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late-to-the-magnus-archives · 1 year

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I Prefer My Heart To Be Broken, Chapter Fifteen: Tea

Baby god training. An oversight revealed. A much-needed conversation.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN: TEA

The door is hidden.

Other-Jon knows where it is as though he’d put it there, and opens it for them with ease.

Inside is a little dining area with three tables and a small kitchenette. Other-Jon plops into a seat and puts his arms on the table and his head on his arms, as if he’s been deflated.

Arthur follows the sound of that flop and joins him at that table. “Ah, Martin—if there’s anything to eat in there….”

“I’ll bring it. Everybody take a breather, okay? I’ll be right back.” Martin walks away.

Other-Jon doesn’t want to talk.

John could use it as an excuse. He could. It would be super easy to tweak this, poke that wounded man into some kind of poor response, then drop the whole plan as a bad deal.

But Arthur wants him to help because it’s help Arthur needed himself: guidance from someone who knows what’s going on, no matter how small.

John signs. Archivist. We need to talk. Now. It’s not a request.

The Archivist hunches.

So strange. The body language is just… a miserable, beat-down human, who can be hurt.

But he’s not a human. He must know that. Doesn’t he? Huh, says John.

And curiosity is what finally draws the other out. “What?” says the Archivist, muffled against his arms.

You’re a mess.

Jon snorts.

No, I mean… your marks are… gods, they’re not even symmetrical. They look like fucking accidents. Who did this to you, anyway?

Jon sighs. “The Spider and a man named Jonah Magnus.”

That was even weirder. You were serious. A human was involved? How did this even work?

“Nobody knows.” Jon sits up, though he keeps his head down. His brown skin is blotchy from tears. “The Web and Jonah just kept… throwing me at things and hoping I wouldn’t die.”

John stares at him. What? That’s not how you make a god.

Jon scoffs. It’s a good scoff, and both Arthur and John flinch back.

“Tell them that,” Jon snaps, and finally looks up.

His eyes are still human, so John presses on. Wait. You’re saying this like you weren’t even aware of the ritual.

“I wasn’t. I was kept ignorant, led around by the gods-damned nose, and only found out what it was even all for when it was too late, at the end.”

John sputters. This is all wrong! How did you even survive? Wait—how much time did they take for this ritual?

Other-Jon frowns. “I was marked by the Eye too young to remember. Marked by the Spider at eight. Then from age twenty-nine through the next two years, monsters just… tried to eat me, or hurt me, or bully me, or kill me. The final change, though, when I… at the end, there wasn’t a ritual. Unless you mean the statement—the, ah… the… the words Jonah made me read, but that only got me halfway to whatever this is.”

John is flabbergasted.

Though he’s seeing some of the logic behind it. The length of time between the initial marks gave Jon’s soul enough time to fully adapt to them—to grow around them, as it were, creating an entanglement that made it harder for him to die.

Each succeeding breach would be more likely to kill him, but could theoretically instead reach that intertwinement faster, until, by the end…

“That sounds like a miserable experience,” says Arthur.

Jon’s smile is bitter. “You could say that.”

You have to be the unluckiest bastard who ever lived, John concludes.

The Archivist laughs.

It’s not a bad laugh, but it’s so… raw.

John sighs. You really had no control over what you just did to me, did you?

“No.” Jon puts his face in his hands. “Gods, I’m so sorry.”

John thinks he may understand why. When’s the last time you did have control?

“When we got here. I thought… I thought it was over. I thought it finally stopped, but being here, with what Hastur did to me, I… it’s back.”

“Martin said you were tricked into ending the world,” says Arthur, gently.

“I… suppose.” Jon swallows. “When I start taking in a statement, I can’t stop. I literally cannot. Jonah knew that, and hid the words that needed to be said to cause the apocalypse within a statement. He taunted me first, though. Made me read his damned monologue before getting to the meat of it.”

Confirmation. I see.

Other-Jon goes quiet.

Martin returns from the kitchen with a small plate of sliced fruit. “Guess this was left there for us. The King, probably, but who gives a shit at this point?”

Arthur, the plate is in front of you. It—oh! I remember this! Arthur, it’s called Gloria fruit, and it’s delicious! You’re going to love it!

John sounds proud, like he’d grown it himself.

Which, long ago, he did.

Arthur smiles a little and feels for the plate.

John is silent until Arthur eats.

And Arthur moans (because of course he does).

Satisfied, John turns his attention back to the Archivist. You would’ve been taught some things, Archivist, immediately, upon your ascension. Tell me what happened. Who was there? You may have missed something in all the drama.

“No one was there for the first part,” says Jon. “It was just me, those words, and then the Eye and all the Fears in the world.”

The first part? Oh—oh! They divided it up? I didn’t know they—what’s the second part?

“When I murdered Jonah Magnus in cold blood, and the Eye made me its pupil,” says Jon to the table, gaze far away.

Cold blood? Hardly. A life sacrifice is always part of ascension. You knew that.

Jon shakes his head. “I’m telling you, I didn’t. I didn’t know it would do that. I didn’t know it was… whatever this is. I wanted to hurt him, and I wanted to… make it stop. The Eye would give me the power to do it. That was all I knew.”

Plan B—murdering the world. John shudders. But who else was there?

“No one.”

Not the Web. Not even a representative. Not one fucking deity from any pantheon?

“I told you. No one.”

Stunning. Could this even fall under “oversight?” Someone should have been there. Even just fucking Gabriel, sticking his damn nose into everything. Someone.

“If they were, all they did was watch me ruin everything,” Jon says, low.

John needs to think.

Arthur feels for the plate. John’s left hand pulls it closer to him. Six more slices, Arthur.

“These are good, John.”

Told you. He’s pleased.

Jon rubs his face.

John sighs. Right. I’m not… qualified for this, but let me try. First, you need to know that deification rarely works. When it does, it gives off so many shockwaves that it’s impossible nobody noticed. I have no idea why you were left alone. Listen: you’re fully entangled with the Fears that made you, and it’s badly done. This is supposed to be even, a carefully woven pattern so your being and their other-nature insertions look and act as natural as if you grew them yourself. That’s not what you look like.

Jon’s smile is crooked and bitter and raw. “And what do I Look like?”

Like someone spilled buckets of boiling gold onto cold glass, letting it shatter and then solidify in unpredictable ways and wild patterns. And it did solidify; it’s no longer fragile, but completely bizarre. It’s not even just fourteen marks. You’ve been marked so many times by some of them that it almost looks like lightning and nails, scattered through you at random. So, like I said: a mess.

Jon’s smile turns wry. “You make it sound almost beautiful, if chaotic.”

It is. To both. It shouldn’t have worked. You should’ve blown to a billion pieces.

Jon wipes away a couple of tears. “Kintsugi,” he mutters to himself. “If only.”

I don’t know what that is, but here’s the thing, Archivist: what’s done is done. It can’t be removed. You and they have all grown together. You’re one being now, fully.

“Good for me.”

It is, actually. Now, listen to me: you aren’t able to control yourself because you’ve been relying on something you no longer have: your humanity.

“What?” whispers Jon.

“What?” says Arthur.

John feels like he’s explaining this to an infant. Or maybe not an infant, but someone who’d definitely been raised by wolves. I don’t mean concepts of kindness, or whatever you’re thinking. I mean you’re trying to resist the way humans do. With free will.

Absolutely all the color drains from Jon’s face. “I have no free will?”

Not the way you’re used to thinking of it. Of course you have choices, but you used to be able to just… stubborn your way through things. Like Arthur does now.

“I certainly do,” says Arthur, reaching for more fruit.

You’re not human enough. You can’t do it that way anymore.

Jon looks desperate. Sounds desperate. Has a doomed expression like he’s considering throwing himself off a cliff. “Then I can’t? I’ll never… I’m just going to keep doing that to people?“

No, you do it the way any god does: with brute force.

“What?”

Martin makes a happy sound from the kitchen. “Found tea!”

“Thanks!” Arthur calls out.

You do it with power, says John.

“You want me to give more of myself to this?” Jon blurts.

Is that what I said? This isn’t taking in something new. You already have power channeling through you.

“I don’t understand,” says Jon.

John thinks for a moment. If you’re in a home with electrical outlets, does the current in the outlets stop because you didn’t plug in a lamp?

“No, but I….”

You haven’t been able to fight because you’re trying to use dead batteries instead of the damned outlet. Listen to me. You use the power you already have. It’s there if you use it or not, and it changes nothing if you don’t. Not using it doesn’t turn it off. Not using it doesn’t make it less. That power is what you call on. Not your will.

“John, that’s amazing,” says Arthur, who is disappointed the fruit is gone.

Other-Jon is still struggling with this. “But how? How do I access this, do that?”

You’ll have to feel your way through that one. It’ll be different from mine.

Oh, great, now Jon is crying—and just in time for Martin to come back.

He has four cups of tea on a tray, the production of which seems like a superpower in itself, and he puts it down on the table.

He slides Arthur’s cup to him. “Honey in it, again.”

“Thank you.” Arthur feels so much better.

“Thank you,” whispers Jon.

“Hey, uh—everything okay?” says Martin, and wipes away Jon’s tears.

Jon catches his hands, looking up into his face. “I can control it. There’s a way. I can… I can stop it happening.”

Martin’s eyes are enormous. He looks at Arthur.

“John’s pretty special,” Arthur says with pride.

Not... not really.

“He figured it out. Gave your boy some tips,” says Arthur.

And now, Martin is looking wobbly, too. “Really? He… he did that?”

I don’t know why everyone’s making such a big deal over this. I didn’t do much.

And Jon says, “Did Hastur know this already?”

But it doesn’t hook John like it did, doesn’t erase the world. It comes with the pressure to answer built-in, but it feels worlds better.

Those loops don’t penetrate, either. They stay around Jon, hovering.

Control. Jon just demonstrated a modicum of control.

That, John thinks, was awfully damned fast for applying such a new and foreign concept. Of course.

And other-Jon makes… a sound. It is no thoughtful hum, no mere verbal affirmation.

The Archivist can’t growl; but somehow, the sound he made was worse.

Martin kisses the top of his head, mitigating again—and John suddenly suspects Martin already knew this. “Forgot the milk.”

“There’s milk?” Jon says, looking shocked.

“Yep. Be right back.” Martin retreats again.

Martin knew. John is sure.

Just how much does Martin know?

The Archivist looks grim. “So the reason I did that to you—we have a plan. It might not work, but… we’re wondering if there’s a way to go to the Dark World and bring someone back.”

Oh. So they’d already figured Hastur’s plan out, apparently. Well, that would—

Arthur drops his cup. It clanks to the table and rolls onto the floor, where, by some miracle, it doesn’t shatter, but the sound of it on the marble is shockingly loud, even with Arthur’s suddenly ragged breath.

“What?” says Arthur.

Other-Jon looks at him. His eyes flash green, just for a moment. “Oh, no,” he whispers.

John could not agree more, because Arthur is a hair’s breadth away from fucking losing it.

“You can get someone back from the Dark World?” Arthur says, clipped.

“I don’t know yet,” says the Archivist in a tone he probably thinks is the best way to handle distraught folks (and John knows is half the reason he instead got attacked by them). “That’s part of what I need to find out.”

Arthur goes quiet.

“Um… guys?” says Martin, who is standing in the doorway to the kitchenette, holding a familiar black book.

You’ve got to be fucking kidding, says John.

Other-Jon stands, staring. “Is that….”

“Kayne’s book. Yeah. Feels… ew. Just the same.”

It’s the same book, says John with grave suspicion.

“He says it’s the same book,” other-Jon says. “Why is it here?”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t there when I brought out the tea,” says Martin. “I’m sure of it.”

“I thought Kayne wasn’t here,” challenges Arthur, who is doubting everything right now with wild abandon.

“He’s not,” says other-Jon, and his face has that lookagain as liquid green light loops all around him. “He has agents.”

Everyone stares at him.

“Agents?” says Arthur.

Martin is silent, and has gone pale.

Jon’s not looking at him, but studies his tea; all around him, the light grows frenetic, as if scooping information right out of the air. “There are places he can’t go without being detected, so he has to use regular people, or other things, or he can’t play. He sent one of those Deep Ones climbing up the side with this thing to deliver it.”

Martin looks stricken.

Arthur can’t see Martin’s face.

Jon isn’t looking at Martin’s face.

John has a very good idea what is making Martin react that way.

It’s a crossroad.

John could say nothing. Let this play out. Let Kayne do whatever the fuck, and maybe take the edge off Kayne’s dislike for him. Maybe get Arthur home.

But then he thinks about Arthur dying, about Arthur being taken from him, and he can’t.

He can’t.

I think Martin’s in trouble, he says.

Other-Jon spins.

Martin looks caught for barely a blink. Then he just looks surprised. “What?”

Other-Jon studies him.

Martin walks away. Right back to the kitchen, rummaging.

Other-Jon looks at Arthur. “Thank you, John. Could you… hold on to this while I go after him? It’s not an accident this thing is here.”

Yes, says John.

The Archivist heads after his lover.

Arthur.

“Did you know?” says Arthur.

Know what? But John can see—Arthur is afraid John knew this plan, somehow, and didn’t tell him, even though he lost Faroe.

Arthur is correct.

John cannot let on.

“About this. About… bringing my counterpart back from death.”

No. To be honest, I doubt it’s possible. That won’t fly for long, and he knows it.

Arthur takes an unsteady breath. “Fine.” He puts his face in his hands and stews.

Martin doesn’t seem to be accomplishing anything in particular. He’s picking up dishes and moving them from one cabinet to another, taking them back out, restacking.

Jon wraps his arms around him from behind. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Martin’s voice cracks.

“Want to talk?”

“No.” Martin swallows. “Nothing much we can talk about. It’s done.”

Jon knows his anger is raising his body temperature, and wonders if Martin can feel it. “Nothing’s done yet.”

Martin sighs and leans heavily on the countertop, hanging his head.

“So,” says Jon, sounding rough. “That’s what he’s going to do to you.”

Martin says nothing.

Jon kisses the back of his neck. “You do know I wouldn’t just let that happen, don’t you?”

Martin sighs. “There’s nothing you can do, Jon. At least your yellow king has something he wants that you can give him and be done.”

“We don’t know for sure what your chaos god wants. Maybe we can do the same.”

“I do know. He told me.”

Jon waits.

“You’re really not looking, are you?” Martin whispers.

“I promised you I wouldn’t.”

Martin sighs. “You chose a hell of a time to start keeping your word,” which he knows is unfair, because Jon hasn’t broken it once since the Panopticon, but pain tends to come out in strange ways.

Jon stiffens. “Are you inviting me to look, or castigating me for my failure?”

Martin turns and holds him. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right.”

They breathe each other in, quiet, just being.

Jon sighs. “Maybe it was. Maybe we should talk about it. At least a little.”

“Now? We’re trying to figure out how to trap the Fears in a death universe, and you want to talk about it now?”

“There’s always something.” Jon nuzzles his cheek. “There always will be something, I think. But this has sat between us long enough. You’re afraid we’re going to be separated, and I think I’m done waiting.”

Martin did not realize how badly he needed to hear that until he did.

His shoulders shake. He tries to keep the tears in.

Jon kisses away the ones that escape.

“You hurt me,” Martin whispers. “So much.”

So they were doing this now.

“I know. I was wrong.” More kisses. “I’d do anything if I could take that decision back.”

“Why, Jon? What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t. I just… hurt. So much. I wasn’t thinking.” But that’s not enough, and Jon seems to know it. “He’d taken away everything. Caused so much loss, and then there he was, floating, in absolute bliss, and I… I was fighting it, Martin. That bliss was offered to me, but he hadn’t fought, and he’d gotten it all, everything he wanted, and I just… you were right. Envy. But not for what you think. I envied that he could do this and not feel a damned thing about it. That he had no conscience. That he didn’t have to hurt.”

Martin cradles Jon’s head and stays silent. His heart aches.

“And I hated myself for that,” says Jon, barely audible. “It’s a terrible thing to think. I just… I felt so bad. All the time.” His voice cracks. “I wanted to stop feeling so bad, and I knew the Eye would give it to me if I just asked, but I didn’t want to do that, because that would be evil.” He leans in, forehead to Martin’s. “I fought so hard, every second of every day, and there he was, swimming in the pool I’d scorned.”

The phrasing should be funny.

It’s not.

“So when you decided to kill him….” Martin’s figuring it out.

“It wasn’t about saving anybody, and I’m ashamed.” Jon won’t look at him now. He keeps swallowing, as though his throat has grown a lump. “It was because I hated him for taking what I fought so hard to avoid. And I knew I was… giving up some good part of myself to act on it, but I did it anyway. So then… I don’t know, Martin. It made sense at the time. I’d kill him, take him away from all that bliss he hadn’t earned. Then I’d take the reins, and end it all. Gently. I’d end all the suffering, Martin. End all the fear. No more pain or screams or nightmares—for the world, or for me. Make it better the only way I could, without damning some other innocent universe.”

No wonder he’d reacted so badly when Martin told him the Fears already were in other universes. “And then what, Jon?”

“And then you and I, we could… just be alone. Together, until the end, whatever it looked like after that. I didn’t really think it through.”

“They’d just have fed on us if we were the only two people left, you know,” says Martin.

Jon sighs. “Yes. I figured that out about three weeks after we landed Somewhere Else, and I’m ashamed it took me that long to think of something so obvious.”

“You weren’t thinking of after,” says Martin. “You just wanted it to be over.”

“I’m not making an excuse. I… just thought explaining this might be better than ‘very sad.’”

So those words haunted him, too. Good to know.

Martin sighs like he’s expelling pain with every second. “Thank you, Jon. That was much better than ‘very sad.’” It’s his turn to kiss away tears. “And Jon, I… I forgive you. I forgave you then.”

“I know you did. I didn't deserve it.”

“Isn’t that the point? Forgiving it means I acknowledge what you did was wrong, but now it’s over. And I choose to let it go.” Softer: “Maybe now, we both can.”

“I don’t know how to ever make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to make up anything. That’s not how this works, Jon.”

Jon pulls back enough to look him in the eye. “Then how does it work?”

Martin dips him.

Jon makes a surprised sound one might charitably call a yip.

“So, first, don’t do it again,” says Martin. “Second, let me love you. Third, forgive yourself, and fourth, forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” blurts Jon. “For what?”

“For saying I loved you with all my heart, but ignoring you bleeding out in front of me for however long it took to get across that hellscape,” says Martin. “You told me. You tried. You protected me from all of it, even when I wandered off while you recorded statements, so I didn’t have to feel all the bad things you were feeling. Jon, it was obvious this was killing you. You told me—there was no happy ending, no way to fix it, to save everyone. You told me you were feeling it, all the world’s horror, day and night, and because it was too awful, too horrible to imagine you suffering that way, I just… chose not to listen.”

Jon’s fingers are digging into Martin’s back. He’s gone pale.

Martin holds tighter. “I should’ve seen. I should’ve done something.”

“There was nothing you could’ve done.”

“I could’ve listened. But when Annabelle spun her tale, I thought, this is it! Jon was wrong. There is a magic off-button. We can do it, and there won’t even be a price to pay.” He sighs. “I chose to listen to someone I knew literally existed for manipulation over the man I knew loved me.”

“She’s good at it,” Jon says, stroking his cheek. “She told you exactly what you wanted to hear.”

“And then, somehow, I didn’t put together the fact that when Jonah died, the Eye would latch onto you, anyway. You didn’t even have to be in the Panopticon for that to happen. If it was fond of me, it loved you.”

“It still does,” whispers Jon, grim. “And yes. I was always going to have to go into the pit. They followed my voice. My marks. The tapes alone were never going to be enough—but if she’d told us that, neither of us would’ve gone to the Panopticon.”

This was a heavy thing.

It didn’t make it better, but it made it… different. Gave it all a new angle.

Martin sighs. “It took me a lot longer than three weeks to figure that out, Jon. I was actually really angry for a while because I thought… I thought you’d forced me into the position of stabbing you.”

“I did, though.”

Martin kisses him for a long enough moment that Jon almost forgets what he said. “So did I,” says Martin. “We both fucked it up.”

“I’m sorry,” whispers Jon.

“I’m sorry, too. Forgive me.”

Jon’s face twists. He clings to Martin, shaking with unvoiced sobs. “I love you. Everything’s forgiven. It’s not even a question.”

Martin pulls him up. They’re both a mess—noses red, eyes swollen, tears everywhere, and Martin is amazed, as always, how they fit. Perfect; like they somehow came from a single, asymmetrical mold. “I’m never not listening to you again.”

“I’m certainly never betraying you again.”

“You didn’t betray me. You broke a single promise in the middle of a fucking suicidal depression. And you know what? You know what? I’m spoiled, because most people have loads of promises broken over years, but in all the time I’ve known you, you did it once. What kind of a privileged asshole am I, anyway?”

Jon manages a small but real smile. “Don’t you go insulting my Martin. I might have to wield the Fears against you if you do.”

“Scary.”

Jon nuzzles him and steals a small kiss. “King of scary,” he says solemnly, then grins. “Does that make you my queen?”

“You’re the queen. The drama queen,” says Martin, and they’re both able to laugh.

The heaviness is gone.

The heaviness, in there so long it had become part of the landscape, undetectable.

It’s gone. In its place is a quiet lightness, like summer morning after a storm.

“I’m not letting him have you,” whispers Jon.

And Martin’s heart sinks again. “Jon, he already hates you, for whatever reason. Please don’t make it worse.”

“If he takes you away from me, something very bad is going to happen,” says Jon, simply. “I’m done letting people hurt us. I’m done, Martin. Never again.”

Martin grimaces. “Maybe that’s what he wants.”

“By the time I’m done, he will not want it,” says Jon.

“Ooh, big threat,” says Martin, trying to be funny.

But Jon isn’t funny.

There’s something disturbing about the way he’s saying it. Too calm.

Something changed in Jon during the last hour in this place, and Martin isn’t sure what. He swallows. “So. Wanna know what Kayne says he’s going to have me do?”

“Is that even a serious question? Of course I do.”

Martin nuzzles him. “Well, first, he made all these extra me’s show up.”

(part sixteen)

NOTES

This conversation has needed to happen for months. It's not done, either; but now that they've started down that road, they're gonna be okay.

So much of healing is just choosing to open that door.

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aerialflight · 3 years

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Fic Recs (cause it's always nice to give a shout out and get people into things I'm into rn)

[The Magnus Archives] (I recently finished the podcast and I fell into a hole for a while so here you go)

Sing a Song of Sixpence by Kaiel

Ship: Jon/Martin

In which Jonathan Sims is a Siren, and he fails to notice any new abilities granted to him by the position of Archivist. Or really anything about the Entities at all.

Takes place in season 1 featuring Jonah Magnus’s slow decent into madness

(The new mythology interwoven with tma's worldbuilding is so freaking good and I love how all the characters change and develop because of these changes. Also, f you Elias)

Along Came a Spider by Dribbledscribbles

Ship: implied Jon/Martin

Sasha James is the Archivist, as expected. Martin Blackwood is menaced by Jane Prentiss, as expected. Elias Bouchard weaves his web, as expected.

All goes as it should.

At least until something calling itself Jonathan Sims steps in.

(Web!Jon in this makes me want to weep, it's so freaking good. A pretty long, very excellent oneshot on what could've happened if Jon got taken by the web when he was a kid. And Sasha as the Archivist is ALWAYS so cool, we love her in this house.)

A Break in the Clouds by Ash_Rabbit

“I’m eight.” the kid sniffs as if eight was any different from four, maybe not an unspeakable horror then, just a regular horror. “And I heard that the Magnus Institute deals with-” his little nose scrunches, cute. “-spooky things.”

“Do you have a-” he cracks a grin, and then rethinks it as small hands tighten against their burden.”-spooky thing to deliver?” gods he hopes not, it’s bad enough when adults walk in and lay out all of their baggage, but for a child-

“There’s a spider in this book.” the kid says solemnly, raising his textbook sized parcel. “It ate Evan Pritchard.” a bloody fucking Leitner. Of course an eight year old would find a murder spider book. “This seemed like the best place to bring it.”

(I never thought about what the Original Elias could've been like AND NOW I CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT BECAUSE OF THIS FIC. I LOVE HIM, HE'S COMPLEX AND HE CARES AND JON CARES AND THEY BOTH CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER. THIS IS THE CONTENT I WANT, OMG. Also, Jon being even smaller than usual is adorable, so cute. No wonder Elias wants to hug him, a LOT.)

See the Line where the Sky meets the Sea by The_Floating_World

Ship: Jon/Martin, Jon/Oliver Banks

When Jon is a child he looks into the infinite abyss of space. The Vast looks back into him.

(One of my all time fave fics in this fandom, no questions asked. I have reread this three times and am open to doing it again, god. Vast!Jon, such a concept. It's written so beautifully and the relationships Jon develops, so good. ugh. My heart. Please please read.)

Sweet As Roses by Prim_the_Amazing

Ship: Jon/Martin

“Come in, Martin,” he says, not looking up from his notes.

“Hi, Jon,” he says, and Jon stops writing at the sound of his voice. “We’re out of the green tea, but we’ve got lemon?”

Jon looks at him. Martin smiles at him in his usual tentative way as he sets the mug of tea down on Jon’s desk. Heat spikes so sharply in his gut that he twitches with it.

“Thank you, Martin,” he says, mouth dry, and he stands up.

“Oh,” he says, sounding almost surprised. He smiles again. “No-- no problem-- um, what are you--”

Jon takes Martin by the shoulders, leans up on the tips of his toes, and kisses him.

(You have no idea how much I howled through this fic, my god. *buries face in hands* The number of times I wanted to cry from sheer hilarity and horror reading this good lord.)

Things Could Always Be Worse by theOestofOCs

Ship: Jon/Martin, Georgie/Melanie

Sometimes, the most horrifying thing of all is what might have been.

Somewhere, Jon could swear he heard a crowd laughing.

Or: in which Jonathan Sims is forced to swap places with his alternate self—a tall, chivalrous hero extraordinaire, who knows neither fear nor nuance—and is sent to the aggressively straight alternate universe the Magnus Archives was never meant to be.

“Whatever place this is,” Jon announced, “I just want to be sure it knows I hate it.”

(I will say this once, THIS IS THE MOST CURSED THING IVE EVER READ EVER. Like holy hell. I can't believe this thing exists. please read it oh please please please)

[Supernatural]

heard from your mother (she don't recognize you) by Schmuzz

Ship: Dean/Cas, Jessica/Sam

A man named Cas wakes up in 2003 with no memories, but he's able to piece together a few things:

1. Supernatural creatures exist, and most of them will hurt innocent civilians if he doesn't stop them; 2. He has abilities that no human hunter should have, but he knows enough about human hunters to keep that to himself, and finally; 3. He keeps running into another hunter named Dean Winchester, who seems to be about as lonely as he is if he's willing to put up with those former facts long enough to help Cas unravel the mystery of who (or what) he really is.

For his part, Dean's still (not) dealing with Sam's departure to Stanford, and figures distracting himself with a bit of mystery and intrigue is as harmless as it gets, right? Right.

