#and hear me out on this: ALL of his books would be in Leitner's library | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

callboxkat · 3 years

Text

Statement of Patton Sanders

Author’s note: Anon, this is probably not what you meant, but, hey! Here you go!

Summary: Statement of Patton Sanders regarding a series of accidents. Statement recorded live from subject, February 7th, 2021, by Logan Sanders—no relation—Head Archivist of The Magnus Institute, London.

(Necessary bg info: The Magnus Institute is an organization that takes and investigates statements about paranormal experiences. Jurgen Leitner is a character who collected books with supernatural powers.)

Warnings: This is a The Magnus Archives AU, so if you’ve listened to that you should know what to expect. Body horror (cut off fingers, broken neck), nondescriptive vomiting, blood mention, food mention. Child abuse, sort of. It's in a story in this story. No character death or villain characters.

Word Count: 3289

Original prompt:

Writing Masterpost!

Ao3 Link

@badthingshappenbingo

...

“Hey, we have the same glasses.”

“Yes, I suppose we do—Do you need help with the chair? Oh, you’ve got it.”

Patton and the other man sat down on opposite sides of a desk. He was a weary-looking, bespectacled man who couldn’t have been much different in age from himself, although slivers of premature gray were visible in his hair.

The man—an archivist, he’d introduced himself as—leaned forward to turn on a tape recorder. It seemed a little old-fashioned, but it certainly did fit in with the overall vibe of the place (recording on a laptop would have probably felt out of place), and Patton didn’t mind. This would be much easier than hand-writing his entire statement.

The archivist cleared his throat. “Statement of Patton Sanders regarding a series of accidents. Statement recorded live from subject, February 6th, 2021, by Logan Sanders—no relation—Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”

Patton shifted in his seat. The archivist sat across him, looking at him expectantly. The tape recorder lay innocently on the desk between them, the tape inside slowly turning with a quiet tick. They sat in the basement of the oft-mocked Magnus Institute. They were in an office, but even here the walls were lined with bookcases, stacked with boxes upon boxes, each of them, it appeared, filled to the brim with folders, or with cassette tapes. Other peoples’ statements, presumably. Patton wasn’t sure how he felt about that. His story just being one of hundreds more, maybe thousands, in those boxes.

“Do I just… start?” he asked.

The archivist adjusted his glasses. “Yes, please.”

He nodded, swallowed, and even before he’d fully decided where to begin, he spoke. The words came surprisingly easily.

“I used to work at a library in my home town, back in the US. It’s a little town in Florida, almost at the border with Georgia, pretty near the coast. I don’t… I don’t work there anymore, of course. But at the time—this was about three years ago, back in 2017—I was there most days.

“One day we got this book in the return bin. It was weird. Not one of ours. It didn’t have a title that I could see, but there was a label on the inside cover. It was a bit smudged, but the last name was Leitner. I don’t know if it belonged to them, or if that was the author… I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I guess.”

He noticed that the archivist suddenly seemed very interested in what he was saying, even leaning forward to hear.

“I was about to move the book over to the donations bin—I figured that’s what it was, you know, just a book somebody didn’t want, and decided to give to us rather than throw away, and got the wrong bin by mistake. But… I don’t know. Something about it just drew me in. I have no idea what; usually I go more for cookbooks, or crafts stuff, or um, lighter fiction. Not… that.”

He tried for a weak smile, but the archivist didn’t seem open to humor. Which Patton have once found awkward, but now it was almost a relief. He wasn’t sure how to make his story funny.

“So I took it out of the return bin, and I put it on my desk, instead. I was busy right then, but when I had a free moment, I sat down to take a look at it. It was old and worn, and like I said, there was no title. But it had this… weird feeling to it. Something off about it. I didn’t like it at all. But it was like I had to open it.

Patton sighed, glancing away. Suddenly, he felt on the edge of tears.

“And I made the biggest mistake of my life, and I opened that book.

“It was a story about a child who keeps refusing to do his chores. His mom would give him things to do, and the kid would say, ‘Yes, I’ll do them!’ but then as soon as the mom leaves, he’d drop the broom or whatever and run off to play with his toys instead. And as time goes on the mom gets more and more tired of this, because she has to do all the chores he doesn’t want to do.

“So, she takes him aside, and tells him sternly that he has to do his chores, or there would be consequences. And of course, he doesn’t listen, because he’s a kid.

“So the next day, takes him aside again, and tells him again to do his chores, and he continues not to. And it continues like that for ten days. But on the tenth day, the mom trips on the broom that the kid left in the middle of the floor, and she hurts herself. Very, um… very badly. She… breaks her neck. But she gets up off the floor, and her neck is all… it’s bent at a 90 degree angle. And there’s blood on the floor. I remember that page very vividly. Most of the book was in black ink, with some—” He made a face, “—illustrations. In the picture on that page, the blood was red.

“So, the mom… she goes to the kid, her neck all wrong, and she tells him, ‘You’re going to clean until your fingers fall off! Which… he does. She makes him clean, and clean, and clean. He has to scrub the floor, and when he finishes, she makes him start all over again, and again, and again. And, one by one, his fingers just… fall off.”

Patton was silent for a moment.

“On the last page of the book, there was a handprint. It wasn’t printed, you know, with ink. It was stuck in with a dark substance. I like to think maybe it was chocolate or something… but I doubt it. The weirdest thing about it, though, was that it had no fingers.

“When I closed that awful thing, I looked up, and it was dark outside. I’d apparently been reading for hours. I want you to understand—this wasn’t a big book. Maybe twenty pages, tops. And I’d found it near the start of my shift. I have no idea where all that time went, or how I didn’t notice it passing. Or why no one came in to disturb me. It’s like no one came to the library that entire day. I lived in a small town, like I said, but it wasn’t that small. We usually had people trickling in and out, even on slow days. Retired people who needed something to do, school kids doing homework, you know. You have a library here, you should understand, even if yours is more, uh… specific. So, it was really strange that no one had come in at all.

“Anyway, it was a horrible, horrible book. It was like someone set out to write a kids’ book about why they should do their chores, but instead of that, it was this nightmare version. I really didn’t want to add it to our library. Where would you even put a book like that? So I didn’t put it in the donation pile like I’d planned. But I also didn’t seem… able to just, like, get rid of it. I couldn’t just throw it away. Not because it was old and weird and maybe worth some money, no, more like… I don’t know. I just couldn’t do it. It’s hard to explain. So I put it in my desk, went home, and tried to forget about it.

“I’ll admit that, at the time, my apartment—my flat, you call ‘em here—wasn’t the cleanest back then. And thinking of that book, I kind of wanted to clean it. But also… I really didn’t. Thinking of that book made me very aware of the mess, but I kept thinking of that kid and the way his fingers just fell off, one by one, with that horrifying mom with her broken neck just watching, and then that handprint in the back of the book.

“I thought maybe whoever owned the book last, that Leitner person or whoever, put the handprint in there as some kind of joke. Just tilted up their fingers so they didn’t touch the page, to make it look like they didn’t have any. But I guess I kinda doubted that, even then.

“I made dinner that night, fed Jim and Pam—they’re my cats—and I left the plates in the sink to clean the next day.

“In the morning, they were stacked on the counter, perfectly clean. I tried to tell myself maybe I’d cleaned them and forgot, or maybe the cats had…. Somehow bumped them, and licked them clean, and it had just coincidentally looked purposeful. I don’t know. Pam liked to jump up on tables.

“I’d almost put it out of my head when the doorbell rang. I wasn’t expecting any visitors, but sometimes a couple of my friends would drop by at random, so I might not have thought much of it, except that my cats suddenly started acting different. Scared. They were hissing, and they ran off to hide. That wasn’t like them at all. …I didn’t answer the door.

“A half hour or so passed, and I figured whoever it was was probably gone, so I went to peek out the front window. Sure enough, whoever it was… if there ever even was anyone out there… was gone. But there was a box sitting on the welcome mat. Plain cardboard, no shipping label or address or anything.

“I should have left it alone. It probably wouldn’t have changed anything, but… who knows.” He let out a heavy sigh. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t leave it alone. I looked around, I wanted to make sure no one was there. No one was, as far as I could tell, so I opened the door.

“The box was small, maybe 6 inches long, a little less tall and wide than that—err, I’m not sure what that is in metric. Maybe like… 15 centimeters?”

The archivist waved him off. “It’s fine.”

“Sorry. So the box was small, and it was very light when I picked it up, which was honestly a bit of a relief at the time. I could practically hear one of my friends, Virgil, screaming at me about mail bombs. He’s a pretty cautious guy. Now I think maybe he had the right idea.

“I thought maybe the box was empty, even, until I stepped over the threshold and… and I uh, felt something rolling around in there.”

He shuddered at the memory.

“I brought it into the kitchen and opened up the box. Inside was… inside was a single, human finger, cut off just below where the joint would have been on the person’s hand.

“I felt sick. I was sick. I barely made it to the trash can. I remember my cats still didn’t come back to see what was going on, which was unusual for them. Normally they were very nosy little guys. It was like they knew something was very, very wrong. I don’t blame them for staying away.

“I called the cops right away, of course. Or, as soon as I’d calmed down enough to dial the number. I mean, course I did. Someone had dropped off a finger at my door.

“The lady on the phone was very nice, but I don’t think she believed me at first. Or maybe she just couldn’t understand what I was saying. I was a little upset, obviously. Eventually, though, the police did show up. They took the box, asked me some questions, and they left.

“That night, I was in the kitchen, cleaning the dishes, trying to forget the whole thing. I was almost done, but then, somehow… the garbage disposal turned itself on. Something wrong with the wiring, they told maybe. I was so surprised that I dropped the plate I was holding, and the stack of dishes shifted, and somehow, my hand ended up… my finger went down the drain. Into the garbage disposal. It all happened so fast. One second I was just washing a plate, humming the intro to Steven Universe, and the next….

“I scrambled to turn it off, but it was too late. I grabbed a dish towel and drove myself to the hospital in a panic. Only remembered later to send someone to look after the cats.

“They couldn’t save my finger, even if they had tried. There wasn’t anything left to save.

“A week later, I got another package. Left at my door, just like the last one. Identical to the first, but this time it was a different finger. Maybe from the same hand, but it wasn’t like I looked at it long enough to know for sure. And I’m not a doctor. I called the cops again, and they came. They weren’t much help. They poked around a bit, talked to the neighbors, and told me to get a security camera. I did do that.

“I was very careful that day, remembering what had happened last time, even though I knew it was ridiculous. What, some crazy person leaves a severed finger on my doorstep, and that somehow makes me lose my own in a freak accident? …But I was careful, anyway. And nothing happened that day. But the next morning, when I went to go to work… I slammed the car door shut on my finger.

“It kept happening. The same plain cardboard boxes left at my door. The camera always seemed to cut out when they were delivered, although once I swear I caught a glimpse of a silhouette. It looked… wrong, though. Maybe it was a tree casting a shadow or something. No one’s head looks like that.

“I stopped calling the police, eventually. They didn’t help. Just asked the same questions, swore they were doing all they could, and left. I stopped opening the boxes, too. I tried throwing them out, burning them, kicking them into the gutter. I went to stay with my friend Virgil, but the box found me there, too. I moved twice. It didn’t seem to matter. Every week, a box would show up, and within a day or two, even if I never even opened my front door or looked at the box, I’d lose another finger. Until….”

Patton looked down at his lap, where his hands sat. Where each finger should be, they instead ended in neat little stubs just after the knuckle. They were remarkably even, considering that he’d lost each one in different ways, in different weeks. One after the other.

“After that, it finally stopped. My hands healed as much as they ever would, and I went back to work—I still don’t know how I kept that job—and I found that book in my desk. I tried to throw it out, but I couldn’t make myself let go of it. I tried to feed it to the paper shredder, but I couldn’t make myself rip out the pages. Eventually I just threw it across the room, and it landed neatly in the pile of donated books. Apparently, it would have let me just… add it to the collection. But I couldn’t let other people read it—What if the same thing happened to them? So I took it home with me.

“I did try to get rid of it on the way there. I stopped by the river, a dumpster… I tried to set it on fire. Imagine trying to get a lighter to work like this. I couldn’t follow through with any of them, though, and not just because of my hands. The book wouldn’t let me. Or I wouldn’t let myself. I don’t know which it was, really. Maybe I was afraid something worse would happen if I managed to destroy it. I don’t know.

“I locked it away. Buried it where I couldn’t see it. Still, it was like it was calling to me, telling it to hold it, to read it, to place my own hand over that awful handprint. It was driving me crazy. The cats wouldn’t go near the room it was in.

“I tried to ignore it. To forget about it. For a while, I thought it was working. I was still constantly aware of where it was, but it got easier to ignore.

“Then, one day, the doorbell rang. It was another box. Inside was a single, severed toe.”

A silence stretched between them, yawning between Patton and the archivist. The tape recorder ticked on. A tear rolled down Patton’s cheek. When he continued, his voice was choked.

“I will never forgive myself for what I did next, but I couldn’t go through that again. Please don’t judge me. I know it’s unforgiveable. But you can’t understand what it was like, not if you’ve never been through something like that. I knew it was the book by now, that was doing this to me, and I had to be rid of it. I still couldn’t destroy it, but I could… give it away. So I went and I got the book, and I wrapped it up as best I could, and I wrote ‘DO NOT READ’ on the package in capital letters. And I gave it away. I don’t know who I gave it to, and I don’t want to know. I drove across town, stopped at a random house, and stuffed the book in their mailbox. I can only hope they never read it.”

Patton let out a shaky breath. “It worked.”

The archivist’s face was impassive.

“After that was all finally over, I decided I needed to get out of there. Not just out of the town, but as far as I could get. I had family in the UK, and one of my friends studied abroad here and loved it, plus you guys speak English, so it seemed like as good a place to go as any. So I moved. Nothing else has happened since. I don’t have any fingers, but at least I have all my toes, and I’m rid of that awful book. I’ve tried to forget the whole thing, which as you might imagine, is a little difficult, but I try. Still, when one of my coworkers mentioned this place—I work at a shop now, restocking at night, so I don’t have to see the customers—I decided to come. I just want to be rid of this story. So… if you guys can track down that book, stop it from hurting anyone else, please do.” He clenched his hands, as well as he could. “I don’t want its weight on my mind anymore. It’s done enough to me.”

He fell silent.

“Statement ends,” said Logan. The archivist leaned forward and turned off the tape recorder. “Thank you for coming in. You can leave the way you came. Roman, my assistant, will take down your details. We might contact you if we need further information. Do you, by chance, remember the address of the house where you left the book?”

Patton shook his head. “No, I… I didn’t want to know.”

Logan nodded slowly. “Alright. Well… we appreciate your time.”

“I hope my statement… ah, comes in handy,” Patton joked weakly. He almost smiled at the gobsmacked look on the archivist’s face, the most emotion he’d shown the entire time Patton had been there. And then, he got up, and he left his story behind. He’d given it away to someone else, and he was done with it.

22 notes · View notes

bibliocratic · 4 years

Note

For your writing prompts, I’ve always found that the phrase “for you” has a certain gravity, so maybe something with that? :3

This was such a good prompt, which is my only excuse for why this is three days late and barely counts as a drabble at all.

jonmartin, post-S5 domesticity and parenthood

“He was showing me another room he's made it to on his game,” Jon offers as an explanation as he ambles back into the living room. “Some sort of creepy dungeon, lots of what I can only presume are zombies. He can turn into a dragon now with this magic cloak thing, it's all very sophisticated.”

Martin, whose knowledge and ability with video games both started and ended with having a go on someone's Game Boy Colour one rainy school break, makes a supportive, 'showing-interest' noise as he feels around for the remote before finding it wedged under his thigh, muting the sound of a gritty BBC drama he is clearly not enamoured by. He shuffles over to make room on the sofa. Disturbing the cat, who jumps off his knees, casting a betrayed gaze upon the offender before she haughtily goes to commandeer the high-backed chair usually taken up by Jon.

“Dragons are one of the few things that haven't turned out to actually exist, and tried to murder us.”

“Oh, don't be like that,” Jon smiles as he drops down next to him. Martin's got a beer out of the fridge now Lewis has gone to bed, and Jon leans forward to snaffle it from the coffee table, takes an slow sip, winces at the flavour and puts it back down on its coaster. “Swimming's at ten Saturday, isn't it? Still haven't fixed his goggles.”

“Half past, they had to move the rota round for some other thing,” Martin says distantly. In the background, someone on the TV has their mouth bared in shouting, and some grim-dark poorly shaved detective is holding a gun.

Martin's shoulders are set tight. He's twisting his wedding ring round and round and round, fidgety and unsettled all evening, and now he's leant forward with his elbows on his knees, half-way through a beer on a Thursday night even though he can get funny about drinking in the house on a weekday.

“You want to talk about it?” Jon asks quietly.

Martin frowns, but doesn't ask how he knows. His palm opens from clenched to fold their fingers together, his touch chilly from the condensation on the bottle.

Jon waits for him.

Martin clears his throat. He sources out the remote again and flicks the TV to standby, the dour detective vanishing morosely.

“I'd like to talk to you about something,” Martin replies eventually. “And I know that we're not going to agree on it, but I want you to at least – hear me out, alright?”

“Alright,” Jon says carefully. A frown has rooted on his own face, but he pushes the curious simmer to a lower heat and tries to be patient. “Alright. What – what do you want to talk about?”

“What happened last week.”

“Martin...”

“Let me finish,” Martin says, his tone slightly sharper. He doesn't shout, never in the house. The only time Lewis sees his dad raise his voice in anger, he's belligerently got his hands in the guts of the boiler, pride the only thing stopping him call a plumber, or else he's stubbed his toe against the side table he always manages to catch.

Jon lets out a heavy breath.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine – we – we can talk about it. You know what I think.”

“Yeah, well, I don't.”

“It was an outlier. It doesn't mean there's a conspiracy.”

“I can't see why you're downplaying this. It was a threat, and you got hurt.”

“A few bruises from the fall. Look, Daisy and Basira handled it. They were – they were a lone Hunter. It wasn't anything organised, so I don't see the need to twist myself in knots when it won't happen again.”

Martin scoffs dismissive. “Last I counted, we've had three 'it won't happens again' in the last ten years. Face it, we've been lucky. This one got too close.”

“So what are you suggesting?” Jon says, deliberately calmly. Martin'll get to his point eventually, but he'd rather cut through whatever he's been stewing in for the past several hours.

Martin throws up his hands.

“I am suggesting that we consider the very real possibility that something like this might happen again. Something worse than some mangy Hunter or clueless cultist. These things out there.... there's more than one of them who'd see a former Archivist as a threat, Christ, I just want you to take this seriously...”

“I do take – ” Jon's voice spikes before he exhales hard and lowers his tone again. “Of course I take this seriously. Of course I worry. But if someone came here, if anyone came here, I'd – I'd Know....”

“Knowing didn't stop you from getting hurt,” Martin insists. “It – it doesn't make you invincible.”

“I've never thought that...”

“We need to prepared, is all I'm saying. Your... the knowledge you get from the Eye, it's so much, it's so much less than before. So what if it's not enough, what if it tells you something too late or not at all?”

“Martin, I'm not going to get myself worked up over maybes.”

“Maybe you should!” Martin snaps.

They are both bullishly quiet for a moment before Martin holds his hands up again.

“Alright,” he presses on, lower pitched than before. “Alright, then lets deal with facts then. Fact number one: there are – there are forces out there that want to see you come to harm.”

“Martin.”

“Am I correct?” Martin repeats. His gaze won't leave Jon's. His temper's made his neck and throat go blotchy, but he's pressing his hands down too hard on his knees to stop their tremors.

Jon meets his eyes.

“Correct,” he says. Because it's what Martin wants to hear, because it's what Jon tries not to think about when the night-time drags loud and sleepless, and every noise he cannot account for takes on the guise of malevolence.

“Fact two,” Martin continues. “There is the possibility – no, no, listen to me, Jon – there is the chance, however small, that those forces, those people, could come here.”

“So what, we should install more locks? Buy more fire extinguishers?”

“This isn't funny,” Martin says waspish.

“I'm not laughing,” Jon replies dogged.

Martin lets out another aggrieved noise. He takes a moment, steeples his hands against the lower half of his face.

“That Hunter,” Martin says slowly. “Had our address on them. Knew where we lived. If Daisy and Basira hadn't sorted them out, they would have come here, and tried again. And if it can happen once, then it could happen again. A-and some of those people, the ones that serve their gods a-and want to make a name for themselves by going after an Archivist – ”

Here Martin's voice catches thready, the centre of his terrors finally excavated.

“I can't – I can't protect you from that, Jon,” he confesses. “I can't protect Lewis from that. And if someone comes here, what if you can't either? You're not – you're not exactly in the game of e-exploding people any more.”

“Been trying to give it up,” Jon replies. Martin's laugh is a little wet.

“Sets a bad example anyway.”

Jon rubs the skin of Martin's hand. He doesn't know what he can say to make this better.

“I would like to propose an idea,” Martin says. Softer now. More tired. “and I-I want you to hear me out.”

“OK.”

“Whatever it is.”

“You're not exactly inspiring confidence.”

Martin gives him a Look.

“OK,” Jon says, rubbing his thumb over Martin's knuckles. “OK, I promise. Whatever it is, I-I'll at least listen.”

Martin nods, and though his lips are pinched, he squeezes Jon's hand once gratefully. He separates them, and gets up, going over to his shoulder bag slouched by the door. He'd been vague, earlier this week, when he'd gone out on an 'errand'. Jon had assumed it was something to do with their anniversary in the next few weeks.

Martin takes out a thick clump of folders from the stomach of the bag. Jon's heart drops when he sees the green-ink stamp of an imperious owl on the front of the beige folders but he says nothing.

“I have been thinking,” Martin says, planting himself back down. “About back-up plans. Last resorts, you know. If someone does come here, if they're more than either of us can handle, if we can't keep our son safe.”

He passes Jon the folders. They're stuffed wide with statements, corroborating evidence, photographs, police reports, newspaper snippets attached with paper clips. Jon reads the introductions of a few statements as he flicks through, feeling not a little unmoored by the way this conversation has progressed – Statement of Dai Williams, regarding a library in Blaenau Gwent; Statement of Michalis Charalambous, regarding an unusual wedding present – and something aches in him like a barely-forgotten hunger, twinges like an old wound.

Near the top of the pile, there's a photograph, blown up to A4 size, of a book. The backdrop of an unremarkable desk, the cover itself blue backed, scuffed and foxed with age, the silver title decorated with florid curlicues: The Shipping Forecast and Other Nautical Curiosities. There's no author.

“What's this?”

“It's a Leitner,” Martin says. Not briskly, but straight-off the bat.

Jon pushes down several reactions with difficulty. Martin knows how he feels about Leitner. Martin wouldn't bring this to him, knowing what histories have left their scars on him, and beg for Jon to listen to him if it wasn't important.

