#jon thinking of her laughter and the memory keeping him warm??? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dontbipanicjonsa · 3 years ago

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A confusing clusterfuck of thoughts re: Jonsa

Or: why the fuck are Jon and Sansa so compatible if they're not canon, huh?

He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. - Bran III AGOT

So....Jon is going to lose memory of all warmth? I'm going to separate the changes brought about in post-resurrection!Jon here as changes caused by death and changes caused by Ghost. This post is only speculating about the changes caused by death i.e. loss of memory of all warmth.

More foreshadowing for that-

Chunks of coal burned in iron braziers at either end of the long room, but Jon found himself shivering. The chill was always with him here. In a few years he would forget what it felt like to be warm. - Jon III AGOT

"It was. The fort is in a sorry state, admittedly. You will restore it as best you can..." ... You'll sleep on stone, too exhausted to complain or plot, and soon you'll forget what it was like to be warm, but you might remember what it was to be a man. - Jon II ADWD

So, I did a word search for warm and memory and I found some interesting stuff. Read under the cut.

1. Home

Jon- warmth and memory of home

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north. - Jon II AGOT (thinking about Arya)

The weariness came on him suddenly... So cold, he thought, remembering the warm halls of Winterfell, where the hot waters ran through the walls like blood through a man's body. There was scant warmth to be found in Castle Black... - Jon III AGOT

...Iron Emmett was still urging on his charges in the yard. The song of steel on steel woke a hunger in Jon. It reminded him of warmer, simpler days, when he had been a boy at Winterfell matching blades with Robb under the watchful eye of Ser Rodrik Cassel. Ser Rodrik too had fallen, slain by Theon Turncloak... All my memories are poisoned. - Jon VI ADWD

The warmth took some of the ache from his muscles and made him think of Winterfell's muddy pools, steaming and bubbling in the godswood. Winterfell, he thought. Theon left it burned and broken, but I could restore it.-Jon XII ASOS

So, these are the memories of warmth he'll lose? This warmth, that he associates with Winterfell (and the Starks), is the first memory of warmth Jon has.

Dany- memory of home

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind... and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door.

"… the dragon …" - Daenerys IX AGOT

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door … was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? - Daenerys VI AGOT

..."What shall we talk of?"

"Home," said Dany. "Naath. Butterflies and brothers. Tell me of the things that make you happy, the things that make you giggle, all your sweetest memories. Remind me that there is still good in the world."

Missandei did her best. She was still talking when Dany finally fell to sleep, to dream queer, half-formed dreams of smoke and fire. - Daenerys VIII ADWD

Dany's idea of 'home' changes over the course of the books. In the beginning she uses home for Illyrio's house, or the house with the red door. She very clearly doesn't think of Westeros as her home. After Viserys's death however, there's a sudden shift. Now, Westeros is her long lost home that she must return to someday. It's jarring. Interestingly enough, she pretty clearly rejects the idea of Dothraki khalasars as home, and the only time she calls Meereen home is in her last chapter of ADWD where she's trying to convince herself to return there. But we know that she ultimately rejects that too, in the same chapter.

Sansa- memory of home

Snow was falling on the Eyrie.

Outside the flakes drifted down as soft and silent as memory. Was this what woke me? Already the snowfall lay thick... The sight took Sansa back to cold nights long ago, in the long summer of her childhood. - Sansa VII ASOS

Last of all came the Royces, Lord Nestor and Bronze Yohn... Though his hair was grey and his face lined, Lord Yohn still looked as though he could break most younger men like twigs in those huge gnarled hands. His seamed and solemn face brought back all of Sansa's memories of his time at Winterfell. - Alayne I AFFC

She missed Septa Mordane, and even more Jeyne Poole, her truest friend... She tried not to think of them too often, yet sometimes the memories came unbidden, and then it was hard to hold back the tears. Once in a while, Sansa even missed her sister. By now Arya was safe back in Winterfell... - Sansa II ACOK

Arya coz why not

"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one another, keep each other warm, share our strengths.… Sansa is your sister. You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you …" - Arya II AGOT

Needle was Robb and Bran and Rickon, her mother and her father, even Sansa. Needle was Winterfell's grey walls, and the laughter of its people. Needle was the summer snows, Old Nan's stories, the heart tree with its red leaves and scary face, the warm earthy smell of the glass gardens, the sound of the north wind rattling the shutters of her room. Needle was Jon Snow's smile. He used to mess my hair and call me "little sister," she remembered, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes. - Arya II AFFC

Again, all this (and much more) is stuff that reminds Sansa (and Arya) of home. This is, presumably, shit that Jon is gonna forget. Or maybe he'll retain the memories and only lose the emotions (warmth) associated with it?

2. Suitors or romantic/sexual partners (+Ben Plumm)

Jon

Many a night he lay with Ygritte warm beside him,... - Jon V ASOS

So, Ygritte becomes his second memory of warmth.

When he turned he saw Ygritte.

...cloaked in darkness and in memory. The light of the moon was in her hair, her red hair kissed by fire. When he saw that, Jon's heart leapt into his mouth. "Ygritte," he said.

"Lord Snow." The voice was Melisandre's.

Surprise made him recoil from her. "Lady Melisandre." He took a step backwards. "I mistook you for someone else." At night all robes are grey. - Jon VI ADWD

AT NIGHT ALL ROBES ARE GREY...yea I know, this is a well established connection between the Girl in Grey and Ygritte. Since Jon associates Ygritte with warmth so strongly, I think it's safe to assume that the Girl in Grey might play a role in warming him too (hehe).

… one hears queer talk of dragons."

"Would that we had one here. A dragon might warm things up a bit."

"My lord jests. You will forgive me if I do not laugh. We Braavosi are descended from those who fled Valyria and the wroth of its dragonlords. We do not jape of dragons." - Jon IX ADWD

Yikes.

Dany

"If my queen commands," he (Jorah) said, curt and cold.

Dany was warm enough for both of them. "She does," she said. "She commands...

When he was gone, Dany threw herself down on her pillows beside her dragons. She had not meant to be so sharp with Ser Jorah, but his endless suspicion had finally woken her dragon. - Daenerys IV ASOS

So, here the warmth is because of anger (woken the dragon).

Dany could feel the warmth of his fingers. He was warm in Qarth as well, she recalled, until the day he had no more use for me. She rose to her feet. "Come," she said, and Xaro followed her through the pillars... - Daenerys III ADWD

She remembered Ben's face the last time she had seen it. It was a warm face, a face I trusted... Even the dragons had been fond of old Brown Ben, who liked to boast that he had a drop of dragon blood himself. Three treasons will you know. Once for gold and once for blood and once for love. Was Plumm the third treason, or the second? And what did that make Ser Jorah, her gruff old bear? Would she never have a friend that she could trust?- Daenerys VI ADWD

This is twice that Dany associates warmth with people who use/betray her.

"You're hurt," she gasped.

"This?" Daario touched his temple. "A crossbowman tried to put a quarrel through my eye, but I outrode it. I was hurrying home to my queen, to bask in the warmth of her smile." He shook his sleeve, spattering red droplets. - Daenerys VI ADWD

Dawn always came too soon.

...If only she had the power, she would have made their nights go on forever, but the best that she could do was stay awake to try and savor every last sweet moment before daybreak turned them into no more than fading memories....

Dany wrapped her arms around her captain and pressed herself against his back. She drank in the scent of him, savoring the warmth of his flesh, the feel of his skin against her own. Remember, she told herself. Remember how he felt. - Daenerys VII ADWD

Ok, I forgot how smitten Dany was with Daario. It would be cute if Daario wasn't so horrifying. Girl has some seriously questionable taste.

Interestingly, the phrase 'fading memory' is used four times in the text (as far as I can find) and three of those times are in Daenerys's POV. One is in the above quote, where she's commanding herself to remember her time with Daario before her marriage to Hizdahr, and the other time is while thinking about the red door. Both these are memories that are important to her, that connect her to the hopeful/little/not-dark girl she once was.

Sansa

Gently, he spoke of Braavos, and met a wall of sullen courtesy as icy and unyielding as the Wall he had walked once in the north. - Tyrion VIII ASOS

"I am composing a new song, you should know. A song so sweet and sad it will melt even your frozen heart. 'The Roadside Rose,' I mean to call it. About a baseborn girl so beautiful she bewitched every man who laid eyes upon her." - Sansa VII ASOS

"Alayne." Her aunt's singer stood over her. "Sweet Alayne. I am Marillion. I saw you come in from the rain. The night is chill and wet. Let me warm you." - Sansa VI ASOS

You must be very cold. Let me warm you, Sansa. Take off those gloves, give me your hands." - Sansa VII ASOS

Yea no. Sansa has not had a good experience with people offering to warm her (unfreeze her? melt her?)

Looks like in TWOW there's going to be two people in desperate need of some warming.

It's pretty neat actually. Jon associates memories of warmth with two things primarily: Winterfell/the Starks, and Ygritte. Sansa is both a Stark, and a much (much) improved Ygritte.

Sansa's iciness-wall-armour is a form of protection that she employs against predatory men. The only person who can melt her frozen heart...is someone who is not predatory. Someone who cares for her. Jon.

It fits perfectly. They fit perfectly.

#actually jonsa #jonsa #jonsa meta #book jonsa

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bluejayblueskies · 4 years ago

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can i be gentle?

Words: 7.1k

Relationships: Jon & Tim, Tim & Martin

Tags: Canon Divergence, Tim Lives, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Post-Unknowing, Injury Recovery

Warnings: suicidal thoughts/ideations, blood, injury, hospitals and hospitalization, survivor's guilt, body horror, minor gore, gun and knife violence, mentions of death, mentions of canon-typical worms, implied child abuse, meat, alcohol, swearing, crying, smoking

Ao3 link in source

Tim aches. It’s full-body, radiating through his arms and back and legs, and he wishes more than anything that he could go to sleep, to chase away the pain for at least a little while. It feels like he’s been hit by a bus.

Or been on the receiving end of several kilos of C4 igniting all at once. But that metaphor’s a bit too on-the-nose, in his opinion.

He should be dead. He should be dead.

(Does he wish he were dead? He hadn’t cared, in those few moments of clarity before he pushed the button on the detonator and the colors solidified into black nothingness, whether or not he would wake up when the smoke cleared. It’s hard to tell. He’d attached so much of himself to revenge, before, when it was easier than feeling everything else bubbling up underneath, and now that it’s been ripped away from him, he doesn’t know what emotion should be filling the gap. Probably relief.

He doesn’t feel relieved.)

The nurse is speaking to him. Her lips are moving, but he can’t hear her. His ears ring and ring and ring, and it sounds like spirling, mocking laughter.

They do some tests. Blast-induced hearing loss, the pamphlet they give him proclaims. Prognosis is good. Most patients recover in 6 weeks. Hearing aids can help with high frequencies.

His ears ring and ring and ring, and he’s alive.

He’s alive.

Jon is not.

“It’s because of him, you know.”

Martin startles badly at Tim’s voice. Tim wonders if it had been too loud; the ringing in his ears is incessant, and every word spoken sounds as if it’s coming from a very, very far distance. He moves a bit further into the room that they’ve placed Jon in, his hands shaking where they grip the wheels of the wheelchair they’d given him. Hard to walk when your leg is shattered. And some ribs as well.

Martin says something, Tim thinks, as he’s turning. His eyes are wide and rimmed with red, and he’s looking at Tim expectantly. Tim sighs, then winces as the motion sends tendrils of pain through his ribcage. “I can’t hear you, Martin. Either speak up—way, way up—or just… move your lips more or something. I don’t care.”

“What?” Martin enunciates, and it’s so ridiculous, Tim wants to cry.

He answers anyway.

“Me. Being here. I’m alive because… because of him.”

It was stupid, thinking he could protect Tim from an entire building collapsing on top of them. But his hand had gripped Tim’s wrist and he’d pulled him to the floor and he’d covered Tim’s body with his own, so when the shock wave had hit, Jon had gotten the worst of it.

Tim refuses to feel guilty about it. He does anyway. Because they’d argued, and Jon had stalked him, and Tim had cultivated his anger and fear into a simmering ember deep in his chest, but at the end of the day, Tim wasn’t supposed to survive.

Jon was.

Tim swallows, hating the bitter taste in his mouth, and says, “Do you… do you think he’s going to wake up?”

Martin says something, too softly for Tim to hear. His mouth twists into something small and pained, and he looks at the floor.

It’s answer enough.

Tim doesn’t ask again.

They arrest Elias a few hours later, after Martin’s collected himself enough to bring his plan to completion. Tim’s only regret is that he isn’t able to see the look on Elias’s face as he’s dragged away.

Knowing Tim’s luck, he’d probably have just looked smug.

The name Peter Lukas crosses Martin’s lips, spelled out in exaggerated motions when he visits Tim again. Tim thinks, absurdly, of the hydra. Cut off one head, two grow back.

Lukas probably won’t be better. Knowing their luck, he’ll be much worse. But Tim thinks of the way Melanie had shaken after she’d come out of Elias’s office, of the haunted look in Martin’s eyes when Tim had asked how his plan went, and can’t find it within himself to care.

They release him from the hospital with a hefty prescription of pain meds, small plastic hearing aids tucked in each ear, and a thick folder of discharge papers. Martin’s there when they do; the bags under his eyes are dark and smudged, and he nods mechanically as the nurses talk to him, outlining Tim’s care regime for the next few weeks. His eyes keep flicking to the side, to the corridor that leads to the long-term care section of the hospital. Wordlessly, Tim reaches over and takes Martin’s hand in his, giving it a single squeeze before holding it tightly.

Martin lets out a breath through his nose and squeezes back.

“Do you want me to, er. To take you back to yours?” Martin asks once they’re out, his voice on the softer side of muffled and overlaid with that constant ringing but audible enough now that he doesn’t have to shout.

Tim feels something almost like embarrassment curling in his stomach. “I, uh. I don’t have a place anymore.” Tim drums his fingers on his thighs, looks at the ground, and says, “I canceled my lease. About a week before we left for Great Yarmouth.”

There’s silence between them—or at least, as close to silence as Tim can get right now. Tim thinks Martin says something, a word or two brushing up against the edges of what the hearing aids allow him to hear, but he can’t grasp any of it. So, Tim looks up at Martin, at the pinched, pained expression on his face, and says, “Don’t pretend like you didn’t know.”

“Know what?” Martin says bitterly. “That you never expected to come back? Yeah, I got that part. I even got why, you know? Doesn’t make it better, though. I didn’t want to lose you, Tim.” Martin pauses, then says, so quietly Tim can barely hear it, “I didn’t want to lose anybody.”

“Yeah,” Tim says. But that’s not how this works. We were never going to all survive. Everything is fucked, and it still is, and it always will be.

“I’m sorry,” he says and finds he means it. Then, to clarify: “For hurting you. And… and for Jon.” He doesn’t elaborate on that point. He doesn’t know what he would say even if he tried. “But I’m not sorry for going, and I’m not sorry for pressing that button. If I would have died, I wouldn’t have been sorry for that either.”

“Right,” Martin says slowly. “But you didn’t. And the Circus is gone now, so do you…?”

“Do I still want to kill myself?”

Martin winces.

“Hey, your question, not mine,” Tim says, holding his hands up in a defensive gesture. After a moment, his hands drop back to his lap, and he gives a small shrug. “Don’t know. I knew I would do what I needed to in order to destroy the Circus, and I did. Thought I would die in the process, but I didn’t. I’m still trapped in the world’s shittiest job, and I don’t really…”

Tim shrugs again. “I don’t know,” he repeats. Then, because it feels true: “It was never… it was never the dying bit I was chasing, you know. I didn’t do this because I thought it would be a good way to get killed. I did it for Danny, and that’s it. Plain and simple. So if you’re asking if I want to die, the answer is no. But I can’t guarantee that I won’t make the same decision again if I have to.”

Martin’s quiet for a long moment. Then, calmer than Tim expects, he says, “Okay.”

“Okay,” Tim echoes. Then, with a levity that only feels slightly forced: “I suppose it’s back to your place, then. Just be sure to buy me dinner first.”

Martin doesn’t smile at that like he used to, but his face does soften a bit. His voice is lighter when he says, “Oh, I will. Within your dietary restrictions, that is. Which means no alcohol.”

Tim groans. “You’re no fun.”

“Uh huh.”

They begin the commute back to Martin’s flat, and the atmosphere between them grows more lighthearted than it’s been in months. Tim feels something warm and familiar curl in his chest, and he realizes just how much he’s missed this. It’s not quite easy conversation, not like it used to be, but it’s nice all the same.

Tim’s ears ring, and his entire body aches, and he still feels a numbness in his core in the shape of suspicious glances and calliope music and a face he can’t remember, but for the first time in a long, long time, he allows himself to smile.

Tim doesn’t visit Jon often. At first, it’s the guilt, acute and cloying and weighing him down. Then, it’s old hurt and stale anger, resurfacing and driving away any passing thought of Jon that isn’t tinged with bad memories and broken trust. After that, it’s just habit.

It also hurts, if he lets himself admit it. To see Jon lying there, motionless and clad entirely in white, the heart monitor attached to him reading out a constant horizontal line even as his eyes move in small, jerky motions behind his eyelids.

See? a part of him whispers. He’s not human. Maybe he never was. Maybe he was always a monster, and you just never noticed. It wouldn’t be the first time.

