#and how difficult it is to trust your own decisions when you've been manipulated since the second you were 'born'
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The Crow’s Funeral Snippet: Jon Gets Involved In Local Politics, Regrets It
Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side of the door.
Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.
She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.
“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”
“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”
Annabelle pinched the bridge of her nose. Jon noticed that she was even wearing her usual all-black lipstick and winged eyeliner. “The council committee for London I planned for today. Remember? The one with a representative for each Entity?” Jon stared blankly at her. “There was an invite?”
“Oh, that. I don’t check my mail.” Jon looked at Daisy, who was now pressing aggressively against Jon. “Did you open up any mail recently?” Daisy barked. Jon looked back at Annabelle. “She ate it.”
“...of course she did.”
Written for no real reason besides for the fact that I know too much about my own AU and I care about Annabelle. This story takes place both pre- and post- story: six months after Jon enters London, and six months after the events of the story. We talk about childhood/adulthood, stagnancy/growth, good/evil, and the inherent metaphor of a Nintendo DS. Sometimes...found family...is bad.
Rest under the cut.
In the third month, boiling and bubbling over, someone knocked at Jon’s door.
Not the door to his office. The door to his flat, which had a very large ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’ sign on it, and was always locked. The employees were, granted, Jon and Daisy, but the message was conveyed. Jon saw the sign in stores and copied it, as he copied many aspects of business models. Jon didn’t quite understand how to run a business, but he had read both ‘What they teach you in Harvard Business School’ - whatever a Harvard was - and ‘What they don’t teach you in Harvard Business School’, so he figured he was set. Daisy had also grabbed him a Girl Scout book on starting your own lemonade stand, which helped more than the other two books combined. Harvard Business School could take notes.
Jon rolled off the bed, where he had been downloading knowledge of string games and trying to figure out how to do them. Omniscence was closer to reading an instruction manual than actually knowing how to do something, but at least that left Jon with plenty of time to learn skills. Even if it wasn’t necessarily his favorite activity - he was bad at a lot of them, which would frustrate him and make him wreck the craft. Daisy kept on saying he needed a hobby other than reading but what did she know, anyway -
Daisy, from where she had been sleeping at the foot of the bed, lifted her head and barked sleepily.
“I’ll get them to go away,” Jon promised. Or eat them. Maybe just eat them.
But when Daisy bristled and jumped off the bed, barking heavily, he knew who it was. Jon sighed, hastily shoving a shirt over his head, and undid the three deadbolts before unlocking the door.
Annabelle, of course, was standing on the other side. Slightly less obviously, she was dressed in a finely tailored suit, complete with high heels and a gorgeous dripping silver chain-link necklace. Her hair was tied up in an up-do of braids piled neatly on top of her head, and there was even a briefcase.
She looked Jon up and down critically. He was wearing sweatpants and a holey shirt.
“You forgot,” she condemned, “didn’t you?”
“No I didn’t,” Jon said reflexively. He paused. “Forgot what?”
Annabelle pinched the bridge of her nose. Jon noticed that she was even wearing her usual all-black lipstick and winged eyeliner. “The council committee for London I planned for today. Remember? The one with a representative for each Entity?”
Jon stared blankly at her.
“There was an invite?”
“Oh, that. I don’t check my mail.” Jon looked at Daisy, who was now pressing aggressively against Jon. “Did you open up any mail recently?” Daisy barked. Jon looked back at Annabelle. “She ate it.”
“...of course she did.” Annabelle glanced down at Daisy, whose fur was standing on end as she growled lowly. “Have you had any success?”
“You would have noticed if I did,” Jon said shortly.
“Have you tried talking to -”
“Yes,” Jon snapped, “but apparently some of us have better things to do than attend meetings and cure dogs.”
Annabelle intelligently dropped the matter, instead frowning at Jon. He crossed his arms, fighting the urge to hunch over away from her dark and perceptive stare. But instead of pushing him, she said, “Go get dressed in something a little appropriate, please. You look like you crawled out of the Buried.” Daisy barked, which Annabelle ignored. “What are you doing to your hair?”
Jon hunched defensively. It was a little matted and frizzy, but who was counting? “Daisy can’t exactly shave it anymore, and I don’t really...know what to do with it...am I doing something wrong? I bathe.”
It was very important to Daisy that he bathe and brush his teeth. Jon didn’t know what the big deal was, but if it was important to her then he did it.
Annabelle just pinched the bridge of her nose again, checking her wrist-watch. “Buzzing your hair is a crime against God, and letting your hair look like that is a crime against me. I’ll take care of this later. Just get ready in the next five minutes, or I’m filling your fridge with spiders again.”
Jon got ready in four. Annabelle didn’t joke around with that stuff.
He didn’t really know what a council committee was. He didn’t know why he had to go to one either, seeing as Jon only tended to concern himself with Daisy. Daisy had been taking up a lot of his concern lately. Then his mood had plummeted again, and in the last month they’ve both been recalcitrant to leave the flat for anything but eating, and he was capable of noticing when he was hunting a little vindictively, and - anyway.
He downloaded the knowledge, and then made a face when it didn’t really help. One of those nasty little political things. What was with his fellow Avatars and politics? Just torture anyone who bothers you. If they were one of those freaks who liked being tortured, then just smite them. Life was easy and very simple once you remembered that basic rule.
But Annabelle was really into it - she kept on saying something about ‘order’ and ‘regulation’ and ‘first dibs’ - and she tended to drag him along into these things. She thought it was ‘important’ that Jon ‘know what was going on’ or something. Jon liked Knowing things, but once you know everything you realize that some things aren’t really interesting enough to know.
When he asked Daisy if she wanted to go with, she feigned sleep. She had been hyperactive lately, compensating for her months of starvation with unbridled and frantic Hunting. Jon had taken her to one of those little pockets where people were running around and screaming all the time, and let her run wild in the rainforest for a while. It was the kind of fun bonding experience they hadn’t had in ages, and Jon had the opportunity to pluck his own grapes from the vine too.
There had been an old man who really hadn’t been happy to see Jon, which had freaked him out a bit. He had started going on a little bit about how Jon had ruined his life, but he only got a few sentences in before a giant, carnivorous plant had eaten him. That was lucky.
Jon had ripped the dimension apart as he left. Nasty little place. Nothing good there.
So Jon left the house without Daisy for the first time since she had been well enough to move around, and with Annabelle. Daisy had been waiting at the door with a rucksack packed with his favorite book and his Nintendo DS, which made Annabelle ask her where the juicebox was. Daisy tried to bite her again. Jon didn’t know why everybody couldn’t just get along.
There was a cab waiting outside, driven by another skeleton, and Annabelle quickly bundled him into it. Jon slouched in the corner and started playing WarioWare as Annabelle leafed through typewritten documents, lips pursing and making notes on the margins of each one with a red pen. She was muttering to herself, somewhat entertainingly.
“My fourth arm for a computer, I swear to Jesus. My fourth and fifth arms. My sixth arm for a computer…”
“Are those the internet machines you told me about?” Jon asked, scribbling his stylus on the screen. Ashley cheered him on. He loved Ashley. “Do council committees need the internet?”
“The internet’s for a lot more than council committees Jon,” Annabelle said tightly. “They’re for video games. Ememoharepeegees -”
“Gesundheit.”
“ - bitcoin mining, instant messaging, online dating, freaking Google Docs -”
“Do you want it back?” Jon asked, bored. “I can make you the internet.”
Annabelle’s pen froze on the paper, hovering over a bullet-point list. “The entire internet? You can just do that?”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” Jon poked his tongue out his mouth in concentration as he pressed the monkeys in a rhythmic order. Rhythm games were his jam. “That’s, like, the pocket nightmare dimension from Tron, right? I can do that. Addictions are easy. Put people inside, trap them inside a video or something. It’d be mostly for torture but you could probably use it normally.”
Annabelle stared at him, expression blank, for so long it made Jon a little uncomfortable and defensive. What had he said wrong? Daisy was usually good at interpreting these things for him, although sometimes when people went on about ‘violence’ she was just as confused as him. Finally, she said, “No, that’s alright. I always hated Black Mirror anyway.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a telly - never mind. I don’t want you getting any more ideas.”
***
The council committee was held in the stupidest building Jon had ever seen in his entire life. And he had been in London for six months. He knew stupid buildings.
‘London City Hall’ or whatever was this awful giant, lopsided, obloid monstrosity. All glass and windows, with nary a brick in sight, Jon hated it instantly and severely. He was immediately filled with the urge to turn to somebody and commiserate with them about shitty architecture, but there was nobody else in the cab but Annabelle - and, well, she seemed to have other things on her mind.
The neighborhood around it was filled with a mix of equally stupid buildings and perfectly respectable buildings that looked as if they had been made a long time ago. The sidewalks were relatively abandoned, and the streets were empty of everything but the endless rotation of tourist double-decker busses. Jon knew that this wasn’t one of those districts where people actually lived and roamed - instead, it was one of those business districts that people only stepped inside for work or city business. Like that silly little Palace of Westminster building that Annabelle had taken him to months ago when she was showing him the city.
That building Annabelle had especially loved. It was filled with old white men with sagging jowls and liver spots, looping in endless routines and miniature atrocities. Annabelle had asked him to take as many Statements as possible, and Jon had needed no encouraging.
That had been a strange trip. Normally people found his little monologues boring, because they were idiots with no taste, but Annabelle had listened to every single one. She had been enraptured, excited and triumphant. She had dragged him into some “Lord’s Chamber” or something and posed on the throne as Jon obediently took polaroids. Well, so long as she was happy.
Jon was already seeing that London City Hall was no better. Annabelle dragged him through it, anxiously checking and re-checking her files, as they effortlessly weaved between shambling zombies of old white men in suits. Jon tasted the ripe air of trauma from them - a similar taste to that spiralling academic building, but rather a little more tart - but Annabelle dragged him away before he could stop and eat them.
There were parts of London that were safe. Maybe even most of London - although nowhere was truly safe, not really, not every location was absolutely haunted. The grocer’s was the grocer’s; the chemist still sold your medication. Not that you really needed it anymore, but habit was habit.
But some buildings, which were entrenched so firmly in hundreds of years of evil, could not be dissuaded from their nightmares. In that respect, the safest city in the United Kingdom became the most dangerous. Some buildings had been nightmares even before the end of the world.
Jon, of course, gave very little shits about this beyond in the academic sense. Annabelle refused to let him duck out of her meeting to go snack, and she ended up dragging him in front of what looked like a smallish conference room.
Annabelle stopped in front of it, taking a second to breathe in and out and check her makeup. She seemed to be hyping herself up for it, shaking out her arms loosely. Jon slouched behind her, hands jammed in his trenchcoat pockets. Annabelle had asked him to put on a less raggedy suit, but - well, he sometimes had nicer suits, but they got raggedy very quickly. She had also asked him to leave the trenchcoat at home, but no way. It was part of his Look.
“You’re frightened,” Jon noted with interest. Annabelle was scared of less than he was, and she had much less of a reason. “What about this room scares you?”
“It’s not the people in the room,” Annabelle snapped, flashing her compact shut. “It’s what I’m trying to do. If this world’s going to last more than a few years before it devolves into fuckin’ Mad Max we need leadership. I didn’t put all of this work in just to -” At Jon’s blank look, she sighed. “Never mind. You don’t care. Just - try to trust me, Jon.”
“Of course I trust you,” Jon said, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I?”
She stared at him, expression inscrutable, for a long moment, before opening the door and pulling him in.
It was a nice conference room, all wood panelling and that specific green shade you only saw in lawyer’s offices. There was a large rectangular table in the center, and more than a dozen luxurious chairs arranged around it. There was a big pull-down screen on the far wall. Jon didn’t know what it was for, but he knew that if he downloaded the information it wouldn’t help. Omniscence was so useless.
In a move that horrified Annabelle, most of the attendees seemed to be there. They had been chatting - talking, actually, quite loudly - before Annabelle strode in and Jon slumped in after her. But in the second that they both stepped in, an abrupt hush swept the room, and every eye swiveled to them.
If Jon was honest with himself, he’d say that they didn’t quiet when Annabelle stepped in. He’d say that they quieted when Jon stepped in. That it was Jon who they were looking at.