(THE fic I'm most into right now, been following this from the very start and it's AMAZING. Cas has agency and is making friends and S1 Dean is growing out of John's influence and is becoming a Person and the both of them first being friends then more. The slow burn as their relationship develops, SO GOOD. SO SO DAMN GOOD. *screams* Seriously one of the best spn fics I've read in a long, long time.)

anamnesis by cenotaphy

Ships: Castiel/Dean, Sam/Eileen

Chuck is depowered, Jack is the new god, and the world is free. Dean and Sam get into the Impala and chase down the miles on an endless highway, and their story is finally, finally their own to follow. At least, that's what Dean tells himself. But the diners and motels and painted interstate lines are blurring together and the smallest details keep catching at his brain like tiny fishhooks and he can't quite shake the feeling that not everything is exactly as it should be.

* Fix-it/alternate series finale. Canon-compliant through the end of 15.19.

(THIS IS THE FIC THAT GOT ME THROUGH THE FINALE OKAY. WHY COULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN CANON. It's Disturbing and honestly plot-wise this makes more sense. Why couldn't we have had this. *screams*)

[Avatar: The Last Airbender]

where the stars do not take sides by WitchofEndor

Ship: Sokka/Zuko

When Azula is nine, she becomes an only child. She hears the Fire Lord call for Zuko's life, and in the morning, her mother and brother are gone. Azula may be young, but she isn't naive. She knows what happened to them.

Which makes it all the more surprising when Azula tracks the Avatar down and fights his group of peasant friends, only to find herself staring into an eerily familiar face.

(The fact one of the tags in this fic is, "Sibling Dynamic: Fucked Up But Wholesome" should give you an idea what this fic is like. Chaotic as HELL and I just love Azula here, she loves Zuko so much in her messed up way and Zuko loves her back in the exact same way lol. It's batshit and I am Here For This.)

[Naruto]

Eclipse by AislingRoisin (JayBird345) for HybrisAnaideia

Ship: Nara Shikaku/OFC

"In life, it's easier to remain stagnant and wallow in your troubles. But life isn't merely about continued existence, nor is it meant to be gone through alone."

(This is a fic that's slept on and I NEED people to read this. A self-insert fic that I find really interesting in its approach and the worldbuilding for the post-third war shinobi world is fantastic. I feel like there's a certain pattern with self-insert fics, not that is a detriment in any way to how much I enjoy them, so this fic feels fresh to me in a way I haven't read in a while. I am waiting eagerly for this to get updated! Please read!)

On Freedom and Other Formalities by iaso

Ship: Kakashi/Genma/OFC

When push comes to shove, Hiwa Inuzuka doesn't go down easy. Reborn into a new, dangerous world? She puts her past life as a spy to work. Thrown into a war? Hiwa does her duty, for Konoha. And when she's forced into an arranged marriage? All there is to do is beat them to the punch and get married first. Thankfully, Genma Shiranui is willing to lend a hand. Literally. SI/OC

(Listen, LISTEN, it's about the slow burn, the longing, the communication (it both has and hasn't and isn't THAT great??), the messy way you fit three very different people together, it's so freaking good! Also, Kakashi is so Chaotic here this is my fave characterization of him, you can't change my mind. And Genma is a Good Boi who is Doing His Best, along with the Self-insert character who I LOVE SO MUCH, SHE'S FANTASTIC FNEIWOPAF. Sped past this fic in the speed of light, I could not stop reading!)(Honestly, read all of the author's fics, they're all really REALLY good!)

Building a Castle by WhisperingDarkness

Without needing anyone to tell her, Sakura knew that talking to someone no-one else could see or hear would make her weird. It would draw the bad kind of attention to her, something people could make fun of her for.

She didn’t like being weird, but she did like the voice. Her inner voice was helpful and it was a part of her that had always been there. The idea of it not being there would have been so much weirder than anything else.

It was during her first year at the Academy that Sakura realised the voice was not in her head at all, but that it came from a cloudy shape floating next to her.

(Basically a short-ish retelling of Hikaru no Go. Only with more Shogi and Nara and Ninja's)

(Sakura can see ghosts (I'm noticing this is a popular trope for her) and it's really cute haha! Her relationship with Tobirama is sweet and I just enjoyed reading this so much.)

[The Magicians]

So Long (And Thanks For All The Books) by IncompleteSentanc (Erava)

Ships: Quentin/Eliot, James/Julia, Quentin/Margo/Eliot

When Quentin is told Julia wasn't admitted to Brakebills, he realizes he has a drastic decision in front of him. If he tells Julia about magic, he'll have his mind wiped as well as hers. But he can't just leave her behind, either. He can't lose his best friend, and he can't let her life a life with her magical potential stolen away from her.

So he makes a third choice.

(Really, and I mean REALLY well-done canon divergent fic, this is the Quentin & Julia friendship fic I have been looking for forever. It explores so much of what could've happened and I just love Quentin here, I really really do. Characterization done so right. I also recommend the author's other works too. Been a follower of them for a long time, they're great.)

[Game of Thrones]

The Road to Victory by writing_as_tracey

Too late in preparing for the Night King and the Long Night, the last stand at Winterfell is close to falling. Bran takes desperate measures to ensure victory, and Jon, Sansa, and Arya pay the price for it in a time unfamiliar to them, on the cusp of another war. [GoT, time-travel fix it]

(I swear, this fic made me laugh so many times, all the Stark are BAMF and fantastic, and Rhaegar gets Wrecked lol. It's crack btw, and the plot goes in directions you'll never guess and it's amazing hahaha!)

[Haikyuu!!] (I am very very late to the fandom but here I am)

Ballare (To Dance) by MidnightSparks

Ship: Iwaizumi Hajime/Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru, and platonic Kageyama & Kentarou (really love their friendship)

Kageyama’s first love is volleyball. His second, however, is ballet.

In one world, Kageyama Tobio is left behind by his parents. In this world, the existence of soulbonds keeps Kageyama’s parents in Miyagi and leaves Kageyama in the care of his grandma and grandpa.

(In which soulmates exist and that changes everything and nothing at the same time.)

(*buries face in hands* I have fallen for this ship so hard and I can't get out fudge me. I understand now. Their DYNAMICS FIEWONPAF)

Kings of Tomorrow by bokubroya (liarielle)

Ship: Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru

On the eve of Tobio’s 16th birthday, he counts down the seconds to midnight, and emerges with Oikawa Tooru’s name on his wrist.

It’s been two years since then, and Tobio thought they had an understanding. A silent, never spoken about understanding that this thing between them is nothing, and they’re going to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Of course, it’s just like Oikawa to change the game and leave Tobio wondering what comes next.

(I am WEAK for soulmate fics between these two, I don't even really like soulmate fics half the times what is WRONG WITH ME-)(Please suffer with me, I'm begging you. Its a good fic, thumbs up.)

[Crossover]

Honey and Magic by JustARatherVerySillyWriter, White_Squirrel for Super Carlin Brothers

Fandoms: Matilda (yeah you read that right), Harry Potter

Everyone knew Matilda was a rather extraordinary child, but even she didn't know she was a witch. Matilda Honey receives her Hogwarts letter in the year of the Triwizard Tournament, and soon, she will leave her unique mark on the magical world.

(Do I even need to explain how amazing it is to have Matilda in the wizarding world? And Matilda is a HUFFLEPUFF AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL THIS FIC IS GREAT PLEASE READ!!!)

An Eye for an Eye by DpsMercy

Fandoms: The Magnus Archives, Welcome to Night Vale

In which Jonathan Sims is not from the UK but instead, if you took his origins and turned them sideways twice then flipped them over, he technically would be from the US, the town of Night Vale specifically. Elias can’t do shit about it and gets a headache and slowly creeping madness instead.

(Look, I know probably everyone has read this because if they haven't, what have you been DOING with your lives??? Jon interning at Night Vale is Incredible, nothing phases this man, it's Delightful. I laughed so many times reading this, I'm not even kidding right now. Read or perish.)

The Favour by R_Cookie

Fandoms: Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Ship: Original Percival Graves/Harry Potter

Percival is ten years old when his grandfather tries to tell him that he's ensured the greatness of the Graves legacy for him, that he ought to be eternally grateful - but the explanation is hijacked by a stranger who manages to intimidate Chester Graves with an ease never seen before.

or: Hadrian (Harry) Potter is the Master of Death, who grants Graves a boon. Nobody could have known that the Deathly Hallows didn't turn you so much into the 'Master of Death' as into the anthropomorphic personification of Death. And so, Death becomes Percival's guardian angel, and Percival does not spit out his cereal.

(Look, I don't know how I stumbled back into the FBAWTFT fandom either, it just happened and I'm grateful for that. Otherwise, I wouldn't have found this amazing fic. Their relationship is slow and strange and I just love how Percival is characterized here. Also, one of the tag promises that it deviates from canon so I am really, really excited for that! XD)

baby that's what i do by natanije

Fandoms: Naruto, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!

"Are you telling me," Hidan exclaims, incredulous, "that you collect money all this time to give to orphans?!"

Kakuzu pauses. He blinks a few times.

"Huh. I guess I do."

(Tsuna reincarnates as Kakuzu and it's HILARIOUS. HE'S SUCH A MOM HAHAHA)

#Fanfiction #AO3 #Fic Rec #Fic Rec List #Podcasts #The Magnus Archives #Supernatural #Avatar The Last Airbender #Naruto #The Magicians #Game of Thrones #Haikyuu!!#Crossover #Matilda #Welcome to Night Vale #Harry Potter #Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them #Katekyou Hitman Reborn

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nonbinaryeye · 3 years

Text

My dear Jonathan...

Written for @jonahmagnusweek

Day 1 - Letters

It has been years since Jonathan Fanshawe cut all the contact with Jonah Magnus.

Read on AO3

...

Jonathan Fanshawe has never given much thought to his future. There hasn’t been any reason to dwell on it too much; anything can happen any time, there is no point to plan anything; no one can predict what will come. Besides he usually has had much more important things to focus on! There have been so many things he wanted to figure out and discover. There has been his hubris telling him he will be able to. Of course he hasn’t had time to concern himself with his future.

That being said though he never imagined he would end up as a local doctor in small village in the middle of Switzerland. But well… anything did happen indeed.

It has been years since he cut any contact with Jonah Magnus. It has also been years since he left England and if he said he is not missing London he would be lying. But it isn’t that bad. His life now is much more… peaceful. Also more frugal. But that is fine. He can be actually helping people instead of chasing his own ambition. He can do some good for a change.

“Good evening, doctor!” as soon as he enters through the doors his housekeeper Frieda welcomes him. She is a widow and even though she’s somewhere in her sixties she is always full of energy no matter if she is cleaning the house or informing him about newest gossips in all the nearby villages.

“Evening, Frieda.” He gives her a tired smile and hangs his coat on a hanger expecting flow of questions. She could never stay quiet for too long; no matter what is the topic she has something to say. In the past these kinds of people used to annoy Jonathan but now no matter how exhausting it can be he prefers it over the alternative of being trapped in silence only with his own thoughts.

“How was your day? The autumn is almost here. There is always much more sick people when the summer ends. We are lucky to have you. You were visiting that Butcher’s kid today right? How is he doing?”

“Hm? Yes, yes… The fever is almost gone. Few more days and Wilhelm will be back on his feet.”

Fanshawe has been living here for almost three years now. He had to deal at first with lots of hostile looks but they quickly changed to more accepting ones as soon as people learnt he is a doctor. Then they changed to fully welcoming when they realized he is a real and actually good doctor who can do more than just offer to people some herb tea. And so no one bothered to ask him too many questions what exactly made him leave all the comforts of London and move in remote village in foreign country.

“You look tired. Go get some rest I will start making dinner. I’ve prepared the fireplace for you it was quite chilly in your room. The autumn really is here isn’t it? As I said more people will start getting sick soon. It is always like that when autumn arrives…”

“Call me when it’s ready.” He might maybe spend the evening by reading next to lit fire place. Maybe he will even pour himself a glass of… well he isn’t sure what kind of alcohol it was exactly, he got it as a gift from one of his patient as a thank you. But it doesn’t taste the worst and he could not exactly be picky here.

“Oh also I would almost forget, a letter for you arrived today. Isn’t it strange, doctor? I don’t remember that you would ever get any.” It is indeed… unusual. There is a seed of worry starting to grow inside him. He doesn’t receive letters very often. He is doctor after all so when someone needs him it is usually way too urgent to wait for post to deliver message since they usually come by only once every two weeks. Still it doesn’t have to mean… “Do you have any idea who might write you? It looks rather fancy it is even in an envelope!”

Jonathan feels a horrible feeling of dread washing over him. “Yes… I mean no. I have no idea. Where is the letter, Frieda?”

“I left it on your table-…”

“Thank you. That is all I… Good night,”

“There will still be a dinner, doctor!” Fanshawe barely registers her words. He rushes into his room. Since Frieda keeps whole house very neat it takes him only few second it find a single letter lying on his writing table. He doesn’t know how long he only stares at it before he finally dares to pick it up.

The space for sender’s address is empty but Jonathan doesn’t need it to know who exactly has sent it to him. Even without the extravagant envelope; even without the seal with the owl imaginary; even if he couldn’t recognize the handwriting he still knows painfully well; there is only one person who could.

It has been years since he cut any contact with Jonah Magnus.

Unfortunately Jonah Magnus still hasn’t decided to cut a contact with him.

When he return from his… “trip” to Germany he was welcomed at his house in London by series of letters from Jonah questioning his decision. And they haven’t stopped coming. After a consideration Jonathan decided to move away, afraid Jonah might eventually try to reach out to him personally. ‘It is just because he doesn’t want to have anything to do with him,’ he was telling himself at first. ‘He has no reason to be afraid. What could Jonah do to him after all?’

The answer on his question was waiting at him every night in his nightmares which were full of eyes. Sometimes they are just floating in nothingness. Sometimes they are staring at him from Albrecht’s dead body. And sometimes he sees himself and he is the one covered in eyes.

After thinking about some of their past conversations and after looking at some of their past correspondence he started to notice lots of double meanings he chose to overlook at the time but which he can ignore no longer. Also what was the name of Jonah’s ‘dear friend’ who so mysteriously disappeared few years ago? Barnabas? There is no doubt something is very wrong with Jonah Magnus. And one should rather get out of his way before they find themselves standing in the middle of it.

He thought simply moving to a different city will solve his issue. He found out he has thought wrong since just as he is settled another letter from Jonah Magnus arrives. Jonathan was more annoyed than worried. At this point he assumed Jonah obtained the address through some acquaintances; he seemed to have some everywhere. And so Fanshawe thought that maybe staying abroad for year or two might solve his problem. He returned to Kingdom of Württemberg but then he very quickly moved to Baden. Then to Nassau, several parts of Saxony, Luxembourg, Hanover and many others German countries.

But the letters never stopped coming. Sometimes he received letters only weeks apart. Sometimes it took months. Now it has been the longest time since the last one. He really hoped that he managed to disappear from his sight. Or that at least Jonah got finally tired and decided to stop bothering him.

As many times before he is wrong. The letter in his hand is proof of that.

He should just throw it out. Destroy it. But he needs to know – it would later bother him too much – he needs to see for himself if there will be some threats. Requests. Curses.

He opens the letter.

My dear Jonathan,

It has been a while since my last letter and I would like to apologize that I haven’t find a time to write to you any sooner but I have been very busy with my Institute lately. I have finally found a perfect place where could I relocate my institute I think that I mentioned my intentions to do so in the past somewhere in our correspondence. I must admit that I might have helped it a bit by…

Jonathan tears the paper in half.

There are no mean spirited words no laughs at him for thinking he might be safe. No. There is just politeness the words written as if they were intended for an old friend. Just mundane information about his everyday life Jonathan couldn’t be less interested in. He doesn’t want to know any of this. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with Jonah Magnus and his damned institute.

He tears the letter again. And again. And then once more. Only as he is throwing the scraps of paper in the fireplace he notices how much are his hands shaking. His heart is beating fast and the feeling of dread is swallowing him whole. Defeated, he sits down on a chair by the fire.

He feels so silly now. How could he think he can ever escape him? How could he think he is able to get rid of him?

The content of the letters really isn’t the point. It doesn’t matter whether Jonathan reads them or not because they already fulfill their purpose by just successfully reaching their destination. All Jonah wants is to remind Fanshawe from time to time that no matter where he moved no matter where he tried to hide he still knows his exact position. He isn’t about to hurt him. But he wants Jonathan to know that he could if he wanted. He is still at his mercy.

Jonathan should be probably angry. Enraged. But he cannot. He can no longer even bring himself to feel spite for what happened to Albrecht and for what probably happened to so many other people surrounding Jonah Magnus; for all the evil Jonathan unknowingly helped him to spread. He is only exhausted. He only wishes for it to finally end…

But it never will, will it? He should finally accept that there will always be a next letter. But living the rest of his life in state of constant paranoia seemed like fair prize to pay for his sins.

#tma #tma fanfic #magnus archives #magnus archives fanfic #jonathan fanshawe #jonah magnus #jonah magnus week #jonah magnus week 2021 #mEye fanfic #reblogs or kudos and comments on ao3 are appreciated #jonahmagnusweek #Jonah week

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ombreblossom · 3 years

Text

speaking words unspoken

This is my gift for @bluejayblueskies for the 2021 @tma-valentines-exchange! I hope you like it!

AO3 link is located in the source :)

Summary: They're a week and some change into their stay at Daisy's safe house, and Martin is still having some trouble with the Lonely. Jon picks up on this and tries to make things better. And he does! In his way, but not before some miscommunication and exhaustion waylay his efforts (about 6.5K words)

The grocery store is awfully busy for a small town nestled in the heart of the Scottish Highlands. Residents of the village wander among a haphazard collection of shelves ranging from middling height to impossibly tall. There seems to be little rhyme or reason for where items are placed from aisle to aisle, forcing Martin to have to search around in order to find anything, increasing the number of people he inadvertently bumps into.

If Martin gave it any more than a cursory thought, he'd come to the conclusion that it's not entirely unexpected, the nearest Tesco many tens of kilometers away and only a smattering of towns in between.

Martin isn’t really in a position to have that cursory thought, though, as freshly escaped from the Lonely as he was. Nervous energy thrums along his skin, speeding his movements and making him quick to avert his eyes in the infrequent event someone meets them. Most people still easily pass their gaze over him, as if he were merely a wisp of tepid air lazily making its way across the store room—a left-over effect of his association with the One Alone. Martin doesn't mind so much the lack of attention paid to him, but he can't help but feel an uncomfortable pressure against his skin when other people are near.

He can't even be near Jon sometimes, not without the pressure overwhelming him, and doesn’t that just smart.

Martin resolved to brave the thick, after-work crowd for this, though, “this” being gathering the supplies needed for a relaxing night in Daisy’s safehouse following a rushed and terrified flight from London and everything that had happened with Peter and Eli-Jonah, Not!Sasha, and the hunters. They weren’t on holiday, Martin had to keep reminding himself. They weren’t on holiday, but he was probably the happiest he’s been in years, and he wants to celebrate that. With Jon.

With Jon. What a concept. He was elsewhere in the store, continuing an extended effort of picking up things they'd conceivably need for the long term. Just in case. Martin’s trying to not examine his shaky optimism too closely, but he is in love, and it's impossible to not consider his current position beside Jon as anything but a miracle.

Ah, there’s finally some room in the sweets aisle. Flanked on either side by various baking paraphernalia, Martin enters the aisle and heads straight for a small section of colorfully-wrapped bar chocolate. Not that Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London likes sweet chocolate—goodness, no. Or sweets at all for that matter. At least not things he classified as “obnoxiously sweet,” an ambiguous term if Martin had ever heard one. Over time, Martin has come to understand it to mean barely sweet, like an echo of sweetness that had once been present and is no longer. He's never said as much, but Jon likes his sweets like he likes his tea: oversteeped to the point of bitterness with the barest hint of sugar and the slightest bit of added color from milk.

And Jon does this unbearably adorable thing where he breaks the bar up into smaller pieces, not even according to the pre-set perforations, mind you, and nibbles on the thing for hours at a time, either to savor the flavor (which Martin cannot possibly fathom) or because Jon is a lying liar who lies about liking bitterness to that degree, and this is the one thing he has managed to successfully lie to anybody about.

It’s probably the former, but Martin would be delighted to find out it’s the latter.

So, he gladly picks up a couple of ninety-percent dark chocolate bars for Jon and turns them over in his hand, feeling the rough texture of the plain, if colorful, wrapping paper surrounding them. Martin does his best to dodge around other shoppers who've entered the aisle, picking up some granulated sugar, flour, baking soda and powder, and cinnamon for banana bread (his personal favorite). It stirs feelings in his chest that Jon had bought bananas several days ago with the (if not explicit, then quite obvious in hindsight) intent to let them over-ripen. Martin starts to head toward the cashier with the rest of his items when he feels a cool hand slip into his, interlacing their fingers together.

“Hey,” Jon begins, a soft warmth in his voice, “Did you get everything we needed?” Jon rubs his thumb in light, rhythmic circles onto his own, and it takes everything Martin has in him to not instinctively pull his hand out of Jon’s gentle hold. It feels nice—Jon feels nice—but it's very nearly too much right now. He hates this, hates constantly putting Jon in a position where he has to somehow intuit Martin’s feelings because not even Martin himself quite understands what exactly sets off the chain reaction of fear and pressure and too many people and the roaring—

There’s suddenly nothing but air around his hand, and Martin misses Jon’s solid presence acutely as much as he found it altogether too much. He doesn’t want to look over at Jon to see his placating smile, the one Martin imagined Jon wore as he all but dragged the both of them through King’s Cross station to barely make it on time for the soonest train to Inverness. That same smile that Martin watched Jon affect as he took on the bulk of the dusting and washing that needed to be done upon arrival at Daisy’s safe house. The same smile that Martin woke up to every morning, knowing that Jon had very likely spent several hours just sitting in their bed waiting for Martin to wake up to make sure he didn’t do so alone.

Martin looks anyway and isn’t surprised to see the smile in question.

If Martin had to describe it, he’d say it conveyed a sense of loss, of mourning, of wanting to protect what remained of a previous whole. It’s an implicit acknowledgement of the pieces of Martin that have been irreparably warped by the Lonely and an acknowledgement that Martin had already lost much to mundane loneliness long before Peter took advantage of his grief and recruited him in waylaying the Extinction.

He never wants to see that smile again, and so he looks away.

“Is there anything else we still need to get, Martin?” Jon rephrases and, after a long beat, continues, “Why don’t I finish up here and we can meet up in a few moments at the bookshop?” The bookshop that Martin knows that Jon knows is likely deserted at this time in the late afternoon, not too long before the elderly shopkeep, Fiona, closes her doors in anticipation of beginning her own nightly rituals. “I’m almost finished with the books we brought from London, and last time we were there—”

“Jon—” Martin sighs while Jon continues.

“—you mentioned Discworld, and it occurred to me that I have somehow managed to avoid reading any Pratchett, despite reading what I can only imagine was nearly every book left at all the second-hand bookshops in and around Bournemouth. Did you know—”

Jon keeps going with tidbits of what he knows of Terry Pratchett, which is an awful lot considering he just admitted to having not read anything by the man. Martin missed this, listening to Jon talk about anything and everything. He dare not interrupt him, even with everyone walking around them. He also refuses to throw Jon’s gift of distraction back at his face.

Color rises in Jon’s cheeks and his brows furrow when he presumably realizes he’s been talking for a while. “My point is I don’t mind finishing up here. Really, I don’t.” Jon’s trying to help. He’s trying to help, damn it, he repeats to himself. Lord knows that all Jon has ever done is try to help, in his way. Martin’s the one who can’t go five seconds without his fear around other people flaring out of control. Jon shouldn’t have to go it alone to preserve his comfort.

Martin takes some deep, steadying breaths. Jon waits patiently for him, his free hand fidgeting unobtrusively.

“No, I'm good," he asserts, threading his words with as much certainty he can manage, and decides then and there that it is so. "I have everything we need for dinner tonight here and a couple extra things, too." He waggles his eyebrows a little at this. "I assume that you're over here because you've finished getting the essentials."

Every time Jon laughs is an exercise in appreciating opposing extremes. His eyes close as if he can’t bear to look at the object of his amusement any longer, and the corners of those eyes crinkle in the prettiest way, taking the breath right out of Martin’s body when it happens. And he holds his hand in front of his mouth like his laughter is something to be smothered, never to see the light of day, the reasons for which Martin can't be certain, but he suspects he wouldn't like them. "Indeed. And a few extra indulgences," Jon teases, winking. Winking! Does Jon wink? Clearly he does, but this is new information, a treasure trove hidden among stormy seas. “I picked up some sausage; sausage always adds an extra depth of flavor to this sort of thing.”

Laughing lightly, Martin says, "Let's get going, then. We have an extremely full evening of relaxation ahead of us."

"Since when do you find cooking relaxing, Mr. Microwave Meals?"

"Since it's a safe activity that we can do together now that we're away from the Institute of Terror, Mr. Will Subsist on Granola Bars and Spite For Days at a Time If Left to His Own Devices."

Jon looks thoughtful suddenly. "Safe. Now there’s a concept," Jon says with no small amount of incredulity.

Martin pauses. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Jon?” Martin goes cold at the thought that Jon might have seen something and not told him.

“What? Oh, no. It’s just…” He trails off, his gaze drifting upward toward the ceiling. “This, being here—with you—is probably the safest I’ve felt in a long time. It-it almost doesn’t feel real. Like any little thing I do or neglect to do could potentially burst this bubble of happiness I’ve all of the sudden found myself in.”

It’s moments like these that Martin might actually be willing to believe that Jon is in his early 40s, the age he’d be now if the ridiculous lie he told about his age when they all started in the archives had been true. The pressing weights of repeated trauma, responsibility, and regret age his features considerably, and it hurts to look at. Martin wants so badly to smooth away the lines that seem to have taken up permanent residence between Jon’s brows however he can.

Martin ventures that he’s calm enough now to at least comfort Jon, if not enough to accept any for himself. He grabs the same hand that grasped his own minutes before and just. Holds it. Jon goes taught, like a newly-strung bow, words of reassurance waiting on Jon’s lips, that no, it’s okay, Martin, you don’t have to do this.

Well, too bad. Martin wants to do this, the Lonely’s lingering influence on him be damned. Martin draws Jon’s hand up to his lips and presses a kiss onto his knuckles. Jon gasps quietly, eyes wide. His grey-streaked dark hair is slipping out of its loose braid, whether from Jon playing with it in idle moments or from the wind that is altogether too often present in the Highlands, Martin couldn’t say, but the image endears him to Martin all the same.

“Well, take it from someone who’s spent a lot of the last year feeling not-quite-real: this is real, Jon. We’re here and safe, at least for now,” Martin assures him, grinning. “Let’s go pay for this stuff, yeah? And let’s go home.” Jon, momentarily speechless, simply nods his assent.

They’re able to leave the store with their purchases eventually and decide to make their way to Fiona’s bookshop anyway, picking up a few volumes while they’re there: a collection of Robin Robertson’s poetry for Martin and a geographical history of the Scottish Highlands and Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards for Jon to chew through. And neither of them would dare leave without giving Maggie, the resident feline guardian, some well-earned scritches. “It takes an awful lot of energy to mind an entire bookshop, after all,” Jon says every time they visit, all the while accumulating what could only amount to an unhealthy amount of cat hair—so much so that Martin’s started to find it laying about in the safe house. Jon doesn’t seem to mind it and says it reminds him of living with The Admiral.

