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#yeah i could start another podcast. but it won’t have jon sims in it :
eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 12/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King, Georgie Barker Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting
Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter summary: Jon and Martin talk things out after their encounter with Annabelle at dinner.
Chapter 12 of my post-canon fix-it is up!
Read above at AO3 or here below.
Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.
***
Martin finally pulled his hand away. “We should pay.”
“I did.”
“Oh.” He still couldn’t bring himself to look at Jon. “I didn’t see.”
“I know.”
“Thank you.” It seemed like the right thing to say before he did, but afterward it hung awkwardly between them.
“Do you…” Jon cleared his throat. “Do you want to leave?”
“Sure.” He didn’t want to stay.
Now that it was later in the evening, it was cool enough outside that he didn’t feel terrible for jamming his hands into his pockets as they walked to the tube station. He took the window seat on the train, staring out into the darkness of the tunnel as if he were watching scenery go by. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk, or even that he was avoiding an argument; after all, arguing seemed to be one of the few ways that he and Jon actually managed to communicate with each other. It was that he still didn’t know what to say.
Jon surprised him by speaking first.
“You’re angry.”
“Yeah. I’m angry,” he answered.
“You have every right to be.”
“I mean—I’m not angry at you.” He finally looked at Jon, who was eyeing him with skepticism. “All right, I’m not just angry at you. I’m angry at the whole situation. I’m angry at her. And I’m—I’m angry at me.”
Jon nodded.
“And I feel stupid.”
“You’re not—”
“I am. And I’m sad,” he added. “I’m sad I can’t fix this.”
“It’s not your job to fix it.”
“It’s not yours, either. But that doesn’t seem to make a difference.”
Jon didn’t answer him, and he went back to looking out the window. They didn’t exchange any more words until they were almost at the front door of the flat, where Martin finally knew what he wanted to ask first.
“When did it happen? When did you—know it was back? Was it after Hill Top Road?”
Jon unlocked the door and opened it, waiting for Martin to go in before he answered him.
“It was. But not right away—it was that next week. I don’t even know if that had anything to do with it.”
“Ok. Ok. So that next weekend, when—and that haircut, and this—this stupid date—” Jon recoiled. “All of it, it’s all been, what—a distraction?”
“What?” Jon started to step toward him, then stopped. “No—no, it wasn’t.”
Martin drew in a breath and swallowed. “But it wasn’t real.”
“It was.” There was a kind of desperation in Jon’s face that Martin hadn’t seen for a while—like he had something to prove. “It’s what I could give. I don’t know how much time we have, and—”
He couldn’t hold it in. “Jon—why didn’t you just tell me?”
A moment passed, but Martin was determined to wait for an answer. Jon finally gave it.
“Because you were happy.”
“Happy? I was worried sick about you most of the time.”
“That was still better, though, wasn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was—” Jon paused. “You liked taking care of me. You liked that I had to rely on you. You liked that I couldn’t—
“Don’t.”
Jon didn’t.
Martin was suddenly conscious that they had never moved away from the front door. Jon’s last point had knocked some of the energy out of him, but going to sit somewhere else didn’t seem right. He sat on the floor instead, leaning against the back of the couch. Jon reciprocated, leaning on the wall behind him. It was dark in the flat, they hadn’t turned on a light, but they could still see each other well enough from the lights outside the window.
“Look—at least I knew it was wrong.”
Jon sighed. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t wrong. I did need you. And it—it was sweet. I’m glad I have you. It was just—”
“I know. I know what it was.”
In the quiet that followed, guilt that had lain dormant until then writhed its way down to his stomach. It settled in, weighing heavy inside him until Jon broke the silence again.
“Earlier, what you said—you were right.”
“About what?”
“That I should have tried harder to tell you.”
“Jon—I was upset.”
“You weren’t wrong.”
“Yes, I was.” Martin sighed. “I mean… I know you tried to tell me. Well, now I do. But I would have listened if—honestly, I just thought you were going to apologize again or feel bad for everything, and—”
“And you didn’t want to hear that.”
“No, I—” Martin stopped. I didn’t want you to feel that was what he started to say, but he was interrupted by the recollection of his mother, telling him to go put the kettle on to make a cup of tea. He’d grown to hate it right along with the oolong, the way she avoided having to talk with him about anything that might have really mattered, replacing it with something that only roughly resembled comfort.
Words he’d once spoken to himself came back to him. At best, it’s a plaster. At worst, a muzzle.
He was exactly the same as her. The guilt that had awoken started to twist its way back up, into his chest and around his lungs.
“Martin, you’re not—it’s different. You’re not the same.”
“Jon!” Martin’s face flushed. “That’s not suddenly ok now, you know?”
“I’m sorry,” Jon mumbled. “I didn’t mean to. It’s not—it’s harder to control than I remember.”
“Yeah. Great.”
It got quiet again; Martin distractedly tapped his fingertips on the floor, looking up at the ceiling.
“Ok, so… what else? What’s it—what’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean—ok, so do you need to read the statements?”
Jon took a small breath. “Yes.”
“Is it—” He forced himself to look at Jon. “Are you ok? I mean… I know they used to really take it out of you.”
“I’m…” Jon met his eyes, which seemed just as hard for him. “Sometimes they do.”
“Ok. Will you—will you check in with me if you’re reading one and I’m not around?”
“Martin—”
“Look, I’m not asking for a promise. I’m just—I’m just asking if you will.”
“I don’t know.” Jon returned to staring at the floor. The answer hurt, but Martin was relieved for the excuse to break eye contact.
“What about… have you compelled anyone?”
“No.”
“Could you?”
“Yes. Well, probably. Depending on the person.”
Martin nodded. “How hard is it to—know something?”
“It’s, um… not easy. Not as hard as it was at first—before—though. And more things… slip through.”
“Accidentally.”
“Yes.”
Martin realized the muscles in his shoulders and neck were starting to cramp from how he’d been holding them. He exhaled and leaned back against the couch when something occurred to him. “What about Melanie?”
Jon looked up at him again. “What about her?”
“You’ve been sending her after dead ends, haven’t you? That’s why she hasn’t found anyone to talk to. You knew she wouldn’t.”
Jon didn’t answer.
“So that’s a yes?”
Jon nodded reluctantly.
“Good.”
Jon sat straighter, looking at Martin again. “Really? I wasn’t sure if you’d—I mean, I know you want them to know about… about everything.”
“Yeah, I do, but—but everything’s different than I thought.” He couldn’t keep the tinge of resentment out of his voice, but he pushed ahead. “They still need to know, but… it’s different. I’m glad she’s safe.”
The gratefulness he saw so plainly reflected in Jon’s face did two things. It made Martin want to go to him, to bridge the short distance between them and put his arms around him, and try again to convince him everything would be ok. It also stirred the guilt that had begun to recede quietly back into his subconscious, pushing him to think further through everything that had happened, what he might have missed, what he might have done. Those thoughts were coming faster now that he was over his initial shock. They had more to talk about.
“Jon, I’m—I’m sorry I stayed to talk to Annabelle tonight.”
“Are you?”
He hadn’t expected that bit of harshness, and he tensed up at the words. “Well, I—”
“Never mind,” Jon stopped him. “I know why you did it.”
Martin sat back again. “I am sorry, though. I mean, I’m sorry it hurt you.”
There was another short round of silence.
“Jon, why do you think she came to talk to us? Or—talk to you, really?”
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Jon slumped back against the wall. “She won and she came to gloat.”
“Has she?” Martin asked. “I mean—yeah, we’re here, but—this wasn’t exactly what she wanted. It’s not what she wants in the end, anyway. And gloating, I mean—that really doesn’t seem like her.”
“We have no idea what seems like her, Martin.” The pure bitterness in Jon’s voice was almost a welcome break from the sadness that had dominated his tone until then. “That’s really her whole deal.”
“Maybe.” Martin kept pushing. “Still—I just think—do you really think she was trying to—call a truce? Whatever she said?”
“No,” Jon answered. “I think she came to see the look on my face when she told me they didn’t need me anymore.”
“I don’t think so.”
“No? You don’t think the Fears will find their way out of here eventually?” It was not meant as a legitimate question.
“Ok—I don’t know, but—” Martin tried to choose his words with care. “Yeah. It seems possible.”
“Therefore, she came to gloat.”
“But Jon—” He could feel the frustration creeping into his voice. “I mean—she has to know you won’t just accept that. You’re not planning to let it go, right?”
“Of course not.”
“Exactly. And she has to know that. It’s almost like—it’s almost like she was trying to push you to do something. To not let it go. Why?”
Something about Jon’s demeanor changed; he stiffened slightly, or shifted his balance, and Martin’s thoughts began to converge. The way Annabelle had talked about time—of course she was right, the Web didn’t care, and so she didn’t either. It was very clear her own life didn’t matter to her, any more than it served the Web.
So why would she show up and deliberately remind Jon that if he did nothing, the entities would escape?
It brought to mind something Jon had said earlier, something he had ignored in the moment.
I don’t know how much time we have.
“Jon, what have you been doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, when you’ve been staying late in the office. When you’ve been working here, writing. What have you been doing? If I open that drawer”—he gestured vaguely behind him toward the desk—“what will I find?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t,” Jon said quietly.
He measured his words carefully. “I’d prefer you tell me.”
Jon shrank into himself; he wrapped one arm around his chest and pulled his knees in, and brought his other hand up to his mouth.
“Jon.” Martin couldn’t stop the slight shake in his voice this time; he hoped he was wrong. “Please. Tell me what you’ve been doing.”
“All right.” Jon spoke from behind his hand. “It’s—it’s a ritual.”
It wasn’t the answer Martin had wanted to hear, but it was the one he had expected. “To start another apocalypse?”
“I—” Jon was breathing harder, and Martin could see the effort he was making to push through his words. “Yes. Not—not exactly the same, I could do it faster, and there would be less—”
“How? From memory?”
“No. Well—some. Some of it—there are a couple of—of Leitners—”
“Jesus Christ, Jon!”
“I only used ones that were safe—”
“Safe? Do you realize that a giant fucking eyeball fear monster is telling you which ones are safe?”
“I meant that I could control—”
“I don’t believe you.”
There was a beat of silence. “Martin please, I’m—”
“No, I mean—I literally don’t believe you. I don’t believe you could do it.”
“Martin—”
“Look, I get what happened before. I didn’t agree, but I get it. You’d lost everything. They used you and they took everything that mattered to you. They took Sasha, then Tim, and then Daisy, and you had to watch what it did to all the others—”
“And you,” Jon said.
“—fine, yes, but—Jon, this is not that. This is—they’re all here. They have a chance. And whatever you think happened before—this is a real choice. And they care about you, and you care about them. I just—I don’t think you could do it. I don’t believe it.”
Jon face slid down into his hand until his eyes were covered. “I don’t know. I don’t want to. Probably I couldn’t. Probably I won’t. But I wish I could. If it gets bad enough, maybe I can. And I need to—to be ready. I just can’t—I just can’t let them—”
The quick hitch of breath that followed made Martin forget what he had been about to say, if he’d had any words. He crawled to Jon’s side, slipping one arm around his back and the other around his chest, awkwardly trapping the arm Jon had wrapped around himself. Jon’s face ended up pressed against Martin’s throat, where his breath continued to catch as he fought to stop crying.
Martin wanted to tell him it was ok—that it would be ok, that they could still fix it—but he remembered the last time Jon had finally broken down that had only made him withdraw again. He was starting to really understand that it wasn’t ok for Jon, and probably never would be. He couldn’t bear to think what that meant for him, especially not right then, but he knew enough to not make that mistake again.
He said the only comforting thing he could think of that he was sure about, that he had been sure about for a long time now.
“I love you.”
Jon reached a hand up to Martin’s neck, where he pressed the pads of his fingers firmly against his skin.
“I’m here.” Martin spoke softly against Jon’s hair. He could tell Jon was still struggling, still trying to gain control, but he seemed to have relaxed a little; his body wasn’t quite so rigid as Martin held him.
***
Eventually Jon was calm. They’d shifted so that he rested with his back against Martin’s chest, and Martin’s back was against the wall. His arms were around Jon’s waist, and Jon’s arms rested comfortably on top of his as he leaned back into him.
“So.” Jon’s voice was raw. “I’ve finally become a monster.”
“No.” Martin pressed his mouth gently against his ear. “You haven’t.”
“Yes, I have.”
“No. I mean—I still don’t think you could do it, but—now that we’re here, and we know what’s out there—you don’t want them to get out again. That would be terrible.”
Jon shifted slightly; Martin impulsively tightened his grip, then made himself relax again.
“To be clear—I don’t think you’re responsible for what happens a hundred years from now, or a thousand years from now—and I’m definitely not in favor of ending the world over it.”
“Martin, it just—it doesn’t matter how long from now it is. If it’s ten thousand years from now and they escape, and poison a thousand dimensions—more than that, maybe—if I could have ended it, it’s my fault.”
Martin tightened his grip again, this time deliberately.
“Maybe there’s another way.”
Jon turned so his forehead was against Martin’s cheek. “Martin, I know you want to think that, but—”
“Yes, and I know, the world doesn’t care what I think.”
“I should never have said that.”
“I mean, it hurt—but it was true.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s not the point. The point is—I still don’t think Annabelle would have turned up just to brag. I think she needs something. She doesn’t want you to have time. I think she’s trying to push you into acting, and maybe—maybe, if you did, it would all turn out the same. But worse, obviously.”
Jon’s fingers, which he had been absentmindedly brushing over Martin’s forearm, were suddenly still; Martin realized that possibility hadn’t occurred to him.
“But maybe—if you don’t, but if you keep trying—keep looking for it—maybe there is another way. One she’s scared of. A path she doesn’t want you to take.”
“Hm.” Martin could tell Jon wasn’t sold on it, but he had heard him, and that was enough for the moment.
“Jon?”
“Yes.”
“I’m—I’m going to tell them soon.”
Jon nodded. “I understand.”
He kissed Jon lightly on the forehead, and slid his hand up to his chest, where he slipped his fingers into the gaps between the buttons of Jon’s shirt. He could feel the scar, his scar, through the thin fabric of Jon’s t-shirt; beneath that though, around it, he could feel the rise and fall of Jon’s chest.
“Jon.”
“Yes?”
“Let me know if you’re reading a statement and I’m not around?”
Jon sighed. “All right.”
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pronouncingitwang · 4 years
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pre-canon Jon/Georgie | 4.3K words | for @the-magnace-archives
1.
“Laundry detergent is practically a self-contained emulsion—not that it has to be a mixture of anything, but it has a hydrophilic and a hydrophobic end,” says Jonathan-Sims-but-I-usually-go-by-Jon-oh-and-it’s-nice-to-meet-you-too, and Georgie grins. She hadn’t expected much when she dragged herself out tonight, prompted more by the vague feeling that she really ought to make some friends this year (apparently, her tutees don’t count, thanks Mum) than any real desire to do so. Then, she’d looked across Balliol Bar to see the student who’d interrupted their Modern-ish Lit prof in lecture yesterday, holding a briefcase in his lap and scowling at his beer as if it too wasn’t planning to analyze Jane Austen through a post-colonialist lens this year. Georgie had headed over as a gesture of BAME Literature student solidarity, and now it’s been an hour and she’s still here, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Jon doesn’t seem to be a fan of eye contact, which gives Georgie plenty of opportunity to observe. None of his initial red flags—being dressed like a professor on TV, for one—have proven to be signs of a deeper rottenness yet. There’s something in Jon’s gestures—abrupt, abortive, like he’s holding himself back—that assures Georgie that he’s not just doing this as an ego boost. This is all to say that the last three hours of banter and infodumping have been wholly pleasant. Probabilistically, it can’t last.
“Do- do you want to go back to mine?” Jon asks, and god does Georgie hates being proven right sometimes. It’s not that Jon’s unattractive, per se—Alex would have called him “hot in a murder victim kind of way” (and the memory of her voice hurts, but less than it would’ve a year ago)—but Georgie had hoped for a little more class. Plus, even if Jon seems harmless and even if Georgie's not scared, she'd rather not run the risk of being called a bitch tonight. She starts scanning for nearest exits.
Something about her silence must’ve clued Jon in because he quickly exclaims, “Not like that! God, sorry, not like that.”
Georgie pauses in her room surveyal. “Oh?”
“Sorry, sorry, I just meant that- that I’d like to keep talking to you, but it’s really loud here and I can’t think of anywhere quieter that’s open right now. I promise. But in retrospect, I can... I can see how that might’ve sounded.”
He looks earnest enough, and a little flushed as well. Georgie wants to—does—believe him. But she takes a second to size Jon up anyway. Between the eyebags, height (or lack thereof), and twig limbs, he looks like someone she could defend herself against if needs be. Also, she kind of does want to learn more about emulsifiers, or just watch him as he talks about them.
“Well, as long as you mean it—” “I do.” “Then, let’s go.”
(Georgie wakes up seven hours later with a crick in her neck and an Oxford sweatshirt she doesn’t own draped over her shoulders. Her hair’s a mess—she hadn’t pineappled it last night, and the back of this chair(? yeah, it’s a chair) is definitely not silk—and the time is… shit. Oh, and there’s Jon, perched on his bed and looking at her.
“You, ah, fell asleep during the ghosts debate? I didn’t know whether or not to wake you.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Georgie says, rolling her neck and wincing. “Sorry for stealing your chair.”
“Tea?” Jon asks, holding out a mug Georgie’s almost certain was just in the godforsaken microwave. Not that she hasn’t done the same thing on many an occasion.
“Sorry,” Georgie says, “I should probably be going; I’m gonna be late for a lecture. But before I leave—do you want to do this again tomorrow?”)
-
2.
Georgie spends some time deliberating over when to pop the question. It’s not fear holding her back; it’s practicality. There’s only a small window of feeling—after “certain she wants this” but before “starting to think losing Jon’s company would require her to take another gap year”—where taking the risk is worth it, and the second stage is coming up much faster than anticipated. (She’s never thought of herself as someone who falls for people fast—she hadn’t even realized her feelings for Alex until it was far too late—but now this. Maybe it’s another side effect of getting a philosophy lesson from a corpse. Or maybe it’s just a Jon thing.) All in all, it’s only been three weeks after their first meeting before she asks.
“Are you seeing anyone else?”
“What?” Jon asks, eyes jolting from his book to scan his room for uninvited apparitions. They’d both been unusually absorbed in their readings for the past hour, only interrupting the silence with scoffs and huhs.
“No, like, are you seeing anyone else romantically?” Jon frowns, and a thread of doubt worms its way into Georgie’s throat. “That is what we’re doing, right?” Granted, lunch meet-ups in the dining hall that spill over into long and unproductive study sessions might not scream “date,” but there’d also been a fair amount of (well, okay, Georgie-initiated) arm-around-the-shoulder action a few times. Also, hand-holding, of the fingers-intertwined variety.
“Oh. Um, yes, we’re romantically involved, or I suppose I should say that I hoped we were and didn’t know how to ask for clarification”—note to self: communicate clearer in future, Georgie thinks—“and no, I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Georgie had thought as much, but the confirmation is nice. “Cool. Me neither. Want to keep doing that?”
“Seeing each other?”
“And not anyone else, yeah.”
“Oh.”
“Maybe even start calling each other girlfriend and boyfriend?”
“Oh. Um.” Jon’s leg starts to bounce, which doesn’t seem like a good sign. Georgie waits.
“It’s not that-” Jon begins, then cuts himself off with a frustrated sigh. “It’s not that I don’t want to, believe me. I just—I have a… ground rule. That you may not be happy about.”
“Just one?”
“What?” Jon looks startled out of his worry for a second, which Georgie counts as a success.
“Well, I mean, if you’re talking about boundaries, I’ve got plenty. Routines that I’d need you to work around, stuff I don’t want to talk about, and if you’re ever even slightly sympathetic to the Tories…”
Jon doesn’t even laugh at the last one, and she knows he’s not a Cameron cocksucker. Something’s really bothering him.
“This one is… a pretty big deal.”
Georgie tries to keep her tone reassuring. “Let me be the judge of that, yeah?”
“Okay,” Jon says, “okay, yeah,” then nods decisively. “I’m… not going to have sex with you.”
What?
Jon continues, hands fluttering nervously as he explains. “I mean, I can’t say for certain that I’ll never change my mind, but if we’re doing this, it should be under the assumption that I won’t. And it’s not—it’s not a you thing, I swear, it’s just the thought of doing that with—with anyone is just…” he shudders slightly, and Georgie gives him a sympathetic wince. “And I know that’s a dealbreaker with a lot of people. I think I’m—well, it’s called asexuality, there’s some books I found if you don’t believe me, here, I’ll write the titles down—” Jon reaches for his briefcase, presumably to find paper and pen, but Georgie grabs his hand before he can.
“Jonathan,” she says. He tightens a little at the sound, and damn if that doesn’t near break her heart. “Jon. I believe you. And”—she squeezes his palm—“I still want to be with you.”
“Are you—are you sure?”
“Completely. Honestly, I’m kind of relieved?” Georgie says, realizing as she replies just how true the words are. “I’m not sure how I feel about sex yet either, really. I’d wondered, each time I’ve been over, if you’d try to… and then you never did, and I was always glad. I’m not like you, I don’t think—the thought doesn’t repulse me, it just… might not be something I’m ready for yet.”
“But you think you’ll want to later?”
Georgie shrugs. “Well, yes and no? People are hot, but even if I changed my mind about sex, I wouldn’t ask you for anything you don’t want to give me, and I doubt I’d be so horny that we’d need to renegotiate our relationship. I’ve been doing just fine dealing with everything single-handedly. Or,” she amends, “sometimes double-handedly.”
And there it is: Jon laughs, a rusty exhale that makes Georgie smile more than anything.
“So…” she whispers, bumping her nose against Jon’s, “Unless my boyfriend has any more objections…”
“Just to—just to clarify. That’s me?”
Despite her best efforts, a giggle escapes Georgie’s throat. “Yes.”
“Well. In that case. He does not.” Jon says. “Oh. Except. Can I kiss you?” he asks, which conveniently answers one of Georgie’s unvoiced questions.
“Absolutely.”
Their lips meet despite Jon’s grin, but only because Georgie’s smiling just as wide as he is.
-
3.
That conversation, it seems, marks the beginning of Jon-initiated physical affection. Georgie had assumed before that his lack of cuddliness was fully a result of touch sensitivity, but it's clear now that although the sensory stuff was a factor, Jon had also been holding himself back, trying to avoid any touch which could be seen as either too clingy or a prelude to sexual activity. Now, on some days, there’s a head leaning against Georgie's shoulder in the dining hall, a leg swung over her lap as they sit on his bed, an arm around her waist when they walk to Modern-ish Lit together. It’s not all effortless—Jon still moves like he half-expects Georgie to bat his hand away, and sometimes Georgie forgets to ask before she touches Jon—but they’re getting there.
Currently, Georgie’s wheeling a shopping cart around Tesco with Jon draped over her back like a very determined lichen. It was Steve-from-down-the-hall’s birthday last night, so Jon and a few of Jon’s acquaintances-turning-friends from a budding local urban exploration group had come over to duck into the party and snag several bottles. Georgie’s more than a little hungover, and Jon is no better for wear—he doesn’t drink, but staying up all night has taken its toll.
Jon’s wearing a sleeveless top that, on second thought, may actually be an old skirt of Georgie’s. Either way, he looks great. Georgie’s in her pajamas, and also, for some reason, a top hat? Between the outfits and Jon’s posture, they’ve gotten a few looks, but being literally fearless does wonders for one’s ability to ignore that stuff. Plus, Georgie knows almost all the employees here. They’ll have her back if needs be. Georgie’s not bothered, not by the other shoppers and not by her barnacle boyfriend—Jon’s not heavy, and he matches her every step, only disentangling himself to add items to the cart. She’s just glad they’ve both stuck around long enough to see each other like this.
In fact, there are a plethora of behaviors Georgie can sort into pre-commitment and/or post-commitment Jon things. She’ll make a Venn diagram once she’s certain her observations are solid. Pre-commitment things that Jon has since dropped include making his bed in the morning and keeping his professorial garb on at home. Things that go into both categories are Jon’s love of debate, the posh accent (though sometimes, after Jon’s just finished up a stilted call to his grandmother, his “of”s sound more like “off”s), and the fact that every time Georgie comes over, he opens the door before she knocks, like he’s been listening for her the whole time. Post-commitment, there’s calling her “George” when he’s sleepy; launching into completely sincere dramatic readings of his assignments to help him think passages through; stimming without looking self-conscious about it; and luckily for Georgie, cooking.
“Pasta tonight?” she asks as Jon squints at two identical-looking tomatoes so hard Georgie thinks they might explode.
“Mm.”
“The one on the left is a bit bigger?”
Jon puts the other one down with a scowl. “Maybe.”
The kitchens in Jon’s building have a stovetop and just enough counter space for prep. Georgie insists on helping this time, so she chops vegetables as Jon gets the noodles going. As the water nears boiling, Jon begins to hum something that Georgie thinks is meant to keep time, tapping his foot to the rhythm.
“Whatcha singing?”
“Oh,” Jon says, foot no longer tapping. “I didn’t notice—that is—it’s just. Something my grandmother sings when she’s cleaning.”
Jon doesn’t talk about his grandmother much, but Georgie can fill in the blanks. Again, she's been in the room for some of their phone conversations, and though she doesn't understand Urdu, she does understand silence. So she doesn’t push, just says, “Well, it sounds nice” and keeps chopping. Jon doesn’t sing, or speak, for the rest of their time in the kitchen.
Georgie’s dad said something once about vulnerability being a mutual exchange, and it’s stuck with her ever since. (Seems even more relevant now, since the no-fear thing means vulnerability doesn’t cost her much anyway.) Five minutes into a very silent dinner, Georgie speaks.
“You know, during first term, on the weekends, I didn’t eat dinner at all. Or any meals, really.”
Jon doesn’t move, but she can tell he’s listening.
“It made sense to eat on weekdays, because I’d always come across a cafeteria on my way to class. But on weekends, it was way too much work to drag myself out of my room, sometimes even out of bed. There didn’t seem to be any reason to. And I always had some rolls on hand that I’d taken from the dining halls earlier that week, so it’s not like I was starving myself. But still. Wasn’t great.” Jon nods, which is enough encouragement for Georgie to finish. “So I guess what I mean is, thank you? For being a good enough reason.”
Georgie takes Jon’s hand, and he squeezes back.
(A few days later, when Georgie’s almost forgotten the incident, Jon pulls the blanket tighter around them and says, “I think I’m going to tell you about my grandmother now, if that’s okay,” and Georgie says, “okay.”)
-
4.
Georgie hasn’t had a bad episode in a long time, but then her dad gets into a car wreck and he’s fine, he’ll be fine, but the bill’s gonna be hell to foot, and Georgie should be calling her English course freshers to see if they or their friends want any more tutoring hours, but instead she hasn’t brushed her teeth in four days and she’s missed her weekly scheduled room cleaning and she has that marked in her calendar for a reason, she has a routine for a reason, but every limb feels heavy and she’d rather stare at the ceiling and wait for it to collapse on her the way it one day will and therefore always has been. She misses Alex. She misses home. She misses being able to move without feeling like she’s dragging her body in a bag behind her.
Jon finds Georgie on what she thinks is a Saturday. He takes a second to scan the room before his eyes alight on the pile of blankets she’s under. “You haven’t been answering my messages,” he says.
The one time Jon had a meltdown in Georgie's presence, he shouted at her to leave, immediately. Georgie thinks she should extend Jon the same chance to escape, never mind that Jon's brain in crisis does better alone and Georgie's doesn't.
“Please go away.”
Jon does go away, but only to the other side of the room—where Georgie had accidentally knocked over her laundry hamper two(? three?) days ago and then stared at it until it felt like her insides had been hollowed out—and starts picking up each item of clothing on the ground, inspecting it, and shoving it back in the basket.
“Is this clean?” Jon asks, holding up a pair of knickers. Under most circumstances, the image would be funny, but as it is, it’s just surreal.
Georgie sighs. “I don’t think there’s a single clean thing in this room.”
“That’s good to know,” Jon says, and then, “Maybe you should get up.”
“Make me,” Georgie says. He does not.
As Jon continues to tidy up the floor, he asks her various bite-sized questions—trying to ground her, she assumes. Where did she get these jeans? What’s that poster on her wall of? Does she need the notes from Thursday? How is she doing? That last one, she elects not to answer.
When Jon’s done with the laundry pile, he asks for a hand to lift the hamper upright again. Georgie considers calling him out on the ruse, but finds that it’s easier to take Jon’s hand as he half-pulls her out of bed. Standing upright makes her a little dizzy, but he holds her still until her vision clears.
But then they go to lift the hamper, and Georgie drops it again and Jon doesn’t catch it fast enough and the clothes go spilling over the floor again, and she screams something at Jon that burns in her throat and Jon blinks and blinks and hardens and yells something back and Georgie wants to throw something or hide or fall asleep but instead she just tells Jon to get the fuck out out of her room.
“Fine,” Jon snaps, and wrenches the door open. He pauses before he takes his first step into the hall. “I’ll be back in an hour, if you want me here then.”
Georgie curls up on the ground and thinks about what Jon breaking up with her would look like and she isn’t scared, just sad, and then she counts prime numbers until she falls asleep again. And then Jon does come back, and Georgie is no less frustrated and Jon is no less hurt, but he’s holding a takeout bag. (Georgie tears through the wrap, and then, upon Jon’s prompting, all of his kebabs too, and he sits there until she’s finished. Once she’s full, she feels a little less heavy.)
-
5.
Georgie practically runs up the stairs to Jon’s room, phone still clutched in hand. “URGENT,” the text had read, and Georgie had felt a sharp curiosity course through her.
When Jon opens the door, he’s practically vibrating. “I figured out a way to get into the Sheldonian after-hours,” he whispers.
“No fucking way,” Georgie whispers back. “Seriously, how? We have to tell the others right fucking now. But how?”
Georgie had recently dragged Jon into her latest obsession—Oxford history—though “dragged” implies that he hadn’t come extremely willingly. She’d wondered if the incident in the medical building would come up, but Jon had quickly turned to fixate on something else. For the last month, Oxford’s main theater has been the subject of most, if not all of their conversation. That's spilled over into their conversations with their urbex friends (read: all their friends), which has then spilled over into their collective ability to engage in academia. Each member of their friend group—going on different days to deflect suspicion—has been on a tour to scope out the surveillance cameras’ blind spots. Plus, they’ve pooled their money to buy a fancy lockpicking kit.
“Well,” Jon says, hands flapping wildly as he looks for his phone, “I was talking to one of the violinists who played there last year, and then there were some blueprints in the Balliol Library—here, I took pictures—and…”
There’s more planning to do, obviously, if the six of them want to achieve their ultimate goal of “don’t get caught, like, seriously.” They practice treading lightly, quiz each other on floor plans, and (at least try to) confine themselves to a strict sleep schedule to keep their reflexes sharp. It’s unbelievably overkill, but such is life.
Then, there’s scheduling, which is difficult because Marie has two big assignments coming up and Steph works night shifts five days a week, but eventually, the expedition is a go.
Two weeks later, Georgie finds herself standing on the wood floor of the Sheldonian Theater, looking up at the barely-moonlit ceiling.
“Wow,” Jon breathes over a chorus of April’s “holy shit!”s.
“Kind of stupid that Truth is white,” Georgie says, but her voice is tinged with as much awe as Jon’s is.
Jon lets out a huff of laughter. “Next time, we can break in and repaint.”
“By stacking like ten ladders on top of each other?”
“Obviously.”
Georgie’s seen the ceiling before on daytime tours, of course she has, but those times, it was always just a painting, no less shiny and solid than the rest of the theater. The fresco she sees now is smudged with shadow, but that only makes it look more real. It depicts a vortex of orange clouds surrounded by scholars and cherubim. The figures curl themselves around the perimeter, simultaneously drawn into and bracing themselves against the storm. In the center of the swirling mass, Truth raises itself up, holding out its glowing hand. Structural support beams run over the mural to hold the ceiling up, sectioning off various parts of the scene. Every figure is drawn in exquisite detail; the shadows of their robes, the strands of their hair. But from down where Georgie stands, the whole thing just looks like an ancient mouth straining against a golden net, ready to consume them both.
“It’s beautiful,” Georgie whispers, and then, because one time doesn’t seem enough, “It’s beautiful!”
“You’re beautiful,” Jon tells the ceiling, though his whisper doesn't carry very far.
“You’re beautiful!” Georgie whisper-shouts at Jon. (Georgie senses, more than hears, an exasperated groan from Nick behind her, but she pays him no mind. She’s earned the right to be this sappy, thank you very much.)
“So are you!” Jon whisper-shouts back.
“I am!”
Most of their friends begin wandering farther off, but Jon and Georgie stay put. The Sheldonian is a flat-floor building. There’s no raised platform that draws the line between stage and audience, just an area with chairs and one without. Whatever secrets the two of them whisper to Truth, it is both call and response.
“Sometimes, I feel so lonely I could scream!”—from Jon.
“I wish I remembered what fear felt like!”—from Georgie.
“I don’t understand poetry and I never will!”
“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong because I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“I wish I’d chosen a different course! I have no idea what to do after graduation!”
“When professors call me Georgina, I feel physically ill!”
“I hate having short hair!”
“I hate having long hair!”
“I wish I’d actually taken my Urdu lessons seriously when I was younger!”
“I don’t feel guilty about quitting all my clubs in first year but I feel like I should!”
“We should be a little quieter!”
“I agree!”
A pause.
“I’m going to fail all my exams!”
“Funny, I’m gonna fail all of mine!”
“I’ll always feel like a disappointment! And I love my girlfriend!” It’s not the first time Jon’s said it, but the words send a thrill through Georgie anyway.
“I stubbed my toe yesterday and it still hurts! And I love my boyfriend!” It is the first time she’s said it. It feels right.
“I’m going to try to get to the balcony without being seen!”
“Good idea!”
“I really do love you,” Jon says again, and begins to move towards the nearest staircase, where Steph and April appear to be arm-wrestling. As Georgie watches his back, she’s suddenly struck by another memory—someone else Georgie loves standing in a building she’s not supposed to be in, taking one of her very last steps away from her. The feeling that rises in Georgie isn’t fear, but it must be the closest thing to it.
“Wait,” she says. (Jon turns around. He really is beautiful.) “I’m coming with you.”
-
+1
It’s third year, which means fast-approaching papers and goodbyes and post-graduation uncertainties, but it also means Georgie and Jon (and Nick and Marie, but they aren’t arriving until tomorrow) are moving in together.
“You’re gonna have to try to hold still,” Georgie says as she attempts to apply a second coat of purple to Jon’s pinky nail.
“I am,” Jon says. “Can’t you tape around it?”
“I don’t know which box the tape’s in,” Georgie says. “And since someone insisted on having his nails done before we began unpacking…”
“New place, new hands,” Jon says. “It just makes sense.”
“It really… doesn’t… but… there! That’s all of them! Now, just- don’t touch anything for the next ten minutes. I’m gonna do mine now.”
“Yes ma’am.” Jon gives a mock salute, and of course, grazes his nails against his hair in the process. “Oh, shit.”
“You’re the worst. I’m stealing all the blankets tonight for revenge.”
“Which blankets did you pack?”
“I thought that was your job?”
“It definitely wasn’t…”
“Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…”
“What did you say the last time I asked you to check the packing list…?”
“Shut up!"
“No, I don’t think ‘shut up’ was it. I’m pretty sure it was more along the lines of ‘I’m not an idiot, Jon,’ but if you’re sure…”
“We can check if they’re still there after our nails dry, okay?”
“Okay.”
A few minutes pass.
“I think we should get a cat,” Georgie says. “Do you want to get a cat?” and Jon breaks the holding-still rule again by shouting something incomprehensible and flinging his arms around her.
(Later, over takeout and scuffed nails:
“This year will be a good year,” Georgie tells Jon. “I can feel it. And if it’s not, I’ll make it good.”
“I’ll make it good, too,” Jon says, “Or I’ll try to, at least. I promise.”
And Georgie believes him, and Georgie is not afraid.)
36 notes · View notes
celsidebottom · 4 years
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Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims Additional Tags: Spoilers for 161!, Nightmares, The Extinction, The Lonely
Summary: When Martin dreams of the Extinction and Lonely, Jon sees his nightmares so vividly, and wants nothing more than to stop Martin from suffering any longer.
“Jon, come to bed.”
“I’m not tired.  Not like that.”
Martin stood in the doorway to the bedroom, leaning against the frame as he watched Jon fumble with one of the many tape recorders that followed him around.
“I know, but… you could still use some rest, even if you don’t sleep.”
“I don’t think it works like that anymore.”
Jon was still running his fingers over the buttons when a gently lobbed pillow thudded into his side.  He dropped the recorder and looked up at Martin, aghast.
“Jon, come on, please..."
Martin had a pouty look on his face with sincere worry shimmering in his eyes, and Jon sighed, the faint upturn of a smile at the edge of his lips.
“Yeah, alright.  Fair enough.”
After changing into his pajamas, Jon crawled into bed beside Martin and draped an arm over his waist.  
“Good night,” Martin yawned.  “Thank you.”
“Of course.  Get some sleep.”
Martin gave Jon a quick kiss on the forehead before rolling in the other direction, adjusting his pillows, and starting to let sleep claim him.   Jon moved a little bit closer and rested his head into Martin’s back while his breath slowed.
It wasn’t that Jon didn’t need rest.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to cuddle up beside Martin and hold him tight.  It was that he saw Martin’s dreams, if they could even be called that.
In the world he’d created, there were only nightmares.
La porte est la porte est la porte est la porte est la porte est la…
Martin’s subconscious raced through doors, some half-destroyed and others pristine, interspersed with dark, dilapidated streets.  And in those streets were corpses, mangled and decayed, mutated beyond recognition, embedded into the pavement, entombed in the walls.  Their hands almost reached out at Martin, begging him to save them, but there was no hope for them now.  Martin ran through one last, broken door, and there was only light.
Blinking, Martin, and by extension, Jon, stepped into a hot summer day, the heat casting up wavering lines around them.   Mechanical numbers buzzed in his ear and repeated themselves over and over and over and over.
 Three.  Zero.  Five.  Eight.  Three.  Nine.  Two.  Eight.  Four.  Six.
In the distance, Martin saw a house atop a small hill.  But the smoke that rose from it was not that of a chimney or a contained brushfire.  It is something else entirely, something unimaginable.
 Four.  Seven.  Four.  Nine.
Jon didn’t need to hear the whole sequence of numbers to know what the meaning was:
The World is Always Ending.
Martin’s subconscious faded away in the beeping of each number, their message both a revelation and a perpetually known truth at the same time.  When he looked again, he stood inside a hut that creaked and groaned like shifting metal, mixed with the sound of a distant scream that was ignored as something innocuous.  As Martin stepped toward the twisting statues made from refuse and forsaken objects, the block of concrete at his feet transformed and hissed.
With a shock, Jon pulled himself from the vision.  It was so easy to fall into Martin’s dreams, to see that fear right there inside him, but how much was he going to let Martin bear?  He could feel Martin’s pulse pounding beneath his embrace and the way his breath caught in his throat as the newly manifested snake lashed out at him and the statues turned toward him, liquid concrete pouring from what should have been their eyes and mouths.
Consciously, Jon tried to look away.  It took all his strength to do so, to reach out and shake Martin, to try and wake him from his nightmares.
“Martin, Martin, wake up, please.  Wake up.”
It was no use.  And he knew that when he tried.  It wasn’t the first time Jon had attempted to wake Martin when the fear of his nightmares caused his body to convulse in the night.  Or whatever passed as night anymore.
But Jon could never wake him.  Instead, all he could do was hold Martin a little tighter.
Instantly, Jon was thrust back into Martin’s dreams and the faint hum of carnival music sent a shiver up both their spines.  The people at the game stalls were gaunt and thin, prying apart bones before descending on their injured companion before the life even left his limbs.  And then, when their appetites were only just whetted, they turned toward Martin.
Just as the crowd descended, the scene shifted and changed.  The gentle sound of waves crashing on a shore came first, followed by an image of a beach, but all the colors were desaturated and empty.
It wasn’t the first time Martin dreamt of the Lonely; he’d had visions of it even before the world ended.
Same as before, Martin’s body shuddered under Jon’s embrace and faint, mumbled words escaped his lips in the waking world.
“No… I can’t go back.  I won’t.  Don’t… don’t make me.  Please…”
A quiet sob broke from Jon as he heard Martin beg.  The weakness in his voice, the frailty…
“Wake up, Martin, please.  You’re not there.  It’s not real,” Jon pleaded even though he knew it wouldn’t help.
He’d seen enough terror replayed in his mind, he knew that such platitudes, even if spoken during the consciousness of day, did little to help allay the fear.  Every statement he’d ever read used to show itself in his dreams, but now they didn’t need to – there was enough fear in the air to sate his monstrous appetite at all hours.
It made sense that Martin would dream of the Extinction.  Especially when the world around them was so warped from the way it had been just a few days ago.
And even Jon used to dream of the Lonely, before he no longer needed to sleep.  Visions of fog, the din of static, the sight of Martin turning away from him and disappearing into the void…
Feeling Martin beside him was the only thing that got him through such nightmares.  So, as Jon was unable to wake him, he held onto Martin even tighter, hoping that his presence would be some small comfort when Martin awoke.
They didn’t have to eat anymore, he didn’t have to sleep, why did they still have to dream?  Why did Martin still have to suffer?  He’d been through so much, and yet he was still hurt again and again…
The tears blurred Jon’s vision and he became acutely aware of how closely he held Martin, how his heart raced and his limbs twitched as he tried to find some escape from the Lonely in his mind.  Jon pressed his forehead against Martin’s back and let himself cry, because there was nothing more that he could do, except watch and wait.
“Jon?  Jon, are you okay?”
Martin extracted himself from Jon’s grip and rolled over to face him.  His eyes were alert even though he’d just awoken from a terrible, terrible dream, and he pulled Jon into a firm embrace, before letting go only slightly, his leg gently draped over Jon’s as he brushed away his tears.
“What happened?”
“I’m sorry, Martin, I’m so, so sorry.  You’ve been through so much and I can’t help, I can’t make it better.  I did all this; it’s all my fault, I’m sorry…”
“Jon, please…”  Martin cradled Jon’s head with one hand while the other gently rubbed his shoulder.  A soothing motion, even if it did little to take away the pain.  “I’m guessing you, uh, saw my dreams again?  Bad stuff, huh?”
“You really don’t remember them?”
Martin shook his head.
“You’re lucky.  The other fear I see from everything happening now, the thing that scares me most about it is that it doesn’t scare me.  But with you… I don’t want you to suffer anymore.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” Martin insisted softly as Jon let out another heavy sob, even as a tear fell from his own eye.  “The dreams might be bad, but at least I get to wake up and see you here.  For a few moments, then, everything is okay – except when you’re crying, of course, but you know.”
Jon choked out a chuckle and couldn’t help but smile.
“When I wake up and see you, or just feel you beside me, there’s a second where none of the pain matters and I can forget that the world is in such a messed-up state.  I just… I wish that you could find a reprieve like that.  Even for the smallest moment.”
“It doesn’t all go away,” Jon muttered.  “It doesn’t ever stop entirely.  But… it gets quieter when I hold you.”
Martin pulled Jon in tight and wrapped his arms around him, and Jon pressed himself into Martin’s chest.
In a soft whisper, Martin urged, “Then don’t ever let go.”
43 notes · View notes
bubonickitten · 4 years
Link
Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.
Previous chapter: tumblr // AO3
Chapter 5 full text & content warnings below the cut:
CWs for Chapter 5: flashbacks re: canon-typical trauma (each of Jon's encounters with the Fears is mentioned, some more detailed than others - worms and Circus-related horror in particular); brief mentions of eye horror/gouging. SPOILERS through S5.
   Chapter 5: Second Chance
   “Hi, Georgie,” Jon says meekly. There’s a raw quality to his tone that he didn’t anticipate. Don’t cry, he warns himself. Don’t you dare cry.   
  Georgie surveys him – not with fear, of course, but with a combination of caution and interest.
  “My eyes are up here,” Jon says with a small, hesitant smile.
  “Jonathan Sims, was that a joke?”
  “People might assume otherwise, but I do have a sense of humor.”
  “Not like that you don’t.”
  “It’s Martin’s,” Jon admits. When he feels himself start to flush, he averts his human eyes. Useless, really, considering how most of the others are still concentrated on Georgie, but it’s just force of habit at this point.
  Georgie grins for a brief moment. Jon is suddenly struck with the magnitude of how long it’s been since he’s seen her smile, and then it fades.
  “You’ve picked up quite a few more…” Georgie raises an eyebrow and motions vaguely at Jon and his general vicinity.
  “Yes.” Jon shifts his weight from one foot to the other, embarrassed. “They aren’t, ah… manifesting in my hospital room, are they?”
  Georgie looks at him like he’s grown an extra head. Though, that may have less to do with his question and more with yet another eye that just emerged unsolicited on his left cheekbone. Great timing.    
  “Uh… no?”
  “Oh, good.” He doesn’t bother to understate his relief. Everyone already saw him as a monster last time; retaining his post-apocalyptic nightmare ‘he’s-all-eyes’ look would make an already difficult challenge nearly impossible.
  “So you… you know where you are, then?”
  “Yes.” 
  When he doesn’t elaborate, Georgie’s eyes sweep up and down his figure again, and Jon feels exposed. Seen. She folds her arms and jerks her chin in his direction.  
  “You’ve got mud all over you.”
  “I… had to help someone climb out of a grave earlier.” In an attempt to distract himself from his own self-consciousness, he begins playing with a lock of hair at the nape of his neck.
  “And the blood?”
  “Dream pica,” Jon says guardedly. “And a dissection lab.” He looks around the pristine room they’re standing in. “A – a different one. With more… blood.”
  “Right.”
  The awkward silence drags on a bit too long.
  “It’s… it’s good to see you, Georgie,” he ventures.
  “Jon, is it really you?”
  “Yes.” Georgie doesn’t respond, and her expression is unreadable. “I – I don’t have any way to make you believe me, but… listen, Georgie, I – there are some important things I have to tell you before you wake up.”
  Before Georgie can stop him, he plunges into the first bullet point on his agenda.
  “First, Melanie. I don’t know how much she told you about her trip to India, but she still has a bullet in her leg, and it’s poisoning her. It didn’t show up on any scans then, and it probably still won’t, but it needs to come out. I know she’s been hurting, growing angrier –”
  “How do you –”
  “Please trust me, Georgie. I don’t know whether Melanie will listen to you, especially when you tell her the information came from me, but – but I think she already knows about the bullet, knows what it’s doing to her. She might not want to give it up, and – and it’s not my place to make that decision for her, but – the Slaughter wants to claim her, and I don’t think any good can come from becoming an Avatar.” He laughs bitterly. “Maybe – maybe that would be enough to convince her. Just tell her she could end up a monster like me.”   
  “Jon –”
  “I just wanted to let you know,” he interrupts again. “You know her better than I do, and she can trust you more than she can trust anyone at the Institute. I don’t know what your relationship is like right now, if she would listen to you, and – and you don’t have to tell me. But you both deserve to know about it. And she… she deserves a chance to heal. She deserves to know that she has a choice.”
  “Okay. That’s... a lot to unpack.” Then, businesslike: “What else?”
  “Martin. He needs to know that I’m coming back. It – it might take another month or two, but I’m going to wake up.”
  “Jon, I’ve never even spoken to him.”
  “I know, and – and right now, he’s distancing himself from the others, too. But he’s in danger.” Georgie raises her eyebrows. “A new kind of danger. If you could ask Melanie to get a message to him, to just – tell him that I’m asking him to wait a few more months before giving up on me.”
  “I’ll pass the message on to Melanie,” Georgie says evenly, “but I’m not going to pressure her about it.”
  “I understand.”
  “You… you think you can wake up, then?”
  “Yes. And I will.” He pauses. “Soon, I hope.”
  “You going to explain, or keep being mysterious?”
  “I… listen, Georgie, I want to tell you, I do –”
  “But you can’t, because as usual, you think you know what you’re doing and you’re going to rush ahead and throw yourself at –”
  “No,” he says firmly. “I know it seems like I’m falling into a – a familiar pattern, but that’s not what this is. I want to tell you, and I will tell you, it just – it can’t be here.”
  “And why not?”
  “Because Elias is probably watching us right now.”
