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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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QUIT: a One-Shot Magnus Archives Fic

It’s a stupid-drafty manor—huge, never properly lit, all its frippery fraying at the edges. It has literal skeletons in the walls. It has too many rooms, a foyer right out of Crimson Peak, an empty cement hole with crumbling cherubs in the back yard that might have once been someone’s idea of a pond, and a library with more cursed books than Gerry could shake a match at.

The part of Gerry that once used Sharpies to blacken his eyebrows loves this place with a truly unholy passion.

If only it didn’t belong to the reason the world was going to end.

——-

Tragedy one-shot? Check.

Extinction Martin? Check.

Gerry/Jon if you squint? Check.

Bittersweet ending? Check.

Major character death. Y'all are warned.

AO3 link | Playlist

QUIT

“Really?” says Gerry.

Jon won’t look at him. Instead, he exhales, smoke funneling between his lips in a slow, controlled fog. “Really.”

Gerry rolls his eyes.

“I felt that,” says Jon, who isn’t looking at him, who doesn’t need to look at him anymore to know what Gerry does.

“So today’s a day of broken promises, is it?” says Gerry, leaning on the wall beside him. The brick shows through his arms; breeze picks up, erasing the evidence of Jon’s transgression, but doesn’t move Gerry’s long hair at all.

“I’m not breaking a promise,” says Jon. “I’m… relapsing.”

“Elias?” says Gerry.

“No,” says Jon, and takes another drag.

Gerry’s sigh matches pace with Jon’s exhale. Elbow on the wall, he props his head on his hand, watching Jon.

“So it’s floors and short walls, now,” Jon remarks, still not looking at him. “Or are you just pretending to lean on that? Getting a ghostly core workout? Or is it only horizontal structures that support you?”

Gerry laughs softly. “Keep asking, Archivist. I’m sure it’ll all make sense someday.”

“There have to be rules of some kind,” Jon says, and points at Gerry with the cigarette. “And you know not to call me Archivist.”

“If you’re going to be a twat, I get to call you what I want,” says Gerry.

Jon doesn’t rise to that, doesn’t respond at all, and that’s how Gerry knows it was really bad today.

Jon exhales again.

The smoke drifts away from them, lingering over dead grass, past the few old-growth trees in the back of the estate, dissipating in the direction of the town.

“So,” says Gerry, drawing the word out. “What’d he do?”

“Made me watch,” says Jon, which means exactly nothing.

“That’s every day.” And he guesses. “Did you finally find Martin?”

Jon’s jaw tightens. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s nice,” says Gerry, who never learned good boundaries growing up, who never lived in a world that rewarded them. “What was it then? Basira hot on the trail?”

“Fuck,” says Jon, so quietly it almost didn’t happen, and finally stubs out the cigarette on the wall. Defiantly, he leaves it there.

“You know that won’t upset Elias, right?” says Gerry as Jon walks away. “You’re littering, Dickavist.”

Jon pauses. “Pick it up yourself, then, unless the rules say you can’t,” he snaps, and walks away.

Wow. It was really bad today.

Gerry shrugs to no one and floats back inside.

Gerry still doesn’t feel things the way he should. There’s a numbness there, silently stifling; it got really bad when Herbert and Montauk still had his book. When he still was a book.

But like his ability to touch, it’s been slowly getting better, too. Maybe it’s because of Jon, maybe not; this is all unknown territory.

One thing Gerry feels quite keenly now, as he floats inside: Elias is a monster, but damn, the man has taste.

It’s a stupid-drafty manor—huge, never properly lit, all its frippery fraying at the edges. It has literal skeletons in the walls. It has three cellars and an underground rail line to an abandoned coal mine. It has too many rooms, a foyer right out of Crimson Peak, an empty cement hole with crumbling cherubs in the back yard that might have once been someone’s idea of a pond, and a library with more cursed books than Gerry could shake a match at.

The part of Gerry that once used Sharpies to blacken his eyebrows loves this place with a truly unholy passion.

If only it didn’t belong to the reason the world was going to end.

“Still here?” says Elias, who manages to pull off the velvet dressing gown look. The man looks sleepy; he’s got tea in a china cup so fine that even the diffused light of this place makes it glow. “You’re free to wander, you know. You could go elsewhere and bother other people.”

