#cover one of her shifts but it's a clean play which goes until 11:30pm but my availability is only until 4pm

[composereggwrites]

Love will not break your Heart (but dismiss your Fears)

Chapter 1: Plant Your Hope with Good Seeds

Fandom: The Magnus Archives

Rating: T

Characters/Ships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Alice “Daisy” Tonner/Basira Hussain, Gerard Keay, Gertrude Robinson

Additional: Reincarnation AU, Soul Bond, Team as Family, Autistic Jon, Post-Canon Fix-it, Childhood Friends, Hurt/Comfort

They stand in the Panopticon, fire raining down from the sky, as the Eye stares down at them.

Jon takes Martin’s hand in his.

Jonathan Barker-King wakes up and goes to class. He works under Gertrude’s rule at the university archives, and subs in when his coworkers at the library, Sasha and Tim, are out sick.

It’s on one such day that he reconnects with his old childhood friend. The one he hasn’t seen in 11 years, ever since their houses burned down. Martin Hussain-Tonner.

An Undone-Apocalypse reincarnation AU.

Ao3 or Below!

Jonathan Sims Barker-King sits at the checkout desk of Oxford University, and curses the flu for taking out both Tim and Sasha in the same week. Abandoning him to cover their shifts, when he should be down in the archives today, learning the ropes from Gertrude.

It’s not a hard job. Arguably, working in the archives is harder. But it’s also midterms season, and that means dealing with an influx of students who’ve realized they need to actually study, and he’s running this place short-staffed.

There’s a lull around 4:30pm, and he breathes a sigh of relief as it hits. The 4pm rush is typically the last of the day. No more beeping of the scanner, no more arguing with patrons about the fines they’ve accrued, and no more dealing with the incompetent people who don’t even know how to use a basic search function.

Maybe now he can work on his own homework. He’s got two essays and a test to study for, after all.

Just as he’s settling into the flow, typing the words into the document at a decent pace, someone approaches the desk once again.

“What do you need?” he snaps, most of the sharp edge tempered down with years of practice, before looking up.

The person who stands before him is easily 6’5, with wavy ginger hair, round glasses, and is absolutely built like a bear. But more importantly–

“Jon? Is that you?” he asks, grin on his face and light dancing in his eyes.

Jon laughs, still staring. “Y–Yeah. Holy–” he bites his tongue, no swearing on the job. “Martin? When the hell did you get so tall?”

Martin Blackwood Hussain-Tonner rubs the back of his head, laughing too. “Oh, you know. Hit a couple growth-spurts as a teen. Fifteen, sixteen, really shot up like a tree. What about you though? You’re so…”

“It’s alright, you can say small,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Unlike some people, I didn’t get height genes from my mysterious spawners. Mum still delights in being able to pick me up.”

“Oh I’m sure. She was absolutely fearless, wasn’t she?” Martin asks, and Jon nods.

“It’s almost terrifying at times. I mean, I’m 23, and she comes swooping in and carrying me around like it’s nothing.” His brain presents him with a mental image of Martin doing this, like he is now, and then he shoves that thought into a dark, locked box. Nope, not doing that.

Jon almost keeps talking, but some of the students with books piled higher than their heads are starting to glare, so he sighs. “I’m still on shift for another hour, but we should catch up, yeah? It’s been ages.”

Martin nods. “Sure! There’s a nice cafe on campus that we could go to, not too far from here, and I’m free tonight.”

He smiles. “I think I know the one. Sounds good to me. Meet you there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

___

It takes three years to find them.

Daisy and Basira chose to look for Martin, while Georgie and Melanie search for Jon. Because these foolish boys decided to stop the apocalypse together, and die together.

They’d left a tape behind, of course. Static layered over the words.

“We’re going to do something. If you’re hearing this, I’m going to assume it worked,” Jon had said. “We’re undoing the apocalypse. Both Martin and I.”

“The thing is,” Martin said, false-confidence in his bold voice, only a hint of a waver, “We’re not making it out of this… Well, not alive. Not how we are now, at least. But it’s okay! We’ll be coming back.”