  “Your boss Elias?" Georgie gives him a blank look. "Your boss Elias who is in prison right now for the murders he framed you for? That Elias?”
  “Yes.”
  “You think he can, what, snoop on your coma dreams?”
  “And most places in the physical world aren’t safe from him, either.”
  “Right,” Georgie sighs. She’s known Jon long enough to tell when he isn’t going to budge. “Where, then?”
  “The tunnels under the Institute. It’s a universal blind spot, he can’t See there.”
  “And you aren’t worried about him overhearing that?”
  “No. He’s likely aware that we know about the properties of the tunnels. Besides, this isn’t some secret battle we’re all fighting. Everything is out in the open. I don’t have to hide my suspicions, and he’s stopped pretending not to be evil. He can safely assume that I’m keeping secrets and plotting behind his back just the same as he is.” Jon glares up at the ceiling and the Watcher beyond it. “I just don’t want him to know the details.” 
  “Can’t he read minds?” Georgie looks away. “It’s just – Melanie mentioned –”
  “It’s… complicated.” Jon folds his arms and starts pacing slowly, retracing the same six-foot space back and forth as he pieces together an explanation. “Elias can See things that happen almost anywhere, but he has to concentrate in order to do it. He can Know a person’s secrets and details about their past, but I don’t think it’s mind-reading, per se, it’s just… Knowing, and – and there are limits on it. And he can implant images and knowledge into a person’s mind, but I think he has to actually be within eyesight in order to do it.”
  Jon abruptly stops pacing and stares transfixed at his feet.
  “It sounds like there’s a ‘but.’”
  “But… I don’t think he can actually read a person’s thoughts in real time. Sometimes it seems like it – he has a gift for reading people, and he always seems to know how best to manipulate or… or break a person. But I think… I think it’s an entirely non-supernatural gift.” Jon hugs his sides and draws his shoulders in, suddenly feeling both too small and too noticeable. “It’s monstrosity, but of a very human sort,” he murmurs softly. 
  “You’re sure?”
  “Fairly sure, yes, though it doesn’t hurt to take as many precautions as possible. I do plan on explaining things after I wake up, but only in the tunnels.” He gives Georgie a pleading look. “I wouldn’t ask you to come to the Institute if there was another option, but it… it has to be there. And I – I get it if you don’t want to see me in person, I can tell Melanie and then she can tell you, but it just – it still has to be in the tunnels.”
  “Jon, it isn’t that I don’t want to see you. I’ve been visiting you in hospital –”
  “I know.”
  “You could hear me?”
  “Not – not quite. I only just started being able to hear what goes on out there. But I… I know you’ve been visiting. Thank you.” Jon pauses, biting his lower lip. “Though I know that you… weren’t expecting me to recover.”
  “It’s been four months, Jon. You have no heartbeat, you’re not breathing –”
  “I know. And you’re thinking I’ve passed a point of no return and that you should cut ties with me before I drag you down with me.”
  “Well, have you?”
  “Passed a point of no return?” He looks up at the ceiling and closes his human eyes. “Yeah. A few of them, actually. I’m not fully human anymore, and I don’t think there’s a way to reverse it. But I – I’m still me, and I want to stay that way. You told me once – not long ago, I suppose – you said that if I was becoming something inhuman, I needed people in my life. To remind me of my humanity. You were right. There are more points of no return I could stumble into, I could get worse, and I don’t…” He swallows hard, fighting back the threat of tears. “I want to get better.”
  “Do you, though?” Georgie’s voice is gentle, but firm. “Actually?”
  “Yes,” Jon says without hesitation. “I really, really do. I can’t escape from the Institute, or from the Beholding. Not any time soon, anyway. Even when I was staying with you, I was physically dependent on reading statements – I just didn’t realize it yet. Running away and staying out of danger isn’t really an option for me anymore. It… hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe ever since I took the job.”
  Georgie presses her lips into a thin line, and Jon can tell he’s losing her.
  “But I’m not – I know you don’t believe me, but I’m not seeking out danger or heroics. I’m not… I’m not playing the martyr, or – or trying to court tragedy. I would love to go a month – hell, a week without the threat of death or worse hanging over me,” he says with a short, humorless laugh, “but that won’t happen as long as I’m the Archivist. So I – I don’t know what ‘better’ looks like for me now that I’m like this, but I want to try. I think this is a second chance, and I… I want to take it.”
  “I want to believe you, Jon. It’s just…”
  “You’ll believe it when you see it.” One corner of his mouth twitches up in a rueful smile.
  “Yeah.” Georgie’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
  He can’t really blame her for being skeptical. They’d had a conversation remarkably similar to this one before, shortly before their breakup – minus the supernatural elements, of course. He’d had a breakdown, finally admitted that he needed help, agreed to go to counseling – and then quit after two sessions. She’s seen his obsessiveness, his refusal to take care of himself, the self-destructive patterns he falls into, his apparent allergy to emotional vulnerability. He’s never shown her any other side of him. Come to think of it, he didn’t know he had another side until… all of this.
  “Look,” Georgie says after a moment and a sigh, “I – I’m not going to cut you out, not completely. But I may need some distance, you understand?”
  “Of course.”
  “And I can’t be your only support.”
  “I wouldn’t want that.”
  “And I have to decide how much I’m willing to get involved in… all of this.” Georgie frowns. “It’s just complicated, what with…”
  “Melanie.”
  “Yeah. I mean, I don’t want you trapped there, either – I think all of you should quit, actually. If you ever figure out how. Maybe even burn the place down just to be safe.” If she’s joking about the latter, Jon can’t tell. He doesn’t disagree with her, per se, but he does take a moment to wonder, not for the first time, how he’s managed to surround himself with so many people who see arson as a first resort. “It’s just –”
  “Listen, that’s actually the last thing I wanted to mention – I might have a way for Melanie to quit.”
  “What?”
  “I – I think the only reason she hasn’t been completely taken over by the Slaughter is because of her connection to the Eye, so it would be safest to remove the bullet first, if she decides that's what she wants, but – yes, there’s a way for her to quit.” He runs one hand through his hair and grimaces. “It’s drastic, but everyone needs to know they have the option. I can’t talk about the details here, though, and I – I’d rather everyone hear everything I have to say before making any decisions.”
  “You get more and more cryptic every time I see you, you know that?” 
  “Trust me, this is an improvement on…” Being the voice of the Archive, he does not say. “It could be worse.”
  “See? Cryptic.”
  “That can’t be the most off-putting thing about me.” As if on cue, another eye opens on his throat, centered on the scar that Daisy left him, and he cringes. More impeccable timing. 
  “Nah,” Georgie says after a contemplative hum. “I think the weirdest thing is how you just had an entire conversation about your feelings and didn’t once try to change the subject. Who are you, and what did you do with Jonathan Sims?”
  Jon laughs. “I guess I’ve… grown, a bit.”
  “Yeah, but when? Since you’ve been in a coma? This place doesn’t exactly seem ripe with opportunities for personal growth.”
  “I…”
  “Let me guess: you can’t talk about it.”
  “Not here.” Jon gives her an apologetic smile.   
  “Right.”
  Jon looks down again, scuffing one foot against the floor to fill the quiet.
  “So when can we expect you back in the world of the living?”
  “No more than a few months, I think. Hopefully sooner. It depends on how long it takes me to figure it out.”
  “Are you sure you’ll be able to?”
  “If I can’t do it on my own, someone else will do it for me. This in-between state doesn’t suit the Beholding, and there are at least a few interested parties who will force me to make a choice if I take too long. The Archivist has a role to perform, and right now, I’ve removed myself from the game board. Either I submit to the hand that moves me, or I die and make room for the next unsuspecting pawn in line.” Jon looks up. “Sorry, that came out more dramatic than I intended.”
  “A bit,” Georgie says, not unkindly.  
  “What I mean is, the coma has a time limit no matter what I do or don’t do. I’m not human enough to die, but I’m too human to live, so I have two choices: I accept what I’ve become and I wake up. I’ll still be me, but I’ll be even less human than I was before, and I’ll have to… make the best of that. Or, I sever my connection with the power that’s keeping me alive, and I die – not quite human, but not a monster, either. A slow death, though,” he adds bitterly. “To make sure I have plenty of time to change my mind.”    
  “Sounds to me like you haven’t made up your mind.”
  “I have, actually. It’s just… I don’t know how to finalize my choice, I suppose?”
  “You can’t just ask to speak to a manager?” One look at Georgie’s playful grin, and Jon feels himself smiling in return.
  “I wish. No, I – it’s… hm. Like I need to find my way to a crossroads, but I don’t have directions or a map.”
  “Maybe you just need a chaperon.” When Jon gives her a serious look, her teasing smirk fades. “What, seriously?”
  “Yeah. I haven’t given up on finding my own way, but if I take too long, a guide will pass this way and… encourage me to choose a path and follow it to the end.”
  “I’d ask you how you know all this, but I doubt you'll tell me.”
  “I Know it because of the Eye, broadly speaking, but there’s a more specific answer I want to give you. Just… not here.”
  “Fine," Georgie says, but she doesn't sound upset, much to Jon's relief. "Anything else?”
  Jon almost says no, but…
  “Maybe… maybe one more thing,” he says, lowering his gaze, suddenly very interested in the floor. “I’ve never had any control in these dreams, and I’m terrified that I’ll lose it again. If I do, just… behind all the eyes, it’s still me. I can see you, and hear you, and I was wondering if… I know it’s stupid, but if it’s alright with you – and I completely understand if it’s not, I don’t want you to feel obligated –”
  “What, Jon?”
  “I… could you still talk to me, maybe?” Jon says it so quickly that it comes out all as one word. “I won’t be able to answer, but it would still be nice to hear your voice. Tell me about the Admiral, or your current knitting project – or the newest What the Ghost, and the weirdest listener feedback it got, or… or the latest dick move your landlord pulled. Anything.”
  When Georgie doesn’t reply right away, Jon keeps his head down and braces himself for disappointment. He didn’t mean to sound so desperate, and now he’s made things weird. He probably shouldn’t have –
  “Huh,” Georgie says finally. “Are you sure you haven’t been able to hear me talking to you out there?”
  “Not… not that I know of?” Jon cautiously looks up at her. “Not consciously, at least.”
  “Hmm. Well, next time I see you, if you’re as unresponsive in here as you are out there, I’ll just do what I usually do when I visit you in hospital, which is natter on about my personal life and tell you all about the Admiral’s latest adventures in protecting the flat from spiders.”
  “Brave boy,” Jon says fondly, and Georgie snorts.
  They spend some time talking about the Admiral and his newfound obsession with bread ties until, mid-sentence, Georgie wakes. Jon is left alone in a sterile dissection lab, the harsh fluorescent light underscoring the emptiness of the place.
  The conversation went… better than he had dared to hope, really. He’s both stunned and relieved that Georgie hasn’t written him off yet, but also terrified of messing things up again, of squandering his second chance. He can’t count on getting a third. This is his one opportunity to fix things, to do better, to be better, and he needs to make it count.
  No pressure, he thinks to himself grimly, and he heads for the door.
   Time is difficult here.
  Well, it was difficult at the end of the world, too. Towards the end, Jon didn’t even bother to keep track of it, but he could have Known, if he had wanted. Here, though, he can’t seem to Know anything about what’s happening outside of the dream.
  Jon relies on his conversations with his fellow dreamers to gauge the time and date in the outside world, and it doesn’t take long for him to realize that his perception of time is wildly inconsistent. Sometimes what feels like hours to him translates to a week on the outside; sometimes a single night in the real world is stretched into days for Jon. There are indeterminate stretches of time in which he drifts in that directionless void again – times when, he assumes, all of the other dreamers are awake, leaving no nightmare settings for him to occupy.
  At least the passage of time seems to be progressive. Time travel is difficult enough without hopping around to different points on the timeline. He’s glad to see that, his initial leap backwards notwithstanding, time still seems to be moving in one direction.
  It took a long time for Jon to stop waiting for the moment when he would lose his agency and become the Watcher again. A small part of him is still waiting for the rug to be ripped out from under him again, but for the most part, he’s allowed himself to relax into it and silence his customary pessimism. He still isn’t sure exactly why he has so much control now. It’s a… well, not best-case scenario – that would be freedom from the dreams altogether, for himself and for the others – but it’s still an unexpected boon that he never would have even imagined. Every time he searches for an answer, though, he gets nothing but noise and a blinding headache.
  The best theory he can come up with is that he’s simply stronger now, after completing his metamorphosis into the Archive. If so, it’s somewhat worrisome. It would mean that coming back in time rewound most of the timeline, but he remains a product of its original trajectory. He is an artifact of a cascade of disasters that never happened – that will never happen, if he manages to foil Jonah’s plans. There’s no way of telling how the world might react to his presence in it. Is he an allergen of sorts, a paradox that cannot be reconciled? Is he something akin to the rift itself? God, he hopes not – it will be difficult to convince anyone of his humanity if he radiates the same sort of wrongness as the crack in the foundation at Hill Top Road.
  Most of all, though, he wonders what it means for the Archivist’s progress.
  At this point in his original timeline, he had been marked by the Web, the Eye, the Corruption, the Spiral, the Desolation, the Vast, the Hunt, and the Stranger. If he isn’t already marked by the End, he will be by the time he wakes up. That leaves the Slaughter, the Buried, the Dark, the Flesh, and the Lonely. He still has to rescue Daisy, so receiving a mark from the Buried is a given. Avoiding the Slaughter and the Lonely may be difficult, considering they’ve both already taken up residence in the Archives. He can try to avoid Jared Hopworth and Ny-Ålesund, but that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t stumble across the Flesh and the Dark some other way, and Jonah Magnus is nothing if not resourceful. He won’t give up just because Jon happens to evade two of his traps.
  Not to mention, Jon has an unfortunate tendency to serve himself up to the Fears on a silver platter. He’s gotten better at tempering his recklessness, at trusting others, at not going it alone, but still – in the past, he’s had an almost supernatural ability to make Jonah’s job easy. It’s possible – probable – that the Web was – is – pulling strings, but trying to account for the Web is like searching a beach for a single grain of sand.
  Then there’s Jonah Magnus’ suggestion that Jon’s life amounts to a truly unfortunate streak of bad luck, but luck is a nebulous concept, and a lot of Jon’s so-called chronic “bad luck” could be a direct result of the manipulations of – speak of the devil – the Web and Jonah Magnus. At this point, Jon suspects his misfortune probably has more to do with his being easily manipulated than it does with any sort of intrinsic unluckiness or tragic destiny.
  Jon’s initial encounter with the Web may or may not have been chance, but becoming the Archivist had nothing to do with luck. Jonah chose him because he knew that Jon would be easy to isolate, terrorize, and control. It was a deliberate action, not some passive twist of fate. Everything that unfolded from that point onward was carefully orchestrated and monitored by Jonah, and he always had contingency plans to keep Jon on the intended path. Yes, Jon made it easy for him in many ways, and he’s still responsible for his choices – but he’s also had to acknowledge that regardless of what choices he made, Jonah likely would have been ready with an equally effective backup plan to counter any move Jon did or did not make.
  Which is exactly why even now, with the advantage of foreknowledge, Jon is still absolutely terrified of Jonah Magnus.     
  But the more Jon thinks about it – and the more his attempts to Know yield nothing – the more he worries that all of that is moot. He recalls Jonah Magnus' statement with a full-body shudder.
  …if I could find an Archivist and have each Power mark them, have them confront each one and in turn instill in them a powerful and acute fear for their life, they could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this nightmare kingdom. Do you see where I’m going with this, Jon?  
  It wasn’t enough to have the Entities cause him bodily harm. The scars are just physical reminders of the encounter. Some of the Fears didn’t even leave him with visible scars. No, the real mark always depended on Jon’s lived experience of the confrontation: the terror, the pain, the confusion, the desperation, the alienation from himself, and the lingering, compounding trauma.  
  Knocking on Mr. Spider’s door, looking on as the monster took its substitute victim and saddled him with lifelong survivor's guilt. The worms gnawing and tunneling through his skin, wriggling against bone, lavishing praise on the give of his flesh, crooning that he will be cherished, he will be perfect, he will be a home. The pandemonium of the Distortion’s corridors; the razor edge of the bones in its hands. The white-hot agony of melting flesh; the terror of terminal velocity without an end; the inexorable press of a knife against his throat.
  An entire month of nothing but raw sensory input, disjointed and unfathomable: chittering, faceless things; ropes chafing and eroding furrows into skin; the ache of a jaw forced open by a length of cloth; cramping muscles and screaming joints; chill air and tailor’s tape on bare skin; layer after slimy layer of lotion; the scent of lavender cut through with the metallic tang of blood; so many hands, hands, hands, ever-present and unyielding. Nikola would mark dotted lines onto his skin with a felt-tip marker, providing a cheerful running commentary as she worked – the sorry state of his skin and her promise to get it into proper shape; vivid descriptions of how it would feel to be flensed alive, exquisitely painful yet so very liberating; how grateful he should be that he will get to be part of something so much greater than himself – all of it overlaid with Jon's unquestioning conviction that no one was coming to help him. 
  And encore after encore: an explosion, an endless nightmare, an impossible choice; the aching strain of bones bending, the agonizing snap of bones breaking, the unsettling vacancy left behind; the damp, earthy press of the coffin; the terrible beauty of unknowable darkness burning holes in his Sight.      
  Martin paling, fading, vanishing –
  “Are you scared, Jon?”
  “Yes.”
  “Perfect.”  
  – almost disappeared, almost lost, almost alone. 
  Jon remembers it all in perfect, visceral detail, every sensation and panic-stricken thought seared into him and easily accessible at the merest twitch of an overactive imagination. He witnessed and experienced worse during the apocalypse, but still those tired old flashbacks would overtake him and bring him to his knees without warning as he passed between domains.
  The question of mind-body dualism is well-settled at this point, at least as far as Avatars are concerned. Jonah Magnus has been body-hopping for centuries, discarding vessels and possessing new ones on a whim; Jon himself is currently a living mind tethered to a body that is in most other respects clinically dead. What if the body is irrelevant, and what really matters is the conscious mind?
  It might not matter whether Jon’s body encounters those final five marks. As long as he remembers receiving them, his consciousness is still scarred by all Fourteen of the Dread Powers. What’s more, traversing the ruined earth retraced those marks several times over, branding him more deeply with every passage through an Entity’s domain. That might be more than enough to initiate the Watcher’s Crown Ritual.
  If so, Jon is still a living chronicle of terror, fully prepared and ready and marked, and he’s delivered himself to Jonah Magnus months ahead of schedule.
  And if that’s the case, Jon has once again played right into Jonah’s hands.
  He can only hope that Jonah doesn’t Know it – and even if he doesn’t, it seems foolish to hope that he won’t find out eventually.
   “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
  “Absolutely not,” Naomi wheezes, doubled over with laughter.
  Jon groans and covers his face with his forearms, still lying on his back in the mud. He had been helping Naomi out of her grave, as had become the routine, but she had lost her footing just as she reached the top. In his scramble to catch her, he had lost balance and toppled in after her, and now they’re both stuck down here. Jon sits up and half-heartedly wipes the dirt off his hands, to little effect.
  “Break any bones, old man?”
  “It’s a dream, Naomi. Also, I’m only thirty.”
  “Could’ve fooled me.”
  He glares at her, but it’s tempered by an amused twist of the lips that he can’t quite suppress – which just makes Naomi snicker again.  
  “So,” she says after a moment, “still haven’t woken up?”
  “Still trapped,” Jon says, all the levity bleeding out of him in an instant.  
  “No luck with the anchor?”
  “No luck.” Jon leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. “Not for lack of trying – or practice. Just the thought of him has saved me more than once. But I guess it’s… different, when it involves trying to manipulate the hour of your own death.”    
  He should have suspected as much, really. Escaping a pocket dimension is different from trying to meddle with the End’s sphere of influence. In all the statements he’s consumed regarding Terminus, no one has ever been able to truly hold sway over it in any direction. It does not want anything, because everyone and everything succumbs to it eventually, given enough time. It doesn’t answer to summons or worship or pleas. Sometimes it elects to play games, but it engages only on its own terms, and no one ever wins – they simply accrue enough debt to delay the inevitable for as long as it takes to repay their dues.   
  “You’re being spooky again,” Naomi says brightly.
  “At this point, I think it’s my default setting,” Jon deadpans back. “More importantly – did you end up going to meet the distinguished Duchess Jellybean Toes?”
  “Yes!” Naomi leans forward with her hands on her knees, practically buzzing with excitement. “She’s gorgeous. A bit rude, though – she climbed up under my shirt, stuck her head out though my collar, and refused to budge for the entire visit.”
  “Are you going to adopt her?”
  “Mhm. I still need to buy some things and get the flat ready for her, but I already paid the adoption fee. Her name is a bit of a mouthful, though. Might have to change it.”
  “Don’t you dare,” Jon says, giving her a severe look. He meant it as a joke, but when his voice dips lower than intended and too many eyes join in on the staring, he winces.
  Naomi doesn’t react, though; she’s well past the point of finding him intimidating. “Hm. Well, I’ll have to shorten it, at least.”
  “Could just call her the Duchess,” Jon says, regulating his tone more carefully this time.
  “It doesn’t sound too… I don’t know, pretentious?”
  “Not at all. It sounds regal,” Jon insists. “I’ve told you about the Admiral, and he carries his title admirably.”
  “If that was a joke, it was terrible.”
  “That one was unintentional, actually.”
  “Good. I almost had to reevaluate my opinion of you.”
  “Can’t have that,” Jon says drily, and then his expression softens. “Seriously though, I’m glad the adoption worked out for you.”
  “Yeah. I think it’ll be good for me. Less lonely, you know,” she says, voice growing so faint that Jon can only barely hear her. Then, in a louder, more conversational tone: “Besides, I’ve always wanted a cat.”
  “Me too,” Jon admits. “By the time I finally got a flat that allowed pets, I was… well, always at work. It didn’t feel right, adopting a cat and then leaving it alone all the time.”
  “Well, you’re not dead yet. Not too late to develop a better work-life balance, even if you are…” Naomi wiggles her fingers. “You know, spooky.”
  “Maybe,” Jon says, pointedly ignoring the jape.  
  “Oh.” Naomi sits up straighter and looks at him. “I just realized – are you going to be able to get out of here once I wake up?”
  “That… is a very good question.” Jon smirks at her alarm. “I’m kidding. It’ll fade out when you do. Then it’s either back to the void, or on to the next nightmare.”
  “Spooky.”
  “That’s your third strike. Quota met for the day.”
  “You really are a buzzkill.”
  “So I’m told,” Jon says. “Now, if you’re finished harassing me, tell me more about the Duchess.”
  “Well, she’s a calico – unbelievably fluffy – and she’s only a year old…”
   Jon has never been the most social person. He doesn’t go out of his way to make friends, conversations typically feel like minefields, and he has a propensity for going off on informational digressions that most people find annoying. He asks too many questions, frequently misses social cues, and has always had difficulty modulating his tone of voice. Becoming the Archivist only made things more complicated, since now a conversational misstep can easily mean unintentional compulsion or Knowing (and sharing) something that he shouldn’t.
  But in recent years, he’s nonetheless become more dependent on human interaction and less tolerant of being alone. He knew he had been starved for companionship since he lost Martin, but he didn’t realize the extent of it until he started talking again, and in his own voice. So, when the voyeuristic nightmare sessions turn into social calls, he finds himself thriving on it in a way that he never expected.   
  There’s his budding friendship with Naomi – unexpected, but far from unwelcome.
  He still finds Dr. Elliott a bit insufferable, but Jon finds himself insufferable as well, so he can’t judge too harshly. He always peeks into the anatomy lab to check that Elliott isn’t in the throes of the nightmare. Sometimes they find some shared academic interest to discuss; other times, Elliott dismisses him, citing a disinterest in conversation at that moment. Jon never asks him to elaborate.
  Tessa usually declines his company, but occasionally she’ll wave him over and immediately launch into a discussion about neural networks or machine learning or some other tech-related subject that’s been on her waking mind. Well, it’s usually more of a one-sided lecture than anything else, but Jon always finds himself riveted, listening hungrily as Tessa shines light on an unfamiliar subject. The first few times he asked follow-up questions, she took it as feigned interest or ridicule, but once she realized that he was actually interested and not just humoring her out of guilt, she began to brighten every time he offered a new tangent for her to explore. He wouldn’t call them friends by any stretch of the imagination, but she seems to enjoy talking to someone who doesn’t tune her out when she begins to ramble. If nothing else, it’s better than devouring a computer.
  Jon doesn’t have much in common with Jordan, to be honest. It doesn’t take long for them to exhaust all avenues of conversation and lapse into an awkward silence. Jordan is skittish, though; he finds Jon’s less-than-human appearance perpetually unsettling, but apparently prefers it to being left alone in this place. Eventually they settle on an unspoken arrangement of just staying within eyeshot of one another for the duration of the dream, even when the conversation runs dry.
  In the silence, it’s more difficult to stave off the Knowing, though, which means Jon gets treated to ceaseless updates on Jordan’s mental state – and Jordan is more repulsed by all those eyes than he is by even the worst infestations he’s encountered on the job. By the time Jordan wakes up, Jon usually feels like an insect half-dead and twitching in the aftermath of an insecticide assault. He can’t blame Jordan, but it does still take its toll on Jon’s already abysmal self-esteem.
  Karolina remains largely unresponsive. Jon sits with her, talks to her – at her, really – and hopes that he isn’t just annoying her. Her eyes follow his movements, and sometimes she smiles, but otherwise, she’s uncommunicative – whether by force or by choice, Jon doesn’t know, and the Beholding doesn’t seem inclined to tell him. Although he has yet to completely interrupt the dream sequence, there have been a few instances where the train car didn’t collapse. He can’t say conclusively whether that indicates progress, but at least it’s evidence that the script can change. 
  On the one hand, it’s probably a good sign that Jon doesn’t have as much control over the Knowing as he did in the future. On the other hand, it’s like having his wings clipped after learning to fly, and he hates it. The Beholding did withhold some things from him during the apocalypse, but for the most part, he had unfettered access to an ocean of knowledge – and it’s maddening to have it restricted once again.
  Even before becoming the Archivist, he always hated unanswered questions; it may as well have been a core facet of his personality. But after so much time with the Archive at the forefront, to not Know is wholly incompatible with his nature in a deeper, existential sense. For the human part of him, it’s like having an itch that can’t be scratched; for the Archivist, it’s excruciating; for the Archive, it’s utterly incomprehensible.
  The balance he’d found in the future is shifting, and he isn’t sure what that means for him just yet, or how he feels about it.
   “How is Melanie?”
  “Struggling,” Georgie says, “but hopeful, I think. It’s really not my place to say much more than that.”
  “Yes, of – of course. I’m… glad to hear that she’s recovering.”
  “She’s still angry that you won’t tell me how she can quit.”
  “I will, I promise, I just… I need to explain everything first.”
  “She said to tell you that it’s patronizing to assume she can’t make her own decision without you holding her hand.”
  “I’m not – I just want it to be an informed decision.” Jon frowns. “That sounded condescending, didn’t it?”
  “A bit, yeah.”
  Jon looks down and rubs his temples. There’s a likelihood that if he tells Georgie right now, Melanie will blind herself before he even wakes up. It’s her choice, of course, but a choice never really feels like a choice when it’s presented as the only option, when vital information is being withheld that might affect your decision.
  There’s also the fact that his death would free all of them without a need for eye-gouging. He’s going to tell them – it doesn’t feel right to keep it to himself – but that’s something that he would rather Jonah not overhear. Jonah might be willing to lose Melanie if she takes an awl to her eyes, but if he thinks there’s a chance that she or any of the others would kill his Archivist just when he’s starting to show some promise, well… there’s no telling whether or how Jonah would choose to intervene. 
  “It’s not just that.” Jon glances up at the ceiling and the Eye just beyond it.
  “Tunnels-only information?”
  “Yeah,” Jon says, contrite. “She might not want to hear it, but please tell Melanie that I’m sorry. I’m hoping – what’s the date right now?”
  “First of February.”
  “She shouldn’t have to wait too much longer.”
  “How do you know?”
  “I just… do.” Jon winces at his weak delivery. He hates being so cagey, but he really has no other option.
  “Right.”  
  “How is… how is Martin?” Jon asks tentatively, perking up ever so slightly. Georgie’s expression turns sympathetic.
  “Melanie says they haven’t seen him,” she says gently.  
  “Oh.” Jon deflates, his cautious hope abruptly snuffed out.
  “I’m sorry, Jon. Melanie did send a few emails, and when that didn’t get a response, she slipped a note under his door. But it’s been radio silence.”
  “Oh,” he says again, almost a whisper this time. He covers his face with both hands and takes a minute to collect himself. “Um, c-can you tell Melanie I said thank you for trying? I –”
  Georgie is gone before Jon can finish his sentence. The Admiral must have woken her for breakfast. He always has been a natural alarm clock.
  Left alone with his own thoughts again, Jon immerses himself in worrying about Martin and a rotating litany of what-ifs. 
   End Notes:
Sorry this chapter isn't very plot-heavy!! It was getting really long and I had to split it into two chapters. Things will move along at the beginning of Chapter 6. It should be ready before the weekend. (Probably by tomorrow or Wednesday. I'm almost done with it.)
There are two excerpts from the show in this one. The clip of Jonah's statement is from MAG 160; the brief "Are you scared?" interaction is from MAG 158. 
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fearfearer · 4 years
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more thoughts about the magnus archives as i reread the transcripts
i was thinking about how gertrude robinson was really an extraordinary person (not extraordinarily Morally Sound, but extraordinary) just because of who she was, whereas the only extraordinary things about jonathan sims are things that have been arranged for him (i.e. his role). i don't mean this as a diss for jonathan, as i'm not extraordinary either. it's just striking that gertrude was so driven and confident compared to jon. of course, now we know that basically everything she did was in the pursuit of a moot goal (i.e. killing people in order to stop rituals that were already doomed to fail) so maybe my point is somewhat moot as well.
i've been doing some rereading of episodes on my phone (i.e. away from this text document on my computer) and i'll have a realization like "right, i should note that down when i get back to my computer" and i have forgotten all of them now that i am back at my computer. suffice it to say there are quite a few things i misheard/misunderstood on the first listen, unsurprisingly.
reading through the first 20 or so episodes i'm surprised by how well i remember each of them, considering i was listening like 4 episodes a day when i started. then again, it was only a month or two ago that i even listened to them, so one should hope my memory is at least this good. anyway the first episode i'm re-listening instead of rereading is 22 bc that's the first one where we hear martin's voice, i'm pretty sure
i've also noticed some errors in the official transcripts, which aren't a big deal because obviously what matters most is the audio, but still... some of them have been simple typos. magnus archives hire me as your official transcriptionist and i'll make all your transcripts 100% error-free bc im smatr
(reading through the rest of the transcripts and my standards went way down in terms of grammar/stylistic consistency, as most of the later ones are fan transcripts by several different people. i found quite a few mistakes, but obviously i have no particular way to help fix them short of sending an email to the tma transcripts fansite person like “hey there’s all these mistakes. upload my good version instead?” bc i’m not that much of a dick)
the whole reason martin went to the spider guy's building was because he didn't want jon to be disappointed in him for not doing Due Diligence. he says so twice. then he went back for the same reason. it seems the fandom joke is "jon asks his assistants to do crimes for him" but in this case martin is like "oh no maybe i didn't do enough crimes to satisfy jon"
jon was doing his archivist voice HEAVILY in season 1, huh?
tim's first appearance is so jovial compared to how he ends up...
if this boat lady is speaking spanish in brazil, then it doesn't matter if it was "bad spanish" or not. anyway now i understand why we already knew peter lukas was serving the lonely by the time jon mentioned offhand that peter lukas was serving the lonely. it was my whole “let’s not bother noting down any FREQUENTLY RECURRING names”
well i guess robert smirke was a real person. should i feel dumb about this? idk. it’s such a fictional-sounding name, to be fair. but i guess that set the precedent of using a real person as an important historical figure in the fiction that we see happening again when edmund halley is referenced later on. also episode 35 has foreshadowing for the separation of 14 powers, and people thought it was 13 because they mention 13 halls PLUS the one they came through.
totally forgot about tim goofing around in episode 39... he was really not having the worst time at this job before bad things started happening and he realized he was trapped, huh
the worms were trying to make a doorway into the Worm Wealm
ep 40 jon's like "I need to hear it. I need to record it. Or else I can't finish." (lightly abridged)
listening to the season 1 Q&A for the first time and EARL BIGMAC
also good to know there's only going to be 5 seasons. very good to know. this seems like a good kind of series to write with a fixed endpoint in mind, as it's very easy to do an episode that has effectively no bearing on the MetaPlot but which is still a short story in itself and therefore doesn't count as "filler"
jonathan sims performs with a mythical space pirate music cabaret. so he IS a ham
jonny says, "no rude words. i could say bums, maybe..." (alexander j newall does a laugh while i do the exact same laugh irl) "...but i won't."
some dumbass writing into the Q&A to ask if the background music is diegetic... get a podcast brain, ya fool. though for my part, i have to say that one of the most striking things about this podcast when i first started listening (though i never made a note of it before) was the Too Spooky Music, and i didn't like it at all. the reason was that i am, and have been, vulnerable to Getting Spooked about irrational things at night, such that it becomes really hard to fall asleep... and one of the things that has an outsize effect on my level of Spookédness is spooky audio. so if i was watching a video at night and i was worried it would Get Me Spooked, i would just turn the sound off, and it would turn out fine. but obviously you can't turn the sound off on a podcast. and i've been listening to podcasts after work, i.e. after 5pm, and i go to bed at like 8 or 9pm because i'm old. so the way it turned out was that even if the actual subject of the podcast wasn't that scary to me, the music would amplify it in an unpleasant way and make me more likely to have trouble sleeping. also i think most of the episodes would have been fine without the music, or maybe with some less intentionally-disconcerting background music.
this just in: i seem to have totally missed episode 50 on my first listen-through, despite having gone in linear order. bc i'm listening to it now and i've definitely never heard this before. fortunately it doesn't seem to have much of a bearing on the rest of the series, so it's not like i missed any crucial information. tbh the only worthwhile bit was a brief moment of tim being a ham, which was good. i hope i didn't miss any other episodes the first time... still don't know how i managed to miss this one.
the official transcript said [EXTENDED SOUNDS OF BRUTAL PIPE MURDER] ...
so gertrude and leitner WERE played by jonny's parents <:3c i'd thought as much when i saw the cast names but i like that it's confirmed. his mom is a really good actress too. i always find the gertrude episodes to be striking in a certain way
"it's Fine working with your parents. it's Fine." as someone who worked with my mom for like a year i can confirm this
i'm tickled to find that the official transcripts have a sense of humor. i wonder who is behind them. i also wonder, what is the excuse for not having a full set of official transcripts when it is a script-based show? surely you know what is going to be said beforehand, and you have it written down, and if someone ends up saying something different in the final recording, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to give the original script a little edit, and bam! that’s a transcript. i wonder if this approach is not feasible for some reason.
whenever martin reads statements, he says something about jon... whenever he talks to someone, he says something about jon
i think episode 110 is an instance of the tape recorder turning ITSELF off... at the end of the episode. because they walk away, and they say something distantly, and then it turns off. lots of other times, there had to be a diegetic reason for the tape recorder to turn off at the end.
i noticed something which i missed last time, which was that there is a rumor between melanie and georgie and basira that implies that jonathan is asexual. worth noting, i think. [side note added in later: yeah it’s canon. cool]
also i listened to episode 103 again and yes. i had thought-- i had been SURE-- that the person interrogating the traffic cop (using the asky ability) was martin. but it was actually jon. how did i possibly manage that mistake? i'm not great at distinguishing voices, but i'm not THAT bad. the only possible answer: when i was listening to the episode for the first time... i must have been eating a crunchy snack.
"it doesn't have to make sense! alex has to make it sense." (jonny sims re: writing the spiral)
glad to know that jonny sims regrets using his own name for the protagonist. doesn't make a difference either way at this point but yeah
YES i knew episode 100 was improvised. and i see, all the statementers had actually had supernatural experiences, but because the archivist was absent, their statements didn't have the coherence and clarity normally lent to them by the eye (in exchange for becoming cursed). i think melanie or basira actually said pretty much that in the episode itself, but i still couldn't be sure that all of those people had something real to talk about.
"in the same way that tim is dead, michael is helen." good shit
the archivist is canon a bit of a drama queen. the first bullet point in my first tma notes document is vindicated
jonny sims mentions another podcast (apocrypals) that sounds 100% up my alley, so that is appreciated, i will add that to my list i think. (listened to episodes 0 and 1 of apocrypals and i'm heavily struck by how VERY clearly i can hear the smiles in chris sims's voice. i did not know smiling could be so audible, truly.) (listened to quite a few more episodes of apocrypals and it’s certainly entertaining at times. i should’ve been reading along though. maybe some other time)
I DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE SEASON 4 TEASER THE FIRST TIME AROUND.........................................
i must confess something that people who know me well may already know: i hate when stories have a bad ending. an unhappy ending. a painful ending. a hopeless ending. bittersweet is the furthest in that direction i can tolerate. my perspective, which is pretty deep-seated, is that there's no point in getting to know and love characters if you're only going to be hurt by that connection to them when the end turns out to be bad. if i have even a mild inkling that a story is heading toward a bad ending, i make a conscious effort to regard all characters from afar and not develop any strong attachments. this is not so much "how i think all stories need to be," but rather, "the characteristics a story needs to have to appeal to me personally." so i understand that my view is very subjective and mostly based on my own mental weakness. but i can't help but apply it to the media i consume. and the idea that someone would do something like "make characters very human and strongly developed" IN COMBINATION WITH "heading toward a bad end" makes me upset. like, picture a horror movie. think about the characters in a horror movie. with the exception of a main character, if there is one, there's no guarantee that anyone is going to survive to the end of the film... BUT... the characters generally aren't fleshed out and very sympathetic. i wouldn't go so far as to say they're disposable, but you're not SUPPOSED to cry when they die; you're just supposed to get scared. their purpose is as objects of fear, and you never expect or even hope for a happy ending. but in the magnus archives... all i'm saying... is that i would cry if any of the remaining members of the main cast died. and it seems clear that we're not heading to a happy ending. so i'm somewhat afraid, and not in a good way. i don't know how much i can trust jonny sims to give me the story i want, and obviously, i'm not entitled to it.
if your name is jonathan and you want to shorten it, the short form is jon. it ain't john, no matter what the official transcripts say. where'd you get that h, huh? stole it from someone else's name? are you shortening it like JOnatHaN? you can’t just be that sneaky!
i listened to scrutiny again and it hits so hard. now, in heart of darkness, when manuela begs jon not to force her statement, it's really heavy given the direct context of the previous two episodes where we see how compulsion works and how it hurts.
also when jon was talking about how to destroy the dark sun and he was like "i just need to see it," when i first heard it, i assumed he meant something along the lines of, "by seeing it, i will learn how to destroy it." but now i understand that the mere act of the eye seeing it destroys it, because being known is what the darkness is weakest to.
the magnus employees who work in the library probably at least have a LITTLE BIT of a feeling that they work in an almost normal place, given that jon and all his assistants were able to have that impression before transferring to the archives. so i wonder how the magnus library people feel about their institute's director getting arrested for double murder and now the big boss is a completely unrelated ship captain who seems to want nothing to do with the place but simultaneously is trying to continue business as usual
on second listen, listening to jon ask helen when the guilt stops (wrt hurting people in order to feed one's patron fear) is pretty chilling. because it seems like he's definitely accepting that he will have to hurt people, and what he's concerned about is how bad it makes HIM feel. of course, helen then answers with precisely what i just wrote, so...
i should've read the transcript for episode 159 instead of relistening because i forgot that peter lukas's actor got so gravelly and hard to listen to in this one. anyway, time to re-listen to the season 4 finale... then i'll listen to the season 4 Q&As and stuff... and then the new episode. (DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI DOKI)
i heard in the Q&A that the voice of peter lukas did multiple takes for episode 159?! but it was because of technical difficulties. right. because i can’t imagine the way it turned out being deemed the best take. sorry
ok, things i missed last time i listened to 160: daisy and the other two hunters are missing. also jon mentioned "magnus's body" and martin mentioned "an old man's corpse" and at the time i took this to mean (somewhat unthinkingly) that when jon and martin returned from the lonely, they killed elias/jonah's body. which would be a weird thing to happen "off-camera," so to speak. so i think i must have been wrong? slightly confused. ok, no, i'm now sure that elias survived, so i must have misunderstood. definitely alive.
as martin leaves and jon is about to begin the statement, he sounds so peaceful and satisfied. that's good acting.
by the way, in one of the previous few episodes, i noticed that jonah seems to have body-swapped by switching out his eyes into his preferred body, which i'm pretty sure i missed the first time.
i like that jonny sims checks reddit to see whether people have solved the mystery. that's just a really funny way to do things, sneaking a peek like "hmm how mysterious is my mystery? let's see who has figured it out..." and for the record, i wasn't even close to figuring it out. but to be fair to myself, i didn't try. like i said from the beginning, i started listening with the intent of going along for the ride. plus the mystery had already been solved before i started listening to the series, so it's not like i had a lot of time in between updates to contemplate whether elias was jonah, etc.
JON'S AMERICAN ACCENT FOR THE IONIZED YEAST AD
ALEX WAS THE VOICE OF JARED HOPWORTH?! i mean it was so messed up it could have been anybody but god
ALEX DIDN'T LET GERTUDE CACKLE
i've listened to the bloopers (including a gertrude cackle?) and the season 5 trailer (martin seems slightly cavalier about the end of the world but maybe he's just trying to keep his shit together for jon) and i'm going to listen to the new episode Soon.
final conclusion on rereads/relistens: i had pretty poor comprehension of some important happenings. i’m realizing just how easy it is to mishear/fail to hear exactly what is happening in a podcast when you’re doing other stuff at the same time. there are still a couple things i don’t quite understand, but i think i’ll have a look around the wiki one of these days.
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soveryanon · 5 years
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Part 3 of The Magnus Archives liveblogging; MAG034 to MAG040 *strangled mix of happy and sad noises* (As usual: contains spoilers (until the end of season 3) that I really should not have known anything about, were I a decent person, with also the possibility that I misunderstood said spoilers.) (One last time: warning for… length.)
… when I had mentioned to @sazandorable​ about the end of MAG033 that ahaha, Jon’s audible frustration seemed to be his equivalent of (╯°Д°)╯︵ ┻━┻ flipping a table, I had been answered with a “:))) Flipping a table, you say.” And now that I've listened to what followed, obviously, let’s be clear, I’m so, so mad about her comment, but at the same time, it’s the only one I could have ever accepted.
One of the first things I ever heard about the series was Aza commenting about the podcast she was listening to that had one assistant replaced, but nobody had noticed she wasn’t the same. So given that Sasha was the one female assistant… I knew it would be her. The statement about Graham Folger (MAG003) had made me guess that something similar would happen but I hadn’t understood that the problem was apparently the table. So when ~something big~ was delivered in MAG035, then confirmed to be a table in MAG036, I was expecting that it would be the thing that would get Sasha killed, and indeed, the table it was ;; (AND IT STINGS EVEN MORE THAN WHAT I BELIEVED.)
Alternative headlines for this post: - Local man SAVAGELY MURDERS ONE OF MARTIN’S SPIDER ROOMMATES, unleashes worms apocalypse in the process. -
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Because I’m scared, Martin! Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched.
Me, having been wondering for a while where I stand as a receptor/listener/audience, pen in hand and ready to take notes, wondering how long it will take for him to squeeze out his backstory or any personal information: *whispers softly* I have no idea what you’re talking about, sweetie.
That said.
Gooooooooooooooods, I’m so maaaaaaad about Jon =D
You got me, you scoundrel!!
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Of course, I believe. Of course I do. Have you ever taken a look at the stuff we have in Artefact storage? That’s enough to convince anyone. But, but even before that… Why do you think I started working here? It’s not exactly glamorous. I have… I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Within reason. I mean. I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe… thirty, forty that are… that go on tape. Now those, I believe, at least for the most part.
I WAS WONDERING SO HARD WHY YOU WERE WORKING THERE, YEAH!!! It was so fitting with his overall… attitude, that yes, he would be a sceptic and dismiss most of the supernatural cases, except for the few that he was a bit more knowledgeable about, mostly Jane Prentiss and the Leitner books. Of course he would, with his elitism and scholar haughtiness!!  I had assumed that he would get convinced with due facts over the course of the series. I wasn’t expecting that actually, no, he had always believed in those things and was just lying through his teeth while recording!! Despite the fact that I was strongly suspecting that he was being an Unreliable Narrator!! (I had guessed that yes, he was hiding some information; not that he was purposely trying to mislead whoever was listening when it came to his personal opinions in the matter.)
It mostly gave me two good keys to handle the series: on the one hand, that characters are aware of the oddities around them. Obviously, as a listener, you immediately guess that if only a few statements resist technology, then it might be because these ones are paranormal, unlike the ones that work on computer just fine, which are probably a load of bullcrap; but you also accept that… characters might be a bit dumber, because they’re in a story and, well, it’s easier to guess about the narrative when you’re not inside of it? But nop. They were aware from the start that there are paranormal events around them, that the Institute is a living proof of it, and that the fact that some statements weren’t recording on computer meant something about them.
(MAG039) SASHA: Jon, what did you mean by “real statements”? ARCHIVIST: You know what I mean. The ones that have weird wrinkles, or that just seem to have something solid to them. They all have one thing in common. SASHA: They don’t record digitally. ARCHIVISTl: And we have to use the tape recorder. At this stage, if it records to my laptop I almost don’t bother.
And on the other hand, it also explained to me that Jon, as a main character, might hide things from us (listeners/tape recorders) or from other characters, and that there can be a gap between the moment he does realize something and the moment he feels ready to publicly admit it. Which, obviously, makes things way more challenging!! And interesting!! I’ve been liking him more and more lately anyway but this, by itself, would have been a good reason to decide that okay, yes, I surrender, I do Like Him A Lot as a character. … Okay, no, to be perfectly honest: I do love him as a character, he has achieved that status already.
Jonathan “You smoke?” “Nnnnnoooooo…” Sims
* eufinjkrefdhuinjIUHJNUILBUTHJNIUYB JOOOOOOOONNNNNNN………
(MAG036) TIM: Er, what is it? ARCHIVIST: A lighter. An old Zippo. TIM: You smoke? ARCHIVIST: No. … And I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!
(I like his tone here! First a bit distant, pensive?, then firm and almost scolding; the Archives are now His Baby and he didn’t want to give Tim any bad ideas, uh.) Ooooh, that self-righteous tone he used followed by the return of his stuck-up voice, which kind of implied “how dare you even suggest I might have smoked one cigarette in my lifetime!! And you better not do it in my Archives or I’ll skin you!!”, vs. three episodes later:
(MAG039) SASHA: […] I think John’s got a lighter somewhere. ELIAS: He’s not smoking again, is he?
… JON, YOU LITTLE SHIT. *buries face in hands* So yeah, he used to smoke, but it doesn’t match with his Respectable Image apparently so he won’t even tell his own assistants. (I’m still HYSTERICAL over his deadpan answer to Tim… yes, this is not a lie, but it’s the moment you should mention you used to smoke if you want to be absolutely honest, and he just. he just didn’t. and dodged. and almost scolded Tim. JON. JON. J O N!!!) * Relatedly, I LOVE HOW HE CAN STILL BE AN ELITIST STUCK-UP ASS IN TIMES OF CRISIS. When ~something~ was banging on the wall and threatening to break it down, and they were assuming that it was Jane Prentiss/the worms:
(MAG039) MARTIN: I thought that wall was meant to be solid?! ARCHIVIST: So did I. We don’t have any sort of weapon, do we? MARTIN: I mean… I mean, I suppose we could use— ARCHIVIST: Don’t say the corkscrew! MARTIN: Okay.
The corkscrew SAVED YOUR LIFE, Jon, show it a bit more respect!! (Poor Martin who just… obeyed this one.) * It’s… not exactly surprising, but noteworthy to point out that Jon never wondered why he was being targeted by Jane Prentiss.
(MAG022) ARCHIVIST: I just received another text message. From you. “Keep him. We have had our fun. He will want to see it when the Archivist’s crimson fate arrives.” MARTIN: What does that mean? ARCHIVIST: It means I ask Elias to hire some extra security.
(MAG039) PRENTISS: Archivist. TIM: Ah. ARCHIVIST: Shit.