Slowly, languorously, Gerry flips him off with both hands.

Elias sighs. “I will find your book, Mr. Keay. When I do, there are many things I could do with it that do not involve your… release. One might think you have better things to do than aggravate me in the interim.”

“One might think you have better things to do than suck a dick,” says Gerry with great cheer.

“So you talked to Jon.” Elias sips his tea.

Gerry doesn’t deny it. He knows he’s always bitchier after Elias has finished with Jon for the day, and he is long past the point where anything like that could embarrass him. “Get anything out of the daily torture session?”

“Yes,” says Elias. “Martin’s taken a secondary school.”

Ah.

Gerry sighs. “Well, that explains that.”

“Indeed.” Elias sips. “Unfortunately, it seems to have brought out Jon’s more… obstreperous nature.. He walked out before we were finished. Quite inconvenient.”

Even knowing how awful he is, some days, Elias still takes Gerry’s breath away. “Wow,” Gerry says. “Wow.”

“Yes, yes. I’m quite the monster. If you see him, do tell him we need to continue, won’t you? Unless he wants more schools to be taken, of course.” And Elias continues down the hall toward whatever psychopath thing he has next on his agenda.

Gerry had been going to give Jon some space. Jon wasn’t fun to be around when he was in his head quite this deeply, but a school…

Children…

Gerry sighs. “Damn,” he mutters to himself, going through the trouble of walking up the stairs instead of floating.

He doesn’t want the Extinction to win.

He doesn't care that much about what any of the Fears are doing these days, particularly. But the Extinction just feels so… personal.

Offensive, Gerry realizes, and puzzles over that thought. He finds the Extinction offensive, and isn’t sure why.

He doesn’t bother to knock on Jon’s door.

Jon’s on the canopy bed, fully clothed, face down.

“Nice,” says Gerry, floating over. “I’d paint this, if I could still hold a brush. Call it, Perfectly Useless Despair, and hang it on the front wall.”

Jon is silent.

Gerry goes for broke. “Elias told me it was a school.”

“Secondary school,” says Jon into his pillow. “Children. Small children, turned to pieces of warped plastic and concrete. Small children, their shadows ripped away from them with screams and transformed into Inheritors that only vanished in the sunlight because we got damned lucky. Children. Martin… Martin’s…” Jon stops.

Gerry climbs onto the bed and lies on his back next to Jon, staring at the faded canopy. “Well,” he says. “That sucks.”

Jon pushes himself up on his elbows just so he can scowl at him.

Gerry looks at him, expression mild.

Jon’s scowls are cute. Gerry wants to muss his hair. He suspects he might be able to, soon. He’s getting a lot better at touching things these days.

“So?” says Gerry. “What’s to be done about it?”

“Nothing,” Jon snaps. “That’s the… that’s the whole thing. There’s nothing to be done.”

“Not according to Elias,” says Gerry.

“Elias is wrong,” says Jon, just because.

“Then why are you still here?” says Gerry. “Letting him use you like this.”

He wonders if Jon has any idea how good his sad puppy look is. Probably not.

“Because he might not be wrong,” says Jon, softer. “What if I can stop him, somehow? What if I…” Jon flops back down, face into the pillow.

“I mean, you can’t,” says Gerry. “That’s not what you’re trying to do, remember? Not stop him. Expose him. But you still think you can save him instead, don’t you? Pull him back from the fire, and all that?”

“He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” says Jon into the pillow. “He’s not… evil. He’s lost.”

“I think you’re half right,” says Gerry. “He’s lost. He’s lost his hope, lost his way, lost everything. Thinks this is what has to happen, somehow. But he does know what he’s doing.”

Jon makes a small, heartbroken sound.

Gerry likes Jon’s sounds—he’s such a vocal person—but not the bad ones. Not this.

So he goes for truth as the only healing balm he knows.

“I can’t even see him like you do, and I know he knows what he’s doing. You won’t be able to help him if you don’t acknowledge that much.” Gerry’s tone isn’t gentle. He doesn’t really do gentle; it seems like false comfort, unfamiliar and cheap.

Jon shakes a little. Possibly crying.

Gerry purses his lips. “Hey.”

Nothing.

“Hey. Let me ask you this. If you could talk to Martin now—but not as he is now, before Peter got hold of him, and it all went wrong—what do you think he’d want you to do?”

