the fears’ control of a situation, jon has already said that martin is his “reason” for being able to go on and stay human and as we got closer to the watchtower he’s been able to keep jon from slipping into a statement or replacing jonah in the eye.  Martin is the reason Jon’s resisting his place at the top of the watchtower, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that he could combat the apocalypse itself

Martin is one of the only people to actively defy the new world order in S5 and in ways that continue to break genre tropes.  He loves Jon and is protective of him, but he’s already said he won’t doom the world over it.  And Jon’s comment of ‘nobody gets what they deserve, not even me’ still feels like it’s yet to come back around and bite us.  Jon may think he deserves to die to save the world but I doubt he wants to die by Martin’s hand and Martin certainly doesn’t want to kill him.  I just think he’s the only one who can.

tl;dr martin has repeatedly set himself apart in this new world as someone who won’t stand for its bullshit.  i’m fairly sure jon will have to die, or at least that destroying the archive will kill him.  I think that martin is going to be the only one capable of killing jon and making sure that he stays dead

[ash-rabbit]

Abitc Ch 11 Cuts: Part 2

This one actually takes place much earlier, in place of Elias asking after Rosie's shifting accent, looping back into the mention of the chapter 1 shovel.

565 words. Despite the lighter nature, and smaller chance of alienating part of the audience, this doesn’t add much to character or plot. Inaction is more liable to get Elias killed so there’s no point to it, and discussing potential research avenues won’t lead to anything. And it felt like another concession, especially after encountering a microagression everytime I left the house to do something other than walk my dog.

Also, just, maybe, if you did feel alienated by Rosie's spiel, it is perhaps, not a bad thing, to maybe gain a glimmer of understanding of what it's like to be a visible minority in western society. It is also me being mortally offended by Jude Perry joining the Desolation for such a shallow reason. I will not go into it here on how Jude Perry is written like a white woman. Additionally if anyone wants to make a comment about what I did with the fortune cookies and web I will happily address that as someone who is half Chinese.

He wants to ask, but it doesn’t feel like the right time. He skims a statement at random, something about an evil ghost woman with a glasgow smile in a dark alleyway. Likely fake and based on some foreign ghost story, the finagling of how to get out of the situation reads very urban legend.

“Do you recognize this by any chance?” he asks, sliding it across the table.

“Oh, I had a Japanese friend who told me this one. The slit-mouthed woman, if you say no she kills you, and if you say yes she gives you a matching smile. You have to throw candy at her, or tell her she’s average, some variations just say you have to politely excuse yourself” Rosie nods, attaching a sticky note to the page. “It’s a pretty common theme over there. There’s one about public toilets and not accepting the colourful toilet paper. Blue gets you strangled, and uh, the other, red, gets you bled out.”

“But what if your stall is out?” Elias asks, marking another statement down as the opening scene of ‘Hamlet’. Honestly, it’s like these people aren’t even trying. Surely they could come up with something original. “Could I ask for green?”

“That gets you dragged straight to the underworld for eternal punishment.” Rosie snorts. “The best you can do is run or just say no.”

“Really?” He sets the page down. “That could make for an interesting paper. A comparison of cultural values through the analysis of urban legends. Chronologically of course, to measure the societal shifts within each compared culture of course. Maybe a series of books- ah, that’s not important.” He shakes his head, clearing away the old research cobwebs.

“I don’t know, it could be important to someone.” Rosie says with a small grin teasing at the edges of her lips. “When’re you going to write these papers?”

“Me? Ha! The amount of work that would take would bury me. Most legends are only known orally in their native language, and the popular text version is almost never the correct one, usually a propaganda piece. The amount of work to find regional variants would be absurd, if anything it’d have to be a group effort.” He pauses, and leans back, looks at Rosie. “You know, there’s no reason you can’t write it. Anything you say would be better than what the ‘Mongolian Death Worm’ men put out.”

Rosie snorts. “That’s a low bar Elias, but it’s not a bad idea. Shame Research wouldn’t take me.”

“Research doesn’t deserve you.” He says absently, plucking through the pile in search of something worthwhile. Wait. He clears his throat. “Your talents are much better suited to Artefact Storage anyway.” Nailed it.

“Who’re you trying to fool?” she asks, smiling audibly.

“I have a reputation to uphold.” He sniffs.

“You mean the absolute hole you’ve dug yourself into?”

“Exactly so!” He grins broadly, before leaning in to whisper conspiratorially. “It’s a very good pit, full of near impenatrable bedrock and enough silt to deter even the most determined door-to-door salesman.”

“I’m very good at gardening, and I’m sure there’s a shovel that we can use to help dig you up. Place like this, I bet the shovel will do most of the work for me.”

“We’ve actually got a shovel like that.” Elias says. “It’s very sturdy, can cut through stone and everything”

[alexandenigtscreations]

Chapters: 2/2

Martin does his best to treat the stubborn fool of an archivist. 

[CHAPTER 1 HERE]

Swearing, Martin rushed forwards catching Jon under the arms before he collapsed completely.  Nearly dropping him when he cried out in pain, the entirety of his slim fraim going rigid.  He was hurting him.  Christ! 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry” Martin chanted, “w-we just need to get you sitting down, then we can have a look and it will all be over and-”  Jon made a choked whimper from in back of his throat as Martin dragged him to a chair, propping him up on the table.  Jon kept hold of his wrist the entire time, making their movements rather awkward.  Hoping he was strong enough to sit.  He was.  Martin dared to hope it was a good sign.  

“Christ Jon, what happened?”

Jon shook his head and winced.  “Jus’ wanted ice-” 

“Ice?  Oh, oh right!” Martin leapt up and retrieved a medical grade ice pack from the ice box.  Artifact storage had taken to squirling a few away incase of accidents...  Sasha had attested to their frequency.  The knot in his stomach tightened, had it truly been Sasha that had told him that?  Or the thing that had replaced her?  

Jon hesitated a moment before gingerly accepting the pack, curling it about the bandaged with a hiss leaving a muddy crimson smear across the plastic.  Martin gasped, he couldn’t help it and took hold of Jon’s bare hand.  Jon pulled back.  Not before Martin saw the dirty broken blisters, some worn bloody, the skin already stiffening and cracking around exposed wounds.

They locked eyes, the Jon closed in on himself in an exhausted fashion.  

“Oh Jon-” Martin started.

“It’s fine-”

“No- it’s not.” he stood “Hang tight and we’ll get that sorted, yeah?”  Without waiting for an answer, Martin flipped on the electric kettle and left to get the first aid kit.   

Another perk of Artifact storage was a hefty and well stocked first aid kit.  Jon had his head down on the table, breaths coming in shallow and far too fast for Martin’s liking.  It looked...painful.  

He took out a cloth and a bowl of water, aiming to have Jon clean up some.  He eyed the hoody caked in mud that hadn’t seemed to have dried.  That wouldn't do, he’d get chilled that way, if he wasn’t already.

“Do you have a change of clothes?” he asked even though he already knew the answer.  It was no secret that Jon stayed nights.

“I-I think so?  Yes-”

“Good,” Martin nodded resolutely “Then let’s get you out of that jumper.” he winced, that hadn’t come out right.

“Right-’ Jon moved gingerly, his hand didn’t seem to work properly and he resolutely refused to allow the dominant one to leave the ice.  

Martin watched him battle the hem of the hoody, chewing on his lower lip.  Debating whether or not he should help his boss out of the layers.  Was this a boundary he was able to cross or?  No, the time for boundaries went to the wayside with the worms.  This was something that needed to be done, plane and simple. 

“Let me.” he leaned forwards and eased the garment up over Jon’s head, heart hammering all the while.  This close, he could make out a ‘what the ghost’ logo with faded horror lettering.  He hadn’t realized that Jon was a fan.  Jon hissed as his body protested the movement, making Martin bite back words of comfort.  His undershirt rode up exposing his torso and ohhh.

Bruises.  Black and blotched with red; bulging out of his brown skin.  Martin saw three, maybe four elongated marks and more discolorations before Jon peeled the sleeves off his arms; the shirt falling back into place.  They’d only been visible for a moment, but they looked deep, perhaps in contusion territory.  In which case, Jon really ought to get looked at in case of infection.  

Martin was just about to comment when he spotted the gory line carved into Jon’s throat. 

“What happened?” he found himself asking for the second time that night, insides twisting.  His hand flew to the wound trying to determine how deep it was under the grime and flaking blood.  It was still oozing, jagged scarlet edges giving wavy to a meaty pink, stretching clear across his neck.  There was a large dark stain on the collar of the light T.  His skin felt hotter than it should under his fingers, and Martin wondered if there was a fever there.  Given his state, probably.  

Jon recoyled.  It was too much, course it was, Jon wasn’t the sort of person you touch lightly.  Even Tim, who valued physical contact, was careful with Jon.  Had been careful, Martin corrected.  The casual side hugs or hand on shoulders had all but dried up what with Jon’s paranoia.  

“It doesn’ matter.”

“Yes, Jon, it does matter.” he sat back “We really should take you to an A&E.”

“No!” there was a touch of fear in his voice and his eyes went wide.

“Jon” Martin was exasperated.  Wishing this man would stop being so, so stubborn and get some proper help!  This was out of his depth.  Reminding him chillingly of having to dig worms out of Jon with a corkscrew.  How he had screamed under his touch-

“‘tective Tonner-” he began, hunching over, words blurring together “I-I don’ know if I’m...clear-” he took a shaky breath “Please.  I-I know, don’ have the right- for favors-”

“It’s alright.” Martin said with a grimace.  Though it wasn't, it wasn't at all-  The man had been on the run, stupid, how had he forgotten? “I-I get it.”

Jon huffed and closed his eyes.  Seeming to breathe easier.

“Then let's see what we can do about your hands.”  

Martin did the best he could to clean it up.  The long sleeves had prevented the grime from going to fare up his arms, which was about the only good thing here.  His hand was rubbed raw, the tips of his fingers oddly blistered and unnaturally warm to the touch.  He didn’t like it.  The dirt had gotten deep into the broken blisters, and he wasn’t sure how successful he’d been at flushing it out with the wound wash.  Normally, he’d leave blisters out in the open air to heal, but these weren’t those types of blisters.  

Once it looked clean to the eye, Martin smeared antibacterial ointment on, covering the palm with gauze and medical tape.  Hardly a replacement for a trained medical professional, but a damn sight better than what Jon could have done for himself.  

Jon sighed.  Carefully curling long fingers apparently testing the flexibility; keeping his hand in place on Martin’s.  It was hard not to notice how snuggly the bony hand fit in his own.  The weight of them felt...nice.  He huffed, irritated with himself.  This was hardly an appropriate time.  

“Better?”

“Yes-” he withdrew back in on himself, for an instant Martin did want to let go “Yes.  I-it does.  Thank you.”

“Good.” flush creped into his cheeks “Then on to the next one.” 

Jon seemed reluctant to move it from the ice pack so Martin did it for him.  He was deliberate and careful as he unwrapped the solid T-shirt.  If Jon’s hisses were any indication, this hurt like hell.  With each layer removed his dread grew.  Jon seemed to have coated the wound in some sort of ointment, making the badges damp and heavy.  That hadn’t stopped the blood from seeping through.

Martin inhaled sharply when he finally peeled the last of the bandage away.  

“Oh jeez Jon.” it was swollen, the palm an alarming shade of red and surface marred by broken blisters.  In some areas, patches of dermis seemed to be missing-  His stomach churned as though he was going to be sick.  

“I know.” Jon moaned. 

“Is- is that a burn?” he hated burns, they were his least favorite thing in the world, and Jon- Christ!

“Yes.” his voice was soft, barely above a whisper.  

“Don’t suppose you’re going to share what happened there either.” he couldn’t keep the hardness out of his tone.

Jon waved a hand vaguely “Got a ss-statement, Jude Perry.”

Martin frowned, the name sounded familiar.  “Hang on, wasn’t she-”

“The church of the lightless flame?  Agnus Montague?” he grimaced “yeah.” and he curled smaller, placing his head on knobby knees and resting his hand once more on the ice pack.  

“Ohhh Jeez.” Martin was torn between wanting to ask more questions and not wanting….details.  Instead he pulled out his phone.  He knew enough about burns to know that they required special treatment, which required a bit of research.  Mindful to not look at the images the screen threatened to divulge.  

First order of business was to suss out the degree of burn.  It was oozing fluid, which meant it wasn’t a first degree, but wasn’t, oh lord, blackened- (he checked just to make sure) so probably not a third degree.  Then, type of burn, he skimmed through the list until “Thermal” jumped out.  That was probably a safe bet.  The article recommended seeking treatment by a medical professional if it was a deep burn, or if it bled.  Hugh, who would of guessed bleeding was a bad sign?  

Martin grimaced and sent a silent curse to Detective Tonner for spooking Jon away from the A&E.  

That article ended, so Martin went looking for information on second degree thermal burns.  His heart jumped to his throat.  He seized the ice pack from Jon and chucked it into the sink as though it had personally offended him.  Jon started and looked like he was about to say something when Martin headed him off.

“Ice can cause nerve damage in burns.” he said quickly by way of explanation.  Oh god, he hadn’t made things worse had he?  His mum was always saying he made things worse!  He took hold of Jon’s hand, inspecting it as if he knew what he was looking for.  The cold quickly fled under his touch, replaced by an unnatural heat.  Was that a good thing?  Martin had no way of knowing.  

Jon made a strangled whimper, his narrow chest hitching.  “Martin-it’s-it’s hot-” he was trembling again, but otherwise keeping horribly still.

“What?  Oh!” heat sensitive, Jon was heat sensitive because of the burn!  That was something he should have remembered.  Stupid!  He let go with a hasty apology.  Jon wirily propped his arm above his head, obscuring most of his face from Martin’s view. 

Running water.  The article said it was important to cool it with running water.  Martin crossed over to the sink and ran the faucet on the coldest setting.  Then got a glass of water and shook out a few Paracetamol pills for Jon to take.  

“We’re going to move you over to the sink.” Jon unfurled as if to stand but Martin stopped him.  “Stay put, yeah?” he doubted that standing would be a good thing for him at the moment.  Instead, he took hold of the back of the chair and dragged it across the floor to the sink.  It made an embarrassingly loud squeak as they progressed, but they didn’t have far to travel.  

Soon, Jon was positioned against the counter, arm resting over the sink divide with the water rushing over his hand.  He gave a relieved sigh, the lines on his face easing slightly.

“Better?”

Jon nodded.  Martin thought that he was going to nod off at any moment and had him take medicine.  He was pleased to see Jon didn’t have much trouble holding the glass and took it all down.  He set the timer on his phone for fifteen minutes.  

He hoped that the water would loosen the grime of the dirt salv mixture which would definitely be a problem if not cleaned away.  Jon had tried to care for it, but clearly hadn’t given it the same attention as he did work assignments.  It was at once frustrating and endearing.  

“Jon?”

“Hmmn?” 

“Would it be alright if, if I get your neck?” he seemed sensitive about that one.  Martin didn’t want to spook him again.  

Jon was silent for a moment, and Martin thought he hadn’t heard; then the soft “Yes.” came.

Martin nodded relieved.  Taking a freshly dampened cloth and carefully wrapping it about Jon’s throat, pulling long tangled locks out of the way and smoothing the fly aways back.  Noting the mud crusted in his hair and the way Jon’s eyes fluttered at the touch and seemed to be leaning in and oh no thiswasnotokay!  

He jumped to his feet, muttering something about “getting the tea” and busied himself with the kettle and mugs.  Making the brew how he knew Jon liked it like it was second nature.  Quickly tucking the tin with the legend of decaf back on the shelf.  Knowing full well Jon found the very existence of decaf offensive.  

Right- Martin thought, the burn.  Taking a moment to center himself, Martin pulled the table closser and flipped off the water.  Jon made a reproachful cat-like sound that caused Martin to choke.  What the hell was that?!  

Warmth bloomed in his chest.  Martin barely kept the smile from his voice as he soothed “I know, I know- just, time to get that bandaged up.” before remembering who exactly he was addressing and feeling the flush deepen in his face.  The sharp rebuke he’d expected, never came.  

The inflammation seemed to have cooled considerably, which Martin could only guess to be a good thing.  The blisters seemed a good deal cleaner as he patted it dry, the salv and dirt having washed away.  

Jon had been unusually quiet, so Martin filled the void, explaining exactly what he was doing and why “The article recommended non-stick bandages, no ointments or sprays.  There was something about trapping heat in, or infections?” he huffed a nervous laugh, peeling the material from their sterilized wrappings.  Jon hummed distractedly.  So he was listening after all- Martin could work with that.  The talking also helped Martin keep his mind of the type of injury he was treating, serving to calm him.  

As tenderly as he could, he wrapped each long, swollen finger, moving to the palm and thumb.  Jon was watching him again, he could feel those deep brown eyes focus in on him as he worked.  The burns covered, Martin switched to gauze and encased the hand loosely to allow proper circulation and accommodate any inflammation that may occur.  He told Jon as much.

When all was said and done, Martin took another damp cloth and laid it over the forearm, far away from the wrappings to keep them clean.  It was meant to further cool the blood flowing to the appendage.  At least, that was what Martin was hoping it would do.  Cold water on your wrists could cool you on a hot day, so why wouldn’t that principle apply here?  

That left the neck wound.  Martin grimaced noting how Jon’s soiled hair brushed against his throat.  He debated if it would be a good idea to tape Jon into some plastic and have him wash up in the Archive’s shower rooms (another accommodation for artifact storage).  Then again, the man had nearly collapsed opening the freezer.  So, maybe not.  He could try and wipe it out or…

The sink had a spray nozzle.  It would be much easier to use that.  Once again he bit his lip, trying to parse out if this was absolutely necessary or just a random excuse to feel Jon’s hair.  If he was being wholly honest with himself, it was a bit of both.  Not to mention it would be easier to treat the neck injury.  

“I-I’ll be right back.” he said, going to retrieve the shampoo and conditioner he’d never bothered to bring back to his flat and a spare jumper.  Jon was leaning heavily against the counter, but kept glancing this way and that as if keeping watch; starting when Martin knocked on the door.  

“Christ- Martin. I thought-” he swallowed hard “never mind.”

“Just me.” he smiled wanly “We need to give your hair a bit of a scrub down, get the mud out.  Alright?” 

Jon starred and Martin’s stomach dropped.  Sure that Jon hated the idea, that he hated Martin  touching him, yet alone treating his injuries.  He barely tolerated Martin bringing him tea.  Oh God, he’d made it perfectly clear how he felt about Martin, hadn’t he?  Hadn’t he? 