It’s a decent walk back to the safe house. They started late enough in the day that the sun is already beginning to sink below the horizon, so they end up leaving after giving Maggie far fewer scritches than any of them would have preferred. Jon rebuffs Martin’s offer to carry all of their purchases, stubbornly hanging onto their books and his share of the groceries. This is becoming a familiar game to them, one that tends to escalate to silly, frantic grabbing for the others’ bags and eventually devolves into giggles and light shoulder bumping. Today, Martin manages to relieve Jon of his groceries, opening up one of Jon’s hands for holding, which Martin promptly attempts to take.

Jon turns his head to him and gives him a look that practically asks in his stead, “Are you sure this is okay?” The likewise unsaid “I don’t want to hurt you” bounces back and forth between them, and Martin answers by interlacing their hands and giving Jon’s a squeeze in hopes that it will quell the worry that’s carved into the lines of Jon’s face.

It does, and the contented sigh Jon makes is one of the loveliest sounds he’s heard. They continue their trek home, the route long and winding.

Not too much later, though, Martin notices something...off about Jon. He notices in increments almost minute winces when Jon steps on the leg Prentiss' worms ravaged, more frequent bumps into him that had nothing to do with showing affection but allowing Martin to take some of his weight for a moment, and some far-away looks.

Martin doesn’t quite have the shape of it until they’re talking about something or other, something simple, easy, meaningless in the grand, cosmic scheme of things, and Jon stumbles. He tries to laugh it off, but there's something not quite right about Jon's laughter this time. The way he bounces his shoulders in suppressed mirth is subdued—sluggish, even. An increasingly concerning picture paints itself in Martin’s mind.

A long, hard look at Jon forces him to confront the deep, dark circles under his eyes set against skin uncomfortably grey, nearly all traces of flush gone from his face, a stark contrast to earlier in the day.

How had he missed this? Maybe he’s been more absent than he thought. He’ll have to keep a close eye on Jon throughout the evening, maybe shepard him to bed if he seems to get any worse.

Only a sliver of the sun remains visible above the horizon when they arrive at the safe house, casting a soft orange glow over the vast grassy spread of the Highlands. Martin pays the sight little mind, though, all of his focus intent on the man in front of him currently unlocking their front door, and he can’t not notice how long it takes for Jon to insert the key into the locking mechanism.

As they’re putting away their groceries, visions of Jon doing the very same thing by himself play in his mind’s eye. He’s only able to summon disconnected images of the first several days of their....could he call it an elopement? Their not-so-great escape from the Archives? He recalls Jon preparing meals for them, bundling up to leave the safe house for groceries, washing their clothes in a small, foot-powered washing machine and later hanging them up on a clothesline outside to dry. Martin also recalls Jon bringing him overly-steeped tea and an old crocheted blanket when all he could do was sit on Daisy’s ancient green corduroy sofa and stare into the void in front of him, the sounds of lapping waves Coming ever closer.

All the while wearing that damnable smile. Shame pools within Martin, shame that Jon had had to take up so much responsibility recently and that Martin can’t say how well Jon’s been sleeping or taking care of his own needs in the meantime. If today is anything to go on, Martin supposes the answer to both of those questions is likely “no.”

“Martin, could you turn on the lights? We’re losing daylight fast.” Jon has a balancing hand on the countertop and is putting their dry and canned food items. Martin does as he’s asked, bathing the entire kitchen and living area in warm light. Martin walks back toward the kitchen area and is greeted with a “thank you” and a kiss. He could get used to this, used to feeling loved and appreciated.

“Is something bothering you, Martin?”

He looks at Jon, concern writ large on his still ashen face and eyes boring into him. Concern has no place being there right now. If anyone has any right to be concerned at the moment, it’s Martin.

“What? No. Why do you ask?”

“You’ve just been awfully quiet since we got home, and after what happened at the store, it’s not surprising that you might still be feeling...off.”

Projection, much? Martin wants to say but has the wherewithal to hold it back. “I’ve just been doing a lot of thinking. Jon. I’m all right.”

Jon eyes him up and down, and after seemingly not finding what he’s looking for, nods once and smiles (again with the smile...) once more. “All right. You’ll tell me if something’s bothering you, though, won’t you?”

“Yeah, Jon, of course I will.” And he intends to mean it.

“Good,” Jon says and walks over to where Daisy keeps her cooking vessels, grabs her Dutch oven, and places it on the stovetop.

“Why don’t I be your line chef today, Jon, and you work the stovetop? You’re much better at the actual cooking part than I am.”

“Mmm. There’s a lot of prep work that goes into this and not a whole lot of actual cooking, so let me help you,” he says, shakily opening a couple drawers in search of a suitable chef’s knife.

“You sure? You’re looking a little peaky over there,” he replies without meaning to and curses his loose tongue.

Jon pauses midway through grabbing one of Daisy’s old wooden cutting boards and blinks slowly. “Oh…. Yes, I’m sure. What do you mean, looking ‘peaky’?”

“It’s just,” Martin starts, collecting the fennel seed, basil, rosemary, and the rest of the spices they needed for their meat sauce and a bowl to mix them in. Too late to not approach the subject now. “You’re exhausted, Jon. You spent most of our walk home either tripping over air or leaning on me for support.” He had wanted to be subtle, but subtlety is no longer on the cards.

Considering this for a moment, Jon’s eyebrows scrunch up in a way that Martin finds so endearing and opens a nearby cupboard to take out a couple onions and a bulb of garlic. “Sure, I’m a little tired,” he concedes, “but we have all evening to relax. I’d like nothing more than to cook with you, Martin.”

He should’ve known Jon was a sap. The signs were all there. “Well, how could I say ‘no’ to that?” He says and means it, though worry continues to percolate in the back of his mind.

“You can’t, and you know it.” Jon teases.

They go about preparing their meat sauce, Martin double- and triple-checking each measurement before pouring the appropriate amount of each spice into the mixing bowl and Jon dicing onions.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Chop onions without tearing up and cursing your hubris that ‘this time will be different’?”

Chuckling softly, Jon apparently thinks better of sliding his hand down his face before answering, pivoting to the most level deadpan Martin thinks he’s ever heard from him, “It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that I spent years perfecting my abilities. Training with the best of the best to strengthen my tears ducts to such a degree that they are, quite literally, incapable of passing tears from my lacrimal glands to my eyes.”

Martin raises a dark eyebrow, amusement in his voice as he replies, “You should probably see a doctor about that, you know.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he draws out. “The real answer, of course, is my grandmother devoted a lot of her time to making sure I could at least cook according to a recipe along with providing some general rules of thumb. I chopped many an onion in search of culinary adequacy. Never progressed much past following recipes, though. Ask me to create something from scratch, and you’ll witness a horror the likes of which has never been seen before.”

“Just out of curiosity, which fear do you think takes credit for culinary disasters?”

“Probably depends on the nature of the disaster, honestly, but…. Hmm. Maybe Corruption? Or Flesh, maybe? Either way, it doesn’t bear thinking about, especially not while we’re preparing to eat ourselves.”

While Martin is rummaging through the fridge in search of where Jon put the ground beef and sausage, he hears a hiss coming from Jon's direction.

Martin whips his head over to where Jon's been dicing onions and his heart clenches at the sight of deep red blossoming over the wooden cutting board.

"Jon! What happened? You're bleeding," He says, stating the obvious, feeling like his throat is closing up behind his words. "Where are you bleeding from?" Martin crosses the room in record time, places a hand in Jon's shoulder and surveys the area in front of him.

Blood leaks sluggishly from a cut on Jon's middle finger. A splatter of crimson on the knife Jon has been using clues Martin in to what happened. "Jon, just stay right there, okay? I'll go grab the first-aid kit. I’m sure there’s some kind of antiseptic or disinfectant in there. I’ll be right back!”

Jon opens his mouth to say something, but Martin’s already gone, heading for the cabinet under the bathroom sink, head abuzz with worry and heart hammering in his chest.

When Martin returns, Jon’s running his hand beneath the running tap and blood trails down into the sink in pink rivulets. Jon glances at him, the same exhaustion that stared back at him when Jon and the rest left for Great Yarmouth on his face, a combination of physical exhaustion and the culmination of several months of emotional upheaval, of bitterly contemplating his own humanity and his role in Elias’ inscrutable plans.

“There’s no need to worry about the first-aid kit, Martin. Didn’t you hear? I heal, ah, preternaturally fast these days. See?” Jon holds up his hand to Martin, and, much to Martin’s surprise, the seeping cut on Jon’s finger is completely gone, no trace even of a faint scar.

“I...I didn’t know, Jon,” he almost whispers. “How long has this been going on?”

“Since I—since I woke up. From the coma.”

Martin mouths an “oh” and considers what this means in the context of what knows about Jon’s actions while he’d been working for Peter. It’s almost sadder that Jon ventured into Ny Alesund knowing that he couldn’t be permanently harmed—or into the coffin, for that matter. Walking into extreme danger knowing that he’d likely bring pain on himself but he’d almost certainly live despite it—”self-destructive” was even more accurate than Martin had imagined at the time Daisy said it.

Martin heaves a tension-relieving breath and hopes it doesn’t sound like a sigh. Making Jon feel guilty about something he can’t exactly help isn’t something he wants to do tonight. Or ever. “Why don’t I go put this back, then, and let’s pick up where we left off. I’ll take over the solemn duty of chopping onions if you start preparing the beef and sausage.”

“Yeah, that might be for the best,” Jon concedes too easily.

The room is quiet after that. Not much sound ever permeates the safe house’s walls, trees and hills absorbing much of the ambient noises of the surrounding area before they even get to their cottage. And they’ve both gone silent, the only sounds filling the room the sharp thuds of a knife hitting wood and the squelching of ground meat.

By time Martin’s done dicing one onion to replace the one Jon bled on and an extra onion that the recipe didn’t call for because “onions are flavor vehicles, Martin,” or so Jon claims, Jon’s still mixing the beef and sausage together.

“H-hey, Jon, I think you’ve mixed those pretty thoroughly, don’t you?”

“Mmm.” He stills, hands still submerged in the mixture.

“Jon?”

Jon blinks slowly, head and gaze drawing downward, like he no longer has the will or strength to work against gravity.

Martin reaches out a hand to shake him out of his stupor but thinks better of it. Has he somehow lost more color in his cheeks? “Jon, I think you should maybe go lay down or at least sit down.” Nothing. “I’d love to hear you talk about Discworld if you’re not ready to lay down yet.”

This seems to break him out of whatever daze he’d fallen into. “Oh. Ah, yes. Right. I understand. I’ll, um, just go.”

What is there to understand, Martin wonders as Jon turns back to the sink and runs water and soap along his hands, movements almost comically slow if not for how worrying they are and the frenetic energy that usually accompanies Jon completely missing.

Martin reaches out a supporting hand, intending to grasp Jon’s upper arm. “The bedroom’s awfully far away; let’s get you to the sofa, and I’ll bring over some tea and blankets, yeah?”

With energy summoned from the aether, Jon leaps out of the way of his hand, throwing himself boldly against the lip of the countertop with a cry. “No. No. That’s all-that’s all right. I can get there by myself,” he says, chest heaving and the trembling Martin noticed more pronounced than even a moment ago.

“Jon, love, you’re not in any condition to be doing anything by yourself. In the most affectionate way possible, you look like you feel awful right now. Please let me help.” Martin’s unable to keep the pleading out of his voice.

Jon looks—Looks?—looks at him, eyes wide, almost bulging, fear and a host of other emotions dancing wildly in them. “No, n-no. You don’t have to…. Please, don’t. I didn’t want this.”

“Don’t what, Jon? What didn’t you want?”

“This. I didn’t want this.”

“Um. I don’t really understand, Jon, but let’s talk about it over on the sofa. We’ll be more comfortable there.” Martin takes a small step forward, palms of his hands facing forward in a gesture of openness and safety. This time when Jon leaps backward, he slips. Martin’s not close enough to grab onto him, and a split second later, the deafening crack of Jon’s head hitting the wood floor fills the room and clamps a vice around Martin’s heart.

Too shaken to yell his name, he bounds over to where Jon lies still and slides into a sitting position beside him. All Martin can see for a terrifying, desolate moment is Jon in that familiar adjustable hospital bed, crisp, undisturbed white sheets carefully arranged over top of him, attached to various monitors that have been silenced to not alert staff of his absent heartbeat and non-existent oxygenation levels.

“Jon. Jon. Come on. Don’t do this to me. Jon, do something—say something if you can. Please, don’t….” Should he move Jon at this point? Martin remembers from a rudimentary first-aid class he took when his mother’s worsening condition started to accelerate that you shouldn’t move people with suspected head or neck injuries without first stabilizing them, but they had nothing like that here. And there was still some question as to how far his healing ability really extended.

He has to be okay. Without giving the action any thought, Martin gently places a hand atop Jon’s chest to check for breathing. They’re shallow breaths, but his chest does rise and sink in a slow rhythm, and Martin lets out the breath he’d been unconsciously holding.

“Love?” He near whispers, as if Jon were merely asleep. “Come back to me.” He brushes away some of the fly-away hairs that have fallen onto his face. That is when Jon begins to stir.

“Jon? Jon!” Martin exclaims. For whatever mysterious reason, Jon is trying to wriggle away from him. “Don’t try to move yet. You hit your head pretty hard, and your healing isn’t immediate, Jon. Just stay put!” Jon wasn’t listening to him, still scrambling to move out of Martin’s reach.

That’s enough of that. Martin lays himself over Jon’s chest and holds him while he waits for him to calm down.

It takes some seconds, maybe a minute or two, but Jon does calm down eventually, becoming boneless in Martin’s arms.

“Hey,” Martin starts, “you with me, Jon?”

Jon lifts a hand slowly, making a so-so gesture.

“Okay. How’s your head?”

He winces. “Hurts.”

Martin hmms. “Do you feel dizzy?”

Jon gives a minute shake of his head.

“Okay. I’m moving us to the sofa, then. And don’t try to protest,” Martin warns.

Martin gets half-way to his feet, slips his arms until Jon’s legs and back, and proceeds to pick them both up off the floor. In the short time it takes to cross the room, Jon nuzzles his head into Martin’s chest. The frustration and concern and worry Martin’s feeling subsides somewhat in the face of overwhelming affection for this man, and he hugs him just a little bit closer.

“Stay here; I’ll be right back,” Martin says as he lays Jon down gingerly onto the sofa. He puts their dinner ingredients back into the fridge for the time being and puts some water on for chamomile tea. His thoughts drift as he waits for the water to come to a boil and some more as he waits for the tea to steep. He glances at Jon every so often, who has rolled over onto his side while Martin’s been gone.

“Hey, you,” Martin says as he sits in front of Jon at the edge of the sofa, the mug of chamomile making a soft thunk on the table.

“Why are you doing all this, Martin?” Jon murmurs into the worn fabric underneath him, and Martin can’t tell if he was supposed to hear it or not.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Jon.”

“Why are you staying so close to me, touching me? Taking care of me?”

“I would have thought the answers to those questions were pretty obvious,” Martin says mildly, carding his fingers through Jon’s hair.

Jon’s silence says everything.

Martin exhales and then steels himself for a delicate conversation. “I love you, Jon. Have done for quite a while now. If there’s anything I can do to lessen your pain and discomfort, I want to do it.”

Jon clenches a fist and refuses to look at him. “I know that, Martin, in every way possible. But...” he stops, apparently to think. He sounds wrecked. Tabling this conversation for when Jon is feeling better might be a better idea, but it’s rare that Jon gets the gumption to speak openly about the things really bothering him, so Martin’s remains quiet. “Things haven’t been easy for you since…. Christ, for a long time, I think. Since Prentiss, at least. But since leaving the Lonely, you’ve been…. You go away for long periods of time, and it seems like you can’t handle people being around you, too.”

It occurs to Martin that they’ve never actually addressed any of this together, not their individual traumas, not their shared traumas, not this thing, these feelings, between them. They’ve been testing the waters, so to speak, bit by bit. Touches and soft barbs and sweet words pass between them unacknowledged but nevertheless heartfelt. But so much else has also remained unsaid in the interim, he now realizes.

“And I get it. No one escapes one of the fears without being marked, and you’ve been marked thoroughly by the Lonely, Martin. It’s...it makes perfect sense that these things are happening, that you feel overwhelmed when people are near.”

He stops again, and Martin gives him ample time to gather his thoughts. Martin is still running his hand through silky salt and pepper strands when Jon lifts his head and looks up at him. His complexion still carries that worrying gray tint and his eyes are and cheeks shine with moisture.

It’s the darker green spot on the sofa where Jon had had his face pressed that really does Martin in, that causes him to throw caution to the wind

“Move back a little, Jon. Just a little, okay?” He says, low and soft. Jon mutters a “yeah” and does as he’s told. “Thanks, love. Now, hold still.”

Daisy’s sofa is by no means a large sofa, and Martin is by no means a small man, but he’ll make this work. He lays himself down beside Jon and works his arms around him, tucking himself into any space he can against him, the lines of their bodies almost completely flush with one another. His back is close enough to the edge that Martin constantly feels like he’s about to fall, but it’s worth it to have Jon in his arms like this. “I’m listening, whenever you’re ready to continue.”

Jon buries himself in Martin’s chest before picking up where he left off, prompting Martin to cup the back of his head and pull him in closer.

“You’ve borne the brunt of maintaining our relationship for so long, Martin, and now it’s my turn. I can take care of you when you’re far away, when you can’t be around people. I can do the shopping, I can cook. I can do all these things.

“And I can stay away when it’s too much for you to be around me.” He clenches the fist caught between them even harder. “I don’t want to be the cause of your pain, Martin. That’s the last thing I want.”

Martin considers all this for...several moments, really, and comes to an ugly conclusion.

“Jon...is this why you didn’t let me touch you earlier?”

A muffled “yes” reaches Martin’s ears, and his heart just breaks.

“We really should have a long conversation about this in the near future—preferably when you’re feeling better—but I want to say a couple things right now, if that’s okay with you.”

“Of course, Martin. I want to hear everything you have to say.”

Martin gives a little squeeze of gratitude and then continues, “For one, you’re right. There’s leftover stuff from the Lonely I’m dealing with right now, and sometimes it’s hard to be around anyone. And I hate it so much that ‘anyone’ sometimes includes you. From here on out, I’m going to try to tell you when I’m feeling this way, so you don’t have to try to guess. And if I’m reaching out to you, please trust me that I’m okay in that moment.”

“I do trust you, Martin. I trusted you to handle Peter. I trusted you to handle the Extinction. I’ll...do my best to trust you in this, too. I...I’m just deeply afraid of ruining this, ruining us.”

“Thank you. And I understand. I worry about that, too, but please also trust me when I say there’s not much that you could do that would ruin this.”

Nodding into Martin’s chest, Jon whispers, “I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask. And second, I want you to know that, as far as I’m concerned, you don’t need to feel like you need to make up for anything.” Jon is tensing up, preparing to protest—he can feel it. “No, I mean it. Our relationship isn’t transactional. You don’t have to meet every comfort I offer you with one of your own just for the sake of reciprocation. That’s not how it works. You’ve done so much for me Jon, just by being you. That’s not even including the Lonely and everything that’s happened after, though I’m grateful for all that, too. You’re already here for me in every way that matters. You don’t need to do anything more.”

Martin places a kiss on the crown of Jon’s head, and they just lie there, soaking in each other’s presence, previous evening plans all but forgotten. Martin thinks Jon dozes a little bit, the stress of the evening finally taking consciousness away from him, but he’s proven wrong when Jon speaks up once more, muffled slightly by Martin’s jumper.

“For the record, I love you, too. In case that needed to be said.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘need,’ necessarily, but I won’t lie and say I don’t like hearing it!”

“I see,” Jon croaks. The man needs to rest. “Well, I guess if you don’t need it, then I won’t bother saying it.”

“You’re insufferable, you know that?” He laughs and feels the smile on his face widen.

“I have an idea, yes.”

“Good. Now, drink your tea.”

Martin pushes himself away from Jon to give him some room to sit up and to get a good look at this face. His face isn’t covered in tears anymore (now probably absorbed by the fibers in his knitted jumper), but he looks positively exhausted, eyes lidded and face otherwise lax in an easy smile, not at all like the one he wears with the intent to soothe. Martin places the still warm cup of chamomile in Jon’s hand.

“Still feeling up for a little dinner?” He asks.

Jon hmms and replies, “Yeah, I could eat a little. Just give me a few minutes to—”

“Absolutely not, Jon. I’m going to make dinner while you take a nap here. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay. A nap sounds wonderful.”

“Good. I’ll wake you up when everything’s finished.��

Martin starts to dislodge himself from Jon when Jon reaches up to kiss his cheek.

“Love you. And good luck.” Jon gives him possibly the most self-satisfied wink he’s seen before taking a sip of his tea.

It’s not terribly cold in the safe house with a fire going, but Martin lays Daisy’s crocheted blanket over Jon anyway, and starts taking everything back out for dinner.

It’s meat sauce—how hard could it be?

#tma valentines exchange #the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jmart #tma #scottish honeymoon #set between mag 159 and mag 160 #idk if there's a unifying scottish honeymoon tag on here #miscommunication #panic #hurt/comfort #sickfic (arguably)#ombre writes #ombre writes fic

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cucumberkale · 3 years

Text

A Guest for Mister Bouchard (AO3)

"Now, tell me Jon, what are you most afraid of?”

The Magnus Institute is now hiring for its researcher's position and Jonathan Sims really wants the position. But to get that job, he has to first survive a job interview with Mister Bouchard.

"Name?" the woman asked, not looking up at Jon from her computer screen. She was an older woman, maybe in her early sixties, if her gray hair, wrinkled skin, and curved shoulders were anything to go by. She had dark circles beneath her eyes, as if she hadn’t been sleeping well. She was typing quickly, chewing absentmindedly on her bottom lip. The nameplate on her desk read: “MISS ROSIE ZAMPANO – EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT.” Jon thought her glasses were a garish shade of red, far too bright and young-looking for a woman who appeared so old.

"Mr. Bouchard," he said, automatically. He had been practicing the pronunciation all morning, terrified of embarrassing himself by stumbling over his words. Her forehead creased slightly as she narrowed her eyes, frowning at something on her screen. "Mis-Mister Elias Bouchard," he repeated, slightly louder, afraid she hadn’t heard him.

She sighed, loudly hitting one of the keys a few times, before finally looking up from the screen to meet Jon's gaze. "Your name, honey."

“Oh, Jon. Jonathan Sims. I’m…I’m Jonathan Sims.”

The woman nodded, adjusting her glasses. As she looked back at her computer screen, moving her mouse and making a few clicks. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Yes,” Jon said, quickly, trying to regain his composure. “I have an interview with Mr. Bouchard for eleven-fifteen.”

The woman nodded, leaning forward in her chair to get a better look at her computer. “There you are,” she said, finally smiling at Jon, though it didn’t seem to reach her eyes. “I’m Rosie Zampano, I’m Mr. Bouchard’s assistant. Mr. Bouchard may say that he’s the beating heart of The Institute, but I’m it’s eyes.” She laughed, small and breathy. “I’ll let him know that you’re here and waiting for him. Please, have a seat.” She gestured to the row of empty armchairs beside her desk.

“Th-thank you,” Jon said, taking a seat in the chair farthest from Rosie’s desk. He waited until he could hear the click-clack of Rosie typing before he relaxed, letting out a breath. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out his flashcards. He had spent the past few days creating them with common interview questions and answers as a practice. It had been a while since Jon had been in a proper job interview, but he had never wanted one of those jobs as much as he wanted this one. As much as he needed this job.

He was lost in thought, reading over his own notes and questions, and jumped when he felt something brush his arm. He looked up quickly to see Rosie looking down at him, that same fake-looking smile on her face. “Mr. Bouchard is ready to see you now,” she said. “You’ll do fine, sweety, but don’t lie. He can always tell when someone is lying. He doesn’t like it.” And with that, Rosie opened the door.

Jon stepped through and into the office of the Head of the Magnus Institute. It was a larger office than Jon had expected. The walls were covered in bookshelves, filled with books and knick-knacks. There were painted portraits of the previous Heads of the Institute, beginning with the image of Jonah Magnus. Against the far wall, behind a great oak desk, were tall, arching windows. At the top of the window was a stained-glass image of a stylized eye with a pair of owl’s wings framing it. Sat at the ancient desk was Elias Bouchard, his hands folding neatly in front of him on the desk.

He stood as Jon approached, walking around the desk to greet him. “Mr. Sims,” he said, extending a hand for Jon to shake. Distantly, Jon hoped his hand wasn’t sweaty. Mr. Bouchard gave him a toothy grin, “I’m Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute. Please, take a seat.” Jon nodded, allowing Mr. Bouchard to guide him into his seat.

Mr. Bouchard moved back to his side of the desk, sitting down gently, and shuffling a few papers out of the way on his desk. “Now, Mr. Sims,” he began, steepling his hands in front, “I know that you’re interested in joining our team.”

“Yes,” Jon said, “I’m very interested in the research position that’s opened up.”

“Good, good,” Mr. Bouchard said, nodding. “I want this interview to be casual. Think of it as a conversation between friends, and not as a formal interview.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please, call me Elias. Now, tell me Jon, what are you most afraid of?”

Jon faltered. “Ex-excuse me?” he asked.

Mr. Bouchard smiled again, that same toothy grin. “What are you most afraid of?”

The back of Jon’s head tingled, and he felt a pressure building in his chest, like he had been holding his breath for too long. “Spiders,” Jon blurted out. “I’m scared of spiders.”

Mr. Bouchard nodded. “Yes, of course. Arachnophobia is a very common fear. It isn’t anything to be ashamed of. Of course, with the existence of deadly spider species, it is also a warranted–”

“No,” he said, cutting Mr. Bouchard off. “No, it’s…it’s more than that.” Jon froze. He couldn’t believe he had just interrupted his potential boss during a job interview. He would never have done it. But what job interview started with a question like that? Jon’s heartrate had picked up and he could feel it begin to pound in his chest.

“Oh,” Mr. Bouchard said, leaning forward in his seat. “Do tell me.”

"It-" Jon started, faltering for a moment. He had never told anyone about Mister Spider before, but now, here he was, sitting in an old, hardback chair in a job interview of all things, about to spill his childhood trauma to a complete stranger. Mr. Bouchard's eyebrows raised just slightly at Jon's hesitancy.

"Go on," Mr. Bouchard said again, softer. "What was it about this spider that scared you so much?"

Jon sucked in a quick breath, lost for a moment in Mr. Bouchard's soft voice, his grey eyes, his warm office. And Jon wanted to tell him everything; he wanted to tell Elias Bouchard every horrible, agonizing moment that had happened from the second he picked up that damned book. He wanted to open his mouth and talk and talk and talk until he had been completely unspooled. But Jon also wanted this job. He wanted to know. He wanted to know why it happened. That was why he was here, at The Magnus Institute.

Jon shut his mouth hard enough to hear his teeth clack. He felt like he was going to be sick, that if he opened his mouth he would vomit all his fears and anxieties over Mr. Bouchard's polished desk, if not also his breakfast.