“Go on,” Jon says, and nothing else.

“This book is currently in Archive Storage, where it's been for the past twenty or so years,” Martin continues. He's to-the-point now, direct, and Jon appreciates it. “Those are copies of all the statements I could find related to it, or people who have been in contact with it, and it makes up a fairly consistent picture of ownership and exchange for at least the past hundred and fifty years, records get a bit patchy before that.”

“Which Power?”

“The Lonely.”

That makes Jon look up. Martin's jaw is set for an argument but his voice betrays him.

“Tell me,” he says.

“The statements are all mostly the same. The book gets found or left as inheritance or in library donations, and some poor sod picks it up. Specifically, what happens is it renders people invisible when they read it.”

Jon blinks.

“... you're taking the piss.”

“No. Practical research did some basic experiments to test it before it was boxed up properly, they've – there's notes there, if you want to read in detail, but basically, you read a few lines of it, and you and whatever you're holding can't be seen. It wears off after a while, depending on how much you've read. The researchers went up to about a page.”

“There's a catch, obviously.”

“It's addictive to some people. Some of the people in the statements can use it once, get the heebie-jeebies then never touch it again, some of them can't shake the urge. The – er invisibility is more tempting to those vulnerable to the Lonely, or so the hypothesis goes. They read a little more, a little more and then, they're just gone.”

“So it's dangerous?”

“Yes.”

“Then why? Why show me this?”

“If someone comes here,” Martin says, “If it's – if it's the Vast o-or the Desolation or even th-the Slaughter, we can't fight them. We can't, OK, we-we have nothing that we could fight them with. So we can't fight them, and we can't outrun them, and I don't think hiding under the bed and hoping they leave is going to do much either. The best we can hope for is that we have a few minutes grace courtesy of your magical eyeballs. And that would at the very least give us time, to get Lewis somewhere safe, get out of harm's way, to go to Daisy's or something.”

“And your great plan is that we use a Leitner to what, turn invisible and sneak away unseen?”

“I'm asking you at least consider it.”

“I have considered it and it's – it's a Leitner, Martin! You know how I – They're not toys, they're dangerous!”

“I know that! Of course I know that. But so is being unprotected! We wouldn't be using it for – it would be a last resort, nothing more. You can read the statements and the reports. I've read them all, over and over again, I-I've checked and doubled checked. As far as I can tell, the turning invisible is a temporary state.”

“For the right people. What about you?”

Martin does not meet his eyes.

“I wouldn't be using it.”

“...What.”

“I wouldn't – I wouldn't be able to,” he says. Quieter, self-conscious. “Much as I like to think that I'm – no. No, it'd be, it'd be too much of a temptation.”

Jon's tone has slipped flat and hard.

“So you're suggesting an escape plan that, what, doesn't include you?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Jon – ”

“No!” Jon wants to get up, to stand, to shake Martin by his ridiculous shoulders, because how dare he, how dare he. “No, how can you even ask me that?”

“Because I need to,” Martin urges. “Because it's not just us. Because if the worst happens, I need to know we have some way of protecting Lewis, that you could use that book to make sure he's safe.”

“And leave you.”

“I'm not the one they want.”

“I don't remember them being all that picky about hurting whoever was in their way,” Jon bites back, and he knows he's louder now, that his eyes are getting wet and his face hot. “You can't know that.”

“No,” Martin replies honestly. “No, I-I can't.”

Jon rubs at his eyes. The anger's boiled over and out of him at a dizzyingly come-down from furious. He listens, wondering if they've woken Lewis, but he doesn't hear the squeak of bed-springs. There's a wind picking up outside, and the cat twitches in sleep.

He doesn't feel angry any more. Just sick and scared.

“That's not fair,” he swallows, looking at the damp-blurred image of his husband's face. “That – that's not fair, to ask this.”

Martin's moved closer. Places his hand back over Jon's.

“I know,” he murmurs, and he sounds sorry, but that doesn't help either of them. “I know it's not. And if there was – was any other option, I wouldn't even think of suggesting it. But I'd, I'd like you to think about it. Please. For me.”

Jon leafs through the folders in his hands without taking any of them in. Martin strokes his back soothingly, and crowds in too close, not close enough.

“I'll read them,” Jon says eventually. Wetly and unhappily. “ The statements, reports, I-I will. For you. And if – and only if they seem legitimate – I'll come with you and have a look at the book myself. And that's all I can promise you.”

“Thank you,” Martin whispers, and presses his lips to the thinning crown of Jon's hair, Jon leaning back slightly against his chest. He clears his throat. “Basira's all for performing some more clinical tests on the book, if you wanted some more concrete validation.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Jon says, feeling too tired to enquire further.

They linger on the sofa for a while after Martin shoves the folders back into his shoulder bag.

“I better put the dishes away,” Martin says.

“Leave them. I'll do them in the morning.”

Their bedtime routine is closer and quieter. Usually Martin goes up first, and Jon watches the newspaper review or the tail end of a documentary, but tonight he trails after him as Martin checks all the plugs and double-checks all the locks.

Martin pokes his head into Lewis' room, even though they said their goodnights hours ago. Jon can't begrudge him the anxiety.

“Kicked all the blankets off as usual,” he reports back as they knock elbows in the bathroom, Jon's mouth full of toothpaste, passing Martin a water glass to take his statins. Martin dutifully swallows the pill before reaching for his own toothbrush. “He sleeps like you, arms flung out all over the place.”

Jon doesn't deny it.

Jon gets into bed first, and fusses with chargers and alarms while Martin gets into a t-shirt and boxers. He gets the light and Jon follows the sound he makes as he approaches the bed in plunging darkness, the disturbance of the covers. Jon immediately curls against his shape, tucking himself tight and buried against his chest.

Martin doesn't comment on how clingy Jon is, how he knots their legs together, clutches him over-tight. On how hot the bed is going to get, on how his arm will go numb quickly from the angle. His own arms come around just as fiercely. He tells Jon goodnight, that he loves him into his hair, and Jon whispers it back into the dark and the heat, and knows it's true to the bones of him.

Neither of them sleep all that much that night.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #fic #prompt fill

145 notes · View notes

soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG181!

- Little nice touch: the fact that time was passing normally inside of the house… immediately felt through the sound of the clock in the background, marking the passage of time:

(MAG180) SALESA: [SAD SIGH] [SILENCE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ANNABELLE: I did say this might happen. SALESA: You did, you diiid. Well… so much for my big reveal… Shame.

(MAG181) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] [CLASSICAL MUSIC IS PLAYING; LOUIS SPOHR’S “SECHS DEUTSCHE LIEDER FÜR EINE SINGSTIMME, KLARINETTE UND KLAVIER, OP. 103: N°2 ZWIEGESANG”] [SOUNDS OF CROCKERY AND LIQUID BEING POURED] SALESA: Hmmm.

(I still have the reflex of associating the sound of a ticking clock with Elias’s office, so I was expecting Big Talk from the get-go! Aaah, I wonder if we’ll “hear” Elias’s office again, before the end…)

As they discussed, time was quantifiable again, existing outside of Jon&Martin (even when they were sleeping), not solely as events succeeding to each other. … On the other hand: it’s concerning that the tape’s case number was still “########-21”: time passes and is quantifiable on a day-to-day basis, Martin was able to conclude that it was daytime thanks to the light, but there was still no date inside of the house. It’s a “little bubble” of normalcy and time, but still existing in the middle of a chaos.

- In the same vein as last episode it was also neat how we could already understand that this space was operating differently, since Jon&Martin needed to physically take care of themselves again:

(MAG180) SALESA: Ah, well. We can talk after they’ve slept, I suppose. Urgh! And had a bath. And some food. No rush. [SOUNDS OF CROCKERY MOVING] We have all the time in the world.

(MAG181) [CLICK–] [CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] […] SALESA: Come in! Did you sleep well? Have you had something to eat? Annabelle said she’d shown you the pantry? [SALESA CEASES THE MUSIC] ARCHIVIST: [UNCOMFORTABLE] I, er… We… slept. I, I don’t know… H–how long’s it been? SALESA: About seventy-one hours by my clock. […] Come on, sit down, have a drink. [CLINKING SOUNDS OF GLASS AND ICE] MARTIN: You’re… sure? What time is it? I– Oh, huh. Huh! I can actually ask that question here! SALESA: You can indeed. MARTIN: And the sun’s high, so… SALESA: Good eye…! Martin, was it? MARTIN: Uh, uh… Yes. SALESA: Well Martin. It’s about ten in the morning, more or less. […] You’re sure you won’t have a drink? We definitely had some tea around here somewhere. MARTIN: Uh, I… already had some, thank you, uh! Some of us know how to be polite guests. ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] I don’t intend to accept anything offered by Annabelle Cane.

They slept, drank and ate! (But did they bathe. We don’t know if they did bathe. Though, Salesa would have probably commented on it again, if they didn’t.)

And on the one hand, I’m laughing really hard that they needed to sleep for three whole days to compensate for time spent in the apocalypse (that’s a long nap.), on the other hand… that’s weirdly optimistic for the rest of humanity trapped out there: I was fearing that if Jon&Martin managed to turn the world back, everyone would just collapse and die on the spot from exhaustion/hunger/thirst but, no, it seems like they could recover in this case?

- More on the differences between Jon and Martin later, but I like how it was quickly clear that Jon was less in control than his usual, and very aware of it: Jon was “disorientated”, his sentences were more hesitant, while Martin was quick to notice things, bouncing off from Salesa’s or Jon’s sentences, able to make small jokes. I loved and got sad over the Beholding one, since:

(MAG181) SALESA: How’re you feeling? MARTIN: [BLOWING AIR] ARCHIVIST: Disorientated. It’s like, hum… li–like I’ve lost my sight o–or, uh… SALESA: Well, you have, haven’t you? [HE CHUCKLES. IT ISN’T THE FRIENDLIEST SOUND] Annabelle tells me you work for “The Eye”. [PAUSE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … Well, I–I wouldn’t exactly say I, I “work” for it… MARTIN: Uh… Well, I–I mean, you say that, but when you stop to think about it, it was literally our employer, Jon, so… Mmh! ARCHIVIST: I, I suppose.

They were actually talking about two different levels, each correct in his own way? Back in season 4, Martin had already pointed out to Jon that working in the Archives meant working for Beholding (MAG129: “I just– I worry. You’re working for someone… really bad!” “Yes, I’m not an idiot, Jon, but it’s no… worse than working for something really bad, so…” “At least, The Eye hasn’t gone after our own. Lukas has vanished two people!”); but on the other hand, Jon… has tried to distance himself from The Eye and what he wanted (by stopping to take live statements, by refusing to indulge in any contentment induced by the apocalypse, by deciding to stop the smiting spree): “working for” is both true (as a neutral stance, since they were tricked into working for Beholding through the Archival contract) and wrong (“working for” also implies some level of active participation?). It reminds me of Melanie’s stance about it (MAG150: “I didn’t say I was going to quit. I said: I’m not going to do my job. No researching; no filing; no… field trips. Nothing that is going to help the Institute in any way. […] Because this place is evil, Jon! And so… doing this job… Helping it out… even in small ways, i–is in some way… evil too! Every time we try to use it to do good, it just seems to make everything worse, and… and I will not be a part of that anymore. […] If I’m… just another cog, er… Maybe I can’t leave the machine, but from this moment? I–I–I’m not turning. I’m… jammed.”), and makes me wonder whether Martin and Basira’s ties to Beholding have been more or less protecting them in the apocalypse… Basira said that she thought she had been protected from the first wave because she was in the Institute, and Jon told her he couldn’t ensure her safety if they went their separate ways, and it didn’t prevent Daisy (who had been bound to the Archives by her own archival contract since season 4) from losing herself to The Hunt, but I still wonder if their ties to the Institute will factor in at some point…

- Blowing kisses in Martin’s direction for being a Polite Boy… and also absolutely doing with Salesa what he did with Peter and Simon – he KNOWS how to play older and potentially terrible men like cheap whistles and/or to get information out of them, and how to get them to like him!

(MAG120) MARTIN: W… what… What are you doing here, mister Lukas? PETER: Please, call me Peter. MARTIN: N–no. No, I think I’m okay.

(MAG151) SIMON: Let’s start over. Simon – Simon Fairchild. Peter asked me to look in on you and… have a small chat. Well! A big chat, really. Answer all those… nagging questions. MARTIN: Simon Fairchild. [PAUSE] [NERVOUS CHUCKLE] Wait, “Simon Fairchild” as in… SIMON: As in “all those people who said I did horrible things to them and their loved ones”? Yes. They have been in, haven’t they? I’d hate to think I’m underrepresented in here, not when Peter tells me that that… “bone” fellow has at least half a dozen. MARTIN: N–no, no, [NERVOUS CHUCKLE], not… not at all. Y–you’ve sent plenty of people our way. […] Right. SIMON: Sorry. Too “big” picture? I get that a lot. MARTIN: No, it’s… [INHALE] Thank you. This has… actually been quite helpful.

(MAG181) MARTIN: Uh… Mr.… Salesa? SALESA: Mikaele, please. Come in!

(MAG126) PETER: He managed to convince himself that he could get his ritual off first, which would have made all of this a… bit moot, but that’s not really an option anymore. So it’s down to us. You and me. The dynamic duo.

(MAG151) SIMON: And he’s not at all certain the world as we understand will come out the other side. MARTIN: And let me guess – you think he can’t see the “big picture”? SIMON: [INHALE] I see why he likes you! MARTIN: [SIGH] […] I thought you said that the maths doesn’t work. SIMON: Oh, you are a quick one! […] And this has been fun! [INHALE] Now. [CHAIR SCRAPES ON THE FLOOR] If we’re about done– MARTIN: We’re not. Sit back down. SIMON: Boooold~ [CHUCKLE] [CHAIR SCRAPES ON THE FLOOR] I like it.

(MAG181) MARTIN: Uh… Well, I–I mean, you say that, but when you stop to think about it, it was literally our employer, Jon, so… Mmh! ARCHIVIST: I, I suppose. SALESA: [FRIENDLY CHUCKLES] I like this one! [SHUFFLING] Come on, sit down, have a drink. [CLINKING SOUNDS OF GLASS AND ICE] MARTIN: You’re… sure? What time is it? I– Oh, huh. Huh! I can actually ask that question here! SALESA: You can indeed. MARTIN: And the sun’s high, so… SALESA: Good eye…! Martin, was it? MARTIN: Uh, uh… Yes. […] [SCOFF] In my experience, open books can actually be pretty dangerous…! SALESA: Ha! I do like this one! […] MARTIN: [LAUGHS] So–sorry, sorry! Y–you did look kind of funny, it was… li–like, like you were flunking an exam or something! SALESA: [CHUCKLES] Yes! Exactly that! […] MARTIN: Look, fo–for what it’s worth, I’d, I’d also quite like to know how this all happened? SALESA: … Fine. I’ll tell you how it happened. But you must sit quietly while I tell it.

I love Martin’s ability to get what he wants by weaponising his politeness/social niceties/a sense of familiarity.

- How Dare You, Salesa.

(MAG181) MARTIN: [SCOFF] In my experience, open books can actually be pretty dangerous…! SALESA: Ha! I do like this one! [SOUNDS OF CROCKERY BEING PUT DOWN] Now you mention it, you actually remind me of Jurgen a bit. In his– MARTIN: Ah, uh… SALESA: –younger days of course.

That was SO RUDE (who, in their right mind, would like to be compared to Leitner), and:

* Martin’s comment was quite interesting given that he never got directly involved with a Leitner, unless there is a Secret Story incoming from the time he worked at the Institute library, before the start of the show? But statements-wise (the ones Martin recorded, at least), the “DIG” book from MAG088 hadn’t been identified as such… and Martin had however speculated that Dexter Banks’s book, destroyed by Alexia in MAG110, was “a Leitner”. And it was a Web one.

* Not a direct experience, but he witnessed someone use one:

(MAG158) MARTIN: … That’s a Leitner. PETER: It is! MARTIN: And the, hum… the blood on it? PETER: That’s Leitner too! MARTIN: … Riiight… PETER: Do you want to see how it works? MARTIN: Uh, n–no; no, I’d really rather you didn’t mess it up– PETER: No, I insist! Watch. [SILENCE] MARTIN: Very impressive. PETER: I’m reading. Shush.

… And had been the one to discover the body of Leitner himself, alongside Tim, at the end of MAG080. Martin, especially Martin, wouldn’t want to be compared to Leitner given how he lived his life and how he ended.

* “In my experience, open books can actually be pretty dangerous” says Martin, who WANTED TO TOUCH THE BOOKS:

(MAG113) MARTIN: Ooh! Ooh! There’s a book in this one. ARCHIVIST: [HASTILY] Don’t…. touch it! MARTIN: Ooh… OH! Right. Yes. ARCHIVIST: Let’s… not touch any books we don’t know. MARTIN: Right.

(The books, and the plastic explosive. Arsooooon!)

- … So, Martin hadn’t had a direct first-hand experience of how dangerous ~open books~ could be, but meanwhile, someone who had a direct encounter with a Web one withdrew from the exchange and only chirped in when prompted, and to be distrusting of the Spider person. Jon wasn’t having a perfectly excellent time at the moment, uh?

(MAG181) SALESA: You’re sure you won’t have a drink? We definitely had some tea around here somewhere. MARTIN: Uh, I… already had some, thank you, uh! Some of us know how to be polite guests. ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] I don’t intend to accept anything offered by Annabelle Cane. MARTIN: [SIGH] SALESA: Oh, you know Annabelle? [SILENCE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … Sort of. You do know she’s part of The Web? SALESA: [SARCASTICALLY] No? I assumed the thread holding her head together was due to a childhood knitting accident! [CHUCKLES] MARTIN: Ha!

* … I’m REALLY, REALLY, ABSOLUTELY NOT SURPRISED that Jon, especially Jon, would want to avoid any “gift” from a Spider-person, given how 1°) he read enough statements about Hill Top Road to know that Raymond Fielding was making the teenagers eat apples full of spiders to turn them into eggs sacks (don’t accept the Spider’s food!), 2°) it mirrors guests bringing gifts to Mr Spider in the hope of not getting devoured. Was Jon internally panicking during their stay, fearing that Annabelle would take Martin like Mr Spiders had taken the gifts and the people bringing them, including Mr Horse’s son…? (I doubt that Martin made that “guests” comment on purpose; I’m still not sure he knows the details of Jon’s childhood encounter with The Web? He knows that Jon hates spiders and is wary of them, that he has suspicions about Annabelle Cane, but did Jon tell him the whole story about the book?)

* … However, that brings to mind the lighter again: Jon “I don’t intend to accept anything by [Web-related individual]” has kept the Web-design lighter since he realised it had been delivered to him in MAG036, had been unable to question it when prompted by Gerry (MAG111) and Daisy (MAG136), complete with static-indicating-that-something-supernatural-was-going-on in the latter case… So, hum. Jon, your lighter. Think about your lighter, Jon. Was it a gift, and for what, Jon. Is it a 100% Web-flavoured gift, or is there a bit of something else (Desolation, Agnes) in that one making it more acceptable, Jon.

* Uh, so quite strangely, we got confirmation that Annabelle does look like the description we previously had of her, with her head injury:

(MAG069, Darren Harlow) “With a sudden, unexpected motion, he charged at her and slammed his full weight into her side. The attack took her completely off guard and she fell hard against the edge of the broken window, the side of her head making a god awful crunching sound as it hit. […] I looked at the crumpled form of Annabelle Cane just as it started to get back up. I could see the side of her skull had been caved in, and beneath the wet mess of blood and bone, I saw a mass of dull white cobweb.”

(MAG123, Angie Santos) “As he told it, she was young, rail-thin underneath an oversized brown hoodie, which she kept pulled up, trying to cover up a network of pale stitches that stretched over one side of her head. […] All through it, she just kept staring at him, hands pressed into the pockets of her hoodie – occasionally pushing long, spindly fingers out against the fabric, smiling to herself.”

(MAG136, Alison Killala) “It was almost six months ago when the woman came to our door. She looked like a film student, and at first I took her for a fan. […] I was about to ask her to wait while I checked with him but as I started to speak, she turned her head, revealing a mass of white thread, criss-crossing all over the side of her temple, standing starkly against the dark brown of her skin. She told me to sit down. And I did.”

… Which is… rather distinctive, so how come Jon apparently got a bit of trouble recognising her immediately when she opened the door?

(MAG180) [DOOR OPENS] [MUSIC CAN BE HEARD PLAYING MORE CLEARLY] MARTIN: Oh. Oh no, uh… [FOOTSTEPS] ANNABELLE: Good morning. ARCHIVIST: [FAINT GRUNT] MARTIN: Uh… Yes… ANNABELLE: Come on in. He’s waiting for you. ARCHIVIST: Oh. And who exactly– MARTIN: J–J–Jon. Jon. ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: I think… Hum… Annabelle? Annabelle Cane? ANNABELLE: Come on. He’s very excited, you know. [FOOTSTEPS AS SHE TURNS TO LEAVE] MARTIN: [FAINT GROAN] So, do we… follow or…? [PIANO CEASES] ARCHIVIST: I… I suppose. [FOOTSTEPS] [DOOR CREAKS] [STATIC RISES ABRUPTLY, WITH A GLITCH, AND FADES] ARCHIVIST: Oh… MARTIN: Oh, hum… ARCHIVIST: Oh. [PIANO RESUMES] [DOOR CLOSES] [FOOTSTEPS ECHOING AS THEY GO] MARTIN: [INHALE] [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: So… Annabelle, what are you playing at, what are you doing here?

Was it Jon recognising her but not making a fuss about it? Being so used to relying on his powers that he didn’t even have the reflex of connecting the dots himself? Was Annabelle’s head covered, or was she showing another side of her head?

- Letting The Web do whatever is confirmed as the most popular tactic to deal with it, uh.

(MAG121) OLIVER: Honestly, I’m… still not exactly sure why I’m here. But… you know better than anyone how the spiders can get into your head. Easier to just do what She asks!

(MAG147) ARCHIVIST: I’m sure the flares will work fine. … I mean, un–unless it’s all some… elaborate… plot… to have us… burn this place down again. BASIRA: So what if it is? ARCHIVIST: I don’t follow…? BASIRA: I mean. Anything we do could be part of the “Grand Master Plan”. So – what, we do nothing? Just… sit on our hands, and hope that’s not what the spiders want? ARCHIVIST: [SIGH]

(MAG148) BASIRA: Or that we were being stalked by some freaky spider woman. Don’t tell me you didn’t know about that! ELIAS: Ah, uh, y–yes… W–well… To be honest, I’d… advise you to leave that one – well alone. BASIRA: Oh yeah? ELIAS: Uh! Look, look, look. I’ve… been doing this a long time now and, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about The Web, it’s that it plays its own game. All you can really do is… hope it doesn’t get in the way of whatever your plan is. Because the Spider usually wins…!