But Jon didn’t particularly feel like engaging with that. He didn’t like being stared at by people he didn’t know, and he didn’t like being out in public with people he didn’t know. He didn’t enjoy being in buildings or meeting new people, much less going to boring meetings. Jon decided all of this instantaneously, as every eye swiveled to him.
Rooms full of humans were fine. It was just humans. Nothing even vaguely intimidating about that, unless the humans were teenage girls. But these were Avatars - Jon could taste their nature in the air, a sharp and electric tingle - and when they stared at Jon he felt something heavier in their gaze. Oh, lord. There was a teenage girl here.
Jon tried slumping to the back chair, but Annabelle grabbed his collar and dumped him in a comfortable chair to her right. Jon saw a little placard in front of it that read ‘THE BEHOLDING’. Great.
“Thank you all for coming today,” Annabelle said crisply, and suddenly every worry was gone. She was calm, poised, confident, and professional. A perfect imitation of the officials and politicians who once really walked these halls, who passed laws and rubber-stamped policies. She could have passed for an assistant or junior staff member, bright and intrepid and ready to climb her way up the ladder. “Are we all accounted for?”
It seemed so. Every chair but one was filled. When Jon peered around at the placards, he saw that each one had a different Entity on it. One of the seats had no placard, and was occupied by said teenage girl. Four were unoccupied: the Spiral, the Slaughter, the Hunt and the Extinction.
Annabelle sat down in the head chair, which seemed just a little fancier. She put her folder in front of her, eyes flickering down the room. “It seems that Helen couldn’t make it. The Hunt duo seem to have...recently met unfortunate ends. The Slaughter Avatar called ahead to say that they couldn’t make it - it was high school picture day? And...I suppose the Extinction Avatar still doesn’t exist.”
She glanced at Jon, who shook his head. “Do you want one?” Jon asked. “I can go find a climate change denier in this building and make one for you.”
That also disturbed Annabelle, as well as everyone else. Jon abruptly felt awkward, and hunched in his seat. He defensively pulled out his DS, his plans to fall asleep in the back of the room already foiled.
Above him, Annabelle continued droning. “Still, I appreciate you all coming. I know that we haven’t all gathered since a bit after the apocalypse began -” Wait, they had? Since when? “ - but I hope we can agree that further coordination is necessary. We’ve already begun having serious territory and jurisdiction disputes, and it’s best that they’re resolved sooner rather than later.” Nobody looked very impressed, but Annabelle looked seriously at them all anyway. “I want us all to have an equal voice at this table. Save the fighting for another time. And please try to keep your powers out of here. I’ve already sworn to avoid using any of my Mother’s gifts in this room, and I hope you all can do the same.”
“Yeah?” A woman drawled. She was unfamiliar to Jon, like most people in the room, but she had a teenage girl sitting next to her who seemed to be paying rapt attention to Annabelle. “How are you going to enforce that?”
Annabelle stared at him for some reason. Jon jabbed at his DS and won the Mona minigame. Nothing more was said.
“Alright, then. I’ve already collected motions from all of you prior to this meeting.” Motions? Annabelle hadn’t said anything like that. Maybe it was on the invitation Daisy ate, but somehow he doubted it. Annabelle looked down and traced her finger down to her first point. “Many of you suggested this, so I would like to introduce it as a general discussion. Territory disputes, apparently, are a point of contention between many of us.” She opened her briefcase and pulled out a large map, and if Jon looked over the top of his DS he could see that it was a map of London. She also pulled out a red marker, uncapping it. The sheet was laminated, and there were already circles and markings all over it. “We’ll go one at a time. Amherst, you’ve motioned that the Stranger is intruding within Camden.”
A foppish looking man on a dumb little top hat scowled, as the young woman sitting behind the Strange placard looked annoyed. “It is gentrification. Every apartment complex occupied by artist studios are stealing food from the plate of my insects.”
“You haven’t had Camden for a decade,” the Stranger woman said, rolling her eyes. The Omniscience informed Jon that her name was Sarah Baldwin. Vaguely familiar - had he seen her at a cafe? “Nobody lives in those rat-infested tenements anymore. Now all the rats are performance art. Which is us. Get over it.”
“What is performance art -”
“Motion for no more Avatars over the age of 40,” Sarah Baldwin said. “I hate how Amherst and Wakely are in this room.”
“I wish I could second that,” Annabelle said, to the great affront of two grimy old men, “but unfortunately we do have to deal with this. Amherst, I’ve heard several complaints from other council members that you’re infiltrating their territory.”
“I am made of bugs -”
Jon checked out after that.
Instead, he surveyed the room a bit. Nobody in it was really interesting, just a meaningless collection of self-important people. The only person in the room other than Annabelle who he recognized was Oliver, who was sitting at the very back doing his best to fall asleep. When Jon Stared at him a bit he took notice and subtly waved. Jon shyly waved back. Jon liked Oliver.
Oliver mouthed something adjacent to ‘what is wrong with your hair’, offending Jon grievously. He didn’t look that bad, did he?
He glanced to his left, then down, to ask Daisy’s opinion, but he realized too late that she hadn’t come with him. Stupid. She could have come as part of the Hunt - they didn’t have anybody, it wasn’t as if they could complain. Not to Jon, anyway.
But she wouldn’t have wanted to. Daisy hated being an Avatar, for reasons that Jon had just never understood. She tried explaining it to him a long time ago, trying to talk about how guilty it made her and how much harm she had done, but it had just confused him more. She had tried to explain up until the end, as Jon had grown more and more angry at her for her refusal. He had never understood.
She had stopped talking about it lately, though. Which was good. Jon didn’t know what he’d do if she starved herself twice. He wouldn’t have tolerated it.
Daisy had told him that the most important thing in the world was to make your own choices. So he let her make hers. No matter how much he hated it.
The others weren’t familiar at all. There was a woman with wild dark hair sitting behind the Dark placard, which confused Jon slightly until he decided that they likely hadn’t wanted to send the thirteen year old. There was this really wrinkly and gross old man for the Vast, a younger looking but older feeling man for the Buried, a deathly pale woman for the Lonely, the muscular woman and the teenager for the Desolation...why did they have two…
The teenager was staring at Jon. She had intense orange eyes, the kind that bored into you and never blinked. She looked away every few seconds, as if she was being subtle, but when her gaze drifted back to him again he met her eyes with an unimpressed stare. She squeaked and looked away firmly, hiding behind her curtain of long red hair.
Okay. Whatever. Kids were weird. Jon was glad he had never been one.
Jon swapped out WarioWare for Pokemon SoulSilver, opening back up where he left off catching another MissingNo. His entire team was full of the things. He wanted a Mareep, damn it.
Finally, Annabelle rapped the table sharply and said, “It’s agreed, then. Everybody submit specific written documentation of your territory by city block, and fax it to me by our next meeting. Please abide by the resolutions to the conflicts we discussed here. Any objections to moving onto our next order of business?”
“I have an objection to the Dark’s questionable behavior,” the Buried guy rumbled. He was dripping dirt everywhere. Why didn’t anybody complain to him about his hygiene? “In the words of the lad Brody, they are kill stealing. If they do not withdraw their nightmares from our embrace of the Earth, we will unleash retribution with extreme prejudice. The dirt is a holy place, and we will not be polluted by -”
“Oh, stick your shovel up your fat ass, Wakely,” the woman with wild black hair said. “People aren’t afraid of the fucking dirt, they’re afraid of the darkness in the tombs. Walk into a mausoleum sometime.”
“You poach the End’s territory now too, wench?”
“Please leave me out of this,” Oliver said.
“If you call me wench one more time, you’ll be watching the back of your eye sockets for eternity,” the woman said pleasantly, “so royally fuck you.”
“Um, not to interrupt, but that’s not really how it works,” the teenager said, and the death glares between the two turned on her. She hunched her shoulders, but her expression stayed firm. “The terror is going to overlap. That’s just how it is. The Buried and the Dark are not entirely...separate things, they’re gradients that overlap. If you get all finicky about what belongs to who, then you’re just going in circles…”
“The last thing we need is the coward Messiah of the Eternal Flame telling me how to worship my god,” the woman snapped.
“Watch your fucking mouth, Manuela,” the muscular woman said flatly.
Then they were glaring, and Wakely was saying something else snide, and Manuela was making another dig at the teenager as the muscular woman bitched, and Jon abruptly wanted them all to shut up.
“You’re being too loud,” Jon said.
The entire room shut up immediately. The teenager opened her mouth, but the pale woman caught her eye and shook her head.
Annabelle clapped her hands in the silence. “Onto the second motion, then! Infrastructure! Right now we are sorely missing a great deal of essential city infrastructure, and it’s becoming a huge problem. We’re still figuring out what’s mystically maintained, and what’s just being maintained because the humans haven’t figured out how to stop doing it yet, but there’s some work that’s being neglected. The Vast has motioned to reinstate the postal system.”
“Vetoed,” the Lonely woman said.
“You can’t do that,” Annabelle said blankly. “We need to vote.”
“I’d like to make an argument for the motion, dear,” the Vast man said, making Annabelle’s eye twitch. “My argument is this: Amazon Prime is so convenient!”
“We have every Amazon warehouse under our control,” the representative from the Flesh said. He was...very fleshy. “It’d be no issue to go back to production.”
“Jared has a point. The Eye’s been feeding through Amazon for years,” Annabelle said thoughtfully. The mention of the Eye piqued Jon’s attention, but then he finally ran into a Mareep and he stopped paying attention again. “We can tap into the people who are living 1984 and get them back in industry.”
“Can we begin producing again?” the Desolation woman asked, interested. “We have all these people miserable at work, but nothing’s actually being made. If we let a little reality break into the nightmares…”
“Wouldn’t that be dangerous?” the Lonely woman asked sharply. “It’ll make it easier for them to escape.”
“They all escape eventually,” Sarah Baldwin said. “They all break out in days to months. We can afford a little more permeability if we actually get things working again.”
Then conversation was off and running about something that Jon didn’t really care about, so he checked out again. He didn’t know what all of this production and infrastructure stuff meant. Going Postal meant that he had a very good understanding of a mail system, but he didn’t have a personal interest. Who he would send letters to?
Jon quickly downloaded what Amazon was. Oh, that would be useful. Wait, he could get any book delivered to his door? Without having to go out hunting for it? How would this work without the internet - a catalogue?
Everybody seemed invested in getting the internet back up, except for the two hundred year olds. Jared kept saying something about porn, whatever that was. If enough people felt like Annabelle, then maybe they would make it a priority. Jon didn’t know how he felt about that.
He didn’t know how he felt about the fact that it was impossible.
But everybody - or most people - genuinely seemed excited about it. They even seemed to be working together, intent on the same goal.
Sarah Baldwin wanted to know if we have enough people constantly under camera to have footage for television. Maybe we could get cable back up? DVDs were a lost cause, but if we could just start airing the VHS tapes…
Annabelle had a look of hook-ups (literally) in the film industry, maybe they could do something like that?
The Hahns are highly involved in production and distribution, Jared pointed out. There was no need to produce food, but if we wanted to increase access to goods it might be possible.
Why? Why did they care? This world provided them everything they needed.
For some reason, Jon felt a little defensive. What did they need all of these things for, anyway? All of this entertainment - cable and movies and internet. The world had books. What was so wrong with books? There were even old VHS tapes liberated from charity stores if you really wanted to get fancy. The most high-tech electronic Jon had ever found was the DS in his hands and a couple of games, which Salasea had given to him as an exotic artifact. Only Salasea owned these things now: trinkets and curiosities, hallmarks of an antiquated time.
What was the point of these supply lines? People didn’t need to eat or shop or consume. Nightmares provided the facsimile, and since they got a little crazy if they never ate they were provided the security of food. Buying towels and shoes and toys...it was a waste of time. People had towels. Nobody outgrew their shoes or wore them out. Children’s toys didn’t break, and anything that made happiness a little easier to come by was discouraged.
Nothing was ever subtracted. Nothing was added. The world was frozen, captured in the amber of time, and it would never move backwards and forwards.
They knew this. Didn’t they?
“We have to make this place livable for us,” Annabelle was saying. She spoke oddly intensely, with a fervor that Jon had seen in her a few times before. Annabelle didn’t like to give off the impression that she cared about things, but once you knew her it was hard to miss. “It’s easier than ever to stay powerful and feed our Forces, but that doesn’t mean we can grow complacent. We have to work together to eat sustainably. To live sustainably. If we don’t try to rebuild, at least enough to get the world moving again, then we’re sentencing ourselves to a boring and decrepit eternity in a world we will all see die within our immortal lifetimes.”