“You’re hair- it-” why was his mouth so dry? 

“I heard you-” the awkward pause dragged out where Martin’s heart did violence to his ribcage “Why are you being so….nice? to me?” 

So the paranoia was kicking in?  But no- this sounded different...the way his voice hitched at the end.  

“I-” Jon swallowed “I haven’ treated-you fairly. Wasn’ professional-”  Strained, his voice was strained and quaking like the rest of him.  

Christ was he going to cry?  If anyone was deserving of a good cry right now, it would be Jon.  But...Martin wished Tim was here.  That Tim was here and wasn’t angry with Jon.  That Sasha was here and wasn’t- there was a sharp pang in his heart.  How long had Jon known that Sasha wasn’t….her anymore-  They’d known him back in research, were friends even.  Martin had no idea what to do with a Jon so far off script.  

 Edging closer, Martin hummed thoughtfully “because you need it.” he said.  “A-and when I needed help with the w-worms- you gave it to me.  So now I’m helping you.  Okay?”  

“You shouldn’t have to-to put up with this-  M’ not even a person-” there it was again that strange quaking voice, he was breathing shallow and too fast.

Martin considered for a moment “No- no, I really shouldn’t.” Tired, Martin was very tired.  It was just sinking in that Jon had tried to protect both himself and Tim from the Not!Sasha?  “But it’s not you I’m putting up with.  It’s this place.” he scratched his forehead, he didn’t want to talk about this now.  Not the worry, the division in the staff, the things out there intent on hurting them, the disappearances, the fact they were trapped in a job where the only way out seemed to be dying, or anything to do with Elias and that persistent feeling of being watched.  He-he didn’t want to think about it.  

“So I’m going to push the table up to the sink, and you’re going to have a lie down so that I can get the dirt out, okay?”

“Yes” little more than a horse whisper.

 In no time at all, Martin found himself soaking and sudsing Jon’s hair.  His neck pillowed on a few rags and burn elevated above his heart.  As with before, Jon’s eyes began to flutter and he leaned into the touch.  He took his time working up a lather, rinsing and repeating until the grit on his skull was gone and the water ran clear.  

This was soothing work, he fell into his usual pattern that he did when dying his mum’s hair.  It was the first time that Jon seemed to genuinely relax; actually looking his age.  How could he of thought this man was capable of murder?  It was true he was critical, borderline confrontational with a nansty habit of pushing things too far and yet...he cared, at the center of it all he was very human.  Trying his best even with the impossible mess he’d been charged to sort out.  And Martin had grown to respect that.  

He worked the cream rinse in, teasing out the tangles; enjoying the way the black and silver locks slipped through his fingers.  Leaving it to sit while he had a look at the neck wound.  

It was much deeper than he’d wanted it to be.  The cloth had done its job though and the clean up was easy.   While sleeping in the archives, Martin had done a lot of research on sutures; just in case.  He took out the sterilized strips and started at the center, pulling the skin together as best he could.  Then worked from the edges inwards, laying the strips over the edges of previous placed ones till it resembled a railroad track.  Transforming it from the image of a closed eye to a straight forwards latus work.  In theory, it should strengthen the hold of the butterfly stitches.  But it wasn’t like he had instruction.  He finished up with ointment, gauze and a bandage around his neck.  

By the time Martin finished rinsing out his hair, he was surprised to find Jon fast asleep.  Tim had stories of strange places he’d found Jonathan Sims sleeping in research, with the funniest being wedged upright between two filing cabinets and curled into a vacant shelf in document storage.  But this was his first time seeing it.

Martin pressed a hand to his forehead.  There was no longer any doubt of a fever, with everything that had happened it wasn’t a surprise.  It was probably the most normal thing to have happened all day.  He draped his jumper on the sleeping figure.  It all but swallowed him in its soft folds, but Martin could still make out the labored breaths.  

Was this karma for lying on his CV?  If so, he had a few choice words to share with karma.

An hour, Martin decided he’d give Jon an hour before sending him home.  There were a couple of poems in this hellish day.  Wishing he hadn’t left his journal at home, Martin instead busied himself by tidying up and returning the first aid kit to its proper place.  Even managed to head off Emmet, the night custodian, before he walked in on Jon.  Christ, was he trapped here like the rest of them, doomed forever to be cleaning up after the archives?  Did he know?  Or was he as ignorant as Martin had been yesterday? 

Jon was plainly still knackered after the rest, but seemed steadier, a little more himself than before.  

Martin had taken the liberty of locating Jon’s change of clothing.  They were fussily folded, the collar of the button down even propped up with a bit of cardboard.  Handing them to Jon with a “We can’t have you taking a cab like that, people will think you ate a puppy- or something.”

Jon had actually smiled a little “Who's to say the puppy didn’t have it coming?” 

“Jon!”

He shrugged, shoulders shrouded in Martin’s’ knit, and winced “Just saying-it could have messed up the archives.”  he gave a side glance at Martin who flushed head to toe.  

He helped Jon to the waiting cab, having the thin man lean against him.  Using the opportunity to give him veiled threats on returning to the archives too soon and recommending an A&E.  

Jon had thanked him then, as he was gingerly placed into the cab.  Martin couldn’t help but feel that he was in serious trouble as he watched the tail lights vanish round the corner.  

[boat-dock]

“Snapshots” Chapter 1

Hello all! this is chapter 1 of my first ever Her Royal Highness fic. this is going to be a collection of oneshots which will start before they are together and will continue past the end of the book. I hope ya’ll enjoy and as always any and all feedback is appreciated and enjoyed

Chapter 1 “Her traitorous heart” is set between the visit to Skye and the surprise Thanksgiving. 

Millie laid on her stomach in her bed, with her laptop open staring at a blank screen where her essay was supposed to be. She’s been sitting there for half an hour trying to do her homework and not getting anywhere. Flora was in the room with her, not helping her distraction levels. Instead of trying to do work, Flora was rolling around the room in a rolly chair, the scraping of the wheels against the floor and her swishing blonde ponytail constantly pulling at Millie’s focus. It was a strangely childlike activity for a princess to be doing and brought a smile to her face.

“Can you please be a little quieter?” Millie groaned, causing Flora’s head to snap towards her, “I’m trying to work.”

Now the chair was being rolled toward her bed so Flora could rest her chin on the edge of her bed, so that she was only inches away from Millie. “But I’m bored Quint,” she whined, a strand of hair falling in front of her eyes. 

Millie rolled her eyes at that,” You could try doing some homework,” she offered, trying to nudge her away. Flora huffed at her and scrunched her nose. She was not deterred, however, she seemed even more determined to get attention. 

“Quiiiint,” she dragged out, poking her lightly on her arm. Millie ignored her and tried to bring her attention back to her essay, letting her fingers run quickly over the keys even though no useful words came out of it. “Millie,” she whispered and a shiver ran up her spine. She was so used to being called Quint that hearing Flora say her name caused her mind to go blank and her breath to hitch. Millie looked at her and blinked back to reality. 

“Yeah Flo?” she asked. The nickname she had heard Seb call her so many times, slipped out without her evening thinking about it. 

Flora’s face lit up, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the nickname or just from her attention in general. “I would like attention please.” 

It would have been so easy to drop everything and hang out with Flora, in fact she’d been doing that more and more these days and that was doing nothing but fan the flames of her pesky little crush. It was easy to follow Flora, she was powerful and confident in a way that only a princess could pull off. It was dangerous, because Millie found that her feelings were not nearly as aware that a relationship with Flora would only end in heartbreak as her brain was. “I can’t, “ she pushed back,” I have to write this paper.” 

The look Flora gave her could only be described as a puppy dog look and Millie’s resolve almost broke. They sat in silence as she tried to keep working, but Flora stayed next to her, watching with her large golden eyes. “Can I have your phone?” she asked. Normally Millie might have questioned this but she was desperate to actually make progress on this paper so she handed it over no questions asked. 

With a grin she rolled away from the bed to mess with Millie’s phone. A strange weight was lifted off of her shoulders and she could breathe again. Being that close to her old roommate, now friend, shouldn’t be this hard. The princess was now taking various selfies and saving them to Millie’s phone. “Couldn’t you do that on your phone?” 

“Perhaps, but I couldn’t use the fun snapchat filters,” she answered, shooting her a sly grin and snapping another photo. She forgets that Flora isn’t allowed to have social media by her family. 

“Go crazy then,” she says, leaving her to enjoy her selfies.

Flora flashed her a dazzling smile and left her to try and do her homework. Even with the new found quiet she still found it hard to concentrate, her mind wandered and all her thoughts seemed to find their way back to her ex-roommate. Somewhere along the way, her fingers stopped typing and her eyes glazed over. She’s snapped out of it when Flora’s voice disrupts the silence, except this time it wasn’t aimed at her. 

When she looked she found Flora talking to her phone, “Hi Americans,” she sang, waving at the camera. It was then that Millie noticed the blinking red button on the bottom of the screen that showed it was recording,” I’m..”

“What are you doing?” Millie cut in, scrunching her eyebrows. She shifted her weight so she was fully facing Flora and the camera. 

Flora turned toward her and spoke, while sliding the chair back closer to the bed,” I’m talking to the Americans and I’m going to post it to your story,” she said blatantly. She almost snorted but stopped herself, she had at most 20 friends on snapchat, four close friends, her aunt Vi and the rest were random kids she used to go to high school with but never really spoke to. 

She leaned forward and rested her head in her hands making eye contact with the camera,” and how many people do you think are going to see that?” she asked. 

“Don’t really care,” she commented,” I’m just bored, love.” she now turned back to the camera,” Amelia here, is very busy writing her essay and I have nothing to do.” Millie huffed and gave a small eye roll. 

“You could go do your homework ya know,” she was deliberately ignored. 

The door to her room flew open as Sakshi and Perry came in carrying snacks and coffee laughing with each other. Flora flipped the phone camera with ease, so that their friends were now in the shot, “ Say hello to the Americans,” she announced, startling them. 

Saks regained her composer quickly and answered,” Hullo Americans,” she grinned, waves of super model charms flowing from her. 

“Hi,” Perry murmmured,” we come bearing snacks.” 

Millie’s stomach growled loudly at the mere mention of snacks. The camera switched back to her and Flora and the filter snapped back into place, giving their skin a ethereal glow that made her kind of uneasy. Not that Flora needed any filter to be beautiful, she always seemed to glow all on her own. 

“Time to go,” she said waving,” Anything to say before we leave Quint?” 

She thought for a second before smirking and answering,” Send help,” she deadpanned, letting her eyes slide to Flora to see how she reacted. 

“Oi!” she exclaimed, in what Millie assumed was mock outrage. 

“Kidding,” she grinned,” Bye y’all,” she quickly grabbed the phone, effectively ending the video. Accepting a muffin and coffee from Perry, she tried to forget the video, knowing that Flora definitely was not going to. 

“Are we going to ignore the fact that Millie just said y’all,” Saks’ asked through a mouthful of muffin, in a surprisingly unlady-like manner for her. 

“...I’ve probably said it before,” Millie answered as Saks sat on her bed on the opposite side of the room. Flora abandoned her chair to join Millie on her bed so that Perry could have it. She sipped her coffee and scrunched her nose, in an annoyingly cute way, before setting it to the side. “I’m from the American south, it’s part of my vernacular.” 

“I like it, “ Flora replied, “ it’s got a cute twang to it.” 

Millie’s cheeks burned against her will and she ducked her head, avoiding eye contact with everyone. She had gotten used to hearing the Scottish accent around her now, but sometimes it still shocked her. It was strange to think that they might think the same things when they heard her talk. She didn’t have a good way to respond to this, so instead she just kept her head down, ignoring the weight of Flora’s eyes on her and the knowing look Sakshi was giving them. 

Her paper now forgotten, Millie closed her laptop and moved to put it on the desk simply so that she would have something to do with her hands. There was officially too much attention on her and she did not know what to do with herself. She was used to being in the background, not the center of attention and right now there was no doubt that all eyes were on her. 

Her phone dinged next to her annoyingly quickly indicating that someone had messaged her. She sighed knowing that it was about the video Flora had posted of all of them. The princess eyed the phone but before she could make a move to grab it Millie snatched it and clicked it on. 

She had a list of people from her old high school that she did not want to talk to and while the person she caught Jude cheating on her with was not on the top of said list he was definitely on it. Mason’s name sat heavily on her screen and she almost didn’t open it, but her curiosity got the better of her. 

She tried to make her fingers move but they sat stubborn and still. This was ridiculous, Mason didn’t know anything about her and Jude, there was no reason for things to be weird between them. Taking a deep breath, she clicked the message. 

Damn Millie who’s your friend? 

A distressed sound escaped from her throat, it started off as a yelp then turned into a groan. On instinct she threw her phone onto the bed face down trying to erase the words from her mind 

No. This was not happening. Not again. 

No. No. No. 

“What’s wrong with you Quint?” Flora asked, picking up the phone. Millie could see her eyes scanning the message. An all too familiar smirk formed on her lips and Millie could barely keep herself from staring, “Oh,” she says and an emotion that Millie couldn’t place flashed across her face, but disappeared as quickly as it had come,” Some American lad thinks I’m attractive. I don’t think that requires that level of a reaction.” she teased, her smirk returning causing Millie’s cheeks to heat up. 

By this point Saks and Perry were peering over Flora’s shoulder to read the message too. “It’s not the message as much as the person that sent it,” she backtracked. 

“Who is he?” Perry asked. 

She took a second too long to answer, “ his name’s Mason,” they all stared at her, waiting for more information. “He’s who I caught Jude cheating on me with.” she murmured and lowered her eyes. 

Saks gasped and before she could blink the phone was in her hand. “I want a picture of this boy,” she announced only to find that there was nothing for her to see. With a disappointed huff she and Flora glared at the home as Perry wheeled the chair across the room to join them. 

“Check his instagram,” he announced and then Saks’ fingers were flying over the screen. 

“Give me that,” Millie growled, taking the phone back to respond to the message. 

I thought you were with Jude?

Mason typed and deleted his reply at least three times before it finally came through. 

We broke up about 2 months ago.

I thought she would have told you

Her stomach knotted. She wasn’t happy about that, she wasn’t. But there was some sick satisfaction in knowing that the relationship had not worked out. She pushed down those feelings scolding herself. 

We haven’t talked much recently. 

Her friends were watching her intently but she made no move to let them read the messages. She deserved some privacy after all. 

That sucks

This conversation had turned painfully awkward fast. She started looking for ways to end it. 

For you too

She thought that would be the last of it and they would both go back to not speaking to each other for the next three months, until she was back in Texas for Christmas. Sadly she was mistaken. 

So is that a no from your friend? 

Just like that Millie closed the phone without answering and tossed it, determined to forget the entire conversation had ever happened. Sadly her friends didn’t agree with her. “Well…” Flora pushed, her eyes sparkling with the prospects of new gossip ,” What did he say?” 

“Nothing important,” she said bluntly, trying to put an end to this whole thing. They all moved in closer to her and she realized that the only way to end this was to give them what they wanted,” he just said that he and Jude aren’t together anymore and then he asked about you again.” 

An annoying smirk was again graced Flora’s face, she was relishing this, she was relishing how Millie was reacting to this. Millie hated how she was reacting to this situation, she hated that she wasn’t mad at Mason because of his relationship with Jude, she was upset because he was interested in Flora. Except she had no right to be possessive over Flora, Flora was not her’s. They were ex-roommates and barely even friends, nothing more. 

If only she could convince her traitorous heart that. 

[tmaliveblogyup]

S3 E07/E87 - The Uncanny Valley

dolls and mannequins: the return

(yes, now that im back you cant stop me, i love this show too much. hope you appreciate your 5 episodes right after the others. maybe ill stop after this one, maybe not. well see.)

-----

hes too deep in it to not do it I'm afraid.

I'VE MISSED GERTRUDE'S VOICE SO MUCH

oh, MOOD

isnt arms spread wide the basic position for a model in a game?

I've looked up what flensing means and. yeah no she wasn't talking about sculpting. or maybe in a weird fleshy way

wait. you mean this thing was casually talking about the things it's doing?? it reminds me of the episode where the professor had to teach to definitely not human beings how a human works. They weren't even aware that they shouldn't be open about some of the weird things they can do. Now I think about it, maybe they were mannequin who took human skin? but why learn about the human body like that, then?

aaand circus again. what, does this entity have a thing for clowns?

sorry, i just find this description funny

The Stranger, seeing a plumber with 'Skinner' as his last name: guys, i have an idea. It's going to be hilarious.

The Unknowing...?

alright, alright, gertrude please calm down because we're having a lot of infos there.

So, Jude Perry/The Lightless Flame ; Orsinov/The Stranger

Then you have the Devastation that is thrown in, which seems to be the entity linked to the lightless flame

did i got all of this right?

The Unknowing seems to be the apocalypse of the Stranger, and its soldiers are called 'dancers'? or was the dancers part just gertrude being poetic?

OH GOD NO

:(

-----

WELL THAT WAS AN EPISODE.

We got more infos on the entities, and it seems pretty obvious now that the circus/mannequin part of the Stranger will be our 'big bad' for the season, with maybe the Lightless Flame ("maybe" because the tape was from 2 years ago, it's possible the alliance was terminated since, and the Devastation will be a sort of ally, like the Spirale loosely was. but that's just a possibility, not even an hypothesis)

Also, did Skinner really was called back only to acare him off because he didn't react?? i mean, i remember accidentally reading a spoiler (before I've started to listen to tma, but after i had decided to listen to it, so I stopped reading thd post pretty quickly once I realised what it was about. So maybe I'm missing something) about the entities feeding on fears or something like that, so that would explain it. What a bummer though; imagine you carefully planned this whole thing to spook the plumber, and then he doesn't react at all.

also, the comment section is amazing. ADHD plumber, indeed.

[haberdashing]

Heart, Don’t Fail Me Now

After Jon calls Martin his boyfriend, Martin has a confession to make about how that term isn’t entirely accurate.

on AO3

The mortal garden was well behind them now, though what waited for them up ahead was still unclear, Martin and Jon walking together in the eerie space where one domain bled into another.

The calm before the storm, perhaps. Or after it, when the smell of petrichor seeps out from rain-laden strips of grass. Or both, even, the eye of the hurricane, with thick storm walls on both sides but a brief moment of respite in between them.