He took a few deep breaths through his nose, the way he always did when he was trying to bring himself down from a panic. Mr. Bouchard said nothing, still simply watching Jon, his face impassive. Jon didn't know what he was thinking. But he didn't ask Jon again.

Eventually, the feeling of nausea passed enough that Jon felt brave enough to open his mouth again. "It couldn't-" Jon's voice cracked. He stopped again, feeling his face heat up, and cleared his throat. "It couldn't be...it, it couldn't exist," Jon said, waving a hand emphatically. "Terrestrial arthropods, that is spiders, have a limit to how large they can grow. Spiders don’t have what people consider to be ‘traditional lungs,’ they don’t breathe like us. Instead, they have book lungs, which are folds in their exoskeletons, well, the folds, they’re actually called spiracles, filled with hemolymph, on the underside of their abdomens. The air passes into the spiracles, from the spiracles and into the hemolymph, and then the hemolymph is circulated back to the heart where it is pumped through the rest of the body. Spiders are dependent on passive diffusion to breathe. The size of a spider is regulated by the concentration of oxygen in the air: a higher oxygen concentration allows for more diffusion and the spider can be larger. It’s all about how well the oxygen can be taken in and processed by the spider. It’s why we don’t see the giant insects and arthropods from millions of years ago: the oxygen levels are too low today. But this spider...it was so...it was large. It was too large. It physically could not exist! It would suffocate under its own mass!

“I know how this sounds, but…it…it was a spider. A giant spider,” Jon stopped, looking up to gauge Mr. Bouchard’s reaction. Mr. Bouchard’s face was impassive, his eyes never leaving Jon’s own. “It…it was in a house, this old house,” Jon said, his voice falling to a whisper. “I was eight years old when my grandmother gave me the book…”

“I know how it sounds…” Jon trailed off, falling into silence. No one knew, he had never told anyone the full story of that book and Mister Spider since his grandmother had first told him not to tell lies. Everyone he had ever told the true, full story to had died. It was only Jon left.

“I believe you,” Elias said. Jon’s head shot up, staring wide-eyed.

“You do?”

“Of course,” he said, reaching across the desk to enfold one of Jon’s hands in his own. His smile was warm and genuine, reaching up to his grey eyes. “Of course I believe you. You’ll find in our line of work, there are dozens of stories which cannot be explained.

“Now,” Elias said, sitting back in his chair and pulling out a notepad, “tell me, how did you find out that we were hiring?”

#the magnus archives #tma #mag pod #the magnus archives fanfiction #tma fanfiction #mag pod fanfiction #fic rec: the magnus archives #jonathan sims #elias bouchard #jonah magnus

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ollieofthebeholder · 3 years

Text

leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall): a TMA fanfic

Tumblr tag || Also on AO3

Chapter 41: Statement #0170703. Recording of a conversation between Elias Bouchard, Head of the Magnus Institute, and the staff of the Archives.

[CLICK]

ELIAS/JONAH

I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here.

[CHORUS OF MUTTERED GRUMBLES AND GROANS. ELIAS/JONAH CHUCKLES]

Yes, all right, perhaps a bit melodramatic, but—

PAST ARCHIVIST

I assume you called us here to apologize.

ELIAS/JONAH

Apologize?

PAST MARTIN

For not telling us Jon had been kidnapped.

TIM

Or, you know, anything else useful about this place. Like about the spooky fear beings that roam the earth hunting for unsuspecting victims. Or the fact that every statement we take or read feeds one of them. Or that it’s going to start changing us. You know. Take your pick.

ELIAS/JONAH

With regards to not telling you what had happened to Jon…it would have made little difference. Martin’s research, at least, would have been sloppier—

[PAST MARTIN SPUTTERS INDIGNANTLY]

—and going to the police would have served little purpose. Certainly they wouldn’t have been able to locate him. Even I wasn’t able to do that.

TIM

And I’m sure you were trying so very hard.

ELIAS/JONAH

I do have other things to do, but I assure you I was doing everything in my power to locate you, Jon.

As for not telling you anything else…it was important that you discover it for yourselves. It’s why I didn’t accept your application for the Archivist position, Sasha.

SASHA

Excuse me?

ELIAS/JONAH

You were Gertrude’s choice of successor, of course. I know the two of you were…close. I couldn’t be sure how much she had told you of what goes on in the Archives—what the job entails. Starting this job with too much knowledge would be dangerous.

SASHA

Bull. Shit.

PAST ARCHIVIST

(softly) Sasha.

SASHA

If you were that concerned about how much I knew, you wouldn’t have accepted Jon’s request to have me as an assistant. You’d have worried that I would have told him everything I learned from Gertrude on day one.

ELIAS/JONAH

On the contrary. I knew you wouldn’t.

Sasha. You are…very much like Gertrude. And like Gertrude, you keep your secrets close to your chest, don’t you? As Archivist, you would have kept your secrets, but they would have informed your direction of your assistants. You would have known why you were telling them to do things, but they would have been fully ignorant. A tactic which, I am afraid, did not always serve her well, and would have been equally ill-advised had you done so.

But as an assistant? In the first place, your actions would be limited. In the second place, I knew you would be frustrated with not having been chosen, and as a result, you would be more inclined to keep your own counsel. And then…well. I had no doubt that as you watched Jon fumble along, stumble over things you knew coming in, and come to his own conclusions, your curiosity would take over. How much would he learn on his own? How far would he get? How much could you do without his instruction, or knowledge? How much assistance would he need?

And what would happen if he was wrong?

SASHA

Wait. You assigned me as Jon’s assistant so I could…gloat?

ELIAS/JONAH

Of course not, Sasha. I assigned you as Jon’s assistant so there would be someone with enough knowledge to keep the rest of the team safe, and perhaps…direct things if need be.

SASHA

Gertrude hardly told me anything. We talked about my research, not hers.

ELIAS/JONAH

Yes. I have noticed that the one who seems to know the most about what’s going on…is you, Martin.

I did tell you knowledge can be dangerous. As can knowledge…ineptly applied.

PAST MARTIN

What’s that supposed to mean?

ELIAS/JONAH

I am aware of your actions on Friday afternoon. It’s quite fortunate that most of the other departments chose to send everyone home early, or the consequences might have been…disastrous. Had the creature encountered anyone else—

PAST MARTIN

Wait. W-wait. You knew?

ELIAS/JONAH

I’ve told you before, nothing escapes my notice at the Institute.

PAST MARTIN

Not about—that, that thing killed Diana and took her place—how long ago? Months? Have you known this whole time?

ELIAS/JONAH

…Hm. That’s an interesting sensation. Surprisingly pleasant. Tingly…but almost freeing.

PAST MARTIN

W-wh—? (realization hits) Oh, Christ.

ELIAS/JONAH

Please be aware, Martin, I am doing you the courtesy of answering honestly, but I do so of my own free will.

Yes. I knew the first time I encountered that creature that it was pretending to be Diana Caxton, and that the real Diana was dead.

SASHA

And you did nothing?

ELIAS/JONAH

What, exactly, would you have me do? Fire it?

What did any of you do when you found out?

PAST MARTIN

I thought you said you were “aware of my actions on Friday afternoon.”

ELIAS/JONAH

I would advise you to mind your tone, Martin.

TIM

(angrily) Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare.

ELIAS/JONAH

Now, really, Tim.

PAST ARCHIVIST

For God’s sake, Elias! For almost two years now we’ve been—fumbling around in the dark, stumbling from revelation to revelation. We’ve barely survived most of them—

ELIAS/JONAH

You underestimate your own resourcefulness.

PAST ARCHIVIST

—and all this time, you’ve been sitting up here, what, watching? You could have warned us any time, a-about any of it.

TIM

You knew Jon had been kidnapped and acted like it was just work-related. You let Martin destroy that table—

SASHA

—which you told Jon to do ages ago, when it was first delivered—

TIM

—and just fucked off for the weekend. Bet it was a shocker to you that he came in for work this morning.

ELIAS/JONAH

I admit, that was a bit—

[LOUD BANGING NOISE, LIKE TIM HAS JUST SLAMMED BOTH HANDS ON THE DESK]

TIM

Give me one good reason not to reach over this desk and strangle you.

ELIAS/JONAH

Now, Tim.

TIM

No jury in the world would convict me. And even if they did, I’d take the jail time if it meant being rid of you.

ELIAS/JONAH

Kill me, and all of you die as well.

PAST ARCHIVIST

What?

ELIAS/JONAH

I am the beating heart of this Institute. The nexus through which all of its power flows.

If I die, so does every single one of you. Every employee, every single person tied to the Institute. Gone in a single stroke.

[A SHOCKED PAUSE, THEN TIM STARTS LAUGHING, A BITTER, SLIGHTLY INCREDULOUS LAUGH]

TIM

I don’t believe you. Even you wouldn’t be stupid enough to make that kind of deal.

ELIAS/JONAH

Then prove it.

TIM

What?

ELIAS/JONAH

Go on, Tim. Kill me. Kill me and watch everyone you love die, right before your eyes, in the seconds before you do.

Here.

[DRAWER SLIDES OPEN]

[SEVERAL DIFFERENT SOUNDS OF ALARM]

ELIAS/JONAH

Take it. Much more effective than strangling me.

TIM

I—

ELIAS/JONAH

I never reloaded it after using it on Gertrude Robinson, but I never unloaded it either. Five shots remaining. One should be sufficient, though.

[SOUND OF PISTOL BEING COCKED]

PAST MARTIN

Tim…

ELIAS/JONAH

Do it, Tim.

Shoot me.

Call my bluff.

[LONG SILENCE]

[GUN SAFETY CLICKS BACK INTO PLACE]

[SOFT THUNK ON TABLETOP]

ELIAS/JONAH

I knew you didn’t have it in you.

[DRAWER SLIDES CLOSED]

Now then. If we’re finished with the histrionics and posturing, shall we get on with the discussion?

PAST ARCHIVIST

…Fine. Fine. What do you want?

ELIAS/JONAH

First of all. Martin.

What did happen to that creature after you destroyed the table? I thought I heard you telling Jon that you…smote it. Is that accurate?

PAST MARTIN

…I don’t know.

ELIAS/JONAH

Don’t lie to me.

PAST MARTIN

I’m not! I don’t know. I-I was—it tracked me down to the Archives. It chased Tim and me through the shelves a-and we couldn’t get to the doors, so we went down to the tunnels. It had us cornered. I—I closed my eyes and—

I honestly can’t tell you what happened after that. There was a roar and a scream, and when I opened my eyes, it was gone.

I-it might still be…down there somewhere. I don’t know. I d-don’t know if it’s something I did or something Tim did or something about the tunnels. I just know we were alone and clear to get out.

ELIAS/JONAH

…Fine.

To business, then. You know what it was?

PAST MARTIN

It—Gertrude called it the Not-Them. A creature that kills its victims and takes their place. It alters memories, pictures, recordings…anything that shows what the person was before.

Except…it doesn’t affect Polaroids, for some reason. Or magnetic tape recordings. A-and sometimes it leaves one or two people to remember what the person really looked like. It feeds off of that fear.

SASHA

We had a statement—one of the first ones we ever used the tape recorder for. A woman whose colleague was taken by one.

PAST ARCHIVIST

It’s a creature of the Stranger.

ELIAS/JONAH

Good! What do you know about the Stranger?

PAST ARCHIVIST

It—good God, Elias, really?

ELIAS/JONAH

It’s important that you learn this on your own, Jon. But I do need to know what you have learned.

[THE PAST ARCHIVIST SIGHS IN EXASPERATION]

PAST ARCHIVIST

It’s the fear of—the uncanny. The unknown. Things hidden and unseen. Masks, mannequins…clowns. For a long time, one of the primary figures involved was Gregor Orsinov, who ran a circus known as the Circus of the Other that toured over much of central and eastern Europe. For some time he was accompanied by Nikolai Denikin, former owner of that Calliaphone up in Artifact Storage.

TIM

“Be still, for there is strange music.”

PAST MARTIN

It’s the antithesis to…the Institute.

To us.

ELIAS/JONAH

Well. Perhaps not quite to all of you. After all, Jon is the Archivist, while the rest of you—

PAST ARCHIVIST

—have apparently helped enough to draw the Beholder’s attention.

ELIAS/JONAH

You really believe that.

PAST ARCHIVIST

Unless that ability to—to force people to answer your questions comes from something else, then yes!

SASHA

It’s not just Martin, either.

Ask them. I’ve been picking up the habit lately of just—Knowing things. Plucking secrets out of people’s minds and whatnot.

ELIAS/JONAH

Ah. I’m sure you enjoy that.

[SASHA INHALES SHARPLY]

TIM

Stop.

ELIAS/JONAH

And what of you, Tim? What has the Beholder gifted you with?

TIM

I can hear your sarcasm perfectly well, thank you, sir.

PAST MARTIN

(softly) Tim.

ELIAS/JONAH

Don’t think I can’t tell how resistant you are to it. To its pull, to what it wants. I don’t even need any powers I may have been granted to tell that.

I knew you would be the one to fight it the hardest. It’s why I assigned you to the Archives. Someone to argue, to push back, to resist the knowledge at every turn and give Jon more reason to look into—

TIM

(angrily) I can see when someone’s encountered one of the fears.

[A BRIEF SILENCE; TIM SEEMS TO HAVE ACTUALLY MANAGED TO CATCH ELIAS/JONAH OFF-GUARD]

ELIAS/JONAH

…How?

TIM

Colors. Call them auras if you want. I’ve been calling them…marks.

We’ve come across a few different…fear things. Not just the Beholder and the Stranger. There’s Jane Prentiss and her worms—we decided on calling that the Corruption, right?

PAST MARTIN

Right. A-and there’s the Lightless Flame, and…Michael. The, the Distortion?

PAST ARCHIVIST

Michael—well, it’s going by Helen now—is the Distortion, but according to…her, she’s a small part of something called the Spiral.

TIM

Yeah, well, whatever that is, it’s yellow. The Beholder is green. Can’t miss that, it’s fucking everywhere here. Hurts the eyes if you look at it too hard.

The Corruption is this weird sort of yellow-green. Like something sick. Like pus and rot. I can see it on Martin sometimes, his scars glow. Kind of weird, really. The Stranger’s more of an indigo.

There are more colors, but we’re still kind of sorting out all the fears. No idea how many there are.

Yet.

ELIAS/JONAH

Well. You’ve all certainly learned a great deal.

And I’m sure there’s more for you to learn. Hopefully you’ll have time.

PAST ARCHIVIST

And just what is that supposed to mean?

ELIAS/JONAH

The Unknowing.

Have you been made aware of it?

PAST ARCHIVIST

(tightly) Almost constantly.

ELIAS/JONAH

Then you know what it is.

SASHA

It’s the Stranger’s ritual. All of the entities have them. Something to bring that fear into the world and let it—no.

Not bring it into the world. Remake the world in its image. Craft our world so that it…belongs. They’re not quite suited for our environment.

TIM

Like if a human wanted to crawl into an anthill.

ELIAS/JONAH

A simplistic metaphor, but…essentially, yes. Beyond that, well, you’ll have to discover what it entails for yourself.

PAST MARTIN

It’s a dance.

ELIAS/JONAH

You just know that, do you?

TIM

I mean—literally every being connected with the Stranger we’ve met has called it the Dance. Gertrude’s the one that termed it the Unknowing on her tapes.

PAST MARTIN

No, the—

PAST ARCHIVIST

(overlapping) Wh-what? I—Orsinov definitely called it a dance. She said she was—th-there was a skin. A gorilla skin, at the Trophy Room. She wanted to wear it to “dance the world new”, she said. And she wanted to—

Who else called it that?

PAST MARTIN

The Not-Diana. When it was stalking us through the Archives.

She—it said something about me making “a lovely partner for the Dance.” But it said it was a shame I’d miss the Unknowing, too, so maybe that is what it’s actually called.

PAST ARCHIVIST

(softly) Oh, God.

TIM

It doesn’t matter, does it? Whatever the hell it’s called, we need to stop it.

Right?

ELIAS/JONAH

Yes. That is the task before you.

TIM

Great! How?

ELIAS/JONAH

That you will have to discover for yourselves.

[GENERAL CHORUS OF EXASPERATED GRUMBLES]

As Martin says, the Stranger is our opposition. It is the unknown, secrecy and lies. To simply tell you how to stop it…I suspect it wouldn’t work.

PAST ARCHIVIST

And I’m sure it wouldn’t please your master.

ELIAS/JONAH

Our master, Jon.

PAST ARCHIVIST

I never chose this.

None of us did.

ELIAS/JONAH

You never wanted this, no. But I’m afraid you absolutely did choose it. In a hundred ways, at a hundred thresholds, you pressed on. You sought knowledge relentlessly, and you always chose to see. Our world is made of choices, and very rarely do we truly know what any of them mean, but we make them nonetheless.

PAST ARCHIVIST

(sighs heavily) Fine. What now?

ELIAS/JONAH

I believe I made it perfectly clear—

SASHA

(interrupting impatiently) How long do we have?

ELIAS/JONAH

For what?

SASHA

Do you have any idea when the Unknowing is scheduled for? How long do we have to figure out how to stop it?

ELIAS/JONAH

I can’t see the future, Sasha. That it’s coming is obvious, from the fact that the Stranger has been gathering strength. When it’s coming…well.

I suspect you have until the preparations are complete. But that’s all I can say for certain.

TIM

(under his breath) Brilliant.

PAST ARCHIVIST

Is there anything you can tell us?

ELIAS/JONAH

You seem to be doing quite well with your research on your own. I’m sure Gertrude had notes on it.

Perhaps your next task should be to find them.

SASHA

Of course. That won’t be hard at all. She made everything so simple and easy to navigate…

PAST ARCHIVIST

Sasha.

ELIAS/JONAH

Yes, well, I’m sure you’re all up to the task. I suggest you get to it.

Jon, a word in private?

PAST MARTIN

We’ll just…be outside, Jon.

ELIAS/JONAH

That’s hardly necessary—

TIM

The hell it isn’t.

[DOOR OPENS, SHUFFLING FEET, DOOR CLOSES]

ELIAS/JONAH

You seem upset.

PAST ARCHIVIST

I can’t imagine what gave you that impression.

ELIAS/JONAH

I realize this has all been a bit much for you. Ordinarily I would suggest you take a day or two off work to recover, but this is rather pressing.

Your team has managed…adequately in the last two weeks—

PAST ARCHIVIST

(dismayed) Two weeks?

ELIAS/JONAH

—but they need your, mm, guiding hand, shall we say.

PAST ARCHIVIST

They—we need direction, Elias. So far we’ve been striking out at random and hoping we get lucky. Luck won’t carry us much farther. All we’ve managed to do is survive.

ELIAS/JONAH

That is actually quite the accomplishment, Jon.

PAST ARCHIVIST

Tim has been to one of the Strangers’ strongholds. They know him, they know his face. And if the—the Not-Them was after Martin, if it was threatening to wear him at the Unknowing, the Stranger is aware of him, too. The only one who might be safe from it is Sasha. I can’t—

ELIAS/JONAH

Ah, that reminds me. I have something here for you.

PAST ARCHIVIST

What?

[DRAWER SLIDES OPEN]

[RUSTLING OF PAPERS]

ELIAS/JONAH

A statement, in the form of a letter.

Read it.

PAST ARCHIVIST

I will.

ELIAS/JONAH

No, Jon. Now.

[DEEP INHALE FROM THE PAST ARCHIVIST]

[SILENCE, BROKEN ONLY BY THE FAINT RATTLE OF PAPER, LIKE IT’S BEING HELD BY SOMEONE WHOSE HANDS ARE SHAKING]

ELIAS/JONAH

Well?

PAST ARCHIVIST

Did he?

Leave him there?

ELIAS/JONAH

…

(does he sound faintly disappointed?) He did.

He got that letter, oh, yes, and was on good terms with Mordechai Lukas. He could have interceded, perhaps even saved him, but he did not. And it was not out of malice, or because he lacked affection for Barnabas Bennett: he retrieved those bones sadly enough when the time came. Bones that you can still find in my office, if you know where to look. No, it was because he was curious. Because he had to know, to watch and see it all.

That’s what this place is, Jon, never forget it. You may believe yourself to have friends, to have confidantes, but in the end, all they are is something for you to watch, to know, and ultimately to discard. This, at least, Gertrude understood.

PAST ARCHIVIST

…

Never.

I’m not stupid, Elias. Every time a Lukas comes up, the theme has been the same: Isolation. Separation. Loneliness. That’s what they thrive on. That’s what this is, that’s what Bennett was punished with.

I won’t fall into that trap. I won’t let myself become convinced that I don’t need anyone else. That’s the easiest path to becoming isolated, and I won’t take that risk.

I don’t believe I have friends. I know it. And I refuse to stand by and watch them suffer. If you honestly hoped I was the sort to do that, then you made the wrong choice in Archivist. I would never choose knowledge over someone I care about.

ELIAS/JONAH

You truly believe that.

PAST ARCHIVIST

It’s more than belief.

ELIAS/JONAH

Well. Far be it from me to disillusion you.

Just be mindful, Jon. Be careful of whom you allow to know who—or what—is important to you, or you think is important to you. Because if there is something you desire more than knowledge…it can be used against you.

PAST ARCHIVIST

Is that a threat?

ELIAS/JONAH

A warning.

Look, despite what you seem to think, I am on your side here. We all want to stop the world from ending, don’t we?

PAST ARCHIVIST

…Fine.

Is there anything else?

ELIAS/JONAH

No. That should be sufficient.

Go get something to eat, Jon. You must be…hungry.

[CLICK]

#leaves too high to touch (roots too strong to fall)#ollie writes fanfic #tma #the magnus archives #the formatting's better on AO3 #emotional abuse tw #manipulation tw #elias bouchard is a rat bastard #getting a lot of use out of that tag

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bibliocratic · 4 years

Text

post-160, spoilers ahoy, Martin/Jon - Martin tries to rescue Jon from Elias

(This is an obligatory fix-it sequel to one of my earlier angst fics but you don’t need to read that first)

[CLICK]

JONAH MAGNUS [mid-conversation] …. rather find they show up by themselves. A curious if harmless side effect, I wouldn't pay them much mind. Unless you'd rather this little interruption was kept from him...?

MARTIN [shortly] I don't really care.

JONAH MAGNUS How boorish. Peter didn't do much in the way of teaching you any manners.

MARTIN He didn't teach anything worth listening to.

JONAH MAGNUS Oh, you were already an adept student of the Lonely before Peter decided to make you part of our wager. [as though noticing something] Forgive me. Would you like to sit down? Plenty of room at the table as you can see. I was just finished eating.

MARTIN No.

JONAH MAGNUS Pity. I do relish the opportunity of a good conversationalist. My present company... as you can see, he's not exactly been up for chatting recently.

MARTIN [ignoring him, the steady tread of footsteps closer]

JONAH MAGNUS If you aren't going to be a hospitable guest, I think that's close enough. I'm sure you understand.

MARTIN [stops walking] You're not surprised I take it?

JONAH MAGNUS To see you here? Not especially. I knew you'd end up here eventually. All brash, full of foolish righteous anger masquerading as justice, bolstered up on thoughts of my murder.

MARTIN Read my mind, did you?

JONAH MAGNUS Oh, I didn't think I needed to for that one. You can be very possessive about what you consider yours.

MARTIN Jon's not mine. He's not yours, he's not anybody's.

JONAH MAGNUS Jon hasn't been his own man for such a long time.

MARTIN You're wrong.

[a lull in the conversation, an impasse both are too proud to cross]

JONAH MAGNUS [deliberately, aiming to hurt] …. You can look at him, you know. See him alive, whole. But you won't, will you, or can't. Too many eyes in his head and none of them the ones you hoped you'd see.

[proud] I've moulded him. Shaped his becoming. And I watch my ruined world thanks to the words I pull from his dutiful throat.

MARTIN You stole him.

JONAH MAGNUS It was a fair trade. I took nothing that wasn't offered. And he pleaded ever so movingly for your life.

MARTIN [biting] And you're such the bleeding heart.

JONAH MAGNUS It was a business transaction. A life for a life.

MARTIN This?! T-this is no life!

JONAH MAGNUS Not as you would understand it. Oh, but, look. Look at him, Martin. Isn't he magnificent?

[a roiling rumbling background sound of static]

MARTIN [whispered, almost fearful] Yes.

JONAH MAGNUS My Archives.

MARTIN [rallying, shaken] I – Jon – Is.... is he gone?

JONAH MAGNUS By which you mean, have I killed him?

MARTIN You know what I'm asking.

JONAH MAGNUS And yet I rather think you've not quite considered how much of a question it is.

MARTIN [sarcastic] Why don't you enlighten me if you're in sharing mood?

JONAH MAGNUS The Archivist has been dead before, has he not? You held his hand and said your little prayers over him as machines kept his body breathing, but I'm sure we can both agree that's not really a life. Jon was offered a choice, and he chose to embrace what he was becoming over death.

But the Jon who woke up is not the one who signed the contract to become my head archivist. Nor was that Jon the one who dragged himself and Ms Tonner out of the Buried. Nor, indeed, did any of those bear resemblance to the Jon who tore Peter Lukas apart to retrieve you from the Lonely. So many Jons, and maybe none of them still alive, none of them the man you want to find. Does that bother you?

MARTIN I don't.... I'm not here to discuss the bloody specifics of being a person. I want to know if he's still in there. His... I don't know, his choice, his emotions, his feelings.

JONAH MAGNUS Are you hoping to appeal to his better nature? How quaint. But to set your mind at ease, let me clarify that the role of Archivist would be poorly served by an unfeeling watcher. Jon's always had to, how did he put it, 'sit in his feelings'.

No, Martin, he feels everything. My Archive is a repository of knowledge. A catalogue of horrors I can collect and sample and observe and store, and they are kept perfectly preserved for me.

[a lip-curling smile obvious in his voice] Shall I have him tell you a story?

[the sound rises to audible, as though it's been playing the entire time but the volume has been turned down to a murmur. An inflectionless rote recitation, tinged with someone else's voice overlapping like twisted signals interjecting over a radio broadcast]

THE ARCHIVES … and I was sure I'd told her to leave, and I turned around, ready to shout at her, to say anything if it got her to run, but the doorway grew toothed and grinning before my eyes and there was something broken-backed and crooked in that space where nothing should have been...

MARTIN [interrupting] Don't make him do that.

[there's the harsh horrifying sound of a jaw clacking shut, and it mimics the snap of a pause button]

JONAH MAGNUS You always liked listening to his voice. When it was the two of you in the Archives, all those late nights, you could hear him through his office door, and it would make you feel like you weren't so alone. We'll listen in on another one, shall we?

[a faint choking jerk, like a leash being pulled too tight, another snap of a play button, the dialogue restarting]

THE ARCHIVES [reciting flatly] … I had the oddest thought then and even as I backed away towards the stairs, I started to get my phone out. The daft thing was...

MARTIN [recognising, voice gone sharp] Stop it.

THE ARCHIVES … I wasn't even going to call anyone for help, I just wanted to take a picture of the thing. To prove to you that it happened – you're always so quick to dismiss these statements and I wanted proof for you....

MARTIN You've made your point.