A newer part of him, one that gets more prominent by the day, recognizes that even if Jon isn’t human anymore, he never would have chosen this. This stasis, this half-death. Not what came before, either. That part of him remembers the way Jon’s hand had gripped his tightly as they’d opened that trapdoor, and how it had continued to do so even as the worms had begun to bite into their skin. He’d tried to protect Tim then, too, putting himself between Tim and Jane Prentiss. For all the good it did, when the worms began to come from all directions. But Tim remembers the way the terror and pain in Jon’s eyes had been tinged with sadness, with a silent apology as he gripped Tim’s hand hard enough to bruise and they both accepted that this was it.

It hadn’t been, in the end. And now it is, with Jon all-but-dead and Tim still here, wheeling his way into Jon’s hospital room for the first time in weeks.

He’s halfway in before he realizes he’s not alone.

“Oh,” he says. “I… I didn’t know you’d be here.”

Martin lets out a sharp, jagged laugh. “Where else would I be?” he says, and it’s tinged with something bitter and broken that takes Tim a bit off-guard. It’s become almost routine now, for Martin to visit Jon, and usually, he comes back looking drained but otherwise fine. Sometimes, when Tim asks him for status updates on our resident medical mystery, Martin even manages a small smile and responds, still dreaming.

Martin scrubs a hand across his face, and Tim realizes belatedly that he’s crying.

“Martin?” Tim says carefully, moving a bit closer to where Martin’s sitting. “Are you… did something happen?”

“No,” Martin says, his voice catching in a way that indicates that something very much did happen. “It’s fine.”

“Is it…?” Tim pauses, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Is it about Jon?”

Martin’s laugh this time is more like a whimper. “Nope, he’s- he’s the same as always. Still asleep.”

Tim moves closer but doesn’t say anything. The clock ticks rhythmically in the background, and he waits. Patience has never been his strong suit, but it’s been something that’s been required of him as of late, and he’s getting better at it.

He likes to think he’s getting better at a lot of things.

Martin doesn’t speak again for a few minutes. He stares at his hands where they rest just shy of one of Jon’s, his fingers restless against the sheets, coming up occasionally to fiddle with the thin black ring that rests on the middle finger of his right hand. Then, so quiet Tim almost can’t hear it, he says, “My mother died today.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says. They’re empty words, but they’re better than the good riddance and about time and you’re better off without her sitting on the back of his tongue, begging to be released. He doesn’t think they would be appreciated right now, no matter how true they might be.

“Yeah,” Martin says. He’s still staring at his hands. “They called me a few hours ago. She… she passed away in her sleep. Natural causes. From- from her illness.” He falls silent for a few moments, his fingers twisting in the sheets. Then: “I… I think I should be sad?”

Tim studies Martin’s face—the tear tracks down his cheeks, the unhappy set to his mouth, the way he’s shaking ever so slightly where he sits. His face is one of grief, but Tim doesn’t ask. He waits for Martin to continue, and after a moment, Martin says, “She was the only family I had left. She- she was my mother. I took care of her, I- I did my best to be a- a good son.” He takes in a shaky breath, curls his hands into fists, and says, “I haven’t seen her in months, you know. I- I visited at first, but she… she never wanted to see me. So I just stopped going. I’d call, every Saturday, but it was the same every time. She’s resting. She doesn’t feel up to talking right now. Call later, and we’ll see what we can do.”

Finally, Martin looks at Tim, and the guilt in his eyes is so acute Tim can feel it cut through him to his core. “I should be sad that she’s dead, but… but all I can feel is relief. And that hurts. I- I don’t know… why am I relieved? God, she was right, I- I’m horrible, no wonder she- she never wanted to see me, I- why can’t I- I can’t—”

Martin cuts off with a wet sob, and all at once, Tim understands.

“It’s okay,” he says, and he collects Martin’s hands from the sheets, holds them tightly in his own. “You can feel however you like, it’s- it’s okay.”

He squeezes Martin’s hands, just once, and repeats, “It’s okay.”

He knows Martin won’t believe him. But still, he sits, and Martin cries, and he says, It’s okay.

It’s okay.

The hearing aids are a permanent fixture in his ears now, as most people have full hearing restoration after six weeks apparently doesn’t include him. The tinnitus is still particularly bad some days, but they help with everything else. It’s not perfect, but it’s a small price to pay for living, he supposes.

He’s not sure when, exactly, he decides that he’s glad he’s alive. But he does.

He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear at all, when the Flesh attacks. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear the wet, sticky sounds of things that shouldn’t be able to move without bones slipping through the vents, shattering the relative peace they’d begun to cultivate. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear the pops of Basira’s gun, bullets burying themselves in things that barely flinched at the contact. He wishes he hadn’t been able to hear Melanie’s screams of anger, the responding screams of pain from things with too many eyes and teeth and limbs as her knife carved a violent path through them.

There are yellow doors and hands slick with blood and a sudden quiet as the last of the twisted, mangled creatures falls, sliced neatly in two in a way that’s just a bit too clean.

Melanie is breathing heavily, but her hands are steady and her eyes are hard with something raging and violent. When Basira reaches tentatively for her knife, saying, “It’s over now, Melanie. We’re- we’re safe,” Melanie stiffens but doesn’t resist.

“This isn’t right,” Tim says after Melanie comes back to herself in bits and pieces, enough to shudder at the blood coating her arms up to the elbows and mutter something he can’t quite catch before disappearing into the toilet. “None of this is. God, can we ever catch a fucking break?”

“We can deal with it later,” Basira says. She’s calm, but she can’t quite hide the tremor in her voice. Her Al-Amira is splattered with viscera. “Right now, we need to make a call. Get this cleaned up.”

“What,” Tim says bitterly, “so we can continue hiding away in the Archives? You’re the one who said we should start sleeping here. Should have known it wouldn’t be safe. It’s not like it was before.”

He rubs at one of the small circular scars on the back of his left hand, his skin crawling with a phantom itch that makes him vaguely nauseous.

“We stay here,” Basira says, leaving no room for debate. “We make the call, and we stay here.”

Tim makes a low, frustrated noise, and bites out, “Fine. Because Basira always knows best. Whatever.” He unlocks his wheelchair and says shortly, “I’m going outside for some fresh air. The smell of rotting meat is making me sick.”

Basira doesn’t follow him.

Martin does.

They situate themselves just outside the glass doors, and they don’t say anything for a long time. Martin still looks vaguely ill. His face is pale, and his hands are fidgeting at his sides. His fingers are resting on his ring, twisting it back and forth, agitated. His shoes are stained a glistening red.

Finally, Martin tilts his head back so it hits the wall behind him and says to the air above him, “Is it horrible that I wish Jon were here?”

Tim snorts, anger still bubbling under the surface of his skin. “Because we’d have done so much better with our own flavor of spooky bullshit?” He bites out a bitter laugh. “Maybe he could have compelled them to explain exactly why every single monster out there has a personal vendetta against us. Working for an eldritch horror of voyeurism doesn’t give you much in terms of an offense.”

“Stop,” Martin says sharply. “You know what I mean.”

Tim does. He’s just not particularly inclined to wax nostalgic about the power of friendship and comradery when he’s got bits of meat stuck in his hair.

Still, he finds that he means it when he says, “I wish he was too. For what it’s worth. Which isn’t a fucking lot, but it’s what we’ve got.”

“Yeah,” Martin says. His hand brushes against Tim’s, and they fall back into silence.

The police arrive, followed closely by the ECDC. It’s a messy affair, even messier than the last time Tim had been in this situation, and Tim wants nothing more than to get away. Forever.

He doesn’t make any jokes this time. He just nods in the right places, and when they’re finally released and he and Martin return to a flat they haven’t seen in weeks, he can feel weariness cutting through him to the bone.

When he wakes the next day, Martin’s gone. His note, stuck to the door of the fridge, says, At the hospital. Be back around noon.

It’s ten in the morning, and the sunlight is bright as it streams in through the kitchen window.

Tim digs out the bottle of rum that Martin keeps tucked in the back of his cabinet and pours himself a drink.

“Peter Lukas wants me to be his assistant.”

Tim looks up from what’s turning out to be quite an impressive doodle of the little figurine of a frog in a top hat he’d purchased back in research from a charity shop and says, “Absolutely not.”

Martin sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, holds it there for a moment, and then says, “I don’t know if I have a choice in the matter, really. It’s… it’s not safe here anymore.” Quieter: “He said he can help. Off- offer protection.”

Tim audibly scoffs at that. He sets down his pencil and notepad and crosses his arms across his chest. He can already feel a headache coming on. (More than the usual, that is. He’s almost able to tune out the constant ringing in his ears now.

Almost.)

“What’s he going to do, isolate them to death? It’s not like the Lonely’s any better of an offensive force than the Eye. We’re doing just fine without involving him.”

“Are we?” Martin’s voice is hard and a bit choked when he continues, “We’re living down here because it’s not safe to stay outside for too long. We’re still finding bits of- of flesh in- eugh.” Martin shudders and folds inward on himself. Quieter, enough so that Tim has to watch the motion of his lips to make out the words, he says, “Jon’s not waking up.”

Tim feels something inside of him twist. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what’s happening with him.” A touch bitterly—old habits die hard, he supposes—he says, “Maybe he’s just not done going through his monster metamorphosis yet.”

“Tim.”

Tim sighs. It’s a profoundly weary sound. “Yeah, yeah. I… I miss him too, you know.”

He’s surprised to find that it’s not a lie.

“Right.” A small, shaky smile crosses Martin’s face, and he says, “I- I suppose they’re right, then. Distance does make the heart grow fonder.”

“Somehow,” Tim says, “I don’t think whoever coined that phrase had this situation in mind.”

Martin’s smile fades as quickly as it had come, and Tim feels a pang of guilt. “Sorry,” he says, pushing away from the desk and wheeling across the room to where Martin sits. He hesitates, just a moment, before placing his hand on Martin’s where it rests on his knee. “I… I suppose I’ve forgotten how to be lighthearted about all of this.”

Martin nods. It’s a small motion. He’s silent for a long moment; Tim squeezes his hand and says nothing. Finally, Martin looks down at his hands and says, “It’s been four months, Tim. Nothing’s changed.” He pauses again, his mouth pinching around the edges. “I… I visited him today. I begged him to wake up, to- to do anything to indicate that he’s even still there. I don’t know why I expected him to answer. It’s not like anything’s different now. He- he’s never going to wake up, Tim.”

Martin’s voice cracks, and he repeats, wetly, “He’s never going to wake up.”

Then, Martin’s crying, heaving sobs that overtake him completely and have him hunched over, dripping salty tears onto the back of Tim’s hand. “Hey, hey, hey,” Tim says, leaning forward as far as he’s comfortably able to and wrapping Martin in as hard of a hug as he can manage. He rubs his hands in circles across Martin’s shoulderblades, feeling Martin’s shaky breaths against the side of his neck, and says, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

He repeats it, again and again, as Martin cries into his shoulder and says, over and over, words thick with grief, “He’s dead, Tim. He’s dead.”

“It’s okay,” Tim says. Maybe if he says it enough times, he’ll start to believe it.

Eventually, Martin’s body stops shaking and he pulls back, the tear tracks on his cheeks already beginning to dry. His eyes are red-rimmed and glistening, and he looks tired, grief apparent in every line of him.

“I said I’d think about it,” Martin says, in a voice rubbed raw and hoarse. “When Peter called me. I- I said I’d think about it. I- I don’t know why…” He cuts off, makes a small, distressed noise, and says, “What do I even have left? If- if this can help, what- what do I have to lose?”

Tim feels a pang of hurt flash through him, but he suppresses it. He squeezes Martin’s hands, gives him as wide a smile as he can without breaking, and says, “You have me. And I’m not leaving—you’re stuck with me. So don’t think for a second that if you take Peter’s deal, I won’t be there still. I’m like a bad penny, or, I don’t know, a- a fungus or whatever. The point is, you’re not going to get rid of me. Whether or not you decide to work for Lukas—which you shouldn’t, by the way, in case I haven’t made that abundantly clear—you’re not going to be lonely, okay? Not on my watch. I can be very persistent when I put my mind to it.”

Martin looks at Tim, eyes wide, and another small, hiccuping sob escapes him. “You really mean that?”

“Yes, Martin,” Tim says, exasperation and fondness filling him in equal measure. “Christ, just because things got… rough for a bit, it doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you. Honestly, don’t know if I could. You’re a very lovable person, you know. It’s not like being your friend is a hardship.”

Martin laughs a little at that, his voice still thick with tears. “Well, when you put it like that…”

Tim gives him another smile, and this one feels easier. Like it would be harder not to smile. Still, he’s careful with his words when he says, “So, then. What are you going to do? I’ve made my opinion more than known, but…” Tim swallows around the lump in his throat and continues, “It’s your decision.”

“Yeah,” Martin says, barely more than a whisper. “Yeah.”

Peter calls again. And when Martin hesitates for a long moment before giving a quiet yet firm no, the relief that sweeps over Tim is enough to make him feel weightless.

Two months later, as a man who smells of death shuts the door behind him, Jon takes a rattling breath and finally opens his eyes.

“Tim?”

Tim raises the hand that’s not holding a rather large bouquet of white daisies and baby’s breath in a half-wave. “Hi, boss. Been a while.”

The look Jon gives him is half-shocked, half-nervous. “I… I suppose it has. Six months, apparently.”

Tim makes a sound of affirmation before wheeling himself fully into Jon’s hospital room and letting the door swing shut behind him. “You know,” he says, allowing a blanket of levity to fall over him, “when we said you should get more sleep, this isn’t exactly what we meant.”

Jon just stares at him for a moment, face blank and eyes wide. Then, a laugh escapes him, a small hiccup of amusement. “Yes, well. I can’t say that I feel particularly well-rested.”

Tim imagines what it must have been like, to be locked in a dreamscape stasis for six months. He can’t say that the idea sounds particularly relaxing. “Yep, sounds about right. Guess we can cross ‘spooky coma’ off our list of possible cures for sleep deprivation.”

Jon folds inward on himself a bit, hugging one arm to his chest and gripping the other tightly. “Right,” he says, his voice small. He looks away from Tim, focusing on the small window in the corner of the room, and says, “I… I’m sorry, Tim.”

Right. Jon still thinks Tim hates him.

Tim lets out a long, weary sigh and makes his way to Jon’s bed. He practically shoves the flowers into Jon’s hands; Jon takes them, more out of surprise than anything, white petals tickling the bottom of his chin. “It’s been six months, Jon. You’ve been… honestly, a bit dead? No offense. And I’ve been alive. And we both know it was meant to be the other way around.”

Jon opens his mouth, and Tim holds up a hand. “Don’t. I know. I already hear enough about it from my therapist, I don’t need to hear about it from you too. The point is that I’ve… I’ve had time to think. And some of the things you did, I can’t forgive you for. But some of it…”

Tim shrugs. “Martin would always go on about how it wasn’t your fault. About how you were suffering just as much as us. And maybe I didn’t believe it because I was already angry, or maybe I didn’t believe it because all I could think about was finally getting a chance at the revenge I’d chased after for years. But then you were gone, and the Circus was gone, and I just… didn’t have anything left for the anger to hold on to.”

Jon clutches the flowers tightly in his hands, looks down at the petals. “But you were right,” he says quietly. “A- about me.”

Tim casts himself back six months and sifts through a metric ton of bitter remarks and angry assumptions. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

Jon lets out a slow, shaky breath. “About me not being human.”

Oh.

“Jon—”

“Do you know what I was dreaming about?” Jon cuts in before Tim can say anything else. “I- I don’t remember, not really, but… but I can guess. I… I Know, somehow, that- that they were the same dreams, over and over and over again.” Jon takes one of the flower petals between his fingers and rubs it back and forth, a nervous gesture. “I started having them soon after I took this job, you know. Naomi Herne was the first one, and I- I didn’t understand why. Every night, she was trapped in the fog, forced into her own grave, and I would try to move, because it- it felt like I should have been able to, but it- it never worked. So I… I stopped trying after a while. I would stand and watch as she relived one of the worst experiences of her life, every night, and I- I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

Jon crushes the petal between his fingers. “She was the first one, but- but there are so many more now. Lionel Elliott and Jordan Kennedy and- and, Christ, Georgie—”

Jon makes a small, unhappy noise. “I don’t know when I realized that they could see me in their dreams too. That in trying to help, I- I’d just made myself another source of terror.”

Jon falls silent for a few moments; the quiet is filled by the familiar tick tick tick of the clock in the corner. Then, so quietly Tim has to focus on his lips to catch the words, he says, “I… I think I made a choice. Before I woke up. I don’t… I don’t know what it means for me, not really, but I know it means that I’m worse than I was before.” He lets out a bitter laugh, devoid of any humor. “So, you were right. I’m just- just even less human now.”

Jon falls silent again, and for a few moments, there’s just tick, tick, tick. Tim rolls the words over in his mind, looks at Jon’s pinched, unhappy expression, and says, “Okay.”

Jon looks at him then, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay?”

Tim shrugs and repeats, “Okay. You’re not human. I’m not going to pretend like that thrills me or whatever, but it’s… honestly, it’s a lot less of an issue for me now than it was back then.”

“I- I don’t…” Jon trails off with a frustrated noise. “What?”

Tim sighs. “A lot’s changed, Jon. Things have… well, things have kind of gone to hell. Honestly, we could use a few monsters who are on our side for a change.”

Jon blinks at him in stunned silence for a few moments more before saying, bewildered, “... Right. Uh, I- I suppose I shouldn’t ask how you’ve been, then.”