“You sound like Elias,” says Jon, and the tightness in his voice says Gerry was right about the crying.

“Stab a man in the heart, why don’t you,” says Gerry. “Really, though. Would he ask you to just let him wander around doing this? Or would he ask you to stop him?”

“He’d ask me to save him,” says Jon, and they both know it’s a lie.

“Uh, huh,” says Gerry. “So you think he wants you to save him, while it’s costing lives. Not stop him. To let more people die while you try to figure out a way to rescue someone completely consumed by a Fear.”

No one can undo that. They both know it.

“I,” says Jon.

“First time he’s done children, right?” says Gerry. “Won’t be the last. He’s been building up to it.”

“I know,” whispers Jon.

Gerry sighs.

Gerry knows Elias is waiting upstairs in hopes that Jon will resume their session—this intense diving into the Eye via both their powers, extending Jon’s abilities, utilizing Elias’ experience.

It’s brutal. It’s violational. It’s increasing Jon’s strength tenfold by the day, and… that’s what seems to be needed.

The more keenly Jon can see Martin, the better chance he has of seeing past his protections, making him vulnerable, somehow. Because apparently, Martin can’t just be shot, or blown up, or whatever, so it’s going to require something extra.

No one from the other powers will go near him anymore. Not since Martin turned Peter Lukas into a pressed-ash statue of himself. Not since Martin reduced Jared Hopworth to a pool of grease like dirty fossil fuel. Not since Jude Perry’s fire turned toxic, and she burned, screaming, leaving weird, sulfurous smears all over the road.

The Extinction isn’t vulnerable in any of the usual ways.

But Martin Blackwood might be. Which would require seeing him, stripping him free like peeling off his skin. Gerry’s not fully clear on how it works because he was never an avatar of anything. Just knew how to work the system, like his mum.

It’s all a mess.

“So,” says Gerry. “I have a growing suspicion.”

“Good for you,” mutters Jon.

“I think you’re already strong enough to do it.”

Jon goes so, so still.

Bingo, Gerry thinks, and is inordinately pleased that he knows something Elias (possibly) does not. “I’ve got an idea.”

Jon grunts.

“Let’s go for a walkabout.”

Jon turns his head slowly to stare at him.

Oh, hi, Gerry thinks, because their faces are inches apart, and it’s nice.

“A walkabout,” grumps Jon.

“Yeah,” says Gerry. “I’ll go with you. You don’t have to do anything. We’ll just… walk and see. Get out of the Haunted Mansion. Remember why you’re even bothering to try to stop the Extinction in the first place.”

Jon scowls.

“Afraid?” Gerry smirks at him.

“Don’t be absurd. Of course I am.”

“Good. You’ll go all superpowered then.”

Jon rolls his eyes.

Gerry thinks he can almost feel Jon’s irritated huff. Or maybe not, but it’s nice to imagine. “You really just want to stay here playing Vulcan mind-meld with Elias all day?”

“Ugh, no,” says Jon.

“Sooo?” says Gerry.

“You can do that?” says Jon, brow knitting thunderously. “Walkabout?”

“Yeah, I can.”

“How? Are you ever going to tell me how you’re getting stronger?” says Jon. “You don’t even seem to be… suffering anymore.”

He isn’t. “Sure, someday, I’ll tell you,” says Gerry. When Elias can’t see. When Elias can’t get involved, ruin things, bury them both in a bog.

Jon balances on the precipice of decision, and Gerry dearly wants to tip him over.

“You can eat ice cream while I moan lasciviously,” he says.

Jon laughs. “All right, all right,” he says, struggling off the over-soft mattress.

Gerry grins and hopes Elias is keeping score.

“I just don’t know why Martin came to Wales,” mutters Jon, his greatcoat fluttering in the wind, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Why we all had to get dragged here.”

Here is a lovely town called Caerphilly. It’s picturesque. There’s a cheese named after it. Merlin filmed here. It even has a castle.

It’s currently quarantined, traffic nearly gone, silent in the eerie way cities can be when humans have to stay inside.

“What, Elias’ Playboy Mansion doesn’t make it all worth the journey?” says Gerry.

Jon snorts. “He stole it.”

“Color me surprised. Did he kill anyone?”

Jon sighs. “Not exactly.”

Gerry waits. Jon doesn’t fill him in.