Everyone at the table was nodding. They looked determined. United. Almost...they held an expression that Jon just couldn’t name. An emotion he didn’t understand.
He had seen it in Daisy, once. She had called it hope. He hadn’t understood back then. He still didn’t.
“Liar,” Jon said, as his minigame timed out and the game over music tinkled across the tinny speakers.
Annabelle looked at him, expression inscrutable. “These problems are legitimate, Archivist. The writing’s clearly on the wall, and -”
“You’re all so stupid,” Jon complained, and Annabelle abruptly stopped talking to glare at him. Whatever. Jon had lost all patience. He closed his DS and dropped it on the table, resigning himself to talking. Jon hated public speaking, especially in front of so many people he didn’t know and, frankly, creeped him out. “You can’t build anything in this world. If you try to impose a cute little government then it’ll break down into cannibalism or something.”
“Would you know, Archivist?” Jared asked evenly.
“Jonah didn’t enact this world through myself for living,” Jon said, bored, and everybody stared at him with wide eyes. “We created it for suffering. Suffering isn’t living.”
“One might say the opposite,” the Vast man said, somehow twinkingly. “Suffering is an unavoidable side effect of living, isn’t it?”
“Is that philosophy? I don’t understand philosophy.” Jon wasn’t very good with anything that required extensive and complex thought. Which made sense - Jonah hadn’t exactly created him to think. “Humanity has clouded your minds. Makes all of you irrational and sentimental. Release your attachment to the old world. Just accept the way things are now.” Jon shrugged. “It’s not as if you can do anything about it.”
“Nobody in this room is exactly human, Jon,” Oliver pointed out placidly.
Jon snorted. “Wanting free porn back? You’re all dripping with it.” It was honestly a little sad. “The only ones in this world free of that weakness are Jonah and I. And he’s the only one who could do any of this.”
“Then where is he?” the Desolation woman snapped. She leaned forward, hands gripping the table in anger. The teenager watched her anxiously. “Why doesn’t he come on down from his high tower and explain what’s going on? We’re in the fucking dark here!”
“I’m sorry,” Jon said coldly, “who are you?”
He rubbed his bad hand. For some reason, everybody watched him do so. He stopped, self-conscious.
“Prejudiced remarks aside,” Manuela said. She had been hostile all day, but she now spoke cautiously. “Jonah Magnus needs to take responsibility for this. We don’t even know how the world ended.”
Several people glanced at Annabelle, whose lips thinned. “I shouldn’t say.”
Of course she knew. And of course she wasn’t about to tell him. Whatever. Jon didn’t care. Past was the past.
He found his hand clenching. There was a strange tension in his throat. He didn’t care. He didn’t. Rehashing the worst pain he had ever felt in his life, even now, wasn’t really worth the time or energy. He didn’t care.
“No use crying over spilled milk,” the Vast guy said lightly. “But it is a relevant question. Jonah frequently spoke of his plans, and I realize now that he had never truly shown all of his cards. But he had always held an intention to...well, rule. It’s only in this moment of his victory that he shows no interest.”
“Jonah’s busy,” Jon snapped. “Trust me, you don’t want that arse around. He never even gives me directions, and I’m his right hand.”
“Or his puppet,” Sarah Baldwin muttered.
It was fair. Probably even true. So why did an intense and burning fury shoot through Jon?
“What gives this child the right to dictate us?” Wakely demanded. Jon’s hands clenched on the table until his knuckles turned white. “What gives Jonah Magnus the right to rule us?”
“He’s not much of a ruler,” Amherst grunted. “My vote’s that we rule this world in a council.”
“Administration is important,” Annabelle said, impossibly terse, “but unless anyone here actually has the means to seize control, then there’s no use voting on it.”
“There’s only one Avatar here who has those means,” Manuela said darkly, crossing her arms and looking straight at Jon. “So why doesn’t he do anything?”
They were feeding on each other. They wouldn’t have said these - these treasonous things by themselves. But when one person spoke up, the next felt empowered, and they felt as if they outnumbered him. Jonah Magnus was hardly there to press him into obedience - why buckle under his oppressive gaze? What could he do?
The stupidest people in this world all gathered in one room. It took a special level of arrogance, pride, and stupidity to assume that one was more powerful than Jonah Magnus.
“I’m not in charge of anything,” Jon said tersely. “I don’t even have a domain. I’m just trying to live my life.”
The Desolation woman snorted. “Typical. You’re rolling over for Jonah.”
Jon’s eyes widened - not in surprise, but in anger.
The teenager seemed a little uncomfortable. “Jude,” she hissed, “I don’t think -”
“Jude,” Jon breathed. “So that’s your name.”
He was standing up. Jon didn’t remember standing up. Everybody was leaning away, their own eyes wide. Some just looked confused, slightly perturbed - Wakely, Amherst. Others looked ready to bolt - Manuela, the old man from the Vast. Jon knew, in a flash of insight that grew hotter and hotter, that he preferred to be called Simon.
“Sit down, Jon,” Annabelle said, as authoritative and no-nonsense as ever. Normally he’d listen to her, respecting that she usually knew what was going on far better than he ever did. But the words barely reached him, drowned out by the rushing in his ears. “Look, we can talk about this rationally, alright?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Jude said. She snorted, burning red eyes never leaving Jon’s. “As if I’m scared of this baby prick.”
“Maybe we can move on from Jonah Magnus,” Simon said quickly. “A discussion of airspace rights, perhaps -”
“Jon,” Oliver said, voice creased in worry, “are you okay?”
“This is the all-powerful demigod you all warned me about?” Amherst said. He was dripping with condescension, just like - just like everyone else - “He’s little more than a child.”
“Guys!” the teenager’s voice rang through the room, close to scared. “The walls are melting!”
So they were. It was as if the stone and wood was made of wax, sent guttering by a sputtering candle. Wood and finish were already pooling on the floor, melting the rolling wheel of Jared’s chair and forcing him to jump up from it.
“Jon!” Annabelle said sharply. “Don’t throw a tantr -”
The table cracked sharply. It was warping, twisting in on itself as if it was a wrung towel. Jon realized, too late to care, that his hair was rising. He knew his eyes were spinning, an eternal churning wheel.
“Fuck this, meeting adjourned.” Manuela stood up sharply, pushing her chair back into a melting bubble. The floor was beginning to bubble and warp. “See you all next month.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Simon said quickly, standing up too.
“You have two minutes,” Jon said, voice heavy with static. “Don’t bother me about this shit again.”
The signal was clear enough. Jude rose from her chair, grabbing her teenager’s elbow and pushing her out the door. The others followed in their wake, expressions carefully neutral. It was useless: Jon could taste their fear, their trepidation. Even better: their anger, barely brindled fury, and disgust.
They couldn’t do anything about it, Jon thought giddily. No matter how much they hated or were scared of him, they couldn’t do anything about it. Jon was powerful. Jon couldn’t be hurt. Jon couldn’t -
Jon couldn’t reign this in.
Before he knew it, the conference room was empty. Only two other people remained: Annabelle, expression as inscrutable as ever, and an uncomfortable Oliver. His hands were stuck in the pockets of his pea coat, and he was looking around with disaffected interest - as if he was standing in line at a Starbucks in rush hour instead of in the epicenter of a melting building.
Jon knew. The entire building was dissolving. It was teeming with humans, lost and trapped and defenseless. He didn’t want to kill them. Jon didn’t like hurting people. He heard a voice speak in his head, foreign and familiar. Bring it in, Jon.
But he couldn’t. His hair would fall back around his shoulders, and the static rushing through his ears just wouldn’t abate. It felt like everything was pouring out of him, a relentless faucet that wouldn’t stop churning out thick streams of putrid water.
Jon fisted his hands in his hair, groaning. “Where’s -”
“She’s at your flat,” Annabelle said calmly. “Do you want me to get her?”
No. No, this was too embarrassing. He was an adult, he could handle this. Jon groaned again and sank into his seat, saved from the toxic waste of glass and brick. “No. Focus on getting the humans out of here.”
“What do you care?” Oliver asked, vaguely curious. “You don’t seem that fond of humanity.”
“Just do it!” Jon snapped, instead of admitting that he didn’t know either.
Eventually, the room stopped melting. Jon didn’t even want to think about how difficult it would be to leave the building. He could probably straighten out the hallways just enough to help Annabelle and Oliver get out.
Ugh. This place had sunk straight into Helen’s domain. He could taste it in the air: any future human who wandered in would be stuck in an endless spiral of twisted, melted hallways. Probably flavored with...powerlessness and fear. Feeling very small, as someone very large loomed down on you. Tories.
At least he hadn’t sucked flattened the building into one plane again, robbing it of all spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. Jon had done that to a graveyard once. The place was putrid now. He had accidentally fallen into a grave and panicked and - anyway.
He rested his forehead on the warped and splintered conference table, waiting for his throat to open back up and the rushing in his ears to die down. Finally, after what felt like forever, his hair floated back down and he felt his eyes resume their normal shape.
Awkward silence loomed. Jon sighed. “Sorry.”
“I worked hard to arrange this, you know,” Annabelle said.
“Yeah.”
“I am not happy with you, Jon,” Annabelle said.
“Sorry,” Jon said miserably. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I mean,” Oliver said, after a beat, “that’s kind of terrifying. That you can melt a building on accident. Like, what would happen if you got really pissed at Manchester or something?”
“Goodbye, Manchester,” Annabelle muttered.
Jon lifted his head, glaring blearily at Oliver. “If you think that’s crazy, you should have been there the one time I opened up an extradimensional gate and unleashed nightmare terrors into the world, rendering all of humanity immortal and eternally trapped in endless infernal hellscapes.”
Oliver shrugged, conceding the point.
But Annabelle just looked thoughtful. Probably reworking five billion plans, knowing her. Jon didn’t want to know, because he didn’t care. Let her do whatever she wanted. None of his business. Hopefully, after this disaster, she’d keep it out of his business.
Finally, she asked, “Was that true? That there’s no moving us forward?”
Jon sighed. He really didn’t want to talk about this anymore. But if he didn’t tell her then she’d just bug him about it later, or find some way to get the information out of him that would be both convoluted and unpleasant. “I’m not saying that people can’t...live their lives. They’re obviously still going to work and typing in every digit of pi into their spreadsheets for eight hours and then going home to stare, hypnotized, into cable television. But I am saying that there’s no achieving more than that. There’s no going backwards, and there’s no going forwards. The past is closed to us, and so is the future.” He eyed her warily. “If you have any cute time travel ideas, forget it.”
“I would never,” Annabelle said innocently.
Yeah, sure. Liar. Jon scowled. “You’re all hampered by your humanity.” When Oliver opened his mouth, Jon just shook his head. “Even Avatars are still people. We’re all conduits for eldritch Forces, hollowed out to serve as a live wire for their power, but we - you all remember a human life. You care about things. You have relationships. You love. It makes you weak. Some of you don’t even like your lot in life - some part of you aching for something familiar, when you felt genuine happiness instead of the cheap facsimile induced by causing pain.” Jon looked down at his hands, reflexively picking at one of his many scars. “You should be more like me. You’d be more focused.”
“Are you capable of...changing, Jon?” Oliver asked curiously. “Or will you be this way forever?”
“Most of Annabelle’s plans hinge on that not happening,” Jon said, not even aware it was true until he said it, “so I suppose we’ll find out.”
Of course, Jon knew what Oliver had tactfully not said. He had wanted to know if Jon would ever grow up. They all thought he was a child, even Annabelle. Jon had the feeling even Daisy did, sometimes.
It was stupid and they were wrong. Child would imply adult, would imply birthday parties and learning to talk and learning geography. Jon didn’t have to learn geography. He knew geography. He didn’t age. He was born being able to talk. Jon was above all of these things. He was mature. And even if he wasn’t, who cared?
But Annabelle just smiled at Jon, a polite mask. Annabelle hadn’t made a genuine facial expression in - well, longer than Jon’s memory. Or maybe that was the wrong way to put it. Maybe it was more accurate that she never expressed an emotion that she didn’t mean to. “Well! That wasn’t entirely a disaster, was it? I think next time could go really well. Don’t worry, Jon, I won’t drag you out of bed again.” She propped her hands on her hips. “Now, the three of us are going back to your flat and doing something about your awful rat’s nest.”