JONAH MAGNUS Hm, I think so. And, remind me, what was my point?

[silence except for Jon's now-muttered static. Careful listening and it's not static at all, but an unceasing recital of horror, statement after statement pouring from his mouth]

JONAH MAGNUS You come into my home clutching that knife with such intentions of bravado. I imagine you wanted to swoop in, rescue him. But I possess him in all the ways that matter. And you know, surely, that you aren't going to be enough to save him.

[Martin's breathing is harder]

I wasn't lying before. I have truly enjoyed your visit, you can be quite distracting company. That's been the whole point of this, hasn't it?

MARTIN Wh – ?

JONAH MAGNUS [interrupting] Who is in the house, Jon?

THE ARCHIVES Martin Blackwood is in the dining room.

JONAH MAGNUS [indulgently, playing for effect] Who else is in the house, Jon?

THE ARCHIVES [a whirring, like the tape's stuck, the first sounds garbled, before a return to normal] Basira Hussain and Melanie King are approaching the east wing. Alice Tonner is patrolling the grounds of the estate.

JONAH MAGNUS You see? All the fear in this world and he can see all of it, every trembling terrified beat of a heart. You think they could approach unseen, hide when he can sense every firing neuron of their fear, the pulse and jump of their nerves? No one is fearless, not in my brave new world, and so he sees them all.

I underestimated you once, Martin. I don't make a habit of repeating my mistakes.

MARTIN I disagree.

JONAH MAGNUS [dismissive] Oh do tell why.

MARTIN Why do you think I came here? Huh? Flimsy knife in hand, having to listen to your gloating.

JONAH MAGNUS Likely a poor attempt at trying to draw my attention.

MARTIN And why do you think Basira, Melanie and Daisy came here?

JONAH MAGNUS To kill me, I should imagine.

MARTIN No.

JONAH MAGNUS No?

MARTIN All those eyes of yours, and they're always too busy focusing on what they shouldn't.

JONAH MAGNUS Tell. Me.

MARTIN No.

JONAH MAGNUS I had thought to spare you further indignities...

MARTIN [almost scoffing] Yeah, this sounds familiar.

JONAH MAGNUS Mart –

MARTIN How about no. H-how about not this time, how about you shut up for a moment?

[huffing sound, almost a disbelieving laugh] It's just so – so easy to distract you.

JONAH MAGNUS Not much of a distraction if I know you're coming.

MARTIN Who said I was the only distraction?

JONAH MAGNUS I –

[a small patter of careful footsteps across marble flooring, and then a grunt, a wet slicing noise that sickeningly sounds like metal through meat]

[Magnus howls in agony. His voice echoing like a wind tunnel, a guttural gusty howling of static, the scrape of a chair shoved back, cutlery and tableware disturbed and smashing]

[another grunt of exertion and someone hitting the table, silverware clattering, before a heavier slump of a body hitting the floor]

MARTIN You have to...!

GEORGIE I know! Just –

[sounds of a tussle for a few seconds, then a deep stabbing puncture, the noise like a punch. Magnus stops screaming]

GEORGIE Now. Now it's done.

MARTIN That is... eurgh, that's so nasty.

GEORGIE Let me have this triumphant moment, huh?

MARTIN Yeah. Sorry. When you said what you were planning, I thought.... it was a bit more like popping a tomato than expected.

[pause, adrenaline fast breathing, the Archives' static]

He's... he's gone. Elias is really gone.

GEORGIE Finally.

Now, where's...? Holy f – Christ, Jon. Jon? Martin, is – that's not....?

MARTIN What Elias left of him.

GEORGIE What's – What's he doing?

MARTIN [darkly] What he was made for. There's so many more statements to archive now. He's being kept busy.

GEORGIE [hand over mouth] God, that's... Christ. [despairingly angry] I thought – I thought that would do it. That was the whole point of this, to get him back.

MARTIN The point was to kill Elias. He's.... Jon's not tied to Elias, he's tied to the Eye.

[creak of a door hinge, footsteps]

BASIRA [getting closer, echoing slightly in the space] He fell for it then?

GEORGIE [pulling herself back to the moment at hand] Yeah. Too busy monologuing at Martin.

BASIRA [creeping closer, sucking air through her teeth] Aim was perfect.

MELANIE She got him? Right across his eyes?

[Georgie makes a 'squish' noise as an affirmative]

Good. Fucker got what was coming.

BASIRA There's still the matter of Jon to deal with.

... Martin, you sure about this?

MARTIN [deep breath] As sure as I can be.

GEORGIE Can he... can Jon hear us?

BASIRA The rest of us, more than likely.

MARTIN [an agreeing 'hm'] He knew you were coming.

BASIRA I'd accounted for that. But being to all intents and purposes 'fearless'? Your invisibility cloak worked on Magnus. As to Jon, no idea.

MELANIE Look, we should hurry. Go, bring him back, Martin.

BASIRA And if you can't...

MARTIN [sharper] That's my call to make, not yours. We agreed.

BASIRA [a heavy pause] Just don't stay in there too long.

MARTIN Right. I'd... I'd stand back.

[there is a creaking static, like muted sound, a whip of rising wind. Martin makes a grunt of effort. Fading in to mix with the static is the rhythmic slosh of tide, the empty drone of wind over empty landscape.]

[a release of held breath]

MARTIN [almost wistful] Back again.

[footsteps digging into sand]

Jon? J-jon, we've... you're ok, Elias, he's.... I know this won't, it won't disconnect you from the Eye or anything, but you told me, you told me it was muted here.

Give you some space, s-so you can come back. I know – I know you're in there

[a crunching chewing sound like a tape spool caught]

[a manic and aggressive fast-forward]

MARTIN Come on, that's it. T-Try and talk to me.

THE ARCHIVES … she had shattered the glass of the horrid thing, its spindling legs made into a constellation of shards on the kitchen floor, but I couldn't move, I couldn't believe that it was over, not until there was a knock at the door. The police, finally. And even then she had to coax me to move, saying that it was finished, it was dead.... [cut off]

MARTIN He – he's gone, Jon. Really gone, he can't... you don't have to fight him any more. [a hopeful gasping exhale] Yeah, that's... that's it... yeah I know it's hard. [ harsh buzz of tape] Look at me, come on, yeah, good, you're doing it. You're out, you're... you're free.

THE ARCHIVES [a crunching whirr, then intoning, tainted with the over-lay of Magnus' intonation, smug and congratulatory] You do not administer and preserve the records of fear, Jon, you are a record of fear... [a sickening buzzing, the sound of a tape recorder being forwarded] ... could be turned into a conduit for the coming of this – nightmare kingdom. Don't you see where I'm going...?

MARTIN I – Jon, I don't understand.

[garbling rewind]

THE ARCHIVES ...A conduit for the coming of this nightmare kingdom.

MARTIN [softer, sounding closer] He did that to you. He forced you to say those words. That wasn't... that wasn't you, that's not your fault.

Look, we – that's why we need you back. We can, Jon, we can stop this – we've... well, Basira's got a plan, and it's a small chance, but we could, with you and Georgie, we could change something. But we need you.

[empty static]

MARTIN [quieter] And I need you. I need you to come back.

THE ARCHIVES [wrenching, cracking, choked] Mar –

[buzz, like a fucked up tape that goes on for several seconds] … I tried to explain, but all I could manage to say to get through the shaking sobs was 'I love you'.

MARTIN [throat tight] Jon, fight this, you can, come on...

THE ARCHIVES [a different recording tugged from his throat, a replication of Martin's own voice, shatter-hearted and Lonely, the faint echo of a hospital monitor] … but we need you, Jon. Please – just. Please.

MARTIN That's – Don't, Jon. Don't use my voice like that.

I'm here. We weren't just going to leave you to him. So how can I... How can I stop this, how can I help you?

THE ARCHIVES [rewind] Please.

MARTIN I don't understand– I'm trying but... no, no, no, come on Jon, eyes on me, yeah, look back up, not....

[ripped and ripe with comprehension] Oh.

THE ARCHIVES Please [rewind]. Please [rewind]. Please.

MARTIN I can't. Jon, I –

THE ARCHIVES [more insistent] Please [rewind]. Please.

MARTIN [forcefully] I won't be your murderer, Jon!

I won't. I'm sorry, but – [makes a deprecating noise] It's not even sharp. It was for show, all part of the act.

[moves in closer, tread of feet in sand] Listen to me, Jon. I know. Sweetheart, I know. I know you're tired. I know everything, everything's wrong, it's been all wrong for so long, and there's only so much hope we can all bear.

[quieter, almost ashamed] And we could stay here. It would be so so easy. Sit down together on the shoreline, let the fog take us.

I've been thinking, you know. [huff] Yeah, dangerous habit. I've had a lot of... I've had a lot of time to think, about Magnus and his 'grand plan' or whatever. He chose you, and let every horrible thing out there have their own pound of flesh from you. And the statements, they feed on you too, don't they? You live this sick repetition of other people's horrors, and that feeds the Eye, but it's too much for you to bear. And Elias, or bloody, Jonah or whoever, even he wasn't sure you'd survive, even before all this mess happened. He wanted you hurt, and scared but he couldn't be sure it wouldn't kill you outright.

[static, unbroken]

I read the statements too. Elias was very keen on giving me [dark laugh] well, professional development while you were away. And if that wasn't... wasn't enough –

[pause]

Jane Prentiss trapped and terrorised me in my home, and after that, Christ, all that time ago, it all just kept happening. The whatever-it-was that called itself Michael, I was in those corridors with Tim for weeks, and I've been, huh – if being pinballed between working for some – some evil eyeball and Peter Lukas doesn't count, I don't know what does.

[a low breath, gearing up. The static continues, an intent and intense sedateness]

I've got all of them now, isn't that right, Jon? Whether it's the statements, or workplace collateral, or even just living in this horrifying hellscape of a world. That's all of them, leaving their mark. And Elias, I think you knew, [wry chuff] or Knew probably, that he would have made me Archivist. If you didn't make it. 's why he agreed to let me stay behind, while you all went to stop the Circus.

S-so my point is. I – I know. I know you're tired, I know you want this to stop. But we could end this, together. It's too much for you to take alone, s-so why don't you share it?

[gentler] You don't – You've never had to do this on your own. An Archivist always had Assistants, remember.

THE ARCHIVES [a break in the static, like signal breaking in and out, a furious dip and rise of disparate statements] – And I told her no – […] He knew he could never ask that of – […] Please, please – [….] Martin – […] – through the shaking sobs was 'I love you' – […...]

MARTIN You're not alone. Not now, not before. If we're to have any chance at all, you have to let me help.

[a staticky buzzing, low breathing, the distant call of gulls]

Look at me, Jon. Yeah, all those eyes of yours.

What do you See?

[the static rises like a wind swell]

[Martin gives an airless grunt]

MARTIN That's it.... [gasp] Come on, Jon, let me in.

[Martin lets out a gasp that chokes into a clenched cry. He gags and swallows the sound, and it is dry and painful and crunching. The static over-washes the sound of the shore, and Martin starts making bitten-off hurt sounds, that soon devolve into screaming. This goes on for a long time.]

[He stops. The static stops]

[The loud sound of something heavy hitting the floor, Jon's breathing suddenly audible, mixed with Martin's panting. The scrape of sand, someone moving]

JONATHAN SIMS, THE ARCHIVIST [slurring and mumbled, his tongue numb and awkward] Martin... Martin... are you...?

MARTIN BLACKWOOD, THE ARCHIVIST [sucking in a harsh breath] Jon. [muffled, like he's embracing someone, or being embraced] Christ, thank god, Jon, you're ok, you're here, you're back.

[even more muffled] God, I thought I was too late.

ARCHIVIST Are you – Martin, tell me please, are you...?

ARCHIVIST I'm fine, I'm just... [wincing groan] It's just a lot.

ARCHIVIST R-right. Breathe through it. Look... look at me, that's it. The rest of it, a-all the noise, it's background. That's all. It doesn't have to drown you.

[For several long moments, they breathe in tandem as Martin calms]

ARCHIVIST I could hear you. B-back with Jonah. It was all so loud but I could hear you.

Thank you. F-for coming to get me.

ARCHIVIST Well, Basira gave me two options so it was that or murder [clearly responding to some visual expression] I'm – I'm kidding. Of course I wasn't going to just leave you.

[a surprised noise] Jon. Your eye.

ARCHIVIST What...?

ARCHIVIST The left one, it's not... It's different, it's not like – it's blue, it's blue, did something go wrong, is it...

ARCHIVIST [ever so softly, clearly a page ahead] Yours has changed too. Brown suits you.

ARCHIVIST I – Oh. Right.

So we've both.... Yours and mine....

ARCHIVIST I think so.

ARCHIVIST That's.... that's crazy.

ARCHIVIST Hmm.

[…]

[thoughtful] I forgot how quiet it was, here.

You really think we can stop this?

ARCHIVIST Basira seems to have a plan. You and Georgie, your abilities. And well, me to some extent now, I guess. It could change everything back to the way it was, now Elias has gone.

ARCHIVIST What do you think?

ARCHIVIST I think we can stop this.

ARCHIVIST Then I believe you.

Martin, what you did –

ARCHIVIST Let's – We'll talk about it later. I promise. Once we're out of here. I'm... Today's been a lot.

ARCHIVIST OK. That's – OK. You should rest, when we get out of here. It's – it'll take a lot out of you, in the beginning.

ARCHIVIST I'm sure Elias wouldn't mind lending us his rooms. Not like he can complain.

ARCHIVIST We're in Jonah's house?

ARCHIVIST Well. More mansion. It's so ostentatiously gaudy, you'd hate it. Bet he has four poster beds and framed paintings of himself all over the place.

ARCHIVIST How charming.

ARCHIVIST Hmm. Melanie's probably started on slashing up the fixtures.

[quieter] Come on, then. Let's get out of here. I know the way back.

ARCHIVIST [ever so softly] I've never doubted it.

[CLICK]

#the magnus archives #tma #fic #martin blackwood #elias bouchard #jonathan sims #cw violence #cw mind-control #tw suicidal intention

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pensivetense · 4 years

Text

A List Of (Mostly TMA) Fic Recs Sorted By Vibe

Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a few favourites that caught my fancy. I shortened many of the summaries for space.

I’m going to pin this here and update it as I go.

Also, I’m pensivetense on ao3

MELANCHOLY VIBES

for when you want to feel comfortably muted

(sad but not utterly bleak endings here)

Hope, Etc. (Dickenson, et al.) by yellow_caballero

Jonathan Sims, six months after the Unknowing, wakes to find himself without a daemon - without humanity, without a soul. It’s a cursed half-life, but existence as a shell without a heart isn’t so bad: between solving the mystery of a persistent illusion cast over his friends and some light pseudo-cannibalism, a life as a monster is better than no life at all. At least, it would be, if it wasn’t for the fucking Owl.

A freaking. Amazing. Daemon au. Ties the lore of Dust with TMA lore very satisfyingly, but is mostly about Jon navigating what it means to be human, or, in the absence of that, a person, and doesn’t require prior knowledge of His Dark Materials. Cannot recommend highly enough.

after one long season of waiting by nuinuijiaojiao

Annabelle is not used to having nice things. or, Annabelle heads to Upton House, muses a little, and gets some well-deserved rest

I love survivalist Annabelle and also the concept of the Web as kind of a horrible Patron, actually.

i love you. I want us both to eat well. by SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse

At the safehouse with Martin, Jon decides it's time to quit statements once and for all. The Eye disagrees. Martin just needs Jon to be okay. It's quite possible that nobody is going to get what they want.

Scottish Safehouse Era, Jon and Martin coping with their respective Entities... really, really good.

the friend by doomcountry

He always greets a new spider when he meets it. It’s instinct, born in childhood, the same way he instinctively counts magpies, or flicks salt over his left shoulder. A little harmless superstition. A bit of politesse.

A great Martin character study with eldritch spider horror included. The imagery regularly haunts me (in a good way).

autumn’s rare gift by bee_bro

Annually, the two meet, renewing the binding ritual where it had all started. The procedure simple: a waltz.

Singlehandedly made me ship Gertrude/Agnes so there’s that. It’s so bittersweet and bee_bro’s writing is, as always, incredibly poetic. (I’d recommend everything they write, actually.)

smile, you’re trending by Goodluckdetective

During an encounter with another Avatar of the Eye, Jon faces his past, Martin takes a turn at playing Kill Bill and Basira has a second look at the monster she’s determined to see. For three people associated with the Eye, they could all use some perspective.

Features an original Eye Avatar character who’s a YouTube personality; she is infuriating and inspired and genuinely frightening and I cannot say enough good things.

Humility by The_Lionheart

have you no idea that you're in deep?/i've dreamt about you nearly every night this week,/how many secrets can you keep?

An OC centric story but don’t let that put you off, it’s amazing. Very heavily focused around Jonah Magnus and the other Avatars as they change through the years. Also, I’d die for the OC.

oh, for one sweet second without the eye series by faedemon

Beholding does not like in the way humans do, but it likes its Archivist all the same.

I’m just so fond of the way this is done stylistically. I have a great weakness for dialogue only/dialogue heavy writing, not to mention all of the wonderful character beats and interplay of humanity/inhumanity for Jon and Melanie.

Rewind by WhyNotFly

It takes eight days of forced confinement for Jon to start hallucinating. [...] It’s Martin, though, that his exhausted brain conjures, because of course it’s Martin. After all this time, of course it’s Martin.

Jon willingly allows himself to be confined rather than hunting for statements, and examines his relationship with Martin.

for a firmament series by supaslim

There is beauty in destruction. There is art in becoming. In which Jon becomes the Archive, and the Archive becomes Jon.

Part two posted this morning and uhhh. Good. Also if you’re here for weird eldritch body horror (I am), this one’s for you.

ONES THAT JUST HURT

for when you want to feel sad

(somewhat bleaker endings here/everyone is NOT okay)

Feste by yellow_caballero

If asked, Martin would say that he became the shadow director of the Magnus Institute by accident. But nobody ever asked, and nobody ever cared, and it was in this way that Martin stopped lying to himself. Or: break free, Martin. All you have to lose are your chains. And your sanity.

Oh, this one totally didn’t go the way I expected it to. A study in isolation. Could go into the category above, as the ending is not bleak, but the tone of the whole is somewhat more depressing than most there.

Ghosts of Love by RavenXavier

Nothing made Martin more grounded in the world than yearning for Jonathan Sims.

Lonely!Martin that really captures a sort of visceral ache. Hurts me and yet I keep rereading.

i do desire (we may be better strangers) by godbewithyouihavedone

For ages, it only knew how to worship, taking human bodies and living off the fear of those who remembered. It never knew love until it became Jonathan Sims. Now it must fight against every instinct to save Martin Blackwood. Archivist Sasha, Not!Jon/Martin, and the worst kind of Fake Dating AU.

Oh, this one just made me sad. The poor not!them, which is something I never thought I’d say.

Apple Of Your Eye by fakeCRfan

In which the Eye is fond of Martin. Perhaps a little too fond for comfort.

Somehow manages to be both sweet and horrifying—the characterisation of the Eye is incredible. ‘The Eye loves Martin’ is a scenario that’s so utterly doomed to failure and yet the writing is packed with so much pathos that I just want them all to be happy. A fantastic use of themes of agency and choice, and the single best use of Beholding as a source of horror I’ve read.

The Last Press by copperbadge

Jon Sims is awake, and has begun preparations for the Rite of the Watcher's Crown. Peter Lukas, who woke him, would be content to rule at his side. Martin is very upset about all of this, and the Lukases aren't thrilled with it either.

I really can’t say anything without spoiling the end and it’s so good. An alternate take on the Watcher’s Crown. Not a pairing that I ever thought would work for me, but this made it work.

watch the blood evaporate by 75hearts

It starts, like so many things in Jon’s life have started, with a nagging itch of curiosity. Jonathan Sims uses his healing abilities throughout s4. Read the tags.

Dear God please read the tags. But this is some high quality pain if it’s for you.

the lighthouse series by low_fi

Peter Lukas is a lighthouse keeper. One evening, he gets a call from a cryptic overseer tasked with monitoring his work.

This is such a vivid and yet subtle story—from the setting to the emotions portrayed, it creeps up on you slowly. The ending was like the gentlest possible gut-punch. The sequel just completed, and yeah, just as wonderful. This one is very much LonelyEyes but I listed it here because it is just exquisitely painful.

SATISFYINGLY HOPEFUL VIBES

for when you want to feel cozy

Clutching Daffodils by Gemi

Martin has always liked the idea of love at first sight. It’s such a romantic idea, the whole thing of it. Seeing someone and instantly feeling that strange, twisting feeling deep inside that every single media likes to obsess over. Of knowing you are in love within the day, petals falling from your mouth and warmth filling your chest as love burrows deep, vines twisting through your lungs. He always liked the idea of it. And then Jonathan Sims starts working at the Magnus Institute.

Somehow manages to be lighter and fluffier than most hanahaki fare, despite the setting. I’ve reread this one a lot.

the least he could do by Prim_the_Amazing

Martin should in fact not pick this man, specifically because of how attracted he is to him. It would be the responsible thing to do. Except he’s already following him. And he’s hungry.

Fluffy vampire au which everyone’s probably already read, but was too good not to mention.

rather interesting by bee_bro

Jonah Magnus realizes that, for some reason, when he comes in contact with weed, Elias Bouchard's consciousness will come into his life banging pots and pans.

Oh boy. So these are all favourite fics but this one is a favourite amongst favourites. The way Jonah is characterised (i.e. incredibly sensitive to scrutiny) is my favourite depiction of him, and the slow-burn between him and Elias is far sweeter than it has any right to be. Also, it’s hilarious.

The Magnus Records series by ErinsWorks

In a world parallel to that of the Archives and the Institute, a supernatural sanctuary stands against a cruel and uncaring world: A world of bureaucracy and tyranny, of murder and carnage, of loneliness and surveillence, of plague and death. But in this world of fear and misery, 14 entities born of the hopes of the world have emerged. And one of them has made their home here, at The Magnus Sanctuary. Perhaps, the employees within may lead happier lives than their counterparts did in the Archives.

This is just so goddamn pure. The author writes a really imaginative, fleshed-out alternate world and alternate Entities with engaging, well-written short statements. All of the character voices are absolutely on point, and it’s overall absurdly hopeful without ever feeling overly saccharine. I love this series so much, you guys, you don’t even know. I want to print it out and paste it on my wall. I love it.

HARD APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel dark and angsty (and eldritch)

Most of these are shorts/oneshots because it’s just that kind of genre, y’know?

Ashes to Ashes by marrowbones

A conversation at the end of the world.

Oliver Banks is one of those minor characters that I am overly attached to. Love him here.

Employee Benefits by equals_eleven_thirds

The Magnus Institute offered some normal employee benefits: a pension plan, holidays, travel subsidies, free lunch on the last Friday of each month. Rosie makes it work.

This manages to hit that perfect sweet spot of satisfying and hilarious. Rosie gets to torment Elias, as she well deserves.

a rose by any other name by Duck_Life

Part of Jon blooms in Jared Hopworth’s garden.

This one was sad and honestly too gentle to really belong in this category, but I love it.

Eye to Eye by Dribbledscribbles

In which Jonah Magnus attempts a post-apocalyptic pep talk.

Unreliable narrator at its finest, and the implications are suitably horrific.

commensalis by doomcountry

The tower is endlessly, impossibly tall, but Jon’s work is taller.

If you’re here for the eldritch imagery, then this has some of the best.

SOFT APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel gently triumphant

apocalypse how series by sunshine_states

Humanity adjusts. The Entities have Regrets.

Some nice vignettes set in a kinder apocalypse.

ceylon series by Sciosa

The one in which Jonathan Sims decides that no, actually, he isn't going to let the world just end.

I include this only for the sake on completeness, as everyone has no doubt already read it.

rituals by doomcountry

Martin is the first person to knock on the Archivist's door since it arrived, fully, into its little waiting temple. The Archivist saw him coming from down the hall, but decides to feign interest when the knob turns, and Martin—still a little bit smaller, a little more translucent than before—stands uncertainly just outside the room.

This one’s a little less focused on the world at large and more on JonMartin specifically.

we raise it up by savrenim

Jonathan Sims reads a book and saves the world; although maybe the real salvation is the friends he makes along the way; (although perhaps the world itself and the darkness that exists behind it isn't quite as out to get everyone as it seems).

More ‘soft revolution’ than ‘soft apocalypse’, but has the same vibe. A time travel fix-it. Incomplete but worth it if this is a mood that appeals to you.

Scarred Ground by DictionaryWrites

“You see," Elias said softly, "people always have this idea that only living things can be scarred - and they're right, of course. But a building is a living thing, Martin. And the ground can be scarred, too." "I don't have any scars," Martin said. "Yes, you do," Elias said. "You just need the right light to see them.”

Falls somewhere between ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Soft Apocalyse’ but I’m putting it here because I feel like it. Also technically a LonelyEyes fic. I found it hard to follow at first but it’s worth sticking with; things will eventually begin to make sense and come together.

LONELYEYES

for when you want to feel lonelyeyes

marrying anguish with one last wish by procrastinatingbookworm

In which Elias isn't Orpheus, and Peter isn't Eurydice, but Elias brings Peter home anyway.

Lives in my head rent free forever. My favourite lonelyeyes fic.

ouroboros by Wildehack

“You know,” Jonah says, a muscle in his calf quivering agreeably where it’s slung over Mordechai’s shoulder, “it’s really quite--fortunate--that I don’t care for you at all.”

Oh, this one hurts in the best possible way. The endless cycle of their relationship, the way it comes full-circle... yeah, good. Actually, no, this one might be my favourite. It’s a tie.

Breaking all the Rules by Thedupshadove

Elias proposes a somewhat...unusual wager.

Soft lonelyeyes? In my recs? It’s more likely than you think. Short, sweet, and... sweet.

Threefold by Sprinkledeath

Peter Lukas breaks three rules.

I’m just a slut for mythology allusions I guess.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight by prodigy

In 2014, Elias Bouchard takes a rare trip outside of his comfort zone. Peter Lukas wastes a bunch of money. You'd be surprised how many things can go wrong for two beings of cosmic power.

I love the sense of the history of them you get while reading this.

love is just a word (the idea seems absurd) by kaneklutz

"Something's wrong. It's stopped hurting" An avatar of the Lonely and an avatar of the Beholding walk into a bar relationship. It was bound to blow up in their faces.

Short, sweet, painful. Excellent exploration of their priorities.

Victor by penguistifical

elias tries something with his powers that he hasn't attempted before

The one where Elias tries to raise the dead. Not incredibly LonelyEyes centric but that’s still the pairing.

Simon Says by penguistifical

“Peter asked me to drop by and have a word with you, and, so, here I am.” Simon chuckles at Elias’s disbelieving stare. “Well, he asked in his own way. He’s not a complicated man, you know. He either comes from your arms looking like a stroked cat that’s been given a dish of cream or looking like he’s been in that toy boat of his out in an unexpected storm. He was far angrier than normal, so I daresay you weren’t cream today.”

I mean personally I’d just go ahead and rec all of penguistifical’s LonelyEyes fics but this is a standout for me.

