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And Eat It, Too - Chapter Seventeen: Annabelle

In which Annabelle Cane tells Jon just enough about what's going on to send him into an existential crisis, and Jon receives his final mark...

>>> NOW ON AO3!

Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims ruined the world.

And it wasn't the first time he had.

(Masterpost including playlist)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was always going to end here, he thinks.

The one place he knows is a stronghold of the Web, a place that took in orphans and made them agents, a place burned to hell by Agnes Montague because spiders and fire don’t play nice.

They’ve rebuilt. It looks okay.

The neighborhood is quiet, quaint. A nice place to retire, more so than raise children, and he knows the worst of the gossips were glad when no one was left alive here to continue bringing in “troubled youth.”

It doesn’t look like anyone is home.

Jon knows that’s a lie.

Simple brick, two stories. They’ve worked on the landscaping, and it has a hedge, though the lawn is in need of reseeding.

The front door is unlocked.

He doesn’t try the lights. Doesn’t need them. Knows, though he’s never been here before, where the door to the basement is, and where they will be waiting for him.

He tries not to see the webs, everywhere, everywhere. They scare him.

Knowing this is his only choice doesn’t mean he isn’t afraid.

Well, at least I’m bringing a snack like a good house guest, he thinks, and emits one high, hysterical giggle.

Sounding like Michael makes it worse, and he has to lean against the doorframe to the basement for a moment, gathering himself.

No turning back.

They are kind enough to have a light on at the bottom.

It’s a wide basement, unfurnished but for two chairs. One of them is occupied by Annabelle Cane.

There’s a slight discoloration on the floor in front of her, as if a table had sat there for a very long time.

And behind Annabelle—

Behind her but not behind her but there but not there is the form of a spider so huge, so sentient, so present, that it could not fit in this basement or six basements or sixty basements, and he cannot see it if he looks directly, but it is there, constant, in the corner of his eye.

And he feels so small.

“It’s all right, Archivist,” says Annabelle. “No one is going to bite you, or put spiders in your skull. Just sit. It’s time for that answer I promised you.”

Jon doesn’t often get so scared his teeth chatter, but he’s hit that peak now, and he can’t quiet them as he goes to sit down. Gingerly, on the edge. As if that would make any difference at all.

Annabelle is being completely non-threatening. Leaning back, no quick movements. Letting him catch his breath.

Behind her, that consciousness (so aware, so much more than the Eye, so much more than even Mister Pitch, so that by comparison maybe they do all seem like muscle spasms) is focused on them.

“I… I don’t know how long I can take this,” says Jon.

“That’s fair. It can be… a lot, when you’re not used to it,” smiles Annabelle. “And if you lack the temperament to appreciate the beauty.”

“I definitely lack it,” says Jon. “Very lacking. Lacked. Can I go now?”

“You can go whenever you want,” says Annabelle. “But you’ll go without answers.”

Fuck.

He grips the arms of the chair. “Don’t make me wait, then. Get on with it.”

She doesn’t react to his sharpness. “I’m going to tell you a story, Archivist.” (And yes he is eager to hear and the Eye’s hunger rises in him and almost but not quite eclipses the terror.) “I’m going to ask you to sit still and listen to the end. You won’t understand what’s going on… at first. It’ll all be clear, soon.”

Jon checks around him, making sure nothing is trying to web him up while she talks. “All right.”

She smiles. She looks fond. She begins. “Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims ruined the world.”

She tells him, in brief, of a man so like him, but who came under the influence of the Corruption’s horrible love, and ended the world in rot and gore. And barely, the Spider and the Fears managed to escape to another universe.

“What?” he says.

She ignores that, and then she begins again. “Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims ruined the world.”

And she tells that story again—but it’s the Hunt this time, and with his power, his mind, the Everchase actually finished, creating a new and screaming ecocosm of predator and prey.

The Fears escaped the same way.

She begins the story again.

And again.

“Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims fell in love with an Avatar of the Lonely, and gave the world away in mist and heartache.”

“Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims fell in love with an Avatar of the Lightless Flame, and birthed a new age of fire and destruction.”

“Once upon a time, a man named Jonathan Sims fell in love with his Archivist, Sasha James, and in trying to save her life, gave the world to the Beholding on a silver platter.”

“I don’t understand,” he finally says, because she’s told him twenty variations, and—

“This is not our first universe, Archivist,” says Annabelle. “But we’re hoping it will be the last.”

Jon shakes. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s you,” she says. “It’s always you.”

