#gerry was right to try to beat him to death

[goo-goober]

JURGEN LEITNER?

STUPID IDIOT MOTHERFUCKING JURGEN LEITNER GOD DAMN FOOL BOOK COLLECTING DUST EATING RAT OLD BASTARD SHITHEAD IDIOT AVATAR OF THE WHORE BIGGEST CLOWN IN THE CIRCUS LAUGHED OUT OF TOWN COWBOY MOTHERFUCKING JURGEIN LEITNER

GO TO BED

[puckpocketed]

UPON FURTHER RESEARCH i may have found the unluckiest girl in the world, Canadiens edition. this is old news to a lot of people but its news to ME!!!!! David Reinbacher uou have been throuhg the trenches hello take my fin GET BEHIND ME

drafted in Bedards draft year but also the next 3 guys are Carlsson-Fantilli-Smith . and everyone and their mother was wondering who was gonna get Michkov. what an act to follow RIP

CAREY PRICE BLUE SCREENED WHILE CALLING OUT HIS NAME. CAN'T MAKE THIS UP!! "Bonsoir, Les Canadiens de Montreal are proud to select, David….........." HELPPPPPP???

to make things worse people sent him thousands of awful messages. AS THOUGH IT WAS HIS FAULT HE GOT DRAFTED INSTEAD OF THE OTHER KID. the messages included death threats and comparisons to hitler (he is austrian. and me. well. I am lighting them all on fire ! <3 )

so the Habs send him back to the NL to let him develop without the pressure of this accursed fucking market right. that should be fine. right.

BOOM !INJURY!!! TWO INJURIES!! im wailing... sobbing... when will it end

His team, Kloten, acquired a new GM the year before. whats the worst that could happen?

THREE DIFFERENT COACHES! AT ONE POINT THE GM IS COACHING??

Kloten were sort of average the year before but this year its flop city. 17-29-6 ahaha <3

god . their system is. not good. per this article -> "Gerry Fleming, named this summer and who was coaching at the opening of the season, is responsible for turning a fairly interesting 22-23 team into a very bad one, including making them defend man on man all over the defensive zone."

and reinbacher saw the most use of all the defensemen in rotation for yet another season. helo .

most difficult match ups. second worst team in the league. so of course he sees a regression in production from his draft year, and during what was supposed to be a season for development this is.Not Good!!!

gonna just. leave some of thee most devastating/endearing quotes from this article below:

like even the nicest fans are sort of holding their noses about him at the time. like oh. him? not an exciting pick at all, according to many. not what the Habs need, in a draft year stacked with offensive talent. not flashy. unsexy, well-rounded hockey. consensus best defenseman on draft day but that's still not good enough !!

weight of the world type beat…gotta prove you're worth that high draft pick. gotta show them they shouldn't have sent you back. they saw there was a mote of excellence in you once and surely if you try to do everything on your own they'll see it again right? <3 ahahahaha.... !

and finally their season ends and the habs reassign him to the AHL. christ alive!!!!!!

he makes his AHL debut with the Laval Rocket and does pretty well!! scores his first goal !!

here's something that made me scream. what are u doing to him, montreal...................

Anyway. the boys in Laval call him Rhino (alt spelling: Reino?) and thats ADORABLE and hes going right beside all the other dmen in my heart .tucking him in carefully!!!!

whatever the hell is goin on with him and Lane Hutson.... i love when two players are bonded cats at the shelter. cosmically fated to be each other's d-pair? hello <3

what if we were prospects and everyone thought we fit together perfectly. what then.

feeling very hinged and regular. hello. unluckiest girl in the world David Reinbacher . <3

[gerrydelano]

Hi i would. Looove to hear about this fantasy au (bonus points for gerrys fucked up origins thanks for the food)

scrambles to sit up and falls out of my desk chair in the process. Bless You, Anon. Bless You. i will limit this to the first side quest because even that is long as fuck but it Is gerry centric which means it's food for Me.

okay So. the key tenets here are:

tim is the pov character

the stokers knew sasha and martin as kids until martin moved away with his dad after his mom's passing (wild!)

danny was taken by the fey at like 18. BAD.

after two years of training and study, tim and sasha are about to set off to find him or get revenge (it's a death wish) just as martin swaggers back into town a new man (he spent a decent chunk of his money on glamors that are tantamount to HRT while traveling back to their hometown after he super left his shitty dad's house) and he elects to come with them because It's A Death Wish and he doesn't want tim to get into trouble, and also he has like... nowhere to go anyway. might as well keep adventuring, but this time with friends.

they go to a coastal city to ask adelard dekker for some advice, and he sends his apprentice along with them. hi jon!

and then once they're on their adventure........ we meet a mysterious figure.

they do a lot of little bounty hunts and side quests for money and whatever obviously and so at one point they get enlisted to find some heirloom for some guy and right as they're about to get it, oops! insert Guy In A Featureless Silver Mask Riding On A Black Dire Wolf, Who Then Swoops In And Takes The Heirloom First.

What.

they hate this guy. they can't stand this guy. they wanna beat this guy up for doing that. he was so scary though so what do you even do. they ask around town and find out he's The Black Rider™ and he has a habit of doing this shit and they should stay out of his way.

they find melanie in a tavern and jon recognizes her from their childhoods because surprise! THEY grew up together. and she's been Away for a while after she ran away with josephine, her first love, who ended up dying about a year later. she's been too ashamed to return home alone. she is begrudging about reconnecting with jon, but she does end up hugging him and crying about this. i love them. bad weather friends.

she joins their party in time to run into the Black Rider again, who once more is trying to get something before they get it.

this time they get some awkward banter out of him though so they figure there is some kind of person under there.

and the Third time they encounter him, tim tries to cut to the chase and offer an olive branch of friendship, only for the black rider to attack them with his big scary halberd and it's like DUDE! WHAT THE FUCK!!!!

the fight is pretty intense but they do outnumber him, so tim gets him on the ground with his sword under his chin and he can feel the dog breathing down his neck but she isn't biting - because the black rider has held up a hand to stop her.

tense! and kinda sexy.

they agree to lower the weapon/call off the dog on the count of three from sasha, but tim hesitates longer than the black rider does. intriguing.

he leaves and they realize he still took the bounty they were after. G-d DAMMIT!!!!

then a few weeks later they meet some guy named gerry in a dungeon and he helps them fight off some zombies or whatever and they vibe for a few days, he seems nice if not a little weird, and they get along well. he dips after a bit and it's just a standard interaction pretty much. neither here nor there.

then they're fighting a cockatrice at some point and the Black Rider comes in to help them! odd, but accepted.

oops! his mask gets knocked off.

martin, being the nice guy he is, goes to return it to him and sees his face - gasp! it's gerry! who EVER could have guessed!

after they defeat the cockatrice they really have to have a whole ass conversation about this because Seriously Dude What The Fuck.

he ends up talking to them a little bit but not much, he's cagey and now seems kind of... nervous? what gives, right.

after a bit though they offer to let him come with them because tim is like "oh my g-d. you're LONELY 😆"

and he'd be right.

but there's a lot more to it than that.

eventually he caves and tells them, "we're being watched." by who? his patron, he says, after taking his time deciding on the wording.

he's never told anyone this before. he didn't even know she couldn't Hear him too, only just found that out.

then after a little while he fucks off for a bit without an explanation, and they're like. wtf.

when he comes back to find them, he explains that he nearly stabbed tim in his sleep one day because he's not only being spied upon, but his body is able to be controlled by his patron.

they are understandably upset about this and have to put in some protective measures to prevent that from happening again. he's no longer allowed on night watch.

but he's clearly distraught with guilt and like... they can SEE the humanity in him, they can SEE that he hates this and he needs help.

martin is a Redemption paladin by now and he wants to help him really badly.

tim needs... some time.

jon suggests they put a blindfold on him now and then to help him feel more at ease talking about things without fear of being spied on and it helps sometimes.

they travel for like 9 months before gerry trusts tim enough to show him what's really going on, while they're bathing in a lake after a battle that left them covered in blood.

he moves his hair aside to show tim a sigil branded on his back.

mary did that to him when he was 12.

so, basically, this guy hasn't had a shred of bodily autonomy or privacy in half his life. it's disgusting honestly like literally if you think for two seconds about the logistics of this it just gets more and more upsetting. bad!!!!

so they've already wanted to break his curse but it's just. tim can't stand this knowledge. he still doesn't know it's his mother yet, though. that stays on lock.

the group goes on to meet with mikaele salesa for some help, and gerry refuses to go anywhere near him. fucks off again with no explanation.

but they take the opportunity to ask salesa if he knows anything about the black rider etc and he says BOY DO I KNOW HIM. HE'S WHY I HAVE SO MUCH PROTECTION AROUND MY HOUSE LOL.

gerry has stolen so much from him and killed some of his guys and it's like YIKES. but salesa Also knows about mary.

she's been collecting super powerful artifacts for ages now trying to give herself more power so she can become a lich. uh oh!

and tim, who has made a Paladin Oath with Death by now, is now assigned by HIS patron to go and kill her before her transformation takes place, because she would be defying the natural order.

so, they go find her scary tower and are intent on fighting her, only to find - gerry?

and boy does he look rough. he looks Bad right now he hasn't been having a good time while he's been gone.

mary is in the middle of her ritual and she halves her focus in order to control gerry into fighting for her and eventually the fight is looking bad enough that she switches tactics.

she has him point the knife at his own throat.

because she did spy a little bit of the tiny intimate moments between gerry and tim, try as gerry might have to keep his eyes averted or up at the sky or just anywhere But tim, and she knows the group has come to care about him. so, clearly this is a better threat.

sasha calls her bluff BIGTIME and says hell no are you gonna kill him, you put too much work into him, he's your only heir, you need him, you'd never go that far, blablabla.

and that much is actually true. but it looks pretty close when she actually has him break skin a little bit.

tim is very upset at sasha for potentially making it worse lol But

it does work

they manage to kill her and free gerry and it's a very complicated moment because like... dude that's his mom. she's all he's ever known, save the wolf she "got" for him when he was a kid that is now his closest companion, and the dryad who guards the forest outside (hi tazia!)

so it takes gerry and tim a while to like. recover from that. but they do.

meanwhile, before they leave mary's tower, they totally pilfer her magical objects and jon finds a peculiar glass orb... that looks like it's got spider webbing inside it.

and that's all i'll say for now! obviously this is the Side Quest i am most invested in, but the plot of this filled 15 pages of a timeline and it goes on until gerrytim die in their 70s lmao so like. Big Big AU. it takes like 5 years after this all happens to find danny and That is a huge mess, too. boy howdy!!!!

now i realize i can't surprise anyone with this plot if i did write it but like. chances of that are slim. this is still so niche. jdhdjdhfk. gtcu brand classes, not canon based at all.

[strangesmallbard]

anyway. wrote a succession postscript scene that’s like, many years down the line after gerri passes away. roman and shiv are at her funeral.

[INT SCENE]

ROMAN: fuck it, this is stupid. who the fuck—i don’t even know—like who the fuck are they? i’ve never fucking seen them in my life! fuck

SHIV: that’s…gerri’s oldest daughter. [beat] and her husband

ROMAN: [squints] Huh. gerri’s…daughter….daughter daughter daughter…

SHIV: [ignoring him, checking phone, looking for someone]

ROMAN: [still squinting] i thought her daughters like, fucked off to portland for a pair of twincestual antifa eunuchs. or whatever.

SHIV: it’s her funeral, rome.

ROMAN: okay, but when mummy went over the rainbow, you literally Zoomed into—what are you looking for, what?

SHIV: nothing, none of your business.

ROMAN: uh huh

[beat. they stare at each other. he grabs her phone and runs.]

SHIV: i’m serious—hey! give back my—

ROMAN: [scampering away, scrolling, shiv following and reaching] ooooooh shivvy’s cucking our stepfather again~ did you finally try pussy, like i told you? i do hear great things about pussy

SHIV: oh go finger gerri’s daughter in the viewing room already instead of / prying

ROMAN: oh ho ho a location pin! is his name…wait, is his name actually kendall??? [beat, wrinkles nose] yucky

SHIV: [holds out phone expectedly, waits for him to get it, finally]

ROMAN: [gets it] oh. wow.

SHIV: [self consciously] uh huh.

ROMAN: wow. i didn’t…i mean, when’s the last time you saw—

SHIV: lottie’s birthday.

ROMAN: that’s not so—

SHIV: her tenth. in paris.

ROMAN: right. [pause]. tom’s daughter has shitfuck taste, shiv. france? in november?

SHIV: [grabs the phone back] it’s not—it’s not a thing. don’t make it a thing. we just—there’s some paperwork leftover, you know. there’s always paperwork fucking leftover and i want to get it over with. shut up.

ROMAN: [slowly smiling] shivvy and kendall sitting in a tree—

SHIV: [pushes his face, trying not to smile]

ROMAN: s-i-g-n-i-n-g. please tell me it’s kerry’s lawsuit oh pleaseeee

SHIV: kerry? fuck no, we buried that in 2025. shes in like, idaho, running a nonprofit for kids with eating disorders.

ROMAN: yummy

SHIV: it’s just…..paperwork. okay? it’s civil. we’re having brunch around the corner and it’s like—i’m paying. it’s all good.

(beat)

ROMAN: [suddenly sincere] i mean do you want…i could be there to…

SHIV: no no it’s good, i’m good. i mean it’s not like i’m meeting—dad. you know.

ROMAN: …obviously, like—i mean i told con we should get security for the death mahal because like, logan roy toes are going for 5mil on ebay right now.

SHIV: [morbid fascination, isn’t even gonna ask how he knows this information) how much would the skull go for?

ROMAN: [defensive suddenly] why the fuck would i know? look i can be a human buffer. a little romey spongecake to absorb all your icky little—the nuclear kenshiv radiation. you know i’ll do that.

SHIV: [sincerely] thanks, roman. but i’m fine. i have my papers, i have access to sophie’s instagram in case he like, gets mopey about her memoir substack again. [beat]. it’ll be good to see him.

ROMAN: yeah. it’ll be—yeah.

[beat. shiv is texting back]

ROMAN: right. well. i’m going to fuck gerri’s daughter, now. very respectfully in a hotel room, thank you. tell me how it goes?

SHIV: i’m sure he’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

ROMAN: [wincing, but so sad] yeahh maybe. but you know, you….your perspective is valuable….to me. feminism! in gerri’s honor.

SHIV: uh huh. yeah.

[beat. no one moves.]

SHIV: [kinda mad] i’ll be fine, roman. jesus i’m not—i don’t need a mommy, okay?

ROMAN: yep, sure. feminism! [beat] well…if you whack kenny at least facetime me.

SHIV: oh no. sophie has first dibs.

ROMAN: [grimaces in a proud way. drifting to the viewing room, where people are gathering]. love it. the youth and their patricide. very cool.…. very very cool….very…refreshing.

SHIV: go see her, roman.

ROMAN: yeah. yeah maybe. yeah. maybe? i mean we did—we’ve talked since—but. maybe. yeah. maybe.

[roman looks back at shiv, but she’s already started walking towards emily, gerri’s daughter, and her husband. she shakes their hands politely. he watches her give very sincere condolences. mocks her under his breath, half heartedly. his eyes are very spooked rabbit on the overpass]

[his phone vibrates. message from kendall says: it’s bitch o’clock in kenny town baby bro 🙏 send your thoughts and prayers 🙏🙏 btw give my condolences to gerri’s family. she was a real one. i know you know.]

[roman types back: LOL]

[ripclaudia]

Not to have my delusional hat on but before this episode i really couldn't see roman turning to gerri after the funeral and her letting him bc like, she hated his guts and rightly so, but this episode after seeing what a state he was in and seeing how she both looked away bc it lade her feel something and then defended his crying to the karl, i think if she saw him after the funeral she would try to help him maybe??

i was of the opinion that she'd help him even before this episode but now? if she sees him she will absolutely help him. throughout the episode it was pretty clear that she was worried about roman and it was very much highlighted right before roman went to the streets - her looking after him and defending him when karl mocked his crying. yeah, their relationship isn't quite what it used to be, but we've seen so many moments where their mutual understanding has showed even on this season. we know that gerri cares about roman and even though roman has been an absolute bastard to her, it's literally only been what, a week? and though i think that gerri is smart enough to realize that roman has been affected by logan's death, i feel like the very public breakdown must have made it even clearer to her too. the way j played gerri in this episode really makes me think there could still be room for the ups we were promised, and i would love to see them happen in the form of gerri seeing roman right after he got beat up in the protests.

[katatonicimpression]

Monet/pietro

eh I was gonna cop out of answering this and then i just kind of kept going

right, so

He's her best official love interest since ev.

Overall I am positive but again i just kind of kept going...

Duggan's writing of it was straightforwardly bad sorry

Orlando so far has been better, even if it's just little moments (thus marking the third? Fourth? Fifth? time that he's taken over a storyline from gerry and done it better lol)

A fair amount of the fandom stuff on it has pissed me off*

I really don't see them lasting as a long term relationship for two reasons:

Pietro doesn't work in x-men books in the long term, and likewise I would be so mad if she got dragged away to be in his stuff/avengers stuff. It's very ororo/t'challa in that way. Some characters have arenas they need to operate in, and putting them together hurts their writing.

Secondly, maybe this is entirely a me thing but I just don't see them as being super in love or really having anything to talk to each other about. There's being different in a fun, opposites attract, way and then there's being different in a "I can't imagine these people chatting" kind of way. But again, that might just be the fact I don't actively ship it.

They have a potentially really interesting power dynamic. Like, he's older (not inappropriately so, but still significantly) and has way more experience with relationships specifically. But of course, she's rich. She's absurdly wealth and very posh, whereas he's from an improverished and incredibly marginalised background. They're staying in flats and hotel rooms that she's paying for. But of course she is marginalised on several axes as well, despite her obvious privilige. There's some interesting room for push and pull there. I've not seen anyone explore it.

*So, fandom-wise the first thing to say is connected to both duggan and point 8. I feel very uncomfortable with anything that portrays M as sexually aggressive and/or hypersexualises her in general. The former is all over uncanny avengers, and the latter is a substantial part of x-factor and uncanny xmen 2016. There's a fine line here, there's nuance. Monet is a sexy character, but she's sexy in a gorgeous supermodel kind of way - sometimes the portrayal veers very clearly into caricature, or is starkly different from how the white women are portrayed in the same series.

While I haven't seen a huge amount of this with the pietro thing, what I have seen is a lot of what duggan wrote - this really forceful, aggressive sexuality, lots of domtop characterisation and the like. And, sorry, no. Just because there are moments of very bad writing that have portrayed her like that in canon does not mean that it's actually in character. You would have thought that pietro fans would be more understanding of this, given how much bullshit writing he's gotten over the years.

Second thing, I keep seeing these people say "look at her taste in men" and pointing at sabretooth and guido and can you please shut the fuck up. Guido constantly berated her then beat her to death. She never liked him and what the fuck is wrong with you. And the sabretooth thing is out of character and part of another racist trend in her writing where she is portrayed as less vulnerable and specifcally less sexually vulnerable than her white peers. They wouldn't have written that storyline with husk. Hell, they wouldn't have even given it to jean.

There is no reason to think that M is resilient and wordly when it comes to sex and relationships, in fact she has very limited experience and it's almost all awful.

Which leads to the third point, I saw somebody (and I'm really not trying to call them out but urgh) argue that people bringing up the age gap between her and pietro are just coddling her because she's "autistic-coded" and are motivated by racial bias against pietro and that it's no big deal actually.

So, right... Easy one first: I think that the ship is good and fun and also think the age gap is important and should be remembered. I don't think it's no big deal, it is a big deal but not in a way that counts against it. It's a big deal in the sense that it makes it interesting.

Next, idk maybe there are people who are overly protective of Monet because she's autistic, but the majority of the fandom doesn't even know that about her. In fact, the majority of fandom treatment of monet is a) racist and b) whatever the opposite of coddling is. Careless?

When people are really protective of Monet it is almost always in defense of the long history of racist treatment by canon writers and, yes, the fandom. Again, this is something you would have thought a pietro fan would empathise with.

People are protective of Monet because she is a Black muslim woman in a world where both canon and fanon mistreat her for it.