Oh, lord. This was going to be terrible. “Do we have to?” Jon whined.
Annabelle smiled again, but this time it was so dangerous that Jon couldn’t help but quail. “My spiders are collecting the avocado oil and coconut oil now. My best friend in secondary had 3C hair too, I think I know what to do. Oliver, bring the buzzer, scissors, and satin wraps.”
“Three cee?” Jon asked, confused. “What’s that?”
Oliver grimaced. “Why am I involved in this?”
“Because I don’t know what to do with a guy’s hair, and you’re probably the only guy I’ve ever met who knows what to do with hair? Keep up.”
“I’m feeling pigeonholed, but fine. But we are not buzzing that hair. It’s a crime against god.” Oliver looked thoughtful for a second. “I think Jon would do a nice, loose afro. I think I still have some hair masks and vinegar rinse -”
“Why is this so complicated?” Jon asked, completely freaked out. “What are these things?”
But Annabelle just smiled sweetly at him, reaching out and squeezing his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Jon. I’ll teach you what you need to know.”
Well. It seemed easier than figuring things out for himself. Jon didn’t like responsibility. Today was his first taste of responsibility in ages, and he had already decided that it sucked. Better to let somebody who actually cared take care of it.
That way, he didn’t have to be powerful. Didn’t have to be anybody’s demigod on Earth, capable of murdering whoever he liked. He could just be Jon, Private Detective, Archivist. He could have fun. Just live. Didn’t he deserve that, despite everything?
He stood up too, summoning a shaky smile for Annabelle. “So you aren’t mad about me ruining your meeting, then?”
“Water under the bridge,” Annabelle said. “Now come on, we have to stop by the chemist’s and pick up a decent hairbrush.”
Hairbrush? What was that for?
****
Six months after time resumed its course
Jon opened his mailbox, only to find mail.
Suspicion immediately loomed. Jon didn’t get mail. Not due to any kind of impossibility, but just because he didn’t pay bills and none of the mimic junk mail was brave enough to try their luck with him. Maybe invoices, sometimes, but mostly those were dropped off in person. The invoices were scarier than the finger-biting mimics: he still didn’t quite know how they worked. Sasha kept insisting they were important, but Sasha also insisted face masks were important. She didn’t know everything. That was Jon’s job.
He grabbed the singular envelope anyway, elbowing his door back open as he inspected the envelope. Thick, rich, and creamy, it reminded Jon uncomfortably of Annabelle’s party invite from a while ago. In the front, he saw that it was addressed to...Agnes?
The living room was noisy and busy, entirely due to the recipient of the letter and her brother. They were playing Mario Kart on the Wii, and apparently disowning each other. Jon watched Agnes hit Gerry with a blue shell, slightly bemused, and saw Dry Bones spin out into the center and make a pitiful noise. Baby Peach loomed supreme.
Jon almost felt bad interrupting. An opened bag of chips scattered dust around Gerry, and Agnes had a half-empty pack of uncooked hot dogs next to her. They had both been at this for a while. “Agnes, you got a letter. And try to keep it down, Sasha’s working and Daisy’s sleeping.”
Agnes turned around, half a hot dog hanging out of her mouth like a cigar. She swallowed it quickly, holding out one hand and letting Jon give her the letter. She frowned down at the front, ignoring the way Gerry craned his head to take a look, and when she checked the back she frowned deeper. There was a wax seal, its details out of sight to Jon.
“Is it that time already?” Agnes muttered, putting her controller down and letting the parade lap on the screen continue.
Gerry frowned too as Agnes carefully broke the seal. “Is that from…?”
“Yeah. Weird, though. Guess it’s about time for the follow-up to the emergency meeting.” She pulled a letter out of the envelope, embossed on creamy paper. She scanned it quickly. “Downing street this time…”
“Are you going to go?”
“Well, it’s not as if Jude can,” Agnes said diplomatically, refolding the paper.
Jon cleared his throat, making the kids jump. They had half-forgotten he was there. Far too late, Agnes hid the invite behind her back. “Care to explain?”
“Oh, you know,” Agnes said vaguely, casually tossing the invite behind her shoulder and letting Gerry snatch it out of midair. “It’s the invite to the Avatar council meetings. I think they’re held once every three months, but since months are a theoretical concept it’s occasionally hard to tell..”
“Not these days,” Gerry said excitedly. “It’s cold! The leaves fell!”
“The leaf thing is dope,” Agnes agreed. “Anyway, I should go. I have, like, serious words. I already submitted ten motions. I want to run for Treasurer, but Jared keeps saying that anybody who isn’t old enough to open her own bank account shouldn’t be treasurer.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?” Jon asked blankly. Was this some kind of youth league? Baseball? Was this baseball?
Abruptly, Agnes looked very sketchy. “I...it’s really nothing you’d be interested in.”
“I am interested in everything,” Jon said. He was offended beyond all belief. “Don’t keep secrets!”
“Jon’s not a big fan of secrets,” Gerry stage-whispered. “Did Annabelle say that we shouldn’t tell him or did she just say not to bother him about it?”
Agnes abruptly started sweating wax. “I can’t remember.”
“Now you have to tell me,” Jon said flatly.
They gave up very quickly. Teenagers loved hiding things, but they also loved drama and spilling secrets. “It’s the Avatar council meeting thing,” Gerry said eagerly. “You know, where you guys all get together and re-enact the British empire by making government decisions and imposing made-up laws on the people you’ve conquered and are currently subjugating under your big stompy boots?”
“I’m changing the system from the inside,” Agnes said proudly.
Gerry shot her an unimpressed look. “Okay. Yeah. Sure. Because that’s a thing that makes sense in an inherently corrupt system with an inherently unethical existence that exists to be profitable at the expense of the marginalized.”
“I don’t understand anything children these days even talk about,” Jon said.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember it,” Agnes said to Jon. But she had a strange expression on her face, one hard to decipher. “It’s where we met.”
Jon stared at her blankly. “I don’t remember talking to you.”
“I was sitting next to Jude?” Agnes hinted. “Teenager? Red hair?”
Wait. Jon snapped his fingers. “Annabelle’s idiot thing! Right! Right, of course, Oliver made me sit still for five hours afterwards, it was insufferable.”
Wait. Jon abruptly remembered the rest of that day. It seemed like so long ago, even though it was probably objectively only about three years. It must have been about...yes, a few months after Daisy had gotten stuck...
He barely remembered those tepid and awful months. He had been on a bit of a hair trigger back then. It had been really tough, with Daisy leaving and his terrifying encounter with Jonah. He remembered everybody had been annoying and mean and made him feel bad…
“First time I ever remember feeling fear, honestly,” Agnes said to Gerry. “Scariest moment of my life. Remember when we first met Jon? All I could think about was that he was going to melt us like he melted that building.”
Hot shame flared in Jon’s gut. Right. Other people were real, and existed, and were probably more important than his...what had he even been upset about? He didn’t remember.
He melted a building and he didn’t even remember why.
“I’m going too,” Jon said, and both kids startled. “I’m coming with you.”
Agnes and Gerry stared at each other with wide eyes.
“Uh,” Agnes said finally, hesitant, “there’s about a 50/50 chance Annabelle said not to tell you about this, and you definitely didn’t get an invite, so statistically you probably aren’t -”
“She can’t exactly stop me from coming,” Jon said, and both kids quieted.
Power-tripping had lost all appeal for Jon - assuming role as a conduit for global and absolute power did that to you - but he couldn’t deny it was useful sometimes. The world probably could have stood a little more power-tripping from him, actually. At least, it would have been helpful if he had ever done anything helpful with it. But he had never really bothered.
But Agnes still looked perturbed, almost worried. “Annabelle’s like one of two people you used to ever listen to, so if you don’t really care what she thinks anymore -”
“I think Annnabelle knows better than to complain these days,” Jon said.
It probably was for the best that Jon didn’t listen much to Annabelle anymore.
****
Jon hadn’t really told the others about Annabelle’s worse-than-murder attempt.
It didn’t really seem like any of their business, and he had spinned a vague explanation of how the situation happened. He didn’t lie, just - withheld information.
For the first time, the truth didn’t seem so important. He had the feeling it would have just upset them. It wasn’t as if he would take revenge against Annabelle. The world needed her, and Jon was a little tired of murdering everyone who upset him. The others (Daisy) would insist on the little murder attempts if they knew, but that was probably part of why he didn’t tell them. If they never knew about the one unselfish thing he had done in his life - well, one unselfish thing didn’t make up for three years of selfishness, so there was very little point.
Martin suspected. Actually, Martin seemed to know, which terrified Jon slightly. It was impossible to get anything past Martin. Jon was deeply intimidated by the man. Sasha laughed very long and hard when he told her that, for unknown reasons.
Besides, it wasn’t as if he felt betrayed. Even if the last time he had attended one of Annabelle’s little council meetings he still trusted her, that had faded quickly in favor of complete apathy. Even then, as young as he was, he had never expected the truth from her. Just friendship. Whatever she was doing, it probably wouldn’t affect him, so there was no use in worrying. Even if Annabelle slightly terrorized every other person in the United Kingdom - well, Jon was fine, so what did it matter.
Jon couldn’t decide if he was stupid or naive. Or, even worse - if he was just lazy.
Jon didn’t listen to Annabelle anymore.
Unfortunately, he still listened to Sasha James.
Two weeks later, the date of the actual meeting, Jon was stuck explaining himself to his entire house, who doubted all of his decisions. Which was just unfair. Jon made good decisions! He had made tons of good decisions, like -
Anyway!
“I think it’s a great idea,” Sasha said, freaking out Jon. “Displaying interest in your local government’s fantastic! Did you do any research on the relevant issues?”
Jon, in the middle of pulling on his trenchcoat, started sweating. “I was just planning on showing up.”
Agnes, who was wearing a gauzy skirt and blouse as Daisy helped a whining Gerry with his court buttons, gave Sasha the thumbs up. “I’m going to propose motions and Jon’s going to say ‘yeah what she said’ and it’ll be great.”
Jon let Agnes believe that.
“Well, you’ll have to share Jon’s political weight,” Sasha said cheerfully. She was in sweatpants and one of Jon’s pilfered t-shirts again. She had recently designated herself a writer, and had joined some sort of recent artist and activist collective where they did mysterious things that Jon didn’t understand. There’s a zine involved? Jon didn’t know what a zine was and he was scared to ask.
Georgie and Melanie had spent a week teaching Jon in laborious detail what exactly the internet was - information Jon could have just downloaded, but they had been intent in their mission of creating ‘the perfect internet’ and had gone through great effort in teaching him what the ‘good’ internet was (Ravelry, Spotify, r/HobbyDrama, YouTubers but only a very specific list) and what the ‘bad’ internet was (social media, the rest of Reddit, every other YouTuber). Jon wasn’t sure if the new internet was to their specifications, and he hadn’t quite been able to avoid parts of it spiralling into nightmare dimensions and hellish breeding grounds for violence and trauma, but Melanie assured him that Twitter had always been like that.
Jon also secretly added a nightmare filter to Melanie’s screen reader, after he made sure every inch of it was accessible, after he roughly recreated screen readers. Melanie said that the voice sounded uncannily like the aunt she had hated, but that it was no big deal.
Anyway, Sasha was a blogger now. After a few meltdowns to Sasha’s computer he had to install a nightmare filter for her too, which made her complain about feeling like an old woman whose grandson had to install AdBlock on her browser. Jon was a little scared of the whole blogging thing, but everybody seemed much happier, so maybe that was the important thing.
“Wait,” Jon said, finally recognizing what Sasha said. “Share with who?”
There was a knock on the door. Jon felt intense fear.
“She’s here!” Sasha said cheerfully. “Come in!”
Jon watched in horror as Basira Hussain casually strode into her house. He knew he couldn’t stop her. She had a key to the place, because Jon had no control of his life.
“Hey honey,” Basira said, intimately.
“Hey honey,” Daisy said lovingly, releasing Gerry from her clutches.
They stared at each other, as if this was any kind of greeting whatsoever, before ignoring each other. Jon did not understand so many things.