“Evil overlord, just less evil than the other evil overlord,” says Gerry, striding along beside him and absolutely unconcerned if anyone thinks he’s a ghost.

Jon doesn’t care, either. It’s all gone beyond that.

A woman hurries by, almost running. She’s carrying an umbrella, which she holds up to hide her face.

“They still think if he can’t see you, he can’t get you,” Jon murmurs, not turning his head to see her.

He. Martin.

“Makes sense,” says Gerry. “He was Eye, first. They all feel watched.”

“It’s not going to protect anyone,” says Jon. “They’re still going to work. They’re still going to school. He’s aiming for gatherings. Someone needs to tell them.”

The news hasn’t told anything much. Terrorist attacks is all that filters through, because nobody knows what it is, and the ECDC doesn’t know what it is, and whatever Section 31 officers are involved here have either succumbed to the trouble or have found nothing of use.

They won’t, either. There’s nothing of use to find.

“Good news,” says Gerry. “Nobody will tell them, and it’ll all get swept under the rug, and the conclusion will be utterly unsatisfying.”

Jon eyes him. “Thanks for that.”

“Not my first merry-go-round,” says Gerry.

“It’s the Senghenydd Disaster,” says Jon suddenly, knowing it. “It wasn’t the worst colliery tragedy, nor even the most damaging, but… for some reason, that’s the one. That’s the reason he came here.”

“A coal thing? Huh. Guess that works. Pollution, or whatever.”

“This isn’t Captain Planet,” Jon mutters.

Gerry beams at him like he won something. “A pop culture reference? Really?”

“I don’t live under a rock.”

“Debatable,” says Gerry, pleased that he can pull Jon out from under said rock.

“He came here because it’s the only vacation he remembers taking when his father was around, and he learned what happened, and that hundreds died because the recommended safety updates were ignored. Greed mattered more than lives. Martin learned about the explosions, and felt awful,” says Jon. “He got angry. Angry at humans for it. It seeded… something in him.”

“That’s sad,” says Gerry, and means it. “How does it all feel to you?”

“Doomed.” Jon sighs and hunches his shoulders. “I think he could be moving much faster than he is, though.”

“But he hasn’t. Maybe he’s waiting for you.”

Gerry hadn’t meant that to punch Jon in the chest, but it seems to have. Jon stops walking and closes his eyes.

“Hey. You’re supposed to eat ice cream while I moan at you, remember?” says Gerry.

Jon smiles weakly. “Yeah. Even though it’s cold.”

“Shop up there’s open.”

Jon doesn't order ice cream. He does get a tea.

The person behind the counter won’t look at them. Is wearing a hat with a visor that covers the top half of their face.

Jon sighs.

“What are they calling him now?” says Gerry.

“The Smoking Man,” says Jon. “That’s what the children who—“ He stops.

“They called him that? To his face?”

“They never even saw him. He walked into the school, and just… just walked through the halls, doing nothing, doing… everything. He didn’t even stop. He just walked through one door and out the other, and when he left, nothing in there was alive.”

“Definitely escalating, then.”

Jon stares at his tea.

“How many people live here?” says Gerry.

“Currently, down from 43,407 to 34,248. Most have left, but… quite a few have died.”

Gerry whistles, low. “And the rest can’t leave.”

“Definitely not. The ECDC won’t let them.”

“You’ve been strong enough to end this for a while now, haven’t you?” says Gerry.

Jon looks… so sad.

Gerry gets it. Sort of. He suspects Jon’s love is different from his in manifestation and form, but he sort of gets it. “Why, then, are you letting Elias do this to you every day?”

“As long as I cooperate, he won’t… he won’t just… try to use someone else,” says Jon.

“Can’t, can he? Long as you’re the—“ Gerry stage whispers—“Archivist.”

“He could do loads of things with cannon fodder. He could shoot me and pick someone else, too. But…“ Jon stops.

“But?”

“Something I figured out, is all. During our sessions.” Jon finally sips his tea, and makes a face. “Ugh.”

“Don’t leave me hanging.”

“I don’t know if he can hear us now, or see us, or anything,” says Jon. “I can’t say.”

“You think you know something he doesn’t know you know? He’s literally splashing around in your head like a kiddy pool half the day.”

Jon says nothing.

“You know, you could just… remove the problem,” says Gerry.