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: O–kay. [SIGH] It’s just… The Web can be subtle, you understand? MELANIE: And? For all you know, its plan is to paralyse you with indecision…! ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] MELANIE: Leaving you… sitting here, terrified that… everything you do is somehow all part of its Grand Plan… And who do you think that fear is gonna feed? ARCHIVIST: Yes, well. [INHALE] You are… not the first, to make that point.

(MAG181) SALESA: Of course I know she’s with The Web. ARCHIVIST: … And that doesn’t bother you? SALESA: Not especially. And even if it did, what good would it do? MARTIN: … Uh, so what’s the deal with you two anyway? SALESA: It’s an odd situation, but not a complicated one. Shortly after I decided to stay here, she arrived; wandered in from the chaos out there and told me she was going to stay with me. I didn’t get this far by pitting myself against The Web, so I welcomed her in. ARCHIVIST: … “And”? SALESA: And sometimes she cooks. ARCHIVIST: She “cooks”? SALESA: I don’t know what you want me to say, it’s a big house and I don’t see her much. Can’t even say which corner she’s made her nest in! Whatever she’s doing… all I can do is hope it doesn’t wreck my little oasis. And if it does… then I hope that by keeping her in good graces, she’ll at least do me the courtesy of killing me first? MARTIN: Mm-mm… SALESA: … Anyway. Let us talk of happier things, or perhaps just take a moment to enjoy not being out there…! […] She keeps… mostly to herself, and when she does talk, it’s usually more of the sinister monologue variety– MARTIN: Ah! SALESA: –or cryptically telling me I’ve got “guests”…! […] ARCHIVIST: I… It’s going to be difficult to relax, with a spider lurking around. MARTIN: [SIGH] SALESA: … It gets easier with practice.

I mean, as mentioned by Salesa, there is still the risk that Annabelle will kill him or make him suffer worse, and has just been using him for her own goals… But also: not worrying about it means not feeding The Web? Unlike Jon, who spiralled so heavily into paranoia during season 4, worried about being trapped in The Web’s plans, about being potentially influenced and threatened by it.

I love how Salesa depicts Annabelle’s arrival and behaviour towards him: it’s… absolutely spider-like? She entered the house, made herself at home (she even has a “nest”), and gets rid of the insects. She had told Martin&Jon that Salesa was waiting for them:

(MAG180) ANNABELLE: Come on in. He’s waiting for you. […] I’m just helping out around the place a little bit. Making myself at home. You know how it is. MARTIN: … Jon, I don’t like this. ANNABELLE: You can relax, Mr. Blackwood. You’re safe here. […] Well. There you go, then! Just in here. [OPENS THE DOOR] Your guests are here, Mikaele. [PIANO CEASES] SALESA: Hoo-hoo-hoo! Excellent! Come in, come in! Ah, a pleasure to meet both of you. Thank you, Annabelle! ANNABELLE: You’re quite welcome. [PIANO RESUMES] Have fun.

… but it was initially her who just Informed Salesa That Yep, He Has Guests Coming, Lucky You, and Salesa rolled with it.

- On the one hand, Salesa is going with the flow hoping that Annabelle doesn’t intend to make him suffer much even if she needs/wants him dead, and sounds pretty rational about it… But on the other hand, OOFT, BIG RED FLAG that Salesa, who sounds like his situation is still on his terms… was and is at the same time shown as a heavy drinker, who could potentially die from over-consumption:

(MAG141) FLOYD: He was drunk for the next two days, and we kept sailing on towards Cape Town. We no longer had anything to deliver there, but no-one was really sure what else to do. Whenever there’d been similar disasters before, Salesa was quick to make a new plan, let Captain Gaultier know what the next steps were. It was one of the reasons the crew trusted him so much. He just always seemed to know what we needed to do next. This time, though… felt different. He was distant, quiet. His words, when he spoke to you at all, were blurred with alcohol and regret. Nobody knew what the plan was, so we just kept going.

(MAG181) SALESA: Well Martin. It’s about ten in the morning, more or less. [PAUSE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] MARTIN: … And you’re drinking. SALESA: Of course! Even in my little bubble of peace, I find drinking after dark leads to some rather morbid thoughts. […] And when I realised that the power moves with the camera, well, hm!, let’s just say I loaded up a truckload of supplies and went on some journeys of my own, before I found… this place. [MORE CLINKING GLASS AND ICE] No reason to not live the apocalypse in style…! [STIRRING NOISES] In the end… I find myself quite happy. I’ve supplies, for a good few years, and then I… plan to take my own life. I think perhaps that’s the greatest blessing the camera can bestow: I – can – die – here. Escape this place. Not yet, of course; and maybe the wine will do me in before I have to take matters into my own hands, but still… it remains a comfort. Anyway, no more stories, I think. Let us relax, and talk, and drink […].

Which. Is self-destructive on its own, and clearly indicating that Salesa hasn’t been quite as fine as he likes to pretend (assuming his role, hiding himself behind it with his friendliness and knack for stories), but also concerning when associated with Annabelle’s presence:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Looking back, of course… and remembering the crunch of used syringes beneath my feet, I realise that addiction… is one of the strongest vectors of control there is.”

We-oops.

- Did Annabelle gossip about Jon&Martin here and there?

(MAG181) SALESA: Annabelle tells me you work for “The Eye”. […] Your powers won’t work here, Jonathan Sims, Head-Archivist-of-the-Magnus-Institute-London! The Eye can’t see this place…! […] You know, Gertrude once used that little trick to ask if I was trying to sell her a forgery? Admittedly I was, so I don’t hold a grudge; but I didn’t much care for the experience. Anyway.

He knew about the compulsion from Gertrude, as well as the nightmares induced by giving a statement (MAG115: “So I suppose if it’s a statement you’re wanting… it’s no inconvenience to me. I don’t sleep well anyway.”), Annabelle apparently introduced Jon&Martin a bit (and had warned him that they would pass out when entering his “little bubble”)… but what about Jon’s title as “Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London”? It was Jon’s way of introducing statements from season 1 to 3, not Gertrude’s (“Gertrude Robinson recording.”)

Did Annabelle make him listen to a few tapes? Specifically the ones about Salesa? Or did she report the way Jon used to introduce himself, a lot, to the point of Salesa internalising it as a way to chide and make fun of Jon?

- Oh JON…

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: What is this place, how did you find it? SALESA: [SLIGHTLY CURT] I didn’t find anything. I made it. ARCHIVIST: [COMPELLINGLY] Tell me what happened. SALESA: … “No”. ARCHIVIST: I– Uh… Wh… Wh–what? SALESA: [DEEP AND LONG CHUCKLES] The look on your face! [CHUCKLES] Look, he’s so confused! MARTIN: [LAUGHS] ARCHIVIST: Martin! MARTIN: [LAUGHS] So–sorry, sorry! Y–you did look kind of funny, it was… li–like, like you were flunking an exam or something! SALESA: [CHUCKLES] Yes! Exactly that! MARTIN: [CHUCKLES] SALESA: Your powers won’t work here, Jonathan Sims, Head-Archivist-of-the-Magnus-Institute-London! The Eye can’t see this place…! [SILENCE BUT FOR CLOCK TICKING IN THE BACKGROUND] ARCHIVIST: … So what now? SALESA: Ah, no need for the suspicion, I’m not going to hurt you…! You’re quite safe! I’ll tell you soon enough; like I said, I have no secrets. But it will be… in my own time. ARCHIVIST: … Right. SALESA: You know, Gertrude once used that little trick to ask if I was trying to sell her a forgery? Admittedly I was, so I don’t hold a grudge; but I didn’t much care for the experience. Anyway. For now, just relax, and no doubt I’ll get there eventually; I haven’t had anyone to talk to properly in months! MARTIN: I thought… What about Annabelle? SALESA: She keeps… mostly to herself, and when she does talk, it’s usually more of the sinister monologue variety– MARTIN: Ah! SALESA: –or cryptically telling me I’ve got “guests”…! MARTIN: Uh…! Yeah, that sounds familiar. ARCHIVIST: I’m trying to be less cryptic…! MARTIN: I know, I know.

* That was incredibly rude of Jon, technically, so I laughed altogether with Salesa&Martin! Jon… is not used to people refusing to answer anymore, uh? But, on the other hand: YIKES that Jon is not used to people refusing to answer him and that he would try to rely on his compulsion… on someone who had been pretty chill and friendly so far, and wasn’t actively hiding anything or saying that some topics were forbidden. Jon was cut from The Eye in there, so it’s really… him, and him alone, who still has the reflex to ask / order people to give him an answer? It’s him and him alone trying to rely on his powers to gain control of a situation, when said powers weren’t currently influencing him? He wasn’t asking/ordering for The Eye or pushed by The Eye? I wonder if the few days he spent in the house helped him a bit to think about the habits he grew as Archivist, what had become a reflex that he had to let go of…

* Keyboardsmashing over Salesa cheerfully explaining that Gertrude had compelled him to check if he was trying to swindle her, and that he was, so he found it fair. Though, “I don’t hold a grudge”: he might have been a bit more pissed at the moment? I remember his MAG115 statement, where he was clearly annoyed and frustrated and toying with her, after one of his artefacts caused damage in the Institute – I like the permanent ambiguity, in Salesa’s words, making you wondering if he’s absolutely sincere… or “playing his role” of the good-natured and jovial merchant, who does awful things but is above feelings like regrets, heartbreaks or annoyance. There is definitely a bit of unreliable narrator vibe to his whole persona?

* Sarcasm was through the roof, tho (Annabelle’s knitting accident, Jon’s face when failing to compel, Annabelle being cryptic), but AHAH for Martin joining him – he’s getting to see many new deluxe Jon faces! (Pretty sure Martin must have found Jon’s bewilderment super cute?)

- I love how Martin can be laughing and the instant afterwards be firm about words that could cross a line:

(MAG181) SALESA: So what’s it like out there? I assume the Archivist must be a rather… powerful position, since you seem to be travelling through it pretty freely? ARCHIVIST: It’s, uh… Uh… Hum… MARTIN: … Jon? ARCHIVIST: Uh, sorry, I–I just, uh… Hmm. MARTIN: Uh, i–it’s bad. Really bad. [SIGH] It’s, it’s all carved up between the powers, and everyone has just been, sort of… scooped up and chucked into their deepest fears, it’s just… it’s just nightmare after nightmare after nightmare, and… I… uh… Why are you smiling? SALESA: I’m sorry. You’re quite right, it’s inappropriate. It’s simply… [INHALE] I have spent the last decade preparing for this to happen. Not just something like this, but almost exactly this situation. There was every chance, in fact, the great likelihood… that I was wasting my time, and throwing away years of my life on a ridiculous precaution. But I was right. I. Was. Right. … And now here I am, safe, warm and comfortable while out there the whole world screams! I don’t mean to sound… uh, uh, a–as if I’m happy that people are suffering– MARTIN: Good, ‘cause it does sound a bit like that. SALESA: … Then I apologise. I’m just not sure I can fully communicate the sense of… of vindication that I feel, all those long nights I spent wondering if I was paranoid or overreacting. But no! I am here. And I am safe. MARTIN: [SIGH] I mean… I guess that makes sense?

* So, unlike other avatars, who were able to tell on sight that Jon had a “powerful position” in the new order, Salesa deduced it from facts! That was a nice touch.

* … Worried over the fact that Jon… didn’t seem able to describe the apocalypse spontaneously. Was he trying to “know” about it from inside the house, once again hitting a blank wall, just like when he tried to compel Salesa? Has he lost the habit of just… storing, remembering and using information regarding what he experienced? It’s interesting that there was no static at all during the whole exchange: Jon was indeed unable to use his powers there.

* LOVE HOW QUICKLY MARTIN REACTED when he saw Salesa’s reaction; Martin was probably gauging him? He had been quick to ask for smiting (and was even planning for the possibility when they were at the door of the house), so… did Salesa dodge a bullet. (Martin, please.)

* Salesa has been shown to be quite prideful, uh? “I made it”, “it will be… in my own time”, “I was right”… (And I can’t tell whether he’s absolutely sincere about that pride! Is it, genuinely, an absolute comfort, or is he grasping at straws because what’s the point of being right when you’re alone and basically waiting for your death with a few luxuries?)

- So, confirmation that Annabelle does know about their journey! It was rather obvious but technically… we didn’t know for sure, since Martin had bullshitted a bit when reporting her words to Jon:

(MAG166) MARTIN: Just, what do you want? ANNABELLE: I want to help you, of course. [SILENCE] MARTIN: … No. Thank you. ANNABELLE: It’s a hard place to find yourself in, maybe I can be of some… assistance…! MARTIN: You can assist me by giving the… “creepy phone” thing a rest…! ANNABELLE: He is more powerful here than he’s ever been, isn’t he? [PAUSE] And you’re not sure what that means for you. MARTIN: [INHALE] I’m hanging up now. ANNABELLE: Does he even need you at all?

(MAG167) ARCHIVIST: Help us with what? MARTIN: ‘xcuse me? ARCHIVIST: Annabelle, help us with “what”? Our–our, our journey, killing Elias, vanishing the Entities – what? […] So. What did Annabelle say? MARTIN: She offered to help, but she didn’t say what with; she… asked us where we were going. I didn’t tell her, but… [SNORT] it was pretty obvious she had a good idea.

(MAG181) SALESA: So what of you two, what, what, wh–where are you going? You seem to be travelling with some purpose…! ARCHIVIST: Did Annabelle not tell you that? SALESA: She said you were travelling to the Tower, the, hm, “Panopticon”, she called it? Whatever that might be; she didn’t say what for. [SUSPICIOUSLY] Nothing that might cause me trouble, I hope? MARTIN: We’re going to try and end this. Turn the world back. ARCHIVIST: Martin…! MARTIN: Wh–what? Okay; maybe he can help. We could use some support and it’s, it’s not like he wants the world to stay like this either! SALESA: You are right. To a point. [INHALE] I would welcome a return to the real world. Eh! To be the only man to weather the greatest disaster in history of reality, utterly unharmed… What an achievement that would be, quite the boast! But alas, no, [INHALE] I can’t help you. MARTIN: What? Why not? SALESA: I have nothing to offer. Well, except perhaps some… basic provisions. I have food, drink, a few luxuries, but none of that would help you out there, and I’m certainly not going to follow you. No, I think the best thing I can do is to welcome you to stay in my sanctuary as long as you wish…!

* Annabelle at least knew their destination already; which means she might have a good eye on the map, and would know that (according to real-world geography) they’re also coming closer to Hill Top Road…? Also: was she expecting them to change their mind about their initial plans to turn the world back? Or did she not tell Salesa because she assumed it was doomed already, or in order to not worry Salesa too much?

* … I keep hearing Salesa and going “Welp, that’s someone who is VERY depressed and also good at hiding it”: the way he jumped with such curiosity and passion on Martin&Jon’s current journey, the fact that they had a “purpose”? It feels to me like someone who currently doesn’t have any, is missing company, and wants to hear about anything that could manage to break his routine.

* Martin had mentioned with Helen already that they were lacking allies, and he&Jon just separated from Basira… So he really craves any help they could get, uh… AND AT THE SAME TIME: Martin is very good at weaving truths when he’s trying to manipulate people; he did that with Elias to make Elias accept (/feel like he had decided) that Martin would stay behind at the Institute in MAG116, he did that with Peter all through season 4 (believing in The Extinction, wanting to stop it… but also, loathing Peter and refusing to serve his plans)… so was he trying to do the same with Salesa, sneaking into his good graces and pretending to be absolutely transparent, nothing to hide sir!, before evaluating whether Salesa was a threat to be disposed of or just harmless?

- … So, Annabelle had been there for at least a month, so she definitely banked on them finding this place on their way… or did she find ways to influence their journey in order for them to walk by the house…?

(MAG181) SALESA: It’s an odd situation, but not a complicated one. Shortly after I decided to stay here, she arrived; wandered in from the chaos out there and told me she was going to stay with me. I didn’t get this far by pitting myself against The Web, so I welcomed her in. […] ARCHIVIST: … Alright, I… [INHALE] I guess we can stay. Just for a bit. SALESA: Excellent, ah! I haven’t had guests since the world ended. ARCHIVIST: [FLAT] Lovely. SALESA: Oh, saying that, I suppose there was that insect thing that stumbled in here a month or so back… MARTIN: Oh, uh, uh, in–“insect thing”? SALESA: Some creature of the Crawling Rot. Anyway, it didn’t actually make it into the house before Annabelle managed to get rid of it. So, I refuse to count it as a guest. MARTIN: Mmm. ARCHIVIST: I suppose that makes sense…! SALESA: Of course, I can’t actually stop things crossing the border into my hideaway, as you both discovered. Another reason I’m content to leave Annabelle to whatever schemes she might be weaving.

Or did she influence Salesa in taking residence there? The fact that he would be there and that Jon&Martin would come close enough for Jon to notice that the whole area was weird (and that they both agreed to take a look) is… a lot of coincidences. Jon “baited” Basira when they were close enough, and they then hunted Daisy; and as for Helen, she has been explicitly following them – those weren’t coincidences, but intended. On the other hand, the current layout is a bit more suspicious?

… It also takes us back to the start, for a Web-affiliated person to go against a Corruption-thing. We had witnessed this since season 1: spiders attracted by worms because they’re food (as Martin suspected in Carlos Vittery’s building), a spider warning Jon of the incoming Prentiss attack (end of MAG038), big spiders eating worm corpses in the tunnels under the Institute…

(… Salesa mentioned that Annabelle was cooking, WHAT IS SHE COOKING. DID SHE COOK THE CORRUPTION THING… DID SHE FEED THEM ALL WITH THE CORRUPTION THING…)

- Aaaaah, I’m having so many feelings over Jon asking so many questions and being so curious!!

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: What is… this place? SALESA: I just told you. It’s my little bubble. My silver lining on an otherwise cloudy day. ARCHIVIST: [HUFF] That’s not an answ– SALESA: Now tell me […]. ARCHIVIST: … So, you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions? SALESA: [SIPPING FOLLOWED BY CONTENTED SIGH] … I am an open book. […] ARCHIVIST: What is this place, how did you find it? SALESA: [SLIGHTLY CURT] I didn’t find anything. I made it. ARCHIVIST: [COMPELLINGLY] Tell me what happened. SALESA: … “No”. ARCHIVIST: I– Uh… Wh… Wh–what? […] How big is your safe zone, is it… is it always the same size? H… How did this happen? SALESA: [CHUCKLES] Look at him! Not three days without his master spooning knowledge into his head, and he can’t bear it! I thought ignorance was meant to be bliss? ARCHIVIST: [FRUSTRATED SOUND]

Same as last episode, that was Jon! It was Jon being himself and curious… Georgie had pointed out that it was Jon’s personality (MAG093: “If your job is asking questions, I mean. You were always the one who pushed too far, and asked smart-arse, awkward questions. I always was surprised you never got punched.”), even before the influence of The Eye – and now, we have the additional dimension that Jon might have grown a bit too accustomed to, indeed, Knowing things, and to getting people to answer him whenever needed or desired… But still. It feels like he was back to his roots?

(And Salesa was doing his best to frustrate him, cutting him off or commenting on it, pfft.)

- While Jon was more pressuring and blunt, I’m reeling over Martin who sugarcoated his approach a bit (joking with Salesa, sometimes agreeing with him or not antagonising him too much while having clear limits)… and got Salesa to give up his story:

(MAG181) SALESA: Of course I know she’s with The Web. ARCHIVIST: … And that doesn’t bother you? SALESA: Not especially. And even if it did, what good would it do? MARTIN: … Uh, so what’s the deal with you two anyway? […] Mm-mm… SALESA: … Anyway. Let us talk of happier things, or perhaps just take a moment to enjoy not being out there…! You are, of course, welcome to stay as long as you like. MARTIN: Uh, that’s… very generous…! […] I thought… What about Annabelle? SALESA: She keeps… mostly to herself, and when she does talk, it’s usually more of the sinister monologue variety– MARTIN: Ah! SALESA: –or cryptically telling me I’ve got “guests”…![…] I am here. And I am safe. MARTIN: [SIGH] I mean… I guess that makes sense? […] SALESA: No, I think the best thing I can do is to welcome you to stay in my sanctuary as long as you wish…! MARTIN: … Oh, well. [EXHALE] Thank you. I–I think we just might. Jon? […] Look, fo–for what it’s worth, I’d, I’d also quite like to know how this all happened? SALESA: … Fine. I’ll tell you how it happened. But you must sit quietly while I tell it. MARTIN: [CHUCKLE] Don’t worry, I have had lots of practice. SALESA: … And you? ARCHIVIST: [DISGRUNTLED SOUND] MARTIN: He’ll behave. SALESA: … My story is not a long one.

(GRUMPY JON WAS SO CUTE… JUST LIKE AN ANNOYED CAT…)

Martin has had experience with Peter and Simon, knows how to be strategical, and it worked. Salesa was clearly craving to give his story, to be the centre of the attention (the main star of the show?), and Martin… played the right cards to get him there?

There was no static, Salesa pointed out that Jon couldn’t use his Eye powers here, Salesa insisted that his statement was on his own terms… but I still wonder if he wasn’t compelled a bit? We didn’t learn much, it had a bit more flourish than our usual (but it’s not unheard of: avatars were shown to be very happy to portray themselves at their best during them), there were some potentially unreliable bits here and there (not unheard of either), but it was also… pretty coherent. Flowing naturally. A long tirade going straight to the points.

Could Salesa have been influenced by Martin? Simon had made it clear that Beholding had compelled him (through Martin) to give him his piece. Or was it… the tape recorder, somehow? It turned on when Jon&Martin were arriving (so, when a discussion would happen), and turned off after Salesa was done:

(MAG181) SALESA: Anyway, no more stories, I think. Let us relax, and talk, and drink, and… not worry about who might be… listening. [CLICK.]

So it was there for Salesa’s statement. Did it compel him?

- I like how we technically didn’t learn much through Salesa’s statement! Well, not much factual info, at least: we already had gotten a recent-ish written statement from him (MAG115, from January 2007); we knew that he had been Leitner’s assistant and had fled when he understood what Leitner was dealing in, that he initially mostly wanted to use his list of clients and had ended up dealing in supernatural artefacts almost coincidentally, that he let (rich) people acquire the artefacts they wanted and too bad for them if they caused them misery, that he was getting angstier between 2011 and 2014, culminating in the last mission to retrieve the camera, and that he had then vanished, presumed dead.