And again, as i've said like a million times, I like the pairing. I think it's fine. If people would stop saying dumb things then I wouldn't have anything negative to say. It's just.. you know...

[ollieofthebeholder]

to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

Read from the beginning on Tumblr || AO3 || My Website

Chapter 98: February 2018

Martin had made a good effort to be cheerful for Christmas, but he’d been badly affected by his mother’s death and the statement he’d taken from her, and really none of them had tried all that hard to snap it out of him. Jon hadn’t known what to do other than be there for him, and while Martin insisted that was enough, Jon still felt like he should have done more. Melanie, too, had been upset by it, or at least Jon assumed that was what was upsetting her. It was hard to tell with Melanie these days. But it didn’t take much of a stretch of the imagination to conclude that the revelation that Liliana Blackwood-King had orchestrated Roger King’s dementia in order to manipulate their children had not gone over well with her. Gerry’s attitude towards the whole thing was hard to read, but Gerry wasn’t one to wear his heart on his sleeve.

Unlike the previous year, they hadn’t spent New Year’s Eve all together; Sasha had somehow managed to convince Melanie to go see the fireworks with her, Tim and Gerry had gone off on some mysterious date of their own—the nature of which they still hadn’t disclosed to the others, and none of them had asked—and Jon and Martin had gone back to their flat and had a quiet night in. Actually, it had been pretty nice, listening to old records and dancing in the kitchen while they made dinner, and they had kissed right at midnight while the mayor’s fireworks exploded on the horizon. Martin hadn’t even had any nightmares that night, or so he said. For a moment, Jon had sincerely hoped, even believed, that the new year would mean a fresh start, that things would start getting better for them.

He still believed it, but he had also bowed to the inevitable and made a list of all the different “new years” marked by the different cultures around the world. Surely one of them would turn the page.

The Christmas decorations had gone down on the second of February, but Tim hadn’t even mentioned Valentine’s Day, much to Jon’s relief. He had to admit he’d been a bit jumpy as the anniversary of that day—the day the Not-Rosie had attacked, the day Jurgen Leitner had been brutally and extensively murdered with a pipe in what had then been his office, the day he’d been forced to go on the run alone—got closer. Martin had tried very hard to give him the day off, but Jon had refused to spend the day without Martin, and in the end Martin had closed the Archives down entirely and told everyone to take it off.

After all, it wasn’t like they could get fired for it.

Jon very much wished he could say he and Martin had come in smiling, holding hands, and refreshed from their day off. Or, for that matter, that any of them had. But neither Jon nor Martin had slept well—Jon because he kept waking up what seemed like every few minutes to reassure himself Martin was still there, Martin because he had evidently had serious nightmares—and it was apparent from the dark circles under Sasha’s eyes when they arrived that she hadn’t either. Although that could have been because she was up earlier than usual, since she’d actually beat them to the Institute.

“Sasha. You’re…early,” Jon said, trying and failing not to let his surprise show.

Martin managed a small smile somewhere between amused and sympathetic. “Melanie keep you up all night?”

“In a sense. We had a fight,” Sasha confessed. “Really nasty one, I don’t even know what started it, and it didn’t matter what I said, she just kept getting angrier and angrier. It finally ended in her storming out and slamming the door so hard she actually woke Nod up out of a sound sleep.” She shrugged out of her cardigan, and Jon winced at the claw marks on her shoulder. “Cat. Not Melanie…anyway, I figured I’d just give her some space and she’d come back eventually, but then I realized it was dark out and she never had. I called her, but then I realized I could hear the phone. She left it behind.”

Jon’s heart kicked into high gear. Martin stared at Sasha, all the color draining out of his face. “Did she ever come back?”

“No. I came early hoping she’d be here, but…”

“Jesus, Sasha, why didn’t you call me?” Martin reached for his pocket, then stopped as it evidently occurred to him that wouldn’t help. “Anything could have happened to her, not just the Fourteen.”

“I—” Sasha dropped her gaze, looking shamefaced, her cheeks flushing. “I don’t know. I should have, but…I just, I wanted to fix whatever I did wrong before I started calling you into it. I guess I thought that would just make her angrier.”

Martin sighed and rubbed his hand over his face. “You’re probably not wrong, but she’s got to realize she can’t do this. Not now. Especially not now.”

Jon tried to think where he would have gone if he and Martin had had a fight like that. Not far, truthfully, because even at his angriest he didn’t think he could walk away for very long, but depending on how bad the fight was he might have broken down and bought a pack of cigarettes. Melanie hadn’t smoked as long as he had, but she still might have done something else destructive that she’d theoretically given up. But to be gone all night…

“Can you—” Sasha hesitated, then gestured vaguely at Martin’s eyes.

“Can, yeah, no problem.” Martin’s voice took on a slight edge. “Honestly, these days it’s stopping myself from doing something like that that’s the challenge. Should, absolutely not. It’s not a habit I really need to be getting into.”

“But if she’s in danger…Martin, please, you know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.” Sasha clasped her hands in front of her and looked up at Martin desperately. “Not when it’s something like this. I’ll take the blame if she gets mad about it.”

“It’s not Melanie I’m worried about being mad, but…fine. Fine, I’ll do it.”

Jon held up a hand. “I’m sorry, what are we talking about?”

Martin sighed. “Sasha is asking if I can use the Eye to Know where Melanie is and if she’s okay.”

A chill ran up Jon’s spine. “That…sounds like a very bad idea. Martin, you’re already so tightly bound in it—”

“I know, Jon. But Sasha’s right.” Martin ran a hand through his hair. “Melanie’s been missing for more than twelve hours, and she’s…she’s vulnerable right now. I won’t look long. Just a quick peek.”

Jon considered protesting further, but he knew it was useless if Martin had made up his mind. Anyway, he had to admit that he was worried, too, and if he had the power to Know where someone was like that, he’d be using it about now. “I’ll go find you a statement, then. You’re going to need one when you’re done.”

Martin gave him a crooked smile and bent down to kiss him quickly. “Thank you.”

As Jon headed deeper into the Archives, scanning the haphazard files on the shelves for something promising, he wondered when this had all become…maybe not normal, but expected. Just facts of life, just how things were. Gerry had come back from the dead and subsisted on souls. Martin could read minds and pull information from the ether like some kind of walking search engine. They’d traded in a boss who could plant memories in their heads and watch them without the aid of CCTV for a boss whom very few people had seen in person but could apparently make people who displeased him disappear in a rather permanent fashion. There was a makeshift bunker, complete with camp stove, down in the tunnels, which still held the Not-Them, presumably. Somewhere along the line, it had become just another day at the office. And something inside Jon mourned the fact that the best way he could think of to comfort his boyfriend was with a written record of someone else’s fear rather than a cup of tea.

The sound of commotion from the front of the Archives made every instinct Jon had fire simultaneously. Abandoning the statements, he bolted back towards the main area and skidded to a halt, gasping in relief—at least momentarily. Melanie was there, looking very much as though she had spent the night on the streets, but alive. She was also nearly purple with rage, her hands balled into tight fists as she shouted up at Martin. Sasha stood a few steps away, hands over her mouth and eyes wide.

“—stay out of it!” she bellowed. “You have no fucking right—”

“Melanie, I didn’t, I was only going to—” Martin began.

Melanie steamrolled right over him. “Spooky eldritch powers don’t give you the fucking right to just go in people’s heads whenever you want!”

“I didn’t.” Martin looked somewhere between anxious and angry. It was clear that he was trying to be rational and calm, but Melanie was pushing him to his limits. “You just vanished, you didn’t have your phone—”

“I’m a grown-ass fucking adult, and I don’t need you checking up on me every five minutes,” Melanie snarled, shoving at Martin and actually knocking him back a step.

Somehow, Martin kept his cool. “Melanie, it’s not safe—”

“Fuck you!” Melanie swung a fist and struck Martin in the stomach. He gave a soft grunt of pain and doubled over.

“Hey, hey, Jesus!” Jon rushed over to the group. Melanie whirled on him, and he took a step back on instinct. From the gleam in her eye, she liked that, liked that she’d scared him, which…wasn’t good. He held up his hands in supplication. “Melanie, come on, this isn’t like you.”

“Oh? What isn’t like me?” Melanie tensed her whole body again. “Choose your words carefully, Sims.”

Sims. Not Jon. She hadn’t called him that in a year and a half. Jon swallowed the sudden lump of emotion and tried to speak softly. “You know what I mean. Not you being angry. I know you well enough to know that’s your default state of being, like mine is being paranoid. But you never treat Martin like this, and frankly I don’t like it.”

“I bet you don’t.” Melanie sneered at him. Martin straightened and bristled, obviously as upset at Melanie talking to Jon like that as he was about her talking to Martin like that.

Jon shook his head, very quickly. Martin didn’t need to…he could handle this. He could. “What’s got into you?”

“What’s got into me?” Melanie repeated incredulously. She slammed her hand on the desk, making Jon flinch. “There’s nothing in me that I didn’t bloody well want there.”

Something cold trickled down Jon’s spine, and from the way Martin’s face shifted, he’d evidently had the same thought. He opened his mouth to say something, but Martin beat him to it. “Melanie, your leg. Is it—”

“Don’t you dare!” Melanie spun back around towards Martin and screamed in his face. “Don’t you fucking force me to answer your questions! You have no right! You have no right!”

“I’m not—” Martin began.

Jon jumped in before Martin could make things any worse. “Is your leg still hurting? Are you sure they—”

“And don’t you start either!” Melanie yelled, shoving Jon back. He stumbled and cracked his hip rather painfully against the desk. “You and your goddamn fucking compulsion, I don’t—”

“Melanie, stop,” Martin said forcefully.

There was no static in the word. It was just an order—from a boss, from an older brother, from a friend who recognized the destructive path currently being traversed and was desperate to save her from heading any further along it. Melanie didn’t seem to care. “Don’t tell me what to do!”

“Melanie, please, we’re—” Martin started.

“It’s bad enough that I’m trapped here, but—” Melanie ranted.

“If there’s still a—” Jon tried.

“—trying to help you—”

“—have a minute to myself—”

“—doctors couldn’t see—”

“—listen to me for one second—”

“—all calm down and—”

“—fucking irresponsible—”

“I’ll kill you!” Melanie screamed, lunging at Martin.

“Melanie, no, stop!” Jon leaped for Melanie, his heart in his throat.

Too late. The blade in her hand—a blade she hadn’t had mere seconds before, a blade Jon hadn’t noticed her holding until it was far, far too late—flashed as she plunged it into Martin’s shoulder, then withdrew it in the same swift motion. Martin cried out in pain, reeling back with a hand pressed to his chest, far too close to his heart for Jon’s liking.

There was clang as the knife dropped from Melanie’s suddenly nerveless fingers. To her credit, she looked absolutely stunned that she’d done that, all the color gone from her face. There was a heartbeat of silence as they stared at one another, wide-eyed.

Suddenly, Sasha loomed up behind Melanie, her own face pale. She threw one arm around Melanie’s chest and clapped a tea-towel over her mouth and nose with the other. Melanie stiffened for a second, then started to fight.

“Jon, help me!” Sasha shouted. “I can’t hold her on my own!”

Not sure what else to do, Jon lunged forward and grabbed Melanie’s wrists. She tried to knee him in the balls; somehow he managed to clamp onto her leg with his own knees and keep it down. Her attempt to kick him, or Sasha, with the other leg almost sent all three of them to the ground, but they just held on as she struggled.

“Sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Sasha repeated, over and over. Jon was sure they were going to lose the battle any second, but slowly, Melanie’s struggles grew less and less, until she finally sagged against Sasha, boneless and unconscious, leaving the rest of them silent and worn out.

“What,” Jon panted, “the fuck just happened?”

“Chloroform,” Sasha said miserably. “I soaked the towel in enough to knock her out without doing too much permanent damage. Hopefully.”

“Why do you just happen to have chloroform lying around in sufficient quantities to knock her out safely?” Martin asked, sounding    very much as if he were doing so through clenched teeth.

“I recommend not asking questions you don’t want the answers to.” Sasha shifted her grip on Melanie. “Someone help me get her lying down.”

“Can someone please get me up to speed here?” Jon asked, not for the first time that day and not, he suspected, for the last.

Martin came over and took Melanie’s legs from Jon, gingerly, then helped Sasha lay her on the floor. “You figured it out, too. I could see it in your eyes. The ghost’s bullet is still in her leg, infecting her with the Slaughter, and it’s only getting worse. We’ve got to get it out.”

Jon blinked. “How?”

Martin looked up at Jon and raised an eyebrow. “How do you think?”

Jon’s stomach flipped as he realized what Martin was implying. “Oh. Will—how long to we have?”

“Until she wakes up, which won’t be long. Chloroform doesn’t last forever.” Martin took a deep breath. “Someone get me a pair of scissors.”

“You’re going to do this with scissors?” Jon said, horrified.

Unexpectedly, the corners of Martin’s mouth twitched. “For the trouser leg, Jon. There’s a scalpel in the first aid kit.”

“I feel like that’s not exactly standard for a first aid kit,” Jon muttered, but he hurried over to the Archivist’s office to fetch a pair of scissors.

By the time he got back, Sasha had Melanie’s head in her lap and was holding her shoulders down, while Martin had spread the chloroform-soaked towel—probably not the cleanest in the world, but Jon guessed it was mostly for the blood—under the leg Melanie was always running. Jon tapped him on the shoulder with the handle of the scissors. Martin took them and nodded his thanks. “Do me one more favor?”

Jon sat on Melanie’s ankle without being asked. Martin smiled at him again, then began cutting away the pant leg. That done, he set the scissors aside, took a deep breath, and Looked. Soft static began gathering, then faded, taking what little color was left in Martin’s face with it. “Jesus.”

“Bad?” Jon asked.

“It’s poisoning her whole system. She’s not gone full avatar yet, but if I can’t get this out…God, I should have Looked at her ages ago.” Martin shook his head and picked up a small packet, then peeled the paper back to reveal a scalpel that was either brand new or had been cunningly replaced. “Right. Let’s do this.”

It was…messier than Jon would have liked, and he had to work hard not to be sick, but he made himself watch as Martin cut a surprisingly neat incision in Melanie’s leg, then dug into it with a pair of forceps. Melanie shifted and groaned, and Jon scanned her face anxiously. “She’s still awake?”

“No.” Surprisingly, it was Sasha who answered, not Martin. “People always used to think that, but it’s not true. She’s just restless from the anesthesia, but she’s asleep and can’t feel anything. Uh…maybe hurry, though?”

“I’m going as fast as I safely can,” Martin assured her without looking up.

There was an unpleasant wet squelching sound, and then Martin withdrew the forceps, seemingly empty…but when he opened them over the metal tray next to him, something landed with a clatter.

“Did you get it?” Sasha asked, her voice shaking a little.

“Yeah.” Martin exhaled slowly and laid the forceps gently in the tray next to the scalpel and, Jon assumed, the ghost bullet. “Let me close her up, and then you can take her back to the cot in Document Storage until she wakes up.”

“And then I want to look at your shoulder,” Jon said, unable to stop the anxiety from coloring his own voice.

Something infinitely sad flickered through Martin’s eyes for a moment, but he didn’t say anything, just concentrated on applying what seemed like an entire box of butterfly bandages to the gash he’d made in Melanie’s thigh. Finally, he was done, and he nodded to Jon to get off Melanie’s leg. The second he did, Sasha scooped her into her arms without a word and staggered towards Document Storage. Jon almost offered to help her, but one look at her face and he knew that wasn’t his place.

“Come here,” he said instead, turning to Martin. “Into your office. Let me see what she did to you.”

Martin gave him a sad smile, but got to his feet and headed for the Archivist’s office. Jon assumed it was the your office bit; even after ten months, he knew Martin still felt guilty about that. He swept up the parts of the first aid kit that hadn’t been used for impromptu surgery and followed him.

Once inside, Martin went without being told to the far back corner, where there was a sturdy floor lamp, and sat slowly down on the floor. He pulled off his torn and bloodied jumper, then simply tugged at the hole in the shirt underneath to make it bigger. Jon grabbed an alcohol wipe out of the first aid kit, hurried over, knelt next to Martin, and began wiping off the blood to see how bad the cut was.

Only to discover that it had already closed itself over, leaving only a shiny pink ridge about an inch and a half wide.

Jon sat back on his heels and stared at it. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Martin said quietly. “Same thing happened with Trevor stabbing me, kind of. Took a bit longer for that to stop bleeding, but, well, I wasn’t…”

“An Avatar?”

“I was going to say ‘Marked by the End’, but yeah, that, too.” Martin sighed and reached for Jon’s hand, then stopped, like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to. “Killing me won’t be that easy. Melanie wasn’t far enough along for it to be that simple.”

Jon shuddered. “She was so angry…”

“Yes. But there was enough of her left that didn’t mean it when she said she’d kill me that she couldn’t.”

He still wasn’t touching. Jon grabbed his hands and laced their fingers together, refusing to let go, then leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss to the spot. It felt hot to the touch. “I wouldn’t have let her. You know that, right?”

“I know.” Martin sighed and wrapped his arms around Jon. Jon snuggled against him and rested his ear against Martin’s chest just below the new scar. The steady thudding of his heartbeat reassured Jon in a way few other things could right about then.

The sound of a door opening somewhere behind him reminded Jon that Tim hadn’t arrived yet. He sighed and started to turn. “You missed quite a morning. Late night or—”

Martin suddenly stiffened and shot to his feet, dragging Jon upright with him and simultaneously pushing him back. Jon was about to demand to know what the hell was going on when he, too, turned and caught sight of the figure standing just a few feet away, far too close for comfort—one of the two men who had menaced them outside the House of Wax.

Only one?

“Come to make a delivery, have you?” Martin’s voice was low and dangerous.

“Maybe,” the figure—Breekon or Hope, Jon wasn’t sure—said. “Yeah. That’s right. Just here to deliver a—package.”

“Why?” Martin’s voice crackled with compulsion.

Unlike when Jon had tried, the Stranger answered immediately. “Realized that I’m not tied to it anymore.” He—it—knocked twice on a wooden box next to him, and Jon felt what little courage he possessed desert him as he realized it was the coffin—the Buried. “Not on my own. Thought you could have it. Pay your respects, like.”

“Our respects?” Jon asked, bewildered, his voice shaking.

Martin didn’t answer, or move from in front of Jon. He only stared down the man in front of them. “Why are you here?”

“Dunno.” The man actually seemed bewildered, maybe a little lost. “’S not right on my own. Not right. No point in doing it on my own. Dunno what happens now.” He tilted his head to one side. “Thought I might kill you. Missed my chance. Thought I might just deliver something. So…here’s a coffin. In case you want to join your friend.”

Horror seized Jon. Oh, God, Tim. Tim was in there, that was why he was late…

He tried to step forward, only to be barred by Martin’s arm. A sudden surge of anger struck him—not at Martin, but at the thing in front of him—and he snarled, “Get out.”

The wrong kind of static crackled. The figure in front of them only grinned nastily, and there was a whooshing, rushing noise that filled the air as it said, “Make me.”

What do you think I was trying to do? Jon wanted to scream, but the anger was gone, replaced only by horror and terror in equal measures. This thing was after him, after Martin, it was so close, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide…

But there was Martin, who continued to stand in front of him, and the whooshing noise died instantly as he said, simply, “Stop.”

Static rose, not soft and gentle but heavy and oppressive, like a sudden torrential downpour on a summer afternoon. The weight of it almost bore Jon physically to the floor, and he saw the thing in front of them reel back from it.

“What are you—stop it,” it protested. “Stop it!”

Martin didn’t so much as flinch. “No.”

Jon watched, fascinated, as the thing before them cringed, literally shrank before Martin’s gaze. “Enough! Stop looking at me!” it howled. Suddenly seeming unable to take any more, it turned and fled across the Archives. A door slammed shut in the distance.

The static died that fast, and Martin sagged slightly, panting for breath.

The world rushed back in. Jon became aware of the situation—the bloody towel, the used scalpel, the small invasion of their workspace, their sanctum. The coffin in the middle of the floor of the Archivist’s office.

The coffin.