Basira, terrifyingly, was dressed like she was about to go defend her client in court. She had a briefcase, and Jon recognized her most important looking crimson hijab. Very abruptly, Jon had a flashback to the way Annabelle had dressed when she had picked him up in his old office. They even had the same expression: determined and resolute, in a way that Jon could never understand.
Basira nodded at Jon. “Hey. Sasha invited me to this thing. She told you I was coming, right.”
“She did not.”
“Whatever. Are we going to get going? We’re going to be late.”
Jon looked at Sasha pleadingly. Cold and resolute stone, Sasha showed no mercy. She smiled brightly, giving Agnes a final hug and pushing her forward. “You kids have a great time! Terrorize the bourgeoisie!”
“I am the bourgeoisie,” Jon said blankly, but the situation had already spiraled out of his control. Agnes and Basira were already comparing lists of notes, seriously discussing the motions Agnes had raised and how she was going to help Basira.
That was it – how Agnes could help Basira. How Agnes, and the role she had in the council hall, could help Basira and the people Jon knew that she intended on representing today.
They hadn’t even looped him in. Had they assumed that he wouldn’t care? That he wouldn’t help? Agnes hadn’t even wanted him there. Only Sasha -
He felt a cool, small hand grab his arm, and he turned around to see Daisy. Gerry was already enthusiastically capturing Sasha about the concert he and Agnes were going to later, and Jon knew that they weren’t listening. Daisy’s expression was somber, her body tense. Daisy wasn’t one for facial expressions at the best of times – not even a new development – but something about this…
“I should go with you,” Daisy said.
“I already told you no,” Jon said, miffed. “I can handle this by myself.”
“I shouldn’t have let you go by yourself last time,” Daisy said. Jon could admit that things probably wouldn’t have spiraled out of control if she had been there, but that didn’t mean – “Don’t terrify yourself just because you feel guilty.”
Daisy hadn’t aged any more than the rest of the world had. As an Avatar, she likely never would. She even looked young for her mid-forties, with her short stature and broad, unlined face. Sasha had assured him that she was ‘Kristen Bell-ish’, whatever that meant. But she always seemed so old to him: larger than life and not even reaching his shoulders. Wise and world-weary even when, as Jon was beginning to see, she didn’t know what she was doing any more than the rest of them did.
It scared Jon, almost: if Daisy wasn’t the person who could swoop in and make it all better, then who could?
If Jonah wasn’t the omnipresent god, then who was the most powerful person in the world?
Jon shook her off, fighting the pull in his gut. “I’m not scared of them anymore.”
She didn’t look impressed. “You’re always scared.”
“Look at the time, going to be late, gotta go!”
He still couldn’t win an argument against her.
They took a taxi there, as Jon had cheerfully informed them that the Tube was delayed due to infernal leaves on the line (Work-from-home was the hot new thing these days). Basira was clearly on edge, tense and constantly keeping an eye on the taxi driver (a friendly skeleton) and the street. Agnes wasn’t any more relaxed, reading her notes over and over.
Jon leaned back in his plush seat, closing his eyes. What would Martin say? He would probably be cuttingly pointing out how Jon was in denial over how he really was secretly afraid of the Avatars and now it was even more dangerous because he was much more willing to power-trip.
Forget about what Jon wanted. Forget about his fear, his insecurities, and every rationale he had constructed for himself as to why Jon deserved a life free of these worries.
Jon was above politics. The Avatar with no need to defend their territory, who held no fear of death or failure, had no need. Jon could not lose the affection of his patron. His domain was the world, and it could not be attacked no matter how hard he tried. Jon was not a politician, so of course that meant he could not be manipulated by politicians -
“What’s your plan,” Jon asked, without opening his eyes.
They told him. Basira was clinical; Agnes excited. Jon didn’t say anything about it, and let the conversation die down until the taxi was rolling in front of 10 Downing Street. Didn’t the prime minister live here? Boris...something? Jon quickly downloaded the information, before he found that Boris Johnson had been the world’s most convoluted psy-op by Annabelle and had never exactly existed. Thank goodness.
Right as the taxi idled in front of the building, Jon opened his eyes. He let them flare up, an intimidating spark of toxic green. “You two follow my lead.”
“Excuse me,” Basira said flatly, as Jon waved at the driver in lieu of payment. He hadn’t found out that you were supposed to pay taxi drivers until...a few months ago. In his defense, they never asked. “This is our operation.”
Jon glanced at her, and something relaxed around the corners of her eyes. He wondered if his expression was familiar to her. He couldn’t help but smile weakly, and that softened her expression even more. “Will you trust me?”
Basira stared at him for one long beat, then two, before grimacing. “Don’t make me regret this.”
“Do I usually make you regret it?”
“Literally, every single time,” Basira said.
“Then it’s a pretty stupid decision to trust me again,” Jon pointed out. “You don’t seem the type to make stupid decisions.”
Basira stared at him for a long moment, before leaving the car.
Jon and Agnes silently watched her leave, before glancing at each other.
“And I thought you ran from your feelings,” Agnes said finally, before following her.
Jon, left with nothing else to do, followed Agnes.
10 Downing Street, Jon quickly found, was just like every other pretentious old British home. With lots of grandiose rooms with furniture shoved into corners so everybody could appreciate the gold-plated tile, or sitting rooms with the most uncomfortable places to sit Jon had ever seen. Each wall hosted gigantic portraits of famous British figures, who were all so ugly that Agnes incinerated one for fun. Jon respected her choices: he had been wearing a stupid wig.
Jon, unfortunately instinctively aware of the layout and history of this sordid place, led them through the halls. He opened his mouth, instinctively about to funnel a Statement regarding the decades of human suffering and imperialism, before forcing his mouth closed. Basira wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, the Statements had been easier to ignore lately - like curious dogs nosing at his hands rather than insistent children demanding to be fed.
Instead, he settled on casually updating them on the choice of location. “A year ago, this location wouldn’t have been safe for Basira at all. This building was a nightmare pit of despair.” He led them up the ridiculous flights of stairs watching carefully as Agnes jumped up them. Trick steps, you know. Basira proceeded far more cautiously. “It’s...no less a nightmare pit, but like the rest of London it’s now safe to navigate. I’d keep clear of the residential rooms, however. The Prime Minister and his family haven’t escaped their nightmares since the apocalypse, and they never will.”
Basira’s eyebrows skyrocketed up. “David Cameron’s stuck in hell? No surprise there. What’s he having a nightmare about?”
“Well, there’s this pig, right, and you’ll never guess what he’s doing -”
“Never mind,” Basira said quickly. “Not interested.”
“I’m interested,” Agnes said.
“I’d rather you weren’t.”
Jon, who also wished he didn’t know this information, quickly directed them towards the conference room.
But he found himself stopping in front of the intricately carved oak double doors. The wrought golden handles were grimy and dull with dust, but Agnes and Basira did not hesitate to open the door and walk in. They didn’t hesitate; they weren’t frightened. Or, if they were, they didn’t let it stop them.
But Jon stopped. He felt like Annabelle, in that moment. Annabelle, standing in front of that conference room door so long ago, unable to admit that she felt any fear at all.
She had been desperate. Jon saw that now. Only a desperate person would have ever concocted that plan against Jon. He was the sole person capable of murder in this world, and the sole person who was so vindictive and petty that he would kill anybody who said something that he didn’t like.
Annabelle was arrogant. She thought herself the most intelligent person in every room. She was petty, manipulative, and power-hungry. She thought that the world was so broken that somebody had to fix it, and that she was the only one who could. She was desperate.
Jon didn’t particularly want to do this. But Jon really, really had to grow up.
Jon opened the door.
It was a far cry from the nice, professional conference room in City Hall. The floor was some ugly light brown hardwood color, and the walls were tudor-like and panelled. Old man ribboned curtains, an intricate rug woven from human rights abuses, and a claw-foot long conference table with an array of chairs made up an incredibly ‘antique’ room. The British found ‘antique’ and ‘wealth signalling’ to be the same thing. It made for some very ugly buildings and very uncomfortable chairs.
Nobody else had entered yet. Jon checked the time with his extradimensional psychic powers and realized that Sasha had hustled them out the door fifteen minutes earlier than necessary. She was so intelligent.
Agnes was already moving to her uncomfortable seat, and Jon tapped Basira on the arm and silently pointed to the seat with the ‘EXTINCTION’ placard. She raised an eyebrow at him, but followed his direction. Maybe that was what her trust looked like.
There was a placard stamped ‘BEHOLDING’ in big letters. Gone unoccupied since the last time Jon had been here.
He ignored it, and sat down at the head of the table. Likely where Annabelle usually sat, as director of the meetings. Historically, where the leader of Britain had once sat and directed the affairs of the country.
Jon kicked up his heels on the polished antique wood, pulling up an episode of The Twilight Zone in his brain. He identified with Rod Serling.
The other Avatars filtered in, one by one. All of their eyes widened when they saw Jon, but none of them said anything. Jon wondered what had filtered through the Avatar grapevine. They always knew all of the gossip on each other. It was impossible to miss the Earth’s paradigm shift, and Agnes mentioned that they had convened an emergency meeting on it. Doubtlessly, his name had come up. They likely knew he was the instigator. Who else could?
Annabelle was the fourth in, as fashionably on time as usual. She was the only one who stopped in her tracks when she saw Jon. A surprise, to a woman unused to surprises. Jon’s house didn’t have insect problems.
Her eyes widened. Her jaw clenched. That was all it took. And Jon Knew, in the way that he Knew things, that she was wondering if this was when he finally killed her.
She didn’t know why she was still alive. It was stressing her out. It was a move that made no sense - an unforeseen reaction. Jon was predictable. When Jon wasn’t predictable, and when Jon’s actions weren’t being very precisely controlled, then she was left with a vindictive and irreverent steam train on her hands. She hadn’t predicted his presence here.
Jon was also sitting in her chair. Scuffing the wood. Leaning back in the chair, and definitely scuffing the floor too.
He pointed to the chair at his right, with a placard that now read ‘WEB’. Annabelle sat down in it. Everybody noticed.
Everybody also noticed Basira. She was receiving some glares, or some pointedly unwelcome expressions. But Basira’s glares and unwelcome expressions were more powerful than any demon could ever offer, and one by one each Avatar looked away in shame.
Only Oliver actually talked to him. Which made sense, as Oliver feared neither life nor death. When he walked in he was just as surprised to see Jon as everyone else, but he offered Jon a smile too. Jon smiled back, which made several of the other Avatars lean back.
“Hey, Archivist. I thought you hated these things.”
“I do!” Jon said cheerfully. “I wasn’t even invited.”
Annabelle busied herself with her notes and agenda.
As usual, Helen didn’t show up. Jon waited patiently for everybody to filter in. Sarah Baldwin didn’t show up either, and Jon searched for the information before realizing that he really didn’t want to know. He saw some other new faces, as well as some faintly familiar ones. It wasn’t that strange: no position of absolute power was forever. Where was that bloke Wakely?
Wait. He was the Avatar who had talked for too long about burying people alive at a party in a ridiculous skyscraper. He had upset Daisy. Jon had seen red and lost his temper. Jon had...tossed him over the side of the roof. Let him keep falling. Left him to waste away. He was probably gone now.
The entire room had been at that party. Whoops.
Now uncomfortably reminded that Jon had murdered two people at this table, that everybody was aware of that, and that Jon had completely forgotten about one of the semi-accidental murders because, in Sasha’s words, he was “a bit of a psychopath, what the hell”.
This distressed her, because apparently Jonathan Sims had always been a “sensitive boy” with a “tender heart”. Daisy had said that he was still a sensitive boy, just prone to power-tripping. Sasha said that this was also very consistent behavior. Martin said -
Martin said that Jonathan Sims had been a good person. And, more importantly, that Jonathan Sims had wanted to be a good person. That was one thing that Jon didn’t want to change.
Who just buried people alive -
Jon waited until everyone was settled down. Nobody was chatting or talking to each other: just sitting silently, avoiding eye contact.
He could see Annabelle preparing herself to say something. Better get this ball rolling, then.
“Jonah Magnus is dead.”
The silence suddenly became oppressive.
Jon didn’t stop to savor the looks on their faces. That wasn’t the point. Enjoying this wasn’t the point. Jon had all the power he wanted and - and he didn’t want it at all. He hoped that nobody here would make him have to prove it.