He’s breathing too fast. “I don’t understand!”

Annabelle sighs. “Let’s try… something different. You read the statements about the Extinction, yeah?”

“The… the new Fear Adelard Dekkard postulated. Yes,” says Jon, so insanely glad to not be talking about another damned Jonathan Sims.

“He was right. Humans… when they fear something enough, it does take on form. It’s coming, the Extinction, but not for a long time yet. It’s not feared enough. Yet.”

“All right,” says Jon, following, trembling, barely breathing.

“The Mother of Machinations believes you exist because too many people began to fear… a chosen one.”

He stares at her.

“Not a good chosen one—just a used one, a manipulated one, trapped by designs too big to escape. Someone who cannot fix the ruined world they inherited. Someone who has no good choices left, and somehow, Jon, that leads to you. And no matter what we do, no matter where we flee, we can’t stop you from becoming.”

He believes her.

He knows with everything in him that she is right, that this is true, that the Eye was waiting for him to show up again, that it’s so happy he’s here, that his appearance put the world on a doomsday countdown.

And the Web couldn’t stop it? The Web? What in hell was he supposed to do?

“So kill me,” he says, head spinning with tales of apocalypse, of a fucking alternate universe secreted below the floor of this house (Under the basement? Is that where it is?). “Just kill me and prevent it!”

“We’ve tried to prevent it. We’ve killed you in your mother’s womb; we’ve kept your parents from even meeting. But you’re always born, or born again, and you always end up here.”

“Born again? Reincarnated? That’s a thing?”

“It is for you.”

“Anyone else?”

She smiles.

“I don’t want to end anything!” Jon cries.

“You sometimes do. You sometimes don’t.”

“No!” He gets up and stalks.

Back and forth.

She’s very well-spoken. He sees these lives as she tells these tales, sees every single one of the choices that lead him to each apocalypse.

And he is upset because he understands.

“No,” he snarls, he denies, he lies.

“In the last universe, you almost ended all life, everywhere—including us,” says Annabelle.

Jon stops. Stares at her.

“When you reached the end, as you always do—Beholding, this time—you’d seen too much suffering. You couldn’t bear the pain of the world, even though your Eye gave you pleasure alongside it.”

Jon flushes. He understands. It is a sick joy, a grief and triumph, all at once.

“So when we showed you our plan, to leave, to just… go away, and let you have your world back…”

He knows. “I didn’t want to curse any other universe with all of this,” he whispers.

She nods. “That. That’s what drove you. You decided instead to gently… end all life. And then we would starve, and the Dread Powers would be no more.”

And Jon can see that, has tasted despair so strong that if it lasted, he wouldn’t see any other way, and he sits again because his legs will not hold him. “What happened?” he whispers. “You’re here. So… so I didn’t do it.”

“You started to. But Martin.”

“Martin?” says Jon quietly.

“Of all the loves of your life—when you have them—you are happiest with Martin, every time.”

That sense of a thing lost, of a goodbye, washes through him again; but he doubles down over the ache. Martin is safe with Tim, or whoever he ends up with. That’s more important. “Martin stopped me?”

“To end all life would end him—and you could not bring yourself to do that..”

“What did we do?”

“Almost too late, you took our escape option, and you went… somewhere else. We don’t know where. It’s beyond our knowledge.”

“They… did they make it? Are they alive?”

“We don’t know, but the Mother thinks it’s a good chance. There were no bodies, at any rate.”

That’s staggering.

Jon swallows. He hopes they found a happy ending, wherever they are.

The questions are coming, and there is no longer any reason not to let them flow. “So… you keep saying, ‘when you’re in love.’ Are you telling me that’s a key factor?”

“It is a factor. You still bring apocalypse when not in love—based on friendship, closer than a brother. You also do it when you have no one, but when you have no one, you always choose the Dark.”

“Not the Lonely?” he says.

“No. When you have no one, Jonathan Sims, you want everyone around you to hurt—not just drift into despair.”

He hunches. That’s a side of himself he’s never seen, and he doesn’t think he wants to. “Oh,” he says, quietly.

“Those are the times we have to… well. Gertrude sometimes had the right idea,” she says with a smile.

Chop me up and throw me into the pit, he thinks, sick. “Then why don’t you just do that every time?” His eyes widen. “Am I here for that now?”

She laughs. “No. We don’t like that way. It goes against our nature, and does not feed the Mother.”

So I’m lucky they prefer manipulating me, he thinks with rising hysteria. “Fine. Fine! So. What about you? A web… apocalypse? Is that what you want?”