Suddenly alive, Jon grabbed Martin’s arm and tugged him out of the office. Martin shook off whatever stupor he was in and followed, and the two of them practically dragged one another to the trapdoor by unspoken agreement, tumbling pell-mell down the steps. They wound up in the small room where they’d spoken after Jon’s return to the Institute after Leitner’s murder.

There was no light. They didn’t need it. They simply collapsed onto the floor, clinging to one another tightly.

Jon trembled head to toe. The adrenaline had worn off, and he was suddenly aware that the Buried, the Fear Martin was most afraid of, was in the middle of the Archives. Tim was trapped in it, and oh, God, what were they going to tell Gerry…and Sasha, she’d be so upset…but what if it took Martin too…

“Tim—” he choked out, unable to say anything more.

“Wh—oh, Christ, we’re going to have to get out there before he gets in,” Martin murmured. “He’s, I don’t think he’ll open the coffin, but—”

Jon looked up at Martin, or at least in the direction of the vague black shape that was Martin, wide-eyed. “He’s…not already…I-I thought that was what…”

“No, Jon, it’s Daisy,” Martin said gently. He kissed Jon’s forehead and tucked his chin over the top of his head. “They…fed her to it. Or—it did. After she killed the other one. She’s in there, and she’s alive.”

“You’re—you’re sure?”

“Yeah. Knew she was still alive before…but yeah.” Martin sighed heavily. “I got its statement. I think.”

“How are we going to get rid of it?” Jon began ticking over possibilities. “It—it can’t stay here, it’s dangerous.”

“I suppose we could put it up in Artifact Storage, but…that won’t help. I don’t know what we have to do with it. We’ll probably have to go over that with the others, and…it m-might need to wait until Melanie’s conscious, at least.”

“You can’t go near it. You—it’ll kill you, or at least it won’t let you go.”

Martin was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “I am the Archivist, Jon. It’s my job to protect you all. And if that means keeping the Buried away from any of you, so be it.”

That wasn’t happening. It wasn’t. Jon was going to have to come up with a way to get Daisy out, and get rid of the coffin, without Martin going near it. But all he said was, “But Tim’s okay? You’re sure?”

“Yeah, he texted while I was getting the first aid kit, said he’d just woke up and he was on his way. Said there was something important he needed to talk to us about.” Martin sighed again. “Can’t say that fills me with confidence.”

Jon nodded slowly. He completely agreed. “So what are we doing in the meantime?”

There was a rustle as Martin got to his feet, guiding Jon up with him. “We’re going back up to the Archives. And…I think I need a pen.”

[suttttton]

My Deer Boy

Martin hits a deer with his car. Then things get weird. (Written for @febuwhump day 1: Head Wound) (content warnings: car accidents, serious injuries, torture) ao3 link in source!

I. Jon

It isn’t safe here.

Jon can hear it, can feel it buzzing in the air around him. His heart is pounding fast, a stuttering beat of danger danger danger. He needs to get away, to flee to where he knows there’s safety and food. The ground is rumbling beneath him, a predator approaching quickly, too quickly, and he needs to run.

But he doesn’t know what the right direction to run is because he can’t see. So instead he’s just standing here, trying to blink away the sudden pain of too-bright light piercing through the twilight darkness. Blink, blink, blink, but nothing comes back into focus.

He can’t stay here. It could be upon him at any moment.

He bolts.

And then—

The air is filled with an awful shrieking.

And then—

Something pounces on Jon, colliding with him, hard and fast and big, and his feet are no longer on the ground, and it hurts.

And then

—darkness.

II. Martin

“Fuck!”

The deer comes out of nowhere, jumping in front of his car much too close for Martin to stop or swerve out of its path. He slams on the brakes, trying to avoid it, but there isn’t anything he can do.

There’s a sickening crunch, and then the car is stopped, and everything is silent, and all Martin can do is stare straight ahead, chest heaving.

Crunch.

He forces himself to get out of the car. He isn’t quite unhurt—his neck is sore from the sudden crashing halt—but he knows he got off lucky. The deer could have come through his windshield, could have maimed or even killed him. As it is, the worst damage he’ll sustain is fighting with the insurance company to get his front bumper fixed.

The deer is almost certainly dead.

Oh god.

He finds it lying in the ditch several feet away. It’s a buck, lying limply on its side, neck slightly twisted. Martin feels sick to his stomach. Why did it have to jump out in front of him? He didn’t want to be responsible for its death! It—

It’s still breathing.

His heart stutters and he takes a step closer, watching its ribcage intently. He swore he saw movement there, but it could have been a trick of the light. Maybe—

But there it is again! Rise-fall-rise. Its breathing is slow and not quite even, but it’s definitely there. He didn’t kill it.

Not yet, at least.

Before Martin can think too hard about what he’s doing, he’s picking the deer up. He tries extremely hard not to jostle it too badly as he loads it into the back of his little van. He knows the worst thing you can do for a person after a traumatic injury is move them, but he doesn’t really have another option, does he?

He gets back into the front seat, and sends thanks to whatever god might be listening when the engine sputters to life. He pulls the car back out onto the road, ignoring his sudden, horrible vision of the buck waking up and proceeding to flip out while Martin is driving. Then, as quickly and carefully as he can, he drives to Gerry and Tim’s house.

III. Gerry

Gerry is about to go to bed when he sees Martin’s car pull up in the driveway, and he opens the door before Martin can knock. He doesn’t want to risk the noise waking Tim.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. Not the most polite greeting, but it’s late and he’s tired, and Martin has shown up entirely unannounced.

“I need to talk to Tim,” Martin says.

Gerry crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows. “You realize that Tim works the dawn shift, right? He’s sleeping.”

“It’s an emergency,” Martin says. And, yeah, he does sound quite a bit… frazzled.

“What is it?”

“I hit a deer! It, it just jumped out in front of my car, and—It’s still breathing, but I think it’s really badly hurt, and I wanted to ask Tim to look at it.”

Gerry holds up his hands. “Two things. One: You realize that Tim is a people doctor, right?”

“Yes, but I figured he could at least—”

“Two,” Gerry interrupts. “Why did you put the deer in your car?”

“What else was I going to do? I don’t just happen to have a, a deer transport vehicle lying around.”

“You’re going to get a wasting disease.”

“No, I won’t,” Martin says. “Can I please talk to Tim?”

“No,” Gerry says. “You need to take this deer to—I don’t know—an animal rehab center. Tim won’t know how to treat a deer.”

“I don’t know if it will last that long,” Martin says, and he’s looking at Gerry with those wide, sad eyes.

Gerry sighs. “How about this: I know stabilize. I can stabilize the thing, and then you can find an animal doctor to fix it. Alright?”

“Okay,” Martin says. “That—that makes sense.”

Gerry pats his shoulder as he steps past him, strolling across the lawn to Martin’s car. He doesn’t wait for Martin before he pulls the back hatch open, braced for the deer to leap out at him, antlers-first.

But there isn’t a deer in Martin’s car at all.

Instead, there’s an unconscious man.

Gerry stares in shocked silence for a few moments until Martin catches up. He waits for Martin to register the man before he says, keeping his voice as calm and steady as possible, “Martin, what the hell is this?”

“I—I—I—I don’t—”

“Did you turn the deer into a human so that Tim would heal it?” Gerry asks.

“What? No! I-I would never—And even if I would, that’s very advanced transformation, so I couldn’t—”

“I didn’t think so.” Gerry’s heart is pounding now, fast. He swallows. “But if you didn’t transform it, that means it must have transformed itself, which means—”

“Fae,” Martin finishes, pale.

Gerry nods. He swallows again. “Let’s go wake Tim.”

IV. Tim

Tim decides to deal with the Fae in the master bathroom. It’s large enough for his purposes, and easy to clean. Most importantly, it’s far from the living room, where he’s instructed Martin and Gerry to stay. They won’t be able to hear much of what happens here.

He ties the Fae tightly to a chair with flexible wires of cold iron, specifically designed for this purpose. Then he examines the extent of its injuries. Broken arm. Shattered hip. Worst of all is a brain bleed that would definitely be fatal without medical intervention.

He supposes that was its plan. Jump in front of Martin’s car, obtain fatal injuries, and claim a life debt against Martin.

Anger bubbles in Tim’s chest, and he heals the worst of the brain bleed. The thing will still feel concussed when it wakes, but now it will be able to wake. Which is good, because Tim very much wants to talk to it.

It only takes a minute or so. The thing’s eyes snap open wide, and it tries to stand up, struggling for a moment against the unforgiving wires and its brutal injuries. It lets out a cry of pain before collapsing back against the chair, looking at Tim with wide eyes.

Tim knows well enough what Fae expressions of pain look like, and it isn’t the kind of vulnerable displays that humans put on. It’s just trying to manipulate him, to ply him with pity. It won’t work.

“Alright, Fae,” Tim says, making sure that it can see the iron fireplace poker he holds in his hand. “Whatever you thought you were going to do with your cute little plan is over. I healed the worst of your wounds, so Martin does not owe you a life debt. You’re going to swear to me that you will leave us alone and bring us no harm. Then you can leave.”

The Fae doesn’t respond. It looks at him, blinking like it doesn’t understand his words.

“I’m more than willing to do whatever it takes to convince you,” Tim says, and he brings the poker down hard on the Fae’s injured arm, right where he knows it will be most painful.

The Fae screams, curling up into itself as much as possible. It pants for a few moments, getting its breath back.

“I’m waiting,” Tim says, unimpressed.

“I’m not a Fae,” it says in a small voice, and Tim could almost laugh.

Instead, he hits it again, this time aiming for its ruined hip. “I’m not actually an idiot,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over its whimpering. It’s crying now, tears flowing freely down its cheeks. It truly looks a pathetic sight, looking up at him with wide, wet brown eyes.

Tim rolls his eyes. “You won’t find any sympathy with me, I’m afraid,” he says, raising the rod to strike again.

The Fae quickly says, “I won’t bother you! Please. Let me go. You won’t see me again.”

Tim smiles. “Say, ‘I swear on my essence and my position in the Fae Court that I won’t harm or otherwise bother you, Gerard Keay, or Martin Blackwood, nor will I send any other force to do so.’”

The Fae repeats the phrase in a shaky voice. It’s still crying.

When it has sworn to do them no harm, Tim cuts away its bonds. He assumes that it will teleport away as soon as possible, go lick its wounds somewhere more comfortable. Curiously, it doesn’t. It stays very still, trembling and clearly struggling to control its breathing.

Then Tim pulls away the wires, and his heart drops. There are lacerations where the wire dug into flesh, but the bubbling burns Tim had expected are nowhere to be seen.

Tim looks up sharply, meeting the thing’s eyes. This time, he really looks. He should see some kind of malice there, a hostile intelligence.

Instead, all he sees is pure, innocent terror.

“Fuck,” Tim says, backing away from the chair, from the—Man? Deer?—as if that will make it better. As if that will take back what he’s just done.

Legs shaking, Tim goes to get Martin.

V. Jon

As soon as the man leaves, Jon tries to get up, but he immediately falls to the ground in a flash of blinding, white-hot pain. He can’t walk. He certainly can’t run. All he can do is lie on the floor, curled up as much as he can.

He hurts.

He doesn’t know what’s going on. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here. He doesn’t know why he’s been interrogated, tortured. He isn’t Fae. At least, he doesn’t think he is. But he doesn’t recognize the body he’s in, hardly even recognizes the sharp, precise movements of his own mind.

His thoughts feel like static, his heart pounding a nightmare beat. He doesn’t want to be here. He wants to be free, he wants to be safe, he wants the pain to stop.

He digs his fingernails into his face, trying to ground himself. Trying to focus.

The door opens, and Jon lets out a fearful noise, pulling his arms up over his head. As if that would hide him.

“They can understand us, right?” It’s a new voice, this time. Softer.

“Yes,” the original person says.

Jon looks up. “Please let me go,” he says, and his voice trembles. The new person is bigger than the last, could probably hurt him much worse, if they wanted to. “Please, I promise I won’t bother you. I just want to leave.”

The person squats down, closer to his eye-level. “We will let you go, okay? We’re not holding you prisoner.”

Jon sobs. Even if the man is speaking honestly, Jon still can’t walk, couldn’t get out of here even if they held the door wide open. Will they be angry at him, when they realize that?

“I’m sorry we hurt you,” the person continues, their voice slow and gentle. “We thought we were defending ourselves, but that’s not an excuse. I don’t expect you to trust us after that, but I promise we just want to help you.”

“Why am I here?” Jon asks.

The man lets out a breath. “I—ah—I accidentally hit you with my car. You were very badly injured, but Tim is a healer, so I brought you here. We just—I wasn’t expecting you to turn into a human—so—”

Jon absorbs this, piecing it together with his memories of bright lights and loud, dangerous noise. It’s hard to think, with how much he’s aching, but it makes sense, almost. It settles his nerves, a bit, to know that this was all just an accident.

“Do you know how that happened? How you turned into a person?”

Jon shakes his head, preparing to flinch away if the person tries to strike out.

But they just smile reassuringly. “It’s alright. It was probably just a random bit of wild magic. Bad luck.”

Of course. It would be his luck to run afoul of a random wild curse.

“I’m Martin,” the person says. “Is—do you have a name?”

Jon just stares at him. Where would he have gotten a name?

Color rises in Martin’s cheeks. “I—I guess not. Um, do you—want a name?”

Jon’s eyes widen. First he gets hit by a car, then he gets tortured, and now he’s being offered a name? What kind of day is this? He nods.

“Okay,” Martin says. “Um—how about—John? Like, like, John Doe? Wait, no that’s—that’s terrible. Uh, how about Jonathan? Jon.”

Jon.

Jon nods, accepting the name. He feels like he should be buzzing with excitement, fluttering all over Martin, thanking him a thousand times for this gift, but—

Christ, he hurts.

Martin must see something on his face because he says, “You need to be healed. I know you probably don’t want to see Tim again, but I promise he won’t hurt you. He’ll fix you up, and then you can leave. Alright?”

Jon nods. Anything, to get rid of the pain.

“Okay,” Martin says. “Tim!” he calls over his shoulder. “Could you get in here?”

The man from before comes back into the room, staying close to the door, nearly as far as he can get from Jon. He’s no longer holding his heavy rod, and the hardness in his eyes is gone, but Jon can’t help tensing when he sees him.

“It’s okay,” Martin says. He looks at Tim. “You can fix his injuries, right?”

To Jon’s dismay, Tim doesn’t nod and immediately offer him some of his magic. Instead, he sucks his teeth. “It’s… not that simple. With the extent of his injuries, it’ll take several meetings for him to be fully healed. And—with the complications involved in the hip and the brain injury, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anything unless he was sedated.”

“Then sedate him,” Martin says. He looks at Jon. “Is that okay with you?”

Jon meets his eyes, kind and gentle, and nods.

“How? I don’t exactly have an anesthesiologist on call,” Tim replies. “We’d need to go to the hospital, and that will come with questions. Questions like: ‘What do you mean the deer turned into a person?’ And ‘Don’t you think we should run tests to make sure it isn’t a Fae in disguise?’”

“I don’t think he would enjoy a hospital anyway,” Martin says. He’s silent for a few moments. “I could make a sleeping powder? Would that work?”

“It’s not ideal,” Tim says. “But I guess it’s better than nothing.”

“Great,” Martin says. “Um—Would it hurt to move him somewhere a little more comfortable?”

“I’m not sure there’s much that would make his injuries worse, at this point.”

“Right. Okay, I’ll figure it out. Do you mind getting some water heated for me?”

“No problem,” Tim says, and then leaves.

Jon finds himself relaxing. He doesn’t have much of a reason to trust Martin, or any of these people, but he can’t help himself. There’s something about Martin that just seems so genuinely concerned. It’s impossible not to feel safe in his presence.

“Do you mind if I pick you up?” Marin says. “I’ll try to be gentle, but it might hurt a bit.”

“It’s fine,” Jon says.

Then Martin is lifting him like he doesn’t weigh a thing. (Which is accurate, he supposes. This form is much, much lighter than Jon is used to.) It puts a bit of pressure on Jon’s bad hip, and he grunts in pain, and Martin says, “Sorry, sorry,” and hurries to deposit him on the bed in the next room.

It’s soft. Much more comfortable than the hard tile floor.

“That’s better,” Martin says. “I’ll be right back. The sleeping powder won’t take long to make.”

He’s being honest—Martin comes back within five minutes—but those few silent minutes seem to stretch on and on and on, Jon unable to do anything but lay as still as possible, trying to ignore the constantly pulsing pain. He’s relieved when Martin returns and hands him a steaming mug.

“Drink the whole thing,” Martin instructs him, so Jon does as he asks. It tastes good, and seems to fill him with warmth. He closes his eyes once, twice.

After the third time, he doesn’t open them again.

VI. Martin

Jon wakes up about two-thirds of the way back to Martin’s house. He raises his head and looks around, blinking drowsily. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t seem particularly confused about the whole riding-in-a-car thing.

“How do you feel?” Martin asks.

“Better,” Jon mumbles, yawning and leaning his head back against the window.

“That’s good,” Martin says. “Um. We decided that you should probably stay with me? At least until your treatments are finished. Is that—Are you okay with that? It’ll be about two weeks, I think.”

Jon nods. “That’s fine.”

Martin doesn’t have a guest bedroom, but he gives Jon the bedroom. It’ll be better for his recovery, not having to sleep on Martin’s old, cramped couch. Jon is still quite drowsy from the sleeping powder, so he’s fast asleep before Martin even leaves the room.

And then, faster than Martin thought possible, Jon becomes part of Martin’s daily routine.

Every morning, Martin makes breakfast, and Jon watches his every move with apt curiosity. Every evening, they drive back to Tim’s house and Tim gives Jon another treatment. He starts bringing Jon with him on shopping trips, takes him out for coffee and sandwiches, even takes him ice skating one sunny afternoon towards the end of his recovery period (letting Jon lean on him the entire time, lest he slip and fall and undo all of Tim’s work).

He doesn’t know if Jon is thinking about the future beyond his treatments, but Martin is. He spends an afternoon trying to find a master-level transformationist who could reverse Jon’s curse, but it quickly becomes clear that such services would be unattainably expensive.

If they can’t turn Jon back into his true form, that means Jon is stuck with them for the long haul. Which means Martin needs to figure out how to help him carve out space for himself in human society. He tries to think of jobs that would work for a person who so recently was not a person at all. More importantly, he starts looking into breaking his lease, doing cursory searches for places with two bedrooms and reasonable rent.

He also starts looking into education options. Jon instinctively knows far more about human life than make sense for a deer, which Martin assumes was just part of the transformation, but he doesn’t know how to read, doesn’t know math beyond basic arithmetic, doesn’t know a thing about history or sociology or any of the sciences. Somehow, Martin doesn’t think Jon would be happy staying ignorant of such important bits of human knowledge.

Then comes the day when Tim pronounces Jon completely healed, and Martin takes Jon out for a celebratory dinner. He watches Jon smiling, his expression finally devoid of any kind of pain, and decides that talk of the future can wait until tomorrow morning.

In the morning, when Martin goes to the bedroom to call Jon to breakfast, he nearly screams in surprise. He rears back, both hands collapsed over his mouth, breath coming far too quickly. Then he stops. Forces himself to calm down. Buries the sinking feeling of disappointment in his chest. This is a good thing. Martin is happy.

Jon is a deer again, and that’s… good.

“Jon,” Martin calls, loudly, not wanting to risk being gored if Jon wakes in a panic.

Jon opens his eyes slowly, and then startles to full wakefulness, apparently registering the whole “once-again-a-deer” thing. He begins to move, so slowly Martin would almost describe the process as “delicate,” stepping off of Martin bed and onto the floor.

“I’ll just—uh—get out of your way,” Martin says, starting off down the hall. He can hear the clip-clip-clip of hooves behind him.

“Do—do you want breakfast, before you go?” Martin asks, and there’s a bit of a manic note in his voice as he turns around to face the literal deer in his house. He’s not as big as Martin expects, but there’s a slender stateliness about him. His antlers look very regal, Martin can’t help thinking, and then he lets out a wild giggle because there’s a deer in his house.

Jon tilts his head, and then looks toward the back door, to the forest beyond it.