Things were relatively calm here, was the point, whatever flowery metaphor Martin chose to use to describe it. The two of them hadn’t spoken much since Jon explained his reasoning behind killing Jude Perry but not Arthur Nolan, explained that he didn’t seem to be helping people no matter what he did, explained that getting rid of other avatars had been out of revenge more than anything else. The silence between them now wasn’t an unpleasant one, though, not exactly.

But something had been bothering Martin since before the two of them left the mortal garden, and he wasn’t sure how long he could go without saying anything about it, so he cleared his throat and prepared to break the peace.

“Jon?”

“Martin?” Jon’s eyes locked on Martin’s in an instant, and Martin could read them like an open book: first wary and worried, searching for threats that had somehow gone unseen, then warming up at the sight of Martin still whole, still unharmed, and only somewhat anxious--was the color getting brighter, or was that just a trick of the lighting?

Martin thought he had never really understood the old expression that the eyes were the window to the soul until after getting to know Jon.

“I- I want to talk to you about something. Something you said to Jared back there.”

Jon stopped walking, and Martin followed his cue, the two standing face to face. “What is it?”

Martin paused, hesitated, biting his lip for a long minute, wanting to savor the moment before he explained his thoughts. They were in the middle of an apocalyptic wasteland, and yet Martin felt--no, Martin knew--that what he was about to say might upend his life far more than any statement Jon read.

“You- you know how Jared asked if I was your boyfriend, and you said I am?”

Martin was pretty sure that even if all he could see of Jon was his eyes, he still would be able to identify every one of Jon’s emotions as his expression flickered from one to the next. Wide-eyed confusion, first. Anxiety, in which he couldn’t quite meet Martin’s gaze, his eyes looking slightly off to the side instead. Concern. Horror. Finally, a sorrow that looked dangerously close to grief.

Jon couldn’t quite keep his voice steady as he responded, though Martin could tell he was making an effort to do so. “Are, are you not-”

Martin’s stomach lurched as he realized where he’d gone wrong, how Jon had been led to entirely the wrong conclusion here. “It’s not- not what you think. We’re still together, or, or dating, if you can call it that...” Martin made a vague hand gesture pointing out their surroundings; anything that most people would consider a “date” was well out of their reach now. “At least I, I want us to be. And I hope once I’m done explaining, that you still want us to be too, that this doesn’t change anything between us...”

Jon’s expression softened, the grief replaced with idle curiosity mixed with confusion--a not-uncommon look for Jon, especially these days. “What do you mean, then?”

“The issue--or, or issue makes it sound bigger than I mean, but--it’s not about us being together, it’s the word. I don’t think I’m your boyfriend.”

Jon considered this for a moment, tilting his head to one side slightly as he thought. “It does sound a bit juvenile, I suppose. Though ‘manfriend’ doesn’t have the right ring to it, I don’t think...”

Martin laughed weakly. “No, no it doesn’t.”

And Martin could see a world where he left it there, maybe ribbed Jon some more about using such a childish term to describe their relationship, didn’t touch on the bigger issue behind it all, didn’t rock the boat. That would be safer. It wouldn’t be the full truth, but it would be safer. The calm would remain undisturbed.

But then again, Martin had already rejected a life full of safety and calm and letting his true self fade away into oblivion in the process, and he had no intentions of going back on that particular decision.

So Martin made himself speak up again.

“Even if it did, though, manfriend wouldn’t really be any better. Because I’m not- I’m not a man. Or a boy, for that matter. I’m not male.”

“Hmm.” Jon’s tone was neutral; Martin suspected that he was working hard to keep it that way, to conceal his true feelings, and he couldn’t quite read whatever was behind Jon’s eyes. “Are you female, then?”

Martin remembered a brief litany of insults hurled at him throughout his childhood--pussy, sissy, girl--and gulped.

“No, no, I- I don’t think I’m either one. I don’t think I’m anything. Does that makes sense? To just... be nothing?”

“You’re not nothing.” The chiding tone of Jon’s voice made Martin flinch, and only after, only when he saw the concern in Jon’s eyes, did he see that Jon might have interpreted things differently once again, might have thought Martin was making a comment regarding his self-esteem rather than his gender or lack thereof.

“I didn’t mean it like that, just, just gender-wise.”

“Ah. Well, then, it’s certainly possible for you to be nonbinary, perhaps agender then, though I don’t mean to force labels on you-”

Martin snorted. “If I can’t get a label from post-apocalyptic Google, where can I get one?”

“I knew those terms beforehand, actually.”

Jon went quiet rather suddenly, averting his gaze, and Martin wondered, then, whether Jon had meant to speak of his pre-existing knowledge so casually.

Had Jon known because he’d come across the terms during his own gender identity exploration, or because he had a friend who’d gone through what Martin had now, or because he’d somehow suspected the truth of Martin’s identity before Martin himself realized it, or just because he was bored one day and did in-depth research into gender identities as nonchalantly as he would do research into spelunking or alchemy or any number of other things that were just idle bits of trivia to him?

Was this the sort of burning curiosity that Jon felt just before he asked someone to tell him their story, whether they wanted to or not?

Well. Martin wasn’t going to force it out of him--he couldn’t do so as literally as Jon himself could, and he certainly didn’t want to pressure Jon into sharing anything he didn’t want to, either. Instead he just stood there and waited for the silence to become less awkward, waited for Jon to speak up again.

Jon did, eventually. “You didn’t mention this earlier.”

It wasn’t a question, certainly, but Martin wasn’t quite sure whether it was meant more as an accusation or as a simple statement of the facts. Either way, Martin could feel his cheeks heat up as he prepared to explain himself.

“I, I’m just starting to figure it all out, didn’t want to bog you down rambling about something I don’t even fully get myself yet. It’s just... all my life people have assumed I’m a man, and I just kind of took it for granted that that meant I was, didn’t think about it much until after we got to Scotland, and usually I’m fine with it, usually it doesn’t even bother me, but there’s a few terms where when they get used it gets under my skin and... and I guess boyfriend’s on that list now.”

It took Jon a moment to respond, and Martin felt like he was getting warmer and warmer by the second as he waited, like he was about ready to spontaneously combust.

“I see.”

Martin forced a grin onto his face, hoped Jon couldn’t tell how false it was. “Of course you see.”

Jon snorted in amusement, and Martin took that as a victory.

“You know you can talk to me about anything, though, Martin, whether you’ve figured it out already or not.”

“I know, I know, just... seems a bit foolish, when I don’t even mind half the assumptions, and, you know...” Martin gestured vaguely at the hellscape around them. “We’ve got a lot going on at the moment already.” 

“Still. Your feelings matter, Martin.” Jon paused. “Should I still call you Martin?”

This threw Martin off a bit, and he took a deep breath as he processed it. “That���s my name, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be, you know. If it’s too masculine, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

Martin hadn’t actually considered that, and he took a moment to ponder the possibility of changing his name to something else, anything else, before shaking his head. “Think I’ll stick with it. I like the way it sounds, and I’m used to it by now, anyway.”

“Honestly, I like how it sounds too, but that’s not what’s important here.” Jon leaned over and gave Martin a quick peck on the cheek, and Martin’s mind was racing.

“You’re... you’re so calm about this.” Martin threw his hands in the air. “How can you just... accept all of this without even blinking an eye?”

Jon shrugged. “I care about you whatever your gender is, Martin. And I know what it’s like, having to come out, explain your gender, navigate all that. Guess how long it took me to settle on the name Jonathan.”

Martin squinted, looked at Jon for a long moment. “I don’t know, how long?”

“No, no, you have to guess.”

Martin hadn’t seen Jon with that particular kind of shit-eating grin on his face very often before.

“...year and a half?” Martin didn’t know how long was the norm for that sort of thing, but he padded his estimate a bit, knowing well enough that Jon was the type to overthink those sort of decisions.

Jon let out a low whistle. “Thirteen months. You were close.”

“Guess I know you pretty well, heh.”

“Guess so.” Jon tapped his fingers against his leg as he considered his next words... “Do you know... what pronouns you want to use? He still, or she, or they, or any number of neopronouns I could name for you...”

Martin didn’t know what a neopronoun was, but he did know that asking would probably get Jon rambling on about the topic for a good half hour or so--or what would be half an hour, if time worked like it should, anyway--and he wasn’t quite ready for that just yet.

“’He’ is... ‘he’ is fine, I guess? I mean, I don’t mind it, it’s done the job for thirty years now and all, I suppose. ‘She’ doesn’t sound right to me. And ‘they’... all I can think of is my old schoolteacher telling me singular they isn’t grammatically correct, and I need to stop using it in my essays.” Martin grimaced a little at that particular memory.

“Don’t worry about the grammar of it. I think the grammar’s fine, but that’s not what matters. Does it sound right to you?”

“...dunno.”

“Want me to give an example?”

Martin silently nodded in response.

Jon looked Martin right in the eyes. “Martin Blackwood is wonderful, and I love them very much, and I think they’re the only reason I can keep going anymore, that I’d give up on it all if it weren’t for them and their determination.”

Martin’s face turned hot again, but for a different reason this time around. “Stop it!”

“It’s true. All of it.” Jon was grinning again. “So what do you think?”

Martin thought about it for a moment, tried to divorce what he thought of the pronoun as applied to him from what he thought of the pronoun in general, and more specifically from Mrs. Jameson’s old reproaches when it came to his essays. It wasn’t easy to do, but once he did... “I think I like it? Not entirely sure, though.”

“That’s fine. You’ve got time to figure it out.”

“All the time in the world. Such as it is.”

Martin shot Jon a wry smile, and Jon reciprocated.

“Quite.”

“Now, about the ‘boyfriend’ thing... what other terms d’you know for that, without the, the gendered bit of it?”

Jon took a second to respond. “Joyfriend?”

Martin’s eyes widened. “Joyfriend?”

“It’s a thing! It’s a word people use!” Jon threw his arms in the air. “And it’s like boyfriend, but without, well, the boy part. And you do bring me joy, after all.”

“Still sounds weird to me, and if you thought boyfriend was juvenile, well...”

“So that’s a no, got it. What about datemate?”

Martin hummed to himself for a moment before making a wavering hand gesture. “Maybe? I like that better than joyfriend, anyway. The internal rhyme’s rather nice.”

“Alright, we can keep that in mind for later. Significant other?”

Martin wrinkled his nose and made a face. “Too proper.”

“Fair enough. Besides, I think if anyone’s going to be the significant other in this relationship, it’s me. I seem to be significant now, after all, and I’m certainly other as well.”

Martin snorted. “And to think there was a time I believed you didn’t make jokes.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad you know better now.” Jon paused for a moment, hesitation clear in his expression. “What about partner?”

Jon’s eyes kept darting between Martin’s own gaze and the ground, and Martin wondered if his thoughts were consumed with the same thing his were when the term “partner” came up. It reminded Martin of Basira and Daisy immediately, and Martin glanced down at the scar Daisy had left on Jon’s neck. Their partnership was why Jon hadn’t ended up dead that day, sure, but it was also, in a sense, what had allowed things to get that far in the first place.

But then again, the two of them weren’t entirely innocent these days, either...

And that partnership between Basira and Daisy, that sense of having each other’s backs no matter what, of trusting each other come hell or high water, that was something Martin could certainly see the value in.

“Yeah, I, I think I like that one.”

Jon nodded solemnly. “Well, next time a fear avatar asks, I’ll make sure to let them know you’re my partner then.”

Martin rolled his eyes. “Because it’s such a regular occurrence.”

“Better than Jude Perry thinking you’re my valet, anyway.”

“Right, the valet for the car you definitely have.” Martin gestured to the space around them, which was entirely lacking in cars.

They’d had a car, once, back at the safehouse. Martin knew now that taking it wouldn’t have actually sped up this process any, had heard Jon’s speeches about how “the journey will be the journey” loud and clear, but still, part of him wondered now what would have happened if they’d taken the car with them when they’d started.

Would the car have insulated them from the worst of it, protected them from the horrors that surrounded them?

Would the car have broken down early on, as any normal car would when confronted with the obstacles that surrounded them now, having to be abandoned amidst the chaos?

Or would the car have become an eldritch being in its own right, like the safehouse was, feeding on the fear of those within it?

Martin shuddered at the thought and decided he was probably better off not having found out the hard way.

“Martin Blackwood, my partner.” Jon reached for Martin’s hand, and as Martin reciprocated the gesture, intertwining his fingers with Jon’s as he had so many times over now, Jon gave Martin’s hand a gentle squeeze. “I rather like the sound of that.”

[bubonickitten]

MAG 167 spoilers

I am once again back to obsessing over Gertrude and Jon as narrative foils!!

And just – the narrative does such a great job of using that foil to illustrate Jon’s neverending struggle with his own humanity. Because although Gertrude didn’t embrace her Archivist powers in the same way that Jon sometimes does, she was arguably monstrous in her own way -- in ways that Jon ultimately isn’t. 

I keep thinking back to Jon’s conversation with Gerry, in particular this bit:

GERARD: Well, she could make people tell her stuff, sometimes. They’d suddenly get real talkative, and lay out whatever she needed. She didn’t do it often though. I don’t think she liked it.

JON: Oh, er, I can do that, too.

GERARD: Huh. Do you like it?

JON: I – I don’t know. I never really thought about it. Yes, I… I suppose I do.

GERRY: Hmmm.

I think after his coma, Jon has a much more negative view of his abilities, but early on, he admits that there’s a part of him that does like being able to compel people. It fits, honestly – of course someone like Jon, so intolerant of mysteries, so prone to overthinking, so full of questions and so voracious for answers, fresh out of a paranoid episode that left him unable to trust any answer that anyone offered him, would like having the option to ask a question and receive a guaranteed answer and to know that the given answer was the truth. At least until he no longer has control over it, finds himself accidentally compelling people and unable to stop knowing things even when he doesn’t want to.

But even if Gertrude was further from the supernatural aspects of the Archivist role, she was still ruthless in her crusade. Her conviction and boldness made her a badass, certainly, but at what cost? The answer depends heavily on how you feel about utilitarianism as an ethical philosophy.

Gertrude Robinson would have a clear answer to the trolley problem and not apologize for it. Jonathan Sims would agonize over all the potential choices and outcomes until he’s paralyzed with indecision. (Annabelle Cane knew exactly what she was doing when she gave him that statement about the nature of free will in a moment where he was struggling so profoundly with self-doubt.)

People are always comparing Jon to Gertrude, telling him that he’d be better off behaving more like her, urging him to accept the premise that ruthlessness is a strength in a world that offers only fear and pain, and that humanity is a weakness and a liability that he doesn’t have the luxury to indulge.

And in Season 4, he tries that philosophy on for a brief while. The Eye drives him to compel people to tell their stories; he starves if he doesn’t obey that instinct. He feeds the Eye the trauma of innocent bystanders, and now he’s the monster haunting the dreams of his victims. (And, to his credit, that’s what he ultimately refers to them as: victims. He uses that word. That’s significant.)

When Basira witnesses him do that and calls him out on it, Jon replies by pointing out that Basira (among others) told him that he should be more like Gertrude: “She got the job done and didn’t care about the cost.” 

Basira responds, “But I thought you did.” 

And that highlights the fundamental difference between Jon and Gertrude! He’d temporarily forgotten that – he’d lost touch with that piece of himself, of his humanity. It makes sense; everyone around him saw him as a monster, and it’s hard to believe in your own humanity when no one else does, when everyone around you is building a self-fulfilling prophecy for you.

It takes Martin reaching out in the only way that he can – urging the others to talk to him – for Jon to wake up and admit that what he’s doing isn’t right and that he needs to do something to stop it. He goes back and forth with himself for a bit – Does he have any control? Is he doing it on autopilot? Is the Web influencing him? – but ultimately he decides that, no, he has to hold himself accountable. Helen asks him if he’s sure he didn’t want to do it, and he takes that hard-to-swallow pill and engages in some introspection and comes to the conclusion, Yeah, while supernatural influence is at play here, I made a choice.

BUT if he made a choice, it means that he can make a different choice going forward. He doesn’t have to be the monster that everyone else expects him to be. He doesn’t have to traumatize others in the same way that he’s been traumatized. (And, eventually, maybe he can learn to see himself as Martin sees him.) And he changes his behavior accordingly!

I keep thinking of Jon’s comment on Gertrude sacrificing Michael to end the Spiral’s Ritual:

“I thought moving away from my humanity would have made that seem more acceptable. That sort of sacrifice… But it just makes me sad. I remembered Gertrude’s notebook. We found it alongside the plastic explosives, but it rather got lost amongst the business of… saving the world at the cost of two lives.”

And this comment, from one of Jon’s many navel-gazing arguments with himself over the nature of humanity and how he fits into that:

“Why were we chosen? …Is there destiny here? Bloodlines, and prophecies? Or did we just – stumble into this. Maybe… maybe we’re the opposite of Agnes. Maybe our doubts are exactly what we need.”  

What keeps Jon in touch with Jonathan Sims, human and distinct from The Archivist/The Archive isn’t just an anchor/reason (Martin) or his own intense guilt, but that capacity for doubt. I mean, it does feed into his self-loathing and it’s unhealthy for him in a number of ways, but that doubt is also what saves him from fully becoming the thing he fears, in a way?

It’s interesting how that doubt and questioning feeds into his innate curiosity. That incessant need to know, even if his discoveries might destroy him, to go with Gerry’s definition of Beholding, is Jon’s fatal flaw, and it’s what makes him so well-suited to the Eye, but it’s also so very human.

That, along with Jon’s choice to change his behavior throughout the story is, imo, the strongest argument in favor of his humanity.

From where Jon is standing, every other Avatar has become so divorced from their prior self that they barely resemble humans anymore. But the question of free will is nebulous for most of the Avatars. 

Some of the Avatars seem to have sought out the power that overtook them, or at the very least openly embraced it. Jude Perry sought to destroy others to make herself feel more alive long before she met Agnes; the Desolation just lent her the power to do so to a greater degree, and she leaned into it. Jared Hopworth was already a bully; becoming the Boneturner just gave him a new way to express that preexisting pattern of behavior. 

Some of the others stumbled into it out of sheer bad luck, or in some way attracted a certain power. They were initially afraid, and typically resisted, but eventually were overtaken – or… gave in? Because that’s the recurring question: How much choice is involved?

Take Oliver Banks: 

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

Or Daisy: 

“I hate a lot of what I did back then; doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t me.”  

Even if some of the Avatars could have done something differently to avoid their ultimate fate, they didn’t necessarily deserve that fate. Helen Richardson could have not opened the door, but opening a door out of curiosity shouldn’t be a punishable offense.