AROMANTIC AND ASPEC MOODS

for when you want to feel Seen

The Aro Archives series by WhyNotFly

These are all just really really good. From Aro!Peter to two different aro-spec versions of the Scottish Safehouse to a long and beautiful aro hanahaki fic, this series is uniformly wonderful. The two Scottish Safehouse ones (Torn Edges and Murky Water) are my comfort fics.

and now all fear gives way by j_quadrifons

Before he can think it through, he murmurs, "Is that what it feels like? Being in love?" Martin's hand stills in his hair and Jon's stomach drops.

This one just. Wow yeah this is how it be. Another absolute comfort fic of mine.

Sweet As Roses by Prim_the_Amazing

Jon takes Martin by the shoulders, leans up on the tips of his toes, and kisses him.

I’m going to be honest—I didn’t know where to put this one. But it ended up here because the real standout of this fic for me is the portrayal of Sasha, and especially her portrayal as an aro character. So I’m putting it here. Mind the content warnings with this one!

HUMOUR

for when you want to feel delight

The Torment of Sebastian Skinner by Urbenmyth

After the Eye's victory, the statement givers are trapped in their horror stories, living them over and over again. Naturally, this works out better for some then for others.

Premise? Delightful. Execution? Fantastic. I read this one to cheer myself up when I’m sad.

Unlucky by VolxdoSioda

Jon’s dice betray him

Short, sweet DnD au, and the reason I cannot get DM!Elias out of my head now.

Voracious by beetl

A bird hits the window. Jon experiences The Flesh's thrall.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” but make it literal.

The Stupid Endings by Urbenmyth

There are a lot of very deeply thought out and creative AUs on this site. These aren't among them. These ones are how the story could have ended, if Jonny Sims was a dumbass.

These are just uniformly hilarious, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

PODCAST CROSSOVERS

for when you want to make one of those “if I had a nickel for every time...” posts

The Sabbatical by morelikeassassin

Nicholas Waters is in need of an all-knowing eldritch entity beyond the confines of human imagining to help with his latest ritual. He'll have to settle for Jonathan Sims, who happens to have nothing better to do.

Crossover with Archive 81 (s3, specifically). Both fun and bittersweet.

The City And Its Sorrows by cuttooth

“What makes you think your friend is in Eskew?” David asks. He feels he can risk the scrutiny of the city that far. “I read that this is a place people end up when they get lost,” says the man. “This is a place people end up,” David agrees./The Archivist comes to Eskew.

Contemplative piece, and I love the way it presents David’s relationship with Eskew, the way he finds it horrible and hates it and yet belongs to it, is almost proud in the way he shows to to Jon. Great little vignette of two people oppressed by eldritch powers, intersecting.

Hiatus by bibliocratic

My name is Jonathan Sims, and I am in Eskew. (Jon gets lost in a Spiral city. It is not as easy as escaping.)

This one is far more focused on Jon than David, and is honestly more Eskew-weird than Spiral-weird. In the best way. Told in Eskew episode style, and is very good.

Sweet Music by Shella688

Eskew has a music to it, if you know how to listen. The percussion beat of thousands of footsteps, the melody in the squealing of the trains overhead. Today, the music of Eskew comes in the form of nine musicians, playing outside my office. My name is David Ward, and I am in Eskew.

Not TMA, but since a lot of Mechs fans go here—this one’s a Mechs/Eskew crossover. Short and simple, mostly David Ward centric, just a little well-written one shot I had to mention because I enjoyed it but it doesn’t have much traffic. Nice portrayal of the Mechs from an outsider’s perspective, and how genuinely strange and frightening they’d come across (especially if you’re already being haunted by and eldritch city). If you like Eskew-style storytelling, check it out!

NOT TMA

...but good enough that I physically cannot make a recs list without including them. Here!

#tma #the magnus archives #fic recs #long post #i'm not kidding you guys it's long #so be warned before you click read more #pinned on my blog

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haberdashing · 4 years

Text

Unraveling All The Mystery

TMA mental time travel AU; Jon gives the rest of the original archives crew an explanation for his erratic behavior. Inspired by this post and this fic of it.

on AO3

“Jon...”

“...this is an intervention.”

Jon couldn’t help but burst into laughter when he heard those words.

He’d known something was up when all three archival assistants had joined him at once in his office early that morning, had half-suspected that they were going to ask in unison about how he had been acting different ever since he had the memories of his future self (well, of his no-longer-future self, hopefully) dumped into his head, but that phrasing...

It reminded Jon of an entirely different “intervention” directed his way, and while he knew he needed to take this situation seriously, it was still a far sight for being confronted for stalking his coworkers and accusing them of murder.

(To be fair, two of the four people he’d seen as murder suspects at the time had in fact killed someone, but Jon knew well enough that that didn’t entirely excuse his actions.)

Martin’s brows furled together in that way Jon had always secretly found adorable as he asked, “What’s so funny?”

Jon tried his best to school his expression back into something approximating neutral before he replied. “It’s... it’s a long story.” Technically true, that, though he knew it wouldn’t get him far to say that alone, knew he wasn’t the only one here hungry for answers (at least metaphorically speaking). “Never mind that. What is this... ‘intervention’ regarding?”

Sasha, Martin, and Tim all exchanged a look that Jon couldn’t quite decipher for a silent moment before Sasha spoke up.

“All three of us have noticed that you haven’t been acting like yourself lately.”

And of course it was Sasha telling him this. Sasha who he had two sets of memories of now, one of the real her and one of a being that had taken her place, the two already starting to blur together in his mind when he wasn’t face to face with the real thing.

Jon knew that her point was a fair one, but he still wanted to know more, wanted to know what exactly had changed, what had revealed to the rest of the world his internal change, wanted to know if it was something Jonah Magnus might have already noticed, so he raised an eyebrow and asked, “How so?”

Tim blurted out “weird” right as Martin blurted out “nice,” with Sasha waiting a beat before adding, “Weirdly nice.”

“...fair enough.” Jon could feel a smile sneaking back onto his face as he spoke. “I do know what you’re referring to there, and I, I do want to explain it all to you, but... do you mind if we take this conversation- er, this ‘intervention’ elsewhere?”

“...this is your office.”

“Exactly. Hardly neutral ground, is it?” Especially with Jonah Magnus doubtlessly watching their every move from his office, but Jon wasn’t very well going to mention that bit... “How about we go to that ice cream parlor we went to for Martin’s birthday? My treat.”

Sasha eyed Jon warily. “I had breakfast two hours ago.”

“Are you really going to turn down an offer of free ice cream and answers because of that?”

The three assistants exchanged a few pointed glances and slight shrugs before Tim said with a wide grin that may or may not have been entirely genuine, “You had me at ‘free ice cream.’”

“Glad to hear it.”

Jon got up and grabbed his bag, but before he could finish leading the way out of the Archives, a thought occurred to him. “Somebody bring a digital recording device with--laptop, phone, whatever, just so long as it’s digital. This won’t be a statement per se, but talking about it all will probably mess up the recordings as badly as the real statements do, and maybe that’ll help prove that this truly is the supernatural at work.”

There was a brief silence for a moment before Martin asked, “Jon, what d’you mean by real statements?”

“You know what I mean.” Jon sighed softly. “The ones with something solid to them, the ones you can’t easily rationalize away... not that I haven’t tried. They never record digitally.”

“I’ll go get a camera then.” Sasha darted away, and as she did, Jon could practically feel Martin and Tim’s gazes boring into him.

“So you do know there’s a difference.” Tim said.

“I didn’t think you believed any of them!” Martin added.

Jon sighed again. “I’ve... I’ve always believed in the supernatural. Well, perhaps not always, but for decades now, long before I got hired by the Institute. That’s why I wanted to work here in the first place. The skeptic act was always just that. An act, because it felt safer than the alternative.”

The awkward silence that followed was broken only by Sasha returning triumphantly, camera in hand. “Got it!”

“Great, let’s go.”

For a moment or two, as Jon’s feet obediently traced their way towards the ice cream parlor despite part of his brain insisting that it’d been years since he’d been to the place, Jon thought that was that.

Then Martin spoke up, his voice tentative but clear. “Care to share why you started believing in the supernatural, then?”

“Not particularly.” Jon paused, considered his options a bit more. He needed to be open with them, to trust them, he knew that, but... but that didn’t make talking about supernatural childhood trauma any easier. “Let’s just say it has to do with my distaste for both Leitners and spiders and leave it at that.”

Martin scrunched up his nose, and Jon’s heart ached at the sight of it. “Fair enough.”

The ice cream parlor wasn’t terribly busy this time of day, which was probably for the best, as Jon figured the less chance of being overheard, the better. After a bit of teasing and decision-making, Jon paid for the order as he’d promised, with both him and his assistants getting one scoop of ice cream each (though Tim had jokingly threatened to buy a scoop of every flavor the place had to offer just because Jon would have to foot the bill).

“What’s with you and rum and raisin ice cream, anyway?”

Jon glared at Tim. Tim glared back.

“What do you mean? It’s good.”

“If you’re eighty years old and have no taste buds left, maybe. Seriously, if you made an objective ranking of ice cream flavors-”

“That’s literally impossible, Tim, everybody has different preferences-”

Tim raised his voice a bit as he spoke over Jon. “Then you know that in dead last would be-”

“Anything with marshmallows in it?”

Martin looked up from his scoop of rocky road, pointing his spoon at Jon accusingly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Jon couldn’t quite look Martin in the eye as he continued, so he focused his gaze on Tim instead. “The texture is all wrong for mixing with ice cream, they’re disgustingly sweet, and do you know what marshmallows are made out of? Because I don’t consider that appetizing, especially in a dessert context.”

Martin scrunched up his face again. “...I try not to think about it.”

“So we’ve established that Jon’s taste in ice cream is just wrong in general, I see.” Sasha chimed in.

“Exactly! We weren’t discussing Martin’s taste in ice cream here-” Tim started to gesture wildly with his own spoon, flecks of moose tracks coming perilously close to falling off as he flailed it around. “We’re discussing Jon’s, and specifically how horrible it is.”

“Technically, we didn’t come here to discuss anybody’s taste in ice cream.”

“Said like a man who still hasn’t explained what the deal is with him and rum and raisin.”

Jon weighed the pros and cons of trying to change the subject more forcefully versus just flat-out telling the truth before settling on the latter.

“My grandmother used to buy it for me as a treat. We’d sit side by side on the couch and share a pint as we watched nature documentaries on the telly. It was as close to a family tradition as we had, I suppose.”

“Oh.” Tim’s gaze softened a bit. “Alright, I’ll give you that one.”

“So it’s not because you’re eighty and have no taste buds, it’s because your grandmother was?” Sasha added.

“Hey!”

Sasha stuck out her tongue, turned bright pink from the strawberry ice cream she was eating, her expression clearly unapologetic.

“Can we talk about what we’re actually here to talk about now?”

Jon’s voice came out a little louder than he had intended, and his near-shouting seemed to shut down the friendly banter that had been surrounding him in one fell swoop. Sasha closed her mouth, a few awkward glances were exchanged (none of which were directed at Jon himself), and silence fell.

“...sure thing, Jon. Go right ahead.” Martin eventually replied.

“Start the camera, please?”

Sasha futzed with the camera for a few seconds before nodding and shooting Jon a thumbs-up. Before Jon could speak up, though, Tim beat him to the punch.

“Statement of Joe Spooky, regarding-”

Jon pressed one hand against his temple, though he was struggling to hold back a laugh as he did so. “I told you, Tim, this isn’t a statement. Not a proper one, anyway. We’re damn well not going to be filing it away in the archives, at least.”

Even with his hand half-covering his eyes, Jon could see Tim’s raised eyebrow and amused expression clearly enough. “Not even going to mention the Joe Spooky bit?”

“Wasn’t planning on it, no.” Though Jon couldn’t help but think of the other time Tim had grabbed a recording device and made a joke about the statement of Joe Spooky... but that was why he had to explain all of this, so that they could work together, so that they could prevent Prentiss’ attack on the Archives and all the horrible things that had followed it the first time around.

“Smart man, knows better than to quibble with some quality wordplay.”

“That’s not wordplay, Tim.” Sasha interjected. “That’s not even a pun, just a first name and the word ‘spooky.’”

“Like I said, quality wordplay right there.”

“Please let me actually talk about this?”

Once again, as Jon spoke up, the others went eerily silent. Jon set his hands on the table as he weighed his next words.

“So, do you want to hear my explanation first, or the proof I have to back it up?”

Tim spoke up first. “Proof first. Given how much you’re building this up, I doubt I’ll believe any of it before you’ve given me a reason to believe this isn’t just some elaborate prank.”

“Usually you’d be the one pranking me, not the other way around. I’m not exactly the pranking type.”

Tim shrugged slightly. “Well, maybe you’ve finally snapped, decided to get your revenge by launching a prank for the ages.”

Jon thought about disputing the idea that he would ever prank one of his assistants, let alone Tim--Tim who he knew from back in Research, Tim who was his friend, Tim who probably knew him better than anyone in the Institute (Jonah Magnus notwithstanding)--but decided against it. “Fine, so that’s one vote for proof first. Anyone else?”

Martin raised his hand before speaking, as if he were still back in primary school, and Jon knew that there had been a time not that long ago when he would have made that very comparison in an attempt to dismiss Martin, in an attempt to prove that at least he was more mature and competent than one of his coworkers. But that time had come and gone now, and Jon was just grateful that Martin was willing to take turns rather than everybody trying to speak over everybody else all at once. “Er, I’d rather have the story first, personally. Hard to establish proof if we don’t know what’s being proven to begin with.”

“Alright, well, that leaves you with the deciding vote, Sasha.” Jon pointed at Sasha, using his finger rather than his spoon for the gesture.

Sasha shoved a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth right as Jon pointed her way, dramatically drawing out her consumption of it before finally swallowing and saying with a mouth still tinged bright pink, “I say proof first. Between working in Artefact Storage and in the Archives, I’ve heard more than my fair share of horror stories; I’d like to know we can trust you, trust that you’re not some creepy doppelganger or something, before we get to the meat of whatever this is.”

Jon nodded. “Very well. Proof first it is.” Jon drummed his fingers on the table for a moment as he thought. “I can’t directly prove what’s happened since there’s no physical evidence, but I can prove that I know things about each of you that you haven’t told me, things that I have no way of knowing unless something supernatural is going on.”

“Go for it, boss.”

“Tim, I... god, there’s no easy way to say this, is there... I know what happened to Danny.”

Tim’s whole body tensed up at the mention of Danny’s name, and he glanced over at Sasha briefly, the two evidently having a silent conversation through facial expressions and minute gestures. Once, Jon would have been able to Know what it was they were saying, Know the meaning of each wink of the eye or tilt of the head, but now he could only make a few educated guesses.

“I know the whole story about your trip to Covent Garden Theatre, and your run-in with Joseph Grimaldi there. I know you want revenge on the circus more than anything in the world, even your own life. I’ll make sure you get that revenge, that the circus is destroyed, though hopefully this time you won’t be lost in the process. And I’m... I’m sorry for your loss.”

Tim blinked rapidly a few times, shifting his gaze from Sasha to Jon. His spoon fell from his hand into his cup of ice cream, though he didn’t seem to notice it, even when a few flecks of mostly-melted ice cream fell onto his shirt. “...shit.”

“Wait, you know about that?” Sasha said, tilting her head slightly to one side.

“I do now. Due to... well, I’ll tell you the story, but I don’t think I’m quite finished with the proof bit yet.”

“Right. Well, keep at it, I suppose.”

“Of course. Sasha...” Jon reached out to grab his own hair, but ended up with more empty air than actual strands of hair in his grasp. How had his hair ever been this short? “I wish I knew more about you, the, the real you. Besides arguing about how to pronounce calliope-”

“Cal-ee-OH-pee.” Sasha corrected, a weak grin on her face.

“Ca-LIE-oh-pee-” Jon returned Sasha’s grin with one of his own, one that he wasn’t sure he could stifle even if he tried. “And your distaste for Artefact Storage, though that apparently won’t stop you from going there in an emergency... Terrible idea, by the way. Don’t go in Artefact Storage, and especially don’t go check out that web table alone.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.” Sasha shivered exaggeratedly at the thought.

“But I, I do know, actually, that you and Tim have talked about how you’re more qualified to be head archivist than I am, that you should’ve been the one to get the position instead of me.”

This time, Sasha was the one to start the silent conversation between her and Tim.

“And honestly? You’re absolutely right. I came across a tape Gertrude left for her successor--far too late for it to help me directly--and she made it very clear that she expected that successor to be you, Sasha.”

Sasha stopped her silent conversation with Tim to stare at Jon. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. And based on what I now know, it’s entirely possible Elias chose me in part because you really would have been better at this job than I am.” Jon punctuated the statement with a sharp, bitter laugh.

“Why would Elias do that, though?” Martin asked.

“That ties in to the bigger picture stuff a fair bit, but suffice it to say that when Elias was looking for an Archivist, he had a lot more in mind for the position than actually taking care of the files in the Archives. There’s a reason Gertrude left it in such disarray, and there’s a reason he has so many inane rules about how to go about organizing what remains.”

“So he’s sabotaging the place?” Tim looked a little less shaken than he had been a moment ago, though he still hadn’t cleaned up the ice cream staining his shirt and was now fiddling absentmindedly with his spoon, half-eaten ice cream forgotten.

“Essentially, yes.”

Tim snorted. “Explains a few things, actually.”

Martin raised his hand again. “D’you have any spooky impossible knowledge about me, then?”

Jon laughed, loud and long. “Martin... the question isn’t whether I know anything about you, the question is where to start.” Jon shook his head, rapping his spoon against his cup as he considered what to say next.

“I know... I know you lied on your CV to get in here, that you don’t even have a degree, let alone the Master’s in parapsychology that you claimed to have. I know that you don’t have a middle name, middle initial notwithstanding. I know you’ve got a second tape recorder stashed away in document storage, that you use it to record poetry you wrote, because you think it gives a, a certain lo-fi charm to the recordings...”

“H-hang on a minute!” Martin’s face was red, but Jon didn’t think it was entirely out of embarrassment this time, and Tim and Sasha had their shoulders raised, as if they felt they were being attacked somehow...

“...oh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? I promise this- this isn’t me calling you out, or, or attacking you, you don’t need to get defensive about all this-”

“Really?” Martin sounded skeptical; Jon couldn’t really blame him.

“For one thing, I couldn’t fire you even if I wanted to. And for another, I absolutely, positively don’t want to. Martin Blackwood, you’re stuck here with us for the long haul.”

“Great.” There was a sharp sarcasm to Martin’s tone, but Jon elected to ignore it.

“I also know that... that you notice a lot more than people think, that you do a lot more than people give you credit for. Including me. Especially me. I’ve taken you for granted... all of you, really, but especially you, Martin. And I’m sorry about that, I really am. I know better now, I swear.”

“...thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. Literally, don’t mention any of this when we’re in the Institute. I don’t want to risk Elias overhearing what I’m going to tell all of you.”

“Elias doesn’t come down to the Archives that much...”

Jon shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Still don’t talk about it.”

“Fine. Won’t mention it.”

“Good.” Jon took a deep breath and let it out before saying, “Proof?”

A few more glances were exchanged between the three assistants before all three nodded in agreement. “Proof.”

Sasha adjusted her glasses slightly before asking, “So what exactly is it you’re proving to us, then?”

“I, uh.” Well. No use beating around the bush. It was going to sound ridiculous no matter what, but hopefully he’d done enough to establish beforehand that he wasn’t just imagining things or making things up. Hopefully he’d done enough that they wouldn’t dismiss his experience the way he’d dismissed so many others.

“I have memories of the future.”

“You’re talking about time travel?” Sasha says, the bright gleam of her eyes visible even though her glasses.

“Not exactly--I didn’t physically go back in time, just, just mentally, just the memories I shouldn’t have yet.” Jon stared down at his hand, the same hand which he clearly remembered being covered in scars from worms and flames and stabbing, but was now utterly unblemished. “And they’re not... not memories of this future. I mean, I didn’t have this conversation before, it doesn’t work quite like that. I remember a future where I didn’t have these memories to work with--so it’d be some sort of changing or branching timeline, not, not a stable time loop...”

“I see.” Tim’s expression suggested otherwise, suggested that despite what his words might suggest he was caught somewhere between confusion and disbelief.

“I suddenly got these memories overnight not long after Martin...” Jon hesitated, unsure how to delicately phrase the next bit of what he had to say, how to refer to Prentiss’ siege on Martin’s flat without risking upsetting Martin in the process. “...started living in the Archives. So I imagine that’s when I started acting weird, or, or nice, or weirdly nice, or however you want to put it. I don’t know why it happened then, exactly, but maybe it has something to do with me growing into my role as Archivist--late enough that I’m already getting comfortable in the position, but hopefully early enough that I can prevent the worst of it from happening all over again.”

Martin held up his hand, though less in a way reminiscent of a primary schooler and more in a way reminiscent of such a child’s crossing guard telling an oncoming car to stop. “I’m sorry, I was trapped in my flat for almost a fortnight, under siege by, by some sort of flesh worm hive thing--are you honestly saying that’s not ‘the worst of it’?”

Jon laughed and shook his head brusquely. “I wish it were, Martin, but unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg here.”

Sasha tilted her head to one side, some strands of hair falling into her face as she did so. “What’s the iceberg then?”

“Well, there’s a lot of it, as the metaphor rather implies, but I’ll try to keep it short... Prentiss attacks the Institute-”

Martin’s face visibly paled at the mention of Prentiss’ name, and Jon scrambled to reassure him.

“Even in the future I remember she didn’t directly kill anyone, and I’ll make damn sure she doesn’t get a chance to do so this time around, but, well, that is what happened. And when Prentiss attacks, Sasha runs over to Artefact Storage, messes with the web table when nobody else is around, and gets killed and replaced by the monster bound to it.”

Jon started to put one finger out for each major event he lists off, as if keeping a tally, though he has no idea what the final count should be.

“Martin finds Gertrude’s body in the tunnels. I accidentally release the thing that replaced Sasha when I meant to kill it, and it almost kills me in turn. I get framed for murder, get kidnapped three separate times within a few months. Tim stops the circus from completing their ritual, but blows himself up in the process. Martin almost gets lost to the Lonely. I accidentally end the world, try to make it better, can’t make it better, send my memories back right as everything’s entirely going to shit. There’s more to it, but those are the most important events, at any rate.”

At least, they’re the most important events relating to Martin, Sasha, and Tim. No need to tell them about things like Melanie getting shot by ghosts in India, or Daisy getting stuck in the Buried. The big picture is complicated enough as it is.

“...I know you’ve made a few cock-ups in your time, boss, but ending the world is a new one even for you.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to laugh, or even to meet Tim’s eyes, instead staring down at the sad dregs of his ice cream, long since melted. “It’s really not funny. Billions of people--just about everybody in the world--were suffering, stuck in a seemingly-endless torment, and it was all my fault.”

Martin bit his lip anxiously for a moment before speaking up. “I’m sure it wasn’t all your fault.”

Martin’s words brought a slight smile to Jon’s face, but he still shook his head in response. “It was. Trust me, Martin, it really was my doing. We had this argument enough after it actually happened... rather than discuss that further, I’d rather focus on preventing it this time around.”

“Do you have an actual plan for making sure the world doesn’t end for us, then?”

Jon looked up, looking into Sasha’s dark eyes, before breaking into laughter and grinning.

“What exactly do you think I’ve been doing all this time?”

#tma #tma au #tma fic #tma fanfic #the magnus archives #the magnus archives au #the magnus archives fic #the magnus archives fanfic #personal #my writing

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bluejayblueskies · 4 years

Text

accident’s design

Part 19 of Whumptober 2020 Fandom: The Magnus Archives Characters: Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood, the Web Tags: Whump, Body Horror, Major Character Death, Spiders, Angst

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Before

They’re in the Panopticon, but it’s wrong. The air is heavy and cloying, weighing them down as they climb the stone steps to the room that Jon Knows sits at the top. Everything’s quiet; even their footsteps fall deafened and silent, in a way that makes Jon’s stomach twist and his hand tighten around Martin’s. Jon can See here, in more vibrant and saturated color than anywhere else, but it makes him dizzy and unbalanced, like the Eye is somehow… more than itself.

His arm brushes the wall as they climb, and comes away coated in cobwebs.

“Martin,” Jon says quietly. A warning.

“I know,” Martin simply says in return. A promise.

They step into a room refracted with a hundred colors never seen, to a thousand lidless eyes and a man held aloft by thin white puppet strings, twitched into life by spindly black legs that extend to a shape sitting on the ceiling that Jon desperately wishes he could refuse to see.

“Hello, Archivist,” the thing that had once been Jonah Magnus says, its mouth unmoving. “And Martin, of course. We’ve been waiting, you know.”

“How polite of you,” Jon says flatly. He moves slightly, so Martin’s behind him. Protected. “So, this was your plan, then? Your master manipulation. To control the man who controls the world?”

It chuckles, an awful clacking sound that rings in Jon’s ears long after it falls silent. “I thought you knew everything, Archivist. It must feel exhilarating, having all those Eyes at your disposal. All that knowledge.”

Jon wants to lie and say that it’s not. That it’s not the most bitter joy he’s ever had. That it doesn’t set his nerves alight with anticipation when he calls upon everything that he is now to reduce a Watcher to a Watched, or to plan their path through a torn and broken world like carefully laid puzzle pieces, or to drink the fear that rightfully belongs to the Eye and feel it electrify him from the inside out.

“Yes,” he says quietly, and tries to pretend he’s not, at his core, profoundly satisfied. “It is.”

“And yet,” the thing continues, “you ask the wrong questions. You… make mistakes.”

“Jon,” Martin says, “let’s go.”

“Oh, but you only just arrived!” The thing does its best to smile; the Eye does its best to see the stringy webs snap to motion before they wrap themselves around Martin’s free wrist and pull him sharply, pinning him to the wall. Neither succeed. “And we have so, so much to discuss.”

Jon sees the muted terror in Martin’s eyes as he’s pulled free from Jon’s grip. He feels that own terror mirrored in himself as he tries to reach for Martin, and finds himself locked in place. Though perhaps that’s the terror, too. Freezing him, and turning his veins to ice in kind.

Stunned, all Jon can think to say is, “Mistakes?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Everybody makes them.” Then, after a light chuckle: “Well, almost everybody. Though you’ve made more than most, haven’t you? Would it make you feel better if I said that they were your own? I know you were concerned—that your actions weren’t your own. That you were manipulated. But don’t worry!”

The Spider drops more fully from the ceiling, and its puppet slumps to the ground, limp and boneless but with skin that ripples as thousands of tiny black bodies scurry underneath. “Everything is all your fault. Isn’t that wonderful? Free will is such a lovely thing, isn’t it, Archivist? Though, of course, so messy. Imperfect.”

Jon’s throat won’t make the words he wants to scream at the thing that’s staring at him with eight unblinking eyes, a manifestation of the first of many fears to make him marked. It watches his increasing desperation with dispassionate eyes. The ones in the sky look on in equal measure. “But you are wrong,” it says, with a mouth that does not move, and in a voice that does not permeate the air so much as it permeates his mind, burning the words upon it like a brand. “What a disappointment it must be. To realize that a world serves you, and that it has been yours all along, only to lose it in the next breath. So no, Archivist. My plan was not to control Jonah Magnus, though he did serve his role well, in the end—if a bit hubristically. I want what I have always wanted. What I have always planned for.”