Then Jon again, slipping into a neutral voice, steady as he explains. “Time is going to get a bit weirder than normal, and this is going to open the door for a lot of people to get second chances. Anyone touched by an Entity who stays alive will still remember everything that happened, but for the rest of the world… It’ll be like a mass hallucination.”

“You don’t need to find us,” Martin murmurs, softer now. “But… You can if you want. Jon doesn’t think we’ll remember anything. Definitely not at first, maybe not ever. We’re just going to be little kids, after all.”

“Take care of yourselves, alright? Georgie. Melanie. Daisy. Basira. This is a chance for freedom for all of you, too. We’re burning that wretched institute to the ground, with Jonah inside of it, and getting out.” Jon sighs, a hint of compassion leaking into his voice. Such a struggle for The Archivist to feel anything, and yet he feels more than ever, nowadays.

“Be safe, all of you. Maybe we’ll meet again someday.”

After a bit of debate, Melanie had scoffed and said, “Obviously we’re gonna find those idiots. If we don’t, then Jude’ll hunt them down and burn them or somethin’. Might as well make sure that don’t happen.”

Easier said than done, of course. Daisy had managed to track down Martin a couple months ago, using some of the Hunt, before diving into a few rounds of Halo to shake the rest of the energy off. (That had been Basira’s idea, what better way to channel the Hunt than through violent video-games?)

Stepping into this orphanage, at first Georgie thinks it’ll be no different. It’s not a bad place, pristine and clean, but there’s no soul. Just another cluster of kids, too alone and small, who need homes that they can’t give.

Until she spots a child with too-big too-familiar eyes staring at them.

When they make eye-contact, the kid stands, and stumbles closer. She kneels down, and this child states, matter-of-fact, “You’re looking for me.”

“Oh, are we now?” she asks, raising an eyebrow. “What’s your name, then?”

“Jonathan. They don’t call me that, they call me a girly name. But I’m Jon.” There’s a hard edge, determination, as if prepared for anything but acceptance.

“Of course you’re Jon,” Melanie says, careful to kneel, careful as she reaches out. It takes a moment, but she finds his hair, and ruffles it. Tenderness wiping away the gleam of fear in his eyes. “Why do you think we’re looking for you?”

He leans closer. “I just know. I know things. I’m very smart!” he says, with what’s almost a proud grin.

She laughs, and leans close to Melanie, so she can whisper, “Mels, he’s so small!”

Melanie, predictably, laughs at her, and keeps talking to Jon. “Well, you certainly seem very smart. And you’re right, we have been searching just for you. It might take a bit before you’re able to come home with us, but I think you’re just the one we’ve been looking for, Jon.”

So they sit there, and talk with Jon. Playing games and reading stories with him. It’s not long before he gets tired, and crawls into Georgie’s lap, tuckered out.

She leans against Melanie’s shoulder, as they both relax.

“He’s such a child,” Melanie says, voice low.

“He really is. But I mean, we expected that, yeah? He’s three, if anything, he seems smarter than the average three-year-old.” Georgie says back, still carding her fingers through Jon’s hair. She had thought it’d be weird, seeing her ex-boyfriend/old friend as a child, and it was, a little. But he was so endearing. A little kid, free from the stress he’d been carrying.

“You don’t think…”

She shrugs. “He might be, I don’t know how all that super works. But from the way he was speaking on the tape, I doubt it. Maybe it’s just… After-effects?” Either way, she’s prepared to raise a weird kid. Had been ever since she and Melanie realized they might have a future together (because there’s no way they were going to be raising someone normal).

“I hope that’s all it is.”

Some of the other kids have been watching them. Georgie’s noticed this. Watching as they play, as they hang out with Jon. Maybe it’s just jealousy, maybe it’s not. It makes her hold him closer. Protective anger like acid on her tongue, ready to burn if they try to hurt her boy.

One of them walks closer now, and narrows his eyes at them. He looks to be older, maybe eight or so. “Why would you choose him? He’s weird.”

Melanie scoffs, and Georgie takes her hand, to keep her from fighting an eight-year-old. “Maybe we like him because he’s weird. A better question is why you want to be mean to a three year old, kid.”