And when the Distortion and Helen ‘become’ one another, it’s interesting that there’s still enough of Helen left (at least at first) for her to feel guilt and doubt over what she’s becoming, in much the same way that Jon does: 

“I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement…. It was nourishing, but… I didn’t like it. I feel… wrong.” 

(Side note: I understand why Jon feels like he can’t trust the Distortion, but it does make me wonder what might have gone differently if he’d maintained an open dialogue with her re: humanity vs. monstrosity, similar to the sort of understanding Jon and Daisy have after the Buried.)

The story has been asking these questions all along, but MAG 167 put it back under the microscope in an important way. It really doesn’t matter as much what Jon is, because what he does is a much better measure of humanity and goodness. 

Jon looks at his own choices, looks at Gertrude’s choices, looks at the things that neither of them had control over and looks at the things that they did, and comes to a final conclusion: 

No, he doesn’t want to be like Gertrude. Human connections are important. He needs an anchor. He needs companionship. Trust and communication don’t come naturally to him, but it’s worth confronting that vulnerability in the end, because it’s what keeps him in touch with his humanity, with who he is and who he wants to be. 

It really complements Martin’s philosophy, too. I’ve gone on and on about it before, but I still think the line that most exemplifies Martin’s character is his response to Simon Fairchild’s brand of flippant, fatalist nihilism: 

“I think our experience of the universe has value. Even if it disappears forever.”

It would be so easy for Jon and Martin to just... give up. Give in to self-loathing, to guilt, to loneliness, to a world gone horribly, possibly irreversibly wrong. Early on, Jon is inclined to do just that. He tells Martin that “this is no longer a world where you can trust comfort.” But what does Martin do instead? He comforts Jon. He puts comfort into a world where it seems like none can exist. It doesn’t matter if that gesture is significant in the grand scheme of things -- however you want to define significance on a cosmic level. In that moment, Martin cared, and that mattered to him, and it mattered to Jon, and that fact won’t change, even when they’re both dead and gone. 

It’s... really the same stubborn sentiment that Jon offered in the Lonely, and Martin is mirroring it back when Jon needs it most. 

They make an active choice to build a relationship, to try to make a change for the better. Even if it ends in failure, the fact that they tried is still significant. Jon looks at how Gertrude lived her life, compares it with his past and current choices, and (rightly imo) comes to the conclusion that, yeah, it hurts to trust and to care, but it’s worth it, and it’s necessary if they want to survive (and, of course, he also doesn’t just want to survive). It’s just... a very brave, very compassionate, and very human way of confronting the end of the world. 

[dathen]

Okay I have some complicated thoughts following Melanie’s arc that all build on top of each other and hinge HEAVILY on unreliable narrator interpretations so bear with me

In my relisten I’m at the beginning of s3, and it always shocks me a bit at how quickly she interprets Martin’s interaction with her as hostile.  I’m going to skip over the “it’s understandable, Melanie’s had a hard time in her career” disclaimers since there’s plenty of meta on that already, and instead follow the effects of this tendency: not on others, this time, but on her

(This got absurdly long and covers so many episodes so I’m going to split it into separate pre- and post-bullet surgery posts)

Rewinding a bit, the last time she was at the Institute, she was starting to get along with Jon before he seemed confused about her comment on “the other Sasha.”  It takes her a split second to interpret that confusion as him suddenly deciding to gaslight and mock her, gets angry and tells him there is something seriously wrong with him, and leaves before he can ask what she means.  Given how tenuous their truce was and the fact she and Jon had mocked each other in the past, it’s an outburst that at least has some personal history behind it.

But only a couple episodes later, we learn that it’s not just Jon she responds to in this way.  In TMA 84, she meets our Martin Blackwood!  Customer service voice opposite-of-Jon politeness extraordinaire!  And as soon as he gets confused about the two Sasha comment, she.......immediately assumes that HE is also trying to gaslight her.  She insists that “I’m not doing this again” without giving him a chance to ask or explain, so they miss the opportunity to piece together the deal with the Not!Sasha.  Her doing this with someone she just met shows a much broader pattern than her interactions with Jon.

That very episode, Elias offers Melanie a job, and she accepts despite Martin’s protests.  Later, she accuses them all of them being an “old boy’s club” because she interpreted Martin’s warnings as sexism rather than trying to protect her.  As the audience, we see the unreliable narrator of her perspective at work: we know that Jon and Martin were genuinely confused, and we know that Martin was trying to save her, and that all of these instances were her seeing it as people being out to get her.

Hop forward to the notorious gossip scene in TMA 106.  Here, Melanie complains about Martin being hostile to her.  My first assumption was that this was all offscreen, but after this parade of misinterpretation and comparing to her and Martin’s actual interactions, I have to wonder:

TMA 84, after Martin tells Melanie about the murder, and right before Elias interrupts:

Martin:  Are you sure you’re alright?

Melanie:  Yes!  I just got… God, I’m kind of at the end, you know?

Martin:  The end of what?

Melanie:   Everything.  Friends, clues, savings. Everything.  Options.  There’s nowhere left for me to go . I don’t know why, but…  I just, I just felt that perhaps coming here might help.  And talking things out with Jon.  I mean, I mean he’s awful, but at least he listens, you know?

Martin:   (soft) Yeah.  ...I’m sorry.  Um, is there anything that I could, like, maybe...do for you?

They get interrupted immediately after this, so this was the first impression Melanie was given.  Then, when Elias offers the job, she...assumes Martin’s “I don’t think that’s a good idea” is from sexism, when he’d just been talking about murders and disappearances that caused that very job opening.

TMA 88 

Melanie:   Are you alright?

Martin:  Yeah… Sorry, just a lot of change recently, y’know.  You and John and Sasha and… everything’s gone a bit wrong.  It’s the not knowing, you know?  I mean, Jon’s still alive.  Not sure why, but I’m sure of that.  But Sasha, I…

Melanie:   Yes, it’s… it’s probably, um…

Martin:   Sorry, sorry, I’m...  What do you need?

Next interaction!  Oh this one HURTS.  Martin takes her question literally, and starts telling her why she’s not alright, a reverse of their earlier exchange.  But Melanie came by for a question and wasn’t prepared for an honest answer, so Martin quickly reels it in and asks what he can do for her once again.

Skipping forward a bit in that same scene:

Martin:   Oh, you weren’t here when we took the place over from Gertrude!  It’s been over a year just to get it like this.  I mean, I think the database was on Jon’s list, but--

Melanie:  So how do you track someone down?

Martin:   Oh, oh well, y’know, we’ve a few contacts in various record offices around the place.  Aside from that it’s just… just a bit of detective work, really.  Tim used to do a great line in impersonating people to utility companies!  Heh, the number of times he got them to give him ‘his own’ address--

Melanie:  Right, right… Um, this one, the name is 'Jude Perry.’ Doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?

I LOVE THIS EXCHANGE.  I TREASURE IT.  Having bottled up his emotions, Martin is going in full Friendly Helpful Coworker mode.  There are so many little details here signaling that he’s embracing her as part of the team, sharing anecdotes about Tim’s shenanigans and Jon’s old plans, looping her in as One of Them as he helps her get what she needs.  This is the kind of approach you go to management trainings to get, to help new hires feel welcome and part of things.  But alas, Melanie is in a hurry and wants to cut to the chase, so all this is lost on her.

TMA 98 - I won’t copy it all in here because it’s long, but this is an overwhelmingly positive interaction.  She asks if he’s okay, but he bottles it up and says he’s fine.  This time, she presses, and he admits it’s because of the statements.  Martin ends up asking for help!! and Melanie agrees!  She’s on the way to murder Elias, but she still gets credit for “I’ll ask him to cut you some slack.”  Then she invites him to drinks!

And then.... TMA 106

Melanie:   Anyway, Martin’s always been lovely to you.

Basira:  Hmm. I don’t know, I mean, you should have seen him when I turned up last year. I think he thought I was trying to steal his precious Archivist.

Melanie:   Ahhh. I got the exact same when Jon was hiding out, and came to me with his “source on the inside” stuff.  Martin was not impressed.

WAIT WHAT

We just looked over all their interactions!  They were all soft and lovely and welcoming!!  But then we hear Melanie with “well unlike how he is to me, Martin is nice to you.”  This was taken at face value for years, but when you line up all of the above, I feel there is a strong basis to say this is another case of Melanie’s first impressions + over-defensiveness gone wrong.  Just like we saw her initial bickerings with Jon solidify into series-long hostility, her interpreting Martin’s confusion as gaslighting and warnings about the job as sexism seems to have doomed her opinion of him long-term.  We hear Martin being kind and concerned and welcoming, then hear Melanie contrast it as bad treatment.

Recently, a mutual considered this even further to how she talked about losing all of her friends with the Ghost Hunt UK circles:

Melanie:  Even back then, I could feel all my old friends starting to distance themselves from me. ...  I stopped asking the others for help, and I kept my research to myself. I talked to them less and less. By the time I was arrested, I think a lot of them had already given up on me.

I have to wonder...did this sort of dynamic play out here, too?  Did she assume that her friends’ concern was judgment or hostility?  Were they giving up on her, or did she lash out and push them away?  Either way, it’s easy to see parallels to s2 Jon in her description, here, with her withdrawing and diving alone into increasingly risky research without asking for help.  And s2 Jon definitely shared Melanie’s tendency to see offers for help and support as hostile.  (Aside:  I interpret her and Georgie as not very close at this point, like a networking contact rather than a friend; Melanie comes to Jon for someone to talk to about her struggles above her, and Georgie seems to be unaware of all of Melanie’s encounters pre-s3)

And on that downer note I am ending part 1...but PART 2 IS GOING TO BE WAY HAPPIER THAN THIS.  Here, we see Melanie with a lot of people who would have supported her if she let them:  Martin, Jon, possibly the friends she said abandoned her.  But in her effort to protect herself and not let history repeat for how she’d been hurt in the past, she ends up alone and spiraling.

[goodluckdetective]

Fic: smile, you’re trending

Ship: Jon/Martin

A03: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567242

Warnings: Canon typical violence, alluded past child neglect, alluded past police brutality, horror, off screen gore, brief mention of body horror, mentioned past character death

Tags: Angst with a happy ending, emotional hurt comfort, protective Martin, Lonely!Martin, one shot, character study

Characters: Jon, Basira, Martin

Rating: PG-13

Length: 9K

Summary:

Post 179 but not episode centric

During an encounter with another Avatar of the Eye, Jon faces his past, Martin takes a turn at playing Kill Bill and Basira has a second look at the monster she’s determined to see.  

For three people associated with the Eye, they could all use some perspective.

Author’s Note:

Formally “a matter of perspective” and then I realized that was an episode title and felt very silly. This is the tumblr version because I forgot to post a version here, I only posted the link, whoops.

Big thanks to Impatiens_capensis on AO3 and lamella who served as editors to this piece so it can beheld without taking psychic damage. Their input was a massive help and I cannot thank them enough for their time. Big thanks to namiofthesea as well for advising me on the small details of beauty youtube. Your cursed info was essential.

Fic below the cut:

Jon knew they couldn’t die in this new world they inhabited, but he wasn’t quite sure about the specifics when it came to being harmed.

His new powers were useful despite being unwanted, but they had their limits. Hypotheticals were the biggest one. He could tell what path was safer to take, but not if an Avatar might change their mind to follow them. He knew Basira’s gun would always have bullets in it, but he didn’t know if that would apply to any other weapon she picked up, or if her gun would always work against what chased them. And he knew they could not die, at least not yet, but he didn’t know what would happen if someone tried to kill them.

“So if I shot you,” Basira said as they took a brief rest to light a fire between a domain of the Stranger and the Vast. She’d met up with them just outside of London after their brief split with a few new scars and a heavy tread to each step. But she was alive and that was something to celebrate. “Your wound would just heal?”

They made camp in a domain of the End, a giant graveyard that while unpleasant, wasn’t the worst place to rest. There was a fallen tree that made a good enough bench to sit on for Martin and Jon, and Basira sat across from them on a rather large boulder.

“Given past experience, that seems the most likely,” Jon replied, ignoring the look Martin gave him at the comment. They had discussed his attempts to make an anchor before he went to Jared, and Martin turned out to be fond of all ten of his fingers. After the incident with Daisy, Martin fussed for a full day as it healed up, even offering to carry him across a few domains. Across from them, Basira looked nonplussed. “The best guess I can go on is my leg and that managed to heal up within the day. But I can’t be sure if that will be the case everywhere.”

Basira scowled at the mention of his leg. It was a painful reminder for the both of them. Jon’s pant leg was still stained with blood and rips from the incident. “Because it’s a hypothetical?”

“Something like that. That or the Eye thinks Knowing will take away all my fear of it and doesn’t want to spoil the fun.”

“It’s spoiled enough fun already if you ask me,” Martin said, just under his breath. Jon allowed himself to smile and reached over to squeeze Martin’s knee in response. They weren’t big into public displays of affection as it was, but with Basira around they’ve tried to keep snogging to a minimum. It might be the apocalypse, but awkwardness apparently lived on.

Basira ran her thumb across her chin, deep in thought. She was less outright hostile to them after they met back up in London , but there was an edge to her that told Jon she still wondered if he was worth trusting. “And we can’t die either?”

“No, at least not for good. At least not now.” Jon paused after that and closed his eyes. Since Daisy, he knew more about the laws of this new world, how it shaped and bent around emotional logic. The specifics on how that logic changed from place to place was what he struggled with. He tried to Know the specifics, reaching out for that endless pool of knowledge but he came back empty handed with the taste of battery acid on his tongue. “I don’t know anything more than that.”

“Another hypothetical?”

Jon looked up at the sky. “I think more trying to keep the fear of not knowing fresh.”

He explained what he meant by that later, when Basira was asleep and he felt less watched despite the thousands of eyes in the sky. Martin was a good listener and patient when Jon struggled for the right words. After being a mouthpiece to others’ horrors Jon still found it difficult to voice his own.

“You think after everything, I wouldn’t be able to feel fear anymore but… I can,” Jon said, lying on his back with his eyes closed. He could still see the eyes in the sky, he could see everything around them, but if he focused very hard on a domain of the Vast, he could sometimes pretend the stars from that sector were the ones actually in front of him. Back before Basira joined them, he would sometimes list the constellations to Martin who in turn would tell him the mythological stories behind each one. “I still do. I don’t think I’d be able to be the Archivist if I couldn’t.”

Martin was next to him, side to side, his hand holding Jon’s tight, thumb brushing across his knuckles. Somehow he managed to remember how to be gentle despite everything. “You don’t seem scared.”

Jon turned to him, opening one eye to look at him properly. Martin looked tired, bags under his eyes from lack of restful sleep, but he watched Jon with rapt attention. It was calming, seeing those brown eyes focused and fully present. One of Jon’s worst memories of the Lonely was Martin staring at him with pale empty blue irises that looked so close to that of Peter Lukas.

Jon forced a wry smile on his face. “Would you believe I’ve become a fantastic actor?”

The raise of one eyebrow that Martin gave him in response was easy to interpret without Knowing. Jon sighed, and closed his eyes again, rolling closer towards Martin. Martin’s arm reached around his side in a loose embrace and Jon made a mental note to move within 10 minutes or his arm would fall asleep.

“Fair enough,” Jon said, voice somewhat muffled by Martin’s shirt. “I suppose it’s that a big part of fear is the unknown. I am scared of the pain fire can cause, but the fear of dying from it or being burnt by it permanently: that’s gone now.”

That was true. The entire time Jon faced down Jude Perry, the fear in his bones was only that of pain, not what might come after. It was such a contrast to the fear he’d first felt facing Jude, that he’d been almost power drunk on it, reveling  in the fear coming off of her in waves that Jon himself no longer felt.

Jon didn’t want to ever admit it out loud, but sometimes it was intoxicating to be the predator instead of the prey.

“That takes some of the edge off, knowing what is coming, at least for me. No, it’s the fear of what I don’t know that is still sharp. And that’s what the Eye wants, I think. The fear of what comes next when all you know is that there will be a next.”

“After all this, it’s still feeding on you,” Martin said, rubbing Jon’s back with the hand under Jon’s side.

“I don’t think it ever intends to stop.”

Martin was quiet before he pulled Jon in closer for a proper embrace, resting his chin on the top of Jon’s head. It reminded Jon of lazy mornings in the cabin, back when they thought things might actually be alright. Comfort might no longer exist in the world, but if there was anything close to it left, the sensation of being loved and protected was the next best thing.

“Think if we find a domain of the Desolation, we can dig up a rocket big enough to fire into one of those pupils?” Martin mused, his hand still rubbing Jon’s back.

“It wouldn’t-“

“I know it wouldn’t do anything, Jon; I mean solely for the satisfaction.”

Jon did consider it and he couldn’t help the smile that crossed his face. He Knew the eyes in the sky wouldn’t even blink if they tried it, but picturing it anyway was indeed satisfying. “I’ve never lit fireworks before.”

“Neither have I.”

“I don’t know if the Eye will allow me knowledge on how to prank it.”

“Good thing we’re likely clever enough to figure it out ourselves. And if not, Basira can probably put it together. She might even like it.”

“Maybe she will,” Jon tried to picture Basira smiling under a display of fireworks. She hadn’t smiled since Daisy and Jon found he missed it. Despite their current antagonism, Jon never wanted her miserable.

Daisy wouldn’t have wanted that either. She told Jon once that Basira and her would go for pubs on weekends. Instead of drinking, they would play trivia and laugh whenever they got an answer horrendously wrong. Jon Knows what that was like, he can even tell you the smell of the peanuts on the floor mixed with spilled beer, but he wished he could have seen that laughter for himself.

“You aren’t responsible for the world, Jon.” Martin whispered into his hair.

“Are you sure you're not an Avatar of the Eye with that insight?”

“No. I don’t know everything. I just know you.”

Jon opened his eyes and looked at Martin before craning his neck up for a brief kiss. It hurt his neck to do it for too long, but the kiss was sweet and reassuring. He moved Martin’s arm so he was no longer lying on top of it and smoothed his hair back.

“Go to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Martin did. As he rested, twitching with nightmares he never remembered, Jon thought about what he was still scared of. The Web for sure, the strings he couldn’t see. Jonah, for what he did to him and what he could still do. He feared for Melanie and Georgie’s safety and if they hated him as much as he thought they should. He worried if Basira would ever be okay again, if he ruined everything he touched, if she was right to sometimes look at him like he was something dangerous.

And Martin. He feared Martin’s devastated expression if they killed Jonah and this hell still stood. He feared the Lonely, coming back and telling Martin that being alone was better than being with a monster. He feared losing Martin’s hand in his, the sound of a soft snore at night, and the whistling as they walked when the landscape was particularly horrendous and they needed a distraction.