Jane Prentiss was here for him, and she/it/they made it pretty clear all along. Yet, Jon never questioned it; why would he, personally, be the one to get targeted? It… does make sense, given Jon’s personality, to think that he just thought that yes, if someone had to be pursued, it would be him, but it’s still curious that he… absolutely rolled with it. Never wondered if he had caused something that would lead him to deserve this situation, or if he had any connection to Jane Prentiss somehow, nothing. (My spoiled self takes note that she used the “Archivist” title every time, and that for her/it/them, Archivists are probably interchangeable? The thing she was becoming hated the last one, so she went after the following one. Is it absolutely because of Martin that she targeted the Archives, because he had accidentally met her, or was she planning to go after them at some point anyway?) * He was all Defensive about “MY ARCHIVE” and all, but his standards dropped quickly when it came to Jane Prentiss vomiting in their files:
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: What’s [Jane Prentiss] doing? MARTIN: I don’t know. She’s messing with the boxes. She’s holding one up and… ahh! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: She’s… She’s destroying them. Sort of. ARCHIVIST: Sort of? MARTIN: Well, I don’t really know what that stuff coming out of her mouth is, but I think we should probably burn them. ARCHIVIST: Right.
I was expecting Jon to take offense about Martin’s suggestion, to scream something along the lines of Over My Dead Body, Martin, but nop. Suddenly, burning their own files doesn’t seem so Out Of The Question anymore, uh. * I realize that I never really wondered about what kind of computer Jon is using for work. I just assumed, I just know he can only be using a Mac (not tech-oriented enough for Linux; way too snobby to use Windows; so Mac it is. Search Your Feelings, You Know It To Be True.) * I was amused and curious at the beginning of MAG034 (the one with Dr. Lionel Elliott), since Jon sounded… way less harsh with him than with Naomi or Melanie, the only live statement-givers so far excluding Martin&Sasha. So I was wondering: was that casual sexism or casual elitism, since Dr. Elliott was a scholar? Was Jon a bit more sympathetic with him because of affinity with fellow academics? AND THEN JON’S POST-STATEMENT MADE IT CLEAR THAT IT WAS BECAUSE “FELLOW ACADEMICS” ARE USUALLY THE ENEMY.
(MAG034) ARCHIVIST: The first thing about this statement that makes me dubious is that it comes from a fellow academic. Historic and prestigious as the Magnus Institute is, there are still many within the sphere of higher education that do not grant it the respect it deserves, and some have been known to make false statements as ill-conceived jokes.
So Jon is able to get cautious when he feels like being an ass could damage the Institute’s reputation, uh? Also, that’s super rich coming from Mister “I was initially inclined to re-file this statement in the ‘Discredited’ section of the Archive, a new category I’ve created that will, I suspect, be housing the majority of these files” (MAG001). It was also super-funny to have… someone who was closer to a “reflection” of Jon himself than previous statement-givers:
(MAG034) ARCHIVIST: And the apple, did you… eat it? DR. ELLIOTT:  Do I look like an idiot?!
Take that, Jon =DDD (I mean, yes, sorry Dr Elliott, you probably do look like an idiot to Jon, but then everyone does, and Jon himself has admitted that he is one, so.)
(MAG034) ARCHIVIST: Oh good lord! That’s… DR. ELLIOTT: Deeply unpleasant, yes. You can keep it, if you want. As proof. ARCHIVIST: We do not want it. I’m afraid it isn’t really proof.
“Deeply unpleasant” sounds like something Jon would have usually said, and I’m still cackling hard that Jon Didn’t Want The Apple but used a “we” to cover his own personal disgust before trying to back-up his rejection with ~logical arguments~ (“I just said it was enough of a possibility that I don’t think your… tooth apple has a place in our artefact storage. Also, it is technically medical waste.”), pffft. And he still ended up taking the apple!! Or at least the teeth. * Too classy for puns, but will do them anyway, and TWICE, TO BE SURE THAT EVERYBODY HAS HEARD HIS JOKES, JON PLEASE, YOU NEED A LIFE… YOU NEED FRIENDS THAT AREN’T TAPE RECORDERS… (Especially with his “You should have seen Tim’s face when […]”: if the only “you” in his life is the damn tape recorder, then yeah. Jon no.)
(MAG035) ARCHIVIST: […] On the one hand, this statement represents a complete dead end […]. From an evidence standpoint, this case is a complete bust. […] It seems we’ve reached something of a dead end. No pun intended.
And it wasn’t the first time he was making puns (MAG024: “No details are given, but it apparently required Mr Rentoul’s hospitalisation. I’m reminded of a somewhat tasteless joke about loose tongues.”) and he even had already made this one (MAG029: “Aside from that it’s almost a complete dead end.”) and would again make it later (MAG036: “Another tale full of dead ends.”) So, obligatory “dead end(s)” joke when a death is involved, but he just has trouble owning up to his puns when he makes them, uh. But he does anyway, and it seems like the universe just loves to give him his due for his puns!
(MAG035) ARCHIVIST: […] End recor— Urgh! Goddamn it! [SOUND OF METAL CANISTER BEING KNOCKED] Martin! [DOOR OPENS] Martin, where did you put the rest of the extinguishers? Martin!
Here, that was terrible, have some worms! I’m so fond of the way his voice just… switched, from cold professional sternness to sheer disgust. (It sounded like just another day, at the same time… So yeah, not the first time worms managed to sneak into the Archives at this point, apparently.) * Compared to the last batch of episodes, I had the faint feeling that Jon miiiiight be a bit better lately? That he sounded less tired overall? But then, his conversation with Tim in MAG036 made it obvious that… no, there is still lingering tiredness: he’s less in control of his voice when he’s surprised or questioned, needs more pauses before wording something, sounds like he’s searching for what to say (even though his answers stay sharp)…
(MAG036) TIM: Oh, ah, nothing urgent, um, it’s just Elias was asking a couple questions about the delivery. ARCHIVIST: Delivery? What delivery? TIM: Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh! Um, apparently Martin, uh, took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you. Did he not mention it? ARCHIVIST: No, he… Oh, yes, actually. I completely forgot. He said he put it in my desk drawer, hold on.
… and he didn’t even pay attention to the delivery Martin had mentioned. mARTIN IS A GOOD BOY, it’s just you (/your memory) (/your current state) that sucks, Jon!! Someone sure is sleep-deprived, to forget things like this. (Sadly relatable.) The following episode just confirmed that yep, Jon was, in fact, Not Doing Any Better Sleep-wise:
(MAG037) MARTIN: […] Look, you need to get some sleep. [SILENCE] … I’ll see you later. […] ARCHIVIST: […] I have no idea what any of this means. I’m… very tired.
(Or was it because Jon took two statements consecutively? It’s not confirmed that MAG036 and MAG037 took place on the same day but it’s most likely: MAG036 ended with Jon announcing that he needed to talk to Martin, with some urgency, and MAG037 began with Jon ordering Martin to repeat what he had said on tape, and then using the same tape for his next statement.) Anyway, Martin has noticed that Jon is not fine ;____; * AND MARTIN NOTICED AGAIN that Jon is not fine in MAG040, as soon as the record begins, and despite the fact that Martin himself is exhausted:
(MAG040) MARTIN: [Tired] I mean, I already told the police. ARCHIVIST: Well, now tell me. I need to hear it, I need to record it. MARTIN: I… alright. … Are you okay? ARCHIVIST: Fine. Painkillers are starting to wear off, but… It’s fine.
(Martin’s small tired voice, while Jon’s was more impatient/jumpy, with the usual sharpness… but yeah, way less controlled. Pain sneaking its way back into his system.) The fact that the painkillers’ effects were wearing off and that the real state of his body was catching up on Jon was audible just with the way he was introducing statements this time around:
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Statement of Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute, regarding the… infestation, by the… entity formerly known as Jane Prentiss. Statement recorded direct from subject, 29th July 2016. … Whenever you’re ready.
[…] ARCHIVIST: […] Anyway. Statement of Timothy Stoker, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding the infestation by the entity formerly known as Jane Prentiss. Statement recorded direct from subject, 29th July 2016. Just… take it from when you got back from lunch.
[…] ARCHIVIST: Statement of Sasha James, archival assistant at the Magnus Institute, regarding the invasion by the entity formerly known as Jane Prentiss. Statement recorded direct from subject, 29th July 2016. In your own time.
[…] ARCHIVIST: […] It’s fine. Statement of Martin Blackwood, archival assistant, etcetera, etcetera. Go.
From getting back to the gist of it with Elias (and having to summarize what happened with Jane Prentiss in a few words), to repeating it almost words for words with Tim and Sasha (I hate your memory, Jon.), to butchering it with Martin because he is all out of spoons. * Though yeah, Jon A Bit High On Painkillers was a thing at the beginning of MAG040, too:
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Our friends in the hazmat suits gave me a clean bill of health, bloody holes notwithstanding. And they seemed quite keen to quarantine anyone showing even the slightest sign of infection. It’s just… pain.
He was a bit nasal and out of it at the beginning of this one, that “Our friends in–” was hilarious, and I’m… not surprised, but howling a bit that Jon, even when exhausted and just coming out of traumatic events, with drugs in his system, casually uses the word “notwithstanding” (nonobstant!). Not fine, but still himself.
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* I did notice that from MAG035 to MAG038, Jon was… not tearing down statements to pieces anymore in his follow-ups, not really. Those ones were a bunch of sad stories, and I wondered if Jon was trying to avoid being completely insensitive about these people (he was less judgemental, more neutral about the impossibility to cross-check information), or if he was just tired and fed up, or if he was getting convinced that yes, maybe, maybe there were dark forces at work down there… With MAG039’s reveals in mind, it’s probably that he was caring less and less about His Plan To Pretend That He Was Not Believing, uh ;; (But I’m glad I did notice that he sounded… less and less sceptic. Congrats, Jon, you kept that up for months!). * Does Jon even listen to his own recordings so far? It seems unlikely, since Tim had brought up a list of mistakes (MAG033) and Martin’s conversation with Breekon&Hope was recorded after MAG035’s statement, but Jon didn’t sound like he had heard it in MAG036 nor at the beginning of MAG037 (he asked for all the details that Martin could remember, but he could have had the audio information, at the very least, if he had listened to their conversation – or maybe he wanted the visual details?). We didn’t have any mention that not!Sasha had harmed the tape from MAG039 that Jon had kept, and the real Sasha had talked on that one too, so if Jon doesn’t realize soon that the voices are different… it might hint that he never relistened to that one either; which is a bit more understandable in that particular case (it was a testimony of his own traumatic experience, and he’s been clearly shaken by it). But overall: I don’t even know if it’s bad archiving practice, but at the very least: not proof-reading (/proof-listening?) is bad researching practice and Jon is giving me second-hand embarrassment. (<3)
(MAG037) ARCHIVIST: Waste of tape, really. [Martin]’s right. Might as well get some use out of it.
So Jon had a statement ready to be read…? Although he had recorded one not too long ago…? When would he have chosen to record this one, if not for the recorder being already on? (Also, please, someone explain to Jon that you can wipe and overwrite tapes. To get a fresh empty one for a later statement. Do students and researchers really need to hear you pressuring poor Martin to repeat the same information and being an overall ass to him?) * About Jon’s unreliability – or, at least, the fact that he isn’t sharing Everything with us. When he learned from Tim about the table that was delivered to the Institute for him, he inquired:
(MAG036) ARCHIVIST: Tim… Tim, it doesn’t have a hole in it, does it? About six inches square?
… But the only description we had of the table so far was Amy Patel’s, who had mentioned “the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole” (MAG003). There was no mention of the size of the hole. So I was wondering: was Jon able to know this because he’s actually getting supernaturally immersed in the statements (insert here all the imagery about falling/diving into a book, living the story as you read, etc.) and notices a lot more details than what was technically written, when he reads them? But then, when I mentioned this to Aza, she laughed and said that I also could have guessed the size of the hole on my own. … and yup, there sure was a mention of an item of that size: “a small wooden box, about six inches square” from Ivo Lensik’s statement (MAG008). Which means that THIS FUCKER CONNECTED THOSE DOTS AND DIDN’T BOTHER MENTIONING HIS CONCLUSIONS ONTAPE. EFF YOOOOOU JOOOOOON, HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME. He guessed that the box that was destroyed on November 2006 (MAG008) was the item that was supposed to fit into Graham Folger’s table – Graham having been “replaced” on April 7th 2006 (MAG001) – and never mentioned any of it, it’s just. RUDE. RUDE, JON. RUDE. * brb, still rolling on the floor over the fact that the Scepticism Was All An Act… Because JON WAS SCARED…….
(MAG039) MARTIN: Then why do you— ARCHIVIST: Because I’m scared, Martin! Because when I record these statements it feels… it feels like I’m being watched. I… I lose myself a bit. And then when I come back, it’s like… like if I admit there may be any truth to it, whatever’s watching will… know somehow. The scepticism, feigning ignorance. It just felt safer. MARTIN: Well… It wasn’t. ARCHIVIST: No. No, it wasn’t. Still, it’s not my fault we’re going to be eaten by worms.
That sounds very convoluted and at the same time… understandable and raw? Human? The fact that Jon was searching for his words and clearly remembering something unpleasant… aouch… I was wondering about the effects these statements had on Jon, Jane Prentiss’s aside, and aouch, he is able to tell that… there is something more. (Is that feeling due to their god, since I know there is somethingsomething about feeding the monster, or is that Elias in particular?) (And I love how Jon switches from giving a genuine confession about how he really feels and showing vulnerability… to compensating with bratty defence. “Still, it’s not my fault we’re going to be eaten by worms.” lISTEN, yes, technically not your fault, but Prentiss also quite clearly targets you and you only, so you could at least sympathize with Martin about how it’s even less his fault.) * Jon himself acknowledging that he is an idiot is… Beautiful…
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: [Bitter laugh] I hope so. Only an idiot would stay in this job. MARTIN: [Chuckles] Wouldn’t that make you an idiot? ARCHIVIST: Yes, Martin, that was my point.
(Fortunately, Martin does things that Jon sees as “stupid”, too, so hey! Good match.
(MAG039) MARTIN: Well, so the worms didn’t know they were there! Look, I know it’s stupid. ARCHIVIST: Yes. Yes it is. They’re just… they’re just unclassified parasites. They don’t have consciousness, they can’t plan, they’re just an unthinking infection.
I’m still “………..” over the fact that Jon can word it that way with a straight face/voice.) * He countered Martin’s pessimism later but there was also an instance where he was… very grim and matter-of-fact, resigned, about Tim’s chances of survival, and it hurt.
(MAG039) SASHA: Turn around. Just turn around. MARTIN: Oh god. There she is, there she is. ARCHIVIST: [Muttering] There’s nothing we can do.
But in the same episode, there was ultimately some Trust And Complicity between Tim and Jon, that I’m not really able to describe.
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] I’m recording this in case— TIM: In case the trapdoor opens back into the Archives and Prentiss is there to kill us. ARCHIVIST: In as many words, yes. Tim? TIM: Alright. [TRAPDOOR IS PUSHED OPEN TO SOUND OF FIRE ALARM AND LOTS OF WRITHING] PRENTISS: Archivist. TIM: Ah. ARCHIVIST: Shit. [CLICK]
If it had been Martin, Jon would have snapped, probably. But Tim summarizing their worst case scenario like this? Got a free pass. (Also, that was, once again, one hell of a way to end an episode. JON. JON SAID “SHIT”. HOLY FUCKING FUCK. You knew it means Seriously Bad.) ;; They went in that… together, uh. Despite the fact that Tim was clearly collateral damage. * I had wondered a lot about whether or not Jon was afraid of dying, or had a special stance about death… and it sounds like it was more a matter of how he could die, without being able to have a say in the circumstances surrounding it. As a result, Jon sounded past everything, reaching a point in which okay, yes, he could laugh about the possibility of dying, it was coming and he could try to face it since it would be on his terms (recording everything). I am also a bit surprised that apparently, he is way more afraid of dying of ~rational~ causes (bullets means guns means clear intent from a human behind the act) than from a supernatural entity.
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Gertrude Robinson, the last Archivist at the Magnus Institute, and my predecessor, was murdered. […] She was killed, in the Archives, by someone who used a gun… and that scares me far more than any spectre or twisted creature. Because that means someone here is a killer. […] There is something in these files, in these statements. I know that now, some deeper mystery. I think Gertrude Robinson found it, and I think that is why they killed her.
The… sheer… dread… in Jon’s voice in that second sentence… (complete with a self-depreciative half-laugh/shaking of voice)……. his delivery was slower, way less firm than usual, and I wanted to learn more about Jon, I wanted to get to know the real actual Jon under the layers of this façade, and I’m getting it… through the form of terror… * There were a string of declarations about “seeing” starting MAG038, mostly from Jon, which culminated with Sasha’s death and replacement at the end of MAG039, and aouch T_T First, Jon and the spider:
(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: […] Urgh. Urgh. [SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING] I see you…
(MAG038) SASHA: […] Do you see anything? […] ARCHIVIST: No, I don’t think so, it… [WORM SOUND INTENSIFIES] Sasha, run. RU—
(You don’t see worms, you hear/smell them first…?)
(MAG039) SASHA: Do you see Prentiss? If we could get her— MARTIN: I, I, I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I don’t see her!
(MAG039) SASHA: Can you see what’s going on out there? MARTIN: Ish. When did we last clean these doors? ARCHIVIST: What can you see?
(MAG039) MARTIN: There! There, there, there! I see him! SASHA: Oh god, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t see them.
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Right. There we go. Martin, what do you see? […] I need you to describe what’s going on.
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] Speaking of, can you see anything? MARTIN: I don’t know. I can’t see because the window is covered in worms.
(MAG039) TIM: Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin? MARTIN: Oh, um… well, I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm. ARCHIVIST: … I see.
(MAG039) SASHA: […] [Hushed and panicked] Jon! Jon, I think there’s someone here. Hello? I see you. Show yourself.
(MAG039) NOT!SASHA: [Words warped] Hello? … I see you. [FOOTSTEPS] [Clearly] I see you.
(… In a lot of cases, circumstances and tones, though, Martin was saying that he couldn’t see. Mm…) * I had discovered tired!Jon with last batch of episodes, but I now have… shaken!Jon. Very, very shaken Jon. He insists on getting other people’s statements in MAG040, despite not being fine, and in the end… we don’t know, technically, what happened when Tim and Jon went face to holes-in-the-face with Prentiss? Jon insists on skipping the subject every time it comes up (because he already knows what happened to him): but what happened exactly? Did they have time to try to flee? Did they scramble to get away? Was it Prentiss launching worms at them (like with the nurses when she had been hospitalized), was it a wave of worms covering them? Was it slower, a few worms biting them, allowing them to still be conscious of the others coming, allowing them to cling on to the hope that they might manage to flee? Was it quick, was it excruciating minutes? Jon doesn’t want to share that story (at least for now?), and when that timeframe comes up in discussions, his breathing, pretty often… becomes Wrong:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I do apologise that it took me quite so long to figure out how to actually work the system. If I’d been quicker… ARCHIVIST: It’s fine. We’re alive. ELIAS: … Yes… Well. […]
(Grunts noises from Jon, towards the end, before he cuts Elias short.) (Also, Elias didn’t ask Jon to define that “We” and :[)
(MAG040) TIM: […] Could’ve been worse though, eh? Another couple of minutes and— ARCHIVIST: Yes. … Yes. It was… … Anyway. […]
That was Jon cutting him and stopping the words (didn’t want to hear how it could have been worse – to picture that it could have been worse. Jon’s distress tends to express in ragged breathing, while Tim’s is more in his expirations.
(MAG040) NOT!SASHA: I went over to check, and you were alive, so I pulled you back to where there was more air and began to remove the worms. Are you alright? ARCHIVIST: Sorry, just… difficult to hear, you know.
Heeeeeeeeeee was breathing very heavily. It’s hard, for him, to hear anything about when he came into contact with the worms. * I already know about Jon’s Compulsion power, I’ve been very attentive to when he was asking questions, to try to guess if it could be there or not, and there hadn’t been a “oh, that might be it?” moment… UNTIL MAG040.
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Martin. How did Gertrude Robinson die? MARTIN: I don’t know – not for sure. It was so dark, and I only saw the body for a few seconds. The police were quite clear that the cause of death could be absolutely any— ARCHIVIST: MARTIN, how did she die?! MARTIN: She was shot! Three times, that I could see. … Three shots to the chest. ARCHIVIST: Right. … Right… Thank you Martin. MARTIN: … Sure.
1°) I’m guessing that yes, the thing about the compulsion is that… it will go undetected for a while, because obviously, ordering an answer is close to demanding one, and by essence, people come to talk with Jon, so they’re less likely to refuse to give him answers. But here, I got a chill, because: was Martin trying to avoid to say that Gertrude had been shot (to not upset Jon further), or had he been unable to remember, before this exchange, that he had actually seen her with bullet wounds in her body? Could be both; either Martin was circling with weak excuses, either he was genuinely reminding Jon of the context to explain that he hadn’t seen the body in details… and then was suddenly able to tell. (As a result, it’s… not sure that the police knows about the bullet wounds. Martin’s sentence was actually going in the other direction; but he could have been trying to bullshit Jon then ;;) 2°) Their tones escalate, Jon’s voice is VERY firm when he pressures Martin, and then Martin also spoke in a louder voice… and right after, it passed. Their voices were super thin, almost whispers. 3°) … I’m crying that, yeah, if it was the compulsion-I-heard-about… it looks like the first time Jon used it was on Martin. On Martin. That’s… so horrible, why is it always Martin?! ;____; * I’m… very emotional over Jon’s enthusiasm when he explained how he actually works, what he truly thinks, what he finds interesting in the Institute, etc. He was so passionate! Sounded so alive when he explained his reasoning! There was adrenalin, there was fear and pain, there was urgency and danger, and he was… past that? There was some pure, genuine, untainted glee about how… things are currently a puzzle, and he wants to piece things together, he wants to keep working on these things, he want to tackle the work that still needs to be done, while being well aware of the bad aspects (he feels watched, he feels scared, but he knows that they've put their finger on something). With his own restrictions unbuckled, I don’t think I had ever heard Jon so genuine and simply… happy. (Happy to talk about what he is passionate about? Happy to drop the act? Happy to be able to be seen for what he is?)
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Look, even if you ignore the walking soil-sack out there, and the fact that we are probably minutes from death, there is still so much more happening here. MARTIN: I’m not sure we can really ignore the— ARCHIVIST: Every real statement just leads… deeper into something I don’t even know the shape of yet.
1°) mARTIN (I love/hate how Jon just. Ignores him sometimes x’D But Martin is right, it’s not like they could make abstraction of the current issues.) 2°) Jon sounding passionate and genuinely interested in what he does!! … On the other hand, I’m sobbing in advance: this is why he is ~good~ for the work, but it’s… not a good thing at the same time, is it. His personality fits, but fits so well that it’s also why he is doomed, isn’t he. The curiosity, the “need” (craving) to know at any cost… * … On that note, it’s horrifying to realize that… yes, Jon never questioned why Jane Prentiss targeted him personally. But also: that Jon himself didn’t do anything during the crisis except using the tape recorders, giving reports of what was happening, and asking others (Martin) to describe what they were seeing when he himself couldn’t get up. He didn’t kill worms (he shouted to Martin to get the fire extinguishers); he had trouble taking decisions (and Martin led them to the backroom); we didn’t even hear him removing worms from the others (but we got to hear Sasha crushing one that had previously been buried in him); he didn’t try to warn Tim (unlike Sasha and Martin) or to save him (like Sasha did); Tim was the one to destroy the wall and to lead them in the tunnels, to open the trapdoor… Jon did nothing but witness and record what others were doing. (And yet, he got the worst of it, along with Tim ;;) * Yay, Jon got terrible experiences! But he faced them with Tim! Yeah, okay, he sounded too adamant about getting proof of people’s official stances of things, and it sounded more like he was trying to see if there was any contradiction or if someone had lied by cross-checking testimonies–
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Fine! Fine. I’ll go home as soon as I have everyone’s statements.
–but maybe after this traumatic event, it will lead to more friendliness and camaraderie amongst the staff, they have bonded, and the power of friendship will–
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: […] but I cannot trust anyone. I’m going to figure this out, and I’m not going to stop. … They’ll have to kill me first. End recording.
noooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! (And it comes from someone who is terrified of dying!!! Jon, what the fuck!! Don’t!!!)
I’m really fond of the fact that in the end… Jon is not exactly a “narrator” but still acts a bit like it for us listeners (he’s a mediation between us and the story, it’s through him and what he accepts to tell us that we’re able to discover this universe) and at the same time, hides. Hides information from us, hides himself from us; it makes me want to know more about him, despite the fact that he is the character we’re following? He makes concessions sometimes, lets some things slip, but it’s overall hard to know what he’s thinking, what he’s planning. At this point, I have this question nagging in my mind, I want to know (and maybe it is the core of the story): Who is Jon? Who is he as a person? What does he think and feel, under his facades? (… and the only way for me to know that is through the tapes, isn't it. And “discovering/learning who Jon is” is precisely what the Beholding is doing through the tapes, isn’t it. I would like to know more about him, but it’s also impossible to do that without him getting hurt, isn’t it…)
Martin Blackwood
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^It was an headline from the French equivalent of The Onion from last month aND IT WAS FITTING. * Martin writes poetry!!! <333
(MAG039) TIM: Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin? MARTIN: Oh, um… well, I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm.
And heeeeeee’s now using a tape recorder, too. Great. (D:) He also temporarily acted as Jon’s eyes when they were hiding in the sealed room (MAG039)… so it sounds like he’s walking in Jon’s footsteps, uh. * Did he get a new phone, at the very least, since Jane Prentiss had kept it in MAG022 (and texted Jon). What did she do of the phone afterwards. Did the Institute pay for Martin's new phone, or not even. * He had been living in the Archives for four months when Jane Prentiss attacked ;; … And he has squirrel-like tendencies, apparently, hoarding fire extinguishers:
(MAG035) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin, where did you put the rest of the extinguishers? Martin!
(MAG039) MARTIN: … Maybe. Maybe, maybe he found the spare CO2. ARCHIVIST: Spare? What? Where? I never saw any. MARTIN: Oh, I, er… I, I hid them in old casefile boxes. ARCHIVIST: What, why? MARTIN: Well, so the worms didn’t know they were there! Look, I know it’s stupid.
(MAG039) TIM: Funny story really. I ran into the office, worms everywhere, horrible death and everything, tripped and fell in some boxes and there were like 20 cans of gas in there.
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] in fact I was getting ready to raise the issue of Martin’s continuing to live in the Institute’s basement, especially as I believe he’s been stealing fire extinguishers.
(Listen, I. I relistened to this last one many many times and it’s unrelated but I need to share this: jON CHUCKLED AT THIS!! At least, there was air coming out through his nose, and it definitely sounded like a chuckle. Martin did something that cracks Jon up. Martin!! Martin, you scored!!!) Anyway, he stashed these fire extinguishers in Jon’s office aND IT SAVED TIM, give this boy a raise!! Also, the heck Elias, there could surely be other reasons than “I’m suspecting him of stealing fire extinguishers” to reconsider having someone living in your workplace for four months. * … Martin and spiders continue to be a Thing, uh.
(MAG016) ARCHIVIST: […] But as I told Martin earlier, he was there for over a week, so there is very likely a perfectly natural explanation for the fact that his body was completely encased in web.
(MAG022) MARTIN: […] I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute—
(MAG022) MARTIN: […] And then I remembered that I’d seen quite a lot of spider webs in the brief time I was down there, and maybe I should check it out again. I mean, like I said, I’m not really afraid of spiders. So… I went back for another look.
(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: Ah… Yeah, a… a spider. […] I tried to kill it… […] SASHA: Did you get it? ARCHIVIST: Ah… I hope so. Think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing. SASHA: [Chuckles] Well, I won’t tell Martin. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.
(MAG039) MARTIN: I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. […] No, no… it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too.
(More on that last one later.)
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] There was dust on everything. […] No worms. No cobwebs. Just… an old corpse. Gertrude Robinson.
(It’s… very strange of Martin to point out the absence of cobwebs. Mentioning absence of worms was logical, since they were the Main Threat, but why spontaneously notice that there were no trace of spiders…?) So!! Since Jon said that:
(MAG037) ARCHIVIST: […] We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.
… Martin, you should really, really nickname all the spiders roaming around the archives variations of “Knowledge”. “Big Knowledge”, “Valuable Knowledge”, “Precious Knowledge”, “Important Knowledge (DO NOT KILL)”. Maybe, then, Jon would leave the creatures in peace. I do remember that Carlos Vittery had mentioned that there might be so many spiders around his flat because of the worms (MAG016: “Our building had acquired something of an infestation of some sort of insect I didn’t recognise – small, silvery worms, almost like maggots but slightly longer – and I assume that they provided a good meal for the eight-legged little monsters.”), and that Jane Prentiss herself had mentioned spiders in her attic when she discovered the nest (MAG032: “Was it the spiders? There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’ […] Webs have a song as well, of course, but it is not the song of the hive.”). It sounds like spiders and worms are tied to entities that do not… really get along – or that spiders have the upper hand over the worms, overall. So, given that Jon discovered the infestation because a spider went to the wall in MAG038… was the spider attracted by the food? Was it tied to the lighter with the “spider web design” that Jon received in MAG035 and discovered in MAG036? Was it trying to attract the staff’s attention to get them to discover the worms before they would be ready to strike? … was it trying to warn Martin specifically, because hey, hey, friend, look! you’re in danger! there are some things behind the wall, but I have your back bro? * With Jon admitting that he had felt… observed, and the fact that there is still no official reason for him to have dissed Martin so hard before MAG022, I wonder if the two mightn't actually be linked. Sasha had mentioned, too, that she was apparently perceiving Martin as the weakest of the bunch (MAG026: “Martin is a great researcher, but his self-preservation instincts are not the strongest, and to be frank I thought that if this Prentiss were a danger everyone seemed to think, then he’d almost certainly be dead.”), and it didn’t sound like Jon was disagreeing with her – quite the contrary, he trusts her overall. … could it be possible that Jon purposely makes a point of portraying Martin as this incompetent, useless assistant when recording, hoping that if “things” were going to go after the staff members, then Martin could probably be spared if deemed too insignificant and not worth it? It’s just a hypothesis, I’m not firmly believing it, but it would then portray some of Jon’s decisions in another light: Jon thought he would protect the weakest assistant (while Tim and Sasha sounded competent enough to deal with mysterious forces), but then Martin was targeted first, and Jon would have realized that he had in fact miscalculated and designated him as the easiest one to target, hence the offer for Martin to stay in the Archives, protected. (I’m more ready to believe that it was either something spider-related on their first few days as coworkers, or something supernatural in Martin himself that makes people look down on him… but I find interesting to consider the possibility, now that I know that yes, Jon can lie, and will lie if he feels that it’s making his world safer.) * I Have So Many Feelings Over Jon & Martin’s ~heart-to-heart thing~ (AND IT’S JON WHO CALLED IT THAT…):
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] Why are you here Martin? MARTIN: Well, well, Prentiss is out there and you can’t run so— ARCHIVIST: I mean at the Archive in general. Why haven’t you quit? MARTIN: Are you giving me my review now? ARCHIVIST: No… We’re clearly doing a whole heart-to-heart thing and, truth be told, the question’s been bothering me. You’ve been living in the Archives for four months, constant threat of… this. Sleeping with a fire extinguisher and a corkscrew. Even you must be aware that that’s not normal for an archiving job? Why are you still here? MARTIN: [Considering] Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck. ARCHIVIST: Martin…You’re not, uh… You didn’t die here, did you? MARTIN: What? What? N-No… what?! ARCHIVIST: No, I just… No, just the way you phrased that... MARTIN: Made you think I was a ghost? ARCHIVIST: No… it’s— MARTIN: No, no… it’s just that whatever web these statements have caught you in, well, I’m there too. We all are, I think. [Sigh] … … A ghost? Really? ARCHIVIST: [Tiredly] Shut up Martin.
1°) Martin’s spontaneous answer is to mention the fact that he doesn’t want to abandon Jon in this precise situation!! Even when he hadn’t understood what Jon was really talking about!! (And he… kind of went back to the same kind of thing at the end, overall: that Jon is there, and that he’s staying there.) 2°) Jon never gave them their individual review before, did he. 3°) “WE’RE CLEARLY DOING A WHOLE HEART-TO-HEART THING” J O N… ;w; (I love how he still manages to be a bit dismissive of the concept, with that “thing”.) 4°) Jon, even before all the worms: is it normal for an archiving job to deal with all the stuff you’re dealing with in the statements. 5°) … JON THOUGHT THAT MARTIN MIGHT HAVE BEEN DEAD ALL ALONG… Martin getting so offended and not letting it go… (Was Jon ashamed of that one, since he went back to Dick Mode and told him to shut up at the end. Accusing someone of being a ghost sounded pretty stupid, granted <3) * My heart feels warm and fuzzy at the evolution from Jon dissing Martin when he wasn’t able to bring back some information (MAG014: “[Martin] could not find anyone that matches the admittedly vague description given here, though he informs me that he had some very pleasant chats about jigsaws. Useless ass.”), to… accepting that if Martin wasn’t able to, then it’s not his fault but exterior circumstances (MAG036: “[…] Martin’s research would seem to indicate the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books, but it doesn’t explain why none of the officially-listed staff can be located for follow-up […].”) ;w; Martin is not deemed as incompetent anymore, he’s a researcher on the same level as the others now. * Even when he tries his best, though, he still had trouble getting his points across:
(MAG035) MARTIN: I’m sorry, are you two meant— […] Look, you really can’t actually— BREEKON: Package for Jonathan Sims. HOPE: Says right here. MARTIN: Well, I don’t really know where he— HOPE: We’ll just leave it with you. BREEKON: Be sure he gets it. MARTIN: Okay, I– I will, but you really do have to actually— BREEKON: ‘course. Much obliged. HOPE: Stay safe. MARTIN: … … I’ll… try? BREEKON: Your recorder’s on, by the way. HOPE: Might want to change that. MARTIN: Oh… hum… so it is. Thanks. BREEKON: No problem. HOPE: At all.
He was utterly dominated (verbally) by Breekon&Hope all through the exchange (they cut his sentences, led the conversation; probably were on each side of him, physically, a bit threatening, cornering him?), and it does sound like he got the ominous vibe from that “Stay safe” (his “I’ll… try?” was sooo cute). Despite it all, he keeps trying ><! He can also be pretty pessimistic and picturing the worst easily:
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Stay with it, Martin. Tim. What happened to Tim? MARTIN: They got split up and he ran into the office. You said that’s where you made the hole. When you were recording. And they all came through, so… he’s dead. He’s dead in there and he’s covered in worms and that’s it. ARCHIVIST: We don’t know that. MARTIN: … Maybe […].
* AOUCH AOUCH AOUCH… So Martin did mention the feeling of being trapped, with a sort of resignation? when it came to working in the Institute,
(MAG039) MARTIN: I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.
… but that feeling was more raw when he lost himself in the tunnels:
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] I was trying to go back – not that I knew what back even meant down there – when I heard the scream. I don’t even know how to go about describing it, but I thought… well I hoped… Well, when I started to find the shrivelled bodies of worms all over the place, I knew she was dead. […] So I wanted to get out of there. I was looking for a way up, but it felt more and more like I was trapped. […] When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead…
And he did mention that he had a torch on him when he was down there (MAG040: “I, I always keep my torch on me, ever since I moved into the Archives so, I had that, at least.”), and…….. shit. It’s because he’s claustrophobic, isn’t it. (MAG015, Jon: “Martin declined to help with this investigation as he’s ‘a bit claustrophobic’”) He truly had prepared himself for the worst; ending in a dark, closed place, and the staff getting attacked by worms (he had the corkscrew ready to remove them…). * I’m all the more sad, as a result, that spontaneously (when frustrated or stressed), Jon goes back to… being dismissive of him, very casually.
(MAG037) ARCHIVIST: [Rosie] says the same as you. Two men, doesn’t know how they got in, too intimidated to ask, looked “exactly like you’d expect”. Useless… MARTIN: S-sorry… Look, John, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case. ARCHIVIST: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge. MARTIN: I suppose. Can I go now? ARCHIVIST: Yes, go on. MARTIN: Thank you.
1°) I’m inclined to go “inb4 Martin was right” but at the same time, Elias was going in the same direction so mayyyybe not. (Or is it a matter of Elias allowing himself to be able to say “I told you so!” later on.) 2°) mY HEART BLED AT THIS “Useless…”??? JON, HOW FUCKING DARE U. And Martin answering with a stammering “S-sorry” ;___; And Martin asking permission to leave, and Jon… granting it?? Like Martin was a scolded child??? Fuck you, Jon!! All the bad things that will happen to you might be proportional to the ways you treated Martin, you can’t blame karma for biting you back in the butt!!!
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] Martin has disappeared. […] during one of the more alarming encounters, Martin ran off. TIM: He thought we were behind him, I think. ARCHIVIST: He didn’t think at all. Tim was with me, and my leg slowed me down. He must have taken a turn we didn’t see or something. We lost him. […]
Jon… still expected the worse from him? That Martin forgot about them? Which yes, could have been the case, but it’s still… going for the most individualistic (although understandable if you’re not Jon) option. Even Tim took Martin’s defence here? And according to Martin, it’s what happened!! Martin didn’t leave them on purpose!! ;_;
(MAG040) MARTIN: No, I mean… I’m sorry I left you. ARCHIVIST: … Oh Martin. MARTIN: [Tearful] It was an accident. I thought you two were with me! I mean, the worms came at us, and they were so much faster, and then there was the gas, and the running, and I just… I, I thought you were right behind me. But when I turned round you were gone. You were both gone. It was an accident. ARCHIVIST: I know. It’s fine, Martin.
Jonathan “I know” Sims, you trashtalked him behind his back in the previous episode!! :| (And Martin feels guilty about it, and I’m heartbroken, his VOICE when he apologizes and explains again and again that… he hadn’t wanted to leave them behind…) * WHY DOES MARTIN APOLOGIZE SO MUCH… You do nothing wrong, sweetie!!! ;___; Even when fucking effing JON praised him, even when Martin had saved their lives, it still ended up with Martin apologizing, somehow???
(MAG039) MARTIN: […] Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay. I didn’t! I’ve been thinking for a long time about what to do when… well, y’know, this happens. ARCHIVIST: [Softly] Well… thank you. SASHA: That’s why we’re here? MARTIN: Yeah. The room’s sealed, I checked it myself when I moved in. ARCHIVIST: Climate controlled, as well. Strong door. Soundproof. [Sigh] These old files are far better protected than we ever were. Alright, I’ll grant you it’s a good place to lay low, but— SASHA: They could still come in through the air con. ARCHIVIST: Not easily. And… not en masse. It is actually safe. MARTIN: Ha! ARCHIVIST: Except, of course, that we’re trapped. MARTIN: Ah… yeah. … sorry.
(It was super pessimistic of Jon to present it as them being “trapped”, though? Sure, they would feel trapped twenty-four hours later, but right now: they’re safe, they’re protected, they can’t be harmed, and someone would have likely noticed their absences before the end of the day and/or the worms would have been noticed first, prompting some reactions from the Institute, since the ECDC apparently Knows How To Deal with these worms. Why present them as being “trapped” when they’re basically in a bunker during an attack? … Jon had complained about the fact that Martin had confessed about being a bit claustrophobic back in MAG015, but maybe Jon himself is and doesn’t want to admit it?) And, of course, Martin breaking down in MAG040…
(MAG040) MARTIN: Right. Well, I was doing some background checks for case 0081709, when you and Sasha started screaming, so I went to ch— ARCHIVIST: Yes, yes, yes, I was there! I was with you for almost the whole time, and that tape. survived. just fine. MARTIN: … sorry. ARCHIVIST: Ah, it’s fine, I just… I only need from when you got separated – from when you got lost in the tunnels. MARTIN: No, I mean… I’m sorry I left you. ARCHIVIST: … oh, Martin. MARTIN: [Tearful] It was an accident. I thought you two were with me, I mean, the worms came at us, and they were so much faster, and then there was the gas, and the running, and I just… I, I thought you were right behind me. But when I turned round you were gone, you were both gone. It was an accident. ARCHIVIST: I know. It’s fine, Martin. Everybody’s… [sigh] Everyone’s fine. I just need you to tell me what happened next, and then, it’s finished.
… Martin’s slow voice, getting harshly cut by Jon; Martin’s weak voice and little countenance…….. His “I’m sorry I left you” which is just… Martin isn’t on the verge of crying, but his words are moist, trying not to crumble, small voice and probably small lip movements?? And then his voice shivers and shakes and my HEART SHATTERS JON, YOU HAVE DONE NOTHING TO DESERVE MARTIN……. T______T (But Martin is so upset that even Jon relents and tries to calm him down!! Jon doesn’t get angry at him, he… feels that it wouldn’t work with Martin and/or feels bad about putting him in this state ;_;) The fact that Martin feels GUILTY over getting lost… feels like he abandoned Tim and Jon….. MARTIN T_______T * But at the same time, Martin keeps surprising me!! I somehow always end up expecting him to be meek and shy, and there are hesitations, there is uneasiness, there are apologies, he has trouble getting heard by the others, pretty often… but he’s also so much more, every time. He had planned ahead for the case the worms would invade the Archives – while Jon was just unable to give any direction about what they should do when it happened. He’s able to come back and to say things that need to be said, like when he questioned Jon’s decision (/ adamant requests/orders) to get Martin’s declaration on tape at the beginning of MAG037; even if he complied (begrudgingly), even if he stammered a “S-sorry”, even if he took Jon’s remarks in stride, he also…
(MAG037) MARTIN: […] Look, you need to get some sleep. [SILENCE] … I’ll see you later.
… pointed out A Deeper Problem regarding Jon. As advice? As a defence? Both? In any case, I would have expected Tim to point it out to Jon, so good surprise to hear Martin doing it. (I pictured Martin as… watching Jon intensely from the doorway, eyebrows slowly twisting in worry? And Jon not crossing his eyes, staring a wall, like a bored/sulky child, just waiting for him to piss off. And AOUCH. Martin ;; I’m just… Martin just got pushed and pressured, Jon was downright insulting here and there (mostly with second-degree remarks), and Martin… still left a ~door open~ with his “I’ll see you later”………… ;; Not wanting to give up on Jon, uh… Martin Cares…) And, of course, he called Jon out for the scepticism!! He had noticed!! He… wasn’t even feeling betrayed by Jon’s behaviour, he had seen through it – he was annoyed that Jon would lie like this!!
(MAG039) MARTIN: Seriously?! ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: Why do you do that? ARCHIVIST: Do what? MARTIN: Push the sceptic thing so hard!? I mean, it made sense at first, but now? After everything we’ve seen, after everything you’ve read! I hear you recording statements and y-you just dismiss them. Your tear them to pieces like they’re wasting your time, but half of the “rational” explanations you give are actually more far-fetched than just accepting it was a, a ghost or something. I mean for god’s sake John, we’re literally hiding from some kind of worm… queen… thing, how, how could you possibly still not believe!?
He’s not a weak thing, he is aware of what is happening around him and he cares, very deeply ;_; * MmMMMMmmm I wonder if Martin might have ADHD or something of the kind.
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] And there was more dust in those corridors too, and dead rats, even some discarded wine bottles. At one point there was an empty packet of mint imperials— ARCHIVIST: Martin… MARTIN: Sorry. Yeah. Um. […]
His thought seem to be drifting a lot, prone to digressions, and he has trouble keeping on one track; in this case, he was even recounting a Very Bad Experience but still chuckled when describing the food he had found in the corridors (getting into a totally different mood). I don’t know if we notice it more with him because he’s Martin, or if Jon gets more easily impatient with him than with the others (since He’s Martin; Tim could probably have gotten away with the same description), but… * It’s impressive but so far, he’s the only one of the Archive team to… be physically alright. Sasha got the cut from the worms+Michael (MAG026), and ultimately got killed (MAG039) though the others haven’t realized it yet; Tim and Jon got… many bloody holes in their bodies. Martin? Nothing. (Nothing so far?) T___T I love him so much??? He deserves to be fine and okay and valued and comforted??? Give him a raise and a blanket??? T___T
Sasha “Well, I won’t tell Martin.” James
* Definitely sounds like she was good with reports – and that Jon trusts her judgement about her discoveries.
(MAG036) ARCHIVIST: […] it seems the records from the closure of Ivy Meadows are… well, according to Sasha, calling them ‘patchy’ would be very generous. […]
* Happy/non-upsetting things first:
(MAG039) [SOUND CUTS IN MIDWAY THROUGH THE ARCHIVIST SCREAMING] MARTIN: And… there we go. Recording again. Did you get it? [PAINED CRY FROM ARCHIVIST AS SASHA EXTRACTS WORM WITH A SQUELCH] SASHA: There. And I just want to point out that I didn’t make this much of a fuss. ARCHIVIST: [Breathing heavily, aggrieved tone] I think your removal was substantially cleaner.
… it wasn’t explicit, so I do wonder if Jon was referencing Michael’s extraction from MAG026, or if Sasha had just got bitten again and they did a ~I take care of yours/you take care of mine~ exchange? (Because if Sasha has been bitten again, then yes, Jon would absolutely mention that he was cleaner at removing worms than others doing the same to him, ahaha.) Also, it was Martin’s corkscrew and yet Sasha was apparently the one to use it on Jon, so what happened. Did Martin just reveal the item and announce they could use it to remove Jon’s worm(s), and Jon went into a frenzy because the sight of Martin with almost-a-weapon was too much so Sasha had to step in to offer her help… (“Jon, you’ll die if I don’t–” “NO!! Don’t come any closer!!” “*sighs* Move aside Martin, I’ll take care of the big baby :/”) (If so, that biaaaaaaas, Jon!!! And he screamed anyway, Martin doing it or not.) * Jon was definitely… more at ease around her than with the others.
(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: […] Urgh. Urgh. [SOUND OF CHAIR SCRAPING] I see you… [THUMP... THEN SOUND OF COLLAPSING SHELVES] [NOISES OF EXCLAMATION] [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Alright? ARCHIVIST: Ah… Yeah, a… a spider. SASHA: A spider? ARCHIVIST: Yeah. I tried to kill it… the shelf collapsed. SASHA: I swear, cheap shelves– ARCHIVIST: Yeah, I… SASHA: –are… Did you get it? ARCHIVIST: Ah… I hope so. Think so. Nasty, bulbous looking thing. SASHA: [Chuckles] Well, I won’t tell Martin. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.
I LOVE SASHA’S PRIORITIES… She went to check on him, complained about the shelves being cheap and then right away remembered to ask if Jon had reached his target <3 Sasha was quite clearly cracking up and!! I like that Jon doesn’t take offense when she does!! He was a mess words-wise and it was kinda cute?! He had some awkward laughter, some breathlessness, the scene was utterly ridiculous (he was being ridiculous) and he knew it <3 … and also, I guess it avoided for him to get mad at himself for destroying furniture. (Describing a spider as “Nasty, bulbous looking thing” is… not wrong per se, but also not very helpful, though.) The comparison between how he’s relaxed around Sasha and quick to complain about Martin huuuuuurts, though. But I like that it’s saying that yes, Martin has already lectured Jon about the importance of spiders in the ecosystem. (Or at least once. I have no doubt that Jon would complain about Martin harassing him about it if Martin had only mentioned it once.) * She was A Big Damn Hero, who had already put herself into danger when she had followed Michael, and who again took big risks to save Tim’s life (something neither Jon nor Martin try to do, while Sasha… just rushed out to tackle him to save him).
(MAG026) SASHA: […] As I was about to exit, though, it called after me, and said if I was interested in saving your life it would be waiting at Hanwell Cemetery. […] It called you by name. You. And Martin. And Tim. […] Part of me wanted to tell you about it  immediately, to make a statement, but even if you believed me I knew you’d try and talk me out of going to Hanwell Cemetery, and I had just about made my mind up to go. I didn’t know if what Michael had said was a threat or a warning or just a lie, but I decided I couldn’t take the chance. So I went to the cemetery.
(MAG039) MARTIN: No. No, it looks like they’re… waiting, I think. ARCHIVIST: For what? MARTIN: I don’t know. Tim, maybe? SASHA: Oh god! MARTIN: I think he was out at lunch. SASHA: Quick, someone call him. Tell him not to come back inside. […] Oh god, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t see them. [SASHA AND MARTIN BOTH START CALLING OUT TO TIM] TIM, LOOK OUT! […] SASHA: What is he doing? No, Tim, just run! Leave it alone! […] Ah, screw this.