“Right, I bet you just want to leave,” Martin says. He goes to the door and opens it, and Jon clip-clip-clips his way over. “Bye,” Martin says, ignoring the bolt of grief twisting in his stomach. He isn’t losing anything. This is good.

Jon bows his head towards Martin, and then he takes four ginger steps outside, and then he’s gone, racing toward the boundary of the forest in flying bounds.

Martin tries not to miss him.

VII. Jon

Jon returns to his life, but it isn’t the same.

Or, it is the same, but Jon isn’t. He has a name, and more than a name. He has knowledge now that he doesn’t know what to do with, that he can hardly hold in his deer-shaped mind.

Jon understands now what happened to him. The forest gives gifts, sometimes. Gifts that are desperately needed. Gifts that could save a life. A temporary transformation, a human form so that a human doctor could heal him. Long enough for his injuries to heal completely so he could step back into his old life as easily as if he’d never left.

Except Jon can’t bring himself to leave the forest around Martin’s house.

At least, not more than he has to. It’s winter, so he has to wander far for forage. His thoughts, though, such as he has in his too-slow, too-quick deer mind, always stay with Martin.

Sometimes, in the weeks that follow, he sees Martin watching him, and he feels the urge to flee. Sometimes he gives in to the urge, but other times, he raises his head and watches Martin back. He wonders if Martin knows it’s him. He wonders if Martin cares.

He wonders if Martin—

But that’s a dangerous thought, the one thing that Jon can’t let himself think.

He tells himself that he’s happy just to see Martin.

He tells himself a lot of things.

***

Then one morning, Jon wakes up with hands and feet and a runny nose, and he knows that this, too, is a gift from the forest. Another blessing, this one more permanent. An answer to the agonized question that Jon hadn’t really even known he was asking.

He feels—

—happy exhilarated terrified—

—but he doesn’t let himself think too hard about it. He has things to do, important things.

On four legs, Jon runs to the nearest village. On two legs, he finds a flower shop. There is exactly enough money in his pocket for a small bouquet, and he carries it gently as he walks the two miles to Martin’s cottage.

He knocks on the door, quickly trying to smooth down his hair, knowing that it’s a futile effort, that he looks like he has been rolling around in the forest all day. He hopes Martin will be happy to see him. He hopes the forest wouldn’t give him this gift if Martin didn’t feel—

Martin opens the door, and every thought in Jon’s head freezes.

“Jon?” Martin says, eyebrows furrowed.

Before he can lose his nerve, Jon holds out the flowers. “These are for you.”

Martin takes them. ““What—? How—?”

“Will you go on a date with me?”

Martin blinks. “I—Jon how are you here?”

“I’ll tell you later, just—Please answer the question. Do you want to go on a date with me?”

Martin laughs then, and it’s clear from the tone of it, from the look in his eyes that he’s still painfully confused, but it’s a lovely sound anyway.

Then he says, “Yes, Jon, of—of course I do.”

And Jon has a million things he wants to say, but Martin has already moved on, is back to asking his questions. So he reaches for Martin’s hand and gives it a squeeze and says, smiling, “I missed you.”

[thezolblade]

Tapes for successors

Some quick meta on something that often seems to be forgotten, which has been on my mind lately.

ARCHIVIST, episode 41:

I have told Martin the second tape recorder was lost in the attack. Having two means I can make two tapes from each recording. One containing the main statement and notes, which will be stored in the archive, and the other containing the statement, notes, and… this supplement, which will chronicle my own investigations. These tapes will be hidden. If you’re hearing this, I assume you’re my replacement, following my death or disappearance, and have received instructions on where to find them. 

Jon’s season 2 secret tapes with his paranoid supplementals were for his successor. He thought that just as he’d found himself in danger by taking on Gertrude’s old position, whoever followed after him might inherit that danger, because he believed that it was tied to the statements and the Institute itself.

ARCHIVIST, episode 41: 

There is something in these files, in these statements. I know that now, some deeper mystery. I think Gertrude Robinson found it, and I think that is why they killed her.

And who would he expect to be his replacement, if he died? As of season two, he probably would’ve thought that one of his assistants might be promoted (or someone else from Research might be transferred). When he said that it could have been ‘any’ of them, he never said that it might have been ‘all’ of them. So, he was investigating everyone to try to find out who was and wasn’t involved, while leaving a record so if any of them followed in his footsteps, they’d start off with more information than he’d had at the beginning.

Even if he made a mess of quite a bit of the investigation, he was still actively trying to help the others avoid the situation that he was struggling with, even though he wasn’t confiding in them in person.

ARCHIVIST, episode 39:

Every real statement just leads… deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet. And to top it all, 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. If I die, wormfood or… something else, whatever, I’m going to make damn sure the same doesn’t happen to me. Whoever takes over from me is going to know exactly what happened.

And while I didn’t much enjoy season 5, it did repeat that characterisation of Jon not wanting to pass on the same problems he’s dealing with to whoever might end up in his shoes next.

ARCHIVIST, episode 199:

It’s my fault. And I don’t want… I can’t let anyone else feel that. That helpless, enormous guilt. Ever.

His tapes parallel Gertrude’s in that they were recorded for the same purpose, to pass on information to a successor. The main difference being that when she recorded her tapes, she had a lot of information to pass on after decades of experience.

Episode 162:

GERTRUDE: Oh, I’d be something of a fool to leave that one in the recorder.

GERRY: I’ve never really seen you use it.

GERTRUDE: Mm. It’s generally only for those statements I think might be useful to my successor.

Gertrude, episode 161;

Right. If you’re listening to this, then it is likely that –  No. Let’s not beat around the bush. If you’re listening to this, it means I’m dead. And you have been chosen to be my replacement as Head Archivist. [...] The first thing you have to do is accept that you are in great danger, and will be for the rest of your life. There are now things that will actively be trying to kill you, due to your new role as Archivist, and Elias has plans for you that are little better. 

Jon was trying to provide that kind of help before he even had much information to offer - when he knew that there was fear-magic at work, and had been since day one, but not why or what it meant, or that the process of trying to figure it out was inherently something that would worsen the problem. (Or that he definitely would’ve been disposed of and replaced if he hadn’t thrown himself into it anyway. )

[iceeckos12]

ouch oof i am sad

remember the scene that @pitviperofdoom was talking about in this post? well this was something she mentioned in the discord server and because i am always a sucker for a good angst, i wrote an entire Thing for it. content warnings under the cut

basically: assistant archivist au where gerry did die. mentions of past character death

Jon’s quiet as Julia explains how to pull Gerard Keay from the page. This is not unusual in and of itself. Jon is not the type of person to fill spaces with endless chatter, or to make small talk for the sake of it. Martin and Jon’s friendship has been characterized by long, comfortable silences and the conversation they make between each one.

This is different, though. Martin can’t tell if it’s because of his connection with the Beholding that he knows, or if he’s just gotten better at reading Jon, but this is - wrong. The last conversation that they had, if you could call it a conversation at all, was Jon quietly asking if they could stop by Pittsburgh to visit the hospital where Gerard Keay died. Since then, he’s been mostly lost in thought.

Martin knows that Jon and Gerard worked together with Gertrude. He’s inferred that they were friends, because Martin has learned to read the quiet grief that crosses Jon’s face whenever Gerard is mentioned. Now he’s wondering if they were closer than he realized.

He doesn’t dare ask though, not in front of Julia. And he’s not even sure that Jon would tell him if he did ask. So he sets aside his worry, turns to the Hunter, and says, “Thank you, Julia.”

Her smile is full of teeth. “Give the door a knock when you’re done.”

Martin watches her go, unwilling to take his eyes off of her for more than a moment. When the door finally clicks shut, he lets out a quiet sigh of relief and looks down to find Jon holding the book in his hands, staring at it, perfectly still.

“...Jon?”

Jon jumps and looks up, his lips pressed into a thin, bitten line, his eyes slightly wild.

Martin knows how to handle Jon when he’s scared, when he’s cruel. He knows how to handle Jon when he’s simmering with anger, when he’s exhausted and frayed about the edges. This is completely new, and he shifts at the unwelcome, familiar feeling of uncertainty. “Do you...want me to do it?”

Jon immediately shakes his head, so quick it looks painful. “No. No, I should…” he takes a deep breath, scrubs his hand through his hair. He takes a few quick steps forward, then turns around, the book pressed to his stomach. “I’ll do it.”

Martin opens his mouth to question the wisdom of that idea, but then Jon is flipping open the book to the last page. He clears his throat once, twice, and then, “His consciousness faded in and out like the tide.”

Jon’s voice breaks on the last word, and he stops.

“...Jon?”

Martin watches the gentle bob of Jon’s throat as he swallows. Then he shakes his head and says in a voice much stronger and clearer than before, “His consciousness faded in and out like the tide. He tried to refuse their drugs…”

He continues talking, his voice rising and falling with every word, like he’s reading just another statement. He slows as he reaches the last few sentences.

“...And his only thought was to cry out for the one he loved. He could feel small, familiar hands gripping his, the soft rise and fall of a voice, hushed like a prayer. The name fell from his lips, but he couldn’t be sure whether or not he had been heard. He hoped that he had been heard. And so Gerard Keay ended.”

Gerard Keay stands in the center of the room. He’s wearing all black, which Martin had expected. Black trench coat, black trousers, black boots, eyes made sharp with makeup. He looks like he just raided the shelves of a Hot Topic, only he makes it work.

Gerard’s gaze flickers from Martin to Jon, and for a moment there is no recognition, no comprehension. He opens his mouth - and then he stills, his eyebrows coming together in vague confusion. His jaw slackens, and his eyes widen, and his expression is cracked open like an egg, revealing the vulnerable yolk beneath.

Jon makes a sound. Martin could not characterize that sound even if he wanted to. It sounds like - like all of Jon’s insides have been scooped out of him, like he’s surrounded by air but he can’t get a breath, like - grief. It sounds like pure, mortal grief.

Just like that, Martin understands.

“Jon,” Gerard Keay says.

And then Jon bursts into tears.

“Gerry,” Jon gasps, but when he reaches out his hand goes right through Gerry’s sleeve. “Gerry, I - “

“Jon,” Gerry steps in close, his hands framing Jon’s face, staring at him the way a drowning man stares at a life raft.

“I’m sorry,” Jon manages. “Gerry I’m so - I promise, I didn’t know, I - “

“It’s okay,” Gerry reaches for Jon’s hair reflexively, but freezes when his fingertips disappear into Jon’s forehead. His expression crumples. “It’s fine, I know. I know. Jon, Jon - ”

And then they’re both crying, tears dripping down. Jon’s face is buried in his hands, and he’s weeping, keening, and Gerry keeps reaching for him, but there’s no way to connect, no way to touch. There’s no relief. It’s just shared grief, endless and pervasive and shattering.

Martin turns away and frantically scrubs his hands across his face. Oh, God. He feels so guilty, but he doesn’t want to be here right now. There is a Shakespearean tragedy playing out before his eyes, the kind that’s brimming with heartache and things left unsaid, and he is powerless against it.

Finally, mercifully, the sound of crying dies away into exhausted silence, except for thick, heavy breathing. Martin keeps his back to them, wanting to give them some semblance of privacy for a conversation that they obviously need to have.

“...so where is she?”

Jon huffs out a quiet laugh, lacking humor, edged with hurt. “Dead. Shot to the chest.”

“Figures.” A meaningful pause. “So are you...”

“Oh, no. No, it’s...oh. Martin?”

Martin sniffs hard and drags his hands over his cheeks before turning around, forcing a smile on his face. Jon and Gerry are standing as close to each other as they can without touching, twin tracks of silver tears on their cheeks.  “Hi, sorry. Just...wanted to give you two a bit of privacy. Martin Blackwood, Head Archivist.”

Gerry dips his chin in acknowledgement, before turning his confused gaze back to Jon. “I thought…?”

“He knows,” Jon says quickly. “I’m...well. It’s complicated. Gertrude hid a lot more from us than we knew.” There’s still a raw hurt in Jon’s voice when he says that, mixed with a lingering sort of nostalgia.

Gerry grimaces. “Did she know about…”

Martin doesn’t realize what he’s asking about until he gestures toward his head, a helpless, reluctant sort of gesture.

“I - maybe?” Jon shakes his head, for the first time turning out of Gerry’s orbit, wrapping his arms around himself. “I’d like to think not, but...it doesn’t matter now. She’s gone. We’ll never know.”

There is a moment of silence. Martin bites his lip, then forces himself to stop when he realizes that he’s already chewed it bloody. It’s hard to watch Jon draw back into himself, put the pain where it can only hurt himself.

“Hey,” Gerry reaches for Jon’s chin, frowns when his hand sinks into the skin. He shakes his head and walks around so he can insert himself into Jon’s field of vision. “Stop. I can feel you blaming yourself, okay? Just...stop. It’s not your fault.”

“...but I should’ve -”

“I am not letting you use this as another stick you beat yourself with,” Gerry interrupts firmly. “You read my page, didn’t you? I didn’t die alone. I’m sorry that you had to go through that, but you don’t understand how much I -”

He breaks off. Jon’s breath rattles dangerously again.

“I always thought that I was going to die alone,” Gerry finishes.

There’s another moment of silence. Jon puts his head in his hands again, and Martin aches at the way Gerry’s face crumples with the desire to reach out, to comfort. They’re in the same room, but there’s a yawning, uncrossable distance between them.

Then Jon lowers his hands. There’s a spark in his eyes that Martin recognizes: the scarce moments before an inferno, before manic determination sets Jon’s whole being ablaze. “Gerry, I’m getting you out of here. I can - you and me, we can figure it out. We can -”

“No.”

Jon pauses. The spark jolts, catches on the cool wave of his confusion. “...what?”

“I’m dead, Jon,” Gerry reaches out for Jon again, then stops. Lets his arm fall to his side, clenches his fists. “I can’t live like this.”

Breathless hurt snatches across Jon’s face. “No, Gerry. I can’t - not when I’ve just found you, I -”

“It hurts, Jon,” Gerry interrupts, and he does not seem like the type to beg, but his voice dips at the end with a desperate plea. “It...it hurts, all the time, and...I just want to rest. Please, just let me rest.”

Jon swallows once. Twice, and his face crumples with sympathy, with empathy, with that awful exhaustion that they’ve all been wearing since what feels like forever. After a moment, he nods.

Gerry lets out a low, quiet sigh of relief, tension draining from his broad shoulders. He smiles faintly, ghosting his knuckles against Jon’s cheek. Jon leans into the touch even though he must not be able to feel it, his eyes fluttering shut, mouth drawn.

“I wish you were here,” Jon whispers.

“Yeah,” Gerry steps back, hiding his expression behind his long curtain of black hair. “Me too.”

There’s a moment of silence. A rearranging of expressions, a folding of hurt and pain back where it can no longer be seen. Jon is once again himself, his expression distant, and Gerry is wry and so very, very dead.

Gerry turns to Martin and smiles. “I wish we had met under better circumstances, Martin.”

Martin swallows, trying to unearth his voice. “Yeah. Me too.”

Then Gerry turns back to Jon. “You know what to do.”

Jon nods again, sharp and short. “I...I dismiss you.”

Gerry closes his eyes, and the whole room sighs as he dissipates into nothing.

Jon stands alone in the middle of the room, spine so straight there may as well be an iron rod put up the back of it. Martin doesn’t even know what the hell he is supposed to say. There is nothing he can do to make this better. How the hell is he supposed to make this better?

The moment passes. Jon’s shoulders slump, and when he turns back to Martin, his eyes are empty.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says monotonously.

Martin cannot do this. Martin cannot just stand there while Jon apologizes and looks at him like that, and -

“Don’t apologize,” he steps forward. “Can I hug you? Please?”

Jon thinks about that for a moment. When he eventually nods, Martin crosses the short distance between them and folds Jon into his arms, trying to ease the sharpness of the pain he surely must be feeling. He can’t make it better, but he can make sure that Jon knows that he isn’t alone. He can do this.

Jon doesn’t move for a moment, his face pressed into Martin’s shoulder, his arms loose at his sides. But just when Martin is about to pull away, he slowly reaches up, curls his hands in the fabric of Martin’s shirt. Lowers his head so he is half-buried in Martin’s embrace. He was already small, but he tries to make himself smaller, like he’s trying to hide himself in the folds of Martin’s pullover.

Eventually, he lets go. Eventually he steps back, letting his bangs hide his eyes, and goes to pick up the book. Martin watches his painful, slow movements, as though he’s filled with bruises from the inside out. He’s so distracted that Jon’s voice almost makes him jump.

“You should…you should do it.”

Martin shakes himself. “Sorry?”

“Burn his page,” Jon elaborates, holding the book out to Martin.

Martin gapes at him, stunned, because - “Um. No? Jon, why -”

“I can’t be the only person who’s ever done right by him.”

Oh. Well, when he puts it like that.

Martin swallows and takes the book gingerly, like he’s holding something precious. He flips to the last page and carefully tears it out, ignoring the way Jon’s breath catches at the soft ripping sound. Then he folds the page and puts it into his pocket, trying not to let on how nervous he is about having this precious page on his person. Trying not to let on how nervous Jon’s complete and utter trust makes him.

He is painfully aware of how many times that trust has been broken.

“Are you ready?” Martin asks.

Jon finally looks away from Martin’s pocket. “Yes. Let’s go.”