A wry smile cracks across Tim’s face. “I’ve been just peachy, thanks for asking. Blow up one Circus and suddenly every spooky monster out there wants to kill you. It’s been one big, long, horrible sleepover in the Archives. But hey, at least Elias isn’t there! Now we’ve just got Lukas, and if one or two staff members disappear every once and a while, well—that’s just how it is at the Magnus Institute. Nothing to be concerned about. Sometimes, we still go out for drinks.”

“Tim,” Jon says flatly. The exasperated expression on his face is so familiar—so Jon—that Tim feels a tension he hadn’t known he’d been holding slip away.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim says, waving a hand absently in Jon’s direction. “Point is, I’m not disappointed or angry or whatever that you’re back in the land of the living.” He pauses, and then, more sincerely: “Martin’s not the only one who’s missed you, okay?”

Jon’s lips part into an O. Then, his mouth twitches up into a smirk, and he says, “Mm, you’re right. Basira did stop by earlier, and then of course Georgie, and I bet even Melanie—”

“Unbelievable. And here I was nice enough to come all the way over here, to bring you flowers.”

“Mm, they are very nice flowers.”

“Damn right they are.”

Jon smiles then, a fragile thing, and says, “Thank you, Tim. I… I’ve missed you too.”

Tim could point out that Jon had been asleep for the majority of the time in question. But he knows that’s not what Jon means. So instead, he offers Jon a smile in return and says, “Be honest: more or less than the Admiral?”

Jon shoots Tim a flat, unimpressed look. “Tim, don’t be ridiculous. Of course less than the Admiral.”

Tim’s been out of the wheelchair for a week when he finally manages to make his way to the roof of the Institute, still learning how to maneuver the crutches he’s moved on to. He swears he can feel every motion of the pins and the rods in his leg—skin covered with even more scars for the collection—as he finally heaves himself through the door and into the cool night air.

The view is just as good as he remembers.

There’s the faint smell of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, and Tim’s entirely unsurprised to see Jon silhouetted against the glow of London, leaning against the wall that rings the roof with his back facing Tim. The cigarette glows a dull red as he raises it to his lips and breathes in.

Jon doesn’t say anything, even as Tim painstakingly makes his way over to where he’s stood. Tim props his crutches against the wall before leaning his weight heavily against it, arms crossed atop the wall in a mirror image of Jon as they both look out onto the city below, humming with life and light.

Finally, after a particularly long drag of his cigarette, Jon says, “I’m going to get Daisy.”

There’s no room for argument in his voice. But that’s never stopped Tim from trying anyways.

“I thought you were done doing stupid shit that’ll get you killed,” Tim says, turning his head to look at Jon. Jon’s staring forward, but Tim gets the distinct impression that Jon isn’t looking out at the city at all.

“It won’t kill me,” Jon says quietly. He moves his hands as he talks, surprisingly competent sign language that he’s begun using tentatively in his conversations with Tim. When Tim had asked him where he’d learned it, Jon had been quiet for a long moment before telling him that he hadn’t.

Well. At least the Eye was being useful for once.

“Yeah, whatever,” Tim says. “Dead or not, you’ll still be gone. You know people who crawl into that coffin don’t come back.”

“I don’t—” Jon cuts off with a frustrated noise. After a moment, he continues, “I have a plan. I- I read a statement, and it said that I would need an anchor. A- a piece of myself to keep here. I can find it when I’m down there, and- and use it to guide me back.”

“Right,” Tim says dryly. “Because our plans have always gone so well.”

“What would you have me do, Tim? I- I can’t just do nothing.”

“Why not?”

Jon affixes him with an expression that’s half-affronted, half-stunned. “Tim.”

“What? Jon, we barely know Daisy. She tried to kill you. No, don’t give me that look.” Tim jabs a finger in Jon’s direction. “You know I’m right.”

“I…” Jon trails off. After a moment, he hugs his arms to himself, his snubbed-out cigarette still smoldering slightly on top of the wall. “I know. But I… I still have to go. I… I’m still going to go.”

Tim exhales slowly and says, “Right. Suppose I should have expected that.”

There’s silence between them for a moment. Then, Jon removes his hands from his arms and signs as he says, quietly, “Why don’t you hate me?”

Tim stares at Jon for a long moment before saying, “What?”

Jon sighs and repeats, the motions of his hands larger and more emphatic, “Why don’t you hate me? Basira and Melanie, they- they keep looking at me like I’m some… thing, and- and maybe I am. No, not… not maybe. I’m not… I’m not human anymore, and I- I know what you said, but what happens when I—?”

Jon cuts off with a small, choked noise, like the air’s been sucked out of him all at once. Weakly, he signs, “I’m so hungry, all the time. What happens when I… when I can’t take it anymore? When I- I become dangerous, a- a monster, will you—?”

Jon’s fingers curl into fists, and he drops his hands to his sides, angling himself away from Tim and staring at an arbitrary point in the distance. “It’s better this way,” he says, loudly enough that Tim can make out the words above the hum of London at night and the ever-present ringing in his ears. “I… I don’t want to go. I don’t want to lose this, to- to lose you and- and Martin. But maybe it’s better than becoming something that will hurt you.”

Jon won’t meet Tim’s eyes. Carefully, Tim reaches across the space between them and takes Jon’s hand in his, uncurling Jon’s fingers gently in an attempt to release some of the tension. Slowly, he says, “You know, I… I shouldn’t be alive right now. Back after the Unknowing, when I woke up in the hospital, I… I didn’t want to be. It was supposed to be whatever it takes, and to me, that was always going to mean my death. Revenge and poetic justice and all of that. I should have died, but I didn’t. And… and you did. And it’s not something I feel guilty about, because we both made the same choice in the end, but that… that doesn’t stop me from feeling, sometimes, like it was my fault somehow.” He lets out a sharp laugh and says, “Well, I was the one to actually blow the place up in the end, but, you know.”

Tim holds Jon’s hand carefully in his like it might break otherwise, the mottled texture of the scar tissue firm against his fingertips. His eyes find the thin white line slashed across Jon’s throat, the stark white bandage poking out from the collar of Jon’s shirt where it covers a fresh scalpel wound in his shoulder, the pale pink spots that pepper Jon’s skin in a mirror image of his own. He can’t see the splash of jagged scars across Jon’s back, a memory of shrapnel and white-hot explosions, but he knows they’re there. “You asked why I don’t hate you?”

When Jon nods mutely, Tim says, “I just… ran out of reasons why I should. I still wanted to, but…” He shrugs and gives Jon a wry, humorless smile. “We’re all just stuck in the same shitty situation. And I guess at some point, I just decided that you hadn’t chosen to be here any more than I did.”

“Oh,” Jon says, barely audible.

Tim takes Jon’s other hand in his, squeezes them firmly, and says, “And I’m sorry. Not for- for how we used to be, because I think the blame for that falls pretty evenly onto both of our shoulders, but… but for everything else. For what’s happened to you. Figured I’ve spent enough time feeling sorry for myself, I might as well extend you the same courtesy.”

Jon’s fingers tighten around Tim’s, and he mumbles something Tim can’t quite catch. Then, he extracts his hands from Tim’s and signs, shakily, “I’m sorry too. For everything. But for what it’s worth, I… I’m glad you’re here. That you’re not dead. I- I know it’s been bad and- and I wish I could fix that, but I… I don’t know if I can.” Jon’s eyes when they meet Tim’s are sad but determined. “But I can fix this. I- I can get Daisy back. I can find my way out.”

Tim looks at the firm set to Jon’s mouth, the furrow of his brow, and says, “Okay. But I’m going to hold you to that. Otherwise, I might have to go in after you.”

Jon looks horrified. “Tim.”

Tim holds his hands up in a placating gesture. “Hey, come back in one piece and we won’t have to worry about it.”

Jon opens his mouth, then closes it again. There’s a long pause before he finally says, decidedly, “I will. I- I promise.”

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Tim wants to say. Instead, he shuffles closer to Jon and leans against the wall again, crossing his arms on top of it and looking out over the city. “Good,” he says softly.

After a moment, Jon shifts to face the city as well. His arm brushes against Tim’s, and Tim lets that point of contact ground him as he looks up and up and up at the stars above, pinpricks of light on a satin black sky.

“Thank you,” Jon says, just loud enough for Tim to hear.

Tim moves his hand to cover Jon’s where it sits on the wall and squeezes once. “Yeah.”

They stand there until sunlight begins to tickle the edges of the horizon. And when Jon gives Tim’s hand one last squeeze, the other holding the lid of the coffin open, and says, “Be back soon,” Tim believes him.

Three days later, Jon climbs out of the coffin with dirt caked underneath his fingernails and a thin, sharp hand clutched in his. “Tim,” he says, and Tim ignores the pain in his leg as he lets his crutches drop to the floor and hugs Jon tightly.

“Looks like I’m staying above ground after all,” Tim jokes, his voice light even as his words come out wet and choked.

Jon’s laugh vibrates against Tim’s chest. “Yeah,” he says, burying his face in the fabric of Tim’s shoulder to hide his smile. “Yeah.”

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #tim stoker #martin blackwood #creators are revealed now so i can post this!#very exciting #blood cw #body horror cw #injury cw #hospitals cw #suicidal ideations cw #more cw in the body of the post as well #my writing #my fic

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voiceless-terror · 4 years ago

Text

My Dearest

Characters: Jonathan Sims/Martin Blackwood

This takes place in the same universe as The Art of Conversation and What Makes a Home, but it’s not necessary to read these before- it works as a stand alone piece! :)

Summary:

“Pass me the towel, dear?”

“Ah y-yes, of course.”

Martin has a million pet names for Jon. Jon attempts to reciprocate.

“Morning, love.”

It’s so easy for him. Just slips out, really. Jon doesn’t understand how he does this.

It happens with enough frequency that you’d think Jon would be used to it. The easy greetings in the morning, when he slips past him at work with a peck on the cheek, as they wash the dishes (as Martin washes the dishes). And yet each time he hears an endearment, he goes immediately warm all over. It’s embarrassing how flustered he gets.

“Pass me the towel, dear?”

“Ah y-yes, of course.”

Darling. Dearest. Hun. There’s a memorable ‘babe,’ somewhere in there. Jon has to leave the room after that incident, he swears he saw Martin smirking out of the corner of his eye. He thinks Martin has some sort of ulterior motive, enjoys watching him blush and stammer.

‘Sweetheart’ makes him melt. It’s very strange, that one. He’s never been called a sweetheart in his life. Not by his grandmother, not by any partners. Perhaps his parents used it at some point, but it’s not something he would remember. He has no memory of his father, and only the passing recollection of a woman running her fingers through his hair. He thinks that’s his mother, but it might have just been a dream.

Sweetheart fills him with warmth. Jon can be nice, tender. Not with many people, but always with Martin. It didn’t start out that way, no. But Martin was able to peel back his layers and lower his defenses. He sees him and knows that Jon likes to see him smile and make him happy. He’s always wanted to please people. It’s just hard, sometimes.

Even the snarky ones are fond in their own way. Ass, he’ll mutter, whenever Jon slips into sarcasm. ‘Brat’ when he’s being contrary. That’s familiar ground- Georgie always used to do this, able to make the derogatory sound sweet. But sentimental? Never.

Jon can’t get the words past his lips. He has to think about it, make a conscious effort. Is that strange? Is that normal? He doesn’t think so. Martin doesn’t seem to mind the lack of endearments, and he hopes the man would let him know if he did. He can’t manage snark just yet, it reminds him too much of the early days when Jon meant the words as an insult. Besides, he likes when Martin’s a bit snippy. There’s a lot of fire in him, and Jon’s attracted like a moth to the flame.

But Martin deserves sweet words more than he does. He deserves Jon’s effort. So now he’s spiraling at his desk, agonizing over a list of ‘135 Adorable Nicknames for Your S.O.’ while he ignores the incessant emails from Elias.

The lists are very comprehensive, albeit annoyingly gendered. He’s not going to call Martin his ‘Baby Angel’ or his ‘’Honey Bunch.’ ‘Sweet pea’ is out of the question, he’s not an eighty-five year old grandmother from the American South. Martin’s taken all the good ones, he grouses. He doesn’t want to copy him, after all- he wants to be original. These are too original. And ridiculous.

Before he knows it, an entire afternoon’s passed and all he has is a scribbled, nonsensical list of ‘Under No Circumstances,’ ‘Tentative,’ and ‘Yes (?).’ Everything in the ‘Yes’ section has already been used by Martin- it’s safe ground, tried and true. He hopes Martin doesn’t mind.

That night Martin’s yawning, off to bed while Jon’s still reading in the living room, engrossed in some terrible crime novel. He gets his customary peck on the cheek and a ‘Come to bed soon, dear.’ He feels his face redden as per usual and thinks, now’s your chance.

“I will,” he pauses. It’s too long, Martin’s almost at the door when he finally tacks on the “love.” Why did you pause? Idiot, you sound so stupid-

But Martin goes still, standing in the dark doorway of the bedroom. He turns and Jon hazards a quick glance at his face- there’s a smile, he’s surprised. He doesn’t say anything but his gaze is enough to ignite a small burst of pride in Jon’s chest. Not too shabby, Sims!

He tries it again at dinner the next day. They’re talking about something inane like the weather; Jon hasn’t really been following, too consumed in mental preparation for his next attempt. So it’s inevitably awkward when Jon interrupts Martin in the middle of his sentence to ask for something he doesn’t even need.

“Can you pass me the salt-” Another pause. Why does he keep pausing? Just spit it out! “-dear?” Martin halts his speech, looking at him quizzically.

And then he snickers.

Jon flushes, embarrassment flooding his every nerve. He goes instantly on the defensive, though Martin hasn’t said a word. “I-I’m trying!” he sputters, and it only serves to encourage Martin’s laughter. “It’s not as easy for me as it is for you, I’m not good at this- stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry!” Martin tries to stifle it and fails miserably. Jon feels terribly self-conscious. “It’s- you’re just so cute, that’s all. Absolutely adorable.”

Jon huffs, crossing his arms. “I am not.”

“You are,” Martin insists, his smile growing mischievous. Oh no. “My dear, sweet Jonathan!”

It’s completely intolerable. “Okay, that’s enough-”

“Sunshine of my day-”

“Martin.”

“Archivist of my heart-”

“Martin.”

“My lovebug, my muffin, my little bean boy-”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know!” Martin’s laughing in earnest and Jon can’t help but join him. “But you like it! Look, you’re smiling.”

“I am not,” Jon grumbled, lying. “I-I just want to be able to do the same for you.”

“And I very much appreciate the effort,” Martin assures him, taking his hand. “But you don’t have to, if it’s not comfortable. I don’t mind, I promise.” Jon sighs, trying to believe the words. It isn’t fair- he should be able to do this, he wants to do this.

“Besides, I, well-” Martin starts to fidget, looking suddenly nervous. “This is going to sound stupid. Don’t laugh.”

“You laughed at me.” A shorter pause. “Dear.”

“That time was better,” Martin replies distractedly. “I, um, like it when- when you just say my name?”

What? Jon says as much.

“It’s-It’s just nice, is all!” It’s Martin’s turn on the defensive as he starts to stammer. “The way you say it, I don’t know- it’s kind. It’s got...it’s got love in it.” He looks at his lap, his voice going soft. “I’m not used to that.” Oh.

Jon squeezes his hand. “Martin.”

Martin blushes, his eyes narrow. “Don’t start.”

“Mahhhh-tin.”

He let’s go of Jon’s hand to swat at his arm. “Stop that.”

“Martin Martin Martin Martin-”

“Okay, okay! You’ve made your point, I’ve taken my medicine.” He lifts his glasses, wiping a stray tear from the laughing fit earlier. “You’re terrible, you know.”

“Love you too.”

A pause.

“Do you, uh, still need the salt?”

“Oh.” Jon blinks, remembering the initial conversation. “Not at all.”

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27879494

Next in Series:

The Weight of Love

#my writing #tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #jon/martin #pure fluff #adhd jon au

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ashes-in-a-jar · 4 years ago

Text

A Double Date at the End of the World

Melanie, Georgie, Jon and Martin have an interesting conversation in their journey through the tunnels.

Cw: second hand embarrassment and lots of teasing (I guess)

Melanie took the lead. Because of course she did. Martin made sure not to get in her way, still feeling awkward after offering help.

She was right. He didn't fare any better than her and most likely worse. The tunnels were darker and damper than he remembered, smelling faintly of earth and... Gas? He didn't dwell on it too much. He found it was better to file those bits of ominous details away until they inevitably come back up on their own.

On his fourth or fifth stumble around a corner Jon caught his arm to steady him. He was walking behind him and Martin was pretty sure he was clutching his backpack for support himself.

"You alright Martin?" He asked softly, his voice just below the level of echo.

"Y-yeah. Thanks Jon. How are you feeling?" Martin asked, his tone changing to worry. He noticed how Jon was during the conversation as they entered the tunnels. All of his worries from the last days in Salesa's home came back, along with the despair at finally having reprieve and knowing Jon won't remember it. Maybe this time it's different, he thought desperately. Maybe the effects will not be the same. God, he hoped so.

"I'm fine, I think. No different than before. It's not getting worse this time... Yet." Jon answered with a hopeful squeeze at Martin's bicept. It was a bit awkward, given they were practically going single file but Martin raised his hand backwards and gently stroked the hand that clutched him. It was dry and cold and all he wanted to do was turn around and warm it properly in his palms.