(MAG040) TIM: […] I think I was going to try and hit her, but that’s when Sasha knocked me to the floor. It, it was a good move, actually. Prentiss didn’t seem to expect it, and we crushed a lot of worms when we fell. They were slow to react, and we were running before they really went for us. I mean, all this happened in the space of a few seconds, so I’m not exactly certain. Sasha had to basically drag me behind her.
(MAG040) ELIAS: [Sasha] told me she had set off the fire alarm to get everyone out, and that you and Martin and Tim were currently trapped by Jane Prentiss.
Jon was already pessimistic about Tim’s fate (and couldn’t use one of his legs), Martin didn’t try to rush towards Tim to help him, but Sasha did. Martin, Tim and Jon were her three idiots, uh? She was always about protecting people… even when she left the archives, she activated the fire alarm (prompting everyone to leave the building) and went straight to Elias, to explain to him what was truly happening and to find out what they could do to neutralize the worms in the hope of saving the others… * … the last contact she had with any member of the team was… Tim letting go of her hand…
(MAG040) TIM: […] Sasha had to basically drag me behind her. I saw the shelf in front of us was about to topple. There were so many worms on it so, being the hero I am, I let go of her hand and told her to get help. She made it out the main door.
Tim joking about “being the hero I am” while… the irony… of what happened… is that it contributed to the chain of event that led to her death damniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit ;; (I’m wishing a bit that Tim will never realize it but AOUCH AOUCH AOUCH???) * … and she died alone, thinking about what Jon would want her to do and concerned and worried for the others (MAG039: “Okay, Jon. I know you’ll want to know what’s been happening. If you’re still alive after this. […] I got cut off from Elias. I hope he made it to the fire system, but who knows. Maybe everyone’s dead already.”), in a… place… that she… hated… (“I’ve had to retreat into Artefact Storage. That should tell you something about how bad it is out there. God, I hate this place.”) It’s even sadder given that… I’m not even sure she was still working at the Institute by choice, since she apparently had money-related issues:
(MAG026) SASHA: […] I love the Institute’s building, of course, it’s beautiful, but from a money point of view, I really wish it wasn’t in Chelsea. Everything around here is so expensive.
(MAG039) SASHA: […] Did I ever tell you I first joined the Institute as a practical researcher? I had to analyse and investigate all the stuff in here. Take notes after sleeping in the rusted chair, write in the memory book, all that sort of thing. I transferred after three months. Would’ve quit, but couldn’t afford to back then.
I’m just. Heartbroken over her. The others haven’t even realized she’s dead, she just… disappeared in all possible ways, and that chain of events wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t saved one of her coworkers’ life… I’m sad?? I’m so sad and inconsolable??? * Specifically with the table: Sasha knew what was written in Graham Folger’s journals:
(MAG003) ARCHIVIST: […] Sasha told her we’d managed to locate what we believed to be one of Graham Folger’s journals. Doubt it would have done much good. It just says the same thing on every page: the words “Keep Watching” over and over again.
… so I’m guessing that she didn’t “watch” (the table?) enough. It reminds me a bit of Will’s mother in His Dark Materials, and the way Will hypothesises that she sometimes focused on counting things to try and escape the Spectres… * I can’t help but wonder how things would turn out, if she had stayed alive… She was already on to something re:Elias avoiding some discussions:
(MAG039) SASHA: […] I… I asked Elias about it once, but he just muttered something about funding and mission statements. He’s good at changing the subject, isn’t he?
… so I wonder whether she would have been able to actually get suspicious of him… I know that Tense/Paranoid Times are coming from Jon, and maybe Sasha would have been able to defuse the situation, or to redirect it towards the right person, uh…? * I’m heartbroken that we’ve lost one member of the team ;; And it hurts-but-doesn’t at the same time, that… technically, we never hear the four of them together? Sasha and Tim never interacted on tape except for when Sasha tackled him!! And yet!! I have feelings for these 4 idiots!! I have no problem picturing their daily life!! * … And Not!Sasha creeped me out so much, efudsjnfr. First thing: static as soon as her statement began (while the others were fine), even before she began to speak, and… her (its?) way to describe ~what she did~…
(MAG040) NOT!SASHA: I pulled a fire alarm, because the worms were following me, and I didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. I went to Elias. We talked. We were going to save you, but the worms came, and I fled into the Artefact Storage room. You know I hate the Artefact Storage room, so it must have been bad. ARCHIVIST: You used to work there, didn’t you? NOT!SASHA: Yes. For three months. It was dreadful. I used to think that it was the most dangerous place in the Institute. […] I saw the worms in the main Institute. They shrivelled and died. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that scream though. I could hear Prentiss screaming even from there. […] Yes. Michael… With the bones in his hands. We still don’t know much about him, do we?
Sasha had amusement and some slyness in her words (a bit cat-like). Not!Sasha’s voice is smooth, but distant and unconcerned; she’s saying sentences without giving life to them – she had no personal feelings about (the true) Sasha’s actions. … But she did some things, on her own, and:
(MAG040) NOT!SASHA: Yes, I returned to the Archives, and all the worms were dead. You and Tim were lying there, but you weren’t moving. You just lay there, the dead worms still half inside of you. The trapdoor was open next to you, and more were inside. I went over to check, and you were alive, so I pulled you back to where there was more air, and began to remove the worms. Are you alright? ARCHIVIST: Sorry, just… difficult to hear, you know.
… so yeah, she saved Tim and Jon. So why. What is the plan for them (/for Jon), and how much will they wish that they had died out there rather than suffering whatever she has in store for them… (It’s also hitting one of Jon’s fears/anguishes, technically, though he’s not conscious of it: (MAG026) “The idea that there are things out there like that that want to help us… For some reason, that makes me more uncomfortable than the worm-infested creature stalking the Institute”).
(MAG040) NOT!SASHA: They took you away, so I waited with Elias. He was looking at me strangely, but we were both quiet. It had been a very strange day.
:w I know that the season 3 finale dealt with ~The Stranger~ so. She dropped the word.
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: […] Are you feeling alright? You seem a bit… out of it. NOT!SASHA: Yes. I am very tired. It’s hard to keep track of things sometimes.
What a hard day. Killing off A True Hero and replacing her is soooo tiresome isn’t it. (Jon… did briefly feel that something was off, but is it because Not!Sasha’s spooky powers don’t hide her intonations when it’s wrong (and anyone would notice), or is it because Jon specifically could feel it…?) (She went meek and “I will uwu” with a small voice right after, pfffft.)
ANYWAY, I’M STILL GRIEVING FOR SASHA… you deserved the world, princess é_è And we get… that thing… instead………………………………
Tim “Joe Spooky” Stoker
(MAG039) TIM: … still working? Ah, okay. Test, test. What are you doing on the floor? Huh. [Imitates Archivist voice] Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding sinister happenings in the downtown old—
I’M LOVE HIM SO MUCH… no respect for Jon (overall tone + “Joe” + “SPOOKY”), it was amazingly beautiful. Tim. TIM. (+ we had the context, we knew he was In Danger, so switching to Tim’s point of view was just Magical. Sasha&Martin banging on the door while Tim is not hearing a thing and getting distracted by the shiny object and the occasion to poke fun at Jon behind Jon’s back, while the Queen Worm was right behind him.) (Let!! Joe!! Spooky!! Give his statement!!) … I also love Tim's official recounting of these events:
(MAG040) TIM: Well, I could tell something was wrong as soon as I got back. It was quiet. I mean, it’s normally quiet, but it was dead quiet. I spotted the tape recorder lying on the ground, and went over to… er… see if it was damaged, and… as I was checking it I heard Sasha shouting.
Yeah, not proper to mention the “Joe Spooky” thing given what had happened since then, but his hesitation gave away that he remembered and that he knew Jon wouldn’t have liked it. (Sad that “Sasha” lost the tape because Jon didn’t get to hear about it, though! :( It’s probably the only reason why Tim’s still alive at this point, uh.) * I learned thanks to MAG040 that his full name is Timothy Stoker and SHHHHHHH… given that he’s so outgoing, it must have been really, reaaaaaaaaally weird for him to hear about Timothy Hodge (MAG006) flirting in a bar and having a one-night stand with a woman infected by worms, and then getting infested himself and dying in the events recounted in MAG026. Awkward. * I like how (before MAG040) Tim’s sentences are always so jumpy and less… slick, compared to Jon. He makes a lot of pauses, small filler sounds, like he’s circling around Jon and trying to convey what he wants in the best way to get Jon to answer peacefully (without fearing him either). There is always a smile in his voice, and so much warmth! (AND I KNOW THAT IT WON’T LAST, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO mE!!!) * He was apparently… delighted? Hysterically happy? Super excited? when he learned about MAG035’s case having to do with Robert Smirke, according to Jon (“You should have seen Tim’s face when I told him. Architecture is one of his specialist areas, and he has always talked of Smirke as one that fascinates him. How did he phrase it? ‘A master of subtle stability’.”) I wonder if that case was related to their banter reported by Sasha in MAG026, since we know from MAG024 that they were already working on the Harold Silvana case at that point? Jon sounds more like he's gushing about Tim’s enthusiasm here, rather than that they really fought about the subject, so I’m guessing that I was right, and that Jon just teased him a bit about Robert Smirke for the sake of it. Idiot dorks <3 * Twice now he’s been a middleman/messenger between Elias and the archives/Jon:
(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: […] Which reminds me, if you do see Elias, tell him thanks for the extra extinguishers. TIM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure.
(MAG036) TIM: Oh, ah, nothing urgent, um, it’s just Elias was asking a couple questions about the delivery.
So is there a cold between Jon&Elias at this point, is Tim the Mandatory Delivery Man for messages. When I mentioned this to Aza, I was answered with: And I’m keeping this screencap here for Posterity (and for going back to sob about it later).
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(Alternatively: Elias was asking Tim to ask Jon about why the eff he’s getting his furniture delivered at work.) (At least, everybody probably guessed that it wasn’t coming from Ikea, since Jon apparently has a personal vendetta against it according to the trailer (“… piled so many files on a shelf. Don’t buy them from IKEA.”), which is? uncalled for??? Ikea shelves are powered with the strength of Norsemen as long as you don’t move them around once settled, if Jonathan (Coulton.) taught me anything.) * I forgot to mention it explicitly, I think?, but I know that He Bi (which is why I can bask in the queer mentions with him already), so:
(MAG038) ARCHIVIST: […] Tim actually managed to find a copy of Mr. Ramao’s marriage licence. It exists, is signed, dated and official… and half of it is blank. Only Mr. Ramao’s details are on the document, and if it wasn’t for the context of this statement, it would appear he was married to nobody. But he was married.
There were many sad things about it: the events of the statement and the statement itself took place in 2012, two years before same-sex marriage was legalized in the UK. Which means… that Andre&David probably got married in another country. And it’s Tim who “managed to find a copy” of that marriage licence: so I’m guessing that he fought to find it, that he really wanted to find it, that he really wanted to believe that yes, this man had not… invented his married life? T_T (Queer people solidarity T_T) More happily, though:
(MAG034) ARCHIVIST: […] Still, Tim made contact with Elena Bower in the King’s administration office, and while she couldn’t find any actual records of them in the system, she does remember them being there, and confirms that she assigned them to Dr. Elliott last year. She could be in on it, of course, but Tim seems to believe her.
1°) Did Tim sleep with her. 2°) Jon trusts Tim’s judgement!!! Same as with the Dreamer’s statement (MAG011: “I had Tim look into it, as I don’t entirely trust the others not to have written it as a practical joke and slipped it into the archives.”), it sounds like he trust Tim a great deal? * I do wonder:
(MAG039) TIM: Oh… PRENTISS: [Slowly intoning over worm sound] Do you hear their song?
Was there a special reason for Tim to be targeted like this? She hadn’t spoken to Martin, it didn’t sound like she had spoken to Harriet Lee (according to Timothy Hodge); does Tim have a… connection with That Thing? He said that he wasn’t able to understand what she was saying, though:
(MAG040) TIM: […] [Prentiss] tried to say something, but I don’t know, I couldn’t really understand her through all the…
(So we could hear her through the tape, but not Tim, who was even closer to her? Is it because… it wasn’t a regular voice but something that was distorted for human ears?) And in the same way, I feel like he dodged a bullet, re: the table ;;
(MAG036) TIM: Oh, ah yes, yeah, it was sent straight to the Artefact Storage, a table of some sort. Ah, looks old. Quite pretty, though. Fascinating design on it. […] Um, I’ll be honest I didn’t really notice. It was quite— ARCHIVIST: Hypnotic, yes. […]
(BUT IT GOT SASHA INSTEAD SO I’M STILL SAD…) * I loved Tim already, I’m even more in love with… high-on-CO2!Tim.
(MAG039) [SOUND OF PLASTERBOARD AND TILE BREAKING] TIM: Hi guys! […] Funny story really. I ran into the office, worms everywhere, horrible death and everything, tripped and fell in some boxes and there were like 20 cans of gas in there. MARTIN: Are, are you alright? You seem a bit… TIM: Fine! Fine! Gas… bit light-headed. Not a lot of ventilation in the tunnels. Come on!
tIM……… He has the Best Entrances, okay.
(MAG040) TIM: […] I found myself lying on top of a whole bunch of CO2 canisters, which are damn hard by the way. The worms were still coming, so I used them. I mean, I went full Gas-Rambo. After that… my memory gets a bit fuzzy. I think the paramedic called it ‘respiratory acidosis’… from breathing in all the carbon dioxide, rather than your more traditional oxygen.
He was such a treat; there was this tense, anxious atmosphere, heart-to-heart talk between Jon&Martin, who thought that it was unlikely that Tim had managed to make it out alive, death lurking around… and then bam. Tim rips apart a fake wall and barges in, totally out of his mind but still aware of the situation.
(MAG040) TIM: […] [I] ended up sprawling into this pile of boxes that I thought were case files. Instead, I found myself lying on top of a whole bunch of CO2 canisters – which are damn hard by the way. The worms were still coming, so I used them. Er, I mean, I went full Gas-Rambo.
“Full Gas-Rambo”… tIM…………. (and the stupid little detail of the fact that the canisters are hard. Tim… trying to get back to normal dandy life, in which he can complain or note random things…) * … the CO2 made him lose some inhibitions too… tIM…
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: You’re not bitten, are you? TIM: No, I don’t think so! Have a look! ARCHIVIST: Yes, alright Tim, you look fine. Put them back on, please.
I’m guessing the “them” is trousers again, so Jon is apparently Fated to see his male assistants without trousers (or even less) at some point. Whether Tim showed his arse or genitalia, Jon said he looks “fine”, though. Jon please <33 * … It’s incredible how even in the worst situations, or to recall traumatic events about himself, he still manages to crack jokes here and there. In a hollow and “I’m fucked up and everything is fucked up ahaha” tone but. Still. Jokes.
(MAG040) TIM: Sure. Just… quarantine, y’know? … Not as much fun as it sounds. ARCHIVIST: You were certainly in there longer than I was. Everything alright? TIM: Yeah. I just made some joke about itching and… suddenly they were doing a whole bunch more tests. ARCHIVIST: Well, itching is one of— TIM: I know… I know. I was trying to lighten the mood. I’m fine, though. Except for the holes. … And the pain. … And the blood. … And the nightmares.
…………….. quarantine does NOT sound fun, Tim, holy Mew. And the joke. Oh gods. His voice was so tired, super slow, you could hear that he regretted that joke so, so, so much, that it meant more discomfort and added trauma. It’s either joking or crying, for him, at this point, isn’t it.
(MAG040) TIM: It’s a bit of blur, to be honest, ‘cause when I turned around, there she was. Prentiss. Her face so full of holes it’s like, “my eyes are up here~”, but they’re not, you know? They’re just… uh.
TIM. (And that. That sentence didn’t make any sense. It was just that he couldn’t make the joke with Jane Prentiss because no eyes anymore.) * And he’s not a complete idiot either!!! He’s actually pretty smart, notices things, connects dots and make hypotheses about what he observed!!
(MAG040) TIM: […] I have a theory, actually. I think [the worms] weren’t ready to attack when you found the tunnels. It’s like something in the Institute slows them down, and makes them… hum… heh, sluggish. And that noise they make, that squirming sound? They don’t make it when they’re in the tunnels. I don’t know why. It was only when they came into the Institute – maybe the light, or the aircon, or something? – I’m not sure, but I think it made them weaker, and they’ve been down there for months, breeding, building up their numbers until there were enough to properly bury us. Except you found that hidden passage, and they had to act.
(He was getting some life back in his voice, when explaining his ideas, too!) * ONCE AGAIN, I’m sad about his description of… what was his last moment with Sasha (and Sash's last moment with anyone from the team):
(MAG040) TIM: […] I don’t know what I was going to do, I think I was gonna try and hit her, but that’s when Sasha knocked me to the floor. It– it was a good move, actually. Prentiss didn’t seem to expect it and, we crushed a lot of worms when we fell. They were slow to react, and we were running before they really went for us. […] so, being the hero I am, I let go of her hand and told her to get help. She made it out the main door.
She saved him, and he knows it. He cracked a joke about what he did (because in his mind, she’s still alive, he can joke about that! she managed to flee and to get help, and got through the ordeal unscathed!) and it’s to say that HE “LET GO OF HER HAND” AND IT WAS THE LAST CONTACT SHE HAD WITH HIM… WITH SOMEONE FROM THE TEAM…………………………….. I hope that he will… never realize it, oh gods………………. * I’M IN PAIN because I know that Things Go To Shit In Season 2 and that it’s especially bad between Jon and Tim… but I wouldn’t have been able to predict that from MAG040. Because… Jon is a bit better with him than how he usually handles people? They were together, they faced Jane Prentiss together, they got the same kind of injuries, the same trauma, they can Relate when hearing each other’s comments, and… Jon sounds aware of that, that his experience and Tim’s are similar. He doesn’t need him to recall the events that horrified him, and he has a few kind words:
(MAG040) TIM: [Tired] Do you need much? I’d really like to go home. ARCHIVIST: I sympathise. It won’t take more than a few minutes.
(Tim’s voice was so small ;; The end of an era, there is a hollowness (ha. many hollownesses.) in his voice there…)
(MAG040) TIM: […] There didn’t seem much point staying, so, I went into the tunnels. They were cold. Dry. You know that worm smell, that earthy rotten smell? ARCHIVIST: Oooh yes. TIM: Well… yeah.
(Jon’s voice was very small there, too ;;)
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: […] Could you… describe the tunnels? TIM: You were there. ARCHIVIST: Humour me.
(Jon was almost whispering.)
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Good. Good. Go home, Tim. Get some sleep. TIM: Heh. Yeah. Sure.
(Aaand Jon went from weak voice to a bit firmer, but more like he was trying to get some composure back than being authoritative. And Tim was scoffing; he knew he… wouldn’t be able to sleep, uh…)
Anyway, I love him and he’s going to break my heart, isn’t he ;;
Elias Bouchard
* I’m laughing because:
(MAG017) ELIAS: […] By the way, have you seen Martin?
(MAG036) TIM: Oh, ah, nothing urgent, um, it’s just Elias was asking a couple questions about the delivery. ARCHIVIST: Delivery? What delivery? TIM: Ah well, that’s actually what he was asking, huh!
He sounds like that PNJ who subtly tries to get you back on the track to the Main Quest when you’re getting distracted (“Jon, Jon, Martin is not here, something happening with Martin, maybe you could focus on that Jon.” “Jonathan, THE TABLE and the zippo, Jonathan, pay attention to the items, JONATHAN.”) * Lalala:
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: [Weary] … Statement of, uuuuh… ELIAS: Jon… as your boss, I’m telling you to go home. ARCHIVIST: I’m fine. ELIAS: Look. You look like a mummy. You need rest. […] Jon! She’s gone. I went with the ECDC people when they took her away. I watched her body burn. Jane Prentiss is dead. You can relax. ARCHIVIST: You know why I can’t. When Martin found… ELIAS: That’s a matter for the police.
1°) With Jon temporarily out, someone had to watch/record this, uh. 2°) There have been a few rough exchanges between Martin and Jon, but Elias and Jon do argue for real and it’s a treat <3 It escalates quickly, Jon’s voice (raw, drifting, a bit low at first) gets tense and firmer in his tone, and Elias keeps having those frustrated and reprobating throat noises, and you get the feeling that both of them are indeed verbally fighting to take possession of the topic. Jon keeps starting to talk before Elias ended his own sentences! Even Jon can’t be dismissive of his own boss – but he’s still very very stubborn and… impertinent with Elias. Almost trying to boss him around.
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: … Tell me what happened to Gertrude Robinson. ELIAS: Jon, how many times do we need to go over this? ARCHIVIST: We’ve never got it on tape. ELIAS: You can barely stand. Just… why don’t we just do this tomorrow? … … Fine. On the 15th of March last year, […].
(Jon cutting the end of Elias’s sentences! And you could hear Jon staring hard and hard and hard as sole answer. Elias gave in and complied, but clearly annoyed, with a dry automatic diction <3) * I have Many Things To Scream About When It Comes To That One Sentence:
(MAG039) SASHA: […] I think John’s got a lighter somewhere. ELIAS: He’s not smoking again, is he?
1°) There is a fire alarm going off, Sasha just explained they're being invaded by worms and attacked by an Abomination: is the fact that Jon may or may not be smoking (again) really a priority, Elias. 2°) ……………. still even when pretending to not know that Elias is Elias……. it sounds so terribly paternalistic and not the kind of comment a boss should allow himself to say about a subordinate……… Whether Jon might be smoking or not is not your business…………… 3°) … does Jon even know that Elias knows that he used to smoke. (For how long has Elias set his eyes on Jon, exactly? Was it before Gertrude’s death?) * I… don’t know how he operates, what he can and cannot do, if he has Restrictions or is totally free to do whatever. Obviously, however, given that I know he’s not… exactly benevolent (let’s say.) and is hiding who/what he is, a big question I have regarding him is: is he bound (by supernatural restrictions or by personal ethics) to tell the truth, or can he lie? (As in: lying for real; not only omitting or changing the subject, which he seems to do quite a lot – as even Sasha had noticed.) Wondering this gives another dimension to some of his sentences, assuming that no, he can’t explicitly lie (but can bend the truth to say a non-lie while avoiding to reveal information):
(MAG039) ELIAS: To be honest I always thought they were just… overreacting. Other staff have seen them around, but no-one’s reported any aggressive behaviour or anything like that. You know how those two are… Jon puts on a good show, but sometimes I swear he’s worse than Martin.
(MAG040) ELIAS: I… know I have often seemed dismissive of your concerns before […]. But… honestly, I didn’t fully appreciate what you’d been talking about until I turned that corner and we saw what I can only describe as a… a tidal wave of filth rushing towards us.
=> Well, Jon will have worse anyway, so no need to take this one too seriously, right? It was ONLY Jane Prentiss. Come on. Not a big deal, right.
(MAG040) Martin finding her body in the tunnels is as much a mystery to me as it is to you.
=> Of all fucking people working at the Institute or investigating Gertrude’s suspicious disappearance, Elias wasn’t expecting that MARTIN would find her body. (THAT’S SO MEAN FOR MARTIN WHEN YOU HEAR IT THIS WAY…) His description of Gertrude’s disappearance is, all in all, pretty neutral and is readable as a not-lie, but there are two details that are noteworthy: 1°) “so I assumed she was dead and left the investigation to the police”: you can’t assume something you know, especially since there would have been ways to word it in a non-personal phrasing (~It was safe to assume~, ~Anybody could have assumed~ etc.)… but then, I don’t know if she was dead-dead when he left her/the body, nor if he was the one to drag the body somewhere else (since the crime scene and the place the body was discovered were different). 2°) … he said that Gertrude’s disappearance was discovered and reported “On the 15th of March last year”: however, according to MAG025, it was the 15th of May. March 15th was, however, the day following ~Antonio Blake~’s written statement about his dreams regarding Gertrude’s death (MAG011). So was it a mix-up from the writers, was it an inconsequential mix-up from Elias, or was that… a mistake made on purpose, because there had been blood on her desk around that time but it was related to another story, not her actual murder? * I’m really amused by the fact that… I know due to spoilers that I have to be careful of him, that’s he’s bad, baaaaad, bad news. But every time he speaks, I have this ringing of “oh, it’s just boring/neutral/a bit useless Elias” flaring in my mind =D (Also, as if his voice actor was just filling in, but not really used to acting. I already know it’s not the case, got some audible proof even… and yet. I still have the impulse of thinking “Oh, it’s just Elias” when hearing him in my current episodes, which baffles me every time. You sneaky falsely boring middle-aged man, you. (Kudos to his VA!)) (Though yeah, I got to actually hear him a bit more thanks to MAG040, and his voice was more noticeable then (unrelated to the fact that, by default, his scenes are funnier when he’s arguing with Jon). Very clean and… I think the word I would use to describe it is “neat”? His elocution is very clear, not exactly cutting, but there is something sharp there.) * But then, it sounds like other characters share the feeling and it’s… how Elias is identified (/gets identified) by others. Sasha wasn’t exactly too impressed with him (clearly feeling that she had to insist to make him do something actually useful to potentially help Jon, Tim and Martin), and Jon himself doesn’t seem to consider Elias useful either:
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude. Officially she’s still missing, but Elias is no help […].
* Again, about what he said about Jon (and Martin) and the worms:
(MAG039) ELIAS: So… these are the worms he and Martin have been going on about? SASHA: The ones terrorising us for months? Yeah! ELIAS: To be honest I always thought they were just… overreacting. Other staff have seen them around, but no-one’s reported any aggressive behaviour or anything like that. You know how those two are… Jon puts on a good show, but sometimes I swear he’s worse than Martin.
I want to say that Elias is also so mean to Jon, but then, that would make me be mean to Martin. So, usually, in the group of four, Tim and Sasha are (perceived as) the ones less likely to ~overreact~? (That’s especially funny considering how, at that exact time, Tim is currently getting High On CO2 and a total mess. And how Martin, having been panicking for months over the concept of an incoming worms invasion, pre-emptively found a solution that would remove them and thought of a place to take shelter in. But Sasha has been Great overall, granted, and Jon… didn’t do a lot except for shouting at Martin and complaining about Sasha’s worm-removal.) * … Though, I’m terrified over how he casually got LIFE OR DEATH power over the people in the Archives:
(MAG039) ELIAS: Not quite what I meant. On Jon’s insistence I recently changed the Archive’s fire suppression system to use carbon dioxide. Should have done it years ago, really— […] SASHA: Wait. Wait. Will it hurt Martin or Jon? ELIAS: Almost certainly. Er, I’m not a doctor, but I know dumping a lot of CO2 on people isn’t generally considered a good idea.
(Jon, what have you done.) Even when ignoring spoilers (he killed Gertrude), THAT’S SO VERY REASSURING… Fitting with what Jon said about how “These old files are far better protected than we ever were.” (MAG039) but I’m also staring so hard about how… ahahaha… there would be… a convenient way… to kill off all the staff if they were a bit troublesome and too uncooperative or something………… that would be less bloody and “cleaner” than with Gertrude, wouldn’t it……….. (was it really “on Jon’s insistence”. Wouldn’t be out of character for Jon given that he had asked for more fire extinguishers, and carbon dioxide means less harm to the documents, but at the same time, those are not… ideal conditions if you want to work without fearing for your life.) * Maybe Not That Immune To Worms:
(MAG040) ELIAS: Luckily it seemed the things were mainly concentrated in that one mass, leaving the other corridors largely vacant. It took me ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but I made it with only one close call.
Oh no, Alexa, this could have been so sad, play “Despacito”. * I still don’t know why Jon was chosen specifically, and I do wonder if Elias was planning to keep him at all costs as the new head archivist, or if he… allowed himself to test the waters a bit, to check if Jon would be up to the task, keeping the possibility of discarding him if he wasn’t a good enough fit. I mean, I know that he killed Gertrude! And even with Jon, he obviously played with fire (ha.) by releasing the carbon dioxide at the last moment. His official stance to Sasha was that he hoped that Jon would survive given that:
(MAG039) Er, I’m not a doctor, but I know dumping a lot of CO2 on people isn’t generally considered a good idea. I really don’t want to have to find another Archivist so quickly after Gertrude, but from what you say… it might be a mercy.
1°) ……………… I do love how his public persona is just… casually so ruthless and un-empathetic. Whining about having to find another archivist when he’s mentioning that oops, Jon (and Tim and Martin) could die while the system is saving the Institute. Everyone in this institute has their priorities wrong. (And yes, it’s even more hysterical when knowing that he killed the previous one. Complaining about having to find another Archivist after you killed the last one? YOU DON’T SAY.) Same thing in the following episode when he recalls ~what happened about Gertrude’s bloody disappearance~, he summarizes his stance with:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] so I assumed she was dead and left the investigation to the police, for all the good it did me. And I appointed another archivist.
Laconic tone for the end of the story (but with a slightly higher pitch: it wasn’t “annoyed” like at the beginning), and Jon was… breathing hard throughout that last sentence. Aouch. Also could you please try to sound sad about one of your employees’ mysterious death, Elias. 2°) I know (thanks spoilers) that Elias has selective omniscience and can see what is happening (if he focuses on it). So he knew how much danger Jon and the others were in, he probably could see the moment Tim and Jon went face to… faces with Jane Prentiss, and he acted at the last minute. Was Elias planning to move a finger only if he had to and there was no other way for Jon to make it out alive? Or did he make the decision to help-if-necessary during the crisis, because Jon had… somehow lived up to his expectations and proved himself as the new Archivist? In the latter case… would it be related to the fact that Jon tried to record at all cost what was happening (endangering himself to retrieve his tape recorder (only to lose it again a few seconds later) and even getting bitten in the process, asking Martin to describe what he was seeing for the second tape recorder), thus ~validating~ Elias’s choice? (In all cases: thaaaaaaaaat’s absolutely creepy, I love it. Terrible.) * Look, yes, he probably timed his actually-doing-something-for-once thingy, but the way he described it:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I composed myself, and decided on a more roundabout route to the boiler room. Luckily it seemed the things were mainly concentrated in that one mass, leaving the other corridors largely vacant. It took me ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but I made it […].
……… I doubt that the building is big enough to require ten to fifteen minutes to reach a place, even when a taking a detour. That is, when you’re rushing. Did he have the time to have a cigarette, one or two coffees, and even to wait for the coffee to cool down to an acceptable temperature, before lifting a finger. * Re: Elias’s public persona being very casually ruthless: the difference between Jon living the horror and Elias ~describing the horror~:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I turned on the fire suppression system. And… that’s when I heard the scream. I… can’t really describe it but… well, I’m sure I don’t need to, you were a lot closer to it than I was. ARCHIVIST: It’s the last thing I remember before blacking out. Tens of thousands of… things without mouths screaming as one. ELIAS: … Yes. Horrible sound. Anyway, […].
(With Jon’s voice shivering and clearly Not Fine, while Elias is just deadpan and firm and that “Anyway,” kills me.)
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I headed down to the Archives to see what had happened. Sasha was already there, but you and Tim were in a bad shape. It looked like a few dozen worms had been going into each of you when the carbon dioxide killed them. Was like bloody Swiss che— ARCHIVIST: YES… thank you, I remember everything from when the ambulance arrived. Quarantine, bandaging, etcetera.
hE’S ALSO SO FUCKING SAVAGE??? ELIAS, OH MY GODS………… Jon is traumatized and Elias just casually describe Tim and him as looking like gruyère (“bloody Swiss cheese”), oh mY GODS… (And Jon was… breathing hard, and he stopped him sharply, so almost getting a panic attack over the recounting of the events, uh. Does Elias feed on Jon’s discomfort and suffering? Because if he wanted to very casually and ~innocently~ make someone ill at ease, yeah, it was a very efficient way.) * Anyway:
(MAG037) MARTIN: […] Look, Jon, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case. ARCHIVIST: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it.
1°) Spoilers aside: I’m laughing that… it’s not like Elias is in charge of the Institute, isn’t it. It’s not like he’s supposed to have a say in how they should handle Suspicious Items that are received in the Institute and that will be kept inside of its Artefact Storage, instead of giving very vague “oh yeah, maybe we should destroy it… idk… do whatever…”, uh. Same thing when he reported what he was doing during the worms invasion, it was hilarious:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] This afternoon, just after lunch, I was going over some budgets in my office, as I normally do on a Tuesday […]. the fire alarm started going off. It was annoying, but not too worrying at first. I, I packed my work away, and began to calmly head towards the evacuation point, when… Sasha came barrelling through the door […].
If it had been a planned training for emergency, he would have known about if beforehand, so his public persona knew it was either someone accidentally setting the alarm or a genuine case, but his official stance about it is “Oh no, there was annoying noise disturbing my Tuesday Budget Ritual, and I even had to evacuate :(”. Same thing with his stance about Martin’s stay:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] in fact I was getting ready to raise the issue of Martin’s continuing to live in the Institute’s basement, especially as I believe he’s been stealing fire extinguishers.
“Yeah, sure, one of my employees has been living in my building for four months, that’s fair, but hoarding fire extinguishers? Too unprofessional.” And in both cases, Jon is not surprised by what Elias is saying, so it’s just… regular Elias comments. THIS IS YOUR FUCKING INSTITUTE, ELIAS…………………….. you could also get a bit more upset about the damages the worms caused – it’s going to cost a lot! (In case you haven’t noticed, I’m really cackling at the Boring Useless Bureaucrat persona =D) 2°) I have no doubt that this fucker knew what kind of Bad News the table meant, so comparatively, what he officially said about it is…  so… noncommittal, pfFFFTTTT. Keeping the table turns out to be a mistake? Elias had advised you to trash it!! Destroying the table turns out to be a mistake? Well, Elias hadn’t instructed you to trash it, he only gave you some advice that you were free to disregard!! Your fault in all cases, Elias Did Nothing Wrong because he did nothing at all, You Can’t Complain, Jon, No, Really, You Can’t. bUT FUCK HIM ANYWAY!!
(MAG040) NOT!SASHA: […] I waited with Elias. He was looking at me strangely, but we were both quiet. It had been a very strange day.
Fuck yooooooooou, you know!!! :| … I’m not sure, however, whether he knew what would happen to Sasha: if it was a pure coincidence (and he rolled with it), if he was aware that it was likely to happen to her, or if he did get ~accidentally separated~ from her at that moment in a deliberate and conscious effort to get her to hide in the Artefact Storage room (where the table was stored, where Sasha would be alone, and where it was very likely that she would get… murdered and replaced). So I can’t scream at him for being a tiny bit responsible (yet), but I’m eyeing him in the meantime. * But apparently, sometimes, when the stars are aligned, Elias can apparently behave like someone who is *gasps!!* helpful:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I called the fire department, ambulance and a contact at the ECDC who had previously been involved in the Prentiss investigation.
… Yeah, needed special staff to get rid of the (worm) corpses. (Aaaand he has a ~repertoire~ of people to contact, apparently?)
The Magnus Institute / The Archives
We got a bit more information about how things apparently work around here!
* According to season 1’s Q&A
(S1Q&A) Alex: “How large is the Magnus Institute, as an organization?” Jonny: There are between 80 and a 100 staff in total. Very few of them are focused on the Archives; I think probably the core staff is maybe 40.
Does it include the cryptids. (That’s not gigantic but leaves some space for not knowing everyone / mostly knowing people in your own services, indeed!) * … The Institute is not here to help you, even if you’re desperate. It wants your stories, but it won’t help you.
(MAG037, Jason North) I’ve asked and asked and your people only ever tell me to write my statement. Put it down on paper for investigation. Is that going to help? No. Of course it isn’t. Even if you had the power to do something, would you? Or would you rather watch my son burn so you can take notes. […] I won’t let my son burn, even if you cowards don’t have the guts to step up and do something. […] But yes, I know, you want the whole goddamn story, don’t you? So you can look over it in ten years and go “Hmm, interesting” long after Ethan and me are dead.
* So, yay! Characters had understood that the statements not recording on computer meant they were Spooky. I was wondering, since the tape recorders do have the advantage of singling them out of the bunch of others, if they were treated differently – apparently, it wasn’t the case at first but Jon is focusing more on them nowadays (MAG039: “At this stage, if it records to my laptop I almost don’t bother.”) Jon also basically said that, so far, we might have heard all the recordings on tape (“I mean. I still think most of the statements down here aren’t real. Of the hundreds I’ve recorded, we’ve had maybe… thirty, forty that are… that go on tape.”): 38 statements so far, minus Martin’s and Sasha’s, and three other live statements. So 33 that came from papers, already in the Archives. It also seems that Jon is also able to… feel that they’re different even before recording them, maybe? (“The ones that have weird wrinkles, or that just seem to have something solid to them.”) Or are those literal “weird wrinkles” in the paper, which would be an indication that some people (Gertrude?), before the current team, used to read those but disregard the others? * Working in the Archives is not a Safe Job:
(MAG026) SASHA: I should really quit, you know. We– we all should. I don’t think this a normal job. I– I don’t think this is a safe job. ARCHIVIST: You’re probably right. Do you want to quit? SASHA: No. I’m just– I’m just too damned curious, I suppose. You? ARCHIVIST: No. Whatever’s going on, I… need to know. Get some rest.
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: […] Why are you here Martin? […] Why haven’t you quit? […] Why are you still here? MARTIN: [Considering] Don’t really know. I just am. It didn’t feel right to just leave. I’ve typed up a few resignation letters, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hand them in. I’m trapped here. It’s like I can’t… move on and the more I struggle, the more I’m stuck.
(MAG039) SASHA: […] I’ve had to retreat into Artefact Storage. That should tell you something about how bad it is out there. God, I hate this place. … Did I ever tell you I first joined the Institute as a practical researcher? […] I transferred after three months. Would’ve quit, but couldn’t afford to back then.
I would scream at all of you to quit but then Sasha is already dead and I knew that curiosity (/not ~keeping watching~ enough?) would kill the cat TT____TT (Also, Martin, sweetie, is your last sentence supposed to reassure us re: the reasons why you don’t feel like quitting? Because it… was a bit terrifying, that whole extended metaphor about an insect stuck in a web. Who/What/Where is the spider. If he had said that he wanted to stay because he had grown fond of the others and didn’t want to feel like he was leaving them behind, I would have dug that, considering how he’s been a sweetie pie so far, but here… it sounded more like a consequence of him staying. He never explained why he didn’t (want to?) quit.) * It sounds like the Institute itself had an effect on the worms? Tim said that the ones in the tunnels were “faster for some reason. And quieter.” (MAG039) than the ones in the Archives, and Jon confirmed it right after (“Tim was right about there being fewer worms down here, but they are much faster. More aggressive.”) When Tim went over the events in MAG040, it’s also something that had struck him (“[In the tunnels,] I did see some more worms, though. They were fast. I only saw a couple, but it was still proper jumpscare territory.”) Back when they had first encountered them in the wild, Martin and Sasha had described the worms as quite fast (MAG022: “the worms began to writhe out of every hole and cavity, falling to the floor in a cascading… wave and starting to crawl towards me with… with alarming speed. […] Just as I was bringing up the camera app, one of the worm-things reached at me and leapt at my face. That thing jumped literally 6 feet through the air at my face.”; MAG026: “The worms also seemed to have taken notice and began to move towards me at an alarming speed.”), so it seems that their behaviour inside of the Institute was the anomaly. Something (the building itself?) was able to slow them down? Tim himself was hypothesizing this in MAG040. Anyway, worms were trying to populate other levels, according to Sasha (MAG039: “The worms are on the upper floor. Not as many as down in the Archive, but enough.”) * I was wondering at which level are the Archives located? I had assumed ground floor or basement floor, and that sounds correct! Elias’s office is apparently on an upper level (not surprised) (MAG040, Elias: “We hurried down, and it was clear everyone else had already evacuated. We… had reached the ground floor when… well…”). Plus, the dent on the wall caused by the collapsing shelf caused by Jon thwacking it caused by an innocent spider visiting the Archives, revealed that this one was not an “exterior wall” (as Sasha had assumed until MAG038) but some sort of plasterboard panel separating the Archives from… hidden tunnels. So the Archives are on the lowest (official) level in the Institute. (Which sounds usual and all but is also pretty dangerous for papers in case of flooding.) And Elias did describe the place where the statements were recorded in MAG040 as “basement filled with a thousand rotting worm carcasses” (he had offered to take the statements in his office instead) and also commented about “the issue of Martin’s continuing to live in the Institute’s basement”. So yep. The Institute hides the nerds in the basement. * I’m guessing that the tunnels that the Archive Team discovered are… sadly related to the ones created by Robert Smirke mentioned in MAG035 (Old Passages, the Harold Silvana case)…? As summarized by Jon, “These tunnels are a maze, and we don’t know where we are.” (MAG039). Martin also said about them:
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] It’s a, it’s a maze down there, Jon. I don’t know how far the passages go, maybe miles. I think it must be the old Millbank Prison, like Tim was saying before. I even found some stairs at one point, but I really didn’t want to go down them.
So the Institute is the tree and… it has roots. Deep, deeeeep roots. * There are least two mysteries lying underneath the Institute (unless it was the same room and Tim didn’t notice Gertrude’s corpse): the room that Tim saw (where worms behaved strangely, trying to make a doorway?), and the room that Martin saw.
(MAG040) TIM: No. I did see… uh, I mean, maybe… ARCHIVIST: What? TIM: No, it’s just… I think I was still gassed, and it was dark, but… I found a room. ARCHIVIST: Go on. TIM: I didn’t stay long, ‘cause it had a lot of worms in, and they weren’t acting like the others. They were sort of… wrapping around each other, like they were trying to form a… thing, like a structure or something. A ring. I was probably still out of my skull, and half-hallucinated the whole thing, but it looked like they were trying to make a doorway. ARCHIVIST: A doorway? Is it still there? TIM: No. I pumped two full extinguishers into that room. Nothing was getting out.
(Tim was almost chuckling at the end. Proud of himself for this, at the very least, uh.)
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead… It was a small room. Square. There was dust on everything. Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes. […] She was sat in a wooden chair in the middle of the room. No worms. No cobwebs. Just… an old corpse. Gertrude Robinson. She was slumped forward, but I could see her mouth hanging open.
The Tape Recorder(s)
* Season 1’s Q&A had a question about which sounds were canonical in the tapes (and mostly the status of music):
(S1Q&A) Alex: From sort of a directorial standpoint, I’ve always had it that the music is not part of the actual recordings…? Jonny: Yes. Alex: However, the tapes detect the distortions, the sound effects of things actually happening, the voices of the people […]. Jonny: Everything that you hear is on the actual tape within the world of the Magnus Archives, except the music.
Niiiiice /o/ … As a result, as mentioned above, I wonder if the tapes have the power to somewhat “translate” some sounds/voices?
(MAG039) TIM: Oh… PRENTISS: [Slowly intoning over worm sound] Do you hear their song?
(MAG040) TIM: […] [Prentiss] tried to say something, but I don’t know, I couldn’t really understand her through all the…
We listeners could hear her perfectly, but apparently, Tim couldn’t (while he was positioned close to the tape recorder, probably between it and Jane Prentiss). Is that it, do they have the power to translate/fix/catch the distortions? I’m also wondering what is the relation between the statements and the tape recorders: are there parts of the statements that described inhuman sounds, and that Jon read as they were written (and the tape recorders made them audible)?
* Jon used to dislike that tape recorder – but that’s not the case anymore.
(MAG033) ARCHIVIST: No. I don’t have time. I still have a mountain of haphazard statements to get through, not to mention that I need to keep this wretched tape recorder on hand – just in case I encounter one of the files too stubborn to work on anything else, and when I do, I have to actually– TIM (BACKGROUND): Oh, woah– ARCHIVIST: –read the damn thing, which is… TIM (BACKGROUND): –woah… woah!
(MAG039) SASHA: Why record it? ARCHIVIST: What? SASHA: Before, in the office. It, it was stupid going for the tape recorder like that, and then when you dropped it out there— ARCHIVIST: I said I was sorry. If I’d known Martin had another one stashed in here, I never would have… SASHA: No, it’s, it’s fine, just… I just don’t understand. I thought you hated the damn thing. You’re always going on about it. ARCHIVIST: I do! I did. I just… […]
“I did”, yIPS. But now, Jon is… I don’t think that saying “he’s grown fond of it” would be the right thing; it’s mostly that he polarized a lot of his actions around it? Keeping it running, keeping things recorded, is almost becoming his priority?
(MAG039) SASHA: What are you doing?! ARCHIVIST: Almost… SASHA: Leave it, it’s not— ARCHIVIST: I got it!
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: What, Sasha, NO! [DOOR OPENS] SASHA: Tim, look out! ARCHIVIST: Watch out for the tape—
(Aouch, for this last one ;;;; There were… other things to shout about…) It was to the point that when unable to stand up, he asked/ordered Martin to be His Eyes… and not even for him:
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Right. There we go. Martin, what do you see? MARTIN: Hm? What? ARCHIVIST: I can’t really stand up yet. I need you to describe what’s going on. For the record.
(MAG039) ELIAS: You [Sasha] did bring a tape recorder. I just thought Jon would appreciate as many supplementary recordings as possible. For the record.
(GUHUTGVHIBGH Elias’s “For the record” is him deliberately quoting Jon, isn’t it. They didn’t say it at the same time, since we couldn’t hear the Fire Alarm system yet when Martin and Jon were talking, while it was already on when Sasha and Elias were talking… So Elias’s was definitely after Jon’s and the same phrasing sure doesn’t sound like a coincidence and that’s terrible of him.) (You could also go “Awww cute! Elias is attentive to Jon's concerns!” I guess but.)
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: Martin, could you pass me the tape recorder? MARTIN: Sure. I think it’s running out, though. ARCHIVIST: Fine. I suppose I can turn it back on when we’re being eaten alive.
(MAG039) SASHA: [SPEECH IS ECHOED FROM THE ROOM AS SHE WALKS] [With some despondency in tone] Okay, Jon. I know you’ll want to know what’s been happening. If you’re still alive after this.
(I love Jon’s sarcasm better when it’s turned towards himself in self-depreciative/grim expectations =D) And of course, Jon was concerned that a valuable tape was lost:
(MAG040) ELIAS: […] I suggested [Sasha] turn the tape recorder on, largely so this sort of debrief wouldn’t be necessary. Did you not get the tape? ARCHIVIST: No. There was… some sort of problem. Sasha told me the tape was lost. ELIAS: Hm. […]
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: Right… Right. What about the tape? You had the tape recorder, the one I’d just recorded Mr. Ramao’s statement on. But when you gave it back, it was empty. NOT!SASHA: Yes, I dropped it a few times. The eject button must have been hit. I didn’t notice until you pointed it out. It’s probably around somewhere. Is it that important? ARCHIVIST: It’s important to me.
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: […] Some of my tapes are missing. Maybe it was Prentiss, but she seemed more interested in the written files, and the other tapes seem fine. There’s no sign of debris, or anything that would indicate they’ve been destroyed, but, in addition to the tape Sasha lost earlier, the tapes for cases 0051701 and 0160204 are gone. I don’t know why these two specifically, but I cannot trust anyone.
……………. I do understand (it’s tangible proof) but still… he’s not feeling comfortable with the idea of losing the tapes in particular… AND I ALREADY UNDERSTOOD WHY THESE TAPES IN PARTICULAR DISAPPEARED… The calliope case and Sasha’s encounter with Michael both had the original Sasha’s voice on them (+ obviously, the one in which she was killed and replaced). Strangely, though: Sasha also spoke on Martin’s tape recorder (when they were in the safe room) and Jon mentions that that one “survived just fine” – despite the fact that not!Sasha would have had plenty of time to dispose of it when she joined Tim’s and Jon’s bodies after Prentiss’s death. So did she do something to that last tape (but Jon hadn’t noticed yet at this point), or… is Jon, anyway, unable to listen to it again, since it hits too close to home? It contains his screams, his fears, his confessions about his stance about the supernatural and, of course, his encounter with Prentiss, and Jon is clearly traumatized by that last one. * I also wonder if Jon won’t prevent some tapes from circulating: the one from Martin’s tape recorder (MAG039), for the reasons mentioned just above, and the one from MAG040, since… Jon ended that one with his thoughts about Gertrude’s murder, and the fact that he “cannot trust anyone.” We learned thanks to Tim (MAG033) that students and researchers sometimes listen to the tapes, and so do the assistants, since they pointed out some of Jon’s mistakes, but maybe Jon will prevent that for new ones? It wouldn’t sound like a good idea to allow people to hear about it when one of them could be Gertrude’s killer. * And now, Martin has been shown using another tape recorder, too:
(MAG039) TIM: Why do you have a second tape recorder, Martin? MARTIN: Oh, um… well, I’ve been using it to record myself. I write poetry and I think the tapes have a sort of… low-fi charm.