[supercasey]

TMA Fankids

Exactly one (1) person enabled me to post this, so here we are

JON/MARTIN KIDS

Name: Sebastian Timothy Blackwood-Sims Gender: Transman Age: 14 Appearance: Long black hair, dark brown eyes, dark skinned (African), paints his nails a lot (usually black or purple), wears a lot of oversized hoodies and leather jackets, almost always wears sweatpants, wears goth makeup because fuck you, etc. Personality: Is way too much like Jon according to everyone, but he's got Martin's softness and high empathy. Gets really anxious if he has to socialize a lot, so his dads try to make sure he has a lot of alone time when he needs it. Acts like a little punk, but he loves his younger siblings to death. Can see ghosts, and has been seeing and talking to someone named “Gerry” since he was about three or so (it worries Martin, but Jon is secretly happy about it). (Marked by the Lonely/Eye)

Name: Millicent “Millie” Georgie Blackwood-Sims Gender: Ciswoman Age: 13 Appearance: Long black hair, striking grey eyes, mixed race (Caucasian/African), wears a lot of leather jackets and short skirts, always has the coolest socks, usually has at least a few bandages on her knees, wears glasses (round frames), ties a lot of ribbons in her hair, etc. Personality: Very goth despite only being thirteen years old (makes Auntie Melanie proud). Surprisingly enough takes more after Martin than Jon, but she definitely has Jon's curiosity. Loves hanging out with Sebastian when she can. Also quite introverted, but she makes friends really easily. She likes hanging out with her dads sometimes, but she doesn't share many of their interests. Loves all things biology. (Marked by the Eye)

Name: Franklin “Frank” James Blackwood-Sims Gender: Cisman Age: 9 Appearance: Short orange hair, bright green eyes, pale skinned (Caucasian), covered head to toe in freckles, wears glasses (round frames) but they're almost always cracked (much to Jon's frustration), has a gap between his front teeth, wears a lot of outdoorsy gear and shorts, insists on wearing his safari explorer hat everywhere he goes, etc. Personality: Absolute wild child; he wants to play sports and run around outside as much as he can, something neither of his dads can relate to, but they encourage him to pursue his interests and be his own person. He really wants to be an explorer of some kind when he grows up, and he adores animals with all his heart. Very extroverted. (Marked by the Vast/Eye)

Name: Sasha Hope Blackwood-Sims Gender: Ciswoman Age: 6 Appearance: Dark brown hair, light brown eyes, covered in dark freckles, mixed race (Caucasian/African), wears a lot of light greens and blues, loves wearing princess themed dresses, carries her stuffed T-Rex “Mr. Chompy” everywhere she goes, has a lot of hairbands, wears glasses (round frames), etc. Personality: She's still pretty young, so she's obviously only just beginning to become more of her own person/have a personality, but so far she's taking a lot after Jon and follows him around everywhere he goes. She looks and acts a lot like OG!Sasha, not that her dads know this. What's more concerning, however, is that she reportedly keeps seeing a big, green eye in her dreams, something she seems frightened by. (Marked by the Web/Eye)

BASIRA/DAISY

Name: Kingsley Bruno Hussain-Tonner Gender: Cisman Age: 15 Appearance: Tall as all hell, long dark red hair, even darker brown eyes, mixed race (Latinx/Arab), has a scar running down the right side of his head, wears (Daisy’s) his mom’s old leather jacket around, has the most torn up jeans known to man, wears glasses, always has bandages around his knuckles, refuses to wears shoes/socks, etc. Personality: Born rebel. He’s been getting into trouble since he could walk, and he can’t help but take pride in that. Good friends with Sebastian, even if he thinks he’s a bit too nervous for his own good. Loves wrestling with Daisy whenever she’s willing to. Teases his sister a lot. Bit of an asshole, but he’s got a heart of gold under all that angst. (Marked by the Hunt)

Name: Rosalina Melanie Hussain-Tonner Gender: Ciswoman Age: 12 Appearance: Light brown hair (shaved off), dark brown eyes, mixed race (Caucasian/Arab), wears glasses (square frames), prefers wearing sweaters and gym shorts despite them looking weird together, has over a million pins on her backpack/purse, carries first aid supplies on her at all times, refuses to wear shoes/socks, etc. Personality: Almost the exact opposite of her older brother. Very down to earth and chill; she honestly hates it when her bro tries to drag her into shenanigans. Prefers sports over books, and she really wants to form/join a sports team of pretty much any kind. Can beat her brother in a fight, much to his frustration. Bit of a Mama’s Girl for Daisy. (Marked by the End)

MELANIE/GEORGIE

Name: Bethany “Annie” Willow King-Barker Gender: Ciswoman Age: 9 Appearance: Second tallest of the triplets, short red hair (curly), bright green eyes, mixed race (Caucasian/Latinx), her face and arms are absolutely covered in dark freckles, wears the most oversized sweaters, sweatpants are the best pants, etc. Personality: The firstborn of the triplets, Beth has a very no nonsense attitude, yet she still follows her siblings into all kinds of shenanigans (mostly because she goes along with whatever Matilda says). Pretty put together, but she's an eccentric bookworm and would much rather sit inside and read than play outside. (Marked by the Eye)

Name: Matilda Joy King-Barker Gender: Transwoman Age: 9 Appearance: Tallest of the triplets, long blonde hair, light brown eyes, mixed race (Caucasian/Latinx), wears jeans with a skirt, has ballerina shoes (wears them damn near everywhere), tank tops are the best shirts ever invented, wears a ginormous adventurer’s backpack everywhere, always has some kind of big ribbon in her hair, etc. Personality: The secondborn of the triplets, Matilda is almost always the leader and insists that her siblings follow her along on adventures. She's very protective of her siblings (especially little Eddy), but also won't hesitate to dropkick them. Fairly outdoorsy. Has a great talent for solving puzzles and tests. Low-key hates Aunt Daisy for unspecified reasons. (Marked by the Hunt)

Name: Leonard “Leo” Grant King-Barker Gender: Transman Age: 9 Appearance: Shortest of the triplets (yes he’s mad about it), short brown hair, dark green eyes, mixed race (Caucasian/Latinx), wears shorts most of the time, every piece of clothing he has is torn in some way, has army boots, always brings a backpack with him places, wears glasses (square frames), etc. Personality: The thirdborn of the triplets, Leo is very introverted yet also very outdoorsy, often running around at all hours of the day and as far away from everyone as possible. Loves his big sisters, but he prefers hanging out with Frank when the Blackwood-Sims kids come over. Kinda cowardly if we're being honest, but he'll jump into danger if it means protecting his family and friends. (Marked by the Vast)

Name: Edwin “Eddy” Oliver King-Barker Gender: Cisman Age: 4 Appearance: Short black hair, light brown eyes that flash green when he’s upset, dark skinned (African), has a huge scar running from one corner of his mouth all the way down to the middle of his chest, can’t stand wearing short-sleeved shirts (unless he has a hoodie/sweater over them), hunches in on himself a lot, carries his stuffed cat “Cheshire” everywhere he goes, etc. Personality: Very, very introverted. Has a thousand-mile stare. Selectively mute; has never spoken a word to anyone. He clings to both of his moms whenever he gets the chance, but if they’re not around, he’ll follow his siblings wherever they go. Can and will bite you if you try to touch/hug him without his consent. Has definitely seen some scary shit in his dreams, even if he can’t talk about it. (Marked by the Dark/End/Eye)

[popculturebuffet]

New X-Men Xtrospective Part 3: Imperial (NXM #121-126)

To me all you happy people! And welcome back to my X-Citing look at Morrison’s Masterwork on Marvel’s Merry Mutants!  Part One is HERE, Part Two is HERE if you feel like it. 

If not... to catch you up on last time....

All Caught up? Good. Join me under the cut as our heroes head into this old woman’s hedd to see what’s wrong and fight off an alien army while horribly ill. 

Silent, Psychic Rescue in Process:

So we pick up not long after we left off: Thanks to Beast waking up from his bat induced coma, the X-Men now know Charles is trapped in Cassandra’s body and she pulled a Freaky Friday on him, with marginally less bullets. 

And thus we get this issue. This one was part of Nuff Said, an incredibly clever theme month by Marvel and one I wish they’d try and do again at some point in some form. 

The gimmick was simple but amazing: Every issue would be mostly silent, with at most some dialouge at the start and finish to bookend it. So far i’ve only read two issues of this, this one and the X-Statix one, but it is a genuinely great idea. I do think forcing it on the entire line was a bit much, but as I said I do wish they’d do this again just make it optional: have some books opt in or do some annuals with the theme. It’s just a fun break from the usual and with this issue resulted in one of the best single issues of x-men period. 

Naturally given the name, which is cleverly displayed on a sign the x-men have because of course they do, it’s exaclty that: Emma and Jean after readying themselves (Jean kisses Scott goodbye and Emma downs a bottle of jack because why not do an alchol before doing delecate mental surgery), head in. 

Inside they find horrific old lady head doors, stone ol dlady heads around a tower that shoot lasers, and said doors also bite and puke weird goop because it’s Grant Morrison. This is his chance to just go full balls out weird.. and given last time involved skin flake golemns.. and this isn’t even the weirdest he’s done. As mentioned last time he once had a supervillian run for president using a super LSD Bike that made everyone high. 

And just to prove he can reach that level of weirndess we find charles alone, naked and with an overenlarged brain.. before he transitions Jean to a field of sperm. 

Yeah... but this DOES have a point.. as it turns out it’s a meaphorical transition into his gestation as a baby.. and how he had a twin. Yeah turns out Cassandra was not lying he did try to kill her.. but as you can probably tell by the fact she’s a genocidal sociopath, she lied by omission to screw with Hank: In the womb she tried strangling Charles to death with his own umbilical cord..only for him to use baby’s first psonic blast to send her reeling and his mom tumbling down the stairs and well.. you can probably guess the rest. Yeah.. Cassandra’s entire origin story is concentrated 

And I love it. The sheer audacity is nice and everything but what makes it really work for me is the simple concept: An evil version of charles, one almost born at the same time whose every bit as evil as he is good.. granted there’s a TON of Morally Grey in Charles Xavier ESPECIALLY post decimation and even more so now with Krakoa. But he’s sitll at his heart a well meaning person, while Cassandra at her heart is a racist genocidal nightmare. She is pure evil, with enough personality to not make her boring.. and more importanlty all the power charles has but NONE of his restraint. Part of what makes Charles noble is he only uses his powers when necessary. Cassandra.. has no such restraint and will happily mentally snap necks all day. 

So with this our heroine’s leave and we end on the iconic line “Professor Xavier killed his twin sister in the womb. We Really ought to talk. 

This issue is an utter classic. It finally explains Cassandra a bit while still leaving a ton of questions, Frank Quitely is at his best here, and he and morrison are incrediby good at non verbal storyteling. The result is surreal, unsettling and awesome. Check it out. Seriously seek this one out it’s worth the trip. It’s so famous it was homaged with a spirtual sequel in the recent Giant Size X-Men one shots. It’s excellent stuff

Imperial:

So with our first issue we open with things going terrible on that flag ship Cassandra took off on with Lilandra, empress of the Shiar and Xavier’s space wife. She’s revealed herself, is ravaging the ship and mind rapes a the helmsman into crashing it, so with no other options Lilandra sends Smasher, not the one from the avengers run earlier version, to earth to send a warning to the X-Men. 

At the School things are actually going well for a second. In an intresting move the school is changing things up with no officla timetable.. which I think means there’s no rigid class schedule and you can just do them as you please or as necessary for your power. The plan’s the same, they just want to learn from each other in building mutant society and the future. It’s ideas like this that are the bedrock of the current run and were sadly never fully realized here.. but I don’t blame this run for that. Morrison had 2-3 years and it was cut short early, leading to a rather disapointing ending we’ll get to. They never had a chance to really dig in because they were kicked out by morons and then their whole grand design was undone until Hickman un-undid it in 2019. And even then some of this like the idea of mutant culture and what not hasn’t been picked up on yet. I do mean YET, as given the sheer NUMBER of x books touching on all sorts of subjects, it’s only a matter of if not when. 

As for who’s behind this it’s a combination of Jean and Charles: Jean is using charles notes and is going at full tilt. Scott is concerned though.. both about her since she went Phoenix and Logan told him about it and because these plans may alarm the humans. ON the former Jean just brushes him off which is not right.. given what happened with the phoenix force copy of jean, which granted had her personality, memories and powers and Jean later got a set of her memories so it might as well of been and only MAYBE the genocide is something Jean wouldn’t of done under the same circumstances, he’s understandably concerned. He lost her to it last time and it did weird shit to poor Rachel, who hif you don’t know is their daughter from an alternate timeline... because the Summer’s family tree is a WAKING NIGHTMARE. Thankfully I don’t have to untangle it because there’s a handy chart right here to do it for me that was recently released in X-Men Legends, a new series featuring legendary x creators telling stories in the cracks... and given we’re getitng storys by the simosons and peter motherfucking david, yeah good stuff.

And why yes there are more than one clone in this tree and several alternate timelines. , not to mention several clones and a sexy cat lady, it’s complicated is understnading it and i’m not sure what properly states it honestly. Also if your wondering about Adam there he’s the genetic son of Cyclops mom and the ma Shiar empreror who killed her for not sleeping with him through. Again it’s complicate REALLY feels like understatement. 

Point is he DOES have a right to be worried about the thing that lead to her being cocooned for a while and left their daughter in the future at the time of this... just in case you needed a reminder after that wonderful clusterfuck of a chart up above athe x-men are really fucking weird. 

So Jean brushing that off is not okay. She does however call him out on the second one and rightfully so: This isn’t some dominate the humans manifesto: this is simply changing the course of the future and how they teach their students to create a better one instead of adhering to human norms to try and appease “the republicans’, as jean puts it.. which has only gotten MORE RELEVANT, 20 years on: Attempts to appease the norms of society and things “just because that’s how it’s been” have never been a good thing. It’s why the very writer of this comic took several decades to properly identify themselves as non binary because people were too stuck int heir ways to try and see if there really were just two genders. Fighting against the grain, finding new ways to express things that have always been there... it’s what humanity needs to do and certainly what comes after us would need to do. i’ts how we get better as a race. If something’s not working we change it, quickly or slowly. And given Scott’s huge amount of emotoinal repression lately.. I can see why she’d see the former complaint as just him being a dick as opposed to the genuine concern it is. 

Short Version: Jean Grey is fucking awesome and while he’d be the last to write her for decades, no one did it better than Grant and no one has since.  Hopefully Gerry Duggan can clear that bar. 

After this fight we get a fuller verson of what happened both at the end of issue 120 and in the big reveal last issue: Turns out Hank awoke because Charles piloted his body like a truck and needed it revealed fast. Hank’s regained control of his body and facilities by now, but in a twist of irony he helpfully points out, had Cassandra not gone a needlessly cruel and sociopathic tangent and had Beak beat Beast into a coma, Charles wouldn’t of had a body. 

As for Charles in cass’ body he’s now in a tub of goo created by it. 

It acts as a shield as well as melding him with Cerebra so he can talk to jean telepathically as his thoughts are very weak.

Thanks to this and her psychic Jaunt, Jean now knows just what the hell cassandra is: She really is Charles twin sister. As for how the hell she surivied outside of the womb and how Charles never knew, she created herself a clone body using his cells and didn’t fully manifest till now. And while she has plenty of intellegence, at an emotional level she’s fully convinced, much like an infant that only she and charles are real and thus destroying him means gaining domance over her world. So in short she’s both utterly insane and now has an interstellar empire at her fingertips. 

And the news SOMEHOW get sworse: She booby trapped her body and charles only has days before he’s vegatable, having put every psychological disease possible in there, and she’s probably responsible for their colds and the u-men. So in short their pretty scrwed but at the very least Charles plans to try to flip things, use the fact their now public (a clear tactic to weaken them) to share his manefesto, his last will and testiment if you would. 

Scott meanwhile figures since their sick a healer might be a good idea and goes solo to fetch Xorn... who just sorta disappeared after the annual and didn’t return till his arc. 

We get an utterly touching scene after this: With Logan staying on his hobbit like toes in case of another attack, Jean goes to talk to hank. Hank is still throughly traumatized from the attack, fearing Cassandra is right and he’ll just keep devlovling until he ends up in a metamoprhisis type situation. I mean it’s not ALL bad hank,.. I mean going through that guarantees a musical about you. 

But Jean reassures him: It’s okay to be afraid of her, they all are.. but as she puts it...

It’s a really powerful inspiring scene... and really afirms how well Morrison writes Jean from the previous arc onward. She’s confident, powerful.. but also caring and compassionate. Here hank’s at his lowest, disparing that this might get worse.. and she reaffirms that htis evolution is an upgrade.. he may not be the same.. but that’s okay. He’s better. It really speaks to the core message of the X-Men as a whole and why they’ve stuck around all this time: It’s not just okay your diffrent.. it’s WONDERFUL. Your wonderful for being you. Whatever meataphor you read into it, it’s at it’s core a message that no matter who hunts you or trys to shame you for what you are, they are wrong and you are wonderful. And you are not alone... your people are out there.. and they will go through hell to protect you. It’s moments like this that remind me despite the bad parts, the accidnetal transphobic metaphor last time, a subplot with Hank coming up, the affair storyline and Planet X, just.. Planet X.. this run is special to me for a reason. It has heart, character and truly gets how the x-men should work, what makes them great... while making something NEW AND FRESH from it’s bones. Pushing envelopes, chanigng things for good and shaking things the hell up after far too much stagnation. It’s just pure good comicy goodness and i’m proud to finally be talking about it after having always wanted to. 

So as we end the issue Scott grabs Xorn, whose been at a budist temple all this time, and Smasher arrives to warn earth... but his warning missed his intended target. 

Well at least he got to Hellcow’s coven.. maybe she can call in Man Eating Cow and the Chick Fill A Super Cows.. thought hey might not help. Their parent company IS pretty homophobic.. I doubt their high on mutants either. 

Testament Emma and Jean talk over things how i’ts going etc, with Emma unsuprisingly annoyed with most of the students and Jean optimsitc.

But Emma soon has bigger issues to deal with: TEEN ANGST!

Yeah 4/5 of the Cuckoos are upset Esme has a boyfriend. Their concerns in part are because without her their apparently powerless.. which given one will die and another will leave and they’ll be left with three is just factually not true, and either Morrison changed his mind later, or more likely their simply exagerating like teens do. Emma points out it’s pointless to fight this...

So... their in a domestically abusive relationship rife with sexual tension? Are you sure your not htinking of Sam and Diane, Ross and Rachel, Garfiled and Odie perhaps?

Meanwhile Angel’s sulking in a tree talking about how all the kids are stupid and she dosen’t fit in. That sort of thing. Wolverine naturally has a tactful and understandable response to this:

It’s here Angel goes from understandable, a bit hard edged and obnoxious becuase of a very rough life.. and just becomes annoying.  I do get what Grant was trying to do: he was trying to play with Wolverine’s habit of taking sassy teens under his wing by giving him a more hardscrabble one with a harder life pre-xaviers.. not that Jubilee’s was easy, but I get what he was going for.. he just dosen’t succeed. Instead of a realistic version of a teen sidekick she just comes off as an obnoxious brat whose rude to everyone including her one friend Logan and her later boyfriend.  It dosen’t help that ONCE AGAIN, Morrison flew directly into unfortunate implications without meaning to, by having the only major POC character (Bishop guest stars later and there are two significant characters during the Riot at Xaviers arc but both aren’t relevant before or after), be an abused teen with gross fly based powers and a teen pregnancy subplot. Seriously this isn’t even the LAST time Morrison shoves their foot in their mouth like this in this run. While I do like this run a lot, it’s still 20 years old and it’s still going to have a bunch of bits that have aged like harvarti left on a sidewalk, and handing out unfortnuate implications like their candy is tied for the biggest with their handling of Magneto when he finally shows up in person. It’s THAT bad a take on the character that it’s up there with accidental racisim and transphobia. 

So moving on from.. that we get Jean comforting the professor before meeting the press, giving a throughly lovely speech about how Charles got his powers 30 years ago and despite seeing the worst in humanity, used his telepathy to allow him to see past it and see deep down just how scared and alone we all felt. So she takes them into a psychic conference room and we get a very interesting exchange. 

It’s an interesting parallel to how real world disinfranchised groups, how it takes time.. but soon being a POC or LBGTQ+ goes from unrightfully perscuted to celebrated. How a group starts with hates whipsers on the fringe of things but grows to be accepted, like it always SHOULD have been. Take representation of Trans people in the media. It started with Trans people being almost entirely punchlines and sources of fucking horendous “DID DEY USED TO BE A MAN.” storylines and hurtful jabs at people who had transitioned, treating them as a sideshow instead of you know as fucking human beings. But now coming out as what you always were ont he inside is celebrated. Sure the right are dicks about it but they always will be: but most media gladly celebrates when someone comes out as trans. Same with being gay, or bi or pan or polamorus or nonbinary.  Hell I admire grant for showing i’ts not even 100% perfect once you are popular: you still have to grapple both with people wanting to copot your culture and those who still don’t understand you trying to speak for you. 

She also gets the standard question calling the X-Men an army, shoots it down with the normal global peacekeeping operation stuff.. then we get this bitch. 

Who quickly realizes she’s outclassed by Emma Frost, professional that bitch. And while Jean is understandbly going to have to erase that.. I can’t blame her for snapping her.

Just to tear this shit down.: The privacy thing is not something she’s doing. All she’s doing is spcyhic teleconfrencing, you harpy. They fight greek gods and monsters to protect your sorry ass and the last one.. just makes me absolutely livid and feels so much like a real world comment i’m suprised there isn’t a fox news logo next to her bigoted head. 

Trouble follows them everywhere they go.. because their mutants. They can’t help it. A LOT of shit like the demons, aliens, and gods and what not, I do not know if they actually did fight the greek gods but i’m not going to say for sure they did not, the norse gods defintely, not sure on greek. But the point is allt his stuff HAPPENS TO THEM half the time, or is a consequence of trying to PROTECT PEOPLE. I’m so nettled by this because this is how the marvel unvierse acts all the fucking time towards ALL super powered peoples. Mutants esepcailly but they blame the heroes and what not for being chased and harassed by guys in costumes or alien invasions or all the stuff they FIGHT. Sure sometimes they caused it but it’s either because of a monsterous person with a grudge or just because their powerful and some douche took an intrest. I’m just.. so fucking tired of asshole civlians in comics. It’s realisitc I know but it’s just hard to stomach after so many have turned their back on so many for such DUMB reasons. 

Jean recovers well pointing out the genocide and how 16 million people, 16 million possible einsteinss or mozarts are just GONE, and that their trying to focus on the future. She also brings up autistic savants who can talk to atoms and while I don’t like the use of the savant thing, as it brings to mind stuff like rainman I very badly want to see this autistic kid who can talk to atoms as someone on the spectrum myself. Also I just want the crew of HIckma’ns books in general to pour over this because there are a lot of intresting powers and personalities only MENTIONED we never saw proper that could be great characters. Just saying. 