But I feel like we mostly learnt about his personality, in contrast to MAG115 (in which he was a bit more on the defensive, given that the Institute and/or Gertrude was going at him for a Slaughter artefact that had… got out of control) and MAG141, in which Floyd Matharu, who clearly kinda liked and respected him (“He was a good boss.”), had given us another look on Salesa: someone who was tired, who had lost people and was growing tired of this life. I find it really interesting to compare MAG141 and MAG181 since, in this episode, Salesa is clearly putting on a show of his own story:

(MAG141) FLOYD: Once found him pouring over an old photo album. The ship was there in the pictures, but a different captain, different crew. I asked him who they were, and he just looked at me, eyes sunken like he hadn’t slept, and for a second I felt like he was seeing someone else, not me. But then he just shrugged. “Dead now,” he said, “doesn’t really matter.” […] I followed slowly, unsteadily, but got there just in time to see Salesa throw both him and what looked like a blank rug over the side and into the ocean. Then he collapsed against the railing, a look of intense exhaustion passing over his face, and I left him there. He was drunk for the next two days, and we kept sailing on towards Cape Town. We no longer had anything to deliver there, but no-one was really sure what else to do. Whenever there’d been similar disasters before, Salesa was quick to make a new plan, let Captain Gaultier know what the next steps were. It was one of the reasons the crew trusted him so much. He just always seemed to know what we needed to do next. This time, though… felt different. He was distant, quiet. His words, when he spoke to you at all, were blurred with alcohol and regret. Nobody knew what the plan was, so we just kept going.

(MAG181) SALESA: But the years, they wear on you, and as I talked to more and more people versed in that secret world, more acolytes and would-be cultists about “rituals” and “destinies”, I began to come to a conclusion. As the number of people in the world grew, and the amount of fear grew with it, I began to become convinced that it was only a matter of time before one of them… succeeded. Before the world was transformed into… Well. You’d know better than me…! So I began to plan for my… retirement. I spent most of my fortune preparing. Some on supplies, but mostly hunting down an artifact that I hoped might give me some… protection. One I had sold right at the start of my career: an old broken camera. One that through some… quirk had the ability to hide you from the Powers…! […] Staging my death was a… comparative, erm, afterthought. In some ways… just a happy accident. And so I waited, and lived out my days in comfort. For the longest time I thought that, well… maybe I had simply entered normal retirement really dramatically! But then… well… I was right.

* “a happy accident”, says the person living with a Web person who knew he was there and threw Jon&Martin at him. (What happened, back then? Why the explosion, why did Gaultier report that they had been “betrayed”? Was someone else after Salesa, or “helped” him hide? If Gertrude was behind the explosion, it would have been mentioned at this point… Was it Annabelle, to ensure that Salesa would be a reliable trump card in the apocalypse?)

* It had been addressed during Arthur and Gertrude’s discussion, and has been a reccurring theme in the series: who really are these characters?

(MAG145) GERTRUDE: What was Agnes like? ARTHUR: … What? GERTRUDE: Well, for all The Web bound us together, I never actually met her. What was she like? ARTHUR: I… [PAUSE] I don’t know. Not really. You got as many answers to that as… folks who met her. Never really knew what she felt ‘bout any of it! Not really. Not in her own words. Guess that’s the thing about being the… Chosen One, or… I mean, Agnes was always quiet; but even if you spend all day, every day, throwing out commandments and… laying down parables… At the end of it, you’re always just the… point of someone else’s story. Everyone clamouring to say what you were, what you meant, and… your thoughts on it… all don’t mean nothing.

Is the real Salesa the self-serving and self-centred man who explained his story to Jon and Martin, all about money and then self-preservation, not giving any retrospective thought about his crew and the people who were following his orders and yet died because of it? Is the real Salesa the “good boss” Floyd had described, who was clearly nostalgic and affected by the losses throughout his life (why keep pictures of the deceased, if they hadn’t mattered at all)? Or is the truth somewhere within the mix, every statement a bit of it – how these characters used to be perceived, how they want to be perceived right now, how they acted then and how they act now?

* There is a bit of a parallel with Jonah, with the way both reached the fatalistic conclusion that someone would eventually manage to bring forth the apocalypse:

(MAG160, Jonah Magnus) “Why does a man seek to destroy the world? It’s a simple enough answer: for immortality, and power. Uninspired, perhaps, but – my God! The discovery, not simply of the dark and horrible reality of the world in which you live, but that you would quite willingly doom that world and confine the billions in it to an eternity of terror and suffering, all to ensure your own happiness; to place yourself beyond pain, and death, and fear. It is an awful thing to know about yourself, but the freedom, Jon, the freedom of it all…! I have dedicated my life to handing the world to these Dread Powers, all for my own gain, and I feel… nothing but satisfaction, in that choice. […] Of course, this desire did not manifest overnight. When Smirke first gathered our little band – Lukas, Scott and the rest – to discuss and hypothesise on the nature of the things he had learned from Rayner… I felt what I believe we all felt: curiosity, and fear. But as he compiled his taxonomy and codified his theories on the grand rituals, I began to develop a very specific concern. Smirke was still so obsessed with his ideas on balance, even as our fellows began to experiment and fall to the service of their patrons: I began to worry that if one of them successfully attempted their ritual, then I would be as much a victim as any, trapped in the nightmare landscape of a twisted world. At first, I attempted prevention, but the cause seemed hopeless. The only way to ensure I did not suffer the tribulations of what I believed to be… an inevitable transformation, was to bring it about myself. So what began as an experiment… soon became a race.”

Both came to the conclusion that an apocalypse would be likely to happen, and both of them worked on a way to mitigate the effects for them and them only, instead of ensuring that others wouldn’t succeed. … And in both cases, it doesn’t feel like they realised how they might have been used rather than in control: Jonah could have just NOT LAUNCHED ANY RITUAL when he discovered that anyway, a ritual would never work unless all the Fears were to be brought through together; and Salesa… had a few holes in his story? Admitted that there was an “accident” leading to his official death, allowing him to go into hiding? Is drinking heavily while having a Web-person as housemate, who explained how “addiction is one of the strongest vectors of control there is”?

- I wonder whether Salesa knew what had truly happened to Leitner, or not at all?

(MAG181) SALESA: … My story is not a long one. Not the parts that you care about, at least. The Powers I first learned about from Jurgen Leitner – you’re familiar with him? Then I don’t need to explain further. When I say I was one of his assistants, you know exactly the kind of education that would be. Terrifying, fascinating, misguided. The man was a genius, and an idiot. It didn’t take me long to see what he was blind to his whole life: that trying to control the Fears was a good way to get yourself killed, or worse. … I left long before he got what was coming to him, and tried to forget what I knew.

He probably assumed that Leitner had died when his library was attacked? Not brutally pipe-murdered by Elias.

(And sidenote, but: Salesa wasn’t presented as an avatar but he also joins the list of people in season 5 not even mentioning Jonah at all as an agent who matters, while Jon was identified as A Big Deal in the apocalypse. I don’t know if Jonah is still in any state to know and watch these things (merged with the Panopticon? Trapped within his old decaying body at the centre of the tower?), and he was certainly not able to see anything inside of the camera’s domain, but I hope that it Stings.)

- I’m not so surprised that Annabelle and Salesa seem to be getting along, since they both sound aware of their “role” in the overall narrative frame:

(MAG147, Annabelle Cane) “Now, I believe the tradition is to tell you the story of my life; the sinister path that led me inevitably to the sorry state in which I now find myself. Well, let it never be said I do not dance the steps I am assigned.”

(MAG181) SALESA: I lived my life, and I lived it well – successful, wealthy, and a little bit feared…! Smuggler to the rich and famous! There wasn’t an art dealer or curator out there who didn’t pretend not to know me! But the trouble is, once you’ve seen backstage, it’s hard to believe in the show anymore. You understand, I’m sure. You can never quite shake off the desire to have a peek…! To see what’s waiting in the wings…! […] Again, I made a lot of money, and remained untouched. It’s the sort of thing to set a man thinking about his life, you understand? I began to think hard about the world, about my place within it, and about fear! About the figure of the merchant, the trader who deals in strange and dangerous goods – how it can be found in so many myths and fables, dealing in second-hand nightmares. And how rarely the merchant themself is ever punished in those stories. […] To tell you the truth, I got a real kick out of playing my role. To think of myself as a purveyor of curses, walking softly through the most dangerous edges of reality, so that the rich and arrogant could buy their own doom.

(+ in some ways, Peter, too: “Thinking about it now, perhaps one of the reasons I lasted as long as I did was that I was, at the end of the day, predictable. A ‘known quantity’. I had my little patch, sending my poor lost sailors to their Forsaken end, but I rarely stepped outside of it. When I think of all those I met who travelled in this secret world we found ourselves in – Gertrude, Simon, Mikaele, even Rayner… there are plenty whose lives might well have been easier with my death, but it was rare that I strayed outside my habits.” (MAG159))

- So, who was the thing/person Salesa was “working for”?

(MAG181) SALESA: Sometimes people would come to me for solutions, protections or talismans to ward off the attention they had already called down on themselves. I sometimes did what I could to help, but I had to be careful. I could never afford to forget who I actually was working for.

Himself? The Fears, given how he made them more impactful by digging out and spreading cursed artefacts?

(Also, aaaah, I’m guessing that Noriega had been asking for help, back in MAG016, while he was suffering from Angela’s curse and had met with Salesa…)

- Salesa reminded me a bit of Leitner, and he would haaaaaaaaaaaate it? Leitner also wanted to take on a “role” and it… had backfired very badly:

(MAG080) LEITNER: I… thought that I could control them. That I alone had the knowledge to contain them. Back then, I believed they were simply books. Horrifying, powerful, yes; but with rules, limits that could be charted. … I was a fool. I had no idea what forces lay behind them, or that they had other servants that might come searching. […] I saw myself as a guardian, a reverse Pandora, gathering the evils of the world and locking them away. And so I branded them with my seal. I told myself that if any should escape such a mark could help me retrieve them. But I think, in my heart, I dreamed of my work becoming known. That “The Library of Jurgen Leitner” would stand as a symbol of courage and protection. Hubris. I suppose it is fitting punishment that my name has become a watchword for evil, spoken by those who only know it as marking the darkest, most terrible of secrets. My name has become a curse.

Is the merchant truly never punished in all these stories? Quite clearly, Salesa has it waaay better than the people out there (he’s not trapped in a personal nightmares, forced to relive terrible experiences over and over again)… but it’s also such an empty existence, with him having become what he used to loathe – as someone who felt like he was punishing the rich, he’s now living in luxury (Upton House, playing the piano, listening to classical music, drinking alcohol in the morning in nice crockery and assuming that said alcohol might end up killing him)…

- Aaaah, I love how the way the camera works does feel like it makes sense within that universe:

(MAG181) SALESA: So I began to plan for my… retirement. I spent most of my fortune preparing. Some on supplies, but mostly hunting down an artifact that I hoped might give me some… protection. One I had sold right at the start of my career: an old broken camera. One that through some… quirk had the ability to hide you from the Powers…! It was in the possession of another scared old man, one who had long been running from his own supernatural debts. I believe it operates as a sort of, uh, battery, charging itself on all the quiet worries that come from living in hiding, and then when the sanctuary collapses, eh!, all that fear flows out at once. … No doubt if my oasis breaks before I die, The Eye will get quite the feast from me. But in this new world, I would hope it has other things to keep itself busy. […] it hid me from The Eye, which, in the new order of reality, also protects where I am from the hellscape all around us. And when I realised that the power moves with the camera.

I also like that… just like a regular camera, it puts some distance between the one who is protected and anybody else, cutting them from reality. It explains why everything went to hell on that island after they took the camera (MAG141) and might be a curse in itself: feeding from the fears of the people into hiding… and anticipating their demise? (We also got told how Salesa could “end”, if it happens offscreen: if Annabelle’s plan is to use the camera without him… either she’ll be charitable and kill him, or tell him in advance for him to kill himself beforehand, either she will just leave with the camera, and Salesa will have it worse than everyone else.)

Also explains why Jon didn’t “know” anything about Salesa’s fate after talking with Floyd, and why he might have been drawn to him? Since he was a blind spot for Beholding, someone hidden from it. It’s quite interesting that we’ve seen so many different ways to get a (temporary or permanent) protection from Beholding? Gertrude was cutting eyes from pictures all around her (and Elias admitted that she had grown quite good at hiding from him); Leitner had the A Disappearance book, preventing Elias and Beholding from seeing him; Eric and Melanie discovered that gouging out their eyes freed them from the Archives; and now, Salesa pointed out that the camera was even specifically anti-Eye – thus, Jon not being able to use his powers around it… Was it initially a Dark artefact? Or an Eye one, just with a delayed reaction (as the fear of “being watched, being followed, having your deepest secrets exposed”)?

- CRIES, because it was to be expected that Jon wouldn’t fare for long in this place:

(MAG181) [PACKING NOISES] MARTIN: You’re sure we can’t stay longer? ARCHIVIST: Yes, I–I–I’ve been, hum… Uh, these last few days I–I’ve been… getting weaker. Dizzy spells, vagueness, you’ve seen it. Being cut off from the Eye, i–it’s not good for me. MARTIN: Yeah, but if… [INHALE] If you’re that connected, that… dependent, what happens if we actually, y’know, do manage to– ARCHIVIST: We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I just need us to be moving on. MARTIN: Hm… […] Feeling better? ARCHIVIST: Uh… Yeah. I’m afraid I am…!

And he reminded me a lot of how he sounded during his partial withdrawal (from live statements), in the second half of season 4: raspier voice, tiredness, the feeling unwell…

(MAG150) ARCHIVIST: … Still feeling weak. Restless. I want to be proactive, but there hasn’t…! That hasn’t been going quite so well for us lately.

(MAG152) HELEN: Hungry, are we~? ARCHIVIST: That’s not…! I haven’t done anything– HELEN: Yet. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: I feel like if I don’t… I might die. Fade away into nothing.

(MAG154) MARTIN: No, ’t’s fine, I ju– You just surprised me, that’s… Jesus, you all right? You… you look like hell. ARCHIVIST: Oh! Uh, right, I, em… ki–kind of weak. Hungry, I–I guess, sort of. I–I’ve been trying to a–avoid, being, hum… Sticking to old statements?

(MAG155) ARCHIVIST: I feel weak. Like I’m… fading away. Do I restrain myself, keep my appetite in check, even at the cost of my life? Or do I try to rationalise what I am, like… Ms. McHugh? I find myself… hating her, her… callous self-deception. But am I so different…?

Except that, back then, Martin hadn’t directly witnessed it – Jon went without statements after MAG159, for three weeks at most (after taking Peter’s live statement), and he sounded mostly fine if eager to read when they received Basira’s statements. Here, it feels like Jon’s degrading state went much quicker and more impressively… and it was a reminder of Jon’s connection to The Eye. Jon cut the conversation short, but they really will have to talk about it, and about how setting the world back, as of now, really sounds incompatible with Jon’s survival…

(Sob at Jon’s “moving on”, because it echoed MAG180’s title: back then, “moving on” had given the feeling of… reaching another chapter, accelerating after a stagnation? But now, “moving on” means returning to the apocalypse, the Fears, their journey towards the Panopticon, and did they learn anything that could help their quest inside of the house? The camera could be useful, maybe, but then…)

-I am HOWLING at Martin’s outburst of rage towards Annabelle because AHAHAH, who used to accept her tea and be a ~polite guest~?

(MAG181) SALESA: Did you sleep well? Have you had something to eat? Annabelle said she’d shown you the pantry? […] You’re sure you won’t have a drink? We definitely had some tea around here somewhere. MARTIN: Uh, I… already had some, thank you, uh! Some of us know how to be polite guests. ARCHIVIST: [SHARPLY] I don’t intend to accept anything offered by Annabelle Cane. […] [FOOTSTEPS] [A DOOR CREAKS OPEN] ANNABELLE: All packed? ARCHIVIST: Mm. MARTIN: Oh! Finally showing your face? ANNABELLE: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. MARTIN: Oh, pffft! All week, you scuttle around with… with food and drinks and all that other stuff, whatever we need, and just when we need it, but if we actually try to talk to you, you’re gone. ANNABELLE: [SMILINGLY] I’m very busy…! ARCHIVIST: Martin, don’t… bother, we–we’re not going to get any answers out of her. MARTIN: You–you’re joking, right? She’s been lurking at the edges of this whole thing since the beginning, and now we can finally actually talk to her, and…! What, you’re just going to pass? You don’t have any questions, nothing at all?

WHO usually provides food and drinks to get some results with people?

(MAG053) MARTIN: I was just going down to the café, did you want a sandwich? ARCHIVIST: Uh, that, that depends. Are you… hum, are you going to keep hovering around me if I go to the canteen? MARTIN: [SIGH] I just worry. You needed five stitches after you “accidentally” stabbed yourself with a breadknife. If you’re still claiming that’s what happened. ARCHIVIST: I am. MARTIN: Then you’ll forgive me for worrying when you use sharp knives. ARCHIVIST: [SIGH] Fine. I’ll come with, just… give me a second to grab my coat.

(MAG069) MARTIN: … Look. Jon… when was the last time we all just… talked? Just talked, without all of this– ARCHIVIST: Thank you for the tea, Martin. MARTIN: … Oookay. Fine. [DOOR OPENS] He’s not wrong, you know. [DOOR CLOSES]

Annabelle is just doing The Usual Martin Things, and Martin accepted it at first, probably thinking that it could put her into good dispositions to talk, except that tactic is NOT working with her and he’s SO PISSED about it =D Oh, Martin…

I’m super amused at Annabelle having so much fun being domestic and taking care of the guests while looming in the background; it’s an interesting dynamic where you can clearly feel like… everything is happening on her terms, and Martin and Jon don’t have any control over it. (And Martin is SO annoyed at the lack of control, ooooh Martin…)

(- And this is how Web!Martin can still w- (No but, seriously, I thought about how spiders can be territorial and usually don’t share the same living area?))

- I adore how you could HEAR Annabelle’s smile while she was clearly having fun.

(MAG181) MARTIN: Oh! Finally showing your face? ANNABELLE: I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. […] ARCHIVIST: Look. I–it’s no accident we finally meet face-to-face in the one place I–I can’t get any answers out of her. ANNABELLE: [SMUG] I’m sure I don’t know what you mean…! MARTIN: … Why are you here? Mm? What’s your game? ANNABELLE: Perhaps I just value my privacy. MARTIN: Fine, fine! Why did you call me before? ANNABELLE: Perhaps I thought you could use a friendly voice…!

Not committing to any answer, and it was driving Martin mad, uh.

- LOVING HOW MARTIN IS JUST “RESENT AND REMEMBER”:

(MAG166) ANNABELLE: He is more powerful here than he’s ever been, isn’t he? [PAUSE] And you’re not sure what that means for you. MARTIN: [INHALE] I’m hanging up now. ANNABELLE: Does he even need you at all? MARTIN: Bye! [BEEP] [SIGH] [LOUDER, CLOSER HOWL] … I know, right?

(MAG181) ANNABELLE: Perhaps I thought you could use a friendly voice…! MARTIN: “Friendly”!? You told me Jon didn’t need me! ANNABELLE: Objectively true. MARTIN: [AGGRAVATED SIGH]

(Jon was out of it for most of the exchange, but… If he had been in a better state of mind, he might have reacted to this: Martin hadn’t told him about that part of the phone call, Martin hadn’t shared that with him in the following episode. So, that was new information… unless he had already “known” about it from Martin’s mind and didn’t tell Martin?)

And! We! Still! Don’t! Know! What Annabelle! Wanted! To Achieve!

(MAG181) ANNABELLE: And more importantly, perhaps I thought you might need a little bit of righteous indignation to help you power through the next steps. […] For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. The call was… clumsy. There were so many things to keep track of at the moment. I must confess it did lack my usual… nuance. ARCHIVIST: And perhaps you’re now just trying to humanise yourself so we underestimate your next move…! ANNABELLE: Perhaps.

* What was that “righteous indignation” about? At this point, Martin was already pro-smiting. Did she want him to focus on his resentment towards her? Did she want to prompt a conversation between Jon&Martin, as it happened in MAG167, leading to Jon admitting to Martin that he was his “reason”? I still feel like if that exchange hadn’t happened, Martin would have had it way worse in the Lonely house a few episodes later…

* It feels like the “Jon does(n’t) need Martin” might be about two different things? It’s objectively true that Jon would still be fine without Martin… but would he keep going on his quest without him? Jon said that Gertrude likely would have given up (implying that his difference with her is that he had “a reason”, in Martin). And Jon himself had told Martin, that it wasn’t just about what he needed in the “survival” sense; it was… about what he wanted for himself:

(MAG159) ARCHIVIST: Listen – I know you think you want to be here, I know you think it’s safer and w– … well, maybe it is… But we need you. I need you. MARTIN: [DISTANT, VOICE ECHOING] No, you don’t. Not really…! Everyone’s alone, but we all survive. ARCHIVIST: I don’t just want to survive!

- Martin and Being Manipulated~~

(MAG126) MARTIN: But if I could just explain– PETER: And how do you think Jon’s going to react, to that explanation? Hm? Do you think he’ll accept it calmly? Come through with a well-considered, rational response– MARTIN: That’s not fair– PETER: –or would he assume he knows better than you and do something rash? [SILENCE] MARTIN: … I don’t like being manipulated. PETER: That’s fair. But I’m not wrong.

(MAG181) MARTIN: … I, I don’t like being manipulated. ANNABELLE: Then we probably aren’t going to be friends. MARTIN: Urrrgh! [SIGH]

(And both times, about Jon.)

- Jon was exhausted, but also kind of fatalistic over the fact that they couldn’t do anything against Annabelle anyway; had Salesa been right when he had told them they would get used to it? And in a way, Jon being less angsty over it… might be good for him – not spiralling into paranoia, being just aware that anyway, he can’t know anything for sure about Annabelle. (… Or is the feeling of powerlessness feeding her anyway?)

(MAG181) MARTIN: So, so that’s it, then? We, we’re just going to leave her here? ARCHIVIST: Yes. MARTIN: We could make her tell us. ARCHIVIST: No, we couldn’t. I don’t have my powers, if it came to a physical fight I really don’t rate our chances…! MARTIN: Hey, I can handle myself! ANNABELLE: But can you handle me? [SILENCE] MARTIN: … I don’t like you. ANNABELLE: I know.

GNIIIIIIIIIIIIH over Martin just. Being absolutely too honest and just telling her, to her face, that he doesn’t like her. Martin, you rude brat.

I got Michael flashbacks, too, because it wasn’t the first time that:

(MAG079) MICHAEL: I think I might also kill you. It would be easier than killing the Archivist; none of you are protected down here. MARTIN: No, no, now hang on… MICHAEL: You are going to try and help him. And I want to see what happens without you there. TIM: Martin… MARTIN: No, no, okay, because there’s two of us and there’s one of you, okay. He’s not killing anyone! TIM: Martin, look at his hands! MARTIN: Oh.

MARTIN WAS READY TO THROW DOWN.