Did he buy/bring it in himself, or did he find this one in the Institute? Jon had mentioned in the trailer that he had found the tape recorder he is using in the building (“I managed to unearth this old tape recorder from storage, and these cassettes, archaic as they may be, are still better than nothing.”), so there could have been a few still in shape. … And Martin mentioned that Gertrude’s body was surrounded by tapes (MAG040: “Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes. […] She was sat in a wooden chair in the middle of the room.”), so WOOOOOOPS, looks. Like Gertrude was using them, too, and this is probably why there are so many cassette tapes in the Institute. But how did they proceed, before tape recorders were a thing? Did they have another way to separate bullshit statements from “real” statements?
Overall notes on episodes’ contents
* MAG034: Live-statement of Dr. Lionel Elliott about the peculiar seven students following his “Introduction to Human Anatomy and Physiology” class at London’s King’s College during the first semester of 2016: Erika Mustermann, Jan Novak, Piotr and Pavel Petrov, John Doe, Fulan al-Fulani and Juan Pérez. He isn’t able to remember anything about them since they were almost aggressively unnoticeable (“They all just looked so… normal. Unremarkable.”) They were curious about basic anatomy knowledge and also apparently learned to breathe, to get accurate bones and heartbeats through the course. Dr. Elliott avoided them as much as he could and still ended up pretty messed up by practical lessons, one involving skeletons and the other hearts dissection. At some point, he went to visit their house (they were all living together.) and heard “a muffled scream of pain came from somewhere deep inside the house. It sounded ragged, like whoever was crying out had been gagged.” He Didn’t Teach Them About The Liver and fled. At the end of semester, he found an apple and a handwritten note (“Thank you for teaching us the insides”); cutting the apple in half, he discovered “human teeth arranged in a smile”. According to Jon’s follow-up, those are “healthy adult teeth, and most of them appeared to come from different people”; he also mentions that the previous year, Dr. Rashid Sadana (teaching the “Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology for Complementary Therapies” course at St Mary’s University) ~committed suicide~ and left a note saying “NOT TO BE USED FOR TEACHING”.
………….. They Wanted To Learn. They were kinda cute in their own way. Terrifying, but also really eager to learn. They looked so out of things and totally following their own interests that it diluted a bit of the horror, it was almost comedic sometimes? Such as when Dr. Elliott when to their home and heard the screaming, it was almost… cartoon-ish. Horrible and poor guy who was inside, sure, but also so incongruous that it felt almost funny. (I didn’t catch on to Dr Elliott’s… quirky voice? because hollow laughers of ahaha-I’m-so-eff’d-up; I thought he was genuinely trying to alleviate the mood at first, being indulgent about the technology, throwing in little morbid references, but nop, it became more and more explicit that he was totally losing it. Oops.) I assumed that Dr. Rashid Sadana had been killed off by the Things because he was deemed a bad teacher (and that they had left the note to convey that no!! this one is bad!! and has a bad body!! give us a better teacher!!) but a friend mentioned that it could be that he got the class the previous year, committed suicide for real, and put the note to request that his corpse not be used in anatomy classes. Oopsies in both cases. (But I would assumed that he would have asked to get cremated or something, to escape the faint probability of being used as teaching material?)
Small things overall: the worms are getting more and more present, WOOPSIE (Dr. Elliott commented on the infestation). I liked Dr Elliott’s programme of his statement, which… set the mood (“Where do want me to start? The bones? The blood? The… uh… the fruit?”) and made you wonder how those things could tie together; his honesty about his, erh, lack of concern for them as a teacher (“I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but I came to terms with the fact that I didn’t care if they passed any exams, and that actually made the whole affair more manageable. I just did my best to stop caring.”, “And I’d long since decided with this class, that if I couldn’t see or hear it, I didn’t care.”) but also booooo-ooooo, bad teacher! When Jon mentioned that “Juan Pérez’ is the generic name of choice in most Spanish speaking countries” Iiiiiii didn’t know this one (more used to “fulano”)? So idk if it’s my own lack of culture but it is listed on the English wiki, so I’m eyeing Jon hard since his linguistic researches (officially “a quick Internet search”) apparently consisted in consulting… Wikipedia of all things <3 That’s so shameful for a researcher. It was also interesting to have him and Jon interacting because 1°) An episode beginning with Jon going “Apologies for […]” to someone??? In my TMA episode??? It’s more likely than you think!!, 2°) The fact that Jon’s Ritualistic Procedures were not exactly understood by Dr Elliott and that he had to… orientate him a bit more (“[…] Statement begins.” “*silence* Now?” “Yes. Just start from the beginning.” “Right. […]”), it just made Jon’s little quirks sound so silly, 3°) As mentioned earlier, I’m still laughing at someone throwing a “Do I look like an idiot?!” at Jon because. Yeah, likely that for Jon, y’all idiots. But it was nice to see someone implying Jon’s question was super duper dumb =D
* MAG035: Harold Silvana about the underground tunnels he discovered during renovations taking place at the Reform Club located at 100 Pall Mall. During a night shift, together with Rachael Turley and Alfred Bartlett, they were joined by Gerard Keay, who was searching for (and smelling?) “Leitner’s pages” and destroyed a bit of the wall with a hammer (“I heard a scream, high-pitched, but it definitely didn’t come from any of us.”) that revealed a corridor. They went in, Alf(red) felt as though the corridors were getting “narrower” (but measuring it proved that it wasn’t the case). They reached a crossroads, with thirteen doorways (“There was one that, for all the world, it felt like I was going to fall into it. Another was so dark that our torches didn’t seem to reach more than a few feet inside.”) plus their own, and a datestone in the middle signed with Robert Smirke’s name. Gerard began running down one, Alf followed him; Rachel went back to get help, Harold followed Alf. He stumbled, at some point; Gerard ran back out holding a book, and Silvana kept seeing small bones, and discovered Alf’s dead body in a small room at the end of the corridor. He had trouble getting back out (had trouble remembering) but eventually managed. The Police was there, retrieved Alf’s body. Harold’s team had to reconstruct the wall and swear they wouldn’t dig deeper (ha.); Harold gave this statement to tell someone the truth about his coworker’s death.
So that was the Harold Silvana case mentioned by Sasha back in MAG034! My heart had screamed “Tim! Tim!” as soon as the statement began to mention architecture, and even more when they discovered the tunnels (and then Robert Smirke was even mentioned!). I was so glad to have confirmation that Tim worked on this one <3 There was a sort of… tender amusement? in Jon’s voice when he rambled about Tim’s reactions (“You should have seen Tim’s face when I told him.”). It was almost half of the post-statement and totally gratuitous, that was so cute from Jon! However, there was something a bit weird about Sasha’s research around Harold Silvana’s statement:
(MAG024) ARCHIVIST […]: I thought you were trying to get hold of those police reports for the Harold Silvana case? SASHA: Tried and succeeded. They were actually quite helpful.
(MAG035) Over the last three months Sasha has attempted to contact Mr. Silvana, Rachel Turley, the management of the Reform Club and any of the police officers involved. All of them flatly deny any of this ever took place.
… what she had said back then and what Jon concluded here didn’t really match, so…? (Or is it again a matter of Jon… withholding information at the time of the recording: the fact that the police is trying to cover it up could be perceived as a valuable information, although a very concerning one ^^’) I really liked this statement-giver’s voice; the way he gave off the feeling of being pretty objective about his work and what he’s doing (having to use fancy nouns (craftsman, artisan) to qualify what he does but being aware that he’s mostly a “builder”) while being pretty confident at the same time (“So yes, my services are expensive, but me and my team are worth every penny. And the sort of people I deal with, or should I say the sort of people whose personal assistants I deal with, can afford it. / I don’t have a company, per se. People hire me for me, and I have a small team I trust to help out with the work itself.”) – he’s working with Rich People but he’s not one of them, really conscious of money issues here and there, including when it could be a disservice to him (“We were given to understand that the police were handling the matter, and if we pursued it closer then we would not be getting any further work from members of the club. As this covers almost everybody who can afford our services, we complied. It makes me feel sick, though, like we’re just abandoning Alf, dishonouring his memory. It’s not even like he had any family to miss him, it just feels wrong. I guess, maybe, that’s why I’m talking to you.”) I really like that yes, he had his interests in mind, of course! that’s human! but also shared this story in the hope of… something being done for his friend’s memory, because he didn’t like that they had to silence the truth about his death.
This one statement managed to intertwine many familiar names. Jurgen Leitner, Gerard Keay (I was wondering if it was him since his first description; then he confirmed his name! and Jon was assuming that yeah, it was indeed Gerard Keay and not any Gerard), Robert Smirke. Gerard Keay (who, again, seems to be mostly involved when Leitner’s books are around?) seemed to be trying to protect bystanders in previous statements – Lesere Saraki in December 2011 (MAG012) and Dominic Swain in winter 2012 (MAG004) – but it wasn’t really the case here ;; Events from this one took place at least ten years before the other two (statement was given in June 2002), so did something happen inbetween, which prompted a shift? He was also portrayed as very young in this one (called “kid” and he answered about his mother when asked a question: “When we asked him how he knew what was behind that wall he just shrugged, and told us that his mother knows all about this stuff.”) … I’m especially laughing really hard at how Harold described Jurgen Leitner back in 1987, because? Y’know? With the collection of Evil Books, I was a bit thinking about a stern, sinister person, but Harold described a… lunatic? throwing a tantrum when builders wanted to respect Legal Procedures when he asked them to dig a hole in his office (“When we told him we’d need to confirm it with the commercial landlord, he got very defensive, told us that it was fine and he’d need to discuss it with some other contractors first. When we told him we’d just need to have a quick phone call with the owner, he started screaming that we didn’t understand what we were talking about, that he didn’t need to explain himself to the likes of us, and there were some things… that were too important… too powerful to be owned. Then he just started yelling at us in Norwegian until we left.”)
Cute things aside, WHAT WAS THAT ENDING……………. Worms being here (it answered a question I had about whether or not the worms were getting inside the building or only around), and it sounded like Another Friday (Jon was already used to it?), and there was a ~special delivery~ from ~two mysterious characters~ for Jon, although Martin was the one there for the reception. (The script spoiled me about Who Was Speaking; I… objectively know that I should pay attention to any mentions of a pair of delivery men, I did until now, but somehow I think I wouldn’t have thought of them in that exact moment. Somehow.) Also woopsies, the sound of worms… faded when B&H’s steps began to be heard (we could still hear the sound when Jon left, so he didn’t squash them). Did the worms… flee… at their approach…
* MAG036: Nicole Baxter, a funeral director/mortician, about the strange incidents happening in Ivy Meadows Care Home during mid-August 2011-or-2012. She was working in Baxter and Gordon Funeral Directors (in Woodley) – William Gordon had passed away 5 years prior, George Baxter (Nicole’s uncle) is currently running it alone, Nicole and her cousin Josh (George’s son) have been hired to help. One day, Nicole Baxter received a call from a nurse, Alenka Kozel, about one of Ivy Meadows’ thirtyish residents (Bertrand Miller) who got ill and passed away (“I asked her for a few more details; she started to say something else, but the call was cut off almost abruptly.”) When Nicole and Josh went, the place seemed smellier and dirtier than usual; the new director, John Amherst, was unsettling (Josh declined shaking his hand) and took a while before accepting to lead them to Bertrand Miller’s body. On their way, they didn’t see anyone else (“I thought I spotted one of the nurses at one point, but they had turned and walked away as soon as they saw us.”). John Amherst instructed that Bertrand Miller should get cremated and the ashes returned to Ivy Meadows, for a “private remembrance service”; when Nicole&Josh saw the body, they were appalled but he told them that “the disease that had claimed poor Mr. Miller wasn’t contagious”. A bit of Nicole’s skin was accidentally exposed despite her gloves, during the handling, and she touched the corpse; it kept feeling itchy afterwards. George Baxter had trouble believing them but ended up taking care of the matter (“He had us tell it to him one more time, before he nodded, told us to stay away from the corpse of Bertrand Miller, and left, telling us he had to make a few calls. I have never seen a cremation done with such a quick turnaround […].”) and refused to send the ashes back to the residence. Two weeks later, Nicole received another call from Alenka Kozel, who just repeated “Come quickly. We’ve taken ill. We’ve passed away.” Nicole decided to go back to the place: it was silent and felt even dirtier and ill. She heard a tapping sound and went around to the other side of the building: what remained of Alenka Kozel was tapping against the window. Nicole tried to flee, got tackled by a strange old man who was accompanied by a young woman; the pair decided to let her go. They apparently burned the place down. Nicole’s hand is Still Not Fine at the time of the writing. Post-statement reveals that she lost her left hand “in what she calls ‘a workplace accident’”; that Ivy Meadows had been officially decommissioned in July and burned down on September 4th due to a gas leak; that Bertrand Miller had died on July 19th according to his death certificate – one week before Ivy Meadows was decommissioned. No trace of a John Amherst anywhere.
(Statement was given in November of the same year, though, and it’s stated as 2012, while Jon is mentioning the year 2011 in his post-statement… so it looks like Mr “I’m not re-recording them” made more mistakes! =D)
My computer is still dying and loves to lag at the worst times because it did it once again (“There was nobody behind it, and I rang the bell. I always wore gloves when on a removal, and was glad of that fact now, as I noticed a /// greasy residue on top of the small brass bell.”), giving me a bonus jumpscare. I had been warned that it was a ~disgusting~ statement, but no, it was a very sad one??? A story about… out-of-the-loop people, isolated by their situations, who had managed to make a good place for themselves despise the circumstances (“Something about the mutual loneliness seemed to lead them to create a real sense of community. It was the only place I ever went where the residents still gave me a smile. […] It was just a happy place, even if I was only there to do a sad duty.”)… and they ended up getting caught, imprisoned and consumed (?) by some evil thingy ;; Nicole Baxter had described Ivy Meadows as “removed enough from main road that it stood alone”, “almost entirely populated by those elderly who were entirely supported by the state”, “Old people without money or family, sent to be looked after by strangers”, and Jon added in the follow-up that the records were disastrous, making it hard to pinpoint who was still living there at the time, and that the staff was mostly undeclared immigrant (“the place employed a reasonable number of international staff they preferred to keep off the books”), so there was really this feeling that… something preyed on vulnerable people, who couldn’t fight back, and it was very, very sad. Jon himself didn’t exactly try to shoot this one down, he mostly highlighted the lack of physical proof in a way that was very neutral compared to his usual standards (he didn’t complain about people wasting his time or whatever), so it gave me the impression that he was a bit… gentler, towards these people who apparently suffered a great deal without anyone noticing, and who now can’t be remembered.
I liked Nicole’s tone! The first part of her statement was very aware and reflexive, she sounded very polite and neat overall? Not assuming that everyone would share her reasoning, so explaining her thought process in detail (“Fear is a strange thing, isn’t it? What you’re afraid of. […] There is one thing about dead bodies that does bother me, though. One thing that... eats at me, as it were, and does give me that sick tightness of fear deep in my gut. It is rot. […] That… the fear, the feeling. That tingling, squirming fear at the back of my mind […].”), before catching herself (“I’m rambling. Disregard this first page, I’ll start again.”), able to appreciate people and to throw in some dark humour here and there (“It feels odd to consider the fact that you will no longer exist some day, but you didn’t exist for billions of years before your birth, so, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to conclude that you will not exist afterwards in much the same way. I try to see life as a pleasant holiday from non-existence. It provides some comfort when the truth of my own mortality stares me in the face every day.”; “For a funeral director to say she has a favourite nursing home probably sounds a bit like the Grim Reaper talking about his favourite hospital, but it’s true.”). The self-awareness was still present at the time of her statement (“at that point we had no idea that there was anything wrong, but looking back it seems like we both felt there was something off about it. Or maybe we were just too hot for conversation and hindsight is colouring my memories.”) and there was a cautiousness about the way she dealt with her own memories that I found very pleasant. It sounds like George Baxter might have had an idea about what had happened, or at least had contacts who were able to provide some assistance/instructions about how to handle the body? Maybe we'll we hear about him again?
Nicole’s “I stood there, torn between wanting to flee and needing to know.” reminded me a bit of how Lesere Saraki had watched without doing anything (MAG012: Gerard Keay’s “Yes. For you, better beholding than the lightless flame.”) and, of course, Jon’s own declaration to Sasha (MAG026: “No. Whatever’s going on, I… need to know.”) Plus, there were two options later on (“I asked them what was going on, and the old man looked at his companion, as if asking permission, said something about knowledge being a good defence here. She shook her head and said that leaving quickly was a better one.”), so I really had the reflex to wonder about what Jon would have done instead, there. I’m not sure whether Alenka Kozel (the nurse) had tried to bait the statement-giver inside the residence, or was trying to get help – thinking at first that removing and disposing of the corpse would save them, in her first call, maybe? The first call had been cut short and John Amherst was apparently angry that someone had called for the morticians, so it sounded a bit as if… she had tried to do this in a last attempt (whether or not she was already contaminated herself), before getting caught and maybe prevented from interacting with Nicole when she went to retrieve the body. The second call sounded more like she had only vaguely kept  the reflex of How She Used To Human ;; (The residence was already illegal at this point, but I’m not sure if the staff knew about it when it happened… and then it was already too late for them, uh ;;) No idea about “Trevor”&the woman’s priority: granting the Ivy Meadows’ people an actual death to free them from their state? Trying to prevent the thing that had contaminated them from spreading further? Neutralizing John Amherst?
Small Jon Things: I found Jon’s tone especially funny when he reported the cross-checking (“We did contact the Baxters. Joshua Baxter repeated the first part of the above statement. George Baxter told us not to listen to tall tales. Nicole Baxter said she stands by her account […].”); I don’t know what is making me smile exactly in those repetitions, the… laconism, maybe? Also, when Tim interrupted him and asked if he could talk, Jon went from one voice to another (“Yes… Yes, I’m just about finished here, what is it?”): drowsy at first (although he had been more composed when acknowledging Tim’s entrance), then firmer, Usual Boss Jon Back At It. The contrast was nice <3 AND I’M SO GLAD TO HAVE HEARD TIM AGAIN!! Jon discovered that a lighter and a table had been delivered for him, is worried about the table, is going to ask more about it to Martin (“I need to talk to Martin. Uh, end recording.”: 1°) Yes, you always need to talk to Martin. Please, talk to Martin more. 2°) Jon probably moved a bit in his chair when he opened the drawer and/or talked with Tim, since there was a slight strain in his voice at the end, perfectly making you hear that he was extending his arm to reach the tape recorder and turn it off. Nice touch!)
… THERE WAS ONE THING SUPER STRANGE, and it is how. the. heckie. Jon managed to think about Trevor in the statement (“And the old man and his companion… who does that remind me of? If he wasn’t dead, I’d think it might have been Trevor—”). The only mention we had of him, afaik, was in MAG010 (Trevor’s own statement), so an internal POV, and Jon… thought about him despise the fact that it was an exterior description here? (And also despite the fact that Trevor apparently died the year prior.) And the only shared trait between Trevor in MAG010 and this mysterious man here is the accent from Manchester? So 1°) is it a matter of Jon once again withholding information, and knowing more about Trevor than what he said?, 2°) is it a matter of somethingsomething spooky happening, that allowed him to recognize someone because he’s read a first-person POV of the same person once?, 3°) … or did Jon forget to mention that he had seen pictures of Trevor? (MAG010: “So everyone around Manchester knows about Trevor the Tramp, sure. I hear someone even made me a page on the Internet and it got a few thousand likes. I don’t know exactly what that means but it sounds nice.” => Jon didn’t mention whether he checked that page, but should have been one of the first things to do.) Anyway, something was weird about that.
* MAG037: Jason North, about his discovery in the forest, near Loch Glass in Scotland. He found a clearing with trees that seemed deliberately arranged in a circle (they must have been planted at least fifty years ago), with a stone in the middle serving as a chair or an altar, with scorch marks on the ground. First weird thing happened when he entered the clearing: he got suffocatingly hot and his bottled water boiled his throat, making him collapse for a while. He noticed dead animals at the edge of the clearing, that looked like they were all badly sunburned – either they all were at the same time, either they were preserved in this state somehow. Iron nails were planted on the trees, suspending old milk bottles thanks to strings that “seemed far cleaner and newer than the bottles or their contents”. The content of the bottles varied (“some had pine needles and twigs, some were full of dirt, and one or two even held what appeared to be rainwater”) but all had, inside, the photograph of an old lady and a lock of hair (“grey, in poor condition”). While trying to take a picture, he accidentally dropped a bottle, which shattered on the ground; he knew he had done something very bad and fled, taking the picture with him. His car burned on the way home; his home (and his wife) burned during the week. He wants to save his son, Ethan. (Follow-up explains that, seven years later, the son is still alive; Jason immolated himself three days after giving his statement.)
Beginning of the episode had the discussion between Martin&Jon (about the deliveries for Jon) that was announced at the end of the previous episode… and it was more of an interrogation, really. I wanted to hear Martin again but not!! like!! this!! Jon, you’re going back to MAG022, ie not deserving Martin’s existence :[ How dare you pressure and be so cutting towards him!! How many times did Martin have to repeat himself before Jon launched the tape recorder ;; (And only because in the end, Jon wanted a trace of Martin’s version. Friendship ended with… well, nobody, but Tape Recorder Is Jon’s Best Friend Anyway, now.)
About the statement in itself: LOOK, I was already sad for the dude in MAG035 (the fact that the cause of his death was kept silent), I was sad that the isolated elderly and immigrant workers in MAG036, and now this??? I’m not spooked, just incredibly SAD????? I was the most heartbreaking one that I ever heard so far????? T________T 1°) It’s not the first one, but I have a Weakness for a character being well aware that they made a mistake, or at least did something that they shouldn’t have done… but Jason was also aware that he was also suffering from a very cruel and disproportionate retribution and aouch aouch aouch… (“I’m sorry. I know. There’s no-one to blame but my own stupid self. Blundering in where I had no right to go. […] For everything it’s done to me, I didn’t really do anything at all. Just messed around in the wrong clearing. […] I didn’t need to enter the clearing. But I did. […] The moment I crossed that threshold I knew I had made a mistake. […] I’ve always been too curious for my own stupid good. […] God knows I should have just left; it’s not like there weren’t plenty of warning signs. I just chose not to pay attention. […] and instantly I knew that I had meddled with something I should have left alone. […] I shouldn’t be in this mess. It’s absurd. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just dropped a bottle. That’s all! I don’t deserve this. I don’t.”)
2°) … he turned towards the Institute for help while… suspecting that they wouldn’t help. He is right, I guess? The Institute will never move a finger to help, that’s not its function, it’s here to… watch people burn (and other things, but “burn” fits, here)………..
3°) … and it wasn’t even help for himself only, it was for his son!!! And he just loves his son so much and you could hear it and T___T (“I just need to know if you can save my son. […] If I’m scared I’m going to lose Ethan like I lost everything else, then I’ll curl into a ball and never get up. I won’t be able to do anything to stop it. I won’t let my son burn, even if you cowards don’t have the guts to step up and do something. […] I didn’t mind being alone, though, because I knew I had my little boy Ethan waiting for me back at home. Four years old and already sharp as anything. And my wife Lucy. She used to be waiting for me as well. […] Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value. That I love. And I cannot lose him. I can’t lose Ethan.”). His job used to have to do with protecting animals (“Do you know what a pine marten is? It’s a wee bear. An adorable wee bear that needs to be protected.”), and the two were resonating strongly, and he had seen those scorched animals and he was fearing for his son and it’s just. The parallel was awful?! ;;
4°) I… found Jon overly emotional compared to his usual self, and it was subtle, mostly having to do with his way of delivering information: he began the follow-up with the mention that the little kid is still alive (“He didn’t, in the end. Lose Ethan, that is. Ethan North is currently a healthy eleven-year-old boy living with a loving foster family in Inverness.”) and… it gave me the impression that it was indeed the Most Important, that needed to be said – as if, in a way, it was to bring comfort to Jason, to convey that information to him posthumously? Jon didn’t need to put reassuring adjectives (“healthy”, “loving”) but he did, because he deemed that important. And gods ;; The rest of the follow-up, explaining that Jason North had apparently immolated himself just three days after giving the statement (“There’s no reason to believe that when Jason North doused himself in petrol on August the 10th 2009, then lit himself on fire, he was doing anything other than acting out the delusions of a paranoid alcoholic.”) was so… unconvincing, and Jon himself sounded unconvinced by what he was saying, that it made it clear that yes, the Institute did nothing; that yes, Jason North killed himself in the end to protect his son from whatever curse was pursuing him. So the follow-up was… giving me the impression that Jon was trying to communicate to Jason that yes, he did it, he had managed, he had succeeded in saving his son in the end (or at least, that it can be said and known that Jason did it). Jon’s voice was also less firm than usual, he was a bit softer and slower. Could be the tiredness, could also be because it was… simply a sad story. (Span of guilt, maybe, too, on the Institute’s behalf? The fact that Jason was desperate for help and didn’t receive any, just got told to write his story… without any compensation?, should sting a bit.) I had guessed that the picture was probably Gertrude’s ;; So what happened? Was it a ritual to try to kill her off, or something she did to neutralize some evil spooky powers from another cluster? Jon Couldn’t Anymore, at least (“I have no idea what this means. I have no idea what any of this means. I’m very tired.” with his voice drifting, he sounded like he was on the verge of dropping from his chair, eyes already closed and overall… very vulnerable.)
* MAG038: Andre Ramao, about an old vase and the disappearances of items around him. He is in the antiques business, used to have a shop, has been facing financial difficulties and ended up buying from Mikaele Salesa (who has a shady reputation legality-wise) in March 2012. Andre bought cavalry sabres from the Revolutionary War, a British artilleryman’s tunic from World War I, some more items. He got a crush on an old Chinese pot from the Jiajing period (“the blue glaze was painted on in crisp, thin geometric lines. They repeated perfectly and seemed to get smaller and more intricate the closer I looked, but the shapes they formed never lost any of the precision, seeming to continue on however closely I looked. The effect was disorientating, and made the vase seem smaller than it actually was. It made my head hurt a bit when I looked at it for too long. It was amazing.”), ended up buying it. However, later, when he received the invoice, the vase wasn’t listed: he contacted Salesa, who didn’t believe that he had ever owned the vase, asked for a few pictures, was suspicious (scared?) overall, and told Andre to keep it. Items then began to disappear around Andre: a pair of polished shoes, then a signed copy of Catch-22 that he held dear, etc. – including items bought from Mikaele Salesa, who, when called, answered that he had never sold these items to him (and they had indeed disappeared from the invoice). His husband David was beginning to get really worried, not remembering the items and thinking that Andre needed medical help. A month before giving his statement, Andre fell asleep in front of the vase (“I don’t remember my dream. Running, maybe?”), woke up seeing the missing items (and more) falling out from the vase; then, “the pale shapes of long, thin fingertips begin to creep above the lip of the pot” and he ran away. When he came back, David was gone, and so was the vase. According to Andre’s landlord, he has always lived alone. (The beginning of the post-statement reveals that, although the second name is blank, there is a marriage licence attesting that Andre was indeed married to someone.) Jon is cut short in his follow-up by the sight of an Unholy Creature (a spider on the wall), smashes it, makes shelves collapse, gets Sasha’s attention (and chuckles), causes a dent in the wall, discovers (many?) worms and screams at Sasha to run away.
I was thinking that this one might break the stream of Statements That Make Me Sad, and I was indeed pretty neutral at first despite the fact that it sounded right away like it wasn’t just a punctual spooky event but an ongoing thing, a bit like a curse (like last statement); from the get-go, the narrator sure didn’t sound like he was having a good time, but he was also able to crack a few jokes (“We haggled a bit, and eventually reached a price I considered only a little bit unreasonable.”, “[Mikaele Salesa] asked me if I’d had a chance to try out the sabres yet, which I’m pretty sure was a joke.”), so it couldn’t be that bad? And then, there was His Problem, the escalation from innocuous items to the book that was precious to him, and the mention that he was married to a man, the fear of being gaslighted/going crazy (“My perceptions are the only ones I can trust. Maybe. I don’t know.”, “For a while I thought he was actually trying to gaslight me, make me think I was losing my mind”), and now it wasn’t a book but the love of his life who disappeared, and there is no trace of him left, no proof that they were married… (“David was gone. I allowed myself some brief hope that maybe he’d just left me, maybe he’d escaped with just a divorce. But no. One call to the housing association confirmed that, as far as they were concerned, I’d always lived alone.”). LISTEN, that was… incredibly upsetting to think about, for a queer couple?! To think that his husband disappeared and that nobody would remember that they were married, to think that the person he loved was just erased like this…? (I mean, yeah, it wouldn’t have been funny for a straight couple either! But for a queer couple… there is the added heartbreak of people who maybe had to fight a bit to get to their current life, who were probably used to have people around them denying who they were, that they had a bond, that they were a couple – and here, one of them got erased out of existence…) (And it’s Tim who found the marriage certificate!!! Must have been super sad for Tim…) I wouldn’t have remembered the “Salesa” name from MAG014 if Jon hadn’t mentioned ~ case #0112905~! Also dealt with antiques, was also shady, except not alone back then. Andre mentioned some books (“several crates packed to the brim with heavy-looking volumes”) ssssso maybe he’s also hoarding some Leitners? Jon was pretty neutral for a follow-up, and he insisted pretty clearly that Andre Ramao had been married, so ;; Good. But given that his speech was interrupted by the spider, we don’t know if Andre Ramao is still alive or if they managed to contact him again.
… I’m still putting my hands on my face over the fact that 1°) after MAG016 and the “ghost spider”, Jon still thinks it’s a good idea to smash spiders (you’re so getting haunted, dude, and it will be karma for upsetting Martin), 2°) THAT HE DID IT IN WHAT IS BASICALLY MARTIN’S CURRENT HOUSE, 3°) that he dared to complain about Martin’s recriminations (“Oh, god. I don’t think I could stand another lecture on their importance to the ecosystem.”). I myself really don’t like spiders but LISTEN! If there is a kind soul that would be ready to get the spider out, you take this opportunity and you send them to their dea- to their duty. THAT ENDING… I was expecting the season finale to probably span two episodes, didn’t expect for things to go south already at the end of this one x’) The wall is not an exterior wall but a fake wall with… things crawling inside or behind. Welp. At least, we’re beginning to know how worms were getting in.
* MAG039: Worms Apocalypse. Tape Recorder 1 (the same as from MAG038): Jon trying to retrieve the tape recorder in the middle of the worm infestation; Martin arriving, beginning to use the fire extinguishers; the three of them running… and Jon losing the tape recorder. Tape Recorder 2 (Martin’s): Sasha, Jon and Martin in the sealed room. Jon gets at least one worm (painfully) removed thanks to Martin’s corkscrew, has trouble standing up. Jon explains that he doesn’t want to die as a “mystery”, hence the obsessive recording (“Whoever takes over from me is going to know exactly what happened.”) and makes a distinction between “real” statements and everything else – he pays more attention to the statements that don’t record digitally. Outside of the room, it looks like the worms have receded a bit; Tim comes back from his lunch; Jane Prentiss is approaching; they try to warn him but he can’t hear them; Sasha decides to barge in (out) to save Tim. Tape Recorder 1: Tim “Joe Spooky” finds the tape recorder lying on the floor and shamelessly pokes fun at Jon; Sasha jumps on him and they struggle a bit. Sasha grabs the tape recorder. Tape Recorder 2: Martin and Jon, now alone in the sealed room, hypothesise about Tim’s survival chances – they’re low, but Martin had a secret stash of fire extinguishers hidden in the office. Jon doesn’t think it was necessary to hide them, since the worms can’t have a consciousness. Martin gets mad at him about the scepticism (they’re supernatural!), Jon defends himself and confesses that he does believe the ~real~ statements but was afraid to state it, since he always felt watched during the recordings. Meanwhile, Prentiss is vomiting into some boxes. Jon wants to know why Martin is still working here; Martin admits that he has thought about quitting but didn’t in the end. Jon misinterprets his wording as Martin being a ghost. Tape Recorder 1: Sasha found Elias, after having activated the fire alarm (urging people to evacuate). ELIAS REVEALS THAT JONATHAN “I don’t allow ignition sources in my archive!” SIMS USED TO BE A SMOKER. Elias explains that until now, he had been a bit dismissive of their fears of the worm-things. The carbon dioxide system used to regulate fire hasn't turned on, however, since there isn’t any real fire; they go to activate it manually. Tape Recorder 1: Something is banging on the wall of Jon&Martin’s room. Turns out to be Tim, alive (yay!) and high on CO2 (YAY!): he found the fire extinguisher, and also secret tunnels, and also is totally out of it. They decide to try to go through the tunnels, since there are less worms there. Tape Recorder 2: Sasha is in the Artefact Storage, having gotten separated from Elias by a “wave of worms”. She explains that she used to work there, at first, and that she hates the place. She notices the Fucking Table that was delivered a few episodes ago, then sees something and addresses the thing. She screams. Something repeats some of her last words (“Hello? I see you.”) Tape Recorder 1: Tim and Jon are in the tunnels; they lost Martin (or Martin left them behind), and the tunnels don’t sound like a great idea anymore due to the worms’ aggressive behaviour. Tim is going to open a trapdoor, hoping it doesn’t lead them back to the Archives. Tim opens it: apparently, it does – there is Jane Prentiss. Indication that the situation is catastrophic: Jon says “Shit.”
I’m a stupid silly brat, but I really had to pause, 2’30 in, to just… shake it off and laugh (I was in tears). Jon having the worst priority and risking everything for the tape recorder because OF COURSE? (Jon, no.) Jon shouting orders for Martin to do things but being at a loss about where to go or how to take initiative? (Not holding yourself to your own standards, uh? =D) Martin’s frantic “I don’t see her! I don’t see her! I don’t see her!” while spraying CO2 everywhere. (He… probably had his eyes closed at this moment, wasn’t he.) The “[RUNNING, PURSUED BY WORMS]” which was just… Beautiful. The fact that we jumped to the worm extraction, and yes, that moment was chilling (Jon… screaming. Gg. Gg. Aesthetic.), but also immediately followed by Sasha commenting about how disclaimer: Contrary To Some People, I Have Not Been A Softie!!, because Priorities, with Jon coming back from Painland just to bite back about how He Obviously Got It Worse So It Can’t Be Compared because PRIORITIES. And the reveal that they have used a corkscrew, that Martin had been hoarding a corkscrew, and Sasha’s immediate reaction being to ask if he was basically partying in the Archives (picture Jon’s horrified&murderous face here, probably). Martin explaining his reasoning, followed by the biggest pause ever perfectly conveying the Stares and the Judging, before Martin tried to defend himself (“Look, you guys got to go home every day, okay.”) At this point, I was losing it from laughter. Yes, the situation is dire! Yes, bad stuff happening! But rfidjnrfdcuhjn they were all adorkable at the same time. Silly idiots. Just. Those three’s priorities. (Sasha: to explain that she takes pain better than Jon / Jon: to explain that no, it’s because Sasha was bad at removing his worm / Martin: justifying why he had been clinging for dear life to a corkscrew for the past months.) And silly urban posh idiots – who somehow never… ever… considered… a tick remover… for worms… (or even tweezers!!!). The three of you have never set one toe in the countryside ever, have you. (I’m really, really losing it over how nobody thought about using a tick remover.)
I think I gushed extensively over many things from this episode already, so I’m going to stick to the basic facts: I had seen fanarts of smoking!Jon, I had assumed it was for the Aesthetic of it (which. Indeed. Noice.), but I was… not prepared… to learn it this way (=> because Elias made a quick comment about it, and the way he delivered that information). That said, FUCK YOU ELIAS RE: WHAT HAPPENED TO SASHA (I’m even more upset given how Sasha… quickly mentioned that she was aware that Elias was a bit too suspiciously shady, being too good at changing the subject when it’s apparently touchy, and ahahaha, she’s the first one to die, right after… discussing and rushing with Elias. How convenient.) It was really action-packed and all the dialogues were great, damniiit! The way tension and laughs were mixed together, with the delivery of information, and how… yes, finally, we got to get a glimpse of Jon himself during the crisis!! Aaaaand the fact that Sasha died… raised the stakes, I guess: because this one thing means Changes and means that no, definite and bad things can also happen… even when we think that the worst is behind. (I have heard of some of the Many Awful Things to come. But this was the first incidence of something terrible and definitive happening: Martin had made it out alive in MAG022, so did Sasha in MAG026, Jon’s worm was removed at the beginning of this episode, and so far, they had managed to avoid them… But Sasha didn’t escape the table.) (And then, the worms got Tim and Jon. But it’s pretty ironic that, in the end, Jane Prentiss, who was set up as the season’s antagonist… didn’t manage to kill any of them, while The Table did.)
* MAG040: Worms apocalypse – The Follow Ups. Jon got out of quarantine and is on painkillers, and refuses to go home until he has the staff’s individual statements about their whereabouts during the invasion. Elias is not happy about Jon’s stubbornness, confirms that Jane Prentiss is dead and burned (he watched.), but ultimately relents. - Elias was in his office when the fire alarm was activated. He began to evacuate, was joined by Sasha, who explained that she was the one responsible for the fire alarm and that the others were currently trapped in the Archives, attacked by worms. They went to activate the fire suppression system manually, got separated by a tidal wave of worms. Elias took another road, activated the system alone after a while, called the fire department, an ambulance and a contact at the ECDC that had worked on a Jane Prentiss case before, and went down to the Archives. Sasha was already there, with Jon’s and Tim’s bodies – in bad shape. Jon and Tim were taken away, Jane Prentiss was being prepared for disposal, when Martin came back through the trapdoor, saying that he had found a body. Jon asks Elias about Gertrude Robinson’s death, and Elias begrudgingly answers: on 15th March 2015, he had come down to the Archives, discovered lots of blood on her desk; the police confirmed it was hers and that a human body couldn’t have survived such an injury. The police took over the case, and Elias appointed Jon as the new archivist. - Tim is out of quarantine and dead inside: his joke about “itching” led to more tests, hence the fact that he came out after Jon. Tim recalls how, after lunch, when he came back to the archives, he discovered the tape recorder on the ground: Jane Prentiss appeared, Sasha tackled him, they struggled a bit and he told her to go get help. He ran to take shelter into the office but discovered more worms and the hole in the wall. He found the CO2 canisters, used them a lot, went into the tunnels – and has some trouble remembering details from then on, because of respiratory acidosis. He avoided the few (fast) worms he met, wandered a bit until he heard Martin’s and Jon’s voices and demolished some plasterboard and that’s when they got reunited. Tim is not sure, but he also thinks that he recalls a room in which worms were forming a sort of ring, or a doorway. He killed them with CO2. - “Sasha” quickly explains that she saved Tim, fled, activated the alarm, went to Elias, got separated from him, retreated in the Artefact Storage room. She heard Prentiss’s scream when the fire system got activated, and saw that the worms died. She went back to the Archives, discovered Tim’s and Jon’s bodies, still alive but barely, dragged them to a place with more air and began to remove the worms. Elias joined her with the people he had contacted; Sasha explained what had happened and waited with Elias. One or two hours afterwards, they heard shouts, and Martin came back from the trapdoor, saying that he had found Gertrude’s body. Elias called the police at this moment. Jon asked about the whereabouts of the tape she had on her: Sasha says that it probably got ejected one of the times the tape recorder fell. - Martin is tired, got interrogated by the police. He feels guilty that he left Jon and Tim back in the tunnels, insists that it was an accident, is not fine about it; Jon calms him down. Martin describes how he got lost in the tunnels, until he found Gertrude’s body, sat on a chair with boxes of tapes around. He ran away and managed to find the trapdoor, in the end. He doesn’t think that he will be able to find the place again. Jon pressures him to know how Gertrude died: Martin finally confesses that he saw three bullet wounds in her chest. - Gertrude was shot and it terrifies Jon. He thinks that she had managed to learn a secret behind the statements, and that that's why she was murdered. He notes that some of his tapes are now missing, and that he won’t trust anyone around him – but that he’s going to uncover the mysteries.
I screamed a lot about this one in the character sections, so I’ll try to be quick (ha). I… loved it… so much… the way Jon behaved differently with everyone… the way the information was distilled (slowly making us understand that Martin had found a body, that it was Gertrude’s body, the fact that we finally heard the whole story from Martin’s mouth at the end)… I’m weeping at Jon towards the end, because obviously, NOOOOOOO DON’T D: (It’s very close to the feeling of excitement you can get when a character usually announces that he will go on an adventure, or go after a mystery… but here, it’s not coming with joy. It’s Jon going deeper into something that is likely to hurt him, and he doesn’t sound like he’s doing with a happy vibe, but with fear and dread. And he’s going alone. And Aouch.)
* Season 1’s Q&A
… It’s making me feel very very weird to call People Behind The Show by their first names like they’re old friends when I’m a newcomer and I’ve been listening for uuuuuuuuuuh 8 weeks but apparently that what the fanbase does s o…
- Laughed hard about Jonny explaining that they got asked a lot whether his/Jon’s accent was fake (“I go a little bit dryer, a little bit more…” “Academic.” “Academic, yes, for Jonathan, but it is my real voice.”: that was very charitable from you two, you could have said “more stuck-up and haughty” for Jon because the difference was jarring =D and he’s giving academia a bad name.), but
Alex: Funnily, no one asked if all the other characters’ voices are real. Jonny: No, apparently they, they sound– Alex: Human. Jonny: –they sound genuine […].
- … I didn’t know that Jonny had planned from the start that the series would be 5 seasons-long bUT I LOVE IT!!!
Jonny: Then I crafted the ending… as in, the ending of season 5. I hate series that don’t have an end goal. […] And since then, aspects of the end have shifted slightly with the writing – because they always do – but I still know where it’s going.
- … and I love how, in the same breath, it’s also very down-to-earth.
Jonny: A couple of the episodes which are… dream-like in tone because they were written to be dream-like, others are a bit dream-like in tone because it was very late at night when they were written.
- Preparation for an episode:
Jonny: Obviously, I've been fasting for a few days to purify the blood. […] To be honest, largely it involves just reading down a few paragraphs in the Archivist’s voice, to get my head in the right space for actually reading it.
- Alex’s Sufferings laid in the multicast recording episodes because directing challenges! =D
Jonny: [They were] easily the most complicated. Alex: Ooooh yeah. Jonny: Because we were doing an actual audio drama rather than an audiodrama-esque anthology series.
- Question about “Are there any Magnus Bloopers? Has Jonathan Sims ever laughed, ever?”
Jonny: No. No. Alex: *undignified laughter* Jonny: No, I laugh a lot. Alex: *BURSTS OUT LAUGHING* Jonny: I laugh uproariously. Some might say that I laugh too much. Alex: Not many. Jonny: No, no, I've never actually heard it, but I assume they say it.
(From the production side, though, Alex said they won’t release the bloopers any time soon “because they’re a bit of a mood-killer” :( So we’re getting killings and our happy mood getting repeatedly hurt, but still no bloopers.)
Jonny: Also, I’m very sweary in real life.
LET JON SAY “FUCK”!!! (Though yeah, Jon’s “Shit.” was… earned.) … But it’s also having to do with itunes’ ratings, ooooh.
Jonny: No rude words. I could say ‘BOMBS’ maybe… Alex: *laughs* Jonny: … but I won’t.
(I KNOW ABOUT TIM :[[[[[[)
- … Alex, what did you DO to pasta. (About the SFX for the Hive)
Alex: I won’t tell people how we make the worms sound, but it just involves A LOT of pasta. LOTS AND LOTS of pasta. Jonny: Deeeeliiiicious screaming pasta.
- Status towards fanbase is LOVE, main emotion is “gratifying” and oooh, reminds me a bit of Ryuukishi07’s stance: Jonny said he was lurking (~keep an eye on~, said twice.) to check some people’s specific opinions, because they tended to pick up on things (and if they didn’t, it meant that Jonny should insist on them). … And also, about the mistakes that had been spotted (I’m guessing this is what prompted the beginning of MAG033 with Tim? =D), “It’s actually fair.” (and Jonny compared to getting someone pointing out your mistakes during a final exam), because it is a ~Mystery~ so you’re supposed to get the tools to understand things! … so yeah, all the comparisons between TMA and Umineko (insert here discussions/debates from the canon about Mystery/Fantasy/Anti-Mystery/Anti-Fantasy/Without Love It Cannot Be Seen) still totally stand /o/
- We’re keeping the “regular” formula /o/
Jonny: Generally, as the series goes on, there will be more of that [like end of season 1/more live-actions things]; at its core, it will still remain one episode = one statement = one story.
- Biggest challenge in season 2?
Jonny: Balancing horror and mystery.
(Because there is The Power of the Unknown at the beginning of series, so it’s easier, so the biggest challenge would be to balance the “unknown and story while at the same time providing enough answers to the mystery”; giving answers but not everything; and we’re getting promised that some things will stay hidden. YEP UMINEKO ALL OVER AGAIN YAAAAAASSSSS!!!)
- Alex commented about “Jonny’s sultry tones” so is there a competition going on with Ben (and others) about who’s getting the Sultriest voice.
Alex: And weee look forward to seeing you again for season 2! Jonny: See you then :)
I’M NOT SMILING AT THAT LAST ONE :[
Actualization on current main threads:
- Jon & Injuries I DID GATHER that Jon has been collecting injuries by the end of season 3, so I’m keeping track of them. * MAG039: bitten by at least one worm towards the beginning (“Did you get it?”), maybe more, and it was on his leg:
(MAG039) ARCHIVIST: I can’t really stand up yet. […] MARTIN: Can, can you walk, Jon? ARCHIVIST: No, I can limp.
* MAG040: at the end of the previous episode, encountered Jane Prentiss, and it went… badly, so currently covered in holes/scars. And so is Tim.
- Oh So Many Red Flags for Gertrude * MAG037: during the summer of 2009, Jason North discovered a clearing with scorch marks, with trees in a circle. Bottles were suspended, each containing a picture of Gertrude (“An old woman, probably in her fifties or sixties, wearing reading glasses and grey hair curled into a tight bun. She stared out disapprovingly from every bottle.”). Jon dates the picture as “circa 2002 as best I can tell.” * MAG039, Jon: “I still don’t know what happened to Gertrude. Officially she’s still missing, but Elias is no help and the police were pretty clear that the wait to call her dead is just a formality.” (… Revealing that it wasn’t a clear death, contrary to what we had been told until then. In MAG011, Jon had reported that Elias “simply said she had passed away and not to worry about it overmuch. Actually, now I think about it, his exact phrase was that she ‘died in the line of duty’, which I had assumed meant having a stroke at her desk or something similar”.) * MAG040: according to Elias, on the 15th of March 2015, she disappeared and a lot of blood was discovered at her desk – the Police did confirm that it was hers, and Elias appointed Jon as her successor. At the end of MAG039’s events, Martin discovered her body when he was lost in the tunnels:
(MAG040) MARTIN: […] When I finally found a door, I thought it might actually get out, but instead… It was a small room. Square. There was dust on everything. Cardboard boxes were piled around. They were full of old cassette tapes. […] She was sat in a wooden chair in the middle of the room. No worms. No cobwebs. Just… an old corpse. Gertrude Robinson. She was slumped forward, but I could see her mouth hanging open.
She was shot three times in the chest. Jon believes that someone from the Institute murdered her, because she had put her finger on something hidden under the statements.