Jean cocludes her speech to the world, including Logan whose wisely getting hammered at anearbye bar.. while Hank finds out what’s going on with their sickness.. nanonscopic sentnels in the blood. 

But while the press confrence ends well with Jean having won over the press.. things go sideways as not only is it clear Esme’s boyfriend is in fact something sinister.. but Jean falls over due to the nano snetinels, and senses Scott being taken in tibet, taken down by a group of the Shiar’s imperial guard.. picutre the legion of superheroes but blindly loyal to the goverment and far more likely to get killed. And the rest are preparing to attacking including Gladiator who if you don’t know him, has all the powers of superman as long as he retains his confidence. 

And it turns out Esme’s boyfriend is an advanced Scout, the shapeshifting amoeba blob thing Stuff, a new addition by morrison and good on him. And the Imperial Guard are here but with one goal

 Superdestroyer

On the Ship we find out both wha’ts going on with Scott and Xorn, they’ve been taken and why the shiar are attempting mutant genocide: Cassandra is puppeting ALL of them, has convinced them the mutants are infected and since Lilandra is a puppet, Scott’s words fall on deaf ears. 

Meanwhile Wolverine ambushes one of the squads, kiling one named Dinosaurer via claw to the brain, while Emma has had a dome thing put over her head and isn’t transforming into diamond to counter it because...

But the Cuckoos fight back, taking out oracle before easily handling stuff since his brain is fairly simple.. and given he’s racist against solid people and unlike the others reveling in the genocide just a tad.. yeah what he deserves. So now with a living weapon the Cuckoos make peace with Angel as they need all the help they can get. 

Jean ushers the press into the panic room, not happy about it but not having anothe roption for their saftey. Hank tells her to self distruct crebra if cassandra get sclose and goes off to join the fight and let off some steam over the situation. Hank easily routes two of them, and one , Manta tries to just fly right ot jtean wince their TK proof. How does that go?

Jean gets to saftey after that, not that she needs it and hank is quickly taken down by a batch of Superguardians.. only for Wolverine to arrive in the Sknitt of time and chop them up.. oh and as one of the puts it...

Bad. Ass. I also like the addition of the flight patch, a nod to the Legion, who the Imperial Guard were based on as those kids used flight rings. 

But while Logan and Hank easily tag team these assholes...

The SHiar call in the big guns.. Gladiator.. and I wasn’t kidding abotu the superman thing. While Logan TRIES to talk him out of it, the murders only confirm Cassandra’s bullshit and Gladiator breaks into the panic room throwing hank and wolverin’e before them having utterly decimated them off panel. I mean Wolvie is a badass.. but even he has limits. I also like recontecullizing the guard as a whole here.. showing just how TERRIFYING they SHOULD be as enimies to the x-men. Yes our heroes did win.. but barely and only till Gladiator showed up. In most cases thier clearly holding back out of affection but here hteir just at errifying unstoppable force, and also apparently used to doing genocides like this. It takes what was a cheesy shout out to David Cockrums other big artistic work, and makes it horrifying and it is AWESOME. I admit to not having liked this arc as much for the longest time but this reread, the sheer teror and hopleessness as an interstellar superman easily cuts through our mighty mutants like tissue... it’s awesome. 

Thankfully one of the Guard found smasher.. and thus the truth comes out so our heroes are given a stay of execution with Gladiator clearly horrified at what he almost did and our heroes now so sick they can barely move and Hank can’t think them out of this. 

Thankfully he dosen’t has to as back in space, Cyclops tires of it and points out something Xorn, not being as experinced nor having delt with the guard ahd thought of: G-Type, the glowly guy about to execute them, is made of solar energy.. and xorn can manipulate that thanks to his star brain. He does, they take out the rest.. and prepare to go save the day.

Losers: PIcking up shortly before where we left off we see Cassandra murder Lilandra’s advisor who figured out what she was just as our heroes escape.. and as Cassandra is having Lilnadra order all of the shiar ships to immolate themselves. 

WIth Lilandra not being any use, Cass tries to psychically force her to commit sucidie but jumping off a space ledge but Xorn saves her. Cass tries another turn at mentally breaking an x-man, pointing out all scott’s recent flaws, his increased repression his faling marriage and while it gets him to stop it dosen’t quite work as well as it did on hank, likely because at his heart Hank is simply a more emotive person. Though his REAL reason for stalling is he can’t kill charles.. which he muses just as the ship blows up real good. 

Meanwhile back at Campus the kids initaiate their plan, having Angel break in and take a dna sample. She also finds beak naked in a tank and decides eh why not and brings him with her. This ends up paying off as Beak suggests the obvious to get emma free.. just force the space guy they have over in the corner to do it. They do and it works

Back in the mansion our heroes prepare for Casssandra... but Jean and Logan object to saving her body, pointing out that getting hank to repair it is exactly what she wants, and that Jean feels she can save charles without uit, with Hank being understandably doubtful given their current condition.. but Jean’s real plan is to put charles in her head and it’s already too far in actoin to stop now: she’s been saving his memories as they flaked off and if she dosen’t do this now there will be no charles left. 

Hank evacuates the civlians to teh danger room, and has an encounter with trish who tries to apologize and get him back.. only for him to rightfully regjecter her..a and then goes a step further by capping it off with:

Yeah on it’s own it’s not TERRIBLE. Still very dated to claim your gay just to spite someone, but for the time it was acceptable and compared to some of Morrison’s other gaffes in the run it’s minor at best. But it leads into a rather annoying subplot we’ll naturally get to that’s a much bigger issue, so i’ll save talking about it in full for when it comes up again. 

Jean manages to shove Chuck into her head, but is naturally leaking a bit and barely holding it or him together and may of overestimated herself just a tad.. while on the lawn Cassandra easily takes out the guards. That said the scene of Jean taking Chuck into her head is REALLY damn awesome. Jean is the arc MVP by a mile and Hank is pretty dang good competition. 

All Hell: We open the final issue of the arc with Scott and Xorn escaping the spaceship using some teleport tubes taking Arakai and Lilandra with them. 

We open with Cassadra utterly humilating gladiator while the kid team prepares to fight her despite you know, the 8 billion to 1 odds against them. 

Jean, despite hte discknes and trying to keep an old man in her brain marches out , prepared to fight, for the kids sake. For the world’s sake. But Logan’s easily taken out and with Jean barely holding it together.. the kids prepare to fight.. likely being slaughtered even if they mean well.. onlyf or help to finally arrive with Scott and Xorn glowy porting in. We get a really sweet , short moment with scott and jean...

Scott not knowing the situation tries to have Xorn heal charles first but since Cassandra’s body is dead and unoccupied that’s a no go.. he’s still usefult hough, curing Jean of her nanosentital sickness and moving on to Scott and Hank while there’s still time. 

We find out more about cassandra: She’s a murrmadi, a bodyless parasite.. eseetinally the dark first test a person faces... she just stuck around because she was one for a telepath.. the world’s STRONGEST telepath. But really other than that part the rest just feels like stuff we alreayd heard LAST TIME, mildly repaackaged and seems enitrley like filler to pad the issue out. 

So while Jean takes cerebra, both to keep it away from Cassandra’s plans of mutant genocide and for whatever she has planned, Scott, Hank and Xorn prepare to hold the line.. and as Jean mentions.. emma’s still out in the wild. 

So we get our climactic showdown.. logan, hank and xorn veruss cassandra, with Cassandra trying to do eveyrthing she can, tear them down mentally, throw out the students with our heroes fighting back best they can. It’s good stuff.  

Eventaully Cassandra gets to Jean.. but she’s already inacted her plan, putting a piece of Xavier’s mind in EVERY mutant, and giving Cassandra one ohell ofa reason you suck speech. 

It’s an incapsulation of what i said earlier and what the runs about: alone we are weak but together.. we just might make it. More on that as we go. But thanks to Cass naturally going fo rcerberba.. she accidently restores charles and is left bodyless.

Emma finishes the fight with her own brilliant gambit, presending cassandra her body.. but it’s actually stuff , reprogrammed into a sentient brain for her to inhabit and leaving her trapped, with Charles hoping t teach the now mentally reset Cassandra.  So Cassandra is beat, the virus is stopped, and our heroes have one.. but naturally for this run.. there’s one last suprise in store. 

Charles can walk again.. and going forward will be a far more active member of the team. The team is complete, Cassandra is beaten, and the future.. is bright. 

Final Thoughts:

This arc is a mixed bag.. it has really good scenes with the first and last issues being the standouts, with the former being an utter classic with an intresting gimick and the latter being a rousing climax with tons of awesome moments, with some good mometns scattered throughout.

But that’s the arc’s issue.. it has good moments and ideas.. but they don’t quite work togehter. The idea of teh Shiar Imperial Guard nearly doing a genocide is good, but the Shiar are such flat characters.. it’s really hard to care. They just don’t have enough connection to the x-men to really have the betryal sting but aren’t callous enough for genocide protocols to maeks sense. It’s a good idea, I still support it being terrifying.. but not enough is done with it and it feels liek Grant is more concerned with throwing weirdos at the x-men than actually saying something. 

The biggest issue however is the art. While inconsitant art is an issue as they’d rotate artists.. but in previous arcs it was usually pretty evenly split but here it’s sloppy: Quitely does the first issue, van Sciver the second.. and the worst of the three Igor Kordey does most of the art. I gave him the beinfit of the doubt last time.. but this time not so much. His art is muddy and tries to be stylized but comes off confusing,ugly and not great. He’s probably a lovely guy but given he’s up against two legendary artists, his lack of style comapred to both shows badly.  And given the arc is alreayd a bit overly complicated, it makes things WORSE by giving us muddled art in a very complex storyline. The flip flopping art makes a fairly intricate story very hard to follow. It’s easily why this arc didn’t grab me in the past and even seeing some better moments, it’s not the series best. It’s not the worst either, Planet X easily takes that ground despite having far better art. It’s an incredibly muddled incredibly long feeling arc and really needed to be compressed by one or two issues but instead is just hard to get through. It’s owrth it for the rest of the runa nd the good moments within but all in all easily one of the weakest points in the series. 

Next Month on New X-Men:The X-Men soak in the new world order, and we meet fantomex, dust and the last surivivors of genosha. 

Next on this blog:Green Eggs and Ham is back!

If you enjoyed this review PLEASE join my patreon. The end of hte month is coming and I need eveyr cent I can get so join at patreon.com/popculturebuffet and i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[beholdme]

All the Many Shades of Gerry - Chapter 3

Chapters: 3/19

Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Gerard Keay, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist

Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gerard Keay, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Gertrude Robinson, Elias Bouchard

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Library AU, Librarian Jon, Artist Gerry, Trans Male Character, Trans Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Asexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Ace Subtype - Sex Positive, Polyamory, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Romantic Fluff, Falling In Love, Boys in Skirts, Kissing, Demisexual Gerard Keay, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Canon-Typical Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Flirting, Minor Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker, Adventures in Hair Dying, Happy Ending, Banter, Gerry has a lot of sass, Gerard Keay is Morticia Adams, Jon is a very grumpy Librarian, Martin adores them anyway.

Summary: In which Gerry is a kaleidoscope and Jon and Martin can't help falling in love with him.

He happens to love them back.

Find it on Ao3

[1] [2]

In the following weeks, as he sees Jon a few more times, Gerry's hair fades out and he looks rather more 'forest nymph' than 'American Gothic'.

So it's not much of a shock when the next time Jon catches sight of Gerry striding through the library stacks, his hair has been re-coloured. This time it's a smooth buttery yellow and Jon is struck by how young the warm, bright colour makes him look.

Gerry doesn't feel young though, he feels tired and bored and wrung out, and he wishes he had never agreed to take art commissions.

"It's only the one time!" Gertrude had insisted to a very put upon Gerry, very early in the morning. "And if he puts in a good word for you in his circles, your name will really be on the map in the art world."

Gerry wasn't particularly interested in being put on any maps, or being picked apart by rich, stuck up strangers, but he had agreed to try, mostly because Gertrude had put a lot of effort into making his passion for art an actual career and he felt like he owed her.

(He forgets, frequently, just how much of a commission she takes on the sales of his paintings).

So there he was, striding around the library at 7 am and desperately looking for exactly the right reference book. Unfortunately, it has been out of print for years, and Gerry can't seem to find a copy anywhere that won't cost him half a liver. He has the money now, but he refuses to pay half a month's rent to a second-hand retailer on principle.

Jon watches him skulk around for so long, (apparently forgetting that he is, in fact, a librarian) that Sasha comes out from her desk to ask Gerry if he's looking for something specific. She's wearing her big round glasses today and even indulged herself in her favorite waistcoat to beat the Monday blues.

"Why, yes." At this, Gerry looks directly up at Jon, where he is standing and watching him from the upper balcony level. Jon's face burns, and he ducks out of sight, but not earshot. "I do actually come here to borrow books, not boys." And he smartly feeds her the name of the reference book he has been hunting for almost an hour.

Sasha giggles at his antics, "We do have a copy of that, actually, but it's very popular. There's a waitlist; also it's checked out right now."

Gerry's whole demeanor sags and he sighs in defeat. "Guess I really will just have to order it off the internet, then." He eyes the stacks of books, old and new, looking vaguely betrayed.

"No!" Sasha's exclamation takes everyone a bit aback, being that they are in a library and all. "You know, my mate has this sweet little bookstore, and he loves hunting down rare copies of older books, he might have a copy?" She wrings her hands, eyebrows raised in question.

Gerry beams down at her, causing even stoic Sasha to blush and scurry off to get a piece of paper for the address.

They're already most of the way to the front desk by the time Jon realizes just which bookstore Sasha is busy recommending to the man he is dating , and just who owns that particular establishment.

By the time he manages to get downstairs to try to deflect the situation, Gerry is out the door, nothing left but the faint scent of oil paints and leather from his jacket.

***

Tim Stoker leaves Gerry feeling faintly dazed. By the time he stumbles out of the bookstore and into the tea room, elusive book in hand, he's forgotten everything he has ever known in the face of such intense flirting. And Gerry thought he was bad.

Throughout the whole episode at the library, the walk through Chelsea, and the exchange with Tim, Gerry had never once taken a moment to consider that Sasha's friend with a bookstore and Jon's Martin with a bookstore might be the same person.

He chooses to blame the lack of sleep and general disarray that is his life for the oversight.

Which is how, 9:30 in the morning, having been awake for almost 24 hours and completely finished, Gerry walks up to Martin in his tea room and says, "I'll have whatever is pink and in that jug, please. The biggest you've got."

Martin, of course, recognized him immediately. He would have recognized Jon's gothic childhood boyfriend from his social media stalking alone, but Jon's frantic texting was also a pretty big giveaway.

Martin: Relax, I don't bite clients this early in the morning. He's in safe hands with me.

Jon: HE KNOWS THINGS ABOUT ME. Besides, who's gonna stop him from biting you?

Martin: Whatever he has to tell me can’t possibly be worse than the office gossip I heard about you before we even meet.

Jon: W H A T

Now, here Gerry is before him, and he’s quite pleased with what he sees. Even tired and vaguely dazed, his presence in the little room carries a certain energy that Martin enjoys.

"Right away. Take a seat and I'll call you with it." Martin's voice is sweet, but gentle and firm, in a comforting sort of way. Through Gerry's sleepy haze, the instruction makes perfect sense, although he has neither paid nor offered a call name.

Gerry considers taking a seat on the plush bench that occupies one wall, before deciding that he desperately needs a cigarette, and wandering outside.

Technically he is only supposed to smoke at night when he's painting and needs just the right kind of boost, but he decides to call this one since he's on a painting-based errand when he's supposed to be sleeping.

"Gerry?" He turns toward the sound of his name, to find the barista offering him a large to-go cup of what he assumes is fruit ice tea. He frowns at having his name known (his new, much-preferred name, no less) and then frowns at a blonde, bespectacled man in a tea room attached to a bookstore.

His brain finally takes a moment to function, and he puts all the pieces together in an avalanche.

"Martin?" Far from his usual self-confident tone, the single word comes out in a squeak that would make even a toddler wince.

"Yes?" Martin returns the single word in the same solidly reassuring way, and even offers a happy smile.

"I didn't... I didn't recognize you."

"Would be pretty hard for you, considering this is the first we've ever met." Martin's voice is calming in a way that eases Gerry a bit, teasing and all.

"Thank you. For the tea, I mean." Gerry closes his eyes and desperately begs his shit to pull together for him, just this one time. "It's nice to finally meet you."

His hands are fully occupied with a book, a cup of tea, and a cigarette, but Martin doesn't seem particularly bothered by the lack of a hand to shake. "It's nice to meet you too. We're giving Jon a heart attack by doing it without him."

"That is the lawful good," Gerry says, after a long drag of his smoke. "A panicked Jon is a happy Jon, after all. Whatever would he do with himself without a situation to unnecessarily complicate?"

"Yes, the man does seem to thrive on anxiety, doesn't he?" Martin asks warmly, eyes crinkling around a fond smile. "Speaking of, you seem pretty wrecked yourself. Good party, I hope."

Gerry's answering laugh has a razor edge, "Not hardly. This fucking painting I'm working on will be the death of me." Gerry lifts the reference book as proof of trauma and stabs out his cigarette viciously.

"Hmm, sounds like a pain. I hope you typically find art a more enjoyable career?" Martin asks, tilting his head inquisitively. His curly hair moves fetchingly and Gerry catches himself tracking the movement.

"Mostly, yes. Although I keep the bartending gig for variety. You'd be amazed at the sort of inspiration someone can find in the right drunk crowd." Gerry grins, thinking of all the ridiculous things he’d seen walk in and out of the bar in his run there.

"I'd be very interested to see what kind of art you can turn that into. Maybe you'd like to show me sometime?" Martin's words are open and friendly.

Gerry eyes him for a minute, hiding behind a long taste of his drink. He's trying to suss out Martin's motivations, for his kindness and general geniality. The drink is good and it tips Gerry's mood far enough back into cheerfulness that he shrugs off his considerations for the time being.

"You know what," Gerry quips back. "I think I would like to show you sometime. How 'bout tonight."

It's not a question really, with Gerry's typical force of personality behind it, and he leaves the shop with Martin holding an address in his hand and a time to drag Jon over for dinner that evening.

***

Gerry does not make a big deal of Martin coming over. He acts as if any other friend is coming over for dinner.

He tidies, a little. Lights a few candles. Wears pants. The bare minimum really.

He isn't trying to impress anyone, he tells himself sternly.

Except he is, obviously. He doesn't know Martin very well yet, but he does want to keep Jon around, and they are a packaged deal these days. Which he was happy with, truly.

In their limited interaction, Martin had been sweet and put Gerry instantly at ease. He knows, from many years of working a bar, how to spot a dipshit, and feels confident in his assessment of Martin's character.

But, it's his own character that concerns him. People don't always like Gerry past surface interactions. He can be tempestuous and moody, and catching him tired is a pretty bad idea. The combination of artist and mommy issues can be jarring.

He desperately wants those things to not bother Martin though. He wants Martin to like him, and he's not interested in putting on a show to make it happen.

It occurs to Gerry an hour before they're due that he doesn't even remotely know what takeout to order for dinner.

(He knows what Jon will eat, and he obviously knows what he likes, but what about Martin? Why didn't he ask this morning? Why didn't he ask Jon earlier?)

Gerry is just starting to really panic about all the life choices leading up to this moment, when he gets a text from an unknown number, instantly filling him with relief.

Martin: Since you're hosting this time, I'll grab the take-out. Jon says you like Thai, I'll bring that. You got the drinks covered?

Gerry: As long as you drink either coffee, vodka, or water, yes.

Martin: I'm sorry, I subsist only on the blood of virgins.

Gerry: Oh dear. I couldn't tempt you to settle for Earl Grey?

Martin: Hmmm, yes, I'll accept your offerings this time.

***

The first knock comes right on time. Gerry, dressed in his best paint-stained jeans and cherry blossom kimono, opens the door with a flourish.

Martin allows himself to be welcomed in and hands the food off to the dramatic artist, who deposits it on the table where he has already set the tea tray.

"No Jon? Not that I mind quality ‘us’ time, of course."