- YIKES over what Annabelle has ~in mind~:

(MAG181) ANNABELLE: Don’t worry, Martin. We’ll meet again. Hopefully when you’re feeling a little bit more… open-minded…! MARTIN: I wouldn’t count on it. ANNABELLE: I would. MARTIN: [SIGH] ARCHIVIST: That’s the trouble with old houses, I suppose. Full of spiders. ANNABELLE: You boys better take care of yourselves. I’m sure we’ll see each other again very soon. Here! Why don’t I show you out?

* Was the “open-minded” a reference to the fact that her own head was opened and is currently stitched together thanks to spiders.

* So, they’re meeting again “soon”… at Hill Top Road, maybe?

* Annabelle is implying that they were refusing something about her, as if there was currently an offer on the table – what was it? Was it about the fact they were antagonising her? Jon didn’t trust her (or at least raised the possibility that she could be trying to make them underestimate her; she had explained that “I have always believed that the key to controlling people… is to ensure that they always under, or overestimate you. Never reveal your true abilities or plans” in MAG147), they were wary of her… and were they right about it? She made sure they drank and ate, she encouraged them to be well; she needs them functioning and still going, but what for? I’m still really curious about Annabelle; it felt to me that she needed them to reach a certain conclusion by themselves, and that they have failed so far… Or is it way more sinister than that, is she waiting for them to ask for her help regarding Jon’s current state?

* Overall, it feels to me like she’s focusing on Martin more than Jon, as if Jon was a “given” in her equation but Martin a more active and rebellious piece?

- Ooooh, Salesa… he really was craving for company, uh.

(MAG181) SALESA: Aaah! You are off, then? [FAINT SOUNDS OF MUSIC IN THE BACKGROUND; LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN’S “9TH SYMPHONY: FINALE”] ARCHIVIST: … Yes, uh… MARTIN: Uh, thank you, for all your hospitality. SALESA: You are sure you won’t stay a little longer? You’re more than welcome! ARCHIVIST: N–no, I, uh… I got to, hum… leave. MARTIN: What he said. SALESA: Ah, such a shame. And you’re sure I can’t give you a little something for the road? Uh, food, wine? MARTIN: Uh, no, thank you. Uh… [SIGH] Nice things, they… tend not to stay nice out there. SALESA: [SCOFF] True enough.

And sob about the fact that Martin has learned to not trust “comfort” too much. (What about the tea he had stored in his own bag? And the bandages he used on Jon didn’t turn against them either, so a few things stayed safe.)

- I love how Annabelle and Salesa seem to be getting along with their cruel humour:

(MAG181) SALESA: Well: best of luck I suppose. And if in the end, you can’t save the world… you know where I am. ANNABELLE: Actually, he doesn’t. SALESA: [CHUCKLES] Of course. What a shame. [INHALE] Well then, I guess it really is goodbye. Travel well. Don’t be Strangers! [MORE CHUCKLES, LOWER AND DARKER]

(SOB, Salesa, “Don’t be strangers” had been copyrighted by Georgie in season 3 already!)

… Really curious that Annabelle seemed to already know that Jon would quickly forget about the place, as soon as they would leave; in the same way that she predicted that they might pass out when entering the domain protected by the camera. She… knows… stuff… and understands how things work, uh…

- Cries about Jon just fading from conversation, it REALLY was time for him to leave:

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: Yes, I–I–I’ve been, hum… Uh, these last few days I–I’ve been… getting weaker. Dizzy spells, vagueness, you’ve seen it. Being cut off from the Eye, i–it’s not good for me. […] MARTIN: You don’t have any questions, nothing at all? … Jon? Jon! [CLICKS HIS FINGERS IN FRONT OF THE ARCHIVIST] ARCHIVIST: [DISTANT] Wha… Oh, yes, uh, sorry… Look. […] MARTIN: God, fi–fine. Fine! [BAG IS GRABBED] Come on, Jon. ARCHIVIST: [VAGUE] Mm… Oh, I’m… sorry, what? MARTIN: We’re leaving. […] SALESA: You are sure you won’t stay a little longer? You’re more than welcome! ARCHIVIST: N–no, I, uh… I got to, hum… leave. MARTIN: What he said. […] Y–yeah, uh, come on, Jon. Let’s go. ARCHIVIST: Mm, what? Oh. Yes, ri–right. Yes…

Jon prompted their departure, but it sounded like he forgot about it multiples times during the conversation… He was absolutely drained and ready to collapse, uh?

(Or is it linked to his other memory losses, such as forgetting his bully’s name, or that he had gone for ice-cream with the assistants for Martin’s birthday? I think it really was exhaustion in this particular case (head empty), but…)

- … Jon’s sense of humour…

(MAG181) MARTIN: Feeling better? ARCHIVIST: Uh… Yeah. I’m afraid I am…!

“Afraid I am” – said he, who is currently back to feeding on fear.

- I’m glad that Jon apologised for making them leave, was aware of what Martin had to give up for him, but also that Martin was clear about his Priorities (and differences from Salesa, who was satisfied being protected and safe in his “little bubble” while others are suffering) and absolutely not holding it against him:

(MAG181) ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry, I… It would have been nice to stay. MARTIN: [WISTFULLY] Yeah… I’d almost forgotten what it was like, you know? A bit of peace, eh! ARCHIVIST: I mean, you could have… MARTIN: No, don’t say it, Jon. You know I never would. I–I can’t just “forget” about all the people out here! Besides, I’d rather be trapped in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with you than spend one more moment in paradise with her. ARCHIVIST: [FAINT CHUCKLES] That might just be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me!

… But it also makes me worry about the alternatives Martin didn’t mention: what about “spending time in paradise without her nor you”, or “going back to the normal world without you”…

- I personally interpreted the last scene as the camera taking back the memories with it, since it was supposed to protect itself and the perimeter around it from The Eye, and Jon knowing/remembering about it would mean giving Beholding access to it:

(MAG181) [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Ah… Pity. MARTIN: What? ARCHIVIST: It’s, uh… It’s going away. That… peace; the, the safety, the memory of ignorance… MARTIN: That’s… [INHALE] Yeah, I guess that makes sense. [STATIC FADES] Do you… remember any of it? Wha–what Salesa said? Annabelle? ARCHIVIST: Some. I–I think. It’s, uh… Do you mind filling me in? MARTIN: Wait, you need me to tell you something for once? ARCHIVIST: I guess so! It’s, uh… It’s gone. Like a dream. … What was it like? MARTIN: … [SIGH] Nice. It was… It was really nice.

(“Ignorance” both as willingly ignoring something you’re aware of, and not knowing what’s happening out there…)

But CRIES about the tinge of nostalgia, at the fact that Jon had been so hopeful during MAG180 while discovering this place (… and was now walking out of it with mixed feelings), and the fact that… these nice memories are stored within Martin, and Martin only.

… And the tape which recorded Salesa’s statement.

- WHAT ARE THE TAPE RECORDERS…

(MAG181) SALESA: Hmmm. [SHUFFLING] Interesting… […] Now tell me, do you know why there’s a tape recorder here? I noticed it just now, but I don’t believe I actually own one. ARCHIVIST: … Uh… Not really. MARTIN: They sort of just … follow us round? SALESA: Hmmmm. Interesting. Did you carry it in? Things shouldn’t be able to manifest in here like that. ARCHIVIST: … You had one in your… bag, I–I think, Martin, did, did you drop it here? MARTIN: Uh… I, I don’t think so…! SALESA: … Very well. In that case, we shall leave it to be. It’s hardly valuable, and it’s probably best not to upset whatever it might be involved with. Besides! I have no secrets to hide. […] Anyway, no more stories, I think. Let us relax, and talk, and drink, and… not worry about who might be… listening.

Jon had already told Tim back in MAG114, but the fact that this place was an anti-Eye zone kinda confirms they’re not Beholding? But outside of that…

* It’s interesting that Jon immediately asked Martin if it was his. Did Jon have his own in his pocket and could tell it wasn’t his? When did Martin acquire one: was it the one drifting alongside him in the water (or not water), in MAG163? Or was the one in MAG170 different?

* We’ve seen with the mention of the Corruption creature that people can go inside of Salesa’s property. We’ve seen that Jon was cut off from Beholding, but what about other powers? Jon was still fearful of Annabelle – so The Web could still be active inside of it? Is the recorder Web, another power?

- Why did Annabelle want them there? Was it for them to learn about the camera, to use later? To close the Salesa chapter? To give them some respite, for funsies? To introduce herself properly while in control of the situation, where Jon couldn’t compel her? To make them lose time because something was happening outside?

- It’s getting clearer and clearer that there are maaaany holes in Jon’s pseudo-omniscience: he’s unable to see inside of the Panopticon. He can’t see the future. He can’t know about The Web’s plans due to it being too fragmented and complex. He doesn’t know about Melanie&Georgie. He couldn’t know about Salesa’s “little oasis” since it was safe from The Eye.

What else is he missing from the big picture?

- So now, what’s coming next?

* If it was indeed Upton House, they’re getting pretty close to London, and with a slight detour, Oxford (and Hill Top Road) could be on their way; given how Annabelle told them they would meet again “very soon”, they might revisit the house… well, Martin would be visiting it for the first time. It was already weird before the apocalypse; how is it as a place, now?

* We still haven’t seen Georgie&Melanie, so they could be coming soon, unless Jon is reuniting with them in MAG189, right before the hiatus, in the same way as they managed to trap Basira in MAG176 as the ending to Act I… (And as usual, where are they? Unlike Annabelle, Jon had been able to hypothesise that they could be in London (MAG164: “Hm! I’m… I’m not… sure, I–I can’t really see Melanie o–or–or Georgie. […] if they were dead, I– I think I would know that, I just… I–I don’t know… where they are, w–what they’re doing. L–London, maybe?”). Are they in the Institute? Behind Helen’s door? Protected because Melanie cut her connection to The Eye and Georgie can’t feel fear, putting them off Beholding’s radar?)

* Basira was supposed to meet them again at the Institute; given that Martin&Jon stayed at Salesa’s for a while, I wonder if she’s ahead of them, now…?

* Last time we saw Helen was in MAG177, and we know that she was usually spying on them…Was she able to materialise her Door into Salesa’s house, or not even? I’m guessing she could be popping up soon, if she couldn’t get her hands on Jon&Martin for a while… (Oh no: given how she liked to casually torment them, she probably witnessed Daisy’s death and bring that topic back on the table just for funsies…)

I’m a broken record, but wow, MAG182’s title is concerning (WHEN IT SHOULDN’T BE…). Spiral (and Helen), Corruption or Lonely stuff? And with the second meaning, a discussion about Jon’s status in the apocalypse? (I’m also thinking about The Admiral ;_;)

#mag181 #tma liveblog #long post/#tma spoilers/#tma season 5 #the magnus archives

19 notes · View notes

localswordlesbian · 4 years

Text

Something There That Wasn’t There Before

Read chapter 1 on ao3

The morning Martin wakes up and realizes his mother has wandered off, he knows he's in trouble. He just never expected this sort of trouble. Never expected a secluded castle beyond the woods, a friendly group of Archival Assistants trapped by an evil curse – a curse saying that if their boss, the reclusive Archivist Jonathan Sims doesn't have someone fall in love with him, he'll remain a monster subservient to the Beholding, and they'll all be trapped forever. Martin never bargained for curse-breaking, but he's never been a quitter.

When Martin woke up to find his mother gone, he knew he was in trouble.

He silently cursed himself as he ran through the house, shouting for her as he checked every room he could possibly think of, even creaking open the door to the attic despite knowing perfectly well his mother couldn’t climb those stairs if she tried.

Not that she ever did, of course. But that wasn’t relevant. What was relevant was that she was gone, and Martin hadn’t the slightest clue of where to find her.

He stopped in the kitchen, pushing his hands through his unruly hair, willing his racing heart to calm down. Just think, Martin. Where would she have gone?

Staring out the window as the town whisked by on their way to run their errands for a typical Saturday morning, Martin grabbed his coat and ran outside. Of course, you daft fool, he chastised himself. She must have just gotten hungry and gone to get bread. Nothing to worry about.

Walking through the town, dodging chickens and waving hello to familiar faces, Martin kept an eye out for the small, familiar form of his mother. Instead, he spotted a man taping a sign to an old, wooden building. Martin smiled as the man turned, waving a friendly hello.

“Blackwood!” the man shouted jovially, sauntering over from his previous perch by the door of the town’s old library. “In the mood for a new adventure? We got a couple donations from a library over in the city. Some Leitner fellow? Didn’t get a look at the books, but I thought you might want to be the first to check them out.”

Martin smiled his first real smile all day. “Thanks, Phil, but I’m in a bit of a hurry at the moment. Have you seen Mum today?”

Phil frowned thoughtfully, rubbing his scruffy beard, stark white against his dark skin. “I think I did, now that you mention ‘er. Saw her walking down the road, towards the bakery. Probably went to get bread? You need to keep a better eye on that woman, my boy. She won’t be able to remember the way home for much longer.”

Martin nodded. “I know. Slipped my mind this morning.”

Phil placed a friendly hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Don’t apologize, young man. These things happen.”

“Thanks. Sorry about the books – I’m sure I’ll be back soon to check them out.”

“No rush – they probably aren’t going anywhere. Now go fetch your mum before she falls into that darned well.”

Waving goodbye, Martin set off down the road toward the bakery. Some people gave Martin a friendly nod or a wave, some gave him a wide berth in the streets. Martin, for his part, mostly kept his eyes ahead of him, until he felt something ram into his legs and wrap around his middle, nearly causing him to take a tumble into the dust.

“Jack, you’ve got to be more careful,” Martin scolded the little boy who was now latched on to Martin’s waist. “I could’ve fallen!”

The little boy, Jack, only giggled in response. “Mr. Martin, did you hear that Mr. Phil got new books in the library? Could you read them to me? Please? Please please please pleasepleaseplease –“

“Yes, Jack, I promise I’ll read them to you,” Martin said with a smile, prying the boy’s small, calloused hands from behind his back. “How about tomorrow morning? I’m a little busy today, but I promise I’ll read to you tomorrow.”

Jack pouted, his freckled face puffing up in annoyance. “Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll be at the well at noon.”

Seeming satisfied, Jack poked Martin’s nose with his finger before sprinting off in the other direction. Martin smiled to himself as he stood and continued down the road – he loved reading to the kids in the town, teaching them the joys that words could bring to the world. They were all a little young for poetry, which was Martin’s personal guilty pleasure read, but he enjoyed reading them children’s books and fairy tales all the same.

Arriving at the bakery, Martin nudged past the line outside, earning him grunts of protest and annoyed glares as he made his way to the window.

“Get in line, boy!” the baker shouted as he sold a loaf to an old woman in a dark cardigan and skirt.

“Sorry, Charles, I was just wondering if you’d seen Mum today?” Martin wrung his hands nervously, the eyes of the annoyed patrons feeling as though they were burning holes in his back.

Charles, the baker, narrowed his eyes. “I did, I saw her head towards the far end of town, towards the woods.”

Martin’s stomach plummeted as he hurriedly thanked Charles and began to walk quickly, up the road once again, a walk that turned into a run as his heart thundered in his chest. Why was she leaving town? What could possibly be in the woods? Where was she intending on going?

Martin sprinted beyond the buildings, adrenaline pumping through his veins as his legs carried him beyond the town and out into the woods. After what felt like an eternity and a second at the same time, Martin slowed, wheezing to catch his breath, as he beheld the looming, foggy forest before him.

Shit.

Martin was oh so hopelessly lost.

After hours of trudging through the woods, twigs breaking under his heavy footfalls as he shouted for his mum until his voice was hoarse and his throat felt like it was splintering, Martin was beginning to lose hope of ever finding his mum or returning to town. He didn’t even know which way the town was anymore, with the looming figures of the trees seeming to make the paths shift right before his eyes. As he stopped in a clearing, his feet aching and his throat begging for water, Martin surveyed what was before him.

Fog seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see in all directions. Behind Martin was a steep cliff that he couldn’t hope to scale if he tried, to his left was trees and fog, same as behind him. To his right, he noticed, was a winding trail that led downwards, leading off to who-knew-where.

Breathing a sigh of defeat, Martin made his way down that path, hoping beyond all hope to either find his mother, the path back to town, or somewhere he could take shelter for the night. The creeping darkness paired with the fog meant he could hardly see in front of him, and the night chill was piercing through his coat and jumper. He shivered as he walked, trying not to let his mind spiral with thoughts of what could have happened to his mum, focusing instead on how his teeth chattered and his feet hurt and his shoulders ached from slumping in on himself in an attempt to stay warm. At the bottom of the path, before him stood tall iron gates, gates which had swung open, seeming to mockingly invite Martin inside.

Had Martin been in his right of mind, he would have immediately turned around and walked away. Though he couldn’t see through the fog, he knew there could be nothing good on the other side of the wicked looking gates.

But Martin was not in his right of mind – he was cold, he was in pain, and he was panicking. So, without a moment’s hesitation, Martin marched through the gates and emerged in what appeared to be a beautiful garden.

For a moment, Martin was awestruck, and he could feel lines from a poem he might write tickling the back of his mind. The stone path he walked on was made up of hundreds of pieces of what appeared to be ceramics and broken glass, forming a twisting pattern that looking at nearly made Martin dizzy. In the middle of the path was a tree, growing along a gnarled trunk and sprouting the most beautiful white, black, and red roses he’d ever seen. All across the property grew different types of flowers: rosebushes and peonies and lilies and lilacs guided Martin towards the massive structure looming before him: a massive gothic castle, dark in comparison to the beauty of the garden, with colossal wooden doors, dark bricks piling higher than Martin could see even when he tilted his head, with spires reaching for the sky and a massive clock: it read that it was half past midnight.

Shaking off a shiver that wasn't quite from the chill of night, Martin marched forward and pushed at the doors. They gave with surprisingly little resistance, and Martin walked into the castle foyer.

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected – for the place to be abandoned, perhaps. Certainly not for the blood-red carpet underfoot to feel soft and to cushion Martin’s footfalls, nor for the dark wood of the interior to look as polished as it did. The foyer was brightly illuminated by a massive chandelier hanging above a grand staircase, which first went upwards before splitting off into left and right. There appeared to be old paintings on the walls, and cabinets lined one side of the front hall.

Beside the door was an ancient-looking wooden coat hanger, so Martin shucked off his coat and hung it up, standing by the door in his favourite yellow wooly jumper and jeans. He walked in slowly, wondering who could possibly be living here.

“Hello?” he called, then cringed as his voice echoed back at him in the vast, empty space. “Mum? Hello? Is anyone here?”

He got no reply, so he dared enter further. To one side he saw an archway that led to a room decorated with an intricate carpet and a comfy-looking sofa, with a roaring fireplace in front of it. The heat hit Martin’s face as he walked towards it, then paused as he noticed a second staircase behind the grand one.

This one was much smaller, leading downwards into what appeared to be a dimly-lit circular stone staircase. The spookiness of it sent shivers down Martin’s spine, and as he debated which direction to go first, he heard the sound of something moving.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” a voice behind him drawled, and Martin yelped as he turned and saw a man standing in front of the couch, the fire behind him accenting his silhouette. As the man approached, Martin could make out more features: pale skin with sunken-in eyes, a lanky figure with long, poorly-dyed black hair and eyeliner accenting his gray eyes. Silver piercings glinted from his eyebrow, nose, and ears, and his nails were painted black that matched his outfit. “You looking for your mum? I heard you shouting.” The man smirked, placing his weight on one foot and crossing his arms in front of him. He seemed friendly, though, if a little intimidating.

“I–yeah,” Martin stammered. “She wandered off this morning? She’s, ah, not exactly in the rightest of minds, so, yeah. Have you seen her?” A hint of hope creeped into his voice.

The man shook his head. “Probably would’ve heard from the boss if she was in the house. Though, the boss can’t see into the basement – Michael and Helen make sure of that.” At Martin’s confused look, the man waved a hand dismissively. “It’s a long story, one that won’t be relevant once you get your mum and get out of here.”

“I–right,” Martin fidgeted with his jumper. He felt like a tele tubby next to this man, and curse Martin’s face for turning red, and he tried to convince himself that it was from the fire and not because he was anxiously facing a sort of cute guy who had just told him he needed to go into a creepy basement to retrieve his mum. “Didn’t you say not to go down there, though?”

The man shrugged. “I hate it down there. You’ll definitely get lost. But if Michael and Helen like you, they should let you go once you’ve found your mum.”

Martin nodded dumbly and tried to muster as much courage as he could, releasing his jumper and willing his hands to be still. “Uh, thanks?”

The man nodded. “No problem. Don’t die.” With that, he walked back towards the couch, vaulted his slim body over it, and settled down. No wonder Martin hadn’t noticed him before – he blended right in.

Taking a deep breath, Martin turned towards the staircase, and before he could talk himself out of it he started the descent.

The staircase was dimly lit by what looked like oil lamps, and Martin felt cramped in the narrow passageway. He felt humidity hanging thick in the air, and soon his ginger curls were plastered to his forehead and his shirt under his jumper was soaked through with sweat. Just as Martin questioned whether the stairs would ever end, his feet hit solid ground and a hallway stretched before him. A hallway lined with cells.

Martin stared at the sight before him, at the ancient looking dungeon that Martin didn’t want to think about why was there. As he stepped forward, he noticed that every cell he passed was empty, which gave him a small amount of relief. Whatever this was, it hadn’t been used in a long time. As he walked, he thought back to the man upstairs’ words.

The boss can’t see into the basement. If Michael and Helen like you, they should let you go once you’ve found your mum. Don’t die.

Who was the boss? How could they see everything in a castle this big? Who were Michael and Helen? Martin picked up his pace, thoroughly spooked and wishing he were back home.

Eventually, he turned around, and nearly stumbled from shock. Behind him was a wall, where there certainly hadn’t been one before. Panic rising in his throat, Martin turned back around and saw with a start that there were now several branching hallways when before it had been a straight path ahead of him. His heart pounding and breath quickening, Martin grabbed the moist wall, wincing at the gross texture but forcing himself to hold on and ground himself. Now is not the time to panic.

Once the panic had become manageable, Martin looked up and saw with a start that there was a figure ahead of him. Familiar dark hair piled on top of the person’s head, and they were dressed in a nightgown and coat.

“Mum?” he called, and the familiar face of his mother looked up at him. As he walked over, her frown deepened into a scowl.

“Where have you been all day?” she demanded.

Martin winced. “I’m sorry. I was looking for you. You went really far, Mum.”

Martin’s mum glowered at him. “Useless. Just like your father.” Martin suppressed a wince, not wanting to let on how wounded he felt at her words. He’d gotten lost and tore his feet up for her, and all she could do was insult him.

Bitterness rose in his throat, and he crushed it down. She’s ill. Let her be. he chided himself. “Come on, Mum. Let’s get you home.”