- FEAAAARRRRS … It sounded superfluous to pay attention to this since “it’s a podcast about fear and about gods/Entities related to fears” was something I knew even before beginning to listen, but at this point, Jon is beginning to understand that the way people experience fear(s) is relevant, so! I want to keep track of the steps, now (/but I’m also too lazy to go back) (for now): * MAG032, Jane Prentiss’s statement: “You must understand, it sings so sweetly, and I need it, but I am afraid. […] The song is loud and beautiful and I am so very afraid.” * MAG033, Carlita Sloane’s statement: “[Sean Kelly] didn’t talk any more than the others, but he also didn’t go around with that blank look on his face. He looked scared.” * MAG035, Harold Silvana’s statement: “[Alfred Bartlett] was dead. I couldn’t see any injuries on him. He didn’t even seem hurt. But looking at how still he lay there, the terrified, awful expression frozen on his face, there was no chance he was alive.” * MAG036, Nicole Baxter’s statement: “Fear is a strange thing, isn’t it? What you’re afraid of. For most people, a corpse is at the least unnerving and, for some, outright terrifying. Or maybe it’s disgust. They are two very different feelings, aren’t they? Though they often bleed into each other, if you’ll pardon the pun.” MAG036, Jon: “Still, there’s a lot here that puts me in mind of other statements. Something in the way Ms. Baxter talks about fear. I can’t help but be reminded of statement 0142302, how Jane Prentiss talks about her own fears.” * MAG037, Jason North’s statement: “I’ve been drinking. […] Only way to keep the fear from settling in. If I’m scared I’m going to lose Ethan like I lost everything else, then I’ll curl into a ball and never get up.”
- Fractals Geometrical patterns YES ALRIGHT, that’s a lot of mysterious items/obsessions with geometric patterns here and there, so *squints* * MAG003: Amy Patel described The Table (currently at the Institute, forwarded to Jon) as “an “ornate wooden thing, with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre. The pattern was hypnotic and shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion. I found my eyes following the lines towards the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole.” Tim confirmed the “Fascinating design on it.” (MAG036) * MAG008: Ivo Lensik’s father suffered from schizophrenia (or did he.), went recluse to dedicate his life to his ~work~: “fractals. He became obsessed with them, seemed to spend all of his time drawing them, staring at them, measuring the patterns they created. He would talk to me for hours about the maths behind them and tell me that he was on the verge of a great truth. He was going to shake mathematics to its foundations once he figured out this truth, hidden in those cascading fractal patterns.” He was found “in a pool of blood, with deep gouges along his wrists and arms. […] The inquest ruled his death a suicide, although the coroner wasn’t able to identify the tool that had made the cuts on his arms or why he had such a look of fear on his face.” * MAG038: Andre Rameo’s vase was described with “blue glaze was painted on in crisp, thin geometric lines. They repeated perfectly and seemed to get smaller and more intricate the closer I looked, but the shapes they formed never lost any of the precision, seeming to continue on however closely I looked. The effect was disorientating, and made the vase seem smaller than it actually was. It made my head hurt a bit when I looked at it for too long. It was amazing.” … And Ivo Lensik’s father had told him that “someone was following him, told me that they were planning to stop his work. I asked him who it was but he shook his head violently and said I’d know him when I saw him because ‘all the bones are in his hands’.” (MAG008), which is… the way Not!Sasha described Michael (MAG040: “Yes, Michael… With the bones in his hands. We still don’t know much about him, do we?”), unlike Sasha, who had noticed the big hands but not described them in these words. So. The death of Ivo Lensik’s father sounds quite likely to be related to Michael, and it seems that Not!Sasha had heard about him/it? (… Sasha tended to say “it”.)
- Worms * They tend to go inside the building by MAG034:
(MAG034) ARCHIVIST: Well… quite. Now, if you’d be so good as to— DR. ELLIOTT: You know you have an infestation, don’t you? ARCHIVIST: Excuse me? I’m not sure— DR. ELLIOTT: Yes, little, grey, maggot things. I saw a few on the way in. Don’t recognise the species, but I’d say you need to get the exterminators in here. Gas the little blighters. ARCHIVIST: You saw them? You weren’t bitten were you? DR. ELLIOTT: Bitten? They’re worms. Still, I’ll admit I didn’t like the look of them. I reckon the sooner you get someone in to kill them dead, the better. ARCHIVIST: We’ve tried, believe me.
* … Sometimes popping up in the Archives as of MAG035, given that at least one appear(s) near Jon and that he already sounded a bit used to the procedure to exterminate them (“Martin, where did you put the rest of the extinguishers? Martin!”). * There. A lot of them, hidden by plasterboard-that-wasn’t-an-exterior-wall at the end of MAG038. * The main characters of MAG039, apparently synched with Jane Prentiss or something since they all died when she/it did. Had the time to scar Tim and Jon, probably forever.
- Spiderrrrrs * MAG008: in late 2006, Ivo Lensik discovered the box that apparently goes inside The Table: it contained a green apple that immediately rotted and split, freeing hundreds of spiders; Ivo then “smashed it with a crowbar and threw the remains into a skip”. * MAG016: ghost spiders haunting Carlos Vittery, who died shortly after giving his statement (his “body was completely encased in web”). The spiders may have been attracted by the worms, since Jane Prentiss was hiding in the building’s basement? According to Carlos, “they provided a good meal for the eight-legged little monsters.” * MAG022: Martin is knowledgeable about spiders, won’t allow Jon to slander them (“I knew there was something not right about the whole thing from the off. I said it probably wasn't natural, him dying and being encased in web when he was found, and I stand by that”) and also Loves Them – “I like spiders. Big ones, at least. Y’know, y’know the ones you can see some fur on; I actually think they’re sort of cute—” (Jon… doesn’t.) * MAG032: Jane Prentiss reported spiders in her home, before discovering the nest – “There were webs in the corners, around the entryway into the attic. I would watch them scurry and disappear in between the wooden boards. ‘Where are you going, little spiders?’ I would think. ‘What are you seeing in the dark? Is it food? Prey? Predators?’” * MAG035: Breekon and Hope (?) deliver an old zippo with a spider web design on the front for Jon, who discovers it in MAG036. * MAG038: a spider on the wall, that Jon smashed with glee despite all common sense, led to the discovery that the worms were infesting the passages around the Archives.
- Teeth * MAG005: The bin men discovered a bag containing “hundreds, thousands of teeth” at 93 Lancaster Road. According to police reports, they were “all in different stages of decay and didn’t match any available dental records, but all two thousand seven hundred and eighty of them were the exact same tooth.” * MAG034: Students form anatomy class left an apple with “healthy adult teeth, and most of them appeared to come from different people” inside of it for Dr. Lionel Elliott.
- The Table (aaaand the box.) According to Amy Patel, “an “ornate wooden thing, with a snaking pattern of lines weaving their way around towards the centre. The pattern was hypnotic and shifted as I watched it, like an optical illusion. I found my eyes following the lines towards the middle of the table, where there was nothing but a small square hole.” (MAG003) * MAG003: used to belong to Graham Folger, who had bought it years ago in a second-hand shop (“It had been in pretty bad shape but he’d spent a long time and a lot of money restoring it, though he’d never been able to figure out what was supposed to go in the centre. He assumed it was a separate piece and couldn’t track it down.”) Graham was ~replaced~ by a Not Graham on April 7th, 2006. * MAG008: on November 23rd 2006, Ivo Lensik discovered “a small wooden box, about six inches square, with an intricate pattern carved along the outside. Engraved lines covered it, warping and weaving together, making it hard to look away” under the bleeding tree from the House on Hill Top Road. The box contained a green apple that immediately rotted and split, liberating hundred of spiders; Ivo then “smashed it with a crowbar and threw the remains into a skip” (Agnes Montague’s body was found on the same day: she had hanged herself, was 26-except-she-shouldn’t-have-been, and had a severed right hand with her.) * MAG035: the table was brought in by Breekon and Hope delivery, along with a zippo, for Jon. (<- unclear what they delivered exactly, since they only mentioned a “Package for Jonathan Sims” to Martin at this point) * MAG036: according to Tim, Martin “took delivery of a couple of items last week addressed to you.” Jon had forgotten, until now, that Martin has put it in his desk drawer: he discovers the lighter/old zippo with a spider web design on the front; the table, meanwhile, “was sent straight to the Artefact Storage”. * MAG037: Martin actually didn’t see the table and thinks Rosie must have signed for its reception, since her desk is on the way to Artefact Storage. According to Jon, Rosie described “Two men, doesn’t know how they got in, too intimidated to ask”, so it’s not actually quite clear if she signed for the reception? Martin thinks they should destroy it, Elias advised in that direction, but Jon decides that nah. (“I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.”) * MAG039: during the Prentiss attack of the Institute, Sasha took shelter in the Artefact Storage, arrived in front of the table (“I’ve found… I’ve found that table you were talking about. Don’t really see what all the fuss is about. Just a… basic… optical illusion. Nothing special…”) and felt someone; was replaced by Not Sasha, without the others being aware of it.
- The Lighter/old zippo with a spider web design on the front. * MAG035: the zippo, along with The Table, was delivered by Breekon and Hope delivery for Jon. (<- unclear what they delivered exactly, since they only mentioned a “Package for Jonathan Sims” to Martin at this point) * MAG036: when Tim mentions the items that Martin received for Jon the previous week, Jon remembers the package that Martin had put in his desk draw: he discovers the lighter (and vehemently denies being a smoker).
(MAG036) TIM: Okay. Is there anything unusual about it? ARCHIVIST: Not really. Just a sort of spider web design on the front. Doesn’t mean anything to me. You? TIM: Ah no. No. ARCHIVIST: Well… show it to the others, see what they think.
(So the others saw it, which explains why Sasha was able to tell Elias that Jon had a lighter in MAG039.)
- Breekon and Hope delivery I’m almost tempted to wonder if they’re not actually working for the Institute, since the red calliope was taken by them before January 2005 and it had been stored in the Institute’s Artefact Storage since “somewhere in 2007”, but I’m also feeling that this could be a hilariously wrong assessment. * MAG035: On-tape, post-statement, while Jon was away and Martin had come down, they delivered the ornate wooden table that used to belong to Graham Folger (MAG003). * MAG037: According to Martin, remembering the delivery, they looked aggressively normal: “There were two delivery men. They were big, and they spoke with cockney accents that might have been fake, and they delivered a package for you. I don’t remember anything else about what they looked like. […] They looked normal. Like you’d expect. They looked like two, huge, cockney delivery men.” According to Rosie, reported by Jon: “Two men, doesn’t know how they got in, too intimidated to ask, looked ‘exactly like you’d expect’.”
- Mikaele Salesa * MAG014: Lee Rentoul had mentioned that Noriega, his target, was supposed to meet with Salesa: “a big Samoan guy with close-cropped hair”, “dealt mainly in stolen art and curious, valuable stuff, and was paranoid as hell, which meant Noriega was going to be there alone”. Salesa came with “four men in dark suits, who carried a square wooden crate between them” and they left with it (apparently, the business transaction didn’t work out). … was it the coffin from MAG002, maybe? * MAG038: according to Andre Ramao, he “has a good reputation for quality, but a… bad reputation for legality”. Andre Ramao bought a spooky antique vase from his “showroom” (a warehouse); Mikaele Salesa was the only person to have ever laughed about his joke (“I’ve been in the antiques business for a long time. It’s not what it used to be. […] There’s a follow up to that one, you know. Something along the lines of the joke being so old only an antiques dealer would be able to sell it.”) When Andre contacted him because Salesa hadn’t put the vase on his invoice, Salesa didn’t remember ever owning it, asked for pictures, and declared: “I do not remember having that thing, which means it belongs to you.” Andre mentioned that there were big books in Salesa’s warehouse (“I recall I felt a moment of relief that I didn’t deal in books, as I caught sight of several crates packed to the brim with heavy-looking volumes.”), so maybe some more Leitners? * MAG038: Jon, in his follow-up, identifies him a bit more; “he appears to have something of a knack for locating objects displaying more… disconcerting phenomena. I believe some of the more bizarre things in the Artefact Storage area were purchased from him.” (Is he perhaps tied to the Institute?)
- Trevor Herbert and a woman * MAG010: on July 10th 2010, Trevor gave his statement about the death of his brother and his activities as a vampire hunter, succumbed to lung cancer in the Institute’s break room before he could keep going. * MAG036: a “faded white Transit van” was parked in front of Ivy Meadows. There was an “old man” with a “long, white beard matted and filthy”, a “thick Mancunian accent”, a skin that was “unblemished pink” who temporally immobilized the statement giver (Nicole Baxter); he was accompanied by a “young woman, tall and lean with close-cropped hair and a deep scar over her right eye” who advised to let her go. They burned down Ivy Meadows (and what was left of their residents…?). No further description, but Nicole felt like she had already seen the man (“I could swear I recognised him from somewhere”) and Jon couldn’t help but think about Trevor for some reason (spooky? Hiding information from us again? Went to consult Trevor’s Internet page mentioned in MAG010?).
- John Amherst * MAG036: he was the new Director of Ivy Meadows, succeeding Hannah Ramirez (“tall man”, “rail thin”, “wore a faded brown suit that seemed to have been cut for a much fatter man. His eyes were a watery blue and his dark hair stood on top of his head in an unruly mess. He must have been around forty, but had a nervous sort of energy to him”, had a “thick, sweaty hand”). According to Jon, he doesn’t exist (or not under this name?): they’ve been “unable to locate anyone fitting that description anywhere within the care or medical sector, and he certainly never ran any nursing homes.” Unclear if he died in the fire or is at large ;;
- Mary and Gerard Keay * MAG035: before June 4th 2002 (the date of the statement), Gerard Key (“looked to be in his late teens”, “dressed all in black, with heavy looking boots and a T-shirt with the logo of some band emblazoned on it, Megadon or Mastodon, or something like that. His hair was long and greasy, almost down to his shoulders, and looked to be dyed almost the same black as his clothes.”) was searching for “Leitner’s pages”, destroyed a fake wall and went into hidden corridors apparently constructed by Robert Smirke. He retrieved a book and fled. Due to the amount of bones, I suppose it’s the Leitner book that Mary Keay had in her possession in Winter 2012 (MAG004)?
- Jurgen Leitner (and his books) * MAG035: Harold Silvana and Rachel met him in London back in 1987. He was then, “a businessman from Norway”, described with “portly, middle-aged, short blond hair in the middle of going grey, well-tailored business suit”, and had his office in the building next to the Reform Club (100 Pall Mall). He wanted them to dig a hole (“He said he needed a hole put through the floor. I thought there would have been a basement under there, and he said no, the building’s basement didn’t go under these rooms.”) Jon confirmed that he had “hired out an office on the ground floor of 100 Pall Mall between 1985 and 1994. He was apparently one of the premier worldwide dealers in rare and antique books at the time, with items selling for the sort of sums where an office in Pall Mall doesn’t raise any eyebrows.” (MAG035) * MAG035: Harold Silvana could smell something like “Damp old stone and musty paper, just a faint whiff” (which was apparently the smell of “Leitner’s pages” according to Gerard Keay?). Gerard Keay retrieved a book that left bones behind in the corridors elaborated by Robert Smirke, so probably the book Mary Keay had in her possession in MAG004. Jon wonders if the books in the tunnels were “where they were found, or just where they were stored.”
- Robert Smirke Tim is a fan! * MAG035: mentioned by Harold Silvana as the architect behind the British Museum and Carlton Club (which got destroyed during the Second War, and where the 100 Pall Mall currently stands instead: “it looked like the underground foundations, or whatever this place was, had not been damaged”). Apparently, he constructed a system of galleries underground, one entrance being on 100 Pall Mall: Harold&company reached a crossroads with fourteen doorways (including theirs): “There was one that, for all the world, it felt like I was going to fall into it. Another was so dark that our torches didn’t seem to reach more than a few feet inside.” In the middle, a datestone had a mention: “Robert Smirke, 1835. Balance and fear”. Harold’s coworker was found dead in “a small, round room. Against the walls were old bookshelves, decayed and empty, save for a few mouldering pages” and Gerard Keay had apparently retrieved a book from here (leaving bones behind). Harold Silvana had trouble getting out, took some wrong doors in the crossroads, only remembers “the vaguest memories: flashes of a pile of paper, completely covered in cobweb; a figure stood in the darkness, a stranger I didn’t know but was sure meant me harm; my skin burning, hot, choking on smoke down there in the dark.” (I’m supposing there was one doorway for each entity…? … was it including one for the Institute then.) According to Jon, “Smirke’s buildings have higher percentages of reported paranormal sightings than any other architect of similar profile.” * MAG040: Tim thinks that the tunnels under the Institute might be related to some of Smirke’s buildings (MAG040, Martin: “It’s a, it’s a maze down there, Jon. I don’t know how far the passages go, maybe miles. I think it must be the old Millbank Prison, like Tim was saying before. I even found some stairs at one point, but I really didn’t want to go down them.”)
Live statements so far:
* MAG013: Naomi Herne * MAG022: Martin Blackwood [archive team] * MAG026: Sasha James [archive team] * MAG028: Melanie King * MAG034: Dr. Lionel Elliott * MAG040: Elias Bouchard, Tim Stoker, “Sasha James”, Martin Blackwood [debriefing post-Prentiss attack] 
Time, what is time
Additional note: Sasha went after police reports for the Harold Silvana case back in MAG024 (March 2016), and Jon recorded this one in MAG035 (July 2016) – so at least 4 months passed between some research and the recording. I’m assuming that they’re all working on multiple cases at the same time, but still, that makes quite a long time before the beginning of their investigations and the moment they archive/“close” cases! * MAG013: 13/01/2016 * MAG022: 12/03/2016 [Martin begins to live in the Archives] * MAG023: one week later (Martin: “It’s been a week and we’ve seen nothing.”) * MAG026: 02/04/2016 (recounting events from March 31st and April 1st) * MAG028: 17/04/2016 * MAG031: Mid-May 2016? (“It’s… been two months now… since Martin returned…”) * MAG034: 12/07/2016. * MAG039: [28th or 29th July 2016] * MAG040: 29/07/2016.
Quotes that I keep in mind, feeling that I’ll cry over them soon:
(MAG037, Jason North’s statement): God knows I should have just left; it’s not like there weren’t plenty of warning signs. I just chose not to pay attention.
(Jon ;;…….)
(MAG037) MARTIN: […] Look, Jon, I do think we should destroy the table, though. I mean, if it’s the one from Amy Patel’s statement. Just in case. ARCHIVIST: Elias told me the same thing. Luckily he phrased it as advice rather than an instruction, so for now I’m more inclined to keep studying it. We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge.
(… Already crying over the fact that Jon wanted to “keep studying” the table, hence keeping it intact, hence Sasha’s death, but also, that “We’re not in the business of destroying knowledge”…)
(MAG040) ARCHIVIST: No. I need to be here, keep watch, I need to be sure…
There was obviously some terrible “hahaha.” feeling, as a listener, when Jon went on about how he was feeling ~watched~ when he recorded, and how he was afraid that the thing watching him perhaps could learn/know about what he was truly thinking. It’s. Exactly what we listeners are doing. We’re the voyeurs. And we’ve made him feel Uncomfortable since the beginning. GREAT.
(Yeah, this post got insanely long, I’m hooked, I’m in pain, I hate everything, and I’m consuming the series like precious sweets. Or have been so far; I want to have caught up by the end of the hiatus but it looks like an impossible task if I keep trying to review it, and I Don’t Know How To Deal With Concision :| So I’ll ~see~. I’m laughing at myself for having thought that hey, Cass! if you take notes and everything, you won’t need to relisten to this! Thanks past!self, nearpast!self already relistened to everything a few times anyway, and present!self is planning to relisten to this series a lot anyway, YOU THOUGHT you wouldn’t like the series enough to do it and you were Wrong. So anyway. IT’S AN AMAZING SERIES, I LOVE IT SO MUCH??? And I know there's a lot of even better stuff to come???)
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 8/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting
Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter Summary: Following their misadventure at Hill Top Road, Jon finally takes some time off; Martin remembers something disturbing about the archives’ collection of books.
Chapter 8 of my post-canon fix-it is up! Read at AO3 above or here below.
Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.
***
“Jon, take the pills.”
Jon, wrapped in a blanket and staring out over the railing of the flat’s small balcony, stayed silent.
“Fine, I’ll just wait.” Martin set the vitamin bottles and the glass of water on the sturdiest-looking part of the railing, and shifted the second chair enough so he could sit down.
“You’re going to get cold,” Jon said.
“Yeah, probably.” Martin was dressed in a light jumper with only a t-shirt beneath it. It had been warm enough earlier in the day—the weather was getting nicer—but as the sun started to go down it was cooling off.
“Your choice.” Jon picked up his lighter from the small table between them and lit another cigarette, and they sat together as the sun continued its journey below the horizon. It really was beautiful, Martin thought. He hadn’t taken the opportunity to observe any part of nature in a long time. It hadn’t ever been much of a priority to him, but there was something nice about taking in the colors that spilled across the sky—deep yellows and oranges that gave way to pinks and purples, and eventually a dark glowing blue that was only barely distinguishable from black.
Martin wrapped his arms around himself.
“At least get a coat,” Jon said.
“At least take those pills.”
“God, you’re stubborn.” Jon readjusted in his seat to pull his legs up under the blanket a little more.
“Pot and kettle, Jon.”
“Why should I take them? You heard the doctors, there isn’t anything actually wrong with me. They’re just grasping at straws.”
After an hour or so on the porch at Hill Top Road, Martin had calmed enough to make the decision to go to A&E. Although Jon had protested, the fact was that he had been too weak to do anything about it, and Martin only felt a little bad taking advantage of that. As he’d said then, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t insisted on doing it before; he’d become so used to not being able to get help, that he hadn’t really considered it until then. He wasn’t going to mess around anymore, though, especially now that he realized he might not always be able to help on his own.
After hearing about Jon’s recent fatigue and his fainting episode, the healthcare staff had run a lot of tests. They’d hooked him up to monitors, measured things, done blood draws. Martin had to admit Jon’s description of their conclusions wasn’t far off—they didn’t find anything explicitly wrong with him. There was no diagnosis they felt comfortable giving, although they had pointed out a few possibilities that they should monitor. And they’d recommended the vitamins, of course.
“They did say you have nutritional deficiency—”
“—minor nutritional deficiency—”
“—and your vitamin D levels were actually quite low.” Martin shivered involuntarily in the cool night air.
“God damn it, Martin.” Jon fidgeted with the lighter on the table, but didn’t actually reach for another cigarette. “Will you take the blanket, anyway?”
“Will you take those pills?”
“They won’t help with anything,” Jon protested. “We both know that. This is ridiculous.”
“Speak for yourself,” Martin countered. “I’m not assuming anything about what will help. Beyond that, given how you’ve been eating, they can’t hurt. And finally, yes, I am being ridiculous, and I don’t care.”
“I didn’t say you were being ridiculous.”
“No, I said it. I’ll own it. I am being ridiculous, because I don’t want to lose you, and I’m scared. I don’t want to lose you now any more than I did when we were walking through an apocalypse together, or when you were being kidnapped by actual monsters every week, or when you were taking unannounced holidays in coffins or whatever.” Martin shivered again. “Look, it’s just not that hard to take them, Jon.”
“Well, when you put it that way, I’m behaving like an ass,” Jon sighed.
“Now I didn’t say that,” Martin replied. “I’m not trying to ignore what you’re feeling Jon, and I know there’s not a quick fix for any of it. It’s just that it’s—it’s such a small thing, and if it helps, at least it’s something.”
Jon grumbled.
“And not to bring this up again, but—I mean, it might help if you would just talk to me?”
Jon shook his head. “I can’t. When I try to put it into words, I—it never comes out right. I sound like a—well, a monster.” Jon seemed to shrink back into the blanket even more. “Or maybe I am one, and I can’t face you knowing it.”
“Jon…” Martin hesitated, but decided to finish the thought. “I’ll be honest with you. I’ve asked myself if—if you are.”
Jon turned to him. “And?”
“And I don’t think so,” Martin said simply.
“Why not?”
“To be completely clear, it’s not the most rational reason. I just don’t think I could love you like this if you were. You’re just not bad. You’ve only ever wanted to do the right thing. You’ve only ever wanted to protect people, to protect me, even if—” Martin cleared his throat. “Even if we haven’t always agreed on what that looks like.”
“I see,” Jon said softly, turning to look over the railing again.
“So, if you don’t want to talk, that’s fine.” Martin leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, blowing warm air into his hands. “But in that case, it’s vitamins and freezing myself.”
“May I ask a favor first?” Jon said, eyeing the glass of water warily.
“Depends on the favor.”
“Will you make me some tea?”
“Of course.” Martin was relieved; that was one thing he imagined he’d always be happy to do. “But you’ll take those pills if I do?”
“Yes,” Jon said. “You’ve made your case.”
He reached down to kiss Jon’s head before he walked back into the kitchen, and noted with comfort that Jon leaned into him as he did.
***
That was Sunday evening. Since they’d returned from A&E, Jon had spent most of the time before that afternoon sleeping. He’d been restless, and Martin had slept on the couch for a few nights to try to let Jon get as much sleep as he could. Of course, he had woken anxiously every few hours needing to check on Jon, so he was more than ready to go to bed after their discussion on the balcony. He ended up turning in before Jon, so he was a little surprised to find him already awake and sitting back against his pillows when he opened his eyes on Monday.
“Hey,” Martin said, moving closer to rest his face against Jon’s hip, throwing an arm over his legs.
“Hey.”
“Did I keep you up?” Martin asked.
“No.”
“What time did you get in bed?”
“I don’t know exactly. Not that long after you. I’m just not that tired. Maybe I finally slept enough.”
“That makes one of us.” One night of sleep hadn’t done Martin as much good as he had hoped.
“I’m sorry.” With his eyes still closed, Martin felt Jon’s hand come to rest on his head, gently rubbing his scalp just above his ear.
“I’m going to have to cut my hair soon.”
“I like it,” Jon said, gently tugging at a few strands. “I mean, I like it shorter, too. I guess I just like your hair.”
“Flatterer.” Martin yawned, then pressed his face into Jon even harder for a moment before rolling back to his side of the bed. “Just so long as you know it’s not getting you out of those pills. Do you want to shower first?”
“Actually, I was thinking I might not go in today.”
“Really?” Martin sat up to look at Jon. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.” He picked at an invisible spot on the quilt. “It’s more that I’d just—I’d like some time to think. If you’re ok with it.”
“Yes, of course I’m ok with it. I’ve been trying to get you to take it easy ever since we got here. We can—” He stopped when he saw the look on Jon’s face and realized what he was actually asking. “Oh, you meant—just you. Yeah, no, of course that’s fine. That’s great.”
“Are you sure? I mean—if you want to stay too—”
“No,” Martin interrupted. “No, it’s really fine. It’s not a problem. I mean, I know I’ve been really irritating with the—”
“That’s not it,” Jon said reassuringly. “It’s really not. I’m—I’m glad you’ve been here for me. It’s just my mind’s been so cluttered, and it finally—I feel like I can gather my thoughts.”
Martin nodded. “I get it. I do.” He did, mostly. “Would it be ok if I called to check on you?”
Jon smiled. “I’m sure I’d worry if you didn’t.”
So Martin went in by himself. He told Tim and Sasha the truth, mostly; Jon had blacked out after therapy, of course, not in an abandoned house in Oxford where there existed a possible gap between dimensions and realities, but the part about going to A&E and Jon staying home to recover was straightforward enough.
“Glad something slowed him down,” Tim said, and Sasha gave him a look. “Well, something was bound to happen, and at least Martin was there. It could have been worse. He was pushing himself too hard.”
“You’re not wrong,” Martin agreed, and Sasha patted him soothingly on the shoulder.
He went in by himself the next day, too. Jon seemed to be doing well enough. They didn’t talk much; Martin was tired and Jon seemed lost in his thoughts. Martin wasn’t sure what Jon was doing most of the day, though it didn’t seem to be much of anything. He was eating—well, drinking the nutrition shakes Martin had picked up for him—and Martin suspected he was sleeping a little, based on how the bed looked when he came home. Jon managed to eat solid food at supper again that second night, and reached protectively for his half-empty plate when Martin assumed he was done.
“Sorry,” Martin said with his hands up in apology, leaning back into the couch. “Does that mean—maybe you’re feeling better?”
“I think so. Starting to.” Jon stretched out his feet to rest them on the bottom ledge of the coffee table. For an instant, Martin already missed the feeling of Jon falling asleep against him—but this was better, he knew. He pushed the mournfulness away.
He went in by himself again on Wednesday. A little after noon, Sasha joined him and Tim in the assistants’ office.
“Want to come to lunch?”
Martin assumed she was asking Tim, but when he didn’t hear an answer, he glanced up to find both of them looking at him.
“Oh—me?” Martin asked.
“Yes,” Tim replied, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. “Might be nice to take up some old habits again.”
Martin didn’t have to think for too long to figure out what Tim was referring to; memories from this world came easy now. Not long after his mother had died, they’d started going out for lunch together once a week. It had almost certainly been for his benefit, but no one had ever admitted that to him; instead, they’d all acted like it was a spontaneous idea that for some reason had never occurred to any of them before. Martin had been so grateful for the company that he’d simply accepted it without thinking about it too hard.
“We’ll miss Jon, of course,” Sasha added, “but he can come with us next week.”
“Oh, whatever,” Tim said, elbowing Martin good-naturedly as they left the office together. “This just makes up for those times Jon couldn’t wait and stole Martin out from under us.”
Martin remembered that, too; there had been a few times when, despite their best intentions, he’d been overwhelmed by the thought of lunch with the whole group. Jon had somehow understood and anticipated those days, and had come up with some reason he had to go early, asking Martin if he’d wanted to join. They hadn’t said much when it had been just the two of them, nothing important, but that had sort of been the point, hadn’t it? It was a nice memory, anyway, and Martin was glad he had it now. He wondered if Jon had remembered it yet.
***
Lunch was pleasant enough, if a little bit awkward. Martin hadn’t spent much time with Sasha, at least not compared to how much time he’d spent with Tim, and he could tell she was being careful with him. She was polite, keeping the conversation easy, deliberately avoiding topics that held anything other than surface interest. After he finished eating, he decided to ask her some things he’d been wondering about, and hoped she’d chalk up anything strange about it to him being a little thrown off from last week.
“Sasha,” he asked, setting his fork down, “do you—like being the head archivist?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, leaning toward him slightly over their table.
“Do you like it? Is it a good job? Is it—is it how you thought it would be?”
Sasha crossed her arms in thought. “Well, I’m not really sure how to answer that. I mean, the Magnus Institute has its issues, I suppose. It’s an academic joke, of course, but it’s not like the respect of my peers was ever that important to me.” She laughed at herself. “And some of our benefactors are… well, a bit full of themselves? But I suppose that’s true anywhere. I am quite happy with the job security, and it pays well enough for what it is. Plus I’m actually using my degree, which is more than I can say for most of my classmates.”
“Have you ever—wanted to leave?”
Sasha frowned slightly. “No—no, not really. Why?”
“No reason,” Martin said as casually as he could. He couldn’t exactly say just wondering if you’re trapped here. “Just been doing some thinking, I guess.”
“Well,” Sasha said, “I’ll admit the job’s felt a little bit different lately. Hard to say exactly how… I guess I’ve been struggling a bit with—well, I’m still not sure how to handle the—incidents, I suppose? It doesn’t make any sense, but it feels like I’m responsible for the people who come here to talk to us. Like I should be keeping track of their stories, somehow. I just don’t know what to do with them. Honestly, I’ve just started asking them to write everything down. I feel bad, but I just can’t listen to some of them. I’ll have nightmares.”
“Oh. They’re still coming in, then?”
“Sometimes. Not every day, but enough.”
“I—I didn’t know. Does Jon know?”
“He’s been there for a few, yes.”
Martin took a few sips of water. Jon hadn’t mentioned that specifically, but it probably wasn’t anything.
“What about—what about Elias? He doesn’t seem too fond of the Institute. Why does he stay?”
“You’ll have to ask Tim,” Sasha said, poking at what was left of her salad with her fork again. “They’re best friends.”
Tim laughed. “We are not best friends. However, I do think you should spend a little more time with him outside of work. You’re missing out.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on.” Tim poked her arm playfully with the tines of his fork, and she batted him away. “He and Allan are a trip.”
“Exactly,” she replied.
“What I meant was, they’re funny. Especially Elias.” He turned to Martin. “Now the key to understanding him is to recognize that he has money—and also that he hates money, even though he has no idea how to function without it. And people with money, he especially hates. But at some point, I suppose, his father wore him down, and he has now accepted his position in life with as little grace and composure as he can.”
Martin thought back to what little he knew about Elias Bouchard, the actual Elias Bouchard, from his own world. “That… makes sense, actually.”
“And it makes him a pain in the ass when I need something,” Sasha added. “But on the positive side—he does leave me alone to do my job, for the most part.”
Martin remembered Allan’s name too; Martin remembered he had died after finding an old book. “So Allan is—his roommate?”
Tim raised his eyebrows. “That, Martin, is none of our business.”
“What?” Martin was genuinely confused before he realized what Tim was getting at.  “Oh—oh god, no, I didn’t—”
“However,” Tim interrupted him, “if you find out let me know, because I believe Sasha will owe me 10 quid on that day.”
“Doubtful,” Sasha said, grinning over the phone she was now scrolling through. “Very doubtful.”
Martin could feel his face turning red, so he was grateful for the distraction when Sasha leaned forward with her phone.
“Speaking of working at the Magnus Institute—look at this,” she said, attempting to angle the phone so both Martin and Tim could see at once. “I cannot get over how much she’s enjoying her retirement. I never thought she’d leave, but then it was like she was just up and done one day, and she never looked back.”
It took Martin a moment to understand what she was showing them, but it was a picture of Gertrude Robinson—a Facebook picture. He might not have known it was her, if it wasn’t for the name posted above it. The biggest difference was that in every picture he’d ever seen of her, she’d been wearing her hair in the same tightly-pulled grey bun; here, she was wearing her hair down, and it flowed softly past her shoulders. The next most obvious difference was he didn’t think he’d ever seen her smiling in a picture before, and she looked quite happy in this one, drink in hand, next to an equally-cheerful looking older man who had been holding up the phone to snap the photo. The caption read catching up with an old friend.
Sasha pointed at Martin to emphasize his surprised reaction. “See, that’s what I’m saying. I guess you just never know.”
“Who—who’s in the picture with her?” Martin asked.
“Oh right, I forget you never met him in person. That’s Jurgen Leitner.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think she was that fond of him, really. Must be another retirement thing.”
Jurgen Leitner—what was his connection to the Institute here? It’s not like he would have been living in the tunnels, there was just no—
The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. The Leitner Room. In this world, the Magnus Institute was home to every book Jurgen Leitner had ever collected. He had collected them, of course, only his library had never been destroyed because there was nothing to make that happen. When he’d decided to downsize in his later life—when he didn’t feel quite the same sense of pride in them—the archives had been the perfect home for his books. Of course, up until now, it meant nothing except a new collection and a nice endowment for the Institute.
What did it mean now?
“Are you ok?” Sasha asked. “You look—”
“You look like you just got run over,” Tim finished.
“Sorry.” Martin pulled his hand away from his mouth; he hadn’t even realized he had put it there. “I just—I just remembered something. It’s, um…”
“Do you need to get back?” Sasha asked after a moment of silence.
“Yeah,” Martin answered, apologizing with his voice. “Yeah, if you don’t mind. You can stay, if you want—”
“No, I’m done.” Tim took one more drink to empty his glass. “Sasha?”
She shrugged. “I’m ready.”
“Thanks,” Martin said. “I—there’s something I need to take care of for Jon.”
***
After they got back, Martin tried to look busy at his desk, hoping they’d think that he was taking care of whatever it was online. He took the opportunity to review the records in the system, and was comforted to note that nothing in the Leitner group currently had any special notations connected to it. All of the books were, at least in principle, on the shelves, and no one had requested access to any of them. He’d been hoping that was why his attention hadn’t been drawn to any of them previously, and it seemed like he’d lucked out. It was an obscure collection, and there were a lot of restrictions on them at Jurgen Leitner’s request; not just anyone could come in and browse them, and only a very specific set of research purposes qualified for special permission to remove them from the library.
He relaxed a little, and then waited for an opportunity to leave the office without attracting attention. He had to wait a while, but eventually Rosie came in with something for Sasha to review. A moment later Sasha called Tim in to her office, and Martin took the opportunity to leave. He just didn’t see a reason to risk drawing anyone else’s attention to the Leitners, especially since it seemed they were all but forgotten as they were.
He walked out past Rosie’s desk and back into the stacks; the room really was quite out of the way, buried deep in a corner of the shelving units. It wasn’t a large room, and if you weren’t looking for it, it would have been easy to miss. Even the sign above the door, emblazoned with the word Leitner, was barely distinguishable from the metal door frame behind it. The room was kept locked, but as an archival assistant Martin had a copy of the key. He held his breath and turned it.
Walking into the room was anticlimactic; it didn’t feel like much. There was no threatening aura; there was no sense of danger. It felt like nothing more than a small room full of musty old books, like many other small rooms of musty old books Martin had been in before.
He took a quick look at some of the titles on the shelves. At first glance, he didn’t see any he had heard of before, but of course he hadn’t heard of most Leitners. He continued to look, straining his eyes at words written on faded spines, occasionally pulling one gingerly off the shelves to check the front cover; he just needed something to prove to himself he wasn’t overreacting. Finally he found one he knew: a thick, black paperback labeled The Boneturner’s Tale. Martin felt a shiver run down his back as he involuntarily jerked his hand away from it.
He closed the door to the room, locking it behind him, and pulled out his phone. Thankfully, he had service, and he immediately dialed Jon’s number.
“I ate,” Jon said when he picked up.
“No,” Martin said. “Well, yes, I’m glad, but—”
“Martin, are you—what’s going on?”
“I—I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m…” Getting Jon to remember for himself was going to be much easier than explaining it.
“Are you ok?”
“Yes, I—well, all right. At lunch, Sasha showed us a picture of Gertrude Robinson. On Facebook.”
“Oh,” Jon sounded puzzled. “I knew she had retired, but I hadn’t thought to—”
“Well, that’s not it. She was with someone in the picture.”
“Who?”
Martin took a deep breath. “Jurgen Leitner.”
There was a prolonged silence before Jon spoke again. “Oh. God.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re there, aren’t you? Right now.”
“Yes. I’m—I’m not sure what I should do.”
“First, don’t touch anything.”
Martin didn’t respond.
“Ok—don’t touch anything else, then.”
“All right,” Martin said.
“Damn it. I should be there. I should be there with you.”
“No—no, it’s fine. I just—what should I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can I—ok, can I destroy them?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like—” Martin swallowed. “Ok, I’m sure this isn’t the best idea, but—what if a fire were to start in here? Or—something?”
“Do not,” Jon commanded. “Martin Blackwood, I have never been more serious in my life, do not do anything of the sort.”
“Ok, ok,” Martin said. “I said it probably wasn’t a great idea—"
“Some of those books would—let’s just say burning them would not have the desired effect. Or wetting them down, or chopping them up, or—”
“All right, all right. I get it. I mean—that’s not surprising, I guess. So what do I do?”
“Did you check the system? Are any checked out, or reserved, or—?”
“No,” Martin answered. “I mean, yes, I checked the system, and they’re all—they’re all here, in theory. No one’s asked for any of them.”
“Ok.” Martin heard the relief he’d felt earlier echoed in Jon’s voice. “That—that’s good.”
They sat in silence for a moment, before Jon spoke again.
“You’re—you’re not going to like this, but—I think you should go. For now.”
“And just leave them all here?”
“Yes. Believe me, I’m just as frustrated as you, but I don’t think there’s another option just yet. They’re relatively protected there, and hopefully they’ll continue to not draw attention.” He paused, and then added softly, “Right now, I just want you out of there.”
Martin sighed. “Right. Ok. Um… I guess… I can at least set up an alert so I get notified if anyone puts in a request?”
“That’s a good idea. And I’ll—I’ll keep thinking. Are you leaving yet?”
“Right after we get off the phone. Just in case. I don’t want to attract attention if someone else is down here.”
“All right. Message me when you’re back at your desk.”
“Sure.” Martin hung up, disappointed there wasn’t more to be done, but Jon was almost certainly right—it would be much too easy to do damage instead of prevent it, if he acted rashly.
Before he left though, he had one more thing he wanted to do.
***
That night, when Martin got home, he found Jon on the small balcony in back again; that was what he’d been hoping for. He grabbed the small metal trash bin out of the toilet in the hallway and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.
��Martin,” Jon said, stamping out a cigarette in the ash tray on the small table as he stood up. “You startled me. You’re a bit early—we can go in.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to—I should have said something. Actually, I wanted to catch you out here. I brought you something.” He set the bin he’d brought out with him on the balcony, between the two of them.
“It’s a trash bin,” Jon observed.
“Well, that’s only part of it.” He picked up the lighter Jon had left on the table and handed it to him.
“If this is commentary on my smoking habit, I think the ash tray is big enough. Besides, I don’t plan to keep—”
“No—no, that’s not it. I don’t care about the smoking. Well, I don’t love it, but that’s really not it.” Martin sighed. “Look, I know you said not to touch anything in the Leitner Room, but—well, here.”
From behind his back, he brought out a small, square book; he could see Jon didn’t need to read the title to recognize it in the dim evening light.
“Martin,” he whispered. “I—”
“Don’t say anything. Don’t think, don’t open it. Just—take it. Burn it. This one should be fine. I can do it if you don’t want to.”
Jon reached a hand toward the book, running his fingers hesitantly over the scribbled black spider webs illustrating the otherwise plain white cover. He spoke as if he were in a dream. “Yes. I imagine this one would be ok.”
“Light it,” Martin encouraged him, reaching for the hand that held the lighter to pull it closer. “Now.”
It seemed too easy; he was afraid it wouldn’t catch, or that Jon would change his mind, or any number of other things would go wrong—but nothing did. The cardboard cover caught beautifully, the yellow-orange flame spreading elegantly out from the corner in less than a minute, swallowing the book front and back.
“Now let go,” Martin said, as the flame began to spread, and Jon nodded. They dropped it together into the trash bin, and Martin watched as the title words A Guest for Mr. Spider were consumed, slowly, letter by letter. They watched together, transfixed, until the fire burned itself out and all that was left was a smoking pile of ash.
“You shouldn’t have done that for me,” Jon said quietly. “Going through the shelves—taking it out—it could have been dangerous.”
“Yeah, well, you said the web was probably still weak, and—” Martin reached for Jon’s arm. “Anyway, it’s done now.”
“Thank you,” Jon stepped carefully around the trash bin, and then his arms were around Martin’s waist and his face was in his chest. “Thank you.”
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 7/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting
Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter summary:  Frustrated by his physical condition and his lack of connection to the Eye, Jon asks Martin to visit Hill Top Road with him.
***
Chapter 7 of post-canon fix-it is up!
Read on AO3 at link above or here below.
Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters here.
***
Over the next few days, Jon continued to struggle. He remained insistent on going into the Institute every day, but even with Martin’s encouragement he had trouble finishing entire meals.
“It’s all right,” Martin told him more than once. “I know you’re trying. Just keep trying.”
Jon would nod. If they were at work, he would catch Martin’s hand between his, just below the edge of his desk, and Martin would quietly tell him about his morning. At home, he would lie back on the couch with his head in Martin’s lap. Martin would come up with something to talk about, unrelated to the entities or the archives or anything that had happened to them. He started saving up topics that occurred to him just so he could have them on hand: a movie he remembered, a funny reddit post, a weird bug he found in the stacks. It wasn’t like Jon really cared; he watched Martin talk more than he listened, anyway. He seemed contented, and that was what mattered. Sometimes he was able to eat more afterward, if he didn’t fall asleep.
***
“Are there still more interviews to be done?” Jon asked Martin one morning, late that week, as they were walking to the office.
“I don’t know,” Martin answered. “I imagine there are. I don’t think Tim’s followed up with any since the ones we did. And I think Sasha’s been around the office the whole time.”
Jon nodded.
“Wait.” Martin reached out a hand to stop him; they faced each other on the pavement. “You're not considering doing them, are you?”
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I need to do something different.” Jon took Martin by the elbow and urged him to keep walking. Martin sighed, but did as he wanted.
“Is it—” Martin measured his tone very carefully and started over. “Is it because what you’re doing isn’t working?”
The Eye, you mean?” Jon looked up at Martin. “No, that’s not why.”
“But also, it isn’t working. Right? You would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
“Nothing’s changed,” Jon confirmed. “But that really isn’t it. I’ve… I’ve run out of information. I’m just going further and further back, through anything describing events and people involved in all of it, and it’s pointless. There was nothing here before we came. Nothing real.”
“Yeah?” Martin asked, recalling that he had done most of the talking between them that week. “I assume you’ve looked into—well, let’s start with Jonah Magnus. What was his deal?”
Jon shrugged. “Him, Robert Smirke, Mordechai Lukas—I’ve looked into all of them. They all existed, they were obsessed with the same ideas and concepts, perhaps because of the pull from our dimension… but there was nothing on the other side of those ideas. Not here.”
“I see.” Martin nodded. “And you think the interviews will give you more?”
“Maybe. It’s the only evidence we’ve had of real connections with individuals. You met Oliver Banks. Tim’s discussions with his police contacts—it was Callum Brodie, by the way. They won’t officially release his name, but it was easy enough to find on social media.”
“So that’s what you want to do, then—look for avatars?”
“Yes,” Jon answered. “They pose the greatest threat, and I think they require the most—advancement in their patrons.”
Martin considered. “You’ll let me go with you?”
“I won’t even pretend I could manage alone right now,” Jon said. “I could go with Tim, I suppose, but he wouldn’t go if you said no. That means it’s your decision.”
“Jon.” They were coming upon the Institute now, and Martin stopped him one more time. “Can I ask—if you just let go of all this—what would happen?”
“What do you mean? Happen how?”
“To you. What would happen to you? Would you get better? Would you get worse? I know you don’t know, but—what does it feel like?”
Jon considered. “You’re right, I don’t know. But… it also doesn’t matter. I can’t just let go. I need to do what I can to fix it, whatever that might be. Don’t ask me to let it go. Please.”
“All right.” Martin had already assumed the answer would be something like that. “Then we do the interviews.”
“Thank you,” Jon said quietly, as Martin put his arm around him before walking into the building.
***
Martin asked Sasha if they could do the interviews. She seemed surprised, but was agreeable enough, probably because Martin was the one doing the asking—it provided an implicit indication that Jon was feeling well enough to go, and Martin felt a bit like he had lied to her just by asking. Tim was a little more skeptical when Martin asked him for the contact forms. He ignored Martin and addressed Jon directly across the office.
“You know, Martin and I could still go.”
“No,” Jon said. “It’s too—it’s better if I’m there.”
“You sure?” Tim tried again. “Look, I don’t really know what the issue is, but if you’re worried about Martin, don’t be. Frankly, he’s doing much better than you are, and we’ve—”
“That’s not it. I just want to be there myself.”
Now Tim looked back at Martin and raised an eyebrow, and Martin shrugged.
“All right then,” Tim said, and reached for a drawer on his desk. “There’s a couple that will bring you down toward Crawley, if I remember, and a couple more that are spread out up north.”
“Can I look at them?” Jon said. “I’d like to see what they’re regarding.”
“Knock yourself out,” Tim said, handing them to Martin.
There were no names they recognized, and Jon didn’t think any of them looked particularly promising, but Martin was able to get ahold of two of them and set up appointments for that afternoon. The discussions were frustrating for everyone involved. For one thing, Jon hadn’t quite come to terms with the fact that things went very differently when people weren’t compelled to tell their stories, and Martin had to keep reminding him to be patient. For the same reason, it was hard to tell what was what; one of the stories might have been legitimately Corruption-related, but it could have also been a very bad case of health code violations combined with an active imagination.
“How did you know before if they were real or not?” Martin asked, as they were headed back on the train. “Like, in the beginning?”
Jon leaned back in the seat next to him with his eyes closed. “Well, when they were written down, there was the fact that I couldn’t record them except on the—on the tapes.”
“Right.” Martin frowned. “Obviously we’re not doing that again, but maybe we could try recording on our phones or something and seeing if it works?”
Jon gave a slight nod of his head. “Maybe. We don’t know if it will be the same, though. We don’t really know why that was. Maybe it was all Web, from the beginning.”
“True.” Martin turned it over some more. “Well, when you were talking to people directly how did you know?”
“I just did,” Jon sighed. “I didn’t think of it as anything more than a feeling until later.”
“And you couldn’t tell today?”
“No. Not even a hint.” Martin was relieved to hear it, although he opted not to share that with Jon.
They rode in silence for a while. Martin was surprised to see Jon had not fallen asleep when he checked on him.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Jon opened his eyes and turned to Martin, then to the back of the seat in front of him. Martin prompted him again.
“Jon? What are you thinking?”
“Come to Hill Top Road with me.”
“What?”
“Come to Hill Top Road with me,” Jon repeated.
“Why?”
“I need to know if I can feel anything there.”
“Why there?”
“When we came here—” Jon stopped and thought for a moment. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s where the separation—the barrier between us and them—would be the weakest.”