Jon did not want to melt anyone. He wasn’t going to melt anyone. Life had started feeling a little valuable lately. These people, the soulless demons surrounding him, weren’t any different than he was. Humans with delusions of grandeur. Infighting and power plays weren’t going to fix it.
But Annabelle had been right, as she always was. Jon couldn’t keep ignoring this. If he could do something, he had to. Even if it was something he didn’t like doing.
Or something he hated that he enjoyed doing.
“Jonah Magnus is dead,” Jon repeated pleasantly. “The world has changed. These two events are related, of course.”
He didn’t elaborate. Jon didn’t lie, but he didn’t have to say everything.
“The chains which bind this Earth have loosened,” Jon continued. He folded his hands over his stomach, relaxed and casual. “We now exist in the third age of life. I ask that you do not resist.
“The seasons have begun to change, our eternal placid summer ripening into fall and sinking into winter. Our world turns yet again. Babies are born, grow old, and die. The apocalypse as we’ve always known was rooted in its stagnancy. Life and growth has bloomed, and will continue to subsist. Change is once again thriving, and we must adapt with it.
“You’ve noticed that your power has weakened. You will have to fight harder than ever to maintain your food supplies. What was once a conquest is now a battleground. The playing field is far from even, but the enemy and harvest now have a fighting chance.” Jon smiled brightly. “Of course, I’m sure that this was all discussed during your emergency meeting. Great job with your repeated warfare attempts against humanity during the last six months, by the way. How’s that working out for us?”
Silence loomed. Of course, their repeated attempts to quash the new human uprising had not gone very well. At the end of the day, for every one Avatar there were thousands of humans.
“You are no longer strong enough to allow these divides into factions,” Jon continued. “We must present a united front if we’re going to maintain the ground we have. We can’t continue on the way we have. And I’ve realized…” Jon glanced at Annabelle, catching her eye. “I’ve realized that I haven’t been helping the situation. There’s more I can do. That’s why Annabelle has handed over moderation of these meetings to me.”
Nobody looked impressed.
He could see it: the way Jon had become an unpredictable, dangerous nuisance towards them. Almost everyone in this room would be much happier if Jon dropped dead. Nobody had really liked him because nobody had ever felt safe around him. Only Annabelle and Oliver - the person who had nothing to fear from him and the other person who did not feel fear - called themselves his friends.
But they would have preferred it if Jon was hostile or dangerous. If he had even admitted his power. But Jon play-acted at harmlessness, unwilling and afraid to make enemies, and in that way he became a nuisance rather than an enemy. He couldn’t even pretend that it wasn’t on purpose. No matter how many Avatars brushed him off or ignored him, it was better than feeling their eyes on him. Or feeling the fear rich on their tongues.
“Also I invited a human to work with us on human affairs,” Jon said cheerfully. “Diversity hire! Any questions?”
There were a lot of questions. Basira didn’t look very pleased at his remark, either.
Simon leaned forward first, pale and watery eyes intent for the first time. “What happened to Jonah Magnus?”
“Natural causes,” Jon said cheerfully. “Next?”
“What does this mean for us?” the Lukas matriarch said. Her eyes skittered away from him. “Are we in danger?”
Jon shrugged. “Only if you’re incompetent at feeding.”
“What caused this?” Manuela demanded. “The children are running wild, we can’t control them. We’ve lost a major food source.”
Jon scratched his temples. “What caused it...sustainability efforts.” He sobered abruptly. “You could never control the children, anyway. This is the generation of the apocalypse. You’ll find that very little frightens them now.”
“Does this have to do with those humans you’ve been running around with?” Jared asked, scratching his chin as Manuela’s expression contorted in rage.
As usual, a frighteningly insightful observation from such a brute. “It is actually directly their fault!”
Everybody turned to look at Basira, who was completely unapologetic. She crossed her arms. “Don’t ask me. First I’m hearing about this too.”
“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?” Oliver asked, morbidly fascinated. “How?”
“We humans didn’t kill him. We showed up at the Panopticon to kill him, only to find Jon there and Jonah Magnus already dead.” Basira scowled as Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Jon subtly shook his head. Annabelle’s lips thinned. “It looked like he’d been dead for years.”
An unfamiliar young man with a thick mop of clumped black hair peered at Jon, expression contorted in grotesque interest. He was one of the Avatars who had been born in the Apocalypse, who were all recognizably weird. His name was - right, Geoff Anjou. Some French man who had made his mark in the Parisian Underground before moving to London and conquering his next terrain. A Parisian to the bone - or, a great deal of bones, as the case may be. So many bones. Jon had always meant to take Daisy to that wonderful little nightmare and let her run loose. Chase people through the tunnels. Munch bones. Perfect vacation.
“So did the Archivist kill him?” Geoff asked, in the same way you would ask who won the World Cup. “Steal his Watcher’s Crown or whatever?”
“Are you the new queen bee?” a young woman asked Jon. The new Slaughter Avatar, Henrietta Something-or-another. A Cambridge legacy college student, Annabelle had intoned, and Jon had been afraid to inquire further. She was cyberbullying someone on her mobile, which seemed to be bleeding. “Cuz, like, you don’t seem qualified.”
“I did not kill Jonah Magnus,” Jon said, for the five hundreth time in the last six months. “And I’m uninterested in filling his shoes. That’s enough questions, I think.”
“Are you as weakened as the rest of us?” Amherst demanded. “Surely this destruction has affected you worst of all.”
“He probably ate Jonah Magnus,” Henrietta said. “The Archivist’s probably god now.”
Geoff snorted. “No way. He brought a human as back-up.”
“Why is there a human?” Another woman asked, with long brown hair and a broad face. Something about her was unquestionably severe, from her bulging muscles to her incredible height. Jon had never seen her before in his life. Her name was Julia Montauk. Something about her stank of life and undeath, same as Amherst. “We can’t exactly work with the prey, here.”
“I’m proposing an emergency motion,” Amherst said suddenly, shutting up the rapidly overlapping voices. “I vote that a leader is elected democratically. And that representatives are limited towards loyal patrons of the Forces.”
“I second that motion,” Geoff said immediately. “We can’t afford a chaotic uprising in our government right now -”
“This really isn’t a vote,” Jon said.
“Isn’t this a democracy?” Henrietta asked, with the self-righteous assurance of a twenty year old. “We vote on things in a democracy. And leaders.”
“Annabelle was voted in last spring,” Julia agreed. “No reason to change things.”
Well. Basira said that she trusted him. He’d have to rely on that.
Jon pressed down.
It felt just like that: pressing down. Reaching out a hand and squashing. Sometimes it was like ripping someone into shreds, and other times it was like plunging your hand into their chest and ripping out their heart. But this was just a press: a heavy static, bearing down over your shoulders like a ten ton weight. A sight so horrible that it was too eldritch to even look at. The realization that the hideous sight was you, and that it was all you would ever be.
Some - Geoff, Amherst - gasped, as if they were choking. Others - Lukas, Henrietta - gasped at their hearts, as if they were having heart attacks. Jon carefully kept it off Oliver, Annabelle, Basira, and Agnes. He couldn’t help but remember what she had said a few weeks ago, about being so frightened -
But Basira winced anyway, clutching her temples, and Jon carefully released the static until the inhabitants of the room could breathe again. His eyes did not stop glowing, and Jon didn’t bother to turn off the light show.
Jon put his feet down on the floor and rested his elbows on the table, leaning forward. As everyone shuddered and gasped, he spoke slowly and pointedly. “This is not a democracy. It never was. It is a monarchy, and the line of succession is clear.”
Annabelle’s eyes widened, and she abruptly clenched her fists before loosening them. An uncharacteristic show of emotion from her.
“This coalition has never been a democracy,” Jon said severely. “This is a house of lords. You are uninterested in representing any needs but your own, and I know Jared failed level eight government, but I’m sure all of you know that democracy represents elected officials. Nobody here has ever lived in a true democracy, and in your human fallibility you have recreated the only system you have ever known. The seats at this table are determined by power - all of you, the most powerful conduits for your Entity. I am the inevitable consequence of this system. I am your natural disaster. All of you bought me. Now you have me. And you are no longer powerful enough to make me leave.”
Agnes’ hand was covering her mouth. Jon dearly hoped Basira was holding onto that trust. He dearly hoped that he wasn’t speaking from anger.
But he couldn’t stop. It boiled and bubbled. It was an anger and a powerlessness that had subjugated him for thirty two years of his life. It had served as the cloud hanging over his head for three more.
“If you want someone to blame for the Archivist who now moderates this meeting,” Jon said, his voice the thin lid over this boiling pot of hurt and anger, “I now know their names. Jonah Magnus. Jude Perry. Nikola Orsinov. Twice. Breekon and Hope’s coffin. Peter Lukas. Jane Prentiss. Maxwell Raynor. A strategic book.” Jon tilted his head, having effectively made his point. There were others, but he had forgiven Daisy and Melanie a long time ago. And Jared had been polite about it. “Bring up your complaints with them. Good luck with that.”
Jon clapped his hands, closing the lid on those memories. Maybe one day the pain would leech from them like a sun-bleached painting, but that day hadn’t come yet. “Now! If you have any further complaints about my position here, or if you want to continue debating political theory, feel free to stand up and tell me so. We’re all interested in you regurgitating your life story until you die. Anyone?” Crickets. Jon leaned back in his chair, making himself comfortable. “Can we go onto the motions now? Ms. Hussain first, then clockwise from her.”
As if they had planned this, with the air of a well-choreographed actress, Basira stood up and spread out her papers in front of her. “The human contingency requests neutral zones in essential areas. Maternal wards in hospitals are highly vulnerable locations, and when assaulted by parasites the mortality rate of children is very high. If you want a self-replenishing food source, you have to allocate space for safe living. The next essential zone is a daycare and a school for children -”
And she was off. Jon had nothing to say, nor was anything necessary. Raging debate sparked after she finished speaking, and Basira effectively crushed the opposition. Agnes spoke up in her defense, and to Jon’s surprise even Manuela contributed a solid understanding of the necessity of children. When the debate started spiraling in an unhelpful direction Jon cut in and shut it down, before forcing the vote.
It did not pass, obviously.
“By the way,” Jon said. “Ms. Hussain proposed five different motions today. At least two of them have to pass. This debate is about picking which two you want.”
Then that started up all over again, and Jon tried not to fall asleep.
Moderating was hard. He actually had to pay attention and focus, and he hated focusing. He was effective enough at shutting down conversations, but sometimes shutting down conversations wasn’t helpful - he just needed to steer them in a more productive conversation. And Agnes’ political theory and Basira’s almost-definitely-made-up statistics started flying so thick and fast above his head that Jon was starting to almost completely lose the plot.
Jon chose his moment as the Lukas woman was complaining extensively about how Henrietta’s digital bullying was intruding upon the Loneliness of her adherents. Henrietta had argued that social media made people more lonely. Jon was afraid that Henrietta was his fault. Maybe the Eye’s fault, holistically. Jared wanted to be friends with Henrietta and co-host Instagram events, which Jon enthusiastically supported despite Basira’s glares.
He leaned over to his right, gesturing slightly at Annabelle so she would lean in closer. She raised an eyebrow at him. Annabelle’s eyebrows were crushing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jon whispered to her, as quietly as possible.
Annabelle mouthed very clearly at him, ‘Wow, really? Shock!’.
“I was making a point,” Jon hissed. “An important point. But I don’t - I still -” Jon faltered, uncertain, as Henrietta began sneering something about Lukas’ hairdo. Finally, he weakly said, “You care. They need you.”
Annabelle stared at him for a long, silent moment, before turning away from him.
For the first time that day, she spoke to the room. “Let’s keep ad hominem attacks out of this,” she said sharply. “Madame Lukas, if you’ll make your closing remarks we can bring this to a vote.”
She really was good at it. Just like she had always wanted. She had never directly admitted it, but Annabelle had always wanted to be the kind of person in rooms like this.
A politician sitting in an uncomfortable chair at 10 Downing Street. Rich, successful, important. Powerful and respected. Back then, she had wanted to be famous. Now, she was content to be controlling famous people. A dream out of her reach in life; laughably attainable in this stagnant after-afterlife.