Love was the only thing that could prompt such overwhelming fear, Jon thought. That was why it was so powerful a feeling: no one would dare to risk that horror of loss otherwise.

No, Jon Sims was still scared of so much. It was hard to quantify all that fear: Jon sometimes felt he could drown in it. Martin helped keep him afloat and in turn Jon kept him from being lost in his own quest devastation. They were each other’s safe harbor.

“Lord, I’m becoming a poet,”Jon said to himself, amused. He glanced at Martin who began to mumble under his breath about the cold. Carefully, as if not to disturb him, Jon grabbed his discarded jacket from next to them and laid it over Martin. It didn’t stop the muttering but there was less of it than before. Small miracles. “I suppose there are worse fates.”

With that, Jon began his watch as his comrades slept on.

______________________________________________________________________

The thing was, Jon never considered what would happen if he ran into another Eye Avatar.

The domain they walked into was one Jon chose as the most safe. When it came to domains, the Desolation and the Corruption were best avoided, so when Jon found himself picking between the two and then the Eye, he went for the Eye. It was a smaller domain, a former multimedia office turned into multiple hallways and rooms of endless monitors. It seemed the Eye had a fondness for the digital age.

The domain belonged to a former internet influencer by the name of Irene Hatchette. In her mid-twenties with a relatively popular makeup series, she fed on the fear of exposure. Her relationship with the Eye began as a child by tattling on her step-sister before the took the same scheme to school where she would steal her classmates cell phones and told everyone what she found, while implying even more to let people come to their own worst conclusions. In university, she learned to make fake accounts and emails to lure people into sending her things she could publish widely out of context, and as an internet star, those fake identities triples as she used each to speak to her rivals, invade their fan groups and personal pages for information she could sell to gossip magazines or twist for her own use. Once, she had to spend months pretending to be a therapist to get scoop on someone’s past hospitalization involving horrendous burns, which she dug up medical photos of by calling the right stupid hospital tech about changing “his corrupted password.” Once she published the pictures all across the internet, well, the rival stopped being a problem. It was business, sure, but there was a thrill to it too, much like pinning a still living butterfly to a corkboard to put on display.

Before the Change, she found rivals would now just tell her things behind her new identity of the week, their greatest insecurities without months and months of building a fake persona. It was like they wanted her to know, like they wanted her to tell everyone about how little they deserved what they had, and she took full advantage. It was a minor power, but a useful one for her line of work. She’d started going after just regular people before everything started, wrecking them with perfect pieces of information when she found someone who deeply feared being seen. Now her entire domain was dedicated to the practice, a full multimedia center for her to broadcast whatever she wanted.

The statement Jon gave after he walked in followed the format of an online video tutorial script. When Jon told them this was a domain of the Eye, Basira decided to stay behind to listen to the statement. Martin plugged his ears and hummed a song Elias used to complain about them playing in the Archives. When the statement was done Basira stared at him, looking like she smelled something rotten.

“What?”

“I may have nightmares of you saying “remember to like and subscribe” in that tone.”

Jon couldn’t blame her. The instructions to “make sure to peel away the skin so you can expose their heart to the viewer! It’s important to be authentic: well it’s important for them to be authentic. Your job is just to watch ,” was particularly vivid. He was glad he never got into social media with all the mess happening in the Archives if this was even a little what it was like.

The dozens of television monitors and screens around them show a different person’s secrets, twisted into a show.  The man who edited his photos to hide his ache scraped of his skin with a rusty razor on one screen. A woman who claimed she lived in luxury was buried by her piles of bills in her crumbling apartment. On a monitor right behind Basira, another man removed each tooth from his mouth by hand. The like counter in the corner shot up with every howl of pain he made.

“Another Eye Avatar?” Martin asked them after Basira gave him a recap of the statement.

“Yes,” Jon said, pulling his gaze from the screens.

“You know, it’s surprising we haven’t run into one before now,” Martin said. “Unless you’ve been keeping us away from them?”

“I haven’t.” That was something worth considering later, Jon thought. Martin was right: it was unusual this was their first one.

“So this domain is what?” Basira asked as they headed down the halls and through a room full of even more televisions. They had to walk slow from the hundreds of cords and wires that littered the floor. “The fear of being exposed?”

“Something like that,” Jon said. “Imposter syndrome too. It doesn’t have to be a real secret to be preyed upon.”

“And the Avatar?”

“In the media room. She shouldn’t be a problem: she’s setting up a new stream,” Jon said, glancing at one of the monitors in the room that had a countdown on it. He didn’t envy the poor soul who was about to grace the captive audience.

Most of the walk through the domain was quiet, nothing but the hum of technology and the noises coming from each screen. It was a small place, just hallways of computer monitors cataloguing fear to a delighted audience. If they hadn’t been interrupted, they wouldn’t have been there for more than an hour relatively speaking.

Later, Jon would suspect Jonah to be behind what followed. Or perhaps the Eye was his blind spot, the one place where he couldn’t quite see. Regardless, he only knew the Avatar was coming right when she appeared at the end of the hallway, phone in one hand, headset around her neck. She was small, smaller than the three of them, with pale skin and a slender build. She looked mostly human. Only two things were off: there was an artificial light to her, almost like that of an edited photo. That and her eyes were a brilliant bright green.

“So you’re the Archivist,” she said. She had an American accent (came over for Uni for a degree in business, able to afford cost of London with her parent’s income, learned secrets were the best weapon for attention by ratting out her step-sister and- focus, Jon, not now ), blonde hair curled up into ringlets and nails sharpened to pointed tips. When she spoke, there was a sneer to it that reminded Jon of his wealthier classmates at Oxford who wanted everyone to know how many zeros graced their bank accounts. “I was expecting someone… older.”

Jon heard the tape recorder in his backpack click on. He could tell Basira and Martin heard it too by the way they stiffened. Something was going to happen here and the Eye wanted to watch.

“We are just passing through,” Jon said. He knew what she wanted now, and he cursed himself for not figuring it out sooner. He should have known an Avatar obsessed with her self importance would take offense to anyone she deemed ‘competition.’ “I’m not here to intrude on your ‘production’ here.”

“Then why walk in like you own the place? She said. “And what’s with the extra luggage?”

“Luggage?” Martin scoffed. “That’s the best you could do, really?”

She ignored him. “I’m just saying, walking in without an introduction is rude. I mean, don’t you know who I am ? You know who everyone is.”

“I know who you are,” Jon said. “And I swear we are just walking through.”

“And if I don’t let you through?” The Avatar took a step closer. Basira pulled out her gun, aiming straight ahead.

“Don’t move.”

The Avatar didn’t look phased. She tilted her head to the side, curious. “Or what you’re going to put my down like your Partner?”

Static grew in Jon’s ears. He turned to Basira. “She’s baiting you.”

“I know that,” Basira snapped, through gritted teeth. The Avatar didn’t move, staring at them with bright green eyes. It wasn’t the same effect as being stared at by Magnus but it was similar, an itch under the skin of being terribly seen.

“Does he know that you thought about shooting him instead for a second?” The Avatar said. “You thought he could be lying, about not being able to bring her back. Maybe killing him would have fixed this. But you picked his word in the end. Sided with the other monster—”

“If you think you can pick me apart, you thought wrong,” Basira’s aim was steady, but Jon could tell she was tense by the grit to her jaw. “I’ve already lost everything. There’s nothing left for you to put on your screen.”

“Jon, I know we’re trying to move away from Kill Bill but we might have to this time,” Martin whispered, his hand on Jon’s shoulder. Jon nodded watching as the Avatar took another step towards them.

“I know.”

A shot rang out as the Avatar took another step in their direction. Jon watched as it passed through the Avatar, the image of the creature only glitching from the attack. Basira shot again and the second bullet was just as ineffective as the first.

“Shit,” Basira said, jumping back. Looking down, Jon saw the cords that lined the hallways twist up and reach for Basira’s ankles, wrapping around one with a tight grip. She yanked her foot loose with another pull but he could see the other wires begin to writhe beneath them like maggots feasting upon a corpse. Some of the cords plugged into monitors disconnected from their respective screens and rose up coiled like snakes. Electric sparks spit from the plugs, more dangerous than any venom.

Jon watched the Avatar take another step, the gaze in her eyes one he’d seen in Elias’ and on his own when he passed reflective surfaces. She was hungry.

Martin and Basira would look like the perfect meal for the Eye.

Jon straightened his shoulder, grabbing his tape recorder which was still recording, focused on the static in his ears and the endless gaze of the eyes above that were watching, always watching. He stared at her, drinking in all the information he could, about where she came from, what she feared, what she had done. The tape recorded whined. “ Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon —”

The Avatar paused mid step. Jon could see some strain to her face as the Eye looked down at her. But unlike the other Avatar’s he’d done this too, the strain looked like an annoyance rather than imbolizing. It didn’t make any sense: she wasn’t stronger than the others he’d faced so far. Then how—

Then he Knew. This Avatar was of the Eye, Jon destroyed the rest by using the power of the Eye against them but in this space that power was hers as well. How could you destroy someone with the power of Knowing when they were already known?

“Jon? What’s wrong?” Martin asked. The Avatar’s smile grew wide, all teeth as she stared at Basira. Basira who was not entirely steady with how her hands shook.

“Run,” Jon said, grabbing both of their hands and taking down a hallway at the same moment the Avatar ran at them at full speed.

It was a short chase. The many cables made navigation difficult when walking, let alone running. As the Avatar passed a monitor, she stuck her hand in it, pulling out a large piece of glass with a very sharp end. Perfect, Jon thought, for gouging out his eyes.

“See that guy: I heard even his mother didn’t like him. I mean, how shitty of a person to you have to be for that to happen? You know there has to be a reason behind it, right?” The Avatar’s voice was different then earlier, an airy sort of tone to her voice was layered with false concern.The monitors chimed in unison, showing a picture of a woman who had Martin’s eyes but none of the warmth of his expression. Comments with wild speculation ( he’s a liar, no he’s a fraud did you see his CV, no it’s because he’s petty about the smallest things it’s so annoying, or maybe he’s just stupid he never even finished university, I can’t believe he put his own mother in a home and barely visited how heartless-)  popped up beneath it, blocking the image except for the woman’s empty eyes.  “I could never do something like that to my Mom.”

Chirping noises of notifications and comments rang from the monitors covering the walls, high and shrill as more responses rang in. The noise consumed the hallway, painful in volume and pitch. Jon looked to Martin who was keeping his gaze away from the screens and focusing on the floor.

“And her-” The Avatar continued. “I feel so bad for people who have to work with her, it has to be so hard. I mean, she just strikes me as so self righteous. Look at me, I’m the law, I know best for the whole world. I mean, maybe she’s just trying to help, but like, she’s also such a hypocrite, you feel me? I mean, did you see what she said back there? If that’s how she greets her allies, I’d hate to be her enemy.”

The monitors changed again to that of Basira, pointing her gun at Jon in the forest as another loud shriek of chimes came from the monitors. Another round of comments appeared (she was just in it for the power anyone can see that, no loyalty whatsoever too did you hear what happened to her partner, I bet she’ll find someone new to blame next time she always does nothing can ever be her fault) . Basira turned around and fired another shot, this one going through the Avatar and hitting one of the monitors behind her.

“Keep running, a left and a right and we’ll hit the exit-” Jon said. He lagged behind the other two; his running abilities still the worst of the three. All seeing Eye powers did not provide sudden physical fitness. That wouldn’t matter once they were out. Outside her domain, she wouldn’t have the advantage. They were so close.

"Hello Jon.”

That voice from the monitors, in just the right intonation and tone that Jon heard from his own mouth on the worst day of his life, caused him to misstep. He tripped over a bundle of cords, falling down with a loud thunk. They wrapped around his legs as he fell, securing him to the floor.

“Jon!” He heard Martin shout from ahead of him. He began to struggle to his feat but before he could, the other Avatar was upon him, the glass shard held high right above his face.

“What makes you the king of this new world?” the Avatar growled, her image flickering like that of a hologram, each pixel looking to be made up of a different colored eye. The concerned tone she had from earlier was gone, envy dripping from every syllable. “You don’t even want the power. It’s wasted on you!” She stabbed down and Jon barely dodged the attack by craning his neck to the left. A cord came up from the ground and wrapped around Jons’ neck, not tight enough to choke him but tight enough to hold him still.

“You weren’t qualified for the job you had, you never were and now we’re supposed to lay our hands off because you were the key to the door? That’s all you are: a shitty old key. A piece of metal! He made you that way, made sure every scar and mark was another notch in your useless body to force open a door.  Why do you get to be in charge when all you do is open people up to their own nightmares?”

The fog consumed the hallway before she could finish her sentence. A small wave rushed in across the tiled floor under Jon’s hands, replacing the endless path of wires and cords. The taste of sea salt coated his tongue, and when he waved his hand in front of him, the Avatar was gone. All that remained was mist and empty space.

Jon’s stomach dropped and the chill that entered his body wasn’t just from the cold. He stumbled to his feet and looked around. All he could see was Basira, running towards him in a full sprint.

“Jon, are you hurt?” She reached out as if to inspect his neck but he turned away. Now wasn’t the time.

“Basira, have you seen Martin?”

She shook her head. “No. Last I saw he was running at you. What happened?”

“I think Martin did.”

Basira frowned. “He’s still tied to it.”

“He always will be. That’s how it works: the trauma doesn’t just leave you. It just gets quieter.”

“This isn’t quiet, Jon.”

“No, it’s not. Can you see enough to not get lost here?”

She nodded. Jon turned to head into the fog.

“I’m going to find Martin.”

He didn’t stay long enough to hear her reply.

______________________________________________________________________

It took around five minutes of searching to find another figure in the Lonely. He could see them just barely at first, a lone person curled up on their side in the endless mists, but as he gets closer he can make out a better shape.

The figure in the shallows isn’t Martin. It’s the eye Avatar. Her makeup is gone, washed off her face from the waves and she sits curled into a ball expression blank. Around her the fog curls up into figures of people Jon has never met, staring down at her with a blank expression. With each roll of the tide she fades more and more.

“This is my apology video,” the Avatar said, voice so soft it was barely audible. “I’m not actually sorry, no one is when they make these, but this is what people want me to be sorry for so I have to pretend to be. That’s all my life is, pretending. It’s probably the thing I’m best at.”

Jon tried to take a step away but he found himself frozen. This statement was different from her first one and the Eye wanted to drink it in.

“I don’t know who my real father is: Mom always told me it was a famous celebrity or something but I’m pretty sure that’s a lie. She’s the one who taught me how to lie; she was the best at it. Before she married my Step-Dad, she talked so much about how she always wanted to be a step-mother and how happy she was that I’d have a sister. I knew she was lying; she never wanted me, and she didn’t want Odessa. But she wanted my Step-Dad and that’s what mattered—”

Jon watched as she continued to speak, the fog around her shifting and forming into rooms and people she once knew. He listened as she talked about how lonely she was in the big house they moved into, how her stepsister helped but never replaced that void of parental attention she craved. She talked about how when she was ten she realized confessing to her mother how Odessa broke a treasured vase made her mother shower her in praise for being a good for, how joyed her mother was to tell her stepfather how much his daughter was a liar. Her voice began to echo as she recalled how she began to tell her stepmother every secret Odessa trusted her with for those scraps of praise, how it made her feel terrible but not as much as it made her feel adored. How when her stepsister found out and stopped talking to her, she was forced to read her diary for scraps of intel.

“Mom convinced my step-dad to send her to a boarding school for troubled kids when we were fifteen.” the woman who was once Irene Hatchette said as her story wound to a close. “And then I had no secrets left to steal. So I watched the housekeepers and my classmates and my teachers and then my competition because nothing was worse than being ignored. And now everyone can see me on their screen except they don’t see me at all, not really. That’s fitting I guess. I can see everything but no one can see me. Isn’t that funny, guys? I think it’s funny.”

Another wave washed over the ground and the Avatar vanished leaving nothing but an imprint of her silhouette in the sand behind her. That would soon be gone with every wave that passes. No record that she ever existed would remain.

“God,” Jon said. Statements of Avatars always got to him. They were always the strangest mix of evil and pathetic.

It scared him to think that his would likely be the same.

He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought. Instead he looked around, really looked, and Martin was there, only a few meters away looking down at the space the Eye Avatar once occupied with a blank expression. The fog swirled around his feet like a cat, cozy and content, not feeding at him but waiting at his beck and call. It made Jon’s stomach turn.

“Martin.”

Martin looked up. His eyes were a glassy white blue, the color of sea foam. Jon was beginning to hate that color. “Jon.”

Jon walked towards him stopping right in front of Martin. He reached out for him on reflex and then pulled his hands back as one passed through Martin’s side. “Time to stop this. She’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” Martin’s voice had an edge to it that told Jon that he knew exactly what Jon was talking about. Like he was making a wry joke. Martin had always been petty and snarky but in the Lonely those twisted again in the mists to make him cruel.

“... fair enough. But time to let the Lonely go. This isn’t—”

Jon cut off. This isn’t you, that was what he wanted to say. But that wasn’t quite true. Martin had such an affinity to the Lonely because it was a part of him, just like Jon’s thirst for knowledge had always made him a part of the Eye. Martin would always find himself feeling alone in a crowd, Martin would always have a bitter edge that came with years of cold air for comfort. To deny that would be wrong.

But Martin’s loneliness had also encouraged his depth of empathy, his unwavering compassion and his helping nature. It was the reason he reached out to others who looked lost, and the reason he brought a fresh cup of tea to his grumpy boss each morning because he always seemed so isolated. Martin would always be tied to the Lonely, yes, but it didn’t have to be who he was.

Jon reached up a hand to cup Martin’s face. He was cold to the touch, eyes the same pale empty blue that reminded Jon far too much of Peter.

“This isn’t who you have to be,” Jon said, swiping his thumb across Martin’s cheek. Then, stronger. “This isn’t who you want to be.”

For a moment, nothing changed. The fog lingered, swirling at their waists and there was no sound but the rush of an empty ocean and a ticking clock. Then Martin closed his eyes and the fog receded, blown away by a gust of wind. The ocean smell faded, the sound of the ticking clock was replaced by the hum of multiple monitors.

When Martin opened his eyes in the monitor filled hallway, they were brown once more.

______________________________________________________________________

They fled the domain quickly after that, spending little time after finding Basira to  escape. When they made it outside, they all stopped to catch their breath, a wheeze coming from Jon who was still no good at running.