“We don’t want one. We like things the way they are. Neither does the End—though when you’re with Oliver Banks, it is an… interesting conclusion.”

It’s just so inane. “Like some stupid novel. The power of love.”

“The best and worst things are created out of love, including the most delicious fear—and when you are in love, you are willing to do anything. But anything isn’t so predictable. Your relationships are always too… complicated. That’s why our little escape plan is always necessary, too.”

He suddenly has to know. “Am I ever with Georgie?”

“Yes—when she’s an avatar of the End.”

“Fuck,” he says quietly. “Tim?”

“Yes. Desolation.”

And oh, Jon can see that, can feel how Tim’s wrath could carry him there, and how, if Jon were his, he would want to give him the world in embers and screams. “Wait. Are you saying being with me guarantees they get snatched up by some fear god?”

“You’re with Jared Hopworth, once,” she says, instead of answering.

“Oh, dear lord,” Jon says, and starts pacing again.

“Whenever Gerard Keay is still alive, you end up with him—and the world is given to the Beholding. Every time. You’re very well matched,” says Annabelle.

“I…” Jon swallows. “I can almost see that.” Another strange regret.

“If it helps, you’re more often tricked into ending it, or taken,” says Annabelle. “Like tonight. You have been used by the Stranger, before—once. It was ugly.”

“But you still manage to pull the ripcord and get out,” Jon snaps.

“Oh, yes.”

He wrings his hands. Trying to think. “They said I don’t have all the marks.”

“It still would have caused a rift—thirteen out of fourteen? Unstable, at best—and you have read statements of the Buried, enough to know the fear of it. While risky, it might have worked.”

Jon doesn’t want to think about the Buried, about Too Close I Cannot Breathe.

He swings back to something he has to ask, just has to know for certain: “What about Elias?”

Annabelle sighs. It may be scripted, but it’s very well performed.

“That bad, is it?”

“The one time he loved you enough not to go through with it—and it took all our help to make that happen—you did it anyway, because you knew it would make him happy.”

Jon smacks his hands over his face. Now for the painful question. “Did you do Michael?”

“We ‘did’ Michael, yes—but only in encouraging you to remind it that your death would not lead to revenge. It already liked you, conflicting with its need for wrath. It didn’t take much.”

Jon frowns. “But it’s true, what I said. That was my thought. That wasn’t—”

“When you don’t say it, it is replaced by Helen.”

Jon’s entire being lurches.

“Yes, that’s consistent, too,” says Annabelle. “And Elias, before you ask, was going to happen the moment you caught Michael’s attention. Elias assumes he has you, Jon. Just assumes. It doesn’t mean he has to reach for you—you’re an object on an arrogant man’s shelf, part of the collection, guaranteed. He doesn’t have to take you down and look at you to know you are owned.”

“But then he got jealous,” mutters Jon.

“But then he got jealous.”

Jon goes silent.

This hurts. Maybe it shouldn’t; maybe he’s being absurd. Elias is evil, and there’s been no doubt about that for years.

But some tiny part of Jon had believed him, too.

His type? No. Irreplaceable? No. You’re not a cost worth paying? Bullshit.

Elias had to violate him, force him to watch his nightmares, seduce him, just so no one else would get to play with his toy.

Jon wipes at his eyes. It hurts.

Annabelle’s tone is gentle. “Not that it matters. Every time he decides to try for you, it works.”

Jon winces. “Every time?”

She shrugs.

Jon crosses his arms, hiding himself. “I’m… pathetic.”

“No, you’re human,” says Annabelle. “The best and the worst, really. Flawed, wounded, but making choices—usually trying to be good. Needing connection is part of who you are—whether it’s romantic or not.”

“Bully for me,” he mutters.

Annabelle laughs.

Jon realizes he’s no longer panicking. “You knew all this weirdness would calm me down. Thinking about… about the people in my life.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you need the reminder that you are not alone, no matter how badly you mess up.” She shrugs. “That you can be worthy of love—and it doesn’t hurt to know that when you are in love, you’re more stubborn than almost anyone else on earth, which is important to help you actually think through your decisions.”

Jon has to laugh. “So I’m an idiot messiah.”

“Or an idiot Ragnarok, enfleshed, bringing an end to all things.”

“That isn’t better.” He rubs his face. Wants to leave, cry, rage. Break something. Sleep in the corner. He’s in shock, he realizes. This is shock.