The dream had crippled her. In her search for a functional world, one that achieved and grew and provided a comfortable world, she had ended up recreating a world that hadn’t been functional at all. A world that was slow to change, and seemingly impossible to improve. A world passed down from the hands of the greedy and bloodthirsty into the hands of the uncaring and apathetic.
The apocalypse had been inevitable. Humans driving themselves to extinction. And Avatars, possessed of human weakness, had been eager to do the same. Just a pathetic room of sour and bitter people power-tripping.
For all that Sasha calls us bougie, Jon thought, we’re such deeply unhappy people.
There had once been a young man, desperate for attention and acknowledgement. Dreaming of importance. He would stay up late at night, planning out his life as a famous researcher and well-respected philosopher. Everyone would tell him how smart he was. He would prove it all - with a scholarship to Oxford, with a sneer and a haughty air, with a boss who said that he had so much promise, here’s a job that will let you realize your potential.
I deserve this job -
Something in Jon’s mind flared, a hot poker rammed behind his eye sockets. Jon hissed, one hand reaching unconsciously to his temple, and Annabelle glanced at him in alarm. She had - Jon had been thinking about her, and - what had he been -
Together, they managed to wrangle the meeting into something half-way productive. Most importantly, Basira had gotten three of her proposals passed, and Agnes’ arguments were stirring the other Avatars into serious discussion. Conversation itself would be stilted by his sheer presence, and they weren’t quite all working together yet, but they would.
It was really all the same to Jon if the Avatars or humans won the war. He should care a bit more than he did, so he didn’t vocalize this to the others. But this conflict sparked life, a strange and frantic energy. Experiences and growth. That was what Jon had always fed on.
It seemed that Jon’s skill at prioritizing himself over all others was as sharp as ever.
Eventually the two hours wrapped up, and the other Avatars were eager to leave. Jon waved them off cheerily.
“Meeting adjourned. Try not to do anything stupid until next time. And if any of you break the boundaries of the human safe zones, I’ll know! Annabelle, will you stay behind?”
The others filtered out quickly, uncharacteristically unwilling to see whatever carnage would be wrought. Agnes and Basira lingered.
“That went so well!” Agnes shouted, the minute the last Avatar left. The room was now empty save for Agnes, Basira, Annabelle, and - Oliver, who was leaning against the doorframe. “I can’t believe you actually did something useful!”
“Ouch,” Oliver said.
It was fair, though. Jon smiled weakly at her. “Hopefully I can help out a little more often going forward. But I’m not going to give any favoritism to you, Agnes. I’ll intervene to give humans a fair shot, but I really don’t want to be...king of a ruined world or whatever.”
“I know,” Agnes said firmly. She reached out and squeezed his arm, round and gentle face creased in determination. “You’d be terrible at it. So just be you, okay?”
Jon saluted her, before gesturing to the door. “Will you steal a historical British artifact from this garbage building for me? Daisy needs more targets to shoot.”
Agnes nodded eagerly and ran off. Jon silently hoped Basira would follow her, if also out of interest for also seeing British things destroyed, but she just looked at Jon intensely instead. Not quite a glare - just a searching, intense look, as if she was finding her own Statement from deep within him. It had always been disconcerting. Jon was still convinced she hated him.
“It’s not as if I knew you very well before we rescued you from the Panopticon,” Basira said crisply, pressing a folder to her chest, “but you’ve changed. What happened? What did Annabelle have to do with it?”
Jon and Annabelle glanced at each other. Oliver lifted an eyebrow.
“Basira -”
“Don’t ask me to trust you.”
“I didn’t betray that,” Jon asked, “did I?”
Her expression didn’t soften. “You didn’t. We’re going to continue needing your help. But an ally with inscrutable motivations who does everything on a whim is a bad ally to have.”
“I’m trying, Basira,” Jon said, impossibly exhausted and just a little disappointed. “Please be patient.”
“I’ve been patient for three years,” Basira said, before forcibly cutting herself short from whatever emotion she was about to display. “What happened?”
A phantom pain pieced Jon’s arms, like chains threaded through bone. Jon fought the urge to wince, unconsciously reaching up to rub at a spot on his forearm. Everyone noticed. “It’s...family business…”
“Did you kill Jonah Magnus?”
“Jonah Magnus killed me,” Jon snapped, far louder than he intended, “so he would have deserved it, wouldn’t he!”
He felt a little lightheaded, more than he intended. It felt like a hand was clenching inside his chest, more than he wanted. No, Basira is fragile, you can’t just - no, Agnes is a kid, Daisy said that we can’t -
“Basira Hussain,” Annabelle said, hands folded tightly in her lap, eyes serious and intent. Jon started, surprised to hear her speak again. “You should go catch up with Agnes.”
Basira stared at Annabelle for a long moment, lips thin, before she abruptly whirled on her heel and stalked out. Jon watched her go, exhausted. He waited for her heels to click down the hall, far away enough that he knew she wasn’t eavesdropping, before groaning and dropping his head down onto his desk.
“They hate me.”
“They’re scared of you,” Annabelle pointed out. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “Frankly, Basira could stand to be a little more afraid of you. She’s going to get herself in trouble one of these days.”
“She’s practically my sister in law, I’m not going to hurt her,” Jon snapped. “Your stupid plan relied on me never hurting people I love.”
“Sorry,” Oliver said pleasantly, “is anyone ever going to tell me what’s going on? I feel like an NPC in Jon’s Dungeons & Dragons game.”
“You want to be an NPC, I found you working at Taco Bell.” God, whatever. Jon could tell Oliver. He wouldn’t give a shit. Jon sighed, lifting his head to twist around and look at Oliver instead. “You remember when I was asking around after Sasha James? Annabelle had put me up to it.”
“Obviously. And then Sasha James started following you around? You terrorized Annabelle’s party again?”
“Yeah, it was this whole big thing.” Jon waved a hand expressively. “Anyway, then Annabelle tried to trap me in an eternal limbo that would shred me from inside out so I could act as purveyor of the world, and probably also use her connection with me so she could take over affairs here, and probably either nudge me into shaping the world back into order or into sinking it deeper into hell. I broke out and now I’m mad at her.”
“I had at least twenty other reasons,” Annabelle said, “but that’s the gist.”
Oliver stared at them.
They all sat in awkward silence. Jon found himself winding a finger around a stray coil of hair and letting it spring back into place. He had kept it the same the last three years, never bothering to change the style. A loose and bouncy cloud of hair, sometimes brushing against his shoulders until Annabelle kidnapped him to cut it again - him, as much as the trenchcoat was. So much as anything had ever been ‘him’.
“Well,” Oliver said diplomatically, “I see that you skipped a lot of steps there. So why are you here, then?”
Was it just to spite Annabelle? Screw her out of her work? Did Jon genuinely care? Did he want to organize the other Avatars, get them mobilized and going? Did he want to protect the humans?
Did he really only care about himself, and the people he called his friends and family? Did he really only care about himself, and those he possessed?
“There’s a person I want to be,” Jon said quietly, “but I don’t know how to be him.”
Annabelle stared at him, with dark and glittering eyes, expression as implacable as always. For a sudden, stupid, intense moment, Jon wanted to know if she cared about him. If one of the few people who had always helped him, who was always in his corner, had seen him as anything more than a tool.
Like Basira, who didn’t like him as a person, but found him too valuable to alienate. But Basira was - she was deeply good, if not always kind, and Jon had the sense that she had fought to turn herself into that good person. It was something she chose. She was trying to push Jon into making that same choice.
Jon clenched his hands in his lap, his fingernails digging into his palm. “There’s people I respect, and who I want to respect me. This person I want to be...I’m worried that I only want this because that’s what they want. They’ll deny it, but they want my power. Everybody just makes me into whoever they want. Whatever’s useful to them.” Jon’s gaze snapped to Annabelle, and he fought hard to keep the compulsion from his voice. It was difficult, when he wanted to know so badly, but - “The kind of person I used to be. That person I’m ashamed of. Is that the person who was useful to you?”
He didn’t want to force the answer from her. He wanted her to choose to say it.
Annabelle didn’t react. She didn’t show anything on her face. Much less what Jon wanted from her. She just tilted her head, one of the few unafraid to meet his eyes. “I never made you be anyone, Jon. All I ever did was put you in the right place at the right time.”
“That wasn’t my question,” Jon said, and this time he couldn’t help the static creeping into his voice. “Answer me.”
Annabelle sighed. “Of course it was useful. Is that what you wanted me to voluntarily say, Jon? I didn’t bring you to the first meeting because I thought it would be educational for you. I needed your power to keep the others in line. I needed everyone else to see that I controlled your power. That’s the only reason why any of this worked. We both got something out of it. Don’t pretend that you weren’t happy with the arrangement.”
It...it wasn’t a surprise, but…
“So that’s why you didn’t bring him to any of the other meetings,” Oliver mused. “He wasn’t as controllable as you liked, not when there’s more than ten other idiots around needling him. There’s never been anybody who can always predict when Jon’s going to lose his shit. Besides the biggie, I guess.”
The biggie, which was his past.
No wonder he had stayed so childlike, innocent, and cruel for so long. Jon took responsibility for his own laziness, but - but he had been most useful that way. Annabelle had liked him best that way.
Daisy had liked him best that way too. That cruel child - Daisy had wanted him, because he made her feel needed. Annabelle was just the same.
Everyone had liked him best that way. And if Jon became the kind of person who he wanted to be, nobody would like him at all.
“If you’re going to kill me,” Annabelle said, exhaustion seeping in through her voice, “just do it.”
Jon closed his eyes. He could feel it - Annabelle’s exhaustion, the way that she had just been waiting for him to do this. Everything she knew about Jon led towards an obvious course of action. Even though you nobody knew everything that set Jon off, certain things were pretty guaranteed that he wouldn’t forgive.
Annabelle had never accounted for Sasha. She had brought Sasha into his life, and she had no idea the effect she would have on it. Sasha, who had been the first to tell Jon that she chose to care about him for him. For a brief, hot flash, Jon was jealous. He wanted to be someone unpredictably kind.
If he only wanted that because he had found yet another person to give his wind-up key, then…
“You won, Annabelle,” Jon said finally, and he only knew it as he said it. “Congratulations. You played the perfect manipulation. You took a vulnerable, afraid man, who had been violated in the worst possible way and left to die.” He stood up, already uncomfortable with what he was about to say. “And you arranged him so that he loved you. I chose to love you. I’m making the choice never to hurt you, because I still love you. ”
He left the room. Oliver stood aside just in time, letting Jon brush by.
As Jon met up with Agnes and Basira, summoning a smile and a wave for them, he felt uncomfortably as if he had grown up.
He wasn’t sure that he liked it.
#tma#the magnus archives#my writing#tma fanfic#jonathan sims#annabelle cane#oliver banks#basira hussain#agnes montague#and a ton more#tcf was about deciding to change#and this story kind of hits at how difficult it is deciding who to change into#and how difficult it is to trust your own decisions when you've been manipulated since the second you were 'born'#jon and his choices and agency is becoming a big thing for me!
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I was recently abandoned by five friends. I did nothing wrong, but they found me burdening because I was going through a miscarriage and labelled me as a 'slut'. I felt overwhelmingly betrayed and was cynical and depressed for a long time. What would you recommend for me to reconcile and come to terms with the situation. What should I do to restore trust and develop Fe again?
[con't: I am an INFJ. I think my Fe is very unhealthy because of what I have experienced. I am cynical, cold and more manipulative. Moreover, one of my friend's is a ISTP who ghosted me and just told me they don't want to care because they found feelings to be almost physically uncomfortable. I understand that I should move on, but I learn a lot from that friend and I want to know what I can do to reach out to this particular friend again.]
You seem to be describing resentment. Resentment is meant to inform you of when you've been treated unfairly, so it's normal to feel resentful when you've been betrayed by someone close to you. It's quite understandable to have difficulty coming to terms with cruel treatment. However, getting stuck in resentment means that something deeper is going on.
Emotions should die down naturally as you get more distance from negative events. Life goes on, and you reach a point where you have to make a choice to move on or keep the resentment going. Many people choose to keep indignation alive and burning, fueling bitter resentment, and perhaps stoking it into full blown anger. Why make this choice? Ego protection. Perhaps the bitterness allows you to stay distant and safe from others. Perhaps obsessing about victimization allows you to claim the moral high ground to judge and condemn the perpetrators. Perhaps the anger affords you the illusion of power to avenge the wrong. Perhaps ruminating on hurt feelings reinforces your belief in a "just world" and how you didn't "deserve" to be hurt. Regardless of how exactly you go about protecting the ego, none of these strategies will lead to real closure, because you are actively keeping the wound open, bleeding, and throbbing.