“Then it sounds like we shouldn’t go there.” Martin turned in his seat, and Jon finally looked at him. “It kind of seems we should actively avoid going there. Like, ever.”
Jon took Martin’s hand in his. “I just need to know. You—you could be right. About the Eye. Maybe it’s not coming back for me. Maybe it’s done with me.”
Martin breathed out slowly, a careful, measured exhalation. “And what if it is done with you?”
“Then…” Jon paused again. “Then I need to accept it.”
“And if it isn’t?”
A little bit of life came back into his voice. “Then it isn’t, and like I’ve been saying, it’s better to know and get on with it.”
Martin wasn’t sure he agreed, but he kept silent.
“Come to Hill Top Road with me,” Jon entreated him again. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Martin exclaimed loudly, and a woman two seats up across the aisle looked back at them. “Oh—sorry. Sorry.”
He waited until she had smiled and turned back to try again, more quietly. “Tomorrow? Really?”
“Yes. In the morning, first thing. Tell Sasha we have therapy.”
“If we go…” Martin sighed. “If we go and you don’t find what you’re looking for, will you—will you try to let it go? I don’t mean everything, we can talk to Tim and Sasha, we can do whatever you want, just—will you try to live without it?”
Jon considered, a troubled look in his eyes.
“I’m not asking for a promise, Jon—I don’t want one. I’m just asking what you’ll do.”
Jon took a deep breath. “I’d like to try. I think I would try.”
“All right.” Jon had won. Martin squeezed his hand, more to reassure himself than anything. “I’ll go with you. Tomorrow morning. I’ll tell them when we get back.”
“Thank you.”
Then next time Martin checked on him, Jon had fallen asleep.
***
Jon’s alarm went off the next morning right around sunrise, before Martin’s usual waking time. Martin was surprised by how much energy he seemed to have; he wanted it to be because he was feeling better, but he suspected Jon was running on fumes and willpower.
“Not going to shower first?” he asked, when Jon stepped out of bed and immediately went to the closet.
“No,” Jon answered. “I’d like to leave as soon as we can.”
“Well, you are going to have breakfast,” Martin grumbled, sitting up and trying to blink away the sleep.
“Martin—”
“That’s not debatable. I couldn’t get you to eat anything last night.” They had ended up taking a cab back from the train station, and Martin had worried for a moment that he was going to have to carry Jon up the stairs. “Use some of that energy to—go pour yourself some cereal or something.”
“Fine.” Jon started to leave the bedroom. “Do you want anything?”
“Nope.” Martin groaned as he started to stand up.
“Well, if I have to, then you should—”
“I ate dinner last night. And part of someone else’s dinner that I didn’t want to go to waste. And it is way too early right now, and—”
“Fine. I get it. I’m going.”
After Martin was dressed, he joined Jon to find him scraping at the bottom of a bowl of cereal.
“How full was that?” he asked, suspicious.
“Overflowing.” Jon regarded him from his seat on the couch.
“Really?”
“No. I don’t know, normal?”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Martin sighed. “I’m still really worried, ok?”
Jon softened his gaze. “No, I’m sorry. I’m—I’m nervous. I just want to get this done.” He put one last spoonful into his mouth, and it made chewing and swallowing look extremely distasteful. “Are you ready?”
“As ready as I’m going to be,” Martin said. “Let’s go.”
The train ride out was long, and they had to switch to a bus line in Oxford. They barely spoke, but it wasn’t a particularly uncomfortable silence. Part of it was probably the early hour, although Jon seemed more awake and alert than Martin had seen him in days. He was probably anxious about what they would find; Martin was, at least, so it was easy to imagine Jon was feeling the same.
When they arrived, they stood together, side by side, staring at the front door. The house that occupied the property was the same as he had imagined it from when the other archive staff had visited it before the apocalypse. Apparently built as student housing, no one had ever actually moved in. The front porch was covered in cobwebs. Martin broke the silence they had maintained during the walk from the bus station.
“I don’t like this.”
“Me neither,” said Jon.
“Yes, but—I mean I don’t want to go in.”
“I understand. You can wait for me out here.”
“No, that—” Martin looked down at Jon, who continued to stare at the house. “I don’t want us to go in. Either of us.”
They let the silence take over again. It went on long enough that Martin wondered if they could just stay on the front lawn indefinitely, if he didn’t say anything; it seemed like it might be the most reasonable option. Unfortunately, Jon did eventually speak again.
“Martin, I really do understand if you—”
“No. If you’re going in, I’m—I’m going too.”
“I am sorry.” Jon started to step toward the house, but Martin caught him by the arm.
“Wait. Where is—where is Annabelle? Where has she been?”
“What?” Jon asked, turning to look at him.
“I know we haven’t talked about it, and maybe this is a bad time to bring it up—but she came here with us, didn’t she? To this dimension.”
“Presumably, yes.”
“Where would she go, if not—if not here? I mean, even without what you said about it—just look at it. It’s got to be crawling with spiders.”
Jon furrowed his brow before responding. “She could be here. It’s possible.”
Martin’s pulse quickened. “Well then—wouldn’t we want to not be here? Isn’t that a good reason to stay out?”
“I’m not concerned.” Jon shrugged, leaving Martin in disbelief.
“Can I ask why not?”
“It’s just a theory, but—” Jon walked a few paces and sat on the front step. “I think—I think the entities are getting stronger, regaining their power, in the order that the fears evolved and separated from one another. The dates I’ve pieced together from Sasha’s notes, the avatars—”
“What?” Martin was dumbfounded. “What do you mean?”
“Right. When I—after I killed Jonah, there was a, um…”
“A statement?”
“Yes.”
“Of course there was.” Martin shook his head and moved to take a seat next to Jon.
“I’m sorry I didn’t—”
“It’s all right.” It still hurt every time he remembered Jon had gone up to the tower without him, and Jon knew it. “Go on.”
“They were born in our dimension. They grew there, as one being at first. Then, as animals and humanity developed and changed, and their fears became more specific, more distinct, so did the entities themselves. The Hunt, the End, the Dark—they were first.”
“I see.” Martin thought. “And we’ve seen Oliver Banks and now Callum Brodie. What about—”
“I suspect we want to avoid anything having to do with Daisy, if we can.”
Martin’s eyes unintentionally drifted to the scar that still stood out vividly on Jon’s throat before he caught himself. “And where does the Eye fit in?”
“Soon. If I’m right.”
“Ok.” Martin now realized there had been a deeper layer to Jon’s recent desperation. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I honestly thought it wasn’t important. But now—you brought up Annabelle, and—”
“Right. So where does the Web fit into this theory?”
Jon considered. “If I’m right—if I’m right—we have time. If she is here, she’s likely much weaker than I am. She would have more to fear from us than the other way around.”
Martin sighed. “Any chance we can just burn the place?”
“Tempting.” Jon grinned just enough for Martin to see it. “In the long run, though—”
“Yeah, yeah—it would probably just make things worse.”
“Shall we?” Jon asked, starting to rise to his feet.
“If you have to.”
“I do.”
The front door gave way at a light touch; the knob and deadbolt were completely useless. It seemed like the sort of place that had been broken into so many times that the owners had simply stopped replacing them. The inside of the house was at least as covered with webs and dust as the front porch.
“Well,” Martin said, “I hate this.”
“I don’t love it.” Jon reflexively reached for Martin’s hand. “Come on.”
They walked further into the depths of the house, which was quite large. There were multiple small rooms, which made sense for student housing, and a larger sitting room; it looked like there was a kitchen in the very back. He was so busy looking up to make sure he didn’t accidentally walk into anything, that he jumped about a foot when Jon stomped his heel against the floor.
“Jon, why would you—”
“Spider,” Jon said.
“Oh. Carry on, then.”
“Remember when you used to get upset with me for—”
“Don’t.”
Jon squeezed his hand, and Martin had the odd feeling that he was somehow more comfortable now than he had been for a while. They looked around them from what appeared to be roughly the middle of the floorplan.
“Should we go upstairs, or—”
“Look,” Jon cut him off, and pointed to the floor. Beneath the dirt and footprints of previous trespassers, Martin could see an unmistakable pattern in the wood stain that ran across multiple boards, beyond the edge of the room they were currently in. It gave the appearance of a long, dark, jagged crack. He may not have noticed it if he hadn’t been looking for it, but he couldn’t see anything else now.
“Do you think that’s—where it is?” Martin asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Jon started to pull Martin toward it, but Martin stayed where he was.
“Do you really have to stand right on it?”
“Just give me a moment.” Jon slipped his hand out of Martin’s before he had a chance to protest. Martin held his breath and gave him five seconds, then ten seconds.
“Anything?”
“Wait.”
Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. He was counting each of them.
“Jon—”
“Wait. Please.” Jon was growing tenser, more anxious.
A minute.
“Jon, I don’t—”
“I told you to wait.” Jon snapped at him this time.
The momentary sting was quickly replaced by concern; that just wasn’t like Jon. He bit his lip, unsure what to do. If he insisted on interrupting him, tried to convince him to leave, Jon might not feel like he really gave it enough of a chance—or worse, he might blame Martin for the failed attempt to find whatever power he was seeking. He’d be too kind to say anything, of course, but they would both know.
He decided to continue waiting, as long as he could make himself. He pressed his hand to his mouth as a reminder. The house was so quiet; it occurred to him he should have been able to hear sounds from outside, but something about the place seemed to be swallowing them up before they could reach them.
In the stunted silence, Martin had the sudden feeling they were not alone.
Before he could make up his mind to disrupt him again, Jon spoke.
“There’s nothing,” he said meekly.
“What?” Martin asked.
“There’s nothing,” Jon said again. “I don’t feel anything. I really thought—” He cut himself off, his expression a mix of loss and confusion and sadness, and Martin was filled with a deep, distressing pity for him.
“Hey,” he said, crossing to Jon, forgetting his trepidation toward the mark on the floor. It seemed meaningless now, nothing more than an ugly accident at the lumber factory. He pulled Jon into his arms. “It’s going to be all right. We’ll figure it out.”
Jon didn’t answer, but he allowed Martin to hold him, eventually letting the weight of his head fall against Martin’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” Martin said quietly.
“Are you?”
“Yes,” Martin answered. “Part of me is relieved, I’ll admit, but I don’t want you to be miserable, Jon. Honestly, I don’t. We’ll do whatever we need to do to help make this better, ok?”
Jon fell silent again, and in that silence Martin remembered the feeling he’d had just before Jon had spoken.
“Jon—can we get out of here? Sit outside? We can talk there. On the porch, even. I just have this feeling like—like we’re being watched.”
“What?” Jon pulled away enough to look up at his face.
“Not like—watched, I don’t think that even feels like anything. I just mean—like, regular being watched. If that’s a thing.”
Jon concentrated for a moment, but quickly gave up. “All right. We can go.”
Martin felt a second wave of relief wash over him. It’s over, he thought to himself, at least for the time being. He released Jon from his grasp, turning him gently toward the door—the faster they could get outside, back to the fresh air, the better for both of them.
A few steps, though, and Jon stumbled. Martin, instinctively reaching to support him, assumed at first that he had stepped wrong or tripped over something—but that wasn’t right. Jon was heavy in his arms, and Martin nearly fell himself trying to stop Jon from hitting the ground.
Ok. Martin collected his thoughts as quickly as possible as he gently set Jon down. He’s fainted. That wasn’t great, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected, given how he had been feeling and his inability to eat. I just need to give him a minute and he’ll come around.
That wasn’t right either, though, Martin quickly realized, because Jon had stopped breathing.
Shit, shit, shit. He had taken a CPR class many years ago, but he hadn’t thought about it in almost as long. What were the steps? He knew Jon wasn’t choking, and he remembered something about checking for a pulse, although he didn’t remember if you were supposed to do that right away or—
Do something.
He reached for Jon’s neck, pressing two fingers against his carotid artery. He waited.
I’m doing it wrong.
He readjusted. Still nothing.
“Shit.” Panic started to well up inside him again. Breaths? Chest compressions?
Call for help.
He pulled out his phone and started to dial, but quickly realized he had no reception. He held it up, moving it around, even standing again to see if he could get a signal, but no matter where he moved he couldn’t get a single bar of service. He thought about going outside to try there, but couldn’t stand the thought of leaving Jon alone in this place.
Chest compressions.
He knelt next to Jon, placing one hand on top of the other the way he thought he remembered. He pressed the heel of his palm against Jon’s sternum, just inches away from the scar he had put there only months ago.
Don’t.
The scar where he had driven a knife through muscle and maybe bone—he didn’t think it was supposed to be so easy to do that, but the cracking sound—
Don’t, not now.
—the cracking sound and then suddenly it had been so much easier, the knife went in and there was that single gasp of pain, and then he’d pulled the knife out because he couldn’t stand to leave it in, but all the blood came with it—
I killed him.
Jon was dying. The tape unspooled; the tower crumbled around them, and Martin held on. Jon lay dead in his arms as the world disappeared around them, and he held on. He held on for so long.
God, it hurts.
“Martin—”
I’m so sorry.
“Martin, let go.”
Martin opened his eyes and tried to remember where he was. His pulse was racing.
“Martin.”
He was sitting on the floor with Jon—Jon needed him to let go. He did, and Jon immediately took a deep breath. Martin still couldn’t quite remember where they were.
“You were dead.”
“No,” Jon answered, still breathing hard. “No, I just blacked out. I think I’m ok.”
“No. I killed you. There was—there was the knife—where did it—”
Jon, understanding, reached for Martin’s face. “Look at me. We’re at Hill Top Road. We came here together.”
“What?” Martin tried to remember, and eventually the details of their current situation came back to him. He looked around at the house. Jon was so pale. “Oh god. Jon, are you all right?”
“I think so. I think I just blacked out.”
“You weren’t breathing. I swear you weren’t breathing, and I couldn’t find a pulse—”
“Are you sure? Or were you…”
“I—I think so?” Although now that he thought about it, Martin realized he couldn’t be completely sure. “Maybe?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m—I’m ok now. I’m breathing.”
Martin looked around again. He hated this place. “Let’s leave. Please. Right now.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
It was harder to help Jon to his feet than either of them expected. His energy from earlier in the day had vanished almost entirely, and he leaned hard against Martin as they walked toward the door. The porch, which had previously seemed as dreadful as the house, now felt like a sanctuary as the sun streamed onto it through the support columns. It was almost unbelievable that nothing stopped them from reaching it, and Martin collapsed onto the wooden deck as soon as they did.
He made sure Jon had a relatively comfortable spot to lie, and then dragged himself to the steps, pulling his knees into his chest and blocking the light from his eyes with one arm. He stayed like that until he’d relaxed enough to reach into his pocket for his phone again. He had a little reception out here, at least. He scrolled through his contacts until he’d pulled up Sasha’s number.
“Hi Martin,” she answered cheerily. “Everything going all right?”
“Sasha, hey,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Listen, I’m sorry to do this—”
“Martin, I can barely hear you. Is everything all right?”
“Yeah—it is. Mostly.” He was too miserable to think up an actual lie. “Jon’s not feeling well today. I think—I think we’ll need the whole day off.”
“Did you say—is Jon ok?”
“He’s—” He looked at Jon where he lay in a patch of sunlight, eyes closed, taking shallow breaths. “He’s—I don’t know. He’s not great.”
“I’m—I’m sorry to hear that. Do you need anything?”
“No. We’ll manage.” He wasn’t sure that was true, but he had no idea what kind of help he could even ask for.
“You’re breaking up, but—please keep me updated? I’ll check in later.”
“All right.”
Martin ended the call.
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 15/22 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King, Georgie Barker, Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Basira Hussain Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting
Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter summary:  Sasha calls a meeting to discuss their current situation, now that Martin and Jon have told their story.
New chapter of my post-canon fix-it is up! Read above at AO3 or read here below.
Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.
***
Martin’s phone buzzed; he didn’t bother opening his eyes. He felt Jon lean toward the coffee table from where he sat underneath Martin’s legs.
“It’s Sasha,” Jon said. “Do you want to get it?”
“Not really.”
The phone continued to buzz.
“Do you… want me to get it?”
Martin realized she would probably just call Jon’s phone next anyway. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”
Jon picked up on speaker. “Hey, Sasha.”
“Oh—oh, I thought I called—oh. I did.” There was a pause on the other end. “Is he—is Martin ok?”
“He’s—he’s here. He can hear you.”
“Martin, um—how are you?”
Martin still didn’t open his eyes; he started to answer, but he hadn’t spoken loudly for a little while and his voice was gravelly. He cleared his throat. “I’m ok.”
“All right.” There was another pause. “Jon, how are you?”
“I’m—I’m fine.” Jon moved the phone to rest it on Martin’s leg from its spot on the table, and now Martin did open his eyes. He guessed it was about mid-afternoon from the light in the sitting room. “What’s going on?”
“I was calling to tell you—” There was yet another pause. “Jon, I have to ask, do you already know what I’m going to say?”
“Oh,” Jon sat back against the couch. Martin sighed, but shook his head and shrugged when Jon looked at him. He hadn’t meant anything by it, or if he had, he didn’t know what it was. “I—no, not really. Although if you wanted, I could—”
“No, that’s all right. I think I prefer—well, I was calling to say that the police have allowed us to open up the Institute again. But not—”
“Not the archives,” Jon finished. “Or the tunnels.”
“Right. And I was thinking—they’re not going to be there investigating or whatever tonight, and while it’s closed to the public, maybe—we should meet there. All of us.”
“Who is all of us, exactly?”
“Well, I talked to Melanie and she’s told Georgie, and they have some questions… and I talked to Elias. I’m not sure exactly where he is with all this, he didn’t say much, but I’d like to invite him. Obviously Tim is still gone, but—anyway, what do you think? Would you come? Both of you?”
“Hold on.” Jon muted the phone and turned to Martin.
“What?” Martin asked.
“Do you want to?”
Martin sat up, crossing his legs to face Jon. “Is this my decision?”
“If you want it to be.”
“I’m—I’m not sure.” Before Jon answered him, though, he reconsidered. “Wait. Is it safe? Won’t the cops be watching or something? If they’ve closed it off—I mean, it’s probably not on the honor system.”
Jon went quiet and Martin could tell he was doing more than just turning it over—he was reaching out for something. “I think—for the moment—that could work in our favor.”
Martin waited to see if Jon would offer more of an explanation, but wasn’t particularly surprised when he didn’t. “Fine. If it’s safe, it’s your decision.”
“I can’t promise it’s safe, but—it’s as safe as anything else.”
Martin nodded and closed his eyes again. He didn’t bother listening to the end of the conversation. It was fine, really. Going was no worse than not going.
***
When they arrived that evening, there were two signs that the archives were closed; one was the crossed lines of blue tape reading “POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS” at the top of the stairs, and the other was a literal sign taped to the banister indicating that the archives were closed until further notice. Martin carefully lifted up one side of the tape.
“After you,” he told Jon.
“Thanks,” Jon said, stepping gingerly over the lower piece of tape.
As they entered the office, Sasha, Melanie, and Georgie, who had arrived before them, fell silent around the conference table. Jon and Martin stood awkwardly, almost apologetically, until Sasha attempted to bridge the discomfort.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
Jon nodded, and Martin turned his gaze toward the floor. He hadn’t noticed until that moment, but the rug, the same generic office rug that wasn’t quite the right size to fit under the conference table, had the same exact stain on it that it had in the other dimension. It came from some time before the rug had come to be in the assistants’ office, and Martin had no idea what its origin was, but that really wasn’t important.
Nothing was going to be any different.
“Martin.” Jon said his name with an emphasis that indicated it wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and Martin looked up to find Jon already sitting, with an extra empty chair pulled over to the table for him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, making his way to the seat. This put him between Jon and Melanie; Georgie was on the other side of Melanie, and Sasha was to the other side of Jon. Between the five of them, they took up just about all the room they could comfortably have at the table.
Sasha spoke again. “Well, I don’t know if we’re still waiting for Elias, but—we might as well go ahead. Jon, I told you on the phone that I talked to Melanie and Georgie, and they had some—questions they wanted to ask.”
“Of course,” Jon said. Martin glanced at Melanie’s face to find the steely, unyielding expression she had worn so often when he had known her before. He realized he hadn’t missed it. Georgie, on the other hand, looked worried. He had seen that expression on her as well, but there was something different about it now. Maybe it was a hint of the fear she could still feel here.
“To be fair,” Georgie started, “Melanie has some questions. I really don’t think we should be here. I’m—I’m really only here for her.”
“You feel like it’s safer to stay away,” Jon said quietly.
“Well—yes, frankly. Melanie’s already been through enough, and honestly—it just doesn’t feel like we can really help. It feels like—like we can only get hurt. And that just doesn’t seem—responsible.”
“That could be true.”
Melanie broke in. “Wait, before we—"
Melanie stopped speaking as Sasha sat up; they all followed her gaze to find Elias standing in the doorway. He looked small, Martin thought. Tired.
“Sorry for being late. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No—no, you didn’t. I wasn’t sure if—well, I’m glad you’re here. I’m sure we can—” Sasha looked around at the table, trying to figure out where they could most easily squeeze in another extra chair.
“I’m fine. I’m—I’m fine here.” He sat on the corner of Tim’s desk, facing the group.
“Are you sure?”
“I think I’ll just listen, if that’s all right.”
“Yes, of course. That—that’s fine.”
Martin could not have explained exactly what it was he noticed, but something about the way Jon was sitting changed just slightly, and Martin realized Jon couldn’t see Elias from his position at the table. He leaned in close to him.
“Do you want to switch seats?” he whispered.
Jon looked at him long enough that Martin realized he was considering, but then shook his head. “No. No, I’m all right.” Despite his words, his fingers grasped Martin’s below the edge of the table, and Martin realized that he’d maybe inadvertently overestimated Jon’s level of comfort with this situation.
“Everything all right?” Sasha asked.
“Yes,” said Jon, and then after a moment, “thank you.”
“Go on, Melanie.”
Melanie looked from Jon to Martin, and then back to Jon again. “What do you want?”
“What?”
“What do you want? Why did you tell us all this?”
“I—I don’t want anything.” Jon looked back at Melanie in confusion.
“Then why did you tell us all this?”
“It was me. I thought we should,” Martin interrupted. “It didn’t feel right to keep hiding it.”
“Well then, let me ask a different question—why didn’t you tell anyone for so long?”
“When everything—when we first—” Martin hadn’t really planned on doing any talking, and he wasn’t prepared. He stopped and gathered his thoughts, then started over. “After everything happened, it took a while for things to—to come into focus. For a bit we could only remember the—the other place, and we weren’t sure where we were, or if you were all you—and then after we understood everything, well, it was just complicated. After what happened in the tunnels yesterday though—it was just—it was time. Probably past time, I don’t know.”
“Hm.” Melanie’s expression didn���t change. “So what are you going to tell us we should do, now that we know?”
Tell them to do? Martin looked at Jon; this wasn’t really a question he had anticipated.
“Nothing,” Jon said.
“Nothing,” Melanie repeated. “No advice for defeating these—fear powers, whatever they are? No explaining to us how we have to help you become more powerful so that you can—”
“No.” Martin felt a bit of anger when he realized what she was implying. “No, it—it’s not like that. Jon—Jon’s not—”
“No.” Jon squeezed his hand. “No advice. No—requests.”
“Sasha said—Sasha said that in the other world, the Institute—was like a trap, I guess. Like once people worked there, they couldn’t leave. They had to serve these things.”
“Just one of them. Just the Eye.”
“And you were in charge.”
Martin started. “What?”
“Jon was the archivist there instead of Sasha. And he had some kind of power. And—” She looked directly at Jon. “You still have it now.”
“That’s true,” Jon said.
“It was Jonah,” Martin blurted out. “It had nothing to do with Jon. Jonah Magnus was in charge of the whole thing. It was all him, he was the one who set it all up, who trapped everyone into working for him, and—”
“Right,” Melanie said. “Jonah Magnus, the—the old dead guy who started the Institute.”
“But he wasn’t dead there,” Martin snapped. “He was—”
The pressure of Jon’s fingers on his changed, and he stopped.
“He was Elias,” Melanie finished. “Or Elias was Jonah. Something like that.”
“Jonah—” Jon turned his head to look at Elias, who was still sitting quietly on the edge of Tim’s desk.
“It’s all right,” Elias said. “Say whatever you need to say. I’m fine.”
Jon turned back to the table. “Jonah killed Elias. And used his physical body to stay alive and run the Institute.”
Melanie looked like she was about to say something else, but then she glanced at Elias again and seemed to change her mind.
“Ok, look—what I really want to know is—what if—what if I do try to—help, somehow. Am I—am I already trapped here? And would it—would I really just be working for this—this Eye?”
“You’re not trapped here,” Jon said. “None of you—none of us—are. But that’s not really what you want to know, is it?”
“What do you mean?” Melanie asked.
“You want to know if you can trust me.”
Melanie thought. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do.”
Jon contemplated for a moment. “I don’t know.”
“Jon.” Martin couldn’t help it. “Yes, of course you can trust him. Jesus Christ, Jon.”
“Hm.”
Silence fell momentarily over the small group, until Georgie spoke again.
“All right. Let me—it sounds like, there, Melanie and I did everything we could to—to avoid it. To stay away. And clearly that didn’t work out, but—well, I’ve already said it, I’m inclined that way now. So tell me. How did I feel about it? In the end?”
Martin bit his lip; his frustration with Melanie and Jon’s back-and-forth left him. He remembered their conversation on that last night as well as he imagined Jon did.
“What?” Georgie said. “Be honest.”
Jon took a breath. “You regretted it.”
“Oh, of course she did,” Melanie countered immediately. “Look, Georgie, maybe I do want to at least—but that’s just—I don’t want you to make any decisions because of him. How do you know if you can trust him? Even he said—and how do you know he’s even really your Jon?”
“How do I—”
“Oh, I don’t mean—” She turned awkwardly to Martin. “I don’t mean her Jon, I just—”
Martin put a hand to his forehead. “I don’t think anyone thought—”
“Wait.” Jon let go of Martin’s other hand to hold up a finger, and everyone stopped talking. They listened to the silence until Jon spoke again. “You can come in, Basira.”
Sasha stood up as Basira, arms crossed and looking slightly disconcerted, entered the assistants’ office.
“Oh,” Sasha said, “I know the archives are off limits—we were just—”
“It’s all right,” Basira said. “I’m not here to arrest any of you.”
“Oh,” Sasha said again, slowly sinking back into her chair. They all stared uncomfortably. “Then, um… why are you here?”
“I saw you were all here”—she pointed to a corner of the room, where Martin couldn’t actually see anything but had to assume there was a camera of some sort installed— “and I suppose I wanted to—try to find out more about what happened the other day.”
“And to ask about Daisy,” Jon added.
Basira looked at him, apparently trying to make up her mind about something, but then she nodded slowly. “Yeah. And to ask about Daisy.”
“Oh,” Sasha said one more time. “Hang on, I’m sure we can find somewhere for you to—”
“I’ve got it,” Elias said, grabbing Tim’s chair and bringing it out from behind his desk for her to sit on. They all turned awkwardly toward her from their seats at the table.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t find myself in this situation often. This is not exactly how I imagined this going down.”
“Sorry.” Martin found himself apologizing for the situation. “If you want, I could—”
“Oh, no, it’s fine.” Basira waved him off. “It’s good for my hubris, anyway. So look—we’ve been getting a lot of very strange reports lately. I have a feeling you know what I mean. And we’ve had some incidents ourselves, but—the point is, some of the people who came to us mentioned they had talked to you all here at the Magnus Institute. They had this idea that you all studied things like that here, or—or something. And then yesterday, you clearly knew something about whatever had happened down there in the tunnels. At least, you two did.” She turned to Martin and Jon. “You two and the other one—you know, the hot one?”
“Tim,” Jon said, then looked at Martin. “I don’t—she said that once in—”
Martin put his hands up. “Why is everyone doing this tonight? I really—I’m really not that sensitive.”
“Right,” Jon said. “Sorry.”
“Anyway,” Basira continued, “when I remembered about the missing person thing and thought about the timing, and just—it felt like there might be some connection. So when I saw you were all here, I thought that instead of reporting it, I’d just come see what I could find out. And if—well, if you did know something, then—yeah.”
“And do you still want to talk about Daisy now?” Jon asked.
“Yeah, I think so. It’s just—she’s my partner, you know? And—it’s hard. I feel bad.”
“Go on,” Jon said. “Tell us.”
Martin recognized something in his tone.
“Jon.”
Jon turned to meet his eyes.
“It’s all right,” he said. “She wants to talk.”
Martin wasn’t sure if it was all right, but Basira certainly didn’t seem bothered.
“So here’s the thing. Like I said, Daisy is my partner. I’ve worked with her for years now. We put our lives in each other’s hands all the time. I don’t know how to describe that to someone who’s never experienced it. I think the point is, we trust each other. More than most people will ever have to trust another person. And I’ve worked hard to earn that trust. I know her. Don’t get me wrong—she’s not perfect. She’s always been—determined, and sometimes that’s maybe pushed her to take things out of step or—I don’t know. But she’s always wanted justice. That’s always been important to her. Trying to make things right. Or at least as right as they can be. I mean—you see a lot of bad stuff on the force, really bad stuff, and there are some things that nothing will ever make right, but—you know.
“After everything started happening though—around the time you reported these two missing—something changed in her. And it’s been getting worse. There are some days when I feel like I don’t know her now. At first, I thought it was just the stress of dealing with the incidents, signing the section forms, all of that, but—then I started seeing it. That look in her eyes. I’m sure you saw it yesterday. That’s not her. Not really. Lately it’s like it doesn’t seem to matter to her whether she’s even got the right person. And then—she’ll disappear for days sometimes. She’s done that before, but she’s at least always told me where she was going or what case she was investigating. Now I have no idea. And the worst part is that I don’t think I really want to know. I suppose that makes me kind of a shit partner.
“You know, I really don’t know why I’m saying all of this. Don’t repeat it to anyone—if you do, I’ll lie. I just—I want it to stop. I want whatever’s happened to her to stop.”
Jon nodded. “And what have you figured out so far?”
“Well, let’s see. There’s some kind of monsters here. And they have something to do with you.” She looked at Jon and Martin.
“Close enough,” Jon said. “What else do you want to know?”
“What’s their purpose?”
“Fear. They create it, and they survive on it.”
“Ok, and—what do they have to do with Daisy? Why are they messing with her?”
“Technically, they’re not,” Jon answered.
“What does that mean?”
“It means—Daisy is drawn to them. One of them, in particular. It’s called—it’s called the Hunt.”
“Does she know about the—the Hunt? Is she aware of it?”
“Not directly.”
“So she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“No.”
“And is she—is she afraid?”
“No,” Jon shook his head. “She—she’s happy, I suppose. She likes it. But if she knew, and she could choose—she wouldn’t choose it.”
“I see.”
They waited a moment.
“Is there—anything else you want to know?” Jon asked.
“Not really. Not unless there’s something I can do. I’d rather not keep things from Daisy. Just—are you trying to stop it?”
“Yes,” Sasha answered.
Martin felt a small pulse from the lump still lurking in his gut.
“To be completely honest,” Jon said, “it’s not likely we can.”
“But we’re going to try,” Sasha said.
“Good.” Basira stood up from her chair. “What do you need from me? Obviously I’m somewhat limited, but I might be able to help with something.”
“What do you think, Jon?” Sasha asked.
“Maybe—keep the archives closed. Officially. For a while. If they’re open, and we’re here—they’ll only be a target.”
“Easy enough,” Basira answered. “Speaking of, though—try not to come back here. I can’t guarantee I’d be the only one watching. Or even that I’d be able to warn you if—if someone else were interested.”
“Got it,” Sasha said. “Anything else, Jon?”
“Not at the moment. If we need anything else, though—”
“Here’s my number.” Basira was already writing on a pad of paper on Tim’s desk. “That is my direct number, but—be careful. I don’t know what’s going to happen between now and—whenever.”
“Understood.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to—stick around?” Sasha asked. “I’m sure we’d—”
“Better not,” Basira answered, setting the pen back down on the desk. “But I’ll do what I can. And really—don’t stay here too much longer tonight, either.”
“All right,” said Sasha. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t done anything yet.” Basira headed toward the door. “Save your thanks.”
“That was strange,” Sasha said, after Basira had left. “Jon, did you know she would come?”
“I knew—I knew Basira was in charge of watching the archives. And I knew she was worried about Daisy.”
“I see,” Sasha said.
They sat in silence for a few moments.
“So what are we doing?” Georgie asked. “Are we—are we really going to try to stop it?”
“Yes,” Sasha said again, even more insistently than the first time.
“Sasha,” Jon said softly, “I don’t—”
“I know, you’re not sure we can.”
“Hang on,” Melanie said. “Jon, do you—do you know we can’t stop it? Or—or are you saying that because you couldn’t before?”
“I don’t—” Jon looked down at his hands, where they had come to rest on the table. “No. I don’t know that we can’t stop it.”
“Then we have to try,” Sasha said. “Think about it. There’s no apocalypse here. Jonah Magnus isn’t here. Most people—other than us—don’t even really know these things exist. These rituals, they were all deliberate, right? Somebody had to choose to start them. And we know so much more than you did. Maybe we can find a way.”
Jon answered with silence; Martin turned to stare at the wall.
“At least say you’re with us, Jon. If the rest of us try. At least be on our side. You too, Martin.”
Jon sighed. “Yes, of course I’m on your side. If that’s what you choose.”
“Martin?”
He turned back to find Sasha looking at him expectantly.
“Look—it’s not like I’m—”
Jon took his hand. “This is what you want, isn’t it?”
“We need you, Martin,” Sasha added.
Need. He remembered telling Jon once that they didn’t need him—that Jon didn’t need him. His own words echoed in his head. Everyone’s alone, but we all survive.
They didn’t all survive, though, did they?
“Fine.” He still didn’t believe they needed him, or even that having him around would change anything—but he wouldn’t abandon them, either. “I’m—I’m here.”
“Good.” Sasha said. “Melanie? Georgie?”
“What do you think?” Melanie asked, turning to Georgie.
“Well,” Georgie said, “I know I don’t want to have any regrets. And I do trust Jon. But Melanie, I meant it, you’ve been through so much already, and—”
“We’re in,” Melanie said. “For now, at least.”
“All right,” Sasha said. “Elias?”
They all turned toward him.
“Hm.” He smiled faintly, almost inwardly. “Sure. Why not?”
“That’s all of us, then. And I’ll get Tim back here as soon as he’s ready.”
“So—now what?” Georgie asked.
“I—” Sasha frowned. “I don’t know. I suppose we can’t stay here much longer, though. We’ll have to come up with another meeting spot.”
Elias cleared his throat. “Are we safe?”
Everyone turned to Jon in a way that Martin found very familiar.
“Safe—how?” Jon asked.
“Are we safe? When we leave here—will we be all right?”
“That’s complicated.” Jon thought. “I suppose we’re relatively safe, for the moment. That could change any time, though, and I wouldn’t necessarily know if it did. And once Annabelle—understands that we’re—”
“Annabelle is the—the Web lady?” Sasha asked. “The one that came here with you?”
“Yes,” Jon said.
“I guess what I’m wondering is—would we be safer if we were together?” Elias asked.
“I don’t know.”
Martin thought about the time after the Unknowing, and before he’d ended up in the Lonely. Certainly the other assistants had all felt safer staying together. Probably they had been. And Martin, well, he hadn’t really been that concerned about his safety then, had he? He’d sort of just been waiting for something to—
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably.”
Jon nodded.
Elias continued. “Well, if you want—and I can understand if you don’t—you all can come and stay with me and Allan. I’ve certainly got enough spare rooms to go around.”
“To be honest, I wouldn’t mind,” Sasha replied. “I mean—I know Melanie and Georgie have each other, and Jon and Martin, but I—yeah. If it’s ok.”
“Of course it is. What about the rest of you?”
“We—have a cat,” Melanie said.
“That’s fine. Bring the cat.”
Melanie and Georgie spoke in whispers to each other for a moment, and then turned back to the rest of the group.
“If Sasha’s going, we’ll go,” Melanie said, slipping her hand into Georgie’s.
“Thanks.” The relief was evident in Sasha’s voice. “Martin? Jon?”
“It’s up to you,” Jon said, turning to Martin.
“We’ll go.” Martin was almost surprised to hear the words come out of his own mouth; he certainly hadn’t made anything like a conscious decision.
“All right, then.” Elias stood up from Tim’s desk, and Martin thought he saw some relief in him as well. “It’s a bit out in the country. Who has a car?”
***
Martin was trying, but the one small duffel bag he had wouldn’t quite fit everything he wanted to bring. They had an hour or so to pack before Elias was coming to pick them up, and he knew it really wasn’t a big deal—it wouldn’t be that hard to come get something else if he needed it—but that didn’t temper his frustration. If he managed to get his toiletries in the bag, then there were a couple of shirts that just didn’t want to let the zipper close; he could fit the shirts, but then—did he really need more than one pair of pants?
“Ugh.” He let the shirts drop to the floor and slumped back against the bed.
“I have room,” Jon said, from his seat on the floor next to Martin. His suitcase was neatly packed already, and he’d pretty much been watching Martin struggle for five minutes.
“It’s not—hang on, I can do this.” He unpacked the duffel bag again. It was more of a gym bag than anything actually meant for traveling. He’d never gone anywhere when his mother had still been living with him, and then after she had moved out, he still didn’t like being too far away from her. The bag had really only ever served for overnights—which he’d done less often than he might have, too.
Once again, he came up short on space. It was those two shirts.
“God damn it.”
“Just put them in my suitcase,” Jon said.
Without answering, he leaned forward and put all his weight on the small stack of clothing that was already in the bag with one arm, and tried again to jam the shirts in on top of them.
He stopped when he felt Jon’s hand on his elbow.
“Martin—do you want to do this? Do you want to go?”
He sat back on his calves. “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”
“Of course you do.”
“Jon—you know I’m not going to stay here if you’re going.”
“That’s not what I meant. If you want to stay—I’ll stay here with you.”
Martin leaned back against the bed again, and Jon did as well. Their arms met at the shoulder.
“Do you mean that?” Martin asked. “Would you be mad?”
“I wouldn’t be mad. Martin, you—you waited for me. In Scotland. You waited for me to be ready. I’ll wait for you.”
Martin nodded; Jon shifted his weight to rest against him, and Martin slipped his arm just behind Jon’s back.
“So this is that, then? This is us leaving the cabin again?”
“Maybe.” Jon let his head fall against Martin’s chest. “Maybe not. Maybe it comes to nothing.”
“You know, this—kind of reminded me of packing to go there. To the cabin. Except—” His throat caught.
“You don’t have to talk about it.”
“I want to, though.” Martin took a breath. “Talking to you—it always makes me feel a bit better, at least. I know you’re not like that, when you—just give me a moment.”
“Take all the time you need.”
Martin looked around the room, as much as he could without pushing Jon away. The bed, the dresser—he hadn’t been there that long, but the amount of time was irrelevant. Despite the questions he’d had later about their living situation, it had stopped being Jon’s bed the moment he’d gotten there; it was their bed. Their dresser. Their bathroom. It was silly to even care about sharing most of those things, but it had mattered. It was what he’d wanted. And as much as Jon could, it was what he’d wanted, too. Martin knew that.
“I was—maybe it was selfish—but I was happy when we went to that cabin. Or maybe—maybe just hopeful—but it had been so long since I’d had any hope, it felt like happiness.”
“Me too,” Jon said.
“And I’m—I’m sad now.” Martin laughed in spite of himself.
“What’s funny about that?” Jon asked.
“Remember when we argued about expressing your emotions, and I asked you how you felt about the apocalypse, and all you said was—sad?”
“Oh,” Jon smiled too, now. “I do remember.”
“I’m—I’ll do better. I feel hopeless. Worse than hopeless, when I think about how we felt then, because we it was so different. We still thought we could stop it. Call it off. Now, it’s—it feels like it’s just the end. And we’re walking into it.”
“Not necessarily. It could—they could all decide there’s nothing we can do, and we’ll be back here in a week.”
“But if we are—isn’t that—isn’t that just as bad? Doesn’t it just go the same place, with one more failure behind us?”
“Martin, we really don’t have go. Not yet.”
Martin thought. He didn’t want to leave. But he also knew if they stayed—while everyone else was together, scared, groping for answers—it wouldn’t be the same. It was over, either way.
“Jon?”
“Yes,” Jon answered quietly.
“I’m—I’m glad we had this.”
“Me too.”
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 4/? Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares
General summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter summary:  Jon and Martin head back to the Magnus Institute, where Martin goes on an interview outing with Tim and Jon starts to catch up with Sasha’s “statements.”
Chapter 4 of my post-canon fix-it is up! Read above at AO3 or here below.
Tumblr master post with links to earlier chapters
***
Shortly after Martin’s phone flickered to life, he found a lot of messages waiting for him—and they were almost all from the same person.
     Are you ok?
     Message soon please.
     Do you need anything?
     Answer when you can.
     Still worried…
He glanced at Jon, sitting on the other side of the bed and looking through his own phone.
“Sasha been messaging you too?” Martin asked him.
“Yes. And I’ve got one from Tim.”
Martin had that one also. “Telling you to answer Sasha?”
“Yes—and calling me something I won’t repeat.”
Ok, so he didn’t have exactly that one.
“All right,” Martin said a few minutes later. “Let’s do this, then. I’ll message Sasha back.”
“Wait—what are we doing? What’s the plan?”
He typed out a simple message to Sasha telling her they were ok and he was sorry for not answering sooner. “We lie to them.”
“Hm.” Jon seemed uneasy.
“Did you… want to tell them the truth?”
“Well…” Jon thought. “Obviously, we can’t. I’m just concerned that—”
“Exactly. And even if we did tell it to them, they wouldn’t believe it.”
Jon still looked doubtful. “Martin, I’m not sure if I—”
“Look, sometimes there are good reasons to lie. We just need to keep it simple, make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.” He read the message one more time and hit send. “Anyway, don’t act like you don’t know how. You’re actually quite good at it when you want to be.”
He didn’t mean to add that last part; it just came out, and it came out bitter. He looked at Jon again and regretted it immediately. He had come to realize he much preferred Jon’s anger to his sadness, especially when he was the cause. He opened his mouth to apologize, but as he did his phone began to buzz. They stared at each other.
“Jon, I didn’t mean that. I’m—I’m sorry—forget it, ok? I have to—hang on.”
He answered Sasha’s call on speaker, turning away to concentrate.
“Hey, Sasha.”
“Martin? Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m sorry I didn’t answer you sooner. It’s been—”
“How is Jon, do you know?”
“Yes, he’s—he’s with me. We’re both ok.”
“Oh, thank god.” Her relief was clear, even over the speaker, and Martin felt a pang of something in his gut. He hadn’t had a moment to consider how much he’d missed Sasha, how unfair it had all been, and how much it felt like she’d somehow come back. It would have been so easy to think that way—except their Sasha was still dead, and he may very well have been responsible for the death of the person she thought she was talking to.
“You do sound better,” she continued. “Look, I really didn’t want to tell you what to do, but—tell me you went to a doctor or something?”
Martin cleared his throat, aware Jon was listening to the conversation. “We did, actually. We did end up going to the hospital. I think we were maybe in a bit of shock after all.”
“No kidding. What happened? What did they say?”
“Physically, we’re—we’re all right.” He thought about all the blood again, and decided he should add a little more. “I mean, we were very dehydrated. They put us on a drip for a bit. And—and antibiotics, just in case. But they said we’re healing well, I guess?”
“That—that’s good. What else? What about—not physically?”
“Well, they did a lot of tests. The kind where they asked a bunch of questions. They didn’t want to call it amnesia, exactly, but we’ve—we’ve got some memory loss.” Experience told him the less specific the lie, the better. “Neither of us really remembers what happened. And it’s possible… we might have forgotten some stuff from before, too. We don’t really know how bad it is yet.”
“Oh. That’s terrible.”
Martin looked over his shoulder at Jon, who had crept closer to hear better. He nodded, and Martin turned back.
“It’s not great, but the good news is they don’t think there are any deeper issues. I mean, they’ve got us signed up for all kinds of therapy, but they don’t think there’s any—how did they say it—no lasting cognitive impairment.” Cognitive impairment was a phrase that maybe came to him too easily after caring for his mother; he felt like he was maybe pushing it a little.
“Well, that part’s good. How are you feeling, though?” Sasha asked.
“A lot better.”
“Did they feed you? Do you need anything? Can I bring you something?”
“No, that’s all right. We’re—actually, Sasha, we were wondering if we could… maybe come back. To work.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end, and Martin cringed and held his breath through it; he didn’t look at Jon. He might have gone for it too soon.
“You want to come back? Already?”
He exhaled quietly, away from the phone so Sasha couldn’t hear it. “They said the more we could normalize things, it might—help? I mean, I know there might be some issues rehiring us—but maybe if Elias hasn’t replaced us yet—"
“No, I mean—you know Elias, he hasn’t even taken you off payroll. It just seems… fast. Are you sure you want to?”
“Well, if you’re worried, we don’t have to come back right away.” Jon grabbed his arm and Martin frowned at him, shrugging him off. Wait, he mouthed. “I know we might not be up to our usual workload, and we’re going to have to take some time off for therapy and all… I’m really only bringing it up because they thought it would help, but it’s completely fair if you don’t want to take—”
“No! No, I don’t mind.” She sounded upset, and he felt bad. “That’s not it at all. And we could use your help, honestly, but I really don’t want to put pressure on you while you’re recovering. Do you promise you’ll let me know if it’s too much?”
“Yes,” Martin answered. “Yes, of course. Jon too.”
“Well…” said Sasha, “When are you thinking about coming in?”
Um… hang on.” He muted himself and turned to Jon.
“What do you think?” Then, before Jon answered, he added, “And do not say today. It’s already after 2 pm and that would just be weird.”
“Fine. Tomorrow, then.” Of course. He sighed.
“Sasha?” He said, unmuting the phone. “Jon says—Jon says tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? Really?”
“Yeah. Yeah, actually. If you’re all right with it.”
There was more silence.
“And I mean Sasha, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t mind being around people. It would be nice.” That wasn’t even a lie.
“Ok. Sure, Martin.” It had done the trick. “Take your time getting in though, ok? And get some sleep tonight.”
“Will do. Thanks, Sasha.” He hung up, and turned his head slightly in Jon’s direction. “Happy?”
“Thank you,” Jon answered, putting an arm around Martin to press his mouth briefly to his cheek. Martin couldn’t help but smile.
“Yeah, all right. Just don’t exhaust yourself. Remember, you’ve got to eat real food and sleep real sleep now.”
“Mm.” Jon was already headed out to the sitting room where his desk was.
“What did I say, Jon?” he shouted.
“Eat and sleep,” Jon shouted back.
Martin grumbled to himself.
The rest of the day was spent washing the one set of clothes that he had, and going through the phone to learn what he could about his current situation. His passwords and fingerprints opened all the apps, but that didn’t faze him anymore. He was able to figure out from email and voicemails that the apartment building where this world’s Martin had been living had indeed kicked him out, but thankfully his belongings were being held in storage. He could pay two months of back rent and a late fee if he wanted to reclaim them, although it wouldn’t be until the following week.
Fortunately, Sasha had been correct that they hadn’t been taken off payroll—not only had they not been taken off, but Martin had been paid his full salary for the last two months. If he hadn’t already been convinced that Jonah Magnus was not running the institute, that certainly did it.
***
Although he didn’t successfully get Jon off the computer for it, he did manage to get him to eat most of a meal that evening at his desk. And while Jon didn’t get in bed at the same time he did, Martin was still up to hear him come in.
“Hey.”
“Sorry,” Jon said softly. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“No, that’s all right. You didn’t. I actually—something’s been bothering me. I wanted to apologize for what I said right before Sasha called today. About… you. Lying. I mean, we need to talk about it—what happened—but not like that.”
“Martin…” Jon shifted under the covers. “I want to talk about it. I do. You deserve that. I’m just…”
“You’re not ready yet.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ll—I’ll try not to push,” Martin answered, closing his eyes again. “I want to do this right. Or at least better than we’ve been doing things. Just… you try too, ok?”
There was a moment of quiet before Jon answered. “Ok.”
***
Going back to the Magnus Institute in the morning already felt much easier than it had the first time. It didn’t hold the same sense of discontinuity—it felt less like déjà vu and more like returning to a place he had genuinely spent a lot of time. Rosie was away from her desk when they arrived; Sasha and Tim were in Sasha’s office with the door closed, and they could hear muffled conversation through the door. Jon sat at his desk, but Martin decided he’d wait for Sasha before he even pretended to do something, and sat on the sofa instead.