Jon understands what he’s saying. “If I kill him, I kill everyone who works at the Institute.”

Gerry sighs. “You can’t save everybody, can you?”

“You think I don’t know that?” Jon looks up, eyes burning, power thrumming through his gaze, and it’s so much.

Wow, Gerry thinks, and almost has to look away.

“You think I don’t know I can’t save everybody? That I keep having to… watch them die in front of me, or find out they died after a coma, or—“

“People die. It’s awful, but it happens.” Gerry puts his hand on Jon’s, and it works.

Jon freezes. Stares down.

His hand shows beneath Gerry’s, like an optical illusion.

“I know,” says Gerry. “All right? I know this isn’t easy. Neither of us have ever had easy choices to make. I get it.” It’s not gentle, but it is real, and it undoes some knot in Jon.

Jon slumps forward over his tea, not moving his hand. He covers his face with his other one. “I can’t save Martin. I know that.”

“So you’re just putting off the hard thing.”

“I… don’t want him to be him when I have to do whatever it is I have to do.”

“But if he’s gone that far, how many people will he have killed?”

Jon says nothing.

“What are you going to do, anyway?” Gerry says. “I get the exposing him, or whatever. But what then?”

“There’s a sniper.”

Gerry blinks. “What, really?”

“At least one. I haven’t looked that closely.”

“That would be a thing,” says Gerry, shaking his head.

Jon looks at their hands. “How did you do this?”

“Doesn’t matter right now,” says Gerry. “Wasn’t actually sure it would work.”

“Feels like a puff of air, almost.”

“Better than nothing. Hey—you’ll be able to share that cigarette soon.”

“After you made me promise to quit? You hypocrite,” says Jon, smiling weakly.

“Can dead people even be hypocrites?”

Jon laughs softly. It’s got a note of wonder in it, and Gerry privately determines to make him laugh like that again. “I don’t think even Thomas Aquinas thought of that one.”

“Bet you he did,” says Gerry. “And it’s in a weird manuscript that somehow got written by him three years before he was born, and Leitner got hold of it in 1973.”

“And it belongs to the Vast, and makes you dance on the head of a pin,” Jon says.

They both laugh.

Jon’s smile fades, and he holds Gerry’s gaze with one that no longer burns, but is just a man’s. “Elias wants me marked by the Extinction,” he says.

“What?”

“That’s why he’s so determined it’s got to be me. That… desire is enough for him to keep me alive, and not go after anyone else. And it’s important to me he doesn’t go after anyone else.”

“Marked by the—why?” says Gerry.

Jon looks down again. “I don’t think he wanted me to know, but… a little late for that.”

“I usually know more than you do in terms of the esoteric stuff,” says Gerry, “but you’ve lost me on this one.”

“He wants me marked by all of them. All the Fears. Then he thinks if I… do the Eye’s ritual, for the Watcher’s Crown—”

”But why would he… that wouldn’t just bring the Eye. If you were actually marked by everybody. That’d…” Gerry inhales. “Fuck me, that would work.”

Jon looks at him. “You got it already?”

He snorts. “The way I was raised? Yeah, of course. And yeah, it really would work. Heh—my mum would be eating herself if she found this out because she hadn’t thought of it first.” Gerry makes a face. “Though if she had….”

“She’d have tried it with you,” says Jon, quietly.

“Maybe,” he says. “After she figured out the whole von Closen legacy thing wasn’t going to happen.”

“You’re not exactly old,” says Jon. “She gave up on it awfully quickly.”

“Yeah, well.” Gerry shrugs. “She took it personally when I came out at fourteen. What can you do?”

“My grandmother never asked, nor addressed the topic in any way,” says Jon, looking at the table. “I have absolutely no idea how she’d have responded to something like asexuality. Physical intimacy did not exist in my house.”

Gerry shakes his head. “Meanwhile, my mum used to bring in random men for rituals she made up, and whatever she did to them, they always left tasting blood.”

“That’s… specific,” says Jon.

“Yeah, breakfast conversations were real fucked up,” says Gerry cheerfully.

“Makes me wonder how we aren’t all completely insane,” says Jon.

“We’re miracles,” says Gerry, so seriously that Jon laughs again.

“Dancing on the head of a pin.”

“Wings?”