“And that brings us… to here. A billion universes, a billion tries. It’s always you. The Mother of Webs feels you are inevitable, like she is. And we again try to keep you from ending it all.”

Inevitable. Him. What a waste of cosmic resources, he thinks.

Jon sits down and faces her.

She’s not telling him everything. There’s still the feeling of something huge, hidden just out of sight.

The Spider is still here, too, still taking up too much space, but she made a good choice in bringing Annabelle to him. In spite of himself, he likes Annabelle Cane. “So what’s your solution, then?”

“Our solution?” says Annabelle, eyes glinting.

“Yes, your solution. Don’t tell me you brought me down here just to give me dire news and send me away. ‘Oh, pack a bag, Sims, you’re probably going to end the world any day now, make sure to bring some plasters.’”

She smiles. “We have decided to try… a different tack.”

“Well?” he says.

“Your life usually heads toward tragedy.”

He sighs, slumps. “I’m not surprised.”

“You also know what is at stake now,” she says.

“Only everything.”

“Yes. So we are going to send you home.”

“What? To wh— of course. the Institute.”

“You’ll have decisions to make there. We’ll be prepared for all of them.”

“What, you can’t tell me what I’m going to decide?” he snaps.

“Not if you’re going to mean them. They have to come from you.”

Oh, good, frustration is now taking the place of more fear. “Give me some sort of clue! Please!”

The Spider shifts. Jon shudders at the sensation of something that complex, that wildly complicated, communicating in human terms, like entire worlds stuffed into a pocket.

Annabelle’s eyes lid. “Apotheosis.”

He blinks at her. “That’s my clue? That’s Michael’s word, for his failed ritual!”

She laughs. “Jonathan Sims… you always want to have your cake and eat it, too, but you never do. This time, for once, maybe you actually should.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” he snarls, then rubs his face, trying to imagine showing up at the Institute this late at night. “Elias is going to be furious.”

“It won’t matter soon.”

“Wh… why, are you going to kill him?” says Jon in horror.

Annabelle laughs. She laughs, and it is light, and somehow free in a way that seems so real in spite of what he thinks she is, and she shakes her head. “It’s time to go, Jonathan Sims. Good luck.”

“Y… you have to give me more than that,” he says, hating that he begs, but what else is there to do? “Please!”

“You have what you need—and all your questions will be answered soon,” she says. “I promise. And I kept my word last time, didn’t I?”

She did.

He laughs weakly. “For what it’s worth, you were right. This would have distracted the hell out of me.”

Annabelle Cane laughs. She’s still chuckling as he goes up the stairs, staggering more than a little, and finds a car driven by someone who’s Web, someone who won’t ask questions, and happily, keeps the radio down low.

It’s a good hour to the Institute.

Jon has no idea what he’s going to do.

Everything has been so crazy that Jon hasn’t had a chance to process that the Unknowing is done.

They did it. He won.

Everyone lived. He chooses to believe Tim will be fine, and Michael will be fine (oh gods, Michael—

Keep it together, Sims, you can’t help it by freaking out.)

All these things are good—but it’s not over. He’d thought it would be over.

All his inertia was to get him to the post-ritual place, and now…

It’s nearly midnight when he arrives at the steps of the Institute. The driver just nods and leaves—not a word said, not a tip needed. Jon hopes Spiders pay well.

He stares up at the old building, elegant, nightmares housed in stone, and wonders how many more stories he could have gotten out of Annabelle if he’d pushed to ask more.

The Eye wanted more. Jon wanted more.

Probably why the Spider was there, he thinks as he climbs. Wasn’t about to bully anybody with that breathing down my neck.

He gets to the top, pats down his pockets, realizes he has no keys. He must have lost them somewhere along the way.

He checks the door. Locked.

“Damn it, why did you bring me here?” he mutters, kicking the door in an annoyed and tired sort of way.

“Didn’t,” says Breekon behind him.

“But we sure are sending you somewhere,” says Hope, and they are angry, and their good humor is gone, and they catch him before he can so much as reach the stairs again, lift him in the air before he can even scream, throw him hard into the mouth of the open coffin.

Jon screams.

He crashes down impossible stone steps into a hole that doesn’t exist, a stairway so narrow that his fall wedges him sideways and upside down, and then they close that lid, leaving him in the choking dark.

(part eighteen)

#tma au #tma fanfic #tma fic #jonathan sims #tma annabelle #annabelle cane #annabelle cain #tma spoilers #and eat it too #tma web #tma the web #the web

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