"Good. I'm glad to hear. Let me know if you start to feel any different."

"Okay. Thank you Martin." He murmured, and Martin could hear the fondness seeping into his name.

He recalled the frustrated argument they had right before Martin stormed away to cool off only to be found by the girls in the tunnels.

He recalled the quiet and uncertain way Jon said his name then before telling him he might be more focused after getting out a statement. It was a tone that made Martin stop his venting to really listen and look at Jon. God he looked so scared. It was the first time in a while he saw Jon like that. He instantly regreted his tirade and felt that same fear that he himself tried to suppress begin to make its way to the forefront of his mind. He realized that tampering it down by fantasizing of the violent ways they'd exact revenge on Jonah was doing exactly what he warned himself against while in his own domain. Sinking into his expectations instead of facing reality. So he went to cool off, get his head in order again and think realistically how to solve their problem instead of kicking walls and squishing sentient cameras (he shuddered at that memory).

He should apologize to Jon for his behavior. He knew Jon understood but still. Once they get a bit of privacy again he should make sure they talk it out. Clear the air so the bad feelings won't hang over them when they need to make a difficult decisions again together. Because that will come eventually and they cannot afford to falter because they weren't on the same page.

Having made that decision, Martin's reveries were interrupted by a noise of someone clearing their throat behind him.

He noticed that Georgie, who was bringing up the rear behind Jon, was trying to get their attention. He also noticed he had slowed down and had reached to fully grasp Jon's chilled hand in his.

"So," Georgie began and immediately Martin became worried. "You too, huh?"

Jon chuckled and as Martin started, reflexively pulling his hand back to quicken his pace. But Jon just held onto to him tighter.

"Yes Georgie, we are together now." He said and Martins heart soared the same way it did when Jon affirmed it in front of the Boneturner. It felt good that Jon wanted others to know. It felt so good to validate their relationship with an outside perspective when they have been alone for so long now.

"How long?" Georgie asked, a little too eagerly.

"Um, a couple of weeks before... all of this?" Jon said vaguely. Their time in the safehouse was interesting in regards to the buildup of officiating their relationship. The actual conversation about it took a while to happen even though they were already very much attached to each other from the moment they left the Lonely.

"Wait, what?" Melanie called out from the front, her voice echoing around them.

"Hah! I told you!" Georgie cheered.

"No way! I was so sure Jon would never have the guts. Surely not before the world ended."

"Wait. What's going on?" Martin was confused.

Georgie, still amused, explained. "Melanie and I had a... Wager when exactly you too would get together. She thought you both were too gutless to take the first step. I thought your unbelievably daft pining, at least from Jon's side of things would eventually become too much for him to handle."

"Georgie," Jon admonished, clearly flustered.

The explanation caught Martin off guard. He knew Jon had some semblance of feelings towards him after the coma. Some bits of chased conversation, vague massages in recordings, his offer to literally run off and become blind together. It wasn't blatantly obvious though it was far from subtle. But Martin never learned how much Jon actually wanted it during those months. Jon spoke about it more generally and didn't seem to want to go into specifics.

"What? You were so obvious about it even before your coma. And then you came over to try to pull us back in to help him... Well, I mean, come on!" Georgie said defensively. "It was pretty hard to miss."

"you should have seen him in the institute." Melanie jeered. "He brooded all day every day. You couldn't even say Martin's name without making him look like a kicked kitten. It was brutal."

Jon let go to cover his face while Martin started chuckling in hidden glee. "Melanie please. I wasn't brooding, I did not mope! Besides, we were all having a bad time."

"Yes but you were so melodramatic about it, like a heartbroken teenager. You should have seen the faces he made whenever Peter's name came up. Oh boy that was something."

"How do you mean?" Martin was struggling to keep his voice straight, every new morsel of information giving him more joy.

"It was the type of face you make when talking to a Tory. The type you want to strangle or punch and are debating which you should do first." Melanie was thoroughly enjoying herself.

"Jon was always good at faces." Georgie giggled.

Martin couldn't help but laugh at that out loud. I was true, Jon did not know how to school his expressions.

Jon groaned "Martin don't encourage them please."

Martin half turned around to grin at Jon "They're not wrong though, are they? It is pretty funny."

Jon grimaced at him "Shut up."

Martin let the Eye contact linger a moment and in the dark he mouthed 'I love you' to Jon, hoping he could see. Judging by the affectionate huff he heard, the message was received. He turned back smiling and quickened the pace to catch up to Melanie's confident strides.

"God you guys are sappy" Georgie sighed. "At least it's an improvement to the mess you two were before."

"Truer words have never been said" Melanie seconded. "I'm glad I was wrong about how assertive you two are. It seems I need to reevaluate my impression of Beholding's baby and his lover boy."

Martin and Jon sighed simultaneously. "Please stop" Jon muttered, mostly to himself.

"Um, how about we change subject, hm? Yes, we're finally together and so are you and this is basically a double date at the end of the world so let's just... Conclude it at that." Martin said, hoping this assertion will work.

"Alright, yeah let's change the subject, shall we?" Georgie said in a dangerously mischievous tone again. "Jon, is that my What the Ghost merch you're wearing? Have you been wearing that the entire time now? You know I'll be needing that back. Our wardrobe is wearing pretty thin."

The tunnels were filled with Jon's groans and Melanie's roaring laughter as they continued onwards towards the survivors' camp to meet the others, finally take a breather and regroup to plan for their fateful future.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #tma spoilers #Melanie king #Georgie barker #Wtgfs #tma fic #Listen. I couldn't not have write this conversation #It was inevitable #Hope you enjoy #Tma 189 #Mag 189 #My tma fic

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butterflies-dragons · 4 years ago

Text

The Direwolves’s Eye Colors

I always found fascinating that the Direwolves’s Eye Colors match the Children of the Forest’s Eye Colors:

"In a sense. Those you call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born amongst them with eyes as red as blood, or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust, and their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. Greenseers."

—A Dance with Dragons - Bran III

Ghost - Red Eyes

"He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said.

"Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran I

And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon realized, disquieted. Like the trees …

—A Game of Thrones - Jon VI

Red eyes, Jon realized, but not like Melisandre’s. He had a weirwood’s eyes. Red eyes, red mouth, white fur. Blood and bone, like a heart tree. He belongs to the old gods, this one.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

Grey Wind - Golden Eyes

At first he did not notice her … but his wolf did. The great grey beast was lying near the fire, but when Catelyn entered he lifted his head, and his golden eyes met hers. The lords fell silent one by one, and Robb looked up at the sudden quiet and saw her. "Mother!" he said, his voice thick with emotion.

—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn VIII

Yet it was not the sword that made Ser Cleos Frey anxious; it was the beast. Grey Wind, her son had named him. A direwolf large as any elkhound, lean and smoke-dark, with eyes like molten gold.

—A Clash of Kings - Catelyn I

Lady - Golden Eyes

"Lady," he said, tasting the name. He had never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur.

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard III

Sansa sat up. "Lady," she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

Nymeria - Golden Eyes

Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they caught the sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins.

—A Game of Thrones - Arya I

"Septa Mordane," Jon told her. "I don't think she'd like Nymeria helping, either." The she-wolf regarded him silently with her dark golden eyes.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon II

Summer - Golden Eyes

Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him through slitted yellow eyes.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran II

The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the dark room. It was Bran's wolf, she realized. Of course it was.

—A Game of Thrones - Catelyn III

Summer stalked out in the echoing gloom, then stopped, lifted his head, and sniffed the chill dead air. He bared his teeth and crept backward, eyes glowing golden in the light of the maester's torch.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran VII

Meera moved in a wary circle, her net dangling loose in her left hand, the slender three-pronged frog spear poised in her right. Summer followed her with his golden eyes, turning, his tail held stiff and tall. Watching, watching . . .

—A Clash of Kings - Bran IV

Summer raised his head from Bran's lap, and gazed at the mudman with his dark golden eyes.

—A Clash of Kings - Bran IV

Shaggydog - Green Eyes

Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran IV

Unknown - Golden Eyes (But I bet It’s Lady)

The crypts were growing darker. A light has gone out somewhere. "Ygritte?" he whispered. "Forgive me. Please." But it was only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark . .

—A Storm of Swords - Jon VIII

Reasons why I think the unknown direwolf is Lady

The other candidate is Grey Wind, that was killed like Lady, but I think the following reasons are enough to conclude that the unknown direwolf is Lady.

The direwolf is grey like Lady.

The direwolf has golden eyes like Lady.

Jon sees the direwolf in the Crypts of Winterfell. Lady is buried in Winterfell’s lichyard.

Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had returned.

—A Game of Thrones - Bran VI

Jon confuses the direwolf with Ygritte. This reminds me when Jon confuses Melisandre with Ygritte in ADWD (both redheads). The two passages have similar wording with Jon feeling guilty for Ygritte’s death. I also believe that this line: “At night all robes are grey. Yet suddenly hers were red.” foreshadows Sansa being the Grey Girl of Melisandre’s visions.

When he turned he saw Ygritte.

She stood beneath the scorched stones of the Lord Commander’s Tower, cloaked in darkness and in memory. The light of the moon was in her hair, her red hair kissed by fire. When he saw that, Jon’s heart leapt into his mouth.

“Ygritte,” he said.

“Lord Snow.” The voice was Melisandre’s.

Surprise made him recoil from her. “Lady Melisandre.” He took a step backwards. “I mistook you for someone else.” At night all robes are grey. Yet suddenly hers were red. He did not understand how he could have taken her for Ygritte. She was taller, thinner, older, though the moonlight washed years from her face.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VI

Later in ADWD Jon links Sansa and Lady with Ygritte:

He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon's breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady's coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XIII

The direwolf is described as ghastly. Ghastly means cadaveric. Lady had gone south, and only her bones had returned. Ghastly also sounds and writes very similar to Ghostly. After its death, Lady is described as a Shade, and Shade is a synonym of Ghost. More about it here. And we have another “ghostly & bloody direwolf” associated with Sansa:

“May the Father judge him justly,” murmured a septon. “The dwarf’s wife did the murder with him,” swore an archer in Lord Rowan’s livery. “Afterward, she vanished from the hall in a puff of brimstone, and a ghostly direwolf was seen prowling the Red Keep, blood dripping from his jaws.”

—ASOS - Jaime VII

The direwolf is described spotted with blood. Lady’s fur got probably spotted with blood when Ned cut its throat. And I even saw a fan-art (for the graphic novel adaptation) where Ned beheaded Lady...

The direwolf’s eyes are described as shinning “sadly”. Lady is described with sad eyes.

Sansa sat up. "Lady," she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in the room, looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing.

—A Game of Thrones - Sansa III

So, if the unknown direwolf is indeed Lady, this creates a yet another Jon/Sansa parallel, Jon seeing Lady’s Shade while walking deeper (like descending) into the Crypts of Winterfell during a dream & Sansa, disguised as Alayne Stone, sensing a Ghost Wolf while descending from the Eyrie to the Gates of the Moon:

—A Storm of Swords - Jon VIII

All around was empty air and sky, the ground falling away sharply to either side. There was ice underfoot, and broken stones just waiting to turn an ankle, and the wind was howling fiercely. It sounds like a wolf, thought Sansa. A ghost wolf, big as mountains.

—A Feast for Crows - Alayne II

There you have it. Jon saw Lady’s Shade in the Crypts of Winterfell during a dream.

#sansa stark #jonsa #direwolves #children of the forest #asoiaf #EDITED

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that-one-girl-behind-you · 4 years ago

Text

Illicio 22/?

Part 21

CW: apocalypse terribleness, JGM under duress, etc

He's free now, he knows.

In this new world ruled by the Watcher, his ultimate 'prize' is to not be tied to Jon anymore. There's a place with his name on it, just like Martin said. There, he could thrive, an eternal existence as a reward for- for pushing Jon towards this.

Gertrude's eyes blink accusingly at him from where he remembers planting the carrots, and Gerry scoffs.

"Of course I'm not going to. Don't be an idiot." Gerry rolls his eyes. There just. There has to be a way to reverse it, no matter-

'No. I don’t think so. Once an Entity fully manifested, I doubt it would be keen to fully relinquish its grip on reality. And as for those unlucky enough to survive its rule… I don’t think they’d be in a state to do anything about it.'

Gerry sighs. Ever the optimist, the old hag.

He feels the cabin creaking and shifting, feasting on the sorrow that thinking of Gertrude brings him, even after years and deceptions.

XXII

Click.

"It can't be as bad as it looks. Nothing could be this bad." There's humour in the man's voice, a sort of fond amusement as he enunciates the words, the beginning of a joke.

"I think we might be looking at different Archives, Tim." The answering voice is dry and unenthusiastic, but the first man chuckles like it's the punchline to his setup.

"There's three of us, we'll figure it out." Some fabric rustles, a disgruntled huff, another chuckle. "Let's go, Sasha should be done already, we said we'd go get drinks."

A long-suffering sigh. "If you insist."

"I do! It's the last time we're going out as coworkers, Boss."

"I'd say this is your last chance to get in my hair, if I didn't know better." Steps growing fainter, as the speakers walk away.

"But you do know better."

Another sigh, a lot less long-suffering, and a lot more amused. "I do."

Click.

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

"We need to get going," Martin says. It feels like the thousandth time he's said it, and maybe it is. Time feels... weird, lately, and memory much more so.

"I'm..." Gerry sighs, also for what feels like thousandth time. "You're not wrong."

"Of course I'm not." Martin crosses his arms over his chest. Gerry's eyes -they look dangerously bright lately, but Martin doesn't fear them as much as he fears the sad, unspoken truth they carry- are searching for his, and for all that Martin tries to stand strong, he gives in eventually, and goes to sit by his side with a tired sigh of his own. "I know, I know."

"You do?" Gerry comes to rest heavily against his side, and after a couple moments, Martin drapes an arm around his shoulders. It's- it's not Gerry's fault, he thinks. It's not anyone's fault. "It's someone's fault."

"Well, yes. Elias', but still-" Martin lets out a low exhale. "I should have done it."

"If you're going to blame yourelf-" Gerry nudges his leg with his knee, "-you'd be good blaming me as well. Blaming Jon."

"Why would I blame you?" Martin asks dryly. "You were going to kill him when I couldn't. You would've done it."

"Yes, to keep you safe." Gerry shrugs. "Not wanting to kill a man doesn't make you a coward, Martin."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

Martin purses his lips. "If I had-"

"It wasn't Elias that put that statement there," Gerry interrupts him before he can even form the thought. "You know that."

"No, I don't!" Martin snaps. "You keep saying that, Jon said that, but I don't! A- and even if I did, am I not supposed to feel guilty that I was under- that they used me to push Jon into starting the apocalypse?!"

"Welcome to the club," Gerry says dryly, and Martin stops so abruptly in his tirade that he very nearly bites his tongue off.

Especially with how well he served his purpose.

Elias' words, written in Martin's own unwitting hand, are burned in his mind.

"I- uh-"

"It's okay." Gerry runs a hand over his hair, his lips pressed in a tight line.

"...It's really not." Martin says after a while. "I- it's not- how can you be so calm?"

"I'm not, I just-" Gerry's eyes are far-off, lost in the depths of the cottage, a door that doesn't open anymore, unless one of them opens it first. "I'm focusing on the two of you right now. Otherwise it's too much."

"How- how does it feel for you?" Martin asks quietly.

"It feels... good, I suppose. Like this is where I'm meant to be, which I suppose is true, being a- a monster of the Eye or whatever. I don't like it."

Martin pulls him a bit tighter against his side, though it makes the part of him that is not quite human roar in discomfort. "You're not a monster of the Eye."

"Agree to disagree, won't we?" Gerry smiles. It's the same gesture he normally uses to rile him up, playful and amused and now tinged with a hint of sadness, and it makes Martin so mad, the unfairness of it all. "Is it different for you?"

"I just- there's a place I 'should' go to. A place where I'd be alone."

"Is that why you want to leave?" Gerry arches an eyebrow.

"Of course not. I'm- I want to fix this but Gerry, I don't know if we can fix it. I don't know how any of this works."

Gerry nods once, a slow tilt of his head like the weight of it all is too much, before he springs back up. It's a gesture so inherently him that Martin feels a fierce rush of protectiveness surge up in him.

They deserved better. They still do.

"I- if we-" Gerry starts, then stops to sigh again. "Jon would be safe if we left. I think we both would be too, but I'm not sure, and-"

"And we aren't leaving him." Martin completes the thought. Gerry nods again, even more exhausted this time. "What are we supposed to do, then? Just wait until he's done torturing himself with those tapes?"

A few notes of a discordant birthday song seep from under the door to reach his ears faintly, the ghost of a memory that he shouldn't be able to hear from this far away, but Martin guesses it's one of those things he's meant to experience precisely because it will hurt him.

"I'm- I don't know, Martin. I really don't."

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

Click.

"Are you on?" A few static-laden taps. "Test, test, testing prehistoric equipment? Okay, yes. How should I... oh, I know. Recording by Sasha James, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute... Hah"

A small chuckle, before the woman speaks again. "Well, the payrise isn't that great anyways, and at least I don't have to pretend I'm a prick all the time, like Jon does." A sigh. "Tim's starting to get tired of it, but I think Jon just- it's tough starting as a boss. I think he's mostly posturing for Martin? When it's just the three of us, it feels just like when we were back at research. He'll get over it, I'm sure."

Another chuckle, a bit embarrassed this time. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. I guess it just feels nice to say it aloud knowing no one will hear it."