“Are you alright, Basira?” Jon said between gasping breaths.

“I’m fine. What the fuck was that?“ Basira gestured to Martin. Fog still clung to his ankles and he exhaled more every breath. While now solid, the edges of him blurred like a mirage. He was glaring at Basira, that cold edge to him still apparent in his expression.

“Me, saving our skins.”

“By summoning the Lonely?”

“It was the best idea I had. She was hurting Jon! Not that you’d care about that.”

“That’s not—” Basira cut off shaking her head. “Since when could you do that anyway?”

“Basira—” Jon started but was soon cut off by Martin.

“I don’t know, I’d never tried it before!”

“Martin—” Jon didn’t get to say anything more than that before Basira responded.

“Do you even know how it works? What if it just consumed you instead? Or Jon?”

All hopes Jon had for this conversation ending civilly died with that question.

“I would never hurt Jon. Not like you planned to. We all heard what it said back there.” Martin almost growled. When he spoke next, his voice echoed. “Why are you looking at me like that, Basira? Thinking you put down the wrong monster again?”

“Enough!” Jon’s shout was enough for Basira and Martin to both take a large step backwards. “Martin that was uncalled for—” Jon kept talking as Martin began to argue. “And Basira, I’d appreciate it if your first reaction to Martin saving our lives wasn’t outright suspicion. We’re all tense with what happened. We need to cool off.”

Basira turned away first, walking towards the street where some burned out cars were. Martin watched as she went and ran his hand down his face.

“Shit,” he said, the echo in his voice still present but not quite as obvious. “You should probably go talk to her. I’ll go sit over there and check our supplies.”

Jon grabbed his wrist as he began to walk away. Thankfully despite the blurring edges to Martin’s form, he was still solid enough to touch. “Do you need me to come with you?”

Martin shook his head. “No. I just need a bit of time to… think.” His eyes were still brown, and Jon felt his pressing concern fade. “I’ll keep in sight just in case. Deal with Basira first. I don’t want her splitting off again: it’s too dangerous. Even if I’m pissed with her.”

“Okay,” Jon said before pressing a kiss to Martin’s cheek, just to feel the cold skin warm a degree. He was worried, but he also trusted him. With that, he let go of Martin’s wrist and walked over towards Basira who was glaring at what was once a car.

“What Martin said  was uncalled for.”

Basira nodded. “It was.” She brushed some dirt off her pants before turning to look at Jon. “But I get why he’s pissed. Given what she said back there.”

Right, that. Jon hadn’t forgotten what the Avatar said about Basira’s opinion on him. “So it’s true then?”

“Don’t you know that already?”

“I told you I wasn’t looking,” Jon said, irritation bubbling over. He’d assumed as much, he wasn’t oblivious, but he’d never looked to know for sure. Having it confirmed wasn’t a surprise but hearing that Basira assumed he was looking stung more than he cared to admit. He couldn’t do this right now, he thought, and turned on his heel to go after Martin.

“Wait, no, Jon—shit this is not how I wanted this to go.“

Jon stopped at the tone in her voice: still stern but not hostile. Instead he waited, still staring back at the empty building where they came from. Did Basira look at him and just see a monster just like the Avatar they had escaped from? A man obsessed with information that he could wield like a knife and rip people open?

Did Basira see him and just see another Elias?

“You don’t talk about yourself much,” Basira said.

“Neither do you.”

“No, I don’t.” Basira was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. “What that woman said—about you being a key to a door—true?”

Jon clenched his bad hand, thumb brushing over the burn scar there. A key notch, that was what the Avatar compared it to. He hated how right the comparison felt. “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried,” Jon snapped, curt. “You didn’t listen.”

He was surprised by how angry he sounded. He thought he was used to this by now, resigned to not being listened to. Basira wasn’t the only one who did it: she was just another person in a long line who decided Jon was better worth blaming than hearing out. And to be fair, she had plenty of reason to, after some of the things he did. She had more reason than most.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“I’m listening now,” Basira said, her voice sure and steady. Jon took a deep breath through his nose, burying down the anger under layers of guilt that left it at bay. He turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved any closer or farther away. Her hands were at her sides, open palms facing her knees.

“And why is that?” Jon’s voice was quiet. Basira was silent for a few moments and when she spoke next, it was with a hesitance Jon rarely heard from her.

“You said with… Daisy… it was the first time Jon heard her say Daisy’s name since everything happened. A pang of grief and hurt washed through him as he remembered two versions of the same woman: the one who held a knife to his throat with hungry eyes and the one who sat with him in his old office and taught him exercises to stop the phantom pain in his bad hand.

He missed the friend he had and he feared the monster who hunted him. Neither canceled out the other.

“You said that I couldn’t hunt a monster I refused to see.” Basira said, drawing him out of the memory. “I think the same might apply in reverse.”

“Oh?”

“I can’t find a human when I’m determined to see a monster. So I’m listening. If you want to give it a try.”

She looked sincere. Part of Jon was afraid this would go like it always did, that he would finish this story to be told he only had himself to blame. Yet, the opportunity of a different ending is enough of a temptation to give it a try. So he does.

He explained Elias’ plan and how he fit into it, the ways he was kept in the dark, the marks he needed to have the perfect notches for the door Elias wanted to open. When she asked about the marks he goes over each, some quicker than the others, sparing the least amount of time for the boy and the book. It wasn’t like a statement, he didn't linger in the emotion of it, but it bleed through in his tone when he wasn’t careful. The whole explanation couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes but it felt like hours.

When he finished his story, Basira spoke first.

“So you were 8 then? When it started?”

Jon’s voice was not steady when he answered.“If you consider the first mark the start then yes.” For a second he could feel the smooth paper of the book under his hands, and the gasp of breath as he ran away from the house that would haunt his memories well into adulthood. All of his past traumas are like that now, as an archive he feels each memory as vividly as it first occurred, but the Web remains the worst one to revisit.

“Daisy was 11,” Basira said.

“What?”

“She didn’t talk about it much,” Basira continued. “I don’t know the details, just that she was young.”

Jon instantly Knew without trying. He saw the creature on the top of the stairs, he felt the fence dig into his back and leave a scar there that will become Daisy’s nickname, he tasted the fear she felt seeing every new report of Calvin’s escalating violence. All the trauma flooded his head in a matter of seconds.

“Oh,” Jon said, when it was over. “I didn’t know.”

“She didn’t like to talk about it,” Basira shrugged. “I assume she didn’t know about you and the Web either.”

“No. I—”Jon’s mouth felt oddly dry. “I...I hadn’t told anyone until a few months ago. Unless you count the tapes.”

Jon didn’t count the tapes. They listened but they never responded, an impassive audience. Not like Martin who upon finding Jon frozen in front of a spider web outside their cabin, pulled him gently inside, made him a cup of tea just warm enough to drink without burning him and said “It’s not your fault what happened. I promise, it’s not your fault.”

“I don’t hate you, Jonathan Sims,” Barisa said. Jon turned his gaze down to his shoes. The blood on his pant leg from Daisy’s attack makes his stomach twist.

“You should.” He thought about the Avatar back in the building, how she’d peeled open his biggest regrets and laid them out for display. How pathetic he was, to have ruined everything so badly.

Basira took a step closer, still far enough away to give Jon space but close enough that Jon could see the mud and tar caking her shoes.

“I think I’m the one who gets to decide that,.” she said. “I am angry; Ithink I might always be. You dragged me into your mess and you’ve hurt innocent people. That doesn’t just go away.” She took another step forward, close enough to reach out if she wanted. “But it doesn’t make you a monster either.”

“What does it make me then?”

“What I wish Daisy got a chance to be; someone who decided to make a different choice before it was too late.”

“Who says it isn’t too late for me?” Jon looked up at Basira. She raised her hand up over Jon’s shoulder but didn’t touch, waiting for a sign the gesture was welcome. Jon gave a slight nod, and she held his shoulder gently and gave it a light squeeze.

“It might be. But I’d like to think you’re the one who gets to decide that.” She removed her grip from Jon’s shoulder and took a step back, giving him space once more. “You should probably talk to Martin: I doubt either of us is feeling friendly right now.”

“I’m sorry for what he said,” Jon said.

“You still apologize too much,” Basira said and a small hint of a smile passed her face. “I’m going to do a weapons check. I’ll join you after.”

Jon watched as she got down on her knees and began to open her pack. In another life, he thought, they could have been friends, joined by their mutual love of books and mysteries. He didn’t think that was a possibility now, after everything that happened. This world was not conducive for new friendships.

After this conversation, however, maybe they might find something close to it. Not quite friendship, but understanding at least.

With that thought in mind, Jon went to follow Martin.

______________________________________________________________________

He found Martin sitting on the ground next to a half-rusted bike and a few empty plastic bottles. He looked less faint around the edges, more solid than when they left, but when Jon got closer he could feel the chill that still wrapped around him like a blanket.

“Martin,” Jon said, sitting down next to him. Martin’s gaze was fixed on his shoes but when he spoke there was no echo to his voice. That was good.

“Jon. How’s Basira?”

“Pissed at you but otherwise better than expected. We had a talk.”

The chill intensified, just a fraction. Jon Restrained the urge to shiver. “What kind of talk?”

“The good kind. I think we’ve reached an understanding, if that makes any sense.”

Martin nodded and the chill went back to how it was when Jon first arrived: enough to be noticed but not enough to demand a jacket. They were silent for a while, Jon making sure he was close enough that their arms were touching. Just enough to provide a weight of presence.

“I’m sorry. About Kill Bill.”

“What?”

Martin still didn’t look at him, twisting his fingers together. He did that when he was nervous, one of the gestures Jon could now read without any supernatural knowhow. Normally he would reach out and with slow movements, drag one of those hands free for a kiss. Martin looked too upset for Jon to try it now.

“For trying to encourage you to go all avenging angel. Back when we first left the cabin and all. I’m sorry.”

Jon was rarely shocked by anything these days, but this threw him off guard. He thought they covered this a long time ago. “Martin you don’t—”

“No, no, I—” Martin breathed in deep and Jon was elated that he couldn’t see the other man’s breath. Back when Martin first escaped the Lonely, a winter fog followed every inhale for at least a few days. It made it hard for Jon to take his eyes off him, so scared he was that he might disappear.  “Back then, I thought it would be good to get rid of them—”

“I know—”

“Let me finish.” Martin untangled his fingers to hold up his pointer finger. Jon stopped speaking at the gesture. “I thought it was good to get rid of them, that we could maybe help people or something.” His shoulders slumped, and Jon could read shame in the slant to them. “But I also thought it would feel good, for the both of us. To not be chased around for once by things we can’t stop, to finally turn the tables on the things giving us nightmares for years. Let them know what it’s like. And when I wasn’t the one doing it, it kind of was. Not entirely, but just enough to feel right.” He kicked one of the empty plastic water bottles forward. “But back there… When I did it myself, I just felt—”

He finally looked up at Jon and Jon’s heart twisted to see the stricken expression on his face. “I just felt terrible Jon. That woman was objectively evil: she used people’s darkest secrets against them for clicks on the internet and her own amusement. The fact that her childhood was shitty doesn’t change that. But when I was there making her feel just as lonely and isolated as she deserved to be, all I could think about was how I sounded exactly like… exactly like… him.”

Jon didn’t have to ask who Martin was talking about. Instead he reached forward and placed his hand in Martin’s squeezing tight. A reminder that Jon was there, that Jon was listening, that Martin was not alone, not anymore.

Martin kept talking, squeezing Jon’s hand back, “I’m not saying we’re the same: Peter threw people in the Lonely for tribute and I only did it to save you. Our reasoning was entirely different even if the end result was the same. I’m not Peter Lukas because of that.” He said that with more confidence, the tremor from earlier gone. “But I think doing that, while it doesn’t make me more like him, it doesn’t make me better either. It makes me—”

“Feel worse?’

Martin leaned against Jon, resting his head on Jon’s shoulder. It was awkward with how much taller Martin was, but not unpleasant. “Yeah. So I’m sorry, for not getting it.”

Jon thought back to the power he had with Jude and with Jared. How the rush of finally being in control would fade to a rush of shame. “It’s hard to understand.”

“That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have tried sooner.”

“You’re not like Peter, you know,” Jon said. “Not even close. Not now, not then.”

“Thank you.”

They sat there for a few moments, quiet in each other’s company. Martin still ran cold, but he warmed up with the contact. Jon listened to his heartbeat, the reminder the Martin was still alive, that he still had a heart, that he hadn’t lost him to death or the Lonely’s endless waves. Jon was not a lucky man but for as long as he lived, he would be thankful he had just enough luck to have this, even if  just for a little while.

“So you’re not going to cast Elias into the Lonely then?” Jon asked after a period of quiet. Martin shrugged, the gesture causing his hair to brush against Jon’s chin.

“I don’t even know if it would work; I think he’s too self absorbed to be lonely properly.. If your thing doesn’t work and I have no other choice I’ll give it a go, but otherwise I’m thinking the traditional route might be best.”

“Oh?”

“I have two hands and the institute probably has some loose pipes in it still. I was thinking I could take a page from his book.”

Jon snorted. His worries about his powers not working on Elias faded to the back of his mind, a matter of concern he could examine later. There would be time to think about the implications of what happened with the Eye Avatar. For now, some banter would suffice.

“How’s your swing?”

“Not bad but I’ll make sure to practice on the way there. I can see how I do against some stop signs.”

“The domain of traffic laws won’t see you coming.”

They both laughed, quiet but strong. When Basira came over to join them, Martin stiffened but with a look from Jon he kept his mouth shut. Knowing the pair of them, Jon thought, they would respectively apologize to the other soon enough. All it would take was some time.

He wasn’t sure how much time they had left, with Elias waiting for them at the end of it. The Eye could only tell him so much and it had no intention to tell him how this would all end. If the world could be saved, if they could survive this ordeal would remain unknown until it happened, leaving Jon to marinate in the fear of what could be.

For now, Jon was content to stay in the dark, the man he loved humming an old song with his head on his shoulder and Basira quietly watching them with something that was close to fondness. The man who understood him best and the woman who was making an effort to try. It wasn’t the worst moment to be in, at the end of the world.

It was something almost like peace.

[backofthebookshelf]

105 Hill Top Road: What the Fuck

(Relevant episodes: 008, 019, 043, 055, 056, 059, 067, 078, 089, 114, 130, 134, 139)

I mean, I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Anya Villette came from another reality, right? The timeline's different but the Powers are the same. At least one of them, with that spidery tree. She goes into the house in one reality and wakes up in another one, where all her friends tell her, "oh yeah, when shit like that happens to you, you go to the Magnus Institute," and she says, "the what now?" And there's this building in Chelsea that wasn't there before and they take her statement and then she...what? Does she disappear? Do the spiders get her? Or does she just not have a legal identity in this reality so that's why they can't find her?

(Did Gertrude actually read this statement? She's probably busy as hell in 2009, she's been working on rituals, Mary Keay has just turned herself into a book, Leitner's running around in the tunnels. And she was skeptical of Dekker's theories; would she be as skeptical of something like this? Presumably she read Vanderstock's statement, she would have wanted to know, and he mentioned the "scar in reality" but would she have believed it? Would she have considered it worth following up on, even without the spiders doubtless doing all they can to keep people from paying attention?)

Vanderstock mentions "other Powers" at work at Hill Top Road, but the only one I can identify besides the Web and the Desolation is the Spiral, and that only vaguely: Ivo Lensik and Father Burroughs were both Spiral-adjacent. And I wonder about that table, too; everything about it seems Spiral-like, except for the fact that it is used to trap a Stranger creature. Granted I can make a case for hypnosis being related to spiders, but still.

Still no idea what actually happened there, of course. Agnes would have been fully grown (26, per her death certificate) by around 1980, assuming she ages normally, which is kind of a big assumption. (139 makes it sound like it took her twenty years to be eleven years old, but that might be me misinterpreting.) Vanderstock makes a reference to Gertrude doing something that delayed their ritual preparations just after Jude Perry joined; not sure whether that's when she first met them in '89 or when she "completed her transformation" in '91, but let's average the difference and call it sometime around 1990. But the house at Hill Top Road burned in 1974, so whatever was happening there happened well before they'd given up on their ritual.

(Besides, it really sounded like the Last Feast was the first ritual Gertrude had successfully and intentionally disrupted. So either she did this accidentally or it was something else. But why assume it was her, otherwise? In 2008 Mary makes a snide comment about Gertrude not getting out and doing much herself, which is hilarious because she disrupted at least two rituals in 2008, but it does indicate that she's at least not seen as someone who gets involved. But that's almost twenty years later; maybe she used to get out more? Maybe the Eye had a particular interest in something? We've got a few statements from the 90s but mostly 1996 and later; we've got exactly one statement from the 80s and it's Tucked In. Anyway. This is (probably) a distraction.) (Interestingly Jon only comments on Agnes's death, not on whatever happened in the early 90s, which makes me wonder if it wasn't Gertrude at all but the spiders themselves. But Vanderstock is so sure it was her.)

I can't find anything in other statements that tells us much of anything aside from one thing: the Institute got a new Head in 1973, a year before the house burned. It might be nothing, but if the Web and the Eye are as closely aligned as we keep speculating they are, it might be something. (This was Elias's predecessor, James Wright, about whom we know nothing at all.) There is a really annoying lack of statements from the 80s and early 90s; we have virtually no idea what was going on in the supernatural ecosystem at that time. Would those be the statements on tape that were found with Gertrude's body, perhaps? What did happen to all of those? Two or three boxes of tapes is a lot of statements.

But back to the point, what was happening at Hill Top Road? It was owned by the Fieldings from the 1800s, which makes me think it's been a Web stronghold that long. (I'd love to know if Walter Fielding knew Smirke or Magnus or anyone else in their circle.) By the sixties Raymond Fielding was using it to harvest...victims? Hosts? What did happen to the kids Ronald Sinclair saw in the basement, who had been turned into spider egg sacs? Were they just there to feed the baby spiders, or were they turning into spider-Jaegers like the one Trevor Herbert met in 2009? (Daisy told Basira her first sectioned case was something to do with spider husks but we never got any other details. That would've been the latter half of 2002. We got no other details but I'd be interested to know where it was. HEY JON TALK TO YOUR COWORKERS.)