“Yes, let’s,” drawled a voice that was not his mother’s from behind him. Martin’s shout echoed off the walls, and he heard his mother shush him sharply as he turned and saw a figure leaning on the wall. Behind him, the passage was as it was the first time Martin had looked at it – straight ahead toward the stairs. “I have no problem with letting her go. A nasty piece of work you’ve got there, boy.”

Martin sputtered as he beheld the man – his long, curling blond hair fell past his hips, acting as a cape for his lithe frame. He was dressed in a suit of colours so bright and patterns so disorienting it gave Martin a headache just looking at it. But what was most notable about the man, aside from his high-pitched drawling voice, was his fingers – long and spindly, as though there were several extra joints extending them to inhuman lengths. The man leaned one shoulder against the wall, his long fingers dangling at his sides. “I don’t-“

“What do you think, Helen?” the man addressed someone over Martin’s head – despite how tall Martin was, this man was significantly taller. Craning his neck, he saw another figure similar to the first one: a woman this time, with dark curling hair that stood straight up before falling to her waist, a spiralling colourful dress, a manic grin, and the same long fingers as the man. “The woman gets on my nerves, but the boy is quite cute.”

The woman, Helen, gave Martin a slow once-over. Martin felt like his skin was crawling, as though the woman was trying to see into his soul. “He is. Wonder if he’d be the boss’ type.”

“Woah!” Martin exclaimed indignantly. “I am not just a piece of meat, I’ll have you know! I don’t know what your boss is running here, but I’m not interested!”

The woman – Helen – chuckled. “Ooh, a feisty one. I like him, Michael.”

So these two were Michael and Helen. “Look, I just came to get my mum and head home. I’d appreciate if you let me do that.”

Michael clucked his tongue. “Shame. Though I suppose we aren’t in the business of taking prisoners, so alright. You can go.” With a click of his tongue, a door appeared to Martin’s left. The door was warped, yellow, and did not look trustful at all. “Go ahead, it’ll take you home.”

“How did you–“

“You should stay behind.”

Martin stared as his mother cut off his question of how Michael knew where he and his mother lived to gape at her. “I–what?”

His mother glared at him. “I’d really forgotten how dense you are, boy. Stay here. I can return home without you. I think I’ll be better off.”

Martin found he could barely form a single word. “Wh–I–Who will take care of you?”

His mother sniffed and made her way for the door. “I’ll find someone. Do not follow me. Perhaps you’ll mope less here.” And with that, his mother stepped through the door and was gone.

#the magnus archives #tMa #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #fluff #jonmartin fluff #beauty and the beast au #disney au #alternate universe fantasy #alternate universe disney #gerard keay #michael distortion #helen distortion

19 notes · View notes

iamthedukeofurl · 4 years

Text

TMA Theory

The Magnus Institute itself was a low-grade Fear Generator. So, what we know about The Institute is that it had several departments 1) Administration

2) The Archives 3) Artefact Storage

4) Research. It’s also, presumably, an “Academic Institution dedicated to the study of the paranormal and supernatural”. People come in and dictate Statements, which are dutifully written down and organized by the Archivist, but we never hear about anybody from the Research department coming down to examine some statements, neither do we ever hear Jon referring to any notes from Research, or using any of the Researchers. Instead, he always uses his own assistants for follow-ups, and it’s not even clear that the follow-up investigations are even part of his job.

We know that Jon and Tim both transferred in from Research, and despite working there for four years, Jon had no knowledge of the Fears, or any real belief in the supernatural. So, allow me to propose my theory of what goes on in the Research Division of the Magnus Institute:

Somebody is hired to work for The Magnus Institute, they’ve heard the stories about the place, it’s something of a joke, and nobody knows why it’s being funded. It’s a simple, three story building, archives and storage in the basement, library and research on the first floor, administration upstairs. The Library is full of texts on a wide range of topics, from folklore to history to mathematics, which might help one delve into the world of the supernatural.

Some of these new employees believe they are about to find themselves thrust into a secret world of fairies and ghosts and wizards, others are skeptics, but they’re desperate, jobs are scarce, and the Magnus Institute’s paychecks are very, very real. So, they get in there, they’re taken to meet the institute’s head, Elias Bouchard, who outlines some simple rules

You are not allowed to access Artefact Storage without written permission

It is strictly forbidden to take any physical media outside the Institute, including books, documents, or photocopies.

All research must be done on an institute-approved computer running proprietary monitoring software.

Which, okay, a little intense about security, but not unreasonable. And then Mr. Bouchard looks at you, gives you a firm handshake and says “Your first assignment is waiting for you at your desk. I’ll be keeping an eye on you, I expect you’ll do great things here”.

And so you get your assigned desk, and there’s an assignment, describing some mysterious incident or old ghost story or whatever, “Investigate and write a report on the Disappearance of the S.S. Torchlight, which left Alexandria in 1910 and never arrived back in Plymouth”. And so you do, and almost immediately you figure it out. The S.S. Torchlight was in poor repair, it departed behind schedule and was in a hurry to make up lost time, it had an inexperienced captain, and there were some nasty storms along its intended route. Clearly the captain, worried about the schedule, decided not to detour around the storms, and the ship sank with all hands.

However, this is The Magnus Institute, they certainly wouldn’t have handed this to you unless there was SOMETHING strange going on with the Torchlight, they wouldn’t just hand you a random missing ship from over a century ago. You look around you, all the other researchers, diligently exploring the world of the paranormal. You can’t just go turn in your first assignment and say “The ship sank in a storm”. You’d get fired, laughed out of the institute, and if you could get a job anywhere else, you would have.

Mr Bouchard’s words echo in your mind, “I’ll be keeping an eye on you. I expect you’ll do great things here”. So you come up with theories. You research Sirens and Sea Serpents and The Flying Dutchman, you look into the possibility that the Torchlight may have been smuggling artefacts stolen from a pharaoh's tomb. The previous captain had died on the voyage to Alexandria, maybe somebody aboard the ship killed him and his ghost sought revenge.

And, in the Institute’s library, you find plenty of legends and stories about ways a ship might be lost at sea. Of course, absolutely nothing with any evidence pointing you towards the S.S. Torchlight.

You consider asking one of your co-workers for help, but you can’t. They’re real investigators, doing important work. They’ll take one look at what you’ve found and expose you for the fraud you are. Your first assignment, and you can’t find the slightest lead.

There is no official deadline, but it’s understood that occasionally mister Bouchard calls somebody up to his office to check in on their research.

So you keep your head down and try to look busy, you try to match the focus and intensity of your colleagues. Sooner or later, you give up completely. The ship was lost in a storm. The house was old and creaking. The “Impossible” muder was entirely possible if you assume that the detective just ignored all evidence that pointed to the wealthy, respectable husband who had the keys but swears he wasn’t home that night. Whether or not the supernatural exists, you can find no trace of it in your current assignment. But that won’t do. You might make a small lie, saying “Well I’m following up a new lead”, even if you don’t believe it will go anywhere. You might make a big one, simply inventing evidence to support some sort of supernatural explanation. Anything to buy yourself some more time, to avoid being exposed for the fraud you are. And the entire time, you’re being Watched. Watched by your colleagues, watched by the security cameras (There seem to be more every day), watched by the proprietary monitoring software on your laptop, watched by the serious faced old men in the oil paintings. Heck, you’re even watched by those strange people who work down in the Archives.

You hear things, some sort of strange worm infestation? The Police start poking around, at one point they arrest your boss for murder? You’re curious, you want to ask questions, but that might bring Attention to you, and the thought of that fills you with dread. You have the unavoidable idea that, should you be noticed, Something Terrible will happen, something worse than being Fired, being laughed out of academia (After all, if you can’t keep a job at The Magnus Institute, what are you good for).And, as you bury your head in old books, staring as the words swirl before you, The Ceaseless Watcher Drinks. What you don’t know is that literally every one of your colleagues feels the same way. The supernatural is real, but you won’t find a trace of it in the library of The Magnus Institute. The books and assignments are very carefully curated to contain no actual facts or connections. You might hear the name “Jurgen Leitner”, but you won’t find any of his books in the Institute Library. Jonah Magnus has spent a very long time assembling the most impressive, but least useful, collection of information on the supernatural ever seen. He wrote many of the books in it himself, and is quite proud of how they unreadable they are.

#the magnus archives #tma spoilers #tma #the magnus institute

17 notes · View notes

infinitelydiverse · 3 years

Text

Gabriel dreamed of falling.

He was on the roof of an apartment building he knew was his own with that strange dream logic. He knew his apartment building was only five stories. In his dream, the ground was a distant memory dotted with glowing, neon-bright ants. It always started with him perched on the railing, barefoot with a white-knuckled grip on the metal. It always started with the wind ripping at his hair and dragging the air right out of his lungs. It always ended with his grip slipping and the world spinning as he toppled, not towards the distant pavement but up into the even more distant stars.

(Sometimes it was the wind that pushed him forward. Sometimes it was hands pushing him forward--- usually Warren’s or his dad’s. The best and worst dreams were when he fell willingly.)

He always woke with the same twitch, a full-bodied jerk, and he never fell back asleep. Gabriel usually crawled onto the fire escape and watched the sun burn away the night sky, cigarette dangling from his fingertips. He thought about the wind tearing at his hair and clothes, the way his breath vanished from his lung, and the rush of terror and something else as the star-studded sky flew up to meet him.

---

It hadn’t always been a common dream. As a child, he had it maybe once or twice a year. As a child, he woke up crying and shaking, and it was always one of his older sibling who’d comfort him. He dozed off eventually, pressed into their side.

Things changed after Benji and Kit died.

Dad got stricter (meaner), and Warren withdrew into themselves. Gabriel got into fights, and that was when he really started hearing it. How he wasn’t good enough, how he was too stupid to stay out of trouble, and whey couldn’t he be good and wonderful and perfect like Warren. It wasn’t fair, and the injustice of it stung. He got good grades. He tried to stay out of trouble, he really did, but why bother trying when his best wasn’t good enough?

He started having the falling dream more and more. It was always the same, and he appreciated knowing what to expect. The feeling of wind in his hair, that breathless terror and exhilaration, it had all become a comfort and rush. Nothing ever came from it, and it wasn’t like there was anyone he could talk to. He was alone. Alone and (as his dad liked to remind him) insignificant, and that makes him perfect for the Falling Titan.

---

In the end, it was Warren who told him about the entities. Warren (Gabriel) hadn’t spoken civilly in years, had barely spoken at all, in fact. It suited Gabriel just fine. Warren had disappeared into the hidden corners of London, and Gabriel retreated to the country. Not because he cared about things like fresh air or open space. He just wanted a clear night sky. Sitting on the roof, staring up at the stars, Gabriel felt the same fear-adrenaline-excitement as his dream.

Gabriel couldn’t --- can’t --- believe it at first. It was impossible. It couldn’t be possible. If there was one thing he and Warren shared though, it was an unerringly logical way of dealing with the world around them. They bombarded Gabriel with messages of all of their not inconsiderable evidence until he has to accept there’s some merit to what they’re saying. He might not have had the same unending curiosity and accompanying sleuthing skills as Warren, but they know how to dig. What really sells it is the book.

---

Gabriel agreed to meet Warren reluctantly, and that’s how he ended up in London for the first time in years. The bar is a bright, frenetic affair, but it doubled as a coffee whop with high-speed wifi. It suited Warren, even if Gabriel would never admit it.

“Hey,” Warren greeted cautiously, sliding into the seat across from Gabriel. He was a little surprised to see how tired and wary they look. Their gaze flited about constantly, skipping over faces and screens, up to cameras, flicking to Gabriel’s face, then dropping to his hands. “Look, I know you probably don’t believe me about everything, but I have even more proof.” They pulled their backpack into their lap and began pawing through it. After a moment, they emerged with a book. Hardcover, the dust jacked long gone, the title faded into illegibility.

Gabriel accepted the book and sucked in a breath when his skin came into contact with the book. For a moment, he went a little breathless in an echo of his dream. He flicked open the worn pages with something approaching reverence as that familiar fear lodged in his lungs. There was a book plate that read From the library of Jurgen Leitner, but Gabriel barely glanced at that. He was drawn to the title. “From Beyond the Stars,” he murmured aloud and thrilled at the power behind the words.

He jolted when Warren leaned over the table and slammed the book shut. “Don’t,” they warn, meeting his eyes for the first time. “I know you’re going to read it, but not here, okay?” Gabriel stares until Warren leaned back slowly in their chair, worrying their sleeve.

Gabriel laughed, a short, sharp sound. “And I bet you want to call me afterwards too so you know what happened right?” Warren’s eyes went wide and wounded and slightly guilty, and Gabriel knew he hit the nail on the head. He took a sip from his drink and shook his head. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? Always so fucking curious, like it makes you any better than me.”

Warren seemed genuinely hurt by that one. “I don’t think I’m better than you Gabriel. I never have.”

Gabriel couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice as he hugged the book to his chest. “You could’ve fooled me. It’s not like you ever said anything to Dad when he started in on me.”

Warren gazed at him steadily. “No, I didn’t. But you never said anything to him either.”

Gabriel didn’t say anything. He just downed the rest of his drink.

---

Gabriel read From Beyond the Stars for the first time on the roof of his little country home. It felt appropriate, and the routine of it was comforting. He’d never been much of a reader, especially not of fiction, but it drew him in. The more he read, the less he felt tethered to the ground. It was like his dream: the burn of adrenaline, the breath vanishing from his lungs, the fear that he is nothing. He felt like he could fall forever, tumbling past stars and celestial titans.

The thought should’ve terrified him. It did. Part of him relished it though. If he meant nothing, nothing he did matters, right?

The realization made him laugh, the sound breathless and spiraling out into the cold void. For the first time in his life, he felt weightless.

#vast!gabriel gives me feeling #and i need to write about eye!warren #( writing | gabriel. )#( tma au | gabriel. )

1 note · View note

wafflesneggos · 4 years

Text

This is stupid but hear me out

Markiplier Egos but in The Magnus Archives Universe

The Host

formerly known as the archivist, clawed his own eyes out at darks approval to sever his connection with the eye

Now is basically jurgen leitner and keeps a hold over powerful books, some he himself wrote, some he’s keeping locked away

His library is super weirdly laid out, it feels like its always changing and the corridors are winding and large. Its structured in a way to keep the books dormant (wilford helped with it)

His powers come from his left over scars from working with the eye and his exposure to just so many cursed books

This makes him extremely powerful but has left him with plenty of other problems

Paranoid

Wilford Warfstache

A character has never screamed the distortion at me as violently as this motherfucker

So yeah Avatar of the spiral

Reality bending powers, so many doors, so much confusion, lives for the chaos

Completely off his rocker

Marked by the spiral from childhood but only became an avatar after his experience in the webs house(tm)

Darkiplier

avatar of the web

Manipulative bastard

Convinced the archivist to gouge his own eyes out and now keeps a very tight hold over him, manipulating him and using him for his own goals

Became an a avatar at the same time as wilford, despite all odds they’re kinda friends

Subtly manipulates all egos at all times, even when they don’t think he’s involved he usually is in some way or another

Dark is a creepy bitch, he can basically appear out of nowhere, and can use his aura to weaken the will power of those around him to then convince them into listening to him

If push comes to shove he can also outright control people but he doesn’t usually need that

When his aura get out of control it can look... spidery, its very unnerving

The rumor is he’s made out of the souls of all the people he’s broken over the years, but thats not possible right? Thats just a rumor.

Celine and Damien

Like the lukas family, Celine and damien were part of a family of occultists worshippers of the mother of puppets

Damien tried very hard to sever all his family ties but he always had a soft spot for his sister

The dark had its eye on him for a while ( get it cause damiens always in the dark)

Celine was the family pride and joy, they thought she would make a fine avatar

Mark, oblivious but manipulated by the web orchestrated who killed markiplier to create a very powerful avatar for the web

Dark as an entity is made out of parts of a dark avatar and a web avatar very closely controlled by the web

Both of them have completely lost their humanity at this point

Doctor Iplier

no affiliation to any fear entity, hates them all and just wants to make sure nobody dies, bless him he’s too old for this shit

The lonely has its eye on him tho

Not that dark or the host would ever allow it to claim him

Google

Not an avatar but a follower of the extinction

Believes that the time of humanity is over and is patiently waiting for them to destroy themselves

Used to be more proactive and tried to destroy humanity but now he just takes care if his brothers and waits for the inevitable

He owes dark a favor for helping him rebuild his brothers and dark never lets him forget it

Ollie

Ollie distanced himself from the family business and severed his connections to the extinction by giving himself a human name

It hit google hard but they’ve a unit and need to work together to function so they’ve tried to rebuild their relationship after giving each other some space and now just don’t talk about entities

I could go on but this post is long... just needed to get these random super niche thoughts into the world. maybe I’ll do a part 2 sometime idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#markiplier #markiplieregos #the magnus archives #tma #the host #darkiplier #wilford warfstache #staygoldrbhw #reverseblackholeofwords #dont know if youve listened to the magnus archives but if you have i thought you might appreciate this #the web #the dark #the lonely #the magnus institute #jurgen leitner #leitners #markiplier egos

6 notes · View notes

pilferingapples · 4 years

Text

TMA S2 Natter I guess!!

LORE LORE LORE LORE WHOOO

under the cut for massive major spoilers of course

- I’m really glad I’m binging this, it helps me remember things to have a big chunk of story and lots to pick up on all stacked together and reinforcing itself. I still have to check and double check the Fan Wiki for names here and there, when I hear someone I KNOW I recognize from earlier; I’ve inevitably run across some spoilers that way, thanks to the structure of the wiki, so I’m really glad I’m needing to do that less and less as the show goes on; I don’t think I had to check anything in the last ten episodes, thought I did still have to go to the wiki to get links to the Transcripts, because

- I find the tunnel-echo effects make the dialogue pretty unparseable no matter how loud I have the show, unfortunately. I could understand Michael,and not much else. (I mean,I could understand Michael’s voice, the Spiral’s motives and all are fairly opaque to me still.) The voices and acting lend so much ambiance, I would have been happy to watch along on the YT vid with subtitles , but it doesn’t have subtitles? Frustrating, but I do really appreciate there being transcripts!

- Michael makes me really, really sad. He was just a kid who stayed out in the rain a second too late! It wasn’t even his idea! And he got Marked and he lost his whole damn life to this thing before he was even old enough to have a good grasp on what reality is in the normal swing of things. Poor kid. Poor Michael-that-should-have-been. (ETA so I don’t answer this multiple times: I’m aware Lightning-and-Tower Michael might not be Hallways and Hands Michael, but this is just name-association, really. Also, there’s a growing horror in S2 in finding so many people who seemed to escape their encounters showing up again in much worse shape in other Statements...)

- Thanks to Tumblr Osmosis , I’m sure the Endgame OTP (at least so far) in Jon/Martin, and while I’m currently not a fan of that (though totally prepared to change my mind according to character/relationship development!) I am delighted to be able to enjoy Jon and Basira’s relationship without worrying that her character is going to be suddenly smashed flat to make her The Love Interest. I love their weird uneasy alliance! I hope she comes back but also hope she goes somewhere Far Away and lives Ordinarily Ever After.

-on that note, Daisy Daisy Daisy bring back Daisy, I don’t usually get into cop characters but WEIRD CRYPTID FORCE COPS are apparently a potential weakness for me (..also I know, I know they are probably Hunt-aligned. I’ve already said I’m unfortunately Weak for The Hunt ).

-I miss Actual!Sasha >:

- Tim is seriously the only person in this whole damn institute with any self preservation either supernatural or normal?? “Yeah you’re right I don’t like the boss who stalks me and keeps secrets about a situation which is directly about my own personal safety like I was the enemy and takes his trauma out on me directly while I’m recovering from,in this case , exactly the same trauma thanks “

Martin: Wow Tim you’re so selfish, how can you even think about fleeing our supernatural hellscape, why aren’t you more concerned with the guy who is very overtly considering you a potential enemy and crossing all boundaries in a way that, in any normal job, would right off be enough to get HR and maybe the cops involved? WHY ARE YOU BEING SO UNREASONABLE, TIM??...Now excuse me while I run to my probable death with no preparation in defense of a guy who seems to go out of his way to hit my very obvious emotional weak points and considered me so useless he thought I might be dead already, because unlike you I am making good decisions!!! LEEEROY JENKINNNSSSSS”

-honestly the apparent connection between why the Institute/Elias accepted Martin as sacrifice an employee and Martin’s emotional Everything is both screamingly apparent and worth an essay all on its own , that’s some Good Charactering

-I never trusted Elia-- Never Trust the Boss Of Shadowy Organization With Mysterious Backers, that’s my motto-- but HE KILLED THE INFODUMP SOURCE. HOW DARE. INSTANT LEAST FAVE.

- I KNEW LEITNER WAS A RESEARCHER I KNEW IT I KNEW IT, who has a vast occult library BUT never really figures in any accounts of actually DOING anything?? AN OCCULT NERD DOING RESEARCH. (I say, well aware that *I* did not do my research as fully as I’d like here, to avoid spoilers, and thus may be forgetting a Big Thing he apparently did)

- I did NOT know he was still alive?? and totally didn’t see him working with Gertrude (it was actually Gert’s Occult Book Hunting that made me slap my head and go OH RIGHT about Leitner!)

-I want to know more about Gertrude

- The OH NO moment I had during Leitner’s description of obvious multiple entities working together to just wreck his shop!! BAD, BAD, THE INJUSTICE LEAGUE OF AAAAAH IS BAD

- also now I know for sure that the Web and the Stranger are enemies? this puts at least 2/3 Fear Entities that could, I am aware , pretty much have me as a pawn for a cheap ice-cream cone allied against the one Entity that makes me absolutely go into Screaming Phobia Murder Mode, I don’t know if everyone’s feeling the same way or if this is just the show happening to find my particular keys like that

-...listen Elias is THE WORRRRSSSST and I am sure The Institute is Not Good but if The Stranger existed and was A Thing like this then they wouldn’t have to Play me to get my assistance on taking it out , every single episode about it makes me go Mad Raccoon in A Box , I want it gone, the enemy of the Stranger is my ...slightly less enemy

-Jonnycakes Sims is the Avatar of the Human Trainwreck, but I did not realize until this episode that he does not drink coffee?? I’m torn between thinking he should and thinking all caffeine should be taken away from him forever.

-Also, Dammit, Jonet, this “keeping info about supernatural horror schemes from my team For Their Own Good” nonsense? BAD , you are not a Victorian patriarch and they are not your children, GIVE THEM A FIGHTING CHANCE YOU GOOBER, DID YOU EVER READ ONE GOTHIC NOVEL, IGNORANCE IS DEATH

- ..HOW DID YOU DECIDE TO SMASH THE TABLE YOU. GOOBER PIE. I take it back, definitely Jonny needs to drink all the more caffeine.

--in conclusion, ELIAS TOOK MY LORE HOOKUP AND HE MUST PAY FOR HIS CRIMES.