“Listen. You don’t have to like him, but we do,” Georgie says, glancing up at him. Skinny, fists clenched and shaking. Scared because every time someone else gets out, he must stay. “Just… Don’t be mad at him, because he’s going to leave and you aren’t. Maybe someone else will like you the way we like him, some day. Being mean to him isn’t going to make that happen sooner.”

It’s a long process, of course. Adoption is complicated. But they manage to pass the inspection, and bring him home. Home to a newly-bought house with three bedrooms, right next door to Daisy, Basira, and Martin.

The look on Jon’s face when he sees his own room, with a ceiling-high bookshelf stocked to the brim, and toys aplenty, is one Georgie will treasure forever.

(She’s made sure that there weren’t any Leitners.)

___  

Martin sits at the cafe, fingers tapping against his leg, grin on his face. The setting sun is shining in from the window to his right, and the soft scent of coffee fills the air.

He’d just seen Jon.

It had been eleven years, and Jon had remembered him.

He sips at his tea as he waits, anxious nerves swelling in his stomach. Which was ridiculous, because this is Jon. They’d been friends ever since Jon had moved in with his moms. Three year olds sitting together and playing with Legos. Jon reading books to him all the time. Going on adventures through their backyards.

They’d both had to move when they were twelve, though, and, in the chaos, had lost contact with each other. Martin hadn’t stopped missing him, even as lonely fog rolled in.

His moms did their best. But it was hard to make friends at school, when his anchor wasn’t there at his side. Cast adrift in a sea of unknown people.

(The pride club in high school helped a lot, but he still felt out of place. Alone even as he had friends to laugh and chat with, even as he started figuring out who he really was).

With his pencil to the paper in front of him, he tries to focus on some of his homework, and not think about Jon.

He ends up with lines of poetry written in the margins of his textbook instead.

When the bell to the cafe rings, he perks up, and grins as Jon walks in. He gives a wave, and Jon smiles and waves back. Once he’s retrieved his own drink, he walks to the table.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey yourself,” Martin replies.

Silence settles around them, and suddenly it dawns on Martin that he has no idea what to say to someone he hasn’t seen in over a decade. Sure, they’d been friends, but that doesn’t mean their interests are the same.

“So… What’s your major?” Jon asks, and Martin lets out a sigh of relief.

“I’m studying literature right now, actually! All the classics, poetry, you know. I’m considering a few different options, but I figured I might as well study what I’m interested in while I ponder career choices.” He could ramble for hours about some of the things he’s studying, but not right now. “What about you?”

Jon leans back in his chair, and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m actually in a grad program right now. Working on a degree in information sciences with a focus on archival work. I double-majored in the History and English course, along with parapsychology.”

“Parapsychology? That’s the study of weird stuff, yeah? Paranormal events?” Martin asks, leaning forward.

Jon nods, and some of the awkward air slides away. “ESP, ghosts, near-death experiences, and reincarnation. All that fun stuff. It’s really interesting, actually. I did a lot of research on the apocalypse, the one that didn’t happen?” He waits for Martin to nod, before continuing.

“There’s bunches about it. Stories are still being collected. Everyone’s got something to say. I mean, an entire year’s worth of memories? Of events that didn’t happen? I don’t know why more people aren’t fascinated by this!” His hands dance through the air, punctuating his sentences with a flourish. Poetry in motion.

Martin smiles, watching Jon as he starts to ramble, sipping his tea. Jon has always been so full of words and energy, if given some encouragement. Infodumping about whatever has caught his interest now. It used to be books and stories, regaling Martin with the plot.

“I’m not in statement collection, of course,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t really get to manage those, though I do read them sometimes. Wrote a paper about all the different ways to classify some of the weirder aspects, because events seem to fall into certain categories.”

“That’s really cool! It sounds like you’ve done a lot of research into it, and I’d love to hear more later. You could send me your paper, if you want?” He asks, a tingle running up his spine at the idea of being able to contact Jon whenever.

“O-oh, sure! What’s your email? Or phone number? We should exchange those, yeah?” Jon starts taking out his phone, and Martin does too.

“Sounds like a plan. I’d like to stay in contact this time,” he says with a snort. “No more disappearing for eleven years on me, mister.”