“So,” he asked Jon, “how are you feeling, now that you’re here?”
“Good, I suppose,” he answered. “Well, not bad, anyway. I’ll feel better once I can start looking through some of Sasha’s statements.”
“They’re not statements, Jon. I expect you’re going to be disappointed if—”
“I just meant that I’ll feel better once I have some understanding of…” He trailed off. “Why do I need a pin?”
“Hm?”
“My laptop. I need a pin.”
“Wait, didn’t you have one before?”
“No. Sasha kept telling me to set one, but…” Jon sighed. “This would be a lot easier if we could remember things about this place when we wanted to.”
A thought occurred to Martin, something they hadn’t talked about yet. “Are you going to be all right, Jon? With Sasha being the archivist here?”
“She’s not the Archivist. There is no Archivist here. Not even me, right now.” Martin could hear him typing, trying different combinations of numbers, and could also hear his frustration growing.
“Hang on, let me try a couple things before you go getting all worked up.” He got up and went to join Jon at his desk. “And no, you’re right, of course—I just meant, are you ok with her being the head archivist here? At the Institute?”
“I don’t care.” Jon leaned back from his desk so Martin could reach the number keys. “Wait—is that the sofa that Tim brought in when—”
“Yes, it is. And it was a good idea.” The pin would have to be something Jon would easily remember, and knowing Jon, probably also too easy for someone else to guess. He tried Jon’s birthday; it didn’t work. He tried the street number of Jon’s flat, and that didn’t work either. “Hmm…”
“Well, I suppose professionalism isn’t as important when your entire area of research is—”
“Jon, hush.” Last four of Jon’s phone number?... Nope. He stared down at the keys and a wild thought entered his head. No reason he couldn’t try it, though. He typed the four-digit combination and was surprised to find that it worked.
“Oh.” Jon leaned forward. “What did you type?”
“I don’t know,” Martin lied. “I was just trying things. I don’t remember what I did.”
“Well, how am I supposed to get back in next time?”
“You’re going to have to change it.”
“I don’t want to change it.”
“Sasha’s going to make you change it.”
“How is Sasha going to know that—”
“Because I just saw Martin type it in for you,” Sasha said from the door of her office, smiling.
“Hey, Sasha.” Martin let himself smile in return—it was easy, if he forgot the last four years of his life. “Thanks again for letting us come in today.”
“Honestly, I’m already wondering if it was a mistake. I told you to take your time and really, it’s first thing in the morning.”
“Well, Jon just couldn’t wait to get back,” he said, reflexively rubbing the back of his neck. “He—hang on.”
He snatched the mouse away from Jon and clicked through to the screen where he could change his pin, while Jon did his best to appear extremely inconvenienced. “Oh, stop. Type the new one, I’m not looking.”
Jon grudgingly did as Martin instructed.
“So why were you so eager to come back, Jon?” Sasha asked.
“Oh.” Jon cleared his throat. “I, um…”
Martin interceded. “He’s actually been very concerned about—about the things you said have been happening here since we were gone.”
“I wondered if that was it. I’ve been thinking about that myself,” Sasha said. “I know you don’t remember anything, but the timing was just so… Jon, I know you’ve always been a skeptic—”
“And I still am. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation for everything.” Martin thought maybe Jon would catch on after all. “But it would be quite the coincidence if it were unrelated. I was actually wondering if I might review some of the notes you took during your—interviews.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Sasha replied. “To be honest, I haven’t the slightest idea what to do with them. They aren’t exactly typical archive material. Maybe you can help me—”
“Morning, everyone.” Tim cheerfully disrupted the conversation as he slipped into the room behind Sasha. “How are we all feeling?”
“All right,” Martin answered, when no one else did.
“Great. Especially coming from you, Martin, because we are going on an adventure today.” Tim made his way to his desk and picked through a few papers.
“Oh?” Martin looked at Sasha.
“What Tim means is that if you are up for it, there were a few people who contacted us but couldn’t come in, and we haven’t had a chance to get back to them. I haven’t felt comfortable sending Tim to interview people alone, and well—it’s not really our job, and I’ve got more than enough actual work to take care of since—well, we’ve gotten a bit backed up.”
“What do you think, Martin?” Tim asked, waving the papers toward him. “Up for it?”
“Oh, well, I—I guess I could, yeah.” He glanced at Jon, who was suddenly sitting up very straight in his chair.
“Martin, I—are you sure?”
“I think so,” Martin replied.
“I’m just thinking that if something were to happen…”
“What—what sort of thing?”
“Yeah Jon, what sort of thing?” Tim echoed. They both turned to look at him and found him with a curious look on his face. “Oh look, if you two need to consult about this, please go ahead. Don’t mind me.”
“Yes, thank you, Tim.” Jon spoke through gritted teeth, indicating the sarcasm hadn’t escaped him. “Martin, just—come talk to me.” He stood up and took Martin by the arm, leading him out into the reception area and closing the door—but not before Martin saw Tim bite back a grin.
“Jon, what—”
“Martin, we have no idea what’s going on, or who or what could be out there, or—”
“Do you want Tim to go by himself?”
“Well—no, but—”
“Look.” He took Jon by the arm now. “I know we haven’t been apart since—well, not for a long time. And I know every time we have been apart, it’s been bad. But things are different now. This is different. You’ll be all right here with Sasha, and I’ll be with Tim and—”
“And with anything else that’s shown up since we got here. And if something happened, I—” Jon stopped and looked toward the floor. “I wouldn’t know about it.”
“Yeah, well, welcome back to being a normal person.” He squeezed Jon’s arm. “Look, if you’re really worried, I’ll come up with some excuse. But Jon, we’ve got to—we’ve got to try and be functional here. Plus, if you really want to figure out where things are—if you’re here going through the interviews, doesn’t it help for me to be out there? Talking to people? You know—like I used to do for you by myself all the time?”
Jon pressed a hand to his own mouth, thinking.
“Jon, I’ve got my phone.”
“Technically you had your phone when you went to look for Jane Prentiss.”
“Ok, I see why that’s not that reassuring, but do you realize how long it took for Jane Prentiss to—become what she was? And I will be with Tim, and—”
“Yes, you’ll be with Tim. Great.”
“Jon.” Martin sighed. “He’s just concerned. Ok, what if I—what if I look through the contact forms before I leave? Make sure I don’t recognize any names on them? Like—no bad names?”
“We don’t even know if it works like that.” Jon thought for another minute, but Martin could see his resistance starting to come down. “Look, I don’t want to… maybe I am being overprotective.”
“You think?” It didn’t really bother him to hear Jon say it; in fact, he got a bit soft knowing Jon felt that way, but it wasn’t going to help the situation to admit it.
Jon finally gave in. “All right. Do look at the names though—and if anything happens—”
“I’ll let you know right away. I won’t do anything dumb.”
“I know. Martin, I—” Jon looked up at him again. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He leaned down for a quick kiss, which Jon returned. “I’ll be fine, ok?”
Jon nodded, reluctant.
***
Despite another look from Tim, Martin did check the names as promised; there were only three for that day, and he didn’t recognize any of them. By the time they left, the thought of spending time alone with Tim made him more nervous than their actual task. He imagined that as soon as they were out the door, Tim would start peppering him with questions about where he and Jon had been, what had happened between them, or both.
As it turned out, though, their time together was quite enjoyable. Martin had forgotten how easy it was to be around Tim—that he had that thing he could do that just made everyone comfortable when he wanted to. They took the tube out to a suburb, and on the way, they talked about the weather a little bit. They talked about a new café that had moved in down the street a few weeks ago; Tim said it was all right for an occasional something different, but nothing special. They talked about what Tim had been up to in his free time. As it turned out, his brother Danny was getting married soon to a girl Tim absolutely adored. Martin suddenly remembered when Danny had come into town and visited Tim at work one day a few years ago, and he’d been amazed by how similar the two of them had been when they stood side by side.
I’ve met Danny Stoker. The urge to smile hitting alongside that awful catch in his throat was becoming a strangely familiar feeling.
Their first interview was with an older woman in her home. She had gotten in touch with the Institute after receiving their information through a friend of a friend, who’d heard a story from yet another friend. Martin really thought there wasn’t anything to it. Well, he supposed it was possible there was a ghost living in her television set that just happened to have moved in after her daughter had tried to help her set up a new voice assistant—but in all fairness, it seemed unlikely. The second interview was equally unimpressive.
Once they finished up, Tim made a phone call to their third interview subject, and announced they were headed back to central London. The man didn’t want to meet at home, but he was willing to meet them somewhere public; Tim arranged to meet him at a deli not far from the Institute. The ride back was pleasant enough, if a bit quieter.
“It’s getting late,” Tim said, after glancing at his phone. “We have time to eat first, if you’re up for it.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Martin was pretty hungry again by the time they sat down with their food. He supposed he’d missed being able to enjoy food, but having to eat multiple times a day was sort of annoying when it came down to it. He was just wondering if he should send Jon a reminder to eat, when he realized Tim was staring at him; he hadn’t touched his sandwich yet.
“Everything ok?” he asked.
“What happened?” Tim asked. “To you and Jon.”
“Oh, I—” Martin swallowed the bite in his mouth. “I assumed Sasha told you. We don’t—”
“Don’t remember.” Tim cut him off. “Really, though? Like—nothing?”
Well, here goes. “Really. Nothing.”
Tim regarded him thoughtfully. “We looked for you. Me and Sasha, we looked everywhere, for weeks. Well, everywhere we could think of.”
“Tim, I’m—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” That was the truth. In fact, he was sorrier than he was going to be able to explain.
“Sasha took it really hard, you know?” Tim said. “I mean, you were at work when it happened. She felt responsible. Like it was her fault.”
That sounded familiar.
“It wasn’t,” Martin replied. “It wasn’t her fault. It had nothing to do with her.”
“I told her that. Every day. I don’t think it made any difference, though. And I’m sure it hasn’t really sunk in yet that you’re back.” Tim picked a small piece of crust from his sandwich bread and chewed it carefully before swallowing. “I mean, it almost seems impossible, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were gone for two months, you left no sign of what had happened or where you were—and then you just show up again one day, making out on the landscape, covered in your own blood.”
“We were not making out,” Martin snapped.
“You were too,” Tim answered. “What’s that about, anyway?”
Martin didn’t answer him.
“Look, I have no idea what happened, but… I’ll admit, I’ve always wondered if you maybe had a thing for him. I mean, the man’s always been a bit of a wreck, and I’ve watched you defend him and try to take care of him ever since we all started working together. And it’s not like you got along that well, but I know you and it just seems like the kind of thing you’d go for. But I never thought—”
“You really don’t like Jon, do you?”
“What? No, I like him just fine. You know that. But I like him for who he is, and this just seems like… it seems like a lot after two months.”
“Tim, it’s complicated, and I don’t know how to explain it. You don’t—you don’t know what we’ve been through. What he’s been through, or what he’s—”
“I thought you didn’t either.”
Martin’s heart skipped, and then beat double to make up for it. “I just meant—look, I don’t know what happened, but I—I feel things I can’t explain. And I can say that it feels like it’s been a lot longer than two months since—since we disappeared.”
“Is that so?” Tim asked. “Just tell me. Do you not remember, or do you actually not remember?”
“I—I really don’t remember.”
“Why did it sound like there were quotes around that?”
“There weren’t.”
“Right.” Tim said. “Well in that case, I ‘believe you’”—he paused to make large air quotes— “and I ‘definitely won’t keep asking.’”
“Tim—”
“It’s fine,” Tim said as he finally took a large bite of his sandwich, then continued with his mouth full. “Whatever happened, I am glad you’re back—and whenever you’re ready to talk about it, I’m here.”
As hungry as he was when he’d sat down, Martin couldn’t touch the rest of his sandwich. He kind of resented the way Tim was able to keep eating. Tim had always been that way though, hadn’t he? Able to say what he thought without worrying about the consequences. It had taken on a different flavor after he’d found himself trapped at the Institute, of course, but even then, he’d stood up to Elias without any fear of what might happen. Even when he’d died, he’d gone out the way he’d wanted too—no regrets.
Martin wanted so badly to tell him the truth in that moment. Instead, he sat in silence and watched him eat.
A short time later, Tim grabbed a napkin to wipe his mouth. “I think that’s him. Our interview. Yellow shirt, black jacket.” He raised a hand toward someone coming through the door behind Martin.
“What was the name again?” Martin asked as he turned around.
“Hang on—” Tim pulled out one of the contact forms. “Here we go. Antonio Blake.”
Wait. Wait, there was something familiar about that name—shit. He’d thought about it too quickly that morning. He’d completely forgotten about the alias.
Jon is going to lose it when I have to tell him this.
“You’re—you’re Oliver Banks,” he said to the man now standing directly in front of him.
Oliver looked suspiciously from him to Tim and back again. “I didn’t—how did you know that?”
“I—don’t know. It just came to me.” Given what Oliver had to be going through, maybe there was half a chance he would find that plausible.
Tim gave him a look. “You know him?”
“Not—not really. Please, sit.”
Oliver continued to hesitate. “I’m not sure I want to.”
“Look—I am sorry, I didn’t mean to—I’m Martin Blackwood, from the Magnus Institute. This is Tim Stoker.”
Tim stood up and offered his hand in that easy, open manner he had, and Oliver tenuously accepted it.
“Please,” Martin said. “Whatever you have to say—we’d like to hear it. It might be important. Maybe we could… help.”
He didn’t feel great about himself for adding that last part.
Oliver slowly pulled out the third chair at the table and sat down. Martin didn’t know what he’d expected him to be like, but somehow this wasn’t it. He felt sad for this man. He looked so tired, but at the same time so ready to run. He reminded Martin a bit of Jon, actually, during the year after Jane Prentiss had come to the institute and before they’d realized that Sasha had been murdered. He supposed that made a lot of sense, the more he thought about it.
Tim spoke again. “You didn’t leave a lot of detail in your message, so—do you want to just walk us through what happened to you?”
“Well…” Oliver looked from one to the other of them again. “I’m really not sure you’ll believe me. To tell the truth, I’m not sure anymore that I’m not going crazy. I’ve—I’ve not been sleeping much, and it’s…” he trailed off.
“You don’t want to sleep because you’re afraid you’ll dream again.”
Oliver re-focused on Martin. “How do you keep—”
“It’s all right.” Martin said. “I just want you to know that I’ll believe you. If you want to tell us.”
They sat in silence for several minutes. Martin didn’t want to say anything that might send Oliver back out the door, and Tim followed his lead. Finally, Oliver spoke, quietly enough that it took some effort to hear him.
“It was a dream. Or it started with a dream. The first time, I dreamed that I was walking near Canary Wharf—I used to have a job there years ago, and—well, I don’t need to get into that, do I… The point is, I know the area. There were people around me, people I don’t actually know, like happens in a dream, but they all had these—I don’t know—tendrils.” He paused and made a motion with his hands, like he was holding something heavy. “I don’t really have another word for it. Like snakes, almost, but not alive like snakes. Just tendrils, everywhere, and they went through these people—like their hearts, or their heads, or around them somewhere. I really didn’t like it, you know, but also I think I knew I was dreaming. Everything was sort of pulsing and—and I was trying to ignore all of it, but when I headed home in the dream… Well, it was my landlady. She had lots of them, like black veins, running into her chest, or her lungs, really, somehow I knew it was her lungs. I woke up not long after that.”
Martin tried to keep his expression neutral. This was so much like the statement Oliver had made years ago in their world, to Gertrude, but it was also so different. Most obviously, it wasn’t a statement at all, it was just Oliver talking. That made sense. There was no Archivist here, either with them or in general, which Jon had so intently pointed out that morning. The words weren’t just pulled out like Martin was used to, thank god. And certainly, the people Oliver had first dreamed of in their world would have passed years earlier. The basic story, though, was the same.
“OK.” Tim nodded, scratching down some notes. “But I assume there’s more?”
“Well, the thing is—not even two weeks later, she—she died. Lung cancer. It was sudden. Undiagnosed. I’d almost forgotten about the dream, to be honest, but that… it shook me.”
“Understandable.” Tim nodded again. “So you think your dream was a—a warning?”
“Well, I mean—of course I was sort of struck by it, that day, but after a little time, it didn’t seem like such a big thing. She smoked her whole life. I know sometimes people know things they aren’t really conscious of, and maybe I just—knew she was sick. But then… it happened again. A man at the bakery near the shop where I work now. I barely knew him. It was his heart. And I—I dreamed it again. The whole thing. A week before it happened. And I just started wondering if—if every person I see in that dream…”
Tim frowned and looked toward Martin, which prompted Oliver to do the same.
“What do I do?” Oliver asked, and Martin swore a shiver ran through him—maybe it was from nerves or too much coffee or not enough sleep, or maybe all three. “I thought maybe you would—know something about this. Maybe you’ve heard of it before. Do you think—do you think I could help them? If I found them, if I talked to them—”
“No,” Martin answered. “I mean, I have heard of it before, and… no. You can’t help them. I’m—I’m sorry.”
Oliver worried at his lip. “I’m not—I’m not causing it somehow, am I? I was thinking that maybe—if I keep trying to stay awake—”
“No.” Martin shook his head. “No, you’re not causing it.  You—you should know it’s not your fault. And if you sleep, or if you don’t sleep—they’ll still… they’ll still die.”
Oliver nodded his head, digesting the information. “So I can’t do anything. I just get to know they’re going to die, and I can’t do anything about it.”
“I’m sorry.” Martin wondered what he would have said if he’d had time to think about it. Would it have been any different? Would he have thought of something better to say, something that didn’t fall so flat the moment it left his mouth, something that could have actually helped?
Would Jon have said something better?
“All right,” Oliver replied softly, bringing Martin back from his thoughts as he stood up from his chair. “Thank you for listening. I—I think I’m going to go.”
“If you need anything—if we can help—you know where to find us.”
Martin wasn’t sure if Oliver even heard him.
“What the hell was that?” Tim asked loudly, once Oliver was out of sight.
“Nothing,” Martin answered.
“That wasn’t nothing. You knew that man. You knew what he was going to say.” Tim pointed at the door, waving his finger for emphasis. “And then you…”
“Tim, I can’t explain it right now.”
He turned his finger on Martin. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like this.”
“I’m sorry. I wish—” His phone, which he had set on the table, buzzed at him. It was a message from Jon, asking if everything was ok. “Let’s go back now, all right?”
Tim shook his head in disbelief. They didn’t speak on the walk back.
***
Jon jerked up from his desk when they walked in, which was now covered in numerous hand-written notes and manilla folders. Martin suspected he’d maybe been taking an unintentional nap. “How did it go?”
“Fine,” Martin answered. “Did you eat?”
“Not—not yet.”
“Here,” Martin said, tossing the rest of his sandwich onto Jon’s desk. “I didn’t finish it.”
“Oh.” Jon peeked under the wrapper. “You barely ate this at all. Are you sure you don’t—”
“Yes.”
“All right, well—thank you.” Jon took a quick bite and set it aside as he resumed reading.
“Well?” Tim said.
Martin ignored him.
“Are you going to tell him about your friend?”
“What friend?” Jon asked, eyes still on the paper in front of him.
“I didn’t catch his name, actually,” Tim replied. “But I do know it wasn’t”—he pulled out the now-crumpled contact form— “Antonio Blake.”
“What?” Jon immediately stopped what he was doing.
“Jon—”
“You saw Oliver Banks.”
“Oliver Banks.” Tim deliberately overpronounced the name. “That’s right. Thank you, Jon.”
“Tim—”
“How could you miss that?” Jon stood up.
“It was fine! Nothing happened. I would have—”
Jon didn’t even need to speak to cut him off; the look in his eyes was enough. “We need to talk.”
“Please,” Tim cut in. “One of you talk, at least.”
“In private. Come on,” Jon said, once again taking Martin by the arm. Rosie was back at her desk now, but Sasha had temporarily stepped out, and they spoke in her office with hushed voices, without bothering to turn the light on.
“Jon, it really was fine, I—”
“Stop.” Jon reached up to take Martin’s face in his hands. “It’s ok. I just want to know what happened.”
“Nothing, really. He—he’s had a couple dreams, that’s all. He wanted to talk about it. He wanted to know if there was anything he could do to—to help them. I told him he couldn’t. I felt bad for him.”
Jon closed his eyes and breathed out, then opened them to look at Martin again.
“Jon, I don’t see what the big deal is. I mean, what does he even do? He sees people’s deaths, and wakes up other people’s”—he paused— “Archivists.”
“It’s not funny. Or that simple.” Jon let go and turned to face the wall. “Martin what if—what if he had seen your death?”
“Well then—at least I’d know? I guess?”
“Or what if he’d seen Tim’s? Or—or mine?”
Martin could sort of see Jon’s point then—but only sort of. “Ok, but—I still think we weren’t really in any danger. Yes, I messed up, and I should have caught that, but—”
“It’s too dangerous,” Jon interrupted. “You can’t do this again without me. And—and neither can Tim.”
“Oh really,” Martin responded. “And why do you—”
“It’s not just Oliver,” Jon broke in again. “I found some things in the—in the interviews Sasha did. Do you remember the thing we called the Anglerfish?”
“Yes?”
“And do you remember Laura Popham?”
“Um—”
“She went caving with her sister and—”
“Oh, right. Lost John’s Cave.”
“They’ve… they were in there, in the interviews. Already. In just two months.”
Martin was starting to understand Jon’s reaction.
“And I was hoping it was just those sorts of things,” Jon continued, “and no… avatars, but if Oliver Banks is already connected to the End—”
“I see.” Martin stepped closer to Jon to put an arm over his shoulder. “All right, I get it. Things are happening fast.”
“Well… most things.” Jon sounded a little offput.
“Wait.” Martin almost laughed, but not because he found it funny. “Wait, are you upset because you aren’t connected to the Eye yet?”
“Upset isn’t the right—”
“Now who’s jealous of Oliver Banks?”
“Technically that would be envy, not jealousy—”
“Technically yes, but that isn’t the—”
“—and I’m not,” Jon finished. “I just—I feel like I know it’s coming, and I’d like to get it over with.”
“Right.” Martin rolled his eyes, but only because Jon couldn’t see it in the dim office. “So what do we do now?”
“First, if there are more interviews to be done, they could be important, but… we do them together. You and me.”
“There are. And… if Sasha is ok with it.”
“And then I keep going through Sasha’s notes. And then I go back before that, just to—”
“Jon, you’re going to exhaust yourself.”
“Then I do.”
“No. It doesn’t do anyone any good if you—”
They were interrupted by Sasha’s voice.
“Jon? Martin?”
“Yes,” Jon answered. “Sorry, I needed to speak with Martin, so we borrowed your office.”
“That’s fine, but you didn’t need to do it in the dark,” she said, switching on the light. “So I was just talking to Tim, and it sounds like today was… eventful?”
“That’s not exactly what I said, but I suppose that’s the polite version.” Tim followed her into the office.
“Well, I have something to report, too.” Sasha sat down behind her desk. “I know I said I was going to get back on regular archive things today, but… well, let’s just say I got curious, and may have found a back door on the web to access certain matters of official police business.”
“Really?” Tim’s grin was back. “That almost sounds like someone’s misbehaving.”
“I’d feel bad about it, but let’s also say I wasn’t too pleased with the way a certain missing persons case was handled.”
“Good for you.”
“Thank you, Tim.” Sasha did seem very pleased with herself. “But that brings me to my next point. Tim, I know you have some… contacts at some of the local police stations who might be able to—supplement the information I’m getting? I could use your help with that.”
“Sure, boss,” Tim said. “And that should work perfectly, actually, because I believe Jon was just getting ready to forbid Martin from going on any more interviews with me.”
“That is not—” Jon started over. “I would like to go with Martin on any further interviews, if that’s agreeable.”
“I mean—that’s fine, and I certainly don’t want anyone going out alone,” Sasha answered, “but what about catching up with everything here? It seemed like you felt that was pretty important.”
“I’d like to keep doing that too. I might need to put in a few extra hours.”
Sasha sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Maybe? Let’s see how you’re doing next week.”
“Sasha, I’m—”
“—already worn out, and a very bad judge of your own health.” Martin nodded in agreement, and shrugged without sympathy when Jon glared at him. “For the rest of this week, if you come in, you’ll both stay here. Jon, you can keep going through my notes, and Martin—would you mind helping me catch up on some of the filing and patron requests? I don’t even want to think about how far behind we are. Those other interviews have waited this long, they’ll wait a few more days. Especially if Tim is able to help follow up with the police angle.”
“Of course,” Martin answered. Even if Jon didn’t think he needed to take it a little bit easy, Martin was more than willing to acknowledge his own limitations—and sometimes Jon’s, even if it wasn’t appreciated. “Oh, and Sasha—we’ve got therapy tomorrow morning, so we’ll probably be a little bit late.”
“Good,” Sasha replied. “And for now, don’t take any of those notes home, Jon.”
Jon stared daggers at Martin, but he didn’t regret it—especially not after Jon fell asleep on him on the couch during dinner a few hours later.
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eldritchteaparty · 3 years
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Chapters: 9/20 Fandom: The Magnus Archives (Podcast) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist Characters: Martin Blackwood, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Tim Stoker (The Magnus Archives), Sasha James, Rosie Zampano, Oliver Banks, Original Elias Bouchard, Peter Lukas, Annabelle Cane, Melanie King Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Fix-It, Post-Canon Fix-It, Scars, Eventual Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, I'll add characters and tags as they come up, Reference to injuries and blood, Character Death In Dream, Nudity (not sexual or graphic), Nightmares, Fighting Summary: Following the events of MAG 200, Jon and Martin find themselves in a dimension very much like the one they came from--with second chances and more time.
Chapter Summary: Jon returns to work, and Melanie King interviews for a position as archival assistant that Elias forgot to mention he had posted. Martin cuts Jon's hair.
Chapter 9 of my post-canon fix-it fic is out and yes, I jumped on the haircut fluff bandwagon. 
Read above at AO3 or read here below.
Tumblr master post with links to previous chapters is here.
***
Jon returned to work the day after they learned about (or more rightly, remembered) the Leitners. Martin had very mixed feelings about it. Even though Jon was eating again and getting enough sleep and making a show of taking his vitamins, Martin wasn’t sure he’d ever feel like he had taken enough time to recover. More than once, he found himself daydreaming about what it might be like if Jon just decided he was never going back to the Institute. Sure, Jon had said it wasn’t an option, but that was before—well, before now. Maybe, if things weren’t going like he’d assumed, he could be convinced to work somewhere else and finally get away from all of this. Or maybe work nowhere, if he wanted. Martin could make that work. He’d taken care of two people on one job before.
On the other hand, the Leitners had really shaken him. It felt like the Institute was sitting on a bomb that could go off at any time if someone took a wrong step—and most of the people walking on it didn’t even know it was there. If it ever had felt as simple as just leaving, it certainly didn’t now. And as long as that was the situation, he needed Jon there. They all needed Jon there.
He’d actually assumed Jon would head straight for the Leitner Room when he got back, but he didn’t. When he asked him about it, Jon’s answer was that Martin had already been there, and there wasn’t any point. That caught Martin off guard—after all, this was the man who not even two weeks ago had re-read every document Martin had tried to read for him—but when he pointed that out, Jon shrugged.
“Maybe I’m trying something different.”
Martin gave him a look. “Really?”
“Why not?” Jon gave what passed for a smile with him this week, and Martin felt like he had to accept it. “Besides, we don’t want to risk drawing attention to them. I think that’s the worst thing we could do.”
The rest of the week was mostly uneventful. Even Jon spent some time in the stacks helping out with client requests, which they somehow had still not caught up on. The only thing that stuck out was that once, on his way out of Sasha’s office, Martin found Jon at his desk going over several page of hand-written text and decided to ask him about it.
“So… Sasha said that people were still coming by with—stories, I guess?”
“Yes.”
“Is that one of them?”
“Yes, I’ve been reviewing them. Sasha really doesn’t like reading them herself, so I’m—” He looked up at Martin. “What?”
“I just didn’t realize. That’s all. That—” Martin frowned down at the papers in front of Jon. “That looks an awful lot like… well, a statement.”
Jon followed Martin’s eyes back to his desk. “I suppose it does. I hadn’t thought about it.”
Martin found the resemblance vaguely troubling, though he couldn’t put his finger on why it stood out to him. Nothing had changed, really, it was just about what it looked like. There were certainly enough other pressing things happening.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mention it,” Jon said, putting his hand on Martin’s arm.
“No, it’s—it’s fine. I guess I should have assumed people were still coming in… I don’t know why it’s bothering me.” He shook his head and squeezed Jon’s hand briefly before turning to head back to the stacks. “I know you’d tell me if there was anything serious. Well, it’s all serious, but anything we could—you know what I mean.”
“Martin, I—"
“No, it’s really all right. I’m just worried about everything, I guess. Sorry for interrupting.”
“You weren’t,” he heard Jon say behind him as he left.
Otherwise, though, things almost seemed to be looking up. Even Tim, spotting Martin on a ladder while reshelving some heavy volumes, commented that Jon looked better.
“I mean—I feel like he does?” Martin agreed, straining to make room on the shelf at an awkward angle without dropping the book in his hand. “I think some—time off—actually did him some good.”
“Or maybe he was so heartbroken about missing our lunch together that he decided he couldn’t stay home another day.”
“I’m sure that was it, Tim.” Martin rolled his eyes as he finally managed to squeeze the book onto the shelf.
Tim was ready to hand him another volume from the cart when he paused, looking up at Martin and down at the cart again. “Wait, was that number—did it end with .5268 or .57?”
Martin looked back at the book he’d just placed on the shelf. “Let’s see—damn it, it was .57.” They hadn’t been paying attention, and they’d managed to miss the poorly placed divider on the cart. Now Martin was going to have to get the book back out of the shelf he’d only barely managed to squeeze it onto, although that maybe explained why it had been so difficult in the first place.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “That was my fault.”
“No, not really. I could have caught it too.”
“Be careful.” Tim shifted to the other side of the ladder as Martin leaned precariously toward the book that now didn’t want to come back out. “You know, Jon’s lucky to have you to take care of him.”
Martin was glad he could blame the color in his face on his efforts to pull the book.
“Are you taking care of yourself?”
“Um—what?” He almost had it now. “I guess? Yes? What are you getting at?”
“Just that I’m still here to listen. If you want to talk about—what happened.”
The book finally came loose, and Martin barely managed to hang on to it and keep his balance on the ladder—but he did. “Here,” he said, tossing it down to Tim once he’d regained his footing. It was his only answer.
***
Even the weekend felt better. He was finally relaxing a little bit about the Leitners—after all, they’d been there for several months and nothing had happened yet, and they were flagged now if anyone asked about one. There were very few people with a key to the room—just the others in the archives and maybe Elias—and none of them were likely to take a sudden interest in them as long as they didn’t attract it.
Jon stayed in bed with him. They went to the store. They made breakfast together—well, Martin made breakfast, but it was a real breakfast with eggs and bacon, and Jon watched him make it with more admiration than it deserved. At some point, Martin borrowed Jon’s trimmer, the one he used on his beard, and finally gave himself the haircut he’d been needing. It felt nice; it felt like a normal thing to do. Afterward, he checked on Jon in the sitting room and found him reading.
“Reading anything important?” Martin asked from the doorway.
“Just a book,” Jon said, briefly holding up a small, worn paperback that Martin recognized from his bookshelf. He walked up behind the couch to look over Jon’s shoulder.
“Like—a normal book that regular people read?”
“A normal book, at least,” Jon said, temporarily closing the book on his thumb to look at Martin. “Oh. You did it. Your hair, I mean. It looks—it looks great.”
“You think?” Martin ran his hand over the shortest part, where he could feel the bristle of the fresh cut against his fingers. “You know, I think I finally found a couple grey hairs this time.”
“Get over it.” Jon lifted his thumb to check the page number and then let the book close entirely before turning to rest his head on his arms on the back of the couch. “You do not get to talk about grey hairs.”
“I wasn’t complaining, I was just mentioning it,” Martin protested. “And I like your grey, it makes you look—”
“Do not say distinguished,” Jon groaned. “Everyone always says that.”
“All right—I won’t.” Martin bent down to kiss Jon instead. Jon started to kiss him back, but Martin stood up. “No, I don’t want to distract you.”
“Oh.” Jon raised his eyebrows. “Is that how it is?”
“Yeah. It is. It’s been forever since you’ve read just a book, and—well, it was something you said you missed.” He kissed Jon one more time, but this time on the top of his head. “And… thank you.”
“For what?”
“For—for trying.”
Jon looked surprised for a moment, and then his face softened. “Martin—”
“Nope,” Martin said, backing away from the couch. “We’re done here. You read. I think I may actually go give poetry another shot.”
“Really?” Jon asked.
“Yeah.” Martin shrugged. “Some of my—his—notebooks were in the stuff from storage. Thought I might go through them and see if it’s any good. It’s not like I was doing a lot of writing—well, there.”
“All right.” Jon sat back on the couch, but turned to look at Martin one more time before opening his book. “You know—if you write anything you like, I’d—”
“Oh, don’t worry, I would never put you through that,” Martin joked. “Just—enjoy your book.”
Martin didn’t end up writing anything—just a line or two that he didn’t like anyway—but going through the notebooks was fascinating. He remembered writing most of the poems in them. For some of them, he could even pinpoint exactly what he had been thinking about when he wrote them, or what had inspired them. He wasn’t afraid anymore that he was losing memories; he found he could navigate memories from the two existences almost side by side now, if he tried. It wasn’t a perfect description, but it was sort of like comparing two different edits of the same document.
He didn’t really identify with the version of him that had written the poems in that notebook. In a way, they annoyed him; it felt like going back and reading things you wrote as a child. He had outgrown them, maybe. He felt like there was simultaneously so much more and so much less to everything he’d tried to capture than he’d understood at the time.
Still, that didn’t stop him from wishing he could have been that person, or stayed that person, or become that person—he wasn’t sure how to think of it, but there it was. He’d liked writing that poetry; it had made him happy, inane as it was. He wanted to like writing it again.
***
Of course, Monday brought another unexpected turn of events. It started with Elias walking into the assistants’ office while Sasha was briefing them on the day’s activities. He looked tired after the weekend, which Martin realized was typical for him, but also vaguely enthused.
“Everyone,” he announced, “I’ve brought someone by that I’d like you to meet. A candidate for our new archival assistant position.”
“Wait,” Sasha said, crossing her arms. “What new position?”
“The one you asked me to advertise.”
“Well, yes, but that was like eight and a half weeks ago. Things were—different. We have Jon and Martin back now, thank god. And you never got back to me, so I just assumed you were ignoring me.”
“I have never once ignored you.” Elias shook his head at Sasha in feigned shock. “And to prove it—you just told me last week you were still behind on the archiving work, and that you weren’t comfortable following up with the reports we’ve been receiving.”
“Technically what I said was that I don’t think we should be dealing with them at all, they’re really not what an archive—”
“And as I told you, although only god knows why, some of our patrons are quite interested in those reports. So, we will keep dealing with them, but this”—Elias held up a finger—“is where our candidate comes in. Look, Sasha, I really think you’ll like this—and as always, I promise you’ll get final approval.”
“All right,” Sasha threw her hands up. “Bring them in.”
“Rosie,” called Elias, “please show her in.”
Before Martin could process it, he found himself staring at Melanie King.
“Melanie,” he said, surprised.
“Oh—” Melanie turned to look at him, and her lack of recognition brought him back to the moment. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“Um,” Martin stammered. “Well—no. I guess maybe I just—feel like I know you? From your YouTube channel.” He laughed uncomfortably.
“Oh, right,” Melanie appeared equally uncomfortable. “I get that sometimes. Um—well, not all that often, actually. Sorry, tell me your name?”
“I’m—I’m Martin Blackwood. I’m one of the assistants here.” He belatedly stepped out from his desk to shake her hand, and she smiled again.
“And I’m Tim Stoker.” Tim’s relative comfort as he also shook Melanie’s hand seemed to put her at ease, at least until she rested her eyes on Jon. He was still sitting at his desk.
“Jon,” Tim prompted him.
“Hm? Oh, right, I’m—”
“I’m guessing you’re Jonathan Sims,” Melanie said.
“That’s—” He seemed mildly surprised. “Yes. I am.”
“My partner, Georgie—Georgie Barker—she’s the one who saw the ad. Said she’d heard someone she used to know might be working here, and well—anyway, we talked about it, and eventually she convinced me to put in my application.”
Jon realized she was waiting for him to say something. “Oh,” he managed.
Her smile faded slightly. “Well, nice to put a name to a face, anyway.”
Elias gestured toward Sasha. “And this is Sasha James, our head archivist.”
“Hello, Ms. King,” Sasha said warmly as she stepped forward. “It’s lovely to meet you.”
“You too.” Melanie took the hand Sasha offered to her. “Mr. Bouchard—Elias—was just telling me about the work you do here, and if you don’t mind, I’d love to chat with you about it.”
“Of course,” Sasha said, leading the way to her office. “Come on in.” Elias followed behind, and they closed the door behind them.
Martin immediately pulled a chair over to Jon’s desk, leaning close and speaking quietly so that Tim couldn’t hear. “What do we do?”
Jon considered. “Nothing, I suppose.”
“But, well—can she—I mean, if she signs a contract, will it be like—”
“No,” Jon shook his head. “No, definitely not.”
“Are you sure?” Martin was still worried. “How can you—”
“I’m sure,” Jon said definitively. “No one’s getting stuck here. Look—that was all Jonah Magnus’s doing, completely. He doesn’t exist here, and when he did, he certainly didn’t have the ability to trap people in his employment.”
“Hm.” Martin still wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Martin, it’s fine,” Jon said, taking his hand. “If it weren’t—if I had any doubt—I’d stop it. I’d find a way. I wouldn’t let her go through that again.”
Martin nodded; Jon’s confidence, at least, gave him confidence. He went back to his desk and continued organizing his tasks for the day, although he was so distracted he hadn’t made much progress when Sasha’s door opened again. She walked out and closed it behind her, leaving Elias and Melanie inside.
“What do you all think?” she asked.
There was a brief silence, and then Tim spoke up first. “It’s a surprise, for sure, but if having someone else around helps you out, I’m all for it.”
“Well, she certainly doesn’t have the sort of background we usually look for, but as Elias pointed out, she has a lot of investigative experience.” Sasha leaned back to sit casually on the round desk in the middle of the office. “Normally that’s not something you’d need in an archive, but as long as we’re being asked to start following up on some of these statements—”
“I can follow up on those,” Jon interrupted. “She doesn’t need to—"
“Jon, onsite research and interviews are exactly what she does.”
“Yes, but as you’ve said, her credentials aren’t—”
“Oh, you’re a certified private detective?” Sasha asked with a note of sarcasm.
“I just meant for an archive—”
“I understand, and credentials are important, but I think we can also all agree that Martin, for example, has become an excellent assistant.”
Tim snorted. “Jon, I dare you to argue.”
Jon ignored him.
“Anyway, Jon,” Sasha continued, “I haven’t forgotten you’re interested in the statements too—I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind helping Melanie get adjusted. You know, help her out a bit. That’s assuming we go ahead with the offer and she accepts.”
Jon thought for a moment, then sighed. “All right. Yes.”
“Good,” Sasha said. “Martin, any thoughts?”
“Um—no,” Martin said. “I’m sure she’ll be—she’ll be fine.” Jon had said it would be fine.
“All right,” Sasha said, standing up. “I’ll tell Elias to make the offer.” She disappeared back into her office.
When they came back out, Melanie was smiling and chatting happily to Sasha about an episode of Ghost Hunt UK she and her crew had filmed in Glencoe. Part of Martin was still very nervous for her; the Institute clearly wasn’t the safest place in the world, even if she wasn’t caught there. Another part of him, though, maybe a bigger part, had missed her, and he would be glad to have her around—and seeing her and Sasha together gave him hope, somehow.
“Oh,” Melanie turned just before she and Elias left the office together. “Jon, Sasha mentioned that you’d be helping me get comfortable with things around here, and well—I’m looking forward to working with you.”
“Yes, of course,” Jon said, not looking up from his desk.
This time her smile vanished. “I’m sorry, did I—did I do something to offend you?”
Now Jon looked up. “What? Why would you say that?”
“It’s just—I feel like you already don’t like me.”
“I—no,” Jon said. “I’m—”
“He’s been ill,” Sasha said. “He’s still recovering. Please excuse him.”
“Oh,” Melanie said, but she looked doubtful. “In that case, I hope you feel better.”
“Right,” Jon nodded. “Thank you.”
After she left, Sasha turned to the assistants. “As you may have gathered, she’s already accepted the offer, and she’s quite happy about it. She’ll be starting on Thursday, and I’d like to suggest that instead of lunch this week, we go out to dinner that night to welcome her. Please try to make it, if you can.”
Martin wasn’t sure if he was dreading it, looking forward to it, or both.
***
“Ready for supper?” Martin asked when they got home that night.
“Actually, first—I was wondering if I could ask you for a favor.”
“Sure,” Martin said. “What is it?”
“Would you cut my hair for me?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Martin crossed his hands in front of his chest for emphasis. “I’m no good with scissors. I mean, I could try to trim the ends if—”
“I meant like yours. Well, not exactly like yours, that’s just—” He cleared his throat. “I want it short.”
“Why?” Martin asked, taken back.
“Would you hate it?”
“No!” Martin said immediately. “No, that—it’s just a big change.”
“Yes, exactly,” Jon agreed. “I think that’s why I want to do it. I mean, I won’t insist if you don’t—”
“No, it’s—if you’re sure, I’ll do it.”
They brought one of the chairs from the balcony into the bathroom. Jon reached back to pull the tie out of his hair, but Martin got there first. He tugged it loose, straightening out the strands that got caught on Jon’s shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re ok with this?” Jon asked again. “I think you’re more attached to it than I am.”
“Not really,” Martin lied, thinking about how he’d taken to brushing it out of Jon’s face while he’d been so out of it. He did kind of miss those moments. “I mean, it doesn’t actually matter how I feel, but—well, ok, give me a moment to say goodbye.”
“Whatever you need,” Jon said with amusement.
“No—no, I’m good.” Martin sighed and pulled it back again, this time into a low, loose ponytail. “So we’re absolutely going to get hair everywhere. I usually just take off my shirt and then jump under the shower afterward, but we could try a garbage bag or something—”
“I don’t mind.” Jon started to unbutton his work shirt, but then stopped. “You’re ok with it?”
“Why wouldn’t I—oh.” Martin suddenly realized he hadn’t seen Jon without a shirt on since the hospital after Hill Top Road, evidently not wanting to expose his scar again. “Jon, it’s—it’s fine. Sorry I didn’t realize before now.”
Jon still hesitated; Martin bent down and kissed him, reaching to undo the button under Jon’s fingers as he did. “Really, it’s fine. Just don’t black out.” He was trying to add some levity, although he wasn’t sure he pulled it off.
“I think I can manage that.” Jon finished unbuttoning the shirt; Martin took it from him as he pulled off the t-shirt underneath, and tossed them both out onto the bed. He deliberately avoided looking directly at Jon’s chest so as not to worry him.
“You’re really, really sure about this?” he asked, twisting his hand into the ponytail. “I mean, once this is gone—it’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Martin took a deep breath, and with the scissors they’d borrowed from the kitchen cut his way through Jon’s hair, just above the tie. “There it is.”
“Oh god.” Jon wasn’t even looking at the hand Martin was holding up—he was looking at his reflection in the mirror and the uneven chin-length mop of hair that was left behind.
“We could leave it like that.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“I’m kidding. Here.” He set the hair down on the counter. “Although it is kind of rugged. With your beard, you’ve got a sort of lumberjack thing going on there.”
“Right—very rugged. Until I stand up.”
“Nothing wrong there. You’d be the world’s most adorable hipster lumberjack.”
The look Jon gave him in the mirror said everything.
“All right, all right—here we go.” The trimmer buzzed to life, and bit by bit, the remaining length fell away.
“Where did you learn to do this?” Jon asked.
“Oh—I had a—a friend who taught me years ago. I used to cut his hair.”
“A friend?” Jon asked.
Martin realized he’d stumbled over that pretty badly. “A boyfriend.”
“You can say that, you know. You don’t have to hide it.”
“No—I know.” Martin stopped cutting for a moment to switch out the guide. “Or I assumed, I guess. It’s just that we’ve never really talked about any of that stuff. Well, I know Georgie, obviously—knew Georgie? But that kind of just happened. It felt weird just now.”
“Well, next time it doesn’t have to.”
“Thanks. I—I really do appreciate that.”
Jon nodded. “I’m sorry that—we really did everything backward, didn’t we?”
“Couldn’t be helped.” Martin flicked the trimmer on and off to make sure the new guard was attached properly. “I mean, there are definitely things I wish were different, but it’s not like I regret it.”
“Me neither,” Jon said.
“Besides, we’ve got time to make up for it now.”
Something about the sad smile Martin saw reflected in the mirror made him lean down and press his mouth to Jon’s bare shoulder. It was nice for a moment, but he quickly found himself spitting out hair clippings. “Ok—I do regret that.”
“Oh god, sorry.” Jon turned to try to help him brush some of the pieces off his face.
“And that is why we took the shirt off in the first place,” Martin said when they had gotten most of it, still grimacing. “Anyway, I’m almost done here—just want to get a little more off the top.”
Jon nodded and turned back to face the mirror again, and Martin continued, mulling over the day’s events.
“Jon,” Martin said, “what was with you and Melanie today? You really did seem like you didn’t want to talk to her. Are you that upset about her working on the statements?”
“No, it wasn’t that. I mean, I don’t like it—I’d rather handle it myself, or with you—but that wasn’t it.”
“But I’m right, aren’t I? There was something.”
Jon hesitated, but finally answered. “I think it’s better to—try to stay unattached.”
Martin turned off the trimmer again. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. “That’s why you’ve never taken Tim up on drinks, too, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Jon, you—you need friends.”
“They don’t need me. And they certainly wouldn’t want to be friends with me if they knew what I brought here.”
“Jon—”
“It’s just better if I keep my distance.”
“Well, I disagree. And I hope you’ll at least come to dinner on Thursday.” Martin could see there wasn’t a point in arguing at that moment. He turned the trimmer on for one last touch up, but didn’t spend much longer on it—he was pretty pleased with it, overall, and it was easy to ruin a good cut by being too picky.
“What do you think?” he asked when he was finished; he was actually nervous to hear the answer.
“It looks great,” Jon said, turning his head in the mirror to look at both sides. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“It really wasn’t that hard,” Martin answered, but now that he knew Jon liked it he had to admit he was feeling pretty proud of it.
“Do you like it?” Jon asked.
“I do.” Martin set the trimmer down and stood back to look at it from farther away. “I’m definitely going to have to get used to it—but I mean, this is easier now.” He stretched his fingers out to scratch the back of Jon’s head.
“Oh,” Jon said, tilting his head back a little. “That’s—that’s quite nice.”
“You know—” Martin started to say, but then stopped as he felt himself blushing.
“What?” Jon said. “Everything all right?”
“I just—I know we don’t usually say stuff like this, but… well, I’ve been staring at you for thirty minutes straight, and you—you’re really quite good looking.”
Jon looked at Martin with his mouth slightly open, but quickly regained his composure. “You don’t have to say it. It’s obvious you think it.”
“Well.” Martin dropped his hand indignantly. “In that case, maybe I—”
“I mean, I can’t think of anything else that would have attracted you to me, so by process of elimination—”
“Oh, shut up.” Martin leaned in and kissed Jon hard, pressing his hands into the now-short hair at the sides of his head. It had been a while since they’d really kissed, maybe since they’d made up after their argument, and Jon returned it with equal insistence. “I can’t believe you turned that into an insult.”
“Sorry. You’re right, I’m not used to it.” Jon kissed him again, gently this time. “Shall I try again?”
“All right, but me too.” Martin tilted Jon’s head up by the chin. “You’re hot.”
Now it was Jon’s turn to blush, but only for a moment. “So are you.”
“No, you can’t just say that. You really are hot, I’m—” Martin cut himself off, realizing the hypocrisy of what he’d started to say. “All right, this is hard.”
“Maybe just back to this again?” Jon reached to kiss him one more time.
“All right. Until we get more practice.” He couldn't help running his hand through Jon's hair as their mouths came together again.
He could definitely get used to it.
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