“Of course we have wings, if we’re taking the place of angels,” says Jon, and it’s a smile like the hint of sunrise.

Then Jon goes very still. All the color drains from his face.

Gerry doesn’t even have to ask, but he does. “What?”

“He’s here.”

That was fast, thinks Gerry.

“Did you know this would happen?” whispers Jon.

“No.” It’s mostly true.

Jon stands, leaving his tea half-drunk, and heads out the door.

Gerry really wishes he’d been there to see Martin take out Peter Lukas. Though from what Jon told him, maybe it wouldn’t have been so good to see.

It had all been building for months to that one moment beneath the Institute, in the heart of the Panopticon that Gertrude hypothesized but never really found.

Months of Martin forced to study the Extinction, to obsess over it, to consider it from every angle.

Months of avoiding Jon while trying to save him, of bleeding himself out to keep Jon from drowning.

And there, standing over Jonah Magnus’ body while Elias and Peter had a smug-off, Martin was quietly breaking.

It must have been happening for some time, but who knew? It wasn’t like he’d talked to anyone.

And when Jon had arrived, trying to help, desperate to save Martin, Peter had just… reacted, shoving Jon into the Lonely without so much as a by-your-leave.

Because of a bet. Because, somehow, of Elias.

Jon had been trapped, separated as if by glass, and won’t talk about how it felt—but oh, he could still see what was happening.

Saw Martin’s face twist, something behind his eyes breaking.

Saw Elias’s expression change when he realized there’d been a miscalculation.

Saw Peter’s smirk as he turned back to Martin and told him to get stabbing.

Instead, Martin turned Peter into volcanic ash.

It wasn’t fast.

It wasn’t quiet.

Elias had already run, or he’d probably have died, too.

Jon had watched, his shouts muffled as if in snow, his self insubstantial and forever alone. Crying words he could not hear as he watched Martin sob on his knees, watched him beat his fists bloody on the ground, and then watched him… calm.

Watched Martin lift his head and look right at him, trapped in thick and choking mist.

And Martin watched Jon aching, watched Jon weeping, watched Jon feeling more separated than he ever had in his life.

And Martin had nodded, and just… walked away.

Like this had decided him.

Like he was done.

It had taken Jon a week to walk out of the Lonely on his own.

By then, it was far too late.

Gerry understands being done.

He’s been done. It’s a bad place to be.

Jon understands, too, though, and that’s… not so good.

Jon’s like a bloodhound now, marching up the street, up the hill, unerring in direction while Gerry follows behind.

It’s surprising to Gerry that he can feel Martin coming. It’s cold.

Not temperature-cold. This is some other kind of thing, a sucking thing, draining color and air and life.

They crest the hill, and there he is.

It just looks like Martin. A large man, sweet-faced, in a simple cable-knit sweater and jeans. There is nothing in his body language or expression that indicates any kind of threat.

With one exception.

Martin’s eyes are gone, and smoke curls from his skull like the lazy smolder from a dying junkyard fire.

“Hi, Jon,” says Martin, and it’s his voice, but it isn’t, and it itches in Gerry’s head, even though he doesn’t have a head to itch.

Jon is already crying, though quietly. Tears stream down his face, dampening his beard.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” says Martin, and it’s so gentle, and so kind. He holds out his hand.

Not what Gerry expected, that’s for sure.

“I’m so sorry,” says Jon.

“It’s okay,” says Martin. “I’ve fixed it.”

“Fixed… Martin, you’re killing people.”

“I’m saving them. Do you know what happens if they stay here? Do you?” And no one with smoke pouring out of their heads should seem so kind, and so certain, and so good. “They get eaten, or burned. Or chased, or manipulated. They get twisted, and isolated, and burrowed into, and stared at until they go mad. But you know that, Jon. It’s all happened to you already.”

His hand is still out, and it feels like the world has gone still.

Gerry says not one word. He has no idea if Martin could do something to him or not, but if they all get through this, he wants to be there after.

It surprises him, honestly. But it’s a good feeling, so Gerry settles into it and waits.

Jon seems to be trying to answer. He keeps swallowing, over and over, looking from Martin’s face to his hand. “I don’t understand.”

Martin smiles, and it is sweet like setting sun shining on honey. “I know. But I do.”

“Martin, they… were children.”