“It’s hardly my fault both our parents decided to move at the same time,” Jon mutters, mock-offended as he plugs his number into Martin’s phone.

“I know. I’m more annoyed that our moms didn’t help us keep in contact. It’s weird, I swear they kept in contact, but I guess I didn’t think to try and get your number, and I know we pretty much ended up on opposite sides of the country.” He shrugs, handing Jon’s phone to him and taking his own back.

He smiles when the text of ^Hello, this is Jon.^ comes through.

“I asked mom once. She told me no. Said it’d be hard, or that it was complicated for some reason. I let the matter drop.” Jon fidgets with one of the napkins, folding and refolding it.

“Maybe I’ll ask my mum about it sometime,” Martin says. “Mom is still kinda busy.”

“She’s still a professional gamer, yeah? I’ve kept up with Miss Daisy’s career.” Jon laughs. “It’s still great watching a fifty? Sixty? Year old lady destroying all the other competitors.”

He laughs, nodding. “Yeah, she’s sixty four now, and still absolutely crushing them. She’s brutal. She’s told me some stories from when she and mum were police, and I gotta say, I think I prefer the gaming.”

“I’ll have to get these stories out of you sometime, I’d be very interested in hearing them.” A grin lights up Jon’s face, and Martin has no doubt that he’ll be able to pull those stories out of Daisy and Basira.

“I’m sure they’d both love to regale you with them.”

All the tension of the room has eased now, as they laugh and joke. Falling back into old patterns so easily. Martin hadn’t been aware of how much he’d missed this until he had it back. Years of withdrawal making it easier to adapt to the empty ache in his chest when Jon wasn’t by his side. Like he didn’t know he’d been living without oxygen, until he could breathe again.

But now Jon’s here. For the first time since he was twelve, his lungs work, and the pain is gone. Gone somewhere, a burden lifted from him.

Maybe he’ll be able to keep it at bay, and keep Jon close, in the coming years.

___

Gertrude Robinson sits in her office, looking over the edge of her computer at the boy who has just walked in. Glasses sit sharp on her face, as she scans him.

Still in his goth phase, with black on black on black, dyed hair, and tattoos peeking out from under his sleeves. Oh-so-familiar, but she doesn’t know if her face is familiar to him yet.

“Can I help you?” she asks, steady and ungiving of an inch.

Gerard stares back at her. No doubt about it then. She’d changed her last name back to what it should properly be, as a signal, just for this. It’d be nice, maybe, to be a woman not so alone with her memories.

“Gertrude?” He raises an eyebrow at her, arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t play dumb with me. Your crotchety old grandma trick doesn’t work as well when you’re barely over thirty.”

She laughs, and leans back. “You’ve caught on then, I see. Good ole’ Gerard Keay.”

“Gerry Delano. I’m not using her last name,” he bites out. “Tell me, what have you been up to here?”

“Oh, this and that. Not much to do in the way of battling the Fears, these days. I hear your friend Jon took care of that for me.” She’d listened to the tapes. Found them hidden away in the ruins of the Institute. The rise and fall of the apocalypse, and Jonah being such a fool. As if he really thought Jonathan Sims wouldn’t find a way to undo the hellscape. The mark of the Lonely was brilliant, but it gave him the key to becoming a savior, not confined to be an Archive.

“They’re still out there, though,” Gerry replies.

She gestures for him to take a seat across from her, and he does. Less stubborn, this life. “Yes, I know. Don’t think I’m unaware of their movements. I’ve been keeping a close eye on the remaining Avatars. I’m not a fool. Jude is still on the move, looking for those two. Mike Crew is still throwing people off buildings–in France, right now I believe. But they’re all weak. Low on power and morals, and there’s not going to be another ritual–not in my lifetime.”

With a shrug, he seems to relent. “I guess. Are you really content, then? To just sit here and work as an–an actual head archivist? For an actual, not-spooky institution?” His words are clipped, not harsh, but pointed.