So okay, 105 Hill Top Road is a spider factory, cool. Then Agnes shows up. Two-three months later she saves a guy from getting et by Raymond Fielding for no apparent reason, that's nice of her. (Agnes likes cute boys confirmed.) And it seems like she stops him from taking in more kids, because they say the number of kids at the house dwindles until it's just Agnes left, and then Raymond disappears. It's "years" that Agnes lives in the house alone and mostly never leaves, though pets go missing from the neighborhood, before, in 1974, a five-year-old goes missing. A week later the house burns down and in it they find only Raymond Fielding's skeleton, sans right hand. So that sounds like Fielding was feeding on the kids, and catching smaller prey after he didn't have them any more, and when he worked back up to kids again Agnes caught him and stopped him. But it had to be more than that, because this is the fight Vanderstock describes as creating "a scar in reality," and which tied Agnes to the location. The fact that she kept Fielding's hand worried Arthur Nolan, which yeah, that would worry me too, but I'm not an avatar of destruction created by an evil cult, so I have to assume it was for some reason other than "eew."

(I also have to wonder exactly what their ritual required, other than Agnes herself, because there's a long time between 1974 and 1990. But.)

Then, in 2006, the house is being rebuilt and Ivo Lensik is working on it evenings and weekends, and who shows up at the door but Raymond Fielding, in an old-fashioned coat and looking "like something out of an old Polaroid," showing off the deed to the house and poking around. This show doesn't really go in for ghosts, and besides he was an avatar or something, so I'm gonna go with "alternate universe Ray Fielding," I guess. Who then...gets burned to a crisp after being inside the (new) house for two minutes? There's a smell of burning and a scorch mark on the floor. This freaks out Lensik so bad he falls and hits his head and also worries that he's getting schizophrenia (which his father apparently had, except schizophrenia doesn't work like that, that was definitely Michael) and he goes to the hospital, where a local nurse apparently likes suggesting exorcisms to people.

(There's no indication that anyone from the Lightless Flame noticed AU!Ray, so I'm assuming for now he was destroyed/banished/yeeted back to his own reality by whatever latent Desolation power is attached to the place.)

So one night the exorcist shows up and while he's waiting outside Ivo Lensik just. Snaps. He cannot handle that tree. That tree is looking at him and he doesn't like it. He takes a crowbar to it and it bleeds; he chains it to his truck and pulls it down. At this point Agnes, who's out with Jack Barnabas being blessedly normal for a change, spasms like something hurt her and makes a panicked phone call, and then Arthur and Diego and everybody show up at her flat with an unlit lantern, a bag of candles, and a jar of tiny spiders, and then she asks them to kill her. Vanderstock puts it down to Jack Barnabas, but in Barnabas's own statement it's very clear that the tree comes down, she calls in a panic, they meet her at her flat, and then she kisses him and he's in the hospital for three days. (I'm not saying her attachment to him didn't ruin the ritual, that's probably why she made whatever decision she did, but the tree was an inciting incident.)

(At the same time the tree is coming down, too, Father Burroughs is inside the house feeling like he's burning alive, and the Spiral is speaking through him insisting that he's already been claimed and the Desolation just doesn't care. It doesn't stop until the tree comes down outside. There's also no indication that any Desolation avatars noticed this.)

Under the tree is a six-inch-square box covered in twisting lines and there's a whole OTHER thing, because that box belongs in the center of the table that trapped the not!Them, and how did it get from here to there? How did it escape the fire that burned down the original house? (Graham had it in 2005. Dekker had it in 2001. No clue where it went between 2005 and when it shows up at the Institute in 2015.) And what was the purpose of it when Fielding used it, had the kids sit around it every Sunday dinner? Did he bury the box, with an apple inside, to protect himself from Agnes? Is that why pulling down the tree hurt her? (In Anya Villette's statement the tree is heavily spider-identified, to the point where she refers to it interchangeably as "branches" and "arms," of which it has eight, but in Ivo Lensik's statement he notices that it was heavily burned at the base. Was it attacked by the Desolation? In which case why did pulling it down hurt Agnes? Was she, in fact, tied to the tree itself? In which case, given the importance of the tree in the alternate reality, is there an alternate Agnes out there? Maybe one where she got to go on dates with cute boys instead of having to either die or burn down the world?)

AND. As more than one of us have pointed out by now, in 114, Jon says:

I’ve half a mind to just go down and have a look at it myself, but… I don’t know. Ever since it first came up I’ve felt like it would be… just a very bad idea.

And then Tim walks in and he and we forget all about it, but doesn't that sound like spidery manipulation to you? It does to me. So whatever Agnes and the Desolation did at Hill Top Road, it had a lasting effect (both in terms of leaving some remnant of the Desolation there and in the side effect of the...apparent dimensional portal?...) but the spiders do still seem to hold a lot of sway there as well.

What this has to do with anything I wish I knew, but I will say that 114 was the first thing I thought of after Garland Hillier's "la porte est la porte," which also sounds a lot like "all the doors are open now" from The Bifrost Incident (which is probably an entirely different continuity and has nothing to do with this other than ~themes~ but you know), but now that we've been talking a lot about the Powers as places I'm not so sure that means anything other than poor Hillier managed to walk into the domain of the Extinction and found his way out again for a while. But if the Powers are places, does that imply that Anya Villette came from one of them, or that there are other mostly-normal universes that haven't been taken over by the Powers? And if they exist...well. What does that imply about saving our universe from them, or losing it to them? (By "our" I mean "Jon and Martin's universe," obviously, "our" universe is another one entirely. I hope.)

tl;dr (TOO LATE): I have absolutely no idea what was or is happening at Hill Top Road but I’m pretty sure the spiders don’t want anyone poking around and also someone should go poke around there immediately, unless that's what Martin is doing right now, Martin stop, go back and get your boyfriend, he's freaking out

[soveryanon]

… I still had some Interrogations about Gertrude’s body and what happened exactly around her death, and MAG121 made me wonder about a few things again.

The “who dun it” has been stated multiple times, including by the prime concerned (unless Big Big Lie); the “why dun it” was also covered; the “how dun it” was also described (both by Martin and by Basira), though there seems to have a bit more to it than a few bullets, but mostly… are we sure about the when and the where Gertrude was killed? Especially since the crime scene and the place where her body was found were fairly different places, and at different times.

So. At the beginning of the series, we and Jon were meant to think that she had died of natural causes, though Jon later explained that it was actually more ~mysterious~ than a straightforward death-by-stroke-at-her-desk (Jon plz):

(MAG011) ARCHIVIST: When [Elias] hired me, he was vague on the point of what happened to my predecessor, Gertrude Robinson. I asked if she would be available to train me up for a handover, but he simply said she had passed away and not to worry about it overmuch. Actually, now I think about it, his exact phrase was that she “died in the line of duty”, which I had assumed meant having a stroke at her desk or something similar – she was quite elderly, I believe.

(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude. Officially she’s still missing, but Elias is no help and the police were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality.

We know that she was shot three times, which sounded… quite personal (MAG040, Martin: “She was shot! Three times, that I could see. … Three shots to the chest.”); Jurgen Leitner suspected that Elias was responsible (MAG080: “I believe it was Elias. […] I assume he discovered we were planning to destroy the Archives.”), Jude Perry had heard Things about the fact that Elias was the one behind it (MAG089: “The rumour is [Elias] killed Gertrude Robinson. If so, I feel like I owe him.”), and Elias himself later claimed that he was indeed her murderer:

(MAG092) ELIAS: So. For the avoidance of any doubt. I killed Gertrude Robinson because she intended to destroy the Archives.

Peter Lukas sounded Very Surprised that Elias would do it, but uh, that was Peter, and he threw a huge amount of shade at Elias overall (MAG108: “Oh. That doesn't sound like the Elias I know. He killed people himself? […] Elias Bouchard, getting his hands dirty. Well well. Must be the end times.”) – it’s most likely another jab at the fact that Elias is very not keen on action overall, and that Gertrude and Leitner’s direct murders were oddities compared to his usual modus operandi; it is more Elias-like to delegate the dirty tasks to others (like with Daisy) or to manipulate/direct them into doing his biddings (who tipped the police about Maxwell Rayner back in season 2?). We heard Leitner’s murder live, and Elias put his and Gertrude’s on the same plane so, unless twist, Elias likely didn’t simply orchestrate Gertrude’s murder but indeed did it on the technical side too, as far as the gun is concerned. And we know that it looks like Gertrude got killed by bullets, since Basira reported that it was in all appearances… a plain mundane murder case, which only got Section 31’d on account of having happened inside of the Magnus Institute (MAG043: “we’re investigating it as a murder because that’s what it is. […] I tried making the argument that the murder didn’t seem to connect to any of your paranormal business, at least not directly, but nope. I’ve got a shot corpse […].”) This doesn’t exclude the possibility of spookiness also having gotten involved to finally manage to kill The Gertrude Robinson™, but we are at least sure that the bullets happened – and that they were the nail in the coffin.

Things get a bit trickier with the dates and the places involved.

Martin discovered the body between MAG039 and MAG040 in the tunnels under the Archives, while the… crime scene had been assumed to be her office in the Archives themselves, given the amount of blood that had been found there.

(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: … Tell me what happened to Gertrude Robinson. ELIAS: Jon, how many times do we need to go over this? […] Fine. On the 15th of March last year, I had a query about a statement one of our researchers was after and went down to the Archives. Gertrude wasn’t there, but her desk was covered in blood. I, I called the police, and there was a huge search, but… there was no sign of Gertrude, alive or dead. She didn’t have any assistants, so there were no witnesses, and no-one saw or heard anything. The police tested the blood and confirmed the DNA matched to Gertrude, though I don’t know why they had her on file. They judged there to be almost a gallon of blood spilled, far more than the human body can lose and survive so, I assumed she was dead and left the investigation to the police, for all that good it did me. And I appointed another archivist. Martin finding her body in the tunnels is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.

First: the two places. It would mean that her body was moved (physically dragged or through spooky means) from the office to the tunnels, or that the blood was transferred from the tunnels to the Archives somehow, or that her murder happened elsewhere and that the blood and the body were both moved afterwards, and we never got told by whom. Elias himself? Leitner? “Michael”? Elias’s comment about how “Martin finding her body in the tunnels is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.” perfectly works as a non-lie even if Elias was the one to put her there, if it’s read as shade about the fact that of all people, Martin was the one to discover her (the fact that Elias is quite contemptuous of Martin was a key part of the assistants’ plan in season 3), but Elias also… doesn’t have a good grasp on the tunnels. He didn’t know that Leitner was the one hiding in them for years and, moreover, Jon ventures the guess that they neutralize Elias’s ability (MAG110: “BASIRA: Tim is… Elias is watching him too closely. / MELANIE: He’s probably watching me too. / MARTIN: We could try the tunnels, Jon says that they might help.”). The team is mostly in the dark about the specifics of Elias’s powers (sometimes thinking him more powerful than he is, sometimes discovering that he had powers they had no idea about, sometimes us discovering that Elias can observe Jon’s dreams, etc.), but this assumption seems to be correct, judging by how it looks like Elias didn’t know the details of the Assistants’ plan in season 3, which they had discussed down in the tunnels. So... would he still have gotten in the tunnels to hide or kill Gertrude there, despite this?

At the very least, the official crime scene and the place where the body was found don’t match and, unless Spooks Also Happened, someone… or something… had to move/shift/teleport/I don’t know her and/or her blood. Gertrude was also found surrounded with boxes of tapes, and Jon did wonder pretty early who had hidden them there: Gertrude herself? Her murderer? 

(MAG041) ARCHIVIST: […] Even when the police finally found Gertrude’s body, they took it, chair and all, as well as all the tapes. […] Whatever’s on them, it must be important, because… either she chose to hide them down here or… whoever killed her did. Either way, I have a feeling it isn’t something the police are going to understand.

We know that Gertrude had a hiding place under a floorboard in the office itself (MAG062: “This bit wasn’t even breached by any of the worms. Because it had Gertrude’s hidden compartment beneath it. Hmm… no strange skin page, but there is a laptop. And a key.”); so another possibility that Jon didn’t consider is that someone else could have concealed the body and the tapes down in the tunnels, to hide them from her murderer or from ~prying eyes~ in general. We know, though, that Jon didn’t remember her voice before listening to the first tape (which means there was no tape from Gertrude left in the Archives when he took over), and that Elias had gotten his hands specifically on her files regarding the Unknowing (Leitner also implied that he might have also taken the ones about the Watcher’s Crown) before her body was found, since neither Leitner nor the police had them and Elias began to finally spoon-feed them to Jon in season 3:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I assume [Elias] discovered we were planning to destroy the Archives. ARCHIVIST: Gertrude was going to destroy the Archives? LEITNER: This is why I need those files. I searched this place thoroughly and they’re not here, so I assume Elias took them when he killed her. I need your help to get into his office. […] ELIAS: What did you want from him? LEITNER: The files. The ones you took from Gertrude. ELIAS: Planning a little light arson, are we Jurgen? LEITNER: It’s not just the Institute and you know it. They had everything she had found on the Stranger. ELIAS: I know. […]

(MAG111) GERARD: She worked out they’d all be happening quite close together. She’d already been doing it a while. And the Unknowing was the next on her list. That and the Watcher’s Crown. ARCHIVIST: The what? GERARD: Uh, the Rite of the Watcher’s Crown. It’s what she called the ritual for the Eye. She didn’t tell me much about that one, just that she knew how to take care of it.

(Elias’s comment to Leitner seems to confirm that Gertrude intended to set the Archives on fire, as a direct counter-measure or as general sabotage, which also… ~sheds some more light~ on the fact that Elias was seething when Martin started burning statements in MAG118 ♥)

So, we still have some things kept unclear about Gertrude’s room in the tunnels: was it the place where she would usually keep her tapes and secret files? Why was her body there? Was she killed down there? in the office? somewhere else? How come Martin managed to find her body and the police later retrieved her, even though Leitner explained to Jon that he had enough control on the tunnels to conceal parts of it? (MAG080: “Over the years I have found that [The Seven Lamps of Architecture] interacts with Smirke’s architecture, and those tunnels specifically, in a more predictable way. By carefully reading specific passages in certain locations I am able to exercise… a degree of control over the substance of the tunnels. […] I will admit that when you began to explore again, I… closed off certain passages and remade others. I, I wanted to keep you contained while deciding whether to make contact.”)

Bigger problem: the date. There is a bit of confusion about the month: was Gertrude killed in March, as Elias mentioned in MAG040 (after all, “Antonio Blake” warned her about her incoming death in a statement delivered on March 14th), or in May (since Jon mentioned in MAG025 that “according to the official file, May 15th 2015 was the day Gertrude Robinson, my predecessor, passed away”)? Is it just a writing error? Or could it be that she was officially declared missing-or-more-likely-dead two months after the discovery of her blood? And/Or did Elias make a mistake on the date, purposely or accidentally? So far, though, we… don’t really have cases of Elias blatantly lying: he dodges questions (Sasha had commented on that as early as in MAG039), he refuses to answer, he may use euphemisms and attenuating speech, but he… doesn’t appear to outright lie. So what about his “I assumed she was dead”: you can’t assume something that you know firsthand since, er, you were the one to kill the person? And what about the date, if March 15th is the day that blood was found in her office? “Antonio” had given his statement on March 14th, mentioning that his dream about Gertrude happened “the night before last” (MAG011), and that there was usually a gap of about ten days between his dream and a person’s death – Gertrude happened a week too early! Or, if it happened in May: almost two months late!

… But what if the blood in Gertrude’s office on March 15th had been Gertrude’s own doing, trying to fake her death, because she had read The Dreamer’s statement and was trying to escape that fate? And maybe she had initially fooled Elias, too, until he realized what was happening?

“Antonio Blake” explains that the roots in his dreams directly represent the causes of death of the various people he sees in them, but Gertrude’s case was… weird, and he couldn't see whether they were roots digging into her chest:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) At the front of the room stood a desk, and the veins were wrapped around it so tightly and so thick that I knew that this must be where they ended. Getting closer I realised that there was a person sitting at that desk and it was them that all of this scarlet light was flowing into. I could see none of the figure’s body beneath the flesh that enclosed them, but as I moved around I saw the face was uncovered. It was your face and the expression upon it was far more fearful than any I had seen in eight years of wandering this twilight city. That was when I awoke.

So it was not only three bullets in the chest, there was something else, something coming for her. Jon said that he wasn’t sure whether Gertrude had read that statement before dying (MAG011: “If this is genuine, well, I have no idea if Gertrude got the chance to read this statement before she passed away”); “Antonio” was told that she apparently used to read them and, though we don’t know if it was right away or after some time, Gertrude was around when he was writing, seemingly waiting:

(MAG011, “Antonio Blake”) As I write these words I can see you in the other room, eyes locked on whatever book you’re diverting yourself with; I recognize you from my dreams. They said at the front desk that you review all the written statements, so I can only hope that you take the time to read through this one fully. […] Be careful. There is something coming for you and I don’t know what it is, but it is so much worse than anything I can imagine.

The person around when Jane Prentiss gave her statement also sounded like Gertrude (MAG032: “As I watch you sitting there through the glass. Eating a sandwich. Do you know where you are? You called me ‘dear’. ‘Have a seat, dear.’ ‘You can write it down, dear.’ ‘Take as much time as you need, dear.’ Can you truly know the danger you are in?”), so I got the impression that Gertrude was usually staying around to take a look at the written statement as soon as it would be finished? And it looked like… she indeed did know that something terrible was coming:

(MAG060) ARCHIVIST: I’ve been examining the CCTV feeds Elias gave me. It… it does seem to provide everyone with a solid alibi and no one is seen entering or exiting the archives except Gertrude. At least not before Elias goes down and discovers the blood. Gertrude’s own movements are somewhat erratic and she seems to be in and out of the Archives at all hours of the day and night. At some point, looking rather disheveled.

(^Leitner later pointed out that Elias is probably able to twist the camera footages because the Institute is “his place of power”, but actually… Elias himself has never said anything about it – probably could have done it, but it hasn’t been stated that he did. Just that camera feeds around the Archives tend to be shaky and corrupted overall, in season 2, which Jon confirmed later with a camera of his own. And it could also have been Leitner’s own protections twisting up the feeds.) In MAG121, Oliver also made it sound like Gertrude had tried to escape her fate, to no avail – but it also sounds like she still overall put up a fight?

(MAG121) OLIVER: […] I s’pose there’s only so long you can dream about someone and not at least try to find them. That was it with the old woman too. That was different, though. Way I figured it? She stuck her nose in just about everywhere it wasn’t wanted and stirred up hornets. ‘Till all the precautions in the world couldn’t stop Death from finally catching her. If I had known more back then, I’m… not sure I would’ve bothered trying to warn her.