Silence. Papers shuffling, the clicking of a stapler, and a sound like someone sliding something heavy across a flat surface.

Thoughtful tapping against wood.

"I'm- it's not like I'm angry at him, I know he thinks that too. I just... I guess it's disappointing to be passed over. I've been thinking of looking for something el-"

"Hey there!" A new voice. Deeper and amused, warm. "Are you done?"

"Almost. I forgot it was Friday. You and Jon ready?"

"I'm... I was actually thinking it could be just us tonight."

"Oh."

"If you want, I mean. If not, there's still time to tell him, or we don't have to go at all." The man's voice hasn't come closer, and a door creaks like someone is shifting against it.

A long moment of silence, before the woman speaks again.

"Mr. Stoker, are you suggesting an office affair?" The woman's smile is audible in her tone, and there's a far off sound like a sigh of an exhale.

"Well, I think these archives have been far too peaceful for far too long, don't you?"

An amused huff.

"It's not a very wise thing to do."

"We don't have to."

Laughter, this time. "No, we're gonna. Let me get my coat."

Click.

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

"She never liked you," Jon says. His voice sounds hoarse with disuse as he glares resentfully at the whirring tape recorder in his hand. "I wonder how it would've manifested for her."

The device doesn't respond, of course. Just sits there, recording, watching. Its intentions, good or bad, have no effect on what it can and cannot do. It was made for a purpose, and that is that.

"I guess it's moot, though." If he's to believe Elias, and there's really no reason why he'd keep lying after achieving his goal, Jon was ripe for the picking decades before even considering setting foot on the Institute.

He can see them now, the hair-thin threads of silver wrapped around him, innocuous in appearance even though he can feel their pull.

Jon knows what the Mother wants of him now, hears it all around him in the creaking of the cottage, the screaming in the wind, in Martin and Gerry's insistence.

He won't give it to her.

Like the Spiral or the Stranger, the Web doesn't enjoy being Seen, and Jon feels it pushing him to not think too much about it or its motives.

He lets it, for the time being. He has other things to focus on, things he hasn't allowed himself to dwell on yet, with Sasha and Tim's voices still swimming in his mind.

"...I did think she resented me," he says after a pause. He closes his eyes, and he sees what would've been. Sees her covered in scars, terrified, hurt. Making the wrong choice time and time again, no matter how hard she tries. "I never- I'm glad it wasn't her."

The fate that befell Sasha wasn't gentle, but at least it was swift. At least she didn't live to see herself turn the world into this cesspool of suffering. To enjoy it.

"They think... They want to leave. Both of them." Sasha was right, it is easier to talk to the tapes, even if Jon is not under any false notion regarding whether or not he's being listened. "They- Martin thinks we can undo this. That there's a way to turn things back."

Jon doesn't know if there is, but- if there's a chance, what right does he have to attempt it, after what he did? Gerry just- he tries to keep things light, but Jon knows he's growing tired of mediating between appeasing Martin's urgencies, and giving Jon the time he thinks he needs.

"I'm- I just-" Jon sighs, clears his throat. "Recording ends."

But it doesn't. It never does anymore.

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

"Still nothing," Georgie sighs as she drops on the couch next to her.

"I expected as much." Melanie lifts the hand not sunk in the Admiral's fur, and Georgie tangles their fingers together. "What were you trying now? Calling again?"

"No, I... I used the recorder app. I thought it might reach him, but no luck."

"It was a good idea." Melanie shrugs. "But these things and technology just don't mix too well. I'm surprised your phone is even working at all."

"I mean, it's not. It's just working enough to get me frustrated, which I guess is the point."

Melanie chuckles. "The point is actually to make you scared, but that's not going to fly with you, and it makes them angry." The entities are nothing if not petty.

"What about you?" Georgie's hand tightens in her. "You can be scared."

"I'm not," Melanie says. It's- she's worried, but as long as she and Georgie are together... "The Eye can't see me."

Gerry once told her words carried power, and these ones hold truth. The Eye no longer has a claim on her, as much as it resents it.

"But the others can?" Georgie asks. Melanie can picture her expression perfectly, a thick eyebrow raised in question.

"They should be able to." She shrugs "I'm guessing the reason none of them have snatched me up is because I'm in your… aura? Blind spot? Anyways, I don't think I'll try going out on my own anytime soon."

"Probably not a good idea, no… What are we going to do, then? If we can't contact them-"

"I think- I think they'll be coming this way. Or I hope so, at least." They have to. They wouldn't just... If there's a way to turn it back, it will be here at London, at Magnus' tower. They'll come, and then they can take him on together. "I think we wait."

It feels odd, to actively choose inaction. Melanie has spent her whole life on the move, for new stories, for more adventure, for something that makes her clench her hands into fists.

"...we wait, then."

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

Click.

"Hi, Jon. I- I hope you don't mind that I'm recording. I thought-" a long, tired sigh "-I don't know what I thought. They just... they remind me of you. It felt right."

A sound of fabric shifting, something soft being patted. "There, that ought to be more comfortable. You're starting to look a bit pale, I'm- I'll ask the nurse if we can move your bed closer to the window so you get some sun. You'd probably hate that, but you need it, Jon," the man chuckles a little.

A long beat.

"I miss you."

Silence. Heavy, tense. A slow, deep inhale. The man clears his throat, and resumes speaking, as casually as before.

"Peter Lukas offered me a new position at the Institute. He- Elias left him in charge, don't ask me how that works legally, but... he wants me to be his assistant." A pause, a scoff, a little chuckle. "Yes, yes I know it is a trap, alright? I'm not stupid, Jon!"

Another chuckle, though this one takes a hint of fondness at the end.

"I know. But... we got attacked, just last month. The Flesh. Melanie managed to drive them back, but we- we lost three people. Emily from Research, Duke from the Library, and Len from Accounting. They didn't even care that they were normal employees, they just-"

The man's voice cracks, and he gives himself a moment, another slow intake of breath. "Lukas says he can protect the Institute. With- with what we know about the Lonely, I don't doubt it. There's... There's something else he isn't telling me. I- I'm not sure what it is, but I can guess it won't end well for me."

The silence that follows stretches for far longer than its predecessors, until the man sighs again.

"Not like I care much, anyways." A chair creaking, as the man atop it shifts. "I'm... I'm starting to understand you're not going to wake up. Wh- who would've thought I'd be the last one, huh?"

A flat, humourless chuckle.

"Guess... guess it's what I deserve, for staying behind every. Single. Time."

Minutes tick by after his words, in a seemingly endless silence, almost like the tape ran out of battery or somehow stopped recording without announcing it.

The chair creaks again.

"Goodbye, Jon."

Click

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

"I just- why do you keep listening to them?" Martin is asking as Gerry enters the bedroom, his voice not quite snappy, but coated with the same deep weariness that's permeated his every interaction with Jon for a while now.

"Because there has to be a reason why they're here. Why-"

"Jon, they're here because Elias wants to rub it in your face. He wants to hurt you even more, and- and you're going along with it! What could there possibly be in them that you don't already know?"

Gerry sighs, shoulders heavy with his own exhaustion as he looks out the window. The eyeballs growing out of the carefully tilled earth turn to stare back at him.

He's free now, he knows.

Gertrude's eyes blink accusingly at him from where he remembers planting the carrots, and Gerry scoffs.

"Of course I'm not going to. Don't be an idiot." Gerry rolls his eyes. There just. There has to be a way to reverse it, no matter-

Gerry sighs. Ever the optimist, the old hag.

He feels the cabin creaking and shifting, feasting on the sorrow that thinking of Gertrude brings him, even after years and deceptions.

It can't consume them, he Knows. None of them are human anymore, not completely. The cabin is just... a memory granted teeth, a place that haunts its occupants instead of the other way around. What hurts them -or him, at least- is the fact that what was supposed to be a sanctuary became a prison, and the only fear to be found here is, Gerry thinks, the fear that this will be the thing to break them apart, with Jon locked in the bedroom listening to his ghosts, with Martin pushing and pulling at him and Jon snapping back like a wounded dog.

It's decent fear. The fact that Gerry doesn't know which one of them to side with only makes it worse.

He understands Jon's reticence, the feeling that if he tries again, it will only make things even worse. He understands he's hurt, and scared, that now more than ever, he doesn't want the power Elias forced on him.

He also understands Martin, the- the need to fight back, to keep moving. To not be a fucking piece on a chessboard again.

Melanie's eyes, scarred and blind, turn to look at him.

"...I know. We're- I know."

Slowly, reluctantly, Gerry pushes away from the window.

This is not a conversation he wants to have, but...

Well, at least Martin will be happy that Gerry's siding with him, and Jon... Jon will understand.

Hopefully.

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

Click.

Statement of Jonathan Sims, the Archive, regarding the current state of affairs.

It is time you take a look at the world you have created, you have put it off for long enough.

You can feel it with awful clarity, even when you pretend the opposite, for their sake. Or is it for yours, desperate to hide the kind of being you are from the ones whose opinion you value the most? All around you, here in this space that is made safe only by your presence, suffering is the course du jour, tailor-made for each and every innocent you have condemned to this life that is not a life as much as it is the bare shadow of an existence.

You do not hear the screaming as much as you Know it -what don't you Know now?-, resonating in your mind every second of every day, if those things existed anymore.

Despite yourself, you sometimes wish that the screamers would choke on their own blood, that their lungs would collapse with the force of their anguished crying, that they could reach into their own ribcage and pull out their heart to squeeze the life out of it, out of themselves.

You want to think that way at least they would be free.

You know better of course. The rules of this new reality you have imposed on everyone are clearly outlined before you, like a neat bullet point list you've learned by heart. The first of these points is the worst, and it's the one that keeps you up at night when you're unable to wake the ones you love from their frantic nightmares, when they toss and trash on the bed, calling out for people who aren't there.

'You made this. This is for you.'

And when you wish fervently for the deaths of innocents, when you pray for each breath to be their last, you try, but can't quite keep out the satisfaction, the delight that comes from Knowing all this fear.

The world is in agony, but it will never die.

You hide here in this cottage that was home because it held the ones you love, clinging desperately to the idea that it can still be a shelter, if you only wish hard enough. You know the thought is as futile as the feeling, love did not make you holy, and it won't consecrate this place.

The cottage feeds on your fear and your doubt, on their tired eyes and strained smiles, and it whispers into your ear that it is only here that you will find peace. Wasn't this your happy ending, wasn't this all that you wanted? A cozy place to end your story with the ones you call your heart?

They hate it here almost as much as you wish they would hate you, but they stay for your sake. Have any of you ever done things for yourselves? All the three of you know is self-sacrifice, and how little it pays. You feel that this place that is not a home is feeding on you, and you relish on it, because it's the only penance you will find in this world that has made you untouchable.

The ones you love want to leave, want to fight; you wish you had an ounce of the hope they still nurse at their core, because you are as afraid to leave as you are of the cottage consuming you if you don't. Every day your interactions are more stilted, more tense, and you wonder which one will crack first.

And that's what it all boils down to, doesn't it? Fear. You're scared of seizing what's yours. Of facing this world of your making.

You're terrified of what awaits you out there, of what awaits you in here. The Pupil wasn't mistaken when he called you an Archive of fear, and it is time that you come back.

You can feel the call at your chest, like a bestial instinct that wills your bones to move, to go back to your place of power. You've been feeling it for a few days now (there are no days anymore, not in the world you've created), but it grows stronger every moment, more recognizable. You followed it once already, traversing a labyrinth like the map to it was burned on the inside of your eyelids.

You've tried futilely to ignore the call, just like you've tried to ignore the silk wrapped choking tight around your throat, pulling at you like it has done all your life. Was there ever a chance for things to work out, or were they just the delusions of a monster that thought -hoped- that maybe if he loved enough, he'd become a man again?

You know the answer to that, of course. You Know everything. What was it that she called it? Ineluctability. Swimming frantically upstream only to be pushed back in the end, because your limbs will get tired a lot sooner than the tide.

You are exhausted, and you have been for a while.

Statement ends.

Steps, slow and unsteady, and the creaking of a door. Some heavy breathing, like the breather has just run a marathon, or had the air choked out of him. A broken, slightly hysterical laugh, no longer the Archivist, but merely a broken man.

I don't want to go.

Click

A moment of silence that seems to stretch for an eternity, as the two of them look at the lone recorder.

"Martin, go get your backpack."

"I'm on it. Meet you outside."

#illicio #jongerrymartin #vit writes #jongerry #gerrymartin #jonmartin

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bookjonsa · 4 years ago

Note

"Of Sansa brushing out Lady's coat and singing to herself. You know nothing Jon Snow" seems straight out of a cheesy romance novel lol. Lets be honest here.

Yeah, that's our Jon, a romantic at heart:

Calling his half sister Sansa “radiant”:

Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon I

Dreaming about his mother:

Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard Stark would not talk of her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon III

Playing the hero:

Every morning they had trained together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. "I'm Prince Aemon the Dragonknight,*" Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, "Well, I'm Florian the Fool." Or Robb would say, "I'm the Young Dragon," and Jon would reply, "I'm Ser Ryam Redwyne.**"

—A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

*Ser Aemon the Dragonknight, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, he crowned Queen Naerys his Queen of Love and Beauty.

**Ser Ryan Redwyne, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, he crowned Queen Alysanne his Queen of Love and Beauty.

Giving courtesies:

"I don't even know your name."

"Gilly, he called me. For the gillyflower."

"That's pretty." He remembered Sansa telling him once that he should say that whenever a lady told him her name. He could not help the girl, but perhaps the courtesy would please her.

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

Playing the honorable knight:

After that he had taken to using Ghost to keep her away. Old Nan used to tell stories about knights and their ladies who would sleep in a single bed with a blade between them for honor's sake, but he thought this must be the first time where a direwolf took the place of the sword.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon II

Straight out the book of courtly love...

Wooing a girl:

If I could show her Winterfell . . . give her a flower from the glass gardens, feast her in the Great Hall, and show her the stone kings on their thrones. We could bathe in the hot pools, and love beneath the heart tree while the old gods watched over us.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon V

Wishing for a domestic life:

I would need to steal her if I wanted her love, but she might give me children. I might someday hold a son of my own blood in my arms. A son was something Jon Snow had never dared dream of, since he decided to live his life on the Wall. I could name him Robb. Val would want to keep her sister's son, but we could foster him at Winterfell, and Gilly's boy as well. Sam would never need to tell his lie. We'd find a place for Gilly too, and Sam could come visit her once a year or so. Mance's son and Craster's would grow up brothers, as I once did with Robb.

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon XII

Calling his mare “sweet lady”:

The mare whickered softly as Jon Snow tightened the cinch. “Easy, sweet lady,” he said in a soft voice, quieting her with a touch. Wind whispered through the stable, a cold dead breath on his face, but Jon paid it no mind. He strapped his roll to the saddle, his scarred fingers stiff and clumsy. “Ghost,” he called softly, “to me.” And the wolf was there, eyes like embers.

—A Game of Thrones - Jon IX

Being friends with soft boys:

Whatever pride his lord father might have felt at Samwell’s birth vanished as the boy grew up plump, soft, and awkward. Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was.

��A Game of Thrones - Jon IV

Sam remembered the last time he’d sung the song with his mother, to lull baby Dickon to sleep. His father had heard their voices and come barging in, angry. “I will have no more of that,” Lord Randyll told his wife harshly. “You ruined one boy with those soft septon’s songs, do you mean to do the same to this babe?” Then he looked at Sam and said, “Go sing to your sisters, if you must sing. I don’t want you near my son.”

—A Storm of Swords - Samwell III

The boy claimed to be eighteen, older than Jon, but he was green as summer grass for all that. Satin, they called him, even in the wool and mail and boiled leather of the Night’s Watch; the name he’d gotten in the brothel where he’d been born and raised. He was pretty as a girl with his dark eyes, soft skin, and raven’s ringlets.

—A Storm of Swords - Jon VII

“Night gathers, and now my watch begins,” they said, as thousands had said before them. Satin’s voice was sweet as song, Horse’s hoarse and halting, Arron’s a nervous squeak. “It shall not end until my death.”

(…)

He could smell Horse’s unwashed breeches, the sweet scent Satin combed into his beard, the rank sharp smell of fear, the giant’s overpowering musk. He could hear the beating of his own heart. ”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon VII

Satin was all grace, dancing with three serving girls in turn but never presuming to approach a highborn lady. Jon judged that wise. He did not like the way some of the queen’s knights were looking at the steward, particularly Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain. That one wants to shed a bit of blood, he thought. He is looking for some provocation.

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon X

Imagining his half sister Sansa calling the lands beyond the wall “an enchantment”:

The pale pink light of dawn sparkled on branch and leaf and stone. Every blade of grass was carved from emerald, every drip of water turned to diamond. Flowers and mushrooms alike wore coats of glass. Even the mud puddles had a bright brown sheen. Through the shimmering greenery, the black tents of his brothers were encased in a fine glaze of ice.

So there is magic beyond the Wall after all. He found himself thinking of his sisters, perhaps because he’d dreamed of them last night. Sansa would call this an enchantment, and tears would fill her eyes at the wonder of it, but Arya would run out laughing and shouting, wanting to touch it all.

—A Clash of Kings - Jon III

Giving up his deepest desire and by that, refusing to despoil his half sister Sansa of her rights:

“How can I lose men I do not have? I had hoped to bestow Winterfell on a northman, you may recall. A son of Eddard Stark. He threw my offer in my face.” Stannis Baratheon with a grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters.