A thousand little events slot into place in Jon’s mind. A black and white book, picked not-quite-so randomly from a charity shop as his grandmother dusted cobwebs off the cover. A gold lighter, igniting an addiction beyond that which smelled of soot and tar. A tape recorder, whirring of its own accord, beholden not to Beholding but to the spiderwebs of fear that had been born of picture-book pages, signed and sealed as the blood of a scared librarian painted the walls of the Archives and nestled snugly within an Archivist who did not yet understand what he was.

The picture within Jon’s mind blooms, just as a spindly leg brushes, almost tenderly, against his cheek. “How lovingly you have cultivated this fear that binds you to me,” it says, and Jon feels that same fear rise hot and heavy within him. “I do think we’ll make a wonderful new world together.”

Jon’s terror ignites, and the Eyes flash open around him, suddenly very aware that there is now, in fact, a fully woven Web to oppose. Threads twist and snap and grow tighter in equal measure, and Jon stumbles back, the muscles in his body reluctantly obeying his mind’s command.

He sees the webs part, ever so slightly. He sees the sky, bright red above and staring. He sees an opening, the slightest misstep, the microscopic twinge of the wrong thread.

He takes it.

And, as with most things done under free will, it’s messy. It’s imperfect.

It’s a mistake.

After

Jon’s not sure how long he’s been crying. Long enough for the dust to have settled on the pile of crumbled stone and sticky webs that had once been the Panopticon. Long enough for the repercussions of the destruction of a facet of fear to begin spreading throughout the world, like cracks in a glass through which water has begun to leak. Long enough for the eyes that had sprouted upon every inch of his skin, refracting the Spider in green-silver facets of itself and reflecting a fear that was of it and for it but could not be both, to seal shut.

Long enough for the blood on the side of Martin’s head to dry, and for his skin to start to take on that chill that makes Jon think, desperately, that he’s just fallen back to the Lonely. That he’s lost, but that he can be found. That his heart isn’t just as still and lifeless as Jon’s, which has found no reason to keep beating but that is no longer needed to sustain a body that has long since been unwilling to die.

Jon holds Martin tighter, and ignores the Knowing that presses insistently at the back of his mind, eagerly hoping to drink upon his suffering as he drinks upon that of others, and tries to See how it all went wrong.

There’s nothing to See. Nothing to Know. There was simply the room, crumbling around them under the weight of a thousand staring eyes, and the heavy stones that rained down upon them, and Martin, still stuck in a Web that refused to let him go. It was an accident—as close as you can come to one in this world of intentionality and observation. It was a mistake. It was Jon’s mistake.

It was Jon’s fault.

He holds Martin tighter, and lets the guilt and grief consume him entirely, and wishes desperately that this were a world that would allow him to die.

#whumptober2020 #no.19 #guilt #mourning loved one #the magnus archives #fic #spiders cw

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idlecreature · 4 years

Text

it’s a delicate business, and you know just how to charge me

Jonah doesn’t write.

Winter lasts an entire year.

Vampire!Mordechai for Jonah Magnus Week! Part 1/Part 2/Part 3

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: Mordechai Lukas/Barnabas Bennett, Jonah Magnus/Barnabas Bennett

Content warnings: Dubcon, Unhealthy relationships, manipulation (hence the dubcon warning), The Lonely, death of an OC, choking (both sexy and unsexy)

—there is still so much to tell you. I tell you first in my mind and then the effort of writing is too much for me—

The thick, wet cough that drove Barnabas out of Moorland house finally lifts in the night, and Barnabas breathes a little easier. He wriggles as he anticipates leaving his sickbed, but does his level best to enjoy a quiet Sunday morning wrapped in a heavy duvet with the Kempthorne’s dog eating bacon rinds out of the palm of his hand.

Eleanor Kempthorne primly raps on his door. She balances a sleepy Sampson and a tray piled high with papers over her heavily pregnant belly. “Morning,” she says. “I’ve got your news and your letters - tell your friends to go easy or they’ll exhaust all the postmen in London.”

“Still catching up after my vacation in Kent,” Barnabas says, taking the tray from her with an appreciative murmur.

“I’m glad you finally took that vacation, Barny.” Eleanor moves over and sets Sampson down on the bed. The child immediately burrows under the covers and latches onto Barnabas’s side. “The countryside in Kent can be beautiful - shame you went in the dead of winter, with that bad snowstorm! Seven feet of snow, I heard!”

“Y-yes, that was unfortunate,” Barnabas says. He recalls little but pale days, ice crystals suspended in the air, grasses bleached of all colour, winter roses, and after Mordechai returned barely scraps of anything but the furniture of Moorland as Mordechai took him against every chair and every table.

Eleanor flops on the bed next to him, frowning as she presses the flat of her palm against his flushed cheek. “You seem brighter today, but you still have a fever.”

“O - oh, I think I should be well enough to leave soon. I hate to be a burden.”

She shifts on her side to face him. “There’s no rush, Barny. Would you like to read your mail while I read the Bible?” Her smile dimples. “I’ll make it a silent service.”

“That’d be appreciated,” Barnabas mutters. They fall into an easy silence as Eleanor opens her Bible and follows her Reverend husband’s elegant cursive and Barnabas does his reading and little Sampson drools on his arm and the dog gnaws on a pillow’s tasselled edge.

There’s no letter from Jonah. Jonah’s always the first to forgive, and quick to forgive; Barnabas is unsure what to make of his silence, but it fills him with unease.

“Barny,” Eleanor says, sifting a hand through Sampson’s hair. “John and I have been thinking about ways we could make you a part of the family - and how do you feel about becoming a godfather to Sampson and the new baby?”

“Godfather?” Barnabas echoes. “I -”

Eleanor inhales sharply and before Barnabas can flinch away she grabs his hand and holds it against her belly.

“Do you feel that?”

Barnabas’s eyes slip closed, and yes, he feels the rhythmic movement, and deeper, as a body waiting to be born shifts like the turn of the earth. Barnabas can feel the baby’s impatience.

He removes his hand, trying to twist in the bed between the dog across his legs and the five-year-old pinioning his arm. “I don't - I don’t think you want me as part of your family - as an influence over your children. I’m - I’m an atheist.”

Eleanor studies him, eyes dark and solemn, but not shocked or frightened. “Ah,” she says. “I did suspect. And you know I love you regardless?” Her roaming hand moves from Sampson’s crown to Barnabas’s neck, her fingertips catching across the newly knotting scar. “What’s this mark, Barnabas? It looks like -”

He slaps a hand over his neck. “Nothing,” he says. He starts coughing emphatically into his elbow, and the scar is forgotten as Eleanor fusses over him and gets up again to fetch him a fresh pitcher of water, lifting sleeping Sampson up and away, the dog following close on her heels, and abruptly, he is alone.

Little Sampson jerks at Barnabas’s arm like a waterspout as they watch Sampson’s mother being put into the ground.

Barnabas’s body aches with a disquiet pressure that rings like a struck bell through his ribcage and his teeth and all the small bones of his hands. He feels newly aware of each shift of bone under the crushing weight of his flesh.

He remains stoic. For the little boy’s sake.

It’s still the choke of winter, and there are debts to be paid.

Barnabas decides he doesn’t care where Mordechai gets his money. He just wants it. It’s horribly unsentimental of him, but perhaps Jonah was right, and Barnabas’s morals are just gilt-wrapped-guilt, and his goodwill means nothing. It’s the banal truth that the whole of Barnabas’s life is founded on money. The world turns on it. As long as you have enough, you will always be accepted, and you will never be missed.

Barnabas is someone who has always enjoyed the pleasure of a transaction. And if the particulars involve him standing in a mirrored hallway with a monster opening a vein in his neck, then, well.

There are many mouths to feed.

—though it was radiant, crystal-clear, one of those days when the earth just pauses, enchanted by its own beauty, and every new bud whispers: “am I not heavenly fair!” it curls up in your belly, the beauty of life! In spite of everything, one cannot but praise life.—

Whenever Mordechai’s in Edinburgh, they meet in somebody’s garden. Someone’s put a lot of effort into making it a nice garden, into a picture of domesticity, with an apple tree and a lemon tree, marigolds and hydrangeas, and red lilies in terracotta pots. It would be a lovely place to spend an afternoon with a loved one.

Barnabas considers the springtime flowers. They’re nice. Their perfume disguises the heavy tang of blood that always hangs around Mordechai, and that’s also nice.

“We should get some flowers for Moorland,” Barnabas says, mostly to keep up their one-sided conversation. “Different ones, I mean. Reds and pinks and oranges to liven up the place a bit. And maybe a fruiting tree.”

Mordechai forgoes a vocal response as per usual, optioning for a shrug that falls like gravity.

“It could do with a bit of colour,” Barnabas says, trying to goad him into saying something because he’s spent their precious passing afternoon in utter silence and it’s starting to get on Barnabas’s nerves. Barnabas nudges his knee against Mordechai’s thigh.

“I’m colourblind,” Mordechai says eventually. He’s still looking away, squaring his jaw. “All the men in my family are.”

“And you’re... proud... of that pedigree?”

“No.”

Barnabas sighs, following Mordechai’s dour gaze to the patch of violets. Barnabas knows the flower meanings - he memorised a book of them as a child - but he refuses to think about them. He makes no insistence on prescribed symbolism, only the shapes and the colours that the eye takes and the heart interprets.

“What does purple look like, to you?”

“I can’t tell you,” Mordechai says. And Barnabas understands that.

“What colours can you see, then?”

Barnabas places a hand on Mordechai’s back, where a doctor might listen to the auscultations of his heart, and massages the bands of hard muscle over his skin at the place where he is not quite human.

“Blue,” Mordechai says, leaning into his touch. “There is a shade of blue that I find haunts me lately.” And Mordechai presses his gloved hand to the corner of Barnabas’s eye.

His skeleton stings, hisses, and pain lances down his bones. Barnabas gasps and Mordechai pulls his hand back as if bitten. He looks at Barnabas in open shock. “Did I hurt you?”

“You - you gave me a fright,” Barnabas says. His heart beats quickly in his chest, and his bones still fizz and tingle. “That’s all.”

Mordechai keeps looking at him, and Barnabas worries he’s lapsing back into that dreadful apathetic silence. But Mordechai breathes in, and his gaze collects some focus. He looks at Barnabas properly, then. Deeply. Then he says, “Do you think you could ever love me?”

“I - “ Barnabas says. He wants to bleed into the flowers, into the afternoon. He feels the silver scars under his cravat, their coldness, their weight, like a collar. “Not in this lifetime, I think,” he says, waiting for a flare of embarrassment that doesn’t come. He doesn’t think he’s capable of hurting Mordechai’s feelings.

“Then put your hands around my throat.”

“...”

“Go on.”

Barnabas wraps his fingers around the vertebrae, thumbs touching together on the soft, thin skin over Mordechai’s windpipe, where the ugly gash of a surgical scar bites into his adam’s apple.

“How does that feel?” Mordechai asks.

Mordechai feels cold and dead under his hand, wax-skinned and corpse-damp. There is no thrum of life, no beating vessels that run like roots under his flesh. Barnabas feels like he’s close to learning something about violence and desire, how close they are, how the wires can get crossed. He squeezes Mordechai’s throat, just enough for the vampire to feel the promise of stolen breath.

“Let me make you immortal,” Mordechai says. And he swallows; Barnabas feels the rolling constriction of his throat. “Please, Barnabas,” he whispers.

Barnabas drops his hand to his side. “No.”

Mordechai looks at him furiously, stonily, unrelentingly, but he makes such a small choked-back noise as he wraps Barnabas up in an embrace that offers him little comfort. Barnabas buries his face in Mordechai’s hair, inhaling the scent of blood and frost. It’s Mordechai’s wordless way of showing Barnabas that he means more to him than life.

Mordechai moves in him so slowly, so deliberately, but he’ll still bruise. They take their pleasure from the ransoming of Mordechai’s self-restraint. When he comes, his teeth graze Barnabas’s pulse like a promise, but his jaw does not close. He waits on Barnabas’s word.

When he receives silence, he is not disappointed. He pulls the blankets up over Barnabas’s shoulders and ducks his head so they’re sharing breaths and Mordechai closes his eyes and feigns sleep, but when Barnabas wakes up, several hours later, Mordechai has dropped the pretence of humanity and lies there, sharp and cold, with his fingers ghosting over the shape of Barnabas under the duvet, trembling like fish’s gills desperately working out of the water and it’s a race to see what kills it first, the choke of no oxygen or the drown of its own blood.

“You look pale tonight, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Blackwood says. Another Christmas with the Blackwood family, the same faded paper decorations and the sewing hanging limply from lines across the low ceiling. There’s a new smell, polish and boot leather, brought home by the eldest child’s apprenticeship to a shoemaker.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Barnabas says as he sips his sherry. He’s sitting in the best seat in the house, right up against the stove, and it’s stifling him, prickling over his skin and wetting his armpits. He doesn’t dare loosen his cravat, though, the starchy collar scratching uncomfortably at the new necklace of barely-closed wounds.

“We’ll get some colour back in the boy’s cheeks right enough,” Mr. Blackwood says fondly. It’s exactly the kind of thing Barnabas might have wanted his own father to say, once, but now it just sounds gauche. He doesn’t want that anymore, not any part of it.

Barnabas hands his presents to the children: polished toy horses with delicate pink lips and real, curling eyelashes. He barely remembers buying them.

“And we have a Christmas present for you, Mr. Bennett,” Mrs. Blackwood says when her children have stopped crowing and hold their toys against the candle-light so tongues of orange flick over polished white bodies.

“Oh, that won’t be necessary -”

“I must insist,” Mrs. Blackwood says. “Annie knitted it special for you, and she’d be upset something awful if you don’t want it.”

The girl in question blushingly presents her creation. It’s bright red and clumsily knitted, the cabling loose and uneven, but the wool is soft and warm, and it’s the thought that counts. The thought of any one of the hardworking Blackwoods spending any time or money on him -

“Don’t worry about the cost, sweetheart,” Mrs. Blackwood says. “It came out of our James’s Christmas bonus. He’s made a lot of shoes this month, hasn’t he! He’s moving up in the world, and we’re so proud of him, and that’s because of you, Mr. Bennett!”

As she speaks, Mrs. Blackwood takes the scarf and wraps it around Barnabas’s neck. It’s long enough to go around several times. It makes the heat worse, the sweat slicker, pouring out of the reservoir of his body like a spring.

“Thank you, Mr. Bennett,” the James in question says dutifully.

“Mr. Bennett?” Isabel says in alarm.

And, oh, good lord, he’s sobbing. He’s sobbing in front of people he needs to respect him, to see him as a Gentleman, and it’s great, whooping gasps that escape him like a crack in a pressure valve, and it’s all he can do but hastily bid goodbye and push away Isabel’s arm and flee that unbearable heat, the den-like house and the cured-leather and the sweet smell of rum pudding and bodies in close habitation and he stumbles into the winter night and the clarity of the cold, and it’s there, after a few minutes to himself, he realises that he doesn’t want to wear any colours that Mordechai can’t properly see.

Barnabas speeds down Morningside Road, the buildings all endlessly long and featureless dark grey, avoiding every stranger he passes on the street until he comes across a homeless man half-frozen to the pavement under the awning of a business, a newspaper over his face barely stirring with his breath. Barnabas claws off the choking, luridly red scarf and winds it around the man’s neck, tucks the man’s coat around him a little tighter, and pulls off his own gloves and gives them to the man for good measure. The man doesn’t stir.

Barnabas breathes again after that.

—you know M. Everything is give and take with him. When he is away I miss his companionship. I miss talking with the man but when he’s in London or at the garden we can only agree when we are silent or out of each others sight!!! I miss him. I miss you. I hope you can forgive me, Jonah, my foibles and my rash words and my shame. I take it all back. I lie down at your feet and anticipate your heavy tread.—

The sixth time Barnabas arrives at the doorstep of Moorland house to repay a debt, Mordechai is waiting for him. It’s enough of a break in their usual routine that Barnabas approaches cautiously, curiously.

Mordechai offers him a compromise in the form of a small silver ring. It’s a sign of Barnabas’s naivety that he thinks Mordechai is proposing, and he laughs in Mordechai’s face. Mordechai flashes his teeth at him and tells him what it really is: a dressing ring in the fashion of Beau Brummell, a man whom Barnabas has always thought himself as being diametrically opposed to in every regard.

Later, Barnabas takes great pleasure in feeding the ring to Mordechai, watching the glint of metal as it is swallowed, the shiver of it against his prick as Mordechai tugs it gently with his tongue. Barnabas is not as gentle with Mordechai as Mordechai is with him; he likes it when Mordechai chokes, fisting his hand in Mordechai’s pretty curls so he can’t pull his head away, wetting his cheeks and chin with saliva. Barnabas feels the curved piercing bite into the back of Mordechai’s throat, and the catch and pull of his skin must feel like torture. But when Barnabas has found his completion he barely strokes Mordechai before he spills across Barnabas’s hand.

Jonah is always the first to reach out, to reconcile. It’s coming up to a year since they ended that evening with a fight, and Barnabas is starting to believe that after the flames of anger died away, Jonah found that he simply didn't care for Barnabas’s company any more. Barnabas wouldn’t blame him, but it still hurts to lose him. He still sits at his writing desk a little after Christmas and writes a letter with no expectations of a reply, and that, more than anything, makes the yawning pit inside him stretch a little wider.

—anticipate your tread. I think sitting in that garden has made me a very lonely man. There’s something to be said about watching life unfold and feeling completely separate from it. But I must end this letter on a better note: they say in April the snows will have melted and even before it is all quite gone the flowers will begin to rise again...

Please, Jonah, can we be friends again?

Your loyal servant,

Barnabas Bennett.

The cheque comes in the mail, and it is a staggering sum. Enough for Barnabas to set up a proper office, hire a second staff member, open space for another family.

Barnabas wonders what Mordechai will ask of him in return; a sum such as this is a poorly-concealed threat. He could always rip up the cheque. That’s a choice Barnabas could make.

But Barnabas is certain that this is more than what Mordechai can decently afford, he just doesn’t know whether Mordechai knows that. Mordechai is not a fastidious accountant like Barnabas; he spends his money like he has it in infinite supply, hasn’t noticed Barnabas draining him at all, and Barnabas would very much like to continue with the arrangement until he has taken everything from Mordechai, keeping nothing for himself, of course; he wants to drive Mordechai Lukas into the quagmire of desperate poverty as much, and perhaps even more than, he wants to pull families like the Blackwoods out of it, and he doesn’t think he has the willpower to stop himself until he has Mordechai, Moorland house, and the entire Lukas estate crushed into the ground like pale, bloodless worms. He thinks he could love Mordechai, then.

Barnabas’s bones sing softly under his skin as he waits for the cheque to clear.

#[barnabas voice] women want me fish fear me #the magnus archives #barnabas bennett #mordechai lukas #jonah magnus #edit: ONCE AGAIN MISSPELLING JONAHS NAME ON MY BLOG

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cuttoothed · 5 years

Text

What’s going to happen in the Lonely? No idea. But I know there’d better be a heck of a lot of softness afterwards.

(AKA I write hand holding and snuggling for 1500 words; Jon, Martin, and JonMartin, featuring Elias “Smug Bastard” Bouchard.)

When there is nothing for so long, everything is overwhelming. Martin feels the whoosh of his breath in his lungs, the rough stone of the old prison gritting under his hands. It feels real, in a way he wasn’t sure he’d ever feel again.

Jon, he thinks.

Jon was with him, at the end. They had stood together, and Jon’s hand had curled shyly around his. It helps, if we’re touching, he explained, and Martin’s face heats with the remembered warmth of his voice.

I love you, Jon had told him, his words trembling but clear, That’s why this works. I can pull myself out, and I think I can pull you out too.

I love you, Martin had blurted in reply, and Jon had looked so wonderfully startled that Martin wanted to kiss him. He hadn’t, of course, there was no time, there was never any time, but Jon’s hand had squeezed his tighter, and he smiled.

Then we can pull each other out.

Martin shuts his eyes, a lump rising in his throat, staggered by the wave of emotion that sweeps over him. When there is nothing for so long, everything is overwhelming. He shakes himself out of it and looks anxiously around.

Jon is lying several yards away, a small, crumpled figure on the floor. Elias - Jonah Magnus, god, this just keeps getting weirder - is crouched beside him on one knee. Martin’s heart leaps in his chest and he scrambles over there, barely getting off his hands and knees before he’s down at Jon’s side again.

“...was it like?” he hears Elias say, soft and intent, and Jon is blinking up at him, eyes unfocused, and his voice is scarcely more than a hoarse whisper when he says:

“It was...desolate, and magnificent.”

Jon’s eyes lock with Elias’ and for an instant, Martin feels like he’s interrupting something private, some transcendent connection he can’t even see. But then Jon’s eyes flicker across to his, and Jon gives a smile that’s only for him, Elias forgotten.

“Martin…” he rasps, and Martin’s heart lurches again at the softness in his voice.

“I’m here,” he says, “Jon, I’m here.”

He helps Jon to sit up, carefully, conscious of Jon’s thinness, the fragility of his body. Martin chews his lip with worry, and Jon smiles at him again, tired and worn. His hand reaches for Martin’s, just like it did in the Lonely, and Jon pulls his hand up to press a careful kiss to his knuckles.

“I never doubted you for a second,” Jon tells him, and Martin feels a surge of warmth, love and pride and relief. They’re here, they’re both here, and it’s more than he could possibly have hoped.

“This is all very sweet,” Elias drawls, and Martin jumps. He’d almost forgotten about the man “But perhaps we should leave here, hmm?”

“You want us to go with you?” Martin stares disbelievingly. “Why on earth would we do that? In fact, now that Peter’s gone, why shouldn’t I stab your body, Jonah? Put an end to all this?”

“Please, Martin,” he says with a wince, “Call me Elias. I’ve rather got used to the name. As to why you shouldn’t kill my...body, well, there’s still the fact that you don’t know what will happen to everyone at the Institute. And the fact that you won’t be able to find your way back without me. Jon is in no condition for navigating the tunnels at present.”

Martin opens his mouth to argue, but Jon’s hand presses gently to his cheek.

“He’s right, Martin,” he says wearily. “Let’s get back to the Archives first. Then we can worry about him.”

The journey back through the tunnels is slow and arduous. Martin doesn’t remember it taking so long on the way there, but he hadn’t been cold and drained from the Lonely then. And he’d spent most of the walk with his mind racing, flitting between fear and longing and frantic calculations of what Peter might be up to. All of it wrong, of course. But it had passed the time quickly. On the return, Martin is aware only of Jon’s slight weight pressed against his side, trembling. The memory of Jon’s voice that keeps replaying in his head, I love you, that’s why this works. I love you. I love you. Time drags by as he thinks about how desperately he wants the two of them to be somewhere alone, and safe, so they can talk.

That isn’t possible with Jonah “Call-Me-Elias” Magnus strolling just ahead of them. He’s mercifully quiet for the most part, at least, though every so often he does point out some feature of architecture or geography that makes Martin want to strangle him. Jon must feel him tense, because at a few particularly irritating moments, he gently squeezes Martin’s arm with his fingers.

“It’s all right,” he murmurs, and Martin feels himself relax minutely. At last the tunnels begin to look familiar, and then they are climbing through the trapdoor into the Archives, a scene of scattered papers and overturned furniture, blood spatters on the walls.

“The...not Sasha…” Jon rasps, slumping into a chair, and Martin feels a stab of grief in his chest. He hates Peter for that, if nothing else.

“And hunters as well, if I’m not mistaken,” Elias notes, glancing around.

“Well there’s nobody here now,” says Martin. “And we’re out of the tunnels, so talk.”

Elias opens his mouth, and three uniformed police officers burst through the door.

As it turns out, the Institute has been fully evacuated and cordoned off. The police had become rather alarmed at the sound of footsteps in the Archives, not expecting anyone to be walking around down here. Elias explains glibly that they had hidden in the tunnels at the sounds of gunfire, and had become lost for a time. Martin spends the whole exchange wondering why they haven’t arrested the bastard yet, but they seem to pay him no mind whatsoever.

“You know he escaped from prison today, right?” he tells one of the officers. She frowns with concern and steps away to talk into her radio for a few moments, then shrugs.

“HQ says he was released. All charges dropped.”

Martin gives up, and turns back to Jon, who’s waving off the medic trying to insert an IV into his arm.

“I’m fine,” he grumbles, “No, these are old scars - Martin, tell him.”

“They are,” Martin confirms. “And he won’t go to the hospital, no point trying. I’ll take care of him.”

The medic gives up and leaves them alone, and Jon goes back to texting Basira. She’s okay, he tells Martin, relieved, but she’s gone to stay with her parents for a few days. There’s been no sign of Daisy since the attack, and Martin hears the worry in his voice as he says it. Martin doesn’t really know Daisy, has barely spoken to her since she came back from the Buried, but he already knows he’ll do anything he can to help someone that Jon cares for so much.

After a little more prevarication from Elias, they’re given permission to leave. Jon seems a little less weak now, though Martin is glad to see him grab a stack of statement files off Basira’s desk as they pass. He could use them.

They pass the police cordon, and Elias turns to the two of them, hands tucked into the pockets of his expensive coat.

“Well,” he says, “This has been an interesting day. Well done to you both.”

“That’s it?” Martin demands. “After all that, just...well done?”

“I don’t know that there’s much more to say at this juncture, Martin. I imagine it will be a week or two before the Institute is re-opened, so consider this a paid holiday.”

“I won’t do it, you know,” Jon says, frowning. “I know you think you’re close, and I don’t know precisely what the Watcher’s Crown is, yet, but you can’t do it without me. And I won’t.”

“How unfortunate for me, then,” Elias says cheerfully. “I’ll expect to see you both back at work in a couple of weeks.”

He turns on his heel and is gone without another word. Martin lets out an explosive breath.

“Bloody hell.”

“Yes,” says Jon, “I think that about sums it up.”

Martin sighs and scrubs his hands over his face. There’s so much they need to figure out, to plan and research and do and -

He stops himself short. He’s standing on the street with Jon, after all this time apart, after Jon said that he loved him. Frankly, Jonah Magnus and the Watcher’s Crown and the rest of the world can go to hell for a little while.

“So, do you...want to get something to eat, or…”

Jon gives him a smile that’s painfully shy this time, and Martin’s heart beats hard in his chest.

“That would be nice,” he says. “Could we get takeaway, though? I uh, I need to - ” He gestures with the stack of folders in his arms.

“Oh, right! Of course, absolutely. Do you...want to come to mine, then? There’s a great Thai place just down the street from me?”

“Yeah - that sounds great!” Jon’s face lights up, and Martin could cry at the simple joy of being here, now, with him. Daring, he slips an arm around Jon’s shoulders, half to support him, and half just to pull him close. Jon comes willingly, presses warm against him, his bundle of folders still clutched in his arms.

Martin guides them down the street to the Tube station, and they wait on the platform with the earth thrumming under their shoes, evening commuters coming and going around them. It’s all very ordinary, and Martin thinks about how he must look to the people around them: a tall, unwieldy man with his tired looking boyfriend nestled against him, half dozing on his feet as they wait to go home. He likes that thought.