“Remember when you asked me to gouge out our eyes together and run away?” says Martin as if recalling a date.

Well, Jon hadn’t told Gerry about that. Mental note made.

“Yes,” whispers Jon.

“And I wouldn’t do it. Remember?”

“Yes,” whispers Jon.

“I’m sorry. You had the right idea.”

“I…”

Martin’s hand is still out.

Jon, seemingly unaware, has taken one step toward him.

“You put the choice on me, and I didn’t listen. Remember?”

Jon doesn’t answer this time. He’s unblinking, staring.

Martin waits. He’s as unmoving as the mountains.

“Why are you… telling me this?” says Jon. He takes another step.

“Because I made the hard choice this time. You don't have to, Jon. It's okay. Take my hand.”

Jon looks at it for a long moment, then back at Martin. “And what then?”

“And then we stop all of this. No rituals. No Entities. It’s all over. Take my hand.”

“I don’t… want to kill anyone,” says Jon.

“You don’t have to. I’m doing the hard thing so you don’t have to. I’m done, Jon. So are you. I’m done watching you be hurt. You’re done with all these people and everything as much as I am.”

Jon’s voice breaks. “I… I can’t.”

“Can’t what? Just be with me? I love you, you know.”

Jon’s shoulders slump. “I love you, too.”

“Just be with me. That’s all I want.”

“Until… it’s over?”

“Until it’s over. Just be with me. I don’t really want anything else.”

Jon’s walking, and reaching out.

And then Martin has him by the hand, and Martin is pulling him in, and they’ve come together with a slow perfection like the inevitable clash of stars, and Jon’s eyes close as they kiss, but Martin’s don’t.

And Martin’s dipping him just slightly, just enough to keep Jon off balance, and Jon’s arms are around his neck, and the kiss goes on, and on, and on.

Gerry forgot that Jon doesn’t need to have his eyes open anymore to do things.

Things are changing.

Jon fits in Martin’s arms, fits in a way Gerry has trouble parsing, a way he’s never seen fitting before. Martin’s arms go from steady to tight, his hands from holding to clutching, and desperation speeds their kiss into something like gasping, into starvation and sharpness and need.

And when Jon opens his eyes, he is in grief and at peace and on the precipice of great sorrow, and it pierces even though Gerry isn’t the focus at all.

“Until it's over?” whispers Jon.

“Until it's over,” whispers Martin, and his voice doesn’t itch, and tears are sliding down his cheeks and onto Jon’s collar. Smoke still rises from his empty eyes, but it’s turned white like a clean, sweet fire of freshly hewn wood, and he is trembling. “I’m sorry, Jon. I’m so sorry.”

“I love you,” Jon whispers back.

The shot rings out.

Gerry thinks, Oh. We were being followed by a sniper, and then Jon is sobbing, and all the sound in the world comes back, including all the sirens they hadn’t known were there.

They couldn’t make Jon leave Martin’s body until it had completely turned to dust.

Dust is the wrong word, but it… well, it didn’t decay. There was no odor, and no rot; it just… wasn’t alive anymore, in a way that defied paltry things like bacteria and the release of gasses.

What’s left looks like cotton so old it’s gone brittle.

Organic matter is what Gerry hears some of them mutter when Jon is finally coaxed away.

It’s all been so weird of late that nobody even cares that Gerry’s hovering around like a ghost.

Jon has not spoken. Daisy speaks—Daisy, who made the shot, who’s been following Jon since they came up here, waiting for the one moment her shot would actually count.

Jon ignores her. And the emergency workers. And everyone. He sits in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in a thin, silvery blanket, staring at nothing.

Gerry is familiar with grief, has always known sorrow. He doesn't know how to do comfort like an ordinary person, but he can be here, so… he will.

Gerry sits beside him. “Hey.”

Nothing.

“I’d like to share that cigarette now,” says Gerry.

Jon manages to look at him. “It’s over.”

“It—” says Gerry, then realizes Jon isn’t looking at him. Jon’s looking through him.

He turns to find Elias.

Elias, who looks like Christmas came early. “Jon. You’ve done so well.”

“It’s over,” says Jon. “I know what you planned. It won’t happen.”

“Of course, Jon, whatever you say,” Elias lies through his teeth, and smiles. “I take it you’re going back to London right away?”

Jon doesn’t answer. He keeps staring.