(Supplemental:P)

I'm getting the impression, from responses to my earlier little post, that people don't? like Tim ?? and I am Afraid this means he is Something Horrible?? but he's fun and friendly and smart and reacting like a human with normal human self-preservation instincts + a touch of Heroic honestly?? why do people not like Tim, is he a secret Horror, NO DON'T ACTUALLY TELL ME but D: NERVOUS NOW

#TMA natter #long post sorry #also not particularly focused I'm tired and wanting to hear S3 XD

31 notes · View notes

trifoliate-undergrowth · 4 years

Text

Jonah Magnus begrudgingly becomes a trans ally after putting himself in the wrong body “as a joke” and suffering

Concept: Dramatic Bastard Jonah “Hubris” Magnus decides to put his eyeballs in a female body for one of these bodyhops because he “thought it’d be fun” (and also perhaps make that snippy young librarian Gertrude stop commenting on the fact that the Institute has never had a female Head and that she feels it’s high time they got their heads out of the Dark Ages and stopped ignoring half the population) and it BACKFIRES HORRIBLY

(long post under the cut)

For one thing, half of his (actual, unstated) reasoning behind the switch was to spice up his third marriage with Peter, but Peter is Too Gay to Function(TM) and just takes one look at the new body and immediately books a year-long voyage to Siberia and leaves the country without so much as touching Jonah.

And then Jonah has to deal with having a female body to take care of and absolutely no idea how one works because despite serving the Watcher he is, also, Too Gay to Function(TM) and has not prioritized information on how to handle having a coochie. He didn’t think it would be a big deal. He was wrong.

See, up until now Jonah Magnus has always picked young, twink-ish bodies that have at least a superficial resemblance to the young Jonah Magnus, and has assumed that being able to adjust to the slight differences just fine and even enjoying the changes means that he’s immune to dysphoria.

Jonah Magnus is convinced that gender dysphoria is bullshit and that he’ll like a female body just fine because he wore drag once and had a fun time. Jonah Magnus has not thought this through. Jonah Magnus has not considered that “wearing drag as a man who enjoys being a man but also likes dresses” is actually different from “actually not being a man or comfortable in a man’s body”.

Jonah Magnus figures out the difference very quickly.

Jonah Magnus, King of Denial, writes it off as “needing to adjust to the new body” until he catches himself wishing he had that Leitner that makes you disappear bc he doesn’t want to be seen, or to have to see himself, in this body and he just wants it to disappear.

The first barista at Jonah’s favorite coffee shop to call him “ma’am” gets to watch a grown woman visibly flinch at being properly addressed and then rush out of the store. The barista then violently remembers something embarrassing that happened to her in high school, and spends the next week suffering from nightmares about her worst memories.

A man makes the mistake of catcalling some academic-looking librarian dame. She gives him a freezing look and suddenly he’s having violent flashbacks to all his worst experiences at once. He falls down on the street and has a nosebleed and eventually has to be picked up by the police and brought to a mental hospital because he’s raving like a lunatic.

Jonah “Cannot Admit I Made a Mistake” Magnus, still trying to convince himself this isn’t that bad actually, catches himself making a mental schedule for showering As Little As Socially Acceptable so he doesn’t have to see himself naked. Jonah Magnus is usually fastidiously clean, and can’t stand the feel of going more than two days without a shower. Jonah Magnus suddenly prefers that to seeing himself naked any more than necessary. Jonah Magnus finally admits that he made a mistake. Jonah Magnus is starting to understand what the words “gender dysphoria” and also “male privilege” mean and he’s hating every moment of it.

And then he forgets to take the birth control that this body was on and its period comes back with a vengeance and he does something he never does and calls Peter, screaming about how he’s LITERALLY DYING and Peter is like “you know women have periods right.”

“WHAT”

“Yeah they bleed every month”

“They WHAT?? EVERY MONTH???”

“...Jonah you serve the Eye. How do you not know basic human biology”

Jonah “Too Proud to Admit that the Information on Coochie is Buried Under Years and Years of Occult Secrets and Sexy Robert Smirke Moments” Magnus: “I KNOW!! I JUST--IT’S COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL THAT IT HURTS THIS MUCH”

“Yes”

“THIS CAN’T BE NORMAL”

“Yes it can”

“I’M DYING AND ALSO I’M STAINING ALL MY SHEETS THIS IS HORRIBLE”

“All of these are things I’ve heard my sisters say.”

“NO IT--wait really”

“They talked way too much. Really weren’t suited for Forsaken. I was so glad when they left. Partly because I was a squeamish little boy who really didn’t want to hear about their girl puberty issues any more”

“Hang on, I’m NOT dying?”

“Probably not. Do you have any painkillers? Get in a hot bath and wait it out.”

“HOW LONG???”

“Euuughgjs I dunno maybe like a week? Ask a woman”

“A WEEK?? WHAT?? I’M GOING TO DIE PETER I CAN’T ENDURE THIS FOR A WEEK”

“You.... didn’t think about this BEFORE you stole the body?”

“Y-YES OF COURSE I DID”

“Jonah Magnus, world’s greatest occultist and scholar, forgot to do his research?”

“THAT’S NOT IT, I JUST DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD BE THIS BAD,,, PETER YOU’RE LYING TO ME PETER PLEASE TELL ME YOU’RE LYING I CAN’T TAKE A WEEK OF THIS PETER”

“I said I don’t know. A week sounds right but I could be totally wrong. Ask a woman.”

“I DON’T KNOW ANY WOMEN THAT I CAN ASK AWKWARD QUESTIONS OF”

“Go to the library”

“I CAN’T I’M IN PAIN AND BLEEDING ALL OVER EVERYTHING”

“Oh, yeah, there should be stuff for that. You’re in, uh, the former body’s apartment right? She’s probably got like, what are they called? Feminine pads?”

“WHAT? PETER I’M AN ADULT I’M NOT WEARING A DIAPER”

“Okay, have fun getting the bloodstains out of everything you own.”

“HOW DO WOMEN LIVE LIKE THIS”

“I don’t know. Rather impressive really.”

“FUCK”

He caves and goes to young Gertrude and is like “listen if you tell anyone this I’ll destroy your life but I’m actually an ancient bodyhopping bastard and this is my first time in a female body and I’m in hell please help me” and that’s how this Gertrude finds out who Jonah Magnus is

Elias Bouchard gets snagged for the next transfer because, yeah he’s kind of a weird pick for next Head of the Institute and people might talk but Jonah is Desperate at this point and Elias more or less fits his MO as far as physical traits go at least

Peter is so relieved to have A Husband when he gets back that he doesn’t even complain about Elias picking a blond just because he knows Peter doesn’t like it. And for once Elias didn’t even do it on purpose, he was just in a hurry to get out of the Hell Dysphoria Body and took the first option he saw.

The formerly-plagued-by-nightmares barista at Jonah’s favorite coffee shop stops seeing the increasingly depressed-looking woman who’d been coming in, but now there’s a nice young who smiles like the sun when she calls him Sir and it’s such a nice smile that she feels a deep sense of warmth and contentment and only thinks good thoughts for the rest of the day. She falls asleep content in the knowledge that all her friends love and appreciate her and that she makes the best coffee in London and for the next week she has pleasant, restful dreams that she can’t remember but that she wakes up from smiling.

Elias Bouchard quietly starts offering trans-inclusive health benefits to employees of the Magnus Institute. Martin Blackwood, Broke Trans Guy In Need of a Job, instantaneously appears on the doorstep.

#elias bastard bouchard #peter lukas #lonely eyes #gertrude robinson (briefly mentioned)#I love trans martin headcanons they're Good #joke post #long text post #the magnus archives #personal #alternate headcanon where Joanna Magnus was actually trans. but this was funnier #raise your hand if you would work for a shady paranormal archive that gave trans health benefits *slowly raises hand*

39 notes · View notes

stilitana · 4 years

Text

a requiem for mister spider | 8k | completed

In which a fly endeavors to know the nature of the web, or: Jon encounters a familiar Leitner, and reflections upon what it means to have a choice ensue.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly; “’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy. The way into my parlor is up a winding stair, And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.” “O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain, For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

— Mary Howitt, "The Spider and the Fly"

Jon stood in the hall staring at the door to the office of the head of the Magnus Institute, where he’d been summoned for his second interview. A second interview—that was a good sign, surely? If they hadn’t liked him—hadn't found him qualified, or capable, they’d have let him know after the first, right? He found himself twisting his fingers together and forced his hands apart, let them hang limply at his sides. Was he dressed appropriately, or did he look as foolish as he felt—like a child wearing an adult’s clothes, a nobody playing at professionalism? He knew the importance of appearance, but that did not mean he enjoyed trying to look the part of a proper academic. He wished his resume could speak for itself, so that it didn’t matter what he wore or what he looked like—but he knew his youth, his lack of work experience or high-demand skills, all left him a rather average candidate. Not too shabby, he hoped—but certainly not a standout.

He took a deep breath and raised his fist to knock on the door. Before he could do so, it swung open, momentarily unbalancing him.

The man who greeted him fixed Jon with an unnerving, unblinking gaze that sharpened when his eyes locked with Jon’s. Jon couldn’t bring himself to look away. (He’d never known when to look away, not effortlessly, as other people seemed to know—but to have his own intent, prolonged eye-contact turned back on himself was new.) The gaze bore into him, seemed to see inside of him. He shivered.

Then the moment passed, and the man extended a hand. “Jonathan Sims, I’m Elias Bouchard, director of the institute. It’s a pleasure to see you for myself.”

Was that an odd way to greet someone? Jon couldn’t be sure. He’d come to the conclusion long ago that he himself was often considered odd, and so didn’t always trust his own judgement when it came to the relative normalcy of others. So he simply tried for a smile and nodded.

He hadn’t expected to be asked about his childhood. But with those blank, unfeeling eyes on his face, he found himself answering whatever was asked of him, without much hesitance.

There was a spider in the corner of Elias’ office. He could see it in his peripheral vision, over Elias’ right shoulder. He could hear it weaving. The sound of its legs running up and down and along the silky sinewy length of its web. He found his gaze drifting to it for longer and longer intervals, and tried not to wince at the sound of its weaving. Like a damp finger tracing the curvature of a crystal glass—that fine, eerie vibration. Fingers up and down a taut harp string—not plucking, not making music, only a sort of skin-to-wire thrumming, a ripple in the air. He heard the air rushing, Elias’ mouth moving but making no sound, only the horrible magnified rhythm of the spider weaving its web, the microscopic ultra-fine hairs on its legs rustling against its own silk.

“Jonathan? Jon? May I call you Jon?”

Jon blinked, refocusing on Elias. He became aware that his back was cold and slick with sweat, his mouth parched. “Yes?”

Elias smiled. It was a bland, mild-mannered expression. He stood and once more offered his hand and Jon mirrored him. “Perfect. Well, Jon, it’s been a real pleasure. I think you’re an excellent fit for the job. Expect to receive a formal offer along with some more information about the position within the next couple of days—I believe you’ve already spoken to Rosie, she’ll send it along—unless you’re feeling eager, and would rather get to the paperwork straight away?”

Jon faltered, momentarily speechless. Had he just landed the job? Just like that? His gaze drifted to the spider once more, and Elias’ sharp gaze followed the motion like an owl tracing the scurrying of a field mouse. His smile tightened. “Ah. Spiders. Pesky little pests—can't say I’m fond of them, but they have their uses, I suppose.”

He turned his smile back on Jon, who swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to return the grin.

He filled out the paperwork that day, and was hired on the spot.

There is a popular notion that ghosts are remnants of habit. Like the canned, repetitious melody inside a music box, playing out until the cylinders cease turning, so too does our muscle memory go on walking circles round the neighborhood, flitting back and forth before a bedroom window, unbodied. The muscles return to the dirt and are eaten by worms but the memory remains.

So too with the living.

By the time the Head Archivist died in the line of duty, she had sunk into such obscurity that the rest of the institute hardly noted her passing. All of her archival assistants were dead and gone, and she’d never been the most sociable woman. During the last few years she’d scarcely been seen outside the basement archives.

There was a brief remembrance vigil held around noon, orchestrated by some of the staff—people who had not known her, but who nonetheless felt obligated to somehow mark her passing.

“What’s going on in here?” Jon muttered, sidling up beside Tim in the crowded cafeteria.

“Some sort of a wake for Gertrude Robinson.”

Jon frowned, his face pinched. “Really? Here?”

“What? You don’t think it’s appropriate, mourning our dearly departed colleague where we all eat lunch?”

“I guess it’s a good reminder to watch what we eat.”

Tim stifled a snort. “You’re horrible.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you two were so close.”

“Listen. If I die in the line of duty—”

“What, crushed by a filing cabinet? Bled out from a thousand papercuts? Drowned in tea?”

“Don’t you dare let anybody pull a stunt like this in my honor. You got that?”

“You mean you don’t think a eulogy performed by strangers in the cafeteria is a suitable send-off?”

“Seriously.”

Jon rolled his eyes. “All right, Tim. I promise that if and when you should perish while checking out books at the library or flirting with filing clerks, I will not let our colleagues mourn you in the cafeteria.”

“You’re a real pal, Jon.”

“How long is this going to take?”

“Hungry? Me too. My lunch is in the fridge.”

“M-hm.”

“Just didn’t feel quite right to grab it and go.”

“No, no, of course.”

Jon turned at a gentle pressure on his shoulder, and there was Elias, leaning down to speak to him, his voice low. “There you are. A word in my office, Jon.”

Jon glanced at Tim, who waggled his eyebrows, before following Elias out of the room and down the hall.

“You’ll need to appoint assistants,” Elias said. “Or else I’m afraid you’ll find the archives quite lonely.”

“There’s no one left?”

“It’s understaffed, at the moment.”

“So I—right. An entirely new staff.”

Elias slid a piece of paper across his desk. “I understand it’s overwhelming. Of course, the decision is yours, but I thought you might appreciate a little guidance. You have your own new position to settle into, on top of hiring and training assistants. These are some people I thought might suit you.”

Jon took the list and glanced over it absently, nodding along. “Yes,” he murmured. “You’d know best.”

Still reading over the names, he missed the vacant smile spread like an oil slick across Elias’ face.

The basement was dusty, cluttered, and dim. If there was any order amid the chaos, it was not a system which Jon could yet read. He swore and scrubbed his hands over his face as he stepped back from the filing cabinets he’d been emptying before he’d stepped directly into a cobweb.

“Are you all right, Jon?”

Jon glared at his new assistant through his fingers, trying and failing to maintain any dignity as his breath caught in his throat and his heartbeat lurched. “I’m fine , Martin,” he said, his voice thin. “Just stepped into another spiderweb.”

Martin winced in sympathy. “There do seem to be an awful lot of them down here.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But you know, that’s not really a bad thing. I mean they aren’t hurting anybody—if anything they’ll keep the more pesky bugs away, you know?”

Jon picked up a heavy book from one of the desks and turned back to the filing cabinet. “It’s an archive, not a nature conservancy.”

He’d already smashed three of the nasty things that day. He needed a shower. He could feel their legs crawling all over him, just beneath the skin. He shivered and raised the book, looking around for the web.

“Wait a minute,” Martin said, picking up his glass and a manila envelope.

“What?” Jon said, trying to decide how to best angle his swing in order to smash the offending arachnid with the greatest efficiency.

Martin stood at his shoulder. Too close, in his space. Jon sidestepped, bumping his shoulder into the filing cabinet. “Let me help.”

“I’m perfectly capable of killing one—little spider.”

“Let me help it , then.”

Martin deftly caught the spider between the envelope and the glass with a triumphant little smile. “Gotcha. See?”

He held up the glass. The spider was crawling around the brim, legs reaching up and sliding down the glass as it mapped the sealed circumference of its cage, searching for escape. Its legs. All of its legs, many-jointed, reaching, grabbing, pulling, weaving. Its fat, segmented body, its cluster of eyes, the faint, barely audible sound of its body against the envelope.

Jon shuddered and licked his lips. His hands were clammy as he wiped them against his slacks. He turned away abruptly, picking up a sheath of papers and mindlessly tapping them against the desk to straighten them. “Get rid of it.”

“Okay. I’ll just take the little guy outside.” Martin paused. “You know, they really are pretty much harmless. He’s not venomous or anything like that. In fact, they’re sort of remarkable? Did you know not all spiders are solitary, like thousands and thousands of them get together to build one huge, gigantic web and—”

Jon made a small, muffled sound, the back of his hand pressed to his mouth. The look he gave Martin shut him up immediately. It was frightened and wounded and suspicious and Martin recognized it as the look of someone who was sure he was being picked on but not yet sure why.

“Just get rid of it,” Jon said, and cleared his throat, schooling his expression into a dismissive, disinterested frown. “We have a lot of work to get done to get this place in order. Stop wasting time.”

Jon turned away and walked into his office, shutting the door behind him.

Martin looked over at Tim and Sasha, who had been minding their own business and sorting through a filing cabinet until Jon shut the door. Now they were staring at him.

Sasha’s mouth twitched as she seemed to be stifling a grin. “Way to go, Martin. It’s the first day and you’ve already gotten in the new boss’ good books.”

Martin winced and walked closer so they would lower their voices. “Sh.”

“Seriously, I didn’t peg you as the type to get a kick out of making people squirm.”

“I wasn’t trying to—I didn’t mean to! I just—really do think they’re neat, that’s all, and thought maybe he’d stop killing them if I showed him how easy they are to catch!”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that, he hates the damn things,” said Tim.

Martin groaned. “Oh, god. I didn’t know it was—I mean, lots of people say they don’t like spiders, I didn’t know it was, you know, like a phobia, or whatever. You don’t think he thinks I was, like, tormenting him on purpose, like making fun of him, or something, do you?”

Tim shrugged, smirking. “Knowing Jon? Yeah, probably.”

“Well, that’s just great.”

Tim patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not one to hold a grudge.”

“He’s not?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tortured him with spider facts before.”

“Great. Thanks, Tim, that makes me feel so much better. Should I...apologize?”

“God, no. That’ll just embarrass everybody. Just let it go, Martin. It’s fine. I’m just teasing. But do go ahead and get that thing out of here, seriously.”

“Right,” Martin muttered, and climbed the stairs out of the archives to release the spider outside.

He took to making what he called (only inside his own head, of course,) spider patrols. If he found an arachnid, he quietly scooped it up and whisked it outside before Jon could see it. Given the archive’s basement location, these little trips could take him several minutes to complete, and more than once he returned downstairs to find Jon peeved with him for vanishing, and he had to make up some nonsense errand as an excuse. But that was fine. It was fine if Jon was irritated with him and didn’t like him much at all. It still felt good to be useful.

“What’s the freakiest thing you ever saw in Artefact Storage?” Tim asked, before taking a huge bite of his sandwich. It was Friday, and Tim had corralled his fellow archival staff members into joining him at a nearby café for lunch. He was trying to make it a weekly thing. It was good to breathe fresh air and escape the oppressive atmosphere in the basement for a little while.

Sasha tapped her chin, thinking. “Oh, that’s a tough one. I mean, the haunted dolls, you know, those are pretty creepy.”

“Haunted dolls?” Martin said.

“I mean, I don’t know if any of them are actually haunted or not? But either way—still creepy.”

“You didn’t work there long, though, did you?” Jon asked.

“No. God, no. I transferred to research soon as I could.”

“So at least some of the stuff down there must have been genuinely weird, if it freaked you out so much you transferred,” Tim said. “Come on, you’ve got to have some spooky stories.”

Sasha grimaced. “Thankfully, I don’t. Nothing weird ever happened to me there, it just—there was just this feeling. Being there, around all of those things—it wasn’t right. I don’t know how to explain it. No, none of the artefacts ever moved on their own or anything like that, but they just...they just weren’t right. Especially not the books.”

“The Leitners,” Jon said.

“Yeah. Exactly. If we ever had any of those in storage, they were under the strictest security. I saw one, once—but never read any, never so much as touched one.”

“Good,” Jon said, sounding startled. “I should think not. Just how many of those things do we have?”

“I...don’t know, off the top of my head. You could check the catalogs, though they’re a bit...out of order, to tell you the truth.”

“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you sound spooked by some old books,” Tim said, smirking. “Dozens of statements about monsters under the bed you write off as bullshit, and this is what gets to you?”

“I didn’t say that,” Jon snapped.

“Leitners do show up in a lot of statements though, don’t they?” Martin mused.

“Yes, Martin, good of you to notice.”

Martin flushed. “I mean—I'm just saying. I know you don’t believe most—or any—of the statements, but if one thing keeps showing up, over and over, from multiple different people—then it just seems like maybe there’s something to it?”

“They’re just books,” Jon said, staring at the table. “And--it doesn’t matter. His library was destroyed. If there are any stragglers in storage...I’ll have a word with Elias about it.”

“You do that, Jon, great idea. No way will the artefacts staff be resentful of the new archivist immediately butting into their business,” said Sasha.

“Really? You don’t think so?”

She patted his arm where it rested on the table. “Maybe just a little.”

“Well. They can resent me if they want to, that’s their business. If there are any of those books lying around, well. It’s doing everyone a favor to have them burned.”

The lighter doesn’t frighten him; it intrigues. In due time, it even comes to be a source of comfort. He likes to hold its familiar slim shape, feel the cool, slick plastic. Flicking the fork and hearing the scratch of the sparkwheel turning comes to satisfy an anxious itch in the back of his mind in times of stress; he can sit there flicking the lighter until he is soothed. The spiderweb pattern might be lace, might be nonsense, just white lines. Symbols in the abstract, divorced from what they signify, failing to connote meaning. A pattern is a pattern, nothing more.

Later he will learn something of anchors. Later he will still have much to learn about anchors. The sparkwheel turns, ignites, lights the tip of a cigarette. Hand cupping the tender flame, shielding it from wind as it takes and eats the paper. The first drag sucking fire into the tobacco, hand to mouth, inhale-exhale, heat in his chest. Everything imbued with so much ritual and no way to extricate himself from it. This too is an anchor of sorts. Entangled. Was there ever a moment when you might have been free? Or is to be born to be ensnared?

Jon was on his hands and knees in Artefact Storage, struggling to dig through boxes one-handed. He kept his burned and bandaged hand tucked close to his chest. Every bump and slight movement made him momentarily speechless from pain. He was trying not to think about it. What was one more scar? What was a loss of mobility in one hand to him, when having two good hands had never kept him safe? If his body was the kindling he had to burn through to find answers, so be it.

This would be easier with help. He could admit that now. But it was too late for that.

It might not be too late to save them. If not from the institute, then from the Unknowing.

He sighed, standing with a wince and kicking the box to the side. Nothing. He surveyed the aisles upon aisles of boxes and waited for Beholding to nudge him, his mind a magnet for awful knowledge, drawing him on to terrible secrets like a shark to blood. As he reached overhead to ease a box off a shelf, he heard footsteps on the stairs and tensed, whirled around and froze.