Gertrude had taken precautions, and we have hints that she knew there was a threat hanging over her. The fact that we have a recording from Gertrude dated April 4th 2015 seems to indicate that, uh, she was still alive after March 15th, in any case… and it was also way after the date she should have died according to The Dreamer’s prediction (it should have happened around March 22nd).

(MAG087) GERTRUDE: […] I had assumed Orsinov and her ilk would have spent more time searching for their precious skin, maybe even acting against me directly, before they started alternate preparations. I had hoped I’d have a chance to recover. I can still barely stand.

(In context, she is more likely referring to an injury received when she stole the gorilla skin from the taxidermy shop and killed "Daniel Rawling”, as “Sarah” recalled in MAG096, but we… technically don’t know for sure.)

… If the blood in her office was indeed found on March 15th, it wouldn’t have been a lie from Elias to say in MAG040 that he had “assumed” she was dead at this point (she was a woman of Many Enemies! A lot of people would have wanted her dead!), if the story is that he hadn’t immediately realized that it was actually one of her schemes. Getting off Elias’s radar would have meant she could have continued to work on stopping the Unknowing… and, a bit more problematic for Elias: on stopping the Watcher’s Crown. Elias has mentioned multiple times that she had found ways to circumvent his vigilance:

(MAG080) ELIAS: I’ve wondered for so long who it could be down there. Who was helping her. I honestly never would have guessed. LEITNER: How did you know I was here? ELIAS: I didn’t. You’re very well hidden. But Jon is not, and he failed to take the same precautions I’m sure you took for granted with Gertrude.

(MAG102) ARCHIVIST: And you can’t just… See where [Gertrude] put it. ELIAS: She was… She got very good at hiding things from me.

Tl;dr could be just a genuine mixup between “March” and “May” on a writing standpoint in season 1, but at the very least, her death did not happen when it should have happened following Oliver’s dream, and hey

hey

hey

Consider the following possibility: Elias appointing Jonathan Dumbass Sims as the new (Head) Archivist while Gertrude was actually still roaming wild and preparing to stop the Watcher’s Crown – before Elias caught up to her.

(And unrelated though related at the same time: could there be, maybe, a tape recording of their final exchange?)

Bonus 1:

Surrounding Gertrude’s death, there is also the matter of Hither Green Chapel. We know that the People’s Church of the Divine Host had been previously spotted there, and that a scream was heard there “about a month after this statement was given, on May 15th 2015” – which Jon identifies as the official day of Gertrude’s death. (MAG025; the statement was indeed given in April, so this time can’t have been a typo between March/May, even though Natalie Ennis was declared missing before March 15th.)

It’s… unclear what the People’s Church of the Divine Host were doing: we know for sure that their ceremony was around the corner in March 2015 (MAG025: “[Natalie Ennis] said that they were all going, that 300 years was a long time to wait, but she was lucky to have found it so close to the end. She said that it wasn’t long until they were collected by Mr. Pitch.”); so was their ceremony stopped on May 15th 2015, given the scream? Or was it when Basira and the other Section 31 officers went after Maxwell Rayner shortly before February 11th 2017 (MAG073)? Were there two different attempts? Basira’s operation sounded a bit underwhelming, if it was a ritual, since… they managed to take care of it pretty easily (there was only one casualty on their ranks). It might have only been a remnant of the cult and a different half-baked thingy rather than the ritual itself, after their attempt at it had already been trashed. Basira herself seems to later crack the code, tying the dates to solar eclipses:

(MAG108) BASIRA: I was reading through a bunch of stuff about the Church of the Divine Host. Did you look into that statement about the chapel in Hither Green? Because apparently, right around that time, there was a full solar eclipse going on in, guess where? MARTIN: I don’t know. BASIRA: Ny-Ålesund! And when Natalie Ennis talked about it being 300 years ago, well. How much do you know about the relationship between Edmond Halley and John Flamsteed? MARTIN: What, Halley like the comet? BASIRA: Exactly.

Gertrude’s actions in this regard are unclear. According to Gerard Keay, she had established that the Watcher’s Crown was supposed to take place after the Unknowing (MAG111: “She worked out they’d all be happening quite close together. She’d already been doing it a while. And the Unknowing was the next on her list. That and the Watcher’s Crown.”), which would imply that The Dark’s ceremony was already a past concern… but their ceremony attempt seems to have happened between Gerard’s death and the Unknowing. Did someone else stop them? Did Gertrude not even bother mentioning that one to Gerard since she felt that it would be easily trashed? She was already prepared for the cult, given the history that Jon found in her laptop:

(MAG066) ARCHIVIST: There’s also the matter of the products she was ordering. There were several online orders of petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides, and high-powered torches. They are sporadic, but notable in that she did not drive, smoke or work in pest control. The torches would make sense, if it wasn’t for the quantities in which she ordered them.

We know that Gertrude meddled with the Lightless Flame before April 2015, since it was already a done deal at this point (MAG087, Gertrude: “It interests me that Jude Perry would be involved. I was unaware that The Lightless Flame had had any contact with the Stranger’s ilk, but I suppose it makes sense that it would be a possible ally to the Devastation, especially since their own plans have so recently, erm, gone up in flames.” + Jude having Strong Feelings against Gertrude in general). Meanwhile, Jane Prentiss was likely not ritual-material on her own, but she had given her statement in February 2014 and loudly implied that the Hive might target the Institute in the close future (MAG032: “But whatever it is that calls to me, that wants me for its own, it hates you. It hates what you are and what you do.”) – so the “petrol, lighter fluid, pesticides” were measures against those two, and maybe against the Watcher’s Crown (Elias specifically referred to “arson” as her plan). In that same list, the torches were quite clearly for The Dark (Jon recommended Basira take a lot of them, obviously plucking the idea from Gertrude’s files), but we don’t know if she had the time to take care of that one or not, nor whether she did it herself. I’m wondering, tho… postulating that she faked her death and went off the radar in March 2015, and that she stopped The Dark’s ceremony, that could then have been how Elias realized that she was actually still alive?

Bonus 2:

The place Gertrude’s body was found. More precisely, the room.

(MAG040) MARTIN: […] When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead… It was a small room. Square. There was dust on everything. Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes. […] She was sat in a wooden chair in the middle of the room. No worms. No cobwebs. Just… an old corpse. Gertrude Robinson. She was slumped forward, but I could see her mouth hanging open.

An old Archivist, almost entombed, laying there for a looong while with her files around her.

Isn’t the scene a bit reminiscent of something.

(MAG053) WALTER HELLER: It was there, in a small alcove, carved into the wall, that I saw what I called the light. It was an old papyrus scroll, lying amongst the shattered remnants of its case. I cast my torch around and saw more shelves, carved into the walls of the chamber, each of which housed a scroll of its own. They were written in a language I didn’t recognise, but they were old and they smelled of age and dry decay. It wasn’t the only room like that. There were dozens of chambers like it, all in different shapes and sizes, connected like a warren. Some were empty, others still had a handful of old scrolls left in alcoves or fallen to the floor. […] From somewhere, deeper within that strange ancient library, there was a sound of movement, the rattling of cloth, and the slow, rhythmic step coming toward me. I darted back away, towards the tunnel that had brought me there, but it was hard. The sense of being watched was getting stronger, an almost physical wave that seemed to drag me down. I reached the mouth of the tunnel just as a figure came into view. It wore what looked like the remains of an ancient robe, and in the darkness, I could see long, spindly fingers stretching out, curling toward me. From beneath its huge, flowing hood, I could see nothing except for a single, lidless eye.

Sssssssssssssomeeeeeeeeethiiiiiiiiiiiiing… that Gertrude identified… as a possible ancient Archivist in their Archives.

(MAG053) GERTRUDE: And… did you replace the grate? WALTER: The– The– The– the what? GERTRUDE: The bronze grate, over the entrance to the Archive. Did you replace it when you fled? […] GERTRUDE: […] It’s not a full confirmation of my theory about ancient iterations of the Archive, but I’m certainly feeling validated for pursuing it. I’ve been working on the assumption that the Great Library itself would have fulfilled that function, but it makes a lot more sense that it would have been the Serapeum off-shoot. […] My biggest concern right now is whatever creature Mr Heller encountered down there. It was… 56 years ago. But if it’s still alive, I should be careful. What was it? A guardian of some sort or perhaps… perhaps it too was… once an Archivist. […] ARCHIVIST: Well… Only two tapes so far and already, I– I don’t know what to think. Another Archive. An earlier version. … Am I just part of a chain? A long, unending string of people who call themselves “the Archivist”, stretching back to– … Are we all destined to end up like Gertrude? Just… following the same path?

I would add that Johann von Württemberg’s mausoleum, discovered by Albrecht von Closen (Jonah Magnus’s friend) in the Black Forest had… reminiscent elements, too:

(MAG023, Albrecht von Closen) Behind the sharp-angled block was a staircase, descending deep into some unknown subterranean vault. […] They descended for some time, until I was quite certain that I was deep within the frozen earth of the Schwarzwald. […] After about a minute of walking, the passage opened out into a large chamber. […] As I gazed at it, I noticed that the walls of the room did not appear to be stone, as the passage or the mausoleum had been. I walked cautiously closer, until my lantern illuminated it clearly. The walls were covered with bookshelves. Packed in with such a density that it was impossible to tell if there was a real wall behind them or if the books themselves formed the only bulwark against the soil. They were, unfortunately, terribly rotten. The centuries had not been kind to them, and as I tried to move one of them I realised that the damp had, over time, caused them to merge into a single mass of paper and bookcloth. Predictable as this may have been, I still felt the most acute pang of loss. […] As I looked at them, I noticed a small engraving, carved at regular intervals along the edge of each one. It was a small eye, open and staring.

The place was famous for the feeling it gave of being watched, and there was also the strange man that Albrecht met around the cemetery and later:

(MAG023, Albrecht von Closen) He laughed at that, a sharp, guttural exclamation that surprised me, and told me that the crypt I sought was a dangerous place. I asked him what I had to fear from the dead, and he stared at me. I could not see his eyes beneath the brim of his hat, but I could still feel his gaze upon me. He laughed again, and told me, “No, sir, you have nothing to fear from the dead.” […] His wide brimmed hat was removed and he stared at me. His head was completely bald, and his eyes were missing. They were just empty sockets but they stared at me. They saw me. Believe or dismiss anything else in my letter as you wish Jonah, but I swear to you that I stood face to face with a man with no eyes and he saw me.

… Is there a tradition to entomb or to isolate Old Archivists with the documents they used during their lifetime? Because if so… Gertrude was also subjected to this tradition, it seems? (Though, unlike the others, she’s apparently dead-dead. Unless she’s haunting the tape recorders or something.)

(Jonathan back in season 1: How I’d like to spend my last days? Eeeh, idk, somewhere quiet with books around. Jonathan starting season 3: THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT–)

[friendlycybird]

Season 3 Reactions - Part 1

I’ve developed a strange association since I’ve begun listening to The Magnus Archives.  I don’t know how it started but somehow, my go-to food choice for listening is, for some reason, Cup of Noodles. Chicken Flavor, Typically.  I don’t understand how this happened, or why, but I strongly associate Cup of Noodle with TMA and I will never understand it, I’ll just go with it. So it is with a Styrofoam cup of cooking noodles set beside my computer that I begin this post.

I’m halfway through season 3, which I was told way back when I was halfway through season one would be the big Lore building season. I just didn’t anticipate how much.  I know so much more now then I did at the end of last season, and I’m fully aware I’ve only scratched the surface. So, as of right now, here’s what I think of the first half of season 3. 

81. Jon’s awareness of his personality flaws dating all the way back to childhood is, on one hand, good. On the other, I’m always wary when I hear a parental figure described as having “done their best” with a troublesome child...I’m never convinced that was a healthy upbringing. 

82. I have a lot of feelings about Martin’s unwavering faith in Jon. Well, unwavering may be a slightly strong word for it but I almost cried when he had that pleased reaction to being told people say he and Jon are close. 

83. I love Georgie. Also, I am of course, not surprised that it was a circus display, of all things, that went wrong in this statement. 

84. I am so happy that Martin’s reading statements now? I mean. I’m not happy for Martin since reading statements is obviously extremely draining and difficult but I love Martin so getting more of him is always good for me, however bad it may be for him. Also, Melanie stepping in to replace Sasha gives me some...mixed feelings. I really like Melanie and I’m glad to have her on board but this...this kinda makes it real, you know? I think this is when that last bit of hope I was still stupidly clinging to, even after Leitner stated point-blank that Sasha was dead, finally died as well. Sasha’s well and truly gone and has been since season one.  It’s Melanie’s turn. 

85. I’ve heard this rhyme before. Taking it to its logical conclusion like this was deeply unsettling. 

86. This episode was a reminder exactly why I didn’t use to listen to TMA at night. I’ve become a lot more flexible on the subject, and yes, I regret it. I fully intended to sleep with the lights on after I listened to this episode. My partner needed it off so she could get to sleep though so I gave in and settled for just not being alone. 

87. I’ve listened to... thirteen episodes after this one. Thirteen. When I listened to this episode, Gertrude’s closing comments were...largely nonsensical to me. All I knew was that something was that she’d been injured somehow, and that this statement suggested an unexpected alliance between avatars and a rushed timeline for The Unknowing. Already a lot of information.  I just went back and read the transcript of her closing statement and...there’s so much here. The connection between Gertrude and Jude Perry was one I picked up on a couple episodes later.  Looking at this now, it seems like a pretty clear who’s-who of the biggest players currently on the board. 

88. I love Martin and I genuinely feel so bad for him with all this.  Recording statements is hard and change is harder and everyone expecting him to know things. 

89. It’s not often anymore I hear a piece of media and have a bone-deep jealousy of the performer. Jude Perry is a character I want to play.  Her dialogue, her *statement*, her power, her...god. She’s just. She might be my favorite antagonist. 

90. Poor Tim. He tried to leave, he actually tried to just pack up and go, and it almost killed him. He hates this place with everything in him and hates himself for working there but he’s not ready to die just to stop. 

91. I can not tell you how taken aback I was by the fact that the first line we hear from Mike Crew is “You’re sure I can’t get you a cup of tea?” The fact that it seems all he really wants is to be left alone with his powers makes him...I can’t properly say sympathetic. Not after episode 75 but close enough that I’m a little sad Daisy killed him.

92. I was...genuinely prepared to come out of this hating Elias. God knows everyone who was in that room did. I don’t though.  Elias comes off to me as nothing so much as the tutor who’s finished his masters thesis on a subject and is sitting down with a first-year undergrad in that subject and trying to explain that yes, I absoloutly could tell you exactly how all of this works but if you don’t learn it for yourself you’ll never pass your tests.  Except, with the stakes turned up to 11. I think about Elias a lot. I don’t...I’m not as attached to him as I am to the others, to everyone else who was in that room...but I like him. He’s...interesting. 

93. Admiral is a good kitty, comforting Jon like that at the beginning. But the exchange toward the end I will never be over is “I don’t want to talk about it.” “Tough.” “Look, I’m moving out anyway, so just...just forget it. I’m out of your life. Alright?” “No.”  - Just. Georgie’s absolute refusal to take Jon’s shit and insistence on actually properly *helping* him - I love her. 

94. I remember we’ve seen this philosophy before, the idea that “The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.” the idea that the present and the future are not distinct from one another. I can’t remember what episode it came up in before but also the thought that - accepting that? Accepting the...smallness? Of the universe? Of the human experience? Would just kill you where you stand or, if you survive it, stop you from ever feeling fear again? That’s...a powerful statement really. And one I’m not sure I agree with? It’ll take some time to unpack the philosophy here. 

95. Poor Martin. I say that a lot but no really, poor Martin. He’s trying so hard and it’s all just too much. For him to give up on professionalism is just sad. His exchange with Basira at the end is another look into the philosophy it seems the show is building. What do you do in the face of helplessness?  “You make the best of things.” Basira says. Of course, as interested as I am in the overall message of TMA (beyond always carry a fucking flashlight, which was the lesson I took from season 1 and now there’s one clipped to my purse) I’m even more overwhelmed by the fact that the idea of escaping himself never occurred to Martin. 

96. Feels good to get some answers about Breekon and Hope finally. Proper ties to the circus it seems, although the questions from episode 93 all still stand.  TMA is really good at it, at giving you an answer, and it’s definitely an answer you know something you didn’t - and yet, none of your actual questions have been answered. 

97. As if it wasn’t enough that the statement hit a little closer to home than the typical TMA episode as I live in Oregon, so less then 500 miles from whatever the fuck that pit was. Of course, when the statement occurred I was safely down in California but all the same, unnerving.  As if THAT WASN’T ENOUGH. Fucking. Orsinov fucked me up, guys. I was *shaking*.  I don’t know what it is but she is, as a character, well beyond terrifying. I. I don’t have words for how much she scares me. I don’t even know why. I just. Everything about her is just. Fuck. 

98. I quite enjoyed Tim pointing out the problem with the “They can never know I have to project them” bullshit that Jon is prone to. That said, I find it ironic that Tim can, in the space of a page, go from calling the Institute, and by extension the Eye, evil, to saying “ignorance isn’t going to save anyone.” - because that’s what The Eye seems to be. Just knowledge. Observing, Learning, Knowing.  It’s not...at least...I don’t know that it’s as evil as Tim thinks it is.  Ruthless, detached, inhuman, yes. Evil? I’m not at all sure of that. 

99. Another American Statement, this time about The Dust Bowl. We also get names of several more...powers. The Spiral, The Buried, The Hunt. But more then that. We find out that Michael use to be Gertrude’s Assistant!  Which. Is he like Mike? Did something change him? He always felt...older...than that? It would explain why he seems to have so much curiosity toward the archive and the archivist though...

100. and finally, an anthology of sorts, of what happens when people who don’t have The Archivist’s ability try to take statements live. Two things stand out to me about this.  The first? Martin, you absoloute sweetheart why are you trying to pay the woman? She gave you fuckall and might not even have been telling the truth.  And also... “Elias can be quite... ‘protective’ of his people.”  Like. !!!!!!! I mean.  After reading that statement, that whole speech for Jon before everyone got there back in episode 92... after all that and people like Peter Lukas still see Elias as ‘protective’  ...I..you know I think it might be true? His total lack of anger when Melanie tried to poison him and just the fact that he’s trying so hard to prepare Jon? I don’t know. It’s funny, I’m always inclined to think the best of people. With Elias though, I’m not so quick to think there might be anything genuinely good to him, but, I definitely can’t see him as evil either.