Betrayal is unexpected, so it certainly stings when it occurs. That sting becomes hurt and continues on when you refuse to accept the reality of what happened. Ego protection is all about hiding from the hurt so that you don't have to face the truth of why you feel hurt. For FJs, being betrayed feels like rejection, which is a very deep issue related to Fe development. It is common for Fe-Ti to interpret rejection as proof that one is inadequate, inferior, unacceptable, or unworthy of love. No one likes to feel worthless, so questioning your worth is a painful experience. It is far more palatable (to the ego) to focus instead on blaming people for putting you in this painful position, for "causing" your pain. Trying to disown your pain means that you relinquish the power to end it, since you have placed the responsibility on others to end it (i.e. waiting for an apology). You haven't yet understood the truth that your pain belongs to you because the hurt arises from your own struggles with self-worth.
Fe development problems are closely tied to lack of proper boundaries between self and world. When "me" is defined as "we", it is a sign that Fe is immature and subconsciously self-sacrificing, which creates unequal relationships. Resentment is a common FJ defense mechanism because it is a quick and easy way to reclaim power in an unequal relationship through shifting blame. It feels comforting to protect the ego, whereas it feels very difficult to confront the deeper underlying problem of overvaluing others, undervaluing oneself, or worse, completely losing the "me" to the "we".
Mature Fe recognizes each individual's value (including one's own) and what they contribute to the "we". In other words, every "me" needs to be properly attended to for the sake of creating a better "we". A person's value comes from how they make decisions, whether they do what's right, and how they develop their potential for contributing something positive -> your self-worth is entirely in your own hands. When you are able to stand confidently in the truth of your own value, in the truth that you have done nothing wrong, what can anyone say or do to hurt you so deeply that you feel destroyed? That kind of hurt only comes when you are unsure of your own value and worth, and the judgment of others shines a light on the true extent of your insecurity. Is it really others' fault for simply revealing what is already there? Resenting others shoves your insecurity back into the dark for a short time, at least until the next betrayal. But hiding from your insecurity means that you hand over the means to control you. The more you fear being hurt, invalidated, or rejected, the more your every action is merely a reaction, until you no longer understand the concept of free will. How can you live your life well when you're no longer in control of your decisions, when all you know to do is bark at everything that dares come near you?
A healthy relationship cannot be one-sided, plagued by mistrust, and full of harmful behavior. If someone chooses to harm you, what does it mean? It means that there is something wrong with their morality. But is their morality your responsibility or any kind of statement about you? Well, when you can't tell the difference between "me" and "we", then boundaries get crisscrossed and you start to blame people for not living up to your expectations (as though it's their job) and/or blame yourself for being naive or stupid, etc etc. This kind of critical judgmentalness is what feeds Ti loop. We are all capable of bad moral judgment, right? "To err is human", but people often forget the second half, "to forgive, divine". Blame isn't about understanding what people need to make better moral judgments, which might actually make some difference. Blame is only about making yourself feel better at someone else's expense. How can you stand proudly in who you are when you can't help but get triggered to strike back and cause more hurt?
Remember that the purpose of Ti loop is to convince you that you don't need to look at YOUR problem of fuzzy, violated boundaries between self and world. Ti loop keeps you stuck in your insecurity by putting it on something else. Being stuck, what other option do you have but to passively sit there and resent everyone around you, which never resolves anything and only causes more relationship problems? It is an ineffectual attempt to reclaim self-worth because it is ultimately based in deception. You will never find true strength by hiding from your weakness. Strength is found in confronting weakness. Ti should be helping you critically assess the situation to see what needs to be done about it, what needs to be learned from it, or what needs to change in your approach - no matter how hard it may be. But you won't be able to use Ti properly when all you really want is to hide from the truth.
Mature Fe knows the right criteria to use for choosing friends. It is generous and fair in its judgment. There is no ego involved and no forcing of anything. When there is a real possibility of salvaging a relationship, you humble yourself, open your heart, reach out, and fully commit to repairing what was broken, making up for mistakes, and atoning for harm inflicted. But when two people are proven to be incompatible, it is better for everyone, especially you, to leave the relationship through empathy, compassion, and forgiveness. Carrying the burden of hurt, bitterness, resentment, anger, and/or hatred with you throughout life is only going to slowly destroy you. A person who knows their true worth would never hurt themselves in that way.
#infj#infj relationships#auxiliary fe#tertiary ti#ti loop#boundaries#resentment#blame#anger#betrayal#forgiveness#self worth#rejection#closure#ask
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You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆
What influences your character's morality more - their own moral code, or the moral code of the people around them?
Thank you for the ask 😊 I’ll throw in pretty much all my characters into the mix for this one because I love thinking about their morality or lack there of.
Umbrolus: Umber’s moral code is very simple because of his sheltered upbringing. You’re either nice or mean, and either bad or good. You can be mean and good, or nice and bad, but if you’re bad you have to be stopped, and are fair game to be fought against. If you’re good he can work with you and maybe even be friends, even if you’re not always nice (see: Celeste sometimes). If you hurt Kleio, you’re automatically bad. Or his other friends, but Kleio especially. And it is very hard to move from that category in his mind, he holds a grudge. He does tend to look to Kleio for moral guidance to a certain extent because he’s aware he doesn’t really know what’s socially correct in many situations, so he tends to trust their judgement on if someone should be labeled good or bad.
Kaius “Hawke” River: Kaius doesn’t so much care about morality as he does debts. You do something to hurt him or his family, and he’ll hold a grudge and seek vengeance. You do something to help him or his family, and he’ll owe you. Do something to protect his daughter and he’ll lay down his life for you. The closest thing to morality for him outside of that is that he has a soft spot for young people who made bad choices because of their situation in life but who can still turn their lives around. He very much believes in people ability to recreate themselves and to become better, especially young people, and he highly encourages it. As far as who affects his morality...just himself, and maybe his daughter. He’ll definitely try to put a little more effort into doing the ‘right’ thing if she’s around. Usually. Unless he’s teaching her to lie and steal. ‘Because those are useful skills in the real world.’
Roland Terrasold: Roland is pretty set in his ways about his morality, he follows his moral code, which is based on the teaching of Sarenrae, and changing his stance on moral questions is anywhere from difficult to impossible. He believes in redemption, and the ability for anyone who truly wishes to better themselves to do so. He believes a second chance should be offered to those who sincerely seek to atone. He also believes those who do evil gleefully and who can and will never seek to be better deserve to be destroyed before they can do further harm. He believes in protecting the weak and defenseless, and in seeking out evil and corruption and stopping it before it can spread and fester and do more harm. He’s opposed to excessive and gleeful violence, preferring to subdue an enemy or kill them in the most quick and merciful what possible, even if the enemy in question is a particularly vile person. He doesn’t believe in an eye for an eye, vengeance begets more vengeance and doing excessive harm just leads to you being more okay with violence it doesn’t solve any problems or help anyone to be sadistic or take joy in killing. This might have a lot to do with the sort of person his extremely sadistic ex Ashton was. Also due to Valoria’s teachings after Sarenrae’s death, Roland also believes that the use of necromancy is not necessarily evil by default, if used on willing volunteers and towards noble ends.
Kiyo Alvara: Kiyo is extremely set in their way about their morality. Like Roland, they believe in doing the least amount of excessive harm, although unlike Roland they don’t have any qualms about revenge. They don’t believe in harming someone who’s helpless, even if the person in question was a vile person. Although they might make an exception if Rolth Lamm were helpless in front of them. I don’t know if they’d feel bad about it afterwards. That’s pretty personal. They believe in honesty unless a secret or lie is vital to someone’s safety, or the safety of Korvosa as a whole (ie they have no problem with keeping Blackjack’s identity secret since that’s vital to keeping Korvosa safe). They are slow to trust again when their trust has been betrayed, they’ve lived for so long and seen so few people change their innate nature, that it takes a lot for them to believe someone’s changed their ways.
Sai Gwenn: Her morality is extremely black and white, and extremely influenced by Hayden. There are good people and bad people, and the bad people need to be taken care of before they can harm the good people. Failing to get rid of a bad person is itself bad, because it enables bad people to harm more good people. Sometimes good people are in a bad situation which makes them have to do bad things, and those people should be given a second chance to be good in better circumstances. Who is good and who is bad is entirely based on Sai’s perception of them. Her morality is a little fucked up honestly. She’d forgive an assassin despite trying to kill her and her friends because she was conditioned into her position her entire life, but was so angry at a gargoyle for harming her friend that she polymorphed it into a bug and kept it in a jar until her friend was healed, then released it into the wild to inevitably live a short and terrified life trapped in the body of an insect with the mind of an intelligent creature.
Lucien Anasia: Part of me wants to say Lucien doesn’t have a moral code since he decides so much on the flip of a coin due to his worship of luck. But he does have some moral qualms. He believes in helping people suffering in front of him. He believes in sharing, and trying to help people to feel happy, and in leaving people’s lives a little brighter. He wouldn’t feel comfortable doing excessive harm to people, although that’s exactly what his cursed starknife does.
Haruki Himura: Haruki’s morality has been shaken to the core recently. He used to follow the teachings of the Nameless Father, but since being turned into a drow and the Nameless Father turned His back on him, Haruki’s been unmoored. Without something to believe in, he’s pendulum swung in the opposite direction, being willing to assassinate people he doesn’t like, violently slaughter creatures with his crystalline curse, and all around give into his anger and desire to make others hurt the way he currently is. He draws the line at harming innocents. He does harm to those who did harm first. Random civilians deserve to be able to just live their lives.
Khazrae Kulata: Khazrae is an erinyes devil, and as such she doesn’t have much in the way of a moral code. She gets her morality 90% from Maxwell and 10% from the rest of the Shadow Slayers. Her morality typically boils down to ‘if I do this will Maxwell be upset I did’. She sincerely likes the party and she owes them an eternal debt for how they saved her from a millennia of torment, so despite very much being an evil creature by nature, she does sincerely want to do right by them. However since she doesn’t always have a firm grasp on human morality, she does make the wrong call on occasion and does something evil without thinking it’ll be a big deal to everyone else, such as when she helped Claudia to kill a helpless prisoner to help another devil get revenge.
Eccardian Drovenge: Eccardian’s morality is a bit grey at the moment. He spent much of his life manipulated and possessed by his infernal father Mammon, so now that he’s finally free he’s feeling out how he actually feels about things without a literal devil whispering in his ear. He takes a lot of cues from Erik on how to be a better person, and considering whether Erik would be disappointed in a choice does go into his decision making. He’s okay with grave robbing and is gleeful about getting revenge on those who have harmed him. He has no qualms about killing to remove a threat to him and his organization. However he’s not going out of his way to do harm anymore, and is actually trying to funnel his resources into doing good for the city and the country as a whole, to help make things better for tieflings like him and ‘lesser’ citizens as a whole.
Chammady Drovenge: Chammady is a pragmatist. Her morality centers her family—which in this case means her brother and the Shadow Slayers—and anyone outside of them is fair game. She took the lessons of both nobility and the thieves’ guild to heart, and is willing to do what has to be done to protect herself and hers. She is skilled at the double talk of nobility, and the necessary manipulations to navigate politics. She’s good at making others underestimate her, playing the role of vapid noblewoman and leaning into people’s expectations and biases, although she’s done that less since becoming mayor as now she has a position of true power, where a different sort of face is both expected and necessary. Like her brother, she has no qualms about killing those who might obstruct her goals or harm her inner circle. She is fiercely protective of her inner circle.
#long post#oc asks#random oc questions fairy#Umbrolus#roland terrasold#kiyo alvara#Sai Gwenn#lucien anasia#haruki himura#Khazrae Kulata#Eccardian Drovenge#Chammady Drovenge#ok so the last three are more like step-ocs#they’re almost totally different from how they were in the book at this point#so they’re OCs in all but name#and I felt like talking about them—especially Khazrae#I love her morality just being WWMD—what would Maxwell do
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