“Jon,” he says after a few minutes.

“Hmm?”

“What you said earlier, that you never doubted me - did you mean that?”

Jon looks up at him, surprised.

“Of course.”

“Why not?” Martin asks, and he doesn’t understand why the answer is so desperately important to him now, except that he’s not sure anyone’s ever trusted him so entirely in his life. And he’s not sure he deserves it. He was so close to being gone, at the end.

Jon’s expression is solemn when he reaches his hand around the back of Martin’s neck and pulls him down. Their lips brush, very gently, and then Jon’s eyes are intent on his, his fingers still curled into the hair at the base of Martin’s skull.

“Because you’re Martin Blackwood,” he says. “And I trust in that.”

#the magnus archives #tma #my fic #jonmartin #tma spoilers #tma 158

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primroseprime2019 · 5 years

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Giver of Life- Chapter One: Reservations

At an army base far from any towns or prying eyes inside the Autobot's temporary headquarters things could of been mistaken for peaceful were it not for the tension in the air. It was so thick it could be cut with a knife.

Jack was sitting with Miko, Malachi, Coleson, Isabella, Elisa and Raf barely listing as Raf and Miko argued over the game they were playing. Every few minutes the oldest would look over to where the Autobots were gathered. It had only been a day since the mine incident and Ultra Magnus was recovering from his fight with Predaking. But it was so quiet. Wheeljack had barely said anything, it was almost unnatural without Ratchet's grumbling as he worked. Arcee was staring off into space while Bulkhead stare at his peds, even Miko couldn't make him talk. Smokescreen, Cliffjumper, Chiller, Jazz, Prowl, Chromia, Elita One, Red Alert and Bumblebee hadn't moved much.

It had been shocking for the Autobots to discover that Predaking could transform, Ratchet had explained that Predacons had went extinct a long time ago so they didn't know the ancient beastformers could transform. It must of been shocking to the Autobots.

As he was thinking about this Jack then realized someone was missing.

Outside Optimus was gazing into the sky deep in thought. It was always saddening when lives were lost, it didn't matter if they were Autobot, Decepticon, Neutral and since being on Earth human.

"Optimus?" The Prime turned to see Jack standing a few feet from him.

"Jackson?"

"A-Are you okay?"

The powerful being kneeled down on one knee and reached a hand towards the boy. Without hesitating Jack climbed up and Optimus stood, being careful not to shake his passenger. "I am well Jackson."

"You don't sound it."

Optimus gave him a small smile, "Lives lost should always be mourned. . . and I grieve for what Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus must be going through." At Jack's questing look he continued, "It's sad enough that they thought they were forced to destroy tortured beast Shockwave created but to learn they were sentient beings. . . little more then sparklings, it adds to the wound."

Jack lowered his gaze, "Yeah."

"And I find something about this very strange."

Jack looked back up. "What?"

"The energon, there was none in the mines and yet I don't think they were delivering it to the lab."

"You think the Decepticons did this on purpose?" Jack asked.

"Indeed," was the grave reply.

"Optimus? Jack?" Both turned to see Ratchet walking towards them. "What are you doing out here?"

"Reminiscing," Optimus answered softly. He placed Jack back on the ground and motion for him to join the others inside. After he left Optimus turned to his medic, "Is something the matter?"

"No just. . . I was wondering what you were doing out here."

Optimus turned away and looked into the sky again, "Something trouble's me."

"After what's happened I can't blame you," Ratchet replied.

"No, the Matrix pluses old friend," Optimus placed a servo over his spark chamber, "In a way I haven't felt for a long time. I just. . . sense that there is something else coming. But for good or evil I can't be certain."

~~~

Another was in mourning over what had been lost. Predaking was currently in his beast mode laying on the top of the Nemesis, he hadn't moved for a long time and someone might mistake him for a statue if it wasn't for his swishing tail. He watched the clouds pass by, it would have been a peaceful time it not for the loss of his brethren. And the ones responsible for this had escaped.

Predaking snarled and dug his claws into the plating of the ship at the thought, he would of killed at least two of them if the Prime had not intervened. But not all was lost yet, Megatron had promised to try and bring his brethren back. But they currently didn't have the resources here.

If he helped them defeat the Autobots then they could reclaim their world and bring his mighty race back. With that goal Predaking was determine to help the Decepticons win this war and nothing would stop him, nothing.

~~~

Inside the Nemesis Megatron, Dreadwing, Breakdown, Knock Out, Starscream and Soundwave were discussing the earlier events that had led to the destruction of most of the Predacons and the discovery of the cyber-matter and a new way to bring their planet back.

"I'd say the plan's working perfectly. And I might add with some unexpected developments." Starscream was as smug as ever.

"Still, the beast survived. We need to be careful," Megatron snapped. For now Predaking was angry at the Autobots but if he ever learned the truth, things would take a very dark turn.

"Still tall, dark and scaly is proving useful," Knock Out commentated.

"For now," Megatron scoffed, "But everyone is to remain on guard. I don't want any slips of the glossa!" He sent a glare at Starscream.

~~~

A silver Honda drove down the road and a sixteen year old girl stared out the window sullenly. The family drove down the road in silence. It wasn't until the silence was quickly broken.

"Okay, where in the name of the Lord are we going!?" Harry William McHenry demanded in irritation, looking at his parents, "we've been driving from hotel to hotel until we came to—wherever we are! Just tell us!"

"I hate to admit it but I'm curious too," Charlotte Olivia McHenry said, crossing her arms over her chest.

Their Mother, Latosha McHenry, chuckled as she looked at her kids, "you'll see."

"Here we are!" Marcus Kendrick called out, making Kaitlin, Tennille, Marley and Shiloh jolt and jump from their nap.

"Dad, why!?" Tennille whined as Shiloh pinched the bridge of his nose with a groan.

"We're in Jasper, Nevada." Latosha chuckled, "our new home."

"New home?" Jonah repeated with shock and they looked out the window. Their Father was right. They drove down the dusty road, passed ranches and a restaurant. Yep, this was Jasper, Nevada.

"So this is the so-called capital of the world huh?" Natalia said, raising an eyebrow as she wasn't convinced.

"Brochure lied!" Harry said, shaking his fist and Griffin chuckled as he moved his arm away from his brother's little display.

"Well we can still make the most of it." Demetrius shrugged as their Father pulled into a driveway of their new home. Everyone got out of the car and the children ran into the house.

"Careful." Their Mother called out with a laugh.

"I call the first room I can find," Natalia grinned, "we'll be glad to see if our rooms are ready!" She ran to the room that was at the end of the hallway. The wallpaper was painted pink with white dots. The bed was near a desk and there was a magenta lava lamp. The fifteen year old girl squealed before she leapt forward and landed on her bed.

Paige walked into her room. The wallpaper was light purple with black, red and blue stripes and her bed was right next to the window.

After the family got settled in their new home, Latosha made some dinner.

"Are we gonna have to go to school?" Shiloh asked. "Possibly." Their Mom sighed. Kaitlin frowned at her answer. Tennille narrowed her eyes and Harry picked at his food.

"Why?" It was a cold question coming from Demetrius, "back in Ohio, the other kids would always laugh at me! Because of my pride. They bullied, shunned and teased me because of who I was!"

"Demetrius," their Dad said, placing his hand on his shoulder, "we're not there anymore. You can start anew. We'll help you. I promise."

Demetrius sniffled and Mom hugged him. Shiloh, Jonah, Owen, Kaitlin, Demetrius, Charlotte and Marley went upstairs to their bedrooms while Griffin, Harry, Natalia, Paige and Tennille helped their parents clean up.

Charlotte laid on her bed, staring at the ceiling before she closed her eyes.

"Ugh... wait... where...?" She breathed as she opened her eyes and found herself in a midnight black void. She looked around.

"Charlotte?" Marley said. She and the others were in the void as well.

"Wh-where are we? What is this place!?" Shiloh exclaimed, his eyes widening in fear.

"Hush now, young ones. Do not be afraid." A calm and deep voice said gently and they had to shield their eyes when a blinding white light appeared before them. In a matter of seconds, it faded and they gasped in shock as a large titan stood before them. He had bright white optics and his plating was silver, bright blue and white.

"Who are you?" Marley breathed, her eyes wide.

"I am Primus. The Creator of all Cybertronians and Cybertron itself."

"Cybertron?"

"Cybertronians?" Primus nodded his helm.

"I have come to give your gifts," the Creator of Cybertron said.

"Gifts? What kind of gifts?" Griffin asked calmly.

Primus smiled before eight sparks appeared before the children, "these are your true hearts. You will be guided by the young Prime."

"Y-young Prime?" Paige whispered and nearly jumped as the third spark went into her chest. A warmth washed over her as her eyes flashed bright blue before turning light brown.

"Welcome home, Firestorm, Nightwalker, Primrose, WhiteRain, ShadowSeeker, Echo, YellowJacket, Eclipse, Comet, Cloudburst, Moonweaver and Dawnstrike. I will be with you when you need me." Primus said gently.

Paige gasped sharply as she shot up from her bed. She knocked on the wall rhythmically. Soft footsteps barreled towards her room and her siblings burst into her room.

"You had the same dream too, right?" Natalia demanded. Paige nodded her head, slightly stunned.

"Yeah. As far as I'm concerned, I'm not having déjà vu," Harry said.

"We all did." Griffin said, placing his hand on his chest where his heart was beating. He suddenly tensed as his eyes widened as he felt two heartbeats.

"What is it?" Marley asked, looking at her brother.

"Please tell me I'm not the only one feeling as though I have two hearts in my body."

Charlotte placed her hand on her chest and she widened her eyes, "nope."

"Nada," Harry, Tennille, Natalia, Demetrius and Kaitlin said.

"Nuh-uh." Marley, Owen, Jonah and Shiloh said.

"No." Paige squeaked. The twelve siblings exchanged worried glances before they all got on Paige's bed and snuggled up with each other. The sparks within their chests glowed brightly.

#fanfiction #transformers

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centaurianthropology · 6 years

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The Magnus Archives ‘Return to Sender’ (S03E16) Analysis

With what feels like two separate stories slammed together in this episode, it was never going to be my favorite. And though we have some tasty meta, I was left feeling a bit disappointed, and more than a bit confused on several points. Come on in to hear what I think about ‘Return to Sender’.

It was inevitable that, after the extreme high water mark that has been the first part of season 3 (the initial bloc of episodes contained some of the strongest material to date from the show, in my opinion), having an episode that really didn’t land for me was inevitable, and would inevitably feel jarring. That was ‘Return to Sender’, which felt like two good episodes both trimmed way down and slammed together. It was the same problem I had with ‘Section 31’ last season. There were several stories in that one, all potentially promising, and all severely undernourished to the point of not being memorable at all.

‘Return to Sender’ only has two such stories, but they still have that distinct feeling of not being long enough to realize their full potential. Both feel important. Both feel like they have a lot to say, both about the plot and about where Sims is as a character right now. So it’s a real shame that the whole thing feels rushed, and major beats fly by without being given the weight I felt like they deserved.

I’ll talk about the two separately first, and I’ll dig into what meta we can glean. Then I’ll talk about why the episode, when taken as a whole, didn’t really work for me.

The first story, which seemed to work better for me, involves Jon going to investigate the previous location of Breekon & Hope. We find out that Breekon & Hope was the name of the company before the delivery men we know took it off the former owner and took the names for themselves. We also know that they are all but confirmed to have been the two strong-men from the Circus of the Other. Given that, their purpose, which had seemed to me to be a bit more freelance, is actually to move important artifacts around in service of the Stranger.

As Sims himself mentioned in this part, it’s a bit light on meta, but understandably. I never thought Breekon & Hope were going to be wealths of information, being more ferrymen than players in the game. Why he felt so hellbent to find their story, I’m not sure, though I figure it’s the Archivist driving him on, making him desperate for any new story.

Indeed, the real intrigue in the first part is Sims’ reaction to standing in this location where someone died, having collected the statement from where Elias left it for him. He himself is bothered by the notion that the death seems inconsequential to him, that his major irritation comes from Elias being a showy prick, rather than the fact that a man struggled and died in that place. Sims sounds more like Gertrude in this part of the episode than he ever has before, and following on the heels of me dubbing him Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute last week for not even bothering to check in with Martin and the rest of the assistants, this seems properly worrisome. His humanity seems to be slipping away at an accelerated rate, and he’s not even trying to hold onto it.

So, yes, the story was a bit light on meta, but it was a good story, and well told. It was nice to hear Jon read a statement again. It was interesting to see him realizing how quickly the Archivist is eclipsing Jonathan Sims. Spooled out a bit, maybe with a confrontation with Elias or something, and I think that this would have been a really good episode.

But instead, brace yourself for whiplash, because we transition directly into the second story. These two are nominally tied together with the log book Jon found at Breekon & Hope, which has allowed him to track the shipments of the Stranger’s packages. This, again, would be a really interesting idea. Concluding the Breekon & Hope episode with the idea that he’s going to start using that book to trach these packages would have been a good hook.

Instead, we hard cut to him at the taxidermy shop from ‘Still Life’, apparently working without any sort of fuss or fear with Daisy. Um, what? I don’t expect this show to hand-hold me or spoon-feed me information. Far from it. But a bit of context is always a good thing. How long is this segment after the former one? Does Jon have Daisy’s number in his phone? Did he contact Elias, who sent Daisy to pick him up? Is this the first time they’ve worked together? Certainly they seem weirdly comfortable in one another’s company all of a sudden, which is quite the change from Daisy wanting to shoot him in the face. Also there was no mention at all of Basira, like Daisy asking after her and Jon not having an answer because he hasn’t bothered to check on Basira since she was taken hostage? That would have been an ideal conversation for these two to have.

But, no. Sudden jump to them confronting Sarah Baldwin, and I feel really bad for that character. Having her shoehorned into the end of this episode after some great buildup early in the series feels like a disservice. I’m hoping we get more of her later to let her shine, because this came and went too fast to leave any sort of notion who she is now or what the Anglerfish’s thing might be.

We’re also missing the bridge between Sims being at least concerned with his slipping humanity in a rather detached way, and the stone cold Sims we get in this latter half. He’s shaking off any threat Daisy might pose, and the only time he broke his cool was at the mention of Sasha. He didn’t seem to mind that Sarah Baldwin escaped, nor was he shocked. He’d got her statement, the story, and that was all that mattered. The hunger for information was good, but needed room to breathe in the middle of everything else happening.

And we’re also introduced to the taxidermy skin from ‘Still Life’ again. Apparently it’s a critical piece of the Unknowing, and to slow that down Gertrude had murdered the former owner of the shop and stolen the skin. And then, in a move that felt more like Jonathan Sims, idiot extraordinaire, than anything else in that latter half of the episode, Sims just out and out admits he has no idea where the skin is. Sarah bolts, ready to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist is a moron, and that’s that.

Like I said before, each of these halves could have been a really good episode unto itself. The first would have been a quieter episode, but I could have dug that. The latter would have been fairly fraught, but Jon actively interrogating a being—not asking for a statement, but a proper interrogation—would have been a really cool thing to explore over 20 minutes. Jon and Daisy having to uncomfortably work with one another would have been interesting. Giving Sarah Baldwin more time to draw out the creepiness of the Anglerfish, still one of the most frightening entities from this series, would have been phenomenal.

Instead, everything felt like it was rushed, and all the story threads got the short shrift in order to pack them in. I think that both parts of this were probably necessary, and maybe the numbering of the episodes just didn’t work for them to be two episodes and still get to the mid-season finale on episode 20 of this season. But I really wish they had found a way.

I don’t want to make it sound like there was nothing good here. Though it was rushed, I now imagine that the Stranger’s efforts to retrieve the skin are going to lie at the center of the mid-season finale. I also think that Jon doesn’t yet realize how dangerous that information is. If I can figure that out, you bet that Nichola Orsinov can. And you bet she’ll be sending some visitors to the Archives to retrieve that skin.

And the assistants STILL don’t know anything, what with Jon apparently now partered with fucking Daisy of all people. Without the key information about the Unknowing and the Stranger, the assistants don’t know not to help some envoy of the Stranger. They don’t know not to let someone from the circus in. And Nichola would almost certainly view killing them all as an added fuck-you to the Beholding, so you know she’d do it if she could. And even if Elias could stop any direct incursions by the Stranger, what if the Stranger were to approach someone like Tim? What if Nichola were to offer Tim freedom in exchange for a creepy old bit of taxidermy skin? He’d go for it in a second.

And speaking of Elias, we also have the most interesting line of the episode from Sarah Baldwin: “Is that what he’s calling himself now?” This, alone, was the one line I’m happy they breezed past. It was the one beat that didn’t feel rushed, because it should be something that spools out over many episodes. So as far as pacing goes, that beat did land really well for me.

It seems pretty clear that whoever Elias Bouchard was before, the thing wearing his body is at least no longer him in entirety. There likely was the original stoner Elias, but he was either replaced by someone else or willingly took on the mantle of something else, making him a hybrid of his own personality and that of something else. And honestly, I have to wonder if that personality isn’t Jonah Magnus. What if the founder of the Institute found a way to pass from body to body, either completely consuming or living in symbiosis with the current head of the Institute? It would lend a lot more weight to Elias’ arrogance so far, if he was the beating heart of the Magnus Institute by literally being the beating heart keeping Magnus alive. And when he dies, he would pass into the next head of the Institute. When he said that killing him would kill everyone there, he wasn’t talking about the body of Elias, perhaps, but the mind of Jonah Magnus.

Or at least that’s the theory I’m running with. It’s by far the most interesting meta coming out of this episode, as Elias continues to be one of the most intriguing aspects of season 3, even when he isn’t there.

But whoever Elias truly is, I get the feeling that he’s not as in control as he thinks. He loves playing games, proving how observant he is to Jon. He wants Jon afraid and impressed. But Jon’s getting a bit sick of it, and the one thing Elias really can’t seem to control is Jon’s bad decision train. And that train feels like it’s about to come into station. Jon’s diminishing humanity is something Elias is clearly pushing, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good a thing as Elias imagines it to be. It’s endangering his assistants, and rather than using them as touchstones and ways to cling to whatever sympathy and caring he has left in him, he’s running around with Daisy, who isn’t exactly a boost to anyone’s humanity. And without the emotional connection, he’s clearly missing obvious conclusions. He’s too focused on the story, and not enough on the people.

As we come up hard toward the mid-season break (which will follow episode 20 of season 3, for anyone who didn’t know yet), I get the feeling they’re going to leave us with either a cliffhanger or a real shakeup of the current situation. We know that the first half of this season has been Jon going out and trying to be proactive. He’s letting the notion that he’s supposed to save the world go to his head. He’s drifting further away from caring about others and falling further and further into the hunger for information. He’s becoming Elias’ sort of Archivist, and I don’t think that’s going to work out well.

Conclusions

Like I said, this felt like about half of two good episodes accidentally put in a tumble dryer together. We get the first half, which explores Breekon & Hope and Jon’s ever-diminishing humanity, and we have the latter half in which Jon is somehow working with Daisy, who is apparently cool with that now. And Sarah Baldwin is there. And she gets away to tell the Stranger that the new Archivist has no clue what his predecessor did with the skin that’s critical to the Unknowing. So a lot happens in a rather disjointed manner, leaving me feeling unsatisfied. The informational bits we got were good, sure, but lacking in context and grounding. Too much happened too quickly with too little reason to string it all together. And to waste a character like Sarah Baldwin on what amounted to a cameo feels like a damn shame.

I know these episodes can’t all be to my taste, and that’s fine. Really, it’s a testament to the high quality of this series that an episode like this, where my problems stem from writing decisions rather than character actions, feels so jarring to me. I’m guessing this was a one-off thing, made necessary by getting all this information out by the mid-season finale. I’ve very little doubt that next week we’ll be back on track, and I’ll be loving every minute.

Hopefully Jon, as a character, gets his head out of his ass in time to realize what he’s just done. I want to believe that he’s at least smart enough to realize that the Stranger is going to believe that skin is at the Archives, and will likely either try to infiltrate or attack it directly. It would be nice if Sims remembered that there are people at the Archive that he might remember as being friendly with him at some point.

And Jon needs those people, because without them his humanity is slipping away fast. So valuing them and keeping them informed? Sort of a thing he has to start doing if he’s going to be this dumb on the regular.

#The Magnus Archives #Analysis #analyzing episodes I don't particularly like is hard

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bluejayblueskies · 4 years

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ascension

Part 15 of Whumptober 2020

Fandom: The Magnus Archives Characters: Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood, Jonah Magnus Tags: Whump, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, Mild Gore

Read on Ao3

When Jon stumbles into the room at the top of Panopticon, heart pounding with equal parts exertion and terror, he sees Martin kneeling over the bloody and broken body of Jonah Magnus and nearly weeps with relief.

“Martin,” he says, voice hoarse from when he’d stood in the twisting halls that the Institute had become and shouted Martin’s name over and over again until it almost lost its meaning. It had been terrifying, to follow Martin around a corner and find that the walls had shifted and warped, turning the hallway into a dead end and sealing Martin away, beyond his reach. It had been even more so to Look, to try to See Martin, and to meet only murky darkness.

But now it’s fine, Jon thinks, as he crosses the room with quick steps hastened by joy and relief to where Martin still kneels on the stone floor, knees stained with crimson blood. Martin’s here, and he’s safe, and Jonah is dead, and it’s fine.

He places a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Martin?”

Martin turns, and Jon’s heart stops beating.

He’d wondered once, back when the world still belonged to the living and he lay curled up next to Martin in the safehouse, about immortality. Not the truest kind, like Simon Fairchild seemed to embody, but the cruder sort, of Rayner and Jonah, who stole the lives of others to escape that fear of what would inevitably consume them. Would it require forethought, planning, the meticulous choice of a new host, someone who had been touched by the fears and could be stolen in kind? Or was it a clumsy experience of trial and error and stolen physicality, rooted more in the human than in the esoteric? Jon thought of the eyes that stared from every portrait that lined the halls of the Institute, the same pair existing within dozens of bodies, always watching, always planning, and couldn’t help but wonder if it hurt to be replaced.

Jon sees those eyes now, a deep purple that glows in a way not quite human and burning in their intensity, staring at him from a face that is at once achingly familiar and startlingly foreign, and feels a terror so thick it makes him want to retch claw its way up his throat. “Martin?” he repeats, barely a whisper, but even as he says it, he Knows it’s not. Not anymore.

“I’m afraid not,” Martin Jonah says, and hearing that smug, selfish pride that Jonah so often employs in the same voice that has said I love you under the soft glow of morning light makes Jon want to crumble, to drop to his knees and let the sobs that push so insistently at the tip of his tongue overtake him completely. One pushes through anyway, a choked gasp of air that brings with it a wave of agonizing sadness.

“What have you done?” Jon says, in a voice so detached from himself it barely seems his own. “What… what have you done?”

“What I had to,” Jonah says mildly. He stands, running a casual thumb under his eyes where a thin trickle of blood drips from the corners. It smears red across his face—Martin’s face—and he stares at his now-crimson thumb with some disdain before wiping it deftly on what had once been Martin’s shirt, soft and loved and taken from Upton House, that final utopia that’s nothing but a blank slate in Jon’s mind. “My previous body was… damaged, so I had to act accordingly. Martin really has become quite adept with a knife, hasn’t he?”

“H… has? Is- is he still—?”

“Alive?” Jonah’s lips curl in a smile that might be sympathetic if it weren’t so obviously fake, and if it weren’t so obviously not Martin, because Martin could never smile like that. Like… like it was a carefully calculated lie. A strategy. “No. There’s only room for one mind within this body, and, well…” Jonah glances at his hands, turning them over in quiet contemplation. “I do think I’m going to like this one.”

No. No, no, no, no.

Jon presses a fist to his mouth and stumbles back, nearly tripping over the uneven stones.

No, no, he can’t be—

Jon’s back hits the stone wall behind him and he folds, sinking to the ground under the weight of his own crescendoing anguish.

He can’t be gone, he can’t be—

Jon closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see the man who used to be Martin watch his suffering, with eyes full of a sickening mirth and a face lacking any sort of remorse or sympathy. He closes his eyes, but he can still See.

He’s dead. Martin’s dead.

“Would it make it easier, I wonder,” Jonah says, his voice cutting through the buzzing in Jon’s ears and the shaking sobs that have completely overcome him, “if I called myself Martin? Of course, there’s no point in subterfuge anymore, but if you would rather—”

“Shut. Up.”

Jonah pauses. Jon’s eyes are tightly closed, but he can still see the corner of Jonah’s mouth turn up, ever so slightly. “Pardon?”

Jon’s face is still streaked with tears, and his arms are still wrapped around himself in a crushing embrace, and his voice is still cracked and broken when he repeats, “Shut. Up.”

Jonah sighs, and it’s the most Martin sound he’s made, and it ignites something white-hot and ravenous in Jon’s mind. “It didn’t have to be like this, you know,” he says placatingly, like one might speak to a child throwing a tantrum. “I was perfectly willing to allow the two of you to wander this new world of ours for eternity, doing—well, doing whatever you wanted, I suppose. You’d done so well, Jon; it felt only fair. And, after all, this world does belong to both of us.”

“I don’t want it,” Jon says, barely more than a whisper. He opens his eyes, finally, and looks up, allowing himself to be consumed by a deep purple that drowns out everything else around it. “I never wanted it.”

Jonah’s mouth curves down. “Pity.”

He turns, perhaps deciding that he’s done with Jon, but Jon isn’t done with him. “I never wanted the world,” Jon says, uncurling his body and pushing himself, shakily, to his feet, despite the trembling in his legs that threatens to send him sprawling again. “I never wanted power, or unlimited knowledge, or even freedom from the horrible places you’ve condemned all of humanity to wallow in.” Jon allows himself, briefly, to study the lines of Jonah’s Martin’s face as he turns back to face Jon: the gentle slope of his nose, turning up slightly at the end; the softness underneath his chin, where Jon had pressed feather-light kisses once and reveled in the way that Martin said, chidingly, “Hey, that tickles!”; the spattering of freckles across cheeks that dimpled when he smiled, spelling out constellations of their own, a night sky more beautiful than the one that lay above. Jon allows himself to feel, one last time, in love with the face he sees before him.

“I only ever wanted Martin,” Jon says, and he tucks the love deep within him, where it won’t be scarred by what’s to come. “And you took him from me.”

Jonah was wrong, Jon thinks, as his eyes flash silver and every eye in the world turns as one to face the body that Jonah had stolen but that is still very much Martin Blackwood. This world does not belong to both of them. It might have, in the beginning, when Jon had still resisted, had still been tied to something that wasn’t pure Knowing, in the form of quiet laughter and recited poetry. But not anymore. And as the Eye begins to burn Jonah from the inside out, Jon feels a bit of himself burn as well. But the love he’s hidden remains safe, held close to his heart and protected from that which wants, more than anything, for him to give himself over completely to the fear that tastes like sweet sherry on his tongue.

Jonah’s eyes flash a brilliant purple, and then it’s over. And Jon is alone.

He sinks back to the floor, and curls in on himself until the hurt is contained, and begins, once again, to weep.

#whumptober2020 #no.15 #possession #the magnus archives #fic

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