“Don’t you think I’ve quite earned my rest?” she fires back. “I’m not caught in the Beholding this life, and I’m not involved. Not yet, at least.  Perhaps if the Web decides I need to be pulled back in, I will, but not now.” The Mother of Puppets is not one she can predict, but dancing to its strings is hard to resist. “Besides, it’s not like all my work here is boring. We’re still working on collecting statements from the apocalypse and filing them away.”

“The thing most people still think was a mass hallucination?” He laughs, and steals one of her pens to fiddle with. She’ll let him keep it. This is better than him using her desk as a footrest.

“Everyone wants to tell their story, and it allows me to travel around as much as I like to collect them. It’ll be a whole genre, I expect. A thousand years from now, and everyone will have their favorite stories. There will be fiction invented about it. Maybe some will even get it right.” She smiles, that smile of hers which he’s called bland but terrifying. Equal disinterest in everything, but with her own plot at play. It’s fitting, in a way.

“Well, you have fun with that. I’ll be keeping a lookout for trouble, and I’ll let you know if I see any. But I’m not here to help you with this,” he says, equally blasé.

“No, you’re here because you’ve said you can get Mr. Jonathan Barker-King, your roommate, an in to the archives here. Because you know me. You placed a lot of stakes on the fact that I remembered, didn’t you?” She chuckles. “You were right, for what it’s worth, but that was quite the gamble.”

“Well, if anyone were to remember, it’d be you, Gertrude.” Gerard shrugs, and she has to concede that he makes a point. “You’ll let him have the job, then?”

“Of course. Tell your friend that if he submits and application, he’ll likely get in. It’d be nice to have someone else around with an Eye for the finer details. Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

Gertrude turns her attention back to the files on her desk, and expects Gerard to show himself out soon.

He lingers at the door, but says nothing more.

#the magnus archives #tma #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #daisy tonner #alice tonner #basira hussain #georgie barker #melanie king #gertrude robinson #gerard keay #gerry delano #magpod #magnuspod #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing

[thedumblyfe]

9.13.17

38th day of age 23

I'm tired. tonight seems as though nothing in my life is ever going to go in my way. I can observe 3 outcomes that have put me into feeling this way.

1.) I'm starting to really hate my job. Granted, it pays well for an unskilled job (waitressing) and if everything goes normally it's honestly stress-free no matter how many customers we receive. Every day we receive between 400-500 customers I kid you not, but it's not even the customers that give me the downhard feeling about work, it's honestly the management. They seemed extremely nice but there were many instances in which I realize that I'm just really in the palm of some employer's hand. For example this one time it was very late at night and we had already closed the store, however my manager lets in a party of 2, 3, and then a 4 at around 10:37pm (we close at 10:30pm) and I couldn't get out of work until after 11:45pm. It pissed me off because we are technically not allowed to serve customers but she did it anyway. Most of us has to return to work the very next day, which meant that it was probably a less than 6-hour sleep until they had to come back before 10am. Second, my other "manager" you can say, though she really isn't but she's basically one level lower, keeps fucking busting my ass for stupid fucking shit it's ridiculous. One, I was sick for an entire WEEK of work and I couldn't find covers because we were THAT understaffed. So when I call in to call out she picks up the phone and just tells me "well then if you don't come in who can?". Typical retail environment bullshit right? Whatever. What really grinds my gears is that when I tell you that all of the ppl I called who can possibly cover me for these shifts can't because they're unavailable or they just don't want to do it (because honestly fuck that place now), she has the audacity to get MADDER at me and literally like threaten me "then who can cover you huh?". What? You are like a 40+ year old woman. I don't care if you're upset or angry, but in my position, I had an extremely bad viral infection in the lungs which caused me to be bedridden for 4 days, to the point where it got so bad that I had asthma attacks every 10 seconds and could not properly breathe. I was literally gasping for air but I couldn't because there's obviously mucus in my lungs so my boyfriend was kind enough to come all the way from Long Island to grab me to take me to the hospital. And this cunt is telling me to literally come in because I couldn't find myself a cover? No fucking joke I thought she was being hella absurd but she CONTINUED, to the point where when the call ended I just didn't bother to pick up the phone, no matter how many times it rang. I was sick (literally) and tired of her bullshit because this wasn't the first time she pulled this kind of shit on me. One time she asked me right on the spot when I entered the restaurant to work if I wanted to take her dinner shift that day because she herself was "feeling very unwell and needed to go home". I was super fucking hesitant because I was already working a lunch shift there so taking this on would mean that I would have to commit to not a 5 hour work day, but a 14 hour work day. But she was all acting and bending down, messaging her back or whatever she was doing to make me feel hella uncomfortable to the point where I just said yes. That was my mistake because it became really crowded that day and while she was working she did everything fine. In fact, she was so fucking happy and joyful, like there was no pain in anywhere in her body and when she went home I just fucking KNEW that I ended up with the shorter end of the stick. Just today, when I enter the store to start my lunch shift one coworker told me that she was being really mad at me yesterday (when I wasn't in the shift) because I didn't close my section at all. BULLSHIT. It's bad to say but I am a perfectionist by heart and if one little detail goes by me, whether that meant I didn't clean one dish or I didn't windex the glass on the fridge properly, I myself go insane. I'm not doing it because I fucking LOVE working at my job, but it's just my nature to not let anything unnoticed. So I get fucking annoyed when my coworker literally told me that she said that I didn't do anything to close my section last Sunday and then took it another step further to tell THE MANAGERS during the server meetings that I didn't fucking do shit. What???? I take PRIDE in how hard I work and now this bitch is going to lie to my managers even though I'm literally the hardest working employee there just because now this bitch doesn't like me? I can't take it. I let my closer co-worker know about how I felt and she told me that this woman literally picks favorites all the time and now I'm just getting the shorter end of the stick.