Martin is busy taking in the rambling studio space and barely spares the attention to respond, although he manages a blush at the flirty tone. "He's, uh, running late. Work stuff. You know Jon."

Gerry smirks at that. "I do indeed. Is it a 'stumble in at 3am' late, or 'we could probably wait to eat' late?"

"Hmmm? Oh, let's wait a bit? If you don't mind." Martin seems equally taken with his painting wall and his book wall and keeps trading his attention between the two. The paintings, being the larger attraction, eventually win, and he meanders over to study them closer.

"Do you keep all the completed paintings around?" His voice is soft and reverent, and Gerry feels a rush of pride for his work.

"For a while. I like to make sure they're in their final forms before I release them into the wild." Martin blinks big brown eyes at him, before grinning and giggling slightly.

"You're very talented. Jon said as much, showed me the pictures, but words and photos are nothing compared to seeing the real thing." Martin really regards his paintings as if they're special, and rather than the prickly feeling of appraisal he feels during gallery nights, it fills Gerry with warmth.

He turns to examine the wall himself. It's filled with an eclectic group at the moment. Large abstracts made by pouring paint and then layering designs over, three-dimensional pieces painted and then embroidered or quilled over in select places, including a particularly wild eye design. Surreal faces and scenes that seem realistic except for the wild subject matter of planets in meadows and chimeras going to battle.

"Is this what comes from your adventures in bartending?" Martin asks Gerry, turning from the wall and towards the slightly taller man.

"That, and my traumatic childhood." Gerry makes sure to laugh at the last, taking the edge off the small confession.

"Obviously." Martin offers.

"Obviously." Gerry accepts.

***

Gerry and Martin drink tea on the floor while they wait for Jon. Gerry gently prods Martin through the story of how he came to open the bookstore. The blonde man even softly confessing that he had to lie on his CV to get the librarian gig at Magnus.

"How old are you? How did you convince them you had a Master's degree?" Gerry is incredulous. Not that he doesn't think Martin could have an advanced degree. But in paranormal research? Gerry hadn't even known that was an option.

"That's the thing! I'm only 29 now . I worked there for five years!" Martin's voice pitches up in disbelief. "I'm still in shock that anyone ever brought it. Desperate times, desperate measures, you know?"

"I do, actually." Gerry shifts slightly, adjusting his balance with the long remembered urge to flee from those desperate times. He fiddles with his teacup to distract himself. He brought this particular set from a pawn shop because the filigree and florals appealed to his love of colour theory. Soft pinks and corals warm against the cool aqua background.

"Jon says you wanted to go to art school when you two were younger."

It's not a question, but merely Martin offering the same space for openness that Gerry had given him.

"I never went. After my A-levels, I had to get away, and I never really stopped moving for long enough to go to uni when I was younger. Now I'm settled and it's not important to me anymore. Besides, no one asks for a copy of my phantom degree when I sell a painting. So I'm happy with how things turned out for the most part." He stops to consider the outline of a possible past for a moment, one where he didn't have to skip college and go ten years without seeing Jon. "Besides, can you imagine a 27-year-old in art school? The young ones would sacrifice me for more creative talent."

Their eyes meet for a moment, and then they laugh easily and move on to different topics, sliding through the easy stages of getting to know each other.

***

Jon does eventually arrive, looking panicked and harried. He de-ages 10 years when he finds them laughing and relaxed instead of tense and awkward.

So, the three of them eat cold Thai take out on the floor of Gerry's loft, leaning against the perfectly good couch. They share the odd intimacy of people who have known each other for very disjointed amounts of time but like each other just the same.

[foreversendmegardenias]

Taken from a personal blog on Facebook called, ‘The Beach Boys 101: The Band, The Music, The History’

If you are interested in learning about the reality of The Beach Boys history rather than the idealistic, sanitised version portrayed by the various BB groups on Facebook, then I recommend you follow this blog.

“The Last Years Of Carl Wilson’s Life His Relationship With His Brother Brian Was Definitely Strained.

But Why ?

One of the reasons I decided to start this page is because many of the other Beach Boys pages on Facebook have too many rules and stipulations on what you can and can’t talk about.

For instance, if you talk about Mike Love or say he had any type of talent or made important contributions to the Beach Boys’ music on a Brian Wilson page, that’s unacceptable.

If you say “Mike Love made the recording of “Pet Sounds” difficult” on a pro-Mike Love page you get your comment deleted and even kicked out of the group.

Same goes for Dennis and Carl pages. Even to give the impression that Carl may have been closer to his cousin Mike than to his two brothers is not acceptable even though history proves it most likely was true, especially in the final years of his life.

The most annoying pages of all are the ones run by people who have close relationships to members of The Beach Boys’ inner circle. They wouldn’t dare to say anything critical of a band member because it may damage their relationship with them. Therefore, you are given this “fairytale” perception of how things were.

Obviously we seem to be doing something fans of the band enjoy. After three years this page continues to grow and we thank you all for that.

The whole Beach Boys story is not all sunshine and roses that’s for sure. On this page we want to talk about and debate the difficult subjects part of the history of the band.

The true story of Brian and Carl is one many fans try to avoid. An agenda is pushed that Brian and Carl were close, right to the very end. Sadly though that’s not the case. As a matter of fact, in the very last years of his life Carl was fueding with Brian more than at any other time through his life.

Don’t get me wrong, both Brian and Carl truly loved each other. Carl especially did many things behind the scenes to help Brian get through some of the most difficult times in his life, especially finally breaking away from Eugene Landy.

Yet, from 1995-1998 something with Carl changed. Granted, by this time he may have already been sick and didn’t even know it. After the filming of the excellent Brian Wilson documentary “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” which was produced by Don Was, discussions came about proposing that Was would produce a new Beach Boys album using the material written by Brian Wilson and Andy Paley.

In mid-1995, Brian met with with Mike Love and Carl to play a number of songs that he had written with a songwriter named Andy Paley who Wilson had been working with since his solo debut album in 1988.

According to producer Don Was, Mike Love at first seemed receptive but Carl really never was. Not only did Carl not like any of the music or songs, he actually offended Brian by telling him the material was not commercial enough for The Beach Boys.

There could’ve been a number of reasons behind this. Carl was obviously embarrassed by the last Beach Boys’ studio album “Summer In Paradise”, a record where he totally relinquished any artistic control to Mike Love with disastrous results. Also having recently worked with artists like Tom Petty during the “Wildflowers” sessions, and Willie Nelson during the “Stars And Stripes” project definitely had Carl reassessing his own legacy. Especially since he had been writing and recording some new quality material of his own with his peers Robert Lamm of Chicago, and Gerry Beckley of America.

Being the team player he had always been, Carl did record vocals for a song called “Soul Searchin’”, a song he absolutely hated and made his feelings known that he didn’t want it released. (The song would eventually be released six years after his death on Brian’s “Gettin’ In Over My Head” solo album).

From that point onward he would fued with Brian’s wife and soon-to-be manager Melinda, not only about the music Brian had written but he also wasn’t happy that she was pushing him to finish the abandoned “SMiLE” project. Carl felt that would’ve caused Brian to have a nervous breakdown.

According to Don Was , who was present at these sessions, the final straw for Carl was the recording of the song called “Dancin’ The Night Away” that was intended for a show called “Baywatch Nights”. Camera crews were even brought in to film the event as a Beach Boys type of reunion. (A clip of that abandoned documentary will be posted in the comments section).

Carl hated the song so much that he walked out of the recording session which became the final nail in the coffin. After that, even Producer Don Was realized that these songs Brian wrote with Andy Paley weren’t that great and he tactfully told Brian he needed to write some better songs.

Both Melinda and a heartbroken Brian, who thought these were some of the greatest songs he ever wrote, blamed Carl for it all falling apart. That coupled with how Melinda also blamed Carl that Brian could not get a record deal, especially after the “Stars And Stripes Vol. 1” Beach Boys project where she felt Carl treated Brian like an invalid, basically making every record company shy away from giving him a recording contract.

Brian was so livid with Carl that in an interview for Vox Magazine during that period he stated : “Carl is my brother, but Carl is a a******. I love Carl, I love his singing, but he’s an a****** to me. Those guys are too . I oughta beat the h*** out of them all. I dunno, I’d probably get beat up if I tried that. ... I'll work on my own, solo, before I work with a bunch of guys that don’t give a s*** about me.”

It’s a shame that soon after Carl was diagnosed with lung cancer and never had the chance to truly make up with his brother Brian.

As history proves many of those songs Brian wrote with Andy Paley weren’t all that great, just as Carl had stated. (Will post bootlegs of those songs in the comments section).

A few were released on Brian’s 2004 “Gettin’ In Over My Head” album, yet the majority remain unreleased to this day. Even that album wasn’t given a fair chance since just a few months later Brian would finally finish and release “SMiLE” and thankfully (though he came close) never had a nervous breakdown.

Soon after the Andy Paley sessions, Brian would team up with former wrestler and music businessman Joe Thomas to have a much more successful songwriting collaboration that continues to this day, even though Melinda tried to sue Joe after the release of Brian’s comeback album “Imagination” in 1998, stating he didn’t allow Brian to produce that album the way he wanted to.

Brian, along with Joe Thomas, did write and record the beautiful “Lay Down Burden” a song Brian would later dedicate as a tribute to Carl proving how much Brian truly loved his baby brother. Carl also recorded a song as a tribute to Brian before his death called “Like A Brother”.

There’s no doubt in my mind, especially the kind of man that he was, that Carl would’ve made peace with Brian (the two did get together to watch the Super Bowl just days before Carl died, proof they may have been working towards a reconciliation) and would’ve contributed his angelic voice to many of the excellent songs Brian has written since that time.

It’s shocking that Carl has been gone over 23 years now. The Beach Boys camp is definitely NOT a better place without him.

Please Share Our Page With Other Beach Boys Fans/Friends”

https://www.facebook.com/BeachBoys101

[mymomanddadaregonnabesomadatme]

"Hey Khyle, why are you obsessed with a rarepair with a dead guy in it?"

Or, JonGerry manifesto time

FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry vs Jon's misandry

Let's talk about how Jon hates men! Jon hates men. Listen to how he conducts himself around Martin, Tim and Elias in season one versus how he gets along with Sasha and the tone is so hilariously different. He has NO patience for the men around him and even though he's still pretty crusty to the women who come in to make statements (Naomi Herne & Melanie in s1) the way he handles talking to Sasha as a colleague is wildly different from how he talks to the men he works with. The same with when he meets Basira! His social comfort around women feels distinctly different from the way he feels about, navigates around and talks to men. So it's very, VERY fun to contrast this not only with how well he and Gerry get along (even after a pretty terse greeting from Gerry!!), but also to how excited he gets talking and thinking about Gerry when he reads about him in statements and goes to America hoping he's still alive. I think being an exciting Idea of a person makes it slightly easier for Jon to digest him before meeting him, and I also think it's the reason that...

SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry is Jon's celebrity crush

If you need convincing, look no further than the fondness with which Jon says "that would be our Gerard" to Jurgen Leitner and your heart will open to this reality...Jon read about a cool goth in some statements and idealized him so hard he started crushing on him. Is Jon out to himself? No idea! Will that stop him from doing the very Jon thing of having very transparent feelings about something? Nope!

I've mentioned it in other posts but I do think it's significant how excited Jon is when he hopes Gerry is alive in America so he can meet him. There are a lot of little notes and quips Jon makes about Gerry throughout the series thay really solidify the idea that he's excited about him. I think Jon gets excited to pull information together and recognize figures from other statements -- he is the Archivist after all -- but I think some of the fondness Jon applies when talking about Gerry is significant and distinct from how he talks about other figures from statements. Plus, Jon has a reason to empathize with and relate to Gerry, given the fact that Leitners were one of the few things he allowed for the existence of even in season one, and Gerry is clearly so upset by their existence that he's gone around destroying them and beating up Jurgen Leitner himself. Probably hard for Jon not to idealize someone doing the work that he was so desperate for Elias to let him engage in during season one, huh? I think we all idealize and build parasocial relationships based on a feeling of relating to the people who are somewhat out of our reach...a cool goth who destroys evil books and punched the man whose library ruined your life? Might be a little hard not to get excited about the idea of him...🤔

THIRD ORDER OF BUSINESS: Gerry in the (quasi-) flesh vs. Gerry on the page

So, maybe you're convinced there were some celebrity crush feelings, maybe you aren't, but there's definitely some idealization at play with how Jon views Gerard Keay, Book-Hunting Goth Of Legend. Now let's talk about how that idea contrasts with Gerry, the regular (ish) dude that comes out of a book in America!!!

I think something very fun to note is how much they joke around with each other, basically right off the bat. It's pretty clear to me how much fun they have in each other's company, especially considering Gerry cites literally being in pain while he's existing as a page in the book. Both the crusty intro and Jon's reluctance to take and burn the page could have soured the entire interaction, but they both enjoy each other's company pretty transparently for the whole exchange. Gerry is straight with Jon in a way no one has been through basically his entire time learning about his position as the Archivist, and despite the fact that Jon summons Gerry for a purpose, it's hard not to view the exchange as largely social because of the tone. The fact that Gerry has ONE conversation with him and thinks of him as a friend is I think pretty telling as far as how Gerry views Jon's intentions and trustworthiness. He has a backlog of experience with Gertrude and insight into the ruthlessness of an Archivist, one that we never see calling him Gerry, and he still meets Jon for 20 minutes and goes yeah. I could befriend this dude. I also think this reinforces how Jon feels about Gerry: he's pretty forthcoming with information, even if he fucks around with him a bit, and there's some trust and transparency there that I think reinforces Jon's rare positive view of a dude in his life.

Like, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jongerry lives in the passage through the Jon Misandry Zone. He can only like a cool fictional goth that he has a reasonable amount of distance from but he's so excited when he meets him irl it forces him to actually learn about him as a person. Idealizing Gerry gives him the motivation to actually learn about another man and untangle how he feels about them!!!

FOURTH ORDER OF BUSINESS: One of these dudes is literally dead

Honestly I'm only Marginally stopped from my rarepair dedication by this fact, but if it's an issue, let's consider:

It's literally a horror tragedy podcast so I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say literally any happy romantic ending for characters is inherently an AU anyway, even if the ones folks are invested in somehow all end up living to the end lol. I guess folks can pray for postgame potential but I've already succumbed to how inherently doomed a lot of these characters seem so...the world is gonna be my rarepair oyster I guess!!!

Also, it's a podcast with some level of worldbuilding around reincarnation. Gerry got brought back once, could he be again? Imo we're only limited by our imaginations on that one. Lots of potential to play around with the form him being brough back and sustained could be...and, honestly, same with any rarepairs where one or both parties are dead imo! I'm here to push my jongerry agenda AND support the kneading of canon into something your faves could be brought back to life in. Death should stop no one from wanting Jon to kiss a hot goth dude!!!

LAST ORDER OF BUSINESS: Compatibility??? CHEMISTRY???

Alright I mean...I can't force anyone to find their back and forths cute and flirty like I do but I CAN say why I think this couple has so much fun potential:

Gerry is already used to being around An Archivist and seems to already think Jon is more friendworthy based on the Gerry request. He would probably be a lot more comfortable navigating around him than some of Jon's other colleagues, occasional snacktime or not. I think being in a book owned by two hunters probably gives him enough context for "monsters, but trying to be good in their own way" for him to be pretty levelheaded about Jon. A human connection that's based on enjoyment of each other's company with someone smart enough to not sign a contract might just be good for our spooky little Archivist...Also...

JON IS A STUFFY DWEEB AND GERRY IS A COOL GOTH THAT'S KILLED A GUY!!! Is this NOT the greatest couple concept this podcast could have offered us? The contrast...the meeting of worlds...Jon idealizing Gerry because he's a cool sexy goth and Gerry getting excited because he's got a sexy scary monster boyfriend...it's all there!!! Rife with entertaining potential!!!

Anyway these are my pro-jongerry arguments I hope you all enjoyed my rarepair shipping manifesto. Don't forget to like comment and subcribe and let me just say...once more for the road...

JonGerry Rights

[that-one-girl-behind-you]

Illicio 9/?

Part 8

"What's up with that?" She asks after so long has gone by that Jon is starting to think he's safe. He lets out an exhalation that hopefully doesn't sound as exhausted as he is with this whole matter.

Jon is, regardless of what Tim -or Georgie, or even Gerry himself- used to say, not completely hopeless at reading people. Only mostly. He's not entirely blind as to how the mood has shifted in his interactions with the man in question.

"Nothing." Jon says, then adds sullenly. "I don't know."

Daisy squeezes his hand. "Martin?"

"I don't know." Jon turns his head away to avoid Daisy's gaze. "I- Daisy, I think there's bigger things to worry about."

"It's good to- I'm trying to think of the little things too." Daisy shrugs. "It feels like having a purpose."

IX

On the days after the Buried, Daisy gets to know the world again. Or more accurately, the Institute, and the people in it. The difference is mind-blowing, now that the Hunt is only a background presence in her mind instead of the driving force behind her thoughts.

"You look... better," she tells Melanie one evening. It's not really a visible change, but she remembers Melanie from before the Unknowing, always bristling with a rage so barely restrained it used to set Daisy on edge too. Back then her thoughts had been mostly focused on how to take Melanie down if it came to a fight, and she has the feeling the same can be said of Melanie. Just two rabid dogs sizing the other up and waiting for the tension to crack.

"I guess I am," Melanie frowns down at the computer screen, and when Daisy leans over she can see she's taking a quiz of some sort. Probably not the approved use of Institute equipment, but she doesn't seem to care. "Did Jon tell you about the bullet?"

"He mentioned it," Daisy shrugs. A lot of things were said in the depths of the coffin, trying to bring the other some measure of comfort.

"Gerry says they got it off me just in time. Apparently I was a bad accident away from becoming a full avatar." Melanie gives her a careful look out the corner of her eye. "I'm guessing that's why you look..."

"Like shit?" Daisy asks with a dry smile, and after a moment Melanie smiles back.

"I was trying to look for a better term."

"Sugar-coating doesn't suit you."

"Can't say I have much practice." Melanie goes back to her quiz, and Daisy goes back to thinking.

Her condition is hardly surprising, considering everything; the Hunt has been pulling at her from the moment she climbed out the coffin after Jon, but she's done her best to ignore the call of the blood. Daisy's very aware that this is abstinence without recovery, and that her reticence to join in with the Hunt's other hounds is her choosing a slow but certain death.

But she's herself again, and finding out who that is feels like a goal worth dying for.

"Why are you an onion?" Daisy frowns at the computer screen showing the results of Melanie's quiz.

"I was always going to be an onion," Melanie shrugs, "I just wanted to know what kind."

Daisy's thinking about the right way to answer to that statement, when Melanie's phone pings in her pocket. She watches her pull it out, and her face softens at whatever it is she just received.

"I have to go. You should- I think he's recording, but you can probably go in if you're quiet." Melanie points at Jon's door. Even the way she refers to him is different, vaguely distasteful apathy instead of the tense hostility Daisy remembers from before the Unknowing, which is a relief.

The irony of the situation doesn't escape Daisy, how she walked into the coffin with half a mind to kill Jonathan Sims, and walked out ready to kill for Jonathan Sims.

"I can be alone for a while. It's alright." The call of the blood is easier to ignore when she's in someone else's company, but Daisy's not- she's noticed how Basira looks at her, the tired tension of her lips when Daisy follows her around the Institute and she has to pretend it doesn't bother her. Daisy's broken, but she will not be a burden. Not to anyone, but most of all not to Basira.

"Okay, then. Want anything from outside?" Melanie asks as she shoves an arm through her jacket's sleeve.

"I- some chips, if you could get them. Or any food that doesn't come packaged, really."

Melanie briefly nods an acknowledgment as she leaves, and she closes the door behind her before Daisy can ask her to leave it open.

It's okay. It's just a room, just a door. There's plenty of space to breathe and to move. If she focuses, she can feel Jon's presence in his office; he's okay too. They're- they made it out.