“By right Winterfell should go to my sister Sansa.”

“Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the Imp perched on your father’s seat? I promise you, that will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow.”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon I

Jon said, “Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa.”

“I have heard all I need to hear of Lady Lannister and her claim.” The king set the cup aside. “You could bring the north to me. Your father’s bannermen would rally to the son of Eddard Stark. Even Lord Too-Fat-to-Sit-a-Horse. White Harbor would give me a ready source of supply and a secure base to which I could retreat at need. It is not too late to amend your folly, Snow. Take a knee and swear that bastard sword to me, and rise as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.”

How many times will he make me say it? “My sword is sworn to the Night’s Watch.”

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon IV

And of course, as if he sensed he was going to die, informing us that his fondest memory of his half sister Sansa is the following:

He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon’s breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady’s coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

—A Dance with Dragons - Jon XIII

He's so fluffy! I'm gonna die!

Thanks for your message.

Good night.

#jonsa #anon asks #jon's romantic nature

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maisiestyle · 5 years ago

Photo

Jon’s Love for Arya and Sansa are not the same

@sweetlingsansa

Your recent Jon x Love post gave me a chuckle. You appear quite confused in how Jon feels about the two Stark sisters. I’m going to address the way you chose to highlight this point: I sense you’re obviously projecting the feelings he has for one sister that George goes to great lengths to show his readers. In fact, George was specifically asked that question and his answer couldn’t be more clear:

On Jon/Arya:

Granny: Are you trying to say something to the reader by drilling into us how much Arya and Jon love each other?

George_RR_Martin: “Say something to the reader?” I’m just reporting how the characters feel. Of course, everything in the book says something to the reader.

Yet @sweetlingsansa reduces Jon’s feelings for Arya as simple family affection. Sigh. What books did you read? Very suspect. Then you falsely claim Jon apparently feels PURE, PERFECT, UNCONDITIONAL love (where?! lol) for the sister he barely spares a second, third or forth thought on? The sister he can go without seeing again if it meant he could have the other more important people back in his life. The sister that only thought about him when he was the last family she had left.

The sister Jon didn’t spare a thought for over her plight in King’s Landing surrounded by enemies. YET multiple times, he wonders how Arya is… even though deep down he knows she must be dead. Only one sister was worth breaking his vows for. It was only one sister that occupied his last thought before he died. His dearest wishes involved her. When Jon wakes from this “death” like Beric described and Lady Stoneheart is demonstrating, the last things that were most important to the undead person at the end of their life will be their fixation when they rise again. Lady Stoneheart’s search for Arya and killing Freys & Lannisters. Revenge. With Jon, he died with a mission he pledged himself to in riding south to Winterfell to face Ramsay Bolton and get Arya back.

“… I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …” was the last thing Jon considers before he decides to break his vows.

“I have my swords, thought Jon Snow, and we are coming for you, Bastard.”

Jon’s death scene in ADWD was significant. His last word was Ghost, his last feeling was pain, and his last thoughts were about a girl he loved more than anything:

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold. - Jon, ADWD

“Jon will want me, even if no one else does.” (Unconditional) - Arya

George is just reporting how the characters feel remember:

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north.

~*~

And Arya … he missed her even more than Robb, so fierce and willful. she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now...

~*~

He remembered the day he had left Winterfell, all the bittersweet farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow in his hair, Arya raining kisses on him after he’d given her Needle.

~*~

That might mean Lord Eddard would return to Winterfell, and his sisters as well. He might even be allowed to visit them, with Lord Mormont’s permission. It would be good to see Arya’s grin again and to talk with his father.

(These two last quotes above are striking in their exclusion of one sister. Yikes.)

~*~

He remembered suddenly how he used to muss Arya’s hair. His little stick of a sister. He wondered how she was faring. It made him a little sad to think that he might never muss her hair again.

This is from Book 2. He thinks she is still alive? When everyone else thinks she’s dead.

~*~

Jon had never met anyone so stubborn, except maybe for his little sister Arya. Is she still my sister? he wondered. Was she ever?

This is just so major, the implications. Wow.

~*~

“He’s to marry Arya Stark. My little sister.” Jon could almost see her in that moment, long-faced and gawky, all knobby knees and sharp elbows, with her dirty face and tangled hair. They would wash the one and comb the other, he did not doubt, but he could not imagine Arya in a wedding gown, nor Ramsay Bolton’s bed. No matter how afraid she is, she will not show it. If he tries to lay a hand on her, she’ll fight him.

~*~

By now she’d be eleven, Jon thought. Still a child. “I have no sister. Only brothers. Only you.” Lady Catelyn would have rejoiced to hear those words, he knew. That did not make them easier to say. His fingers closed around the parchment. Would that they could crush Ramsay Bolton’s throat as easily.

~*~

His thoughts kept returning to Arya. There is no way I can help her. I put all kin aside when I said my words. If one of my men told me his sister was in peril, I would tell him that was no concern of his. Once a man had said the words his blood was black. Black as a bastard’s heart. He’d had Mikken make a sword for Arya once, a bravo’s blade, made small to fit her hand. Needle. He wondered if she still had it. Stick them with the pointy end, he’d told her, but if she tried to stick the Bastard, it could mean her life.

~*~

“I have no sister.” The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?

I love winning.

~*~

Melisandre seemed amused. “What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?”

“Arya.” His voice was hoarse. “My half-sister, truly …”

~*~

Gods of my fathers, protect these men. And Arya too, my little sister, wherever she might be. I pray you, let Mance find her and bring her safe to me.

~*~

He glanced at the letter again. I will save your sister if I can. A surprisingly tender sentiment from Stannis, though undercut by that final, brutal if I can and the addendum and find a better match for her than Ramsay Snow. But what if Arya was not there to be saved? What if Lady Melisandre’s flames had told it true? Could his sister truly have escaped such captors? How would she do that? Arya was always quick and clever, but in the end she’s just a little girl, and Roose Bolton is not the sort who would be careless with a prize of such great worth.

He keeps hitting that right spot. Jon the president of the Arya Stark stanclub from day mf 1.

~*~

What if Bolton never had his sister? This wedding could well be just some ruse to lure Stannis into a trap. A grey girl on a dying horse, fleeing from her marriage. On the strength of those words he had loosed Mance Rayder and six spearwives on the north. He had even less trust in Melisandre. Yet somehow here he was, pinning his hopes on them. All to save my sister. But the men of the Night’s Watch have no sisters.

~*~

And keep him away from the red woman. She knows who he is. She sees things in her fires.”

Arya, he thought, hoping it was so.

~*~

“That’s good.” Jon felt fifteen years old again. Little sister. He rose and donned his cloak.

~*~

He wanted to believe it would be Arya. He wanted to see her face again, to smile at her and muss her hair, to tell her she was safe.

~*~

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart.

~*~

The girl smiled in a way that reminded Jon so much of his little sister that it almost broke his heart. “Let him be scared of me.” The snowflakes were melting on her cheeks, but her hair was wrapped in a swirl of lace that Satin had found somewhere, and the snow had begun to collect there, giving her a frosty crown. Her cheeks were flushed and red, and her eyes sparkled.

“Winter’s lady.” Jon squeezed her hand.

~*~

He wondered where Mance was now. Did he ever find you, little sister? Or were you just a ploy he used so I would set him free?

~*~

It had been so long since he had last seen Arya. What would she look like now? Would he even know her? Would she still have that little sword he’d had Mikken forge for her? Stick them with the pointy end, he’d told her. Wisdom for her wedding night if half of what he heard of Ramsay Snow was true.

Sill worrying about Arya’s wedding night. Wow.

~*~

Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl.

~*~

You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird’s nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …

These aren’t even ALL the Jon/Arya quotes from the books, no conjecture, tortured symbolism, imaginary themes/loose connections/extrapolations or weak nonsense explanations, just direct quotes.

Direct. quotes.said.by/about.two.people. Something most Jonsas have very little experience with I know. The Arya quotes would fill pages.

This wasn’t done by accident. George didn’t do this for fun.

These two matter to eachother on a level you don’t seem to understand or want to acknowledge.

#jon snow #Arya Stark #Sansa Stark #house stark #jon x arya #Jon x Sansa #jonrya #jonsa #anti jonsa #asoaif #game of thrones #grrmartin #winterfell #winds of winter #greek mythology

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thelustybraavosimaid · 3 years ago

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What's interesting about Jon and Arya's relationship isn't just they are each other's favourite sibling - they are one another's favourite person. This is why Jon thinks of her with just about everyone, has a specific type that she is a reference to (as was confirmed by George):

It's a reference to a certain physical type, and a certain indication of what Jon finds admirable.

Jon, also, misses her more than Robb, his best friend and constant companion:

He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet; Robb, his rival and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him anything but "my half brother" since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant. And Arya…he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had…yet she could always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him. (Jon III, AGoT)

It hits me how Jon's thoughts about Arya alone take up half of the passage!

Jon, on the way to Castle Black:

The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north. (Jon II, AGoT)

Arya does the same thing, being reminded of Jon in other people:

"NO!" Arya and Gendry both said, at the exact same instant. Hot Pie quailed a little. Arya gave Gendry a sideways look. He said it with me, like Jon used to do, back in Winterfell. She missed Jon Snow the most of all her brothers. (Arya I, ASoS)

And with the Ghost of High Heart:

Ned, Gendry, and many of the others were fast asleep when Arya spied the small pale shape creeping behind the horses, thin white hair flying wild as she leaned upon a gnarled cane. The woman could not have been more than three feet tall. The firelight made her eyes gleam as red as the eyes of Jon's wolf. He was a ghost too. Arya stole closer, and knelt to watch. (Arya VIII, ASoS)

Despite not interacting since the very beginning of AGoT, the two of them have interconnected narratives, to boot. Arya interacting with Yoren, being dressed up as a boy to join the Night's Watch, her desperation to get to Jon and desire to go to the Wall to be with him is mentioned repeatedly throughout the whole of the series.

This is just one example:

But that was stupid. Her home was gone, her parents dead, and all her brothers slain but Jon Snow on the Wall. That was where she had wanted to go. She told the captain as much, but even the iron coin did not sway him. Arya never seemed to find the places she set out to reach. (Arya I, AFfC)

Despite Arya being a continent away from Jon, George still has her interact with members of the Night's Watch (with Dareon, and defending Sam). And for Jon, George has him settling on a loan with Tycho Nestoris of the Iron Bank, which is connected to the Faceless Men. Arya already has a hand in the Iron Bank's politics - in the form of her ruining their negotiations with the Lannisters in the Mercy chapter.

She is so steadfast in Jon's love for her that she thinks:

"I know where we could go," Arya said. She still had one brother left. Jon will want me, even if no one else does. He'll call me "little sister" and muss my hair. It was a long way, though, and she didn't think she could get there by herself. She hadn't even been able to reach Riverrun. "We could go to the Wall." (Arya XII, ASoS)

He is among those she imagines walking alongside her to quell her fear:

Alone, she slid through the shadow of the Tower of Ghosts. She walked fast, to keep ahead of her fear, and it felt as though Syrio Forel walked beside her, and Yoren, and Jaqen H'ghar, and Jon Snow. (Arya X, ACoK)

How far are you willing to go to prove your love?

They both have relatively shaky vows to their respective institutions because of one another. Arya stows away Needle, a representation of her family but also specifically referred to as Jon Snow's smile in the HoBaW. She will give up every other thing but that. And because of this anchor - which includes Nymeria and her wolf dreams, but especially Needle and, by association, Jon - is what prevents her from becoming No One completely.

The marriage letter Ramsay sends to Jon is what well and truly tests Jon's vows - and it's what caused the intense anguish that culminates in his death in ADwD.

Jon loves her so dearly that she is his heart:

"The heart is all that matters. Do not despair, Lord Snow. Despair is a weapon of the enemy, whose name may not be spoken. Your sister is not lost to you."

"I have no sister." The words were knives. What do you know of my heart, priestess? What do you know of my sister?

Melisandre seemed amused. "What is her name, this little sister that you do not have?"

"Arya." His voice was hoarse. "My half-sister, truly..." (Jon VI, ADwD)

And that Winterfell, where she supposedly "is," is not her home, her true home is with him:

Bring her home, Mance. I saved your son from Melisandre, and now I am about to save four thousand of your free folk. You owe me this one little girl. (Jon XI, ADwD)

Arya feels a huge amount of shame when Needle is taken from her:

They talked over her as she lay hurting, but Arya could not seem to understand the words. Her ears rang. When she tried to crawl off, the earth moved beneath her. They took Needle. The shame of that hurt worse than the pain, and the pain hurt a lot. Jon had given her that sword. Syrio had taught her to use it. (Arya V, ACoK)

And she gets particularly upset when accused of having stolen Needle:

"I did not!" she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn't going to let them call Jon a thief. (Arya I, ACoK)

Call me whatever you want, just don't call Jon a thief.

There is a bit of irony in this, since Jon is accused by Ramsay in ADwD of sending Mance south in order to steal Arya.

Your false king's friends are dead. Their heads upon the walls of Winterfell. Come see them, bastard. Your false king lied, and so did you. You told the world you burned the King-Beyond-the-Wall. Instead you sent him to Winterfell to steal my bride from me. (Jon XIII, ADwD)

She has a very deep-rooted sense of justice and loyalty, but she wouldn't even tell her own father - who she loved enough to bypass snakes and lizard-lions and pools of quicksand to retrieve some flowers for, mind you - who gifted her the sword.

Lord Eddard Stark sighed. "My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?"

Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father. (Arya II, AGoT)

George is heavy-handed in the way he includes how much they miss + love each other, and what they mean for - and to - one another. George wrote them as inseparable, as true soulmates, as people who would break any vows to be with one another again, and that's the most beautiful aspect of the series there is.

Home is a person to Jon and Arya and it's one another. They are each other's safe havens and hearts and homes.

He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him.

And he did. He gave his life. And the very first lesson he gave to her was the one that he thought of.

Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger's hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. "Ghost," he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold… (Jon XIII, ADwD)

That makes me think of this:

He is a man of the Night's Watch, she thought, as he sang about some stupid lady throwing herself off some stupid tower because her stupid prince was dead. The lady should go kill the ones who killed her prince. (Cat of the Canals, AFfC)

Because of the proximity of the Wall to Braavos, Arya does hear about him:

But they were all dead now, even Arya, everyone but her half-brother, Jon. Some nights she heard talk of him, in the taverns and brothels of the Ragman's Harbor. The Black Bastard of the Wall, one man had called him. Even Jon would never know Blind Beth, I bet. That made her sad. (The Blind Girl, ADwD)

Undoubtedly she will hear of his death. And she will break her vows to go to him. And she'll finally go to the place she had struggled to reach before.

#they are soulmates #no way around that #that's why they are so interconnected #arcs and all #there's so much more that i would like to discuss about this but it would be far too long #George wrote them as well and truly inseparable #and that is so beautiful to me #jon snow #arya stark #canonjonsnow #canonaryastark

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writingjoycebyers · 4 years ago

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Could you write a small drabble about jopper being protective of eachother 🥺

Joyce Byers x Jim Hopper - Friend, old friend - a song fic

(this fic is based on the prompt above (I hope this counts as protective) and the song slow mover by Angie McMahon. Comments and reblogs make my writing heart go boom boom - you know how it works. love feedback and suggestion on how to do it better. or ideas. or thoughts. or whatever <3)

Warnings: contains mature topics like a hint of cheating, alcohol consumption, very light nsfw (superficial) and angst. 18+ as always

Friend, old friend, it's 4 AM

What are we doing in the street?

They walk through the empty streets of Hawkins, a cold february night in 1969, snow falling onto them, and they don‘t even notice the small, cold drops on their heads, shoulders and hands - they‘re far too gone to notice, too drunk to freeze and too sober to dance in the snow the way they used to when they were kids in Jim‘s parents backyard. They‘d left the bar an hour ago, to roam the empty streets at night, talking and walking like old friends do.

„Yeah, he‘s with my mother tonight. Jon loves it there.“, Joyce adds as Jim asks her where she‘s left her son - a reasonable question considering Joyce seemed to have time and space to get wasted all on her own on a saturday night. „She lets him have chocolate before dinner and all.“

„And...“, Jim adds, unable to finish his questioning words when Joyce interrupts him. „I‘ve got no clue, and I kind of don‘t want to know.“, Joyce finishes his sentence, anticipating the question underlying the small word „and“ and the tone of her friend‘s voice. No clue, he might aswell be screwing some girl in her very own wedding bed. Lonnie.

„Joyce, does he even care for the kid?“, Hopper suddenly blurts out, without warning, and boy — he does sound angry. He stops, and grabs her by the shoulders. It‘s a sudden move for him, impulsive and way more serious than she had experienced him at the bar, in their heavy, drunken laughter above the tears behind her brown eyes.

„He... even asked me if I want to try for another one.“, Joyce confessed, a whisper in the cold as she tried to avoid locking eyes with Jim. She had become bad at eye contact lately. Her hand found his on her shoulder. He had not actually asked, had rather joked around that if they tried for another boy, then maybe he‘d finally have a kid that liked what he‘d call boys stuff. Joyce swallowed hard. Lonnie didn‘t want to make another baby for love. No, he was being selfish. And still that idea had sparked a tiny bit of hope inside of her, a hope that he‘d maybe change? Change for the sake of another kid? But she couldn‘t tell Hopper. So she told him some kind of half hearted truth.