Elias’ smile falters.

Gerry can’t see a change in Jon’s look, but he can feel it.

A heat, this time, the opposite of what Martin was doing, a tidal thing, a filling thing, renewing color and air and life.

And whatever it is, it is making Elias shake in his fancy shoes.

Elias looks like he’s seen… well, a ghost. He can’t seem to look away from Jon.

“Do you believe me now?” says Jon.

Elias nods sharply. He sets his jaw. “I’ll see you back at the Institute,” he promises, dire, and walks away.

“Go to hell,” Jon mutters, and huddles under his thin silver blanket.

“You have got to tell me what happened there,” says Gerry.

“I started to unravel him.”

“Right. What’s that?”

“Untie him from his god. I can unhook him.”

“You… what?” Gerry stares. “You can make someone unbecome?”

“No. No, he can’t be… freed. Nobody can. But I could end him.”

Gerry whistles, low. “Would you really do it? What about all the other people connected to the Institute?”

“I can’t save everyone,” Jon says darkly.

This is a hard day to be Jon, Gerry thinks, and touches his hand.

Jon looks up as though swimming up from a deep well. Tears still fill his eyes, unshed.

“Let’s get out of here,” says Gerry. “Not back to the Playboy Mansion, either. If you’re willing to do a little impersonation, I do have a good bit squared away in the bank. Bet it’s still there.”

“Look, this is absurd. Can you even do that?” says Jon. “Where is your book? How can you run around like this, and… do this?” He puts his other hand over Gerry’s, and it works.

Gerry grins. It’s a naughty grin, the one his mum used to call up to trouble. “Still haven’t figured it out?”

“No, I haven’t figured it out. You just appeared, a few days after the Lonely. You’ve been with me ever since, and you haven’t told me how.”

“Some Archivist you are.”

“Gerry…”

“It’s you.”

Jon blinks at him in confusion that Gerry honestly finds adorable. “What?”

“Sims,” says Daisy, wandering over. “They need a debrief.”

“I won’t give one,” says Jon.

Daisy ignores Gerry with a will. “You have to.”

“No, I don’t, any more than you have to report all the bodies you buried in the woods. Make it go away, Daisy. I’m done.”

Daisy gives him a searing look, but she walks off.

Jon turns back. “Explain.”

“Like I said, it’s you. When you read my page. It didn’t matter that you burned it, because I’m… archived, I guess.” He shrugs. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m written in you. So, uh. Bit awkward, but you’re stuck with me.”

Jon stares. He wipes his face on his sleeve. Looks more than a little lost. “I… I think I’m… actually fine with that. I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, though.”

“I’m not. Though I’m sorry about Martin,” says Gerry, trying.

Jon smiles a strange smile, small and sad and final. “I did save him, in the end. In a way.”

“He was himself when he died.”

“Yes.”

“The thing you didn't want to have happen.”

“This was about him, not me. It… was all I could give him.”

Gerry studies him. “I don’t know how to be… comforting. But I can be with you while you figure it out. And I still owe you some inappropriate ice cream. So… let’s go, Jon.”

Jon hesitates.

“It’s a choice, you know? Grief has to be walked through. You can’t outrun it, or hide.”

Jon exhales slowly. “I… I think I understand. What will we do?”

And Gerry says the first thing that comes to mind. “Quit.”

Jon laughs weakly. “I can’t. I can’t quit being Archivist. Quit the Eye. Any of it.”

“Maybe not, but we can do it our own way, can’t we?”

“I…”

“Look,” says Gerry. “I followed Gertrude around, and she did whatever the hell she wanted for fifty years. I think the world can handle you going just a little bit rogue.”

Jon looks him in the eye.

It’s almost too much.

Gerry loves it. “Intense,” he says.

Jon looks at their hands. “Like touching a whisper,” he says.

“Is that a yes, or…” says Gerry.

“Yes. Let’s go. Back to London, and then…”

“Quit.”

“Quit.” Jon smiles a little. “Somehow, some way. We quit.”

“They’ll never know what hit them,” says Gerry, hopping down from the ambulance.

He offers his hand. Maybe it’s too soon; maybe it’s wrong of him, to do this just after Martin.

But Gerry doesn’t think so. He thinks it’s maybe the most important thing he ever could do.

Especially when Jon takes it, grips, and it actually works.