Daisy opens her eyes, unsure when she closed them, and finds that the walls have started closing in. She tries to ignore them by clicking back on Melanie's onion quiz, surely that will distract her right? The room is unchanged, she's- it's safe out here, safer than outside for sure, where she'd no doubt find a trail and be compelled to chase it, to run until her legs hurt and she can smell the panicked exhaustion her victim's perspiration, until they cannot keep from her any longer and she's forced to claim the prize and move on to the next-

"You alright there?" When the man's voice pulls her away from her mind, Daisy realizes she's closed her eyes again. Her fists are clenched tightly on the desk, and when she forces them open she finds a matching set of angry red crescent moons on her palms. "You're growling."

She looks up; the man is standing before the desk, looking warily down at her and he smells of lavender and Jon, which helps her push away the last traces of the blood.

"I'm okay." She mumbles, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to release her hunch over the desk, leaning back against her chair. She's heard a lot about this man lately; Basira calls him by his surname, like the ones she doesn't trust, but Melanie calls him Gerry with a sort of relaxed companionship, and when Jon does the same there's an undeniable undercurrent of fondness in the tone he gives the name. She has yet to meet him herself, but this seems as good a time as any, now that the room has stopped trying to suffocate her. "You're Gerry Keay?"

The man holds his silent contemplation for another minute, before he shrugs and grabs the chair across the desk. "That would be me. I've never seen an avatar of the Hunt look so famished," he observes. "Your kind doesn't usually deprive themselves."

"Well, I do," Daisy grumbles.

"Yeah. I can see that."

Silence. It's not exactly comfortable, but it's not uncomfortable either, and the company keeps both the Buried and the Hunt at bay.

"Are you here for Jon?" Daisy asks, and Gerry nods.

"Always. But right now I have to see Martin first."

That's... unexpected, to say the least. "Why do you have to see Martin?"

The man gives her an amused, resigned smile and a shrug. "Jon," he says like it's all the reason he needs, and Daisy decides on the spot that she likes Gerry Keay.

"I guess that tracks," she nods. "Why don't you go then?"

"You looked like you needed someone to talk to for a bit."

"That helps." Daisy nods. While she would've sneered at it before, she's now terribly aware that kindness is a virtue sorely lacking in the world they move in. "I'm alright now."

"You sure?" Gerry's eyeing her strangely, and only then does Daisy remember he's aligned with the Beholding as well.

"Yes. I'm- I'll just keep myself busy." Daisy looks at the computer. "I can... figure out what kind of onion I am."

The man blinks rapidly a couple times, probably trying to process what she just said, and Daisy wonders if Melanie felt the same perverse satisfaction when she said it.

"Sounds- yeah. I'll go now," Gerry says, climbing to his feet again. He turns at the door, and gives Daisy another evaluating look. "You're… very strong. Thank you. For helping him back." And he's gone before Daisy can ask what that even means.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"You should be careful with that. Could be dangerous." Peter half-turns before he leaves, a hand on the edge of the ajar door and ice-cold eyes heavy on Martin's nape.

"Not any more dangerous than anything else in my life, really." Martin shrugs, eyes fixed on the bright computer screen. Interacting with Peter is only tolerable because it feels only marginally like talking to another human being, but even that is enough to upset his stomach.

"Well, if you look at it like that. But I think you'll find that doing something dangerous out of your own free will is always better than being controlled to do it, even if that will is motivated by your frankly worrying infatuation with a man that does not care about you."

"Hm," is all Martin says. Out the corner of his eye he sees Peter's lips curl into a satisfied smile, but he can't bring himself to care. It's not like he's telling any lies either way.

"Okay! Now I really am running late, so if you don't mind?" Peter says in that cheerful, jovial tone Martin is quickly growing tired of, before he closes the office door behind him.

Martin sighs. This is- it's been harder, lately.

He still remembers why he's doing this, and he still cares, he really does. And everything is going according to plan, Peter really does think Martin believed his 'only you can save the world' spiel, Jon is out of the coffin, Daisy's alive, the Institute is -mostly- safe... but he just got the first actually feasible proof that the Extinction might be a real thing, and all he can think is that he's glad Peter left quickly.

The door flies open, and Martin jumps to his feet so abruptly that the chair he was sitting on tumbles to the floor.

"What- Gerard? What are you doing here?" Martin asks angrily, his heart beating madly in his throat. "Peter could've seen you!"

"I waited until he left, Martin, I'm not an idiot." The man rolls his eyes as he closes and locks the door behind him. Martin isn't sure it would be enough to stop Peter from coming in through the Lonely, but it's something.

"So what, were you eavesdropping?" Now that the shock is starting to pass, Martin is steadily moving towards annoyance in the spectrum of emotion. He told Gerard he didn't want him messing with his business, and yet here he is, just-

"You still look a bit gray," Gerard comments, coming to sit across Martin's desk like they had a freaking appointment. "You know what he said was bullshit, don't you?"

"He said a lot of things," Martin mumbles as he picks his chair back up and sits under Gerard's heavy gaze.

"There we go again." Gerard rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes are a beautiful color, Martin notices -if he still felt anything when writing his poetry, he'd be inclined to find a suitable comparison- and they couldn't be more different from Peter's. Gerard is actually looking at him, instead of through him, like Peter does. "Are you always this stubborn?"

"Excuse me? I'm not- you're the one who broke in here!" Martin sputters indignantly. "After I told you very clearly that I didn't want your help. If anyone is stubborn, that's-"

"The door was unlocked. Next time you want to be alone, check that first." Gerard shrugs, leaning backwards on his chair until the front legs lift off the floor.

Martin rolls his eyes. "Would it have stopped you?"

"For about five minutes." The man gives him a smug smile that fits his face like a glove, a handsome, mischievous troublemaker that takes far too much pride on the admission. "You look better now."

Martin grumbles, shoving the tape towards him across the desk's polished surface. "Here. Dekker's statement."

"What did you make of it?" The chair's legs land heavily against the floor, and Gerard reaches to take the tape and shove it in his jacket's pocket.

"It's... very odd. It feels like the Spiral, the Lonely and the End all rolled into one, with a side of the Stranger to boot." Martin worries at his bottom lip, frowning. His thoughts as he puts them into words are slow like dripping treacle, like waking up on a cold morning, but he can feel with no room for uncertainty that they're his thoughts, not the Lonely's. "I'm- I don't know if it is a new power, but I- the fears don't usually interact like that, do they?"

"Not really. They're more likely to fight over territory than to share it." Gerard's face is thoughtful when Martin lifts his gaze to look for answers there. "Sometimes they get along if their domains overlap. I've seen the Forsaken mix with the Vast and the Buried, but never at the same time because those two are opposites. The more entities that try to get in the mix, the more likely it is to fail."

"Hm. So? New kid in town?"

"I'll have to listen to it. I'm not exactly thrilled by the idea, though." Gerard sighs, rubbing at the back of his neck in a slow, deliberate movement that belies his exhaustion. "But it's not out of the question."

"H-how's Jon?" Martin blurts out. Gerard's mouth twitches, and Martin clears his throat, looking pointedly away.

"He's... better. I don't think anyone's left the coffin before, so it's not like we have much to compare his progress to. Got a nice new mark out of it, of course. We're this close to completing the card."

"The what?"

"It's just something I- " Gerard blinks, a confused frown coming to rest at his face all of a sudden. "...Something I thought of."

"...Yes?" Martin arches an eyebrow, but Gerard's frown only grows more pronounced when he shuts his eyes tight, as if trying to focus on a though- "Oh. Oh, you're bleeding again!"

Martin goes rustling frantically around in his desk, until he finds a box of paper tissues. The black ink dripping down steadily from Gerard's nose still hasn't slowed down by the time he looks back up, offering the box.

"Her- grab one. Jesus, what happened?"

"I-" Gerard opens his eyes again, and one of them has popped a blood vessel, it seems, the black startling against the white and blue as he reaches to pull a tissue free. "The Eye didn't like that too much."

"It didn't like what specifically?"

Gerard gives him a dubious look. "I don't-"

"Oh, no. You have to tell me now." Martin scowls as fiercely as he can, ignoring the heat on his face when Gerard raises an eyebrow.

"Excuse me? I have to?"

"Of course you do! You can't just barge in here and- and expect me to give you all I know and then not tell me anything!"

"You continue to not be what I expected, Martin," Gerard says in a flat, annoyed tone. Good. "It's got something to do with the marks. He's- he has twelve of them already."

"That's- wow. That's a lot of them." Martin blinks. He's aware -oh, he is so aware- of Jon's brushes with the entities, but it never occurred to him to actually sit down and figure which he hasn't encountered yet. It never felt important, for some reason. Peter's voice echoes in his mind. You should be careful with that. Could be dangerous.

"And he's getting them in the weirdest ways too, like-"

"Is there a normal way to be marked by a fear god?" Martin interrupts, only to be pinned down by Gerard's unimpressed stare. He snorts. "Sorry, sorry. You were saying?"

"Well, yes. I was there when he Knew about the bullet in Melanie's leg. It was a tidbit from the Eye. And then- why did that Stranger bloke bring the coffin here?" Gerard frowns, and ink starts running down from his other nostril as well. "Ah, fuck."

"Yes, maybe- we should stop for now." Martin gives the box of tissues another push. "I really don't want to go looking for Jon because you bled out in my office."

"Would be hard to explain, huh?" Gerard tears a handful of tissues out, before climbing to his feet. "We'll listen to the tape. I'll-"

"Wait- we?"

"I'm not going to lie to him," Gerard shrugs. "Besides, it will make him... not happy, but at least he'll have news of you."

"Very considerate," Martin says dryly. It's an abrupt reminder that they might be doing this out of love for the same man, but they're not friends. Still, Jon deserves nice things, even if Martin can't be the one to give them to him. "What?" He asks, when he zones back in and finds Gerard still looking at him thoughtfully.

"He really does care. Lukas knows how to come at you; don't let him." Gerard opens the door, halfway out already before he pokes his head back in. "Don't call the Lonely back in yet, give yourself a break, will you?"

He's gone before Martin can answer, and he sighs. This is getting so much more difficult than he thought it would be.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"-statement ends." Jon clicks the recorder off and places it on his improvised desk, before turning to look at Daisy. "The Flesh continues to be... puzzling, to say the least."

"Nasty," Daisy agrees without looking away from her phone. The tape recorder slides a little on his stomach when she shifts to make her head more comfortable on Jon's thigh. "Are vampires from the Flesh?"

Jon leans back, resting his head against the wall as the Knowledge starts pressing against his mind. "Yes. Bit of the Hunt too. And a little Stranger. They're quite a mess." He shifts too, the hardwood floor of his office punishing on his tailbone.

"Want to switch?" Daisy asks, already halfway through sitting up.

"I'm alright." Jon slides down instead. "It's almost time to leave anyways, Gerry will be here soon."

"I met him the other day. He seems nice." Daisy lays back next to him. Jon slides his hand under her forearm, just to have an additional point of contact, and she tangles their fingers together.

"He is," Jon says quietly. Daisy, who is not aligned with the Beholding but whose stare can still make you squirm, looks at him out the corner of her eye.

"What's up with that?" She asks after so long has gone by that Jon is starting to think he's safe. He lets out an exhalation that hopefully doesn't sound as exhausted as he is with this whole matter.

Jon is, regardless of what Tim -or Georgie, or even Gerry himself- used to say, not completely hopeless at reading people. Only mostly. He's not entirely blind as to how the mood has shifted in his interactions with the man in question.

Gerry has ways been generous with his touch, a heavy hand on Jon's shoulder, around his wrist, on top of his head, but recently there's been the slightest moment of hesitation just before making contact, and Jon finds himself dreading it every time, without really knowing what outcome he fears more.

It definitely doesn't help that Jon is far too aware that no matter what Gerry may or may not feel, he did not choose to be here willingly, that even if he for some reason enjoys Jon's company, he's as much a prisoner to him as Jon himself is to the Eye.

"Nothing." Jon says, then adds sullenly. "I don't know."

Daisy squeezes his hand. "Martin?"

"I don't know." Jon turns his head away to avoid Daisy's gaze. "I- Daisy, I think there's bigger things to worry about."

"It's good to- I'm trying to think of the little things too." Daisy shrugs. "It feels like having a purpose."

Jon purses his lips. Sure, having a purpose is good and all until said purposes are self-sacrificing to a fear entity to keep you safe or behaving in an entirely too confusing manner.

"How's Basira?" He hasn't spoken much to her since that day after the statement. Jon gets the feeling she doesn't want to give him another chance to voice those thoughts she doesn't pride herself on.

Daisy sighs. "She's- it's okay. We're together, so it's fine. I just-" her voice falters a little, and Jon turns back to face her, squeezes her hand in reassurance. "I know I'm not what she needed."

Jon doesn't do her the disservice of trying to offer advice; the nuances of their relationship are something he doesn't want to intrude on. Instead, he tugs softly on her hand.

"I think we have time for an episode or two, if you're up for it."

Daisy's chapped lips twitch with humor. "I thought you didn't like it."

Jon snorts; no need for an Eye membership to see that, then. "It's- charmingly simple, I suppose."

"You don't get to back out," she says, lifting Jon's hand in hers to tap at her phone.

"Fine. But I will comment on it." Jon mock-scowls as the opening notes of The Archers' intro start playing.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Want some coffee?" Gerry asks as he locks the door to the flat behind him.

"That sounds nice," Jon mutters. His voice is distracted and somewhat annoyed, and Gerry turns to see him struggling with the very last button of his coat. The burned hand must be aching more than usual, because he's not even trying to use it. "Uh- could you-"

"On it," Gerry nudges Jon's hand away gently, before easily sliding the button through the hole. "You're... good." Jon's large, dark eyes are glued to him when he looks up, awfully closer than he expected.

"Yes, I- thank you." After a moment's hesitation Jon's hands slide under his again to grab at the coat's lapels, and he steps away as he shrugs it off.

Gerry sighs, taking his own jacket off. This tension is ridiculous, he thinks as he watches Jon make a beeline for his bedroom. It's not- Gerry's far too aware of the situation with Martin. The tape he's carried around in his jacket for the past two days can attest to that, so no, he's not planning on making a move on Jon without at least a conversation. But he can't- it's not like he can just pretend he doesn't want Jon. Not after the Buried, not after thinking he lost him, and all the revelations that stemmed from that.

And speaking of the tape...

He hasn't brought himself around to listening to it, the hard corners digging at his ribs where his heart should be. Gerry's not so blind as to not realize this is selfishness on his part, a futile attempt to keep up this false normalcy they have found for themselves.

It's not fair for Jon, after Gerry made him promise to not keep secrets, but most of all it's not fair to Martin, who Gerry has very much decided he misjudged.

"We should- there's something I have for us. That we should listen to," he says once he goes back to the living room. He hands Jon -who has already changed into night clothes and is balled up at one end of the sofa- the two steaming mugs. "Here. I'll be right back."

Jon's eyes narrow in suspicion when Gerry comes back with the tape recorder. "What is that?" Gerry sits next to him on the sofa, stalling for time. "Gerry..."

With the kind of relationship he has with Jon, there's probably not a good way or time of saying 'I really like the way you say my name', but considering the news he's about to give, Gerry's willing to bet this would be one of the worst.

"I spoke to Martin." He says hurriedly, instead.

"You what?" Jon's eyes go wide, and Gerry lifts a hand in an appeasing motion.

"Yes, when- I went to look for him when you went into the Buried."

"I- why would you do that?!" Jon asks, his voice strained.

"Let me see, because I found out you'd fatally misunderstood the concept of anchors, and I thought he might have a better chance at getting you back than a rib." Gerry finds himself growing more agitated as he speaks, the light compulsion bringing forth more than just words. "A rib. Jon what were you think-"

"You said you'd stop bringing that up," Jon cuts him sullenly, his brow furrowed as he straightens up to shove a finger into Gerry's chest. "You said a man used quiche as his anchor!"

"It was not about the quiche, I thought you'd understood that!" Gerry clamps a hand down on Jon's to yank it away from his torso as he leans forward. "How was I supposed to know- a rib!"

"Well-" Jon snaps angrily, inches from Gerry's face. "Next time-"

"Next- there is not going to be a next time, Jon! You're not going into any more entities without me," Gerry blurts out. Jon's face goes carefully blank, and they stay there for a moment, breathing heavily in agitation. "Jon-"

"What- the tape." Jon sits back, bringing his knees up to his chest and wrapping an arm around them. "What's in it?"

Gerry groans, sitting back as well. Stupid.

"It's... let's just listen to it," he says before pressing the play button.

"Right. Martin Blackwood, archi- assistant to Peter Lukas, head of the Magnus Institute."

Jon grows more and more stiff with each passing second, and Gerry purses his lips in thought. This is probably the most Jon has heard of Martin in months, and the content could hardly be worse.

"Hey, I..." Gerry sighs. Jon doesn't look at him, and Gerry notices with a start that his eyes are starting to glow a faint green. More information to the Archive, then, whether Jon wants the knowledge or not.

He reaches over to lay a comforting arm across Jon's shoulders, pulling him lightly towards him, and Jon -surprisingly, terrifyingly- comes. It doesn't make Martin's words any less dreadful, but it does make it easier to listen to, knowing they're not alone.

"What- what happened after?" Jon asks after the tape clicks to an end. Gerry didn't miss how his posture against him grew stiff again at the subtle abuse Lukas flung to Martin after the statement. He'd known that was a possibility, but he'd also known Jon wouldn't let him stop the tape before it was over.

"I waited until Lukas left, locked us into his office and pissed him off until he was more human." Gerry shrugs. "Then we talked."

"Please don't antagonize Martin," Jon mutters softly, running his pointer finger over the edge of the tape in a gesture that seems almost intimate, and that Gerry very much doubts is meant for the device.

"All interaction helps, when he's like this. Especially if it turns out he wants to engage back, and trust me, he wanted to argue with me."

"That's because you are irritating," Jon huffs, and Gerry snorts a little.

"Beholding hasn't told you where it hid the return receipt?"

Jon's hand slaps softly against Gerry's chest. "What else?"

"Not much. After- I reminded him that you care about him. When he was more himself," Gerry adds, giving Jon's shoulders a light squeeze. "He even listened, I think." Jon frowns, quiet and contemplative for a moment that stretches for entirely too long. "Does it help? To know he's doing this for a reason?" Gerry asks

'Does it help to know you're loved?' he doesn't add.

Jon sighs.

"Somewhat. I just- leaving my personal- what are we going to do about this?" Jon asks. "This new- we have our hands full with the regular ones already, but a new one?"

"Is the Eye telling you something about it?" Gerry watches his face carefully, but his eyes are already back to their usual, comforting dark hue, and Jon shakes his head.

"Suspiciously quiet, if you ask me." Jon looks up at him, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Does it ever tell you anything?"

Gerry thinks of the marks all over Jon's soul, and the screeching static that came from trying to Know about them.

"Sometimes. I try to pay more attention to what it doesn't want to tell me."

"And what is that?"

"There's something about your marks," Gerry says slowly, trying to pinpoint the exact piece of information that the Watcher doesn't want him to focus on. "I think there's a reason you're getting- oh, there we go."

"Wh- Gerry!" Jon springs from the sofa, leaving Gerry's side uncomfortably empty as he darts into the bathroom. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back to keep the ink flowing from his nose from making a bigger mess. Done with Eye business for the night, it seems.

"It doesn't hurt," Gerry shrugs after Jon comes back with a handful of bunched up toilet paper. "You're a cheapskate, Martin had tissues."

"You're ridiculous," Jon huffs, pressing the paper carefully against Gerry's face. "Should I- I'll get something to read, that'll fix it. Hold this."

"Nah." Gerry makes no move to take over holding the toilet paper under his nose, cracking an eye open instead to find Jon hovering over him with concern clear on his face. "Just talk to me. I like it better."

"I-" Jon's cheeks go a few shades darker, and Gerry feels his mouth twitch into a smile. "Uh- alright. What- Gerry, I'm really bad at small talk."

"Then don't do small talk," Gerry shrugs. "Tell me... oh, tell me about when you broke into Getrude's flat."

"W- how did you know about that?!" Jon gapes, his face red with embarrassment. He could get used to this, Gerry thinks.

"Had a lot to listen to when you went to pick up Daisy. Supplemental Jon sounds like a fun fella," Gerry adds with a wink, and Jon sputters like an angry kettle.

He could definitely get used to this.