„Are you hungry?“, she suddenly asked as his grip on her shoulders began to losen. She nodded into the direction of a 24 hour diner, the neon lights behind them illuminating his silhouette from behind. She loved his silhouette.

I don't want to buy fried chicken

I wish that I was going to sleep

„Nah...I just... Joyce.“, he mumbled, his articulation heavy and sloppy from the drinks he had drowned. The „Joyce“ said it all. He knew she was trying to distract him, knew she did not want to talk about Lonnie, that she did not want to stay with that man and neither would want to leave him. He‘d take her with him, he thinks, take her with him into his small apartment in NYC, around the corner of his police training station, and hold her tight every night in his way too small bed, and never let go again. He‘d done that once too often already. But then, his mind flashes to the woman he‘s dating, Diane, tall and blonde, a woman he hasn‘t thought of much during his visit home, if he was honest with himself. A small bundle of guilt starts to form in his gut, and he isn‘t sure if he‘s sick from the alcohol, or if it really is his conscience.

„Just tired.“, he mumbles then, and none of his thoughts were said.

So they start to make their way towards Jim‘s parents‘ house, the way they had done it so often as teenagers just a couple of years ago. A lifetime ago. Joyce keeps on walking next to him although she lives on the opposite side of town now, that small house on the edge of the woods. Where was home?

Quietly she follows Jim up to the corner of the street, because walking next to him feels a lot like home to her, so familar with his warmth, his unique scent, his height towering above her. He was home, after all.

They stop by the STOP-sign, a flashing one that stands across the streets of Jim‘s birth place, and as if the stop sign was meant for them, they don‘t go any further. It‘s quiet, a winter night, and Joyce feels like she can hear the snow flakes falling. Jim‘s presence feels warm, and life feels cold - and she does not know where to go. She‘s got a house to live in, but no home to go to sleep at. No peace within her own four walls.

„So, when are you heading back to the city?“, she asks shyly after some moments of silence.

„Tomorrow night.“, he replies, staring down on the floor, and then back up to the sign as a car goes by and it starts blinking.

„So.. last night here, huh?“, Joyce whispers, her face turned to the side because for some reason, for some damn reason she can‘t look him in the eye again.

The silence gets louder, the blinking feels harsher, the cold gets colder. She wraps her arms around herself as she feels the dizziness of the alcohol get washed away by the bleak midwinter air and her thoughts. The last night - their last chance?

Her thoughts drift off as she feels his gaze on her, feels him get closer and wrap his arms around her. They stand there in a deep, intimate hug and she asks herself what if - what if she was married to him, what if the house on the other side of the street was theirs, their home? What if they entered the living room, warmed themselves up with a deep, long kiss? God, she wanted to kiss him. His breath is warming the side of her face while he still hugged her, and she turns her head a bit, looking up. The last time they had been this close to kissing had been another lifetime ago. His eyes look dark and warm in contrast to the cold wind around them.

„You wanna come inside with me?“, he suddenly suggests. She answers with a small nod.

And I don't want to kiss you

Underneath that flashing sign

They enter his parents‘ place and although it is huge and empty, it is welcoming and cozy. The furniture hasn‘t changed. The atmosphere hasn‘t changed. There‘s a small light on the table by the sofa, and the room looks so large without Jim‘s family in it. She looks at him, and he looks sad. „It is okay to miss them.“, she whispers softly, her small hand on his back as they stand in the middle of the living room. The tension they had shared under the flashing light is gone for a second. They‘re old friends again. She rubs his back, and feels like she was wrong, feels as if she had interpreted it all the wrong way. Maybe he needed a friend, not a lover. Or maybe he needed time?

She can sense his tension underneath her hand, and she‘s glad she can be close to him in some way, somehow. Joyce looks around the familiar room, the old clock on the wall telling her the night might soon be coming to an end, and she gets sad herself. Their last chance - gone?

But then, suddenly, Jim wakes up from his short, griefing trance. Without a warning he pulls her close by the hand that had just comforted him, and as he leans down his lips find hers. There‘s no time to lose. They kiss and it feels both wrong and right, both hot and cold. She‘s overwhelmed by the passion behind his kiss, the force behind his touch as he scoops her up into his arms and her legs wrap around his waist like they belong there. „Jim...slow down. I want to feel this.“, she suddenly whispers. Suddenly, the night feels still young as he takes her by the hand and they walk up the stairs to his childhood bedroom

What's the hurry? We're not ready

We've got plenty of time

Some time later, minutes, hours, moments, they‘re a mess of limbs and words and kisses and Joyce could swear to God she has never felt like this before. He‘s rushed, but gentle, as if he‘s trying to make up for the lost time, and she‘s the other side of the magnet, slow and sensual and they make the perfect mixture. It takes a bit of talking, a bit of trust, and then they arrive - arrive at home.

For the rest of the night, Jim holds her tight in his way too small bed for once and he never wants to let her go again. They look into each other‘s eyes as they lay entangled, none of them daring to losen the grip, and Joyce feels tired, but she does not want to miss a second of this. Their last chance, remember?

„Get some sleep.“, he murmurs with a soft kiss onto the top of her head. „I‘m not leaving your side tonight.“, he adds as he strokes her hair, caresses it gently, stroking away the thoughts of guilt that come creeping up in Joyce‘s mind as she lays in the arms of another man, indulging in the afterglow of a forbidden rush of passion and confusion. What about him, she thinks, is there someone he should feel guilty for now?

Joyce couldn‘t know what the future would hold for him, a wife, a marriage and a daughter. She could only guess. Neither could she know what the future would hold for her, that she would indeed try for another baby with Lonnie and that, in two years or three, she‘d sometimes find herself lying awake late at night, counting the weeks between their little adventure and her blood results from the doctor‘s pregnancy test. It‘d be wishful thinking, maybe, that she wanted her second son to be more like Hopper than Lonnie. Wishful thinking, and a stupid, unprotected adventure.

Maybe you will get married

Maybe fall in love

Could you make me fall asleep

When you're holding me?

Try set me on fire

The morning after, Joyce awakes with her head on his chest and his arms neatly placed around his torso. Jim is fast asleep. Memories of the night come flashing back in front of her inner eye. She‘s Lonnie Byers wife. She is Lonnie Byers god damn wife in another man‘s bed. And she‘d always thought she was better than Lonnie.

Quietly, she leaves the bed and tiptoes to her clothes lying on the floor on the other side of the room. For the first time, she catches a glance of Jim‘s old room. Nothing has changed. She gets dressed as silently as possible, staring at a picture on the wall - him and her during Prom Night, in front of the Gym. She should have known earlier that this was more than friendship. She had known earlier, actually, and they had always danced around it, danced like it was prom night - until yesterday.

There's someone else but I twist all of

His words and he twists mine

At last, Joyce puts on her jacket, slips into her shoes and opens the old wooden door as carefully as she can. One last look towards the bed with a peacefully sleeping Jim in it, and she‘s out the door. He had promised last night he wouldn‘t leave her side, but this was a promise she herself could not make. In this moment, she felt as if they had to go backt to the separate paths they had chosen at some point, whether they were right or wrong, drunk or sober.

She waves him goodbye as the front door of Jim‘s parent‘s house closes behind her. A wave he doesn’t see.

Joyce would never return to that place again — She‘d not return home for more than 10 years after that. And when she, in 1983, finally does return home, entering the Chief of Police‘s office one morning, she‘ll be too panicked to notice that it‘s home, too broken to see that he‘s still there beneath the flashing sign. Waiting.

So I'll have to let him go

We sometimes fit, but we always lie

And he thinks we could make it work

But only when he's drunk

You think you could help me swim

But I've already sunk

_____________

Thanks for reading. Please drop me a line if you‘ve got thoughts on this. Or if you wanna chat about joyce/st/jopper. My inbox is open.<3

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iceeckos12 · 4 years ago

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Hi! I hope Im not bothering you, but Im absolutely IN LOVE w/ jgvtw! Do you ever think you would write Gerrys perspective on Jon telling him hes ace? Also will we ever learn about what Mary had Gerry do while he was under her thrall/hypnotized? Im so excited for part 3 of the AU and have been rereading all the snippets from part 3 you posted + all the other content you have for it! I can’t wait for part 3! Do you know how long the fic will be? I’m planning on binging it as soon as it comes out,

Hi anon, im so sorry i took so long to answer - it’s been a crazy couple of weeks!! So, to answer a few of your questions - im not planning on getting into what mary had gerry do while he was under her control, mostly because i dont actually know. much like how it is for gerry and jon, im just going to let yall imagine what could’ve happened.

right now part three is sitting at around 7 chapters! i have the outline planned out and everything. the chapters will probably be pretty long though, so im guessing it’ll be around 50k total? but that’s just a guess.

and finally.....really wanted to write the ace thing from gerry’s perspective so. here’s a lil treat:

Gerry loved Jon.

-0-

The thing was, growing up, affection was always a transaction or a battle. Gerry would have to claw and fight for each scrap of approval, for each modicum of his mother’s regard. And even when he did get it, it was never easy, or kind, or long-lasting. He would hand his mother a Leitner, and she might smile at him for one exultant moment, before her interest slid unerringly away again.

And the cycle would repeat again.

He never understood why there were so many songs and books and TV shows about love. Why were people so eager to write about something that took and took and took and never gave anything in return? That tied one to another in the cruelest of ways?

Gerry wanted nothing to do with love.

-0-

Being friends with Jon didn’t come naturally to Gerry.

Jon was everything Mary wasn’t; sensitive to changing moods, innocently inquisitive, attentive to direction. But more than that, more than anything, he cared. He cared so intensely that it scared Gerry sometimes.

Gerry had never cared about anything the way Jon seemed to about nothing and everything all at once. In all his years working as Mary’s glorified errand boy, it’d never occurred to him to try and soften the sharp, dangerous edges of the supernatural world for others. But Jon, endearingly earnest, painfully awkward, worried about the victims, worried about protecting them. (The very antithesis of Mary.)

It made Gerry want to do better. It made Gerry want to be better.

-0-

Gerry loved Jon.

This was no surprise; Gerry wasn’t sure when it’d first happened, but when he’d realized, all he’d been able to think was, ah. Because Jon had shown Gerry that affection could be gentle instead of sharp, that it didn’t have to be won like the prize of a gruesome struggle. Falling in love with Jon felt like the foregone conclusion, the period one placed at the end of a sentence.

Being around Jon, being with Jon, made him feel like everything was going to be okay, like everything was okay. The supernatural world felt a little less awful, a little less inescapably evil, because Jon existed in it.

“Delinquent!” Gerry howled, then dissolved into laughter, the way he never thought he could.

“To be fair,” Jon said, rolling over and draping himself over Gerry’s chest. Gerry tried very hard not smile like an idiot at the warm weight of his partner, at the sheer joy he felt at the way Jon’s eyes crinkled at the edges. “I am wearing a fussy little sweater vest, and you have eyeliner on.”

(He Knows that if Jon keeps smiling like that, in ten years the crinkles at Jon’s eyes will turn into laugh lines. They will be overwhelmingly charming and Gerry will love them just as he loves the rest of Jon.)

He doesn’t say that, though. Instead he wraps his arms around Jon’s shoulders and tugs him close, pressing their lips firmly together. Jon smiled, and their teeth clacked together awkwardly, but Gerry was weak to that smile, so it was okay.

He tucked Jon’s hair behind his ear, smiling at the dazed look in his eyes. “I like seeing you like this,” he commented idly.

“Like what?”

Gerry laughed, then carefully cupped the back of Jon’s head and flipped them over so their positions were reversed. Jon stared up at Gerry, rich brown eyes wide, lips parted.

Gorgeous, Gerry thought, then pressed a kiss to Jon’s mouth, then his jaw, then the underside of his chin. “I like seeing you lose control,” he whispered into the junction between neck and shoulder.

“G-Gerry,” Jon gasped out, and Gerry smiled at the sound of his name on Jon’s lips. But then a cold, clammy hand wrapped around his wrist, and he froze, suddenly realizing that something was wrong. “Stop.”

Gerry immediately pulled away, frowning in confusion. Cold dread pooled in his stomach at the sheer terror on Jon’s face, the wide-eyed fear. “Jon?”

Jon pulled away, putting space between them, pushing anxiously at his hair.

Did I do something wrong? It took everything Gerry had to keep outwardly calm. He ran over the past few minutes in his head, trying to figure out what he’d done, why it’d gone wrong so quickly. They’d - Gerry had never kissed Jon’s neck before, maybe he’d accidentally triggered a bad memory - ?

Then Jon extended his arms, a quietly pleading gesture, and Gerry was so relieved that he was almost dizzy at the relief of it. He let out a shaky sigh and folded himself into Jon’s space, slotting them neatly together.

“I’m sorry,” Jon whispered.

“Don’t apologize,” Gerry responded immediately. Whatever it was that’d caused such a negative reaction, Jon should never apologize for it. Gerry had enough of his own issues to reproach Jon for his.

“No, Gerry,” Jon scrubbed his hand over his face. “I need to—talk to you about something, I should’ve said something earlier.”

Gerry didn’t really understand the ensuing conversation; what he did understand was that he loved Jon, had loved Jon for a long time, and sex had never factored into it.

So, yes.

Gerry loved Jon, and that was all there was to it.

#tma #my writing #jongerry #jongerry vs the world #iceeckos12 writes #ask #anonymous

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alinaastarkov · 4 years ago

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Omg, I just saw a Jonsa/Sansa stan argue that Jon **didn't** break his vows when he learned of Arya's marriage and that when he decided to march against Ramsay, he was doing it for ALL his siblings, mostly Sansa. Uh huh. I guess it was another character named Jon who sends Mance to rescue Arya, decidedly NOT putting blood kin aside OR staying neutral per Watch requirements -- [1/3]

Even though Jon himself reflects that he ought to be putting blood kin aside and staying neutral as a Night's Watch brother. And Jon thinks that he did all of this... to save his little sister. And sure, we don't get Jon's initial reaction to learning that Tyrion married Sansa but he never thinks of Sansa in regard to her marriage or dwells on it. The most he dwells on is that Tyrion, the man who had called him friend, had killed his father and he had a hard time with that. [2/3]

But sure, yes, Jon is overcome by feelings for Sansa, uh huh. The girl he only refers to as a sister (Jonsas: "But Jon doesn't see her as a sister!") while Robb (who disinherited Sansa). That's some suppression -- all the non-dwelling, the non self-convincing, the straight up acceptance of Sansa as his sister. I guess Jon is suppressing his feelings so well that they've entered into the land of Non-Existence. [3/3]

These people are a joke. They just completely ignore the sequence of events entirely. Jon has two chances before this to save his family - Robb and Bran and Rickon - and even a third if we take him learning of Sansa’s marriage into account, an event that meant so little to him we didn’t even get a reaction in the text. He ignores all of them. Then, he learns of “Arya’s” marriage and is so devastated he sends Mance Rayder, a man he trusts less than Alliser Thorne, to save her because he is the only option. Then, he puts faith in Melisandre, whom he trusts even less, because he needs to rescue her that much. Then, when all of that fails, he hears Ramsay’s threats of killing him and taking back Arya and decides that all those vows he fought so hard to keep aren’t worth it when she’s in danger. And btw, he only claims he’s leaving to answer Ramsay’s threats against him as Lord Commander, because there is no way the NW would accept anything else. So, not a single mention of Sansa’s marriage or his reaction, but we get seven (7) whole chapters of Jon’s thoughts on Arya’s marriage, from the moment he finds out to the moment he dies for her.

They also always confuse Jon’s thoughts and when he has them.

This happens after he reads the letter: Jon flexed the fingers of his sword hand. The Night's Watch takes no part. He closed his fist and opened it again. What you propose is nothing less than treason. He thought of Robb, with snowflakes melting in his hair. Kill the boy and let the man be born. He thought of Bran, clambering up a tower wall, agile as a monkey. Of Rickon's breathless laughter. Of Sansa, brushing out Lady's coat and singing to herself. You know nothing, Jon Snow. He thought of Arya, her hair as tangled as a bird's nest. I made him a warm cloak from the skins of the six whores who came with him to Winterfell … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back … "I think we had best change the plan," Jon Snow said.

It’s interesting that Jon “closed his fist and opened it again” seeing as flexing his sword-hand is first connected to one of his fondest memories of Arya that gets repeated over and over in his chapters: As he rode, Jon peeled off his glove to air his burned fingers. Ugly things. He remembered suddenly how he used to muss Arya's hair. His little stick of a sister. He wondered how she was faring. It made him a little sad to think that he might never muss her hair again. He began to flex his hand, opening and closing the fingers.

Then notice the pattern. He first thinks of Robb, the brother he was closest to. He connects him to thoughts of abandoning his vows, as he tried to do when he heard of Ned’s execution and Robb’s war. Then he thinks of three of his siblings in a row, the ones he was less close to due to age/ the way he was treated. Bran comes after “Kill the boy” for obvious reasons, but he is also connected to Rickon and Sansa because they weren’t as close to Jon for a number of reasons. Then he thinks of Ygritte’s words. This is always taken as being linked to Sansa for some reason, and people also ignore that he thinks of Arya after this. People genuinely believe this passage ends at the thought of Ygritte. But that is not why this thought is here. This Ygritte mention is to separate these people in Jon’s life. 3 siblings at once, then a break, then Arya, to highlight her importance to him and that she is the focus of this moment, seeing as she is the one he’s been trying to rescue. Also interesting that these people cut off this passage to fuel their delusion, when a line 100 times more romantic than “You know nothing, Jon Snow” is mentioned and can only be linked to Arya: “I want my bride back … I want my bride back … I want my bride back …” This thought then inspires him to “change the plan”. I don’t see how anyone can see Jon think of Arya as his “bride” three times and still think this is about Sansa.