Martin stood in the doorway and slowly raised his palms. “Hey. It’s just me, it’s okay.”

Jon released his breath but couldn’t let go of the tension that was making his whole body tremble. “What do you want?” He winced. “I--that came out wrong.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t know how it was meant to have come out, or any better way to put it. He was all out of energy for social pleasantries. He had left the circus unfit for human interaction, a tangle of nerves and bruises.

(Melanie had been applying lotion to her hands in the office the other day, and the smell had made him gag. He’d frozen, staring at her hands, and she’d called him a creep and asked him what his problem was, and how could he explain that the smell made him feel all over again Nikola’s cold, plastic hands touching him, touching all over, so gentle and terrible with the latent threat of violence, so soft upon the skin she planned to flay from his body?)

“Do you...want some help?”

“Okay.”

Martin shuffled closer, slowly. “This one?” he said, pointing to the box Jon had been reaching for. Jon nodded, and watched him lean up and take it from the shelf with ease, holding it firmly with both hands. He expected Martin to dump it on the ground with the other boxes he’d been rifling through, but instead he turned and carried it over to the table. When he caught Jon watching him, standing still, he said, “Come on, sit down. It’s no good for your back, sitting all hunched over on the ground like that.”

Jon went to the table and reached into the box with his good hand, feeling through its contents.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. You might have just said. You could have asked.”

“Hm.”

“So...what are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Or—I'll know it when I find it.”

“That’s vague.”

“Well. That’s all I’ve got for you, at the moment. So much for serving an all-seeing god. Maybe I’m just not very good at this.”

“I think...that’s a good thing.”

“It’s not helping us. It’s not what we need.”

“What we need is...is each other. Not fear gods, or, or whatever the hell they are. Certainly not to be giving ourselves over to them.”

“Even if it might make things easier?”

“Yes, Jon. Especially then.”

Jon huffed, an irritated exhale as he raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m just—hell, Martin, I don’t know what I’m looking for. There’s just got to be something. We’re supposed to be stopping an apocalypse, but—but Tim can hardly stand to look at me, and I’m--well, let’s all be honest, I’m not exactly what you’d call in fighting shape,” he said, gesturing at himself with a bitter, derisive laugh. He cut the sound off harshly before it could give way to the ragged sob that sat permanently lodged in his throat. “And you—and this is going to be dangerous .”

“It’s already dangerous, Jon. You were kidnapped. I don’t--I wish you’d tell me what happened. I know you haven’t told us everything.”

“What’s the point?”

“It might help.”

“That’s not the kind of help we need at the moment.”

“Isn’t it?”

Jon turned away from Martin, back towards the aisles of boxes. He grit his teeth as he strained against the static buzz of ignorance, his limited human vision, bearing down upon the veil of the world, looking for a tear in the fabric of the world through which he could See through the dread eye of Beholding.

Something familiar looked back at him, blinked, and all at once his vision narrowed back to its usual limited scope. His breath hitched. “Oh. There’s something down here.”

“What--what do you mean?”

Jon walked forward as though in a dream. He knelt and pulled a box into his lap, reached inside and felt around. His hand bumped up against a small cardboard rectangle. Thick, bulky pages. A familiar worn corner where the cover was bent, the plastic having worn away and leaving a soft, fuzzy patch of exposed cardboard. His heart beat fast. He heard only the blood in his ears, loud. It sounded as though he were travelling very fast through a tunnel with the wind blowing by. His body faded away, became invisible and light as the air as Jon pulled the book from the box.

The strings attached to his joints lift and pull him to his feet and he cannot find it in himself to be at all surprised. They were always there, the strings—they simply hung loose enough that you didn’t always feel them. Now they were taut. Now he was operated. Strings on his hands, turning the pages, on his eyes, flicking left and right as he read, on his legs as he was led up the stairs and down the hall and back into the archival office.

“Mr. Spider wants another guest for dinner,” said the book, directly into his head, in a voice like creeping velvet, like moldering lace, like the rough gravel of a palm passing over a microphone, like the quiver in the words of a terrified child. “It is polite to knock.”

Where there once had been a door to knock at, was now a great black blankness. No—not empty—open. The door was open. Not blankness, not darkness—but a web woven so tightly that no light could only pass through the tiniest of slivers.

“Mr. Spider wants more.”

As the ringing in Jon’s ears reached a crescendo loud as though a plane were landing atop the building, the book was smacked out of his hands and sent tumbling through the air, to the floor.

All at once he was thrust back into his body. His chest heaved as his breath came back, short and shallow. His vision swam. He felt himself shaking. For an instant, blind rage coursed through his body and he turned to glare at whoever had knocked the book out of his hands, and then it was gone in an instant as the strings all snapped and he felt his mind in freefall, wheeling and spiraling out of control.

“Jon? Can you hear me, Jon?” said Martin, staring at him with wide, fearful eyes.

“What the fuck is going on?” said Tim, standing along with Melanie and Basira, all three of them staring with looks of mingled concern and confusion.

Jon opened his mouth but no words came out.

“Can you—can you talk? No? That’s, that’s all right, just—it's okay. I’m sorry I hit you, I didn’t know what to do, I thought—you didn’t seem like yourself.”

Jon looked down where the book had fallen. The rest of them did, too.

“ A Guest for Mr. Spider ,” said Tim. He was closest to where the book had fallen, and leaned down to pick it up, holding it aloft between two fingers, like it was an especially nasty piece of trash. “Looks like a real page-turner, Jon.”

Jon lurched forward, bumping painfully against a desk as he reached out for the book. “Tim, don’t .”

Tim glared. “Don’t what?”

Jon felt his head spinning. He knew he needed to slow down his breathing as he felt light-headed and dizzy, but he couldn’t. All he could see was the door opening, those two arms reaching out—

“Don’t open it. Please , Tim, don’t.”

Tim scrunched his nose and looked at Martin. “What the hell’s gotten into him?”

“I don’t--I don’t know. We were down in Artefact Storage, looking for—well, looking for something, and all of a sudden he got real quiet, and I look over and he’s reading this book, and then he started walking up here, so I followed him, but it was like he couldn’t hear me, and—I don’t know, I’ve never seen that book before in my life.”

Tim’s eyes widened and he dropped the book on the desk. “Whoa, you got this out of Artefact Storage?”

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying.”

Jon leaned over and snatched the book off the desk. It made his skin crawl to touch it—but he couldn’t just leave it there, where anyone might pick it up, and open it, and start to read.

“Jon, put that thing down, it’s got to be a damn Leitner,” said Tim.

“I know what it is.”

“Then what the hell are you doing with it?”

“I’m—I—”

“Don’t you think we’ve got enough supernatural bullshit going on without you reading a goddamn Leitner? What were you thinking?”

“I—I wasn’t thinking, I—”

“Obviously not,” said Melanie. “Jesus, Jon.”

Jon clutched the book to his chest and backed away from them as Martin took a step closer. “Jon, maybe you should let me take that...”

“No! No, it’s mine, I have to—”

“What do you mean, it’s yours ?” said Tim.

Jon swallowed back the rising bile. “Or, or I’m its , or was almost its, but I—I can’t let you touch it, just—just forget you ever saw it, I’ll take care of it.”

“Like you’ve taken care of every other fucked up spooky bullshit that’s come crashing into our lives?”

“That’s not fair, Tim,” said Martin. “Why don’t we just—all try to calm down, all right? Nobody’s reading the Leitner, we’re all okay.”

“Maybe we’re okay—or else Jon opening that thing summoned an eldritch horror. Again.”

“No. No, it doesn’t, it shouldn’t work like that, you have to read to the end, and then you have to knock.”

“Like this?” said Tim, raising a fist to wrap against the door.

Jon cried out and covered his mouth with his bandaged hand, the other clutching the book with white knuckles.

Tim lowered his fist without knocking. The anger faded from his face. “Jesus. I was kidding.”

“Jon. For someone who seems to know how the book works, you seem awful scared of it. What’s going on?” said Basira.

“I—I’m going to destroy it.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

Jon looked down and nodded once.

“You...you already read it, then?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re...still here. What happened?”

“It--took him.”

“Took who?”

Jon rubbed his bandaged hand harshly beneath his eyes, not caring how the motion painfully tugged at his burns. “I don’t--I can’t remember his name. I can’t remember .”

“You don’t mean—Jesus, right now? Like someone who works in Storage? What do you mean, you can’t remember?”

“No way, Tim, I was there, too. Nothing happened,” said Martin. “He must mean—how long ago was this then, Jon?”

“I was eight.”

He found a curious numbness stealing over him. It pushed aside all other emotions and allowed him to get his breathing back under control, to stand up straight and all but force the tremor from his voice.

“I made a statement about it, even,” he said, with a humorless laugh. “No idea where that ended up. It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to open it—but it’s powerful, and it already has its hooks in me. But I’m fine now. I’m going to burn it. If you don’t—don’t trust me to do so, you can watch.”

“No one should have to be alone with an awful thing like that,” Martin murmured. “I’ll come, but not because I don’t trust you to burn it—you just shouldn’t be alone with it. Nobody should.”

“Well, you didn’t watch him closely enough last time, so count me in too,” Tim said. “Don’t worry, boss, I’ll smack you quicker than Martin did if you feel an uncontrollable urge to read and unleash unspeakable horrors into the archives again.”

“I’d like to set a fire in the archives,” said Melanie. “Count me in.”

“Where should we do this?” asked Basira.

“The tunnels,” said Jon. “We’ll burn it in the tunnels.”

Later, Annabelle Cane will leave a statement for him gift-wrapped in cobwebs. He will taste his own fear as he reads it, as he realizes he never meant to begin reading it out loud, as he is unable or unwilling to stop, as he can no longer tell the difference between the two. And his own fear makes the statement sweeter and full of blood and appeases his god and fills the ragged yawning hole in his center that is forever demanding more sustenance just for a moment. A strange duet: his fear and her fear, his patron and hers, an act of auto-cannibalism just as his own statement was almost a whole year ago.

He will not know where he ends and where Beholding begins. The boundaries between choice and compulsion, instinct and free-will. Everything he learns will be futile—everything he learns will merely be the discovery that what he thought was a choice was merely a step in someone else’s dance, pre-choreographed. The music started long ago. When did the music start? He was caught in a web before he ever knew one was being woven and each twist and turn has only ever drawn him deeper. He can feel the strings all of the time now.

They didn’t venture far into the tunnels. There was no need, that day, to brave the dark, to pass by the old ring of worms, the old bloodstain on the floor where the old main whose name they are burning was slain. They simply set the book alight inside a trash can stolen from a vacant office and watch it burn.

“Well,” said Tim, watching black smoke curl up from the fire. “I guess this sort of provides for your tragic backstory. I always did wonder what it was that made you come work here. I mean, we’ve all got one. I’d started to think maybe you were just like this.”

“This isn’t why I came to work here,” Jon said, peevish again now that the old wound was settling down, the shock of seeing the book again wearing off. “I mean—not totally. It was still a choice .”

“Sure it was. But nobody makes choices in a vacuum.”

“You said you were eight?” Melanie said.

“Yes.”

“That’s very young.”

“I suppose. I guess I should be over it by now, is what you’re saying.”

“No. No, that wasn’t it at all.”

“Well. I got off easy, all things considered.”

“You wouldn’t say that to anybody else,” said Basira. “You can be a jerk sometimes. But I know you wouldn’t say a thing like that to anybody else.”

“I don’t even know what happened to him. The one it—took. I mean, I��I can guess. But I can’t be sure he died. Not right away. Did it make him an avatar of the Web first? I don’t know.”

“Best not to linger on it. There are some things we just don’t get to know. And it wouldn’t do you or him any good anyway,” said Basira.

“I know you can stand that sentiment about as much as I can,” Jon muttered.

“I’m just happy to see the damn thing burn,” said Tim, loudly. “Thirty years too late, but still.”

Jon was quiet for a moment. He thought that might have been Tim’s way of saying he was glad Jon was alive, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Rather than broach that subject, he said, “Tim, just how old do you think I am, exactly?”

“Oh. I dunno. You said you were eight when you first read the book, so—”

“Never mind.”

Beside him, Jon heard Martin muffling a laugh, and allowed the tiniest of smiles to curve across his own face.

Georgie hadn’t liked spiders, either. Hadn’t hated them, or feared them in any odd or excessive measure, either, but still. His particular disdain never required explanation. So he never gave one. It was easy not to mention something so anomalous in his past that it stood out like an open sore on an otherwise relatively average life.

It never occurred to him that he ought to have told her anyway. That it was something she might have liked to have known. That willingness to grant her that vulnerability might have been at least part of the remedy to the discord that came to ail their relationship. It never occurred to him, until many years later, when she gave him her own statement, and he felt gutted, and could only think, oh, but you never told me .

After the coffin, he and Daisy gravitate towards each other. They find reasons to be in the same room. When there are no reasons other than that the other’s company is more grounding than any rib bone ever had been, that is reason enough. The casual touching takes getting used to. For so long now, any touch has hurt and been full of malice. Once, early on, he startled, and was terrified he had offended her—but she had understood, in her own way, the instinctual flinch of a prey animal, and had backed off slowly. From then on she moved more slowly around him, gave him time to move away if he needed to, made sure he heard her if she came up behind him, until gradually the press of her hand against his, her side to his side, became familiar.

They sat on the ground in his office. The others were out bringing back food for lunch, but neither of them got out much those days. The quiet was more bearable when they were together. It was almost peaceful.

She bumped her side against his. “You can go ahead and read that. I know you want to.”

He had a statement sitting in his lap, the tape recorder lying beside him. It flicked on occasionally, as though to poke and prod him into feeding it, like a begging dog whining for food. He kept switching it off.

“And you’re supposed to be doing your exercises.”

Daisy growled and tipped her head back against the desk. “I did ‘em this morning.”

“That was this morning. Now it’s this afternoon.”

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Daisy...”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Ah, I hate it when you do that.”

“It’s stupid. It might make you mad.”

“I don’t have much of a temper these days.”

“That’s true. Still.”

“Just spit it out, Sims.”

“It’s just—if you could go back, and choose for things to be different, would you?”

She turned her head and blinked at him, all dry and unamused. “You’re right. That is stupid.”

“Okay, that’s not what I meant .”

“For a guy who talks into a recorder all day, you sure do get tongue-tied a lot.”

“That’s reading off a script, it’s not the same thing at all as talking.”

“I guess not. So what did you mean,” she said, nudging him.

“Right. I don’t mean, if you could go back, and be—unclaimed, fully human, would you. That’s not what I’m asking, that’s...no. I mean, if you could choose to be different, claimed by something else other than the Hunt, would you?”

“Oh. Hm. I never thought about it.”

“Never?”

“The Hunt just...makes sense. Every decision I made, the way I lived...it led me right to it.”

“But, if you could do it a different way...”

“It’s not like a damn star chart or a personality test. You choose it. You’re not born under a certain star, and predestined to join the Hunt—but say, even if you were brought up that way, with that in mind, it still wouldn’t be a sure thing. You have to choose it. Either it eats you whole, or burns you alive, or buries you—or you make a choice.”

“I...I see.”

“Why do you ask? Thinking of switching teams?”

“No. Sort of...the opposite, actually, I...I was thinking about how the Web was the first entity I encountered. Before the Eye. And I had this strange thought—I didn’t mean to think it, I felt bad for it immediately, but still, I had this reaction of, of disgust. Of wrongness. I was...don’t take this the wrong way. I think you might be the only one who’ll understand, who won’t--won’t take this as another sign I’m losing my humanity or what not. I’m not happy about any of this. But for a second, I was...glad it wasn’t the Web. Everything you’ve said makes sense to me all of a sudden. I must have chosen the Eye, at some point. You’re right. It just makes sense.”

“Hm.”

Daisy stared at him intently. He squirmed. “What?”

“I’m trying to picture you with the Web now.”

“What is there to picture ?”

“I dunno. Lots of eyes? But spidery ones. Eyes are already your thing.”

“Well, don’t .”

“I could go Vast. They at least seem to have a sense of humor about things.”

“Because you’re so well known for your love of all things fun.”

She growled, and he smiled, a real, wide smile. It was only around him she let slip these little quirks these days, and he’d come to recognize the differences in her tone—now she was being playful.

“What would you know about fun,” she scoffed. “Everybody with the Eye is a big wimpy nerd.”

“Don’t forget neurotic.”

“God forbid.”

“You could go Spiral if you want a sense of fun. Although theirs is a little twisted.”

“Was that supposed to be a joke ?”

“So it’s funny when Basira makes a pun, but I’m not allowed?”

“It’s about tone and timing, Sims, and Basira’s is impeccable.”

“ Sure it is. You know, Basira’s sort of ‘with the Eye’ these days, too. Does that make her a—what was it—wimpy nerd?”

“Basira is the exception to the rule. And she’s no avatar, more like a freelancer.”

Jon snorted. “Is it—is it bad that we’re laughing about this? I mean it’s really not funny. It’s terrible.”

“Sometimes you have to laugh if you don’t want to cry.”

Jon gave a sharp burst of laughter, hand going to his face. “What is that—is that from a Hallmark card, or something?”

“It’s just wisdom. Goes to show what you know.”

“I’d never have chosen the Web. Would I? We keep talking about choice, and we have to, because we’ve got to hold ourselves accountable, but really—if it had taken me—if I’d been terrified, if it had been choose the Web or die, or worse—how can I know what I’d have done?”

“You can’t know. That’s the ultimate pointlessness of your Eye. Even it can’t know everything.”

“Well, that was never the point. The point is more about—being watched, and trying to know, even if the what you’re trying to know is terrible, and going to kill you.”

“How tantalizing. I can see how it compels you.”

“You see? This is what I’m talking about, you’d never—maybe you’d never have been able to choose it, the same as I couldn’t have chosen the Hunt, because it’s just not—not in our nature. Not the way we were before, not the way we are now. Maybe we aren’t so altered. Maybe we were always like this. Is that a comfort? Or is that terrible?”

“What sort of sick bastard chooses the Buried?” Daisy growled. “While we’re on the subject. The Hunt is a high, it’s all adrenaline and purpose, movement—where's the draw in that damn coffin?”

“I don’t know. It’s all this...mingling of terror and ecstasy. One demands the other. What is the Buried? Being held—but being held too tightly—wanting to be at the center—but to be at the center also means to be pinned and crushed—I don’t know. I don’t understand any of them. Not even the Eye. I think...I myself, I couldn’t choose Corruption. But...I felt like I understood something about Jane Prentiss, when I read her statement. I understand them all—at least I feel what they felt—but she made a sort of sense. Not logically, but...emotionally?”

“The bug lady?”

Jon sighed. “Yes, the bug lady. Call her Jane, please.”

“I think it’s interesting, thinking about this stuff. But I also think you take it too much to heart. Sometimes knowing doesn’t help.”

“So I keep being told.”

“And you keep not listening.”

“Still. I guess my point was—did I have a point? I don’t know. I’m glad it wasn’t the Web.”

“Then you’d have to eat flies instead of statements. And lie. You’re a terrible liar. Martin, on the other hand...”

“Martin is not a liar .”

Daisy gave him a small, teasing grin. “Martin is an excellent liar.”

“How can you say that! He’s--he’s nice, and helpful, and polite!”

“To you, maybe. He can be a real prick when he wants to be, you know.”

“Well. If it’s to somebody like Elias, then that just makes you a good person.”

Daisy snorted. “I never said he was a bad person. I said he was a good liar. Elias is a liar and a bad person—Martin is just good at lying. There’s a difference, see.”

“I guess so.”

They were quiet for a moment. Then Jon said, “I miss him, you know.”

“I know.”

There came a knock on the door. “Jon?”

“Come in.”

Basira opened the door, expressing no surprise to find them seated on the floor. “We’ve got lunch,” she said, holding up a bag.

Daisy used the desk to hoist herself to her feet and offered her hand to Jon. “Should’ve read that while you had the chance, now you’ll have to wait.”

“What?”

“Come on.”

He opened his mouth. A thousand protests and excuses leapt to mind—but when he really got down to it, he could think of no good reason why he shouldn’t take her hand. So he did.

Even after knowing that going into the Lonely marked him and sealed Jonah Magnus’ plan to bring on the apocalypse, Jon could not regret it. Martin closed the door and he settled in to read with love in his heart, more love than he’d known himself capable of, and the love remained and became something wild and raging as he grew queasy and sick with trying to stop himself from reading. He could not. He felt hysterical laughter in his throat but could not laugh, could not shut his eyes, could not make his own voice silent. He felt the strings again, lodged in his belly, pulling words out of his throat. He could not choose not to read. But even as he read Jonah’s awful list of all the ways he’d been marked—he knew he had chosen them all.

He would not have both his ribs back. At the time he had deemed their loss necessary.

He wouldn’t choose to die and never wake from his coma. He’d never meant to do anyone harm—he'd only wanted to live.

He would not choose to leave the coffin lid shut and abandon Daisy to the buried. Not even to spare himself another mark.

He wouldn’t leave the Slaughter’s bullet lodged in Melanie’s leg. Not even knowing she would retaliate with a stab wound that would send him one step further into becoming an object, a thing, an archive.

He would not let Martin walk alone in the Lonely. Not even to thwart an apocalypse.

That was what Gertrude would have done. But Gertrude had been wrong, too.

Maybe sometimes he had a choice, and maybe sometimes it only felt or seemed like he did, and maybe he never did at all, and maybe the only choice in life was choosing what to believe.

Maybe it was already too late.

The day he returned to work after waking in a hospital bed in which, he’d been told, he should have died, the archives were quiet. Sasha was dead. Tim was dead. Daisy was gone. Martin was—elsewhere.

Jon walked into the cafeteria and suddenly saw it full of mourners on that strange day on which they had come together to remember a woman none of them had ever really known, and all at once he understood everything and nothing and he wanted to ask the few people in there eating lunch, perfect strangers, if they’d known Tim Stoker, and if not would you like to? But he’d made a promise, and he was scared of asking questions these days, so instead he locked himself in his office.

So many of his belongings were gone, lost, thrown away. But in his desk, along with a jar of ashes, was the web-patterned lighter. He flicked it to hear the sparkwheel catching, the familiar soothing motion, and it occurred to him that Martin might have held this lighter just so, while he was lost in the wax museum; that Martin might have used this very lighter to burn those statements.

Jon thought about anchors. He thought about webs.

He felt the strings again, of old. He had known them all along. They were not only for making puppets jerk and dance. How many hands had this lighter passed through? He knew of two of them. Nothing was untethered. The web stretched wide across the world, glinting silver gossamer, and one could not breath in North America that one in the Maldives would not shiver. What strange wonder, what annihilating grace. He swore he could hear the weavers threading, could feel the strings.

#the magnus archives #i relistened to mr spider and well. here we are #tma

6 notes · View notes