Long story short, I'm just really fucking annoyed right now because the management in the company doesn't look promising. They look down on me for mistakes that THEY make, and in these particular cases they are understaffed because they obviously want to cut salary (they even took away some of my shifts because I was covering someone else who went to vacation??) or because this bitch is straight out lying to them because she literally does not like me. Who wants to work in an environment like that? And besides, why am I still here taking this shit? 2.) Drawing. Taking a drawing course right now which my friend spread the work in her facebook and I'm kind of discouraged. Not because I think that my art is good because it's not at all and not because I don't know that I just need to improve and take my time to practice to get better. It's just hard because when I spent more than 15 hours out of my 50hr/work week for the assignment just to know like 4 weeks later that it's actually absolute garbage just makes you feel bad. And I know it's one of those "oh he's just telling you what you need to work on, you're not perfect keep trying"-kinds of things and like I said before I know my art is shit because I never properly went to school for it, but it just puts these little voices in your head like "oh maybe this is really just a hobby thing, don't have to take it so seriously" or like "and because it's a hobby thing, it's not going to amount to anything better in the future. Maybe you're just amateur forever". And I just get discouraged, a lot in fact. And I KNOW it's just my part to just keep trying, but I'm not going to just "keep trying" when maybe it'll literally lead me to nowhere in life, like what gymnastics had taken away from me. That shit took 15 years of my own life away from me and it resulted into what? Becoming a waitress at a cheapass Japanese-run Restaurant? Hell no.

3.) I'm just losing a lot of games in League. I know this is probably the most ridiculous reason to think that nothing in my life is going my way, but adding the two reasons above with this one just makes my anxiety about my future roll down the hill even faster. Because if I really think about it, I've played this game for more than 3 years now and where am I? I'm literally in the same place, if not a little better but probably by only one rank then when I was back 3 years ago. Again, this is probably really fucking stupid to worry about but it just ties into like my drawing anxiety and how what if I spend literally 3 years on drawing instead and STILL be in the same exact place where I'm at will I have accomplished anything at all? And when I ask myself this question, I'm really asking myself "What exactly have I accomplished in my life in general?"

Job prospects: Being a forever waitress at a job I hate with little to no chance of promotion, not even becoming a manager. Drawing prospects: Being literally bad at drawing, but still (maybe) have a potential to grow, but having to force yourself to invest your time, money, and effort to do so Life's prospects: Am I taking any steps to get out of my situation right now?

I completely understand that right now I'm just ranting like I normally do and I have everything in my power to switch my life around. However tonight it just feels really tough on me specifically for these three reasons alone.

#text #9.13.17