And then these people constantly say that these are his last thoughts before he died, that he died thinking of Sansa (lmao even though this includes everyone and Arya is clearly most important) when this is not his dying moment. This is:

He thinks of all his siblings, though as I’ve made clear Arya is the most significant of them all, when deciding to go kill Ramsay and save Arya. When he actually dies, he thinks of two things: Ghost, the direwolf that he is warging into, and Arya with “Stick them with the pointy end”. This is the final moment, when true priorities are revealed. And Sansa is nowhere to be seen.

#asoiaf #anti jonsa #arya stark #jon snow #adwd #acok #jonrya #jon x arya #jonarya #Anonymous #neve has mail

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celosiaa · 4 years ago

Text

i can almost see you

Summary: Tim says his final farewells.

Martin refuses to leave his side.

(for a prompt from @nebulousowl requesting an exploration of Tim saying his last goodbyes, and being comforted through it all)

CW: suicidal(ish) thoughts, discussion of death wish/martyrdom, heavy angst

this is a bit of a dark one--definitely heavy on the angst, but I’ve got the comfort here too, never fear. Though I would not classify Tim as suicidal, I could see how this piece could potentially be triggering for folks who struggle with those things. Please please please be careful!!! Love to you all! <3

“Honestly, I hope that John learned something from her because—because I don’t expect I’m going to be coming back from this. I don’t know if I want to. And if he needs to pull the trigger, to use me to stop it… well, he’d better have the guts to do it.”

Tim stops briefly, the faint flicker of compulsion fading away to nothing as he says these words.

My last words.

He knows it as sure as anything—this had been his last statement for the archive. Whether that means he escapes, or he dies, Tim can’t even find it in himself to care. Just for it all to be over.

He’s just got to end the tape.

“Timothy Stoker, August 4th, 2017.”

It’s so very like an obituary that he cannot help but laugh.

“Statement ends.”

Clicking off the recorder, Tim buries his face in his hands, rubbing at eyes that have seen no rest for days now. He hasn’t been able to sleep, able to eat, able to—anything, really, now he thinks of it. And what would be the point anyway? He’s only got to last a little bit longer.

“Tim? Are you alright?” a timid voice asks from the doorway.

Of course it would be Martin.

Of course.

“Well, isn’t this just the icing on the cake?” he says with as much vitriol as he can manage, pulling the corners of his mouth into a wide and terrible grin.

To his surprise, this does not seem to intimidate Martin in the slightest. Certainly, the man of a few years ago would have balked at this behavior, so worried even to look at someone the wrong way that he would rather just run out of the room. The expression he’s directing at Tim right now, however, speaks volumes as to just how much they’ve all changed.

“Look, you can—you can be nasty to me all you want,” he says, stepping into the office and closing the door behind him. “It’s not going to stop this conversation from happening.”

Bastard.

Wiping the grin from his face, Tim leans back in the wooden chair, which creaks a bit as he crosses his arms tightly across his chest. Martin absolutely refuses to look away, his eyes just boring into Tim’s with a steadily-building intensity—until he finally bursts.

“What? What do you want, Martin? Just spit it out,” he shouts, slamming a hand against the table and returning the stare with equal force.

“I heard what you just said,” he says quietly, refusing to match Tim’s outlandish volume.

“Great, thanks for eavesdropping then! Really appreciate it,” Tim spits, tipping back even further to stare angrily at the ceiling.

“Well, I’ve already heard it, so tough. And to be honest, it fucking terrified me.”

What?

Taken so completely aback by this language, his eyes immediately snap back to Martin—who is staring at him more seriously perhaps than ever before.

There was time I would have loved this, he thinks dimly, just a flicker of memory of teasing and laughter dancing across his mind—gone as quickly as it had come. It makes his head ache.

“Yeah—yeah, I mean it, alright?” Martin continues, straightening up even taller, firm in his determination not to let this go.

“What you said about not expecting to come back, and—” he breaks off to inhale a quick, shaky breath. “—and not wanting to. That bit. That terrified me.”

Seeing the fear written all over Martin’s face, knowing that he had put it there, that this might be the last time he saw him—

Tim can’t think about it—he won’t.

Just get out just get out just get out

“If this is your idea of an intervention, Martin, it’s very sad,” he says, standing from the chair with a wooden creak and crossing the room quickly.

A firm hand grips his upper arm before he can make it to the door—and it’s been so long since anyone has touched him that he cannot help but freeze in his tracks, briefly overwhelmed by the sensation. He stares down at Martin’s hand on his arm, frozen in shock.

“I know, alright?” Martin says, clearly fighting with his own voice to keep his tone gentle. “I know this probably won’t help, and you probably won’t listen to me at all, and that it might all be rubbish.”

Tim can’t help but huff out a derisive laugh at this as he tries to move away again—but Martin’s grip remains firm.

“But I also know you, Tim.”

You don’t know me you don’t know me you don’t

“I know you, alright? And I know what you’re trying to do—be a hero, be a martyr, sacrifice yourself for the sake of vengeance—"

“You know fuck all about me,” Tim hisses, cutting off whatever ridiculous nonsense Martin was about to say at once, trying yet again to shoulder past him.

And he’s stopped again—this time by a gentle hand on his shoulder. It’s warm and soft and…and kind.

Something is coming back to Tim now, scratching at the back of his mind like some half-forgotten dream.

“That’s not true,” Martin says, sharp and low. “That’s not true and you know it.”

…I do know.

Clawing to the surface of his thoughts, of his memories, of everything that he’s tried to shut down or block out for the last few months are pictures—small scenes in flashes, colors all faded and running together, yet still somehow so vivid it makes his head spin.

Martin on their first day of work together, chasing a dog around the archives while Tim tries to stop laughing long enough to catch it.

The two of them seated at the breakroom table with ice cream, Martin listening to him pine after Sasha with a small smile on his face.

Martin staying at his apartment for a bit after his mother decided to move out, watching telly and eating pizza and just taking comfort in each other’s presence.

Martin sitting with him on the floor of the archives bathroom, rubbing his back and listening to him pour out his grief on the anniversary of Danny’s death.

Sasha and himself sharing food and wine with Martin after he’d ended up staying in the archives—and Martin confessing his crush on Jon at last, blushing fit to burst.

Martin driving him to physical therapy after the worms had injured his shoulder, trying to make up for having left him behind, though he has insisted over and over that it’s not Martin’s fault.

The two of them trudging through the tunnels under the institute, with Martin supporting his weight after he’d turned his ankle.

Both of them together, sharing their grief over Sasha—until Tim had begun to pull away.

Even now, Martin still reaches out to him, still checks on him, knowing he’s been so full of despair and anger and sorrow that he’s drowning in it. Even now, he still continues to throw him a lifeline, and Tim knows he’s been so nasty, that he’s been cutting everyone out and everything is just so wrong—

Someone gasps—and Tim quickly realizes it was himself.

“Tim?” Martin’s hand moves from his shoulder to behind his elbow now, his brows furrowing in concern. “You okay?”

“Fine, fine,” he manages to mumble, his voice coming from somewhere far beneath the earth.

The room begins to spin.

“Woah, okay, just—just sit down, alright?” Martin urges, guiding him quickly back toward the chair with hands clasped behind his elbows. “I’ll get you some water.”

Sit down? But—

When he looks up again, he is already sitting, head buried in arms he’s crossed over the table in front of him. He lets out a soft groan at the movement, the office around him pitching sickeningly—and promptly folds over onto his arms once again.

God, how did I get here?

How did I become this?

He stays quiet for several moments, rubbing his forehead miserably into his arms as he begs his vision to stop swimming. Even now, he’s considering running, overwhelmed by everything that’s just flooded his memories, hoping that if he runs again he can just ignore ignore ignore until it’s all finished. Until he’s finished.

“Tim? I’ve got you some water.”

Once again, Martin is there to stop him, bringing a bit of comfort with him in the process.

God. He shouldn’t even care about me at this point.

I’ve done everything I could think of to make him stop.

Chest twinging with the weight of it, Tim raises his head slowly, unfolding his arms to prop himself up to sitting braced against the table. Martin pulls the chair around from the other side, setting himself catty-corner to him.

“You alright?” he asks in a near-whisper, tilting his head to try and get a better look at Tim’s face.

The gentleness with which he asks this question is enough to bring a lump immediately to Tim’s throat, and he reaches out for the glass set in front of him—swallowing the tears and the water down to the last drop.

“Alright, that’s good, that’s—that’s great,” Martin praises, though it does not sound at all like he thinks so. “When’s the last time you’ve eaten?”

Tim cannot bring himself to reply. He’s quite certain Martin already knows the answer to that question, anyway.

Is this really how I want to leave this?

How I want to spend the last of our time together?

To leave without even an apology, after everything.

In a moment, he makes a decision, gripping every foul thing that has forced him to hold his tongue and casting it all away.

“I’m sorry, Martin,” he mutters, hanging his head. “I’m sorry for yelling.”

“It’s alright,” Martin says, because of course he would.

“It’s really not.”

Turning to face him now, Tim is greeted with hazel eyes full of worry, lines creasing between eyebrows that have shot up past his fringe. He can’t help but smile sadly at the sight—knowing that Martin will never understand, how hurt he will be over whatever happens tonight, how hard he’s tried to make friends in this world, only to have them all stripped away till none remain—barely Jon, and not even Tim anymore.

He deserves to know. He deserves to have a place to visit her.

The smile Tim offers him now only furrows the lines of worry on Martin’s face closer, and Tim knows he must really look rather frightening at this point.

“Look, I—I want to show you something,” he says, standing carefully from the table. “Something you should know about.”

“What do you mean?” Martin asks apprehensively, standing with him, arms hovering near Tim’s elbows, just in case.

“It’s not far,” Tim assures, grabbing his keys from the table and making his way toward the door. “We’ve got some time yet.”

“Wait, Tim, where—?”

He turns back to face him, meeting him with an expression that begs for his trust, however unearned it may be.

“Just follow me, okay?”

“O…kay?”

Though his fears are far from disbanded, Martin follows Tim out of the office, flicking out the lights out behind them in a final farewell.

---

Upon reaching the cemetery, the one where Danny has been buried for nearly four years now, Tim leads them quickly down the earthen path, straight toward a patch of trees and brush on their left. Behind him, Martin stammers a bit in confusion.

“Tim, I thought…I thought Danny’s was over—oh.”

Tim has stopped now, a few yards back into the trees, where he has erected a small monument. It’s not much, really—just a stake in the ground, sanded and stained cherry with his own hands, and a bit of carving at the top.

Sasha Eloise James

4 August 1985 – 29 July 2016

“The Best”

“Oh,” Martin chokes, a bit wetter this time.

Turning at the sound, he looks Martin over—finding him rapidly blinking back tears.

“Just thought,” Tim starts, his voice coming out hoarser than he’d expected. “Just thought you should know this is here.”

He pulls his eyes away from Martin to give him some privacy, as well as to allow himself to breathe through the memories—all distorted by the face of the Stranger, now. After a few deep inhales, it seems Martin finds the strength to speak again, his voice wobbling only a bit around his tears.

“You made this?”

“Yeah,” Tim replies, brushing his thumb over the carving to scrape away some dirt that has built up there. “Probably not exactly legal, but…I didn’t really care.”

“It’s beautiful,” Martin whispers, stepping forward at last to stand at his side, his simple act of camaraderie pulling a wry smile to Tim’s face.

“She was beautiful,” Tim says, the constant hollow of his chest flooding with something both aching and lovely as he speaks. “I can’t…I can’t remember her face exactly, but I remember that. And so smart. And—”

“And kind,” Martin finishes, reaching an arm across his shoulders, the warmth of it seeping deep into his back. “Always kind. And always willing to stick up for you.”

“Yeah,” Tim’s voice breaks properly now, and he hangs his head to hide the tears stinging in his eyes.

Martin notices, of course. As always.

“And bossy, a bit,” he continues with a smile, pulling Tim into a proper side hug now, running a hand comfortingly over his upper arm.

Tim can’t help but laugh roughly at this, the sound of it more choking and wet than anything.

“Yeah a bit,” he whispers, the tears at last spilling over his cheeks.

It’s too much, it’s all too much, and it aches aches aches—he can’t help but double over, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of it all, biting back against the sobs threatening to burst from his throat.

“Hey, hey,” Martin soothes, rubbing his back, gentle as ever. “Are you alright?”

No, he wants to say more than anything.

I don’t think I ever will be.

“Just…just give me a moment, would you?” he asks, scrubbing a hand down his face.

“Oh—yeah, erm…I’ll just be at that bench, okay?” Martin says at once, stepping back and thumbing in the general direction of a park bench they had passed.

Tim merely nods in response, and then Martin is gone—leaving only him, the quiet, and the birds singing above. He lets it lie there for a moment, staring down at the curving letters of her name, trying desperately to remember her face, her true face. But nothing comes to him—nothing save the rising static and the cold and the dark.

I’ve got to tell her. She has to know.

“I haven’t forgotten you, you know. Never could do. You’re—‘unforgettable,’ as you put it. Thought about carving that on your post here, but I could hear your voice in my head saying it was ‘too on-the-nose.’”

He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face now, the memories feeling closer to him than perhaps ever before.

“I…I think I’ll be seeing you soon. Really soon, in fact—you and Danny both. And I just want you to know that it’s alright, that I’m not scared, and that I’m going to see justice done. I won’t stop until it’s done, I promise.”

Crouching down in front of the post now, he rubs his thumb back over her name again and again, memorizing the feeling of it in his hands to tide him over for however long he has left on this earth.

“I promise, sweetheart. I know you hate when I call you that, but it’s just the truth, isn’t it?”

With a soft smile, he rises back to standing, knees aching in protest as he brushes them off.

“Can’t wait to see you, Sash. We’ll have a laugh at the whole thing soon, I’m sure.”

As he starts to turn away, his heart shatters with the thought that this can’t be it this can’t be it this can’t be it—

And he turns back, laying his hand to rest on top of the cherry wood.

“Tell Danny I’m coming, okay?” he whispers—before looking away at last.

What more could he say? What more could he say that she doesn’t already know, that Danny doesn’t already know? He’ll be there soon, and he’ll say it all again, hundreds of times, thousands even, if they have the time—

“You alright?” Martin asks, standing from the bench as Tim makes his way back through the trees. “You look pale—maybe we should sit a little.”

“I’m fine, Martin,” he lies easily, and with a smile. “I promise. We can go, unless you want a moment.”

Martin seems to consider this briefly, gazing over Tim’s shoulder at the trees behind him, worrying at his bottom lip.

“No, I…I don’t think I’m ready for that just yet,” he replies at last, voice low and rough.

“That’s alright. Let’s just go then.”

As they walk, Tim tries not to hear Martin’s muffled sniffling, tries not to think about him coming back here, utterly alone in his grief—when he’s reminded of Jon.

God, Jon.

…he deserves to know too.

Even after everything.

“Tell Jon about this after, alright?” he says, turning toward Martin as they walk. “So he can come here if he wants.”

“Tell him yourself,” Martin mutters wetly, eyes firmly fixed on the ground in front of him.

He knows.

He knows that this is the end.

He just doesn’t want to see it.

“Martin.”

Tim forces them to stop, turning Martin towards him with a hand on his shoulder. The tears welling in Martin’s eyes, wild with repressed panic and sorrow, are like knives in Tim’s chest.

God, Martin.

I’m so sorry.

“Promise me. Promise me you will,” he begs in earnest, grabbing Martin lightly by the folds of his jacket.

At this, the pools in Martin’s eyes begin to run over, unbidden and so full of hurt Tim could choke on it.

“I will. I promise,” he murmurs, voice thin enough to shatter.

Good man.

Quirking up a half-smile at this, Tim reaches on hand up to rest on his cheek, thumbing at the steady flow of tears.

“Thank you, Martin. Thank you for—”

--lovingcaringlaughinglisteningcryinggrievingholdingreaching—

“—for being with me.”

He pours as much meaning as possible into these words, broken and small and fragile—and suddenly he’s being hugged—properly hugged, wrapped up in a warmth that makes him sigh in relief from the comfort of it all. A proper Martin hug.

Not a bad way to end things after all.

“Just please try to come back alright?” Martin begs, voice rumbling in Tim’s ear where he’s got it pressed into Martin’s chest.

“Martin—”

“Just try. That’s all I ask. Try to make it out. It’s what they—it’s what Sasha and Danny would both want.”

He doesn’t understand he doesn’t understand he doesn’t understand.

Biting back against the lie with all the strength he has left, Tim reassures him of a falsehood too dreadful to bear.

“I’ll try,” he whispers.

“Thank you.”

At last, Martin pulls away—eyes still brimming and swiping his nose desperately against his sleeve—but offering a gentle smile all the same. He’s choking it all back, and Tim knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s for his sake—and can’t help but return the favor.

“Come on then,” he says, shoving Martin’s shoulder good-naturedly. “Plenty to do before it’s dark.”

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #tma fanfic #hurt/comfort #angst #cw suicidal thoughts #martim if you want it mayhaps #timsasha as well #and some background jonmartin #my writing #for real though be careful with this one #it's the saddest thing i've written so far i think

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